A Spirit in Prison Part 82

If his suspicion were well founded, then certain things are ordained.

They have to happen for some reason, known only to the hidden Intelligence that fas.h.i.+ons each man's character, that develops it in joy or grief, that makes it glad with feasting, or forces it to feed upon the bread of tears.

Did Gaspare know? If the truth were what Artois suspected, and Gaspare did know it, what would Gaspare do?

That was a problem which interested Artois intensely.

The Sicilian often said of a thing "E il Destino." Yet Artois believed that for his beloved Padrona he would fight to the death. He, Artois, would leave this fight against destiny to the Sicilian. For him the Oriental's philosophy; for him resignation to the inevitable, whatever it might be.

He said to himself that to do more than he had already done to ward off the a.s.saults of truth would be impious. Perhaps he ought never to have done anything. Perhaps it would have been far better to have let the wave sweep over Hermione long ago. Perhaps even in that fight of his there had been secret selfishness, the desire that she should not know how by his cry from Africa her happy life had been destroyed. And perhaps he was to be punished some day for that.

He did not know. But he felt, after all these years, that if to that hermitage of the sea Fate had really found the way he must let things take their course. And it seemed to him as if the old Oriental had been mysteriously appointed to come near him just at that moment, to make him feel that this was so. The Oriental had been like a messenger sent to him out of that East which he loved, which he had studied, but from which, perhaps, he had not learned enough.

Vere's letter came. He read it with eagerness and pleasure till he came to the postscript. But that startled him. He knew that Vere had never read his books. He thought her far too young to read them. Till lately he had almost a contempt for those who write with one eye on "la jeune fille." Now he could conceive writing with a new pleasure something that Vere might read. But those books of his! Why had Hermione suddenly given that permission? He remembered Peppina. Vere must have told her mother of the scene with Peppina, and how her eyes had been opened to certain truths of life, how she had pa.s.sed from girlhood to womanhood through that gate of knowledge. And Hermione must have thought that it was useless to strive to keep Vere back.

But did he wish Vere to read all that he had written?

On Thursday he went over to the island with mingled eagerness and reluctance. That little home in the sea, washed by blue waters, rooted by blue skies, sun-kissed and star-kissed by day and night, drew and repelled him. There was the graciousness of youth there, of youth and promise; but there was tragedy there, too, in the heart of Hermione, and in Peppina, typified by the cross upon her cheek. And does not like draw like?

For a moment he saw the little island with a great cloud above it. But when he landed and met Vere he felt the summer, and knew that the sky was clear.

Hermione was not on the island, Vere told him. She had left many apologies, and would be home for lunch. She had had to go in to Naples to see the dentist. A tooth had troubled her in the night. She had gone by tram. As Vere explained Artois had a moment of surprise, a moment of suspicion--even of vexation. But it pa.s.sed when Vere said:

"I'm afraid poor Madre suffered a great deal. She looked dreadful this morning, as if she hadn't slept all night."

"Poveretta!" said Artois.

He looked earnestly at Vere. This was the first time they had met since the revelation of Peppina. What the Marchesino had seen Artois saw more plainly, felt more strongly than the young Neapolitan had felt. But he looked at Vere, too, in search of something else, thinking of Ruffo, trying to probe into the depth of human mysteries, to find the secret spring that carried child to child.

"What do you want, Monsieur Emile?"

"I want to know how the work goes," he answered, smiling.

She flushed a little.

"And I want to tell you something," he added. "My talk with you roused me up. Vere, you set me working as I have not worked for a long while."

A lively pleasure showed in her face.

"Is that really true? But then I must be careful, or you will never come to see us any more. You will always be shut up in the hotel writing."

They mounted the cliff together and, without question or reply, as by a mutual instinct, turned towards the seat that faced Ischia, clear to-day, yet romantic with the mystery of heat. When they had sat down Vere added:

"And besides, of course, I know that it is Madre who encourages you when you are depressed about your work. I have heard you say so often."

"Your mother has done a great deal for me," said Artois, seriously--"far more than she will ever know."

There was a sound of deep, surely of eternal feeling in his voice, which suddenly touched the girl to the quick.

"I like to hear you say that--like that," she said, softly. "I think Madre does a great deal for us all."

If Hermione could have heard them her torn heart might perhaps have ceased to bleed. It had been difficult for her to do what she had done--to leave the island that morning. She had done it to discipline her nature, as Pa.s.sionists scourge themselves by night before the altar.

She had left Emile alone with Vere simply because she hated to do it.

