"What is it? What do you want?" said the doctor, in a grumbling voice. "Is it another baby? Upon my word, these—"

"Signor Dottore, come down, come down instantly! The signore of Monte Amato, the signore of the Casa del Prete has had an accident. You must come at once. I will go to fetch a donkey."

The doctor leaned farther out of the window.

"An accident! What—?"

But the man, a fisherman of Marechiaro, was already gone, and the doctor saw only the narrow, deserted street, black with the shadows of the tall houses.

He drew in quickly and began to dress himself with some expedition. An accident, and to a forestiere! There would be money in this case. He regretted his lost sleep less now and cursed no more, though he thought of the ride up into the mountains with a good deal of self-pity. It was no joke to be a badly paid Sicilian doctor, he thought, as he tugged at his trousers buttons, and fastened the white front that covered the breast of his flannel shirt, and adjusted the cuffs which he took out of a small drawer. Without lighting a candle he went down-stairs, fumbled about, and found his case of instruments. Then he opened the street door and waited, yawning on the stone pavement. In two or three minutes he heard the tripping tip-tap of a donkey's hoofs, and the fisherman came up leading a donkey apparently as disinclined for a nocturnal flitting as the doctor.

"Ah, Giuseppe, it's you, is it?"

"Si, Signor Dottore!"

"What's this accident?"

The fisherman looked grave and crossed himself.

"Oh, signore, it is terrible! They say the poor signore is dead!"

"Dead!" exclaimed the doctor, startled. "You said is was an accident. Dead you say now?"

"Signore, he is dead beyond a doubt. I was going to the fishing when I heard dreadful cries in the water by the inlet—you know, by Salvatore's terreno!"

"In the water?"

"Si, signore. I went down quickly and I found Gaspare, the signore's—"

"I know—I know!"

"Gaspare in a boat with the padrone lying at the bottom, and the signora standing up to her middle in the sea."

"Z't! z't!" exclaimed the doctor, "the signora in the sea! Is she mad?"

"Signor Dottore, how do I know? I brought the boat to shore. Gaspare was like one crazed. Then we lifted the signore out upon the stones. Oh, he is dead, Signor Dottore; dead beyond a doubt. They had found him in the sea—"

"They?"

"Gaspare—under the rocks between Salvatore's terreno and the main-land. He had all his clothes on. He must have been there in the dark—"

"Why should he go in the dark?"

"How do I know, Signor Dottore?—and have fallen, and struck his head against the rocks. For there was a wound and—"

"The body should not have been moved from where it lay till the Pretore had seen it. Gaspare should have left the body."

"But perhaps the povero signore is not really dead, after all! Madonna! How—"

"Come! come! we must not delay! One minute! I will get some lint and—"

He disappeared into the house. Almost directly he came out again with a package under his arm and a long, black cigar lighted in his mouth.

"Take these, Giuseppe! Carry them carefully. Now then!"

He hoisted himself onto the donkey.

"A-ah! A-ah!"

They set off, the fisherman walking on naked feet beside the donkey.

"Then we have to go down to the sea?"

"No, Signor Dottore. There were others on the road, Antonio and—"

"The rest of you going to the boats—I know. Well?"

"And the signora would have him carried up to Monte Amato."

"She could give directions?"

"Si, signore. She ordered everything. When she came out of the sea she was all wet, the poor signora, but she was calm. I called the others. When they saw the signore they all cried out. They knew him. Some of them had been to the fishing with him. Oh, they were sorry! They all began to speak and to try to—"

"Diavolo! They could only make things worse! If the breath of life was in the signore's body they would drive it out. Per Dio!"

"But the signora stopped them. She told them to be silent and to carry the signore up to the Casa del Prete. Signore, she—the povera signora—she took his head in her hands. She held his head and she never cried, not a tear!"

The man brushed his hand across his eyes.

"Povera signora! Povera signora!" murmured the doctor.

"And she comforted Gaspare, too!" Giuseppe added. "She put her arm round him and told him to be brave, and help her. She made him walk by her and put his hand under the padrone's shoulder. Madonna!"

They turned away from the village into a narrow path that led into the hills.

"And I came to fetch you, Signor Dottore. Perhaps the povero signore is not really dead. Perhaps you can save him, Signor Dottore!"

"Chi lo sa?" replied the doctor.

He had let his cigar go out and did not know it.

"Chi lo sa?" he repeated, mechanically.

Then they went on in silence—till they reached the shoulder of the mountain under Castel Vecchio. From here they could see across the ravine to the steep slope of Monte Amato. Upon it, high up, a light shone, and presently a second light detached itself from the first, moved a little way, and then was stationary.

Giuseppe pointed.

"Ecco, Signor Dottore! They have carried the poor signore up."

The second light moved waveringly back towards the first.

"They are carrying him into the house, Signor Dottore. Madonna! And all this to happen in the night!"

The doctor nodded without speaking. He was watching the lights up there in that lonely place. He was not a man of strong imagination, and was accustomed to look on misery, the misery of the poor. But to-night he felt a certain solemnity descend upon him as he rode by these dark by-paths up into the bosom of the hills. Perhaps part of this feeling came from the fact that his mission had to do with strangers, with rich people from a distant country who had come to his island for pleasure, and who were now suddenly involved in tragedy in the midst of their amusement. But also he had a certain sense of personal sympathy. He had known Hermione on her former visit to Sicily and had liked her; and though this time he had seen scarcely anything of her he had seen enough to be aware that she was very happy with her young husband. Maurice, too, he had seen, full of the joy of youth and of bounding health. And now all that was put out, if Giuseppe's account were true. It was a pity, a sad pity.

The donkey crossed the mouth of the ravine, and picked its way upward carefully amid the loose stones. In the ravine a little owl hooted twice.

"Giuseppe!" said the doctor.

"Signore?"

"The signora has been away, hasn't she?"

"Si signore. In Africa."

"Nursing that sick stranger. And now directly she comes back here's this happening to her! Per Dio!"

He shook his head.

"Somebody must have looked on the povera signora with the evil-eye, Signor Dottore."

Giuseppe crossed himself.

"It seems so," the doctor replied, gravely.

He was almost as superstitious as the contadini among whom he labored.

"Ecco, Signor Dottore!"

The doctor looked up. At the arch stood a figure holding a little lamp. Almost immediately, two more figures appeared behind it.

"Il dottore! Ecco il dottore!"

There was a murmur of voices in the dark. As the donkey came up the excited fishermen crowded round, all speaking at once.

"He is dead, Signor Dottore. The povero signore is dead!"

"Let the Signor Dottore come to him, Beppe! What do you know? Let the—"

"Sure enough he is dead! Why, he must have been in the water a good hour. He is all swollen with the water and—"

"It is his head, Signor Dottore! If it had not been for his coming against the rocks he would not have been hurt. Per Dio, he can swim like a fish, the povero signorino. I have seen him swim. Why, even Peppino—"

"The signora wants us all to go away, Signor Dottore. She begs us to go and leave her alone with the povero signore!"

"Gaspare is in such a state! You would not know him. And the povera signora, she is all dripping wet. She has been into the sea, and now she has carried the head of the povero signore all the way up the mountain. She would not let any one—"

A succession of cries came out of the darkness, hysterical cries that ended in prolonged sobbing.

"That is Lucrezia!" cried one of the fishermen. "Madonna! That is Lucrezia!"

"Mamma mia! Mamma mia!"

Their voices were loud in the night. The doctor pushed his way between the men and came onto the terrace in front of the steps that led into the sitting-room.

Gaspare was standing there alone. His face was almost unrecognizable. It looked battered, puffy, and inflamed, as if he had been drinking and fighting. There were no tears in his eyes now, but long, violent sobs shook his body from time to time, and his blistered lips opened and shut mechanically with each sob. He stared dully at the doctor, but did not say a word, or move to get out of the way.

"Gaspare!" said the doctor. "Where is the padrona?"

The boy sobbed and sobbed, always in the same dry and terribly mechanical way.

"Gaspare!" repeated the doctor, touching him. "Gaspare!"

"E' morto!" the boy suddenly cried out, in a loud voice.

And he flung himself down on the ground.

The doctor felt a thrill of cold in his veins. He went up the steps into the little sitting-room. As he did so Hermione came to the door of the bedroom. Her dripping skirts clung about her. She looked quite calm. Without greeting the doctor she said, quietly:

"You heard what Gaspare said?"

"Si, signora, ma—"

The doctor stopped, staring at her. He began to feel almost dazed. The fishermen had followed him and stood crowding together on the steps and staring into the room.

"He is dead. I am sorry you came all this way."

