Last time I was at Castellinaria there came to the town for a week a company of Sicilian actors. I was afraid the dialect would be beyond me, but Peppino assured me that it would matter very little if it were, because I should understand the gestures, and he promised to come with me and give me any explanation I wanted. So we went to the theatre the first evening. He was right about the gestures which were wonderfully expressive and, as for the dialect, it may have been because he interpreted the long speeches that I found the first two acts of La Morte Civile rather dull. He admitted that it was so, but things would improve as soon as Giovanni appeared.

In the third act a haggard, hunted creature, in a peasant’s dress which he had borrowed or stolen, wandered in among the actors; Peppino whispered that he had escaped from prison. I could not take my eyes off him; every movement, every attitude, every gesture was full of beauty, nobility and significance, and his voice was a halo of romance. I thought no more about leaving the theatre. The part has been played by many famous actors, but the long account of how and why he killed his man can never have been more finely delivered. I saw him do the deed. I saw him turn and gaze upon the body while he wiped the blood off the knife and wrung it from his hands. He sat on a chair during the whole speech and I was surprised into believing I understood every word, whereas I understood none, for it was all in the dialect of Catania and Peppino, who was as much carried away as I was, forgot to interpret. And when, still sitting on his chair, he came to his escape from prison, he seemed to lift the roof off the theatre and to fill the place with freedom and fresh air.

Peppino, before his uncle died, thought of going on the stage and passed a year with Giovanni and his company in Catania and on tour, he therefore knew him quite well and at the end of the play took me round to his dressing-room. It was Carlo Magno in his palace receiving a couple of friendly sovereigns, though we were none of us dressed for our parts. I told him that he was the greatest dramatic artist I had ever seen and that he had given me a new standard whereby to judge of acting. I said that when he first appeared I thought he really was an escaped convict who had lost his way in the streets and come on the stage for shelter, and that he was going to interrupt the play, as the theatre cat sometimes does. Suddenly, in a flash, I saw what was before me in two senses at once, and knew that it must be Giovanni acting, and the sorrow for the poor hunted wretch was turned to joy at seeing a man do something supremely well. He was as pleased as a boy with a new half-sovereign, particularly when I compared him to the theatre cat, and said, with charming simplicity—

“Thank you. Yes; that is because of the realism; that is my art.”

Peppino and I sat up late that night talking about him. He was then about thirty-five, with a large repertoire and a reputation extending through Europe and America. When he was about fourteen his father, who owned and worked the most famous marionette theatre in Catania, died suddenly, leaving the family unprovided for. He took over the business and kept his mother, his sister and his young brother. He spoke for the men figures himself, and his sister for the women. He says that in this way he learned his art, but other men have had similar training without arriving at such mastery. He has a passion for doing things thoroughly, and so thoroughly well did he manage his theatre that Catania was delighted with him. Three or four years after his father’s death, one of the celebrated Italian actors came to the town and they gave him a private performance of the Cavalleria Rusticana. The celebrated actor advised him not to waste his time with marionettes, but to act himself. The theatre was barely large enough, only six or seven paces across, but it could be made to do, and he followed the advice, giving, at first, in the Catanian dialect, plays of which nothing was written except, perhaps, a sketch of the plot. Formerly, when reading was a rarer accomplishment than it is now, it would have been of little use to write the words.

These plays are full of violence and vendetta, jealousy, murder and the elementary passions. The audience are uneducated, simple people who look for the same thing over and over again, as children love the same story and resent any radical change. This makes it easier to carry one through than it would be if subtleties or much novelty were to be attempted. I had seen some of these plays in Catania, and it may make matters clearer to give a short account of one; it was not until Peppino told me about them that I understood that the words were improvised.

In the first act Pietro Longo discovers that his sister has been betrayed, shoots her seducer and is taken by the police.

The second act passes in prison. Two convicts are talking and a third, a stupid fellow, old, dirty, only half clothed, is sitting apart, stitching together a few more rags. Singing is heard without. Every one in the theatre who had passed under prison walls by night had heard such music and had seen the singers crouching in the shadows; we all knew it was a signal. The two convicts go to the window and reply. A stone is thrown in, wrapped up in a letter, which tells them that Pietro Longo has killed one of their gang and will be taken to their prison; it is for them to avenge the murder. They confer and agree that the stupid fellow shall be their instrument. They call him from his occupation and instruct him. They tell him that a prisoner will be brought in, he is to ask his name, if he replies “Pietro Longo,” he is to stab him with the knife which they give him. He is so stupid that they have to act it for him, and to make him imitate them till they think he can be trusted. They hide. A prisoner is brought in and talks to the stupid fellow. The stupid fellow has been in prison for years and has talked to hundreds of prisoners. In the course of conversation, without any particular intention, for he has forgotten all about his lesson, he asks the prisoner his name.

“Pietro Longo.”

The stupid fellow remembers that this is his cue for doing something, but cannot remember what. His arm accidentally hits the knife which is stuck in his belt; of course, this is the prisoner he is to kill; he takes out his knife, opens it with his teeth and attacks Pietro who, though unarmed, is able to defend himself. This puts the stupid fellow out, he was told nothing about the prisoner defending himself. The two convicts, who have been watching, get impatient, come from their hiding and encourage him. This makes matters worse, he was told nothing about this either. He is irritated, he grows wilder and, in a fury, suddenly turns from Pietro and murders the two convicts instead.

