A Fellow-Traveler

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

IT was in a third-class railway carriage in Italy. The train, which was the “ omnibus,” aptly so called, of an accommodating and lingering disposition, had stopped at Prato. Nothing of the charm of the still little town was visible from the station ; the lovely black and white cathedral, with its tall campanile and its open-air pulpit sculptured by Donatello, was out of sight. The special delicacy of the place, pan’ dolce di Prato, a kind of seed-bread in thick toasted slices, was brought within reach of travelers, at a soldo a slice, on the platform. The door of our compartment opened, and a young man got in with a child in his arms, and deposited her, standing, on the seat, while he turned to take some hand luggage from two men outside, and to arrange it on the shelf. There are a very few people and a good many children who bear the stamp of a natural sovereignty : that little creature, as she stood on the dingy seat, wide-eyed, self-possessed, and regal, annexed the compartment and its inhabitants in a moment to an unnamed country of which she was queen. She was a glorious child, large for her years, which, as we soon learned, were but two and a half, round and firm of mould, with rich red cheeks, dark eyes, and a superb mouth, revealing, when it opened, a treasure of tiny first teeth. She wore no hat, and her brown hair broke into curls and gold as it listed, the soft locks straying in curves from shadow to sunshine. She was neatly dressed in a sailor frock of dark blue ; a little white muff hung round her neck by a cord ; one dimpled hand grasped a piece of Prato sweet-bread, and the other clasped to her bosom a bouquet of red camellias and daffodils.

The luggage disposed of, the bambina was carried to the window, with a word of apology from the young man to the occupants of corner seats, to make her adieux to the friends without. “ Kiss Giovanni, Ilda,” and a gracious indifferent kiss was bestowed upon an awkward young fellow, who received it with the evident satisfaction of a devoted swain. An old man, with a kindly open face, accepted a similar salute with no less pleasure. There was an eager exchange of parting words and greetings between the men; then the train moved away, the young man sitting down with the child on his lap. The farewells were not over, however. Soon after the train left the station the pair were again at the window, making signals with handkerchief and bouquet, which were responded to from a house at some distance. Then they settled down. The bambina was relieved of her flowers and muff, which were put on the shelf ; she had a draught of red wine from a little flask, and ate in a slow, abstracted way two or three mouthfuls of her bread, soon forgetting it in the interest of the conversation. Her father, a handsome man, whose animated face was picturesquely set off by a broad felt hat, fell into talk with the man in the corner, who was accompanied by a boy of twelve. After a little chat with them he transferred his attention to the peasant woman opposite with a baby in arms, and asked after the age, sex, health, and history of the infant, informing her in return that his own bambina was due messo, in his soft pronunciation ; that they had been visiting his father at Prato, and were going hack to join the mamma. He asked my permission to smoke, lit a cigar, and inquired concerning my nationality and destination, finding the chances for further conversation rather impaired by my imperfect knowledge of the language. Ilda took note of the baby, and leaned over to converse with it, offering it generously a piece of her Prato bread, which it was obliged to decline by proxy, being kept of necessity to a less crusty diet. The man next to her tried to snatch a piece ; but, though willing to share her meal voluntarily, she was not to be deprived of it by force, and stood on the seat holding it behind her, deaf to arguments and entreaties, and showing all her little white teeth in a smile of triumph, till she finally concluded to preserve her treasure by devouring it, and ate the last morsel, apparently not from hunger, but out of sheer good-humored maliciousness. She held her own in the talk, too, and replied to the teasing of her father and her fellowtravelers, the man and the boy, with a very quick sense of the fun of its intention.

