That night the Marchesino failed in his search for Vere, and he returned
to Naples not merely disappointed but incensed. He had learned from
a fisherman in the Saint’s Pool that she was out upon the sea “with a
Signore,” and he had little difficulty in guessing who this Signore was.
Of course it was “Caro Emilio,” the patron of Maria Fortunata. He began
to consider his friend unfavorably. He remembered how frankly he had
always told Emilio of his little escapades, with what enthusiasm, in
what copious detail. Always he had trusted Emilio. And now Emilio
was trying to play him false--worse, was making apparently a complete
success of the attempt. For Emilio and Vere must have heard his
beautiful singing, must have guessed from whom that vibrant voice
proceeded, must have deliberately concealed themselves from its
possessor. Where had they lain in hiding? His shrewd suspicion fell upon
the very place. Virgilio’s Grotto had surely been their refuge.
“Ladro! Vigiliacco!” Words of no uncertain meaning flowed from his
overcharged heart. His whole hot nature was aroused. His spirit was
up in arms. And now, almost for the first time, he drew a comparison
between his age and Emilio’s. Emilio was an old man. He realized it.
Why had he never realized it before? Was he, full of youth, beauty,
chivalrous energy and devotion, to be interfered with, set aside, for
a man with gray hairs thick upon his head, for a man who spent half his
hours bent over a writing-table? Emilio had never wished him to know the
ladies of the island. He knew the reason now, and glowed with a
fiery lust of battle. Vere had attracted him from the first. But this
opposition drove on attraction into something stronger, more determined.
He said to himself that he was madly in love. Never yet had he been
worsted in an amour by any man. The blood surged to his head at the
mere thought of being conquered in the only battle of life worth
fighting--the battle for a woman, and by a man of more than twice his
age, a man who ought long ago to have been married and have had children
as old as the Signorina Vere.
Well, he had been a good friend to Emilio. Now Emilio should see that
the good friend could be the good enemy. Late that night, as he sat
alone in front of the Caffe Turco smoking innumerable cigarettes, he
resolved to show these foreigners the stuff a Neapolitan was made of.
They did not know. Poor, ignorant beings from cold England, drowned
forever in perpetual yellow fogs, and from France, country of volatility
but not of passion, they did not know what the men of the South, of a
volcanic soil, were capable of, once they were roused, once their blood
spoke and their whole nature responded! It was time they learned. And
he would undertake to teach them. As he drove towards dawn up the dusty
hill to Capodimonte he was in a fever of excitement.
There was excitement, too, in the house on the island, but it did not
centre round the Marchesino.
That night, for the first time in her young life, Vere did not sleep.
She heard the fisherman call, but the enchantment of sea doings did not
stir her. She was aware for the first time of the teeming horrors of
life. There, in the darkness beneath the cliff, Peppina had sobbed out
her story, and Vere, while she listened, had stepped from girlhood into
womanhood.
She had come into the house quietly, and found Artois waiting for her
alone. Hermione had gone to bed, leaving word that she had a headache.
And Vere was glad that night not to see her mother. She wished to see no
one, and she bade Artois good-bye at once, telling him nothing, and not
meeting his eyes when he touched her hand in adieu. And he had asked
nothing. Why should he, when he read the truth in the grave, almost
stern face of the child?
Vere knew.
The veils that hung before the happy eyes of childhood had been torn
away, and those eyes had looked for the first time into the deeps of an
unhappy human heart.
And he had thought it possible to preserve, perhaps for a long while,
Vere’s beautiful ignorance untouched. He had thought of the island as
a safe retreat in which her delicate, and as yet childish talent, might
gradually mature under his influence and the influence of the sea. She
had been like some charming and unusual plant of the sea, shot with
sea colors, wet with sea winds, fresh with the freshness of the
smooth-backed waves. And now in a moment she was dropped into the filthy
dust of city horrors. What would be the result upon her and upon her
dawning gift?
