Artois stayed to dine. The falling of night deepened Hermione’s
impression of the gulf which was now between them, and which she was
sure he knew of. When darkness comes to intimacy it seems to make that
intimacy more perfect. Now surely it caused reserve, restraint, to be
more complete. The two secrets which Hermione now knew, but which were
still cherished as secrets by Vere and Artois, stood up between the
mother and her child and friend, inexorably dividing them.
Hermione was strung up to a sort of nervous strength that was full of
determination. She had herself in hand, like a woman of the world who
faces society with the resolution to deceive it. While Vere and Artois
had been out in the boat she had schooled herself. She felt more
competent to be the watcher of events. She even felt calmer, for
knowledge increased almost always brings an undercurrent of increased
tranquility, because of the sense of greater power that it produces in
the mind. She looked better. She talked more easily.
When dinner was over they went as usual to the garden, and when
they were there Hermione referred to the projected meeting with the
Marchesino.
“I made a promise,” she said. “I must keep it.”
“Of course,” said Artois. “But it seems to me that I am always being
entertained, and that I am inhospitable--I do nothing in return. I have
a proposal to make. Monday will be the sixteenth of July, the festa
of the Madonna del Carmine--Santa Maria del Carmine. It is one of the
prettiest of the year, they tell me. Why should not you and Vere come
to dine at the Hotel, or in the Galleria, with me? I will ask Panacci to
join us, and we will all go on afterwards to see the illuminations,
and the fireworks, and the sending up of the fire-balloons. What do you
say?”
“Would you like it, Vere?”
“Immensely, Madre.”
She spoke quietly, but she looked pleased at the idea.
“Won’t the crowd be very bad, though?” asked Hermione.
“I’ll get tickets for the enclosure in the Piazza. We shall have seats
there. And you can bring Gaspare, if you like. Then you will have three
cavaliers.”
“Yes, I should like Gaspare to come,” said Hermione.
There was a sound of warmth in her hitherto rather cold voice when she
said that.
“How you rely on Gaspare!” Artois said, almost as if with a momentary
touch of vexation.
“Indeed I do,” Hermione answered.
Their eyes met, surely almost with hostility.
“Madre knows how Gaspare adores her,” said Vere, gently. “If there were
any danger he’d never hesitate. He’d save Madre if he left every other
human being in the world to perish miserably--including me.”
“Vere!”
“You know quite well he would, Madre.”
They talked a little more. Presently Vere seemed to be feeling restless.
Artois noticed it, and watched her. Once or twice she got up, without
apparent reason. She pulled at the branches of the fig-trees. She
gathered a flower. She moved away, and leaned upon the wall. Finally,
when her mother and Artois had fallen into conversation about some new
book, she slipped very quietly away.
Hermione and Artois continued their conversation, though without much
animation. At length, however, some remark of Hermione led Artois to
speak of the book he was writing. Very often and very openly in the days
gone by she had discussed with him his work. Now, feeling the barrier
between them, he fancied that perhaps it might be removed more easily
by such another discussion. And this notion of his was not any proof of
want of subtlety on his part. Without knowing why, Hermione felt a
lack of self-confidence, a distressing, an almost unnatural humbleness
to-day. He partially divined the feeling. Possibly it sprang from their
difference of opinion on the propriety of Vere’s reading his books. He
thought it might be so. And he wanted to oust Hermione gently from her
low stool and to show her himself seated there. Filled with this idea,
he began to ask her advice about the task upon which he was engaged. He
explained the progress he had made during the days when he was absent
from the island and shut perpetually in his room. She listened in
perfect silence.
They were sitting near each other, but not close together, for Vere had
been between them. It was dark under the fig-trees. They could see each
other’s faces, but not quite clearly. There was a small breeze which
made the trees move, and the leaves rustled faintly now and then, making
a tiny noise which joined the furtive noise of the sea, not far below
them.
