Hermione was not going to Mergellina, but to the Scoglio di Frisio.
She had only come out of her room late in the afternoon. During her
seclusion there she had once been disturbed by Gaspare, who had come to
ask her if she wanted him for anything, and, if not, whether he might go
over to Mergellina for the rest of the afternoon to see some friends he
had made there. She told him he was free till night, and he went away
quickly, after one searching, wide-eyed glance at the face of his
Padrona.
When he had gone Hermione told herself that she was glad he was away. If
he had been on the island she might have been tempted to take one of the
boats, to ask him to row her to the Scoglio that evening. But now,
of course, she would not go. It was true that she could easily get a
boatman from the village on the mainland near by, but without Gaspare’s
companionship she would not care to go. So that was settled. She would
think no more about it. She had tea with Vere, and strove with all her
might to be natural, to show no traces in face or manner of the storm
that had swept over her that day. She hoped, she believed that she was
successful. But what a hateful, what an unnatural effort that was!
A woman who is not at her ease in her own home with her own girl--where
can she be at ease?
It was really the reaction from that effort that sent Hermione from the
island that evening. She felt as if she could not face another meal with
Vere just then. She felt transparent, as if Vere’s eyes would be able to
see all that she must hide if they were together in the evening. And she
resolved to go away. She made some excuse--that she wished for a little
change, that she was fidgety and felt the confinement of the island.
“I think I’ll go over to the village,” she said; “and walk up to the
road and take the tram.”
“Will you, Madre?”
Hermione saw in Vere’s eyes that the girl was waiting for something.
“I’ll go by myself, Vere,” she said. “I should be bad company to-day.
The black dog is at my heels.”
She laughed, and added:
“If I am late in coming back, have dinner without me.”
“Very well, Madre.”
Vere waited a moment; then as if desiring to break forcibly through the
restraint that bound them put out her hand to her mother’s and said:
“Why don’t you go to Naples and have dinner with Monsieur Emile? He
would cheer you up, and it is ages since we have seen him.”
“Only two or three days. No, I won’t disturb Emile. He may be working.”
Vere felt that somehow her eager suggestion had deepened the constraint.
She said no more, and Hermione presently crossed over to the mainland
and began her walk to the road that leads from Naples to Bagnoli.
Where was she going? What was she really about to do?
Certainly she would not adopt the suggestion of Vere. Emile was the last
person whom she wished to see--by whom she wished to be seen--just then.
The narrow path turned away from the sea into the shadow of high banks.
She walked very slowly, like one out for a desultory stroll; a lizard
slipped across the warm earth in front of her, almost touching her foot,
climbed the bank swiftly, and vanished among the dry leaves with a faint
rustle.
She felt quite alone to-day in Italy, and far off, as if she had
no duties, no ties, as if she were one of those solitary, drifting,
middle-aged women who vaguely haunt the beaten tracks of foreign lands.
It was sultry in this path away from the sea. She was sharply conscious
of the change of climate, the inland sensation, the falling away of the
freedom from her, the freedom that seems to exhale from wave and wind of
the wave.
She walked on, meeting no one and still undecided what to do. The
thought of the Scoglio di Frisio returned to her mind, was dismissed,
returned again. She might go and dine there quietly alone. Was she
deceiving herself, and had she really made up her mind to go to the
Scoglio before she left the island? No, she had come away mainly because
she felt the need of solitude, the difficulty of being with Vere just
for this one night. To-morrow it would be different. It should be
different to-morrow.
She saw a row of houses in the distance, houses of poor people, and knew
that she was nearing the road. Clothes were hanging to dry. Children
were playing at the edge of a vineyard. Women were washing linen, men
sitting on the doorsteps mending _nasse_. As she went by she nodded to
them, and bade them “Buona sera.” They answered courteously, some with
smiling faces, others with grave and searching looks--or so she thought.
