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Page 31
"Irma, darling Irma, this letter is for you. I almost
forgot I have a daughter. It will make you unhappy, but I
want you to know everything, and you cannot learn things too
soon. God bless you, my dearest, and save you. God bless
your miserable mother."
Fortunately Mrs. Herriton was in when the letter
arrived. She seized it and opened it in her bedroom.
Another moment, and Irma's placid childhood would have been
destroyed for ever.
Lilia received a brief note from Harriet, again
forbidding direct communication between mother and daughter,
and concluding with formal condolences. It nearly drove her
mad.
"Gently! gently!" said her husband. They were sitting
together on the loggia when the letter arrived. He often
sat with her now, watching her for hours, puzzled and
anxious, but not contrite.
"It's nothing." She went in and tore it up, and then
began to write--a very short letter, whose gist was "Come and
save me."
It is not good to see your wife crying when she
writes--especially if you are conscious that, on the whole,
your treatment of her has been reasonable and kind. It is
not good, when you accidentally look over her shoulder, to
see that she is writing to a man. Nor should she shake her
fist at you when she leaves the room, under the impression
that you are engaged in lighting a cigar and cannot see her.
Lilia went to the post herself. But in Italy so many
things can be arranged. The postman was a friend of Gino's,
and Mr. Kingcroft never got his letter.
So she gave up hope, became ill, and all through the
autumn lay in bed. Gino was distracted. She knew why; he
wanted a son. He could talk and think of nothing else. His
one desire was to become the father of a man like himself,
and it held him with a grip he only partially understood,
for it was the first great desire, the first great passion
of his life. Falling in love was a mere physical
triviality, like warm sun or cool water, beside this divine
hope of immortality: "I continue." He gave candles to Santa
Deodata, for he was always religious at a crisis, and
sometimes he went to her himself and prayed the crude
uncouth demands of the simple. Impetuously he summoned all
his relatives back to bear him company in his time of need,
and Lilia saw strange faces flitting past her in the
darkened room.
"My love!" he would say, "my dearest Lilia! Be calm. I
have never loved any one but you."
She, knowing everything, would only smile gently, too
broken by suffering to make sarcastic repartees.
Before the child was born he gave her a kiss, and said,
"I have prayed all night for a boy."
Some strangely tender impulse moved her, and she said
faintly, "You are a boy yourself, Gino."
He answered, "Then we shall be brothers."
He lay outside the room with his head against the door
like a dog. When they came to tell him the glad news they
found him half unconscious, and his face was wet with tears.
As for Lilia, some one said to her, "It is a beautiful
boy!" But she had died in giving birth to him.
Chapter 5
At the time of Lilia's death Philip Herriton was just
twenty-four years of age--indeed the news reached Sawston on
his birthday. He was a tall, weakly-built young man, whose
clothes had to be judiciously padded on the shoulders in
order to make him pass muster. His face was plain rather
than not, and there was a curious mixture in it of good and
bad. He had a fine forehead and a good large nose, and both
observation and sympathy were in his eyes. But below the
nose and eyes all was confusion, and those people who
believe that destiny resides in the mouth and chin shook
their heads when they looked at him.
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