Two Days in the Life of Piccino
By Frances Hodgson Burnett
CHAPTER I
If he lived a hundred years—to be as old as Giuseppe, who was little Roberto’s great-grand-father, and could only move when he was helped, and sat in the sun and played with bits of string—if he lived to be as old as that, he could never forget them, those two strange and dreadful days.
When sometimes he spoke of them to such of his playmates as were older than himself—especially to Carlo, who tended sheep, and was afraid of nothing, even making jokes about the forestieri—they said they thought he had been foolish; that as it seemed that the people had been ready to give him anything, it could not have been so bad but one could have tried to bear it, though they all agreed that it was dreadful about the water.
It is true, too, that as he grew older himself, after his mother died and his father married again—the big Paula who flew into such rages and beat him—and when he had to tend sheep and goats himself, and stay out on the hills all day in such ragged jackets and with so little food—because Paula said he had not earned his salt, and she had her own children to feed—then he longed for some of the food he would not eat during those two days, and wondered if he would do quite the same thing again under the same circumstances. But this was only when he was very hungry and the mistral was blowing, and the Mediterranean looked gray instead of blue.
He was such a tiny fellow when it happened. He was not yet six years old, and when a child is under six he has not reached the age when human creatures have begun to face life for themselves altogether; and even a little Italian peasant, who tumbles about among sheep and donkeys, which form part of his domestic circle, is still in a measure a sort of baby, whose mother or brother or sister has to keep an occasional eye on him to see that he does not kill himself. And then also Piccino had been regarded by his family as a sort of capital, and had consequently had more attention paid to him than he would have had under ordinary circumstances.
It was like this. He was so pretty, so wonderfully pretty! His brothers and sisters were not beauties, but he was a beauty from his first day, and with every day that passed he grew prettier. When he was so tiny that he was packed about like a bundle, wound up in unattractive-looking bandages, he had already begun to show what his eyes were going to be—his immense soft black eyes, with lashes which promised to be velvet fringes. And as soon as his hair began to show itself, it was lovely silk, which lay in rings, one over the other, on his beautiful little round head. Then his soft cheeks and chin were of exquisite roundness, and in each he had a deep dimple which came and went as he laughed.
He was always being looked at and praised. A “Gesù bambino” the peasant women called him. That was what they always said when a child had wonderful beauty, their idea of supreme child loveliness being founded on the pictures and waxen, richly dressed figures they saw in the churches.
But it was the forestieri who admired him most, and that was why he was so valuable. His family lived near a strange little old city in the hills, which spread out behind one of the fashionable seaside towns on the Italian Riviera. The strange little old city, which was a relic of centuries gone by, was one of the places the rich foreigners made excursions to see. It was a two or three hours’ drive from the fashionable resort, and these gay, rich people, who seemed to do nothing but enjoy themselves, used to form parties and drive in carriages up the road which wound its way up from the shore through the olive vineyards and back into the hills. It was their habit to bring servants with them, and hampers of wonderful things to eat, which would be unpacked by the servants and spread on white cloths on the grass in some spot shaded by the trees. Then they would eat, and drink wine, and laugh, and afterwards wander about and explore the old city of Ceriani, and seem to find the queer houses and the inhabitants and everything about it interesting.
To the children of Ceriani and its outskirts these excursion parties were delightful festivities. When they heard of the approach of one they gathered themselves together and went forth to search for its encampment. When they had found it they calmly seated themselves in rows quite near and watched it as if it were a kind of theatrical entertainment to which they had paid for admission. They were all accomplished in the art of begging, and knew that the forestieri always had plenty of small change, and would give, either through good-nature or to avoid being annoyed. Then they knew from experience that the things that were not eaten were never repacked into the hampers if there was some one to ask for them. So they kept their places quite cheerfully and looked on at the festivities, and talked to each other and showed their white teeth in generous grins quite amiably, sure of reaping a pleasant harvest before the carriages drove back again down the winding road ending at the sea and San Remo, and the white, many-balconied hotels.
