The Call of the Blood Part 70

Maurice remembered his sensation that already, before he had done the fisherman any wrong, the fisherman had condemned him. Now there was a reason for condemnation. He had no physical fear of Salvatore. He was not a man to be physically afraid of another man. But if Salvatore ever knew he might tell. He might tell Hermione. That thought brought with it to Maurice a cold as of winter. The malign spirit might still have a purpose in connection with him, might still be near him full of intention. He felt afraid of the Sicily he had loved. He longed to leave it. He thought of it as an isle of fear, where terrors walked in the midst of the glory of the suns.h.i.+ne, where fatality lurked beside the purple sea.

"Maurice!"

He started. Hermione was on the steps of the sitting-room.

"You're not sleeping!" he said.

He felt as if she had been there reading all his thoughts.

"And you!" she answered.

"The sun woke me."

He lied instinctively. All his life with her would be a lie now, could never be anything else--unless----

He looked at her hard and long in the eyes for the first time since they had met after her return. Suppose he were to tell her, now, at once, in the stillness, the wonderful innocence and clearness of the dawn! For a moment he felt that it would be an exquisite relief, a casting down of an intolerable burden. She had such a splendid nature. She loved sincerity as she loved G.o.d. To her it was the one great essential quality, whose presence or absence made or marred the beauty of a human soul. He knew that.

"Why do you look at me like that?" she said, coming down to him with the look of slow strength that was always characteristic of her.

He dropped his eyes.

"I don't know. How do you mean?"

"As if you had something to tell me."

"Perhaps--perhaps I have," he answered.

He was on the verge, the very verge of confession. She put her arm through his. When she touched him the impulse waned, but it did not die utterly away.

"Tell it me," she said. "I love to hear everything you tell me. I don't think you could ever tell me anything that I should not understand."

"Are you--are you sure?"

"I think so."

"But"--he suddenly remembered some words of hers that, till then, he had forgotten--"but you had something to tell me."

"Yes."

"I want to hear it."

He could not speak yet. Perhaps presently he would be able to.

"Let us go up to the top of the mountain," she answered. "I feel as if we could see the whole island from there. And up there we shall get all the wind of the morning."

They turned towards the steep, bare slope and climbed it, while the sun rose higher, as if attending them. At the summit there was a heap of stones.

"Let us sit here," Hermione said. "We can see everything from here, all the glories of the dawn."

"Yes."

He was so intensely preoccupied by the debate within him that he did not remember that it was here, among these stones where they were sitting, that he had hidden the fragments of Hermione's letter from Africa telling him of her return on the day of the fair.

They sat down with their faces towards the sea. The air up here was exquisitely cool. In the pellucid clearness of dawn the coast-line looked enchanted, fairy-like and full of delicate mystery. And its fading, in the far distance, was like a calling voice. Behind them the ranges of mountains held a few filmy white clouds, like laces, about their rugged peaks. The sea was a pale blue stillness, shot with soft grays and mauves and pinks, and dotted here and there with black specks that were the boats of fishermen.

Hermione sat with her hands clasped round her knees. Her face, browned by the African sun, was intense with feeling.

"Yes," she said, at last, "I can tell you here."

She looked at the sea, the coast-line, then turned her head and gazed at the mountains.

"We looked at them together," she continued--"that last evening before I went away. Do you remember, Maurice?"

"Yes."

"From the arch. It is better up here. Always, when I am very happy or very sad, my instinct would be to seek a mountain-top. The sight of great s.p.a.ces seen from a height teaches one, I think."

"What?"

"Not to be an egoist in one's joy; not to be a craven in one's sorrow.

You see, a great view suggests the world, the vastness of things, the multiplicity of life. I think that must be it. And of course it reminds one, too, that one will soon be going away."

"Going away?"

"Yes. 'The mountains will endure'--but we--!"

"Oh, you mean death."

"Yes. What is it makes one think most of death when--when life, new life, is very near?"

She had been gazing at the mountains and the sea, but now she turned and looked into his face.

"Don't you understand what I have to tell you?" she asked.

He shook his head. He was still wondering whether he would dare to tell her of his sin. And he did not know. At one moment he thought that he could do it, at another that he would rather throw himself over the precipice of the mountain than do it.

"I don't understand it at all."

There was a lack of interest in his voice, but she did not notice it. She was full of the wonder of the morning, the wonder of being again with him, and the wonder of what she had to tell him.

"Maurice"--she put her hand on his--"the night I was crossing the sea to Africa I knew. All these days I have kept this secret from you because I could not write it. It seemed to me too sacred. I felt I must be with you when I told it. That night upon the sea I was very sad. I could not sleep. I was on deck looking always back, towards Sicily and you. And just when the dawn was coming I--I knew that a child was coming, too, a child of mine and yours."

She was silent. Her hand pressed his, and now she was again looking towards the sea. And it seemed to him that her face was new, that it was already the face of a mother.

He said nothing and he did not move. He looked down at the heap of stones by which they were sitting, and his eyes rested on a piece of paper covered with writing. It was a fragment of Hermione's letter to him. As he saw it something sharp and cold like a weapon made of ice, seemed to be plunged into him. He got up, pulling hard at her hand. She obeyed his hand.

"What is it?" she said, as they stood together. "You look----"

He had become pale. He knew it.