The Call of the Blood

He did not know of the muttered comments of the fishermen from Catania as

he and Maddalena passed down the steps of the church of Sant' Onofrio.

But Salvatore's sharp ears had caught them and the laughter that followed

them, and his hot blood was on fire. The words, the laughter had touched

his sensitive Sicilian pride--the pride of the man who means never to be

banished from the Piazza--as a knife touches a raw wound. And as Maurice

had set a limit to his sinning--his insincerity to Hermione, his betrayal

of her complete trust in him, nothing more--so Salvatore now, while he

sat at meat with the Inglese, mentally put a limit to his own

complaisance, a complaisance which had been born of his intense avarice.

To-day he would get all he could out of the Inglese--money, food, wine, a

donkey--who knew what? And then--good-bye to soft speeches. Those

fishermen, his friends, his comrades, his world, in fact, should have

their mouths shut once for all. He knew how to look after his girl, and

they should know that he knew, they and all Marechiaro, and all San

Felice, and all Cattaro. His limit, like Maurice's, was that day of the

fair, and it was nearly reached. For the hours were hurrying towards the

night and farewells.

Moved by his abrupt desire to stand well with everybody during this last

festa, Maurice began to speak to Salvatore of the donkey auction. When

would it begin?

"Chi lo sa?"

No one knew. In Sicily all feasts are movable. Even mass may begin an

hour too late or an hour too early. One thought the donkey auction would

start at fourteen, another at sixteen o'clock. Gaspare was imperiously

certain, over the macaroni, which had now made its appearance, that the

hour was seventeen. There were to be other auctions, auctions of

wonderful things. A clock that played music--the "Marcia Reale" and the

"Tre Colori"--was to be put up; suits of clothes, too; boots, hats, a

chair that rocked like a boat on the sea, a revolver ornamented with

ivory. Already--no one knew when, for no one had missed him--he had been

to view these treasures. As he spoke of them tongues were loosed and eyes

shone with excitement. Money was in the air. Prices were passionately

discussed, values debated. All down the table went the words "soldi,"

"lire," "lire sterline," "biglietti da cinque," "biglietti da dieci."

Salvatore's hatred died away, suffocated for the moment under the weight

of his avarice. A donkey--yes, he meant to get a donkey with the

stranger's money. But why stop there? Why not have the clock and the

rocking-chair and the revolver? His sharpness of the Sicilian, a

sharpness almost as keen and sure as that of the Arab, divined the

intensity, the recklessness alive in the Englishman to-day, bred of that

limit, "my last day of the careless life," to which his own limit was

twin-brother, but of which he knew nothing. And as Maurice was intense

to-day, because there were so few hours left to him for intensity, so was

Salvatore intense in a different way, but for a similar reason. They were

walking in step without being aware of it. Or were they not rather racing

neck to neck, like passionate opponents?