by Ouida
His long stride and the child’s rapid little trot kept them even, and took them fast into the road and on to the bridge. At the entrance of this bridge Sandro met them: though the children were always together, Sandro knew little of Bruno, and was afraid of the little he did know. But the common bond of their trouble made them friends. He seized hold of Bruno as he went to the bridge —
“Do not waste time in the Lastra. He is not in the Lastra. There was some horrid quarrel — so they say, Nita knocked the body down — all about that fiddle and the quantity of money. The boy has run away, and my Gemma with him — my pretty little Gemma! — and a minute ago there came in Nisio with his baroccino; he has been to Prato, and he says he saw them there, and thought that we had sent them — there is a fair. You can see Nisio; he is stopping at the wineshop just across. That was at four in the day he saw them. The boy was playing. Will you go? I do not see how I can go — they will turn me away at Giovoli if I go — all my carnations potting and all my roses budding — and then the goat is near her labour, and nothing but his child to see to her or to keep the boys in order — and what the lad could take Gemma for, if he would run away, though she was only a trouble in the house, and a greedy poppet always, still—”
Bruno, before half his words were done, was away over the bridge, and had reached the wineshop, and had confronted Nisio — Dionisio Riggo, a chandler and cheesemonger of the Lastra, who had a little bit of land out Prato way.
“You saw — the boy — in Prato?”
Nisio grinned.
“I saw Lippo’s foundling in Prato. Is that much to you? Nay, nay! I meant no offence indeed. Only you are so soft upon the boy — people will talk! Yes, he was there, playing a fiddle in a crowd. And the little girl of Sandro’s — the pretty white one — with him. Only a child’s freak, no doubt. I thought they were out there for a holiday. Else I would have spoken, and have brought them home. But they can take no harm.”
Bruno left him also without a word, and went on his way as swiftly as the wind up to the house of Lippo.
Old Baldo was working at a boot at his board before his door. Lippo, who had just come down from the hills, was standing idling and talking with his gossip the barber. His wife was ironing linen in an attic under the roof, her eyes none the worse, though she had bound one up with a red handkerchief that she might make her moan with effect to the neighbours.
Bruno’s hand fell like a sledge‐hammer on his brother’s shoulder before Lippo knew that he was nigh.
“What did you do to the boy?”
Lippo trembled, and his jaw fell. People came out of the other doorway. Old Baldo paused with his awl uplifted. Children came running to listen. Bruno shook his brother to and fro as the breeze shakes a cane by the river.
“What did you do to the boy?”
“I did nothing,” stammered Lippo. “We were vexed — all that money — and nothing but a fiddle to show. That was natural you know — only natural was it? And then the child grew in a dreadful passion, and he flew on my poor good Nita like a little wild cat, and blinded her — she is blind now. That is all the truth, and the saints are my testimony!”
“That is a lie, and the devils are your sponsors!” shouted Bruno, till the shout rang from the gateway to the shrine. “If harm have come to the child, I will break every bone in your body. I go to find him first — then I will come back and deal with you.”
He shook Lippo once more to and fro, and sent him reeling against the cobbler’s board, and scattered Baldo’s boots and shoes and tools and bits of leather right and left; then without looking backward or heeding the clamour he had raised, he dashed through the Lastra to get home, and fetch money, and find a horse.
Old Baldo did not love his son‐in‐law. His daughter had been taken by Lippo’s handsome, soft, pensive face, and timid gentleness and suavity of ways, as rough, strong, fierce‐tempered women often are; and Baldo had let her have her way, though Lippo had brought nothing to the common purse. It was a bad marriage for Nita, the sole offspring of the old cobbler, who owned the house he lived in, and let some floors of it, and was a warm man all the Lastra said, with cosy little bits of money here and there, and morsels of land even, bought at bargains, and a shrewd head and a still tongue, so that he might be worth much more that even people fancied, where he sat stitching at his door, with a red cap and a pair of horn spectacles, and a wicked old tongue that could throw dirt with any man’s or woman’s either.
