He was making horrible motions with his mouth; Christina found some unspilled wine and thrust the edge of the glass between his lips. "Tell me! Nancy—?"
Kane held up his hand. Beyond, in the pantry, a step sounded—backing from Nicola's trail. Herrick and the sheriff dragged in between them a tall Sicilian whose triangular knife was still wet. The embroidered table-cloth with which they bound him to the piano strained under his renewed efforts to attack the dying man whom Christina still entreated, "Is she with my sister? Is she?"
A hoarse sob raged through Nicola and gasped past his last grin of pride and hate. "You fool of hers! Fool of us all!Yoursister?Mysister, mine! You thinkyouever have a sister like that?"
The girl stood above him, tranced and wide-eyed, with distended nostrils; as she turned to Herrick a face which release and knowledge were even then palely lighting the figure of a man darted into the gallery where Herrick had lain; a slim, soft man whose pretty little face was all flecked and sweated with the insane hate and courage which come of insane fear. The Sicilian greeted what he took for reinforcement with a cry of triumph and encouragement; but it was not Nicola, it was Herrick at whom this tremulous assassin, yelling "Spy! Spy! Will you show me again to the Camorra?" extended his revolver. At the same moment, Nicola, turning on his side and aiming upward, shot him dead. The slim, soft figure doubled over the rail and the refined, pretty, convulsed face swung there with open mouth. At this Nicola spat the wine which he had sucked as he lay: "Thus my sister salutes thee!" Then his head knocked back upon the floor and he lay still.
The tall Sicilian, who had watched the action without fully understanding the quick English words, now strained forward, peering with a kind of gratified thirst into Christina's face. He said to her in Italian that was almost a whisper, "You are very fair!"
"Do you think that is news to me?" asked the girl, with a kind of fury. "But my fairness has done all it can! What's to do, now?"
"You are fair. But you are the devil. You brought police to the river, who will return with more. You have plunged this night in the blood of your brothers. There was one who was like a little sister. Where is she?"
Christina started; half in appeal, half in defense against the omen of his tones, she stretched out her hands. The Sicilian lowered his mouth to the bosom of his shirt and brought forth in his teeth a little hoop of silver which he shook before Christina's eyes. "Where is she now? Of her tokensshe has lost the third!" It was Nancy's bracelet that he dropped at Christina's feet.
"Devil of fine fairness," he said, "I shall pick it up again, when you are lying low! When not one shot is left for our hurt we there, without, will come quietly in! Then shall I bear this to my chief. I took it from the hand of Beppo, who lay bleeding in the grass. Were Chigi and Pepe caught in the fire? They reached her late, for they had rowed their boat back, to escape those policemen on the river. Only when Alieni jumped and swam they must follow him and tramp to the house for boats along the shore. But they reached her! I was against it always—she was not of our nation. Ah, she was pretty! Had you not let her know too much she need not have been put to sleep!"
Christina made no outcry. If his attack on herself bewildered her, her imagination caught the significance of the Camorrist phrase. "Where," asked she slowly, "does she sleep?"
"In the dead ashes of the house of boats." His malignant sneer took in the stricken, threatened group, as well as his own bondage. And turning once more to Christina he smilingly informed her, "I seek in the house for boats Nicola Pascoe. I hear him talking as at a telephone. They have brought a lamp and in the window I see a pretty girl, young and not so tall, with a face very sweet but sick and the hair falls curling and red. She has in her hands a tiny bottle filled with a dark liquid. She throws it from the window where it fills the air with laudanum smell. And at that up runs to her Nicola—and she, away! They must have knocked over the lamp, for next the house for boats is blazing high. And, as the smoke comes in the window, there she runs again—just as I see the woman's figure and in the fiery smoke one light of her red hair at that out from the bushes a bullet springs. She clasps her hands over her breast with a small cry and down she sinks. And Alieni flies out of the bushes with Beppo and Chigi and Pepe at his back and he races into the flaming house. It is after that down plunges Nicola, down and past us, running here to this place, and I follow him, sure that past him I shall come, too, upon his sister. Before we reach here, through the dark, comes a horse with two men on its back—one is yelling 'I have killed her! I have killed her!' and he passes. The other falls off. It is Beppo, who dies at my feet, giving me the bracelet. He had it from Pepe, the Parmesan, whom he saw meet with Alieni in the doorway of the house for boats. By this time all, everywhere, is fighting and the house for boats blows up in a puff and falls in upon itself in crumbling fire."
