The Children of the King | Page 8

not old enough to be married yet," he remarked at last.
"That is true," admitted Ruggiero, reluctantly.

Possibly, the close connection between going to America and being
married may not be apparent to the poor untutored foreign mind. It
would certainly not have been understood a hundred miles north of
Sebastiano's heap of sand. And yet it is very simple. In Calabria any
strong young fellow with a decently good character can find a wife
with a small dowry, though he be ever so penniless. Generally within a
week, and always within a fortnight, he emigrates alone, taking all his
wife's money with him and leaving her to work for her own living with
her parents. He goes to Buenos Ayres or Monte Video. If, at the end of
four, five or six years he has managed to increase the money so as to
yield a small income, and if his wife behaves herself during his absence,
he comes home again and buys a piece of land and builds a house. His
friends do not fail to inform him of his wife's conduct, and he holds her
dowry as a guarantee of her fidelity. But if he fails to enrich himself, or
if she is unfaithful to him, he never comes back at all. It is thus clear
that a penniless young man cannot go to America until he is married.
"That is very true," Ruggiero repeated.
"And we must eat," said Sebastiano, who knew by experience the truth
of what he said.
"And we are always hungry. It is very strange. I am hungry now, and
yet we had the beans only this morning. It is true that the plate was not
full, and there were two of us. I wish we were like the son of Antonio,
who never eats. I heard his mother telling the chemist so last winter."
"He is dead," said Sebastiano. "Health to us!" he added, according to
custom.
"Health to us!" repeated Euggiero. "Perhaps he died because he did not
eat. Who knows? I should, I am sure. Is he dead? I did not know. Come
along! If Don Antonino is not away we shall get some bread."
So they trudged on through the sand. It was still very hot on the
yellowish white beach, under the great southern sun in September, but
the Children of the King had been used to bearing worse hardships than
heat, or cold either, and the thought of the big brown loaves in Don

Antonino's wine-shop was very cheering.
At last they reached the foot of the terraced village that rises with its
tiers of white and brown houses from the shore to the top of the hill.
Not so big nor so prosperous a place as Verbicaro, but much bigger and
richer than Diamante. There are always a good many fishing boats
hauled up on the beach, but you will not often see a cargo boat
excepting in the autumn. Don Antonino keeps the cook-shop and the
wine cellar in the little house facing the sea, before you turn to the right
to go up into the village. He is an old sailor and an honest fellow, and
comes from Massa, which is near Sorrento.
A vast old man he is, with keen, quiet grey eyes under heavy lids that
droop and slant outward like the lifts of a yard. He is thickset, heavy,
bulky in the girth, flat-footed, iron-handed, slow to move. He has a
white beard like a friar, and wears a worsted cap. His skin, having lost
at last the tan of thirty years, is like the rough side of light brown sole
leather--a sort of yellowish, grey, dead-leaf colour. He is very deaf and
therefore generally very silent. He has been boatswain on board of
many a good ship and there are few ports from Batum to San Francisco
where he has not cast anchor.
The boys saw him from a long way off, and their courage rose. He
often came to Verbicaro to buy wine and had known their father, and
knew them. He would certainly give them a piece of bread. As he saw
them coming his quiet eyes watched them, and followed them as they
came up the beach. But he did not turn his head, nor move hand or foot,
even when they were close to him. He looked so solid and determined
to stand still where he was, in the door of his shop, that you might have
taken him for an enormous lay figure of a man, made of carved oak and
dressed up for a sign to his own business. The two lads touched their
ragged woollen caps and stood looking at him, wondering whether he
would ever move. At last his grey eyes twinkled.
"Have you