And it was through these excursion parties that Piccino’s market value was discovered. When he was a baby and his sister Maria, who was his small nurse—being determined not to be left behind by her comrades—toiled after the rest of the children with her little burden in her arms or over her shoulder, it was observed that the forestieri always saw the pretty round black baby head and big soft dark eyes before they saw anything else, and their attention once attracted by Piccino very pleasant things were often the result. The whole party got more cakes and sandwiches and legs of chickens and backs of little birds, and when bits of silver were given to Maria for Piccino, Maria herself sometimes even had whole francs given to her, because it was she who was his sister and took care of him. And then, having begun giving, the good-natured ones among the party of ladies and gentlemen did not like to quite neglect the other children, and so scattered soldi among them, so that sometimes they all returned to Ceriani feeling that they had done a good day’s work. Their idea of a good day’s work was one when they had not run after carriages for nothing, or had heads shaken at them when they held out their hands and called imploringly, “Uno soldino, bella signora—bella signora!” Piccino had been born one of the class which in its childhood and often even later never fails in the belief that the English and Americans who come to the beautiful Riviera come there to be begged from, or in some way beguiled out of their small coin.
Maria was a sharp child. She had not lugged her little brothers and sisters about all through the working time of her twelve years without learning a few things. She very soon found out what it was that brought in the soldi and the nice scraps from the hampers.
“It is Piccino they give things to—ecco!” she said. “They see his eyes and they want to look at him and touch his cheeks. They like to see the dimples come when he laughs. They would not look at me like that, or at you, Carmela. They would not come near us.”
This was quite true. The row of little spectators watching the picnics might be picturesque, but it was exceedingly dirty, and not made up of the material it is quite safe to come near. It was a belief current among the parties who drove up from San Remo that soap had never been heard of in the vicinity of Ceriani and that water was avoided as a poisonous element, and this belief was not founded upon mere nothings.
“They are as dirty as they are cheerful and impudent,” some one had said, “and that is saying a great deal. I wonder what would happen if one of them were caught and washed all over.”
Nobody could have been dirtier than Piccino was. Pretty as he looked, there were days when the most enthusiastic of the ladies dare not have taken him in her arms. In fact, there were very few days when any one would have liked to go quite that far—or any farther, indeed, than looking at his velvet eyes and throwing him soldi and cakes. But his eyes always won him the soldi and cakes, and the older he grew the more he gained, so that not only Maria and her companions, but his mother herself, began to look upon him as a source of revenue.
“If he can only sing when he grows a little older,” his mother said, “he can fill his pockets full by going and singing before the hotels and in the gardens of the villas. Every one will give him something. They are a queer lot, these foreigners, who are willing to give good money to a child because he has long eyelashes. His are long enough, thanks to the Virgin! Sometimes I wonder they are not in his way.”
His mother was the poorest of the poor. She had seven children, and a mere hovel to put them in, and nothing to feed and clothe them with. Her husband was a good-for-nothing, who never worked if he could help it, and who, if he earned a few soldi, got rid of them at once before they could be scolded out of him and spent on such extravagances as food and fire. If Piccino had not been a little Italian peasant he would, no doubt, have starved to death or died of cold long before he had his adventure; but on the Riviera the sun shines and the air is soft, and people seem born with a sort of gay carelessness of most things that trouble the serious world.
As for Piccino, he was as happy as a soft little rabbit or a young bird or a baby fawn. When he was old enough to run about, he had the most beautiful days. They seemed to him to be made up of warm sunshine and warm grass, flowers looking at him as he toddled round, light filtering through vines and the branches of olive-trees, nice black bread and figs, which he lay on his back and munched delightedly, and days when Maria dragged him along the road to some green place where grand people sat and ate good things, and who afterwards gave him cakes and delicious little bones and soldi, saying over and over again to each other that he was the prettiest little boy they had ever seen, and had the most beautiful eyes, and oh! his eyelashes!
“Look at his eyelashes!” they would exclaim. “They are as thick as rushes round a pool, and they must be half an inch long.”
