Chapter 10

He saw such a dwelling as one may see in any part of Sicily where the inhabitants are not sunk in the direst poverty and squalor, a modest home consisting of two fair-sized rooms, one opening into the other. In each room was a mighty bed, high and white, with fat pillows, and a counterpane of many colors. At the head of each was pinned a crucifix and a little picture of the Virgin, Maria Addolorata, with a palm branch that had been blessed, and beneath the picture in the inner room a tiny light, rather like an English night-light near its end, was burning. It was this that Delarey had seen like a spark in the distance. At the foot of each bed stood a big box of walnut wood, carved into arabesques and grotesque faces. There were a few straw chairs and kitchen utensils. An old gun stood in a corner with a bundle of wood. Not far off was a pan of charcoal. There were also two or three common deal-tables, on one of which stood the remains of a meal, a big jar containing wine, a flat loaf of coarse brown bread, with a knife lying beside it, some green stuff in a plate, and a slab of hard, yellow cheese.

Delarey was less interested in these things than in the display of photographs, picture-cards, and figures of saints that adorned the walls, carefully arranged in patterns to show to the best advantage. Here were colored reproductions of actresses in languid attitudes, of peasants dancing, of babies smiling, of elaborate young people with carefully dressed hair making love with "Molti Saluti!" "Una stretta di Mano!" "Mando un bacio!" "Amicizia eterna!" and other expressions of friendship and affection, scribbled in awkward handwritings across and around them. And mingled with them were representations of saints, such as are sold at the fairs and festivals of Sicily, and are reverently treasured by the pious and superstitious contadine; San Pancrazio, Santa Leocanda, the protector of child-bearing women; Sant Aloe, the patron saint of the beasts of burden; San Biagio, Santo Vito, the patron saint of dogs; and many others, with the Bambino, the Immacolata, the Madonna di Loreto, the Madonna della Rocca.

In the faint light cast by the flickering candle, the faces of saints and actresses, of smiling babies, of lovers and Madonnas peered at Delarey as if curious to know why at such an hour he ventured to intrude among them, why he thus dared to examine them when all the world was sleeping. He drew back from them at length and looked again at the great bed with its fat pillows that stood in the farther room secluded from the sea-breeze. Suddenly he felt a longing to throw himself down and rest.

The girl smiled at him with sympathy.

"That is my bed," she said, simply. "Lie down and sleep, signorino."

Delarey hesitated for a moment. He thought of his companions. If they should wake in the cave and miss him what would they think, what would they do? Then he looked again at the bed. The longing to lie down on it was irresistible. He pointed to the open door.

"When the sun comes will you wake me?" he said.

He took hold of his arm with one hand, and made the motion of shaking himself.

"Sole," he said. "Quando c'è il sole."

The girl laughed and nodded.

"Si, signore--non dubiti!"

Delarey climbed up on to the mountainous bed.

"Buona notte, Maddalena!" he said, smiling at her from the pillow like a boy.

"Buon riposo, signorino!"

That was the last thing he heard. The last thing he saw was the dark, eager face of the girl lit up by the candle-flame watching him from the farther room. Her slight figure was framed by the doorway, through which a faint, sad light was stealing with the soft wind from the sea. Her lustrous eyes were looking towards him curiously, as if he were something of a phenomenon, as if she longed to understand his mystery.

Soon, very soon, he saw those eyes no more. He was asleep in the midst of the Madonnas and the saints, with the blessed palm branch and the crucifix and Maria Addolorata above his head.

The girl sat down on a chair just outside the door, and began to sing to herself once more in a low voice:

"Divina Pruvidenza, pruvvidìtimi; Divina Pruvidenza, consulàtimi; Divina Pruvidenza è granni assai; Cu' teni fidi a Diù, 'un pirisci mai!"

