The Call of the Blood Part 59

Indeed, the ma.s.ses of stones in the watercourse seemed to draw and to concentrate the sun-rays. The air was alive with minute and dancing specks of light, and in the distance, seen under the railway bridge, the sea looked hot, a fiery blue that was surely sweating in the glare of the afternoon. The crowd of donkeys, of cattle, of pigs--there were many pigs on sale--looked both dull and angry in the heat, and the swarms of Sicilians who moved slowly about among them, examining them critically, appraising their qualities and noting their defects, perspired in their festa clothes, which were mostly heavy and ill-adapted to summer-time. A small boy pa.s.sed by, bearing in his arms a struggling turkey. He caught his foot in some stones, fell, bruised his forehead, and burst out crying, while the indignant and terrified bird broke away, leaving some feathers, and made off violently towards Etna. There was a roar of laughter from the people near. Some ran to catch the turkey, others picked up the boy. Salvatore had stopped to see this adventure, and was now at a little distance surrounded by the Catanesi, who were evidently determined to a.s.sist at his bidding for a donkey. The sight of the note for a hundred lire had greatly increased their respect for Salvatore, and with the Sicilian instinct to go, and to stay, where money is, they now kept close to their comrade, eying him almost with awe as one in possession of a fortune. Maurice saw them presently examining a group of donkeys. Salvatore, with an autocratic air, and the wild gestures peculiar to him, was evidently laying down the law as to what each animal was worth. The fishermen stood by, listening attentively. The fact of Salvatore's purchasing power gave him the right to p.r.o.nounce an opinion.

He was in glory. Maurice thanked Heaven for that. The man in glory is often the forgetful man. Salvatore, he thought, would not bother about his daughter and his banker for a little while. But how to get rid of Gaspare and Amedeo! It seemed to him that they would never leave his side.

There were many wooden stands covered with goods for sale in the watercourse, with bales of stuff for suits and dresses, with hats and caps, s.h.i.+rts, cravats, boots and shoes, walking-sticks, shawls, household utensils, crockery, everything the contadino needs and loves. Gaspare, having money to lay out, considered it his serious duty to examine everything that was to be bought with slow minuteness. It did not matter whether the goods were suited to a masculine taste or not. He went into the mysteries of feminine attire with almost as much a.s.siduity as a mother displays when buying a daughter's trousseau, and insisted upon Maurice sharing his interest and caution. All sense of humor, all boyish sprightliness vanished from him in this important epoch of his life. The suspicion, the intensity of the bargaining contadino came to the surface.

His usually bright face was quite altered. He looked elderly, subtle, and almost Jewish as he slowly pa.s.sed from stall to stall, testing, weighing, measuring, appraising.

It seemed to Maurice that this progress would never end. Presently they reached a stand covered with women's shawls and with ap.r.o.ns.

"Shall I buy an ap.r.o.n for my mother, signorino?" asked Gaspare.

"Yes, certainly."

Maurice did not know what else to say. The result of his consent was terrible. For a full half-hour they stood in the glaring sun, while Gaspare and Amedeo solemnly tried on ap.r.o.ns over their suits in the midst of a concourse of attentive contadini. In vain did Maurice say: "That's a pretty one. I should take that one." Some defect was always discoverable.

The distant mother's taste was evidently peculiar and not to be easily suited, and Maurice, not being familiar with it, was unable to combat such a.s.sertions of Gaspare as that she objected to pink spots, or that she could never be expected to put on an ap.r.o.n before the neighbors if the stripes upon it were of different colors and there was no st.i.tching round the hem. For the first time since he was in Sicily the heat began to affect him unpleasantly. His head felt as if it were compressed in an iron band, and the vision of Gaspare, eagerly bargaining, looking Jewish, and revolving slowly in ap.r.o.ns of different colors, shapes, and sizes, began to dance before his eyes. He felt desperate, and suddenly resolved to be frank.

"Macche!" Gaspare was exclaiming, with indignant gestures of protest to the elderly couple who were in charge of the ap.r.o.ns; "it is not worth two soldi! It is not fit to be thrown to the pigs, and you ask me----"

"Gaspare!"

"Two lire--Madonna! Sangue di San Pancrazio, they ask me two lire!

Macche!" (He flung down the ap.r.o.n pa.s.sionately upon the stall.) "Go and find Lipari people to buy your dirt; don't come to one from Marechiaro."

He took up another ap.r.o.n.

"Gaspare!"

"One lira fifty? Madre mia, do you think I was born in a grotto on Etna and have never----"

"Gaspare, listen to me!"

"Scusi, signorino! I----"

"I'm going over there to sit down in the shade for a minute. After that wine I drank at dinner I'm a bit sleepy."