The double question was in his mind, and quite honestly. For his
interest of the literary man in Vere was very vivid. Never yet had he
had a pupil or dreamed of having one. There are writers who found a
school, whose fame is carried forward like a banner by young and
eager hands. Artois had always stood alone, ardently admired, ardently
condemned, but not imitated. And he had been proud of his solitude.
But--lately--had not underthoughts come into his mind, thoughts of
leaving an impress on a vivid young intellect, a soul that was full of
life, and the beginnings of energy? Had not he dreamed, however
vaguely, of forming, like some sculptor of genius, an exquisite
statuette--poetry, in the slim form of a girl-child singing to the
world?
And now Peppina had rushed into Vere’s life, with sobs and a tumult of
cries to the Madonna and the saints, and, no doubt, with imprecations
upon the wickedness of men. And where were the dreams of the sea? And
his dreams, where were they?
That night the irony that was in him woke up and smiled bitterly, and he
asked himself how he, with his burden of years and of knowledge of life,
could have been such a fool as to think it possible to guard any one
against the assaults of the facts of life. Hermione, perhaps, had been
wiser than he, and yet he could not help feeling something that was
almost like anger against her for what he called her quixotism. The
woman of passionate impulses--how dangerous she is, even when her
impulses are generous, are noble! Action without thought, though the
prompting heart behind it be a heart of gold--how fatal may it be!
And then he remembered a passionate impulse that had driven a happy
woman across a sea to Africa, and he was ashamed.
Yet again the feeling that was almost like hostility returned. He said
to himself that Hermione should have learned caution in the passing
of so many years, that she ought to have grown older than she had.
But there was something unconquerably young, unconquerably naïve, in
her--something that, it seemed, would never die. Her cleverness went
hand in hand with a short-sightedness that was like a rather beautiful,
yet sometimes irritating stupidity. And this latter quality might
innocently make victims, might even make a victim of her own child.
And then a strange desire rose up in Artois, a desire to protect Vere
against her own mother.
But how could that be done?
Vere, guarded by the beautiful unconsciousness of youth, was unaware
of the subtleties that were brought into activity by her. That the
Marchesino was, or thought himself, in love with her she realized.
But she could not connect any root-sincerity with his feeling. She
was accustomed vaguely to think of all young Southern Italians as
perpetually sighing for some one’s dark eyes. The air of the South was
full of love songs that rose and fell without much more meaning than a
twitter of birds, that could not be stilled because it was so natural.
And the Marchesino was a young aristocrat who did absolutely nothing of
any importance to the world. The Northern blood in Vere demanded other
things of a man than imitations of a seal, the clever driving of a
four-in-hand, light-footed dancing, and songs to the guitar. In Gaspare
she saw more reality than she saw as yet in the Marchesino. The dawning
intellect of her began to grasp already the nobility of work. Gaspare
had his work to do, and did it with loyal efficiency. Ruffo, too, had
his profession of the sea. He drew out of the deep his livelihood. Even
with the fever almost upon him he had been out by night in the storm.
That which she liked and respected in Gaspare, his perfect and natural
acceptance of work as a condition of his life, she liked and respected
in Ruffo.
On the morning after the incident with Peppina, Vere came down looking
strangely grave and tired. Her mother, too, was rather heavy-eyed, and
the breakfast passed almost severely. When it was over Hermione, who
still conducted Vere’s education, but with a much relaxed vigor in the
summer months, suggested that they should read French together.
“Let us read one of Monsieur Emile’s books, Madre,” said Vere, with an
awakening of animation. “You know I have never read one, only two or
three baby stories, and articles that don’t count.”
“Yes, but Emile’s books are not quite suitable for you yet, Vere.”
“Why, Madre?”
“They are very fine, but they dive deep into life, and life contains
many sad and many cruel things.”
“Oughtn’t we to prepare ourselves for them, then?”
