She spoke very quietly, but he felt--he did not know why--that it had cost her very much to say what she had said.
"You wanted Vere to think badly of me!"
He was honoring her for the moral courage which enabled her to tell him. Yet he felt as if she had struck him. And so absolutely was he accustomed to delicate tenderness, and the most thoughtful, anxious kindness from her, that he suffered acutely and from a double distress.
The thing itself was cruel and hurt him. But that Hermione had done it hurt him far more. He could hardly believe it. That by any road she could travel to such an action seemed incredible to him. He stood, realizing it. And the bitter sharpness of his suffering made him understand something. In all its fulness he understood what Hermione"s tenderness had been in his life for many, many years. And then--his mind seemed to take another step. "Why does a woman do such a thing as this?"
he asked himself. "Why does such a woman as Hermione do such a thing?"
And he knew what her suffering must have been, and how her heart must have been storm-tossed, before it was driven to succ.u.mb to such an impulse.
And he came quite close to her. And he felt a strange, sudden nearness to her that was no nearness of body.
"Hermione," he said, "I could never judge your character by that action.
Don"t--don"t judge mine by any cruelty of which I have been guilty during this summer. You have told me something that it was very difficult for you to tell. I have something to tell you. And it is--it is not easy to tell."
"Tell it me."
He looked at her. He was now quite close to her, and could see the outline of her face but not the expression in her eyes.
"My interest in Vere increased. I believed it to be an interest aroused in me by the discovery of this talent in her. I believed the new fondness I felt for her to be a very natural fondness, caused by her charming confidence in me. Our little secret drew us together. And I understand now, Hermione, that it seemed to set you apart from us. I believe I understand all now, all the circ.u.mstances that have seemed strange to me this summer. I wanted Vere"s talent to develop naturally, unhindered, unaffected--I thought it was merely that--and I became exigent, I even became jealous of all outside interference. On the night we dined at Frisio"s I felt strongly irritated at Panacci"s interest in Vere. And there were other moments--"
He looked at her again. She stood perfectly still. Her head was slightly bent and she seemed to be looking at the ground.
"And then came the night of the Carmine. Hermione, after you and Vere had gone to bed Panacci and I had a quarrel. He attacked me violently.
He told me--he told me that I was in love with Vere, and that you, and even--even that Gaspare knew it. At the moment I think I laughed at him. I thought his accusation ridiculous. But when he was gone--and afterwards--I examined myself. I tried to know myself. I spent hours in self-examination, cruel self-examination. I did not spare myself.
Believe that, Hermione! Believe that!"
"I do believe it."
"And at the end I knew that it was not true. I was not, I had never been in love with Vere. When I thought of Vere and myself in such a relation my spirit recoiled. Such a thing seemed to me monstrous. But though I knew that it was not true, I knew also that I had been jealous of Vere, unjust to others because of Vere. I had been, perhaps, foolish, undignified. Perhaps--perhaps--for how can we be quite sure of ourselves. Hermione? How can we be certain of our own natures, our own conduct?--perhaps, if Panacci"s coa.r.s.e brutality had not waked up my whole being, I might have drifted on towards an affection for Vere that, in a man of my age, would have been absurd, have made me ridiculous in the eyes of others. I scarcely think so. But I want to be sincere.
I would rather exaggerate than minimize my own shortcomings to you to-night. I scarcely believe it ever could have been so. But Panacci said it was so. And you--I don"t know what you have thought--"
"What I have thought doesn"t matter now."
She spoke very quietly, but not with bitterness. She knew Artois. And even in that moment of emotion, and of a sort of strange exhaustion following upon emotion, she knew, as no other living person could have known, the effort it must have cost him to speak as he had just spoken.
"That, at any rate, is the exact truth."
"I know it is."
"I have thought myself clear-sighted, Hermione. I have studied others.
Just lately I have been forced to study myself. It is as if--it seems to me as if events had conspired against my own cra.s.s ignorance of myself, as if a resolve had been come to by the power that directs our destinies that I should know myself. I wish I dared to tell you more. I wish to-night I dared to tell you all that I have come to know. But I dare not, I dare not. You would not believe me. I could not even expect you to believe me."
