CHAPTER VISEPARATION
Natalelay flat on the grass, his face hidden on his arms, and his feet rebelliously kicking the ground. The added week granted by the mayor had passed, and the circus-wagon was about to move on.
“You are only to try it, child, and if it will not do, you can come back to us. One year is not a hundred.”
No reply from Natale.
“You ought to think, sometimes, of how many mouths your stepfather has to fill,” another voice began. “Five children, and not one his own.”
“Why did he marry us then?” fiercelymuttered Natale, but without lifting his head, so perhaps nobody heard.
“You will have new clothes and shoes!”
“And a new hat, Natalino!”
“And you will learn to read much faster than I can teach you ’Lino, with all the practicings and the journeyings. Perhaps you will even learn to be as clever as my Antonio was, before—” Nonna ended with a sigh instead of more words.
The women and girls were in the side tent, busied about dinner, and Nonna would not finish her sentence in the presence of Antonio’s wife.
“I would rather be our Antonio than—than the King or theprincipino,”[5]Natale cried helplessly. Then he sat up on the worn grass, and faced them all, tearful but resolute. “I shall not stay here with the priest and go to school, mamá,” he said earnestly. “You shall not leave me behindand take Maria and Pietro and the rest.”
“Perhaps we can persuade Giovanni to leave little Bianco with you, if the good priest does not object,” Nonna whispered in his ear.
“No, I shall go with you,” returned Natale.
“Ah! what is all this?” came suddenly in Giovanni’s gruff, good-natured tones. “What? Natale will not stay? The beautiful little star of the ring will not leave us in the darkness?” And the clown entered the tent and flung himself down, laughing, beside the little boy.
“Hurry with the polenta, Arduina,” he called to his stepdaughter, who had lifted her hot face from the steam of the mush pot to laugh at the man’s rough wit. “The biggest hole yet torn in the tent must be mended this afternoon, and the canvas is almost dry now in this wind. If it had notrained yesterday, and if the wind had not played us such a trick on the very eve of our going, we should have made our fortunes yesterday. A cattle fair does not offer itself every day, with its crowd of country bumpkins who never saw a man in tights. Now, that will do, Natale,” turning to the boy, who was sniffing audibly. “Hours ago it was all decided, and there is nothing more to be said.”
“Then I amnotto stay in this horrid place, Giovanni—papá—”
“‘Giovanni—papá—!’ No more of these tears, Natalino. You are to stay in this beautiful place, and after polenta, you are to go up to the garden and thank the lady.”
With a loud, rebellious howl, Natale sprang to his feet and rushed out into the open air. Nor did he stop until he stood among the briar bushes below the garden palings. Clenching his small grimy fists, hestood there looking up toward the many-windowedpensionand shook them vehemently, while his shrill voice cried out passionately:
“I shall not stay here! I shall not go to school! I like my old hat, and I want Nonna to teach me to read. I shall never thank you,never,NEVER, NEVER!”
He had seen no one in the garden, and was only addressing the whole houseful of his enemies up there in the big yellow building with the staring windows. Why should they interfere with him? Why should any one be trying to make him wretched,—the most wretched boy in all Italy?
“Heyday! what’s all this about?” and a white-haired old man, speaking from the garden, came close to the palings and looked over at the small, threatening figure among the bushes. “I cannot understand your gibberish, if you are talking to me. You would better go away now, little boy, orsome of your people will come and whip you.”
“How suddenly you stopped the noise, Mr. Grantly,” exclaimed Betty, coming up to his side. “Who was it? Why, Aunty’s little protégé, Natale! How pitiful he looks, walking away as if his feelings were hurt. You must have frightened him.”
“Not a bit of it, ma’am. He frightenedmewith his fierce little voice. It came suddenly, just as I was dropping off to sleep in my chair. It is a relief to have them moving on this afternoon, with their horns and drum. But that boy stays, some one tells me. Is it possible that the family agreed to give him up? I have understood that the Italians cling to each other as much as even we do in America or England. Do they really leave the child?”
“For more money than he could ever bring them by his somersaulting, yes,”Betty answered. “Sometimes I think Aunty really does not know what to do with her money,” the girl went on confidentially to the old gentleman, who was listening with interest. “Now, that boy has no desire to be taken away from ‘the evil life he is leading’ in Aunty’s estimation, and he does not wish to be sent to school and become ‘a decent man.’”
