The Wheat Princess Read online

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE drops were falling fast by the time they reached the building. Theyhastily dismounted and pushed forward to the wide stone archway whichserved as entrance. A door of rudely joined boards swung across theopening, but it was ajar and banging in the wind. Sybert threw it openand led the horses into the gloomy interior. It proved to be awine-cellar, probably belonging to the monastery. The room was low butdeep, with a dirt floor and rough masonry walls; in the rear two hugevats rose dimly to the roof, and the floor was scattered withfarming-implements. The air was damp and musty and pungent with thesmell of fermenting grape-juice.

  Sybert fastened the horses to a low beam by means of their bridles,while Marcia sat down upon a plough and pensively regarded thelandscape. He presently joined her.

  'This is not a very cheerful refuge,' he remarked; 'but at least it isdrier than the open road.'

  She moved along and offered him part of her seat.

  'I think I can improve on that,' he said, as he rummaged out a boardfrom a pile of lumber and fitted it at a somewhat precarious slopeacross the plough. They gingerly sat down upon it and Marcia observed--

  'I suppose if you had your way, Mr. Sybert, we should be sitting on aMcCormick reaper.'

  'It would at least be more comfortable,' he returned.

  The rain was beating fiercely by this time, and the lightning flasheswere following each other in quick succession. Black clouds wererolling inland from across the Volscian mountains and piling layer uponlayer above their heads. Marcia sat watching the gathering storm, andpresently she exclaimed:

  'This might be a situation out of a book! To be overtaken by athunderstorm in the Sabine mountains and seek shelter in a desertedwine-cellar--it sounds like one of the "Duchess's" novels.'

  'It does have a familiar ring,' he agreed. 'It only remains for you tosprain your ankle.'

  She laughed softly, with an undertone of excitement in her voice.

  'I've never had so many adventures in my life as since we came out toVilla Vivalanti--Marcellus, and Gervasio, and Gervasio's stepfather,and now a cloud-burst in the mountains! If they're going to rise to aclimax, I can't imagine what our stay will end with.'

  'Henry James, you know, says that the only adventures worth having areintellectual adventures.'

  Marcia considered this proposition doubtfully.

  'In an intellectual adventure,' she objected, 'you could never be quitesure that it really _was_ an adventure; you'd always be afraid you'dimagined half of it. I think I prefer mine more visibly exciting.There's something picturesque in a certain amount of real bloodshed.'

  Sybert turned his eyes away from her with a gesture of indifference.

  'Oh, if it's merely bloodshed you're after,' he said dryly, 'you'llfind as much as you like in any butcher's shop.'

  She watched him for a moment and then she observed, 'I suppose you aredisagreeable on purpose, Mr. Sybert. You have a--' she hesitated for aword, and as none presented itself, substituted a genericterm--'_horrid_ way of answering a person.'

  He turned back toward her with a laugh. 'If I really thought you meantit, I should have a still "horrider" way.'

  'Certainly I mean it,' she declared. 'I've always liked to read aboutfights and plots and murders in books. I think it's nice to have alittle blood spattered about. It's a sort of concrete symbol ofcourage.'

  'Ah--I saw a concrete symbol of courage the other day, but I can't saythat it struck me as attractive.'

  'What was it?'

  'A fellow lying by the roadside, in a pool of dirty water and blood,with his mouth wide open, a couple of stiletto wounds in his neck, andhis brains spattered over his face--brains may be useful, but they'renot pretty.'

  She looked at him gravely, with a slow expression of disgust.

  'I suppose you think I'm horrider than ever now?'

  'Yes, said Marcia; 'I do.'

  'Then don't make any such absurd statement as that you think bloodshedpicturesque. The world's got beyond that. Do you object if I smoke? Idon't think it would hurt this place to have a bit of fumigating.'

  She nodded permission, and watched him silently as he rolled acigarette and hunted through his pockets for a match. The coat did notreward his search, and he commenced on the waistcoat. Suddenly shebroke out with--

  'What's that in your pocket, Mr. Sybert?'

  A momentary shade of annoyance flashed over his face.

  'It's a dynamite bomb.'

  'It's a revolver! What are you carrying that for? It's against the law.'

  'Don't tell the police' he pleaded. 'I've always liked to play withfire-arms; it's a habit I've never outgrown.'

  'Why are you carrying it?' she repeated.

