A Spirit in Prison Part 102

Questions blazed in his eyes. His hand closed more firmly on the Marchesino.

"Where did you take that child? What did you say to her? What did you dare to say?"

"I! And you?" said the Marchesino, sharply.

He threw out his hand towards the face of Artois. "And you--you!" he repeated.

"I?"

"Yes--you! What have you said to her? Where have you taken her? I at least am young. My blood speaks to me. I am natural, I am pa.s.sionate. I know what I am, what I want; I know it; I say it; I am sincere. I--I am ready to go naked into the sun before the whole world, and say, 'There!

There! This is Isidoro Panacci; and he is this--and this--and this! Like it or hate it--that does not matter! It is not his fault. He is like that. He is made like that. He is meant to be like that, and he is that--he is that!' Do you hear? That is what I am ready to do. But you--you--! Ah, Madonna! Ah, Madre benedetta!"

He threw up both his hands suddenly, looked at the ceiling and shook his head sharply from side to side. Then he slapped his hands gently and repeatedly against his knees, and a grim and almost venerable look came into his mobile face.

"The great worker! The man of intellect! The man who is above the follies of that little Isidoro Panacci, who loves a beautiful girl, and who is proud of loving her, and who knows that he loves her, that he wants her, that he wishes to take her! Stand still!"--he suddenly hissed out the words. "The man with the white hairs who might have had many children of his own, but who prefers to play papa--caro papa, Babbo bello!--to the child of another on a certain little island. Ah, buon Dio! The wonderful writer, respected and admired by all; by whose side the little Isidoro seems only a small boy from college, about whom n.o.body need bother! How he is loved, and how he is trusted on the island! n.o.body must come there but he and those whom he wishes. He is to order, to arrange all. The little Isidoro--he must not come there.

He must not know the ladies. He is nothing; but he is wicked. He loves pleasure. He loves beautiful girls! Wicked, wicked Isidoro! Keep him out! Keep him away! But the great writer--with the white hairs--everything is allowed to him because he is Caro Papa. He may teach the Signorina. He may be alone with her. He may take her out at night in the boat."--His cheeks were stained with red and his eyes glittered.--"And when the voice of that wicked little Isidoro is heard--Quick! Quick! To the cave! Let us escape! Let us hide where it is dark, and he will never find us! Let us make him think we are at Nisida!

Hush! the boat is pa.s.sing. He is deceived! He will search all night till he is tired! Ah--ah--ah! That is good! And now back to the island--quick!--before he finds out!"--He thrust out his arm towards Artois.--"And that is my friend!" he exclaimed. "He who calls himself the friend of the little wicked Isidoro. P--!"--He turned his head and spat on to the balcony.--"Gran Dio! And this white-haired Babbo! He steals into the Galleria at night to meet Maria Fortunata! He puts a girl of the town to live with the Signorina upon the island, to teach her--"

"Stop!" said Artois.

"I will not stop!" said the Marchesino, furiously. "To teach the Signorina all the--"

Artois lifted his hand.

"Do you want me to strike you on the mouth?" he said.

"Strike me!"

Artois looked at him with a steadiness that seemed to pierce.

"Then--take care, Panacci. You are losing your head."

"And you have lost yours!" cried the Marchesino. "You, with your white hairs, you are mad. You are mad about the 'child.' You play papa, and all the time you are mad, and you think n.o.body sees it. But every one sees it, every one knows it. Every one knows that you are madly in love with the Signorina."

Artois had stepped back.

"I--in love!" he said.

His voice was contemptuous, but his face had become flushed, and his hands suddenly clinched themselves.

"What! you play the hypocrite even with yourself! Ah, we Neapolitans, we may be shocking; but at least we are sincere! You do not know!--then I will tell you. You love the Signorina madly, and you hate me because you are jealous of me--because I am young and you are old. I know it; the Signora knows it; that Sicilian--Gaspare--he knows it! And now you--you know it!"

He suddenly flung himself down on the sofa that was behind him.

Perspiration was running down his face, and even his hands were wet with it.

Artois said nothing, but stood where he was, looking at the Marchesino, as if he were waiting for something more which must inevitably come. The Marchesino took out his handkerchief, pa.s.sed it several times quickly over his lips, then rolled it up into a ball and shut it up in his left hand.

"I am young and you are old," he said. "And that is all the matter. You hate me, not because you think I am wicked and might do the Signorina harm, but because I am young. You try to keep the Signorina from me because I am young. You do not dare to let her know what youth is, really, really to know, really, really to feel. Because, if once she did know, if once she did feel, if she touched the fire"--he struck his hand down on his breast--"she would be carried away, she would be gone from you forever. You think, 'Now she looks up to me! She reverences me! She admires me! She worships me as a great man!' And if once, only once she touched the fire--ah!"--he flung out both his arms with a wide gesture, opened his mouth, then shut it, showing his teeth like an animal.--"Away would go everything--everything. She would forget your talent, she would forget your fame, she would forget your thoughts, your books, she would forget you, do you hear?--all, all of you. She would remember only that you are old and she is young, and that, because of that, she is not for you. And then"--his voice dropped, became cold and serious and deadly, like the voice of one proclaiming a stark truth--"and then, if she understood you, what you feel, and what you wish, and how you think of her--she would hate you! How she would hate you!"

