“Yes, signor—my mother.”
I was deeply touched by his naive and unexpected reply—more deeply than I cared to show. A bitter regret stirred in my soul—why, oh, why had my mother died so young! Why had I never known the sacred joy that seemed to vibrate through the frame, and sparkle in the eyes of this common sailor! Why must I be forever alone, with a curse of a woman’s lie on my life, weighing me down to the dust and ashes of a desolate despair! Something in my face must have spoken my thoughts, for the captain said, gently:
“The signor has no mother?”
“She died when I was but a child,” I answered, briefly.
The Sicilian puffed lightly at his cigarette in silence—the silence of an evident compassion. To relieve him of his friendly embarrassment, I said:
“You spoke of Teresa? Who is Teresa?”
“Ah, you may well ask, signor! No one knows who she is; she loves Carmelo Neri, and there all is said. Such a little thing she is—so delicate! like a foam-bell on the waves; and Carmelo—You have seen Carmelo, signor?”
I shook my head in the negative.
“Ebbene! Carmelo is big and rough and black like a wolf of the forests, all hair and fangs; Teresa is, well! you have seen a little cloud in the sky at night, wandering past the moon all flecked with pale gold?—that is Teresa. She is, small and slight as a child; she has rippling curls, and soft praying eyes, and tiny, weak, white hands, not strong enough to snap a twig in two. Yet she can do anything with Carmelo—she is the one soft spot in his life.”
“I wonder if she is true to him,” I muttered, half to myself and half aloud.