the following night, and every night of the week, signor di bello held forth ecstatically in the box at la scala. but the warmth of his demonstrations for juno was unable to melt the frost that her dreadful voice had caused to settle on the audience—a frost that grew thicker with each new display of her copious self. from his bench under the gallery bertino was a witness of his uncle’s frantic courtship, and the green fever fairly consumed him, for he had decided that juno was made for him, and that neither his uncle nor any one else should have her for wife. in the matter of courting he too had not been idle, though he was young enough to know better than to make a public show of [pg 58]his addresses. more than once it had occurred that while signor di bello took his ease in the caffè of the three gardens of an afternoon, juno and bertino passed a quarter of an hour together in the grocery. with a black mantilla of cheap lace thrown over her head, instead of the accustomed shawl that maids of mulberry wear on working days, she visited the shop for her supply of salame, lupine beans, or the goat’s-milk cheese of which she told bertino she was very fond. the first time she entered, his heart leaped and he began stammering excuses for the spot of yellow he had given her cheek at their last meeting. would the beautiful signorina believe that it was all an accident, clumsy calf that he was—a mishap most stupid? he begged her to forgive him. would she not? oh, how happy it would make him!
“bah!” she answered, looking him over. “give me good weight of salame and free measure of beans.”
clearly, the weight and measure that he [pg 59]gave suited her, for she came every afternoon thereafter, but never when signor di bello happened to be in the shop. one day he said to her:
“every night i dream of you.”
“ah, si?” she replied, arching her rich brows. “and every night i dream. shall i tell you of what?”
“of me?” breathed bertino.
“of you? simpleton! i dream of getting out of this hogpen. blood of san gennaro! do you think i came to america to live a life like this? wait until i have money in the bank of risparmio.”
“but, signorina, i love you.”
“love! what good is that? it may do for these animals to live on. for me, no. when i marry i shall become a grand signora.”
on the fifth day of their acquaintance she told him her troubles. five dollars a week was all she got at la scala, and signor grabbini—a man most stingy—kept back two of that for the dress, the scarlet [pg 60]slippers, and the pink tights. don’t talk to her of america as a place to make money. what a pigsty was mulberry! her room, which she hired of luigia the garlic woman, was smaller and darker than any she ever had in naples. and what did it cost? a whole dollar every week! five liras for a room! merciful madonna!
“listen,” said bertino, coming from behind the counter and walking with her to the door; “i want you for my wife. marry me, and you shall live in the finest house in mulberry—in casa di bello.”
“what have you to do with that house?” she asked quickly.
“i live there.”
“but it belongs to signor di bello.”
“yes; i am his nephew.”
a new interest awoke in her wary and artful eye. “they say he is very rich,” she mused, looking toward the patch of green in paradise. “he admires my singing very much.”
“your singing! bah!” bertino’s love [pg 61]was not deaf. “don’t you know why he makes a baboon of himself when you are on the stage? you have turned his old head with your beauty.”
“i don’t believe you,” she said absently, while there came into her mind an extravagant avowal of love that signor di bello had made to her behind the scenes the night before. “well, he is rich,” she went on, “and you—are poor.”
“true; i am not rich now, but i shall be soon. ha! do you know how i am going to make money? i do not tell everybody—not even my uncle—but i will tell you. i have a friend in italy, at cardinali. do you know the place? no matter. my friend is what is called a sculptor, and he is going to make statues—oh, so fine!—of great people in this country. now, it is i who am to tell him what to make. when i have made up my mind, i shall send him the picture of some great american—some famous man—and from this he will make a marble bust. the marble is all ready. [pg 62]when it is done he will send it to me, and i shall—well, perhaps i shall put it in some fine gallery like our palazzo rosso in genoa. ah, what a place that is! i was there once on the feast of the child. now, my friend is a sculptor most wonderful. i know what he can do. you should see his beautiful juno and the peacock. if you——”
“juno and the peacock?” she broke in. “what is that?”
“ah! a lady most beautiful, without any clothes, and a great bird with a long tail. oh, how beautiful—as beautiful as you!”
“veramente?”
“i tell you the truth. now, when the people of america see the bust that he shall send, what do you think they will do? why, they will be mad for it, and some rich man will buy it. i have not yet made up my mind how much i shall make him pay. not less than a thousand liras, of that you may be sure. but this will be only the beginning. after that armando will make more [pg 63]busts, the rich ladies and gentlemen will continue to buy, and—who knows?—bertino manconi may become a millionaire. now will you be my wife?”
