They did not talk as they went down the steep mountain-side, but when
they reached the entrance of the ravine Gaspare stopped abruptly and took
his cold hand away from his padrona's hand.
"Signora," he said, almost in a whisper. "Let me go alone!"
They were under the shade of the trees here and it was much darker than
upon the mountain-side. Hermione could not see the boy's face plainly.
She came close up to him.
"Why do you want to go alone?" she asked.
Without knowing it, she, too, spoke in an under-voice.
"What is it you are afraid of?" she added.
"I am not afraid."
"Yes," she said, "you are. Your hand is quite cold."
"Let me go alone, signora."
"No, Gaspare. There is nothing to be afraid of, I believe. But if--if
there should have been an accident, I ought to be there. The padrone is
my husband, remember."
She went on and he followed her.
Hermione had spoken firmly, even almost cheerfully, to comfort the boy,
whose uneasiness was surely greater than the occasion called for. So many
little things may happen to delay a man. And Maurice might really have
made the détour to Marechiaro on his way home. If he had, then they would
miss him by taking this path through the ravine. Hermione knew that, but
she did not hesitate to take it. She could not remain inactive to-night.
Patience was out of her reach. It was only by making a strong effort that
she had succeeded in waiting that short time on the terrace. Now she
could wait no longer. She was driven. Although she had not yet sincerely
acknowledged it to herself, fear was gradually taking possession of her,
a fear such as she had never yet known or even imagined.
She had never yet known or imagined such a fear. That she felt. But she
had another feeling, contradictory, surely. It began to seem to her as if
this fear, which was now coming upon her, had been near her for a long
time, ever since the night when she knew that she was going to Africa.
Had she not even expressed it to Maurice?
Those beautiful days and nights of perfect happiness--can they ever come
again? Had she not thought that many times? Was it not the voice of this
fear which had whispered those words, and others like them, to her mind?
And had there not been omens? Had there not been omens?
She heard Gaspare's feet behind her in the ravine, and it seemed to her
that she could tell by the sound of them upon the many little loose
stones that he was wild with impatience, that he was secretly cursing her
for obliging him to go so slowly. Had he been alone he would have sped
down with a rapidity almost like that of travelling light. She was
strong, active. She was going fast. Instinctively she went fast. But she
was a woman, not a boy.
"I can't help it, Gaspare!"
She was saying that mentally, saying it again and again, as she hurried
onward.
Had there not been omens?
That last letter of hers, whose loss had prevented Maurice from meeting
her on her return, from welcoming her! When she had reached the station
of Cattaro, and had not seen him upon the platform, she had felt "I have
lost him." Afterwards, directly almost, she had laughed at the feeling as
absurd. But she had had it. And then, when at last he had come, she had
been moved to suggest that he might like to sleep outside upon the
terrace. And he had agreed to the suggestion. They had not resumed their
old, sweet relation of husband and wife.
Had there not been omens?
And only an hour ago, scarcely that, not that, she had knelt before the
Madonna della Rocca and she had prayed, she had prayed passionately for
deserted women, for women who loved and who had lost those whom they
loved.
The fear was upon her fully now, and she fully knew that it was. Why had
she prayed for lonely, deserted women? What had moved her to such a
prayer?
"Was I praying for myself?"
At that thought a physical weakness came to her, and she felt as if she
could not go on. By the side of the path, growing among pointed rocks,
there was a gnarled olive-tree, whose branches projected towards her.
Before she knew what she was doing she had caught hold of one and stood
still. So suddenly she had stopped that Gaspare, unprepared, came up
against her in the dark.
"Signora! What is the matter?"
His voice was surely angry. For a moment she thought of telling him to go
on alone, quickly.
"What is it, signora?"
"Nothing--only--I've walked so fast. Wait one minute!"
She felt the agony of his impatience, and it seemed to her that she was
treating him very cruelly to-night.
"You know, Gaspare," she said, "it's not easy for women--this rough
walking, I mean. We've got our skirts."
She laughed. How unnatural, how horrible her laugh sounded in the
darkness! He did not say any more. She knew he was wondering why she had
laughed like that. After a moment she let go the branch. But her legs
were trembling, and she stumbled when she began to walk on.
