For the past two weeks Roman workmen and Castel Vivalanti cleaning-women had been busily carrying out Mrs. Copley’s orders. The florid furniture and coloured chandeliers of the latter Vivalanti had been banished9 to the attic10 (or what answers to an attic in a Roman villa), while the faded damask of a former generation had been dusted and restored. Tapestries11 covered the walls and hung over the balustrade of the marble staircase. Dark rugs lay on the red tile floors; carved chests and antique chairs and tables of coloured marble, supported by gilded12 griffins, were scattered13 through the rooms. In the bedrooms the heavy draperies had been superseded14 by curtains of an airier texture15, while wicker chairs and chintz-covered couches lent an un-Roman air of comfort to the rooms.
In spite of his humorous grumbling16 about the trials of moving-day, Mr. Copley found himself very comfortable as he lounged on the parapet toward sunset, smoking a pre-prandial cigarette, and watching the shadows as they fell over the Campagna. Gerald was already up to his elbows in the fountain, and the ilex grove17 was echoing his happy shrieks18 as he prattled21 in Italian to Marietta about a marvellous two-tailed lizard22 he had caught in a cranny of the stones. Copley smiled as he listened, for—Castel Vivalanti to the contrary—his little boy was very near his heart.
Marcia in the house had been gaily superintending the unpacking, and running back and forth23 between the rooms, as excited by her new surroundings as Gerald himself.
‘What time does Villa Vivalanti dine?’ she inquired while on a flying visit to her aunt’s room.
‘Eight o’clock when any of us are in town, and half-past seven other nights.’
‘I suppose it’s half-past seven to-night, alors! Shall I make a grande toilette in honour of the occasion?’
‘Put on something warm, whatever else you do; I distrust this climate after sundown.’
‘You’re such a distrustful person, Aunt Katherine! I can’t understand how one can have the heart to accuse this innocent old villa of harbouring malaria24.’
She returned to her own room and delightedly rummaged25 out a dinner-gown from the ancient wardrobe, with a little laugh at the thought of the many different styles it had held in its day. Perhaps some other girl had once occupied this room; very likely a young Princess Vivalanti, two hundred years before, had hung silk-embroidered gowns in this very 42 wardrobe. It was a big, rather bare, delightfully26 Italian apartment with tall windows having solid barred shutters27 overlooking the terrace. The view from the windows revealed a broad expanse of Campagna and hills. Marcia dressed with her eyes on the landscape, and then stood a long time gazing up at the broken ridges28 of the Sabines, glowing softly in the afternoon light. Picturesque29 little mountain hamlets of battered30 grey stone were visible here and there clinging to the heights; and in the distance the walls and towers of a half-ruined monastery31 stood out clear against the sky. She drew a deep breath of pleasure. To be an artist, and to appreciate and reproduce this beauty, suddenly struck her as an ideal life. She smiled at herself as she recalled something she had said to Paul Dessart in the gallery the day before; she had advised him—an artist—to exchange Italy for Pittsburg!
Mr. Copley, who was strolling on the terrace, glanced up, and catching32 sight of his niece, paused beneath her balcony while he quoted:—
‘“But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”’
Marcia brought her eyes from the distant landscape to a contemplation of her uncle; and then she stepped through the glass doors, and leaned over the balcony railing with a little laugh.
‘You make a pretty poor Romeo, Uncle Howard,’ she called down. ‘I’m afraid the real one never wore a dinner-jacket nor smoked a cigarette.’
Mr. Copley spread out his hands in protest.
‘For the matter of that, I doubt if Juliet ever wore a gown from—where was it—42, Avenue de l’Opéra? How does the new house go?’ he asked.
‘Beautifully. I feel like a princess on a balcony waiting for the hunters to come back from the chase.’
‘I can’t get over the idea that I’m a usurper33 myself, and that the rightful lord is languishing34 in a donjon somewhere in the cellar. Come down and talk to me. I’m getting lonely so far from the world.’
