That day, ere he started with Gaspare for the house of the priest,
Maurice made a promise to Maddalena. He pledged himself to go with her
and her father to the great fair of San Felice, which takes place
annually in the early days of June, when the throng of tourists has
departed, and the long heats of the summer have not yet fully set in. He
gave this promise in the presence of Salvatore and Gaspare, and while he
did so he was making up his mind to something. That day at the fair
should be the day of his farewell to Maddalena. Hermione must surely be
coming back in June. It was impossible that she could remain in Kairouan
later. The fury of the African summer would force her to leave the sacred
city, her mission of salvation either accomplished or rendered forever
futile by the death of her friend. And then, when Hermione came, within a
short time no doubt they would start for England, taking Gaspare with
them. For Maurice really meant to keep the boy in their service. After
the strange scene of the morning he felt as if Gaspare were one of the
family, a retainer with whose devoted protection he could never dispense.
Hermione, he was sure, would not object.
Hermione would not object. As he thought that, Maurice was conscious of a
feeling such as sometimes moves a child, upon whom a parent or guardian
has laid a gently restraining hand, violently to shrug his shoulders and
twist his body in the effort to get away and run wild in freedom. He knew
how utterly unreasonable and contemptible his sensation was, yet he had
it. The sun had bred in him not merely a passion for complete personal
liberty, but for something more, for lawlessness. For a moment he envied
Gaspare, the peasant boy, whose ardent youth was burdened with so few
duties to society, with so few obligations.
What was expected of Gaspare? Only a willing service, well paid, which he
could leave forever at any moment he pleased. To his family he must, no
doubt, give some of his earnings, but in return he was looked up to by
all, even by his father, as a little god. And in everything else was not
he free, wonderfully free in this island of the south, able to be
careless, unrestrained, wild as a young hawk, yet to remain uncondemned,
unwondered at?
And he--Maurice?
He thought of Hermione's ardent and tenderly observant eyes with a sort
of terror. If she could know or even suspect his feelings of the previous
night, what a tragedy he would be at once involved in! The very splendor
of Hermione's nature, the generous nobility of her character, would make
that tragedy the more poignant. She felt with such intensity, she thought
she had so much. Careless though his own nature was, doubly careless here
in Sicily, Maurice almost sickened at the idea of her ever suspecting the
truth, that he was capable of being strongly drawn towards a girl like
Maddalena, that he could feel as if a peasant who could neither read nor
write caught at something within him that was like the essence of his
life, like the core of that by which he enjoyed, suffered, desired.