"Signora, you are tired already. You had better let me go alone."
For the first time she told him a lie.
"I should be afraid to wait here all by myself in the night," she said.
"I couldn't do that."
"Who would come?"
"I should be frightened."
She thought she saw him look at her incredulously in the dark, but was
not sure.
"Be kind to me to-night, Gaspare!" she said.
She felt a sudden passionate need of gentleness, of support, a woman's
need of sympathy.
"Won't you?" she added.
"Signora!" he said.
His voice sounded shocked, she thought; but in a moment, when they came
to an awkward bit of the path, he put his hand under her arm, and very
carefully, almost tenderly, helped her over it. Tears rushed into her
eyes. For such a small thing she was crying! She turned her head so that
Gaspare should not see, and tried to control her emotion. That terrible
question kept on returning to her heart.
"Was I praying for myself when I prayed at the shrine of the Madonna
della Rocca?"
Hermione was gifted, or cursed, with imagination, and as she never made
use of her imaginative faculty in any of the arts, it was, perhaps, too
much at the service of her own life. In happiness it was a beautiful
handmaid, helping her to greater joy, but in unhappy, or in only anxious
moments, it was, as it usually is, a cursed thing. It stood at her elbow,
then, like a demon full of suggestions that were terrible. With an
inventiveness that was diabolic it brought vividly before her scenes to
shake the stoutest courage. It painted the future black. It showed her
the world as a void. And in that void she was as something falling,
falling, yet reaching nothing.
Now it was with her in the ravine, and as she asked questions, terrible
questions, it gave her terrible answers. And it reminded her of other
omens--it told her these facts were really omens--which till now she had
not thought of.
Why had both she and Maurice been led to think and to speak of death
to-day?
Upon the mountain-top the thought of death had come to her when she
looked at the glory of the dawn. She had said to Maurice, "'The mountains
will endure'--but we!" Of course it was a truism, such a thing as she
might say at any time when she was confronted by the profound stability
of nature. Thousands of people had said much the same thing on thousands
of occasions. Yet now the demon at her elbow whispered to her that the
remark had had a peculiar significance. She had even said, "What is it
makes one think most of death when--when life, new life, is very near?"
Existence is made up of loss and gain. New beings rush into life day by
day and hour by hour. Birth is about us, but death is about us too. And
when we are given something, how often is something also taken from us!
Was that to be her fate?
And Maurice--he had been led to speak of death, afterwards, just as he
was going away to the sea. She recalled his words, or the demon whispered
them over to her:
"'One can never tell what will happen--suppose one of us were to die
here? Don't you think it would be good to lie there where we lay this
afternoon, under the oak-trees, in sight of Etna and the sea? I think it
would."
They were his very last words, his who was so full of life, who scarcely
ever seemed to realize the possibility of death. All through the day
death had surely been in the air about them. She remembered her dream, or
quasi-dream. In it she had spoken. She had muttered an appeal, "Don't
leave me alone!" and at another time she had tried to realize Maurice in
England and had failed. She had felt as if Sicily would never let him go.
And when she had spoken her thought he had hinted that Sicily could only
keep him by holding him in arms of earth, holding him in those arms that
keep the body of man forever.
Perhaps it was ordained that her Sicilian should never leave the island
that he loved. In all their Sicilian days how seldom had she thought of
their future life together in England! Always she had seen herself with
Maurice in the south. He had seemed to belong to the south, and she had
brought him to the south. And now--would the south let him go? The
thought of the sirens of legend flitted through her mind. They called men
to destruction. She imagined them sitting among the rocks near the Casa
della Sirene, calling--calling to her Sicilian.
Long ago, when she first knew him well and loved his beauty, she had
sometimes thought of him as a being of legend. She had let her fancy play
about him tenderly, happily. He had been Mercury, Endymion, a dancing
faun, Cupid vanishing from Psyche as the dawn came. And now she let a
cruel fancy have its will for a moment. She imagined the sirens calling
among the rocks, and Maurice listening to their summons, and going to his
destruction. The darkness of the ravine helped the demon who hurried with
her down the narrow path, whispering in her ears. But though she yielded
for a time to the nightmare spell, common-sense had not utterly deserted
her, and presently it made its voice heard. She began to say to herself
that in giving way to such fantastic fears she was being unworthy of
herself, almost contemptible. In former times she had never been a
foolish woman or weak. She had, on the contrary, been strong and
sensible, although unconventional and enthusiastic. Many people had
leaned upon her, even strong people. Artois was one. And she had never
yet failed any one.
