“Buona sera, Ruffo.”
She did not feign surprise when he came up to her.
“So you fish at night?” she said. “I thought the divers forfrutti di maredid not do that.”
“Signorina, I have been taken into the boat of Mandano Giuseppe.”
He spoke rather proudly, and evidently thought she would know of whom he was telling her. “I fish for sarde now.”
“Is that better for you?”
“Si, Signorina, of course.”
“I am glad of that.”
“Si, Signorina.”
He stood beside her quite at his ease. To-night he had on a cap, but it was pushed well off his brow, and showed plenty of his thick, dark hair.
“When did you see me?” she asked.
“Almost directly, Signorina.”
“And what made you look up?”
“Signorina?”
“Why did you look up directly?”
“Non lo so, Signorina.”
“I think it was because I made you feel that I was there,” she said. “I think you obey me without knowing it. You did the same the other day.”
“Perhaps, Signorina.”
“Have you smoked all the cigarettes?”
She saw him smile, showing his teeth.
“Si, Signorina, long ago. I smoked them the same day.”
“You shouldn’t. It is bad for a boy, and you are younger than I am, you know.”
The smile grew wider.
“What are you laughing at?”
“I don’t know, Signorina.”
“Do you think it is funny to be younger than I am?”
“Si, Signorina.”
“I suppose you feel quite as if you were a man?”
“If I could not work as well as a man Giuseppe would not have taken me into his boat. But of course with a lady it is all different. A lady does not have to work. Poor women get old very soon, Signorina.”
“Your mother, is she old?”
“My mamma! I don’t know. Yes, I suppose she is rather old.”
He seemed to be considering.
“Si, Signorina, my mamma is rather old. But then she has had a lot of trouble, my poor mamma!”
“I am sorry. Is she like you?”
“I don’t know, Signorina; I have never thought about it. What does it matter?”
“It may not matter, but such things are interesting sometimes.”
“Are they, Signorina?”
Then, evidently with a polite desire to please her and carry on the conversation in the direction indicated by her, he added:
“And are you like your Signora Madre, Signorina?”
Vere felt inclined to smile, but she answered, quite seriously.
“I don’t believe I am. My mother is very tall, much taller than I am, and not so dark. My eyes are much darker than hers and quite different.”
“I think you have the eyes of a Sicilian, Signorina.”
Again Vere was conscious of a simple effort on the part of the boy to be gallant. And he had a good memory too. He had not forgotten her three-days’-old claim to Sicilian blood. The night mitigated the blunders of his temperament, it seemed. Vere could not help being pleased. There was something in her that ever turned towards the Sicily she had never seen. And this boy had not seen Sicily either.
“Isn’t it odd that you and I have never seen Sicily?” she said, “and that both our mothers have? And mine is all English, you know.”
“My mamma would be very glad to kiss the hand of your Signora Mother,” replied Ruffo. “I told her about the kind ladies who gave me cigarettes, and that the Signorina had never seen her father. When she heard that the Signorina was born after her father was dead, and that her father had died in Sicily, she said—my poor mamma!—‘If ever I see the Signorina’s mother, I shall kiss her hand. She was a widow before she was a mother; may the Madonna comfort her.’ My mamma spoke just like that, Signorina. And then she cried for a long time. But when Patrigno came in she stopped crying at once.”
“Did she? Why was that?”
“I don’t know, Signorina.”
Vere was silent for a moment. Then she said:
“Is your Patrigno kind to you, Ruffo?”
The boy looked at her, then swiftly looked away.
“Kind enough, Signorina,” he answered.
Then they both kept silence. They were standing side by side thus, looking down rather vaguely at the Saint’s pool, when another boat floated gently into it, going over to the far side, where already lay the two boats at the feet of San Francesco. Vere saw it with indifference. She was accustomed to the advent of the fishermen at this hour. Ruffo stared at it for a moment with a critical inquiring gaze. The boat drew up near the land and stopped. There was a faint murmur of voices, then silence again.
The Marchesino had told the two sailors that they could have an hour or two of sleep before beginning to fish.
The men lay down, shut their eyes, and seemed to sleep at once. But Artois and the Marchesino, lounging on a pile of rugs deftly arranged in the bottom of the stern of the boat, smoked their cigars in a silence laid upon them by the night silence of the Pool. Neither of them had as yet caught sight of the figures of Vere and Ruffo, which were becoming more clearly relieved as the moon rose and brought a larger world within its radiance, of its light. Artois was satisfied that the members of the Casa del Mare were in bed. As they approached the house he had seen no light from its windows. The silence about the islet was profound, and gave him the impression of being in the very heart of the night. And this impression lasted, and so tricked his mind that he forgot that the hour was not really late. He lay back, lazily smoking his cigar, and drinking in the stark beauty round about him, a beauty delicately and mysteriously fashioned by the night, which, as by a miracle, had laid hold of bareness and barren ugliness, and turned them to its exquisite purposes, shrinking from no material in its certainty of its own power to transform.
The Marchesino, too, lay back, with his great, gray eyes staring about him. While the feelings of his friend had moved towards satisfaction, his had undergone a less pleasant change. His plan seemed to be going awry, and he began to think of himself as of a fool. What had he anticipated? What had he expected of this expedition? He had been, as usual, politely waiting on destiny. He had come to the islet in the hope that Destiny would meet him there and treat him with every kindness and hospitality, forestalling his desires. But lo! He was abandoned in a boat among a lot of taciturn men, while the object of all his thoughts and pains, his plots and hopes, was, doubtless, hermetically sealed in the home on the cliff above him.
Several Neapolitan words, familiar in street circles, ran through his mind, but did not issue from his lips, and his face remained perfectly calm—almost seraphic in expression.
Out of the corners of his eyes he stole a glance at “caro Emilio.” He wished his friend would follow the example of the men and go to sleep. He wanted to feel himself alone in wakefulness and unobserved. For he was not resigned to an empty fate. The voices of the laughing women at the Antico Giuseppone still rang through his memory. He was adventurous by nature. What he would do if Emilio would only slumber he did not know. But it was certain he would do something. The islet, dark and distinct in outline beneath the moon, summoned him. Was he a Neapolitan and not beneath her window? It was absurd. And he was not at all accustomed to control himself or to fight his own impulses. For the moment “caro Emilio” became “maledetto Emilio” in his mind. Sleepless as Providence, Emilio reclined there. A slightly distracted look came into the Marchesino’s eyes as he glanced away from his friend and stared once more at the islet, which he longed so ardently to invade.
This time he saw the figures of Vere and Ruffo above him in the moonlight, which now sharply relieved them. He gazed. And as he gazed they moved away from the bridge, going towards the seat where Vere had been before she had seen Ruffo.
Vere had on a white dress.
The heart of the Marchesino leaped. He was sure it was the girl of the white boat. Then the inhabitants of the house on the islet were not asleep, were not even in bed. They—she at least, and that was all he cared for—were out enjoying the moon and the sea. How favorable was the night! But who was with her?
The Marchesino had very keen eyes. And now he used them with almost fierce intensity. But Ruffo was on the far side of Vere. It was not possible to discern more than that he was male, and taller than the girl in the white dress.
Jealousy leaped up in the Marchesino, that quick and almost frivolous jealousy which, in the Southerner, can so easily deepen into the deadliness that leads to crime. Not for a moment did he doubt that the man with Vere was a lover. This was a blow which, somehow, he had not expected. The girl in the white boat had looked enchantingly young. When he had played the seal for her she had laughed like a child. He—even he, who believed in no one’s simplicity, made sceptical by his own naughtiness so early developed towards a fine maturity!—had not expected anything like this. And these English, who pride themselves upon their propriety, their stiffness, their cold respectability! These English misses!
“Ouf!”
It was out of the Marchesino’s mouth before he was aware of it, an exclamation of cynical disgust.
“What’s the matter, amico mio?” said Artois, in a low voice.
“Niente!” said the Marchesino, recollecting himself. “Are not you going to sleep?”
“Yes,” said Artois, throwing away his cigar end. “I am. And you?”
“I too!”
The Marchesino was surprised by his friend’s reply. He did not understand the desire of Artois not to have his sense of the romance of their situation broken in upon by conversation just then. The romance of women was not with Artois, but the romance of Nature was. He wanted to keep it. And now he settled himself a little lower in the boat, under the shadow of its side, and seemed to be giving himself to sleep.
The Marchesino thanked the Madonna, and made his little pretence of slumber too, but he kept his head above the gunwale, leaning it on his arm with a supporting cushion beneath; and though he really did shut both his eyes for a short time, to deceive caro Emilio, he very soon opened them again, and gazed towards the islet. He could not see the two figures now. Rage seized him. First the two men at the Antico Giuseppone, and now this man on the islet! Every one was companioned. Every one was enjoying the night as it was meant to be enjoyed. He—he alone was the sport of “il maledetto destino.” He longed to commit some act of violence. Then he glanced cautiously round without moving.
The two sailors were sleeping. He could hear their regular and rather loud breathing. Artois lay quite still. The Marchesino turned his body very carefully so that he might see the face of his friend. As he did so Artois, who had been looking straight up at the stars, shut his eyes, and simulated sleep. His suspicion of Doro, that this expedition had been undertaken with some hidden motive, was suddenly renewed by this sly and furtive movement, which certainly suggested purpose and the desire to conceal it.
So caro Emilio slept very peacefully, and breathed with the calm regularity of a sucking child. But in this sleep of a child he was presently aware that the boat was moving—in fact was being very adroitly moved. Though his eyes were shut he felt the moonlight leave his face presently, and knew they were taken by the shadow of the islet. Then the boat stopped.
A moment later Artois was aware that the boat contained three people instead of four.
The Marchesino had left it to take a little stroll on shore.
Artois lay still. He knew how light is the slumber of seamen in a boat with the wide airs about them, and felt sure that the sailors must have been waked by the tour of the boat across the Pool. Yet they had not moved, and they continued apparently to sleep. He guessed that a glance from their “Padrone” had advised them not to wake. And this was the truth.
At the first movement of the boat both the men had looked up and had received their message from the Marchesino’s expressive eyes. They realized at once that he had some design which he wished to keep from the knowledge of his friend, the forestiere. Of course it must be connected with a woman. They were not particularly curious. They had always lived in Naples, and knew their aristocracy. So they merely returned the Marchesino’s glance with one of comprehension and composed themselves once more to repose.
The Marchesino did not come back, and presently Artois lifted himself up a little, and looked out.
The boat was right under the lee of the islet, almost touching the shore, but the sea was so perfectly still that it scarcely moved, and was not in any danger of striking against the rock. The sailors had seen that, too, before they slept again.
Artois sat quite up. He wondered a good deal what his friend was doing. One thing was certain—he was trespassing. The islet belonged to Hermione, and no one had any right to be upon it without her invitation. Artois had that right, and was now considering whether or not he should use it, follow the Marchesino and tell him—what he had not told him—that the owner of the islet was the English friend of whom he had spoken.
For Artois the romance of the night in which he had been revelling was now thoroughly disturbed. He looked again towards the two sailors, suspecting their sleep. Then he got up quietly, and stepped out of the boat onto the shore. His doing so gave a slight impetus to the boat, which floated out a little way into the Pool. But the men in it seemed to sleep on.
Artois stood still for a moment at the edge of the sea. His great limbs were cramped, and he stretched them. Then he went slowly towards the steps. He reached the plateau before the Casa del Mare. The Marchesino was not there. He looked up at the house. As he did so the front door opened and Hermione came out, wrapped in a white lace shawl.
“Emile?” she said, stopping with her hand on the door. “Why—how extraordinary!”
She came to him.
“Have you come to pay us a nocturnal visit, or—there’s nothing the matter?”
“No,” he said.
For perhaps the first time in his life he felt embarrassed with Hermione. He took her hand.
“I don’t believe you meant me to know you were here,” she said, guided by the extraordinary intuition of woman.