Lippo stood quivering, and almost weeping.
“So good as we have been!” he moaned.
“You white‐livered cur!” swore old Baldo, who had been toppled off his stool, and was wiping the dust off his grey head, and groping in the dark for his horn spectacles, with many oaths. “You whining ass! Your brother only serves you right. It is not for me to say so. It is ill work washing one’s foul linen in the town fountain. But if Bruno break your neck he will serve you right — taking his money all these years, and starving his brat, and beating it; — pah!”
“And what would you have said if I had pampered it up with dainties?” said Lippo, panting and shivering, and hoping to heaven Nita’s hands were in the starch, and her ears anywhere than hearkening out of the window.
“That is neither here nor there,” said old Baldo, who, like all the world, detested the tu quoque form of argument. “That is neither here nor there. The pasticcio was none of my making. I said there were brats too many in the house. But you have got good pickings out of it, that is certain; and it is only a raging lion like Bruno, a frank fool, and a wrathful, and for ever eating fire and being fleeced like a sheep, that would not have seen through you all these years.”
Lippo upset the stall again by an excess of zeal in searching for the spectacles, and prayed the saints, who favoured him, to serve him so that, in the noise of all the falling tools, his terrible father‐inlaw’s revelations might not reach the listening barber.
Rage in, wit out: — Lippo sighed to think that his lot fell for ever amongst people who saw not the truth and wisdom of this saying.
He found the spectacles, and then gathered himself together with a sigh.
“My brother shall not go alone to seek the boy,” he said with gentle courage and a sigh. “I thought the child was safe upon the hill, or else — Harm me? — oh, no! Poor Bruno is a rough man; but he owes me too much — besides, he is not bad at heart — oh, no! Perhaps I was hasty about that money. After all, it was the child’s. But when people are poor, as we all are, and never taste meat hardly twice a year, and so much sickness and trouble everywhere, it overcomes one. So much money for a toy! — for, after all, an old lute does as well. Tell Nita I am gone to look for Signa, and may be out all night.”
“He is a good man, and it is a shame to treat him so,” said the women at the doors.
Old Baldo picked up his waxed thread, and made a grimace to himself, as he went to his work again, with a lanthorn hung up above him on a nail. But it was not for him to show his daughter, or her husband, in the wrong. Besides, popular feeling, so far as it was represented in the lane between the gateway and the shrine, was altogether with Lippo.
He had struck a chord that was sure to answer. People who lived on black bread and cabbages, and had a good deal of sickness, and laboured from red dawn to white moonlight to fill empty mouths, were all ready to resent with him the waste of gold pieces on a child and a fiddle.
He knew the right key to turn to move his little world.
Good man as he was, he went down the lane with an angry heart, saying, as old Vasari has it, things that are not in the mass; but he said them to himself only, for he had a character to lose.
Under the light of the lamp that jutted out from the east gateway, where the old portcullis hangs, he saw Bruno. He was putting a little, rough, short pony into a baroccino, having hired both from a vintner, whose tavern and stable were open on to the street.
The baroccino was the common union of rope and bars and rotten wood and huge wheels,
which looks as if it would be shivered at a step, but will in truth whirl unbroken over mountain‐heights, and fly unsinking over a morass. The pony was one of those sturdy little beasts which, with a collar of bells and a head‐dress of fox‐tails, fed on straw and on blows, and on little else besides, will yet race over the country at that headlong, yet sure‐footed, speed, which Tuscans teach their cattle, heaven knows how. Bruno had hired both of the vintner, to save the time that his return home would have taken him.
The street was quite dark. The lamp in the gateway shed a flickering gleam over Bruno’s dark face and the brass of the pony’s headstall.
Lippo’s heart stood still within him with fear. Nevertheless, he went up to the place. He had a thing to say, and he knew he must say it then or never.
“Bruno, give me one word,” he said, in a whisper, touching his brother on the arm.
