CHAPTER IV
It was dusk when he wakened. Lady Aileen’s callers had departed some time ago, and Lady Aileen herself had departed to take a twilight drive, which was a thing she was fond of doing. The servants were enjoying themselves in their own fashion in the kitchen, and all the house seemed very quiet.
It seemed so still to Piccino when he slipped off his chair and stood on his feet rubbing his eyes, that for a moment he felt a little frightened. He was so accustomed to living in a hovel crowded with children and only partitioned off from the donkey, that Lady Aileen’s villa seemed enormous to him. It was not enormous, but it seemed so. He looked round him and listened.
“Nobody is here!” he said. “Everybody has gone away. Nicola has gone away.”
He certainly did not want Nicholson, but his sense of desolation overwhelmed him.
And then, as he stood there, there came a sound which seemed to alter everything. It came through the window, which was open, and which he ran towards at once. It was the voice of the friend who had come to him the night before—the dog who lived in the fine kennel at the gate, and wanted human things so much, and was so unhappy.
Piccino listened to him a moment, and his breath began to come quickly. He turned round and went to the door. It was not locked—Nicholson had not thought of that. It was easy enough to open, and when he had opened it he made his way quickly towards the stairs.
He did not go out at the big front door at which he had been brought in. That was shut, and he knew he was too little to open it, but he remembered the side entrance into the garden, out of which he had slipped when he went to the girl who looked like Maria. He found it again and passed through it, and was out among the flowers in a moment, running quickly down the broad drive to the gate.
How the dog jumped and yelped and covered him with caresses when he reached the kennel! He knew his small bed-fellow again well enough. Perhaps, too, he liked the fragrance of the garlic, which was still as perceptible as ever. The two embraced and rubbed against each other, and tumbled affectionately about, until Piccino was quite dirty enough for the bathtub again. But there was to be no more bathtub if he could help it. He wanted the dog to come with him, though, and help him to find his way; and he fumbled and struggled with the chain and collar until his friend was loose, and, finding that nothing held him, began to race up and down in breathless rapture and run in circles, darting like a wild thing.
“Come,” said Piccino, “come with me. I am going home.”
He did not realize the number of chances there might be that he would be caught and carried back into bondage. He was not old enough to think much of that, but he just knew enough to teach him that it was best to keep in the shade when he saw any one coming. He trudged along, keeping under trees and near walls, and he was clever enough to do it until he turned off the highway which led through the city. He passed by houses and shops and villas and gardens, but at last he turned into the road which sloped up among the olive vineyards, into the hills. Then he felt that he was at home. He did not know that he was still miles and miles away from Ceriani; he only knew that the big trees and the little ones were familiar things, that when he lifted his face he could see the sky he knew so well, and that the wind that blew softly up from the sea among his curls was something he seemed to have been far away from during these last strange two days. These things made him feel that Ceriani must be near.
He was used to running about and being on his legs all day, or he would have been tired out long before he was. When he did begin to be tired he sat down on the grass, and the dog sat with him. In their own way they talked to each other. Then they would get up and trudge on.
They had rested and trudged on many times before he began to be really discouraged. But his legs were so short, and in time he began to feel as if Ceriani was too far away! Stars were beginning to come out, and he suddenly realized that he was very little, and it had taken the big carriages of the forestieri quite a long time to return to San Remo after their picnic. He sat down suddenly and began to cry.
“We can’t find it!” he said to the dog. “We can’t find it!”
The dog looked very much grieved. It is probable that he knew quite well what Piccino said. He shook his head until his ears made a flapping noise. Then he pushed close to Piccino and kissed him, lapping the salt tears off his soft cheeks as they rolled down. He knew he could have found the place all by himself, and got there without any particular trouble, but he could not leave his friend, and such a little friend, too, by the roadside. So he pressed close to him and looked sympathetic, and kissed his tears off cheeringly.
“We can’t find it!” wailed Piccino. “Maria! Maria! Maria! Ma-ri-a!”
Up the curve of the road below there toiled a donkey dragging a cart. It was one of the little peasant carts, floored with a lattice-work of ropes, and there were three people in it. They were a boy and two very young men. They had been to a festa, and the boy was fast asleep, and the two young men were in very good spirits. They had been dancing and enjoying themselves, and had had so much wine that they were not quite sure of what they were doing. They alternately sang songs and made jokes and laughed at each other. One of the favorite jokes was about a pretty peasant girl they had both been dancing with, and as it chanced, her name was Maria. After a good deal of such joking they had both been silent for a while, being a little stupid with the wine they had had, and quieted a little by the motion of the cart as the donkey jogged along with it. It was very peaceful in this place, with the gentle wind from the sea, and the occasional rustle of the olives, and the stars shining sweetly above the many shadows.
“What are you thinking of, Pietro?” said one to the other at last, with a little laugh.
“Maria! Maria! Ma-ri-a!” wailed Piccino, a few hundred feet above them.
They both burst out laughing at once.
“Of Maria! Maria!” said Alessandro. “The very trees call out to you!” And they found this such a beautiful joke that they laughed until the very donkey was afraid they would roll off the cart.
By the time they stopped they were close to Piccino, and, whether because she wanted a rest or from some queer instinct, the donkey stopped too.
“Maria!” cried Piccino. “Voglio andare a casa! Voglio an-dar-e!”
“It is a child,” said Pietro. “It is lost!” They had had wine enough to be good-natured, and ready for any adventure. Pietro got out of the cart and rather unsteadily went to the side of the road, where Piccino sat crying with his dog.
