CHAPTER XII. A FOREST SCENE
Once more did Gerald find himself alone and penniless upon the world. Hewas not, however, as when first he issued forth, timid, depressed, anddiffident. Short as had been the interval since that time, his mind hadmade a considerable progress. His various readings had taught him much;and he had already learned that in the Mutual Assurance Company we callLife men are ever more or less dependent on their fellows. 'There must,then,' said he to himself, 'be surely some craft or calling to which Ican bring skill or aptitude, and some one or other will certainly acceptof services that only require the very humblest recognition.' He walkedfor hours without seeing a living thing: the barren mountain had noteven a sheep-walk; and save the path worn by the track of smugglers,there was nothing to show that the foot of man had ever traversed itsdreary solitudes. At last he gained the summit of the ridge, and couldsee the long line of coast to the westward, jagged and indented withmany a bay and promontory. There lay St. Stephano: he could recognise itby the light cloud of pale blue smoke that floated over the valley, andmarked where the town stood; and, beyond, he could catch the masts andyards of a few small craft that were sheltering in the offing. Beyondthese again stretched the wide blue sea, marked at the horizon by somefar-away sails. The whole was wrapped in that solemn calm, so strikingin the noon of an Italian summer's day. Not a cloud moved, not a leafwas stirring; a faint foam-line on the beach told that there the wavescrept softly in, but, except this, all nature was at rest.
In the dead stillness of night our thoughts turn inward, and we minglememories with our present reveries; but in the stillness of noonday,when great shadows lie motionless on the hillside, and all is hushedsave the low murmur of the laden bee, our minds take the wide range ofthe world--visiting many lands--mingling with strange people. Action,rather than reflection, engages us; and we combine, and change, andfashion the mighty elements before us as we will. We people theplains with armed hosts; we fill the towns with busy multitudes--gayprocessions throng the squares, and banners wave from steeple and tower;over the blue sea proud fleets are seen to move, and thundering echoessend back their dread cannonading: and through these sights and soundswe have our especial part--lending our sympathies here, bearing ourwarmest wishes there. If we dream, it is of the real, the actual, andthe true; and thus dreaming, we are but foreshadowing to ourselvesthe incidents and accidents of life, and garnering up the resourceswherewith to meet them.
Stored as was his mind with recent reading, Gerald's fancy supplied himwith innumerable incidents, in every one of which he displayed thesame heroic traits, the same aptitude to meet emergency, and the samehigh-hearted courage he had admired in others. Vain-gloriousness may beforgiven when it springs, as his did, out of thorough ignorance of theworld. It is, indeed, but the warm outpouring of a generous temperament,where self-esteem predominates. The youth ardently desired that the goodshould prosper and the bad be punished: his only mistake was, that heclaimed the chief place in effecting both one and the other.
Eagerly bent upon adventure, no matter where, how, or with whom, hestood on the mountain's peak, gazing at the scene beneath him. A wavingtract of country, traversed by small streams, stretched away towardTuscany, but where the boundary lay between the states he could notdetect. No town or village could be descried; and, so far as he couldsee, miles and miles of journey yet lay before him ere he could arriveat a human dwelling. This was indeed the less matter, since Tina hadfastened up in his handkerchief sufficient food for the day; and evenwere night to overtake him, there was no great hardship in passing itbeneath that starry sky.
'Many there must be,' thought he, 'campaigning at this very hour, infar-away lands, mayhap amid the sand deserts of the East, or crouchingbeneath the shelter of the drifted snows in the North; and even here aretroops of gypsies, who never know what means the comfort of a roof overthem.' Just as he said these words to himself, his eyes chanced to restupon a thin line of pale blue smoke that arose from a group of aldersbeside a stream in the valley. Faint and thin at first, it graduallygrew darker and fuller, till it rose into the clear air, and was waftedslowly along toward the sea.
