Persons Unknown Part 43

"See here, young man," she said, "don't you let me ketch ye doin'

anything underhanded--squealin' on us or tryin' to keep us here, 'cause we got to get out. If I was to say a word to my son that I thought that, there wouldn't be no prettiness left to you. I ain't goin' to have her locked up in no jail for any man that ever was born. Mebbe you think, 'cause I speak harsh of her, I ain't fond of 'er. Why, you little fool, I ain't never had a thought but for that minx since she was born. Even when I first see the other child, an' the resemblance gimme such a turn, the first thing I think of was how I was goin' to get somepun' out of it for her. That's why when I got to nurse the little thing I never let on fur a minute that I had one the spittin' breathin' image of it,--hair, mouth and nose, an' the eyes, too, so I near fainted when I first seen theirs--somepun' warned me to shut up an' somepun' 'ud come of it. They thought I'd just gone cracked on their baby. It's been the same ever since. I read all them yarns about changed children an' I thought it would be funny if I couldn't work it. An' I did. She used to act it all to me afterwards, right out in poertry. 'The ol' earl's daughter died at my breast'--Didn't she ever do any of her actin' fur you? Goes--'I buried her like my own sweet child an' put my child in her stead.'" Mrs.

Pascoe gave this forth with an inimitable relish of its stylish precedent. "If theirs hadn't died I'd ha' worked it somehow. They was rich then. She's walked on me an' on them, an' on the whole blame lot of us, ever since. But she's mine. What she wants she's goin' to have,--him or anything--I can't prevent her. No more can you. I'm goin' to stan' by her. An' you've got to."

"He's a murderer!" shrieked the Italian gentleman. "He's a murderer!"

"Seems like it's catchin'," Mrs. Pascoe commented. "Here's my daughter tells me you was hangin' round Mrs. Hope's all last Friday, lookin' fur that spy feller, an' all is you wasn't even competent to find him.--I guess I don't want to hear no talk outer you! Though as far forth as what roughness goes I don't say but what you wus druv to it."

The young man rose and stretching out a delicate hand, over which a gold bracelet drooped from underneath a highly fas.h.i.+onable British cuff, tremulously lighted a cigarette. Under its soothing influence he replied that of course he was a lost soul and he didn't deny that his companions had at last succeeded in dragging him to their level.

Mrs. Pascoe snorted like an angry horse. "Now you look here, Filly; when I married Mr. Ansello I didn't have no more idee what his business was than what you had. So far forth as what that goes, I didn't rightly ketch the whole o' what was goin' on till you come whoopin' along an'

got us all into that muss where we had to clear out back to my country.

I was mighty glad we did an' cut loose from all them demons--I said then an' I say now I won't stand fur nothin' rough! But you know as well as I do, oncet we was started out fur ourselves there's n.o.body ain't worked harder to keep to the quiet part o' the business 'un what yer brother-in-law an' yer wife has. It usta be, before Ally come back, that things did get oncet in a while beyond Nick's control, but never any more, thank the Lord--not in his own little crowd 'ut he has anything to do with! I guess there's one thing we agree on, young feller; it's jus'

druv me crazy, lately, to get mixed up with the regular Society again.

It's gettin' to be so big, even in this country, it won't let none o'

the little ones work fur themselves--all this month since it took us in I've felt there was things goin' on I never got to hear of an' I'm mighty glad we're goin' to get away from it to-morrer." She caught herself back from what was evidently a favorite topic. "But don't let me hear any more talk about draggin' down! You've done considerable draggin' on us with all that feller spyin' on yeh costs us, an' yeh'd ought to thank the children the way they've kep' yeh clear out o' the whole business. Why, n.o.body hardly knows 'ut yer alive! Y' ain't asked to do anything, y' ain't asked to show yerself, y' ain't even ever been a member, so now the Society ain't nabbed on yeh none. I wisht it hadn't sent fur yeh to the meetin' to-day, jus' to take Nick the word an' his money. Ally nor me, we won't do--no, they gotta have a man, an'

I s'pose they take you fur one! So far forth as what that goes the less I have to do with their greasy meetin's the better I like it, but I want you should be awful careful. If oncet they was to get on to who you was--Now, Filly, don't you smash them mugs!"

The Italian hastily resigned the object with which he had been angrily and absently rapping the table, and, exhausted with sobbing, began to breathe upon and polish his fingernails.

