Chapter IV: The Festival of San Lorenzo

SUDDENLY the small black figure of Natale appeared, kneeling at the horse’s side, although no one had seen him slip in. With his hands clasped in distress, he lifted his voice in such a disconsolate wail that even Betty started and wondered if the horse could be really dying.

The solemn march was still sounding in the tent, and before speaking the clown gave the spectators full time to take in the tragic tableau. Then he exclaimed briskly:

“What are you crying about, boy?”

“Because our horse is dead.”

“Do you think he is quite dead, Natale?”

“Oh, quite,” wailed the child.

“Get up and feel his pulse, boy. If there is any pulse he is not dead.”

Natale went nearer and took one of the great hoofs of the horse fearlessly into his little hands, and felt for the “pulse.”

“Well, what do you find?” asked the clown impatiently.

“There isn’t any pulse,” the little fellow wailed again, laying down the big black hoof with the utmost tenderness.

“Too bad,” quoth the clown, taking his seat deliberately on the prostrate horse, which lay as motionless as if certainly dead. Then, all in a moment, Natale’s manner changed, and he skipped around in front of Giovanni, remarking glibly that the gentleman had found a beautiful sofa to sit upon.

“And I shall have a kiss to prove that the beast is not dead,” exclaimed the clown, chirruping a little and smacking his lips. And the great brown head of the horse lifted itself from the dust, the graceful neck turned, and Il Duca actually kissed his master, then scrambled hastily to his feet as if glad for that job to be over, while Giovanni hurried him out of the ring.

“Such silly jokes!” commented Mrs. Bishop, otherwise Aunty, as the performance ended, and the rollicking crowd poured out of the tent. “Think of my having spent two whole hours listening to them, and all on pins too, for fear that poor, ill-used child should be forced to do some other unchristian thing.”

“But, Aunty, what did you expect when you came?” Betty asked impatiently. “Surely the little show was not bad, and there was actually nothing but what was quite decent in every way.”

“I call it ‘bad’ to beat and starve children into turning themselves into monkeys.”

“If people would not go to see the ‘monkeys’ it would be stopped,” was Betty’s retort.

“Well, I am sure I only went to oblige Mrs. Choky,” Aunty said in an injured tone. “She said she thought we ought to encourage the poor people on their first night. But it will be my last night there, as I shall very soon inform her. ‘Encourage’ them to martyrize that poor child, indeed!”

From the first performance in Cutigliano, therefore, Natale’s trouble began, although he did not know it. Contented and tired he lay down in his corner of the brown house on wheels and went to sleep, while the men let down the big yellow canvas of the large tent and furled it about the pole. But first, he ate his supper of macaroni with the rest of the actors, gathered in the small tent behind. Midnight suppers were the rule on the nights when there were performances, as it would have been at the risk of upsetting their stomachs in more ways than one to eat food beforehand.

Later, the stars kept quiet watch above the little encampment, where even Pietro slept well, with the open house door admitting the fresh air of the mountains.

For ten days the yellow “mushroom” spread over the grass of the field, although very much in the way of the fine city gentlemen, playing at ball with bats like tambourines. The noisy music at night and the cheering in the tent may have kept the invalids in the nearest boarding-houses awake and nervous, and the people at large may have grown tired of the performances which they soon learned by heart, but no one felt inclined to hustle the poor people away, and no one grumbled except Mrs. Bishop.

There was something pathetic about the clown in his everyday dress, his gayety and paint all gone and the deep lines of his face showing too plainly in the garish light of day, as he pottered about the tent, adjusting ropes, and keeping off the village boys who would throw stones upon the old canvas, or play hide and seek among the curtains. It gave one a queer feeling, also, to fancy the drooping figure of Pietro, with his pure little face like alabaster, a member of the “wicked circus troop.”

This child was perhaps twelve years old, and he had the face of an angel. He had begun to lose his daily feverishness after a week in the mountains, and was soon able to limp, and later to run feebly about the field with the village boys.

But Natale, spidery little Natale, interested every one more even than did Pietro. Yet he looked only an everyday lad during the long summer days, when he trotted up and down, to and from the town, carrying now a bowl of this, now a flask of that, but always carrying something. To most people he seemed as happy as the days were long, just as ready for a chat with a strange foreigner who might address him in broken Italian as with old Sora Teresa who sold fruit and vegetables in the piazza, and who sometimes presented him with a ripe red tomato, or a slice of melon all green and pink.

But Mrs. Bishop looked down upon the tent from the garden terrace of Madame Cioche’s boarding-house every day, and slowly formed a plan for making Natale’s life happier. Poor little Natale!

The terrace garden above the field was shaded with plane trees and the mountain ash, and the grass was soft and richly green. Each afternoon some of the boarders would gather at the palings on the edge of this garden and watch the gentlemen playing ball below, and the village boys imitating Olga and Natale at turning somersaults and wheels.

One afternoon, while the boarders were drinking tea under the ash trees, with the berries overhead turning red, and the sun streaming across the croquet ground, there came a knock at the side door of the boarding-house. Madame Cioche herself opened the door, and there stood Natale, smiling up into her face, with the old blue hat set far back on his dark curls. The lady noticed that the boy’s face was very clean.

“Happy day to you,” he said brightly, using the peasant form of address, “and my mamá says will you please send her a cup of tea? She is feeling ill to-day.”

Of course Madame Cioche would send the tea, fetching it herself from the dining room and handing it to the boy. But she kept Natale a moment to ask how it was that his mamá could possibly like tea.

“Oh, but she has it every day when we are in Egypt,” was the reply. “And to-day her head aches. Thank you, Signora.” And Natale went off down the hill carrying the big cup as carefully as his bowls and flasks were always carried.

