John Marshall - "A Short History of Greek Philosophy"

Selected by Beverly Nichols - "Book of Old Ballads"

Various - "Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445"

Cleveland Moffett - "The Conquest of America"

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




Presently the clock Gaspare had brought from the fair chimed, then played
the "Tre Colori." Lucrezia had set it to play that evening when she was
waiting for the padrone to return from the sea.

When he heard the tinkling tune Gaspare lifted his head and listened till
it was over. It recalled to him all the glories of the fair. He saw his
padrone before him. He remembered how he had decorated Maurice with
flowers, and he felt as if his heart would break.

"The povero signorino! the povero signorino!" he cried, in a choked
voice. "And I put roses above his ears! Si, signora, I did! I said he
should be a real Siciliano!"

He began to rock himself to and fro. His whole body shook, and his face
had a frantic expression that suggested violence.

"I put roses above his ears!" he repeated. "That day he was a real
Siciliano!"

"Gaspare--Gaspare--hush! Don't! Don't!"

She held his hand and went on speaking softly.

"We must be quiet in here. We must remember to be quiet. It isn't our
fault, Gaspare. We did all we could to make him happy. We ought to be
glad of that. You did everything you could, and he loved you for it. He
was happy with us. I think he was. I think he was happy till the very
end. And that is something to be glad of. Don't you think he was very
happy here?"

"Si, signora!" the boy whispered, with twitching lips.

"I'm glad I came back in time," Hermione said, looking at the dark hair
on the pillow. "It might have happened before, while I was away. I'm glad
we had one more day together."

Suddenly, as she said that, something in the mere sound of the words
seemed to reveal more clearly to her heart what had befallen her, and for
the first time she began to cry and to remember. She remembered all
Maurice's tenderness for her, all his little acts of kindness. They
seemed to pass rapidly in procession through her mind on their way to her
heart. Not one surely was absent. How kind to her he had always been! And
he could never be kind to her again. And she could never be kind to
him--never again.

Her tears went on falling quietly. She did not sob like Gaspare. But she
felt that now she had begun to cry she would never be able to stop again;
that she would go on crying till she, too, died.

Gaspare looked up at her.

"Signora!" he said. "Signora!"

Suddenly he got up, as if to go out of the room, out of the house. The
sight of his padrona's tears had driven him nearly mad with the desire to
wreak vengeance upon Salvatore. For a moment his body seemed to get
beyond his control. His eyes saw blood, and his hand darted down to his
belt, and caught at the knife that was there, and drew it out. When
Hermione saw the knife she thought the boy was going to kill himself
with it. She sprang up, went swiftly to Gaspare, and put her hand on it
over his hand.

"Gaspare, what are you doing?" she said.

For a moment his face was horrible in its savagery. He opened his mouth,
still keeping his grasp on the knife, which she tried to wrest from him.

"Lasci andare! Lasci andare!" he said, beginning to struggle with her.

"No, Gaspare."

"Allora--"

He paused with his mouth open.

At that moment he was on the very verge of a revelation of the truth. He
was on the point of telling Hermione that he was sure that the padrone
had been murdered, and that he meant to avenge the murder. Hermione
believed that for the moment he was mad, and was determined to destroy
himself in her presence. It was useless to pit her strength against his.
In a physical struggle she must be overcome. Her only chance was to
subdue him by other means.

"Gaspare," she said, quickly, breathlessly, pointing to the bed. "Don't
you think the padrone would have wished you to take care of me now? He
trusted you. I think he would. I think he would rather you were with me
than any one else in the whole world. You must take care of me. You must
take care of me. You must never leave me!"

The boy looked at her. His face changed, grew softer.

"I've got nobody now," she added. "Nobody but you."

The knife fell on the floor.

In that moment Gaspare's resolve was taken. The battle within him was
over. He must protect the padrona. The padrone would have wished it. Then
he must let Salvatore go.

He bent down and kissed Hermione's hand.

"Lei non piange!" he muttered. "Forse Dio la aiutera."

In the morning, early, Hermione left the body for the first time, went
into the dressing-room, changed her clothes, then came back and said to
Gaspare:

"I am going a little way up the mountain, Gaspare. I shall not be long.
No, don't come with me. Stay with him. Are you dreadfully tired?"

"No, signora."

