A Spirit in Prison Part 54

CHAPTER XVII

That night the Marchesino failed in his search for Vere, and he returned to Naples not merely disappointed but incensed. He had learned from a fisherman in the Saint's Pool that she was out upon the sea "with a Signore," and he had little difficulty in guessing who this Signore was.

Of course it was "Caro Emilio," the patron of Maria Fortunata. He began to consider his friend unfavorably. He remembered how frankly he had always told Emilio of his little escapades, with what enthusiasm, in what copious detail. Always he had trusted Emilio. And now Emilio was trying to play him false--worse, was making apparently a complete success of the attempt. For Emilio and Vere must have heard his beautiful singing, must have guessed from whom that vibrant voice proceeded, must have deliberately concealed themselves from its possessor. Where had they lain in hiding? His shrewd suspicion fell upon the very place. Virgilio's Grotto had surely been their refuge.

"Ladro! Vigiliacco!" Words of no uncertain meaning flowed from his overcharged heart. His whole hot nature was aroused. His spirit was up in arms. And now, almost for the first time, he drew a comparison between his age and Emilio's. Emilio was an old man. He realized it.

Why had he never realized it before? Was he, full of youth, beauty, chivalrous energy and devotion, to be interfered with, set aside, for a man with gray hairs thick upon his head, for a man who spent half his hours bent over a writing-table? Emilio had never wished him to know the ladies of the island. He knew the reason now, and glowed with a fiery l.u.s.t of battle. Vere had attracted him from the first. But this opposition drove on attraction into something stronger, more determined.

He said to himself that he was madly in love. Never yet had he been worsted in an amour by any man. The blood surged to his head at the mere thought of being conquered in the only battle of life worth fighting--the battle for a woman, and by a man of more than twice his age, a man who ought long ago to have been married and have had children as old as the Signorina Vere.

Well, he had been a good friend to Emilio. Now Emilio should see that the good friend could be the good enemy. Late that night, as he sat alone in front of the Caffe Turco smoking innumerable cigarettes, he resolved to show these foreigners the stuff a Neapolitan was made of.

They did not know. Poor, ignorant beings from cold England, drowned forever in perpetual yellow fogs, and from France, country of volatility but not of pa.s.sion, they did not know what the men of the South, of a volcanic soil, were capable of, once they were roused, once their blood spoke and their whole nature responded! It was time they learned. And he would undertake to teach them. As he drove towards dawn up the dusty hill to Capodimonte he was in a fever of excitement.

There was excitement, too, in the house on the island, but it did not centre round the Marchesino.

That night, for the first time in her young life, Vere did not sleep.

She heard the fisherman call, but the enchantment of sea doings did not stir her. She was aware for the first time of the teeming horrors of life. There, in the darkness beneath the cliff, Peppina had sobbed out her story, and Vere, while she listened, had stepped from girlhood into womanhood.

She had come into the house quietly, and found Artois waiting for her alone. Hermione had gone to bed, leaving word that she had a headache.

And Vere was glad that night not to see her mother. She wished to see no one, and she bade Artois good-bye at once, telling him nothing, and not meeting his eyes when he touched her hand in adieu. And he had asked nothing. Why should he, when he read the truth in the grave, almost stern face of the child?

Vere knew.

The veils that hung before the happy eyes of childhood had been torn away, and those eyes had looked for the first time into the deeps of an unhappy human heart.

And he had thought it possible to preserve, perhaps for a long while, Vere's beautiful ignorance untouched. He had thought of the island as a safe retreat in which her delicate, and as yet childish talent, might gradually mature under his influence and the influence of the sea. She had been like some charming and unusual plant of the sea, shot with sea colors, wet with sea winds, fresh with the freshness of the smooth-backed waves. And now in a moment she was dropped into the filthy dust of city horrors. What would be the result upon her and upon her dawning gift?

The double question was in his mind, and quite honestly. For his interest of the literary man in Vere was very vivid. Never yet had he had a pupil or dreamed of having one. There are writers who found a school, whose fame is carried forward like a banner by young and eager hands. Artois had always stood alone, ardently admired, ardently condemned, but not imitated. And he had been proud of his solitude.

But--lately--had not underthoughts come into his mind, thoughts of leaving an impress on a vivid young intellect, a soul that was full of life, and the beginnings of energy? Had not he dreamed, however vaguely, of forming, like some sculptor of genius, an exquisite statuette--poetry, in the slim form of a girl-child singing to the world?

And now Peppina had rushed into Vere's life, with sobs and a tumult of cries to the Madonna and the saints, and, no doubt, with imprecations upon the wickedness of men. And where were the dreams of the sea? And his dreams, where were they?

