A Spirit in Prison Part 30

Giulia came in at this moment with tea. She smiled again broadly on Artois, and received and returned his greeting with the comfortable and unembarra.s.sed friendliness of the Italian race. As she went out she was still smiling.

"Addio to the German gentleman with the unaesthetic ailments!" said Artois.

An almost boyish sensation of sheer happiness invaded him. It made him feel splendidly, untalkative. And he felt for a moment, too, as if his intellect lay down to sleep.

"Cara Giulia!" he added, after a rapturous silence.

"What?"

"Carissima Giulia!"

"Yes, Giulia is--"

"They all are, and the island, and the house upon it, and this clear yellow tea, and this brown toast, and this b.u.t.ter from Lombardy. They all are."

"I believe you are feeling good all over, Monsieur Emile."

"San Gennaro knows I am."

He drank some tea, and ate some toast, spreading the b.u.t.ter upon it with voluptuous deliberation.

"Then I'm sure he's pleased."

"Paris, hateful Paris!"

"Oh, but that's abusive. A person who feels good all over should not say that."

"You are right, Vere. But when are you not right? You ought always to wear your hair down, mon enfant, and always to have just been bathing."

"And you ought always to have just been travelling."

"It is true that a dreadful past can be a blessing as well as a curse.

It is profoundly true. Why have I never realized that before?"

"If I am twelve and a half, I think you are about--about--"

"For the love of the sea make it under twenty, Vere."

"Nineteen, then."

"Were you going to make it under twenty?"

"Yes, I was."

"I don't believe you. Yes, I do, I do! You are an artist. You realize that truth is a question of feeling, not a question of fact. You penetrate beneath the gray hairs as the prosaic never do. This b.u.t.ter is delicious! And to think that there have been moments when I have feared b.u.t.ter, when I have kept an eye upon a corpulent future. Give me some more, plenty more."

Vere stretched out her hand to the tea-table, but it shook. She drew it back, and burst into a peal of laughter.

"What are you laughing at?" said Artois, with burlesque majesty.

"At you. What's the matter with you, Monsieur Emile? How can you be so foolish?"

She lay back in her chair, with her hair streaming about her, and her thin body quivered, as if the sense of fun within her were striving to break through its prison walls.

"This," said Artois, "this is sheer impertinence. I venture to inquire for b.u.t.ter, and--"

"To inquire! One, two, three, four--five pats of b.u.t.ter right in front of you! And you inquire--!"

Artois suddenly sent out a loud roar to join her childish treble.

The tea had swept away his previous sensation of fatigue, even the happy stolidity that had succeeded it for an instant. He felt full of life and gayety, and a challenging mental activity. A similar challenging activity, he thought, shone in the eyes of the girl opposite to him.

"Thank G.o.d I can still be foolis.h.!.+" he exclaimed. "And thank G.o.d that there are people in the world devoid of humor. My German friend was without humor. Only that fact enabled me to endure his prodigious collection of ailments. But for the heat I might even have revelled in them. He was asthmatic, without humor; dyspeptic, without humor. He had a bad cold in the head, without humor, and got up into the top berth with two rheumatic legs and a crick in the back, without humor. Had he seen the fun of himself, the fun would have meant much less to me."

"You cruel person!"

"There is often cruelty in humor--perhaps not in yours, though, yet."

"Why do you say--yet, like that?"

"The hair is such a kindly veil that I doubt the existence of cruelty behind it."

He spoke with a sort of almost tender and paternal gentleness.

"I don't believe you could ever be really cruel, Monsieur Emile."

"Why not?"

"I think you are too intelligent."

"Why should that prevent me?"

"Isn't cruelty stupid, unimaginative?"

"Often. But it can be brilliant, artful, intellectual, full of imagination. It can be religious. It can be pa.s.sionate. It can be splendid. It can be almost everything."

"Splendid!"

"Like Napoleon's cruelty to France. But why should I educate you in abominable knowledge?"

"Oh," said the girl, thrusting forward her firm little chin, "I have no faith in mere ignorance."

"Yet it does a great deal for those who are not ignorant."

"How?"

"It shows them how pretty, how beautiful even, sometimes, was the place from which they started for their journey through the world."

Vere was silent for a moment. The sparkle of fun had died out of her eyes, which had become dark with the steadier fires of imagination. The strands of her thick hair, falling down on each side of her oval face, gave to it a whimsically mediaeval look, suggestive of legend. Her long-fingered, delicate, but strong little hands were clasped in her lap, and did not move. It was evident that she was thinking deeply.