"Sit down, poet," said Beppo.
Angioletto sat on the doorstep beside him without a word.
"Will you have an onion, my friend?" the old fellow went on to ask.
"Thank you, Sor Beppo, but I have already dined. Let me rather talk to you while you finish your meal."
"It is not so much a meal as a relish," said the sweep. "But talk away--we"ll never quarrel over terms."
"I hope not," Angioletto took him up; "because I have done with poetising and have a mind to try your trade."
Beppo, his mouth full of onion, paused in his bite to gape at this dapper page, who, all scarlet and white as he was, talked after such a fashion.
"How"ll that be now?" he said. "You"ve never come all this way to crack a joke?"
"Ah, never in the world, my friend," cried Angioletto. "I am in earnest."
"You may be as earnest as a friar in the pulpit, and yet pretty bad at chimney-work, young master. What do you know of it, pray?"
"Nothing at all," replied Angioletto, as if that helped him.
"Look at that now," cried the triumphant Sor Beppo.
"Pardon me, Master Beppo," said the youth, "you cannot look at it yet, but you very soon shall. Have you a chimney to hand?"
"Ah, I might have that," the old man agreed, with a chuckle which ended as a snort. "There might be a chimney in my house that"s not been swept for thirty year, having little time and less inclination to sweep "em for nothing but glory. But, happen there were such a piece of work, what then?"
Angioletto pointed into the house. "Is that the chimney, Beppo?"
Beppo nodded. "That might be the chimney in question, my gentleman."
With a "By your leave, Sor Beppo," Angioletto stepped delicately into the room. He threw down cloak and cap, unstrapped girdle and hanger, stripped off his doublet, and stood up in shirt and breeches. Beppo watched him, all agape, too breathless to chew. Before he could interfere--
"By the Saints, but he"s in!" he cried with arms thrown up. "Eh, master, come you back, come you back!"
"What do you want?" a m.u.f.fled voice came from the chimney. Beppo sawed the air.
"Don"t you play the fool up there, my boy, don"t you do it! That"s as foul as the grave, that chimney is. I"ll have ye on my soul as long as I live, and I can ill afford it, for I"ve a queasy conscience in my black sh.e.l.l." He seemed to be treading on pins.
He was answered, "We will talk of your conscience and its sh.e.l.l when I come back. Take off my shoes, will you?"
A neat leg was pushed into the fireplace; then another. Beppo did the office, meek as an acolyte. Then he sighed, for the legs drew up the chimney and vanished in dust.
"There goes a lad of spirit to his gloomy end," murmured brokenly the sweep, as he looked at the little red shoes in his hand. "I would not have had that come to pa.s.s for twenty gold ducats. But, Lord! who"d "a thought it of a Court spark, that he should be as good as his word? Not I, used to Courts as a man may be." He fell to scratching his head.
"Hey, hey!" he cried, as there was a prodigious scuffling up the chimney. "Now he strangles, now he strangles!" A shower of soot came down. Beppo flacked about the room; then two heavy objects fell. Beppo crept up. "Mary Virgin, he"s killing birds," he said, in an awed whisper, and picked up two owls with wagging heads. The recesses of the chimney were still very lively. "Eh, there he is again," said the old sweep. "What now?" Down came a rat, squeaking for its life, then three in succession, very silent because their necks were wrung. "This is better than a cat any day of the seven," said Sor Beppo. "What a diamond of a poet! He should be crowned with laurel-twigs if I were Duke Borso in all his glory. Being but Beppo the sweep, he shall be free of my mystery the moment he"s free of my chimney-stack."
He could await Angioletto"s coming now with equal mind. The lad had approved himself. I leave you to judge of the welcome he got when, breathless, scratched, and sable as the night, he showed his white teeth at the door. Beppo, in fact, fell weeping on his neck. By this simple device Angioletto was enabled to keep his word, and Bellaroba to find him black but comely.
