by Grant Allen
At last, hemmed in between the mountains and the shore, we began to reach a long line of splendid meretricious towns: towns whose like I had not seen before — courtesans of the great — San Remo, Mentone, Nice, Cannes, Monte Carlo. There, scissors flagged The poor have no part in them. We hurried past them all, gleaming white in the sun, and smiling with their rows of villas towards the sea; we made for Marseilles and up the Rhône valley in the direction of Paris. We jogged on deliquescent through the arid fields, with the thermometer at ninety in the shade — if there had been any. I cannot rattle down the Rhône valley now in the train de luxe, past those grim grey towns, without a sigh and a smile for the far-off time when we toiled up it slowly, ten kilometres a day, along sun-baked roads, half barefoot and half clad, in draggled procession — the One-eyed Calender in front, singing and wagging his head — he had St Vitus’s dance — and trundling his wheel before him; the Signora his wife slouching behind, with a bone in both hands, in her anxiety to extract from it the last particle of nourishment; and myself trailing after, a little on one side, in the narrow shadow of the walls, watching the lizards dart into sheltered holes as I approached, and envying them the cool crannies where I could not follow them.
All this time I was learning, learning, learning. People have often expressed surprise to me since that, with “my early disadvantages,” I should yet be able to hold my own in society. To me, the wonder seems all the other way: how do our women come to know anything when they have never had points of contact with realities?
No schooling was allowed to interfere with my education. I was getting a clear idea of European geography, and a distinct conception of the value of centesimi. I was also, imperceptibly to myself, adding to my little stock of languages. Before we reached Paris, I spoke Provençal and French as well as I already spoke English and Italian. Not that I even knew I was learning them. That is the best of being bilingual; given two tongues, all others come easily. Moving slowly as we did along the debatable borderland of the languages, through Genoa and the Ligurian coast to Provence, and then up the Rhône valley, I hardly even noticed at the time the demarcation of dialects. They melt into one another imperceptibly. It seemed to me only that, as I trailed ever westward and northward, the people spoke progressively worse and worse Italian What was oddest of all, when we first entered France it was the common people who spoke best, and the signori who spoke the most clipped and distorted dialect. Only gradually did I learn, as we neared Lyons and Dijon, that this extremely bad and mispronounced Italian was what people call French, and that the better the French the outer and more maimed and debased the words in it. Something of that feeling persists with me to this day; thought I now speak French with ease, and immensely admire the grace of French literature, the language itself sounds to me always like bastard Italian. John Stodmarsh tells me that is because it is the furthest removed of all Romance tongues from the original Latin. He says I was really a philologist sans le savoir.
Philologist or not, thus it came about that I grew into a linguist For this I think there were ample reasons. If one starts with Italian and English, French is hardly more than a half-way house, having relations with both. But more than that; those who do not love me will tell you that I am in type an adventuress. Now it is a common note of adventuresses that, clever or stupid, they invariably possess the gift of tongues — without which, indeed, you are not an adventuress at all, but a mere ordinary dishonest body. Adventuresses are the intellectual aristocracy of crime. I have learnt with ease every European language I have come across, except German. For the exception I have good grounds; indeed, I do not know why any un-Teutonic soul should ever wish to acquire the tongue of the Fatherland. In the first place, it spoils the expression of your mouth; in the second place, it can only be of use to you in the improbable event of your desiring to hold conversation with a German.
The Duddleswells and others have carelessly asserted that during this long march we often slept out in the rain. That is a vile calumny. In hopelessly wet weather, the One-eyed Calender always sought the shelter of a tramp’s refuge, or took us to one of those humble auberges on the outskirts of villages, where On loge à pied is scrawled on the lintel in uneven letters. It was only on fine nights that we ever slept in the open; even then we usually lay under some barn or shed, or else nestled close beneath the big stones that supported a hayrick.
And my father, all this time? — Ah, there you put your finger on a spot that winces!
Remember, I was a child. A child’s head has room for but one emotion at a time. That emotion, while it lasts, monopolises consciousness. On the day when I left home, my head was filled with burning indignation against my mother. I am not ashamed to say that, just at that moment, I forgot my father. Such forgetfulness is my only excuse — that, and my age; for used not Miss Westmacott to inform me with impressive iteration that you cannot put old heads on young shoulders? I never thought of my father’s distress and alarm till I reached Milan, and could no longer see the Monti Berici. By that time, return was practically impossible. But the moment it occurred to me, I cried hard over it.
“Why dost thou cry?” the Signora asked.
I told her.
She agreed with me that to go back was out of the question. She and the One-eyed Calender were certainly not going back to please me; and I could not tramp alone from Milan to Vicenza. Why not, as easily as I had run away from home, you ask? There, dear respectable English reader, you show once more the limitations of your respectability. Had you had the mental advantage of being a tramp, as I have had it, you would see why at once. It is easy to set out from home and go where Fortune leads you; she is certain in the end to lead you somewhere. Put to set out with the object of attaining a definite point is quite another matter; the jade, in that case, will surely guide your footsteps to Patagonia when you are bound for Kamschatka. ‘T is Theseus in the labyrinth, without his clue. We all know the difference between trying to draw a card at random and trying to draw four aces running.
