Crossing to the little grotto that had formed the subject of the picture, she stood gazing pensively at the dilapidated moss-grown pile of stones. The afternoon when Paul had sketched it seemed years before; in reality it was not two months. She thought of him as he had looked that day—so enthusiastic and young and debonair—and she thought of him without a tremor. Many things had changed since then, and she had changed with them. If only Eleanor’s suspicion might be true, that he would come to care for Margaret! She clung to the suggestion. Eleanor’s ‘superstition’ need trouble her no more; Paul would not need to be avenged.
She turned aside, and as she did so something caught her eyes. She leaned over to look, and then started back with an exclamation of alarm. A man was lying asleep, almost at her feet, hidden by the tall weeds that choked the entrance to the grotto. The first involuntary thought that flashed to her mind was of Gervasio’s stepfather, but immediately she knew that he was not the sleeper. Gervasio’s stepfather was old, with a grizzled beard; it was evident that this man was young, in spite of the fact that his hat was pulled across his eyes. She laughed at her own fear; it was some peasant who had come from the fields to rest in the shade.
She leaned over to look again, and as she did so her heart suddenly leaped into her mouth. The man’s shirt was open at the throat, and there was a dark-purple crucifix tattooed upside down upon his breast. For a second she stood staring, powerless to move; the next, she was running wildly across the blazing wheat field toward the shelter of the villa, with a frightened glance behind at the shadow of the cypresses.
CHAPTER XXIII
Marcia passed the afternoon in a state of nervous impatience for her uncle’s return. She said nothing to Mrs. Copley of the man she had found asleep in the grotto, and the effort to preserve an outward serenity added no little to her inner trepidation. In vain she tried to reason with her fear; it was not a subject which responded to logic. She assured herself over and over again that the man could not be the same Neapolitan who had warned her uncle; that he was safely in prison; and that the tattooed crucifix was only the general mark of a secret society. The assurance did not carry conviction. Her first startled impression had been too deep to be thrown off lightly, and coming just then, in the midst of the rioting and lawlessness, the incident carried additional force. She had lately heard many stories of lonely villas being broken into, of travellers on the Campagna being waylaid and robbed, of the vindictiveness of the Camorra, which her uncle had opposed. The stories were not reassuring; and though she resolutely put them out of her mind, she found herself thinking of them again and again. Italy’s elaborate police system, she knew, was not merely for show.
Mr. Copley and the Melvilles were due at five, but as they had not appeared by half-past, Mrs. Copley decided that they had missed their train, and she and Marcia sat down to tea—or, more accurately, to iced lemonade—without waiting. The table was set under the shade of the ilex trees where the grove met the upper end of the terrace, and where any slight breeze that chanced to be stirring would find them out. Gerald and Gervasio swallowed their allotted glassful and two brioches with dispatch, and withdrew to the cool shadows of the ilex grove to play at horse with poor, patient Bianca and the streaming ribbons of her cap. Mrs. Copley and Marcia took the repast in more leisurely fashion, with snatches of very intermittent conversation. Marcia’s eyes wandered in the pauses to the poppy-sprinkled wheat field and the cypresses beyond.
‘I believe they are coming, after all!’ Mrs. Copley finally exclaimed, as she shaded her eyes with her hands and looked down across the open stretch of vineyards to where the Roman road, a yellow ribbon of dust, divided the fields. ‘Yes, that is the carriage!’
Marcia looked at the moving speck and shook her head. ‘Your eyes are better than mine, Aunt Katherine, if you can recognize Uncle Howard at this distance.’
‘The carriage is turning up our road. I am sure it is they. Poor things! I am afraid they will be nearly dead after the drive in this heat. Rome must have been unbearable to-day.’ And she hastily dispatched Pietro to prepare more iced drinks.
Ten minutes later, however, the carriage had resolved itself into a jangling Campagna wine-cart, and the two resigned themselves to waiting again. By half-past seven Marcia was growing frankly nervous. Could anything have happened to her uncle? Should she have told her aunt and sent some one to meet him with a warning message? Surely no one would dare to stop the carriage on the open road in broad daylight. A hundred wild imaginings were chasing through her brain, when finally, close upon eight, the rumble of wheels sounded on the avenue.
Both Mrs. Copley and Marcia uttered an exclamation of relief. Mrs. Copley had been worried on the score of the dinner, and Marcia for any number of reasons which disappeared with the knowledge that her uncle was safe. They hurried out to the loggia to meet the new-comers, and as the carriage drew up, not only did the Melvilles and Mr. Copley descend, but Laurence Sybert as well. At sight of him Marcia hung back, asking herself, with a quickly beating heart, why he had come.
Mrs. Copley, with the first glance at their faces, interrupted her own graceful words of welcome to cry: ‘Has anything happened? Why are you so late?’
They were visibly excited, and did not wait for greetings before pouring out their news—an attempted assassination of King Humbert on the Pincian hill that afternoon—Rome under martial law—a plot discovered to assassinate the premier and other leaders in control.
The two asked questions which no one answered, and all talked at once—all but Sybert. Marcia noticed that he was unusually silent, and it struck her that his face had a haggard look. He did not so much as glance in her direction, except for a bare nod of greeting on his arrival.
‘Well, well,’ Copley broke into the general babel, ‘it’s a terrible business. You should see the excitement in Rome! The city is simply demoralized; but we’ll give you the particulars later. Let us get into something cool first—we’re all nearly dead. Has it been hot out here? Rome has been a foretaste of the inferno.’
‘And this young man,’ Melville added, laying a hand on Sybert’s arm, ‘just got back from the Milan riots. Hadn’t slept, any to speak of for four days, and what does he do this afternoon but sit down at his desk, determined to make up his back work, Sunday or no Sunday, with the thermometer where it pleases. Your husband and I had to drag him off by main force.’
‘Poor Mr. Sybert! you do look worn out. Not slept for four days? Why, you must be nearly dead! You may go to bed immediately after dinner, and I shall not have you called till Monday morning.’
‘I’ve been sleeping for the last twenty-four hours, Mrs. Copley, and I really don’t need any more sleep at present,’ he protested laughingly, but with a slight air of embarrassment. It was a peculiar trait of Sybert’s that he never liked to be made the subject of conversation, which was possibly the reason why he had been made the subject of so many conversations. This reticence when speaking of himself or his own feelings, struck the beholder as somewhat puzzling. It had always puzzled Marcia, and had been one reason why she had been so persistent in her desire to find out what he was really like.
The party shortly assembled for dinner, the women in the coolest of light summer gowns, the men in white linen instead of evening dress. They went into the dining-room without affording Marcia a chance to catch her uncle alone. The meal did not pass off very gaily. Assassinations were served with the soup, bread riots with the fish, and hypothetical robberies and plots with the further courses; while Pietro presided with a sinister obsequiousness which added darkly to the effect. In vain Mrs. Copley tried to turn the conversation into pleasanter channels. The men were too stirred up to talk of anything else, and the threatened tragedy of the day was rehearsed in all its bearings.