'Just as if I had conjured them up,' cried Gerald, 'there are thegypsies; and if there be a Strega in the company, she shall have thiscrown for telling me my fortune! What marvels will she not invent forthis broad piece--what dragons shall I not slay--what princesses notmarry; not but in reality they do possess some wondrous insight into thefuture! Signor Gabriel sneered at it, as he sneered at everything-; butthere's no denying they read destiny, as the sailor reads the comingstorm in signs unseen by others. There is something fine, too, in theirclanship; how, poor and houseless, despised as they are, they clingtogether, hoarding up their ancient rites and traditions--their onlywealth--and wandering through the world, pilgrims of centuries old.'
As he descended the mountain path he continued thus to exalt the gypsiesin his estimation, and with that unfailing resource in similar cases,that what he was unable to praise he at least found picturesque. Thepath led through a wood of stunted chestnut-trees, on issuing from whoseshade he could no longer detect the spot he was in search of; the firehad gone out, and the smoke ceased to linger over the place.
'Doubtless the encampment has broken up; they are trudging along towardthe coast, where the villages lie,' thought he, 'and I may come up withthem to-morrow or next day,' and he stepped out briskly on his way.
The day was intensely hot, and Gerald would gladly have availed himselfof any shade, to lie down and enjoy the 'siesta' hours in true Italianfashion. The only spot, however, he could procure likely to offer suchshelter was a little copse of olives, at a bend of the river, about amile away. A solitary rock, with a few ruined walls upon it, rose abovethe trees, and marked the place as one once inhabited. Following thewinding of the stream, he at length drew nigh, and quickly noticed thatthe grass was greener and deeper, with here and there a daffodil or awild-flower, signs of a soil which, in some past time, had been caredfor and cultivated. The river, too, as it swept around the base of therock, deepened into a clear, calm pool, the very sight of which wasintensely grateful and refreshing. As the youth stood in admiringcontemplation of this fair bath, and inwardly vowing to himself theluxury of a plunge into it, a low rustling noise startled him, and asound like the sharp stamp of a beast's foot. He quickly turned, and,tracing the noise, saw a very diminutive ass, who, tethered to anolive-tree, was busily munching a meal of thistles, and as busilystamping off the stray forest flies that settled on him. Two panniers,covered over with some tarnished scarlet cloth, and a drum ofconsiderable size and very gaudy colouring, lay on the grass, with threeor four painted poles, a roll of carpet, and a bright brass basin, suchas conjurers use for their trade. There was also a curiously-shaped box,painted in checkers, doubtless some mysteriously gifted 'property.'
Curious to discover the owners of these interesting relics, Geraldadvanced into the copse, when his quick hearing was arrested by thelong-drawn breathings of several people fast asleep--so, at least, theyseemed, by the full-toned chorus of their snorings; though the nextmoment showed him that they consisted of but three persons, an old,stunted, and very emaciated man; an equally old woman, immensely fatand misshapen, to which her tawdry finery gave something indescribablyludicrous in effect; and a young girl, whose face was buried in the bendof her arms, but whose form, as she lay in the graceful abandonment ofsleep, was finely and beautifully proportioned. A coarse dress of brownstuff was her only covering, leaving her arms bare, while her legs, butfor the sandals of some tawdry tinsel, were naked to the knees and asbrown as the skin of an Indian, yet in shape and symmetry they mighthave vied with the most faultless statue of the antique--indeed, toa sleeping nymph in the gallery of the Altieri Palace was Gerald nowcomparing her, as he stood gazing on her. The richly floating hair,which, as a protection against the zanzari, she had let fall over herneck and shoulders, only partially defended her, and so she stirred attimes, each motion displaying some new charm, some fresh grace of
form.At last, perhaps startled by a thought of her dreams, she gave a suddencry, and sprang up to a sitting posture, her eyes widely staring and herhalf-opened lips turned to where Gerald stood. As for him, the amazementthat seized him overcame him--for she was no other than the tarantelladancer of the Piazza di Spagna, the Marietta who had so fascinated himon the night he left the convent.
