The Call of the Blood Part 94

"Gaspare!"

The woman in the chair whispered to him. He took no notice.

"Gaspare!"

She got up and crossed over to the boy, and took one of his hands.

"It's no use," she said. "Perhaps he is happy."

Then the boy began to cry pa.s.sionately. Tears poured out of his eyes while he held his padrona's hand. The doctor got up.

"He is dead, signora," he said.

"We knew it," Hermione replied.

She looked at the doctor for a minute. Then she said:

"Hush, Gaspare!"

The doctor stood by the bed.

"Scusi, signora," he said, "but--but will you take him into the next room?"

He pointed to Gaspare, who s.h.i.+vered as he wept.

"I must make a further examination."

"Why? You see that he is dead."

"Yes, but--there are certain formalities."

He stopped.

"Formalities!" she said. "He is dead."

"Yes. But--but the authorities will have to be informed. I am very sorry. I should wish to leave everything undisturbed."

"What do you mean? Gaspare! Gaspare!"

"But--according to the law, our law, the body should never have been moved. It should have been left where it was found until--"

"We could not leave him in the sea."

She still spoke quite quietly, but the doctor felt as if he could not go on.

"Since it is done--" he began.

He pulled himself together with an effort.

"There will have to be an inquiry, signora--the cause of death will have to be ascertained."

"You see it. He was coming from the island. He fell and was drowned. It is very simple."

"Yes, no doubt. Still, there must be an inquiry. Gaspare will have to explain--"

He looked at the weeping boy, then at the woman who stood there holding the boy's hand in hers.

"But that will be for to-morrow," he muttered, fingering his s.h.i.+rt-front and looking down. "That will be for to-morrow."

As he went out he added:

"Signora, do not remain in your wet clothes."

"I--oh, thank you. They do not matter."

She did not follow him into the next room. As he went down the steps to the terrace the sound of Gaspare's pa.s.sionate weeping followed him into the night.

When the doctor was on the donkey and was riding out through the arch, after a brief colloquy with the fishermen and with Giuseppe, whom he had told to remain at the cottage for the rest of the night, he suddenly remembered the cigar which he had left upon the table, and he pulled up.

"What is it, Signor Dottore?" said one of the fishermen.

"I've left something, but--never mind. It does not matter."

He rode on again.

"It does not matter," he repeated.

He was thinking of the English signora standing beside the bed in her wet skirts and holding the hand of the weeping boy.

It was the first time in his life that he had ever sacrificed a good cigar.

He wondered why he did so now, but he did not care to return just then to the Casa del Prete.

XXIII

Hermione longed for quiet, for absolute silence.

It seemed strange to her that she still longed for anything--strange and almost horrible, almost inhuman. But she did long for that, to be able to sit beside her dead husband and to be undisturbed, to hear no voice speaking, no human movement, to see no one. If it had been possible she would have closed the cottage against every one, even against Gaspare and Lucrezia. But it was not possible. Destiny did not choose that she should have this calm, this silence. It had seemed to her, when fear first came upon her, as if no one but herself had any real concern with Maurice, as if her love conferred upon her a monopoly. This monopoly had been one of joy. Now it should be one of sorrow. But now it did not exist. She was not weeping for Maurice. But others were. She had no one to go to. But others came to her, clung to her. She could not rid herself of the human burden.

She might have been selfish, determined, she might have driven the mourners out. But--and that was strange, too--she found herself pitying them, trying to use her intellect to soothe them.

Lucrezia was terrified, almost like one a.s.sailed suddenly by robbers, terrified and half incredulous. When her hysteria subsided she was at first unbelieving.

"He cannot be really dead, signora!" she sobbed to Hermione. "The povero signorino. He was so gay! He was so--"

She talked and talked, as Sicilians do when face to face with tragedy.