THE LITTLE ACROBAT
[Illustration: The pale apparition of Natale startled them all.
_Frontispiece._
_See page 167._]
THE
LITTLE ACROBAT
A STORY OF ITALY
BY
JANIE PRICHARD DUGGAN
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY_
NANA FRENCH BICKFORD
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1919
_Copyright, 1919_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
Published, September, 1919
Norwood Press
Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
DEDICATED
TO MEMORIES OF
TWO LITTLE “ANGELICALS” OF ROME
SPOTTISWOODE AND SUSIE
BY
“CUDDIE”
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I ALONG THE WHITE ROAD 1
II NONNA 12
III IN THE RING 26
IV THE FESTIVAL OF SAN LORENZO 39
V A GIFT FOR THE CIRCUS 55
VI SEPARATION 73
VII THE CAGED BIRD OF THE FIELDS 91
VIII THE CAGE DOOR OPENED 105
IX THE FLIGHT OF THE BIRD 121
X ON THE WING 133
XI FLUTTERING A LITTLE FARTHER 150
XII AT LAST 167
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The pale apparition of Natale startled
them all _Frontispiece_
Mrs. Bishop looked down upon the tent
from the garden terrace PAGE 45
The priest led Natale to the other end of
the house “ 94
“_Capitomboli_, such as the boy who was
here just now made in the circus at
Cutigliano” “ 142
THE LITTLE ACROBAT
_A STORY OF ITALY_
CHAPTER I
ALONG THE WHITE ROAD
THE July sunshine lay hot and golden over the fields of wheat on the
Italian hillsides, and the deep shade of the chestnut woods along the
road was more inviting than the white glare beyond. The sun stood
directly overhead, and along the middle of that white, dusty road there
was not an inch of shadow.
A small brown house on wheels crept slowly along this sunny way,
drawn by a queer, ill-matched team of three--a plump white horse with
long, silky mane and tail, a large spotted horse with fierce eyes and
nostrils, and a lean, little brown pony, with strangely twisted neck.
Up and up, always a little higher up, the horses toiled with the
house-wagon, as the road rose into the mountains. From the interior
of the wagon came the sound of voices, mingled now and then with a
complaining note, or an exclamation of pain. The travelers were very
tired, and poor Pietro’s fever was rising with every turn of the wheels.
Several men and a sturdy girl of fifteen walked beside the horses in
the powdery white dust. Behind the big wagon lagged a boy of eight or
nine years. This was Natale,[1] a slight little fellow, with dusty lean
legs and dragging feet. His light brown hair curled damply about his
sun-browned forehead, and he wore an old, misshapen hat set far back on
his pretty head. His loosely fitting clothes were dingy with dust but
Natale did not mind, for, presently, they would come to Cutigliano,
the old, old town on the mountain side, and there they would camp out
on the soft, green grass. And Natale knew from much experience that
nothing could clean the dust from travel-stained clothes so well as
rolling down the grassy slopes of the chestnut woods, with Niero and
Bianco as companions.
[Footnote 1: Pronounced Nah-tah´le.]
Of course the sun was hot; was it not always hot at noon of a summer’s
day in the Apennines? But Niero did not complain, and why should Natale?
Bianco had tired of trotting along at Natale’s side, and at the last
stopping-place, when Pietro had had a drink of water from the wayside
fountain, the tired little black dog had begged to be allowed to ride,
and had been willingly taken inside the wagon.
Natale never asked to ride in the wagon, unless he were very tired and
sleepy. They were rather crowded in there even without him, for Pietro
took up a great deal of room, now that he had to lie down all the time.
Besides, the other children, good travelers as they usually were,
sometimes grew quarrelsome and made the mothers and the grandmother
angry. Natale did not like quarreling and loud voices, so he always
preferred his resting times to be given him on the back of one of the
horses. But now Tesoro and Il Duca were tired also, and they were so
near Cutigliano, it did not matter if Natale did lag behind a little,
always with big Niero for company.
Niero was a large, lean, white dog with a closely sheared body. About
his neck, however, he wore a fluffy collar of long white hair, and
bracelets of the same adorned his four paws, while his long tail ended
in a tuft, having very much the appearance of a dishmop. Why this
white dog should have been named Niero, meaning black, the clown who
had also named the little black dog Bianco, white, could have best
explained.
By and by, long after the gray church tower had come in sight and the
red-tiled roofs of the town showed bunched together against the green
of the wooded hillside, the travelers reached the arched stone bridge
across the river at the foot of the mountain. Here the wagon made a
halt before beginning the last steep climb to the town. Above, they
could see the stone wall which was the boundary of the road winding by
loops, one above the other, up the mountain side, but the town had now
disappeared from view, so sheer was the rise of the chestnut woods.
This halt gave Natale time to come up with the wagon, and then he sat
down with a tired sigh on a heap of mending-stones by the roadside, in
front of the wagon door. His legs ached with weariness, but this was
no time to think of riding, as even the women and all the children but
Pietro must alight now, to relieve the horses in the last pull up hill.
Natale watched them descend from the wagon one by one, by the steps one
of the musicians placed at the door.
First came Nonna, the grandmother of Rudolfo and Tito and the five
other children of the blond acrobat, Antonio Bisbini. She was not
Natale’s Nonna, of course, yet everybody called her Nonna, and why
should not he, who had no grandmother of his own?
Nonna carried Tito in her arms and led Rudolfo by the hand. Then
came Tito’s mother, the three-months’-old infant, Gigi, in her arms,
followed by Olga, who held little Maria by the hand. Next, Natale’s own
mamá stepped down, glad to stretch her active limbs by walking, after
nursing Pietro for so many tedious hours. Then the rest of Bisbini’s
children scrambled out, aided by the music-man’s helping hands.
On they went again then, the clown, who was Natale’s stepfather,
walking at the horses’ heads, and cracking his long whip, and
chirruping to them while the other men strode behind the wagon, pushing
upon it with all their might at the steep places in the road.
The women and children, meanwhile, left the road to climb the short
cuts upward, leading directly from terrace to terrace,--mere paths
paved with rough stones, here and there loosened and displaced by
rushing rain-torrents of the past. The little ones bore the heat and
the roughness of the way without murmuring, being allowed to straggle
along as they pleased, now stopping to gather a red poppy from the
edge of the wheat, now dropping on the ground to search for a briar
afflicting some tired foot. Natale was not the last in the procession
now, for he was anxious to get to the top and see what the tall wheat
and the green slopes were hiding from his eyes.
At last they reached the wide turn in the road where the wagon must
finally stop, at the edge of the town field. The wagon also came
toiling upward, and now the good horses might rest. So these were
unhitched from the wagon, and while one or two of the men led them
up the steep, paved street into the village to find food and shelter
for them, the others attended to the house-wagon, drawn close against
the low stone wall inclosing the field, placing great stones against
the wheels to steady it in its place. Now was Natale’s hour and the
dogs’, and they understood this as well as he! Over the low wall they
scampered and down on the soft, hot grass they lay, rolling over and
over down the gentle slope of the field until, suddenly, Natale found
himself landing directly upon his feet, with a whirring in his head,
and the sound of distressed barking in his ears.
The dogs had had the wit to stop on the very edge of a sharp descent
which Natale had not noticed, and now they stood on the bank,
half-a-dozen feet above him, their forefeet firmly planted on the brink
of the grassy precipice, and their tufty tails high in the air, begging
with all their might to know whether their dear little comrade were
hurt. Natale was not hurt, but the jar of the descent gave him a queer
feeling under the waistband of his trousers, and he sat down directly
where he stood, on the lower terrace, turning his back upon the dogs.
A fringe of bushes threw a narrow band of shade about him from above,
and he made up his mind to stay there till something should be made
ready for dinner. He hoped he would not be wanted to fetch anything
from the village,--he was always fetching something for somebody. He
had heard his mother calling to her husband to bring a little meal for
the polenta,[2] when he should finish stabling the horses, and he knew
there was wine left in the flask in the wagon.
[Footnote 2: Mush of corn meal.]
From where Natale sat he could look directly down upon the roof of a
house far down by the stone bridge and could faintly hear the rushing
of the little river Lima over the rocks. Presently he eased himself
out on the grass at full length, with his arms crossed beneath his
head. As he dropped off to sleep, he was thinking how well it was that
there could be no performance in the tent that evening. He was sure
that Arduina would laugh more than ever at his stiff little feats on
the circus carpet if he should have to turn somersaults after the long
tramp.
Then Natale slept, with the great green mountains closing around him,
and Bianco the black dog and Niero the white keeping watch above his
head from where they had stretched themselves on the edge of the
terrace in the sun.