“Not too soon, I think. I am nearly sure that if you were to read
Emile’s books just yet you would regret it.”
Vere said nothing.
“Don’t you think you can trust me to judge for you in this matter,
figlia mia? I--I am almost certain that Emile himself would think as I
do.”
It was not without an effort, a strong effort, that Hermione was able
to speak the last sentence. Vere came nearer to her mother, and stood
before her, as if she were going to say something that was decisive or
important. But she hesitated.
“What is it, Vere?” Hermione asked, gently.
“I might learn from life itself what Monsieur Emile’s books might teach
me.”
“Some day. And when that time comes neither I nor he would wish to keep
them out of your hands.”
“I see. Well, Madre dear, let us read whatever you like.”
Vere had been on the verge of telling her mother about the previous
night and Peppina. But, somehow, at the last moment she could not.
And thus, for the moment at least, Artois and she shared another secret
of which Hermione was unaware.
But very soon Hermione noticed that Vere was specially kind always to
Peppina. They did not meet, perhaps, very often, but when by chance
they did Vere spoke to the disfigured girl with a gentleness, almost a
tenderness, that were striking.
“You like Peppina, Vere?” asked her mother one day.
“Yes, because I pity her so much.”
There was a sound that was almost like passion in the girl’s voice; and,
looking up, Hermione saw that her eyes were full of light, as if the
spirit had set two lamps in them.
“It is strange,” Vere continued, in a quieter tone; “but sometimes I
feel as if on the night of the storm I had had a sort of consciousness
of her coming--as if, when I saw the Saint’s light shining, and bent
down to the water and made the sign of the Cross, I already knew
something of Peppina’s wound, as if I made the sign to protect our Casa
del Mare, to ward off something evil.”
“That was coming to us with Peppina, do you mean?”
“I don’t know, Madre.”
“Are you thinking of Giulia’s foolish words about the evil eye?”
“No. It’s all vague, Madre. But Peppina’s cross sometimes seems to me to
be a sign, a warning come into the house. When I see it it seems to say
there is a cross to be borne by some one here, by one of us.”
“How imaginative you are, Vere!”
“So are you, Madre! But you try to hide it from me.”
Hermione was startled. She took Vere’s hand, and held it for a moment
in silence, pressing it with a force that was nervous. And her luminous,
expressive eyes, immensely sensitive, beautiful in their sensitiveness,
showed that she was moved. At last she said:
“Perhaps that is true. Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Why do you try to hide it?”
“I suppose--I think because--because it has brought to me a great deal
of pain. And what we hide from others we sometimes seem almost to be
destroying by that very act, though of course we are not.”
“No. But I think I should like to encourage my imagination.”
“Do you encourage it?” the mother asked, looking at her closely.
Again, as Vere had been on the edge of telling her mother all she knew
about Peppina, she was on the edge of telling her about the poems of
the sea. And again, moved by some sudden, obstinate reluctance, come she
knew not why, she withheld the words that were almost on her lips.
And each time the mother was aware of something avoided, of an impulse
stifled, and therefore of a secret deliberately kept. The first time
Hermione had not allowed her knowledge to appear. But on this second
occasion for a moment she lost control of herself, and when, after a
perceptible pause, Vere said, “I know I love it,” and was silent, she
exclaimed:
“Keep your secrets, Vere. Every one has a right to their freedom.”
“But, Madre--” Vere began, startled by her mother’s abrupt vehemence.
“No, Vere, no! My child, my dearest one, never tell me anything but of
your own accord, out of your own heart and desire. Such a confidence is
beautiful. But anything else--anything else, I could not bear from you.”
And she got up and left the room, walking with a strange slowness, as if
she put upon herself an embargo not to hasten.
