Chapter 34

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?"

"What, Hermione?"

"How much older I look now. He was like my youth, and my youth has gone with him."

"Will it not revive--when--?"

"No, never. I don't wish it to. Gaspare gathered roses, all the best roses from his father's little bit of land, to throw into the grave. And I want my youth to lie there with my Sicilian under Gaspare's roses. I feel as if that would be a tender companionship. I gave everything to him when he was alive, and I don't want to keep anything back now. I would like the sun to be with him under Gaspare's roses. And yet I know he's elsewhere. I can't explain. But two days ago at dawn I heard a child playing the tarantella, and it seemed to me as if my Sicilian had been taken away by the blue, by the blue of Sicily. I shall often come back to the blue. I shall often sit here again. For it was here that I heard the beating of the heart of youth. And there's no other music like that. Is there, Emile?"

"No," he said.

Had the music been wild? He suspected that the harmony she worshipped had passed on into the hideous crash of discords. And whose had been the fault? Who creates human nature as it is? In what workshop, of what brain, are forged the mad impulses of the wild heart of youth, are mixed together subtly the divine aspirations which leap like the winged Mercury to the heights, and the powerful appetites which lead the body into the dark places of the earth? And why is the Giver of the divine the permitter of those tremendous passions, which are not without their glory, but which wreck so many human lives?

Perhaps a reason may be found in the sacredness of pity. Evil and agony are the manure from which spring some of the whitest lilies that have ever bloomed beneath that enigmatic blue which roofs the terror and the triumph of the world. And while human beings know how to pity, human beings will always believe in a merciful God.

A strange thought to come into such a mind as Artois's! Yet it came in the twilight, and with it a sense of tears such as he had never felt before.

With the twilight had come a little wind from Etna. It made something near him flutter, something white, a morsel of paper among the stones by which he was sitting. He looked down and saw writing, and bent to pick the paper up.

"Emile may leave at once. But there is no good boat till the 10th. We shall take that...."

Hermione's writing!

Artois understood at once. Maurice had had Hermione's letter. He had known they were coming from Africa, and he had gone to the fair despite that knowledge. He had gone with the girl who wept and prayed beside the sea.

His hand closed over the paper.

"What is it, Emile? What have you picked up?"

"Only a little bit of paper."

He spoke quietly, tore it into tiny fragments and let them go upon the wind.

"When will you come with me, Hermione? When shall we go to Italy?"

"I am saying 'a rivederci' now"--she dropped her voice--"and buon riposo."

The white fragments blew away into the gathering night, separated from one another by the careful wind.

* * * * *

Three days later Hermione and Artois left Sicily, and Gaspare, leaning out of the window of the train, looked his last on the Isle of the Sirens. A fisherman on the beach by the inlet, not Salvatore, recognized the boy and waved a friendly hand. But Gaspare did not see him.

There they had fished! There they had bathed! There they had drunk the good red wine of Amato and called for brindisi! There they had lain on the warm sand of the caves! There they had raced together to Madre Carmela and her frying-pan! There they had shouted "O sole mio!"

There--there they had been young together!

The shining sea was blotted out from the boy's eyes by tears.

"Povero signorino!" he whispered. "Povero signorino!"

And then, as his "Paese" vanished, he added for the last time the words which he had whispered in the dawn by the grave of his padrone, "Dio ci mandi buon riposo in Paradiso."