The Call of the Blood

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"It's from Emile," she said.

Maurice was closing the shutters, to make the bedroom dark.

"Is he still in Africa?" he asked, letting down the bar with a clatter.

"Yes," she said, opening the envelope. "Go to bed like a good boy while I
read it."

She wanted his kiss so much that she did not go near to him, and spoke
with a lightness that was almost like a feigned indifference. He thrust
his gay face through the doorway into the sunshine, and she saw the beads
of perspiration on his smooth brow above his laughing, yet half-sleepy
eyes.

"Come and tuck me up afterwards!" he said, and vanished.

Hermione made a little movement as if to follow him, but checked it and
unfolded the letter.

"4, RUE D'ABDUL KADER, KAIROUAN.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--This will be one of my dreary notes, but you must
forgive me. Do you ever feel a heavy cloud of apprehension lowering
over you, a sensation of approaching calamity, as if you heard the
footsteps of a deadly enemy stealthily approaching you? Do you know
what it is to lose courage, to fear yourself, life, the future, to
long to hear a word of sympathy from a friendly voice, to long to
lay hold of a friendly hand? Are you ever like a child in the dark,
your intellect no weapon against the dread of formless things? The
African sun is shining here as I sit under a palm-tree writing,
with my servant, Zerzour, squatting beside me. It is so clear that
I can almost count the veins in the leaves of the palms, so warm
that Zerzour has thrown off his burnous and kept on only his linen
shirt. And yet I am cold and seem to be in blackness. I write to
you to gain some courage if I can. But I have gained none yet. I
believe there must be a physical cause for my malaise, and that I
am going to have some dreadful illness, and perhaps lay my bones
here in the shadow of the mosques among the sons of Islam. Write to
me. Is the garden of paradise blooming with flowers? Is the tree of
knowledge of good weighed down with fruit, and do you pluck the
fruit boldly and eat it every day? You told me in London to come
over and see you. I am not coming. Do not fear. But how I wish that
I could now, at this instant, see your strong face, touch your
courageous hand! There is a sensation of doom upon me. Laugh at me
as much as you like, but write to me. I feel cold--cold in the sun.

EMILE."

When she had finished reading this letter, Hermione stood quite still
with it in her hand, gazing at the white paper on which this cry from
Africa was traced. It seemed to her that--a cry from across the sea for
help against some impending fate. She had often had melancholy letters
from Artois in the past, expressing pessimistic views about life and
literature, anxiety about some book which he was writing and which he
thought was going to be a failure, anger against the follies of men, the
turn of French politics, or the degeneration of the arts in modern times.
Diatribes she was accustomed to, and a definite melancholy from one who
had not a gay temperament. But this letter was different from all the
others. She sat down and read it again. For the moment she had forgotten
Maurice, and did not hear his movements in the adjoining room. She was in
Africa under a palm-tree, looking into the face of a friend with keen
anxiety, trying to read the immediate future for him there.

"Maurice!" she called, presently, without getting up from her seat,
"I've had such a strange letter from Emile. I'm afraid--I feel as if he
were going to be dreadfully ill or have an accident."

There was no reply.

"Maurice!" she called again.

Then she got up and looked into the bedroom. It was nearly dark, but she
could see her husband's black head on the pillow and hear a sound of
regular breathing. He was asleep already; she had not received his kiss
or tucked him up. She felt absurdly unhappy, as if she had missed a
pleasure that could never come to her again. That, she thought, is one of
the penalties of a great love, the passionate regret it spends on the
tiny things it has failed of. At this moment she fancied--no, she felt
sure--that there would always be a shadow in her life. She had lost
Maurice's kiss after his return from his first absence since their
marriage. And a kiss from his lips still seemed to her a wonderful,
almost a sacred thing, not only a physical act, but an emblem of that
which was mysterious and lay behind the physical. Why had she not let him
kiss her on the terrace? Her sensitive reserve had made her loss. For a
moment she thought she wished she had the careless mind of a peasant.
Lucrezia loved Sebastiano with passion, but she would have let him kiss
her in public and been proud of it. What was the use of delicacy, of
sensitiveness, in the great, coarse thing called life? Even Maurice had
not shared her feeling. He was open as a boy, almost as a peasant boy.

She began to wonder about him. She often wondered about him now in
Sicily. In England she never had. She had thought there that she knew him
as he, perhaps, could never know her. It seemed to her that she had been
almost arrogant, filled with a pride of intellect. She was beginning to
be humbler here, face to face with Etna.