The words and--specially that--the way in which they were spoken made
Vere suddenly and completely aware of something that perhaps she had
already latently known--that the relation between her mother and herself
had, of late, not been quite what once it was. At moments she had felt
almost shy of her mother, only at moments. Formerly she had always told
her mother everything, and had spoken--as her mother had just said--out
of her own heart and desire, with eagerness, inevitably. Now--well,
now she could not always do that. Was it because she was growing older?
Children are immensely frank. She had been a child. But now--she thought
of the Marchesino, of Peppina, of her conversation with Monsieur Emile
in the Grotto of Virgilio, and realized the blooming of her girlhood,
was aware that she was changing. And she felt half frightened, then
eager, ardently eager. An impulse filled her, the impulse towards a
fulness of life that, till now, she had not known. And for a moment she
loved those little, innocent secrets that she kept.
But then she thought again of her mother, the most beloved of all her
world. There had been in her mother’s voice a sound of tragedy.
Vere stood for a long while by the window thinking.
The day was very hot. She longed to bathe, to wash away certain
perplexities that troubled her in the sea. But Gaspare was not on the
island. He had gone she knew not where. She looked at the sea with
longing. When would Gaspare be back? Well, at least she could go out in
the small boat. Then she would be near to the water. She ran down the
steps and embarked. At first she only rowed a little way out into the
Saint’s Pool, and then leaned back against the white cushions, and
looked up at the blue sky, and let her hand trail in the water. But
she was restless to-day. The Pool did not suffice her, and she began
to paddle out along the coast towards Naples. She passed a ruined,
windowless house named by the fisherfolk “The Palace of the Spirits,”
and then a tiny hamlet climbing up from a minute harbor to an antique
church. Children called to her. A fisherman shouted: “Buon viaggio,
Signorina!” She waved her hand to them apathetically and rowed slowly
on. Now she had a bourne. A little farther on there was a small inlet of
the sea containing two caves, not gloomy and imposing like the Grotto
of Virgilio, but cosy, shady, and serene. Into the first of them she ran
the boat until its prow touched the sandy bottom. Then she lay down
at full length, with her hands behind her head on the cushions, and
thought--and thought.
Figures passed through her mind, a caravan of figures travelling as all
are travelling: her mother, Gaspare, Giulia, with her plump and swarthy
face; Monsieur Emile, to whom she had drawn so pleasantly, interestingly
near in these last days; the Marchesino (strutting from the hips and
making his bold eyes round), Peppina, Ruffo. They went by and returned,
gathered about her, separated, melted away as people do in our musings.
Her eyes were fixed on the low roof of the cave. The lilt of the water
seemed to rock her soul in a cradle. “Madre--Ruffo! Madre--Ruffo!”
The words were in her mind like a refrain. And then the oddity, the
promiscuity of life struck her. How many differences there were in this
small group of people by whom she was surrounded! What would their fates
be, and hers? Would her life be happy? She did not feel afraid. Youth
ran in her veins. But--would it be? She saw the red cross on Peppina’s
cheek. Why was one singled out for misery, another for joy? Which would
be her fate? Ruffo seemed to be standing near her. She had seen him
several times in these last days, but only at evening, fugitively, when
he came in the boat with the fishermen. He was stronger now. He had
saluted her eagerly. She had spoken to him from the shore. But he had
not landed again on the island. She felt as if she saw his bright and
beaming eyes. And Ruffo--would he be happy? She hoped so. She wanted him
to be happy. He was such a dear, active boy--such a real boy. What
must it be like to have a brother? Gaspare approved of Ruffo now, she
thought; and Gaspare did not like everybody, and was fearfully blunt in
expressing his opinion. She loved his bluntness. How delightfully his
nose twitched when he was pleased! Dear old Gaspare! She could never
feel afraid of anything or anybody when he was near. Monsieur Emile--the
poems--the Marchesino singing. She closed her eyes to think the better.
“Signorina! Signorina!”
Vere woke and sat up.
“Signorina!”
Gaspare was looking at her from his boat.
“Gaspare!”