The mug, or jug, a little earthenware copy of a two-handled Etruscan drinking-vase, was one of three which stood there side by side, exactly alike save that the crude design which each of them bore--an arm and hand holding a scales--was differently colored; one red, one white, one green. But Mrs. Pascoe was aware of another difference and she turned the jugs around in a bar of sunlight till she found it; on one jug the scales of justice were gilded, on another silvered, on the third painted a dull gray. The single exclamation stenciled over each design translated into a sort of jingle:

Gold buys!

Silver pays!

Lead slays!

"Ain't she the hand," exclaimed Mrs. Pascoe, "for monkey-s.h.i.+nes! Don't you wonder what they do with these here, Filly? Mr. Gumama asked Ally to get him these new ones fur to-day. She'd have to fancy a thing up if 't was only to take a pill out of. Comin' in las' night without the car, what with luggin' these here an' the paul-parrot--'t ain't spoke a word, that bird ain't, since it left here!--I dunno but I'd ha' broke my neck hadn't been fur M'ree. I do hate turrible to part from M'ree--I declare, if ever anything happens to my Ally, I'll come back here an' put up with these Dagoes on M'ree's account--Now, for mercy's sake, Filly, don't howl!"

For the mention of parting had brought on a still more violent attack of the young man's anguish. The smile--wan but touched with the charm of Sicilian plaintiveness--with which he had been reconciling himself to life utterly disappeared; he ceased half-way through an excellent polish and casting himself down as from the Tarpeian rock, blubbered into the bedspread.

The old lady regarded him with contempt pa.s.sing again into suspicion and then into a softening weariness that rose in her manner like an anxiety that all the time had barely been held down. "Filly," said Mrs. Pascoe with sudden friendliness and such an uneasy, furtive look of dread as quite transformed her face, "what'er they goin' to do with that girl?"

He lay quiet a moment, as if discomfortably arrested by the question.

Then he asked, how did he know? Take her, leave her; what was it to him?

"Well, 't ain't hardly likely they're goin' to take her--an' her feller on the boat! An' I should jus' like to know how they could leave her!" A strange, helpless tremor pa.s.sed across that firm mouth. "Oh, why was she ever brought away? I allus knoo what it 'ud come to! Times there I did hope she was goin' to die, poor thing! But it war n't to be!" There was no sound but the sound of Filly, growling moistly into the bed.

Mrs. Pascoe,--or, according to her own reference, Mrs. Ansello--looked at the clock and began to fold up her knitting. But her long pent-up broodings burst from her again in a new channel. "One while I was scared Nick was kind o' losin' his head about the little piece. What with him gettin' more an' more stuck on her, all the time, an' her sick with love uv another feller, even to the farm I didn't know from one day to the next what he would do. But when he made out 't was safer to take her alone with him up t' the old place--Well, we all had to scuttle there that very same night, an' when she begun to take on for that letter I guess he forgot all them feelin's. He ain't never let a human bein'

stand in his sister's way an', however pretty that little neck o' hers might strike him, 't wouldn't take him two minutes t' wring it if he got scared she'd shoot her mouth against Allegra. I've had bad dreams before you ever was born, but I ain't ever had any like waitin' fur the bunch to come home that night an' the river so handy! I never thought I'd be glad to see my son half-bled to death--but there, there's allus mercies!

I expect he wishes, though, he'd come straight home from the post-office, instead o' snoopin' round that hotel! The sea-voyage'll fix him up all right, an' he's strong enough an' cross enough an' sick enough to pull the whole house down 'cause he can't get back an' forth without the car. Filly," she shot forth, "sure as you live he's got something made up fur to-night about that girl!"

The Italian gentleman taking this as a still further personal degradation, inquired aloud why he ever was born. But Mrs. Pascoe did not attempt the obvious retort.

She rose, fetched paper and string and, with an impotence foreign to her whole nature, fumbled in tying up the jugs. "I've allus said I wouldn't stand fur it, allus! But what can I do? I tell him I'll curse the last breath he draws--but can I stop him? Yeh know what he is--can anybody stop him? I tell yeh what 't is, Filly, I'm gettin' scared uv him! Yes, now I'm past sixty, I'll say it fur oncet--I'm scared uv him! And then, poor boy, so far forth as what that goes, what can he do, himself? When you come down to it, what can any uv us do? The girl knows everything--n.o.body knows that better'n you!--an' what she knows she'll blab. She's soft-lookin' but she's got a chin an' she's in love! If her feller's done fur, we're goin' to be done fur, too! There's my daughter to consider an' every last one uv us. Jus' now, too, when Ally's goin'

to get her divorce an' be so happy! What can I do?"

There was the sound of doors opening and closing and of some one coming upstairs. But Mrs. Pascoe paid no heed. Her unaccustomed garrulity, which had hitherto seemed the result of mere strain, began to appear as her idea of conciliation for the ushering in of a plan. "I've only one thing I can say favorable to you, Filly," she urged him, "yeh ain't rough an' yeh was a gentleman. Yeh don't want screamin' an' hurtin', I'll be bound. She's a little lady, Filly, an' she's 'n American girl.

Well, what I'm gettin' at is, would yeh dare do this? Now she's conscious, they won't lemme near her. But they'll never suspect you. I want yeh should tell her there's a bottle o' laudanum fur M'ree's tooth in my closet an' if she wants it, give it to her. Give it to her quick!"

The Italian gentleman giving no sign of finding consolation in this prospect, "Oh, yeh'll never in the world do it!" Mrs. Pascoe groaned.

"Yeh ain't got the nerve uv a sick worm! Why, it's different,--can't yeh see, Filly?--if she asks fur it herself--it's different, ain't it? It's what she promised to do in the beginnin'. An' now, jus' out o'

spitework, she won't. But I bet she will to-night. Whatever's up, she'll know it before they get her feller out there to-night. Give it to her, Filly!"

There was a knock at the door and the proprietress of the table d'hote entered cheerfully. "They come?" inquired Mrs. Pascoe. "Well, time I went. There, get up, Filly, an' blow yer nose, do! Come, come, yeh don't want the gentleman yer wife's goin' to marry to be brought up an' find yeh wallerin' on yer stomach!--Well, stay where yeh be! But now yeh mind what I was tellin' yeh, awhile back, about bein' anyways treacherous.

'T wouldn't be the first time but 't would be the last! My daughter's my daughter, an' as fur my son--I never said there was anythin' so rough I wouldn't stand fur it, when it come to Dagoes!"

CHAPTER XI

THE ARM OF JUSTICE ON CLEANING DAY: AN OVERTURE TO A COMIC OPERA

Mrs. Pascoe had some last minute shopping on hand, including farewell gifts for her niece's family and a special token for Maria Rosa, and she was quite unaware that it would have been a G.o.dsend for her daughter's plans had she kept her sharp eyes, that day, on the interior of the table d'hote. But even had this occurred to her the number of figures on the background of her son's life had lately so increased that she could scarcely have been expected to recognize that the friendly Italians who arrived at the appointed time were not a guard of Nicola's choosing, sent to carry a willing captive to the freedom of Allegra's waiting s.h.i.+p, but plain clothes men, who bore their prisoner back to jail. She and little Maria Rosa shopped successfully, refreshed themselves at an ice-cream parlor, returned home for a distribution of the farewells and, re-emerging from the house in mid-afternoon, walked briskly enough eastward, though now laden with heavier packages. Mrs. Pascoe carried so many bottles of wine that even the stout wrappings threatened to give way and, wrapped in many folds of clean dust-cloth, Maria bore the pretty jugs.

"I did lay out you should wait an' take those home," said Mrs. Pascoe to the little girl, "since your cousin Ally's fixed 'em up so pretty! But it'll be too late, likely, an' I don't like you should be crossin' the street after dark. You better tell me good-by an' run home soon 's I get the loft cleaned up fer the meetin'. I told yer ma you an' me 'd unpack that barrel o' backyard party truck an' the boys could bring a bundle of it over when they leave to-night. No use it settin' in a empty garradge.

Don't fergit yer old great-aunt, now will you, M'ree?--an' I'll send you somepun' reel pretty from furrin' parts, where yer parrot come from."

She added, as they crossed under a bend of the Elevated Road into South Fifth Avenue, "Remember, I've told yer ma ye're always to go out an'

visit my folks, same as if I was there. Mercy, I hope it don't rain with all of us trapesin' out there fer our last night! I don't see how the boys are goin' to get that feller out, with them fools skiddin' round the roads the way they be--an' Filly'll faint away most likely!"

They turned in at the door of a small dingy structure, which had been something else before it became a garage and that now looked vaguely out of use; from its obscure depths emerged the tall Sicilian, Mr. Gumama, who relieved her of the wine. She and the child mounted a ladder-like staircase and emerged through a sort of hatchway, scarcely more than an opening in the boards, with its lid tipped back against the wall.