“Ah! tell me the whole plan, now. I heard something of it a few days ago.”
“It is very simple—all but getting Natale to agree to being imposed upon,” Betty went on a little vexedly. “Aunty has had the stepfather and the mother up here several times this past week to be talked to, and an old woman who seems to be the grandmother of them all. Miss Lorini has done all the interpreting, and also saw the priest about it, as Madame Cioche would not. They have agreed to leave Natale here for one year; he is to be taken care of by thepriest’s mother, and to be sent to school and made ‘decent,’ poor little fellow.”
Mr. Grantly laughed, but said nothing, for his heart was still young and understanding of boyish hearts, if his head was white, and he felt a wise interest in Mrs. Bishop’s philanthropic scheme.
“Aunty is to pay everything, and she says she thinks she knows now why all the hotels up at Abetone were full so she could not get a good room there for these three weeks. She finds that she was ‘ordained’ to rescue a boy from his persecutors, as she persists in calling the circus men. It is supposed, I believe, that all little boys and girls of circuses have been stolen from kind parents, and if not are half-killed with cruelty by their own.”
“You speak very warmly, young lady,” Mr. Grantly remarked, a little reproof in his tone. “There is no doubt that many such children do suffer and are very unhappy.”
“Those certainly do not!” retorted Betty, pointing to a number of the circus children frolicking in the field with Niero and Bianco. Olga’s red cotton dress was flitting over the grass, and her merry laugh was echoed by the other little ones, as Niero finally caught her red skirts in the chase.
“Of course the clown objected at first,” Betty continued, “but Aunty was more determined than he and soon proved to him that it would be worth his while to agree. The old lady, whom they call Nonna, was curiously anxious for Natale to have a chance at schooling. I wondered at that till I heard about her son.”
“Yes, I know,” Mr. Grantly assented. “Some, however, would think he had made a very fair exchange in giving up the future of a priest for the easy, out-of-doors life of an acrobat. There is no accounting for tastes, though. And is this boy to be made a priest?”
“Only let my Aunty hear you say that!”laughed the girl. “No, indeed, but the priest was the only one who would agree to be troubled with the child, after Miss Lorini had explained all Aunty’s conditions—how Natale was to have a cold bath every morning, meat to eat every day, and new shoes as soon as his old ones come into holes. The priest, too, has agreed to write a letter to Aunty every month to tell her of Natale’s progress—”
“Toward growing into a ‘decent man’?” interposed Mr. Grantly. “Well, I hope the plan will work well for all parties. Few Italian peasant lads get such a chance.” Then the old gentleman went back to his chair to continue his nap.
All that afternoon, until four o’clock, there was an unusual bustle going on about the little encampment. The tattered, damp, half-ruined canvas was rolled up and packed along with poles and planks and ropes on a small cart hired for this occasion,while the cooking utensils and the scant furniture of the tents were gathered together for conveyance in the house-wagon. It was a cold and dreary day, following the night of stormy wind, with the clouds settling close about the mountain tops and the wind sweeping down the valley wet with rain. And in the heart of Natale there was even less promise of sunshine. He sat apart from the others on the damp wall, frowning and sullen.
Half an hour before, he had been almost forcibly dragged up the hill to the house in the garden by Giovanni, who had made little jokes to hide the sulkiness of the boy’s replies to the questions of the ladies gathered there. Madame Cioche had promptly hidden herself when she saw the green gate open and the pair coming in, but the clown had walked directly through the hall and up to the little table where Mrs. Bishop sat taking her tea.
No command of Giovanni nor persuasion of Miss Lorini, who was an artist, could induce Natale to say: “Thank you, signora, for your kindness.” His revolt had been beforehand hushed into silence by some very plain threats of punishment by his mother, but nothing could make him say that he was glad to stay in Cutigliano and go to school every day.
He stood before them all, miserable as a child could be, his face very clean and pale, and a new pair of shoes already upon his feet. They pinched his toes woefully, but his heart ached more than his feet.
“You will love the signora very much, some day, when you are a man and remember how good she was to the poor little boy who knew nothing but how to turn somersaults,” Miss Lorini had said caressingly in her softest Italian, studying the piteous face meanwhile with an eye to painting it some day, when it should smile again.