Let him sleep, mystery wrapped in the mystery of slumber!

She sat down in the twilight, waiting till he should wake, watching the
darkness of his hair upon the pillow.

Some time passed, and presently she heard a noise upon the terrace. She
got up softly, went into the sitting-room, and looked out. Lucrezia was
laying the table for collazione.

"Is it half-past one already?" she asked.

"Si, signora."

"But the padrone is still asleep!"

"So is Gaspare in the hay. Come and see, signora."

Lucrezia took Hermione by the hand and led her round the angle of the
cottage. There, under the low roof of the out-house, dressed only in his
shirt and trousers with his brown arms bare and his hair tumbled over his
damp forehead, lay Gaspare on a heap of hay close to Tito, the donkey.
Some hens were tripping and pecking by his legs, and a black cat was
curled up in the hollow of his left armpit. He looked infinitely young,
healthy, and comfortable, like an embodied carelessness that had flung
itself down to its need.

"I wish I could sleep like that," said Hermione.

"Signora!" said Lucrezia, shocked. "You in the stable with that white
dress! Mamma mia! And the hens!"

"Hens, donkey, cat, hay, and all--I should love it. But I'm too old ever
to sleep like that. Don't wake him!"

Lucrezia was stepping over to Gaspare.

"And I won't wake the padrone. Let them both sleep. They've been up all
night. I'll eat alone. When they wake we'll manage something for them.
Perhaps they'll sleep till evening, till dinner-time."

"Gaspare will, signora. He can sleep the clock round when he's tired."

"And the padrone too, I dare say. All the better."

She spoke cheerfully, then went to sit down to her solitary meal.

The letter of Artois was her only company. She read it again as she ate,
and again felt as if it had been written by a man over whom some real
misfortune was impending. The thought of his isolation in that remote
African city pained her warm heart. She compared it with her own
momentary solitude, and chided herself for minding--and she did mind--the
lonely meal. How much she had--everything almost! And Artois, with his
genius, his fame, his liberty--how little he had! An Arab servant for his
companion, while she for hers had Maurice! Her heart glowed with
thankfulness, and, feeling how rich she was, she felt a longing to give
to others--a longing to make every one happy, a longing specially to make
Emile happy. His letter was horribly sad. Each time she looked at it she
was made sad by it, even apprehensive. She remembered their long and
close friendship, how she had sympathized with all his struggles, how she
had been proud of possessing his confidence and of being asked to advise
him on points connected with his work. The past returned to her, kindling
fires in her heart, till she longed to be near him and to shed their
warmth on him. The African sun shone upon him and left him cold, numb.
How wonderful it was, she thought, that the touch of a true friend's
hand, the smile of the eyes of a friend, could succeed where the sun
failed. Sometimes she thought of herself, of all human beings, as
pygmies. Now she felt that she came of a race of giants, whose powers
were illimitable. If only she could be under that palm-tree for a moment
beside Emile, she would be able to test the power she knew was within
her, the glorious power that the sun lacked, to shed light and heat
through a human soul. With an instinctive gesture she stretched out her
hand as if to give Artois the touch he longed for. It encountered only
the air and dropped to her side. She got up with a sigh.

"Poor old Emile!" she said to herself. "If only I could do something for
him!"

The thought of Maurice sleeping calmly close to her made her long to say
"Thank you" for her great happiness by performing some action of
usefulness, some action that would help another--Emile for choice--to
happiness, or, at least, to calm.

This longing was for a moment so keen in her that it was almost like an
unconscious petition, like an unuttered prayer in the heart, "Give me an
opportunity to show my gratitude."

She stood by the wall for a moment, looking over into the ravine and at
the mountain flank opposite. Etna was startlingly clear to-day. She
fancied that if a fly were to settle upon the snow on its summit she
would be able to see it. The sea was like a mirror in which lay the
reflection of the unclouded sky. It was not far to Africa. She watched a
bird pass towards the sea. Perhaps it was flying to Kairouan, and would
settle at last on one of the white cupolas of the great mosque there, the
Mosque of Djama Kebir.

What could she do for Emile? She could at least write to him. She could
renew her invitation to him to come to Sicily.

"Lucrezia!" she called, softly, lest she might waken Maurice.