She began to realize things.
“I was--I was thinking.”
“Si, Signorina. I always think like that when I am in bed.”
She laughed. She was wide awake now.
“How did you find me?”
“I met one of the fishermen. He had seen you row into the cave.”
“Oh!”
She looked at him more steadily. His brown face was hot. Perspiration
stood on his forehead just under the thick and waving hair.
“Where have you been, Gaspare? Not to Naples in all this heat?”
“I have been to Mergellina, Signorina.”
“Mergellina! Did you see Ruffo?”
“Si, Signorina.”
There was something very odd about Gaspare to-day, Vere thought. Or was
she still not thoroughly awake? His eyes looked excited, surely, as if
something unusual had been happening. And they were fixed upon her face
with a scrutiny that was strange, almost as if he saw her now for the
first time.
“What is it, Gaspare? Why do you look at me like that?”
Gaspare turned his eyes away.
“Like what, Signorina? Why should I not look at you?”
“What have you been doing at Mergellina?”
She spoke rather imperiously.
“Nothing particular, Signorina.”
“Oh!”
She paused, but he did not speak.
“Where did you see Ruffo?”
“At the harbor, Signorina.”
“Tell me, Gaspare, do you like him?”
“Ruffo?”
“Yes.”
“I do not dislike him, Signorina. He has never done me any harm.”
“Of course not. Why should he?”
“I say--he has not.”
“I like Ruffo.”
“Lo so.”
Again he looked at her with that curious expression in his eyes. Then he
said:
“Come, Signorina! It is getting late. We must go to the island.”
And they pulled out round the point to the open sea.
During the hot weather the dwellers in the Casa del Mare made the siesta
after the mid-day meal. The awnings and blinds were drawn. Silence
reigned, and the house was still as the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty.
At the foot of the cliffs the sea slept in the sunshine, and it was
almost an empty sea, for few boats passed by in those hot, still hours.
To-day the servants were quiet in their quarters. Only Gaspare was
outside. And he, in shirt and trousers, with a white linen hat covering
his brown face, was stretched under the dwarf trees of the little
garden, in the shadow of the wall, resting profoundly after the labors
of the morning. In their respective rooms Hermione and Vere were
secluded behind shut doors. Hermione was lying down, but not sleeping.
Vere was not lying down. Generally she slept at this time for an hour.
But to-day, perhaps because of her nap in the cave, she had no desire
for sleep.
She was thinking about her mother. And Hermione was thinking of her.
Each mind was working in the midst of its desert space, its solitude
eternal.
What was growing up between them, and why was it growing?
Hermione was beset by a strange sensation of impotence. She felt as if
her child were drifting from her. Was it her fault, or was it no one’s,
and inevitable? Had Vere been able to divine certain feelings in her,
the mother, obscure pains of the soul that had travelled to mind and
heart? She did not think it possible. Nor had it been possible for her
to kill those pains, although she had made her effort--to conceal them.
Long ago, before she was married to Maurice, Emile had spoken to them
of jealousy. At the time she had not understood it. She remembered
thinking, even saying, that she could not be jealous.
But then she had not had a child.
Lately she had realized that there were forces in her of which she
had not been aware. She had realized her passion for her child. Was it
strange that she had not always known how deep and strong it was?
Her mutilated life was more vehemently centred upon Vere than she had
understood. Of Vere she could be jealous. If Vere put any one before
her, trusted any one more than her, confided anything to another rather
than to her, she could be frightfully jealous.
Recently she had suspected--she had imagined--
Restlessly she moved on her bed. A mosquito-curtain protected it. She
was glad of that, as if it kept out prying eyes. For sometimes she was
ashamed of the vehemence within her.
She thought of her friend Emile, whom she had dragged back from death.
He, too, had he not drifted a little from her in these last days? It
seemed to her that it was so. She knew that it was so. Women are so sure
of certain things, more almost than men are ever sure of anything. And
why should Vere have drifted, Emile have drifted, if there were not some
link between them--some link between the child and the middle-aged man
which they would not have her know of?
