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!"
CHAPTER XI
THE ARM OF JUSTICE ON CLEANING DAY: AN OVERTURE TO A COMIC OPERA
Mrs. Pascoe had some last minute shopping on hand, including farewell gifts for her niece's family and a special token for Maria Rosa, and she was quite unaware that it would have been a godsend for her daughter's plans had she kept her sharp eyes, that day, on the interior of the table d'hôte. But even had this occurred to her the number of figures on the background of her son's life had lately so increased that she could scarcely have been expected to recognize that the friendly Italians who arrived at the appointed time were not a guard of Nicola's choosing, sent to carry a willing captive to the freedom of Allegra's waiting ship, but plain clothes men, who bore their prisoner back to jail. She and little Maria Rosa shopped successfully, refreshed themselves at an ice-cream parlor, returned home for a distribution of the farewells and, re-emerging from the house in mid-afternoon, walked briskly enough eastward, though now laden with heavier packages. Mrs. Pascoe carried so many bottles of wine that even the stout wrappings threatened to give way and, wrapped in many folds of clean dust-cloth, Maria bore the pretty jugs.
"I did lay out you should wait an' take those home," said Mrs. Pascoe to the little girl, "since your cousin Ally's fixed 'em up so pretty! But it'll be too late, likely, an' I don't like you should be crossin' the street after dark. You better tell me good-by an' run home soon 's I get the loft cleaned up fer the meetin'. I told yer ma you an' me 'd unpack that barrel o' backyard party truck an' the boys could bring a bundle of it over when they leave to-night. No use it settin' in a empty garradge. Don't fergit yer old great-aunt, now will you, M'ree?—an' I'll send you somepun' reel pretty from furrin' parts, where yer parrot come from." She added, as they crossed under a bend of the Elevated Road into South Fifth Avenue, "Remember, I've told yer ma ye're always to go out an' visit my folks, same as if I was there. Mercy, I hope it don't rain with all of us trapesin' out there fer our last night! I don't see how the boys are goin' to get that feller out, with them fools skiddin' round the roads the way they be—an' Filly'll faint away most likely!"
They turned in at the door of a small dingy structure, which had been something else before it became a garage and that now looked vaguely out of use; from its obscure depths emerged the tall Sicilian, Mr. Gumama, who relieved her of the wine. She and the child mounted a ladder-like staircase and emerged through a sort of hatchway, scarcely more than an opening in the boards, with its lid tipped back against the wall.
It was not yet four in the afternoon, but the September light was already failing under the low roof of the loft. The windows were built close to the floor and that at the rear had a little, begrimed straggle of vine waving in at it. For the window looked out upon a triangle of trodden earth, heaped as with the rubbish of an old machine-shop but producing spears of grass and black, stunted bushes to show it had once been part of a yard. In front the loft gave directly upon a turning of the Elevated Road, and when a deafening train roared by the whole flimsy structure rattled and shook; the walls were irregularly studded with nails and hooks from which hung lengths of rope and buckled straps as of old harness that shook, too. Among these, from a cleared space of honor, a head of Garibaldi, in gaily colored lithograph, confronted the flyspecked grandeur of the Italian royal family, domestically grouped; the pink paper of cheap gazettes brightened some of the murkier boards with woodcuts of prizefighters or disrobing ladies. Three or four stools stood about on the dingy boards and rather a greater number of worn out chairs; a couple of heaping barrels in one corner were covered with an old awning; there was a small bureau, once yellowishly glazed, without any glass; a kitchen table, stained with al fresco dinners, had been brought in from the yard; in another corner, torn rubber curtain-flaps, collapsed tires and threadbare leather cushions supported each other. Suddenly Mrs. Pascoe uttered a little hiss. She had perceived, sitting in the frame of the front window, a listless, undersized, undeveloped lad with the delicate, soft-eyed face of a young seraph, who looked seventeen and had probably turned twenty.
This young person was reading an Italian newspaper and sucking a limp cigarette which hung from between his teeth and occasionally scattered sparks down the slim chest which his inconceivably filthy shirt left open to his belt. He was greeted devotedly by Maria as Cousin Beppo and, though he was evidently the old lady's abomination, when she accosted him with the unconciliatory greeting, "Here, you! You stir yourself!" he reared himself slowly to his feet and, with a good-natured smile, sagged amicably toward her.