"Signorino! Signorino!"
Maurice lifted his head lazily from the hands that served it as a pillow,
and called out, sleepily: "Che cosa c'é?"
"Where are you, signorino?"
"Down here under the oak-trees."
He sank back again, and looked up at the section of deep-blue sky that
was visible through the leaves. How he loved the blue, and gloried in the
first strong heat that girdled Sicily to-day, and whispered to his happy
body that summer was near, the true and fearless summer that comes to
southern lands. Through all his veins there crept a subtle sense of
well-being, as if every drop of his blood were drowsily rejoicing. Three
days had passed, had glided by, three radiant nights, warm, still,
luxurious. And with each his sense of the south had increased, and with
each his consciousness of being nearer to the breast of Sicily. In those
days and nights he had not looked into a book or glanced at a paper. What
had he done? He scarcely knew. He had lived and felt about him the
fingers of the sun touching him like a lover. And he had chattered idly
to Gaspare about Sicilian things, always Sicilian things; about the fairs
and the festivals, Capo d'Anno and Carnevale, martedì grasso with its
Tavulata, the solemn family banquet at which all the relations assemble
and eat in company, the feasts of the different saints, the peasant
marriages and baptisms, the superstitions--Gaspare did not call them
so--that are alive in Sicily, and that will surely live till Sicily is
no more; the fear of the evil-eye and of spells, and the best means of
warding them off, the "guaj di lu linu," the interpretation of dreams,
the power of the Mafia, the legends of the brigands, and the vanished
glory of Musolino. Gaspare talked without reserve to his padrone, as to
another Sicilian, and Maurice was never weary of listening. All that was
of Sicily caught his mind and heart, was full of meaning to him, and of
irresistible fascination. He had heard the call of the blood once for all
and had once for all responded to it.
But the nights he had loved best. For then he slept under the stars. When
ten o'clock struck he and Gaspare carried out one of the white beds onto
the terrace, and he slipped into it and lay looking up at the clear sky,
and at the dimness of the mountain flank, and at the still silhouettes of
the trees, till sleep took him, while Gaspare, rolled up in a rug of many
colors, snuggled up on the seat by the wall with his head on a cushion
brought for him by the respectful Lucrezia. And they awoke at dawn to see
the last star fade above the cone of Etna, and the first spears of the
sun thrust up out of the stillness of the sea.