The Call of the Blood

R >> Robert Smythe Hichens >> The Call of the Blood

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And he laughed aloud, with the delight of a boy who has discovered
something, and feels that he is clever and a man. And Maurice laughed
too, not without a pride that was joyous. The heart of his youth, the
wild heart, bounded within him, and the glory of the sun, and the
passionate blue of the sea seemed suddenly deeper, more intense, more
sympathetic, as if they felt with him, as if they knew the rapture of
youth, as if they were created to call it forth, to condone its
carelessness, to urge it to some almost fierce fulfilment.

"Salvatore is there, signorino."

"How do you know?"

"I saw the smoke from his pipe. Look, there it is again!"

A tiny trail of smoke curled up; and faded in the blue.

"I will go first because of Maddalena. Girls are silly. If I do this at
her she will understand. If not she may show her father you have been
here before."

He closed one eye in a large and expressive wink.

"Birbante!"

"It is good to be birbante sometimes."

He went out from the trees and Maurice heard his voice, then a man's,
then Maddalena's. He waited where he was till he heard Gaspare say:

"The padrone is just behind. Signorino, where are you?"

"Here!" he answered, coming into the open with a careless air.

Before the cottage door in the sunshine a great fishing-net was drying,
fastened to two wooden stakes. Near it stood Salvatore, dressed in a
dark-blue jersey, with a soft black hat tilted over his left ear, above
which was stuck a yellow flower. Maddalena was in the doorway looking
very demure. It was evident that the wink of Gaspare had been seen and
comprehended. She stole a glance at Maurice but did not move. Her father
took off his hat with an almost wildly polite gesture, and said, in a
loud voice:

"Buona sera, signore."

"Buona sera," replied Maurice, holding out his hand.

Salvatore took it in a large grasp.

"You are the signore who lives up on Monte Amato with the English lady?"

"Yes."

"I know. She has gone to Africa."

He stared at Maurice while he spoke, with small, twinkling eyes, round
which was a minute and intricate web of wrinkles, and again Maurice felt
almost--or was it quite?--ashamed. What were these Sicilians thinking of
him?

"The signora will be back almost directly," he said. "Is this your
daughter?"

"Yes, Maddalena. Bring a chair for the signore, Maddalena."

Maddalena obeyed. There was a slight flush on her face and she did not
look at Maurice. Gaspare stood pulling gently at the stretched-out net,
and smiling. That he enjoyed the mild deceit of the situation was
evident. Maurice, too, felt amused and quite at his ease now. His
sensation of shame had fleeted away, leaving only a conviction that
Hermione's absence gave him a right to snatch all the pleasure he could
from the hands of the passing hour.

He drew out his cigar-case and offered it to Salvatore.

"One day I want to come fishing with you if you'll take me," he said.

Salvatore looked eager. A prospect of money floated before him:

"I can show you fine sport, signore," he answered, taking one of the long
Havanas and examining it with almost voluptuous interest as he turned it
round and round in his salty, brown fingers. "But you should come out at
dawn, and it is far from the mountain to the sea."

"Couldn't I sleep here, so as to be ready?"

He stole a glance at Maddalena. She was looking at her feet, and twisting
the front of her short dress, but her lips were twitching with a smile
which she tried to repress.

"Couldn't I sleep here to-night?" he added, boldly.

Salvatore looked more eager. He loved money almost as an Arab loves it,
with anxious greed. Doubtless Arab blood ran in his veins. It was easy to
see from whom Maddalena had inherited her Eastern appearance. She
reproduced, on a diminished scale, her father's outline of face, but that
which was gentle, mysterious, and alluring in her, in him was informed
with a rugged wildness. There was something bird-like and predatory in
his boldly curving nose with its narrow nostrils, in his hard-lipped
mouth, full of splendid teeth, in his sharp and pushing chin. His whole
body, wide-shouldered and deep-chested, as befitted a man of the sea,
looked savage and fierce, but full of an intensity of manhood that was
striking, and his gestures and movements, the glance of his penetrating
eyes, the turn of his well-poised head, revealed a primitive and
passionate nature, a nature with something of the dagger in it, steely,
sharp, and deadly.

"But, signore, our home is very poor. Look, signore!"

A turkey strutted out through the doorway, elongating its neck and
looking nervously intent.

"Ps--sh--sh--sh!"

He shooed it away, furiously waving his arms.

"And what could you eat? There is only bread and wine."

"And the yellow cheese!" said Maurice.

"The--?" Salvatore looked sharply interrogative.

"I mean, there is always cheese, isn't there, in Sicily, cheese and
macaroni? But if there isn't, it's all right. Anything will do for me,
and I'll buy all the fish we take from you, and Maddalena here shall cook
it for us when we come back from the sea. Will you, Maddalena?"

"Si, signore."

The answer came in a very small voice.

"The signore is too good."

Salvatore was looking openly voracious now.

"I can sleep on the floor."

"No, signore. We have beds, we have two fine beds. Come in and see."

