by Grant Allen
I eyed him suspiciously. His face was by no means reassuring. “Ma che! ma che! I make no promise. You were willing to buy me on chance from my padrone, who has no kind of claim to me; and you must abide the result. If you suit me, I stop with you; if you fail to please me — tra-la-la! la-ra! zim boum! I go elsewhere.”
The First Murderer glanced significantly at the One-eyed Calender. The One-eyed Calender shrugged his shoulders. I guessed what they meant. The one said with his eyebrows, “A wise man would have stopped this earlier”; the other said with his open palms, “‘T is less easy than it seems to curb the young rebel.”
“Then thou wilt start with us to-morrow?” the First Murderer observed a little later, after further conference with my recent owner.
The old Eve asserted herself within me. “Not if you thou me,” I answered quietly; for I knew the respect due to the daughter of so grand a gentleman as an ex-waiter at Gatti’s. “It must be you at the very least.” We Italians, I may say in explanation, possess four delicate gradations of courtesy in our personal pronouns; they vary from thou, the lowest, through you and they, the middle terms, to she, the most honorific of all, which is short for “Your Excellency.” I had debated at first whether I should not compel my new padrone to call me lei, but I decided at last that for the present voi would meet the exigencies of the situation. I was going up gradually. When the One-eyed Calender first thou’d me, I was still a child, and children are always thou; now, I was a girl of nearly fourteen, and exacted my due from the First Murderer.
He made a wry face. “I have not bought much for my fourteen francs,” he muttered. “But still — we shall see...when I get her to England!”
His face was black; he somehow looked like a huge dark spider: but his threats did not disturb me. Once in England, I knew I had the English tongue, while he would be merely an Italian organ-grinder.
‘T is in the blood of the Lupari to fear disgrace, and fear nought else.
Next day we set out from Paris, along the Great North Road, for Amiens and England.
I do not purpose to trouble you with the details of my career in the First Murderer’s company: ‘t was a transient episode; though my new master was “the very devil incarnation” — a Bluebeard, I thought, with a touch of Don Juan. We made our way gradually by Amiens and Abbeville to Boulogne; thence we took the night boat, third class, to Folkestone.
From the coast it was the First Murderer’s plan to grind his way to London by slow stages through the villages of the highroad. But here, fate turned on me. In Picardy I had found my audiences somewhat smaller than in the South, and decidedly more niggardly of small copper coin, yet attentive and appreciative. The moment I crossed over to England, a great and immediate change became apparent. The English people were so odd: I “tried confusions with them.” I played one of my little dramas — I think it was the story of Oberon and Titania — before a Kentish audience on a wayside green in a sweet rustic village. Elizabethan half-timbered houses fronted the play-stow: yet, to my surprise and chagrin, the villagers looked on listlessly at first, then burst out in coarse laughter.
Burning in the face, I danced and worked my puppets; my audience gazed at me with the wrong kind of merriment They laughed, not with me, but at me. The harder I exerted myself to please them, the more did they grin at me for a silly foreign idiot I flushed and bit my lip; I held back my tears; I knew I was beaten. It was my first great artistic disappointment; — a Christmas gambol or a tumbling trick, I had nothing to offer that these English cared for.
I slank off to bed that night in the Fisherman’s Arms, a limp, broken creature. Could these be Shakespeare’s countrymen? Though I had been so long away from England, in outlandish parts, I still retained my native British sense that what the English liked must be the standard of taste; and the discovery that my work was not good enough for England cut the solid ground from beneath me like an earthquake. I had come to my own, and my own rejected me.
I know now, of course, that the romantic and artistic peoples of the Mediterranean lands entered into my fantastic mood sympathetically, and loved what I offered them: the coarse and full-fed English rustics did not understand my monologue or my acting; they preferred a circus. A conjurer’s dog, jumping through fire amid red-covered hoops, meant more to these clods than my tripping Titania.
Indeed, my heart sank when I tried to translate into my most native mother-tongue the well-worn phrases that had told so often in France and Italy. “The part of Oberon by Mr. John Puppet” had not the ghost of a laugh in it. The Kentish rustics stared, and seemed to think me mad. In England, at least, it was not in villages that I was to find encouragement.
