When, the next day, Artois sat down at his table to work he found it impossible to concentrate his mind. The irritation of the previous evening had passed away. He attributed it to the physical effect made upon him by the disturbed atmosphere. Now the sun shone, the sky was clear, the sea calm. He had just come out of an ice-cold bath, had taken his coffee, and smoked one cigarette. A quiet morning lay before him. Quiet?
He got up and went to the window.
On the wooden roof of the bath establishment opposite rows of towels, hung out to dry, were moving listlessly to and fro in the soft breeze. Capri was almost hidden by haze in the distance. In the sea, just below him, several heads of swimmers moved. One boy was “making death.” He floated on his back with his eyes closed and his arms extended. His body, giving itself without resistance to every movement of the water, looked corpselike and ghostly.
A companion shouted to him. He threw up his arms suddenly and shouted a reply in the broadest Neapolitan, then began to swim vigorously towards the slimy rocks at the base of Castel dell’ Ovo. Upon the wooden terrace of the baths among green plants in pots stood three women, probably friends of the proprietor. For though it was already hot, the regular bathing season of Naples had not yet begun and the baths were not completed. Only in July, after the festa of the Madonna del Carmine, do the Neapolitans give themselves heart and soul to the sea. Artois knew this, and wondered idly what the women were doing on the terrace. One had a dog. It sat in the sun and began to cough. A long wagon on two wheels went by, drawn by two mules and a thin horse harnessed abreast. It was full of white stone. The driver had bought some green stuff and flung it down upon the white. He wore a handkerchief on his head. His chest was bare. As he passed beneath the window he sang a loud song that sounded Eastern, such a song as the Spanish wagoners sing in Algeria, as they set out by night on their long journeys towards the desert. Upon a tiny platform of wood, fastened to slanting stakes which met together beneath it in a tripod, a stout man in shirt and trousers, with black whiskers, was sitting on a chair fishing with a rod and line. A boy sat beside him dangling his legs over the water. At a little distance a large fishing-smack, with sails set to catch the breeze farther out in the Bay, was being laboriously rowed towards the open sea by half-naked men, who shouted as they toiled at the immense oars.
Artois wondered where they were going. Their skins were a rich orange color. From a distance in the sunlight they looked like men of gold. Their cries and their fierce movements suggested some fantastic quest to lands of mysterious tumult.
Artois wished that Vere could see them.
What were the inhabitants of the island doing?
To-day his mind was beyond his governance, and roamed like a vagrant on a long, white road. Everything that he saw below him in the calm radiance of the morning pushed it from thought to thought. Yet none of these thoughts were valuable. None seemed fully formed. They resembled henids, things seen so far away that one cannot tell what they are, but is only aware that they exist and can attract attention.
He came out upon his balcony. As he did so he looked down into the road, and saw a hired carriage drive up, with Hermione in it.
She glanced up and saw him.
“May I come in for a minute?”
He nodded, smiling, and went out to meet her, glad of this interruption.
They met at the door of the lift. As Hermione stepped out she cast a rather anxious glance at her friend, a glance that seemed to say that she was not quite certain of her welcome. Artois’ eyes reassured her.
“I feel guilty,” she said.
“Why?”
“Coming at such an hour. Are you working?”
“No. I don’t know why, but I am incapable of work. I feel both lazy and restless, an unfruitful combination. Perhaps something in me secretly knew that you were coming.”
“Then it is my fault.”
They came into his sitting-room. It had four windows, two facing the sea, two looking on the road, and the terraces and garden of the Hotel Hassler. The room scarcely suggested its present occupant. It contained a light-yellow carpet with pink flowers strewn over it, red-and-gold chairs, mirrors, a white marble mantelpiece, a gray-and-pink sofa with a pink cushion. Only the large writing-table, covered with manuscripts, letters, and photographs in frames, said something individual to the visitor. Hermione and Vere were among the photographs.
Hermione sat down on the sofa.
“I have come to consult you about something, Emile.”
“What is it?”
“I really meant to ask you last night, but somehow I couldn’t”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. We—I—there seemed to be a sort of barrier between us—didn’t there?”
“I was in a bad humor. I was tired after the journey, and perhaps the weather upset me.”