Once, in his sleep, Delarey must surely have heard her song, for he began to dream that he was Ulysses sailing across the purple seas along the shores of an enchanted coast, and that he heard far off the sirens singing, and saw their shadowy forms sitting among the rocks and reclining upon the yellow sands. Then he bade his mariners steer the bark towards the shore. But when he drew near the sirens changed into devout peasant women, and their alluring songs into prayers uttered to the Bambino and the Virgin. But one watched him with eyes that gleamed like black jewels, and her lips smiled while they uttered prayers, as if they could murmur love words and kiss the lips of men.

"Signorino! Signorino!"

Delarey stirred on the great, white bed. A hand grasped him firmly, shook him ruthlessly.

"Signorino! C'è il sole!"

He opened his eyes reluctantly. Maddalena was leaning over him. He saw her bright face and curious young eyes, then the faces of the saints and the actresses upon the wall, and he wondered where he was and where Hermione was.

"Hermione!" he said.

"Cosa?" said Maddalena.

She shook him again gently. He stretched himself, yawned, and began to smile. She smiled back at him.

"C'è il sole!"

Now he remembered, lifted himself up, and looked towards the doorway. The first rays of the sun were filtering in and sparkling in the distance upon the sea. The east was barred with red.

He slipped down from the bed.

"The frittura!" he said, in English. "I must make haste!"

Maddalena laughed. She had never heard English before.

"Ditelo ancora!" she cried, eagerly.

They went but together on to the plateau and stood looking seaward.

"I--must--make--haste!" he said, speaking slowly and dividing the words.

"Hi--maust--maiki--'ai--isti!" she repeated, trying to imitate his accent.

He burst out laughing. She pouted. Then she laughed, too, peal upon peal, while the sunlight grew stronger about them. How fresh the wind was! It played with her hair, from which she had now removed the handkerchief, and ruffled the little feathers of gold upon her brow. It blew about her smooth, young face as if it loved to touch the soft cheeks, the innocent lips, the candid, unlined brow. The leaves of the olive-trees rustled and the brambles and the grasses swayed. Everything was in movement, stirring gayly into life to greet the coming day. Maurice opened his mouth and drew in the air to his lungs, expanding his chest. He felt inclined to dance, to sing, and very much inclined to eat.

"Addio, Maddalena!" he said, holding out his hand.

He looked into her eyes and added:

"Addio, Maddalena mia!"

She smiled and looked down, then up at him again.

"A rivederci, signorino!"

She took his hand warmly in hers.

"Yes, that's better. A rivederci!"

He held her hand for a moment, looking into her long and laughing eyes, and thinking how like a young animal's they were in their unwinking candor. And yet they were not like an animal's. For now, when he gazed into them, they did not look away from him, but continued to regard him, and always with an eager shining of curiosity. That curiosity stirred his manhood, fired him. He longed to reply to it, to give a quick answer to its eager question, its "what are you?" He glanced round, saw only the trees, the sea all alight with sun-rays, the red east now changing slowly into gold. Then he bent down, kissed the lips of Maddalena with a laugh, turned and descended through the trees by the way he had come. He had no feeling that he had done any wrong to Hermione, any wrong to Maddalena. His spirits were high, and he sang as he leaped down, agile as a goat, to the sea. He meant to return as he had come, and at the water's edge he stripped off his clothes once more, tied them into a bundle, plunged into the sea, and struck out for the beach opposite. As he did so, as the cold, bracing water seized him, he heard far above him the musical cry of the siren of the night. He answered it with a loud, exultant call.

That was her farewell and his--this rustic Hero's good-bye to her Leander.

When he reached the Caffè Berardi its door stood open, and a middle-aged woman was looking out seaward. Beyond, by the caves, he saw figures moving. His companions were awake. He hastened towards them. His morning plunge in the sea had given him a wild appetite.

"Frittura! Frittura!" he shouted, taking off his hat and waving it.

Gaspare came running towards him.

"Where have you been, signorino?"

"For a walk along the shore."

He still kept his hat in his hand.

"Why, your face is all wet, and so is your hair."

"I washed them in the sea. Mangiamo! Mangiamo!"

"You did not sleep?"

