"Maju torna, maju veniCu li belli soi ciureri—"
"Maju torna, maju veniCu li belli soi ciureri—"
He tried to hum the tune, but it had left his memory. He longed to hear it once more under the olive-trees of the Sirens' Isle.
Again his thought went to Hermione. Very soon she would be out there, far out on the silver of the sea. Hadshe wanted him to go with her? He knew that she had. Yet she had not asked him to go, had not hinted at his going. Even she had refused to let him go. And he had not pressed it. Something had held him back from insisting, something secret, and something secret had kept her from accepting his suggestion. She was going to her greatest friend, to the man she had known intimately, long before she had known him—Delarey—and he was left alone. In England he had never had a passing moment of jealousy of Artois; but now, to-night, mingled with his creeping resentment against the joys of the peasants, of those not far from him under the moon of Sicily, there was a sensation of jealousy which came from the knowledge that his wife was travelling to her friend. That friend might be dead, or she might nurse him back to life. Delarey thought of her by his bedside, ministering to him, performing the intimate offices of the attendant on a sick man, raising him up on his pillows, putting a cool hand on his burning forehead, sitting by him at night in the silence of a shadowy room, and quite alone.
He thought of all this, and the Sicilian that was in him grew suddenly hot with a burning sense of anger, a burning desire for action, preventive or revengeful. It was quite unreasonable, as unreasonable as the vagrant impulse of a child, but it was strong as the full-grown determination of a man. Hermione had belonged to him. She was his. And the old Sicilian blood in him protested against that which would be if Artois were still alive when she reached Africa.
But it was too late now. He could do nothing. He could only look at the shining sea on which the ship would bear her that very night.
His inaction and solitude began to torture him. If he went in he knew he could not sleep. The mere thought of the festa would prevent him from sleeping. Again he looked at the lights of Castel Vecchio. He saw only onenow, and imagined it set in the window of Pancrazio's house. He even fancied that down the mountain-side and across the ravine there floated to him the faint wail of the ceramella playing a dance measure.
Suddenly he knew that he could not remain all night alone on the mountain-side.
He went quickly into the cottage, got his soft hat, then went from room to room, closing the windows and barring the wooden shutters. When he had come out again upon the steps and locked the cottage door he stood for a moment hesitating with the large door-key in his hand. He said to himself that he was going to the festa at Castel Vecchio. Of course he was going there, to dance the country dances and join in the songs of Sicily. He slipped the key into his pocket and went down the steps to the terrace. But there he hesitated again. He took the key out of his pocket, looked at it as it lay in his hand, then put it down on the sill of the sitting-room window.
"If any one comes, there isn't very much to steal," he thought. "And, perhaps—" Again he looked at the lights of Castel Vecchio, then down towards the sea. The star of the sea shone steadily and seemed to summon him. He left the key on the window-sill, with a quick gesture pulled his hat-brim down farther over his eyes, hastened along the terrace, and, turning to the left beyond the archway, took the path that led through the olive-trees towards Isola Bella and the sea.
Through the wonderful silence of the night among the hills there came now a voice that was thrilling to his ears—the voice of youth by the sea calling to the youth that was in him.
Hermione was travelling to her friend. Must he remain quite friendless?
All the way down to the sea he heard the calling of the voice.
As dawn was breaking, Lucrezia and Gaspare climbed slowly up the mountain-side towards the cottage. Lucrezia's eyes were red, for she had just bidden good-bye to Sebastiano, who was sailing that day for the Lipari Isles, and she did not know how soon he would be back. Sebastiano had not cried. He loved change, and was radiant at the prospect of his voyage. But Lucrezia's heart was torn. She knew Sebastiano, knew his wild and adventurous spirit, his reckless passion for life, and the gifts it scatters at the feet of lusty youth. There were maidens in the Lipari Isles. They might be beautiful. She had scarcely been jealous of Sebastiano before her betrothal to him, for then she had had no rights over him, and she was filled with the spirit of humbleness that still dwells in the women of Sicily, the spirit that whispers "Man may do what he will." But now something had arisen within her to do battle with that spirit. She wanted Sebastiano for her very own, and the thought of his freedom when away tormented her.
Gaspare comforted her in perfunctory fashion.
"What does it matter?" he said. "When you are married you can keep him in the house, and make him spin the flax for you."
And he laughed aloud. But when they drew near to the cottage he said:
"Zitta, Lucrezia! The padrone is asleep. We must steal in softly and not waken him."
On tiptoe they crept along the terrace.
"He will have left the door open for us," whispered Gaspare. "He has the revolver beside him and will not have been afraid."
But when they stood before the steps the door was shut. Gaspare tried it gently. It was locked.
"Phew!" he whistled. "We cannot get in, for we cannot wake him."
Lucrezia shivered. Sorrow had made her feel cold.
"Mamma mia!" she began.
But Gaspare's sharp eyes had spied the key lying on the window-sill. He darted to it and picked it up. Then he stared at the locked door and at Lucrezia.
"But where is the padrone?" he said. "Oh, I know! He locked the door on the inside and then put the key out of the window. But why is the bedroom window shut? He always sleeps with it open!"
Quickly he thrust the key into the lock, opened the door, and entered the dark sitting-room. Holding up a warning hand to keep Lucrezia quiet, he tiptoed to the bedroom door, opened it without noise, and disappeared, leaving Lucrezia outside. After a minute or two he came back.
"It is all right. He is sleeping. Go to bed."
Lucrezia turned to go.
"And never mind getting up early to make the padrone's coffee," Gaspare added. "I will do it. I am not sleepy. I shall take the gun and go out after the birds."
Lucrezia looked surprised. Gaspare was not in the habit of relieving her of her duties. On the contrary, he was a strict taskmaster. But she was tired and preoccupied. So she made no remark and went off to her room behind the house, walking heavily and untying the handkerchief that was round her head.
When she had gone, Gaspare stood by the table, thinking deeply. He had lied to Lucrezia. The padrone was not asleep. His bed had not been slept in. Where had he gone? Where was he now?
The Sicilian servant, if he cares for his padrone, feels as if he had a proprietor's interest in him. He belongs to his padrone and his padrone belongs to him. He will allow nobody to interfere with his possession. He is intensely jealous of any one who seeks to disturb the intimacy between his padrone and himself, or to enter into his padrone's life without frankly letting him know it and the reason for it. The departure of Hermione had given an additional impetus to Gaspare's always lively sense of proprietorship in Maurice. He felt as if he had been left in charge of his padrone, and had an almost sacred responsibility to deliver him up to Hermione happy and safe when she returned. This absence, therefore, startled and perturbed him—more—made him feel guilty of a lapse from his duty. Perhaps he should not have gone to the festa. True, he had asked the padrone to accompany him. But still—
He went out onto the terrace and looked around him. The dawn was faint and pale. Wreaths of mist, like smoke trails, hung below him, obscuring the sea. The ghostly cone of Etna loomed into the sky, extricating itself from swaddling bands of clouds which shrouded its lower flanks. The air was chilly upon this height, and the aspect of things was gray and desolate, without temptation, without enchantment, to lure men out from their dwellings.