"We shall be able to rest presently," she said.

She was thinking of the time when they would take Maurice from her. She
left Gaspare sitting near the bed, and went out onto the terrace.
Lucrezia and Gaspare, both thoroughly tired out, were sleeping soundly.
She was thankful for that. Soon, she knew, she would have to be with
people, to talk, to make arrangements. But now she had a short spell of
solitude.

She went slowly up the mountain-side till she was near the top. Then she
sat down on a rock and looked out towards the sea.

The world was not awake yet, although the sun was coming. Etna was like a
great phantom, the waters at its foot were pale in their tranquillity.
The air was fresh, but there was no wind to rustle the leaves of the
oak-trees, upon whose crested heads Hermione gazed down with quiet,
tearless eyes.

She had a strange feeling of being out of the world, as if she had left
it, but still had the power to see it. She wondered if Maurice felt like
that.

He had said it would be good to lie beneath those oak-trees in sight of
Etna and the sea. How she wished that she could lay his body there,
alone, away from all other dead. But that was impossible, she supposed.
She remembered the doctor's words. What were they going to do? She did
not know anything about Italian procedure in such an event. Would they
take him away? She had no intention of trying to resist anything, of
offering any opposition. It would be useless, and besides he had gone
away. Already he was far off. She did not feel, as many women do, that so
long as they are with the body of their dead they are also with the soul.
She would like to keep the dear body, to have it always near to her, to
live close to the spot where it was committed to the earth. But Maurice
was gone. Her Mercury had winged his way from her, obedient to a summons
that she had not heard. Always she had thought of him as swift, and
swiftly, without warning, he had left her. He had died young. Was that
wonderful? She thought not. No; age could have nothing to say to him,
could hold no commerce with him. He had been born to be young and never
to be anything else. It seemed to her now strange that she had not felt
this, foreseen that it must be so. And yet, only yesterday, she had
imagined a far future, and their child laying them in the ground of
Sicily, side by side, and murmuring "Buon riposo" above their mutual
sleep.

Their child! A life had been taken from her. Soon a life would be given
to her. Was that what is called compensation? Perhaps so. Many strange
thoughts, come she could not tell why, were passing through her mind as
she sat upon this height in the dawn. The thought of compensation
recalled to her the Book of Job. Everything was taken from Job; not only
his flocks and his herds, but his sons and his daughters. And then at the
last he was compensated. He was given new flocks and herds and new sons
and daughters. And it was supposed to be well with Job. If it was well
with Job, then Job had been a man without a heart.

Never could she be compensated for this loss, which she was trying to
realize, but which she would not be able to realize until the days went
by, and the nights, the days and the nights of the ordinary life, when
tragedy was supposed to be over and done with, and people would say, and
no doubt sincerely believe, that she was "getting accustomed" to her
loss.

Thinking of Job led her on to think of God's dealings with His creatures.

Hermione was a woman who clung to no special religion, but she had
always, all her life, had a very strong personal consciousness of a
directing Power in the world, had always had an innate conviction that
this directing Power followed with deep interest the life of each
individual in the scheme of His creation. She had always felt, she felt
now, that God knew everything about her and her life, was aware of all
her feelings, was constantly intent upon her.

He was intent. But was He kindly or was He cruelly intent?

Surely He had been dreadfully cruel to her!

Only yesterday she had been wondering what bereaved women felt about God.
Now she was one of these women.

"Was Maurice dead?" she thought--"was he already dead when I was praying
before the shrine of the Madonna della Rocca?"

She longed to know. Yet she scarcely knew why she longed. It was like a
strange, almost unnatural curiosity which she could not at first explain
to herself. But presently her mind grew clearer and she connected this
question with that other question--of God and what He really was, what He
really felt towards His creatures, towards her.

Had God allowed her to pray like that, with all her heart and soul, and
then immediately afterwards deliberately delivered her over to the fate
of desolate women, or had Maurice been already dead? If that were so, and
it must surely have been so, for when she prayed it was already night,
she had been led to pray for herself ignorantly, and God had taken away
her joy before He had heard her prayer. If He had heard it first He
surely could not have dealt so cruelly with her--so cruelly! No human
being could have, she thought, even the most hard-hearted.

But perhaps God was not all-powerful.

