THE LITTLE ACROBAT

The pale apparition of Natale startled them all. Frontispiece.
See page [167.]

THE
LITTLE ACROBAT

A STORY OF ITALY

BY
JANIE PRICHARD DUGGAN

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
NANA FRENCH BICKFORD

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1919

Copyright, 1919,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published, September, 1919
Norwood Press
Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

DEDICATED
TO MEMORIES OF
TWO LITTLE “ANGELICALS” OF ROME
SPOTTISWOODE AND SUSIE
BY
“CUDDIE”

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE LITTLE ACROBAT

A STORY OF ITALY

CHAPTER I
ALONG THE WHITE ROAD

The July sunshine lay hot and golden over the fields of wheat on the Italian hillsides, and the deep shade of the chestnut woods along the road was more inviting than the white glare beyond. The sun stood directly overhead, and along the middle of that white, dusty road there was not an inch of shadow.

A small brown house on wheels crept slowly along this sunny way, drawn by a queer, ill-matched team of three—a plump white horse with long, silky mane and tail, a large spotted horse with fierce eyes and nostrils, and a lean, little brown pony, with strangely twisted neck.

Up and up, always a little higher up, the horses toiled with the house-wagon, as the road rose into the mountains. From the interior of the wagon came the sound of voices, mingled now and then with a complaining note, or an exclamation of pain. The travelers were very tired, and poor Pietro’s fever was rising with every turn of the wheels.

Several men and a sturdy girl of fifteen walked beside the horses in the powdery white dust. Behind the big wagon lagged a boy of eight or nine years. This was Natale,[1] a slight little fellow, with dusty lean legs and dragging feet. His light brown hair curled damply about his sun-browned forehead, and he wore an old, misshapen hat set far back on his pretty head. His loosely fitting clothes were dingy with dust but Natale did not mind, for, presently, they would come to Cutigliano, the old, old town on the mountain side, and there they would camp out on the soft, green grass. And Natale knew from much experience that nothing could clean the dust from travel-stained clothes so well as rolling down the grassy slopes of the chestnut woods, with Niero and Bianco as companions.

Of course the sun was hot; was it not always hot at noon of a summer’s day in the Apennines? But Niero did not complain, and why should Natale?

Bianco had tired of trotting along at Natale’s side, and at the last stopping-place, when Pietro had had a drink of water from the wayside fountain, the tired little black dog had begged to be allowed to ride, and had been willingly taken inside the wagon.

Natale never asked to ride in the wagon, unless he were very tired and sleepy. They were rather crowded in there even without him, for Pietro took up a great deal of room, now that he had to lie down all the time. Besides, the other children, good travelers as they usually were, sometimes grew quarrelsome and made the mothers and the grandmother angry. Natale did not like quarreling and loud voices, so he always preferred his resting times to be given him on the back of one of the horses. But now Tesoro and Il Duca were tired also, and they were so near Cutigliano, it did not matter if Natale did lag behind a little, always with big Niero for company.

Niero was a large, lean, white dog with a closely sheared body. About his neck, however, he wore a fluffy collar of long white hair, and bracelets of the same adorned his four paws, while his long tail ended in a tuft, having very much the appearance of a dishmop. Why this white dog should have been named Niero, meaning black, the clown who had also named the little black dog Bianco, white, could have best explained.

By and by, long after the gray church tower had come in sight and the red-tiled roofs of the town showed bunched together against the green of the wooded hillside, the travelers reached the arched stone bridge across the river at the foot of the mountain. Here the wagon made a halt before beginning the last steep climb to the town. Above, they could see the stone wall which was the boundary of the road winding by loops, one above the other, up the mountain side, but the town had now disappeared from view, so sheer was the rise of the chestnut woods.

This halt gave Natale time to come up with the wagon, and then he sat down with a tired sigh on a heap of mending-stones by the roadside, in front of the wagon door. His legs ached with weariness, but this was no time to think of riding, as even the women and all the children but Pietro must alight now, to relieve the horses in the last pull up hill. Natale watched them descend from the wagon one by one, by the steps one of the musicians placed at the door.

First came Nonna, the grandmother of Rudolfo and Tito and the five other children of the blond acrobat, Antonio Bisbini. She was not Natale’s Nonna, of course, yet everybody called her Nonna, and why should not he, who had no grandmother of his own?

Nonna carried Tito in her arms and led Rudolfo by the hand. Then came Tito’s mother, the three-months’-old infant, Gigi, in her arms, followed by Olga, who held little Maria by the hand. Next, Natale’s own mamá stepped down, glad to stretch her active limbs by walking, after nursing Pietro for so many tedious hours. Then the rest of Bisbini’s children scrambled out, aided by the music-man’s helping hands.

On they went again then, the clown, who was Natale’s stepfather, walking at the horses’ heads, and cracking his long whip, and chirruping to them while the other men strode behind the wagon, pushing upon it with all their might at the steep places in the road.

The women and children, meanwhile, left the road to climb the short cuts upward, leading directly from terrace to terrace,—mere paths paved with rough stones, here and there loosened and displaced by rushing rain-torrents of the past. The little ones bore the heat and the roughness of the way without murmuring, being allowed to straggle along as they pleased, now stopping to gather a red poppy from the edge of the wheat, now dropping on the ground to search for a briar afflicting some tired foot. Natale was not the last in the procession now, for he was anxious to get to the top and see what the tall wheat and the green slopes were hiding from his eyes.

At last they reached the wide turn in the road where the wagon must finally stop, at the edge of the town field. The wagon also came toiling upward, and now the good horses might rest. So these were unhitched from the wagon, and while one or two of the men led them up the steep, paved street into the village to find food and shelter for them, the others attended to the house-wagon, drawn close against the low stone wall inclosing the field, placing great stones against the wheels to steady it in its place. Now was Natale’s hour and the dogs’, and they understood this as well as he! Over the low wall they scampered and down on the soft, hot grass they lay, rolling over and over down the gentle slope of the field until, suddenly, Natale found himself landing directly upon his feet, with a whirring in his head, and the sound of distressed barking in his ears.

The dogs had had the wit to stop on the very edge of a sharp descent which Natale had not noticed, and now they stood on the bank, half-a-dozen feet above him, their forefeet firmly planted on the brink of the grassy precipice, and their tufty tails high in the air, begging with all their might to know whether their dear little comrade were hurt. Natale was not hurt, but the jar of the descent gave him a queer feeling under the waistband of his trousers, and he sat down directly where he stood, on the lower terrace, turning his back upon the dogs.

A fringe of bushes threw a narrow band of shade about him from above, and he made up his mind to stay there till something should be made ready for dinner. He hoped he would not be wanted to fetch anything from the village,—he was always fetching something for somebody. He had heard his mother calling to her husband to bring a little meal for the polenta,[2] when he should finish stabling the horses, and he knew there was wine left in the flask in the wagon.

From where Natale sat he could look directly down upon the roof of a house far down by the stone bridge and could faintly hear the rushing of the little river Lima over the rocks. Presently he eased himself out on the grass at full length, with his arms crossed beneath his head. As he dropped off to sleep, he was thinking how well it was that there could be no performance in the tent that evening. He was sure that Arduina would laugh more than ever at his stiff little feats on the circus carpet if he should have to turn somersaults after the long tramp.

