A Spirit in Prison Part 73

Again that bitter flood of curiosity welled up in her. She wondered where Vere was, but she did not go to the girl's room. Instead, she went to her own sitting-room. Yesterday she had been restless. She had felt driven. To-day she felt even worse. But to-day she knew what yesterday she had not known--Vere's solitary occupation. Why had not Vere told her, confided in her? It was a very simple matter. The only reason why it now a.s.sumed an importance to her was because it had been so carefully concealed. Why had not Vere told her all about it, as she told her other little matters of their island life, freely, without even a thought of hesitation?

She sought the reason of this departure which was paining her. But at first she did not find it.

Perhaps Vere wanted to give her a surprise. For a moment her heart grew lighter. Vere might be preparing something to please or astonish her mother, and Emile might be in the secret, might be a.s.sisting in some way. But no! Vere's mysterious occupation had been followed too long.

And then Emile had not always known what it was. He had only known lately.

Those long reveries of Vere upon the sea, when she lay in the little boat in the shadow cast by the cliffs over the Saint's Pool--they were the prelude to work; imaginative, creative perhaps.

And Vere was not seventeen.

Hermione smiled to herself rather bitterly, thinking of the ignorance, of the inevitable folly of youth. The child, no doubt, had dreams of fame. What clever, what imaginative and energetic child has not such dreams at some period or other? How absurd we all are, thinking to climb to the stars almost as soon as we can see them!

And then the smile died away from Hermione's lips as the great tenderness of the mother within her was moved by the thought of the disappointments that come with a greater knowledge of life. Vere would suffer when she learned the truth, when she knew the meaning of failure.

Quite simply and naturally Hermione was including her child inevitably within the circle of her own disaster.

If Emile knew, why did he not tell Vere what he had told her mother?

But Emile had surely shown much greater interest in Vere just lately than ever before?

Was Emile helping Vere in what she was doing? But if he was, then he must believe in Vere's capacity to do something that was worth doing.

Hermione knew the almost terrible sincerity of Artois in the things of the intellect, his clear, unwavering judgment, his ruthless truthfulness. Nothing would ever turn him from that. Nothing, unless he--

Her face became suddenly scarlet, then pale. A monstrous idea had sprung up in her mind; an idea so monstrous that she strove to thrust it away violently, without even contemplating it. Why had Vere not told her?

There must be some good and sufficient reason. Vehemently--to escape from that monstrous idea--she sought it. Why had everything else in her child been revealed to her, only this one thing been hidden from her?

She searched the past, Vere and herself in that past. And now, despite her emotion, her full intelligence was roused up and at work. And presently she remembered that Emile and Vere shared the knowledge of her own desire to create, and her utter failure to succeed in creation.

Emile knew the whole naked truth of that. Vere did not. But Vere knew something. Could that mutual knowledge be the reason of this mutual secrecy? As women often do, Hermione had leaped into the very core of the heart of the truth, had leaped out of the void, guided by some strange instinct never alive in man. But, as women very seldom do, she shrank away from the place she had gained. Instead of triumphing, she was afraid. She remembered how often her imagination had betrayed her, how it had created phantoms, had ruined for her the lagging hours.

Again and again she had said to herself, "I will beware of it." Now she accused it of playing her false once more, of running wild. Sharply she pulled herself up. She was a.s.suming things. That was her great fault, to a.s.sume that things were that which perhaps they were not.

How often Emile had told her not to trust her imagination! She would heed him now. She knew nothing. She did not even know for certain that Vere's flush, Vere's abrupt hesitation at lunch, were a betrayal of the child's secret.

But that she would find out.

Again the fierce curiosity besieged and took possession of her. After all, she was a mother. A mother had rights. Surely she had a right to know what another knew of her child.

"I will ask Vere," she said to herself.

Once before she had said to herself that she would do that, and she had not done it. She had felt that to do it would be a humiliation. But now she was resolved to do it, for she knew more of her own condition and was more afraid of herself. She began to feel like one who has undergone a prolonged strain of work, who believes that it has not been too great and has been capably supported, and who suddenly is aware of a yielding, of a downward and outward movement, like a wide and spreading disintegration, in which brain, nerves, the whole body are involved.

