IX

Only when Hermione was gone, when the train from which she waved her hand

had vanished along the line that skirted the sea, and he saw Gaspare

winking away two tears that were about to fall on his brown cheeks, did

Maurice begin to realize the largeness of the change that fate had

wrought in his Sicilian life. He realized it more sharply when he had

climbed the mountain and stood once more upon the terrace before the

house of the priest. Hermione's personality was so strong, so aboundingly

vital, that its withdrawal made an impression such as that made by an

intense silence suddenly succeeding a powerful burst of music. Just at

first Maurice felt startled, almost puzzled like a child, inclined to

knit his brows and stare with wide eyes and wonder what could be going to

happen to him in a world that was altered. Now he was conscious of being

far away from the land where he had been born and brought up, conscious

of it as he had not been before, even on his first day in Sicily. He did

not feel an alien. He had no sensation of exile. But he felt, as he had

not felt when with Hermione, the glory of this world of sea and

mountains, of olive-trees and vineyards, the strangeness of its great

welcome to him, the magic of his readiness to give himself to it.

He had been like a dancing faun in the sunshine and the moonlight of

Sicily. Now, for a moment, he stood still, very still, and watched and

listened, and was grave, and was aware of himself, the figure in the

foreground of a picture that was marvellous.

The enthusiasm of Hermione for Sicily, the flood of understanding of it,

and feeling for it that she had poured out in the past days of spring,

instead of teaching Maurice to see and to feel, seemed to have kept him

back from the comprehension to which they had been meant to lead him.

With Hermione, the watcher, he had been but as a Sicilian, another

Gaspare in a different rank of life. Without Hermione he was Gaspare and

something more. It was as if he still danced in the tarantella, but had

now for the moment the power to stand and watch his performance and see

that it was wonderful.

This was just at first, in the silence that followed the music.

He gazed at Etna, and thought: "How extraordinary that I'm living up here

on a mountain and looking at the smoke from Etna, and that there's no

English-speaking person here but me!" He looked at Gaspare and at

Lucrezia, and thought: "What a queer trio of companions we are! How

strange and picturesque those two would look in England, how different

they are from the English, and yet how at home with them I feel! By Jove,

it's wonderful!" And then he was thrilled by a sense of romance, of

adventure, that had never been his when his English wife was there beside

him, calling his mind to walk with hers, his heart to beat with hers,

calling with the great sincerity of a very perfect love.

"The poor signora!" said Gaspare. "I saw her beginning to cry when the

train went away. She loves my country and cannot bear to leave it. She

ought to live here always, as I do."

"Courage, Gaspare!" said Maurice, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"She'll come back very soon."

Gaspare lifted his hand to his eyes, then drew out a red-and-yellow

handkerchief with "Caro mio" embroidered on it and frankly wiped them.

"The poor signora!" he repeated. "She did not like to leave us."

"Let's think of her return," said Maurice.

He turned away suddenly from the terrace and went into the house.

When he was there, looking at the pictures and books, at the open piano

with some music on it, at a piece of embroidery with a needle stuck

through the half-finished petal of a flower, he began to feel deserted.

The day was before him. What was he going to do? What was there for him

to do? For a moment he felt what he would have called "stranded." He was

immensely accustomed to Hermione, and her splendid vitality of mind and

body filled up the interstices of a day with such ease that one did not

notice that interstices existed, or think they could exist. Her physical

health and her ardent mind worked hand-in-hand to create around her an

atmosphere into which boredom could not come, yet from which bustle was

excluded. Maurice felt the silence within the house to be rather dreary

than peaceful. He touched the piano, endeavoring to play with one finger

the tune of "O sole mio!" He took up two or three books, pulled the

needle out of Hermione's embroidery, then stuck it in again. The feeling

of loss began to grow upon him. Oddly enough, he thought, he had not felt

it very strongly at the station when the train ran out. Nor had it been

with him upon the terrace. There he had been rather conscious of change

than of loss--of change that was not without excitement. But now--He

began to think of the days ahead of him with a faint apprehension.

"But I'll live out-of-doors," he said to himself. "It's only in the house

that I feel bad like this. I'll live out-of-doors and take lots of

exercise, and I shall be all right."