Then Natale slept, with the great green mountains closing around him, and Bianco the black dog and Niero the white keeping watch above his head from where they had stretched themselves on the edge of the terrace in the sun.

CHAPTER II
NONNA

Natale, as will have been discovered by this time, was an Italian circus boy, a cheerful, happy little soul, who loved his “profession”, and whose ambition reached to the giddy height of some day rivaling even Antonio Bisbini in his wonderful trapeze performances. He loved everything connected with the life he led,—the long slow journeyings through his beautiful Italy, the camping out at night along the quiet roads, the open-air loungings in some village through the sunny days, until the evening should come and the oil lamps be lighted in the tent, and the people come crowding in to see Arduina dance the tight rope, and little Olga do her wonderful turns and twists on the carpet, and to applaud Antonio and the clown and the horses, and—yes, and himself too, little Natale, stiff as his short thin legs always were and hopeless, as Arduina declared, in his bows and scrapes.

Besides the three musicians, there were two families in the strolling company. Giovanni Marzuchetti was the clown, also the stepfather of Paulo, Arduina, Pietro, Natale and little Maria, and husband of Elvira, the black-haired mother of the five children. This man had no children of his own but was kind in his rough, clownish way to Natale and the rest.

It is not difficult to understand why Giovanni should have married Elvira and her family, when it was known that the woman brought to her husband a small fortune in the shape of her own wonderful skill as a rider of horses, and the little ones as possible acrobats of the future. They had been married for two years now, and if Giovanni had counted largely upon his ready-made family for speedy reënforcements in the “ring”, he must have become a little discouraged even by this time. It is true that Paulo and Arduina were well trained in the art of circus acting; but poor Pietro, the middle-sized one, who was twelve years old, was always ailing and feeble. Sleeping out of doors in the marshy regions had developed in his system a chronic fever which could not be thrown off, even with the aid of Nonna’s assiduous doctoring, and lately the weakness had settled in one leg and foot, threatening permanent lameness.

Natale, who came next, was agile enough when running about on his slim brown legs, but his funny stiff-legged somersaults and awkward antics in the ring were matters of jesting among the whole troop. Poor little Natale, who did so wish to be like Antonio Bisbini!

Lastly there was Maria, who was a mere baby and as yet only just learning to stand upright on her stepfather’s head.

But Antonio Bisbini, the father of the other family, was the star of the little troop of strolling players. Tall and lean and muscular, he stood six feet two in his sandals. His blond hair and skin and strong, clear-cut features gave him the look of some stern young Viking from the cold forests of the North, yet this youthful-looking, ruddy athlete was already the father of seven young children.

No one in the company, not even the clown, could hold a candle to Antonio in looks or in graceful skill. Natale was sure that the noblest and most beautiful figure in all Italy was that of Antonio Bisbini as he would step forth from behind the tent-curtain, ready to thrill the spectators about the ring. The flesh-colored tights clothing his limbs showed to perfection their symmetry and grace, relieved by the brilliantly spangled hip garment of black velvet and fringe, while the proud glance of his gray eyes and the light tread of his feet never failed to impress the beholder.

Antonio’s oldest, little red-haired Olga, tumbled and danced with all a healthy child’s love of activity and applause, and Oh! how Natale envied her the perfect “wheels” she turned, one after the other with dizzying swiftness across the dusty strip of carpet in the ring. But the rest of Antonio’s seven were as yet too small to be useful as tumblers or dancers, and Nonna’s hands were always full, while their mother did her daring dances in the air.

The three musicians, then, and Nonna completed this strolling band of twenty, with the two horses, the dogs and the twisted-necked pony. Poor Caffero had grievously hurt his pretty neck one day when very young, while tied in his stall and leaping to reach his food from a manger set cruelly high. Since then he had trotted painfully through three years of going up and down the earth, with his brown head and long neck twisted far around to one side without the power of righting them. Caffero would have made a pretty part of the show had not this accident befallen him. As it was, he was good for little but helping to guide the house-wagon along the weary roads. Yet every one loved Caffero.

On the day of the arrival at Cutigliano the two horses Tesoro and Il Duca were left in their stalls in the village stables during the whole afternoon, while Caffero was brought down the steep village street and allowed to graze in the public field. Nonna herself had gone up for him with Tito in her arms, after the midday meal of polenta, or thick mush of yellow meal, had been eaten. As the trio passed through the narrow street of the village, many heads turned to wonder at the strangers—the gray-haired woman, the bright-eyed child in her arms, and poor Caffero, who always seemed pulling against the leading rope and trying to twist his head after something left behind.

It was while Nonna, a little later, was tying Caffero’s rope to a tree in the field that she spied the two dogs asleep in the sun near the edge of the terrace. As Tito recognized them at the same time, and called them in his baby voice, the grandmother added her summons, and was rather astonished at their failure to obey. They bounded to their feet, it is true, but instead of scampering to meet her, they stood still, quivering with nervous excitement and waving their tails in much perplexity. Then as Tito began to fret and belabor the air with his fists, Nonna started swiftly toward the dogs with something threatening in her gait.

But where were they, those lazy brutes, which a moment before had defied her and then had promptly disappeared? A few more hasty steps brought Nonna near enough to the edge of the descent to see both Niero and Bianco crouching over Natale on the lower terrace. The boy had been awakened by the sudden onset of his faithful friends, and lay looking lazily upward as Nonna and Tito peered over at him.

“Natalino!” the old woman exclaimed, and, at the word, Natale scrambled to his feet.

“I am ready! Where am I to go?” he asked hurriedly, preparing to creep up the bank. But Nonna only laughed and reached down a helping hand to the child, as he clutched at the long grass for support.

“Come and eat your polenta,” she said, when Natale stood at her side, the dogs panting close by. “I suppose they have saved you a bite. Why did you run away? Though, as for that, you were not missed in all this hurly-burly of arriving. Now, Niero, stand on your hind legs and beg. See, Tito is fretting for you to do it—”

“But we haven’t a bone or a crust of bread for him, Nonna,” Natale pleaded. “See how sadly his eyes look at you. Giovanni always gives him a bone.”

“There! take to your legs then, poor thing!” Nonna cried in a friendly way to the hungry dog. “Perhaps to-morrow there will be a bone. Who knows?”

Natale ran off toward the wagon, followed by the patient animals, who perhaps were well assured that he was going to share with them his own scanty heap of polenta.

The brown house on wheels leaned slightly inward against the stone wall for security, as the hill’s incline was steep at this point. The door opened directly upon the top of the wall, which formed a broad and convenient doorstep, reached from the ground by a short ladder. About the wagon and in the field close by everybody was busy.

The great canvas of the tent had been unpacked from the top of the wagon, and the two women sat on the ground patching the holes and thin places worn in it by long use. Some of the men were making trips back and forth from wagon and field, carrying sections of board for inclosing the ring. These were to be set up in their places by and by, when Antonio should have finished marking off the circle on the grass, with the hole in the center for the tent pole. There was nothing, as yet, for the children to do but loll in the shadow of the wagon, asleep or awake, and chatter among themselves.

