ADIEU TO FRISPI
Zilla Camperdown was strutting up and down Hollis Street after the
fashion of a small peacock airing itself. Back and forth she went, now
in front of the shops, now passing hotels where gentlemen smoking and
lounging stared curiously at the well-plumaged little creature in her
white and black garments.
She was doing wrong to be parading the streets alone, that she very well
knew, but she was enjoying herself so hugely that she made no haste to
go home, and continued to complacently spread the tail of her little
white dress while sunning herself in the glances of admiration bestowed
upon her dark, _piquante_ face.
Her only fear was that her adopted brother might suddenly come upon her.
If he did she knew that she would receive a sharp scolding and would
probably be sent to bed, but willing to snatch the present moment she
did not allow this to interfere with her enjoyment. A strict rule with
regard to her was that she must never set foot in the street alone. Her
idle, dissolute father still haunted the streets of Halifax, and
although he was too wise to attempt any interference with her, knowing
that he might stop the supplies of food and clothing that he received
from Camperdown, he often lurked about waiting for a chance to hold some
conversation with her. Hence the order that she should always be
accompanied during her walks abroad.
The child’s punishment came swiftly upon her. Sauntering up the hill
from Water Street with his monkey on his shoulder and a troop of
children at his heels, Gilberto Frispi suddenly appeared and came face
to face with his daughter.
“Ah, little bird,” he ejaculated in Italian _patois_, while the monkey
screamed and chattered in delight and clutched its tiny hands toward
Zilla’s lace hat; “is it thou at last? I have longed to see thee, but
thou art not allowed to fly far from thy nest.”
Scarcely knowing what she did the girl turned and walked back toward the
hotels. Her mortification was intense, and if a glance could have killed
the smiling Frispi he would have fallen dead by the side of the daughter
whom he presumed to address. She was exasperated too, almost beyond
endurance, at the children who were hooting and shrieking with delight
at the acrobatic feats of the monkey on Frispi’s shoulder.
“Send them away,” she exclaimed, stopping short.
“Scatta, my children,” said Frispi in English, “go roun’ de corna. I
come lata.”
“With your organ?” inquired his expectant youthful followers, to whom an
Italian with a monkey and minus an organ partook of the nature of a
phenomenon.
“Yes, yes. I got organ,” said the man mendaciously. “Five, six organ. I
bring. Go ’long.”
They looked at him as trustingly as if they expected to find musical
instruments issuing from his pockets, then went to peep around the
corner and listen surreptitiously to the conversation between him and
his elegant companion.
“What do you wish?” asked Zilla sharply.
“Oh ze beauty clothes!” exclaimed Frispi spreading his hands over her in
delight. Then relapsing into Italian he told her in eager tones of his
longing to have her with him. “Could she not leave her fine friends and
run away with him?”
“Hold thy tongue,” said Zilla scornfully interrupting him. “I wish no
more of thee. Thou must leave this town.”
“No, no, my loved one, not till thou canst go.”
“Thou shalt go alone—at once, never to return,” she said, hissing the
words through her pointed white teeth that looked as if they might bite
him. “I hate thee and thy poverty; and art thou not a thief?”
“Si, si,” he said blandly; “and thou also?”
“Thou art worse,” she said furiously, but in a low tone, for she was
desperately aware that she was being surveyed curiously not only by the
children, but also by some of the gentlemen in the hotel windows.
“I am thy father,” said the man with a flash of anger, for he rarely
relapsed into a passion unless he had been drinking.
“Who stabbed Constante?” breathed the girl. “Ah, thou startest! I did
not always sleep when thou entertainedst thy friends. And if thou dost
not leave here, I write at once to the Mafia and thou wilt be declared
infamous. A cross will be drawn on thy door,” and she made gestures with
her hands signifying the choking of a person.
The man’s olive skin turned to a greenish pallor and he kept his small
black eyes fixed pleadingly on her face. “Surely thou wouldst not do
that, my daughter. The Mafia is implacable and the companions would
consider me a traitor and put me to sleep for what was a mistake. It was
not in my heart to kill Constante.”
“Thou hast soft shoes; thou canst walk backward,” said Zilla inexorably.
“By sundown if thou art here I write to Guglielmo Barzoni, and thou art
doomed.”
“Enough,” replied the man with a gesture of resignation. “Thou art thy
mother’s child. Thou canst do all and more than thou promisest. Thou
wilt never see me more,” and with no other sign of emotion beyond his
unusual pallor, he noiselessly left her and in polite broken English
postponed his engagement with the children until the next day, at which
time they would return and wait anxiously for the man whose shadow would
fall no more on the streets of Halifax.
