A Spirit in Prison Part 9

"A rivederci, Gaspare."

Artois took the oars and paddled very gently out, keeping near to the cliffs of the opposite sh.o.r.e.

"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 pa.s.sion."

"You think so?"

"I am sure of it. Where does she get that from?"

"He was full of the pa.s.sion of the South."

"I think Vere has a touch of Northern pa.s.sion 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 G.o.d meant it to be used."

"In loving?"

"In loving pa.s.sionately 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 n.o.bility of it, the grand necessity of it in certain circ.u.mstances 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 was something truly delicate, and truly n.o.ble in it, was as a link of steel between them. They were watchdogs of Hermione. They had been watchdogs through all these years, guarding her from the knowledge of a truth. And so well had they done her service that now to-day she was able to say, with clasped hands and the light of pa.s.sion in her eyes:

"Something that was utterly worthy to be loved."

When Artois spoke again he said:

"And that force cannot be fully used in loving Vere?"

"No, Emile. Is that very horrible, very unnatural?"

"Why should it be?"

"I have tried--I have tried for years, Emile, to make Vere enough. I have even been false with myself. I have said to myself that she was enough. I did that after I knew that I could never produce work of any value. When Vere was a baby I lived only for her. Again, when she was beginning to grow up, I tried to live, I did live only for her. And I remember I used to say, I kept on saying to myself, 'This is enough for me. I do not need any more than this. I have had my life. I am now a middle-aged woman. I must live in my child. This will be my satisfaction. This is my satisfaction. This is using rightly and naturally all that force I feel within me.' I kept on saying this. But there is something within one which rises up and defies a lie--however beautiful the lie is, however n.o.ble it is. And I think even a lie can sometimes be both. Don't you, Emile?"

It almost seemed to him for a moment that she knew his lie and Gaspare's.

"Yes," he said. "I do think so."

"Well, that lie of mine--it was defied. And it had no more courage."

"I want you to tell me something," he said, quietly. "I want you to tell me what has happened to-day."

"To-day?"

"Yes. Something has happened either to-day or very recently--I am sure of it--that has stirred up within you this feeling of acute dissatisfaction. It was always there. But something has called it into the open. What has done that?"