Artois talked on. As his thoughts became more concentrated upon the book
he grew warmer. Having always had Hermione’s eager, even enthusiastic
sympathy and encouragement in his work, he believed himself to have them
now. And in his manner, in his tone, even sometimes in his choice of
words, he plainly showed that he assumed them. But presently, glancing
across at Hermione, he was surprised by the expression on her face.
It seemed to him as if a face of stone had suddenly looked bitterly
satirical. He was so astonished that the words stopped upon his lips.
“Go on, Emile,” she said, “I am listening.”
The expression which had startled him was gone. Had it ever been?
Perhaps he had been deceived by the darkness. Perhaps the moving leaves
had thrown their little shadows across her features. He said to himself
that it must be so--that his friend, Hermione, could never have looked
like that. Yet he was chilled. And he remembered her passing by in the
tram at Posilipo, and how he had stood for a moment and watched her, and
seen upon her face a furtive look that he had never seen there before,
and that had seemed to contradict her whole nature as he knew it.
Did he know it?
Never before had he asked himself this question. He asked it now. Was
there living in Hermione some one whom he did not know, with whom he had
had no dealings, had exchanged no thoughts, had spoken no words?
“Go on, Emile,” she said again.
But he did not. For once his brain was clouded, and he felt confused. He
had completely lost the thread of his thoughts.
“I can’t,” he said, abruptly.
“Why not?”
“I’ve forgotten. I’ve not thoroughly worked the thing out. Another time.
Besides--besides, I’m sure I bore you with my eternal talk about my
work. You’ve been such a kind, such a sympathetic friend and encourager
that--”
He broke off, thinking of that face. Was it possible that through
all these years Hermione had been playing a part with him, had been
pretending to admire his talent, to care for what he was doing, when
really she had been bored by it? Had the whole thing been a weariness to
her, endured perhaps because she liked him as a man? The thought cut him
to the very quick, seared his self-respect, struck a blow at his pride
which made it quiver, and struck surely also a blow at something else.
His life during all these years--what would it have been without
Hermione’s friendship? Was he to learn that now?
He looked at her. Now her face was almost as usual, only less animated
than he had seen it.
“Your work could never bore me. You know it,” she said.
The real Hermione sounded in her voice when she said that, for
the eternal woman deep down in her had heard the sound almost of
helplessness in his voice, had felt the leaning of his nature, strong
though it was, on her, and had responded instantly, inevitably, almost
passionately. But then came the thought of his secret intercourse with
Vere. She saw in the dark words: “Monsieur Emile’s idea.” “Monsieur
Emile’s suggestion.” She remembered how Artois had told her that she
could never be an artist. And again the intensely bitter feeling of
satire, that had set in her face the expression which had startled him,
returned, twisting, warping her whole nature.
“I am to encourage you--you who have told me that I can do nothing!”
That was what she had been feeling. And, as by a search-light, she had
seen surely for a moment the whole great and undying selfishness of man,
exactly as it was. And she had seen surely, also, the ministering world
of women gathered round about it, feeding it, lest it should fail and be
no more. And she had seen herself among them!
“Where can Vere have gone to?” he said.
There had been a pause. Neither knew how long it had lasted.
“I should not wonder if she is on the cliff,” said Hermione. “She often
goes there at this hour. She goes to meet Ruffo.”
The name switched the mind of Artois on to a new and profoundly
interesting train of thought.
“Ruffo,” he began slowly. “And you think it wise--?”
He stopped. To-night he no longer dared frankly to speak his mind to
Hermione.
“I was at Mergellina the other day,” he said. “And I saw Ruffo with his
mother.”
“Did you. What is she like?”
“Oh, like many middle-aged women of the South, rather broad and
battered-looking, and probably much older in appearance than in years.”
“Poor woman! She has been through a great deal.”
Her voice was quite genuine now. And Artois said to himself that the
faint suspicion he had had was ill-founded.
“Do you know anything about her?”
“Oh yes. I had a talk with Ruffo the other night. And he told me several
things.”
