CHAPTER XIII. A CONTRACT
I am not certain that a great ‘Impressario’ of Paris or London would have deemed the document which bound Gerald to his new master a very formal instrument. But there was a document. It was written on a fly-leaf of old Babbo’s Breviary, and set forth duly that for certain services to be afterward detailed, ‘un certo Gherardi’—so was he called—was to eat, and drink, and be clothed; always providing that there was meat, and drink, and wearables to give him; with certain benefices—small contingent remainders—to accrue when times were prosperous and patrons generous, and all this for the term of a twelvemonth. Donna Gaetana stoutly fought for five years, then three, and then two: but she was beaten in all her amendments, though she argued her case ably. She showed, with a force derived from great experience, that theirs was a profession wherein there was much to learn; that the initial stages developed very few of those gifts which won popular applause; that, consequently, the neophyte was anything but a profitable colleague; and it was only when his education was perfected that he could be expected to repay the cost of his early instruction. ‘At the end of a year,’ to borrow her own forcible language, ‘he ‘ll have smashed a dozen basins and broken twenty poles, and he ‘ll just be as stiff in the back as you see him today.’
‘He ‘ll have had enough of a weary life ere that,’ muttered the Babbo.
‘What have you to complain of, I ‘d like to know?’ asked she fiercely; ‘you that sit there all day like a prince on a throne, never so much as giving a blast of a horn or a beat on the drum; but pulling a few cords for your puppets, and making them patter about the stage while you tell over the self-same story I heard forty years ago. Ah, if it was Pierno! that was something indeed to hear! He came out with something new every evening—droll fellow that he was—and could make the people laugh till the Piazza rung again.’
‘Well, well,’ sighed Babbo, ‘his drollery has cost him something. He cut a jest upon the Cardinal Balfi, and they sent him to Molo di Gaeta, to work at the galleys. My pulcinello may be stupid, but will not make me finish my days in chains.’
Whether Marietta feared the effect these domestic discussions might produce upon Gerald, newly come as he was among them, or that she desired to talk with him more at her ease, she strolled away into the wood, giving one lingering glance as she left the place to bid him follow. The youth was not loth to accept the hint, and soon overtook her.
‘And so,’ said she, taking his hand between both her own, ‘you will stay?’
‘I have promised it,’ replied Gerald.
‘All for me, all for me, as the little song says.’
‘I never heard it. Will you sing it, Marietta?’ said he, placing his arm around her waist.