He had again taken up a book, almost without knowing it, and now, holding

it in his hand, he went to the head of the steps leading to the terrace

and looked out. Gaspare was sitting by the wall with a very dismal face.

He stared silently at his master for a minute. Then he said:

"The signora should have taken us with her to Africa. It would have been

better."

"It was impossible, Gaspare," Maurice said, rather hastily. "She is going

to a poor signore who is ill."

"I know."

The boy paused for a moment. Then he said:

"Is the signore her brother?"

"Her brother! No."

"Is he a relation?"

"No."

"Is he very old?"

"Certainly not."

Gaspare repeated:

"The signora should have taken us with her to Africa."

This time he spoke with a certain doggedness. Maurice, he scarcely knew

why, felt slightly uncomfortable and longed to create a diversion. He

looked at the book he was holding in his hand and saw that it was _The

Thousand and One Nights_, in Italian. He wanted to do something definite,

to distract his thoughts--more than ever now after his conversation with

Gaspare. An idea occurred to him.

"Come under the oak-trees, Gaspare," he said, "and I'll read to you. It

will be a lesson in accent. You shall be my professore."

"Si, signore."

The response was listless, and Gaspare followed his master with listless

footsteps down the little path that led to the grove of oak-trees that

grew among giant rocks, on which the lizards were basking.

"There are stories of Africa in this book," said Maurice, opening it.

Gaspare looked more alert.

"Of where the signora will be?"

"Chi lo sa?"

He lay down on the warm ground, set his back against a rock, opened the

book at hazard, and began to read slowly and carefully, while Gaspare,

stretched on the grass, listened, with his chin in the palm of his hand.

The story was of the fisherman and the Genie who was confined in a

casket, and soon Gaspare was entirely absorbed by it. He kept his

enormous brown eyes fixed upon Maurice's face, and moved his lips,

silently forming, after him, the words of the tale. When it was finished

he said:

"I should not like to be kept shut up like that, signore. If I could not

be free I would kill myself. I will always be free."

He stretched himself on the warm ground like a young animal, then added:

"I shall not take a wife--ever."

Maurice shut the book and stretched himself, too, then moved away from

the rock, and lay at full length with his hands clasped behind his head

and his eyes, nearly shut, fixed upon the glimmer of the sea.

"Why not, Gasparino?"

"Because if one has a wife one is not free."

"Hm!"

"If I had a wife I should be like the Mago Africano when he was shut up

in the box."

"And I?" Maurice said, suddenly sitting up. "What about me?"

For the first time it seemed to occur to Gaspare that he was speaking to

a married man. He sat up, too.

"Oh, but you--you are a signore and rich. It is different. I am poor. I

shall have many loves, first one and then another, but I shall never take

a wife. My father wishes me to when I have finished the military service,

but"--and he laughed at his own ingenious comparison--"I am like the Mago

Africano when he was let out of the casket. I am free, and I will never

let myself be stoppered-up as he did. Per Dio!"

Suddenly Maurice frowned.

"It isn't like--" he began.

Then he stopped. The lines in his forehead disappeared, and he laughed.

"I am pretty free here, too," he said. "At least, I feel so."

The dreariness that had come upon him inside the cottage had disappeared

now that he was in the open air. As he looked down over the sloping

mountain flank--dotted with trees near him, but farther away bare and

sunbaked--to the sea with its magic coast-line, that seemed to promise

enchantments to wilful travellers passing by upon the purple waters, as

he turned his eyes to the distant plain with its lemon groves, its

winding river, its little vague towns of narrow houses from which thin

trails of smoke went up, and let them journey on to the great, smoking

mountain lifting its snows into the blue, and its grave, not insolent,

panache, he felt an immense sense of happy-go-lucky freedom with the

empty days before him. His intellect was loose like a colt on a prairie.

There was no one near to catch it, to lead it to any special object, to

harness it and drive it onward in any fixed direction. He need no longer

feel respect for a cleverness greater than his own, or try to understand

subtleties of thought and sensation that were really outside of his

capacities. He did not say this to himself, but whence sprang this new

and dancing feeling of emancipation that was coming upon him? Why did he

remember the story he had just been reading, and think of himself for a

moment as a Genie emerging cloudily into the light of day from a narrow

prison which had been sunk beneath the sea? Why? For, till now, he had

never had any consciousness of imprisonment. One only becomes conscious

of some things when one is freed from them. Maurice's happy efforts to

walk on the heights with the enthusiasms of Hermione had surely never

tired him, but rather braced him. Yet, left alone with peasants, with

Lucrezia and Gaspare, there was something in him, some part of his

nature, which began to frolic like a child let out of school. He felt

more utterly at his ease than he had ever felt before. With these

peasants he could let his mind be perfectly lazy. To them he seemed

instructed, almost a god of knowledge.

