She was thinking of the time when they would take Maurice from her. She left Gaspare sitting near the bed, and went out onto the terrace.

Lucrezia and Gaspare, both thoroughly tired out, were sleeping soundly.

She was thankful for that. Soon, she knew, she would have to be with people, to talk, to make arrangements. But now she had a short spell of solitude.

She went slowly up the mountain-side till she was near the top. Then she sat down on a rock and looked out towards the sea.

The world was not awake yet, although the sun was coming. Etna was like a great phantom, the waters at its foot were pale in their tranquillity.

The air was fresh, but there was no wind to rustle the leaves of the oak-trees, upon whose crested heads Hermione gazed down with quiet, tearless eyes.

She had a strange feeling of being out of the world, as if she had left it, but still had the power to see it. She wondered if Maurice felt like that.

He had said it would be good to lie beneath those oak-trees in sight of Etna and the sea. How she wished that she could lay his body there, alone, away from all other dead. But that was impossible, she supposed.

She remembered the doctor's words. What were they going to do? She did not know anything about Italian procedure in such an event. Would they take him away? She had no intention of trying to resist anything, of offering any opposition. It would be useless, and besides he had gone away. Already he was far off. She did not feel, as many women do, that so long as they are with the body of their dead they are also with the soul.

She would like to keep the dear body, to have it always near to her, to live close to the spot where it was committed to the earth. But Maurice was gone. Her Mercury had winged his way from her, obedient to a summons that she had not heard. Always she had thought of him as swift, and swiftly, without warning, he had left her. He had died young. Was that wonderful? She thought not. No; age could have nothing to say to him, could hold no commerce with him. He had been born to be young and never to be anything else. It seemed to her now strange that she had not felt this, foreseen that it must be so. And yet, only yesterday, she had imagined a far future, and their child laying them in the ground of Sicily, side by side, and murmuring "Buon riposo" above their mutual sleep.

Their child! A life had been taken from her. Soon a life would be given to her. Was that what is called compensation? Perhaps so. Many strange thoughts, come she could not tell why, were pa.s.sing through her mind as she sat upon this height in the dawn. The thought of compensation recalled to her the Book of Job. Everything was taken from Job; not only his flocks and his herds, but his sons and his daughters. And then at the last he was compensated. He was given new flocks and herds and new sons and daughters. And it was supposed to be well with Job. If it was well with Job, then Job had been a man without a heart.

Never could she be compensated for this loss, which she was trying to realize, but which she would not be able to realize until the days went by, and the nights, the days and the nights of the ordinary life, when tragedy was supposed to be over and done with, and people would say, and no doubt sincerely believe, that she was "getting accustomed" to her loss.

Thinking of Job led her on to think of G.o.d's dealings with His creatures.

Hermione was a woman who clung to no special religion, but she had always, all her life, had a very strong personal consciousness of a directing Power in the world, had always had an innate conviction that this directing Power followed with deep interest the life of each individual in the scheme of His creation. She had always felt, she felt now, that G.o.d knew everything about her and her life, was aware of all her feelings, was constantly intent upon her.

He was intent. But was He kindly or was He cruelly intent?

Surely He had been dreadfully cruel to her!

Only yesterday she had been wondering what bereaved women felt about G.o.d.

Now she was one of these women.

"Was Maurice dead?" she thought--"was he already dead when I was praying before the shrine of the Madonna della Rocca?"

She longed to know. Yet she scarcely knew why she longed. It was like a strange, almost unnatural curiosity which she could not at first explain to herself. But presently her mind grew clearer and she connected this question with that other question--of G.o.d and what He really was, what He really felt towards His creatures, towards her.

Had G.o.d allowed her to pray like that, with all her heart and soul, and then immediately afterwards deliberately delivered her over to the fate of desolate women, or had Maurice been already dead? If that were so, and it must surely have been so, for when she prayed it was already night, she had been led to pray for herself ignorantly, and G.o.d had taken away her joy before He had heard her prayer. If He had heard it first He surely could not have dealt so cruelly with her--so cruelly! No human being could have, she thought, even the most hard-hearted.

But perhaps G.o.d was not all-powerful.