With not a little pride he led Maurice into the cottage, and showed him
the bed on which he had already slept.

"That will be for the signore, Gaspare."

"Si--e molto bello."

"Maddalena and I--we will sleep in the outer room."

"And I, Salvatore?" demanded the boy.

"You! Do you stay too?"

"Of course. Don't I stay, signore?"

"Yes, if Lucrezia won't be frightened."

"It does not matter if she is. When we do not come back she will keep
Guglielmo, the contadino."

"Of course you must stay. You can sleep with me. And to-night we'll play
cards and sing and dance. Have you got any cards, Salvatore?"

"Si, signore. They are dirty, but--"

"That's all right. And we'll sit outside and tell stories, stories of
brigands and the sea. Salvatore, when you know me, you'll know I'm a true
Sicilian."

He grasped Salvatore's hand, but he looked at Maddalena.

XII

Night had come to the Sirens' Isle--a night that was warm, gentle, and
caressing. In the cottage two candles were lit, and the wick was burning
in the glass before the Madonna. Outside the cottage door, on the flat
bit of ground that faced the wide sea, Salvatore and his daughter,
Maurice and Gaspare, were seated round the table finishing their simple
meal, for which Salvatore had many times apologized. Their merry voices,
their hearty laughter rang out in the darkness, and below the sea made
answer, murmuring against the rocks.

At the same moment in an Arab house Hermione bent over a sick man,
praying against death, whose footsteps she seemed already to hear coming
into the room and approaching the bed on which he tossed, white with
agony. And when he was quiet for a little and ceased from moving, she sat
with her hand on his and thought of Sicily, and pictured her husband
alone under the stars upon the terrace before the priest's house, and
imagined him thinking of her. The dry leaves of a palm-tree under the
window of the room creaked in the light wind that blew over the flats,
and she strove to hear the delicate rustling of the leaves of
olive-trees.

Salvatore had little food to offer his guests, only bread, cheese, and
small, black olives; but there was plenty of good red wine, and when the
time of brindisi was come Salvatore and Gaspare called for health after
health, and rivalled each other in wild poetic efforts, improvising
extravagant compliments to Maurice, to the absent signora, to Maddalena,
and even to themselves. And with each toast the wine went down till
Maurice called a halt.

"I am a real Sicilian," he said. "But if I drink any more I shall be
under the table. Get out the cards, Salvatore. Sette e mezzo, and I'll
put down the stakes. No one to go above twenty-five centesimi, with fifty
for the doubling. Gaspare's sure to win. He always does. And I've just
one cigar apiece. There's no wind. Bring out the candles and let's play
out here."

Gaspare ran for the candles while Salvatore got the cards, well-thumbed
and dirty. Maddalena's long eyes were dancing. Such a festa as this was
rare in her life, for, dwelling far from the village, she seldom went to
any dance or festivity. Her blood was warm with the wine and with joy,
and the youth in her seemed to flow like the sea in a flood-tide.
Scarcely ever before had she seen her harsh father so riotously gay, so
easy with a stranger, and she knew in her heart that this was her
festival. Maurice's merry and ardent eyes told her that, and Gaspare's
smiling glances of boyish understanding. She felt excited, almost
light-headed, childishly proud of herself. If only some of the girls of
Marechiaro could see, could know!

When the cards were thrown upon the table, and Maurice had dealt out a
lira to each one of the players as stakes, and cried, "Maddalena and I'll
share against you, Salvatore, and Gaspare!" she felt that she had nothing
more to wish for, that she was perfectly happy. But she was happier still
when, after a series of games, Maurice pushed back his chair and said:

"I've had enough. Salvatore, you are like Gaspare, you have the devil's
luck. Together you can't be beaten. But now you play against each other
and let's see who wins. I'll put down twenty-five lire. Play till one of
you's won every soldo of it. Play all night if you like."

And he counted out the little paper notes on the table, giving two to
Salvatore and two to Gaspare, and putting one under a candlestick.

"I'll keep the score," he added, pulling out a pencil and a sheet of
paper. "No play higher than fifty, with a lira when one of you makes
'sette e mezzo' with under four cards."

"Per Dio!" cried Gaspare, flushed with excitement. "Avanti, Salvatore!"

"Avanti, Avanti!" cried Salvatore, in answer, pulling his chair close up
to the table, and leaning forward, looking like a handsome bird of prey
in the faint candlelight.

They cut for deal and began to play, while Maddalena and Maurice watched.

When Sicilians gamble they forget everything but the game and the money
which it brings to them or takes from them. Salvatore and Gaspare were at
once passionately intent on their cards, and as the night drew on and
fortune favored first one and then the other, they lost all thought of
everything except the twenty-five lire which were at stake. When
Maddalena slipped away into the darkness they did not notice her
departure, and when Maurice laid down the paper on which he had tried to
keep the score, and followed her, they were indifferent. They needed no
score-keeper, for they had Sicilian memories for money matters. Over the
table they leaned, the two candles, now burning low, illuminating their
intense faces, their violent eyes, their brown hands that dealt and
gathered up the cards, and held them warily, alert for the cheating that
in Sicily, when possible, is ever part of the game.

