The Call of the Blood

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Gaspare at once took charge of the proceedings as one born to be a leader
of fishermen. He began by ordering wine to be poured into the one glass
provided, placed it in Maurice's hand, and smiled proudly at his pupil's
quick "Alla vostra salute!" before tossing it off. Then each one in turn,
with an "Alla sua salute!" to Maurice, took a drink from the great,
leather bottle; and Nito, shaking out his long coil of net, declared that
it was time to get to work.

Gaspare cast a sly glance at Maurice, warning him to be prepared for a
comedy, and Maurice at once remembered the scene on the terrace when
Gaspare had described Nito's "birbante" character, and looked out for
rheumatics.

"Who goes into the sea, Nito?" asked Gaspare, very seriously.

Nito's wrinkled and weather-beaten face assumed an expression of
surprise.

"Who goes into the sea!" he ejaculated. "Why, don't we all know who likes
wading, and can always tell the best places for the fish?"

He paused, then as Gaspare said nothing, and the others, who had received
a warning sign from him, stood round with deliberately vacant faces, he
added, clapping Gaspare on the shoulder, and holding out one end of the
net:

"Off with your clothes, compare, and we will soon have a fine frittura
for Carmela."

But Gaspare shook his head.

"In summer I don't mind. But this is early in the year, and, besides--"

"Early in the year! Who told me the signore distinto would--"

"And besides, compare, I've got the stomach-ache."

He deftly doubled himself up and writhed, while the lips of the others
twitched with suppressed amusement.

"Comparedro, I don't believe it!"

"Haven't I, signorino?" cried Gaspare, undoubling himself, pointing to
his middleman, and staring hard at Maurice.

"Si, si! E vero, e vero!" cried Maurice.

"I've been eating Zampaglione, and I am full. If I go into the sea
to-night I shall die."

"Mamma mia!" ejaculated Nito, throwing up his hands towards the stars.

He dared not give the lie to the "signore distinto," yet he had no trust
in Gaspare's word, and had gained no sort of conviction from his eloquent
writhings.

"You must go in, Nito," said Gaspare.

"I--Madonna!"

"Why not?"

"Why not?" cried Nito, in a plaintive whine that was almost feminine. "I
go into the sea with my rheumatism!"

Abruptly one of his legs gave way, and he stood before them in a crooked
attitude.

"Signore," he said to Maurice. "I would go into the sea, I would stay
there all night, for I love it, but Dr. Marini has forbidden me to enter
it. See how I walk!"

And he began to hobble up and down exactly as Gaspare had on the terrace,
looking over his shoulder at Maurice all the time to see whether his
deception was working well. Gaspare, seeing that Nito's attention was for
the moment concentrated, slipped away behind a boat that was drawn up on
the beach; and Maurice, guessing what he was doing, endeavored to make
Nito understand his sympathy.

"Molto forte--molto dolore?" he said.

"Si, signore!"

And Nito burst forth into a vehement account of his sufferings,
accompanied by pantomime.

"It takes me in the night, signore! Madonna, it is like rats gnawing at
my legs, and nothing will stop it. Pancrazia--she is my wife,
signore--Pancrazia, she gets out of bed and she heats oil to rub it on,
but she might as well put it on the top of Etna for all the good it does
me. And there I lie like a--"

"Hi--yi--yi--yi--yi!"

A wild shriek rent the air, and Gaspare, clad in a pair of bathing
drawers, bounded out from behind the boat, gave Nito a cuff on the cheek,
executed some steps of the tarantella, whirled round, snatched up one end
of the net, and cried:

"Al mare, al mare!"

Nito's rheumatism was no more. His bent leg straightened itself as if by
magic, and he returned Gaspare's cuff by an affectionate slap on his bare
shoulder, exclaiming to Maurice:

"Isn't he terribile, signore? Isn't he terribile?"

Nito lifted up the other end of the net and they all went down to the
shore.

That night it seemed to Delarey as if Sicily drew him closer to her
breast. He did not know why he had now for the first time the sensation
that at last he was really in his natural place, was really one with the
soil from which an ancestor of his had sprung, and with the people who
had been her people. That Hermione's absence had anything to do with his
almost wild sense of freedom did not occur to him. All he knew was this,
that alone among these Sicilian fishermen in the night, not understanding
much of what they said, guessing at their jokes, and sharing in their
laughter, without always knowing what had provoked it, he was perfectly
at home, perfectly happy.