Christina had never taken her eyes from his face and in those eyes alone there now seemed any life to hold her body upright. "It's not true!" said she, gently and at length. "Life's not so silly!" But she stretched out a blind hand to Herrick and leaned on him a little.
"Ah!" mocked the Sicilian, "it made a beautiful grave! You will not have so fine! But yours gapes for you now as well as for your lover, and for your husband, who caused all the death! Do not pity the girl who died. Exult not over Giuseppe Gumama. Read, instead, the writing in your golden pistol—of Alieni—and the Signora Alieni—" He stopped with a gratified gasp. The handle of the door into the hall had been softly turned from the outside.
No one moved. In a strange voice the sheriff called to know if this were one of his men. There was no answer. "Where are they? Why don't they—"
Gumama the Sicilian laughed aloud. "The long cellar-way, where by night we carried out to the river our broken press—It has let us in—so quietly—Many went upstairs—"
Herrick translated. With one impulse the three men turned toward the slide in the paneling. It was closed. But their intent listening made sure of more than one soft touch, straying in search of the mechanism. Of crowding whispers they could not be so sure. Herrick reached for Nicola's gun. But it had only one charge and then, indeed, though without turning her head, Christina closed her hand on his and took it from him. "That's mine, you know!" No man gainsaid her and she put it in her breast. Undisguised, unhurried footsteps sounded overhead. An alien presence pervaded all that house. Caged in their shelter, they drew together, close under the balcony. Christina suffered herself to be drawn with them, but she was considering aloud the Sicilian's words.
"My golden pistol!" Christina looked from the little femininely jeweled dummy to the script, "'Filippi Alieni and all his house'—And all his house! 'The death of traitors'—My husband, you say? The Signora Alieni—A. A. A. Alieni, of course! But—Allegra?—Allegra?—Alieni?"
"Signora Alieni!" Gumama smilingly repeated.
The girl gave him one glance, sprang past him and flung herself against the shuttered windows. "Whom do you mean by traitors?" she called. "For whom do you take us? Answer! Answer!"
At the sound of her voice a deep-bayed, many-throated yell roared out derision and victory. As the men dragged Christina back a coarse laugh mocked loudly from across the road. "Signora Alieni, we rejoice at the last to salute you!" And the whole woodland took up his phrase in chorus, "Buona sera, Signora Alieni!"
Then, uncontrollably, at length the darkness volleyed, the earth was rived with sound and fire, the flashes of it scorching their skin while glass, plaster, woodwork, split and spattered round them as through the windows the hail beat.
Christina's stream of Italian left Herrick so far behind that he could only watch the incredulity of Gumama's face turn to doubt and then to reflection. The word "American" was often repeated, and then came Gumama's slower answer, puzzling out the question—But was not the Signora Alieni herself much American? Did not she to-night meet here in this house her brother Nicola? And was she not to run away at sunrise with—and he pointed to Herrick—an American? And how well was it not known that the Signora Alieni was bella, bella donna?—"Bella—bella!" with mounting fervor he violently repeated.
"But you, yourself? You never saw her?"
"The Signora Alieni goes always veiled."
"Are there none—out there—who know her?"
"Old friends ten years ago in Naples. And the laborers of Nicola."
"When they come, they will know at once she is not here," said Christina, with an odd, proud calm. "Ah, please, let me see what they are about!" And she persistently advanced to a window and peered between the slats of a blind.
Blackness was lifting from the earth. That clear gray light, clearer and grimmer than ever they had seen it, of the slowly rising dawn had begun to fill the open spaces. Under the trees it was still a dusk of living shadows, and, from within the house, the half-muffled, surrounding pressure strained closer still against the walls. Christina faced round, uttered a piercing shriek and pointed toward the panel. To this, the men who watched her turned. And on the instant, the shutters clicking as she flung them open, the girl flashed through and ran straight into the dawn on the white terrace. "You who know Allegra Alieni, am I she? Am I she?"