"Carta da cinquanta!"

They had forgotten Maurice's limit for the stakes.

"Carta da cento!"

Their voices died away from Maurice's ears as he stole through the
darkness seeking Maddalena.

Where had she gone, and why? The last question he could surely answer,
for as she stole past him silently, her long, mysterious eyes, that
seemed to hold in their depths some enigma of the East, had rested on his
with a glance that was an invitation. They had not boldly summoned him.
They had lured him, as an echo might, pathetic in its thrilling frailty.
And now, as he walked softly over the dry grass, he thought of those eyes
as he had first seen them in the pale light that had preceded the dawn.
Then they had been full of curiosity, like a young animal's. Now surely
they were changed. Once they had asked a question. They delivered a
summons to-night. What was in them to-night? The mystery of young
maidenhood, southern, sunlit, on the threshold of experience, waking to
curious knowledge, to a definite consciousness of the meaning of its
dreams, of the truth of its desires.

When he was out of hearing of the card-players Maurice stood still. He
felt the breath of the sea on his face. He heard the murmur of the sea
everywhere around him, a murmur that in its level monotony excited him,
thrilled him, as the level monotony of desert music excites the African
in the still places of the sand. His pulses were beating, and there was
an almost savage light in his eyes. Something in the atmosphere of the
sea-bound retreat made him feel emancipated, as if he had stepped out of
the prison of civilized life into a larger, more thoughtless existence,
an existence for which his inner nature fitted him, for which he had
surely been meant all these years that he had lived, unconscious of what
he really was and of what he really needed.

"How happy I could have been as a Sicilian fisherman!" he thought. "How
happy I could be now!"

"St! St!"

He looked round quickly.

"St! St!"

It must be Maddalena, but where was she? He moved forward till he was at
the edge of the land where the tiny path wound steeply downward to the
sea. There she was standing with her face turned in his direction, and
her lips opened to repeat the little summoning sound.

"How did you know I was there?" he said, whispering, as he joined her.
"Did you hear me come?"

"No, signore."

"Then--"

"Signorino, I felt that you were there."

He smiled. It pleased him to think that he threw out something, some
invisible thread, perhaps, that reached her and told her of his nearness.
Such communication made sympathy. He did not say it to himself, but his
sensation to-night was that everything was in sympathy with him, the
night with its stars, the sea with its airs and voices, Maddalena with
her long eyes and her brown hands, and her knowledge of his presence when
she did not see or hear him.

"Let us go down to the sea," he said.

He longed to be nearer to that low and level sound that moved and excited
him in the night.

"Father's boat is there," she said. "It is so calm to-night that he did
not bring it round into the bay."

"If we go out in it for a minute, will he mind?"

A sly look came into her face.

"He will not know," she said. "With all that money Gaspare and he will
play till dawn. Per Dio, signore, you are birbante!"

She gave a little low laugh.

"So you think I--"

He stopped. What need was there to go on? She had read him and was openly
rejoicing in what she thought his slyness.

"And my father," she added, "is a fox of the sea, signore. Ask Gaspare if
there is another who is like him. You will see! When they stop playing at
dawn the twenty-five lire will be in his pocket!"

She spoke with pride.

"But Gaspare is so lucky," said Maurice.

"Gaspare is only a boy. How can he cheat better than my father?"

"They cheat, then!"

"Of course, when they can. Why not, madonna!"

Maurice burst out laughing.

"And you call me birbante!" he said.

"To know what my father loves best! Signorino! Signorino!"

She shook her out-stretched forefinger to and fro near her nose, smiling,
with her head a little on one side like a crafty child.

"But why, Maddalena--why should I wish your father to play cards till the
dawn. Tell me that! Why should not I wish him, all of us, to go to bed?"

"You are not sleepy, signorino!"

"I shall be in the morning when it's time to fish."

"Then perhaps you will not fish."

"But I must. That is why I have stayed here to-night, to be ready to go
to sea in the morning."

She said nothing, only smiled again. He felt a longing to shake her in
joke. She was such a child now. And yet a few minutes ago her dark eyes
had lured him, and he had felt almost as if in seeking her he sought a
mystery.

"Don't you believe me?" he asked.

But she only answered, with her little gesture of smiling rebuke:

"Signorino! Signorino!"

He did not protest, for now they were down by the sea, and saw the
fishing-boats swaying gently on the water.

"Get in Maddalena. I will row."

He untied the rope, while she stepped lightly in, then he pushed the boat
off, jumping in himself from the rocks.

"You are like a fisherman, signore," said Maddalena.

He smiled and drew the great bladed oars slowly through the calm water,
leaning towards her with each stroke and looking into her eyes.

"I wish I were really a fisherman," he said, "like your father!"

"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 her beauty 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.

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