The Call of the Blood - Page 48/317

"This sun's made me mad, I think," he said, looking at her. "Why, how

pale you are, Hermione!"

"Am I? No, it must be the shadow of the awning makes me look so. Oh,

Maurice, you are indeed a southerner! Do you know, I feel--I feel as if I

had never really seen you till now, here on this terrace, as if I had

never known you as you are till now, now that I've watched you dance the

tarantella."

"I can't dance it, of course. It was absurd of me to try."

"Ask Gaspare! No, I'll ask him. Gaspare, can the padrone dance the

tarantella?"

"Eh--altro!" said Gaspare, with admiring conviction.

He got off Giuseppe's knee, where he had been curled up almost like a big

kitten, came and stood by Hermione, and added: "Per Dio, signora, but the padrone is like one of us!"

Hermione laughed. Now that the dance was over and the twittering flute

was silent, her sense of loneliness and melancholy was departing. Soon,

no doubt, she would be able to look back upon it and laugh at it as one

laughs at moods that have passed away.

"This is his first day in Sicily, Gaspare."

"There are forestieri who come here every year, and who stay for months,

and who can talk our language--yes, and can even swear in dialetto as we

can--but they are not like the padrone. Not one of them could dance the

tarantella like that. Per Dio!"

A radiant look of pleasure came into Maurice's face.

"I'm glad you've brought me here," he said. "Ah, when you chose this

place for our honeymoon you understood me better than I understand

myself, Hermione."

"Did I?" she said, slowly. "But no, Maurice, I think I chose a little

selfishly. I was thinking of what I wanted. Oh, the boys are going, and

Sebastiano."

That evening, when they had finished supper--they did not wish to test

Lucrezia's powers too severely by dining the first day--they came out

onto the terrace. Lucrezia and Gaspare were busily talking in the

kitchen. Tito, the donkey, was munching his hay under the low-pitched

roof of the out-house. Now and then they could faintly hear the sound of

his moving jaws, Lucrezia's laughter, or Gaspare's eager voice. These

fragmentary noises scarcely disturbed the great silence that lay about

them, the night hush of the mountains and the sea. Hermione sat down on

the seat in the terrace wall looking over the ravine. It was a moonless

night, but the sky was clear and spangled with stars. There was a cool

breeze blowing from Etna. Here and there upon the mountains shone

solitary lights, and one was moving slowly through the darkness along the

crest of a hill opposite to them, a torch carried by some peasant going

to his hidden cottage among the olive-trees.