'Babbo! Babbo!' screamed she, in terror, as she caught sight of thenaked rapier at the youth's side; and in a moment both the old man andthe woman were on their legs.
'We are poor, miserably poor, Signore!' cried the old man piteously;'mere "vagabonds," and no more.'
'We have not a Bajocclo among us, Signore mio,' blubbered out the oldwoman.
An honest burst of laughter from Gerald, far more reassuring than words,soon satisfied them that their fears were needless.
'Who are you, then?' cried the girl, as she darted her piercing blackeyes toward him; 'and why are you here?'
'The world is wide, and open to all of us, _cara mia_,' said the youthgood-humouredly. 'Don't be angry with me because I 'm not a brigand.'
'He says truly,' said the old man.
'_Sangue dei Santi_, but you have given me a hearty fright, boy, whatever brought you here!' said the fat old woman, as she wiped the hotdrops from her steaming face.
There is some marvellous freemasonry in poverty--some subtle sympathylinks poor men together--for scarcely had Gerald told that he wasdestitute and penniless as themselves, than these poor outcasts bade hima frank welcome among them, and invited him to a share of their littlescanty supper.
'I 'll warrant me that you have drawn a low number in the conscription,boy; and that's the reason you have fled from home,' said the old woman;and Gerald laughed good-humouredly, as though accepting the suggestionas a happy guess; nor was he sorry to be spared the necessity ofrecounting his story.
'But why not be a soldier?' broke in Marietta.
'Because it's a dog's life,' retorted the hag savagely.
'I don't think so,' said Gerald. 'When I saw the noble guard of hisHoliness prancing into the Piazza del Popolo, I longed to be one ofthem. They were all glittering with gold and polished steel, and theirhorses bounded and caracoled as if impatient for a charge.'
'Ah!' sighed the old man drearily, 'there's only one happy road in thislife.'
'And what may that be, Babbo?' said Gerald, addressing him by thefamiliar title the girl had given him.
'A Frate's, boy, a Frate's. I don't care whether he be a Dominican or anIgnorantine. Though, myself, I like the Ignorantines. Theirs is trulya blessed existence: no wants--no cares--no thoughts for the morrow! Inever watched one of them stepping along, with firm foot and sack onhis arm, that I didn't say to myself, "There's freedom--there'slight-heartedness."'
'I should have called your own a pleasanter life.'
'Mine!' groaned he.
'Ay, Babbo, and so is it,' burst in the girl, in an excited tone. 'Showme the Frate has such a time as we have! Whenever the friar comes, menshuffle away to escape giving him their "quattrini." They know wellthere's no such sturdy beggar as he who asks no alms, but shows you themouth of his long empty sack; but where we appear the crowds gather,mothers snatch up their babies and hurry out to greet us; hard-workedmen cease their toil; children desert their games; all press roundeagerly at the first roll of Gaetana's drum, and of poor Chico's fife,when he was with us,' added she, dropping her head, while a heavy tearrolled down her swarthy cheek.
'_Maladizione a Chico!_' screamed out the old man, lifting up both hisclenched hands in passion.
'What was it he did?' asked Gerald of the old man.
'He fancied himself a patriot, boy, and he stabbed a spy of the policeat the St. Lucia one evening; and they have him now at the galleys, andthey 'll keep him there for life!
'Ah! if you saw him on the two poles,' cried the girl, 'only strappedso, over his instep, and he could spring from here to the tree yonder;and then he 'd unfasten one, and holding it on his forehead, balanceBabbo's basin on the top, all the while playing the tambourine! And whocould play it like him? It was a drum with cymbals in his hands.'
'Was he handsome, too?' asked Gerald, with a half-sly glance toward her;but she only hung her head in silence.
'He handsome!' cried the old woman, catching at the words. 'Brutto!brutto! he had a hare-lip, with a dog's jaw!'
