"THE OLD EARL'S DAUGHTER": MRS. PASCOE ON FAMILY TIES
"I know no more than you do," Wheeler said. "Or rather, no more than this." And he spread before them a sheet of writing-paper.
Above the penciled scribble was neither date nor heading, but the signature in Christina's slapdash scrawl made the world spin before Herrick's eyes. Upon that sheet of paper her hand had rested and had written there to Wheeler, but not to him! The message ran—
"Announce me for Thursday night, September 20th. I will be there.
"Christina Hope."
"Where did it come from?"
"From the infernal regions, apparently. It was left here at the club without the mannikin in buttons so much as noticing by whom. It may have been written from across the street; it may have been enclosed from anywhere."
"When?"
"This noon-time. You don't doubt its being genuine?" Wheeler asked. "No more do I. As for what to think, I haven't a guess. The girl may be, for all I know, a mere born-devil, or the tool of devils. Let her come back to my cast, and, for what I care, she may bring all hell in her pocket! I've had a very nasty interview with Ten Euyck, who thinks I can explain my sign."
Stanley stood there with his face working. "You don't mean to tell me," he cried aloud, "you don't mean to tell me that it's been nothing but an advertising trick from the beginning!"
"God forgive you!" Wheeler said. "You are our public!—No, my dear lad, there is one thing in this angelic wildcat of ours that you can tie to. When she tells me, in our business, to bank on her being in the theater Thursday night, I bank on it; if she can set one foot before the other, there she will be. That's my belief, if it were my last breath, and I'm staking everything on it. But we've got to allow for one thing. If she can! Christina has a great idea of her powers. But, even for her, heaven and earth are not always movable."
More people than one were perhaps discovering a certain helplessness before fate. About noon of the next day Mrs. Pascoe sat knitting in a bedroom above her niece's table d'hôte. There was only one other person in the room, a smallish man in the early thirties, who looked as though he had once been a gentleman, and whose correct feminine little features were now drawn into an expression at once weak and wild. His soft helpless-looking figure writhed and twitched as he now lay down and now sat up upon the bed; his face was swollen with weeping and the tears still flowed from his eyes.
"Well, if yeh're goin' to take on that way," said Mrs. Pascoe, "I dunno as I can blame her any. I dunno as I blame her anyhow. Yeh never objected when there was any money in it. It's kind o' late to carry on, now. What say?"
The gentleman poured forth in Italian, which Mrs. Pascoe understood better than he did English, that the lady he lamented had never wished to leave him before; she had never loved anybody before; hitherto it had always been business. The business of the whole family he had never interfered with, but this he would not bear; he had borne too much. And, indeed, from his language, it appeared that he had.
"My," said Mrs. Pascoe, "men are funny! Yeh been married to my girl since she was sixteen years old, and she ain't never treated yeh like anything but dirt. Well, what do yeh want to hang on to her for! Clear out! You ain't like me. Yeh can get another wife but I ain't got no other daughter. I gotta stick. She don't want me either. She wants swift folks an' gay folks, she'd forget she was mine if she could. But she can't! An' I can't! I can't deny anything yeh got to say. You say she ruined yer life. She'd ruin anybody's she can get her clutch onto. You say she don't love you. If you ask me, why should she? Even if 'twasn't herself she was thinkin' of, first, last an' all the time! She ain't never cared for any human bein' but this actin' feller, an' that's 'cause he cares 'bout the other one. Still, she got hold of him, oncet, an' do you think if she can get him again, if she can get them fellers our boys know to snake him out onto that boat for 'er, she's goin' to care whether you like it or not? You take it from me you ain't goin' to sail to-morrow any—or anyway not with us. You ain't never wanted anything but a wife that could take care o' you, an' you're quite a pretty lookin' little feller. The best you can do is to get some money out of her an' get a divorce."
The young man rolled back and forth and bit the pillows. Mrs. Pascoe, who had hitherto regarded him with contemptuous tolerance, observed a wave of genuine despair in this sea of grief and her eyes narrowed.
"See here, young man," she said, "don't you let me ketch ye doin' anything underhanded—squealin' on us or tryin' to keep us here, 'cause we got to get out. If I was to say a word to my son that I thought that, there wouldn't be no prettiness left to you. I ain't goin' to have her locked up in no jail for any man that ever was born. Mebbe you think, 'cause I speak harsh of her, I ain't fond of 'er. Why, you little fool, I ain't never had a thought but for that minx since she was born. Even when I first see the other child, an' the resemblance gimme such a turn, the first thing I think of was how I was goin' to get somepun' out of it for her. That's why when I got to nurse the little thing I never let on fur a minute that I had one the spittin' breathin' image of it,—hair, mouth and nose, an' the eyes, too, so I near fainted when I first seen theirs—somepun' warned me to shut up an' somepun' 'ud come of it. They thought I'd just gone cracked on their baby. It's been the same ever since. I read all them yarns about changed children an' I thought it would be funny if I couldn't work it. An' I did. She used to act it all to me afterwards, right out in poertry. 'The ol' earl's daughter died at my breast'—Didn't she ever do any of her actin' fur you? Goes—'I buried her like my own sweet child an' put my child in her stead.'" Mrs. Pascoe gave this forth with an inimitable relish of its stylish precedent. "If theirs hadn't died I'd ha' worked it somehow. They was rich then. She's walked on me an' on them, an' on the whole blame lot of us, ever since. But she's mine. What she wants she's goin' to have,—him or anything—I can't prevent her. No more can you. I'm goin' to stan' by her. An' you've got to."