The two acts were of about equal length; the first existed merely to introduce the second, and the second merely to introduce the stupid fellow whose part was nearly all gesture and, as I afterwards ascertained, was taken by Giovanni’s brother, Domenico. He may have spoken twenty words, he was too stupid to speak more; the others spoke a good deal, but, except that they had been told beforehand, as to each act, about as much as the reader has been told about the second, all they said was impromptu, so that each repetition, like a Japanese netsuke, would be a unique work of art.

Remembering how continually Sicilians use gesture in ordinary life, it will be understood that in such a play the actual words are of secondary importance. Giovanni, in working the marionettes had become familiar with all the types that in different grades of society reappear in all plays—the good king, the proud tyrant, the traitor, the faithful friend, the young lover, the noble mother and so on; and, as the words were always improvised, except in such plays as Cavalleria Rusticana, which are exceptional with the Sicilian marionettes, his memory had become stored with conventional phrases suitable for all the usual stage emergencies and always ready for impromptu delivery. His fellow-actors were also familiar with them, having heard the phrases over and over again, and seen the types with their appropriate gestures from their early youth as members of the marionette audience.

It is claimed for this kind of impromptu acting that the actors are freer than when speaking words they have learnt, and can therefore behave with more naturalness. It is the difference between delivering an extempore speech and reciting one that has been learnt—the difference between “recitare a soggetto” and “recitare col suggeritore.” So great is the freedom that an actor may introduce anything appropriate that occurs to him at the moment, and the others must be ready to fall in with it. Peppino told me that one night in Catania, after the performance, he was sitting in the cool with Giovanni’s family on the pavement and in the road, outside the theatre, when an old beggar stopped to beg. He had come a long way, he knew no one in the town, he had nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep, no money. The mother gave him a penny, Giovanni gave him another, his brother, Domenico, another—every one gave something. The beggar, seeing all that wealth lying in the hollow of his hand, and knowing that he was now safe for a few days, burst into tears and turned away speechless. At the sight of this, Domenico called to him, went after him, met him, emptied his pockets, gave him all he had, took his head in his hands, kissed him on both cheeks, dismissed him, returned to his family and was received with an approval that was too deep for words. Such an improvised incident, the sudden outcome of uncontrollable emotion, may be seen any day in Sicily and might be introduced any evening into one of these unwritten plays by any actor who should take it into his head to do it. The audience, who would probably have seen the play before, would recognize that here was an impromptu interpolation, and would applaud the actor both for the idea and for the way it was carried out.

Gradually Giovanni added written plays and a prompter, and was the first to take on tour a company of actors performing in a Sicilian dialect. He also included plays written in Italian. These written plays, though constructed with more care, did not depart far from the style with which he began. Giovanni still frequently returns from prison, but as he never forfeits the sympathy of the audience, if he really committed the crime it was in self-defence. Whatever the play may be, it always contains, besides the inevitable scenes of violence, many other passages such as hearing a letter read (he is then a simple fellow who cannot read), collapsing in the presence of the Madonna (he is then deeply religious), dancing at a festa (he is a perfect dancer), confiding, with his last breath, the name of his murderer to his young brother who promises to execute the vendetta. In these passages his humour, his delicacy, his grace, his tenderness, his voice and, most wonderful of all, his apparently intense belief in the reality of everything he says and does make one forget how crude and transpontine the bare theme is.

On my saying I should like to see more of him, Peppino asked why I had come away so soon. I had thought he must be tired and would want to be alone and change his dress.

“Never is he alone,” said Peppino. “Surely now shall he be suppering by his friends.”

We thought it too late to go and look for him then, so we determined to ask ourselves to supper after the play the following evening.

CHAPTER XVII—SUPPER WITH THE PLAYERS

Next evening the play was Feudalismo. Giovanni does not return from prison; he is a shepherd and is made to marry a girl without being told of the relations that had subsisted between her and his lord. He and his wife fall in love with one another, he discovers the deception, kills his lord and carries his wife off on his shoulders to live happily with him among his sheep in the mountains.

We went round to his dressing-room after the performance to congratulate him; when he began to bring the interview to a close, saying that no doubt it was now my bedtime, I interrupted—

“If you are going to supper presently, may I be allowed to accompany you?”

He was delighted, patted me on the back and exclaimed, “Bravo, bravo!”

It took us some time to get away; most of the company came into his dressing-room to say “Good-night” to him, men, women and children all came; each of the children expected some little attention, and Giovanni playing with a child is a beautiful sight. Then there were congratulating friends clustering round him and managers and secretaries waiting for instructions. At last, with only about fifteen others, we proceeded, stopping on the way for a prickly drink to cool us after the performance, and the barman was so overcome by the honour of serving Giovanni that we had the greatest difficulty in forcing him to accept payment. We arrived at a small piazza where five or six more of the company were waiting for us at a restaurant.

Tables were set out under the stars and we sat down to supper which was the same for all: stock fish (which they called pesce stocco and sometimes stocca fiscia), bread and wine. Giovanni kissed the loaf before cutting it, as he does on the stage.

After supper it was proposed that we should play at Tocco. I did not thoroughly understand the game, but it was something of this kind: Wine was sent for and we all threw out one or more fingers of one hand, perhaps there might be seventy-two fingers; then we were counted, beginning with the one who had proposed the game and going over us again and again until seventy-two was reached with some one who thereupon became padrone of the wine. He was entitled to drink it all, but every Sicilian is a born gentleman, so he appointed one of the company presidente and another sotto-presidente, poured out a little wine for himself and handed the bottle to the presidente, who again might drink it all if he liked. But the game was that he made a speech proposing so-and-so as a suitable person to be invited to drink, and the sotto-presidente made another speech giving his reasons for agreeing or differing. Any one who considered himself aggrieved might plead for himself, and there was some risk in giving the verdict against him because sooner or later he was pretty certain to become presidente or sotto-presidente and to take his revenge. This gave opportunities for declamation and gesticulation and resulted in much merriment.