'No, truly,' muttered Babbo; 'he was not handsome, though he could domany a thing well-favoured ones couldn't attempt. He was a sore loss tous,' said he, with a deep sigh.
'There wasn't a beast of the field nor a bird that flies he couldn'timitate,' broke in Marietta; 'and with some wondrous cunning, too, hecould blend the sounds together, and you 'd hear the cattle lowing andthe rooks cawing all at the same time.'
'The owl was good; that was his best,' said Babbo.
'Oh, was it not fine!--the wild shriek of the owl, while the tide wasbreaking on the shore, and the waves came in plash, plash, in the stillnight.'
'May his toil be hard and his chains heavy!' exclaimed the hag; 'we havehad nothing but misery and distress since the day he was taken.'
'Poor fellow,' said Gerald, 'his lot is harder still.' The girl's darkeyes turned fully upon him, with a look of grateful meaning, that wellrepaid his compassionate speech.
'So may it be,' chimed in the hag; 'and so with all who ill-treat thosewhose bread they've eaten,' and she turned a glance of fiery anger onthe girl. 'What art doing there, old fool!' cried she to the Babbo,who, having turned his back to the company, was telling over his beadsbusily. He made no reply, and she went on: 'That's all he's good fornow. There was a time he could sing Punch's carnival from beginning toend, keep four dancing on the stage, and two talking out of windows; butnow he's ever at the litanies: he'd rather talk to you about St. Francisthan of the Tombola, he would!'
As the old hag, with bitter words and savage energy, inveighed againsther old associate, Gerald had sense to mark that, small as the companywas, it yet consisted of ingredients that bore little resemblance, andwere attached by the slenderest sympathies to each other. He was youngand inexperienced enough in life to imagine that they who amuse theworld by their gifts, whatever they be, carry with them to their homesthe pleasant qualities which delight the audiences. He fancied that,through all their poverty, the light-hearted gaiety that marked them inpublic would abide with them when alone, and that the quips and jeststhey bandied were but the outpourings of a ready wit always in exercise.
The Babbo had been a servitor of a convent in the Abruzzi, and,dismissed for some misdemeanour, had wandered about the world invagabondage till he became a conjurer, some talent or long-neglectedgift of slight-of-hand coming to the rescue of his fortune. The woman,Donna Gaetana, had passed through all the stages of 'Street Ballet,'from the prodigy of six years old, with a wreath of violets on herbrow, to the besotted old beldame, whose specialty was the drum. As forMarietta, where she came from, of what parentage, or even of whatland, I know not. The Babbo called her his niece--his grandchild--his'figliuola' at times, but she was none of these. In the wayward turnsof their fortune these street performers are wont to join occasionallytogether in the larger capitals, that by their number they may attractmore favourable audiences; and so, when Gerald first saw them at Rome,they were united with some Pifferari from Sicily; but the same destinythat decides more pretentious coalitions had separated theirs, and thethree were now trudging northward in some vague hope that the land ofpromise lay in that direction. It is needless to say how Gerald feltattracted by the strange adventurous life of which they spoke. TheBabbo, mingling his old convent traditions, his scraps of monkish Latin,his little fragments of a pious training, with the descriptions of hissubtle craft, was a study the youth delighted in, while from his ownearly teaching, it was also a character he could thoroughly appreciate.Donna Gaetana, indeed, offered little in the way of interest, but didnot Marietta alone compensate for more than this? The wild and fearlessgrace of this young girl, daring to the very verge of sham
elessness, andyet with a strange instinctive sense of womanly delicacy about her, thatlifted her, in her raggedness, to a sphere where deference was her due;her matchless symmetry, her easy motion, a mingled expression of energyand languor about her, all met happily in one who but needed cultureto have become a great artiste. She possessed, besides, a voice ofexquisite richness, one of those deep-toned organs whose thrillingexpression seems to attain at once the highest triumph of musical artin the power of exciting the sensibilities: such was that poor neglectedchild, as she hovered over the brink where vice and wretchedness andcrime run deep and fast below!