The rising up of jealousy in her heart had frightened her. All night she had lain awake feeling this new and terrible emanation from her soul, conscious of this monster that lifted up its head and thrust it forth out of the darkness.

But one merit she had. She was frank with herself. She named the monster before she strove to fight it, to beat it back into the darkness from which it was emerging.

She was jealous, doubly jealous. The monopolizing instinct of strong-natured and deeply affectionate women was fiercely alive in her.

Always, no doubt, she had had it. Long ago, when first she was in Sicily alone, she had dreamed of a love in the South--far away from the world.

When she married she had carried her Mercury to the exquisite isolation of Monte Amato. And when that love was taken from her, and her child came and was at the age of blossom, she had brought her child to this isle, this hermitage of the sea. Emile, too, her one great friend, she had never wished to share him. She had never cared much to meet him in society. Her instinct was to have him to herself, to be with him alone in unfrequented places. She was greedy or she was timid. Which was it?

Perhaps she lacked self-confidence, belief in her own attractive power.

Life in the world is a fight. Woman fight for their lovers, fight for their friends, with other women: those many women who are born thieves, who are never happy unless they are taking from their sisters the possessions those sisters care for most. Hermione could never have fought with other women for the love or the friends.h.i.+p of a man. Her instinct, perhaps, was to carry her treasure out of all danger into the wilderness.

Two treasures she had--Vere her child, Emile her friend. And now she was jealous of each with the other. And the enormous difference in their ages made her jealousy seem the more degrading. Nevertheless, she could not feel that it was unnatural. By a mutual act they had excluded her from their lives, had withdrawn from her their confidence while giving it to each other. And their reason for doing this--she was sure of it now--was her own failure to do something in the world of art.

She was jealous of Vere because of that confidence given to Emile, and of Emile because of his secret advice and help to Vere--advice and help which he had not given to the mother, because he had plainly seen that to do so would be useless.

And when she remembered this Hermione was jealous, too, of the talent Vere must have, a talent she had longed for, but which had been denied to her. For even if Emile... and then again came the most hateful suspicion of all--but Emile could not lie about the things of art.

Had they spoken together of her failure? Again and again she asked herself the question. They must have spoken. They had spoken. She could almost hear their words--words of regret or of pity. "We must not hurt her. We must keep it from her. We must temper the wind to the shorn lamb." The elderly man and the child had read together the tragedy of her failure. To the extremes of life, youth and age, she had appeared an object of pity.

And then she thought of her dead husband's reverence of her intellect, boyish admiration of her mental gifts; and an agony of longing for his love swept over her again, and she felt that he was the only person who had been able to love her really, and that now he was gone there was no one.

At that moment she forgot Gaspare. Her sense of being abandoned, and of being humiliated, swept out many things from her memory. Only Maurice had loved her really. Only he had set her on high, where even the humblest woman longs to be set by some one. Only he had thought her better, braver, more wors.h.i.+pful, more loveable, than any other woman.

Such love, without bringing conceit to the creature loved, gives power, creates much of what it believes in. The lack of any such love seems to withdraw the little power that there is.

Hermione, feeling in this humiliation of the imagination that she was less than nothing, clung desperately to the memory of him who had thought her much. The dividing years were gone. With a strange, a beautiful and terrible freshness, the days of her love came back. She saw Maurice's eyes looking at her with that simple, almost reverent admiration which she had smiled at and adored.

And she gripped her memory. She clung to it feverishly as she had never clung to it before. She told herself that she would live in it as in a house of shelter. For there was the desolate wind outside.

And she thought much of Ruffo, and with a strange desire--to be with him, to search for the look she loved in him. For a moment with him she had seemed to see her Mercury in the flesh. She must watch for his return.

When the morning came she began her fight. She made her excuse, and left the morning free for Emile to be with Vere.

Two dreary hours she spent in Naples. The buzzing city affected her like a nightmare. Coming back through Mergellina, she eagerly looked for Ruffo. But she did not see him. Nor had she seen him in the early morning, when she pa.s.sed by the harbor where the yachts were lying in the sun.

Gaspare came with the boat to take her over from the nearest village to the island.

"Don Emilio has come?" she asked him, as she stepped into the boat.

"Si, Signora. He has been on the island a long time."

Gaspare sat down facing his Padrona and took the oars. As he rowed the boat out past the ruined "Palace of the Spirits" he looked at Hermione, and it seemed to her that his eyes pitied her.

Could Gaspare see what she was feeling, her humiliation, her secret jealousy? She felt as if she were made of gla.s.s. But she returned his gaze almost sternly, and said:

"What's the matter, Gaspare? Why do you look at me like that?"