Persons Unknown Part 54

"That cub!" said Ten Euyck. "You love that cub!" And he took her in his arms; and covering her throat and hair with kisses, he held her off again, and tried to see into her face. "Do you?" he cried. "Do you? Do you?"

"Give me a handkerchief!" Christina snapped.

He was surprised into releasing her; and plucking forth her own sc.r.a.p of lace, she wiped her nose with some deliberation. "I look hideous. I should like those lights out!"

He went about putting out light after light, till she said,

"Leave my lamp!"

She was standing beneath it, pensive and grave and now quite pale, with her back to the mantelshelf, her soft, fair arms stretched out along its length, and her head hanging. She might have been bound there, beneath the single lamp, like an olden criminal to a seacoast rock before the rising tide. The pale light floated over her as Ten Euyck came up and seemed to illumine her within a magic circle.

"My dear," Ten Euyck began, with a kind of solemn fierceness, "when you made me accomplice in a crime, when you came here to me like this to-night, did you really dream that you could change your mind? Did you suppose you could make me ridiculous again? Do you know where you are?

And under what circ.u.mstances? There is a slang phrase, Christina--do you really think you can get away with it?"

"No," Christina replied. She quietly lifted her head. Her eyes rested soberly on his. "I am here, with you. I am alone. There is no Rebecca's window here to dash myself from. You see I have counted up everything.

And this is what I will do. If I cannot die now, I can die to-morrow.

You can not watch me forever. And in the hour when you leave me, I shall find a way to die."

His face grayed as he looked at her.

"Do you think I am not acquainted," Christina went on, "with the story of Lucretia? I could strike a blow like hers! And oh, believe me, like her I should not die in silence!" She felt him start. "Do you suppose I should not tell why I came here? Do you by any chance suppose I should not tell what bait I had from the Inspector of Police? Ah, when we have something to lose, we stumble and make terms. But when we have no longer anything, we are the masters of terms.--Is this my last night?"

Christina asked.

"By G.o.d!" he said, "you know how to defend yourself!" And his arms dropped at his side.

He was a moment silent, his mouth twitching, his eyes drinking her up.

Christina had, in argument, that better sort of eloquence that calls up convincing pictures. Doubtless, he knew she might denounce his theft of the letter. Doubtless he saw her, then, clay-cold; lost to him, utterly. On the other hand, to lose her, now, was a thing outside nature and not to be endured. So that suddenly he broke out in a kind of high, hoa.r.s.e whisper; "Christina, there's another way! I never meant to marry--but--Christina, shall it be that?"

"_What!_" she exclaimed. It was a volcanic outcry, not a question. She stretched out her two arms, with the palms of her hands lifted against him, and laughter and amazement seemed to course through her and to wave and s.h.i.+ne out of her face, like fire in a wind.

"Christina," he said; "Christina, I will marry you!--Oh, Christina, isn't that the way! There's your ambition! There's your satisfaction!

There's the world under your shoe! Christina, will you?"

"Is it possible?" she said. And again--"Is it possible! What! Peter Winthrop Brewster Cuyler Ten Euyck and the girl in the moving-picture show? 'Mr. Ten Euyck' and the sister of a jail-bird! Eh, me, my poor soul, is it as bad as that?" Her laughter died and her brows clouded.

"It's a far cry, Ten Euyck, since you stole my kiss on the sly! You laid the first bruise on my soul! You put the first slur and sense of shame into the shabby little girl in the stock-company who had no one to defend her but a boy as poor as herself. What did it feel like, dear sir, that check? We have come a long way since then, but have you forgotten? And does the pure patrician and the representative of high life now lay the cloak of his great name down at my feet? To walk on it, yes! But to pick it up? After all, I think it would be stopping! Ah, my good fellow, I don't jump at it!"

"I know you don't! That's why I want you! I've been jumped at all my life!" Thus Ten Euyck, holding her fast, his face burning darkly under her little blows of speech, and his pulse rising with the sense of battle. "I think I've never known a woman who wouldn't have given her eyes to marry me! I've never taken a step among them without looking out for traps! Christina, I long to do the trapping and the giving, yes, and the taking, for myself! You don't want me; well, I want you! Yes, for my wife! I see it now. You dislike me, you despise me. Well, your dislike doesn't count; believe me, you'd not despise me long! I'd rather see you bearing my name--you, with another man for me to wipe out of your heart, you, as cold as ice and as hard as nails to me,--than any of those soft, waiting women! See, we'll play a great trick on the world! We'll be married to-morrow! We'll sail for Europe. From there we'll send back word we've been married all along. People shall think that when you left me the other night I followed you; that we fooled them from the beginning, and when next they see you, you shall be on my arm! Come, Christina, will not that be a reentry? Will not the world be vanquished, then?"

"Hus.h.!.+" she said, with lifted finger. "I thought I heard some one!" She lifted the lamp from the mantelshelf and going to the window held it far out into the darkness with an anxious face. "No!" she breathed. Ten Euyck observed with joy that her manner to him had changed; it had become that of a fellow-conspirator. Up and down the terrace she sent the light, her apprehensive eyes searching the shadows and the bushes.