CHAPTER IX
GOOD SOCIETY
I WAS over twelve when I left the dear Monti Berici, with their tunnels of vine-trellis; I was full fourteen by the time that I landed in England. But the exceptional advantages in the way of education which I had enjoyed meanwhile made me older than my years. At an age when most girls are wasting their days over learning by rote that which will avail them nothing, I had acquired an amount of first-hand knowledge that was to stand me in good stead throughout my later life. In place of the dates of Anglo-Saxon kings, and the useless mysteries of tare and tret, I had had direct contact with affairs; I had learnt languages and the value of money; my poor little plays had taught me at least the habit of literary composition; even from the point of view of culture, it was no small matter that I had lived with Shakespeare, Dante, Molière, De Musset, Shelley.
Not that I loved my more immediate human companions. My life was in the ideal. The First Murderer, I may say, did not take my fancy. He was a malign, unshaven Adonis of fifty, and he had a trick of leering which displeased me. We had got half-way to London, or further, however, when an episode occurred which severed our connection.
The First Murderer’s wife went off into a village one morning to buy bread, leaving her husband and myself to light the fire for the kettle by the roadside. We were camped on a common, with abundance of brushwood. While she was gone, and I was blowing the embers, the Murderer, with an odious leer, began to talk to me in a low and blandishing voice, praising my beautiful eyes and making other unnecessary remarks about my personal appearance. He was a slimy creature. His face came so close to mine as he spoke that I could feel his hot garlic-laden breath on my cheek.
I did not value his admiration. There are people who are most loathsome when they try to make love. But I would not let him see I was afraid. “Pray do not trouble to continue,” I said in my coldest voice. “I have seen myself in a mirror. Also, your conversation bores me.”
He drew still nearer. “But, bella mia!” he cried, ogling.
“Keep off!” I said, drawing back.
“You are cruel, dear child!”
I rose with a look that quelled him. “Good morning,” I murmured abruptly. “I have had enough of you. Do not dare to say one word. I go my own way.” And I turned and left him.
He was too much astonished to follow me, thinking no doubt I would return (for breakfast) in a few minutes.
But I had no intention of returning. I strolled off by myself, in the most casual mood. — up a path that led obliquely along a spur of the downs — without the slightest notion what I meant to do, yet satisfied with the sunshine, the green trees, the song of birds in the copses. A scent of dog-roses stole on tiptoe from the neighbouring hedgerows. The sky was a blue vault — blue with a fathomless deep English blue, relieved here and there by fleecy white clouds. In Italy we never see it a blue like that — not the clear and profound ultramarine of England; our skies are mostly pallid and dimly hazy. The freshness of spring and of chalk country met one’s face in the air — an indefinable freshness, as of sprouting green things and bursting seeds; the turf on the downs spread close and springy. It yielded under one’s feet In the distance a wedge of sea just showed itself through a gap. I mounted and mounted, trolling out my stave as I went — and without the remotest idea how I could get a din
ner. Blame Nature, if you disapprove; she made me a Bohemian.
At the end of the steep foot-path which I had taken haphazard in my haste, a road ran among beeches: a highroad on the hilltop, like the ridge of a hog’s back. I followed it a few yards and saw an open gateway, with solid stone balls capping the square pillars. The gateway gave access to the grounds of a great house; an avenue lined with rhododendrons led up to it. I turned in past the lodge as if the place belonged to me. I did not yet understand the peculiar sanctity which attaches in England to the landed interest. Perhaps had I understood it, even a gay little iconoclast like myself might have feared to intrude — in which case the whole course of my later life would have been totally different.
As it was, I strolled up the avenue, singing aloud as I walked. I trolled a gay song I had picked up in Paris. ‘T was nice to be thus alone, and to have cut myself loose from the One-eyed Calender, the First Murderer, and their respective Signore. Pom, pom, pom: I would be free, free, free — que j’aime la liberté!
I sang it out loudly.
