Hermione was not by nature at all a self-conscious woman. She knew that she was plain, and had sometimes, very simply, regretted it. But she did not generally think about her appearance, and very seldom now wondered what others were thinking of it. When Maurice had been with her she had often indeed secretly compared her ugliness with his beauty. But a great love breeds many regrets as well as many joys. And that was long ago.
It was years since she had looked at herself in the gla.s.s with any keen feminine anxiety, any tremor of fear, or any cruel self-criticism. But now she stood for a long time before the gla.s.s, quite still, looking at her reflection with wide, almost with staring, eyes.
It was true what Gaspare said. She saw that she was looking ill, very different from her usual strong self. There was not a thread of white in her thick hair, and this fact, combined with the eagerness of her expression, the strong vivacity and intelligence that normally shone in her eyes, deceived many people as to her age. But to-day her face was strained, haggard, and feverish. Under the brown tint that the sunrays had given to her complexion there seemed to lurk a sickly white, which was most markedly suggested at the corner of the mouth. The cheek-bones seemed unusually prominent. And the eyes held surely a depth of uneasiness, of--
Hermione approached her face to the mirror till it almost touched the gla.s.s. The reflected eyes drew hers. She gazed into them with a scrutiny into which she seemed to be pouring her whole force, both of soul and body. She was trying to look at her nature, to see its shape, its color, its expression, so that she might judge of what it was capable--whether for good or evil. The eyes into which she looked both helped her and frustrated her. They told her much--too much. And yet they baffled her.
When she would know all, they seemed to subst.i.tute themselves for that which she saw through them, and she found herself noticing their size, their prominence, the exact shade of their brown hue. And the quick human creature behind them was hidden from her.
But Gaspare was right. She did look ill. Emile would notice it directly.
She washed her face with cold water, then dried it almost cruelly with a rough towel. Having done this, she did not look again into the gla.s.s, but went at once down-stairs. As she came into the drawing-room she heard voices in the garden. She stood still and listened. They were the voices of Vere and Emile talking tirelessly. She could not hear what they said. Had she been able to hear it she would not have listened.
She could only hear the sound made by their voices, that noise by which human beings strive to explain, or to conceal, what they really are.
They were talking seriously. She heard no sounds of laughter. Vere was saying most. It seemed to Hermione that Vere never talked so much and so eagerly to her, with such a ceaseless vivacity. And there was surely an intimate sound in her voice, a sound of being warmly at ease, as if she spoke in an atmosphere of ardent sympathy.
Again the jealousy came in Hermione, acute, fierce, and travelling--like a needle being moved steadily, point downwards, through a network of quivering nerves.
"Vere!" she called out. "Vere! Emile!"
Was her voice odd, startling?
They did not hear her. Emile was speaking now. She heard the deep, booming sound of his powerful voice, that seemed expressive of strength and will.
"Vere! Emile!"
As she called again she went towards the window. She felt pa.s.sionately excited. The excitement had come suddenly to her when they had not heard her first call.
"Emile! Emile!" she repeated. "Emile!"
"Madre!"
"Hermione!"
Both voices sounded startled.
"What"s the matter?"
Vere appeared at the window, looking frightened.
"Hermione, what is it?"
Emile was there beside her. And he, too, looked anxious, almost alarmed.
"I only wanted to let you know I had come back," said Hermione, crushing down her excitement and forcing herself to smile.
"But why did you call like that?"
Vere spoke.
"Like what? What do you mean, figlia mia?"
"It sounded--"
She stopped and looked at Artois.
"It frightened me. And you, Monsieur Emile?"
"I, too, was afraid for a moment that something unpleasant had happened."
"You nervous people! Isn"t it lunch-time?"
As they looked at her she felt they had been talking about her, about her failure. And she felt, too, as if they must be able to see in her eyes that she knew the secret Vere had wished to keep from her and thought she did not know. Emile had given her a glance of intense scrutiny, and the eyes of her child still questioned her with a sort of bright and searching eagerness.
"You make me feel as if I were with detectives," she said, laughing, but uneasily. "There"s really nothing the matter."
"And your tooth, Madre? Is it better?"
"Yes, quite well. I am perfectly well. Let us go in."
Hermione had said to herself that if she could see Emile and Vere together, without any third person, she would know something that she felt she must know. When she was with them she meant to be a watcher.
And now her whole being was strung to attention. But it seemed to her that for some reason they, too, were on the alert, and so were not quite natural. And she could not be sure of certain things unless the atmosphere was normal. So she said to herself now, though before she had had the inimitable confidence of woman in certain detective instincts claimed by the whole s.e.x. At one moment the thing she feared--and her whole being recoiled from the thought of it with a shaking disgust--the thing she feared seemed to her fact. Then something occurred to make her distrust herself. And she felt that betraying imagination of hers at work, obscuring all issues, tricking her, punishing her.
And when the meal was over she did not know at all. And she felt as if she had perhaps been deliberately baffled--not, of course, by Vere, of whose att.i.tude she was not, and never had been, doubtful, but by Emile.
When they got up from the table Vere said:
"I"m going to take the siesta."
"You look remarkably wide awake, Vere," Artois said, smiling.
"But I"m going to, because I"ve had you all to myself the whole morning.
Now it"s Madre"s turn. Isn"t it, Madre?"
The girl"s remark showed her sense of their complete triple intimacy, but it emphasized to Hermione her own cruel sense of being in the wilderness. And she even felt vexed that it should be supposed she wanted Emile"s company. Nevertheless, she restrained herself from making any disclaimer. Vere went up-stairs, and she and Artois went out and sat down under the trellis. But with the removal of Vere a protection and safety-valve seemed to be removed, and neither Hermione nor Emile could for a moment continue the conversation. Again a sense of humiliation, of being mindless, nothing in the eyes of Artois came to Hermione, diminishing all her powers. She was never a conceited, but she had often been a self-reliant woman. Now she felt a humbleness such as she knew no one should ever feel--a humbleness that was contemptible, that felt itself incapable, unworthy of notice. She tried to resist it, but when she thought of this man, her friend, talking over her failure with her child, in whom he must surely believe, she could not. She felt "Vere can talk to Emile better than I can. She interests him more than I."
And then her years seemed to gather round her and whip her. She shrank beneath the thongs of age, which had not even brought to her those gifts of the mind with which it often partially replaces the bodily gifts and graces it is so eager to remove.
"Hermione."
"Yes, Emile."
She turned slowly in her chair, forcing herself to face him.
"Are you sure you are not feeling ill?"
"Quite sure. Did you have a pleasant morning with Vere?"
"Yes. Oh"--he sat forward in his chair--"she told me something that rather surprised me--that you had told her she might read my books."
"Well?"
Hermione"s voice was rather hard.