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A Spirit in Prison

R >> Robert Hichens >> A Spirit in Prison




She stepped in. As Artois followed her he said to Gaspare:

"Those fishermen have gone?"

"Five minutes ago, Signore. There they are!"

He pointed to a boat at some distance, moving slowly in the direction
of Posilipo.

"I have been talking with them. One says he is of my country, a
Sicilian."

"The boy?"

"Si, Signore, the giovinotto. But he cannot speak Sicilian, and he has
never been in Sicily, poveretto!"

Gaspare spoke with an accent of pity in which there was almost a hint
of contempt.

"A rivederci, Signore," he added, pushing off the little boat.

"A rivederci, Gaspare."

Artois took the oars and paddled very gently out, keeping near to the
cliffs of the opposite shore.

"Even San Francesco looks weary to-day," he said, glancing across the
pool at the Saint on his pedestal. "I should not be surprised if, when
we return, we find that he has laid down his cross and is reclining
like the tired fishermen who come here in the night. Where shall we
go?"

"To the Grotto of Virgil."

"I wonder if Virgil was ever in his grotto? I wonder if he ever came
here on such a day of scirocco as this, and felt that the world was
very old, and he was even older than the world?"

"Do you feel like that to-day?"

"I feel that this is a world suitable for the old, for those who have
white hairs to accord with the white waters, and whose nights are the
white nights of age."

"Was that why you were smiling so strangely just now when I came in?"

"Yes."

He rowed on softly. The boat slipped out of the Pool of the Saint, and
then they saw the Capo Coroglio and the Island of Nisida with its
fort. On their right, and close to them, rose the weary-looking
cliffs, honey-combed with caverns, and seamed with fissures as an old
and haggard face is seamed with wrinkles that tell of many cares.

"Here is the grotto," said Hermione, almost directly. "Row in gently."

He obeyed her and turned the boat, sending it in under the mighty roof
of rock.

A darkness fell upon them. They had a safe, enclosed sensation in
escaping for a moment from the white day, almost as if they had
escaped from a white enemy.

Artois let the oars lie still in the water, keeping his hands lightly
upon them, and both Hermione and he were silent for a few minutes,
listening to the tiny sounds made now and then by drops of moisture
which fell from the cavern roof softly into the almost silent sea. At
last Artois said:

"You are out of the whiteness now. This is a shadowed place like a
confessional, where murmuring lips tell to strangers the stories of
their lives. I am not a stranger, but tell me, my friend, about
yourself and Vere. Perhaps you scarcely know how deeply the mother and
child problem interests me--that is, when mother and child are two
real forces, as you and Vere are."

"Then you think Vere has force?"

"Do not you?"

"What kind of force?"

"You mean physical, intellectual, or moral? Suppose I say she has the
force of charm!"

"Indeed she has that, as he had. That is one of the attributes she
derives from Maurice."

"Yes. He had a wonderful charm. And then, Vere has passion."

"You think so?"

"I am sure of it. Where does she get that from?"

"He was full of the passion of the South."

"I think Vere has a touch of Northern passion in her, too, combined
perhaps with the other. And that, I think, she derives from you. Then
I discern in Vere intellectual force, immature, embryonic if you like,
but unmistakable."

"That does not come from me," Hermione said, suddenly, almost with
bitterness.

"Why--why will you be unnecessarily humiliated?" Artois exclaimed.

His voice was confusedly echoed by the cavern, which broke into faint,
but deep mutterings. Hermione looked up quickly to the mysterious
vault which brooded above them, and listened till the chaotic noises
died away. Then she said:

"Do you know what they remind me of?"

"Of what?"

"My efforts. Those efforts I made long ago to live again in work."

"When you wrote?"

"Yes, when I tried to throw my mind and my heart down upon paper. How
strange it was! I had Vere--but she wasn't enough to still the ache.
And I knew what work can be, what a consolation, because I knew you.
And I stretched out my hands to it--I stretched out my soul. And it
was no use; I wasn't made to be a successful writer. When I spoke from
my heart to try and move men and save myself, my words were seized, as
yours were just now by the rock--seized, and broken, and flung back in
confusion. They struck my heart like stones. Emile, I'm one of those
people who can only do one thing: I can only feel."

"It is true that you could never be an artist. Perhaps you were made
to be an inspiration."

"But that's not enough. The role of starter to those who race--I
haven't the temperament to reconcile myself to that. It's not that I
have in me a conceit which demands to be fed. But I have in me a force
that clamors to exercise itself. Only when I was living on Monte Amato
with Maurice did I feel that the force was being used as God meant it
to be used."

"In loving?"

"In loving passionately something that was utterly worthy to be
loved."

Artois was silent. He knew Hermione's mistake. He knew what had never
been told him: that Maurice had been false to her for the love of the
peasant girl Maddalena. He knew that Maurice had been done to death by
the betrayed girl's father, Salvatore. And Gaspare knew these things,
too. But through all these years these two men had so respected
silence, the nobility of it, the grand necessity of it in certain
circumstances of life, that they had never spoken to each other of the
black truth known to them both. Indeed, Artois believed that even now,
after more than sixteen years, if he ventured one word against the
dead man Gaspare would be ready to fly at his throat in defence of the
loved Padrone. For this divined and persistent loyalty Artois had a
sensation of absolute love. Between him and Gaspare there must always
be the barrier of a great and mutual reserve. Yet that very reserve,
because there was something truly delicate, and truly noble in it, was
as a link of steel between them. They were watchdogs of Hermione. They
had been watchdogs through all these years, guarding her from the
knowledge of a truth. And so well had they done her service that now
to-day she was able to say, with clasped hands and the light of
passion in her eyes:

"Something that was utterly worthy to be loved."

When Artois spoke again he said:

"And that force cannot be fully used in loving Vere?"

"No, Emile. Is that very horrible, very unnatural?"

"Why should it be?"

"I have tried--I have tried for years, Emile, to make Vere enough. I
have even been false with myself. I have said to myself that she was
enough. I did that after I knew that I could never produce work of any
value. When Vere was a baby I lived only for her. Again, when she was
beginning to grow up, I tried to live, I did live only for her. And I
remember I used to say, I kept on saying to myself, 'This is enough
for me. I do not need any more than this. I have had my life. I am now
a middle-aged woman. I must live in my child. This will be my
satisfaction. This is my satisfaction. This is using rightly and
naturally all that force I feel within me.' I kept on saying this. But
there is something within one which rises up and defies a lie--however
beautiful the lie is, however noble it is. And I think even a lie can
sometimes be both. Don't you, Emile?"

It almost seemed to him for a moment that she knew his lie and
Gaspare's.

"Yes," he said. "I do think so."

"Well, that lie of mine--it was defied. And it had no more courage."

"I want you to tell me something," he said, quietly. "I want you to
tell me what has happened to-day."

"To-day?"

"Yes. Something has happened either to-day or very recently--I am sure
of it--that has stirred up within you this feeling of acute
dissatisfaction. It was always there. But something has called it into
the open. What has done that?"

Hermione hesitated.

"Perhaps you don't know," he said.

"I was wondering--yes, I do know. I must be truthful with myself--with
you. I do know. But it seems so strange, so almost inexplicable, and
even rather absurd."

"Truth often seems absurd."

"It was that boy, that diver for /frutti di mare/--Ruffo."

"The boy with the Arab eyes?"

"Yes. Of course I have seen many boys full of life and gayety and
music. There are so many in Italy. But--well, I don't know--perhaps it
was partly Vere."

"How do you mean?"

"Vere was so interested in him. It may have been that. Or perhaps it
was something in his look and in his voice when he was singing. I
don't really know what it was. But that boy made me feel--more
horribly than I have ever felt before--that Vere is not enough. Emile,
there is some hunger, so persistent, so peculiar, so intense, that one
feels as if it must be satisfied eventually, as if it were impossible
for it not to be satisfied. I think that human hunger for immortal
life is like that, and I think my hunger for a son is like that. I
know my hunger can never be satisfied. And yet it lives on in me just
as if it knew more than I know, as if it knew that it could and must.
After all these years I can't, no, I can't reconcile myself to the
fact that Maurice was taken from me so utterly, that he died without
stamping himself upon a son. It seems as if it couldn't be. And I feel
to-day that I cannot bear that it is."

There were tears standing in her eyes. She had spoken with a force of
feeling, with a depth of sincerity, that startled Artois, intimately
as he knew her. Till this moment he had not quite realized the
wonderful persistence of love in the hearts of certain women, and not
only the persistence of love's existence, but of its existence
undiminished, unabated by time.

"How am I to bear it?" she said, as he did not speak.

