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."