"Why, signore?" she asked, in astonishment.
"Because it's a free life, because it's a life I should love."
She still looked at him with surprise.
"But a fisherman has few soldi, signorino."
"Maddalena," he said, letting the oars drift in the water, "there's only one good thing in the world, and that is to be free in a life that is natural to one."
He drew up his feet onto the wooden bench and clasped his hands round his knees, and sat thus, looking at her while she faced him in the stern of the boat. He had not turned the boat round. So Maddalena had her face towards the land, while his was set towards the open sea.
"It isn't having many soldi that makes happiness," he went on. "Gaspare thinks it is, and Lucrezia, and I dare say your father would—"
"Oh yes, signore! In Sicily we all think so!"
"And so they do in England. But it isn't true."
"But if you have many soldi you can do anything."
He shook his head.
"No you can't. I have plenty of soldi, but I can't always live here, I can't always live as I do now. Some day I shall have to go away from Sicily—I shall have to go back and live in London."
As he said the last words he seemed to see London rise up before him in the night, with shadowy domes and towers and chimneys; he seemed to hear through the exquisite silence of night upon the sea the mutter of its many voices.
"It's beastly there! It's beastly!"
And he set his teeth almost viciously.
"Why must you go, then, signorino?"
"Why? Oh, I have work to do."
"But if you are rich why must you work?"
"Well—I—I can't explain in Italian. But my father expects me to."
"To get more rich?"
"Yes, I suppose."
"But if you are rich why cannot you live as you please?"
"I don't know, Maddalena. But the rich scarcely ever live really as they please, I think. Their soldi won't let them, perhaps."
"I don't understand, signore."
"Well, a man must do something, must get on, and if I lived always here I should do nothing but enjoy myself."
He was silent for a minute. Then he said:
"And that's all I want to do, just to enjoy myself here in the sun."
"Are you happy here, signorino?"
"Yes, tremendously happy."
"Why?"
"Why—because it's Sicily here! Aren't you happy?"
"I don't know, signorino."
She said it with simplicity and looked at him almost as if she were inquiring of him whether she were happy or not. That look tempted him.
"Don't you know whether you are happy to-night?" he asked, putting an emphasis on the last word, and looking at her more steadily, almost cruelly.
"Oh, to-night—it is a festa."
"A festa? Why?"
"Why? Because it is different from other nights. On other nights I am alone with my father."
"And to-night you are alone with me. Does that make it a festa?"
She looked down.
"I don't know, signorino."
The childish merriment and slyness had gone out of her now, and there was a softness almost of sentimentality in her attitude, as she drooped her head and moved one hand to and fro on the gunwale of the boat, touching the wood, now here, now there, as if she were picking up something and dropping it gently into the sea.
Suddenly Maurice wondered about Maddalena. He wondered whether she had ever had a Sicilian lover, whether she had one now.
"You are not 'promised,' are you, Maddalena?" he asked, leaning a little nearer to her. He saw the red come into her brown skin. She shook her head without looking up or speaking.
"I wonder why," he said. "I think—I think there must be men who want you."
She slightly raised her head.
"Oh yes, there are, signore. But—but I must wait till my father chooses one."
"Your father will choose the man who is to be your husband?"
"Of course, signore."
"But perhaps you won't like him."
"Oh, I shall have to like him, signore."
She did not speak with any bitterness or sarcasm, but with perfect simplicity. A feeling of pity that was certainly not Sicilian but that came from the English blood in him stole into Maurice's heart. Maddalena looked so soft and young in the dim beauty of the night, so ready to be cherished, to be treated tenderly, or with the ardor that is the tender cruelty of passion, that her childlike submission to the Sicilian code woke in him an almost hot pugnacity. She would be given, perhaps, to some hard brute of a fisherman who had scraped together more soldi than his fellows, or to some coarse, avaricious contadino who would make her toil till herbeauty vanished, and she changed into a bowed, wrinkled withered, sun-dried hag, while she was yet young in years.
"I wish," he said—"I wish, when you have to marry, I could choose your husband, Maddalena."
She lifted her head quite up and regarded him with wonder.
"You, signorino! Why?"
"Because I would choose a man who would be very good to you, who would love you and work for you and always think of you, and never look at another woman. That is how your husband should be."
She looked more wondering.
"Are you like that, then, signore?" she asked. "With the signora?"
Maurice unclasped his hands from his knees, and dropped his feet down from the bench.
"I!" he said, in a voice that had changed. "Oh—yes—I don't know."
He took the oars again and began to row farther out to sea.
"I was talking about you," he said, almost roughly.
"I have never seen your signora," said Maddalena. "What is she like?" Maurice saw Hermione before him in the night, tall, flat, with her long arms, her rugged, intelligent face, her enthusiastic brown eyes.
"Is she pretty?" continued Maddalena. "Is she as young as I am?"
"She is good, Maddalena," Maurice answered.
"Is she santa?"
"I don't mean that. But she is good to every one."
"But is she pretty, too?" she persisted. "And young?"
"She is not at all old. Some day you shall see—"
He checked himself. He had been going to say, "Some day you shall see her."
"And she is very clever," he said, after a moment.
"Clever?" said Maddalena, evidently not understanding what he meant.
"She can understand many things and she has read many books."
"But what is the good of that? Why should a girl read many books?"
"She is not a girl."
"Not a girl!"
She looked at him with amazed eyes and her voice was full of amazement.
"How old are you, signorino?" she asked.
"How old do you think?"
She considered him carefully for a long time.
"Old enough to make the visit," she said, at length.
"The visit?"
"Yes."
"What? Oh, do you mean to be a soldier?"
"Si, signore."
"That would be twenty, wouldn't it?"
She nodded.
"I am older than that. I am twenty-four."
"Truly?"
"Truly."
"And is the signora twenty-four, too?"
"Maddalena!" Maurice exclaimed, with a sudden impatience that was almost fierce. "Why do you keep on talking about the signora to-night? This is your festa. The signora is in Africa, a long way off—there—across the sea." He stretched out his arm, and pointed towards the wide waters above which the stars were watching. "When she comes back you can see her, if you wish—but now—"
"When is she coming back?" asked the girl.
There was an odd pertinacity in her character, almost an obstinacy, despite her young softness and gentleness.
