In Maremma/Volume 2/Chapter 29

by Marie Louise de la Ramée

 

CHAPTER XXIX.

 

NE day she went out fishing as soon as the mountains grew red with the uprising of the sun. When she came ashore the morning was still young; the water had been very cold, the air was stormy with a west wind, far away where Sardinia lay unseen in the south, mists were hurrying up in great armies; here the sun still shone, and the dazzle of golden light and the play of deep blue shadows cast from the wind-tossed clouds were very beautiful upon land and sea.

The Sasso Scritto was all purple and green with the flowering rosemary that covered its marble-veined sandstone; the rock-pigeons were wheeling and meeting above it and across it, foreseeing a change in the sunshiny weather; some kittiwakes had arrived and were floating away to the estuary; a Dutch dogger with square sail was passing in the distance, and a little fleet of feluccas, graceful as the kittiwakes, was running merrily under the west wind towards the Cape of Troja.

Musa, in haste to return, put the rope of her boat over her shoulders and began to pull it over the sand to that hole in the rocks where she was wont to hide it. As she bent her head and shoulders forward to make the first effort at hauling it from the fringe of the waves, she heard the sound of oars in the water behind her. Always afraid of being watched, and above all afraid when she had her boat, lest any should see and steal it as soon as her back was turned, she let the rope fall from her shoulders and looked towards the sea.

In another moment, another boat's keel ground upon the sand and stones, and from it Maurice Sanctis leaped, and stood before her amongst the southernwood and sea-rush. For a moment they were both mute; he from hesitation, she from fear and anger commingled. By the Sasso Scritto no human foot but her own fell on that solitary shore from one year to another. It was a bad place for landing, and its ill-repute for this amongst the fishermen had long kept it untroubled for her and the blue-rocks and the rock-martins.

She had never dreaded disturbance there. She stood with wide-opened angry eyes staring on him, the rope slipping through her hand, the sea water running from her kilted skirt and shining feet, the west wind blowing the dusky gold of her curls, her cheeks warm with exertion and the cold sea air till they glowed like the damask of the autumn rose.

'Why did you come back?' she said, with a sombre wrath in her voice. 'I told you to go away; I told you to stay away.'

'I could not obey you,' said Sanctis gently. 'I have been away five months and more. I strove against the wish to return, since I knew that I should be unwelcome to you. But at last, the thought of you all alone now that winter is so nigh overcame my resolution. I could not stay on in ease and mirth and luxury in Paris and think of you in the wild weather dependent on chance for bread.'

He looked at her wistfully. She seemed to him more lovely than before, and more than ever sternly and fiercely hostile to him.

In truth she was not thinking of him at all, except in the sense of a fresh and terrible danger. How could she keep him out of the tombs? How could she prevent his finding Este there? It was of that alone she was thinking as she continued to gaze at him, her eyes full of anger and alarm.

'Do not look at me with so much fear and hatred,' he said patiently. 'I can wish you nothing but good. There is the memory of Joconda between us. Can it not be in some little measure a peace-maker?'

Her eyes softened at the name he invoked, but she was too deeply disturbed for her to be won over by his words.

'I do not know why you should trouble yourself as to me,' she said sullenly—sullenness that was the outcome of extreme dread. 'I told you in the summer-time I have all I want. I am happy. But I do not like to be hunted like this. Go back to your own country, and leave me alone in mine.'

'You are alone still?' he asked: he was thinking of the Sicilian sailor.

Her face grew troubled and the rose of her cheeks spread over her brow and throat. She had never lied in her life. She must needs lie now. It was the shame of that which made her blush so hotly; but Sanctis only saw in the sudden flush of colour an answer to his question made in such wise that there was nothing else left to learn. Yet he could not repress an impatient word.

'It is the Sicilian?' he said quickly.

She laughed angrily.

'You remember the Sicilian? No; he is gone as he came. I tell you I want no one. If I did, what would that be to you? I do not know why you torment me. I loved Joconda, but, I told you before, you have nothing of her. You are rich and she was poor; your people forgot her all her life long, and I do not see why you should think of her now. As for me, I am well and I need nothing; but do not hunt me—it makes me wicked.'

'I do not hunt you,' said Sanctis, distressed and perplexed. 'Why should you think of such a thing? I would be your friend if you would let me, and I cannot understand why I should seem to you an enemy. It is impossible that I can be that. You are set against me, but that is no fault of mine. I have met you by mere accident. I came here to go over the moors to your sepulchre. I intended nothing but what was open and simple. I landed at Orbetello this morning———'

The colour faded as quickly out of her face as it had come there. A great dread froze her very heart. How could she keep him from the tombs? His patient gentleness with his unchanging resolve alarmed her much more than any fiery menaces or reproaches of Daniello Villamagna's would have done. It gave her the impression of being something she could neither bend nor break. This northern persistence gave her the sense of being meshed in by it as the fish were in the web of the nets.

She did not know what to say to him, nor how to rid herself of his importunity.

'You see I do not want for anything,' she said at last. 'You see I am strong and well. Go back to your own land and leave me in mine. I told you in the summer you cannot drive a grey-lag goose by force to the poultry byre.'

