The little acrobat: a story of Italy

Natale, too, was looking up, but only dully, as a party of ladies and gentlemen sauntered toward him laughing and talking gayly as they came. Many such groups had passed him already, taking afternoon strolls toward the beautiful promenade of San Vito leading around the mountain side. But this particular group paused, when a spectacled old lady did, and all gathered about Natale, except the white-haired gentleman standing a little aloof and tapping the paving stones with his stick.

“Why haven’t you been to see us, Natale Marzuchetti?” Miss Lorini asked cheerfully in Italian. “Mrs. Bishop was sure you would come.”

“He does not look like the same child!” whispered Betty to her aunt, who now pushed forward.

“Ask him if he is a smart boy in school, and if he is not glad to be dressed so decently and to be learning something useful,” Mrs. Bishop said hurriedly to the Italian lady, all of which was repeated to Natale in his own language as was requested. But Natale only shook his head slowly and wistfully.

“You used to talk fast enough!” Mrs. Bishop cried impatiently. “Look,” she went on, pointing to the next house, a little farther on, “don’t you see that white stone in the wall? The words on it tell about a man who was born there, two hundred and fifty years ago, who was so good and useful that the people here put his name up there that he might never be forgotten. What’s to hinder there being a stone put up on this house, to tell about little Natale who was only a poor circus boy, but who came to live here when he was eight years old and became a very useful and good man? Tell him, Miss Lorini, just what I say!” And Mrs. Bishop pointed from the memorial tablet in one house to the blank front wall of the other, while Luigi, peering out of his window between the flower pots, dodged behind a tall geranium, and hoped the sharp eyes of the old lady were not searching for him.

Natale listened gravely to Miss Lorini’s communication, his eyes passing carelessly from the memorial tablet to the wall of an opposite house.

There was a rude painting on this wall of a Madonna holding a baby in her arms, and it was protected from the weather by a shallow arch of masonry. As Natale looked at the picture, he was reminded in some mysterious way of Nonna, who was never without a child in her arms, unless she were bending over a fountain washing the children’s clothes. A new look sprang into his eyes.

“Our Antonio had his name printed in Egypt and in Turkey and in Greece!” he answered proudly, for the first time opening his lips. “I would rather be like that than have my name cut here on the priest’s house!”

“Good for the little chap,” cried the gentleman softly. He had understood what the shrill little voice said.

“Printed on what, child? What was ‘our Antonio’s’ name printed on, in all those places?” Miss Lorini asked.

“On paper, of course,” answered the child simply. “And there were pictures of him too, all red and yellow and blue, performing on the bars. Everybody in the streets was looking at his name and the pictures.” The little fellow’s face was glowing as he spoke of his friend, and Miss Lorini had not the heart to translate his words to Mrs. Bishop, who could hardly have passed them by calmly.

“But you are content here?” Betty managed to ask in intelligible Italian.

The shadow fell again over Natale’s face, and his figure visibly drooped. He did not pretend to answer her question.

“Oh, Aunty, let him go back to his people,” Betty pleaded, seeing the change. “Anybody can see that he is miserable. He is too little to be made to suffer.”

“He is too little to suffer long,” Mrs. Bishop replied calmly, with but one thought in her mind, of course.

“Poor little Egyptian!” sighed the gentleman. “He was born in Egypt, was he not, Miss Betty?”

“At Port Said, yes, and Pietro in Tunis they say.”

“Well, be a good boy, Natale,” said Mrs. Bishop, patting his head, in its new cap. “Then you will be happy. In a few days, I shall send for you to come to see me, and we will drink tea in the garden. Good-by! Addio!”

Natale touched his hat, as he had long ago been taught to do, and the pedestrians moved away, all but the gentleman who had called him a “little Egyptian.”

He stood for a moment at Natale’s side, with his back turned to the house and his departing friends, and in a trice a handful of copper coins was transferred from his pocket to Natale’s hands. Mr. Grantly had just had a paper note changed into small coins, at the fruit shop, and he was glad to relieve his pocket of some of its weight.

“I hope his guardians will let him keep the money,” was his thought as he turned away from Natale’s brilliant smile of thanks. The boy’s training had made him none too proud to accept the money of a stranger, and he lost no time in stowing it away in his jacket pocket, while Mr. Grantly hurried after the echoing steps of his party.

Luigi at the window above had seen the money given to Natale, but he asked no questions of the boy, who, after kicking his heels against the wall for some time longer, was presently called to his supper.

There was a flush on Natale’s cheeks and a brightness in his eyes which even Sora Grazia noticed, and as the evening was cool, she thought it wise to forbid his sitting out on the balcony or the wall, as was his wont, until bedtime. He looked feverish, she said, and in her own mind she planned a cup of hot camomile tea as a remedy at bedtime. Natale’s disappointment at this command to keep indoors showed so plainly upon his childish features that Sora Grazia was provoked, and for the first time since the boy had been with her she used harsh tones.

“There! you may as well go to bed at once!” she cried, as he was leaving the kitchen, without a word it is true, but with the light all gone from his face. “I can never please you, whatever I do, and you are here only to waste food and sulk. Go to bed, Natale!”

Luigi had gone off directly after eating his supper, about some matter of business with one of his superiors at the church, so he was not there to take Natale’s part.

It is hard enough to be sent to bed on an ordinary night and at one’s regular time, as any child will agree, but to be forbidden the early hours of a moonlit evening outdoors, especially when one’s little head is teeming with wild, delicious ideas of flight—away from daily baths, from the cramping walls of a house, and out into the freshness and freedom of the night, which has no terror for the dwellers in tents, was well-nigh unbearable.