"I must not fail myself," she suddenly thought. "I must not be a fool
because I love."
She loved very much, and she had been separated from her lover very soon.
Her eagerness to return to him had been so intense that it had made her
afraid. Yet she had returned, been with him again. Her fear in Africa
that they would perhaps never be together again in their Sicilian home
had been groundless. She remembered how it had often tormented her,
especially at night in the dark. She had passed agonizing hours, for no
reason. Her imagination had persecuted her. Now it was trying to
persecute her more cruelly. Suddenly she resolved not to let it have its
way. Why was she so frightened at a delay that might be explained in a
moment and in the simplest manner? Why was she frightened at all?
Gaspare's foot struck a stone and sent it flying down the path past her.
Ah! it had been Gaspare. His face, his manner, had startled her, had
first inclined her to fear.
"Gaspare!" she said.
"Si, signora?"
"Come up beside me. There's room now."
The boy joined her.
"Gaspare," she continued, "do you know that when we meet the padrone, you
and I, we shall look like two fools?"
"Meet the padrone?" he repeated, sullenly.
"Yes. He'll laugh at us for rushing down like this. He'll think we've
gone quite mad."
Silence was the only response she had.
"Won't he?" she asked.
"Non lo so."
"Oh, Gaspare!" she exclaimed. "Don't--don't be like this to-night. Do you
know that you are frightening me?"
He did not answer.
"What is the matter with you? What has been the matter with you all day?"
"Niente."
His voice was hard, and he fell behind again.
Hermione knew that he was concealing something from her. She wondered
what it was. It must be something surely in connection with his anxiety.
Her mind worked rapidly. Maurice--the sea--bathing--Gaspare's
fear--Maurice and Gaspare had bathed together often while she had been in
Africa.
"Gaspare," she said. "Walk beside me--I wish it."
He came up reluctantly.
"You've bathed with the padrone lately?"
"Si, signora."
"Many times?"
"Si, signora."
"Have you ever noticed that he was tired in the sea, or afterwards, or
that bathing seemed to make him ill in any way?"
"Tired, signora?"
"You know there's a thing, in English we call it cramp. Sometimes it
seizes the best swimmers. It's a dreadful pain, I believe, and the limbs
refuse to move. You've never--when he's been swimming with you, the
padrone has never had anything of that kind, has he? It wasn't that which
made you frightened this evening when he didn't come?"
She had unwittingly given the boy the chance to save her from any worse
suspicion. With Sicilian sharpness he seized it. Till now he had been in
a dilemma, and it was that which had made him sullen, almost rude. His
position was a difficult one. He had to keep his padrone's confidence.
Yet he could not--physically he could not--stay on the mountain when he
knew that some tragedy was probably being enacted, or had already been
enacted by the sea. He was devoured by an anxiety which he could not
share and ought not to show because it was caused by the knowledge which
he was solemnly pledged to conceal. This remark of Hermione gave him a
chance of shifting it from the shoulders of the truth to the shoulders of
a lie. He remembered the morning of sirocco, his fear, his passion of
tears in the boat. The memory seemed almost to make the lie he was going
to tell the truth.
"Si, signora. It was that."
His voice was no longer sullen.
"The padrone had an attack like that?"
Again the terrible fear came back to her.
"Signora, it was one morning."
"Used you to bathe in the morning?"
A hot flush came in Gaspare's face, but Hermione did not see it in the
darkness.
"Once we did, signora. We had been fishing."
"Go on. Tell me!"
Then Gaspare related the incident of his padrone's sinking in the sea.
Only he made Maurice's travesty appear a real catastrophe. Hermione
listened with painful attention. So Maurice had nearly died, had been
into the jaws of death, while she had been in Africa! Her fears there had
been less ill-founded than she had thought. A horror came upon her as she
heard Gaspare's story.
