A Spirit in Prison

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Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
Emma Dudding, emma_302@hotmail.com
and John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz

PREPARERS' NOTE

This text was prepared from a 1908 edition, published by Harper &
Brothers, New York and London.

A SPIRIT IN PRISON

by Robert Hichens

A SPIRIT IN PRISON

CHAPTER I

Somewhere, not far off on the still sea that held the tiny islet in a
warm embrace, a boy's voice was singing "Napoli Bella."

Vere heard the song as she sat in the sun with her face set towards
Nisida and the distant peak of Ischia; and instinctively she shifted
her position, and turned her head, looking towards the calm and
untroubled water that stretched between her and Naples. For the voice
that sang of the beautiful city was coming towards her from the
beautiful city, hymning the siren it had left perhaps but two hours
ago.

On his pedestal set upon rock San Francesco seemed to be attentive to
the voice. He stood beyond the sheltered pool of the sea that divided
the islet from the mainland, staring across at Vere as if he envied
her; he who was rooted in Italy and deprived of her exquisite freedom.
His beard hung down to his waist, his cross protruded over his left
shoulder, and his robe of dusty grayish brown touched his feet, which
had never wandered one step since he was made, and set there to keep
watch over the fishermen who come to sleep under the lee of the island
by night.

Now it was brilliant daylight. The sun shone vividly over the Bay of
Naples, over the great and vital city, over Vesuvius, the long line of
the land towards Sorrento, over Capri with its shadowy mountain, and
Posilippo with its tree-guarded villas. And in the sharp radiance of
May the careless voice of the fisher-boy sang the familiar song that
Vere had always known and seldom heeded.

To-day, why she did not know, Vere listened to it attentively.
Something in the sound of the voice caught her attention, roused
within her a sense of sympathy.

Carelessness and happiness make a swift appeal to young hearts, and
this voice was careless, and sounded very happy. There was a
deliberate gruffness in it, a determination to be manly, which proved
the vocalist to be no man. Vere knew at once that a boy was singing,
and she felt that she must see him.

She got up, went into the little garden at the edge of the cliff, and
looked over the wall.

There was a boat moving slowly towards her, not very far away. In it
were three figures, all stripped for diving, and wearing white cotton
drawers. Two were sitting on the gunwale with their knees drawn up
nearly to their chins. The third was standing, and with a languid, but
strong and regular movement, was propelling the boat forward with big-
bladed oars. This was the singer, and as the boat drew nearer Vere
could see that he had the young, lithe form of a boy.

While she watched, leaning down from her eyrie, the boat and the song
stopped, and the singer let go his oars and turned to the men behind
him. The boat had reached a place near the rocks that was good ground
for /frutti di mare/.

Vere had often seen the divers in the Bay of Naples at their curious
toil. Yet it never ceased to interest her. She had a passion for the
sea, and for all things connected with it. Now she leaned a little
lower over the wall, with her eyes fixed on the boat and its
occupants.

Upon the water she saw corks floating, and presently one of the men
swung himself round and sat facing the sea, with his back to the boat
and his bare legs dipping into the water. The boy had dropped down to
the bottom of the craft. His hands were busy arranging clothes, or
tackle, and his lusty voice again rang out to the glory of "Napoli,
bella Napoli." There was something infectious in his happy-go-lucky
light-heartedness. Vere smiled as she listened, but there was a
wistfulness in her heart. At that moment a very common desire of young
and vigorous girls assailed her--the desire to be a boy; not a boy
born of rich parents, destined to the idle, aimless life of
aristocratic young Neapolitans, but a brown, badly dressed, or
scarcely dressed at all boy of the people.

She was often light-hearted, careless. But was she ever as light-
hearted and careless as that singing boy? She supposed herself to be
free. But was she, could she ever be at liberty as he was?

The man who had been dipping his feet in the sea rested one hand on
the gunwale, let his body droop forward, dropped into the water,
paddled for a moment, reached one of the floating corks, turned over
head downwards, describing a circle which showed his chocolate-colored
back arched, kicked up his feet and disappeared. The second man
lounged lazily from the boat into the sea and imitated him. The boy
sat still and went on singing. Vere felt disappointed. Was not he
going to dive too? She wanted him to dive. If she were that boy she
would go in, she felt sure of it, before the men. It must be lovely to
sink down into the underworld of the sea, to rifle from the rocks
their fruit, that grew thick as fruit on the trees. But the boy--he
was lazy, good for nothing but singing. She was half ashamed of him.
Whimsically, and laughing to herself at her own absurdity, she lifted
her two hands, brown with the sun, to her lips, and cried with all her
might:

"Va dentro, pigro! Va dentro!"

