Chapter 22

"Help me down the bank! Come on!"

He began to run, pulling Gaspare with him. When they got to the bottom, he said:

"It's all right, Gaspare. I'm not going to be such a fool as to buy a cart. Now, then, which way are we going?"

"Signore, do you want to buy a very good donkey, a very strong donkey, strong enough to carry three Germans to the top of Etna? Come and see my donkey. He is very cheap. I make a special price because the signore is simpatico. All the English are simpatici. Come this way, signore! Gaspare knows me. Gaspare knows that I am not birbante."

"Signorino! Signorino! Look at this clock! It plays the 'Tre Colori.' It is worth twenty-five lire, but I will make a special price for you because you love Sicily and are like a Siciliano. Gaspare will tell you----"

But Gaspare elbowed away his acquaintances roughly.

"Let my padrone alone. He is not here to buy. He is only here to see the fair. Come on, signorino! Do not answer them. Do not take any notice. You must not buy anything or you will be cheated. Let me make the prices."

"Yes, you make the prices. Per Bacco, how hot it is!"

Maurice pulled his hat down over his eyes.

"Maddalena, you'll get a sunstroke!" he said.

"Oh no, signore. I am accustomed to the sun."

"But to-day it's terrific!"

Indeed, the masses of stones in the watercourse seemed to draw and to concentrate the sun-rays. The air was alive with minute and dancing specks of light, and in the distance, seen under the railway bridge, the sea looked hot, a fiery blue that was surely sweating in the glare of the afternoon. The crowd of donkeys, of cattle, of pigs--there were many pigs on sale--looked both dull and angry in the heat, and the swarms of Sicilians who moved slowly about among them, examining them critically, appraising their qualities and noting their defects, perspired in their festa clothes, which were mostly heavy and ill-adapted to summer-time. A small boy passed by, bearing in his arms a struggling turkey. He caught his foot in some stones, fell, bruised his forehead, and burst out crying, while the indignant and terrified bird broke away, leaving some feathers, and made off violently towards Etna. There was a roar of laughter from the people near. Some ran to catch the turkey, others picked up the boy. Salvatore had stopped to see this adventure, and was now at a little distance surrounded by the Catanesi, who were evidently determined to assist at his bidding for a donkey. The sight of the note for a hundred lire had greatly increased their respect for Salvatore, and with the Sicilian instinct to go, and to stay, where money is, they now kept close to their comrade, eying him almost with awe as one in possession of a fortune. Maurice saw them presently examining a group of donkeys. Salvatore, with an autocratic air, and the wild gestures peculiar to him, was evidently laying down the law as to what each animal was worth. The fishermen stood by, listening attentively. The fact of Salvatore's purchasing power gave him the right to pronounce an opinion. He was in glory. Maurice thanked Heaven for that. The man in glory is often the forgetful man. Salvatore, he thought, would not bother about his daughter and his banker for a little while. But how to get rid of Gaspare and Amedeo! It seemed to him that they would never leave his side.

There were many wooden stands covered with goods for sale in the watercourse, with bales of stuff for suits and dresses, with hats and caps, shirts, cravats, boots and shoes, walking-sticks, shawls, household utensils, crockery, everything the contadino needs and loves. Gaspare, having money to lay out, considered it his serious duty to examine everything that was to be bought with slow minuteness. It did not matter whether the goods were suited to a masculine taste or not. He went into the mysteries of feminine attire with almost as much assiduity as a mother displays when buying a daughter's trousseau, and insisted upon Maurice sharing his interest and caution. All sense of humor, all boyish sprightliness vanished from him in this important epoch of his life. The suspicion, the intensity of the bargaining contadino came to the surface. His usually bright face was quite altered. He looked elderly, subtle, and almost Jewish as he slowly passed from stall to stall, testing, weighing, measuring, appraising.

It seemed to Maurice that this progress would never end. Presently they reached a stand covered with women's shawls and with aprons.

"Shall I buy an apron for my mother, signorino?" asked Gaspare.

"Yes, certainly."