  Sybert found his match and lighted his cigarette with slowdeliberation. Then he rose to his feet and looked down at her. 'You asktoo many questions, Miss Marcia,' he said, and he commenced pacing backand forth the length of the dirt floor.

  She remained with her elbow resting on her knee and her chin in herhand, looking out at the storm. Presently he came back and sat downagain.

  'Is our amnesty off?' he asked.

  Before she could open her mouth to respond a fierce white flash oflightning came, followed instantly by a deafening crash of thunder. Atorrent of water came pouring down on the loose tiles with a roar thatsounded like a cannonading. The air seemed quivering with electricity.The horses plunged and snorted in terror, and Sybert sprang to his feetto quiet them.

  'Jove! It _is_ a cloudburst,' he cried.

  Marcia ran to the open doorway and stood looking out across thestorm-swept valley. The water was coming down in an almost solid sheet;the clouds hung low and black and impenetrable except when a jaggedline of lightning cut them in two. From the height across the valleythe tall square monastery tower rose defiantly into the very midst ofthe storm, while the cypress trees at its base swayed and writhed andwrung their hands in agony. Sybert came and stood beside her, and thetwo watched the storm in silence.

  'There,' he suddenly flashed out, with a little undertone of triumph inhis voice--'there is Italy!' He nodded toward the old walls rising sostanchly from the storm. 'That's the way the Italians have weatheredtyranny and revolution and oppression for centuries, and that's the waythey will keep on doing.'

  She looked up at him quickly, and caught a gleam of something she hadnever seen before in his face. It was as if an internal fire wereblazing through. For an imperceptible second he held her look, then hiseyelids drooped again and his usual expression of reserve came back.

  'Come and sit down,' he said; 'you're getting wet.'

  They turned back to the plough again and sat side by side, looking outat the storm. The beating of the rain on the tiles above their headsmade a difficult accompaniment for conversation, and they did not tryto talk. But they were electrically aware of each other's presence; thewild excitement of the storm had taken hold of both of them. Marcia'sbreath came fast through slightly parted lips, her cheeks were flushed,her hair was tumbled, and there was a yellow glow in her deep greyeyes. Her face seemed to vivify the gloomy interior. Sybert glanced ather sidewise once or twice in half surprise; she did not seem exactlythe person he had thought he knew. Her hand lay in her lap, idlyclasping her gloves and whip. It looked white and soft against herblack habit.

  Suddenly Marcia asked a question.

  'Will you tell me something, Mr. Sybert?'

  'I am at your service,' he bowed.

  'And the truth?'

  'Oh, certainly, the truth.'

  She glanced down in her lap a moment and smoothed the fingers of hergloves in a thoughtful silence. 'Well,' she said finally, 'I don'tknow, after all, what I want to ask you; but there is something in theair that I don't understand. Tell me the truth about Italy.'

  'The truth about Italy?' He repeated the words with a slight accent ofsurprise.

  'Last week in Rome, at the Roystons' hotel, everybody was talking aboutthe wheat famine and the bread riots, and the
y all stopped suddenlywhen I asked any questions. Uncle Howard will never tell me a thing; hejust jokes about it when I ask him.'

  'He's afraid,' said Sybert. 'No one dares to tell the truth in Italy;it's lese majeste.'

  She glanced up at him quickly to see what he meant. His face was quitegrave, but there was a disagreeable suggestion of a smile about hislips. She looked out of doors again with an angry light in her eyes.'Oh, I think you are beastly!' she cried. 'You and Uncle Howard bothact as if I were ten years old. I don't think that a wheat famine isany subject to joke about.'

  'Miss Marcia,' he said quietly, 'when things get to a certain point, ifyou wish to keep your senses you can't do anything but joke about them.'

  'Tell me,' she said.

  There was a look of troubled expectancy in her face. Sybert half closedhis eyes and studied the ground without speaking. Not very many daysbefore he had felt a fierce desire to hurl the story at her, toconfront her with a picture of the suffering that her father hadcaused; now he felt as strongly as her uncle that she must not know.

  'Since you cannot do anything to help, why should you wish tounderstand? There are so many unpleasant things in the world, and somany of us already who know about them. It's--' he turned toward herwith a little smile, but one which she did not resent--'well, it's arelief, you know, to see a few people who accept their happiness as afree gift from heaven and ask no questions.'

  'I am not a baby. I should not care to accept happiness on any suchterms.'