"I don't know," Maurice said, with difficulty controlling his gathering impatience.
"Why did she go away?"
"To nurse some one who is ill."
"She went all alone across the sea?"
"Yes."
Maddalena turned and looked into the dimness of the sea with a sort of awe.
"I should be afraid," she said, after a pause.
And she shivered slightly.
Maurice had let go the oars again. He felt a longing to put his arm round her when he saw her shiver. The night created many longings in him, a confusion of longings, of which he was just becoming aware.
"You are a child," he said, "and have never been away from your 'paese.'"
"Yes, I have."
"Where?"
"I have been to the fair of San Felice."
He smiled.
"Oh—San Felice! And did you go in the train?"
"Oh no, signore. I went on a donkey. It was last year, in June. It was beautiful. There were women there in blue silk dresses with ear-rings as long as that"—she measured their length in the air with her brown fingers—"and there was a boy from Napoli, a real Napolitano, who sang and danced as we do not dance here. I was very happy that day. And I was given an image of Sant' Abbondio."
She looked at him with a sort of dignity, as if expecting him to be impressed.
"Carissima!" he whispered, almost under his breath.
Her little air of pride, as of a travelled person, enchanted him, even touched him, he scarcely knew why, as he had never been enchanted or touched by any London beauty.
"I wish I had been at the fair with you. I would have given you—"
"What, signorino?" she interrupted, eagerly.
"A blue silk dress and a pair of ear-rings longer—much longer—than those women wore."
"Really, signorino? Really?"
"Really and truly! Do you doubt me?"
"No."
She sighed.
"How I wish you had been there! But this year—"
She stopped, hesitating.
"Yes—this year?"
"In June there will be the fair again."
He moved from his seat, softly and swiftly, turned the boat's prow towards the open sea, then went and sat down by her in the stern.
"We will go there," he said, "you and I and Gaspare—"
"And my father."
"All of us together."
"And if the signora is back?"
Maurice was conscious of a desire that startled him like a sudden stab from something small and sharp—the desire that on that day Hermione should not be with him in Sicily.
"I dare say the signora will not be back."
"But if she is, will she come, too?"
"Do you think you would like it better if she came?"
He was so close to her now that his shoulder touched hers. Their faces were set seaward and were kissed by the breath of the sea. Their eyes saw the same stars and were kissed by the light of the stars. And the subtle murmur of the tide spoke to them both as if they were one.
"Do you?" he repeated. "Do you think so?"
"Chi lo sa?" she responded.
He thought, when she said that, that her voice sounded less simple than before.
"You do know!" he said.
She shook her head.
"You do!" he repeated.
He stretched out his hand and took her hand. He had to take it.
"Why don't you tell me?"
She had turned her head away from him, and now, speaking as if to the sea, she said:
"Perhaps if she was there you could not give me the blue silk dress and the—and the ear-rings. Perhaps she would not like it."
For a moment he thought he was disappointed by her answer. Then he knew that he loved it, for its utter naturalness, its laughable naïveté. It seemed, too, to set him right in his own eyes, to sweep away a creeping feeling that had been beginning to trouble him. He was playing with a child. That was all. There was no harm in it. And when he had kissed her in the dawn he had been kissing a child, playfully, kindly, as a big brother might. And if he kissed her now it would mean nothing to her. And if it did mean something—just a little more—to him, that did not matter.
"Bambina mia!" he said.
"I am not a bambina," she said, turning towards him again.
"Yes you are."
"Then you are a bambino."
"Why not? I feel like a boy to-night, like a naughty little boy."
"Naughty, signorino?"
"Yes, because I want to do something that I ought not to do."
"What is it?"
"This, Maddalena."
And he kissed her. It was the first time he had kissed her in darkness, for on his second visit to the sirens' house he had only taken her hand and held it, and that was nothing. The kiss in the dawn had been light, gay, a sort of laughing good-bye to a kind hostess who wasof a class that, he supposed, thought little of kisses. But this kiss in the night, on the sea, was different. Only when he had given it did he understand how different it was, how much more it meant to him. For Maddalena returned it gently with her warm young lips, and her response stirred something at his heart that was surely the very essence of the life within him.
He held her hands.
"Maddalena!" he said, and there was in his voice a startled sound. "Maddalena!"
Again Hermione had risen up before him in the night, almost as one who walked upon the sea. He was conscious of wrong-doing. The innocence of his relation with Maddalena seemed suddenly to be tarnished, and the happiness of the starry night to be clouded. He felt like one who, in summer, becomes aware of a heaviness creeping into the atmosphere, the message of a coming tempest that will presently transform the face of nature. Surely there was a mist before the faces of the stars.
She said nothing, only looked at him as if she wanted to know many things which only he could tell her, which he had begun to tell her. That was her fascination for his leaping youth, his wild heart of youth—this ignorance and this desire to know. He had sat in spirit at the feet of Hermione and loved her with a sort of boyish humbleness. Now one sat at his feet. And the attitude woke up in him a desire that was fierce in its intensity—the desire to teach Maddalena the great realities of love.
"Hi—yi—yi—yi—yi!"
Faintly there came to them a cry across the sea.
"Gaspare!" Maurice said.
He turned his head. In the darkness, high up, he saw a light, descending, ascending, then describing a wild circle.
"Hi—yi—yi—yi!"
"Row back, signorino! They have done playing, and my father will be angry."
He moved, took the oars, and sent the boat towards the island. The physical exertion calmed him, restored him to himself.
"After all," he thought, "there is no harm in it."
And he laughed.
"Which has won, Maddalena?" he said, looking back at her over his shoulder, for he was standing up and rowing with his face towards the land.
"I hope it is my father, signorino. If he has got the money he will not be angry; but if Gaspare has it—"
"Your father is a fox of the sea, and can cheat better than a boy. Don't be frightened."
When they reached the land, Salvatore and Gaspare met them. Gaspare's face was glum, but Salvatore's small eyes were sparkling.
"I have won it all—all!" he said. "Ecco!"
And he held out his hand with the notes.
"Salvatore is birbante!" said Gaspare, sullenly. "He did not win it fairly. I saw him—"
"Never mind, Gaspare!" said Maurice.
He put his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"To-morrow I'll give you the same," he whispered.
"And now," he added, aloud, "let's go to bed. I've been rowing Maddalena round the island and I'm tired. I shall sleep like a top."