Maurice did not know what else to say. The result of his consent was terrible. For a full half-hour they stood in the glaring sun, while Gaspare and Amedeo solemnly tried on aprons over their suits in the midst of a concourse of attentive contadini. In vain did Maurice say: "That's a pretty one. I should take that one." Some defect was always discoverable. The distant mother's taste was evidently peculiar and not to be easily suited, and Maurice, not being familiar with it, was unable to combat such assertions of Gaspare as that she objected to pink spots, or that she could never be expected to put on an apron before the neighbors if the stripes upon it were of different colors and there was no stitching round the hem. For the first time since he was in Sicily the heat began to affect him unpleasantly. His head felt as if it were compressed in an iron band, and the vision of Gaspare, eagerly bargaining, looking Jewish, and revolving slowly in aprons of different colors, shapes, and sizes, began to dance before his eyes. He felt desperate, and suddenly resolved to be frank.

"Macchè!" Gaspare was exclaiming, with indignant gestures of protest to the elderly couple who were in charge of the aprons; "it is not worth two soldi! It is not fit to be thrown to the pigs, and you ask me----"

"Gaspare!"

"Two lire--Madonna! Sangue di San Pancrazio, they ask me two lire! Macchè!" (He flung down the apron passionately upon the stall.) "Go and find Lipari people to buy your dirt; don't come to one from Marechiaro."

He took up another apron.

"Gaspare!"

"One lira fifty? Madre mia, do you think I was born in a grotto on Etna and have never----"

"Gaspare, listen to me!"

"Scusi, signorino! I----"

"I'm going over there to sit down in the shade for a minute. After that wine I drank at dinner I'm a bit sleepy."

"Si, signore. Shall I come with you?"

For once there was reluctance in his voice, and he looked down at the blue-and-white apron he had on with wistful eyes. It was a new joy to him to be bargaining in the midst of an attentive throng of his compatriots.

"No, no. You stay here and spend the money. Bid for the clock when the auction comes on."

"Oh, signore, but you must be here, too, then."

"All right. Come and fetch me if you like. I shall be over there under the trees."

He waved his hand vaguely towards the lemon groves.

"Now, choose a good apron. Don't let them cheat you."

"Macchè!"

The boy laughed loudly, and turned eagerly to the stall again.

"Come, Maddalena!"

Maurice drew her quickly, anxiously, out of the crowd, and they began to walk across the watercourse towards the farther bank and the group of olive-trees. Salvatore had forgotten them. So had Gaspare. Both father and servant were taken by the fascination of the fair. At last! But how late it must be! How many hours had already fled away! Maurice scarcely dared to look at his watch. He feared to see the time. While they walked he said nothing to Maddalena, but when they reached the bank he took her arm and helped her up it, and when they were at the top he drew a long breath.

"Are you tired, signorino?"

"Tired--yes, of all those people. Come and sit down, Maddalena, under the olive-trees."

He took her by the hand. Her hand was warm and dry, pleasant to touch, to hold. As he felt it in his the desire to strike at Salvatore revived within him. Salvatore was laughing at him, was triumphing over him, triumphing in the get-all and give-nothing policy which he thought he was pursuing with such complete success. Would it be very difficult to turn that success into failure? Maurice wondered for a moment, then ceased to wonder. Something in the touch of Maddalena's hand told him that, if he chose, he could have his revenge upon Salvatore, and he was assailed by a double temptation. Both anger and love tempted him. If he stooped to do evil he could gratify two of the strongest desires in humanity, the desire to conquer in love and the desire to triumph in hate. Salvatore thought him such a fool, held him in such contempt! Something within him was burning to-day as a cheek burns with shame, something within him that was like the kernel of him, like the soul of his manhood, which the fisherman was sneering at. He did not say to himself strongly that he did not care what such men thought of him. He could not, for his nature was both reckless and sensitive. He did care, as if he had been a Sicilian half doubtful whether he dared to show his face in the piazza. And he had another feeling, too, which had come to him when Salvatore had answered his exclamation of irresistible anger at being called "compare," the feeling that, whether he sinned against the fisherman or not, the fisherman meant to do him harm. The sensation might be absurd, would have seemed to him probably absurd in England. Here, in Sicily, it sprang up and he had just to accept it, as a man accepts an instinct which guides him, prompts him.

