That night when Hermione drew near to the island she saw the Saint’s
light shining, and remembered how, in the storm, she had longed for
it--how, when she had seen it above the roaring sea, she had felt that
it was a good omen. To-night it meant nothing to her. It was just a
lamp lit, as a lamp might be lit in a street, to give illumination in
darkness to any one who passed. She wondered why she had thought of it
so strangely.
Gaspare met her at the landing. She noticed at once a suppressed
excitement in his manner. He looked at Andrea keenly and suspiciously.
“How late you are, Signora!”
He put out his strong arm to help her to the land.
“Am I, Gaspare? Yes, I suppose I am--you ought all to be in bed.”
“I should not go to bed while you were out, Signora.”
Again she linked Gaspare with her memory, saw the nomad not quite alone
on the journey.
“I know.”
“Have you been to Naples, Signora?”
“No--only to--”
“To Mergellina?”
He interrupted her almost sharply.
“No, to the Scoglio di Frisio. Pay the boatman this, Gaspare.
Good-night, Andrea.”
“Good-night, Signora.”
Gaspare handed the man his money, and at once the boat set out on its
return to Posilipo.
Hermione stood at the water’s edge watching its departure. It passed
below the Saint, and the gleam of his light fell upon it for a moment.
In the gleam the black figure of Andrea was visible stooping to the
water. He was making the fishermen’s sign of the Cross. The cross on
Peppina’s face--was it an enemy of the Cross that carried with it San
Francesco’s blessing? Vere’s imagination! She turned to go up to the
house.
“Is the Signorina in bed yet, Gaspare?”
“No, Signora.”
“Where is she? Still out?”
“Si, Signora.”
“Did she think I was lost?”
“Signora, the Signorina is on the cliff with Ruffo.”
“With Ruffo?”
They were going up the steps.
“Si, Signora. We have all been together.”
Hermione guessed that Gaspare had been playing chaperone, and loved him
for it.
“And you heard the boat coming from the cliff?”
“I saw it pass under the Saint’s light, Signora. I did not hear it.”
“Well, but it might have been a fisherman’s boat.”
“Si, Signora. And it might have been your boat.”
The logic of this faithful watcher was unanswerable. They came up to the
house.
“I think I’ll go and see Ruffo,” said Hermione.
She was close to the door of the house, Gaspare stood immediately before
her. He did not move now, but he said:
“I can go and tell the Signorina you are here, Signora. She will come at
once.”
Again Hermione noticed a curious, almost dogged, excitement in his
manner. It recalled to her a night of years ago when he had stood on a
terrace beside her in the darkness and had said: “I will go down to the
sea. Signora, let me go down to the sea!”
“There’s nothing the matter, is there, Gaspare?” she said, quickly.
“Nothing wrong?”
“Signora, of course not! What should there be?”
“I don’t know.”
“I will fetch the Signorina.”
On that night, years ago, she had battled with Gaspare. He had been
forced to yield to her. Now she yielded to him.
“Very well,” she answered. “Go and tell the Signorina I am here.”
She turned and went into the house and up to the sitting-room. Vere did
not come immediately. To her mother it seemed as if she was a very long
time coming; but at last her light step fell on the stairs, and she
entered quickly.
“Madre! How late you are! Where have you been?”
“Am I late? I dined at the little restaurant at the top of the hill
where the tram passes.”
“There? But you haven’t been there all this time?”
“No. Afterwards I took the tram to Posilipo and came home by boat. And
what have you been doing?”
“Oh, all sorts of things--what I always do. Just now I’ve been with
Ruffo.”
“Gaspare told me he was here.”
“Yes. We’ve been having a talk.”
Hermione waited for Vere to say something more, but she was silent. She
stood near the window looking out, and the expression on her face had
become rather vague, as if her mind had gone on a journey.
“Well,” said the mother at last, “and what does Ruffo say for himself,
Vere?”
“Ruffo? Oh, I don’t know.”
She paused, then added:
“I think he has rather a hard time, do you know, Madre?”
Hermione had taken off her hat. She laid it on a table and sat down. She
was feeling tired.
