The Wheat Princess

He studied the Campagna, silent, a moment, while a shadow crossed his face. He shook his head slowly and looked back with melancholy eyes.

‘I don’t know, Marcia. That may come later—but—not just now. You can’t understand what Italy means to me. I was born here; I learned to speak the language before I did English; all that other men feel for their country, for their homes, I feel for Italy. And these poor, hard-working, patient people—I’ve done them harm instead of good. Oh, I see the truth; Italy must do for herself. The foreigners can’t help, and I’m a foreigner like the rest.’

‘Ah, Laurence,’ she pleaded, ‘don’t you see that you’re an American, and that nothing, nothing can stamp it out? It’s all a mistake; your place isn’t here—it’s at home. Every man can surely do his best work in his own country, and America needs good men. Do you remember what you said at Uncle Howard’s dinner that last night we were in Rome? That to be a loyal citizen of the world was the best a man could do? But you can’t be a loyal citizen of the world unless you are first of all a loyal citizen of your own country. America may be crude and it may have a good many faults, but it’s our country just the same, and we ought to love it better than any other. You do love it, don’t you? Tell me you do. Tell me you’re glad that you’re an American.’

She put her hands on his shoulders and looked up with glowing eyes and cheeks that burned.

As he watched her a picture flashed over him of what it meant. He thought of the vast country, with its richness, its possibilities, its contrasts. He thought of its vitality and force; its energy and nervousness and daring. And for a brief instant he felt himself a part of it. A sudden wave swept over him of that strange, irrational, romantic love of fatherland which is fundamental underneath the polish, underneath the wickedness, in every man in every land. For a second he thrilled with it too; and then, as his eye wandered to the great plain beneath them, the old love—his first love—rushed back. He bent over and kissed her with sudden tears in his eyes.

‘Some day, Marcia, I will tell you that I’m proud to be an American. Don’t ask me just yet.’

And as they stood there, hand in hand, there was borne to them from the mountain-top above the sweet, prophetic sound of the bells of Castel Vivalanti ringing the Angelus; while below them on the horizon, like a great, far-reaching sea, stretched the Campagna, haunting, mysterious, insatiable—the Roman Campagna, that has demanded as sacrifice the lives of so many miserable peasants, that has lured from distant homes so many strangers and held them prisoners to its spell—the beautiful, deadly, desolate land that has inspired more passionate love than any land on earth.