In Maremma/Volume 1/Chapter 10

by Marie Louise de la Ramée

 

CHAPTER X.

 

HEN late in the hot day Musa returned to Santa Tarsilla, after long dreamless sleep of intense fatigue which had lasted many hours, she was very pale, and her face had a look of sullen pain. For the first time in her young life she had been deceived. Where he had gone in those wild swamps and barren moors she knew not, but he had deceived her—that was enough to know.

He had robbed the dead and their gods. He became abhorrent to her.

Of the thanklessness to herself she thought little, but of that theft of the sacred things she had no forgiveness. She had never felt even tempted to take them; they had been hallowed to her; they had been the armour, the arms, the jewels, the possessions of the golden king whom the first ray of light had set free to ascend to the stars. She would sooner have stolen the chalice off the church altar, the jewels off the saint's shrine, than have touched those treasures of the Etruscan dead.

The flight and the theft of the man she had saved, weighed on her with a sense of shame; a burning indignation consumed her. She was silent by nature; she crushed the pain in silence into her heart, and said to herself that she would never speak of that traitor—never tell any living being of her rescue of him and of her betrayal by him—never; not even Joconda.

She came home to the stone pier of Santa Tarsilla and fastened up the boat in silence, and took her way through the little town, steeped in the drowsy calm of a sultry and late afternoon.

Here and there in an open court, or upon a stone bench, or under the deep caves of a roof some figure was lying asleep; that was all. The stillness of heat and of exhaustion had fallen on all the place, and the very dogs lay motionless and stupid in what little shade there was to be found anywhere.

Where was he, the hunted man, in this intolerable glare of day?

She thought of him fleeing always over the brown burnt moors, the pallid wastes of sand, with the stolen gold that he would be able neither to eat nor drink, and would not dare to barter. Let the guards have him if they would, she thought; he was vile.

Nothing is so cruel as youth in its scorn; she was full of scorn, and cruel. She would have seen the guards take him now, and would not have lifted her hand or opened her lips. He was a traitor and a thief.

Yet it hurt her to remember what he had done. The betrayal weighed upon her with a heavy hand. She had given him sanctuary, and he had robbed her.

A girl she knew, Fulvia, daughter of Gianno, was sitting on an open door sunning her rich gold tresses in the old Venetian way.

'Where have you been?' the girl called to her. 'There was a stir last night. Some carabineers came hunting for a man that had got away off Gorgona. They said he was Saturnino. Saturnino used to rule all the mountains over there, so my father says; have you heard tell of it?'

'I have been away on the sea,' said Musa, and passed on; the girl called after her.

'He is loose on the country, so they say, he has got away somewhere; I thought you might know. But you have never a word for any one, you graceless, sullen thing.'

Musa passed on along the line of sun-baked stone-faced houses with their middens stinking in front of them, and beyond the middens the rotten seaweeds, the salt and clammy beach.

She reached her home in a few moments; the house was closed as it had been at midnight, and was quite as still. She was not frightened at that, since often Joconda went far afield with the old mule, and shut her dwelling closely in her absence. Perhaps Joconda had gone to seek for her, herself, alarmed at her being away so long upon the water;—so she thought.

She tried the house door; the dog was howling low within. She could not stir the door, which fastened inside with ancient iron bolts and locks. She unslipped the stable shutter as before, and by the stable entered the house as in the night. The mule was in his place, munching straw and the withered leaves of cane.

She went thence into the room of Joconda; Leone did not cease to howl, although he saw her. Joconda still lay sleeping.

'She must be ill,' thought Musa, with a sudden pang, and the chillness of a new vague terror falling on her.

She sprang to the bedside where the dog lay moaning. Joconda had not moved since the night; only on her face there was shining, instead of the silvery moonlight, the yellowish, sickly glare of the setting sun.

She had died in her sleep.

A terrible cry rang through the empty house out to the seashore.

Musa was left alone.

 

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