"No!" said she again, "I was wrong."

She came back to him flushed and eager, and setting the light upon the table, he caught her hands. "Remember!" he said, "otherwise I shall stop your sister. And where will your name be then?"

Her nostrils widened, her eyes contracted, doubt succeeded to triumph in her face. "If it were not the truth!" she said.

"What do you mean?"

"If there were no such necessity! If you did not have my name in your power at all. If you have no such letter!"

"Christina!"

"It is what I have doubted from the beginning! How do I know you haven't lied to me all along? I ask you if you have that letter, and you thump your breast! I ask you to show it to me and you answer, 'To-morrow'!

Traps--did you say? Did you think I was to be caught in a trap? When you were looking for a poor gull, did you cast eyes on Christina Hope? If you had that proof to show me, you wouldn't hesitate! There is no such letter--I can see it in your face!"

He took the letter from his coat and held it up.

"Oh, well," Christina said, "I see an envelope. Am I to marry for an envelope?"

He cast the envelope away, folded the letter to a certain page and held it for her to read.

She read it and a faintness seized her. She stood there, swaying, with closed eyes, and he put an arm about her for support. She leaned upon him, and he put down his mouth to hers. "Christina, look up!" he cried.

"Don't be afraid! Don't tremble so! My darling, here's your first wedding-present!" And, alarmed by her half-swoon, transported by that surrender in his arms, he held the letter above the lamp and let its edge catch fire.

Christina opened her sick eyes and they dwelt dully on the paper and then with pleasure on the little flame. "Let me!" she breathed. "Yes, let me. It's my right."

He put the burning paper in her hands, smiling on her with a tender playfulness. "Take care!" he said.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "You fool!" she cried. "You miserable, monstrous fool!

Thank G.o.d, I've done with you!"]

"I will take care." She held up the paper, intent on the thin edges crisping in the glowing fire, and then, swift as a deer and wild as a lion's mate, she sprang away, clapped her hands hard upon the burning paper, pressed out the flame upon the bosom of her gown, and thrust the letter in her breast. "You fool!" she cried. "You miserable, monstrous fool! Thank G.o.d, I've done with you!"

CHAPTER IV

TURN, FORTUNE, TURN THY WHEEL--

Ten Euyck's face blazed white with anger. Sick with rage, driven with bewilderment and some touch of vague suspicion, all his cold strength gathered itself. He was no longer merely a harp for Christina's fingers.

She stood at the far end of the room with her back against the wall, barricaded, indeed, by a little gilded table, but not at all alarmed or even concerned, and the master of the situation forced himself to say quietly, "I am tired of play, my dear. I shall not run after you. Bring that letter here!"

Christina laughed.

"You will come to me, quite obediently, and give that letter here to me."

"Oh, I think not!" Christina said. "Not to a thief! Not to a blackmailer! Nor even to a gentleman who tried, and failed, at murder.--How much did you give the man in the Tombs?"

A profound silence fell upon that house. It was as if, in that great golden room, among the mirrored gulfs of shadow, something held its breath. Night seemed to look in at the windows with a startled face.

Then somewhere, a hawk cried. And still there was no movement in the room. The homely sound of crickets rose from without like the stir of a world immeasurably far away. And Christina, in the changing l.u.s.ters of her gold and silver gown, stood half in shadow; flushed and radiant, a little shaken with triumph, as a spent runner who has touched his goal, and with her hand above the letter on her heaving breast. Ten Euyck did not make one sound. But his face had a paralyzed, chalky stiffness, and the jaw dropped, like the jaw of a corpse.

"You fatuous hypocrite!" cried the girl. "You pillar of society! And could you ever imagine it was for _you_ I came! For your name, for your position! I thank you, I prefer my own! For your protection? Can you protect yourself? Am I the girl to throw myself away on you for the sake of a bad sister, who has treated me with so much hate? It took all your greed, all your vanity, all your stupid, cruel pomp and dullness to be fooled like that! Did you ever really think I could stoop to such a scene as this to-night for you--or me? Oh, blind, blind, blind! How could you imagine I would leave him in your hands and never make a fight for it? Did you think I didn't remember?--that I couldn't still hear, as I heard when I was a frightened girl, the stroke of his hand across your face, and that I didn't know you had always had death for him in your heart?"

She covered her face with her hands and then she stood up tall again.

"My dear Will, my poor boy!--who treated me as if I were his little brother! Oh, the cold night trips on railway trains when I couldn't pay for a sleeper and used to sit wrapped in his coat; the morning races down the track for coffee; the scenes we used to work and work on and get so cross we almost struck each other; the time I was discharged and he lent me his few dollars till I should get work again; his first big hit and then mine; and then--Nancy, and all the sweetness of a hundred times with both my dears! Did you think I was going to sit quiet and let you turn your heel on all of that? Allow your conceit and insolence and spite to feed on his disgrace and danger! Let _you_ sneer at _him_!

Leave _him_ to be triumphed over by _you_!--Will Denny by a Ten Euyck!