Each time Hermione mentioned Ruffo’s name it seemed to Artois that her
voice softened, almost that she gave the word a caress. He longed to ask
her something, but he was afraid to.
He would try not to interfere with Fate. But he would not hasten its
coming--if it were coming. And he knew nothing. Perhaps the anxious
suspicion which had taken up its abode in his mind, and which,
without definite reason, seemed gradually changing into conviction
was erroneous. Perhaps some day he would laugh at himself, and say to
himself, “I was mad to dream of such a thing.”
“Those women often have a bad time,” he said.
“Few women do not, I sometimes think.”
He said nothing, and she went on rather hastily, as if wishing to cover
her last words.
“Ruffo told me something that I did not know about Peppina. His
step-father was the man who cut that cross on Peppina’s face.”
“Perdio!” said Artois.
He used the Italian exclamation at that moment quite naturally. Suddenly
he wished more than ever before that Hermione had not taken Peppina to
live on the island.
“Hermione,” he said, “I wish you had not Peppina here.”
“Still because of Vere?” she said.
And now she was looking at him steadily.
“I feel that she comes from another world, that she had better keep away
from yours. I feel as if misfortune attended her.”
“It is odd. Even the servants say she has the evil eye. But, if she has,
it is too late now. Peppina has looked upon us all.”
“Perhaps that old Eastern was right.” Artois could not help saying it.
“Perhaps all that is to be is ordained long beforehand. Do you think
that, Hermione?”
“I have sometimes thought it, when I have been depressed. I have
sometimes said to myself, ‘E il destino!’”
She remembered at that moment her feeling on the day when she returned
from the expedition with Vere to Capri--that perhaps she had returned
to the island to confront some grievous fate. Had Artois such a thought,
such a prevision? Suddenly she felt frightened, like a child when, at
night, it passes the open door of a room that is dark.
She moved and got up from her chair. Like the child, when it rushes on
and away, she felt in her panic the necessity of physical activity.
Artois followed her example. He was glad to move.
“Shall we go and see what Vere is doing?” he said.
“If you like. I feel sure she is with Ruffo.”
They went towards the house. Artois felt a deep curiosity, which filled
his whole being, to know what Hermione’s exact feeling towards Ruffo
was.
“Don’t you think,” he said, “that perhaps it is a little dangerous to
allow Vere to be so much with a boy from Mergellina?”
“Oh no.”
In her tone there was the calm of absolute certainty.
“Well, but we don’t know so very much about him.”
“Do you think two instincts could be at fault?”
“Two instincts?”
“Vere’s and mine?”
“Perhaps not. Then your instinct--”
He waited. He was passionately interested.
“Ruffo is all right,” Hermione answered.
It seemed to him as if she had deliberately used that bluff expression
to punish his almost mystical curiosity. Was she warding him off
consciously?
They passed through the house and came out on its further side, but they
did not go immediately to the cliff top. Both of them felt certain the
two children must be there, and both of them, perhaps, were held
back for a moment by a mutual desire not to disturb their innocent
confidences. They stood upon the bridge, therefore, looking down into
the dimness of the Pool. From the water silence seemed to float up to
them, almost visibly, like a lovely, delicate mist--silence, and the
tenderness of night, embracing their distresses.
The satire died out of Hermione’s poor, tormented heart. And Artois
for a moment forgot the terrible face half seen in the darkness of the
trees.
“There is the boat. He is here.”
Hermione spoke in a low voice, pointing to the shadowy form of a boat
upon the Pool.
“Yes.”
Artois gazed at the boat. Was it indeed a Fate that came by night to the
island softly across the sea, ferried by the ignorant hands of men?
He longed to know. And Hermione longed to know something, too: whether
Artois had ever seen the strange likeness she had seen, whether Maurice
had ever seemed to gaze for a moment at him out of the eyes of Ruffo.