"And then, signora, I cried," he ended. "I cried."
"You cried?"
"I thought I never could stop crying again."
How different from an English boy's reticence was this frank confession!
and yet what English boy was ever more manly than this mountain lad?
"Why--but then you saved the padrone's life! God bless you!"
Hermione had stopped, and she now put her hand on Gaspare's arm.
"Oh, signora, there were two of us. We had the boat."
"But"--another thought came to her--"but, Gaspare, after such a thing as
that, how could you let the padrone go down to bathe alone?"
Gaspare, a moment before credited with a faithful action, was now to be
blamed for a faithless one. For neither was he responsible, if strict
truth were to be regarded. But he had insisted on saving his padrone from
the sea when it was not necessary. And he knew his own faithfulness and
was secretly proud of it, as a good woman knows and is proud of her
honor. He had borne the praise therefore. But one thing he could not
bear, and that was an imputation of faithlessness in his stewardship.
"It was not my fault, signora!" he cried, hotly. "I wanted to go. I
begged to go, but the padrone would not let me."
"Why not?"
Hermione, peering in the darkness, thought she saw the ugly look come
again into the boy's face.
"Why not, signora?"
"Yes, why not?"
"He wished me to stay with you. He said: 'Stay with the padrona, Gaspare.
She will be all alone.'"
"Did he? Well, Gaspare, it is not your fault. But I never thought it was.
You know that."
She had heard in his voice that he was hurt.
"Come! We must go on!"
Her fear was now tangible. It had a definite form, and with every moment
it grew greater in the night, towering over her, encompassing her about.
For she had hoped to meet Maurice coming up the ravine, and, with each
moment that went by, her hope of hearing his footstep decreased, her
conviction that something untoward must have occurred grew more solid.
Only once was her terror abated. When they were not far from the mouth of
the ravine Gaspare suddenly seized her arm from behind.
"Gaspare! What is it?" she said, startled.
He held up one hand.
"Zitta!" he whispered.
Hermione listened, holding her breath. It was a silent night, windless
and calm. The trees had no voices, the watercourse was dry, no longer
musical with the falling stream. Even the sea was dumb, or, if it were
not, murmured so softly that these two could not hear it where they
stood. And now, in this dark silence, they heard a faint sound. It was
surely a foot-fall upon stones. Yes, it was.
By the fierce joy that burst up in her heart Hermione measured her
previous fear.
"It's he! It's the padrone!"
She put her face close to Gaspare's and whispered the words. He nodded.
His eyes were shining.
"Andiamo!" he whispered back.
With a boy's impetuosity he wished to rush on and meet the truant pilgrim
from the sea, but Hermione held him back. She could not bear to lose that
sweet sound, the foot-fall on the stones, coming nearer every moment.
"No. Let's wait for him here! Let's give him a surprise."
"Va bene!"
His body was quivering with suppressed movement. But they waited. The
step was slow, or so it seemed to Hermione as she listened again, like
the step of a tired man. Maurice seldom walked like that, she thought. He
was light-footed, swift. His actions were ardent as were his eyes. But it
must be he! Of course it was he! He was languid after a long swim, and
was walking slowly for fear of getting hot. That must be it. The walker
drew nearer, the crunch of the stones was louder under his feet.
"It isn't the padrone!"
Gaspare had spoken. All the light had gone out of his eyes.
"Si! Si! It is he!"
Hermione contradicted him.
"No, signora. It is a contadino."
Her joy was failing. Although she contradicted Gaspare, she began to feel
that he was right. This step was heavy, weary, an old man's step. It
could not be her Mercury coming up to his home on the mountain. But still
she waited. Presently there detached itself from the darkness a faint
figure, bent, crowned with a long Sicilian cap.
"Andiamo!"
This time she did not keep Gaspare back. Without a word they went on. As
they came to the figure it stopped. She did not even glance at it, but as
she went by it she heard an old, croaky voice say:
"Benedicite!"