They stood there facing one another. From the kitchen came the sound of Lucrezia's cries. Hermione put her hands up to her ears.

"Please—please—oh, there should be a little silence here now!" she said.

For the first time there was a sound of something like despair in her voice.

"Let me come in, signora!" stammered the doctor. "Let me come in and examine him."

"He is dead."

"Well, but let me. I must!"

"Please come in," she said.

The doctor turned round to the fishermen.

"Go, one of you, and make that girl keep quiet," he said, angrily. "Take her away out of the house—directly! Do you hear? And the rest of you stay outside, and don't make a sound."

The fishermen slunk a little way back into the darkness, while Giuseppe, walking on the toes of his bare feet, and glancing nervously at the furniture and the pictures upon the walls, crossed the room and disappeared into the kitchen. Then the doctor laid down his cigar on a table and went into the bedroom whither Hermione had preceded him.

There was a lighted candle on the white chest of drawers. The window and the shutters of the room were closed against the glances of the fishermen. On one of the two beds—Hermione's—lay the body of a man dripping with water. The doctor took the candle in his hand, went to this bed and leaned down, then set down the candle at the bedhead and made a brief examination. He found at once that Gaspare had spoken the truth. This man had been dead for some time. Nevertheless, something—he scarcely knew what—kept the doctor there by the bed for some moments before he pronounced his verdict. Never before had he felt so great a reluctance to speak the simple words that would convey a great truth. He fingered his shirt-front uneasily, and stared at the body on the bed and at the wet sheets and pillows. Meanwhile, Hermione had sat down on a chair near the door that opened into what had been Maurice's dressing-room, and folded her hands in her lap. The doctor did not look towards her, but he felt her presence painfully. Lucrezia's cries had died away, and there was complete silence for a brief space of time.

The body on the bed was swollen, but not very much, the face was sodden, the hair plastered to the head, and on the left temple there was a large wound, evidently, as the doctor had seen, caused by the forehead striking violently against a hard, resisting substance. It was not the sea alone which had killed this man. It was the sea and the rock in the sea. He had fallen, been stunned and then drowned. The doctor knew the place where he had been found. The explanation of the tragedy was very simple—very simple.

While the doctor was thinking this, and fingering his shirt-front mechanically, and bracing himself to turn towards the quiet woman in the chair, he heard a loud, dry noise in the sitting-room, then in the bedroom. Gaspare had come in, and was standing at the foot of the bed, sobbing and staring at the doctor with hopeless eyes, that yet asked a last question, begged desperately for a lie.

"Gaspare!"

The woman in the chair whispered to him. He took no notice.

"Gaspare!"

She got up and crossed over to the boy, and took one of his hands.

"It's no use," she said. "Perhaps he is happy."

Then the boy began to cry passionately. Tears poured out of his eyes while he held his padrona's hand. The doctor got up.

"He is dead, signora," he said.

"We knew it," Hermione replied.

She looked at the doctor for a minute. Then she said:

"Hush, Gaspare!"

The doctor stood by the bed.

"Scusi, signora," he said, "but—but will you take him into the next room?"

He pointed to Gaspare, who shivered as he wept.

"I must make a further examination."

"Why? You see that he is dead."

"Yes, but—there are certain formalities."

He stopped.

"Formalities!" she said. "He is dead."

"Yes. But—but the authorities will have to be informed. I am very sorry. I should wish to leave everything undisturbed."

"What do you mean? Gaspare! Gaspare!"

"But—according to the law, our law, the body should never have been moved. It should have been left where it was found until—"

"We could not leave him in the sea."

She still spoke quite quietly, but the doctor felt as if he could not go on.

"Since it is done—" he began.

He pulled himself together with an effort.

"There will have to be an inquiry, signora—the cause of death will have to be ascertained."

"You see it. He was coming from the island. He fell and was drowned. It is very simple."

"Yes, no doubt. Still, there must be an inquiry. Gaspare will have to explain—"

He looked at the weeping boy, then at the woman who stood there holding the boy's hand in hers.

"But that will be for to-morrow," he muttered, fingering his shirt-front and looking down. "That will be for to-morrow."

As he went out he added:

"Signora, do not remain in your wet clothes."

"I—oh, thank you. They do not matter."

She did not follow him into the next room. As he went down the steps to the terrace the sound of Gaspare's passionate weeping followed him into the night.

When the doctor was on the donkey and was riding out through the arch, after a brief colloquy with the fishermen and with Giuseppe, whom he had told to remain at the cottage for the rest of the night, he suddenly remembered the cigar which he had left upon the table, and he pulled up.

"What is it, Signor Dottore?" said one of the fishermen.

"I've left something, but—never mind. It does not matter."

He rode on again.

"It does not matter," he repeated.

He was thinking of the English signora standing beside the bed in her wet skirts and holding the hand of the weeping boy.

It was the first time in his life that he had ever sacrificed a good cigar.

He wondered why he did so now, but he did not care to return just then to the Casa del Prete.



XXIII

Hermione longed for quiet, for absolute silence.

It seemed strange to her that she still longed for anything—strange and almost horrible, almost inhuman. But she did long for that, to be able to sit beside her dead husband and to be undisturbed, to hear no voice speaking, no human movement, to see no one. If it had been possible she would have closed the cottage against every one, even against Gaspare and Lucrezia. But it was not possible. Destiny did not choose that she should have this calm, this silence. It had seemed to her, when fear first came upon her, as if no one but herself had any real concern with Maurice, as if her love conferred upon her a monopoly. This monopoly had been one of joy. Now it should be one of sorrow. But now it did not exist. She was not weeping for Maurice. But others were. She had no one to go to. But others came to her, clung to her. She could not rid herself of the human burden.

She might have been selfish, determined, she might have driven the mourners out. But—and that was strange, too—she found herself pitying them, trying to use her intellect to soothe them.

Lucrezia was terrified, almost like one assailed suddenly by robbers, terrified and half incredulous. When her hysteria subsided she was at first unbelieving.

"He cannot be really dead, signora!" she sobbed to Hermione. "The povero signorino. He was so gay! He was so—"

She talked and talked, as Sicilians do when face to face with tragedy.

She recalled Maurice's characteristics, his kindness, his love of climbing, fishing, bathing, his love of the sun—all his love of life.

Hermione had to listen to the story with that body lying on her bed.

Gaspare's grief was speechless, but needed comfort more. There was an element in it of fury which Hermione realized without rightly understanding. She supposed it was the fury of a boy from whom something is taken by one whom he cannot attack.

For God is beyond our reach.

She could not understand the conflict going on in the boy's heart and mind.

He knew that this death was probably no natural death, but a murder.

Neither Maddalena nor her father had been in the Casa delle Sirene when he knocked upon the door in the night. Salvatore had sent Maddalena to spend the night with relations in Marechiaro, on the pretext that he was going to sail to Messina on some business. And he had actually sailed before Gaspare's arrival on the island. But Gaspare knew that there had been a meeting, and he knew what the Sicilian is when he is wronged. The words "vengeance is mine!" are taken in Sicily by each wronged man into his own mouth, and Salvatore was notoriously savage and passionate.

As the first shock of horror and despair passed away from Gaspare he was devoured, as by teeth, devoured by the desire to spring upon Salvatore and revenge the death of his padrone. But the padrone had laid a solemn injunction upon him. Solemn, indeed, it seemed to the boy now that the lips which had spoken were sealed forever. The padrona was never to know. If he obeyed his impulse, if he declared the vendetta against Salvatore, the padrona would know. The knife that spilled the murderer's blood would give the secret to the world—and to the padrona.

Tremendous that night was the conflict in the boy's soul. He would not leave Hermione. He was like the dog that creeps to lie at the feet of his sorrowing mistress. But he was more than that. For he had his own sorrow and his own fury. And he had the battle with his own instincts.

What was he going to do?

As he began to think, really to think, and to realize things, he knew that after such a death the authorities of Marechiaro, the Pretore and the Cancelliere, would proceed to hold a careful examination into the causes of death. He would be questioned. That was certain. The opportunity would be given him to denounce Salvatore.

And was he to keep silence? Was he to act for Salvatore, to save Salvatore from justice? He would not have minded doing that, he would have wished to do it, if afterwards he could have sprung upon Salvatore and buried his knife in the murderer of his padrone.

But—the padrona? She was not to know. She was never to know. And she had been the first in his life. She had found him, a poor, ragged little boy working among the vines, and she had given him new clothes and had taken him into her home and into her confidence. She had trusted him. She had remembered him in England. She had written to him from far away, telling him to prepare everything for her and the padrone when they were coming.

He began to sob violently again, thinking of it all, of how he had ordered the donkeys to fetch the luggage from the station, of how—

"Hush, Gaspare!"

