A Spirit in Prison Part 10

Hermione hesitated.

"Perhaps you don't know," he said.

"I was wondering--yes, I do know. I must be truthful with myself--with you. I do know. But it seems so strange, so almost inexplicable, and even rather absurd."

"Truth often seems absurd."

"It was that boy, that diver for _frutti di mare_--Ruffo."

"The boy with the Arab eyes?"

"Yes. Of course I have seen many boys full of life and gayety and music.

There are so many in Italy. But--well, I don't know--perhaps it was partly Vere."

"How do you mean?"

"Vere was so interested in him. It may have been that. Or perhaps it was something in his look and in his voice when he was singing. I don't really know what it was. But that boy made me feel--more horribly than I have ever felt before--that Vere is not enough. Emile, there is some hunger, so persistent, so peculiar, so intense, that one feels as if it must be satisfied eventually, as if it were impossible for it not to be satisfied. I think that human hunger for immortal life is like that, and I think my hunger for a son is like that. I know my hunger can never be satisfied. And yet it lives on in me just as if it knew more than I know, as if it knew that it could and must. After all these years I can't, no, I can't reconcile myself to the fact that Maurice was taken from me so utterly, that he died without stamping himself upon a son. It seems as if it couldn't be. And I feel to-day that I cannot bear that it is."

There were tears standing in her eyes. She had spoken with a force of feeling, with a depth of sincerity, that startled Artois, intimately as he knew her. Till this moment he had not quite realized the wonderful persistence of love in the hearts of certain women, and not only the persistence of love's existence, but of its existence undiminished, unabated by time.

"How am I to bear it?" she said, as he did not speak.

"I cannot tell. I am not worthy to know. And besides, I must say to you, Hermione, that one of the greatest mysteries in human life, at any rate to me, is this: how some human beings do bear the burdens laid upon them. Christ bore His cross. But there has only been, since the beginning of things, one Christ, and it is unthinkable that there can ever be another. But all those who are not Christ, how is it they bear what they do bear? It is easy to talk of bravery, the necessity for it in life. It is always very easy to talk. The thing that is impossible is to understand. How can you come to me to help you, my friend? And suppose I were to try. How could I try, except by saying that I think Vere is very worthy to be loved with all your love?"

"You love Vere, don't you, Emile?"

"Yes."

"And I do. You don't doubt that?"

"Never."

"After all I have said, the way I have spoken, you might."

"I do not doubt it for a moment."

"I wonder if there is any mother who would not, if I spoke to her as I have spoken to you to-day?"

"I think there is a great deal of untruth spoken of mother's love, a great deal of misconception about it, as there is about most very strange, and very wonderful and beautiful things. But are you so sure that if your husband had stamped himself upon a boy this force within you could have been satisfied?"

"I have believed so."

She was silent. Then she added, quietly, "I do believe so."

He did not speak, but sat looking down at the sea, which was full of dim color in the cave.

"I think you are doubting that it would have been so?" she said, at last.

"Yes, that is true. I am doubting."

"I wonder why?"

"I cannot help feeling that there is pa.s.sion in you, such pa.s.sion as could not be satisfied in any strict, maternal relations.h.i.+p."

"But I am old, dear Emile," she said, very simply.

"When I was standing by that window, looking at the mountains of Ischia, I was saying to myself, 'This is an old, tired world, suitable for me--and for you. We are in our right environment to-day.' I was saying that, Hermione, but was I believing it, really? I don't think I was. And I am ten years older than you, and I have been given a nature that was, I think, always older than yours could ever be."

"I wonder if that is so."

She looked at him very directly, even searchingly, not with eager curiosity, but with deep inquiry.

"You know, Emile," she added, "I tell you very much, but you tell me very little. Not that I wish to ask anything--no. I respect all your reserve. And about your work: you tell me all that. It is a great thing in my life, your work. Perhaps you don't realize how sometimes I live in the book that you are doing, almost as if I were writing it myself. But your inner life--"

"But I have been frankness itself with you," said Artois. "To no one have I ever said so much as to you."

"Yes, I know, about many things. But about emotion, love,--not friends.h.i.+p, the other love--do you get on without that? When you say your nature has always been older than mine, do you mean that it has always been harder to move by love, that it has had less need of love?"

"I think so. For many years in my life I think that work has filled the place love occupies in many, perhaps in most men's lives. Everything comes second to work. I know that, because if any one attempts to interfere with my work, or to usurp any of the time that should be given to it, any regard I may have for that person turns at once to irritation, almost to hatred."

"I have never done that?"

"You--no. Of course, I have been like other men. When I was young--well, Hermione, after all I am a Frenchman, and though I am of Normandy, still I pa.s.sed many years in Paris, as you know."

"All that I understand. But the real thing? Such as I have known?"

"I have never broken my heart for any one, though I have known agitations. But even those were long ago. And since I was thirty-five I have never felt really dominated by any one. Before that time I occasionally pa.s.sed under the yoke, I believe, like other men. Why do you fix your eyes on me like that?"

"I was wondering if you could ever pa.s.s under the yoke again."

"Honestly, I do not think so. I am not sure. When can one be certain that one will never be, or do, this or that? Surely,"--he smiled,--"you are not afraid for me?"

"I do not say that. But I think you have forces in you not fully exercised even by your work."

"Possibly. But there the years do really step in and count for something, even for much. There is no doubt that as the years increase, the man who cares at all for intellectual pleasures is able to care for them more, is able to subst.i.tute them, without keen regret, without wailing and gnas.h.i.+ng of teeth, for certain other pleasures, to which, perhaps, formerly he clung. That is why the man who is mentally and bodily--you know what I mean?"

"Yes."

"Has such an immense advantage in years of decline over the man who is merely a bodily man."

"I am sure that is true. But--"

"What is it?"

"The heart? What about that?"

"Perhaps there are some hearts that can fulfil themselves sufficiently in friends.h.i.+p."