after juno’s sudden disappearance the theatre and the caffès of mulberry lost their charm for signor di bello. he began to roam abroad evenings in quest of amusement. there came to him a newborn desire to explore the region of american life that lay beyond the colony’s border. for twelve years he had dwelt in its heart and felt the throb of the big city; but never before had it struck his mind to know more of this terra misteriosa than he could learn from the morning araldo and the evening bolletino, two local scions of the corybantic press, which bawled the news of mulberry in double-column scares, but only whispered in paragraphs of the affairs of new york. [pg 144]with sixty thousand others mulberry was his world. he had never sought acquaintance with the great american monster whose roar filled the surrounding air by day and whose million eyes at night gave the northern sky a dim, false dawn.
from visiting bowery shows he became a patron of the vaudeville theatres farther up town. at length he discovered the tenderloin, with its dazzling electric displays at the doors of theatres and drinking places, its phantom gaiety. resolved to sound the depths of this ocean of lights, he went along with a current that flowed to the box office of the titania, where the glittering aztec spectacle, “zapeaca” was the magnet, charged with “one hundred american beauties.”
“by cristoforo colombo, it is she!” the grocer exclaimed, as the woman he had hunted in a cityful marched across the stage, bringing up the rear of a long column of high-heeled warriors. though disguised in a tin spear, a pasteboard shield, and a [pg 145]sheening helmet set jauntily upon her bounteous raven mane, he knew her at first sight. no mistaking that snub nose, that grand carriage, the plethora of her line, the eastern warmth of her colour.
“brava!” he cried out, from his seat near the footlights whenever the row of beauties to which she belonged showed themselves in marching order. it was a renewal of the transport into which her presence had thrown him when in solitary pride she held the stage of la scala and bleated “santa lucia.” to the jeers of the people about him he paid no heed, but gave wild, vociferous expression to his delight at finding her and feasting his eyes upon her, as she stood there in all the truth of the ballet’s scant drapery.
after the performance he waited in front of the theatre until the lights were extinguished and the big doors slammed in his face. well it was for the public peace that his education did not include a knowledge of the stage door, for had he gone round the [pg 146]corner to that entrance not only would he have encountered juno, but he would have witnessed the infuriating afterpiece of bertino taking her arm and carrying her off toward the east side. it is not unlikely that one steel blade at least would have gleamed in the half light of that by-street. but his innocence as to the right door at which to await a lady of the ballet caused a postponement of the tragedy. when at last he sought the advice of a cabman and was directed to the proper place it was too late.
“satana porco!” he growled as he started homeward. “i am a grand donkey. this is saturday. to-morrow is festa. two whole days must i go without seeing her. but on monday night we shall meet, and then she shall be my promised wife.”
at the same time juno was telling bertino of her determination to go with the “zapeaca” company in a tour of the country. they talked as they moved along on foot toward the third avenue elevated. “it is [pg 147]only ten dollars a week,” she said, “with all expenses save the railroad to pay; but what would you have? is it not better than living here the way you support me? perhaps you think i will spend my money. not even in a dream! a woman expects her husband to support her. to-morrow night, then, i go.”
“how long shall you be absent?” asked bertino humbly.
“goldoni says six months anyway; perhaps longer.”
“you will come back to me?”
“yes”—and after a pause—“when you can support me like a signora.”
“in six months!” said bertino exultantly. “ha! then i shall be my own padrone. then you shall see what a man your husband is.”
“why?”
“armando’s bust will be here. don’t you remember? the bust that shall bring us both fortune. patience, patience, my precious. mark what i say: with the grand [pg 148]marble of the first lady of the land once in my hands i shall quickly put my uncle in a sack. in his face i will snap my fingers and say, ‘i beg to inform you, signore, that juno is my wife.’”
she made no answer, and bertino went on building airy mansions of the golden harvest to follow the sale of the sculpture then under way as well as that to be reaped from other marbles to be turned out of armando’s far-off workshop. his words affected juno in a manner that he little kenned. she had given herself only a fugitive thought as to what might happen when the bust should arrive and bertino should find it an image of his own wife instead of the wife of the president of the united states. when the critical moment came, when the fruit of her roguery stood unveiled, she felt that she should be equal to it—that she could shrug her shoulders and meet bertino’s suspicions with a simple plea of ignorance, and trust to his believing that he himself sent the wrong photograph by mistake. now she perceived[pg 149] that it behooved her to keep friends with him, to guile him with affection, else his suspicion when he should discover the fraud might take the cast of sullen conviction, and in mulberry who can tell what a husband may do with a false wife, whatever the shade of her duplicity may be? moreover, she wanted the bust. her rude self-conceit thirsted for that effigy in stone of her own dear self. to lose it would be to miss the prize on which she had set her desire when she said “yes” that day in the caffè of the beautiful sicilian.
“ah, yes,” she replied when they stood on the elevated platform. “we shall put your uncle in a sack and get along well together when the bust is here.”
“brava, my wife!” said bertino, and they entered the train.
next day being the feast of sunday, bertino and his uncle met at the noon repast in casa di bello, as they had done every sunday since carolina’s absence. the grocer [pg 150]was in jubilant spirits, unable to contain his joy over the finding of juno.
“ah, nephew mine,” he said, when angelica had set a large bowl of steaming chestnut soup on the board and retired to her listening place. “not many days, caro mio, and we shall have a fine woman at table with us. yes, a woman truly magnificent.”
“who is she?”
“the woman who is to be my wife. i told you once. can you not divine?”
“no.”
“well, i will tell you, though it is a great secret: juno the superb.”
a spoonful of soup that bertino was in the act of swallowing took the wrong course and choked him, while angelica was thrown from her balance at the head of the kitchen stairs and almost fell to the bottom. when bertino had stopped coughing he gasped:
“juno the superb?”
“yes. is it not famous?”
“your wife?”
“yes. ah, what joy!”
[pg 151]
“but it is impossible!”
“not at all, nephew mine. i have found her. i saw her last night for the first time since the feast of san giorgio. ah, how i had searched! it was in the theatre that i saw her—at the titania, a grand spectacle. so many women, and beautiful! but not one was the equal of juno. my word of honour for that. well, i waited after the representation, but did not see her. to-morrow night, though, i shall say to her: ‘juno, be my wife. in three months come to my house, to casa di bello.’ these words will i say to her, and i shall wait at the stage door until she comes out.”
“you will wait many months, then,” said bertino to himself with a smothered chuckle as he fell upon a patty of codfish that angelica had just brought in.
“grand trouble, grand trouble,” sighed angelica, as she prepared the after-dinner zabaglioni[b] for her master. “if the signorina[pg 152] were here he would not dare bring her to the house. and when she comes and finds the singer has been in casa di bello! o maria—grandissimo trouble!”
in the evening bertino accompanied juno to the grand central depot, whence she left for buffalo with the rest of the hundred american beauties of the “zapeaca” aggregation.
on tuesday morning bertino regarded his uncle quizzically across the breakfast table, but of his second fruitless visit to the titania’s stage door the signore was as silent as the figure of san patrizio that looked down upon casa di bello from the architrave of the church on the opposite side of mulberry street. and for many a day thereafter not a word did he utter concerning any magnificent woman that was to become his wife.
