There was no one at the foot of the cliff. Artois got out of the boat
and stood for a moment, hesitating whether to keep Giovanni or to
dismiss him.
“I can stay, Signore,” said the man. “You will want some one to row you
back.”
“No, Giovanni. I can get Gaspare to put me ashore. You had better be
off.”
“Va bene, Signore,” he replied, looking disappointed.
The Signora of the Casa del Mare was always very hospitable to such
fishermen as she knew. Giovanni wanted to seek out Gaspare, to have a
cigarette. But he obediently jumped into the boat and rowed off into the
darkness, while Artois went up the steps towards the house.
A cold feeling of dread encompassed him. He still saw, imaginatively,
that stranger at the window, that falling movement, that frantic
gesture, the descending blind that brought to Hermione’s bedroom a great
obscurity. And he remembered Hermione’s face in the garden, half seen by
him once in shadows, with surely a strange and terrible smile upon it--a
smile that had made him wonder if he had ever really known her.
He came out on the plateau before the front door. The door was shut,
but as he went to open it it was opened from within, and Gaspare stood
before him in the twilight, with the dark passage for background.
Gaspare looked at Artois in silence.
“Gaspare,” Artois said, “I came home from San Martino. I found a note
from the Signorina, begging me to come here at once.”
“Lo so, Signore.”
“I have come. What has--what is it? Where is the Signorina?”
Gaspare stood in the middle of the narrow doorway.
“The Signorina is in the garden.”
“Waiting for me?”
“Si, Signore.”
“Very well.”
He moved to enter the house; but Gaspare stood still where he was.
“Signore,” he said.
Artois stopped at the door-sill.
“What is it?”
“What are you going to do here?”
At last Gaspare was frankly the watch-dog guarding the sacred house.
His Padrona had cast upon him a look of hatred. Yet he was guarding the
sacred house and her within it. Deep in the blood of him was the sense
that, even hating him, she belonged to him and he to her.
And his Padroncina had trusted him, had clung to him that day.
“What are you going to do here?”
“If there is trouble here, I want to help.”
“How can you help, Signore?”
“First tell me,--there is great trouble?”
“Si, Signore.”
“And you know what it is? You know what caused it?”
“No one has told me.”
“But you know what it is.”
“Si, Signore.”
“Does--the Signorina doesn’t know?”
“No, Signore.”
He paused, then added:
“The Signorina is not to know what it is.”
“You do not think I shall tell her?”
“Signore, how can I tell what you will do here? How can I tell what you
are here?”
For a moment Artois felt deeply wounded--wounded to the quick. He had
not supposed it was possible for any one to hurt him so much with a few
quiet words. Anger rose in him, an anger such as the furious attack of
the Marchesino had never brought to the birth.
“You can say that!” he exclaimed. “You can say that, after Sicily!”
Gaspare’s face changed, softened for an instant, then grew stern again.
“That was long ago, Signore. It was all different in Sicily!”
His eyes filled with tears, yet his face remained stern. But Artois was
seized again, as when he walked in the golden air between the vineyards
and heard the peasants singing, by an intense desire to bring happiness
to the unhappy, especially and above all to one unhappy woman. To-night
his intellect was subordinate to his heart, his pride of intellect was
lost in feeling, in an emotion that the simplest might have understood
and shared: the longing to be of use, to comfort, to pour balm into the
terrible wound of one who had been his friend--such a friend as only a
certain type of woman can be to a certain type of man.
“Gaspare,” he said, “you and I--we helped the Signora once, we helped
her in Sicily.”
Gaspare looked away from him, and did not answer.
“Perhaps we can help her now. Perhaps only we can help her. Let me into
the house, Gaspare. I shall do nothing here to make your Padrona sad.”
Gaspare looked at him again, looked into his eyes, then moved aside,
giving room for him to enter. As soon as he was in the passage Gaspare
shut the door.
“I am sorry, Signore; the lamp is not lighted.”