Hermione again put her hand on his. She was sitting near the bed on which the body was lying between dry sheets. For she had changed them with Gaspare's assistance. Maurice still wore the clothes which had been on him in the sea. Giuseppe, the fisherman, had explained to Hermione that she must not interfere with the body till it had been visited by the authorities, and she had obeyed him. But she had changed the sheets. She scarcely knew why. Now the clothes had almost dried on the body, and she did not see any more the stains of water. One sheet was drawn up over the body, to the chin. The matted dark hair was visible against the pillow, and had made her think several times vaguely of that day after the fishing when she had watched Maurice taking his siesta. She had longed for him to wake then, for she had known that she was going to Africa, that they had only a few hours together before she started. It had seemed almost terrible to her, his sleeping through any of those hours. And now he was sleeping forever. She was sitting there waiting for nothing, but she could not realize that yet. She felt as if she must be waiting for something, that something must presently occur, a movement in the bed, a—she scarcely knew what.

Presently the clock Gaspare had brought from the fair chimed, then played the "Tre Colori." Lucrezia had set it to play that evening when she was waiting for the padrone to return from the sea.

When he heard the tinkling tune Gaspare lifted his head and listened till it was over. It recalled to him all the glories of the fair. He saw his padrone before him. He remembered how he had decorated Maurice with flowers, and he felt as if his heart would break.

"The povero signorino! the povero signorino!" he cried, in a choked voice. "And I put roses above his ears! Si, signora, I did! I said he should be a real Siciliano!"

He began to rock himself to and fro. His whole body shook, and his face had a frantic expression that suggested violence.

"I put roses above his ears!" he repeated. "That day he was a real Siciliano!"

"Gaspare—Gaspare—hush! Don't! Don't!"

She held his hand and went on speaking softly.

"We must be quiet in here. We must remember to be quiet. It isn't our fault, Gaspare. We did all we could to make him happy. We ought to be glad of that. You did everything you could, and he loved you for it. He was happy with us. I think he was. I think he was happy till the very end. And that is something to be glad of. Don't you think he was very happy here?"

"Si, signora!" the boy whispered, with twitching lips.

"I'm glad I came back in time," Hermione said, looking at the dark hair on the pillow. "It might have happened before, while I was away. I'm glad we had one more day together."

Suddenly, as she said that, something in the mere sound of the words seemed to reveal more clearly to her heart what had befallen her, and for the first time she began to cry and to remember. She remembered all Maurice's tenderness for her, all his little acts of kindness. They seemed to pass rapidly in procession through her mind on their way to her heart. Not one surely was absent. How kind to her he had always been! And he could never be kind to her again. And she could never be kind to him—never again.

Her tears went on falling quietly. She did not sob like Gaspare. But she felt that now she had begun to cry she would never be able to stop again; that she would go on crying till she, too, died.

Gaspare looked up at her.

"Signora!" he said. "Signora!"

Suddenly he got up, as if to go out of the room, out of the house. The sight of his padrona's tears had driven him nearly mad with the desire to wreak vengeance upon Salvatore. For a moment his body seemed to get beyond his control. His eyes saw blood, and his hand darted down to his belt, and caught at the knife that was there, and drew it out. When Hermione saw the knife she thought the boy was going to kill himself with it. She sprang up, went swiftly to Gaspare, and put her hand on it over his hand.

"Gaspare, what are you doing?" she said.

For a moment his face was horrible in its savagery. He opened his mouth, still keeping his grasp on the knife, which she tried to wrest from him.

"Lasci andare! Lasci andare!" he said, beginning to struggle with her.

"No, Gaspare."

"Allora—"

He paused with his mouth open.

At that moment he was on the very verge of a revelation of the truth. He was on the point of telling Hermione that he was sure that the padrone had been murdered, and that he meant to avenge the murder. Hermione believed that for the moment he was mad, and was determined to destroy himself in her presence. It was useless to pit her strength against his. In a physical struggle she must be overcome. Her only chance was to subdue him by other means.

"Gaspare," she said, quickly, breathlessly, pointing to the bed. "Don't you think the padrone would have wished you to take care of me now? He trusted you. I think he would. I think he would rather you were with me than any one else in the whole world. You must take care of me. You must take care of me. You must never leave me!"

The boy looked at her. His face changed, grew softer.

"I've got nobody now," she added. "Nobody but you."

The knife fell on the floor.

In that moment Gaspare's resolve was taken. The battle within him was over. He must protect the padrona. The padrone would have wished it. Then he must let Salvatore go.

He bent down and kissed Hermione's hand.

"Lei non piange!" he muttered. "Forse Dio la aiutera."

In the morning, early, Hermione left the body for the first time, went into the dressing-room, changed her clothes, then came back and said to Gaspare:

"I am going a little way up the mountain, Gaspare. I shall not be long. No, don't come with me. Stay with him. Are you dreadfully tired?"

"No, signora."

"We shall be able to rest presently," she said.

She was thinking of the time when they would take Maurice from her. She left Gaspare sitting near the bed, and went out onto the terrace. Lucrezia and Gaspare, both thoroughly tired out, were sleeping soundly. She was thankful for that. Soon, she knew, she would have to be with people, to talk, to make arrangements. But now she had a short spell of solitude.

She went slowly up the mountain-side till she was near the top. Then she sat down on a rock and looked out towards the sea.

The world was not awake yet, although the sun was coming. Etna was like a great phantom, the waters at its foot were pale in their tranquillity. The air was fresh, but there was no wind to rustle the leaves of the oak-trees, upon whose crested heads Hermione gazed down with quiet, tearless eyes.

She had a strange feeling of being out of the world, as if she had left it, but still had the power to see it. She wondered if Maurice felt like that.

He had said it would be good to lie beneath those oak-trees in sight of Etna and the sea. How she wished that she could lay his body there, alone, away from all other dead. But that was impossible, she supposed. She remembered the doctor's words. What were they going to do? She did not know anything about Italian procedure in such an event. Would they take him away? She had no intention of trying to resist anything, of offering any opposition. It would be useless, and besides he had gone away. Already he was far off. She did not feel, as many women do, that so long as they are with the body of their dead they are also with the soul. She would like to keep the dear body, to have it always near to her, to live close to the spot where it was committed to the earth. But Maurice was gone. Her Mercury had winged his way from her, obedient to a summons that she had not heard. Always she had thought of him as swift, and swiftly, without warning, he had left her. He had died young. Was that wonderful? She thought not. No; age could have nothing to say to him, could hold no commerce with him. He had been born to be young and never to be anything else. It seemed to her now strange that she had not felt this, foreseen that it must be so. And yet, only yesterday, she had imagined a far future, and their child laying them in the ground of Sicily, side by side, and murmuring "Buon riposo" above their mutual sleep.

Their child! A life had been taken from her. Soon a life would be given to her. Was that what is called compensation? Perhaps so. Many strange thoughts, come she could not tell why, were passing through her mind as she sat upon this height in the dawn. The thought of compensation recalled to her the Book of Job. Everything was taken from Job; not only his flocks and his herds, but his sons and his daughters. And then at the last he was compensated. He was given new flocks and herds and new sons and daughters. And it was supposed to be well with Job. If it was well with Job, then Job had been a man without a heart.

Never could she be compensated for this loss, which she was trying to realize, but which she would not be able to realize until the days went by, and the nights, the days and the nights of the ordinary life, when tragedy was supposed to be over and done with, and people would say, and no doubt sincerely believe, that she was "getting accustomed" to her loss.

Thinking of Job led her on to think of God's dealings with His creatures.

Hermione was a woman who clung to no special religion, but she had always, all her life, had a very strong personal consciousness of a directing Power in the world, had always had an innate conviction that this directing Power followed with deep interest the life of each individual in the scheme of His creation. She had always felt, she felt now, that God knew everything about her and her life, was aware of all her feelings, was constantly intent upon her.

He was intent. But was He kindly or was He cruelly intent?

Surely He had been dreadfully cruel to her!

Only yesterday she had been wondering what bereaved women felt about God. Now she was one of these women.

"Was Maurice dead?" she thought—"was he already dead when I was praying before the shrine of the Madonna della Rocca?"

She longed to know. Yet she scarcely knew why she longed. It was like a strange, almost unnatural curiosity which she could not at first explain to herself. But presently her mind grew clearer and she connected this question with that other question—of God and what He really was, what He really felt towards His creatures, towards her.