“It’s all right—one can’t be always—Well, this is what I wanted to say. I alluded to it yesterday when I told you about my visit to Naples with Madame Alliani. Do you remember?”
“You hinted you had seen, or heard of, some tragedy.”
“Yes. I believe it is a quite ordinary one in Naples. We went to visit a consumptive woman in one of those narrow streets going uphill to the left of the Via Roma, and while there by chance I heard of it. In the same house as the sick woman there is a girl. Not many days ago she was beautiful!”
“Yes? What has happened to her?”
“I’ll tell you. Her name is Peppina. She is only nineteen, but she has been one of those who are not given a chance. She was left an orphan very young and went to live with an aunt. This aunt is a horrible old woman. I believe—they say she goes to the Galleria—”
Hermione paused.
“I understand,” said Artois.
“She is greedy, wicked, merciless. We had the story from the woman we were visiting, a neighbor. This aunt forced Peppina into sin. Her beauty, which must have been extraordinary, naturally attracted attention and turned people’s heads. It seems to have driven one man nearly mad. He is a fisherman, not young, and a married man. It seems that he is notoriously violent and jealous, and thoroughly unscrupulous. He is a member of the Camorra, too. He pestered Peppina with his attentions, coming day after day from Mergellina, where he lives with his wife. One night he entered the house and made a scene. Peppina refused finally to receive his advances, and told him she hated him before all the neighbors. He took out a razor and—”
Hermione stopped.
“I understand,” said Artois. “He disfigured her.”
“Dreadfully.”
“It is often done here. Sometimes a youth does it simply to show that a girl is his property. But what is it you wish to do for Peppina? I see you have a plan in your head.”
“I want to have her on the island.”
“In what capacity?”
“As a servant. She can work. She is not a bad girl. She has only—well, Emile, the aunt only succeeded in forcing one lover on her. That is the truth. He was rich and bribed the aunt. But of course the neighbors all know, and—the population here has its virtues, but it is not exactly a delicate population.”
“Per Bacco!”
“And now that the poor girl is disfigured the aunt is going to turn her out-of-doors. She says Peppina must go and earn money for herself. Of course nobody will take her. I want to. I have seen her, talked to her. She would be so thankful. She is in despair. Think of it! Nineteen, and all her beauty gone! Isn’t it devilish?”
“And the man?”
“Oh, they say he’ll get scarcely anything, if anything. Two or three months, perhaps. He is ‘protected.’ It makes my blood boil.”
Artois was silent, waiting for her to say more, to ask questions.
“The only thing is—Vere, Emile,” she said.
“Vere?”
“Yes. You know how friendly she is with the servants. I like her to be. But of course till now they have been all right—so far as I know.”
“You do well to add that proviso.”
“Peppina would not wait on us. She would be in the kitchen. Am I justified in taking her? Of course I could help her with money. If I had not seen her, talked to her, that is what I should have done, no doubt. But she wants—she wants everything, peace, a decent home, pure air. I feel she wants the island.”
“And the other servants?”
“They need only know she was attacked. They need not know her past history. But all that does not matter. It is only the question of Vere that troubles me.”
“You mean that you are not decided whether you ought to bring into the house with Vere a girl who is not as Vere is?”
“Yes.”
“And you want me to advise you?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t do that, Hermione.”
She looked at him almost as if she were startled.
“Why not? I always rely—”
“No, no. This is not a man’s business, my business.”
He spoke with an odd brusqueness, and there were traces of agitation in his face. Hermione did not at all understand what feeling was prompting him, but again, as on the previous evening, she felt as if there were a barrier between them—very slight, perhaps, very shadowy, but definite nevertheless. There was no longer complete frankness in their relations. At moments her friend seemed to be subtly dominated by some secret irritation, or anxiety, which she did not comprehend. She had been aware of it yesterday. She was aware of it now. After his last exclamation she said nothing.
“You are going to this girl now?” he asked.
“I mean to. Yes, I shall go.”
She sat still for a minute, looking down at the pink-and-yellow carpet.
“And what will you do?”
She looked up at him.
