Chapter 11

The letter of Artois was her only company. She read it again as she ate, and again felt as if it had been written by a man over whom some real misfortune was impending. The thought of his isolation in that remote African city pained her warm heart. She compared it with her own momentary solitude, and chided herself for minding--and she did mind--the lonely meal. How much she had--everything almost! And Artois, with his genius, his fame, his liberty--how little he had! An Arab servant for his companion, while she for hers had Maurice! Her heart glowed with thankfulness, and, feeling how rich she was, she felt a longing to give to others--a longing to make every one happy, a longing specially to make Emile happy. His letter was horribly sad. Each time she looked at it she was made sad by it, even apprehensive. She remembered their long and close friendship, how she had sympathized with all his struggles, how she had been proud of possessing his confidence and of being asked to advise him on points connected with his work. The past returned to her, kindling fires in her heart, till she longed to be near him and to shed their warmth on him. The African sun shone upon him and left him cold, numb. How wonderful it was, she thought, that the touch of a true friend's hand, the smile of the eyes of a friend, could succeed where the sun failed. Sometimes she thought of herself, of all human beings, as pygmies. Now she felt that she came of a race of giants, whose powers were illimitable. If only she could be under that palm-tree for a moment beside Emile, she would be able to test the power she knew was within her, the glorious power that the sun lacked, to shed light and heat through a human soul. With an instinctive gesture she stretched out her hand as if to give Artois the touch he longed for. It encountered only the air and dropped to her side. She got up with a sigh.

"Poor old Emile!" she said to herself. "If only I could do something for him!"

The thought of Maurice sleeping calmly close to her made her long to say "Thank you" for her great happiness by performing some action of usefulness, some action that would help another--Emile for choice--to happiness, or, at least, to calm.

This longing was for a moment so keen in her that it was almost like an unconscious petition, like an unuttered prayer in the heart, "Give me an opportunity to show my gratitude."

She stood by the wall for a moment, looking over into the ravine and at the mountain flank opposite. Etna was startlingly clear to-day. She fancied that if a fly were to settle upon the snow on its summit she would be able to see it. The sea was like a mirror in which lay the reflection of the unclouded sky. It was not far to Africa. She watched a bird pass towards the sea. Perhaps it was flying to Kairouan, and would settle at last on one of the white cupolas of the great mosque there, the Mosque of Djama Kebir.

What could she do for Emile? She could at least write to him. She could renew her invitation to him to come to Sicily.

"Lucrezia!" she called, softly, lest she might waken Maurice.

"Signora?" said Lucrezia, appearing round the corner of the cottage.

"Please bring me out a pen and ink and writing-paper, will you?"

"Si, signora."

Lucrezia was standing beside Hermione. Now she turned to go into the house. As she did so she said:

"Ecco, Antonino from the post-office!"

"Where?" asked Hermione.

Lucrezia pointed to a little figure that was moving quickly along the mountain-path towards the cottage.

"There, signora. But why should he come? It is not the hour for the post yet."

"No. Perhaps it is a telegram. Yes, it must be a telegram."

She glanced at the letter in her hand.

"It's a telegram from Africa," she said, as if she knew.

And at that moment she felt that she did know.

Lucrezia regarded her with round-eyed amazement.

"But, signora, how can you--"

"There, Antonino has disappeared under the trees! We shall see him in a minute among the rocks. I'll go to meet him."

And she went quickly to the archway, and looked down the path where the lizards were darting to and fro in the sunshine. Almost directly Antonino reappeared, a small boy climbing steadily up the steep pathway, with a leather bag slung over his shoulder.

"Antonino!" she called to him. "Is it a telegram?"

"Si, signora!" he cried out.

He came up to her, panting, opened the bag, and gave her the folded paper.

"Go and get something to drink," she said. "To eat, too, if you're hungry."

Antonino ran off eagerly, while Hermione tore open the paper and read these words in French:

"Monsieur Artois dangerously ill; fear may not recover; he wished you to know.

MAX BERTON, Docteur Médecin, Kairouan."

