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A Spirit in Prison

R >> Robert Hichens >> A Spirit in Prison




Long ago, before Hermione married, he had felt for her a warm and
intimate friendship. He had even been jealous of Maurice. Without
being at all in love, he had cared enough for Hermione to be jealous.
Before her marriage he had looked forward in imagination down a vista
of long years, and had seen her with a husband, then with children,
always more definitely separated from himself.

And he had seen himself exceptionally alone, even almost miserably
alone.

Then fate had spun tragedy into her web. He had nearly died in Africa,
and had been nursed back to life by this friend of whom he had been
jealous. And they had gone together to Sicily, to the husband whose
memory Hermione still adored. And then had followed swiftly the
murder, the murderer's departure to America, saved by the silence of
Gaspare, and the journey of the bereaved woman to Italy, where Artois
had left her and returned to France.

Once more Artois had his friend, released from the love of another
man. But he wished it were not so. Hermione's generosity met with a
full response of generosity from him. All his egotism and selfishness
dropped from him then, shaken down like dead leaves by the tempest of
a genuine emotion. His knowledge of her grief, his understanding of
its depth, brought to him a sorrow that was keen, and even exquisitely
painful. For a long while he was preoccupied by an intense desire to
assuage it. He strove to do so by acting almost in defiance of his
nature, by fostering deception. From the Abetone Hermione had written
him letters, human documents--the tale of the suffering of a woman's
heart. Many reserves she had from him and from every one. The most
intimate agony was for her alone, and she kept it in her soul as the
priest keeps the Sacred Host in its tabernacle. But some of her grief
she showed in her letters, and some of her desire for comfort. And
without any definite intention, she indicated to her subtle and
devoted friend the only way in which he could console her.

For once, driven by his emotion, he took that way.

He allowed Hermione to believe that he agreed with her in the
conception she had formed of her husband's love for her. It was
difficult for him to do this, for he had an almost cruel passion for
truth, and generally a clear insight into human character. Far less
than many others would have condemned did he, in his mind, condemn the
man who was dead for the sin against love that he had committed. He
had understood Maurice as Hermione had not understood him, and
knowledge is full of pardon. But though he could pardon easily he
could not easily pretend. By pretending he sinned against himself, and
helped his friend some steps along the way to peace. He thought he had
helped her to go much farther along that way than she had gone. And he
thought that Vere had helped her, too.

Now the hollow mutterings of the rock in Virgil's Grotto seemed to be
in his heart, as he realized how permanent was the storm in Hermione's
nature. Something for her he had done. And something--much more, no
doubt--Vere had done. But how little it all was!

Their helplessness gave him a new understanding of woman.

Hermione had allowed him great privileges, had allowed him to protect
her, had taken his advice. After Vere was born she had wished to go
back again to Sicily. The house of the priest, where she had been so
happy, and so sad, drew her. She longed for it. She desired to make it
her home. He had fought against her in this matter, and had been aided
by Gaspare.

There had been a subtle understanding, never expressed, between the
boy and him.

Artois had played upon her intellect, had appealed, too, to her
mother's heart.

He had not urged her to try to forget, but he had urged her not
morbidly to remember, not to cherish and to foster the memory of the
tragedy which had broken her life. To go back to that tiny home,
solitary in its beautiful situation, in the changed circumstances
which were hers, would be, he told her, to court and to summon sorrow.
He was even cruel to be kind. When Hermione combated his view,
assuring him that to her Monte Amato was like a sacred place, a place
hallowed by memories of happiness, he recalled the despair in which
that happiness had ended. With all the force at his command, and it
was great, he drew the picture of the life that would be in comparison
with the life that had been. And he told her finally that what she
wished to do was morbid, was unworthy of her strength of character,
was even wicked now that she was a mother. He brought before her mind
those widows who make a cult of their dead. Would she be one of them?
Would she steep a little child in such an atmosphere of memories,
casting a young and tender mind backward into a cruel past instead of
leading it forward into a joyous present? Maurice had been the very
soul of happiness. Vere must be linked with the sunbeams. With his
utmost subtlety Artois described and traced the effect upon a tiny and
sensitive child of a mother's influence, whether for good or evil,
until Hermione, who had a deep reverence for his knowledge of all
phases of human nature, at last, almost in despite of the truth within
her, of the interior voice which said to her, "With you and Vere it
would not be so," caught alarm from his apparent alarm, drew distrust
of herself from his apparent distrust of her.

