The poor old man sank back on the straw again, and began to sob piteously. Why had he left the merry crowds of the Strada del Male, where there was always a laugh and a song, and a slice of melon or of pasta?
At last both he and Bindo sobbed themselves into sleep, but no sleep came to Gemma; she was wide awake, panting, hot, all alive with fury, all the night.
With morning they were all taken before the magistrates, who were sitting that day. There were a great many gentlemen and officials, but among them all Gemma only saw one, the horseman whose ears she had boxed in the lane. For Philip Carey was on the bench that day, and recognized, with not much pleasure, the little group of Italian strollers. They all three looked miserable, jaded, and very dusty. The night passed in the lock-up had taken all their look of sunshiny merriment away; the straw had caught on their poor garments; the faces of Nonno and the little boy were swollen and disfigured with crying; only Gemma, all dishevelled and dusty and feverish, had a pride and ferocity about her that gave her strength and kept her beauty.
As she was the only one who could talk any English, she was ordered to speak for the others; but when she said her grandfather’s name was Epifania Santo, there was a laughter in the court, which incensed her so bitterly that she flung back her curls out of her eyes and said, “If you do not believe what I say, why do you want me to speak?”
Then being once started she went on before any of the magistrates or officials could stop her: “You have taken us up; why have you taken us up? we have done nobody any sort of harm. We only dance, and Nonno tells fortunes, and does the tricks, and you have taken his box away, and do you call that honest to a poor man? We do not rob, we do not kill, we do not hurt; when Bindo takes an apple I am angry.” And then her English, which was apt to go away from her in moments of excitement, failed her utterly, and she poured out a torrent of Neapolitan patois which not a soul there present understood, only from her flashing eyes and her expressive gestures it was easy to guess that it meant vehement invective and reproach.
Mr. Carey looked at her attentively, but he said nothing; his brother magistrates, when she had been peremptorily ordered to be still and listen, put a few sharp questions to her and examined the witnesses, who were policemen and country-people, and who all deposed to the fact that the old Italian did tricks and told fortunes and got them to put their pence down by fair promises, and had moreover dice and cards whereby he induced them to lose money. The children only danced; they had no habitation; they were always wandering about; by their papers they were natives of Naples. Then the constable whose arm Gemma had bitten appeared with it in a sling, and stated what she had done to him, and this terrible piece of violence prejudiced the whole court greatly against her.
Mr. Carey smiled once; he took no share in the examination. But Gemma was always looking at him; she was always thinking, “This is all his doing because I struck him: he has had us all put in prison because I offended him.”
She hated him,—oh, how she hated him! If she had not been so watched and warded by the constables, she would have leaped across the court and done the same thing again. For she did not mind anything for herself; but if they put Nonno and Bindo back in prison, and parted them from her,—she knew people were parted in prison and boys and girls were never together there, nor ever the old left with the young. And she knew too that in England there were prisons called workhouses, where they packed away all the people who were poor. Her heart stood still with fright, and all she saw in the dusky court was the grave face of Philip Carey, which seemed to her like the stony face of Fate.
“Ah, bimba mia,” sobbed her grandfather in a whisper, “yonder is the gentleman you struck as he rode on his horse. You have been our undoing with your fiery temper: always was I afraid that you would be!”
Under that reproof Gemma’s head drooped and all the color fled out of her cheeks. She knew that it was a just one.