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When they reached the foot of the cliff Gaspare was there, holding the little craft in which Vere had gone out with Ruffo. "Do you want me, Signora?" "No, thank you, Gaspare. Don Emilio will row me. We are only going a very little way." She stepped in. As Artois followed her he said to Gaspare: "Those fishermen have gone?" "Five minutes ago, Signore. There they are!"
She felt a rush of tenderness for Ruffo, just because he was so young, and sang and brought back to her the piercing truth of the everlasting renewal that goes hand in hand with the everlasting passing away. "Ruffo Ruffo!" Almost as Vere had once called "Pescator!" she called. And as Ruffo had once come running up to Vere he came now to Vere's mother. "Good-evening, Ruffo."
Or, perhaps, he felt it his duty to be on guard against all strangers who approached them. She knew well his fixed belief that she and Vere depended entirely on him, felt always perfectly safe when he was near. And she liked to have him near but not just at this moment. Yet she did not feel that she could ask him to go. "Thank you very much for your gratitude, Ruffo," she said.
Ruffo refused to send the papers in, and said decisively that, if Nelson saw fit to break the armistice then existing, between the signature of the capitulation and its execution, he would aid neither with men nor guns. Finally, he went on board the "Foudroyant;" but after an animated discussion, which rose nearly to an altercation, neither party yielded his ground.
They had been given to her, but she had not heeded them. She saw a brown body shoot through the air from the rocks and disappear into the shining sea. Was it Ruffo? With an effort she remembered that she had left Ruffo in the tall house, in the room where the green parrot was. She walked on slowly till she came to the place where Artois had seen Ruffo with his mother.
"Oh yes. I had a talk with Ruffo the other night. And he told me several things." Each time Hermione mentioned Ruffo's name it seemed to Artois that her voice softened, almost that she gave the word a caress. He longed to ask her something, but he was afraid to. He would try not to interfere with Fate. But he would not hasten its coming if it were coming. And he knew nothing.
Far off he still heard Ruffo's voice drifting away in the mist out to the great sea. And he saw the vague form of Hermione leaning down over the terrace wall, towards the sea, the song, and Ruffo.
It was Ruffo preparing to go, feeling that he scarcely belonged to this company, although he looked in no way shy, and had been smiling broadly at Vere's narrative of the discomfiture of the Marchesino. "Ruffo," said Hermione, "you must wait a moment." "Si, Signora?" "I am going to give you a few more cigarettes." Vere sent a silent but brilliant "Thank you" to her mother.
And then she stood trembling. Yes, it was Maurice whom she had seen again for an instant in the melting look of Ruffo's face. She felt frightened in the dark. Maurice when he kissed her for the last time, had looked at her like that. It could not be fancy. It was not. Was this the very first time she had noticed in Ruffo a likeness to her dead husband? She asked herself if it was. Yes.
He approached it, made a sign of the cross, bent down his head and examined it closely, but did not touch it. Artois and Vere watched him closely. He lifted up his head at last. "I know who brought the fattura della morte here," he said, solemnly. "I know." "Who?" said Vere. "It was Ruffo." "Ruffo!" Vere reddened. "Ruffo! He loves our house, and he loves us!" "It is Ruffo, Signorina. It is Ruffo.
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