A Spirit in Prison. Robert Hichens
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with a sort of tender amusement.
“I really have,” returned Vere.
She put her head against her mother’s shoulder.
“Isn’t this odd, Madre? Twice in the short time I’ve known Ruffo, he’s obeyed me. The first time he was in the boat. I called out to him to dive in, and he did it instantly. The second time he was under water, at the very bottom of the sea. He looked as if he were dead, and for a minute I felt frightened. So I called out to him to come up, and he came up directly.”
“But that only shows that he’s a polite boy and does what you wish.”
“No, no. He didn’t hear me either time. He had no idea I had called. But each time I did, without hearing me he had the sudden wish to do what I wanted. Now, isn’t that curious?”
She paused.
“Madre?” she added.
“You think you influenced him?”
“Don’t you think I did?”
“Perhaps so. There’s a sympathetic link of youth between you. You are gloriously young, both of you, little daughter. And youth turns naturally to youth, though I’m afraid old age doesn’t always turn naturally to old age.”
“What do you know about old age, Madre? You haven’t a gray hair.”
She spoke with anxious encouragement.
“It’s true. My hair declines to get gray.”
“I don’t believe you’ll ever be gray.”
“Probably not. But there’s another grayness—Life behind one instead of before; the emotional—”
She stopped herself. This was not for Vere.
“They’re close in,” she said, looking out of the window.
She waved her hand. The big man in the stern of the boat took off his hat in reply, and waved his hand, too. The rower pulled with the vivacity that comes to men near the end of a task, and the boat shot into the Pool of the Saint, where Ruffo was at that moment enjoying his third cigarette.
“I’ll run down and meet Monsieur Emile,” said Vere.
And she disappeared as swiftly as she had come.
The big man who got out of the boat could not claim Hermione’s immunity from gray hairs. His beard was lightly powdered with them, and though much of the still thick hair on his head was brown, and his figure was erect, and looked strong and athletic—he seemed what he was, a man of middle age, who had lived, and thought, and observed much. His eyes had the peculiar expression of eyes that have seen very many and very various sights. It was difficult to imagine them not looking keenly intelligent. The vivacity of youth was no longer in them, but the vividness of intellect, of an intellect almost fiercely alive and tenacious of its life, was never absent from them.
As Artois got out, the boat’s prow was being held by the Sicilian, Gaspare, now a man of thirty-five, but still young-looking. Many Sicilians grow old quickly—hard life wears them out. But Gaspare’s fate had been easier than that of most of his contemporaries and friends of Marechiaro. Ever since the tragic death of the beloved master, whom he still always spoke of as “mio Padrone,” he had been Hermione’s faithful attendant and devoted friend. Yes, she knew him to be that—she wished him to be that. Their stations in life might be different, but they had come to sorrow together. They had suffered together and been in sympathy while they suffered. He had loved what she had loved, lost it when she had lost it, wept for it when she had wept.
And he had been with her when she had waited for the coming of the child.
Hermione really cared for three people: Gaspare was one of them. He knew it. The other two were Vere and Emile Artois.
“Vere,” said Artois, taking her two hands closely in his large hands, and gazing into her face with the kind, even affectionate directness that she loved in him: “do you know that to-day you are looking insolent?”
“Insolent!” said the girl. “How dare you!”
She tried to take her hands away.
“Insolently young,” he said, keeping them authoritatively.
“But I am young. What do you mean, Monsieur Emile?”
“I? It is your meaning I am searching for.”
“I sha’n’t let you find it. You are much too curious about people. But—I’ve been having a game this morning.”
“A game! Who was your playmate?”
“Never mind.”
But her bright eyes went for the fraction of a second to Ruffo, who close by in the boat was lying at his ease, his head thrown back, and one of the cigarettes between his lips.
“What! That boy there?”
“Nonsense! Come along! Madre has been sitting at the window for ages looking out for the boat. Couldn’t you sail at all Gaspare?”
Artois had let go her hands, and now she turned to the Sicilian.
“To Naples, Signorina, and nearly to the Antico Giuseppone coming back.”
“But we had to do a lot of tacking,” said Artois. “Mon Dieu! That boy is smoking one of my cigarettes! You sacrilegious little creature! You have been robbing my box!”
Gaspare’s eyes followed Artois’ to Ruffo, who was watching them attentively, but who now looked suddenly sleepy.
“It belongs to Madre.”
“It was bought for me.”
“I like you better with a pipe. You are too big for cigarettes. And besides, artists always smoke pipes.”
“Allow me to forget that I try to be an artist when I come to the island, Vere.”
“Yes, yes, I will,” she said, with a pretty air of relenting. “You poor thing, here you are a king incognito, and we all treat you quite familiarly. I’ll even go first, regardless of etiquette.” And she went off to the steps that led upward to the house.
Artois followed her. As he went he said to Ruffo in the Neapolitan dialect:
“It’s a good cigarette, isn’t it? You are in luck this morning.”
“Si, Signore,” said the boy, smiling. “The Signorina gave me ten.”
And he blew out a happy cloud.
There was something in his welcoming readiness of response, something in his look and voice, that seemed to stir within the tenacious mind of Artois a quivering chord of memory.
“I wonder if I have spoken to that boy in Naples?” he thought, as he mounted the steps behind Vere.
Hermione met him at the door of her room, and they went in almost directly to lunch with Vere. When the meal was over Vere disappeared, without saying why, and Hermione and Artois returned to Hermione’s room to have coffee. By this time the day was absolutely windless, the sky had become nearly white, and the sea was a pale gray, flecked here and there with patches of white.
“This is like a June day of scirocco,” said Artois, as he lit his pipe with the air of a man thoroughly at home. “I wonder if it will succeed in affecting Vere’s spirits. This morning, when I arrived, she looked wildly young. But the day held still some blue then.”
Hermione was settling herself slowly in a low chair near the window that faced Capri. The curious, rather ghastly light from the sea fell over her.
“Vere is very sensitive to almost all influences,” she said. “You know that, Emile.”
“Yes,” he said, throwing away the match he had been using;