CHAPTER XI
FLUTTERING A LITTLE FARTHER
Natale sat down in his leisurely fashion on the low wall bounding the road just beyond the town and began daintily nibbling around the crisp, sugared edges of his bread ring. It was mid-afternoon, and while his jaws worked steadily, his wide bright eyes watched with interest two bicyclists toiling up the hill and trundling their wheels alongside. As they passed him by without a glance, their faces red and perspiring, and their shoes whitened with the light dust, the boy’s eyes still followed them and lighted upon a queer figure coming from the town he had just quitted. It was the red-capped, swarthy-faced man of the wine-shop door, and now his shoulders were bent under a pack slung on his back, and his legs were bowed as he limped along, and he wore an old overcoat much too long, which had seen better days upon another’s shoulders.
The wheelmen paid no attention to this fellow, as he stopped on meeting them and perhaps offered them a sight of his wares hidden in the pack, so the peddler presently came up with Natale, grumbling sourly.
“These foreigners without manners!” he growled, planting himself in front of the little boy’s swinging legs. “Ah! you are the boy who goes to the Bagni. Come, I also go thither. We shall be companions merry enough!”
Natale had no fancy for joining company with this man who frowned with his black brows and grinned, in turn, with big white teeth gleaming in his hairy face, but neither had he the courage to demur. Therefore, he slipped down unwillingly from his perch and trotted along at the peddler’s side.
Fortunately, the man asked no questions and spoke little, and before evening, his steady tramp had led Natale over more miles than the whole previous day had carried him. Little cared this strange, silent fellow for leaning over walls to gaze at the foaming water singing over the rocks, or for idly resting on a bridge to watch the white cloud-ships crossing the azure sea overhead, as the white sails of the orange boats ply the blue waves between Sicily and the Italian coast, and to dream of future glory as an acrobat of renown!
The sun had again sunk behind the rounded summits in the west, when the peddler at last stood still and grinned down upon the panting child.
“One easily sees that you are no traveler,” he said in his hoarse, unpleasant voice. “Now we will sit down here by the roadside and make our beds for the night. Did you mention supper? The bracelet you wear on your arm will suffice for us both, if we divide it according to the size of our stomachs. Ecco!” And Natale’s precious ring of sweetened bread was rudely snatched from his arm.
Naturally, Natale was most indignant at being treated in this manner by so perfect a stranger, and he did not hesitate to remonstrate.
“But the bread is mine, signore! I bought it with my own soldi in the town,” he cried, clutching at the beautiful ring of bread, already being broken in two by the peddler’s dirty fingers.
“Soldi!” echoed the man; “and where are your precious soldi?”
“At the shop where I bought the bread, of course,” was the shrewd reply, and not a coin remaining in Natale’s pocket jostled against its neighbor now. They kept as quiet as if they knew that long, eager fingers were ready to pounce upon them.
Then a change came over the peddler’s manner, and he showed his unpleasant-looking teeth in a broad smile. Perhaps he was planning a look into those little pockets by and by, who knows?
“What a clever boy you are!” he cried. “Well, as you are also such a hungry little beast, take back your bread, and for a relish I shall give you a smell of my own supper. See!”
So speaking, he drew a roll of sausage from a pocket of his long coat. The sausage was wrapped in a soiled handkerchief, and there was a hunk of black bread with it. A knife with a curious curved handle and long, shining blade was next produced, and the peddler went to work, alternately whacking off bits of the highly seasoned meat and the hard bread, and devouring them with crunching teeth and smacking lips.
Natale gnawed industriously at his own bread without even thinking of offering to barter a portion of it for a taste of the savory sausage. There was a kind of fascination in watching the ugly fellow eat, and the wondering brown eyes were fixed upon the peddler’s surly face.
It was now the close of a warm afternoon. A light haze wrapped the more distant mountains in misty blue, a chirring of insects stirred the silence about the travelers, and now and then a carriage or cart whisked downward, or toiled upward, along the road, accompanied by the jingle of harness bells and the whooping cries of the drivers. A fog of white dust rose behind every passing vehicle, and the chestnut leaves overhead, long unwashed by rain, hung grimy and listless in the heavy air.
