Persons Unknown Part 23

"Oh, my darling! Why--"

"Because I won't have you think me shameless! Nor that an accident, like death, turned my light love to you! I was just twenty when he first asked me to marry him; I was so mad about him that my head swam. And yet it wasn't love. It was only infatuation and I knew it. I was still young enough for him to be a sort of prince--all elegance and the great world.

The last two have been my big years, Bryce. I was rather a poor little girl till then. Even so, I held him off ten months. I felt that there was a curse on it and that it could never, never be! What did I know of men or that great world--well, G.o.d knows he taught me! When I did consent to our engagement the fire was already dying. But by that time the idea of him had grown into me. He had always a great influence over me, Bryce, and he could trouble and excite me long after he had broken my dream. Oh, my dear, it was one long quarrel. It was a year's struggle for my freedom! Well, I got my release. I didn't wait for fate." She paused. And then with a low gasp, "All my life I've stood quite alone. I have been hard. I have been independent. I have been brave--oh, yes, I can say it; I have been brave!--but I've broken down.

Only, if you will let me keep hold of you, I shall get courage."

"Christina!"

"Do you know how big you are? Or what a clear look your eyes have got?

There in that coroner's office--oh, heavens,--among those _stones_!--Bryce, he was there this afternoon! that man!"

"Ten Euyck? Yes, I know."

"Do you know what he means to do as Police Inspector? He means to run me down! Wait--you've never known. I've kept so still--I didn't want to think of it. Four years ago he payed for the production of a play of his, by a stock company I was with. Oh, my dear, that play! It gave us all quite a chill! He wanted his Mark Antony played like a young gentleman arranging the marriage-settlements. But he took the rehearsals so hard, he nearly killed us." She hesitated. "He was very kind to me.

He was too kind. One night, he met me as I was coming out of the theater, and--forgot himself. One of the boys in the company, who was right behind me, slapped him in the face! Do you mean to tell me that he has ever forgotten that? At the inquest he thought he had me down, and the laugh turned against him! Is he the man to forget that?"

"But what can he do?"

"How I detested him!" Christina hurried on. "He taught me, in that one minute, when I was eighteen, how men feel about girls who aren't in their cla.s.s! Just because I was on the stage, he took it for granted I--Well, he, too, learned something! Since then I've heard about him.

He isn't a hypocrite, he's an egoist. I wonder, were some of the Puritans really like that? He's so very proper, and so particular not to entangle himself with respectable women! But with women he calls bad he doesn't mind--because for him bad women don't count, they don't exist!

Oh, dear G.o.d, how I despise a man who feels like that! How I love you, who never, never could! Does he really know, I wonder, that sometimes it's the coldest of heart who can be made to turn his s.h.i.+ps at Actium?--'What can he do?' He can hope I'm guilty! And he can use all the machinery of his office to prove me so!"

"Why, look here, dearest, if he's never revenged himself on the man who struck him--"

Christina gave a shrill little cry. "But, now he has his chance with me!

His great spectacular chance! Oh, Bryce, I'm afraid of him, and I was never afraid before!--Dearest dear, I know you can't do anything! But the girl's in love with you, poor thing, and she feels as if you can!

I've wanted you--oh, how I've wanted you!--all my life. I've known the dearest fellows in the world, the cleverest, the gamest, the most charming. But they were too much like poor Christina; fidgety things, nervous and on edge. 'You take me where the good winds blow and the eternal meadows are!'--What are you doing?"

He had bowed down to kiss her wrist and he replied, "I'm thanking G.o.d I look like a farmer!"

"My poor boy!" cried Christina, breaking her tears with little laughs, "I've got your cheek all wet! Bryce dear, we're engaged, aren't we? You haven't said.--Bryce!"

He slipped back onto the floor, with his head in her lap and her two hands gathered in his one. They were both silent. The little fire was going out and the room was almost dark. And in that happy depth of life where she had led him he was at first unaware of any change. Then he knew that the hands he held had become tense, that rigidity was creeping over her whole body, and looking up, he could just make out through the dusk, the alert head, the parted lips of one who is waiting for a sound. "Bryce," she said, "you were mistaken. That detective has not gone!"

"What do you hear?"

"I don't hear. I simply know." Their senses strained into the silence.

"If he went away, it was only to bring some one back. He went to get Ten Euyck!"

"Christina! Tell me what you're really afraid of!"

"Oh! Oh!" she breathed.

"Christina, what was it you couldn't go through with?"

"Death!" she said. "Not that way! I can't!" She rocked herself softly to and fro. "If I could die now!" she whispered.

"You shan't die. And you shan't go crazy, either. You're driving yourself mad, keeping silence." He drew her to her feet, and she stood, shaking, in his arms. "Christina, what's your trouble?"

"Nancy,--that murder--my opening--my danger--aren't they enough?"

"For everything but your conviction that it is you who are pursued, and you who will be punished. Some horrible accident, dear heart, has shown you something, which you must tell. Tell it to me, and we will find that it is nothing."

"Bryce," she said, "they're coming. It's our last time together. Don't let's spend it like this."

"Did you--" he asked her so tenderly that it sounded like a caress, "did you, in some terrible emergency, in some defense, dear, of yourself, Christina--did you fire that shot?"

Her head swung back; she did not answer.

"My darling, if you did we must just take counsel whether to fight or to run. Don't be afraid. The world's before us. Christina, did you?"

"No, no, no!" she whispered. "I did not!" She felt his quiver of relief, and her nervous hands closed on his sleeve. "Oh, if you only knew. There is a thing I long to tell you! But not that! Oh, if I could trust you!"

"Can't you?"

"I mean--trust you to see things as I do! To do only what I ask! What I chose--not what was best for me! Suppose that some one whom--Bryce?"

"Yes?"

"If any one should hear--"

"There is no one to hear."

"You can't tell where they are."

"Christina, can't you see that we're alone here? That the door's locked?

That you're safe in my arms? The cab went away. No one followed you. No one even knows where I live; my dear, dear love, we're all alone--"

The door-bell sounded through the house.

He thought the girl would have fallen and his own heart leaped in his side. "Darling, it's nothing. It's for some one else."

"It's for me."

"That's impossible."

There was a knock on the door.

Herrick called--"Who's there?"

"It's a card, sir."

"A card?"

"A gentleman's card, sir. He's down in the hall."

"I can't see any one at present."

"It's not for you, sir; it's for the young lady."