Salvatore had turned down his thumb that day.

Maurice was not afraid of him. Physically, he was quite fearless. But this sensation of having been secretly condemned made him feel hard, cruel, ready, perhaps, to do a thing not natural to him, to sacrifice another who had never done him wrong. At that moment it seemed to him that it would be more manly to triumph over Salvatore by a double betrayal than to "run straight," conquer himself and let men not of his code think of him as they would.

Not of his code! But what was his code? Was it that of England or that of Sicily? Which strain of blood was governing him to-day? Which strain would govern him finally? Artois would have had an interesting specimen under his observant eyes had he been at the fair of San Felice.

Maddalena willingly obeyed Maurice's suggestion.

"Get well into the shade," he said. "There's just enough to hold us, if we sit close together. You don't mind that, do you?"

"No, signore."

"Put your back against the trunk--there."

He kept his hat off. Over the railway line from the hot-looking sea there came a little breeze that just moved his short hair and the feathers of gold about Maddalena's brow. In the watercourse, but at some distance, they saw the black crowd of men and women and beasts swarming over the hot stones.

"How can they?" Maurice muttered, as he looked down.

"Cosa?"

He laughed.

"I was thinking out loud. I meant how can they bargain and bother hour after hour in all that sun!"

"But, signorino, you would not have them pay too much!" she said, very seriously. "It is dreadful to waste soldi."

"I suppose--yes, of course it is. Oh, but there are so many things worth more than soldi. Dio mio! Let's forget all that!"

He waved his hand towards the crowd, but he saw that Maddalena was preoccupied. She glanced towards the watercourse rather wistfully.

"What is it, Maddalena? Ah, I know! The blue dress and the ear-rings! Per Bacco!"

"No, signore--no, signore!"

She disclaimed quickly, reddening.

"Yes, it is. I had forgotten. But we can't go now. Maddalena, we will buy them this evening. Directly it gets cool we'll go, directly we've rested a little. But don't think of them now. I've promised, and I always keep a promise. Now, don't think of that any more!"

He spoke with a sort of desperation. The fair seemed to be his enemy, and he had thought that it would be his friend. It was like a personage with a stronger influence than his, an influence that could take away that which he wished to retain, to fix upon himself.

"No, signore," Maddalena said, meekly, but still wistfully.

"Do you care for a blue dress and a pair of ear-rings more than you do for me?" cried Maurice, with sudden roughness. "Are you like your father? Do you only care for me for what you can get out of me? I believe you do!"

Maddalena looked startled, almost terrified, by his outburst. Her lips trembled, but she gazed at him steadily.

"Non è vero."

The words sounded almost stern.

"I do--" he said. "I do want to be cared for a little--just for myself."

At that moment he had a sensation of loneliness like that of an utterly unloved man. And yet at that moment a great love was travelling to him--a love that was complete and flawless. But he did not think of it. He only thought that perhaps all this time he had been deceived, that Maddalena, like her father, was merely pleased to see him because he had money and could spend it. He sickened.

"Non è vero!" Maddalena repeated.

Her lips still trembled. Maurice looked at her doubtfully, yet with a sudden tenderness. Always when she looked troubled, even for an instant, there came to him the swift desire to protect her, to shield her.

"But why should you care for me?" he said. "It is better not. For I am going away, and probably you will never see me again."

Tears came into Maddalena's eyes. He did not know whether they were summoned by his previous roughness or his present pathos. He wanted to know.

"Probably I shall never come back to Sicily again," he said, with pressure.

She said nothing.

"It will be better not," he added. "Much better."

Now he was speaking for himself.

"There's something here, something that I love and that's bad for me. I'm quite changed here. I'm like another man."

He saw a sort of childish surprise creeping into her face.

"Why, signorino?" she murmured.

He kept his hand on hers and held it on the warm ground.

"Perhaps it is the sun," he said. "I lose my head here, and I--lose my heart!"

She still looked rather surprised, and again her ignorance fascinated him. He thought that it was far more attractive than any knowledge could have been.

"I'm horribly happy here, but I oughtn't to be happy."

"Why, signorino? It is better to be happy."

"Per Dio!" he exclaimed.

Now a deep desire to have his revenge upon Salvatore came to him, but not at all because it would hurt Salvatore. The cruelty had gone out of him. Maddalena's eyes of a child had driven it away. He wanted his revenge only because it would be an intense happiness to him to have it. He wanted it because it would satisfy an imperious desire of tender passion, not because it would infuriate a man who hated him. He forgot the father in the daughter.

"Suppose I were quite poor, Maddalena!" he said.

"But you are very rich, signorino."

"But suppose I were poor, like Gaspare, for instance. Suppose I were as I am, just the same, only a contadino, or a fisherman, as your father is. And suppose--suppose"--he hesitated--"suppose that I were not married!"

She said nothing. She was listening with deep but still surprised attention.

"Then I could--I could go to your father and ask him----"

He stopped.

"What could you ask him, signorino?"

"Can't you guess?"

"No, signore."

"I might ask him to let me marry you. I should--if it were like that--I should ask him to let me marry you."

"Davvero?"

An expression of intense pleasure, and of something more--of pride--had come into her face. She could not divest herself imaginatively of her conception of him as a rich forestiere, and she saw herself placed high above "the other girls," turned into a lady.

"Magari!" she murmured, drawing in her breath, then breathing out.

"You would be happy if I did that?"

"Magari!" she said again.

He did not know what the word meant, but he thought it sounded like the most complete expression of satisfaction he had ever heard.

"I wish," he said, pressing her hand--"I wish I were a Sicilian of Marechiaro."

At this moment, while he was speaking, he heard in the distance the shrill whistle of an engine. It ceased. Then it rose again, piercing, prolonged, fierce surely with inquiry. He put his hands to his ears.

"How beastly that is!" he exclaimed.

He hated it, not only for itself, but for the knowledge it sharply recalled to his mind, the knowledge of exactly what he was doing, and of the facts of his life, the facts that the very near future held.

"Why do they do that?" he added, with intense irritation.

"Because of the bridge, signorino. They want to know if they can come upon the bridge. Look! There is the man waving a flag. Now they can come. It is the train from Palermo."

"Palermo!" he said, sharply.

"Si, signore."

"But the train from Palermo comes the other way, by Messina!"

"Si, signore. But there are two, one by Messina and one by Catania. Ecco!"

From the lemon groves came the rattle of the approaching train.

"But--but----"

He caught at his watch, pulled it out.

Five o'clock!

He had taken his hand from Maddalena's, and now he made a movement as if to get up. But he did not get up. Instead, he pressed back against the olive-tree, upon whose trunk he was leaning, as if he wished to force himself into the gnarled wood of it. He had an instinct to hide. The train came on very slowly. During the two or three minutes that elapsed before it was in his view Maurice lived very rapidly. He felt sure that Hermione and Artois were in the train. Hermione had said that they would arrive at Cattaro at five-thirty. She had not said which way they were coming. Maurice had assumed that they would come from Messina because Hermione had gone away by that route. It was a natural error. But now? If they were at the carriage window! If they saw him! And surely they must see him. The olive-trees were close to the line and on a level with it. He could not get away. If he got up he would be more easily seen. Hermione would call out to him. If he pretended not to hear she might, she probably would, get out of the train at the San Felice station and come into the fair. She was impulsive. It was just the sort of thing she might do. She would do it. He was sure she would do it. He looked at the watercourse hard. The crowd of people was not very far off. He thought he detected the form of Gaspare. Yes, it was Gaspare. He and Amedeo were on the outskirts of the crowd near the railway bridge. As he gazed, the train whistled once more, and he saw Gaspare turn round and look towards the sea. He held his breath.