Gaspare went into the sea, wading carefully through the silver waters,
and Maurice, from the shore, watched his slowly moving form, taking a
lesson which would be useful to him later. The coast-line looked
enchanted in the glory of the moon, in the warm silence of the night, but
the little group of men upon the shore scarcely thought of its
enchantment. They felt it, perhaps, sometimes faintly in their gayety,
but they did not savor its wonder and its mystery as Hermione would have
savored them had she been there.

The naked form of Gaspare, as he waded far out in the shallow sea, was
like the form of a dream creature rising out of waves of a dream. When he
called to them across the silver surely something of the magic of the
night was caught and echoed in his voice. When he lifted the net, and its
black and dripping meshes slipped down from his ghostly hands into the
ghostly movement that was flickering about him, and the circles tipped
with light widened towards sea and shore, there was a miracle of delicate
and fantastic beauty delivered up tenderly like a marvellous gift to the
wanderers of the dark hours. But Sicily scarcely wonders at Sicily.
Gaspare was intent only on the catching of fish, and his companions smote
the night with their jokes and their merry, almost riotous laughter.

The night wore on. Presently they left Isola Bella, crossed a stony spit
of land, and came into a second and narrower bay, divided by a turmoil
of jagged rocks and a bold promontory covered with stunted olive-trees,
cactus, and seed-sown earth plots, from the wide sweep of coast that
melted into the dimness towards Messina. Gathered together on the little
stones of the beach, in the shadow of some drawn-up fishing-boats, they
took stock of the fish that lay shining in the basket, and broke their
fast on bread and cheese and more draughts from the generous wine-bottle.

Gaspare was dripping, and his thin body shook as he gulped down the wine.

"Basta Gaspare!" Maurice said to him. "You mustn't go in any more."

"No, no, signore, non basta! I can fish all night. Once the wine has
warmed me, I can--"

"But I want to try it."

"Oh, signore, what would the signora say? You are a stranger. You will
take cold, and then the signora will blame me and say I did not take
proper care of my padrone."

But Delarey was determined. He stripped off his clothes, put on his
bathing drawers, took up the net, and, carefully directed by the admiring
though protesting Gaspare, he waded into the sea.

For a moment he shuddered as the calm water rose round him. Then, English
fashion, he dipped under, with a splash that brought a roar of laughter
to him from the shore.

"Meglio cosi!" he cried, coming up again in the moonlight. "Adesso sto
bene!"

The plunge had made him suddenly feel tremendously young and triumphant,
reckless with a happiness that thrilled with audacity. As he waded out he
began to sing in a loud voice:

"Ciao, ciao, ciao,
Morettina bella ciao,
Prima di partire
Un bacio ti voglio da'."

Gaspare, who was hastily dressing by the boats, called out to him that
his singing would frighten away the fish, and he was obediently silent.
He imprisoned the song in his heart, but that went on singing bravely. As
he waded farther he felt splendid, as if he were a lord of life and of
the sea. The water, now warm to him, seemed to be embracing him as it
crept upward towards his throat. Nature was clasping him with amorous
arms. Nature was taking him for her own.

"Nature, nature!" he said to himself. "That's why I'm so gloriously happy
here, because I'm being right down natural."

His mind made an abrupt turn, like a coursed hare, and he suddenly found
himself thinking of the night in London, when he had sat in the
restaurant with Hermione and Artois and listened to their talk,
reverently listened. Now, as the net tugged at his hand, influenced by
the resisting sea, that talk, as he remembered it, struck him as
unnatural, as useless, and the thoughts which he had then admired and
wondered at, as complicated and extraordinary. Something in him said,
"That's all unnatural." The touch of the water about his body, the light
of the moon upon him, the breath of the air in his wet face drove out his
reverence for what he called "intellectuality," and something savage got
hold of his soul and shook it, as if to wake up the sleeping self within
him, the self that was Sicilian.

As he waded in the water, coming ever nearer to the jagged rocks that
shut out from his sight the wide sea and something else, he felt as if
thinking and living were in opposition, as if the one were destructive of
the other; and the desire to be clever, to be talented, which had often
assailed him since he had known, and especially since he had loved,
Hermione, died out of him, and he found himself vaguely pitying Artois,
and almost despising the career and the fame of a writer. What did
thinking matter? The great thing was to live, to live with your body,
out-of-doors, close to nature, somewhat as the savages live. When he
waded to shore for the first time, and saw, as the net was hauled in, the
fish he had caught gleaming and leaping in the light, he could have
shouted like a boy.