'Will you not let me come with you?'

'No; if the people, any one of them, see you here again they will talk of me and find out where I dwell. I told you so in the summer. You are a stranger, you are a signore; it looks odd to see you here.'

'I will come to you there———'

Her heart beat loud; a great terror which she concealed was upon her.

'It will be ungenerous if you do,' she said coldly. 'I should never have been found by you if Zirlo had not betrayed me. Do not be as mean as he. When I see where a moorhen has made her nest, I never go near; I will even walk miles out of the way sooner than disturb her. Why do you not feel that for me?'

'Is it a nest that you have made there?' said Sanctis with an irritation that he would have been ill able to explain to himself. 'You were all alone with your dead in the summer.'

'The dead are better friends than the living,'

'You escape my question.'

'Ido not see why you should question me. Let me go; that is all I wish to do.'

'You are free to go, of course. But if you forbid me to follow you, will you meet me here once at the least?'

'What can you have to say? If it be what you said in the summer, you know that it is of no use to say it all again. I shall not come.'

'Let me put your boat up for you at the least,' said Sanctis, controlling whatever impatience he felt and having faith that patience soon or late prevailed with all women. 'Your shore folks must be very honest people that they have never stolen it from you.'

'It is not because they are honest, but because they are afraid of the Sasso Scritto. It has a bad name. There are sunken rocks and quaking sands about it. I know where they are, but they are always dangerous.'

As she spoke, she drew the rope over her shoulders and began to pull her boat upward.

Seeing that she was obdurate, Sanctis went behind the boat and pushed it and lifted it through the stones and the sand and the sea-grasses that choked the way.

'I have put it up every day that I have used it without help,' said Musa, angrily.

But he did not desist, and with the aid of his strength the little skiff was soon safe beyond the water-mark of the rocks in a cleft that glittered with marbles golden and white, and gleams of porphyry and agate.

Then she took out of it the little fish she had captured, and turned her head to Sanctis.

'If really you do not hunt me, do not come with me. If you try to follow me I will run; you know I am swifter than you. I can go as fast as the bunting when I choose.'

'Will you meet me here once for Joconda's sake?—I will not ask you for myself.'

'Very well,' she said reluctantly. 'It is folly. But I will come if nothing else will content you. I will be here to-morrow at this hour.'

'Not this evening?'

'No; to-morrow. Keep your word, and do not follow me. It makes me feel as the buck feels when the dogs are after him. I am very sorry that you have come from your own country, for it is loss of time, and to you I seem thankless and rude, no doubt. Look up yonder at those rock-martins. What is the best thing you can do for them? It is to leave them alone. I am like them; I have my house in the rocks. I do not want to go away to other air as the nightingales go and the lorys.'

'But in those sepulchres, under the earth———'

'The kingfisher's house is under the earth, and he would not thank you to pull him out of it. I will come here tomorrow—for Joconda's sake. Farewell to-day.'

With the little glittering fish in her hand, and the sea-wet wool of her clothes clinging to her limbs, she turned away and began to climb the face of the cliff as rapidly and as easily as a woodpecker climbs a tree.

She went so quickly and with such sure feet that the bluish-grey of her kirtle was soon lost amongst the blue and green of the rosemary. The sun-rays and the shadows played about her head, and the rock-doves who knew her so well flew in circles round her path; soon she had climbed to where the little rain clouds floated across the upper portion of the cliff, and there the vapour of them took her to itself as if she were indeed the goddess of the golden bow and hidden in a cloud.

Sanctis stood baffled and troubled, looking up at the face of the cliff and watching the blue-rocks whirling under the shadows and the martins swaying under the force of the wind as they flew. He could not tell what to think. An irresistible desire to try once more to persuade her, to see once more this sad sunlit land she loved, had driven him here on an impulse altogether against his judgment. A vague jealousy stirred in him, thinking of that hot blush that had come upon her face. Had any found the mystical secret of influence that escaped himself? Had any more akin to her learned the way to tame and move her? It did not seem possible; she was still so bold, so dauntless, so grave, so innocent. Surely Love had not passed by there?

His heart set itself on winning this halcyon from its subterranean home; on bringing this flame-winged flamingo from the loneliness of the marsh and the estuary into the world of men.

It was no wise wish, nor was it one easy of fulfilment, but in its very unwisdom and difficulty it dominated him with the same persistence of possession as that with which the desire of her beauty haunted the Silician mariner. He did not try to follow her; she had touched his pride when she had called the attempt ungenerous. But he stood motionless, and followed her in thought over the head of the cliff and along that green winter country which stretched between the shore and the tomb of the Lucumo.

Sudden splashes of white rain and the breaking of the clouds massed southward into storm aroused him. Under the heavy downpour from the skies and against the wind he made his tedious way back to desolate Telamone.

Musa ran home as fast as the little felucca fleet was scudding before the wind to the Trojan cape. Este was looking impatiently upward through the shrubs that screened the entrance.

'How long you have been,' he said, with a little accent of reproach that was almost querulous.