"He's a murderer!" shrieked the Italian gentleman. "He's a murderer!"
"Seems like it's catchin'," Mrs. Pascoe commented. "Here's my daughter tells me you was hangin' round Mrs. Hope's all last Friday, lookin' fur that spy feller, an' all is you wasn't even competent to find him.—I guess I don't want to hear no talk outer you! Though as far forth as what roughness goes I don't say but what you wus druv to it."
The young man rose and stretching out a delicate hand, over which a gold bracelet drooped from underneath a highly fashionable British cuff, tremulously lighted a cigarette. Under its soothing influence he replied that of course he was a lost soul and he didn't deny that his companions had at last succeeded in dragging him to their level.
Mrs. Pascoe snorted like an angry horse. "Now you look here, Filly; when I married Mr. Ansello I didn't have no more idee what his business was than what you had. So far forth as what that goes, I didn't rightly ketch the whole o' what was goin' on till you come whoopin' along an' got us all into that muss where we had to clear out back to my country. I was mighty glad we did an' cut loose from all them demons—I said then an' I say now I won't stand fur nothin' rough! But you know as well as I do, oncet we was started out fur ourselves there's nobody ain't worked harder to keep to the quiet part o' the business 'un what yer brother-in-law an' yer wife has. It usta be, before Ally come back, that things did get oncet in a while beyond Nick's control, but never any more, thank the Lord—not in his own little crowd 'ut he has anything to do with! I guess there's one thing we agree on, young feller; it's jus' druv me crazy, lately, to get mixed up with the regular Society again. It's gettin' to be so big, even in this country, it won't let none o' the little ones work fur themselves—all this month since it took us in I've felt there was things goin' on I never got to hear of an' I'm mighty glad we're goin' to get away from it to-morrer." She caught herself back from what was evidently a favorite topic. "But don't let me hear any more talk about draggin' down! You've done considerable draggin' on us with all that feller spyin' on yeh costs us, an' yeh'd ought to thank the children the way they've kep' yeh clear out o' the whole business. Why, nobody hardly knows 'ut yer alive! Y' ain't asked to do anything, y' ain't asked to show yerself, y' ain't even ever been a member, so now the Society ain't nabbed on yeh none. I wisht it hadn't sent fur yeh to the meetin' to-day, jus' to take Nick the word an' his money. Ally nor me, we won't do—no, they gotta have a man, an' I s'pose they take you fur one! So far forth as what that goes the less I have to do with their greasy meetin's the better I like it, but I want you should be awful careful. If oncet they was to get on to who you was—Now, Filly, don't you smash them mugs!"
The Italian hastily resigned the object with which he had been angrily and absently rapping the table, and, exhausted with sobbing, began to breathe upon and polish his fingernails.
The mug, or jug, a little earthenware copy of a two-handled Etruscan drinking-vase, was one of three which stood there side by side, exactly alike save that the crude design which each of them bore—an arm and hand holding a scales—was differently colored; one red, one white, one green. But Mrs. Pascoe was aware of another difference and she turned the jugs around in a bar of sunlight till she found it; on one jug the scales of justice were gilded, on another silvered, on the third painted a dull gray. The single exclamation stenciled over each design translated into a sort of jingle:
Gold buys!
Silver pays!
Lead slays!
"Ain't she the hand," exclaimed Mrs. Pascoe, "for monkey-shines! Don't you wonder what they do with these here, Filly? Mr. Gumama asked Ally to get him these new ones fur to-day. She'd have to fancy a thing up if 't was only to take a pill out of. Comin' in las' night without the car, what with luggin' these here an' the paul-parrot—'t ain't spoke a word, that bird ain't, since it left here!—I dunno but I'd ha' broke my neck hadn't been fur M'ree. I do hate turrible to part from M'ree—I declare, if ever anything happens to my Ally, I'll come back here an' put up with these Dagoes on M'ree's account—Now, for mercy's sake, Filly, don't howl!"
For the mention of parting had brought on a still more violent attack of the young man's anguish. The smile—wan but touched with the charm of Sicilian plaintiveness—with which he had been reconciling himself to life utterly disappeared; he ceased half-way through an excellent polish and casting himself down as from the Tarpeian rock, blubbered into the bedspread.
