Chapter XLII: “Hermione!” (2)

Her voice spoke falteringly. In her voice there was a sound of pleading that struck into the very depths of his heart. The real Hermione was in that sound, the loving woman who needed love, who deserved a love as deep as that which she had given, as that which she surely still had to give.

“He loved you always, but he loved you in his way.”

“In his way!” she repeated, with a sort of infinite, hopeless sadness.

“Yes, Hermione, in his way. Oh, we all have our ways, all our different ways of loving. But I don’t believe a human being ever existed who had no way at all. Delarey’s way was different from your way, so different that, now you know the truth of him, perhaps you can’t believe he ever loved you. But he did. He was young, and he was hot-blooded--he was really of the South. And the sun got hold of him. And he betrayed you. But he repented. That last day he was stricken, not by physical fear, but by a tremendous shame at what he had done to you, and perhaps, also, by fear lest you should ever know it. I sat with him by the wall, and I felt without at all fully understanding it the drama in his soul. But now I understand it. I’m sure I understand it. And I think the depth of a shame is very often the exact measure of the depth of a love. Perhaps, indeed, there is no more exact measure.”

Again he thought of the episode with Vere, and of his determination always from henceforth to be absolutely sincere with himself and with those whom he really loved.

“I am sure there is no more exact measure. Hermione, it is very difficult, I think, to realize what any human being is, to judge any one quite accurately. Some judge a nature by the distance it can sink, others by the distance it can rise. Which do you do? Do you judge Delarey by his act of faithlessness? And, if you do, how would you judge me?”

“You!”

There was a sound of wonder in her voice.

“Yes. You say I am an egoist. And this that I am saying will seem to you egoism. It is egoism, I suppose. But I want to know--I must know. How would you judge me? How do you judge me?”

She was silent.

“How are you judging me at this moment? Aren’t you judging me by the distance I fall, the distance, perhaps, you think I have fallen?”

He spoke slowly. He was delaying. For all the time he spoke he was secretly battling with his pride--and his pride was a strong fighter. But to-night his passion for sincerity, his instinct that for Hermione--and for him, too--salvation lay in their perfect, even in their cruel sincerity to themselves and to each other, was a strong fighter also. In it his pride met an antagonist that was worthy of it. And he went on:

“Are you judging me by this summer?”

He paused.

“Go on,” she said.

He could not tell by her voice what she was feeling, thinking. Expression seemed to be withdrawn from it, perhaps deliberately.

“This summer something has come between us, a cloud has come between us. I scarcely know when I first noticed it, when it came. But I have felt it, and you have felt it.”

“Yes.”

“It might, perhaps, have arisen from the fact of my suspicion who Ruffo was, a suspicion that lately became a certainty. My suspicion, and latterly my knowledge, no doubt changed my manner--made me anxious, perhaps, uneasy, made me watchful, made me often seem very strange to you. That alone might have caused a difference in our relations. But I think there was something else.”

“Yes, there was something else.”

“And I think, I feel sure now, that it was something to do with Vere. I was, I became deeply interested in Vere--interested in a new way. She was growing up. She was passing from childhood into girlhood. She was developing swiftly. That development fascinated me. Of course I had always been very fond of Vere. But this summer she meant more to me than she had meant. One day--it was the day I came back to the island after my visit to Paris--”

“Yes?”

He looked at her, trying to read what she was feeling in her face, but it was too dark for him to discern it.

“Vere made a confession to me. She told me she was working secretly, that she was writing poems. I asked her to show them to me. She did so. I found some talent in them, enough for me to feel justified in telling her to continue. Once, Hermione, you consulted me. Then my advice was different.”

“I know.”

“The remembrance of this, and Vere’s knowledge that you had suffered in not succeeding with work, prompted us to keep the matter of her attempts to write a secret for the time. It seems a trifle--all this, but looking back now I feel that we were quite wrong in not telling you.”

“I found it out.”

“You knew?”

“I went to Vere’s room. The poems were on the table with your corrections. I read them.”

“We ought to have told you.”

“I oughtn’t to have read them, but I did.”

“A mother has the right--”

“Not a mother who has resigned her right to question her child. I had said to Vere, ‘Keep your secrets.’ So I had no right, and I did wrong in reading them.”

He felt that she was instinctively trying to match his sincerity with hers, and that fact helped him to continue.

“The knowledge of this budding talent of Vere’s made me take a new interest in her, made me wish very much--at least I thought, I believed it was that, Hermione--that no disturbing influence should come into her life. Isidoro Panacci came--through me. Peppina came--through you. Hermione, on the night when Vere and I went out alone together in the boat Vere learned the truth about Peppina and the life behind the shutter.”

“I knew that, too.”

“You knew it?”

“Yes. I suspected something. You led me to suspect it.”

“I remember--”

“I questioned Peppina. I made her tell me.”

He said nothing for a moment. Then, with an effort, he said:

“You knew we had kept those two things from you, Vere and I?”

“Vere and you--yes.”

Now he understood almost all, or quite all, that had been strange to him in her recent conduct.

“Sometimes--have you almost hated us for keeping those two secrets?”

“I don’t think I have ever hated Vere.”

“But me?”

“Do you know why I told Vere she might read your books?”

“Why?”

“Because I thought they might make her feel differently towards you.”

“Less--less kindly?”

“Yes.”

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 succumb 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 circumstances 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 coarse 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 crass 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 nobility 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 shore. 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.

“Lei si riposi!” he whispered, as he set her down.

She shut her eyes, leaning back against the seat. She heard Artois get in, the boat pushed off, the splash of the oars. But she did not open her eyes, until presently an instinct told her there was something she must see. Then she looked.

The boat was passing under the blessing hand of San Francesco, under the light of the Saint, which was burning calmly and brightly.

Hermione moved. She bent down to the water, the _acqua benedetta_. She sprinkled it over the boat and made the sign of the cross. When they reached the island Artois got out. As she came on shore he said to her:

“Hermione, I left the--the two children together in the garden. Do you think--will you go to them for a moment? Or--”

“I will go,” she answered.

She was no longer trembling. She followed him up the steps, walking slowly but firmly. They came to the house door. Gaspare had kept close behind them. At the door Artois stopped. He felt as if to-night he ought to go no farther.

Hermione looked at him and passed into the house. Gaspare, seeing that Artois did not follow her, hesitated, but Artois said to him:

“Go, Gaspare, go with your Padrona.”

Then Gaspare went in, down the passage, and out to the terrace.

Hermione was standing there.

“Do you think they are in the garden, Gaspare?” she said.

“Si, Signora. Listen! I can hear them!”

He held up his hand. Not far away there was a sound of voices speaking together.

“Shall I go and tell them, Signora?”

After a moment Hermione said:

“Yes, Gaspare--go and tell them.”

He went away, and she waited, leaning on the balustrade and looking down to the dim sea, from which only the night before Ruffo’s voice had floated up to her, singing the song of Mergellina. Only the night before! And it seemed to her centuries ago.

“Madre!”

Vere spoke to her. Vere was beside her. But she gazed beyond her child to Ruffo, who stood with his cap in his hand and his eyes, full of gentleness, looking at her for recognition.

“Ruffo!” she said.

Vere moved to let Ruffo pass. He came up and stood before Hermione.

“Ruffo!” she said again.

It seemed that she was going to say more. They waited for her to say more. But she did not speak. She stood quite still for a moment looking at the boy. Then she put one hand on his shoulder, bent down and touched his forehead with her lips.

And in that kiss the dead man was forgiven.