[Illustration]
Beatrice was making an angel. She had lifted down the Princess Angelica
from the hook whence her royal highness had been suspended since her
death a few weeks before, had removed the royal crown and the royal
legs, and was turning the royal robe into celestial drapery. Beatrice's
conception of a heavenly garment was a white morning wrapper gathered
at the bottom, so that when the angel soared head downward—as angels
do—its clothes could not fall over its face. Beside Beatrice, who was
seated on the floor, lay a pair of wings constructed of muslin tacked
upon thin sticks; and about her feet writhed long wires designed to
support the angel that evening in its visitation to her father's Italian
marionette theatre.
It was behind the scenes that I was waiting for her father to come in;
and meanwhile I lounged upon the helpers' bench and enjoyed the quaintness
of the place.
Lighted by an irresolute gas-jet, the space between the back-drop and
the rear wall of the theatre was a chaos of strange objects. Beside me,
upon the bench, lay the book of the play—a collection of those legends
of Charlemagne's court, descended from the _Chansons de gestes_, which
have been so dear to Italian poets and are still so dear to the Italian
people. Each afternoon the manager read over the adventure to be presented
in the evening. When the curtain rose he took his stand in the wings and
declaimed lines extemporized to fit the situations. The helpers, from
their places upon the high bench, leaned over the back-drop, swung the
marionettes upon the stage by means of long rods running down through the
heads of the figures, and by means of other rods and of strings caused
the mock men and women to make gestures and to fight. That was a task
which told upon heads as well as hands; for the helpers were bound, not
only to make the figures walk—no light labor, for each puppet weighed
seventy pounds—but also to make them express the sentiment of every
speech as it fell from Pietro's lips. Many times had I tried to handle
a marionette and as often had failed; and I looked with respect upon
the row of little creatures hung about the walls from a rack. They were
dight in the panoply of knighthood. At my left shone the brass armor of
the Christianos. The right was brilliant with the party-colored robes
and turbans and the glowering faces of dusky infidels. The corners were
piled high with heterogeneous properties; bright silks, bits of armor,
shields, swords. From the right-hand heap protruded a ghastly leg, lopped
from a Christian. The summit of the opposite heap was the grinning head
of a dragon which had met death a few nights before in terrible battle
with Orlando.
The dragon's body was a comfortable support for Beatrice's back. Of
her face, bent over her work, I could see only an obstinate little
olive-colored chin, two faintly red cheeks, and two straight black brows.
Her hair hung over ears and shoulders and fell in dusky tangles upon a
green silk waist. Ordinarily, Italian girls begin early in life to use
hairpins.
"How old are you, Beatrice?" I asked.
The girl looked up and opened wide a pair of great tawny eyes.
"How old, Signore?" she repeated, in her low, husky voice. "Fifteen-a.
Nex' moont' I s'all be sixteen-a."
"So old!" I commented. "Almost a woman. You'll be having a sweetheart
soon; and what will your father do when he wants an angel?"
Again I saw of Beatrice only a veil of hair and a hand rapidly plying
to and fro.
"No, Signore," she murmured from behind her screen. "I am not enough
old-a. I s'all nevair marry. Who would tak-a me?"
"Anselmo?" I suggested.