For a few moments there was silence; then she cried, in the accent of reproach, of accusation:
“Can’t you see? You were his child!”
“Old Oscar’s?... Sometimes I have thought it might be so. I am dark like him. But we can never know it now.”
“I know it! The devil in that bad old man has slept in you and is waking in little Oscar,—my child, my child! That is what you have brought me for my love. I took you because I loved you, because I was mad to have you. I wanted you just for myself, just to give me joy. Now! Now!... I can sit and watch the child who is me fight with that devil. Oh! there is nothing but pain!”
IV
MOODS of the night pass with their tragic glooms, and the first lines of sorrow fade into dull distaste and distant apprehension. Husband and wife met day by day, and slowly the black cloud between them became imperceptibly mist: the man dared raise his eyes to that pitiable face, and the silent wife began to speak. Doctors had come and applied their poultices against panic,—the vast circle of probabilities, the excellences of regimen.
Then the engineer, in the fulfilment of his business engagements, had gone away for six weeks, which the mother and child had spent at the seacoast for a change of air. Early in September they were living once more in the pleasant country house outside the great city, and husband and wife were talking almost confidently of what they should do in this matter and that, speaking with more and more certainty as the days slipped past. Something grave in the woman’s voice, a touch of doubt in the glance between them—those signs alone remained, and the memory.
Another trip to the mines was to be made; the date of departure Simmons put off, in order that he might take his wife to the large dance at the Bellflowers’. On this day he returned from the city by an early afternoon train. When the coachman drew up before the house, no one could be seen about the place. Simmons called out heartily: