“Bah!” she answered, looking him over. “Give me good weight of salame and free measure of beans.”
Clearly, the weight and measure that he [Pg 59]gave suited her, for she came every afternoon thereafter, but never when Signor Di Bello happened to be in the shop. One day he said to her:
“Every night I dream of you.”
“Ah, si?” she replied, arching her rich brows. “And every night I dream. Shall I tell you of what?”
“Of me?” breathed Bertino.
“Of you? Simpleton! I dream of getting out of this hogpen. Blood of San Gennaro! Do you think I came to America to live a life like this? Wait until I have money in the Bank of Risparmio.”
“But, signorina, I love you.”
“Love! What good is that? It may do for these animals to live on. For me, no. When I marry I shall become a grand signora.”
On the fifth day of their acquaintance she told him her troubles. Five dollars a week was all she got at La Scala, and Signor Grabbini—a man most stingy—kept back two of that for the dress, the scarlet10 [Pg 60]slippers, and the pink tights. Don’t talk to her of America as a place to make money. What a pigsty11 was Mulberry! Her room, which she hired of Luigia the Garlic Woman, was smaller and darker than any she ever had in Naples. And what did it cost? A whole dollar every week! Five liras for a room! Merciful Madonna!
“Listen,” said Bertino, coming from behind the counter and walking with her to the door; “I want you for my wife. Marry me, and you shall live in the finest house in Mulberry—in Casa Di Bello.”
“What have you to do with that house?” she asked quickly.
“I live there.”
“But it belongs to Signor Di Bello.”
“Yes; I am his nephew.”
A new interest awoke in her wary12 and artful eye. “They say he is very rich,” she mused13, looking toward the patch of green in Paradise. “He admires my singing very much.”
“Your singing! Bah!” Bertino’s love [Pg 61]was not deaf. “Don’t you know why he makes a baboon15 of himself when you are on the stage? You have turned his old head with your beauty.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said absently, while there came into her mind an extravagant16 avowal17 of love that Signor Di Bello had made to her behind the scenes the night before. “Well, he is rich,” she went on, “and you—are poor.”
“True; I am not rich now, but I shall be soon. Ha! Do you know how I am going to make money? I do not tell everybody—not even my uncle—but I will tell you. I have a friend in Italy, at Cardinali. Do you know the place? No matter. My friend is what is called a sculptor18, and he is going to make statues—oh, so fine!—of great people in this country. Now, it is I who am to tell him what to make. When I have made up my mind, I shall send him the picture of some great American—some famous man—and from this he will make a marble bust19. The marble is all ready. [Pg 62]When it is done he will send it to me, and I shall—well, perhaps I shall put it in some fine gallery like our Palazzo Rosso in Genoa. Ah, what a place that is! I was there once on the Feast of the Child. Now, my friend is a sculptor most wonderful. I know what he can do. You should see his beautiful Juno and the Peacock. If you——”
“Juno and the Peacock?” she broke in. “What is that?”
“Ah! a lady most beautiful, without any clothes, and a great bird with a long tail. Oh, how beautiful—as beautiful as you!”
“Veramente?”
“I tell you the truth. Now, when the people of America see the bust that he shall send, what do you think they will do? Why, they will be mad for it, and some rich man will buy it. I have not yet made up my mind how much I shall make him pay. Not less than a thousand liras, of that you may be sure. But this will be only the beginning. After that Armando will make more [Pg 63]busts, the rich ladies and gentlemen will continue to buy, and—who knows?—Bertino Manconi may become a millionaire. Now will you be my wife?”
“He has made one Juno,” she said, her thought set on a single phase of his chimera—that whomever he chose for the subject, after that person a bust would be fashioned. “Since he has made one Juno, why not let him make another?” She said it seriously, without guile20. “Oh, so many photographs I had taken in Naples! Here, none; I am too poor. Next week I shall have some. But how fine I should look in marble! I have thought of it many a time. Ah, proprio bella, neh?”