Artois felt at once an unusual atmosphere in the house, an atmosphere
not of confusion but of mystery, of secret curiosity, of brooding
apprehension. At the foot of the servants’ staircase he heard a remote
sound of whispering, which emphasized the otherwise complete silence of
this familiar dwelling, suddenly become unfamiliar to him--unfamiliar
and almost dreadful.
“I had better go into the garden.”
“Si, Signore.”
Gaspare looked down the servants’ staircase and hissed sharply:
“Sh! S-s-sh!”
“The Signora--?” asked Artois, as Gaspare came to him softly.
“The Signora is always in her room. She is shut up in her room.”
“I saw the Signora just now, at the window,” Artois said, in an
undervoice.
“You saw the Signora?”
Gaspare looked at him with sudden eagerness mingled with a flaming
anxiety.
“From the boat. She came to the window and let down the blind.”
Gaspare did not ask anything. They went to the terrace above the sea.
“I will tell the Signorina you have come, Signore.”
“Sha’n’t I go down?”
“I had better go and tell her.”
He spoke with conviction. Artois did not dispute his judgment. He went
away, always softly. Artois stood still on the terrace. The twilight
was spreading itself over the sea, like a veil dropping over a face.
The house was dark behind him. In that darkness Hermione was hidden, the
Hermione who was a stranger to him, the Hermione into whose heart and
soul he was no longer allowed to look. Upon Monte Amato at evening she
had, very simply, showed him the truth of her great sorrow.
Now--he saw the face at the window, the falling blind. Between then and
now--what a gulf fixed!
Vere came from the garden followed by Gaspare. Her eyes were wide with
terror. The eyelids were red. She had been weeping. She almost ran to
Artois, as a child runs to refuge. Never before had he felt so acutely
the childishness that still lingered in this little Vere of the
island--lingered unaffected, untouched by recent events. Thank God for
that! In that moment the Marchesino was forgiven; and Artois--did he not
perhaps also in that moment forgive himself?
“Oh Monsieur Emile--I thought you wouldn’t come!”
There was the open reproach of a child in her voice. She seized his
hand.
“Has Gaspare told you?” She turned her head towards Gaspare. “Something
terrible has happened to Madre. Monsieur Emile, do you know what it is?”
She was looking at him with an intense scrutiny.
“Gaspare is hiding something from me--”
Gaspare stood there and said nothing.
“--something that perhaps you know.”
Gaspare looked at Artois, and Artois felt now that the watch-dog trusted
him. He returned the Sicilian’s glance, and Gaspare moved away, went to
the rail of the terrace, and looked down over the sea.
“Do you know? Do you know anything--anything dreadful about Madre that
you have never told me?”
“Vere, don’t be frightened.”
“Ah, but you haven’t been here! You weren’t here when--”
“What is it?”
Her terror infected him.
“Madre came back. She had been to Mergellina all alone. She was away
such a long time. When she came back I was in my room. I didn’t know. I
didn’t hear the boat. But my door was open, and presently I heard some
one come up-stairs and go into the boudoir. It was Madre. I know her
step. I know it was Madre!”
She reiterated her assertion, as if she anticipated that he was going to
dispute it.
“She stayed in the boudoir only a very little while--only a few minutes.
Oh, Monsieur Emile, but--”
“Vere. What do you mean? Did--what happened there--in the boudoir?”
He was reading from her face.
“She went--Madre went in there to--”
She stopped and swallowed.
“Madre took father’s photograph--the one on the writing-table--and
tore it to pieces. And the frame--that was all bent and nearly broken.
Father’s photograph, that she loves so much!”
Artois said nothing. At that moment it was as if he entered suddenly
into Hermione’s heart, and knew every feeling there.
“Monsieur Emile--is she--is Madre--ill?”
She began to tremble once more, as she had trembled when she came to
fetch Gaspare from the nook of the cliff beside the Saint’s Pool.
“Not as you mean, Vere.”
“You are sure? You are certain?”
“Not in that way.”