Zilla began to tremble as soon as he left her. The interview with him
had been a terrible strain on her, yet she courageously tried to make
her way home. At the street corner she paused and leaned against a
house. One of the gentlemen at the window seeing this, left his station
there and came slowly sauntering up to her.
“Good-morning,” he said kindly. “Do you remember me?”
“Yes; you are Mr. Patrick Macartney’s brother,” she said, “and I am Dr.
Camperdown’s little girl, and that bad beggar-man frightened me.”
“Will you come into the hotel and rest?” he asked, noting in some
anxiety that her two small feet were braced against the pavement to keep
her from falling.
She drew herself up suspiciously: “No, thank you.”
“There is a ladies’ entrance,” he said, pulling severely at his
moustache.
“I am going to see my brother,” she said loftily, and leaving him
without a word she, by a severe effort, managed to walk as far as the
door having on it the brass plate, “Dr. Camperdown, Surgeon.” Arrived
there, she tottered inside and seated herself on the lowest step of the
staircase, while Captain Macartney, passing by the open doorway, knew
that she would be safe now, and went on his way muttering thoughtfully,
“Poor child!”
After she had rested sufficiently Zilla, with lips firmly compressed,
climbed the steps to the waiting room and seated herself among her
adopted brother’s patients.
The next time Camperdown opened the door he saw her and called her into
the inner room. “Now, birdling, what is it? Be quick, for I am rushed
this morning. What’s the matter with your cheeks? Have you seen a
ghost?”
“I have done a bad thing,” said the little girl deliberately.
“Indeed! An unusual confession for you. I thought that you and the pope
had the infallibility of the world between you. Out with it.”
“I have told my father to leave Halifax.”
“H’m—well, yes, that was bad—for you. What was the occasion of it?” and
by means of questions he drew from her an account of her meeting with
Frispi after she had run away from Mrs. Trotley, who had gone shopping
with her.
“What do you know about the Mafia, Zilla?”
With a reluctance that she would not have displayed three months earlier
in her career, Zilla gave a child’s account of low brigandage according
to her observation of her father and his associates.
“Stop,” said Camperdown at last, when she was describing the
disarticulation of the fingers of the “_picciotti_” so that they might
be more expert at stealing, “never mention this again, Zilla. Don’t let
a living soul know that you were familiar with such iniquities. The Lord
in his mercy has delivered you from them. Now, what do you want me to do
about your father?”
The child hung her head. “Tell him to stay, for I do not wish Stargarde
to know that I would do so bad a thing. Tears will come in her eyes and
she will say: ‘Your father is all that you have; do not send him away as
a dog’.”
Camperdown’s thoughts ran back to the day when he had acquainted Zilla
with her relationship to Stargarde. The child’s passion of astonishment
and joy when she found that she was connected with a woman whom she not
only loved and admired, but who was the acme of respectability to her,
had not seemed to decrease as time went by. She still loved him more
intensely perhaps, but Stargarde was her pride and delight, her own
blood relation, and the person in the world for whom she had the most
reverence.
“Run home and tell her all about it,” said Camperdown softly. “In the
meantime I will look up Frispi,” and patting Zilla’s relieved face, he
sent her away.
“Ha, sir, were you addressing me?” said his next patient fiercely, as he
hobbled into the room.
Camperdown stared blankly at a choleric old gentleman. “No—was talking
aloud as I have a habit of doing. What was I saying?”
“‘Low, stealthy brute,’ sir, you said, ‘and a constant worry to me.’”
Camperdown threw back his head and laughed heartily. “I crave your
pardon. I was thinking of a pensioner of my wife’s—a miserable foreigner
that I hope has been frightened from the town.”
Long after his usual lunch time Camperdown arrived home to find
Stargarde and Zilla waiting for him—the latter hanging about her
half—sister with red eyes and glances of suppressed adoration.
“Have been all over the town,” said Camperdown; “there’s no trace of
Frispi to be had. He went to his lodging, gathered up his few
belongings, and left. The police are on his track——”
“He will not be found,” said Zilla quietly and despairingly. “He knows
how to run away.”
“I propose,” said Camperdown, seating himself at the table, “to have
something to eat now. Subsequently, to take my wife and Zilla and Mrs.
Trotley for a drive to Cow Bay. Don’t carry your bathing suit, Zilla;
it’s too late in the day for a plunge in the breakers. We’ll have a run
over the sands. Then I propose two weeks hence to take my wife and Zilla
vagabondizing—that is, in the earliest sense of the word. We’ll stroll
about this continent and see if we can’t pick up some trace of the
runaway——”
He was interrupted by Zilla, who precipitated herself into his arms.
“A little girl with a sleeping conscience is rather a ticklish
possession, isn’t she?” he said, addressing his smiling wife over
Zilla’s bent head. “A little girl with an awakened conscience is
something very precious and must be treated with very great care.”