The boy threw his chin up again and half shut his eyes.
"No, Signorina."
"Because you did what I told you."
She spoke rather with the air of a little queen.
"I don"t understand."
"Didn"t you hear me call out to you from up there?"--she pointed to the cliff above their heads--"when you were sitting in the boat? I called to you to go in after the men."
"Why?"
"Why! Because I thought you were a lazy boy."
He laughed. All his brown face gave itself up to laughter--eyes, teeth, lips, cheeks, chin. His whole body seemed to be laughing. The idea of his being lazy seemed to delight his whole spirit.
"You would have been lazy if you hadn"t done what I told you," said Vere, emphatically, forcing her words through his merriment with determination. "You know you would."
"I never heard you call, Signorina."
"You didn"t?"
He shook his head several times, bent down, dipped his fingers in the sea, put them to his lips: "I say it."
"Really?"
There was a note of disappointment in her voice. She felt dethroned.
"But then, you haven"t earned these," she said, looking at him almost with rebuke, "if you went in of your own accord."
"I go in because it is my mestiere, Signorina," the boy said, simply. "I go in by force."
He looked at her and then again at the cigarettes. His expression said, "Can you refuse me?" There was a quite definite and conscious attempt to cajole her to generosity in his eyes, and in the pose he a.s.sumed. Vere saw it, and knew that if there had been a mirror within reach at that moment the boy would have been looking into it, frankly admiring himself.
In Italy the narcissus blooms at all seasons of the year.
She was charmed by the boy, for he did his luring well, and she was susceptible to all that was naturally picturesque. But a gay little spirit of resistance sprang up like a flame and danced within her.
She let her hands fall to her sides.
"But you like going in?"
"Signorina?"
"You enjoy diving?"
He shrugged his shoulders, and again used what seemed with him a favorite expression.
"Signorina, I must enjoy it, by force."
"You do it wonderfully. Do you know that? You do it better than the men."
Again the conscious look came into the boy"s face and body, as if his soul were faintly swaggering.
"There is no one in the Bay who can dive better than I can," he answered. "Giovannino thinks he can. Well, let him think so. He would not dare to make a bet with me."
"He would lose it if he did," said Vere. "I"m sure he would. Just now you were under water nearly a minute by my mother"s watch."
"Where is the Signora?" said the boy, looking round.
"Why d"you ask?"
"Why--I can stay under longer than that."
"Now, look here!" said the girl, eagerly. "Never mind Madre! Go down once for me, won"t you? Go down once for me, and you shall have the dolce and two packets of cigarettes."
"I don"t want the dolce, Signorina; a dolce is for women," he said, with the complete bluntness characteristic of Southern Italians and of Sicilians.
"The cigarettes, then."
"Va bene. But the water is too shallow here."
"We"ll take my boat."
She pointed to a small boat, white with a green line, that was moored close to them.
"Va bene," said the boy again.
He rolled his white trousers up above his knees, stripped off his blue jersey, leaving the thin vest that was beneath it, folded the jersey neatly and laid it on the stones, tightened his trousers at the back, then caught hold of the rope by which Vere"s boat was moored to the sh.o.r.e and pulled the boat in.
Very carefully he helped Vere into it.
"I know a good place," he said, "where you can see right down to the bottom."
Taking the oars he slowly paddled a little way out to a deep clear pool of the sea.
"I"ll go in here, Signorina."
He stood up straight, with his feet planted on each side of the boat"s prow, and glanced at the water intimately, as might a fish. Then he shot one more glance at Vere and at the cigarettes, made the sign of the cross, lifted his brown arms above his head, uttered a cry, and dived cleanly below the water, going down obliquely till he was quite dim in the water.
Vere watched him with deep attention. This feat of the boy fascinated her. The water between them made him look remote, delicate and unearthly--neither boy nor fish. His head, she could see, was almost touching the bottom. She fancied that he was actually touching bottom with his hands. Yes, he was. Bending low over the water she saw his brown fingers, stretched out and well divided, promenading over the basin of the sea as lightly and springily as the claws of a crab tip-toeing to some hiding-place. Presently he let himself down a little more, pressed his flat palms against the ground, and with the impetus thus gained made his body shoot back towards the surface feet foremost.
Then bringing his body up till it was in a straight line with his feet, he swam slowly under water, curving first in this direction then in that, with a lithe ease that was enchantingly graceful. Finally, he turned over on his back and sank slowly down until he looked like a corpse lying at the bottom of the sea.
Then Vere felt a sickness of fear steal over her, and leaning over the sea till her face almost touched the water, she cried out fiercely:
"Come up! Come up! Presto! Presto!"
As the boy had seemed to obey her when she cried out to him from the summit of the cliff, so he seemed to obey her now.