by Grant Allen
This man had one eye. So I knew he was the Calender.
Otherwise, he chiefly resembled a scarecrow. He was a shambling person, with clothes that held together by the grace of God rather than by the common laws of cohesion.
He regarded me with amazement. “Listen!” he said to his wife — at least, I saw no reason to doubt the sallow lady’s relationship. “What language is that that the wild thing is singing?”
“It is English,” I answered. “A song of the Inglesi!” I had not yet been taught that ‘t is unladylike to converse in the streets with strangers. That knowledge I owed later to Her Imperturbability Miss Westmacott.
“How didst thou learn it, little witch?” he asked.
“How did you learn I was a witch?” I retorted.
“Nay, but tell me.”
“In London,” I answered, in my “of course” tone of voice. For to me it was so natural that an English-born child should have the gift of English.
“A Londra?” the woman echoed, with a little start “Thou ‘st been there?”
“But yes,” I answered, laughing. “What wouldst have? I was born there.”
The woman looked at the man. The man looked at the woman. They exchanged a quick-darted glance of question and answer. Then the One-eyed Calender asked in a tone of candid inquiry, “What is the English for pane?”
“Bread,” I replied, much amused. “I wish I had some!”
The woman looked at the man. Her face was tied up in a handkerchief for toothache.
The man nodded and said, “It is true. Bread! And for vino?”
“Wine” I answered, wondering not a little why they should thus catechise me.
The pair spoke to one another low for a minute. Then the woman, who possessed the relics of a pug-nose, pulled out a slice of panettone, a sort of common cake — big sultanas scattered sparsely like islands through a sea of dough — and handed it across to me. She pulled it from a bundle which was far from clean; I cannot imagine nowadays how I ate it. But I was young; and I was hungry — two powerful incentives. I fell to it yarely, and ate every morsel; I even recollect that I thought it delicious. Indeed, I have a fancy for panettone to this day, and always buy a couple when we drop down to Vicenza from our vineyard on the hills; you can get them most excellently confectioned at a pastry-cook’s shop in the Piazza delle Biade.
The sallow woman glanced at my feet They were naturally dusty. If you could see that road!— “Thou hast come far this morning,” she murmured.
I admitted the fact. “I rose early,” I explained.
“Whence dost come?”
The spontaneous Italian expedient of a lie at once occurred to me. “From Schio,” I answered mendaciously. (Remember, all this antedated Miss Westmacott, at whose excellent Select School for Young Ladies I learned better morals and better manners.)
She shook her unkempt head. “No, no; ‘t is too far! Vicenza at utmost.”
“Oh, if you doubt me—” I cried; then I remembered that I was lying. Virtuous indignation sits ill on the detected.
“Vicenza?” she repeated, with an interrogative accent, scanning my face to see if her guess was right I surrendered at discretion and ate my lie. “Si, st; Vicenza!”
“Then why didst thou seek to deceive me?” I was on adventures bound, and the One-eyed Calender had the air of an adventurer. In the background stood, in point of fact his symbol and means of livelihood, a scissors-grinder’s wheel. What life more venturesome than the free life of the road? I risked my all on one bold cast. “I am running away from home,” I answered, shaming the devil. He fled, discomfited.
The woman’s keen eyes gazed at my welted neck and arms. “Father?” she asked at last, with a comprehending air.
I drew back as if stung. “Father!” I cried in horror. “Oh, no; he is so good. Not him, but mother.”
Their glance met again, darting rapid signals. “Speak English well?” the woman asked in our elliptical Italian fashion.
“All as well as Italian.”
“Say in English, ‘This lady and gentleman are my father and mother.’”
I said it unhesitatingly.
“Speak more.”
I burst out into the passionate recital of my wrongs, and my reasons for leaving home. It was a relief to me to unburden. I knew they did not understand one word I spoke; but that was all the better. I would have been too proud to let them know if they had comprehended what I said; but the mere outpouring of my heart in speech acted like an outlet to my pent-up indignation. I opened the flood-gates. I waxed eloquent, in English.
“She will do,” the woman said shortly. “Little witch, wouldst like to come with us?”
“Why do you call me little witch?” I asked, hanging back.