But to-night she could not ask him that. They were too far away from
each other. And because of the gulf between them her memory had suddenly
become far more sacred, far more necessary to her even, than it had been
before.
It had been a solace, a beautiful solace. But now it was much more than
that--now it was surely her salvation.
As she felt that, a deep longing filled her heart to look again on
Ruffo’s face, to search again for the expression that sent back the
years. But she wished to do that without witnesses, to be alone with
the boy, as she had been alone with him that night upon the bridge. And
suddenly she was impatient of Vere’s intercourse with him. Vere could
not know what the tender look meant, if it came. For she had never seen
her father’s face.
“Let us go to the cliff,” Hermione said, moved by this new feeling of
impatience.
She meant to interrupt the children, to get rid of Vere and Emile, and
have Ruffo to herself for a moment. Just then she felt as if he were
nearer, far nearer, to her than they were: they who kept things from
her, who spoke of her secretly, pitying her.
And again that evening she came into acute antagonism with her friend.
For the instinct was still alive in him not to interrupt the children.
The strange suspicion that had been born and had lived within him,
gathered strength, caused him to feel almost as if they might be upon
holy ground, those two so full of youth, who talked together in the
night; as if they knew mysteriously things that were hidden from their
elders, from those wiser, yet far less full of the wisdom that is
eternal, the wisdom in instinct, than themselves. There is always
something sacred about children. And he had never lost the sense of it
amid the dust of his worldly knowledge. But about these children, about
them or within them, there floated, perhaps, something that was mystic,
something that was awful and must not be disturbed. Hermione did not
feel it. How could she? He himself had withheld from her for many years
the only knowledge that could have made her share his present feeling.
He could tell her nothing. Yet he could not conceal his intense
reluctance to go to that seat upon the cliff.
“But it’s delicious here. I love the Pool at night, don’t you? Look at
the Saint’s light, how quietly it shines!”
She took her hands from the rail. His attempt at detention irritated her
whole being. She looked at the light. On the night of the storm she
had felt as if it shone exclusively for her. That feeling was dead. San
Francesco watched, perhaps, over the fishermen. He did not watch over
her.
And yet that night she, too, had made the sign of the cross when she
knew that the light was shining.
She did not answer Artois’ remark, and he continued, always for the
children’s sake, and for the sake of what he seemed to divine secretly
at work in them:
“This Pool is a place apart, I think. The Saint has given his
benediction to it.”
He was speaking at random to keep Hermione there. And yet his words
seemed chosen by some one for him to say.
“Surely good must come to the island over that waterway.”
“You think so?”
Her stress upon the pronoun made him reply:
“Hermione, you do not think me the typical Frenchman of this century,
who furiously denies over a glass of absinthe the existence of the
Creator of the world?”
“No. But I scarcely thought you believed in the efficacy of a plaster
Saint.”
“Not of the plaster--no. But don’t you think it possible that truth,
emanating from certain regions and affecting the souls of men, might
move them unconsciously to embody it in symbol? What if this Pool were
blessed, and men, feeling that it was blessed, put San Francesco here
with his visible benediction?”
He said to himself that he was playing with his imagination, as
sometimes he played with words, half-sensuously and half-aesthetically;
yet he felt to-night as if within him there was something that might
believe far more than he had ever suspected it would be possible for him
to believe.
And that, too, seemed to have come to him from the hidden children who
were so near.
“I don’t feel at all as if the Pool were blessed,” said Hermione. She
sighed.
“Let us go to the cliff,” she said, again, this time with a strong
impatience.
He could not, of course, resist her desire, so they moved away, and
mounted to the summit of the island.
The children were there. They could just see them in the darkness, Vere
seated upon the wooden bench, Ruffo standing beside her. Their forms
looked like shadows, but from the shadows voices came.
When he saw them, Artois stood still. Hermione was going on. He put his
hand upon her arm to stop her. She sent an almost sharp inquiry to him
with her eyes.
“Don’t you think,” he said--“don’t you think it is a pity to disturb
them?”
