The Call of the Blood Part 71

"Hermione!" he said.

He was actually panting as if he had been running. He moved a few steps towards the edge of the summit. She followed him.

"You are angry that I didn't tell you! But--I wanted to say it. I wanted to--to----"

She lifted his hands to her lips.

"Thank you for giving me a child," she said.

Then tears came into his eyes and ran down over his cheeks. That he should be thanked by her--that scourged the genuine good in him till surely blood started under the strokes.

"Don't thank me!" he said. "Don't do that! I won't have it!"

His voice sounded angry.

"I won't ever let you thank me for anything," he went on. "You must understand that."

He was on the edge of some violent, some almost hysterical outburst. He thought of Gaspare casting himself down in the boat that morning when he had feared that his padrone was drowned. So he longed to cast himself down and cry. But he had the strength to check his impulse. Only, the checking of it seemed to turn him for a moment into something made not of flesh and blood but of iron. And this thing of iron was voiceless.

She knew that he was feeling intensely and respected his silence. But at last it began almost to frighten her. The boyish look she loved had gone out of his face. A stern man stood beside her, a man she had never seen before.

"Maurice," she said, at length. "What is it? I think you are suffering."

"Yes," he said.

"But--but aren't you glad? Surely you are glad?"

To her the word seemed mean, poverty-stricken. She changed it.

"Surely you are thankful?"

"I don't know," he answered, at last. "I am thinking that I don't know that I am worthy to be a father."

He himself had fixed a limit. Now, G.o.d was putting a period to his wild youth. And the heart--was that changed within him?

Too much was happening. The cup was being filled too full. A great longing came to him to get away, far away, and be alone. If it had been any other day he would have gone off into the mountains, by himself, have stayed out till night came, have walked, climbed, till he was exhausted.

But to-day he could not do that. And soon Artois would be coming. He felt as if something must snap in brain or heart.

And he had not slept. How he wished that he could sleep for a little while and forget everything. In sleep one knows nothing. He longed to be able to sleep.

"I understand that," she said. "But you are worthy, my dear one."

When she said that he knew that he could never tell her.

"I must try," he muttered. "I'll try--from to-day."

She did not talk to him any more. Her instinct told her not to. Almost directly they were walking down to the priest's house. She did not know which of them had moved first.

When they got there they found Lucrezia up. Her eyes were red, but she smiled at Hermione. Then she looked at the padrone with alarm. She expected him to blame her for having disobeyed his orders of the day before. But he had forgotten all about that.

"Get breakfast, Lucrezia," Hermione said. "We'll have it on the terrace.

And presently we must have a talk. The sick signore is coming up to-day for collazione. We must have a very nice collazione, but something wholesome."

"Si, signora."

Lucrezia went away to the kitchen thankfully. She had heard bad news of Sebastiano yesterday in the village. He was openly in love with the girl in the Lipari Isles. Her heart was almost breaking, but the return of the padrona comforted her a little. Now she had some one to whom she could tell her trouble, some one who would sympathize.

"I'll go and take a bath, Hermione," Maurice said.

And he, too, disappeared.

Hermione went to talk to Gaspare and tell him what to get in Marechiaro.

When breakfast was ready Maurice came back looking less pale, but still unboyish. All the bright sparkle to which Hermione was accustomed had gone out of him. She wondered why. She had expected the change in him to be a pa.s.sing thing, but it persisted.

At breakfast it was obviously difficult for him to talk. She sought a reason for his strangeness. Presently she thought again of Artois. Could he be the reason? Or was Maurice now merely preoccupied by that great, new knowledge that there would soon be a third life mingled with theirs?

She wondered exactly what he felt about that. He was really such a boy at heart despite his set face of to-day. Perhaps he dreaded the idea of responsibility. His agitation upon the mountain-top had been intense.

Perhaps he was rendered unhappy by the thought of fatherhood. Or was it Emile?

When breakfast was over, and he was smoking, she said to him:

"Maurice, I want to ask you something."

A startled look came into his eyes.

"What?" he said, quickly.

He threw his cigarette away and turned towards her, with a sort of tenseness that suggested to her a man bracing himself for some ordeal.

"Only about Emile."

"Oh!" he said.

He took another cigarette, and his att.i.tude at once looked easier. She wondered why.

"You don't mind about Emile being here, do you?"

Maurice was nearly answering quickly that he was delighted to welcome him. But a suddenly born shrewdness prevented him. To-day, like a guilty man, he was painfully conscious, painfully alert. He knew that Hermione was wondering about him, and realized that her question afforded him an opportunity to be deceptive and yet to seem quite natural and truthful.

He could not be as he had been, to-day. The effort was far too difficult for him. Hermione's question showed him a plausible excuse for his peculiarity of demeanor and conduct. He seized it.

"I think it was very natural for you to bring him," he answered.

He lit the cigarette. His hand was trembling slightly.

"But--but you had rather I hadn't brought him?"

As Maurice began to act a part an old feeling returned to him, and almost turned his lie into truth.