Sometimes Piccino got rather tired of his eyelashes, and wore a resigned expression, but he was little Italian enough to feel that they must be rather a good thing, as they brought such luck. Once, indeed, a man came all by himself to Ceriani, and persuaded his mother to make him sit on a stone while he put him in a picture, and when it was over he gave his mother several francs, and she was delighted; but Piccino was not so pleased, because he had thought it rather tiresome to sit so long on one stone.
This was the year before the dreadful two days came.
When they came he had been put into queer little trousers, which were much too big for him. One of his brothers had outgrown them and given them good wear. They were, in fact, as ragged as they were big, and as dirty as they were ragged; but Piccino was very proud of them. He went and showed them to the donkey, whose tumble-down sleeping apartment was next to his own, and who was his favorite playmate and companion. It was such a little donkey, but such a good one! It could carry a burden almost as big as its stable, and it had soft, furry ears and soft, furry sides, and eyes and eyelashes as pretty for a donkey as Piccino’s were for a boy. It was nearly always at work, but when it was at home Piccino was nearly always with it. On wet and cold days he stayed with it in its tiny, broken stable, playing and talking to it; and many a day he had fallen asleep with his curly head on its warm little fuzzy side. When it was fine they strolled about together and were companions, the donkey cropping the grass and Piccino pretending it was a little flock of sheep, and that he was big enough to be a shepherd. In the middle of the night he used to like to waken and hear it move and make little sounds. It was so close to him that he felt as if they slept together.
So he went to show it his trousers, of course.
“Now I am a man,” he said, and he stood close by its head, and the two pairs of lustrous eyes looked affectionately into each other.
After that they sauntered out together into the beautiful early morning. When Piccino was with the donkey his mother and Maria knew he was quite safe and so was the donkey, so they were allowed to ramble about. They never went far, it is true. Piccino was too little, and besides, there were such nice little rambles quite near. This time was the loveliest of all the year. The sun was sweetly warm, but not hot, and there were anemones and flaming wild tulips in the grass.
Piccino did not know how long they were out together before Maria came to find them. The donkey had a beautiful breakfast, and Piccino ate his piece of black bread without anything to add to its flavor, because his mother was at the time in great trouble and very poor, and there was scarcely the bread itself to eat. Piccino toddled along quite peacefully, however, and when he came upon a space where there were red and yellow tulips swaying in the soft air he broke off a fine handful, and when the donkey lay down he sat by it and began to stick the beautiful, flaring things round his hat, as he had seen Maria stick things round hers. It was a torn, soft felt hat, with a pointed crown and a broad rim, and when he put it on again, with its adornment of red and yellow flowers sticking up and down, and falling on his soft, thick curls, he was a strangely beautiful little thing to see, and so like a picture that he scarcely seemed like a real child at all, but like a lovely, fantastic little being some artist had arranged to put on canvas.
He was sitting in this way, looking out to where he could see a bit of blue sea through a break in the hills, when Maria came running towards him.
“The donkey!” she cried, “the donkey!”
She had been crying and looked excited, and took him by the hand, dragging him towards home. His legs were so short and he was so little that it always seemed as if she dragged him. She was an excitable child, and always went fast when she had an object in view. Piccino was used to excitement. They all shouted and screamed and gesticulated at each other when any trifling thing happened. His mother and her neighbors were given to tears and cries and loud ejaculations upon the slightest provocation, as all Italian peasants are, so he saw nothing unusual in Maria’s coming upon him like a whirlwind and exclaiming disjointedly with tears. He wondered, however, what the donkey could have to do with it, and evidently the donkey wondered too, for she got up and trotted after them down the road.
But when they reached the house it was very plain that the thing which had occurred was not a trifle, or usual.
Piccino saw an old man standing before the door talking to his mother. At least, he was trying to get in a word edgeways now and then, while the mother wept and beat her breast and poured forth a torrent of bewailing, mingled with an avalanche of scolding addressed to her husband, who stood near her, looking at once sheepish and ill-tempered.
