THE FEAST OF SPRINGTIDE
INSTEAD of the arrogant negative that he had returned to Bertino’s
anxious inquiry day after day, the postmaster of Jamaica this morning
threw out a yellow-enveloped letter.
“Your uncle died to-day.”
He did not stay to read further, but thrust the paper into his pocket,
fearful that some one might be looking over his shoulder. The blind
terror of the hunted murderer was full upon him. At first he moved away
almost on a run, but checked himself suddenly to a dawdling swing, and
put on a comic air of unconcern. Not until he was far beyond the town,
crossing the brushwood solitude, did he take out the writing and read
Juno’s wily admonition: “Fly from America. The man-hunters are after
you!”
With sharper stride he pressed on, unmindful whither his course lay if
only he widened the distance between him and the city. He had walked
to the post office twice a day for a week, and from habit now he took
the wagon track that zigzagged toward the iron villa. The green bower
forming the roof of that matchless dwelling rose to view as he turned
into the road by the railway track. A few yards onward the penetrating
whistle of a quail startled him, and a flash of his affrighted fancy
revealed police rising from ambush on every side and closing in. For
the first time since leaving the town he turned about, and beheld what
he had not dared look behind for dread of seeing--men coming after him.
There were six or seven of them, all in a group, and gliding along so
strangely. _Gran Dio!_ his wife’s warning had come too late. Why had
she waited until the hounds were fairly sniffing at his heels? What
giants his pursuers were! He could see their heads and shoulders
above the quivering foliage. Now the ears of two horses showed, and
the rumble of wheels reached him. Ah! thus it was these men could
glide after him without moving their bodies. Courage! Maybe they were
not man-hunters at all. He would see if they kept on in his track, or
turned the opposite way at the corner. Yes; they had struck into the
road by the railway and were galloping after him. Idiot that he was to
stand so long! But he would elude them. He knew the trails and secret
hollows in the bush that would cover his flight and shelter him until
they should give up the search. What a fool he had been to run! Now
they must know he was the murderer! On he sped past the iron villa, not
even glancing to see if Bridget and the children were there. He reached
the point on the edge of the thicket where he intended to plunge into
its shielding labyrinth, but a look behind told him that this was
needless, for the two-horse truck had come to a halt at the villa,
and the men were moving about the pipes, some kneeling and looking in.
The wind bore to him their shouts of laughter and inarticulate talk.
Screened by the dwarf oaks he crept nearer, until the confusion of
human voices became the dialect of Sicily.
That the men were all Italians did not drive away his fear of them. His
racial faith in the sanctity of the _vendetta_ was not blind enough
to make the Genovese trust himself to the Siciliani, although the
knowledge that they were no emissaries of the Questura of Police was
somewhat of relief.
The gang stripped both pipes of their green mantle, and tore out the
bedding and soap-box furniture of the dormitory tube. Full of wonder,
Bertino looked on. He did not know that the letters “D. P. W.” painted
boldly on the truck stood for Department of Public Works, and that New
York was merely gathering up its half-forgotten property. In his wrath
at this desecration of the Tomato domicile he would have sprung from
his concealment and protested, but the thought that he was a murderer
held him back. He lurked at such close range now that he recognised
two of the men as residents of Mulberry. One, the foreman of the gang,
he knew for a distinguished political captain of a Sicilian election
district, and a prominent figure in the social life of that quarter.
So Bertino dared not show himself even when they dragged forth the box
containing the Last Lady.
“Beautiful!” said the foreman.
“Beautiful!” was the united echo.
“Listen, Andrea,” the foreman went on, addressing the other man whom
Bertino knew, “I find this thing on the city’s property, and I shall
keep it. To Mulberry you will carry it, my friend, for I have a famous
idea for the Feast of Springtide.”
With block and tackle and much hauling of ropes and singing of hee-hoo!
they loaded the pipe on the truck. Then the foreman and Andrea lifted
on the bust, and before Bertino’s eyes the Last Lady was abducted.
He did not rise from his covert until the truck, its big horses
straining at the traces and the wheels glucking under their heavy
burden, had gone a quarter of a mile. Then he started after it, keeping
a safe distance between himself and the men who might recognise him at
closer range. Only a vague sense had he at first of the purpose that
impelled him onward; he could not bear to see his friend’s precious
work of months, upon which he had built his very life hope, thus
carried away without doing something, and that something, whatever it
pleased Fate to provide, could not be done unless he kept the bust in
sight. Later the clearer design came to him of following the Last Lady
to her destination, and letting the banker know, so that he might go
forward and reclaim her from the abductors.
Over dusty roads of the burning plains, through woodland passes, in
village streets, and on the crazy pavements of Long Island City he
kept in her wake. With a feeling of relief he saw the truck drive into
a gateway, and while he waited to make sure that she was to lodge
there for the night Andrea came out with a push-cart, and on it the
well-known pine box. Again he took up the pursuit, which led this
time to the ferry and across to New York. For a moment he shrank from
trailing on through the city, which his fancy filled with man-hunters
peering into every face to find the murderer of Signor Di Bello. But an
impulse of fidelity to Armando conquered his fears, and, turning up his
coat collar and drawing his soft hat over his eyes, he went on, dogging
the push-cart in all its fits and starts through the lighted highways
that he was sure teemed with detectives.