"Signora?" said Lucrezia, appearing round the corner of the cottage.

"Please bring me out a pen and ink and writing-paper, will you?"

"Si, signora."

Lucrezia was standing beside Hermione. Now she turned to go into the
house. As she did so she said:

"Ecco, Antonino from the post-office!"

"Where?" asked Hermione.

Lucrezia pointed to a little figure that was moving quickly along the
mountain-path towards the cottage.

"There, signora. But why should he come? It is not the hour for the post
yet."

"No. Perhaps it is a telegram. Yes, it must be a telegram."

She glanced at the letter in her hand.

"It's a telegram from Africa," she said, as if she knew.

And at that moment she felt that she did know.

Lucrezia regarded her with round-eyed amazement.

"But, signora, how can you--"

"There, Antonino has disappeared under the trees! We shall see him in a
minute among the rocks. I'll go to meet him."

And she went quickly to the archway, and looked down the path where the
lizards were darting to and fro in the sunshine. Almost directly Antonino
reappeared, a small boy climbing steadily up the steep pathway, with a
leather bag slung over his shoulder.

"Antonino!" she called to him. "Is it a telegram?"

"Si, signora!" he cried out.

He came up to her, panting, opened the bag, and gave her the folded
paper.

"Go and get something to drink," she said. "To eat, too, if you're
hungry."

Antonino ran off eagerly, while Hermione tore open the paper and read
these words in French:

"Monsieur Artois dangerously ill; fear may not recover; he wished
you to know.

MAX BERTON, Docteur Medecin, Kairouan."

Hermione dropped the telegram. She did not feel at all surprised. Indeed,
she felt that she had been expecting almost these very words, telling her
of a tragedy at which the letter she still held in her hand had hinted.
For a moment she stood there without being conscious of any special
sensation. Then she stooped, picked up the telegram, and read it again.
This time it seemed like an answer to that unuttered prayer in her heart:
"Give me an opportunity to show my gratitude." She did not hesitate for
a moment as to what she would do. She would go to Kairouan, to close the
eyes of her friend if he must die, if not to nurse him back to life.

Antonino was munching some bread and cheese and had one hand round a
glass full of red wine.

"I'm going to write an answer," she said to him, "and you must run with
it."

"Si, signora."

"Was it from Africa, signora?" asked Lucrezia.

"Yes."

Lucrezia's jaw fell, and she stared in superstitious amazement.

"I wonder," Hermione thought, "if Maurice--"

She went gently to the bedroom. He was still sleeping calmly. His
attitude of luxurious repose, the sound of his quiet breathing, seemed
strange to her eyes and ears at this moment, strange and almost horrible.
For an instant she thought of waking him in order to tell him her news
and consult with him about the journey. It never occurred to her to ask
him whether there should be a journey. But something held her back, as
one is held back from disturbing the slumber of a tired child, and she
returned to the sitting-room, wrote out the following telegram:

"Shall start for Kairouan at once; wire me Tunisia Palace Hotel,
Tunis,
MADAME DELAREY."

and sent Antonino with it flying down the hill. Then she got time-tables
and a guide-book of Tunisia, and sat down at her writing-table to make
out the journey; while Lucrezia, conscious that something unusual was
afoot, watched her with solemn eyes.

Hermione found that she would gain nothing by starting that night. By
leaving early the next morning she would arrive at Trapani in time to
catch a steamer which left at midnight for Tunis, reaching Africa at
nine on the following morning. From Tunis a day's journey by train would
bring her to Kairouan. If the steamer were punctual she might be able to
catch a train immediately on her arrival at Tunis. If not, she would have
to spend one day there.

Already she felt as if she were travelling. All sense of peace had left
her. She seemed to hear the shriek of engines, the roar of trains in
tunnels and under bridges, to shake with the oscillation of the carriage,
to sway with the dip and rise of the action of the steamer.

Swiftly, as one in haste, she wrote down times of departure and arrival:
Cattaro to Messina, Messina to Palermo, Palermo to Trapani, Trapani to
Tunis, Tunis to Kairouan, with the price of the ticket--a return ticket.
When that was done and she had laid down her pen, she began for the first
time to realize the change a morsel of paper had made in her life, to
realize the fact of the closeness of her new knowledge of what was and
what was coming to Maurice's ignorance. The travelling sensation within
her, an intense interior restlessness, made her long for action, for some
ardent occupation in which the body could take part. She would have liked
to begin at once to pack, but all her things were in the bedroom where
Maurice was sleeping. Would he sleep forever? She longed for him to wake,
but she would not wake him. Everything could be packed in an hour. There
was no reason to begin now. But how could she remain just sitting there
in the great tranquillity of this afternoon of spring, looking at the
long, calm line of Etna rising from the sea, while Emile, perhaps, lay
dying?

She got up, went once more to the terrace, and began to pace up and down
under the awning. She had not told Lucrezia that she was going on the
morrow. Maurice must know first. What would he say? How would he take it?
And what would he do? Even in the midst of her now growing sorrow--for
at first she had hardly felt sorry, had hardly felt anything but that
intense restlessness which still possessed her--she was preoccupied with
that. She meant, when he woke, to give him the telegram, and say simply
that she must go at once to Artois. That was all. She would not ask, hint
at anything else. She would just tell Maurice that she could not leave
her dearest friend to die alone in an African city, tended only by an
Arab, and a doctor who came to earn his fee.

And Maurice--what would he say? What would he--do?

If only he would wake! There was something terrible to her in the
contrast between his condition and hers at this moment.

And what ought she to do if Maurice--?

She broke off short in her mental arrangement of possible happenings when
Maurice should wake.

The afternoon waned and still he slept. As she watched the light changing
on the sea, growing softer, more wistful, and the long outline of Etna
becoming darker against the sky, Hermione felt a sort of unreasonable
despair taking possession of her. So few hours of the day were left now,
and on the morrow this Sicilian life--a life that had been ideal--must
come to an end for a time, and perhaps forever. The abruptness of the
blow which had fallen had wakened in her sensitive heart a painful,
almost an exaggerated sense of the uncertainty of the human fate. It
seemed to her that the joy which had been hers in these tranquil Sicilian
days, a joy more perfect than any she had conceived of, was being broken
off short, as if it could never be renewed. With her anxiety for her
friend mingled another anxiety, more formless, but black and horrible in
its vagueness.

"If this should be our last day together in Sicily!" she thought, as she
watched the light softening among the hills and the shadows of the
olive-trees lengthening upon the ground.

"If this should be our last night together in the house of the priest!"

It seemed to her that even with Maurice in another place she could never
know again such perfect peace and joy, and her heart ached at the thought
of leaving it.

"To-morrow!" she thought. "Only a few hours and this will all be over!"

It seemed almost incredible. She felt that she could not realize it
thoroughly and yet that she realized it too much, as in a nightmare one
seems to feel both less and more than in any tragedy of a wakeful hour.

A few hours and it would all be over--and through those hours Maurice
slept.

The twilight was falling when he stirred, muttered some broken words, and
opened his eyes. He heard no sound, and thought it was early morning.

"Hermione!" he said, softly.

Then he lay still for a moment and remembered.

"By Jove! it must be long past time for dejeuner!" he thought.

He sprang up and put his head into the sitting-room.

"Hermione!" he called.

"Yes," she answered, from the terrace.

"What's the time?"

"Nearly dinner-time."

He burst out laughing.

"Didn't you think I was going to sleep forever?" he said.

"Almost," her voice said.

He wondered a little why she did not come to him, but only answered him
from a distance.

"I'll dress and be out in a moment," he called.

"All right!"

Now that Maurice was awake at last, Hermione's grief at the lost
afternoon became much more acute, but she was determined to conceal it.
She remained where she was just then because she had been startled by the
sound of her husband's voice, and was not sure of her power of
self-control. When, a few minutes later, he came out upon the terrace
with a half-amused, half-apologetic look on his face, she felt safer. She
resolved to waste no time, but to tell him at once.

"Maurice," she said, "while you've been sleeping I've been living very
fast and travelling very far."

"How, Hermione? What do you mean?" he asked, sitting down by the wall and
looking at her with eyes that still held shadows of sleep.

"Something's happened to-day that's--that's going to alter everything."

He looked astonished.

"Why, how grave you are! But what? What could happen here?"

"This came."

She gave him the doctor's telegram. He read it slowly aloud.

"Artois!" he said. "Poor fellow! And out there in Africa all alone!"

He stopped speaking, looked at her, then leaned forward, put his arm
round her shoulder, and kissed her gently.

"I'm awfully sorry for you, Hermione," he said. "Awfully sorry, I know
how you must be feeling. When did it come?"