“Worthless brute and pig,” she proclaimed; “idle, wicked animal, who will not work to help me to feed his children. It is only I who work and the donkey who helps me. Without her we should starve—starve! And he sells her—poor beast!—sells her to get money for his wickedness and gluttony. And I am to starve without her—a fine thing! And he brings to my door the thief he has sold her to.”
Baby as he was, Piccino began to understand. His father had sold the donkey, and it would be taken away. He lifted up his voice in a wail of bitter lamentation, and breaking away from Maria ran to the donkey and clung round her front leg, rubbing his cheek wofully against her gray shoulder.
For an hour or so they all wept and lamented while their mother alternately wept and raved. She abused her husband and the old man who had bought the donkey, by turns. Stray neighbors dropped in and helped her. They all agreed that old Beppo was a usurer and a thief, who had somehow got the better of Annibale, who was also a drunken, shameless brute. Old Beppo was so overwhelmed by the storm of hard words and bad names raging about him that he actually was stunned into allowing that the donkey should remain where she was for two days, that she might finish some work her mistress had promised to do with her aid. And he went away grumbling, with his piece of rope over his arm.
There was nothing to eat in the house, and if there had been, the mother was too prostrate with grief and rage to have prepared anything like a meal. And so it seemed a great piece of good luck when dirty little Filippo burst upon them with the news that three grand carriages full of illustrious-looking forestieri and inviting hampers were unloading themselves at a certain turn of the road, where the grass was thick and the trees big and close together.
“Come!” said Maria, catching at Piccino’s hand. She gave him a look over. His crying had left a flush in his soft cheeks and a little pathetic curve on his baby mouth, which was always like a tiny vermilion bow. His hat, with the tulips tumbling round it, was set on the back of his head, and the red and yellow things made his eyes look bigger and lovelier than ever by contrast. In these respects Maria saw that he was good for more cakes and soldi than ever. And it would never have occurred to her that tears and rubbing against the donkey had left him dirtier than ever. In Maria’s world nobody troubled themselves about dirt. Washing one’s self amounted almost to a religious ceremony. But ah! that little love of a Piccino was dirty—as dirty as he was soft and dimpled and rich-colored and beautiful!
Near the place where the pleasure-seekers had spread their feast upon the grass there was a low, rough, stone wall at the side of the road.
When the servants had spread the bright rugs and cushions upon the ground the party sat down in little groups. No sooner had they done this than one of the ladies looked up and broke into a little laugh.
“Look there!” she said, nodding in the direction of the low wall, which was only a few yards from them.
And those near her looked and saw a little boy peasant, sitting with his legs dangling, and gazing at them with the interest and satisfaction of a person who has had the good fortune to secure the best seat at a theatre.
“He is a sharp one,” said the lady, “he has got here first. There will be others directly. They are like a swarm of little vultures. The Bothwicks, who have the Villa des Palmiers, were here a week ago, and they said children seemed to start up from the earth.”
The servants moved about in dexterous silence, unpacking the hampers and spreading white cloths. The gentlemen sat at the ladies’ feet, and everybody laughed and talked gayly. In a few minutes the lady looked up and laughed again.
“Look,” she said, “now there are three!”
And there were six legs dangling, and the second and third pair were little girls’ legs, and their owners looked on at the strangers with cheerful composure, as if their assistance at the festive scene were the most proper and natural thing in the world.
The lady who had seen them first was a tall and handsome Englishwoman. She had big coils of reddish-brown hair, and large bright eyes which looked restless and tired at the same time. Everybody seemed to pay her a great deal of attention. The party was hers, the carriages were hers, the big footmen were hers. Her guests called her Lady Aileen. She was a very rich young widow with no children, and though she had everything that wealth and rank could give she found it rather hard to amuse herself. Perhaps this was because she had given everything to Lady Aileen Chalmer that she could, and it had not yet occurred to her that any one else in the world was any affair of hers.
