A Spirit in Prison Part 59

Artois rested his arms on the bal.u.s.trade.

The ristorante was nearly full now, gay with lights and with a tempest of talk. The waiter came to ask if the Signore would take coffee.

Artois hesitated a moment, then shook his head. He realized that his nerves had been tried enough in these last days and nights. He must let them rest for a while.

The waiter went away, and he turned once more towards the sea. To-night he felt the wonder of Italy, of this part of the land and of its people, as he had not felt it before, in a new and, as it seemed to him, a mysterious way. A very modern man and, in his art, a realist, to-night there was surely something very young alert within him, something of vague sentimentality that was like an echo from Byronic days. He felt over-shadowed, but not unpleasantly, by a dim and exquisite melancholy, in which he thought of nature and of human nature pathetically, linking them together; those singing voices with the stars, the women who leaned on balconies to listen with the sea that was murmuring below them, the fishermen upon that sea with the deep and marvellous sky that watched their labors.

In a beautiful and almost magical sadness he too was one with the night, this night in Italy. It held him softly in its arms. A golden sadness streamed from the stars. The voices below expressed it. The fishermen's torches in the Bay, those travelling lights that are as the eyes of the South searching for charmed things in secret places, lifted the sorrows of earth towards the stars, and they were golden too. There was a joy even in the tears wept on such a night as this.

He loved detail. It was, perhaps, his fault to love it too much. But now he realized that the magician, Night, knew better than he what were the qualities of perfection. She had changed Naples into a diaper of jewels sparkling softly in the void. He knew that behind that lacework of jewels there were hotels, gaunt and discolored houses full of poverty, shame, and wickedness, galleries in which men hunted the things that gratify their l.u.s.ts, alleys infected with disease and filth indescribable. He knew it, but he no longer felt it. The glamour of the magician was upon him. Perhaps behind the stars there were terrors, too. But who, looking upon them, could believe it? Detail might create a picture; its withdrawal let in upon the soul the spirit light of the true magic.

It was a mistake to search too much, to draw too near, to seek always to see clearly.

The Night taught that in Italy, and many things not to be clothed with words.

Reluctantly at last he lifted his arms from the balcony rail and got up to leave the restaurant. He dreaded the bustle of the street. As he came out into it he heard the sharp "Ting! Ting!" of a tram-bell higher up the hill, and stepped aside to let the tram go by. Idly he looked at it as it approached. He was still in the vague, the almost sentimental mood that had come upon him with the night. The tram came up level with him and slipped slowly by. There was a number of people in it, but on the last seat one woman sat alone. He saw her clearly as she pa.s.sed, and recognized Hermione.

She did not see him. She was looking straight before her.

"Ah-ah! Ah-ah!"

A shower of objurgations in the Neapolitan dialect fell upon Artois from the box of a carriage coming up the hill. He jumped back and gained the path. There again he stood still. The sweet and half-melancholy vagueness had quite left him now. The sight of his friend had swept it away. Why was she going to Mergellina at that hour? And why did she look like that?

And he thought of the expression he had seen on her face as the tram slipped by, an expression surely of excitement; but also a furtive expression.

Artois had seen Hermione in all her moods, and hers was a very changeful face. But never before had he seen her look furtive. Nor could he have conceived it possible that she could look so.

Perhaps the lights had deceived him. And he had only seen her for an instant.

But why was she going to Mergellina?

Then suddenly it occurred to him that she might be going to Naples, not to Mergellina at all. He knew no reason why her destination should be Mergellina. He began to walk down the hill rather quickly. Some hundreds of yards below the Ristorante della Stella there is a narrow flight of steps between high walls and houses, which leads eventually down to the sea at a point where there are usually two or three boats waiting for hire. Artois, when he started, had no intention of going to sea that night, but when he reached the steps he paused, and finally turned from the path and began to descend them.

He had realized that he was really in pursuit, and abruptly relinquished his purpose. Why should he wish to interfere with an intention of Hermione's that night?

He would return to Naples by sea.

As he came in sight of the water there rose up to him in a light tenor voice a melodious cry:

"Barca! Barca!"

He answered the call.

"Barca!"

The sailor who was below came gayly to meet him.

"It is a lovely night for the Signore. I could take the Signore to Sorrento or to Capri to-night."

He held Artois by the right arm, gently a.s.sisting him into the broad-bottomed boat.

"I only want to go to Naples."

"To which landing, Signore?"

"The Vittoria. But go quietly and keep near the sh.o.r.e. Go round as near as you can to the Mergellina."

"Va bene, Signore."

They slipped out, with a delicious, liquid sound, upon the moving silence of the sea.

CHAPTER XIX

Hermione was not going to Mergellina, but to the Scoglio di Frisio.

She had only come out of her room late in the afternoon. During her seclusion there she had once been disturbed by Gaspare, who had come to ask her if she wanted him for anything, and, if not, whether he might go over to Mergellina for the rest of the afternoon to see some friends he had made there. She told him he was free till night, and he went away quickly, after one searching, wide-eyed glance at the face of his Padrona.

When he had gone Hermione told herself that she was glad he was away. If he had been on the island she might have been tempted to take one of the boats, to ask him to row her to the Scoglio that evening. But now, of course, she would not go. It was true that she could easily get a boatman from the village on the mainland near by, but without Gaspare's companionship she would not care to go. So that was settled. She would think no more about it. She had tea with Vere, and strove with all her might to be natural, to show no traces in face or manner of the storm that had swept over her that day. She hoped, she believed that she was successful. But what a hateful, what an unnatural effort that was!

A woman who is not at her ease in her own home with her own girl--where can she be at ease?

It was really the reaction from that effort that sent Hermione from the island that evening. She felt as if she could not face another meal with Vere just then. She felt transparent, as if Vere's eyes would be able to see all that she must hide if they were together in the evening. And she resolved to go away. She made some excuse--that she wished for a little change, that she was fidgety and felt the confinement of the island.

"I think I'll go over to the village," she said; "and walk up to the road and take the tram."

"Will you, Madre?"

Hermione saw in Vere's eyes that the girl was waiting for something.

"I'll go by myself, Vere," she said. "I should be bad company to-day.

The black dog is at my heels."

She laughed, and added:

"If I am late in coming back, have dinner without me."

"Very well, Madre."

Vere waited a moment; then as if desiring to break forcibly through the restraint that bound them put out her hand to her mother's and said:

"Why don't you go to Naples and have dinner with Monsieur Emile? He would cheer you up, and it is ages since we have seen him."

"Only two or three days. No, I won't disturb Emile. He may be working."

Vere felt that somehow her eager suggestion had deepened the constraint.

She said no more, and Hermione presently crossed over to the mainland and began her walk to the road that leads from Naples to Bagnoli.

Where was she going? What was she really about to do?