She remembered that once in London she had asked a clever and good
clergyman if, looking around upon the state of things in the world, he
was able to believe without difficulty that the world was governed by an
all-wise, all-powerful, and all-merciful God. And his reply to her had
been, "I sometimes wonder whether God is all-powerful--yet." She had not
pursued the subject, but she had not forgotten this answer; and she
thought of it now.

Was there a conflict in the regions beyond the world which was the only
one she knew? Had an enemy done this thing, an enemy not only of hers,
but of God's, an enemy who had power over God?

That thought was almost more terrible than the thought that God had been
cruel to her.

She sat for a long time wondering, thinking, but not praying. She did not
feel as if she could ever pray any more. The world was lighted up by the
sun. The sea began to gleam, the coast-line to grow more distinct, the
outlines of the mountains and of the Saracenic Castle on the height
opposite to her more hard and more barbaric against the deepening blue.
She saw smoke coming from the mouth of Etna, sideways, as if blown
towards the sea. A shepherd boy piped somewhere below her. And still the
tune was the tarantella. She listened to it--the tarantella. So short a
time ago Maurice had danced with the boys upon the terrace! How can such
life be so easily extinguished? How can such joy be not merely clouded
but utterly destroyed? A moment, and from the body everything is
expelled; light from the eyes, speech from the lips, movement from the
limbs, joy, passion from the heart. How can such a thing be?

The little shepherd boy played on and on. He was nearer now. He was
ascending the slope of the mountain, coming up towards heaven with his
little happy tune. She heard him presently among the oak-trees
immediately below her, passing almost at her feet.

To Hermione the thin sound of the reed-flute always had suggested Arcady.
Even now it suggested Arcady--the Arcady of the imagination: wide soft
airs, blue skies and seas, eternal sunshine and delicious shade, and
happiness where is a sweet noise of waters and of birds, a sweet and deep
breathing of kind and bounteous nature.

And that little boy with the flute would die. His foot might slip now as
he came upward, and no more could he play souls into Arcady!

The tune wound away to her left, like a gay and careless living thing
that was travelling ever upward, then once more came towards her. But now
it was above her. She turned her head and she saw the little player
against the blue. He was on a rock, and for a moment he stood still. On
his head was a long woollen cap, hanging over at one side. It made
Hermione think of the woollen cap she had seen come out of the darkness
of the ravine as she waited with Gaspare for the padrone. Against the
blue, standing on the gray and sunlit rock, with the flute at his lips,
and his tiny, deep-brown fingers moving swiftly, he looked at one with
the mountain and yet almost unearthly, almost as if the blue had given
birth to him for a moment, and in a moment would draw him back again into
the womb of its wonder. His goats were all around him, treading
delicately among the rocks. As Hermione watched he turned and went away
into the blue, and the tarantella went away into the blue with him.

Her Sicilian and his tarantella, the tarantella of his joy in
Sicily--they had gone away into the blue.

She looked at it, deep, quivering, passionate, intense; thousands and
thousands of miles of blue! And she listened as she looked; listened for
some far-off tarantella, for some echo of a fainting tarantella, that
might be a message to her, a message left on the sweet air of the
enchanted island, telling her where the winged feet of her beloved one
mounted towards the sun.



XXIV

Giuseppe came to fetch Hermione from the mountain. He had a note in his
hand and also a message to give. The authorities were already at the
cottage; the Pretore of Marechiaro with his Cancelliere, Dr. Marini and
the Maresciallo of the Carabinieri.

"They have come already?" Hermione said. "So soon?"

She took the note. It was from Artois.

"There is a boy waiting, signora," said Giuseppe. "Gaspare is with the
Signor Pretore."

She opened Emile's note.

"I cannot write anything except this--do you wish me to come?--E."

"Do I wish him to come?" she thought.

She repeated the words mentally several times, while the fisherman stood
by her, staring at her with sympathy. Then she went down to the cottage.

Dr. Marini met her on the terrace. He looked embarrassed. He was
expecting a terrible scene.

"Signora," he said, "I am very sorry, but--but I am obliged to perform my
duty."

"Yes," she said. "Of course. What is it?"

"As there is a hospital in Marechiaro--"

He stopped.

"Yes?" she said.

"The autopsy of the body must take place there. Otherwise I could have--"

"You have come to take him away," she said. "I understand. Very well."

But they could not take him away, these people. For he was gone; he had
gone away into the blue.

The doctor looked relieved, though surprised, at her apparent
nonchalance.

"I am very sorry, signora," he said--"very sorry."

"Must I see the Pretore?" she said.

"I am afraid so, signora. They will want to ask you a few questions. The
body ought not to have been moved from the place where--"

"We could not leave him in the sea," she said, as she had said in the
night.

"No, no. You will only just have to say--"

"I will tell them what I know. He went down to bathe."

"Yes. But the Pretore will want to know why he went to Salvatore's
terreno."

"I suppose he bathed from there. He knew the people in the Casa delle
Sirene, I believe."

She spoke indifferently. It seemed to her so utterly useless, this
inquiry by strangers into the cause of her sorrow.

"I must just write something," she added.

She went up the steps into the sitting-room. Gaspare was there with three
men--the Pretore, the Cancelliere and the Maresciallo. As she came in the
strangers turned and saluted her with grave politeness, all looking
earnestly at her with their dark eyes. But Gaspare did not look at her.
He had the ugly expression on his face that Hermione had noticed the day
before.

"Will you please allow me to write a line to a friend?" Hermione said.
"Then I shall be ready to answer your questions."

"Certainly, signora," said the Pretore; "we are very sorry to disturb
you, but it is our duty."

He had gray hair and a dark mustache, and his black eyes looked as if
they had been varnished.

Hermione went to the writing-table, while the men stood in silence
filling up the little room.

"What shall I say?" she thought.

She heard the boots of the Cancelliere creak as he shifted his feet upon
the floor. The Maresciallo cleared his throat. There was a moment of
hesitation. Then he went to the steps and spat upon the terrace.

"Don't come yet," she wrote, slowly.

Then she turned round.

"How long will your inquiry take, do you think, signore?" she asked of
the Pretore. "When will--when can the funeral take place?"

"Signora, I trust to-morrow. I hope--I do not suppose there will be any
reason to suspect, after what Dr. Marini has told us and we have seen,
that the death was anything but an accident--an accident which we all
most deeply grieve for."

"It was an accident."

She stood by the table with the pen in her hand.

"I suppose--I suppose he must be buried in the Campo Santo?" she said.

"Do you wish to convey the body to England, signora?"

"Oh no. He loved Sicily. He wished to stay always here, I think,
although--"

She broke off.

"I could never take him away from Sicily. But there is a place
here--under the oak-trees. He was very fond of it."

Gaspare began to sob, then controlled himself with a desperate effort,
turned round and stood with his face to the wall.

"I suppose, if I could buy a piece of land there, it could not be
permitted--?"

She looked at the Pretore.

"I am very sorry, signora, such a thing could not possibly be allowed. If
the body is buried here it must be in the Campo Santo."

"Thank you."

She turned to the table and wrote after "Don't come yet":

"They are taking him away now to the hospital in the village. I
shall come down. I think the funeral will be to-morrow. They tell
me he must be buried in the Campo Santo. I should have liked him to
lie here under the oak-trees.
HERMIONE."

When Artois read this note tears came into his eyes.

No event in his life had shocked him so much as the death of Delarey.

It had shocked both his intellect and his heart. And yet his intellect
could hardly accept it as a fact. When, early that morning, one of the
servants of the Hotel Regina Margherita had rushed into his room to tell
him, he had refused to believe it. But then he had seen the fishermen,
and finally Dr. Marini. And he had been obliged to believe. His natural
impulse was to go to his friend in her trouble as she had come to him in
his. But he checked it. His agony had been physical. Hers was of the
affections, and how far greater than his had ever been! He could not bear
to think of it. A great and generous indignation seized him, an
indignation against the catastrophes of life. That this should be
Hermione's reward for her noble unselfishness roused in him something
that was like fury; and then there followed a more torturing fury against
himself.

He had deprived her of days and weeks of happiness. Such a short span of
joy had been allotted to her, and he had not allowed her to have even
that. He had called her away. He dared not trust himself to write any
word of sympathy. It seemed to him that to do so would be a hideous
irony, and he sent the line in pencil which she had received. And then he
walked up and down in his little sitting-room, raging against himself,
hating himself.