Bruno flashed one glance at him, and went on buckling the straps of the harness.
“Are you going to quarrel with me — about the boy?”
“As God lives, I will kill you if harm come to him.”
Lippo shivered.
“But if you find him safe and sound — boys are always safe and sound — do you mean to quarrel with me? — do you mean to take him away?”
“If you have dealt ill with him, it will be the worse for you.”
Lippo knew the menace that was in his brother’s voice, though Bruno did not look up once, nor leave off buckling and strapping. And he knew that he had dealt ill — very ill.
“Listen, Bruno!” he said, coaxingly. “He will tell you things, no doubt; children always whine. We have punished him sometimes; — one must punish children, or what would they be? If you listen, he will tell you things, of course. Children want to live on clover, and never do a stroke of work. “‘
Bruno freed his arm from his brother’s hand, with a gesture that sent the strap he was fastening backward up into Lippo’s face.
“You have hurt him, and you have lied, and you have betrayed me and cheated me,” he said between his teeth. “I know that — I know that! Well, your reckoning will wait — till I have found the child.”
Lippo’s blood ran very cold. Concealment, he saw, was impossible any longer. If the boy were found, he knew that he would have scant mercy to look for from Bruno’s hands.
“But hear a word, Bruno,” he said; and his voice shook, and his fingers trembled as they clutched at Bruno’s cloak, as the latter took the ropes that served for reins and put his foot on the step of the baroccino. “Just a word — just a word only. Will you take him away? Will you cease to pay? Will you break our compact? Is that what you mean?”
Bruno sprang on the little cart, and answered with a slash of his whip across Lippo’s mouth.
Lippo, stung with the pain of the blow, and goaded by a laugh that he caught from the vintner, who stood watching in his tavern doorway, sprang up also on the iron bar that serves as footboard to the little vehicle.
“Take care what you do!” he hissed in his elder’s ear. “Take care! If you cease to pay — if you take the child — I will say what I said. I will make him hate you; I will tell him who he is; I will tell him how you stabbed his mother at the fair; I will tell him how you — you — you left her alone dead for the flood to take her, and maybe had murdered her, for aught I know. And see how he will love you then, and eat your bread. Now strike me again, if you like. That is what I shall say. And what can you do? Tell me that — tell me that! Now go and ride out all the night, and think and choose. How weak you are! — ah, ah! How weak you are against me now! — how weak, with all your rage!”
Bruno struck him backwards off the step. The pony dashed away into the darkness. Lippo fell in the dust.
When the tearing noise of the wheels and the hoofs flying away into the night over the stones had died away, Lippo lifted his head to the vintner, who had raised him from the ground, and had poured some wine into his mouth.
“Good friend,” said gentle Lippo, with faltering breath, wiping the dust and a little blood from his forehead; “good friend, say nothing of this — it would only bring trouble on Bruno. I would have gone with him to find the boy, but you saw what his passion was. He thinks me to blame; perhaps I was. So much money thrown away on a toy of music for a child, when a pipe cut in the fields does as well, and it might have been laid aside for his manhood! And so much want as there is in the world! But never mind that; say I was wrong — only do not tell people of Bruno. You know he is brawling always, and that gets him a bad name; and not for paradise would I add to it. He is too quick with his hands, and will take life, I always fear, one day; but this was an accident — a pure accident only! Oh, I am well — quite well; not hurt at all. And your wine is so pure and good.”
And he drank a little more of it, and then went away home; and the vintner watched him, going feebly, as one bruised and shaken would do; and shook his head, and said to three or four others who came in for a flask and a turn at dominoes, that that beast Bruno had well‐nigh killed his brother and driven over him; and that it would be well to give a hint of the story to the Carabineers when they should next come by looking after bad men and perilous tempers.
VOLUME II.
CHAPTER I.
WHEN he reached Prato it was quite night. Most of the houses were shut up; but, as it had been a great fair day, there were lights in many places, and little knots before winehouse doors, and groups coming and going to the sound of mandolines, laughing and romping about the old crooked streets.