“Because of thy big saucer eyes and thy long black eyelashes. Thou wilt tell fortunes in time. Thou ‘st the air of a sorceress. It is a merry life on the road, and I can see thou art one that loves well freedom. We sleep where we can; we eat what we earn; we go where we choose; and we pay no sou of rent or tax to anyone!”
“Sta bene,” I answered. “I ask no more. I came forth to-day in search of adventures. But, behold” — I drew myself up and bared my bruised arm. “I have run away from home because of these stripes. Treat me well, and I stop with you, no matter where you go; but beat me” — I paused, then I drew my hand threateningly across my bare brown throat—” and you will answer for it!”
“Is she a witch?” the man cried, laughing. “I ask you but that, Is she a witch? In time the child ought to be worth any money.”
The woman murmured something deprecating in a tongue I did not know. Only long after did I see some in print, and learn that it was the ancient tinkers’ language. But I understood, all the same: she was warning him not to give me too good a conceit of myself.
Still the man was not yet satisfied. He sampled me all over as if I were a dog for sale. Then “Run!” he cried, clapping his hands.
I ran.
“Run till I say turn!” he continued.
I ran on, and back again when he bid me.
He listened at my chest and felt my arms when I got back to him, running my hardest. Apparently he judged me sound in wind and limb, for he smiled as he finished.
Though unprepossessing in appearance, he had not an unkindly voice or manner. “Look here, little one,” he said, twitching his face in a queer way that was habitual with him, “we are going to England, and we have need of an interpreter. England is a very great and rich country, where all the people have much money, and where everything is most beautiful.” (That was scarcely my recollection of Leather Lane; but I held my peace, not feeling myself called on for criticism.) “If thou wilt come with us and interpret for us, we will promise not to beat thee. We are not rich; we are poverini, we others, as thou seest; but we will share everything with thee, as with our own daughter. We will be thy father and mother. Come; is it a bargain?”
“It is a bargain,” I answered; “faith of the Lupari!”
At that they both laughed, though I meant it as a solemn form of adjuration. Their laugh grated. I saw my new allies did not take my family and the moral law as seriously as I did.
But I was free — that was well. I am an amateur of freedom. All the troubles that have come upon me through life have come through my resolute determination to be myself at all hazards. Yet I would incur them again rather than prove false to my own nature. Better the frosty dews under a convenient hedge than to have one’s thoughts and beliefs and habits dictated to one.
“Budge!” said the fiend. “Budge not!” said my conscience. “Fiend!” said I, “you counsel well. My heels are at your commandment.”
CHAPTER VI
THE LOG OF A LAND CRUISE
IF you are a stupid person, who want to be amused, take my advice and skip this chapter.
We slept that night at San Bonifacio, in a fifth-rate inn; next day we proceeded on our way to Verona.
O Siren Verona! what shall I say of t
hee? I have seen thee often since, dear Siren, ever beautiful, ever picturesque, ever the most Italian sight in Italy! But that whirling first glimpse, in that strange, weird company — how effective it was, how Veronese, how appropriate! We arrived, not prosaically by rail, but straggling footsore over the Roman bridge that crosses the Adige. It chanced to be market-day; and we went straight through the narrow paved streets into the arcaded Piazza delle Erbe, alive with booths, and crowded with market-women under their red umbrellas. Huge, ribbed and wrinkled melons smiled temptingly on the stalls; purple aubergines hung in shining bunches from the sides of the carts; yellow pumpkins lay huddled in careless heaps on the ground; all was noise and bustle and colour and plenty. As for apples and oranges, they glutted the market. The One-eyed Calender bought a pink-fleshed watermelon as big as a horse’s head; I eyed it thirstily. He cut a juicy slice out of its middle with his pocket-knife (first cleaning the edge in his mouth), and gave it me to eat as I stood and gazed up at the columns and statues of the crumbling Piazza. The World beyond Vicenza — oh, the World beyond Vicenza was beautiful and wonderful! Not in wildest dreams of Bagdad or Cairo had I pictured aught lovelier, aught more romantic, than Verona!
To see that siren first with a child’s eyes — round eyes of wonder; well — Madonna del Monte, thou hadst been truly kind to me!
I looked for the balcony where Juliet leaned out to speak with Roméo, and I soon found it In point of fact, I found it ten deep in every mouldering street. All poetry might come true any day in Verona. What tragedies hid themselves behind those round-arched loggie! What eyes peered down from those mysterious persiennes!
