A RACE TO THE SWIFT
THE morning that Carolina sailed for Genoa, Signor Di Bello began
to reconsider the roar of derision with which he had treated Juno’s
matrimonial aims, and before the day was out he had made up his mind
to possess her as his wife. To be sure, he had promised Carolina not
to marry for three months, and this pledge, given on his saint’s day,
was of course inviolable; but he reasoned that there would be no
breach of faith in offering Juno his hand, and having the nuptials set
three months to a day from the Feast of St. George. He sat in the shop
thinking over the great matter, when the sunlit floor was darkened by
the shadow of Sara the Frier of Pepper Pods.
“_Buon giorno_, Signor Di Bello,” she said, in a tone that gave promise
sure of more to follow.
“O Signora Sara, _buon giorno_.”
“Two cents’ worth of salt, if you please. _Ahimè!_ Truly these are days
of much expense. Never did I fry peppers that required so much salt.”
“Ah, _si_; much expense,” said Signor Di Bello, yawning and handing her
out a two-cent bag.
From a deep pocket of her skirt she drew a begrimed canvas money pouch,
and untied a long string with which it was closed at the top and wound
about many times. Dipping in, she brought forth a handful of coppers,
and selected two. These she laid on the counter with a sigh, first
feeling of the bag to make sure that it was packed hard with salt. She
looked about the shop, and stood a moment moving a red-stockinged foot
in and out at the open heel of her wooden-soled slipper.
“Your nephew not here?” she remarked, and then with a chuckle, “With
the singer, _neh_?”
“What singer?” asked Di Bello.
“Juno.”
“What has he to do with La Superba?”
“More than you think,” returned the yellow-visaged beldame, nodding her
head mysteriously, while her long gold earrings jingled. “Listen, and
it is I that will tell you something. Go to the Caffè of the Beautiful
Sicilian if you would know with whom he spends his time.”
“What do you mean?”
“There it is that he meets the _cantatrice_.”
“Juno?”
“_Si_, signore.”
“Satan the Pig! Bah! What are you saying?”
“The truth, signore; the truth, I assure you. I have it on the word of
Lavinia the waitress. Only yesterday she saw them kiss.”
The gloating eyes of Sara were fixed upon him, and Di Bello did
something very unusual for him--he dissembled his feelings.
“What of it?” he said with an air of unconcern. “Why should he not kiss
her? It is no affair of mine.”
Though a good piece of acting, it did not gammon the keen wits of Sara
the Frier of Pepper Pods. Taking up her bag of salt, she clattered from
the shop, and before long stood the voluble centre of a group of eager
women, into whose ears she poured the tidings of rival loves in Casa Di
Bello. Meantime the grocer, waiting for Bertino, fanned his wrath. When
the young man turned up at the shop this was his greeting:
“Satan the Pig!”
“Why?” asked Bertino.
“And you have the courage to ask? Very innocent for one who tries to
rob me of the woman I love. O traitor!”
Bertino stood speechless with amazement and dismay. His good-natured,
easy-going uncle prancing about the place in a fit of passion was a
sight that took his breath away.
“By the Egg of Columbus!” Di Bello continued, raising his clinched fist
and fixing his eyes upon the loops of dried sausage suspended from the
ceiling--“by the Egg, I swear it, if you don’t keep away from that
woman I’ll turn you from my door--I’ll have your heart’s blood!”
“What woman?” Bertino asked gingerly, and with a feint of ignorance
that was not convincing.
“Bah! Don’t play the fool. I know all. Remember what I tell you--keep
away from her.”
Bertino went behind the counter, put on an apron, and held his tongue.
By degrees the padrone’s ire cooled, until he became so tranquil as to
take a chair.
“Listen, my nephew,” he said, sprawling his legs and thrusting his
hands in his pockets. “I will tell you a secret. This woman is to be my
wife.”
“Your what?” gasped Bertino.
“My wife. Three months from yesterday she will be Signora Di Bello. I
would marry her this very day but I promised--donkey that I was!--I
promised not to take a wife for three months; a pledge that I can’t
break, for it was given on San Giorgio’s Day. Oh, what a donkey!”
