The Call of the Blood - Page 217/317

When the sun came up over the rim of the sea Maurice ceased from his

pretence of sleep, raised himself on his elbow, then sat upright and

looked over the ravine to the rocks of the Sirens' Isle. The name seemed

to him now a fatal name, and everything connected with his sojourn in

Sicily fatal. Surely there had been a malign spirit at work. In this

early morning hour his brain, though unrefreshed by sleep, was almost

unnaturally clear, feverishly busy. Something had met him when he first

set foot in Sicily--so he thought now--had met him with a fixed and evil

purpose. And that purpose had never been abandoned.

Old superstitions, inherited perhaps from a long chain of credulous

Sicilian ancestors, were stirring in him. He did not laugh at his idea,

as a pure-blooded Englishman would have laughed. He pondered it. He

cherished it.

On his very first evening in Sicily the spirit had led him to the wall,

had directed his gaze to the far-off light in the house of the sirens. He

remembered how strangely the little light had fascinated his eyes, and

his mind through his eyes, how he had asked what it was, how, when

Hermione had called him to come in to sleep, he had turned upon the steps

to gaze down on it once more. Then he had not known why he gazed. Now he

knew. The spirit that had met him by the sea in Sicily had whispered to

him to look, and he had obeyed because he could not do otherwise.

He dwelt upon that thought, that he had obeyed because he had been

obliged to obey. It was a palliative to his mental misery and his hatred

of himself. The fatalism that is linked with superstition got hold upon

him and comforted him a little. He had not been a free agent. He had had

to do as he had done. Everything had been arranged so that he might sin.

The night of the fishing had prepared the way for the night of the fair.

If Hermione had stayed--but of course she had not stayed. The spirit that

had kept him in Sicily had sent her across the sea to Africa. In the full

flush of his hot-blooded youth, intoxicated by his first knowledge of the

sun and of love, he had been left quite alone. Newly married, he had been

abandoned by his wife for a good, even perhaps a noble, reason. Still, he

had been abandoned--to himself and the keeping of that spirit. Was it any

wonder that he had fallen? He strove to think that it was not. In the

night he had cowered before Hermione and had been cruel with himself.

Now, in the sunshine, he showed fight. He strove to find excuses for

himself. If he did not find excuses he felt that he could not face the

day, face Hermione in sunlight.