As they went up the steep path he took Salvatore familiarly by the arm.
"You are too clever, Salvatore," he said. "You play too well for Gaspare."
Salvatore chuckled and handled the five-lire notes voluptuously.
"Cci basu li manu!" he said. "Cci basu li manu!"
Maurice lay on the big bed in the inner room of the siren's house, under the tiny light that burned before Maria Addolorata. The door of the house was shut, and he heard no more the murmur of the sea. Gaspare was curled up on the floor, on a bed made of some old sacking, with his head buried in his jacket, which he had taken off to use as a pillow. In the far room Maddalena and her father were asleep. Maurice could hear their breathing, Maddalena's light and faint, Salvatore's heavy and whistling, and degenerating now and then into a sort of stifled snore. But sleep did not come to Maurice. His eyes were open, and his clasped hands supported his head. He was thinking, thinking almost angrily.
He loved joy as few Englishmen love it, but as many southerners love it. His nature needed joy, was made to be joyous. And such natures resent the intrusion into their existence of any complications which make for tragedy as northern natures seldom resent anything. To-night Maurice had a grievance against fate, and he was considering it wrathfully and not without confusion.
Since he had kissed Maddalena in the night he was disturbed, almost unhappy. And yet he was surely face to face with something that was more than happiness. The dancing faun was dimly aware that in his nature there was not only the capacity for gayety, for the performance of the tarantella, but also a capacity for violence which he had never been conscious of when he was in England. It had surely been developed withinhim by the sun, by the coming of the heat in this delicious land. It was like an intoxication of the blood, something that went to head as well as heart. He wondered what it meant, what it might lead him to. Perhaps he had been faintly aware of its beginnings on that day when jealousy dawned within him as he thought of his wife, his woman, nursing her friend in Africa. Now it was gathering strength like a stream flooded by rains, but it was taking a different direction in its course.
He turned upon the pillow so that he could see the light burning before the Madonna. The face of the Madonna was faintly visible—a long, meek face with downcast eyes. Maddalena crossed herself often when she looked at that face. Maurice put up his hand to make the sign, then dropped it with a heavy sigh. He was not a Catholic. His religion—what was it? Sunworship perhaps, the worship of the body, the worship of whim. He did not know or care much. He felt so full of life and energy that the far, far future after death scarcely interested him. The present was his concern, the present after that kiss in the night. He had loved Hermione. Surely he loved her now. He did love her now. And yet when he had kissed her he had never been shaken by the headstrong sensation that had hold of him to-night, the desire to run wild in love. He looked up to Hermione. The feeling of reverence had been a governing factor in his love for her. Now it seemed to him that a feeling of reverence was a barrier in the path of love, something to create awe, admiration, respect, but scarcely the passion that irresistibly draws man to woman. And yet he did love Hermione. He was confused, horribly confused.
For he knew that his longing was towards Maddalena.
He would like to rise up in the dawn, to take her in his arms, to carry her off in a boat upon the sea, or toset her on a mule and lead her up far away into the recesses of the mountains. By rocky paths he would lead her, beyond the olives and the vines, beyond the last cottage of the contadini, up to some eyrie from which they could look down upon the sunlit world. He wanted to be in wildness with her, inexorably divided from all the trammels of civilization. A desire of savagery had hold upon him to-night. He did not go into detail. He did not think of how they would pass their days. Everything presented itself to him broadly, tumultuously, with a surging, onward movement of almost desperate advance.
He wanted to teach those dark, inquiring young eyes all that they asked to know, to set in them the light of knowledge, to make them a woman's eyes.
And that he could never do.
His whole body was throbbing with heat, and tingling with a desire of movement, of activity. The knowledge that all this beating energy was doomed to uselessness, was born to do nothing, tortured him.
He tried to think steadily of Hermione, but he found the effort a difficult one. She was remote from his body, and that physical remoteness seemed to set her far from his spirit, too. In him, though he did not know it, was awake to-night the fickleness of the south, of the southern spirit that forgets so quickly what is no longer near to the southern body. The sun makes bodily men, makes very strong the chariot of the flesh. Sight and touch are needful, the actions of the body, to keep the truly southern spirit true. Maurice could neither touch nor see Hermione. In her unselfishness she had committed the error of dividing herself from him. The natural consequences of that self-sacrifice were springing up now like the little yellow flowers in the grasses of the lemon groves. With all her keen intelligence she made the mistake of the enthusiast, that of reading into those whom she loved her own shining qualities,of seeing her own sincerities, her own faithfulness, her own strength, her own utter loyalty looking out on her from them. She would probably have denied that this was so, but so it was. At this very moment in Africa, while she watched at the bedside of Artois, she was thinking of her husband's love for her, loyalty to her, and silently blessing him for it; she was thanking God that she had drawn such a prize in the lottery of life. And had she been already separated from Maurice for six months she would never have dreamed of doubting his perfect loyalty now that he had once loved her and taken her to be his. The "all in all or not at all" nature had been given to Hermione. She must live, rejoice, suffer, die, according to that nature. She knew much, but she did not know how to hold herself back, how to be cautious where she loved, how to dissect the thing she delighted in. She would never know that, so she would never really know her husband, as Artois might learn to know him, even had already known him. She would never fully understand the tremendous barriers set up between people by the different strains of blood in them, the stern dividing lines that are drawn between the different races of the earth. Her nature told her that love can conquer all things. She was too enthusiastic to be always far-seeing.
So now, while Maurice lay beneath the tiny light in the house of the sirens and was shaken by the wildness of desire, and thought of a mountain pilgrimage far up towards the sun with Maddalena in his arms, she sat by Artois's bed and smiled to herself as she pictured the house of the priest, watched over by the stars of Sicily, and by her many prayers. Maurice was there, she knew, waiting for her return, longing for it as she longed for it. Artois turned on his pillow wearily, saw her, and smiled.
"You oughtn't to be here," he whispered. "But I am glad you are here."
"And I am glad, I am thankful I am here!" she said, truly.
"If there is a God," he said, "He will bless you for this!"
"Hush! You must try to sleep."
She laid her hand in his.
"God has blessed me," she thought, "for all my poor little attempts at goodness, how far, far more than I deserve!"