"Some hours ago."

"And I've been sleeping! I feel a brute."

He kissed her again.

"Why didn't you wake me?"

"Just to share a grief? That would have been horrid of me, Maurice!"

He looked again at the telegram.

"Did you wire?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Of course. Perhaps to-morrow, or in a day or two, we shall have better
news, that he's turned the corner. He's a strong man, Hermione; he ought
to recover. I believe he'll recover."

"Maurice," she said. "I want to tell you something."

"What, dear?"

"I feel I must--I can't wait here for news."

"But then--what will you do?"

"While you've been sleeping I've been looking out trains."

"Trains! You don't mean--"

"I must start for Kairouan to-morrow morning. Read this, too."

And she gave him Emile's letter.

"Doesn't that make you feel his loneliness?" she said, when he had
finished it. "And think of it now--now when perhaps he knows that he is
dying."

"You are going away," he said--"going away from here!"

His voice sounded as if he could not believe it.

"To-morrow morning!" he added, more incredulously.

"If I waited I might be too late."

She was watching him with intent eyes, in which there seemed to flame a
great anxiety.

"You know what friends we've been," she continued. "Don't you think I
ought to go?"

"I--perhaps--yes, I see how you feel. Yes, I see. But"--he got up--"to
leave here to-morrow! I felt as if--almost as if we'd been here always
and should live here for the rest of our lives."

"I wish to Heaven we could!" she exclaimed, her voice changing. "Oh,
Maurice, if you knew how dreadful it is to me to go!"

"How far is Kairouan?"

"If I catch the train at Tunis I can be there the day after to-morrow."

"And you are going to nurse him, of course?"

"Yes, if--if I'm in time. Now I ought to pack before dinner."

"How beastly!" he said, just like a boy. "How utterly beastly! I don't
feel as if I could believe it all. But you--what a trump you are,
Hermione! To leave this and travel all that way--not one woman in a
hundred would do it."

"Wouldn't you for a friend?"

"I!" he said, simply. "I don't know whether I understand friendship as
you do. I've had lots of friends, of course, but one seemed to me very
like another, as long as they were jolly."

"How Sicilian!" she thought.

She had heard Gaspare speak of his boy friends in much the same way.

"Emile is more to me than any one in the world but you," she said.

Her voice changed, faltered on the last word, and she walked along the
terrace to the sitting-room window.

"I must pack now," she said. "Then we can have one more quiet time
together after dinner."

Her last words seemed to strike him, for he followed her, and as she was
going into the bedroom, he said:

"Perhaps--why shouldn't I--"

But then he stopped.

"Yes, Maurice!" she said, quickly.

"Where's Gaspare?" he asked. "We'll make him help with the packing. But
you won't take much, will you? It'll only be for a few days, I suppose."

"Who knows?"

"Gaspare! Gaspare!" he called.

"Che vuole?" answered a sleepy voice.

"Come here."

In a moment a languid figure appeared round the corner. Maurice explained
matters. Instantly Gaspare became a thing of quicksilver. He darted to
help Hermione. Every nerve seemed quivering to be useful.

"And the signore?" he said, presently, as he carried a trunk into the
room.

"The signore!" said Hermione.

"Is he going, too?"

"No, no!" said Hermione, swiftly.

She put her finger to her lips. Delarey was just coming into the room.

Gaspare said no more, but he shot a curious glance from padrona to
padrone as he knelt down to lay some things in the trunk.

By dinner-time Hermione's preparations were completed. The one trunk she
meant to take was packed. How hateful it looked standing there in the
white room with the label hanging from the handle! She washed her face
and hands in cold water, and came out onto the terrace where the
dinner-table was laid. It was a warm, still night, like the night of the
fishing, and the moon hung low in a clear sky.

"How exquisite it is here!" she said to Maurice, as they sat down. "We
are in the very heart of calm, majestic calm. Look at that one star over
Etna, and the outlines of the hills and of that old castle--"

She stopped.

"It brings a lump into my throat," she said, after a little pause. "It's
too beautiful and too still to-night."

"I love being here," he said.

They ate their dinner in silence for some time. Presently Maurice began
to crumble his bread.

"Hermione," he said. "Look here--"

"Yes, Maurice."

"I've been thinking--of course I scarcely know Artois, and I could be of
no earthly use, but I've been thinking whether it would not be better for
me to come to Kairouan with you."

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