Robert Hichens

“ And then Hermione waited for that against which she had prayed.
Artois would come to the island that night. Useless to pray! He was coming. She felt that he was on the sea, environed by this strange mist that hung to-night over the waters. She felt that he was coming to Vere. She had gone to Africa to save him—in order that he might fall in love with her then unborn child.
Monstrosities, the monstrosities that are in life, deny them, beat them back, close our eyes to them as we will, rose up around her in the hot stillness. She felt haunted, terrified. ”

“ Those long reveries of Vere upon the sea, when she lay in the little boat in the shadow cast by the cliffs over the Saint’s Pool—they were the prelude to work; imaginative, creative perhaps.
And Vere was not seventeen.
Hermione smiled to herself rather bitterly, thinking of the ignorance, of the inevitable folly of youth. The child, no doubt, had dreams of fame. What clever, what imaginative and energetic child has not such dreams at some period or other? How absurd we all are, thinking to climb to the stars almost as soon as we can see them! ”

“ What was friendship without sincerity? Nothing—less than nothing. She felt as if her whole body stiffened with a proud reserve to meet the reserve with which he treated her. And she felt as if her friend of years, the friend whose life she had perhaps saved in Africa, had turned in that moment into a stranger, or—even into an enemy. For this furtive withdrawal from their beautiful and open intimacy was like an act of hostility. She was almost dazed for an instant. Then her brain worked with feverish activity. What had Emile meant? Her permission to Vere was connected in his mind with Peppina. ”

“ She was there in the night with Gaspare. They were hurrying down towards the sea. He was behind her, and she could hear his footsteps—longing to go faster. But she was breathless, her heart was beating, there was terror in her soul. What was that? A rattle of stones in the darkness, and then an old voice muttering “Benedicite!”
She opened her eyes and moved suddenly, like one intolerably stirred. What a foe the imagination can be—what a foe! She got up and went to the window. She must drive away that memory of the ravine, of all that followed after. ”

“ And he remembered his conversation with Hermione in Virgil’s Grotto; how he had spoken like one who scarcely needed love, having ambition and having work to do, and being no longer young.
To-night he felt that every one needs love first—that all the other human needs come after that great necessity. He had thought himself a man full of self-knowledge, full of knowledge of others. But he had not known himself. Perhaps even now the real man was hiding somewhere, far down, shrinking away for fear of being known, for fear of being dragged up into the light. ”

“ When they got beyond the breakwater the sail was set, the Marchesino took the helm, and the boat slipped through the smooth sea, rounded the rocks on which the old fort stands to stare at Capri, radiant now as a magic isle in the curiously ethereal light of evening, and headed for the distant point of land which hid Ischia from their eyes. The freedom of the Bay of Naples was granted them—the freedom of the sea. As they ran out into the open water, and Artois saw the round gray eyes of the Marchesino dancing to the merry music of a complete bodily pleasure, he felt like a man escaping. ”

“ The veils that hung before the happy eyes of childhood had been torn away, and those eyes had looked for the first time into the deeps of an unhappy human heart.
And he had thought it possible to preserve, perhaps for a long while, Vere’s beautiful ignorance untouched. He had thought of the island as a safe retreat in which her delicate, and as yet childish talent, might gradually mature under his influence and the influence of the sea. She had been like some charming and unusual plant of the sea, shot with sea colors, wet with sea winds, fresh with the freshness of the smooth-backed waves. ”

“ A sort of horror of the situation came upon him, as he began thoroughly to realize the hatred, hatred of brain, of nerves, of heart, that was surely quivering in Hermione in this moment, that was driving her away into the darkness from sound and touch of life. Like a wounded animal she was creeping away from it and hating it. He remembered Gaspare’s words about the look she had cast upon perhaps the most truly faithful of all her friends.
But—she did not know. And he, Artois, must tell her. He must make her see the exact truth of the years. He must win her back to reason. ”

“ By this time of night, no doubt, Ruffo was in his home at the Mergellina, sitting in the midst of his family, or was strolling with lively companions of his own age, or, perhaps, was fast asleep in bed.
Vere felt that it would be horrible to go to bed on such a night, to shut herself in from the moon and the sea. The fishermen who slept in the shelter of the Saint’s Pool were enviable. They had the stars above them, the waters about them, the gentle winds to caress them as they lay in the very midst of romance. ”