What could have kept the padrone from his sleep till this hour?
Gaspare shivered a little as he stared over the wall. He was thinking—thinking furiously. Although scarcely educated at all, he was exceedingly sharp-witted, and could read character almost as swiftly and surely as an Arab. At this moment he was busily recalling the book he had been reading for many weeks in Sicily, the book of his padrone's character, written out for him in words, in glances, in gestures, in likes and dislikes, most clearly in actions. Mentally he turned the leavesuntil he came to the night of the fishing, to the waning of the night, to the journey to the caves, to the dawn when he woke upon the sand and found that the padrone was not beside him. His brown hand tightened on the stick he held, his brown eyes stared with the glittering acuteness of a great bird's at the cloud trails hiding the sea below him—hiding the sea, and all that lay beside the sea.
There was no one on the terrace. But there was a figure for a moment on the mountain-side, leaping downward. The ravine took it and hid it in a dark embrace. Gaspare had found what he sought, a clew to guide him. His hesitation was gone. In his uneducated and intuitive mind there was no longer any room for a doubt. He knew that his padrone was where he had been in that other dawn, when he slipped away from the cave where his companions were sleeping.
Surefooted as a goat, and incited to abnormal activity by a driving spirit within him that throbbed with closely mingled curiosity, jealousy, and anger, Gaspare made short work of the path in the ravine. In a few minutes he came out on to the road by Isola Bella. On the shore was a group of fishermen, all of them friends of his, getting ready their fishing-tackle, and hauling down the boats to the gray sea for the morning's work. Some of them hailed him, but he took no notice, only pulled his soft hat down sideways over his cheek, and hurried on in the direction of Messina, keeping to the left side of the road and away from the shore, till he gained the summit of the hill from which the Caffè Berardi and the caves were visible. There he stopped for a moment and looked down. He saw no one upon the shore, but at some distance upon the sea there was a black dot, a fishing-boat. It was stationary. Gaspare knew that its occupant must be hauling in his net.
"Salvatore is out then!" he muttered to himself, as he turned aside from the road onto the promontory,which was connected by the black wall of rock with the land where stood the house of the sirens. This wall, forbidding though it was, and descending sheer into the deep sea on either side, had no terrors for him. He dropped down to it with a sort of skilful carelessness, then squatted on a stone, and quickly unlaced his mountain boots, pulled his stockings off, slung them with the boots round his neck, and stood up on his bare feet. Then, balancing himself with his out-stretched arms, he stepped boldly upon the wall. It was very narrow. The sea surged through it. There was not space on it to walk straight-footed, even with only one foot at a time upon the rock. Gaspare was obliged to plant his feet sideways, the toes and heels pointing to the sea on either hand. But the length of the wall was short, and he went across it almost as quickly as if he had been walking upon the road. Heights and depths had no terrors for him in his confident youth. And he had been bred up among the rocks, and was a familiar friend of the sea. A drop into it would have only meant a morning bath. Having gained the farther side, he put on his stockings and boots, grasped his stick, and began to climb upward through the thickly growing trees towards the house of the sirens. His instinct had told him upon the terrace that the padrone was there. Uneducated people have often marvellously retentive memories for the things of every-day life. Gaspare remembered the padrone's question about the little light beside the sea, his answer to it, the way in which the padrone had looked towards the trees when, in the dawn, they stood upon the summit of the hill and he pointed out the caves where they were going to sleep. He remembered, too, from what direction the padrone came towards the caffè when the sun was up—and he knew.
As he drew near to the cottage he walked carefully, though still swiftly, but when he reached it he paused,bent forward his head, and listened. He was in the tangle of coarse grass that grew right up to the north wall of the cottage, and close to the angle which hid from him the sea-side and the cottage door. At first he heard nothing except the faint murmur of the sea upon the rocks. His stillness now was as complete as had been his previous activity, and in the one he was as assured as in the other. Some five minutes passed. Again and again, with a measured monotony, came to him the regular lisp of the waves. The grass rustled against his legs as the little wind of morning pushed its way through it gently, and a bird chirped above his head in the olive-trees and was answered by another bird. And just then, as if in reply to the voices of the birds, he heard the sound of human voices. They were distant and faint almost as the lisp of the sea, and were surely coming towards him from the sea.
When Gaspare realized that the speakers were not in the cottage he crept round the angle of the wall, slipped across the open space that fronted the cottage door, and, gaining the trees, stood still in almost exactly the place where Maurice had stood when he watched Maddalena in the dawn.
The voices sounded again and nearer. There was a little laugh in a girl's voice, then the dry twang of the plucked strings of a guitar, then silence. After a minute the guitar strings twanged again, and a girl's voice began to sing a peasant song, "Zampagnaro."
At the end of the verse there was an imitation of the ceramella by the voice, humming, or rather whining, bouche fermée. As it ceased a man's voice said:
"Ancora! Ancora!"
The girl's voice began the imitation again, and the man's voice joined in grotesquely, exaggerating the imitation farcically and closing it with a boyish shout.
In response, standing under the trees, Gaspare shouted. He had meant to keep silence; but the twangof the guitar, with its suggestion of a festa, the singing voices, the youthful laughter, and the final exclamation ringing out in the dawn, overcame the angry and suspicious spirit that had hitherto dominated him. The boy's imp of fun was up and dancing within him. He could not drive it out or lay it to rest.
"Hi—yi—yi—yi—yi!"
His voice died away, and was answered by a silence that seemed like a startled thing holding its breath.
"Hi—yi—yi—yi—yi!"
He called again, lustily, leaped out from the trees, and went running across the open space to the edge of the plateau by the sea. A tiny path wound steeply down from here to the rocks below, and on it, just under the concealing crest of the land, stood the padrone with Maddalena. Their hands were linked together, as if they had caught at each other sharply for sympathy or help. Their faces were tense and their lips parted. But as they saw Gaspare's light figure leaping over the hill edge, his dancing eyes fixed shrewdly, with a sort of boyish scolding, upon them, their hands fell apart, their faces relaxed.
"Gasparino!" said Maurice. "It was you who called!"
"Si, signore."
He came up to them. Maddalena's oval face had flushed, and she dropped the full lids over her black eyes as she said:
"Buon giorno, Gaspare."
"Buon giorno, Donna Maddalena."
Then they stood there for a moment in silence. Maurice was the first to speak again.
"But why did you come here?" he said. "How did you know?"