Ah! how little Sora Grazia knew of the anguish she was causing!

But Natale obediently stumbled slowly upstairs in the dark to the bedroom, and when there, crouched in his usual place on the floor behind the flower pots without an audible murmur.

The little acrobat had made no plans at all, but with the touch of the money given him by the kind old gentleman on San Vito, an impulse to seek his freedom had occurred to his mind, and in the half-hour while he continued on the wall, furtively handling the coins in his pocket, he had wished,—only wished, however,—that he might have the courage to steal out into the moonlight, after eating, while Sora Grazia should be about her dish-washing, and Luigi poring over one of his little black books, perhaps, by the light of the candle in the kitchen. He had often thought of Olga’s words, “I would run after the wagon, if I were you,” but he had been too closely watched during the first day or two to admit of his carrying out so bold a plan, and since then, for the rest of the long, dreary week since the caravan had gone, he had not had the spirit to undertake such a measure. The whole world seemed to intervene between himself and the beloved company who had gone, and he felt sure that he would be seen by some mistaken person and brought back, even before he could reach the river, if he should attempt to follow.

Until to-night no thought of leaving under the protection of the friendly darkness had come to him, and he had only been able to see himself flying down the sunny road in full view of all the village, to be promptly turned back again by some carriage driver of the place, or some schoolboy bigger than himself and therefore stronger. Besides, he had had no money, and Natale had traveled enough to know that a few cents in one’s pocket make one’s road easier and less long. So the days had passed, and Natale was fast drifting into a state of listless torpor which must have ended in illness, had not Mr. Grantly changed a five-franc note at the fruit shop that sunny afternoon and taken a stroll along San Vito where Natale sat “sulking” on the wall!

Presently, as the little child continued to gaze longingly out into the moonlight, a ray of further hope illumined his mind. As Luigi had gone to the church now, it would be late before he would return. Sora Grazia always sat dozing on her stool in the doorway until time for barring the door and going to bed. Why should he not slip past her and away into the shadows of the street, before Luigi should return? His heart leaped at the thought, and he rose noiselessly to his feet and glanced around the darkening room. His small cot stood smooth and white against the wall. Another thought struck him, and he quailed with a sense of utter discouragement. When Luigi should come in,—and he might be very early, one never knew,—the runaway would be missed straightway from the empty little bed, and easily overtaken if he should have taken the regular road down the hill.

It is true there were paths innumerable down the terraces from the back of almost any house in the street, most of them probably leading down to the river far below, but Natale had been no explorer of the neighborhood during his week of captivity, and was ignorant of the precipitate windings and the final ending of even the most practicable of these. No, he must go by the road, and he must wait until Luigi should return, and get to bed and to sleep.

Natale knew that the priest slept soundly, for, one night he had had the misfortune to knock over upon the floor a pot containing a carnation plant, and the crash had not awakened Luigi. The boy had waked and had gone to the window to peer out into the night, fancying that he heard the hoarse creaking of the caravan brake as the clumsy vehicle crawled down the hill, and in craning his head between the pots, his elbow had pushed over one of them. Fortunately, neither pot nor plant had broken, and he had spent a good deal of time in packing the loosened earth about the carnation’s roots and replacing the pot among its fellows. The next morning, Sora Grazia had bidden him be more careful about carrying mud upstairs on his shoes, only to be cleaned up by her afterward, and he supposed he must have left some of the earth upon the floor, in the dim light.

At any rate, Luigi slept soundly, and if he, himself, could only manage to keep awake until all was safe, he knew that he would have no difficulty in unbarring the door. He had accomplished it unaided only that morning, with Sora Grazia standing by and saying that it was the first thing of use he had set his hands to do since coming there to live. She had spoken good-naturedly though, and Natale had nothing against her. No, not even now did he remember her late harsh words, for he was too sweet-natured to harbor malice. He had only suffered, and now there was a prospect of escaping more suffering of the same kind.

So after sitting on his bed with a wild turmoil of thoughts engaging his busy little brain, he began rapidly to undress. Luigi must not find him up! But, after taking off the strong new suit of clothes which Mrs. Bishop had had made for him, he rummaged under his mattress where his old things had been stored by Sora Grazia and quickly got into the worn trousers, the faded blouse and leggings, tucking the old shoes under his pillow. He had set the new shoes and stockings in orderly fashion on the floor and folded up the new clothes and laid them at the foot of the little cot. How fortunate that his old shoes had not been thrown away, for he could hardly have traveled barefoot over the flinty stones of the road and the river. Natale chose to wear the old easy shoes, for the new ones had always hurt him, and he would not have been able to steal unheard out of the house with those heavy, creaking soles tramping over the bricks. If he had known of the long way ahead of the old worn shoes, perhaps he would have planned to carry the despised footgear in his hands. But forethought had little place in the mind of so young a runaway, and he was guided in his change of clothes only by his own desires for comfort. The old clothes were as familiar as old friends, and therefore he preferred them.

Then, after making his preparations, not forgetting to change the money from the pocket of the new jacket to that of his old trousers, he laid himself down on the cot, and drew up the light covering snugly about his shoulders, devoutly hoping that he would not fall soundly asleep.

If Natale had only known it, Sora Grazia, believing Natale safe for the night, had slipped off for a gossip with a friend living just back of the church, simply drawing the door to behind her and leaving the coast clear for flight. And it would not have been difficult for the boy to leave a semblance of himself tucked under the bed covering, in the shape of the roll of discarded clothes and shoes! But little Natale was not possessed of a very designing brain, and after all, Luigi might have come in untimely, and spoiled it all!

In a few moments, the would-be runaway was fast asleep, while the moon sailed across the valley from the eastern toward the western sky.