Alas, however, this planet is ruled by Supply and Demand, not by poetry! The demand for scissors-sharpeners was slack in Verona. By the end of three days we had ground and set every rickety pair from the Porta Vescovo to San Zeno Maggiore, and were outward bound once more by dusty roads on our long slow journey northward and westward.
I acquit the One-eyed Calender of deliberate divagation. It was his honest intention to proceed by the directest route he knew to England. But the directest route in his case was not the St. Gothard. Motion, I now know (thanks to Miss Westmacott), follows the line of least resistance. To a scissors-grinder, the line of least resistance is the path which leads him past the largest number of poor scissors-owning populations. Poor, I say, for the reckless’ rich throw away old scissors, instead of grinding them. Placards on the walls by the Verona railway station informed us (in flaring red and green) that London could be reached direct in thirty-six hours. That was not our experience. We took fourteen months to straggle deviously as far as Paris, with frequent stoppages by the way for rest and refreshment.
If the One-eyed Calender had refreshed less frequently, indeed, ‘t is probable we might have journeyed faster; for we were all three good walkers, and the roads were straight with continental straightness. Their parallel lines of poplars converged and met somewhere about infinity. But my new master had a shuffling sidelong gait, much like a hermit-crab’s: I attributed it in part to the long effects of that constant uncertainty which has its origin in wine. It was his habit, indeed, to spend in drink the larger part of his gains, whenever he made any. I cannot call him a turbulent or a savage drunkard; what he had promised me was true: he never beat me. But he used to sit down at wayside inns and drink, drink, drink, in a solemn, serious, sober spirit, like one who knew few other pleasures, and who was conscientiously determined to make the most of this one. He drank earnestly. He was a philosopher in his way, and his philosophy was Omarian.
“The rich, look thou, Rosalba,” he used to say to me; “the rich have many enjoyments.
The poor have one. I do not blame the aristos that they frequent the races, the theatre, the circus, the promenade; I would do as much myself, were I an aristo. I do not blame them that they have singers and dancers and players to amuse them. Singing, dancing, and playing are well if you can afford them. But the poor man has only one club, the osteria, only one pleasure, to get drunk when possible. Then he should do it always. Life is not so rich in enjoyments that he can afford to miss the best it gives him. When they make me a marchese, I will mend my ways; while I remain a scissors-grinder, I shall practise such life as seems gayest for my profession.”
Within the first few days of our companionship, however, the Calender began to learn that I would not taste wine; and being the wreck of a Mephistopheles, he loved to tempt me. I have as few prejudices, I flatter myself, as most Italians; and certainly I was at no time a bigoted teetotaller; but since that day on the Monti Berici, I had made up my mind never to taste again the moral poison. I believed it begot habits of injustice. Later in life (I write calmly of my past from the specular mount of seven-and-twenty) my objection was based on the definite idea that in a family where the demon of drink had once entered, one should meet his first blandishments with a stern “Get thee behind me, Satan!” But in this earlier stage, when I had not so much as heard that modern Mesopotamia, the blessed word heredity, I knew only that I did not wish to resemble my mother. Do not fancy me a preacher; I know what I am saying; and if you doubt my breadth of mind, I will join you forthwith in a bottle of champagne, just to show you at once that I am not bigoted.
But the One-eyed Calender, as I say, loved to attack my resolve. He would pour out a glass of our small red wine — very, very small — and would hold it up to the light to show me how it danced. Then he would murmur insinuatingly, with a gleam of white teeth — age never darkened them—” Good! Ah, so good! Just one little sip, piccola! That will put fresh legs into thy threadbare stockings when thou art tired with walking!”