“ Artois knew nothing of what had happened that day at Mergellina, but he divined that it was Ruffo who, without words, had told Hermione the truth. It must have been Ruffo, in whom the dead man lived again. And, going beyond the innocent boy, deep into the shadows where lies so much of truth, Artois saw the murdered man stirring from his sleep, unable to rest because of the lie that had been coiled around his memory, making it what it should not be. Perhaps only the dead know the true, the sacred passion for justice. ”

“ It came upon her heart like the whisper of a world trying to tell its secret to the darkness. What depths, what subtleties, what unfailing revelations of beauty, and surely, too, of love, there were in Nature! And yet in Nature what terrible indifference there was: a powerful, an almost terrific inattention, like that of the sphinx that gazes at what men cannot see. Hermione moved away from the house. She walked to the brow of the island and sat down on the seat that Vere was fond of. Presently she would go to the bridge and look over into the Pool and listen for the voices of the fishermen. ”

“ He was acutely conscious of the mist of which Hermione had thought. He wondered about her, as she about him. He saw again that face in the night under the trellis. He heard the voice that had called to him and Vere in the garden. And he knew that enmity, mysterious yet definite, might arise even between Hermione and him; that even they two—inexorably under the law that has made all human beings separate entities, and incapable of perfect fusion—might be victims of misunderstanding, of ignorance of the absolute truth of personality. ”

“ She realized to-night that her child was growing up rapidly, was passing from the stage of childhood to the stage of girlhood, was on the threshold of all the mysterious experiences that life holds for those who have ardent temperaments and eager interests, and passionate desires and fearless hearts.
To-night Hermione felt very strongly the difference between the father and the daughter. There was a gravity in Vere, a firmness that Maurice had lacked. Full of life and warmth as she was, she was not the pure spirit of joy that he had been in those first days in Sicily. ”

“ For years this woman had been to him “dear Hermione,” “ma pauvre amie,” comrade, sympathizer, nurse, mother of Vere.
Now—what else was she? A human creature with a heart and brain capable of mystery; a soul with room in it for secret things; a temple whose outside he had seen, but whose god, perhaps, he had never seen.
And Vere was involved in her mother’s strangeness, and had her own strangeness too. Of that he had been conscious before to-night. For Vere was being formed. The plastic fingers were at work about her, moulding her into what she must be as a woman. ”

“ For his interest of the literary man in Vere was very vivid. Never yet had he had a pupil or dreamed of having one. There are writers who found a school, whose fame is carried forward like a banner by young and eager hands. Artois had always stood alone, ardently admired, ardently condemned, but not imitated. And he had been proud of his solitude. But—lately—had not underthoughts come into his mind, thoughts of leaving an impress on a vivid young intellect, a soul that was full of life, and the beginnings of energy? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Vere stretched out her hand to the tea-table, but it shook. She drew it back, and burst into a peal of laughter.
“What are you laughing at?” said Artois, with burlesque majesty.
“At you. What’s the matter with you, Monsieur Emile? How can you be so foolish?”
She lay back in her chair, with her hair streaming about her, and her thin body quivered, as if the sense of fun within her were striving to break through its prison walls.
“This,” said Artois, “this is sheer impertinence. ”

“ And now Peppina had rushed into Vere’s life, with sobs and a tumult of cries to the Madonna and the saints, and, no doubt, with imprecations upon the wickedness of men. And where were the dreams of the sea? And his dreams, where were they?
That night the irony that was in him woke up and smiled bitterly, and he asked himself how he, with his burden of years and of knowledge of life, could have been such a fool as to think it possible to guard any one against the assaults of the facts of life. ”

“ Was he, full of youth, beauty, chivalrous energy and devotion, to be interfered with, set aside, for a man with gray hairs thick upon his head, for a man who spent half his hours bent over a writing-table? Emilio had never wished him to know the ladies of the island. He knew the reason now, and glowed with a fiery lust of battle. Vere had attracted him from the first. But this opposition drove on attraction into something stronger, more determined. He said to himself that he was madly in love. Never yet had he been worsted in an amour by any man. ”

“ To do so would have been impossible to her, even had Vere been willing to come to her. Since the brutal outburst of the Marchesino, she, too, had felt the desire, the necessity, of a desert place, where she could sit alone and realize the bareness of her world.
In that outburst of passion the Marchesino had gathered together and hurled at her beliefs that had surely been her own, but that she had striven to avoid, that she had beaten back as spectres and unreal, that she had even denied, tricking, or trying to trick, her terrible sense of truth. ”