“But then I heard Madre come out and go to her bedroom. I didn’t hear
whether she locked the door. I only heard it shut. But Gaspare says
he knows it is locked. Two or three minutes after the door was shut I
heard--I heard--”
“Don’t be afraid. Tell me--if I ought to know.”
Those words voiced a deep and delicate reluctance which was beginning to
invade him. Yet he wished to help Vere, to release this child from the
thrall of a terror which could only be conquered if it were expressed.
“Tell me,” he added, slowly.
“I heard Madre--Monsieur Emile, it was hardly crying!”
“Don’t. You needn’t tell me any more.”
“Gaspare heard it too. It went on for a long, long time. We--Gaspare
made the servants keep downstairs ever since. And I--I have been waiting
for you to come, because Madre cares for you.”
Artois put his hand down quickly upon Vere’s right hand.
“I am glad that you sent for me, Vere. I am glad you think that. Come
and sit down on the bench.”
He drew her down beside him. He felt that he was with a child whom he
must comfort. Gaspare stood always looking down over the rail of the
terrace to the sea.
“Vere!”
“Yes, Monsieur Emile.”
“You mother is not ill as you thought--feared. But--to-day--she has had,
she must have had, a great shock.”
“But at Mergellina?”
“Only that could account for what you have just told me.”
“But I don’t understand. She only went to Mergellina.”
“Did you see her before she went there?”
“Yes.”
“Was she as usual?”
“I don’t think she was. I think Madre has been changing nearly all this
summer. That is why I am so afraid. You know she has been changing.”
He was silent. The difficulty of the situation was great. He did not
know how to resolve it.
“You have seen the change, Monsieur Emile!”
He did not deny it. He did not know what to do or say. For of that
change, although perhaps now he partly understood it, he could never
speak to Vere or to any one.
“It has made me so unhappy,” Vere said, with a break in her voice.
And he had said to himself: “Vere must be happy!” At that moment he and
his intellect seemed to him less than a handful of dust.
“But this change of to-day is different,” he said, slowly. “Your mother
has had a dreadful shock.”
“At Mergellina?”
“It must have been there.”
“But what could it be? We scarcely ever go there. We don’t know any one
there--oh, except Ruffo.”
Her eyes, keen and bright with youth, even though they had been crying,
were fixed upon his face while she was speaking, and she saw a sudden
conscious look in his eyes, a movement of his lips--he drew them sharply
together, as if seized by a spasm.
“Ruffo!” she repeated. “Has it something to do with Ruffo?”
There was a profound perplexity in her face, but the fear in it was
less.
“Something to do with Ruffo?” she repeated.
Suddenly she moved, she got up. And all the fear had come back to her
face, with something added to it, something intensely personal.
“Do you mean--is Ruffo dead?” she whispered.
A voice rose up from the sea singing a sad little song. Vere turned
towards the sea. All her body relaxed. The voice passed on. The sad
little song passed under the cliff, to the Saint’s Pool and the lee of
the island.
“Ah, Monsieur Emile,” she said, “why don’t you tell me?”
She swayed. He put his arm quickly behind her.
“No, no! It’s all right. That was Ruffo!”
And she smiled.
At that moment Artois longed to tell her the truth. To do so would
surely be to do something that was beautiful. But he dared not--he had
no right.
A bell rang in the house, loudly, persistently, tearing its silence.
Gaspare turned angrily from the rail, with an expression of apprehension
on his face.
Giulia was summoning the household to dinner.
“Perhaps--perhaps Madre will come down,” Vere whispered.
Gaspare passed them and went into the house quickly. They knew he had
gone to see if his Padrona was coming. Moved by a mutual instinct, they
stayed where they were till he should come to them again.
For a long time they waited. He did not return.
“We had better go in, Vere. You must eat.”
“I can’t--unless she comes.”
“You must try to eat.”
He spoke to her as to a child.
“And perhaps--Gaspare may be with her, may be speaking with her. Let us
go in.”
They passed into the house, and went to the dining-room. The table was
laid. The lamp was lit. Giulia stood by the sideboard looking anxious
and subdued. She did not even smile when she saw Artois, who was her
favorite.
