The Call of the Blood - Page 236/317

"You have a nice fellow as servant," Artois said, to change the

conversation.

"Gaspare--yes. He's loyal. I intend to ask Hermione to let me take him to

England with us."

He paused, then added, with an anxious curiosity: "Did you talk to him much as you came up?"

He wondered whether the novelist had noticed Gaspare's agitation or

whether the boy had been subtle enough to conceal it.

"Not very much. The path is narrow, and I rode in front. He sang most of

the time, those melancholy songs of Sicily that came surely long ago

across the sea from Africa."

"They nearly always sing on the mountains when they are with the

donkeys."

"Dirges of the sun. There is a sadness of the sun as well as a joy."

"Yes."

As Maurice answered, he thought, "How well I know that now!" And as he

looked at the black figure drawing nearer in the sunshine it seemed to

him that there was a terror in that gold which he had often worshipped.

If that figure should be Salvatore! He strained his eyes. At one moment

he fancied that he recognized the wild, free, rather strutting walk of

the fisherman. At another he believed that his fear had played him a

trick, that the movements of the figure were those of an old man, some

plodding contadino of the hills. Artois wondered increasingly what he was

looking at. A silence fell between them. Artois lay back in the chaise

longue and gazed up at the blue, then at the section of distant sea which

was visible above the rim of the wall though the intervening mountain

land was hidden. It was a paradise up here. And to have it with the great

love of a woman, what an experience that must be for any man! It seemed

to him strange that such an experience had been the gift of the gods to

their messenger, their Mercury. What had it meant to him? What did it

mean to him now? Something had changed him. Was it that? In the man by

the wall Artois did not see any longer the bright youth he remembered.

Yet the youth was still there, the supple grace, the beauty, bronzed now

by the long heats of the sun. It was the expression that had changed. In

cities one sees anxious-looking men everywhere. In London Delarey had

stood out from the crowd not only because of his beauty of the South, but

because of his light-hearted expression, the spirit of youth in his eyes.

And now here, in this reality that seemed almost like a dream in its

perfection, in this reality of the South, there was a look of strain in

his eyes and in his whole body. The man had contradicted his surroundings

in London--now he contradicted his surroundings here.