Instead of the arrogant1 negative that he had returned to Bertino’s anxious inquiry2 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 dawdling3 swing, and put on a comic air of unconcern. Not until he was far beyond the town, crossing the brushwood solitude4, did he take out the writing and read [Pg 279]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 wagon5 track that zigzagged6 toward the iron villa7. The green bower8 forming the roof of that matchless dwelling9 rose to view as he turned into the road by the railway track. A few yards onward10 the penetrating11 whistle of a quail12 startled him, and a flash of his affrighted fancy revealed police rising from ambush13 on every side and closing in. For the first time since leaving the town he turned about, and beheld14 what he had not dared look behind for dread15 of seeing—men coming after him. There were six or seven of them, all in a group, and gliding16 along so strangely. Gran Dio! his wife’s warning had come too late. Why had she waited until the hounds were fairly sniffing17 at his heels? What giants his pursuers[Pg 280] were! He could see their heads and shoulders above the quivering foliage18. Now the ears of two horses showed, and the rumble19 of wheels reached him. Ah! thus it was these men could glide20 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 galloping21 after him. Idiot that he was to stand so long! But he would elude22 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 thicket23 where he intended to plunge24 into its shielding labyrinth25, but a look behind told him that this was needless, for the two-horse truck had come to a halt [Pg 281]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 dwarf26 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 vendetta27 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 mantle28, 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 gathering29 up its half-forgotten property. In his wrath30 at this desecration31 of the Tomato domicile he would [Pg 282]have sprung from his concealment32 and protested, but the thought that he was a murderer held him back. He lurked33 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 distinguished34 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 forth35 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 bust36, and [Pg 283]before Bertino’s eyes the Last Lady was abducted37.
He did not rise from his covert38 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 impelled39 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 reclaim40 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 [Pg 284]City he kept in her wake. With a feeling of relief he saw the truck drive into a gateway41, and while he waited to make sure that she was to lodge42 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 fidelity43 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 teemed44 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 doorway45 or alley46 that [Pg 285]would not have a law-hound in its shadow! But it was too late to falter47. 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 boisterous48 throng49 in the flare50 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 drooping51 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 [Pg 286]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, pensive52 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 plaintive53 satire54 of Fate in this clinging to the poetic55 shadows of their native vineyard and field after the substance had been despised and forsaken56?
The foreman had come to town by rail, swelling57 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 inflated58 chest he proclaimed that he, the leader of the election district, had not only an idea but its marble [Pg 287]embodiment as well. Yes, a beautiful bust, the masterpiece of a renowned59 sculptor60, 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.
“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 stony61 majesty62, but held in place by a padding of paper roses. The brass63 band blared, and the pageant64 advanced, to the cock-a-hoop strain of Italy’s national quickstep.
[Pg 288]
Bertino had looked on silently during the metamorphosis of the bust, and when the long column of candle-bearers moved he kept abreast65 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, standing66 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 beguile67 him—yes, Marianna and Armando! All in America! What did it mean? Surely this was no house of mourning. And these jeers68 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!”
[Pg 289]
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 hisses69 and wrathful epithets70 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.
“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.”
[Pg 290]
The band had relapsed into silence, and the air was filled with the drone of a weird73 island chant that lacked only the tom-tom to perfect its Hindu cadence74. The lips of the marchers scarcely moved as they gave forth their hymn75 of praise to the Genius of Spring. And there was the Queen, wabbling along in her push-cart chariot, the idol76 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, tugging77 hard, but Bertino clutched his other arm at the command of Carolina. “Magnificent God! [Pg 291]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.
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1
arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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2
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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dawdling
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| adj.闲逛的，懒散的v.混（时间）( dawdle的现在分词 ) | |
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4
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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6
zigzagged
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| adj.呈之字形移动的v.弯弯曲曲地走路，曲折地前进( zigzag的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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7
villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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bower
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| n.凉亭，树荫下凉快之处；闺房；v.荫蔽 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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10
onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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11
penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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12
quail
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| n.鹌鹑；vi.畏惧，颤抖 | |
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13
ambush
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| n.埋伏(地点)；伏兵；v.埋伏；伏击 | |
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14
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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15
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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16
gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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sniffing
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| n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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18
foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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19
rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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glide
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| n./v.溜，滑行；(时间)消逝 | |
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21
galloping
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| adj. 飞驰的, 急性的 动词gallop的现在分词形式 | |
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22
elude
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| v.躲避，困惑 | |
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thicket
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| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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24
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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25
labyrinth
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| n.迷宫；难解的事物；迷路 | |
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26
dwarf
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| n.矮子，侏儒，矮小的动植物；vt.使…矮小 | |
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27
vendetta
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| n.世仇，宿怨 | |
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28
mantle
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| n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红 | |
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29
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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30
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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31
desecration
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| n. 亵渎神圣, 污辱 | |
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32
concealment
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| n.隐藏, 掩盖，隐瞒 | |
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33
lurked
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| vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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34
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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35
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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bust
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| vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部 | |
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abducted
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| 劫持，诱拐( abduct的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（肢体等）外展 | |
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38
covert
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| adj.隐藏的；暗地里的 | |
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39
impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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40
reclaim
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| v.要求归还，收回；开垦 | |
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41
gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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42
lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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43
fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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44
teemed
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| v.充满( teem的过去式和过去分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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45
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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46
alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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47
falter
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| vi.(嗓音)颤抖，结巴地说；犹豫；蹒跚 | |
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48
boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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49
throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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50
flare
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| v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发 | |
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51
drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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52
pensive
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| a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的 | |
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53
plaintive
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| adj.可怜的，伤心的 | |
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54
satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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55
poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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56
Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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57
swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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58
inflated
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| adj.（价格）飞涨的；（通货）膨胀的；言过其实的；充了气的v.使充气（于轮胎、气球等）( inflate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）膨胀；（使）通货膨胀；物价上涨 | |
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59
renowned
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| adj.著名的，有名望的，声誉鹊起的 | |
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60
sculptor
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| n.雕刻家，雕刻家 | |
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61
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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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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63
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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64
pageant
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| n.壮观的游行；露天历史剧 | |
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65
abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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66
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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67
beguile
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| vt.欺骗，消遣 | |
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68
jeers
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| n.操纵帆桁下部（使其上下的）索具；嘲讽( jeer的名词复数 )v.嘲笑( jeer的第三人称单数 ) | |
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69
hisses
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| 嘶嘶声( hiss的名词复数 ) | |
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70
epithets
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| n.（表示性质、特征等的）词语( epithet的名词复数 ) | |
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71
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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72
exulted
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| 狂喜，欢跃( exult的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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73
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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74
cadence
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| n.（说话声调的）抑扬顿挫 | |
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75
hymn
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌 | |
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76
idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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77
tugging
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| n.牵引感v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的现在分词 ) | |
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