“For when?”
“The Feast of Januarius.”
“The baggage!” said Carolina, her austere 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 corked 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 buckled for the onset with a veteran heart. She plumed 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 sinewy pattern, famed for settling disputes with the neighbours pugnis et calcibus; but Carolina pitted brain against brawn, 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’ savings 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 solely 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:
“Do you think I can’t admire a fine woman without giving her a wedding ring?”
But from the watchtower of her ever-present dread the petticoats that she espied 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 teeming 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 reign, which she took as a most serious matter. Alas! it was the same old battle. Would the struggle never end? And this ever-returning necessity of standing watch and ward, of fighting away aspirants for wedding rings, rose before her now in an unwonted light, as a penance 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 back would-be wives from the portals of Casa Di Bello, and the troubled outlook weighted her spirit with despair. A yearning 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 puffed with the foolish conceit of being able to govern the household; a ragazza with good sense enough to see that a wife’s place under the connubial 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 trampler, 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. 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.”