A Spirit in Prison Part 48

Suddenly Artois remembered all he knew and she did not know.

"At least you act hastily often," he said evasively. "And I think you are often so concentrated upon the person who stands, perhaps suffering, immediately before you, that you forget who is on the right, who is on the left."

"Emile, I asked your advice yesterday, and you would not give it me."

"A fair hit!" he said. "And so Peppina is here. How did the servants receive her?"

"I think they were rather surprised. Of course they don't know the truth."

"They will within--shall we say twenty-four hours, or less?"

"How can they? Peppina won't tell them."

"You are sure? And when Gaspare goes into Naples to 'fare la spesa'?"

"I told Gaspare last night."

"That was wisdom. You understand your watch-dog's character."

"You grant that Gaspare is not an instance of a worthless object made the recipient of my heroic devotion?"

"Give him all you like," said Artois, with warmth. "You will never repent of that. Was he angry when you told him?"

"I think he was."

"Why?"

"I heard him saying 'Testa della Madonna!' as he was leaving me."

Artois could not help smiling.

"And Vere?" he said, looking directly at her.

"I have not told Vere anything about Peppina's past," Hermione said, rather hastily. "I do not intend to. I explained that Peppina had had a sad life and had been attacked by a man who had fallen in love with her, and for whom she didn't care."

"And Vere was all sympathy and pity?" said Artois, gently.

"She didn't seem much interested, I thought. She scarcely seemed to be listening. I don't believe she has seen Peppina yet. When we arrived she was shut up in her room."

As she spoke she was looking at him, and she saw a slight change come over his face.

"Do you think--" she began, and paused. "I wonder if she was reading,"

she added, slowly, after a moment.

"Even the children have their secrets," he answered. As he spoke he turned his head and looked out of the window towards Ischia. "How clear it is to-night! There will be no storm."

"No. We can dine outside. I have told them." Her voice sounded slightly constrained. "I will go and call Vere," she added.

"She is in the house?"

"I think so."

She went out, shutting the door behind her.

So Vere was working. Artois felt sure that her conversation with him had given to her mind, perhaps to her heart, too, an impulse that had caused an outburst of young energy. Ah! the blessed ardors of youth! How beautiful they are, and, even in their occasional absurdity, how sacred.

What Hermione had said had made him realize acutely the influence which his celebrity and its cause--the self that had made it--must have upon a girl who was striving as Vere was. He felt a thrill of pleasure, even of triumph, that startled him, so seldom now, jealous and careful as he was of his literary reputation, did he draw any definite joy from it. Would Vere ever do something really good? He found himself longing that she might, as the proud G.o.dparent longs for his G.o.dchild to gain prizes.

He remembered the line at the close of Maeterlinck's "Pelleas and Melisande," a line that had gone like a silver shaft into this soul when he first heard it--"Maintenant c'est au tour de la pauvre pet.i.te" (Now it's the child's turn.)

"Now it's the child's turn," he said it to himself, forming the words with his lips. At that moment he was freed entirely from the selfishness of age, and warm with a generous and n.o.ble sympathy with youth, its aspirations, its strivings, its winged hopes. He got up from his chair.

He had a longing to go to Vere and tell her all he was feeling, a longing to pour into her--as just then he could have poured it--inspiration molten in a long-tried furnace. He had no need of any one but Vere.

The doors opened and Hermione came back.

"Vere is coming, Emile," she said.

"You told her I was here?"

She looked at him swiftly, as if the ringing sound in his voice had startled her.

"Yes. She is glad, I know. Dear little Vere!"

Her voice was dull, and she spoke--or he fancied so--rather mechanically. He remembered all she did not know and was conscious of her false position. In their intercourse she had so often, so generally, been the enthusiastic sympathizer. More than she knew she had inspired him.

"Dear Hermione! How good it is to be here with you!" he said, turning towards her the current of his sympathy. "As one grows old one clings to the known, the proved. That pa.s.sion at least increases while so many others fade away, the pa.s.sion for all that is faithful in a s.h.i.+fting world, for all that is real, that does not suffer corruption, disintegration! How adorable is Time where Time is powerless!"

"Is Time ever powerless?" she said. "Ah, here is Vere!"

They dined outside upon the terrace facing Vesuvius. Artois sat between mother and child. Vere was very quiet. Her excitement, her almost feverish gayety of the evening of the storm had vanished. To-night dreams hung in her eyes. And the sea was quiet as she was, repentant surely of its former furies. There seemed something humble, something pleading in its murmur, as if it asked forgiveness and promised amendment.

The talk was chiefly between Hermione and Artois. It was not very animated. Perhaps the wide peace of the evening influenced their minds.

When coffee was carried out Artois lit his pipe, and fell into complete silence, watching the sea. Giulia brought to Hermione a bit of embroidery on which she was working, cleared away the dessert and quietly disappeared. From the house now and then came a sound of voices, of laughter. It died away, and the calm of the coming night, the calm of the silent trio that faced it, seemed to deepen as if in delicate protest against the interference. The stillness of Nature to-night was very natural. But was the human stillness natural? Presently Artois, suddenly roused, he knew not why, to self-consciousness, found himself wondering. Vere lay back in her wicker chair like one at ease. Hermione was leaning forward over her work with her eyes bent steadily upon it.

Far off across the sea the smoke from the summit of Vesuvius was dyed at regular intervals by the red fire that issued from the entrails of the mountain. Silently it rose from its hidden world, glowed angrily, menacingly, faded, then glowed again. And the life that is in fire, and that seems to some the most intense of all the forces of life, stirred Artois from his peace. The pulse of the mountain, whose regular beating was surely indicated by the regularly recurring glow of the rising flame, seemed for a moment to be sounding in his ears, and, with it, all the pulses that were beating through the world. And he thought of the calm of their bodies, of Hermione's, of Vere's, of his own, as he had thought of the calm of the steely sky, the steely sea, that had preceded the bursting of the storm that came from Ischia. He thought of it as something unnatural, something almost menacing, a sort of combined lie that strove to conceal, to deny, the leaping fires of the soul.

Suddenly Vere got up and went quietly away. While she had been with them silence had been easy. Directly she was gone Artois felt that it was difficult, in another moment that it was no longer possible.

"Am I to see Peppina to-night?" he asked.

"Do you wish to?"

Hermione's hands moved a little faster about their work when he spoke.

"I feel a certain interest in her, as I should in any new inhabitant of the island. A very confined s.p.a.ce seems always to heighten the influence of human personality, I think. On your rock everybody must mean a good deal, perhaps more than you realize, Hermione."

"I am beginning to realize that," she answered, quietly. "Perhaps they mean too much. I wonder if it is wise to live as we do?"

"In such comparative isolation, you mean?"

"Yes."