Some discussion presently arose as to how far Africa and America are the same place: one of the actors, who had not forgotten his geography, said it was well known that they are separate countries, being, in fact, two of the quarters of the globe. Whereupon Peppino remembered how when he was at school one of the boys, on being asked to name the quarters of the globe, replied—

“The five quarters of the globe are four in number and they are the three following, viz. Europe and Asia.”

“Bravo, bravo!” shouted Giovanni, and repeated the sentence several times in his deep, rich voice.

But however amusing this might be, it did not convince us all that the two names might not apply to one place; so the geographical actor went further and told us that Africa had been known since the earliest ages, that it was not very far from Sicily and contained Tunis, a city which the company had visited on one of their tours, whereas America was a long way off, on the other side of the world, and had been discovered in comparatively recent times, and, strange to say, by an Italian. Giovanni at once showed great interest.

“Tell us about it,” he said, leaning forward.

“His name was Cristoforo Colombo,” said the actor. “He was poor and confided his difficulty to a priest who happened to be the queen’s confessor and a kind-hearted man. This priest went to the queen and said, ‘May it please your Majesty, I have a friend, Cristoforo Colombo, who wishes to discover America but he has no money to buy ships.’ The queen thought it would be a good thing that America should be discovered and promised to give him as much money as he wanted for the purpose.”

“Oh, bel!” exclaimed Giovanni. “Let us drink the health of the good queen.”

“She died some years ago,” said the actor in a warning tone.

“Then,” said Giovanni, bowing his head reverently and crossing himself, “let us drink to the repose of her blessed soul.”

We did so and had all about the voyage and the tunnies, the flight of the birds, the alarm of the crew when the meteor appeared, their disappointment when the fancied land vanished in the morning, their wonder at the distant moving light, their impatience and their turbulence. All this he did, still sitting on his seat and gesticulating. When he came to the mutiny he rose. He was peculiarly well able to tell us about the mutiny because, in addition to the usual sources of information, he had recently taken part in a performance of the story got up for a charity in Palermo and he had been the one chosen by lot to kill Colombo. He conspired apart with imaginary sailors, occasionally glancing and pointing furtively towards the other end of the piazza. When the murder had been sufficiently agreed upon, he snatched a knife off the supper-table and, hiding himself behind our chairs, crept cautiously towards that part of the deck where Colombo stood busily discovering America through a telescope, the invention of another Italian named Galileo (who was born some seventy years later). He took the knife from between his teeth where he had been carrying it, and was about to commit the dastardly act when Colombo turned round, seized him by the collar, flung him away and had him put into chains. He was brought up again when land was in sight and told to look ahead.

“But what do I see?” said the sailor, shading his eyes. “What strange vegetation is yonder and what unknown beasts? When I look upon these potatoes, this tobacco for the nose, all these elephants and cucumbers and trees full of monkeys, it appears to me that I am taking part in the discovery of America. O noble captain! PietÀ, pietÀ!”

With this he knelt at the feet of Colombo who pardoned him, and the sailors embraced and wept for joy.

And all the time Giovanni sat gazing and listening with all his eyes, his ears, his expressive hands and his eloquent back as though it was the first he had ever heard of it, which can hardly have been the case. More probably he was considering and criticizing the speaker’s delivery and mentally casting him for a part in a new play, for he lives in his art; his meals, his sleep, his recreations are all arranged with a view to the theatre whose only rival in his affections is his mother.

Then we went on with the game, if this did not form part of it, and I was given some wine and invited to drink. It was an occasion not to be passed over in silence, so, although I am not good at speech-making, I rose with my glass in my right hand and, laying my left on Giovanni’s shoulder said—

“Quattro sono le cinque parti del mondo e sono le tre seguenti: Sicilia, Inghilterra.”

Giovanni led the applause with shouts of “Bravo, bravo!” but before I could drink, my glory slipped off me, the stars went out and the world came to an end. I had spilt my wine. He saw my distress and at once took charge of the situation—

“Oh, che bel augurio!” he exclaimed.

I tried to apologize.

“No, no, it will bring us good fortune,” and turning sorrow into joy again, he dipped his finger in the spilt wine and anointed my forehead and the back of my neck; I did the same to him; he took up the bottle, flourished it in the air, sprinkling every one of us with wine, and then flung it away empty over our heads, so that it crashed down on the pavement and the pieces skated across the piazza, bang up against the opposite house. Thus we baptized our friendship and in a fresh bottle drank to its eternal continuance. He then became Carlo Magno again and declared that I was padrone of the theatre, and that if I did not come every night to see him act, and to supper afterwards, there would be an eruption of Mount Etna and he would never speak to me again.

Presently a greasy, throaty voice began to infect the air with reminiscences of O Sole Mio! Nearer and nearer it came until it floated into the piazza and a drunken vagabond reeled past us and out of sight. It was a disturbance and we rose to go. I paid sevenpence for my supper, i.e. fourpence for the pesce stocco and bread, a penny for the wine, a penny for my share of the tocco wine and a penny for the waiter. Giovanni was pleased with me for giving the waiter a penny. He said I had done quite right because the waiter (who had never seen me before) was very fond of me. It was now half-past two and I supposed we might be going to bed, but on the way we sat down outside a second caffÈ, had some more tables out and ordered coffee. O Sole Mio! sailed towards us again, followed by the drunken man. They wanted to send him away, but Giovanni, watching him, said—

“Let him stay. Give me a cigarette, some one”—as usual he had smoked all his own.