And the gratitude within her was almost like an ache, like a beautiful pain of the heart.
In the morning Maurice put to sea with Gaspare and Salvatore. He knew the silvery calm of dawn on a day of sirocco. Everything was very still, in a warm and heavy stillness of silver that made the sweat run down at the least movement or effort. Masses of white, feathery vapors floated low in the sky above the sea, concealing the flanks of the mountains, but leaving their summits clear. And these vapors, hanging like veils with tattered edges, created a strange privacy upon the sea, an atmosphere of eternal mysteries. As the boat went out from the shore, urged by the powerful arms of Salvatore, its occupants were silent. The merriment and the ardor of the night, the passion of cards and of desire, were gone, as if they had been sucked up into the smoky wonder of the clouds, or sucked down into the silver wonder of the sea.
Gaspare looked drowsy and less happy than usual. He had not yet recovered from his indignation at the success of Salvatore's cheating, and Maurice, who had not slept, felt the bounding life, the bounding fire of his youth held in check as by the action of a spell. The carelessness of excitement, of passion, was replaced by another carelessness—the carelessness of dream. It seemed to him now as if nothing mattered or ever could matter. On the calm silver of a hushed and breathless sea, beneath dense white vapors that hid the sky, hewas going out slowly, almost noiselessly, to a fate of which he knew nothing, to a quiet emptiness, to a region which held no voices to call him this way or that, no hands to hold him, no eyes to regard him. His face was damp with sweat. He leaned over the gunwale and trailed his hand in the sea. It seemed to him unnaturally warm. He glanced up at the clouds. Heaven was blotted out. Was there a heaven? Last night he had thought there must be—but that was long ago. Was he sad? He scarcely knew. He was dull, as if the blood in him had run almost dry. He was like a sapless tree. Hermione and Maddalena—what were they? Shadows rather than women. He looked steadily at the sea. Was it the same element upon which he had been only a few hours ago under the stars with Maddalena? He could scarcely believe that it was the same. Sirocco had him fast, sirocco that leaves many Sicilians unchanged, unaffected, but that binds the stranger with cords of cotton wool which keep him like a net of steel.
Gaspare lay down in the bottom of the boat, buried his face in his arms, and gave himself again to sleep. Salvatore looked at him, and then at Maurice, and smiled with a fine irony.
"He thought he would win, signore."
"Cosa?" said Maurice, startled by the sound of a voice.
"He thought that he could play better than I, signore."
Salvatore closed one eye, and stuck his tongue a little out of the left side of his mouth, then drew it in with a clicking noise.
"No one gets the better of me," he said. "They may try. Many have tried, but in the end—"
He shook his head, took his right hand from the oar and flapped it up and down, then brought it downward with force, as if beating some one, or something, to his feet.
"I see," Maurice said, dully. "I see."
He thought to himself that he had been cleverer than Salvatore the preceding night, but he felt no sense of triumph. He had divined the fisherman's passion and turned it to his purpose. But what of that? Let the man rejoice, if he could, in this dream. Let all men do what they wished to do so long as he could be undisturbed. He looked again at the sea, dropped his hand into it once more.
"Shall I let down a line, signore?"
Salvatore's keen eyes were upon him. He shook his head.
"Not yet. I—" He hesitated.
The still silver of the sea drew him. He touched his forehead with his hand and felt the dampness on it.
"I'm going in," he said.
"Can you swim, signore?"
"Yes, like a fish. Don't follow me with the boat. Just let me swim out and come back. If I want you I'll call. But don't follow me."
Salvatore nodded appreciatively. He liked a good swimmer, a real man of the sea.
"And don't wake Gaspare, or he'll be after me."
"Va bene!"
Maurice stripped off his clothes, all the time looking at the sea. Then he sat down on the gunwale of the boat with his feet in the water. Salvatore had stopped rowing. Gaspare still slept.
It was curious to be going to give one's self to this silent silver thing that waited so calmly for the gift. He felt a sort of dull voluptuousness stealing over him as he stared at the water. He wanted to get away from his companions, from the boat, to be quite alone with sirocco.
"Addio Salvatore!" he said, in a low voice.
"A rivederci, signore."
He let himself down slowly into the water, feet foremost, and swam slowly away into the dream that lay before him.
Even now that he was in it the water felt strangely warm. He had not let his head go under, and the sweat was still on his face. The boat lay behind him. He did not think of it. He had forgotten it. He felt himself to be alone, utterly alone with the sea.
He had always loved the sea, but in a boyish, wholly natural way, as a delightful element, health-giving, pleasure-giving, associating it with holiday times, with bathing, fishing, boating, with sails on moonlight nights, with yacht-races about the Isle of Wight in the company of gay comrades. This sea of Sicily seemed different to him to-day from other seas, more mysterious and more fascinating, a sea of sirens about a Sirens' Isle. Mechanically he swam through it, scarcely moving his arms, with his chin low in the water—out towards the horizon-line.
He was swimming towards Africa.
Presently that thought came into his mind, that he was swimming towards Africa and Hermione, and away from Maddalena. It seemed to him, then, as if the two women on the opposite shores of this sea must know, Hermione that he was coming to her, Maddalena that he was abandoning her, and he began to think of them both as intent upon his journey, the one feeling him approach, the other feeling him recede. He swam more slowly. A curious melancholy had overtaken him, a deep depression of the spirit, such as often alternates in the Sicilian character with the lively gayety that is sent down upon its children by the sun. This lonely progress in the sea was prophetic. He must leave Maddalena. His friendship with her must come to an end, and soon. Hermione would return, and then, in no long time, they would leave the Casa del Prete and go back to England. They would settle down somewhere, probably in London,and he would take up his work with his father, and the Sicilian dream would be over.
The vapors that hid the sky seemed to drop a little lower down towards the sea, as if they were going to enclose him.
The Sicilian dream would be over. Was that possible? He felt as if the earth of Sicily would not let him go, as if, should the earth resign him, the sea of Sicily would keep him. He dwelt on this last fancy, this keeping of him by the sea. That would be strange, a quiet end to all things. Never before had he consciously contemplated his own death. The deep melancholy poured into him by sirocco caused him to do so now. Almost voluptuously he thought of death, a death in the sea of Sicily near the rocks of the isle of the sirens. The light would be kindled in the sirens' house and his eyes would not see it. They would be closed by the cold fingers of the sea. And Maddalena? The first time she had seen him she had seen him sinking in the sea. How strange if it should be so at the end, if the last time she saw him she saw him sinking in the sea. She had cried out. Would she cry out again or would she keep silence? He wondered. For a moment he felt as if it were ordained that thus he should die, and he let his body sink in the water, throwing up his hands. He went down, very far down, but he felt that Maddalena's eyes followed him and that in them he saw terrors enthroned.
