THE PERPETUA MEETS A BEAR
THE lookout had sighted Genoa, but to many eager eyes that peered from
the rail there lay naught in the northern distance save the imperial
sapphire sparkling to the clear and eternal blue. After a while, the
magic wand of proximity touching east and west, the great Mediterranean
gem revealed its setting; the Riviera di Levante lazily unfolded her
beauty to the eager men and women in the bow.
There was one passenger whose soul missed the enchantment. A matter of
greater import filled her mind and dimmed her vision--her mission to
secure a wife for Casa Di Bello. She did show an interest in the fairy
picture that was coming out all around, but not until the ship had
steamed so far shoreward that the hamlets of the slopes showed their
shining faces through the mountain greenery. Then she stood intently
regarding the land, her gaze set far above the white turrets and
flaring walls of the Sea City that took form out of the yellow summer
haze.
“O Genova Superba!
Qual Città te paragon?”
It was Cardinali that Carolina strained her eyes to discern, and at
last she beheld it--a weather-beaten little town perched high on a
crag of rock. Then she breathed content and awaited patiently the
time for landing. Within an hour after her well-shod feet had pressed
the soil she was snugly installed, trunk and handtraps, in a veteran
victoria drawn by a raw recruit of a horse, whose youthful antics kept
the driver busy. With her luggage safely at her side and the landing
accomplished without mishap, she settled back on the cushion and gave
herself up to ease and self-adoration. How much wiser and abler she
was than those excitable, nervous women whom she had left on the
quay, still fuming over their baggage and the customs examination!
Complacently she judged herself a very superior person, and never
before had she felt on better terms with herself. The raw recruit
trotted decorously enough past the monument of the Man that made an Egg
stand on End, and clattered under the marble arch, whereon St. George,
champion of Genoa, was trampling a dragon. Presently the city lay at
her back, and she began to breathe the good air of home in the white
dust of the highway, the pungent scent of the sage, the sweetness of
the honeysuckle and oleander.
They began the ascent of the winding causeway up which Armando had
toiled so sadly with his despised Juno and the Peacock. Long stretches
of wall bordered the route, which was rough in places and steep, and
not at all to the taste of the youngster in the traces. He grew cross
and nervous, and shied at such innocent things as a tuft of cowslips
on the roadside or an umbel of clematis on the wall.
“What kind of horse have you there?” asked Carolina, picking up a
valise that had been jolted from the seat several times.
“What kind of a horse?” repeated the _cocchiere_, as though unable
to credit his ears. “Ah, signora, there is none better in all Genoa;
only he is a little green and has had the staggers once. Verily a fine
beast.”
At the bight of a turning a Franciscan monk came in view suddenly from
behind a thicket of myrtle. He wore the brown robe, scanty cape and
hood on the shoulders, the girdle of knotted cord, the wooden sandals
of his order. The recruit struck up a dance, and would have caracoled
to the upsetting of the victoria, had not the monk run forward and
caught his head.
“I regret that I frightened your horse, signora,” said the friar; “but
I think he will go safely now.”
To the mind of Aunt Carolina, both the danger and its allayance had
sprung from an eminently proper source. To be put in peril by a holy
man was a distinction second only to being rescued by one. In thanking
her deliverer she made known with pride that she too had been a limb of
the Church.
“For eight years, father, was I _perpetua_ of the rectory in Mulberry.”
The monk crossed himself and trudged on.
They were not far now from the last squirm of the highway that
serpentined to Cardinali. The angle by the myrtle thicket doubled, they
entered upon a road that for half a mile was an almost level shelf on
the mountain side. On one hand yawned a precipice that grew deeper as
the road wore upward, and all that stood between an ungovernable horse
and his driver’s eternity was a low stone wall built along the margin.
Carolina would have descended from the vehicle and walked the rest of
the way but for the persuasive driver, who promised her upon his honour
that all would go well now they had reached a stretch of road that was
not steep. He could assure the signora that his horse was kind and
gentle at heart, but coming of a lordly stock he loved not the menial
task of hauling heavy loads uphill. A person of education like the
signora would understand that. Peril? Not a spark of it now that the
going was smooth and easy. See! he was behaving better already.
The horse was steadier, and all might have ended well, but for certain
dark objects that had appeared at this moment from behind the last bend
and were dimly visible far up the pass. As they drew near, the ears of
the recruit stiffened higher and higher, and a few short, wild snorts
gave further signal of danger. In the oncoming group was a tall and
sinewy mountaineer, bronze of face and shock-headed, who led a monkey
with one hand and with the other held the chain of a large cinnamon
bear. By his side, a little behind, tramped his wife in picturesque
rags and tinsel. She carried a brown baby, and half dragged along
a toddling boy with a tambourine. When only a dozen rods separated
them from the carriage, the mountebank, obeying business instinct,
commanded the bear to rise on his hind paws. With clumsy alacrity the
beast did so, while the master doffed his hat, and with the others
of the vagabond troop stood lined on the roadside ready to receive
Carolina’s bounty.
