The Call of the Blood Part 73

"I am grateful and I am ashamed," he said. "I was not your friend, monsieur, but you have treated me with more than friends.h.i.+p. I thank you in words now, but my hope is that some day I shall be given the opportunity to thank you with an act."

He held out his hand again to Maurice. There had been a certain formality in his speech, but there was a warmth in his manner that was not formal.

As Maurice held his hand the eyes of the two men met, and each took swift note of the change in the other.

Artois's appearance was softened by his illness. In health he looked authoritative, leonine, very sure of himself, piercingly observant, sometimes melancholy, but not anxious. His manner, never bl.u.s.tering or offensive, was usually dominating, the manner of one who had the right to rule in the things of the intellect. Now he seemed much gentler, less intellectual, more emotional. One received, at a first meeting with him, the sensation rather of coming into contact with a man of heart than with a man of brains. Maurice felt the change at once, and was surprised by it. Outwardly the novelist was greatly altered. His tall frame was shrunken and slightly bent. The face was pale and drawn, the eyes were sunken, the large-boned body was frightfully thin and looked uncertain when it moved. As Maurice gazed he realized that this man had been to the door of death, almost over the threshold of the door.

And Artois? He saw a change in the Mercury whom he had last seen at the door of the London restaurant, a change that startled him.

"Come into our Garden of Paradise and rest," said Hermione. "Lean on my arm, Emile."

"May I?" Artois asked of Maurice, with a faint smile that was almost pathetic.

"Please do. You must be tired!"

Hermione and Artois walked slowly forward to the terrace, arm linked in arm. Maurice was about to follow them when he felt a hand catch hold of him, a hand that was hot and imperative.

"Gaspare! What is it?"

"Signorino, signorino, I must speak to you!"

Startled, Maurice looked into the boy's flushed face. The great eyes searched him fiercely.

"Put the donkeys in the stable," Maurice said. "I'll come."

"Come behind the house, signorino. Ah, Madonna!"

The last exclamation was breathed out with an intensity that was like the intensity of despair. The boy's look and manner were tragic.

"Gaspare," Maurice said, "what----?"

He saw Hermione turning towards him.

"I'll come in a minute, Gaspare."

"Madonna!" repeated the boy. "Madonna!"

He held up his hands and let them drop to his sides. Then he muttered something--a long sentence--in dialect. His voice sounded like a miserable old man's.

"Ah--ah!"

He called to the donkeys and drove them forward to the out-house. Maurice followed.

What had happened? Gaspare had the manner, the look, of one confronted by a terror from which there was no escape. His eyes had surely at the same time rebuked and furiously pitied his master. What did they mean?

"This is our Garden of Paradise!" Hermione was saying as Maurice came up to her and Artois. "Do you wonder that we love it?"

"I wonder that you left it." Artois replied.

He was sunk in a deep straw chair, a chaise longue piled up with cus.h.i.+ons, facing the great and radiant view. After he had spoken he sighed.

"I don't think," he said, "that either of you really know that this is Eden. That knowledge has been reserved for the interloper, for me."

Hermione sat down close to him. Maurice was standing by the wall, listening furtively to the noises from the out-house, where Gaspare was unsaddling the donkeys. Artois glanced at him, and was more sharply conscious of change in him. To Artois this place, after the long journey, which had sorely tried his feeble body, seemed an enchanted place of peace, a veritable Elysian Field in which the saddest, the most driven man must surely forget his pain and learn how to rest and to be joyful in repose. But he felt that his host, the man who had been living in paradise, who ought surely to have been learning its blessed lessons through sunlit days and starry nights, was restless like a man in a city, was anxious, was intensely ill at ease. Once, watching this man, Artois had thought of the messenger, poised on winged feet, radiantly ready for movement that would be exquisite because it would be obedient. This man still looked ready for flight, but for a flight how different! As Artois was thinking this Maurice moved.

"Excuse me just for an instant!" he said. "I want to speak to Gaspare."

He saw now that Gaspare was taking into the cottage the provisions that had been carried up by the donkey from Marechiaro.

"I--I told him to do something for me in the village," he added, "and I want just to know--"

He looked at them, almost defiantly, as if he challenged them not to believe what he had said. Then, without finis.h.i.+ng his sentence, he went quickly into the cottage.

"You have chosen your garden well," Artois said to Hermione directly they were alone. "No other sea has ever given to me such an impression of tenderness and magical s.p.a.ce as this; no other sea has surely ever had a horizon-line so distant from those who look as this."

He went on talking about the beauty, leading her with him. He feared lest she might begin to speak about her husband.

Meanwhile, Maurice had reached the mountain-side behind the house and was waiting there for Gaspare. He heard the boy's voice in the kitchen speaking to Lucrezia, angrily it seemed by the sound. Then the voice ceased and Gaspare appeared for an instant at the kitchen door, making violent motions with his arms towards the mountain. He disappeared. What did he want? What did he mean? The gestures had been imperative. Maurice looked round. A little way up the mountain there was a large, closed building, like a barn, built of stones. It belonged to a contadino, but Maurice had never seen it open, or seen any one going to or coming from it. As he stared at it an idea occurred to him. Perhaps Gaspare meant him to go and wait there, behind the barn, so that Lucrezia should not see or hear their colloquy. He resolved to do this, and went swiftly up the hill-side. When he was in the shadow of the building he waited. He did not know what was the matter, what Gaspare wanted, but he realized that something had occurred which had stirred the boy to the depths. This something must have occurred while he was at Marechiaro. Before he had time mentally to make a list of possible events in Marechiaro, Maurice heard light feet running swiftly up the mountain, and Gaspare came round the corner, still with the look of tragedy, a wild, almost terrible look in his eyes.

"Signorino," he began at once, in a low voice that was full of the pressure of an intense excitement. "Tell me! Where were you last night when we were making the fireworks go off?"

Maurice felt the blood mount to his face.

"Close to where you left me," he answered.

"Oh, signore! Oh, signore!"

It was almost a cry. The sweat was pouring down the boy's face.

"Ma non e mia colpa! Non e mia colpa!" he exclaimed.

"What do you mean? What has happened, Gaspare?"

"I have seen Salvatore."

His voice was more quiet now. He fixed his eyes almost sternly on his padrone, as if in the effort to read his very soul.

"Well? Well, Gaspare?"

Maurice was almost stammering now. He guessed--he knew what was coming.

"Salvatore came up to me just before I got to the village. I heard him calling, 'Stop!' I stood still. We were on the path not far from the fountain. There was a broken branch on the ground, a branch of olive.

Salvatore said: 'Suppose that is your padrone, that branch there!' and he spat on it. He spat on it, signore, he spat--and he spat."

Maurice knew now.

"Go on!" he said.

And this time there was no uncertainty in his voice. Gaspare was breathing hard. His breast rose and fell.