As Natale and the dogs drew near, Elvira, the boy’s mother, looked up from her stitching and clapped her hand to her forehead on seeing them.

“Natale! I had forgotten the child. Little pest, where have you been, away from us all, and your dinner? One would think you had friends in the town and had been taking your polenta in grander houses than ours here.”

Natale replied to these mocking words with only a rather naughty shrug of the shoulders, and went to sit down on the lowest step of the short ladder against the wall.

“Give him his polenta, Arduina,” Nonna called shrilly from a little way behind. “He was asleep, Elvira, all tired out with walking to-day as much as any man among us. I keep my eyes open. Don’t scold the boy.”

“One would think my Natale your own grandson, Nonna,” Elvira replied, laughing good-naturedly.

“All boys are as her own sons or grandsons,” Nonna’s daughter-in-law interposed carelessly, as the old woman passed on with Tito, perhaps to see that Arduina gave Natale his proper share of mush.

In Nonna’s big warm heart there was indeed room for the sons and grandsons of those who were too sparing of motherly love and care for their own. The gray-haired woman had long ago accepted this wandering life for the sake of continuing near to her only son, Antonio, the acrobat, and Antonio’s children. When her boy at the age of twenty-two had given up everything that his mother thought of worth in the world—home, a decent, quiet life in it, books, school, a career as a priest—in order to marry Cara, a rosy, lithe-limbed rope-dancer out of Egypt, he had found that his mother was not going to be given up along with these. By and by, when the babies began to come every year or two, Nonna came to be appreciated even by the fantastic daughter-in-law given her by Antonio, while in the hearts of all the little ones Nonna was—well, Nonna,—and therefore everything good and patient and sweet.

It was Nonna who cared for the ailing Pietro, who rubbed Natale’s stiff ankles and elbows with an ointment of her own invention to limber them up, who thought to tuck Olga’s long red hair out of the way when practice time came and the curling locks would have teased the little face and shoulders turned upside down and hindside before. It was Nonna who nursed the babies and put them to bed while the mothers rode the horses in the tent, and Nonna who led the poor pony about to “fresh fields and pastures new”, and Nonna who instructed giddy-brained Arduina in the simple mysteries of concocting savory stews out of next to nothing, and how to make corn meal for ten do service as polenta for twice as many. The little troop could not have done without Nonna, no, indeed!

CHAPTER III
IN THE RING

It took all of that first day and most of the next to get everything into shape for an exhibition on the second night after the arrival of the circus troop at Cutigliano.

The turf had been removed from the ring, or round space inclosed by the low panels of wood, and the tent pole erected, by the time the canvas was mended and the side curtains were ready to be hung.

The sun was just about to slip over the mountain rim in the west when everything was done, and it only remained to draw the stout ropes and hoist the canvas into position. Natale was generally on hand when this was done, listening for the creaking of the pulley at the top of the pole, as the dull yellow canvas slowly rose into position, till, all at once, it spread like a queer, pointed mushroom over the green grass of the field.

It was a fortunate thing that there was no wind that first evening, for if there had been even a stiff breeze there would have been no performance. A very little wind caught under the canvas spread on that exposed hillside before it was securely roped into place might have carried it all away to be stranded in the tops of the chestnut trees below, and a new canvas for such a circo as that would have cost certainly three hundred francs.

When at last the tent was raised, Giovanni hung above the entrance a broad strip of blue canvas with clowns’ and horses’ heads painted upon it, and the sign in large letters: “Circo Equestre”, which is Italian for “Circus with Horses.”

Lastly, figured curtains of pale green calico were hung around the little vestibule, so that outsiders who had not paid the entrance fee might not peep inside and see what was going on, without payment.

Now all was ready, and it was still early, although almost dark in the field. Among the mountains, where one lives perhaps at the foot or even half-way up the slopes, night falls early, because the sinking sun is hidden from sight over the mountain tops long before it really drops into the sea behind them.

Yet it was not quite time to light the lamps inside the tent, as the performance was not to begin until half-past eight o’clock. Cutigliano was full of Italians, and a few English and Americans who had left the hot cities behind, with their churches and picture galleries and ruins, and had come to the pleasant hotels of the ancient mountain town to enjoy the fine air and the beautiful chestnut woods during the hot summer months. These visitors would not be through with their dinners at the hotels before eight o’clock, while the servants and plain village folk would find a late hour convenient for coming down the hill to the yellow tent.

At seven o’clock, however, the three men, with the big brass horn, the cornet and the drum, climbed the stony street into the town and made lively music in the little stone-paved piazzas, or open squares, where the children played in the sunset light.

By this time everybody in Cutigliano had learned what had been going on down in the field for the past two days, and many even of the rich strangers had made up their minds to go to see the show, partly out of curiosity, partly out of kindly purpose to help the strolling players. It had been announced that six soldi, or cents, would admit to the side of the ring where there would be benches and a chair or two for seats, while three cents offered room on the other side with a few boards and the green grass as accommodation. Visitors were invited to bring chairs for their sittings, if possible.

The music sounded very brave and loud as it returned down the very steepest street of all, which ran between high walls past Madame Cioche’s English pension or boarding-house and ended in the field. As this was a dark and even dangerous descent at night for the unwary, Antonio had driven a nail into a tree at the foot of the street, and had hung there a smutty tin lamp, with the light flaring and the smoke pouring from two long spouts.

Nonna had beguiled most of the children away from the tent by this time, and was putting the youngest to bed in the wagon, while the others rolled over the grass behind the tent.

Natale was as busy as a bee in the small tent which opened out of the large one. This was the dressing room, and the different costumes of the actors lay in heaps on the boxes scattered about.

As half-past eight o’clock approached, the boy became as excited as if this were to be his first appearance in public, and he kept lifting up the flap of curtain dividing the two tents to see how fast the seats were filling. The band had brought back a horde of village children in its train, and though few of these were possessed of the three cents charged for children, they served to keep up an appearance of bustle and enterprise outside, where the band now played the National Hymn of Italy gaily in the light of the big lamp at the entrance.

Cara, the mother of Olga and the rest of the seven, stood in the vestibule and took in the great copper cents which by and by began to pile up in the bowl on the table. She was a very striking person to look at, with her coal-black hair frizzed bushily on each side of her head, with her flashing black eyes and her heavy brows, her red, red lips and cheeks, and her scarlet and black gown. No one dared to slip in behind the rustling skirts or portly form of anybody without paying, for her piercing eyes seemed everywhere. Once or twice, when the crowds about the doors seemed to hesitate and to wonder whether, after all, it were worth while to expend six or even three cents for what was to be seen behind the curtain, the pretty little figure of her Olga was seen to flit, as if by accident, across the vestibule, the full light streaming over her little full blouse of yellow satin, and her pink feet tripping as if on air.

The anxious half-hour of expectation ended in the sight of a full circle surrounding the ring, and then the band came inside and all the performers slipped into the smaller tent and hurried on their costumes.

The band played on; Arduina danced a measured dance on the tight rope which was stretched near the ground; the clown made his funny jokes; Antonio performed his clever feats on the bars; Elvira rode the galloping horses with Cara dancing in and out and everywhere, while Giovanni cracked the whip and Paulo held the bar for Il Duca to leap. The pantomime then brought shouts of laughter and loud hand-clappings from the spectators; and afterward the tumbling began.