Gaspare, too, played his part. When Hermione spoke to him of returning
to the priest's house, almost wildly, and with the hot energy that
bursts so readily up in Sicilians, he begged her not to go back to the
/maledetta casa/ in which his Padrone's dead body had lain. As he
spoke a genuine fear of the cottage came upon him. All the latent
superstition that dwells in the contadino was stirred as dust by a
wind. In clouds it flew up about his mind. Fear looked out of his
great eyes. Dread was eloquent in his gestures. And he, too, referred
to the child, to the /povera piccola bambina/. It would cast ill-luck
on the child to bring her up in a chamber of death. Her saint would
forsake her. She too would die. The boy worked himself up into a
fever. His face was white. Drops of sweat stood on his forehead.

He had set out to be deceptive--what he would have called /un poco
birbante/, and he had even deceived himself. He knew that it would be
dangerous for his Padrona to live again near Marechiaro. Any day a
chance scrap of gossip might reach her ears. In time she would be
certain almost to hear something of the dead Padrone's close
acquaintance with the dwellers in the Casa delle Sirene. She would
question him, perhaps. She would suspect something. She would inquire.
She would search. She would find out the hideous truth. It was this
fear which made him argue on the same side as Artois. But in doing so
he caught another fear from his own words. He became really natural,
really truthful in his fear. And--she scarcely knew why--Hermione was
even more governed by him than by Artois. He had lived with them in
the Casa del Prete, had been an intimate part of their life there. And
he was Sicilian of the soil. The boy had a real power to move, to
dominate her, which he did not then suspect.

Again and again he repeated those words, "/La povera bambina--la
povera piccola bambina/." And at last Hermione was overcome.

"I won't go to Sicily," she said to Artois. "For if I went there I
could only go to Monte Amato. I won't go until Vere is old enough to
wish to go, to wish to see the house where her father and I were
happy."

And she had never gone back. For Artois had not been satisfied with
this early victory.

In returning from a tour in North America the following spring, when
Vere was nearly two years old, he had paid a visit to Marechiaro, and,
while there, had seen the contadino from whom Hermione had rented, and
still rented, the house of the priest. The man was middle-aged,
ignorant but shrewd, and very greedy. Artois made friends with him,
and casually, over a glass of /moscato/, talked about his affairs and
the land question in Sicily. The peasant became communicative and, of
course, loud in his complaining. His land yielded nothing. The price
of almonds had gone down. The lemon crop had been ruined by the
storms. As to the vines--they were all devoured by the phylloxera, and
he had no money to buy and plant vines from America. Artois hinted
that he received a good rent from the English lady for the cottage on
Monte Amato. The contadino acknowledged that he received a fair price
for the cottage and the land about it; but the house, he declared,
would go to rack and ruin with no one ever in it, and the land was
lying idle, for the English lady would have everything left exactly as
it had been when she lived there with her husband. Artois seized upon
this hint of what was in the peasant's mind, and bemoaned with him his
situation. The house ought to be occupied, the land all about it, up
to the very door, and behind upon the sunny mountain-side, planted
with American vines. If it belonged to him that was what he would do--
plant American vines, and when the years of yielding came, give a good
percentage on all the wine made and sold to the man who had tended the
vineyard.

The peasant's love of money awoke. He only let the cottage to Hermione
year by year, and had no contract with her extending beyond a twelve-
months' lease. Before Artois left Marechiaro the tender treachery was
arranged. When the year's lease was up, the contadino wrote to her
declining to renew it. She answered, protesting, offering more money.
But it was all in vain. The man replied that he had already let the
cottage and the land around it to a grower of vines for a long term of
years, and that he was getting double the annual price she offered.

Hermione was indignant and bitterly distressed. When this letter
reached her she was at Fiesole with Vere in a villa which she had
taken. She would probably have started at once for Sicily; but Vere
was just then ill with some infantile complaint, and could not be
left. Artois, who was in Rome, and had received from her the news of
this carefully arranged disaster, offered to go to Sicily on her
behalf--and actually went. He returned to tell her that the house of
the priest was already occupied by contadini, and all the land up to
the very door in process of being dug up and planted with vines. It
was useless to make any further offer. The thing was done.