“I think I shall take her to the island. I am almost sure I shall. Emile, I don’t believe in cowardice, and I sometimes think I am inclined to be a coward about Vere. She is growing up. She will be seventeen this year, very soon. There are girls who marry at sixteen, even English girls.”
“That is true.”
She could gather nothing from his tone; and now his face was perfectly calm.
“My instinct is to keep Vere just as she is, to preserve the loveliness of childhood in her as long as possible, to keep away from her all knowledge of sin, sorrow, the things that distract and torture the world. But I mustn’t be selfish about Vere. I mustn’t keep her wrapped in cotton wool. That is unwholesome. And, after all, Vere must have her life apart from me. Last night I realized that strongly.”
“Last night?”
“Yes, from the way in which she treated the Marchese, and later from something else. Last night Vere showed two sides of a woman’s nature—the capacity to hold her own, what is vulgarly called ‘to keep her distance,’ and the capacity to be motherly.”
“Was Vere motherly to the Marchesino, then?” asked Artois, not without irony.
“No—to Ruffo.”
“That boy? But where was he last night?”
“When we got back to the island, and the launch had gone off, Vere and I stood for a minute at the foot of the steps to listen to the roaring of the sea. Vere loves the sea.”
“I know that.”
As he spoke he thought of something that Hermione did not know.
“The pool was protected, and under the lee of the island it was comparatively calm. But the rain was falling in torrents. There was one fishing-boat in the pool, close to where we were, and as we were standing and listening, Vere said, suddenly, ‘Madre, that’s Ruffo’s boat!’ I asked her how she knew—because he has changed into another boat lately—she had told me that. ‘I saw his head,’ she answered. ‘He’s there and he’s not asleep. Poor boy, in all this rain!’ Ruffo has been ill with fever, as I told you, and when Vere said that I remembered it at once.”
“Had you told Vere yet?” interposed Artois.
“No. But I did then. Emile, she showed an agitation that—well, it was almost strange, I think. She begged me to make him come into the house and spend the night there, safe from the wind and the rain.”
“And you did, of course?”
“Yes. He was looking very pale and shaky. The men let him come. They were nice and sympathetic. I think they are fond of the boy.”
“Ruffo seems to know how to attract people to him.”
“Yes.”
“And so Vere played the mother to Ruffo?”
“Yes. I never saw that side of her before. She was a woman then. Eventually Ruffo slept with Gaspare.”
“And how did Gaspare accept the situation?”
“Better than I should have expected. I think he likes Ruffo personally, though he is inclined to be suspicious and jealous of any strangers who come into our lives. But I haven’t had time to talk to him this morning.”
“Is Ruffo still in the house?”
“Oh no. He went off in the boat. They came for him about eight.”
“Ah!”
Artois went to the window and looked out. But now he saw nothing, although the three women were still talking and gesticulating on the terrace of the bath-house, more fishing-boats were being towed or rowed out into the Bay, carts were passing by, and people were strolling in the sun.
“You say that Vere showed agitation last night?” he said, turning round after a moment.
“About Ruffo’s illness? It really almost amounted to that. But Vere was certainly excited. Didn’t you notice it?”
“I think she was.”
“Emile,” Hermione said, after an instant of hesitation, “you remember my saying to you the other day that Vere was not a stranger to me?”
“Yes, quite well.”
“You said nothing—I don’t think you agreed. Well, since that day—only since then—I have sometimes felt that there is much in Vere that I do not understand, much that is hidden from me. Has she changed lately?”
“She is at an age when development seems sudden, and is often striking, even startling.”
“I don’t know why, but—but I dread something,” Hermione said. “I feel as if—no, I don’t know what I feel. But if Vere should ever drift away from me I don’t know how I could bear it. A boy—one expects him to go out into the world. But a girl! I want to keep Vere. I must keep Vere. If anything else were to be taken from me I don’t think I could bear it.”
“Vere loves you. Be sure of that.”
“Yes.”
Hermione got up.
“Well, you won’t give me your advice?”
“No, Hermione.”
He looked at her steadily.
“You must treat Vere as you think best, order her life as you think right. In some things you do wisely to consult me. But in this you must rely on yourself. Let your heart teach you. Do not ask questions of my head.”
“Your head!” she exclaimed.
