now,’ threw out the sculptor.
‘Sybert’s all right,’ said Melville emphatically.
The woman who wrote laughed as she rose. ‘It will be an interesting matter to watch,’ she announced; ‘but you may mark my words that our host is the man.’
CHAPTER II
A carriage rumbled into the stone-paved courtyard of the Palazzo Rosicorelli a good twenty minutes before six o’clock the next evening, and the Copleys descended and climbed the stairs, at peace with Villa Vivalanti and its thirty miles. Though it was still light out of doors, inside the palace, with its deep-embrasured windows and heavy curtains, it was already quite dark. As they entered the long salon the only light in the room came from a seven-branch candlestick on the tea-table, which threw its reflection upon Gerald’s white sailor-suit and little bare knees as he sat back solemnly in a carved Savonarola chair. At the sound of their arrival he wriggled down quickly and precipitated himself against Mrs. Copley.
‘Oh, mamma! Sybert came to tea, an’ I made it; an’ he said it was lots better van Marcia’s tea, an’ he dwank seven cups, an’ I dwank four.’
A chorus of laughter greeted this revelation, and a lazy voice called from the depths of an easy chair, ‘Oh, I say, Gerald, you mustn’t tell such shocking tales, or your mother will never leave me alone with the tea-things again.’ And the owner of the voice pulled himself together and walked across the room ta shake hands with the new-comers.
Laurence Sybert, as he advanced toward his hostess, threw a long thin shadow against the wall. He had a spare, dark, clean-shaven face with deep-set, sullen eyes; he was a delightfully perfected type of the cosmopolitan; it would have taken a second, or very possibly a third, glance to determine his nationality. But if the expression of his face were Italian, Oriental, anything you please, his build was undoubtedly Anglo-Saxon. Further, a certain wiriness beneath his movements proclaimed him, to any one familiar with the loose-hung riders of the plains, unmistakably American.
‘Your son slanders me, Mrs. Copley,’ he said as he held out his hand; ‘I didn’t drink but six, upon my honour.’
‘Hello, Sybert! Anything happened in Rome to-day? What’s the news on the Rialto?’ was Mr. Copley’s greeting.
Marcia regarded him with a laugh as she drew off her gloves and lighted the spirit-lamp.
‘We’ve been away since nine this morning, and here’s Uncle Howard thirsting for news already! What he will do when we really get out of the city, I can’t imagine.’
‘Oh, and so you’ve taken the villa, have you?’
Marcia nodded.
‘And you should see it! It looks like a papal palace. This is the first time that Prince Vivalanti has ever consented to rent it to strangers; it’s his official seat.’
‘Very condescending of him,’ the young man laughed; ‘and do you accept his responsibilities along with the place?’
‘From the fattore’s account I should say that his responsibilities rest but lightly on the Prince of Vivalanti.’
‘Ah—that’s true enough.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Only by hearsay. I know the village; and a more desperate little place it would be hard to find in all the Sabine hills. The people’s love for their prince is tempered by the need of a number of improvements which he doesn’t supply.’
‘I dare say they are pretty poor,’ she conceded; ‘but they are unbelievably picturesque! Every person there looks as if he had just walked out of a water-colour sketch. Even Uncle Howard was pleased, and he has lived here so long that he is losing his enthusiasms.’
‘It is a pretty decent sort of a place,’ Copley agreed, ‘though I have a sneaking suspicion that we may find it rather far. But the rest of the family liked it, and my aim in life–’
‘Nonsense, Uncle Howard! you know you were crazy over it yourself. You signed the lease without a protest. Didn’t he, Aunt Katherine?’
‘I signed the lease, my dear Marcia, at the point of the pistol.’
‘The point of the pistol?’
‘You threatened, if we got a mile—an inch, I believe you said—nearer Rome, you would give a party every day; and if that isn’t the point of a pistol to a poor, worn-out man like me, I don’t know what is.’
‘It would certainly seem like it,’ Sybert agreed. And turning to Marcia, he added, ‘I am afraid that you rule with a very despotic hand, Miss Marcia.’
Marcia’s eyebrows went up a barely perceptible trifle, but she laughed and returned: ‘No, indeed, Mr. Sybert; you are mistaken there. It is not I, but Gerald, who plays the part of despot in the Copley household.’
At this point, Granton, Mrs. Copley’s English maid, appeared in the doorway. ‘Marietta is waiting to give Master Gerald his supper,’ she announced.
Gerald fled to his mother and raised a cry of protest.
‘Mamma, please let me stay up to dinner wif you to-night.’
For a moment Mrs. Copley looked as if she might consent, but catching sight of Granton’s relentless face, she returned: ‘No, my dear, you have had enough festivity for one evening. You must have your tea and go to bed like a good little boy.’
Gerald abandoned his mother and entrenched himself behind Sybert. ‘‘Cause Sybert’s here, an’ I like Sybert,’ he wailed desperately.
But Granton stormed even this fortress. ‘Come, Master Gerald; your supper’s getting cold,’ and she laid a firm hand on his shoulder and marched him away.
‘There’s the real despot,’ laughed Copley. ‘I tremble before Granton myself.’
Pietro appeared with a plate of toasted muffins and the evening mail. Mr. Copley settled himself in a wicker chair, with a pile of letters on the arm at his right; and, as he ran his eyes over them one by one, he tore them in pieces and formed a new pile at his left. They were begging letters for the most part. He received a great many, and this was his usual method of answering them: not that he was an ungenerous man; it was merely a matter of principle with him not to be generous in this particular way.
As he sat disposing of envelope after envelope with vigorous hands, Copley’s appearance suggested a series of somewhat puzzling contrasts: seriousness and humour; sensitiveness and force—an active impulse to forge ahead and accomplish things, a counter-impulse to shrug his shoulders and wonder why. He was a puzzle to most of his friends; at times even one to his wife; but she had accepted his eccentricities along with his millions, and though she did not always understand either his motives of his actions, she made no complaint. To most men a fortune is a blessing. To Copley it was rather in the nature of a curse. He might have amounted to almost anything had he had to work for it; but for the one field of activity which a fortune in America seems to entail upon its owner—that of entering the arena and doubling and tripling it—he was singularly unfitted both by temperament and inclination. In this he differed from his elder brother. And there was one other point in which the two were at variance. Though their father had been in the eyes of the law a just and upright man, still, in the battle of competition, many had fallen that he might stand, and the younger son had grown up with the knowledge that from a humanitarian
