Persons Unknown Part 17

"It's the biggest truth in my life," Herrick replied.

"You see. I, who am so unlucky, what am I to do? If ever a poor girl needed a friend, I am that girl. But I don't dare let you touch my need.

I don't know what it may do to you."

Herrick answered her with a smile--"And I don't care."

She, too, smiled. It began to be borne in upon Herrick how great, when she chose to exercise it, was her self-control. She could talk to him with one part of her mind while the other was still listening, peering, questing, trembling for some fatal news. And he was suddenly aware of her murmuring--

"'Vous qui m'avez tant puni, Dans ma triste vie--'"

"Well, then," she said, "if you must,--I want something. Not protection, not pity, not champions.h.i.+p; I'm a little in your own line, you know, I'm not easily frightened.

"'Je suis aussi sans desir Autre que d'en bien finir-- Sans regret, sans repentir--'

"I don't know if you read Peter Ibbetson?"

"Raised on it!" Herrick said.

"Well, then, you understand things--I don't mean merely his French songs! And that is exactly what I want--to be quite simply and sensibly and decently understood! I am a more successful actress than you realize, you backward Easterners, and I am treated like a G.o.ddess, a bad child, a sibyl, an adventuress, a crazy woman. I should like to speak now and then with some one who knew that I was nothing but a lonely girl with some brains in her head, who often took herself too seriously and sometimes, alas! not seriously enough; who was capricious and perverse but not a coward, and oh, who meant so well! Such a person would sometimes say, 'She was silly to-day, but by this time she is ashamed.

She had a strange girlhood and they taught her very bad manners, but she is not a fool and she will learn.' Well, I will not have any common person thinking like that about me! It takes an artist to understand an artist! You think me very arrogant to speak like that of you and me, because, at the bottom of your heart, you have the arrogance of all the world--you do not admit that an actress really is an artist! Wait a little, and you shall own that I am one. At any rate, I know a bit of other people's art; it's my pride I was among the first to be made happy by yours--and oh, but I could do very well with a friend I could be proud of!"--It was not very long before he had embarked upon the history of his novel.

He went on and on; he explained to her Ten Euyck's thrust about the photograph; he told her of Evadne and of Sal. The first thing she said to him was--"Is there a play in it?"

"I tried it as a play first, but--"

"Oh, surely, the novel's better first! You can get it all out of your system in the novel, and then we could drain it of the pure gold for my end of it--for the play! You'd never sell it over my head! Why, I could have you up,--couldn't I?--for plagiarism! Do you know how you can keep me agreeable? Bring it to me here, when my rehearsals are over, and read it to me--it will please me and it can do you no harm. If you find me stupid, say to yourself, 'She is drunk with pleasure, poor thing, at what I have made of her.' Oh, you'd never have the heart to publish my portrait, and not let me see the proof!"

The compact was concluded as the maid entered with the tea things. Mrs.

Hope came in radiant. She began to thank Herrick for his article, and Christina said, "Where is Mrs. Deutch?"

"She is in the sitting-room. She says she must go home."

Christina went and parted the portieres and Herrick heard her speaking with a kind of sweet authority in German, of which he caught the phrase--"Yes, you will stay! You will certainly stay!" She waited there till her friend joined her, and then, returning, she took charge of the tea-table.

Henrietta Deutch was a large, handsome woman of about forty-five, too stout, but of a matronly dignity; her beautiful coloring was blended into a smooth, rich surface as foreign-looking as lacquer. So far as he was capable of perceiving anything but Christina, Herrick perceived that not only her physical but her social stature was higher than her husband's; she was neither ignorant nor fussy; she was a person of large silences, as well, he imagined, as of grave sympathies; for her age she was, to an American, strangely old-fas.h.i.+oned but, despite her addiction to black silk and the incessant knitting of white woolen clouds, she had, in her continental youth, received an excellent formal education "with accomplishments."

"Tante Deutch," said Christina, "this is our new friend, Mr. Herrick, who stood up for us against that man."

The little maid continued to throw out signals of distress and Mrs.

Hope, going to her relief, was heard to say, "Well, she'll use her white one." She explained to Christina, "It's only about laying out your things for to-night. She can't find your blue cloak--you know, the long one with the hood--"

"I am very glad to know you, sir," said Mrs. Deutch. "Christina, my lamb, you are ill!"

"No, I am not ill. But I am distracted. Sugar, Mr. Herrick? Lemon? My hand shakes and if the coroner were here he would say it was with guilt.

Poor soul, what a disappointment!"

"Christina!" exclaimed Mrs. Hope. "Don't laugh!"

