When the Marchesino received the invitation of Artois to dine with him
and the ladies from the island on the night of the Festa of the Madonna
del Carmine he was again ill in bed with fever. But nevertheless he
returned an immediate acceptance. Then he called in the family doctor,
and violently demanded to be made well, “perfectly well,” by the evening
of the sixteenth. The doctor, who guessed at once that some amorous
adventure was on foot, promised to do his best, and so ingeniously plied
his patient with drugs and potions that on the sixteenth Doro was out
of bed, and busily doing gymnastics to test his strength for the coming
campaign.
Artois’ invitation had surprised him. He had lost all faith in his
friend, and at first almost suspected an ambush. Emilio had not invited
him out of love--that was certain. But perhaps the ladies of the island
had desired his presence, his escort. He was a Neapolitan. He knew the
ways of the city. That was probably the truth. They wanted him, and
Emilio had been obliged to ask him.
He saw his opportunity. His fever, coming at such a time, had almost
maddened him, and during the days of forced inaction the Panacci temper
had been vigorously displayed in the home circle. As he lay in bed his
imagination ran riot. The day and the night were filled with thoughts
and dreams of Vere. And always Emilio was near her, presiding over her
doings with a false imitation of the paternal manner.
But now at the last the Marchesino saw his opportunity to strike a blow
at Emilio. Every year of his life since he was a child he had been to
the festa in honor of the Madonna del Carmine. He knew the crowd that
assembled under the prison walls and beneath Nuvolo’s tall belfry, the
crowds that overflowed into the gaunt Square of the Mercato and streamed
down the avenues of fire into the narrow side streets. In those crowds
it would be easy to get lost. Emilio, when he heard his friend’s voice
singing, had hidden with the Signorina in the darkness of a cave. He
might be alone with the Signorina when he would. The English ladies
trusted his white hairs. Or the English ladies did not care for the
_convenances_. Since he had found Peppina in the Casa del Mare, the
Marchesino did not know what to think of its Padrona. And now he was
too reckless to care. He only knew that he was in love, and that
circumstances so far had fought against him. He only knew that he had
been tricked, and that he meant to trick Emilio in return. His anxiety
to revenge himself on Emilio was quite as keen as his desire to be alone
with Vere. The natural devilry of his temperament, a boy’s devilry, not
really wicked, but compounded of sensuality, vanity, the passion for
conquest, and the determination to hold his own against other males and
to shine in his world’s esteem, was augmented by the abstinence from his
usual life. The few days in the house seemed to him a lifetime already
wasted. He meant to make up for it, and he did not care at whose
expense, so long as some of the debt was paid by Emilio.
On the sixteenth he issued forth into life again in a mood that was
dangerous. The fever that had abandoned his body was raging in his
mind. He was in the temper which had governed his papa on the day of the
slapping of Signora Merani’s face in the Chiaia.
The Marchesino always thought a great deal about his personal
appearance, but his toilet on the night of the sixteenth was unusually
prolonged. On several matters connected with it he was undecided. Should
he wear a waistcoat of white pique or one of black silk? Should he put
on a white tie, or a black? And what about rings?
He loved jewelry, as do most Neapolitans, both male and female, and had
quantities of gaudy rings, studs, sleeve links, and waistcoat buttons.
In his present mood he was inclined to adorn himself with as many of
them as possible. But he was not sure whether the English liked diamonds
and rubies on a man. He hesitated long, made many changes, and looked
many times in the glass. At last he decided on a black tie, a white
waistcoat with pearl buttons, a pearl shirt-stud surrounded with
diamonds, pearl and diamond sleeve-links, and only three rings--a gold
snake, a seal ring, and a ring set with turquoises. This was a modest
toilet, suited, surely to the taste to the English, which he remembered
to have heard of as sober.
He stood long before the mirror when he was ready, and had poured over
his handkerchief a libation of “Rose d’amour.”
Certainly he was a fine-looking fellow--his natural sincerity obliged
him to acknowledge it. Possibly his nose stuck out too much to balance
perfectly the low forehead and the rather square chin. Possibly his
cheek-bones were too prominent. But what of that? Women always looked
at a man’s figure, his eyes, his teeth, his mustaches. And he had a
splendid figure, enormous gray eyes, large and perfectly even white
teeth between lips that were very full and very red, and blond mustaches
whose turned-up points were like a cry of victory.
He drew himself up from the hips, enlarged his eyes by opening them
exaggeratedly, stretched his lips till his teeth were well exposed, and
vehemently twisted the ends of his mustaches.
Yes, he was a very handsome fellow, and boyish-looking, too--but not too
boyish.