"Ecco, signorino. Viene!"

Maddalena touched his arm, kept her hand upon it. She was deeply interested in this event, the traversing by the train of the unfinished bridge. Maurice was thankful for that. At least she did not notice his violent perturbation.

"Look, signorino! Look!"

In despite of himself, Maurice obeyed her. He wanted not to look, but he could not help looking. The engine, still whistling, crept out from the embrace of the lemon-trees, with the dingy line of carriages behind it. At most of the windows there were heads of people looking out. Third class--he saw soldiers, contadini. Second class--no one. Now the first-class carriages were coming. They were close to him.

"Ah!"

He had seen Hermione. She was standing up, with her two hands resting on the door-frame and her head and shoulders outside of the carriage. Maurice sat absolutely still and stared at her, stared at her almost as if she were a stranger passing by. She was looking at the watercourse, at the crowd, eagerly. Her face, much browner than when she had left Sicily, was alight with excitement, with happiness. She was radiant. Yet he thought she looked old, older at least than he had remembered. Suddenly, as the train came very slowly upon the bridge, she drew in to speak to some one behind her, and he saw vaguely Artois, pale, with a long beard. He was seated, and he, too, was gazing out at the fair. He looked ill, but he, too, looked happy, much happier than he had in London. He put up a thin hand and stroked his beard, and Maurice saw wrinkles coming round his eyes as he smiled at something Hermione said to him. The train came to the middle of the bridge and stopped.

"Ecco!" murmured Maddalena. "The man at the other end has signalled!"

Maurice looked again at the watercourse. Gaspare was beyond the crowd now, and was staring at the train with interest, like Maddalena. Would it never go on? Maurice set his teeth and cursed it silently. And his soul said; "Go on! Go on!" again and again. "Go on! Go on!" Now Hermione was once more leaning out. Surely she must see Gaspare. A man waved a flag. The train jerked back, jangled, crept forward once more, this time a little faster. In a moment they would begone. Thank God! But what was Hermione doing? She started. She leaned further forward, staring into the watercourse. Maurice saw her face changing. A look of intense surprise, of intense inquiry, came into it. She took one hand swiftly from the door, put it behind her--ah, she had a pair of opera-glasses at her eyes now! The train went on faster. It was nearly off the bridge. But she was waving her hand. She was calling. She had seen Gaspare. And he? Maurice saw him start forward as if to run to the bridge. But the train was gone. The boy stopped, hesitated, then dashed away across the stones.

"Signorino! Signorino!"

Maurice said nothing.

"Signorino!" repeated Maddalena. "Look at Gaspare! Is he mad? Look! How he is running!"

Gaspare reached the bank, darted up it, and disappeared into the village.

"Signorino, what is the matter?"

Maddalena pulled his sleeve. She was looking almost alarmed.

"Matter? Nothing."

Maurice got up. He could not remain still. It was all over now. The fair was at an end for him. Gaspare would reach the station before the train went on, would explain matters. Hermione would get out. Already Maurice seemed to see her coming down to the watercourse, walking with her characteristic slow vigor. It did not occur to him at first that Hermione might refuse to leave Artois. Something in him knew that she was coming. Fate had interfered now imperiously. Once he had cheated fate. That was when he came to the fair despite Hermione's letter. Now fate was going to have her revenge upon him. He looked at Maddalena. Was fate working for her, to protect her? Would his loss be her gain? He did not know, for he did not know what would have been the course of his own conduct if fate had not interfered. He had been trifling, letting the current take him. It might have taken him far, but--now Hermione was coming. It was all over and the sun was still up, still shining upon the sea.

"Let us go into the fair. It is cooler now."

He tried to speak lightly.

"Si, signore."

Maddalena shook out her skirt and began to smile. She was thinking of the blue dress and the ear-rings. They went down into the watercourse.

"Signorino, what can have been the matter with Gaspare?"

"I don't know."

"He was looking at the train."

"Was he? Perhaps he saw a friend in it. Yes, that must have been it. He saw a friend in the train."