She remembered that once in London she had asked a clever and good clergyman if, looking around upon the state of things in the world, he was able to believe without difficulty that the world was governed by an all-wise, all-powerful, and all-merciful G.o.d. And his reply to her had been, "I sometimes wonder whether G.o.d is all-powerful--yet." She had not pursued the subject, but she had not forgotten this answer; and she thought of it now.

Was there a conflict in the regions beyond the world which was the only one she knew? Had an enemy done this thing, an enemy not only of hers, but of G.o.d's, an enemy who had power over G.o.d?

That thought was almost more terrible than the thought that G.o.d had been cruel to her.

She sat for a long time wondering, thinking, but not praying. She did not feel as if she could ever pray any more. The world was lighted up by the sun. The sea began to gleam, the coast-line to grow more distinct, the outlines of the mountains and of the Saracenic Castle on the height opposite to her more hard and more barbaric against the deepening blue.

She saw smoke coming from the mouth of Etna, sideways, as if blown towards the sea. A shepherd boy piped somewhere below her. And still the tune was the tarantella. She listened to it--the tarantella. So short a time ago Maurice had danced with the boys upon the terrace! How can such life be so easily extinguished? How can such joy be not merely clouded but utterly destroyed? A moment, and from the body everything is expelled; light from the eyes, speech from the lips, movement from the limbs, joy, pa.s.sion from the heart. How can such a thing be?

The little shepherd boy played on and on. He was nearer now. He was ascending the slope of the mountain, coming up towards heaven with his little happy tune. She heard him presently among the oak-trees immediately below her, pa.s.sing almost at her feet.

To Hermione the thin sound of the reed-flute always had suggested Arcady.

Even now it suggested Arcady--the Arcady of the imagination: wide soft airs, blue skies and seas, eternal sunshine and delicious shade, and happiness where is a sweet noise of waters and of birds, a sweet and deep breathing of kind and bounteous nature.

And that little boy with the flute would die. His foot might slip now as he came upward, and no more could he play souls into Arcady!

The tune wound away to her left, like a gay and careless living thing that was travelling ever upward, then once more came towards her. But now it was above her. She turned her head and she saw the little player against the blue. He was on a rock, and for a moment he stood still. On his head was a long woollen cap, hanging over at one side. It made Hermione think of the woollen cap she had seen come out of the darkness of the ravine as she waited with Gaspare for the padrone. Against the blue, standing on the gray and sunlit rock, with the flute at his lips, and his tiny, deep-brown fingers moving swiftly, he looked at one with the mountain and yet almost unearthly, almost as if the blue had given birth to him for a moment, and in a moment would draw him back again into the womb of its wonder. His goats were all around him, treading delicately among the rocks. As Hermione watched he turned and went away into the blue, and the tarantella went away into the blue with him.

Her Sicilian and his tarantella, the tarantella of his joy in Sicily--they had gone away into the blue.

She looked at it, deep, quivering, pa.s.sionate, intense; thousands and thousands of miles of blue! And she listened as she looked; listened for some far-off tarantella, for some echo of a fainting tarantella, that might be a message to her, a message left on the sweet air of the enchanted island, telling her where the winged feet of her beloved one mounted towards the sun.

XXIV

Giuseppe came to fetch Hermione from the mountain. He had a note in his hand and also a message to give. The authorities were already at the cottage; the Pretore of Marechiaro with his Cancelliere, Dr. Marini and the Maresciallo of the Carabinieri.

"They have come already?" Hermione said. "So soon?"

She took the note. It was from Artois.

"There is a boy waiting, signora," said Giuseppe. "Gaspare is with the Signor Pretore."

She opened Emile's note.

"I cannot write anything except this--do you wish me to come?--E."

"Do I wish him to come?" she thought.

She repeated the words mentally several times, while the fisherman stood by her, staring at her with sympathy. Then she went down to the cottage.

Dr. Marini met her on the terrace. He looked embarra.s.sed. He was expecting a terrible scene.

"Signora," he said, "I am very sorry, but--but I am obliged to perform my duty."

"Yes," she said. "Of course. What is it?"

"As there is a hospital in Marechiaro--"

He stopped.

"Yes?" she said.

"The autopsy of the body must take place there. Otherwise I could have--"

"You have come to take him away," she said. "I understand. Very well."

But they could not take him away, these people. For he was gone; he had gone away into the blue.

The doctor looked relieved, though surprised, at her apparent nonchalance.