When the meal was over, and the little vessels used in preparing it wereall duly washed and packed, old Gaetana lighted her pipe, and once infull puff proceeded to drag from a portentous-looking bag a mass ofstrange rags, dirty and particoloured, the slashed sleeves and spangledskirts proclaiming them as 'properties.'
'Clap that velvet cap on thy head, boy, and let's see what thou lookestlike,' cried she, handing Gerald a velvet hat, looped up in front, andornamented with an ostrich feather.
'What for?' cried he rudely; 'I am no mountebank.' And then, as hecaught Marietta's eyes, a deep blush burned all over his face, and hesaid, in a voice of shame, 'To be sure! Anything you like. I'll wearthis too,' and he snatched up a tawdry mantle and threw it over hisshoulders.
'_Come e bellino!_' said Marietta, as she clasped her hands across herbosom, and gazed on him in a sort of rapture. 'He's like Paolo in theFrancesca,' muttered she.
'He'll never be Chico,' growled out the hag. 'Birbante that he was, who'll ever jump through nine hoops with A lighted taper in his hand? Oh,_Assassino!_ it won't serve you now!'
'Do you know Paolo's speech?' whispered Marietta.
'No,' said he, blushing, half angry, half ashamed.
'Then I 'll teach it to you.'
'Thou shouldst have been an acolyte at San Giovanni di Laterano when thePope says the high mass, boy,' cried Babbo enthusiastically. 'Thy figureand face would well become the beauteous spectacle.'
'Does not that suit him?' cried the girl, as she replaced the hat by around cap, such as pages wear, with a single eagle's feather. 'Does notthat become him?'
'Who cares for looks?' muttered the hag. 'Chico was ugly enough to bringbad luck; and when shall we see his like again?'
'Who knows! who knows?' said Babbo slowly. 'This lad may, if he join us,have many a good gift we suspect not. Canst sing?'
'Yes; at least the litanies.'
'Ah, bravo, Giovane!' cried the old man. 'Thou It bring a blessing uponus.'
'Canst play the fife, the tambourine, the flute?' asked Gaetana.
'None of them.'
'Thou canst recite, I'm sure,' said Marietta. 'Thou knowest Tasso andPetrarch, surely, and Guarini?'
'Yes; and Dante by heart, if that be of any service to me,' said Gerald.
'Ah! I know nothing of him,' said she sorrowfully; 'but I could repeatthe Orlando from beginning to end.'
'How art thou on the stilts or the slack-rope?' asked the old woman;'for these other things never gave bread to any one.'
'If I must depend upon the slack-rope, then,' said Gerald,good-humouredly, 'I run a good chance of going supperless to bed.'
'How they neglect them when they're young, and their bones soft andpliant!' said Gaetana sternly. 'What parents are about nowadays I can'timagine. I used to crouch into a flower-pot when I was five years old;ay, and spring out of it too when the Fairy Queen touched the flower!'
Gerald could with great difficulty restrain the burst of laughter thisanecdote of her early life provoked.
'Oh, come with us; stay with us,' whispered Marietta in his ear.
'If thou hast been taught the offices, boy,' said Babbo, 'thou deservestan honester life than ours. Leave us, then; go thy ways, and walk inbetter company.'
'_Corpo del diavolo!_' screamed out the hag. 'It's always so with him.He has nothing but hard words for the trade he lives by.'
'Stay with us; stay with us,' whispered the girl, more faintly.
'Thou mightst have a worse offer, lad; for who can tell what's in thee?I warrant me, thou 'It never be great at jumping tricks,' said Babbo.
'Wilt stay?' said Marietta, as her eyes swam in tears.
'I will,' said Gerald, with a glance that made her cheek crimson.