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.