A Spirit in Prison | Page 5

beating the men.
They dived once more. She saw the sun gleam on their backs, which
looked polished as they turned slowly over, almost like brown
porpoises.
But the boy remained hidden beneath the veil of water.
Vere began to feel anxious. What if some accident had happened?
What if he had been caught by the seaweed, or if his groping hand had
been retained by some crevice of the rock? There was a pain at her
heart. Her quick imagination was at work. It seemed to her as if she felt
his agony, took part in his struggle to regain his freedom. She clinched
her small hands and set her teeth. She held her breath, trying to feel
exactly as he was feeling. And then suddenly she lifted her hands up to

her face, covering her nostrils. What a horrible sensation it was, this
suffocation, this pressing of the life out of the body, almost as one may
push a person brutally out of a room! She could bear it no more, and
she dropped her hands. As she did so the boy's dark head rose above
the sea.
Vere uttered a cry of joy.
"Brave! Bravo!"
She felt as if he had returned from the dead. He was a wonderful boy.
"Bravo! Bravissimo!"
Serenely unconscious of her enthusiasm, the boy swam slowly for a
moment, breathing the air into his lungs, then serenely dived again.
"Vere!" called a woman's voice from the house--"Vere!"
"Madre!" cried the girl in reply, but without turning away from the sea.
"I am here! Do come out! I want to show you something."
On a narrow terrace looking towards Naples a tall figure appeared.
"Where are you?"
"Here! here!"
The mother smiled and left the terrace, passed through a little gate, and
almost directly was standing beside the girl, saying:
"What is it? Is there a school of whales in the Bay, or have you sighted
the sea-serpent coming from Capri?"
"No, no! But--you see that boat?"
"Yes. The men are diving for /frutti di mare/, aren't they?"
Vere nodded.

"The men are nothing. But there is a boy who is wonderful."
"Why? What does he do?"
"He stays under water an extraordinary time. Now wait. Have you got a
watch, Madre?"
"Yes."
"Take it out, there's a darling, and time him. I want to know--there he is!
You see!"
"Yes."
"Have you got your watch? Wait till he goes under! Wait a minute!
There! He's gone! Now begin."
She drew into her lungs a long breath, and held it. The mother smiled,
keeping her eyes obediently on the watch which lay in her hand.
There was a silence between them as the seconds passed.
"Really," began the mother presently, "he must be--"
"Hush, Madre, hush!"
The girl had clasped her hands tightly. Her eyes never left the sea. The
tick, tick of the watch was just audible in the stillness of the May
morning. At last--
"There he is!" cried the girl. "Quick! How long has he been under?"
"Just fifty seconds."
"I wonder--I'm sure it's a record. If only Gaspare were here! When will
he be back from Naples with Monsieur Emile?"
"About twelve, I should think. But I doubt if they can sail." She looked
out to sea, and added: "I think the wind is changing to scirocco. They

may be later."
"He's gone down again!"
"I never saw you so interested in a diver before," said the mother.
"What made you begin to look at the boy?"
"He was singing. I heard him, and his voice made me feel--" She
paused.
"What?" said her mother.
"I don't know. /Un poco diavolesca/, I'm afraid. One thing, though! It
made me long to be a boy."
"Did it?"
"Yes! Madre, tell me truly--sea-water on your lips, as the fishermen
say--now truly, did you ever want me to be a boy?"
Hermione Delarey did not answer for a moment. She looked away over
the still sea, that seemed to be slowly losing its color, and she thought
of another sea, of the Ionian waters that she had loved so much. They
had taken her husband from her before her child was born, and this
child's question recalled to her the sharp agony of those days and nights
in Sicily, when Maurice lay unburied in the Casa del Prete, and
afterwards in the hospital at Marechiaro--of other days and nights in
Italy, when, isolated with the Sicilian boy, Gaspare, she had waited
patiently for the coming of her child.
"Sea-water, Madre, sea-water on your lips!"
Her mother looked down at her.
"Do you think I wished it, Vere?"
"To-day I do."
"Why to-day?"

"Because I wish it so much. And it seems to me as if perhaps I wish it
because you once wished it for me.