It really was absurd of Emilio to think of cutting him out with a
girl--Emilio, an old man, all beard and brains! As if any living woman
really cared for brains! Impertinence, gayety, agility, muscle--that was
what women loved in men. And he had all they wanted.
He filled his case with cigarettes, slipped on a very smart fawn-colored
coat, cocked a small-brimmed black bowler hat over his left ear, picked
up a pair of white gloves and a cane surmounted by a bunch of golden
grapes, and hurried down-stairs, humming “Lili Kangy,” the “canzonetta
birichina” that was then the rage in Naples.
The dinner was to be at the Hotel des Etrangers. On consideration,
Artois had decided against the Galleria. He had thought of those who
wander there, of Peppina’s aunt, of certain others. And then he had
thought of Vere. And his decision was quickly taken. When the Marchesino
arrived, Artois was alone in his sitting-room. The two men looked into
each other’s eyes as they met, and Artois saw at once that Doro was in
a state of suppressed excitement and not in a gentle mood. Although Doro
generally seemed full of good-humor, and readiness to please and to be
pleased, he could look very cruel. And when, in rare moments, he did so,
his face seemed almost to change its shape: the cheek-bones to become
more salient, the nose sharper, the eyes catlike, the large but
well-shaped mouth venomous instead of passionate. He looked older and
also commoner directly his insouciance departed from him, and one could
divine a great deal of primitive savagery beneath his lively grace and
boyish charm.
But to-night, directly he spoke to Artois, his natural humor seemed to
return. He explained his illness, which accounted for his not having
come as usual to see his friend, and drew a humorous picture of a
Panacci in a bed surrounded by terror-stricken nurses.
“And you, Emilio, what have you been doing?” he concluded.
“Working,” said Artois.
He pointed to the writing-table, on which lay a pile of manuscript.
The Marchesino glanced at it carelessly, but the two vertical lines
suddenly appeared in his forehead just above the inside corners of his
eyes.
“Work! work!” he said. “You make me feel quite guilty, amico mio. I live
for happiness, for love, but you--you live for duty.”
He put his arm through his friend’s with a laugh, and drew him towards
the balcony.
“Nevertheless,” he added, “even you have your moments of pleasure,
haven’t you?”
He pressed Artois’ arm gently, but in the touch of his fingers there
was something that seemed to hint a longing to close them violently and
cause a shudder of pain.
“Even you have moments when the brain goes to sleep and--and the body
wakes up. Eh, Emilio? Isn’t it true?”
“My dear Doro, when have I claimed to be unlike other men?”
“No, no! But you workers inspire reverence, you know. We, who do not
work, we see your pale faces, your earnest eyes, and we think--mon Dieu,
Emilio!--we think you are saints. And then, if, by chance, one evening
we go to the Galleria, and find it is not so, that you are like
ourselves, we are glad.”
He began to laugh.
“We are glad; we feel no longer at a disadvantage.”
Again he pressed Artois’ arm gently.
“But, amico mio, you are deceptive, you workers,” he said. “You take
us all in. We are children beside you, we who say all we feel, who show
when we hate and when we love. We are babies. If I ever want to become
really birbante, I shall become a worker.”
He spoke always lightly, laughingly; but Artois understood the malice
at his heart, and hesitated for a moment whether to challenge it quietly
and firmly, or whether laughingly, to accept the sly imputations
of secrecy, of hypocrisy, in a “not-worth-while” temper. If things
developed--and Artois felt that they must with such a protagonist as the
Marchesino--a situation might arise in which Doro’s enmity must come out
into the open and be dealt with drastically. Till then was it not best
to ignore it, to fall in with his apparent frivolity? Before Artois
could decide--for his natural temper and an under-sense of prudence and
contempt pulled different ways--the Marchesino suddenly released his
arm, leaned over the balcony rail, and looked eagerly down the road. A
carriage had just rattled up from the harbor of Santa Lucia only a few
yards away.
“Ecco!” he exclaimed. “Ecco! But--but who is with them?”
“Only Gaspare,” replied Artois.
“Gaspare! That servant who came to the Guiseppone? Oh, no doubt he has
rowed the ladies over and will return to the boat?”
“No, I think not. I think the Signora will bring him to the Carmine.”
“Why?” said the Marchesino, sharply.
“Why not? He is a strong fellow, and might be useful in a crowd.”
“Are we not strong? Are we not useful?”
“My dear Doro, what’s the matter?”
“Niente--niente!”
He tugged at his mustaches.
“Only I think the Signora might trust to us.”
“Tell her so, if you like. Here she is.”
At this moment the door opened and Hermione came in, followed by Vere.