There was nothing that Olga loved so much, and she showed it in every line of her chubby, yet nimble little figure as she came prancing into the ring, and then went heels over head, over and over again, without stopping to breathe, as far as the strip of dusty carpet stretched. Then back again she tumbled, only stopping to toss a stray wisp of hair from her flushed face.

Next Arduina came tripping in, and over and over she went too, not so gracefully and daintily as Olga had done, for Arduina was getting a little too large for that kind of thing,—a great girl of fifteen years.

The clown followed Arduina, dressed in his clumsy suit of black and white, and what a farce his tumbling was, to be sure; only the spectators must have known that he failed in order to make them laugh at his awkwardness, and make merry they did.

Somehow Natale never quite enjoyed the laughter which often accompanied his own performances, and now his time had come.

“Ecco! Natalino!” called his stepfather, the clown, rushing behind the curtain all breathless and covered with dust. “Over and over and over you go, youngster, without stopping to sneeze between!”

Natale was such a little fellow, so much smaller than Olga even, that many of the faces outside the ring softened at sight of him, as he darted out into the light of the lamps and then halted to make his funny little salute. He was dressed in imitation of the clown, in long black trousers and a tailed black coat, with a pointed white waistcoat reaching below his waist. With an earnest seriousness very different from Olga’s smiling grace, Natale turned his first somersault, paused on his back, turned another jerkily, while the little boys watching him hooted, and a ripple of laughter ran around the ring. Back again he came, however, his thin black legs sprawling in air, and his pale little face flushing with the exertion. On his feet again, he clapped one hand to the back of his neck, bobbed his head to the spectators, and trotted off behind the friendly curtain, satisfied that he had, at least, done as well as usual, and pleased with the loud clapping attending his exit. Indeed, there was a clapping and a calling out of something with laughing voices.

“Il picino! Il picino!”[3]

“You will have to go back, Natalino,” laughed the clown. “Salute them and stand on your head, boy, but don’t lose it on the way.”

The music played loudly, and Natale stepped gravely back again, made his odd little bow, and fell over on his hands as the first step toward standing on his head. Poor, stiff little legs! It took more than one effort to throw them into an upright position above his head, but finally he really did accomplish it, and stood thus several seconds while the shouting and laughing went on.

When Natale had disappeared a second time behind the curtain, there were a few grave faces among the laughing ones looking on. An English lady whispered to her companion and sighed.

“The poor little fellow is evidently afraid to disobey that dreadful clown,” she said. “Did you see how he trembled as the man stood over him, when he tried to stand on his head? Something ought to be done to put a stop to this, Betty.”

“The child looks weak, as if he were not very well fed,” Betty answered, “but I do not think he looks unhappy. And the clown was certainly smiling, and seemed to be standing by as if to help the little boy accomplish his wonderful feat, I thought. Don’t distress yourself, Aunty. He is just learning, it may be, and they bring him in to contrast him with that little beauty who turned the ‘wheels.’ Send the boy some good bread and meat to-morrow, and that will be better for him than our empty sympathy.”

But “Aunty” was not satisfied, as we shall see.

The last act of the evening again brought Natale to the fore. The big spotted horse, Il Duca, was again brought into the ring, and after he had cantered gaily around inside the ring many times, to the music of a schottisch, striking terror to the ladies occupying the front seats, with their knees pressed against the low barrier, the clown suddenly called a halt and caught the bridle of the panting steed. Gently the solemn strains of the “Dead March” sounded through the tent, and Il Duca fell slowly and painfully upon his knees, and then rolled over upon the ground, apparently dying. The light dust of the ring stirred under the beast’s laboring nostrils, and deep groans issued from his throat, while Giovanni stood mournfully by and the music played on.

CHAPTER IV
THE FESTIVAL OF SAN LORENZO

Suddenly the small black figure of Natale appeared, kneeling at the horse’s side, although no one had seen him slip in. With his hands clasped in distress, he lifted his voice in such a disconsolate wail that even Betty started and wondered if the horse could be really dying.

The solemn march was still sounding in the tent, and before speaking the clown gave the spectators full time to take in the tragic tableau. Then he exclaimed briskly:

“What are you crying about, boy?”

“Because our horse is dead.”

“Do you think he is quite dead, Natale?”

“Oh, quite,” wailed the child.

“Get up and feel his pulse, boy. If there is any pulse he is not dead.”

Natale went nearer and took one of the great hoofs of the horse fearlessly into his little hands, and felt for the “pulse.”

“Well, what do you find?” asked the clown impatiently.

“There isn’t any pulse,” the little fellow wailed again, laying down the big black hoof with the utmost tenderness.

“Too bad,” quoth the clown, taking his seat deliberately on the prostrate horse, which lay as motionless as if certainly dead. Then, all in a moment, Natale’s manner changed, and he skipped around in front of Giovanni, remarking glibly that the gentleman had found a beautiful sofa to sit upon.

“And I shall have a kiss to prove that the beast is not dead,” exclaimed the clown, chirruping a little and smacking his lips. And the great brown head of the horse lifted itself from the dust, the graceful neck turned, and Il Duca actually kissed his master, then scrambled hastily to his feet as if glad for that job to be over, while Giovanni hurried him out of the ring.

“Such silly jokes!” commented Mrs. Bishop, otherwise Aunty, as the performance ended, and the rollicking crowd poured out of the tent. “Think of my having spent two whole hours listening to them, and all on pins too, for fear that poor, ill-used child should be forced to do some other unchristian thing.”

“But, Aunty, what did you expect when you came?” Betty asked impatiently. “Surely the little show was not bad, and there was actually nothing but what was quite decent in every way.”

“I call it ‘bad’ to beat and starve children into turning themselves into monkeys.”

“If people would not go to see the ‘monkeys’ it would be stopped,” was Betty’s retort.

“Well, I am sure I only went to oblige Mrs. Choky,” Aunty said in an injured tone. “She said she thought we ought to encourage the poor people on their first night. But it will be my last night there, as I shall very soon inform her. ‘Encourage’ them to martyrize that poor child, indeed!”

From the first performance in Cutigliano, therefore, Natale’s trouble began, although he did not know it. Contented and tired he lay down in his corner of the brown house on wheels and went to sleep, while the men let down the big yellow canvas of the large tent and furled it about the pole. But first, he ate his supper of macaroni with the rest of the actors, gathered in the small tent behind. Midnight suppers were the rule on the nights when there were performances, as it would have been at the risk of upsetting their stomachs in more ways than one to eat food beforehand.

Later, the stars kept quiet watch above the little encampment, where even Pietro slept well, with the open house door admitting the fresh air of the mountains.

For ten days the yellow “mushroom” spread over the grass of the field, although very much in the way of the fine city gentlemen, playing at ball with bats like tambourines. The noisy music at night and the cheering in the tent may have kept the invalids in the nearest boarding-houses awake and nervous, and the people at large may have grown tired of the performances which they soon learned by heart, but no one felt inclined to hustle the poor people away, and no one grumbled except Mrs. Bishop.

