The Call of the Blood

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

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"I remember your telling me."

"And you were so glad the signora was travelling the other way."

"Yes, yes."

He spoke hastily. Salvatore was on his feet.

"What hour have we?"

Maurice looked at his watch.

"Half-past two already! I say, Salvatore, you mustn't forget the
donkeys."

Salvatore came close up to him.

"Signore," he began, in a low voice, "what do you wish me to do?"

"Bid for a good donkey."

"Si, signore."

"For the best donkey they put up for sale."

Salvatore began to look passionately eager.

"Si, signore. And if I get it?"

"Come to me and I will give you the money to pay."

"Si, signore. How high shall I go?"

Gaspare was listening intently, with a hard face and sullen eyes. His
whole body seemed to be disapproving what Maurice was doing. But he said
nothing. Perhaps he felt that to-day it would be useless to try to govern
the actions of his padrone.

"How high? Well"--Maurice felt that, before Gaspare, he must put a limit
to his price, though he did not care what it was--"say a hundred. Here,
I'll give it you now."

He put his hand into his pocket and drew out his portfolio.

"There's the hundred."

Salvatore took it eagerly, spread it over his hand, stared at it, then
folded it with fingers that seemed for the moment almost delicate, and
put it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He meant to go presently and
show it to the fishermen of Catania, who had laughed upon the steps of
the church, and explain matters to them a little. They thought him a
fool. Well, he would soon make them understand who was the fool.

"Grazie, signore!"

He said it through his teeth. Maurice turned to Gaspare. He felt the
boy's stern disapproval of what he had done, and wanted, if possible, to
make amends.

"Gaspare," he said, "here is a hundred lire for you. I want you to go to
the auction and to bid for anything you think worth having. Buy
something for your mother and father, for the house, some nice things!"

"Grazie, signore."

He took the note, but without alacrity, and his face was still lowering.

"And you, signore?" he asked.

"I?"

"Yes. Are you not coming with me to the auction? It will be better for
you to be there to choose the things."

For an instant Maurice felt irritated. Was he never to be allowed a
moment alone with Maddalena?

"Oh, but I'm no good at----" he began.

Then he stopped. To-day he must be birbante--on his guard. Once the
auction was in full swing--so he thought--Salvatore and Gaspare would be
as they were when they gambled beside the sea. They would forget
everything. It would be easy to escape. But till that moment came he must
be cautious.

"Of course I'll come," he exclaimed, heartily. "But you must do the
bidding, Gaspare."

The boy looked less sullen.

"Va bene, signorino. I shall know best what the things are worth. And
Salvatore"--he glanced viciously at the fisherman--"can go to the
donkeys. I have seen them. They are poor donkeys this year."

Salvatore returned his vicious glance and said something in dialect which
Maurice did not understand. Gaspare's face flushed, and he was about to
burst into an angry reply when Maurice touched his arm.

"Come along, Gaspare!"

As they got up, he whispered:

"Remember what I said about to-day!"

"Macche----"

Maurice closed his fingers tightly on Gaspare's arm.

"Gaspare, you must remember! Afterwards what you like, but not to-day.
Andiamo!"

They all got up. The Musica della citta was now playing a violent jig,
undoubtedly composed by Bellini, who was considered almost as a child of
San Felice, having been born close by at Catania.

"Where are the women in the wonderful blue dresses?" Maurice asked, as
they stepped into the road; "and the ear-rings? I haven't seen them yet."

"They will come towards evening, signorino," replied Gaspare, "when it
gets cool. They do not care to be in the sun dressed like that. It might
spoil their things."

Evidently the promenade of these proud beauties was an important
function.

"We must not miss them," Maurice said to Maddalena.

She looked conscious.

"No, signore."

"They will all be here this evening, signore," said Amedeo, "for the
giuochi di fuoco."

"The giuochi di fuoco--they will be at the end?"

"Si, signore. After the giuochi di fuoco it is all finished."

Maurice stifled a sigh. "It is all finished," Amedeo had said. But for
him? For him there would be the ride home up the mountain, the arrival
upon the terrace before the house of the priest. At what hour would he be
there? It would be very late, perhaps nearly at dawn, in the cold, still,
sad hour when vitality is at its lowest. And Hermione? Would she be
sleeping? How would they meet? How would he----?

"Andiamo! Andiamo!"

He cried out almost angrily.

"Which is the way?"

"All the auctions are held outside the town, signore," said Amedeo.
"Follow me."

Proudly he took the lead, glad to be useful and important after the
benefits that had been bestowed upon him, and hoping secretly that
perhaps the rich Inglese would give him something to spend, too, since
money was so plentiful for donkeys and clocks.

"They are in the fiume, near the sea and the railway line."

The railway line! When he heard that Maurice had a moment's absurd
sensation of reluctance, a desire to hold back, such as comes to a man
who is unexpectedly asked to confront some danger. It seemed to him that
if he went to the watercourse he might be seen by Hermione and Artois as
they passed by on their way to Marechiaro. But of course they were coming
from Messina! What a fool he was to-day! His recklessness seemed to have
deserted him just when he wanted it most. To-day he was not himself. He
was a coward. What it was that made him a coward he did not tell himself.