At Bleecker Street and the Bowery Andrea turned, and with a sinking of
courage Bertino guessed that the Last Lady was bound for the very heart
of Mulberry. Here every man and woman would know him for a murderer,
and not a doorway or alley that would not have a law-hound in its
shadow! But it was too late to falter. If the bust were lost now he
could never again look Armando in the face. Bah! he knew a trick that
would fool the police. He tied his gingham handkerchief over his mouth
and struck forth, wholly confident that his disguise was impenetrable.
Another turn into Elizabeth Street, where the tribes of Sicily
forgather, and Bertino found himself amid the boisterous throng in
the flare of light and colour that of ages belong to the Feast of
Springtide. The New World memory of the Sicilians’ agricultural
festival was in the last of its three days and nights of fantastic
gaiety. All the colony was out of doors. On both sides of the way the
house fronts were lost in a jungle of American and Italian flags. In
drooping garlands that reached from window to window across the street,
dim-burning lights in red and purple glasses gave the barbaric scene a
strange, sombre note. Men as dark as Parsees, and their women decked
with paper flowers, and little girls in white frocks crowned with real
and make-believe blossoms, stood about, each bearing a lighted candle,
waiting eagerly to march in the procession that would go singing
through Mulberry. Here and there, apart from the gabbling collection,
was the face of a silent, pensive one who looked on at the doings of
these wage slaves of the sweat-shop, building scaffold, river tunnel.
Did he see a thorn on the rose of their festivity--a plaintive satire
of Fate in this clinging to the poetic shadows of their native vineyard
and field after the substance had been despised and forsaken?
The foreman had come to town by rail, swelling with the political
significance of his find in the pipe. First he sounded a few comrades
in the wine-shop, and their approving “bravoes” told him that his idea
for a queen of the feast would hit the bull’s-eye of public opinion.
Then with inflated chest he proclaimed that he, the leader of the
election district, had not only an idea but its marble embodiment as
well. Yes, a beautiful bust, the masterpiece of a renowned sculptor,
who had been induced, at vast expense to him, the leader of the
election district, to do this high honour to the brave Sicilian voters.
From tongue to tongue the news flew, and when Andrea appeared with his
push-cart the expectant people, to whom symbolism were ever precious,
shouted a delighted welcome all along the line.
[Illustration: The Last Lady as Queen of the Feast.]
“Long live the Queen of Springtide!”
By the time the procession was ready to start, the Last Lady had
been lifted out and set upon a flower-strewn throne made of a large
packing-case that rested on the push-cart. Then a crown of tinsel,
typing the sovereign power of the season over bread and wine, was
lowered from the wire whereon it had hung above the middle of the
street--somewhat oversized for the brow of her stony majesty, but
held in place by a padding of paper roses. The brass band blared, and
the pageant advanced, to the cock-a-hoop strain of Italy’s national
quickstep.
Bertino had looked on silently during the metamorphosis of the bust,
and when the long column of candle-bearers moved he kept abreast of the
head. At length they wheeled into Mulberry Street and passed by Casa Di
Bello. He had expected to see his uncle’s home in darkness and crape
on the door. But the windows showed light, and, standing on the stoop
to see the procession, like all the populace of Mulberry, were Aunt
Carolina and--he pushed the hat from his brow at the risk of liberty
and life, to make sure that his eyes did not beguile him--yes, Marianna
and Armando! All in America! What did it mean? Surely this was no house
of mourning. And these jeers of the paraders, who jerked their thumbs
at Casa Di Bello:
“A bridegroom without a bride!”
“Ha! Signor Di Bello must hunt another wife!”
“He’d better ask her first if she has a husband!”
“The stable of the Genovese donkey!”
No, no; even these Sicilian pigs could not be making game of a dead
man. Pulling the handkerchief from his mouth, he dashed across the
street, breaking through the ranks and exploding a volley of hisses and
wrathful epithets from marchers and bystanders.
“Aunt Carolina! Marianna! Armando!”
“Bertino!”
They all tried to hug and kiss him at once.
“Are you Juno’s husband?” were the first coherent words.
“Yes; miserable that I am!”
“Bravo!” exulted Carolina. “The Napolitana shall not enter.”
“And my uncle? He lives?”
“Lives! By the mass! He is too much alive.”
“_Grazie a Dio!_ I thought I had killed him. She told me he was dead;
to fly, that the police were after me.” The others did not understand
just then.
“And the bust?” breathed Armando.
“It is here.”
The band had relapsed into silence, and the air was filled with the
drone of a weird island chant that lacked only the tom-tom to perfect
its Hindu cadence. The lips of the marchers scarcely moved as they gave
forth their hymn of praise to the Genius of Spring. And there was the
Queen, wabbling along in her push-cart chariot, the idol of Mulberry’s
rabble--the “Presidentessa” whom her creator had dreamed--oh, so
trustfully!--to see enthroned upon a porphyry pedestal in the White
House, admired of the rich and great. Armando would have dived into the
_cortège_, pushed aside the candle-bearers who guarded the Queen, and
striven to reclaim his own, but the grip of Carolina’s hands on his arm
held him back. She had guessed his death-courting purpose. A picture of
knife-blades gleaming in the candlelight flashed in her mind, and she
put all her strength in her grasp.
“Let go!” he cried, tugging hard, but Bertino clutched his other arm at
the command of Carolina. “Magnificent God! Am I to stand here and see
them carry it away?”
“Fool!” said Carolina. “Do you think they will let you take their
Queen? A hundred knives would stop you.”
He ceased struggling. “But what shall I do?”
“Patience! Here, Bertino; follow on, learn whither the Sicilian swine
take the bust, and when their feast is over we shall demand it.”
Again Bertino took up the trail.