Suddenly Maurice laughed, showing his white teeth. He stretched up his

arms to the blue heaven and the sun that sent its rays filtering down to

him through the leaves of the oak-trees, and he laughed again gently.

"What is it, signore?"

"It is good to live, Gaspare. It is good to be young out here on the

mountain-side, and to send learning and problems and questions of

conscience to the devil. After all, real life is simple enough if only

you'll let it be. I believe the complications of life, half of them, and

its miseries too, more than half of them, are the inventions of the

brains of the men and women we call clever. They can't let anything

alone. They bother about themselves and everybody else. By Jove, if you

knew how they talk about life in London! They'd make you think it was the

most complicated, rotten, intriguing business imaginable; all

misunderstandings and cross-purposes, and the Lord knows what. But it

isn't. It's jolly simple, or it can be. Here we are, you and I, and we

aren't at loggerheads, and we've got enough to eat and a pair of boots

apiece, and the sun, and the sea, and old Etna behaving nicely--and what

more do we want?"

"Signore--"

"Well?"

"I don't understand English."

"Mamma mia!" Delarey roared with laughter. "And I've been talking

English. Well, Gaspare, I can't say it in Sicilian--can I? Let's see."

He thought a minute. Then he said:

"It's something like this. Life is simple and splendid if you let it

alone. But if you worry it--well, then, like a dog, it bites you."

He imitated a dog biting. Gaspare nodded seriously.

"Mi piace la vita," he remarked, calmly.

"E anche mi piace a me," said Maurice. "Now I'll give you a lesson in

English, and when the signora comes back you can talk to her."

"Si, signore."

The afternoon had gone in a flash. Evening came while they were still

under the oak-trees, and the voice of Lucrezia was heard calling from the

terrace, with the peculiar baaing intonation that is characteristic of

southern women of the lower classes.

Gaspare baaed ironically in reply.

"It isn't dinner-time already?" said Maurice, getting up reluctantly.

"Yes, meester sir, eef you pleesi," said Gaspare, with conscious pride.

"We go way."

"Bravo. Well, I'm getting hungry."

As Maurice sat alone at dinner on the terrace, while Gaspare and Lucrezia

ate and chattered in the kitchen, he saw presently far down below the

shining of the light in the house of the sirens. It came out when the

stars came out, this tiny star of the sea. He felt a little lonely as he

sat there eating all by himself, and when the light was kindled near the

water, that lay like a dream waiting to be sweetly disturbed by the moon,

he was pleased as by the greeting of a friend. The light was company. He

watched it while he ate. It was a friendly light, more friendly than the

light of the stars to him. For he connected it with earthly

things--things a man could understand. He imagined Maddalena in the

cottage where he had slept preparing the supper for Salvatore, who was

presently going off to sea to spear fish, or net them, or take them with

lines for the market on the morrow. There was bread and cheese on the

table, and the good red wine that could harm nobody, wine that had all

the laughter of the sun-rays in it. And the cottage door was open to the

sea. The breeze came in and made the little lamp that burned beneath the

Madonna flicker. He saw the big, white bed, and the faces of the saints,

of the actresses, of the smiling babies that had watched him while he

slept. And he saw the face of his peasant hostess, the face he had kissed

in the dawn, ere he ran down among the olive-trees to plunge into the

sea. He saw the eyes that were like black jewels, the little feathers of

gold in the hair about her brow. She was a pretty, simple girl. He liked

the look of curiosity in her eyes. To her he was something touched with

wonder, a man from a far-off land. Yet she was at ease with him and he

with her. That drop of Sicilian blood in his veins was worth something to

him in this isle of the south. It made him one with so much, with the

sunburned sons of the hills and of the sea-shore, with the sunburned

daughters of the soil. It made him one with them--or more--one of them.