There was a trace of disappointment, even of surprise, in her voice. She looked at him as if she were going to say more, but again she was disconcerted by something in his look, his attitude.
“Well, good-bye, Emile.”
“I will come with you to the lift.”
He went with her and touched the electric bell. As they waited for a moment he added:
“I should like to have an evening quietly on the island.”
“Come to-night, or whenever you like. Don’t fix a time. Come when the inclination whispers—‘I want to be with friends.’”
He pressed her hand.
“Shall I see Peppina?”
“Chi lo sa?”
“And Ruffo?”
She laughed.
“The Marchesino, too, perhaps.”
“No,” said Artois, emphatically. “Disfigured girls and fisher-boys—as many as you like, but not the alta aristocrazia Napoletana.”
“But I thought—”
“I like Doro, but—I like him in his place.”
“And his place?”
“Is not the island—when I wish to be quiet there.”
The lift descended. Artois went out once more onto the balcony, and watched her get into the carriage and drive away towards Naples. She did not look up again.
“She has gone to fetch that girl Peppina,” Artois said to himself, “and I might have prevented it.”
He knew very well the reason why he had not interfered. He had not interfered because he had wished too much to interfere. The desire had been strong enough to startle him, to warn him.
An islet! That suggests isolation. Like Hermione, he wished to isolate Vere, to preserve her as she was in character. He did not know when the wish had first been consciously in his mind, but he knew that since he had been consulted by Vere, since she had broken through her reserve and submitted to him her poems, unveiling for him alone what was really to her a holy of holies, the wish had enormously increased. He told himself that Vere was unique, and that he longed to keep her unique, so that the talent he discerned in her might remain unaffected. How great her talent was he did not know. He would not know, perhaps, for a very long time. But it was definite, it was intimate. It was Vere’s talent, no one else’s.
He had made up his mind very soon about Hermione’s incapacity to produce work of value. Although Vere was such a child, so inexperienced, so innocent, so cloistered, he knew at once that he dared not dash her hopes. It was possible that she might eventually become what her mother certainly could never be.
But she must not be interfered with. Her connection with the sea must not be severed. And people were coming into her life—Ruffo, the Marchesino, and now this wounded girl Peppina.
Artois felt uneasy. He wished Hermione were less generous-hearted, less impulsive. She looked on him as a guide, a check. He knew that. But this time he would not exercise his prerogative. Ruffo he did not mind—at least he thought he did not. The boy was a sea creature. He might even be an inspiring force to Vere. Something Artois had read had taught him that. And Ruffo interested him, attracted him too.
But he hated Vere’s acquaintance with the Marchesino. He knew that the Marchesino would make love to her. And the knowledge was odious to him. Let Vere be loved by the sea, but by no man as yet.
And this girl, Peppina?
He thought of the horrors of Naples, of the things that happen “behind the shutter,” of the lives led by some men and women, some boys and girls of the great city beneath the watching volcano. He thought of evenings he had spent in the Galleria. He saw before him an old woman about whom he had often wondered. Always at night, and often in the afternoon, she walked in the Galleria. She was invariably alone. The first time he had seen her he had noticed her because she had a slightly humped back. Her hair was snow white, and was drawn away from her long, pale face and carefully arranged under a modest bonnet. She carried a small umbrella and a tiny bag. Glancing at her casually, he had supposed her to be a respectable widow of the borghese class. But then he had seen her again and again, and by degrees he had come to believe that she was something very different. And then one night in late spring he had seen her in a new light dress with white thread gloves. And she had noticed him watching her, and had cast upon him a look that was unmistakable, a look from the world “behind the shutter”; and he had understood. Then she had followed him persistently. When he sat before the “Gran caffe” sipping his coffee and listening to the orchestra of women that plays on the platform outside the caffe, she had passed and repassed, always casting upon him that glance of sinister understanding, of invitation, of dreary wickedness that sought for, and believed that it had found, an answering wickedness in him.
Terrible old woman! Peppina’s aunt might well be like that. And Peppina would sleep, perhaps to-night, in the Casa del Mare, under the same roof as Vere.
He resolved to go that evening to the island, to see Peppina, to see Vere. He wished, too, to have a little talk with Gaspare about Ruffo.
