Blue Magic/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
A VOICE IN THE DARKNESS
SIDDERETICUS had pulled his blankets out into the cockpit of the yawl, where he intended to sleep. The sky was of lapis-lazuli; the moon made a misty pathway on the waters. Over the festooned lights of the Chiaja, beyond the glittering façade of Naples, the mountains rose vaguely violet, and melted into the trembling sky. Just before he went to sleep, Thornton remembered the moon's radiance on the Nile, and thought with a little smile of how he had given Fen into Maut's care. Maut seemed to be watching over him now, and her starry eyes were Cynthia's—
But through the night, through the high stars, a strange, distant voice was calling him:
"Siddereticus! Siddereticus!"
Half awake, he stumbled to his feet, crying:
"Fen!" and then, "What has happened?"
For a launch rose and fell on the glittering water beside the yawl, and in it stood a woman, her auburn hair gleaming in then moonlight.
He was at the gunwale instantly, wide awake.
"What is it? What has happened?" he said.
"Can you come?" she asked, her voice trembling with urgency. "He is very badly hurt. He is asking for you ceaselessly."
Siddereticus had disappeared before she had finished speaking, and in a few minutes was beside her in the launch, pulling on his coat.
"Tell me" he said.
"It has all been so unbelievable," she said, speaking in quick short breaths. "Most unfortunately, Hal is away. He went by train to Rome last night. He—Fen, that is—you'll understand me, won't you?—was to walk this morning—had he told you? He was so proud! He walked from me to Emily—such a little way! She let him stand there alone. He stood there with his head up, looking utterly—oh, you know how he can look—" Thornton nodded. "When—I don't know if the ship rolled a little, or if he just lost his balance, but he fell—before Emily could catch him—striking the corner of the companionway with a dreadful wrench. Fortunately, we could get a splendid English doctor in Naples. But everything is undone—the little strength that he's been getting back in these years; he is where he started, only now it will take, oh, so much, much longer!" She suddenly covered her face with her hands and sobbed, and Siddereticus patted her shoulder gently.
"He was half conscious all day," she went on, "and they've had to give him morphine and things, he suffered so. Oh, it 's not right for anybody to suffer like that! His poor back, you know, that was so very much hurt already— But tonight he suddenly asked for you,—oh so faintly,—and for the amulet, which we'd taken off. He held it—or tried to—and called for you to come to him. Emily didn't want me to come—she said one of the men could tell you and I mustn't go; but I knew they couldn't explain it all."
"Will he know me?" asked Siddereticus, in a low voice.
"I'm quite sure he will," she said; "he knew me to-night, but not Emily. It—oh, it seems cruel to say it, but I think it 's because he's fonder of us than of—any one else."
They had put him in the big bed in his parents' cabin. On one side of it knelt his mother, and on the other sat the doctor, his arms folded. Mrs. Norvell silently gave up her place to Siddereticus, who bent over the poor little figure on the bed.
"Fen!" he said,—and his voice was wonderfully steady, and compelling in its tenderness,—"it is I—even I, Siddereticus."
"Hold—me—" said Fen, almost inaudibly.
Siddereticus slid his arm under the pillow, and laid his cheek beside Fen's hair.
"Make it stop—hurting," whispered Fen. "Oh, do a magic, and—make it stop—hurting!"
"My dearest!" groaned Siddereticus, "I would bear it all a thousand times over, if I could. But," his voice broke, "I am not powerful enough to make it stop hurting."
There was no sound but Fen's painful breathing and the ticking of the doctor's watch.
"The heart action is very weak," the doctor said. "It's a fearful shock to the whole system—no vitality to draw on—nothing left. But," he glanced at his watch, "if he can get along as well as this till somewhere near midnight, the reaction ought to come. He has a good chance."
There seemed an interminable time of silence, and then Fen's lips moved again,
"Sing—to me. Memnon—"
And very softly Siddereticus began to sing the Slumber Song of the Nile. Over and over he crooned it; and as he sang, he saw the placid, sluggish river winding between its pale banks under the full moon, and could not think this anything but a ghastly dream. Yet Cynthia was there, her eyes, wide with anxiety and fatigue, fixed on him, cheering him, encouraging him. The mother crouched white-faced beside the bed—her son had grown passionately dear to her, now that there was a chance of losing him . . .
"The river singeth sweeter far
A slumber-song than I;
Be then your night-lamp yonder star—"
The doctor leaned suddenly forward, and then straightened with a curious expression.
"He is asleep," he said, and then—"seventeen minutes after twelve."
Siddereticus stopped singing. Fen was breathing regularly, and much more easily, in quiet sleep. The doctor insisted that Mrs. Norvell and Cynthia should go to bed, or at least to rest, and flung himself down on a couch in the corner. Siddereticus refused to move, saying that he would not risk withdrawing his arm from under the pillow, for fear of waking Fen. So he remained through the hours, sometimes changing the position of his shoulders and legs, but keeping his right arm motionless.
He fell at times into a sort of numb sleep, and would wake dizzily with a horrible fear that he had moved. He never knew until very long afterward whether or not he had dreamed it, but he was almost certain that once in the night Cynthia had come and bent over Fen with an expression of infinite tenderness, and then, turning toward himself, had touched his hair very lightly.
Siddereticus had lost all sensation in his arm, and felt that he could not bear to keep his cramped position very much longer. He looked toward the port-holes, A few lamps burned here and there on shore, and the riding-lights of the vessels undulated gently. The moon had set long ago, and a few pale stars were clustered in the crystal sky. Far away, on shore, a cock crowed eerily through the dark, and in at the port-hole came the first sigh of the winds of sunrise.
At dawn. Fen opened his eyes, and looked up into the face above him. "Do you know, Siddereticus," he said gently, "I walked this morning."
And Siddereticus, worn out with his vigil, covered his face with his hand, and wept.
It was long that the yacht had lain idle at anchor, but now she was bravely nosing her way through the blue Mediterranean westward bound once more. It was the first time that Fen had been on deck, and he lay on a cot under the awning, very straight in a plaster cast. But when the two people that he loved most in the world bent over him, he was able to give them almost as ineffably sweet a smile as of old.
"Dear to my heart," said Siddereticus, as he knelt beside the bed and took one of Fen's hands, while Cynthia possessed herself of the other, "we have something very important to ask you. We want your permission. Do you know, that when a Djinn marries a mortal,—which doesn't often happen,—he loses all his magic power, and has to become a human creature. Now what I want to ask you is this: would you rather that I should stay a Djinn forever, and only see you once in a long, long while,—or,—would you rather that I should ask Auntie to marry me and so turn myself into Uncle Siddereticus and see you nearly all the time?"
Fen looked from one to the other of the eager faces.
"I think," he said slowly, "I'm quite sure—that I'd rather have you—and Auntie—all the time."