“To tell the truth,” he answered, “I did not expect to see you. I thought you were all in bed.”
“Oh no. I have been on the terrace and in the garden. Vere is out somewhere. I was just going to look for her.”
There was a distinct question in her prominent eyes as she fixed them on him.
“No, I haven’t seen Vere,” he said, answering it.
“Are you alone?” she asked, abruptly.
“No. You remember my mentioning my friend, the Marchesino Panacci? Well, he is with me. We were going to fish. The fishermen suggested our sleeping in the Saint’s Pool for an hour or two first. I found Doro gone and came to look for him.”
There was still a faint embarrassment in his manner.
“I believe you have seen him,” he added. “He was bathing the other day when you were passing in the boat,—I think it was you. Did you see a young man who did some tricks in the water?”
“Oh yes, an impudent young creature. He pretended to be a porpoise and a seal. He made us laugh. Vere was delighted with him. Is that your friend? Where can he be?”
“Where is Vere?” said Artois.
Their eyes met, and suddenly his embarrassment passed away.
“You don’t mean that—?”
“My friend, you know what these Neapolitans are. Doro came back from his bathe raving about Vere. I did not tell him I knew her. I think—I am sure he has guessed it, and much more. Let us go and find him. It seems you are to know him. E il destino.”
“You don’t want me to know him?” she said, as they turned away from the house.
“I don’t know that there is any real reason why you should not. But my instinct was against the acquaintance. Where can Vere be? Does she often come out alone at night?”
“Very often. Ah! There she is, beyond the bridge, and—is that the Marchesino Panacci with her? Why—no, it’s—”
“It is Ruffo,” Artois said.
Vere and the boy were standing near the edge of the cliff and talking earnestly together, but as Hermione and Artois came towards them they turned round as if moved by a mutual impulse. Ruffo took off his cap and Vere cried out:
“Monsieur Emile!”
She came up to him quickly. He noticed that her face looked extraordinarily alive, that her dark eyes were fiery with expression.
“Good-evening, Vere,” he said.
He took her small hand.
“Buona sera, Ruffo,” he added.
He looked from one to the other, and saw the perfect simplicity of both.
“Tell me, Vere,” he said. “Have you seen any one on the islet to-night?”
“Yes, just now. Why? What made you think so?”
“Well?”
“A man—a gentleman came. I told him he was trespassing.”
Artois smiled. Ruffo stood by, his cap in his hand, looking attentively at Vere, who had spoken in French. She glanced at him, and suddenly broke into Italian.
“He was that absurd boy we saw in the sea, Madre, the other day, who pretended to be a seal, and made me laugh. He reminded me of it, and asked me if I didn’t recognize him.”
“What did you say?”
“I said ‘No’ and ‘Good-night.’”
“And did he go?” asked Artois.
“No, he would not go. I don’t know what he wanted. He looked quite odd, as if he were feeling angry inside, and didn’t wish to show it. And he began trying to talk. But as I didn’t really know him—after all, laughing at a man because he pretends to be a seal is scarcely knowing him, is it, Monsieur Emile?”
“No,” he said, smiling at her smile.
“I said ‘good-night’ again in such a way that he had to go.”
“And so he went!” said Artois.
“Yes. Do you know him, Monsieur Emile?”
“Yes. He came with me to-night.”
A little look of penitence came into the girl’s face.
“Oh, I am sorry.”
“Why should you be?”
“Well, he began saying something about knowing friends of mine, or—I didn’t really listen very much, because Ruffo was telling me all about the sea—and I thought it was all nonsense. He was absurdly complimentary first, you see! and so, when he began about friends, I only said ‘good-night’ again. And—and I’m really afraid I turned my back upon him. And now he’s a friend of yours. Monsieur Emile! I am sorry!”
Already the Marchesino had had that lesson of which Artois had thought in Naples. Artois laughed aloud.
“It doesn’t matter, Vere. My friend is not too sensitive.”
“Buona sera, Signorina! Buona sera, Signora! Buon riposo!”
It was Ruffo preparing to go, feeling that he scarcely belonged to this company, although he looked in no way shy, and had been smiling broadly at Vere’s narrative of the discomfiture of the Marchesino.
“Ruffo,” said Hermione, “you must wait a moment.”
“Si, Signora?”
“I am going to give you a few more cigarettes.”
Vere sent a silent but brilliant “Thank you” to her mother. They all walked towards the house.
Vere and her mother were in front, Artois and Ruffo behind. Artois looked very closely and even curiously at the boy.
“Have I ever seen you before?” he asked, as they came to the bridge.
“Signore?”
“Not the other morning. But have we ever met in Naples?”
“I have seen you pass by sometimes at the Mergellina, Signore.”
“That must be it then!” Artois thought, “I have seen you there without consciously noticing you.”
“You live there?” he said.
“Si, Signore; I live with my mamma and my Patrigno.”
“Your Patrigno,” Artois said, merely to continue the conversation. “Then your father is dead?”
“Si, Signore, my Babbo is dead.”
They were on the plateau now, before the house.
“If you will wait a moment, Ruffo, I will fetch the cigarettes,” said Hermione.
“Let me go, Madre,” said Vere, eagerly.
“Very well, dear.”
The girl ran into the house. As she disappeared they heard a quick step, and the Marchesino came hurrying up from the sea. He took off his hat when he saw Hermione, and stopped.
“I was looking for you, Emilio.”
He kept his hat in his hand. Evidently he had recovered completely from his lesson. He looked gay and handsome. Artois realized how very completely the young rascal’s desires were being fulfilled. But of course the introduction must be made. He made it quietly.
“Marchese Isidoro Panacci—Mrs. Delarey.”
The Marchesino bent and kissed Hermione’s hand. As he did so Vere came out of the house, her hands full of Khali Targa cigarettes, her face eager at the thought of giving pleasure to Ruffo.
“This is my daughter, Vere,” Hermione said. “Vere, this is the Marchese Isidoro Panacci, a friend of Monsieur Emile’s.”
The Marchesino went to kiss Vere’s hand, but she said:
“I’m very sorry—look!”
She showed him that they were full of cigarettes, and so escaped from the little ceremony. For those watching it was impossible to know whether she wished to avoid the formal salutation of the young man’s lips or not.
“Here, Ruffo!” she said. She went up to the boy. “Put your hands together.”
Ruffo gladly obeyed. He curved his brown hands into a cup, and Vere filled this cup with the big cigarettes, while Hermione, Artois, and the Marchesino looked on; each one of them with a fixed attention which—surely—the action scarcely merited. But there was something about those two, Vere and the boy, which held the eyes and the mind.
“Good-night, Ruffo. You must carry them to the boat. They’ll be crushed if you put them into your trousers-pocket.”
“Si, Signorina!”
He waited a moment. He wanted to salute them, but did not know how to. That was evident. His expressive eyes, his whole face told it to them.
Artois suddenly set his lips together in his beard. For an instant it seemed to him that the years had rolled back, that he was in London, in Caminiti’s restaurant, that he saw Maurice Delarey, with the reverential expression on his face that had been so pleasing. Yes, the boy Ruffo looked like him in that moment, as he stood there, wishing to do his devoir, to be polite, but not knowing how to.
“Never mind, Ruffo,” It was Vere’s voice. “We understand! Or—shall I?” A laughing look came into her face. She went up to the boy and, with a delicious, childish charm and delicacy, that quite removed the action from impertinence, she took his cap off. “There!” She put it gently back on his dark hair. “Now you’ve been polite to us. Buona notte!”
“Buona notte, Signorina.”
The boy ran off, half laughing, and carrying carefully the cigarettes in his hands still held together like a cup.
Hermione and Artois were smiling. Artois felt something for Vere just then that he could hardly have explained, master though he was of explanation of the feelings of man. It seemed to him that all the purity, and the beauty, and the whimsical unselfconsciousness, and the touchingness of youth that is divine, appeared in that little, almost comic action of the girl. He loved her for the action, because she was able to perform it just like that. And something in him, suddenly adored youth in a way that seemed new to his heart.
“Well,” said Hermione, when Ruffo had disappeared. “Will you come in? I’m afraid all the servants are in bed, but—”
“No, indeed it is too late,” Artois said.
Without being aware of it he spoke with an authority that was almost stern.
“We must be off to our fishing,” he added. “Good-night. Good-night, Vere.”
“Good-night, Signora.”
The Marchesino bowed, with his hat in his hand. He kissed Hermione’s hand again, but he did not try to take Vere’s.
“Good-night,” Hermione said.
A glance at Artois had told her much that he was thinking.
“Good-night, Monsieur Emile,” said Vere. “Good-night, Marchese. Buona pesca!”
She turned and followed her mother into the house.
“Che simpatica!”
It was the Marchesino’s voice, breathing the words through a sigh: “Che simpatica Signorina!” Then an idea seemed to occur to him, and he looked at his friend reproachfully. “And you knew the girl with the perfect little nose, Emilio—all the time you knew her!”
“And all the time you knew I knew her!” retorted Artois.
They looked at each other in the eyes and burst out laughing.
“Emilio, you are the devil! I will never forgive you. You do not trust me.”
“Caro amico, I do trust you—always to fall in love with every girl you meet. But”—and his voice changed—“the Signorina is a child. Remember that, Doro.”
They were going down the steps to the sea. Almost as Artois spoke they reached the bottom, and saw their boat floating in the moonlight nearly in the centre of the Pool. The Marchesino stood still.
“My dear Emilio,” he said, staring at Artois with his great round eyes, “you make me wonder whether you know women.”
Artois felt amused.
“Really?” he said.
“Really! And yet you write books.”
“Writing books does not always prove that one knows much. But explain to me.”
They began to stroll on the narrow space at the sea edge. Close by lay the boat to which Ruffo belonged. The boy was already in it, and they saw him strike a match and light one of the cigarettes. Then he lay back at his ease, smoking, and staring up at the moon.
“A girl of sixteen is not a child, and I am sure the Signorina is sixteen. But that is not all. Emilio, you do not know the Signorina.”
Artois repressed a smile. The Marchesino was perfectly in earnest.
“And you—do you know the Signorina?” Artois asked.
“Certainly I know her,” returned the Marchesino with gravity.
They reached Ruffo’s boat. As they did so, the Marchesino glanced at it with a certain knowing impudence that was peculiarly Neapolitan.
“When I came to the top of the islet the Signorina was with that boy,” the Marchesino continued.
“Well?” said Artois.
“Oh, you need not be angry, Emilio caro.”
“I am not angry,” said Artois.
Nor was he. It is useless to be angry with racial characteristics, racial points of view. He knew that well. The Marchesino stared at him.
“No, I see you are not.”
“The Signorina was with that boy. She has talked to him before. He has dived for her. He has sung for her! She has given him cigarettes, taken from her mother’s box, with her mother’s consent. Everything the Signorina does her mother knows and approves of. You saw the Signora send the Signorina for more cigarettes to give the boy to-night. Ebbene?”
“Ebbene. They are English!”
And he laughed.
“Madre mia!”
He laughed again, seized his mustaches, twisted them, and went on.
“They are English, but for all that the Signorina is a woman. And as to that boy—”
“Perhaps he is a man.”
“Certainly he is. Dio mio, the boy at least is a Neapolitan.”
“No, he isn’t.”
“He is not?”
“He’s a Sicilian.”
“How do you know?”
“I was here the other day when he was diving forfrutti di mare.”
“I have seen him at the Mergellina ever since he was a child.”
“He says he is a Sicilian.”
“Boys like that say anything if they can get something by it. Perhaps he thought you liked the Sicilians better than the Neapolitans. But anyhow—Sicilian or Neapolitan, it is all one! He is a Southerner, and at fifteen a Southerner is already a man. I was.”
“I know it. But you were proving to me that the Signorina is a woman. The fact that she, an English girl, is good friends with the fisher boy does not prove it.”