As the peddler supped, large drops of sweat gathered on his long, red nose and dripped down his black beard, while his face grew flushed and more scowling than ever. Presently, with an angry movement which startled Natale half out of his wits, he dropped the sausage and knife to the ground and tore off his coat.
“Poor men have no choice!” he muttered. “Bare shoulders in winter, the cast-off winter coat of an Englishman in summer!”
The soiled and tattered old coat was tossed aside, falling uncomfortably close to Natale’s feet, but he did not dare to push it away with disdainful touch. The peddler’s meal now came to an end, the remains of the sausage were gathered up with the cruel-looking knife and laid aside with the handkerchief, after which the peddler, with a satisfied grunt, sprawled himself on his side—to sleep, as Natale devoutly hoped.
But not quite yet was the man ready for sleep. Reaching for his pack, with a lazy movement from where he lay, he unstrapped it and drew from among the coarse laces and horn buttons inside a flat bottle, which he uncorked and turned up to his lips. As the liquor gurgled down his throat and its strong odor tainted the air, Natale let his eyes fall to the uncomely garment lying within touch of his fingers.
Then the boy’s heart leaped into his throat, and it seemed as if he would suffocate where he sat. He dared not move, and bravely he looked away from the thing which lay within such easy reach of his longing hands, half-in, half-out of the fellow’s old coat pocket.
If only the peddling thief would go off into a drunken sleep!
For there, close by, lay Giovanni’s old pocketbook of stamped Spanish leather, stained and battered, as Natale had always known it!
Who could tell whether any money still remained in it? There was nothing to do but wait till the man should go to sleep, and then, stealthily drawing the pocketbook away from the overcoat, speed down the road to a safe distance and find out all about it.
He had not long to wait before the peddler returned the bottle to the pack, and then, disposing himself on the ground, sank into an open-mouthed slumber.
Only when quite sure that the sleep was real did Natale steal away on noiseless feet, prize in hand, across the shallow ditch bordering the road, and onward to the shelter of a ruined shed quite out of sight of their resting-place. Putting the shed between him and the road, Natale unstrapped the pocketbook with trembling eagerness.
There lay the notes into which Giovanni had from time to time changed the cumbersome copper soldi of their earnings! There were the dingy blue five-franc notes, with many one and two-franc notes of a most uncompromising dirt color!
The boy dared not take time to count them all. The fierce ogre asleep under the tree might rouse at any moment and find the pocketbook gone. Away, away, he must fly, on and on toward the Bagni di Lucca, even though evening was at hand, and a gray blanket of cloud threatened to hide the coming stars. So the little feet twinkled away through the dust, Natale’s heart now heavy with the dread of what was behind, now light with the joy of what might be ahead. As the warm dusk fell, it seemed safe to walk again, although every sound from behind made Natale’s heart seem to leap into his throat. Indeed, it seemed pretty much to stay in his throat, until, by and by, he came upon some one who was to give him most welcome news.
He had traveled half a mile farther, and still it was not yet dark when he sighted a cluster of houses ahead and heard cheerful human voices. Coming up to the first house, he found a pretty, plump young mother on her doorstep, cuddling a nursling on her breast. From across the road and about the house came busy sounds of sheep and cows being housed for the night in their thatched pens, and nobody seemed at leisure except the laughing woman with the crowing baby in her arms.
On plying the woman with his usual question, Natale learned that the end of his pilgrimage was indeed “just down the road a little distance”, although, on such short legs as his, the woman added thoughtfully, it might take two hours more of brisk walking to reach even the big circus tent, standing on the outskirts of the Bagni all the past week.
Ah! and was the circus still there?
Of that the woman could not speak certainly, as some passer-by had mentioned only the day before that but one or two more performances were to be given before the circo moved on to Lucca. She herself had wished to go to see the wonderful Antonio Bisbini, also the little Olga who had no more fear of a great horse’s hoofs than she herself of her baby’s brown toes. But how was a woman to leave her house and the tired men folks, to tramp down the hill and up again at night, with a heavy baby in her arms? Was the little boy hoping to reach the tent in time for the night’s exhibition?
Natale’s heart had thrilled at the mention of Antonio’s magic name, and his spine straightened and his head was lifted with the pride of conscious relationship with the hero of the circus. He gave but a thought now to Olga’s usurpation of his place in the ring. For was he not returning to his own again, with the stolen pocketbook in the breast of his blouse? What a welcome there would be for him now!
“Well, good night, bimbo, if you will go, and may you enjoy seeing the riding in the tent!” the woman called to him, looking wistfully after the little figure plodding away, after a polite return of her farewell.
Natale’s heart was carefree now, as he limped lamely onward to the tune of the “Dead March,” humming the air as he went.
The road had been growing more level for some hours as it entered the valley, and the river flowed more still and deep. The hush of night gathered under the trees, and the birds and insects went to rest or noiselessly crept from their haunts about vine and root, intent upon the business of the hour.
As signs of the famous Baths of Lucca began to appear at certain curves in the road, Natale became possessed of but one idea. Down the river he began to see the lights of the town, and he even thought he heard the notes of band music, which, in truth, were wafted to his ears from the terrace of the Casino. His head was full of plans of stealing into the tent, and for at least this last night at Bagni di Lucca, playing his own part in the dying-horse act. He would not take precious moments now for practicing a somersault or wheel, as he went along, but it was easy to rehearse the dialogue over the dying brute—if only his tired, tired legs could keep the road, and his aching eyes find the old yellow tent set up somewhere among the trees.
Presently, the gleaming eyes of bicycles began to whiz by, and a squarely built, many-windowed villa or two rose flush with the road. A little farther now, and the tent would surely appear, with perhaps Cara in her red dress at the doorway, and the band playing outside in the light of the big lamp!
Laughing stragglers now sauntered here and there, none noticing the child making his dizzy way among them toward a flare of light on one side where the trees fell apart. One would have hardly believed it possible that there was room for even the tent of the Circo Equestre of Antonio Bisbini and Giovanni Marzuchetti in the space between the long storehouse of corn and the terraced hillside behind. Yet, not only was the tent there, spread to its full circle and height, but the brown wagon also was visible, drawn within its shadow, and now the staring brown eyes of the little wanderer had found them both.
Yes, there was the dear old tent, with its white patches upon the dull yellow, showing against the vine-clad hillsides of the Bagni. Also, there was the smoky lamp fastened to a post, where two ways met and parted. There was the usual crowd gathered outside about the entrance where Cara in her red dress and gauzy veil watched over the money bowl, in wait for some possible late-arriving spectator. The big reflecting lantern on the table showed the wistful features of the outsiders as they crowded about the tent.
As Natale crept around the tent, he saw the bare, brown legs of some trespassing youngster following squirming head and shoulders inside, under the curtain by way of the ground. In former times, the little acrobat would have been the first to raise an alarm and assist with alacrity in the ignominious expulsion of the intruder who wanted to see the show, and yet keep his soldi in his pocket, if such were there. But the sight of the enterprising offender made little impression on Natale’s mind now, as he stepped past the struggling legs, for, the hour being much later than he thought, the band inside just then struck up the familiar schottisch, and Natale knew that Il Duca was even now treading the ring in a dignified dance, led by Giovanni himself. His heart gave a suffocating throb, and his cheeks burned. Then he shivered with cold, and his weary legs faltered before the daring deed about to be perpetrated.
There was plenty of time, even yet, and he would do it even if Giovanni should strike him to the ground with his cracking whip, which had never yet, however, been raised against him with more than threatening intent.
He stopped to listen a moment longer to the music before entering. Yes, there it was, the schottisch, accompanied by the beat of the clever hoofs. Then, as he knew the moment was at hand for Il Duca to drop dying in the ring, Natale crept swiftly in among the players gathered as usual in the small tent behind. Olga was there and Arduina, in their fanciful costumes, and Elvira, his mother, waiting for their “cues.”