Already the sparkle of merriment had dropped out of Gaspare's face as the feeling of jealousy, of not having been completely trusted, returned to his mind.
"Did not the signore wish me to know?" he said,almost gruffly, with a sort of sullen violence. "I am sorry."
Maurice touched the back of his hand, giving it a gentle, half-humorous slap.
"Don't be an ass, Gaspare. But how could you guess where I had gone?"
"Where did you go before, signore, when you could not sleep?"
At this thrust Maurice imitated Maddalena and reddened slightly. It seemed to him as if he had been living under glass while he had fancied himself enclosed in rock that was impenetrable by human eyes. He tried to laugh away his slight confusion.
"Gaspare, you are the most birbante boy in Sicily!" he said. "You are like a Mago Africano."
"Signorino, you should trust me," returned the boy, sullenly.
His own words seemed to move him, as if their sound revealed to him the whole of the injury that had been inflicted upon his amour propre, and suddenly angry tears started into his eyes.
"I thought I was a servant of confidence" (un servitore di confidenza), he added, bitterly.
Maurice was amazed at the depth of feeling thus abruptly shown to him. This was the first time he had been permitted to look for a moment deep down into that strange volcano, a young and passionate Sicilian heart. As he looked, swift and short as was his glance, his amazement died away. Narcissus saw himself in the stream. Maurice saw, or believed he saw, his heart's image, trembling perhaps and indistinct, far down in the passion of Gaspare. So could he have been with a padrone had fate made his situation in life a different one. So could he have felt had something been concealed from him.
Maurice said nothing in reply. Maddalena was there. They walked in silence to the cottage door, and there,rather like a detected school-boy, he bade her good-bye, and set out through the trees with Gaspare.
"That's not the way, is it?" Maurice said, presently, as the boy turned to the left.
"How did you come, signore?"
"I!"
He hesitated. Then he saw the uselessness of striving to keep up a master's pose with this servant of the sea and of the hills.
"I came by water," he said, smiling. "I swam, Gasparino."
The boy answered the smile, and suddenly the tension between them was broken, and they were at their ease again.
"I will show you another way, signore, if you are not afraid."
Maurice laughed out gayly.
"The way of the rocks?" he said.
"Si, signore. But you must go barefooted and be as nimble as a goat."
"Do you doubt me, Gasparino?"
He looked at the boy hard, with a deliberately quizzing kindness, that was gay but asked forgiveness, too, and surely promised amendment.
"I have never doubted my padrone."
They said nothing more till they were at the wall of rock. Then Gaspare seemed struck by hesitation.
"Perhaps—" he began. "You are not accustomed to the rocks, signore, and—"
"Silenzio!" cried Maurice, bending down and pulling off his boots and stockings.
"Do like this, signore!"
Gaspare slung his boots and stockings round his neck. Maurice imitated him.
"And now give me your hand—so—without pulling."
"But you hadn't—"
"Give me your hand, signore!"
It was an order. Maurice obeyed it, feeling that in these matters Gaspare had the right to command.
"Walk as I do, signore, and keep step with me."
"Bene!"
"And look before you. Don't look down at the sea."
"Va bene."
A moment, and they were across. Maurice blew out his breath.
"By Jove!" he said, in English.
He sat down on the grass, put his hand on his knees, and looked back at the rock and at the precipices.
"I'm glad I can do that!" he said.
Something within him was revelling, was dancing a tarantella as the sun came up, lifting its blood-red rim above the sea-line in the east. He looked over the trees.
"Maddalena saw us!" he cried.
He had caught sight of her among the olive-trees watching them, with her two hands held flat against her breast.
"Addio, Maddalena!"
The girl started, waved her hand, drew back, and disappeared.
"I'm glad she saw us."
Gaspare laughed, but said nothing. They put on their boots and stockings, and started briskly off towards Monte Amato. When they had crossed the road, and gained the winding path that led eventually into the ravine, Maurice said:
"Well, Gaspare?"
"Well, signorino?"
"Have you forgiven me?"
"It is not for a servant to forgive his padrone, signorino," said the boy, but rather proudly.
Maurice feared that his sense of injury was returning, and continued, hastily:
"It was like this, Gaspare. When you and Lucrezia had gone I felt so dull all alone, and I thought, 'every one is singing and dancing and laughing except me.'"
"But I asked you to accompany us, signorino," Gaspare exclaimed, reproachfully.
"Yes, I know, but—"
"But you thought we did not want you. Well, then, you do not know us!"
"Now, Gaspare, don't be angry again. Remember that the padrona has gone away and that I depend on you for everything."
At the last words Gaspare's face, which had been lowering, brightened up a little. But he was not yet entirely appeased.
"You have Maddalena," he said.
"She is only a girl."
"Oh, girls are very nice."
"Don't be ridiculous, Gaspare. I hardly know Maddalena."
Gaspare laughed; not rudely, but as a boy laughs who is sure he knows the world from the outer shell to inner kernel.
"Oh, signore, why did you go down to the sea instead of coming to the festa?"
Maurice did not answer at once. He was asking himself Gaspare's question. Why had he gone to the Sirens' Isle? Gaspare continued:
"May I say what I think, signore? You know I am Sicilian, and I know the Sicilians."
"What is it?"
"Strangers should be careful what they do in my country."
"Madonna! You call me a stranger?"
It was Maurice's turn to be angry. He spoke with sudden heat. The idea that he was a stranger—a straniero—in Sicily seemed to him ridiculous—almost offensive.
"Well, signore, you have only been here a little while. I was born here and have never been anywhere else."
"It is true. Go on then."
"The men of Sicily are not like the English or the Germans. They are jealous of their women. I have been told that in your country, on festa days, if a man likes a girl and she likes him he can take her for a walk. Is it true?"
"Quite true."
"He cannot walk with her here. He cannot even walk with her down the street of Marechiaro alone. It would be a shame."
"But there is no harm in it."
"Who knows? It is not our custom. We walk with our friends and the girls walk with their friends. If Salvatore, the father of Maddalena, knew—"
He did not finish his sentence, but, with sudden and startling violence, made the gesture of drawing out a knife and thrusting it upward into the body of an adversary. Maurice stopped on the path. He felt as if he had seen a murder.
"Ecco!" said Gaspare, calmly, dropping his hand, and staring into Maurice's face with his enormous eyes, which never fell before the gaze of another.
"But—but—I mean no harm to Maddalena."
"It does not matter."
"But she did not tell me. She is ready to talk with me."
"She is a silly girl. She is flattered to see a stranger. She does not think. Girls never think."
He spoke with utter contempt:
"Have you seen Salvatore, signore?"
"No—yes."
"You have seen him?"
"Not to speak to. When I came down the cottage was shut up. I waited—"
"You hid, signore?"
Maurice's face flushed. An angry word rose to his lips, but he checked it and laughed, remembering that hehad to deal with a boy, and that Gaspare was devoted to him.
