"One!"
The cigarette fell and was caught.
"Two!"
A second fell. But this time Ruffo was unprepared, and it dropped on the rock by his bare feet.
"Stupido!" laughed the girl.
"Ma, Signorina--!"
"Three!"
It had become a game between them, and continued to be a game until all the ten cigarettes had made their journey through the air.
Vere would not let Ruffo know when a cigarette was coming, but kept him on the alert, pretending, holding it poised above him between his finger and thumb until even his eyes blinked from gazing upward; then dropping it when she thought he was unprepared, or throwing it like a missile.
But she soon knew that she had found her match in the boy. And when he caught the tenth and last cigarette in his mouth she clapped her hands, and cried out so enthusiastically that one of the men in the boat heaved himself up from the bottom, and, choking down a yawn, stared with heavy amazement at the young virgin of the rocks, and uttered a "Che Diavolo!"
under his stiff mustache.
Vere saw his astonishment, and swiftly, with a parting wave of her hand to Ruffo, she disappeared, leaving her protege to run off gayly with his booty to his comrades of the _Sirena del Mare_.
CHAPTER III
"I can see the boat, Vere," said Hermione, when the girl came back, her eyes still gleaming with memories of the fun of the cigarette game with Ruffo.
"Where, Madre?"
She sat down quickly beside her mother on the window-seat, leaning against her confidentially and looking out over the sea. Hermione put her arm round the girl"s shoulder.
"There! Don"t you see!" She pointed. "It has pa.s.sed Casa Pantano."
"I see! Yes, that is Gaspare, and Monsieur Emile in the stern. They won"t be late for lunch. I almost wish they would, Madre."
"Why?"
"I"m not a bit hungry. Ruffo wouldn"t eat the dolce, so I did."
"Ruffo! You seem to have made great friends with that boy."
She did not speak rebukingly, but with a sort of tender amus.e.m.e.nt.
"I really have," returned Vere.
She put her head against her mother"s shoulder.
"Isn"t this odd, Madre? Twice in the short time I"ve known Ruffo, he"s obeyed me. The first time he was in the boat. I called out to him to dive in, and he did it instantly. The second time he was under water, at the very bottom of the sea. He looked as if he were dead, and for a minute I felt frightened. So I called out to him to come up, and he came up directly."
"But that only shows that he"s a polite boy and does what you wish."
"No, no. He didn"t hear me either time. He had no idea I had called. But each time I did, without hearing me he had the sudden wish to do what I wanted. Now, isn"t that curious?"
She paused.
"Madre?" she added.
"You think you influenced him?"
"Don"t you think I did?"
"Perhaps so. There"s a sympathetic link of youth between you. You are gloriously young, both of you, little daughter. And youth turns naturally to youth, though I"m afraid old age doesn"t always turn naturally to old age."
"What do you know about old age, Madre? You haven"t a gray hair."
She spoke with anxious encouragement.
"It"s true. My hair declines to get gray."
"I don"t believe you"ll ever be gray."
"Probably not. But there"s another grayness--Life behind one instead of before; the emotional--"
She stopped herself. This was not for Vere.
"They"re close in," she said, looking out of the window.
She waved her hand. The big man in the stern of the boat took off his hat in reply, and waved his hand, too. The rower pulled with the vivacity that comes to men near the end of a task, and the boat shot into the Pool of the Saint, where Ruffo was at that moment enjoying his third cigarette.
"I"ll run down and meet Monsieur Emile," said Vere.
And she disappeared as swiftly as she had come.
The big man who got out of the boat could not claim Hermione"s immunity from gray hairs. His beard was lightly powdered with them, and though much of the still thick hair on his head was brown, and his figure was erect, and looked strong and athletic--he seemed what he was, a man of middle age, who had lived, and thought, and observed much. His eyes had the peculiar expression of eyes that have seen very many and very various sights. It was difficult to imagine them not looking keenly intelligent. The vivacity of youth was no longer in them, but the vividness of intellect, of an intellect almost fiercely alive and tenacious of its life, was never absent from them.
As Artois got out, the boat"s prow was being held by the Sicilian, Gaspare, now a man of thirty-five, but still young-looking. Many Sicilians grow old quickly--hard life wears them out. But Gaspare"s fate had been easier than that of most of his contemporaries and friends of Marechiaro. Ever since the tragic death of the beloved master, whom he still always spoke of as "mio Padrone," he had been Hermione"s faithful attendant and devoted friend. Yes, she knew him to be that--she wished him to be that. Their stations in life might be different, but they had come to sorrow together. They had suffered together and been in sympathy while they suffered. He had loved what she had loved, lost it when she had lost it, wept for it when she had wept.
And he had been with her when she had waited for the coming of the child.
Hermione really cared for three people: Gaspare was one of them. He knew it. The other two were Vere and Emile Artois.
"Vere," said Artois, taking her two hands closely in his large hands, and gazing into her face with the kind, even affectionate directness that she loved in him: "do you know that to-day you are looking insolent?"
"Insolent!" said the girl. "How dare you!"
She tried to take her hands away.
"Insolently young," he said, keeping them authoritatively.