Had God allowed her to pray like that, with all her heart and soul, and then immediately afterwards deliberately delivered her over to the fate of desolate women, or had Maurice been already dead? If that were so, and it must surely have been so, for when she prayed it was already night, she had been led to pray for herself ignorantly, and God had taken away her joy before He had heard her prayer. If He had heard it first He surely could not have dealt so cruelly with her—so cruelly! No human being could have, she thought, even the most hard-hearted.

But perhaps God was not all-powerful.

She remembered that once in London she had asked a clever and good clergyman if, looking around upon the state of things in the world, he was able to believe without difficulty that the world was governed by an all-wise, all-powerful, and all-merciful God. And his reply to her had been, "I sometimes wonder whether God is all-powerful—yet." She had not pursued the subject, but she had not forgotten this answer; and she thought of it now.

Was there a conflict in the regions beyond the world which was the only one she knew? Had an enemy done this thing, an enemy not only of hers, but of God's, an enemy who had power over God?

That thought was almost more terrible than the thought that God had been cruel to her.

She sat for a long time wondering, thinking, but not praying. She did not feel as if she could ever pray any more. The world was lighted up by the sun. The sea began to gleam, the coast-line to grow more distinct, the outlines of the mountains and of the Saracenic Castle on the height opposite to her more hard and more barbaric against the deepening blue. She saw smoke coming from the mouth of Etna, sideways, as if blown towards the sea. A shepherd boy piped somewhere below her. And still the tune was the tarantella. She listened to it—the tarantella. So short a time ago Maurice had danced with the boys upon the terrace! How can such life be so easily extinguished? How can such joy be not merely clouded but utterly destroyed? A moment, and from the body everything is expelled; light from the eyes, speech from the lips, movement from the limbs, joy, passion from the heart. How can such a thing be?

The little shepherd boy played on and on. He was nearer now. He was ascending the slope of the mountain, coming up towards heaven with his little happy tune. She heard him presently among the oak-trees immediately below her, passing almost at her feet.

To Hermione the thin sound of the reed-flute always had suggested Arcady. Even now it suggested Arcady—the Arcady of the imagination: wide soft airs, blue skies and seas, eternal sunshine and delicious shade, and happiness where is a sweet noise of waters and of birds, a sweet and deep breathing of kind and bounteous nature.

And that little boy with the flute would die. His foot might slip now as he came upward, and no more could he play souls into Arcady!

The tune wound away to her left, like a gay and careless living thing that was travelling ever upward, then once more came towards her. But now it was above her. She turned her head and she saw the little player against the blue. He was on a rock, and for a moment he stood still. On his head was a long woollen cap, hanging over at one side. It made Hermione think of the woollen cap she had seen come out of the darkness of the ravine as she waited with Gaspare for the padrone. Against the blue, standing on the gray and sunlit rock, with the flute at his lips, and his tiny, deep-brown fingers moving swiftly, he looked at one with the mountain and yet almost unearthly, almost as if the blue had given birth to him for a moment, and in a moment would draw him back again into the womb of its wonder. His goats were all around him, treading delicately among the rocks. As Hermione watched he turned and went away into the blue, and the tarantella went away into the blue with him.

Her Sicilian and his tarantella, the tarantella of his joy in Sicily—they had gone away into the blue.

She looked at it, deep, quivering, passionate, intense; thousands and thousands of miles of blue! And she listened as she looked; listened for some far-off tarantella, for some echo of a fainting tarantella, that might be a message to her, a message left on the sweet air of the enchanted island, telling her where the winged feet of her beloved one mounted towards the sun.



XXIV

Giuseppe came to fetch Hermione from the mountain. He had a note in his hand and also a message to give. The authorities were already at the cottage; the Pretore of Marechiaro with his Cancelliere, Dr. Marini and the Maresciallo of the Carabinieri.

"They have come already?" Hermione said. "So soon?"

She took the note. It was from Artois.

"There is a boy waiting, signora," said Giuseppe. "Gaspare is with the Signor Pretore."

She opened Emile's note.

"I cannot write anything except this—do you wish me to come?—E."

"Do I wish him to come?" she thought.

She repeated the words mentally several times, while the fisherman stood by her, staring at her with sympathy. Then she went down to the cottage.

Dr. Marini met her on the terrace. He looked embarrassed. He was expecting a terrible scene.

"Signora," he said, "I am very sorry, but—but I am obliged to perform my duty."

"Yes," she said. "Of course. What is it?"

"As there is a hospital in Marechiaro—"

He stopped.

"Yes?" she said.

"The autopsy of the body must take place there. Otherwise I could have—"

"You have come to take him away," she said. "I understand. Very well."

But they could not take him away, these people. For he was gone; he had gone away into the blue.

The doctor looked relieved, though surprised, at her apparent nonchalance.

"I am very sorry, signora," he said—"very sorry."

"Must I see the Pretore?" she said.

"I am afraid so, signora. They will want to ask you a few questions. The body ought not to have been moved from the place where—"

"We could not leave him in the sea," she said, as she had said in the night.

"No, no. You will only just have to say—"

"I will tell them what I know. He went down to bathe."

"Yes. But the Pretore will want to know why he went to Salvatore's terreno."

"I suppose he bathed from there. He knew the people in the Casa delle Sirene, I believe."

She spoke indifferently. It seemed to her so utterly useless, this inquiry by strangers into the cause of her sorrow.

"I must just write something," she added.

She went up the steps into the sitting-room. Gaspare was there with three men—the Pretore, the Cancelliere and the Maresciallo. As she came in the strangers turned and saluted her with grave politeness, all looking earnestly at her with their dark eyes. But Gaspare did not look at her. He had the ugly expression on his face that Hermione had noticed the day before.

"Will you please allow me to write a line to a friend?" Hermione said. "Then I shall be ready to answer your questions."

"Certainly, signora," said the Pretore; "we are very sorry to disturb you, but it is our duty."

He had gray hair and a dark mustache, and his black eyes looked as if they had been varnished.

Hermione went to the writing-table, while the men stood in silence filling up the little room.

"What shall I say?" she thought.

She heard the boots of the Cancelliere creak as he shifted his feet upon the floor. The Maresciallo cleared his throat. There was a moment of hesitation. Then he went to the steps and spat upon the terrace.

"Don't come yet," she wrote, slowly.

Then she turned round.

"How long will your inquiry take, do you think, signore?" she asked of the Pretore. "When will—when can the funeral take place?"

"Signora, I trust to-morrow. I hope—I do not suppose there will be any reason to suspect, after what Dr. Marini has told us and we have seen, that the death was anything but an accident—an accident which we all most deeply grieve for."

"It was an accident."

She stood by the table with the pen in her hand.

"I suppose—I suppose he must be buried in the Campo Santo?" she said.

"Do you wish to convey the body to England, signora?"

"Oh no. He loved Sicily. He wished to stay always here, I think, although—"

She broke off.

"I could never take him away from Sicily. But there is a place here—under the oak-trees. He was very fond of it."

Gaspare began to sob, then controlled himself with a desperate effort, turned round and stood with his face to the wall.

"I suppose, if I could buy a piece of land there, it could not be permitted—?"

She looked at the Pretore.

"I am very sorry, signora, such a thing could not possibly be allowed. If the body is buried here it must be in the Campo Santo."

"Thank you."

She turned to the table and wrote after "Don't come yet":

"They are taking him away now to the hospital in the village. I shall come down. I think the funeral will be to-morrow. They tell me he must be buried in the Campo Santo. I should have liked him to lie here under the oak-trees. HERMIONE."

When Artois read this note tears came into his eyes.

No event in his life had shocked him so much as the death of Delarey.

It had shocked both his intellect and his heart. And yet his intellect could hardly accept it as a fact. When, early that morning, one of the servants of the Hotel Regina Margherita had rushed into his room to tell him, he had refused to believe it. But then he had seen the fishermen, and finally Dr. Marini. And he had been obliged to believe. His natural impulse was to go to his friend in her trouble as she had come to him in his. But he checked it. His agony had been physical. Hers was of the affections, and how far greater than his had ever been! He could not bear to think of it. A great and generous indignation seized him, an indignation against the catastrophes of life. That this should be Hermione's reward for her noble unselfishness roused in him something that was like fury; and then there followed a more torturing fury against himself.

He had deprived her of days and weeks of happiness. Such a short span of joy had been allotted to her, and he had not allowed her to have even that. He had called her away. He dared not trust himself to write any word of sympathy. It seemed to him that to do so would be a hideous irony, and he sent the line in pencil which she had received. And then he walked up and down in his little sitting-room, raging against himself, hating himself.

In his now bitterly acute consideration of his friendship with Hermione he realized that he had always been selfish, always the egoist claiming rather than the generous donor. He had taken his burdens to her, not weakly, for he was not a weak man, but with a desire to be eased of some of their weight. He had always been calling upon her for sympathy, and she had always been lavishly responding, scattering upon him the wealth of her great heart.

