The Call of the Blood - Page 119/317

"Signorino! Signorino!"

Maurice lifted his head lazily from the hands that served it as a pillow,

and called out, sleepily: "Che cosa c'é?"

"Where are you, signorino?"

"Down here under the oak-trees."

He sank back again, and looked up at the section of deep-blue sky that

was visible through the leaves. How he loved the blue, and gloried in the

first strong heat that girdled Sicily to-day, and whispered to his happy

body that summer was near, the true and fearless summer that comes to

southern lands. Through all his veins there crept a subtle sense of

well-being, as if every drop of his blood were drowsily rejoicing. Three

days had passed, had glided by, three radiant nights, warm, still,

luxurious. And with each his sense of the south had increased, and with

each his consciousness of being nearer to the breast of Sicily. In those

days and nights he had not looked into a book or glanced at a paper. What

had he done? He scarcely knew. He had lived and felt about him the

fingers of the sun touching him like a lover. And he had chattered idly

to Gaspare about Sicilian things, always Sicilian things; about the fairs

and the festivals, Capo d'Anno and Carnevale, martedì grasso with its

Tavulata, the solemn family banquet at which all the relations assemble

and eat in company, the feasts of the different saints, the peasant

marriages and baptisms, the superstitions--Gaspare did not call them

so--that are alive in Sicily, and that will surely live till Sicily is

no more; the fear of the evil-eye and of spells, and the best means of

warding them off, the "guaj di lu linu," the interpretation of dreams,

the power of the Mafia, the legends of the brigands, and the vanished

glory of Musolino. Gaspare talked without reserve to his padrone, as to

another Sicilian, and Maurice was never weary of listening. All that was

of Sicily caught his mind and heart, was full of meaning to him, and of

irresistible fascination. He had heard the call of the blood once for all

and had once for all responded to it.

But the nights he had loved best. For then he slept under the stars. When

ten o'clock struck he and Gaspare carried out one of the white beds onto

the terrace, and he slipped into it and lay looking up at the clear sky,

and at the dimness of the mountain flank, and at the still silhouettes of

the trees, till sleep took him, while Gaspare, rolled up in a rug of many

colors, snuggled up on the seat by the wall with his head on a cushion

brought for him by the respectful Lucrezia. And they awoke at dawn to see

the last star fade above the cone of Etna, and the first spears of the

sun thrust up out of the stillness of the sea.