Madcap Part 26

"Mademoiselle--" he paused and changed her t.i.tle to "Madame" (a discretion which the others acknowledged with nods of the head)--Madame was Yvonne Deschamps, Premir lady musician of the world, who played five separate and distinct musical instruments at one and the same time--an artist known, as the Signor would perhaps be aware, from Sicily to Sweden, from Brittany to the Russias.

Hermia bowed.

As for himself, he was Monsieur Philidor, the lightning portrait artist, of Paris. Likenesses, two francs--soldiers, ten sous.

Signor Fabiani was glad. _Madonna mia!_ It was not often that such persons met. Would the visitors not join him at a pitcher of Calvados which was not cooling in the stream?

Markham fastened Clarissa's halter to the wheel of the _roulette_ near the s.h.a.ggy horse, and joined Hermia, who was already at her ease by the fire and playing with the _bambino_. They were a jolly lot and made a fine plea for Markham's philosophy of content. Signor Fabiani brought the pitcher from the stream and Luigi cups from the house-wagon, and there they all sat, as thick as thieves, drinking healths and wishing one another a prosperous pilgrimage. The Fabiani family had never been to Alenon. This was one of the few parts of the world into which their fame had not yet spread. All the more their profit and glory! _Sacro mento_! They would see what they would see. He, Cleofonte Fabiani, would snap heavy chains about his chest. He would put a great stone on his stomach, and, while he supported himself on his feet and hands, Luigi would break the stone with a sledge hammer. He, Cleofonte Fabiani, would lift her far above his head, tossing her to Luigi, who would catch her upon his shoulders. And the Signora meanwhile would juggle with a piece of paper, an egg, and a cannonball. _O Jesu_! They should see!

He stopped and looked at Hermia. A _Femme Orchestre_! In all his travels in Italy he had never seen one. The signora was an _artista_, though. That was clear. One only had to look at her to see that. He would listen with delight to her music. And Signor Philidor--would Signor Philidor do his portrait? He would pay--

He straightened, put his enormous hand upon his chest, elbow out, and took a dramatic pose of the head. He was wonderful. Markham at once fetched his sketching materials and drew him, while the others crowded about, looking over the shoulders of Monsieur Philidor, and watched the feat accomplished. Not until it was done was Cleofonte permitted to see. It would spoil the pose.

And then! _Che magnifico pitture_! It was nothing short of a miracle! The nose perhaps a little shorter--but _Madre Dio_! what could one expect in twenty minutes! Did not the mustache need a little smoothing? Upon the morning of the performance it was Cleofonte's custom to dress it with pomatum. The cap, the earrings, the mole upon his cheek--everything was as like as possible. _Si_, Monsieur Philidor was a great artist--a very great artist. He, Cleofonte Fabiani, said so.

But when Philidor took the sketch from his pad and presented it to Cleofonte with his compliments, the athlete's delight knew no bounds.

He shoed his teeth, and stood first upon one foot and then upon the other, the sketch held before him by the very tips of his stubby fingers. The Signora, relinquishing the _bambino_ to Hermia, looked over his shoulder, more pleased, even, than he. After that nothing would do but that the visitors must stay for supper. Nothing much--a soup, some rye bread, peas, and lettuce, but, if they would condescend, he, Fabiani, would be highly honored. Hermia accepted with alacrity. She was hungry again. Markham smiled and glanced up at the smiling heavens, unfastened Clarissa's pack, and brought out a roasted chicken cold, a loaf of bread, a new tin pot, and a bag of coffee, which he brought to the fireside.

The Signora insisted on preparing the meal, so Markham filled his pipe and helped Hermia to amuse the _bambino_.

"You will pardon?" said Fabiani. "But this is the hour of practice, while the supper is preparing. Luigi, Stella, we will go on if you please."

The child rose, rather ruefully, Hermia thought, and took her place upon the mat, where, under Luigi's direction, she went through the exercises which were to keep her young limbs supple for the approaching performances. It was the familiar thing--the slow bending of the back until the palms of the hands touched the ground, in which position the child walked backward and forward, the contortions of the slender body, the "split," the putting of the legs around the neck.

Hermia had seen these acts at the _Vari?t?s_ and at Madison Square Garden when the circus came, but had seen them at a great distance, under a blaze of light, as part of a great spectacle in a performance which went so smoothly that one never gave a thought to the difficulty of achievement. There in the silent shadows of the wood, bared of its tinsel and music, the rehearsal took on a different color. She saw the straining muscles of the child, the beads of perspiration which stood on her brow, the livid face with its tortured expression. An exclamation of pity broke from her lips. "Is it not enough?" she asked. Cleofonte only laughed through his cigarette smoke. It seemed like a great deal, he said. She had not had her practice yesterday. It would be still easier to-morrow. And then he signaled for the performance to be repeated. At last Hermia turned to the _bambino_ and would look no more. She was tasting life, other people's, at the springs, as John Markham had promised, and it was not sweet.

There was a brief rest, after which Luigi and Stella did an acrobatic performance of tumbling and balancing in which at the end Cleofonte joined with a masterful air, punctuating the acts with cries and handclaps, and at the end of each act they all bowed and kissed the tips of their fingers right and left to the imaginary audience. The rehearsal ended in applause from the visitors. As for the Signora, having put the coffee on to boil, she was not nursing the _bambino_.

Cleofonte came up, puffing and blowing and tapping his chest. "The performance is ended," he exclaimed, "in tricks with Toma.s.so--that is the name of my bear--and in great feats of strength, as I have told you, after which I make my great wrestling challenge, to throw any man in the world for one hundred francs. _Madre de Dio_! You can be sure that when they see Luigi break the stone upon me--they are not zealous."

The baby bed and fast asleep, it was put to bed in the wagon and they all sat at supper. The delight Hermia had taken in her new acquaintances--Fabiani's bombast, Luigi's grace, and the Signora's motherly perquisites--had lost some of its spontaneity since she had seen the expression on the face of the child Stella, when she had gone through her act of _d?carca.s.se_. It haunted her like the memory of a bad dream and brought into stronger contrast her own girlhood in New York, with its nurses and governesses and the sheltered life she had led under their care and supervision.

And when Stella, her slim figure wrapped in a shabby cloak, came from the _roulette_ and joined them at the fire, Hermia motioned her to the place beside her. When she sat, Hermia put an arm around the child and kissed her softly on the brow. Stella looked up at her timidly and then put her sinewy brown hand in Hermia's softer ones and there let it stay. Hermia had made a friend.

Cleofonte looked up from his chicken bone and shook his huge shoulders.

"You are sorry, Signorina? _Jesu mio_! So am I. But what would you have? One must eat."

"It seems a pity," said Hermia, smiling.

Fabiani shrugged his shoulders and raised his brows to the sky, with the resignation of the fatalist. "It is life--_voil? tout_."

The soup was of vegetables, for which the Fabiani family had not paid, but it was none the less nourishing on that account. The chicken, a luxury, for which for many days the palate of the Fabiani family had been innocent, was acclaimed with joy and dispatched with magic haste.

The cheese, the rye bread, and the salad were beyond cavil; and the coffee--of Monsieur Duchanel's best--made all things complete.

The dusk had fallen, velvety and odorous, and the stars came peeping shyly forth. Fabiani, who for all his braggadocio did not lack a certain magnificence, had insisted that the visitors remain in camp for the night. Madame should sleep in the house-wagon with the Signora Fabiani, Stella and the baby. Were there not two beds? As for Monsieur Philidor--he knew a man when he saw one. The night was heaven sent. Monsieur should sleep as he and Luigi slept--_?

la belle ?toile_.

Hermia's cover for the night a.s.sured, Markham had accepted the invitation, and now, all care banished for at least twelve hours, they sat in great good fellowship before the fire, listening to Cleofonte's tales of the road. They forgave him much for his good heart and at appropriate moments led in applause of his prowess and achievements.

When the conversation lagged, which it did when Cleofonte grew weary, Hermia brought forth her _orchestre_ and played for them; first the tunes she had practiced and afterward, as she gained new confidence in their appreciation, "Santa Lucia" and "Funiculi, funicula," to which Cleofonte, who had a soul for concord, roared a fine ba.s.so. It was a night for vagabonds, carefree, a night of laughter, of mirth and of song. What did it matter what happened on the morrow? Here were meat, drink and good company. Could any mortal ask for more?

