"Signore?"

"The signora has been away, hasn't she?"

"Si signore. In Africa."

"Nursing that sick stranger. And now directly she comes back here's this happening to her! Per Dio!"

He shook his head.

"Somebody must have looked on the povera signora with the evil-eye, Signor Dottore."

Giuseppe crossed himself.

"It seems so," the doctor replied, gravely.

He was almost as superst.i.tious as the contadini among whom he labored.

"Ecco, Signor Dottore!"

The doctor looked up. At the arch stood a figure holding a little lamp.

Almost immediately, two more figures appeared behind it.

"Il dottore! Ecco il dottore!"

There was a murmur of voices in the dark. As the donkey came up the excited fishermen crowded round, all speaking at once.

"He is dead, Signor Dottore. The povero signore is dead!"

"Let the Signor Dottore come to him, Beppe! What do you know? Let the--"

"Sure enough he is dead! Why, he must have been in the water a good hour.

He is all swollen with the water and--"

"It is his head, Signor Dottore! If it had not been for his coming against the rocks he would not have been hurt. Per Dio, he can swim like a fish, the povero signorino. I have seen him swim. Why, even Peppino--"

"The signora wants us all to go away, Signor Dottore. She begs us to go and leave her alone with the povero signore!"

"Gaspare is in such a state! You would not know him. And the povera signora, she is all dripping wet. She has been into the sea, and now she has carried the head of the povero signore all the way up the mountain.

She would not let any one--"

A succession of cries came out of the darkness, hysterical cries that ended in prolonged sobbing.

"That is Lucrezia!" cried one of the fishermen. "Madonna! That is Lucrezia!"

"Mamma mia! Mamma mia!"

Their voices were loud in the night. The doctor pushed his way between the men and came onto the terrace in front of the steps that led into the sitting-room.

Gaspare was standing there alone. His face was almost unrecognizable. It looked battered, puffy, and inflamed, as if he had been drinking and fighting. There were no tears in his eyes now, but long, violent sobs shook his body from time to time, and his blistered lips opened and shut mechanically with each sob. He stared dully at the doctor, but did not say a word, or move to get out of the way.

"Gaspare!" said the doctor. "Where is the padrona?"

The boy sobbed and sobbed, always in the same dry and terribly mechanical way.

"Gaspare!" repeated the doctor, touching him. "Gaspare!"

"E' morto!" the boy suddenly cried out, in a loud voice.

And he flung himself down on the ground.

The doctor felt a thrill of cold in his veins. He went up the steps into the little sitting-room. As he did so Hermione came to the door of the bedroom. Her dripping skirts clung about her. She looked quite calm.

Without greeting the doctor she said, quietly:

"You heard what Gaspare said?"

"Si, signora, ma--"

The doctor stopped, staring at her. He began to feel almost dazed. The fishermen had followed him and stood crowding together on the steps and staring into the room.

"He is dead. I am sorry you came all this way."

They stood there facing one another. From the kitchen came the sound of Lucrezia's cries. Hermione put her hands up to her ears.

"Please--please--oh, there should be a little silence here now!" she said.

For the first time there was a sound of something like despair in her voice.

"Let me come in, signora!" stammered the doctor. "Let me come in and examine him."

"He is dead."

"Well, but let me. I must!"

"Please come in," she said.

The doctor turned round to the fishermen.

"Go, one of you, and make that girl keep quiet," he said, angrily. "Take her away out of the house--directly! Do you hear? And the rest of you stay outside, and don't make a sound."

The fishermen slunk a little way back into the darkness, while Giuseppe, walking on the toes of his bare feet, and glancing nervously at the furniture and the pictures upon the walls, crossed the room and disappeared into the kitchen. Then the doctor laid down his cigar on a table and went into the bedroom whither Hermione had preceded him.

There was a lighted candle on the white chest of drawers. The window and the shutters of the room were closed against the glances of the fishermen. On one of the two beds--Hermione's--lay the body of a man dripping with water. The doctor took the candle in his hand, went to this bed and leaned down, then set down the candle at the bedhead and made a brief examination. He found at once that Gaspare had spoken the truth.

This man had been dead for some time. Nevertheless, something--he scarcely knew what--kept the doctor there by the bed for some moments before he p.r.o.nounced his verdict. Never before had he felt so great a reluctance to speak the simple words that would convey a great truth. He fingered his shirt-front uneasily, and stared at the body on the bed and at the wet sheets and pillows. Meanwhile, Hermione had sat down on a chair near the door that opened into what had been Maurice's dressing-room, and folded her hands in her lap. The doctor did not look towards her, but he felt her presence painfully. Lucrezia's cries had died away, and there was complete silence for a brief s.p.a.ce of time.

The body on the bed was swollen, but not very much, the face was sodden, the hair plastered to the head, and on the left temple there was a large wound, evidently, as the doctor had seen, caused by the forehead striking violently against a hard, resisting substance. It was not the sea alone which had killed this man. It was the sea and the rock in the sea. He had fallen, been stunned and then drowned. The doctor knew the place where he had been found. The explanation of the tragedy was very simple--very simple.

While the doctor was thinking this, and fingering his shirt-front mechanically, and bracing himself to turn towards the quiet woman in the chair, he heard a loud, dry noise in the sitting-room, then in the bedroom. Gaspare had come in, and was standing at the foot of the bed, sobbing and staring at the doctor with hopeless eyes, that yet asked a last question, begged desperately for a lie.