Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster (best free ereader TXT) 📕

firmly. He gave a loud and curious cry⁠—a cry of interrogation it might be called. Below there was the noise of Perfetta returning with the baby’s milk.

“Go to him,” said Miss Abbott, indicating Philip. “Pick him up. Treat him kindly.”

She released him, and he approached Philip slowly. His eyes were filling with trouble. He bent down, as if he would gently raise him up.

“Help! help!” moaned Philip. His body had suffered too much from Gino. It could not bear to be touched by him.

Gino seemed to understand. He stopped, crouched above him. Miss Abbott herself came forward and lifted her friend in her arms.

“Oh, the foul devil!” he murmured. “Kill him! Kill him for me.”

Miss Abbott laid him tenderly on the couch and wiped his face. Then she said gravely to them both, “This thing stops here.”

“Latte! latte!” cried Perfetta, hilariously ascending the stairs.

“Remember,” she continued, “there is to be no revenge. I will have no more intentional evil. We are not to fight with each other any more.”

“I shall never forgive him,” sighed Philip.

“Latte! latte freschissima! bianca come neve!” Perfetta came in with another lamp and a little jug.

Gino spoke for the first time. “Put the milk on the table,” he said. “It will not be wanted in the other room.” The peril was over at last. A great sob shook the whole body, another followed, and then he gave a piercing cry of woe, and stumbled towards Miss Abbott like a child and clung to her.

All through the day Miss Abbott had seemed to Philip like a goddess, and more than ever did she seem so now. Many people look younger and more intimate during great emotion. But some there are who look older, and remote, and he could not think that there was little difference in years, and none in composition, between her and the man whose head was laid upon her breast. Her eyes were open, full of infinite pity and full of majesty, as if they discerned the boundaries of sorrow, and saw unimaginable tracts beyond. Such eyes he had seen in great pictures but never in a mortal. Her hands were folded round the sufferer, stroking him lightly, for even a goddess can do no more than that. And it seemed fitting, too, that she should bend her head and touch his forehead with her lips.

Philip looked away, as he sometimes looked away from the great pictures where visible forms suddenly become inadequate for the things they have shown to us. He was happy; he was assured that there was greatness in the world. There came to him an earnest desire to be good through the example of this good woman. He would try henceforward to be worthy of the things she had revealed. Quietly, without hysterical prayers or banging of drums, he underwent conversion. He was saved.

“That milk,” said she, “need not be wasted. Take it, Signor Carella, and persuade Mr. Herriton to drink.”

Gino obeyed her, and carried the child’s milk to Philip. And Philip obeyed also and drank.

“Is there any left?”

“A little,” answered Gino.

“Then finish it.” For she was determined to use such remnants as lie about the world.

“Will you not have some?”

“I do not care for milk; finish it all.”

“Philip, have you had enough milk?”

“Yes, thank you, Gino; finish it all.”

He drank the milk, and then, either by accident or in some spasm of pain, broke the jug to pieces. Perfetta exclaimed in bewilderment. “It does not matter,” he told her. “It does not matter. It will never be wanted any more.”

X

“He will have to marry her,” said Philip. “I heard from him this morning, just as we left Milan. He finds he has gone too far to back out. It would be expensive. I don’t know how much he minds⁠—not as much as we suppose, I think. At all events there’s not a word of blame in the letter. I don’t believe he even feels angry. I never was so completely forgiven. Ever since you stopped him killing me, it has been a vision of perfect friendship. He nursed me, he lied for me at the inquest, and at the funeral, though he was crying, you would have thought it was my son who had died. Certainly I was the only person he had to be kind to; he was so distressed not to make Harriet’s acquaintance, and that he scarcely saw anything of you. In his letter he says so again.”

“Thank him, please, when you write,” said Miss Abbott, “and give him my kindest regards.”

“Indeed I will.” He was surprised that she could slide away from the man so easily. For his own part, he was bound by ties of almost alarming intimacy. Gino had the southern knack of friendship. In the intervals of business he would pull out Philip’s life, turn it inside out, remodel it, and advise him how to use it for the best. The sensation was pleasant, for he was a kind as well as a skilful operator. But Philip came away feeling that he had not a secret corner left. In that very letter Gino had again implored him, as a refuge from domestic difficulties, “to marry Miss Abbott, even if her dowry is small.” And how Miss Abbott herself, after such tragic intercourse, could resume the conventions and send calm messages of esteem, was more than he could understand.

“When will you see him again?” she asked. They were standing together in the corridor of the train, slowly ascending out of Italy towards the San Gothard tunnel.

“I hope next spring. Perhaps we shall paint Siena red for a day or two with some of the new wife’s money. It was one of the arguments for marrying her.”

“He has no heart,” she said severely. “He does not really mind about the child at all.”

“No; you’re wrong. He does. He is unhappy, like the rest of us. But he doesn’t try to keep up appearances as we