Hermione dropped the telegram. She did not feel at all surprised. Indeed, she felt that she had been expecting almost these very words, telling her of a tragedy at which the letter she still held in her hand had hinted. For a moment she stood there without being conscious of any special sensation. Then she stooped, picked up the telegram, and read it again. This time it seemed like an answer to that unuttered prayer in her heart: "Give me an opportunity to show my gratitude." She did not hesitate for a moment as to what she would do. She would go to Kairouan, to close the eyes of her friend if he must die, if not to nurse him back to life.

Antonino was munching some bread and cheese and had one hand round a glass full of red wine.

"I'm going to write an answer," she said to him, "and you must run with it."

"Si, signora."

"Was it from Africa, signora?" asked Lucrezia.

"Yes."

Lucrezia's jaw fell, and she stared in superstitious amazement.

"I wonder," Hermione thought, "if Maurice--"

She went gently to the bedroom. He was still sleeping calmly. His attitude of luxurious repose, the sound of his quiet breathing, seemed strange to her eyes and ears at this moment, strange and almost horrible. For an instant she thought of waking him in order to tell him her news and consult with him about the journey. It never occurred to her to ask him whether there should be a journey. But something held her back, as one is held back from disturbing the slumber of a tired child, and she returned to the sitting-room, wrote out the following telegram:

"Shall start for Kairouan at once; wire me Tunisia Palace Hotel, Tunis, MADAME DELAREY."

and sent Antonino with it flying down the hill. Then she got time-tables and a guide-book of Tunisia, and sat down at her writing-table to make out the journey; while Lucrezia, conscious that something unusual was afoot, watched her with solemn eyes.

Hermione found that she would gain nothing by starting that night. By leaving early the next morning she would arrive at Trapani in time to catch a steamer which left at midnight for Tunis, reaching Africa at nine on the following morning. From Tunis a day's journey by train would bring her to Kairouan. If the steamer were punctual she might be able to catch a train immediately on her arrival at Tunis. If not, she would have to spend one day there.

Already she felt as if she were travelling. All sense of peace had left her. She seemed to hear the shriek of engines, the roar of trains in tunnels and under bridges, to shake with the oscillation of the carriage, to sway with the dip and rise of the action of the steamer.

Swiftly, as one in haste, she wrote down times of departure and arrival: Cattaro to Messina, Messina to Palermo, Palermo to Trapani, Trapani to Tunis, Tunis to Kairouan, with the price of the ticket--a return ticket. When that was done and she had laid down her pen, she began for the first time to realize the change a morsel of paper had made in her life, to realize the fact of the closeness of her new knowledge of what was and what was coming to Maurice's ignorance. The travelling sensation within her, an intense interior restlessness, made her long for action, for some ardent occupation in which the body could take part. She would have liked to begin at once to pack, but all her things were in the bedroom where Maurice was sleeping. Would he sleep forever? She longed for him to wake, but she would not wake him. Everything could be packed in an hour. There was no reason to begin now. But how could she remain just sitting there in the great tranquillity of this afternoon of spring, looking at the long, calm line of Etna rising from the sea, while Emile, perhaps, lay dying?

She got up, went once more to the terrace, and began to pace up and down under the awning. She had not told Lucrezia that she was going on the morrow. Maurice must know first. What would he say? How would he take it? And what would he do? Even in the midst of her now growing sorrow--for at first she had hardly felt sorry, had hardly felt anything but that intense restlessness which still possessed her--she was preoccupied with that. She meant, when he woke, to give him the telegram, and say simply that she must go at once to Artois. That was all. She would not ask, hint at anything else. She would just tell Maurice that she could not leave her dearest friend to die alone in an African city, tended only by an Arab, and a doctor who came to earn his fee.

And Maurice--what would he say? What would he--do?

If only he would wake! There was something terrible to her in the contrast between his condition and hers at this moment.

And what ought she to do if Maurice--?

She broke off short in her mental arrangement of possible happenings when Maurice should wake.

