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Page 72
"What am I to do?" he cried; "it is not like the lady to
be late. We shall miss the train."
"Let us drive slowly," said the driver, "and you shall
call her by name as we go."
So they started down into the night, Philip calling
"Harriet! Harriet! Harriet!" And there she was, waiting
for them in the wet, at the first turn of the zigzag.
"Harriet, why don't you answer?"
"I heard you coming," said she, and got quickly in. Not
till then did he see that she carried a bundle.
"What's that?"
"Hush--"
"Whatever is that?"
"Hush--sleeping."
Harriet had succeeded where Miss Abbott and Philip had
failed. It was the baby.
She would not let him talk. The baby, she repeated, was
asleep, and she put up an umbrella to shield it and her from
the rain. He should hear all later, so he had to conjecture
the course of the wonderful interview--an interview between
the South pole and the North. It was quite easy to
conjecture: Gino crumpling up suddenly before the intense
conviction of Harriet; being told, perhaps, to his face that
he was a villain; yielding his only son perhaps for money,
perhaps for nothing. "Poor Gino," he thought. "He's no
greater than I am, after all."
Then he thought of Miss Abbott, whose carriage must be
descending the darkness some mile or two below them, and his
easy self-accusation failed. She, too, had conviction; he
had felt its force; he would feel it again when she knew
this day's sombre and unexpected close.
"You have been pretty secret," he said; "you might tell
me a little now. What do we pay for him? All we've got?"
"Hush!" answered Harriet, and dandled the bundle
laboriously, like some bony prophetess--Judith, or Deborah,
or Jael. He had last seen the baby sprawling on the knees
of Miss Abbott, shining and naked, with twenty miles of view
behind him, and his father kneeling by his feet. And that
remembrance, together with Harriet, and the darkness, and
the poor idiot, and the silent rain, filled him with sorrow
and with the expectation of sorrow to come.
Monteriano had long disappeared, and he could see
nothing but the occasional wet stem of an olive, which their
lamp illumined as they passed it. They travelled quickly,
for this driver did not care how fast he went to the
station, and would dash down each incline and scuttle
perilously round the curves.
"Look here, Harriet," he said at last, "I feel bad; I
want to see the baby."
"Hush!"
"I don't mind if I do wake him up. I want to see him.
I've as much right in him as you."
Harriet gave in. But it was too dark for him to see the
child's face. "Wait a minute," he whispered, and before she
could stop him he had lit a match under the shelter of her
umbrella. "But he's awake!" he exclaimed. The match went out.
"Good ickle quiet boysey, then."
Philip winced. "His face, do you know, struck me as all
wrong."
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