The Call of the Blood

R >> Robert Smythe Hichens >> The Call of the Blood

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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 passionate 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 bastard French: "Tournez!" "A votre place!" "Prenez la donne!" "Dansez
toutes!" Eyes were sparkling, cheeks were flushing, 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 glasses, 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 passing moment,
forgetting poverty, hardship, and toil, grinding taxation, all the cares
and the sorrows that encompass the peasant's life, forgetting the flight
of the hours, forgetting everything in the passion of the festa, the
dedication of all their powers to the laughing worship of fun.

Yes, the passing 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 passing 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
shining sea on which the ship 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.

Suddenly he knew that he could not remain all night alone on the
mountain-side.

He went quickly into the cottage, got his soft hat, then went from room
to room, closing the windows and barring the wooden shutters. When he had
come out again upon the steps and locked the cottage door he stood for a
moment hesitating with the large door-key in his hand. He said to himself
that he was going to the festa at Castel Vecchio. Of course he was going
there, to dance the country dances and join in the songs of Sicily. He
slipped the key into his pocket and went down the steps to the terrace.
But there he hesitated again. He took the key out of his pocket, looked
at it as it lay in his hand, then put it down on the sill of the
sitting-room window.

"If any one comes, there isn't very much to steal," he thought. "And,
perhaps--" Again he looked at the lights of Castel Vecchio, then down
towards the sea. The star of the sea shone steadily and seemed to summon
him. He left the key on the window-sill, with a quick gesture pulled his
hat-brim down farther over his eyes, hastened along the terrace, and,
turning to the left beyond the archway, took the path that led through
the olive-trees towards Isola Bella and the sea.

Through the wonderful silence of the night among the hills there came now
a voice that was thrilling to his ears--the voice of youth by the sea
calling to the youth that was in him.

Hermione was travelling to her friend. Must he remain quite friendless?

All the way down to the sea he heard the calling of the voice.

X

As dawn was breaking, Lucrezia and Gaspare climbed slowly up the
mountain-side towards the cottage. Lucrezia's eyes were red, for she had
just bidden good-bye to Sebastiano, who was sailing that day for the
Lipari Isles, and she did not know how soon he would be back. Sebastiano
had not cried. He loved change, and was radiant at the prospect of his
voyage. But Lucrezia's heart was torn. She knew Sebastiano, knew his wild
and adventurous spirit, his reckless passion for life, and the gifts it
scatters at the feet of lusty youth. There were maidens in the Lipari
Isles. They might be beautiful. She had scarcely been jealous of
Sebastiano before her betrothal to him, for then she had had no rights
over him, and she was filled with the spirit of humbleness that still
dwells in the women of Sicily, the spirit that whispers "Man may do what
he will." But now something had arisen within her to do battle with that
spirit. She wanted Sebastiano for her very own, and the thought of his
freedom when away tormented her.

Gaspare comforted her in perfunctory fashion.

"What does it matter?" he said. "When you are married you can keep him in
the house, and make him spin the flax for you."

And he laughed aloud. But when they drew near to the cottage he said:

"Zitta, Lucrezia! The padrone is asleep. We must steal in softly and not
waken him."

On tiptoe they crept along the terrace.

"He will have left the door open for us," whispered Gaspare. "He has the
revolver beside him and will not have been afraid."

But when they stood before the steps the door was shut. Gaspare tried it
gently. It was locked.

"Phew!" he whistled. "We cannot get in, for we cannot wake him."

Lucrezia shivered. Sorrow had made her feel cold.

"Mamma mia!" she began.

But Gaspare's sharp eyes had spied the key lying on the window-sill. He
darted to it and picked it up. Then he stared at the locked door and at
Lucrezia.

"But where is the padrone?" he said. "Oh, I know! He locked the door on
the inside and then put the key out of the window. But why is the bedroom
window shut? He always sleeps with it open!"

Quickly he thrust the key into the lock, opened the door, and entered the
dark sitting-room. Holding up a warning hand to keep Lucrezia quiet, he
tiptoed to the bedroom door, opened it without noise, and disappeared,
leaving Lucrezia outside. After a minute or two he came back.

"It is all right. He is sleeping. Go to bed."

Lucrezia turned to go.

"And never mind getting up early to make the padrone's coffee," Gaspare
added. "I will do it. I am not sleepy. I shall take the gun and go out
after the birds."

Lucrezia looked surprised. Gaspare was not in the habit of relieving her
of her duties. On the contrary, he was a strict taskmaster. But she was
tired and preoccupied. So she made no remark and went off to her room
behind the house, walking heavily and untying the handkerchief that was
round her head.

When she had gone, Gaspare stood by the table, thinking deeply. He had
lied to Lucrezia. The padrone was not asleep. His bed had not been slept
in. Where had he gone? Where was he now?

The Sicilian servant, if he cares for his padrone, feels as if he had a
proprietor's interest in him. He belongs to his padrone and his padrone
belongs to him. He will allow nobody to interfere with his possession. He
is intensely jealous of any one who seeks to disturb the intimacy between
his padrone and himself, or to enter into his padrone's life without
frankly letting him know it and the reason for it. The departure of
Hermione had given an additional impetus to Gaspare's always lively sense
of proprietorship in Maurice. He felt as if he had been left in charge of
his padrone, and had an almost sacred responsibility to deliver him up to
Hermione happy and safe when she returned. This absence, therefore,
startled and perturbed him--more--made him feel guilty of a lapse from
his duty. Perhaps he should not have gone to the festa. True, he had
asked the padrone to accompany him. But still--

He went out onto the terrace and looked around him. The dawn was faint
and pale. Wreaths of mist, like smoke trails, hung below him, obscuring
the sea. The ghostly cone of Etna loomed into the sky, extricating itself
from swaddling bands of clouds which shrouded its lower flanks. The air
was chilly upon this height, and the aspect of things was gray and
desolate, without temptation, without enchantment, to lure men out from
their dwellings.

What could have kept the padrone from his sleep till this hour?

Gaspare shivered a little as he stared over the wall. He was
thinking--thinking furiously. Although scarcely educated at all, he was
exceedingly sharp-witted, and could read character almost as swiftly and
surely as an Arab. At this moment he was busily recalling the book he had
been reading for many weeks in Sicily, the book of his padrone's
character, written out for him in words, in glances, in gestures, in
likes and dislikes, most clearly in actions. Mentally he turned the
leaves until he came to the night of the fishing, to the waning of the
night, to the journey to the caves, to the dawn when he woke upon the
sand and found that the padrone was not beside him. His brown hand
tightened on the stick he held, his brown eyes stared with the glittering
acuteness of a great bird's at the cloud trails hiding the sea below
him--hiding the sea, and all that lay beside the sea.

There was no one on the terrace. But there was a figure for a moment on
the mountain-side, leaping downward. The ravine took it and hid it in a
dark embrace. Gaspare had found what he sought, a clew to guide him. His
hesitation was gone. In his uneducated and intuitive mind there was no
longer any room for a doubt. He knew that his padrone was where he had
been in that other dawn, when he slipped away from the cave where his
companions were sleeping.

Surefooted as a goat, and incited to abnormal activity by a driving
spirit within him that throbbed with closely mingled curiosity, jealousy,
and anger, Gaspare made short work of the path in the ravine. In a few
minutes he came out on to the road by Isola Bella. On the shore was a
group of fishermen, all of them friends of his, getting ready their
fishing-tackle, and hauling down the boats to the gray sea for the
morning's work. Some of them hailed him, but he took no notice, only
pulled his soft hat down sideways over his cheek, and hurried on in the
direction of Messina, keeping to the left side of the road and away from
the shore, till he gained the summit of the hill from which the Caffe
Berardi and the caves were visible. There he stopped for a moment and
looked down. He saw no one upon the shore, but at some distance upon the
sea there was a black dot, a fishing-boat. It was stationary. Gaspare
knew that its occupant must be hauling in his net.

"Salvatore is out then!" he muttered to himself, as he turned aside from
the road onto the promontory, which was connected by the black wall of
rock with the land where stood the house of the sirens. This wall,
forbidding though it was, and descending sheer into the deep sea on
either side, had no terrors for him. He dropped down to it with a sort of
skilful carelessness, then squatted on a stone, and quickly unlaced his
mountain boots, pulled his stockings off, slung them with the boots round
his neck, and stood up on his bare feet. Then, balancing himself with his
out-stretched arms, he stepped boldly upon the wall. It was very narrow.
The sea surged through it. There was not space on it to walk
straight-footed, even with only one foot at a time upon the rock. Gaspare
was obliged to plant his feet sideways, the toes and heels pointing to
the sea on either hand. But the length of the wall was short, and he went
across it almost as quickly as if he had been walking upon the road.
Heights and depths had no terrors for him in his confident youth. And he
had been bred up among the rocks, and was a familiar friend of the sea. A
drop into it would have only meant a morning bath. Having gained the
farther side, he put on his stockings and boots, grasped his stick, and
began to climb upward through the thickly growing trees towards the house
of the sirens. His instinct had told him upon the terrace that the
padrone was there. Uneducated people have often marvellously retentive
memories for the things of every-day life. Gaspare remembered the
padrone's question about the little light beside the sea, his answer to
it, the way in which the padrone had looked towards the trees when, in
the dawn, they stood upon the summit of the hill and he pointed out the
caves where they were going to sleep. He remembered, too, from what
direction the padrone came towards the caffe when the sun was up--and he
knew.

As he drew near to the cottage he walked carefully, though still swiftly,
but when he reached it he paused, bent forward his head, and listened.
He was in the tangle of coarse grass that grew right up to the north wall
of the cottage, and close to the angle which hid from him the sea-side
and the cottage door. At first he heard nothing except the faint murmur
of the sea upon the rocks. His stillness now was as complete as had been
his previous activity, and in the one he was as assured as in the other.
Some five minutes passed. Again and again, with a measured monotony, came
to him the regular lisp of the waves. The grass rustled against his legs
as the little wind of morning pushed its way through it gently, and a
bird chirped above his head in the olive-trees and was answered by
another bird. And just then, as if in reply to the voices of the birds,
he heard the sound of human voices. They were distant and faint almost as
the lisp of the sea, and were surely coming towards him from the sea.

When Gaspare realized that the speakers were not in the cottage he crept
round the angle of the wall, slipped across the open space that fronted
the cottage door, and, gaining the trees, stood still in almost exactly
the place where Maurice had stood when he watched Maddalena in the dawn.

The voices sounded again and nearer. There was a little laugh in a girl's
voice, then the dry twang of the plucked strings of a guitar, then
silence. After a minute the guitar strings twanged again, and a girl's
voice began to sing a peasant song, "Zampagnaro."

At the end of the verse there was an imitation of the ceramella by the
voice, humming, or rather whining, bouche fermee. As it ceased a man's
voice said:

"Ancora! Ancora!"

The girl's voice began the imitation again, and the man's voice joined in
grotesquely, exaggerating the imitation farcically and closing it with a
boyish shout.

In response, standing under the trees, Gaspare shouted. He had meant to
keep silence; but the twang of the guitar, with its suggestion of a
festa, the singing voices, the youthful laughter, and the final
exclamation ringing out in the dawn, overcame the angry and suspicious
spirit that had hitherto dominated him. The boy's imp of fun was up and
dancing within him. He could not drive it out or lay it to rest.

"Hi--yi--yi--yi--yi!"

His voice died away, and was answered by a silence that seemed like a
startled thing holding its breath.

"Hi--yi--yi--yi--yi!"

He called again, lustily, leaped out from the trees, and went running
across the open space to the edge of the plateau by the sea. A tiny path
wound steeply down from here to the rocks below, and on it, just under
the concealing crest of the land, stood the padrone with Maddalena. Their
hands were linked together, as if they had caught at each other sharply
for sympathy or help. Their faces were tense and their lips parted. But
as they saw Gaspare's light figure leaping over the hill edge, his
dancing eyes fixed shrewdly, with a sort of boyish scolding, upon them,
their hands fell apart, their faces relaxed.

"Gasparino!" said Maurice. "It was you who called!"

"Si, signore."

He came up to them. Maddalena's oval face had flushed, and she dropped
the full lids over her black eyes as she said:

"Buon giorno, Gaspare."

"Buon giorno, Donna Maddalena."

Then they stood there for a moment in silence. Maurice was the first to
speak again.

"But why did you come here?" he said. "How did you know?"

Already the sparkle of merriment had dropped out of Gaspare's face as the
feeling of jealousy, of not having been completely trusted, returned to
his mind.

"Did not the signore wish me to know?" he said, almost gruffly, with a
sort of sullen violence. "I am sorry."

Maurice touched the back of his hand, giving it a gentle, half-humorous
slap.

"Don't be an ass, Gaspare. But how could you guess where I had gone?"

"Where did you go before, signore, when you could not sleep?"

At this thrust Maurice imitated Maddalena and reddened slightly. It
seemed to him as if he had been living under glass while he had fancied
himself enclosed in rock that was impenetrable by human eyes. He tried to
laugh away his slight confusion.

"Gaspare, you are the most birbante boy in Sicily!" he said. "You are
like a Mago Africano."

"Signorino, you should trust me," returned the boy, sullenly.

His own words seemed to move him, as if their sound revealed to him the
whole of the injury that had been inflicted upon his amour propre, and
suddenly angry tears started into his eyes.

"I thought I was a servant of confidence" (un servitore di confidenza),
he added, bitterly.

Maurice was amazed at the depth of feeling thus abruptly shown to him.
This was the first time he had been permitted to look for a moment deep
down into that strange volcano, a young and passionate Sicilian heart. As
he looked, swift and short as was his glance, his amazement died away.
Narcissus saw himself in the stream. Maurice saw, or believed he saw, his
heart's image, trembling perhaps and indistinct, far down in the passion
of Gaspare. So could he have been with a padrone had fate made his
situation in life a different one. So could he have felt had something
been concealed from him.

Maurice said nothing in reply. Maddalena was there. They walked in
silence to the cottage door, and there, rather like a detected
school-boy, he bade her good-bye, and set out through the trees with
Gaspare.

"That's not the way, is it?" Maurice said, presently, as the boy turned
to the left.

"How did you come, signore?"

"I!"

He hesitated. Then he saw the uselessness of striving to keep up a
master's pose with this servant of the sea and of the hills.

"I came by water," he said, smiling. "I swam, Gasparino."

The boy answered the smile, and suddenly the tension between them was
broken, and they were at their ease again.

"I will show you another way, signore, if you are not afraid."

Maurice laughed out gayly.

"The way of the rocks?" he said.

"Si, signore. But you must go barefooted and be as nimble as a goat."

"Do you doubt me, Gasparino?"

He looked at the boy hard, with a deliberately quizzing kindness, that
was gay but asked forgiveness, too, and surely promised amendment.

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