Vere had told to Emile something that she had kept, that she still kept
from her mother. When Vere had been shut up in her room she had not been
reading. Emile knew what it was that she did during those long hours
when she was alone. Emile knew that, and perhaps other things of Vere
that she, Hermione, did not know, was not allowed to know.
Hermione, in their long intimacy, had learned to read Artois more
clearly, more certainly than he realized. Although often impulsive,
and seemingly unconscious of the thoughts of others, she could be both
sharply observant and subtle, especially with those she loved. She
had noticed the difference between his manner when first they spoke of
Vere’s hidden occupation and his manner when last they spoke of it. In
the interval he had found out what it was, and that it was not reading.
Of that she was positive. She was positive also that he did not wish her
to suspect this. Vere must have told him what it was.
It was characteristic of Hermione that at this moment she was free from
any common curiosity as to what it was that Vere did during those many
hours when she was shut up in her room. The thing that hurt her, that
seemed to humiliate her, was the Emile should know what it was and not
she, that Vere should have told Emile and not told her.
As she lay there she cowered under the blow a mutual silence can give,
and something woke up in her, something fiery, something surely that
could act with violence. It startled her, almost as a stranger rushing
into her room would have startled her.
For a moment she thought of her child and her loved friend with a
bitterness that was cruel.
How long had they shared their secret? She wondered, and began
to consider the recent days, searching their hours for those tiny
incidents, those small reticences, avoidances, that to women are
revelations. When had she first noticed a slight change in Emile’s
manner to her? When had Vere and he first seemed a little more intimate,
a little more confidential than before? When had she, Hermione, first
felt a little “out of it,” not perfectly at ease with these two dear
denizens of her life?
Her mind fastened at once upon the day of the storm. On the night of the
storm, when she and Emile had been left alone in the restaurant, she
had felt almost afraid of him. But before then, in the afternoon on the
island, there had been something. They had not been always at ease.
She had been conscious of trying to tide over moments that were almost
awkward--once or twice, only once or twice. But that was the day. Her
woman’s instinct told her so. That was the day on which Vere had told
Emile the secret she had kept from her mother. How excited Vere had
been, almost feverishly excited! And Emile had been very strange. When
the Marchesino and Vere went out upon the terrace, how restless, how
irritable he--
Suddenly Hermione sat up in her bed. The heat, the stillness, the white
cage of the mosquito net, the silence had become intolerable to her.
She pulled aside the net. Yes, that was better. She felt more free. She
would lie down outside the net. But the pillow was hot. She turned it,
but its pressure against her cheek almost maddened her, and she got up,
went across the room to the wash-stand and bathed her face with cold
water. Then she put some _eau de Cologne_ on her forehead, opened a
drawer and drew out a fan, went over to an arm-chair near the window and
sat down in it.
What had Emile written in the visitors’ book at the Scoglio di Frisio?
With a strange abruptness, with a flight that was instinctive as that
of a homing pigeon, Hermione’s mind went to that book as to a book of
revelation. Just before he wrote he had been feeling acutely--something.
She had been aware of that at the time. He had not wanted to write. And
then suddenly, almost violently, he had written and had closed the book.
She longed to open that book now, at once, to read what he had written.
She felt as if it would tell her very much. There was no reason why she
should not read it. The book was one that all might see, was kept to be
looked over by any chance visitor. She would go one day, one evening, to
the restaurant and see what Emile had written. He would not mind. If she
had asked him that night of course he would have shown her the words.
But she had not asked him. She had been almost afraid of things that
night. She remembered how the wind had blown up the white table-cloth,
her cold, momentary shiver of fear, her relief when she had seen Gaspare
walking sturdily into the room.
