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 within
him 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 to set 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, he was 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 into his 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.