As Artois went to welcome them he was aware of a strange mixture of
sensations, which made these two dear and close friends, these intimates
of his life, seem almost new. He was acutely conscious of the mist of
which Hermione had thought. He wondered about her, as she about him. He
saw again that face in the night under the trellis. He heard the voice
that had called to him and Vere in the garden. And he knew that enmity,
mysterious yet definite, might arise even between Hermione and him; that
even they two--inexorably under the law that has made all human beings
separate entities, and incapable of perfect fusion--might be victims
of misunderstanding, of ignorance of the absolute truth of personality.
Even now he was companioned by the sudden and horrible doubt which had
attacked him in the garden: that perhaps she had been always playing
a part when she had seemed to be deeply interested in his work, that
perhaps there was within her some one whom he did not know, had never
even caught a glimpse of until lately, once when she was in the tram
going to the Scoglio di Frisio, and once the last time they had met. And
yet this was the woman who had nursed him in Africa--and this was the
woman against whose impulsive actions he had had the instinct to protect
Vere--the Hermione Delarey whom he had known for so many years.
Never before had he looked at Hermione quite as he looked at her
to-night. His sense of her strangeness woke up in him something that was
ill at ease, doubtful, almost even suspicious, but also something that
was quivering with interest.
For years this woman had been to him “dear Hermione,” “ma pauvre amie,”
comrade, sympathizer, nurse, mother of Vere.
Now--what else was she? A human creature with a heart and brain capable
of mystery; a soul with room in it for secret things; a temple whose
outside he had seen, but whose god, perhaps, he had never seen.
And Vere was involved in her mother’s strangeness, and had her own
strangeness too. Of that he had been conscious before to-night. For Vere
was being formed. The plastic fingers were at work about her, moulding
her into what she must be as a woman.
But Hermione! She had been a woman so long.
Perhaps, too, she was standing on the brink of a precipice. That
suspicion, that fear, not to be banished by action, added to the
curiosity, as about an unknown land, that she aroused.
And the new and vital sense of Hermione’s strangeness which was alive
in Artois was met by a feeling in her that was akin to it, only of the
feminine sex.
Their eyes encountered like eyes that say, “What are you?”
After swift greeting they went down-stairs to dine in the public room.
As there were but few people in the house, the large dining-room was not
in use, and their table was laid in the small restaurant that looks out
on the Marina, and was placed close to the window.
“At last we are repeating our _partie carree_ of the Guiseppone,” said
Artois, as they sat down.
He felt that as host he must release himself from subtleties and
under-feelings, must stamp down his consciousness of secret inquiries
and of desires or hatreds half-concealed. He spoke cheerfully, even
conventionally.
“Yes, but without the storm,” said Hermione, in the same tone. “There is
no feeling of electricity in the air to-night.”
Even while she spoke she felt as if she were telling a lie which was
obvious to them all. And she could not help glancing hastily round. She
met the large round eyes of the Marchesino, eyes without subtlety though
often expressive.
“No, Signora,” he said, smiling at her, rather obviously to captivate
her by the sudden vision of his superb teeth--“La Bruna is safe
to-night.”
“La Bruna?”
“The Madonna del Carmine.”
They talked of the coming festa.
Vere was rather quiet, much less vehement in appearance and lively in
manner than she had been at the Marchesino’s dinner. Artois thought
she looked definitely older than she had then, though even then she had
played quite well the part of a little woman of the world. There was
something subdued in her eyes to-night which touched him, because it
made him imagine Vere sad. He wondered if she were still troubled about
her mother, if she had fulfilled her intention and asked Gaspare what
he thought. And he longed to ask her, to know what Gaspare had said. The
remembrance of Gaspare made him say to Hermione:
“I gave orders that Gaspare was to have a meal here. Did they tell you?”
“Yes. He has gone to the servants’ room.”
The Marchesino’s face changed.
“Your Gaspare seems indispensable, Signora,” he said to Hermione in his
lightest, most boyish manner--a manner that the determination in his
eyes contradicted rather crudely. “Do you take him everywhere, like a
little dog?”
“I often take him,--but not like a little dog, Marchese,” Hermione said,
quietly.
“Signora, I did not mean--Here in Naples, we use that expression for
anything, or any one, we like to have always with us.”
“I see. Well, call Gaspare a watch-dog if you like,” she answered, with
a smile; “he watches over me carefully.”
“A watch-dog, Signora! But do you like to be watched? Is it not
unpleasant?”
He was speaking now to get rid of the impression his first remark had
evidently made upon her.
“I think it depends how,” she replied. “If Gaspare watches me it is only
to protect me--I am sure of that.”
