THE WORD OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE
Betimes in the morning we were afoot--long before Madame was awake; and
having committed our heavier luggage to the care of our Swiss landlord,
we set each a knapsack on our backs, and with light foot passed through
the market-place among the bright and chattering throng of Italian folk,
whose greetings of "_Buone feste, buon principio, e buona fine_" told of
the birth of another day of joy for them under the blue of their sky.
Before we were clear of the town, Henry turned, and as he glanced at the
green valanced windows of the Hotel Averso he drew a long breath which
was not quite a sigh. And this was all his farewell to the allegiance of
half a score of weeks. For my part, I was not easy till we swung out of
sight along the dusty road, and had skirted the first two or three miles
of old wall and vineyard terrace, where the lizards were already
flashing and darting in the sun.
But indeed it takes much to chain a young man's fancy, when the road of
life runs enticingly before him, dappled with laurel and carpeted with
primrose.
It was our vagabond year, and, as I had foretold, a fair maid stood at
every door, smiling at us and leading us on. We did not keep long by the
dusty road. Presently we turned up byways, over which the prickly-pear
and red valerian broke in profuse and unprecise beauty--fleshy-leaved
creepers, too, as of a house-leek turned passion-flower, over-crowned
all with scarlet blotches of cunningly placed colour.
We wandered into woodland paths and across fields. A peasant or small
farmer ran out to stay us. Something was forbidden, it appeared. We were
trampling his artichokes or other precious crop. We understood him not
over well, nor indeed tried to. But a touchingly insignificant piece of
silver induced him to think more kindly of our error, and he showed us a
sweet path, by the side of which a brook tinkled down from the cliffs
above. It led us into another scene--and, I am of opinion, upon another
man's property. For at the door of a low, square-roofed house stood a
man with his hands clasped behind him. He frowned, for he had seen his
neighbour of the itching palm lead us to his gate and there leave us.
And of the silver that lay within that palm he had not partaken.
The sun was broad and high. Here were flats of hay, greyish-green, blue
in parts--but with none of that moist and emerald velvet which would
have flashed upon the burnside meadows at home. Again by the water we
brushed against the asters, which had no business to be growing here in
the spring. Among the young wheat the poppies were flaming--red-coat
officers of the Sower of Tares, with flaunting feather leading on to the
inquisition of fires, when the reapers edge their keen sickles and
fall-to, and the tares are separated from the wheat.
For pence judiciously tendered, we had the young Pan himself for
leader--an Italian boy of sixteen, fair as a god of Greece. He went
before with the most innocent grace in the world, and looked at us over
his shoulder. He called his sister to come also, and as a stimulant he
held up his penny. But she hung back, smit with sudden maidenly modesty
at the sight of two such proper young men; and so her brother danced on
without her.
Looking back, we saw that she had called her mother, and now peeped out
wistfully from behind the shelter of the skirt maternal. Perhaps she
regretted that she had not gone with us, for there, far ahead, was her
brother skipping upon his quest. And suddenly there was no interest in
the dull farmyard and the cattle. For that is a way of women--to be
willing too late.
As we go, we talk with the young Pan--Henry Fenwick freely, I slowly,
yet with comprehension greater than speech.
Will Pan sit down and eat with us? we ask.
Surely! There is no doubt whatever that he will, and that gladly. But we
must wait till we come to a spring of hill-water, so that we may have
the true and only apostolic baptism for our red wine.
There presently we arrive. The place is verily an inspiration. It is a
natural well in the shadow of a great rock. Overhead is the virgin cup
rudely cut in the stone. A shelf for sitting on while you drink, and the
rocky laver brimming with clear and icy water. Little grains of fine
white sand dance at the bottom, where from its living source the pure
brew wells up. It is indeed a proper place to break bread.
Here, with Pan talking to us in a speech soft as the Italian air, we eat
and are refreshed. Pan himself willingly opens his heart, and tells us
of the changes that are coming--an Italy free from lagoon to
triangle-which is to say, from Venice to Messina. But there is much
dying to be done before then. The tears must fall from many mothers'
eyes--from his own, who knows? Will he fight? Ay, surely he will fight!
And the face of Pan hardens, till one understands how he could have been
so cruel one day to the reeds which grew in the river.
But the distance beckons us, and the sun draws himself upward to his
strength. We have on us the English itch for change. The breeze comes
and goes as we plunge among the groves of Virgilian ilex, and through
the interstices of the trees we see on a hill-slope above us thirty
great horned oxen, etched black against the sky.
Here Pan leaves us, saying farewell with tears in his woman's eyes; with
silver also in his pocket, which, to do him justice, does not comfort
him wholly. Before he goes, for love and gratitude he tells us of a
rhyme with which to please the children and to cause the good wives to
give us a lodging.
At the next village we try its efficacy upon a company by the well--a
group with those oriental suggestions which are common to all villages
south of the Alps. The effect is instantaneous. The shy maidens draw
nearer, the boys gather from their noisy game, the bambinos stretch to
us from many a sisterly shoulder. We sit down, a couple of wayfarers,
dusty and hot. But no sooner is the rhyme said than, lo! a tin is dipped
for our drinking, and the Rebekah of the well herself expects her kiss,
nor, spite of a possible knife, is she disappointed. For the rhyme's
sake we are friends of the fairies and can put far the evil eye. It is
good to entertain us. Thanks be to Pan! We shall offer him a garland of
enduring ivy, or it may be half a kid. The cry that was heard over the
waters was not true! Pan is not dead. Perhaps he too but sleeps a while,
and in the likeness of young goatherds the god of the earlier time,
reborn in dew, comes out still to tell his secrets to wandering lads
who, asking no favour, go a-wayfaring with strong hearts as in the
ancient days.
Round the corner peeps a laughing face. An urchin of surpassing
impishness, one who has come too late to hear our password, taunts us in
evil words.
"Ha, Giuseppe, beware of the Giant Caranco! Behold, he has the great
teeth of the English. At the water-trough this morning I saw him
sharpening them to eat thee, thou exceeding plump one! In the bag at his
back he carries the bones of sixteen just as fat as thou art!"
And the rascal flees with a cry of pretended fear. So contagious is
terror, that more than half our band flees away a dozen paces, halting
there upon one foot, balancing our evil and our good.
But we have wiles as well as rhymes, and great in all places of the
earth is the fascination of ready money.
"The Giant Caranco! forsooth," we say; "what lack of sense! Does the
Giant Caranco know the good word of the Gentle Folk whose song brings
luck? Can the Giant Caranco tell the tale that only the fairies know?
Has the Giant Caranco those things in his wallet which are loved of lads
and maids? Of a surety, no! Was ever such nonsense heard!"
In vain rings the shout of the maligner on the rocks above, as the
circle gathers in again closer than ever about us.
"Beware of his thrice-sharpened teeth, Giuseppe! I saw him bite a fair
half-moon out of the iron pipe by the fountain trough this morning!" he
cries.
It is worse than useless now. Not only does the devil's advocate lack
his own halfpenny; but with a swirl of the hand and a cunning jerk at
the side, a stone whizzes after this regardless railer upon honest
giants. Wails and agony follow. It is a dangerous thing to sit in the
scorner's chair, specially when the divinity has the popular acclaim,
with store of sweetmeats and _soldi_ as well.
Most dangerous of all is it to interfere with a god in the making, for
proselytism is hot, and there are divine possibilities.