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Updated: June 4, 2025
But at this moment a group of people from Marechiaro suddenly appeared upon the road beside them, having descended from the village by a mountain-path. There were exclamations, salutations. Maddalena's gown was carefully examined by the women of the party. The men exchanged compliments with Maurice. Then Salvatore and Gaspare, seeing friends, came galloping up, shouting, in a cloud of dust.
They tickle! There, then! Now let's be off!" He leaped onto Tito's back. Gaspare sprang up on the other donkey. "Addio, Lucrezia!" Maurice turned to her. "Don't leave the house to-day." "No, signore," said poor Lucrezia, in a deplorable voice. "Mind, now! Don't go down to Marechiaro this afternoon." There was an odd sound, almost of pleading, in his voice. "No, signore."
"Do not say too much, signora. It makes people proud." She thought that she heard an odd Sicilian echo of Artois. The peasant lad's mind reflected the mind of the subtle novelist for a moment. "Very well, Gaspare," she said, submissively. He smiled at her with satisfaction. "I understand girls," he said. "You must keep them down or they will keep you down. Every girl in Marechiaro is like that.
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!"
Artois looked at the man closely. He was a young fellow, handsome and gentler-looking than are most Sicilians. Artois wondered what the people of Marechiaro were saying. He knew how they must be gossiping on such an occasion. And then it was summer, when they have little or nothing to do, no forestieri to divide their attentions and to call their ever-ready suspicions in various directions.
Turkeys strolled in and out among the toilet-makers. Pigs accompanied their mistresses from doorway to doorway as dogs accompany the women of other countries. And the cavalcade of the people of Marechiaro was hailed from all sides with pleasantries and promises to meet at the fair, with broad jokes or respectful salutations. Many a "Benedicite!" or "C'ci basu li mano!" greeted Maurice.
It seemed to me that when I took Vere to the Casa del Prete she would have learned to know something of her father there that she could never have learned to know in another place. But now no, I shall not go back. If I did I should even lose my memories, perhaps, and I could not bear that." And she had not returned. Gaspare went to Marechiaro sometimes, to see his family and his friends.
The voices within her that strove to whisper commonplaces of consolation, saying that Maurice had gone to Marechiaro, or that he had taken another path home, not the path from Isola Bella, brought her no comfort. The thing within her soul that knew what she, the human being containing it, did not know, told her that her terror had its reason, that she was not suffering in this way without cause.
The "Valse Bleu," "Santa Lucia," "Addio, mia bella Napoli," "La Frangese," "Sole Mio," "Marechiaro," "Carolina," "La Ciociara"; with the chain of lights the chain of songs was woven round the bay; from the Eldorado, past the Hotel de Vesuve, the Hotel Royal, the Victoria, to the tree-shaded alleys of the Villa Nazionale, to the Mergellina, where the naked urchins of the fisherfolk took their evening bath among the resting boats, to the "Scoglio di Frisio," and upwards to the Ristorante della Stella, and downwards again to the Ristorante del Mare, and so away to the point, to the Antico Giuseppone.
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.
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