Presently, at a bend of the avenue, like a sudden Gorgon in the garden of the Hesperides, an old gentleman faced me.
He was a fruity old gentleman, somewhat red in the face, and extremely well-fed; he carried the mark of long good-feeding obtrusively before him. He was placidly self-satisfied. His features were an epitome of the landed interest.
He stared at me, amazed at such exotic insolence. A little Italian girl, tricked out in a theatrical fancy-dress costume, trespassing on his grounds — and not only trespassing, but singing as she trespassed! I think he could scarce believe his eyes; I know he rubbed them twice before he accosted me.
Then he spoke severely:— “Look here, child, what’s this you ‘re doing? These are private grounds.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” I answered. “I’m a private person.” And I strolled calmly past him.
He opened his mouth with a curious drop of surprise, and stared at me mutely, while his red face grew redder. His look was one of cool remonstrant bewilderment. At first, I think, he hardly knew whether to be angry or not But, after a moment, his brain worked — it took it a perceptible interval to recover from the shock — the corners of his mouth twitched, and he burst out laughing.
“Well, of all the unconcerned young vagabonds I ever did see!” he cried, gazing at me as if I were on exhibition.
“Don’t look at me so,” I said; “I am not a toad.”
“I suppose you belong to an organ-grinder,” he went on, resting his huge bulk on his stick behind him.
“I belong to myself,” I answered, confronting him. “Do you take me for a Circassian? Slaves cannot breathe in England. ‘T is the home of the brave and the land of the free. Rule, Britannia!” — this I sang—” Britannia rules the waves! Bri-tons never, never, NEVER — shall — be — slaves!”
He regarded me fixedly. He was never in a hurry. “But you ‘re no Briton,” he objected with a glance up and down at my Italian finery.
“Born in the parish of St. Paneras,” I retorted with glib ease, quoting Mariana’s favourite boast. “That’s English enough, is it not?”
“Then why peacock about in this toggery?” He pointed contempt at my Italian garb with one fat red hand.
“You need not turn your nose up at it,” I replied. “‘T is the sign of my ancestry. My father was a Garibaldian, who freed Italy.”
“And now he grinds an organ!”
“You jump at conclusions,” I cried, growing warm, and drawing myself up. “He does nothing of the sort.” I assumed my best Coriolanus tone. “He is a landed proprietor on the Monti Berici near Vicenza.”
That avowal produced an immediate effect upon the corpulent old gentleman. The one thing in this world that he really respected was Landed Property. He spelt it with mental capitals. The word made him stare harder than ever. “Then why does his daughter trapes about the world like this?” he asked in an incredulous voice.
“Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits,” I answered, looking upon him. Then I burst out singing again, “Pom, pom, pom! que j’aime la liberté!”
His face was a study of utter puzzlement. He put his fat red hands where his hips should have been, and stood gazing at me vacantly. “Can’t you read that notice?” he said at last, pointing to the usual board with its vulgar threat of “Trespassers will be prosecuted.”
“I have read it,” I answered; “it’s not very original. Besides, I suppose you pray, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.’”
He turned toward the house in the background, and cried aloud, “Mrs. Mallory! Mrs. Mallory! come here at once; I have something to show you.”
I dropped a little bob. “Thanks for thinging me,” I put in saucily. “Somebody would have been politer.”
“Gracious heavens!” he ejaculated. “The infant is going to teach me manners!”
Mrs. Mallory hurried down from the verandah of the big house. She was a bright and gracious-looking middle-aged lady, artistically dressed in a divinely lovely gown of some loose light material, and artistic in expression.
“Well, Sir Hugh?” she said in an inquiring tone.
The corpulent old gentleman pointed towards me with his stick from a safe distance. “This is a Phenomenon,” he said solemnly.
The lady inspected me with a kindly smile. I love the bright smile of an English lady. There is so much heart in it. “This is a model,” she answered, laughing. “A splendid model. Such exquisite curves and plenitudes in her contours!”
