Persons Unknown Part 22

He found Mrs. Hope, but not Christina, and the elder lady received him almost with tears. "She is out driving, Mr. Herrick; she is out driving about all by herself and she won't come home. She is in one of her tantrums and all about Mr. Wheeler--a fine actor, of course, but why bother?"

Herrick had never seen the poor lady so ruffled. "It was such a beautiful reception," she told him, "all the best people. She got there late. She always does. You can't tell me, Mr. Herrick, that she doesn't do it on purpose to make an entrance. All the time I was brus.h.i.+ng her up after the rehearsal she stood with her eyes shut, mumbling one line over and over from her part. n.o.body could be more devoted to her success than I am, but it got on my nerves so I stuck her with a hairpin and I thought she would have torn her hair down. 'What are these people to me?' she said. 'Or I to them.' You know how she goes on, Mr. Herrick, as if she were actually disreputable, instead of being really the best of girls. Then, again, she's so exclusive it seems sometimes as if she really couldn't a.s.sociate with anybody, except the Deutches! She likes well enough to fascinate people, all the same. She behaved beautifully after she got there; and oh, Mr. Herrick, you can't imagine how beautiful she looked! Surely, there never was anything so lovely as my daughter!"

"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 has his inspectors.h.i.+p 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 to feel a trifle uneasy. You know that soft, sad look she's got?--it's so angelic it just _melts_ you--when she's really thinking how dull people are! Well, there, I saw it beginning to come! And about then they had got 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 one asked Christina how she could bear to play love-scenes with a man like Wheeler--of course, Mr. Herrick, it _is_ annoying, but they will ask things like that; they can't help it."

"And Miss Hope?"

"She looked up at them with the sugariest expression I ever saw and asked 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 they talked about how dear Miss So-and-So had refused to act with him in amateur theatricals, he said such rough things! And how lovely Christina was, and how hard it was on her, and all the time I could see Christina clouding 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 that awful stormy lower she has, and then, in a voice like one of those pursuing things in the Greek tragedies, 'I!' she said, 'I am not worthy to kiss his feet!' Oh, Mr. Herrick, why should she mention them? There are times when she certainly is not delicate!"

Herrick burst out laughing. He thought Christina might at least have exhibited some sense of humor. "And was the slaughter terrible?"

"Why, Mr. Herrick, what could any one say? She looked as if she might have hit them. She shook the crumbs off her skirt, as if they were the party, and then she said good-by very sweetly, but coldly and sadly, like Mary Queen of Scots going to execution, and left. Mr. Herrick, I don't know where to hide my head!"

Herrick stayed for some time to counsel and console, but Christina did not return and as Mrs. Hope did not ask him to dinner he was at length obliged to go. For all his amus.e.m.e.nt he felt a little snubbed and blue and lonely; his eyes hungered for Christina in her finery; he saw her at once as the darling and the executioner of society and he longed to rea.s.sure himself with the favor of the spoiled beauty; how was he to wait till to-morrow for the summons of his proud princess? As he opened his door he saw that the fire had been kept up; some one kneeling before it turned at his entrance and faced him. It was Christina.

The shock of her presence was cruelly sweet. The firelight played over her soft light gown; she had taken off her gloves and the ruddiness gleamed on her arms and her long throat and on the sheen of her hair. As she rose slowly to her feet that something at once ineffably luxurious and ineffably spiritual which hung about her like the emanation of a perfume stirred uneasily in him and his senses ached. Never had her fairness hurt him like that; his pa.s.sion rose into his throat and held him dumb.

"The man looked at me, hard," she told him, "and let me in. I came here to 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 roll back 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. "I love you!"

It was no sooner said than he loathed himself for speaking. He had not dreamed that he should say such a thing. It was not yet a month since her engagement to Ingham had been broken; she was a young girl; she was here alone with him in his rooms, to which she had paid him the perfect honor of coming--she, who had accepted him so simply, so n.o.bly, as a gentleman. Hot shame and black despair seized upon him.

The girl stood quiet as if controlling herself. Then, so gently that she was almost inaudible, she said, "I must go!"