The afternoon waned and still he slept. As she watched the light changing on the sea, growing softer, more wistful, and the long outline of Etna becoming darker against the sky, Hermione felt a sort of unreasonable despair taking possession of her. So few hours of the day were left now, and on the morrow this Sicilian life--a life that had been ideal--must come to an end for a time, and perhaps forever. The abruptness of the blow which had fallen had wakened in her sensitive heart a painful, almost an exaggerated sense of the uncertainty of the human fate. It seemed to her that the joy which had been hers in these tranquil Sicilian days, a joy more perfect than any she had conceived of, was being broken off short, as if it could never be renewed. With her anxiety for her friend mingled another anxiety, more formless, but black and horrible in its vagueness.

"If this should be our last day together in Sicily!" she thought, as she watched the light softening among the hills and the shadows of the olive-trees lengthening upon the ground.

"If this should be our last night together in the house of the priest!"

It seemed to her that even with Maurice in another place she could never know again such perfect peace and joy, and her heart ached at the thought of leaving it.

"To-morrow!" she thought. "Only a few hours and this will all be over!"

It seemed almost incredible. She felt that she could not realize it thoroughly and yet that she realized it too much, as in a nightmare one seems to feel both less and more than in any tragedy of a wakeful hour.

A few hours and it would all be over--and through those hours Maurice slept.

The twilight was falling when he stirred, muttered some broken words, and opened his eyes. He heard no sound, and thought it was early morning.

"Hermione!" he said, softly.

Then he lay still for a moment and remembered.

"By Jove! it must be long past time for déjeuner!" he thought.

He sprang up and put his head into the sitting-room.

"Hermione!" he called.

"Yes," she answered, from the terrace.

"What's the time?"

"Nearly dinner-time."

He burst out laughing.

"Didn't you think I was going to sleep forever?" he said.

"Almost," her voice said.

He wondered a little why she did not come to him, but only answered him from a distance.

"I'll dress and be out in a moment," he called.

"All right!"

Now that Maurice was awake at last, Hermione's grief at the lost afternoon became much more acute, but she was determined to conceal it. She remained where she was just then because she had been startled by the sound of her husband's voice, and was not sure of her power of self-control. When, a few minutes later, he came out upon the terrace with a half-amused, half-apologetic look on his face, she felt safer. She resolved to waste no time, but to tell him at once.

"Maurice," she said, "while you've been sleeping I've been living very fast and travelling very far."

"How, Hermione? What do you mean?" he asked, sitting down by the wall and looking at her with eyes that still held shadows of sleep.

"Something's happened to-day that's--that's going to alter everything."

He looked astonished.

"Why, how grave you are! But what? What could happen here?"

"This came."

She gave him the doctor's telegram. He read it slowly aloud.

"Artois!" he said. "Poor fellow! And out there in Africa all alone!"

He stopped speaking, looked at her, then leaned forward, put his arm round her shoulder, and kissed her gently.

"I'm awfully sorry for you, Hermione," he said. "Awfully sorry, I know how you must be feeling. When did it come?"

"Some hours ago."

"And I've been sleeping! I feel a brute."

He kissed her again.

"Why didn't you wake me?"

"Just to share a grief? That would have been horrid of me, Maurice!"

He looked again at the telegram.

"Did you wire?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Of course. Perhaps to-morrow, or in a day or two, we shall have better news, that he's turned the corner. He's a strong man, Hermione; he ought to recover. I believe he'll recover."

"Maurice," she said. "I want to tell you something."

"What, dear?"

"I feel I must--I can't wait here for news."

"But then--what will you do?"

"While you've been sleeping I've been looking out trains."

"Trains! You don't mean--"

"I must start for Kairouan to-morrow morning. Read this, too."

And she gave him Emile's letter.

"Doesn't that make you feel his loneliness?" she said, when he had finished it. "And think of it now--now when perhaps he knows that he is dying."

"You are going away," he said--"going away from here!"

His voice sounded as if he could not believe it.

"To-morrow morning!" he added, more incredulously.

"If I waited I might be too late."

She was watching him with intent eyes, in which there seemed to flame a great anxiety.

"You know what friends we've been," she continued. "Don't you think I ought to go?"

