"It isn't the padrone!"
Gaspare had spoken. All the light had gone out of his eyes.
"Si! Si! It is he!"
Hermione contradicted him.
"No, signora. It is a contadino."
Her joy was failing. Although she contradicted Gaspare, she began to feel
that he was right. This step was heavy, weary, an old man's step. It
could not be her Mercury coming up to his home on the mountain. But still
she waited. Presently there detached itself from the darkness a faint
figure, bent, crowned with a long Sicilian cap.
"Andiamo!"
This time she did not keep Gaspare back. Without a word they went on. As
they came to the figure it stopped. She did not even glance at it, but as
she went by it she heard an old, croaky voice say: "Benedicite!"
Never before had the Sicilian greeting sounded horrible in her ears. She
did not reply to it. She could not. And Gaspare said nothing. They
hastened on in silence till they reached the high-road by Isola Bella,
the road where Maurice had met Maddalena on the morning of the fair.
It was deserted. The thick white dust upon it looked ghastly at their
feet. Now they could hear the faint and regular murmur of the oily sea by
which the fishermen's boats were drawn up, and discern, far away on the
right, the serpentine lights of Cattaro.
"Where do you go to bathe?" Hermione asked, always speaking in a hushed
voice. "Here, by Isola Bella?"
She looked down at the rocks of the tiny island, at the dimness of the
spreading sea. Till now she had always gloried in its beauty, but
to-night it looked to her mysterious and cruel.
"No, signora."
"Where then?"
"Farther on--a little. I will go."
His voice was full of hesitation. He did not know what to do.
"Please, signora, stay here. Sit on the bank by the line. I will go and
be back in a moment. I can run. It is better. If you come we shall take
much longer."
"Go, Gaspare!" she said. "But--stop--where do you bathe exactly?"
"Quite near, signora."
"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 fishing. 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 shore. For there was no one
here. The fishermen were up in the village. The contadini had long since
left their work. No one passed 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.