Bertino did not dare ask any questions, but he resolved that something
should be done at once to head off his uncle; not another day, nay, not
a single hour, must pass until he and Juno should be man and wife. He
found an excuse to leave the shop, and went to Juno’s humble abode.
“Come with me at once, _carissima_!” he cried. “Come to the Church
of San Loretto. It is open to-day for masses, and Father Bernardo is
there. We shall be married this very hour.”
“Why such haste?” she asked.
“Ah, my angel, can you ask? I wish to make sure of you--to know that
you are really mine.”
Together they made their way through Mulberry, walking with step rapid
and resolute. As they entered Elizabeth Street and approached the
portals of San Loretto, Bertino recollected with a tremor of fear the
threat of his uncle: “If you don’t keep away from that woman I’ll turn
you from my door--I’ll have your heart’s blood!” They were about to
ascend the church steps when he caught Juno by the arm and drew back.
“Come away from here,” he said hoarsely.
“What is the matter?”
“Come away! We must go to some other church. Here it is that the pigs
of Sicilians get married. It is no place for a Genovese like me or a
fine Neapolitan like you. Come, we shall find another priest.”
In secrecy he saw his one chance of saving himself for the present from
the consequences of openly defying Signor Di Bello. To be married at
the altar of San Loretto, to which dozens of sharp eyes and gossiping
tongues were always directed in prayer, would be to proclaim the
nuptials to all Mulberry before vesper bells should be rung that day.
He led her through Houston Street and across the Bowery to a rectory in
lower Second Avenue, a quarter that lies only a few blocks beyond the
frontier of Mulberry, but with a life as remote and distinct from that
of the Italian colony as though a hundred leagues of sea divided them.
A brief mumbling in a little parlour, and they were man and wife.
Neither bride nor bridegroom looked joyous as they came forth into
the street and moved slowly toward Mulberry. Bertino’s face was
particularly long. He was in a black study. Throughout his persistent
courtship he had promised Juno that she should have a home in Casa Di
Bello if she became his wife. Now he found himself cracking his wits
to contrive a good excuse for keeping her out of his uncle’s sight.
If they met she would be sure to tell him of the marriage, whereupon
_inferno_ would kindle. With a wife on his hands, he would find
himself homeless and out of employment, even if Di Bello’s _vendetta_
did not remove the need of earning a living. He dared not make a
confidante of his wife, for to do so meant disclosure of the ugly truth
that he had cheated her of the richest husband in Mulberry--of a prize
which he knew she had been eager to win. His heart sank at thought
of the terrible _vendetta_ that _she_ might take. He believed her
capable of forsaking him and setting their union at naught. Silent of
tongue and sore bestead, he moved along slowly, while passers-by eyed
the majestic woman at his side. When they had reached St. Patrick’s
Graveyard, and her glance fell on Casa Di Bello, she said:
“Now that we are married, let us go to your uncle and tell him, so that
I may move in over there. When that is done we can have the marriage
before the mayor, and the wedding feast.”
“Not yet,” he said; “not yet, for the love of Dio!”
“Why?” she demanded. “I am as good as any one in that house.”
“Oh, my precious one, it is not that; not that. Listen. There is my
uncle--a good man, but strange, strange. When I told him I should take
a wife he called me fool and got very angry. He said I would not do my
work so well if I took a wife. But you--ah, you, my angel!--I would
not give you up for all the uncles and shops in New York--yes, in all
America.”
“You talk nonsense,” said Juno. “Tell me why I should not live in Casa
Di Bello.”
“Well, it is for this, _carissima_, only this: I am afraid to tell him
just now that I am married, because he said he would put me out--do you
understand?--said he would put me out of the shop and Casa Di Bello if
I got married. In a few weeks----”
“Bah!” she said, waving a forefinger in Neapolitan fashion, meaning
that she was not to be taken in. “I never believed you when you talked
of Casa Di Bello. Do you think it was for that I married you?”
