The Call of the Blood

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

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"Let him alone. Per Dio, signore, you gave me a fright, too."

"I was only swimming under water."

He looked at Gaspare. He longed to do something to comfort him, but he
realized that such violence could not be checked by anything. It must
wear itself out.

"And he thought I was dead!"

"Per Dio! And if you had been!"

He wrinkled up his face and spat.

"What do you mean?"

"Has he got a knife on him?"

He threw out his hand towards Gaspare.

"I don't know to-day. He generally has."

"I should have had it in me by now," said Salvatore.

And he smiled at the weeping boy almost sweetly, as if he could have
found it in his heart to caress such a murderer.

"Row in to land," Maurice said.

He began to put on his clothes. Salvatore turned the boat round and they
drew near to the rocks. The vapors were lifting now, gathering themselves
up to reveal the blue of the sky, but the sea was still gray and
mysterious, and the land looked like a land in a dream. Presently Gaspare
put his fists to his eyes, lifted his head, and sat up. He looked at his
master gloomily, as if in rebuke, and under this glance Maurice began to
feel guilty, as if he had done something wrong in yielding to his strange
impulses in the sea.

"I was only swimming under water, Gaspare," he said, apologetically.

The boy said nothing.

"I know now," continued Maurice, "that I shall never come to any harm
with you to look after me."

Still Gaspare said nothing. He sat there on the floor of the boat with
his dripping clothes clinging to his body, staring before him as if he
were too deeply immersed in gloomy thoughts to hear what was being said
to him.

"Gaspare!" Maurice exclaimed, moved by a sudden impulse. "Do you think
you would be very unhappy away from your 'paese'?"

Gaspare shifted forward suddenly. A light gleamed in his eyes.

"D'you think you could be happy with me in England?"

He smiled.

"Si, signore!"

"When we have to go away from Sicily I shall ask the signora to let me
take you with us."

Gaspare said nothing, but he looked at Salvatore, and his wet face was
like a song of pride and triumph.

XIV

That day, ere he started with Gaspare for the house of the priest,
Maurice made a promise to Maddalena. He pledged himself to go with her
and her father to the great fair of San Felice, which takes place
annually in the early days of June, when the throng of tourists has
departed, and the long heats of the summer have not yet fully set in. He
gave this promise in the presence of Salvatore and Gaspare, and while he
did so he was making up his mind to something. That day at the fair
should be the day of his farewell to Maddalena. Hermione must surely be
coming back in June. It was impossible that she could remain in Kairouan
later. The fury of the African summer would force her to leave the sacred
city, her mission of salvation either accomplished or rendered forever
futile by the death of her friend. And then, when Hermione came, within a
short time no doubt they would start for England, taking Gaspare with
them. For Maurice really meant to keep the boy in their service. After
the strange scene of the morning he felt as if Gaspare were one of the
family, a retainer with whose devoted protection he could never dispense.
Hermione, he was sure, would not object.

Hermione would not object. As he thought that, Maurice was conscious of a
feeling such as sometimes moves a child, upon whom a parent or guardian
has laid a gently restraining hand, violently to shrug his shoulders and
twist his body in the effort to get away and run wild in freedom. He knew
how utterly unreasonable and contemptible his sensation was, yet he had
it. The sun had bred in him not merely a passion for complete personal
liberty, but for something more, for lawlessness. For a moment he envied
Gaspare, the peasant boy, whose ardent youth was burdened with so few
duties to society, with so few obligations.

What was expected of Gaspare? Only a willing service, well paid, which he
could leave forever at any moment he pleased. To his family he must, no
doubt, give some of his earnings, but in return he was looked up to by
all, even by his father, as a little god. And in everything else was not
he free, wonderfully free in this island of the south, able to be
careless, unrestrained, wild as a young hawk, yet to remain uncondemned,
unwondered at?

And he--Maurice?

He thought of Hermione's ardent and tenderly observant eyes with a sort
of terror. If she could know or even suspect his feelings of the previous
night, what a tragedy he would be at once involved in! The very splendor
of Hermione's nature, the generous nobility of her character, would make
that tragedy the more poignant. She felt with such intensity, she thought
she had so much. Careless though his own nature was, doubly careless here
in Sicily, Maurice almost sickened at the idea of her ever suspecting the
truth, that he was capable of being strongly drawn towards a girl like
Maddalena, that he could feel as if a peasant who could neither read nor
write caught at something within him that was like the essence of his
life, like the core of that by which he enjoyed, suffered, desired.

But, of course, she would never suspect. And he laughed at himself, and
made the promise about the fair, and, having made it and his resolution
in regard to it, almost violently resolved to take no thought for the
morrow, but to live carelessly and with gayety the days that lay before
him, the few more days of his utter freedom in Sicily.

After all, he was doing no wrong. He had lived and was going to live
innocently. And now that he realized things, realized himself, he would
be reasonable. He would be careless, gay--yes, but not reckless, not
utterly reckless as he felt inclined to be.

"What day of June is the fair?" he asked, looking at Maddalena.

"The 11th of June, signore," said Salvatore. "There will be many donkeys
there--good donkeys."

Gaspare began to look fierce.

"I think of buying a donkey," added Salvatore, carelessly, with his
small, shrewd eyes fixed upon Maurice's face.

Gaspare muttered something unintelligible.

"How much do they cost?" said Maurice.

"For a hundred lire you can get a very good donkey. It would be useful to
Maddalena. She could go to the village sometimes then--she could go to
Marechiaro to gossip with the neighbors."

"Has Maddalena broken her legs--Madonna!" burst forth Gaspare.

"Come along, Gaspare!" said Maurice, hastily.

He bade good-bye to the fisherman and his daughter, and set off with
Gaspare through the trees.

"Be nice to Salvatore," said Maurice, as they went down towards the rocky
wall.

"But he wants to make you give him a donkey, signorino. You do not know
him. When he is with you at the fair he will--"

"Never mind. I say, Gaspare, I want--I want that day at the fair to be a
real festa. Don't let's have any row on that day."

Gaspare looked at him with surprised, inquiring eyes, as if struck by his
serious voice, by the insisting pressure in it.

"Why that day specially, signorino?" he asked, after a pause.

"Oh, well--it will be my last day of--I mean that the signora will be
coming back from Africa by then, and we shall--"

"Si, signore?"

"We sha'n't be able to run quite so wild as we do now, you see. And,
besides, we shall be going to England very soon then."

Gaspare's face lighted up.

"Shall I see London, signorino?"

"Yes," said Maurice.

He felt a sickness at his heart.

"I should like to live in London always," said Gaspare, excitedly.

"In London! You don't know it. In London you will scarcely ever see the
sun."

"Aren't there theatres in London, signorino?"

"Theatres? Yes, of course. But there is no sea, Gaspare, there are no
mountains."

"Are there many soldiers? Are there beautiful women?"

"Oh, there are plenty of soldiers and women."

"I should like always to live in London," repeated Gaspare, firmly.

"Well--perhaps you will. But--remember--we are all to be happy at the
fair of San Felice."

"Si, signore. But be careful, or Salvatore will make you buy him a
donkey. He had a wine-shop once, long ago, in Marechiaro, and the
wine--Per Dio, it was always vino battezzato!"

"What do you mean?"

"Salvatore always put water in it. He is cattivo--and when he is angry--"

"I know. You told me. But it doesn't matter. We shall soon be going away,
and then we sha'n't see him any more."

"Signorino?"

"Well?"

"You--do you want to stay here always?"

"I like being here."

"Why do you want to stay?"

For once Maurice felt as if he could not meet the boy's great, steady
eyes frankly. He looked away.

"I like the sun," he answered. "I love it! I should like to live in the
sunshine forever."

"And I should like to live always in London," reiterated Gaspare. "You
want to live here because you have always been in London, and I want to
live in London because I have always been here. Ecco!"

Maurice tried to laugh.

"Perhaps that is it. We wish for what we can't have. Dio mio!"

He threw out his arms.

"But, anyhow, I've not done with Sicily yet! Come on, Gaspare! Now for
the rocks! Ciao! Ciao! Ciao! Morettina bella ciao!"

He burst out into a song, but his voice hardly rang true, and Gaspare
looked at him again with a keen inquiry.

* * * * *

Artois was not yet destined to die. He said that Hermione would not let
him die, that with her by his side it was useless for Death to approach
him, to desire him, to claim him. Perhaps her courage gave to him the
will to struggle against his enemy. The French doctor, deeply, almost
sentimentally interested in the ardent woman who spoke his language with
perfection and carried out such instructions of his as she considered
sensible, with delicate care and strong thoroughness, thought and said
so.

"But for madame," he said to Artois, "you would have died, monsieur. And
why? Because till she came you had not the will to live. And it is the
will to live that assists the doctor."

"I cannot be so ungallant as to die now," Artois replied, with a feeble
but not sad smile. "Were I to do so, madame would think me ungrateful.
No, I shall live. I feel now that I am going to live."

And, in fact, from the night of Maurice's visit with Gaspare to the house
of the sirens he began to get better. The inflammation abated, the
temperature fell till it was normal, the agony died away gradually from
the tormented body, and slowly, very slowly, the strength that had ebbed
began to return. One day, when the doctor said that there was no more
danger of any relapse, Artois called Hermione and told her that now she
must think no more of him, but of herself; that she must pack up her
trunk and go back to her husband.

"You have saved me, and I have killed your honeymoon," he said, rather
sadly. "That will always be a regret in my life. But, now go, my dear
friend, and try to assuage your husband's wrath against me. How he must
hate me!"

"Why, Emile?"

"Are you really a woman? Yes, I know that. No man could have tended me as
you have. Yet, being a woman, how can you ask that question?"

"Maurice understands. He is blessedly understanding."

"Don't try his blessed comprehension of you and of me too far. You must
go, indeed."

"I will go."

A shadow that he tried to keep back flitted across Artois's pale face,
over which the unkempt beard straggled in a way that would have appalled
his Parisian barber. Hermione saw it.

"I will go," she repeated, quietly, "when I can take you with me."

"But--"

"Hush! You are not to argue. Haven't you an utter contempt for those who
do things by halves? Well, I have. When you can travel we'll go
together."

"Where?"

"To Sicily. It will be hot there, but after this it will seem cool as the
Garden of Eden under those trees where--but you remember! And there is
always the breeze from the sea. And then from there, very soon, you can
get a ship from Messina and go back to France, to Marseilles. Don't talk,
Emile. I am writing to-night to tell Maurice."

And she left the room with quick softness.

Artois did not protest. He told himself that he had not the strength to
struggle against the tenderness that surrounded him, that made it sweet
to return to life. But he wondered silently how Maurice would receive
him, how the dancing faun was bearing, would bear, this interference with
his new happiness.

"When I am in Sicily I shall see at once, I shall know," he thought. "But
till then--"

And he gave up the faint attempt to analyze the possible feelings of
another, and sank again into the curious peace of convalescence.

And Hermione wrote to her husband, telling him of her plan, calling upon
him with the fearless enthusiasm that was characteristic of her to
welcome it and to rejoice, with her, in Artois's returning health and
speedy presence in Sicily.

Maurice read this letter on the terrace alone. Gaspare had gone down on
the donkey to Marechiaro to buy a bottle of Marsala, which Lucrezia
demanded for the making of a zampaglione, and Lucrezia was upon the
mountain-side spreading linen to dry in the sun. It was nearly the end of
May now, and the trees in the ravine were thick with all their leaves.
The stream that ran down through the shadows towards the sea was a tiny
trickle of water, and the long, black snakes were coming boldly forth
from their winter hiding-places to sun themselves among the bowlders that
skirted the mountain tracks.

"I can't tell for certain," Hermione wrote, "how soon we shall arrive,
but Emile is picking up strength every day, and I think, I pray, it may
not be long. I dare to hope that we shall be with you about the second
week of June. Oh, Maurice, something in me is almost mad with joy, is
like Gaspare dancing the tarantella, when I think of coming up the
mountain-side again with you as I came that first day, that first day of
my real life. Tell Sebastiano he must play the 'Pastorale' to welcome me.
And you--but I seem to feel your dear welcome here, to feel your hands
holding mine, to see your eyes looking at me like Sicily. Isn't it
strange? I feel out here in Africa as if you were Sicily. But you are,
indeed, for me. You are Sicily, you are the sun, you are everything that
means joy to me, that means music, that means hope and peace. Buon
riposo, my dearest one. Can you feel--can you--how happy I am to-night?"

The second week in June! Maurice stood holding the letter in his hand.
The fair of San Felice would take place during the second week in June.
That was what he was thinking, not of Artois's convalescence, not of his
coming to Sicily. If Hermione arrived before June 11th, could he go to
the fair with Maddalena? He might go, of course. He might tell Hermione.
She would say "Go!" She believed in him and had never tried to curb his
freedom. A less suspicious woman than she was had surely never lived. But
if she were in Sicily, if he knew that she was there in the house of the
priest, waiting to welcome him at night when he came back from the fair,
it would--it would--He laid the letter down. There was a burning heat of
impatience, of anxiety, within him. Now that he had received this letter
he understood with what intensity he had been looking forward to this day
at the fair, to this last festa of his Sicilian life.

"Perhaps they will not come so soon!" he said to him self. "Perhaps they
will not be here."

And then he began to think of Artois, to realize the fact that he was
coming with Hermione, that he would be part of the final remnant of these
Sicilian days.

His feeling towards Artois in London had been sympathetic, even almost
reverential. He had looked at him as if through Hermione's eyes, had
regarded him with a sort of boyish reverence. Hermione had said that
Artois was a great man, and Maurice had felt that he was a great man, had
mentally sat at his feet. Perhaps in London he would be ready to sit at
his feet again. But was he ready to sit at his feet here in Sicily? As he
thought of Artois's penetrating eyes and cool, intellectual face, of his
air of authority, of his close intimacy with Hermione, he felt almost
afraid of him. He did not want Artois to come here to Sicily. He hated
his coming. He almost dreaded it as the coming of a spy. The presence of
Artois would surely take away all the savor of this wild, free life,
would import into it an element of the library, of the shut room, of that
intellectual existence which Maurice was learning to think of as almost
hateful.

And Hermione called upon him to rejoice with her over the fact that
Artois would be able to accompany her. How she misunderstood him! Good
God! how she misunderstood him! It seemed really as if she believed that
his mind was cast in precisely the same mould as her own, as if she
thought that because she and he were married they must think and feel
always alike. How absurd that was, and how impossible!

A sense of being near a prison door came upon him. He threw Hermione's
letter onto the writing-table, and went out into the sun.

When Gaspare returned that evening Maurice told him the news from Africa.
The boy's face lit up.

"Oh, then shall we go to London?" he said.

"Why not?" Maurice exclaimed, almost violently. "It will all be
different! Yes, we had better go to London!"

"Signorino."

"Well, what is it, Gaspare?"

"You do not like that signore to come here."

"I--why not? Yes, I--"

"No, signorino. I can see in your face that you do not like it. Your face
got quite black just now. But if you do not like it why do you let him
come? You are the padrone here."

"You don't understand. The signore is a friend of mine."

"But you said he was the friend of the signora."

"So he is. He is the friend of both of us."

Gaspare said nothing for a moment. His mind was working busily. At last
he said:

"Then Maddalena--when the signora comes will she be the friend of the
signora, as well as your friend?"

"Maddalena--that has nothing to do with it."

"But Maddalena is your friend!"

"That's quite different."

"I do not understand how it is in England," Gaspare said, gravely.
"But"--and he nodded his head wisely and spread out his hands--"I
understand many things, signorino, perhaps more than you think. You do
not want the signore to come. You are angry at his coming."

"He is a very kind signore," said Maurice, hastily. "And he can speak
dialetto."

Gaspare smiled and shook his head again. But he did not say anything
more. For a moment Maurice had an impulse to speak to him frankly, to
admit him into the intimacy of a friend. He was a Sicilian, although he
was only a boy. He was Sicilian and he would understand.

"Gaspare," he began.

"Si, signore."

"As you understand so much--"

"Si, signore?"

"Perhaps you--" He checked himself, realizing that he was on the edge of
doing an outrageous thing. "You must know that the friends of the signora
are my friends and that I am always glad to welcome them."

"Va bene, signorino! Va bene!"

The boy began to look glum, understanding at once that he was being
played with.

"I must go to give Tito his food."

And he stuck his hands in his pockets and went away round the corner of
the cottage, whistling the tune of the "Canzone di Marechiaro."

Maurice began to feel as if he were in the dark, but as if he were being
watched there. He wondered how clearly Gaspare read him, how much he
knew. And Artois? When he came, with his watchful eyes, there would be
another observer of the Sicilian change. He did not much mind Gaspare,
but he would hate Artois. He grew hot at the mere thought of Artois being
there with him, observing, analyzing, playing the literary man's part in
this out-door life of the mountains and of the sea.

"I'm not a specimen," he said to himself, "and I'm damned if I'll be
treated as one!"

It did not occur to him that he was anticipating that which might never
happen. He was as unreasonable as a boy who foresees possible
interference with his pleasures.

This decision of Hermione to bring with her to Sicily Artois, and its
communication to Maurice, pushed him on to the recklessness which he had
previously resolved to hold in check. Had Hermione been returning to him
alone he would have felt that a gay and thoughtless holiday time was
coming to an end, but he must have felt, too, that only tenderness and
strong affection were crossing the sea from Africa to bind him in chains
that already he had worn with happiness and peace. But the knowledge that
with Hermione was coming Artois gave to him a definite vision of
something that was like a cage. Without consciously saying it to himself,
he had in London been vaguely aware of Artois's coldness of feeling
towards him. Had any one spoken of it to him he would probably have
denied that this was so. There are hidden things in a man that he himself
does not say to himself that he knows of. But Maurice's vision of a cage
was conjured up by Artois's mental attitude towards him in London, the
attitude of the observer who might, in certain circumstances, be cruel,
who was secretly ready to be cruel. And, anticipating the unpleasant
probable, he threw himself with the greater violence into the enjoyment
of his few more days of complete liberty.

He wrote to Hermione, expressing as naturally as he could his ready
acquiescence in her project, and then gave himself up to the
light-heartedness that came with the flying moments of these last days of
emancipation in the sun. His mood was akin to the mood of the rich man,
"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." The music, he knew, must
presently fail. The tarantella must come to an end. Well, then he would
dance with his whole soul. He would not husband his breath nor save his
strength. He would be thoughtless because for a moment he had thought too
much, too much for his nature of the dancing faun who had been given for
a brief space of time his rightful heritage.

Each day now he went down to the sea.

"How hot it is!" he would say to Gaspare. "If I don't have a bath I shall
be suffocated."

"Si, signore. At what time shall we go?"

"After the siesta. It will be glorious in the sea to-day."

"Si, signore, it is good to be in the sea."

The boy smiled, at last would sometimes laugh. He loved his padrona, but
he was a male and a Sicilian. And the signora had gone across the sea to
her friend. These visits to the sea seemed to him very natural. He would
have done the same as his padrone in similar circumstances with a light
heart, with no sense of doing wrong. Only sometimes he raised a warning
voice.

"Signorino," he would say, "do not forget what I have told you."

"What, Gaspare?"

"Salvatore is birbante. You think he likes you."

"Why shouldn't he like me?"

"You are a forestiere. To him you are as nothing. But he likes your
money."

"Well, then? I don't care whether he likes me or not. What does it
matter?"

"Be careful, signorino. The Sicilian has a long hand. Every one knows
that. Even the Napoletano knows that. I have a friend who was a soldier
at Naples, and--"

"Come, now, Gaspare! What reason will there ever be for Salvatore to turn
against me?"

"Va bene, signorino, va bene! But Salvatore is a bad man when he thinks
any one has tried to do him a wrong. He has blood in his eyes then, and
when we Sicilians see through blood we do not care what we do--no, not if
all the world is looking at us."

"I shall do no wrong to Salvatore. What do you mean?"

"Niente, signorino, niente!"

"Stick the cloth on Tito, and put something in the pannier. Al mare! Al
mare!"

The boy's warning rang in deaf ears. For Maurice really meant what he
said. He was reckless, perhaps, but he was going to wrong no one, neither
Salvatore, nor Hermione, nor Maddalena. The coming of Artois drove him
into the arms of pleasure, but it would never drive him into the arms of
sin. For it was surely no sin to make a little love in this land of the
sun, to touch a girl's hand, to snatch a kiss sometimes from the soft
lips of a girl, from whom he would never ask anything more, whatever
leaping desire might prompt him.

And Salvatore was always at hand. He seldom put to sea in these days
unless Maurice went with him in the boat. His greedy eyes shone with a
light of satisfaction when he saw Tito coming along the dusty white road
from Isola Bella, and at night, when he crossed himself superstitiously
before Maria Addolorata, he murmured a prayer that more strangers might
be wafted to his "Paese," many strangers with money in their pockets and
folly in their hearts. Then let the sea be empty of fish and the wind of
the storm break up his boat--it would not matter. He would still live
well. He might even at the last have money in the bank at Marechiaro,
houses in the village, a larger wine-shop than Oreste in the Corso.

But he kept his small eyes wide open and seldom let Maddalena be long
alone with the forestiere, and this supervision began to irritate
Maurice, to make him at last feel hostile to Salvatore. He remembered
Gaspare's words about the fisherman--"To him you are as nothing. But he
likes your money"--and a longing to trick this fox of the sea, who wanted
to take all and make no return, came to him.

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