"Well, I waited among the trees—birbante!"
"And you saw Salvatore?"
"He came out and went down to the fishing."
"Salvatore is a terrible man. He used to beat his wife Teresa."
"P'f! Would you have me be afraid of him?"
Maurice's blood was up. Even his sense of romance was excited. He felt that he was in the coils of an adventure, and his heart leaped, but not with fear.
"Fear is not for men. But the padrona has left you with me because she trusts me and because I know Sicily."
It seemed to Maurice that he was with an inflexible chaperon, against whose dominion it would be difficult, if not useless, to struggle. They were walking on again, and had come into the ravine. Water was slipping down among the rocks, between the twisted trunks of the olive-trees. Its soft sound, and the cool dimness in this secret place, made Maurice suddenly realize that he had passed the night without sleep, and that he would be glad to rest. It was not the moment for combat, and it was not unpleasant, after all—so he phrased it in his mind—to be looked after, thought for, educated in the etiquette of the Enchanted Isle by a son of its soil, with its wild passions and its firm repressions linked together in his heart.
"Gasparino," he said, meekly. "I want you to look after me. But don't be unkind to me. I'm older than you, I know, but I feel awfully young here, and I do want to have a little fun without doing any harm to anybody, or getting any harm myself. One thing I promise you, that I'll always trust you and tell you what I'm up to. There! Have you quite forgiven me now?"
Gaspare's face became radiant. He felt that he haddone his duty, and that he was now properly respected by one whom he looked up to and of whom he was not merely the servant, but also the lawful guardian.
They went up to the cottage singing in the morning sunshine.
"Signorino! Signorino!"
Maurice lifted his head lazily from the hands that served it as a pillow, and called out, sleepily:
"Che cosa c'é?"
"Where are you, signorino?"
"Down here under the oak-trees."
He sank back again, and looked up at the section of deep-blue sky that was visible through the leaves. How he loved the blue, and gloried in the first strong heat that girdled Sicily to-day, and whispered to his happy body that summer was near, the true and fearless summer that comes to southern lands. Through all his veins there crept a subtle sense of well-being, as if every drop of his blood were drowsily rejoicing. Three days had passed, had glided by, three radiant nights, warm, still, luxurious. And with each his sense of the south had increased, and with each his consciousness of being nearer to the breast of Sicily. In those days and nights he had not looked into a book or glanced at a paper. What had he done? He scarcely knew. He had lived and felt about him the fingers of the sun touching him like a lover. And he had chattered idly to Gaspare about Sicilian things, always Sicilian things; about the fairs and the festivals, Capo d'Anno and Carnevale, martedì grasso with itsTavulata, the solemn family banquet at which all the relations assemble and eat in company, the feasts of the different saints, the peasant marriages and baptisms, the superstitions—Gaspare did not call them so—that are alive in Sicily, and that will surelylive till Sicily is no more; the fear of the evil-eye and of spells, and the best means of warding them off, the "guaj di lu linu," the interpretation of dreams, the power of the Mafia, the legends of the brigands, and the vanished glory of Musolino. Gaspare talked without reserve to his padrone, as to another Sicilian, and Maurice was never weary of listening. All that was of Sicily caught his mind and heart, was full of meaning to him, and of irresistible fascination. He had heard the call of the blood once for all and had once for all responded to it.
But the nights he had loved best. For then he slept under the stars. When ten o'clock struck he and Gaspare carried out one of the white beds onto the terrace, and he slipped into it and lay looking up at the clear sky, and at the dimness of the mountain flank, and at the still silhouettes of the trees, till sleep took him, while Gaspare, rolled up in a rug of many colors, snuggled up on the seat by the wall with his head on a cushion brought for him by the respectful Lucrezia. And they awoke at dawn to see the last star fade above the cone of Etna, and the first spears of the sun thrust up out of the stillness of the sea.
"Signorino, ecco la posta!"
And Gaspare came running down from the terrace, the wide brim of his white linen hat flapping round his sun-browned face.
"I don't want it, Gaspare. I don't want anything."
"But I think there's a letter from the signora!"
"From Africa?"
Maurice sat up and held out his hand.
"Yes, it is from Kairouan. Sit down, Gaspare, and I'll tell you what the padrona says."
Gaspare squatted on his haunches like an Oriental, not touching the ground with his body, and looked eagerly at the letter that had come across the sea. He adored his padrona, and was longing for news of her.Already he had begun to send her picture post-cards, laboriously written over. "Tanti saluti carissima Signora Pertruni, a rividici, e suno il suo servo fidelisimo per sempre—Martucci Gaspare. Adio! Adio! Ciao! Ciao!" What would she say? And what message would she send to him? His eyes sparkled with affectionate expectation.
"Hotel de France, Kairouan.My Dearest,—I cannot write very much, for all my moments ought to be given up to nursing Emile. Thank God, I arrived in time. Oh, Maurice, when I saw him I can't tell you how thankful I was that I had not hesitated to make the journey, that I had acted at once on my first impulse to come here. And how I blessed God for having given me an unselfish husband who trusted me completely, and who could understand what true friendship between man and woman means, and what one owes to a friend. You might so easily have misunderstood, and you are so blessedly understanding. Thank you, dearest, for seeing that it was right of me to go, and for thinking of nothing but that. I feel so proud of you, and so proud to be your wife. Well, I caught the train at Tunis mercifully, and got here at evening. He is frightfully ill. I hardly recognized him. But his mind is quite clear, though he suffers terribly. He was poisoned by eating some tinned food, and peritonitis has set in. We can't tell yet whether he will live or die. When he saw me come in he gave me such a look of gratitude, although he was writhing with pain, that I couldn't help crying. It made me feel so ashamed of having had any hesitation in my heart about coming away from our home and our happiness. And it was difficult to give it all up, to come out of paradise. That last night I felt as if I simply couldn't leave you, my darling. But I'm glad and thankful I've done it. I have to do everything for him. The doctor's rather an ass, very French and excitable, but he does his best. But I have to see to everything, and be always there to put on the poultices and the ice, and—poor fellow, he does suffer so, but he's awfully brave and determined to live. He says he will live if it's only to prove that I came in time to save him. And yet, when I look at him, I feel as if—but I won't give up hope. The heat here is terrible, and tries him very much now he is so desperately ill, and the flies—but I don't want to bother you with my troubles. They're not very great—only one. Do you guess what that is? I scarcely dare to think of Sicily. Whenever I do I feel sucha horrible ache in my heart. It seems to me as if I had not seen your face or touched your hand for centuries, and sometimes—and that's the worst of all—as if I never should again, as if our time together and our love were a beautiful dream, and God would never allow me to dream it again. That's a little morbid, I know, but I think it's always like that with a great happiness, a happiness that is quite complete. It seems almost a miracle to have had it even for a moment, and one can scarcely believe that one will be allowed to have it again. But, please God, we will. We'll sit on the terrace again together, and see the stars come out, and—The doctor's come and I must stop. I'll write again almost directly. Good-night, my dearest. Buon riposo. Do you remember when you first heard that? Somehow, since then I always connect the words with you. I won't send my love, because it's all in Sicily with you. I'll send it instead to Gaspare. Tell him I feel happy that he is with the padrone, because I know how faithful and devoted he is. Tanti saluti a Lucrezia. Oh, Maurice, pray that I may soon be back. You do want me, don't you?Hermione."