Gaspare spoke curiously, regarded him with inquisitive, searching eyes.

"I couldn't. I'll sleep up there when we get home."

He pointed to the mountain. His eyes were dancing with gayety.

"The frittura, Gasparino, the frittura! And then the tarantella, and then 'O sole mio'!"

He looked towards the rising sun, and began to sing at the top of his voice:

"O sole, o sole mio, Sta 'n fronte a te, Sta 'n fronte a te!"

Gaspare joined in lustily, and Carmela in the doorway of the Caffè Berardi waved a frying-pan at them in time to the music.

"Per Dio, Gaspare!" exclaimed Maurice, as they raced towards the house, each striving to be first there--"Per Dio, I never knew what life was till I came to Sicily! I never knew what happiness was till this morning!"

"The frittura! The frittura!" shouted Gaspare. "I'll be first!"

Neck and neck they reached the caffè as Nito poured the shining fish into Madre Carmela's frying-pan.

VIII

"They are coming, signora, they are coming! Don't you hear them?"

Lucrezia was by the terrace wall looking over into the ravine. She could not see any moving figures, but she heard far down among the olives and the fruit trees Gaspare's voice singing "O sole mio!" and while she listened another voice joined in, the voice of the padrone:

"Dio mio, but they are merry!" she added, as the song was broken by a distant peal of laughter.

Hermione came out upon the steps. She had been in the sitting-room writing a letter to Miss Townly, who sent her long and tearful effusions from London almost every day.

"Have you got the frying-pan ready, Lucrezia?" she asked.

"The frying-pan, signora!"

"Yes, for the fish they are bringing us."

Lucrezia looked knowing.

"Oh, signora, they will bring no fish."

"Why not? They promised last night. Didn't you hear?"

"They promised, yes, but they won't remember. Men promise at night and forget in the morning."

Hermione laughed. She had been feeling a little dull, but now the sound of the lusty voices and the laughter from the ravine filled her with a sudden cheerfulness, and sent a glow of anticipation into her heart.

"Lucrezia, you are a cynic."

"What is a cinico, signora?"

"A Lucrezia. But you don't know your padrone. He won't forget us."

Lucrezia reddened. She feared she had perhaps said something that seemed disrespectful.

"Oh, signora, there is not another like the padrone. Every one says so. Ask Gaspare and Sebastiano. I only meant that--"

"I know. Well, to-day you will understand that all men are not forgetful, when you eat your fish."

Lucrezia still looked very doubtful, but she said nothing more.

"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 passionately, 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 assurance.

"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 appetite, 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.

"Come and tuck me up afterwards!" he said, and vanished.

Hermione made a little movement as if to follow him, but checked it and unfolded the letter.

"4, RUE D'ABDUL KADER, KAIROUAN.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--This will be one of my dreary notes, but you must forgive me. Do you ever feel a heavy cloud of apprehension lowering over you, a sensation of approaching calamity, as if you heard the footsteps of a deadly enemy stealthily approaching you? Do you know what it is to lose courage, to fear yourself, life, the future, to long to hear a word of sympathy from a friendly voice, to long to lay hold of a friendly hand? Are you ever like a child in the dark, your intellect no weapon against the dread of formless things? The African sun is shining here as I sit under a palm-tree writing, with my servant, Zerzour, squatting beside me. It is so clear that I can almost count the veins in the leaves of the palms, so warm that Zerzour has thrown off his burnous and kept on only his linen shirt. And yet I am cold and seem to be in blackness. I write to you to gain some courage if I can. But I have gained none yet. I believe there must be a physical cause for my malaise, and that I am going to have some dreadful illness, and perhaps lay my bones here in the shadow of the mosques among the sons of Islam. Write to me. Is the garden of paradise blooming with flowers? Is the tree of knowledge of good weighed down with fruit, and do you pluck the fruit boldly and eat it every day? You told me in London to come over and see you. I am not coming. Do not fear. But how I wish that I could now, at this instant, see your strong face, touch your courageous hand! There is a sensation of doom upon me. Laugh at me as much as you like, but write to me. I feel cold--cold in the sun.