"I am not laughing. I think the man a dangerous enemy and now he is my enemy. He will never forgive me for letting him make himself ridiculous.

He is too righteous to forget a grudge, for any one who earns such a thing from the excellent Peter Winthrop Brewster Cuyler Ten Euyck becomes a criminal by that action. 'Winthrop.' Of course there had to be the New England strain--he was born to wear a steeple hat and snoop for witches! May he never light the f.a.ggots about me!"

"Now, my dear, you are working yourself up!"

"Dear mother, you are a bit hard to please! First you tell me not to laugh and then you reproach me with working myself up! But you are right! Why should I fash myself over a man with a personality like a pair of shears? Ah, if I could get news of Nancy, my hand would be steady enough!"

"You'll have news of Nancy when she gets ready!" declared Mrs. Hope, with the maternal freedom of speech toward our dearest friends, "An ungrateful, stubborn, secretive girl!"

"My mother," said Christina, "is enthusiastic but inaccurate. She means that Nancy is neither voluble nor impulsive, like the paragon before you, and that though her affection is steady it is not easily dazzled.

We have been friends scarcely more than four years--since she made her first five dollars a week as part of a stage-mob--but I knew her at once for the little real sister of my heart. I told you I'd always been a lonely girl, Mr. Herrick, and that soft, little touch came close on my loneliness, like a child's. I have succeeded and she has not; I am the world's own daughter--I know the world and she does not; my hands are very keen, believe me, for the power and the glory--after all, one must have something!--and she can only put hers into mine. But where I am weak, she is strong. One can't ask one's family to forgive that!" said Christina. And with a tempestuous swoop she handed him a photograph upon which, whether for newspapers or detectives, had been pasted some memoranda. "This is more to the point."

He beheld a charming little face, fresh and pretty, quaintly feminine, with sensible and resolute brows to balance the wistfulness of the soft mouth; a face at once grave and glad, with a deep dimple softening the stubborn little chin. Herrick, studying the memoranda, compared them with his own vague memories and the photograph.

Height, five feet, four inches.

Weight, a hundred and twenty pounds.

Age, twenty years.

Complexion, fair.

Hair, dark auburn and curling.

Eyes, blue.

Wearing, when last seen, a white organdie dress with lace insertion; white shoes, stockings and gloves; small straw hat, dull green, trimmed with violets; carried a white embroidered linen sunshade and a small purse-bag, green suede with silver monogram, "A. C." No jewelry of any value. Wearing round her neck a string of green beads. Missing from her effects and commonly worn by her, two bangle bracelets--one silver, one jade. One silver locket. One scarab ring, bluish-green Egyptian turquoise, set in silver. Last seen on West Eighty --th Street, walking east, at five o'clock in the afternoon of August fourth.

It was now August seventh; she had been missing for three days.

"Where is she?"

"And I thought it strange enough, before the inquest, that I was in such trouble and didn't hear from her! Mother, you say she is hiding herself.

But,--all alone? I have telegraphed and telephoned everywhere, to every one! And then--does a girl throw down her work, her engagement, for nothing, without a syllable, and disappear! Her things are all at Mrs.

McBride's; her bill for her room is still going on; she was to have gone out to an opening that night with Susie Grayce! She hadn't a valise with her, not a change of clothes! She turned east from Jim Ingham's doorway, and that's all!" Christina was beginning to lose control of herself; she looked as if her teeth were going to chatter.

"Now, my pretty--" began Mrs. Deutch.

"Turned east?" ruminated Mrs. Hope. "East? That's toward the park. She might have been going to meet--Well, Christina!"

For the hand which Christina had criticized as trembling had dropped the tea-pot. This must have dropped rather hard, for it broke to pieces.

Everything was deluged with tea.

"My sweeting!" cried Mrs. Deutch. "Move yet a little!" For she was already at work upon the disaster which was threatening Christina's white gown. The fragments of the wreck were cleared away, and while fresh tea was being made Christina urged Mrs. Deutch to play "and get me quiet."

"Yes, you will play. You will play for me and for Mr. Herrick. Mr.

Herrick is not one of these deaf Yankees--don't you remember what he wrote about the music in Berlin?"

"So!" said Mrs. Deutch. "In Berlin! Is it so!" She went seriously to the piano where she executed some equally serious music with admirable technique and some feeling, but her performance was scarcely so remarkable as to account for Christina's extreme eagerness.

When she had finished Herrick took himself unwillingly away, and was still so agitated by the sweetness of Christina's farewell that after he had got himself into the hall he dropped his glove. The little maid who had opened the door for him, let it slam as she sprang to pick up the glove, and at the closing of the door he heard Christina's voice break hysterically forth, and rise above some remonstrance of her mother's.