The Call of the Blood Part 24

"There they are!" exclaimed Hermione.

She waved her hand and cried out. Life suddenly seemed quite different to her. These moving figures peopled gloriously the desert waste, these ringing voices filled with music the brooding silence of it. She murmured to herself a verse of scripture, "Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh with the morning," and she realized for the first time how absurdly sad and deserted she had been feeling, how unreasonably forlorn.

By her present joy she measured her past--not sorrow exactly; she could not call it that--her past dreariness, and she said to herself with a little shock almost of fear, "How terribly dependent I am!"

"Mamma mia!" cried Lucrezia, as another shout of laughter came up from the ravine, "how merry and mad they are! They have had a good night's fishing."

Hermione heard the laughter, but now it sounded a little harsh in her ears.

"I wonder," she thought, as she leaned upon the terrace wall--"I wonder if he has missed me at all? I wonder if men ever miss us as we miss them?"

Her call, it seemed, had not been heard, nor her gesture of welcome seen, but now Maurice looked up, waved his cap, and shouted. Gaspare, too, took off his linen hat with a stentorian cry of "Buon giorno, signora."

"Signora!" said Lucrezia.

"Yes?"

"Look! Was not I right? Are they carrying anything?"

Hermione looked eagerly, almost pa.s.sionately, at the two figures now drawing near to the last ascent up the bare mountain flank. Maurice had a stick in one hand, the other hung empty at his side. Gaspare still waved his hat wildly, holding it with both hands as a sailor holds the signalling-flag.

"Perhaps," she said--"perhaps it wasn't a good night, and they've caught nothing."

"Oh, signora, the sea was calm. They must have taken--"

"Perhaps their pockets are full of fish. I am sure they are."

She spoke with a cheerful a.s.surance.

"If they have caught any fish, I know your frying-pan will be wanted,"

she said.

"Chi lo sa?" said Lucrezia, with rather perfunctory politeness.

Secretly she thought that the padrona had only one fault. She was a little obstinate sometimes, and disinclined to be told the truth. And certainly she did not know very much about men, although she had a husband.

Through the old Norman arch came Delarey and Gaspare, with hot faces and gay, shining eyes, splendidly tired with their exertions and happy in the thought of rest. Delarey took Hermione's hand in his. He would have kissed her before Lucrezia and Gaspare, quite naturally, but he felt that her hand stiffened slightly in his as he leaned forward, and he forbore.

She longed for his kiss, but to receive it there would have spoiled a joy. And kind and familiar though she was with those beneath her, she could not bear to show the deeps of her heart before them. To her his kiss after her lonely night would be an event. Did he know that? She wondered.

He still kept her hand in his as he began to tell her about their expedition.

"Did you enjoy it?" she asked, thinking what a boy he looked in his eager, physical happiness.

"Ask Gaspare!"

"I don't think I need. Your eyes tell me."

"I never enjoyed any night so much before, out there under the moon. Why don't we always sleep out-of-doors?"

"Shall we try some night on the terrace?"

"By Jove, we will! What a lark!"

"Did you go into the sea?"

"I should think so! Ask Gaspare if I didn't beat them all. I had to swim, too."

"And the fish?" she said, trying to speak, carelessly.

"They were stunning. We caught an awful lot, and Mother Carmela cooked them to a T. I had an appet.i.te, I can tell you, Hermione, after being in the sea."

She was silent for a moment. Her hand had dropped out of his. When she spoke again, she said:

"And you slept in the caves?"

"The others did."

"And you?"

"I couldn't sleep, so I went out on to the beach. But I'll tell you all that presently. You won't be shocked, Hermione, if I take a siesta now?

I'm pretty well done--grandly tired, don't you know. I think I could get a lovely nap before collazione."

"Come in, my dearest," she said. "Collazione a little late, Lucrezia, not till half-past one."

"And the fish, signora?" asked Lucrezia.

"We've got quite enough without fish," said Hermione, turning away.

"Oh, by Jove!" Delarey said, as they went into the cottage, putting his hand into his jacket-pocket, "I've got something for you, Hermione."

"Fish!" she cried, eagerly, her whole face brightening. "Lucre--"

"Fish in my coat!" he interrupted, still not remembering. "No, a letter.

They gave it me from the village as we came up. Here it is."

He drew out a letter, gave it to her, and went into the bedroom, while Hermione stood in the sitting-room by the dining-table with the letter in her hand.

It was from Artois, with the Kairouan postmark.

"It's from Emile," she said.

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

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

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

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