'I will make haste now,' she said humbly, and, without waiting to change her skirt, still heavy with sea and rain water, she began at once to light a charcoal fire in the bronze vessel which served her for that purpose.

'I wish you had not to be so constantly away,' said Este, as he watched her at her work. 'It is very lonely here. There is not even a dog.'

'What can I do?' she answered him. 'You must have food, so must I. It does not grow on these rocks.'

'I know, I know! And I am so useless!'

She was silent as she fanned the charcoal with her breath. She was wondering whether she had better tell him of the new danger to him that might arise if Maurice Sanctis should come thither.

But silence was so habitual with her that she doubted the wisdom of any departure from it. Of what use to torment him with a new dread? She trusted to her own powers of repelling her undesired friend in so resolute a manner that Sanctis would abandon his attempts to force his companionship and assistance on her. She knew that he would not come there all that day; amidst her suspicion of him as so unlike anything she had ever known, her instinct made her unconsciously do justice to the loyalty of his nature.

'What is a place they call Paris?' she said suddenly to Este, as she watched his fish roast in the heat from the charcoal.

'It is a great French city,' Este answered her. 'I was never there. It is all light and noise and mirth, they say; it is carnival with them all the year round. They are very great in comedy and spectacle; they are half Greek and half Harlequin. What made you think of Paris? I would sooner you saw Mantua, with its water-meadows and its long lines of reeds, and its dying frescoes, and all the ghosts of the Gonzaga. What could make you think of Paris? The seagulls could not talk to you of it.'

'I met a stranger on the shore; he said he was of Paris.'

'A stranger? A young man?'

'He is not old.'

'Have you seen him before?'

'Yes—in the summer; before you came here. Then he went away, and now he is here again; and you will be very careful, because in the summer he made paintings of these tombs, and it may be that he will come back to do the same.'

Then she took the fish from the embers, and served them with a tempting grace upon some green leaves on one of the red and black dishes of the Etruscan ware. She took none of them herself; she ate her rough oaten bread with good appetite, whilst she gave a roll of wheaten flour to Este and a draught of wine in the ivory skyphos.

'I thought you always hid yourself from all eyes,' said Este with some anger, as he looked suddenly at her. 'You must have stayed to converse with this man since you know whence he came.'

'I had talked to him in the summer-time. He means no harm; only he must not see you, though I do not think he would speak and tell of you; do not come so near the entrance as you were to-day.'

Este was silent. A new sense stirred in him that was almost a jealous anger. When she was away all through the long hours he had never thought of her as seeing or being seen by any human creature; he knew she hid herself from the shepherd, from the hunter, from the cattle-keeper, from the charcoal-burner, and he had thought these were the only men that ever passed over the moors or came down to the marshes, and that these were scattered and met with but rarely. All in a moment, as he heard her speak of meeting a stranger on the shore, he became suddenly alive to that great personal beauty in her which his mind had languidly acknowledged but his pulse had never quickened to before.

This stranger had been here in the summer and had come again!

All at once he realised that here, growing unnoticed by him in the twilight in the heart of the rocks, was a wild flower that men of science would envy him; an orchid of the swamps, an amaryllis of the woods, that they would covet for hothouse and hortus siccus in the cities of the world.

'Why do you go out so long and so often?' he said angrily. 'You are too young, you are too handsome; you cannot wander as the hare does and the polecat from morn to eve.'

She laughed a little.

'I must, or what food should we have? The danger is not for me; it is for you. If any one come down into these tombs you must hide yourself, and you are not careful enough when I am away.'

'Stay, then. Do not go. We can live on bread,'

'I can. You cannot.'

'I would sooner die of hunger than that you should meet with other men and talk with them, and let them see the glory of your eyes.'

He spoke rather with petulance than with passion. Musa coloured a little.

'I did not suppose you cared,' she said, and then was silent, not understanding entirely why he was displeased and why his displeasure gave her joy.

'Of course I care! You are all I have!' he said impetuously, and then paused. He was not sure that he did care; only he was sure that he did not choose for men from the North to meet her on the shore and tell her stories of Paris.

Musa put down some of her bread uneaten, and rose and went towards the stone chamber where Joconda's coffin was, and where he would no more have dared to enter than he would have dared to draw a knife across her throat as Saturnino once had bidden him do if she were troublesome or squeamish.

'I must change my clothes,' she said to him as she moved away. 'It rained very hard as I came back; and the rain gives ague, they say, though never yet has it hurt me.'

'Stay! have my words frightened you?'

'No. Why should they?'

'Then you care nothing for me!'

'I think you talk idly.'

She spoke gravely, with the shadow of some reproach for the first time upon her face.

'Oh, you care—as saints care for sinners, as wood nymphs cared for mortals! What is that?'

She might have said to him 'it is your life at least;' but she answered nothing. She took her hand from the hold of his fingers, and alike without haste and without hesitation passed into the chamber where the dead body of Joconda still gave her its defence, as the sense of holiness in a consecrated place protects the jewels and the silver of an altar from bold hands and covetous eyes.

 

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