“ When darkness comes to intimacy it seems to make that intimacy more perfect. Now surely it caused reserve, restraint, to be more complete. The two secrets which Hermione now knew, but which were still cherished as secrets by Vere and Artois, stood up between the mother and her child and friend, inexorably dividing them.
Hermione was strung up to a sort of nervous strength that was full of determination. She had herself in hand, like a woman of the world who faces society with the resolution to deceive it. While Vere and Artois had been out in the boat she had schooled herself. ”

“ She heard the Marchesino’s voice: “I see what he is, what he wants, I see it all—all that is in his mind and heart. I see, I have always seen, that he loves the Signorina, that he loves her madly.”
Vere!
Hermione sickened. Emile and Vere in that relation!
The storm of anger was not spent yet. Would it ever be spent? Something within her, the something, perhaps, that felt rejected, strove to reject in its turn, did surely reject. Pride burned in her like a fire that cruelly illumines night, shining upon the destruction it is compassing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Giulia brought to Hermione a bit of embroidery on which she was working, cleared away the dessert and quietly disappeared. From the house now and then came a sound of voices, of laughter. It died away, and the calm of the coming night, the calm of the silent trio that faced it, seemed to deepen as if in delicate protest against the interference. The stillness of Nature to-night was very natural. But was the human stillness natural? Presently Artois, suddenly roused, he knew not why, to self-consciousness, found himself wondering. Vere lay back in her wicker chair like one at ease. ”

“ A woman who is not at her ease in her own home with her own girl—where can she be at ease?
It was really the reaction from that effort that sent Hermione from the island that evening. She felt as if she could not face another meal with Vere just then. She felt transparent, as if Vere’s eyes would be able to see all that she must hide if they were together in the evening. And she resolved to go away. She made some excuse—that she wished for a little change, that she was fidgety and felt the confinement of the island. ”

“ One got lost in a nature that was full of winding paths. Just then, and for the time, she forgot her love of, even her passion for, mental things. The beauty of the straight white road appealed to her. She saw it leading one onward to the glory of the sun.
Vere and she did not see very much of each other during these days. They met, of course, at meals, and often for a few minutes at other times. But it seemed as if each tacitly, and almost instinctively, sought to avoid any prolonged intercourse with the other. Hermione was a great deal in her sitting-room, reading, or pretending to read. ”

“ Before Hermione could reply the Marchesino exclaimed:
“Signorina, in the breast of an angel you have the heart of a lion! The sea will never harm you. How could it? It will treat you as it treats the Saint of your pool, San Francesco. You know what the sailors and the fishermen say? In the wildest storms, when the sea crashes upon the rocks, never, never does it touch San Francesco. Never does it put out the lamp that burns at San Francesco’s feet.” ”

“ That they could ever be enemies was unthinkable. Even in Hermione’s bitterness and anger Artois felt her deep affection. In her cry, “Take care, Emile, or I shall hate you for keeping me in the dark!” he heard only the hatred that is the other side of love.
But could they ever be comrades again? And if they could not, what could they be?
As the boat slipped on, under the Saint’s light, which was burning although the mist had hidden it from Hermione’s searching eyes, and out to the open sea, Artois heard again her fierce exclamation. It blended with Vere’s sob. ”

“ Artois felt shut out. But when Vere and he had laughed over the tea-table in a blessed community of happy foolishness, who could have understood their mirth? He remembered how he had pitied the imagined outsider.
He turned again to Hermione, but such conversation as theirs, and indeed all serious conversation, now seemed to him heavy, portentous, almost ludicrous. The young alone knew how to deal with life, chasing it as a child chases a colored air-ball, and when it would sink, and fall and be inert, sending it with a gay blow soaring once more towards the blue. ”

“ All his self-confidence returned, all his former certainty that the Signorina was secretly devoted to him. His days of doubt and fury were forgotten. His jealousy of Emilio vanished in a cloud of happy contempt for the disabilities of age, and he began to talk to Vere with a vivacity that was truly Neapolitan. When the Marchesino was joyous he had charm, the charm that emanates from the bounding life that flows in the veins of youth. Even the Puritan feels, and fears, the grace that is Pagan. The Marchesino had a Pagan grace. ”