He stopped. Perhaps he hoped for a word that would deny his last observation. But it did not come to him. And he hesitated for what seemed to him a very long time, almost an eternity. He was beset by indecision, by an extraordinary deep modesty and consciousness of his own unworthiness that he had never before experienced, and also by a new and acute consciousness of the splendor of Hermione"s nature, of the power of her heart, of the faithfulness and n.o.bility of her temperament.
"All I can say, Hermione"--he at length went on speaking, and in his voice sounded that strange modesty, a modesty that made his voice seem to her almost like a voice of hesitating youth--"all that I dare to say to-night is this. I told you just now that we all have our different ways of loving. You have loved in your way. You have loved Delarey as your husband. And you have loved me as your friend. Delarey, as your husband, betrayed you. Only to-day you know it. I, as your friend--have I ever betrayed you? Do you believe--even now when you are ready to believe very much of evil--do you really believe that as a friend I could ever betray you?"
He moved, stood in front of her, lifted his hands and laid them on her shoulders.
"Do you believe that?"
"No."
"You have loved us in your way. He is dead. But I am here to love you always in my way. Perhaps my way seems to you such a poor way--it must, it must--that it is hardly worth anything at all. But perhaps, now that I know so much of myself--and of you"--there was a slight break in his voice--"and of you, I shall be able to find a different, a better way.
I don"t know. To-night I doubt myself. I feel as if I were so unworthy.
But I may--I may be able to find a better way of loving you."
Quite unconsciously his two hands, which still rested upon her shoulders, began to lean heavily upon them, to press them, to grip them till she suffered a physical discomfort that almost amounted to pain.
"I shall seek a better way--I shall seek it. And the only thing I ask you to-night is--that you will not forbid me to seek it."
The pressure of his hands upon her shoulders was becoming almost unbearable. But she bore it. She bore it for she loved it. Perhaps that night no words could have quite convinced her of his desperate honesty of soul in that moment, perhaps no sound of his voice could have quite convinced her. But the unconsciously cruel pressure of his hands upon her convinced her absolutely. She felt as if it was his soul--the truth of his soul--which was grasping her--which was closing upon her. And she felt that only a thing that needed could grasp, could close like that.
And even in the midst of her chaos of misery and doubt she felt, she knew, that it was herself that was needed.
"I will not forbid you to seek it," she said.
He sighed deeply. His hands dropped down from her. They stood for a moment quite still. Then he said, in a low voice:
"You took the _fattura della morte_?"
"Yes," she answered. "It was in--in her room at Mergellina to-day."
"Have you got it still?"
"Yes."
She held out her right hand. He took the death-charm from her.
"She made it--the woman who wronged you made it to bring death into the Casa del Mare."
"Not to me?"
"No, to Peppina. Has it not brought another death? Or, at least, does it not typify another death to-night, the death of a great lie? I think it does. I look upon it as a symbol. But--but--?"
He looked at her. He was at the huge doorway of the palace. The sea murmured below him. Hermione understood and bent her head.
Then Artois threw the death-charm far away into the sea.
"Let me take you to the boat. Let me take you back to the island."
She did not answer him. But when he moved she followed him, till they came to the rocks and saw floating on the dim water the two white boats.
"Gaspare!"
"Vengo!"
That cry--what did it recall to Hermione? Gaspare"s cry from the inlet beneath the Isle of the Sirens when he was bringing the body of Maurice from the sea. As she had trembled then, she began to tremble now. She felt exhausted, that she could bear no more, that she must rest, be guarded, cared for, protected, loved. The boat touched sh.o.r.e. Gaspare leaped out. He cast an eager, fiery look of scrutiny on his Padrona. She returned it. Then, suddenly, he seized her hand, bent down and kissed it.
She trembled more. He lifted his head, stared at her again. Then he took her up in his strong arms, as if she were a child, and carried her gently and carefully to the stern of the boat.