The tunnel that runs beneath the road at the point where this path joins
it came in sight. And still Hermione did not know what she was going to
do. As she entered the tunnel she heard above her head the rumble of a
tram going towards Naples. This decided her. She hurried on, turned
to the right, and came out on the highway before the little lonely
ristorante that is set here to command the view of vineyards and of sea.
The tram was already gliding away at some distance down the road.
A solitary waiter came forward in his unsuitable black into the dust to
sympathize with the Signora, and to suggest that she should take a seat
and drink some lemon water, or gazzosa, while waiting for the next
tram. Or would not the Signora dine in the upper room and watch the
_tramontare del sole_. It would be splendid this evening. And he could
promise her an excellent risotto, sardines with pomidoro, and a bifteck
such as certainly she could not get in the restaurants of Naples.
“Very well,” Hermione answered, quickly, “I will dine here, but not
directly--in half an hour or three-quarters.”
What Artois was doing at the Ristorante della Stella she was doing at
the Trattoria del Giardinetto.
She would dine quietly here, and then walk back to the sea in the cool
of the evening.
That was her decision. Yet when evening fell, and her bill was paid, she
took the tram that was going down to Naples, and passed presently before
the eyes of Artois. The coming of darkness had revived within her
much of the mood of the afternoon. She felt that she could not go home
without doing something definite, and she resolved to go to the Scoglio
di Frisio, have a cup of coffee there, look through the visitors’ book,
and then take a boat and return by night to the island. The sea wind
would cool her, would do her good.
Nothing told her when the eyes of her friend were for an instant fixed
upon her, when the mind of her friend for a moment wondered at the
strange, new look in her face. She left the tram presently at the
doorway above which is Frisio’s name, descended to the little terrace
from which Vere had run in laughing with the Marchesino, and stood there
for a moment hesitating.
The long restaurant was lit up, and from it came the sound of
music--guitars, and a voice singing. She recognized the throaty tenor of
the blind man raised in a spurious and sickly rapture:
“Sa-anta-a Lu-u-ci-ia! Santa Luci--a!”
It recalled her sharply to the night of the storm. For a moment she
felt again the strange, the unreasonable sense of fear, indefinable but
harsh, which had come upon her then, as fear comes suddenly sometimes
upon a child.
Then she stepped into the restaurant.
As on the other night, there were but few people dining there, and they
were away at the far end of the big room. Near them stood the musicians
under a light--seedy, depressed; except the blind man, who lifted his
big head, rolled his tongue, and swelled and grew scarlet in an effort
to be impressive.
Hermione sat down at the first table.
For a moment no one saw her. She heard men’s voices talking loudly and
gayly, the clatter of plates, the clink of knives and forks. She looked
round for the visitors’ book. If it were lying near she thought she
would open it, search for what Emile had written, and then slip away at
once unobserved.
There was a furtive spirit within her to-night.
But she could not see the book; so she sat still, listening to the blind
man and gazing at the calm sea just below her. A boat was waiting there.
She could see the cushions, which were white and looked ghastly in the
darkness, the dim form of the rower standing up to search for clients.
“Barca! Barca!”
He had seen her.
She drew back a little. As she did so her chair made a grating noise,
and instantly the sharp ears of the Padrone caught a sound betokening
the presence of a new-comer in his restaurant. It might be a queen, an
empress! Who could tell?
With his stiff yet alert military gait, he at once came marching down
towards her, staring hard with his big, bright eyes. When he saw who it
was he threw up his brown hands.
“The Signora of the storm!” he exclaimed. He moved as if about to turn
around. “I must tell--”
But Hermione stopped him with a quick, decisive gesture.
“One moment, Signore.”
The Padrone approached aristocratically.
“The Marchese Isidoro Panacci is here dining with friends, the Duca
di--”
“Yes, yes. But I am only here for a moment, so it is not worth while to
tell the Marchese.”
“You are not going to dine, Signora! The food of Frisio does not please
you!”
He cast up his eyes in deep distress.
