A Spirit in Prison. Robert Hichens
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if this weather has any effect upon that amazing population. I wonder if my young friend, Marchese Isidoro Panacci—By-the-way, I haven’t told you about him?”
“No.”
“I must. But not now. We will continue our former conversation. Where shall we find the boat, the small one?”
“Gaspare will bring it—Gaspare! Gaspare!”
“Signora!” cried a strong voice below.
“La piccola barca!”
“Va bene, Signora!”
They descended slowly. It would have been almost impossible to do anything quickly on such a day. The smallest movement, indeed, seemed almost an outrage, likely to disturb the great white dreamer of the sea. When they reached the foot of the cliff Gaspare was there, holding the little craft in which Vere had gone out with Ruffo.
“Do you want me, Signora?”
“No, thank you, Gaspare. Don Emilio will row me. We are only going a very little way.”
She stepped in. As Artois followed her he said to Gaspare:
“Those fishermen have gone?”
“Five minutes ago, Signore. There they are!”
He pointed to a boat at some distance, moving slowly in the direction of Posilipo.
“I have been talking with them. One says he is of my country, a Sicilian.”
“The boy?”
“Si, Signore, the giovinotto. But he cannot speak Sicilian, and he has never been in Sicily, poveretto!”
Gaspare spoke with an accent of pity in which there was almost a hint of contempt.
“A rivederci, Signore,” he added, pushing off the little boat.
“A rivederci, Gaspare.”
Artois took the oars and paddled very gently out, keeping near to the cliffs of the opposite shore.
“Even San Francesco looks weary to-day,” he said, glancing across the pool at the Saint on his pedestal. “I should not be surprised if, when we return, we find that he has laid down his cross and is reclining like the tired fishermen who come here in the night. Where shall we go?”
“To the Grotto of Virgil.”
“I wonder if Virgil was ever in his grotto? I wonder if he ever came here on such a day of scirocco as this, and felt that the world was very old, and he was even older than the world?”
“Do you feel like that to-day?”
“I feel that this is a world suitable for the old, for those who have white hairs to accord with the white waters, and whose nights are the white nights of age.”
“Was that why you were smiling so strangely just now when I came in?”
“Yes.”
He rowed on softly. The boat slipped out of the Pool of the Saint, and then they saw the Capo Coroglio and the Island of Nisida with its fort. On their right, and close to them, rose the weary-looking cliffs, honey-combed with caverns, and seamed with fissures as an old and haggard face is seamed with wrinkles that tell of many cares.
“Here is the grotto,” said Hermione, almost directly. “Row in gently.”
He obeyed her and turned the boat, sending it in under the mighty roof of rock.
A darkness fell upon them. They had a safe, enclosed sensation in escaping for a moment from the white day, almost as if they had escaped from a white enemy.
Artois let the oars lie still in the water, keeping his hands lightly upon them, and both Hermione and he were silent for a few minutes, listening to the tiny sounds made now and then by drops of moisture which fell from the cavern roof softly into the almost silent sea. At last Artois said:
“You are out of the whiteness now. This is a shadowed place like a confessional, where murmuring lips tell to strangers the stories of their lives. I am not a stranger, but tell me, my friend, about yourself and Vere. Perhaps you scarcely know how deeply the mother and child problem interests me—that is, when mother and child are two real forces, as you and Vere are.”
“Then you think Vere has force?”
“Do not you?”
“What kind of force?”
“You mean physical, intellectual, or moral? Suppose I say she has the force of charm!”
“Indeed she has that, as he had. That is one of the attributes she derives from Maurice.”
“Yes. He had a wonderful charm. And then, Vere has passion.”
“You think so?”
“I am sure of it. Where does she get that from?”
“He was full of the passion of the South.”
“I think Vere has a touch of Northern passion in her, too, combined perhaps with the other. And that, I think, she derives from you. Then I discern in Vere intellectual force, immature, embryonic if you like, but unmistakable.”
“That does not come from me,” Hermione said, suddenly, almost with bitterness.
“Why—why will you be unnecessarily humiliated?” Artois exclaimed.
His voice was confusedly echoed by the cavern, which broke into faint, but deep mutterings. Hermione looked up quickly to the mysterious vault which brooded above them, and listened till the chaotic noises died away. Then she said:
“Do you know what they remind me of?”
“Of what?”
“My efforts. Those efforts I made long ago to live again in work.”
“When you wrote?”
“Yes, when I tried to throw my mind and my heart down upon paper. How strange it was! I had Vere—but she wasn’t enough to still the ache. And I knew what work can be, what a consolation, because I knew you. And I stretched out my hands to it—I stretched out my soul. And it was no use; I wasn’t made to be a successful writer. When I spoke from my heart to try and move men and save myself, my words were seized, as yours were just now by the rock—seized, and broken, and flung back in confusion. They struck my heart like stones. Emile, I’m one of those people who can only do one thing: I can only feel.”
“It is true that you could never be an artist. Perhaps you were made to be an inspiration.”
“But that’s not enough. The role of starter to those who race—I haven’t the temperament to reconcile myself to that. It’s not that I have in me a conceit which demands to be fed. But I have in me a force that clamors to exercise itself. Only when I was living on Monte Amato with Maurice did I feel that the force was being used as God meant it to be used.”
“In loving?”
“In loving passionately something that was utterly worthy to be loved.”
Artois was silent. He knew Hermione’s mistake. He knew what had never been told him: that Maurice had been false to her for the love of the peasant girl Maddalena. He knew that Maurice had been done to death by the betrayed girl’s father, Salvatore. And Gaspare knew these things, too. But through all these years these two men had so respected silence, the nobility of it, the grand necessity of it in certain circumstances of life, that they had never spoken to each other of the black truth known to them both. Indeed, Artois believed that even now, after more than sixteen years, if he ventured one word against the dead man Gaspare would be ready to fly at his throat in defence of the loved Padrone. For this divined and persistent loyalty Artois had a sensation of absolute love. Between him and Gaspare there must always be the barrier of a great and mutual reserve. Yet that very reserve, because there