There was something pathetic about the clown in his everyday dress, his gayety and paint all gone and the deep lines of his face showing too plainly in the garish light of day, as he pottered about the tent, adjusting ropes, and keeping off the village boys who would throw stones upon the old canvas, or play hide and seek among the curtains. It gave one a queer feeling, also, to fancy the drooping figure of Pietro, with his pure little face like alabaster, a member of the “wicked circus troop.”

This child was perhaps twelve years old, and he had the face of an angel. He had begun to lose his daily feverishness after a week in the mountains, and was soon able to limp, and later to run feebly about the field with the village boys.

Mrs. Bishop looked down upon the tent from the garden terrace.
Page [45.]

But Natale, spidery little Natale, interested every one more even than did Pietro. Yet he looked only an everyday lad during the long summer days, when he trotted up and down, to and from the town, carrying now a bowl of this, now a flask of that, but always carrying something. To most people he seemed as happy as the days were long, just as ready for a chat with a strange foreigner who might address him in broken Italian as with old Sora Teresa who sold fruit and vegetables in the piazza, and who sometimes presented him with a ripe red tomato, or a slice of melon all green and pink.

But Mrs. Bishop looked down upon the tent from the garden terrace of Madame Cioche’s boarding-house every day, and slowly formed a plan for making Natale’s life happier. Poor little Natale!

The terrace garden above the field was shaded with plane trees and the mountain ash, and the grass was soft and richly green. Each afternoon some of the boarders would gather at the palings on the edge of this garden and watch the gentlemen playing ball below, and the village boys imitating Olga and Natale at turning somersaults and wheels.

One afternoon, while the boarders were drinking tea under the ash trees, with the berries overhead turning red, and the sun streaming across the croquet ground, there came a knock at the side door of the boarding-house. Madame Cioche herself opened the door, and there stood Natale, smiling up into her face, with the old blue hat set far back on his dark curls. The lady noticed that the boy’s face was very clean.

“Happy day to you,” he said brightly, using the peasant form of address, “and my mamá says will you please send her a cup of tea? She is feeling ill to-day.”

Of course Madame Cioche would send the tea, fetching it herself from the dining room and handing it to the boy. But she kept Natale a moment to ask how it was that his mamá could possibly like tea.

“Oh, but she has it every day when we are in Egypt,” was the reply. “And to-day her head aches. Thank you, Signora.” And Natale went off down the hill carrying the big cup as carefully as his bowls and flasks were always carried.

Mrs. Bishop overheard the word “Egypt” and sighed.

The next day was Sunday and an important festival, being the day of San Lorenzo. A great harvest of soldi was expected, as peasants from all the mountain villages would come trooping in that day, to go to high mass in the church under the old mountain firs, and to take part in the procession of the “saints” in the afternoon. So there was, of course, to be a performance in the tent that day, but in the afternoon this time, just after the procession, instead of in the evening, when everybody would be tired or toiling homeward along the dark mountain ways. As there was nothing for him to do about the tent, however, until five o’clock should boom from the stone tower of the church, Natale made good use of his legs during the whole day, for there was much to see.

Betty Bishop had tossed a penny into his hands down over the garden palings that very Sunday morning. Perhaps she was thinking of some little child at home in England who would be clamoring for a penny to carry to Sunday school, but Natale had no thought of dropping his precious two soldi into the priest’s collecting bag in the church.

The piazza was too fascinating a place to be passed by, when one held a penny of his own fast in his fist. With the dogs on each side of him, therefore, Natale spent most of the day above in the town, going from booth to booth, and in fancy spending his money over and over again. There were sweets of various kinds offered for sale on the little tables along the steep, narrow streets, and booths of everything from coarse stuffs and ready-made clothing to breastpins of gay mosaic work and filigree rings.

Everywhere Natale was jostled by the peasants who all through the morning had flocked to the town, dressed in their best clothes and wearing holiday looks on their faces. The women and girls wore gay kerchiefs on their heads, with brilliant borderings and flowing ends, while even the men wore bits of vivid color in the shape of gorgeous neck scarfs spread over their white shirt fronts. Mingled with these walked the lords and ladies of a higher class dressed according to the fashion plates of Paris, and seeming to enjoy the hot sunshine and the gay restiveness of the multitude as much as the plainer folk. All day the frolic and prayers and the music of the town band and the church organ went on in the little town, till mid-afternoon, when there fell a hush over all and a great expectation.

Natale had not a very good place from which to see the procession pass, for he stood between a very stout peasant woman and a visiting priest in his full black gown. Still, he managed to peer from under their elbows without attracting their attention, and he was content, holding securely in one hand, meanwhile, the balloon whistle which he had finally purchased with his penny. The pretty red bubble of rubber had not yet burst, and Natale was happy in its possession. The handful of crisp wafers flavored with anise seed, which he had almost bought—so very foolish he had been—would have been eaten long ere this, and it would be as if he had never had a penny of his own tossed over the fence to him by a smiling young lady, but now he still had the whistle!

On they came, the straggling company of men and boys, dressed in white gowns and cowls, and bearing huge lighted candles in their hands. Natale thought he would like to have been one of the two boys bearing the immense candlesticks of brass; yet, after all, the candlesticks must be very heavy, and they were propped very uncomfortably on the little boys’ stomachs, and very red and perspiring were the little boys’ faces.

Natale thought the men’s feet ugly and clumsy, showing below the white gowns, and their harsh, chanting voices made him shiver. But he could not follow the awkward marching steps of the peasants with laughing looks as some of the onlookers were doing, for here, behind the banners and crucifixes, came two very curious-looking objects.

“Ecco! the dead saints!” he exclaimed softly to himself. “How heavy they must be in the glass boxes on the men’s shoulders. Yet our Antonio Bisbini would never bend so under a small box as those men do. Ah! but the little girls are pretty, so pretty in their white veils, and scattering flowers before the saints.”

The crowd closed in upon the end of the procession now, and Natale could see no more, as he was nearly overturned where he stood. After a breathless moment or two, he found himself left in peace and quiet under the great old fir trees in front of the church, with the crowd all gone and Nicro and Bianco with them.

Nonna had told him to be sure and see the saints, if possible, so he went into the dark old church and sat down on a low chair to wait for the procession to return. He knew that San Lorenzo and Sant’ Aurelio would surely be brought back to spend the night in the church, perhaps in front of the candle-lighted altar, and he wished to please Nonna. It was dark and quiet in his corner under the organ gallery, and it was a very easy and natural thing for a tired little boy to fall asleep in that quiet place.

When the procession returned after half an hour, it was without the blare of trumpets and the crash of organ music, though for a long while shuffling feet passed in and out. This continued until everybody had looked at the two saints robed in costly garments and reposing now at full length on their satin cushions within their caskets of glass set before the altar. Many touched the rich cloths draping the caskets with reverent fingers, and pressed kisses on the cold glass before passing out into the radiant sunset light.

When Natale waked, the church doors were still open, but only one light swung before the high altar, and there was no trace anywhere of dead saint or living soul. He groped his way among the disarranged chairs and benches quite to the altar rail, but even the empty biers had been borne away to some inner recess of the church, so, with a dread that he had overslept awaking in his mind, Natale found his way out of the church again.