The watch-dog instinct, which dwelt also in Gaspare, was alive in him.
But to-day it was alive to do service for Vere, not for Hermione. He knew that, and said to himself that it was natural. For Hermione was a woman, with experience of life; but Vere was only upon the threshold of the world. She needed protection more than Hermione.
Some time ago, when he was returning to Naples from the island on an evening of scirocco, Artois had in thought transferred certain hopes of his from Hermione to Vere. He had said to himself that he must henceforth hope for Hermione in Vere.
Now was he not transferring something else from the mother to the child?
Artois had intended to go that evening to the island. But he did not fulfil his intention. When the sun began to sink he threw a light coat over his arm and walked down to the harbor of Santa Lucia. A boatman whom he knew met him and said:
“Shall I take you to the island, Signore?”
Artois was there to take a boat. He meant to say yes. Yet when the man spoke he answered no. The fellow turned away and found another customer. Two or three minutes later Artois saw his boat drawing out to sea in the direction of Posilipo. It was a still evening, and very clear after the storm of the preceding night. Artois longed to be in that travelling boat, longed to see the night come from the summit of the island with Hermione and Vere. But he resisted the sea, its wide peace, its subtle summons, called a carriage and drove to the Galleria. Arrived there, he took his seat at a little table outside the “Gran Caffe,” ordered a small dinner, and, while he was eating it, watched the people strolling up and down, seeking among them for a figure that he knew.
As the hour drew near for the music to begin, and the girls dressed in white came out one by one to the platform that, surrounded by a white railing edged with red velvet, is built out beyond the caffe to face the crowd, the number of promenaders increased, and many stood still waiting for the first note, and debating the looks of the players. Others thronged around Artois, taking possession of the many little tables, and calling for ices, lemon-water, syrups, and liqueurs. Priests, soldiers, sailors, students, actors—who assemble in the Galleria to seek engagements—newsboys, and youths whose faces suggested that they were “ruffiani,” mingled with foreigners who had come from the hotels and from the ships in the harbor, and whose demeanor was partly curious and partly suspicious, as of one who longs to probe the psychology of a thief while safely guarding his pockets. The buzz of voices, the tramp of feet, gained a peculiar and vivid sonorousness from the high and vaulted roof; and in the warm air, under the large and winking electric lights, the perpetually moving figures looked strangely capricious, hungry, determined, furtive, ardent, and intent. On their little stands the electric fans whirred as they slowly revolved, casting an artificial breeze upon pallid faces, and around the central dome the angels with gilded wings lifted their right arms as if pointing the unconscious multitude the difficult way to heaven.
A priest sat down with two companions at the table next to Artois. He had a red cord round his shaggy black hat. His face was like a parroquet’s, with small, beady eyes full of an unintellectual sharpness. His plump body suggested this world, and his whole demeanor, the movements of his dimpled, dirty hands, and of his protruding lips, the attitude of his extended legs, the pose of his coarse shoulders, seemed hostile to things mystical. He munched an ice, and swallowed hasty draughts of iced water, talking the while with a sort of gluttonous vivacity. Artois looked at him and heard, with his imagination, the sound of the bell at the Elevation, and saw the bowed heads of the crouching worshippers. The irony of life, that is the deepest mystery of life, came upon him like the wave of some Polar sea. He looked up at the gilded angels, then dropped his eyes and saw what he had come to see.
Slowly threading her way through the increasing throng, came the old woman whom he had watched so often and by whom he had been watched. To-night she had on her summer dress, a respectable, rather shiny gown of grayish mauve, a bonnet edged with white ribbon, a pair of white thread gloves. She carried her little bag and a small Japanese fan. Walking in a strange, flat-footed way that was peculiar to her, and glancing narrowly about her, yet keeping her hand almost still, she advanced towards the band-stand. As she came opposite to Artois the orchestra of women struck up the “Valse Noir,” and the old woman stood still, impeded by the now dense crowd of listeners. While the demurely sinister music ran its course, she remained absolutely immobile. Artois watched her with a keen interest.
It had come into his mind that she was the aunt of Peppina, the disfigured girl, who perhaps to-night was sleeping in the Casa del Mare with Vere.