“I think so myself,” she nodded, drawing the mantilla under her chin and moving away with her package of freely weighed codfish. He watched her until she turned into the mouth of the Alley22 of the Moon, whereon her lodgings23 looked, and the idea [Pg 64]that she had put into his head took deeper hold.
“Why not?” he asked the tub of olives at the door. “Is there a more beautiful woman in America? It is settled. To-morrow I shall say to her, ‘Carissima Juno, when you are my wife I will send your picture to Armando, that you may be the first bust.’”
He stood in the doorway24 gazing out on the park, assured now that she must be his—for what greater honour could man show to woman?—when his eye met the bronze presence of Italy’s liberator25. A withered26 wreath of laurel, with which the Italian societies had crowned their hero on his last birthday, had dropped over the head and become a lopsided necklace. Bertino saw the half-drawn sword, the bared arm, the conquering air, and his promise to Armando came back:
“It shall be some one as great as Garibaldi.”
Thus it fell out that the following afternoon,[Pg 65] when Juno came to the shop for garlic and spaghetti, and told him that of all things she would like to see herself in marble, he said: “No; it would be false to my friend.”
“And you say you dream of me?”
“By night and by day.”
“And you love me?”
“Ah, si; Madonna knows.”
“Still you will not do me this favour?”
“But it is to be the bust of a man.”
“Bah! Why not a woman?”
“No, no; I can not. It would be treachery to Armando.”
None the less, she had spoken the words that sealed the fate of the bust. “Why not a woman, indeed?” Bertino asked himself when she had gone. “But it must be the greatest as well as the handsomest woman in America.” He thought of the picture of the President’s wife that he had seen one night at an illustrated27 Italian lecture in the Hudson Mission. “By San Giorgio!” he exclaimed, astonished at the grandeur28 of his [Pg 66]own idea. “A bust of her Majesty29, the First Lady of America! This is the best thing I ever thought of.”
The next day was one of vast import. Not only did it witness the purchase by Bertino in a Bowery store of a small photograph of the President’s wife, warranted genuine, but it brought to the ears of Aunt Carolina news that made her tremble for Casa Di Bello. From the market place Angelica bore the gossip that was fast reaching every niche30 and turn of Mulberry—the great tidings that Signor Di Bello and Juno the Superb had been seen the night before in the Caffè of the Beautiful Sicilian sitting at the same table eating a ragout of spiced pigskin.
“It must be stopped!” declared Carolina, setting her gold-patched teeth. The old bugaboo of a wife arose, as it did with any woman to whom the running voice of the colony linked her brother’s name. “He shall never bring that Neapolitan baggage to Casa Di Bello.”
[Pg 67]
That night, after dinner, from which her brother was absent, she hung long gold pendants in her ears, fastened her lace collar with a large cameo brooch, and, her puce-coloured silk all arustle, went to reconnoitre, as she always did when the sky of her dominion31 was threatened with a wife. It was a rare sight to see Signorina Di Bello abroad at night, afoot in the heart of Mulberry, and people stared in wonder or bowed reverently32 as she passed by. A half-hour afterward33, when the Bay of Naples and smoking Vesuvius made way for Juno on the stage of La Scala, three shoots of the Di Bello stock were intent beholders—Giorgio in the box, Bertino on his bench under the gallery, and Carolina in a seat directly overhead, where her brother could not see her. With ears stopped, but eyes wide open, the priestly dame34 surveyed with alarm the expansive glories of Juno, and regarded with dismay the rhapsody of Signor Di Bello. If she knew her brother, and she was confident that she did, here was a woman who could have him [Pg 68]for a husband. Thoughtfully she walked home, and thoughtfully she sought her pillow.
