The Call of the Blood - Page 115/317

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 grass, 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.

He had caught sight of her among the olive-trees watching them, with her

two hands held flat against her breast.