Chapter 6

Hermione had kept Artois's letter in her hand, and now, as she danced in spirit with Gaspare, and rejoiced not only in her own joy, but in his, she thought suddenly of that sentence in it--"Life may seem to most of us who think in the main a melancholy, even a tortured, thing." Life a tortured thing! She was thinking now, exultantly thinking. Her thoughts were leaping, spinning, crouching, whirling, rushing with Gaspare in the sunshine. But life was a happy, a radiant reality. No dream, it was more beautiful than any dream, as the clear, when lovely, is more lovely than even that which is exquisite and vague. She had, of course, always known that in the world there is much joy. Now she felt it, she felt all the joy of the world. She felt the joy of sunshine and of blue, the joy of love and of sympathy, the joy of health and of activity, the joy of sane passion that fights not against any law of God or man, the joy of liberty in a joyous land where the climate is kindly, and, despite poverty and toil, there are songs upon the lips of men, there are tarantellas in their sun-browned bodies, there are the fires of gayety in their bold, dark eyes. Joy, joy twittered in the reed-flute of Sebastiano, and the boys were joys made manifest. Hermione's eyes had filled with tears of joy when among the olives she had heard the far-off drone of the "Pastorale." Now they shone with a joy that was different, less subtly sweet, perhaps, but more buoyant, more fearless, more careless. The glory of the pagan world was round about her, and for a moment her heart was like the heart of a nymph scattering roses in a Bacchic triumph.

Maurice moved beside her, and she heard him breathing quickly.

"What is it, Maurice?" she asked. "You--do you--"

"Yes," he answered, understanding the question she had not fully asked. "It drives me almost mad to sit still and see those boys. Gaspare's like a merry devil tempting one."

As if Gaspare had understood what Maurice said, he suddenly spun round from his companions, and began to dance in front of Maurice and Hermione, provocatively, invitingly, bending his head towards them, and laughing almost in their faces, but without a trace of impertinence. He did not speak, though his lips were parted, showing two rows of even, tiny teeth, but his radiant eyes called to them, scolded them for their inactivity, chaffed them for it, wondered how long it would last, and seemed to deny that it could last forever.

"What eyes!" said Hermione. "Did you ever see anything so expressive?"

Maurice did not answer. He was watching Gaspare, fascinated, completely under the spell of the dance. The blood was beginning to boil in his veins, warm blood of the south that he had never before felt in his body. Artois had spoken to Hermione of "the call of the blood." Maurice began to hear it now, to long to obey it.

Gaspare clapped his hands alternately in front of him and behind him, leaping from side to side, with a step in which one foot crossed over the other, and holding his body slightly curved inward. And all the time he kept his eyes on Delarey, and the wily, merry invitation grew stronger in them.

"Venga!" he whispered, always dancing. "Venga, signorino, venga--venga!"

He spun round, clapped his hands furiously, snapped his fingers, and jumped back. Then he held out his hands to Delarey, with a gay authority that was irresistible.

"Venga, venga, signorino! Venga, venga!"

All the blood in Delarey responded, chasing away something--was it a shyness, a self-consciousness of love--that till now had held him back from the gratification of his desire? He sprang up and he danced the tarantella, danced it almost as if he had danced it all his life, with a natural grace, a frolicsome abandon that no pure-blooded Englishman could ever achieve, danced it as perhaps once the Sicilian grandmother had danced it under the shadow of Etna. Whatever Gaspare did he imitated, with a swiftness and a certainty that were amazing, and Gaspare, intoxicated by having such a pupil, outdid himself in countless changing activities. It was like a game and like a duel, for Gaspare presently began almost to fight for supremacy as he watched Delarey's startling aptitude in the tarantella, which, till this moment, he had considered the possession of those born in Sicily and of Sicilian blood. He seemed to feel that this pupil might in time become the master, and to be put upon his mettle, and he put forth all his cunning to be too much for Delarey.

And Hermione was left alone, watching, for Lucrezia had disappeared, suddenly mindful of some household duty.

When Delarey sprang up she felt a thrill of responsive excitement, and when she watched his first steps, and noted the look of youth in him, the supple southern grace that rivalled the boyish grace of Gaspare, she was filled with that warm, that almost yearning admiration which is the child of love. But another feeling followed--a feeling of melancholy. As she watched him dancing with the four boys, a gulf seemed to yawn between her and them. She was alone on her side of this gulf, quite alone. They were remote from her. She suddenly realized that Delarey belonged to the south, and that she did not. Despite all her understanding of the beauty of the south, all her sympathy for the spirit of the south, all her passionate love of the south, she was not of it. She came to it as a guest. But Delarey was of it. She had never realized that absolutely till this moment. Despite his English parentage and upbringing, the southern strain in his ancestry had been revived in him. The drop of southern blood in his veins was his master. She had not married an Englishman.

