The Call of the Blood Part 31

"Yes, meester sir, eef you pleesi," said Gaspare, with conscious pride.

"We go way."

"Bravo. Well, I'm getting hungry."

As Maurice sat alone at dinner on the terrace, while Gaspare and Lucrezia ate and chattered in the kitchen, he saw presently far down below the s.h.i.+ning of the light in the house of the sirens. It came out when the stars came out, this tiny star of the sea. He felt a little lonely as he sat there eating all by himself, and when the light was kindled near the water, that lay like a dream waiting to be sweetly disturbed by the moon, he was pleased as by the greeting of a friend. The light was company. He watched it while he ate. It was a friendly light, more friendly than the light of the stars to him. For he connected it with earthly things--things a man could understand. He imagined Maddalena in the cottage where he had slept preparing the supper for Salvatore, who was presently going off to sea to spear fish, or net them, or take them with lines for the market on the morrow. There was bread and cheese on the table, and the good red wine that could harm n.o.body, wine that had all the laughter of the sun-rays in it. And the cottage door was open to the sea. The breeze came in and made the little lamp that burned beneath the Madonna flicker. He saw the big, white bed, and the faces of the saints, of the actresses, of the smiling babies that had watched him while he slept. And he saw the face of his peasant hostess, the face he had kissed in the dawn, ere he ran down among the olive-trees to plunge into the sea. He saw the eyes that were like black jewels, the little feathers of gold in the hair about her brow. She was a pretty, simple girl. He liked the look of curiosity in her eyes. To her he was something touched with wonder, a man from a far-off land. Yet she was at ease with him and he with her. That drop of Sicilian blood in his veins was worth something to him in this isle of the south. It made him one with so much, with the sunburned sons of the hills and of the sea-sh.o.r.e, with the sunburned daughters of the soil. It made him one with them--or more--one of them.

He had had a kiss from Sicily now--a kiss in the dawn by the sea, from lips fresh with the sea wind and warm with the life that is young. And what had it meant to him? He had taken it carelessly with a laugh. He had washed it from his lips in the sea. Now he remembered it, and, in thought, he took the kiss again, but more slowly, more seriously. And he took it at evening, at the coming of night, instead of at dawn, at the coming of day--his kiss from Sicily.

He took it at evening.

He had finished dinner now, and he pushed back his chair and drew a cigar from his pocket. Then he struck a match. As he was putting it to the cigar he looked again towards the sea and saw the light.

"d.a.m.n!"

"Signore!"

Gaspare came running.

"I didn't call, Gaspare, I only said 'Mamma mia!' because I burned my fingers."

He struck another match and lit the cigar.

"Signore--" Gaspare began, and stopped.

"Yes? What is it?"

"Signore, I--Lucrezia, you know, has relatives at Castel Vecchio."

Castel Vecchio was the nearest village, perched on the hill-top opposite, twenty minutes' walk from the cottage.

"Ebbene?"

"Ebbene, signorino, to-night there is a festa in their house. It is the festa of Pancrazio, her cousin. Sebastiano will be there to play, and they will dance, and--"

"Lucrezia wants to go?"

"Si, signore, but she is afraid to ask."

"Afraid! Of course she can go, she must go. Tell her. But at night can she come back alone?"

"Signore, I am invited, but I said--I did not like the first evening that the padrona is away--if you would come they would take it as a great honor."

"Go, Gaspare, take Lucrezia, and bring her back safely."

"And you, signore?"

"I would come, too, but I think a stranger would spoil the festa."

"Oh no, signore, on the contrary--"

"I know--you think I shall be sad alone."

"Si, signore."

"You are good to think of your padrone, but I shall be quite content. You go with Lucrezia and come back as late as you like. Tell Lucrezia! Off with you!"

Gaspare hesitated no longer. In a few minutes he had put on his best clothes and a soft hat, and stuck a large, red rose above each ear. He came to say good-bye with Lucrezia on his arm. Her head was wrapped in a brilliant yellow-and-white shawl with saffron-colored fringes. They went off together laughing and skipping down the stony path like two children.