As her voice died away, the boy stopped singing, sprang into the sea,
kicked up his feet and disappeared.

Vere was conscious of a thrill that was like a thrill of triumph.

"He obeyed me!" she thought.

A pleasant feeling of power came to her. From her eyrie on the rock
she was directing these strange sea doings. She was ruling over the
men of the sea.

The empty boat swayed softly on the water, but its three former
occupants were all hidden by the sea. It seemed as if they would never
come up again. Vere began to hold her breath as they were holding
theirs. At last a dark head rose above the surface, then another. The
two men paddled for a minute, drawing the air into their lungs. But
the boy did not reappear.

As the seconds passed, Vere began to feel proud of him. He was doing
that which she would have tried to do had she been a boy. He was
rivalling the men.

Another second slipped away--and another. He was more than rivalling,
he was beating the men.

They dived once more. She saw the sun gleam on their backs, which
looked polished as they turned slowly over, almost like brown
porpoises.

But the boy remained hidden beneath the veil of water.

Vere began to feel anxious. What if some accident had happened? What
if he had been caught by the seaweed, or if his groping hand had been
retained by some crevice of the rock? There was a pain at her heart.
Her quick imagination was at work. It seemed to her as if she felt his
agony, took part in his struggle to regain his freedom. She clinched
her small hands and set her teeth. She held her breath, trying to feel
exactly as he was feeling. And then suddenly she lifted her hands up
to her face, covering her nostrils. What a horrible sensation it was,
this suffocation, this pressing of the life out of the body, almost as
one may push a person brutally out of a room! She could bear it no
more, and she dropped her hands. As she did so the boy's dark head
rose above the sea.

Vere uttered a cry of joy.

"Brave! Bravo!"

She felt as if he had returned from the dead. He was a wonderful boy.

"Bravo! Bravissimo!"

Serenely unconscious of her enthusiasm, the boy swam slowly for a
moment, breathing the air into his lungs, then serenely dived again.

"Vere!" called a woman's voice from the house--"Vere!"

"Madre!" cried the girl in reply, but without turning away from the
sea. "I am here! Do come out! I want to show you something."

On a narrow terrace looking towards Naples a tall figure appeared.

"Where are you?"

"Here! here!"

The mother smiled and left the terrace, passed through a little gate,
and almost directly was standing beside the girl, saying:

"What is it? Is there a school of whales in the Bay, or have you
sighted the sea-serpent coming from Capri?"

"No, no! But--you see that boat?"

"Yes. The men are diving for /frutti di mare/, aren't they?"

Vere nodded.

"The men are nothing. But there is a boy who is wonderful."

"Why? What does he do?"

"He stays under water an extraordinary time. Now wait. Have you got a
watch, Madre?"

"Yes."

"Take it out, there's a darling, and time him. I want to know--there
he is! You see!"

"Yes."

"Have you got your watch? Wait till he goes under! Wait a minute!
There! He's gone! Now begin."

She drew into her lungs a long breath, and held it. The mother smiled,
keeping her eyes obediently on the watch which lay in her hand.

There was a silence between them as the seconds passed.

"Really," began the mother presently, "he must be--"

"Hush, Madre, hush!"

The girl had clasped her hands tightly. Her eyes never left the sea.
The tick, tick of the watch was just audible in the stillness of the
May morning. At last--

"There he is!" cried the girl. "Quick! How long has he been under?"

"Just fifty seconds."

"I wonder--I'm sure it's a record. If only Gaspare were here! When
will he be back from Naples with Monsieur Emile?"

"About twelve, I should think. But I doubt if they can sail." She
looked out to sea, and added: "I think the wind is changing to
scirocco. They may be later."

"He's gone down again!"

"I never saw you so interested in a diver before," said the mother.
"What made you begin to look at the boy?"

"He was singing. I heard him, and his voice made me feel--" She
paused.

"What?" said her mother.

"I don't know. /Un poco diavolesca/, I'm afraid. One thing, though! It
made me long to be a boy."

"Did it?"

"Yes! Madre, tell me truly--sea-water on your lips, as the fishermen
say--now truly, did you ever want me to be a boy?"

Hermione Delarey did not answer for a moment. She looked away over the
still sea, that seemed to be slowly losing its color, and she thought
of another sea, of the Ionian waters that she had loved so much. They
had taken her husband from her before her child was born, and this
child's question recalled to her the sharp agony of those days and
nights in Sicily, when Maurice lay unburied in the Casa del Prete, and
afterwards in the hospital at Marechiaro--of other days and nights in
Italy, when, isolated with the Sicilian boy, Gaspare, she had waited
patiently for the coming of her child.