“What do you think she said to me?” Sir Hugh, went on, gasping. “I said, ‘You can’t come in here; these are private grounds’; and the little minx looked up at me — cucumbers couldn’t compare with her — and plumps out, as jaunty as can be, ‘That’s all right; I’m a private person.’ Plumps it out to me, in my own grounds.” And he laughed again at the bare recollection of my foreign audacity.
“She seems a pretty brazen piece of goods,” the lady admitted, still scanning me, but smiling.
“Not brazen,” I answered, flushing up; “vivacious — that’s all. — Tra-la-la — pom pom, pom! zimboum!’ T is the southern blood in me.
They interchanged quick glances. Mrs. Mallory’s face grew suddenly grave.— “But — you are a lady, my child,” she said. “Tell me all about yourself. I didn’t think you understood English or I would not have spoken so.”
I was in the gayest possible mood, having just sloughed off the First Murderer and all his works: but the strange touch of kindness in the lady’s voice, so long unknown to me, went through me like a knife. I swallowed a sob; then my heart was too much for me. I sat down by the trunk of a big beech and burst out crying. In a second, Mrs. Mallory was kneeling by my side and bending over me with tender sympathy. It was years since I had known tenderness, and it cut me to the quick. I sobbed harder and harder. I could not control myself.
She led me up to the great house, and took me into a drawing-room. It was the “grandest” room I had ever been in; Mariana would have revelled in it; and indeed, Sir Hugh Tachbrook, to whom the place belonged, was one of the richest men in that part of England.
She seated me on the sofa — such a soft, reposeful, luxurious sofa! — and waited patiently by my side till I should recover from my paroxysm. Once or twice Sir Hugh interposed a remark, offering advice or consolation — sal volatile or brandy and water; but Mrs. Mallory shook her head and answered in French, which she clearly imagined I would not understand, “No, no; let the poor child cry it out; it is the only plan. She is unaccustomed to kindness; that takes her breath away.”
I was grateful to her for those words; grateful — and surprised to learn that there existed in the world other people who could understand, who felt and thought and spoke as I did.
Like a flash it came over me, “These people are my sort. I have been living all my life in alien company. Mrs. Mallory is like myself and Miranda and Rosalind.”
Slowly and gr
adually I cried my stock of tears out. “I calmed my inner tumult as soon as I could, for Mrs. Mallory’s sake, for I could see that my weeping distressed her. But I clasped her hand tight all the time with a recurrent pressure; and each time I pressed, her hand pressed back again. Touch is the mother-sense of the emotions. In that unspoken sympathy we seemed to read and draw near to one another.
At last she rose, and glided softly from the room for a minute. When she returned she brought in a cake and a glass of milk. She cut me a big slice. “Eat that, my child,” she said gently, handing it to me.
I was hungry as a hawk that morning, having had no breakfast except a piece of dry bread, so I wiped my eyes and eat it, not greedily, I hope, but with evident enjoyment. Sir Hugh looked on, grave doubt in his glance. “Do you think it is too rich for her?” he asked Mrs. Mallory.
“Rich!” I answered, smiling up at him through my tears; “‘t is a perfect Croesus of a cake.”
They both laughed and interchanged glances once more. I felt how nice it was to be among people who were well-read like oneself, and who understood the meaning of an allusion. The One-eyed Calender and the First Murderer understood so little; and even my peasant audiences, though they followed my plays, missed many small points in them. They knew not Croesus.
My new friends talked to me for some time, asking me questions about myself and my mode of life. I answered frankly, telling them the story of the One-eyed Calender and the First Murderer, and my impromptu Shakespearian representations, and the book that the old gentleman in France had given me. My odd, fanciful names for persons and things amused them. When I spoke of my plays, Mrs. Mallory asked me to give her a specimen. I clapped my hand to my head. “Impossible!” I answered with tragic despair (after Juliet). “The First Murderer has my costumes, my properties, my dolls and dresses!”
Mrs. Mallory rose promptly. “That will do,” she said with decision to Sir Hugh. “She is the very model I want. She poses splendidly. Such suppleness of limb! The real thing, not wooden imitation. I must make some arrangement.” She rang the bell. “Simpson,” she went on, “ask that Italian man to step this way.”