“I shall learn to do something besides thecapitomboli,[6]when I am a man,” Natale had said eagerly. “I shall be like our Antonio some day.” Perhaps these foreigners would be willing to leave him in peace if he could convince them that hewishedto be a strolling player all his life.
“He speaks as if he does not exactly understand,” said Miss Lorini, looking at Giovanni inquiringly. “Does he not know that he is to give up the circus now?”
Giovanni shrugged his shoulders, then shook Natale’s slender shoulder, muttering:
“No more of your silly talk, boy!” Then louder, “If you will not thank the lady, I do, with all my heart.” And with that he bowed low, then pushing Natale before him, went quickly away. He was, in secret, rather sorry for the boy, who had never before given any trouble with foolish willfulness, and who had moreover such highambitions! It did seem a stupid life to which they were leaving the poor child, but then there was to be considered the roll of money already sewed into his own belt, with more to accumulate there, if Natale should be left still another year with the priest Luigi. If richforestierihad nothing else to do with their money but give it away in this frantic fashion, the stepfather was not unwilling to share the bounty, and Elvira, the mother, had seemed not to mind.
So now Natale sat alone on the wall, feeling very much out of it all, and longing to hear some one say, “Natalino, do fetch me this”, or “Carry that”; but no one said anything of the kind. They seemed to feel that he was no longer one of them, and his little heart swelled to breaking.
He was too young to long harbor ill-will and of too sunny a spirit to sulk for many minutes at a time, so presently he slipped off the wall and ran to meet Olga, who wasstruggling over to the traveling house-on-wheels, dragging two stools behind her. The very last things were being done, and already the horses were standing by, ready to be hitched at the last moment.
“Do let me carry the stools, Olga,” Natale pleaded with unwonted entreaty in his voice. “Well, one of them, then.”
“I am sorry you are going to stay behind here, Natalino,” the little girl panted. “Why do you? I should run after the wagon if I were you!”
Natale had never thought of such a simple thing to do by way of escape! He promptly set down the stool he had grasped and looked fixedly away from Olga’s red-brown eyes.
Alas! in that critical moment, what did he see approaching from the village? The flat, broad-brimmed hat and flowing black skirts of a priest, descending the street and turning in at the field!
There was then not a moment to be lost! Forgetting Olga and the heavy stools, Natale turned and fled, away—anywhere—out of sight of the jailor advancing. Everything flashed out of his mind except the impulse to escape, to hide himself from those searching eyes under the felt hat brim. His flying feet skimmed across the field, and when they had borne him out of sight down the nearest slope, Natale flung himself on the ground under a thicket of thorny blackberry bushes.
He lay there for what must have been a long time, for, after a while, a sudden shower of rain swept down the valley and for a few minutes enveloped everything in a gray mist. Even after it had passed, Natale delayed returning to the wagon until the priest should have quite gone, in despair of capturing his prisoner. When at last he did venture forth, and crept to the upper verge of the slope, his firstglance was across the field for the brown wagon.
It was not there!
He set out in a headlong run for the place where it had stood. There was nothing left—absolutely nothing. Only a priest sat quietly waiting in a gap in the wall.
Natale, with eyes only for the deserted spot, came stumbling upon the man, without so much as seeing that he was there, and then the priest rose, and taking the boy’s hand, spoke with the utmost quietness.
“Come home with me now, Natalino,” was what he said, and Natale heard as one hears dream voices.
Poor child! If he had only listened, he might have heard the dull screeching of the brakes as the wagon crawled carefully down the hill toward the arched bridge, and it would have been an easy matter to snatch his hand from the limp grasp of the priestand go hurrying down the short cuts in pursuit. But his head seemed so full of a hundred roaring noises that he could not hear, and his heart beat so fast that he could not speak, and so up the hill he went at the priest’s side.
Nor did he see the quiet smile upon Luigi’s shaven lips, as they passed the green gate of the garden where Betty stood peering through. She would not have spoken to the boy just then for all the world, and as for Madame Cioche, she could not have done so if she had wished. She gazed down from her latticed window, her bright eyes dimmed as they fell upon the little caged bird of the fields fluttering by.