Marcia disappeared from the balcony and reappeared three minutes later on the loggia. She paused on the top step and slowly turned around in order to take in the whole affect. The loggia, in its rehabilitation35, made an excellent lounging-place for a lazy summer morning. It was furnished with comfortably deep Oriental rush chairs, a crimson36 rug and awnings37, and, at either side of the steps, white azaleas growing in marble cinerary urns38.
‘Isn’t this the most fun you ever had, Uncle Howard?’ she inquired as she brought her eyes back to Mr. Copley waiting on the terrace below. ‘We’ll have coffee served out here in the morning, and then when it gets sunny in the afternoon we’ll move to the end of the terrace under the ilex trees. Villa Vivalanti is the most thoroughly39 satisfying place I ever lived in.’ She ran down the steps and joined him. ‘Aren’t those little trees nice?’ she asked, nodding toward a row of oleanders ranged at mathematical intervals40 along the balustrade. ‘I think that Aunt Katherine and I planned things beautifully!’
‘If every one were as well pleased with his own work as you appear to be, this would be a contented41 world. There’s nothing like the beautiful enthusiasm of youth.’
‘It’s a very good thing to have, just the same,’ said Marcia, good-naturedly; ‘and without mentioning any names, I know one man who would be less disagreeable if he had more of it.’
‘None of that!’ said her uncle. ‘Our pact42 was that if I stopped grumbling about the villa being so abominably43 far from Rome, you were not to utter any—er——’
‘Unpleasant truths about Mr. Sybert? Very well, I’ll not mention him again; and you’ll please not refer to the thirty-nine kilometres—it’s a bargain. Gerald, I judge, has found the fountain,’ she added as a delighted shriek19 issued from the grove.
‘And a menagerie as well.’
‘If you only dream of them you will be doing well. I dare say the place is full of bats and lizards and owls45 and all manner of ruin-haunting creatures.’
‘You’re such a pessimist46, Uncle Howard. Between you and Aunt Katherine, the poor villa won’t have a shred47 of character left. For my part, I approve of it all—particularly the ruins. I am dying to explore them—do you think it’s too late to-night?’
‘Far too late; you’d get malaria, to say nothing of missing 44 dinner. Here comes Pietro now to announce the event.’
As the family entered the dining-room they involuntarily paused on the threshold, struck by the contrast between the new and the old. In the days of Cardinal48 Vivalanti the room had been the chapel49, and it still contained its Gothic ceiling, appropriately redecorated to its new uses with grape-wreathed trellises, and, in the central panelling, Bacchus crowned with vines. The very modern dinner-table, with its glass and silver and shaded candles, looked ludicrously out of place in the long, dusky, vaulted50 apartment, which, in spite of its rakish frescoes51, tenaciously52 preserved the air of a chapel. The glass doors at the end were thrown wide to a little balcony which overlooked the garden and the ilex grove; and the room was flooded with a nightingale’s song.
Marcia clasped her hands ecstatically.
‘Isn’t this perfect? Aren’t you glad we came, Aunt Katherine? I feel like forgiving all my enemies! Uncle Howard, I’m going to be lovely to Mr. Sybert.’
‘Don’t promise anything rash,’ he laughed. ‘You’ll get acclimated53 in a day or two.’
Gerald, in honour of the occasion, and because Marietta, under the stress of excitement, had forgotten to give him his supper, was allowed to dine en famille. Elated by the unwonted privilege and by his new surroundings, he babbled54 gaily of the ride in the cars and the little boys who turned ‘summelsorts’ by the roadside, and of the beautiful two-tailed lizard of the fountain, whose charms he dwelt on lovingly. But he had missed his noonday nap, and though he struggled bravely through the first three courses, his head nodded over the chicken and salad, and he was led away by Marietta still sleepily boasting, in a blend of English and Italian, of the bellissimi animali he would catch domane morning in the fountain.
‘It is a pity,’ said Marcia, as the sound of his prattle20 died away, ‘Gerald hasn’t some one his own age to play with.’
‘Yes, it is a pity,’ Copley returned. ‘I passed a lonely childhood myself, and I know how barren it is.’
‘That is the chief reason that would make me want to go back to New York,’ said his wife.
