When the sun came up over the rim of the sea Maurice ceased from his
pretence of sleep, raised himself on his elbow, then sat upright and
looked over the ravine to the rocks of the Sirens' Isle. The name seemed
to him now a fatal name, and everything connected with his sojourn in
Sicily fatal. Surely there had been a malign spirit at work. In this
early morning hour his brain, though unrefreshed by sleep, was almost
unnaturally clear, feverishly busy. Something had met him when he first
set foot in Sicily--so he thought now--had met him with a fixed and evil
purpose. And that purpose had never been abandoned.
Old superstitions, inherited perhaps from a long chain of credulous
Sicilian ancestors, were stirring in him. He did not laugh at his idea,
as a pure-blooded Englishman would have laughed. He pondered it. He
cherished it.
On his very first evening in Sicily the spirit had led him to the wall,
had directed his gaze to the far-off light in the house of the sirens. He
remembered how strangely the little light had fascinated his eyes, and
his mind through his eyes, how he had asked what it was, how, when
Hermione had called him to come in to sleep, he had turned upon the steps
to gaze down on it once more. Then he had not known why he gazed. Now he
knew. The spirit that had met him by the sea in Sicily had whispered to
him to look, and he had obeyed because he could not do otherwise.
He dwelt upon that thought, that he had obeyed because he had been
obliged to obey. It was a palliative to his mental misery and his hatred
of himself. The fatalism that is linked with superstition got hold upon
him and comforted him a little. He had not been a free agent. He had had
to do as he had done. Everything had been arranged so that he might sin.
The night of the fishing had prepared the way for the night of the fair.
If Hermione had stayed--but of course she had not stayed. The spirit that
had kept him in Sicily had sent her across the sea to Africa. In the full
flush of his hot-blooded youth, intoxicated by his first knowledge of the
sun and of love, he had been left quite alone. Newly married, he had been
abandoned by his wife for a good, even perhaps a noble, reason. Still, he
had been abandoned--to himself and the keeping of that spirit. Was it any
wonder that he had fallen? He strove to think that it was not. In the
night he had cowered before Hermione and had been cruel with himself.
Now, in the sunshine, he showed fight. He strove to find excuses for
himself. If he did not find excuses he felt that he could not face the
day, face Hermione in sunlight.
And now that the spirit had led him thus far, surely its work was done,
surely it would leave him alone. He tried to believe that.
Then he thought of Maddalena.
She was there, down there where the rising sun glittered on the sea. She
surely was awake, as he was awake. She was thinking, wondering--perhaps
weeping.
He got up. He could not look at the sea any more. The name "House of the
Sirens" suddenly seemed to him a terrible misnomer, now that he thought
of Maddalena perhaps weeping by the sea.
He had his revenge upon Salvatore, but at what a cost!
Salvatore! The fisherman's face rose up before him. If he ever knew!
Maurice remembered his sensation that already, before he had done the
fisherman any wrong, the fisherman had condemned him. Now there was a
reason for condemnation. He had no physical fear of Salvatore. He was not
a man to be physically afraid of another man. But if Salvatore ever knew
he might tell. He might tell Hermione. That thought brought with it to
Maurice a cold as of winter. The malign spirit might still have a purpose
in connection with him, might still be near him full of intention. He
felt afraid of the Sicily he had loved. He longed to leave it. He thought
of it as an isle of fear, where terrors walked in the midst of the glory
of the sunshine, where fatality lurked beside the purple sea.
"Maurice!"
He started. Hermione was on the steps of the sitting-room.
"You're not sleeping!" he said.
He felt as if she had been there reading all his thoughts.
"And you!" she answered.
"The sun woke me."
He lied instinctively. All his life with her would be a lie now, could
never be anything else--unless----
He looked at her hard and long in the eyes for the first time since they
had met after her return. Suppose he were to tell her, now, at once, in
the stillness, the wonderful innocence and clearness of the dawn! For a
moment he felt that it would be an exquisite relief, a casting down of an
intolerable burden. She had such a splendid nature. She loved sincerity
as she loved God. To her it was the one great essential quality, whose
presence or absence made or marred the beauty of a human soul. He knew
that.
"Why do you look at me like that?" she said, coming down to him with the
look of slow strength that was always characteristic of her.
He dropped his eyes.
"I don't know. How do you mean?"
"As if you had something to tell me."
"Perhaps--perhaps I have," he answered.
He was on the verge, the very verge of confession. She put her arm
through his. When she touched him the impulse waned, but it did not die
utterly away.
"Tell it me," she said. "I love to hear everything you tell me. I don't
think you could ever tell me anything that I should not understand."
"Are you--are you sure?"
"I think so."