“Indeed it does. But I have dined. What I want is a cup of coffee,
and--and a liqueur--une fine. And may I look over your wonderful
visitors’ book? To tell the truth, that is what I have come for, to see
the marvellous book. I hadn’t enough time the other night. May I?”
The Padrone was appeased. He smiled graciously and turned upon his
heels.
“At once, Signora.”
“And--not a word to the Marchese! He is with friends. I would rather not
disturb him.”
The Padrone threw up his chin and clicked his tongue against his teeth.
A shrewd, though not at all impudent, expression had come into his face.
A Signora alone, at night, in a restaurant! He was a man of the great
world. He understood. What a mercy it was to be “educato”!
He came back again almost directly, bearing the book as a sacristan
might bear a black-letter Bible.
“Ecco, Signora.”
With a superb gesture he placed it before her.
“The coffee, the fine. Attendez, Signora, pour un petit momento.”
He stood to see the effect of his French upon her. She forced into
her face a look of pious admiration, and he at once departed. Hermione
opened the book rather furtively. She had the unpleasant sensation
of doing a surreptitious action, and she was an almost abnormally
straightforward woman by nature. The book was large, and contained
an immense number of inscriptions and signatures in handwritings that
varied as strangely as do the characters of men. She turned the leaves
hastily. Where had Emile written? Not at the end of the book. She
remembered that his signature had been followed by others, although she
had not seen, or tried to see, what he had written. Perhaps his name
was near Tolstoy’s. They had read together Tolstoy’s _Vedi Napoli e poi
Mori_.
But where was Tolstoy’s name?
A waiter came with the coffee and the brandy. She thanked him quickly,
sipped the coffee without tasting it, and continued the search.
The voice of the blind man died away. The guitars ceased.
She started. She was afraid the musicians would come down and gather
round her. Why had she not told the Padrone she wished to be quite
alone? She heard the shuffle of feet. They were coming. Feverishly she
turned the pages. Ah! here is was! She bent down over the page.
“La conscience, c’est la quantite de science innee que nous avons
en nous. EMILE ARTOIS.
“Nuit d’orage. Juin.”
The guitars began a prelude. The blind man shifted from one fat leg to
another, cast up his sightless eyes, protruded and drew in his tongue,
coughed, spat--
“Cameriere!”
Hermione struck upon the table sharply. She had forgotten all about the
Marchesino. She was full of the desire to escape, to get away and be out
on the sea.
“Cameriere!”
She called more loudly.
A middle-aged waiter came shuffling over the floor.
“The bill, please.”
As she spoke she drank the brandy.
“Si, Signora.”
He stood beside her.
“One coffee?”
“Si.”
“One cognac!”
“Si, si.”
The blind man burst into song.
“One fifty, Signora.”
Hermione gave him a two-lire piece and got up to go.
“Signora--buona sera! What a pleasure!”
The Marchesino stood before her, smiling, bowing. He took her hand, bent
over it, and kissed it.
“What a pleasure!” he repeated, glancing round. “And you are alone! The
Signorina is not here?”
He stared suspiciously towards the terrace.
“And our dear friend Emilio?”
“No, no. I am quite alone.”
The blind man bawled, as if he wished to drown the sound of speech.
“Please--could you stop him, Marchese?” said Hermione. “I--really--give
him this for me.”
She gave the Marchese a lira.
“Signora, it isn’t necessary. Silenzio! Silenzio! P-sh-sh-sh!”
He hissed sharply, almost furiously. The musicians abruptly stopped,
and the blind man made a gurgling sound, as if he were swallowing the
unfinished portion of his song.
“No; please pay them.”
“It’s too much.”
“Never mind.”
The Marchese gave the lire to the blind man, and the musicians went
drearily out.
Then Hermione held out her hand at once.
“I must go now. It is late.”
“You are going by sea, Signora?”
“Yes.”
“I will accompany you.”