And now he had deprived her of nearly all the golden time that had been stored up for her by the decree of the Gods, of God, of Fate, of—whatever it was that ruled, that gave and that deprived.

A bitterness of shame gripped him. He felt like a criminal. He said to himself that the selfish man is a criminal.

"She will hate me," he said to himself. "She must. She can't help it."

Again the egoist was awake and speaking within him. He realized that immediately and felt almost a fear of this persistence of character. What is the use of cleverness, of clear sight into others, even of genius, when the self of a man declines to change, declines to be what is not despicable?

"Mon Dieu!" he thought, passionately. "And even now I must be thinking of my cursed self!"

He was beset by an intensity of desire to do something for Hermione. For once in his life his heart, the heart she believed in and he was inclined to doubt or to despise, drove him as it might have driven a boy, even such a one as Maurice. It seemed to him that unless he could do something to make atonement he could never be with Hermione again, could never bear to be with her again. But what could he do?

"At least," he thought, "I may be able to spare her something to-day. I may be able to arrange with these people about the funeral, about all the practical things that are so frightful a burden to the living who have loved the dead, in the last moments before the dead are given to the custody of the earth."

And then he thought of the inquiry, of the autopsy. Could he not help her, spare her perhaps, in connection with them?

Despite his weakness of body he felt feverishly active, feverishly desirous to be of practical use. If he could do something he would think less, too; and there were thoughts which seemed furtively trying to press themselves forward in the chambers of his mind, but which, as yet, he was, also furtively, pushing back, striving to keep in the dark place from which they desired to emerge.

Artois knew Sicily well, and he knew that such a death as this would demand an inquiry, might raise suspicions in the minds of the authorities of Marechiaro. And in his own mind?

He was a mentally courageous man, but he longed now to leave Marechiaro, to leave Sicily at once, carrying Hermione with him. A great dread was not actually with him, but was very near to him.

Presently something, he did not know what, drew him to the window of his bedroom which looked out towards the main street of the village. As he came to it he heard a dull murmur of voices, and saw the Sicilians crowding to their doors and windows, and coming out upon their balconies.

The body of Maurice was being borne to the hospital which was at the far end of the town. As soon as he realized that, Artois closed his window. He could not look with the curious on that procession. He went back into his sitting-room, which faced the sea. But he felt the procession going past, and was enveloped in the black wonder of death.

That he should be alive and Delarey dead! How extraordinary that was! For he had been close to death, so close that it would have seemed quite natural to him to die. Had not Hermione come to him, he thought, he would almost, at the crucial stage in his illness, have preferred to die. It would have been a far easier, far simpler act than the return to health and his former powers. And now he stood here alive, looking at the sea, and Delarey's dead body was being carried to the hospital.

Was the fact that he was alive the cause of the fact that Delarey was dead? Abruptly one of those furtive thoughts had leaped forward out of its dark place and challenged him boldly, even with a horrible brutality. Too late now to try to force it back. It must be faced, be dealt with.

Again, and much more strongly than on the previous day, Artois felt that in Hermione's absence the Sicilian life of the dead man had not run smoothly, that there had been some episode of which she knew nothing, that he, Artois, had been right in his suspicions at the cottage. Delarey had been in fear of something, had been on the watch. When he had sat by the wall he had been tortured by some tremendous anxiety.

He had gone down to the sea to bathe. That was natural enough. And he had been found dead under a precipice of rock in the sea. The place was a dangerous one, they said. A man might easily fall from the rock in the night. Yes; but why should he be there?

That thought now recurred again and again to the mind of Artois. Why had Delarey been at the place where he had met his death? The authorities of Marechiaro were going to inquire into that, were probably down at the sea now. Suppose there had been some tragic episode? Suppose they should find out what it was?

He saw Hermione in the midst of her grief the central figure of some dreadful scandal, and his heart sickened.

But then he told himself that perhaps he was being led by his imagination. He had thought that possible yesterday. To-day, after what had occurred, he thought it less likely. This sudden death seemed to tell him that his mind had been walking in the right track. Left alone in Sicily, Delarey might have run wild. He might have gone too far. This death might be a vengeance.

Artois was deeply interested in all human happenings, but he was not a vulgarly curious man. He was not curious now, he was only afraid for Hermione. He longed to protect her from any further grief. If there were a dreadful truth to know, and if, by knowing it, he could guard her more efficiently, he wished to know it. But his instinct was to get her away from Sicily at once, directly the funeral was over and the necessary arrangements could be made. For himself, he would rather go in ignorance. He did not wish to add to the heavy burden of his remorse.

There came at this moment a knock at his door.

"Avanti!" he said.

The waiter of the hotel came in.

"Signore," he said. "The poor signora is here."

"In the hotel?"

"Si, signore. They have taken the body of the signore to the hospital. Everybody was in the street to see it pass. And now the poor signora has come here. She has taken the rooms above you on the little terrace."

"The signora is going to stay here?"

"Si, signore. They say, if the Signor Pretore allows after the inquiry is over, the funeral will be to-morrow."

Artois looked at the man closely. He was a young fellow, handsome and gentler-looking than are most Sicilians. Artois wondered what the people of Marechiaro were saying. He knew how they must be gossiping on such an occasion. And then it was summer, when they have little or nothing to do, no forestieri to divide their attentions and to call their ever-ready suspicions in various directions. The minds of the whole community must undoubtedly be fixed upon this tragic episode and its cause.

"If the Pretore allows?" Artois said. "But surely there can be no difficulty? The poor signore fell from the rock and was drowned."

"Si, signore."

The man stood there. Evidently he was anxious to talk.

"The Signor Pretore has gone down to the place now, signore, with the Cancelliere and the Maresciallo. They have taken Gaspare with them."

"Gaspare!"

Artois thought of this boy, Maurice's companion during Hermione's absence.

"Si, signore. Gaspare has to show them the exact place where he found the poor signore."

"I suppose the inquiry will soon be over?"

"Chi lo sa?"

"Well, but what is there to do? Whom can they inquire of? It was a lonely place, wasn't it? No one was there."

"Chi lo sa?"

"If there had been any one, surely the signore would have been rescued at once? Did not every one here love the signore? He was like one of you, wasn't he, one of the Sicilians?"

"Si, signore. Maddalena has been crying about the signore."

"Maddalena?"

"Si, signore, the daughter of Salvatore, the fisherman, who lives at the Casa delle Sirene."

"Oh!"

Artois paused; then he said:

"Were she and her—Salvatore is her father, you say?"

"Her father, signore."

"Were they at the Casa delle Sirene yesterday?"

Artois spoke quietly, almost carelessly, as if merely to say something, but without special intention.

"Maddalena was here in the town with her relations. And they say Salvatore is at Messina. This morning Maddalena went home. She was crying. Every one saw her crying for the signore."

"That is very natural if she knew him."

"Oh yes, signore, she knew him. Why, they were all at the fair of San Felice together only the day before."

"Then, of course, she would cry."

"Si, signore."

The man put his hand on the door.

"If the signora wishes to see me at any time I am here," said Artois. "But, of course, I shall not disturb her. But if I can do anything to help her—about the funeral, for instance—"

"The signora is giving all the directions now. The poor signore is to be buried in the high part of the Campo Santo by the wall. Those who are not Catholics are buried there, and the poor signore was not a Catholic. What a pity!"

"Thank you, Ferdinando."

The man went out slowly, as if he were reluctant to stop the conversation.

So the villagers were beginning to gossip already! Ferdinando had not said so, but Artois knew his Sicily well enough to read the silences that had made significant his words. Maddalena had been crying for the signore. Everybody had seen Maddalena crying for the signore. That was enough. By this time the village would be in a ferment, every woman at her door talking it over with her next-door neighbor, every man in the Piazza, or in one of the wine-shops.

Maddalena—a Sicilian girl—weeping, and Delarey's body found among the rocks at night in a lonely place close to her cottage. Artois divined something of the truth and hated himself the more. The blood, the Sicilian blood in Delarey, had called to him in the sunshine when he was left alone, and he had, no doubt, obeyed the call. How far had he gone? How strongly had he been governed? Probably Artois would never know. Long ago he had prophesied, vaguely perhaps, still he had prophesied. And now had he not engineered perhaps the fulfilment of his own prophecy?

But at all costs Hermione must be spared any knowledge of that fulfilment.