He could not answer her; he was aware of the ripple and murmur of her dress as she fetched her wraps; she put on her hat and the lace of her sleeves foamed back from her arms in the ruddy light; he felt how soon she would be engulfed by that world which was already rolling back to be picked up. He stepped forward to help her with her thin chiffon coat and she suffered this, gently, pa.s.sively; as it slipped over her shoulders he felt her turn; he felt her arms come around his neck, clinging to him, and the sweetness of her body on his breast. In that firelit room her 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! Save me!"

CHAPTER V

HERRICK HEARS A BELL RING

"Don't let them take me!" Christina entreated. "Don't let them lock me up! That door--! Turn the key!"

Without demur he turned it. He was in that commotion of bewildered feeling where one shock after another deliciously and terribly strikes upon the heart, and anything seems possible. From the trembling girl his pulses took a myriad alarms; apprehension of he knew not what ran riot in them and credited the suggestions of her terror; but all the while his blood rushed through him, warm and singing, and his heart glowed.

She was here, with him! She had fled here and clung to him for defense!

She loved him! In no dream, now, did she lie back there, in the deep chair beside his fire, with her hand clasping his eagerly as he knelt and her shoulder leaning against his. It was keener than any dream; it was that fullness of life, which, even at Herrick's age, we have mostly ceased to expect.

"There are detectives shadowing me," Christina said. "Don't deny it--I know! They've been following me from the beginning!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "There are detectives shadowing me," Christina said.

"Don't deny it--I know!"]

"But why, dearest, why?"

"Because they think I killed Jim Ingham."

"Christina! Why should they think such a thing?"

"Why shouldn't they? Don't you?"

She put her finger on his lips to still his cry of protest, and, looking down into his face, her own eyes slowly filled with that brooding of maternal tenderness which seemed to search him through and through. For a moment he thought that her eyes brimmed, that her lips trembled with some communication. But, without speaking, she ran her hand along his arm and a quiver pa.s.sed through her; taking his face in her two hands she bent and kissed his mouth. In that kiss they plighted a deeper troth than in ten thousand promises. And, creeping close into his breast with a shuddering sigh, she pressed her cheek to his. "Oh, Bryce, you won't let them take me away? I can stand anything but being locked up--I couldn't bear that--I couldn't! What can I do?"

"My dearest, no one in the world can harm you!"

"I came here to be safe, where I could touch you. Let me rest here a little, and feel your heart close to me. Oh, my love, I'm so frightened!

I thought I was strong! I thought I was brave and could go through with it! But I can't! I'm tired--to death! All through my soul, I'm cold.

It's only here I can get warm!"

"Christina," he asked her, "go through with what?"

She stirred in his arms and drew back. "Look first--ah, carefully!--from the window. What do you see?"

"Nothing but ordinary people pa.s.sing. And the usual number of waiting taxis."

"Well, in the nearest of those taxis is a detective. He has been following me all the afternoon. He is sitting there waiting for me to come out."

Herrick carried her hand to his lips. "Christina, don't think me a cursed schoolmaster. But it's imagination, dear. You've driven yourself wild with all this worry and excitement. Why, believe me, they're not so clumsy! If they were following you, you wouldn't know it."

"I tell you I've known it for at least two weeks! I'm an actress, and if, as they say, we've no intelligence, only instincts, well then, our instincts are extraordinarily developed. And mine tells me that, over my shoulder, there is a shadow creeping, creeping, looming on my path."

A series of sounds burst on the air. Herrick went to the window. "There, my sweet, the taxi's gone."

"Did no one get out?"

"No one."

He had s.n.a.t.c.hed up her hand again and he felt her relax.

"Well, I ought to be used to shadows; all my girlhood there has been a shadow near me. Bryce, when I was really a child, something happened.

Something that changed my whole heart--oh, you shall know before you marry me! I shall find a way to tell you!--It made me a rebel and a cynic; it made me wish to have nothing to do with the rules men make; I had to find my own morality. Only, when I saw you, I felt such a strength and freshness, like sunny places. Bryce!"

"Yes."

"My feeling for Jim was dead a year ago. Do you believe that?"