“The Bothwicks came home in raptures over a child they had seen,” she said; “they talked of him until it was fatiguing. They said he was as dirty as a pig and as beautiful as an angel. The rest of the children seemed to use him as a bait. I wish they would bring him to-day; I should like to see him. I must say I don’t believe he was as beautiful as they said. You know Mary Bothwick is by way of being artistic, and is given to raptures.”
“Are you fond of children, Lady Aileen?” asked the man nearest to her.
“I don’t know,” she answered, “I never had one. But I think they are amusing. And these little Italian beggars are sometimes very handsome. Perhaps I should not be so bored if I had a very good-looking child. I should want a boy. I believe I will buy one from a peasant some day. They will give you anything for money.” She turned her face a little, and laughed as she had done before.
“There are quite twelve on the wall now,” she said, “perhaps more. I must count them.” When they counted them they found there were fourteen, all in a row, all with dangling feet, all dirty, and all staring at what was going on with a composure which had no shadow of embarrassment touching it.
The row having gained in numbers was also beginning to be a little more lively. The young spectators had begun to exchange conversational and lively remarks upon the party, the big footmen, and the inviting things being handed about and eaten.
In ten minutes from that time Lady Aileen counted again and found there were twenty-two lookers-on, and when she reached the twenty-first she gave a slight start.
“Dear me!” she exclaimed, and laid down her fork.
“What is it, Lady Aileen?” asked a girl who sat at her side.
“I am perfectly certain the twenty-first one is the child the Bothwicks were talking about. And he is a handsome creature!”
“Which one?” the girl exclaimed, leaning forward to look. “The twenty-first. Oh, I am sure you mean the one next to the end. What a beauty! Mr. Gordon, look at him!”
And Maria had the encouragement of seeing half a dozen people turn to look at Piccino sitting by her on the wall, a marvel of soft roundness and rich color, his velvet eyes dreamily wide open as he gazed fixedly at the good things to eat, his crimson bow of a mouth with parted lips, his flaming tulips nodding round his torn felt hat.
Lady Aileen looked quite interested.
“I never saw such a beautiful little animal,” she said. “I had no idea children were ever really like that. He looks as if he had been deliberately made to order. But I should never have had the imagination to order anything so perfect.”
In a very few minutes everybody was looking at him and discussing him. Maria saw them and all the other children saw them, and the whole party began to congratulate itself and feel its spirits exhilarated, because it knew how the matter would end. The only one who was not exactly exhilarated was, it must be confessed, Piccino himself. He felt a certain shy awkwardness when he was looked at and talked about so much. He was not much more than a baby, after all, and he liked the cakes and little birds’ backs much better than he liked being looked at by so many grand ladies and gentlemen all at once. Perhaps, too, if the truth were told, he was not as thrifty as Maria and her companions. He liked the good things, but he did not like to ask for them, whereas the others did not object to begging at all. It was second nature to them.
On this occasion Maria, seeing what effect he had produced, wanted to lift him down from the wall and put him on the grass, and make him go among the signori and hold out his hand.
But he clung to her and shook his head and stuck out his vermilion under lip, and would not go.
It was when he was doing this and Maria was whispering to him, and scolding and coaxing, that Lady Aileen called to one of her footmen and told him to bring her a plateful of cakes and some marrons glacés.
“Does your ladyship wish me to take them to the beggar children?” asked Thomas, his distaste suppressed by respectful civility.
“No,” Lady Aileen answered, rising to her feet. “I am going to take them myself.”
“Yes, my lady,” said Thomas, and stepped back. “It would have been safer to have let me do it,” he remarked in a discreet undertone when he returned to his fellows. “Ladies’ dresses are more liable to touch them by accident; and one wouldn’t want to touch them.”
Lady Aileen carried her plate to the line of spectators on the wall. Mr. Gordon and two or three others of the party followed her. All along the row eyes began to glisten and mouths to water, but Lady Aileen went straight to Piccino. She spoke to him in Italian.
“What is your name?” she asked.
He hung back a little, keeping close to Maria. This was just what he did not like at all—that they would come and ask him his name and try to make him talk. He had nothing to say to people like them. He could talk to the donkey, but then the donkey was of his own world and they knew each other’s language.
