Her unrest was greater than ever, and the desire that consumed her
remained ungratified, although Emile had come to the island as if in
obedience to her fierce mental summons. But she had not seen him even
for a moment with Vere. Why had she let him go? When would he come
again? She might ask him to come for a long day, or she might get Vere
to ask him.
Vere must surely be longing to have a talk with her secret mentor, with
her admirer and inspirer. And then Hermione remembered how often she had
encouraged Emile, how they had discussed his work together, how he had
claimed her sympathy in difficult moments, how by her enthusiasm she
had even inspired him--so at least he had told her. And now he was
fulfilling in her child’s life an office akin to hers in his life.
The knowledge made her feel desolate, driven out. Yes, she felt as
if this secret shared by child and friend had expelled her from their
lives. Was that unreasonable? She wished to be reasonable, to be calm.
Calm? She thought of the old Oriental, and of his theory of resignation.
Surely it was not for her, that theory. She was of different blood. She
did not issue from the loins of the immutable East. And yet how much
better it was to be resigned, to sit enthroned above the chances of
life, to have conquered fate by absolute submission to its decrees!
Why was her heart so youthful in her middle-aged body? Why did it still
instinctively clamor for sympathy, like a child’s? Why could she be so
easily and so cruelly wounded? It was weak. It was contemptible. She
hated herself. But she could only be the thing she at that moment hated.
Her surreptitious act of the afternoon seemed to have altered her
irrevocably, to have twisted her out of shape--yet she could not wish it
undone, the knowledge gained by it withheld. She had needed to know what
Emile knew, and chance had led her to learn it, as she had learned it,
with her eyes instead of from the lips of her child.
She wondered what Vere would have said if she had been asked to reveal
the secret. She would never know that now. But there were other things
that she felt she must know: why Vere had never told her--and something
else.
Her act of that day had twisted her out of shape. She was awry, and she
felt that she must continue to be as she was, that her fearless honesty
was no longer needed by her, could no longer rightly serve her in the
new circumstances that others had created for her. They had been secret.
She could not be open. She was constrained to watch, to conceal--to be
awry, in fact.
Yet she felt guilty even while she said this to herself, guilty and
ashamed, and then doubtful. She doubted her new capacity to be furtive.
She could watch, but she did not know whether she could watch without
showing what she was doing. And Emile was terribly observant.
This thought, of his subtlety and her desire to conceal, made her
suddenly realize their altered relations with a vividness that
frightened her. Where was the beautiful friendship that had been the
comfort, the prop of her bereaved life? It seemed already to have sunk
away into the past. She wondered what was in store for her, if there
were new sorrows being forged for her in the cruel smithy of the great
Ruler, sorrows that would hang like chains about her till she could go
no farther. The Egyptian had said: “What is to come will come, and what
is to go will go, at the time appointed.” And Vere had said she felt
as if perhaps there was a cross that must be borne by some one on the
island, by “one of us.” Was she, Hermione, picked out to bear that
cross? Surely God mistook the measure of her strength. If He had He
would soon know how feeble she was. When Maurice had died, somehow she
had endured it. She had staggered under the weight laid upon her,
but she had upheld it. But now she was much older, and she felt as if
suffering, instead of strengthening, had weakened her character, as if
she had not much “fight” left in her.
“I don’t believe I could endure another great sorrow,” she said to
herself. “I’m sure I couldn’t.”
Just then Vere came in to bid her good-night.
“Good-night, Vere,” Hermione said.
She kissed the girl gently on the forehead, and the touch of the cool
skin suddenly made her long to sob, and to say many things. She took her
lips away.
“Emile has been here,” she said.
“Monsieur Emile!”
Vere looked round.
“But--”
“He has gone.”
“Gone! But I haven’t seen him!”
Her voice seemed thoroughly surprised.
“He only stayed five minutes or so.”
“Oh, Madre, I wish I had known!”
There was a touch of reproach in Vere’s tone, and there was something
so transparently natural, so transparently innocent and girlish in her
disappointment, that it told her mother something she was glad to know.
Not that she had doubted it--but she was glad to know.
“We came to look for you.”
“Well, but I was only on the cliff, where I always go. I was there
having a little talk with Ruffo.”
“I know.”
“And you never called me, Madre!” Vere looked openly hurt. “Why didn’t
you?”
In truth, Hermione hardly knew. Surely it had been Emile who had led
them away from the singing voice of Ruffo.
“Ruffo was singing.”
“A song about Mergellina. Did you hear it? I do like it and the way he
sings it.”
The annoyance had gone from her face at the thought of the song.
“And when he sings he looks so careless and gay. Did you listen?”
“Yes, for a moment, and then we went away. I think it was Emile who made
us go. He didn’t want to disturb you, I think.”
“I understand.”
Vere’s face softened. Again Hermione felt a creeping jealousy at her
heart. Vere had surely been annoyed with her, but now she knew that it
was Emile who had not wished to disturb the _tete-a-tete_ on the cliff
she did not mind. She even looked as if she were almost touched. Could
the mother be wrong where the mere friend was right? She felt, when Vere
spoke and her expression changed, the secret understanding from which
she was excluded.
“What is the matter, Madre?”
“The matter! Nothing. Why?”
“You looked so odd for a minute. I thought--”
But she did not express what she had thought, for Hermione interrupted
her by saying:
“We must get Emile to come for a long day. I wish you would write him
a note to-morrow morning, Vere. Write for me and ask him to come on
Thursday. I have a lot to do in the morning. Will you save me the
trouble?” She tried to speak, carelessly. “I’ve a long letter to send to
Evelyn Townley,” she added.
“Of course, Madre. And I’ll tell Monsieur Emile all I think of him for
neglecting us as he has. Ah! But I remember; he’s been working.”
“Yes, he’s been working; and one must forgive everything to the worker,
mustn’t one?”
“To such a worker as Monsieur Emile is, yes. I do wish you’d let me read
his books, Madre.”
For a moment Hermione hesitated, looking at her child.
“Why are you so anxious to read them all of a sudden?” she asked.
“Well, I’m growing up and--and I understand things I used not to
understand.”
Her eyes fell for a moment before her mother’s, and there was a silence,
in which the mother felt some truth withheld. Vere looked up again.
“And I want to appreciate Monsieur Emile properly--as you do, Madre. It
seems almost ridiculous to know him so well, and not to know him really
at all.”
“But you do know him really.”
“I’m sure he puts most of his real self into his work.”
Hermione remembered her conception of Emile Artois long ago, when she
only knew him through two books; that she had believed him to be cruel,
that she had thought her nature must be in opposition to his. Vere did
not know that side of “Monsieur Emile.”
“Vere, it is true you are growing up,” she said, speaking rather slowly,
as if to give herself time for something. “Perhaps I was wrong the other
day in what I said. You may read Emile’s books if you like.”
“Madre!”
Vere’s face flushed with eager pleasure.
“Thank you, Madre!”
She went up to bed radiant.
When she had gone Hermione stood where she was. She had just done a
thing that was mean, or at least she had done a thing from a mean, a
despicable motive. She knew it as the door shut behind her child, and
she was frightened of herself. Never before had she been governed by
so contemptible a feeling as that which had just prompted her. If Emile
ever knew, or even suspected what it was, she felt that she could never
look into his face again with clear, unfaltering eyes. What madness was
upon her? What change was working within her? Repulsion came, and with
it the desire to combat at once, strongly, the new, the hateful self
which had frightened her.
She hastened after Vere, and in a moment was knocking at the child’s
door.
“Who’s there? Who is it?”
“Vere!” called the mother.
As she called she tried the door, and found it locked.
“Madre! It’s you!”
“Yes. May I come in?”
“One tiny moment.”
The voice within sounded surely a little startled and uneven, certainly
not welcoming. There was a pause. Hermione heard the rustling of paper,
then a drawer shut sharply.
Vere was hiding away her poems!
When Hermione understood that she felt the strong, good impulse suddenly
shrivel within her, and a bitter jealousy take its place. Vere came to
the door and opened it.
“Oh, come in, Madre! What is it?” she asked.
In her bright eyes there was the look of one unexpectedly disturbed.
Hermione glanced quickly at the writing-table.
