"Let us go to the cliff," Hermione said, moved by this new feeling of impatience.
She meant to interrupt the children, to get rid of Vere and Emile, and have Ruffo to herself for a moment. Just then she felt as if he were nearer, far nearer, to her than they were: they who kept things from her, who spoke of her secretly, pitying her.
And again that evening she came into acute antagonism with her friend.
For the instinct was still alive in him not to interrupt the children.
The strange suspicion that had been born and had lived within him, gathered strength, caused him to feel almost as if they might be upon holy ground, those two so full of youth, who talked together in the night; as if they knew mysteriously things that were hidden from their elders, from those wiser, yet far less full of the wisdom that is eternal, the wisdom in instinct, than themselves. There is always something sacred about children. And he had never lost the sense of it amid the dust of his worldly knowledge. But about these children, about them or within them, there floated, perhaps, something that was mystic, something that was awful and must not be disturbed. Hermione did not feel it. How could she? He himself had withheld from her for many years the only knowledge that could have made her share his present feeling.
He could tell her nothing. Yet he could not conceal his intense reluctance to go to that seat upon the cliff.
"But it"s delicious here. I love the Pool at night, don"t you? Look at the Saint"s light, how quietly it shines!"
She took her hands from the rail. His attempt at detention irritated her whole being. She looked at the light. On the night of the storm she had felt as if it shone exclusively for her. That feeling was dead. San Francesco watched, perhaps, over the fishermen. He did not watch over her.
And yet that night she, too, had made the sign of the cross when she knew that the light was shining.
She did not answer Artois" remark, and he continued, always for the children"s sake, and for the sake of what he seemed to divine secretly at work in them:
"This Pool is a place apart, I think. The Saint has given his benediction to it."
He was speaking at random to keep Hermione there. And yet his words seemed chosen by some one for him to say.
"Surely good must come to the island over that waterway."
"You think so?"
Her stress upon the p.r.o.noun made him reply:
"Hermione, you do not think me the typical Frenchman of this century, who furiously denies over a gla.s.s of absinthe the existence of the Creator of the world?"
"No. But I scarcely thought you believed in the efficacy of a plaster Saint."
"Not of the plaster--no. But don"t you think it possible that truth, emanating from certain regions and affecting the souls of men, might move them unconsciously to embody it in symbol? What if this Pool were blessed, and men, feeling that it was blessed, put San Francesco here with his visible benediction?"
He said to himself that he was playing with his imagination, as sometimes he played with words, half-sensuously and half-aesthetically; yet he felt to-night as if within him there was something that might believe far more than he had ever suspected it would be possible for him to believe.
And that, too, seemed to have come to him from the hidden children who were so near.
"I don"t feel at all as if the Pool were blessed," said Hermione. She sighed.
"Let us go to the cliff," she said, again, this time with a strong impatience.
He could not, of course, resist her desire, so they moved away, and mounted to the summit of the island.
The children were there. They could just see them in the darkness, Vere seated upon the wooden bench, Ruffo standing beside her. Their forms looked like shadows, but from the shadows voices came.
When he saw them, Artois stood still. Hermione was going on. He put his hand upon her arm to stop her. She sent an almost sharp inquiry to him with her eyes.
"Don"t you think," he said--"don"t you think it is a pity to disturb them?"
"Why?"
"They seem so happy together."
He glanced at her for sympathy, but she gave him none.
"Am I to have nothing?" she thought. And a pa.s.sion of secret anger woke up in her. "Am I to have nothing at all? May I not even speak to this boy, in whom I have seen Maurice for a moment--because if I do I may disturb some childish gossip?"
Her eyes gave to Artois a fierce rebuke.
"I beg your pardon, Hermione," he said, hastily. "Of course if you really want to talk to Ruffo--"
"I don"t think Vere will mind," she said.
Her lips were actually trembling, but her voice was calm.
They walked forward.
When they were close to the children they both saw there was a third figure on the cliff. Gaspare was at a little distance. Hermione could see the red point of his cigarette gleaming.
"Gaspare"s there, too," she said.
"Yes."
"Why is he there?" Artois thought.
And again there woke up in him an intense curiosity about Gaspare.
Ruffo had seen them, and now he took off his cap. And Vere turned her head and got up from the seat.
Neither the girl nor the boy gave any explanation of their being together. Evidently they did not think it necessary to do so. Hermione was the first to speak.
"Good-evening, Ruffo," she said.
Artois noticed a peculiar kindness and gentleness in her voice when she spoke to the boy, a sound apart, that surely did not come into her voice even when it spoke to Vere.
"Good-evening, Signora." He stood with his cap in his hand. "I have been telling the Signorina what you have done for my poor mamma, Signora.
I did not tell her before because I thought she knew. But she did not know."
Vere was looking at her mother with a shining of affection in her eyes.
At this moment Gaspare came up slowly, with a careless walk.
Artois watched him.
"About the little money, you mean?" said Hermione, rather hastily.
"Si, Signora. When I gave it to my poor mamma she cried again. But that was because you were so kind. And she said to me, "Ruffo, why should a strange lady be so kind to me? Why should a strange lady think about me?" she said. "Ruffino," she said, "it must be Santa Maddalena who has sent her here to be good to me." My poor mamma!"
"The Signora does not want to be bothered with all this!" It was Gaspare who had spoken, roughly, and who now pushed in between Ruffo and those who were listening to his simple narrative.