Henry Edward Krehbiel - "A Second Book Of Operas"

Washington Irving - "The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II)"

John Kirtland, ed. - "Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles"

Anonymous - "The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Call of the Blood

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




She felt as if at this moment God were on His trial before her--before a
poor woman who loved.

"If God has taken Maurice from me," she thought, "He is cruel,
frightfully cruel, and I cannot love Him. If He has not taken Maurice
from me, He is the God who is love, the God I can, I must worship!"

Which God was he?

The vast scheme of the world narrowed; the wide horizons vanished. There
was nothing beyond the limit of her heart. She felt, as almost all
believing human beings feel in such moments, that God's attention was
entirely concentrated upon her life, that no other claimed His care,
begged for His pity, demanded His tenderness because hers was so intense.

Did God wish to lose her love? Surely not! Then He could not commit this
frightful act which she feared. He had not committed it.

A sort of relief crept through her as she thought this. Her agony of
apprehension was suddenly lessened, was almost driven out.

God wants to be loved by the beings He has created. Then He would not
deliberately, arbitrarily destroy a love already existing in the heart of
one of them--a love thankful to Him, enthusiastically grateful for
happiness bestowed by Him.

Beyond the darkness of the point there came out of the dimness of the
night that brooded above the open sea a moving darkness, and Hermione
heard the splash of oars in the calm water. She got up quickly. Now her
body was trembling again. She stared at the boat as if she would force it
to yield its secret to her eyes. But that was only for an instant. Then
her ears seemed to be seeking the truth, seeking it from the sound of the
oars in the water!

There was no rhythmic regularity in the music they made, no steadiness,
no--no--

She listened passionately, instinctively bending down her head sideways.
It seemed to her that she was listening to a drunken man rowing. Now
there was a quick beating of the oars in the water, then silence, then a
heavy splash as if one of the oars had escaped from an uncertain hand,
then some uneven strokes, one oar striking the water after the other.

"But Gaspare is a contadino," she said to herself, "not a fisherman.
Gaspare is a contadino and--"

"Gaspare!" she called out. "Gaspare!"

The boat stopped midway in the mouth of the inlet.

"Gaspare! Is it you?"

She saw a dark figure standing up in the boat.

"Gaspare, is it you?" she cried, more loudly.

"Si."

Was it Gaspare's voice? She did not recognize it. Yet the voice had
answered "Yes." The boat still remained motionless on the water midway
between shore and shore. She did not speak again; she was afraid to
speak. She stood and stared at the boat and at the motionless figure
standing up in it. Why did not he row in to land? What was he doing
there? She stared at the boat and at the figure standing in it till she
could see nothing. Then she shut her eyes.

"Gaspare!" she called, keeping her eyes shut. "What are you doing?
Gaspare!"

There was no reply.

She opened her eyes, and now she could see the boat again and the rower.

"Gaspare!" she cried, with all her strength, to the black figure. "Why
don't you row to the shore? Why don't you come to me?"

"Vengo!"

Loudly the word came to her, loudly and sullenly as if the boy were angry
with her, almost hated her. It was followed by a fierce splash of oars.
The boat shot forward, coming straight towards her. Then suddenly the
oars ceased from moving, the dark figure of the rower fell down in a
heap, and she heard cries, like cries of despair, and broken
exclamations, and then a long sound of furious weeping.

"Gaspare! Gaspare!"

Her voice was strangled in her throat and died away.

"And then, signora, I cried--I cried!"

When had Gaspare said that to her? And why had he cried?

"Gaspare!"

It came from her lips in a whisper almost inaudible to herself.

Then she rushed forward into the dark water.



XXII

Late that night Dr. Marini, the doctor of the commune of Marechiaro, was
roused from sleep in his house in the Corso by a violent knocking on his
street door. He turned over in his bed, muttered a curse, then lay still
for a moment and listened. The knocking was renewed more violently.
Evidently the person who stood without was determined to gain admission.
There was no help for it. The good doctor, who was no longer young,
dropped his weary legs to the floor, walked across to the open window,
and thrust his head out of it. A man was standing below.

"What is it? What do you want?" said the doctor, in a grumbling voice.
"Is it another baby? Upon my word, these--"

"Signor Dottore, come down, come down instantly! The signore of Monte
Amato, the signore of the Casa del Prete has had an accident. You must
come at once. I will go to fetch a donkey."

The doctor leaned farther out of the window.

"An accident! What--?"

But the man, a fisherman of Marechiaro, was already gone, and the doctor
saw only the narrow, deserted street, black with the shadows of the tall
houses.

