Marcia, with Sybert and Dessart on either hand, continued to stroll up and down the terrace, while her aunt and uncle entertained Melville amid the furnished comfort of the loggia. Sybert would ordinarily have joined the group on the loggia, but he happened to be in the middle of a discussion with Dessart regarding the new and, according to most people, scandalous proposition for levelling the Seven Hills. The two men seemed to be diametrically opposed to all their views, and were equally far apart in their methods of arguing. Dessart would lunge into flights of exaggerated rhetoric, piling up adjectives and metaphors until by sheer weight he had carried his listeners off their feet; while Sybert, with a curt phrase, would knock the corner-stone from under the finished edifice. The latters method of fencing had always irritated Marcia beyond measure. He had a fashion of stating his point, and then abandoning his adversarys eloquence in mid-air, as if it were not worth his while to argue further. To-day, having come to a deadlock in the matter of the piano regolatore, they dropped the subject, and pausing by the terrace parapet, they stood looking down on the plain below.
Dessart scanned it eagerly with eyes quick to catch every contrast and tone; he noted the varying purples of the distance, the narrow ribbon of glimmering gold where sky and plain met the sea, the misty whiteness of Rome, the sharply cut outline of Monte Soracte. It was perfect as a picturecomposition, perspective, colour-schemenothing might be bettered. He sighed a contented sigh.
Even I, he murmured, couldnt suggest a single change.
A slight smile crept over Syberts sombre face.
I could suggest a number.
The young painter brought a reproachful gaze to bear upon him.
Ah, he agreed, and I can imagine the direction theyd take! Miss Copley, he added, turning to Marcia, let me tell you of the thing I saw the other day on the Roman Campagna: a sight which was enough to make a right-minded man sick. I saw there was a tragic pausea McCormick reaper and binder!
Sybert uttered a short laugh.
I am glad that you did; and I only wish it were possible for one to see more.
Man! Man! You dont know what you are saying! Paul cried. There were tears in his voice. A McCormick reaper, I tell you, painted red and yellow and bluethe man who did it should have been compelled to drink his paint.
Marcia laughed, and he added disgustedly: The thing sows and reaps and binds all at once. One shudders to think of its activitiesand that in the Agra Romana, which picturesque peasants have spaded and planted and mowed by hand for thousands of years.
Not, however, a particularly economical way of cultivating the Campagna, Sybert observed.
Economical way of cultivating the Campagna! Dessart repeated the words with a groan. Is there no place in the world sacred to beauty? Must America flood every corner of the habitable globe with reapers and sewing-machines and trolley-cars? The way theyre sophisticating these adorably antique peasants is criminal.
Thats the way it seems to me, Marcia agreed cordially. Uncle Howard says they havent enough to eat; but they certainly do look happy, and they dont look thin. I cant help believing he exaggerates the trouble.
An Italian, Miss Copley, who doesnt know where his next meal is coming from, will lie on his back in the sunshine, thinking how pretty the sky looks; and he will get as much pleasure from the prospect as he would from his dinner. If that isnt the art of being happy, I dont know what is. And that is why I hate to have Italy spoiled.
Well, Dessart, I fancy we all hate that, Sybert returned. Though I am afraid we should quarrel over definitions. He stretched out his hand toward the west, where the plain joined the sea by the ruins of Ostia and the Pontine Marshes. It was a great, barren, desolate waste; unpeopled, uncultivated, fever-stricken.
Dont you think it would be rather a fine thing, he asked, to see that land drained and planted and lived on again as it was perhaps two thousand years ago?
Marcia shook her head. I should rather have it left just as it is. Possibly a few might gain, but think of the poetry and picturesqueness and romance that the many would lose! Once in a while, Mr. Sybert, it seems as if utility might give way to poetryespecially on the Roman Campagna. It is more fitting that it should be desolate and bare, with only a few wandering shepherds and herds, and no buildings but ruined towers and Latin tombsa sort of burial-place for Ancient Rome.
The living have a few rightseven in Rome.
They seem to have a good many, Dessart agreed. Oh, I know what you reformers want! Youd like to see the city full of smoke-stacks and machinery, and the Campagna laid out in garden plots, and everybody getting good wages and six per cent. interest; with all the people dressed alike in ready-made clothing instead of peasant costume, and nobody poor and nobody picturesque.
Sybert did not reply for a moment, as with half-shut eyes he studied the distance. He was thinking of a ride he had taken three days before. He had gone out with a hunting-party to one of the great Campagna estates, owned by a Roman prince whose only interest in the land was to draw from it every possible centesime of income. They had stopped to water their horses at a cluster of straw huts where the farm labourers lived, and Sybert had dismounted and gone into one of them to talk to the people. It was dark and damp, with a dirt floor and rude bunks along the sides. There, fifty human beings lived crowded together, breathing the heavy, pestilential air. They had come down to bands from their mountain homes, searching for work, and had sold their lives to the prince for thirty cents a day.
The picture flashed across him now of their pale, apathetic faces, of the dumb reproach in their eyes, and for a second he felt tempted to describe it. But with the reflection that neither of the two before him would care any more about it than had the landlord prince, he changed his expression into a careless shrug.
It will be some time before well see that, he answered Dessarts speech.
But youd like it, wouldnt you? Marcia persisted.
Yes; wouldnt you?
No, she laughed, I cant say that I should! I decidedly prefer the peasants as they are. They are far more attractive when they are poor, and since they are happy in spite of it, I dont see why it is our place to object.
Sybert eyed the pavement impassively a moment: then he raised his head and turned to Marcia. He swept her a glance from head to foot which took in every detail of her dainty gown, her careless grace as she leaned against the balustrade, and he made no endeavour to conceal the look of critically cold contempt in his eyes. Marcia returned his glance with an air of angry challenge; not a word was spoken, but it was an open declaration of war.
CHAPTER VII
The Roystons approached Rome by easy stages along the Riviera, and as their prospective movements were but vaguely outlined even to themselves, they suffered their approach to remain unheralded. Paul Dessart, since his talk with Marcia, had taken a little dip into the future, with the result that he had decided to swallow any hurt feelings he might possess and pay dutiful court to his relatives. The immediate rewards of such a course were evident.
One sunny morning early in April (he had been right in his forecast of the time: Palm Sunday loomed a week ahead) a carriage drew up before the door of his studio, and Mrs. Royston and the Misses Royston alighted, squabbled with the driver over the fare, and told him he need not wait. They rang the bell, and during the pause that followed stood upon the door-step, dubiously scanning the neighbourhood. It was one of the narrow, tortuous streets between the Corso and the river; a street of many colours and many smells, with party-coloured washings fluttering from the windows, with pretty tumble-haired children in gold ear-rings and shockingly scanty clothing sprawling underfoot. The house itself presented a blank face of peeling stucco to the street, with nothing but the heavily barred windows below and an ornamental cornice four stories up to suggest that it had once been a palace and a stronghold.