CHAPTER IV
THE MYSTERY PAUSES, AND OTHER THINGS GO FORWARD
The doctor drew back from examining a badly bruised, cut, and skinnedyouth and smiled.
"Well, young man," said he, "if I were you, the next time I saw anautomobile making right for me, I'd get out of its way."
"I guess I'm all right," Herrick grinned. The grin was rather sketchy.He was not very secure yet in which world he was.
On first recovering consciousness he had found himself lying with hishead in Christina's lap, and had supposed he was in heaven. But ithadn't been heaven; it had still been the middle of Ninety-third Streetand Christina was sitting in the dust thereof. And then he had anotherglimmer; he was on a couch, and, facing him, Christina was huddled onher heels on the floor with large tears running down her nose andplumping off the end of it into a bowl, full of funny red water, thatshe held; a cloth in her hand was even redder, and her mouth had such apiteous droop that if only he could have sat up it would have been thenatural thing to kiss it. "Darling!" he had said, to comfort her; andshe had said, eagerly, "Yes!" just as if that were her name; thenanother blackness. And now the couch was in her drawing-room andeverywhere was the scent and the sheen of her country flowers--larkspurand sweet alyssum and mignonette, the white of wild cucumber vine, thelavender of horsemint, and everywhere the breath of clover--the housewas filled with them! Wherever did she get them?
"What's that?" he asked sharply. It was a policeman's helmet.
The policeman was merely left there,--the automobile having escapedwithout leaving its number behind it,--to take his evidence of theaccident. Herrick rather dreaded being laughed at for his surety that itwas no accident; but a man who had seen it from a window and the passinglady who had saved his life by shrieking had already testified to thesame effect. They had both declared the offending car to be a graytouring-car; a very dark gray, Herrick thought. The policeman, who hadread his Sunday special, stooped to be communicative. "Do you rememberthe young feller," he asked, "that was a witness to the Ingham inquest?Do you remember he got there late through bein' knocked over by 'nautomobile?"
Herrick stared.
"Well, the young lady called him on the 'phone with me listenin', an' Iguess you're on a'ready to what kind of a car it was that hit him--'twasa gray tourin'-car."
By-and-by, when the policeman and the doctor were gone, and Mrs. Hopeand Mrs. Deutch, without whom no crisis in the life of the Hope familyseemed to be complete, had swathed him tastefully in one of Mrs. Hope'skimonos they began to tell him that he must send for his things, becausehe would have to convalesce as Christina's guest. The idea wasdistressing to him, but he was a little surprised by the soft bitternesswith which Christina opposed it. "Do you want him murdered outright?"she said. "What has he done that he should be mixed up with my house andmy life? I was wrong ever to let him be my friend." She was spreading acloth over a little table which Stanley Ingham had brought close to thecouch. She lifted a lighted lamp out of Herrick's eyes and set it on themantel shelf behind his head. Looking down as the light touched hisbandaged forehead and the unusual pallor of his bronzed face she said,so gently that Herrick's heart melted with a painful sweetness, "Iwarned you!"
"It does look awfully funny," young Ingham exclaimed, "about thistouring-car. Wonder what the police will say to that! Wouldn't opentheir mouths about the letters, and warned me not to open mine. Wouldn'teven let me tell you, Chris!"
"Fortunately," said Christina, "Mr. Herrick had told me before any onecould possibly interfere.--The police think they're genuine, then?"
"You bet they do! At least, I s'pose they do. They didn't say. But theygrabbed them, fast enough."
Christina asked no more, and thereafter, if she kept the talk aroundHerrick quiet, she kept it almost gay. She and the boy ate their dinnerwith him in order to wait on him and watch his comfort; and before longshe seemed scarcely the older of the two. It was all wonderfully simpleand kind; there could be no embarrassment in that light, genialatmosphere; when the dishes had been cleared away the girl went to thepiano and sang softly--tender negro melodies, little folk lullabies,snatches of German love-songs. Just as Herrick, greatly soothed and atpeace, was beginning to feel tired, Deutch arrived and he and StanleyIngham took the patient home in a taxi and put him to bed.
To Herrick's indignant astonishment, it was four or five days before hecould get about again, and at the end of that period the Deutches hadbecome almost as large a part of his life as of the Hopes. It was invain he protested. Mrs. Deutch came twice a day and looked after hiscomfort with a devotion as arbitrary as a mother's; she inspected allhis garments, and, with clucks of consternation, took them away with herand returned them, perfected; between her and Mrs. Grubey a deepdistrust as to each other's cookery arose. She cooked him three meals aday, beside all sorts of elaborate "foreign" trifles, Mr. Deutchbringing them over in a basket, piping hot; and Mrs. Grubey, enteringwith her own dainty contribution of pork chops and canned lobster,professed herself unable to understand how he could eat such messes. Hefinished his memorial of Ingham amid the perpetual bloom and fragranceof Christina's garden flowers; once Mr. Ingham came, with Stanley, toinquire; Mrs. Hope came twice. On her second visit, when he was almostready to re-enter the world, she brought Christina with her.
The girl had lost her air of tragic greatness; there was more color inher face, the pupils of her eyes were less expanded and her nostrilsless inflated. She seemed, too, to have been rather put back into herplace as a young lady, for she smiled sweetly but a little shyly aboutHerrick's room, and left the talking to her mother; when her eyesencountered the photograph which had been replaced over the desk a faintflush suffused her face.
"My daughter has at last allowed herself to be persuaded," said Mrs.Hope, "that Miss Cornish is hiding voluntarily; and that, if there is ablackmailing society trying to slander us and to injure any one who isapt to defend us, the police are quite as capable of dealing with it asshe is. Therefore she is now able to give a little attention to her ownaffairs."
Herrick was sorry for the poor lady; he knew that she was devoted toChristina and that she must have had a great deal to endure. He hadlearned by this time that she had been a Miss Fairfax, and that herfamily, however desperately poor, considered her to have made amisalliance with a mere wealthy manufacturer of wall-papers, like Hope.It had been, indeed, a runaway match and relations with her family werenever really resumed. Now Deutch reported that of late conciliatoryrelatives, making advances to the rising star, had been routed withgreat slaughter. But both men guessed that this had not been the realwish of a person so socially inclined as Mrs. Hope; she was too plainlydragged at the chariot-wheels of a freer spirit, and in this light evenher occasional asperities, her method of communicating with her daughtermainly by protesting exclamations, became only pathetic attempts at anauthority she did not possess. "You know, Mr. Herrick," she now went on,"that the opening of 'The Victors' three weeks from next Thursday nightis the great occasion of my daughter's life. I can't begin to tell youwhat it means to us; it's everything. At such a time I think we--weought to have our friends about us. The Inghams are so kind; they aretaking me in their box. But Christina had already ordered me two of thebest seats in the house, and I'm sure I'm speaking for her, too, when Isay what a pleasure it would be if you would accept them. Indeed itwould be a favor.--My dear, can't you persuade him?"
"It's only--" said Christina, slowly, "that I'm afraid."
"Christina! I do wish you would drop that ridiculous pose. No horriblefate has overtaken me!"
"Ah, mother," said the girl, touching her mother's shoulder, "perhapsbecause we were both born, you and I, under the same ban!"
"My dear!" cried Mrs. Hope, as if Christina had mentioned somethingindecent. "I hope you won't pay any attention to her, Mr. Herrick."
"I certainly shan't. I shall be too glad to get those seats."
"Ah, now you're a dear! You'll see Christina at her best, and I'm goingto say that that's something to
see. It's a magnificent part and Mr.Wheeler has been so wonderful in rehearsing her in it. Christina doesn'tfind him at all intimidating or brutal, as people say. Though, ofcourse, he's a very profane man."
"I love every bone in his body," Christina said.
"My child! I wish you wouldn't speak so immoderately!"
"I'm an immoderate person," the girl replied. She rose, and pointing outof the window she said to Herrick--"You sat here? It was there, on thatshade?"
"Yes."
Christina shuddered; just then Mr. Deutch arrived with the luncheonbasket. The ladies passed him in taking their leave and Christinaslipped her hand through his arm. "Mr. Herrick," she said, "Herr Hermydoes not look wise--no, Herr Hermy, you don't,--but if ever I puzzleyou, ask him. Do not ask Tante Deutch, she will tell you something nobleand solid, for she herself is wise, and so she can never understand me.But Herr Hermy is a little foolish, just as I am. He is flighty; he hasthe artistic temperament and understands us; he knows me to thecore.--Herr Hermy, he is coming to see me act; tell him I am really Sal,not Evadne; tell him that I am a hardworking girl."
As he came to know her better, Herrick did not need to be told that. Hehad never seen any one work so hard nor take their work quite soseriously. But her advice remained with him and he began to listen morerespectfully to Hermann Deutch on his favorite subject. "Wait till yousee her, Mr. Herrick! She's like Patti, and the others were the chorus;you'll say so, too. And it don't seem but yesterday, hardly, she didn'tknow how she should go to faint, even! Drop herself, she would, aboutthe house, and black and blue herself in bumps! We used to go in thefamily circle, when I had a half-a-dollar or two, and watch greatactresses and when one did something she had a fancy for, she'd pinch melike a pair o' scissors! And she'd be up practising it all night, overand over, and the gas going! She'd wear herself out, and there's thosethat would expect she shouldn't wear them out, too!"
"She takes things too hard," said the lover fondly.
"Yes," said Mr. Deutch, after a pause, "she takes 'em hard, but she candrop 'em quick!" Herrick felt a little knife go through his heart; andthen Deutch added, "Not that she's the way people talk--insincere. Oh,that's foolish talk! She's only quick-like; she sees all things and shefeels all things, and not one of 'em will she keep quiet about! Thoseglass pieces, you know, hang from chandeliers?--when they flash first inthe one light and then the way another strikes 'em, they ain'tinsincere. An' that's the way Miss Christina is--she's young, an' she'sgot curiosity, an' she wants she should know all things an' feel allthings, so she can put 'em in her parts; she wants all the lights to goclean through her. And there's so many of 'em! So many to take in and somany to give out! There ain't one of 'em, Mr. Herrick, but what she'llreflect it right into your face."
Although, in this elaborate fancy, Herrick suspected an echo ofChristina's own eloquence, he did not listen to it less eagerly on thataccount. "After all," he translated, "it's only that she's willingly andextraordinarily impressionable, and then willingly and extraordinarilyexpressive! In that case, instead of being less sincere than otherpeople, she's more so!"
"You got it!" cried Mr. Deutch with satisfaction. "That's what theseoutsiders, they can't ever understand. The best friend she ever had saysto me once, 'If ever Miss Hope gets enough really good parts to keep herinterested, she'll take things more quietly around the house!' That'sbeen a great comfort to me, Mr. Herrick.--She's got these emotions inher, I'll say to myself, and what harm is it she should let 'em off?"
"The best friend she ever had?"
"Well, now, Mr. Herrick, he was an old hand when she first came into thebusiness. He taught her a lot; she'd be the first to say so. Often I'vethought if she hadn't been so young then, what a match they might ha'made of it! But she never thought of it, nor, I shouldn't wonder, heneither, and now it's too late. But don't you worry because she takesall things hard; she's got a kind of a spring in her. When she's laiddown to die of one thing, comes along another and she gets up again."
If Herrick did not complete this analysis, it was not for lack ofopportunity. As soon as he was about again he found himself as merged inthe life of the Hopes as were the Deutches themselves. "You interestChristina," Mrs. Hope told him. "You take her mind off these dreadfulthings. It's a very critical week with us. I hope you won't leave heralone."
Herrick did all that in him lay to justify this hope, and if Christinanever urged nor invited, never made herself "responsible" for hispresence, she accepted it unquestioningly. His first outing was a Sundaydinner at their house, and again Christina kept herself in thebackground, and only drew her mother's affectionate wrath upon herselfby one remark; saying, as Herrick helped himself from the dish the maidwas passing him, "I hope it's not poisoned!"
She seemed rather tired, and he hoped this was not because she had madehim come at an outrageously early hour and read her the beginning of hisnovel. He knew she was recasting it into scenes as he read; she got himto tell her all that he meant to do with it and, as they all, save Mrs.Hope, lighted their cigarettes over the coffee in the sitting-room, shebegan telling Wheeler about it.--Wheeler had dined there, too.
Christina's star was a big, stalwart man of about fifty, who had notquite ceased to be a matinee idol in becoming one of the foremost ofproducers. He listened with a good deal of interest and indeed the storylost nothing on Christina's tongue; Herrick began to see that her mindwas a highly sensitized plate which could catch reflections even ofdisembodied things. Then Wheeler exclaimed what an actor's approval hasto say first, whatever he may bring himself to deal with afterward."Why, but there's a play in that!"
"Yes," said Christina, promptly. "For me!"
Humor shone out of the good sense and good feeling of Wheeler's heavy,handsome face. "Give me more coffee, my cormorant! Do you think I wantto play the young lady myself? Nay, 'I know the hour when itstrikes!'--heavy fathers for mine! Stouter than I used to be--Tut-tut,no sugar!--There will be too much of me--Did you get your idea of moralresponsibility out of New England, Mr. Herrick?"
"Well, this form of it I got from such a different source as a verysuave, amiable Italian, Emile Gabrielli, an intending author, too,--alawyer who had exiled himself to Switzerland. Do you know a line ofHowell's?--'The wages of sin is more sinning.' And it's seemed to methat the more-sinning doesn't stop with ourselves; it draws the mostinnocent and indifferent people into our net. Well, I always wanted tofind a vehicle for that notion."
"And your Italian told you this story?"
"Something like it. Set the tone for it, too, in a way. He was a highlyrespectable sentimental person, and used to carry about an old miniatureof a lovely girl to whom, I believe, he had once been betrothed. Thebans had been forbid by cruel parents but he used to brag to me, atfifty, that they could never force him to part from her idolized face!Yet he knew so many shady stories I've often wondered if he hadn't lefthome in order to avoid a circle of too embarrassing clients. At any ratehe had known a woman whose husband had got into trouble with the policein Italy--for swindling, I think he said. She had to clear out anddisappeared. Years afterward he found that she had run into the arms ofa respectable, God-fearing family; the natural prey of cheats becauseyears before their little daughter had been kidnapped or lost and neverfound. They cry out at this young woman's resemblance to the child; theyoung woman puts two and two together into a story which deceives thosewho wish to be deceived, and settles down to be taken care of for therest of her life. It must have been any port in a storm, for I didn'tgather her adopted family had money. Spent all they had in looking forher when she was a baby, as I understood. To Signor Gabrielli the creamof the jest was that this girl was being petted and cherished andlabored for by industrious people who would have perished of horror ifthey had known who she was, and who had not one drop of their blood inher veins.--I may not have got the incidents at all straight, but that'sthe idea."
"But you've changed the relationship--?"
"Oh, yes. I've cut down the family to a daughter and, as you s
ee, I'vereversed the parts--in my story it is the daughter who is deceived; itis the supposed mother who settles down upon the devoted innocence andlabor of a generous girl."
"Oh, of course!" exclaimed Mrs. Hope. "Put it all on the mother!Nowadays, everything's sure to be her fault!"
Christina gave her mother her hand, much as she might have given her acup of tea and said, "Well, but that is only where your novel begins?"
"Yes. I thought the interesting part was all to come. I thought I shouldbe justified in supposing my reformed lady to go back to her old habits,perhaps through the mere claim of genuine ties,--old friendships, realrelationships--to be caught in some serious crime, involve those friendsand, finally, without in the least intending it, draw her daughter andher daughter's lover into her quicksand--of course, by means of theirefforts to pull her out! And then to see what happened!"
"When the daughter finds out," Wheeler cogitated, "that should be astrong scene, a very strong scene.--What made you think of reversing thecharacters?--less trite?"
"Simply, I could handle it this way and not the other. When I had thecheat a young woman, she was very strenuous--I couldn't keep her frombeing the most lurid of common adventuresses. And I had a theory thatpeople are never like that to themselves. Well, as soon as I substituteda rather passee woman she became much quieter--just a feeble, worthless,selfish person a good deal battered by life, and wanting nothing butcomfort--trying to get it in the easiest way. I wanted so much to givethe commonplace quality of crime, of what a simple, sensible, ordinarypiece of business it seems to the person engaged in it--at any rateuntil it's found out, and he begins to be reacted on by fear and otherpeople's minds. Ah, if I can only give these people their own point ofview, and make one thing after another seem quite ordinary and human,just the necessary thing to do! Until they begin to lose their headswhen one gate and then another closes and, finding themselves cornered,they fight like rats in a trap! The good as well as the bad, in onepanic degradation of despair! I heard a figure of crime the other daywhich I should like to carry out. I should like to start with thesmallest blemish on the outside of the clean, rosy apple of respectablesociety, 'the little, pitted speck in garnered fruit, which, rottinginward' lets you, by following it, down and down, from one layer ofhuman living to another, at last hold a whole sphere of crime,collapsed, crumbling and wide open, in your hand. Then I've got to saveEvadne in the end, without the effect of dragging her through atrap-door!"
"Well, if you made it into a play," Wheeler persisted, "would the motheror the daughter be the star-part?"
"I could play both!" Christina cried.
Wheeler laughed aloud. "You are too good to be true!"
"Well, but why not? Why not a dual role? Even if the relationship werefalse, the resemblance would have to be real--it's the backbone of thestory! Mother and I look a good deal alike, but I've seen chanceresemblances incomparably stronger!"
She went on eagerly and Herrick was surprised to see that it was not shealone but Wheeler who took the idea of dramatization seriously. It washis first real gage of what was expected of Christina as anactress--that in a year or two she would be starring on her own account.She was not only Wheeler's leading-woman, she was his find, hisspeculation; he meant to be her manager and Christina meant that heshould, too. Again Ingham's death seemed to be dragging Herrick into thepath of success.
Then his attention was caught by Wheeler's saying, "Well, we must all beas criminal as we can, while we can. Once P. L. B. C. Ten Euyck gets tobe a police inspector there will be no more crime. The word will beblotted from the vocabulary of New York."
"That man!" Mrs. Hope cried.
"Well, all these recent scandals in the Department are making themremove Simmonds; they want somebody beyond the reach of graft; and TenEuyck has resigned his coronership. What does that look like to you?
"It will be nuts to watch," Wheeler went on. "The force, down in hisdistrict, will be shaken up till its teeth rattle. Ten Euyck won't restcontented till he has stopped mice from stealing scraps of cheese! Butmy leading-woman must be civil to him, now, or he's the sort of fellowto get my license revoked. Nobody's ever run up against hisself-righteousness and got away with it, yet. Poor chap, he'd be mightyable if he weren't crazy! I believe I could do a Valjean if I couldengage him as Javert!"
"Don't let us speak forever of that bilious person! Why do you distracta poor girl from her work? Come," cried she to Wheeler, "are we going todo our scene?"
She drove her rather reluctant star to action.--"Young miss!" he said,"it is not every ageing favorite who would take a girl on the word of amutual friend, give her a better part than his own, push her over hisown head, and coach her in private into the bargain!" He put his bighand on Christina's shoulder. "But she's worth it!" he said. "A scenewith her is a tonic to me--I did not know the old man had so much bloodin him! Sally, the poor working-girl, what are you going to do to thecritics, that still sleep unconscious? 'Ha--ha! Wait till Monday week!'or whenever we open!
"'They'll be all gangin' East an' West, They'll be all gane a-glee! They'll be all gangin' East an' West, Courtin' Molly Lee!'
"Mr. Herrick, as you come up Broadway, you don't see her name on thebills! But they might as well be printing the paper!--for the youngergeneration is knocking at the door. Ah, Christina, my dear, thou art thyWheeler's glass, and he in thee calls back the lovely April of hisprime!" His indulgent sardonic glance caught Christina's and the flamingsword of hers drove him to work. They left behind them such a vividsense of Herrick's having written his play and their having taken it,that he might have thought it a scene of his they were working on.
From the room where they were immured strange sounds occasionallyescaped; sometimes Wheeler laughed and sometimes he swore furiously."She'll get everything that he knows out of him!" said Mrs. Hope withgreat satisfaction.
Herrick discovered this, in no ignoble sense, to be the keynote ofChristina's life. It was borne in upon him with every hour that herwork in the theater was the essence of her; that no matter where nor howutterly she should consciously give her heart the unconscious course ofher nature would still flow through the field of dramatic endeavor. Hemight admire or condemn this, like it or leave it; but the jealoushumility of his love must recognize it.
She seemed largely to have recovered from the terrors that had envelopedher upon Ingham's death. If for Nancy Cornish she had lain down to die,for her opening night she had got up again. And she was ready to bendthe whole world to that night's service. Herrick saw that she had alwaysbeen so.
It became a thrilling amusement to him to watch her at work; to see howvividly she perceived, how unscrupulously she absorbed! In thevocabulary of her profession, everything was so much "experience." Allher life long she had sucked out of every creature that came near hersome sort of artistic sustenance; learning from the jests of her ownheart and its despair; out of the shop windows and the night sky. At anage when other girls were being chaperoned to dancing-parties she hadworked,--she with her soft cheek and slight strength and shy eye,--"likea miner buried in a landslide"; she was mistress of her body's everycurve, of her voice's every note; she had read widely and withpassionate intelligence; as soon as she had begun to make money, she hadpoured it into her accomplishments; she was a diligent student ofpassing manners and historic modes, and of each human specimen throughwhich she did not hesitate to run her pin.
For instance, what use had she not made of the Deutches? From HenriettaDeutch she had learned German and a not inconsiderable amount of music;they had a venerated library of standard works that contained a fewmodern continentals in the original; she developed her school-girlFrench by reading the Parisians under Mrs. Deutch's supervision and inItalian she surpassed her; while all the time she learned just enoughknitting to know how people feel when they knit, and just what thesensation is of stirring sugar into the preserves. She liked to go totheir apartment of an evening and, once, when Mrs. Hope sent Herrickafter her, he found her sitting on the fl
oor with her hair down and herhead against Mrs. Deutch's black silk knee while that lady croonedGerman lullabies to the baby she had never borne, and "Herr Hermy"played the pianola. As soon as she had twisted up her hair, she put on along apron and got supper and waited on them all with the charmingdaughterly ways which lent her such a tender girlishness; and Herrickperceived that when a part required her to move about a kitchen shewould be able to welcome the kitchen as an old friend. She couldreproduce Deutch's accent, his whole personal equation, with inhumanexactness, even his tremors at the inquest, his inarticulate stammer--asof a mental dumbness, groping for words--that overtook him in moments ofextreme excitement, she had caught in her net; she had learned from himsome jokes and stories, some student songs, which would have astonishedthe many delicate tea-tables at which she shyly cast down her thievingeyes to observe exactly what service was in vogue; she did not hesitateto stir him up to dreadful stories of old racial hates and thoughHerrick saw her eyes darken and her nostrils expand he knew that she wasdrawing thoroughly into her system the dark passion of retaliation withwhich she would some day scorch an astonished audience. "If ever I get aqueen to do--oh, one of the virtuous queens, of course," she said, "Ishall have to fall back on Tante Deutch." And Herrick saw how right shewas; how all along she had modeled her grand moments--and Christina,though so fond of describing herself as a poor working girl, hadoccasional moments of extreme grandeur--upon that simple, domesticstateliness which was really the stateliness of a great lady.
On the other hand when she was out with her mother she modeledherself--except for a stray vagary of speech--upon Mrs. Hope's excellentidea of a-young-lady-out-with-her-mother-a-la-mode; and she was by nomeans insensible to the glories of the smart world, nor to the luxuriesof the moneyed world. "I want them all," she confessed to Herrick asthey walked up Fifth Avenue from rehearsal. "I covet them; I long to ownthem, and I dare swear I should never be owned by them. I'm infinitelymore fit than those that have them, and thank heaven I've stood out herewhen I was cold and wet and _oh!_ how hopeless, and felt in me theanarchist and his bomb. I was never made to smile on conquerors. Oneman, from these great houses, once taught me how to hate them! How Ishould like to do a Judith! How I should like to _tame_ all this!" Shelooked, with a bitterer gaze than he had ever seen in her, down theincomparable pomp of the great street. Then more lightly, with a curvinglip, "My Deutches, I believe," she said, "are supposed to belong to themoneyed camp. But it is borne in upon me, every now and then, that ourown race has occasionally put by a dollar or two."
She moved in such an atmosphere of luxury that it was difficult toimagine her what she plainly called "hard up." But it will be seen thatthey were now continually together and there was something about herwhich made it possible to offer her the simplest and the cheapestpleasures. In her rare hours of freedom he had the fabulous happiness oftaking her where he had often taken Evadne in that old empty time; toConey Island, to strange Bowery haunts, to the wharves where the boysdive, and even to his table d'hote in the back yard. She had a zest, afresh-hearted pleasure in everything and her sense of characterizationfed upon queer colors and odd flavors just as he had known it would. Hewas so sorry that the little Yankee woman was absent from his tabled'hote, particularly as he had recently had a specimen of her which helonged to hear Christina reproduce. She had a little sewing-table behindher desk at which she sat playing solitaire with a grim precision whichmade Herrick think of the French Revolution and the knitting women; butas she had then been absent from the restaurant for some time heventured a "Buon giorno" as he passed.
She instantly replied, "You needn't talk that Dago talk to me. I justtook my daughter's paul-parrot away from here, case 't 'ed get so itcouldn't talk real talk."
"That's what I call a good firm prejudice!" Herrick laughed to himself,and he continued to hope for some such specimen, or at least for Mr.Gumama, when he should bring Christina again.
But as the opening drew near, she began to limit her interests and toexclude from her vision everything which could interfere with the partin hand. It sometimes seemed to him, indeed, as if even her new calmabout Nancy were only because Nancy--yes, and the threatening Arm ofJustice,--were among these conscious, these voluntary exclusions. It wasalmost as though, over the very body of Ingham's death, she had thrownher part's rosy skirts and shut it out of sight. Beneath her innumerablemoods one seemed permanent, strangely compounded of languor andexcitement. By-and-by, she seemed to dwell within it, veiled, andHerrick knew that only her part was there behind the veil with her.
It was Mrs. Hope who could least endure this sleepwalking abstraction.There came an evening when some people whom Mrs. Hope considered ofimportance were asked to dinner. Christina improved this occasion byhaving her own dinner served upstairs, so that she would not be tootired to rehearse that night with Wheeler. And to Herrick Mrs. Hopereported this behavior, biting her lips. "She's the most self-willedperson living! I declare to you, Mr. Herrick, she has the cruelesttricks in the world. The best friend that any girl ever had said oncethat, if acting were in question, she would grind his bones to make itsbread!"
Later, Herrick said jealously to the girl, "Who _was_ the best friendyou ever had?"
Her head happened to be turned from him and it seemed to him a long timebefore she spoke. Even then her indifference was so great she almostyawned as "Who has told you of him?" she asked.
"Both Deutch and your mother called some old actor that."
"They meant a dear fellow who put me in the moving-picture business,bless him, when I hadn't enough to eat!"
"And where's he now?"
"I dare say he's very well off. He taught me poise. He taught meindependence, too. That's enough for one man. He had a singular way ofturning his eyes, without turning his head. I learned that, too."
Was it true, then--what had been hinted to him often enough--that onceshe had plucked out the heart of your mystery, the heart of the humanbeing she forgot all about? She might be of as various moods as shewould, she was very single-minded, and was all she valued in her friendssome personal mannerism?--any peculiar impression of which she mightmaster the physical mechanism and reproduce it? A trait like thisnaturally made Herrick take anxious stock of his own position. Whatpersonal peculiarity of his was she studying? But it was nevertheless insuch a trait that the staunchness of his love found its true food. Hefound his faith digested such things capitally; his passion at oncenourished and clarified itself by every human failing, by all the littlenerves and little ways of his darling divinity, until it ceased to bemerely the bleeding heart of a valentine and found within itself thesolid, articulated bones of mortal life. If, in return, there was theleast thing she could learn of him, let her, in heaven's name, learn it!Only, how long before she would have finished with it?
In the blessed meantime she scarcely stirred without him. With a freedomunthinkable in girls of his own world, she let him take her to lunchevery day; unlike a proper heroine of romance, Christina required atthis time a great deal of food and he waited for her after rehearsal andtook her to tea. It was a mercy that he was now doing a series of FamousCrimes in Manhattan, for the Record, as he certainly did not wish to puther on a diet of Italian table d'hotes! She accepted all this quite as amatter of course; and it had become a matter of course that he should gohome with her for dinner. Sometimes they walked up through the Park,sometimes they took a taxi and drove to shops or dressmakers; she didnot scruple, when she was tired or wanted air, to drive home with herhat off and her eyes shut. It seemed to the poor fellow that she hadaccepted him like the weather.
For she had become strangely quiet in his presence. Eventually sheceased to use upon him any conscious witchery whatever; something hadspiked all her guns, and Herrick was too much in love to presume thatthis quiet meant anything except that he did not irritate her. Every nowand again, it is true, he was breathlessly aware of something thatbrooded, touchingly humble and anxious and tender, in a tone, in aglance. He feared that this anxiety, this tendern
ess, was only thatroyal kindness with which, for instance, when Joe Patrick gave up hiselevator, hating that haunted job, she at once got him taken on as usherat the theater. But Herrick dared not translate her expression, when,looking up suddenly, he would find her eyes swimming in a kind of happylight and fastened on his face. At such moments a flush would runthrough him; there would fall between them a painful, an exquisiteconsciousness. And, with the passing of the wave, she would seem to himextraordinarily young.
He considered it a bad sign that seldom or never did she introduce himto any of her mates. Public as was their companionship, she kept himwholly to herself. This was particularly noticeable in the restaurantswhere she would go to strange shifts to keep actors from dallying at hertable; she would forestall their advances by paying visits to theirs,leaving Herrick to make what he liked of it; and, do what he would, thepoor fellow could find no flattering reason for this. Already he knewChristina too well to have any hope that it was the actors who were notgood enough.
They were to her, in the most drastic and least sentimental sense, herfamily. She quarreled with them; often enough she abused and mimickedthem; at the memory of bad acting scorn and disdain rode sparkling inher eye, and if her vast friendliness was lighted by passionateenthusiasms, it was capable, too, of the very sickness of contempt. Butthis was in private and among themselves; there was not the least northe worst of them whom she would not have championed against the world.Quite apart from goodness or badness of art, Christina conceived of buttwo classes of human beings, artists and not artists; as who should say"Brethren"; "Cattle." Herrick congratulated himself that he could bescooped in under at least the title of "Writer." It was not so good as"Actor," but 't was enough, 't would serve. All her sense of kin, ofrace, of patriotism, and--once you came to good acting--of religion, wascentered in her country of the stage. Herrick had never seen any one soclass conscious. With those whom she called "outsiders," she adopted thecourse most calculated, as a matter of fact, to make her the rage; sherefused to know them. And when, for the sake of some day reproducinghigh life upon the boards, she brought herself to dine out, this littleprotegee of the Deutches had always said to herself, with ArnoldBennett's hero, "World, I condescend."
Such an affair took place on the Monday before Christina's opening. Somefriends of the Inghams made a reception for her; and Herrick saw a dressarrive that was plainly meant for conquest. Now Herrick considered thatthis reception had played him a mean trick. He had a right to! He whohad recently been a desperado with sixpence was soon to be an associateeditor of _Ingham's Weekly_!--While he was still dizzy with thisknowledge a friend on the _Record_ had pointed out a suite in an oldfashioned downtown mansion, which had been turned into bachelorlodgings: a friend of the friend wished to sub-let these roomsfurnished, and Herrick had extravagantly taken them. A beautifulColonial fireplace had decided him. He remembered a mahogany tea-tableand some silver which Marion could be induced to part with, and itseemed to him that he could not too quickly bring about the hour whenChristina, before that fireplace and at that tea-table, should pour teafor whatever Thespians she might think him worthy to entertain. But ithad taken time for the things to arrive; to-morrow she was going on theroad for the preliminary performances, and to-day was set for thereception! He had, of course, kept silence. But it was heartbreaking tosee how perfect a day it was for tea and fires--one of those cool daysof earliest September. He kindled the flame; alas, it didn't matter!Then, toward six he went uptown to hear about the party.
He found Mrs. Hope, but not Christina, and the elder lady received himalmost with tears. "She is out driving, Mr. Herrick; she is out drivingabout all by herself and she won't come home. She is in one of hertantrums and all about Mr. Wheeler--a fine actor, of course, but whybother?"
Herrick had never seen the poor lady so ruffled. "It was such abeautiful reception," she told him, "all the best people. She got therelate. She always does. You can't tell me, Mr. Herrick, that she doesn'tdo it on purpose to make an entrance. All the time I was brushing her upafter the rehearsal she stood with her eyes shut, mumbling one line overand over from her part. Nobody could be more devoted to her success thanI am, but it got on my nerves so I stuck her with a hairpin and Ithought she would have torn her hair down. 'What are these people tome?' she said. 'Or I to them.' You know how she goes on, Mr. Herrick, asif she were actually disreputable, instead of being really the best ofgirls. Then, again, she's so exclusive it seems sometimes as if shereally couldn't associate with anybody, except the Deutches! She likeswell enough to fascinate people, all the same. She behaved beautifullyafter she got there; and oh, Mr. Herrick, you can't imagine howbeautiful she looked! Surely, there never was anything so lovely as mydaughter!"
"Can't I?" Herrick exclaimed.
"Well, every one just lay down flat in front of her. Even Mr. Ten Euyck.Yes, he was there. I trembled when they should meet. You know, he hashis inspectorship now. He wants to give her a lunch on board his yacht!It was a triumph. Christina was very demure. But by-and-by I began tofeel a trifle uneasy. You know that soft, sad look she's got?--it's soangelic it just _melts_ you--when she's really thinking how dull peopleare! Well, there, I saw it beginning to come! And about then they hadgot rid of all but the very smartest people, just the cream, you know,for a little intimacy! We were all getting quite cozy, when some oneasked Christina how she could bear to play love-scenes with a man likeWheeler--of course, Mr. Herrick, it _is_ annoying, but they will askthings like that; they can't help it."
"And Miss Hope?"
"She looked up at them with the sugariest expression I ever saw andasked them why, and they all began reminding her of the--well, you know!And I must say, when you come to think of his--ah--affairs--! And theytalked about how dear Miss So-and-So had refused to act with him inamateur theatricals, he said such rough things! And how lovely Christinawas, and how hard it was on her, and all the time I could see Christinaclouding up."
Herrick, with his eyes on the rug, smilingly murmured, "Wave, Munich,all thy banners wave! And charge, with all thy chivalry!"
"Well, Mr. Herrick, she stood up and looked all round her with thatawful stormy lower she has, and then, in a voice like one of thosepursuing things in the Greek tragedies, 'I!' she said, 'I am not worthyto kiss his feet!' Oh, Mr. Herrick, why should she mention them? Thereare times when she certainly is not delicate!"
Herrick burst out laughing. He thought Christina might at least haveexhibited some sense of humor. "And was the slaughter terrible?"
"Why, Mr. Herrick, what could any one say? She looked as if she mighthave hit them. She shook the crumbs off her skirt, as if they were theparty, and then she said good-by very sweetly, but coldly and sadly,like Mary Queen of Scots going to execution, and left. Mr. Herrick, Idon't know where to hide my head!"
Herrick stayed for some time to counsel and console, but Christina didnot return and as Mrs. Hope did not ask him to dinner he was at lengthobliged to go. For all his amusement he felt a little snubbed and blueand lonely; his eyes hungered for Christina in her finery; he saw her atonce as the darling and the executioner of society and he longed toreassure himself with the favor of the spoiled beauty; how was he towait till to-morrow for the summons of his proud princess? As he openedhis door he saw that the fire had been kept up; some one kneelingbefore it turned at his entrance and faced him. It was Christina.
The shock of her presence was cruelly sweet. The firelight played overher soft light gown; she had taken off her gloves and the ruddinessgleamed on her arms and her long throat and on the sheen of her hair. Asshe rose slowly to her feet that something at once ineffably luxuriousand ineffably spiritual which hung about her like the emanation of aperfume stirred uneasily in him and his senses ached. Never had herfairness hurt him like that; his passion rose into his throat and heldhim dumb.
"The man looked at me, hard," she told him, "and let me in. I came hereto rest. And because I didn't want to be scolded. Don't scold me.Perhaps I've thrown away a world this afternoon. But no; it
will rollback to be picked up again. Listen, and tell me that I was right."
Without stirring, "I can never tell you but the one thing," he said. "Ilove you!"
It was no sooner said than he loathed himself for speaking. He had notdreamed that he should say such a thing. It was not yet a month sinceher engagement to Ingham had been broken; she was a young girl; she washere alone with him in his rooms, to which she had paid him the perfecthonor of coming--she, who had accepted him so simply, so nobly, as agentleman. Hot shame and black despair seized upon him.
The girl stood quiet as if controlling herself. Then, so gently that shewas almost inaudible, she said, "I must go!"
He could not answer her; he was aware of the ripple and murmur of herdress as she fetched her wraps; she put on her hat and the lace of hersleeves foamed back from her arms in the ruddy light; he felt how soonshe would be engulfed by that world which was already rolling back to bepicked up. He stepped forward to help her with her thin chiffon coat andshe suffered this, gently, passively; as it slipped over her shouldershe felt her turn; he felt her arms come around his neck, clinging tohim, and the sweetness of her body on his breast. In that firelit roomher lips were cold, as they stumbled on his throat with the low cry,"Oh, you love me!--You love me!" she repeated. "And you're a man! Saveme!"