THE LAST LADY UNMASKED
DAWN began to show the shapes of things an hour after the Tomato outfit
had left the environs of Jamaica and struck into a gravel-strewn byway
that followed the Long Island Railroad. All night the banker and his
faithful helpmeet had pushed the cart through a country sparsely
settled in places, but always with a good road under the wheels. Now
they had reached the last stage of their journey, and the little
passengers, who had fallen asleep on the ferryboat crossing the East
River, began to open their eyes. Mike was first to crawl out from under
the furniture, and Pat and Biddy appeared soon afterward. They were
allowed to get down and stretch their legs, which they did by frisking
ahead of the cart and dancing for pure joy at finding themselves in
a new and beautiful world. Never before had they seen a piece of
Nature larger than the lawn of Paradise. In the delight and wonder of
beholding the gloried east they almost forgot to be hungry, but did
not, and presently set up a cry for breakfast. Bridget told them they
would have to wait until the villa was reached, which would be in a
little while, her husband said. Their route now lay directly over the
pipe line of the Brooklyn aqueduct, the manhole caps of which projected
from the ground at intervals of a hundred yards. To the north and east
stretched a level countryside, covered in spots with oaks of scrubby
growth. From the low thicket a quail now and then blew his shrill
whistle, to the deep bewilderment of the gamins of Mulberry. They would
scamper after the mystery and thrash the bushes for it, only to hear
the piercing note elsewhere, when the bird had flown away.
At last Signor Tomato, who had been peering anxiously into the
distance, pointed ahead and exclaimed:
“Be praised de Madonna! Ees-a dere! ees-a dere! Now ees-a all right
evrytheen.”
“Phat’s there?”
“De villa Tomato. Ees-a var fine. You not see?”
“Upon me sowl I see nothin’ but two big black things that do look like
whales.”
Domenico put on a grin and said:
“Ah, my dear wife, moosta tell you de trut honesta. I’m been mague lill
fun. Deesa villa she no ees-a joosta der same lika de housa. Ees-a not
mague of wood; but you wait-a, some time I’m show you how ees-a nice
and cool-a de iron when ees-a cover wit leaves. Pietro Sardoni he been
liv-a here, and he lik-a var mooch, I’m blief.”
“Phat d’yer mane at all at all? Is it not a house ye’re takin’ us to,
thin? What is it, annyway? Howly wafer! Pipes!”
They had drawn near enough for her to distinguish two black iron pipes
of the largest size used for underground conduits. Though they seemed
much smaller from that distance, each was twelve feet long with an
interior diameter of five feet. They lay side by side, as they had been
left by the builders of the aqueduct.
“Moosha, moosha,” she went on, but not relaxing her effort at the
shafts, “it’s far down in the worruld y’are now, Bridget O’Kelly, and
yer father’s own third cousin coachman to the Lord Mayor iv Dublin!”
“My dear wife, moosta forgive your husband; ees-a got northeen better.
De proverbio he say: One who is contented has enough.”
The strip of green that crowned the margin of the railroad cut was
spangled with bright yellow, and, his eye lighting on it, Signor Tomato
said, by way of a comforting crumb to Bridget:
“Look! Guess-a we goin’ mague plenta mon here pickin’ dandelion salad.”
One of the youngsters had heard the talk about the pipes, and, telling
the others, all three ran ahead to investigate. After a peep into one
of the huge tubes they came trooping back in a state of fright.
“Somebody in our pipe, pah!” said Mike.
“A big man; guess he’s dead,” from Pat.
It had never struck Domenico’s fancy that the water pipes whereon he
had counted for a final refuge might become a château in Spain because
of some rival claimant to their shelter.
“_Gran Dio!_ More trouble!” he whined, and bundled through the grass to
see for himself, while Bridget trudged on with the cart, the children
close at her heels. Stooping, he peered into one of the pipes, rose
again quickly, threw up his arms, brandished his open hands, bent
again, and put his head into the mouth of the iron cavern. Then he
sprang up and shrieked:
“It is he! By the blood of St. Januarius, _his_ blood shall pay!”
From the deep pocket of his threadbare coat he drew a heavy-bladed
clasp knife, jerked it open, and the next instant would have tried its
steel on the awakened figure in the pipe but for Bridget, who caught
both his arms from behind and pinioned them in able style.
“Is it bloody murther yer’d be addin’ to all the rest, Dominick
Tomah-toe,” said she, tightening her grip, while the little man
struggled and profaned the canonized host. “Phat the divil’s the manin’
iv it, annyhow?”
“Let-a go! You hear? Let-a go, I’m tell-a you! Look in de pipa and you
see ees-a what for. Guess-a you goin’ want kill too.”
At this point a well-thatched head stuck out of the pipe, and the
drowsy eyes of a man on his knees looked up wonderingly at the group of
Tomatoes. It was the face of Bertino Manconi.