“But, Signora, do you not trust Don Emilio, do you not trust me, to be
your watch-dogs to-night at the festa?”
There was a little pressure in his voice, but he still preserved his
light and boyish manner. And now he turned to Vere.
“Speak for us, Signorina! Tell the Signora that we will take care of her
to-night, that there is no need of the faithful Gaspare.”
Vere looked at him gravely. She had wondered a little why her mother
had brought Gaspare, why, at least, she had not left him free till they
returned to the boat at Santa Lucia. But her mother wanted him to come
with them, and that was enough for her. She opened her lips, and Artois
thought she was going to snub her companion. But perhaps she suddenly
changed her mind, for she only said:
“Who would trust you, Marchese?”
She met his eyes with a sort of child’s impertinence. She had abruptly
become the Vere of the Scoglio di Frisio.
“Who would take you for a watch-dog?”
“Ma--Signorina!”
“As a seal--yes, you are all very well! But--”
The young man was immediately in the seventh Heaven. The Signorina
remembered his feats in the water. All his self-confidence returned, all
his former certainty that the Signorina was secretly devoted to him. His
days of doubt and fury were forgotten. His jealousy of Emilio vanished
in a cloud of happy contempt for the disabilities of age, and he began
to talk to Vere with a vivacity that was truly Neapolitan. When the
Marchesino was joyous he had charm, the charm that emanates from the
bounding life that flows in the veins of youth. Even the Puritan feels,
and fears, the grace that is Pagan. The Marchesino had a Pagan grace.
And now it returned to him and fell about him like a garment, clothing
body and soul. And Vere seemed to respond to it. She began to chatter,
too. She talked lightly, flicking him with little whips of sarcasm that
did not hurt, but only urged him on. The humor of a festa might begin to
flow from these two.
And again, instead of infecting Artois, it seemed to set him apart, to
rebuke silently his gifts, his fame--to tell him that they were useless,
that they could do nothing for him.
The Marchesino was not troubled with an intellect. Yet with what ease he
found words to play with the words of Vere! His Latin vivacity seemed a
perfect substitute for thought, for imagination, for every subtlety. He
bubbled like champagne. And when champagne winks and foams at the edge
of the shining glass, do the young think of, or care for, the sober
gravity, the lingering bouquet of claret, even if it be Chateau Margaux?
As Artois half listened to the young people, while he talked quietly
with Hermione, playing the host with discretion, he felt the peculiar
cruelty which ordains that the weapons of youth, even if taken up and
used by age with vigor and competence, shall be only reeds in those
hands whose lines tell of the life behind.
Yet how Vere and he had laughed together on the day of his return
from Paris! One gust of such mutual laughter is worth how many days of
earnest talk!
Vere was gleaming with fun to-night.
The waiters, as they went softly about the table, looked at her with
kind eyes. Secretly they were enjoying her gayety because it was so
pretty. Her merriment was as airy as the flight of a bird.
The Marchesino was entranced. Did she care for that?
Artois wondered secretly, and was not sure. He had a theory that all
women like to feel their power over men. Few men have not this theory.
But there was in Vere something immensely independent, that seemed
without sex, and that hinted at a reserve not vestal, but very pure--too
pure, perhaps, to desire an empire which is founded certainly upon
desire.
And the Marchesino was essentially and completely the young animal;
not the heavy, sleek, and self-contented young animal that the northern
countries breed, but the frolicsome, playful, fiery young animal that
has been many times warmed by the sun.
Hermione felt that Artois’ mood to-night echoed his mood at Frisio’s,
and suddenly she thought once more of the visitors’ book and of what he
had written there, surely in a moment of almost heated impulse. And as
she thought of it she was moved to speak of her thought. She had so many
secret reserves from Emile now that this one she could dispense with.
“You remember that night when I met you on the sea?” she said to him.
He looked away from Vere and answered:
“Yes. What about it?”
“When I was at the Scoglio di Frisio I looked again over that wonderful
visitors’ book.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. And I saw what you had written.”
Their eyes met. She wondered if by the expression in hers he divined
why she had made that expedition, moved by what expectation, by what
curiosity. She could tell nothing by his face, which was calm and
inscrutable.
After an instant’s pause he said:
“Do you know from whom those words come?”
“No. Are they your own?”
“Victor Hugo’s. Do you like them?”
But her eyes were asking him a question, and he saw it.
“What is it?” he said.
“Why did you write them?” she said.
“I had to write something. You made me.”
“Vere suggested it first.”
He looked again at Vere, but only for a moment. She was laughing at
something the Marchesino was saying.