“Why?”
“They seem so happy together.”
He glanced at her for sympathy, but she gave him none.
“Am I to have nothing?” she thought. And a passion of secret anger woke
up in her. “Am I to have nothing at all? May I not even speak to this
boy, in whom I have seen Maurice for a moment--because if I do I may
disturb some childish gossip?”
Her eyes gave to Artois a fierce rebuke.
“I beg your pardon, Hermione,” he said, hastily. “Of course if you
really want to talk to Ruffo--”
“I don’t think Vere will mind,” she said.
Her lips were actually trembling, but her voice was calm.
They walked forward.
When they were close to the children they both saw there was a third
figure on the cliff. Gaspare was at a little distance. Hermione could
see the red point of his cigarette gleaming.
“Gaspare’s there, too,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why is he there?” Artois thought.
And again there woke up in him an intense curiosity about Gaspare.
Ruffo had seen them, and now he took off his cap. And Vere turned her
head and got up from the seat.
Neither the girl nor the boy gave any explanation of their being
together. Evidently they did not think it necessary to do so. Hermione
was the first to speak.
“Good-evening, Ruffo,” she said.
Artois noticed a peculiar kindness and gentleness in her voice when she
spoke to the boy, a sound apart, that surely did not come into her voice
even when it spoke to Vere.
“Good-evening, Signora.” He stood with his cap in his hand. “I have been
telling the Signorina what you have done for my poor mamma, Signora.
I did not tell her before because I thought she knew. But she did not
know.”
Vere was looking at her mother with a shining of affection in her eyes.
At this moment Gaspare came up slowly, with a careless walk.
Artois watched him.
“About the little money, you mean?” said Hermione, rather hastily.
“Si, Signora. When I gave it to my poor mamma she cried again. But that
was because you were so kind. And she said to me, ‘Ruffo, why should
a strange lady be so kind to me? Why should a strange lady think about
me?’ she said. ‘Ruffino,’ she said, ‘it must be Santa Maddalena who has
sent her here to be good to me.’ My poor mamma!”
“The Signora does not want to be bothered with all this!” It was Gaspare
who had spoken, roughly, and who now pushed in between Ruffo and those
who were listening to his simple narrative.
Ruffo looked surprised, but submissive. Evidently he respected Gaspare,
and the two understood each other. And though Gaspare’s words were
harsh, his eyes, as they looked at Ruffo, seemed to contradict them.
Nevertheless, there was excitement, a strung-up look in his face.
“Gaspare!” said Vere.
Her eyes shot fire.
“Signorina?”
“Madre does like to hear what Ruffo has to say. Don’t you, Madre?”
Gaspare looked unmoved. His whole face was full of a dogged obstinacy.
Yet he did not forget himself. There was nothing rude in his manner as
he said, before Hermione could reply:
“Signorina, the Signora does not know Ruffo’s mother, so such things
cannot interest her. Is it not so, Signora?”
Hermione was still governed by the desire to be alone for a little while
with Ruffo, and the sensation of intense reserve--a reserve that seemed
even partially physical--that she felt towards Artois made her dislike
Ruffo’s public exhibition of a gratitude that, expressed in private,
would have been sweet to her. Instead, therefore, of agreeing with Vere,
she said, in rather an off-hand way:
“It’s all right, Ruffo. Thank you very much. But we must not keep Don
Emilio listening to my supposed good deeds forever. So that’s enough.”
Vere reddened. Evidently she felt snubbed. She said nothing, but she
shot a glance of eager sympathy at Ruffo, who stood very simply looking
at Hermione with a sort of manly deference, as if all that she said, or
wished, must certainly be right. Then she moved quietly away, pressing
her lips rather firmly together, and went slowly towards the house.
After a moment’s hesitation, Artois followed her. Hermione remained by
Ruffo, and Gaspare stayed doggedly with his Padrona.