He had had a kiss from Sicily now--a kiss in the dawn by the sea, from

lips fresh with the sea wind and warm with the life that is young. And

what had it meant to him? He had taken it carelessly with a laugh. He had

washed it from his lips in the sea. Now he remembered it, and, in

thought, he took the kiss again, but more slowly, more seriously. And he

took it at evening, at the coming of night, instead of at dawn, at the

coming of day--his kiss from Sicily.

He took it at evening.

He had finished dinner now, and he pushed back his chair and drew a cigar

from his pocket. Then he struck a match. As he was putting it to the

cigar he looked again towards the sea and saw the light.

"Damn!"

"Signore!"

Gaspare came running.

"I didn't call, Gaspare, I only said 'Mamma mia!' because I burned my

fingers."

He struck another match and lit the cigar.

"Signore--" Gaspare began, and stopped.

"Yes? What is it?"

"Signore, I--Lucrezia, you know, has relatives at Castel Vecchio."

Castel Vecchio was the nearest village, perched on the hill-top opposite,

twenty minutes' walk from the cottage.

"Ebbene?"

"Ebbene, signorino, to-night there is a festa in their house. It is the

festa of Pancrazio, her cousin. Sebastiano will be there to play, and

they will dance, and--"

"Lucrezia wants to go?"

"Si, signore, but she is afraid to ask."

"Afraid! Of course she can go, she must go. Tell her. But at night can

she come back alone?"

"Signore, I am invited, but I said--I did not like the first evening that

the padrona is away--if you would come they would take it as a great

honor."

"Go, Gaspare, take Lucrezia, and bring her back safely."

"And you, signore?"

"I would come, too, but I think a stranger would spoil the festa."

"Oh no, signore, on the contrary--"

"I know--you think I shall be sad alone."

"Si, signore."

"You are good to think of your padrone, but I shall be quite content. You

go with Lucrezia and come back as late as you like. Tell Lucrezia! Off

with you!"

Gaspare hesitated no longer. In a few minutes he had put on his best

clothes and a soft hat, and stuck a large, red rose above each ear. He

came to say good-bye with Lucrezia on his arm. Her head was wrapped in a

brilliant yellow-and-white shawl with saffron-colored fringes. They went

off together laughing and skipping down the stony path like two children.

When their footsteps died away Delarey, who had walked to the archway to

see them off, returned slowly to the terrace and began to pace up and

down, puffing at his cigar. The silence was profound. The rising moon

cast its pale beams upon the white walls of the cottage, the white seats

of the terrace. There was no wind. The leaves of the oaks and the

olive-trees beneath the wall were motionless. Nothing stirred. Above the

cottage the moonlight struck on the rocks, showed the nakedness of the

mountain-side. A curious sense of solitude, such as he had never known

before, took possession of Delarey. It did not make him feel sad at

first, but only emancipated, free as he had never yet felt free, like one

free in a world that was curiously young, curiously unfettered by any

chains of civilization, almost savagely, primitively free. So might an

animal feel ranging to and fro in a land where man had not set foot. But

he was an animal without its mate in the wonderful breathless night. And

the moonlight grew about him as he walked, treading softly he scarce knew

why, to and fro, to and fro.

Hermione was nearing the coast now. Soon she would be on board the

steamer and on her way across the sea to Africa. She would be on her way

to Africa--and to Artois.

Delarey recalled his conversation with Gaspare, when the boy had asked

him whether Artois was Hermione's brother, or a relation, or whether he

was old. He remembered Gaspare's intonation when he said, almost sternly,

"The signora should have taken us with her to Africa." Evidently he was

astonished. Why? It must have been because he--Delarey--had let his wife

go to visit a man in a distant city alone. Sicilians did not understand

certain things. He had realized his own freedom--now he began to realize

Hermione's. How quickly she had made up her mind. While he was sleeping

she had decided everything. She had even looked out the trains. It had

never occurred to her to ask him what to do. And she had not asked him to

go with her. Did he wish she had?

A new feeling began to stir within him, unreasonable, absurd. It had come

to him with the night and his absolute solitude in the night. It was not

anger as yet. It was a faint, dawning sense of injury, but so faint that

it did not rouse, but only touched gently, almost furtively, some spirit

drowsing within him, like a hand that touches, then withdraws itself,

then steals forward to touch again.