A wail of amazement and denial greeted her. The men within, the men without, came to a standstill.—"If you ever loved me," said Christina to Herrick, "keep back from me, now!" He replied only by swinging forward Gumama, who thereupon stood in the sight of his friends with the mute argument of a revolver at his head. Not a voice replied. But not a shot was fired.
In the pause produced by the concerned and puzzled hesitation of the besiegers, Christina gathered up her voice. She was used to send it far, to hush and rouse with it, to pierce and move at will, and neither misery nor fatigue seemed now to have weakened its flexible and winning melody. "Sirs," cried the girl, "I ask you the one thing. Are you not here as the executioners of the great Camorra? Do you, then, wish to disobey?"
She had centered upon herself a bewildered stare.
"And do you not disobey if you blunder? Do you wish to bring all the new world about your ears for the wrong thing? Believe me, we four, we are strong persons in that world—we do not fall unavenged! If we are to die here, now, and the great society of the Camorra is to wreck itself upon our death, let it not be in a mistake!—Ah, you see! Believe me! We are not false brethren of yours, we are Americans, every one! But in a way you and I are brethren, for I, like you, have seen my heart's good faith betrayed—and by the same hand!"
A startled murmur rose.
"I, too, was brought to come here by the ruin of my life through Allegra Alieni! Of her husband I never knew. Only hold back the force that masses at our door and here is a plan. We are here four—three men and a woman. Send us four men—mask them, if you will—and let them look at us close and well; they will see that we cannot be those whom you seek. But we have with us the body of Nicola whom this one here, calling himself Giuseppe Gumama, slew, and who was brother to the Alienis. Let your men take this Nicola from our house, for we, no more than you, have any use for traitors!"
These words produced an extraordinary effect. A murmur of admiration, of fellowship, exclamations, argument, a sort of congratulation traversed the green spaces through the still strengthening dawn. Christina, as always, had found her audience.
"Oh, sirs," cried the girl, in a softer cadence, advancing to the very edge of the terrace, and still eagerly baring her face to the pale light, "you seek our lives and I am so weary I am almost glad to die. But die or live, oh, now, for the dear love of God, let me go down to the river! Let me see who is still alive there! Send whom you will with me, but let me go!" And Christina stretched out her arms to the men of the Camorra as to the brothers of her soul and for the moment they were all more than her brothers in their inflammable hearts.
But even a little noise could still distract them. And this time it was the noise of the unhinged shutter as it slid, bumping, for a second and then fell with a crash upon the terrace. In the half-light Ten Euyck's hand, holding a pistol, was visible at the window and above it the white leer of his face. Voices cried, "A fourth man! A man of whom she did not tell!"
A prisoner from the yellow farmhouse called out in an insufferable, fawning yelp, "I know him! He used to visit the signora! He is the confidant of the signora and of her brother!"
A roar rose and drowned out Christina's voice. "That man—how comes he there! The friends of Allegra Alieni are her friends!"
The crowd did not advance for the ring of Herrick's gun was still pressed against Mr. Gumama's beautiful brow. But some shrill voice rose, a-quiver with exhorting hate. "The hour is come! For what have we waited? Till they had not a shot left! They have none now! If they had they would have shot Gumama when he came in! They do not shoot him, now—they have nothing to shoot! Give the signal! They hid the friend of Allegra Alieni behind the window—how shall they tell us her friends are not their friends? How shall they tell us they can injure our Gumama? Close in! Close in!"
The tide of the Camorra washed forward, and surged up the first terrace. But it came to a halt.
"How?" Christina had cried. And then, extending the revolver that carried the last shot, she had fired straight into the dead face of Ten Euyck.
The jar shattered that perilous equilibrium. The corpse fell in upon itself, its weapon dropping with a clank, the tongue suddenly protruding beneath the shattered cheekbones and the head goggling on the breast. The note of one still unaffrighted bird came through the perfect stillness.
The invading army shivered, shocked and applausive; then, apprehensively, it glanced at Gumama. It drew together in consulting knots. Some men, coming from round the house, joined the counsel and created a sensation. A puzzled but now rather friendly voice shouted, "Some one lies! Alieni was seen to enter where you are!"
