"You have a son," the doctor said, still more gently but with a hint of respect in his voice. "You should be proud and happy because he is a magnificent boy."
One by one the words were beginning to penetrate, to acquire a meaning. Marianne's hands moved slowly over her body, and as realization broke over her that the monstrous swelling had gone, that her stomach was almost flat once more, the tears welled from her eyes.
They were tears of joy, relief and gratitude toward a Providence that had taken pity on her. As the doctor had said, it was over. Never had the word "delivery" been charged with a deeper meaning.
It was as though the bars of an iron cage which had stood between her and a glorious landscape bathed in sunlight had fallen away all at once. She was free. Free at last! And the very word itself was as if she had newly rediscovered it.
Rebecca, returning with the child in her arms, mistook the reason for the tears that were rolling down her face in a melancholy stream.
"You must not cry," she said gently. "You made the right choice, for it would have been a shame to lose such a child as this. See how beautiful he is?"
She was holding out her arms with their soft burden but even as she did so the reaction came, harsh and sudden. Marianne set her jaw and turned her head away.
"Take it away! I don't want to look at it!"
The Jewess frowned. Accustomed as she was to the unpredictable ways of women, she was shocked by the violence in the girl's voice. Even where the child was not wanted, the most stubborn and determined woman would be softened with pride and pleasure after giving birth to a son. She persisted, as though she had not understood.
"Do you not want to see your son?"
But Marianne shut her eyes tightly with a desperate obstinacy. It was almost as if she were afraid of what she might see. She rolled her head on the pillow and the damp mass of her hair clung like seaweed about her face.
"No! Send for Donna Lavinia. She must look after it. I only want to sleep… sleep, that's all I want."
"You shall sleep later," Rebecca said sharply. "It is not finished yet. Another half hour or so."
She was laying the child down in the big cradle of gilded wood which two women had brought into the room when Donna Lavinia returned.
The housekeeper's eyes were like stars. Oblivious of everything else, she went straight to the bed and fell on her knees beside it, as though before an altar, and pressed her lips fervently to the hand which lay abandoned on the sheet.
"Thank you," she murmured. "Oh, thank you… our princess!"
Embarrassed by a gratitude she could not feel was in any way deserved, Marianne tried to withdraw her hand. She could feel it wet with tears.
"Please! Don't thank me so, Donna Lavinia! I—I don't deserve it. Only tell me—that you are happy. That is all I want—"
"Happy? Oh, my lady—"
Unable to say any more, she rose and turned to Rebecca. Drawing herself up gravely, she held out her arms.
"Give me the prince," she ordered.
The sound of the title came as a shock to Marianne. She realized all at once that the tiny thing which, while it still lay within her body, she had refused even to think of as a child, this formless being had taken on a new identity on coming into the world. He was the heir! The one hope of a man who, from the day of his own tragic birth, had been paying for someone else's sin, a man so wretched that he could be grateful for a son sired by another man—even such a man! On the little bundle of fine linen and lace which Donna Lavinia was cradling to her heart with all the love and worship she might have given to the infant Savior himself, rested the weight of centuries of tradition, of a great name and vast estates and of fabulous riches…
A bitter, resentful voice muttered deep in her heart: "It is Damiani's child! The monstrous issue of an evil man whose life was all wickedness." And it was answered in Donna Lavinia's calm, grave tones: "He is the prince! The last of the Sant'Annas, and nothing and no one can ever alter that now!" And it was the calm certainty of love and loyalty which carried the day, just as when light and darkness meet, the light always prevails.
Standing in a pool of sunlight that poured into the room, Donna Lavinia held up an antique flask which she had taken from a small box and it shone with a gleam of dull gold. She turned a tiny drop from it onto a fine linen cloth and passed it over the baby's lips.
"This wheaten flour comes from your lands, my lord. It is the bread that nourishes all those who are your own, servants and peasants. They make it grow for you, but you must watch all your life that it does not fail them."
She repeated the action with almost the same words, pouring out from another, similar flask the very lifeblood of the Tuscan soiclass="underline" a wine, dark, red and thick as the vital fluid itself.
When it was done, the old woman turned again to the bed where Marianne sat watching, fascinated in spite of herself, the stages of this curious little ceremony which had the grave simplicity of a religious rite.
"My lady," she said earnestly, "the priest will be here in a moment from the church of St. Mary Draperis to baptize the young prince. What name is it Your Highness's wish that he shall be given?"
Taken unawares, Marianne felt herself flushing. Why must Donna Lavinia force her into a maternal role she did not want? Surely the old lady must know that the birth was simply part of a bargain between her master and the woman she persisted in regarding as her mistress, a bargain that was only the prelude to a final separation. Or was she trying to ignore it? Probably that was it, because she was making no attempt to bring the child to his mother. Yet some answer had to be given.
"I don't know," Marianne said faintly. "I don't think it is for me to decide… Have you no suggestion to make?"
"Yes, indeed! If it is agreeable to Your Highness, Prince Corrado would wish the child to be called by the family name of Sebastiano. But it is usual for him to bear that of his maternal grandfather also."
"But surely Don Sebastiano was Prince Corrado's grandfather, not his father?"
"That is so. But he preferred that the name Ugolino should not be used again. Will you tell me your father's name, my lady?"
Marianne felt as if the jaws of a trap were closing around her. Donna Lavinia knew what she was doing. She was deliberately seeking to bind the child's mother, willy-nilly, to the family she was endeavoring to leave. Marianne had never felt so weak and exhausted. She was tired out. Why did they have to bother her with the baby? Why couldn't they leave her alone even now and let her rest? She had a sudden vision of the portrait that reigned over her salon in Paris. Surely the proud and splendid Marquis d'Asselnat, whose title of nobility went back to the Crusades, in whatever warrior heaven he was now, would be angry to see his name given to a child of the steward Damiani? But even as the thought crossed her mind, she heard herself answering in a dreamlike voice that did not seem to belong to her, as though driven to the capitulation, as it seemed to her, by some power stronger than herself.
"His name was Pierre… Pierre-Armand…"
Her whole subconscious being was in rebellion against what she felt to be her own weakness, but although she tried to fight it the vast weariness overcame her. Her eyelids were like lead and her brain was sinking into a fog. She had fallen into a deep sleep even before Rebecca had finished her ministrations.
Donna Lavinia stood for a moment looking at the slender form, so thin and frail now that it seemed lost in the great bed. There were tears in her eyes. Was it possible for so much strength of will to endure in one so young and so exhausted? Even after all that she had been through, she still retained sufficient presence of mind to reject the child, refusing to allow herself to succumb to the powerful maternal instinct.