He began to walk a little faster up and down, always keeping along the

terrace wall.

He was primitive man to-night, and primitive feelings were astir in him.

He had not known he possessed them, yet he--the secret soul of him--did

not shrink from them in any surprise. To something in him, some part of

him, they came as things not unfamiliar.

Suppose he had shown surprise at Hermione's project? Suppose he had asked

her not to go? Suppose he had told her not to go? What would she have

said? What would she have done? He had never thought of objecting to this

journey, but he might have objected. Many a man would have objected. This

was their honeymoon--hers and his. To many it would seem strange that a

wife should leave her husband during their honeymoon, to travel across

the sea to another man, a friend, even if he were ill, perhaps dying. He

did not doubt Hermione. No one who knew her as he did could doubt her,

yet nevertheless, now that he was quite companionless in the night, he

felt deserted, he felt as if every one else were linked with life, while

he stood entirely alone. Hermione was travelling to her friend. Lucrezia

and Gaspare had gone to their festa, to dance, to sing, to joke, to make

merry, to make love--who knew? Down in the village the people were

gossiping at one another's doors, were lounging together in the piazza,

were playing cards in the caffès, were singing and striking the guitars

under the pepper-trees bathed in the rays of the moon. And he--what was

there for him in this night that woke up desires for joy, for the

sweetness of the life that sings in the passionate aisles of the south?

He stood still by the wall. Two or three lights twinkled on the height

where Castel Vecchio perched clinging to its rock above the sea.

Sebastiano was there setting his lips to the ceramella, and shooting bold

glances of tyrannical love at Lucrezia out of his audacious eyes. The

peasants, dressed in their gala clothes, were forming in a circle for the

country dance. The master of the ceremonies was shouting out his commands

in bastard French: "Tournez!" "À votre place!" "Prenez la donne!" "Dansez

toutes!" Eyes were sparkling, cheeks were flushing, lips were parting as

gay activity created warmth in bodies and hearts. Then would come the

tarantella, with Gaspare spinning like a top and tripping like a Folly in

a veritable madness of movement. And as the night wore on the dance would

become wilder, the laughter louder, the fire of jokes more fierce.

Healths would be drunk with clinking glasses, brindisi shouted, tricks

played. Cards would be got out. There would be a group intent on "Scopa,"

another calling "Mi staio!" "Carta da vente!" throwing down the soldi and

picking them up greedily in "Sette e mezzo." Stories would be told, bets

given and taken. The smoke would curl up from the long, black cigars the

Sicilians love. Dark-browed men and women, wild-haired boys, and girls in

gay shawls, with great rings swinging from their ears, would give

themselves up as only southerners can to the joy of the passing moment,

forgetting poverty, hardship, and toil, grinding taxation, all the cares

and the sorrows that encompass the peasant's life, forgetting the flight

of the hours, forgetting everything in the passion of the festa, the

dedication of all their powers to the laughing worship of fun.

Yes, the passing hour would be forgotten. That was certain. It would be

dawn ere Lucrezia and Gaspare returned.

Delarey's cigar was burned to a stump. He took it from his lips and threw

it with all his force over the wall towards the sea. Then he put his

hands on the wall and leaned over it, fixing his eyes on the sea. The

sense of injury grew in him. He resented the joys of others in this

beautiful night, and he felt as if all the world were at a festa, as if

all the world were doing wonderful things in the wonderful night, while

he was left solitary to eat out his heart beneath the moon. He did not

reason against his feelings and tell himself they were absurd. The

dancing faun does not reason in his moments of ennui. He rebels. Delarey

rebelled.

He had been invited to the festa and he had refused to go--almost eagerly

he had refused. Why? There had been something secret in his mind which

had prompted him. He had said--and even to himself--that he did not go

lest his presence might bring a disturbing element into the peasants'

gayety. But was that his reason?

Leaning over the wall he looked down upon the sea. The star that seemed

caught in the sea smiled at him, summoned him. Its gold was like the

gold, the little feathers of gold in the dark hair of a Sicilian girl

singing the song of the May beside the sea:

"Maju torna, maju veni

Cu 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. Had she 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

one now, 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.

X

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

leaves until 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 twang of 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 he had 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 had done 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.