Never before had the Sicilian greeting sounded horrible in her ears. She
did not reply to it. She could not. And Gaspare said nothing. They
hastened on in silence till they reached the high-road by Isola Bella,
the road where Maurice had met Maddalena on the morning of the fair.
It was deserted. The thick white dust upon it looked ghastly at their
feet. Now they could hear the faint and regular murmur of the oily sea by
which the fishermen's boats were drawn up, and discern, far away on the
right, the serpentine lights of Cattaro.
"Where do you go to bathe?" Hermione asked, always speaking in a hushed
voice. "Here, by Isola Bella?"
She looked down at the rocks of the tiny island, at the dimness of the
spreading sea. Till now she had always gloried in its beauty, but
to-night it looked to her mysterious and cruel.
"No, signora."
"Where then?"
"Farther on--a little. I will go."
His voice was full of hesitation. He did not know what to do.
"Please, signora, stay here. Sit on the bank by the line. I will go and
be back in a moment. I can run. It is better. If you come we shall take
much longer."
"Go, Gaspare!" she said. "But--stop--where do you bathe exactly?"
"Quite near, signora."
"In that little bay underneath the promontory where the Casa delle Sirene
is?"
"Sometimes there and sometimes farther on by the caves. A rivederla!"
The white dust flew up from the road as he disappeared.
Hermione did not sit down on the bank. She had never meant to wait by
Isola Bella, but she let him go because what he had said was true, and
she did not wish to delay him. If anything serious had occurred every
moment might be valuable. After a short pause she followed him. As she
walked she looked continually at the sea. Presently the road mounted and
she came in sight of the sheltered bay in which Maurice had heard
Maddalena's cry when he was fishing. A stone wall skirted the road here.
Some twenty feet below was the railway line laid on a bank which sloped
abruptly to the curving beach. She leaned her hands upon the wall and
looked down, thinking she might see Gaspare. But he was not there. The
dark, still sea, protected by the two promontories, and by an islet of
rock in the middle of the bay, made no sound here. It lay motionless as
a pool in a forest under the stars. To the left the jutting land, with
its turmoil of jagged rocks, was a black mystery. As she stood by the
wall, Hermione felt horribly lonely, horribly deserted. She wished she
had not let Gaspare go. Yet she dreaded his return. What might he have to
tell her? Now that she was here by the sea she felt how impossible it was
for Maurice to have been delayed upon the shore. For there was no one
here. The fishermen were up in the village. The contadini had long since
left their work. No one passed upon the road. There was nothing, there
could have been nothing to keep a man here. She felt as if it were
already midnight, the deepest hour of darkness and of silence.
As she took her hands from the wall, and turned to go on up the hill to
the point which commanded the open sea and the beginning of the Straits
of Messina, she was terrified. Suspicion was hardening into certainty.
Something dreadful must have happened to Maurice.
Her legs had begun to tremble again. All her body felt weak and
incapable, like the body of an old person whose life was drawing to an
end. The hill, not very steep, faced her like a precipice, and it seemed
to her that she would not be able to mount it. In the road the deep dust
surely clung to her feet, refusing to let her lift them. And she felt
sick and contemptible, no longer her own mistress either physically or
mentally. The voices within her that strove to whisper commonplaces of
consolation, saying that Maurice had gone to Marechiaro, or that he had
taken another path home, not the path from Isola Bella, brought her no
comfort. The thing within her soul that knew what she, the human being
containing it, did not know, told her that her terror had its reason,
that she was not suffering in this way without cause. It said, "Your
terror is justified."
[Illustration: "SHE COULD SEE VAGUELY THE SHORE BY THE CAVES WHERE THE
FISHERMEN HAD SLEPT IN THE DAWN"]
At last she was at the top of the hill, and could see vaguely the shore
by the caves where the fishermen had slept in the dawn. To her right was
the path which led to the wall of rock connecting the Sirens' Isle with
the main-land. She glanced at it, but did not think of following it.
Gaspare must have followed the descending road. He must be down there on
that beach searching, calling his padrone's name, perhaps. She began to
descend slowly, still physically distressed. True to her fixed idea that
if there had been a disaster it must be connected with the sea, she
walked always close to the wall, and looked always down to the sea.
Within a short time, two or three minutes, she came in sight of the
lakelike inlet, a miniature fiord which lay at the feet of the woods
where hid the Casa delle Sirene. The water here looked black like ebony.
She stared down at it and saw a boat lying on the shore. Then she gazed
for a moment at the trees opposite from which always, till to-night, had
shone the lamp which she and Maurice had seen from the terrace. All was
dark. The thickly growing trees did not move. Secret and impenetrable
seemed to her the hiding-place they made. She could scarcely imagine that
any one lived among them. Yet doubtless the inhabitants of the Casa delle
Sirene were sleeping quietly there while she wandered on the white road
accompanied by her terror.
She had stopped for a minute, and was just going to walk on, when she
heard a sound that, though faint and distant, was sharp and imperative.
It seemed to her to be a violent beating on wood, and it was followed by
the calling of a voice. She waited. The sound died away. She listened,
straining her ears. In this absolutely still night sound travelled far.
At first she had no idea from what direction came this noise which had
startled her. But almost immediately it was repeated, and she knew that
it must be some one striking violently and repeatedly upon wood--probably
a wooden door.
Then again the call rang out. This time she recognized, or thought she
recognized, Gaspare's voice raised angrily, fiercely, in a summons to
someone. She looked across the ebon water at the ebon mass of the trees
on its farther side, and realized swiftly that Gaspare must be there. He
had gone to the only house between the two bathing-places to ask if its
inhabitants had seen anything of the padrone.
This seemed to her to be a very natural and intelligent action, and she
waited eagerly and watched, hoping to see a light shine out as
Salvatore--yes, that had been the name told to her by Gaspare--as
Salvatore got up from sleep and came to open. He might know something,
know at least at what hour Maurice had left the sea.
Again came the knocking and the call, again--four, five times. Then there
was a long silence. Always the darkness reigned, unbroken by the
earth-bound star, the light she looked for. The silence began to seem to
her interminable. At first she thought that perhaps Gaspare was having a
colloquy with the owner of the house, was learning something of Maurice.
But presently she began to believe that there could be no one in the
house, and that he had realized this. If so, he would have to return
either to the road or the beach. She could see no boat moored to the
shore opposite. He would come by the wall of rock, then, unless he swam
the inlet. She went back a little way to a point from which dimly she saw
the wall, and waited there a few minutes. Surely it would be dangerous to
traverse that wall on such a dark night! Now, to her other fear was added
fear for Gaspare. If an accident were to happen to him! Suddenly she
hastened back to the path which led from the high-road along the spit of
cultivated land to the wall, turned from the road, traversed the spit,
and went down till she stood at the edge of the wall. She looked at the
black rock, the black sea that lay motionless far down on either side of
it. Surely Gaspare would not venture to come this way. It seemed to her
that to do so would mean death, or, if not that, a dangerous fall into
the sea--and probably there were rocks below, hidden under the surface of
the water. But Gaspare was daring. She knew that. He was as active as a
cat and did not know the meaning of fear for his own safety. He might--
Out of the darkness on the land beyond the wall, something came, the form
of some one hurrying.
"Gaspare!"
The form stopped.
"Gaspare!"
"Signora! What are you doing here? Madonna!"
"Gaspare, don't come this way! You are not to come this way."
"Why are you here, signora? I told you to wait for me by Isola Bella."
The startled voice was hard.
"You are not to cross the wall. I won't have it."
"The wall--it is nothing, signora. I have crossed it many times. It is
nothing for a man."
"In the day, perhaps, but at night--don't, Gaspare--d'you hear me?--you
are not--"
She stopped, holding her breath, for she saw him coming lightly, poised
on bare feet, straight as an arrow, and balancing himself with his
out-stretched arms.
"Ah!"
She had shrieked out. Just as he was midway Gaspare had looked down at
the sea--the open sea on the far side of the wall. Instantly his foot
slipped, he lost his balance and fell. She thought he had gone, but he
caught the wall with his hands, hung for a moment suspended above the
sea, then raised himself, as a gymnast does on a parallel bar, slowly
till his body was above the wall. Then--Hermione did not know how--he was
beside her.
She caught hold of him with both hands. She felt furiously angry.
"How dare you disobey me?" she said, panting and trembling. "How dare
you--"
But his eyes silenced her. She broke off, staring at him. All the healthy
color had left his face. There was a leaden hue upon it.
"Gaspare--are you--you aren't hurt--you--"
"Let me go, signora! Let me go!"
She let him go instantly.
"What is it? Where are you going?"
He pointed to the beach.
"To the boat. There's--down there in the water--there's something in the
water!"
"Something?" she said.
"Wait in the road."
He rushed away from her, and she heard him saying: "Madonna! Madonna!
Madonna!"--crying it out as he ran.
Something in the water! She felt as if her heart stood still for a
century, then at last beat again somewhere up in her throat, choking her.
Something--could Gaspare have seen what? She moved on a step. One of her
feet was on the wall, the other still on the firm earth. She leaned down
and tried to look over into the sea beyond, the sea close to the wall.
But her head swam. Had she not moved back hastily, obedient to an
imperious instinct of self-preservation, she would have fallen. She sat
down, there where she had been standing, and dropped her face into her
hands close to her knees, and kept quite still. She felt as if she were
in a train going through a tunnel. Her ears were full of a roaring
clamor. How long she sat and heard tumult she did not know. When she
looked up the night seemed to her to be much darker than before,
intensely dark. Yet all the stars were there in the sky. No clouds had
come to hide them. She tried to get up quickly, but there was surely
something wrong with her body. It would not obey her will at first.
Presently she lay down, turned over on her side, put both hands on the
ground, and with an effort, awkward as that of a cripple, hoisted herself
up and stood on her feet. Gaspare had said, "Wait in the road." She must
find the road. That was what she must do.
"Wait in the road--wait in the road." She kept on saying that to herself.
But she could not remember for a moment where the road was. She could
only think of rock, of water black like ebony. The road was white. She
must look for something white. And when she found it she must wait.
Presently, while she thought she was looking, she found that she was
walking in the dust. It flew up into her nostrils, dry and acrid. Then
she began to recover herself and to realize more clearly what she was
doing.
She did not know yet. She knew nothing yet. The night was dark, the sea
was dark. Gaspare had only cast one swift glance down before his foot had
slipped. It was impossible that he could have seen what it was that was
there in the water. And she was always inclined to let her imagination
run riot. God isn't cruel. She had said that under the oak-trees, and it
was true. It must be true.
"I've never done God any harm," she was saying to herself now. "I've
never meant to. I've always tried to do the right thing. God knows that!
God wouldn't be cruel to me."
In this moment all the subtlety of her mind deserted her, all that in her
might have been called "cleverness." She was reduced to an extraordinary
simplicity like that of a child, or a very instinctive, uneducated
person.
"I don't think I'm bad," she thought. "And God--He isn't bad. He wouldn't
wish to hurt me. He wouldn't wish to kill me."
She was walking on mechanically while she thought this, but presently
she remembered again that Gaspare had told her to wait in the road. She
looked over the wall down to the narrow strip of beach that edged the
inlet between the main-land and the Sirens' Isle. The boat which she had
seen there was gone. Gaspare had taken it. She stood staring at the place
where the boat had been. Then she sought a means of descending to that
strip of beach. She would wait there. A little lower down the road some
of the masonry of the wall had been broken away, perhaps by a winter
flood, and at this point there was a faint track, trodden by fishermen's
feet, leading down to the line. Hermione got over the wall at this point
and was soon on the beach, standing almost on the spot where Maurice had
stripped off his clothes in the night to seek the voice that had cried
out to him in the darkness. She waited here. Gaspare would presently come
back. His arms were strong. He could row fast. She would only have to
wait a few minutes. In a few minutes she would know. She strained her
eyes to catch sight of the boat rounding the promontory as it returned
from the open sea. At first she stood, but presently, as the minutes went
by and the boat did not come, her sense of physical weakness returned and
she sat down on the stones with her feet almost touching the water.
"Gaspare knows now," she thought. "I don't know, but Gaspare knows."