When their footsteps died away Delarey, who had walked to the archway to see them off, returned slowly to the terrace and began to pace up and down, puffing at his cigar. The silence was profound. The rising moon cast its pale beams upon the white walls of the cottage, the white seats of the terrace. There was no wind. The leaves of the oaks and the olive-trees beneath the wall were motionless. Nothing stirred. Above the cottage the moonlight struck on the rocks, showed the nakedness of the mountain-side. A curious sense of solitude, such as he had never known before, took possession of Delarey. It did not make him feel sad at first, but only emanc.i.p.ated, free as he had never yet felt free, like one free in a world that was curiously young, curiously unfettered by any chains of civilization, almost savagely, primitively free. So might an animal feel ranging to and fro in a land where man had not set foot. But he was an animal without its mate in the wonderful breathless night. And the moonlight grew about him as he walked, treading softly he scarce knew why, to and fro, to and fro.

Hermione was nearing the coast now. Soon she would be on board the steamer and on her way across the sea to Africa. She would be on her way to Africa--and to Artois.

Delarey recalled his conversation with Gaspare, when the boy had asked him whether Artois was Hermione's brother, or a relation, or whether he was old. He remembered Gaspare's intonation when he said, almost sternly, "The signora should have taken us with her to Africa." Evidently he was astonished. Why? It must have been because he--Delarey--had let his wife go to visit a man in a distant city alone. Sicilians did not understand certain things. He had realized his own freedom--now he began to realize Hermione's. How quickly she had made up her mind. While he was sleeping she had decided everything. She had even looked out the trains. It had never occurred to her to ask him what to do. And she had not asked him to go with her. Did he wish she had?

A new feeling began to stir within him, unreasonable, absurd. It had come to him with the night and his absolute solitude in the night. It was not anger as yet. It was a faint, dawning sense of injury, but so faint that it did not rouse, but only touched gently, almost furtively, some spirit drowsing within him, like a hand that touches, then withdraws itself, then steals forward to touch again.

He began to walk a little faster up and down, always keeping along the terrace wall.

He was primitive man to-night, and primitive feelings were astir in him.

He had not known he possessed them, yet he--the secret soul of him--did not shrink from them in any surprise. To something in him, some part of him, they came as things not unfamiliar.

Suppose he had shown surprise at Hermione's project? Suppose he had asked her not to go? Suppose he had told her not to go? What would she have said? What would she have done? He had never thought of objecting to this journey, but he might have objected. Many a man would have objected. This was their honeymoon--hers and his. To many it would seem strange that a wife should leave her husband during their honeymoon, to travel across the sea to another man, a friend, even if he were ill, perhaps dying. He did not doubt Hermione. No one who knew her as he did could doubt her, yet nevertheless, now that he was quite companionless in the night, he felt deserted, he felt as if every one else were linked with life, while he stood entirely alone. Hermione was travelling to her friend. Lucrezia and Gaspare had gone to their festa, to dance, to sing, to joke, to make merry, to make love--who knew? Down in the village the people were gossiping at one another's doors, were lounging together in the piazza, were playing cards in the caffes, were singing and striking the guitars under the pepper-trees bathed in the rays of the moon. And he--what was there for him in this night that woke up desires for joy, for the sweetness of the life that sings in the pa.s.sionate aisles of the south?

He stood still by the wall. Two or three lights twinkled on the height where Castel Vecchio perched clinging to its rock above the sea.

Sebastiano was there setting his lips to the ceramella, and shooting bold glances of tyrannical love at Lucrezia out of his audacious eyes. The peasants, dressed in their gala clothes, were forming in a circle for the country dance. The master of the ceremonies was shouting out his commands in b.a.s.t.a.r.d French: "Tournez!" "a votre place!" "Prenez la donne!" "Dansez toutes!" Eyes were sparkling, cheeks were flus.h.i.+ng, lips were parting as gay activity created warmth in bodies and hearts. Then would come the tarantella, with Gaspare spinning like a top and tripping like a Folly in a veritable madness of movement. And as the night wore on the dance would become wilder, the laughter louder, the fire of jokes more fierce.

