The Call of the Blood - Page 287/317

Hermione longed for quiet, for absolute silence.

It seemed strange to her that she still longed for anything--strange and

almost horrible, almost inhuman. But she did long for that, to be able to

sit beside her dead husband and to be undisturbed, to hear no voice

speaking, no human movement, to see no one. If it had been possible she

would have closed the cottage against every one, even against Gaspare and

Lucrezia. But it was not possible. Destiny did not choose that she should

have this calm, this silence. It had seemed to her, when fear first came

upon her, as if no one but herself had any real concern with Maurice, as

if her love conferred upon her a monopoly. This monopoly had been one of

joy. Now it should be one of sorrow. But now it did not exist. She was

not weeping for Maurice. But others were. She had no one to go to. But

others came to her, clung to her. She could not rid herself of the human

burden.

She might have been selfish, determined, she might have driven the

mourners out. But--and that was strange, too--she found herself pitying

them, trying to use her intellect to soothe them.

Lucrezia was terrified, almost like one assailed suddenly by robbers,

terrified and half incredulous. When her hysteria subsided she was at

first unbelieving.

"He cannot be really dead, signora!" she sobbed to Hermione. "The povero

signorino. He was so gay! He was so--"

She talked and talked, as Sicilians do when face to face with tragedy.

She recalled Maurice's characteristics, his kindness, his love of

climbing, fishing, bathing, his love of the sun--all his love of life.

Hermione had to listen to the story with that body lying on her bed.

Gaspare's grief was speechless, but needed comfort more. There was an

element in it of fury which Hermione realized without rightly

understanding. She supposed it was the fury of a boy from whom something

is taken by one whom he cannot attack.

For God is beyond our reach.

She could not understand the conflict going on in the boy's heart and

mind.

He knew that this death was probably no natural death, but a murder.

Neither Maddalena nor her father had been in the Casa delle Sirene when

he knocked upon the door in the night. Salvatore had sent Maddalena to

spend the night with relations in Marechiaro, on the pretext that he was

going to sail to Messina on some business. And he had actually sailed

before Gaspare's arrival on the island. But Gaspare knew that there had

been a meeting, and he knew what the Sicilian is when he is wronged. The

words "vengeance is mine!" are taken in Sicily by each wronged man into

his own mouth, and Salvatore was notoriously savage and passionate.