Mrs. Bishop overheard the word “Egypt” and sighed.

The next day was Sunday and an important festival, being the day of San Lorenzo. A great harvest of _soldi_ was expected, as peasants from all the mountain villages would come trooping in that day, to go to high mass in the church under the old mountain firs, and to take part in the procession of the “saints” in the afternoon. So there was, of course, to be a performance in the tent that day, but in the afternoon this time, just after the procession, instead of in the evening, when everybody would be tired or toiling homeward along the dark mountain ways. As there was nothing for him to do about the tent, however, until five o’clock should boom from the stone tower of the church, Natale made good use of his legs during the whole day, for there was much to see.

Betty Bishop had tossed a penny into his hands down over the garden palings that very Sunday morning. Perhaps she was thinking of some little child at home in England who would be clamoring for a penny to carry to Sunday school, but Natale had no thought of dropping his precious two _soldi_ into the priest’s collecting bag in the church.

The _piazza_ was too fascinating a place to be passed by, when one held a penny of his own fast in his fist. With the dogs on each side of him, therefore, Natale spent most of the day above in the town, going from booth to booth, and in fancy spending his money over and over again. There were sweets of various kinds offered for sale on the little tables along the steep, narrow streets, and booths of everything from coarse stuffs and ready-made clothing to breastpins of gay mosaic work and filigree rings.

Everywhere Natale was jostled by the peasants who all through the morning had flocked to the town, dressed in their best clothes and wearing holiday looks on their faces. The women and girls wore gay kerchiefs on their heads, with brilliant borderings and flowing ends, while even the men wore bits of vivid color in the shape of gorgeous neck scarfs spread over their white shirt fronts. Mingled with these walked the lords and ladies of a higher class dressed according to the fashion plates of Paris, and seeming to enjoy the hot sunshine and the gay restiveness of the multitude as much as the plainer folk. All day the frolic and prayers and the music of the town band and the church organ went on in the little town, till mid-afternoon, when there fell a hush over all and a great expectation.

Natale had not a very good place from which to see the procession pass, for he stood between a very stout peasant woman and a visiting priest in his full black gown. Still, he managed to peer from under their elbows without attracting their attention, and he was content, holding securely in one hand, meanwhile, the balloon whistle which he had finally purchased with his penny. The pretty red bubble of rubber had not yet burst, and Natale was happy in its possession. The handful of crisp wafers flavored with anise seed, which he had almost bought--so very foolish he had been--would have been eaten long ere this, and it would be as if he had never had a penny of his own tossed over the fence to him by a smiling young lady, but now he still had the whistle!

On they came, the straggling company of men and boys, dressed in white gowns and cowls, and bearing huge lighted candles in their hands. Natale thought he would like to have been one of the two boys bearing the immense candlesticks of brass; yet, after all, the candlesticks must be very heavy, and they were propped very uncomfortably on the little boys’ stomachs, and very red and perspiring were the little boys’ faces.

Natale thought the men’s feet ugly and clumsy, showing below the white gowns, and their harsh, chanting voices made him shiver. But he could not follow the awkward marching steps of the peasants with laughing looks as some of the onlookers were doing, for here, behind the banners and crucifixes, came two very curious-looking objects.

“_Ecco!_ the dead saints!” he exclaimed softly to himself. “How heavy they must be in the glass boxes on the men’s shoulders. Yet our Antonio Bisbini would never bend so under a small box as those men do. Ah! but the little girls are pretty, so pretty in their white veils, and scattering flowers before the saints.”

The crowd closed in upon the end of the procession now, and Natale could see no more, as he was nearly overturned where he stood. After a breathless moment or two, he found himself left in peace and quiet under the great old fir trees in front of the church, with the crowd all gone and Nicro and Bianco with them.

Nonna had told him to be sure and see the saints, if possible, so he went into the dark old church and sat down on a low chair to wait for the procession to return. He knew that San Lorenzo and Sant’ Aurelio would surely be brought back to spend the night in the church, perhaps in front of the candle-lighted altar, and he wished to please Nonna. It was dark and quiet in his corner under the organ gallery, and it was a very easy and natural thing for a tired little boy to fall asleep in that quiet place.

When the procession returned after half an hour, it was without the blare of trumpets and the crash of organ music, though for a long while shuffling feet passed in and out. This continued until everybody had looked at the two saints robed in costly garments and reposing now at full length on their satin cushions within their caskets of glass set before the altar. Many touched the rich cloths draping the caskets with reverent fingers, and pressed kisses on the cold glass before passing out into the radiant sunset light.

When Natale waked, the church doors were still open, but only one light swung before the high altar, and there was no trace anywhere of dead saint or living soul. He groped his way among the disarranged chairs and benches quite to the altar rail, but even the empty biers had been borne away to some inner recess of the church, so, with a dread that he had overslept awaking in his mind, Natale found his way out of the church again.

The purple bloom of evening was creeping up the mountain sides, and a star glowed in the sky. Just above the mountain line in the west the crescent moon hovered, as if uncertain over which side to sink. The dread in Natale’s mind had nothing to do with saints or dark churches. On awaking, his first sensation had been a fear that he might have missed the afternoon performance in the beloved tent, and now, standing outside the church in the dusk, he knew that he had missed it!

With a sob in his throat he turned his face from the telltale sky, and fled through the village down to the field. When he reached the wagon,--for he would not go to the tent, quiet now and unlighted,--the first words he heard came from Olga:

“Have you not heard, Natalino? Giovanni has lost a hundred francs! Somebody stole them when he changed his coat in the little tent. Yes, I know you were not there! We wondered where you could be!”