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 G.o.d--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. G.o.d"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 G.o.d were on His trial before her--before a poor woman who loved.
"If G.o.d 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 G.o.d who is love, the G.o.d I can, I must worship!"
Which G.o.d 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 G.o.d"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 G.o.d 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.
G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionately, 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 sh.o.r.e and sh.o.r.e. 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 sh.o.r.e? 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.
XXII
Late that night Dr. Marini, the doctor of the commune of Marechiaro, was roused from sleep in his house in the Corso by a violent knocking on his street door. He turned over in his bed, muttered a curse, then lay still for a moment and listened. The knocking was renewed more violently.
Evidently the person who stood without was determined to gain admission.
There was no help for it. The good doctor, who was no longer young, dropped his weary legs to the floor, walked across to the open window, and thrust his head out of it. A man was standing below.
"What is it? What do you want?" said the doctor, in a grumbling voice.
"Is it another baby? Upon my word, these--"
"Signor Dottore, come down, come down instantly! The signore of Monte Amato, the signore of the Casa del Prete has had an accident. You must come at once. I will go to fetch a donkey."
The doctor leaned farther out of the window.
"An accident! What--?"
But the man, a fisherman of Marechiaro, was already gone, and the doctor saw only the narrow, deserted street, black with the shadows of the tall houses.
He drew in quickly and began to dress himself with some expedition. An accident, and to a forestiere! There would be money in this case. He regretted his lost sleep less now and cursed no more, though he thought of the ride up into the mountains with a good deal of self-pity. It was no joke to be a badly paid Sicilian doctor, he thought, as he tugged at his trousers b.u.t.tons, and fastened the white front that covered the breast of his flannel shirt, and adjusted the cuffs which he took out of a small drawer. Without lighting a candle he went down-stairs, fumbled about, and found his case of instruments. Then he opened the street door and waited, yawning on the stone pavement. In two or three minutes he heard the tripping tip-tap of a donkey"s hoofs, and the fisherman came up leading a donkey apparently as disinclined for a nocturnal flitting as the doctor.
"Ah, Giuseppe, it"s you, is it?"