“Where is Gaspare, Giulia?” said Artois.
“Up-stairs, Signore. He came in and ran up-stairs, and he has not come
down. Ah!”--she raised her hands--“the evil eye has looked upon this
house! When that girl Peppina--”
“Be quiet!” Artois said, sharply.
Giulia’s round, black eyes filled with tears, and her mouth opened in
surprise.
He put his hand kindly on her arm.
“Never mind, Giulia mia! But it is foolish to talk like that. There is
no reason why evil should come upon the Casa del Mare. Here is Gaspare!”
At that moment he entered, looking tragic.
“Go away, Giulia!” he said to her, roughly.
“Ma--”
“Go away!”
He put her out of the room without ceremony, and shut the door.
“Signore!” he said to Artois, “I have been up to the Padrona’s room. I
have knocked on the door. I have spoken--”
“What did you say?”
“I did not say that you were here, Signore.”
“Did you ask the Signora to come down?”
“I asked if she was coming down to dinner. I said the Signorina was
waiting for her.”
“Yes?”
“The Signora did not answer. There was no noise, and in the room there
is no light!”
“Let me go!” Vere said, breathlessly.
She was moving towards the door when Artois stopped her authoritatively.
“No, Vere--wait!”
“But some one must--I’m afraid--”
“Wait, Vere!”
He turned once more to Gaspare.
“Did you try the door, Gaspare?”
“Signore, I did. After I had spoken several times and waited a long
time, I tried the door softly. It is locked.”
“You see!”
It was Vere speaking, still breathlessly.
“Let me go, Monsieur Emile. We can’t let Madre stay like that, all alone
in the dark. She must have food. We can’t stay down here and leave her.”
Artois hesitated. He thought of the stranger at the window, and he felt
afraid. But he concealed his fear.
“Perhaps you had better go, Vere,” he said, at length. “But if she does
not answer, don’t try the door. Don’t knock. Just speak. You will find
the best words.”
“Yes. I’ll try--I’ll try.”
Gaspare opened the door. Giulia was sobbing outside. Her pride and
dignity were lacerated by Gaspare’s action.
“Giulia, never mind! Don’t cry! Gaspare didn’t mean--”
Before she had finished speaking the servant passionately seized her
hand and kissed it. Vere released her hand very gently and went slowly
up the stairs.
The instinct of Artois was to follow her. He longed to follow her, but
he denied himself, and sat down by the dinner-table, on which the zuppa
di pesce was smoking under the lamp. Giulia, trying to stifle her sobs,
went away down the kitchen stairs, and Gaspare stood near the door. He
touched his face with his hands, opened and shut his lips, then thrust
his hands into his pockets, and stared first at Artois then at the
floor. His cheeks and his forehead looked hot, as if he had just
finished some difficult physical act. Artois did not glance at him. In
that moment both men, in their different ways, felt dreadfully, almost
unbearably, self-conscious.
Presently Vere’s step was heard again on the stairs, descending softly
and slowly. She came in and went at once to Artois.
“Madre doesn’t answer.”
Artois got up.
“What ought we to do?”
Vere was whispering.
“Did you hear anything?”
“No.”
Gaspare moved, took his hands violently out of his pockets, then thrust
them in again.
Artois stood in silence. His face, generally so strong, so
authoritative, showed his irresolution, and Vere, looking to him like a
frightened child for guidance, felt her terror increase.
“Shall I go up again. I didn’t knock. You told me not to. Shall I go and
knock? Or shall Gaspare go again?”
She did not suggest that Artois should go himself. He noticed that, even
in this moment of the confusion of his will.
“I think we had better leave her for a time,” he said, at last.
As he spoke he made an effort, and recovered himself.
“We had better do nothing more. What can we do?”
He was looking at Gaspare.
Gaspare went out into the passage and called down the stairs.
“Giulia! Come up! The Signorina is going to dinner.”
His defiant voice sounded startling in the silent house.
“We are to eat!”
“Yes, Vere. I shall stay. Presently our mother may come down. She feels
that she must be alone. We have no right to try to force ourselves upon
her.”
