a train for jamaica next morning carried four anxious souls from mulberry. in one car were signori di bello and tomato, in another carolina and armando. the banker had agreed to meet armando at the country station; but the sculptor had given no hint that he would have carolina in company, nor did either of the latter dream of finding signor di bello with the banker. they all met on the station platform. at sight of carolina her brother divined her state of mind. he knew that her presence meant the first advance of a revived era of meddling in his love affairs, and with the perversity of the ripe-aged swain he resented it as stoutly as though his own judgment about [pg 269]woman had not just been caught soundly napping.
“you have come to see the husband of your brother’s bride, i suppose,” he said. “you are glad to be near to see me made a fool of, neh?”
“no,” she answered; “i seek only the proofs that casa di bello is not to be disgraced.”
they climbed into a creaky, swaying stage that the banker hired to convey them to the iron villa.
“it was you that said she was the presidentessa,” broke out the signore, eying armando on the opposite seat. “what the porcupine did you mean?”
as the decrepit stage squeaked through the village, plunging and tossing on its feeble springs like a boat in a choppy sea, armando gave the history of the last lady—the jugglery of the photographs, of which the banker had told him; his months of fruitless toil on the second juno following a year lost on the first.
[pg 270]
“ah, signore,” he added, yielding to a blank sense of desolation, “surely the evil eye has fallen upon me and i am doomed to fiasco.”
“body of a rhinoceros!” was signor di bello’s first comment. then he added, after an apparent mental struggle with the stubborn truth: “yes; she has made grand trouble for you, but you shall not suffer. i will buy your juno and the peacock and—the other juno, if only to smash it in a thousand pieces!”
“will you pay me back the dogana, signore?” put in the banker, striking the hot iron. “i too have been ruined by the last lady.”
“excuse me, signore; you are old enough to know better.”
“and so are you,” chirped tomato, whereat signor di bello held his tongue.
they had left the village street behind and were tottering over a rude wagon trail that threaded the thicket of dwarf oaks on whose margin crouched the dwelling of the [pg 271]tomatoes. the site of the iron villa was not far distant, and from its kitchen chimney a spiral of ascending smoke showed plainly in the sunlight that bathed the flat landscape. from the railroad cut the muffled roar of a passing train lent a basso undertone to the squeak and clack of the voluble stage. at length they struck into the road that borders the railway, and the banker leaned out of the vehicle and peered ahead, wondering if all were well with bridget and the youngsters. as he drew nearer, the deeper became a look of horror that had come upon his face.
“diavolo!” he exclaimed at last. “a new calamity!”
“what is it?”
“half of my house is gone.”
one woe-begone pipe was all that he could see of the imposing double-tubed villa that reclined there so proudly two days before. stripped of the foliage that had shielded it and its mate from the burning sun, it loomed black in ominous nakedness.
[pg 272]
had further evidence of disaster been needful, the countenance of bridget would have supplied it abundantly. like a feminine marius, she sat amid the ruins of the tomato carthage. strewn about her in wild disorder were the twigs of oak that had been so carefully fashioned over the pipes, mingled with the bedclothes and boxes that had furnished the interior of the dormitory. the little garden of tomato plants that had been set out at the back doors bore the vandal marks of hobnailed boots and was slashed with the tracks of heavy wheels.
“where’s the other pipe?” shrieked the banker before the stage came to a stop.
“howly shamrock, domenico, is it yersilf? sure i thought they was comin’ for the rest iv the house. where aire ye these two days, and the worruld comin’ to an ind all around us?”
“no ees-a maka differenza where i’m goin’ be,” he said, jumping down, followed by signor di bello, carolina, and armando.[pg 273] “i ask-a you where ees-a de oder pipa?”
“ax the divvil and he’ll tell yer betther, for the ground has opened and shwalleyed it.”
there was a chorus of whoops at the edge of the brush, and the trio of juvenile tomatoes came trooping toward their father.
“what-a kind talk you call-a dees-a?” he said, glaring at bridget and pushing away the children fiercely. “i ask-a you, where ees-a de pipa?”
“and i answer that i don’t knaw, dominick tomah-toe! me and the childer was away beyandt there, pickin’ dandelie-yuns, d’ye moind! be the sun, i’m thinkin’ we was gone two hours. well, whin we got back only the wan pipe was there, and a cushibaloo made iv the place as ye see it now.”
“and bertino, where ees-a?”
“gone wid the pipe.”
“goin’ weet de pipa?” echoed the others.
[pg 274]
“didn’t i say it?”
“and de bust-a, ees-a where?” asked signor di bello.
“gone wid the pipe.”
“bravo!” cried the grocer, who saw the case against juno crumbling. locking his hands behind him, he began to whistle cheerfully, his eyes on the moving pictures of the sky.
“shame to you, my brother!” broke out carolina. then she took the witness in hand. “when you have seen-a bertino—de last-a time, ees-a when?”
“airly this mornin’ whin we wint for the dandelie-yuns, me and the childer here.”
“and he no more coma back?”
“divvil a hair iv him.”
“bravo!” again from the grocer, the last barrier between him and juno levelled.
“where he say he go?” asked carolina.
“well, mum, if i understud his dog italian and his hog english, he said he was [pg 275]goin’ to jamaiky to ax at the post arface was there a letter from somebody in mulberry.”
signor di bello returned to new york in high spirits. whether the proofs of juno’s attempted bigamy were and always had been myths of tomato’s fancy was not the question that seemed to him of most import now. what towered above all else was the monolithic fact that the proofs were missing, and juno might be his, after all. as the wish gained firmer hold on the thought, he began to view the doings of the past two days as moves in a miscarried plot of his sister’s to cheat him of the woman who challenged his taste.
in the train he sat apart from carolina and armando and nursed his delight. they could see that he was gloating over the events that had cast them into hopeless gloom. and while they brooded, signor di bello replanned his wedding. arrived in mulberry, he made straight for the restaurant[pg 276] of santa lucia and caroled the triumphant tidings to juno.
“did i not tell you they were a flock of geese?” he said, passing the bottle of barbera. “there was no bust, and, of course, no husband. but there will be a husband on the feast of sunday, my very sympathetic one,” he cooed.
“ah! bertino has received my letter and fled,” she mused under her fallen eyelids as she tipped the glass.
that evening signor di bello observed to carolina:
“there will be a wedding in this house next sunday. the priest will not be the harebrained father nicodemo. i shall invite many of my genovese friends, some milanesi, some torinesi, and a few of the first families of the calabriani, the siciliani, and the napolitani, for i am a man above race prejudice.”
it was what she had dreaded since the moment bridget made known the fact of bertino’s melting away. convinced—without [pg 277]proof, however—that juno was his wife, she had resolved never to live under a bigamous roof, though she might, with a wife of her own selection, endure life in a monogamous household. wherefore she would secede from casa di bello—embrace again the rubric peace of the anagamous rectory. father nicodemo had given her repeated assurance that the latchstring was always hanging out; that the spaghetti sauces had never been proper since she left; that they had despaired of having a palatable dish of boiled snails fricasseed with pepper pods.
“very well, my brother,” she returned frostily; “when that neapolitan baggage comes in, i go out.”
“ah, you will enter the church again, i suppose,” he taunted. “have i not said it truly—once a priest always a priest?”
“you will have the police in the house,” was her last word.