Presently, attracted, no doubt, by his gaze, the old woman looked across at Artois and met his eyes. Instantly a sour and malignant expression came into her long, pale face, and she drew up a corner of her upper lip, as a dog sometimes does, showing a tooth that was like a menace.
She was secretly cursing Artois.
He knew why. Encouraged by his former observation of her, she had scented a client in him and had been deceived, and this deception had bred within her an acrid hatred of him. To-night he would chase away that hatred. For he meant to speak to her. The old woman looked away from him, holding her head down as if in cold disdain. Artois read easily what was passing in her mind. She believed him wicked, but nervous in his wickedness, desirous of her services but afraid to invite them. And she held him in the uttermost contempt. Well, to-night he would undeceive her on one point at least. He kept his eyes upon her so firmly that she looked at him again. This time he made a sign of recognition, of understanding. She stared as if in suspicious amazement. He glanced towards the dome, then at her once more. At this moment the waiter came up. Artois paid his bill slowly and ostentatiously. As he counted out the money upon the little tray he looked up once, and saw the eyes in the long, pale face of the venerable temptress glitter while they watched. The music ceased, the crowd before the platform broke up, and began quickly to melt away. Only the woman waited, holding her little bag and her cheap Japanese fan.
Artois drew out a cigar, lit it slowly, then got up, and began to move out among the tables.
The priest looked after him, spoke rapidly to his companions, and burst into a throaty laugh which was loudly echoed.
“Maria Fortunata is in luck to-night!” said some one.
Then the band began again, the waiter came with more ices, and the tall, long-bearded forestiere was forgotten.
Without glancing at the woman, Artois strolled slowly on. Many people looked at him, but none spoke to him, for he was known now, as each stranger who stays long in Naples is known, summed up, labelled, and either ignored or pestered. The touts and the ruffiani were aware that it was no use to pester the Frenchman, and even the decrepit and indescribably seedy old men who hover before the huge plate-glass windows of the photograph shops, or linger near the entrance to the cinematograph, never peeped at him out of the corners of their bloodshot eyes or whispered a word of the white slaves in his ear.
When he was beneath the dome, and could see the light gleaming upon the wings of the pointing angels, Artois seemed to be aware of an individual step among the many feet behind him, a step soft, furtive, and obstinate, that followed him like a fate’s. He glanced up at the angels. A melancholy and half-bitter smile came to his lips. Then he turned to the right and made his way still slowly towards the Via Roma, always crowded from the early afternoon until late into the night. As he went, as he pushed through the mob of standing men at the entrance of the Galleria, and crossed the street to the far side, from which innumerable narrow and evil-looking alleys stretch away into the darkness up the hill, the influence of the following old woman increased upon him, casting upon him like a mist her hateful eagerness. He desired to be rid of it, and, quickening his walk, he turned into the first alley he came to, walked a little way up it, until he was in comparative solitude and obscurity, then stopped and abruptly turned.
The shiny, grayish mauve gown and the white-trimmed bonnet were close to him. Between them he faintly perceived a widely smiling face, and from this face broke at once a sickly torrent of speech, half Neapolitan dialect, half bastard French.
“Silenzio!” Artois said, sternly.
The old harridan stopped in surprise, showing her tooth.
“What has become of Peppina?”
“Maria Santissima!” she ejaculated, moving back a step in the darkness.
She paused. Then she said:
“You know Peppina!”
She came forward again, quite up to him, and peered into his face, seeking there for an ugly truth which till now had been hidden from her.
“What had you to do with Peppina?”
“Nothing. Tell me about her, and—”
He put his hand to the inside pocket of his coat, and showed her the edge of a little case containing paper notes. The woman misunderstood him. He knew that by her face, which for the moment was as a battle-field on which lust fought with a desperate anger of disappointment. Then cunning came to stop the battle.
“You have heard of Peppina, Signore? You have never seen her?”
Artois played with her for a moment.
“Never.”
Her smile widened. She put up her thin hands to her hair, her bonnet, coquettishly.
“There is not a girl in Naples as beautiful as Peppina. Mother of—”
But the game was too loathsome with such a player.
“Beautiful! Macche!”
He laughed, made a gesture of pulling out a knife and smashing his face with it.
“Beautiful! Per Dio!”