From the land of sleep there came no helpful message, and in the morning she sat before her sanctum window still pondering what to do. Over the forest of gray shafts35 that marked the sepulchres in St. Patrick’s Churchyard she gazed sadly at the broad windows of the rectory where she had lived those years of sweetest order and tranquility, where husbands and wives had no part in life’s economy, where marrying woman and wedlocking man jarred not the placid36 liturgy37 of her days. Suddenly the door swung wide, and Angelica panted into the room. As fast as her short legs could waddle38 she had come from the market place with a basket full of fresh vegetables and a head full of dewy scandal.
“O signorina! The shame!” she gasped39. “Truly a disgrace tremendous! Mulberry talks of naught40 else. I speak of what I [Pg 69]know, for it comes straight from the lips of Sara the Frier of Pepper Pods, who had it first from Simone the Snail41 Boiler42.”
“What?”
“Juno the Superb?”
“Si, signorina. Oh, the disgrace!”
“Misericordia, Santa Maria!”
“For when?”
“The Feast of Januarius.”
“The baggage!” said Carolina, her austere45 calm all gone. “That’s her doing. A Genovese to be married on the Feast of St. Januarius! By the mass, we shall see!”
Even as the bottled blood of Naples’s patron saint boils once a year, so did the corked46 emotions of Carolina begin to bubble. Clearly the hour for action had come. It was not the first time that a war cloud of matrimony had darkened her sky, and she buckled47 for the onset48 with a veteran heart. [Pg 70]She plumed49 herself on having outwitted and driven to retreat more than a dozen pretenders to her brother’s hand. Once it was the daughter of Pescoli the Undertaker, a ripe maid of barn-owl face and sinewy50 pattern, famed for settling disputes with the neighbours pugnis et calcibus; but Carolina pitted brain against brawn51, and this terror bit the dust. Next came the red Milanese, widow of Baroni the merchant in secondhand bread. In her hand she brought her husband’s ten years’ savings52 for dowry, and on her apricot face, still fresh, her everblooming smile; she, too, was outgeneralled by Carolina, as were many other would-be wives as fast as they showed their heads. At least, so it seemed to Carolina. That she held her place as mistress of Casa Di Bello, she firmly believed, was due solely53 to the fact of her never-flagging vigilance. But it may be guessed that her brother’s side of the story would have dimmed her self-glory as a match-breaker. Once he said to her, spicing the sentiment with a dry laugh:
[Pg 71]
“Do you think I can’t admire a fine woman without giving her a wedding ring?”
But from the watchtower of her ever-present dread3 the petticoats that she espied54 were always signals of real danger, however he might laugh them to false alarms. Wherefore she felt that she must take up the cudgels against Juno as she had raised them against other women, and that without delay. The teeming55 line and colour of the Neapolitan were clear in her memory, and she knew a stronger siege than ever had been laid to her brother’s taste. Henceforth eternal alertness would be the price of Signor Di Bello’s bachelorhood and her own reign56, which she took as a most serious matter. Alas57! it was the same old battle. Would the struggle never end? And this ever-returning necessity of standing58 watch and ward14, of fighting away aspirants59 for wedding rings, rose before her now in an unwonted light, as a penance60 that ought not to be laid upon her, as one that she would like to put off. She could see herself all her days beating[Pg 72] back would-be wives from the portals of Casa Di Bello, and the troubled outlook weighted her spirit with despair. A yearning61 for peace entered her soul, and with it came the thought of a startling alternative for war—a voice telling her to do the very thing that she had fought so long against her brother’s doing. Take a wife! But her taking a wife, she mused smugly, should be quite a different matter from his taking one. The maid of her choosing would be no menace to the status quo of Casa Di Bello. She would be a person of right notions, not puffed62 with the foolish conceit63 of being able to govern the household; a ragazza with good sense enough to see that a wife’s place under the connubial64 roof is far inferior to that of her husband’s sister. Ah! the wife of her choice, she told herself fondly, should be her creature, not a ruler; a subject, not a trampler65, of her parish-house laws. It never struck Carolina’s mind to seek her ideal among the girls of New Italy; that would be calling for aid to the camp of the enemy. [Pg 73]Her fancy took wing over seas to old Italy, to Apennine maids untinged of the craft and airs of Mulberry; to some maid of clay that would shape easy in the mould of her wish. When Bertino came in at noon from the shop, she began:
“You have a sister?”