"I--perhaps--yes, I see how you feel. Yes, I see. But"--he got up--"to leave here to-morrow! I felt as if--almost as if we'd been here always and should live here for the rest of our lives."

"I wish to Heaven we could!" she exclaimed, her voice changing. "Oh, Maurice, if you knew how dreadful it is to me to go!"

"How far is Kairouan?"

"If I catch the train at Tunis I can be there the day after to-morrow."

"And you are going to nurse him, of course?"

"Yes, if--if I'm in time. Now I ought to pack before dinner."

"How beastly!" he said, just like a boy. "How utterly beastly! I don't feel as if I could believe it all. But you--what a trump you are, Hermione! To leave this and travel all that way--not one woman in a hundred would do it."

"Wouldn't you for a friend?"

"I!" he said, simply. "I don't know whether I understand friendship as you do. I've had lots of friends, of course, but one seemed to me very like another, as long as they were jolly."

"How Sicilian!" she thought.

She had heard Gaspare speak of his boy friends in much the same way.

"Emile is more to me than any one in the world but you," she said.

Her voice changed, faltered on the last word, and she walked along the terrace to the sitting-room window.

"I must pack now," she said. "Then we can have one more quiet time together after dinner."

Her last words seemed to strike him, for he followed her, and as she was going into the bedroom, he said:

"Perhaps--why shouldn't I--"

But then he stopped.

"Yes, Maurice!" she said, quickly.

"Where's Gaspare?" he asked. "We'll make him help with the packing. But you won't take much, will you? It'll only be for a few days, I suppose."

"Who knows?"

"Gaspare! Gaspare!" he called.

"Che vuole?" answered a sleepy voice.

"Come here."

In a moment a languid figure appeared round the corner. Maurice explained matters. Instantly Gaspare became a thing of quicksilver. He darted to help Hermione. Every nerve seemed quivering to be useful.

"And the signore?" he said, presently, as he carried a trunk into the room.

"The signore!" said Hermione.

"Is he going, too?"

"No, no!" said Hermione, swiftly.

She put her finger to her lips. Delarey was just coming into the room.

Gaspare said no more, but he shot a curious glance from padrona to padrone as he knelt down to lay some things in the trunk.

By dinner-time Hermione's preparations were completed. The one trunk she meant to take was packed. How hateful it looked standing there in the white room with the label hanging from the handle! She washed her face and hands in cold water, and came out onto the terrace where the dinner-table was laid. It was a warm, still night, like the night of the fishing, and the moon hung low in a clear sky.

"How exquisite it is here!" she said to Maurice, as they sat down. "We are in the very heart of calm, majestic calm. Look at that one star over Etna, and the outlines of the hills and of that old castle--"

She stopped.

"It brings a lump into my throat," she said, after a little pause. "It's too beautiful and too still to-night."

"I love being here," he said.

They ate their dinner in silence for some time. Presently Maurice began to crumble his bread.

"Hermione," he said. "Look here--"

"Yes, Maurice."

"I've been thinking--of course I scarcely know Artois, and I could be of no earthly use, but I've been thinking whether it would not be better for me to come to Kairouan with you."

For a moment Hermione's rugged face was lit up by a fire of joy that made her look beautiful. Maurice went on crumbling his bread.

"I didn't say anything at first," he continued, "because I--well, somehow I felt so fixed here, almost part of the place, and I had never thought of going till it got too hot, and especially not now, when the best time is only just beginning. And then it all came so suddenly. I was still more than half asleep, too, I believe," he added, with a little laugh, "when you told me. But now I've had time, and--why shouldn't I come, too, to look after you?"

As he went on speaking the light in Hermione's face flickered and died out. It was when he laughed that it vanished quite away.

"Thank you, Maurice," she said, quietly. "Thank you, dear. I should love to have you with me, but it would be a shame!"

"Why?"

"Why? Why--the best time here is only just beginning, as you say. It would be selfish to drag you across the sea to a sick-bed, or perhaps to a death-bed."

"But the journey?"