The coquetry, the cunning, dropped out of the long, pale face.
“The Signore knows?”
“Ma si! All Naples knows.”
The old woman’s face became terrible. Her two hands shot up, dropped, shot up again, imprecating, cursing the world, the sky, the whole scheme of the universe, it seemed. She chattered like an ape. Artois soothed her with a ten-lire note.
That night, when he went back to the hotel, he had heard the aunt’s version of Peppina, and knew—that which really he had known before—that Hermione had taken her to live on the island.
Hermione! What was she? An original, clever and blind, great-hearted and unwise. An enthusiast, one created to be carried away.
Never would she grow really old, never surely would the primal fires within her die down into the gray ashes that litter so many of the hearths by which age sits, a bleak, uncomely shadow.
And Peppina was on the island, a girl from the stews of Naples; not wicked, perhaps, rather wronged, injured by life—nevertheless, the niece of that horror of the Galleria.
He thought of Vere and shuddered.
Next day towards four o’clock the Marchesino strolled into Artois’ room, with a peculiarly impudent look of knowledge upon his face.
“Buon giorno, Caro Emilio,” he said. “Are you busy?”
“Not specially.”
“Will you come with me for a stroll in the Villa? Will you come to see the gathering together of the geese?”
“Che Diavolo! What’s that?”
“This summer the Marchesa Pontini has organized a sort of club, which meets in the Villa every day except Sundays. Three days the meeting is in the morning, three days in the afternoon. The silliest people of the aristocracy belong to this club, and the Marchesa is the mother goose. Ecco! Will you come, or—or have you some appointment?” He smiled in his friend’s face.
Artois wondered, but could not divine, what was at the back of his mind.
“No, I had thought of going on the sea.”
“Or to the Toledo, perhaps?”
The Marchesino laughed happily.
“The Toledo? Why should I go there?”
“Non lo so. Put on your chapeau and come. Il fait tres beau cet apres-midi.”
Doro was very proud of his French, which made Artois secretly shiver, and generally spoke it when he was in specially good spirits, or was feeling unusually mischievous. As they walked along the sea-front a moment later, he continued in Italian:
“You were not at the island yesterday, Emilio?”
“No. Were you?”
“I naturally called to know how the ladies were after that terrible storm. What else could I do?”
“And how were they?”
“The Signora was in Naples, and of course the Signorina could not have received me alone. But the saints were with me, Emilio. I met her on the sea; quite by herself, on the sea of the Saint’s pool. She was lying back in a little boat, with no hat on, her hands behind her head—so, and her eyes—her beautiful eyes, Emilio, were full of dreams, of dreams of the sea.”
“How do you know that?” said Artois, rather sharply.
“Cosa?”
“How do you know the Signorina was dreaming of the sea? Did she—did she tell you?”
“No, but I am sure. We walked together from the boats. I told her she was an enchantress of the sea, the spirit of the wave—I told her!”
He spread out his hands, rejoicing in the remembrance of his graceful compliments.
“The Signorina was delighted, but she could not stay long. She had a slight headache and was a little tired after the storm. But she would have liked to ask me to the house. She was longing to. I could see that.”
He seized his mustache.
“She turned her head away, trying to conceal from me her desire, but—”
He laughed.
“Le donne! Le donne!” he happily exclaimed.
Artois found himself wondering why, until Doro had made the acquaintance of the dwellers on the island, he had never wished to smack his smooth, complacent cheeks.
They turned from the sea into the broad walk of the Villa, and walked towards the kiosk. Near it, on the small, green chairs, were some ladies swathed in gigantic floating-veils, talking to two or three very smart young men in white suits and straw hats, who leaned forward eying them steadily with a determined yet rather vacuous boldness that did not disconcert them. One of the ladies, dressed in black-and-white check, was immensely stout. She seemed to lead the conversation, which was carried on with extreme vivacity in very loud and not melodious voices.
“Ecco the gathering of the geese!” said the Marchesino, touching Artois on the arm. “And that”—he pointed to the stout lady, who at this moment tossed her head till her veil swung loose like a sail suddenly deserted by the wind—“is the goose-mother. Buona sera, Marchesa! Buona sera—molto piacere. Carlo, buona sera—a rivederci, Contessa! A questa sera.”
