“I am not jealous now.” He emphasized the last word.
“Well, I am glad you are over it.”
“It looks like a very jolly party,” he hastened to add, seeing that Helen’s annoyance was genuine, “and I can see where we become old married folk to-morrow. You and Uncle Peabody will act as chaperons, I presume, Phil and Dick will look after the Sinclair girls, while I am to devote myself to Inez Thayer. Is that the programme?”
“Exactly. I am so anxious that Inez should appreciate what a talented husband I have. She has heard great stories about your learning and erudition, so now you must live up to the picture.”
“Then suppose we start for home if you are quite rested. It is plainly incumbent on me to make sure that my knowledge of the classics proves equal to the test.”
II
The Armstrongs had installed themselves in the Villa Godilombra, near Settignano. The date for the wedding was no sooner settled than Jack cabled to secure what had always seemed to him to be the most glorious location around Florence. Years before, his favorite tramp had been out of the ancient city through the Porta alla Croce to La Mensola, whence he delighted to ascend the hill of Settignano. Every villa possessed a peculiar fascination for him. The “Poggio Gherardo”—the “Primo Palagio del Refugio” of the Decameron—made Boccaccio real to him. The Villa Buonarroti, whither Michelangelo was sent as a baby, after the Italian custom, to be nursed in a family of scarpellini, always attracted him, and times without number he had stood admiringly before the wall in one of the rooms, gazing at the figure of the satyr which the infant prodigy drew with a burning stick taken from the fire. In those days he had been seized with a secret yearning to become an artist, and often he had tried to reproduce the satyr from memory, but always the ugly visage assumed a mocking, sneering aspect which caused him to relinquish his cherished ambition in despair.
But the Villa Godilombra appealed to Armstrong for a different reason. It stood high up on the hill, affording a wonderful view of the village of Settignano and the wide-spreading valley of the Arno. The villa itself, with its overhanging eaves, coigned angles, and narrow windows, set on heavy consoles, was essentially Tuscan, and impressive far out of proportion to its size. It would have seemed too massive but for an arcade at either end, the one connecting the house itself with its chapel, the other leading from the first floor through a spiral stairway in one pier of the arcade to what originally, in the days of the Gamberelli, had been an old fish-pond and herb-garden. In front of the villa a row of antiquated stone vases shared the honors with equally dilapidated stone dogs along a grassy terrace held up by a low wall, while beyond this and the house was the vineyard.