Once again, and in all the glowing sunshine, with Etna and the sea before her, and the sound of Sebastiano's flute in her ears, she was on the Thames Embankment in the night with Artois, and heard his deep voice speaking to her.

"Does he know his own blood?" said the voice. "Our blood governs us when the time comes."

And again the voice said:

"The possible call of the blood that he doesn't understand."

"The call of the blood." There was now something almost terrible to Hermione in that phrase, something menacing and irresistible. Were men, then, governed irrevocably, dominated by the blood that was in them? Artois had certainly seemed to imply that they were, and he knew men as few knew them. His powerful intellect, like a search-light, illumined the hidden places, discovering the concealed things of the souls of men. But Artois was not a religious man, and Hermione had a strong sense of religion, though she did not cling, as many do, to any one creed. If the call of the blood were irresistible in a man, then man was only a slave. The criminal must not be condemned, nor the saint exalted. Conduct was but obedience in one who had no choice but to obey. Could she believe that?

The dance grew wilder, swifter. Sebastiano quickened the time till he was playing it prestissimo. One of the boys, Giulio, dropped out exhausted. Then another, Alfio, fell against the terrace wall, laughing and wiping his streaming face. Finally Giuseppe gave in, too, obviously against his will. But Gaspare and Maurice still kept on. The game was certainly a duel now--a duel which would not cease till Sebastiano put an end to it by laying down his flute. But he, too, was on his mettle and would not own fatigue. Suddenly Hermione felt that she could not bear the dance any more. It was, perhaps, absurd of her. Her brain, fatigued by travel, was perhaps playing her tricks. But she felt as if Maurice were escaping from her in this wild tarantella, like a man escaping through a fantastic grotto from some one who called to him near its entrance. A faint sensation of something that was surely jealousy, the first she had ever known, stirred in her heart--jealousy of a tarantella.

"Maurice!" she said.

He did not hear her.

"Maurice!" she called. "Sebastiano--Gaspare--stop! You'll kill yourselves!"

Sebastiano caught her eye, finished the tune, and took the flute from his lips. In truth he was not sorry to be commanded to do the thing his pride of music forbade him to do of his own will. Gaspare gave a wild, boyish shout, and flung himself down on Giuseppe's knees, clasping him round the neck jokingly. And Maurice--he stood still on the terrace for a moment looking dazed. Then the hot blood surged up to his head, making it tingle under his hair, and he came over slowly, almost shamefacedly, and sat down by Hermione.

"This sun's made me mad, I think," he said, looking at her. "Why, how pale you are, Hermione!"

"Am I? No, it must be the shadow of the awning makes me look so. Oh, Maurice, you are indeed a southerner! Do you know, I feel--I feel as if I had never really seen you till now, here on this terrace, as if I had never known you as you are till now, now that I've watched you dance the tarantella."

"I can't dance it, of course. It was absurd of me to try."

"Ask Gaspare! No, I'll ask him. Gaspare, can the padrone dance the tarantella?"

"Eh--altro!" said Gaspare, with admiring conviction.

He got off Giuseppe's knee, where he had been curled up almost like a big kitten, came and stood by Hermione, and added:

"Per Dio, signora, but the padrone is like one of us!"

Hermione laughed. Now that the dance was over and the twittering flute was silent, her sense of loneliness and melancholy was departing. Soon, no doubt, she would be able to look back upon it and laugh at it as one laughs at moods that have passed away.

"This is his first day in Sicily, Gaspare."

"There are forestieri who come here every year, and who stay for months, and who can talk our language--yes, and can even swear in dialetto as we can--but they are not like the padrone. Not one of them could dance the tarantella like that. Per Dio!"

A radiant look of pleasure came into Maurice's face.

"I'm glad you've brought me here," he said. "Ah, when you chose this place for our honeymoon you understood me better than I understand myself, Hermione."

"Did I?" she said, slowly. "But no, Maurice, I think I chose a little selfishly. I was thinking of what I wanted. Oh, the boys are going, and Sebastiano."

That evening, when they had finished supper--they did not wish to test Lucrezia's powers too severely by dining the first day--they came out onto the terrace. Lucrezia and Gaspare were busily talking in the kitchen. Tito, the donkey, was munching his hay under the low-pitched roof of the out-house. Now and then they could faintly hear the sound of his moving jaws, Lucrezia's laughter, or Gaspare's eager voice. These fragmentary noises scarcely disturbed the great silence that lay about them, the night hush of the mountains and the sea. Hermione sat down on the seat in the terrace wall looking over the ravine. It was a moonless night, but the sky was clear and spangled with stars. There was a cool breeze blowing from Etna. Here and there upon the mountains shone solitary lights, and one was moving slowly through the darkness along the crest of a hill opposite to them, a torch carried by some peasant going to his hidden cottage among the olive-trees.

Maurice lit his cigar and stood by Hermione, who was sitting sideways and leaning her arms on the wall, and looking out into the wide dimness in which, somewhere, lay the ravine. He did not want to talk just then, and she kept silence. This was really their wedding night, and both of them were unusually conscious, but in different ways, of the mystery that lay about them, and that lay, too, within them. It was strange to be together up here, far up in the mountains, isolated in their love. Below the wall, on the side of the ravine, the leaves of the olives rustled faintly as the wind passed by. And this whisper of the leaves seemed to be meant for them, to be addressed to them. They were surely being told something by the little voices of the night.

"Maurice," Hermione said, at last, "does this silence of the mountains make you wish for anything?"

"Wish?" he said. "I don't know--no, I think not. I have got what I wanted. I have got you. Why should I wish for anything more? And I feel at home here. It's extraordinary how I feel at home."

"You! No, it isn't extraordinary at all."

She looked up at him, still keeping her arms on the terrace wall. His physical beauty, which had always fascinated her, moved her more than ever in the south, seemed to her to become greater, to have more meaning in this setting of beauty and romance. She thought of the old pagan gods. He was, indeed, suited to be their happy messenger. At that moment something within her more than loved him, worshipped him, felt for him an idolatry that had something in it of pain. A number of thoughts ran through her mind swiftly. One was this: "Can it be possible that he will die some day, that he will be dead?" And the awfulness, the unspeakable horror of the death of the body gripped her and shook her in the dark.

"Oh, Maurice!" she said. "Maurice!"

"What is it?"

She held out her hands to him. He took them and sat down by her.

"What is it, Hermione?" he said again.

"If beauty were only deathless!"

"But--but all this is, for us. It was here for the old Greeks to see, and I suppose it will be here--"

"I didn't mean that."

"I've been stupid," he said, humbly.

"No, my dearest--my dearest one. Oh, how did you ever love me?"

She had forgotten the warning of Artois. The dirty little beggar was staring at the angel and wanted the angel to know it.

"Hermione! What do you mean?"

He looked at her, and there was genuine surprise in his face and in his voice.

"How can you love me? I'm so ugly. Oh, I feel it here, I feel it horribly in the midst of--of all this loveliness, with you."

She hid her face against his shoulder almost like one afraid.

"But you are not ugly! What nonsense! Hermione!"

He put his hand under her face and raised it, and the touch of his hand against her cheek made her tremble. To-night she more than loved, she worshipped him. Her intellect did not speak any more. Its voice was silenced by the voice of the heart, by the voices of the senses. She felt as if she would like to go down on her knees to him and thank him for having loved her, for loving her. Abasement would have been a joy to her just then, was almost a necessity, and yet there was pride in her, the decent pride of a pure-natured woman who has never let herself be soiled.

"Hermione," he said, looking into her face. "Don't speak to me like that. It's all wrong. It puts me in the wrong place, I a fool and you--what you are. If that friend of yours could hear you--by Jove!"

There was something so boyish, so simple in his voice that Hermione suddenly threw her arms round his neck and kissed him, as she might have kissed a delightful child. She began to laugh through tears.

"Thank God you're not conceited!" she exclaimed.

"What about?" he asked.

But she did not answer. Presently they heard Gaspare's step on the terrace. He came to them bareheaded, with shining eyes, to ask if they were satisfied with Lucrezia. About himself he did not ask. He felt that he had done all things for his padrona as he alone could have done them, knowing her so well.

"Gaspare," Hermione said, "everything is perfect. Tell Lucrezia."

"Better not, signora. I will say you are fairly satisfied, as it is only the first day. Then she will try to do better to-morrow. I know Lucrezia."

And he gazed at them calmly with his enormous liquid eyes.

"Do not say too much, signora. It makes people proud."

She thought that she heard an odd Sicilian echo of Artois. The peasant lad's mind reflected the mind of the subtle novelist for a moment.