Yet what had been the strain that she had been supporting, that now suddenly she began to feel too much? The strain of a loss. Time should have eased it. But had Time eased it, or only lengthened the period during which she had been forced to carry her load? People ought to get accustomed to things. She knew that it is supposed by many that the human body, the human mind, the human heart can get accustomed--by which is apparently meant can cease pa.s.sionately and instinctively to strive to repel--can get accustomed to anything. Well she could not. Never could she get accustomed to the loss of love, of man's love. The whole world might proclaim its proverbs. For her they had no truth. For her--and for how many other silent women!

And now suddenly she felt that for years she had been struggling, and that the struggle had told upon her far more than she had ever suspected. Nothing must be added to her burden or she would sink down.

The dust would cover her. She would be as nothing--or she would be as something terrible, nameless.

She must ask Vere, do what she had said to herself that she would not do. Unless she had the complete confidence of her child she could not continue to do without the cheris.h.i.+ng love she had lost. She saw herself a cripple, something maimed. Hitherto she had been supported by blessed human crutches: by Vere, Emile, Gaspare. How heavily she had leaned upon them! She knew that now. How heavily she must still lean if she were to continue on her way. And a fierce, an almost savage something, desperate and therefore arbitrary, said within her:

"I will keep the little that I have: I will--I will."

"The little!" Had she said that? It was wicked of her to say that. But she had had the wonderful thing. She had held for a brief time the magic of the world within the hollow of her hands, within the shadow of her heart. And the others? Children slip from their parents' lives into the arms of another whose call means more to them than the voices of those who made them love. Friends drift away, scarcely knowing why, divided from each other by the innumerable channels that branch from the main stream of existence. Even a faithful servant cannot be more than a friend.

There is one thing that is great, whose greatness makes the smallness of all the other things. And so Hermione said, "the little that I have,"

and there was truth in it. And there was as vital a truth in the fact of her whole nature recognizing that little's enormous value to her. Not for a moment did she underrate her possession. Indeed, she had to fight against the tendency to exaggeration. Her intellect said to her that, in being so deeply moved by such a thing as the concealment from her by Vere of something innocent of which Emile knew, she was making a water drop into an ocean. Her intellect said that. But her heart said no.

And the voice of her intellect sank away like the frailest echo that ever raised its spectral imitation of a reality. And the voice of her heart rang out till it filled her world.

And so the argument was over.

She thought she heard a step below, and looked out of the window into the suns.h.i.+ne.

Gaspare was there. It was his hour of repose, and he was smoking a cigarette. He was dressed in white linen, without a coat, and had a white linen hat on his head. He stood near the house, apparently looking out to sea. And his pose was meditative. Hermione watched him. The sight of him reminded her of another question she wished to ask.

Gaspare had one hand in the pocket of his white trousers. With the other he held the cigarette. Hermione saw the wreaths of pale smoke curling up and evaporating in the s.h.i.+ning, twinkling air, which seemed full of joyous, dancing atoms. But presently his hand forgot to do its work. The cigarette, only half smoked, went out, and he stood there as if plunged in profound thought. Hermione wondered what he was thinking about.

"Gaspare!"

She said it softly. Evidently he did not hear.

"Gaspare! Gaspare!"

Each time she spoke a little louder, but still he took no notice.

She leaned farther out and called:

"Gaspare!"

This time he heard and started violently, dropped the cigarette, then, without looking up, bent down slowly, recovered it, and turned round.

"Signora?"

The sun shone full on his upturned face, showing to Hermione the dogged look which sometimes came to it when anything startled him.

"I made you jump."

"No, Signora."

"But I did. What were you thinking about?"

"Nothing, Signora. Why are you not asleep?"

He spoke almost as if she injured him by being awake.

"I couldn't sleep to-day. What are you going to do this afternoon?"

"I don't know, Signora. Do you wish me to do anything for you?"

"Well--"