“Did she?--Oh! Take some of that salade a la Russe. I gave the chef the
recipe for it.--Did she?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“Those words were in my head. I put them down.”
“Are you fond of them?”
Her restless curiosity was still quite unsatisfied.
“I don’t know. But one has puzzled about conscience. Hasn’t one?”
He glanced at the Marchesino, who was bending forward to Vere, and
illustrating something he was telling her by curious undulating gestures
with both hands that suggested a flight.
“At least some of us have,” he continued. “And some never have, and
never will.”
Hermione understood the comment on their fellow-guest.
“Do you think that saying explains it satisfactorily?” she said.
“I believe sometimes we know a great deal more than we know we know,” he
answered. “That sounds like some nonsense game with words, but it’s the
best way to put it. Conscience seems to speak out of the silence. But
there may be some one in the prompter’s box--our secret knowledge.”
“But is it knowledge of ourselves, or of others?”
“Which do you think?”
“Of ourselves, I suppose. I think we generally know far less of others
than we believe ourselves to know.”
She expressed his thought of her earlier in the evening.
“Probably. And nevertheless we may know things of them that we are not
aware we know--till after we have instinctively acted on our knowledge.”
Their eyes met again. Hermione felt in that moment as if he knew why she
had given Vere the permission to read his books.
But still she did not know whether he had written that sentence in the
book at Frisio’s carelessly, or prompted by some violent impulse to
express a secret thought or feeling of the moment.
“Things good or evil?” she said, slowly.
“Perhaps both.”
The Marchesino burst into a laugh. He leaned back in his chair, shaking
his head, and holding the table with his two hands. His white teeth
gleamed.
“What is the joke?” asked Artois.
Vere turned her head.
“Oh, nothing. It’s too silly. I can’t imagine why the Marchesino is so
much amused by it.”
Artois felt shut out. But when Vere and he had laughed over the
tea-table in a blessed community of happy foolishness, who could have
understood their mirth? He remembered how he had pitied the imagined
outsider.
He turned again to Hermione, but such conversation as theirs, and indeed
all serious conversation, now seemed to him heavy, portentous, almost
ludicrous. The young alone knew how to deal with life, chasing it as a
child chases a colored air-ball, and when it would sink, and fall and be
inert, sending it with a gay blow soaring once more towards the blue.
Perhaps Hermione had a similar thought, or perhaps she knew of it in
him. At any rate, for a moment she had nothing to say. Nor had he. And
so, tacitly excluded, as it seemed, from the merriment of the young
ones, the two elders remained looking towards each other in silence,
sunk in a joint exile.
Presently Artois began to fidget with his bread. He pulled out some
of the crumb from his roll, and pressed it softly between his large
fingers, and scattered the tiny fragments mechanically over the
table-cloth near his plate. Hermione watched his moving hand. The
Marchesino was talking now. He was telling Vere about a paper-chase at
Capodimonte, which had started from the Royal Palace. His vivacity,
his excitement made a paper-chase seem one of the most brilliant and
remarkable events in a brilliant and remarkable world. He had been the
hare. And such a hare! Since hares were first created and placed in the
Garden of Eden there had been none like unto him. He told of his cunning
exploits.
The fingers of Artois moved faster. Hermione glanced at his face.
Its massiveness looked heavy. The large eyes were fixed upon the
table-cloth. His hand just then was more expressive. And as she glanced
at it again something very pitiful awoke in her, something pitiful
for him and for herself. She felt that very often lately she had
misunderstood him--she had been confused about him. But now, in this
moment, she understood him perfectly.
He pulled some more crumb out of his roll.
She was fascinated by his hand. Much as it had written, it had never
written more clearly on paper than it was writing now.
But suddenly she felt as if she could not look at it any more, as if it
was intolerable to look at it. And she turned towards the open window.
“What is it?” Artois asked her. “Is there too much air for you?”
“Oh no. It isn’t that. I was only thinking what a quantity of people
pass by, and wondering where they were all going, and what they were all
thinking and hoping. I don’t know why they should have come into my
head just then. I suppose it will soon be time for us to start for the
festa.”
“Yes. We’ll have coffee in my sitting-room--when they are ready.” He
looked again at Vere and the Marchesino.
“Have we all finished? I thought we would go and have coffee up-stairs.
What do you say, Vere?”
He spoke cheerfully.
“Yes; do let us.”
They all got up. As Hermione and Vere moved towards the door Artois
leaned out of the window for a moment.
“You needn’t be afraid. There will be no storm to-night, Emilio!” said
the Marchesino, gayly--almost satirically.
“No--it’s quite fine.”
Artois drew in. “We ought to have a perfect evening,” he added, quietly.