CHAPTER XXI

THE CALL OF THE BLOOD

It was all clear now, the mystery of Cleo's a.s.surance, of her happiness, of her acceptance of his going without protest.

She had known the truth from the first and had reckoned on his strength and manliness to draw him to her in this hour.

"I'll show her!" he said in fierce rebellion. "I'll give her the money she needs--yes--but her shadow shall never again darken my life. I won't permit this shame to smirch the soul of my boy--I'll die first!"

He moved to the West side of town, permitted no one to learn his new address, sent her money from the general postoffice, and directed all his mail to a lock box he had secured.

He destroyed thus every trace by which she might discover his residence if she dared to venture into New York.

To his surprise it was more than three weeks before he received a reply from her. And the second letter made an appeal well-nigh resistless. The message was brief, but she had instinctively chosen the words that found him. How well she knew that side of his nature! He resented it with rage and tried to read all sorts of sinister guile into the lines. But as he scanned them a second time reason rejected all save the simplest and most obvious meaning the words implied.

The letter was evidently written in a cramped position. She had missed the lines many times and some words were so scrawled they were scarcely legible. But he read them all at last:

"I have been very sick since your letter came with the money. I tried to get up too soon. I have suffered awfully.

You see, I didn't know how much I had gone through. Please don't be angry with me for what neither you nor I can help now. I want to see you just once, and then I won't trouble you any more. I am very weak to-day, but I'll soon be strong again.

"CLEO."

It made him furious, this subtle appeal to his keen sense of fatherhood.

She knew how tenderly he loved his boy. She knew that while such obligations rest lightly on some men, the tie that bound him to his son was the biggest thing in his life. She had been near him long enough to learn the secret things of his inner life. She was using them now to break down the barriers of character and self-respect. He could see it plainly. He hated her for it and yet the appeal went straight to his heart.

Two things in this letter he couldn't get away from:

"You see, I didn't know how much I had gone through."

He kept reading this over. And the next line:

"Please don't be angry with me for what neither you nor I can help now."

The appeal was so human, so simple, so obviously sincere, no man with a soul could ignore it. How could she help it now? She too had been swept into the tragic situation by the blind forces of Nature. After all, had it not been inevitable? Did not such a position of daily intimate physical contact--morning, noon and night--mean just this? Could she have helped it?

Were they not both the victims, in a sense, of the follies of centuries?

Had he the right to be angry with her?

His reason answered, no. And again came the deeper question--can any man ever escape the consequences of his deeds? Deeds are of the infinite and eternal and the smallest one disturbs the universe. It slowly began to dawn on him that nothing he could ever do or say could change one elemental fact. She was a mother--a fact bigger than all the forms and ceremonies of the ages. It was just this thing in his history that made his sin against the wife so poignant, both to her and to his imagination. A child was a child, and he had no right to sneak and play a coward in such an hour.

Step by step the woman's simple cry forced its way into the soul and slowly but surely the rags were stripped from pride, until he began to see himself naked and without sham.

The one thing that finally cut deepest was the single sentence: "You see, I didn't know how much I had gone through----"

He read it again with a feeling of awe. No matter what the shade of her olive cheek or the length of her curly hair, she was a mother with all that big word means in the language of men. Say what he might--of her art in leading him on, of her final offering herself in a hundred subtle ways in their daily life in his home--he was still responsible. He had accepted the challenge at last.

And he knew what it meant to any woman under the best conditions, with a mother's face hovering near and the man she loved by her side. He saw again the scene of his boy's birth. And then another picture--a lonely girl in a strange city without a friend--a cot in the whitewashed ward of a city's hospital--a pair of startled eyes looking in vain for a loved, familiar face as her trembling feet stepped falteringly down into the valley that lies between Life and Death!

A pitiful thing, this hour of suffering and of waiting for the unknown.

His heart went out to her in sympathy, and he answered her letter with a promise to come. But on the day he was to start for Baltimore mammy was stricken with a cold which developed into pneumonia. Unaccustomed to the rigors of a Northern climate, she had been careless and the result from the first was doubtful. To leave her was, of course, impossible.

He sent for a doctor and two nurses and no care or expense was spared, but in spite of every effort she died. It was four weeks before he returned from the funeral in the South.

He reached Baltimore in a blinding snowstorm the week preceding Christmas.

Cleo had left the hospital three weeks previous to his arrival, and for some unexplained reason had spent a week or ten days in Norfolk and returned in time to meet him.

He failed to find her at the address she had given him, but was directed to an obscure hotel in another quarter of the city.

He was surprised and puzzled at the att.i.tude a.s.sumed at this meeting. She was nervous, irritable, insolent and apparently anxious for a fight.

"Well, why do you stare at me like that?" she asked angrily.

"Was I staring?" he said with an effort at self-control.

"After all I've been through the past weeks," she said bitterly, "I didn't care whether I lived or died."

"I meant to have come at once as I wrote you. But mammy's illness and death made it impossible to get here sooner."

"One excuse is as good as another," she retorted with a contemptuous toss of her head.

Norton looked at her in blank amazement. It was inconceivable that this was the same woman who wrote him the simple, sincere appeal a few weeks ago. It was possible, of course, that suffering had embittered her mind and reduced her temporarily to the nervous condition in which she appeared.

"Why do you keep staring at me?" she asked again, with insolent ill-temper.

He was so enraged at her evident attempt to bully him into an att.i.tude of abject sympathy, he shot her a look of rage, seized his hat and without a word started for the door.

With a cry of despair she was by his side and grasped his arm:

"Please--please don't!"

"Change your tactics, then, if you have anything to say to me."

She flushed, stammered, looked at him queerly and then smiled:

"Yes, I will, major--please don't be mad at me! You see, I'm just a little crazy. I've been through so much since I came here I didn't know what I was saying to you. I'm awfully sorry--let me take your hat----"

She took his hat, laid it on the table and led him to a seat.

"Please sit down. I'm so glad you've come, and I thank you for coming. I'm just as humble and grateful as I can be. You must forget how foolish I've acted. I've been so miserable and scared and lonely, it's a wonder I haven't jumped into the bay. And I just thought at last that you were never coming."

Norton looked at her with new astonishment. Not because there was anything strange in what she said--he had expected some such words on his arrival, but because they didn't ring true. She seemed to be lying. There was an expression of furtive cunning in her greenish eyes that was uncanny. He couldn't make her out. In spite of the effort to be friendly she was repulsive.

"Well, I'm here," he said calmly. "You have something to say--what is it?"