“How did she know that you were going to New York?”
“Because already before dinner I have ask permission from Mr. Bell’my if I can go to New York that evening to see a young lady from Milan that I think perhaps I marry, maybe. Miz’ Bell’my she is in the next room and she laugh and call out, ‘You tell Marietta that if she get you, one day she will find herself marry to the President of these United State’.’ I excuse myself for what may seem like a boast, but those are the words she use.”
And suddenly, as though he found the memory of that gay, mocking young voice floating across the heavy air of the courtroom more unbearable than all the blood and shame and horror that had invaded it, Stephen Bellamy’s face twisted to a tortured grimace and he lifted an unsteady hand to lowered eyes.
“Look!” came a penetrating whisper. “He’s crying, ain’t he? Ain’t he, Gertie?”
And the red-headed girl lowered her own eyes swiftly, a shamed and guilty flush reaching to the roots of her hair. How ugly, how contemptible, one’s thoughts could sound in words!
“What reply did you make to Mrs. Bellamy?”
“I tell to her that I think maybe I had better not go, as that afternoon I have invest my money in a small game of chance with the gardener next door and the investment it have prove’ unsound. I say that how if I go to New York to see my young lady, it is likely that I must request of her the money to return back to Rosemont—and me, who am proud, I find that indelicate. So Miz’ Bell’my she laugh out and look quick in the little bag that she carry and give me three dollar’—to make the course of true love run more smooth, she say—and then she call back over her shoulder, ‘Better hurry, Luigi, or you miss that train.’ So I hurry, but all the same I miss it—by two small minute, because, chiefly, this watch he is too eccentric.”
In spite of its eccentricity, he returned it tenderly to his vest pocket, after a final flip in the direction of the harassed Farr and the enraptured audience.
“Did you notice anything else in the bag when Mrs. Bellamy opened it?”
“Oh, positive. The eyes of Luigi they miss nothing what there is to see. All things they observe. In that bag of Miz’ Bell’my there are stuff, stuff in two, three letters—I dunno for sure—maybe four. But they make that small little bag bulge out so—very tight, like that.” Mr. Orsini’s eloquent hands sketched complete rotundity.