"But"--he suddenly remembered some words of hers that, till then, he had
forgotten--"but you had something to tell me."
"Yes."
"I want to hear it."
He could not speak yet. Perhaps presently he would be able to.
"Let us go up to the top of the mountain," she answered. "I feel as if we
could see the whole island from there. And up there we shall get all the
wind of the morning."
They turned towards the steep, bare slope and climbed it, while the sun
rose higher, as if attending them. At the summit there was a heap of
stones.
"Let us sit here," Hermione said. "We can see everything from here, all
the glories of the dawn."
"Yes."
He was so intensely preoccupied by the debate within him that he did not
remember that it was here, among these stones where they were sitting,
that he had hidden the fragments of Hermione's letter from Africa telling
him of her return on the day of the fair.
They sat down with their faces towards the sea. The air up here was
exquisitely cool. In the pellucid clearness of dawn the coast-line looked
enchanted, fairy-like and full of delicate mystery. And its fading, in
the far distance, was like a calling voice. Behind them the ranges of
mountains held a few filmy white clouds, like laces, about their rugged
peaks. The sea was a pale blue stillness, shot with soft grays and mauves
and pinks, and dotted here and there with black specks that were the
boats of fishermen.
Hermione sat with her hands clasped round her knees. Her face, browned by
the African sun, was intense with feeling.
"Yes," she said, at last, "I can tell you here."
She looked at the sea, the coast-line, then turned her head and gazed at
the mountains.
"We looked at them together," she continued--"that last evening before I
went away. Do you remember, Maurice?"
"Yes."
"From the arch. It is better up here. Always, when I am very happy or
very sad, my instinct would be to seek a mountain-top. The sight of great
spaces seen from a height teaches one, I think."
"What?"
"Not to be an egoist in one's joy; not to be a craven in one's sorrow.
You see, a great view suggests the world, the vastness of things, the
multiplicity of life. I think that must be it. And of course it reminds
one, too, that one will soon be going away."
"Going away?"
"Yes. 'The mountains will endure'--but we--!"
"Oh, you mean death."
"Yes. What is it makes one think most of death when--when life, new life,
is very near?"
She had been gazing at the mountains and the sea, but now she turned and
looked into his face.
"Don't you understand what I have to tell you?" she asked.
He shook his head. He was still wondering whether he would dare to tell
her of his sin. And he did not know. At one moment he thought that he
could do it, at another that he would rather throw himself over the
precipice of the mountain than do it.
"I don't understand it at all."
There was a lack of interest in his voice, but she did not notice it. She
was full of the wonder of the morning, the wonder of being again with
him, and the wonder of what she had to tell him.
"Maurice"--she put her hand on his--"the night I was crossing the sea to
Africa I knew. All these days I have kept this secret from you because I
could not write it. It seemed to me too sacred. I felt I must be with you
when I told it. That night upon the sea I was very sad. I could not
sleep. I was on deck looking always back, towards Sicily and you. And
just when the dawn was coming I--I knew that a child was coming, too, a
child of mine and yours."
She was silent. Her hand pressed his, and now she was again looking
towards the sea. And it seemed to him that her face was new, that it was
already the face of a mother.
He said nothing and he did not move. He looked down at the heap of stones
by which they were sitting, and his eyes rested on a piece of paper
covered with writing. It was a fragment of Hermione's letter to him. As
he saw it something sharp and cold like a weapon made of ice, seemed to
be plunged into him. He got up, pulling hard at her hand. She obeyed his
hand.
"What is it?" she said, as they stood together. "You look----"
He had become pale. He knew it.
"Hermione!" he said.
He was actually panting as if he had been running. He moved a few steps
towards the edge of the summit. She followed him.
"You are angry that I didn't tell you! But--I wanted to say it. I wanted
to--to----"
She lifted his hands to her lips.
"Thank you for giving me a child," she said.
Then tears came into his eyes and ran down over his cheeks. That he
should be thanked by her--that scourged the genuine good in him till
surely blood started under the strokes.
"Don't thank me!" he said. "Don't do that! I won't have it!"
His voice sounded angry.
"I won't ever let you thank me for anything," he went on. "You must
understand that."
He was on the edge of some violent, some almost hysterical outburst. He
thought of Gaspare casting himself down in the boat that morning when he
had feared that his padrone was drowned. So he longed to cast himself
down and cry. But he had the strength to check his impulse. Only, the
checking of it seemed to turn him for a moment into something made not of
flesh and blood but of iron. And this thing of iron was voiceless.
She knew that he was feeling intensely and respected his silence. But at
last it began almost to frighten her. The boyish look she loved had gone
out of his face. A stern man stood beside her, a man she had never seen
before.