EMILE."

When she had finished reading this letter, Hermione stood quite still with it in her hand, gazing at the white paper on which this cry from Africa was traced. It seemed to her that--a cry from across the sea for help against some impending fate. She had often had melancholy letters from Artois in the past, expressing pessimistic views about life and literature, anxiety about some book which he was writing and which he thought was going to be a failure, anger against the follies of men, the turn of French politics, or the degeneration of the arts in modern times. Diatribes she was accustomed to, and a definite melancholy from one who had not a gay temperament. But this letter was different from all the others. She sat down and read it again. For the moment she had forgotten Maurice, and did not hear his movements in the adjoining room. She was in Africa under a palm-tree, looking into the face of a friend with keen anxiety, trying to read the immediate future for him there.

"Maurice!" she called, presently, without getting up from her seat, "I've had such a strange letter from Emile. I'm afraid--I feel as if he were going to be dreadfully ill or have an accident."

There was no reply.

"Maurice!" she called again.

Then she got up and looked into the bedroom. It was nearly dark, but she could see her husband's black head on the pillow and hear a sound of regular breathing. He was asleep already; she had not received his kiss or tucked him up. She felt absurdly unhappy, as if she had missed a pleasure that could never come to her again. That, she thought, is one of the penalties of a great love, the passionate regret it spends on the tiny things it has failed of. At this moment she fancied--no, she felt sure--that there would always be a shadow in her life. She had lost Maurice's kiss after his return from his first absence since their marriage. And a kiss from his lips still seemed to her a wonderful, almost a sacred thing, not only a physical act, but an emblem of that which was mysterious and lay behind the physical. Why had she not let him kiss her on the terrace? Her sensitive reserve had made her loss. For a moment she thought she wished she had the careless mind of a peasant. Lucrezia loved Sebastiano with passion, but she would have let him kiss her in public and been proud of it. What was the use of delicacy, of sensitiveness, in the great, coarse thing called life? Even Maurice had not shared her feeling. He was open as a boy, almost as a peasant boy.

She began to wonder about him. She often wondered about him now in Sicily. In England she never had. She had thought there that she knew him as he, perhaps, could never know her. It seemed to her that she had been almost arrogant, filled with a pride of intellect. She was beginning to be humbler here, face to face with Etna.

Let him sleep, mystery wrapped in the mystery of slumber!

She sat down in the twilight, waiting till he should wake, watching the darkness of his hair upon the pillow.

Some time passed, and presently she heard a noise upon the terrace. She got up softly, went into the sitting-room, and looked out. Lucrezia was laying the table for collazione.

"Is it half-past one already?" she asked.

"Si, signora."

"But the padrone is still asleep!"

"So is Gaspare in the hay. Come and see, signora."

Lucrezia took Hermione by the hand and led her round the angle of the cottage. There, under the low roof of the out-house, dressed only in his shirt and trousers with his brown arms bare and his hair tumbled over his damp forehead, lay Gaspare on a heap of hay close to Tito, the donkey. Some hens were tripping and pecking by his legs, and a black cat was curled up in the hollow of his left armpit. He looked infinitely young, healthy, and comfortable, like an embodied carelessness that had flung itself down to its need.

"I wish I could sleep like that," said Hermione.

"Signora!" said Lucrezia, shocked. "You in the stable with that white dress! Mamma mia! And the hens!"

"Hens, donkey, cat, hay, and all--I should love it. But I'm too old ever to sleep like that. Don't wake him!"

Lucrezia was stepping over to Gaspare.

"And I won't wake the padrone. Let them both sleep. They've been up all night. I'll eat alone. When they wake we'll manage something for them. Perhaps they'll sleep till evening, till dinner-time."

"Gaspare will, signora. He can sleep the clock round when he's tired."

"And the padrone too, I dare say. All the better."

She spoke cheerfully, then went to sit down to her solitary meal.