A Spirit in Prison. Robert Hichens
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in those first days in Sicily. She was not irresponsible. She was more keenly aware of others, of just how they were feeling, of just how they were thinking, than Maurice had been.
Vere was very individual.
With that thought there came to Hermione a deeper sense of loneliness. She was conscious now in this moment, as she had never been conscious before, of the independence of her child’s character. The knowledge of this independence seemed to come upon her suddenly—she could not tell why; and she saw Vere apart from her, detached, like a column in a lonely place.
Vere must not escape from her. She must accompany her child step by step. She must not be left alone. She had told Emile that she could not live again in Vere. And that was true. Vere was not enough. But Vere was very much. Without Vere, what would her life be?
A wave of melancholy flowed over her to-night, a tide come from she knew not where. Making an effort to stem it, she recalled her happiness with Maurice after that day of the Tarantella. How groundless had really been her melancholy then! She had imagined him escaping from her, but he had remained with her, and loved her. He had been good to her until the end, tender and faithful. If she had ever had a rival, that rival had been Sicily. Always her imagination was her torturer.
Her failure in art had been a tragedy because of this. If she could have set her imagination free in an art she would have been far safer than she was. Emile Artois was really lonelier than she, for he had not a child. But his art surely saved him securely from her sense of desolation. And then he was a man, and men must need far less than women do. Hermione felt that it was so. She thought of Emile in his most helpless moment, in that period when he was ill in Kairouan before she came. Even then she believed that he could not have felt quite so much alone as she did now; for men never long to be taken care of as women do. And yet she was well, in this tranquil house which was her own—with Vere, her child, and Gaspare, her devoted servant.
As mentally she recounted her benefits, the strength there was in her arose, protesting. She called herself harsh names: egoist, craven, faineant. But it was no use to attack herself. In the deeps of her poor, eager, passionate, hungry woman’s nature something wept, and needed, and could not be comforted, and could not be schooled. It complained as one feeble, but really it must be strong; for it was pitilessly persistent in its grieving. It had a strange endurance. Life, the passing of the years, could not change it, could not still it. Those eternal hungers of which Hermione had spoken to Artois—they must have their meaning. Somewhere, surely, there are the happy hunting-grounds, dreamed of by the red man—there are the Elysian Fields where the souls that have longed and suffered will find the ultimate peace.
There came a tap at the door.
Hermione started up from the cushion against which she had pressed her head, and opened her eyes, instinctively laying her hand on Vere’s volume of Rossetti, and pretending to read it.
“Avanti!” she said.
The door opened and Gaspare appeared. Hermione felt an immediate sensation of comfort.
“Gaspare,” she said, “what is it? I thought you were in bed.”
“Ha bisogna Lei?” he said.
It was a most familiar phrase to Hermione. It had been often on Gaspare’s lips when he was a boy in Sicily, and she had always loved it, feeling as if it sprang from a nature pleasantly ready to do anything in her service. But to-night it had an almost startling appropriateness, breaking in as if in direct response to her gnawing hunger of the heart. As she looked at Gaspare, standing by the door in his dark-blue clothes, with an earnest expression on his strong, handsome face, she felt as if he must have come just then because he was conscious that she had so much need of help and consolation. And she could not answer “no” to his simple question.
“Come in, Gaspare,” she said, “and shut the door. I’m all alone. I should like to have a little talk with you.”
He obeyed her, shut the door gently, and came up to her with the comfortable confidence of one safe in his welcome, desired not merely as a servant but as a friend by his Padrona.
“Did you want to say anything particular, Gaspare?” Hermione asked him. “Here—take a cigarette.”
She gave him one. He took it gently, twitching his nose as he did so. This was a little trick he had when he was pleased.
“You can smoke it here, if you like.”
“Grazie, Signora.”
He lit it gravely and took a whiff. Then he said:
“The Signorina is outside.”
“Is she?”
Hermione looked towards the window.
“It is a lovely night.”
“Si, Signora.”
He took another whiff, and turned his great eyes here and there, looking about the room. Hermione began to wonder what he had to say to her. She was certain that he had come to her for some reason other than just to ask if she had need of him.
“It does the Signorina good to get a breath of air before she goes to bed,” Hermione added, after a moment of silence. “It makes her sleep.”
“Si, Signora.”
He still stood calmly beside her, but now he looked at her with the odd directness which had been characteristic of him as a boy, and which he had not lost as a man.
“The Signorina is getting quite big, Signora,” he said. “Have you noticed? Per Dio! In Sicily, if the Signorina was a Sicilian, the giovinotti would be asking to marry her.”
“Ah, but, Gaspare, the Signorina is not a Sicilian,” she said. “She is English, you know, and English girls do not generally think of such things till they are much older than Sicilians.”
“But, Signora,” said Gaspare, with the bluntness which in him was never rudeness, but merely the sincerity which he considered due to his Padrona—due also to himself, “my Padrone was like a real Sicilian, and the Signorina is his daughter. She must be like a Sicilian too, by force.”
“Your Padrone, yes, he was a real Sicilian,” Hermione said softly. “But, well, the Signorina has much more English blood in her veins than Sicilian. She has only a little Sicilian blood.”
“But the Signorina thinks she is almost a Sicilian. She wishes to be a Sicilian.”
“How do you know that, Gaspare?” she asked, smiling a little at his firmness and persistence.
“The Signorina said so the other day to the giovinotto who had the cigarettes, Signora. I talked to him, and he told me. He said the Signorina had said to him that she was partly a Sicilian, and that he had said ‘no,’ that she was English. And when he said that—he said to me—the Signorina was quite angry. He could see that she was angry by her face.”
“I suppose that is the Sicilian blood, Gaspare. There is some in the Signorina’s veins, of course. And then, you know, both her father and I loved your country. I think the Signorina must often long to see Sicily.”
“Does she say so?” asked Gaspare, looking rather less calm.
“She has not lately. I think she is very happy here. Don’t you?”
“Si, Signora. But the Signorina is growing up now, and she is a little Sicilian anyhow, Signora.”
He paused, looking steadily at his Padrona.
“What is it, Gaspare? What do you want to say to me?”
“Signora, perhaps you will say it is not my business, but in my country we do not let girls go about by themselves after they are sixteen. We know it is better not. Ecco!”
Hermione had some difficulty in not smiling. But she knew that if she smiled he might be offended. So she kept her countenance and said:
“What