He seized the net once more, but Gaspare, now clothed, took hold of him
by the arm with a familiarity that had in it nothing disrespectful.

"Signore, basta, basta! Giulio will go in now."

"Si! si!" cried Giulio, beginning to tug at his waistcoat buttons.

"Once more, Gaspare!" said Maurice. "Only once!"

"But if you take cold, signorino, the signora--"

"I sha'n't catch cold. Only once!"

He broke away, laughing, from Gaspare, and was swiftly in the sea. The
Sicilians looked at him with admiration.

"E' veramente piu Siciliano di noi!" exclaimed Nito.

The others murmured their assent. Gaspare glowed with pride in his pupil.

"I shall make the signore one of us," he said, as he deftly let out the
coils of the net.

"But how long is he going to stay?" asked Nito. "Will he not soon be
going back to his own country?"

For a moment Gaspare's countenance fell.

"When the heat comes," he began, doubtfully. Then he cheered up.

"Perhaps he will take me with him to England," he said.

This time Maurice waded with the net into the shadow of the rocks out of
the light of the moon. The night was waning, and a slight chill began to
creep into the air. A little breeze, too, sighed over the sea, ruffling
its surface, died away, then softly came again. As he moved into the
darkness Maurice was conscious that the buoyancy of his spirits received
a slight check. The night seemed suddenly to have changed, to have
become more mysterious. He began to feel its mystery now, to be aware of
the strangeness of being out in the sea alone at such an hour. Upon the
shore he saw the forms of his companions, but they looked remote and
phantom-like. He did not hear their voices. Perhaps the slow approach of
dawn was beginning to affect them, and the little wind that was springing
up chilled their merriment and struck them to silence. Before him the
dense blackness of the rocks rose like a grotesque wall carved in
diabolic shapes, and as he stared at these shapes he had an odd fancy
that they were living things, and that they were watching him at his
labor. He could not get this idea, that he was being watched, out of his
head, and for a moment he forgot about the fish, and stood still, staring
at the monsters, whose bulky forms reared themselves up into the
moonlight from which they banished him.

"Signore! Signorino!"

There came to him a cry of protest from the shore. He started, moved
forward with the net, and went under water. He had stepped into a deep
hole. Still holding fast to the net, he came up to the surface, shook his
head, and struck out. As he did so he heard another cry, sharp yet
musical. But this cry did not come from the beach where his companions
were gathered. It rose from the blackness of the rocks close to him, and
it sounded like the cry of a woman. He winked his eyes to get the water
out of them, and swam for the rocks, heedless of his duty as a fisherman.
But the net impeded him, and again there was a shout from the shore:

"Signorino! Signorino! E' pazzo Lei?"

Reluctantly he turned and swam back to the shallow water. But when his
feet touched bottom he stood still. That cry of a woman from the mystery
of the rocks had startled, had fascinated his ears. Suddenly he
remembered that he must be near to that Casa delle Sirene, whose little
light he had seen from the terrace of the priest's house on his first
evening in Sicily. He longed to hear that woman's voice again. For a
moment he thought of it as the voice of a siren, of one of those beings
of enchantment who lure men on to their destruction, and he listened
eagerly, almost passionately, while the ruffled water eddied softly about
his breast. But no music stole to him from the blackness of the rocks,
and at last he turned slowly and waded to the shore.

He was met with merry protests. Nito declared that the net had nearly
been torn out of his hands. Gaspare, half undressed to go to his rescue,
anxiously inquired if he had come to any harm. The rocks were sharp as
razors near the point, and he might have cut himself to pieces upon them.
He apologized to Nito and showed Gaspare that he was uninjured. Then,
while the others began to count the fish, he went to the boats to put on
his clothes, accompanied by Gaspare.

"Why did you swim towards the rocks, signorino?" asked the boy, looking
at him with a sharp curiosity.

Delarey hesitated for a moment. He was inclined, he scarcely knew why, to
keep silence about the cry he had heard. Yet he wanted to ask Gaspare
something.

"Gaspare," he said, at last, as they reached the boats, "was any one of
you on the rocks over there just now?"

He had forgotten to number his companions when he reached the shore.
Perhaps one was missing, and had wandered towards the point to watch him
fishing.

"No, signore. Why do you ask?"

