XVIII
When the sun came up over the rim of the sea Maurice ceased from his pretence of sleep, raised himself on his elbow, then sat upright and looked over the ravine to the rocks of the Sirens' Isle. The name seemed to him now a fatal name, and everything connected with his sojourn in Sicily fatal. Surely there had been a malign spirit at work. In this early morning hour his brain, though unrefreshed by sleep, was almost unnaturally clear, feverishly busy. Something had met him when he first set foot in Sicily—so he thought now—had met him with a fixed and evil purpose. And that purpose had never been abandoned.
Old superstitions, inherited perhaps from a long chain of credulous Sicilian ancestors, were stirring in him. He did not laugh at his idea, as a pure-blooded Englishman would have laughed. He pondered it. He cherished it.
On his very first evening in Sicily the spirit had led him to the wall, had directed his gaze to the far-off light in the house of the sirens. He remembered how strangely the little light had fascinated his eyes, and his mind through his eyes, how he had asked what it was, how, when Hermione had called him to come in to sleep, he had turned upon the steps to gaze down on it once more. Then he had not known why he gazed. Now he knew. The spirit that had met him by the sea in Sicily had whispered to him to look, and he had obeyed because he could not do otherwise.
He dwelt upon that thought, that he had obeyed because he had been obliged to obey. It was a palliative to his mental misery and his hatred of himself. The fatalism that is linked with superstition got hold upon him and comforted him a little. He had not been a free agent. He had had to do as he had done. Everything had been arranged so that he might sin. The night of the fishing had prepared the way for the night of the fair. If Hermione had stayed—but of course she had not stayed. The spirit that had kept him in Sicily had sent her across the sea to Africa. In the full flush of his hot-blooded youth, intoxicated by his first knowledge of the sun and of love, he had been left quite alone. Newly married, he had been abandoned by his wife for a good, even perhaps a noble, reason. Still, he had been abandoned—to himself and the keeping of that spirit. Was it any wonder that he had fallen? He strove to think that it was not. In the night he had cowered before Hermione and had been cruel with himself. Now, in the sunshine, he showed fight. He strove to find excuses for himself. If he did not find excuses he felt that he could not face the day, face Hermione in sunlight.
And now that the spirit had led him thus far, surely its work was done, surely it would leave him alone. He tried to believe that.
Then he thought of Maddalena.
She was there, down there where the rising sun glittered on the sea. She surely was awake, as he was awake. She was thinking, wondering—perhaps weeping.
He got up. He could not look at the sea any more. The name "House of the Sirens" suddenly seemed to him a terrible misnomer, now that he thought of Maddalena perhaps weeping by the sea.