A Spirit in Prison Part 132

He was reading from her face.

"She went--Madre went in there to--"

She stopped and swallowed.

"Madre took father's photograph--the one on the writing-table--and tore it to pieces. And the frame--that was all bent and nearly broken.

Father's photograph, that she loves so much!"

Artois said nothing. At that moment it was as if he entered suddenly into Hermione's heart, and knew every feeling there.

"Monsieur Emile--is she--is Madre--ill?"

She began to tremble once more, as she had trembled when she came to fetch Gaspare from the nook of the cliff beside the Saint's Pool.

"Not as you mean, Vere."

"You are sure? You are certain?"

"Not in that way."

"But then I heard Madre come out and go to her bedroom. I didn't hear whether she locked the door. I only heard it shut. But Gaspare says he knows it is locked. Two or three minutes after the door was shut I heard--I heard--"

"Don't be afraid. Tell me--if I ought to know."

Those words voiced a deep and delicate reluctance which was beginning to invade him. Yet he wished to help Vere, to release this child from the thrall of a terror which could only be conquered if it were expressed.

"Tell me," he added, slowly.

"I heard Madre--Monsieur Emile, it was hardly crying!"

"Don't. You needn't tell me any more."

"Gaspare heard it too. It went on for a long, long time. We--Gaspare made the servants keep downstairs ever since. And I--I have been waiting for you to come, because Madre cares for you."

Artois put his hand down quickly upon Vere's right hand.

"I am glad that you sent for me, Vere. I am glad you think that. Come and sit down on the bench."

He drew her down beside him. He felt that he was with a child whom he must comfort. Gaspare stood always looking down over the rail of the terrace to the sea.

"Vere!"

"Yes, Monsieur Emile."

"You mother is not ill as you thought--feared. But--to-day--she has had, she must have had, a great shock."

"But at Mergellina?"

"Only that could account for what you have just told me."

"But I don't understand. She only went to Mergellina."

"Did you see her before she went there?"

"Yes."

"Was she as usual?"

"I don't think she was. I think Madre has been changing nearly all this summer. That is why I am so afraid. You know she has been changing."

He was silent. The difficulty of the situation was great. He did not know how to resolve it.

"You have seen the change, Monsieur Emile!"

He did not deny it. He did not know what to do or say. For of that change, although perhaps now he partly understood it, he could never speak to Vere or to any one.

"It has made me so unhappy," Vere said, with a break in her voice.

And he had said to himself: "Vere must be happy!" At that moment he and his intellect seemed to him less than a handful of dust.

"But this change of to-day is different," he said, slowly. "Your mother has had a dreadful shock."

"At Mergellina?"

"It must have been there."

"But what could it be? We scarcely ever go there. We don't know any one there--oh, except Ruffo."

Her eyes, keen and bright with youth, even though they had been crying, were fixed upon his face while she was speaking, and she saw a sudden conscious look in his eyes, a movement of his lips--he drew them sharply together, as if seized by a spasm.

"Ruffo!" she repeated. "Has it something to do with Ruffo?"

There was a profound perplexity in her face, but the fear in it was less.

"Something to do with Ruffo?" she repeated.

Suddenly she moved, she got up. And all the fear had come back to her face, with something added to it, something intensely personal.

"Do you mean--is Ruffo dead?" she whispered.

A voice rose up from the sea singing a sad little song. Vere turned towards the sea. All her body relaxed. The voice pa.s.sed on. The sad little song pa.s.sed under the cliff, to the Saint's Pool and the lee of the island.

"Ah, Monsieur Emile," she said, "why don't you tell me?"

She swayed. He put his arm quickly behind her.

"No, no! It's all right. That was Ruffo!"

And she smiled.