‘There are, however, compensations,’ he went on presently. ‘Our poor peasants do not have all the pleasures, but they do not have all the pains, either. There are a great many girls in Castel Vivalanti who will never have a birthday ball’—he glanced from the lighted villa behind them to the glowing vista in front, the green stretch of the ilex walk with the shimmering fountain at the end—‘whose lives will be very bare, indeed. They will work and eat and sleep, and love and perhaps hate, and that is all. You have many other pleasures which they could never understand. You enjoy the Egoist, for instance. But also’—he paused—‘you can suffer many things they cannot understand. You are an individual, while they are merely human beings. Gervasio’s stepmother married a husband, and doubtless loved him very much and cried for him a week after he was dead. Then she married another, and saw no difference between him and the first. She may have to work hard, and she may be hungry sometimes, but she will escape the worst suffering in life, which you, with all your privileges, may not escape, Marcia.’
‘One would rather not escape it,’ she answered. ‘I should rather feel what there is to feel.’
‘Ah!’ he breathed, ‘so should we all! And these poor devils of peasants, who can’t feel anything but their hunger and weariness, lose the most of life. They are not even human beings; they are merely beasts of burden, hard-working, patient, unthinking oxen, who go the way they are driven, not dreaming of their strength. That is the unfairness; that is where society owes them a debt; they have no chance to develop. However,’ he broke off with a short laugh, ‘it’s not the time to bother you with other people’s troubles—on your birthday night. We will hope, after all, that you may not have any very grave ones of your own.’
They had reached the fountain and they paused. They were alone in a fairy grove, with a nightingale pouring out his soul in the branches above their heads. Marcia stood looking down the dim, green alley they had come by, breathing deeply. She knew that Sybert’s eyes were on her, and slowly she raised her head and looked up in his face. For a moment they stood in silence; then, as the sound of carriage wheels reached them from the avenue, she started and turned away.
‘The people are beginning to come. I am afraid that Aunt Katherine will be wondering where I am,’ she said in a voice that trembled slightly.
Sybert followed her in silence.
Some one had once said to her that Sybert’s silences meant more than other men’s words, and as they turned back she tried to think who it had been. Ah—she remembered! It was the contessa.
CHAPTER XIX
Throughout the evening while she was laughing and talking with the stream of guests, Marcia kept a sub-conscious notion of Sybert’s movements. She saw him in the hall exchanging jokes with the English ambassador. She saw him talking to Eleanor Royston and bending over the Contessa Torrenieri. And once, as she whirled past in a waltz, she caught sight of his dark face in a doorway with his eyes fixed on her, and she forgave him Eleanor and the contessa. She was conscious all the time of a secret amazement at herself. Sybert had suddenly become for her the only person in the room, and while she was outwardly intent upon what other men were saying, her mind was filled with the picture of his face as he had looked during that silent moment by the fountain. She went through the evening in a maze, conscious only of the approach of the one dance she had with him.
When the evening was nearing its end she was suddenly brought to her senses by the realization that she was strolling down one of the ilex walks with Paul Dessart at her side. She had been rattling on unheedingly, and she scarcely knew how they had come there. Her first instinct was one of self-preservation; she felt what was coming, and she wanted to ward it off. Anything to get back to the crowd again! She paused and looked back at the lighted villa, listening to the sound of the violins rising above the murmur of voices and laughter. For a moment she almost felt impelled to turn and run. Since she had stopped, Paul stopped perforce, and looked at her questioningly.