“No, indeed. I couldn’t think of it. You have friends.”
“They will understand. Have you your own boat?”
“No.”
“Then of course I shall come with you.”
But Hermione was firm. She knew that to-night the company of this young
man would be absolutely unbearable.
“Marchese, indeed I cannot--I cannot allow it. We Englishwomen are very
independent, you know. But you may call me a boat and take me down to
it, as you are so kind.”
“With pleasure, Signora.”
He went to the open window. At once the boatman’s cry rose up.
“Barca! Barca!”
“That is Andrea’s voice,” said the Marchesino. “I know him. Barca--si!”
The boat began to glide in towards the land.
As they went out the Marchesino said:
“And how is the Signorina?”
“Very well.”
“I have had a touch of fever, Signora, or I should have come over to
the island again. I stayed too long in the sea the other day, or--” He
shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” said Hermione. “You are very pale to-night.”
For the first time she looked at him closely, and saw that his face was
white, and that his big and boyish eyes held a tired and yet excited
expression.
“It is nothing. It has passed. And our friend--Emilio? How is he?”
A hardness had come into his voice. Hermione noticed it.
“We have not seen him lately. I suppose he has been busy.”
“Probably. Emilio has much to do in Naples,” said the Marchesino,
with an unmistakable sneer. “Do allow me to escort you to the island,
Signora.”
They had reached the boat. Hermione shook her head and stepped in at
once.
“Then when may I come?”
“Whenever you like.”
“To-morrow?”
“Certainly.”
“At what time?”
Hermione suddenly remembered his hospitality and felt that she ought to
return it.
“Come to lunch--half-past twelve. We shall be quite alone.”
“Signora, for loneliness with you and the Signorina I would give up
every friend I have ever had. I would give up--”
“Half-past twelve, then, Marchese. Addio!”
“A rivederci, Signora! A demain! Andrea, take care of the Signora. Treat
her as you would treat the Madonna. Do you hear?”
The boatman grinned and took off his cap, and the boat glided away
across the path of yellow light that was shed from the window of
Frisio’s.
Hermione leaned back against the white cushions. She was thankful to
escape. She felt tired and confused. That dreadful music had distracted
her, that--and something else, her tricked expectation. She knew now
that she had been very foolish, perhaps even very fantastic. She had
felt so sure that Emile had written in that book--what?
As the boat went softly on she asked herself exactly what she had
expected to find written there, and she realized that her imagination
had, as so often before, been galloping like a frightened horse with the
reins upon its neck. And then she began to consider what he had written.
“La conscience, c’est la quantite de science innee que nous avons en
nous.”
She did not know the words. Were they his own or another’s? And had he
written them simply because they had chanced to come into his mind at
the moment, or because they expressed some underthought or feeling that
had surged up in him just then? She wished she knew.
It was a fine saying, she thought, but for the moment she was less
interested in it than in Emile’s mood, his mind, when he had written
it. She realized now, on this calm of the sea, how absurd had been the
thought that a man so subtle as Emile would flagrantly reveal a passing
phase of his nature, a secret irritability, a jealousy, perhaps, or a
sudden hatred in a sentence written for any eyes that chose to see. But
he might covertly reveal himself to one who understood him well.
She sat still, trying to match her subtlety against his.
From the shore came sounds of changing music, low down or falling to
them from the illuminated heights where people were making merry in the
night. Now and then a boat passed them. In one, young men were singing,
and interrupting their song to shout with laughter. Here and there a
fisherman’s torch glided like a great fire-fly above the oily darkness
of the sea. The distant trees of the gardens climbing up the hill
made an ebony blackness beneath the stars, a blackness that suggested
impenetrable beauty that lay deep down with hidden face. And the lights
dispersed among them, gaining significance by their solitude, seemed to
summon adventurous or romantic spirits to come to them by secret paths
and learn their revelation. Over the sea lay a delicate warmth, not
tropical, not enervating, but softly inspiring. And beyond the circling
lamps of Naples Vesuvius lit up the firmament with a torrent of
rose-colored fire that glowed and died, and glowed again, constantly as
beats a heart.