There was a bright moon above the old town where Fra Lippo once lived. The shadows of walls, and gables, and toweres, and roofs, were black as jet. The women and youths danced on the pavement, while somebody strummed a guitar for them. Thre was a smell of spilt wine and dead flowers. Some mountebanks, in scarlet and blue and silvery spangles, were coming down a lane, having finished their night’s work, drum and fife sounding before them.
Bruno saw nothing of all this.
He only looked for a little, thin, pale face with big brown eyes as bright as stars.
He stopped the pony before a little osteria that was open, because some men were still playing draughts and drinking in its doorway, and bid them put the beast in the stable; and asked if they had seen a little boy and a girl somewhat younger, they boy having a fiddle with him, and long hair.
The people did not know; they had not noticed; scores of children and country‐folks had been about Prato all the day.
Bruno left the pony and baroccino with them, and wandered out where chance took him. He had no acquaintance in Prato. He had only come there a few times to buy or sell, if there were a good chance to do either with profit.
But he inquired of every creature he saw for the children.
He asked the girls dancing. He asked the old man raking up the melon‐rinds and fig‐skins out of the dust. He asked the women barring up their casements for the night. He asked the lovers sauntering in the white, moon‐lit midnight, with their arms round one another. He asked the dusky monk, flitting like a brown shadow from one arched doorway to another. But none could tell him anything; nobody had noticed; some thought they had seen a little fellow with a violin, but were not sure; one girl had, she knew, and had thought that he had played prettily; and remembered there had been a crowd about him; but where the child had gone, had no idea.
“He must be in the town,” thought Bruno, and looked for him in every nook of shadow — under arches or on the steps of shrines, thinking to find them curled up asleep, like kittens after play.
He tramped through and through the town, not staying for any rest or drink, footsore and heartsore, and putting away form him as best he could the dark perplexity of how he should tell the child the truth, without risking the loss of his affections; or, keeping his secret, save the boy from Lippo.
As he went pondering, with midnight tolling from the ancient bells above him, one of the mountebanks came to him down a dim passage‐way, a rose‐coloured and gold‐bedizene
d figure, skipping in the shadows with a mask on, and a bladder that it rattled.
“Are you looking for two children?” it said to him through its grotesque visage. “I can tell you of him — a little lad with a fiddle, and a pretty baby, white as a lily. They were here all day in Prato. And this evening Giovacchini, whom we call the Ape, took them both off with him to the sea. They went willingly! — oh,they went willingly! The Ape’s children always do; only they never know what they go to! Do you understand? The Ape has such a pretty cajolery with him. He would make the little Gesu off the very altars dance and play for him. But if you are their father, as I take it, follow them to Livorno, the Ape will take ship there at once. Follow them. For the Ape is — not so pleasant when children once are out of sight of shore. You understand!”
And, singing, the mountebank, with his masked face grinning from ear to ear, rattling his peas in his gilded bladder, skipped away as he had come, too suddenly and swiftly for Bruno to stretch a hand to stay him.
“Is that true?” cried Bruno, with a great gasp. He felt as if a strong hand had gripped his heart and stopped its beating.
An old man, raking the fruit skins that revellers had left on the stones, looked up from his basket of filth.
“I daresay it is true,” said he. “Why not? That man they call the Ape seeks pretty children, and catches some, and takes them off to strange countries, to go about and play and dance, or sell the plaster casts, or grind the barrel organs. I have heard of him. It is a trade, like any other. He always takes care that they go willingly. Still, if you be their father, and have no mind to lose them, best be off. He would be sure to go to sea at once.”
“The sea! Where is the sea?” said Bruno.
He did not know, except that it was somewhere where the sun went every night.
“Go to Livorno. They have gone to Livorno safe enough. The Ape will be sure to ship with them, and he got a score more I warrant! Go to Livorno.”