So now, while Maurice lay beneath the tiny light in the house of the
sirens and was shaken by the wildness of desire, and thought of a
mountain pilgrimage far up towards the sun with Maddalena in his arms,
she sat by Artois's bed and smiled to herself as she pictured the house
of the priest, watched over by the stars of Sicily, and by her many
prayers. Maurice was there, she knew, waiting for her return, longing for
it as she longed for it. Artois turned on his pillow wearily, saw her,
and smiled.
"You oughtn't to be here," he whispered. "But I am glad you are here."
"And I am glad, I am thankful I am here!" she said, truly.
"If there is a God," he said, "He will bless you for this!"
"Hush! You must try to sleep."
She laid her hand in his.
"God has blessed me," she thought, "for all my poor little attempts at
goodness, how far, far more than I deserve!"
And the gratitude within her was almost like an ache, like a beautiful
pain of the heart.
In the morning Maurice put to sea with Gaspare and Salvatore. He knew the
silvery calm of dawn on a day of sirocco. Everything was very still, in a
warm and heavy stillness of silver that made the sweat run down at the
least movement or effort. Masses of white, feathery vapors floated low in
the sky above the sea, concealing the flanks of the mountains, but
leaving their summits clear. And these vapors, hanging like veils with
tattered edges, created a strange privacy upon the sea, an atmosphere of
eternal mysteries. As the boat went out from the shore, urged by the
powerful arms of Salvatore, its occupants were silent. The merriment and
the ardor of the night, the passion of cards and of desire, were gone, as
if they had been sucked up into the smoky wonder of the clouds, or sucked
down into the silver wonder of the sea.
Gaspare looked drowsy and less happy than usual. He had not yet recovered
from his indignation at the success of Salvatore's cheating, and Maurice,
who had not slept, felt the bounding life, the bounding fire of his youth
held in check as by the action of a spell. The carelessness of
excitement, of passion, was replaced by another carelessness--the
carelessness of dream. It seemed to him now as if nothing mattered or
ever could matter. On the calm silver of a hushed and breathless sea,
beneath dense white vapors that hid the sky, he was going out slowly,
almost noiselessly, to a fate of which he knew nothing, to a quiet
emptiness, to a region which held no voices to call him this way or that,
no hands to hold him, no eyes to regard him. His face was damp with
sweat. He leaned over the gunwale and trailed his hand in the sea. It
seemed to him unnaturally warm. He glanced up at the clouds. Heaven was
blotted out. Was there a heaven? Last night he had thought there must
be--but that was long ago. Was he sad? He scarcely knew. He was dull, as
if the blood in him had run almost dry. He was like a sapless tree.
Hermione and Maddalena--what were they? Shadows rather than women. He
looked steadily at the sea. Was it the same element upon which he had
been only a few hours ago under the stars with Maddalena? He could
scarcely believe that it was the same. Sirocco had him fast, sirocco that
leaves many Sicilians unchanged, unaffected, but that binds the stranger
with cords of cotton wool which keep him like a net of steel.