They all looked at Christina. But the wire had snapped at last. She stood with a scared vagueness on her white face, the pistol swinging loose in her hand and her eyes fixed on the hunched clutter of what had been Ten Euyck. Herrick made out to translate the message and Kane said, "Ask 'em if they'll send up that investigating committee?"
Christina's shot had made, however, too great an impression. If they had ammunition to spare, they were no hosts for the Camorra. Would the Americans come out, each one, upon the second terrace?—bringing, also, the dead and wounded, till Gumama shall tell us there are no more?
"When the devil drives—! Say we'll begin with the dead!"
They began with Ten Euyck. Sheriff Buckley took the head, Kane the feet; the long, bony figure sagged between them and the tails of its dress-coat flopped as if pointing jocularly toward the ground. As they bore this burden down the terraces and laid it on the smooth greenness of the lawn, amid the ever brightening daylight and the ever growing chirp and twitter of the slowly calming birds, various disheveled figures began to hurry into view along the drive from the river. These arrivals had all the air of refugees and continued to excite, in counsel, an increasing perturbation. Yet the truce remained unbroken. So long as Kane and Buckley, exposed, defenseless, to the first marksman, carried forth Nicola no word nor movement was given in enmity. But the delay in reaching the figure in the gallery produced great restiveness. Taunts and outcries of nervous impatience gave way, when the two men appeared with their slighter burden, to a chorus of half-derisive welcome. The Camorra had begun to be in a hurry.
Its nervousness communicated itself to the men who bore this third body down the great stone steps and laid it at Ten Euyck's right hand. A thick sweat stood out upon them when a sharp storm of curses, geysers and downpours of venom broke suddenly from heavens and earth. But the tempest was not for them. The face of their last burden had become visible to the advance guard stationed among the foremost trees and this now leaned violently forth, tossing like branches with the shriek, "Alieni! Traditore! Alieni!"
Upon that the shadow of the woodland broke at last. A dozen men, their hats screened low to shield their faces, detached themselves from the mass which crouched greedily after them and, racing out upon the lawn, threw themselves prostrate on the soft, supine thing that lay there. Behind them the tide became ungovernable; rose, swelled forward; covered the road, the lowest terrace; raving, shrieking, leaping and falling; biting the grass upon which it rolled in frenzy. There were perhaps two minutes of pandemonium. Then a whistle sounded. Then another. The tide rolled back; the groves of oak and pine and maple swallowed it into their shadow; and of that orgy of living hate no trace remained in the full clearness of the fresh morning but the trampled, mangled body of Filippi Alieni, pierced with fifty-eight wounds and still bearing between the shoulder blades a triangular knife. The will of the Camorra was satisfied.
A chorus of whistles sounded from the wood. Then arose a single voice, demanding Gumama. His captors realized that the war was over; the prisoner was released. Despite the hurrying bird-calls of his mates he paused, thoughtfully knitting his Saracen brows, for a look at Christina.
The girl was standing perfectly still, with her eyes intent upon Ten Euyck's empty chair, as if she had not observed his removal; her gaze was fixed, but her lower lip strained and quivered. As Gumama paused the pistol slid from her hand; the noise of its dropping at her feet attracted her eyes; she shivered violently; broke into trembling mirth and sank, till her soft cheek and the convulsive throbbing of her young body lay pressed upon the stone. Herrick and Gumama both sprang to her. Herrick lifted her head upon his knee, but she lay limp and shook from head to foot with sobbing laughter.
Gumama shrugged and stood back. "Is it," he asked, "the silver bracelet?" Then they all saw that the bracelet snatched from Nancy was on Christina's wrist.
Herrick nodded; his soul was sick with that horror. There was no triumph, now, in victory.
"Tell her," said the tall Sicilian, "when she avenges her friend to think of me. I will come. Always. She is the pearl of everything. All would not see it. But I have the piercing eye. I see."