That night the irony that was in him woke up and smiled bitterly, and he asked himself how he, with his burden of years and of knowledge of life, could have been such a fool as to think it possible to guard any one against the a.s.saults of the facts of life. Hermione, perhaps, had been wiser than he, and yet he could not help feeling something that was almost like anger against her for what he called her quixotism. The woman of pa.s.sionate impulses--how dangerous she is, even when her impulses are generous, are n.o.ble! Action without thought, though the prompting heart behind it be a heart of gold--how fatal may it be!

And then he remembered a pa.s.sionate impulse that had driven a happy woman across a sea to Africa, and he was ashamed.

Yet again the feeling that was almost like hostility returned. He said to himself that Hermione should have learned caution in the pa.s.sing of so many years, that she ought to have grown older than she had.

But there was something unconquerably young, unconquerably nave, in her--something that, it seemed, would never die. Her cleverness went hand in hand with a short-sightedness that was like a rather beautiful, yet sometimes irritating stupidity. And this latter quality might innocently make victims, might even make a victim of her own child.

And then a strange desire rose up in Artois, a desire to protect Vere against her own mother.

But how could that be done?

Vere, guarded by the beautiful unconsciousness of youth, was unaware of the subtleties that were brought into activity by her. That the Marchesino was, or thought himself, in love with her she realized.

But she could not connect any root-sincerity with his feeling. She was accustomed vaguely to think of all young Southern Italians as perpetually sighing for some one's dark eyes. The air of the South was full of love songs that rose and fell without much more meaning than a twitter of birds, that could not be stilled because it was so natural.

And the Marchesino was a young aristocrat who did absolutely nothing of any importance to the world. The Northern blood in Vere demanded other things of a man than imitations of a seal, the clever driving of a four-in-hand, light-footed dancing, and songs to the guitar. In Gaspare she saw more reality than she saw as yet in the Marchesino. The dawning intellect of her began to grasp already the n.o.bility of work. Gaspare had his work to do, and did it with loyal efficiency. Ruffo, too, had his profession of the sea. He drew out of the deep his livelihood. Even with the fever almost upon him he had been out by night in the storm.

That which she liked and respected in Gaspare, his perfect and natural acceptance of work as a condition of his life, she liked and respected in Ruffo.

On the morning after the incident with Peppina, Vere came down looking strangely grave and tired. Her mother, too, was rather heavy-eyed, and the breakfast pa.s.sed almost severely. When it was over Hermione, who still conducted Vere's education, but with a much relaxed vigor in the summer months, suggested that they should read French together.

"Let us read one of Monsieur Emile's books, Madre," said Vere, with an awakening of animation. "You know I have never read one, only two or three baby stories, and articles that don't count."

"Yes, but Emile's books are not quite suitable for you yet, Vere."

"Why, Madre?"

"They are very fine, but they dive deep into life, and life contains many sad and many cruel things."

"Oughtn't we to prepare ourselves for them, then?"

"Not too soon, I think. I am nearly sure that if you were to read Emile's books just yet you would regret it."

Vere said nothing.

"Don't you think you can trust me to judge for you in this matter, figlia mia? I--I am almost certain that Emile himself would think as I do."

It was not without an effort, a strong effort, that Hermione was able to speak the last sentence. Vere came nearer to her mother, and stood before her, as if she were going to say something that was decisive or important. But she hesitated.

"What is it, Vere?" Hermione asked, gently.

"I might learn from life itself what Monsieur Emile's books might teach me."

"Some day. And when that time comes neither I nor he would wish to keep them out of your hands."

"I see. Well, Madre dear, let us read whatever you like."

Vere had been on the verge of telling her mother about the previous night and Peppina. But, somehow, at the last moment she could not.

And thus, for the moment at least, Artois and she shared another secret of which Hermione was unaware.

But very soon Hermione noticed that Vere was specially kind always to Peppina. They did not meet, perhaps, very often, but when by chance they did Vere spoke to the disfigured girl with a gentleness, almost a tenderness, that were striking.

"You like Peppina, Vere?" asked her mother one day.

"Yes, because I pity her so much."

There was a sound that was almost like pa.s.sion in the girl's voice; and, looking up, Hermione saw that her eyes were full of light, as if the spirit had set two lamps in them.

"It is strange," Vere continued, in a quieter tone; "but sometimes I feel as if on the night of the storm I had had a sort of consciousness of her coming--as if, when I saw the Saint's light s.h.i.+ning, and bent down to the water and made the sign of the Cross, I already knew something of Peppina's wound, as if I made the sign to protect our Casa del Mare, to ward off something evil."

"That was coming to us with Peppina, do you mean?"

"I don't know, Madre."

"Are you thinking of Giulia's foolish words about the evil eye?"

"No. It's all vague, Madre. But Peppina's cross sometimes seems to me to be a sign, a warning come into the house. When I see it it seems to say there is a cross to be borne by some one here, by one of us."

"How imaginative you are, Vere!"