"Hotel de France, Kairouan.
My Dearest,—I cannot write very much, for all my moments ought to be given up to nursing Emile. Thank God, I arrived in time. Oh, Maurice, when I saw him I can't tell you how thankful I was that I had not hesitated to make the journey, that I had acted at once on my first impulse to come here. And how I blessed God for having given me an unselfish husband who trusted me completely, and who could understand what true friendship between man and woman means, and what one owes to a friend. You might so easily have misunderstood, and you are so blessedly understanding. Thank you, dearest, for seeing that it was right of me to go, and for thinking of nothing but that. I feel so proud of you, and so proud to be your wife. Well, I caught the train at Tunis mercifully, and got here at evening. He is frightfully ill. I hardly recognized him. But his mind is quite clear, though he suffers terribly. He was poisoned by eating some tinned food, and peritonitis has set in. We can't tell yet whether he will live or die. When he saw me come in he gave me such a look of gratitude, although he was writhing with pain, that I couldn't help crying. It made me feel so ashamed of having had any hesitation in my heart about coming away from our home and our happiness. And it was difficult to give it all up, to come out of paradise. That last night I felt as if I simply couldn't leave you, my darling. But I'm glad and thankful I've done it. I have to do everything for him. The doctor's rather an ass, very French and excitable, but he does his best. But I have to see to everything, and be always there to put on the poultices and the ice, and—poor fellow, he does suffer so, but he's awfully brave and determined to live. He says he will live if it's only to prove that I came in time to save him. And yet, when I look at him, I feel as if—but I won't give up hope. The heat here is terrible, and tries him very much now he is so desperately ill, and the flies—but I don't want to bother you with my troubles. They're not very great—only one. Do you guess what that is? I scarcely dare to think of Sicily. Whenever I do I feel sucha horrible ache in my heart. It seems to me as if I had not seen your face or touched your hand for centuries, and sometimes—and that's the worst of all—as if I never should again, as if our time together and our love were a beautiful dream, and God would never allow me to dream it again. That's a little morbid, I know, but I think it's always like that with a great happiness, a happiness that is quite complete. It seems almost a miracle to have had it even for a moment, and one can scarcely believe that one will be allowed to have it again. But, please God, we will. We'll sit on the terrace again together, and see the stars come out, and—The doctor's come and I must stop. I'll write again almost directly. Good-night, my dearest. Buon riposo. Do you remember when you first heard that? Somehow, since then I always connect the words with you. I won't send my love, because it's all in Sicily with you. I'll send it instead to Gaspare. Tell him I feel happy that he is with the padrone, because I know how faithful and devoted he is. Tanti saluti a Lucrezia. Oh, Maurice, pray that I may soon be back. You do want me, don't you?
Hermione."
Maurice looked up from the letter and met Gaspare's questioning eyes.
"There's something for you," he said.
And he read in Italian Hermione's message. Gaspare beamed with pride and pleasure.
"And the sick signore?" he asked. "Is he better?"
Maurice explained how things were.
"The signora is longing to come back to us," he said.
"Of course she is," said Gaspare, calmly.
Then suddenly he jumped up.
"Signorino," he said. "I am going to write a letter to the signora. She will like to have a letter from me. She will think she is in Sicily."
"And when you have finished, I will write," said Maurice.
"Si, signore."
And Gaspare ran off up the hill towards the cottage, leaving his master alone.
Maurice began to read the letter again, slowly. It made him feel almost as if he were with Hermione. He seemed to see her as he read, and he smiled. How good she was and true, and how enthusiastic! When he had finished the second reading of the letter he laid it down, and put his hands behind his head again, and looked up at the quivering blue. Then he thought of Artois. He remembered his tall figure, his robust limbs, his handsome, powerful face. It was strange to think that he was desperately ill, perhaps dying. Death—what must that be like? How deep the blue looked, as if there were thousands of miles of it, as if it stretched on and on forever! Artois, perhaps, was dying, but he felt as if he could never die, never even be ill. He stretched his body on the warm ground. The blue seemed to deny the fact of death. He tried to imagine Artois in bed in the heat of Africa, with the flies buzzing round him. Then he looked again at the letter, and reread that part in which Hermione wrote of her duties as sick-nurse.
"I have to see to everything, and be always there to put on the poultices and the ice."
He read those words again and again, and once more he was conscious of a stirring of anger, of revolt, such as he had felt on the night after Hermione's departure when he was alone on the terrace. She was his wife, his woman. What right had she to be tending another man? His imagination began to work quickly now, and he frowned as he looked up at the blue. He forgot all the rest of Hermione's letter, all her love of him and her longing to be back in Sicily with him, and thought only of her friendship for Artois, of her ministrations to Artois. And something within him sickened at the thought of the intimacy between patient and nurse, raged against it, till he felt revengeful. The wild unreasonableness of his feeling did not occur to him now. He hated that his wife should be performing these offices for Artois; he hated that she had chosen to go to him, that she had considered it to be her duty to go.
Had it been only a sense of duty that had called her to Africa?
When he asked himself this question he could not hesitate what answer to give. Even this new jealousy, this jealousy of the Sicilian within him, could not trick him into the belief that Hermione had wanted to leave him.
Yet his feeling of bitterness, of being wronged, persisted and grew.
When, after a very long time, Gaspare came to show him a letter written in large, round hand, he was still hot with the sense of injury. And a new question was beginning to torment him. What must Artois think?
"Aren't you going to write, signorino?" asked Gaspare, when Maurice had read his letter and approved it.
"I?" he said.
He saw an expression of surprise on Gaspare's face.
"Yes, of course. I'll write now. Help me up. I feel so lazy!"
Gaspare seized his hands and pulled, laughing. Maurice stood up and stretched.
"You are more lazy than I, signore," said Gaspare. "Shall I write for you, too?"
"No, no."
He spoke abstractedly.
"Don't you know what to say?"
Maurice looked at him swiftly. The boy had divined the truth. In his present mood it would be difficult for him to write to Hermione. Still, he must do it. He went up to the cottage and sat down at the writing-table with Hermione's letter beside him.