She had an eager interest in everything before her, — a primal intellectual curiosity of the sort possible only to the child, the puppy dog, and the first poet. “That is Pistoia ! ” the boy exclaimed, as we emerged from a tunnel and saw a city spread out on the plain below us. “ That is Pistoia,” echoed Ilda, in her clear, assertive voice. “ I must sec Pistoia, ” and she stretched out her sunny little head as if for a vision of some promised land. I had a seat by the window, and invited her to share it; she came without hesitation, and, the window proving so high that, as she sat on my lap, its sill was on a level with her eyes, she stood up on my knees and leaned out, reporting eagerly in her childish speech every object in view. When the train passed into a tunnel, she nestled down in my lap with her curly head against my shoulder, springing up like a deer the moment the light appeared. “ C’ e uu altro ? ” she inquired each time as it began to grow dark ; and she followed the boy in his systematic reckoning of the tunnels, calling out each number after him, into the thirties. Her father was concerned for my possible fatigue and the injury to my traveling dress, but the impression of the warm little life was sweet and real enough to be set against that of the tiny patent-leather shoes, and the burden was yielded with reluctance, and was willingly resumed when, drawn by new attractions at the window, Ilda volunteered to return. Her father got out at a station and bought another flask of wine, which he insisted upon my sharing ; so I took a little for companionship, and it was passed on generously to the man and the boy, and then offered again to me before he would touch it himself. It was sweet, strong white wine, very nice, but, I could not help thinking, a little too strong for two and a half, who however imbibed it like water, with no visible effects, though a slight sleepiness very naturally manifested itself toward the end of the long journey, to be bravely conquered in unflagging response to the remarks addressed to her. At two and a half she was already well advanced in language lessons. “ What is it in Tuscan, Ilda?” she was asked, as she sat on my lap eating a dried fig. “ Fio sec,” she replied shyly, after some urging. “ And in Italian ? ” “ Fico secco.” But the word for “ water ” was beyond her powers of articulation. “C’e le montagne,” she would say, pointing to the hills ; then, indicating the rapid little river below us, “ E e’e 1’acca. ” “Aqua,” her father would say, with a stern front of disapproval. “ Why do you not say it right, aqua ? ” They all tried, by threats and laughter, to effect the reform ; but the queen, responding to both by laughter and by a royal firmness, dictated the language instead of accepting it as found. “C’ e l’ acca,” she replied each time, with triumphant emphasis and a wave of her chubby hand toward the river, as if to insist that it should bear that name in future, and to make of the limitation of her powers a decree of her will. And is not that absolute sovereignty ?

The worst of making friends for the hour is the parting, though to be sure that is also the drawback to much more enduring relations. We had all been subject for three or four hours to the rule of that small creature, with her unconscious supremacy of childhood ; even the passengers in the other compartments of the carriage, divided from us by only half partitions, had stood up now and then and looked ver in frank admiration. When we drew near the destination of the bambina, and the full toilet of muff and nosegay was resumed, some of us felt a pang. The train stopped at a little station ; the young man seized my hand, with a cordial “ Grazie e buon viaggio ! ” Ilda submitted to a hasty kiss, and they got out, their luggage being handed down by fellow-travelers with that eager helpfulness which third-class travelers in Europe, especially Italians, so often exhibit toward each other. As the train moved away from the station, the man in the corner sprang up, exclaiming, “ C’ e la bambina chi passa ! ” and we all stood up, eager and alert, to watch them going along the white country road. The bambina, carried in the arms of a woman with a bright handkerchief on her head, unconscious of our admiration, was holding high her bouquet of red camellias and daffodils. I confess that her departure left a void not only in the train : I was still vaguely aware of it the next day as I went through the Academy at Bologna, and it was association rather than appreciation of art which made it difficult to get away from the large canvas of Domenichino, the Madonna of the Rosary, where the smiling Child, with his floating blue drapery, stands in his mother’s arms up in cloudland, holding aloft a bright nosegay of roses. What a picture that is, considered simply as a transcript of life ! Below, all the miseries of the earth, the martyrdoms, the frightened innocence, the rage of passion and cruelty ; saints looking up with the question, “ How long, O Lord ? ” in their intense hollow eyes. Each holds fast a rosary. And above on the clouds a Madonna looks down with eyes of pity, and the blonde Child holds up his roses with a smile. How are a chaplet and a posy, a smile and a pitying glance, to weigh against all that wretchedness ? Yet they are pretty much the sum of all that has been heaped in the balance against, it by religions and philosophies, by love, and by life itself ; and if we have had a moment’s glimpse of their significance, and felt aught of their potency, can we say that they are wholly inadequate ?