Books › The Red Book Magazine v026 n02 [1915-12], 1915 › scan 79
Scan 79
The Red Book Magazine v026 n02 [1915-12], 1915
34 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1he remembered that above the bed of his grandparents hung a framed commission as captain of infantry, at the bottom the signature of Italy's beloved Garibaldi.
3The three old men sat and chatted volubly while the noise grew and the calls for wine came oftener from Eripodi's table.
5Eripodi, too, had watched the entry of old Giuseppe. He had long hated him. In an evil day Eripodi had demanded a share of the rents that came to the old man every month from the tenements and the store. And Giuseppe had answered by seeking Eripodi out in his own home, and, backed by a huge blue revolver, prefacing his refusal of tribute by a blazingly profane description of the Eripodi characteristics. Since then Eripodi had left him alone, although nursing his hatred and promising himself vengeance some day. He had vaguely planned to strike through the grandson but had no definite plot yet.
7The old man's entrance this night added fuel to his hate. Every indication of respect in which Giuseppe was held by the groups at the tables, every bow, every smile, every sign of pleasure which greeted the old soldier, was a direct insult to Eripodi. Much wine had made him forget caution and his plans for a more stealthy revenge. He would bait the old man now.
9"Hi there, graybeard," he shouted, "see if the arm you have cheated the gravedigger of can wring any music from the fiddle."
11The two with Giuseppe would have risen to resent the insult, but the latter silenced them with a word and a gesture.
13"Music?" he smiled. "With pleasure. I shall give you my poor best."
15Tony felt doubly guilty. He felt his face burn with shame that he should sit by while his grandfather was insulted. And he felt guilty, in an after-thought, of treachery to his leader because of the impulse to strike that surged in his heart at the leader's words.
17But there was no hint of resentment as Giuseppe put his violin to his shoulder.
19His was the perfect, untaught courtesy of the Italian peasant. There is courtesy and there is courtesy. And there are gentlemen and there are gentlemen. But there never was more perfect courtesy displayed by more finished gentleman than that of the toil-hardened, white-haired Italian peasant. In youth the fires of passion may burn too fiercely for perfect courtesy. In middle-age the struggle for existence may be too keen to leave much space for grace of politeness. But when white hair comes and eyes flash less brightly, there is left the finished gentleman, though he may, in all his life, have known nothing but the fields of Italy and the mines or mills of America.
21The big room stilled as Giuseppe played. He was no artist, this rough-palmed section-hand, but he could play the airs they loved, airs from folk-song and opera. And where his bow failed, their hearts took up the music and made it the music of a master. Again and again they cheered him when he would have rested.
23And then some one pushed old Giovanni out to sing. His voice was cracked, and there were strange interludes when he gasped for breath; but he sang from the great Italian operas, that every laborer knows.
25He had a right to sing operas with a cracked voice, this Giovanni. In his youth he had sung at La Scala in Milan. Critics hailed him as a tenor promising great things. But there was a woman, the wife of a nobleman, and then flight—poverty—desertion—drink. Now the tenor of La Scala was old. He was pastry cook in the Ristorante Sarto. In dirty white cap and apron he sang before shopkeeper and laborer and crook in a dingy restaurant in Webster Avenue—and their plaudits were sweet to his ears.
27GIUSEPPE, as he sat down, seemed to overlook the little table where he had been before and took a chair at the big table. Across from him sat Eripodi.
29It was a moment before Eripodi noticed him, but when he did, he grinned and reached in his pocket. He threw a quarter across the table.
31"Here, old one. Alms for thy music."
33As Eripodi threw him the quarter, the wrinkles in Giuseppi's brown, weather-beaten face were wiped out in a flood of
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