“Wait, wait, my Juno. _Pazienza._ The day will come when you will be
_padrona_ of that house.”
“Enough,” she said. “I am tired of this nonsense. What are you going to
do?”
“Listen,” said Bertino, delighted at the success of his garbled version
of Di Bello’s threat. “This is my idea: You do not like Mulberry too
well, nor do I. Moreover, rents are very high here, because these
animals find it hard to get in anywhere else, and the landlords rob
them. But with us it is different. We, for example, are signori, are we
not?”
“Ah, yes; I am a signora.”
“Very well. Now I will tell you the rest: In the upper city there
are apartments, small and fine, that we could take. You know Giacomo
Goldoni, the cornetist at La Scala? Well, he lives in a place like
that, he and his wife, just like Americans.”
“Where is it?”
“In One Hundred and Eleventh Street of the East. Do you know where that
is? Well, you can find it. To-day you shall go and choose the place.
Here is money, the first that you have received from your husband. Do
you think I have been fool enough to give the money I brought from
Italy to the pothouses? Not I. When I need money I go to the Bank of
Risparmio. See what kind of a husband you have! Neither you nor any
one else knows how much I have in the bank. I will tell _you_. Before
drawing this five yesterday I had fifty-three dollars.”
Juno expressed her contempt in a glance, but she closed her fingers on
the greenback.
“Very well. I go to look for the apartment. This evening we meet.
Where? At the Caffè of the Beautiful Sicilian?”
“No, no; not there!” said Bertino. “You must not come to Mulberry.”
“Why?” she demanded, eying him closely.
He made the only answer that could have satisfied her:
“It is no place for such a signora as you.”
They appointed another meeting place--one that lay beyond the zone of
Signor Di Bello’s nightly revels, and with a wave of the hand Juno
took leave of her husband. He watched her proudly as her stately
figure moved toward the Bowery. She carried her head with the dignity
of the ladies she had seen driving in the Chiaja of Naples on a sunny
afternoon.
Bertino returned to the shop in Paradise Park. As he picked his way
through the swarms of children on the sidewalk he thought of his uncle
sitting in the sunlight, all unwary that the prize he coveted had
passed to another. And the elation of the conqueror gave a spring to
his step, and a swagger, until he turned a corner and beheld the sign
of the Wooden Bunch. Then misgiving filled his soul and restored his
trudging pace, his peasant gait--misgiving that the vanquished one
might exact an accounting.
“Soul of a lobster!” cried Di Bello, springing from his chair, when the
young man appeared at the door. “Where the crocodile have you been?
Animal! To keep me waiting like this, and a grand game of _bastoni_ to
be played at the Three Gardens. By the Dragon, you are going too far!”
He flung out of the shop, not waiting to hear Bertino’s lame excuse.
That evening, after the shop was closed, Bertino and Juno visited
a large instalment house in the Bowery and made their selection of
furniture.
“We shall not need much,” he said, mindful of his balance in the bank,
“for in a little while we shall live in Casa Di Bello.”
“Casa Di Bello!” sneered Juno. “Do you think I am a fool?”
Nevertheless, when two months of living in the little dark flat had
brought her no nearer the inside of the Di Bello house, where her
husband continued to live in order to avert suspicion, she became
impatient, disgusted. The few hours a week that he could steal from the
shop to visit her were not the happiest in his life. She grew sullen
and entertained him with fault-finding. Of his poverty she never lost
an opportunity to twit him, and called him a cheat for marrying her.
At last she declared that she would not stay there alone any longer.
If a man took a wife and could not live with her and support her like
a Christian he had better give her up. And he talked of money! Why did
he not bring her good things from the grocery? For two months she had
lived on bread and _salame_ half the time, with an occasional feast of
lupine beans and veal that he brought her from Mulberry. And what veal!
