My mother’s feelings were not to be described! Within ten minutes three or four other people smilingly informed her that they, too, had been invited and certainly meant to come. There was nothing for it but to go straight home and find out what the little monkeys had committed us to. On being sternly questioned, Daisy, with the imperturbable calmness that distinguished her even then, produced a list of some two hundred names, culled from mamma’s visiting-book, and said: “These are the people we have asked. We chose the ones we liked, of course. I have composed the play and it will be most interesting. Arthur is in love with me, Sofia is my rival—I have one or two other children in it, but they are rather stupid, so I shall have to do most of the acting myself. Don’t worry me, please—you have nothing to do but order the supper and send for the chairs!”
Of course we submitted. Everything had been done in order; Daisy (Arthur could not write well enough as yet) must have devoted her playtime, for days, to writing out the invitations, which the servants had carried to their addresses, never doubting but that the Signora’s authorization had been obtained. We were not allowed to see the last rehearsals even—the drop-curtain of the little theatre in the ballroom being jealously closed while they went on. I tried to get taken on as manager—no use! “I know exactly what I am about,” said my small sister, “I haven’t watched you grown-ups all these years for nothing! It’s going to be a great success!”
Which it certainly was! Daisy’s speeches were a little long, because some of the others forgot their parts and she had to bridge their silences by expressing their sentiments for them. “I know what you would say, dear friend—your heart is true, but you fear the vengeance of the Marquis! Oh, I understand!” And so on. Then, at the critical moment of the love scene, Arthur got stage-fright, and the Marquise, who was naturally taller than her adorer, stooped towards him and energetically whispered, “Go down on your knees and kiss my hand this minute, stupid!” at which a roar of merriment swept through the room, to end in a storm of applause, as the small boy, dropping on one knee, gave the hand a smacking kiss and exclaimed ardently, “My angel!”
Oh yes, it was a great success. The little Marquise was a born actress, and carried it all off so well that the guests declared they had never enjoyed an evening so much. But we “grown-ups” had passed some anxious moments; and when it was all over and the triumphant performers had had all the applause, as well as all the cake and goodies, they wanted, we extracted a sleepy promise that we should be at least warned the next time they asked the town to a play!
CHAPTER X A STORY OF VENICE
Here is a story of Venice.
In the early part of the fifteenth century a Northern soldier, riding home through the sweet-smelling summer twilight, dreaming in all probability of some dusky-eyed maiden of the border States, stopped by the side of a field to look about him for a shelter for the night. That he would be welcome at any inn, he was sure, for he was returning from the wars to spend his not very hard-earned prize money, of which his saddle-bags were full.
One can imagine him, pushing back his helmet and regarding the fair country-side with the appreciative eye of the professional marauder, smacking his dusty lips at the thought of the weeks of hilarious wickedness that his loot would buy for him. The picture is not overdrawn, I can assure the reader, for they were little more than wild beasts, those followers of the great Condottieri, brought under an iron discipline, the yoke of which they were willing to bear for a time, in return for the ample pay and the opportunities which their service afforded them of sacking unoffending towns and robbing and spearing harmless and unarmed citizens and ravishing their wives and daughters. Here and there, stray flowers in those acres of weeds, a fairly decent character appeared among them, but, from such accounts as can be found, these latter never seem to have stayed long in their ranks.
As it has been said, the rival bands that infested Italy and Southern France in those merry days never made any serious attempt to injure each other, unless driven to such unpleasant measures by the sternest necessity—or, to be sure, unless some particularly rich bit of loot was between them. As a general thing, though, they do not seem to have displayed even the common courage of the wolf. The longer a campaign could be dragged out the better for all concerned was their motto, and they lived up to it, even to the point of punctiliously letting loose all the prisoners they took from each other after every engagement. A safer and more care-free life than theirs would be difficult, if not impossible, to imagine. The people who hired them were, of course, utterly unable to cope with their enemies—with their enemies’ bravos, that is to say—by themselves, and were as completely helpless against their own servants; it was altogether an ideal state of things.
To return to our trooper, breathing his horse and probably smacking his lips over the prospect of the cheer with which his blood-spotted loot would provide him for the next month or so. Looking around in the early dusk, he noticed a boy working desultorily in the fields, and, while his horse rested, he studied him. There was something in the way in which he carried his head, and the set of his chin and jaw, which sounded a sympathetic echo in the trooper’s breast. This was no common peasant, he told himself, and called out to the boy to come over and speak to him. Nothing loath, the youth obeyed, and the upshot of this conversation was that the boy elected to take the trooper’s advice and follow him.