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.
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.