 | CHAPTER XIV.
GIOVANNI AND PANTALON. Outpost |  |
14. CHAPTER XIV.
GIOVANNI AND PANTALON.
It was April; and the bit of sky to be seen between two
tall roofs, from the window of Mrs. Ginniss's attic, had
suddenly grown of a deeper blue, and was sometimes
crossed by a great white, glittering cloud, such as is never
seen in winter; and, when the window was raised for a few
moments, the air came in soft and mild, and with a fresh
smell to it, as if it had blown through budding trees and
over fresh-ploughed earth.
Cherry was now well enough to be dressed, and to play
about the room, or sew a little, or look at pictures in the
gaudily painted books Teddy anxiously saved his coppers
to buy for her: but, more than once in the day, she would
push a chair to the bed, and climb up to lie upon it; or
would come and cling to her foster-mother, moaning, —
“I'm tired now, mammy. Hold me in your lap.”
And very seldom was the petition refused, although the
wash-tub or the ironing-table stood idle that it might be
to love the child, that she would have been as unwilling as
Teddy himself to remember that she had not always been
her own.
Sitting thus in her mammy's lap one day, Cherry suddenly
asked, —
“Where's the music, mammy?”
“The music, darlint? And what music do ye be manin'?”
“The music I heard one day before I went to heaven.
Didn't you hear it?”
“An' whin did ye go to hivin, ye quare child?”
“Oh! I don't know. When I came back, I was sick in
the bed. I want the music, mammy.”
“It's Jovarny she manes, the little crather,” said Mrs.
Ginniss, and promised, that if Cherry would lie on the bed,
and let her “finish ironing the lady's clothes all so pretty,”
she should hear the music as soon as Teddy and the organ-grinder
came home.
To this proposal, Cherry consented more willingly than
her mammy had dared to expect; and when, after finishing
the ironing of some intricate embroideries, the laundress
turned to look, she found the child had dropped quietly
asleep.
“An' all the betther fur yees, darlint,” said she. “Whin
ye waken, ye'll think no more uv the music that well-nigh
kilt yees afore.”
An hour later, Teddy's entrance aroused the sleeper, who,
rolling over upon the bed with a pretty little gape, smiled
upon him, saying, —
“Where's the music, Teddy? Mammy said you'd get it
for me.”
“It's Jovarny she's afther wantin' to hear play on his
grind-orgin; an' I towld her he'd coom whin yees did,”
explained Mrs. Ginniss: and Teddy, delighted to be asked
to do any thing for his little sister, lost no time in running
down stairs, and begging the Italian, who had just returned
home, to play one of the prettiest tunes in his list, but on
no account to touch the one that had so strangely affected
the little invalid upon a former occasion.
The Italian very willingly complied, and was already in
the midst of a pretty waltz when Teddy re-appeared in his
mother's room. Cherry's delight was unbounded; and
when the whole list of tunes, with the exception of the
cachuca, had been exhausted, she put her arms round
Teddy's neck, and kissed him, saying, —
“Thank you, little brother. I'll eat my supper for you
now.”
And this, as Cherry had hardly been willing to eat any
thing since her illness, was considered, both by Teddy and
herself, as a remarkable proof of amiability and affection.
The next day, before Teddy went away in the morning,
he was obliged to promise that he would bring the music
at night; and, as he ran down stairs, he stopped to beg the
organ-grinder to come home as early as possible, and to
come prepared to play for the little sister's benefit.
“Let her come down and see the organ and Pantalon,”
said the Italian in his broken English; and Teddy eagerly
cried, —
“Oh! may she?” and ran up stairs again with the invitation.
But Mrs. Ginniss prudently declared that Cherry
must not think of leaving her own room at present, while
the stairs and entries were so cold; and “Thin agin,” said
she, “maybe the bit moonkey ud scare her back into the
fayver as bad as iver.”
So, for a week or two longer, Cherry was obliged to
content herself with an evening-concert through the floor:
and upon these concerts the whole of the day seemed to
depend. Very soon the little girl began to have her favorites
among the half-dozen airs she so often heard, and, little by
little, learned to hum them all, giving them names of her
although quite unable to give any reason for so doing; and
Teddy, who watched her constantly, noticed that she always
remained very thoughtful, wearing a puzzled, anxious look,
while hearing it. After a time, however, this dim association
with the almost-forgotten past wore away; and
although Cherry still called the air “Susan,” and liked it
better than any of the rest, it seemed to have become a
thing of the present instead of the past.
At last, one warm day in April, when Giovanni had
returned home earlier than usual, and Teddy again brought
an invitation to the bambína, as he called Cherry, to visit
him, Mrs. Ginniss reluctantly consented; and the little girl,
wrapped in shawls and hood, with warm stockings pulled
over her shoes, was carried in Teddy's arms down the stairs
as she had been brought up in them six months before.
The boy himself was the first to think of it, and, as he
stooped to take the little figure in his arms, said, —
“You haven't been over the stairs, sissy, since Teddy
brought you up last fall.”
“Teddy didn't bring me up. I never came up, 'cause I
never was down,” said Cherry resolutely; and the boy,
who dreaded above all things to awaken in her mind any
the shawl about her, and promising his mother not to
stay too long, carried her gently down the stairs, and to
the door Giovanni opened as he heard them approach.
“Welcome, little one!” said the Italian in his own language
as they entered; and Cherry smiled at the sound,
and then looked troubled and thoughtful.
The truth was, that 'Toinette's father and mother had
often spoken both Italian and French in her presence; and
although the terrible fever had destroyed her memory of
home and parents, and all that went before, the things that
she had known in those forgotten days still awoke in her
heart a vague sense of pain and loss, — an effort to recall
something that seemed just vanishing away, as through the
strings of a broken and forsaken harp will sweep some
vagrant breeze, wakening the ghosts of its forgotten melodies
to a brief and shadowy life, again to pass and be forgotten.
So 'Toinette, still clinging to Teddy's neck, turned, and
fixed her great eyes upon the Italian's dark face so earnestly
and so piteously, that he smiled, showing all his white
teeth, and asked, —
“Does the little one know the language of my country?”
“No: of course she don't. I don't,” said Teddy, looking
a little anxiously into Cherry's face, and wondering in his
own heart if she might not have known Italian in that former
life, of whose loves and interests he had always been so
jealous.
Giovanni looked curiously at the two children. Cherry,
in recovering from her illness, was regaining the wonderful
beauty, that, for a time, had seemed lost. The remnant
of her golden hair spared by Mother Winch's shears had
fallen off after the first attack of fever, and was now
replaced by thick, short curls of a sunny brown, clustering
about her white forehead with a careless grace far
more bewitching than the elaborate ringlets Susan had been
so proud of manufacturing; while long confinement to the
house had rendered the delicate complexion so pearly in its
whiteness, so exquisite in its rose-tints, that one could
hardly believe it possible that flesh and blood should
become so etherealized even while gaining health and
strength.
The subtle eye of the Italian marked every point of this
exquisite loveliness, ran admiringly over the outlines of the
graceful figure, the delicate hands and little feet, the classic
curve of the lips, the thin nostrils and tiny ears; then returned
heavy lashes, and smiled at the earnestness of the gaze that
met his own. Then, from this lovely and patrician face, the
Italian's eyes wandered to Teddy's coarse and unformed
features, and figure of uncouth strength.
“Nightingales are not hatched from hens' eggs,” muttered
Giovanni in his native tongue.
“Speak that some more; I like it,” said Cherry softly.
“Yes; and you are like it, and, like all that belongs to my
Italia, beautiful and graceful,” said Giovanni, dropping the
liquid accents as lovingly from his lips as if they had been
a kiss. Then, in the imperfect English he generally spoke,
he asked of Teddy, —
“Where did the child come from?”
“She's my little sister,” replied the boy doggedly.
The Italian shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows,
muttering in his own tongue, —
“I never heard or saw any child above there in the first
weeks of my living here. But what affair is it of mine? The
child I have lost is safe with the Holy Mother!”
He crossed himself, and muttered a prayer; then from
behind the stove, where he lay warming himself, pulled a
little creature, at sight of whom Cherry uttered a scream,
and clung to Teddy.
“It's the monkey, sissy; it's Jovarny's monkey; and his
name is Pantaloons,” explained Teddy.
“Pantalon,” corrected the monkey's master; and snapping
his fingers, and whistling to the monkey, he called him
to his shoulder, and made him go through a number of
tricks and gestures, — some of them so droll, that Cherry's
terror ended in peals of laughter; and she soon left Teddy's
side to run and caper about the room in imitation of the
monkey's antics.
“Does she dance, the little one?” asked Giovanni,
watching the child's lithe movements admiringly.
“Sure, and every step she takes is as good as dancing,”
said Teddy evasively.
“Let us see, then.”
And the Italian, arranging the stops of his organ, played
the pretty waltz Cherry had so often heard from it, and
liked so well.
The child continued her frolicsome motions, unconsciously
adapting them to the music, until she was moving in perfect
harmony with it, although not in the step or figure of a
waltz.
“She was born to dance!” exclaimed Giovanni with
enthusiasm; and, moving the stops of the organ, he passed,
cachuca.
As the first tones struck the child's ear, she faltered; then
stopped, turned pale, and listened intently.
“Whisht! That's the tune I told you not to play!” exclaimed
Teddy. But Giovanni, his eyes fixed upon the child,
did not hear or did not heed him, but played on; while
Cherry, trembling, pale, her hands clasped, lips apart, and
eyes fixed intently upon the musician, seemed shaken to the
very soul by some strange and undefined emotion. Suddenly
a scarlet flush mounted to the roots of her hair, her
eyes grew bright, her parted lips curved to a roguish smile;
and, pointing her little foot, she spun away in the graceful
movements of the dance, and continued it to the close, finishing
with a courtesy, and kiss of the hand, that made Giovanni
drop the handle of his organ, clasp his hands, and cry in
Italian, —
“Bravo, bravo, picciola! Truly you were born to
dance!”
But the child, suddenly losing the life and color that had
sparkled through every line of face and figure, ran with a
wild cry to Teddy, and, clasping him tight round the neck,
burst into a flood of tears, crying, —
“Take me home, Teddy! — quick, quick! I want
mamma!”
Mrs. Ginniss had taught her to say “mammy;” and
Teddy remembered with dismay that she had never used the
name “mamma,” except in the delirium of her fever, when
she was evidently addressing some distant and beloved
object. But still he chose to understand the appeal in his
own way; and, hastily wrapping the shawls about the little
figure, he raised it in his arms, saying soothingly, —
“Come, then; come to mammy, little sister. You didn't
ought to have danced and got all tired.”
“Good-by, little one,” said Giovanni somewhat ruefully.
The child raised her head from Teddy's shoulder,
and, smiling through her tears, said sweetly, —
“Good-by, 'Varny. It wasn't you made me cry, but
because” —
“'Cause you was tired, little sister,” interposed Teddy
hastily; and Giovanni looked at him craftily.
“I'll come and see you another day, 'Varny; but I must
go lie down now,” continued Cherry, anxious to remove
any wound her new friend's feelings might have received.
And the organ-grinder smiled until he showed all his white
teeth, as he replied, —
“Yes, and again and again, — as often as you will,
picciola.”
But Teddy, shaking his head disapprovingly, muttered,
as he carried his little sister away, —
“No: it isn't good for you, sissy, to get so tired and
worried.”
| CHAPTER XIV.
GIOVANNI AND PANTALON. Outpost | |