“Tell the signora your name,” whispered Maria, furtively pushing him.
“Piccino,” he said at length, the word coming through a little reluctant pout.
Lady Aileen laughed.
“He says his name is Piccino,” she said to her companions. “That means ‘little one,’ so I suppose it is a sort of pet name. How old is he?” she asked Maria.
Piccino was so tired of hearing that. They always asked it. He never asked how old they were. He did not want to know.
“He will be six in three months,” said Maria.
“Will you have some cakes?” said Lady Aileen. Piccino held out his horribly dirty, dimpled hands, but Maria took off his hat with the tulips round it and held it out for him.
“If the illustrissima will put them in here,” she said, “he can carry them better.”
Lady Aileen gave a little shudder, but she emptied the plate.
“What an awful hat!” she said to her friends. “They are quite like little pigs—but he looks almost prettier without it. Look how wonderful his hair is. It has dark red lights in it, and is as thick as a mat. The curls are like the cherubs’ of the Sistine Madonna. If it were not so dirty I should have liked to put my hand on it.”
She spoke in English, and Piccino wondered what she was saying about him. He knew it was about him, and he looked at her from under his veil of lashes.
“It would please me to have a child as handsome as that about me,” she said.
“Why don’t you buy him?” said Mr. Gordon; “you spoke of buying one just now. It would be like buying a masterpiece.”
“So it would,” said Lady Aileen. “That’s an idea. I think I will buy him. I believe he would amuse me.”
“For a while, at least,” said Mr. Gordon.
“He would always be well taken care of,” said her ladyship, with a practical air. “He would be infinitely better off than he is now.”
She was a person who through all her life had cultivated the habit of getting all she had a fancy for. If one cultivates the habit, and has plenty of money, there are not many things one cannot have. There are some, it is true, but not many. Lady Aileen had not found many. Just now she was rather more bored than usual. Before she had left England something had occurred which had rather troubled her. In fact, she had come to the Riviera to forget it in change of surroundings. She had been to Monte Carlo and had found it too exciting and not new enough, as she had been there often before. She had been to Nice, and had said it was too much like a seaside Paris, and that there were so many English people that walking down the Promenade des Anglais was like walking down Bond Street. She had tried San Remo because it was quiet, and she had a temporary fancy for being quiet, and then she had chanced to meet some people she liked. So she had taken a snow-white villa high above the sea, and with palms and orange-trees and slender yellow-green bamboos in the garden. And she had invited her new acquaintances to dinner and afternoon tea, and had made up excursions. Still, she was often bored, and wanted some new trifle to amuse her. And actually, when she saw Piccino, and Mr. Gordon suggested to her that she should buy him, it occurred to her that she would try it. If she had chanced to come upon a tiny, pretty, rare monkey or toy terrier, or an unheard-of kind of parrot or cockatoo, she would have tried the experiment of buying it; and Piccino, with his dirty, beautiful little face and his half-inch eyelashes, did not seem much more serious to her. He would cost more money, of course, as she would have to provide for him in some way after he had grown too big to amuse her; but she had plenty of money, and she need not trouble herself about him. She need not see him if she did not wish to, after she had sent him to school, or to be trained into some kind of superior servant. Lady Aileen was not a person whose conscience disturbed her, and caused her to feel responsibilities. And so, after the party had been to explore Ceriani and the things that otherwise interested them, she asked Mr. Gordon to go with her to the poor little tumble-down house which Maria had pointed out to her as the home of Piccino. Maria had, in fact, had a rich harvest. Everybody had returned full of good things, and Piccino’s small pocket was rich with soldi.
“I am going to carry out your suggestion,” Lady Aileen said to Mr. Gordon, as they walked down the road.
“What was it?” Mr. Gordon asked.
“That I should buy the child.”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Gordon. “You find you can always buy what you have a fancy for?”
“Nearly always,” said Lady Aileen, knitting her handsome white forehead a little; “I have no doubt I can buy this thing I have a fancy for.”