“But generally he looks so gay, so strong. Don’t you remember that first
day you saw him?”
“Ah--then!”
“Of course, when he had fever--”
“No, it wasn’t that. Any one might be ill. I think he has things at home
to make him unhappy sometimes.”
“Has he been telling you so?”
“Oh, he doesn’t complain,” Vere said, quickly, and almost with a touch
of heat. “A boy like that couldn’t whine, you know, Madre. But one can
understand things without hearing them said. There is some trouble.
I don’t know what it is exactly. But I think his step-father--his
Patrigno, as he calls him--must have got into some bother, or done
something horrible. Ruffo seemed to want to tell me, and yet not to
want to tell me. And, of course, I couldn’t ask. I think he’ll tell me
to-morrow, perhaps.”
“Is he coming here to-morrow?”
“Oh, in summer I think he comes nearly every night.”
“But you haven’t said anything about him just lately.”
“No. Because he hasn’t landed till to-night since the night of the
storm.”
“I wonder why?” said Hermione.
She was interested; but she still felt tired, and the fatigue crept into
her voice.
“So do I,” Vere said. “He had a reason, I’m sure. You’re tired Madre, so
I’ll go to bed. Good-night.”
She came to her mother and kissed her. Moved by a sudden overwhelming
impulse of tenderness, Hermione put her arms round the child’s slim
body. But even as she did so she remembered Vere’s secret, shared with
Emile and not with her. She could not abruptly loose her arms without
surprising her child. But they seemed to her to stiffen, against her
will, and her embrace was surely mechanical. She wondered if Vere
noticed this, but she did not look into her eyes to see.
“Good-night, Vere.”
“Good-night.”
Vere was at the door when Hermione remembered her two meetings of that
evening.
“By-the-way,” she said, “I met the Marchesino to-night. He was at the
Scoglio di Frisio.”
“Was he?”
“And afterwards on the sea I met Emile.”
“Monsieur Emile! Then he isn’t quite dead!”
There was a sound almost of irritation in Vere’s voice.
“He has been working very hard.”
“Oh, I see.”
Her voice had softened.
“The Marchesino is coming here to lunch to-morrow.”
“Oh, Madre!”
“Does he bore you? I had to ask him to something after accepting his
dinner, Vere.”
“Yes, yes, of course. The Marchese is all right.”
She stood by the door with her bright, expressive eyes fixed on her
mother. Her dark hair had been a little roughened by the breeze from
Ischia, and stuck up just above the forehead, giving to her face an odd,
almost a boyish look.
“What is it, Vere?”
“And when is Monsieur Emile coming? Didn’t he say?”
“No. He suggested to-morrow, but when I told him the Marchese was coming
he said he wouldn’t.”
As Hermione said this she looked very steadily at her child. Vere’s eyes
did not fall, but met hers simply, fearlessly, yet not quite childishly.
“I don’t wonder,” she said. “To tell the truth, Madre, I can’t see how a
man like the Marchesino could interest a man like Monsieur Emile--at any
rate, for long. Well--” She gave a little sigh, throwing up her pretty
chin. “A letto si va!”
And she vanished.
When she had gone Hermione thought she too would go to bed. She was very
tired. She ought to go. Yet now she suddenly felt reluctant to go, and
as if the doings of the day for her were not yet over. And, besides, she
was not going to sleep well. That was certain. The dry, the almost sandy
sensation of insomnia was upon her. What was the matter with Gaspare
to-night? Perhaps he had had a quarrel with some one at Mergellina. He
had a strong temper as well as a loyal heart.
Hermione went to a window. The breeze from Ischia touched her. She
opened her lips, shut her eyes, drank it in. It would be delicious to
spend the whole night upon the sea, like Ruffo. Had he gone yet? Or was
he in the boat asleep, perhaps in the Saint’s Pool? How interested
Vere was in all the doings of that boy--how innocently, charmingly
interested!
Hermione stood by the window for two or three minutes, then went out
of the room, down the stairs, to the front door of the house. It was
already locked. Yet Gaspare had not come up to say good-night to her.
And he always did that before he went to bed. She unlocked the door,
went out, shut it behind her, and stood still.
How strangely beautiful and touching the faint noise of the sea round
the island was at night, and how full of meaning not quite to be
divined! It came upon her heart like the whisper of a world trying to
tell its secret to the darkness. What depths, what subtleties, what
unfailing revelations of beauty, and surely, too, of love, there were
in Nature! And yet in Nature what terrible indifference there was: a
powerful, an almost terrific inattention, like that of the sphinx that
gazes at what men cannot see. Hermione moved away from the house. She
walked to the brow of the island and sat down on the seat that Vere was
fond of. Presently she would go to the bridge and look over into the
Pool and listen for the voices of the fishermen. She sat there for some
time gaining a certain peace, losing something of her feeling of weary
excitement and desolation under the stars. At last she thought that
sleep might come if she went to bed. But before doing so she made her
way to the bridge and leaned on the rail, looking down into the Pool.
It was very dark, but she saw the shadowy shape of a fishing-boat lying
close to the rock. She stood and watched it, and presently she lost
herself in a thicket of night thoughts, and forgot where she was and
why she had come there. She was recalled by hearing a very faint voice
singing, scarcely more than humming, beneath her.
“Oh, dolce luna bianca de l’ Estate
Mi fugge il sonno accanto a la marina:
Mi destan le dolcissime serate
Gli occhi di Rosa e il mar di Mergellina.”
It was the same song that Artois had heard that day as he leaned on the
balcony of the Ristorante della Stella. But this singer of it sang the
Italian words, and not the dialetto. The song that wins the prize at the
Piedigrotta Festival is on the lips of every one in Naples. In houses,
in streets, in the harbor, in every piazza, and upon the sea it is heard
incessantly.
And now Ruffo was singing it softly and rather proudly in the Italian,
to attract the attention of the dark figure he saw above him. He was not
certain who it was, but he thought it was the mother of the Signorina,
and--he did not exactly know why--he wished her to find out that he was
there, squatting on the dry rock with his back against the cliff wall.
The ladies of the Casa del Mare had been very kind to him, and to-night
he was not very happy, and vaguely he longed for sympathy.
Hermione listened to the pretty, tripping words, the happy, youthful
words. And Ruffo sang them again, still very softly.
“Oh, dolce luna bianca de l’ Estate--”
And the poor nomad wandering in the desert? But she had known the
rapture of youth, the sweet white moons of summer in the South. She
had known them long ago for a little while, and therefore she knew them
while she lived. A woman’s heart is tenacious, and wide as the world,
when it contains that world which is the memory of something perfect
that gave it satisfaction.
“Mi destan le dolcissime serate
Gli occhi do Rosa e il mar di Mergellina.”
Dear happy, lovable youth that can sing to itself like that in the deep
night! Like that once Maurice, her sacred possession of youth, sang. She
felt a rush of tenderness for Ruffo, just because he was so young, and
sang--and brought back to her the piercing truth of the everlasting
renewal that goes hand in hand with the everlasting passing away.
“Ruffo--Ruffo!”
Almost as Vere had once called “Pescator!” she called. And as Ruffo had
once come running up to Vere he came now to Vere’s mother.
“Good-evening, Ruffo.”
“Good-evening, Signora.”
She was looking at the boy as at a mystery which yet she could
understand. And he looked at her simply, with a sort of fearless
gentleness, and readiness to receive the kindness which he knew dwealt
in her for him to take.
“Are you better?”
“Si, Signora, much better. The fever has gone. I am strong, you know.”
“You are so young.”
She could not help saying it, and her eyes were tender just then.
“Si, Signora, I am very young.”
His simple voice almost made her laugh, stirred in her that sweet humor
which has its dwelling at the core of the heart.
“Young and happy,” she said.
And as she said it she remembered Vere’s words that evening; “I think he
has rather a hard time.”
“At least, I hope you are happy, Ruffo,” she added.
“Si, Signora.”
He looked at her. She was not sure which he meant, whether his assent
was to her hope or to the fact of his happiness. She wondered which it
was.
“Young people ought to be happy,” she said.
“Ought they, Signora?”
