CHAPTER VII
MORNING IN THE PARK: THE SILENT OUTCRY
The week in which Christina was to open in "The Victors" was one ofthose which call down the curses of dramatic critics by producing a newplay each night. Thursday was to see the opening of openings; there werebut two nights on the road and Mrs. Hope and Herrick were to livethrough these as best they might in a metropolis that was once more adesert.
After that momentous interview of Monday evening Christina would not letHerrick drive home with her. "Come to the station in the morning, andhear what has happened. Lunch with me on Thursday. But don't let me seeyou alone again till Friday noon, when--" she laughed--"when I've readmy notices. Let your poor Christina tell you her trouble then. Till thenshe has trouble enough!" She put her face up with a kind of humblefrankness, to be kissed. And he saw that it was a weary face, indeed.
Throughout the night his anxiety concerning the next day's meeting withthe blackmailers contended in him with that other anxiety: what she wasto tell him on Friday--when she had read her notices! Whatever it was,it was not for his passion that he feared. There were even times when hecould almost have wished it were not some distorted molehill that thegirl's excitable broodings had swollen past all proportion, but sometest of his strength, some plumbing of his tenderness. And then again hewould be aware of a cold air crawling over his heart, of that horriblesinking of the stomach with which, walking in the dark, we feel that weare taking a step into space. A black wall, ominous, menacing and verynear, would loom upon him and blind him from the wholesome and habitableworld. The daylight reinforced his faith in simpler probabilities. Itwashed away all but the sweetly humble arrogance of the one fact whichall night long had shot in glory through his veins and built itself intothe foundations of his life. With the day he remembered only that sheloved him.
He hung about the outskirts of One Hundred-and-tenth Street till he sawher enter the Park and till he saw her leave it--safe, but with anexceedingly clouded brow.
"They didn't come, of course!" she said to him at the station. "Theyvery naturally refused to swim into a net. Mr. Kane is a great dear, butI wish he would mind his own business! Mother, speak to Bryce." She tookleave of them both with a serenely fond indifference to publicconjecture and the train bore her away.
Mrs. Hope may habitually have endeavored to clutch at the life-lines ofher own world even while she was being submerged in the billows ofChristina's but she was not mercenary and she accepted Herrick with anevident thankfulness that he was no worse. When he had taken her home,he found himself at a loss as to what to do with his life. Christina hadbecome so wholly his occupation that to lose her even for a few days wasto lose the bottom out of the world. Although the morning was stillswathed in yesterday's fog, the sun was struggling, the damp air wasvery warm, and his steps turned toward the Park. But he did not followthe paths which he and Christina had trod homeward from rehearsals;instinctively, he turned north. Then he smiled to see that he was oncemore making for the Hundred-and-tenth Street entrance.
Yes, here was the last spot which had held her, and, as he looked abouthim, his heart stirred to think of her here. They should come heretogether, he and she. The place was a little wilderness; he could nothave believed that in that kempt and ordered domain there could be sowild and sweet a grace of nature and charmed loneliness. The hill washigh and thinly wooded; finely veiled in the mist and the faint sunshineit was the very spot for the dryad length and lightness of Christina'smovements. At the same time, so close to the city's hum, there seemedsomething magic, something ominous and waiting in the utter, perfectstillness, and the little clearing at the top of the hill somehow,whether by its broken boulders or the columnar straightness of asemicircle of trees, suggested a Druid clearing. Those who wished tomake a sacrifice here would be very strangely unmolested. High and lowand far away there was no human figure, and a cry might perish longbefore it traveled those misty distances. Herrick thought, "If she hadcome alone!" and shuddered.
But there was the little squirrel house; there the bench where she hadwaited; and at its base he smiled to see the scattered nuts whichChristina, with her variegated interests, had not failed to bring herfurry hosts. A lassitude of loneliness came over him; he was still notwholly recovered from his accident of three weeks before and with aweary yielding to stiffness and weakness he dropped down on the bench.Then he saw that along one of its slats some one had recently penciled aline, and he recognized Christina's hand. "I will come again for threedays running, after Thursday. At the same hour. And I will come_alone_."
He was startled, but he smiled. It was so like her! Looking up, he sawbehind him a man sweeping leaves in the distance, and, far down thehill, there appeared a loafer with a newspaper. The charm was broken.Good heavens, where were people starting from! He could perceive, now,to his left a man sleeping in the grass. Could any of these be the plainclothes men, still lingering hopefully about? By George, they must be!And Christina was right--they were too obvious a snare! Why, there wasa fourth, altogether too loutishly and innocently eating an apple as hestrayed on!
Herrick looked down at Christina's message, wondering if the detectiveshad seen it. Intrepid and obstinate darling, how resolute she was toknow all there was to be known! When he looked up again he saw that theslumberer had wakened and was sitting up. The other three men wereapproaching from their respective angles, nearer and nearer to thebench. And then it occurred to him--did they take him for a blackmailer?
It made him laugh and then somehow it vexed him; and he began to stirthe fallen leaves with a light stick he carried, restlessly. The mencame on, and it annoyed him to be surrounded like this, as by a pack ofwolves. He lifted his head impatiently, and was about to hail thenearest man when a splash of sun fell full on that man's face. It wasthe face of the chauffeur in the gray touring-car.