The purple bloom of evening was creeping up the mountain sides, and a star glowed in the sky. Just above the mountain line in the west the crescent moon hovered, as if uncertain over which side to sink. The dread in Natale’s mind had nothing to do with saints or dark churches. On awaking, his first sensation had been a fear that he might have missed the afternoon performance in the beloved tent, and now, standing outside the church in the dusk, he knew that he had missed it!

With a sob in his throat he turned his face from the telltale sky, and fled through the village down to the field. When he reached the wagon,—for he would not go to the tent, quiet now and unlighted,—the first words he heard came from Olga:

“Have you not heard, Natalino? Giovanni has lost a hundred francs! Somebody stole them when he changed his coat in the little tent. Yes, I know you were not there! We wondered where you could be!”

CHAPTER V
A GIFT FOR THE CIRCUS

Natale held his breath with horror. One hundred francs lost! And he not at hand to hear of it, to help look for the money, among the very first? He could not ask Olga how it had happened, because his heart was almost too disappointed and sore for words. He sat down on the wall, with his back toward the tent, and waited for her to tell all about the loss, although he was not at all certain that she would condescend to do so. In fact, she said not a word more, but stood in front of Natale, wondering not a little at his unusual quiet.

“You are sulky!” she exclaimed finally, “and Giovanni is very angry with you. So am I, for I had to feel Il Duca’s pulse, and I did not like it at all. Suppose he had kicked me, seeing that it was not you.”

“Il Duca was dead!” Natale retorted, with a twinkle in his eye, if only Olga could have seen it. “He would not know you from me!”

“Dead!” cried Olga. “I believe you truly do think that, when you set up your crying, Natale; really I did not do it half so well as you,” she confessed honestly.

“But you ‘wheel’ much better than I do,” Natale conceded with ready generosity in return.

“Il Duca did not shut his eyes at all,” Olga went on, nodding assent to Natale’s remark, “and I am sure he winked at me, Natale, just to frighten me. It did not take me long to feel his pulse! But where were you, Natalino, all the time? Nonna said she was afraid some of the peasants had stolen you and carried you off, when Niero and Bianco came home without you.”

“As if they would have let anybody steal me! Olga, I went to sleep in the church, waiting for the saints to come back, and when I waked it was dark, almost as dark as this!”

“Oho! then you must have been in the church when Arduina and I went in to look at the saints. Arduina said—but you must not dare to tell anybody—she said that she did not believe there were any bones under the saints’ fine velvet robes because San Lorenzo had a hand of pink wax, and the rest of him looked rather stuffed. But do not tell Nonna, Natale!”

“Arduina is very wicked,” said Natale, but he laughed with Olga, and then felt much better, and as if he could ask about the losing of the money.

They were in a little nook to themselves, behind the wagon, and no one heeded them.

“Ecco! it was this way,” Olga began, charmed to be the first to recount the misfortune to Natale, who was usually behind none in his knowledge of the affairs of the company. “Just when Giovanni was going in to do the clown in the first dance on the rope, the Signor Barbera, the stable man, came behind the big tent with his bill for keeping the horses, and Giovanni took the big pocketbook out of the pocket of his coat—”

“Yes, I know which pocket,” Natale interposed. “I saw him put the money there this morning.”

“Well, the signor could not make the change, so he told Giovanni it was all right, and any time would do, and then Antonio rang the bell for Giovanni, and he just put the pocketbook back in his coat and hung the coat on the nail in the little tent, and hurried on the black coat, and went into the ring.”

“Yes, and then?” asked Natale breathlessly.

“When he came back, he saw his coat on the ground, and he knew he had hung it up. ‘How comes my coat on the ground?’ he said, very loud indeed, and your mamá told him he must have put it there himself. But he did not hear her, because he was shaking the coat and feeling in the pocket,—but there was nothing there!

“We made a great fuss about it,” Olga ended, shrugging her shoulders and throwing up her hands, “but what was the use?”

Natale was silent with dismay. A hundred francs meant so much. It was all that they had made during the ten days’ stay at Cutigliano, and now it was gone, in a moment.

“The stable man?” he questioned in a distressed tone of voice, and very low.

“No, Giovanni said it could not have been the signor. He is a rich man and honest, everybody says.”

So subdued were they all over the trouble of the afternoon that not even Elvira thought it worth while to scold the quiet boy who presently slipped in among the little crowd of players in the tent, deep in fruitless discussion over their grievous loss. They had had a crowded tent that afternoon, and the receipts had been so good that this evening would have been one of rejoicing if only the money for the labors of the ten other days and nights had been again safe in Giovanni’s pocket. There was not the slightest clew to the thief, as no stranger had been known to enter the tent, and Giovanni had even interviewed the Signor Barbera from outside the doorway. It had been necessary to be on the lookout for possible thieving, as the field was crowded all the afternoon with strange peasants, attracted by the band music and the big yellow tent, and by peddlers with their wares. One very decent-looking peddler had begged pretty, vain Arduina to look at his beautiful jewelry and ribbons, but she had refused him entrance very reluctantly, and Giovanni himself had noticed how patiently and decorously the man had turned away. He had worn a red fez cap over his long black hair, and his bushy black beard had reached nearly to his waist.

“I saw him!” Emilio, one of the musicians exclaimed, “and his legs were as crooked as Pietro’s, only they bent out at the knee instead of in!” There was a laugh at this sally, but Pietro frowned and muttered something about Emilio’s having little right to criticize the legs of others.

“I met such a man as I came out of the church in the crowd,” said Nonna, hastening to speak that a dispute might be avoided. “He walked very well notwithstanding his poor, bent legs, and he asked me if he were too late to get a glimpse of the blessed relics. A politer man I never saw, though Tito was afraid of him, and began to cry when the man snapped his fingers at him.”

Poor Natale felt so left out in the cold with this talk that he could not bear it long, and was just about to creep away, down to his corner in the wagon, when a strange hand lifted a corner of the tent flap, and a strange voice inquired for “Il piccolo Natale.”

“Some ladies up at the house there have a little present for you all,” the black-coated Italian butler of the boarding-house announced, peering in upon the group gathered about the sputtering lamp inside, “but they wish to send it down by the boy, Natale.”

Then Natale was himself again, and without demur or bashfulness presented himself to the servant.

“It is well you turned up in time, Natalino,” said the clown, giving him a little shove toward the dignified butler waiting just outside. “Perhaps Olga would not have done, in this case. Off with you to the forestieri[4] above!”

Many a boy would have been abashed at finding himself the center of such a group as awaited Natale in the hallway of the house in the garden. But Natale was too well accustomed to an array of faces fixed upon him to make the least show of bashfulness. The lady of the house, whose pleasant face he knew very well, laid her hand on his shoulder and asked him kindly in Italian if anything had been heard of the money lost that afternoon, and her soft, dark eyes looked sympathetically into his own.

“No, signora, and my papá says we shall never see a soldo of it again,” was Natale’s prompt answer.

