Where Angels Fear to Tread Part 20

Miss Abbott was furious at this final insult to her dead acquaintance.

She was glad that after all she could be so angry with the boy. She glowed and throbbed; her tongue moved nimbly. At the finish, if the real business of the day had been completed, she could have swept majestically from the house. But the baby still remained, asleep on a dirty rug.

Gino was thoughtful, and stood scratching his head. He respected Miss Abbott. He wished that she would respect him. "So you do not advise me?"

he said dolefully. "But why should it be a failure?"

Miss Abbott tried to remember that he was really a child still--a child with the strength and the pa.s.sions of a disreputable man. "How can it succeed," she said solemnly, "where there is no love?"

"But she does love me! I forgot to tell you that."

"Indeed."

"Pa.s.sionately." He laid his hand upon his own heart.

"Then G.o.d help her!"

He stamped impatiently. "Whatever I say displeases you, Signorina. G.o.d help you, for you are most unfair. You say that I ill-treated my dear wife. It is not so. I have never ill-treated any one. You complain that there is no love in this marriage. I prove that there is, and you become still more angry. What do you want? Do you suppose she will not be contented? Glad enough she is to get me, and she will do her duty well."

"Her duty!" cried Miss Abbott, with all the bitterness of which she was capable.

"Why, of course. She knows why I am marrying her."

"To succeed where Lilia failed! To be your housekeeper, your slave, you--" The words she would like to have said were too violent for her.

"To look after the baby, certainly," said he.

"The baby--?" She had forgotten it.

"It is an English marriage," he said proudly. "I do not care about the money. I am having her for my son. Did you not understand that?"

"No," said Miss Abbott, utterly bewildered. Then, for a moment, she saw light. "It is not necessary, Signor Carella. Since you are tired of the baby--"

Ever after she remembered it to her credit that she saw her mistake at once. "I don't mean that," she added quickly.

"I know," was his courteous response. "Ah, in a foreign language (and how perfectly you speak Italian) one is certain to make slips."

She looked at his face. It was apparently innocent of satire.

"You meant that we could not always be together yet, he and I. You are right. What is to be done? I cannot afford a nurse, and Perfetta is too rough. When he was ill I dare not let her touch him. When he has to be washed, which happens now and then, who does it? I. I feed him, or settle what he shall have. I sleep with him and comfort him when he is unhappy in the night. No one talks, no one may sing to him but I. Do not be unfair this time; I like to do these things. But nevertheless (his voice became pathetic) they take up a great deal of time, and are not all suitable for a young man."

"Not at all suitable," said Miss Abbott, and closed her eyes wearily.

Each moment her difficulties were increasing. She wished that she was not so tired, so open to contradictory impressions. She longed for Harriet's burly obtuseness or for the soulless diplomacy of Mrs.

Herriton.

"A little more wine?" asked Gino kindly.

"Oh, no, thank you! But marriage, Signor Carella, is a very serious step. Could you not manage more simply? Your relative, for example--"

"Empoli! I would as soon have him in England!"

"England, then--"

He laughed.

"He has a grandmother there, you know--Mrs. Theobald."

"He has a grandmother here. No, he is troublesome, but I must have him with me. I will not even have my father and mother too. For they would separate us," he added.

"How?"

"They would separate our thoughts."

She was silent. This cruel, vicious fellow knew of strange refinements.

The horrible truth, that wicked people are capable of love, stood naked before her, and her moral being was abashed. It was her duty to rescue the baby, to save it from contagion, and she still meant to do her duty.

But the comfortable sense of virtue left her. She was in the presence of something greater than right or wrong.

Forgetting that this was an interview, he had strolled back into the room, driven by the instinct she had aroused in him. "Wake up!" he cried to his baby, as if it was some grown-up friend. Then he lifted his foot and trod lightly on its stomach.

Miss Abbott cried, "Oh, take care!" She was unaccustomed to this method of awakening the young.

"He is not much longer than my boot, is he? Can you believe that in time his own boots will be as large? And that he also--"

"But ought you to treat him like that?"

He stood with one foot resting on the little body, suddenly musing, filled with the desire that his son should be like him, and should have sons like him, to people the earth. It is the strongest desire that can come to a man--if it comes to him at all--stronger even than love or the desire for personal immortality. All men vaunt it, and declare that it is theirs; but the hearts of most are set elsewhere. It is the exception who comprehends that physical and spiritual life may stream out of him for ever. Miss Abbott, for all her goodness, could not comprehend it, though such a thing is more within the comprehension of women. And when Gino pointed first to himself and then to his baby and said "father-son," she still took it as a piece of nursery prattle, and smiled mechanically.

The child, the first fruits, woke up and glared at her. Gino did not greet it, but continued the exposition of his policy.

"This woman will do exactly what I tell her. She is fond of children.

She is clean; she has a pleasant voice. She is not beautiful; I cannot pretend that to you for a moment. But she is what I require."

The baby gave a piercing yell.

"Oh, do take care!" begged Miss Abbott. "You are squeezing it."

"It is nothing. If he cries silently then you may be frightened. He thinks I am going to wash him, and he is quite right."

"Wash him!" she cried. "You? Here?" The homely piece of news seemed to shatter all her plans. She had spent a long half-hour in elaborate approaches, in high moral attacks; she had neither frightened her enemy nor made him angry, nor interfered with the least detail of his domestic life.

"I had gone to the Farmacia," he continued, "and was sitting there comfortably, when suddenly I remembered that Perfetta had heated water an hour ago--over there, look, covered with a cushion. I came away at once, for really he must be washed. You must excuse me. I can put it off no longer."

"I have wasted your time," she said feebly.

He walked sternly to the loggia and drew from it a large earthenware bowl. It was dirty inside; he dusted it with a tablecloth. Then he fetched the hot water, which was in a copper pot. He poured it out. He added cold. He felt in his pocket and brought out a piece of soap. Then he took up the baby, and, holding his cigar between his teeth, began to unwrap it. Miss Abbott turned to go.

"But why are you going? Excuse me if I wash him while we talk."

"I have nothing more to say," said Miss Abbott. All she could do now was to find Philip, confess her miserable defeat, and bid him go in her stead and prosper better. She cursed her feebleness; she longed to expose it, without apologies or tears.

"Oh, but stop a moment!" he cried. "You have not seen him yet."