A Bookful of Girls. Fuller Anna

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СКАЧАТЬ lettering on one of the lifeboats, she discovered the city of Bremen lying “buried” in “the sombre menace of the sea!”

      After a while, Gustav appeared before them, bearing a huge tray of bouillon and sandwiches, with which he was striking the most eccentric angles; and Blythe discovered that she was preposterously hungry. And while her nose was still buried in her cup, she espied over its rim a pair of legs planted well apart, in the cause of equilibrium, and the big, pleasant voice of Mr. Grey made itself heard above wind and sea, saying, “Guess where I’ve been.”

      “In the smoking-room,” was the prompt reply.

      “Guess again.”

      “On the bridge, – only you wouldn’t dare!”

      “Once more.”

      “Oh, I know,” Blythe cried, setting her thick cup down on the deck, and tumbling off her chair in a snarl of steamer-rugs; “You’ve been down in the steerage finding out about the little Signorina!”

      “Who told you?”

      “You did! You looked so pleased with yourself! Oh, do tell me all about her!”

      “Well, I’ve had a long talk with the woman. Shall we walk up and down?”

      And off they went, with that absence of ceremony which characterises life on shipboard, leaving Mr. DeWitt to bury his cities all unaided and unapplauded. Then, as the two walked up and down, – literally up and down, for the ship was pitching a bit, and sometimes they were labouring up-hill, and sometimes they were running down a steep incline, – as they walked up and down Mr. Grey told his story.

      The woman, Giuditta, had confided to him all she knew, and he had surmised more. Giuditta had known the family only since the time, three years ago, when she had been called in to take care of the little Cecilia during the illness of the Signora. The father had been a handsome good-for-nothing, who had got shot in a street row in that quarter of New York known as “Little Italy.” He was nothing, —niente, niente; – but the Signora! Oh, if the gentleman could but have known the Signora, so beautiful, so patient, so sad! Giuditta had stayed with her and shared her fortunes, which were all, alas! misfortunes, – and had nursed her through a long decline. But never a word had she told of her own origin, – the beautiful Signora, – nor had her father’s name ever passed her lips. Had she known that she was dying, perhaps then, for the child’s sake, she might have forgotten her pride. But she was always thinking she should get well, – and then, one day, she died!

      There was very little left, – only a few dollars; but among the squalid properties of the pitiful little stage where the poor young thing had enacted the last act of her tragedy, was one picture, a Madonna, with the painter’s name, G. Bellini, just decipherable. It was a little picture, twelve inches by sixteen, in a dingy old frame, and not a pretty picture at that. But a kind man, a dealer in antiquities, had given Giuditta one hundred dollars for it. “Think of that, Signore! One hundred dollars for an ugly little black picture no bigger than that!”

      “I suppose,” Mr. Grey remarked, as they stood balancing themselves at an angle of many degrees, – “I suppose that the picture was genuine, – else the man would hardly have paid one hundred dollars for it.”

      “And would it be worth more than that?”

      “A trifle,” he replied, rather grimly. “Somewhere among the thousands.”

      “But why should they have kept such a picture when they were so poor? Why didn’t they sell it?”

      “That would hardly have occurred to them. It was evidently a family heirloom that the girl had taken with her because she loved it. I doubt if she guessed its value. A Bellini! A Giovanni Bellini, in a New York tenement house! Think of it! And now I suppose some millionaire has got it. Likely enough somebody who doesn’t know enough to buy his own pictures! Horrible idea! Horrible!” and Mr. Grey strode along, all but snorting with rage at the thought.

      “But tell me more about the little girl,” Blythe entreated, wishing the wind wouldn’t blow her words out of her mouth so rudely. “Her name is Cecilia, you say?”

      “Yes; Cecilia. Dopo is the name they went by, but the nurse doesn’t think it genuine. Her idea is that her Signora was the daughter of some great family, and got herself disowned by marrying an opera singer who subsequently made a fiasco and dropped his name with his fame. She doesn’t think Dopo ever was a family name. It means ‘after,’ you know, and they may have adopted it for its ironical significance.”

      “And the poor lady died and never told!” Blythe panted, as they toiled painfully up-hill with the rain beating in their faces.

      “Yes, and – look out! hold tight!” for suddenly the slant of the deck was reversed, and they came coasting down to an impromptu seat on a bench.

      “It seems,” Mr. Grey went on, when they had resumed their somewhat arduous promenade, – “it seems the woman, Giuditta, is quite alone in the world and has been longing to get back to Italy. So she easily persuaded herself that she could find the child’s family and establish her in high life. Giuditta has an uncommonly high idea of high life,” he added. “I think she imagines that somebody in a court train and a coronet will come to meet her Signorina at the pier in Genoa. Poor things! There’ll be a rude awakening!”

      “But we won’t let it be rude!” Blythe protested. “We must do something about it. Can’t you think of anything to do?”

      They were standing now, clinging to the friendly rope stretched across the deck, shoulder high.

      “Giuditta’s plan,” Mr. Grey replied, “is the naïve one of appealing to the Queen about it. And, seriously, I think it may be worth while to ask the American Minister to make inquiries. For there is, of course, a bare chance that the family may be known at Court. In the meantime–”

      “In the meantime,” Blythe interposed, “we’ve got to get her out of the steerage!”

      “But how?”

      “Oh, Mamma will arrange that. We’ll just make a cabin passenger of her, and I can take her in with me in my stateroom. Oh! how happy she will be, lying in my steamer chair, with that dear Gustav to wait on her! I must go down at once and get Mamma to say yes!”

      “And you think she will?”

      “I know she will! She is always doing nice things. If you really knew her you wouldn’t doubt it!” And with that the young optimist vanished in her accustomed whirl of golf-cape.

      If faith can move mountains, it is perhaps no wonder that the implicit and energetic faith of which Blythe Halliday was possessed proved equal to the removal of a small child from one quarter to another of the big ship. The three persons concerned in bringing about the change were easily won over; for Mrs. Halliday was quite of Blythe’s mind in the matter, Mr. Grey had little difficulty in bringing the Captain to their point of view, while, as for Giuditta, she hailed the event as the first step in the transformation of her small Signorina into the little “great lady” she was born to be.

      Accordingly, close upon luncheon time, when the sun was just breaking through the clouds, and the sea, true to the Captain’s prediction, was already beginning to subside, the tiny Signorina was carried, in the strong arms of Gustav, up the steep gangway by the wheel-house, where Blythe and her mother, Mr. DeWitt and the poet, to say nothing of Captain Seemann himself, formed an impromptu reception committee for her little ladyship.

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