“Ask him if they have any idea of the person who stole it,” Betty Bishop suggested in English, and Madame Cioche did so. Natale’s answer to this was more expressive than polite perhaps, for without words he simply raised his shoulders as high as possible, pressing his elbows against his sides, and spreading his hands wide to indicate the complete ignorance of his people as to the coward who had taken their hard-earned money. And the drawn-down corners of his mouth so changed the expression of his face that one would hardly have known him.

“Who would have believed the child could make himself so ugly,” Mrs. Bishop exclaimed. “Have you no tongue, boy, to answer properly?”

But as English words were far less intelligible to Natale than Caffero’s whinny, or Niero’s bark, he only looked up into Madame Cioche’s face and smiled.

“There! it is a bonny little face after all,” said that lady, “and now shall we give him the money and send him away?”

“No, let me speak to him first,” demanded Mrs. Bishop, “and you, Mrs. Choky, must interpret. Ask him if he likes to be a wicked little circus boy.”

“Aunty!” gasped Betty.

“Never mind, I have a reason for my question, Betty. Hush, what does he say?”

“Do you like to play in the circus, dear?” asked Mrs. Cioche’s kind voice, in Italian.

Natale’s eyes shone.

“Ah, yes, signora! And when I am a man, I shall be another Antonio Bisbini.”

“He says he likes it very much, Mrs. Bishop,” was the interpretation.

“Already corrupted, poor boy, and so young!” the old lady sighed, while Betty laughed outright.

“Ask him if he would not like better to have some nice clothes, and go to school, and grow up to be a decent man some day, Mrs. Choky.” That lady hesitated a little before putting this question into Italian.

“What does she say to me?” Natale asked, his brown eyes twinkling as he looked from one to the other, his teeth showing white between his red lips. Natale’s was a wide, good-natured mouth, very prone to laugh upon small provocation.

“She wants to know if you would not like to go to school, and learn to read and write,” said Madame Cioche.

“And leave the circo?” Natale asked with a gasp.

“Yes, you could not go to school unless you should stop in one place, you know.”

“And not travel about with the horses and wagon any more, and leave Nonna?”

“Of course, Natale. But she is only asking you about it, carino, so do not look so troubled.”

Natale laughed then, and happily.

“She wanted to find out how much I love the circo!” he exclaimed. “Please tell her, signora. You know, how we all love the circo!”

“I think I do, Natale. He does not want to go to school, Mrs. Bishop,” turning to the eager old lady, “because he loves his life with the circus and his own people too much.”

“And he does not wish to leave his grandmother,” chimed in Betty who had very cleverly picked up a good deal of Italian during a winter and summer in Italy, and all grandmothers are Nonnas in that land.

Mrs. Bishop was silent for a moment, her gaze taking in every detail of Natale’s little figure standing sturdily before her, dusty shoes, and rough peasant leggings, velveteen trousers, faded blue blouse, and rumpled curls, with the old hat held in one sun-burned hand. His face was not so clean as usual now, and there were tired circles about his eyes. It had been a long, exciting summer’s day.

“Children—especially boys—do not know what is best for themselves,” she said presently, bending her brows, but not in the least frightening Natale, “and I am not going to give up my plan, for this baby’s nonsense. Why, he cannot be over eight years old, at the most.”

“Here, Natale,” said Madame Cioche, judging that the interview might well be concluded, and handing the boy a small packet. “Take this to your papá, and tell him that the ladies and gentlemen in my house have heard of the loss of the money, and are sending him thirty-five francs as a little present. Can you carry it safely?”

Again Natale’s sweet smile broke over his face, but he only nodded happily in reply, tucking the money away in the bosom of his blouse.

“Ask him how long they are going to stay,” Mrs. Bishop called after Madame Cioche, who was going to the gate with Natale.

“He says that the sindaco—the mayor—has offered them the use of the field for another week,” Madame Cioche said, her eyes glowing, as she returned to the hall. “I am glad of that, as the poor creatures will need all they can make here, now.”

“I call it a sort of punishment, their losing the money when playing on Sunday,” Mrs. Bishop said severely, and one or two other English ladies nodded their approval of this speech. “And I think the whole business wrong and that it ought to be discouraged. I was not at all sure about the propriety of giving my francs to your little collection, Mrs. Choky.”

“Would it have been more Christian to have let them suffer, perhaps for food, and the poor beasts too?” the hostess asked, pausing on her way through the hall.

“But surely you think circusing wrong and unchristian?” the disputative old lady exclaimed.

“Aunty, do be quiet,” cried Betty warmly. “I am sure you ought not to dispute ‘on Sunday’! Besides,” she added, as everybody laughed, and two or three softly applauded, “they make their living that way, and we cannot change them into farmers, or preachers. But I think it is always wrong not to help honest people who are in trouble.”

“If they are honest,” Mrs. Bishop remonstrated, but under her breath, this time, for Madame Cioche’s eyes were sparkling, and she seemed waiting to speak.

“Those poor creatures down there deserve nothing but praise,” she said stoutly; “they are quiet folks, who teach their children obedience and keep themselves remarkably clean and mended. If they make their living in a way we do not approve, we cannot change them, as Miss Betty says, but we can feed them when they are hungry, and that seems to me not ‘unchristian’!”

“I am afraid she has a little temper,” said Mrs. Bishop, as their hostess went upstairs.

“A temper I like!” exclaimed a gentleman who had before kept silent, looking up from his book. “But do you still think of carrying out your plan, Mrs. Bishop?”

“If possible, certainly,” was the reply, while Betty, shaking her head, walked out into the garden. There, under the stars, she stood looking down upon the tent in the field. There was no wind, and the heavens were fair, so the canvas had not been furled.

“I should like it myself,” she murmured. “What a fascinating life to live! Camping out the year round in Italy, with no troublesome dressing four times a day, no tiresome table-d’hôte dinners at night. But after all I should not like to be that girl,—Arduina, they call her. Of course, Aunty is right about the rope dancing and other ‘circusing’ on Sunday, only she need not be quite so fussy over what we certainly cannot help. Poor Natale! how disturbed he did look when Madame Cioche asked him about going to school!”

CHAPTER VI
SEPARATION

Natale lay 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?” fiercely muttered 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 the principino,”[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 behind and 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 not rained 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 am not to 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, he stood there looking up toward the many-windowed pension and 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, or some 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 frightened me with 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 the priest’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 the capitomboli,[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 he wished to 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 high ambitions! 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 rich forestieri had 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 was struggling 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 first glance 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 priest and 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.

CHAPTER VII
THE CAGED BIRD OF THE FIELDS

There is a short, crooked street in Cutigliano, which leads back of the church and out upon the promenade of San Vito. This street is confined on either hand by stone houses and stone walls of gardens, and paved with large square stones. Here and there a gateway gives a peep at lapping hills across the river. The massive church tower rises directly from a narrow turn in this street, and when the bells ring down from the arches in the top of this tower, the stony street reverberates with a deafening clamor.

By the time the priest and Natale reached the foot of the church tower, the boy was weeping bitterly but quietly. His one free arm hid as much of his face as possible, and his feet in the clumsy new shoes stumbled so helplessly that Luigi had some trouble in preventing his falling.