Gaspare stirred in the boat, lifted his head from his arms and looked sleepily around him. He saw Salvatore lighting a pipe, bending forward over a spluttering match which he held in a cage made of his joined hands. He glanced away from him still sleepily, seeking the padrone, but he saw only the empty seats of the boat, the oars, the coiled-up nets, and lines for the fish.
"Dove—?" he began.
He sat up, stared wildly round.
"Dov'è il padrone?" he cried out, shrilly.
Salvatore started and dropped the match. Gaspare sprang at him.
"Dov'è il padrone? Dov'è il padrone?"
"Sangue di—" began Salvatore.
But the oath died upon his lips. His keen eyes had swept the sea and perceived that it was empty. From its silver the black dot which he had been admiringly watching had disappeared. Gaspare had waked, had asked his fierce question just as Maurice threw up his hands and sank down in his travesty of death.
"He was there! Madonna! He was there swimming a moment ago!" exclaimed Salvatore.
As he spoke he seized the oars, and with furious strokes propelled the boat in the direction Maurice had taken. But Gaspare would not wait. His instinct forbade him to remain inactive.
"May the Madonna turn her face from thee in the hour of thy death!" he yelled at Salvatore.
Then, with all his clothes on, he went over the side into the sea.
Maurice was an accomplished swimmer, and had ardently practised swimming under water when he was a boy. He could hold his breath for an exceptionally long time, and now he strove to beat all his previous records. With a few strokes he came up from the depths of the sea towards the surface, then began swimming under water, swimming vigorously, though in what direction he knew not. At last he felt the imperative need of air, and, coming up into the light again, he gasped, shook his head, lifted his eyelids that were heavy with the pressure of the water, heard a shrill cry, and felt a hand grasp him fiercely.
"Signorino! Signorino!"
"Gaspare!" he gulped.
He had not fully drawn breath yet.
"Madonna! Madonna!"
The hand still held him. The fingers were dug intohis flesh. Then he heard a shout, and the boat came up with Salvatore leaning over its side, glaring down at him with fierce anxiety. He grasped the gunwale with both hands. Gaspare trod water, caught him by the legs, and violently assisted him upward. He tumbled over the side into the boat. Gaspare came after him, sank down in the bottom of the boat, caught him by the arms, stared into his face, saw him smiling.
"Sta bene Lei?" he cried. "Sta bene?"
"Benissimo."
The boy let go of him and, still staring at him, burst into a passion of tears that seemed almost angry.
"Gaspare! What is it? What's the matter?"
He put out his hand to touch the boy's dripping clothes.
"What has happened?"
"Niente! Niente!" said Gaspare, between violent sobs. "Mamma mia! Mamma mia!"
He threw himself down in the bottom of the boat and wept stormily, without shame, without any attempt to check or conceal his emotion. As in the tarantella he had given himself up utterly to joy, so now he gave himself up utterly to something that seemed like despair. He cried loudly. His whole body shook. The sea-water ran down from his matted hair and mingled with the tears that rushed over his brown cheeks.
"What is it?" Maurice asked of Salvatore.
"He thought the sea had taken you, signore."
"That was it? Gaspare—"
"Let him alone. Per Dio, signore, you gave me a fright, too."
"I was only swimming under water."
He looked at Gaspare. He longed to do something to comfort him, but he realized that such violence could not be checked by anything. It must wear itself out.
"And he thought I was dead!"
"Per Dio! And if you had been!"
He wrinkled up his face and spat.
"What do you mean?"
"Has he got a knife on him?"
He threw out his hand towards Gaspare.
"I don't know to-day. He generally has."
"I should have had it in me by now," said Salvatore.
And he smiled at the weeping boy almost sweetly, as if he could have found it in his heart to caress such a murderer.
"Row in to land," Maurice said.
He began to put on his clothes. Salvatore turned the boat round and they drew near to the rocks. The vapors were lifting now, gathering themselves up to reveal the blue of the sky, but the sea was still gray and mysterious, and the land looked like a land in a dream. Presently Gaspare put his fists to his eyes, lifted his head, and sat up. He looked at his master gloomily, as if in rebuke, and under this glance Maurice began to feel guilty, as if he had done something wrong in yielding to his strange impulses in the sea.
"I was only swimming under water, Gaspare," he said, apologetically.
The boy said nothing.
"I know now," continued Maurice, "that I shall never come to any harm with you to look after me."
Still Gaspare said nothing. He sat there on the floor of the boat with his dripping clothes clinging to his body, staring before him as if he were too deeply immersed in gloomy thoughts to hear what was being said to him.
"Gaspare!" Maurice exclaimed, moved by a sudden impulse. "Do you think you would be very unhappy away from your 'paese'?"
Gaspare shifted forward suddenly. A light gleamed in his eyes.
"D'you think you could be happy with me in England?"
He smiled.
"Si, signore!"
"When we have to go away from Sicily I shall ask the signora to let me take you with us."
Gaspare said nothing, but he looked at Salvatore, and his wet face was like a song of pride and triumph.
That day, ere he started with Gaspare for the house of the priest, Maurice made a promise to Maddalena. He pledged himself to go with her and her father to the great fair of San Felice, which takes place annually in the early days of June, when the throng of tourists has departed, and the long heats of the summer have not yet fully set in. He gave this promise in the presence of Salvatore and Gaspare, and while he did so he was making up his mind to something. That day at the fair should be the day of his farewell to Maddalena. Hermione must surely be coming back in June. It was impossible that she could remain in Kairouan later. The fury of the African summer would force her to leave the sacred city, her mission of salvation either accomplished or rendered forever futile by the death of her friend. And then, when Hermione came, within a short time no doubt they would start for England, taking Gaspare with them. For Maurice really meant to keep the boy in their service. After the strange scene of the morning he felt as if Gaspare were one of the family, a retainer with whose devoted protection he could never dispense. Hermione, he was sure, would not object.