"Maurice," she said, at length. "What is it? I think you are suffering."
"Yes," he said.
"But--but aren't you glad? Surely you are glad?"
To her the word seemed mean, poverty-stricken. She changed it.
"Surely you are thankful?"
"I don't know," he answered, at last. "I am thinking that I don't know
that I am worthy to be a father."
He himself had fixed a limit. Now, God was putting a period to his wild
youth. And the heart--was that changed within him?
Too much was happening. The cup was being filled too full. A great
longing came to him to get away, far away, and be alone. If it had been
any other day he would have gone off into the mountains, by himself, have
stayed out till night came, have walked, climbed, till he was exhausted.
But to-day he could not do that. And soon Artois would be coming. He felt
as if something must snap in brain or heart.
And he had not slept. How he wished that he could sleep for a little
while and forget everything. In sleep one knows nothing. He longed to be
able to sleep.
"I understand that," she said. "But you are worthy, my dear one."
When she said that he knew that he could never tell her.
"I must try," he muttered. "I'll try--from to-day."
She did not talk to him any more. Her instinct told her not to. Almost
directly they were walking down to the priest's house. She did not know
which of them had moved first.
When they got there they found Lucrezia up. Her eyes were red, but she
smiled at Hermione. Then she looked at the padrone with alarm. She
expected him to blame her for having disobeyed his orders of the day
before. But he had forgotten all about that.
"Get breakfast, Lucrezia," Hermione said. "We'll have it on the terrace.
And presently we must have a talk. The sick signore is coming up to-day
for collazione. We must have a very nice collazione, but something
wholesome."
"Si, signora."
Lucrezia went away to the kitchen thankfully. She had heard bad news of
Sebastiano yesterday in the village. He was openly in love with the girl
in the Lipari Isles. Her heart was almost breaking, but the return of the
padrona comforted her a little. Now she had some one to whom she could
tell her trouble, some one who would sympathize.
"I'll go and take a bath, Hermione," Maurice said.
And he, too, disappeared.
Hermione went to talk to Gaspare and tell him what to get in Marechiaro.
When breakfast was ready Maurice came back looking less pale, but still
unboyish. All the bright sparkle to which Hermione was accustomed had
gone out of him. She wondered why. She had expected the change in him to
be a passing thing, but it persisted.
At breakfast it was obviously difficult for him to talk. She sought a
reason for his strangeness. Presently she thought again of Artois. Could
he be the reason? Or was Maurice now merely preoccupied by that great,
new knowledge that there would soon be a third life mingled with theirs?
She wondered exactly what he felt about that. He was really such a boy at
heart despite his set face of to-day. Perhaps he dreaded the idea of
responsibility. His agitation upon the mountain-top had been intense.
Perhaps he was rendered unhappy by the thought of fatherhood. Or was it
Emile?
When breakfast was over, and he was smoking, she said to him:
"Maurice, I want to ask you something."
A startled look came into his eyes.
"What?" he said, quickly.
He threw his cigarette away and turned towards her, with a sort of
tenseness that suggested to her a man bracing himself for some ordeal.
"Only about Emile."
"Oh!" he said.
He took another cigarette, and his attitude at once looked easier. She
wondered why.
"You don't mind about Emile being here, do you?"
Maurice was nearly answering quickly that he was delighted to welcome
him. But a suddenly born shrewdness prevented him. To-day, like a guilty
man, he was painfully conscious, painfully alert. He knew that Hermione
was wondering about him, and realized that her question afforded him an
opportunity to be deceptive and yet to seem quite natural and truthful.
He could not be as he had been, to-day. The effort was far too difficult
for him. Hermione's question showed him a plausible excuse for his
peculiarity of demeanor and conduct. He seized it.
"I think it was very natural for you to bring him," he answered.
He lit the cigarette. His hand was trembling slightly.
"But--but you had rather I hadn't brought him?"
As Maurice began to act a part an old feeling returned to him, and almost
turned his lie into truth.
"You could hardly expect me to wish to have Artois with us here, could
you, Hermione?" he said, slowly.
She scarcely knew whether she were most pained or pleased. She was pained
that anything she had done had clouded his happiness, but she was
intensely glad to think he loved to be quite alone with her.
"No, I felt that. But I felt, too, as if it would be cruel to stop short,
unworthy in us."
"In us?"
"Yes. You let me go to Africa. You might have asked me, you might even
have told me, not to go. I did not think of it at the time. Everything
went so quickly. But I have thought of it since. And, knowing that,
realizing it, I feel that you had your part, a great part, in Emile's
rescue. For I do believe, Maurice, that if I had not gone he would have
died."
"Then I am glad you went."