And now, at once, this thought of Gaspare brought to her a sense of
relief again, of relief so great, so sharp--piercing down into the very
deep of her nature--that by it she was able to measure something, her
inward desolation at this moment. Yes, she clung to Gaspare, because he
was loyal, because he loved her, because he had loved Maurice--but also
because she was terribly alone.
Because he had loved Maurice! Had there been a time, really a time, when
she had possessed one who belonged utterly to her, who lived only in and
for her? Was that possible? To-day, with the fierceness of one starving,
she fastened upon this memory, her memory, hers only, shared by no one,
never shared by living or dead. That at least she had, and that could
never be taken from her. Even if Vere, her child, slipped from her,
if Emile, her friend, whose life she had saved, slipped from her, the
memory of her Sicilian was forever hers, the memory of his love, his joy
in their mutual life, his last kiss. Long ago she had taken that kiss as
a gift made to two--to her and to Vere unborn. To-day, almost savagely,
she took it to herself, alone, herself--alone. Hers it was, hers only,
no part of it Vere’s.
That she had--her memory, and Gaspare’s loyal, open-hearted devotion.
He knew what she had suffered. He loved her as he had loved his dead
Padrone. He would always protect her, put her first without hesitation,
conceal nothing from her that it was her right--for surely even the
humblest, the least selfish, the least grasping, surely all who love
have their rights--that it was her right to know.
Her cheeks were burning. She felt like one who had been making some
physical exertion.
Deeply silent was the house. Her room was full of shadows, yet full of
the hidden presence of the sun. There was a glory outside, against
which she was protected. But outside, and against assaults that were
inglorious, what protection had she? Her own personality must protect
her, her own will, the determination, the strength, the courage that
belong to all who are worth anything in the world. And she called upon
herself. And it seemed to her that there was no voice that answered.
There was a hideous moment of drama.
She sat there quietly in her chair in the pretty room. And she called
again, and she listened--and again there was silence.
Then she was afraid. She had a strange and horrible feeling that she was
deserted by herself, by that which, at least, had been herself and on
which she had been accustomed to rely. And what was left was surely
utterly incapable, full of the flabby wickedness that seems to dwell in
weakness. It seemed to her that if any one who knew her well, if Vere,
Emile, or even Gaspare, had come into the room just then, the intruder
would have paused on the threshold amazed to see a stranger there. She
felt afraid to be seen and yet afraid to remain alone. Should she do
something definite, something defiant, to prove to herself that she had
will and could exercise it?
She got up, resolved to go to Vere. When she was there, with her child,
she did not know what she was going to do. She had said to Vere, “Keep
your secrets.” What if she went now and humbled herself, explained
to the child quite simply and frankly a mother’s jealousy, a widow’s
loneliness, made her realize what she was in a life from which the
greatest thing had been ruthlessly withdrawn? Vere would understand
surely, and all would be well. This shadow between them would pass away.
Hermione had her hand on the door. But she did not open it. An imperious
reserve, autocrat, tyrant, rose up suddenly within her. She could never
make such a confession to Vere. She could never plead for her child’s
confidence--a confidence already given to Emile, to a man. And now for
the first time the common curiosity to which she had not yet fallen a
victim came upon her, flooded her. What was Vere’s secret? That it was
innocent, probably even childish, Hermione did not question even for a
moment. But what was it?
She heard a light step outside and drew back from the door. The step
passed on and died away down the paved staircase. Vere had gone out to
the terrace, the garden, or the sea.
Hermione again moved forward, then stopped abruptly. Her face was
suddenly flooded with red as she realized what she had been going to do,
she who had exclaimed that every one has a right to their freedom.
For an instant she had meant to go to Vere’s room, to try to find out
surreptitiously what Emile knew.
A moment later Vere, coming back swiftly for a pencil she had forgotten,
heard the sharp grating of a key in the lock of her mother’s door.
She ran on lightly, wondering why her mother was locking herself in, and
against whom.