He longed to go to her and to guard her door against the Sicilians. But surely in such a moment they would not speak to her of any suspicions, of any certainties, even if they had them. She would surely be the last person to hear anything, unless—he thought of the "authorities"—of the Pretore, the Cancelliere, the Maresciallo, and suddenly it occurred to him to ride down to the sea. If the inquiry had yielded any terrible result he might do something to protect Hermione. If not, he might be able to prepare her. She must not receive any coarse shock from these strangers in the midst of her agony.

He got his hat, opened his door, and went quietly down-stairs. He did not wish to see Hermione before he went. Perhaps he would return with his mind relieved of its heaviest burden, and then at least he could meet her eyes without a furtive guilt in his.

At the foot of the stairs he met Ferdinando.

"Can you get me a donkey, Ferdinando?" he said.

"Si, signore."

"I don't want a boy. Just get me a donkey, and I shall go for a short ride. You say the signora has not asked for me?"

"No, signore."

"If she does, explain to her that I have gone out, as I did not like to disturb her."

Hermione might think him heartless to go out riding at such a time. He would risk that. He would risk anything to spare her the last, the nameless agony that would be hers if what he suspected were true, and she were to learn of it, to know that all these people round her knew it.

That Hermione should be outraged, that the sacredness of her despair should be profaned, and the holiness of her memories utterly polluted—Artois felt he would give his life willingly to prevent that.

When the donkey came he set off at once. He had drawn his broad-brimmed hat down low over his pale face, and he looked neither to right nor left, as he was carried down the long and narrow street, followed by the searching glances of the inhabitants, who, as he had surmised, were all out, engaged in eager conversation, and anxiously waiting for the return of the Pretore and his assistants, and the announcement of the result of the autopsy. His appearance gave them a fresh topic to discuss. They fell upon it like starveling dogs on a piece of offal found in the gutter.

Once out of the village, Artois felt a little safer, a little easier; but he longed to be in the train with Hermione, carrying her far from the chance of that most cruel fate in life—the fate of disillusion, of the loss of holy belief in the truth of one beloved.

When presently he reached the high-road by Isola Bella he encountered the fisherman, Giuseppe, who had spent the night at the Casa del Prete.

"Are you going to see the place where the poor signore was found, signore?" asked the man.

"Si," said Artois. "I was his friend. I wish to see the Pretore, to hear how it happened. Can I? Are they there, he and the others?"

"They are in the Casa delle Sirene, signore. They are waiting to see if Salvatore comes back this morning from Messina."

"And his daughter? Is she there?"

"Si, signore. But she knows nothing. She was in the village. She can only cry. She is crying for the poor signore."

Again that statement. It was becoming a refrain in the ears of Artois.

"Gaspare is angry with her," added the fisherman. "I believe he would like to kill her."

"It makes him sad to see her crying, perhaps," said Artois. "Gaspare loved the signore."

He saluted the fisherman and rode on. But the man followed and kept by his side.

"I will take you across in a boat, signore," he said.

"Grazie."

Artois struck the donkey and made it trot on in the dust.

Giuseppe rowed him across the inlet and to the far side of the Sirens' Isle, from which the little path wound upward to the cottage. Here, among the rocks, a boat was moored.

"Ecco, signore!" cried Giuseppe. "Salvatore has come back from Messina! Here is his boat!"

Artois felt a pang of anxiety, of regret. He wished he had been there before the fisherman had returned. As he got out of the boat he said:

"Did Salvatore know the signore well?"

"Si, signore. The poor signore used to go out fishing with Salvatore. They say in the village that he gave Salvatore much money."

"The signore was generous to every one."

"Si, signore. But he did not give donkeys to every one."

"Donkeys? What do you mean, Giuseppe?"

"He gave Salvatore a donkey, a fine donkey. He bought it at the fair of San Felice."

Artois said no more. Slowly, for he was still very weak, and the heat was becoming fierce as the morning wore on, he walked up the steep path and came to the plateau before the Casa delle Sirene.

A group of people stood there: the Pretore, the Cancelliere, the Maresciallo, Gaspare, and Salvatore. They seemed to be in strong conversation, but directly Artois appeared there was a silence, and they all turned and stared at him as if in wonder. Then Gaspare came forward and took off his hat.

The boy looked haggard with grief, and angry and obstinate, desperately obstinate.

"Signore," he said. "You know my padrone! Tell them—"

But the Pretore interrupted him with an air of importance.

"It is my duty to make an inquiry," he said. "Who is this signore?"

Artois explained that he was an intimate friend of the signora and had known her husband before his marriage.

"I have come to hear if you are satisfied, as no doubt you are, Signor Pretore," he said, "that this terrible death was caused by an accident. The poor signora naturally wishes that this necessary business should be finished as soon as possible. It is unavoidable, I know, but it can only add to her unhappiness. I am sure, signore, that you will do your best to conclude the inquiry without delay. Forgive me for saying this. But I know Sicily, and know that I can always rely on the chivalry of Sicilian gentlemen where an unhappy lady is concerned."

He spoke intentionally with a certain pomp, and held his hat in his hand while he was speaking.

The Pretore looked pleased and flattered.

"Certainly, Signor Barone," he said. "Certainly. We all grieve for the poor signora."

"You will allow me to stay?" said Artois.

"I see no objection," said the Pretore.

He glanced at the Cancelliere, a small, pale man, with restless eyes and a pointed chin that looked like a weapon.

"Niente, niente!" said the Cancelliere, obsequiously.

He was reading Artois with intense sharpness. The Maresciallo, a broad, heavily built man, with an enormous mustache, uttered a deep "Buon giorno, Signor Barone," and stood calmly staring. He looked like a magnificent bull, with his short, strong brown neck, and low-growing hair that seemed to have been freshly crimped. Gaspare stood close to Artois, as if he felt that they were allies and must keep together. Salvatore was a few paces off.

Artois glanced at him now with a carefully concealed curiosity. Instantly the fisherman said:

"Povero signorino! Povero signorino! Mamma mia! and only two days ago we were all at the fair together! And he was so generous, Signor Barone." He moved a little nearer, but Artois saw him glance swiftly at Gaspare, like a man fearful of violence and ready to repel it. "He paid for everything. We could all keep our soldi in our pockets. And he gave Maddalena a beautiful blue dress, and he gave me a donkey. Dio mio! We have lost a benefactor. If the poor signorino had lived he would have given me a new boat. He had promised me a boat. For he would come fishing with me nearly every day. He was like a compare—"

Salvatore stopped abruptly. His eyes were again on Gaspare.

"And you say," began the Pretore, with a certain heavy pomposity, "that you did not see the signore at all yesterday?"

"No, signore. I suppose he came down after I had started for Messina."

"What did you go to Messina for?"

"Signore, I went to see my nephew, Guido, who is in the hospital. He has—"

"Non fa niente! non fa niente!" interrupted the Cancelliere.

"Non fa niente! What time did you start?" said the Pretore.

The Maresciallo cleared his throat with great elaboration, and spat with power twice.

"Signor Pretore, I do not know. I did not look at the clock. But it was before sunset—it was well before sunset."

"And the signore only came down from the Casa del Prete very late," interposed Artois, quietly. "I was there and kept him. It was quite evening before he started."

An expression of surprise went over Salvatore's face and vanished. He had realized that for some reason this stranger was his ally.

"Had you any reason to suppose the signore was coming to fish with you yesterday?" asked the Pretore of Salvatore.

"No, signore. I thought as the signora was back the poor signore would stay with her at the house."

"Naturally, naturally!" said the Cancelliere.

"Naturally! It seems the signore had several times passed across the rocks, from which he appears to have fallen, without any difficulty," remarked the Pretore.

"Si, signore," said Gaspare.

He looked at Salvatore, seemed to make a great effort, then added:

"But never when it was dark, signore. And I was always with him. He used to take my hand."

His chest began to heave.

"Corragio, Gaspare!" said Artois to him, in a low voice.

His strong intuition enabled him to understand something of the conflict that was raging in the boy. He had seen his glances at Salvatore, and felt that he was longing to fly at the fisherman, that he only restrained himself with agony from some ferocious violence.

The Pretore remained silent for a moment. It was evident that he was at a loss. He wished to appear acute, but the inquiry yielded nothing for the exercise of his talents.

At last he said:

"Did any one see you going to Messina? Is there any corroboration of your statement that you started before the signore came down here?"

"Do you think I am not speaking the truth, Signor Pretore?" said Salvatore, proudly. "Why should I lie? The poor signore was my benefactor. If I had known he was coming I should have been here to receive him. Why, he has eaten in my house! He has slept in my house. I tell you we were as brothers."

"Si, si," said the Cancelliere.

Gaspare set his teeth, walked away to the edge of the plateau, and stood looking out to sea.

"Then no one saw you?" persisted the Pretore.

