"It is all right. He is sleeping. Go to bed."
Lucrezia turned to go.
"And never mind getting up early to make the padrone's coffee," Gaspare
added. "I will do it. I am not sleepy. I shall take the gun and go out
after the birds."
Lucrezia looked surprised. Gaspare was not in the habit of relieving her
of her duties. On the contrary, he was a strict taskmaster. But she was
tired and preoccupied. So she made no remark and went off to her room
behind the house, walking heavily and untying the handkerchief that was
round her head.
When she had gone, Gaspare stood by the table, thinking deeply. He had
lied to Lucrezia. The padrone was not asleep. His bed had not been slept
in. Where had he gone? Where was he now?
The Sicilian servant, if he cares for his padrone, feels as if he had a
proprietor's interest in him. He belongs to his padrone and his padrone
belongs to him. He will allow nobody to interfere with his possession. He
is intensely jealous of any one who seeks to disturb the intimacy between
his padrone and himself, or to enter into his padrone's life without
frankly letting him know it and the reason for it. The departure of
Hermione had given an additional impetus to Gaspare's always lively sense
of proprietorship in Maurice. He felt as if he had been left in charge of
his padrone, and had an almost sacred responsibility to deliver him up to
Hermione happy and safe when she returned. This absence, therefore,
startled and perturbed him--more--made him feel guilty of a lapse from
his duty. Perhaps he should not have gone to the festa. True, he had
asked the padrone to accompany him. But still-He went out onto the terrace and looked around him. The dawn was faint
and pale. Wreaths of mist, like smoke trails, hung below him, obscuring
the sea. The ghostly cone of Etna loomed into the sky, extricating itself
from swaddling bands of clouds which shrouded its lower flanks. The air
was chilly upon this height, and the aspect of things was gray and
desolate, without temptation, without enchantment, to lure men out from
their dwellings.
What could have kept the padrone from his sleep till this hour?
Gaspare shivered a little as he stared over the wall. He was
thinking--thinking furiously. Although scarcely educated at all, he was
exceedingly sharp-witted, and could read character almost as swiftly and
surely as an Arab. At this moment he was busily recalling the book he had
been reading for many weeks in Sicily, the book of his padrone's
character, written out for him in words, in glances, in gestures, in
likes and dislikes, most clearly in actions. Mentally he turned the
leaves until he came to the night of the fishing, to the waning of the
night, to the journey to the caves, to the dawn when he woke upon the
sand and found that the padrone was not beside him. His brown hand
tightened on the stick he held, his brown eyes stared with the glittering
acuteness of a great bird's at the cloud trails hiding the sea below
him--hiding the sea, and all that lay beside the sea.