When I came to realise what I had done, I cried much about my father; and the very first money I earned for myself — you shall hear of that presently — I spent on a sheet of paper and a stamp to write to him. I learned long after from Mariana that he received my letter, and how much it comforted him. And he forgave me, I know; for when I returned to the Monti Berici, I planted a white rosebush on my father’s grave; and that white rose-bush blossomed far more luxuriantly than Mariana’s myrtle. But this is anticipating; and you are not to suppose my dear father dead until I tell of it.
CHAPTER VII
I FIND MY VOCATION
YOU must not imagine, however, that all this time I was dependent for bread on the charity of the One-eyed Calender and the Signora his wife. Quite the contrary: reciprocity is the soul of business. I was at least as useful to my new friends as they to me; otherwise, being of those who will not beg, I should not have continued to journey in their company.
When the wandering Calender dropped from the sky and invited me to join his travelling band of two, he did it, I was aware (in the most literal sense), with a single eye to his own advantage. With the wisdom of this age, he saw that “there was money in me.” But being a prudent man in his own line, he did not at once press his advantage; he regarded me from the first as a long investment, and waited for my talents to develop naturally. They did develop before long; indeed, I think he saw a return for his money — or rather his bread and protection — sooner than he expected.
It is my temperament to dance. Some elf dwells in my limbs; he moves as to a tabor. And he danced me on my way from Vicenza to Paris, when I was not engaged in straggling at the rear of our travelling company.
The dancing took shape of itself. I think it was as we trudged from Milan to Genoa that I first discovered the trade value of my antics. We had stopped at Borghetto, a small white village lost among the folds of the Apennines, where we camped on the open piazza near the church. The population, as usual, turned out in force
with all its scissors. Our advent marked an epoch. While the women and children stood by to watch the shower of sparks, I played about myself in the dust of the piazza, making dolls, as was my fashion, out of sticks and rags which I picked up in the gutter. One of the dolls I named, as usual, Roméo, the other Juliet. In pure childish spirits I began playing them off against one another, talking and gambolling as I did so. Presently, one or two of the elder children, tired of the sparks that flew from the wheel, turned round to listen. They made up my first audience. Encouraged by their interest, I began my game all over again, out of a girl’s mere vanity at finding somebody pay attention to her chatter; I told them the story of Roméo e Giulietta, half in recitative, half in pantomime and action. Sometimes I narrated; sometimes I danced and capered; sometimes I used my puppets as marionettes, and spoke for them like a Punch-and-Judy man, just as the fancy seized me. By and by I became aware that the elders too had formed a ring around me, and that all Borghetto was straining its ears to hear me. Even the One-eyed Calender left off his grind, grind, grind, and leaned on the frame of his wheel to listen; the Signora bent forward and craned her skinny neck; not a woman in the crowd but overflowed with sympathy for “that poor Giulietta,” and eagerly awaited the unfolding of her story.
The more I found my audience listened, the more eager and excited I became. I poured forth my tale as far as I could remember it, with dramatic accompaniment; I made my fantoccini talk and cry; I danced sympathetically in a ballet d’ action. The women cried out that Giulietta was a sweet fanciulla, and that I was a little witch; both which candid expressions of opinion delighted me. My first performance was an immense success, all the more because wholly improvised and unrehearsed. In that moment I became aware that I was at heart an artist.
As soon as I had finished, and fell back, laughing, showing my teeth with pride, the One-eyed Calender rose at once from his wheel and improved the occasion. Wagging his head grimly, he handed me the little tin mug (embossed with the legend Bevi, card) out of which we drank the water of brooks on our way, and motioned me to go round with it. I did not hesitate. That was not begging. I felt at once it was in essence payment for an artistic exhibition.
I carried the mug round, casting a saucy triumphant eye as I went on my queer little audience. The village was poor, but its sympathies were awakened. Hands fumbled in pockets. Old purses opened. Centesimi poured in with surprising rapidity. When I had tripped round the circle, casting a smile and a nod at each prospective giver, or dropping a quick curtsey to accompany each grazie, as the coppers jingled on the floor of the tin mug, we counted out our gains and found I had netted thirteen soldi. For the Calender and his wife thirteen soldi clear was a glittering Golconda. The patron’s one eye glistened. “I told you she would go far!” he murmured to his wife in a tone of triumph.
The Signora, who was an acidulous lady, made a wry face (as though her own were not wry enough), and muttered something in the unknown tongue which she always talked when she did not wish me to understand. But though the words were strange to me and conveyed no meaning, I was quite old enough to catch at the intonation: she was telling the One-eyed Calender not to say too much and make the girl overproud of her performance. Indeed, the Signora’s desire to avoid excessive praise had often a deeper effect upon me than her husband’s frank recognition of my worth. I saw in her lack-lustre eye that she was afraid I might form too good an opinion of my own value and so slip through her fingers; the knowledge that she thus desired to keep me gave me an effectual lever to use against her in case of injustice. For it was injustice that I dreaded; not for nought was I born the daughter of the man who with his own right hand drove the Austrians out of Italy, and who was even then engaged in plotting to upset the new despotism of the tyrannical borghesia.
My audience lingered about a little when all was over, to see whether perchance I would repeat my performance; but the Signora whispered to me, “No more to-night, lest you make yourself cheap, little one!”
I recognised her wisdom and shook my head waywardly.
The audience murmured discontent; so, by way of protest, I proceeded to put my puppets to bed with profound seriousness. “Poor Roméo!” I said, bending over him, “he is dead. We must bury him quietly. These good people of Borghetto will not allow even the dead to sleep in peace! They want me to play the archangel Gabriel — toot, toot, toot, on a tin trumpet — and bring him to life again with a glorious resurrection. But no, my poor Roméo; I know how you feel. You need rest to-night after so much emotion!”
The women laughed and nodded their heads. “Is she clever,” they cried, “the little one! She will be an opera-singer when she grows up. Her eyes! Her movements!”
“Play again! Play us another piece!” several of my new friends urged.
I rose and smiled sweetly. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, bobbing to them, “I, the actors and actresses, am too tired to re-open the theatre and set another piece before you.” They dispersed unwillingly. When they had all melted away, and we were left to ourselves, I turned with asperity to the One-eyed Calender. “You took my thirteen soldi!” I cried in an aggrieved tone. For he had promptly pocketed them.
“Yes,” the Signora answered, nodding her head. “We took them, naturalmente. Thou owest us for arrears of board and lodging.”
I reflected a moment. That was true. I had eaten their bread; I had accepted their panettone. — But still — thirteen soldi! It was a power of money. I glanced at Roméo, tucked up neatly in bed in his ragged tunic. The commercial spirit awakened within me. I was not aware just then that I was fighting the battle of the proletariate against the capitalist, like my father; but I felt my soul burn that the One-eyed Calender should appropriate the whole of my petty earnings in return for bare board and problematical lodging. Besides, this thing might grow. The Calender himself had prophesied, “She will go far”; and I saw he had reason. If the people of this insignificant village could give me thirteen soldi in pieces of one or two centesimi each, what might I not hope to earn in the great rich cities?
I struck for the rights of labour.
“See here,” I said argumentatively; “what I have done to-night, that I can do elsewhere. I can dance and sing, and tell tales of mermaids, and make wooden dolls talk, and so earn money. You may keep some of it, to buy me food arid all that; but I ought to touch half for myself. That is but bare justice.”
When John Stodmarsh taught me political economy long after, I glowed with pride to think that from the first, though firm for the rights of labour, I was quite prepared to be just to capital.
My demand of fifty per cent, for the toiler, however, made the capitalists tremble in their torn shoes. And indeed I perceive now that it was a greater proportion than labour can ever expect to earn, before the socialist millennium. The Signora cried, “Nonsense!” I could see she was inexorable. She was for giving me nothing. But the Calender interposed. He was a man; and I hope’t is no treason to my sex to admit that, in matters of business, I have found men proner to compromise than women.
“Thou art right,” he said to me slowly, after a brief marital altercation with the Signora in the unknown language. “I can see it with one eye. Thou sayest well that thou oughtest to touch something. Still, we pay for thy food, and we secure thee lodging—”
“Where necessary,” I put in gravely.
He winced. “Where necessary,” he went on, accepting the correction. “For that, we naturally deserve to be recouped. We took thee as a fellow-wayfarer, expecting to recoup ourselves. This is a world, reflect, Rosalba, of nothing for nothing. But we acknowledge thy claim to a share, if this luck should hold. In that case” — he put his head on one side, keeping it as straight for the nonce as St. Vitus would permit, and screwed his face up insinuatingly—” in that case, we would allow thee one sou in ten on all thou earnest.” He stared at me hard. “I call the offer liberality.”
One sou in ten! My gorge rose at it. Ten per cent, alone as the miserable pittance offere
d to labour! (I did not know at the time it was ten per cent., but I resisted instinctively the aggression of the capitalist.) “Let us be reasonable,” I said, sitting down and facing him. “I allow that you have fed me, and sometimes even housed me; but my food and lodging are not expensive. I give you my lowest terms. One soldo in five! Come;’t is an ultimatum!” I did not quite know what an ultimatum might be, but I knew it was the sort of proposal my father had flung at the Austrian Emperor’s head, and that after he had once launched an ultimatum nobody ever said anything further.
“One soldo in five? But ‘t is ruin. Why, what wouldst thou do with it?”
I tossed my head. “My affair! One soldo in five! An ultimatum. Take it — or leave it.”