"Not now—not just yet," Vickers said to himself, with a quick rush of comprehension.
But the "now" never seemed to come, the right moment for delivering the blow, through all those months that followed, while the young man was settling into his corner of the great establishment. When the mother or Isabelle confessed their doubts to the Colonel, the old man would say:—
"It will do him no harm, a little of it. He'll know how to look after your money, mother, when I am gone." And he added, "It's making a man of him, you'll see!"
There was another matter, little suspected by the Colonel, that was rapidly to make a man of his engaging young son.
CHAPTER XV
When Vickers Price raised his eyes from his desk and, losing for the moment the clattering note of business that surged all around him, looked through dusky panes into the cloud of mist and smoke, visions rose before him that were strange to the smoky horizon of the river city….
From the little balcony of his room on the Pincio, all Rome lay spread before him,—Rome smiling under the blue heaven of an April morning! The cypresses in the garden pointed to a cloudless sky. Beyond the city roofs, where the domes of churches rose like little islands, was the green band of the Janiculum, and farther southwards the river cut the city and was lost behind the Aventine. And still beyond the Campagna reached to the hills about Albano.
Beneath he could see the Piazza del Popolo, with a line of tiny cabs standing lazily in the sunlight, and just below the balcony was a garden where a fountain poured softly, night and day. Brilliant balls of colored fruit hung from the orange trees, glossy against the yellow walls of the palazzo across the garden. From the steep street on the other side of the wall rose the thin voice of a girl, singing a song of the mountains, with a sad note of ancient woe, and farther away in the city sounded the hoarse call of a pedler…. This was not the Rome of the antiquary, not the tawdry Rome of the tourist. It was the Rome of sunshine and color and music, the Rome of joy, of youth! And the young man, leaning there over the iron railing, his eyes wandering up and down the city at his feet, drank deep of the blessed draught,—the beauty and the joy of it, the spirit of youth and romance in his heart….
From some one of the rooms behind a neighboring balcony floated a woman's voice, swelling into a full contralto note, then sinking low and sweet into brooding contemplation. After a time Vickers went to his work, trying to forget the golden city outside the open window, but when the voice he had heard burst forth joyously outside, he looked up and saw the singer standing on her balcony, shading her eyes with a hand, gazing out over the city, her voice breaking forth again and again in scattered notes, as though compelled by the light and the joy of it all. She was dressed in a loose black morning gown that rippled in the breeze over her figure. She clasped her hands above her bronze-colored hair, the action revealing the pure white tint of neck and arms, the well-knit body of small bones. She stood there singing to herself softly, the note of spring and Rome in her voice. Still singing she turned into her room, and Vickers could hear her, as she moved back and forth, singing to herself. And as he hung brooding over Rome, listening to the gurgle of the fountain in the garden, he often listened to this contralto voice echoing the spirit within him…. Sometimes a little girl came out on the balcony to play.
"Are you English?" she asked the young man one day.