Hermione was nearing the coast now. Soon she would be on board the
steamer and on her way across the sea to Africa. She would be on her way
to Africa--and to Artois.
Delarey recalled his conversation with Gaspare, when the boy had asked
him whether Artois was Hermione's brother, or a relation, or whether he
was old. He remembered Gaspare's intonation when he said, almost sternly,
"The signora should have taken us with her to Africa." Evidently he was
astonished. Why? It must have been because he--Delarey--had let his wife
go to visit a man in a distant city alone. Sicilians did not understand
certain things. He had realized his own freedom--now he began to realize
Hermione's. How quickly she had made up her mind. While he was sleeping
she had decided everything. She had even looked out the trains. It had
never occurred to her to ask him what to do. And she had not asked him to
go with her. Did he wish she had?
A new feeling began to stir within him, unreasonable, absurd. It had come
to him with the night and his absolute solitude in the night. It was not
anger as yet. It was a faint, dawning sense of injury, but so faint that
it did not rouse, but only touched gently, almost furtively, some spirit
drowsing within him, like a hand that touches, then withdraws itself,
then steals forward to touch again.
He began to walk a little faster up and down, always keeping along the
terrace wall.
He was primitive man to-night, and primitive feelings were astir in him.
He had not known he possessed them, yet he--the secret soul of him--did
not shrink from them in any surprise. To something in him, some part of
him, they came as things not unfamiliar.
Suppose he had shown surprise at Hermione's project? Suppose he had asked
her not to go? Suppose he had told her not to go? What would she have
said? What would she have done? He had never thought of objecting to this
journey, but he might have objected. Many a man would have objected. This
was their honeymoon--hers and his. To many it would seem strange that a
wife should leave her husband during their honeymoon, to travel across
the sea to another man, a friend, even if he were ill, perhaps dying. He
did not doubt Hermione. No one who knew her as he did could doubt her,
yet nevertheless, now that he was quite companionless in the night, he
felt deserted, he felt as if every one else were linked with life, while
he stood entirely alone. Hermione was travelling to her friend. Lucrezia
and Gaspare had gone to their festa, to dance, to sing, to joke, to make
merry, to make love--who knew? Down in the village the people were
gossiping at one another's doors, were lounging together in the piazza,
were playing cards in the caffès, were singing and striking the guitars
under the pepper-trees bathed in the rays of the moon. And he--what was
there for him in this night that woke up desires for joy, for the
sweetness of the life that sings in the passionate aisles of the south?