He drew in quickly and began to dress himself with some expedition. An
accident, and to a forestiere! There would be money in this case. He
regretted his lost sleep less now and cursed no more, though he thought
of the ride up into the mountains with a good deal of self-pity. It was
no joke to be a badly paid Sicilian doctor, he thought, as he tugged at
his trousers buttons, and fastened the white front that covered the
breast of his flannel shirt, and adjusted the cuffs which he took out of
a small drawer. Without lighting a candle he went down-stairs, fumbled
about, and found his case of instruments. Then he opened the street door
and waited, yawning on the stone pavement. In two or three minutes he
heard the tripping tip-tap of a donkey's hoofs, and the fisherman came up
leading a donkey apparently as disinclined for a nocturnal flitting as
the doctor.

"Ah, Giuseppe, it's you, is it?"

"Si, Signor Dottore!"

"What's this accident?"

The fisherman looked grave and crossed himself.

"Oh, signore, it is terrible! They say the poor signore is dead!"

"Dead!" exclaimed the doctor, startled. "You said is was an accident.
Dead you say now?"

"Signore, he is dead beyond a doubt. I was going to the fishing when I
heard dreadful cries in the water by the inlet--you know, by Salvatore's
terreno!"

"In the water?"

"Si, signore. I went down quickly and I found Gaspare, the signore's--"

"I know--I know!"

"Gaspare in a boat with the padrone lying at the bottom, and the signora
standing up to her middle in the sea."

"Z't! z't!" exclaimed the doctor, "the signora in the sea! Is she mad?"

"Signor Dottore, how do I know? I brought the boat to shore. Gaspare was
like one crazed. Then we lifted the signore out upon the stones. Oh, he
is dead, Signor Dottore; dead beyond a doubt. They had found him in the
sea--"

"They?"

"Gaspare--under the rocks between Salvatore's terreno and the main-land.
He had all his clothes on. He must have been there in the dark--"

"Why should he go in the dark?"

"How do I know, Signor Dottore?--and have fallen, and struck his head
against the rocks. For there was a wound and--"

"The body should not have been moved from where it lay till the Pretore
had seen it. Gaspare should have left the body."

"But perhaps the povero signore is not really dead, after all! Madonna!
How--"

"Come! come! we must not delay! One minute! I will get some lint and--"

He disappeared into the house. Almost directly he came out again with a
package under his arm and a long, black cigar lighted in his mouth.

"Take these, Giuseppe! Carry them carefully. Now then!"

He hoisted himself onto the donkey.

"A-ah! A-ah!"

They set off, the fisherman walking on naked feet beside the donkey.

"Then we have to go down to the sea?"

"No, Signor Dottore. There were others on the road, Antonio and--"

"The rest of you going to the boats--I know. Well?"

"And the signora would have him carried up to Monte Amato."

"She could give directions?"

"Si, signore. She ordered everything. When she came out of the sea she
was all wet, the poor signora, but she was calm. I called the others.
When they saw the signore they all cried out. They knew him. Some of them
had been to the fishing with him. Oh, they were sorry! They all began to
speak and to try to--"

"Diavolo! They could only make things worse! If the breath of life was
in the signore's body they would drive it out. Per Dio!"

"But the signora stopped them. She told them to be silent and to carry
the signore up to the Casa del Prete. Signore, she--the povera
signora--she took his head in her hands. She held his head and she never
cried, not a tear!"

The man brushed his hand across his eyes.

"Povera signora! Povera signora!" murmured the doctor.

"And she comforted Gaspare, too!" Giuseppe added. "She put her arm round
him and told him to be brave, and help her. She made him walk by her and
put his hand under the padrone's shoulder. Madonna!"

They turned away from the village into a narrow path that led into the
hills.

"And I came to fetch you, Signor Dottore. Perhaps the povero signore is
not really dead. Perhaps you can save him, Signor Dottore!"

"Chi lo sa?" replied the doctor.

He had let his cigar go out and did not know it.

"Chi lo sa?" he repeated, mechanically.

Then they went on in silence--till they reached the shoulder of the
mountain under Castel Vecchio. From here they could see across the ravine
to the steep slope of Monte Amato. Upon it, high up, a light shone, and
presently a second light detached itself from the first, moved a little
way, and then was stationary.

Giuseppe pointed.

"Ecco, Signor Dottore! They have carried the poor signore up."

The second light moved waveringly back towards the first.

"They are carrying him into the house, Signor Dottore. Madonna! And all
this to happen in the night!"