Hermione wished he would go. She could not understand his exact feeling
about the fisher-boy’s odd little intimacy with them. Her instinct told
her that secretly he was fond of Ruffo. Yet sometimes he seemed to be
hostile to him, to be suspicious of him, as of some one who might do
them harm. Or, perhaps, he felt it his duty to be on guard against all
strangers who approached them. She knew well his fixed belief that she
and Vere depended entirely on him, felt always perfectly safe when he
was near. And she liked to have him near--but not just at this moment.
Yet she did not feel that she could ask him to go.
“Thank you very much for your gratitude, Ruffo,” she said. “You mustn’t
think--”
She glanced at Gaspare.
“I didn’t want to stop you,” she continued, trying to steer an even
course. “But it’s a very little thing. I hope your mother is getting on
pretty well. She must have courage.”
As she said the last sentence she thought it came that night oddly from
her lips.
Gaspare moved as if he felt impatient, and suddenly Hermione knew
an anger akin to Vere’s, an anger she had scarcely ever felt against
Gaspare.
She did not show it at first, but went on with a sort of forced calmness
and deliberation, a touch even perhaps of obstinacy that was meant for
Gaspare.
“I am interested in your mother, you know, although I have not seen her.
Tell me how she is.”
Gaspare opened his lips to speak, but something held him silent; and
as he listened to Ruffo’s carefully detailed reply, delivered with the
perfect naturalness of one sure of the genuine interest taken in his
concerns by his auditors, his large eyes travelled from the face of the
boy to the face of his Padrona with a deep and restless curiosity. He
seemed to inquire something of Ruffo, something of Hermione, and then,
at the last, surely something of himself. But when Ruffo had finished,
he said, brusquely:
“Signora, it is getting very late. Will not Don Emilio be going? He will
want to say good-night, and I must help him with the boat.”
“Run and see if Don Emilio is in a hurry, Gaspare. If he is I’ll come.”
Gaspare looked at her, hesitating.
“What’s the matter?” she exclaimed, her secret irritation suddenly
getting the upper hand in her nature. “Are you afraid that Ruffo will
hurt me?”
“No, Signora.”
As Vere had reddened, he reddened, and he looked with deep reproach
at his Padrona. That look went to Hermione’s heart; she thought, “Am I
going to quarrel with the one true and absolutely loyal friend I have?”
She remembered Vere’s words in the garden about Gaspare’s devotion to
her, a devotion which she felt like a warmth round about her life.
“I’ll come with you, Gaspare,” she said, with a revulsion of feeling.
“Good-night, Ruffo.”
“Good-night, Signora.”
“Perhaps we shall see you to-morrow.”
She was just going to turn away when Ruffo bent down to kiss her hand.
Since she had given charity to his mother it was evident that his
feeling for her had changed. The Sicilian in him rose up to honor her
like a Padrona.
“Signora,” he said, letting go her hand. “Benedicite e buon riposo.”
He was being a little whimsical, was showing to her and to Gaspare that
he knew how to be a Sicilian. And now he looked from one to the other to
see how they took his salutation; looked gently, confidentially, with a
smile dawning in his eyes under the deference and the boyish affection
and gratitude.
And again it seemed to Hermione for a moment that Maurice stood there
before her in the night. Her impulse was to catch Gaspare’s arm, to say
to him, “Look! Don’t you see your Padrone?”
She did not do this, but she did turn impulsively to Gaspare. And as
she turned she saw tears start into his eyes. The blood rushed to his
temples, his forehead. He put up his hand to his face.
“Signora,” he said, “are you not coming?”
He cleared his throat violently. “I have taken a cold,” he muttered.
He caught hold of his throat with his left hand, and again cleared his
throat.
“Madre di Dio!”
He spoke very roughly.
But his roughness did not hurt Hermione; for suddenly she felt far less
lonely and deserted. Gaspare had seen what she had seen--she knew it.
As they went back to the house it seemed to her that she and Gaspare
talked together.
And yet they spoke no words.