"Oh, I am accustomed to being a lonely woman. Think how short a time we've been married! I've nearly always travelled alone."

"Yes, I know," he said. "Of course there's no danger. I didn't mean that, only--"

"Only you were ready to be unselfish," she said. "Bless you for it. But this time I want to be unselfish. You must stay here to keep house, and I'll come back the first moment I can--the very first. Let's try to think of that--of the day when I come up the mountain again to my--to our garden of paradise. All the time I'm away I shall pray for the moment when I see these columns of the terrace above me, and the geraniums, and--and the white wall of our little--home."

She stopped. Then she added:

"And you."

"Yes," he said. "But you won't see me on the terrace."

"Why not?"

"Because, of course, I shall come to the station to meet you. That day will be a festa."

She said nothing more. Her heart was very full, and of conflicting feelings and of voices that spoke in contradiction one of another. One or two of these voices she longed to hush to silence, but they were persistent. Then she tried not to listen to what they were saying. But they were pitilessly distinct.

Dinner was soon over, and Gaspare came to clear away. His face was very grave, even troubled. He did not like this abrupt departure of his padrona.

"You will come back, signora?" he said, as he drew away the cloth and prepared to fold up the table and carry it in-doors.

Hermione managed to laugh.

"Why, of course, Gaspare! Did you think I was going away forever?"

"Africa is a long way off."

"Only nine hours from Trapani. I may be back very soon. Will you forget me?"

"Did I forget my padrona when she was in England?" the boy replied, his expressive face suddenly hardening and his great eyes glittering with sullen fires.

Hermione quickly laid her hand on his.

"I was only laughing. You know your padrona trusts you to remember her as she remembers you."

Gaspare lifted up her hand quickly, kissed it, and hurried away, lifting his own hand to his eyes.

"These Sicilians know how to make one love them," said Hermione, with a little catch in her voice. "I believe that boy would die for me if necessary."

"I'm sure he would," said Maurice. "But one doesn't find a padrona like you every day."

"Let us walk to the arch," she said. "I must take my last look at the mountains with you."

Beyond the archway there was a large, flat rock, a natural seat from which could be seen a range of mountains that was invisible from the terrace. Hermione often sat on this rock alone, looking at the distant peaks, whose outlines stirred her imagination like a wild and barbarous music. Now she drew down Maurice beside her and kept his hand in hers. She was thinking of many things, among others of the little episode that had just taken place with Gaspare. His outburst of feeling, like fire bursting up through a suddenly opened fissure in the crust of the earth, had touched her and something more. It had comforted her, and removed from her a shadowy figure that had been approaching her, the figure of a fear. She fixed her eyes on the mountains, dark under the silver of the moon.

"Maurice," she said. "Do you often try to read people?"

The pleasant look of almost deprecating modesty that Artois had noticed on the night when they dined together in London came to Delarey's face.

"I don't know that I do, Hermione," he said. "Is it easy?"

"I think--I'm thinking it especially to-night--that it is horribly difficult. One's imagination seizes hold of trifles, and magnifies them and distorts them. From little things, little natural things, one deduces--I mean one takes a midget and makes of it a monster. How one ought to pray to see clear in people one loves! It's very strange, but I think that sometimes, just because one loves, one is ready to be afraid, to doubt, to exaggerate, to think a thing is gone when it is there. In friendship one is more ready to give things their proper value--perhaps because everything is of less value. Do you know that to-night I realize for the first time the enormous difference there is between the love one gives in love and the love one gives in friendship?"

"Why, Hermione?" he asked, simply.

He was looking a little puzzled, but still reverential.

"I love Emile as a friend. You know that."

"Yes. Would you go to Kairouan if you didn't?"

"If he were to die it would be a great sorrow, a great loss to me. I pray that he may live. And yet--"

Suddenly she took his other hand in hers.

"Oh, Maurice, I've been thinking to-day, I'm thinking now--suppose it were you who lay ill, perhaps dying! Oh, the difference in my feeling, in my dread! If you were to be taken from me, the gap in my life! There would be nothing--nothing left."

He put his arm round her, and was going to speak, but she went on: