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A Spirit in Prison

by Robert Hichens · English · Gutenberg #2994 · 1,059,411 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Spirit in Prison

Author: Robert Hichens


        
Release date: December 1, 2001 [eBook #2994]
                Most recently updated: February 19, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2994

Credits: Produced by Emma Dudding, John Bickers, Dagny, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SPIRIT IN PRISON ***




Produced by Emma Dudding, John Bickers, and Dagny





A SPIRIT IN PRISON

By Robert Hichens



Original Transcriber’s Note: This text was prepared from a 1908 edition,
published by Harper & Brothers, New York and London.




A SPIRIT IN PRISON



CHAPTER I

Somewhere, not far off on the still sea that held the tiny islet in a
warm embrace, a boy’s voice was singing “Napoli Bella.”

Vere heard the song as she sat in the sun with her face set towards
Nisida and the distant peak of Ischia; and instinctively she shifted her
position, and turned her head, looking towards the calm and untroubled
water that stretched between her and Naples. For the voice that sang
of the beautiful city was coming towards her from the beautiful city,
hymning the siren it had left perhaps but two hours ago.

On his pedestal set upon rock San Francesco seemed to be attentive to
the voice. He stood beyond the sheltered pool of the sea that divided
the islet from the mainland, staring across at Vere as if he envied her;
he who was rooted in Italy and deprived of her exquisite freedom.
His beard hung down to his waist, his cross protruded over his left
shoulder, and his robe of dusty grayish brown touched his feet, which
had never wandered one step since he was made, and set there to keep
watch over the fishermen who come to sleep under the lee of the island
by night.

Now it was brilliant daylight. The sun shone vividly over the Bay of
Naples, over the great and vital city, over Vesuvius, the long line of
the land towards Sorrento, over Capri with its shadowy mountain, and
Posilippo with its tree-guarded villas. And in the sharp radiance of May
the careless voice of the fisher-boy sang the familiar song that Vere
had always known and seldom heeded.

To-day, why she did not know, Vere listened to it attentively. Something
in the sound of the voice caught her attention, roused within her a
sense of sympathy.

Carelessness and happiness make a swift appeal to young hearts, and
this voice was careless, and sounded very happy. There was a deliberate
gruffness in it, a determination to be manly, which proved the vocalist
to be no man. Vere knew at once that a boy was singing, and she felt
that she must see him.

She got up, went into the little garden at the edge of the cliff, and
looked over the wall.

There was a boat moving slowly towards her, not very far away. In it
were three figures, all stripped for diving, and wearing white cotton
drawers. Two were sitting on the gunwale with their knees drawn up
nearly to their chins. The third was standing, and with a languid,
but strong and regular movement, was propelling the boat forward with
big-bladed oars. This was the singer, and as the boat drew nearer Vere
could see that he had the young, lithe form of a boy.

While she watched, leaning down from her eyrie, the boat and the song
stopped, and the singer let go his oars and turned to the men behind
him. The boat had reached a place near the rocks that was good ground
for _frutti di mare_.

Vere had often seen the divers in the Bay of Naples at their curious
toil. Yet it never ceased to interest her. She had a passion for the
sea, and for all things connected with it. Now she leaned a little lower
over the wall, with her eyes fixed on the boat and its occupants.

Upon the water she saw corks floating, and presently one of the men
swung himself round and sat facing the sea, with his back to the boat
and his bare legs dipping into the water. The boy had dropped down
to the bottom of the craft. His hands were busy arranging clothes, or
tackle, and his lusty voice again rang out to the glory of “Napoli,
bella Napoli.” There was something infectious in his happy-go-lucky
light-heartedness. Vere smiled as she listened, but there was a
wistfulness in her heart. At that moment a very common desire of young
and vigorous girls assailed her--the desire to be a boy; not a boy born
of rich parents, destined to the idle, aimless life of aristocratic
young Neapolitans, but a brown, badly dressed, or scarcely dressed at
all boy of the people.

She was often light-hearted, careless. But was she ever as light-hearted
and careless as that singing boy? She supposed herself to be free. But
was she, could she ever be at liberty as he was?

The man who had been dipping his feet in the sea rested one hand on the
gunwale, let his body droop forward, dropped into the water, paddled for
a moment, reached one of the floating corks, turned over head downwards,
describing a circle which showed his chocolate-colored back arched,
kicked up his feet and disappeared. The second man lounged lazily from
the boat into the sea and imitated him. The boy sat still and went
on singing. Vere felt disappointed. Was not he going to dive too? She
wanted him to dive. If she were that boy she would go in, she felt
sure of it, before the men. It must be lovely to sink down into the
underworld of the sea, to rifle from the rocks their fruit, that grew
thick as fruit on the trees. But the boy--he was lazy, good for nothing
but singing. She was half ashamed of him. Whimsically, and laughing to
herself at her own absurdity, she lifted her two hands, brown with the
sun, to her lips, and cried with all her might:

“Va dentro, pigro! Va dentro!”

As her voice died away, the boy stopped singing, sprang into the sea,
kicked up his feet and disappeared.

Vere was conscious of a thrill that was like a thrill of triumph.

“He obeyed me!” she thought.

A pleasant feeling of power came to her. From her eyrie on the rock she
was directing these strange sea doings. She was ruling over the men of
the sea.

The empty boat swayed softly on the water, but its three former
occupants were all hidden by the sea. It seemed as if they would never
come up again. Vere began to hold her breath as they were holding
theirs. At last a dark head rose above the surface, then another. The
two men paddled for a minute, drawing the air into their lungs. But the
boy did not reappear.

As the seconds passed, Vere began to feel proud of him. He was doing
that which she would have tried to do had she been a boy. He was
rivalling the men.

Another second slipped away--and another. He was more than rivalling, he
was beating the men.

They dived once more. She saw the sun gleam on their backs, which looked
polished as they turned slowly over, almost like brown porpoises.

But the boy remained hidden beneath the veil of water.

Vere began to feel anxious. What if some accident had happened? What
if he had been caught by the seaweed, or if his groping hand had been
retained by some crevice of the rock? There was a pain at her heart.
Her quick imagination was at work. It seemed to her as if she felt his
agony, took part in his struggle to regain his freedom. She clinched
her small hands and set her teeth. She held her breath, trying to feel
exactly as he was feeling. And then suddenly she lifted her hands up to
her face, covering her nostrils. What a horrible sensation it was, this
suffocation, this pressing of the life out of the body, almost as one
may push a person brutally out of a room! She could bear it no more, and
she dropped her hands. As she did so the boy’s dark head rose above the
sea.

Vere uttered a cry of joy.

“Brave! Bravo!”

She felt as if he had returned from the dead. He was a wonderful boy.

“Bravo! Bravissimo!”

Serenely unconscious of her enthusiasm, the boy swam slowly for a
moment, breathing the air into his lungs, then serenely dived again.

“Vere!” called a woman’s voice from the house--“Vere!”

“Madre!” cried the girl in reply, but without turning away from the sea.
“I am here! Do come out! I want to show you something.”

On a narrow terrace looking towards Naples a tall figure appeared.

“Where are you?”

“Here! here!”

The mother smiled and left the terrace, passed through a little gate,
and almost directly was standing beside the girl, saying:

“What is it? Is there a school of whales in the Bay, or have you sighted
the sea-serpent coming from Capri?”

“No, no! But--you see that boat?”

“Yes. The men are diving for _frutti di mare_, aren’t they?”

Vere nodded.

“The men are nothing. But there is a boy who is wonderful.”

“Why? What does he do?”

“He stays under water an extraordinary time. Now wait. Have you got a
watch, Madre?”

“Yes.”

“Take it out, there’s a darling, and time him. I want to know--there he
is! You see!”

“Yes.”

“Have you got your watch? Wait till he goes under! Wait a minute! There!
He’s gone! Now begin.”

She drew into her lungs a long breath, and held it. The mother smiled,
keeping her eyes obediently on the watch which lay in her hand.

There was a silence between them as the seconds passed.

“Really,” began the mother presently, “he must be--”

“Hush, Madre, hush!”

The girl had clasped her hands tightly. Her eyes never left the sea.
The tick, tick of the watch was just audible in the stillness of the May
morning. At last--

“There he is!” cried the girl. “Quick! How long has he been under?”

“Just fifty seconds.”

“I wonder--I’m sure it’s a record. If only Gaspare were here! When will
he be back from Naples with Monsieur Emile?”

“About twelve, I should think. But I doubt if they can sail.” She looked
out to sea, and added: “I think the wind is changing to scirocco. They
may be later.”

“He’s gone down again!”

“I never saw you so interested in a diver before,” said the mother.
“What made you begin to look at the boy?”

“He was singing. I heard him, and his voice made me feel--” She paused.

“What?” said her mother.

“I don’t know. _Un poco diavolesca_, I’m afraid. One thing, though! It
made me long to be a boy.”

“Did it?”

“Yes! Madre, tell me truly--sea-water on your lips, as the fishermen
say--now truly, did you ever want me to be a boy?”

Hermione Delarey did not answer for a moment. She looked away over the
still sea, that seemed to be slowly losing its color, and she thought of
another sea, of the Ionian waters that she had loved so much. They had
taken her husband from her before her child was born, and this child’s
question recalled to her the sharp agony of those days and nights in
Sicily, when Maurice lay unburied in the Casa del Prete, and afterwards
in the hospital at Marechiaro--of other days and nights in Italy, when,
isolated with the Sicilian boy, Gaspare, she had waited patiently for
the coming of her child.

“Sea-water, Madre, sea-water on your lips!”

Her mother looked down at her.

“Do you think I wished it, Vere?”

“To-day I do.”

“Why to-day?”

“Because I wish it so much. And it seems to me as if perhaps I wish it
because you once wished it for me. You thought I should be a boy?”

“I felt sure you would be a boy.”

“Madre! How strange!”

The girl was looking up at her mother. Her dark eyes--almost Sicilian
eyes they were--opened very wide, and her lips remained slightly parted
after she had spoken.

“I wonder why that was?” she said at length.

“I have wondered too. It may have been that I was always thinking of
your father in those days, recalling him--well, recalling him as he had
been in Sicily. He went away from me so suddenly that somehow his
going, even when it had happened, for a long time seemed to be an
impossibility. And I fancied, I suppose, that my child would be him in a
way.”

“Come back?”

“Or never quite gone.”

The girl was silent for a moment.

“Povera Madre mia!” at last she said.

But she did not seem distressed for herself. No personal grievance,
no doubt of complete love assailed her. And the fact that this was so
demonstrated, very quietly and very completely, the relation existing
between this mother and this child.

“I wonder, now,” Vere said, presently, “why I never specially wished to
be a boy until to-day--because, after all, it can’t be from you that the
wish came. If it had been it must have come long ago. And it didn’t. It
only came when I heard that boy’s voice. He sings like all the boys,
you know, that have ever enjoyed themselves, that are still enjoying
themselves in the sun.”

“I wish he would sing once more!” said Hermione.

“Perhaps he will. Look! He’s getting into the boat. And the men are
stopping too.”

The boy was very quick in his movements. Almost before Vere had finished
speaking he had pulled on his blue jersey and white trousers, and again
taken the big oars in his hands. Standing up, with his face set towards
the islet, he began once more to propel the boat towards it. And as he
swung his body slowly to and fro he opened his lips and sang lustily
once more,

  “O Napoli, bella Napoli!”

Hermione and Vere sat silently listening as the song grew louder and
louder, till the boat was almost in the shadow of the islet, and the
boy, with a strong stroke of the left oar turned its prow towards the
pool over which San Francesco watched.

“They’re going into the Saint’s Pool to have a siesta,” said Vere.
“Isn’t he a splendid boy, Madre?”

As she spoke the boat was passing almost directly beneath them, and they
saw its name painted in red letters on the prow, _Sirena del Mare_. The
two men, one young, one middle-aged, were staring before them at the
rocks. But the boy, more sensitive, perhaps, than they were to the
watching eyes of women, looked straight up to Vere and to her mother.
They saw his level rows of white teeth gleaming as the song came out
from his parted lips, the shining of his eager dark eyes, full of the
careless merriment of youth, the black, low-growing hair stirring in
the light sea breeze about his brow, bronzed by sun and wind. His
slight figure swayed with an easy motion that had the grace of perfectly
controlled activity, and his brown hands gripped the great oars with
a firmness almost of steel, as the boat glided under the lee of the
island, and vanished from the eyes of the watchers into the shadowy pool
of San Francesco.

When the boat had disappeared, Vere lifted herself up and turned round
to her mother.

“Isn’t he a jolly boy, Madre?”

“Yes,” said Hermione.

She spoke in a low voice. Her eyes were still on the sea where the boat
had passed.

“Yes,” she repeated, almost as if to herself.

For the first time a little cloud went over Vere’s sensitive face.

“Madre, how horribly I must have disappointed you,” she said.

The mother did not break into protestations. She always treated her
child with sincerity.

“Just for a moment, Vere,” she answered. “And then, very soon, you made
me feel how much more intimate can be the relationship between a mother
and a daughter than between a mother and any son.”

“Is that true, really?”

“I think it is.”

“But why should that be?”

“Don’t you think that Monsieur Emile can tell you much better than I? I
feel all the things, you know, that he can explain.”

There was a touch of something that was like a half-hidden irony in her
voice.

“Monsieur Emile! Yes, I think he understands almost everything about
people,” said Vere, quite without irony. “But could a man explain such a
thing as well as a woman? I don’t think so.”

“We have the instincts, perhaps, men the vocabulary. Come, Vere, I want
to look over into the Saint’s Pool and see what those men are doing.”

Vere laughed.

“Take care, Madre, or Gaspare will be jealous.”

A soft look came into Hermione’s face.

“Gaspare and I know each other,” she said, quietly.

“But he could be jealous--horribly jealous.”

“Of you, perhaps, Vere, but never of me. Gaspare and I have passed
through too much together for anything of that kind. Nobody could ever
take his place with me, and he knows it quite well.”

“Gaspare’s a darling, and I love him,” said Vere, rather inconsequently.
“Shall we look over into the Pool from the pavilion, or go down by the
steps?”

“We’ll look over.”

They passed in through a gateway to the narrow terrace that fronted the
Casa del Mare facing Vesuvius, entered the house, traversed a little
hall, came out again into the air by a door on its farther side, and
made their way to a small pavilion that looked upon the Pool of San
Francesco. Almost immediately below, in the cool shadow of the cliff,
the boat was moored. The two men, lying at full length in it, their
faces buried in their hands, were already asleep. But the boy, sitting
astride on the prow, with his bare feet dangling on each side of it
to the clear green water, was munching slowly, and rather seriously, a
hunch of yellow bread, from which he cut from time to time large pieces
with a clasp knife. As he ate, lifting the pieces of bread to his mouth
with the knife, against whose blade he held them with his thumb, he
stared down at the depths below, transparent here almost to the sea
bed. His eyes were wide with reverie. He seemed another boy, not the
gay singer of five minutes ago. But then he had been in the blaze of the
sun. Now he was in the shade. And swiftly he had caught the influence of
the dimmer light, the lack of motion, the delicate hush at the feet of
San Francesco.

This time he did not know that he was being watched. His reverie,
perhaps, was too deep, or their gaze less concentrated than it had been
before. And after a moment, Hermione moved away.

“You are going in, Madre?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mind if I give something to that boy?”

“Do you mean money?”

“Oh no. But the poor thing’s eating dry bread, and--”

“And what, you puss?”

“Well, he’s a very obedient boy.”

“How can you know that?”

“He was idling in the boat, and I called out to him to jump into the
sea, and he jumped in immediately.”

“Do you think because he heard you?”

“Certainly I do.”

“You conceited little creature! Perhaps he was only pleasing himself!”

“No, Madre, no. I think I should like to give him a little reward
presently--for his singing too.”

“Get him a dolce, then, from Carmela, if there is one. And you can give
him some cigarettes.”

“I will. He’ll love that. Oh dear! I wish he didn’t make me dissatisfied
with myself!”

“Nonsense, Vere!”

Hermione bent down and kissed her child. Then she went rather quickly
away from the pavilion and entered the Casa del Mare.



CHAPTER II

After her mother had gone, Vere waited for a moment, then ran lightly to
the house, possessed herself of a dolce and a packet of cigarettes, and
went down the steps to the Pool of San Francesco, full of hospitable
intentions towards the singing boy. She found him still sitting astride
of the boat’s prow, not yet free of his reverie apparently; for when
she gave a low call of “Pescator!” prolonging the last syllable with the
emphasis and the accent of Naples, but always softly, he started, and
nearly dropped into the sea the piece of bread he was lifting to his
mouth. Recovering himself in time to save the bread deftly with one
brown hand, he turned half round, leaning on his left arm, and stared at
Vere with large, inquiring eyes. She stood by the steps and beckoned to
him, lifting up the packet of cigarettes, then pointing to his sleeping
companions:

“Come here for a minute!”

The boy smiled, sprang up, and leaped onto the islet. As he came to her,
with the easy, swinging walk of the barefooted sea-people, he pulled up
his white trousers, and threw out his chest with an obvious desire to
“fare figura” before the pretty Padrona of the islet. When he reached
her he lifted his hand to his bare head forgetfully, meaning to take off
his cap to her. Finding that he had no cap, he made a laughing grimace,
threw up his chin and, thrusting his tongue against his upper teeth and
opening wide his mouth, uttered a little sound most characteristically
Neapolitan--a sound that seemed lightly condemnatory of himself. This
done, he stood still before Vere, looking at the cigarettes and at the
dolce.

“I’ve brought these for you,” she said.

“Grazie, Signorina.”

He did not hold out his hand, but his eyes, now devoted entirely to
the cigarettes, began to shine with pleasure. Vere did not give him the
presents at once. She had something to explain first.

“We mustn’t wake them,” she said, pointing towards the boat in which the
men were sleeping. “Come a little way with me.”

She retreated a few steps from the sea, followed closely by the eager
boy.

“We sha’n’t disturb them now,” she said, stopping. “Do you know why I’ve
brought you these?”

She stretched out her hands, with the dolce and the cigarettes.

The boy threw his chin up again and half shut his eyes.

“No, Signorina.”

“Because you did what I told you.”

She spoke rather with the air of a little queen.

“I don’t understand.”

“Didn’t you hear me call out to you from up there?”--she pointed to the
cliff above their heads--“when you were sitting in the boat? I called to
you to go in after the men.”

“Why?”

“Why! Because I thought you were a lazy boy.”

He laughed. All his brown face gave itself up to laughter--eyes, teeth,
lips, cheeks, chin. His whole body seemed to be laughing. The idea of
his being lazy seemed to delight his whole spirit.

“You would have been lazy if you hadn’t done what I told you,” said
Vere, emphatically, forcing her words through his merriment with
determination. “You know you would.”

“I never heard you call, Signorina.”

“You didn’t?”

He shook his head several times, bent down, dipped his fingers in the
sea, put them to his lips: “I say it.”

“Really?”

There was a note of disappointment in her voice. She felt dethroned.

“But then, you haven’t earned these,” she said, looking at him almost
with rebuke, “if you went in of your own accord.”

“I go in because it is my mestiere, Signorina,” the boy said, simply. “I
go in by force.”

He looked at her and then again at the cigarettes. His expression said,
“Can you refuse me?” There was a quite definite and conscious attempt to
cajole her to generosity in his eyes, and in the pose he assumed. Vere
saw it, and knew that if there had been a mirror within reach at
that moment the boy would have been looking into it, frankly admiring
himself.

In Italy the narcissus blooms at all seasons of the year.

She was charmed by the boy, for he did his luring well, and she was
susceptible to all that was naturally picturesque. But a gay little
spirit of resistance sprang up like a flame and danced within her.

She let her hands fall to her sides.

“But you like going in?”

“Signorina?”

“You enjoy diving?”

He shrugged his shoulders, and again used what seemed with him a
favorite expression.

“Signorina, I must enjoy it, by force.”

“You do it wonderfully. Do you know that? You do it better than the
men.”

Again the conscious look came into the boy’s face and body, as if his
soul were faintly swaggering.

“There is no one in the Bay who can dive better than I can,” he
answered. “Giovannino thinks he can. Well, let him think so. He would
not dare to make a bet with me.”

“He would lose it if he did,” said Vere. “I’m sure he would. Just now
you were under water nearly a minute by my mother’s watch.”

“Where is the Signora?” said the boy, looking round.

“Why d’you ask?”

“Why--I can stay under longer than that.”

“Now, look here!” said the girl, eagerly. “Never mind Madre! Go down
once for me, won’t you? Go down once for me, and you shall have the
dolce and two packets of cigarettes.”

“I don’t want the dolce, Signorina; a dolce is for women,” he said,
with the complete bluntness characteristic of Southern Italians and of
Sicilians.

“The cigarettes, then.”

“Va bene. But the water is too shallow here.”

“We’ll take my boat.”

She pointed to a small boat, white with a green line, that was moored
close to them.

“Va bene,” said the boy again.

He rolled his white trousers up above his knees, stripped off his blue
jersey, leaving the thin vest that was beneath it, folded the jersey
neatly and laid it on the stones, tightened his trousers at the back,
then caught hold of the rope by which Vere’s boat was moored to the
shore and pulled the boat in.

Very carefully he helped Vere into it.

“I know a good place,” he said, “where you can see right down to the
bottom.”

Taking the oars he slowly paddled a little way out to a deep clear pool
of the sea.

“I’ll go in here, Signorina.”

He stood up straight, with his feet planted on each side of the boat’s
prow, and glanced at the water intimately, as might a fish. Then he
shot one more glance at Vere and at the cigarettes, made the sign of the
cross, lifted his brown arms above his head, uttered a cry, and dived
cleanly below the water, going down obliquely till he was quite dim in
the water.

Vere watched him with deep attention. This feat of the boy fascinated
her. The water between them made him look remote, delicate and
unearthly--neither boy nor fish. His head, she could see, was almost
touching the bottom. She fancied that he was actually touching bottom
with his hands. Yes, he was. Bending low over the water she saw his
brown fingers, stretched out and well divided, promenading over the
basin of the sea as lightly and springily as the claws of a crab
tip-toeing to some hiding-place. Presently he let himself down a little
more, pressed his flat palms against the ground, and with the impetus
thus gained made his body shoot back towards the surface feet foremost.
Then bringing his body up till it was in a straight line with his feet,
he swam slowly under water, curving first in this direction then in
that, with a lithe ease that was enchantingly graceful. Finally, he
turned over on his back and sank slowly down until he looked like a
corpse lying at the bottom of the sea.

Then Vere felt a sickness of fear steal over her, and leaning over the
sea till her face almost touched the water, she cried out fiercely:

“Come up! Come up! Presto! Presto!”

As the boy had seemed to obey her when she cried out to him from the
summit of the cliff, so he seemed to obey her now.

When her voice died down into the sea-depths he rose from those depths,
and she saw his eyes laughing, his lips laughing at her, freed from the
strange veil of the water, which had cast upon him a spectral aspect,
the likeness of a thing deserted by its soul.

“Did you hear me that time?” Vere said, rather eagerly.

The boy lifted his dark head from the water to shake it, drew a long
breath, trod water, then threw up his chin with the touch of tongue
against teeth which is the Neapolitan negative.

“You didn’t! Then why did you come up?”

He swam to the boat.

“It pleased me to come.”

She looked doubtful.

“I believe you are birbante,” she said, slowly. “I am nearly sure you
are.”

The boy was just getting out, pulling himself up slowly to the boat by
his arms, with his wet hands grasping the gunwale firmly. He looked at
Vere, with the salt drops running down his sunburnt face, and dripping
from his thick, matted hair to his strong neck and shoulders. Again his
whole face laughed, as, nimbly, he brought his legs from the water and
stood beside her.

“Birbante, Signorina?”

“Yes. Are you from Naples?”

“I come from Mergellina, Signorina.”

Vere looked at him half-doubtfully, but still with innocent admiration.
There was something perfectly fearless and capable about him that
attracted her.

He rowed in to shore.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Sixteen years old, Signorina.”

“I am sixteen, too.”

They reached the islet, and Vere got out. The boy followed her, fastened
the boat, and moved away a few steps. She wondered why, till she saw him
stop in a sun-patch and let the beams fall full upon him.

“You aren’t afraid of catching cold?” she asked.

He threw up his chin. His eyes went to the cigarettes.

“Yes,” said Vere, in answer to the look, “you shall have one. Here!”

She held out the packet. Very carefully and neatly the boy, after
holding his right hand for a moment to the sun to get dry, drew out a
cigarette.

“Oh, you want a match!”

He sprang away and ran lightly to the boat. Without waking his
companions he found a matchbox and lit the cigarette. Then he came back,
on the way stopping to get into his jersey.

Vere sat down on a narrow seat let into the rock close to the sun-patch.
She was nursing the dolce on her knee.

“You won’t have it?” she asked.

He gave her his usual negative, again stepping full into the sun.

“Well, then, I shall eat it. You say a dolce is for women!”

“Si, Signorina,” he answered, quite seriously.

She began to devour it slowly, while the boy drew the cigarette smoke
into his lungs voluptuously.

“And you are only sixteen?” she asked.

“Si, Signorina.”

“As young as I am! But you look almost a man.”

“Signorina, I have always worked. I am a man.”

He squared his shoulders. She liked the determination, the resolution in
his face; and she liked the face, too. He was a very handsome boy, she
thought, but somehow he did not look quite Neapolitan. His eyes lacked
the round and staring impudence characteristic of many Neapolitans she
had seen. There was something at times impassive in their gaze. In shape
they were long, and slightly depressed at the corners by the cheeks, and
they had full, almost heavy, lids. The features of the boy were small
and straight, and gave no promise of eventual coarseness. He was
splendidly made. When Vere looked at him she thought of an arrow. Yet he
was very muscular, and before he dived she had noticed that on his arms
the biceps swelled up like smooth balls of iron beneath the shining
brown skin.

“What month were you born in?” she asked.

“Signorina, I believe I was born in March. I believe I was sixteen last
March.”

“Then I am older than you are!”

This seemed to the boy a matter of indifference, though it was evidently
exercising the girl beside him. She had finished the dolce now, and he
was smoking the last fraction of an inch of the cigarette, economically
determined to waste none of it, even though he burnt his fingers.

“Have another cigarette,” Vere added, after a pause during which she
considered him carefully. “You can’t get anything more out of that one.”

“Grazie, Signorina.”

He took it eagerly.

“Do tell me your name, won’t you?” Vere went on.

“Ruffo, Signorina.”

“Ruffo--that’s a nice name. It sounds strong and bold. And you live at
Mergellina?”

“Si, Signorina. But I wasn’t born there. I wasn’t born in Naples at
all.”

“Where were you born?”

“In America, Signorina, near New York. I am a Sicilian.”

“A Sicilian, are you!”

“Si, Signorina.”

“I am a little bit Sicilian, too; only a little tiny bit--but still--”

She waited to see the effect upon him. He looked at her steadily with
his long bright eyes.

“You are Sicilian, Signorina?”

“My great-grandmother was.”

“Si?”

His voice sounded incredulous.

“Don’t you believe me?” she cried, rather hotly.

“Ma si, Signorina! Only--that’s not very Sicilian, if the rest is
English. You are English, Signorina, aren’t you?”

“The rest of me is. Are you all Sicilian?”

“Signorina, my mother is Sicilian.”

“And your father, too?”

“Signorina, my father is dead,” he said, in a changed voice. “Now I live
with my mother and my step-father. He--Patrigno--he is Neapolitan.”

There was a movement in the boat. The boy looked round.

“I must go back to the boat, Signorina,” he said.

“Oh, must you?” Vere said. “What a pity! But look, they are really still
asleep.”

“I must go back, Signorina,” he protested.

“You want to sleep, too, perhaps?”

He seized the excuse.

“Si, Signorina. Being under the sea so much--it tires the head and the
eyes. I want to sleep, too.”

His face, full of life, denied his words, but Vere only said:

“Here are the cigarettes.”

“Grazie, Signorina.”

“And I promised you another packet. Well, wait here--just here, d’you
see?--under the bridge, and I’ll throw it down, and you must catch it.”

“Si, Signorina.”

He took his stand on the spot she pointed out, and she disappeared up
the steps towards the house.

“Madre! Madre!”

Hermione heard Vere’s voice calling below a moment later.

“What is it?”

There was a quick step on the stairs, and the girl ran in.

“One more packet of cigarettes--may I? It’s instead of the dolce. Ruffo
says only women eat sweet things.”

“Ruffo!”

“Yes, that’s his name. He’s been diving for me. You never saw anything
like it! And he’s a Sicilian. Isn’t it odd? And sixteen--just as I am.
May I have the cigarettes for him?”

“Yes, of course. In that drawer there’s a whole box of the ones Monsieur
Emile likes.”

“There would be ten cigarettes in a packet. I’ll give him ten.”

She counted them swiftly out.

“There! And I’ll make him catch them all, one by one. It will be more
fun than throwing only a packet. Addio, mia bella Madre! Addi-io!
Addi-io!”

And singing the words to the tune of “Addio, mia bella Napoli,” she
flitted out of the room and down the stairs.

“Ruffo! Ruffo!”

A minute later she was leaning over the bridge to the boy, who stood
sentinel below. He looked up, and saw her laughing face full of merry
mischief, and prepared to catch the packet she had promised him.

“Ruffo, I’m so sorry, but I can’t find another packet of cigarettes.”

The boy’s bright face changed, looked almost sad, but he called up:

“Non fa niente, Signorina!” He stood still for a moment, then made a
gesture of salutation, and added; “Thank you, Signorina. A rivederci!”

He moved to go to the boat, but Vere cried out, quickly:

“Wait, Ruffo! Can you catch well?”

“Signorina?”

“Look out now!”

Her arm was thrust out over the bridge, and Ruffo, staring up, saw a big
cigarette--a cigarette such as he had never seen--in her small fingers.
Quickly he made a receptacle of his joined hands, his eyes sparkling and
his lips parted with happy anticipation.

“One!”

The cigarette fell and was caught.

“Two!”

A second fell. But this time Ruffo was unprepared, and it dropped on the
rock by his bare feet.

“Stupido!” laughed the girl.

“Ma, Signorina--!”

“Three!”

It had become a game between them, and continued to be a game until all
the ten cigarettes had made their journey through the air.

Vere would not let Ruffo know when a cigarette was coming, but kept him
on the alert, pretending, holding it poised above him between his finger
and thumb until even his eyes blinked from gazing upward; then dropping
it when she thought he was unprepared, or throwing it like a missile.
But she soon knew that she had found her match in the boy. And when he
caught the tenth and last cigarette in his mouth she clapped her hands,
and cried out so enthusiastically that one of the men in the boat heaved
himself up from the bottom, and, choking down a yawn, stared with heavy
amazement at the young virgin of the rocks, and uttered a “Che Diavolo!”
 under his stiff mustache.

Vere saw his astonishment, and swiftly, with a parting wave of her hand
to Ruffo, she disappeared, leaving her protégé to run off gayly with his
booty to his comrades of the _Sirena del Mare_.



CHAPTER III

“I can see the boat, Vere,” said Hermione, when the girl came back, her
eyes still gleaming with memories of the fun of the cigarette game with
Ruffo.

“Where, Madre?”

She sat down quickly beside her mother on the window-seat, leaning
against her confidentially and looking out over the sea. Hermione put
her arm round the girl’s shoulder.

“There! Don’t you see!” She pointed. “It has passed Casa Pantano.”

“I see! Yes, that is Gaspare, and Monsieur Emile in the stern. They
won’t be late for lunch. I almost wish they would, Madre.”

“Why?”

“I’m not a bit hungry. Ruffo wouldn’t eat the dolce, so I did.”

“Ruffo! You seem to have made great friends with that boy.”

She did not speak rebukingly, but with a sort of tender amusement.

“I really have,” returned Vere.

She put her head against her mother’s shoulder.

“Isn’t this odd, Madre? Twice in the short time I’ve known Ruffo, he’s
obeyed me. The first time he was in the boat. I called out to him to
dive in, and he did it instantly. The second time he was under water,
at the very bottom of the sea. He looked as if he were dead, and for a
minute I felt frightened. So I called out to him to come up, and he came
up directly.”

“But that only shows that he’s a polite boy and does what you wish.”

“No, no. He didn’t hear me either time. He had no idea I had called. But
each time I did, without hearing me he had the sudden wish to do what I
wanted. Now, isn’t that curious?”

She paused.

“Madre?” she added.

“You think you influenced him?”

“Don’t you think I did?”

“Perhaps so. There’s a sympathetic link of youth between you. You
are gloriously young, both of you, little daughter. And youth turns
naturally to youth, though I’m afraid old age doesn’t always turn
naturally to old age.”

“What do you know about old age, Madre? You haven’t a gray hair.”

She spoke with anxious encouragement.

“It’s true. My hair declines to get gray.”

“I don’t believe you’ll ever be gray.”

“Probably not. But there’s another grayness--Life behind one instead of
before; the emotional--”

She stopped herself. This was not for Vere.

“They’re close in,” she said, looking out of the window.

She waved her hand. The big man in the stern of the boat took off
his hat in reply, and waved his hand, too. The rower pulled with the
vivacity that comes to men near the end of a task, and the boat shot
into the Pool of the Saint, where Ruffo was at that moment enjoying his
third cigarette.

“I’ll run down and meet Monsieur Emile,” said Vere.

And she disappeared as swiftly as she had come.

The big man who got out of the boat could not claim Hermione’s immunity
from gray hairs. His beard was lightly powdered with them, and though
much of the still thick hair on his head was brown, and his figure was
erect, and looked strong and athletic--he seemed what he was, a man of
middle age, who had lived, and thought, and observed much. His eyes
had the peculiar expression of eyes that have seen very many and very
various sights. It was difficult to imagine them not looking keenly
intelligent. The vivacity of youth was no longer in them, but the
vividness of intellect, of an intellect almost fiercely alive and
tenacious of its life, was never absent from them.

As Artois got out, the boat’s prow was being held by the Sicilian,
Gaspare, now a man of thirty-five, but still young-looking. Many
Sicilians grow old quickly--hard life wears them out. But Gaspare’s fate
had been easier than that of most of his contemporaries and friends of
Marechiaro. Ever since the tragic death of the beloved master, whom he
still always spoke of as “mio Padrone,” he had been Hermione’s faithful
attendant and devoted friend. Yes, she knew him to be that--she wished
him to be that. Their stations in life might be different, but they had
come to sorrow together. They had suffered together and been in sympathy
while they suffered. He had loved what she had loved, lost it when she
had lost it, wept for it when she had wept.

And he had been with her when she had waited for the coming of the
child.

Hermione really cared for three people: Gaspare was one of them. He knew
it. The other two were Vere and Emile Artois.

“Vere,” said Artois, taking her two hands closely in his large hands,
and gazing into her face with the kind, even affectionate directness
that she loved in him: “do you know that to-day you are looking
insolent?”

“Insolent!” said the girl. “How dare you!”

She tried to take her hands away.

“Insolently young,” he said, keeping them authoritatively.

“But I am young. What do you mean, Monsieur Emile?”

“I? It is your meaning I am searching for.”

“I sha’n’t let you find it. You are much too curious about people.
But--I’ve been having a game this morning.”

“A game! Who was your playmate?”

“Never mind.”

But her bright eyes went for the fraction of a second to Ruffo, who
close by in the boat was lying at his ease, his head thrown back, and
one of the cigarettes between his lips.

“What! That boy there?”

“Nonsense! Come along! Madre has been sitting at the window for ages
looking out for the boat. Couldn’t you sail at all Gaspare?”

Artois had let go her hands, and now she turned to the Sicilian.

“To Naples, Signorina, and nearly to the Antico Giuseppone coming back.”

“But we had to do a lot of tacking,” said Artois. “Mon Dieu! That boy is
smoking one of my cigarettes! You sacrilegious little creature! You have
been robbing my box!”

Gaspare’s eyes followed Artois’ to Ruffo, who was watching them
attentively, but who now looked suddenly sleepy.

“It belongs to Madre.”

“It was bought for me.”

“I like you better with a pipe. You are too big for cigarettes. And
besides, artists always smoke pipes.”

“Allow me to forget that I try to be an artist when I come to the
island, Vere.”

“Yes, yes, I will,” she said, with a pretty air of relenting. “You
poor thing, here you are a king incognito, and we all treat you quite
familiarly. I’ll even go first, regardless of etiquette.” And she went
off to the steps that led upward to the house.

Artois followed her. As he went he said to Ruffo in the Neapolitan
dialect:

“It’s a good cigarette, isn’t it? You are in luck this morning.”

“Si, Signore,” said the boy, smiling. “The Signorina gave me ten.”

And he blew out a happy cloud.

There was something in his welcoming readiness of response, something
in his look and voice, that seemed to stir within the tenacious mind of
Artois a quivering chord of memory.

“I wonder if I have spoken to that boy in Naples?” he thought, as he
mounted the steps behind Vere.

Hermione met him at the door of her room, and they went in almost
directly to lunch with Vere. When the meal was over Vere disappeared,
without saying why, and Hermione and Artois returned to Hermione’s room
to have coffee. By this time the day was absolutely windless, the sky
had become nearly white, and the sea was a pale gray, flecked here and
there with patches of white.

“This is like a June day of scirocco,” said Artois, as he lit his pipe
with the air of a man thoroughly at home. “I wonder if it will succeed
in affecting Vere’s spirits. This morning, when I arrived, she looked
wildly young. But the day held still some blue then.”

Hermione was settling herself slowly in a low chair near the window that
faced Capri. The curious, rather ghastly light from the sea fell over
her.

“Vere is very sensitive to almost all influences,” she said. “You know
that, Emile.”

“Yes,” he said, throwing away the match he had been using; “and the
influence of this morning roused her to joy. What was it?”

“She was very excited watching a diver for _frutti di mare_.”

“A boy about seventeen or eighteen, black hair, Arab eyes, bronze
skin, a smile difficult to refuse, and a figure almost as perfect as a
Nubian’s, but rather squarer about the shoulders?”

“You have seen him, then?”

“Smoking ten of my special Khali Targa cigarettes, with his bare toes
cocked up, and one hand drooping into the Saint’s Pool.”

Hermione smiled.

“My cigarettes! They’re common property here,” she said.

“That boy can’t be a pure-bred Neapolitan, surely. And yet he speaks the
language. There’s no mistaking the blow he gives to the last syllable of
a sentence.”

“He’s a Sicilian, Vere says.”

“Pure bred?”

“I don’t know.”

“I fancy I must have run across him somewhere in or about Naples. It is
he who made Vere, as I told her, look so insolently young this morning.”

“Ah, you noticed! I, too, thought I had never seen her so full of the
inner spirit of youth--almost as he was in Sicily.”

“Yes,” Artois said, gravely. “In some things she is very much his
daughter.”

“In some things only?” asked Hermione.

“Don’t you think so? Don’t you think she has much of you in her also? I
do.”

“Has she? I don’t know that I see it. I don’t know that I want to see
it. I always look for him in Vere. You see, I dreamed of having a boy.
Vere is instead of the boy I dreamed of, the boy--who never came, who
will never come.”

“My friend,” said Artois, very seriously and gently, “are you still
allowing your mind to dwell upon that old imagination? And with Vere
before you, can you regard her merely as a substitute, an understudy?”

An energy that was not free from passion suddenly flamed up in Hermione.

“I love Vere,” she said. “She is very close to me. She knows it. She
does not doubt me or my love.”

“But,” he quietly persisted, “you still allow your mind to rove
ungoverned among those dangerous ways of the past?”

“Emile,” she said, still speaking with vehemence, “it may be very easy
to a strong man like you to direct his thoughts, to keep them out of one
path and guide them along another. It may be--I don’t know whether it
is; but I don’t pretend to such strength. I don’t believe it is ever
given to women. Perhaps even strength has its sex--I sometimes think
so. I have my strength, believe me. But don’t require of me the peculiar
strength that is male.”

“The truth is that you love living in the past as the Bedouin loves
living in the desert.”

“It was my oasis,” she answered, simply.

“And all these years--they have made no difference?”

“Did you think they would? Did you think they had?”

“I hoped so. I thought--I had begun to think that you lived again in
Vere.”

“Emile, you can always stand the truth, can’t you? Don’t say you can’t.
That would hurt me horribly. Perhaps you do not know how sometimes I
mentally lean on you. And I like to feel that if you knew the
absolute truth of me you would still look upon me with the same kind,
understanding eyes as now. Perhaps no one else would. Would you, do you
think?”

“I hope and believe I could,” he said. “You do not live in Vere. Is that
it?”

“I know it is considered the right, the perfectly natural thing that a
mother, stricken as I have been, should find in time perfect peace and
contentment in her child. Even you--you spoke of ‘living again.’ It’s
the consecrated phrase, Emile, isn’t it? I ought to be living again in
Vere. Well, I’m not doing that. With my nature I could never do that. Is
that horrible?”

“Ma pauvre amie!” he said.

He bent down and touched her hand.

“I don’t know,” she said, more calmly, as if relieved, but still with an
undercurrent of passion, “whether I could ever live again in the life of
another. But if I did it would be in the life of a man. I am not made to
live in a woman’s life, really to live, giving out the force that is
in me. I know I’m a middle-aged woman--to these Italians here more than
that, an old woman. But I’m not a finished woman, and I never shall
be till I die. Vere is my child. I love her tenderly; more than
that--passionately. She has always been close to me, as you know. But
no, Emile, my relation to Vere, hers to me, does not satisfy all my need
of love, my power to love. No, no, it doesn’t. There’s something in me
that wants more, much more than that. There’s something in me that--I
think only a son of his could have satisfied my yearning. A son might
have been Maurice come back to me, come back in a different, beautiful,
wonderfully pure relation. I prayed for a son. I needed a son. Don’t
misunderstand me, Emile; in a way a son could never have been so close
to me as Vere is,--but I could have lived in him as I can never live in
Vere. I could have lived in him almost as once I lived in Maurice. And
to-day I--”

She got up suddenly from her chair, put her arms on the window-frame,
and leaned out to the strange, white day.

“Emile,” she said, in a moment, turning round to him, “I want to get
away, on to the sea. Will you row me out, into the Grotto of Virgil?[*]
It’s so dreadfully white here, white and ghastly. I can’t talk naturally
here. And I should like to go on a little farther, now I’ve begun. It
would do me good to make a clean breast of it, dear brother confessor.
Shall we take the little boat and go?”

     [*] The grotto described in this book is not really the
     Grotto of Virgil, but it is often called so by the fishermen
     along the coast.

“Of course,” he said.

“I’ll get a hat.”

She was away for two or three minutes. During that time Artois stood
by the window that looked towards Ischia. The stillness of the day was
intense, and gave to his mind a sensation of dream. Far off across the
gray-and-white waters, partially muffled in clouds that almost resembled
mist, the mountains of Ischia were rather suggested, mysteriously
indicated, than clearly seen. The gray cliffs towards Bagnoli went
down into motionless water gray as they were, but of a different, more
pathetic shade.

There was a luminous whiteness in the sky that affected the eyes, as
snow does.

Artois, as he looked, thought this world looked very old, a world
arranged for the elderly to dwell in. Was it not, therefore, an
appropriate setting for him and for Hermione? As this idea came into his
mind it sent a rather bitter smile to his lips, and Hermione, coming in
just then, saw the smile and said,--

“What is it, Emile? Why are you smiling?”

“Perhaps I will tell you when we are on the sea,” he answered.

He looked at her. She had on a black hat, over which a white veil was
fastened. It was tied beneath her chin, and hung down in a cloud over
her breast. It made him think of the strange misty clouds which brooded
about the breasts of the mountains of Ischia.

“Shall we go?” she said.

“Yes. What is Vere doing?”

“She is in her room.”

“What is she doing there?”

“Reading, I suppose. She often shuts herself up. She loves reading
almost more than I do.”

“Well?”

Hermione led the way down-stairs. When they were outside, on the crest
of the islet, the peculiar sickliness of the weather struck them both
more forcibly.

“This is the strangest scirocco effect I think I have ever seen,” said
Artois. “It is as if nature were under the influence of a drug, and had
fallen into a morbid dream, with eyes wide open, and pale, inert and
folded hands. I should like to see Naples to-day, and notice if this
weather has any effect upon that amazing population. I wonder if my
young friend, Marchese Isidoro Panacci--By-the-way, I haven’t told you
about him?”

“No.”

“I must. But not now. We will continue our former conversation. Where
shall we find the boat, the small one?”

“Gaspare will bring it--Gaspare! Gaspare!”

“Signora!” cried a strong voice below.

“La piccola barca!”

“Va bene, Signora!”

They descended slowly. It would have been almost impossible to do
anything quickly on such a day. The smallest movement, indeed, seemed
almost an outrage, likely to disturb the great white dreamer of the sea.
When they reached the foot of the cliff Gaspare was there, holding the
little craft in which Vere had gone out with Ruffo.

“Do you want me, Signora?”

“No, thank you, Gaspare. Don Emilio will row me. We are only going a
very little way.”

She stepped in. As Artois followed her he said to Gaspare:

“Those fishermen have gone?”

“Five minutes ago, Signore. There they are!”

He pointed to a boat at some distance, moving slowly in the direction of
Posilipo.

“I have been talking with them. One says he is of my country, a
Sicilian.”

“The boy?”

“Si, Signore, the giovinotto. But he cannot speak Sicilian, and he has
never been in Sicily, poveretto!”

Gaspare spoke with an accent of pity in which there was almost a hint of
contempt.

“A rivederci, Signore,” he added, pushing off the little boat.

“A rivederci, Gaspare.”

Artois took the oars and paddled very gently out, keeping near to the
cliffs of the opposite shore.

“Even San Francesco looks weary to-day,” he said, glancing across the
pool at the Saint on his pedestal. “I should not be surprised if, when
we return, we find that he has laid down his cross and is reclining like
the tired fishermen who come here in the night. Where shall we go?”

“To the Grotto of Virgil.”

“I wonder if Virgil was ever in his grotto? I wonder if he ever came
here on such a day of scirocco as this, and felt that the world was very
old, and he was even older than the world?”

“Do you feel like that to-day?”

“I feel that this is a world suitable for the old, for those who have
white hairs to accord with the white waters, and whose nights are the
white nights of age.”

“Was that why you were smiling so strangely just now when I came in?”

“Yes.”

He rowed on softly. The boat slipped out of the Pool of the Saint, and
then they saw the Capo Coroglio and the Island of Nisida with its
fort. On their right, and close to them, rose the weary-looking cliffs,
honey-combed with caverns, and seamed with fissures as an old and
haggard face is seamed with wrinkles that tell of many cares.

“Here is the grotto,” said Hermione, almost directly. “Row in gently.”

He obeyed her and turned the boat, sending it in under the mighty roof
of rock.

A darkness fell upon them. They had a safe, enclosed sensation in
escaping for a moment from the white day, almost as if they had escaped
from a white enemy.

Artois let the oars lie still in the water, keeping his hands lightly
upon them, and both Hermione and he were silent for a few minutes,
listening to the tiny sounds made now and then by drops of moisture
which fell from the cavern roof softly into the almost silent sea. At
last Artois said:

“You are out of the whiteness now. This is a shadowed place like a
confessional, where murmuring lips tell to strangers the stories of
their lives. I am not a stranger, but tell me, my friend, about yourself
and Vere. Perhaps you scarcely know how deeply the mother and child
problem interests me--that is, when mother and child are two real
forces, as you and Vere are.”

“Then you think Vere has force?”

“Do not you?”

“What kind of force?”

“You mean physical, intellectual, or moral? Suppose I say she has the
force of charm!”

“Indeed she has that, as he had. That is one of the attributes she
derives from Maurice.”

“Yes. He had a wonderful charm. And then, Vere has passion.”

“You think so?”

“I am sure of it. Where does she get that from?”

“He was full of the passion of the South.”

“I think Vere has a touch of Northern passion in her, too, combined
perhaps with the other. And that, I think, she derives from you. Then I
discern in Vere intellectual force, immature, embryonic if you like, but
unmistakable.”

“That does not come from me,” Hermione said, suddenly, almost with
bitterness.

“Why--why will you be unnecessarily humiliated?” Artois exclaimed.

His voice was confusedly echoed by the cavern, which broke into faint,
but deep mutterings. Hermione looked up quickly to the mysterious vault
which brooded above them, and listened till the chaotic noises died
away. Then she said:

“Do you know what they remind me of?”

“Of what?”

“My efforts. Those efforts I made long ago to live again in work.”

“When you wrote?”

“Yes, when I tried to throw my mind and my heart down upon paper. How
strange it was! I had Vere--but she wasn’t enough to still the ache. And
I knew what work can be, what a consolation, because I knew you. And
I stretched out my hands to it--I stretched out my soul. And it was no
use; I wasn’t made to be a successful writer. When I spoke from my heart
to try and move men and save myself, my words were seized, as yours were
just now by the rock--seized, and broken, and flung back in confusion.
They struck my heart like stones. Emile, I’m one of those people who can
only do one thing: I can only feel.”

“It is true that you could never be an artist. Perhaps you were made to
be an inspiration.”

“But that’s not enough. The role of starter to those who race--I haven’t
the temperament to reconcile myself to that. It’s not that I have in me
a conceit which demands to be fed. But I have in me a force that clamors
to exercise itself. Only when I was living on Monte Amato with Maurice
did I feel that the force was being used as God meant it to be used.”

“In loving?”

“In loving passionately something that was utterly worthy to be loved.”

Artois was silent. He knew Hermione’s mistake. He knew what had never
been told him: that Maurice had been false to her for the love of the
peasant girl Maddalena. He knew that Maurice had been done to death by
the betrayed girl’s father, Salvatore. And Gaspare knew these things,
too. But through all these years these two men had so respected silence,
the nobility of it, the grand necessity of it in certain circumstances
of life, that they had never spoken to each other of the black truth
known to them both. Indeed, Artois believed that even now, after more
than sixteen years, if he ventured one word against the dead man Gaspare
would be ready to fly at his throat in defence of the loved Padrone. For
this divined and persistent loyalty Artois had a sensation of absolute
love. Between him and Gaspare there must always be the barrier of a
great and mutual reserve. Yet that very reserve, because there was
something truly delicate, and truly noble in it, was as a link of steel
between them. They were watchdogs of Hermione. They had been watchdogs
through all these years, guarding her from the knowledge of a truth. And
so well had they done her service that now to-day she was able to say,
with clasped hands and the light of passion in her eyes:

“Something that was utterly worthy to be loved.”

When Artois spoke again he said:

“And that force cannot be fully used in loving Vere?”

“No, Emile. Is that very horrible, very unnatural?”

“Why should it be?”

“I have tried--I have tried for years, Emile, to make Vere enough. I
have even been false with myself. I have said to myself that she was
enough. I did that after I knew that I could never produce work of any
value. When Vere was a baby I lived only for her. Again, when she was
beginning to grow up, I tried to live, I did live only for her. And I
remember I used to say, I kept on saying to myself, ‘This is enough for
me. I do not need any more than this. I have had my life. I am now
a middle-aged woman. I must live in my child. This will be my
satisfaction. This is my satisfaction. This is using rightly and
naturally all that force I feel within me.’ I kept on saying this. But
there is something within one which rises up and defies a lie--however
beautiful the lie is, however noble it is. And I think even a lie can
sometimes be both. Don’t you, Emile?”

It almost seemed to him for a moment that she knew his lie and
Gaspare’s.

“Yes,” he said. “I do think so.”

“Well, that lie of mine--it was defied. And it had no more courage.”

“I want you to tell me something,” he said, quietly. “I want you to tell
me what has happened to-day.”

“To-day?”

“Yes. Something has happened either to-day or very recently--I am
sure of it--that has stirred up within you this feeling of acute
dissatisfaction. It was always there. But something has called it into
the open. What has done that?”

Hermione hesitated.

“Perhaps you don’t know,” he said.

“I was wondering--yes, I do know. I must be truthful with myself--with
you. I do know. But it seems so strange, so almost inexplicable, and
even rather absurd.”

“Truth often seems absurd.”

“It was that boy, that diver for _frutti di mare_--Ruffo.”

“The boy with the Arab eyes?”

“Yes. Of course I have seen many boys full of life and gayety and music.
There are so many in Italy. But--well, I don’t know--perhaps it was
partly Vere.”

“How do you mean?”

“Vere was so interested in him. It may have been that. Or perhaps it
was something in his look and in his voice when he was singing. I don’t
really know what it was. But that boy made me feel--more horribly than
I have ever felt before--that Vere is not enough. Emile, there is some
hunger, so persistent, so peculiar, so intense, that one feels as if it
must be satisfied eventually, as if it were impossible for it not to be
satisfied. I think that human hunger for immortal life is like that, and
I think my hunger for a son is like that. I know my hunger can never
be satisfied. And yet it lives on in me just as if it knew more than
I know, as if it knew that it could and must. After all these years I
can’t, no, I can’t reconcile myself to the fact that Maurice was taken
from me so utterly, that he died without stamping himself upon a son. It
seems as if it couldn’t be. And I feel to-day that I cannot bear that it
is.”

There were tears standing in her eyes. She had spoken with a force of
feeling, with a depth of sincerity, that startled Artois, intimately as
he knew her. Till this moment he had not quite realized the wonderful
persistence of love in the hearts of certain women, and not only the
persistence of love’s existence, but of its existence undiminished,
unabated by time.

“How am I to bear it?” she said, as he did not speak.

“I cannot tell. I am not worthy to know. And besides, I must say to you,
Hermione, that one of the greatest mysteries in human life, at any rate
to me, is this: how some human beings do bear the burdens laid upon
them. Christ bore His cross. But there has only been, since the
beginning of things, one Christ, and it is unthinkable that there can
ever be another. But all those who are not Christ, how is it they bear
what they do bear? It is easy to talk of bravery, the necessity for it
in life. It is always very easy to talk. The thing that is impossible
is to understand. How can you come to me to help you, my friend? And
suppose I were to try. How could I try, except by saying that I think
Vere is very worthy to be loved with all your love?”

“You love Vere, don’t you, Emile?”

“Yes.”

“And I do. You don’t doubt that?”

“Never.”

“After all I have said, the way I have spoken, you might.”

“I do not doubt it for a moment.”

“I wonder if there is any mother who would not, if I spoke to her as I
have spoken to you to-day?”

“I think there is a great deal of untruth spoken of mother’s love,
a great deal of misconception about it, as there is about most very
strange, and very wonderful and beautiful things. But are you so sure
that if your husband had stamped himself upon a boy this force within
you could have been satisfied?”

“I have believed so.”

She was silent. Then she added, quietly, “I do believe so.”

He did not speak, but sat looking down at the sea, which was full of dim
color in the cave.

“I think you are doubting that it would have been so?” she said, at
last.

“Yes, that is true. I am doubting.”

“I wonder why?”

“I cannot help feeling that there is passion in you, such passion as
could not be satisfied in any strict, maternal relationship.”

“But I am old, dear Emile,” she said, very simply.

“When I was standing by that window, looking at the mountains of Ischia,
I was saying to myself, ‘This is an old, tired world, suitable for
me--and for you. We are in our right environment to-day.’ I was saying
that, Hermione, but was I believing it, really? I don’t think I was. And
I am ten years older than you, and I have been given a nature that was,
I think, always older than yours could ever be.”

“I wonder if that is so.”

She looked at him very directly, even searchingly, not with eager
curiosity, but with deep inquiry.

“You know, Emile,” she added, “I tell you very much, but you tell me
very little. Not that I wish to ask anything--no. I respect all your
reserve. And about your work: you tell me all that. It is a great thing
in my life, your work. Perhaps you don’t realize how sometimes I live in
the book that you are doing, almost as if I were writing it myself. But
your inner life--”

“But I have been frankness itself with you,” said Artois. “To no one
have I ever said so much as to you.”

“Yes, I know, about many things. But about emotion, love,--not
friendship, the other love--do you get on without that? When you say
your nature has always been older than mine, do you mean that it has
always been harder to move by love, that it has had less need of love?”

“I think so. For many years in my life I think that work has filled the
place love occupies in many, perhaps in most men’s lives. Everything
comes second to work. I know that, because if any one attempts to
interfere with my work, or to usurp any of the time that should be
given to it, any regard I may have for that person turns at once to
irritation, almost to hatred.”

“I have never done that?”

“You--no. Of course, I have been like other men. When I was young--well,
Hermione, after all I am a Frenchman, and though I am of Normandy, still
I passed many years in Paris, as you know.”

“All that I understand. But the real thing? Such as I have known?”

“I have never broken my heart for any one, though I have known
agitations. But even those were long ago. And since I was thirty-five
I have never felt really dominated by any one. Before that time I
occasionally passed under the yoke, I believe, like other men. Why do
you fix your eyes on me like that?”

“I was wondering if you could ever pass under the yoke again.”

“Honestly, I do not think so. I am not sure. When can one be certain
that one will never be, or do, this or that? Surely,”--he smiled,--“you
are not afraid for me?”

“I do not say that. But I think you have forces in you not fully
exercised even by your work.”

“Possibly. But there the years do really step in and count for
something, even for much. There is no doubt that as the years increase,
the man who cares at all for intellectual pleasures is able to care
for them more, is able to substitute them, without keen regret, without
wailing and gnashing of teeth, for certain other pleasures, to which,
perhaps, formerly he clung. That is why the man who is mentally and
bodily--you know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Has such an immense advantage in years of decline over the man who is
merely a bodily man.”

“I am sure that is true. But--”

“What is it?”

“The heart? What about that?”

“Perhaps there are some hearts that can fulfil themselves sufficiently
in friendship.”

As Artois said this his eyes rested upon Hermione with an expression in
them that revealed much that he never spoke in words. She put out her
hand, and took his, and pressed it, holding hers over it upon the oar.

“Emile,” she said, “sometimes you make me feel unworthy and ungrateful
because--because I still need, I dare to need more than I have been
given. Without you I don’t know how I should have faced it.”

“Without me you would never have had to face it.”

That was the cry that rose up perpetually in the heart of Artois, the
cry that Hermione must never hear. He said to her now:

“Without you, Hermione, I should be dust in the dust of Africa!”

“Perhaps we each owe something to the other,” she said. “It is blessed
to have a debt to a friend.”

“Would to God that I could pay all my debt to you!” Artois exclaimed.

Again the cavern took up his voice and threw it back to the sea in
confused and hollow mutterings. They both looked up, as if some one were
above them, warning them or rebuking them. At that instant they had the
feeling that they were being watched. But there was only the empty gray
sea about them, and over their heads the rugged, weary rock that had
leaned over the sea for countless years.

“Hark!” said Artois, “it is telling me that my debt to you can never be
paid: only in one way could it be partially discharged. If I could
show you a path to happiness, the happiness you long for, and need, the
passionate happiness of the heart that is giving where it rejoices to
give--for your happiness must always be in generosity--I should have
partially paid my debt to you. But that is impossible.”

“I’ve made you sad to-day by my complaining,” she said, with
self-rebuke; “I’m sorry. You didn’t realize?”

“How it was with you? No, not quite--I thought you were more at peace
than you are.”

“Till to-day I believe I was half deceived too.”

“That singing boy, that--what is his name?”

“Ruffo.”

“That Ruffo, I should like to run a knife into him under the left
shoulder-blade. How dare he, a ragamuffin from some hovel of Naples,
make you know that you are unhappy?”

“How strange it is what outside things, or people who have no connection
with us or with our lives, can do to us unconsciously!” she said. “I
have heard a hundred boys sing on the Bay, seen a hundred rowing their
boats into the Pool--and just this one touches some chord, and all the
strings of my soul quiver.”

“Some people act upon us somewhat as nature does sometimes. And Vere
paid the boy. There is another irony of unconsciousness. Vere, bone of
your bone, flesh of your flesh, rewards your pain-giver. How we hide
ourselves from those we love best and live with most intimately! You,
her mother, are a stranger to Vere. Does not to-day prove it?”

“Ah, but Vere is not a stranger to me. That is where the mother has the
advantage of the child.”

Artois did not make any response to this remark. To cover his silence,
perhaps, he grasped the oars more firmly and began to back the boat out
of the cave. Both felt that it was no longer necessary to stay in this
confessional of the rock.

As they came out under the grayness of the sky, Hermione, with a change
of tone, said:

“And your friend? The Marchese--what is his name?”

“Isidoro Panacci.”

“Tell me about him.”

“He is a very perfect type of a complete Neapolitan of his class. He has
scarcely travelled at all, except in Italy. Once he has been in Paris,
where I met him, and once to Lucerne for a fortnight. Both his
father and mother are Neapolitans. He is a charming fellow, utterly
unintellectual, but quite clever; shrewd, sharp at reading character,
marvellously able to take care of himself, and hold his own with
anybody. A cat to fall on his feet! He is apparently born without any
sense of fear, and with a profound belief in destiny. He can drive
four-in-hand, swim for any number of hours without tiring, ride--well,
as an Italian cavalry officer can ride, and that is not badly. His
accomplishments? He can speak French--abominably, and pick out all
imaginable tunes on the piano, putting instinctively quite tolerable
basses. I don’t think he ever reads anything, except the _Giorno_
and the _Mattino_. He doesn’t care for politics, and likes cards, but
apparently not too much. They’re no craze with him. He knows Naples
inside out, and is as frank as a child that has never been punished.”

“I should think he must be decidedly attractive?”

“Oh, he is. One great attraction he has--he appears to have no sense
at all that difference of age can be a barrier between two men. He is
twenty-four, and I am what I am. He is quite unaware that there is any
gulf between us. In every way he treats me as if I were twenty-four.”

“Is that refreshing or embarrassing?”

“I find it generally refreshing. His family accepts the situation with
perfect naivete. I am welcomed as Doro’s chum with all the good-will in
the world.”

Hermione could not help laughing, and Artois echoed her laugh.

“Merely talking about him has made you look years younger,” she
declared. “The influence of the day has lifted from you.”

“It would not have fallen upon Isidoro, I think. And yet he is full
of sentiment. He is a curious instance of a very common Neapolitan
obsession.”

“What is that?”

“He is entirely obsessed by woman. His life centres round woman. You
observe I use the singular. I do that because it is so much more plural
than the plural in this case. His life is passed in love-affairs, in a
sort of chaos of amours.”

“How strange that is!”

“You think so, my friend?”

“Yes. I never can understand how human beings can pass from love to
love, as many of them do. I never could understand it, even before
I--even before Sicily.”

“You are not made to understand such a thing.”

“But you do?”

“I? Well, perhaps. But the loves of men are not as your love.”

“Yet his was,” she answered. “And he was a true Southerner, despite his
father.

“Yes, he was a true Southerner,” Artois replied.

For once he was off his guard with her, and uttered his real thought
of Maurice, not without a touch of the irony that was characteristic of
him.

Immediately he had spoken he was aware of his indiscretion. But Hermione
had not noticed it. He saw by her eyes that she was far away in Sicily.
And when the boat slipped into the Saint’s Pool, and Gaspare came to the
water’s edge to hold the prow while they got out, she rose from her seat
slowly, and almost reluctantly, like one disturbed in a dream that she
would fain continue.

“Have you seen the Signorina, Gaspare?” she asked him. “Has she been
out?”

“No, Signora. She is still in the house.”

“Still reading!” said Artois. “Vere must be quite a book-worm!”

“Will you stay to dinner, Emile?”

“Alas, I have promised the Marchesino Isidoro to dine with him. Give
me a cup of tea _a la Russe_, and one of Ruffo’s cigarettes, and then
I must bid you adieu. I’ll take the boat to the Antico Giuseppone, and
then get another there as far as the gardens.”

“One of Ruffo’s cigarettes!” Hermione echoed, as they went up the steps.
“That boy seems to have made himself one of the family already.”

“Yet I wish, as I said in the cave, that I had put a knife into him
under the left shoulder-blade--before this morning.”

They spoke lightly. It seemed as if each desired for the moment to get
away from their mood in the confessional of Virgil’s Grotto, and from
the sadness of the white and silent day.

As to Ruffo, about whom they jested, he was in sight of Naples, and not
far from Mergellina, still rowing with tireless young arms, and singing
to “Bella Napoli,” with a strong resolve in his heart to return to the
Saint’s Pool on the first opportunity and dive for more cigarettes.



CHAPTER IV

At the Antico Giuseppone, Artois left the boat from the islet and,
taking another, was rowed towards the public gardens of Naples, whose
trees were faintly visible far off across the Bay. Usually he talked
familiarly to any Neapolitan with whom he found himself, but to-day he
was taciturn, and sat in the stern of the broad-bottomed craft looking
towards the city in silence while the boatman plied his oars. The
memory of his conversation with Hermione in the Grotto of Virgil, of
her manner, the look in her eyes, the sound of her voice there, gave him
food for thought that was deep and serious.

Although Artois had an authoritative, and often an ironical manner that
frightened timid people, he was a man capable of much emotion and of
great loyalty. He did not easily trust or easily love, but in those
whose worth he had thoroughly proved he had a confidence as complete as
that of a child. And where he placed his complete confidence he placed
also his affection. The one went with the other almost as inevitably as
the wave goes with the wind.

In their discussion about the emotion of the heart Artois had spoken the
truth to Hermione. As he had grown older he had felt the influence of
women less. The pleasures of sentiment had been gradually superceded
in his nature--or so at least he honestly believed--by the purely
intellectual pleasures. More and more completely and contentedly had
he lived in his work, and in the life of preparation for it. This life
could never be narrow, for Artois was a traveller, and studied many
lands.

In the years that had elapsed since the tragedy in Sicily, when the
husband of Hermione had met his death suddenly in the sea, almost in
sight of the home of the girl he had betrayed, the fame of Artois had
grown steadily. And he was jealous of his fame almost as a good woman is
jealous of her honor. This jealousy had led him to a certain selfishness
of which he was quite aware--even to a certain hardness such as he had
hinted to Hermione. Those who strove, or seemed likely to strive to
interrupt him in his work, he pushed out of his life. Even if they were
charming women he got rid of them. And the fact that he did so proved
to him, and not improbably to them, that he was more wrapped up in the
gratification of the mind than in the gratification of the heart, or
of the body. It was not that the charm of charming women had ceased to
please him, but it seemed to have ceased really to fascinate him.

Long ago, before Hermione married, he had felt for her a warm and
intimate friendship. He had even been jealous of Maurice. Without being
at all in love, he had cared enough for Hermione to be jealous. Before
her marriage he had looked forward in imagination down a vista of long
years, and had seen her with a husband, then with children, always more
definitely separated from himself.

And he had seen himself exceptionally alone, even almost miserably
alone.

Then fate had spun tragedy into her web. He had nearly died in Africa,
and had been nursed back to life by this friend of whom he had been
jealous. And they had gone together to Sicily, to the husband whose
memory Hermione still adored. And then had followed swiftly the murder,
the murderer’s departure to America, saved by the silence of Gaspare,
and the journey of the bereaved woman to Italy, where Artois had left
her and returned to France.

Once more Artois had his friend, released from the love of another man.
But he wished it were not so. Hermione’s generosity met with a full
response of generosity from him. All his egotism and selfishness dropped
from him then, shaken down like dead leaves by the tempest of a genuine
emotion. His knowledge of her grief, his understanding of its depth,
brought to him a sorrow that was keen, and even exquisitely painful. For
a long while he was preoccupied by an intense desire to assuage it. He
strove to do so by acting almost in defiance of his nature, by fostering
deception. From the Abetone Hermione had written him letters, human
documents--the tale of the suffering of a woman’s heart. Many reserves
she had from him and from every one. The most intimate agony was for her
alone, and she kept it in her soul as the priest keeps the Sacred Host
in its tabernacle. But some of her grief she showed in her letters, and
some of her desire for comfort. And without any definite intention,
she indicated to her subtle and devoted friend the only way in which he
could console her.

For once, driven by his emotion, he took that way.

He allowed Hermione to believe that he agreed with her in the conception
she had formed of her husband’s love for her. It was difficult for him
to do this, for he had an almost cruel passion for truth, and generally
a clear insight into human character. Far less than many others would
have condemned did he, in his mind, condemn the man who was dead for
the sin against love that he had committed. He had understood Maurice
as Hermione had not understood him, and knowledge is full of pardon. But
though he could pardon easily he could not easily pretend. By pretending
he sinned against himself, and helped his friend some steps along the
way to peace. He thought he had helped her to go much farther along that
way than she had gone. And he thought that Vere had helped her, too.

Now the hollow mutterings of the rock in Virgil’s Grotto seemed to be
in his heart, as he realized how permanent was the storm in Hermione’s
nature. Something for her he had done. And something--much more, no
doubt--Vere had done. But how little it all was!

Their helplessness gave him a new understanding of woman.

Hermione had allowed him great privileges, had allowed him to protect
her, had taken his advice. After Vere was born she had wished to go back
again to Sicily. The house of the priest, where she had been so happy,
and so sad, drew her. She longed for it. She desired to make it her
home. He had fought against her in this matter, and had been aided by
Gaspare.

There had been a subtle understanding, never expressed, between the boy
and him.

Artois had played upon her intellect, had appealed, too, to her mother’s
heart.

He had not urged her to try to forget, but he had urged her not morbidly
to remember, not to cherish and to foster the memory of the tragedy
which had broken her life. To go back to that tiny home, solitary in its
beautiful situation, in the changed circumstances which were hers, would
be, he told her, to court and to summon sorrow. He was even cruel to be
kind. When Hermione combated his view, assuring him that to her
Monte Amato was like a sacred place, a place hallowed by memories of
happiness, he recalled the despair in which that happiness had ended.
With all the force at his command, and it was great, he drew the picture
of the life that would be in comparison with the life that had been. And
he told her finally that what she wished to do was morbid, was unworthy
of her strength of character, was even wicked now that she was a mother.
He brought before her mind those widows who make a cult of their dead.
Would she be one of them? Would she steep a little child in such an
atmosphere of memories, casting a young and tender mind backward into a
cruel past instead of leading it forward into a joyous present? Maurice
had been the very soul of happiness. Vere must be linked with the
sunbeams. With his utmost subtlety Artois described and traced the
effect upon a tiny and sensitive child of a mother’s influence, whether
for good or evil, until Hermione, who had a deep reverence for his
knowledge of all phases of human nature, at last, almost in despite of
the truth within her, of the interior voice which said to her, “With you
and Vere it would not be so,” caught alarm from his apparent alarm, drew
distrust of herself from his apparent distrust of her.

Gaspare, too, played his part. When Hermione spoke to him of returning
to the priest’s house, almost wildly, and with the hot energy that
bursts so readily up in Sicilians, he begged her not to go back to the
_maledetta casa_ in which his Padrone’s dead body had lain. As he spoke
a genuine fear of the cottage came upon him. All the latent superstition
that dwells in the contadino was stirred as dust by a wind. In clouds
it flew up about his mind. Fear looked out of his great eyes. Dread was
eloquent in his gestures. And he, too, referred to the child, to the
_povera piccola bambina_. It would cast ill-luck on the child to bring
her up in a chamber of death. Her saint would forsake her. She too would
die. The boy worked himself up into a fever. His face was white. Drops
of sweat stood on his forehead.

He had set out to be deceptive--what he would have called _un poco
birbante_, and he had even deceived himself. He knew that it would
be dangerous for his Padrona to live again near Marechiaro. Any day
a chance scrap of gossip might reach her ears. In time she would
be certain almost to hear something of the dead Padrone’s close
acquaintance with the dwellers in the Casa delle Sirene. She would
question him, perhaps. She would suspect something. She would inquire.
She would search. She would find out the hideous truth. It was this
fear which made him argue on the same side as Artois. But in doing so he
caught another fear from his own words. He became really natural, really
truthful in his fear. And--she scarcely knew why--Hermione was even more
governed by him than by Artois. He had lived with them in the Casa
del Prete, had been an intimate part of their life there. And he was
Sicilian of the soil. The boy had a real power to move, to dominate her,
which he did not then suspect.

Again and again he repeated those words, “_La povera bambina--la povera
piccola bambina_.” And at last Hermione was overcome.

“I won’t go to Sicily,” she said to Artois. “For if I went there I could
only go to Monte Amato. I won’t go until Vere is old enough to wish to
go, to wish to see the house where her father and I were happy.”

And she had never gone back. For Artois had not been satisfied with this
early victory.

In returning from a tour in North America the following spring, when
Vere was nearly two years old, he had paid a visit to Marechiaro, and,
while there, had seen the contadino from whom Hermione had rented, and
still rented, the house of the priest. The man was middle-aged, ignorant
but shrewd, and very greedy. Artois made friends with him, and casually,
over a glass of _moscato_, talked about his affairs and the land
question in Sicily. The peasant became communicative and, of course,
loud in his complaining. His land yielded nothing. The price of almonds
had gone down. The lemon crop had been ruined by the storms. As to the
vines--they were all devoured by the phylloxera, and he had no money to
buy and plant vines from America. Artois hinted that he received a good
rent from the English lady for the cottage on Monte Amato. The contadino
acknowledged that he received a fair price for the cottage and the land
about it; but the house, he declared, would go to rack and ruin with no
one ever in it, and the land was lying idle, for the English lady would
have everything left exactly as it had been when she lived there with
her husband. Artois seized upon this hint of what was in the peasant’s
mind, and bemoaned with him his situation. The house ought to be
occupied, the land all about it, up to the very door, and behind upon
the sunny mountain-side, planted with American vines. If it belonged to
him that was what he would do--plant American vines, and when the years
of yielding came, give a good percentage on all the wine made and sold
to the man who had tended the vineyard.

The peasant’s love of money awoke. He only let the cottage to
Hermione year by year, and had no contract with her extending beyond a
twelve-months’ lease. Before Artois left Marechiaro the tender treachery
was arranged. When the year’s lease was up, the contadino wrote to her
declining to renew it. She answered, protesting, offering more money.
But it was all in vain. The man replied that he had already let the
cottage and the land around it to a grower of vines for a long term of
years, and that he was getting double the annual price she offered.

Hermione was indignant and bitterly distressed. When this letter reached
her she was at Fiesole with Vere in a villa which she had taken. She
would probably have started at once for Sicily; but Vere was just then
ill with some infantile complaint, and could not be left. Artois,
who was in Rome, and had received from her the news of this carefully
arranged disaster, offered to go to Sicily on her behalf--and actually
went. He returned to tell her that the house of the priest was already
occupied by contadini, and all the land up to the very door in process
of being dug up and planted with vines. It was useless to make any
further offer. The thing was done.

Hermione said nothing, but Artois saw in her eyes how keenly she was
suffering, and turned his own eyes away. He was only trying to preserve
her from greater unhappiness, the agony of ever finding out the truth;
but he felt guilty at that moment, and as if he had been cruel to the
woman who roused all his tenderness, all his protective instinct.

“I shall not go back to Marechiaro now,” Hermione said. “I shall not
go back even to see the grave. I could never feel that anything of his
spirit lingered there. But I did feel, I should have felt again, as if
something of him still loved that little house on the mountain, still
stayed among the oak-trees. It seemed to me that when I took Vere to the
Casa del Prete she would have learned to know something of her father
there that she could never have learned to know in another place. But
now--no, I shall not go back. If I did I should even lose my memories,
perhaps, and I could not bear that.”

And she had not returned. Gaspare went to Marechiaro sometimes, to see
his family and his friends. He visited the grave and saw that it was
properly kept. But Hermione remained in Italy. For some time she lived
near Florence, first at Fiesole, later at Bellosguardo. When the summer
heat came she took a villa at the Abetone. Or she spent some months with
Vere beside the sea. As the girl grew older she developed a passion
for the sea, and seemed to care little for the fascination of the pine
forests. Hermione, noting this, gave up going to the Abetone and took
a house by the sea for the whole summer. Two years they were at Santa
Margherita, one year at Sorrento.

Then, sailing one evening on the sea towards Bagnoli, they saw the house
on the islet beyond the Pool of San Francesco. Vere was enchanted by it.

“To live in it,” she exclaimed, “would be almost like living in the
sea!”

Hermione, too, was fascinated by its situation, the loneliness, the
wildness, yet the radiant cheerfulness of it. She made inquiries, found
that it was owned by a Neapolitan who scarcely ever went there, and
eventually succeeded in getting it on a long lease. For two years now
she and Vere had spent the summer there.

Artois had noticed that since Hermione had been in the Casa del Mare
an old desire had begun to revive in her. She spoke more frequently of
Sicily. Often she stood on the rock and looked across the sea, and
he knew that she was thinking of those beloved coasts--of the Ionian
waters, of the blossoming almond-trees among the olives and the rocks,
of the scarlet geraniums glowing among the thorny cactus, of the giant
watercourses leading up into the mountains. A hunger was awake in her,
now that she had a home so near the enchanted island.

He realized it. But he was no longer much afraid. So many years had
passed that even if Hermione revisited Marechiaro he believed there
would be little or no danger now of her ever learning the truth. It had
never been known in the village, and if it had been suspected, all the
suspicions must have long ago died down. He had been successful in his
protection. He was thankful for that. It was the one thing he had been
able to do for the friend who had done so much for him.

The tragedy had occurred because of him. Because of him all knowledge
of it had been kept from Hermione, and would now be kept from her
forever--because of him and Gaspare.

This he had been able to do. But how powerless he was, and how powerless
was Vere!

Now he looked vaguely at the villas of Posilipo, and he realized this
thoroughly.

Something for her he had done, and something Vere had done. But how
little it all was!

To-day a new light had been thrown upon Hermione, and he realized what
she was as he had never realized it before. No, she was right. She could
never live fully in a girl child--she was not made to do that. Why had
he ever thought, hoped that perhaps it might be so, that perhaps Vere
might some day completely and happily fill her life? Long ago he had
encouraged her to work, to write. Misled by her keen intelligence, her
enthusiasm, her sincerity and vitality, by the passion that was in her,
the great heart, the power of feeling, the power of criticising
and inspiring another which she had freely shown to him, Artois had
believed--as he had once said to her in London--that she might be an
artist, but that she preferred to be simply a woman. But he found it
was not so. Hermione had not the peculiar gift of the writer. She could
feel, but she could not arrange. She could discern, but she could not
expose. A flood of words came to her, but not the inevitable word. She
could not take that exquisite leap from the known into the unknown
which genius can take with the certainty of alighting on firm ground.
In short, she was not formed and endowed to be an artist. About such
matters Artois knew only how to be sincere. He was sincere with his
friend, and she thanked him for being so.

One possible life was taken from Hermione, the life of the artist who
lives in the life of the work.

There remained the life in Vere.

To-day Artois knew from Hermione’s own lips that she could not live
completely in her child, and he felt that he had been blind as men are
often blind about women, are blind because they are secretly selfish.
The man lives for himself, but he thinks it natural, even distinctively
womanly, that women should live for others--for him, for some other
man, for their children. What man finds his life in his child? But the
woman--she surely ought to, and without difficulty. Hermione had been
sincere to-day, and Artois knew his blindness, and knew his secret
selfishness.

The gray was lifting a little over Naples, the distant shadowy form of
Vesuvius was becoming clearer, more firm in outline. But the boatman
rowed slowly, influenced by the scirocco.

How, then, was Hermione to live? How was she to find happiness or peace?
It was a problem which he debated with an ardor that had in it something
of passion. And he began to wonder how it would have been if he had
acted differently, if he had allowed her to find out what he suspected
to be the exact truth of the dead man. Long ago he had saved her from
suffering. But by doing so had he not dedicated her, not to a greater,
but to a longer suffering? He might have defiled a beautiful memory. He
must have done so had he acted differently. But if he had defiled it,
might not Hermione have been the subject of a great revulsion? Horror
can kill, but it can also cure. It can surely root out love. But from
such a heart as Hermione’s?

Despite all his understanding of women, Artois felt at a loss to-day. He
could not make up his mind what would have been the effect upon Hermione
if she had learned that her husband had betrayed her.

Presently he left that subject and came to Vere.

When he did this he was conscious at once of a change within him. His
tenderness and pity for Hermione were replaced by another tenderness and
pity. And these were wholly for Vere. Hermione was suffering because
of Maurice. But Vere was surely suffering, subconsciously, because of
Hermione.

There were two links in the chain of suffering, that between Maurice and
Hermione, and that between Hermione and Vere.

For a moment he felt as if Vere were bereaved, were motherless. The
sensation passed directly he realized the exaggeration in his mind. But
he still felt as if the girl were deprived of something which she ought
to possess, which, till now, he had thought she did possess. It seemed
to him that Vere stood quite outside of her mother’s life, instead of
in it, in its centre, its core; and he pitied the child, almost as he
pitied other children from time to time, children to whom their parents
were indifferent. And yet Hermione loved Vere, and Vere could not know
what he had only known completely to-day--that the mother often felt
lonely with the child.

Vere did not know that, but surely some day she would find it out.

Artois knew her character well, knew that she was very sensitive, very
passionate, quick to feel and quick to understand. He discovered in her
qualities inherited both from her father and her mother, attributes both
English and Sicilian. In appearance she resembled her father. She had
“thrown back” to the Sicilian ancestor, as he had. She had the Southern
eyes, the Southern grace, the Southern vivacity and warmth that had made
him so attractive. But Artois divined a certain stubbornness in Vere
that had been lacking in the dead man, a stubbornness that took its rise
not in stupidity but in a secret consciousness of force.

Vere, Artois thought, might be violent, but would not be fickle. She had
a loyalty in her that was Sicilian in its fervor, a sense of gratitude
such as the contadini have, although by many it is denied to them; a
quick and lively temper, but a disposition that responded to joy,
to brightness, to gayety, to sunlight, with a swiftness, almost a
fierceness, that was entirely un-English.

Her father had been the dancing Faun. She had not, could never have his
gift of thoughtlessness. For she had intellect, derived from Hermione,
and an old truthfulness that was certainly not Sicilian. Often there
were what Artois called “Northern Lights” in her sincerity. The strains
in her, united, made, he thought, a fascinating blend. But as yet she
was undeveloped--an interesting, a charming child, but only a child.
In many ways she was young for her age. Highly intelligent, she was
anything rather than “knowing.” Her innocence was like clear water in a
spring. The graciousness of youth was hers to the full.

As Artois thought of it he was conscious, as of a new thing, of the
wonderful beauty of such innocent youth.

It was horrible to connect it with suffering. And yet that link in the
chain did exist. Vere had not something that surely she ought to have,
and, without consciously missing it, she must sometimes subtly, perhaps
vaguely, be aware that there was a lack in her life. Her mother gave her
great love. But she was not to her mother what a son would have been.
And the love that is mingled with regret has surely something shadowy in
it.

Maurice Delarey had been as the embodiment of joy. It was strange that
from the fount of joy sorrow was thrown up. But so it was. From him
sorrow had come. From him sorrow might still come, even for Vere.

In the white and silent day Artois again felt the stirring of intuition,
as he had felt it long ago. But now he roused himself, and resolutely,
almost angrily, detached his mind from its excursions towards the
future.

“Do you often think of to-morrow?” he suddenly said to the boatman,
breaking from his silence.

“Signore?”

“Do you often wonder what is going to happen to-morrow, what you will
do, whether you will be happy or sad?”

The man threw up his head.

“No, Signore. Whatever comes is destiny. If I have food to-day it is
enough for me. Why should I bother about to-morrow’s maccheroni?”

Artois smiled. The boat was close in now to the platform of stone that
projected beneath the wall of the Marina.

As he stepped out he gave the boatman a generous _buonamano_.

“You are quite right, comrade,” he said. “It is the greatest mistake in
the world to bother about to-morrow’s maccheroni.”



CHAPTER V

Three days after Artois’ conversation with Hermione in the Grotto of
Virgil the Marchesino Isidoro Panacci came smiling into his friend’s
apartments in the Hotel Royal des Etrangers. He was smartly dressed in
the palest possible shade of gray, with a bright pink tie, pink socks,
brown shoes of the rather boat-like shape affected by many young
Neopolitans, and a round straw hat, with a small brim, that was set
slightly on the side of his curly head. In his mouth was a cigarette,
and in his buttonhole a pink carnation. He took Artois’ hand with his
left hand, squeezed it affectionately, murmured “Caro Emilio,” and sat
down in an easy attitude on the sofa, putting his hat and stick on a
table near by.

It was quite evident that he had come for no special reason. He had just
dropped in, as he did whenever he felt inclined, to gossip with
“Caro Emilio,” and it never occurred to him that possibly he might
be interrupting an important piece of work. The Marchesino could not
realize work. He knew his friend published books. He even saw him
sometimes actually engaged in writing them, pen in hand. But he was sure
anybody would far rather sit and chatter with him, or hear him play a
valse on the piano, or a bit of the “Boheme,” than bend over a table all
by himself. And Artois always welcomed him. He liked him. But it was not
only that which made him complaisant. Doro was a type, and a singularly
perfect one.

Now Artois laid down his pen, and pulled forward an arm-chair opposite
to the sofa.

“Mon Dieu, Doro! How fresh you look, like a fish just pulled out of the
sea!”

The Marchesino showed his teeth in a smile which also shone in his round
and boyish eyes.

“I have just come out of the sea. Papa and I have been bathing at
the Eldorado. We swam round the Castello until we were opposite your
windows, and sang ‘Funiculi, funicula!’ in the water, to serenade you.
Why didn’t you hear us? Papa has a splendid voice, almost like Tamagno’s
in the gramophone, when he sings the ‘Addio’ from ‘Otello.’ Of course
we kept a little out at sea. Papa is so easily recognized by his red
mustaches. But still you might have heard us.”

“I did.”

“Then why didn’t you come unto the balcony, amico mio?”

“Because I thought you were street singers.”

“Davvero? Papa would be angry. And he is in a bad temper to-day anyhow.”

“Why?”

“Well, I believe Gilda Mai is going to bring a _causa_ against Viviano.
Of course he won’t marry her, and she never expected he could. Why, she
used to be a milliner in the Toledo. I remember it perfectly, and now
Sigismondo--But it’s really Gilda that has made papa angry. You see, he
has paid twice for me, once four thousand lire, and the other time three
thousand five hundred. And then he has lost a lot at Lotto lately. He
has no luck. And then he, too, was in a row yesterday evening.”

“The Marchese?”

“Yes, in the Chiaia. He slapped Signora Merani’s face twice before every
one.”

“Diavolo! What! a lady?”

“Well, if you like to call her so,” returned Doro, negligently. “Her
husband is an impiegato of the Post-office, or something of the kind.”

“But why should the Marchese slap her face in the Chiaia?”

“Because she provoked him. They took a flat in the house my father owns
in the Strada Chiatamone. After a time they got behind with the rent. He
let them stay on for six months without paying, and then he turned them
out. What should he do?” Doro began to gesticulate. He held his right
hand up on a level with his face, with the fingers all drawn together
and pressed against the thumb, and moved it violently backwards and
forwards, bringing it close to the bridge of his nose, then throwing
it out towards Artois. “What else, I say? Was he to give his beautiful
rooms to them for nothing? And she with a face like--have you, I ask
you, Emilio, have you seen her teeth?”

“I have never seen the Signora in my life!”

“You have never seen her teeth? Dio Mio!” He opened his two hands, and,
lifting his arms, shook them loosely above his head, shutting his eyes
for an instant as if to ward off some dreadful vision. “They are like
the keys of a piano from Bordicelli’s! Basta!” He dropped his hands
and opened his eyes. “Yesterday papa was walking in the Chiaia. He met
Signori Merani, and she began to abuse him. She had a red parasol. She
shook it at him! She called him vigliacco--papa, a Panacci, dei Duchi di
Vedrano! The parasol--it was a bright red, it infuriated papa. He told
the Signora to stop. She knows his temper. Every one in Naples knows our
tempers, every one! I, Viviano, even Sigismondo, we are all the same,
we are all exactly like papa. If we are insulted we cannot control
ourselves. You know it, Emilio!”

“I am perfectly certain of it,” said Artois. “I am positive you none of
you can.”

“It does not matter whether it is a man or a woman. We must do something
with our hands. We have got to. Papa told the Signora he should strike
her at once unless she put down the red parasol and was silent. What did
she do, the imbecile? She stuck out her face like this,”--he thrust
his face forward with the right cheek turned towards Artois--“and said,
‘Strike me! strike me!’ Papa obeyed her. Poom! Poom! He gave her a smack
on each cheek before every one. ‘You want education!’ he said to her.
‘And I shall give it you.’ And now she may bring a _processo_ too. But
did you really think we were street singers?” He threw himself back,
took the cigarette from his mouth, and laughed. Then he caught hold of
his blond mustache with both hands, gave it an upward twist, at the same
time pouting his big lips, and added:

“We shall bring a _causa_ against you for that!”

“No, Doro, you and I must never quarrel. By the way, though, I want to
see you angry. Every one talks of the Panacci temper, but when I am with
you I always see you smiling or laughing. As to the Marchese, he is as
lively as a boy. Viviano--”

“Oh, Viviano is a buffone. Have you ever seen him imitate a monkey from
whom another monkey has snatched a nut?”

“No.”

“It is like this--”

With extraordinary suddenness he distorted his whole face into the
likeness of an angry ape, hunching his shoulders and uttering fierce
simian cries.

“No, I can’t do it.”

With equal suddenness and self-possession he became his smiling self
again.

“Viviano has studied in the monkey-house. And the monk looking the other
way when he passes along the Marina where the women are bathing in the
summer! He shall do that for you on Sunday afternoon when you come
to Capodimonte. It makes even mamma die of laughing, and you know
how religious she is. But then, of course, men--that does not matter.
Religion is for women, and they understand that quite well.”

The Marchesino never made any pretence of piety. One virtue he had
in the fullest abundance. He was perfectly sincere with those whom he
considered his friends. That there could be any need for hypocrisy never
occurred to him.

“Mamma would hate it if we were saints,” he continued.

“I am sure the Marchesa can be under no apprehension on that score,”
 said Artois.

“No, I don’t think so,” returned the Marchesino, quite seriously.

He had a sense of humor, but it did not always serve him. Occasionally
it was fitful, and when summoned by irony remained at a distance.

“It is true, Emilio, you have never seen me angry,” he continued,
reverting to the remark of Artois; “you ought to. Till you have seen a
Panacci angry you do not really know him. With you, of course, I could
never be angry--never, never. You are my friend, my comrade. To you I
tell everything.”

A sudden remembrance seemed to come to him. Evidently a new thought had
started into his active mind, for his face suddenly changed, and became
serious, even sentimental.

“What is it?” asked Artois.

“To-day, just now in the sea, I have seen a girl--Madonna! Emilio, she
had a little nose that was perfect--perfect. How she was simpatica! What
a beautiful girl!”

His whole face assumed a melting expression, and he pursed his lips in
the form of a kiss.

“She was in the sea, too?” asked Artois.

“No. If she had been! But I was with papa. It was just after we had been
serenading you. She had heard us, I am sure, for she was laughing. I
dived under the boat in which she was. I did all my tricks for her. I
did the mermaid and the seal. She was delighted. She never took her eyes
from me. As to papa--she never glanced at him. Poor papa! He was angry.
She had her mother with her, I think--a Signora, tall, flat, ugly, but
she was simpatica, too. She had nice eyes, and when I did the seal she
could not help laughing, though I think she was rather sad.”

“What sort of boat were they in?” Artois asked, with sudden interest.

“A white boat with a green line.”

“And they were coming from the direction of Posilipo?”

“Ma si! Emilio, do you know them? Do you know the perfect little nose?”

The Marchesino laid one hand eagerly on the arm of his friend.

“I believe you do! I am sure of it! The mother--she is flat as
a Carabiniere, and quite old, but with nice eyes, sympathetic,
intelligent. And the girl is a little brown--from the sun--with eyes
full of fun and fire, dark eyes. She may be Italian, and yet--there is
something English, too. But she is not blonde, she is not cold. And
when she laughs! Her teeth are not like the keys of a piano from
Bordicelli’s. And she is full of passion, of flame, of sentiment, as
I am. And she is young, perhaps sixteen. Do you know her? Present me,
Emilio! I have presented you to all my friends.”

“Mio caro, you have made me your debtor for life.”

“It isn’t true!”

“Indeed it is true. But I do not know who these ladies are. They may be
Italians. They may be tourists. Perhaps to-morrow they will have left
Naples. Or they may come from Sorrento, Capri. How can I tell who they
are?”

The Marchesino suddenly changed. His ardor vanished. His gesticulating
hands fell to his sides. His expressive face grew melancholy.

“Of course. How can you tell? Directly I was out of the sea and dressed,
I went to Santa Lucia. I examined every boat, but the white boat with
the green line was not there, Basta!”

He lit a fresh cigarette and was silent for a moment. Then he said:

“Emilio caro, will you come out with me to-night?”

“With pleasure.”

“In the boat. There will be a moon. We will dine at the Antico
Giuseppone.”

“So far off as that?” Artois said, rather abruptly.

“Why not? To-day I hate the town. I want tranquility. At the Antico
Giuseppone there will be scarcely any one. It is early in the season.
And afterwards we will fish for sarde, or saraglie. Take me away from
Naples, Emilio; take me away! For to-night, if I stay--well, I feel that
I shall not be santo.”

Artois burst into his big roaring laugh.

“And why do you want to be santo to-night?” he asked.

“The beautiful girl! I wish to keep her memory, if only for one night.”

“Very well, then. We will fish, and you shall be a saint.”

“Caro Emilio! Perhaps Viviano will come, too. But I think he will be
with Lidia. She is singing to-night at the Teatro Nuovo. Be ready at
half-past seven. I will call for you. And now I shall leave you.”

He got up, went over to a mirror, carefully arranged his tie, and put on
his straw hat at exactly the most impudent angle.

“I shall leave you to write your book while I meet papa at the villa.
Do you know why papa is so careful to be always at the villa at four
o’clock just now?”

“No!”

“Nor does mamma! If she did! Povera mamma! But she can always go to
Mass. A rivederci, Emilio.”

He moved his hat a little more to one side and went out, swinging his
walking-stick gently to and fro in a manner that was pensive and almost
sentimental.



CHAPTER VI

The Marchesino Panacci was generally very sincere with his friends,
and the boyish expression in his eyes was not altogether deceptive,
for despite his wide knowledge of certain aspects of life, not wholly
admirable, there was really something of the simplicity of a child--of a
child that could be very naughty--in his disposition. But if he could
be naïve he could also be mischievous and even subtle, and he was very
swift in grasping a situation, very sharp in reading character, very
cunning in the pursuit of his pleasure, very adroit in deception, if
he thought that publicity of pursuit would be likely to lead to the
frustration of his purpose.

He had seen at once that Artois either knew, or suspected, who were the
occupants of the white boat with the green line, and he had also seen
that, influenced perhaps by one of those second thoughts which lead men
into caution, Artois desired to conceal his knowledge, or suspicion.
Instantly the Marchesino had, therefore, dropped the subject, and as
instantly he had devised a little plan to clear the matter up.

The Marchesino knew that when Artois had arrived in Naples he had had no
friends in the town or neighborhood. But he also knew that recently an
Englishwoman, an old friend of the novelist, had come upon the scene,
that she was living somewhere not far off, and that Artois had been to
visit her once or twice by sea. Artois had spoken of her very casually,
and the Marchesino’s interest in her had not been awakened. He was not
an inquisitive man by nature, and was always very busy with his own
pursuit of pleasure. But he remembered now that once he had seen his
friend being rowed in the direction of Posilipo, and that in the evening
of the same day Artois had mentioned having been to visit his English
friend. This fact had suggested to the Marchesino that if his suspicion
were correct, and the ladies in the white boat with the green line were
this English friend and a daughter, they probably lived in some villa as
easily reached by sea as by land. Such villas are more numerous towards
the point of the Capo di Posilipo than nearer Naples, as the high road,
after the Mergellina, mounts the hill and diverges farther and farther
from the sea. The Antico Giuseppone is a small waterside ristorante at
the point of the Capo di Posilipo, a little below the Villa Rosebery.

The Marchesino’s suggestion of a dinner there that evening had been
prompted by the desire to draw his friend into the neighborhood of his
charmer of the sea. Once there he might either find some pretext for
making her acquaintance through Artois--if Artois did know her--or, if
that were impossible, he might at least find out where she lived. By the
manner of Artois when the Antico Giuseppone was mentioned, he knew at
once that he was playing his cards well. The occupants of the white
boat were known to the novelist. They did live somewhere near the Antico
Giuseppone. And certainly Artois had no desire to bring about his--the
Marchesino’s--acquaintance with them.

That this was so, neither surprised nor seriously vexed the Marchesino.
He knew a good deal of his friend’s character, knew that Artois, despite
his geniality and friendliness, was often reserved--even with him.
During their short intimacy he had certainly told Artois a great deal
more about his affairs with women than had been told to him in return.
This fact was borne in upon him now. But he did not feel angry. A
careless good-nature was an essential part of his character. He did not
feel angry at his friend’s secrecy, but he did feel mischievous. His
lively desire to know the girl with “the perfect little nose” was backed
up now by another desire--to teach “Caro Emilio” that it was better to
meet complete frankness with complete frankness.

He had strolled out of his friend’s room pensively, acting the
melancholy youth who had lost all hope of succeeding in his desire; but
directly the door was shut his manner changed. Disregarding the lift, he
ran lightly down the stairs, made his way swiftly by the revolving door
into the street, crossed it, and walked towards the harbor of Santa
Lucia, where quantities of pleasure-boats lie waiting for hire, and the
boatmen are gathered in knots smoking and gossiping, or are strolling
singly up and down near the water’s edge, keeping a sharp look-out for
possible customers.

As the Marchesino turned on the bridge that leads towards Castel dell’
Ovo one of these boatmen met him and saluted him.

“Good-day, Giuseppe,” said the Marchesino, addressing him familiarly
with a broad Neapolitan accent.

“Good-day, Signorino Marchesino,” replied the man. “Do you want a boat?
I will take you for--”

The Marchesino drew out his cigarette case.

“I don’t want a boat. But perhaps you can tell me something.”

“What is it, Signorino Marchesino?” said the man, looking eagerly at the
cigarette case which was now open, and which displayed two tempting rows
of fat Egyptian cigarettes reposing side by side.

“Do you know a boat--white with a green line--which sometimes comes into
the harbor from the direction of Posilipo? It was here this afternoon,
or it passed here. I don’t know whether it went on to the Arsenal.”

“White with a green line?” said the man. “That might be--who was there
in it, Signorino Marchesino?”

“Two ladies, one old and one very young. The young lady--”

“Those must be the ladies from the island,” interrupted the man. “The
English ladies who come in the summer to the Casa del Mare as they call
it, on the island close to the Grotto of Virgilio by San Francesco’s
Pool. They were here this afternoon, but they’re gone back. Their boat
is white with a green line, Signorino Marchesino.”

“Grazie, Giuseppe,” said the Marchesino, with an immovable countenance.
“Do you smoke cigarettes?’

“Signorino Marchesino, I do when I have any soldi to buy them with.”

“Take these.”

The Marchesino emptied one side of his cigarette case into the boatman’s
hand, called a hired carriage, and drove off towards the Villa--the
horse going at a frantic trot, while the coachman, holding a rein in
each hand, ejaculated, “A--ah!” every ten seconds, in a voice that was
fiercely hortatory.

Artois, from his window, saw the carriage rattle past, and saw his
friend leaning back in it, with alert eyes, to scan every woman passing
by. He stood on the balcony for a moment till the noise of the wheels on
the stone pavement died away. When he returned to his writing-table the
mood for work was gone. He sat down in his chair. He took up his
pen. But he found himself thinking of two people, the extraordinary
difference between whom was the cause of his now linking them together
in his mind. He found himself thinking of the Marchesino and of Vere.

Not for a moment did he doubt the identity of the two women in the white
boat. They were Hermione and Vere. The Marchesino had read him rightly,
but Artois was not aware of it. His friend had deceived him, as almost
any sharp-witted Neapolitan can deceive even a clever forestiere.
Certainly he did not particularly wish to introduce his friend to
Vere. Yet now he was thinking of the two in connection, and not without
amusement. What would they be like together? How would Vere’s divine
innocence receive the amiable seductions of the Marchesino? Artois,
in fancy, could see his friend Doro for once completely disarmed by a
child. Vere’s innocence did not spring from folly, but was backed up
by excellent brains. It was that fact which made it so beautiful. The
innocence and the brains together might well read Doro a pretty little
lesson. And Vere after the lesson--would she be changed? Would she lose
by giving, even if the gift were a lesson?

Artois had certainly felt that his instinct told him not to do what Doro
wanted. He had been moved, he supposed now, by a protective sentiment.
Vere was delicious as she was. And Doro--he was delightful as he was.
The girl was enchanting in her ignorance. The youth--to Artois the
Marchesino seemed almost a boy, indeed, often quite a boy--was admirable
in his precocity. He embodied Naples, its gay _furberia_, and yet
that was hardly the word--perhaps rather one should say its sunny
naughtiness, its reckless devotion to life purged of thought. And
Vere--what did she embody? Not Sicily, though she was in some ways so
Sicilian. Not England; certainly not that!

Suddenly Artois was conscious that he knew Doro much better than he knew
Vere. He remembered the statement of an Austrian psychologist, that men
are far more mysterious than women, and shook his head over it now. He
felt strongly the mystery that lay hidden deep down in the innocence of
Vere, in the innocence of every girl-child of Vere’s age who had brains,
temperament and perfect purity. What a marvellous combination they made!
He imagined the clear flame of them burning in the night of the world of
men. Vere must be happy.

When he said this to himself he knew that, perhaps for the first
time, he was despairing of something that he ardently desired. He was
transferring a wish, that was something like a prayer in the heart
of one who had seldom prayed. He was giving up hope for Hermione and
fastening hope on Vere. For a moment that seemed like treachery, like an
abandoning of Hermione. Since their interview on the sea Artois had
felt that, for Hermione, all possibility of real happiness was over. She
could not detach her love. It had been fastened irrevocably on Maurice.
It was now fastened irrevocably on Maurice’s memory. Long ago, had she,
while he was alive, found out what he had done, her passion for him
might have died, and in the course of years she might have been able
to love again. But now it was surely too late. She had lived with her
memory too long. It was her blessing--to remember, to recall, how love
had blessed her life for a time. And if that memory were desecrated now
she would be as one wrecked in the storm of life. Yet with that memory
how she suffered!

What could he do for her? His chivalry must exercise itself. He must
remain in the lists, if only to fight for Hermione in Vere. And the
Marchesino? Artois seemed to divine that he might be an enemy in certain
circumstances.

A warmth of sentiment, not very common in Artois, generated within him
by such thoughts as these, thoughts that detained him from work, still
glowed in his heart when evening fell and the Marchesino came gayly in
to take him out upon the sea.

“There’s a little wind, Emilio,” he said, as they got into the boat in
the harbor of Santa Lucia; “we can sail to the Antico Giuseppone. And
after dinner we’ll fish for sarde. Isn’t it warm? One could sleep out on
such a night.”

They had two men with them. When they got beyond the breakwater the sail
was set, the Marchesino took the helm, and the boat slipped through the
smooth sea, rounded the rocks on which the old fort stands to stare at
Capri, radiant now as a magic isle in the curiously ethereal light of
evening, and headed for the distant point of land which hid Ischia
from their eyes. The freedom of the Bay of Naples was granted them--the
freedom of the sea. As they ran out into the open water, and Artois saw
the round gray eyes of the Marchesino dancing to the merry music of a
complete bodily pleasure, he felt like a man escaping. He looked back
at the city almost as at a sad life over, and despite his deep and
persistent interest in men he understood the joy of the hermit who casts
them from him and escapes into the wilds. The radiance of the Bay, one
of the most radiant of all the inlets of the sea, bold and glaring
in the brilliant daytime, becomes exquisitely delicate towards night.
Vesuvius, its fiery watcher, looks like a kindly guardian, until perhaps
the darkness shows the flame upon its flanks, the flame bursting forth
from the mouth it opens to the sky; and the coast-line by Sorrento, the
lifted crest of Capri, even the hill of Posilipo, appear romantic and
enticing, calling lands holding wonderful pleasures for men, joys
in their rocks and trees, joys in their dim recesses, joys and soft
realities fulfilling every dream upon their coasts washed by the
whispering waves.

The eyes of the Marchesino were dancing with physical pleasure. Artois
wondered how much he felt the beauty of the evening, and how. His friend
evidently saw the question in his eyes, for he said:

“The man who knows not Naples knows not pleasure.”

“Is that a Neapolitan saying?” asked Artois.

“Yes, and it is true. There is no town like Naples for pleasure.
Even your Paris, Emilio, with all its theatres, its cocottes, its
restaurants--no, it is not Naples. No wonder the forestiere come here.
In Naples they are free. They can do what they will. They know we shall
not mind. We are never shocked.”

“And do you think we are easily shocked in Paris?”

“No, but it is not the same. You have not Vesuvius there. You have not
the sea, you have not the sun.”

Artois began laughingly to protest against the last statement, but the
Marchesino would not have it.

“No, no, it shines--I know that,--but it is not the sun we have here.”

He spoke to the seamen in the Neapolitan dialect. They were brown,
muscular fellows. In their eyes were the extraordinary boldness
and directness of the sea. Neither of them looked gay. Many of the
Neapolitans who are much upon the sea have serious, even grave faces.
These were intensely, almost overpoweringly male. They seemed to partake
of the essence of the elements of nature, as if blood of the sea ran in
their veins, as if they were hot with the grim and inner fires of the
sun. When they spoke their faces showed a certain changefulness that
denoted intelligence, but never lost the look of force, of an almost
tense masculinity ready to battle, perpetually alive to hold its own.

The Marchesino was also very masculine, but in a different way and more
consciously than they were. He was not cultured, but such civilization
as he had endowed him with a power to catch the moods of others not
possessed by these men, in whom persistence was more visible than
adroitness, unless indeed any question of money was to the fore.

“We shall get to the Giuseppone by eight, Emilio,” the Marchesino said,
dropping his conversation with the men, which had been about the best
hour and place for their fishing. “Are you hungry?”

“I shall be,” said Artois. “This wind brings an appetite with it. How
well you steer!”

The Marchesino nodded carelessly.

As the boat drew ever nearer to the point, running swiftly before
the light breeze, its occupants were silent. Artois was watching the
evening, with the eyes of a lover of nature, but also with the eyes
of one who takes notes. The Marchesino seemed to be intent on his
occupation of pilot. As to the two sailors, they sat in the accustomed
calm and staring silence of seafaring men, with wide eyes looking
out over the element that ministered to their wants. They saw it
differently, perhaps, from Artois, to whom it gave now an intense
aesthetic pleasure, differently from the Marchesino, to whom it was
just a path to possible excitement, possible gratification of a new
and dancing desire. They connected it with strange superstitions, with
gifts, with deprivations, with death. Familiar and mysterious it was
purely to them as to all seamen, like a woman possessed whose soul is
far away.

Just as the clocks of Posilipo were striking eight the Marchesino
steered the boat into the quay of the Antico Guiseppone.

Although it was early in the season a few deal tables were set out by
the waterside, and a swarthy waiter, with huge mustaches and a napkin
over his arm, came delicately over the stones to ask their wishes.

“Will you let me order dinner, Emilio?” said the Marchesino: “I know
what they do best here.”

Artois agreed, and while the waiter shuffled to carry out the
Marchesino’s directions the two friends strolled near the edge of the
sea.

The breeze had been kindly. Having served them well it was now
dying down to its repose, leaving the evening that was near to night
profoundly calm. As Artois walked along the quay he felt the approach of
calm like the approach of a potentate, serene in the vast consciousness
of power. Peace was invading the sea, irresistible peace. The night was
at hand. Already Naples uncoiled its chain of lamps along the Bay. In
the gardens of Posilipo the lights of the houses gleamed. Opposite,
but very far off across the sea, shone the tiny flames of the houses
of Portici, of Torre del Greco, of Torre Annunziata, of Castellamare.
Against the gathering darkness Vesuvius belched slowly soft clouds of
rose-colored vapor, which went up like a menace into the dim vault of
the sky. The sea was without waves. The boats by the wharf, where
the road ascends past the villa Rosebery to the village of Posilipo,
scarcely moved. Near them, in a group, lounging against the wall and
talking rapidly, stood the two sailors from Naples with the boatmen
of the Guiseppone. Oil lamps glimmered upon two or three of the deal
tables, round one of which was gathered a party consisting of seven
large women, three children, and two very thin middle-aged men with
bright eyes, all of whom were eating oysters. Farther on, from a small
arbor that gave access to a fisherman’s house, which seemed to be
constructed partially in a cave of the rock, and which was gained by a
steep and crumbling stairway of stone, a mother called shrilly to some
half-naked little boys who were fishing with tiny hand-nets in the
sea. By the table which was destined to the Marchesino and Artois three
ambulant musicians were hovering, holding in their broad and dirty hands
two shabby mandolins and a guitar. In the distance a cook with a white
cap on his head and bare arms was visible, as he moved to and fro in the
lighted kitchen of the old ristorante, preparing a “zuppa di pesce” for
the gentlemen from Naples.

“Che bella notte!” said the Marchesino, suddenly.

His voice sounded sentimental. He twisted his mustaches and added:

“Emilio, we ought to have brought two beautiful women with us to-night.
What are the moon and the sea to men without beautiful women?”

“And the fishing?” said Artois.

“To the devil with the fishing,” replied the young man. “Ecco! Our
dinner is ready, with thanks to the Madonna!”

They sat down, one on each side of the small table, with a smoking lamp
between them.

“I have ordered vino bianco,” said the Marchesino, who still looked
sentimental. “Cameriere, take away the lamp. Put it on the next table.
Va bene. We are going to have ‘zuppa di pesce,’ gamberi and veal
cutlets. The wine is Capri. Now then,” he added, with sudden violence
and the coarsest imaginable Neapolitan accent, “if you fellows play
‘Santa Lucia,’ ‘Napoli Bella,’ or ‘Sole mio’ you’ll have my knife in
you. I am not an Inglese. I am a Neapolitan. Remember that!”

He proved it with a string of gutter words and oaths, at which the
musicians smiled with pleasure. Then, turning again to Artois, he
continued:

“If one doesn’t tell them they think one is an imbecile. Emilio caro, do
you not love to see the moon with a beautiful girl?”

His curious assumption that Artois and he were contemporaries because
they were friends, and his apparently absolute blindness to the fact
that a man of sixty and a man of twenty-four are hardly likely to
regard the other sex with an exactly similar enthusiasm, always secretly
entertained the novelist, who made it his business with this friend to
be accommodating, and who seldom, if ever, showed himself authoritative,
or revealed any part of his real inner self.

“Ma si!” he replied; “the night and the moon are made for love.”

“Everything is made for love,” returned the Marchesino. “Take plenty of
soaked bread, Emilio. They know how to make this zuppa here. Everything
is made for love.--Look! There is a boat coming with women in it!”

At a short distance from the shore a rowing boat was visible; and from
it now came shrill sounds of very common voices, followed by shouts of
male laughter.

“Perhaps they are beautiful,” said the Marchesino, at once on the alert.

The boat drew in to the quay, and from it there sprang, with much noise
and many gesticulations, two over-dressed women--probably, indeed almost
certainly, _canzonettiste_--and the two large young men, whose brown
fingers and whose chests gleamed with false diamonds. As they passed the
table where the two friends were sitting, the Marchesino raked the women
with his bold gray eyes. One of them was large and artificially blonde,
with a spreading bust, immense hips, a small waist, and a quantity of
pale dyed hair, on which was perched a bright blue hat. The other was
fiercely dark, with masses of coarse black hair, big, blatant eyes that
looked quite black in the dim lamplight, and a figure that suggested a
self-conscious snake. Both were young. They returned the Marchesino’s
stare with vigorous impudence as they swung by.

“What sympathetic creatures!” he murmured. “They are two angels.
I believe I have seen one of them at the Margherita. What was her
name--Maria Leoni, I fancy.”

He looked enviously at the young men. The arrival of the lobster
distracted his attention for the moment; but it was obvious that the
appearance of these women had increased the feeling of sentimentality
already generated in him by the softness and stillness of the night.

The three musicians, rendered greedy rather than inspired by the
presence of more clients, now began to pluck a lively street tune from
their instruments; and the waiter, whose mustaches seemed if possible
bigger now that night was truly come, poured the white wine into the
glasses with the air of one making a libation.

As the Marchesino ate, he frequently looked towards the party at the
neighboring table. He was evidently filled with envy of the two men
whose jewels glittered as they gesticulated with their big brown hands.
But presently their pleasure and success recalled to him something
which he had momentarily forgotten, the reason why he had planned this
expedition. He was in pursuit. The recollection cheered him up, restored
to him the strength of his manhood, put him right with himself. The envy
and the almost sickly sentimentality vanished from him, and he broke
into the usual gay conversation which seldom failed him, either by day
or night.

It was past nine before they had finished their coffee. The two boatmen
had been regaled and had drunk a bottle of wine, and the moon was rising
and making the oil lamps of the Guiseppone look pitiful. From the table
where the canzonettiste were established came peals of laughter, which
obviously upset the seven large and respectable women who had been
eating oysters, and who now sat staring heavily at the gay revellers,
while the two thin middle-aged men with bright eyes began to look
furtively cheerful, and even rather younger than they were. The
musicians passed round a small leaden tray for soldi, and the waiter
brought the Marchesino the bill, and looked inquiringly at Artois, aware
that he at least was not a Neapolitan. Artois gave him something and
satisfied the musicians, while the Marchesino disputed the bill, not
because he minded paying, but merely to prove that he was a Neapolitan
and not an imbecile. The matter was settled at last, and they went
towards the boat; the Marchesino casting many backward glances towards
the two angels, who, with their lovers, were becoming riotous in their
gayety as the moon came up.

“Are we going out into the Bay?” said Artois, as they stepped into the
boat, and were pushed off.

“Where is the best fishing-ground?” asked the Marchesino of the elder of
the two men.

“Towards the islet, Signorino Marchesino,” he replied at once, looking
his interlocutor full in the face with steady eyes, but remaining
perfectly grave.

Artois glanced at the man sharply. For the first time it occurred to
him that possibly his friend had arranged this expedition with a purpose
other than that which he had put forward. It was not the fisherman’s
voice which had made Artois wonder, but the voice of the Marchesino.

“There are generally plenty of sarde round the islet,” continued the
fisherman, “but if the Signori would not be too tired it would be best
to stay out the night. We shall get many more fish towards morning, and
we can run the boat into the Pool of San Francesco, and have some sleep
there, if the Signori like. We others generally take a nap there, and
go to work further on in the night. But of course it is as the Signori
prefer.”

“They want to keep us out all night to get more pay,” said the
Marchesino to Artois, in bad French.

He had divined the suspicion that had suddenly risen up in his friend,
and was resolved to lay it to rest, without, however, abandoning his
purpose, which had become much more ardent with the coming of the night.
The voices of the laughing women were ringing in his ears. He felt
adventurous. The youth in him was rioting, and he was longing to be gay,
as the men with those women were being gay.

“What do you think, Emilio caro?” he asked.

Then before Artois could reply, he said:

“After all, what do a few soldi matter? Who could sleep in a room on
such a night? It might be August, when one bathes at midnight, and sings
canzoni till dawn. Let us do as he says. Let us rest in the--what is the
pool?” he asked of the fishermen, pretending not to know the name.

“The pool of San Francesco, Signorino Marchesino.”

“Pool of San Francesco. I remember now. That is the place where all the
fishermen along the coast towards Nisida go to sleep. I have slept there
many times when I was a boy, and so has Viviano. To-night shall we do as
the fishermen, Emilio?”

There was no pressure in his careless voice. His eyes for the moment
looked so simple, though as eager as a child’s.

“Anything you like, mon ami,” said Artois.

He did not want to go to San Francesco’s Pool with the Marchesino, but
he did not wish to seem reluctant to go. And he said to himself now that
his interior hesitation was absurd. Night had fallen. By the time they
reached the Pool the inmates of the Case del Mare would probably be
asleep. Even if they were not, what did it matter? The boat would lie
among the vessels of the fishermen. The Marchesino and he would share
the fishermen’s repose. And even if Hermione and Vere should chance
to be out of doors they would not see him, or, if they did, would not
recognize him in the night.

His slight uneasiness, prompted by a vague idea that the Marchesino was
secretly mischievous, had possibly some plan in his mind connected with
the islet, was surely without foundation.

He told himself so as the fisherman laid hold of their oars and set the
boat’s prow towards the point of land which conceals the small harbor of
the Villa Rosebery.

The shrill voices of the two singers died away from their ears, but
lingered in the memory of the Marchesino, as the silence of the sea took
the boat to itself, the sea silence and the magic of the moon.

He turned his face towards the silver, beyond which, hidden as yet, was
the islet where dwelt the child he meant to know.



CHAPTER VII

Although Hermione had told Artois that she could not find complete rest
and happiness in her child, that she could not live again in Vere fully
and intensely as she had lived once, as she still had it in her surely
to live, she and Vere were in a singularly close relationship. They had
never yet been separated for more than a few days. Vere had not been to
school, and much of her education had been undertaken by her mother. In
Florence she had been to classes and lectures. She had had lessons
in languages, French, German, and Italian, in music and drawing. But
Hermione had been her only permanent teacher, and until her sixteenth
birthday she had never been enthusiastic about anything without
carrying her enthusiasm to her mother, for sympathy, explanation, or
encouragement.

Sorrow had not quenched the elan of Hermione’s nature. What she had told
Artois had been true--she was not a finished woman, nor would she ever
be, so long as she was alive and conscious. Her hunger for love, her
passionate remembrance of the past, her incapacity to sink herself in
any one since her husband’s death, her persistent, though concealed,
worship of his memory, all these things proved her vitality. Artois was
right when he said that she was a force. There was something in her that
was red-hot, although she was now a middle-aged woman. She needed much
more than most people, because she had much more than most people have
to give.

Her failure to express herself in an art had been a tragedy. From this
tragedy she turned, not with bitterness, but perhaps with an almost
fiercer energy, to Vere. Her intellect, released from fruitless toil,
was running loose demanding some employment. She sought that employment
in developing the powers of her child. Vere was not specially studious.
Such an out-of-door temperament as hers could never belong to a bookworm
or a recluse. But she was naturally clever, as her father had not been,
and she was enthusiastic not only in pleasure but in work. Long ago
Hermione, trying with loving anxiety to educate her boyish husband, to
make him understand certain subtleties of her own, had found herself
frustrated. When she made such attempts with Vere she was met half way.
The girl understood with swiftness even those things with which she was
not specially in sympathy. Her father’s mind had slipped away, ever so
gracefully, from all which it did not love. Vere’s could grasp even an
unloved subject. There was mental grit in her--Artois knew it. In all
her work until her sixteenth year Vere had consulted her mother. Nothing
of her child till then was ever hidden from Hermione, except those
things which the human being cannot reveal, and sometimes scarcely
knows of. The child drew very much from her mother, responded to
her enthusiasm, yet preserved instinctively, and quite without
self-consciousness, her own individuality.

Artois had noticed this, and this had led him to say that Vere also was
a force.

But when she was sixteen Vere woke up to something. Until now no one but
herself knew to what. Sometimes she shut herself up alone in her room
for long periods. When she came out she looked lazy, her mother thought,
and she liked to go then to some nook of the rocks and sit alone, or to
push a boat out into the centre of the Saint’s Pool, and lie in it with
her hands clasped behind her head looking up at the passing clouds or at
the radiance of the blue.

Hermione knew how fond Vere was of reading, and supposed that this love
was increasing as the child grew older. She sometimes felt a little
lonely, but she was unselfish. Vere’s freedom was quite innocent. She,
the mother, would not seek to interfere with it. Soon after dinner on
the evening of the Marchesino’s expedition with Artois, Vere had got up
from the sofa, on which she had been sitting with a book of Rossetti’s
poems in her hand, had gone over to one of the windows, and had stood
for two or three minutes looking out over the sea. Then she had turned
round, come up to her mother and kissed her tenderly--more tenderly,
Hermione thought, even than usual.

“Good-night, Madre mia,” she had said.

And then, without another word, she had gone swiftly out of the room.

After Vere had gone the room seemed very silent. In the evening, if they
stayed in the house, they usually sat in Hermione’s room up-stairs.
They had been sitting there to-night. The shutters were not closed. The
window that faced the sea towards Capri was open. A little moonlight
began to mingle subtly with the light from the two lamps, to make it
whiter, cleaner, suggestive of outdoor things and large spaces. Hermione
had been reading when Vere was reading. She did not read now Vere was
gone. Laying down her book she sat listening to the silence, realizing
the world without. Almost at her feet was the sea, before her a
wide-stretching expanse, behind her, confronted by the desolate rocks,
the hollow and mysterious caverns. In the night, the Saint, unwearied,
watched his Pool. Not very far off, yet delightfully remote, lay Naples
with its furious activities, its gayeties, its intensities of sin, of
misery, of pleasure. In the Galleria, tourists from the hotels and
from the ships were wandering rather vaguely, watched and followed
by newspaper sellers, by touts, by greedy, pale-faced boys, and old,
worn-out men, all hungry for money and indifferent how it was gained.
Along the Marina, with its huge serpent of lights, the street singers
and players were making their nightly pilgrimage, pausing, wherever they
saw a lighted window or a dark figure on a balcony, to play and sing
the tunes of which they were weary long ago. On the wall, high above
the sea, were dotted the dilettante fishermen with their long rods and
lines. And below, before each stone staircase that descended to the
water, was a waiting boat, and in the moonlight rose up the loud cry of
“Barca! Barca!” to attract the attention of any casual passer-by.

And here, on this more truly sea-like sea, distant from the great crowd
and from the thronging houses, the real fishermen who live by the sea
were alert and at work, or were plunged in the quiet sleep that is a
preparation for long hours of nocturnal wakefulness.

Hermione thought of it all, was aware of it, felt it, as she sat there
opposite to the open window. Then she looked over to her writing-table,
on which stood a large photograph of her dead husband, then to the sofa
where Vere had been. She saw the volume of Rossetti lying beside the
cushion that still showed a shallow dent where the child’s head had been
resting.

And then she shut her eyes, and asked her imagination to take her away
for a moment, over the sea to Messina, and along the curving shore, and
up by winding paths to a mountain, and into a little room in a tiny,
whitewashed house, not the house of the sea, but of the priest. It still
stood there, and the terrace was still before it. And the olive-trees
rustled, perhaps, just now in the wind beneath the stars.

Yes, she was there. Lucrezia and Gaspare were in bed. But she and
Maurice were sitting in the straw chairs on each side of the table,
facing the open French window and the flight of shallow steps that led
down to the terrace.

Faintly she heard the whisper of the sea about the islet, but she would
not let it hinder her imagination: she translated it by means of her
imagination into the whisper of the wind low down there, in the ravine
among the trees. And that act made her think of the ravine, seemed
presently to set her in the ravine. She was there in the night with
Gaspare. They were hurrying down towards the sea. He was behind her,
and she could hear his footsteps--longing to go faster. But she was
breathless, her heart was beating, there was terror in her soul. What
was that? A rattle of stones in the darkness, and then an old voice
muttering “Benedicite!”

She opened her eyes and moved suddenly, like one intolerably stirred.
What a foe the imagination can be--what a foe! She got up and went to
the window. She must drive away that memory of the ravine, of all that
followed after. Often she lingered with it, but to-night, somehow, she
could not, she dared not. She was less brave than usual to-night.

She leaned out of the window.

“Am I a fool?”

That was what she was saying to herself. And she was comparing herself
now with other people, other women. Did she know one who could not
uproot an old memory, who could suffer, and desire, and internally weep,
after more than sixteen years?

“I suppose it is preposterous.”

She deliberately chose that ugly word to describe her own condition
of soul. But instantly it seemed to her as if far down in that soul
something rose up and answered:

“No, it is not. It is beautiful. It is divine. It is more--it is due. He
gave you the greatest gift. He gave you what the whole world is always
seeking; even in blindness, even in ignorance, even in terrible vice. He
gave you love. How should you forget him?”

Far away on the sea that was faintly silvered by the moon there was
a black speck. It was, or seemed from the distance to be, motionless.
Hermione’s eyes were attracted to it, and again her imagination carried
her to Sicily. She stood on the shore by the inlet, she saw the boat
coming in from the open sea. Then it stopped midway--like that boat.

She heard Gaspare furiously weeping.

But the boat moved, and the sound that was in her imagination died away,
and she said to herself, “All that was long ago.”

The boat out there was no doubt occupied by Neapolitan fishermen, and
she was here on the islet in the Sea of Naples, and Sicily was far
away across the moonlit waters. As to Gaspare--she was sure he was not
weeping, faithful though he was to the memory of the dead Padrone.

And Vere? Hermione wondered what Vere was doing. She felt sure, though
she did not know why, that Vere had not gone to bed. She realized
to-night that her child was growing up rapidly, was passing from the
stage of childhood to the stage of girlhood, was on the threshold of
all the mysterious experiences that life holds for those who have ardent
temperaments and eager interests, and passionate desires and fearless
hearts.

To-night Hermione felt very strongly the difference between the father
and the daughter. There was a gravity in Vere, a firmness that Maurice
had lacked. Full of life and warmth as she was, she was not the pure
spirit of joy that he had been in those first days in Sicily. She was
not irresponsible. She was more keenly aware of others, of just how they
were feeling, of just how they were thinking, than Maurice had been.

Vere was very individual.

With that thought there came to Hermione a deeper sense of loneliness.
She was conscious now in this moment, as she had never been conscious
before, of the independence of her child’s character. The knowledge of
this independence seemed to come upon her suddenly--she could not tell
why; and she saw Vere apart from her, detached, like a column in a
lonely place.

Vere must not escape from her. She must accompany her child step by
step. She must not be left alone. She had told Emile that she could not
live again in Vere. And that was true. Vere was not enough. But Vere was
very much. Without Vere, what would her life be?

A wave of melancholy flowed over her to-night, a tide come from she knew
not where. Making an effort to stem it, she recalled her happiness with
Maurice after that day of the Tarantella. How groundless had really been
her melancholy then! She had imagined him escaping from her, but he had
remained with her, and loved her. He had been good to her until the end,
tender and faithful. If she had ever had a rival, that rival had been
Sicily. Always her imagination was her torturer.

Her failure in art had been a tragedy because of this. If she could have
set her imagination free in an art she would have been far safer than
she was. Emile Artois was really lonelier than she, for he had not
a child. But his art surely saved him securely from her sense of
desolation. And then he was a man, and men must need far less than
women do. Hermione felt that it was so. She thought of Emile in his most
helpless moment, in that period when he was ill in Kairouan before she
came. Even then she believed that he could not have felt quite so much
alone as she did now; for men never long to be taken care of as women
do. And yet she was well, in this tranquil house which was her own--with
Vere, her child, and Gaspare, her devoted servant.

As mentally she recounted her benefits, the strength there was in her
arose, protesting. She called herself harsh names: egoist, craven,
_faineant_. But it was no use to attack herself. In the deeps of her
poor, eager, passionate, hungry woman’s nature something wept, and
needed, and could not be comforted, and could not be schooled. It
complained as one feeble, but really it must be strong; for it was
pitilessly persistent in its grieving. It had a strange endurance. Life,
the passing of the years, could not change it, could not still it. Those
eternal hungers of which Hermione had spoken to Artois--they must have
their meaning. Somewhere, surely, there are the happy hunting-grounds,
dreamed of by the red man--there are the Elysian Fields where the souls
that have longed and suffered will find the ultimate peace.

There came a tap at the door.

Hermione started up from the cushion against which she had pressed
her head, and opened her eyes, instinctively laying her hand on Vere’s
volume of Rossetti, and pretending to read it.