“Si; Marianna.”
“Very well. What kind of a girl is she?”
“A fine girl.”
“Is she sound in health?”
“Ah, si; very sound.”
“How big is she?”
“Medium size.”
“Gentle and kind?”
“Yes, very gentle.”
“How old?”
“Let me think. She will be seventeen come the Feast of the Mother.”
“Any bad traits?”
“Not a single one, except that she eats too much molasses.”
“What work does she?”
[Pg 74]
“Straw-plaiting.”
“Do you think she would like to come to America?”
“Not unless—unless——”
“Well?”
“Not unless Armando came.”
“Armando? An amante, I suppose?”
“Yes, aunt; her amante.”
“Bah!” Her spinster mind did not count this a serious matter. “Perhaps I shall send for her.”
“She wouldn’t leave Armando.”
“Then I might go and bring her.”
“What do you want of her?” ventured Bertino.
“Some day you shall see.”
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1
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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demonstrations
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| 证明( demonstration的名词复数 )； 表明； 表达； 游行示威 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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4
copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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stammering
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的现在分词 ) | |
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8
calf
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| n.小牛，犊，幼仔，小牛皮 | |
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9
mishap
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| n.不幸的事，不幸；灾祸 | |
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10
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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11
pigsty
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| n.猪圈，脏房间 | |
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12
wary
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| adj.谨慎的，机警的，小心的 | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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14
ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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15
baboon
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| n.狒狒 | |
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16
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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avowal
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| n.公开宣称，坦白承认 | |
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18
sculptor
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| n.雕刻家，雕刻家 | |
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19
bust
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| vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部 | |
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guile
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| n.诈术 | |
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ardently
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| adv.热心地，热烈地 | |
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alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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23
lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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24
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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liberator
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| 解放者 | |
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withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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27
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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28
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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30
niche
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| n.壁龛；合适的职务(环境、位置等) | |
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31
dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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32
reverently
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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34
dame
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| n.女士 | |
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35
shafts
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| n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等） | |
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36
placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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liturgy
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| n.礼拜仪式 | |
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waddle
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| vi.摇摆地走；n.摇摆的走路(样子) | |
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39
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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40
naught
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| n.无，零 [=nought] | |
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41
snail
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| n.蜗牛 | |
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42
boiler
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| n.锅炉；煮器(壶，锅等) | |
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43
betrothed
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| n. 已订婚者 动词betroth的过去式和过去分词 | |
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vender
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| n.小贩 | |
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45
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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46
corked
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| adj.带木塞气味的，塞着瓶塞的v.用瓶塞塞住( cork的过去式 ) | |
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47
buckled
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| a. 有带扣的 | |
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48
onset
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| n.进攻，袭击，开始，突然开始 | |
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49
plumed
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| 饰有羽毛的 | |
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50
sinewy
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| adj.多腱的，强壮有力的 | |
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51
brawn
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| n.体力 | |
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52
savings
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| n.存款，储蓄 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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54
espied
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| v.看到( espy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55
teeming
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| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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56
reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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57
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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58
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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aspirants
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| n.有志向或渴望获得…的人( aspirant的名词复数 )v.渴望的，有抱负的，追求名誉或地位的( aspirant的第三人称单数 )；有志向或渴望获得…的人 | |
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60
penance
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| n.（赎罪的）惩罪 | |
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61
yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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62
puffed
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| adj.疏松的v.使喷出( puff的过去式和过去分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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63
conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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64
connubial
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| adj.婚姻的，夫妇的 | |
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trampler
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