He ran off swiftly; and the sort of uproarious twitter which welcomed him under the trees ended in a final message. "Farewell, Americans. You do us the courtesy of our beloved Gumama! We do you our courtesy—Flee! Whoever you are, the policemen are upon you! They are coming from the gate, they are coming from the river! In ten minutes they will be here! Americans, farewell!"
It was the last word of the Camorra in their lives. The undergrowth of the wood seemed to grow scantier; it was the backward fading of the shadows, it was the passing of a great, black bulk; the disappearance of innumerable unknown persons whom they had never even seen, of whose existence they had never even known, out of their path. Nothing remained but the signaling whistles of the Camorra, gathering its children in its retreat. The thing was over. The last consequence of the Ingham murder, of the birth of the Hopes' first child twenty-eight years ago in Naples, was over and done. And the three men regarded each other with a strange feeling of vacancy.
But in the mouths of Kane and the sheriff the morning air was good and life ran sweet in their veins. Even to Herrick, with the exhausted girl laughing and shuddering in his arms, there seemed to rise a kind of future hope when forgetfulness should deal tenderly with her. Soon she must begin to weep and the other side of weeping a kind of consolation lies. "Why, her own youth and life must heal her!" Kane said. "It's hard, it's bitter hard! But there's her feeling for you, her future, her work—Don't look at her as if she were dying! Time, my boy, she needs time, that's all!—As for Nancy Cornish, she fell with one shot. And since she was so much in love with that poor fellow, believe me, she's better off!"
Herrick looked up in alarm, lest Christina should hear bad news. But she was lost in the hot surge of tears that had come to her at last and lay only quieter and quieter in his hold. Till at length, since there was a time coming when she must know if Fate had played her doubly false, he fetched a coat to put under her head and drew Kane aside. "You meant just now—?"
"I meant what I've had on my mind through all this night, as something with which I didn't know how to face Miss Hope. I meant that this chap Denny was never a very lucky fellow—"
"Was?"
"But that never was anything unluckier than his consenting to leave the Tombs."
"Because they followed and brought him back?"
"They followed. But they didn't bring him back!—I forgot you wouldn't know. The Italians somehow palmed off on Ten Euyck's men another Italian made up with the things in which they took Denny from the Tombs. It's easy enough to understand now why Ten Euyck, with discreet mercy, called this substitute simply a mistake and let him go." He paused, studying the driveway with clouded eyes. "The Italians must have got clear away with Denny, but why did they take so much pains? Were they really going to hand over to Allegra a man whom they certainly considered in some way their enemy, when already they must have begun to turn against her? What were they going to do with him? Whatdidthey try to do with him when he was first imprisoned in the Tombs? Don't groan, my boy! It's the one way out. It's the most merciful thing for that poor girl, there; it's the most merciful thing for Denny himself. Hope for it! If his captors didn't get away, if he's been retaken with them, then marry Christina Hope as fast as may be and get her out of this country for awhile. You understand?" Herrick looked up. "I intend, with all my strength, to keep my bargain. I'll go to the Governor to-morrow. But he let me know, as I was starting here, that it would be useless."
"After his promise?"
"Since that promise Denny broke jail. There are minds to which such a move is always the unpardonable sin! Against it the mere justifying provocation in any story Allegra Alieni may tell could make no appeal. Besides, it's told by a woman who was in love with him, and who, by this time, is either dead or run away. So must be every witness to it. Even as evidence against the blackmailers, if there are any left, Miss Hope can't force the state to sell her his life for this, now. Well, some day, perhaps, you can make her see that whatever happens, police or Camorra, he managed to get his way, poor chap! If she weren't fooled by life's being hope she would see, well enough, that he was the last man to thank her for a light sentence. He was keen against jail, you remember?"
They were both silent. Yes, Herrick remembered. "The best friend Christina ever had" she would surely some day see could not have lingered in the black durance that he loathed.—Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!
It was the hour for resolution, for new birth. Herrick felt a strength of pity in his breast whose tide should lift Christina from the whirlpools of which the lessening eddies still plucked at her sick soul. Poor girl, poor, brave, spoiled, wilful, imperious, generous heart! To have fought so hard and to be checked thus at the end! To have outwatched, outstalked, outrun the hounds for this! "Thus far shalt thou go...." Hers had been a heroic presumption, but it had been presumption all the same. You cannot outface consequences nor outdare natural tragedy; no, not even you, Christina Hope! After all, could she have expected to clear out from a morass like this without a loss? Ah, for her defeat he suffered, but for her safety he thanked God! Rest, time, the irrevocable—these in the end would place the past under her feet. Was it because she read the tender vowing of his thought that she had a little ceased to weep?