“Ah, well!”
The Marchesino hesitated.
“I had seen the Signorina before I came to meet you at the house.”
“Had you?”
“Didn’t you know it?”
“Yes, I did.”
“I knew she told you.”
“What?”
“She told you! she told you! She is birbante. She is a woman, for she pretended as only a woman can pretend.”
“What did she pretend?”
“That she was not pleased at my coming, at my finding out where she lived, and seeking her. Why, Emilio, even when I was in the sea, when I was doing the seal, I could read the Signorina’s character. She showed me from the boat that she wanted me to come, that she wished to know me. Ah, che simpatica! Che simpatica ragazza!”
The Marchesino looked once more at Ruffo.
“Come here a minute!” he said, in a low voice, not wishing to wake the still sleeping fishermen.
The boy jumped lightly out and came to them. When he stood still the Marchesino said, in his broadest Neapolitan:
“Now then, tell me the truth! I’m a Neapolitan, not a forestiere. You’ve seen me for years at the Mergellina.”
“Si, Signore.”
“You’re a Napolitano.”
“No, Signore. I am a Sicilian.”
There was a sound of pride in the boy’s voice.
“I am quite sure he speaks the truth,” Artois said, in French.
“Why do you come here?” asked the Marchesino.
“Signore, I come to fish.”
“For cigarettes?”
“No, Signore, for sarde. Buona notte, Signore.”
He turned away from them with decision, and went back to his boat.
“He is a Sicilian,” said Artois. “I would swear to it.”
“Why? Hark at his accent.”
“He is a Sicilian!”
“But why are you so sure?”
Artois only said:
“Are you going to fish?”
“Emilio, I cannot fish to-night. My soul is above such work as fishing. It is indeed. Let us go back to Naples.”
“Va bene.”
Artois was secretly glad. He, too, had no mind—or was it no heart?—for fishing that night, after the episode of the islet. They hailed the sailors, who were really asleep this time, and were soon far out on the path of the moonlight setting their course towards Naples.
On the following morning Hermione and Vere went for an excursion to Capri. They were absent from the island for three nights. When they returned they found a card lying upon the table in the little hall—“Marchese Isidoro Panacci di Torno”—and Gaspare told them that it had been left by a Signore, who had called on the day of their departure, and had seemed very disappointed to hear that they were gone.
“I do not know this Signore,” Gaspare added, rather grimly.
Vere laughed, and suddenly made her eyes look very round, and staring, and impudent.
“He’s like that, Gaspare,” she said.
“Vere!” said her mother.
Then she added to Gaspare:
“The Marchese is a friend of Don Emilio’s. Ah! and here is a letter from Don Emilio.”
It was lying beside the Marchese’s card with some other letters. Hermione opened it first, and read that Artois had been unexpectedly called away to Paris on business, but intended to return to Naples as soon as possible, and to spend the whole summer on the Bay.
“I feel specially that this summer I should like to be near you,” he wrote. “I hope you wish it.”
At the end of the letter there was an allusion to the Marchesino, “that gay and admirably characteristic Neapolitan product, the Toledo incarnate.”
There was not a word of Vere.
Hermione read the letter aloud to Vere, who was standing beside her, evidently hoping to hear it. When she had finished, Vere said:
“I am glad Monsieur Emile will be here all the summer.”
“Yes.”
“But why specially this summer, Madre?”
“I am not sure what he means by that,” Hermione answered.
But she remembered the conversation in the Grotto of Virgil, and wondered if her friend thought she needed the comfort of his presence.
“Well, Madre?”
Vere’s bright eyes were fixed upon her mother.
“Well, Vere? What is it?”
“Is there no message for me from Monsieur Emile?”
“No, Vere.”
“How forgetful of him! But never mind!” She went upstairs, looking disappointed.
Hermione re-read the letter. She wondered, perhaps more than Vere, why there was no message for the child. The child—she was still calling Vere that in her mind, even after the night conversation with Gaspare. Two or three times she re-read that sentence, “I feel specially that this summer I should like to be near you,” and considered it; but she finally put the letter away with a strong feeling that most of its meaning lay between the lines, and that she had not, perhaps, the power to interpret it.
Vere had said that Emile was forgetful. He might be many things, but forgetful he was not. One of his most characteristic qualities was his exceptionally sharp consciousness of himself and of others. Hermione knew that he was incapable of writing to her and forgetting Vere while he was doing so.
She did not exactly know why, but the result upon her of this letter was a certain sense of depression, a slight and vague foreboding. And yet she was glad, she was even thankful, to know that her friend, was going to spend the summer on the Bay. She blamed herself for her melancholy, telling herself that there was nothing in the words of Artois to make her feel sad. Yet she continued to feel sad, to feel as if some grievous change were at hand, as if she had returned to the island to confront some untoward fate. It was very absurd of her. She told herself that.
The excursion to Capri had been a cheerful one. She had enjoyed it. But all the time she had been watching Vere, studying her, as she had not watched and studied her before. Something had suddenly made her feel unaccustomed to Vere. It might be the words of Gaspare, the expression in the round eyes of the Marchesino, or something new, or newly apparent, in Vere. She did not know. But she did know that now the omission of Artois to mention Vere in his letter seemed to add to the novelty of the child for her.
That seemed strange, yet it was a fact. How absolutely mysterious are many of the currents of our being, Hermione thought. They flow far off in subterranean channels, unseen by us, and scarcely ever realized, but governing, carrying our lives along upon their deeps towards the appointed end.
Gaspare saw that his Padrona was not quite as usual, and looked at her with large-eyed inquiry, but did not at first say anything. After tea, however, when Hermione was sitting alone in the little garden with a book, he said to her bluntly:
“Che ha Lei?”
Hermione put the book down in her lap.
“That is just what I don’t know, Gaspare.”
“Perhaps you are not well.”
“But I believe I am, perfectly well. You know I am always well. I never even have fever. And you have that sometimes.”
He continued to look at her searchingly.
“You have something.”
