A Spirit in Prison Part 95

She met his eyes with a sort of child's impertinence. She had abruptly become the Vere of the Scoglio di Frisio.

"Who would take you for a watch-dog?"

"Ma--Signorina!"

"As a seal--yes, you are all very well! But--"

The young man was immediately in the seventh Heaven. The Signorina remembered his feats in the water. All his self-confidence returned, all his former certainty that the Signorina was secretly devoted to him. His days of doubt and fury were forgotten. His jealousy of Emilio vanished in a cloud of happy contempt for the disabilities of age, and he began to talk to Vere with a vivacity that was truly Neapolitan. When the Marchesino was joyous he had charm, the charm that emanates from the bounding life that flows in the veins of youth. Even the Puritan feels, and fears, the grace that is Pagan. The Marchesino had a Pagan grace.

And now it returned to him and fell about him like a garment, clothing body and soul. And Vere seemed to respond to it. She began to chatter, too. She talked lightly, flicking him with little whips of sarcasm that did not hurt, but only urged him on. The humor of a festa might begin to flow from these two.

And again, instead of infecting Artois, it seemed to set him apart, to rebuke silently his gifts, his fame--to tell him that they were useless, that they could do nothing for him.

The Marchesino was not troubled with an intellect. Yet with what ease he found words to play with the words of Vere! His Latin vivacity seemed a perfect subst.i.tute for thought, for imagination, for every subtlety. He bubbled like champagne. And when champagne winks and foams at the edge of the shining gla.s.s, do the young think of, or care for, the sober gravity, the lingering bouquet of claret, even if it be Chateau Margaux?

As Artois half listened to the young people, while he talked quietly with Hermione, playing the host with discretion, he felt the peculiar cruelty which ordains that the weapons of youth, even if taken up and used by age with vigor and competence, shall be only reeds in those hands whose lines tell of the life behind.

Yet how Vere and he had laughed together on the day of his return from Paris! One gust of such mutual laughter is worth how many days of earnest talk!

Vere was gleaming with fun to-night.

The waiters, as they went softly about the table, looked at her with kind eyes. Secretly they were enjoying her gayety because it was so pretty. Her merriment was as airy as the flight of a bird.

The Marchesino was entranced. Did she care for that?

Artois wondered secretly, and was not sure. He had a theory that all women like to feel their power over men. Few men have not this theory.

But there was in Vere something immensely independent, that seemed without s.e.x, and that hinted at a reserve not vestal, but very pure--too pure, perhaps, to desire an empire which is founded certainly upon desire.

And the Marchesino was essentially and completely the young animal; not the heavy, sleek, and self-contented young animal that the northern countries breed, but the frolicsome, playful, fiery young animal that has been many times warmed by the sun.

Hermione felt that Artois' mood to-night echoed his mood at Frisio's, and suddenly she thought once more of the visitors' book and of what he had written there, surely in a moment of almost heated impulse. And as she thought of it she was moved to speak of her thought. She had so many secret reserves from Emile now that this one she could dispense with.

"You remember that night when I met you on the sea?" she said to him.

He looked away from Vere and answered:

"Yes. What about it?"

"When I was at the Scoglio di Frisio I looked again over that wonderful visitors' book."

"Did you?"

"Yes. And I saw what you had written."

Their eyes met. She wondered if by the expression in hers he divined why she had made that expedition, moved by what expectation, by what curiosity. She could tell nothing by his face, which was calm and inscrutable.

After an instant's pause he said:

"Do you know from whom those words come?"

"No. Are they your own?"

"Victor Hugo's. Do you like them?"

But her eyes were asking him a question, and he saw it.

"What is it?" he said.

"Why did you write them?" she said.

"I had to write something. You made me."

"Vere suggested it first."

He looked again at Vere, but only for a moment. She was laughing at something the Marchesino was saying.

"Did she?--Oh! Take some of that salade a la Russe. I gave the chef the recipe for it.--Did she?"

"Don't you remember?"

"Those words were in my head. I put them down."

"Are you fond of them?"

Her restless curiosity was still quite unsatisfied.

"I don't know. But one has puzzled about conscience. Hasn't one?"

He glanced at the Marchesino, who was bending forward to Vere, and ill.u.s.trating something he was telling her by curious undulating gestures with both hands that suggested a flight.

"At least some of us have," he continued. "And some never have, and never will."

Hermione understood the comment on their fellow-guest.

"Do you think that saying explains it satisfactorily?" she said.

"I believe sometimes we know a great deal more than we know we know," he answered. "That sounds like some nonsense game with words, but it's the best way to put it. Conscience seems to speak out of the silence. But there may be some one in the prompter's box--our secret knowledge."

"But is it knowledge of ourselves, or of others?"

"Which do you think?"

"Of ourselves, I suppose. I think we generally know far less of others than we believe ourselves to know."

She expressed his thought of her earlier in the evening.

"Probably. And nevertheless we may know things of them that we are not aware we know--till after we have instinctively acted on our knowledge."

Their eyes met again. Hermione felt in that moment as if he knew why she had given Vere the permission to read his books.