He knew then that he was in a trap. Controlling his first impulse tospring up and bring the struggle to an issue, he counted his chances. Heremembered how far and still was this deserted spot; his muscles werevery stiff, and he felt the slimness of the stick in his hand. He had noother weapon. And there were four of those figures sauntering in uponhim through the silence and the pale, dreamy sunshine. He felt the high,hot beating of his heart. The city lay so close at hand! He could stillfeel on his mouth Christina's kiss! And the immense desire to live, andall a man's fury against outrage, against this causeless andinexplicable brute-hate, which already, in the city's very streets, haddared to maim and tried to murder him, rose in him with a colder rageand kept him quiet and expressionless. He rose; and striking the dust ofthe bench from his clothes, he glanced about. Yes, the man behind himwas still advancing, sweeping leaves; down the hill before him the manclimbed upward, still mumbling over his newspaper; to his right theapple-eater, chewing his last bite, tossed away the core as he came on;the chauffeur alone disdained subterfuge, advancing quietly; he carriedin his hand some lengths of rope. Herrick believed that he had onechance. This wooded isolation could not be so far-reaching as it seemed:they would scarcely dare to fire a shot.
Leisurely he idled a step or two down the slope toward the man with thenewspaper, till he was just outside the closing semicircle of theothers. Then, lowering his head, he shot swiftly forward. Immediatelythere was a shrill whistle and the reader cast his newspaper away. Itwas too late; Herrick's lowered head struck him in the diaphragm andknocked him backwards. As he fell, Herrick leaped over him and turning,caught the chauffeur a stinging blow across the eyes with his stick. Thestick broke; and Herrick, dropping to his knees, caught the ankle of thenext comer and threw him flat upon his face. The fourth man flung ablackjack which, as Herrick rose up, caught him just below the rightelbow; the young fellow sprang up and, shouting now for help at the topof his strong voice, he raced down the hill as if, once more, he werebearing the ball to its last goal.
For a moment he felt that he had snatched the victory, but his stiffmuscles played him false and his right arm hung as if paralyzed. Hisshouts, too,
were leaving him winded and the fourth man, nowconsiderably in advance of the others, was gaining on him at every step.Suddenly Herrick mistook the shadow of a little bush for the shadow of afifth opponent; in his second's wavering the fourth man lunged at him,missed him, and losing his own balance clutched the end of Herrick'scoat. They both went down together, getting and giving blows; and thoughHerrick was up and off again in an instant, the breath was pretty wellknocked out of him. Violent pains were throbbing now through his arm; heseemed to himself as heavy as lead; near the bottom of the hill thefourth man was on him again; Herrick landed on the fellow's head withhis left, only to fall himself into the hands of the two whom he hadthrown at first and who now fell upon him with a zeal that all hisFrench boxing, which enabled him to land a kick in one jaw and ahorrible backheeled stroke into the ribs of the fellow who was trying towrap a coat round his head, scarcely availed to rid him of. He gatheredhimself together for one shout that seemed to him to crack thetree-trunks. But the game was up; without knowing it he was turningfaint from the pain in his arm, and then the men were all round him now;barring his path and only holding off from him a little because thechauffeur was running down hill toward them, aiming at Herrick, as hecame, the rope which he had tied into a noose. Herrick leaped to oneside, and clinging to the tactics which had served him best, dropped tothe ground and pulled the chauffeur down atop of him. They clenched likethat and went, rolling and struggling, down the hill; striking againsttrees, kicking, clawing, blind with rage, till they were stopped by theflat ground. It was Herrick who landed on his back and found himselfstaring up at the revolver the chauffeur was drawing from his pocket. Atthat moment there sounded a policeman's whistle.
The man who had been running after them with the coat for Herrick'shead, dropped it and ran like mad. His companion's arm had been brokenby Herrick's kick, but this man and the fourth continued wildlysearching for something they had dropped on the hill. The chauffeur hadhad to ease a little on Herrick in order to draw his gun; but when hefelt Herrick struggling onto his right side and even rolling himself ontop of his right arm, he quickly slid the barrel of the revolver intohis palm and lifted the butt-end. As he did so Herrick's left fist shotup and dealt him a blow on the point of the chin. He fell back as if hisneck were broken; the pistol slipped out of his hand and Herrick caughtit just as the man with the broken arm dropped on his chest. Thepolicemen's whistles were sounding nearer and nearer; the man onHerrick's chest kept him from aiming the pistol, but he discharged it inthe grass, shot after shot, five of them, to guide the police. "Let himhave it!" said the man on top of Herrick, but in an Italian phrase, tothe fourth man, who leaned over Herrick raising what the other haddropped back there on the hill. It was the blackjack. Herrick could justturn the pistol a little and point it upward from his side. He fired itstraight into the fourth man's face; and he was always glad, afterward,that, like a sick girl, he had closed his eyes. The next man who bentover him was a policeman.
"Don't mind me," Herrick said, "get them! Get after them!" But thatautomobile of theirs must have been waiting on the driveway near athand; for the man whom Herrick had shot dead was the only one theycaught.
At first the body seemed to offer no clue; save a soiled and torn halfof a blank card on which had been uncouthly scribbled the number1411--unless its being the body of a young Italian could be called aclue. Herrick, who had, of course, accompanied it to the station under anominal arrest, turned sick with disappointment. At that moment thelieutenant in charge emitted an exclamation. He had found on the deadman a letter addressed in the typewriting of the Arm of Justice toChristina Hope. The inclosure was intact, and the lieutenant held it outto Herrick.
To the single sheet of paper was fastened a thick, soft curl of dark redhair. Under the curl, in a rounded but girlish handwriting, were fourwords: "Help me, dear Chris!"