“Ah-ha! Now you see what for I’m go kill. Let-a go, I’m tell-a you!”
“Aisy now, me darlint. No, no; I’ll not lave you go yit awhile; not
till that ghinny fire in ye has burnt out a bit. Will ye give me the
knife? Here, lave go iv it--there y’are. Now ye can use yer fists in
Donnybrook shtyle, and not a worrud from Bridget O’Kelly.”
She had captured the knife. Bertino was on his feet. Tomato moved
toward him with claws outspread.
“See what you have done,” he snarled in the Naples patter. “Famous
joke, _neh_? To rob a poor man of his last cent, that you might have
a bust of your _amorosa_--some good-for-naught of a woman! A-h-h! A
famous joke! But you shall pay. Oh, woman, give me that knife.”
“Phat ails yer fists?”
“You are a fool,” broke out Bertino, and the banker jumped at him, but
did not strike. “A fool, I say. You talk much and say nothing. What is
it about the bust? Tell me. Can’t you see I am hungry to know? What has
become of it? Is it a fine likeness of the Presidentessa?”
“Presidentessa!” sneered the banker, and Bridget echoed the word in
like contempt.
“Yes. Beautiful, _neh_?”
The banker waved the back of his hand beneath his chin in token that
he was not to be fooled. “You are a great innocent. Yes; but you can’t
play off on me. You know it is not the First Lady of the Land.”
“Not the Presidentessa?”
“No, you thief!”
“For the love of the bright Saints, who is it?”
“Bah! You know.”
“I swear I do not. It was a picture of the Presidentessa that I sent to
the sculptor. Maria! Has Armando made the wrong woman? Where is it?”
“Here.”
In a jiffy the furniture atop of it was removed and the boxed marble
set on the ground. When the paper had been torn off and the face of
Juno stood revealed in the morning’s first flush Bertino was on hands
and knees before it.
“Holy Madonna of Grace!” he shrieked, and got up covering his eyes and
turning away. “It is too much, too much!”
“Who is it?” asked Bridget and Domenico in concert.
“My wife!”
“Arrah, now I know the mug iv it!” cried Bridget in triumph. “Sure that
pug nose has been dancin’ in me brain like a nightmare since iver I
seen it in the bank. She’s noane other than the singer I seen in the
Caffè of the Bella Siciliana the day ye was writin’ at the table. Do ye
moind?”
She spoke in Signor Tomato’s jargon, tinctured freely with dashes of
her mother brogue.
“Yes,” Bertino answered; “it was on that day she promised to be my
wife, and that day I wrote the letter to Armando and put in a picture
of the First Lady.”
“Be the same token, ye did nothin’ iv the koind, for it’s mesilf that
remimbers seein’ her take out that pictoor when ye ran to the dure at
her biddin’, and putt another wan in its place. Then it was she putt in
her own ugly mug and ruined the hull iv us. Sure anny blind man can
see it now wid half an eye. Worra, worra, why didn’t I know what it
mint at the toime!”
“I will kill her,” Bertino said in a low voice, and Signor Tomato
dropped wearily on the ground. It was the moment for a soul-thrilling
proverb, but the apt one would not come, and he eased his feelings with
the poor makeshift, “He who goes slow goes safe” (_Chi va piano va
sano_).
No impolite questions were put to Bertino concerning the affair that
had necessitated his sudden exit from Mulberry, nor did Bertino
give any hint of his belief, inspired by Juno’s ruse, that Signor
Di Bello had been laid low. Had not the ethics of Mulberry rendered
the knife-play and the names of all concerned a forbidden subject,
they could have told him that his uncle was up and about and cracking
walnuts in his usual form. But the _vendetta_ is sacred, and Bridget,
itching as she was to discuss the murderous attempt, was too much
Italianized to venture upon that hallowed ground. Aided by their
knowledge of Signor Di Bello’s admiration for Juno, however, the
Tomatoes were easily able to understand why Bertino had risen to the
assertion of a husband’s rights under the law of the stiletto.
When Bertino told them he had slept in the pipe every night since his
hasty departure from the city, the banker, with an expansive grace that
atoned handsomely for the insult of attempting to slay him, begged him
to remain a guest at Villa Tomato. They were not quite settled in their
summer home, to be sure, but in a few minutes they would be prepared to
serve breakfast. The formality ended here, for one and all they fell to
the task of putting their house in order. First the clamour of Mike,
Pat, and Biddy was silenced by issuing to each a large chunk of coarse
bread, with the command that they go at once and gather dry twigs for
firewood. The urchins returned quickly with the stock of bread greatly
diminished, but the store of firewood not much increased. Meantime
Signor Tomato and Bertino had set up the stove, and fitted a sheet-iron
chimney to the end of the pipe that was to serve as kitchen and
parlour. Bridget soon had a fire crackling, though it tried her back
somewhat stooping as she moved from the parlour door to the kitchen.