"Then we can all go together," he said. "Salvatore and all."

"Si, signore."

Salvatore's voice was close at his ear, and he knew by the sound of it
that the fisherman was smiling.

"We can all keep together, signore; then we shall be more gay."

They threaded their way through the throng. The violent jig of Bellini
died away gradually, till it was faint in the distance. At the end of the
narrow street Maurice saw the large bulk of Etna. On this clear afternoon
it looked quite close, almost as if, when they got out of the street,
they would be at its very foot, and would have to begin to climb. Maurice
remembered his wild longing to carry Maddalena off upon the sea, or to
some eyrie in the mountains, to be alone with her in some savage place.
Why not give all these people the slip now--somehow--when the fun of the
fair was at its height, mount the donkeys and ride straight for the huge
mountain? There were caverns there and desolate lava wastes; there were
almost impenetrable beech forests. Sebastiano had told him tales of
them, those mighty forests that climbed up to green lawns looking down
upon the Lipari Isles. He thought of their silence and their shadows,
their beds made of the drifted leaves of the autumn. There, would be no
disturbance, no clashing of wills and of interests, but calm and silence
and the time to love. He glanced at Maddalena. He could hardly help
imagining that she knew what he was thinking of. Salvatore had dropped
behind for a moment. Maurice did not know it, but the fisherman had
caught sight of his comrades of Catania drinking in a roadside wine-shop,
and had stopped to show them the note for a hundred francs, and to make
them understand the position of affairs between him and the forestiere.
Gaspare was talking eagerly to Amedeo about the things that were likely
to be put up for sale at the auction.

"Maddalena," Maurice said to the girl, in a low voice, "can you guess
what I am thinking about?"

She shook her head.

"No, signore."

"You see the mountain!"

He pointed to the end of the little street.

"Si, signore."

"I am thinking that I should like to go there now with you."

"Ma, signorino--the fiera!"

Her voice sounded plaintive with surprise and she glanced at her
pea-green skirt.

"And this, signorino!"--she touched it carefully with her slim fingers.
"How could I go in this?"

"When the fair is over, then, and you are in your every-day gown,
Maddalena, I should like to carry you off to Etna."

"They say there are briganti there."

"Brigands--would you be afraid of them with me?"

"I don't know, signore. But what should we do there on Etna far away from
the sea and from Marechiaro?"

"We should"--he whispered in her ear, seizing this chance almost angrily,
almost defiantly, with the thought of Salvatore in his mind--"we should
love each other, Maddalena. It is quiet in the beech forests on Etna. No
one would come to disturb us, and----"

A chuckle close to his ear made him start. Salvatore's hand was on his
arm, and Salvatore's face, looking wily and triumphant, was close to his.

"Gaspare was wrong, there are splendid donkeys here. I have been talking
to some friends who have seen them."

There was a tramp of heavy boots on the stones behind them. The fishermen
from Catania were coming to see the fun. Salvatore was in glory. To get
all and give nothing was, in his opinion, to accomplish the legitimate
aim of a man's life. And his friends, those who had dared to sneer and to
whisper, and to imagine that he was selling his daughter for money, now
knew the truth and were here to witness his ingenuity. Intoxicated by his
triumph, he began to show off his power over the Inglese for the benefit
of the tramplers behind. He talked to Maurice with a loud familiarity,
kept laying his hand on Maurice's arm as they walked, and even called
him, with a half-jocose intonation, "compare." Maurice sickened at his
impertinence, but was obliged to endure it with patience, and this act of
patience brought to the birth within him a sudden, fierce longing for
revenge, a longing to pay Salvatore out for his grossness, his greed, his
sly and leering affectation of playing the slave when he was really
indicating to his compatriots that he considered himself the master.
Again Maurice heard the call of the Sicilian blood within him, but this
time it did not call him to the tarantella or to love. It called him to
strike a blow. But this blow could only be struck through Maddalena,
could only be struck if he were traitor to Hermione. For a moment he saw
everything red. Again Salvatore called him "compare." Suddenly Maurice
could not bear it.

"Don't say that!" he said. "Don't call me that!"

He had almost hissed the words out. Salvatore started, and for an
instant, as they walked side by side, the two men looked at each other
with eyes that told the truth. Then Salvatore, without asking for any
explanation of Maurice's sudden outburst, said:

"Va bene, signore, va bene! I thought for to-day we were all compares.
Scusi, scusi."

There was a bitterness of irony in his voice. As he finished he swept off
his soft hat and then replaced it more over his left ear than ever.
Maurice knew at once that he had done the unforgivable thing, that he had
stabbed a Sicilian's amour propre in the presence of witnesses of his own
blood. The fishermen from Catania had heard. He knew it from Salvatore's
manner, and an odd sensation came to him that Salvatore had passed
sentence upon him. In silence, and mechanically, he walked on to the end
of the street. He felt like one who, having done something swiftly,
thoughtlessly, is suddenly confronted with the irreparable, abruptly sees
the future spread out before him bathed in a flash of crude light, the
future transformed in a second by that act of his as a landscape is
transformed by an earthquake or a calm sea by a hurricane.

