The Call of the Blood - Page 311/317

A night and a day had passed, and still Artois had not seen Hermione. The

autopsy had been finished, and had revealed nothing to change the theory

of Dr. Marini as to the determining cause of death. The English stranger

had been crossing the dangerous wall of rock, probably in darkness, had

fallen, been stunned upon the rocks in the sea beneath, and drowned

before he recovered consciousness.

Gaspare said nothing. Salvatore held his peace and began his preparations

for America. And Maddalena, if she wept, wept now in secret; if she

prayed, prayed in the lonely house of the sirens, near the window which

had so often given a star to the eyes that looked down from the terrace

of the Casa del Prete.

There was gossip in Marechiaro, and the Pretore still preserved his air

of faint suspicion. But that would probably soon vanish under the

influence of the Cancelliere, with whom Artois had had some private

conversation. The burial had been allowed, and very early in the morning

of the day following that of Hermione's arrival at the hotel it took

place from the hospital.

Few people knew the hour, and most were still asleep when the coffin was

carried down the street, followed only by Hermione, and by Gaspare in a

black, ready-made suit that had been bought in the village of Cattaro.

Hermione would not allow any one else to follow her dead, and as Maurice

had been a Protestant there was no service. This shocked Gaspare, and

added to his grief, till Hermione explained that her husband had been of

a different religion from that of Sicily, a religion with different

rites.

"But we can pray for him, Gaspare," she said. "He loved us, and perhaps

he will know what we are doing."

The thought seemed to soothe the boy. He kneeled down by his padrona

under the wall of the Campo Santo by which Protestants were buried, and

whispered a petition for the repose of the soul of his padrone. Into the

gap of earth, where now the coffin lay, he had thrown roses from his

father's little terreno near the village. His tears fell fast, and his

prayer was scarcely more than a broken murmur of "Povero

signorino--povero signorino--Dio ci mandi buon riposo in Paradiso."

Hermione could not pray although she was in the attitude of supplication;

but when she heard the words of Gaspare she murmured them too. "Buon

riposo!" The sweet Sicilian good-night--she said it now in the stillness

of the lonely dawn. And her tears fell fast with those of the boy who had

loved and served his master.