‘As you please,’ he returned, pocketing the slip with a half-shrug. ‘I know a village in Calabria that will be very grateful for a little help until the olives ripen again.’
‘Dinner is served,’ announced Pietro in the doorway.
Marcia nodded to the two men.
‘I don’t want any dinner to-night,’ and she turned upstairs to her room. She sat for half an hour staring out at the darkening Campagna; then she rose and lighted the candles, and commenced a letter to her father. Her pen she dipped in blood. She told him everything she had heard or seen or imagined about Italy—of the ‘hunger madness’ in the north and the starving peasants in the south; of the poor people of Castel Vivalanti and little Gervasio. She told him what the people said about her uncle; that they called her the ‘Wheat Princess’; and that the children in the streets taunted her as she went past. She told him that the name of Copley was despised from end to end of Italy. All the crimes that have ever been laid at the door of the government and the church and the ignorance of the people, Marcia heaped upon her offending father’s shoulders, but with the forgiving assurance that she knew he didn’t mean it. And would he please prove that he didn’t mean it, by stopping the corner immediately and sending wheat to Italy? It was a letter to wring a father’s heart—and a financier’s.
CHAPTER XVII
For the next week or so Marcia steadfastly avoided meeting people. There were no visitors at the villa, and it was easy to find pretexts for not going into Rome. She felt an overwhelming reluctance to meeting any of her friends—to meeting any one, in truth, who even knew her name. It seemed to her that beneath their smiles and pleasant speeches she could read their thoughts; that the words ‘wheat, wheat, wheat’ rang as an undertone to every sentence that was spoken. Her horseback rides were ridden in the direction away from Castel Vivalanti, and if, by chance, she did meet any of her former friends the villagers, she galloped past, looking the other way.
Mrs. Copley was engaged with preparations for the coming ball. It was to be partially in honour of the Roystons, partially in honour of Marcia’s birthday, and all of Rome—or as much of it as existed for the Copleys—was to be asked to stop the night either at Villa Vivalanti or at the contessa’s villa in Tivoli. Marcia, her aunt complained, showed an inordinate lack of interest in these absorbing preparations. She was usually ready enough with suggestions, and her listlessness did not pass unnoticed. Mr. Copley’s eyes occasionally rested upon her with a guiltily worried expression, and if she caught the look she immediately assumed an air of gaiety. Neither had made the slightest reference to the subject of that evening’s scene, except upon the arrival of a characteristic cablegram from Willard Copley, in which he informed his daughter that he was sending her a transport of wheat as a birthday present.
‘You see, Uncle Howard,’ she had said as she handed him the message, ‘it is possible to do good as well as harm by telegraph.’
Copley read it with a slight smile. ‘After all, I’m afraid he’s no worse than the rest of us!’ and with that, wheat was a tabooed subject.
For the future, however, he was particularly thoughtful toward his niece to show that he was sorry, and she met his advances more than half-way to show that she had forgiven; and, all in all, they came to a better understanding because of their momentary falling out. Mrs. Copley accounted for Marcia’s apathy (and possibly nearest the truth) on the ground that she had taken a touch of malaria in the old wine-cellar, and she dosed her with quinine until the poor girl’s head rang.