Hermione said nothing, but Artois saw in her eyes how keenly she was
suffering, and turned his own eyes away. He was only trying to
preserve her from greater unhappiness, the agony of ever finding out
the truth; but he felt guilty at that moment, and as if he had been
cruel to the woman who roused all his tenderness, all his protective
instinct.

"I shall not go back to Marechiaro now," Hermione said. "I shall not
go back even to see the grave. I could never feel that anything of his
spirit lingered there. But I did feel, I should have felt again, as if
something of him still loved that little house on the mountain, still
stayed among the oak-trees. It seemed to me that when I took Vere to
the Casa del Prete she would have learned to know something of her
father there that she could never have learned to know in another
place. But now--no, I shall not go back. If I did I should even lose
my memories, perhaps, and I could not bear that."

And she had not returned. Gaspare went to Marechiaro sometimes, to see
his family and his friends. He visited the grave and saw that it was
properly kept. But Hermione remained in Italy. For some time she lived
near Florence, first at Fiesole, later at Bellosguardo. When the
summer heat came she took a villa at the Abetone. Or she spent some
months with Vere beside the sea. As the girl grew older she developed
a passion for the sea, and seemed to care little for the fascination
of the pine forests. Hermione, noting this, gave up going to the
Abetone and took a house by the sea for the whole summer. Two years
they were at Santa Margherita, one year at Sorrento.

Then, sailing one evening on the sea towards Bagnoli, they saw the
house on the islet beyond the Pool of San Francesco. Vere was
enchanted by it.

"To live in it," she exclaimed, "would be almost like living in the
sea!"

Hermione, too, was fascinated by its situation, the loneliness, the
wildness, yet the radiant cheerfulness of it. She made inquiries,
found that it was owned by a Neapolitan who scarcely ever went there,
and eventually succeeded in getting it on a long lease. For two years
now she and Vere had spent the summer there.

Artois had noticed that since Hermione had been in the Casa del Mare
an old desire had begun to revive in her. She spoke more frequently of
Sicily. Often she stood on the rock and looked across the sea, and he
knew that she was thinking of those beloved coasts--of the Ionian
waters, of the blossoming almond-trees among the olives and the rocks,
of the scarlet geraniums glowing among the thorny cactus, of the giant
watercourses leading up into the mountains. A hunger was awake in her,
now that she had a home so near the enchanted island.

He realized it. But he was no longer much afraid. So many years had
passed that even if Hermione revisited Marechiaro he believed there
would be little or no danger now of her ever learning the truth. It
had never been known in the village, and if it had been suspected, all
the suspicions must have long ago died down. He had been successful in
his protection. He was thankful for that. It was the one thing he had
been able to do for the friend who had done so much for him.

The tragedy had occurred because of him. Because of him all knowledge
of it had been kept from Hermione, and would now be kept from her
forever--because of him and Gaspare.

This he had been able to do. But how powerless he was, and how
powerless was Vere!

Now he looked vaguely at the villas of Posilipo, and he realized this
thoroughly.

Something for her he had done, and something Vere had done. But how
little it all was!

To-day a new light had been thrown upon Hermione, and he realized what
she was as he had never realized it before. No, she was right. She
could never live fully in a girl child--she was not made to do that.
Why had he ever thought, hoped that perhaps it might be so, that
perhaps Vere might some day completely and happily fill her life? Long
ago he had encouraged her to work, to write. Misled by her keen
intelligence, her enthusiasm, her sincerity and vitality, by the
passion that was in her, the great heart, the power of feeling, the
power of criticising and inspiring another which she had freely shown
to him, Artois had believed--as he had once said to her in London--
that she might be an artist, but that she preferred to be simply a
woman. But he found it was not so. Hermione had not the peculiar gift
of the writer. She could feel, but she could not arrange. She could
discern, but she could not expose. A flood of words came to her, but
not the inevitable word. She could not take that exquisite leap from
the known into the unknown which genius can take with the certainty of
alighting on firm ground. In short, she was not formed and endowed to
be an artist. About such matters Artois knew only how to be sincere.
He was sincere with his friend, and she thanked him for being so.

One possible life was taken from Hermione, the life of the artist who
lives in the life of the work.

There remained the life in Vere.

