The Call of the Blood Part 75

"Gaspare," he said, "I was mad. We men--we are mad sometimes. But now I must be sane. I must do what I can to--I must do what I can--and you must help me."

He held out his hand. Gaspare took it. The grasp of it was strong, that of a man. It seemed to rea.s.sure the boy.

"I will always help my padrone," he said.

Then they went down the mountain-side.

It was perhaps very strange--Maurice thought it was--but he felt now less tired, less confused, more master of himself than he had before he had spoken with Gaspare. He even felt less miserable. Face to face with an immediate and very threatening danger, courage leaped up in him, a certain violence of resolve which cleared away clouds and braced his whole being. He had to fight. There was no way out. Well, then, he would fight. He had played the villain, perhaps, but he would not play the poltroon. He did not know what he was going to do, what he could do, but he must act, and act decisively. His wild youth responded to this call made upon it. There was a new light in his eyes as he went down to the cottage, as he came upon the terrace.

Artois noticed it at once, was aware at once that in this marvellous peace to which Hermione had brought him there were elements which had nothing to do with peace.

"What hast thou to do with peace? Turn thee behind me."

These words from the Bible came into his mind as he looked into the eyes of his host, and he felt that Hermione and he were surely near to some drama of which they knew nothing, of which Hermione, perhaps, suspected nothing.

Maurice acted his part. The tonic of near danger gave him strength, even gave him at first a certain subtlety. From the terrace he could see far over the mountain flanks. As one on a tower he watched for the approach of his enemy from the sea, but he did not neglect his two companions. For he was fighting already. When he seemed natural in his cordiality to his guest, when he spoke and laughed, when he apologized for the misfortune of the previous day, he was fighting. The battle with circ.u.mstances was joined. He must bear himself bravely in it. He must not allow himself to be overwhelmed.

Nevertheless, there came presently a moment which brought with it a sense of fear.

Hermione got up to go into the house.

"I must see what Lucrezia is doing," she said. "Your collazione must not be a fiasco, Emile."

"Nothing could be a fiasco here, I think," he answered.

She laughed happily.

"But poor Lucrezia is not in paradise," she said. "Ah, why can't every one be happy when one is happy one's self? I always think of that when I----"

She did not finish her sentence in words. Her look at the two men concluded it. Then she turned and went into the house.

"What is the matter with Lucrezia?" asked Artois.

"Oh, she--she's in love with a shepherd called Sebastiano."

"And he's treating her badly?"

"I'm afraid so. He went to the Lipari Isles, and he doesn't come back."

"A girl there keeps him captive?"

"It seems so."

"Faithful women must not expect to have a perfect time in Sicily," Artois said.

As he spoke he noticed that a change came in his companion's face. It was fleeting, but it was marked. It made Artois think:

"This man understands Sicilian faithlessness in love."

It made him, too, remember sharply some words of his own said long ago in London:

"I love the South, but I distrust what I love, and I see the South in him."

There was a silence between the two men. Heat was growing in the long summer day, heat that lapped them in the influence of the South. Africa had been hotter, but this seemed the breast of the South, full of glory and of languor, and of that strange and subtle influence which inclines the heart of man to pa.s.sion and the body of man to yield to its desires.

It was glorious, this wonderful magic of the South, but was it wholesome for Northern men? Was it not full of danger? As he looked at the great, shining waste of the sea, purple and gold, dark and intense and jewelled, at the outline of Etna, at the barbaric ruin of the Saracenic castle on the cliff opposite, like a cry from the dead ages echoing out of the quivering blue, at the man before him leaning against the blinding white wall above the steep bank of the ravine, Artois said to himself that the South was dangerous to young, full-blooded men, was dangerous, to such a man as Delarey. And he asked himself the question, "What has this man been doing here in this glorious loneliness of the South, while his wife has been saving my life in Africa?" And a sense of reproach, almost of alarm, smote him. For he had called Hermione away. In the terrible solitude that comes near to the soul with the footfalls of death he had not been strong enough to be silent. He had cried out, and his friend had heard and had answered. And Delarey had been left alone with the sun.

"I'm afraid you must feel as if I were your enemy," he said.

And as he spoke he was thinking, "Have I been this man's enemy?"

"Oh no. Why?"

"I deprived you of your wife. You've been all alone here."

"I made friends of the Sicilians."

Maurice spoke lightly, but through his mind ran the thought, "What an enemy this man has been to me, without knowing it!"

"They are easy to get on with," said Artois. "When I was in Sicily I learned to love them."

"Oh, love!" said Maurice, hastily.

He checked himself.

"That's rather a strong word, but I like them. They're a delightful race."

"Have you found out their faults?"

Both men were trying to hide themselves in their words.

"What are their faults, do you think?" Maurice said.

He looked over the wall and saw, far off on the path by the ravine, a black speck moving.

"Treachery when they do not trust; sensuality, violence, if they think themselves wronged."

"Are--are those faults? I understand them. They seem almost to belong to the sun."

Artois had not been looking at Maurice. The sound of Maurice's voice now made him aware that the speaker had turned away from him. He glanced up and saw his companion staring over the wall across the ravine. What was he gazing at? Artois wondered.

"Yes, the sun is perhaps partly responsible for them. Then you have become such a sun-worshipper that----"

"No, no, I don't say that," Maurice interrupted.

He looked round and met Artois's observant eyes. He had dreaded having those eyes fixed upon him.

"But I think--I think things done in such a place, such an island as this, shouldn't be judged too severely, shouldn't be judged, I mean, quite as we might judge them, say, in England."