He read it again carefully, then began to write. Now he was faintly aware of the unreason of his previous mood and quite resolved not to express it, but while he was writing of his every-day life in Sicily a vision of the sick-room in Africa came before him again. He saw his wife shut in with Artois, tending him. It wasnight, warm and dark. The sick man was hot with fever, and Hermione bent over him and laid her cool hand on his forehead.
Abruptly Maurice finished his letter and thrust it into an envelope.
"Here, Gaspare!" he said. "Take the donkey and ride down with these to the post."
"How quick you have been, signore! I believe my letter to the signora is longer than yours."
"Perhaps it is. I don't know. Off with you!"
When Gaspare was gone, Maurice felt restless, almost as he had felt on the night when he had been left alone on the terrace. Then he had been companioned by a sensation of desertion, and had longed to break out into some new life, to take an ally against the secret enemy who was attacking him. He had wanted to have his Emile Artois as Hermione had hers. That was the truth of the matter. And his want had led him down to the sea. And now again he looked towards the sea, and again there was a call from it that summoned him.
He had not seen Maddalena since Gaspare came to seek him in the Sirens' Isle. He had scarcely wanted to see her. The days had glided by in the company of Gaspare, and no moment of them had been heavy or had lagged upon its way.
But now he heard again the call from the sea.
Hermione was with her friend. Why should not he have his? But he did not go down the path to the ravine, for he thought of Gaspare. He had tricked him once, while he slept in the cave, and once Gaspare had tracked him to the sirens' house. They had spoken of the matter of Maddalena. He knew Gaspare. If he went off now to see Maddalena the boy would think that the sending him to the post was a pretext, that he had been deliberately got out of the way. Such a crime could never be forgiven. Maurice knew enough about the Sicilian character to be fully aware of that. Andwhat had he to hide? Nothing. He must wait for Gaspare, and then he could set out for the sea.
It seemed to him a long time before he saw Tito, the donkey, tripping among the stones, and heard Gaspare's voice hailing him from below. He was impatient to be off, and he shouted out:
"Presto, Gaspare, presto!"
He saw the boy's arm swing as he tapped Tito behind with his switch, and the donkey's legs moving in a canter.
"What is it, signorino? Has anything happened?"
"No. But—Gaspare, I'm going down to the sea."
"To bathe?"
"I may bathe. I'm not sure. It depends upon how I go."
"You are going to the Casa delle Sirene?"
Maurice nodded.
"I didn't care to go off while you were away."
"Do you wish me to come with you, signorino?"
The boy's great eyes were searching him, yet he did not feel uncomfortable, although he wished to stand well with Gaspare. They were near akin, although different in rank and education. Between their minds there was a freemasonry of the south.
"Do you want to come?" he said.
"It's as you like, signore."
He was silent for a moment; then he added:
"Salvatore might be there now. Do you want him to see you?"
"Why not?"
A project began to form in his mind. If he took Gaspare with him they might go to the cottage more naturally. Gaspare knew Salvatore and could introduce him, could say—well, that he wanted sometimes to go out fishing and would take Salvatore's boat. Salvatore would see a prospect of money. And he—Maurice—did want to go out fishing. Suddenly he knew it. His spirits rose and he clapped Gaspare on the back.
"Of course I do. I want to know Salvatore. Come along. We'll take his boat one day and go out fishing."
Gaspare's grave face relaxed in a sly smile.
"Signorino!" he said, shaking his hand to and fro close to his nose. "Birbante!"
There was a world of meaning in his voice. Maurice laughed joyously. He began to feel like an ingenious school-boy who was going to have a lark. There was neither thought of evil nor even a secret stirring of desire for it in him.
"A rivederci, Lucrezia!" he cried.
And they set off.
When they were not far from the sea, Gaspare said:
"Signorino, why do you like to come here? What is the good of it?"
They had been walking in silence. Evidently these questions were the result of a process of thought which had been going on in the boy's mind.
"The good!" said Maurice. "What is the harm?"
"Well, here in Sicily, when a man goes to see a girl it is because he wants to love her."
"In England it is different, Gaspare. In England men and women can be friends. Why not?"
"You want just to be a friend of Maddalena?"
"Of course. I like to talk to the people. I want to understand them. Why shouldn't I be friends with Maddalena as—as I am with Lucrezia?"
"Oh, Lucrezia is your servant."
"It's all the same."
"But perhaps Maddalena doesn't know. We are Sicilians here, signore."
"What do you mean? That Maddalena might—nonsense, Gaspare!"
There was a sound as of sudden pleasure, even sudden triumph, in his voice.
"Are you sure you understand our girls, signore?"
"If Maddalena does like me there's no harm in it. She knows who I am now. She knows I—she knows there is the signora."
"Si, signore. There is the signora. She is in Africa, but she is coming back."
"Of course!"
"When the sick signore gets well?"
Maurice said nothing. He felt sure Gaspare was wondering again, wondering that Hermione was in Africa.
"I cannot understand how it is in England," continued the boy. "Here it is all quite different."
Again jealousy stirred in Maurice and a sensation almost of shame. For a moment he felt like a Sicilian husband at whom his neighbors point the two fingers of scorn, and he said something in his wrath which was unworthy.
"You see how it is," he said. "If the signora can go to Africa to see her friend, I can come down here to see mine. That is how it is with the English."
He did not even try to keep the jealousy out of his voice, his manner. Gaspare leaped to it.
"You did not like the signora to go to Africa!"
"Oh, she will come back. It's all right," Maurice answered, hastily. "But, while she is there, it would be absurd if I might not speak to any one."
Gaspare's burden of doubt, perhaps laid on his young shoulders by his loyalty to his padrona, was evidently lightened.
"I see, signore," he said. "You can each have a friend. But have you explained to Maddalena?"
"If you think it necessary, I will explain."
"It would be better, because she is Sicilian and she must think you love her."
"Gaspare!"
The boy looked at him keenly and smiled.
"You would like her to think that?"
Maurice denied it vigorously, but Gaspare only shook his head and said:
"I know, I know. Girls are nicest when they think that, because they are pleased and they want us to go on. You think I see nothing, signorino, but I saw it all in Maddalena's face. Per Dio!"
And he laughed aloud, with the delight of a boy who has discovered something, and feels that he is clever and a man. And Maurice laughed too, not without a pride that was joyous. The heart of his youth, the wild heart, bounded within him, and the glory of the sun, and the passionate blue of the sea seemed suddenly deeper, more intense, more sympathetic, as if they felt with him, as if they knew the rapture of youth, as if they were created to call it forth, to condone its carelessness, to urge it to some almost fierce fulfilment.
"Salvatore is there, signorino."
"How do you know?"
"I saw the smoke from his pipe. Look, there it is again!"
A tiny trail of smoke curled up; and faded in the blue.