To-day Artois knew from Hermione's own lips that she could not live
completely in her child, and he felt that he had been blind as men are
often blind about women, are blind because they are secretly selfish.
The man lives for himself, but he thinks it natural, even
distinctively womanly, that women should live for others--for him, for
some other man, for their children. What man finds his life in his
child? But the woman--she surely ought to, and without difficulty.
Hermione had been sincere to-day, and Artois knew his blindness, and
knew his secret selfishness.

The gray was lifting a little over Naples, the distant shadowy form of
Vesuvius was becoming clearer, more firm in outline. But the boatman
rowed slowly, influenced by the scirocco.

How, then, was Hermione to live? How was she to find happiness or
peace? It was a problem which he debated with an ardor that had in it
something of passion. And he began to wonder how it would have been if
he had acted differently, if he had allowed her to find out what he
suspected to be the exact truth of the dead man. Long ago he had saved
her from suffering. But by doing so had he not dedicated her, not to a
greater, but to a longer suffering? He might have defiled a beautiful
memory. He must have done so had he acted differently. But if he had
defiled it, might not Hermione have been the subject of a great
revulsion? Horror can kill, but it can also cure. It can surely root
out love. But from such a heart as Hermione's?

Despite all his understanding of women, Artois felt at a loss to-day.
He could not make up his mind what would have been the effect upon
Hermione if she had learned that her husband had betrayed her.

Presently he left that subject and came to Vere.

When he did this he was conscious at once of a change within him. His
tenderness and pity for Hermione were replaced by another tenderness
and pity. And these were wholly for Vere. Hermione was suffering
because of Maurice. But Vere was surely suffering, subconsciously,
because of Hermione.

There were two links in the chain of suffering, that between Maurice
and Hermione, and that between Hermione and Vere.

For a moment he felt as if Vere were bereaved, were motherless. The
sensation passed directly he realized the exaggeration in his mind.
But he still felt as if the girl were deprived of something which she
ought to possess, which, till now, he had thought she did possess. It
seemed to him that Vere stood quite outside of her mother's life,
instead of in it, in its centre, its core; and he pitied the child,
almost as he pitied other children from time to time, children to whom
their parents were indifferent. And yet Hermione loved Vere, and Vere
could not know what he had only known completely to-day--that the
mother often felt lonely with the child.

Vere did not know that, but surely some day she would find it out.

Artois knew her character well, knew that she was very sensitive, very
passionate, quick to feel and quick to understand. He discovered in
her qualities inherited both from her father and her mother,
attributes both English and Sicilian. In appearance she resembled her
father. She had "thrown back" to the Sicilian ancestor, as he had. She
had the Southern eyes, the Southern grace, the Southern vivacity and
warmth that had made him so attractive. But Artois divined a certain
stubbornness in Vere that had been lacking in the dead man, a
stubbornness that took its rise not in stupidity but in a secret
consciousness of force.

Vere, Artois thought, might be violent, but would not be fickle. She
had a loyalty in her that was Sicilian in its fervor, a sense of
gratitude such as the contadini have, although by many it is denied to
them; a quick and lively temper, but a disposition that responded to
joy, to brightness, to gayety, to sunlight, with a swiftness, almost a
fierceness, that was entirely un-English.

Her father had been the dancing Faun. She had not, could never have
his gift of thoughtlessness. For she had intellect, derived from
Hermione, and an old truthfulness that was certainly not Sicilian.
Often there were what Artois called "Northern Lights" in her
sincerity. The strains in her, united, made, he thought, a fascinating
blend. But as yet she was undeveloped--an interesting, a charming
child, but only a child. In many ways she was young for her age.
Highly intelligent, she was anything rather than "knowing." Her
innocence was like clear water in a spring. The graciousness of youth
was hers to the full.

As Artois thought of it he was conscious, as of a new thing, of the
wonderful beauty of such innocent youth.

It was horrible to connect it with suffering. And yet that link in the
chain did exist. Vere had not something that surely she ought to have,
and, without consciously missing it, she must sometimes subtly,
perhaps vaguely, be aware that there was a lack in her life. Her
mother gave her great love. But she was not to her mother what a son
would have been. And the love that is mingled with regret has surely
something shadowy in it.

Maurice Delarey had been as the embodiment of joy. It was strange that
from the fount of joy sorrow was thrown up. But so it was. From him
sorrow had come. From him sorrow might still come, even for Vere.

In the white and silent day Artois again felt the stirring of
intuition, as he had felt it long ago. But now he roused himself, and
resolutely, almost angrily, detached his mind from its excursions
towards the future.

"Do you often think of to-morrow?" he suddenly said to the boatman,
breaking from his silence.

"Signore?"

"Do you often wonder what is going to happen to-morrow, what you will
do, whether you will be happy or sad?"

The man threw up his head.

"No, Signore. Whatever comes is destiny. If I have food to-day it is
enough for me. Why should I bother about to-morrow's maccheroni?"

Artois smiled. The boat was close in now to the platform of stone that
projected beneath the wall of the Marina.

As he stepped out he gave the boatman a generous /buonamano/.

"You are quite right, comrade," he said. "It is the greatest mistake
in the world to bother about to-morrow's maccheroni."



CHAPTER V

Three days after Artois' conversation with Hermione in the Grotto of
Virgil the Marchesino Isidoro Panacci came smiling into his friend's
apartments in the Hotel Royal des Etrangers. He was smartly dressed in
the palest possible shade of gray, with a bright pink tie, pink socks,
brown shoes of the rather boat-like shape affected by many young
Neopolitans, and a round straw hat, with a small brim, that was set
slightly on the side of his curly head. In his mouth was a cigarette,
and in his buttonhole a pink carnation. He took Artois' hand with his
left hand, squeezed it affectionately, murmured "Caro Emilio," and sat
down in an easy attitude on the sofa, putting his hat and stick on a
table near by.

It was quite evident that he had come for no special reason. He had
just dropped in, as he did whenever he felt inclined, to gossip with
"Caro Emilio," and it never occurred to him that possibly he might be
interrupting an important piece of work. The Marchesino could not
realize work. He knew his friend published books. He even saw him
sometimes actually engaged in writing them, pen in hand. But he was
sure anybody would far rather sit and chatter with him, or hear him
play a valse on the piano, or a bit of the "Boheme," than bend over a
table all by himself. And Artois always welcomed him. He liked him.
But it was not only that which made him complaisant. Doro was a type,
and a singularly perfect one.

Now Artois laid down his pen, and pulled forward an arm-chair opposite
to the sofa.

"Mon Dieu, Doro! How fresh you look, like a fish just pulled out of
the sea!"

The Marchesino showed his teeth in a smile which also shone in his
round and boyish eyes.

"I have just come out of the sea. Papa and I have been bathing at the
Eldorado. We swam round the Castello until we were opposite your
windows, and sang 'Funiculi, funicula!' in the water, to serenade you.
Why didn't you hear us? Papa has a splendid voice, almost like
Tamagno's in the gramophone, when he sings the 'Addio' from 'Otello.'
Of course we kept a little out at sea. Papa is so easily recognized by
his red mustaches. But still you might have heard us."

"I did."

"Then why didn't you come unto the balcony, amico mio?"

"Because I thought you were street singers."

"Davvero? Papa would be angry. And he is in a bad temper to-day
anyhow."

"Why?"

"Well, I believe Gilda Mai is going to bring a /causa/ against
Viviano. Of course he won't marry her, and she never expected he
could. Why, she used to be a milliner in the Toledo. I remember it
perfectly, and now Sigismondo-- But it's really Gilda that has made
papa angry. You see, he has paid twice for me, once four thousand
lire, and the other time three thousand five hundred. And then he has
lost a lot at Lotto lately. He has no luck. And then he, too, was in a
row yesterday evening."

"The Marchese?"

"Yes, in the Chiaia. He slapped Signora Merani's face twice before
every one."

"Diavolo! What! a lady?"

"Well, if you like to call her so," returned Doro, negligently. "Her
husband is an impiegato of the Post-office, or something of the kind."

"But why should the Marchese slap her face in the Chiaia?"

"Because she provoked him. They took a flat in the house my father
owns in the Strada Chiatamone. After a time they got behind with the
rent. He let them stay on for six months without paying, and then he
turned them out. What should he do?" Doro began to gesticulate. He
held his right hand up on a level with his face, with the fingers all
drawn together and pressed against the thumb, and moved it violently
backwards and forwards, bringing it close to the bridge of his nose,
then throwing it out towards Artois. "What else, I say? Was he to give
his beautiful rooms to them for nothing? And she with a face like--
have you, I ask you, Emilio, have you seen her teeth?"

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