"Si, signore. Shall I come with you?"

For once there was reluctance in his voice, and he looked down at the blue-and-white ap.r.o.n he had on with wistful eyes. It was a new joy to him to be bargaining in the midst of an attentive throng of his compatriots.

"No, no. You stay here and spend the money. Bid for the clock when the auction comes on."

"Oh, signore, but you must be here, too, then."

"All right. Come and fetch me if you like. I shall be over there under the trees."

He waved his hand vaguely towards the lemon groves.

"Now, choose a good ap.r.o.n. Don't let them cheat you."

"Macche!"

The boy laughed loudly, and turned eagerly to the stall again.

"Come, Maddalena!"

Maurice drew her quickly, anxiously, out of the crowd, and they began to walk across the watercourse towards the farther bank and the group of olive-trees. Salvatore had forgotten them. So had Gaspare. Both father and servant were taken by the fascination of the fair. At last! But how late it must be! How many hours had already fled away! Maurice scarcely dared to look at his watch. He feared to see the time. While they walked he said nothing to Maddalena, but when they reached the bank he took her arm and helped her up it, and when they were at the top he drew a long breath.

"Are you tired, signorino?"

"Tired--yes, of all those people. Come and sit down, Maddalena, under the olive-trees."

He took her by the hand. Her hand was warm and dry, pleasant to touch, to hold. As he felt it in his the desire to strike at Salvatore revived within him. Salvatore was laughing at him, was triumphing over him, triumphing in the get-all and give-nothing policy which he thought he was pursuing with such complete success. Would it be very difficult to turn that success into failure? Maurice wondered for a moment, then ceased to wonder. Something in the touch of Maddalena's hand told him that, if he chose, he could have his revenge upon Salvatore, and he was a.s.sailed by a double temptation. Both anger and love tempted him. If he stooped to do evil he could gratify two of the strongest desires in humanity, the desire to conquer in love and the desire to triumph in hate. Salvatore thought him such a fool, held him in such contempt! Something within him was burning to-day as a cheek burns with shame, something within him that was like the kernel of him, like the soul of his manhood, which the fisherman was sneering at. He did not say to himself strongly that he did not care what such men thought of him. He could not, for his nature was both reckless and sensitive. He did care, as if he had been a Sicilian half doubtful whether he dared to show his face in the piazza. And he had another feeling, too, which had come to him when Salvatore had answered his exclamation of irresistible anger at being called "compare," the feeling that, whether he sinned against the fisherman or not, the fisherman meant to do him harm. The sensation might be absurd, would have seemed to him probably absurd in England. Here, in Sicily, it sprang up and he had just to accept it, as a man accepts an instinct which guides him, prompts him.

Salvatore had turned down his thumb that day.

Maurice was not afraid of him. Physically, he was quite fearless. But this sensation of having been secretly condemned made him feel hard, cruel, ready, perhaps, to do a thing not natural to him, to sacrifice another who had never done him wrong. At that moment it seemed to him that it would be more manly to triumph over Salvatore by a double betrayal than to "run straight," conquer himself and let men not of his code think of him as they would.

Not of his code! But what was his code? Was it that of England or that of Sicily? Which strain of blood was governing him to-day? Which strain would govern him finally? Artois would have had an interesting specimen under his observant eyes had he been at the fair of San Felice.

Maddalena willingly obeyed Maurice's suggestion.

"Get well into the shade," he said. "There's just enough to hold us, if we sit close together. You don't mind that, do you?"

"No, signore."

"Put your back against the trunk--there."

He kept his hat off. Over the railway line from the hot-looking sea there came a little breeze that just moved his short hair and the feathers of gold about Maddalena's brow. In the watercourse, but at some distance, they saw the black crowd of men and women and beasts swarming over the hot stones.

"How can they?" Maurice muttered, as he looked down.

"Cosa?"

He laughed.

"I was thinking out loud. I meant how can they bargain and bother hour after hour in all that sun!"

"But, signorino, you would not have them pay too much!" she said, very seriously. "It is dreadful to waste soldi."

"I suppose--yes, of course it is. Oh, but there are so many things worth more than soldi. Dio mio! Let's forget all that!"

He waved his hand towards the crowd, but he saw that Maddalena was preoccupied. She glanced towards the watercourse rather wistfully.

"What is it, Maddalena? Ah, I know! The blue dress and the ear-rings! Per Bacco!"

"No, signore--no, signore!"

She disclaimed quickly, reddening.

"Yes, it is. I had forgotten. But we can't go now. Maddalena, we will buy them this evening. Directly it gets cool we'll go, directly we've rested a little. But don't think of them now. I've promised, and I always keep a promise. Now, don't think of that any more!"