  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, "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 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 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 "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 "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, "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." This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. |
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