The Call of the Blood Part 40

"Signorino! Signorino!"

He did not protest, for now they were down by the sea, and saw the fishing-boats swaying gently on the water.

"Get in Maddalena. I will row."

He untied the rope, while she stepped lightly in, then he pushed the boat off, jumping in himself from the rocks.

"You are like a fisherman, signore," said Maddalena.

He smiled and drew the great bladed oars slowly through the calm water, leaning towards her with each stroke and looking into her eyes.

"I wish I were really a fisherman," he said, "like your father!"

"Why, signore?" she asked, in astonishment.

"Because it's a free life, because it's a life I should love."

She still looked at him with surprise.

"But a fisherman has few soldi, signorino."

"Maddalena," he said, letting the oars drift in the water, "there's only one good thing in the world, and that is to be free in a life that is natural to one."

He drew up his feet onto the wooden bench and clasped his hands round his knees, and sat thus, looking at her while she faced him in the stern of the boat. He had not turned the boat round. So Maddalena had her face towards the land, while his was set towards the open sea.

"It isn't having many soldi that makes happiness," he went on. "Gaspare thinks it is, and Lucrezia, and I dare say your father would--"

"Oh yes, signore! In Sicily we all think so!"

"And so they do in England. But it isn't true."

"But if you have many soldi you can do anything."

He shook his head.

"No you can't. I have plenty of soldi, but I can't always live here, I can't always live as I do now. Some day I shall have to go away from Sicily--I shall have to go back and live in London."

As he said the last words he seemed to see London rise up before him in the night, with shadowy domes and towers and chimneys; he seemed to hear through the exquisite silence of night upon the sea the mutter of its many voices.

"It's beastly there! It's beastly!"

And he set his teeth almost viciously.

"Why must you go, then, signorino?"

"Why? Oh, I have work to do."

"But if you are rich why must you work?"

"Well--I--I can't explain in Italian. But my father expects me to."

"To get more rich?"

"Yes, I suppose."

"But if you are rich why cannot you live as you please?"

"I don't know, Maddalena. But the rich scarcely ever live really as they please, I think. Their soldi won't let them, perhaps."

"I don't understand, signore."

"Well, a man must do something, must get on, and if I lived always here I should do nothing but enjoy myself."

He was silent for a minute. Then he said:

"And that's all I want to do, just to enjoy myself here in the sun."

"Are you happy here, signorino?"

"Yes, tremendously happy."

"Why?"

"Why--because it's Sicily here! Aren't you happy?"

"I don't know, signorino."

She said it with simplicity and looked at him almost as if she were inquiring of him whether she were happy or not. That look tempted him.

"Don't you know whether you are happy to-night?" he asked, putting an emphasis on the last word, and looking at her more steadily, almost cruelly.

"Oh, to-night--it is a festa."

"A festa? Why?"

"Why? Because it is different from other nights. On other nights I am alone with my father."

"And to-night you are alone with me. Does that make it a festa?"

She looked down.

"I don't know, signorino."

The childish merriment and slyness had gone out of her now, and there was a softness almost of sentimentality in her att.i.tude, as she drooped her head and moved one hand to and fro on the gunwale of the boat, touching the wood, now here, now there, as if she were picking up something and dropping it gently into the sea.

Suddenly Maurice wondered about Maddalena. He wondered whether she had ever had a Sicilian lover, whether she had one now.

"You are not 'promised,' are you, Maddalena?" he asked, leaning a little nearer to her. He saw the red come into her brown skin. She shook her head without looking up or speaking.