Her husband smiled. ‘I suppose there are children to be found outside of New York?’
‘There are the Kirkups in Rome,’ she agreed; ‘but they are so boisterous55; and they always quarrel with Gerald whenever they come to play with him.’
‘I am not sure, myself, but that Gerald quarrels with them,’ returned her husband. However fond he might be of his offspring, he cherished no motherly delusions56. ‘But perhaps you are right,’ he added, with something of a sigh. ‘It may be necessary to take him back to America before long. I myself have doubts if this cosmopolitan57 atmosphere it the best in which to bring up a boy.’
‘I should have wished him to spend a winter in Paris for his French,’ said Mrs. Copley, plaintively58; ‘but I dare say he can learn it later. Marcia didn’t begin till she was twelve, and she has a very good accent, I am sure.’
Mr. Copley twisted the handle of his glass in silence.
‘I suppose, after all,’ he said finally, to no one in particular, ‘if you manage to bring up a boy to be a decent citizen you’ve done something in the world.’
‘I don’t know,’ Marcia objected, with a half-laugh. ‘If one man, whom we will suppose is a decent citizen, brings up one boy to be a decent citizen, and does nothing else, I don’t see that much is gained to the world. Your one man has merely shifted the responsibility.’
‘Of course it would be easier for the man to think so,’ she agreed. ‘But if everybody passed on his responsibilities there wouldn’t be much progress. The boys might do the same, you know, when they grew up.’
Mrs. Copley rose, ‘If you two are going to talk metaphysics, I shall go into the salon60 and have coffee alone.’
‘It’s not metaphysics; it’s theology,’ her husband returned. ‘Marcia is developing into a terrible preacher.’
‘I know it,’ Marcia acknowledged. ‘I’m growing deplorably moral; I think it must be the Roman air.’
‘It doesn’t affect most people that way,’ her uncle laughed. ‘I don’t care for any coffee, Katherine. I will smoke a cigarette on the terrace and wait for you out there.’
He disappeared through the balcony doors, and Marcia and her aunt proceeded to the salon.
Marcia poured the coffee, and her aunt said as she received her cup, ‘I really believe your uncle is getting tired of Rome and will be ready to go back before long.’
‘I don’t believe he’s tired of Rome, Aunt Katherine. I think he’s just a little bit—well, discouraged.’
‘Nonsense, child! he has nothing to be discouraged about; he is simply getting restless again. I know the signs! I’ve never known him to stay as long as this in one place before. I only hope now that he will not think of any ridiculous new thing to do, but will be satisfied to go back to New York and settle down quietly like other people.’
‘It seems to me,’ said Marcia, slowly, ‘as if he might do more good there, because he would understand better what the people need. There are plenty of things to be done even in New York.’
‘Oh, yes; when he once got settled he would find any amount of things to take up his time. He might even try yachting, for a change; I am sure that keeps men absorbed.’
Marcia sipped61 her coffee in silence and glanced out of the window at her uncle, who was pacing up and down the terrace with his hands in his pockets. He looked a rather lonely figure in the half-darkness. It suddenly struck her, as she watched him, that she did not understand him; she had scarcely realized before that there was anything to understand.
Mrs. Copley set her cup down on the table, and Marcia rose. ‘Let’s go out on the terrace, Aunt Katherine.’
‘You go out, my dear, and I will join you later. I want to see if Gerald is asleep. I neglected to have a crib sent out for him, and the dear child thrashes around so—what with a bed four feet high and a stone floor——’
‘It would be disastrous62!’ Marcia agreed.
She crossed the loggia to the terrace and silently fell into step beside her uncle. It was almost dark, and a crescent moon was hanging low over the top of Guadagnolo. A faint lemon light still tinged63 the west, throwing into misty64 relief the outline of the Alban hills. The ilex grove was black—gruesomely black—and the happy song of the nightingales and the splashing of the fountain sounded uncanny coming from the darkness; but the white, irregular mass of the villa formed a cheerful contrast, with its shining lights, which threw squares of brightness on the marble terrace and the trees.
