Had the music been wild? He suspected that the harmony she worshipped had pa.s.sed 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 appet.i.tes which lead the body into the dark places of the earth? And why is the Giver of the divine the permitter of those tremendous pa.s.sions, 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 G.o.d.
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, a morsel of paper among the stones by which he was sitting. He looked down and saw writing, and bent to pick the paper up.
"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."