The Call of the Blood Part 33

He came up to them. Maddalena's oval face had flushed, and she dropped the full lids over her black eyes as she said:

"Buon giorno, Gaspare."

"Buon giorno, Donna Maddalena."

Then they stood there for a moment in silence. Maurice was the first to speak again.

"But why did you come here?" he said. "How did you know?"

Already the sparkle of merriment had dropped out of Gaspare's face as the feeling of jealousy, of not having been completely trusted, returned to his mind.

"Did not the signore wish me to know?" he said, almost gruffly, with a sort of sullen violence. "I am sorry."

Maurice touched the back of his hand, giving it a gentle, half-humorous slap.

"Don't be an a.s.s, Gaspare. But how could you guess where I had gone?"

"Where did you go before, signore, when you could not sleep?"

At this thrust Maurice imitated Maddalena and reddened slightly. It seemed to him as if he had been living under gla.s.s while he had fancied himself enclosed in rock that was impenetrable by human eyes. He tried to laugh away his slight confusion.

"Gaspare, you are the most birbante boy in Sicily!" he said. "You are like a Mago Africano."

"Signorino, you should trust me," returned the boy, sullenly.

His own words seemed to move him, as if their sound revealed to him the whole of the injury that had been inflicted upon his amour propre, and suddenly angry tears started into his eyes.

"I thought I was a servant of confidence" (un servitore di confidenza), he added, bitterly.

Maurice was amazed at the depth of feeling thus abruptly shown to him.

This was the first time he had been permitted to look for a moment deep down into that strange volcano, a young and pa.s.sionate Sicilian heart. As he looked, swift and short as was his glance, his amazement died away.

Narcissus saw himself in the stream. Maurice saw, or believed he saw, his heart's image, trembling perhaps and indistinct, far down in the pa.s.sion of Gaspare. So could he have been with a padrone had fate made his situation in life a different one. So could he have felt had something been concealed from him.

Maurice said nothing in reply. Maddalena was there. They walked in silence to the cottage door, and there, rather like a detected school-boy, he bade her good-bye, and set out through the trees with Gaspare.

"That's not the way, is it?" Maurice said, presently, as the boy turned to the left.

"How did you come, signore?"

"I!"

He hesitated. Then he saw the uselessness of striving to keep up a master's pose with this servant of the sea and of the hills.

"I came by water," he said, smiling. "I swam, Gasparino."

The boy answered the smile, and suddenly the tension between them was broken, and they were at their ease again.

"I will show you another way, signore, if you are not afraid."

Maurice laughed out gayly.

"The way of the rocks?" he said.

"Si, signore. But you must go barefooted and be as nimble as a goat."

"Do you doubt me, Gasparino?"

He looked at the boy hard, with a deliberately quizzing kindness, that was gay but asked forgiveness, too, and surely promised amendment.

"I have never doubted my padrone."

They said nothing more till they were at the wall of rock. Then Gaspare seemed struck by hesitation.

"Perhaps--" he began. "You are not accustomed to the rocks, signore, and--"

"Silenzio!" cried Maurice, bending down and pulling off his boots and stockings.

"Do like this, signore!"

Gaspare slung his boots and stockings round his neck. Maurice imitated him.

"And now give me your hand--so--without pulling."

"But you hadn't--"

"Give me your hand, signore!"

It was an order. Maurice obeyed it, feeling that in these matters Gaspare had the right to command.

"Walk as I do, signore, and keep step with me."

"Bene!"

"And look before you. Don't look down at the sea."

"Va bene."

A moment, and they were across. Maurice blew out his breath.

"By Jove!" he said, in English.

He sat down on the gra.s.s, put his hand on his knees, and looked back at the rock and at the precipices.

"I'm glad I can do that!" he said.

Something within him was revelling, was dancing a tarantella as the sun came up, lifting its blood-red rim above the sea-line in the east. He looked over the trees.

"Maddalena saw us!" he cried.