And when the watercourse came in sight, with its crowd, its voices, and
its multitude of beasts, he looked at it dully for a moment, hardly
realizing it.

In Sicily the animal fairs are often held in the great watercourses that
stretch down from the foot of the mountains to the sea, and that resemble
huge highroads in the making, roads upon which the stones have been
dumped ready for the steam-roller. In winter there is sometimes a torrent
of water rushing through them, but in summer they are dry, and look like
wounds gashed in the thickly growing lemon and orange groves. The
trampling feet of beasts can do no harm to the stones, and these
watercourses in the summer season are of no use to anybody. They are,
therefore, often utilized at fair time. Cattle, donkeys, mules are driven
down to them in squadrons. Painted Sicilian carts are ranged upon their
banks, with sets of harness, and the auctioneers, whose business it is to
sell miscellaneous articles, household furniture, stuffs, clocks,
ornaments, frequently descend into them, and mount a heap of stones to
gain command of their gaping audience of contadini and the shrewder
buyers from the towns.

The watercourse of San Felice was traversed at its mouth by the railway
line from Catania to Messina, which crossed it on a long bridge supported
by stone pillars and buttresses, the bridge which, as Gaspare had said,
had recently collapsed and was now nearly built up again. It was already
in use, but the trains were obliged to crawl over it at a snail's pace in
order not to shake the unfinished masonry, and men were stationed at each
end to signal to the driver whether he was to stop or whether he might
venture to go on. Beyond the watercourse, upon the side opposite to the
town of San Felice, was a series of dense lemon groves, gained by a
sloping bank of bare, crumbling earth, on the top of which, close to the
line and exactly where it came to the bridge, was a group of four old
olive-trees with gnarled, twisted trunks. These trees cast a patch of
pleasant shade, from which all the bustle of the fair was visible, but at
a distance, and as Maurice and his party came out of the village on the
opposite bank, he whispered to Maddalena:

"Maddalena!"

"Si, signore?"

"Let's get away presently, you and I; let's go and sit under those trees.
I want to talk to you quietly."

"Si, signore?"

Her voice was lower even than his own.

"Ecco, signore! Ecco!"

Salvatore was pointing to a crowd of donkeys.

"Signorino! Signorino!"

"What is it, Gaspare?"

"That is the man who is going to sell the clock!"

The boy's face was intent. His eyes were shining, and his glum manner had
vanished, under the influence of a keen excitement. Maurice realized that
very soon he would be free. Once his friends were in the crowd of buyers
and sellers everything but the chance of a bargain would be forgotten.
His own blood quickened but for a different reason.

"What beautiful carts!" he said. "We have no such carts in England!"

"If you would like to buy a cart, signore----" began Salvatore.

But Gaspare interrupted with violence.

"Macche! What is the use of a cart to the signorino? He is going away to
England. How can he take a cart with him in the train?"

"He can leave the cart with me," said Salvatore, with open impudence. "I
can take care of it for the signore as well as the donkey."

"Macche!" cried Gaspare, furiously.

Maurice took him by the arm.

"Help me down the bank! Come on!"

He began to run, pulling Gaspare with him. When they got to the bottom,
he said:

"It's all right, Gaspare. I'm not going to be such a fool as to buy a
cart. Now, then, which way are we going?"

"Signore, do you want to buy a very good donkey, a very strong donkey,
strong enough to carry three Germans to the top of Etna? Come and see my
donkey. He is very cheap. I make a special price because the signore is
simpatico. All the English are simpatici. Come this way, signore! Gaspare
knows me. Gaspare knows that I am not birbante."

"Signorino! Signorino! Look at this clock! It plays the 'Tre Colori.' It
is worth twenty-five lire, but I will make a special price for you
because you love Sicily and are like a Siciliano. Gaspare will tell
you----"

But Gaspare elbowed away his acquaintances roughly.

"Let my padrone alone. He is not here to buy. He is only here to see the
fair. Come on, signorino! Do not answer them. Do not take any notice. You
must not buy anything or you will be cheated. Let me make the prices."

"Yes, you make the prices. Per Bacco, how hot it is!"

Maurice pulled his hat down over his eyes.

"Maddalena, you'll get a sunstroke!" he said.

"Oh no, signore. I am accustomed to the sun."

"But to-day it's terrific!"

Indeed, the masses 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 passed 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 assist 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 pronounce 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, shirts, 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 assiduity 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 passed 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 aprons.

"Shall I buy an apron 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 aprons 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 assertions of Gaspare as that she objected to pink spots, or that
she could never be expected to put on an apron before the neighbors if
the stripes upon it were of different colors and there was no stitching
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 aprons 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 aprons; "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 apron passionately upon the stall.) "Go and
find Lipari people to buy your dirt; don't come to one from Marechiaro."

He took up another apron.

"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 apron 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 apron. 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 assailed 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.

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