VII
THE CAPTAIN"S TREADINGS
While Angioletto and his Bellaroba dwelt in a paradise, none the less glorious for being as sooty as the darkness which veiled it, the estate of Captain Mosca, that hungry swordsman, was most unhappy. Divorced from bed and board, cast off by his mistress, and not yet adopted by his master, the poor man felt dimly about for supports, conscious that his treadings had well-nigh slipped. At such a time the gentle eyes of Bellaroba--n.o.body"s enemy--courted him, like a beam of firelight on a rain-scoured street, with a smiling invitation to share the peace within doors. He hung uneasily about the gateways in these days, cold-elbowed by the lackeys, ignored by the higher sort, unseen by the quality; he burnished the lintels with his shoulder-blades, chewed many straws, counted the flagstones, knew the hours by the signals of his stomach.
Then, if by hazard Bellaroba should come dancing by with a "Good morning, Signor Capitano," a "_Come sta?_" or, prettier still, a bright "_Sta bene?_" what wonder if the man of rage humbled himself before the little Maid of Honour? What wonder, again, if she, out of the overflowings of her happiness, should give him an alms?
No wonder at all, but pity there should be; for the Captain played an unworthy part. I suppose his standard was not very high. I know he was hungry; I know that nothing degrades a man so low as degradation--since what he believes himself, that he is; but I find it hard to excuse him for draining Bellaroba of her little secrets. Judas that he was, he took her sop, and then sold her for thirty pieces of silver.
The draining of a well so limpid was the easiest thing in the world. She was too absurdly happy, too triumphant altogether in the successful craft of her brilliant little lord, to be continent. She dealt in semi-transparent mystery with her manipulator from the moment he had won her compa.s.sion. Her secret was none from the first, or it was like the secret which a child will tell you, all the louder for being said in your ear.
"My dear little friend," said the smirking Captain, when he had it, "what you tell me there is as wine in my blood. I declare it sets me singing tunes."
"Ah, but he is wonderful, my Angioletto," said she, and her eyes grew larger for the thought of him.
"For a stripling of his inches he beats any c.o.c.k that ever fought a main," Mosca declared; "blood of Blood, but he does! What and if he did square up to me--do I bear a grudge? Never, upon my body."
"You will not--you would not--ah, tell Olimpia of this, Signor Capitano?" she hazarded. The Captain stroked one eye with the back of his finger. He looked pityingly upon her with the other.
"Ah, my dear soul," he said, sighing, "could you think it of old Mosca?"
Bellaroba hastened to disclaim. "No, no, no, I did not think it, Signor Capitano. But for a minute I had a little fear. Olimpia never loved Angioletto at all, and I don"t think she loves me very much--now."
"To be plain with you, my lamb," said the Mosca, "she has no such vasty love for me. I have not set foot within her door since a certain day you may remember."
The girl shivered. "If I remember it! Ah, Madonna delle Grazie, she had a devil that day!"
"She had seven, I"m sure of it," cried the Captain. "So I leave you to judge how much of your story she may worm out of me."
He so beamed upon her, kissed her hands with such a lofty stoop, that she felt ashamed of herself, and begged his pardon.
This brought the Captain to his knees. "By the G.o.d who made the Jews,"
he swore, "I leave not this raw flagstone till you have unsaid those words!"
In the end, after a prodigious fuss, he drifted away down the corridor and left her to go about her business.
But he drifted not very far. He felt himself full of affairs which were as meat and drink to his spirit starved by neglect. It was so great a thing to have a pretext for approaching Count Guarini. That young lord had a way like a keen-edged knife. You might weave a whole vestment about your errand, fold upon fold of ingenious surmise, argument _pro_, argument _con_; Guarino Guarini would dart eyes upon you--slash! he had rent your fabric and discovered you naked underneath, a liar ready for the whip. Nor, to do him justice, did he ever fail to apply it. Truth was, indeed, the only key to Guarino"s chamber.
Truth, and timely truth, was what the Captain felt he had at last. With it he braved the supercilious doorkeeper; with it he forced the fellow to lift his intolerable eyelids.
"By the powers of darkness, my friend," he said, "it will be a bad day"s work for you if you deny me this time." So he won his admission and faced his master.
"Now, Mosca, your lie," said the Count, with his cold-steel delivery.
Mosca did not stumble.
"Master," he said, "I can do you service."