JUNO PERFORMS A MIRACLE
OF great import was the picture Bridget saw in the Caffè of the
Beautiful Sicilian. It was Bertino’s afternoon off from the shop, and
he had planned the meeting with Juno the preceding day while his uncle
fought again the battles of Garibaldi before an audience of admiring
comrades at the Three Gardens. The little _tête-à-tête_ meant that a
crisis had suddenly developed in the green fever of the grocery clerk.
His temperature had reached a degree where he swore _vendetta_. Yes,
to-day she must choose between life with him and death with his rival.
It all came of the Snail Boiler’s false report that Signor Di Bello
had betrothed himself to the Superb. But Juno eased matters by coming
to the tryst with consent on her lips. She would be his wife. It was
not Bertino’s hot breathings of revenge, however, that had melted the
handsome iceberg. Her change of poise was due to a pair of hard knocks
that life had playfully dealt her the night before. The first came from
the _impresario_, who told her, with tearful voice, that the affairs
of the theatre had gone so badly of late that he was obliged--how
much against his will Iddio knew--to dispense with her services. The
second blow came after the performance, when she was eating _polenta_
and birds with Signor Di Bello. She had broached the subject of a
wedding ring, only to have him dash her hopes with a roar of laughter
that shook the _caffè_. The rich husband failing and her stage career
closed, she decided to tide over present difficulties by accepting
Bertino’s offer of a situation as wife. Though he had promised her
a home in Casa Di Bello, she was too shrewd not to perceive that he
would find it a promise hard to make good. But there was another prize
whereon she had set her purpose.
She was madly addicted to the photograph habit. The only genuine
emotion of which her nature seemed capable was the one of delight she
evinced when beholding a picture of herself in some new pose. In Naples
a good part of her earnings as bottle-washer in a wine house had gone
for portraits; and the passion still clinging to her, she had begun to
mortgage her salary at the theatre to a Mulberry photographer. In two
days she had posed three times, and brought each set of the tintypes
to the grocery to show them to Bertino. At sight of them he rolled his
eyes, clasped his hands, and exclaimed:
“Ah, how beautiful! How sympathetic!”
“It would make a fine bust, _neh_?” she would add, but to this Bertino
always returned a decisive no. Once she showed him an old solar print
that was taken in Naples. It portrayed her in bare shoulders, with a
lace mantle over her head and eyes looking soulfully at the moon.
This was her favourite. “In America,” she declared, “they could not
make a _ritratto_ like that.” But with all her pictures there remained
a gnawing in the stomach of her vanity--a hunger that would not be
allayed since the moment that he told her about the bust. She wanted to
see herself in marble.
It was understood between them that at the meeting this afternoon
they would settle the marriage question once and for all; Bertino
told himself it would be settled for life or death. On his way to the
_caffè_ he encountered Carolina, and she stunned him with the news of
her coming departure for Italy.
“To-night I go aboard,” she said. “Thus I shall not miss the ship and
have to wait five weeks for another, as Father Nicodemo did.”
With thrift-prodding anxiety Bertino walked on, thinking out a plan for
turning her voyage to the advantage of himself and Armando. The letter
he meant to write, and its inclosure of a portrait of the President’s
wife, had assumed in his mind a boundless importance. It would be a
packet far too valuable for intrustment to the ordinary mail, and
registering letters to Europe he had found, on inquiry of Banker
Tomato, to be a costly business; nor was it any too safe, according to
the same authority. Aunt Carolina was going to Cardinali; why not send
it by her? With her own hands she could deliver the precious missive to
Armando. Nothing could be safer or cheaper. But there was not a moment
to lose if she went aboard to-night.
Thus it had come about that when Juno entered the _caffè_ she found
Bertino writhing in the travail of chirography. Before him on the table
lay a photograph of the First Lady of the Land. She checked an impulse
to catch it up and tear it to shreds.
Taking a chair by the table she watched him while he wrote. When he had
finished the letter he read it over slowly, then took up the picture
of the President’s wife to fold the written sheet around it and place
it in the envelope.
“Bah!” she said. “You talk of love. What love! Why don’t you send this
picture for the bust instead of that one? Am I not more beautiful?” She
drew from her skirt pocket her favourite portrait--the one that showed
her gazing wistfully at the moon.
“Anything but that,” he answered. “The next one shall be yours. I swear
it, if you will swear to be my wife. Ah, _mia preziosa_, in this letter
there is a fortune for me--for us both. Don’t you see the fine idea it
is to have a bust made of such a grand signora? It will make a _furore
tremendo_ in America.”
He had put the letter and the picture in the envelope, and in another
instant would have sealed it, but Juno sprang to her feet and pointed
to the door, crying:
“Quick! Go stop him! That man with the brown hat--my cousin! He has
just passed. I must see him. Quick, Bertino!”
He started for the door, but hardly had he reached it before she
snatched the envelope from the table, took out the photograph of the
President’s wife and put in the one of herself. Bertino ran back and
forth in search of the myth with the brown hat, and at length returned,
grumbling that no such person was in the street.
“Ah, what a pity!” she said. “I have not seen my cousin since the Feast
of the Madonna del Carmelo.”
Bertino licked the gum and sealed the envelope.
“And now, _carina_,” he said, regarding her tenderly, “the answer that
you promised to-day.”
“It is ready,” she said, her eye on the letter. “I will be your wife.”
“Joy!” he cried, and gave her a resonant kiss that startled two
chess-players from their absorption and evoked a sneer from the _caffè_
waitress.
* * * * *
That night Bertino went with Aunt Carolina to the ship. Before saying
_buon viaggio_ he handed her the letter for the sculptor.
“May you guard it well, my aunt!” he said solemnly. “It is of great
value.”