The doctor nodded without speaking. He was watching the lights up there
in that lonely place. He was not a man of strong imagination, and was
accustomed to look on misery, the misery of the poor. But to-night he
felt a certain solemnity descend upon him as he rode by these dark
by-paths up into the bosom of the hills. Perhaps part of this feeling
came from the fact that his mission had to do with strangers, with rich
people from a distant country who had come to his island for pleasure,
and who were now suddenly involved in tragedy in the midst of their
amusement. But also he had a certain sense of personal sympathy. He had
known Hermione on her former visit to Sicily and had liked her; and
though this time he had seen scarcely anything of her he had seen enough
to be aware that she was very happy with her young husband. Maurice, too,
he had seen, full of the joy of youth and of bounding health. And now all
that was put out, if Giuseppe's account were true. It was a pity, a sad
pity.

The donkey crossed the mouth of the ravine, and picked its way upward
carefully amid the loose stones. In the ravine a little owl hooted twice.

"Giuseppe!" said the doctor.

"Signore?"

"The signora has been away, hasn't she?"

"Si signore. In Africa."

"Nursing that sick stranger. And now directly she comes back here's this
happening to her! Per Dio!"

He shook his head.

"Somebody must have looked on the povera signora with the evil-eye,
Signor Dottore."

Giuseppe crossed himself.

"It seems so," the doctor replied, gravely.

He was almost as superstitious as the contadini among whom he labored.

"Ecco, Signor Dottore!"

The doctor looked up. At the arch stood a figure holding a little lamp.
Almost immediately, two more figures appeared behind it.

"Il dottore! Ecco il dottore!"

There was a murmur of voices in the dark. As the donkey came up the
excited fishermen crowded round, all speaking at once.

"He is dead, Signor Dottore. The povero signore is dead!"

"Let the Signor Dottore come to him, Beppe! What do you know? Let the--"

"Sure enough he is dead! Why, he must have been in the water a good hour.
He is all swollen with the water and--"

"It is his head, Signor Dottore! If it had not been for his coming
against the rocks he would not have been hurt. Per Dio, he can swim like
a fish, the povero signorino. I have seen him swim. Why, even Peppino--"

"The signora wants us all to go away, Signor Dottore. She begs us to go
and leave her alone with the povero signore!"

"Gaspare is in such a state! You would not know him. And the povera
signora, she is all dripping wet. She has been into the sea, and now she
has carried the head of the povero signore all the way up the mountain.
She would not let any one--"

A succession of cries came out of the darkness, hysterical cries that
ended in prolonged sobbing.

"That is Lucrezia!" cried one of the fishermen. "Madonna! That is
Lucrezia!"

"Mamma mia! Mamma mia!"

Their voices were loud in the night. The doctor pushed his way between
the men and came onto the terrace in front of the steps that led into the
sitting-room.

Gaspare was standing there alone. His face was almost unrecognizable. It
looked battered, puffy, and inflamed, as if he had been drinking and
fighting. There were no tears in his eyes now, but long, violent sobs
shook his body from time to time, and his blistered lips opened and shut
mechanically with each sob. He stared dully at the doctor, but did not
say a word, or move to get out of the way.

"Gaspare!" said the doctor. "Where is the padrona?"

The boy sobbed and sobbed, always in the same dry and terribly mechanical
way.

"Gaspare!" repeated the doctor, touching him. "Gaspare!"

"E' morto!" the boy suddenly cried out, in a loud voice.

And he flung himself down on the ground.

The doctor felt a thrill of cold in his veins. He went up the steps into
the little sitting-room. As he did so Hermione came to the door of the
bedroom. Her dripping skirts clung about her. She looked quite calm.
Without greeting the doctor she said, quietly:

"You heard what Gaspare said?"

"Si, signora, ma--"

The doctor stopped, staring at her. He began to feel almost dazed. The
fishermen had followed him and stood crowding together on the steps and
staring into the room.

"He is dead. I am sorry you came all this way."

They stood there facing one another. From the kitchen came the sound of
Lucrezia's cries. Hermione put her hands up to her ears.

"Please--please--oh, there should be a little silence here now!" she
said.

For the first time there was a sound of something like despair in her
voice.

"Let me come in, signora!" stammered the doctor. "Let me come in and
examine him."

"He is dead."

"Well, but let me. I must!"

"Please come in," she said.

The doctor turned round to the fishermen.

"Go, one of you, and make that girl keep quiet," he said, angrily. "Take
her away out of the house--directly! Do you hear? And the rest of you
stay outside, and don't make a sound."

The fishermen slunk a little way back into the darkness, while Giuseppe,
walking on the toes of his bare feet, and glancing nervously at the
furniture and the pictures upon the walls, crossed the room and
disappeared into the kitchen. Then the doctor laid down his cigar on a
table and went into the bedroom whither Hermione had preceded him.