He handed the cigarette to the man who accepted it and stood gesticulating, trying to light it and mumbling unsteadily till he veered off and capsized in a heap, spluttering and muttering in the gutter.

I said, “You have been taking a lesson for your next drunken man.”

“Of course I have,” he replied.

It was past three by the time we left the second caffÈ, but we drifted into a third and, after liqueur, really did at last set about going seriously to bed; but what with seeing one another home, trying to find the reason why Feudalismo was a better play than La Morte Civile (no one had any doubt that it was, but the reason was involved in declamation and gesticulation) and one thing and another, it was past four before we separated. We were standing on the pavement outside the albergo, our numbers reduced to ten or twelve; instead of saying “Good-night” to me in the usual way, Giovanni put his hands on my shoulders and said—

“Enrico mio! Caro fratello! Io ti voglio bene assai, assai, assai!”

These were his words, but, without his voice, they can convey no idea of the great burst of emotion with which he pronounced the “bene,” or of the sobbing diminuendo with which he repeated the “assai.”

Next morning there was a rehearsal at noon and plenty of work to be got through, because the tour was only beginning, and there were six new plays added to the repertoire and fifteen new performers to the company, which numbers in all forty-four persons.

Giovanni sat with the prompter at a table and the actors went through various passages requiring consideration. He was too intent upon getting things right to waste any time by losing his temper, nor did I ever see any sign of irritation or hear him speak a hasty word. It is true he kicked Pietro off the stage one day, but he did it with the volcanic energy of Vanni kicking his wife out of the house at the end of the second act of La Zolfara. And Pietro was not really touched, he had acted in many unwritten dramas, understood in a moment, played up with the correct stage exit and we all laughed at the impromptu burlesque—or modificazione, as one of them called it.

If Giovanni was not satisfied, he got up and showed the actor how he wanted the passage done. If Berto still failed to satisfy him, he was immediately replaced by Ernesto, if Ernesto could not do it, there was always Pietro who could do nearly anything. Berto was the only one of the company who had any self-consciousness in his acting or, rather, in his attempts at acting. Probably he will return to the drapery shop in which he has hitherto been an assistant, after a pleasant wanderjahr with the company. Ernesto has been some time on the stage and was formerly a barber; he is, in fact, still a barber and shaves the company, thereby adding to his salary, the greater part of which he sends every week to his wife who is at home with his two children.

Sicilians do not like being separated from their families and, as travelling expenses are paid, if the husband and wife are both employed in the theatre, it costs no more to bring the children than to leave them at home. The principal lady is the wife of one of the young actors and they have brought the baby. The brother of this lady is chief stage carpenter and property-man, and is married to another lady of the company. One of the under-carpenters is stepson of the chief comic who was formerly a fruit seller and is a little fellow of inexhaustible drollery with a flavour of Dan Leno in his method.

I dined one day with the actor who does old priests, respectable commissaries of police, chief peasants and anything of that kind, a man of about forty who formerly kept a shop and sold grain. His wife, the daughter of artists, is about the same age and does comic mothers, women who know a thing or two and won’t stand any nonsense, garrulous duennas and so on. They had brought four of their children and occupied a fairly large room with a kitchen, which they had taken for the week. The children also act if required; one of them, Lola, a girl between five and six, was on the stage all through the first act of one of the plays; she had only a few words to speak, and all the rest of the time was moving about; she tried the rocking-chair, she stood irresolute on the side of one foot leaning against a table with a finger to her mouth, she found a ball, tossed it up, missed it and ran after it, she climbed up to a table, got a piece of bread and ate it. She had not been taught any of this business. They had merely said to her, “Play about, Lola,” and, being the daughter of artists, she had played about with an unconscious spontaneity that was startling. Had there been an irritable uncle on the scene he must have exclaimed—

“For goodness’ sake, do send that child to bed.”

Lola was at home upon the stage and was acting accordingly, if it can properly be called acting, at any rate she was playing. What was Giovanni doing at supper? Is Giovanni only an actor when on the stage and when everything he says and does has been thought out? Is he a great actor by virtue of producing the illusion of being a Lola? And is Lola not really an actress at all, because she has not prepared what she is doing and is not even trying to produce any illusion? What is acting? And what is realism? Here are more problems for discussion at supper under the stars and on the way to bed at four o’clock in the morning—problems not easily solved by a company of gesticulating freebooters who are for ever making raids, first into stage-land, then into real life, and lifting incidents across the border into that buffer-state where they lead a joyous life between the two.

CHAPTER XVIII—A YOUNG CRITIC

One day after rehearsal I had an appointment with a young man whose acquaintance I had made the previous evening behind the scenes. He was sitting on a packing-case, exchanging compliments with the head fireman, and inquired whether I was looking for anything; finding I wanted a seat he took me under his protection, scoured the theatre for a chair, and put it for me in a corner with a view of the stage. There was only room for one chair, so he sat on my knee and put his arm round my neck to keep himself in place. He was absorbed by the performance, but, while the curtain was down, had leisure to tell me that his name was Domenico, that he was nearly thirteen years old and brother to one of the ladies of the company; he was at school in the town and his sister had got him a week’s holiday and taken him to stay with her.

“And so they call you Domenico,” said I, just to keep things going.

“No,” he replied, “they call me Micio.”

“Why do they do that if your name is Domenico?”

“Because they are all very fond of me. Domenico is my name as I said, but Micio is a caress.”

“I see; then may I also call you Micio?”

“Of course you may, and I hope you will.”