“Who are you?” he said, “and what are you doing here?”
Piccino answered him with sobs. He was not so clear as he thought he was, and Pietro and Alessandro laughed a good deal. They thought he was a great joke—all the more when they saw how he was dressed. Their heads were not clear enough to permit them to quite understand what was meant by the childish rambling and disconnected story about the forestieri and the water and Nicola and the donkey, but they found out that somehow the young one lived near Ceriani and wanted to get home to Maria. They themselves lived not far from Ceriani, and if they had been quite sober might have put this and that together and guessed something of the truth; but as it was, it happened to seem enough of a joke for them to be inclined to carry it out.
“Let us take him in the cart as far as we go,” said Alessandro. “He can find his way home after we leave him. Perhaps he will talk to us about his Maria. She may be prettier than the other one.” And so he was lifted into the cart, and the dog trotted joyfully by the donkey’s side. The two probably talked to each other confidentially, and everything was explained between them as far as the dog could explain it. At all events, he could explain the loneliness of living in a kennel with a chain round your neck, and grand people passing you, laughing and talking, and taking no notice, however much you jumped and whined and begged to have a pat and a word, and not seeing that you loved everybody.
Piccino sat in the cart and leaned against Pietro or the boy, and enjoyed himself. He answered questions about Maria, and did not know why his rescuers laughed at everything he said. Maria seemed a very mature person to him, and he did not know that the young men’s impression that she was a pretty young woman was not the correct one. Pietro had some good things he had brought from the festa in a paper, and he gave him some. That he was such a pretty, soft, rabbit-like little thing, made things pleasant for him even when he was picked up from the roadside by two young peasants full of cheap wine. They laughed at his disconnected babbling, and thought him great fun, and when he was sleepy let him cuddle down and be comfortable.
He was very fast asleep when they wakened him, having reached the end of their journey.
“Here!” they said, shaking him good-naturedly enough, “you can find your way to Maria now.”
He stood unsteadily in the road where Pietro put him, rubbing his eyes, and feeling the dog greeting him again by jumping at him and kissing him.
“Where is Maria?” he said, sleepily.
Pietro and Alessandro were sleepy too by this time; they had almost had time to forget him while he was asleep.
“Go on and you will find her,” they said. “Ceriani is near here.”
When he saw the donkey led away Piccino was on the point of crying because he was to be left, but before he quite began he saw by the light of the moon, which had risen since he fell asleep, a familiar tree—a big-twisted and huge-trunked olive he had sat under many a time when he had strayed down the road with Maria. It made his heart begin to beat fast and his rising tears dry in their fountain. It was true! He was near Ceriani! He was near home! He could find it! He began to run as fast as his short legs could carry him. The white villa and the grand signori who had joked about him all day, the bathtub and Nicola and the dreadful pasta, seemed as far away now as Ceriani and the donkey had been this morning. The tears that had dried for joy suddenly began to rise again for joy. He did not know anything about it himself, but it was joy which made him begin to choke—this beautiful little savage peasant who had been taken away to a world so much too grand for him.
He ran and ran, and at every yard he saw something that he knew, and felt that he loved it because he knew it. The late moon shone down on him, a little white figure running eagerly; the trees rustled as he passed.
“Maria! Maria!” he said, but he did not say it loud, but softly.
And at last he had reached it—his own dear hovel which he seemed to have left a thousand years ago. He stood and beat on the door with his little soft fists.
“Maria! Maria!” he said, “open the door! I have come home. Let me in!”
But inside they slept the heavy sleep of wornout peasants and of tired childhood. They could not have heard him even if he had been able to make more noise. His child hands could make very little. They slept so heavily that he could hear them.
And there he stood in the moonlight, thumping on the old door, unanswered. And the dog stood by him, wagging his tail and looking up at him with such a companionable air that he could not feel he was alone, and actually did not begin to cry. At all events he had got home, and was among the hills again, with the trees growing close around him, and Maria and the donkey.
His whimper lost itself in a sudden sense of relief. Yes, there was the donkey in her stable, and the door would keep nobody out.
“The donkey will let us in,” he said to the dog. “Let us go in there.”
And a few moments later the donkey was roused from her sleep by something soft stumbling against her as she lay down, and, being a donkey with a memory, she realized that a familiar friend had come to her at this untimely hour, and she knew the little voice that spoke, and the little body which cuddled against her side as if she were a pillow, and being also affectionate and maternal, she did not resent the intrusion by any unfriendly moving.
And in the early, early morning, when Rita opened the stable door and let in a shaft of the gold sunlight which was lighting up the darkness of the olive-trees, the first thing it shone upon was the beautiful, tired little travel-stained figure of Piccino, who lay fast asleep against the donkey’s gray side, his arms around her neck, and the dog’s body pressed close and lovingly against his own.
Upon the whole, Lady Aileen was not very much surprised and not at all disturbed when it was found that he was gone. She sent some one to Ceriani, and when the news was brought back to her that he was discovered there, she only laughed a little. In fact, she had found it too tiresome an amusement to undertake the management of a lovely little wild animal, to whom civilization only represented horror and dismay. She sent Rita some money—not too much, but enough to make her feel quite rich for a few weeks. For the rest, she only remembered Piccino as part of an anecdote it was rather amusing to tell to those of her friends in London who were entertained by anecdotes.
“He thought we were savages or mad,” she used to say. “I think he might have borne anything, perhaps, but the bathtub. He said that we ‘put him in water!’”