“You like your life, don’t you? You like the sea?”
“Si, Signora. I could not live away from the sea. If I could not see the
sea every day I don’t know what I should do.”
“I love it, too.”
“The Signorina loves the sea.”
He had ignored her love for it and seized on Vere’s. She thought that
this was very characteristic of his youth.
“Yes. She loves being here. You talked to her to-night, didn’t you?”
“Si, Signora.”
“And to Gaspare?”
“Si, Signora. And this afternoon, too. Gaspare was at Mergellina this
afternoon.”
“And you met there, did you?”
“Si, Signora. I had been with my mamma, and when I left my
mamma--poveretta--I met Gaspare.”
“I hope your mother is well.”
“Signora, she is not very well just now. She is a little sad just now.”
Hermione felt that the boy had some trouble which, perhaps, he would
like to tell her. Perhaps some instinct made him know that she felt
tender towards him, very tender that night.
“I am sorry for that,” she said--“very sorry.”
“Si, Signora. There is trouble in our house.”
“What is it, Ruffo?”
The boy hesitated to answer. He moved his bare feet on the bridge and
looked down towards the boat. Hermione did not press him, said nothing.
“Signora,” Ruffo said, at last, coming to a decision, “my Patrigno is
not a good man. He makes my mamma jealous. He goes after others.”
It was the old story of the South, then! Hermione knew something of the
persistent infidelities of Neapolitan men. Poor women who had to suffer
them!
“I am sorry for your mother,” she said, gently. “That must be very
hard.”
“Si, Signora, it is hard. My mamma was very unhappy to-day. She put her
head on the table, and she cried. But that was because my Patrigno is
put in prison.”
“In prison! What has he done?”
Ruffo looked at her, and she saw that the simple expression had gone out
of his eyes.
“Signora, I thought perhaps you knew.”
“I? But I have never seen your step-father.”
“No, Signora. But--but you have that girl here in your house.”
“What girl?”
Suddenly, almost while she was speaking, Hermione understood.
“Peppina!” she said. “It was your Patrigno who wounded Peppina?”
“Si, Signora.”
There was a silence between them. Then Hermione said, gently:
“I am very sorry for your poor mother, Ruffo--very sorry. Tell me, can
she manage? About money, I mean?”
“It is not so much the money she was crying about, Signora. But, of
course, while Patrigno is in prison he cannot earn money for her. I
shall give her my money. But my mamma does not like all the neighbors
knowing about that girl. It is a shame for her.”
“Yes, of course it is. It is very hard.”
She thought a moment. Then she said:
“It must be horrible--horrible!”
She spoke with all the vehemence of her nature. Again, as long ago, when
she knelt before a mountain shrine in the night, she had put herself
imaginatively in the place of a woman, this time in the place of Ruffo’s
mother. She realized how she would have felt if her husband, her “man,”
had ever been faithless to her.
Ruffo looked at her almost in surprise.
“I wish I could see your poor mother, Ruffo,” she said. “I would go to
see her, only--well, you see, I have Peppina here, and--”
She broke off. Perhaps the boy would not understand what she considered
the awkwardness of the situation. She did not quite know how these
people regarded certain things.
“Wait here a moment, Ruffo,” she said. “I am going to give you something
for your mother. I won’t be a moment.”
“Grazie, Signora.”
Hermione went away to the house. The perfect naturalness and simplicity
of the boy appealed to her. She was pleased, too, that he had not told
all this to Vere. It showed a true feeling of delicacy. And she was sure
he was a good son. She went up to her room, got two ten lira notes, and
went quickly back to Ruffo, who was standing upon the bridge.
“There, Ruffo,” she said, giving them to him. “These are for your
mother.”
The boy’s brown face flushed, and into his eyes there came an expression
of almost melting gentleness.
“Oh, Signora!” he said.
And there was a note of protest in his voice.
“Take them to her, Ruffo. And--and I want you to promise me something.
Will you?”
“Si, Signora. I will do anything--anything for you.”
Hermione put her hand on his shoulder.
“Be very, very kind to your poor mother, Ruffo.”
“Signora, I always am good for my poor mamma.”