He stopped abruptly, staring at Artois, who said nothing.

"Is it not true?" he said.

He got up, taking his hat and stick from the floor.

"You do not know! Well--think! And you will know that it is true. A rivederci, Emilio!"

His manner had suddenly become almost calm. He turned away and went towards the door. When he reached it he added:

"To-morrow I shall ask the Signora to allow me to marry the Signorina."

Then he went out.

The gilt clock on the marble table beneath the mirror struck the half-hour after one. Artois looked at it and at his watch, comparing them. The action was mechanical, and unaccompanied by any thought connected with it. When he put his watch back into his pocket he did not know whether its hands pointed to half-past one or not. He carried a light chair on to the balcony, and sat down there, crossing his legs, and leaning one arm on the rail.

"If she touched the fire." Those words of the Marchesino remained in the mind of Artois--why, he did not know. He saw before him a vision of a girl and of a flame. The flame aspired towards the girl, but the girl hesitated, drew back--then waited.

What had happened during the hours of the Festa? Artois did not know.

The Marchesino had told him nothing, except that he--Artois--was madly in love with Vere. Monstrous absurdity! What trivial nonsense men talked in moments of anger, when they desired to wound!

And to-morrow the Marchesino would ask Vere to marry him. Of course Vere would refuse. She had no feeling for him. She would tell him so. He would be obliged to understand that for once he could not have his own way. He would go out of Vere's life, abruptly, as he had come into it.

He would go. That was certain. But others would come into Vere's life.

Fire would spring up round about her, the fire of love of men for a girl who has fire within her, the fire of the love of youth for youth.

Youth! Artois was not by nature a sentimentalist--and he was not a fool.

He knew how to accept the inevitable things life cruelly brings to men, without futile struggling, without contemptible pretence. Quite calmly, quite serenely, he had accepted the snows of middle age. He had not secretly groaned or cursed, railed against destiny, striven to defy it by travesty, as do many men. He had thought himself to be "above" all that--until lately. But now, as he thought of the fire, he was conscious of an immense sadness that had in it something of pa.s.sion, or a regret that was, for a moment, desperate, bitter, that seared, that tortured, that was scarcely to be endured. It is terrible to realize that one is at a permanent disadvantage, which time can only increase. And just then Artois felt that there was nothing, that there could never be anything, to compensate any human being for the loss of youth.

He began to wonder about the people of the island. The Marchesino had spoken with a strange a.s.surance. He had dared to say:

"You love the Signorina. I know it; the Signora knows it; Gaspare--he knows it. And now you--you know it."

Was it possible that his deep interest in Vere, his paternal delight in her talent, in her growing charm, in her grace and sweetness, could have been mistaken for something else, for the desire of man for woman? Vere had certainly never for a moment misunderstood him. That he knew as surely as he knew that he was alive. But Gaspare and Hermione? He fell into deep thought, and presently he was shaken by an emotion that was partly disgust and partly anxiety. He got up from his chair and looked out into the night. The weather was exquisitely still, the sky absolutely clear. The sea was like the calm that dwells surely in the breast of G.o.d. Naples was sleeping in the silence. But he was terribly awake, and it began to seem to him as if he had, perhaps, slept lately, slept too long. He was a lover of truth, and believed himself to be a discerner of it. The Marchesino was but a thoughtless, pa.s.sionate boy, headstrong, Pagan, careless of intellect, and immensely physical. Yet it was possible that he had been enabled to see a truth which Artois had neither seen nor suspected. Artois began to believe it possible, as he remembered many details of the conduct of Hermione and of Gaspare in these last summer days. There had been something of condemnation sometimes in the Sicilian's eyes as they looked into his. He had wondered what it meant. Had it meant--that? And that night in the garden with Hermione--

With all the force and fixity of purpose he fastened his mind upon Hermione, letting Gaspare go.

If what the Marchesino had a.s.serted were true--not that--but if Hermione had believed it to be true, much in her conduct that had puzzled Artois was made plain. Could she have thought that? Had she thought it? And if she had--? Always he was looking out to the stars, and to the ineffable calm of the sea. But now their piercing brightness, and its large repose, only threw into a sort of blatant relief in his mind its consciousness of the tumult of humanity. He saw Hermione involved in that tumult, and he saw himself. And Vere?

Was it possible that in certain circ.u.mstances Vere might hate him?

It was strange that to-night Artois found himself for the first time considering the Marchesino seriously, not as a boy, but as a man who perhaps knew something of the world and of character better than he did.

The Marchesino had said:

"If she understood you--how she would hate you."

But surely Vere and he understood each other very well.

He looked out over the sea steadily, as he wished, as he meant, to look now at himself, into his own heart and nature, into his own life. Upon the sea, to the right and far off, a light was moving near the blackness of the breakwater. It was the torch of a fisherman--one of those eyes of the South of which Artois had thought. His eyes became fascinated by it, and he watched it with intensity. Sometimes it was still. Then it travelled gently onward, coming towards him. Then it stopped again.

Fire--the fire of youth. He thought of the torch as that; as youth with its hot strength, its beautiful eagerness, its intense desires, its spark-like hopes, moving without fear amid the dark mysteries of the world and of life; seeking treasure in the blackness, the treasure of an answering soul, of a completing nature, of the desired and desirous heart, seeking its complement of love--the other fire.