The Call of the Blood - Page 129/317

When the cards were thrown upon the table, and Maurice had dealt out a

lira to each one of the players as stakes, and cried, "Maddalena and I'll

share against you, Salvatore, and Gaspare!" she felt that she had nothing

more to wish for, that she was perfectly happy. But she was happier still

when, after a series of games, Maurice pushed back his chair and said: "I've had enough. Salvatore, you are like Gaspare, you have the devil's

luck. Together you can't be beaten. But now you play against each other

and let's see who wins. I'll put down twenty-five lire. Play till one of

you's won every soldo of it. Play all night if you like."

And he counted out the little paper notes on the table, giving two to

Salvatore and two to Gaspare, and putting one under a candlestick.

"I'll keep the score," he added, pulling out a pencil and a sheet of

paper. "No play higher than fifty, with a lira when one of you makes

'sette e mezzo' with under four cards."

"Per Dio!" cried Gaspare, flushed with excitement. "Avanti, Salvatore!"

"Avanti, Avanti!" cried Salvatore, in answer, pulling his chair close up

to the table, and leaning forward, looking like a handsome bird of prey

in the faint candlelight.

They cut for deal and began to play, while Maddalena and Maurice watched.

When Sicilians gamble they forget everything but the game and the money

which it brings to them or takes from them. Salvatore and Gaspare were at

once passionately intent on their cards, and as the night drew on and

fortune favored first one and then the other, they lost all thought of

everything except the twenty-five lire which were at stake. When

Maddalena slipped away into the darkness they did not notice her

departure, and when Maurice laid down the paper on which he had tried to

keep the score, and followed her, they were indifferent. They needed no

score-keeper, for they had Sicilian memories for money matters. Over the

table they leaned, the two candles, now burning low, illuminating their

intense faces, their violent eyes, their brown hands that dealt and

gathered up the cards, and held them warily, alert for the cheating that

in Sicily, when possible, is ever part of the game.

"Carta da cinquanta!"

They had forgotten Maurice's limit for the stakes.

"Carta da cento!"

Their voices died away from Maurice's ears as he stole through the

darkness seeking Maddalena.

Where had she gone, and why? The last question he could surely answer,

for as she stole past him silently, her long, mysterious eyes, that

seemed to hold in their depths some enigma of the East, had rested on his

with a glance that was an invitation. They had not boldly summoned him.

They had lured him, as an echo might, pathetic in its thrilling frailty.

And now, as he walked softly over the dry grass, he thought of those eyes

as he had first seen them in the pale light that had preceded the dawn.

Then they had been full of curiosity, like a young animal's. Now surely

they were changed. Once they had asked a question. They delivered a

summons to-night. What was in them to-night? The mystery of young

maidenhood, southern, sunlit, on the threshold of experience, waking to

curious knowledge, to a definite consciousness of the meaning of its

dreams, of the truth of its desires.