He spoke with warm eagerness.
“I am sure you are. But just now, when she is sad, be very good to her.”
“Si, Signora.”
She took her hand from the boy’s shoulder. He bent to kiss her hand, and
again, as he was lifting up his head, she saw the melting look in his
eyes. This time it was unmingled with amazement, and it startled her.
“Oh, Ruffo!” she said, and stopped, staring at him in the darkness.
“Signora! What is it? What have you?”
“Nothing. Good-night, Ruffo.”
“Good-night, Signora.”
He took off his cap and ran down to the boat. Hermione leaned over the
railing, bending down to see the boy reappear below. When he came he
looked like a shadow. From this shadow there rose a voice singing very
softly.
“Oh, dolce luna bianca de l’ Estate--”
The shadow went over to the boat, and the voice died away.
“Gli occhi di Rosa e il mar di Mergellina.”
Hermione still was bending down. And she formed the last words with lips
that trembled a little.
“Gli occhi di Rosa e il mar di Mergellina.”
Then she said: “Maurice--Maurice!”
And then she stood trembling.
Yes, it was Maurice whom she had seen again for an instant in the
melting look of Ruffo’s face. She felt frightened in the dark.
Maurice--when he kissed her for the last time, had looked at her like
that. It could not be fancy. It was not.
Was this the very first time she had noticed in Ruffo a likeness to her
dead husband? She asked herself if it was. Yes. She had never--or had
there been something? Not in the face, perhaps. But--the voice? Ruffo’s
singing? His attitude as he stood up in the boat? Had there not been
something? She remembered her conversation with Artois in the cave. She
had said to him that--she did not know why--the boy, Ruffo, had made
her feel, had stirred up within her slumbering desires, slumbering
yearnings.
“I have heard a hundred boys sing on the Bay--and just this one touches
some chord, and all the strings of my soul quiver.”
She had said that.
Then there was something in the boy, something not merely fleeting like
that look of gentleness--something permanent, subtle, that resembled
Maurice.
Now she no longer felt frightened, but she had a passionate wish to go
down to the boat, to see Ruffo again, to be with him again, now that she
was awake to this strange, and perhaps only faint, imitation by another
of the one whom she had lost. No--not imitation; this fragmentary
reproduction of some characteristic, some--
She lifted herself up from the railing. And now she knew that her eyes
were wet. She wiped them with her handkerchief, drew a deep breath, and
went back to the house. She felt for the handle of the door, and, when
she found it, opened the door, went in, and shut it rather heavily, then
locked it. As she bent down to push home the bolt at the bottom a voice
called out:
“Who’s there?”
She was startled and turned quickly.
“Gaspare!”
He stood before her half dressed, with his hair over his eyes, and a
revolver in his hand.
“Signora! It is you!”
“Si. What did you think? That it was a robber?”
Gaspare looked at her almost sternly, went to the door, bent down and
bolted it, then he said:
“Signora, I heard a noise in the house a few minutes ago. I listened,
but I heard nothing more. Still, I thought it best to get up. I had just
put on my clothes when again I heard a noise at the door. I myself had
locked it for the night. What should I think?”
“I was outside. I came back for something. That was what you heard. Then
I went out again.”
“Si.”
He stood there staring at her in a way that seemed, she fancied, to
rebuke her. She knew that he wished to know why she had gone out so
late, returned to the house, then gone out once more.
“Come up-stairs for a minute, Gaspare,” she said. “I want to speak to
you.”
He looked less stern, but still unlike himself.
“Si, Signora. Shall I put on my jacket?”
“No, no, never mind. Come like that.”
She went up-stairs, treading softly, lest she might disturb Vere. He
followed. When they were in her sitting-room she said:
“Gaspare, why did you go to bed without coming to say good-night to me?”
He looked rather confused.
“Did I forget, Signora? I was tired. Forgive me.”
“I don’t know whether you forgot. But you never came.”
As Hermione spoke, suddenly she felt as if Gaspare, too, were going,
perhaps, to drift from her. She looked at him with an almost sharp
intensity which hardened her whole face. Was he, too, being insincere
with her, he whom she trusted implicitly?