And to Hermione came a melancholy devoid of all violence, soft almost
as the warmth upon this sea, quite as the resignation of the fatalistic
East. She felt herself for a moment such a tiny, dark thing caught in
the meshes of the great net of the Universe, this Universe that she
could never understand. What could she do? She must just sink down upon
the breast of this mystery, let it take her, hold her, do with her what
it would.
Her subtlety against Emile’s! She smiled to herself in the dark. What
a combat of midgets! She seemed to see two marionettes battling in the
desert.
And yet--and yet! She remembered a saying of Flaubert’s, that man is
like a nomad journeying on a camel through the desert; and he is the
nomad, and the camel--and the desert.
How true that was, for even now, as she felt herself to be nothing, she
felt herself to be tremendous.
She heard the sound of oars from the darkness before them, and saw the
dim outline of a boat, then the eyes of Emile looking straight into
hers.
“Emile!”
“Hermione!”
His face was gone. But yielding to her impulse she made Andrea stop,
and, turning round, saw that the other boat had also stopped a little
way from hers. It began to back, and in a moment was level with them.
“Emile! How strange to meet you! Have--you haven’t been to the island?”
“No. I was tired. I have been working very hard. I dined quietly at
Posilipo.”
He did not ask her where she had been.
“Yes. I think you look tired,” she said. He did not speak, and she
added: “I felt restless, so I took the tram from the Trattoria del
Giardinetto as far as the Scoglio di Frisio, and am going back, as you
see, by boat.”
“It is exquisite on the sea to-night,” he said.
“Yes, exquisite, it makes one sad.”
She remembered all she had been through that day, as she looked at his
powerful face.
“Yes,” he answered. “It makes one sad.”
For a moment she felt that they were in perfect sympathy, as they used
to be. Their sadness, born of the dreaming hour, united them.
“Come soon to the island, dear Emile,” she said, suddenly and with the
impulsiveness that was part of her, forgetting all her jealousy and all
her shadowy fears. “I have missed you.”
He noticed that she ruled out Vere in that sentence; but the warmth of
her voice stirred warmth in him, and he answered:
“Let me come to-morrow.”
“Do--do!”
“In the morning, to lunch, and to spend a long day.”
Suddenly she remembered the Marchesino and the sound of his voice when
he had spoken of his friend.
“Lunch?” she said.
Instantly he caught her hesitation, her dubiety.
“It isn’t convenient, perhaps?”
“Perfectly, only--only the Marchesino is coming.”
“To-morrow--To lunch?”
The hardness of the Marchesino’s voice was echoed now in the voice of
Artois. There was antagonism between these men. Hermione realized it.
“Yes. I invited him this evening.”
There was a slight pause. Then Artois said:
“I’ll come some other day, Hermione. Well, my friend, au revoir, and bon
voyage to the island.”
His voice had suddenly become cold, and he signed to his boatman.
“Avanti!”
The boat slipped away and was lost in the darkness.
Hermione had said nothing. Once again--why, she did not know--her friend
had made her feel guilty.
Andrea, the boatman, still paused. Now she saw him staring into her
face, and she felt like a woman publicly deserted, almost humiliated.
“Avanti, Andrea!” she said.
Her voice trembled as she spoke.
He bent to his oars and rowed on.
And man is the nomad, and the camel--and the desert.
Yes, she carried the desert within her, and she was wandering in it
alone. She saw herself, a poor, starved, shrinking figure, travelling
through a vast, a burning, a waterless expanse, with an iron sky above
her, a brazen land beneath. She was in rags, barefoot, like the poorest
nomad of them all.
But even the poorest nomad carries something.
Against her breast, to her heart, she clasped--a memory--the sacred
memory of him who had loved her, who had taken her to be his, who had
given her himself.