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: