Part 25

“I have no young son, Gregorio Livadas, and I will take yours. Not only will I forgive you the debt, but I will give you money. I want the child.”

“By God, you shall not touch him!” cried Gregorio, suddenly finding voice for his passion.

He rushed furiously at Amos, gripped him by the throat, and flung him to the far side of the room. Then he stood by his child with his arms folded on his breast, his eyes flashing and his nostrils dilated. Amos quickly recovered himself, and, in a voice that scarcely trembled, again demanded his money.

“Go away,” shouted Gregorio; “if you come here again, I will kill you. Twice now have I saved my boy from falling into your hands.”

“I wish only to do you a service. You are a beggar, and I am rich enough, ask Heaven, to look after the child. Why should you abuse me because I offer to release you from your debts if you will let me take the child?”

Gregorio answered brusquely that the Jew should not touch the boy. “I will not have him made a Jew.”

“Then you will pay me.”

“I will not. I cannot.”

“I shall take measures, my friend, to force you to pay me. I have not dealt harshly with you. I came here to help you, and you have insulted me and beaten me.”

“Because you are a dog of a Jew, and you have tried to steal my son.”

A nasty look came into the Jew’s eyes,--a cold, cunning look,--and he was about to reply when the door opened and Xantippe entered. She was well dressed, and wore some ornaments of gold. Amos turned toward her, asking the man:

“This is your wife?”

But Gregorio told Xantippe rapidly the history of his adventures with the boy; and the woman, hearing them, moved quietly to the corner where he slept, and took him in her arms.

The Jew smiled. “I see,” he said, “that madam has money. She has taken the advice I gave you the other day. Now I know that you can pay me, and if you do not within two days, Gregorio Livadas, you will repent the insults you have heaped on my head this night.”

He walked quietly to the corner of the room, where Xantippe sat nursing the boy, touched the child gently on the forehead with his lips, and then went out.

For some minutes neither Xantippe nor Gregorio spoke, but the man rubbed the infant’s forehead with his finger as if to wipe out the stain of the Jew’s kiss.

VII--XANTIPPE SPEAKS OUT

At last the silence, roused only by the strident buzzing of the mosquitos, became unendurable. Gregorio gave a preparatory cough and opened his lips to speak, but the words refused to be born. He was unnerved. The odious visitor, the wearying day, the memory of Xantippe’s face at the window, combined to make him fearful. He watched, under his half-closed lids, his wife crouching on the far side of the boy. Once or twice, as he was rubbing the youngster’s forehead, his fingers touched those of his wife as she waved off the mosquitos; but at each contact with them he shivered and his fears increased. He tried, vainly, to get his thoughts straight, and lit a cigarette with apparent calmness, swaggering to the window; but his legs did not cease to tremble, and the unsteadiness of his gait caused Xantippe to smile as she watched him. Resting by the window, Gregorio widened the lips of the lattice and let in a stream of moonbeams that rested on wife and child, illumining the dark corner.

“Gregorio!”

“Yes.”

“Have you told me all? Is there nothing else to tell em about our son and the Jew?”

Gregorio felt he must now speak; it was not possible to keep silence longer. He was pleased that his wife had begun the conversation, for it seemed easier to answer questions than to frame them. “I have told you the whole story. There is no more to tell. It was by accident I found him in the bazaar, and that devil Amos was bending over him. I could kill that man.”

“What good would that do?”

“Fancy if we had lost the boy! Think of the sacrifices we have made for him, and they would have been useless.”

“Have you made any sacrifices, Gregorio?”

The question was quietly asked, but there was a ring of irony in the sound of the voice, and Gregorio, to shun his wife’s gaze, moved into the friendly shadows. For some minutes he did not answer. At length, with a nervous laugh, he replied:

“Of course. We have both made sacrifices, great sacrifices.”

“It is odd,” pursued Xantippe, gently, as if speaking to herself, “that you should so flatter yourself. You professed to care for me once; you only regard me now as a slave to earn money for you.”