He showed his splendid teeth in a fixed but winning smile, and, hat in hand, went by, walking from his hips. Then, replacing his hat on his head, he added to his friend:
“The Marchesa is always hoping that the Duchessa d’Aosta will come one day, if only for a moment, to smile upon the geese. But—well, the Duchessa prefers to climb to the fourth story to see the poor. She has a heart. Let us sit here, Emilio.”
They sat down under the trees, and the Marchesino looked at his pointed boots for a moment in silence, pushing forward his under lip until his blond mustache touched the jaunty tip of his nose. Then he began to laugh, still looking before him.
“Emilio! Emilio!”
He shook his head repeatedly.
“Emilio mio! And that you should be asking me to show you Naples! It is too good! C’est parfait!”
The Marchesino turned towards Artois.
“And Maria Fortunata! Santa Maria of the Toledo, the white-haired protectress of the strangers! Emilio—you might have come to me! But you do not trust me. Ecco! You do not—”
Artois understood.
“You saw me last night?”
“Ma si! All Naples saw you. Do you not know that the Galleria is full—but full—of eyes?”
“Va bene! But you don’t understand.”
“Emilio!”
He shrugged his shoulders, lifted his hands, his eyebrows. His whole being seemed as if it were about to mount ironically towards heaven.
“You don’t understand. I repeat it.”
Artois spoke quietly, but there was a sound in his voice which caused his frivolous companion to stare at him with an inquiry that was, for a moment, almost sulky.
“You forget, Doro, how old I am.”
“What has that to do with it?”
“You forget—”
Artois was about to allude to his real self, to point out the improbability of a man so mental, so known, so travelled as he was, falling like a school-boy publicly into a sordid adventure. But he stopped, realizing the uselessness of such an explanation. And he could not tell the Marchesino the truth of his shadowy colloquy in a by-street with the old creature from behind the shutter.
“You have made a mistake about me,” he said. “But it is of no consequence. Look! There is another goose coming.”
He pointed with his cane in the direction of the chatterers near the kiosk.
“It is papa! It is papa!”
“Pardon! I did not recognize—”
The Marchesino got up.
“Let us go there. The Marchesa with papa—it is better than the Compagnia Scarpetta! I will present you.”
But Artois was in no mood for a cataract of nothingness.
“Not now,” he said. “I have—”
The Marchesino shot a cruel glance of impudent comprehension at him, and touched his left hand in token of farewell.
“I know! I know! The quickest horse to the Toledo. A-ah! A-ah! May the writer’s saint go with you! Addio, mio caro!”
There was a hint of real malice in his voice. He cocked his hat and strutted away towards the veils and the piercing voices. Artois stared after him for a moment, then walked across the garden to the sea, and leaned against the low wall looking towards Capri. He was vexed at this little episode—unreasonably vexed. In his friend Doro he now discerned a possible enemy. An Italian who has trusted does not easily forgive if he is not trusted in return. Artois was conscious of a dawning hostility in the Marchesino. No doubt he could check it. Doro was essentially good-tempered and light-hearted. He could check it by an exhibition of frankness. But this frankness was impossible to him, and as it was impossible he must allow Doro to suspect him of sordid infamies. He knew, of course, the Neapolitan’s habitual disbelief in masculine virtue, and did not mind it. Then why should he mind Doro’s laughing thought of himself as one of the elderly crew who cling to forbidden pleasures? Why should he feel sore, angry, almost insulted?
Vere rose before him, as one who came softly to bring him the answer to his questionings. And he knew that his vexation arose from the secret apprehension of a future in which he would desire to stand between her and the Marchesino with clean hands, and tell Doro certain truths which are universal, not national. Such truths would come ill from one whom the lectured held unclean.
As he walked home to the hotel his vexation grew.
When he was once more in his room he remembered his remark to Hermione, “We shall have many quiet, happy evenings together this summer, I hope,” and her strange and doubtful reply. And because he felt himself invaded by her doubts he resolved to set out for the island. If he took a boat at once he could be there between six and seven o’clock.
And perhaps he would see the new occupant of the Casa del Mare. Perhaps he would see Peppina.