He was very fond of reading and wanted me to lend him a story-book, but Tristram Shandy, which was the nearest approach to a story-book I had with me, was in English, so that would not do. Then he began searching my pockets for chocolate, but there, again, he was disappointed. It was to give me an opportunity of remedying these deficiencies in my equipment that we made our appointment, and he was to do the bargaining. During rehearsal I consulted his sister, which I suppose would have been the correct thing to do in England, but she only shook her finger at him, and he only laughed and played at hiding his fresh brown face and his curly black head in her white skirts; she might as well have shaken her finger at the scirocco.

The child put his hand in mine and avoiding the glare of the big streets, led me through narrow lanes to one of the gates of the town. There had been a storm the previous night, so sudden that our supper had been spoilt before we could get it under cover and we had to begin again inside the restaurant. The clouds had all cleared away and the panorama, as seen from the gate, was at its best with the sun beating down on the slopes of the mountain-side and sprinkling sapphires all over the sea.

Micio, however, had not come to admire the view; he turned from it to the books that were laid out on a shady ledge of the town-wall and began to consider those with the illustrated covers. He wanted them all, not simultaneously but one after the other. He paused before Uno Strano Delitto but, the crime being too strange to be comprehensible, we passed on to Guirlanda Sanguinosa, a lady dressed in bridal attire but, doubtless through exposure to the weather, the blood had faded off the wreath of orange blossoms, so we took up another. Il Bacio del Cadavere was about a lady in evening dress who had got out of cab No. 3402 which was waiting for her in the moonlight while she conversed with the porter at the gates of the cemetery; Micio’s anxiety to ascertain whether the interview was preliminary or subsequent to the corpse’s kiss was not acute enough to induce him to buy the book. There was another about a kiss, Bacio Infame, on which a lady with a stiletto was defending herself from a bad man. All these were enticing, but we hoped to do better, and I began to blush for the somewhat thin plot of Tristram Shandy and to be thankful that my copy was not in Italian. Finally he took La Mano del Defunto: at the back of a sepulchral chamber in a violated coffin, from which the lid had been removed, lay the body of a woman, shockingly disarranged, over the edge hung her right arm, the hand had been cut off and was being carried away by a city gent in tall hat, unbuttoned frock coat, jaunty tie, yellow boots and streaky trousers; he had a dark lantern with the help of which he had committed the sacrilege—very horrible which attracted Micio, and only twenty-five centimes which attracted me. We might possibly have done better, but we should have had to search a long time. So we bought it and thought we might take something else as well. Now, it seemed to me, was the time for Carlo Magno and the Paladins or the Life of Musolino, or Robinson Crusoe, or Don Quixote, or The Three Musketeers, but he had read them all, years ago. The Arabian Nights was new to him, but it was marked ten francs. In voluble Sicilian he expressed my views by telling the bookseller it was ridiculously too expensive and that he could give no more than two francs fifty centimes—he never gave more for a book. The man held out for five francs. The boy laughed at him. They declaimed and gesticulated and swore at each other until, at last, Micio, a baffled paladin, wiped his brow wearily as though there was no doing anything with these people, and told me to take three francs out of my purse and give them to the brigand, who politely wrapped up our purchases and we strolled off.

“Now,” said Micio as we approached the chocolate shop, “we did rather well over the Arabian Nights—saved seven francs—do you think it would be extravagant if we were to have an ice to restore us after our struggles?”

Of course I agreed, though I had not myself done any struggling, and, as we sat at our little table eating our ices, we talked about the theatre. I said I had never seen such acting; leaving Giovanni out of consideration, all the company knew how to produce the illusion of reality even down to Lola. Micio had no opinion of Lola. She was not to be considered seriously as an actress; she might become one some day, but she was only a child. All the children of artists can do as well as she, but no one can really act who has not suffered. He himself used to act quite as well as Lola, but had not appeared on the stage for a long while—not since he had been at school. He could do better now.

“When I see the others acting,” he said, “I am not moved, it is like reading an index. But when I see Giovanni, it is all different, it is like reading a romance and it makes me cry.”

He found fault with some of the plays for not being worthy of the actor. Too many of them were little more than disconnected incidents, strung together to provide opportunities for effects, but with no more plot than the doings of the paladins in the marionette theatres. They were like the Pietro Longo play, which I had told him about, and he said that, if that was really all of it, it began with one story and ended with another and cried aloud for a third act to hold it together.

“Pietro must escape from prison,” said Micio; “he must return home and we must know whether his sister died or went into a convent or married the policeman.”

“What is the stupid fellow to do?” I inquired, “the play was made for him.”

“He must escape too, Pietro will help him because they will become friends; besides, any one can escape from a stage prison, especially if the knives are not taken away from the convicts. And then he can do whatever the author likes.

“But it is always so in life,” he continued, with a sigh, “we must not be discontented because the best we can get is not the best we can imagine. I am still young, but not too young to have kn--- Let us not talk about that. What did you think of the play last night?”

I replied that it was a fine play.

He agreed, saying it was “strepitosamente bello.” It opened with a state of things easily comprehensible and of great interest. There were no tedious explanatory speeches, but plenty of action leading naturally to a catastrophe which was at once seen to be inevitable, though no one could have predicted precisely that. And the conclusion sent the audience away feeling that something tremendous had happened, and that the state of things existing at the beginning could never exist again.

“That is how a play should be,” said Micio.

I took a leaf out of Giovanni’s book and patted him on the back.

“Bravo, Micio, bravo! No one has yet said anything like that at supper. This is the second time this morning that you have expressed my thoughts for me. We must get your sister to let you sit up with us one of these evenings. You would keep us straight.”

