They left the beach and climbed the bank, Maddalena walking carefully in
the shining shoes, and holding her green skirt well away from the bushes
with both hands. Maurice hurried across the railway line without looking
at it. He wanted to forget it. He was determined to forget it, and what
it was bringing to Cattaro that afternoon. They reached the group of four
donkeys which were standing patiently in the dusty white road.
"Mamma mia!" ejaculated Gaspare, as Maddalena came full into his sight.
"Madre mia! But you are like a burgisa dressed for the wedding-day, Donna
Maddalena!"
He wagged his head at her till the big roses above his ears shook like
flowers in a wind.
"Ora basta, ch' è tardu: jamu ad accumpagnari li Zitti!" he continued,
pronouncing the time-honored sentence which, at a rustic wedding, gives
the signal to the musicians to stop their playing, and to the assembled
company the hint that the moment has come to escort the bride to the new
home which her bridegroom has prepared for her.
Maddalena laughed and blushed all over her face, and Salvatore shouted
out a verse of a marriage song in high favor at Sicilian weddings: "E cu saluti a li Zituzzi novi!
Chi bellu 'nguaggiamentu furtunatu!
Firma la menti, custanti lu cori,
E si cci arriva a lu jornu biatu--"
Meanwhile, Maurice helped Maddalena onto her donkey, and paid and
dismissed the boy who had brought it and Salvatore's beast from
Marechiaro. Then he took out his watch.
"A quarter-past ten," he said. "Off we go! Now, Gaspare--uno! due! tre!"
They leaped simultaneously onto their donkeys, Salvatore clambered up on
his, and the little cavalcade started off on the long, white road that
ran close along the sea, Maddalena and Maurice in the van, Salvatore and
Gaspare behind. Just at first they all kept close together, but Sicilians
are very careful of their festa clothes, and soon Salvatore and Gaspare
dropped farther behind to avoid the clouds of dust stirred up by the
tripping feet of the donkeys in front. Their chattering voices died away,
and when Maurice looked back he saw them at a distance which rendered his
privacy with Maddalena more complete than anything he had dared to hope
for so early in the day. Yet now that they were thus alone he felt as if
he had nothing to say to her. He did not feel exactly constrained, but it
seemed to him that, to-day, he could not talk the familiar commonplaces
to her, or pay her obvious compliments. They might, they would please
her, but something in himself would resent them. This was to be such a
great day. He had wanted it with such ardor, he had been so afraid of
missing it, he had gained it at the cost of so much self-respect, that it
ought to be extraordinary from dawn to dark, and he and Maddalena to be
unusual, intense--something, at least, more eager, more happy, more
intimate than usual in it.