The old lady regarded him with contempt passing again into suspicion and then into a softening weariness that rose in her manner like an anxiety that all the time had barely been held down. "Filly," said Mrs. Pascoe with sudden friendliness and such an uneasy, furtive look of dread as quite transformed her face, "what'er they goin' to do with that girl?"
He lay quiet a moment, as if discomfortably arrested by the question. Then he asked, how did he know? Take her, leave her; what was it to him?
"Well, 't ain't hardly likely they're goin' to take her—an' her feller on the boat! An' I should jus' like to know how they could leave her!" A strange, helpless tremor passed across that firm mouth. "Oh, why was she ever brought away? I allus knoo what it 'ud come to! Times there I did hope she was goin' to die, poor thing! But it war n't to be!" There was no sound but the sound of Filly, growling moistly into the bed.
Mrs. Pascoe,—or, according to her own reference, Mrs. Ansello—looked at the clock and began to fold up her knitting. But her long pent-up broodings burst from her again in a new channel. "One while I was scared Nick was kind o' losin' his head about the little piece. What with him gettin' more an' more stuck on her, all the time, an' her sick with love uv another feller, even to the farm I didn't know from one day to the next what he would do. But when he made out 't was safer to take her alone with him up t' the old place—Well, we all had to scuttle there that very same night, an' when she begun to take on for that letter I guess he forgot all them feelin's. He ain't never let a human bein' stand in his sister's way an', however pretty that little neck o' hers might strike him, 't wouldn't take him two minutes t' wring it if he got scared she'd shoot her mouth against Allegra. I've had bad dreams before you ever was born, but I ain't ever had any like waitin' fur the bunch to come home that night an' the river so handy! I never thought I'd be glad to see my son half-bled to death—but there, there's allus mercies! I expect he wishes, though, he'd come straight home from the post-office, instead o' snoopin' round that hotel! The sea-voyage'll fix him up all right, an' he's strong enough an' cross enough an' sick enough to pull the whole house down 'cause he can't get back an' forth without the car. Filly," she shot forth, "sure as you live he's got something made up fur to-night about that girl!"
The Italian gentleman taking this as a still further personal degradation, inquired aloud why he ever was born. But Mrs. Pascoe did not attempt the obvious retort.
She rose, fetched paper and string and, with an impotence foreign to her whole nature, fumbled in tying up the jugs. "I've allus said I wouldn't stand fur it, allus! But what can I do? I tell him I'll curse the last breath he draws—but can I stop him? Yeh know what he is—can anybody stop him? I tell yeh what 't is, Filly, I'm gettin' scared uv him! Yes, now I'm past sixty, I'll say it fur oncet—I'm scared uv him! And then, poor boy, so far forth as what that goes, what can he do, himself? When you come down to it, what can any uv us do? The girl knows everything—nobody knows that better'n you!—an' what she knows she'll blab. She's soft-lookin' but she's got a chin an' she's in love! If her feller's done fur, we're goin' to be done fur, too! There's my daughter to consider an' every last one uv us. Jus' now, too, when Ally's goin' to get her divorce an' be so happy! What can I do?"
There was the sound of doors opening and closing and of some one coming upstairs. But Mrs. Pascoe paid no heed. Her unaccustomed garrulity, which had hitherto seemed the result of mere strain, began to appear as her idea of conciliation for the ushering in of a plan. "I've only one thing I can say favorable to you, Filly," she urged him, "yeh ain't rough an' yeh was a gentleman. Yeh don't want screamin' an' hurtin', I'll be bound. She's a little lady, Filly, an' she's 'n American girl. Well, what I'm gettin' at is, would yeh dare do this? Now she's conscious, they won't lemme near her. But they'll never suspect you. I want yeh should tell her there's a bottle o' laudanum fur M'ree's tooth in my closet an' if she wants it, give it to her. Give it to her quick!"
The Italian gentleman giving no sign of finding consolation in this prospect, "Oh, yeh'll never in the world do it!" Mrs. Pascoe groaned. "Yeh ain't got the nerve uv a sick worm! Why, it's different,—can't yeh see, Filly?—if she asks fur it herself—it's different, ain't it? It's what she promised to do in the beginnin'. An' now, jus' out o' spitework, she won't. But I bet she will to-night. Whatever's up, she'll know it before they get her feller out there to-night. Give it to her, Filly!"
There was a knock at the door and the proprietress of the table d'hôte entered cheerfully. "They come?" inquired Mrs. Pascoe. "Well, time I went. There, get up, Filly, an' blow yer nose, do! Come, come, yeh don't want the gentleman yer wife's goin' to marry to be brought up an' find yeh wallerin' on yer stomach!—Well, stay where yeh be! But now yeh mind what I was tellin' yeh, awhile back, about bein' anyways treacherous. 'T wouldn't be the first time but 't would be the last! My daughter's my daughter, an' as fur my son—I never said there was anythin' so rough I wouldn't stand fur it, when it come to Dagoes!"