Again Delarey hesitated. Then he said:

"I heard some one call out to me there."

He began to rub his wet body with a towel.

"Call! What did they call?"

"Nothing; no words. Some one cried out."

"At this hour! Who should be there, signore?"

The action of the rough towel upon his body brought a glow of warmth to
Delarey, and the sense of mystery began to depart from his mind.

"Perhaps it was a fisherman," he said.

"They do not fish from there, signore. It must have been me you heard.
When you went under the water I cried out. Drink some wine, signorino."

He held a glass full of wine to Delarey's lips. Delarey drank.

"But you've got a man's voice, Gaspare!" he said, putting down the glass
and beginning to get into his clothes.

"Per Dio! Would you have me squeak like a woman, signore?"

Delarey laughed and said no more. But he knew it was not Gaspare's voice
he had heard.

The net was drawn up now for the last time, and as soon as Delarey had
dressed they set out to walk to the caves on the farther side of the
rocks, where they meant to sleep till Carmela was about and ready to make
the frittura. To reach them they had to clamber up from the beach to the
Messina road, mount a hill, and descend to the Caffe Berardi, a small,
isolated shanty which stood close to the sea, and was used in summer-time
by bathers who wanted refreshment. Nito and the rest walked on in front,
and Delarey followed a few paces behind with Gaspare. When they reached
the summit of the hill a great sweep of open sea was disclosed to their
view, stretching away to the Straits of Messina, and bounded in the far
distance by the vague outlines of the Calabrian Mountains. Here the wind
met them more sharply, and below them on the pebbles by the caffe they
could see the foam of breaking waves. But to the right, and nearer to
them, the sea was still as an inland pool, guarded by the tree-covered
hump of land on which stood the house of the sirens. This hump, which
would have been an islet but for the narrow wall of sheer rock which
joined it to the main-land, ran out into the sea parallel to the road.

On the height, Delarey paused for a moment, as if to look at the wide
view, dim and ethereal, under the dying moon.

"Is that Calabria?" he asked.

"Si, signore. And there is the caffe. The caves are beyond it. You cannot
see them from here. But you are not looking, signorino!"

The boy's quick eyes had noticed that Delarey was glancing towards the
tangle of trees, among which was visible a small section of the gray wall
of the house of the sirens.

"How calm the sea is there!" Delarey said, swiftly.

"Si, signore. That is where you can see the light in the window from our
terrace."

"There's no light now."

"How should there be? They are asleep. Andiamo?"

They followed the others, who were now out of sight. When they reached
the caves, Nito and the boys had already flung themselves down upon the
sand and were sleeping. Gaspare scooped out a hollow for Delarey, rolled
up his jacket as a pillow for his padrone's head, murmured a "Buon
riposo!" lay down near him, buried his face in his arms, and almost
directly began to breathe with a regularity that told its tale of
youthful, happy slumber.

It was dark in the cave and quite warm. The sand made a comfortable bed,
and Delarey was luxuriously tired after the long walk and the wading in
the sea. When he lay down he thought that he, too, would be asleep in a
moment, but sleep did not come to him, though he closed his eyes in
anticipation of it. His mind was busy in his weary body, and that little
cry of a woman still rang in his ears. He heard it like a song sung by a
mysterious voice in a place of mystery by the sea. Soon he opened his
eyes. Turning a little in the sand, away from his companions, he looked
out from the cave, across the sloping beach and the foam of the waves,
to the darkness of trees on the island. (So he called the place of the
siren's house to himself now, and always hereafter.) From the cave he
could not see the house, but only the trees, a formless, dim mass that
grew about it. The monotonous sound of wave after wave did not still the
cry in his ears, but mingled with it, as must have mingled with the song
of the sirens to Ulysses the murmur of breaking seas ever so long ago.
And he thought of a siren in the night stealing to a hidden place in the
rocks to watch him as he drew the net, breast high in the water. There
was romance in his mind to-night, new-born and strange. Sicily had put it
there with the wild sense of youth and freedom that still possessed him.
Something seemed to call him away from this cave of sleep, to bid his
tired body bestir itself once more. He looked at the dark forms of his
comrades, stretched in various attitudes of repose, and suddenly he knew
he could not sleep. He did not want to sleep. He wanted--what? He raised
himself to a sitting posture, then softly stood up, and with infinite
precaution stole out of the cave.