"Very well, Gaspare," she said, submissively.

He smiled at her with satisfaction.

"I understand girls," he said. "You must keep them down or they will keep you down. Every girl in Marechiaro is like that. We keep them down therefore."

He spoke calmly, evidently quite without thought that he was speaking to a woman.

"May I go to bed, signora?" he added. "I got up at four this morning."

"At four!"

"To be sure all was ready for you and the signore."

"Gaspare! Go at once. We will go to bed, too. Shall we, Maurice?"

"Yes. I'm ready."

Just as they were going up the steps into the house, he turned to take a last look at the night. Far down below him over the terrace wall he saw a bright, steady light.

"Is that on the sea, Hermione?" he asked, pointing to it. "Do they fish there at night?"

"Oh yes. No doubt it is a fisherman."

Gaspare shook his head.

"You understand?" said Hermione to him in Italian.

"Si, signora. That is the light in the Casa delle Sirene."

"But no one lives there."

"Oh, it has been built up now, and Salvatore Buonavista lives there with Maddalena. Buon riposo, signora. Buon riposo, signore."

"Buon riposo, Gaspare."

And Maurice echoed it:

"Buon riposo."

As Gaspare went away round the angle of the cottage to his room near Tito's stable, Maurice added:

"Buon riposo. It's an awfully nice way of saying good-night. I feel as if I'd said it before, somehow."

"Your blood has said it without your knowing it, perhaps many times. Are you coming, Maurice?"

He turned once more, looked down at the light shining in the house of the sirens, then followed Hermione in through the open door.

V

That spring-time in Sicily seemed to Hermione touched with a glamour such as the imaginative dreamer connects with an earlier world--a world that never existed save in the souls of dreamers, who weave tissues of gold to hide naked realities, and call down the stars to sparkle upon the dust-heaps of the actual. Hermione at first tried to make her husband see it with her eyes, live in it with her mind, enjoy it, or at least seem to enjoy it, with her heart. Did he not love her? But he did more; he looked up to her with reverence. In her love for him there was a yearning of worship, such as one gifted with the sense of the ideal is conscious of when he stands before one of the masterpieces of art, a perfect bronze or a supreme creation in marble. Something of what Hermione had felt in past years when she looked at "The Listening Mercury," or at the statue of a youth from Hadrian's Villa in the Capitoline Museum at Rome, she felt when she looked at Maurice, but the breath of life in him increased, instead of diminishing, her passion of admiration. And this sometimes surprised her. For she had thought till now that the dead sculptors of Greece and Rome had in their works succeeded in transcending humanity, had shown what God might have created instead of what He had created, and had never expected, scarcely ever even desired, to be moved by a living being as she was moved by certain representations of life in a material. Yet now she was so moved. There seemed to her in her husband's beauty something strange, something ideal, almost an other-worldliness, as if he had been before this age in which she loved him, had had an existence in the fabled world that the modern pagan loves to recall when he walks in a land where legend trembles in the flowers, and whispers in the trees, and is carried on the winds across the hill-sides, and lives again in the silver of the moon. Often she thought of him listening in a green glade to the piping of Pan, or feeding his flocks on Mount Latmos, like Endymion, and falling asleep to receive the kisses of Selene. Or she imagined him visiting Psyche in the hours of darkness, and fleeing, light-footed, before the coming of the dawn. He seemed to her ardent spirit to have stepped into her life from some Attic frieze out of a "fairy legend of old Greece," and the contact of daily companionship did not destroy in her the curious, almost mystical sensation roused in her by the peculiar, and essentially youthful charm which even Artois had been struck by in a London restaurant.

This charm increased in Sicily. In London Maurice Delarey had seemed a handsome youth, with a delightfully fresh and almost woodland aspect that set him apart from the English people by whom he was surrounded. In Sicily he seemed at once to be in his right setting. He had said when he arrived that he felt as if he belonged to Sicily, and each day Sicily and he seemed to Hermione to be more dear to each other, more suited to each other. With a loving woman's fondness, which breeds fancies deliciously absurd, laughably touching, she thought of Sicily as having wanted this son of hers who was not in her bosom, as sinking into a golden calm of satisfaction now that he was there, hearing her "Pastorale," wandering upon her mountain-sides, filling his nostrils with the scent of her orange blossoms, swimming through the liquid silver of her cherishing seas.

"I think Sicily's very glad that you are here," she said to him on one morning of peculiar radiance, when there was a freshness as of the world's first day in the air, and the shining on the sea was as the shining that came in answer to the words--"Let there be light!"