The Signora insisted on preparing the meal, so Markham filled his pipe and helped Hermia to amuse the bambino.
"You will pardon?" said Fabiani. "But this is the hour of practice, while the supper is preparing. Luigi, Stella, we will go on if you please."
The child rose, rather ruefully, Hermia thought, and took her place upon the mat, where, under Luigi's direction, she went through the exercises which were to keep her young limbs supple for the approaching performances. It was the familiar thing—the slow bending of the back until the palms of the hands touched the ground, in which position the child walked backward and forward, the contortions of the slender body, the "split," the putting of the legs around the neck. Hermia had seen these acts at the Variétés and at Madison Square Garden when the circus came, but had seen them at a great distance, under a blaze of light, as part of a great spectacle in a performance which went so smoothly that one never gave a thought to the difficulty of achievement. There in the silent shadows of the wood, bared of its tinsel and music, the rehearsal took on a different color. She saw the straining muscles of the child, the beads of perspiration which stood on her brow, the livid face with its tortured expression. An exclamation of pity broke from her lips. "Is it not enough?" she asked. Cleofonte only laughed through his cigarette smoke. It seemed like a great deal, he said. She had not had her practice yesterday. It would be still easier to-morrow. And then he signaled for the performance to be repeated. At last Hermia turned to the bambino and would look no more. She was tasting life, other people's, at the springs, as John Markham had promised, and it was not sweet.
There was a brief rest, after which Luigi and Stella did an acrobatic performance of tumbling and balancing in which at the end Cleofonte joined with a masterful air, punctuating the acts with cries and handclaps, and at the end of each act they all bowed and kissed the tips of their fingers right and left to the imaginary audience. The rehearsal ended in applause from the visitors. As for the Signora, having put the coffee on to boil, she was not nursing the bambino. Cleofonte came up, puffing and blowing and tapping his chest. "The performance is ended," he exclaimed, "in tricks with Tomasso—that is the name of my bear—and in great feats of strength, as I have told you, after which I make my great wrestling challenge, to throw any man in the world for one hundred francs. Madre de Dio! You can be sure that when they see Luigi break the stone upon me—they are not zealous."
The baby bed and fast asleep, it was put to bed in the wagon and they all sat at supper. The delight Hermia had taken in her new acquaintances—Fabiani's bombast, Luigi's grace, and the Signora's motherly perquisites—had lost some of its spontaneity since she had seen the expression on the face of the child Stella, when she had gone through her act of décarcasse. It haunted her like the memory of a bad dream and brought into stronger contrast her own girlhood in New York, with its nurses and governesses and the sheltered life she had led under their care and supervision.
And when Stella, her slim figure wrapped in a shabby cloak, came from the roulette and joined them at the fire, Hermia motioned her to the place beside her. When she sat, Hermia put an arm around the child and kissed her softly on the brow. Stella looked up at her timidly and then put her sinewy brown hand in Hermia's softer ones and there let it stay. Hermia had made a friend.
Cleofonte looked up from his chicken bone and shook his huge shoulders.
"You are sorry, Signorina? Jesu mio! So am I. But what would you have? One must eat."
"It seems a pity," said Hermia, smiling.
Fabiani shrugged his shoulders and raised his brows to the sky, with the resignation of the fatalist. "It is life—voilà tout."