“You--you weren’t writing my note to Monsieur Emile?” she said.
She stepped into the room. She wished she could force Vere to tell
her about the poems, but without asking. She felt as if she could not
continue in her present condition, excluded from Vere’s confidence. Yet
she knew now that she could never plead for it.
“No, Madre. I can do it to-morrow.”
Vere looked and sounded surprised, and the mother felt more than ever
like an intruder. Yet something dogged kept her there.
“Are you tired, Vere?” she asked.
“Not a bit.”
“Then let us have a little talk.”
“Of course.”
Vere shut the door. Hermione knew by the way she shut it that she wanted
to be alone, to go on with her secret occupation. She came back slowly
to her mother, who was sitting on a chair by the bedside. Hermione took
her hand, and Vere pushed up the edge of the mosquito-curtain and sat
down on the bed.
“About those books of Emile’s--” Hermione began.
“Oh, Madre, you’re not going to--But you’ve promised!”
“Yes.”
“Then I may?”
“Why should you wish to read such books? They will probably make you
sad, and--and they may even make you afraid of Emile.”
“Afraid! Why?”
“I remember long ago, before I knew him, I had a very wrong conception
of him, gained from his books.”
“Oh, but I know him beforehand. That makes all the difference.”
“A man like Emile has many sides.”
“I think we all have, Madre. Don’t you?”
Vere looked straight at her mother. Hermione felt that a moment had
come in which, perhaps, she could force the telling of that truth which
already she knew.
“I suppose so, Vere; but we need not surely keep any side hidden from
those we love, those who are nearest to us.”
Vere looked a little doubtful--even, for a moment, slightly confused.
“N--o?” she said.
She seemed to consider something. Then she added:
“But I think it depends. If something in us might give pain to any one
we love, I think we ought to try to hide that. I am sure we ought.”
Hermione felt that each of them was thinking of the same thing, even
speaking of it without mentioning it. But whereas she knew that Vere
was doing so, Vere could not know that she was. So Vere was at a
disadvantage. Vere’s last words had opened the mother’s eyes. What she
had guessed was true. This secret of the poems was kept from her because
of her own attempt to create and its failure. Abruptly she wondered if
Vere and Emile had ever talked that failure over. At the mere thought of
such a conversation her whole body tingled. She got up from her chair.
“Well, good-night, Vere,” she said.
And she left the room, leaving her child amazed.
Vere did not understand why her mother had come, nor why, having come,
she abruptly went away. There was something the matter with her mother.
She had felt that for some time. She was more conscious than ever of it
now. Around her mother there was an atmosphere of uneasiness in which
she felt herself involved. And she was vaguely conscious of the new
distance between them, a distance daily growing wider. Now and then,
lately, she had felt almost uncomfortable with her mother, in the
sitting-room when she was saying good-night, and just now when she sat
on the bed. Youth is terribly quick to feel hostility, however subtle.
The thought that her mother could be hostile to her had never
entered Vere’s head. Nevertheless, the mother’s faint and creeping
hostility--for at times Hermione’s feeling was really that, thought she
would doubtless have denied it even to herself--disagreeably affected
the child.
“What can be the matter with Madre?” she thought.
She went over to the writing-table, where she had hastily shut up her
poems on hearing the knock at the door, but she did not take them out
again. Instead she sat down and wrote the note to Monsieur Emile. As
she wrote the sense of mystery, of uneasiness, departed from her, chased
away, perhaps, by the memory of Monsieur Emile’s kindness to her and
warm encouragement, by the thought of having a long talk with him again,
of showing him certain corrections and developments carried out by her
since she had seen him. The sympathy of the big man meant a great deal
to her, more even than he was aware of. It lifted up her eager young
heart. It sent the blood coursing through her veins with a new and
ardent strength. Hermione’s enthusiasm had been inherited by Vere, and
with it something else that gave it a peculiar vitality, a power of
lasting--the secret consciousness of talent.
Now, as she wrote her letter, she forgot all her uneasiness, and her pen
flew.
At last she sighed her name--“Vere.”
She was just going to put the letter into its envelope when something
struck her, and she paused. The she added:
“P.S.--Just now Madre gave me leave to read your books.”