She spoke very kindly but very firmly.
"May the Madonna take out my tongue if I speak, Signora!" Peppina raised her hand.
As she was going out Hermione stared at the cross upon her cheek.
CHAPTER XXVI
Artois stayed to dine. The falling of night deepened Hermione"s impression of the gulf which was now between them, and which she was sure he knew of. When darkness comes to intimacy it seems to make that intimacy more perfect. Now surely it caused reserve, restraint, to be more complete. The two secrets which Hermione now knew, but which were still cherished as secrets by Vere and Artois, stood up between the mother and her child and friend, inexorably dividing them.
Hermione was strung up to a sort of nervous strength that was full of determination. She had herself in hand, like a woman of the world who faces society with the resolution to deceive it. While Vere and Artois had been out in the boat she had schooled herself. She felt more competent to be the watcher of events. She even felt calmer, for knowledge increased almost always brings an undercurrent of increased tranquility, because of the sense of greater power that it produces in the mind. She looked better. She talked more easily.
When dinner was over they went as usual to the garden, and when they were there Hermione referred to the projected meeting with the Marchesino.
"I made a promise," she said. "I must keep it."
"Of course," said Artois. "But it seems to me that I am always being entertained, and that I am inhospitable--I do nothing in return. I have a proposal to make. Monday will be the sixteenth of July, the festa of the Madonna del Carmine--Santa Maria del Carmine. It is one of the prettiest of the year, they tell me. Why should not you and Vere come to dine at the Hotel, or in the Galleria, with me? I will ask Panacci to join us, and we will all go on afterwards to see the illuminations, and the fireworks, and the sending up of the fire-balloons. What do you say?"
"Would you like it, Vere?"
"Immensely, Madre."
She spoke quietly, but she looked pleased at the idea.
"Won"t the crowd be very bad, though?" asked Hermione.
"I"ll get tickets for the enclosure in the Piazza. We shall have seats there. And you can bring Gaspare, if you like. Then you will have three cavaliers."
"Yes, I should like Gaspare to come," said Hermione.
There was a sound of warmth in her hitherto rather cold voice when she said that.
"How you rely on Gaspare!" Artois said, almost as if with a momentary touch of vexation.
"Indeed I do," Hermione answered.
Their eyes met, surely almost with hostility.
"Madre knows how Gaspare adores her," said Vere, gently. "If there were any danger he"d never hesitate. He"d save Madre if he left every other human being in the world to perish miserably--including me."
"Vere!"
"You know quite well he would, Madre."
They talked a little more. Presently Vere seemed to be feeling restless.
Artois noticed it, and watched her. Once or twice she got up, without apparent reason. She pulled at the branches of the fig-trees. She gathered a flower. She moved away, and leaned upon the wall. Finally, when her mother and Artois had fallen into conversation about some new book, she slipped very quietly away.
Hermione and Artois continued their conversation, though without much animation. At length, however, some remark of Hermione led Artois to speak of the book he was writing. Very often and very openly in the days gone by she had discussed with him his work. Now, feeling the barrier between them, he fancied that perhaps it might be removed more easily by such another discussion. And this notion of his was not any proof of want of subtlety on his part. Without knowing why, Hermione felt a lack of self-confidence, a distressing, an almost unnatural humbleness to-day. He partially divined the feeling. Possibly it sprang from their difference of opinion on the propriety of Vere"s reading his books. He thought it might be so. And he wanted to oust Hermione gently from her low stool and to show her himself seated there. Filled with this idea, he began to ask her advice about the task upon which he was engaged. He explained the progress he had made during the days when he was absent from the island and shut perpetually in his room. She listened in perfect silence.
They were sitting near each other, but not close together, for Vere had been between them. It was dark under the fig-trees. They could see each other"s faces, but not quite clearly. There was a small breeze which made the trees move, and the leaves rustled faintly now and then, making a tiny noise which joined the furtive noise of the sea, not far below them.
Artois talked on. As his thoughts became more concentrated upon the book he grew warmer. Having always had Hermione"s eager, even enthusiastic sympathy and encouragement in his work, he believed himself to have them now. And in his manner, in his tone, even sometimes in his choice of words, he plainly showed that he a.s.sumed them. But presently, glancing across at Hermione, he was surprised by the expression on her face.
It seemed to him as if a face of stone had suddenly looked bitterly satirical. He was so astonished that the words stopped upon his lips.
"Go on, Emile," she said, "I am listening."
The expression which had startled him was gone. Had it ever been?
Perhaps he had been deceived by the darkness. Perhaps the moving leaves had thrown their little shadows across her features. He said to himself that it must be so--that his friend, Hermione, could never have looked like that. Yet he was chilled. And he remembered her pa.s.sing by in the tram at Posilipo, and how he had stood for a moment and watched her, and seen upon her face a furtive look that he had never seen there before, and that had seemed to contradict her whole nature as he knew it.
Did he know it?
Never before had he asked himself this question. He asked it now. Was there living in Hermione some one whom he did not know, with whom he had had no dealings, had exchanged no thoughts, had spoken no words?
"Go on, Emile," she said again.
But he did not. For once his brain was clouded, and he felt confused. He had completely lost the thread of his thoughts.
"I can"t," he said, abruptly.
"Why not?"
"I"ve forgotten. I"ve not thoroughly worked the thing out. Another time.
Besides--besides, I"m sure I bore you with my eternal talk about my work. You"ve been such a kind, such a sympathetic friend and encourager that--"
He broke off, thinking of that face. Was it possible that through all these years Hermione had been playing a part with him, had been pretending to admire his talent, to care for what he was doing, when really she had been bored by it? Had the whole thing been a weariness to her, endured perhaps because she liked him as a man? The thought cut him to the very quick, seared his self-respect, struck a blow at his pride which made it quiver, and struck surely also a blow at something else.
His life during all these years--what would it have been without Hermione"s friendship? Was he to learn that now?
He looked at her. Now her face was almost as usual, only less animated than he had seen it.
"Your work could never bore me. You know it," she said.
The real Hermione sounded in her voice when she said that, for the eternal woman deep down in her had heard the sound almost of helplessness in his voice, had felt the leaning of his nature, strong though it was, on her, and had responded instantly, inevitably, almost pa.s.sionately. But then came the thought of his secret intercourse with Vere. She saw in the dark words: "Monsieur Emile"s idea." "Monsieur Emile"s suggestion." She remembered how Artois had told her that she could never be an artist. And again the intensely bitter feeling of satire, that had set in her face the expression which had startled him, returned, twisting, warping her whole nature.
"I am to encourage you--you who have told me that I can do nothing!"
That was what she had been feeling. And, as by a search-light, she had seen surely for a moment the whole great and undying selfishness of man, exactly as it was. And she had seen surely, also, the ministering world of women gathered round about it, feeding it, lest it should fail and be no more. And she had seen herself among them!
"Where can Vere have gone to?" he said.
There had been a pause. Neither knew how long it had lasted.
"I should not wonder if she is on the cliff," said Hermione. "She often goes there at this hour. She goes to meet Ruffo."
The name switched the mind of Artois on to a new and profoundly interesting train of thought.
"Ruffo," he began slowly. "And you think it wise--?"