The Call of the Blood

"Signore," he said to Maurice. "I would go into the sea, I would stay

there all night, for I love it, but Dr. Marini has forbidden me to enter

it. See how I walk!"

And he began to hobble up and down exactly as Gaspare had on the terrace,

looking over his shoulder at Maurice all the time to see whether his

deception was working well. Gaspare, seeing that Nito's attention was for

the moment concentrated, slipped away behind a boat that was drawn up on

the beach; and Maurice, guessing what he was doing, endeavored to make

Nito understand his sympathy.

"Molto forte--molto dolore?" he said.

"Si, signore!"

And Nito burst forth into a vehement account of his sufferings,

accompanied by pantomime.

"It takes me in the night, signore! Madonna, it is like rats gnawing at

my legs, and nothing will stop it. Pancrazia--she is my wife,

signore--Pancrazia, she gets out of bed and she heats oil to rub it on,

but she might as well put it on the top of Etna for all the good it does

me. And there I lie like a--"

"Hi--yi--yi--yi--yi!"

A wild shriek rent the air, and Gaspare, clad in a pair of bathing

drawers, bounded out from behind the boat, gave Nito a cuff on the cheek,

executed some steps of the tarantella, whirled round, snatched up one end

of the net, and cried: "Al mare, al mare!"

Nito's rheumatism was no more. His bent leg straightened itself as if by

magic, and he returned Gaspare's cuff by an affectionate slap on his bare

shoulder, exclaiming to Maurice: "Isn't he terribile, signore? Isn't he terribile?"

Nito lifted up the other end of the net and they all went down to the

shore.

That night it seemed to Delarey as if Sicily drew him closer to her

breast. He did not know why he had now for the first time the sensation

that at last he was really in his natural place, was really one with the

soil from which an ancestor of his had sprung, and with the people who

had been her people. That Hermione's absence had anything to do with his

almost wild sense of freedom did not occur to him. All he knew was this,

that alone among these Sicilian fishermen in the night, not understanding

much of what they said, guessing at their jokes, and sharing in their

laughter, without always knowing what had provoked it, he was perfectly

at home, perfectly happy.

Gaspare went into the sea, wading carefully through the silver waters,

and Maurice, from the shore, watched his slowly moving form, taking a

lesson which would be useful to him later. The coast-line looked

enchanted in the glory of the moon, in the warm silence of the night, but

the little group of men upon the shore scarcely thought of its

enchantment. They felt it, perhaps, sometimes faintly in their gayety,

but they did not savor its wonder and its mystery as Hermione would have

savored them had she been there.