He said it firmly, almost as if he were supplying her with information which she needed and had lacked.
Hermione made a sound that was like a little laugh, behind which there was no mirth.
“I don’t know what it is.”
Then, after a pause, she added that phrase which is so often upon Sicilian lips:
“Ma forse e il destino.”
Gaspare moved his head once as if in acquiescence.
“When we are young, Signora,” he said, “we do what we want, but we have to want it. And we think we are very free. And when we are old we don’t feel to want anything, but we have to do things just the same. Signora, we are not free. It is all destiny.”
And again he moved his head solemnly, making his liquid brown eyes look more enormous than usual.
“It is all destiny,” Hermione repeated, almost dreamily.
Just then she felt that it was so—that each human being, and she most of all, was in the grasp of an inflexible, of an almost fierce guide, who chose the paths, and turned the feet of each traveller, reluctant or not, into the path the will of the guide had selected. And now, still dreamily, she wondered whether she would ever try to rebel if the path selected for her were one that she hated or feared, one that led into any horror of darkness, or any horror of too great light. For light, too, can be terrible, a sudden great light that shines pitilessly upon one’s own soul. She was of those who possess force and impulse, and she knew it. She knew, too, that these are often rebellious. But to-day it seemed to her that she might believe so much in destiny, be so entirely certain of the inflexible purpose and power of the guide, that her intellect might forbid her to rebel, because of rebellion’s fore-ordained inutility. Nevertheless, she supposed that if it was her instinct to rebel, she would do so at the psychological moment, even against the dictates of her intellect.
Gaspare remained beside her quietly. He often stood near her after they had been talking together, and calmly shared the silence with her. She liked that. It gave her an impression of his perfect confidence in her, his perfect ease in her company.
“Don’t you ever think that you can put a knife into destiny, Gaspare,” she asked him presently, using an image he would be likely to understand, “as you might put a knife into a man who tried to force you to do something you didn’t wish to do?”
“Signora, what would be the use? The knife is no good against Destiny, nor the revolver either. And I have the permesso to carry one,” he added, with a smile, as if he realized that he was being whimsical.
“Well, then, we must just hope that Destiny will be very kind to us, be a friend to us, a true comrade. I shall hope that and so must you.”
“Si, Signora.”
He realized that the conversation was finished, and went quietly away.
Hermione kept the letter of Artois. When he came back to the Bay she wanted to show it to him, to ask him to read for her the meaning between its lines. She put it away in her writing-table drawer, and then resolved to forget the peculiar and disagreeable effect it had made upon her.
A fortnight passed away before Artois’ return. June came in upon the Bay, bringing with it a more vivid life in the environs of Naples. As the heat of the sun increased the vitality of the human motes that danced in its beams seemed to increase also, to become more blatant, more persistent. The wild oleander was in flower. The thorny cactus put forth upon the rim of its grotesque leaves pale yellow blossoms to rival the red geraniums that throng about it insolently in Italy. In the streets of the city ragged boys ran by crying, “Fragole!” and holding aloft the shallow baskets in which the rosy fruit made splashes of happy color. The carters wore bright carnations above their dusty ears. The children exposed their bare limbs to the sun, and were proud when they were given morsels of ice wrapped up in vine leaves to suck in the intervals of their endless dances and their play. On the hill of Posilipo the Venetian blinds of the houses, in the gardens clouded by the rounded dusk of the great stone pines, were thrust back, the windows were thrown open, the glad sun-rays fell upon the cool paved floors, over which few feet had trodden since the last summer died. Loud was the call of “Aqua!” along the roads where there were buildings, and all the lemons of Italy seemed to be set forth in bowers to please the eyes with their sharp, yet soothing color, and tempt the lips with their poignant juice. Already in the Galleria, an “avviso” was prominently displayed, stating that Ferdinando Bucci, the famous maker of Sicilian ice-creams, had arrived from Palermo for the season. In the Piazza del Plebiscito, hundreds of chairs were ranged before the bandstand, and before the kiosk where the women sing on the nights of summer near the Caffe Turco. The “Margherita” was shutting up. The “Eldorado” was opening. And all along the sea, from the vegetable gardens protected by brushwood hedges on the outskirts of the city towards Portici, to the balconies of the “Mascotte,” under the hill of Posilipo, the wooden bathing establishments were creeping out into the shallow waters, and displaying proudly to the passers-by above their names: “Stabilimento Elena,” “Stabilimento Donn’ Anna,” “Stabilimento delle Sirene,” “Il piccolo Paradiso.”
And all along the sea by night there was music.
From the Piazza before the Palace the band of the Caffe Gambrinus sent forth its lusty valses. The posturing women of the wooden kiosk caught up the chain of sound, and flung it on with their shrill voices down the hill towards Santa Lucia, where, by the waterside and the crowding white yachts, the itinerant musicians took it into the keeping of their guitars, their mandolins, their squeaky fiddles, and their hot and tremulous voices. The “Valse Bleu,” “Santa Lucia,” “Addio, mia bella Napoli,” “La Frangese,” “Sole Mio,” “Marechiaro,” “Carolina,” “La Ciociara”; with the chain of lights the chain of songs was woven round the bay; from the Eldorado, past the Hotel de Vesuve, the Hotel Royal, the Victoria, to the tree-shaded alleys of the Villa Nazionale, to the Mergellina, where the naked urchins of the fisherfolk took their evening bath among the resting boats, to the “Scoglio di Frisio,” and upwards to the Ristorante della Stella, and downwards again to the Ristorante del Mare, and so away to the point, to the Antico Giuseppone.
Long and brilliant was the chain of lamps, and long and ardent was the chain of melodies melting one into the other, and stretching to the wide darkness of the night and to the great stillness of the sea. The night was alive with music, with the voices that beat like hearts over-charged with sentimental longings.
But at the point where stood the Antico Giuseppone the lights and the songs died out. And beyond there was the mystery, the stillness of the sea.