"Sea-water, Madre, sea-water on your lips!"

Her mother looked down at her.

"Do you think I wished it, Vere?"

"To-day I do."

"Why to-day?"

"Because I wish it so much. And it seems to me as if perhaps I wish it
because you once wished it for me. You thought I should be a boy?"

"I felt sure you would be a boy."

"Madre! How strange!"

The girl was looking up at her mother. Her dark eyes--almost Sicilian
eyes they were--opened very wide, and her lips remained slightly
parted after she had spoken.

"I wonder why that was?" she said at length.

"I have wondered too. It may have been that I was always thinking of
your father in those days, recalling him--well, recalling him as he
had been in Sicily. He went away from me so suddenly that somehow his
going, even when it had happened, for a long time seemed to be an
impossibility. And I fancied, I suppose, that my child would be him in
a way."

"Come back?"

"Or never quite gone."

The girl was silent for a moment.

"Povera Madre mia!" at last she said.

But she did not seem distressed for herself. No personal grievance, no
doubt of complete love assailed her. And the fact that this was so
demonstrated, very quietly and very completely, the relation existing
between this mother and this child.

"I wonder, now," Vere said, presently, "why I never specially wished
to be a boy until to-day--because, after all, it can't be from you
that the wish came. If it had been it must have come long ago. And it
didn't. It only came when I heard that boy's voice. He sings like all
the boys, you know, that have ever enjoyed themselves, that are still
enjoying themselves in the sun."

"I wish he would sing once more!" said Hermione.

"Perhaps he will. Look! He's getting into the boat. And the men are
stopping too."

The boy was very quick in his movements. Almost before Vere had
finished speaking he had pulled on his blue jersey and white trousers,
and again taken the big oars in his hands. Standing up, with his face
set towards the islet, he began once more to propel the boat towards
it. And as he swung his body slowly to and fro he opened his lips and
sang lustily once more,

"O Napoli, bella Napoli!"

Hermione and Vere sat silently listening as the song grew louder and
louder, till the boat was almost in the shadow of the islet, and the
boy, with a strong stroke of the left oar turned its prow towards the
pool over which San Francesco watched.

"They're going into the Saint's Pool to have a siesta," said Vere.
"Isn't he a splendid boy, Madre?"

As she spoke the boat was passing almost directly beneath them, and
they saw its name painted in red letters on the prow, /Sirena del
Mare/. The two men, one young, one middle-aged, were staring before
them at the rocks. But the boy, more sensitive, perhaps, than they
were to the watching eyes of women, looked straight up to Vere and to
her mother. They saw his level rows of white teeth gleaming as the
song came out from his parted lips, the shining of his eager dark
eyes, full of the careless merriment of youth, the black, low-growing
hair stirring in the light sea breeze about his brow, bronzed by sun
and wind. His slight figure swayed with an easy motion that had the
grace of perfectly controlled activity, and his brown hands gripped
the great oars with a firmness almost of steel, as the boat glided
under the lee of the island, and vanished from the eyes of the
watchers into the shadowy pool of San Francesco.

When the boat had disappeared, Vere lifted herself up and turned round
to her mother.

"Isn't he a jolly boy, Madre?"

"Yes," said Hermione.

She spoke in a low voice. Her eyes were still on the sea where the
boat had passed.

"Yes," she repeated, almost as if to herself.

For the first time a little cloud went over Vere's sensitive face.

"Madre, how horribly I must have disappointed you," she said.

The mother did not break into protestations. She always treated her
child with sincerity.

"Just for a moment, Vere," she answered. "And then, very soon, you
made me feel how much more intimate can be the relationship between a
mother and a daughter than between a mother and any son."

"Is that true, really?"

"I think it is."

"But why should that be?"

"Don't you think that Monsieur Emile can tell you much better than I?
I feel all the things, you know, that he can explain."

There was a touch of something that was like a half-hidden irony in
her voice.

"Monsieur Emile! Yes, I think he understands almost everything about
people," said Vere, quite without irony. "But could a man explain such
a thing as well as a woman? I don't think so."

"We have the instincts, perhaps, men the vocabulary. Come, Vere, I
want to look over into the Saint's Pool and see what those men are
doing."

Vere laughed.

"Take care, Madre, or Gaspare will be jealous."

A soft look came into Hermione's face.

"Gaspare and I know each other," she said, quietly.

"But he could be jealous--horribly jealous."

"Of you, perhaps, Vere, but never of me. Gaspare and I have passed
through too much together for anything of that kind. Nobody could ever
take his place with me, and he knows it quite well."

"Gaspare's a darling, and I love him," said Vere, rather
inconsequently. "Shall we look over into the Pool from the pavilion,
or go down by the steps?"

"We'll look over."

They passed in through a gateway to the narrow terrace that fronted
the Casa del Mare facing Vesuvius, entered the house, traversed a
little hall, came out again into the air by a door on its farther
side, and made their way to a small pavilion that looked upon the Pool
of San Francesco. Almost immediately below, in the cool shadow of the
cliff, the boat was moored. The two men, lying at full length in it,
their faces buried in their hands, were already asleep. But the boy,
sitting astride on the prow, with his bare feet dangling on each side
of it to the clear green water, was munching slowly, and rather
seriously, a hunch of yellow bread, from which he cut from time to
time large pieces with a clasp knife. As he ate, lifting the pieces of
bread to his mouth with the knife, against whose blade he held them
with his thumb, he stared down at the depths below, transparent here
almost to the sea bed. His eyes were wide with reverie. He seemed
another boy, not the gay singer of five minutes ago. But then he had
been in the blaze of the sun. Now he was in the shade. And swiftly he
had caught the influence of the dimmer light, the lack of motion, the
delicate hush at the feet of San Francesco.

This time he did not know that he was being watched. His reverie,
perhaps, was too deep, or their gaze less concentrated than it had
been before. And after a moment, Hermione moved away.

"You are going in, Madre?"

"Yes."

"Do you mind if I give something to that boy?"

"Do you mean money?"

"Oh no. But the poor thing's eating dry bread, and--"

"And what, you puss?"

"Well, he's a very obedient boy."

"How can you know that?"

"He was idling in the boat, and I called out to him to jump into the
sea, and he jumped in immediately."

"Do you think because he heard you?"

"Certainly I do."

"You conceited little creature! Perhaps he was only pleasing himself!"

"No, Madre, no. I think I should like to give him a little reward
presently--for his singing too."

"Get him a dolce, then, from Carmela, if there is one. And you can
give him some cigarettes."

"I will. He'll love that. Oh dear! I wish he didn't make me
dissatisfied with myself!"

"Nonsense, Vere!"

Hermione bent down and kissed her child. Then she went rather quickly
away from the pavilion and entered the Casa del Mare.

CHAPTER II

After her mother had gone, Vere waited for a moment, then ran lightly
to the house, possessed herself of a dolce and a packet of cigarettes,
and went down the steps to the Pool of San Francesco, full of
hospitable intentions towards the singing boy. She found him still
sitting astride of the boat's prow, not yet free of his reverie
apparently; for when she gave a low call of "Pescator!" prolonging the
last syllable with the emphasis and the accent of Naples, but always
softly, he started, and nearly dropped into the sea the piece of bread
he was lifting to his mouth. Recovering himself in time to save the
bread deftly with one brown hand, he turned half round, leaning on his
left arm, and stared at Vere with large, inquiring eyes. She stood by
the steps and beckoned to him, lifting up the packet of cigarettes,
then pointing to his sleeping companions:

"Come here for a minute!"

The boy smiled, sprang up, and leaped onto the islet. As he came to
her, with the easy, swinging walk of the barefooted sea-people, he
pulled up his white trousers, and threw out his chest with an obvious
desire to "fare figura" before the pretty Padrona of the islet. When
he reached her he lifted his hand to his bare head forgetfully,
meaning to take off his cap to her. Finding that he had no cap, he
made a laughing grimace, threw up his chin and, thrusting his tongue
against his upper teeth and opening wide his mouth, uttered a little
sound most characteristically Neapolitan--a sound that seemed lightly
condemnatory of himself. This done, he stood still before Vere,
looking at the cigarettes and at the dolce.

"I've brought these for you," she said.

"Grazie, Signorina."

He did not hold out his hand, but his eyes, now devoted entirely to
the cigarettes, began to shine with pleasure. Vere did not give him
the presents at once. She had something to explain first.

"We mustn't wake them," she said, pointing towards the boat in which
the men were sleeping. "Come a little way with me."

She retreated a few steps from the sea, followed closely by the eager
boy.

"We sha'n't disturb them now," she said, stopping. "Do you know why
I've brought you these?"

She stretched out her hands, with the dolce and the cigarettes.

