The Call of the Blood - Page 258/317

So Lucrezia plucked up a little courage. The activity of the walk helped

her. She knew the solace of movement. And perhaps, without being

conscious of it, she was influenced by the soft beauty of the evening, by

the peace of the hills. But as they crossed the ravine they heard the

tinkle of bells, and a procession of goats tripped by them, following a

boy who was twittering upon a flute. He was playing the tune of the

tarantella, that tune which Hermione associated with careless joy in the

sun. He passed down into the shadows of the trees, and gradually the airy

rapture of his fluting and the tinkle of the goat-bells died away towards

Marechiaro. Then Hermione saw tears rolling down over Lucrezia's brown

cheeks.

"He can't play it like Sebastiano, signora!" she said.

The little tune had brought back all her sorrow.

"Perhaps we shall soon hear Sebastiano play it again," said Hermione.

They began to climb upward on the far side of the ravine towards the

fierce silhouette of the Saracenic castle on the height. Beneath the

great crag on which it was perched was the shrine of the Madonna della

Rocca. Night was coming now, and the little lamp before the shrine shone

gently, throwing a ray of light upon the stones of the path. When they

reached it, Lucrezia crossed herself, and they stood together for a

moment looking at the faded painting of the Madonna, almost effaced

against its rocky background. Within the glass that sheltered it stood

vases of artificial flowers, and on the ledge outside the glass were two

or three bunches of real flowers, placed there by peasants returning to

their homes in Castel Vecchio from their labors in the vineyards and the

orchards. There were also two branches with clustering, red-gold oranges

lying among the flowers. It was a strange, wild place. The precipice of

rock, which the castello dominated, leaned slightly forward above the

head of the Madonna, as if it meditated overwhelming her. But she smiled

gently, as if she had no fear of it, bending down her pale eyes to the

child who lay upon her girlish knees. Among the bowlders, the wild cactus

showed its spiked leaves, and in the daytime the long black snakes sunned

themselves upon the stones.

To Hermione this lonely and faded Madonna, smiling calmly beneath the

savagely frowning rock upon which dead men had built long years ago a

barbarous fastness, was touching in her solitude. There was something

appealing in her frailness, in her thin, anæmic calm. How long had she

been here? How long would she remain? She was fading away, as things fade

in the night. Yet she had probably endured for years, would still be here

for years to come, would be here to receive the wild flowers of peasant

children, the prayers of peasant lovers, the adoration of the poor, who,

having very little here, put their faith in far-off worlds, where they

will have harvests surely without reaping in the heat of the sun, where

they will have good wine without laboring in the vineyards, where they

will be able to rest without the thought coming to them, "If to-day I

rest, to-morrow I shall starve."