Hermione would not object. As he thought that, Maurice was conscious of a feeling such as sometimes moves a child, upon whom a parent or guardian has laid a gently restraining hand, violently to shrug his shoulders and twist his body in the effort to get away and run wild in freedom. He knew how utterly unreasonable and contemptible his sensation was, yet he had it. Thesun had bred in him not merely a passion for complete personal liberty, but for something more, for lawlessness. For a moment he envied Gaspare, the peasant boy, whose ardent youth was burdened with so few duties to society, with so few obligations.
What was expected of Gaspare? Only a willing service, well paid, which he could leave forever at any moment he pleased. To his family he must, no doubt, give some of his earnings, but in return he was looked up to by all, even by his father, as a little god. And in everything else was not he free, wonderfully free in this island of the south, able to be careless, unrestrained, wild as a young hawk, yet to remain uncondemned, unwondered at?
And he—Maurice?
He thought of Hermione's ardent and tenderly observant eyes with a sort of terror. If she could know or even suspect his feelings of the previous night, what a tragedy he would be at once involved in! The very splendor of Hermione's nature, the generous nobility of her character, would make that tragedy the more poignant. She felt with such intensity, she thought she had so much. Careless though his own nature was, doubly careless here in Sicily, Maurice almost sickened at the idea of her ever suspecting the truth, that he was capable of being strongly drawn towards a girl like Maddalena, that he could feel as if a peasant who could neither read nor write caught at something within him that was like the essence of his life, like the core of that by which he enjoyed, suffered, desired.
But, of course, she would never suspect. And he laughed at himself, and made the promise about the fair, and, having made it and his resolution in regard to it, almost violently resolved to take no thought for the morrow, but to live carelessly and with gayety the days that lay before him, the few more days of his utter freedom in Sicily.
After all, he was doing no wrong. He had lived and was going to live innocently. And now that he realized things, realized himself, he would be reasonable. He would be careless, gay—yes, but not reckless, not utterly reckless as he felt inclined to be.
"What day of June is the fair?" he asked, looking at Maddalena.
"The 11th of June, signore," said Salvatore. "There will be many donkeys there—good donkeys."
Gaspare began to look fierce.
"I think of buying a donkey," added Salvatore, carelessly, with his small, shrewd eyes fixed upon Maurice's face.
Gaspare muttered something unintelligible.
"How much do they cost?" said Maurice.
"For a hundred lire you can get a very good donkey. It would be useful to Maddalena. She could go to the village sometimes then—she could go to Marechiaro to gossip with the neighbors."
"Has Maddalena broken her legs—Madonna!" burst forth Gaspare.
"Come along, Gaspare!" said Maurice, hastily.
He bade good-bye to the fisherman and his daughter, and set off with Gaspare through the trees.
"Be nice to Salvatore," said Maurice, as they went down towards the rocky wall.
"But he wants to make you give him a donkey, signorino. You do not know him. When he is with you at the fair he will—"
"Never mind. I say, Gaspare, I want—I want that day at the fair to be a real festa. Don't let's have any row on that day."
Gaspare looked at him with surprised, inquiring eyes, as if struck by his serious voice, by the insisting pressure in it.
"Why that day specially, signorino?" he asked, after a pause.
"Oh, well—it will be my last day of—I mean that the signora will be coming back from Africa by then, and we shall—"
"Si, signore?"
"We sha'n't be able to run quite so wild as we do now, you see. And, besides, we shall be going to England very soon then."
Gaspare's face lighted up.
"Shall I see London, signorino?"
"Yes," said Maurice.
He felt a sickness at his heart.
"I should like to live in London always," said Gaspare, excitedly.
"In London! You don't know it. In London you will scarcely ever see the sun."
"Aren't there theatres in London, signorino?"
"Theatres? Yes, of course. But there is no sea, Gaspare, there are no mountains."
"Are there many soldiers? Are there beautiful women?"
"Oh, there are plenty of soldiers and women."
"I should like always to live in London," repeated Gaspare, firmly.
"Well—perhaps you will. But—remember—we are all to be happy at the fair of San Felice."
"Si, signore. But be careful, or Salvatore will make you buy him a donkey. He had a wine-shop once, long ago, in Marechiaro, and the wine—Per Dio, it was always vino battezzato!"
"What do you mean?"
"Salvatore always put water in it. He is cattivo—and when he is angry—"
"I know. You told me. But it doesn't matter. We shall soon be going away, and then we sha'n't see him any more."
"Signorino?"
"Well?"
"You—do you want to stay here always?"
"I like being here."
"Why do you want to stay?"
For once Maurice felt as if he could not meet the boy's great, steady eyes frankly. He looked away.
"I like the sun," he answered. "I love it! I should like to live in the sunshine forever."
"And I should like to live always in London," reiterated Gaspare. "You want to live here because you have always been in London, and I want to live in London because I have always been here. Ecco!"
Maurice tried to laugh.
"Perhaps that is it. We wish for what we can't have. Dio mio!"
He threw out his arms.
"But, anyhow, I've not done with Sicily yet! Come on, Gaspare! Now for the rocks! Ciao! Ciao! Ciao! Morettina bella ciao!"
He burst out into a song, but his voice hardly rang true, and Gaspare looked at him again with a keen inquiry.
Artois was not yet destined to die. He said that Hermione would not let him die, that with her by his side it was useless for Death to approach him, to desire him, to claim him. Perhaps her courage gave to him the will to struggle against his enemy. The French doctor, deeply, almost sentimentally interested in the ardent woman who spoke his language with perfection and carried out such instructions of his as she considered sensible, with delicate care and strong thoroughness, thought and said so.
"But for madame," he said to Artois, "you would have died, monsieur. And why? Because till she came you had not the will to live. And it is the will to live that assists the doctor."
"I cannot be so ungallant as to die now," Artois replied, with a feeble but not sad smile. "Were I to do so, madame would think me ungrateful. No, I shall live. I feel now that I am going to live."
And, in fact, from the night of Maurice's visit with Gaspare to the house of the sirens he began to get better. The inflammation abated, the temperature fell till it was normal, the agony died away gradually from the tormented body, and slowly, very slowly, the strength that had ebbed began to return. One day, when the doctor said that there was no more danger of any relapse, Artois called Hermione and told her that now she must think no more of him, but of herself; that she must pack up her trunk and go back to her husband.