“They know all about it,” he replied, “especially Giovanni, he knows everything. But they don’t say it because they like to go on talking.”

“There! now you have done it a third time. You appear to me to know all about it too. How did you find it all out? They did not teach it you at school, did they?”

“I do not remember that any one ever taught it me,” he replied; “I seem to have known it always. It cannot be otherwise. It is like eating cheese with maccaroni.”

“We seldom eat maccaroni in England,” said I, in defence, “and when we do we usually eat sugar with it; perhaps that is why we are so slow.”

This was a mistake because I wanted him to talk more about the theatre, and there is something quicksilverish in Micio’s temperament; having got on the maccaroni he did not care to return to art.

“What do you eat in England if you do not eat maccaroni? Do you eat chocolate?”

Which reintroduced the original question, and when we had attended to that, it was nearly four o’clock, his sister’s dinner-hour and time for him to go home.

In the natural order of things, Micio, being the son of artists, will return to the stage. Should he fail as an adult actor, he will perhaps travel in tiles or in ecclesiastical millinery, or he may get employment on the railway, or as a clerk in the office of the cemetery. I should like to know when the time comes, for I feel towards him somewhat as he feels towards Pietro Longo. And there is a chance that he will tell me, for we promised to exchange postcards, and before parting he gave me his address—

(Indirizzo)
All’ Egregio Giovanotto Micio Boccadifuoco,
Casa Educativa Garibaldi,
Via Fata Morgana No. 92, Castellinaria.

Four o’clock was also Giovanni’s dinner-hour, and this was the day he had promised to dine with me. I was in some fear lest I might choose the wrong restaurant or order something that would disagree with him; the evening’s entertainment, on which the whole town depended, was at stake. But I need not have worried about it. Giovanni lives so entirely among people who are devoted to him that he habitually takes the lead in everything. Consequently he chose the restaurant, and its name was Quo Vadis? He also brought a couple of friends, ordered the dinner and, as a matter of course, took me for a drive afterwards to the lighthouse and back.

As we drove through the town, he pointed out the municipio, the post-office, the old Saracen palace, and the other objects of interest. When we got into the country, it occurred to me that I might not again have Giovanni all to myself, it was the first time we had been alone. If I could now get him to talk about his art, he might tell me exactly how deeply he feels the emotions which he expresses with so much conviction. I considered how to begin. I had better ask him first which was his favourite character. I turned to put the question. He had fallen asleep, and gave me rather an anxious time, for he repeatedly seemed to be on the point of rolling out of the carriage. It was a relief when, at last, the clattering of the horse’s hoofs on the paved streets woke him up, and there was no longer any necessity to hold him in by the coat-tail.

“There now,” said Giovanni, as he helped me out, “we have had a delightful drive. Is this your umbrella?” he added, handing it to me; “if I had known you had brought that, I would have put it up to keep the sun off you while you were asleep.”

I had not expected this and looked into his eye for a twinkle, I saw nothing but grave politeness and the kindest consideration for my comfort. There are moments when one may regret not having been brought up on impromptu plays; Pietro would have known at once what to do. I could only ask, rather feebly—

“Have I been to sleep?”—a question to which, of course, he did not know the answer; he was quite capable of inventing one, however, so I hastily went on about the umbrella: “Thank you very much. I am afraid it would have been of no use. I intended to take it to be mended. I had an accident with it in the storm last night. Look,” and I opened it.

“You will never get that mended. You must buy a new one. Why, it is broken into as many pieces as the quarters of the globe. Ha, ha! The two parts of Enrico’s umbrella are three in number and they are the four following, viz. the handle, the ribs, the silk, most of the stick and—and—yes, and this little bit broken off from the end.”

“Bravo, Giovanni, bravo!”

“You are coming to see me act this evening?”

“Of course I am.”

“And to supper afterwards?”

“Certainly, if I may. I do not want to cause an eruption of Mount Etna, and I do not want you to leave off speaking to me.”

“Bravo, bravo!” And away he went, apologizing for leaving me by saying he really must try to get a little sleep before nine o’clock or he would be no good at the performance. And this time I fancied there was something of a twinkle in his eye.

Four o’clock p.m. is not such a bad dinner-hour when one is going to bed at four a.m. And four a.m. is not such a bad time for going to bed in Sicily. At some seasons it is better for getting up and then one takes one’s siesta during the heat of the day. Either way some alteration of one’s usual habits is a good thing on a holiday, and any one in want of a thorough change from the life of the ordinary Londoner might do worse—or, as I should prefer to say, could hardly do better—than spend a week with a Sicilian Dramatic Company.

After the players were gone I resumed my normal habits. One morning, as Peppino and I were returning to colazione he asked me whether I had seen the procession down on the shore.

“Of course I saw it, but I did not know what it was all about.”

“That,” said he, “was the bishop; he go to bless the sea and pray God to send the tunnies. Every spring shall be coming always the tunnies, but if to don’t bless the sea, then to be coming few tunnies; if to bless the sea then to be coming plenty many tunnies.”

“It was a beautiful procession,” I said. “I knew it was the bishop; I saw his mitre and the vestments and the gilded crosses and the smoke of the incense in the sunlight. But do you think it is quite sportsmanlike to pray that many tunnies may be killed?”

“Yes,” said Peppino, “it is right to pray to win the battle, and we battle the tunnies so we may pray.”

“It is not quite the same thing,” said I. “In battle the enemy has a religion too and can pray against us: it may be fair if both pray equally, especially if both have the same religion. But it is taking a mean advantage of the poor tunnies to pray against them, for they have no religion.”