It was not yet four in the afternoon, but the September light was already failing under the low roof of the loft. The windows were built close to the floor and that at the rear had a little, begrimed straggle of vine waving in at it. For the window looked out upon a triangle of trodden earth, heaped as with the rubbish of an old machine-shop but producing spears of gra.s.s and black, stunted bushes to show it had once been part of a yard. In front the loft gave directly upon a turning of the Elevated Road, and when a deafening train roared by the whole flimsy structure rattled and shook; the walls were irregularly studded with nails and hooks from which hung lengths of rope and buckled straps as of old harness that shook, too. Among these, from a cleared s.p.a.ce of honor, a head of Garibaldi, in gaily colored lithograph, confronted the flyspecked grandeur of the Italian royal family, domestically grouped; the pink paper of cheap gazettes brightened some of the murkier boards with woodcuts of prizefighters or disrobing ladies. Three or four stools stood about on the dingy boards and rather a greater number of worn out chairs; a couple of heaping barrels in one corner were covered with an old awning; there was a small bureau, once yellowishly glazed, without any gla.s.s; a kitchen table, stained with al fresco dinners, had been brought in from the yard; in another corner, torn rubber curtain-flaps, collapsed tires and threadbare leather cus.h.i.+ons supported each other.

Suddenly Mrs. Pascoe uttered a little hiss. She had perceived, sitting in the frame of the front window, a listless, undersized, undeveloped lad with the delicate, soft-eyed face of a young seraph, who looked seventeen and had probably turned twenty.

This young person was reading an Italian newspaper and sucking a limp cigarette which hung from between his teeth and occasionally scattered sparks down the slim chest which his inconceivably filthy s.h.i.+rt left open to his belt. He was greeted devotedly by Maria as Cousin Beppo and, though he was evidently the old lady's abomination, when she accosted him with the unconciliatory greeting, "Here, you! You stir yourself!" he reared himself slowly to his feet and, with a good-natured smile, sagged amicably toward her.

"I don't s'pose you think so," snapped Mrs. Pascoe, "but this place's got to be swep' out!"

Fortunately, the tidying of the loft did not depend upon the sweet-smiling indolence which remained unbroken while she swept and rubbed; when the barrels were despoiled of their green and pink netting, their feast-day lanterns and paper flowers Beppo nosed ingratiatingly up; but long before the old woman had laid clean oil-cloth over table and bureau he was playing charmingly with Maria, whom he coaxed to carry a chair to the rear window, to fill and set upon it a tin basin, and to filch him a clean dust-cloth.

Then he began cautiously to wash his face, down almost to the black rim midway of his pretty throat; cleansing his hands, too, but not so as to disturb the fingernails. Out from the top drawer of the bureau he took a broken bit of mirror, also richly scented pomatum with which he smoothed his hair well down over his brows and then he brought forth a velvet jacket and a waistcoat sprigged with embroidered flowers. He handled them as if they were vestments and, despite the warmth of the afternoon, their weight did not appal him. To these, over the filthy s.h.i.+rt, he added a silk neckerchief of robin's egg blue and a glittering scarfpin; there came forth, from its hiding-place about his person, a very graceful little knife which he stuck with airy bravado in his belt.

Lastly, he lighted a huge cigar and a.s.sumed, though for indoor display only, a soft hat balanced on the left side of the head, and a light cane swung from the left hand. Standing thus, full-costumed, with a hip-swaying swagger, he was more picturesque though less fas.h.i.+onable than his confreres of northern races, but his infamous profession was none the less proclaimed in every line of him. And once more he turned the sweet beam of his smile upon the little girl.

Beppo had not, however, dressed himself for professional purposes. The coming occasion was more solemn and his toilette an act of the purest piety. Perhaps that was why, when Mrs. Pascoe turned her contempt on him again, he was no longer amused.

The old woman, as she set out the jugs, was saying, "Fetch up them bottles, M'ree. An' Becky or whatever your name is--"

She turned and beheld the basin of dirty water. "You take that right down stairs!" cried she, in outrage. "An' the rest o' yer trash with yeh! When I clean a place, I want it left clean!"

He said something, sulkily, about emptying it herself.

"Well, when I come to emptyin' swill, 't won't be no Dago swill! Here--"

For he had furiously s.n.a.t.c.hed the basin above his head to dash it on the floor.

She caught at and somehow prevented him, but not from whirling it through the window into the back yard. He was smiling again at this a.s.suagement to his dignity when he suddenly perceived that the struggle had sprinkled his vest; spots appeared also upon his scarf's cerulean blue! He became, on the instant, a maniac, not human; he raved, he shrieked, his delicate skin flamed, tears suffused his eyes, he ran up and down scattering prayers, howls and curses. Until, one of these voyages bringing him close to Mrs. Pascoe's small disgusted figure, he seized her by the wrist and with the deliberate, systematic skill of custom began to wrench her arm.