Meanwhile the man at the door, happily unaware of the preparations for receiving him above, came lounging inside with his hands in his pockets; and Mrs. Pascoe, whose greeting had shown some slight surprise at his appearance, laughed aloud. "It's funny how it does become you! I can't deny it!"
For he had doffed his gentleman's attire and was dressed like the shabbiest laborer, the tawny, earth-stained shirt open at his throat against a red cotton handkerchief; his loose, frayed, dingy jacket had once been of square, seafaring cut.
"I bet she picked them out fur yeh!" Mrs. Pascoe jeered. "She ain't one to miss the artistic touch!" Her mockery took him all in. "She'd be sure t' have yeh more uv a Dago organ-grinder 'n any Dago organ-grinder ever was! But I will say you wear 'em t' the manner born!"
Well, truly, the swinging gold earrings, rounder than Mr. Gumama's, had been carefully tarnished; his bracelet shot its golden gleam from under a ragged cuff; the cord of a scapular, scarlet against his olive skin, had been torn and knotted, and a handkerchief in the Sicilian colors was thrust into a belt supple with age. But, truly again, they became him mightily. For in those weathered boots, of which the soles were almost gone, his feet gripped the earth with a loping, elastic tread like a young animal's; and when, at the disconcerting coldness of her greeting, he snatched off his old cap and stood with it crushed flat in his nervous fingers the smooth and coal-black glitter of his head called her attention to the alertness of its carriage, like some prowler's scouting in the woods. Doubtless morning-coats and starched British linen are very discreet garments. But the worn softness of those old borrowed properties, in loosing the movement and the poise of his lithe body, had released some other change in him; something wild, light and strong, with the strength of a hound and the lightness of a cat, which, in the dense jungle where he was about to enter, might yet stand him in good stead. After all, one does not dress as a Sicilian for nothing!
Particularly when there are ladies about! Mrs. Pascoe was as much a woman as any silkier petticoat and it must have been some such momentary glimmer of the national presence, of the primitive equation, which had won her forgotten girlhood as it had once wooed and won her daughter's fancy. "Well, I vum!" said she again with tart amusement. Was he going to turn out a man? She leaned toward him all intentness. Was he?
"What yeh got up yer sleeve?" she whispered, for she thought she saw an impulse flickering in his eyes. "Look here, my lad, you pluck up heart an' mebbe yeh'll win through yet. She ain't God A'mighty, whoever she is; she ain't got rid o' that Cornish girl yet, nor, p'raps she ain't goin' to. She'll fin' she's gotta answer t' somebody in this world—she's got her ma. An' I don't see but what, when all's said, she's got her husband!"
He drew back with that little viperish black motion of his head and she cautioned him, "Now, now! Don't yer go puttin' those fellers' back up! I got no doubt they mean well by yeh if yeh keep quiet. But they're natcherul born devils—she's a natcherul born devil, as seems to me yeh had oughtta know by this time! An' only thing fur you is to jus' lay low an' squirm through.—Yeh goin' to do what yeh can fur that girl out there?"
He turned from her with the impatience of a man tested beyond his strength and as she went back to her solitaire her lips twitched. A man came down past her and quietly but with tremendous dramatic consciousness touched the arm of the slim figure in the doorway. "You will, above, attend the council!"
Without a sign to her he followed the messenger. Putting out one claw she clutched his cuff in her hold like a parrot's. She was looking in his face for her answer and he made that motion, palm downwards, with which an Italian dismisses some slight unpleasantness. "Ah, che voul pazienza!" he intoned as the messenger turned round, shrugging and pulling mildly at his cuff.
The claw held. "Ah, let 'em wait! An' don't yeh gimme none o' that gibberish—I been altogether too patient, this good while!" The messenger beckoned and she lowered her voice. "Yeh claim yer a gentleman an', as far forth as what that goes, I dun't say but yeh be. I never thought one o' yer kind was a man, exactly, but if yer be, be one now. I hadn't ought to let yer do it, but, if yeh can, do! An' if not, yeh got all the rest o' yer life to think what kind uv a gentleman y' are!—Yeh can g'won up."