A GIFT FOR THE CIRCUS
NATALE held his breath with horror. One hundred francs lost! And he
not at hand to hear of it, to help look for the money, among the very
first? He could not ask Olga how it had happened, because his heart was
almost too disappointed and sore for words. He sat down on the wall,
with his back toward the tent, and waited for her to tell all about the
loss, although he was not at all certain that she would condescend to
do so. In fact, she said not a word more, but stood in front of Natale,
wondering not a little at his unusual quiet.
“You are sulky!” she exclaimed finally, “and Giovanni is very angry
with you. So am I, for I had to feel Il Duca’s pulse, and I did not
like it at all. Suppose he had kicked me, seeing that it was not you.”
“Il Duca was dead!” Natale retorted, with a twinkle in his eye, if only
Olga could have seen it. “He would not know you from me!”
“Dead!” cried Olga. “I believe you truly do think that, when you set up
your crying, Natale; really I did not do it half so well as you,” she
confessed honestly.
“But you ‘wheel’ much better than I do,” Natale conceded with ready
generosity in return.
“Il Duca did not shut his eyes at all,” Olga went on, nodding assent
to Natale’s remark, “and I am sure he _winked_ at me, Natale, just to
frighten me. It did not take _me_ long to feel his pulse! But where
were you, Natalino, all the time? Nonna said she was afraid some of the
peasants had stolen you and carried you off, when Niero and Bianco
came home without you.”
“As if they would have let anybody steal me! Olga, I went to sleep in
the church, waiting for the saints to come back, and when I waked it
was dark, almost as dark as this!”
“Oho! then you must have been in the church when Arduina and I went
in to look at the saints. Arduina said--but you must not dare to tell
anybody--she said that she did not believe there were any bones under
the saints’ fine velvet robes because San Lorenzo had a hand of pink
wax, and the rest of him looked rather stuffed. But do not tell Nonna,
Natale!”
“Arduina is very wicked,” said Natale, but he laughed with Olga, and
then felt much better, and as if he could ask about the losing of the
money.
They were in a little nook to themselves, behind the wagon, and no one
heeded them.
“_Ecco!_ it was this way,” Olga began, charmed to be the first to
recount the misfortune to Natale, who was usually behind none in his
knowledge of the affairs of the company. “Just when Giovanni was going
in to do the clown in the first dance on the rope, the Signor Barbera,
the stable man, came behind the big tent with his bill for keeping the
horses, and Giovanni took the big pocketbook out of the pocket of his
coat--”
“Yes, I know which pocket,” Natale interposed. “I saw him put the money
there this morning.”
“Well, the signor could not make the change, so he told Giovanni it was
all right, and any time would do, and then Antonio rang the bell for
Giovanni, and he just put the pocketbook back in his coat and hung the
coat on the nail in the little tent, and hurried on the black coat, and
went into the ring.”
“Yes, and then?” asked Natale breathlessly.
“When he came back, he saw his coat on the ground, and he knew he had
hung it up. ‘How comes my coat on the ground?’ he said, very loud
indeed, and your mamá told him he must have put it there himself. But
he did not hear her, because he was shaking the coat and feeling in the
pocket,--but there was nothing there!
“We made a great fuss about it,” Olga ended, shrugging her shoulders
and throwing up her hands, “but what was the use?”
Natale was silent with dismay. A hundred francs meant so much. It was
all that they had made during the ten days’ stay at Cutigliano, and now
it was gone, in a moment.
“The stable man?” he questioned in a distressed tone of voice, and very
low.
“No, Giovanni said it could not have been the signor. He is a rich man
and honest, everybody says.”
So subdued were they all over the trouble of the afternoon that
not even Elvira thought it worth while to scold the quiet boy who
presently slipped in among the little crowd of players in the tent,
deep in fruitless discussion over their grievous loss. They had had a
crowded tent that afternoon, and the receipts had been so good that
this evening would have been one of rejoicing if only the money for
the labors of the ten other days and nights had been again safe in
Giovanni’s pocket. There was not the slightest clew to the thief, as
no stranger had been known to enter the tent, and Giovanni had even
interviewed the Signor Barbera from outside the doorway. It had been
necessary to be on the lookout for possible thieving, as the field was
crowded all the afternoon with strange peasants, attracted by the band
music and the big yellow tent, and by peddlers with their wares. One
very decent-looking peddler had begged pretty, vain Arduina to look at
his beautiful jewelry and ribbons, but she had refused him entrance
very reluctantly, and Giovanni himself had noticed how patiently and
decorously the man had turned away. He had worn a red fez cap over his
long black hair, and his bushy black beard had reached nearly to his
waist.
“I saw him!” Emilio, one of the musicians exclaimed, “and his legs
were as crooked as Pietro’s, only they bent out at the knee instead of
in!” There was a laugh at this sally, but Pietro frowned and muttered
something about Emilio’s having little right to criticize the legs of
others.
“I met such a man as I came out of the church in the crowd,” said
Nonna, hastening to speak that a dispute might be avoided. “He walked
very well notwithstanding his poor, bent legs, and he asked me if he
were too late to get a glimpse of the blessed relics. A politer man I
never saw, though Tito was afraid of him, and began to cry when the man
snapped his fingers at him.”
Poor Natale felt so left out in the cold with this talk that he could
not bear it long, and was just about to creep away, down to his corner
in the wagon, when a strange hand lifted a corner of the tent flap, and
a strange voice inquired for “_Il piccolo Natale_.”
“Some ladies up at the house there have a little present for you all,”
the black-coated Italian butler of the boarding-house announced,
peering in upon the group gathered about the sputtering lamp inside,
“but they wish to send it down by the boy, Natale.”
Then Natale was himself again, and without demur or bashfulness
presented himself to the servant.
“It is well you turned up in time, Natalino,” said the clown, giving
him a little shove toward the dignified butler waiting just outside.
“Perhaps Olga would not have done, in this case. Off with you to the
_forestieri_[4] above!”
[Footnote 4: Foreigners.]
Many a boy would have been abashed at finding himself the center of
such a group as awaited Natale in the hallway of the house in the
garden. But Natale was too well accustomed to an array of faces fixed
upon him to make the least show of bashfulness. The lady of the house,
whose pleasant face he knew very well, laid her hand on his shoulder
and asked him kindly in Italian if anything had been heard of the money
lost that afternoon, and her soft, dark eyes looked sympathetically
into his own.
“No, signora, and my papá says we shall never see a _soldo_ of it
again,” was Natale’s prompt answer.
“Ask him if they have any idea of the person who stole it,” Betty
Bishop suggested in English, and Madame Cioche did so. Natale’s answer
to this was more expressive than polite perhaps, for without words
he simply raised his shoulders as high as possible, pressing his
elbows against his sides, and spreading his hands wide to indicate the
complete ignorance of his people as to the coward who had taken their
hard-earned money. And the drawn-down corners of his mouth so changed
the expression of his face that one would hardly have known him.
“Who would have believed the child could make himself so ugly,” Mrs.
Bishop exclaimed. “Have you no tongue, boy, to answer properly?”
But as English words were far less intelligible to Natale than
Caffero’s whinny, or Niero’s bark, he only looked up into Madame
Cioche’s face and smiled.
“There! it is a bonny little face after all,” said that lady, “and now
shall we give him the money and send him away?”
“No, let me speak to him first,” demanded Mrs. Bishop, “and you, Mrs.
Choky, must interpret. Ask him if he likes to be a wicked little circus
boy.”
“Aunty!” gasped Betty.
“Never mind, I have a reason for my question, Betty. Hush, what does he
say?”
“Do you like to play in the circus, dear?” asked Mrs. Cioche’s kind
voice, in Italian.
Natale’s eyes shone.
“Ah, yes, signora! And when I am a man, I shall be another Antonio
Bisbini.”
“He says he likes it very much, Mrs. Bishop,” was the interpretation.
“Already corrupted, poor boy, and so young!” the old lady sighed, while
Betty laughed outright.
“Ask him if he would not like better to have some nice clothes, and go
to school, and grow up to be a decent man some day, Mrs. Choky.” That
lady hesitated a little before putting this question into Italian.
“What does she say to me?” Natale asked, his brown eyes twinkling as he
looked from one to the other, his teeth showing white between his red
lips. Natale’s was a wide, good-natured mouth, very prone to laugh upon
small provocation.
“She wants to know if you would not like to go to school, and learn to
read and write,” said Madame Cioche.
“And leave the _circo_?” Natale asked with a gasp.
“Yes, you could not go to school unless you should stop in one place,
you know.”