"Non lo so," said Salvatore. "I did not think of such things. I wanted to go to Messina, so I sent Maddalena to pass the night in the village, and I took the boat. What else should I do?"

"Va bene! Va bene!" said the Cancelliere.

The Maresciallo cleared his throat again. That, and the ceremony which invariably followed, were his only contributions to this official proceeding.

The Pretore, receiving no assistance from his colleagues, seemed doubtful what more to do. It was evident to Artois that he was faintly suspicious, that he was not thoroughly satisfied about the cause of this death.

"Your daughter seems very upset about all this," he said to Salvatore.

"Mamma mia! And how should she not? Why, Signor Pretore, we loved the poor signore. We would have thrown ourselves into the sea for him. When we saw him coming down from the mountain to us it was as if we saw God coming down from heaven."

"Certo! Certo!" said the Cancelliere.

"I think every one who knew the signore at all grew to be very fond of him," said Artois, quietly. "He was greatly beloved here by every one."

His manner to the Pretore was very civil, even respectful. Evidently it had its effect upon that personage. Every one here seemed to be assured that this death was merely an accident, could only have been an accident. He did not know what more to do.

"Va bene!" he said at last, with some reluctance. "We shall see what the doctors say when the autopsy is concluded. Let us hope that nothing will be discovered. I do not wish to distress the poor signora. At the same time I must do my duty. That is evident."

"It seems to me you have done it with admirable thoroughness," said Artois.

"Grazie, Signor Barone, grazie!"

"Grazie, grazie, Signor Barone!" added the Cancelliere.

"Grazie, Signor Barone!" said the deep voice of the Maresciallo.

The authorities now slowly prepared to take their departure.

"You are coming with us, Signor Barone?" said the Pretore.

Artois was about to say yes, when he saw pass across the aperture of the doorway of the cottage the figure of a girl with bent head. It disappeared immediately.

"That must be Maddalena!" he thought.

"Scusi, signore," he said, "but I have been seriously ill. The ride down here has tired me, and I should be glad to rest for a few minutes longer, if—" He looked at Salvatore.

"I will fetch a chair for the signore!" said the fisherman, quickly.

He did not know what this stranger wanted, but he felt instinctively that it was nothing that would be harmful to him.

The Pretore and his companions, after polite inquiries as to the illness of Artois, took their leave with many salutations. Only Gaspare remained on the edge of the plateau staring at the sea. As Salvatore went to fetch the chair Artois went over to the boy.

"Gaspare!" he said.

"Si!" said the boy.

"I want you to go up with the Pretore. Go to the signora. Tell her the inquiry is finished. It will relieve her to know."

"You will come with me, signore?"

"No."

The boy turned and looked him full in the face.

"Why do you stay?"

For a moment Artois did not speak. He was considering rapidly what to say, how to treat Gaspare. He was now sure that there had been a tragedy, with which the people of the sirens' house were, somehow, connected. He was sure that Gaspare either knew or suspected what had happened, yet meant to conceal his knowledge despite his obvious hatred for the fisherman. Was the boy's reason for this strange caution, this strange secretiveness, akin to his—Artois's—desire? Was the boy trying to protect his padrona or the memory of his padrone? Artois wondered. Then he said:

"Gaspare, I shall only stay a few minutes. We must have no gossip that can get to the padrona's ears. We understand each other, I think, you and I. We want the same thing. Men can keep silence, but girls talk. I wish to see Maddalena for a minute."

"Ma—"

Gaspare stared at him almost fiercely. But something in the face of Artois inspired him with confidence. Suddenly his reserve disappeared. He put his hand on Artois's arm.

"Tell Maddalena to be silent and not to go on crying, signore," he said, violently. "Tell her that if she does not stop crying I will come down here in the night and kill her."

"Go, Gaspare! The Pretore is wondering—go!"

Gaspare went down over the edge of the land and disappeared towards the sea.

"Ecco, signore!"

Salvatore reappeared from the cottage carrying a chair which he set down under an olive-tree, the same tree by which Maddalena had stood when Maurice first saw her in the dawn.

"Grazie."

Artois sat down. He was very tired, but he scarcely knew it. The fisherman stood by him, looking at him with a sort of shifty expectation, and Artois, as he noticed the hard Arab type of the man's face, the glitter of the small, cunning eyes, the nervous alertness of the thin, sensitive hands, understood a great deal about Salvatore. He knew Arabs well. He had slept under their tents, had seen them in joy and in anger, had witnessed scenes displaying fully their innate carelessness of human life. This fisherman was almost as much Arab as Sicilian. The blend scarcely made for gentleness. If such a man were wronged, he would be quick and subtle in revenge. Nothing would stay him. But had Maurice wronged him? Artois meant to assume knowledge and to act upon his assumption. His instinct advised him that in doing so he would be doing the best thing possible for the protection of Hermione.

"Can you make much money here?" he said, sharply yet carelessly.

The fisherman moved as if startled.

"Signore!"

"They tell me Sicily's a poor land for the poor. Isn't that so?"

Salvatore recovered himself.

"Si, signore, si, signore, one earns nothing. It is a hard life, Per Dio!"

He stopped and stared hard at the stranger with his hands on his hips. His eyes, his whole expression and attitude said, "What are you up to?"

"America is the country for a sharp-witted man to make his fortune in," said Artois, returning his gaze.

"Si, signore. Many go from here. I know many who are working in America. But one must have money to pay the ticket."

"Yes. This terreno belongs to you?"

"Only the bit where the house stands, signore. And it is all rocks. It is no use to any one. And in winter the winds come over it. Why, it would take years of work to turn it into anything. And I am not a contadino. Once I had a wine-shop, but I am a man of the sea."

"But you are a man with sharp wits. I should think you would do well in America. Others do, and why not you?"

They looked at each other hard for a full minute. Then Salvatore said, slowly:

"Signore, I will tell you the truth. It is the truth. I would swear it with sea-water on my lips. If I had the money I would go to America. I would take the first ship."

"And your daughter, Maddalena? You couldn't leave her behind you?"

"Signore, if I were ever to go to America you may be sure I should take Maddalena with me."

"I think you would," Artois said, still looking at the man full in the eyes. "I think it would be wiser to take Maddalena with you."

Salvatore looked away.

"If I had the money, signore, I would buy the tickets to-morrow. Here I can make nothing, and it is a hard life, always on the sea. And in America you get good pay. A man can earn eight lire a day there, they tell me."

"I have not seen your daughter yet," Artois said, abruptly.

"No, signore, she is not well to-day. And the Signor Pretore frightened her. She will stay in the house to-day."

"But I should like to see her for a moment."

"Signore, I am very sorry, but—"

Artois turned round in the chair and looked towards the house. The door, which had been open, was now shut.

"Maddalena is praying, signore. She is praying to the Madonna for the soul of the dead signore."

For the first time Artois noticed in the hard, bird-like face of the fisherman a sign of emotion, almost of softness.

"We must not disturb her, signore."

Artois got up and went a few steps nearer to the cottage.

"Can one see the place where the signore's body was found?" he asked.

"Si, signore, from the other side, among the trees."

"I will come back in a moment," said Artois.

He walked away from the fisherman and entered the wood, circling the cottage. The fisherman did not come with him. Artois's instinct had told him that the man would not care to come on such an errand. As Artois passed at the back of the cottage he noticed an open window, and paused near it in the long grass. From within there came the sound of a woman's voice, murmuring. It was frequently interrupted by sobs. After a moment Artois went close to the window, and said, but without showing himself:

"Maddalena!"

The murmuring voice stopped.

"Maddalena!"

There was silence.

"Maddalena!" Artois said. "Are you listening?"

He heard a faint movement as if the woman within came nearer to the casement.

"If you loved the dead signore, if you care for his memory, do not talk of your grief for him to others. Pray for him, and be silent for him. If you are silent the Holy Mother will hear your prayers."

As he said the last words Artois made his deep voice sound mysterious, mystical.

Then he went away softly among the thickly growing trees.

When he saw Salvatore again, still standing upon the plateau, he beckoned to him without coming into the open.

"Bring the boat round to the inlet," he said. "I will cross from there."

"Si, signore."

"And as we cross we can speak a little more about America."

The fisherman stared at him, with a faint smile that showed a gleam of sharp, white teeth.

"Si, signore—a little more about America."



XXV

A night and a day had passed, and still Artois had not seen Hermione. The autopsy had been finished, and had revealed nothing to change the theory of Dr. Marini as to the determining cause of death. The English stranger had been crossing the dangerous wall of rock, probably in darkness, had fallen, been stunned upon the rocks in the sea beneath, and drowned before he recovered consciousness.