“Do you think it is that? Are you telling me the truth? Are you?”
“If she does not come down presently I will go up. Don’t be afraid. I
will not leave you till she comes down.”
Giulia returned, wiping her eyes. When he saw her Gaspare disappeared.
They knew he had gone to wait outside his Padrona’s door.
The dinner passed almost in silence. Artois ate, and made Vere eat. Vere
sat in her mother’s place, with her back to the door. Artois was facing
her. Often his eyes travelled to the door. Often, too, Vere turned her
head. And in the silence both were listening for a step that did not
come: Vere with a feverish eagerness, Artois with a mingling of longing
and of dread. For he knew he dreaded to see Hermione that night. He knew
that it would be terrible to him to meet her eyes, to speak to her,
to touch her hand. And yet he longed for her to come. For he was
companioned by a great and growing fear, which he must hide. And that
act of secrecy, undertaken for Vere’s sake, seemed to increase the
thing he hid, till the shadow it had been began to take form, to grow in
stature, to become dominating, imperious.
Giulia put some fruit on the table. The meal was over, and there had
been no sound outside upon the stairs.
“Monsieur Emile, what are you going to do?”
“Go to the drawing-room, Vere. I will go out and see whether there is
any light in your mother’s window.”
She obeyed him silently and went away. Then he took his hat and went out
upon the terrace.
Gaspare had said that Hermione’s room was dark. Perhaps he had been
mistaken. The key might have been so placed in the lock that he had been
deceived. As Artois walked to a point from which he could see one of
the windows of Hermione’s bedroom, he knew that he longed to see a
light there. If the window was dark the form of his fear would be more
distinct. He reached the point and looked up. There was no light.
He stood there for some time gazing at that darkness. He thought of the
bent photograph frame, of the photograph that had been so loved torn
into fragments, of the sound that was--hardly crying, and of the face he
had seen for an instant as he drew near to the island. He ought to come
to some decision, to take some action. Vere was depending upon him. But
he felt as if he could do nothing. In answer to Vere’s appeal he
had hastened to the island. And now he was paralyzed, he was utterly
useless.
He felt as if he dared not do anything. Hermione in her grief, had
suddenly passed from him into a darkness that was sacred. What right had
he to try to share it?
And yet--if that great shape of fear were not the body of a lie, but of
the truth?
Never had he felt so impotent, so utterly unworthy of his manhood.
He moved away, turned, came back and stood once more beneath the window.
Ought he to go up to Hermione’s door, to knock, to speak, to insist on
admittance? And if there was no reply?--what ought he to do then? Break
down the door?
He went into the house. Vere was sitting in the drawing-room looking at
the door. She sprang up.
“Is there a light in Madre’s room?”
“No.”
He saw, as he answered, that she caught his fear, that hers now had the
same shape as his.
“Monsieur Emile, you--you don’t think--?”
Her voice faltered, her bright eyes became changed, dim, seemed to sink
into her head.
“You must go to her room. Go to Madre, Monsieur Emile, Go! Speak to her!
Make her answer! Make her! make her!”
She put her hands on him. She pushed him frantically.
He took her hands and held them tightly.
“I am going, Vere. Don’t be frightened!”
“But you are frightened! You are frightened!”
“I will speak to your mother. I will beg her to answer.”
“And if she doesn’t answer?”
“I will get into the room.”
He let go her hands and went towards the door. Just as he reached it
there came from below in the house a loud, shrill cry. It was followed
by an instant of silence, then by another cry, louder, nearer than
before. And this time they could hear the words:
“_La fattura della morte_! _La fattura della morte_!”
Running, stumbling feet sounded outside, and Peppina appeared at the
door, her disfigured face convulsed with terror, her hand out-stretched.
“Look!” she cried shrilly. “Look, Signorina! Look, Signore! _La fattura
della morte_! _La fattura della morte_! It has been brought to the house
to-night! It has been put in my room to-night!”
In her hand lay a green lemon pierced by many nails.