It chanced that she came exactly at the right moment. As they approached the house they heard even louder cries and lamentations and railings than Piccino had heard in the morning.
It appeared that old Beppo had repented his leniency and had come back for the donkey. He would not let it stay another night. He wanted to work it himself. He had brought his piece of rope and had fastened it to the pretty gray head already, while Piccino’s mother, Rita, wept and gesticulated and poured forth maledictions. The neighbors had come back to sympathize with her and find out what would happen, and the children had begun to cry and Annibale to swear, so that there was such a noise filling the air that if Lady Aileen had not been a cool and determined person she might have been alarmed.
But she was not. She did not wait for Mr. Gordon to command order, but walked straight into the midst of the altercation.
“What is the matter?” she demanded in Italian, “what is all this noise about?”
Then, after their first start of surprise at seeing the grand lady, who was so plainly one of the rich forestieri, Rita and all her neighbors began to explain their wrongs at once. They praised the donkey and reviled Annibale, and proclaimed that old Beppo was a malefactor without a soul, and a robber of the widow and the fatherless.
“Far better,” cried Rita, “that my children should be without a father. An idle, ugly brute, who takes their bread out of their poor mouths. To sell their one friend who keeps them—the donkey!”
Old Beppo looked both sheepish and frightened when Lady Aileen turned upon him as he was beginning to try to shuffle away with his property at the end of his rope halter.
“Stay where you are!” she said.
“Illustrissima,” mumbled Beppo, “a thousand excuses. But I have work to do, and the donkey is mine. I have bought it. It is my donkey, illustrissima.”
Lady Aileen knew Italy very well. She drew out her purse, that he might see it in her hand, before she turned away from him.
“Stay where you are,” she said. “I shall have something to say to you later.”
Then she turned to Rita.
“Stop making a noise,” she said. “I want to talk to you.”
“What could the illustrious signora have to say to a wretched woman?” Rita wept. “All her children must starve; she must starve herself; death from cold and hunger lay before them!”
“No such thing,” said Lady Aileen. “I will buy your donkey back, and give you food and fuel for the winter—for more than one winter—if you will let me have what I want.”
Rita and the neighbors exclaimed in chorus. If she could have what she wanted, the most illustrious signora! What could she want that a hovel could hold, and what could such poor creatures refuse her?
Lady Aileen made a gesture towards Piccino, who had gone to stand by the donkey, and had big tears on his eyelashes as he fondled its nose.
“I want you to lend me your little boy,” she said. “I want to take him home with me and keep him. It will be much better for him.”
The neighbors all exclaimed in chorus. Rita for a moment only stared.
“Piccino!” she said at length. “You want to take him—to make him your child!” And aside she exclaimed: “Mother of God? it is his eyelashes!”
Lady Aileen shrugged her shoulders slightly. “I cannot make him my child,” she said, “but I will take care of him. He shall live with me, and be fed and clothed, and shall enjoy himself.”
Maria clutched at her mother’s apron.
“Mother,” she said, “he will be a signorino. He will ride in the carriage of the illustrissima. It will be as if he were a prince.”
“As if he were a prince!” the neighbors echoed. “As if he were a king’s son!” And they all looked at dirty little Piccino with a growing awe.
Rita looked at him too. She had never been a very motherly person, and these children, who had given her such hard work and hard fare, had been a combined trial and burden to her. She had never felt it fair that they should have come upon her. Each one had seemed an added calamity, and when Piccino had been born he had seemed a heavier weight than all the rest.
It was indeed well for him that his eyelashes had begun to earn his living so early. And now, if he could save their daily bread and the donkey for them, it would be a sort of excuse for his having intruded himself upon the world. But Rita was not the woman to let him go for a nothing.
“He is as beautiful as an angel,” she said. “He has brought in many a lira only because the forestieri admire him so. His eyelashes are an inch long. When he is old enough to sing——”
Lady Aileen spoke aside to Mr. Gordon.