“he has made one juno,” she said, her thought set on a single phase of his chimera—that whomever he chose for the subject, after that person a bust would be fashioned. “since he has made one juno, why not let him make another?” she said it seriously, without guile. “oh, so many photographs i had taken in naples! here, none; i am too poor. next week i shall have some. but how fine i should look in marble! i have thought of it many a time. ah, proprio bella, neh?”
“you would make the finest bust in the world,” he said ardently.
“i think so myself,” she nodded, drawing the mantilla under her chin and moving away with her package of freely weighed codfish. he watched her until she turned into the mouth of the alley of the moon, whereon her lodgings looked, and the idea [pg 64]that she had put into his head took deeper hold.
“why not?” he asked the tub of olives at the door. “is there a more beautiful woman in america? it is settled. to-morrow i shall say to her, ‘carissima juno, when you are my wife i will send your picture to armando, that you may be the first bust.’”
he stood in the doorway gazing out on the park, assured now that she must be his—for what greater honour could man show to woman?—when his eye met the bronze presence of italy’s liberator. a withered wreath of laurel, with which the italian societies had crowned their hero on his last birthday, had dropped over the head and become a lopsided necklace. bertino saw the half-drawn sword, the bared arm, the conquering air, and his promise to armando came back:
“it shall be some one as great as garibaldi.”
thus it fell out that the following afternoon,[pg 65] when juno came to the shop for garlic and spaghetti, and told him that of all things she would like to see herself in marble, he said: “no; it would be false to my friend.”
“and you say you dream of me?”
“by night and by day.”
“and you love me?”
“ah, si; madonna knows.”
“still you will not do me this favour?”
“but it is to be the bust of a man.”
“bah! why not a woman?”
“no, no; i can not. it would be treachery to armando.”
none the less, she had spoken the words that sealed the fate of the bust. “why not a woman, indeed?” bertino asked himself when she had gone. “but it must be the greatest as well as the handsomest woman in america.” he thought of the picture of the president’s wife that he had seen one night at an illustrated italian lecture in the hudson mission. “by san giorgio!” he exclaimed, astonished at the grandeur of his [pg 66]own idea. “a bust of her majesty, the first lady of america! this is the best thing i ever thought of.”
the next day was one of vast import. not only did it witness the purchase by bertino in a bowery store of a small photograph of the president’s wife, warranted genuine, but it brought to the ears of aunt carolina news that made her tremble for casa di bello. from the market place angelica bore the gossip that was fast reaching every niche and turn of mulberry—the great tidings that signor di bello and juno the superb had been seen the night before in the caffè of the beautiful sicilian sitting at the same table eating a ragout of spiced pigskin.
“it must be stopped!” declared carolina, setting her gold-patched teeth. the old bugaboo of a wife arose, as it did with any woman to whom the running voice of the colony linked her brother’s name. “he shall never bring that neapolitan baggage to casa di bello.”
[pg 67]
that night, after dinner, from which her brother was absent, she hung long gold pendants in her ears, fastened her lace collar with a large cameo brooch, and, her puce-coloured silk all arustle, went to reconnoitre, as she always did when the sky of her dominion was threatened with a wife. it was a rare sight to see signorina di bello abroad at night, afoot in the heart of mulberry, and people stared in wonder or bowed reverently as she passed by. a half-hour afterward, when the bay of naples and smoking vesuvius made way for juno on the stage of la scala, three shoots of the di bello stock were intent beholders—giorgio in the box, bertino on his bench under the gallery, and carolina in a seat directly overhead, where her brother could not see her. with ears stopped, but eyes wide open, the priestly dame surveyed with alarm the expansive glories of juno, and regarded with dismay the rhapsody of signor di bello. if she knew her brother, and she was confident that she did, here was a woman who could have him [pg 68]for a husband. thoughtfully she walked home, and thoughtfully she sought her pillow.
from the land of sleep there came no helpful message, and in the morning she sat before her sanctum window still pondering what to do. over the forest of gray shafts that marked the sepulchres in st. patrick’s churchyard she gazed sadly at the broad windows of the rectory where she had lived those years of sweetest order and tranquility, where husbands and wives had no part in life’s economy, where marrying woman and wedlocking man jarred not the placid liturgy of her days. suddenly the door swung wide, and angelica panted into the room. as fast as her short legs could waddle she had come from the market place with a basket full of fresh vegetables and a head full of dewy scandal.