Marcia looked about with a deep breath. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Uncle Howard?’ They paused a moment by the parapet and stood looking down over the plain. ‘Isn’t the Campagna lovely,’ she added, ‘half covered with mist?’
‘Yes, it’s lovely—and the mist means death to the peasants who live beneath it.’
She exclaimed half impatiently:
‘Uncle Howard, why can’t you let anything be beautiful here without spoiling it by pointing out an ugliness beneath?’
‘I’m sorry; it isn’t my fault that the ugliness exists. Look upon the mist as a blessed dew from heaven, if it makes you any happier.’
‘Of course I should rather know the truth, but it seems as if the Italians are happy in spite of things. They strike me as the happiest people I have ever seen.’
‘Ah, well, perhaps they are happier than we think.’
‘I’m sure they are,’ said Marcia, comfortably. ‘Anglo-Saxons, particularly New Englanders, and most particularly Mr. Howard Copley, worry too much.’
‘It’s at least a fault the Italians haven’t learned,’ he replied. ‘But, after all, as you say, it may be the better fortune to have less and worry less—I’d like to believe it.’
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1
gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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unpacking
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| n.取出货物，拆包[箱]v.从（包裹等）中取出（所装的东西），打开行李取出( unpack的现在分词 )；拆包；解除…的负担；吐露（心事等） | |
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hampers
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| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的第三人称单数 ) | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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squeals
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| n.长而尖锐的叫声( squeal的名词复数 )v.长声尖叫，用长而尖锐的声音说( squeal的第三人称单数 ) | |
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banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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tapestries
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| n.挂毯( tapestry的名词复数 )；绣帷，织锦v.用挂毯（或绣帷）装饰( tapestry的第三人称单数 ) | |
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gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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superseded
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| [医]被代替的，废弃的 | |
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texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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grumbling
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| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
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grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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prattle
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| n.闲谈；v.（小孩般）天真无邪地说话；发出连续而无意义的声音 | |
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prattled
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| v.（小孩般）天真无邪地说话( prattle的过去式和过去分词 )；发出连续而无意义的声音；闲扯；东拉西扯 | |
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lizard
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| n.蜥蜴，壁虎 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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malaria
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| n.疟疾 | |
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rummaged
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| 翻找，搜寻( rummage的过去式和过去分词 )； 已经海关检查 | |
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delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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ridges
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| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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monastery
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| n.修道院，僧院，寺院 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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usurper
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| n. 篡夺者, 僭取者 | |
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languishing
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| a. 衰弱下去的 | |
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rehabilitation
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| n.康复，悔过自新，修复，复兴，复职，复位 | |
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crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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awnings
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| 篷帐布 | |
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urns
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| n.壶( urn的名词复数 )；瓮；缸；骨灰瓮 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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pact
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| n.合同，条约，公约，协定 | |
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abominably
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| adv. 可恶地，可恨地，恶劣地 | |
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lizards
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| n.蜥蜴( lizard的名词复数 ) | |
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owls
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| n.猫头鹰( owl的名词复数 ) | |
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pessimist
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| n.悲观者；悲观主义者；厌世 | |
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shred
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| v.撕成碎片，变成碎片；n.碎布条，细片，些少 | |
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cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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vaulted
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| adj.拱状的 | |
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frescoes
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| n.壁画( fresco的名词复数 )；温壁画技法，湿壁画 | |
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tenaciously
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| 坚持地 | |
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acclimated
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| v.使适应新环境，使服水土服水土，适应( acclimate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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babbled
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| v.喋喋不休( babble的过去式和过去分词 )；作潺潺声（如流水）；含糊不清地说话；泄漏秘密 | |
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boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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delusions
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| n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 )；谬见；错觉；妄想 | |
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cosmopolitan
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| adj.世界性的，全世界的，四海为家的，全球的 | |
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plaintively
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| adv.悲哀地，哀怨地 | |
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59
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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salon
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| n.[法]沙龙；客厅；营业性的高级服务室 | |
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61
sipped
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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63
tinged
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| v.（使）发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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