And there, beyond the chain of lights, the chain of melodies, the islet lay in its delicate isolation; nevertheless, it, too, was surely not unaware of the coming of summer. For even here, Nature ran up her flag to honor her new festival. High up above the rock on the mainland opposite there was a golden glory of ginestra, the broom plant, an expanse of gold so brilliant, so daring in these bare surroundings, that Vere said, when she saw it:
“There is something cruel even in beauty, Madre. Do you like successful audacity?”
“I think I used to when I was your age,” said Hermione. “Anything audacious was attractive to me then. But now I sometimes see through it too easily, and want something quieter and a little more mysterious.”
“The difference between the Marchesino and Monsieur Emile?” said the girl, with a little laugh.
Hermione laughed, too.
“Do you think Monsieur Emile mysterious?” she asked.
“Yes—certainly. Don’t you?”
“I have known him so intimately for so many years.”
“Well, but that does not change him. Does it?”
“No. But it may make him appear very differently to me from the way in which he shows himself to others.”
“I think if I knew Monsieur Emile for centuries I should always wonder about him.”
“What is it in Emile that makes you wonder?” asked her mother, with a real curiosity.
“The same thing that makes me wonder when I look at a sleepy lion.”
“You call Emile sleepy!” said Hermione.
“Oh, not his intellect, Madre! Of course that is horribly, horribly wide awake.”
And Vere ran off to her room, or the garden, or the Saint’s Pool—who knew where?—leaving her mother to say to herself, as she had already said to herself in these last days of the growing summer, “When I said that to Emile, what a fool I was!” She was thinking of her statement that there was nothing in her child that was hidden from her. As if in answer to that statement, Vere was unconsciously showing to her day by day the folly of it. Emile had said nothing. Hermione remembered that, and realized that his silence had been caused by his disagreement. But why had he not told her she was mistaken? Perhaps because she had just been laying bare to him the pain that was in her heart. Her call had been for sympathy, not merely for truth. She wondered whether she was a coward. Since they had returned from Capri the season and Vere had surely changed. Then, and always afterwards, Hermione thought of those three days in Capri as a definite barrier, a dividing line between two periods. Already, while in Capri, she had begun to watch her child in a new way. But that was, perhaps, because of an uneasiness, partly nervous, within herself. In Capri she might have been imagining. Now she was not imagining, she was realizing.
Over the sea came to the islet the intensity of summer. Their world was changing. And in this changing world Vere was beginning to show forth more clearly than before her movement onward—whither?
As yet the girl herself was unconscious of her mother’s new watchfulness. She was happy in the coming of summer, and in her happiness was quite at ease, like a kitten that stretches itself luxuriously in the sun. To Vere the world never seemed quite awake till the summer came. Only in the hot sunshine did there glow the truthfulness and the fulness of life. She shared it with the ginestra. She saw and felt a certain cruelty in the gold, but she did not fear or condemn it, or wish it away. For she was very young, and though she spoke of cruelty she did not really understand it. In it there was force, and force already appealed to the girl as few things did. As, long ago, her father had gloried in the coming of summer to the South, she gloried in it now. She looked across the Pool of the Saint to the flood of yellow that was like sunlight given a body upon the cliff opposite, and her soul revelled within her, and her heart rose up and danced, alone, and yet as if in a glad company of dancers, all of whom were friends. Her brain, too, sprang to the alert. The sun increased the feeling of intelligence within her.
And then she thought of her room, of the hours she passed shut in there, and she was torn by opposing impulses.
But she told no one of them. Vere could keep her secrets although she was a girl.
How the sea welcomed the summer! To many this home on the island would have seemed an arid, inhospitable place, desolate and lost amid a cruel world of cliffs and waters. It was not so to Vere. For she entered into the life of the sea. She knew all its phases, as one may know all the moods of a person loved. She knew when she would find it intensely calm, at early morning and when the evening approached. At a certain hour, with a curious regularity, the breeze came, generally from Ischia, and turned it to vivacity. A temper that was almost frivolous then possessed it, and it broke into gayeties like a child’s. The waves were small, but they were impertinently lively. They made a turmoil such as urchins make at play. Heedless of reverence, but not consciously impious, they flung themselves at the feet of San Francesco, casting up a tiny tribute of spray into the sun.
Then Vere thought that the Saint looked down with pleasure at them, as a good old man looks at a crowd of laughing children who have run against him in the street, remembering his own youth. For even the Saints were young! And, after that, surely the waves were a little less boisterous. She thought she noted a greater calm. But perhaps it was only that the breeze was dying down as the afternoon wore on.
She often sat and wondered which she loved best—the calm that lay upon the sea at dawn, or the calm that was the prelude to the night. Silvery were these dawns of the summer days. Here and there the waters gleamed like the scales of some lovely fish. Mysterious lights, like those in the breast of the opal, shone in the breast of the sea, stirred, surely travelled as if endowed with life, then sank away to the far-off kingdoms that man may never look on. Those dawns drew away the girl’s soul as if she were led by angels, or, like Peter, walked upon the deep at some divine command. She felt that though her body was on the islet the vital part of her, the real “I,” was free to roam across the great expanse that lay flat and still and delicately mysterious to the limits of eternity.
She had strange encounters there, the soul of her, as she went towards the East.
The evening calm was different. There was, Vere thought, less of heaven about it, but perhaps more of the wonder of this world. And this made her feel as if she had been nearer to heaven at her birth than she would be at her death. She knew nothing of the defilements of life. Her purity of mind was very perfect; but, taking a parable from Nature, she applied it imaginatively to Man, and she saw him covered with dust because of his journey through the world. Poor man!
And then she pitied herself too. But that passed. For if the sea at evening held most of the wonder of this world, it was worth the holding. Barely would she substitute the heavenly mysteries for it. The fishermen’s boats were dreams upon a dream. Each sail was akin to a miracle. A voice that called across the water from a distance brought tears to Vere’s eyes when the magic was at its fullest. For it seemed to mean all things that were tender, all things that were wistful, all things that trembled with hope—that trembled with love.
With summer Vere could give herself up to the sea, and not only imaginatively but by a bodily act.
Every day, and sometimes twice a day, she put on her bathing-dress in the Casa del Mare, threw a thin cloak over her, and ran down to the edge of the sea, where Gaspare was waiting with the boat. Hermione did not bathe. It did not suit her now. And Gaspare was Vere’s invariable companion. He had superintended her bathing when she was little. He had taught her to swim. And with no one else would he ever trust his Padroncina when she gave herself to the sea. Sometimes he would row her out to a reef of rocks in the open water not too many yards from the island, and she would dive from them. Sometimes, if it was very hot, he would take her to the Grotto of Virgil. Sometimes they went far out to sea, and then, like her father in the Ionian Sea before the Casa delle Sirene, Vere would swim away and imagine that this was her mode of travel, that she was journeying alone to some distant land, or that she had been taken by the sea forever.
But very soon she would be sure to hear the soft splash of oars following her, and, looking back, would see the large, attentive eyes of the faithful Gaspare cautiously watching her dark head. Then she would lift up one hand, and call to him to go, and say she did not want him, that she wished to be alone, smiling and yet imperious. He only followed quietly and inflexibly. She would dive. She would swim under water. She would swim her fastest, as if really anxious to escape him. It was a game between them now. But always he was there, intent upon her safety.
Vere did not know the memories within Gaspare that made him such a guardian to the child of the Padrone he had loved; but she loved him secretly for his watchfulness, even though now and then she longed to be quite alone with the sea. And this she never was when bathing, for Hermione had exacted a promise from her not to go to bathe without Gaspare. In former days Vere had once or twice begun to protest against this prohibition, but something in her mother’s eyes had stopped her. And she had remembered:
“Father was drowned in the sea.”
Then, understanding something of what was in her mother’s heart, she threw eager arms about her, and anxiously promised to be good.
One afternoon of the summer, towards the middle of June, she prolonged her bathe in the Grotto of Virgil until Gaspare used his authority, and insisted on her coming out of the water.
“One minute more, Gaspare! Only another minute!”
“Ma Signorina!”
She dived. She came up.
“Ma veramente Signorina!”
She dived again.
Gaspare waited. He was standing up in the boat with the oars in his hands, ready to make a dash at his Padroncina directly she reappeared, but she was wily, and came up behind the boat with a shrill cry that startled him. He looked round reproachfully over his shoulder.
“Signorina,” he said, turning the boat round, “you are like a wicked baby to-day.”
“What is it, Gaspare?” she asked, this time letting him come towards her.
“I say that you are like a wicked baby. And only the other day I was saying to the Signora—”
“What were you saying?”
She swam to the boat and got in.
“What?” she repeated, sitting down on the gunwale, while he began to row towards the islet.
“I was saying that you are nearly a woman now.”
Vere seemed extraordinarily thin and young as she sat there in her dripping bathing-dress, with her small, bare feet distilling drops into the bottom of the boat, and her two hands, looking drowned, holding lightly to the wood on each side of her. Even Gaspare, as he spoke, was struck by this, and by the intensely youthful expression in the eyes that now regarded him curiously.
“Really, Gaspare?”
Vere asked the question quite seriously.
“Si, Signorina.”
“A woman!”
She looked down, as if considering herself. Her wet face had become thoughtful, and for a moment she said nothing.
“And what did mother say?” she asked, looking up again. “But I know. I am sure she laughed at you.”
Gaspare looked rather offended. His expressive face, which always showed what he was feeling, became almost stern, and he began to row faster than before.
“Why should the Signora laugh? Am I an imbecile, Signorina?”
“You?”
She hastened to correct the impression she had made.
“Why, Gaspare, you are our Providence!”
“Va bene, but—”
“I only meant that I am sure Madre wouldn’t agree with you. She thinks me quite a child. I know that.”
She spoke with conviction, nodding her head.
“Perhaps the Signora does not see.”
Vere smiled.
“Gaspare, I believe you are horribly sharp,” she said. “I often think you notice everything. You are birbante, I am half afraid of you.”
Gaspare smiled, too. He had quite recovered his good humor. It pleased him mightily to fancy he had seen what the Padrona had not seen.
“I am a man, Signorina,” he observed, quietly. “And I do not speak till I know. Why should I? And I was at your baptism. When we came back to the house I put five lire on the bed to bring you luck, although you were not a Catholic. But it is just the same. Your Saint will take care of you.”
“Well, but if I am almost a woman—what then, Gaspare?”
“Signorina?”
“Mustn’t I play about any more? Mustn’t I do just what I feel inclined to, as I did in the grotto just now?”
“Three is no harm in that, Signorina. I was only joking then. But—”
He hesitated, looking at her firmly with his unfaltering gaze.
“But what? I believe you want to scold me about something. I am sure you do.”
“No, Signorina, never! But women cannot talk to everybody, as children can. Nobody thinks anything of what children say. People only laugh and say ‘Ecco, it’s a baby talking.’ But when we are older it is all different. People pay attention to us. We are of more importance then.”
He did not mention Ruffo. He was too delicate to do that, for instinctively he understood how childish his Padroncina still was. And, at that moment, Vere did not think of Ruffo. She wondered a little what Gaspare was thinking. That there was some special thought behind his words, prompting them, she knew. But she did not ask him what it was, for already they were at the islet, and she must run in, and put on her clothes. Gaspare put her cloak carefully over her shoulders, and she hurried lightly up the steps and into her room. Her mother was not in the house. She had gone to Naples that day to see some poor people in whom she was interested. So Vere was alone. She took off her bathing-dress, and began to put on her things rather slowly. Her whole body was deliciously lulled by its long contact with the sea. She felt gloriously calm and gloriously healthy just then, but her mind was working vigorously though quietly.
A woman! The word sounded a little solemn and heavy, and, somehow, dreadfully respectable. And she thought of her recent behavior in the Grotto, and laughed aloud. She was so very slim, too. The word woman suggested to her some one more bulky than she was. But all that was absurd, of course. She was thinking very frivolously to-day.