VII
BETWEEN FRIENDS
A Story of the Italian Quarter
By ADRIANA SPADONI
Vincenza looked from the three crisp dollar bills to her husband, and back again, wonderingly and with fear in her eyes.
"I understand nothing, Gino, and I am afraid. Perhaps it will bring the sickness, the money—it is of the devil, maybe–"
Luigi laughed, but a little uneasily. "It is time, then, that the devil went to paradise; he makes better for us than the saints, to whom you pray so–"
"S-sh!" Vincenza crossed herself quickly. "That is a great wickedness."
Luigi picked up the bills, examining them closely. Apparently they were good. Nevertheless he put them down again, and went on carving a wooden cow for the little Carolina, with a puzzled look in his black eyes.
"Gino," Vincenza stopped undressing the baby suddenly when the thought came to her. "Go thou and ask Biaggio. He has been many years in this country, and, besides, he is also a Genovese. He will tell thee."
Luigi's eyes cleared, but he condescended to make no reply. It is not for a man to take the advice of a woman. But when it was dark, and Vincenza had gone to lie down with the Little One, Luigi took his hat and went over to the shop of Biaggio Franchini.
Biaggio listened attentively; his pudgy hands, crossed on his stomach, rose and fell with the undulations of the rolls of flesh beneath. From time to time he ceased for a moment the contemplation of the strings of garlic and sausage that hung from the fly-specked ceiling of his diminutive shop, and turned his little black eyes sharply on Luigi.
"So," he said at last, "to-day a lady came to thy house, and after to ask many questions left these three dollars. It was in this way?"
"Just so," replied Luigi, "and questions the most marvelous I have ever heard. And in this country, where everyone asks the questions. How long that I do not work, and if we have to eat?" Luigi laughed; "of a surety, Biaggio, she asked that. She sees that we live—and she asks if we eat—ma! chè! And then, if we have every day the meat? When I said once, sometimes twice in the week—thou knowest it is not possible to have more often, when one waits to buy the house—then it was she put on the table the three dollars, and gave me a paper to sign–"
"Thou didst sign nothing?" Biaggio spoke eagerly.
"No. Once I signed the paper in English and it cost me two dollars; not again. I said I could not write, and she wrote for me."
"Bene," Biaggio nodded approval. "It is not thy writing. It can do nothing."
"Perhaps it is because I voted twice at the election last week? But already I have taken the money for that. It was one only dollar. I–"
"Non, non, it is not that. Listen!" Slowly Biaggio shut both eyes, as if to keep out the tremendous light that had dawned upon him, and nodded his head knowingly. Then he opened them, shifted his huge bulk upright, and clapped Luigi on the knee.
"Thou art in great luck friend," he cried, "and it is well that thou hast asked me. If thou hadst gone to another, to a man not honest, who knows? Listen. In our country when a rich man dies, he leaves always something for the poor, but he leaves it to the church and it is the fathers who give away the money. Corpo di Bacco! what that means thou knowest well. Sometimes a little gets to the poor. Sometimes– But in this country it is not so. He leaves to a society. There are many. And they pay the women, and sometimes the men, to give away the money–"
"Santo Cristo," gasped Luigi, "they pay to give away the money?"
"For them it is a job like any other. Didst think it was for love of thee or the red curls of thy Vincenza?"
"Marvelous, most marvelous," murmured Luigi, "and it is possible then for all people to get–"
"Ma, that no one can explain," and Biaggio shrugged his shoulders; in a gesture of absolute inability to solve the problem.
"She will come then again, this lady?" Luigi leaned forward eagerly. He was beginning to grasp it.
"It is for thee to say stop, my son, if thou hast in thy head anything but fat. But thou art a Genovese. Only I say," Biaggio laid a grimy thumb across his lips and winked knowingly—"Tell to none."
"Thanks, many thanks friend," Luigi's voice was deeply grateful, "perhaps some day I can do for thee–?"
"It is nothing—nothing," insisted Biaggio, patting the air with his pudgy hands in a gesture of denial, "a little kindness between friends."
At great inconvenience to himself, Biaggio held the door open to give Luigi more light in crossing the street. As he closed it and turned out the gas, he smiled to himself. "And each bottle of oil will cost thee ten cents more, friend. Business is business, and yesterday thy Vincenza returned the carrots because they were not fresh. Ecco!"
Back in his own room, Luigi folded the three notes neatly, while Vincenza watched him, her gray eyes wide with wonder.
"Marvelous, marvelous," she whispered just as Luigi had done, "to-night I thank the Virgin."
As Biaggio had foretold, the Lady in Fur came every day. Luigi did not understand all that she said, but he always listened politely and smiled, with his dark eyes and his lips and his glistening white teeth. It made her feel very old to see Luigi smile like that, when he had to live in one room with a leaking water pipe and a garbage can outside the door. Sometimes she was almost ashamed to offer the three dollars, and she was grateful for the gentle, sweet way Luigi accepted it.
Then one day when the air was thick with snow, and the air in the tenement halls cut like needles of ice and the lamps had to be lit at two o'clock, the Lady in Brown Fur came unexpectedly. She had found work for Luigi. She kissed the Little One, patted Vincenza's shoulder and shook hands with Luigi. Again and again she made him repeat the name and address to make sure he had it quite right. The Lady in Brown Fur was very happy. When she went Vincenza leaned far over the banisters with the lamp while Luigi called out in his soft, broken English, directions for avoiding the lines of washing below and the refuse piled in dark turns of the stairs. When the Lady in Brown Fur had disappeared Vincenza turned to Luigi.
"Of a surety, cara, the saints are good. Never before didst thou work before April. In the new house we will keep for ourselves two rooms.
"These people have the 'pull' even more than the alderman, Biaggio says," replied Luigi with a dreamy look in his eyes. "It may be that from this work I shall take three dollars each day."
"Madonna mia," gasped Vincenza, "it is beyond belief."
For five days Luigi stood four hours each afternoon, bent forward, to the lifting of a cardboard block, while Hugh Keswick painted, as he had not painted for months, the tense muscles under the olive skin, the strong neck and shoulders. The Building of the Temple advanced rapidly. And Luigi's arms and back ached so that each night Vincenza had to rub them with the oil which now cost ten cents more in the shop of Biaggio.
On the Sixth day Luigi refused to go.
"I tell thee it is a stupidness—to stand all day with the pain in the back. For what? Fifty cents. It is a work for old men and children–"
"But thou canst not make the money, sitting in thy chair, with thy feet on the stove, like now–"
"Dost thou wish then that I have every night the knives in my back? If so–"
"Not so, caro, but–"
"Listen. You understand nothing and talk as a woman. A lady comes to my house. She says—you have no work, here is money. Then she comes and says—here is work. But at this work I make not so much as before she gave; and in addition, I have the pain in the back. Ecco, when she comes again, I no longer have the work. It is her job to give away the money. She is not a fool, that Lady in Brown Fur. It is that I make her a kindness. Not so?"
"As thou sayest," and Vincenza went on with her endless washing.
But when the week passed and the Lady in Brown Fur did not come, Luigi's forehead wrinkled with the effort to understand. When the second had gone, Luigi was openly troubled. When the third was half over, he again took his hat and went over to the shop of Biaggio.
As before Biaggio listened attentively, his eyes closed, until Luigi had finished. Then he opened them, made a clicking noise with his tongue, and laid one finger along the side of his nose.
"Holy Body of Christ," he said softly, "in business thou hast the head like a rock. In one curl of thy Vincenza there is more sense than in all thy great body. Did I not tell thee to be careful, and it would stop only when thou didst wish. And now, without to ask my advice, you make the stupidness, bah–"
"Ma, Dio mio," Luigi's hands made angry protest against the invective of Biaggio, "I said only like a man of sense. It is her job, it make no difference–"
"Blood of the Lamb! Thou hast been in America eight months, and thou dost not know that they are mad, all quite mad, to work? Never do they stop. Even after to have fifty years, think, fifty years, still they work. They work even with the children old enough to keep them. For many months The Skinny One, she who gives milk to the baby of Giacomo, had the habit to find him such work, like the foolishness of your painter. And Giacomo has already three children more than fifteen. Ma–" Biaggio snorted his contempt. Then suddenly his manner changed. He leaned back in his chair, and apparently dismissed the subject with a wave of his fat hand.
"And the little Carolina she is well in this weather of the devil?" But Luigi did not answer. He was thinking with a pucker between his black eyes. Biaggio watched him narrowly. At last he spoke, looking fixedly at the sausages above his head.
"Of course—it—is—possible—you have made a—mistake—but–"
Luigi leaned forward eagerly. "It is possible then to–"
"All things are possible," Biaggio nodded his head at the sausages, blinking like a large, fat owl. Then he stopped.
"Perhaps, you will tell—to me," Luigi was forced to it at last.
Biaggio gave a little grunt as if he were being brought back from a deep meditation. "There is a way," he said slowly. "If thou write to her of the Brown Fur that thou art sick and cannot do the work–"
"But never in my life was I better. Only last week Giacomo said I have grown fat. How the–"
"It is possible," replied Biaggio wearily, "to be sick of a sickness that makes one neither thin nor white. With a sickness—of the legs like the rheumatism, for example, one eats, one sleeps, only one cannot walk or stand for many hours."
In spite of his efforts to the contrary, the wonder and admiration grew deeper in Luigi's eyes. "Thou thinkest the–?"
"I am sure," now that Luigi was reduced to the proper state of humility Biaggio gave up his attitude of distant oracle, and leaned close. "Thou hast made a mistake, but it is not too late. If thou dost wish I will write it for thee."
"If thou sayest," replied Luigi and now it was his turn to gaze at the strings of garlic, "if you will do this favor."
"With pleasure," Biaggio's fat hands made little gestures of willingness to oblige. "Of a truth it is not much, but when one wishes to buy the house, and already the family is begun, two dollars and a half each week–"
Luigi glanced at him sharply. "Two and–"
Biaggio drew the ink to him and dipped his pen. "Two and a half for thee, and for me–"
"Bene, bene," Luigi interrupted quickly, "it is only just."
"Between friends," explained Biaggio as he began to write.
"Between friends," echoed Luigi, and added to himself, "closer than the skin of a snake art thou—friend."
The Lady in the Brown Fur came next day. She had been very angry and disappointed in Luigi, too angry and disappointed to go near him. Now she felt very sorry and uncomfortable when she saw his right leg stretched out before, so stiff that he could not bend it. He smiled and made the motion of getting up, but could not do it, and sank back again with a gesture of helplessness more eloquent than words. When the Lady in Brown Fur had gone, Vincenza found an extra bill, brand new, tucked into the pocket of the little Carolina.
Luigi waited until he was quite sure that Biaggio would be alone. There was a look of real sorrow in his dark eyes as he slipped a shiny quarter across the counter. "She left only two," he explained, "the reason I do not know. Perhaps next time–"
"It is nothing, nothing between friends." Biaggio slipped the quarter into the cigar box under the counter and smiled a fat smile at Luigi. But he did not hold the door open when Luigi went, and his little eyes were hard like gimlet points. "So," he whispered softly. "So. One learns quickly, very quickly in this new country. Only two dollars this time. Bene, Gino mio, the price of sausage, as that of oil, goes up—between friends."
VIII
THE HAMMERPOND BURGLARY
The Story of an Artist
By H.G. WELLS
It is a moot point whether burglary is to be considered as a sport, a trade, or an art. For a trade the technique is scarcely rigid enough, and its claims to be considered an art are vitiated by the mercenary element that qualifies triumphs. On the whole it seems to be most justly ranked as sport, a sport for which no rules are at present formulated, and of which the prizes are distributed in an extremely informal manner. It was this informality of burglary that led to the regrettable extinction of two promising beginners at Hammerpond Park.
The stakes offered in this affair consisted chiefly of diamonds and other personal bric-à-brac belonging to the newly married Lady Aveling. Lady Aveling, as the reader will remember, was the only daughter of Mrs. Montague Pangs, the well-known hostess. Her marriage to Lord Aveling was extensively advertised in the papers, the quantity and quality of her wedding presents, and the fact that the honeymoon was to be spent at Hammerpond. The announcement of these valuable prizes created a considerable sensation in the small circle in which Mr. Teddy Watkins was the undisputed leader, and it was decided that, accompanied by a duly qualified assistant, he should visit the village of Hammerpond in his professional capacity.
Being a man of naturally retiring and modest disposition, Mr. Watkins determined to make his visit incog, and, after due consideration of the conditions of his enterprise, he selected the rôle of a landscape artist, and the unassuming surname of Smith. He preceded his assistant, who, it was decided, should join him only on the last afternoon of his stay at Hammerpond. Now the village of Hammerpond is perhaps one of the prettiest little corners in Sussex; many thatched houses still survive, the flint-built church, with its tall spire nestling under the down, is one of the finest and least restored in the county, and the beech-woods and bracken jungles through which the road runs to the great house are singularly rich in what the vulgar artist and photographer call "bits." So that Mr. Watkins, on his arrival with two virgin canvases, a brand-new easel, a paint-boy, portmanteau, an ingenious little ladder made in sections; (after the pattern of that lamented master, Charles Peace), crowbar, and wire coils, found himself welcomed with effusion and some curiosity by half a dozen other brethren of the brush. It rendered the disguise he had chosen unexpectedly plausible, but it inflicted upon him a considerable amount of æsthetic conversation for which he was very imperfectly prepared.
"Have you exhibited very much?" said young Porson in the bar-parlor of the "Coach and Horses," where Mr. Watkins was skilfully accumulating local information on the night of his arrival.
"Very little," said Mr. Watkins; "just a snack here and there."
"Academy?"
"In course. And at the Crystal Palace."
"Did they hang you well?" said Porson.
"Don't rot," said Mr. Watkins; "I don't like it."
"I mean did they put you in a good place?"
"Whatyer mean?" said Mr. Watkins suspiciously. "One 'ud think you were trying to make out I'd been put away."
Porson was a gentlemanly young man even for an artist, and he did not know what being "put away" meant, but he thought it best to explain that he intended nothing of the sort. As the question of hanging seemed a sore point with Mr. Watkins, he tried to divert the conversation a little.
"Did you do figure work at all?"
"No, never had a head for figures," said Mr. Watkins. "My miss—Mrs. Smith, I mean, does all that."
"She paints too!" said Porson. "That's rather jolly."
"Very," said Mr. Watkins, though he really did not think so, and, feeling the conversation was drifting a little beyond his grasp, added: "I came down here to paint Hammerpond House by moonlight."
"Really!" said Porson. "That's rather a novel idea."
"Yes," said Mr. Watkins, "I thought it rather a good notion when it occurred to me. I expect to begin to-morrow night."
"What! You don't mean to paint in the open, by night?"
"I do, though."
"But how will you see your canvas?"
"Have a bloomin' cop's–" began Mr. Watkins, rising too quickly to the question, and then realizing this, bawled to Miss Durgan for another glass of beer. "I'm goin' to have a thing called a dark lantern," he said to Porson.
"But it's about new moon now," objected Porson. "There won't be any moon."
"There'll be the house," said Watkins, "at any rate. I'm goin', you see, to paint the house first and the moon afterward."
"Oh!" said Porson, too staggered to continue the conversation.
Toward sunset next day Mr. Watkins, virgin canvas, easel, and a very considerable case of other appliances in hand, strolled up the pleasant pathway through the beech-woods to Hammerpond Park, and pitched his apparatus in a strategic position commanding the house. Here he was observed by Mr. Raphael Sant, who was returning across the park from a study of the chalk-pits. His curiosity having been fired by Porson's account of the new arrival, he turned aside with the idea of discussing nocturnal art.
Mr. Watkins was mixing color with an air of great industry. Sant, approaching more nearly, was surprised to see the color in question was as harsh and brilliant an emerald green as it is possible to imagine. Having cultivated an extreme sensibility to color from his earliest years, he drew the air in sharply between his teeth at the very first glimpse of this brew. Mr. Watkins turned round. He looked annoyed.
"What on earth are you going to do with that beastly green?" said Sant.
Mr. Watkins realized that his zeal to appear busy in the eyes of the butler had evidently betrayed him into some technical error. He looked at Sant and hesitated.
"Pardon my rudeness," said Sant; "but, really, that green is altogether too amazing. It came as a shock. What do you mean to do with it?"
Mr. Watkins was collecting his resources. Nothing could save the situation but decision. "If you come here interrupting my work," he said, "I'm a-goin' to paint your face with it."
Sant retired, for he was a humorist and a peaceful man. Going down the hill he met Porson and Wainwright. "Either that man is a genius or he is a dangerous lunatic," said he. "Just go up and look at his green." And he continued his way, his countenance brightened by a pleasant anticipation of a cheerful affray round an easel in the gloaming, and the shedding of much green paint.
But to Porson and Wainwright Mr. Watkins was less aggressive, and explained that the green was intended to be the first coating of his picture. It was, he admitted, in response to a remark, an absolutely new method, invented by himself.
Twilight deepened, first one then another star appeared. The rooks amid the tall trees to the left of the house had long since lapsed into slumberous silence, the house itself lost all the details of its architecture and became a dark gray outline, and then the windows of the salon shone out brilliantly, the conservatory was lighted up, and here and there a bedroom window burnt yellow. Had any one approached the easel in the park it would have been found deserted. One brief uncivil word in brilliant green sullied the purity of its canvas. Mr. Watkins was busy in the shrubbery with his assistant, who had discreetly joined him from the carriage-drive.
Mr. Watkins was inclined to be self-congratulatory upon the ingenious device by which he had carried all his apparatus boldly, and in the sight of all men, right up to the scene of operations. "That's the dressing-room," he said to his assistant, "and, as soon as the maid takes the candle away and goes down to supper, we'll call in. My! how nice the house do look, to be sure, against the starlight, and with all its windows and lights! Swop me, Jim, I almost wish I was a painter-chap. Have you fixed that there wire across the path from the laundry?"
He cautiously approached the house until he stood below the dressing-room window, and began to put together his folding ladder. He was too experienced a practitioner to feel any unusual excitement. Jim was reconnoitring the smoking-room. Suddenly, close beside Mr. Watkins in the bushes, there was a violent crash and a stifled curse. Some one had tumbled over the wire which his assistant had just arranged. He heard feet running on the gravel pathway beyond. Mr. Watkins, like all true artists, was a singularly shy man, and he incontinently dropped his folding ladder and began running circumspectly through the shrubbery. He was indistinctly aware of two people hot upon his heels, and he fancied that he distinguished the outline of his assistant in front of him. In another moment he had vaulted the low stone wall bounding the shrubbery, and was in the open park. Two thuds on the turf followed his own leap.
It was a close chase in the darkness through the trees. Mr. Watkins was a loosely built man and in good training, and he gained hand over hand upon the hoarsely panting figure in front. Neither spoke, but, as Mr. Watkins pulled up alongside, a qualm of awful doubt came over him. The other man turned his head at the same moment and gave an exclamation of surprise. "It's not Jim," thought Mr. Watkins, and simultaneously the stranger flung himself, as it were, at Watkins's knees, and they were forthwith grappling on the ground together. "Lend a hand, Bill," cried the stranger, as the third man came up. And Bill did—two hands, in fact, and some accentuated feet. The fourth man, presumably Jim, had apparently turned aside and made off in a different direction. At any rate, he did not join the trio.
Mr. Watkins's memory of the incidents of the next two minutes is extremely vague. He has a dim recollection of having his thumb in the corner of the mouth of the first man, and feeling anxious about its safety, and for some seconds at least he held the head of the gentleman answering to the name of Bill to the ground by the hair. He was also kicked in a great number of different places, and apparently by a vast multitude of people. Then the gentleman who was not Bill got his knee below Mr. Watkins's diaphragm and tried to curl him up upon it.
When his sensations became less entangled he was sitting upon the turf, and eight or ten men—the night was dark, and he was rather too confused to count—standing around him, apparently waiting for him to recover. He mournfully assumed that he was captured, and would probably have made some philosophical reflections on the fickleness of fortune, had not his internal sensations disinclined him to speech.
He noticed very quickly that his wrists were not handcuffed, and then a flask of brandy was put in his hands. This touched him a little—it was such unexpected kindness.
"He's a-comin' round," said a voice which he fancied he recognized as belonging to the Hammerpond second footman.
"We've got 'em, sir, both of 'em," said the Hammerpond butler, the man who had handed him the flask. "Thanks to you."
No one answered his remark. Yet he failed to see how it applied to him.
"He's fair dazed," said a strange voice; "the villain's half-murdered him."
Mr. Teddy Watkins decided to remain fair dazed until he had a better grasp of the situation. He perceived that two of the black figures round him stood side by side with a dejected air, and there was something in the carriage of their shoulders that suggested to his experienced eye hands that were bound together. In a flash he rose to his position. He emptied the little flask and staggered—obsequious hands assisting him—to his feet. There was a sympathetic murmur.
"Shake hands, sir, shake hands," said one of the figures near him. "Permit me to introduce myself. I am very greatly indebted to you. It was the jewels of my wife, Lady Aveling, which attracted these scoundrels to the house."
"Very glad to make your lordship's acquaintance," said Teddy Watkins.
"I presume you saw the rascals making for the shrubbery, and dropped down on them?"
"That's exactly how it happened," said Mr. Watkins.
"You should have waited till they got in at the window," said Lord Aveling; "they would get it hotter if they had actually committed the burglary. And it was lucky for you two of the policemen were out by the gates, and followed up the three of you. I doubt if you could have secured the two of them—though it was confoundedly plucky of you, all the same."
"Yes, I ought to have thought of all that," said Mr. Watkins; "but one can't think of everything."
"Certainly not," said Lord Aveling. "I am afraid they have mauled you a little," he added. The party was now moving toward the house. "You walk rather lame. May I offer you my arm?"
And instead of entering Hammerpond House by the dressing-room window, Mr. Watkins entered it—slightly intoxicated, and inclined now to cheerfulness again—on the arm of a real live peer, and by the front door. "This," thought Mr. Watkins, "is burgling in style!" The "scoundrels," seen by the gaslight, proved to be mere local amateurs unknown to Mr. Watkins, and they were taken down into the pantry and there watched over by the three policemen, two gamekeepers with loaded guns, the butler, an ostler, and a carman, until the dawn allowed of their removal to Hazelhurst police-station. Mr. Watkins was made much of in the salon. They devoted a sofa to him, and would not hear of a return to the village that night. Lady Aveling was sure he was brilliantly original, and said her idea of Turner was just such another rough, half-inebriated, deep-eyed, brave, and clever man. Some one brought up a remarkable little folding-ladder that had been picked up in the shrubbery, and showed him how it was put together. They also described how wires had been found in the shrubbery, evidently placed there to trip up unwary pursuers. It was lucky he had escaped these snares. And they showed him the jewels.
Mr. Watkins had the sense not to talk too much, and in any conversational difficulty fell back on his internal pains. At last he was seized with stiffness in the back and yawning. Everyone suddenly awoke to the fact that it was a shame to keep him talking after his affray, so he retired early to his room, the little red room next to Lord Aveling's suite.
The dawn found a deserted easel bearing a canvas with a green inscription, in the Hammerpond Park, and it found Hammerpond House in commotion. But if the dawn found Mr. Teddy Watkins and the Aveling diamonds, it did not communicate the information to the police.