The Call of the Blood Part 69

"Have you?" she said.

"Yes."

"Do you--would you rather sleep there to-night?"

She did not mean to say it. It was the last thing she wished to say. Yet she said it. It seemed to her that she was forced to say it.

"Well, it's much cooler there."

She was silent.

"I could just put one or two rugs and cushions on the seat by the wall,"

he said. "I shall sleep like a top. I'm awfully tired!"

"But--but the sun will soon be up, won't it?"

"Oh--then I can come in."

"All right."

"I'll take the rugs from the sitting-room. I say--how's Artois?"

"Much better, but he's still weak."

"Poor chap!"

"He'll ride up to-morrow on a donkey."

"Good! I'm--I'm most awfully sorry about his rooms."

"What does it matter? I've made them quite nice already. He's perfectly comfortable."

"I'm glad. It's all--it's all been such a pity--about to-day, I mean."

"Don't let's think of it! Don't let's think of it any more."

A pa.s.sionate sound had stolen into her voice. She moved a step towards him. A sudden idea had come to her, an idea that stirred within her a great happiness, that made a flame of joy spring up in her heart.

"Maurice, you--you----"

"What is it?" he asked.

"You aren't vexed at my staying away so long? You aren't vexed at my bringing Emile back with me?"

"No, of course not," he said. "But--but I wish you hadn't gone away."

And then he disappeared into the sitting-room, collected the rugs and cushions, opened the French window, and went out upon the terrace.

Presently he called out:

"I shall sleep as I am, Hermione, without undressing. I'm awfully done.

Good-night."

"Good-night!" she called.

There was a quiver in her voice. And yet that flame of happiness had not quite died down. She said to herself:

"He doesn't want me to know. He's too proud. But he has been a little jealous, perhaps." She remembered how Sicilian he was.

"But I'll make him forget it all," she thought, eagerly.

"To-morrow--to-morrow it will be all right. He's missed me, he's missed me!"

That thought was very sweet to her. It seemed to explain all things; this constraint of her husband, which had reacted upon her, this action of his in preferring to sleep outside--everything. He had always been like a boy. He was like a boy now. He could not conceal his feelings. He did not doubt her. She knew that. But he had been a little jealous about her friendship for Emile.

She undressed. When she was ready for bed she hesitated a moment. Then she put a white shawl round her shoulders and stole quickly out of the room. She came upon the terrace. The stars were waning. The gray of the dawn was in the sky towards the east. Maurice, stretched upon the rugs, with his face turned towards the terrace wall, was lying still. She went to him, bent down, and kissed him.

"I love you," she whispered--"oh, so much!"

She did not wait, but went away at once. When she was gone he put up his hand to his face. On his cheek there was a tear.

"G.o.d forgive me!" he said to himself. "G.o.d forgive me!"

His body was shaken by a sob.

XVIII

When the sun came up over the rim of the sea Maurice ceased from his pretence of sleep, raised himself on his elbow, then sat upright and looked over the ravine to the rocks of the Sirens' Isle. The name seemed to him now a fatal name, and everything connected with his sojourn in Sicily fatal. Surely there had been a malign spirit at work. In this early morning hour his brain, though unrefreshed by sleep, was almost unnaturally clear, feverishly busy. Something had met him when he first set foot in Sicily--so he thought now--had met him with a fixed and evil purpose. And that purpose had never been abandoned.

Old superst.i.tions, inherited perhaps from a long chain of credulous Sicilian ancestors, were stirring in him. He did not laugh at his idea, as a pure-blooded Englishman would have laughed. He pondered it. He cherished it.

On his very first evening in Sicily the spirit had led him to the wall, had directed his gaze to the far-off light in the house of the sirens. He remembered how strangely the little light had fascinated his eyes, and his mind through his eyes, how he had asked what it was, how, when Hermione had called him to come in to sleep, he had turned upon the steps to gaze down on it once more. Then he had not known why he gazed. Now he knew. The spirit that had met him by the sea in Sicily had whispered to him to look, and he had obeyed because he could not do otherwise.

He dwelt upon that thought, that he had obeyed because he had been obliged to obey. It was a palliative to his mental misery and his hatred of himself. The fatalism that is linked with superst.i.tion got hold upon him and comforted him a little. He had not been a free agent. He had had to do as he had done. Everything had been arranged so that he might sin.

The night of the fishing had prepared the way for the night of the fair.

If Hermione had stayed--but of course she had not stayed. The spirit that had kept him in Sicily had sent her across the sea to Africa. In the full flush of his hot-blooded youth, intoxicated by his first knowledge of the sun and of love, he had been left quite alone. Newly married, he had been abandoned by his wife for a good, even perhaps a n.o.ble, reason. Still, he had been abandoned--to himself and the keeping of that spirit. Was it any wonder that he had fallen? He strove to think that it was not. In the night he had cowered before Hermione and had been cruel with himself.

Now, in the sunshine, he showed fight. He strove to find excuses for himself. If he did not find excuses he felt that he could not face the day, face Hermione in sunlight.

And now that the spirit had led him thus far, surely its work was done, surely it would leave him alone. He tried to believe that.

Then he thought of Maddalena.

She was there, down there where the rising sun glittered on the sea. She surely was awake, as he was awake. She was thinking, wondering--perhaps weeping.

He got up. He could not look at the sea any more. The name "House of the Sirens" suddenly seemed to him a terrible misnomer, now that he thought of Maddalena perhaps weeping by the sea.

He had his revenge upon Salvatore, but at what a cost!

Salvatore! The fisherman's face rose up before him. If he ever knew!