The coldness of the coming dawn took hold on him on the shore, and he saw
in the east a mysterious pallor that was not of the moon, and upon the
foam of the waves a light that was ghastly and that suggested infinite
weariness and sickness. But he did not say this to himself. He merely
felt that the night was quickly departing, and that he must hasten on his
errand before the day came.

He was going to search for the woman who had cried out to him in the sea.
And he felt as if she were a creature of the night, of the moon and of
the shadows, and as if he could never hope to find her in the glory of
the day.

VII

Delarey stole along the beach, walking lightly despite his fatigue. He
felt curiously excited, as if he were on the heels of some adventure. He
passed the Caffe Berardi almost like a thief in the night, and came to
the narrow strip of pebbles that edged the still and lakelike water,
protected by the sirens' isle. There he paused. He meant to gain that
lonely land, but how? By the water lay two or three boats, but they were
large and clumsy, impossible to move without aid. Should he climb up to
the Messina road, traverse the spit of ground that led to the rocky wall,
and try to make his way across it? The feat would be a difficult one, he
thought. But it was not that which deterred him. He was impatient of
delay, and the detour would take time. Between him and the islet was the
waterway. Already he had been in the sea. Why not go in again? He
stripped, packed his clothes into a bundle, tied roughly with a rope made
of his handkerchief and bootlaces, and waded in. For a long way the water
was shallow. Only when he was near to the island did it rise to his
breast, to his throat, higher at last. Holding the bundle on his head
with one hand, he struck out strongly and soon touched bottom again. He
scrambled out, dressed on a flat rock, then looked for a path leading
upward.

The ground was very steep, almost precipitous, and thickly covered with
trees and with undergrowth. This undergrowth concealed innumerable rocks
and stones which shifted under his feet and rolled down as he began to
ascend, grasping the bushes and the branches. He could find no path.
What did it matter? All sense of fatigue had left him. With the activity
of a cat he mounted. A tree struck him across the face. Another swept off
his hat. He felt that he had antagonists who wished to beat him back to
the sea, and his blood rose against them. He tore down a branch that
impeded him, broke it with his strong hands, and flung it away viciously.
His teeth were set and his nerves tingled, and he was conscious of the
almost angry joy of keen bodily exertion. The body--that was his God
to-night. How he loved it, its health and strength, its willingness, its
capacities! How he gloried in it! It had bounded down the mountain. It
had gone into the sea and revelled there. It had fished and swum. Now it
mounted upward to discovery, defying the weapons that nature launched
against it. Splendid, splendid body!

He fought with the trees and conquered them. His trampling feet sent the
stones leaping downward to be drowned in the sea. His swift eyes found
the likely places for a foothold. His sinewy hands forced his enemies to
assist him in the enterprise they hated. He came out on to the plateau at
the summit of the island and stood still, panting, beside the house that
hid there.

Its blind, gray wall confronted him coldly in the dimness, one shuttered
window, like a shut eye, concealing the interior, the soul of the house
that lay inside its body. In this window must have been set the light he
had seen from the terrace. He wished there were a light burning now. Had
he swum across the inlet and fought his way up through the wood only to
see a gray wall, a shuttered window? That cry had come from the rocks,
yet he had been driven by something within him to this house,
connecting--he knew not why--the cry with it and with the far-off light
that had been like a star caught in the sea. Now he said to himself that
he should have gone back to the rocks and sought the siren there. Should
he go now? He hesitated for a moment, leaning against the wall of the
house.

"Maju torna, maju veni
Cu li belli soi ciureri;
Oh chi pompa chi nni fa;
Maju torna, maju e cca!

"Maju torna, maju vinni,
Duna isca a li disinni;
Vinni riccu e ricchi fa,
Maju viva! Maju e cca!"

He heard a girl's voice singing near him, whether inside the house or
among the trees he could not at first tell. It sang softly yet gayly, as
if the sun were up and the world were awake, and when it died away
Delarey felt as if the singer must be in the dawn, though he stood still
in the night. He put his ear to the shuttered window and listened.

"L'haju; nun l'haju?"

The voice was speaking now with a sort of whimsical and half-pathetic
merriment, as if inclined to break into laughter at its own childish
wistfulness.

"M'ama; nun m'ama?"

It broke off. He heard a little laugh. Then the song began again:

"Maju viju, e maju cogghiu,
Bona sorti di Diu vogghiu;
Ciuri di maju cogghiu a la campia,
Diu, pinzaticci vu a la sorti mia!"

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