Healths would be drunk with clinking gla.s.ses, brindisi shouted, tricks played. Cards would be got out. There would be a group intent on "Scopa,"

another calling "Mi staio!" "Carta da vente!" throwing down the soldi and picking them up greedily in "Sette e mezzo." Stories would be told, bets given and taken. The smoke would curl up from the long, black cigars the Sicilians love. Dark-browed men and women, wild-haired boys, and girls in gay shawls, with great rings swinging from their ears, would give themselves up as only southerners can to the joy of the pa.s.sing moment, forgetting poverty, hards.h.i.+p, and toil, grinding taxation, all the cares and the sorrows that encompa.s.s the peasant's life, forgetting the flight of the hours, forgetting everything in the pa.s.sion of the festa, the dedication of all their powers to the laughing wors.h.i.+p of fun.

Yes, the pa.s.sing hour would be forgotten. That was certain. It would be dawn ere Lucrezia and Gaspare returned.

Delarey's cigar was burned to a stump. He took it from his lips and threw it with all his force over the wall towards the sea. Then he put his hands on the wall and leaned over it, fixing his eyes on the sea. The sense of injury grew in him. He resented the joys of others in this beautiful night, and he felt as if all the world were at a festa, as if all the world were doing wonderful things in the wonderful night, while he was left solitary to eat out his heart beneath the moon. He did not reason against his feelings and tell himself they were absurd. The dancing faun does not reason in his moments of ennui. He rebels. Delarey rebelled.

He had been invited to the festa and he had refused to go--almost eagerly he had refused. Why? There had been something secret in his mind which had prompted him. He had said--and even to himself--that he did not go lest his presence might bring a disturbing element into the peasants'

gayety. But was that his reason?

Leaning over the wall he looked down upon the sea. The star that seemed caught in the sea smiled at him, summoned him. Its gold was like the gold, the little feathers of gold in the dark hair of a Sicilian girl singing the song of the May beside the sea:

"Maju torna, maju veni Cu li belli soi ciureri--"

He tried to hum the tune, but it had left his memory. He longed to hear it once more under the olive-trees of the Sirens' Isle.

Again his thought went to Hermione. Very soon she would be out there, far out on the silver of the sea. Had she wanted him to go with her? He knew that she had. Yet she had not asked him to go, had not hinted at his going. Even she had refused to let him go. And he had not pressed it.

Something had held him back from insisting, something secret, and something secret had kept her from accepting his suggestion. She was going to her greatest friend, to the man she had known intimately, long before she had known him--Delarey--and he was left alone. In England he had never had a pa.s.sing moment of jealousy of Artois; but now, to-night, mingled with his creeping resentment against the joys of the peasants, of those not far from him under the moon of Sicily, there was a sensation of jealousy which came from the knowledge that his wife was travelling to her friend. That friend might be dead, or she might nurse him back to life. Delarey thought of her by his bedside, ministering to him, performing the intimate offices of the attendant on a sick man, raising him up on his pillows, putting a cool hand on his burning forehead, sitting by him at night in the silence of a shadowy room, and quite alone.

He thought of all this, and the Sicilian that was in him grew suddenly hot with a burning sense of anger, a burning desire for action, preventive or revengeful. It was quite unreasonable, as unreasonable as the vagrant impulse of a child, but it was strong as the full-grown determination of a man. Hermione had belonged to him. She was his. And the old Sicilian blood in him protested against that which would be if Artois were still alive when she reached Africa.

But it was too late now. He could do nothing. He could only look at the s.h.i.+ning sea on which the s.h.i.+p would bear her that very night.

His inaction and solitude began to torture him. If he went in he knew he could not sleep. The mere thought of the festa would prevent him from sleeping. Again he looked at the lights of Castel Vecchio. He saw only one now, and imagined it set in the window of Pancrazio's house. He even fancied that down the mountain-side and across the ravine there floated to him the faint wail of the ceramella playing a dance measure.