"I cannot tell. I am not worthy to know. And besides, I must say to
you, Hermione, that one of the greatest mysteries in human life, at
any rate to me, is this: how some human beings do bear the burdens
laid upon them. Christ bore His cross. But there has only been, since
the beginning of things, one Christ, and it is unthinkable that there
can ever be another. But all those who are not Christ, how is it they
bear what they do bear? It is easy to talk of bravery, the necessity
for it in life. It is always very easy to talk. The thing that is
impossible is to understand. How can you come to me to help you, my
friend? And suppose I were to try. How could I try, except by saying
that I think Vere is very worthy to be loved with all your love?"

"You love Vere, don't you, Emile?"

"Yes."

"And I do. You don't doubt that?"

"Never."

"After all I have said, the way I have spoken, you might."

"I do not doubt it for a moment."

"I wonder if there is any mother who would not, if I spoke to her as I
have spoken to you to-day?"

"I think there is a great deal of untruth spoken of mother's love, a
great deal of misconception about it, as there is about most very
strange, and very wonderful and beautiful things. But are you so sure
that if your husband had stamped himself upon a boy this force within
you could have been satisfied?"

"I have believed so."

She was silent. Then she added, quietly, "I do believe so."

He did not speak, but sat looking down at the sea, which was full of
dim color in the cave.

"I think you are doubting that it would have been so?" she said, at
last.

"Yes, that is true. I am doubting."

"I wonder why?"

"I cannot help feeling that there is passion in you, such passion as
could not be satisfied in any strict, maternal relationship."

"But I am old, dear Emile," she said, very simply.

"When I was standing by that window, looking at the mountains of
Ischia, I was saying to myself, 'This is an old, tired world, suitable
for me--and for you. We are in our right environment to-day.' I was
saying that, Hermione, but was I believing it, really? I don't think I
was. And I am ten years older than you, and I have been given a nature
that was, I think, always older than yours could ever be."

"I wonder if that is so."

She looked at him very directly, even searchingly, not with eager
curiosity, but with deep inquiry.

"You know, Emile," she added, "I tell you very much, but you tell me
very little. Not that I wish to ask anything--no. I respect all your
reserve. And about your work: you tell me all that. It is a great
thing in my life, your work. Perhaps you don't realize how sometimes I
live in the book that you are doing, almost as if I were writing it
myself. But your inner life--"

"But I have been frankness itself with you," said Artois. "To no one
have I ever said so much as to you."

"Yes, I know, about many things. But about emotion, love,--not
friendship, the other love--do you get on without that? When you say
your nature has always been older than mine, do you mean that it has
always been harder to move by love, that it has had less need of
love?"

"I think so. For many years in my life I think that work has filled
the place love occupies in many, perhaps in most men's lives.
Everything comes second to work. I know that, because if any one
attempts to interfere with my work, or to usurp any of the time that
should be given to it, any regard I may have for that person turns at
once to irritation, almost to hatred."

"I have never done that?"

"You--no. Of course, I have been like other men. When I was young--
well, Hermione, after all I am a Frenchman, and though I am of
Normandy, still I passed many years in Paris, as you know."

"All that I understand. But the real thing? Such as I have known?"

"I have never broken my heart for any one, though I have known
agitations. But even those were long ago. And since I was thirty-five
I have never felt really dominated by any one. Before that time I
occasionally passed under the yoke, I believe, like other men. Why do
you fix your eyes on me like that?"

"I was wondering if you could ever pass under the yoke again."

"Honestly, I do not think so. I am not sure. When can one be certain
that one will never be, or do, this or that? Surely,"--he smiled,--
"you are not afraid for me?"

"I do not say that. But I think you have forces in you not fully
exercised even by your work."

"Possibly. But there the years do really step in and count for
something, even for much. There is no doubt that as the years
increase, the man who cares at all for intellectual pleasures is able
to care for them more, is able to substitute them, without keen
regret, without wailing and gnashing of teeth, for certain other
pleasures, to which, perhaps, formerly he clung. That is why the man
who is mentally and bodily--you know what I mean?"

"Yes."

"Has such an immense advantage in years of decline over the man who is
merely a bodily man."

"I am sure that is true. But--"

"What is it?"

"The heart? What about that?"

"Perhaps there are some hearts that can fulfil themselves sufficiently
in friendship."

As Artois said this his eyes rested upon Hermione with an expression
in them that revealed much that he never spoke in words. She put out
her hand, and took his, and pressed it, holding hers over it upon the
oar.

"Emile," she said, "sometimes you make me feel unworthy and ungrateful
because--because I still need, I dare to need more than I have been
given. Without you I don't know how I should have faced it."

"Without me you would never have had to face it."

That was the cry that rose up perpetually in the heart of Artois, the
cry that Hermione must never hear. He said to her now:

"Without you, Hermione, I should be dust in the dust of Africa!"

"Perhaps we each owe something to the other," she said. "It is blessed
to have a debt to a friend."

"Would to God that I could pay all my debt to you!" Artois exclaimed.

Again the cavern took up his voice and threw it back to the sea in
confused and hollow mutterings. They both looked up, as if some one
were above them, warning them or rebuking them. At that instant they
had the feeling that they were being watched. But there was only the
empty gray sea about them, and over their heads the rugged, weary rock
that had leaned over the sea for countless years.

"Hark!" said Artois, "it is telling me that my debt to you can never
be paid: only in one way could it be partially discharged. If I could
show you a path to happiness, the happiness you long for, and need,
the passionate happiness of the heart that is giving where it rejoices
to give--for your happiness must always be in generosity--I should
have partially paid my debt to you. But that is impossible."

"I've made you sad to-day by my complaining," she said, with self-
rebuke; "I'm sorry. You didn't realize?"

"How it was with you? No, not quite--I thought you were more at peace
than you are."

"Till to-day I believe I was half deceived too."

"That singing boy, that--what is his name?"

"Ruffo."

"That Ruffo, I should like to run a knife into him under the left
shoulder-blade. How dare he, a ragamuffin from some hovel of Naples,
make you know that you are unhappy?"

"How strange it is what outside things, or people who have no
connection with us or with our lives, can do to us unconsciously!" she
said. "I have heard a hundred boys sing on the Bay, seen a hundred
rowing their boats into the Pool--and just this one touches some
chord, and all the strings of my soul quiver."

"Some people act upon us somewhat as nature does sometimes. And Vere
paid the boy. There is another irony of unconsciousness. Vere, bone of
your bone, flesh of your flesh, rewards your pain-giver. How we hide
ourselves from those we love best and live with most intimately! You,
her mother, are a stranger to Vere. Does not to-day prove it?"

"Ah, but Vere is not a stranger to me. That is where the mother has
the advantage of the child."

Artois did not make any response to this remark. To cover his silence,
perhaps, he grasped the oars more firmly and began to back the boat
out of the cave. Both felt that it was no longer necessary to stay in
this confessional of the rock.

As they came out under the grayness of the sky, Hermione, with a
change of tone, said:

"And your friend? The Marchese--what is his name?"

"Isidoro Panacci."

"Tell me about him."

"He is a very perfect type of a complete Neapolitan of his class. He
has scarcely travelled at all, except in Italy. Once he has been in
Paris, where I met him, and once to Lucerne for a fortnight. Both his
father and mother are Neapolitans. He is a charming fellow, utterly
unintellectual, but quite clever; shrewd, sharp at reading character,
marvellously able to take care of himself, and hold his own with
anybody. A cat to fall on his feet! He is apparently born without any
sense of fear, and with a profound belief in destiny. He can drive
four-in-hand, swim for any number of hours without tiring, ride--well,
as an Italian cavalry officer can ride, and that is not badly. His
accomplishments? He can speak French--abominably, and pick out all
imaginable tunes on the piano, putting instinctively quite tolerable
basses. I don't think he ever reads anything, except the /Giorno/ and
the /Mattino/. He doesn't care for politics, and likes cards, but
apparently not too much. They're no craze with him. He knows Naples
inside out, and is as frank as a child that has never been punished."

"I should think he must be decidedly attractive?"

"Oh, he is. One great attraction he has--he appears to have no sense
at all that difference of age can be a barrier between two men. He is
twenty-four, and I am what I am. He is quite unaware that there is any
gulf between us. In every way he treats me as if I were twenty-four."

"Is that refreshing or embarrassing?"

"I find it generally refreshing. His family accepts the situation with
perfect naivete. I am welcomed as Doro's chum with all the good-will
in the world."

Hermione could not help laughing, and Artois echoed her laugh.

"Merely talking about him has made you look years younger," she
declared. "The influence of the day has lifted from you."

"It would not have fallen upon Isidoro, I think. And yet he is full of
sentiment. He is a curious instance of a very common Neapolitan
obsession."

"What is that?"

"He is entirely obsessed by woman. His life centres round woman. You
observe I use the singular. I do that because it is so much more
plural than the plural in this case. His life is passed in love-
affairs, in a sort of chaos of amours."

"How strange that is!"

"You think so, my friend?"

"Yes. I never can understand how human beings can pass from love to
love, as many of them do. I never could understand it, even before I--
even before Sicily."

"You are not made to understand such a thing."

"But you do?"

"I? Well, perhaps. But the loves of men are not as your love."

"Yet his was," she answered. "And he was a true Southerner, despite
his father.

"Yes, he was a true Southerner," Artois replied.

For once he was off his guard with her, and uttered his real thought
of Maurice, not without a touch of the irony that was characteristic
of him.

Immediately he had spoken he was aware of his indiscretion. But
Hermione had not noticed it. He saw by her eyes that she was far away
in Sicily. And when the boat slipped into the Saint's Pool, and
Gaspare came to the water's edge to hold the prow while they got out,
she rose from her seat slowly, and almost reluctantly, like one
disturbed in a dream that she would fain continue.

"Have you seen the Signorina, Gaspare?" she asked him. "Has she been
out?"

"No, Signora. She is still in the house."

"Still reading!" said Artois. "Vere must be quite a book-worm!"

"Will you stay to dinner, Emile?"

"Alas, I have promised the Marchesino Isidoro to dine with him. Give
me a cup of tea /a la Russe/, and one of Ruffo's cigarettes, and then
I must bid you adieu. I'll take the boat to the Antico Giuseppone, and
then get another there as far as the gardens."

"One of Ruffo's cigarettes!" Hermione echoed, as they went up the
steps. "That boy seems to have made himself one of the family
already."

"Yet I wish, as I said in the cave, that I had put a knife into him
under the left shoulder-blade--before this morning."

They spoke lightly. It seemed as if each desired for the moment to get
away from their mood in the confessional of Virgil's Grotto, and from
the sadness of the white and silent day.

As to Ruffo, about whom they jested, he was in sight of Naples, and
not far from Mergellina, still rowing with tireless young arms, and
singing to "Bella Napoli," with a strong resolve in his heart to
return to the Saint's Pool on the first opportunity and dive for more
cigarettes.



CHAPTER IV

At the Antico Giuseppone, Artois left the boat from the islet and,
taking another, was rowed towards the public gardens of Naples, whose
trees were faintly visible far off across the Bay. Usually he talked
familiarly to any Neapolitan with whom he found himself, but to-day he
was taciturn, and sat in the stern of the broad-bottomed craft looking
towards the city in silence while the boatman plied his oars. The
memory of his conversation with Hermione in the Grotto of Virgil, of
her manner, the look in her eyes, the sound of her voice there, gave
him food for thought that was deep and serious.

Although Artois had an authoritative, and often an ironical manner
that frightened timid people, he was a man capable of much emotion and
of great loyalty. He did not easily trust or easily love, but in those
whose worth he had thoroughly proved he had a confidence as complete
as that of a child. And where he placed his complete confidence he
placed also his affection. The one went with the other almost as
inevitably as the wave goes with the wind.

In their discussion about the emotion of the heart Artois had spoken
the truth to Hermione. As he had grown older he had felt the influence
of women less. The pleasures of sentiment had been gradually
superceded in his nature--or so at least he honestly believed--by the
purely intellectual pleasures. More and more completely and
contentedly had he lived in his work, and in the life of preparation
for it. This life could never be narrow, for Artois was a traveller,
and studied many lands.

In the years that had elapsed since the tragedy in Sicily, when the
husband of Hermione had met his death suddenly in the sea, almost in
sight of the home of the girl he had betrayed, the fame of Artois had
grown steadily. And he was jealous of his fame almost as a good woman
is jealous of her honor. This jealousy had led him to a certain
selfishness of which he was quite aware--even to a certain hardness
such as he had hinted to Hermione. Those who strove, or seemed likely
to strive to interrupt him in his work, he pushed out of his life.
Even if they were charming women he got rid of them. And the fact that
he did so proved to him, and not improbably to them, that he was more
wrapped up in the gratification of the mind than in the gratification
of the heart, or of the body. It was not that the charm of charming
women had ceased to please him, but it seemed to have ceased really to
fascinate him.

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