He spoke perfunctorily, almost formally. Hermione felt chilled.
"It seemed to me that, having begun to do a good work, it would be finer,
stronger, to carry it quite through, to put aside our own desires and
think of another who had passed through a great ordeal. Was I wrong,
Maurice? Emile is still very weak, very dependent. Ought I to have said,
'Now I see you're not going to die, I'll leave you at once.' Wouldn't it
have been rather selfish, even rather brutal?"
His reply startled her.
"Have you--have you ever thought of where we are?" he said.
"Where we are!"
"Of the people we are living among?"
"I don't think I understand."
He cleared his throat.
"They're Sicilians. They don't see things as the English do," he said.
There was a silence. Hermione felt a heat rush over her, over all her
body and face. She did not speak, because, if she had, she might have
said something vehement, even headstrong, such as she had never said,
surely never would say, to Maurice.
"Of course I understand. It's not that," he added.
"No, it couldn't be that," she said. "You needn't tell me."
The hot feeling stayed with her. She tried to control it.
"You surely can't mind what ignorant people out here think of an utterly
innocent action!" she said, at last, very quietly.
But even as she spoke she remembered the Sicilian blood in him.
"You have minded it!" she said. "You do mind now."
And suddenly she felt very tender over him, as she might have felt over a
child. In his face she could not see the boy to-day, but his words set
the boy, the inmost nature of the boy that he still surely was, before
her.
The sense of humor in her seemed to be laughing and wiping away a tear at
the same time.
She moved her chair close to his.
"Maurice," she said. "Do you know that sometimes you make me feel
horribly old and motherly?"
"Do I?" he said.
"You do to-day, and yet--do you know that I have been thinking since I
came back that you are looking older, much older than when I went away?"
"Is that Artois?" he said, looking over the wall to the mountain-side
beyond the ravine.
Hermione got up, leaned upon the wall, and followed his eyes.
"I think it must be. I told Gaspare to go to the hotel when he fetched
the provisions in Marechiaro and tell Emile it would be best to come up
in the cool. Yes, it is he, and Gaspare is with him! Maurice, you don't
mind so very much?"
She put her arm through his.
"These people can't talk when they see how ill he looks. And if they
do--oh, Maurice, what does it matter? Surely there's only one thing in
the world that matters, and that is whether one can look one's own
conscience in the face and say, 'I've nothing to be ashamed of!'"
Maurice longed to get away from the touch of her arm. He remembered the
fragment of paper he had seen among the stones on the mountain-side. He
must go up there alone directly he had a moment of freedom. But
now--Artois! He stared at the distant donkeys. His brain felt dry and
shrivelled, his body both feverish and tired. How could he support this
long day's necessities? It seemed to him that he had not the strength and
resolution to endure them. And Artois was so brilliant! Maurice thought
of him at that moment as a sort of monster of intellectuality, terrifying
and repellent.
"Don't you think so?" Hermione said.
"I dare say," he answered. "But I dare say, I suppose--very few of us can
do that. We can't expect to be perfect, and other people oughtn't to
expect it of us."
His voice had changed. Before, it had been almost an accusing voice and
insincere. Now it was surely a voice that pleaded, and it was absolutely
sincere. Hermione remembered how in London long ago the humility of
Maurice had touched her. He had stood out from the mass of conceited men
because of his beauty and his simple readiness to sit at the feet of
others. And surely the simplicity, the humility, still persisted
beautifully in him.
"I don't think I should ever expect anything of you that you wouldn't
give me," she said to him. "Anything of loyalty, of straightness, or of
manhood. Often you seem to me a boy, and yet, I know, if a danger came to
me, or a trouble, I could lean on you and you would never fail me. That's
what a woman loves to feel when she has given herself to a man, that he
knows how to take care of her, and that he cares to take care of her."
Her body was touching his. He felt himself stiffen. The mental pain he
suffered under the lash of her words affected his body, and his knowledge
of the necessity to hide all that was in his mind caused his body to long
for isolation, to shrink from any contact with another.
"I hope," he said, trying to make his voice natural and simple----"I hope
you'll never be in trouble or in danger, Hermione."
"I don't think I could mind very much if you were there, if I could just
touch your hand."
"Here they come!" he said. "I hope Artois isn't very tired with the ride.
We ought to have had Sebastiano here to play the 'Pastorale' for him."
"Ah! Sebastiano!" said Hermione. "He's playing it for some one else in
the Lipari Islands. Poor Lucrezia! Maurice, I love Sicily and all things
Sicilian. You know how much! But--but I'm glad you've got some drops of
English blood in your veins. I'm glad you aren't all Sicilian."
"Come," he said. "Let us go to the arch and meet him."