The Call of the Blood Part 76

He looked embarra.s.sed as he ended, and s.h.i.+fted his gaze from his companion.

"I agree with you," Artois said.

Maurice looked at him again, almost eagerly. An odd feeling came to him that this man, who unwittingly had done him a deadly harm, would be able to understand what perhaps no woman could ever understand, the tyranny of the senses in a man, their fierce tyranny in the sunlit lands. Had he been so wicked? Would Artois think so? And the punishment that was perhaps coming--did he deserve that it should be terrible? He wondered, almost like a boy. But Hermione was not with them. When she was there he did not wonder. He felt that he deserved lashes unnumbered.

And Artois--he began to feel almost clairvoyant. The new softness that had come to him with the pain of the body, that had been developed by the blessed rest from pain that was convalescence, had not stricken his faculty of seeing clear in others, but it had changed, at any rate for a time, the sentiments that followed upon the exercise of that faculty.

Scorn and contempt were less near to him than they had been. Pity was nearer. He felt now almost sure that Delarey had fallen into some trouble while Hermione was in Africa, that he was oppressed at this moment by some great uneasiness or even fear, that he was secretly cursing some imprudence, and that his last words were a sort of surrept.i.tious plea for forgiveness, thrown out to the Powers of the air, to the Spirits of the void, to whatever shadowy presences are about the guilty man ready to condemn his sin. He felt, too, that he owed much to Delarey. In a sense it might be said that he owed to him his life. For Delarey had allowed Hermione to come to Africa, and if Hermione had not come the end for him, Artois, might well have been death.

"I should like to say something to you, monsieur," he said. "It is rather difficult to say, because I do not wish it to seem formal, when the feeling that prompts it is not formal."

Maurice was again looking over the wall, watching with intensity the black speck that was slowly approaching on the little path.

"What is it, monsieur?" he asked, quickly.

"I owe you a debt--indeed I do. You must not deny it. Through your magnanimous action in permitting your wife to leave you, you, perhaps indirectly, saved my life. For, without her aid, I do not think I could have recovered. Of her n.o.bility and devotion I will not, because I cannot adequately, speak. But I wish to say to you that if ever I can do you a service of any kind I will do it."

As he finished Maurice, who was looking at him now, saw a veil over his big eyes. Could it--could it possibly be a veil of tears!

"Thank you," he answered.

He tried to speak warmly, cordially. But his heart said to him: "You can do nothing for me now. It is all too late!"

Yet the words and the emotion of Artois were some slight relief to him.

He was able to feel that in this man he had no secret enemy, but, if need be, a friend.

"You have a nice fellow as servant," Artois said, to change the conversation.

"Gaspare--yes. He's loyal. I intend to ask Hermione to let me take him to England with us."

He paused, then added, with an anxious curiosity:

"Did you talk to him much as you came up?"

He wondered whether the novelist had noticed Gaspare's agitation or whether the boy had been subtle enough to conceal it.

"Not very much. The path is narrow, and I rode in front. He sang most of the time, those melancholy songs of Sicily that came surely long ago across the sea from Africa."

"They nearly always sing on the mountains when they are with the donkeys."

"Dirges of the sun. There is a sadness of the sun as well as a joy."

"Yes."

As Maurice answered, he thought, "How well I know that now!" And as he looked at the black figure drawing nearer in the suns.h.i.+ne it seemed to him that there was a terror in that gold which he had often wors.h.i.+pped.

If that figure should be Salvatore! He strained his eyes. At one moment he fancied that he recognized the wild, free, rather strutting walk of the fisherman. At another he believed that his fear had played him a trick, that the movements of the figure were those of an old man, some plodding contadino of the hills. Artois wondered increasingly what he was looking at. A silence fell between them. Artois lay back in the chaise longue and gazed up at the blue, then at the section of distant sea which was visible above the rim of the wall though the intervening mountain land was hidden. It was a paradise up here. And to have it with the great love of a woman, what an experience that must be for any man! It seemed to him strange that such an experience had been the gift of the G.o.ds to their messenger, their Mercury. What had it meant to him? What did it mean to him now? Something had changed him. Was it that? In the man by the wall Artois did not see any longer the bright youth he remembered.

Yet the youth was still there, the supple grace, the beauty, bronzed now by the long heats of the sun. It was the expression that had changed. In cities one sees anxious-looking men everywhere. In London Delarey had stood out from the crowd not only because of his beauty of the South, but because of his light-hearted expression, the spirit of youth in his eyes.

And now here, in this reality that seemed almost like a dream in its perfection, in this reality of the South, there was a look of strain in his eyes and in his whole body. The man had contradicted his surroundings in London--now he contradicted his surroundings here.

While Artois was thinking this Maurice's expression suddenly changed, his att.i.tude became easier. He turned round from the wall, and Artois saw that the keen anxiety had gone out of his eyes. Gaspare was below with his gun pretending to look for birds, and had made a sign that the approaching figure was not that of Salvatore. Maurice's momentary sense of relief was so great that it threw him off his guard.

"What can have been happening beyond the wall?" Artois thought.

He felt as if a drama had been played out there and the denouement had been happy.

Hermione came back at this moment.

"Poor Lucrezia!" she said. "She's plucky, but Sebastiano is making her suffer horribly."

"Here!" said Artois, almost involuntarily.

"It does seem almost impossible, I know."

She sat down again near him and smiled at her husband.

"You are coming back to health, Emile. And Maurice and I--well, we are in our garden. It seems wrong, terribly wrong, that any one should suffer here. But Lucrezia loves like a Sicilian. What violence there is in these people!"

"England must not judge them."

He looked at Maurice.

"What's that?" asked Hermione. "Something you two were talking about when I was in the kitchen?"

Maurice looked uneasy.

"I was only saying that I think the sun--the South has an influence," he said, "and that----"

"An influence!" exclaimed Hermione. "Of course it has! Emile, you would have seen that influence at work if you had been with us on our first day in Sicily. Your tarantella, Maurice!"

She smiled again happily, but her husband did not answer her smile.

"What was that?" said Artois. "You never told me in Africa."

"The boys danced a tarantella here on the terrace to welcome us, and it drove Maurice so mad that he sprang up and danced too. And the strange thing was that he danced as well as any of them. His blood called him, and he obeyed the call."

She looked at Artois to remind him of his words.

"It's good when the blood calls one to the tarantella, isn't it?" she asked him. "I think it's the most wildly innocent expression of extreme joy in the world. And yet"--her expressive face changed, and into her prominent brown eyes there stole a half-whimsical, half-earnest look--"at the end--Maurice, do you know that I was almost frightened that day at the end?"

"Frightened! Why?" he said.

He got up from the terrace-seat and sat down in a straw chair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'BUT I SOON LEARNED TO DELIGHT IN--IN MY SICILIAN,' SHE SAID, TENDERLY"]

"Why?" he repeated, crossing one leg over the other and laying his brown hands on the arms of the chair.

"I had a feeling that you were escaping from me in the tarantella. Wasn't it absurd?"

He looked slightly puzzled. She turned to Artois.