“Perhaps they have,” said Peppino. “Perhaps they have Signor Vescovo down in the sea and make a procession with tunny priests very well dressed, and bells and banners and incense and singing, and to pray against the death and the boiling in oil, and to escape to be eaten.”

“I should like to see that procession,” I said.

I knew that Peppino had sporting instincts to which I could appeal because, a few days before, he had taken me into his room and shown me the cups he had won. Some of them were English, for when in London he was not occupied as a waiter without intermission; his recreation was to retire from business occasionally for a few weeks, go into training and appear as a champion bicyclist. So that, after my frugal chop and potato in Holborn, I had been in the habit of giving twopence to an athlete famous enough to have had his portrait in the illustrated papers—that is, if his recollection of me in Holborn was not his invention; anyhow, there were the cups.

It had come to pass by this time that Peppino and I took our meals together and we were attended by the waiter, a native of Messina, named Letterio. This name is given to many of the boys of Messina, and the girls are called Letteria. It seems that when St. Paul was at Messina the citizens gave him a congratulatory address for the Madonna; he took it back with him and gave it to her in Jerusalem. She, in reply, sent them a letter in Hebrew which they have now in the cathedral. At least they have a translation of it. Or, to be exact, a translation of a translation of it. The first translation was into Greek and the second into Latin. This is the letter after which the children are baptized. It is to be hoped they have another translation ready in Sicilian, or perhaps in Tuscan, to take its place in case anything should happen to it. Letterio could not tell me the contents of the letter, but he knew it was in the Duomo and was his padrona, and was sure that, though only a translation, the meaning of the original had been religiously preserved.

Peppino never spoke a word to Letterio; he talked to me and gesticulated. When he held out one hand flat and patted it with the other, I did not pay much attention to the gesture, assuming that he was merely emphasizing what he was saying to me, and that Letterio brought cutlets because it was time for them. When he tumbled his hands rapidly one over the other and Letterio brought salad, I did not see that it was cause and effect. But when he put his hand to his mouth as though drinking and Letterio brought another bottle of wine, I saw that Peppino had not been saying everything twice over to me, once with words and once with gestures, as a Sicilian usually does, but that he had been carrying on two independent conversations with two people simultaneously.

Talking about Letterio’s name naturally led us to talk about baptisms, and so we returned to the subject of marriage. Another friend of Peppino’s was to be married that evening—yes, poor man! The church was to bless the union at four o’clock next morning, after which the happy pair would drive down to the station in a cart, the side panels painted with scenes from the story of Orlando out of the marionette theatre, and the back panel with a ballet girl over the words “Viva la Divina Provvidenza.” Then they would take the train to Palermo for a honeymoon of three days. The interval between the two ceremonies was to be spent in dancing and, if I liked, Peppino would take me to see it.

So in the evening we went to a house at the other end of the town, “far away—beyond the Cappucini,” as Peppino said. We entered by a back door which led directly into a small bedroom containing the music: one clarionet, a quartet of Saxhorns, and one trombone. The room also contained four babies in one bed, and two more on a mattress on the floor, all peacefully sleeping. These were the babies that had succumbed to the late hour, their mothers having brought them because they wanted their suppers, and would presently want their breakfasts. We sat among the band and the babies for some time to get accustomed to the noise, and then passed into the room where the dancing was going on. All round sat the friends and relations, some with babies, some without; and all the ladies very serious, the bride in the middle chair of a row along one wall was so desperately serious that she was quite forbidding.

As when the traveller asks the chambermaid if he can have his linen back from the wash in time to catch an early train, and notices an expression passing across her face as she replies, “Impossibilissimo!”—well knowing that nothing is easier, only she wants an extra fifty centimes—even such an expression did I see not passing across the face of the bride, but frozen upon it as she sat with her back up against the wall frowning on the company. Peppino said she was all right. Brides have to behave like this; they consider it modest and maiden-like to appear to take no interest or pleasure in their wedding ceremonies.

The bridegroom was a very different sort of person—gay, alert and all the time dancing, talking, laughing and gesticulating with every one, as though his good spirits and vitality were inexhaustible.

The guests on the chairs left space for only two couples at a time. At the first opportunity Peppino began to dance, choosing for his partner a young lady who was not merely the prettiest girl in the room, but the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. She was also an exception to the other ladies in that she looked happy, especially when dancing with Peppino. She had a quantity of fine, black, curly hair, a dark complexion and surprising eyes, like Love-in-a-mist when the morning sun shines on it, full of laughter and good humour. Her eyelids, her nose and chin, her full lips and the curves of her cheeks were modelled with the delicate precision of a violin, and when she moved it was with that wave-o’-the-sea motion which Florizel observed in Perdita’s dancing. I put her black hair and complexion down to some Arabian ancestor, and her blue eyes to some Norman strain.

“Who is that wonderfully beautiful girl you have been dancing with, Peppino?” said I.

He replied, with a rather bored air, that her name was Brancaccia, and that she was the daughter of a distant cousin of his father who kept a curiosity shop in the corso.

“How long has this been going on, Peppino? Why did you never mention Brancaccia to me before?”

He replied in a tone, as though closing the discussion, that there had never been any reason to mention her, that he had known her all her life, and she was nothing to him.