"I will go first because of Maddalena. Girls are silly. If I do this at her she will understand. If not she may show her father you have been here before."
He closed one eye in a large and expressive wink.
"Birbante!"
"It is good to be birbante sometimes."
He went out from the trees and Maurice heard his voice, then a man's, then Maddalena's. He waited where he was till he heard Gaspare say:
"The padrone is just behind. Signorino, where are you?"
"Here!" he answered, coming into the open with a careless air.
Before the cottage door in the sunshine a great fishing-net was drying, fastened to two wooden stakes. Near it stood Salvatore, dressed in a dark-blue jersey, with asoft black hat tilted over his left ear, above which was stuck a yellow flower. Maddalena was in the doorway looking very demure. It was evident that the wink of Gaspare had been seen and comprehended. She stole a glance at Maurice but did not move. Her father took off his hat with an almost wildly polite gesture, and said, in a loud voice:
"Buona sera, signore."
"Buona sera," replied Maurice, holding out his hand.
Salvatore took it in a large grasp.
"You are the signore who lives up on Monte Amato with the English lady?"
"Yes."
"I know. She has gone to Africa."
He stared at Maurice while he spoke, with small, twinkling eyes, round which was a minute and intricate web of wrinkles, and again Maurice felt almost—or was it quite?—ashamed. What were these Sicilians thinking of him?
"The signora will be back almost directly," he said. "Is this your daughter?"
"Yes, Maddalena. Bring a chair for the signore, Maddalena."
Maddalena obeyed. There was a slight flush on her face and she did not look at Maurice. Gaspare stood pulling gently at the stretched-out net, and smiling. That he enjoyed the mild deceit of the situation was evident. Maurice, too, felt amused and quite at his ease now. His sensation of shame had fleeted away, leaving only a conviction that Hermione's absence gave him a right to snatch all the pleasure he could from the hands of the passing hour.
He drew out his cigar-case and offered it to Salvatore.
"One day I want to come fishing with you if you'll take me," he said.
Salvatore looked eager. A prospect of money floated before him:
"I can show you fine sport, signore," he answered, taking one of the long Havanas and examining it with almost voluptuous interest as he turned it round and round in his salty, brown fingers. "But you should come out at dawn, and it is far from the mountain to the sea."
"Couldn't I sleep here, so as to be ready?"
He stole a glance at Maddalena. She was looking at her feet, and twisting the front of her short dress, but her lips were twitching with a smile which she tried to repress.
"Couldn't I sleep here to-night?" he added, boldly.
Salvatore looked more eager. He loved money almost as an Arab loves it, with anxious greed. Doubtless Arab blood ran in his veins. It was easy to see from whom Maddalena had inherited her Eastern appearance. She reproduced, on a diminished scale, her father's outline of face, but that which was gentle, mysterious, and alluring in her, in him was informed with a rugged wildness. There was something bird-like and predatory in his boldly curving nose with its narrow nostrils, in his hard-lipped mouth, full of splendid teeth, in his sharp and pushing chin. His whole body, wide-shouldered and deep-chested, as befitted a man of the sea, looked savage and fierce, but full of an intensity of manhood that was striking, and his gestures and movements, the glance of his penetrating eyes, the turn of his well-poised head, revealed a primitive and passionate nature, a nature with something of the dagger in it, steely, sharp, and deadly.
"But, signore, our home is very poor. Look, signore!"
A turkey strutted out through the doorway, elongating its neck and looking nervously intent.
"Ps—sh—sh—sh!"
He shooed it away, furiously waving his arms.
"And what could you eat? There is only bread and wine."
"And the yellow cheese!" said Maurice.
"The—?" Salvatore looked sharply interrogative.
"I mean, there is always cheese, isn't there, in Sicily, cheese and macaroni? But if there isn't, it's all right. Anything will do for me, and I'll buy all the fish we take from you, and Maddalena here shall cook it for us when we come back from the sea. Will you, Maddalena?"
"Si, signore."
The answer came in a very small voice.
"The signore is too good."
Salvatore was looking openly voracious now.
"I can sleep on the floor."
"No, signore. We have beds, we have two fine beds. Come in and see."
With not a little pride he led Maurice into the cottage, and showed him the bed on which he had already slept.
"That will be for the signore, Gaspare."
"Si—è molto bello."
"Maddalena and I—we will sleep in the outer room."
"And I, Salvatore?" demanded the boy.
"You! Do you stay too?"
"Of course. Don't I stay, signore?"
"Yes, if Lucrezia won't be frightened."
"It does not matter if she is. When we do not come back she will keep Guglielmo, the contadino."
"Of course you must stay. You can sleep with me. And to-night we'll play cards and sing and dance. Have you got any cards, Salvatore?"
"Si, signore. They are dirty, but—"
"That's all right. And we'll sit outside and tell stories, stories of brigands and the sea. Salvatore, when you know me, you'll know I'm a true Sicilian."
He grasped Salvatore's hand, but he looked at Maddalena.
Night had come to the Sirens' Isle—a night that was warm, gentle, and caressing. In the cottage two candles were lit, and the wick was burning in the glass before the Madonna. Outside the cottage door, on the flat bit of ground that faced the wide sea, Salvatore and his daughter, Maurice and Gaspare, were seated round the table finishing their simple meal, for which Salvatore had many times apologized. Their merry voices, their hearty laughter rang out in the darkness, and below the sea made answer, murmuring against the rocks.
At the same moment in an Arab house Hermione bent over a sick man, praying against death, whose footsteps she seemed already to hear coming into the room and approaching the bed on which he tossed, white with agony. And when he was quiet for a little and ceased from moving, she sat with her hand on his and thought of Sicily, and pictured her husband alone under the stars upon the terrace before the priest's house, and imagined him thinking of her. The dry leaves of a palm-tree under the window of the room creaked in the light wind that blew over the flats, and she strove to hear the delicate rustling of the leaves of olive-trees.
Salvatore had little food to offer his guests, only bread, cheese, and small, black olives; but there was plenty of good red wine, and when the time of brindisi was come Salvatore and Gaspare called for health after health, and rivalled each other in wild poetic efforts, improvising extravagant compliments to Maurice, to the absent signora, to Maddalena, and even to themselves.And with each toast the wine went down till Maurice called a halt.
"I am a real Sicilian," he said. "But if I drink any more I shall be under the table. Get out the cards, Salvatore. Sette e mezzo, and I'll put down the stakes. No one to go above twenty-five centesimi, with fifty for the doubling. Gaspare's sure to win. He always does. And I've just one cigar apiece. There's no wind. Bring out the candles and let's play out here."