“And not travel about with the horses and wagon any more, and leave
Nonna?”
“Of course, Natale. But she is only asking you about it, _carino_, so
do not look so troubled.”
Natale laughed then, and happily.
“She wanted to find out how much I love the _circo_!” he exclaimed.
“Please tell her, signora. You know, how we all love the _circo_!”
“I think I do, Natale. He does not want to go to school, Mrs. Bishop,”
turning to the eager old lady, “because he loves his life with the
circus and his own people too much.”
“And he does not wish to leave his grandmother,” chimed in Betty who
had very cleverly picked up a good deal of Italian during a winter and
summer in Italy, and all grandmothers are Nonnas in that land.
Mrs. Bishop was silent for a moment, her gaze taking in every detail
of Natale’s little figure standing sturdily before her, dusty shoes,
and rough peasant leggings, velveteen trousers, faded blue blouse, and
rumpled curls, with the old hat held in one sun-burned hand. His face
was not so clean as usual now, and there were tired circles about his
eyes. It had been a long, exciting summer’s day.
“Children--especially boys--do not know what is best for themselves,”
she said presently, bending her brows, but not in the least frightening
Natale, “and I am not going to give up my plan, for this baby’s
nonsense. Why, he cannot be over eight years old, at the most.”
“Here, Natale,” said Madame Cioche, judging that the interview might
well be concluded, and handing the boy a small packet. “Take this to
your papá, and tell him that the ladies and gentlemen in my house have
heard of the loss of the money, and are sending him thirty-five francs
as a little present. Can you carry it safely?”
Again Natale’s sweet smile broke over his face, but he only nodded
happily in reply, tucking the money away in the bosom of his blouse.
“Ask him how long they are going to stay,” Mrs. Bishop called after
Madame Cioche, who was going to the gate with Natale.
“He says that the _sindaco_--the mayor--has offered them the use of the
field for another week,” Madame Cioche said, her eyes glowing, as she
returned to the hall. “I am glad of that, as the poor creatures will
need all they can make here, now.”
“I call it a sort of punishment, their losing the money when playing on
Sunday,” Mrs. Bishop said severely, and one or two other English ladies
nodded their approval of this speech. “And I think the whole business
wrong and that it ought to be discouraged. I was not at all sure about
the propriety of giving my francs to your little collection, Mrs.
Choky.”
“Would it have been more Christian to have let them suffer, perhaps for
food, and the poor beasts too?” the hostess asked, pausing on her way
through the hall.
“But surely you think circusing wrong and _un_christian?” the
disputative old lady exclaimed.
“Aunty, do be quiet,” cried Betty warmly. “I am sure you ought not to
dispute ‘on Sunday’! Besides,” she added, as everybody laughed, and two
or three softly applauded, “they make their living that way, and we
cannot change them into farmers, or preachers. But I think it is always
wrong not to help honest people who are in trouble.”
“If they _are_ honest,” Mrs. Bishop remonstrated, but under her breath,
this time, for Madame Cioche’s eyes were sparkling, and she seemed
waiting to speak.
“Those poor creatures down there deserve nothing but praise,” she said
stoutly; “they are quiet folks, who teach their children obedience and
keep themselves remarkably clean and mended. If they make their living
in a way we do not approve, we cannot change them, as Miss Betty says,
but we can feed them when they are hungry, and that seems to me not
‘unchristian’!”
“I am afraid she has a little temper,” said Mrs. Bishop, as their
hostess went upstairs.
“A temper I like!” exclaimed a gentleman who had before kept silent,
looking up from his book. “But do you still think of carrying out your
plan, Mrs. Bishop?”
“If possible, certainly,” was the reply, while Betty, shaking her head,
walked out into the garden. There, under the stars, she stood looking
down upon the tent in the field. There was no wind, and the heavens
were fair, so the canvas had not been furled.
“I should like it myself,” she murmured. “What a fascinating life to
live! Camping out the year round in Italy, with no troublesome dressing
four times a day, no tiresome _table-d’hôte_ dinners at night. But
after all I should not like to be that girl,--Arduina, they call her.
Of course, Aunty is right about the rope dancing and other ‘circusing’
on Sunday, only she need not be quite so fussy over what we certainly
cannot help. Poor Natale! how disturbed he did look when Madame Cioche
asked him about going to school!”