I changed the subject and, saying it was a long time since I had been to a ball, asked if there was anything I ought to do. He said that I was expected to dance. Now my dancing days terminated many years ago when I was told that my dancing was the very prose of motion, but I did not want to say so, because I thought it just possible I might be allowed to dance with Brancaccia if I played my cards judiciously; so I merely said modestly I was afraid of knocking up against the other couple. Peppino silenced this objection by promising to dance with me himself, and to see that all went well. So I danced a waltz with Peppino. He, of course, complimented me upon my proficiency, and told me I ought now to dance with the bridegroom. So I danced another waltz with the bridegroom. He then said it was expected that I should dance with the bride. This naturally alarmed me, but I boldly asked her and she consented with a stiff bow: we performed a polka together and I restored her to her seat, feeling as though I had crossed from Siracusa to Valletta in a storm, more frightened than hurt, it is true, but glad it was over, especially as I now considered myself entitled to introduce the subject of dancing with Brancaccia. Peppino received the proposition without enthusiasm, saying she was her own mistress and I could do as I liked.

“But first,” he said, “there shall be a contraddanza; did you know what is contraddanza? All right, I shall tell you. A dancing man shall be crying to the people to do and they shall do, but if to don’t know, better to don’t dance or would come confusion; better to see and to expect.”

“All right, Peppino,” I said. “I don’t know enough about it; I will look on and wait, and when it is over I shall ask Brancaccia to dance a waltz with me.”

Peppino paid no attention: he was off and busy superintending the preparations for the contraddanza.

Eight couples stood in the middle of the room, space being made for them by removing the chairs they left unoccupied, and by the remaining guests packing themselves more closely into the corners. The dancers stood in a circle, men and women alternately, and the circle sometimes became a square, as in a quadrille, and sometimes two parallel rows, as in Sir Roger de Coverley. One of the men dancers, shouting in dialect, gave short staccato directions which the others carried out. This brightened up the party, and some of the women began to look less gloomy, but a week of contraddanze would not have brought the best of them up to the standard of Brancaccia. I approached her and said—

“Signorina, will you do me the favour of dancing with me?”

Another man was about to make a similar request and the girl might have been in a difficulty had not Peppino, who happened to be hovering near, made a gesture and taken the other man away. She rose and we danced a waltz. As we went round and round I saw Peppino talking with the other man and watching us, and then it flashed into my head that he had planned all this. He and Brancaccia were in love with one another, any one could tell that, and he wanted me to meet her so that he could talk to me about her afterwards. I said to Brancaccia—

“What is Peppino saying to the gentleman?”

She, looking up and smiling, in an amused and friendly way, said—

“Oh! Peppino is always talking to people.”

“Some of them seem to enjoy his conversation.”

“Do you mean the gentleman?” she said, looking away.

“No, I do not,” I replied, and she blushed delightfully.

As I led her back to her seat, I said, “If Peppino asks me about my partner, I shall tell him that I have just danced with the most beautiful and charming young lady in the world, and that her future husband, whoever he may be, will be an extremely fortunate man.”

She replied, “Thank you very much, but I do not suppose Peppino will ask you anything about me.”

“I shall tell him what I think of you whether he asks me or not,” said I, bowing.

It was now nearly two o’clock and I got Peppino to take me away. Remembering what Brancaccia had said, I began at once—

“What a wonderfully beautiful and charming girl Brancaccia is; she seems to me to be the most desirable young lady I have ever met.” There was a pause, and I added, “You are a bachelor, Peppino, Brancaccia is unmarried and she is quite different from all the other young ladies.”

“That,” he replied, “is what says my mother. But womans it is always like that. First she will be mother, not satisfied; then she will be grandmother, not satisfied.”

“Of course, if you are too much occupied there is an end of the matter. But, you know, you have as much time as any one else, twenty-four hours in the day, and some of the others find that enough. Would not Brancaccia be exactly the woman to help you to run the albergo and to look after your parents in their old age?”

He admitted that she had the reputation of being an admirable housekeeper and that he had never heard anything against her. So I went on and said all I could think of in favour of matrimony, to which he listened without attempting to interrupt. I finished by saying that if he did marry Brancaccia and it turned out unsuccessful he was not to blame me. He replied with great decision that I need not fear anything of the kind, for he had made up his mind never to marry any one, and certainly not Brancaccia.

* * * * *

Soon after the wedding festa I returned to London. Peppino and I exchanged several postcards, but Brancaccia’s name was never mentioned in any of his. After a year I received a letter from him. [329]

“Castellinaria.

“Pregiatissimo e Indimenticabile Signore!

“Sono giÀ piÙ di dodeci mesi che non ho il piacere di vedere la sua grata persona sulla nostra spiaggia.

“Con vero piacere Le faccio sapere che mio caro padre gode buonissima salute e che desidera grandemente di rivederla.

“Tre mesi fa il mio cuore È stato distrutto, causa la salita al cielo della mia adorata mamma. Non posso trovare parole per esprimerle il mio cordoglio. Sarebbe stato meglio che il buon Dio avesse preso anche me, perchÈ non prenderÒ piÙ alcun piacere nella vita.

“Vi annuncio che Domenica prossima si celebrerÀ il mio matrimonio.

“Non posso mai dimenticare la sua squisita cortesia ed il gentile pensiero che nutre a mio riguardo. La prego credere che io sono ora, e per tutta la mia vita sarÒ, a Lei legato di affezione, divozione e rispetto.

“Pampalone Giuseppe.”

I replied in a letter of congratulation to the bride and bridegroom, wishing them every happiness, sending them a wedding present and promising to come and see them as soon as possible. In due course I received a box of sugar-plums and a letter signed by Peppino and Brancaccia asking me to be godfather to their first son when he should he born—an honour which, of course, I accepted. I trust that at the christening festa this book may not be thought unworthy to take the place of the more conventional silver mug.

THE END

printed by william clowes and sons, limited,
london and beccles.