The boy threw his chin up again and half shut his eyes.

"No, Signorina."

"Because you did what I told you."

She spoke rather with the air of a little queen.

"I don't understand."

"Didn't you hear me call out to you from up there?"--she pointed to
the cliff above their heads--"when you were sitting in the boat? I
called to you to go in after the men."

"Why?"

"Why! Because I thought you were a lazy boy."

He laughed. All his brown face gave itself up to laughter--eyes,
teeth, lips, cheeks, chin. His whole body seemed to be laughing. The
idea of his being lazy seemed to delight his whole spirit.

"You would have been lazy if you hadn't done what I told you," said
Vere, emphatically, forcing her words through his merriment with
determination. "You know you would."

"I never heard you call, Signorina."

"You didn't?"

He shook his head several times, bent down, dipped his fingers in the
sea, put them to his lips: "I say it."

"Really?"

There was a note of disappointment in her voice. She felt dethroned.

"But then, you haven't earned these," she said, looking at him almost
with rebuke, "if you went in of your own accord."

"I go in because it is my mestiere, Signorina," the boy said, simply.
"I go in by force."

He looked at her and then again at the cigarettes. His expression
said, "Can you refuse me?" There was a quite definite and conscious
attempt to cajole her to generosity in his eyes, and in the pose he
assumed. Vere saw it, and knew that if there had been a mirror within
reach at that moment the boy would have been looking into it, frankly
admiring himself.

In Italy the narcissus blooms at all seasons of the year.

She was charmed by the boy, for he did his luring well, and she was
susceptible to all that was naturally picturesque. But a gay little
spirit of resistance sprang up like a flame and danced within her.

She let her hands fall to her sides.

"But you like going in?"

"Signorina?"

"You enjoy diving?"

He shrugged his shoulders, and again used what seemed with him a
favorite expression.

"Signorina, I must enjoy it, by force."

"You do it wonderfully. Do you know that? You do it better than the
men."

Again the conscious look came into the boy's face and body, as if his
soul were faintly swaggering.

"There is no one in the Bay who can dive better than I can," he
answered. "Giovannino thinks he can. Well, let him think so. He would
not dare to make a bet with me."

"He would lose it if he did," said Vere. "I'm sure he would. Just now
you were under water nearly a minute by my mother's watch."

"Where is the Signora?" said the boy, looking round.

"Why d'you ask?"

"Why--I can stay under longer than that."

"Now, look here!" said the girl, eagerly. "Never mind Madre! Go down
once for me, won't you? Go down once for me, and you shall have the
dolce and two packets of cigarettes."

"I don't want the dolce, Signorina; a dolce is for women," he said,
with the complete bluntness characteristic of Southern Italians and of
Sicilians.

"The cigarettes, then."

"Va bene. But the water is too shallow here."

"We'll take my boat."

She pointed to a small boat, white with a green line, that was moored
close to them.

"Va bene," said the boy again.

He rolled his white trousers up above his knees, stripped off his blue
jersey, leaving the thin vest that was beneath it, folded the jersey
neatly and laid it on the stones, tightened his trousers at the back,
then caught hold of the rope by which Vere's boat was moored to the
shore and pulled the boat in.

Very carefully he helped Vere into it.

"I know a good place," he said, "where you can see right down to the
bottom."

Taking the oars he slowly paddled a little way out to a deep clear
pool of the sea.

"I'll go in here, Signorina."

He stood up straight, with his feet planted on each side of the boat's
prow, and glanced at the water intimately, as might a fish. Then he
shot one more glance at Vere and at the cigarettes, made the sign of
the cross, lifted his brown arms above his head, uttered a cry, and
dived cleanly below the water, going down obliquely till he was quite
dim in the water.

Vere watched him with deep attention. This feat of the boy fascinated
her. The water between them made him look remote, delicate and
unearthly--neither boy nor fish. His head, she could see, was almost
touching the bottom. She fancied that he was actually touching bottom
with his hands. Yes, he was. Bending low over the water she saw his
brown fingers, stretched out and well divided, promenading over the
basin of the sea as lightly and springily as the claws of a crab tip-
toeing to some hiding-place. Presently he let himself down a little
more, pressed his flat palms against the ground, and with the impetus
thus gained made his body shoot back towards the surface feet
foremost. Then bringing his body up till it was in a straight line
with his feet, he swam slowly under water, curving first in this
direction then in that, with a lithe ease that was enchantingly
graceful. Finally, he turned over on his back and sank slowly down
until he looked like a corpse lying at the bottom of the sea.