Gaspare ran for the candles while Salvatore got the cards, well-thumbed and dirty. Maddalena's long eyes were dancing. Such a festa as this was rare in her life, for, dwelling far from the village, she seldom went to any dance or festivity. Her blood was warm with the wine and with joy, and the youth in her seemed to flow like the sea in a flood-tide. Scarcely ever before had she seen her harsh father so riotously gay, so easy with a stranger, and she knew in her heart that this was her festival. Maurice's merry and ardent eyes told her that, and Gaspare's smiling glances of boyish understanding. She felt excited, almost light-headed, childishly proud of herself. If only some of the girls of Marechiaro could see, could know!
When the cards were thrown upon the table, and Maurice had dealt out a lira to each one of the players as stakes, and cried, "Maddalena and I'll share against you, Salvatore, and Gaspare!" she felt that she had nothing more to wish for, that she was perfectly happy. But she was happier still when, after a series of games, Maurice pushed back his chair and said:
"I've had enough. Salvatore, you are like Gaspare, you have the devil's luck. Together you can't be beaten. But now you play against each other and let's see who wins. I'll put down twenty-five lire. Play till one of you's won every soldo of it. Play all night if you like."
And he counted out the little paper notes on the table,giving two to Salvatore and two to Gaspare, and putting one under a candlestick.
"I'll keep the score," he added, pulling out a pencil and a sheet of paper. "No play higher than fifty, with a lira when one of you makes 'sette e mezzo' with under four cards."
"Per Dio!" cried Gaspare, flushed with excitement. "Avanti, Salvatore!"
"Avanti, Avanti!" cried Salvatore, in answer, pulling his chair close up to the table, and leaning forward, looking like a handsome bird of prey in the faint candlelight.
They cut for deal and began to play, while Maddalena and Maurice watched.
When Sicilians gamble they forget everything but the game and the money which it brings to them or takes from them. Salvatore and Gaspare were at once passionately intent on their cards, and as the night drew on and fortune favored first one and then the other, they lost all thought of everything except the twenty-five lire which were at stake. When Maddalena slipped away into the darkness they did not notice her departure, and when Maurice laid down the paper on which he had tried to keep the score, and followed her, they were indifferent. They needed no score-keeper, for they had Sicilian memories for money matters. Over the table they leaned, the two candles, now burning low, illuminating their intense faces, their violent eyes, their brown hands that dealt and gathered up the cards, and held them warily, alert for the cheating that in Sicily, when possible, is ever part of the game.
"Carta da cinquanta!"
They had forgotten Maurice's limit for the stakes.
"Carta da cento!"
Their voices died away from Maurice's ears as he stole through the darkness seeking Maddalena.
Where had she gone, and why? The last questionhe could surely answer, for as she stole past him silently, her long, mysterious eyes, that seemed to hold in their depths some enigma of the East, had rested on his with a glance that was an invitation. They had not boldly summoned him. They had lured him, as an echo might, pathetic in its thrilling frailty. And now, as he walked softly over the dry grass, he thought of those eyes as he had first seen them in the pale light that had preceded the dawn. Then they had been full of curiosity, like a young animal's. Now surely they were changed. Once they had asked a question. They delivered a summons to-night. What was in them to-night? The mystery of young maidenhood, southern, sunlit, on the threshold of experience, waking to curious knowledge, to a definite consciousness of the meaning of its dreams, of the truth of its desires.
When he was out of hearing of the card-players Maurice stood still. He felt the breath of the sea on his face. He heard the murmur of the sea everywhere around him, a murmur that in its level monotony excited him, thrilled him, as the level monotony of desert music excites the African in the still places of the sand. His pulses were beating, and there was an almost savage light in his eyes. Something in the atmosphere of the sea-bound retreat made him feel emancipated, as if he had stepped out of the prison of civilized life into a larger, more thoughtless existence, an existence for which his inner nature fitted him, for which he had surely been meant all these years that he had lived, unconscious of what he really was and of what he really needed.
"How happy I could have been as a Sicilian fisherman!" he thought. "How happy I could be now!"
"St! St!"
He looked round quickly.
"St! St!"
It must be Maddalena, but where was she? Hemoved forward till he was at the edge of the land where the tiny path wound steeply downward to the sea. There she was standing with her face turned in his direction, and her lips opened to repeat the little summoning sound.
"How did you know I was there?" he said, whispering, as he joined her. "Did you hear me come?"
"No, signore."
"Then—"
"Signorino, I felt that you were there."
He smiled. It pleased him to think that he threw out something, some invisible thread, perhaps, that reached her and told her of his nearness. Such communication made sympathy. He did not say it to himself, but his sensation to-night was that everything was in sympathy with him, the night with its stars, the sea with its airs and voices, Maddalena with her long eyes and her brown hands, and her knowledge of his presence when she did not see or hear him.
"Let us go down to the sea," he said.
He longed to be nearer to that low and level sound that moved and excited him in the night.
"Father's boat is there," she said. "It is so calm to-night that he did not bring it round into the bay."
"If we go out in it for a minute, will he mind?"
A sly look came into her face.
"He will not know," she said. "With all that money Gaspare and he will play till dawn. Per Dio, signore, you are birbante!"
She gave a little low laugh.
"So you think I—"
He stopped. What need was there to go on? She had read him and was openly rejoicing in what she thought his slyness.
"And my father," she added, "is a fox of the sea, signore. Ask Gaspare if there is another who is like him. You will see! When they stop playing at dawn the twenty-five lire will be in his pocket!"
She spoke with pride.
"But Gaspare is so lucky," said Maurice.
"Gaspare is only a boy. How can he cheat better than my father?"
"They cheat, then!"
"Of course, when they can. Why not, madonna!"
Maurice burst out laughing.
"And you call me birbante!" he said.
"To know what my father loves best! Signorino! Signorino!"
She shook her out-stretched forefinger to and fro near her nose, smiling, with her head a little on one side like a crafty child.
"But why, Maddalena—why should I wish your father to play cards till the dawn. Tell me that! Why should not I wish him, all of us, to go to bed?"
"You are not sleepy, signorino!"
"I shall be in the morning when it's time to fish."
"Then perhaps you will not fish."
"But I must. That is why I have stayed here to-night, to be ready to go to sea in the morning."
She said nothing, only smiled again. He felt a longing to shake her in joke. She was such a child now. And yet a few minutes ago her dark eyes had lured him, and he had felt almost as if in seeking her he sought a mystery.
"Don't you believe me?" he asked.
But she only answered, with her little gesture of smiling rebuke:
"Signorino! Signorino!"
He did not protest, for now they were down by the sea, and saw the fishing-boats swaying gently on the water.
"Get in Maddalena. I will row."
He untied the rope, while she stepped lightly in, then he pushed the boat off, jumping in himself from the rocks.
"You are like a fisherman, signore," said Maddalena.
He smiled and drew the great bladed oars slowly through the calm water, leaning towards her with each stroke and looking into her eyes.
"I wish I were really a fisherman," he said, "like your father!"