Gaspare said nothing. Salvatore held his peace and began his preparations for America. And Maddalena, if she wept, wept now in secret; if she prayed, prayed in the lonely house of the sirens, near the window which had so often given a star to the eyes that looked down from the terrace of the Casa del Prete.

There was gossip in Marechiaro, and the Pretore still preserved his air of faint suspicion. But that would probably soon vanish under the influence of the Cancelliere, with whom Artois had had some private conversation. The burial had been allowed, and very early in the morning of the day following that of Hermione's arrival at the hotel it took place from the hospital.

Few people knew the hour, and most were still asleep when the coffin was carried down the street, followed only by Hermione, and by Gaspare in a black, ready-made suit that had been bought in the village of Cattaro. Hermione would not allow any one else to follow her dead, and as Maurice had been a Protestant there was no service. This shocked Gaspare, and added to his grief, till Hermione explained that her husband had been of a different religion from that of Sicily, a religion with different rites.

"But we can pray for him, Gaspare," she said. "He loved us, and perhaps he will know what we are doing."

The thought seemed to soothe the boy. He kneeled down by his padrona under the wall of the Campo Santo by which Protestants were buried, and whispered a petition for the repose of the soul of his padrone. Into the gap of earth, where now the coffin lay, he had thrown roses from his father's little terreno near the village. His tears fell fast, and his prayer was scarcely more than a broken murmur of "Povero signorino—povero signorino—Dio ci mandi buon riposo in Paradiso." Hermione could not pray although she was in the attitude of supplication; but when she heard the words of Gaspare she murmured them too. "Buon riposo!" The sweet Sicilian good-night—she said it now in the stillness of the lonely dawn. And her tears fell fast with those of the boy who had loved and served his master.

When the funeral was over she walked up the mountain with Gaspare to the Casa del Prete, and from there, on the following day, she sent a message to Artois, asking him if he would come to see her.

"I don't ask you to forgive me for not seeing you before," she wrote. "We understand each other and do not need explanations. I wanted to see nobody. Come at any hour when you feel that you would like to. HERMIONE."

Artois rode up in the cool of the day, towards evening.

He was met upon the terrace by Gaspare.

"The signora is on the mountain, signore," he said. "If you go up you will find her, the povero signora. She is all alone upon the mountain."

"I will go, Gaspare. I have told Maddalena. I think she will be silent."

The boy dropped his eyes. His unreserve of the island had not endured. It had been a momentary impulse, and now the impulse had died away.

"Va bene, signore," he muttered.

He had evidently nothing more to say, yet Artois did not leave him immediately.

"Gaspare," he said, "the signora will not stay here through the great heat, will she?"

"Non lo so, signore."

"She ought to go away. It will be better if she goes away."

"Si, signore. But perhaps she will not like to leave the povero signorino."

Tears came into the boy's eyes. He turned away and went to the wall, and looked over into the ravine, and thought of many things: of readings under the oak-trees, of the tarantella, of how he and the padrone had come up from the fishing singing in the sunshine. His heart was full, and he felt dazed. He was so accustomed to being always with his padrone that he did not know how he was to go on without him. He did not remember his former life, before the padrone came. Everything seemed to have begun for him on that morning when the train with the padrone and the padrona in it ran into the station of Cattaro. And now everything seemed to have finished.

Artois did not say any more to him, but walked slowly up the mountain leaning on his stick. Close to the top, by a heap of stones that was something like a cairn, he saw, presently, a woman sitting. As he came nearer she turned her head and saw him. She did not move. The soft rays of the evening sun fell on her, and showed him that her square and rugged face was pale and grave and, he thought, empty-looking, as if something had deprived it of its former possession, the ardent vitality, the generous enthusiasm, the look of swiftness he had loved.

When he came up to her he could only say: "Hermione, my friend—"

The loneliness of this mountain summit was a fit setting for her loneliness, and these two solitudes, of nature and of this woman's soul, took hold of Artois and made him feel as if he were infinitely small, as if he could not matter to either. He loved nature, and he loved this woman. And of what use were he and his love to them?

She stretched up her hand to him, and he bent down and took it and held it.

"You said some day I should leave my Garden of Paradise, Emile."

"Don't hurt me with my own words," he said.

"Sit by me."

He sat down on the warm ground close to the heap of stones.

"You said I should leave the garden, but I don't think you meant like this. Did you?"

"No," he said.

"I think you thought we should be unhappy together. Well, we were never that. We were always very happy. I like to think of that. I come up here to think of that; of our happiness, and that we were always kind and tender to each other. Emile, if we hadn't been, if we had ever had even one quarrel, even once said cruel things to each other, I don't think I could bear it now. But we never did. God did watch us then, I think. God was with me so long as Maurice was with me. But I feel as if God had gone away from me with Maurice, as if they had gone together. Do you think any other woman has ever felt like that?"

"I don't think I am worthy to know how some women feel," he said, almost falteringly.

"I thought perhaps God would have stayed with me to help me, but I feel as if He hadn't. I feel as if He had only been able to love me so long as Maurice was with me."

"That feeling will pass away."

"Perhaps when my child comes," she said, very simply.

Artois had not known about the coming of the child, but Hermione did not remember that now.

"Your child!" he said.

"I am glad I came back in time to tell him about the child," she said. "I think at first he was almost frightened. He was such a boy, you see. He was the very spirit of youth, wasn't he? And perhaps that—but at the end he seemed happy. He kissed me as if he loved not only me. Do you understand, Emile? He seemed to kiss me the last time—for us both. Some day I shall tell my baby that."

She was silent for a little while. She looked out over the great view, now falling into a strange repose. This was the land he had loved, the land he had belonged to.

"I should like to hear the 'Pastorale' now," she said, presently. "But Sebastiano—" A new thought seemed to strike her. "I wonder how some women can bear their sorrows," she said. "Don't you, Emile?"

"What sorrows do you mean?" he asked.

"Such a sorrow as poor Lucrezia has to bear. Maurice always loved me. Lucrezia knows that Sebastiano loves some one else. I ought to be trying to comfort Lucrezia. I did try. I did go to pray with her. But that was before. I can't pray now, because I can't feel sure of almost anything. I sometimes think that this happened without God's meaning it to happen."

"God!" Artois said, moved by an irresistible impulse. "And the gods, the old pagan gods?"

"Ah!" she said, understanding. "We called him Mercury. Yes, it is as if he had gone to them, as if they had recalled their messenger. In the spring, before I went to Africa, I often used to think of legends, and put him—my Sicilian—"

She did not go on. Yet her voice had not faltered. There was no contortion of sorrow in her face. There was a sort of soft calmness about her almost akin to the calmness of the evening. It was the more remarkable in her because she was not usually a tranquil woman. Artois had never known her before in deep grief. But he had known her in joy, and then she had been rather enthusiastic than serene. Something of her eager humanity had left her now. She made upon him a strange impression, almost as of some one he had never previously had any intercourse with. And yet she was being wonderfully natural with him, as natural as if she were alone.

"What are you going to do, my friend?" he said, after a long silence.

"Nothing. I have no wish to do anything. I shall just wait—for our child."

"But where will you wait? You cannot wait here. The heat would weaken you. In your condition it would be dangerous."

"He spoke of going. It hurt me for a moment, I remember. I had a wish to stay here forever then. It seemed to me that this little bit of earth and rock was the happiest place in all the world. Yes, I will go, Emile, but I shall come back. I shall bring our child here."

He did not combat this intention then, for he was too thankful to have gained her assent to the departure for which he longed. The further future must take care of itself.

"I will take you to Italy, to Switzerland, wherever you wish to go."

"I have no wish for any other place. But I will go somewhere in Italy. Wherever it is cool and silent will do. But I must be far away from people; and when you have taken me there, dear Emile, you must leave me there."

"Quite alone?"

"Gaspare will be with me. I shall always keep Gaspare. Maurice and he were like two brothers in their happiness. I know they loved each other, and I know Gaspare loves me."

Artois only said:

"I trust the boy."

The word "trust" seemed to wake Hermione into a stronger life.

"Ah, Emile," she said, "once you distrusted the south. I remember your very words. You said, 'I love the south, but I distrust what I love, and I see the south in him.' I want to tell you, I want you to know, how perfect he was always to me. He loved joy, but his joy was always innocent. There was always something of the child in him. He was unconscious of himself. He never understood his own beauty. He never realized that he was worthy of worship. His thought was to reverence and to worship others. He loved life and the sun—oh, how he loved them! I don't think any one can ever have loved life and the sun as he did, ever will love them as he did. But he was never selfish. He was just quite natural. He was the deathless boy. Emile, have you noticed anything about me—since?"

THE END