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The Eternal City, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Prologue - Chapter 2 |
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_ PROLOGUE CHAPTER II Half-an-hour later the little musician was lying on a couch in the doctor's surgery, a cheerful room with a fire and a soft lamp under a shade. He was still unconscious, but his damp clothes had been taken off and he was wrapped in blankets. The doctor sat at the boy's head and moistened his lips with brandy, while a good woman, with the face of a saint, knelt at the end of the couch and rubbed his little feet and legs. After a little while there was a perceptible quivering of the eyelids and twitching of the mouth. "He is coming to, mother," said the doctor. "At last," said his wife. The boy moaned and opened his eyes, the big helpless eyes of childhood, black as a sloe, and with long black lashes. He looked at the fire, the lamp, the carpet, the blankets, the figures at either end of the couch, and with a smothered cry he raised himself as though thinking to escape. "Carino!" said the doctor, smoothing the boy's curly hair. "Lie still a little longer." The voice was like a caress, and the boy sank back. But presently he raised himself again, and gazed around the room as if looking for something. The good mother understood him perfectly, and from a chair on which his clothes were lying she picked up his little grey squirrel. It was frozen stiff with the cold and now quite dead, but he grasped it tightly and kissed it passionately, while big teardrops rolled on to his cheeks. "Carino!" said the doctor again, taking the dead squirrel away, and after a while the boy lay quiet and was comforted. "Italiano--si?" "Si, Signore." "From which province?" "Campagna Romana, Signore." "Where does he say he comes from, doctor?" "From the country district outside Rome. And now you are living at Maccari's in Greek Street--isn't that so?" "Yes, sir." "How long have you been in England--one year, two years?" "Two years and a half, sir." "And what is your name, my son?" "David Leone." "A beautiful name, carino! David Le-o-ne," repeated the doctor, smoothing the curly hair. "A beautiful boy, too! What will you do with him, doctor?" "Keep him here to-night at all events, and to-morrow we'll see if some institution will not receive him. David Leone! Where have I heard that name before, I wonder? Your father is a farmer?" But the boy's face had clouded like a mirror that has been breathed upon, and he made no answer. "Isn't your father a farmer in the Campagna Romana, David?" "I have no father," said the boy. "Carino! But your mother is alive--yes?" "I have no mother." "Caro mio! Caro mio! You shall not go to the institution to-morrow, my son," said the doctor, and then the mirror cleared in a moment as if the sun had shone on it. "Listen, father!" Two little feet were drumming on the floor above. "Baby hasn't gone to bed yet. She wouldn't sleep until she had seen the boy, and I had to promise she might come down presently." "Let her come down now," said the doctor. The boy was supping a basin of broth when the door burst open with a bang, and like a tiny cascade which leaps and bubbles in the sunlight, a little maid of three, with violet eyes, golden complexion, and glossy black hair, came bounding into the room. She was trailing behind her a train of white nightdress, hobbling on the portion in front, and carrying under her arm a cat, which, being held out by the neck, was coiling its body and kicking its legs like a rabbit. But having entered with so fearless a front, the little woman drew up suddenly at sight of the boy, and, entrenching herself behind the doctor, began to swing by his coat-tails, and to take furtive glances at the stranger in silence and aloofness. "Bless their hearts! what funny things they are, to be sure," said the mother. "Somebody seems to have been telling her she might have a brother some day, and when nurse said to Susanna, 'The doctor has brought a boy home with him to-night,' nothing was so sure as that this was the brother they had promised her, and yet now ... Roma, you silly child, why don't you come and speak to the poor boy who was nearly frozen to death in the snow?" But Roma's privateering fingers were now deep in her father's pocket, in search of a specimen of the sugar-stick which seemed to live and grow there. She found two sugar-sticks this time, and sight of a second suggested a bold adventure. Sidling up toward the couch, but still holding on to the doctor's coat-tails, like a craft that swings to anchor, she tossed one of the sugar-sticks on to the floor at the boy's side. The boy smiled and picked it up, and this being taken for sufficient masculine response, the little daughter of Eve proceeded to proper overtures. "Oo a boy?" The boy smiled again and assented. "Oo me brodder?" The boy's smile paled perceptibly. "Oo lub me?" The tide in the boy's eyes was rising rapidly. "Oo lub me eber and eber?" The tears were gathering fast, when the doctor, smoothing the boy's dark curls again, said: "You have a little sister of your own far away in the Campagna Romana--yes?" "No, sir." "Perhaps it's a brother?" "I ... I have nobody," said the boy, and his voice broke on the last word with a thud. "You shall not go to the institution at all, David," said the doctor softly. "Doctor Roselli!" exclaimed his wife. But something in the doctor's face smote her instantly and she said no more. "Time for bed, baby." But baby had many excuses. There were the sugar-sticks, and the pussy, and the boy-brother, and finally her prayers to say. "Say them here, then, sweetheart," said her mother, and with her cat pinned up again under one arm and the sugar-stick held under the other, kneeling face to the fire, but screwing her half-closed eyes at intervals in the direction of the couch, the little maid put her little waif-and-stray hands together and said: "Our Fader oo art in Heben, alud be dy name. Dy kingum tum. Dy will be done on eard as it is in Heben. Gib us dis day our dayey bread, and forgib us our trelspasses as we forgib dem dat trelspass ayenst us. And lee us not into temstashuns, but deliber us from ebil ... for eber and eber. Amen." The house in Soho Square was perfectly silent an hour afterward. In the surgery the lamp was turned down, the cat was winking and yawning at the fire, and the doctor sat in a chair in front of the fading glow and listened to the measured breathing of the boy behind him. It dropped at length, like a pendulum that is about to stop, into the noiseless beat of innocent sleep, and then the good man got up and looked down at the little head on the pillow. Even with the eyes closed it was a beautiful face; one of the type which great painters have loved to paint for their saints and angels--sweet, soft, wise, and wistful. And where did it come from? From the Campagna Romana, a scene of poverty, of squalor, of fever, and of death! The doctor thought of his own little daughter, whose life had been a long holiday, and then of the boy whose days had been an unbroken bondage. "Yet who knows but in the rough chance of life our little Roma may not some day ... God forbid!" The boy moved in his sleep and laughed the laugh of a dream that is like the sound of a breeze in soft summer grass, and it broke the thread of painful reverie. "Poor little man! he has forgotten all his troubles." Perhaps he was back in his sunny Italy by this time, among the vines and the oranges and the flowers, running barefoot with other children on the dazzling whiteness of the roads!... Perhaps his mother in heaven was praying her heart out to the Blessed Virgin to watch over her fatherless darling cast adrift upon the world! The train of thought was interrupted by voices in the street, and the doctor drew the curtain of the window aside and looked out. The snow had ceased to fall, and the moon was shining; the leafless trees were casting their delicate black shadows on the whitened ground, and the yellow light of a lantern on the opposite angle of the square showed where a group of lads were singing a Christmas carol. "While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground, The angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around." Doctor Roselli closed the curtain, put out the lamp, touched with his lips the forehead of the sleeping boy, and went to bed. _ |
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