After a time, the din awakening the _bambino_, the Signora went to bed, and Hermia, her hand in Stella's, followed to the wagon. The animals fed and watered, Markham settled down by the fire with his newly found friends and lit a pipe. In a moment Luigi had fallen back on his blanket and was asleep. Markham was conscious that Fabiani still talked, but he had already learned that it was not necessary to make replies, and so he sat, nodding or answering in monosyllables. A warm breeze sighed in the tree tops, the rill tinkled nearby, and a night bird called in the distance. The glow of the fire painted the trunks of the trees which rose in dim majesty to where their branches held eyrie among the stars. The chains of the bear still clanked as he rolled to and fro until a gruff "Be silent, thou!" from Cleofonte brought quiet in that direction. After a while even Cleofonte grew weary of his own voice, his head fell upon his breast, and he sank p.r.o.ne and slept.

Markham sat for a long while, his back against the bole of a tree, pipe in mouth, gazing into the embers of the fire. He had brought the tarpaulin which covered the donkey's pack, and Cleofonte had provided him with a blanket, but he seemed to have no desire to sleep. The smile at his lips indicated that his thoughts were pleasant ones.

Hermia had learned something to-day--would learn something more to-morrow, and yet she had not flinched from the school in which he was driving her. If he had thought by hardship to dissuade her from her venture, it seemed that he had thus far missed his calculations.

Indeed, each new experience seemed only to make her relish the keener.

She was drinking in impressions avidly, absorbing the new life as a sponge absorbs water, differing from this only in the particular that her capacity for retention had no limitations. He smiled because it pleased him to think that his judgment of her character had not been at fault. Hers was a brave soul, not easily daunted or discouraged, better worthy of this life which was teaching its stoicism, charity and self-abnegation than of that other life which denied by self-sufficiency their very existence--a gallant spirit which for once soared free of the worldly, venal and time-serving. It pleased him to think it was by his means that she had been bought into his valley of contentment and that thus far she had found it pleasant. Would the humor last?

Fabiani snored, as he did everything, from the depths of his being, and Luigi, in the shadows, echoed him n.o.bly. Markham looked toward the _roulette_. The lantern which had burned there a while ago had been extinguished. Strangely enough, although it was his custom to be much alone, Markham wanted company. He wished at least that Hermia had bade him good night. It was curious how quickly one fell into the habit of gregariousness. He and Hermia had fared together but for one day, and yet he already felt a sort of material dependence upon her presence. It was the habit of interdependence, of course--he recognized it, the same habit which led men and women in droves to the cities, to herd in the back streets of the slums when the clean vales of the open country awaited them, sweet with the smells of shrub and clover, where one could lie at one's length and look up as one should at the stars, lulled by the song of the stream or the whistle of the south wind in the-- His head nodded and his pipe dropped from his teeth. Heigho! he had almost been asleep.

He rose and spread his tarpaulin upon the ground. As he did so a dry twig cracked nearby, a dog growled, and presently a small phantom emerged from the shadows. It was Hermia, with a finger laid upon her lips in token of silence.

"Couldn't you sleep?" he whispered.

"No. It was a pity to crowd them, so when Stella got to sleep I came away."

He laid a log upon the fire, and made a place for her beside him.

"It was very nice of you," he whispered. "To tell the truth, I wanted you."

"Then I'm glad I came. I shall sleep here, by the fire, if you don't mind."

"You're not afraid of the damp?"

"I never take colds."

She smiled at the prostrate Cleofonte, whose stertorous breathing shattered the silences.

"He is so much in earnest about everything," she laughed.

"Aren't you tired?" he asked. "You've had a hard day."

"Yes--a little. But I don't feel like sleeping."

"Nor I--but you'd better sleep, you've been up since dawn."

"What time is it?" she inquired.

He looked at his watch. "There is no time in Vagabondia. The birds have been asleep a long while. But if you must know--it's half-past nine."

"Only that?" in surprise. "We've turned time backward, haven't we?"

"Of life forward," he paused and then: "You are still willing to go on?" he asked.

She smiled into the fire.

"I am," quietly. "I'm committed irrevocably."

"To me?"

"Oh, no. To myself, _mon ami_. You are merely my recording angel."