The Call of the Blood Part 90

"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 fis.h.i.+ng. 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 sh.o.r.e. For there was no one here. The fishermen were up in the village. The contadini had long since left their work. No one pa.s.sed 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SHE COULD SEE VAGUELY THE Sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 ma.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 sh.o.r.e 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. G.o.d isn't cruel. She had said that under the oak-trees, and it was true. It must be true.

"I've never done G.o.d any harm," she was saying to herself now. "I've never meant to. I've always tried to do the right thing. G.o.d knows that!

G.o.d wouldn't be cruel to me."