Part 28 (1/2)

He spoke as if he were questioning his own intellect for the reason, not asking it of her. And she did not try to answer his question.

”I suppose,” he continued, ”it is because you are the only human being who has partially understood that there is something with me that sets me apart from all my kind, from all the others.”

”With you?” Lily said.

She felt horribly frightened and yet strong and earnest.

”Yes, with me,” he answered. ”I told you that I was a haunted man. Miss Alston, can you, will you bear to hear what it is that is with me, and why it comes. It is a story that, perhaps, your father might forbid you to read. I don't know. And, if it was fiction, perhaps he would be right. But--but--I think--I wonder--you might help me. I can't see how, but--I feel--”

He faltered suddenly, and seemed for the first time to become self-conscious and confused.

”Tell me, please,” Lily said.

She felt rather as if she were beginning to read some strange French story by night. Maurice still stood on the hearth.

”It is a sound that is with me,” he said. ”Only that; never anything else but that.”

”A sound,” she repeated.

She thought of their conversation about the bells.

”Yes, it is a cry--the cry of a child.”

”Yes?”

”That's nothing--you think? Absurd for a man to heed such a trifle?”

”Why do you think it comes?”

Maurice hesitated. His eyes searched the face of the little girl with an almost hard gaze of scrutiny, as if he were trying to sum up the details of her nature.

”Long ago--before I came here, before I was qualified, I was cruel, bitterly cruel to a child,” he said at last, speaking now very coldly and distinctly.

His eyes were on Lily. Had she made just then any movement of horror or of disgust, had an expression betokening fear of him come into her eyes, Maurice knew that his lips would be sealed, that he would bid her good-night and leave her. But she only looked more intent, more expectant. He went on.

”I was bitterly cruel to my own child,” he said.

Then Lily moved suddenly. Maurice thought she was going to start up. If she had intended to she choked the impulse. Was she shocked? He could not tell. She had turned her face away from him. He wondered why, but he did not know that those last words had given to Lily an abrupt and fiery insight into the depths of her heart.

”At that time,” Maurice said, still speaking very distinctly and quietly, ”I was desperately ambitious. I was bitten by the viper whose poison, stealing through all a man's veins, is emulation. My only desire, my only aim in life was to beat all the men of my year, to astonish all the authorities of the hospital to which I was attached by the brilliance of my attainments and my achievements, I was ambition incarnate, and such mad ambition is the most cruel thing in the world.

And my child interfered with my ambition. It cried, how it cried!”

He was becoming less definitely calm.

”It cried through my dreams, my thoughts, my endeavours, my determinations. Do you know what a weapon a sound can be, Miss Alston?

Perhaps not. A sound can be like a sword and pierce you, like a bludgeon and strike you down. A little sound can nestle in your life, and change all the colour and all the meaning of it. The cry of the living child was terrible to me, I thought then. But--then--I had never heard the cry of the dead child. You see I wanted to forget something. And the tiny cry of the child recalled it. There were no words in the cry, and yet there were words,--so it seemed to me--telling over a past history. This history--well, I want to say to you--”

Lily had now put a guard on watch over against her impulsive nature.

When Maurice stopped speaking she was able to look towards him again and murmur: