"No, Marianne. It's impossible. I cannot wait. In any case, I shall have to go secretly. There will be risks, fighting, perhaps, for the English will not let me sail out of the harbor without giving chase. I don't want to expose you to those risks. When you are quite better, you can go quietly aboard a Greek ship with Jolival and sail peacefully back to Europe. Once there, you have enough friends among seafaring men to find a vessel willing to dare the English blockade and carry you across the Atlantic."
"I'm not afraid of danger. Nothing can frighten me as long as I'm with you."
"You alone, perhaps, but aren't you forgetting, Marianne? You are no longer alone. Have you forgotten the child? Do you want to expose him when he's no more than a few hours old, to the perils of the sea, of gunfire and the risk of shipwreck? This is war, Marianne."
She broke free of his tender clasp and fell back on her pillows. Her face had gone very pale and there was a painful tightness in her chest. The child! Did he have to remind her? And what need had Jason to trouble himself about the little bastard? Did he seriously imagine she was going to take it with her to that other life, which was to be all clean and fresh and new? That she was going to bring up Damiani's child with his, the children that she longed to give him? In her uncertainty, she burst out angrily to gain time: "It is not war! Even here at the ends of the earth we know that there has been no formal declaration of war between Britain and the United States."
"Certainly. War has not been declared, but incidents are becoming more and more frequent and it will be only a matter of weeks. Mr. Canning knows that. He'd not have hesitated to impound my brig if she hadn't been protected by Turhan Bey's colors. Would you rather it caught me here and left me rotting in an English prison while my friends and fellow countrymen were fighting?"
"I want you to be free and happy… but I want to keep you with me."
It was a cry of despair and in the same instant Marianne had cast herself on Jason's chest and was burying her face in his coat while her thin arms—still so pitifully thin and the skin almost transparent—encircled his broad shoulders.
He held her to him, grieving for the hurt he had been forced to cause her once again, cradling her like a child while his hand caressed the soft curls at the nape of her neck.
"You can't keep me like that, my heart. I am a man, a seaman, and I must live according to my nature. Besides… would you truly love me if I were content to hide behind your skirts when danger threatened? Would you love a coward without honor?"
"I should love you anyhow…"
"No, you wouldn't. You're deceiving yourself, Marianne. If I were to listen to you, my sweet, a day would come when you would blame me for my cowardice. You'd throw it in my face with scorn and contempt. And you would be right. As God is my witness, I'd give anything to be able to stay with you, but I must choose America."
"America!" she said bitterly. "That endless country… with so many people in it. Does she really need you, just one among her countless children?"
"She needs them all. America only won her freedom because all those who wanted it joined together to make one people! I come of that free people… one grain of sand on the seashore, yet that grain, carried away on the winds, is lost forever."
Marianne was weeping now, with little, hard, gasping sobs, and clinging with all her strength to the virile form that was a solid wall to her, a refuge that she was about to lose once more, and for how long? For she had lost, she knew that. She had always known it. From the first words he had uttered, she had known that she was fighting a losing battle, that she could never hold him.
As though he had divined her thought, he murmured into her hair: "Be brave, my sweet. We shall be together again soon. Even if the chances of war mean that I cannot be there to greet you when you land at Charleston, everything will be ready to welcome you. To welcome you both, you and the baby. There will be a house, servants and an old friend of mine to look after you…"
Marianne had stiffened at the mention of the child and once again she avoided speaking of him, concentrating on her own misery instead.
"I know… but you will not be there," she mourned. "What will become of me without you?"
Gently but firmly he loosened the clinging arms which held him and stood up.
"I'm going to tell you," he said.
Before Marianne could recover from her surprise or make a move to stop him, he had walked quickly from the room, leaving the door open behind him. She heard him go swiftly across the boudoir, calling: "Jolival! Jolival! Come here!"
A moment later he was back with the vicomte on his heels. But what made Marianne gasp was the realization that, in his arms, with infinite care, he held a small white woolly bundle from which emerged two tiny, moving pink blobs.
The blood drained from Marianne's face as it came to her that Jason was bringing her the child whose very presence filled her with loathing. She cast about her wildly, seeking childishly for a way of escape, for somewhere to hide from the peril advancing on her, wrapped in a snow-white shawl and carried in the arms of the man she loved.
Coming to the foot of the bed, he tossed back the lock of black hair falling over his eyes with an automatic gesture and beamed triumphantly at the frightened girl.
"This is what is going to become of you, my sweet. An adorable little mother! Your son will keep you company and stop you thinking too much about the war. You can't imagine how quickly this little fellow will make the time pass for you."
He was coming around the bed toward her… In another moment he would be laying the child down on the counterpane… His blue eyes were alight with mischief and in that minute Marianne almost hated him. How could he?
"Take that child away," she articulated between gritted teeth. "I have already said I don't want to see him."
There was a sudden silence, a silence so vast and crushing that Marianne was frightened. Not daring to raise her eyes to Jason's face for fear of what she might see there, she went on in a much milder tone: "Try to understand what he means to me. I—I can't help it."
She had been prepared for an outburst of anger, but Jason's voice remained quiet and perfectly level.
"I don't know what he means to you—and I do not need to know. No, no, don't try to explain. Jolival has done so more than adequately and I am quite aware of the circumstances of the child's conception. But now I am going to tell you what he means to me. He's a fine, strong, healthy little man, something you have made very slowly and brought into the world with suffering that would have served to wipe out the worst of sins, if sin there was, and make it holy. And, most of all, he is your child—yours and only yours. He even looks like you."
"That's true," Jolival put in nervously. "He looks like the portrait of your father."
"Come, look at him at least," Jason persisted. "Have the courage to look, if only for a moment, or else you're not the woman—"
You're not the woman I thought you were. That was what he meant. Nor did his meaning escape Marianne. She knew his demanding private code of honor too well not to have scented danger. If she were to refuse to do as he asked, which he evidently regarded as a perfectly natural thing, a quite normal reflex, she would run the risk of seeing the place she held in his heart shrinking a little. Already she had some reason to think that place less than it had been. For too long life had conspired to show her to Jason in her least attractive light.
She surrendered unconditionally.
"Very well," she sighed. "Show him to me if you insist."
"I do insist," he said gravely.
Marianne had expected that he would show him to her in his arms so that she could take a quick glance, but instead he bent swiftly and set down the trifling burden on one of her pillows, close by his mother's shoulder.