The huge brown shape risen so suddenly in his path was more than
the overwrought nerves of the lordling could stand, and away he
shot, bit and reins a cipher, bent upon turning out and flying past
the mysterious terror. The hubs of the victoria struck against the
low stone parapet, kept bumping hard and rapidly from one jagged
projection to another, and do his best the driver could not steer the
maddened animal clear of the rude masonry. Carolina’s first thought
was to leap into the road rather than be popped over the wall to sure
destruction. She did not wait for a second thought, but sprang, and
landed by a miracle clear of the wheels, at the feet of the astonished
bear. Another instant and the inquiring beast would have scratched
her face or combed her hair, but his master jerked him back with a
mighty tug at the chain, while the wife, setting down her baby, leaped
to Carolina’s aid. They carried her to the herbage that fringed the
highway. Then the mountebank set off at a run for the victoria, which
had come to a standstill at a point where the road assumed an abrupt
steepness. Horse, driver, and vehicle were faintly discernible through
the powdery clouds thrown up by hoof and wheel.
[Illustration: The bear-tamer’s wife.]
“_Presto!_ To Cardinali!” cried the bear-tamer, coming up with the
carriage, which the recruit was striving to back over the parapet. “A
doctor! The signora has broken her leg!”
“To Cardinali!” sneered the _cocchiere_. “Bah! The beast--woo-ah,
woo!--he will mount no higher--woo-ah, woo!--and by San Giorgio, I
blame him not.--There, now, ugly one, quiet, quiet.--No; if I go for
a doctor it must be downhill. And you and your bear!” he added with a
scowl at the showman. “A fine day’s work you have done. It is men and
bears like you two that I would send to prison. Look at those hubs. Who
will pay the damage? Not such as you, I warrant. Body of a whale! Why
did I ever come here?”
“You are a wild ass!” returned the mountebank. “Who but an ass would
try to drive such a horse? My jackanapes has more sense.”
“_Al diavolo_, rascal!”
“_All’inferno_, donkey!”
“Bah!”
“Bah!”
Without difficulty the driver turned his horse in the opposite
direction, and at a contented jog he started downhill toward the spot
where Carolina lay. The showman’s wife was supporting her head and
begging forgiveness for her husband and the bear. Presently Sebastiano
the Carrier reached the scene with his empty cart. Did he know the
lady? Some there were who forgot faces, but not he. Signorina Di Bello.
It was many years since she went away, but he knew her. Had the sun
overcome her? A broken leg! _Dio Santo!_
[Illustration: “A broken leg! _Dio Santo!_”]
After much vehement talk and excited gesture the baggage was taken from
the victoria and the injured woman placed, none too tenderly, in the
donkey cart, that being deemed the only safe course. It was the same
springless wain that had carried Armando’s Juno and the Peacock on
their fruitless pilgrimage to Genoa. For Carolina it was simply a car
of torture. By the time it rolled under the arched gate of Cardinali
she was no longer sensible of pain.
It was the most stupendous event the village had ever known--this
return of Carolina Di Bello after an absence of twelve years, and
bumping along over the cobbles in old Sebastiano’s cart. Every house
that the terrible ambulance passed was straightway emptied of its
inmates, who fell in behind the cart, clamouring for a view of its
unconscious occupant. She lay as though lifeless, her head propped
by a travelling bag, her face exposed to the glare of the sun. No one
thought of covering her face, so eager were they all to gaze at it and
compare her looks with what they were twelve years before when she
departed for America. The women discussed her gown and foot gear, and
pronounced them both very _signora_. Sebastiano drew up at a flight of
broken stone steps that zigzagged to a porch shaded by a gnarled fig
tree, whereunder a cow-faced woman stood patiently stirring a copper
vessel of steaming corn-meal mush. The donkey gave a bray of approval
at the calling of a halt, and the woman, in response to a general cry,
clattered down to the cart.
“Cousin Carolina! _Misericordia!_ What has happened? Where did she come
from?”
The new actor on the scene was Serafina Digrandi, aunt of the maid for
whose wiving Carolina had made the disastrous journey; and, following
the mountain usage, she would have flung herself weeping upon the
moveless figure of her relative, but the village doctor broke through
the crowd in time to hold her back and declare the patient still alive.
At this Serafina dried her tears and began a bustling preparation of
the best room in the house.