A Spirit in Prison. Robert Hichens
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him carefully. “You can’t get anything more out of that one.”
“Grazie, Signorina.”
He took it eagerly.
“Do tell me your name, won’t you?” Vere went on.
“Ruffo, Signorina.”
“Ruffo—that’s a nice name. It sounds strong and bold. And you live at Mergellina?”
“Si, Signorina. But I wasn’t born there. I wasn’t born in Naples at all.”
“Where were you born?”
“In America, Signorina, near New York. I am a Sicilian.”
“A Sicilian, are you!”
“Si, Signorina.”
“I am a little bit Sicilian, too; only a little tiny bit—but still—”
She waited to see the effect upon him. He looked at her steadily with his long bright eyes.
“You are Sicilian, Signorina?”
“My great-grandmother was.”
“Si?”
His voice sounded incredulous.
“Don’t you believe me?” she cried, rather hotly.
“Ma si, Signorina! Only—that’s not very Sicilian, if the rest is English. You are English, Signorina, aren’t you?”
“The rest of me is. Are you all Sicilian?”
“Signorina, my mother is Sicilian.”
“And your father, too?”
“Signorina, my father is dead,” he said, in a changed voice. “Now I live with my mother and my step-father. He—Patrigno—he is Neapolitan.”
There was a movement in the boat. The boy looked round.
“I must go back to the boat, Signorina,” he said.
“Oh, must you?” Vere said. “What a pity! But look, they are really still asleep.”
“I must go back, Signorina,” he protested.
“You want to sleep, too, perhaps?”
He seized the excuse.
“Si, Signorina. Being under the sea so much—it tires the head and the eyes. I want to sleep, too.”
His face, full of life, denied his words, but Vere only said:
“Here are the cigarettes.”
“Grazie, Signorina.”
“And I promised you another packet. Well, wait here—just here, d’you see?—under the bridge, and I’ll throw it down, and you must catch it.”
“Si, Signorina.”
He took his stand on the spot she pointed out, and she disappeared up the steps towards the house.
“Madre! Madre!”
Hermione heard Vere’s voice calling below a moment later.
“What is it?”
There was a quick step on the stairs, and the girl ran in.
“One more packet of cigarettes—may I? It’s instead of the dolce. Ruffo says only women eat sweet things.”
“Ruffo!”
“Yes, that’s his name. He’s been diving for me. You never saw anything like it! And he’s a Sicilian. Isn’t it odd? And sixteen—just as I am. May I have the cigarettes for him?”
“Yes, of course. In that drawer there’s a whole box of the ones Monsieur Emile likes.”
“There would be ten cigarettes in a packet. I’ll give him ten.”
She counted them swiftly out.
“There! And I’ll make him catch them all, one by one. It will be more fun than throwing only a packet. Addio, mia bella Madre! Addi-io! Addi-io!”
And singing the words to the tune of “Addio, mia bella Napoli,” she flitted out of the room and down the stairs.
“Ruffo! Ruffo!”
A minute later she was leaning over the bridge to the boy, who stood sentinel below. He looked up, and saw her laughing face full of merry mischief, and prepared to catch the packet she had promised him.
“Ruffo, I’m so sorry, but I can’t find another packet of cigarettes.”
The boy’s bright face changed, looked almost sad, but he called up:
“Non fa niente, Signorina!” He stood still for a moment, then made a gesture of salutation, and added; “Thank you, Signorina. A rivederci!”
He moved to go to the boat, but Vere cried out, quickly:
“Wait, Ruffo! Can you catch well?”
“Signorina?”
“Look out now!”
Her arm was thrust out over the bridge, and Ruffo, staring up, saw a big cigarette—a cigarette such as he had never seen—in her small fingers. Quickly he made a receptacle of his joined hands, his eyes sparkling and his lips parted with happy anticipation.
“One!”
The cigarette fell and was caught.
“Two!”
A second fell. But this time Ruffo was unprepared, and it dropped on the rock by his bare feet.
“Stupido!” laughed the girl.
“Ma, Signorina—!”
“Three!”
It had become a game between them, and continued to be a game until all the ten cigarettes had made their journey through the air.
Vere would not let Ruffo know when a cigarette was coming, but kept him on the alert, pretending, holding it poised above him between his finger and thumb until even his eyes blinked from gazing upward; then dropping it when she thought he was unprepared, or throwing it like a missile. But she soon knew that she had found her match in the boy. And when he caught the tenth and last cigarette in his mouth she clapped her hands, and cried out so enthusiastically that one of the men in the boat heaved himself up from the bottom, and, choking down a yawn, stared with heavy amazement at the young virgin of the rocks, and uttered a “Che Diavolo!” under his stiff mustache.
Vere saw his astonishment, and swiftly, with a parting wave of her hand to Ruffo, she disappeared, leaving her protégé to run off gayly with his booty to his comrades of the Sirena del Mare.
CHAPTER III
“I can see the boat, Vere,” said Hermione, when the girl came back, her eyes still gleaming with memories of the fun of the cigarette game with Ruffo.
“Where, Madre?”
She sat down quickly beside her mother on the window-seat, leaning against her confidentially and looking out over the sea. Hermione put her arm round the girl’s shoulder.
“There! Don’t you see!” She pointed. “It has passed Casa Pantano.”
“I see! Yes, that is Gaspare, and Monsieur Emile in the stern. They won’t be late for lunch. I almost wish they would, Madre.”
“Why?”
“I’m