“o signorina! the shame!” she gasped. “truly a disgrace tremendous! mulberry talks of naught else. i speak of what i [pg 69]know, for it comes straight from the lips of sara the frier of pepper pods, who had it first from simone the snail boiler.”
“what?”
“a grand shame! signor di bello is betrothed to the neapolitan singer!”
“juno the superb?”
“si, signorina. oh, the disgrace!”
“misericordia, santa maria!”
“and the day is set. luigia the garlic vender says it, and——”
“for when?”
“the feast of januarius.”
“the baggage!” said carolina, her austere calm all gone. “that’s her doing. a genovese to be married on the feast of st. januarius! by the mass, we shall see!”
even as the bottled blood of naples’s patron saint boils once a year, so did the corked emotions of carolina begin to bubble. clearly the hour for action had come. it was not the first time that a war cloud of matrimony had darkened her sky, and she buckled for the onset with a veteran heart. [pg 70]she plumed herself on having outwitted and driven to retreat more than a dozen pretenders to her brother’s hand. once it was the daughter of pescoli the undertaker, a ripe maid of barn-owl face and sinewy pattern, famed for settling disputes with the neighbours pugnis et calcibus; but carolina pitted brain against brawn, and this terror bit the dust. next came the red milanese, widow of baroni the merchant in secondhand bread. in her hand she brought her husband’s ten years’ savings for dowry, and on her apricot face, still fresh, her everblooming smile; she, too, was outgeneralled by carolina, as were many other would-be wives as fast as they showed their heads. at least, so it seemed to carolina. that she held her place as mistress of casa di bello, she firmly believed, was due solely to the fact of her never-flagging vigilance. but it may be guessed that her brother’s side of the story would have dimmed her self-glory as a match-breaker. once he said to her, spicing the sentiment with a dry laugh:
[pg 71]
“do you think i can’t admire a fine woman without giving her a wedding ring?”
but from the watchtower of her ever-present dread the petticoats that she espied were always signals of real danger, however he might laugh them to false alarms. wherefore she felt that she must take up the cudgels against juno as she had raised them against other women, and that without delay. the teeming line and colour of the neapolitan were clear in her memory, and she knew a stronger siege than ever had been laid to her brother’s taste. henceforth eternal alertness would be the price of signor di bello’s bachelorhood and her own reign, which she took as a most serious matter. alas! it was the same old battle. would the struggle never end? and this ever-returning necessity of standing watch and ward, of fighting away aspirants for wedding rings, rose before her now in an unwonted light, as a penance that ought not to be laid upon her, as one that she would like to put off. she could see herself all her days beating[pg 72] back would-be wives from the portals of casa di bello, and the troubled outlook weighted her spirit with despair. a yearning for peace entered her soul, and with it came the thought of a startling alternative for war—a voice telling her to do the very thing that she had fought so long against her brother’s doing. take a wife! but her taking a wife, she mused smugly, should be quite a different matter from his taking one. the maid of her choosing would be no menace to the status quo of casa di bello. she would be a person of right notions, not puffed with the foolish conceit of being able to govern the household; a ragazza with good sense enough to see that a wife’s place under the connubial roof is far inferior to that of her husband’s sister. ah! the wife of her choice, she told herself fondly, should be her creature, not a ruler; a subject, not a trampler, of her parish-house laws. it never struck carolina’s mind to seek her ideal among the girls of new italy; that would be calling for aid to the camp of the enemy. [pg 73]her fancy took wing over seas to old italy, to apennine maids untinged of the craft and airs of mulberry; to some maid of clay that would shape easy in the mould of her wish. when bertino came in at noon from the shop, she began:
“you have a sister?”
“si; marianna.”
“very well. what kind of a girl is she?”
“a fine girl.”
“is she sound in health?”
“ah, si; very sound.”
“how big is she?”
“medium size.”
“gentle and kind?”
“yes, very gentle.”
“how old?”
“let me think. she will be seventeen come the feast of the mother.”
“any bad traits?”
“not a single one, except that she eats too much molasses.”
“what work does she?”
[pg 74]
“straw-plaiting.”
“do you think she would like to come to america?”
“not unless—unless——”
“well?”
“not unless armando came.”
“armando? an amante, i suppose?”
“yes, aunt; her amante.”
“bah!” her spinster mind did not count this a serious matter. “perhaps i shall send for her.”
“she wouldn’t leave armando.”
“then i might go and bring her.”
“what do you want of her?” ventured bertino.
“some day you shall see.”