In Naples it would not be permitted to sell such young meat. Perhaps it
was good enough for the wives of the Mulberry cattle, but it would not
do for her to live that way. She had been a fool to put up with it as
long as she had--a woman like her!--when she could go on the stage and
live as a signora should. Yes, she could get a place on the stage, and
it would not be an Italian theatre either. Goldoni the cornetist had
left La Scala and was playing in the orchestra of a Broadway theatre,
the great Titania. The other day she met him, and she did not let on
that she was married. See how well she could keep a secret!--but she
was a fool for doing so. Well, Goldoni was a man. He said that he
could get her a place in the Titania without any trouble. In fact, the
_impresario_ would be glad to engage her. She would be the finest shape
in the company. It would be twelve dollars a week sure for a figure
such as hers, Signor Goldoni had assured her. Why, then, should she
remain at home nights waiting for a good-for-nothing of a husband, who
never brought her anything better than bob veal?
Bertino pleaded with her to be patient and all would end well. By the
Feast of San Giovanni, if not before, it would be safe to reveal the
secret of his marriage, when, he could promise her, his good-tempered
uncle would forgive him, and invite them both to make their home in
Casa Di Bello. As for his aunt, she would not be here to interfere.
“Your aunt will not be here?” asked Juno, who recognised in Carolina
her bitterest foe.
“No. She has broken her leg, and will not return to America for a long
time. The news came yesterday.”
* * * * *
When Bertino pressed the bell button of the flat a week afterward the
electric lock of the street door did not click its customary “come in.”
For several minutes he kept up a serenade. At length a thunderous voice
sounded through the speaking tube:
“She’s out. Get out!”
It was Juno’s first night on the stage of the Titania. She had taken
the engagement without deeming it worth while to inform her husband.
Bertino returned to Mulberry, at first greatly alarmed for her safety,
but in turn filled with most dreadful imaginings as to the cause of
her absence. The following night he got a similar response to his
_sonata_ on the bell, but, instead of going away in a half-distracted
state of mind, he lingered in the doorway, or paced to and fro before
the house. To-night he was not merely a husband worried because his
wife was missing. His alert eye and grimly patient air bespoke a more
serious matter. Whether walking, standing, or sitting on the steps he
was careful not to take one of his hands--the right--out of his coat
pocket. It was after midnight when he caught sight of her. The white
glare of an electric light brought her suddenly into view as she turned
the corner. He tightened his grip on the thing in his pocket, but as
she drew near and it was certain that she had no companion save a small
valise, he came forth from the shadow in which he had crouched when the
purpose of dealing her a deadly thrust was full upon him. She started
back, but quickly regained her frigid calm.
“You’ve had a fine wait,” she said.
“Where have you been?” he demanded, for the first time speaking to her
in a tone that smacked of authority.
“Working and earning money,” she answered--“money that you ought to
give me.”
“Working? Where?”
“In the theatre--the great Titania. Bah! You never even heard of it. Do
you know where Broadway is?”
He did not resent her scornful words. The motive for killing her having
passed, he was again her blind worshipper. Producing her latchkey she
opened the door.
“Come in,” she said. “I have something to say to you.” And when they
had entered the flat: “You must come to the theatre and walk home with
me every night after the representation. At the stage door you must
wait. There are beasts who will not let a woman be when she is alone at
night. I have been annoyed enough.”
“Who has annoyed you?” said Bertino, springing up and putting his hand
in the stiletto pocket, now as eager to slay the offender as he had
been to knife her a few minutes before.
“No matter. To-morrow night and every night you be there at the stage
door.”
* * * * *
Signor Di Bello sought in vain to get a trace of Juno. The _impresario_
of La Scala could not give him any clew. He visited all the concert
halls and singing _caffès_ of Mulberry, as well as the Italian theatres
of Little Italy in the Upper East End. Not a soul knew anything about
her. One day he said to Bertino:
“That woman Juno has flown like the bluebird that used to light on the
Garibaldi statue. Do you know where she is?”
“How should I know? You threaten to kill me if I do not keep away from
her, and then ask me where she is!”
“It is a grand mystery,” mused Di Bello, throwing out his legs and
lying back in his chair. “Just when I am ready to marry her she takes
wing.”
“Ah, _si_,” said Bertino meditatively--“a grand mystery.”