"You have saved me, and I have killed your honeymoon," he said, rather sadly. "That will always be a regret in my life. But, now go, my dear friend, and try to assuage your husband's wrath against me. How he must hate me!"
"Why, Emile?"
"Are you really a woman? Yes, I know that. No man could have tended me as you have. Yet, being a woman, how can you ask that question?"
"Maurice understands. He is blessedly understanding."
"Don't try his blessed comprehension of you and of me too far. You must go, indeed."
"I will go."
A shadow that he tried to keep back flitted across Artois's pale face, over which the unkempt beard straggled in a way that would have appalled his Parisian barber. Hermione saw it.
"I will go," she repeated, quietly, "when I can take you with me."
"But—"
"Hush! You are not to argue. Haven't you an utter contempt for those who do things by halves? Well, I have. When you can travel we'll go together."
"Where?"
"To Sicily. It will be hot there, but after this it will seem cool as the Garden of Eden under those trees where—but you remember! And there is always the breeze from the sea. And then from there, very soon, you can get a ship from Messina and go back to France, to Marseilles. Don't talk, Emile. I am writing to-night to tell Maurice."
And she left the room with quick softness.
Artois did not protest. He told himself that he had not the strength to struggle against the tenderness that surrounded him, that made it sweet to return to life. But he wondered silently how Maurice would receive him, how the dancing faun was bearing, would bear, this interference with his new happiness.
"When I am in Sicily I shall see at once, I shall know," he thought. "But till then—"
And he gave up the faint attempt to analyze the possible feelings of another, and sank again into the curious peace of convalescence.
And Hermione wrote to her husband, telling him of her plan, calling upon him with the fearless enthusiasm that was characteristic of her to welcome it and to rejoice, with her, in Artois's returning health and speedy presence in Sicily.
Maurice read this letter on the terrace alone. Gaspare had gone down on the donkey to Marechiaro to buy a bottle of Marsala, which Lucrezia demanded for the making of a zampaglione, and Lucrezia was upon the mountain-side spreading linen to dry in the sun. It was nearly the end of May now, and the trees in the ravine were thick with all their leaves. The stream that ran down through the shadows towards the sea was a tiny trickle of water, and the long, black snakes were coming boldly forth from their winter hiding-places to sun themselves among the bowlders that skirted the mountain tracks.
"I can't tell for certain," Hermione wrote, "how soon we shall arrive, but Emile is picking up strength every day, and I think, I pray, it may not be long. I dare to hope that we shall be with you about the second week of June. Oh, Maurice, something in me is almost mad with joy, is like Gaspare dancing the tarantella, when I think of coming up the mountain-side again with you as I came that first day, that first day of my real life. Tell Sebastiano he must play the 'Pastorale' to welcome me. And you—but I seem to feel your dear welcome here, to feel your hands holding mine, to see your eyes looking at me like Sicily. Isn't it strange? I feel out here in Africa as if you were Sicily. But you are, indeed, for me. You are Sicily, you are the sun, you are everything that means joy to me, that means music, that means hope and peace. Buon riposo, my dearest one. Can you feel—can you—how happy I am to-night?"
The second week in June! Maurice stood holding the letter in his hand. The fair of San Felice would take place during the second week in June. That was what he was thinking, not of Artois's convalescence, not of his coming to Sicily. If Hermione arrived before June 11th, could he go to the fair with Maddalena? He might go, of course. He might tell Hermione. She would say "Go!" She believed in him and had never tried to curb his freedom. A less suspicious woman than she was had surely never lived. But if she were in Sicily, if he knew that she was there in the house of the priest, waiting to welcome him at night when he came back from the fair, it would—it would—He laid the letter down. There was a burning heat of impatience, of anxiety, within him. Now that he had received this letter he understood with what intensity he had been looking forward to this day at the fair, to this last festa of his Sicilian life.
"Perhaps they will not come so soon!" he said to him self. "Perhaps they will not be here."
And then he began to think of Artois, to realize the fact that he was coming with Hermione, that he would be part of the final remnant of these Sicilian days.
His feeling towards Artois in London had been sympathetic, even almost reverential. He had looked at him as if through Hermione's eyes, had regarded him with a sort of boyish reverence. Hermione had said that Artois was a great man, and Maurice had felt that he was a great man, had mentally sat at his feet. Perhaps in London he would be ready to sit at his feet again. But was he ready to sit at his feet here in Sicily? As he thought of Artois's penetrating eyes and cool, intellectual face, of his air of authority, of his close intimacy with Hermione, he felt almost afraid of him. He did not want Artois to come here to Sicily. He hated his coming. He almost dreaded it as the coming of a spy. The presence of Artois would surely take away all the savor of this wild, free life, would import into it an element of the library, of the shut room, of that intellectual existence which Maurice was learning to think of as almost hateful.
And Hermione called upon him to rejoice with her over the fact that Artois would be able to accompany her. How she misunderstood him! Good God! how she misunderstood him! It seemed really as if she believed that his mind was cast in precisely the same mould as her own, as if she thought that because she and he were married they must think and feel always alike. How absurd that was, and how impossible!
A sense of being near a prison door came upon him. He threw Hermione's letter onto the writing-table, and went out into the sun.
When Gaspare returned that evening Maurice told him the news from Africa. The boy's face lit up.
"Oh, then shall we go to London?" he said.
"Why not?" Maurice exclaimed, almost violently. "It will all be different! Yes, we had better go to London!"
"Signorino."
"Well, what is it, Gaspare?"
"You do not like that signore to come here."
"I—why not? Yes, I—"
"No, signorino. I can see in your face that you do not like it. Your face got quite black just now. But if you do not like it why do you let him come? You are the padrone here."
"You don't understand. The signore is a friend of mine."
"But you said he was the friend of the signora."
"So he is. He is the friend of both of us."
Gaspare said nothing for a moment. His mind was working busily. At last he said:
"Then Maddalena—when the signora comes will she be the friend of the signora, as well as your friend?"
"Maddalena—that has nothing to do with it."
"But Maddalena is your friend!"
"That's quite different."