As they had passed through the town, where everybody sat at their doors or lounged in the piazza, all had recognized the little acrobat, as Natale realized only too well. Many accosted him in wonder, and some would even have stopped him to inquire into his misfortune in being left behind by his family. But the young priest motioned such away with authority, silencing with a gesture of his long finger the too curious. Others had already learned how it had come about that Natale was to spend a year with Sora Grazia, and her son the priest, and these contented themselves with shrugs and smiles for the boy’s companion, as who should say: “We wish you well of your bargain, Signor priest.”

The great hands of the church clock pointed to ten minutes of four, as the bell boomed the hour of six. No one, however, ever thought of consulting the huge figures painted on the stone face of the tower clock, for those long iron hands had not stirred for many a day.

The deep sound of the bell struck so suddenly upon Natale’s ears that he started, and dropping his arm from before his eyes, gazed dully ahead. It was not often that he had strayed farther than this corner of the old church, and he had never followed the San Vito promenade to the end. Most of the town was left behind now; whither could this man be taking him?

A row of houses with numbers in blue figures on one side of the lintels extended back of the church, but before none of these did Luigi pause. Next came a low, broken wall, and then a house, detached from its neighbors and with a long, sloping roof, covered with slabs of slate. This house had no door opening on the street, and in the blank front wall there was only a very small window at one corner close under the eaves. Over a door in the end of the house nearest the church there was a small crucifix in carved stone set into the wall, but this door was seemingly closed and unused.

The priest led Natale a few steps farther, to the other end of the house, and then they left the street and entered a long balcony leading to a wide-open door.

A middle-aged woman sat just inside this doorway at the foot of a flight of stairs leading up into the room under the roof. She wore a kerchief of red and black cotton over her head and tied in a knot under her chin, and her eyes were bent upon a coarse piece of mending occupying her work-worn hands.

The priest led Natale to the other end of the house.
Page [94.]

At Luigi’s heavy step on the stone flooring of the balcony, she lifted her face to his and something like a smile softened the expression of her stern features. Her black brows unbent and she made way for her son to enter by twisting her stool slightly and shifting her feet. Luigi passed by her and took up his stand in the gathering gloom of the little passage, his eyes fixed warily upon Natale. The little boy had released his hand from the priest’s outside the door, and now stood leaning against the railing of the balcony, staring frowningly at the woman.

“You are content to have it over with, Gigi?” the mother asked, glancing from man to boy and back again.

Luigi nodded his head.

“Give him something to eat and put him to bed,” he counseled in a low tone, “and do not argue with him to-night. To-morrow the sun will shine and he will begin to forget.”

Natale’s sharp ears caught every word, stolid as he looked. “Forget?” What did they think he would forget? Not Olga’s last words, certainly: “I would run after the wagon, if I were you.”

But, why was he not running now? No door, as yet, kept him prisoner. There was the empty street. Below ran the long, long white road. The night was coming down, and he was not afraid of the dark. Once out of sight, around one of the loops of the road, it would take but a moment to slip off the heavy shoes with their soles half an inch thick, and then on and on in the cool darkness he might run on light bare feet—“after the wagon.”

He thrilled with the thought as it flashed through his mind, but a flash of the same thought thrilled Sora Grazia at the same time, for just then she leaned forward and laying her hand on Natale’s arm, she drew him to her side.

“Once I had a curly-haired little boy of my own,” she said with a serious smile, “but after a while, he grew to be a man, and now he has brought to me another little boy. Natalino, I hope you will be as good a boy as my Gigi ever was.”

Natale gazed earnestly into the woman’s face.

“I am not at all good, signora,” he said unsteadily, and he could not help the stirring of hope in his heart, with this confession, but Sora Grazia only smiled again and tapped his cheek, and said that perhaps the good Luigi would teach him to be good.

And there was no more opportunity left Natale for running away, for he was presently led into the kitchen where he had to sit and watch Sora Grazia prepare the macaroni for supper. He was hungry enough to enjoy a plateful of this but the slip of boiled beef served him on a clean plate afterward could not be choked down. He had overheard some one in the tent—could it have been only that very day?—say that he was to have meat every day in his new home, and his sister, Arduina, had added that she wished she were sure of getting a morsel three times a week. Had not a doctor in Sicily said that she must have all delicate and nourishing food? And what were dry bread and sour wine as substitutes? No, Natale could not eat the meat that night. Happily the plate of macaroni had been generous, and what in all the land of sunny Italy is so filling as a plate of macaroni?

The valley looked dismally dark that night, as Natale crept from his little trestle bed and crouched on the brick floor at the window, after he was supposed to be asleep. He was to share the priest’s attic chamber, and a few moments before Sora Grazia had carried away the candle. He peered out between the flower pots on the window ledge and again wondered in his childish way why anybody in the big world outside should have troubled to make him miserable.

He was very sure that he had done nothing to harm the foreign lady with the spectacles. Once he had laughed when she had sneezed many times very loudly, in crossing the field near him, but he was sure no one had heard him, for he was lying on the ground and had buried his face in the grass. The pretty signorina with her had laughed too, and said something in their strange language which the lady had answered by another loud sneeze. Besides this, there was absolutely nothing he could have done to provoke any of the people in the garden. Yet, here he was being punished!

The thought of Sora Grazia oppressed him, her serious face and her high hopes of his goodness. The house, too, was quieter than any place he had ever known,—he who had been used to few roofs save those of the caravan and tent. There were no children about, and there was no sound inside of crying, or laughing, or singing, or whistling. It was almost as bad as having to live in a solemn church when the candles are all out and the crowds are gone, and one feels, in the dimness and silence, as if something were coming up stealthily behind one to scare one’s wits away. It is all very well to rest for a minute in a cool church, out of the glare of the sunlight, when one may run out again at will, free as a wild bird or butterfly. But to have to stay, night and day, for a whole year in such a place! Natale shuddered, for this was just the way in which the awful quiet of the little stone house of the priest affected him.

When Luigi came up to bed, hours later, he lifted the sleeping boy from the bricks at the window and covered him up snugly in bed.

“My mother thinks we can do it,” he muttered to himself, as he threw off his black gown. “I shall do my part, but I am not sure they have done a wise thing.” Then he sighed a little. Perhaps he was wishing that he could be a little boy again, with the wide, wide world before him, and no one to interfere with his choice of a career,—free to be acrobat or priest, but always to have his own choice.

With the passing of the first night all idea of running away seemed to have left Natale’s mind, and Sora Grazia was at first delighted to find her charge as submissive as a lamb to all her arrangements. After the first day or two, however, it became not quite so comfortable to see the little boy sit immovable for hours at a time, on the floor of the balcony, gazing down into the valley where the river ran merrily over the rocks. She would even have preferred to rebuke the child for something a little more outrageous than his listless torpor. She herself had to eat the meat prepared for Natale, if she would not see it wasted, for Natale could not touch it, nor would Luigi, her usually tractable son.

The young priest was no less puzzled over Natale’s conduct than his mother was. The schoolmaster reported to him that the boy held his little paper-covered spelling-book before his eyes with the utmost diligence, and really seemed to try to remember the letters as they were pointed out to him with patient repetition, but that he might as well have been gazing off into the valley instead, for all the good the pages did him, and Luigi believed it.