But she did not grumble. Her heart warmed with womanly response to the
blessing of a home, lowly as it was, and she stirred inside and out of
the pipe with a jollity of temper that bespoke the halcyon days of the
babies.
The Last Lady, as they now called the wicked bust, had swallowed all
but a dollar or two of the bank’s capital, but for what remained
to give them a new start Bridget was full of thanksgiving. She had
rationed the outfit with a small supply of codfish, with which to make
the indispensable Neapolitan _baccalà_; a generous measure of the cheap
but enduring lupine beans, some bacon, red onions, and a half dozen
loaves of secondhand bread. So well had she managed the finances that
a balance of forty-seven cents was left in the treasury. Soon after the
blue smoke began writhing from the chimney she had a pot of soup on
the stove, and hungrily Domenico and Bertino busied themselves in the
current of its gustful odour. They brought leafy boughs from the scrub
oaks and fashioned them thickly atop and beside both wings of the iron
villa to shield it from the sun’s fire. They made it look like a mound
of the plain grown with tangled greenery and pierced by two grottoes
straight and smooth as arrow shafts. Of the pipe not used as a kitchen
they devised a dormitory, and placed therein the Last Lady, first
swathing her tenderly in paper and putting her back in the casing of
pine wood. For doors the nankeen sail was made to serve a new turn, but
not without a throe of sorrow did the banker cut it in parts and fasten
them to the ends of the pipes.
The first meal cooked in the villa scullery was a triumph for
Bridget’s art. Never in all her Mulberry days had she produced a
better _minestrone_. Bertino was asked to a seat at the table, which
consisted of a piece of oilcloth spread on the ground. While they sat
like tailors in a circle spooning their thick soup from tin plates and
munching the secondhand bread, a bobolink and his wife, drawn by the
human habitation, dashed above them, weighing the question of becoming
neighbours:
“...Now they rise and now they fly;
They cross and turn, and in and out, and down the middle
and wheel about,
With a ’phew, shew, Wodolincon; listen to me, Bobolincon!”
At length they dropped in the high grass not many yards away, and
began laying the foundation for their house, undaunted by the trio of
natural nest burglars whose wondering eyes and ears had taken them in.
But Mike, Pat, and Biddy never discovered the pale-blue egg that soon
lay there; and in the days that followed, when the other Tomatoes and
Bertino were afield gathering dandelion leaves, and Bridget sat with
her knitting at the kitchen door, the rollicking song of these trustful
neighbours was often the only sound that enlivened the desolate moor.
When Saturday morning came, and the push-cart was heaped high with the
esculent herbs, Signor Tomato said to Bridget:
“Guess ees-a better I’m goin’ to de cit for sell-a de salata. See how
moocha! Moosta have tree dollar for dat.”
“Sure,” said Bridget, and away he started with their first load of
produce for market. Bertino helped him push as far as Jamaica; then
he went to the post office to inquire for the letter that Juno had
promised to write telling him the result of his uncle’s wound. There
was no letter for him. He had made up his mind to get away from America
somehow should the death of Signor Di Bello make him a murderer, but
he thirsted for an accounting with Juno in the matter of the bust. His
wife had deceived him, and the canons of _vendetta_ left him only one
course. At the same time he saw that he was in Juno’s power, and for
the present must do naught to fan her wrath. She knew his hiding place,
and could deliver him to the man-hunters of the Central Office. What
a simpleton he had been to tell her! Had his heart not warned him all
along that she did not love him? Well, he was blind no more. He would
wait, and if his uncle died, Australia or any other land would do for a
refuge, but he would not quit America until he had collected from Juno
the debt she owed him and the poor sculptor whom her treachery would be
sure to send to a madhouse.
As he trudged back to the pipes it occurred to him that there would
be fine lyric justice in a measure of vitriol well thrown at the face
that poor Armando’s marble so faithfully depicted. But to this form of
payment he quickly said no; smooth, lean steel, tried and true, was the
best friend of the _vendetta_.
When Signor Tomato reached Mulberry the day was spent, and the market
minstrels had begun their songs. It was no easy work for him to find
a place at the curbstone wherein he could squeeze and join the long
line of Saturday-night venders who filled the air with their ditties.
In the weary solitude of his journey from Jamaica he had had ample time
to plagiarize an ancient market couplet, so that when he began to offer
his wares he was able to do so in the manner of a veteran:
“Dandelion, tra-la-la, dandelion, tra-la-lee;
Buy him and eat him, and lusty you’ll be!”
The people marvelled at beholding the banker in his new rôle, but they
bought of his stock, and the first venture of Villa Tomato in the world
of commerce was a resplendent success.