Why Harlequin Ran Away from Home
Harlequin was a very imp of mischief. Whatever naughtiness was afoot, he must take his part in it, and he soon became the ringleader among boys who were, many of them, twice his age and size. He showed a diabolical ingenuity in devising tricks to play upon the good folk of Bergamo. Incredibly active and fleet of foot, no policeman could hope to catch him, and no bird’s nest was safe from him: he went up church towers like a steeplejack. In his coloured suit he pirouetted joyfully about the town like a bright butterfly, working havoc wherever he went.
His mother laughed at his doings, and even his father, though he scolded him, could not at first help rather admiring him for them. “I was just such a young rascal at his age,” he would say; though it was difficult to believe that the stout fruit-seller had ever looked anything like his quicksilver son.
But when the boy’s devilries began to affect his trade, he took a more serious view of the matter. Harlequin liked nothing better than to sit in the window above the shop and pelt the customers with cherry-stones or even rotten oranges. Naturally the customers were annoyed, and some of them began to buy their fruit at the new shop over the way.
This made the fruit-seller very angry, and he decided that he must teach his son a lesson. So he went to the carpenter’s and bought a lath, or wand, of white wood, long and thin and flexible. And Harlequin, dancing into the shop, whistling and gay as usual, unexpectedly received his first thrashing.
His mother cried; which surprised Harlequin. It was not she who was being whipped. That himself should cry, which he did most lustily, was no wonder; for his father’s arm was strong, and those pretty clothes of his fitted him very tightly.
Still, he did not mend his ways. He lived for fun; and the fun which he got out of life was, he decided, well worth an occasional whipping. And, in spite of his mother’s tears, he was whipped pretty often.
As Harlequin grew older he discovered new kinds of mischief. By the time he was fifteen he was well known in all the taverns of Bergamo. He diced and played cards, kissed the girls, and was, altogether, as wild a youth as could be found in Lombardy.
“The gallows will be the end of him,” said his father.
“Oh, don’t say so!” cried his mother.
“Well, it is not my fault, my dear,” her husband replied. “I am sure I have done my best to bring him up properly, and I was always sober enough myself. I can’t imagine where he gets his wicked ways from.”
And the fruit-seller looked severely at his wife, for he could not help thinking that her merry disposition—and she was still as merry as ever when she was not worrying about Harlequin—was in some degree responsible for their son’s levity.
“Of one thing I am quite certain,” the fruit-seller concluded, “and that is that he will never be any use to me in the shop. Heaven only knows what is to become of him.”
His wife sighed. What was to become of her precious, scapegrace Harlequin? It certainly was a problem.
Harlequin himself solved the problem for them, quite suddenly.
One day there was a procession in Bergamo, a very magnificent affair. All the dignitaries of the town took part in it: among them the fruit-seller, who was now a person of great importance—and looked it, as he rode proudly on his white horse, in his fur-trimmed cloak of black velvet, with his gold chain about his shoulders.
The cavalcade was approaching the cathedral, and everything seemed to be going as it should. But suddenly there was a flash and a bang; then another; then a regular fusillade. For a moment people thought that some enemy, the French perhaps, had taken advantage of the holiday to make an attack on the town. The horses reared, threw their riders, and dashed into the crowd. Women screamed, men shouted, and all was confusion.
Harlequin flung his last cracker into an old woman’s market basket, paused a moment to laugh as she scuttled away as though the devil himself were after her, and then slipped up a deserted side street.
He was pleased with the success of his plot, but he was not sure that it had not been too successful. Of course, every one would guess who had been the author of it, and, if any one were seriously hurt, he would certainly be called to account. For the first time in his life he felt frightened.
“I very much doubt whether the air of Bergamo will be good for my health for some time to come,” he said to himself as he hurried back to the shop, which he knew he would find empty; for his mother was in a window in the great square, watching the procession. He filled his pockets with fruit and with the contents of the till. Also he took that long, flexible wand, of the virtue of which, as a weapon of attack, he had had such painful experience. He could not help shivering as he made it whistle through the air.
Until nightfall he hid in an empty stable on the outskirts of the town, where he and his friends had often gone to play their devilries. As soon as it was dark enough he took the road.