“Avanti!” she said.

The door opened and Gaspare appeared. Hermione felt an immediate
sensation of comfort.

“Gaspare,” she said, “what is it? I thought you were in bed.”

“Ha bisogna Lei?” he said.

It was a most familiar phrase to Hermione. It had been often on
Gaspare’s lips when he was a boy in Sicily, and she had always loved it,
feeling as if it sprang from a nature pleasantly ready to do anything
in her service. But to-night it had an almost startling appropriateness,
breaking in as if in direct response to her gnawing hunger of the heart.
As she looked at Gaspare, standing by the door in his dark-blue clothes,
with an earnest expression on his strong, handsome face, she felt as
if he must have come just then because he was conscious that she had so
much need of help and consolation. And she could not answer “no” to his
simple question.

“Come in, Gaspare,” she said, “and shut the door. I’m all alone. I
should like to have a little talk with you.”

He obeyed her, shut the door gently, and came up to her with the
comfortable confidence of one safe in his welcome, desired not merely as
a servant but as a friend by his Padrona.

“Did you want to say anything particular, Gaspare?” Hermione asked him.
“Here--take a cigarette.”

She gave him one. He took it gently, twitching his nose as he did so.
This was a little trick he had when he was pleased.

“You can smoke it here, if you like.”

“Grazie, Signora.”

He lit it gravely and took a whiff. Then he said:

“The Signorina is outside.”

“Is she?”

Hermione looked towards the window.

“It is a lovely night.”

“Si, Signora.”

He took another whiff, and turned his great eyes here and there, looking
about the room. Hermione began to wonder what he had to say to her. She
was certain that he had come to her for some reason other than just to
ask if she had need of him.

“It does the Signorina good to get a breath of air before she goes to
bed,” Hermione added, after a moment of silence. “It makes her sleep.”

“Si, Signora.”

He still stood calmly beside her, but now he looked at her with the odd
directness which had been characteristic of him as a boy, and which he
had not lost as a man.

“The Signorina is getting quite big, Signora,” he said. “Have you
noticed? Per Dio! In Sicily, if the Signorina was a Sicilian, the
giovinotti would be asking to marry her.”

“Ah, but, Gaspare, the Signorina is not a Sicilian,” she said. “She
is English, you know, and English girls do not generally think of such
things till they are much older than Sicilians.”

“But, Signora,” said Gaspare, with the bluntness which in him was
never rudeness, but merely the sincerity which he considered due to his
Padrona--due also to himself, “my Padrone was like a real Sicilian,
and the Signorina is his daughter. She must be like a Sicilian too, by
force.”

“Your Padrone, yes, he was a real Sicilian,” Hermione said softly.
“But, well, the Signorina has much more English blood in her veins than
Sicilian. She has only a little Sicilian blood.”

“But the Signorina thinks she is almost a Sicilian. She wishes to be a
Sicilian.”

“How do you know that, Gaspare?” she asked, smiling a little at his
firmness and persistence.

“The Signorina said so the other day to the giovinotto who had the
cigarettes, Signora. I talked to him, and he told me. He said the
Signorina had said to him that she was partly a Sicilian, and that he
had said ‘no,’ that she was English. And when he said that--he said to
me--the Signorina was quite angry. He could see that she was angry by
her face.”

“I suppose that is the Sicilian blood, Gaspare. There is some in the
Signorina’s veins, of course. And then, you know, both her father and
I loved your country. I think the Signorina must often long to see
Sicily.”

“Does she say so?” asked Gaspare, looking rather less calm.

“She has not lately. I think she is very happy here. Don’t you?”

“Si, Signora. But the Signorina is growing up now, and she is a little
Sicilian anyhow, Signora.”

He paused, looking steadily at his Padrona.

“What is it, Gaspare? What do you want to say to me?”

“Signora, perhaps you will say it is not my business, but in my country
we do not let girls go about by themselves after they are sixteen. We
know it is better not. Ecco!”

Hermione had some difficulty in not smiling. But she knew that if she
smiled he might be offended. So she kept her countenance and said:

“What do you mean, Gaspare? The Signorina is nearly always with me.”

“No, Signora. The Signorina can go wherever she likes. She can speak to
any one she pleases. She is free as a boy is free.”

“Certainly she is free. I wish her to be free.”

“Va bene, Signora, va bene.”

A cloud came over his face, and he moved as if to go. But Hermione
stopped him.

“Wait a minute, Gaspare. I want you to understand. I like your care
for the Signorina. You know I trust you and depend on you more than on
almost any one. But you must remember that I am English, and in England,
you know, things in some ways are very different from what they are in
Sicily. Any English girl would be allowed the freedom of the Signorina.”

“Why?”

“Why not? What harm does it do? The Signorina does not go to Naples
alone.”

“Per Dio!” he interrupted, in a tone almost of horror.

“Of course I should never allow that. But here on the island--why, what
could happen to her here? Come, Gaspare, tell me what it is you are
thinking of. You haven’t told me yet. I knew directly you came in that
you had something you wanted to say. What is it?”

“I know it is not my business,” he said. “And I should never speak to
the Signorina, but--”

“Well, Gaspare?”

“Signora, all sorts of people come here to the island--men from Naples.
We do not know them. We cannot tell who they are. And they can all see
the Signorina. And they can even talk to her.”

“The fishermen, you mean?”

“Any one who comes in a boat.”

“Well, but scarcely any one ever comes but the fishermen. You know
that.”

“Oh, it was all very well when the Signorina was a little girl, a child,
Signora,” he said, almost hotly. “But now it is different. It is quite
different.”

Suddenly Hermione understood. She remembered what Vere had said about
Gaspare being jealous. He must certainly be thinking of the boy-diver,
of Ruffo.

“You think the Signorina oughtn’t to talk to the fishermen?” she said.

“What do we know of the fishermen of Naples, Signora? We are not
Neapolitans. We are strangers here. We do not know their habits. We
do not know what they think. They are different from us. If we were
in Sicily! I am a Sicilian. I can tell. But when men come from Naples
saying they are Sicilians, how can I tell whether they are ruffiani or
not?”

Gaspare’s inner thought stood revealed.

“I see, Gaspare,” Hermione said, quietly. “You think I should not have
let the Signorina talk to that boy the other day. But I saw him myself,
and I gave the Signorina leave to take him some cigarettes. And he dived
for her. She told me all about it. She always tells me everything.”

“I do not doubt the Signorina,” said Gaspare. “But I thought it was my
duty to tell you what I thought, Signora. Why should people come here
saying they are of my country, saying they are Sicilians, and talking as
the Neapolitans talk?”

“Well, but at the time, you didn’t doubt that boy was what he said he
was, did you?”

“Signora, I did not know. I could not know. But since then I have been
thinking.”

“Well, Gaspare, you are quite right to tell me. I prefer that. I have
much faith in you, and always shall have. But we must not say anything
like this to the Signorina. She would not understand what we meant.”

“No, Signora. The Signorina is too good.”

“She would not understand, and I think she would be hurt”--Hermione
used the word “_offesa_,”--“as you would be if you fancied I thought
something strange about you.”

“Si, Signora.”

“Good-night, Gaspare.”

“Good-night, Signora. Buon riposo.”

He moved towards the door. When he reached it he stopped and added:

“I am going to bed, Signora.”

“Go. Sleep well.”

“Grazie, Signora. The Signorina is still outside, I am sure.”

“She goes out for a minute nearly every evening, Gaspare. She likes the
air and to look at the sea.”

“Si, Signora; in a minute I shall go to bed. Buon riposo.”

And he went out.

When he had gone Hermione remained at first where she was. But Gaspare
had effectually changed her mood, had driven away what she chose to
call her egoism, had concentrated all her thoughts on Vere. He had never
before spoken like this about the child. It was a sudden waking up on
his part to the fact that Vere was growing up to womanhood.

When he chose, Gaspare could always, or nearly always, make his Padrona
catch his mood, there was something so definite about him that he made
an impression. And, though he was easily inclined to be suspicious
of those whom he did not know well, Hermione knew him to be both
intelligent and shrewd, especially about those for whom he had
affection. She wondered now whether it were possible that Gaspare saw,
understood, or even divined intuitively, more clearly than she did--she,
a mother!

It was surely very unlikely.

She remembered that Gaspare had a jealous nature, like most of his
countrymen.

Nevertheless he had suddenly made the islet seem different to her.
She had thought of it as remote, as pleasantly far away from Naples,
isolated in the quiet sea. But it was very easy to reach from Naples,
and, as Gaspare had said, what did they know, or understand, of the
Neapolitans, they who were strangers in the land?

She wondered whether Vere was still outside. To-night she certainly
envisaged Vere newly. Never till to-night had she thought of her as
anything but a child; as characteristic, as ardent, as determined
sometimes, perhaps as forceful even, but always with a child’s mind
behind it all.

But to the people of the South Vere was already a woman--even to
Gaspare, who had held her in his arms when she was in long clothes. At
least Hermione supposed so now, after what Gaspare had said about the
giovinotti, who, in Sicily, would have been wishing to marry Vere, had
she been Sicilian. And perhaps even the mind of Vere was more grown-up
than her mother had been ready to suppose.

The mother was conscious of a slight but distinct uneasiness. It was
vague. Had she been asked to explain it she could not, perhaps, have
done so.

Presently, after a minute or two of hesitation, she went to the window
that faced north, opened it, and stood by, listening. It was from the
sea on this side that the fishermen who lived in the Mergellina, and in
the town of Naples, came to the islet. It was from this direction that
Ruffo had come three days ago.

Evidently Gaspare had been turning over the boy’s acquaintance with
Vere in his mind all that time, disapproving of it, secretly condemning
Hermione for having allowed it. No, not that; Hermione felt that he was
quite incapable of condemning her. But he was a watchdog who did not
bark, but who was ready to bite all those who ventured to approach his
two mistresses unless he was sure of their credentials. And of this
boy’s, Ruffo’s, he was not sure.

Hermione recalled the boy; his brown healthiness, his laughing eyes and
lips, his strong young body, his careless happy voice. And she found
herself instinctively listening by the window to hear that voice again.

Now, as she looked out, the loveliness of the night appealed to her
strongly, and she felt sure that Vere must be still outside, somewhere
under the moon.

Just beneath the window was the narrow terrace, on to which she had
stepped out, obedient to Vere’s call, three days ago. Perhaps Vere was
there, or in the garden beyond. She extinguished the lamp. She went to
her bedroom to get a lace shawl, which she put over her head and drew
round her shoulders like a mantilla. Then she looked into Vere’s room,
and found it empty.

A moment later she was on the terrace bathed in the radiance of the
moon.



CHAPTER VIII

Vere was outside under the stars. When she had said good-night and had
slipped away, it was with the desire to be alone, to see no one, to
speak with no one till next morning. But the desires of the young change
quickly, and Vere’s presently changed.

She came out of the house, and passing over the bridge that connected
together the two cliffs of which the islet was composed, reached the
limit of the islet. At the edge of the precipice was a seat, and there
she sat down. For some time she rested motionless, absorbing the beauty
and the silence of the night. She was looking towards Ischia. She wished
to look that way, to forget all about Naples, the great city which lay
behind her.

Here were the ancient caves darkening with their mystery the silver
wonder of the sea. Here the venerable shore stretched towards lands she
did not know. They called to the leaping desires of her heart as the
city did not call. They carried her away.

Often, from this seat, on dark and moonless nights, she had watched the
fishermen’s torches flaring below her in the blackness, and had thrilled
at the mystery of their occupation, and had imagined them lifting from
the sea strange and wonderful treasures, that must change the current of
their lives: pearls such as had never before been given to the breasts
of women, caskets that had lain for years beneath the waters, bottles in
which were stoppered up magicians who, released, came forth in smoke, as
in the Eastern story.

Once she had spoken of this last imagination to Gaspare, and had seen
his face suddenly change and look excited, vivid, and then sad. She had
asked him why he looked like that, and, after a moment of hesitation, he
had told her how, long ago, before she was born, his Padrone had read
to him such a tale as they lay together upon a mountain side in Sicily.
Vere had eagerly questioned him, and he, speaking with vehemence in the
heat of his recollection, had brought before her a picture of that scene
in his simple life; had shown her how he lay, and how the Padrone
lay, he listening, the Padrone, book in hand, reading about the “mago
africano.” He had even told Vere of their conversation afterwards, and
how he had said that he would always be free, that he would never be
“stoppered up,” like the “mago africano.” And when she had wondered at
his memory growing still more excited he had told her many other things
of which his Padrone and he had talked together, and had made her feel
the life of the past on Monte Amato as no cultured person, she believed,
could ever have made her feel it. But when she had sought to question
him about her father’s death he had become silent, and she had seen that
it would be impossible to make him obey her and tell her all the details
that she longed to know.

To-night Vere could see no fishermen at work. The silver of the sea
below her was unbroken by the black forms of gliding boats, the silence
was unbroken by calling voices. And to-night she was glad that it was
so; for she was in the mood to be quite alone. As she sat there very
still she seemed to herself to be drawing nearer to the sea, and drawing
the sea to her. Indeed, she was making some such imaginative attempt as
her mother was making in the house--to become, in fancy at least, one
with something outside of her, to be fused with the sea, as her mother
desired to be fused with her. But Vere’s endeavor was not tragic, like
her mother’s, but was almost tenderly happy. She thought she felt the
sea responding to her as she responded to the sea. And she was very glad
in that thought.

Presently she began to wonder about the fishermen.

How did they feel about the sea? To her the sea was romantic and
personal. Was it romantic and personal to them? They were romantic to
her because of their connection with the sea, which had imprinted
upon them something of itself, showed forth in them, by means of them,
something surely of its own character; but probably, almost certainly,
she supposed, they were unconscious of this. They lived by the sea.
Perhaps they thought of it as of a vast money-bag, into which they
dipped their hands to get enough to live by. Or perhaps they thought of
it as an enemy, against which they lived in perpetual war, from which
they wrung, as it were at the sword’s point, a poor and precarious
booty.

As she sat thinking about this Vere began to change in her desire, to
wish there were some fishermen out to-night about the islet, and that
she could have speech of them. She would like to find out from one of
them how they regarded the sea.

She smiled as she imagined a conversation between herself and some
strong, brown, wild Neapolitan, she questioning and he replying. How
he would misunderstand her! He would probably think her mad. And yet
sometimes the men of the sea in their roughness are imaginative. They
are superstitious. But a man--no, she could not question a man. Her mind
went to the boy diver, Ruffo. She had often thought about Ruffo during
the last three days. She had expected to see him again. He had said
nothing about returning to the islet, but she had felt sure he would
return, if only in the hope of being given some more cigarettes. Boys
in his position, she knew well, do not get a present of Khali Targa
cigarettes every day of the week. How happy he had looked when he was
smoking them! She remembered exactly the expression of his brown face
now, as she sat watching the empty, moonlit sea. It was not greedy. It
was voluptuous. She remembered seeing somewhere a picture of some Sultan
of the East reclining on a divan and smoking a chibouk. She thought
Ruffo had looked rather like the Sultan, serenely secure of all earthly
enjoyment. At that moment the Pool of San Francesco had stood to the boy
for the Paradise of Mahomet.

But Ruffo had not come again.

Each morning Vere had listened for his voice, had looked down upon the
sea for his boat, but all in vain. On the third day she had felt almost
angry with him unreasonably. But then she remembered that he was not his
own master, not the owner of the boat. Of course, he could not do what
he liked. If he could--well, then he would have come back. She was
positive of that.

If he ever did come back, she said to herself now, she would question
him about the sea. She would get at his thoughts about the sea, at his
feelings. She wondered if they could possibly be at all like hers. It
was unlikely, she supposed. They two were so very different. And yet--!

She smiled to herself again, imagining question and answer with Ruffo.
He would not think her mad, even if she puzzled him. They understood
each other. Even her mother had said that they seemed to be in sympathy.
And that was true. Difference of rank need not, indeed cannot, destroy
the magic chain if it exists, cannot prevent its links from being
forged. She knew that her mother was in sympathy with Gaspare, and
Gaspare with her mother. So there was no reason why she should not be in
sympathy with Ruffo.

If he were here to-night she would begin at once to talk to him about
the sea. But of course he would never come at night to the islet.

Vere knew that the Neapolitan fishermen usually keep each to his own
special branch of the common profession. By this time of night, no
doubt, Ruffo was in his home at the Mergellina, sitting in the midst of
his family, or was strolling with lively companions of his own age, or,
perhaps, was fast asleep in bed.

Vere felt that it would be horrible to go to bed on such a night, to
shut herself in from the moon and the sea. The fishermen who slept in
the shelter of the Saint’s Pool were enviable. They had the stars above
them, the waters about them, the gentle winds to caress them as they lay
in the very midst of romance.

She wondered whether there were any boats in the Saint’s Pool to-night.
She had not been to see. A few steps and she could look over. She got up
and went back to the bridge, treading softly because she was thinking of
repose. There she stopped and looked down. She saw two boats on the far
side of the Pool almost at the feet of the Saint. The men in them must
be lying down, for Vere could see only the boats, looking black, and
filled with a confused blackness--of sails probably, and sleeping men.
The rest of the pool was empty, part of it bright with the radiance of
the moon, part of it shading away to the mysterious dimness of still
water at night under the lee of cliffs.

For some time the girl stood, watching. Just at that moment her active
brain almost ceased to work, stilled by the reverie that is born of
certain night visions. Without these motionless boats the Pool of the
Saint would have been calm. With them, its stillness seemed almost
ineffably profound. The hint of life bound in the cores of sleep,
prisoner to rest, deepened Nature’s impression and sent Vere into
reverie. There were no trees here. No birds sang, for although it was
the month of the nightingales, none ever came to sing to San Francesco.
No insects chirped or hummed. All was stark and almost fearfully still
as in a world abandoned; and the light fell on the old faces of the
rocks faintly, as if it feared to show the ravages made in them by the
storms of the long ages they had confronted and defied.

Vere had a sensation of sinking very slowly down into a gulf, as she
stood there, not falling, but sinking, down into some world of quiet
things, farther and farther down, leaving all the sounds of life far up
in light above her. And descent was exquisite, easy and natural, and,
indeed, inevitable. Nothing called her from below. For where she was
going there were no voices. Yet she felt that at last there would be
something to receive her; mystical stillness, mystical peace.

A silky sound--far off--checked that imaginative descent that seemed
so physical, first merely arrested it, then, always silky, but growing
louder, took her swiftly and softly back to the summit she had left. Now
she was conscious again of herself and of the night. She was listening.
The sound that had broken her reverie was the gentle sweep of big-bladed
oars through the calm sea. As she knew this she saw, away to the right,
a black shadow stealing across the silver waste beyond the islet. It
pushed its way to the water at her very feet, and chose that as its
anchorage.

The figure of the rower stood up straight and black for a moment,
looking lonely in the night.

Vere could not see his face, but she knew at once that he was Ruffo. Her
inclination was to bend down with the soft cry of “Pescator!” which she
had sent to him on the sunny morning of their meeting. She checked it,
why she scarcely knew, in obedience to some imperious prompting of her
nature. But she kept her eyes on him. And they were full of will. She
was willing him not to lie down in the bottom of the boat and sleep. She
knew that he and his companions must have come to the pool at that hour
to rest. There were three other men in the boat. Two had been sitting
on the gunwale of it, and now lay down. The third, who was in the bows,
exchanged some words with the rower, who replied. Vere could hear
the sound of their voices, but not what they said. The conversation
continued for two or three minutes, while Ruffo was taking in the oars
and laying them one on each side of the boat. When he had done this he
stretched up his arms to their full length above his head, and a loud
noise of a prolonged yawn came up to Vere, and nearly made her laugh.
Long as it was, it seemed to her to end abruptly. The arms dropped down.

She felt sure he had seen her watching, and stayed quite still,
wondering what he was going to do. Perhaps he would tell the other man.
She found herself quickly hoping that he would not. That she was there
ought to be their little secret.

All this that was passing through her mind was utterly foreign to any
coquetry. Vere had no more feeling of sex in regard to Ruffo than she
would have had if she had been a boy herself. The sympathy she felt with
him was otherwise founded, deep down in mysteries beyond the mysteries
of sex.

Again Ruffo and the man who had not lain down spoke together. But the
man did not look up to Vere. He must have looked if his attention had
been drawn to the fact that she was there--a little spy upon the men of
the sea, considering them from her eminence.

Ruffo had not told. She was glad.

Presently the man moved from his place in the bows. She saw him lift
a leg to get over into the stern, treading carefully in order not to
trample on his sleeping companions. Then his black figure seemed to shut
up like a telescope. He had become one with the dimness in the boat, was
no longer detached from it. Only Ruffo was still detached. Was he going
to sleep, too?

A certain tenseness came into Vere’s body. She kept her eyes, which she
had opened very wide, fixed upon the black figure. It remained standing.
The head moved. He was certainly looking up. She realized that he was
not sleepy, despite that yawn,--that he would like to speak to her--to
let her know that he knew she was there.

Perhaps he did not dare to--or, not that, perhaps fishermen’s etiquette,
already enshrined in his nature, did not permit him to come ashore. The
boat was so close to the land that he could step on to it easily.

She leaned down.

“Pescator!”

It was scarcely more than a whisper. But the night was so intensely
still that he heard it. Or, if not that, he felt it. His shadow--so
it seemed in the shadow of the cliff--flitted out of the boat and
disappeared.

He was coming--to have that talk about the sea.



CHAPTER IX

“Buona sera, Signorina.”

“Buona sera, Ruffo.”

She did not feign surprise when he came up to her.

“So you fish at night?” she said. “I thought the divers for _frutti di
mare_ did not do that.”

“Signorina, I have been taken into the boat of Mandano Giuseppe.”

He spoke rather proudly, and evidently thought she would know of whom he
was telling her. “I fish for sarde now.”

“Is that better for you?”

“Si, Signorina, of course.”

“I am glad of that.”

“Si, Signorina.”

He stood beside her quite at his ease. To-night he had on a cap, but it
was pushed well off his brow, and showed plenty of his thick, dark hair.

“When did you see me?” she asked.

“Almost directly, Signorina.”

“And what made you look up?”

“Signorina?”

“Why did you look up directly?”

“Non lo so, Signorina.”

“I think it was because I made you feel that I was there,” she said. “I
think you obey me without knowing it. You did the same the other day.”

“Perhaps, Signorina.”

“Have you smoked all the cigarettes?”

She saw him smile, showing his teeth.

“Si, Signorina, long ago. I smoked them the same day.”

“You shouldn’t. It is bad for a boy, and you are younger than I am, you
know.”

The smile grew wider.

“What are you laughing at?”

“I don’t know, Signorina.”

“Do you think it is funny to be younger than I am?”

“Si, Signorina.”

“I suppose you feel quite as if you were a man?”

“If I could not work as well as a man Giuseppe would not have taken me
into his boat. But of course with a lady it is all different. A lady
does not have to work. Poor women get old very soon, Signorina.”

“Your mother, is she old?”

“My mamma! I don’t know. Yes, I suppose she is rather old.”

He seemed to be considering.

“Si, Signorina, my mamma is rather old. But then she has had a lot of
trouble, my poor mamma!”

“I am sorry. Is she like you?”

“I don’t know, Signorina; I have never thought about it. What does it
matter?”

“It may not matter, but such things are interesting sometimes.”

“Are they, Signorina?”

Then, evidently with a polite desire to please her and carry on the
conversation in the direction indicated by her, he added:

“And are you like your Signora Madre, Signorina?”

Vere felt inclined to smile, but she answered, quite seriously.

“I don’t believe I am. My mother is very tall, much taller than I am,
and not so dark. My eyes are much darker than hers and quite different.”

“I think you have the eyes of a Sicilian, Signorina.”

Again Vere was conscious of a simple effort on the part of the boy to
be gallant. And he had a good memory too. He had not forgotten her
three-days’-old claim to Sicilian blood. The night mitigated the
blunders of his temperament, it seemed. Vere could not help being
pleased. There was something in her that ever turned towards the Sicily
she had never seen. And this boy had not seen Sicily either.

“Isn’t it odd that you and I have never seen Sicily?” she said, “and
that both our mothers have? And mine is all English, you know.”

“My mamma would be very glad to kiss the hand of your Signora Mother,”
 replied Ruffo. “I told her about the kind ladies who gave me cigarettes,
and that the Signorina had never seen her father. When she heard that
the Signorina was born after her father was dead, and that her father
had died in Sicily, she said--my poor mamma!--‘If ever I see the
Signorina’s mother, I shall kiss her hand. She was a widow before she
was a mother; may the Madonna comfort her.’ My mamma spoke just like
that, Signorina. And then she cried for a long time. But when Patrigno
came in she stopped crying at once.”

“Did she? Why was that?”

“I don’t know, Signorina.”

Vere was silent for a moment. Then she said:

“Is your Patrigno kind to you, Ruffo?”

The boy looked at her, then swiftly looked away.

“Kind enough, Signorina,” he answered.

Then they both kept silence. They were standing side by side thus,
looking down rather vaguely at the Saint’s pool, when another boat
floated gently into it, going over to the far side, where already
lay the two boats at the feet of San Francesco. Vere saw it with
indifference. She was accustomed to the advent of the fishermen at this
hour. Ruffo stared at it for a moment with a critical inquiring gaze.
The boat drew up near the land and stopped. There was a faint murmur of
voices, then silence again.

The Marchesino had told the two sailors that they could have an hour or
two of sleep before beginning to fish.

The men lay down, shut their eyes, and seemed to sleep at once. But
Artois and the Marchesino, lounging on a pile of rugs deftly arranged
in the bottom of the stern of the boat, smoked their cigars in a silence
laid upon them by the night silence of the Pool. Neither of them had as
yet caught sight of the figures of Vere and Ruffo, which were becoming
more clearly relieved as the moon rose and brought a larger world within
its radiance, of its light. Artois was satisfied that the members of the
Casa del Mare were in bed. As they approached the house he had seen no
light from its windows. The silence about the islet was profound, and
gave him the impression of being in the very heart of the night. And
this impression lasted, and so tricked his mind that he forgot that the
hour was not really late. He lay back, lazily smoking his cigar, and
drinking in the stark beauty round about him, a beauty delicately and
mysteriously fashioned by the night, which, as by a miracle, had laid
hold of bareness and barren ugliness, and turned them to its exquisite
purposes, shrinking from no material in its certainty of its own power
to transform.

The Marchesino, too, lay back, with his great, gray eyes staring about
him. While the feelings of his friend had moved towards satisfaction,
his had undergone a less pleasant change. His plan seemed to be going
awry, and he began to think of himself as of a fool. What had he
anticipated? What had he expected of this expedition? He had been, as
usual, politely waiting on destiny. He had come to the islet in the hope
that Destiny would meet him there and treat him with every kindness and
hospitality, forestalling his desires. But lo! He was abandoned in a
boat among a lot of taciturn men, while the object of all his thoughts
and pains, his plots and hopes, was, doubtless, hermetically sealed in
the home on the cliff above him.

Several Neapolitan words, familiar in street circles, ran through his
mind, but did not issue from his lips, and his face remained perfectly
calm--almost seraphic in expression.

Out of the corners of his eyes he stole a glance at “caro Emilio.” He
wished his friend would follow the example of the men and go to sleep.
He wanted to feel himself alone in wakefulness and unobserved. For he
was not resigned to an empty fate. The voices of the laughing women at
the Antico Giuseppone still rang through his memory. He was adventurous
by nature. What he would do if Emilio would only slumber he did not
know. But it was certain he would do something. The islet, dark and
distinct in outline beneath the moon, summoned him. Was he a Neapolitan
and not beneath her window? It was absurd. And he was not at all
accustomed to control himself or to fight his own impulses. For the
moment “caro Emilio” became “maledetto Emilio” in his mind. Sleepless as
Providence, Emilio reclined there. A slightly distracted look came into
the Marchesino’s eyes as he glanced away from his friend and stared once
more at the islet, which he longed so ardently to invade.

This time he saw the figures of Vere and Ruffo above him in the
moonlight, which now sharply relieved them. He gazed. And as he gazed
they moved away from the bridge, going towards the seat where Vere had
been before she had seen Ruffo.

Vere had on a white dress.

The heart of the Marchesino leaped. He was sure it was the girl of the
white boat. Then the inhabitants of the house on the islet were not
asleep, were not even in bed. They--she at least, and that was all he
cared for--were out enjoying the moon and the sea. How favorable was the
night! But who was with her?

The Marchesino had very keen eyes. And now he used them with almost
fierce intensity. But Ruffo was on the far side of Vere. It was not
possible to discern more than that he was male, and taller than the girl
in the white dress.

Jealousy leaped up in the Marchesino, that quick and almost frivolous
jealousy which, in the Southerner, can so easily deepen into the
deadliness that leads to crime. Not for a moment did he doubt that the
man with Vere was a lover. This was a blow which, somehow, he had not
expected. The girl in the white boat had looked enchantingly young. When
he had played the seal for her she had laughed like a child. He--even
he, who believed in no one’s simplicity, made sceptical by his own
naughtiness so early developed towards a fine maturity!--had not
expected anything like this. And these English, who pride themselves
upon their propriety, their stiffness, their cold respectability! These
English misses!

“Ouf!”

It was out of the Marchesino’s mouth before he was aware of it, an
exclamation of cynical disgust.

“What’s the matter, amico mio?” said Artois, in a low voice.

“Niente!” said the Marchesino, recollecting himself. “Are not you going
to sleep?”

“Yes,” said Artois, throwing away his cigar end. “I am. And you?”

“I too!”

The Marchesino was surprised by his friend’s reply. He did not
understand the desire of Artois not to have his sense of the romance of
their situation broken in upon by conversation just then. The romance of
women was not with Artois, but the romance of Nature was. He wanted to
keep it. And now he settled himself a little lower in the boat, under
the shadow of its side, and seemed to be giving himself to sleep.

The Marchesino thanked the Madonna, and made his little pretence of
slumber too, but he kept his head above the gunwale, leaning it on his
arm with a supporting cushion beneath; and though he really did shut
both his eyes for a short time, to deceive caro Emilio, he very soon
opened them again, and gazed towards the islet. He could not see the
two figures now. Rage seized him. First the two men at the Antico
Giuseppone, and now this man on the islet! Every one was companioned.
Every one was enjoying the night as it was meant to be enjoyed. He--he
alone was the sport of “il maledetto destino.” He longed to commit some
act of violence. Then he glanced cautiously round without moving.

The two sailors were sleeping. He could hear their regular and rather
loud breathing. Artois lay quite still. The Marchesino turned his body
very carefully so that he might see the face of his friend. As he did
so Artois, who had been looking straight up at the stars, shut his eyes,
and simulated sleep. His suspicion of Doro, that this expedition had
been undertaken with some hidden motive, was suddenly renewed by this
sly and furtive movement, which certainly suggested purpose and the
desire to conceal it.

So caro Emilio slept very peacefully, and breathed with the calm
regularity of a sucking child. But in this sleep of a child he was
presently aware that the boat was moving--in fact was being very
adroitly moved. Though his eyes were shut he felt the moonlight leave
his face presently, and knew they were taken by the shadow of the islet.
Then the boat stopped.

A moment later Artois was aware that the boat contained three people
instead of four.

The Marchesino had left it to take a little stroll on shore.

Artois lay still. He knew how light is the slumber of seamen in a boat
with the wide airs about them, and felt sure that the sailors must have
been waked by the tour of the boat across the Pool. Yet they had not
moved, and they continued apparently to sleep. He guessed that a glance
from their “Padrone” had advised them not to wake. And this was the
truth.

At the first movement of the boat both the men had looked up and had
received their message from the Marchesino’s expressive eyes. They
realized at once that he had some design which he wished to keep from
the knowledge of his friend, the forestiere. Of course it must be
connected with a woman. They were not particularly curious. They had
always lived in Naples, and knew their aristocracy. So they merely
returned the Marchesino’s glance with one of comprehension and composed
themselves once more to repose.

The Marchesino did not come back, and presently Artois lifted himself up
a little, and looked out.

The boat was right under the lee of the islet, almost touching the
shore, but the sea was so perfectly still that it scarcely moved, and
was not in any danger of striking against the rock. The sailors had seen
that, too, before they slept again.

Artois sat quite up. He wondered a good deal what his friend was
doing. One thing was certain--he was trespassing. The islet belonged to
Hermione, and no one had any right to be upon it without her invitation.
Artois had that right, and was now considering whether or not he
should use it, follow the Marchesino and tell him--what he had not told
him--that the owner of the islet was the English friend of whom he had
spoken.

For Artois the romance of the night in which he had been revelling
was now thoroughly disturbed. He looked again towards the two sailors,
suspecting their sleep. Then he got up quietly, and stepped out of the
boat onto the shore. His doing so gave a slight impetus to the boat,
which floated out a little way into the Pool. But the men in it seemed
to sleep on.

Artois stood still for a moment at the edge of the sea. His great limbs
were cramped, and he stretched them. Then he went slowly towards the
steps. He reached the plateau before the Casa del Mare. The Marchesino
was not there. He looked up at the house. As he did so the front door
opened and Hermione came out, wrapped in a white lace shawl.

“Emile?” she said, stopping with her hand on the door. “Why--how
extraordinary!”

She came to him.

“Have you come to pay us a nocturnal visit, or--there’s nothing the
matter?”

“No,” he said.

For perhaps the first time in his life he felt embarrassed with
Hermione. He took her hand.

“I don’t believe you meant me to know you were here,” she said, guided
by the extraordinary intuition of woman.

“To tell the truth,” he answered, “I did not expect to see you. I
thought you were all in bed.”

“Oh no. I have been on the terrace and in the garden. Vere is out
somewhere. I was just going to look for her.”

There was a distinct question in her prominent eyes as she fixed them on
him.

“No, I haven’t seen Vere,” he said, answering it.

“Are you alone?” she asked, abruptly.

“No. You remember my mentioning my friend, the Marchesino Panacci?
Well, he is with me. We were going to fish. The fishermen suggested our
sleeping in the Saint’s Pool for an hour or two first. I found Doro gone
and came to look for him.”

There was still a faint embarrassment in his manner.

“I believe you have seen him,” he added. “He was bathing the other day
when you were passing in the boat,--I think it was you. Did you see a
young man who did some tricks in the water?”

“Oh yes, an impudent young creature. He pretended to be a porpoise and
a seal. He made us laugh. Vere was delighted with him. Is that your
friend? Where can he be?”

“Where is Vere?” said Artois.

Their eyes met, and suddenly his embarrassment passed away.

“You don’t mean that--?”

“My friend, you know what these Neapolitans are. Doro came back from his
bathe raving about Vere. I did not tell him I knew her. I think--I am
sure he has guessed it, and much more. Let us go and find him. It seems
you are to know him. E il destino.”

“You don’t want me to know him?” she said, as they turned away from the
house.

“I don’t know that there is any real reason why you should not. But my
instinct was against the acquaintance. Where can Vere be? Does she often
come out alone at night?”

“Very often. Ah! There she is, beyond the bridge, and--is that the
Marchesino Panacci with her? Why--no, it’s--”

“It is Ruffo,” Artois said.

Vere and the boy were standing near the edge of the cliff and talking
earnestly together, but as Hermione and Artois came towards them they
turned round as if moved by a mutual impulse. Ruffo took off his cap and
Vere cried out:

“Monsieur Emile!”

She came up to him quickly. He noticed that her face looked
extraordinarily alive, that her dark eyes were fiery with expression.

“Good-evening, Vere,” he said.

He took her small hand.

“Buona sera, Ruffo,” he added.

He looked from one to the other, and saw the perfect simplicity of both.

“Tell me, Vere,” he said. “Have you seen any one on the islet to-night?”

“Yes, just now. Why? What made you think so?”

“Well?”

“A man--a gentleman came. I told him he was trespassing.”

Artois smiled. Ruffo stood by, his cap in his hand, looking attentively
at Vere, who had spoken in French. She glanced at him, and suddenly
broke into Italian.

“He was that absurd boy we saw in the sea, Madre, the other day, who
pretended to be a seal, and made me laugh. He reminded me of it, and
asked me if I didn’t recognize him.”

“What did you say?”

“I said ‘No’ and ‘Good-night.’”

“And did he go?” asked Artois.

“No, he would not go. I don’t know what he wanted. He looked quite odd,
as if he were feeling angry inside, and didn’t wish to show it. And
he began trying to talk. But as I didn’t really know him--after all,
laughing at a man because he pretends to be a seal is scarcely knowing
him, is it, Monsieur Emile?”

“No,” he said, smiling at her smile.

“I said ‘good-night’ again in such a way that he had to go.”

“And so he went!” said Artois.

“Yes. Do you know him, Monsieur Emile?”

“Yes. He came with me to-night.”

A little look of penitence came into the girl’s face.

“Oh, I am sorry.”

“Why should you be?”

“Well, he began saying something about knowing friends of mine, or--I
didn’t really listen very much, because Ruffo was telling me all
about the sea--and I thought it was all nonsense. He was absurdly
complimentary first, you see! and so, when he began about friends, I
only said ‘good-night’ again. And--and I’m really afraid I turned my
back upon him. And now he’s a friend of yours. Monsieur Emile! I am
sorry!”

Already the Marchesino had had that lesson of which Artois had thought
in Naples. Artois laughed aloud.

“It doesn’t matter, Vere. My friend is not too sensitive.”

“Buona sera, Signorina! Buona sera, Signora! Buon riposo!”

It was Ruffo preparing to go, feeling that he scarcely belonged to this
company, although he looked in no way shy, and had been smiling broadly
at Vere’s narrative of the discomfiture of the Marchesino.

“Ruffo,” said Hermione, “you must wait a moment.”

“Si, Signora?”

“I am going to give you a few more cigarettes.”

Vere sent a silent but brilliant “Thank you” to her mother. They all
walked towards the house.

Vere and her mother were in front, Artois and Ruffo behind. Artois
looked very closely and even curiously at the boy.

“Have I ever seen you before?” he asked, as they came to the bridge.

“Signore?”

“Not the other morning. But have we ever met in Naples?”

“I have seen you pass by sometimes at the Mergellina, Signore.”

“That must be it then!” Artois thought, “I have seen you there without
consciously noticing you.”

“You live there?” he said.

“Si, Signore; I live with my mamma and my Patrigno.”

“Your Patrigno,” Artois said, merely to continue the conversation. “Then
your father is dead?”

“Si, Signore, my Babbo is dead.”

They were on the plateau now, before the house.

“If you will wait a moment, Ruffo, I will fetch the cigarettes,” said
Hermione.

“Let me go, Madre,” said Vere, eagerly.

“Very well, dear.”

The girl ran into the house. As she disappeared they heard a quick step,
and the Marchesino came hurrying up from the sea. He took off his hat
when he saw Hermione, and stopped.

“I was looking for you, Emilio.”

He kept his hat in his hand. Evidently he had recovered completely
from his lesson. He looked gay and handsome. Artois realized how very
completely the young rascal’s desires were being fulfilled. But of
course the introduction must be made. He made it quietly.

“Marchese Isidoro Panacci--Mrs. Delarey.”

The Marchesino bent and kissed Hermione’s hand. As he did so Vere came
out of the house, her hands full of Khali Targa cigarettes, her face
eager at the thought of giving pleasure to Ruffo.

“This is my daughter, Vere,” Hermione said. “Vere, this is the Marchese
Isidoro Panacci, a friend of Monsieur Emile’s.”

The Marchesino went to kiss Vere’s hand, but she said:

“I’m very sorry--look!”

She showed him that they were full of cigarettes, and so escaped from
the little ceremony. For those watching it was impossible to know
whether she wished to avoid the formal salutation of the young man’s
lips or not.

“Here, Ruffo!” she said. She went up to the boy. “Put your hands
together.”

Ruffo gladly obeyed. He curved his brown hands into a cup, and Vere
filled this cup with the big cigarettes, while Hermione, Artois, and
the Marchesino looked on; each one of them with a fixed attention
which--surely--the action scarcely merited. But there was something
about those two, Vere and the boy, which held the eyes and the mind.

“Good-night, Ruffo. You must carry them to the boat. They’ll be crushed
if you put them into your trousers-pocket.”

“Si, Signorina!”

He waited a moment. He wanted to salute them, but did not know how to.
That was evident. His expressive eyes, his whole face told it to them.

Artois suddenly set his lips together in his beard. For an instant it
seemed to him that the years had rolled back, that he was in London, in
Caminiti’s restaurant, that he saw Maurice Delarey, with the reverential
expression on his face that had been so pleasing. Yes, the boy Ruffo
looked like him in that moment, as he stood there, wishing to do his
devoir, to be polite, but not knowing how to.

“Never mind, Ruffo,” It was Vere’s voice. “We understand! Or--shall I?”
 A laughing look came into her face. She went up to the boy and, with a
delicious, childish charm and delicacy, that quite removed the action
from impertinence, she took his cap off. “There!” She put it gently back
on his dark hair. “Now you’ve been polite to us. Buona notte!”

“Buona notte, Signorina.”

The boy ran off, half laughing, and carrying carefully the cigarettes in
his hands still held together like a cup.

Hermione and Artois were smiling. Artois felt something for Vere just
then that he could hardly have explained, master though he was of
explanation of the feelings of man. It seemed to him that all the
purity, and the beauty, and the whimsical unselfconsciousness, and the
touchingness of youth that is divine, appeared in that little, almost
comic action of the girl. He loved her for the action, because she was
able to perform it just like that. And something in him, suddenly adored
youth in a way that seemed new to his heart.

“Well,” said Hermione, when Ruffo had disappeared. “Will you come in?
I’m afraid all the servants are in bed, but--”

“No, indeed it is too late,” Artois said.

Without being aware of it he spoke with an authority that was almost
stern.

“We must be off to our fishing,” he added. “Good-night. Good-night,
Vere.”

“Good-night, Signora.”

The Marchesino bowed, with his hat in his hand. He kissed Hermione’s
hand again, but he did not try to take Vere’s.

“Good-night,” Hermione said.

A glance at Artois had told her much that he was thinking.

“Good-night, Monsieur Emile,” said Vere. “Good-night, Marchese. Buona
pesca!”

She turned and followed her mother into the house.

“Che simpatica!”

It was the Marchesino’s voice, breathing the words through a sigh: “Che
simpatica Signorina!” Then an idea seemed to occur to him, and he looked
at his friend reproachfully. “And you knew the girl with the perfect
little nose, Emilio--all the time you knew her!”

“And all the time you knew I knew her!” retorted Artois.

They looked at each other in the eyes and burst out laughing.

“Emilio, you are the devil! I will never forgive you. You do not t

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