In his now bitterly acute consideration of his friendship with Hermione
he realized that he had always been selfish, always the egoist claiming
rather than the generous donor. He had taken his burdens to her, not
weakly, for he was not a weak man, but with a desire to be eased of some
of their weight. He had always been calling upon her for sympathy, and
she had always been lavishly responding, scattering upon him the wealth
of her great heart.

And now he had deprived her of nearly all the golden time that had been
stored up for her by the decree of the Gods, of God, of Fate,
of--whatever it was that ruled, that gave and that deprived.

A bitterness of shame gripped him. He felt like a criminal. He said to
himself that the selfish man is a criminal.

"She will hate me," he said to himself. "She must. She can't help it."

Again the egoist was awake and speaking within him. He realized that
immediately and felt almost a fear of this persistence of character. What
is the use of cleverness, of clear sight into others, even of genius,
when the self of a man declines to change, declines to be what is not
despicable?

"Mon Dieu!" he thought, passionately. "And even now I must be thinking of
my cursed self!"

He was beset by an intensity of desire to do something for Hermione. For
once in his life his heart, the heart she believed in and he was inclined
to doubt or to despise, drove him as it might have driven a boy, even
such a one as Maurice. It seemed to him that unless he could do something
to make atonement he could never be with Hermione again, could never bear
to be with her again. But what could he do?

"At least," he thought, "I may be able to spare her something to-day. I
may be able to arrange with these people about the funeral, about all the
practical things that are so frightful a burden to the living who have
loved the dead, in the last moments before the dead are given to the
custody of the earth."

And then he thought of the inquiry, of the autopsy. Could he not help
her, spare her perhaps, in connection with them?

Despite his weakness of body he felt feverishly active, feverishly
desirous to be of practical use. If he could do something he would think
less, too; and there were thoughts which seemed furtively trying to press
themselves forward in the chambers of his mind, but which, as yet, he
was, also furtively, pushing back, striving to keep in the dark place
from which they desired to emerge.

Artois knew Sicily well, and he knew that such a death as this would
demand an inquiry, might raise suspicions in the minds of the authorities
of Marechiaro. And in his own mind?

He was a mentally courageous man, but he longed now to leave Marechiaro,
to leave Sicily at once, carrying Hermione with him. A great dread was
not actually with him, but was very near to him.

Presently something, he did not know what, drew him to the window of his
bedroom which looked out towards the main street of the village. As he
came to it he heard a dull murmur of voices, and saw the Sicilians
crowding to their doors and windows, and coming out upon their balconies.

The body of Maurice was being borne to the hospital which was at the far
end of the town. As soon as he realized that, Artois closed his window.
He could not look with the curious on that procession. He went back into
his sitting-room, which faced the sea. But he felt the procession going
past, and was enveloped in the black wonder of death.

That he should be alive and Delarey dead! How extraordinary that was! For
he had been close to death, so close that it would have seemed quite
natural to him to die. Had not Hermione come to him, he thought, he
would almost, at the crucial stage in his illness, have preferred to die.
It would have been a far easier, far simpler act than the return to
health and his former powers. And now he stood here alive, looking at the
sea, and Delarey's dead body was being carried to the hospital.

Was the fact that he was alive the cause of the fact that Delarey was
dead? Abruptly one of those furtive thoughts had leaped forward out of
its dark place and challenged him boldly, even with a horrible brutality.
Too late now to try to force it back. It must be faced, be dealt with.

Again, and much more strongly than on the previous day, Artois felt that
in Hermione's absence the Sicilian life of the dead man had not run
smoothly, that there had been some episode of which she knew nothing,
that he, Artois, had been right in his suspicions at the cottage. Delarey
had been in fear of something, had been on the watch. When he had sat by
the wall he had been tortured by some tremendous anxiety.

He had gone down to the sea to bathe. That was natural enough. And he had
been found dead under a precipice of rock in the sea. The place was a
dangerous one, they said. A man might easily fall from the rock in the
night. Yes; but why should he be there?

That thought now recurred again and again to the mind of Artois. Why had
Delarey been at the place where he had met his death? The authorities of
Marechiaro were going to inquire into that, were probably down at the sea
now. Suppose there had been some tragic episode? Suppose they should find
out what it was?

He saw Hermione in the midst of her grief the central figure of some
dreadful scandal, and his heart sickened.

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