“Did you forget, Gaspare?” she said.
“Signora,” he repeated, with a certain, almost ugly doggedness, “I was
tired. Forgive me.”
She felt sure that he had chosen deliberately not to come to her for
the evening salutation. It was a trifle, yet to-night it hurt her. For
a moment she was silent, and he was silent, looking down at the floor.
Then she opened her lips to dismiss him. She intended to say a curt
“Good-night”; but--no--she could not let Gaspare retreat from her behind
impenetrable walls of obstinate reserve. And she did know his nature
through and through. If he was odd to-night, unlike himself, there was
some reason for it; and it could not be a reason that, known to her,
would make her think badly of him. She was certain of that.
“Never mind, Gaspare,” she said gently. “But I like you to come and say
good-night to me. I am accustomed to that, and I miss it if you don’t
come.”
“Si, Signora,” he said, in a very low voice.
He turned a little away from her, and made a small noise with his nose
as if he had a cold.
“Gaspare,” she said, with an impulse to be frank, “I saw Ruffo
to-night.”
He turned round quickly. She saw moisture in his eyes, but they were
shining almost fiercely.
“He told me something about his Patrigno. Did you know it?”
“His Patrigno and Peppina?”
Hermione nodded.
“Si Signora; Ruffo told me.”
“I gave the boy something for his mother.”
“His mother--why?”
There was quick suspicion in Gaspare’s voice.
“Poor woman! Because of all this trouble. Her husband is in prison.”
“Lo so. But he will soon be out again. He is ‘protected.’”
“Who protects him?”
But Gaspare evaded the answer, and substituted something that was almost
a rebuke.
“Signora,” he said, bluntly, “if I were you I would not have anything to
do with these people. Ruffo’s Patrigno is a bad man. Better leave them
alone.”
“But, Ruffo?”
“Signora?”
“You like him, don’t you?”
“Si, Signora. There is no harm in him.”
“And the poor mother?”
“I am not friends with his mother, Signora. I do not want to be.”
Hermione was surprised by his harshness.
“But why not?”
“There are people at Mergellina who are bad people,” he said. “We are
not Neapolitan. We had better keep to ourselves. You have too much
heart, Signora, a great deal too much heart, and you do not always know
what people are.”
“Do you think I ought not to have given Ruffo that money for his
mother?” Hermione asked, almost meekly.
“Si, Signora. It is not for you to give his mother money. It is not for
you.”
“Well, Gaspare, it’s done now.”
“Si, it’s done now.”
“You don’t think Ruffo bad, do you?”
After a pause, Gaspare answered:
“No, Signora. Ruffo is not bad.”
Hermione hesitated. She wanted to ask Gaspare something, but she was
not sure that the opportunity was a good one. He was odd to-night. His
temper had surely been upset. Perhaps it would be better to wait. She
decided not to speak of what was in her mind.
“Well, Gaspare, good-night,” she said.
“Good-night, Signora.”
She smiled at him.
“You see, after all, you have had to say good-night to me!”
“Signora,” he answered, earnestly, “even if I do not come to say
good-night to you always, I shall stay with you till death.”
Again he made the little noise with his nose, as he turned away and went
out of the room.
That night, as she got into bed, Hermione called down on that faithful
watch-dog’s dark head a blessing, the best that heaven contained for
him. Then she put out the light, and lay awake so long that when a boat
came round the cliff from the Saint’s Pool to the open sea, in the hour
before the dawn, she heard the soft splash of the oars in the water and
the sound of a boy’s voice singing.
“Oh, dolce luna bianca de l’ Estate
Mi fugge il sonno accanto a la marina:
Mi destan le dolcissime serate
Gli occhi di Rosa e il mar di Mergellina.”
She lifted herself up on her pillow and listened--listened until across
the sea, going towards the dawn, the song was lost.
“Gli occhi di Rosa e il mar di Mergellina.”
When the voice was near, had not Maurice seemed near to her? And when
it died away, did not he fade with it--fade until the Ionian waters took
him?
She sat up in the darkness until long after the song was hushed. But she
heard it still in the whisper of the sea.