There was a lighted candle on the white chest of drawers. The window and
the shutters of the room were closed against the glances of the
fishermen. On one of the two beds--Hermione's--lay the body of a man
dripping with water. The doctor took the candle in his hand, went to this
bed and leaned down, then set down the candle at the bedhead and made a
brief examination. He found at once that Gaspare had spoken the truth.
This man had been dead for some time. Nevertheless, something--he
scarcely knew what--kept the doctor there by the bed for some moments
before he pronounced his verdict. Never before had he felt so great a
reluctance to speak the simple words that would convey a great truth. He
fingered his shirt-front uneasily, and stared at the body on the bed and
at the wet sheets and pillows. Meanwhile, Hermione had sat down on a
chair near the door that opened into what had been Maurice's
dressing-room, and folded her hands in her lap. The doctor did not look
towards her, but he felt her presence painfully. Lucrezia's cries had
died away, and there was complete silence for a brief space of time.

The body on the bed was swollen, but not very much, the face was sodden,
the hair plastered to the head, and on the left temple there was a large
wound, evidently, as the doctor had seen, caused by the forehead striking
violently against a hard, resisting substance. It was not the sea alone
which had killed this man. It was the sea and the rock in the sea. He
had fallen, been stunned and then drowned. The doctor knew the place
where he had been found. The explanation of the tragedy was very
simple--very simple.

While the doctor was thinking this, and fingering his shirt-front
mechanically, and bracing himself to turn towards the quiet woman in the
chair, he heard a loud, dry noise in the sitting-room, then in the
bedroom. Gaspare had come in, and was standing at the foot of the bed,
sobbing and staring at the doctor with hopeless eyes, that yet asked a
last question, begged desperately for a lie.

"Gaspare!"

The woman in the chair whispered to him. He took no notice.

"Gaspare!"

She got up and crossed over to the boy, and took one of his hands.

"It's no use," she said. "Perhaps he is happy."

Then the boy began to cry passionately. Tears poured out of his eyes
while he held his padrona's hand. The doctor got up.

"He is dead, signora," he said.

"We knew it," Hermione replied.

She looked at the doctor for a minute. Then she said:

"Hush, Gaspare!"

The doctor stood by the bed.

"Scusi, signora," he said, "but--but will you take him into the next
room?"

He pointed to Gaspare, who shivered as he wept.

"I must make a further examination."

"Why? You see that he is dead."

"Yes, but--there are certain formalities."

He stopped.

"Formalities!" she said. "He is dead."

"Yes. But--but the authorities will have to be informed. I am very
sorry. I should wish to leave everything undisturbed."

"What do you mean? Gaspare! Gaspare!"

"But--according to the law, our law, the body should never have been
moved. It should have been left where it was found until--"

"We could not leave him in the sea."

She still spoke quite quietly, but the doctor felt as if he could not go
on.

"Since it is done--" he began.

He pulled himself together with an effort.

"There will have to be an inquiry, signora--the cause of death will have
to be ascertained."

"You see it. He was coming from the island. He fell and was drowned. It
is very simple."

"Yes, no doubt. Still, there must be an inquiry. Gaspare will have to
explain--"

He looked at the weeping boy, then at the woman who stood there holding
the boy's hand in hers.

"But that will be for to-morrow," he muttered, fingering his shirt-front
and looking down. "That will be for to-morrow."

As he went out he added:

"Signora, do not remain in your wet clothes."

"I--oh, thank you. They do not matter."

She did not follow him into the next room. As he went down the steps to
the terrace the sound of Gaspare's passionate weeping followed him into
the night.

When the doctor was on the donkey and was riding out through the arch,
after a brief colloquy with the fishermen and with Giuseppe, whom he had
told to remain at the cottage for the rest of the night, he suddenly
remembered the cigar which he had left upon the table, and he pulled up.

"What is it, Signor Dottore?" said one of the fishermen.

"I've left something, but--never mind. It does not matter."

He rode on again.

"It does not matter," he repeated.

He was thinking of the English signora standing beside the bed in her wet
skirts and holding the hand of the weeping boy.

It was the first time in his life that he had ever sacrificed a good
cigar.

He wondered why he did so now, but he did not care to return just then to
the Casa del Prete.



XXIII

Hermione longed for quiet, for absolute silence.

It seemed strange to her that she still longed for anything--strange and
almost horrible, almost inhuman. But she did long for that, to be able to
sit beside her dead husband and to be undisturbed, to hear no voice
speaking, no human movement, to see no one. If it had been possible she
would have closed the cottage against every one, even against Gaspare and
Lucrezia. But it was not possible. Destiny did not choose that she should
have this calm, this silence. It had seemed to her, when fear first came
upon her, as if no one but herself had any real concern with Maurice, as
if her love conferred upon her a monopoly. This monopoly had been one of
joy. Now it should be one of sorrow. But now it did not exist. She was
not weeping for Maurice. But others were. She had no one to go to. But
others came to her, clung to her. She could not rid herself of the human
burden.

She might have been selfish, determined, she might have driven the
mourners out. But--and that was strange, too--she found herself pitying
them, trying to use her intellect to soothe them.

Lucrezia was terrified, almost like one assailed suddenly by robbers,
terrified and half incredulous. When her hysteria subsided she was at
first unbelieving.

"He cannot be really dead, signora!" she sobbed to Hermione. "The povero
signorino. He was so gay! He was so--"

She talked and talked, as Sicilians do when face to face with tragedy.

She recalled Maurice's characteristics, his kindness, his love of
climbing, fishing, bathing, his love of the sun--all his love of life.

Hermione had to listen to the story with that body lying on her bed.

Gaspare's grief was speechless, but needed comfort more. There was an
element in it of fury which Hermione realized without rightly
understanding. She supposed it was the fury of a boy from whom something
is taken by one whom he cannot attack.

For God is beyond our reach.

She could not understand the conflict going on in the boy's heart and
mind.

He knew that this death was probably no natural death, but a murder.

Neither Maddalena nor her father had been in the Casa delle Sirene when
he knocked upon the door in the night. Salvatore had sent Maddalena to
spend the night with relations in Marechiaro, on the pretext that he was
going to sail to Messina on some business. And he had actually sailed
before Gaspare's arrival on the island. But Gaspare knew that there had
been a meeting, and he knew what the Sicilian is when he is wronged. The
words "vengeance is mine!" are taken in Sicily by each wronged man into
his own mouth, and Salvatore was notoriously savage and passionate.

As the first shock of horror and despair passed away from Gaspare he was
devoured, as by teeth, devoured by the desire to spring upon Salvatore
and revenge the death of his padrone. But the padrone had laid a solemn
injunction upon him. Solemn, indeed, it seemed to the boy now that the
lips which had spoken were sealed forever. The padrona was never to know.
If he obeyed his impulse, if he declared the vendetta against Salvatore,
the padrona would know. The knife that spilled the murderer's blood would
give the secret to the world--and to the padrona.

Tremendous that night was the conflict in the boy's soul. He would not
leave Hermione. He was like the dog that creeps to lie at the feet of his
sorrowing mistress. But he was more than that. For he had his own sorrow
and his own fury. And he had the battle with his own instincts.

What was he going to do?

As he began to think, really to think, and to realize things, he knew
that after such a death the authorities of Marechiaro, the Pretore and
the Cancelliere, would proceed to hold a careful examination into the
causes of death. He would be questioned. That was certain. The
opportunity would be given him to denounce Salvatore.

And was he to keep silence? Was he to act for Salvatore, to save
Salvatore from justice? He would not have minded doing that, he would
have wished to do it, if afterwards he could have sprung upon Salvatore
and buried his knife in the murderer of his padrone.

But--the padrona? She was not to know. She was never to know. And she had
been the first in his life. She had found him, a poor, ragged little boy
working among the vines, and she had given him new clothes and had taken
him into her home and into her confidence. She had trusted him. She had
remembered him in England. She had written to him from far away, telling
him to prepare everything for her and the padrone when they were coming.

He began to sob violently again, thinking of it all, of how he had
ordered the donkeys to fetch the luggage from the station, of how--

"Hush, Gaspare!"

Hermione again put her hand on his. She was sitting near the bed on which
the body was lying between dry sheets. For she had changed them with
Gaspare's assistance. Maurice still wore the clothes which had been on
him in the sea. Giuseppe, the fisherman, had explained to Hermione that
she must not interfere with the body till it had been visited by the
authorities, and she had obeyed him. But she had changed the sheets. She
scarcely knew why. Now the clothes had almost dried on the body, and she
did not see any more the stains of water. One sheet was drawn up over the
body, to the chin. The matted dark hair was visible against the pillow,
and had made her think several times vaguely of that day after the
fishing when she had watched Maurice taking his siesta. She had longed
for him to wake then, for she had known that she was going to Africa,
that they had only a few hours together before she started. It had seemed
almost terrible to her, his sleeping through any of those hours. And now
he was sleeping forever. She was sitting there waiting for nothing, but
she could not realize that yet. She felt as if she must be waiting for
something, that something must presently occur, a movement in the bed,
a--she scarcely knew what.

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