"I do not understand how it is in England," Gaspare said, gravely. "But"—and he nodded his head wisely and spread out his hands—"I understand many things, signorino, perhaps more than you think. You do not want the signore to come. You are angry at his coming."
"He is a very kind signore," said Maurice, hastily. "And he can speak dialetto."
Gaspare smiled and shook his head again. But he did not say anything more. For a moment Maurice had an impulse to speak to him frankly, to admit him into the intimacy of a friend. He was a Sicilian, although he was only a boy. He was Sicilian and he would understand.
"Gaspare," he began.
"Si, signore."
"As you understand so much—"
"Si, signore?"
"Perhaps you—" He checked himself, realizing that he was on the edge of doing an outrageous thing. "You must know that the friends of the signora are my friends and that I am always glad to welcome them."
"Va bene, signorino! Va bene!"
The boy began to look glum, understanding at once that he was being played with.
"I must go to give Tito his food."
And he stuck his hands in his pockets and went away round the corner of the cottage, whistling the tune of the "Canzone di Marechiaro."
Maurice began to feel as if he were in the dark, but as if he were being watched there. He wondered how clearly Gaspare read him, how much he knew. And Artois? When he came, with his watchful eyes, there would be another observer of the Sicilian change. He did not much mind Gaspare, but he would hate Artois. He grew hot at the mere thought of Artois being there with him, observing, analyzing, playing the literary man's part in this out-door life of the mountains and of the sea.
"I'm not a specimen," he said to himself, "and I'm damned if I'll be treated as one!"
It did not occur to him that he was anticipating that which might never happen. He was as unreasonable as a boy who foresees possible interference with his pleasures.
This decision of Hermione to bring with her to Sicily Artois, and its communication to Maurice, pushed him on to the recklessness which he had previously resolved to hold in check. Had Hermione been returning to him alone he would have felt that a gay and thoughtless holiday time was coming to an end, but he must have felt, too, that only tenderness and strong affection were crossing the sea from Africa to bind him in chains that already he had worn with happiness and peace. But the knowledge that with Hermione was comingArtois gave to him a definite vision of something that was like a cage. Without consciously saying it to himself, he had in London been vaguely aware of Artois's coldness of feeling towards him. Had any one spoken of it to him he would probably have denied that this was so. There are hidden things in a man that he himself does not say to himself that he knows of. But Maurice's vision of a cage was conjured up by Artois's mental attitude towards him in London, the attitude of the observer who might, in certain circumstances, be cruel, who was secretly ready to be cruel. And, anticipating the unpleasant probable, he threw himself with the greater violence into the enjoyment of his few more days of complete liberty.
He wrote to Hermione, expressing as naturally as he could his ready acquiescence in her project, and then gave himself up to the light-heartedness that came with the flying moments of these last days of emancipation in the sun. His mood was akin to the mood of the rich man, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." The music, he knew, must presently fail. The tarantella must come to an end. Well, then he would dance with his whole soul. He would not husband his breath nor save his strength. He would be thoughtless because for a moment he had thought too much, too much for his nature of the dancing faun who had been given for a brief space of time his rightful heritage.
Each day now he went down to the sea.
"How hot it is!" he would say to Gaspare. "If I don't have a bath I shall be suffocated."
"Si, signore. At what time shall we go?"
"After the siesta. It will be glorious in the sea to-day."
"Si, signore, it is good to be in the sea."
The boy smiled, at last would sometimes laugh. He loved his padrona, but he was a male and a Sicilian. And the signora had gone across the sea to her friend.These visits to the sea seemed to him very natural. He would have done the same as his padrone in similar circumstances with a light heart, with no sense of doing wrong. Only sometimes he raised a warning voice.
"Signorino," he would say, "do not forget what I have told you."
"What, Gaspare?"
"Salvatore is birbante. You think he likes you."
"Why shouldn't he like me?"
"You are a forestiere. To him you are as nothing. But he likes your money."
"Well, then? I don't care whether he likes me or not. What does it matter?"
"Be careful, signorino. The Sicilian has a long hand. Every one knows that. Even the Napoletano knows that. I have a friend who was a soldier at Naples, and—"
"Come, now, Gaspare! What reason will there ever be for Salvatore to turn against me?"
"Va bene, signorino, va bene! But Salvatore is a bad man when he thinks any one has tried to do him a wrong. He has blood in his eyes then, and when we Sicilians see through blood we do not care what we do—no, not if all the world is looking at us."
"I shall do no wrong to Salvatore. What do you mean?"
"Niente, signorino, niente!"
"Stick the cloth on Tito, and put something in the pannier. Al mare! Al mare!"
The boy's warning rang in deaf ears. For Maurice really meant what he said. He was reckless, perhaps, but he was going to wrong no one, neither Salvatore, nor Hermione, nor Maddalena. The coming of Artois drove him into the arms of pleasure, but it would never drive him into the arms of sin. For it was surely no sin to make a little love in this land of the sun, to touch a girl's hand, to snatch a kiss sometimes from the softlips of a girl, from whom he would never ask anything more, whatever leaping desire might prompt him.
And Salvatore was always at hand. He seldom put to sea in these days unless Maurice went with him in the boat. His greedy eyes shone with a light of satisfaction when he saw Tito coming along the dusty white road from Isola Bella, and at night, when he crossed himself superstitiously before Maria Addolorata, he murmured a prayer that more strangers might be wafted to his "Paese," many strangers with money in their pockets and folly in their hearts. Then let the sea be empty of fish and the wind of the storm break up his boat—it would not matter. He would still live well. He might even at the last have money in the bank at Marechiaro, houses in the village, a larger wine-shop than Oreste in the Corso.
But he kept his small eyes wide open and seldom let Maddalena be long alone with the forestiere, and this supervision began to irritate Maurice, to make him at last feel hostile to Salvatore. He remembered Gaspare's words about the fisherman—"To him you are as nothing. But he likes your money"—and a longing to trick this fox of the sea, who wanted to take all and make no return, came to him.
"Why can one never be free in this world?" he thought, almost angrily. "Why must there always be some one on the watch to see what one is doing, to interfere with one's pleasure?"
He began presently almost to hate Salvatore, who evidently thought that Maurice was ready to wrong him, and who, nevertheless, grasped greedily at every soldo that came from the stranger's pocket, and touted perpetually for more.