was! I had Vere—but she wasn’t enough to still the ache. And I knew what work can be, what a consolation, because I knew you. And I stretched out my hands to it—I stretched out my soul. And it was no use; I wasn’t made to be a successful writer. When I spoke from my heart to try and move men and save myself, my words were seized, as yours were just now by the rock—seized, and broken, and flung back in confusion. They struck my heart like stones. Emile, I’m one of those people who can only do one thing: I can only feel.”
“It is true that you could never be an artist. Perhaps you were made to be an inspiration.”
“But that’s not enough. The role of starter to those who race—I haven’t the temperament to reconcile myself to that. It’s not that I have in me a conceit which demands to be fed. But I have in me a force that clamors to exercise itself. Only when I was living on Monte Amato with Maurice did I feel that the force was being used as God meant it to be used.”
“In loving?”
“In loving passionately something that was utterly worthy to be loved.”
Artois was silent. He knew Hermione’s mistake. He knew what had never been told him: that Maurice had been false to her for the love of the peasant girl Maddalena. He knew that Maurice had been done to death by the betrayed girl’s father, Salvatore. And Gaspare knew these things, too. But through all these years these two men had so respected silence, the nobility of it, the grand necessity of it in certain circumstances of life, that they had never spoken to each other of the black truth known to them both. Indeed, Artois believed that even now, after more than sixteen years, if he ventured one word against the dead man Gaspare would be ready to fly at his throat in defence of the loved Padrone. For this divined and persistent loyalty Artois had a sensation of absolute love. Between him and Gaspare there must always be the barrier of a great and mutual reserve. Yet that very reserve, because there was something truly delicate, and truly noble in it, was as a link of steel between them. They were watchdogs of Hermione. They had been watchdogs through all these years, guarding her from the knowledge of a truth. And so well had they done her service that now to-day she was able to say, with clasped hands and the light of passion in her eyes:
“Something that was utterly worthy to be loved.”
When Artois spoke again he said:
“And that force cannot be fully used in loving Vere?”
“No, Emile. Is that very horrible, very unnatural?”
“Why should it be?”
“I have tried—I have tried for years, Emile, to make Vere enough. I have even been false with myself. I have said to myself that she was enough. I did that after I knew that I could never produce work of any value. When Vere was a baby I lived only for her. Again, when she was beginning to grow up, I tried to live, I did live only for her. And I remember I used to say, I kept on saying to myself, ‘This is enough for me. I do not need any more than this. I have had my life. I am now a middle-aged woman. I must live in my child. This will be my satisfaction. This is my satisfaction. This is using rightly and naturally all that force I feel within me.’ I kept on saying this. But there is something within one which rises up and defies a lie—however beautiful the lie is, however noble it is. And I think even a lie can sometimes be both. Don’t you, Emile?”
It almost seemed to him for a moment that she knew his lie and Gaspare’s.
“Yes,” he said. “I do think so.”
“Well, that lie of mine—it was defied. And it had no more courage.”
“I want you to tell me something,” he said, quietly. “I want you to tell me what has happened to-day.”
“To-day?”
“Yes. Something has happened either to-day or very recently—I am sure of it—that has stirred up within you this feeling of acute dissatisfaction. It was always there. But something has called it into the open. What has done that?”
Hermione hesitated.
“Perhaps you don’t know,” he said.
“I was wondering—yes, I do know. I must be truthful with myself—with you. I do know. But it seems so strange, so almost inexplicable, and even rather absurd.”
“Truth often seems absurd.”
“It was that boy, that diver for frutti di mare—Ruffo.”
“The boy with the Arab eyes?”
“Yes. Of course I have seen many boys full of life and gayety and music. There are so many in Italy. But—well, I don’t know—perhaps it was partly Vere.”
“How do you mean?”
“Vere was so interested in him. It may have been that. Or perhaps it was something in his look and in his voice when he was singing. I don’t really know what it was. But that boy made me feel—more horribly than I have ever felt before—that Vere is not enough. Emile, there is some hunger, so persistent, so peculiar, so intense, that one feels as if it must be satisfied eventually, as if it were impossible for it not to be satisfied. I think that human hunger for immortal life is like that, and I think my hunger for a son is like that. I know my hunger can never be satisfied. And yet it lives on in me just as if it knew more than I know, as if it knew that it could and must. After all these years I can’t, no, I can’t reconcile myself to the fact that Maurice was taken from me so utterly, that he died without stamping himself upon a son. It seems as if it couldn’t be. And I feel to-day that I cannot bear that it is.”
There were tears standing in her eyes. She had spoken with a force of feeling, with a depth of sincerity, that startled Artois, intimately as he knew her. Till this moment he had not quite realized the wonderful persistence of love in the hearts of certain women, and not only the persistence of love’s existence, but of its existence undiminished, unabated by time.
“How am I to bear it?” she said, as he did not speak.
“I cannot tell. I am not worthy to know. And besides, I must say to you, Hermione, that one of the greatest mysteries in human life, at any rate to me, is this: how some human beings do bear the burdens laid upon them. Christ bore His cross. But there has only been, since the beginning of things, one Christ, and it is unthinkable that there can ever be another. But all those who are not Christ, how is it they bear what they do bear? It is easy to talk of bravery, the necessity for it in life. It is always very easy to talk. The thing that is impossible is to understand. How can you come to me to help you, my friend? And suppose I were to try. How could I try, except by saying that I think Vere is very worthy to be loved with all your love?”
“You love Vere, don’t you, Emile?”
“Yes.”
“And I do. You don’t doubt that?”
“Never.”
“After all I have said, the way I have spoken, you might.”
“I do not doubt it for a moment.”
“I wonder if there is any mother who would not, if I spoke to her as I have spoken to you to-day?”
“I think there is a great deal of untruth spoken of mother’s love, a great