I shook my head, capered about a bit in pantomimic refusal, and answered, “No, no.” The Calender’s wife upheld me in my decision. Middle-aged women are always virtuous — for their charges. Besides, she saw no reason why good red wine should be wasted on imps who did not want it Our wanderings were long and slow. They were also tedious. We had no Circassian slaves, no enchanted carpets. Yet I thank God that He taught me betimes the stern lesson of indigence. We marched first by road, with our kits on our backs, past the Lago di Garda; then on by Brescia and Treviglio through the boundless plain to Milan. That was the grandest place I had ever seen in my life — Milan! I thought it then, and indeed think it now, a vast deal handsomer and nobler than London. It may be childish memory; it may be personal taste; but I know no town that impresses me still so much with its magnificence. I adhere to this day to my qualifying adjective. My countrymen call it Milano la grande! and they are right. Milan is grand; Paris is only grandiose. But alas, the knifegrinding trade languished in Milan. ‘T was ever thus. When we arrived at a town where I should have loved to tarry — a town full of bright shops and splendidly robed ladies — the One-eyed Calender grumbled perpetually that business was slack; while the Signora his wife, who arranged for our installation, complained that the price of a night’s lodging was exorbitant But when we passed through squalid, brown-tiled villages, where we slept in open maize-barns or under the windy shelter of hayricks, the One-eyed Calender’s remaining eye lit up with pleasure; there, trade simply boomed, soldi rained upon us, red wine ruled cheap, and the village fathers, conspicuously free from aristocratic exclusiveness, sat and gossiped late with us on sanded floors as to how affairs marched in Milan and the Provinces. At such spots, we were hailed as in the thick of the Movement It was a wild free life; in its way, I will honestly confess, I loved it A gipsy-like strain runs through my blood even to-day. I decline to be a mollusk. For two pins, I could give up my comfortable home in Aunt Emily’s vineyards on the Monti Berici, and wander the world once more, as with the One-eyed Calender.
From Milan our trail grew more and more devious. Being ultimately bound for England, of course we turned our faces southward toward Genoa. We marched in Indian file. The Calender led the company; the Signora followed at a varying distance; I brought up the rear, especially towards evening. A few days of such straggling march through the Lombard level
saw us at the foot of some high green hills, which the One-eyed Calender knew as the Apennines. He was no geographer; he could not use a map; but he had the born wayfarer’s instinct for routes; and when I follow our track now on the best atlases, I cannot see that he ever took a wrong turn — allowing of course for the necessary divagations of the scissors-grinding industry. The object of people in our line of business was not to find the shortest road from spot to spot, with monotonous accuracy, but to select the track that would lead past the greatest number of scissors-using villages, without ever exposing one for any length of time to the chance of traversing unpopulated or, what was worse, scissors-barren country.
I remember well that green tramp over the Apennines: — the long steep rise; the bivouacs by the side of churning torrents; the wind that displayed the Signora’s meagre anatomy through her clinging rags; the compassionate bread-offerings of brown-skinned peasant women who took pity on me, shivering, for a footsore poverina; the halt on the bare summit; the glorious descent upon basking Genoa, ringed round with tiers of hills like the seats in a circus. Can I forget the hungry mood in which we wound our way down the endless slopes of that interminable zigzag? There is no plan to realise the size of a country like plodding across it on foot. By so doing, you measure yourself against it I have a just conception of the true bigness of France and Italy which wholly fails me when I try to picture the relative extent of California or Texas.
I may as well finish this dull description of our route at once, now that I am about it. Were my purpose merely to write an agreeable story, I might curtail the whole, or suggest it for you instead by a few graphic anecdotes and vivid dramatic scenes of particular adventures. But I am too stern a realist. Every novel worth the name is autobiographic, a transcript from life — one’s own reminiscences, aptly selected and artistically presented. That alone carries conviction. My desire is therefore to picture my adventures to you as faithfully as I may; and I cannot put you at my point of view without insisting a little on this mere skeleton framework of aimless wanderings. From Genoa we marched slowly, up and down hill, one slope after another, like a switchback railway, along a narrow strip of coast between the mountains and the sea, which, as I now know, English people call the Riviera. Silvery-shuddering olives clung to the slopes; Judas-trees flamed on the rocky headlands. It was a monotonously beautiful tramp — day after day we started at dawn from some white village in a hot river valley (where we had just ground all the scissors the inhabitants possessed), mounted a steep hill with wide map-like views over the blue water, crossed a panoramic ridge, and descended on the other side, weary and thirsty, at the ringing of the Angelus, to a similar white village, with a whitewashed church, and a fresh crop of scissors, which struck monotonous sparks from the monotonous wheel with a monotonous drone that grew positively odious to me. I hated everything but the hills and the sea, the silver of the olives and the gold of the orange-groves. Those grew daily dearer. They kept alive within me the poetic instinct.