“I told you that I believed I could buy this thing I fancied,” she said.
To Rita she said:
“Tell me what you want. I will give you a reasonable sum. But you will be foolish if you try to be extortionate. I want him—but not so much that I will be robbed.”
“I should be a foolish woman if I tried to keep him,” said Rita; “he will have nothing to eat to-night if he stays here, nor to-morrow, nor the day after, unless a miracle happens. The illustrious signora will give him a good home, and will buy back the donkey and save us from starvation? I can come sometimes to the villa of the signora and see him?”
“Yes,” said Lady Aileen, practically, “and the servants will always give you a good meal and something to carry home with you. You can have him back at any time if you want him.”
She said this for two reasons. One was because she knew his mother was not likely to want him back, because he would always be a source of small revenue. And then she herself was not a person of the affections, and if the woman made herself in the least tiresome, she was not likely to feel it a grief to part with the child. She only wanted him to amuse her.
How it was all arranged Piccino did not in the least know. As he stood by the donkey his mother and the neighbors, his father and Beppo and the illustrious lady, all talked together. He knew they were talking of him, because he heard his own name, but he was too little to listen or care.
Maria listened to good purpose, however. She was wildly excited and exhilarated. Before the bargain was half concluded she slipped over to Piccino’s side and tried to make him understand.
“The signora is going to buy back the donkey,” she said, “and give us money besides, and you are going back in her beautiful carriage to San Remo, to live in her magnificent villa, and be a signorino, and have everything you want. You will be dressed like the king’s son, and have servants. You will be as rich as the forestieri.”
Piccino gave her a rather timid look. He was not a beloved nursery darling, he was only a pretty little animal who was only noticed because he was another mouth to feed; he was not of half as much consequence as the donkey. But the dirty place where he ate and slept was his home, and it gave him a queer feeling to think of tumbling about in a strange house.
But Maria was so delighted, and seemed to think he had such luck, and everybody got up a sort of excitement about him, and he did not want the donkey to be sold, and he was too young to realize that he could not come back as often as he liked. And in the end, when the matter was actually settled, he found himself part of a sort of triumphal procession which escorted him back to the place where the carriages were. His mother and Maria and several of the neighbors walked quite proudly along the road with him, and even old Beppo followed at a distance, and the donkey, having been freed from the halter, and taking an interest in her friends, loitered along also, cropping grass as she went.
Lady Aileen and Mr. Gordon had gone on before them. When they reached the place where the rest of the party was waiting, Lady Aileen explained the rather remarkable thing she had done, and did so with her usual direct coolness.
“I have bought the child with the eyelashes,” she said, “and I am going to take him back to San Remo on the box with the coachman. He is too dirty to come near us until he is washed.”
She was a person whom nobody thought of questioning, because she never questioned herself. She simply did what it occurred to her to do, and felt her own wish quite enough reason. She did not care in the least whether people thought her extraordinary or not. That was their affair, and not hers.
“You have bought Piccino!” one of her friends exclaimed. “Does that mean you are going to adopt him?”
“I have not thought of it as seriously as that,” said Lady Aileen. “I am going to take him home and have him thoroughly washed, however. When he is clean I will decide what I shall do next. The thing that interests me at present is, that I am curious to see what he will look like when he has had a warm bath all over, and has been puffed with violet powder, and had his hair combed. I want to see it done. I wonder what he will think is happening to him. Nicholson will have to take care of him until I find him a nurse. Look at his relatives and friends escorting him in procession down the road. They have already begun to regard him with veneration.”
She beckoned to one of the men servants.
“Greggs,” she said, “you and Hepburn must put the child between you on the box. He is going back to San Remo with me. See that he does not fall off.”
Greggs went to the coachman, with a queer expression of the nostrils.
“We’ve got a nice bunch of narcissuses to carry back between us. Her ladyship says the boy is to go with us on the box.”
“A nice go that is for two men that’s a bit particular themselves,” said the coachman. “Let’s hope he won’t give us both typhus fever.”
And under these auspices Piccino went forth to his strange experience.