Gaspare hastened to fill two more glasses.
"Now it's our turn," cried Hermione.
"Questo vino è bello e fino,
È portato da Castello a mare,
Faccio brindisi al Signor Gaspare."
The boys burst into a hearty laugh, and Gaspare's eyes gleamed with
pleasure while Hermione and Maurice drank. Then Sebastiano drew from the
inner pocket of his old jacket a little flute, smiling with an air of
intense and comic slyness which contorted his face.
"Ah," said Hermione, "I know--it's the tarantella!"
She clapped her hands.
"It only wanted that," she said to Maurice. "Only that--the tarantella!"
"Guai Lucrezia!" cried Gaspare, tyrannically.
Lucrezia bounded to one side, bent her body inward, and giggled with all
her heart. Sebastiano leaned his back against a column and put the flute
to his lips.
"Here, Maurice, here!" said Hermione.
She made him sit down on one of the seats under the parlor window, facing
the view, while the four boys took their places, one couple opposite to
the other. Then Sebastiano began to twitter the tune familiar to the
Sicilians of Marechiaro, in which all the careless pagan joy of life in
the sun seems caught and flung out upon a laughing, dancing world.
Delarey laid his hands on the warm tiles of the seat, leaned forward, and
watched with eager eyes. He had never seen the tarantella, yet now with
his sensation of expectation there was blended another feeling. It seemed
to him as if he were going to see something he had known once, perhaps
very long ago, something that he had forgotten and that was now going to
be recalled to his memory. Some nerve in his body responded to
Sebastiano's lively tune. A desire of movement came to him as he saw the
gay boys waiting on the terrace, their eyes already dancing, although
their bodies were still.
Gaspare bent forward, lifted his hands above his head, and began to snap
his fingers in time to the music. A look of joyous invitation had come
into his eyes--an expression that was almost coquettish, like the
expression of a child who has conceived some lively, innocent design of
which he thinks that no one knows except himself. His young figure surely
quivered with a passion of merry mischief which was communicated to his
companions. In it there began to flame a spirit that suggested undying
youth. Even before they began to dance the boys were transformed. If they
had ever known cares those cares had fled, for in the breasts of those
who can really dance the tarantella there is no room for the smallest
sorrow, in their hearts no place for the most minute regret, anxiety, or
wonder, when the rapture of the measure is upon them. Away goes
everything but the pagan joy of life, the pagan ecstasy of swift
movement, and the leaping blood that is quick as the motes in a sunray
falling from a southern sky. Delarey began to smile as he watched them,
and their expression was reflected in his eyes. Hermione glanced at him
and thought what a boy he looked. His eyes made her feel almost as if
she were sitting with a child.