That seemed to her strange, that any one should know the truth of this
thing before she did. For what did it matter to any one but her? Maurice
was hers--was so absolutely hers that she felt as if no one else had any
concern in him. He was Gaspare's padrone. Gaspare loved him as a Sicilian
may love his padrone. Others in England, too, loved him--his mother, his
father. But what was any love compared with the love of the one woman to
whom he belonged. His mother had her husband. Gaspare--he was a boy. He
would love some girl presently; he would marry. No, she was right. The
truth about that "something in the water" only concerned her. God's
dealing with this creature of his to-night only really mattered to her.
As she waited, pressing her hands on the stones and looking always at the
point of the dark land round which the boat must come, a strange and
terrible feeling came to her, a feeling that she knew she ought to drive
out of her soul, but that she was powerless to expel.
She felt as if at this moment God were on His trial before her--before a
poor woman who loved.
"If God has taken Maurice from me," she thought, "He is cruel,
frightfully cruel, and I cannot love Him. If He has not taken Maurice
from me, He is the God who is love, the God I can, I must worship!"
Which God was he?
The vast scheme of the world narrowed; the wide horizons vanished. There
was nothing beyond the limit of her heart. She felt, as almost all
believing human beings feel in such moments, that God's attention was
entirely concentrated upon her life, that no other claimed His care,
begged for His pity, demanded His tenderness because hers was so intense.
Did God wish to lose her love? Surely not! Then He could not commit this
frightful act which she feared. He had not committed it.
A sort of relief crept through her as she thought this. Her agony of
apprehension was suddenly lessened, was almost driven out.
God wants to be loved by the beings He has created. Then He would not
deliberately, arbitrarily destroy a love already existing in the heart of
one of them--a love thankful to Him, enthusiastically grateful for
happiness bestowed by Him.
Beyond the darkness of the point there came out of the dimness of the
night that brooded above the open sea a moving darkness, and Hermione
heard the splash of oars in the calm water. She got up quickly. Now her
body was trembling again. She stared at the boat as if she would force it
to yield its secret to her eyes. But that was only for an instant. Then
her ears seemed to be seeking the truth, seeking it from the sound of the
oars in the water!
There was no rhythmic regularity in the music they made, no steadiness,
no--no--
She listened passionately, instinctively bending down her head sideways.
It seemed to her that she was listening to a drunken man rowing. Now
there was a quick beating of the oars in the water, then silence, then a
heavy splash as if one of the oars had escaped from an uncertain hand,
then some uneven strokes, one oar striking the water after the other.
"But Gaspare is a contadino," she said to herself, "not a fisherman.
Gaspare is a contadino and--"
"Gaspare!" she called out. "Gaspare!"
The boat stopped midway in the mouth of the inlet.
"Gaspare! Is it you?"
She saw a dark figure standing up in the boat.
"Gaspare, is it you?" she cried, more loudly.
"Si."
Was it Gaspare's voice? She did not recognize it. Yet the voice had
answered "Yes." The boat still remained motionless on the water midway
between shore and shore. She did not speak again; she was afraid to
speak. She stood and stared at the boat and at the motionless figure
standing up in it. Why did not he row in to land? What was he doing
there? She stared at the boat and at the figure standing in it till she
could see nothing. Then she shut her eyes.
"Gaspare!" she called, keeping her eyes shut. "What are you doing?
Gaspare!"
There was no reply.
She opened her eyes, and now she could see the boat again and the rower.
"Gaspare!" she cried, with all her strength, to the black figure. "Why
don't you row to the shore? Why don't you come to me?"
"Vengo!"
Loudly the word came to her, loudly and sullenly as if the boy were angry
with her, almost hated her. It was followed by a fierce splash of oars.
The boat shot forward, coming straight towards her. Then suddenly the
oars ceased from moving, the dark figure of the rower fell down in a
heap, and she heard cries, like cries of despair, and broken
exclamations, and then a long sound of furious weeping.
"Gaspare! Gaspare!"
Her voice was strangled in her throat and died away.
"And then, signora, I cried--I cried!"
When had Gaspare said that to her? And why had he cried?
"Gaspare!"
It came from her lips in a whisper almost inaudible to herself.
Then she rushed forward into the dark water.