  'And you want to know about Italy? Very well,' he said grimly; 'I cangive you plenty of statistics.' He leaned forward with his elbows onhis knees and traced lines in the dirt floor with his whip, speaking inthe emotionless tone of one who is quoting a list from a catalogue.

  'The poor people bear three-fourths of the taxes. Every necessity oflife is taxed--bread and salt and meat and utensils--but such things ascarriages and servants and jewels go comparatively free. When thegovernment has squeezed all it can from the people, the church takesits share, and then the government comes in again with the statelotteries. The Latin races are already sufficiently addicted togambling without needing any extra encouragement from the state. Partof the revenue thus collected is spent in keeping up the army--intraining the young men of the country in idleness and in a great manythings they would do better without. Part of it goes to build arcadesand fountains and statues of Victor Emmanuel. The most of it stops inofficial pockets. You may think that politics are as corrupt as theycan be in America, but I assure you it is not the case. In Italy thepriests won't let the people vote, and the parliament is run in theinterests of a few. The people are ignorant and superstitious; morethan half of them can neither read nor write, and the governmentexploits them as it pleases. The farm labourer earns only fromtwenty-five to thirty cents a day to support himself and his family.Fortunately, living is cheap or there would soon not be any farmlabourers alive.

  'Last year--' he paused and an angry flush crept under his darkskin--'last year in Lombardy, Venetia, and the Marches--three of themost fertile provinces in Italy--fifteen thousand people went mad fromhunger. The children of these _pellagrosi_ will be idiots and cripples,and ten years from now you will find them on the steps of churches,holding out maimed hands for coppers. At this present moment there areten thousand people in Naples crowded into damp caves andcellars--practically all of them stricken with consumption andscrofula, and sick with hunger.'

  He leaned forward and looked into her face with blazing eyes.

  'Marcia, in this last week I've seen--God!' he burst out, '_what_things I've seen!'

  He got up and strode to the door, and Marcia sat looking after him withfrightened eyes. The air seemed charged with his words. She feltherself trembling, and she caught her breath quickly with a half-gasp.She closed her eyes and pictures rose up before her--pictures she didnot wish to see. She thought of the hordes of poor people in CastelVivalanti, of the bony, wrinkled hands that were stretched out forcoppers at every turn, of the crowds of children with hungry faces. Shethought of the houses that they lived in--wretched little dens, darkand filthy and damp. And it wasn't their fault, she repeated toherself; it wasn't their fault. They were honest and frugal, theywanted work; but there was not enough to go around.

  She sat quite still for several moments, feeling acutely a great manythings she had scarcely divined before. Then presently she glanced overher shoulder at the great vats towering out of the darkness behind her.They suddenly presented themselves to her imagination as a symbol, avisible sign of the weight of society bearing down upon the poor,crushing out goodness and happiness and hope. As she watched them withhalf-fascinated eyes, they seemed to swell and grow until theydominated the whole room with the sense of their oppressiveness. Sherose with a little shiver and almost ran to the door.

  'Let's go!' she cried.

  'What's the matter?' he asked, looking at her face.

  'Nothing. I want to go. It's stopped raining.'

  He led out the horses and helped her to mount.

  'What's the matter?' he asked again, 'Your hand is trembling. Did I sayanything to frighten you?'

  She shook her head without answering, and when they reached the roadshe drew a long breath of fresh air and glanced back with a nervouslaugh.

  'I had the most horrible feeling in there! I felt as if something weregoing to reach out from those vats and grab me from behind.'

  'I think,' he suggested, 'that you'd better take some of your aunt'squinine when you get home.'

  'Mr. Sybert,' she said presently, 'I told you one day that I thoughtpoor people were picturesque, I don't think so any more.'

  'I didn't suppose that you meant it.'

  'But I did!' said Marcia. 'I've merely changed my mind.' She touchedKentucky Lil with her whip and splashed on ahead down the road that ledtoward the monastery, while Sybert followed with a slightly perplexedfrown.

  The storm had passed as quickly as it had come. Loose, flying cloudsstill darkened the sky, but the heavy black thunder-clouds were alreadyfar to the eastward over the Apennines. In its brief passage, however,the storm had left havoc behind it. The vines in the wayside vineyardswere stripped of their leaves, and the bamboo poles they were trainedupon broken and bent. Branches torn from the olive trees were strewnover the grass, and in the wheat fields the young grain was bowedalmost to the ground. A fierce mountain torrent poured down the side ofthe road through a gully that an hour before had been dry.

  The mountain air was fresh and keen, and the horses, excited by thestorm, plunged on, recklessly irrespective of mud and water. Theycrossed the little valley that lay between the hill of the wine-cellarand the higher hill of the monastery, clattered through the singlestreet of the tiny hamlet which huddled itself at the base of the hill,and wound on upward along the narrow walled roadway that turned andunturned upon itself like the coils of a serpent. They passed throughthe dark grove of cypresses that skirted the outer walls, and emergedfor a moment on a small plateau which gave a wide view of recedinghills and valleys and hills again. Below them, at a precipitous angle,lay the valley they had just come through and the clusteringbrown-tiled roofs of the little Noah's Ark village.

  As they rode out from the shadow of the trees, by a common impulse theyboth drew rein and brought their horses to a standstill at the edge ofthe grove. Away to the eastward the sky was black, but the western skywas a blaze of orange light, and the sun, an orange ball, was droppinginto the purple Campagna as into a sea. The shadows were settling inthe valley beneath them, but the hills were tinged with a shimmeringlight, and the tower above their heads was glowing in a sombre,softened beauty.

  They had scarcely had time, however, to more than glance at thewide-spread picture before them when they became aware of a littlehuman drama that was being enacted under their eyes.

  A young monk in the brown cassock of the Franciscans, probably a laybrother in the monastery, was standing in the vineyard by the roadside,resting for a moment from his task of tying up the vines tha
t had beenbeaten down by the storm. He had not seen the riders--his back wasturned toward them, and his gaze was resting on the field across theway, where scarlet poppies were growing among the wheat. But his eyeswere not for the flowers, nor yet for the light on the hillsbeyond--these he had seen before and understood. He was watching adark-haired peasant girl and a man dressed in shepherd's clothes, whowere strolling side by side along the narrow pathway that leddiagonally through the wheat. The man, strong-limbed and brown andmuscular, in sheepskin trousers and pointed hat, was bending towardher, talking insistently with vehement Italian gestures. She appearedto listen, and then she shrugged her shoulders and half drew back,while her mocking laugh rang out clearly on the still evening air. Fora moment he hesitated, then he boldly put his arm around her, and thetwo passed down the hill and out of sight in the direction of thehamlet. The poor young frate, his work forgotten, with hands idlyhanging at his sides, stared at the spot where they had disappeared.And as he looked, the monastery bells in the campanile above him slowlyrang out the 'Ave Maria.' He started guiltily, and with a hasty sign ofthe cross caught up his rosary and bowed his head in prayer.

  At the unexpected sound of the bells the horses broke into a quicktrot. The monk, startled at the clatter of hoofs so near, turnedsuddenly and looked in their direction. As he caught sight of Marcia'sand Sybert's eyes upon him, and knew that they had seen, a quick flushspread over his thin dark face, and turning away he bowed his headagain.

  Marcia broke the silence with a low laugh as they rode on into theshade of the cypresses.

  'He thought we were----' and then she stopped.

  'Lovers too,' said Sybert. 'Poor devil! I suppose he thinks the worldis full of lovers outside his monastery walls. There,' he added, 'is aman who is living for an idea.'

  'And is beginning to suspect that it is the wrong one.'

  He shot her a quick glance of comprehension. 'Ah, there's the rub,' hereturned, a trifle soberly--'when you begin to suspect your idea's thewrong one.'

  They rode on down the hill into the darkening valley. They were goingthe straight way home now, and the horses knew it. They were still inthe hills when the twilight faded, and a young moon, just beyond thecrescent, took its place, riding high in a sky scattered thick withflying clouds. It was a wild, wet, windy night, though on the lowerlevels the roads were fairly dry: the storm had evidently wasted itsfury on the heights.

  It was too fast a pace to admit much talking, and they both contentedthemselves with their thoughts. Only once did Marcia break the silence.

  'I feel as if we were carrying the good news from Ghent to Aix!'

  Sybert laughed and quoted softly:--

  'Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the midnight we galloped abreast. Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace-- Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place----

  Kentucky Lil would make quite a Roland,' he broke off.

  'She's the nicest horse I ever rode,' said Marcia.

  As they turned in at the villa gates she said contritely, 'I didn'tknow it would take so long; I'm afraid, Mr. Sybert, that I've made youvery late!'

  'Perhaps I like adventures too,' he smiled; 'and you and I, MissMarcia, have travelled far to-day.'