For she lifted her exhausted face, where the wild, wet eyes still seemed to listen, just as Herrick remembered their continual guard six weeks ago. She was listening to those chorusing signals, still whistled from far stations nearer road and river and returned in such imitation of bird voices that bird after bird replied. They were growing fainter—they were retreating on every hand—all but one, which seemed to advance and to give forth a more familiar note. And suddenly Christina answered it.
Herrick caught her closer, in a new terror of delirium. The girl rose to her knees and put him back. "But we've wandered many a weary foot—" From among the fleeing whistles of the wood one had certainly warned or questioned in articulate notes with which hers joined in a familiar bar—"Since auld lang syne, my dear—" Through the colorless day a strong yellow light had begun to flood the earth; the clouds were carved out sharp in it, the woods stood black; the light had a blush of happy fire and the air sparkled. In that cool radiance, in that bright hour, out from among the very waves of the Camorra's receding sea, a single figure stepped from the border of the wood and came straight up the terraces.
Not so tall as Mr. Gumama but still vaguely Sicilian in cut, the messenger or fugitive or whatever he might be advanced under the gaze of those who grew terribly pale and could not speak; Christina peering forward, shaking from head to foot, her clenched hands hanging at her side and her lips caught between the knocking of her teeth. The echoing, ominous whistles, the noises of rescue approaching from two sides, the hails of the police, the sound of wheels, tires, horses' hoofs and running feet did not deter the single figure which, mounting with a kind of steady stumble, like one far spent, blind, now, to the danger of sudden bullets, indifferent to arrest or punishment or anything in heaven or earth but his own ends, gained at length the foot of the stone steps and lifted his face. At the same instant the risen sun glinted on the swinging gold of sailors' earrings, on the bracelet slipped out below a ragged cuff, on the red cord of a scapular and on the scarf in the Sicilian colors that had helped to play their part in the Duel by Wine in the loft above the garage. The wearer was damp from the river and stained with earth, yet smelling of singed cloth and grimed with smoke; torn, wounded, blackened, haggard, with bright, steady eyes. It was Will Denny. He carried the unconscious but still breathing figure of Nancy Cornish in his arms.
The first thing she woke to was Allegra's letter and Kane's question, "Do you know what this document contains? Can you witness its truth?"
And then answered Nancy Cornish, "Of course I can! I saw her come out in Christina's cloak. They kept me waiting in the motor outside while she shot Mr. Ingham."
The whole of Allegra's document was never made public. Before it was read even by those concerned they heard from Nancy how, when she had run from the window of the boathouse, it was Allegra who had reappeared there, she whose red hair Gumama had glimpsed through the smoke and she whom Alieni had found courage to shoot. Afterwards they got from Denny the story of his venture: how he had guessed that, on leaving the Tombs, he would, in his own person, be kept a prisoner by his Italian hosts till he was got out of the country; and how he had therefore persuaded Filippi Alieni to change places with him—Filippi to be carried to Allegra and he to receive at the meeting of the Camorra a message that would take him to Nicola, to the hiding of the Arm of Justice and to Nancy Cornish. What must forever sicken Denny to think of was that hour in the boathouse when Nancy might have yielded and taken the laudanum that Mrs. Pascoe had finally secured, before he could get to her. Nancy's eyes were upon him, regarding him fixedly and strangely. With the vividness of his remembrance he broke off to question her. "How, at such a time, among such dangers, did you dare to throw it away?"
"Why, I had to! No matter what! I had to live till the last minute. The letter was gone. I was your life. I was the only one who knew!"
He dropped his face into her lap with a strange laugh. By and by, they turned to the story of Allegra.
That great donkey of a Ten Euyck wishes me to write this. He says it is for his protection, but I know well enough what it is for. It is a net to catch a peacock—to whom he is welcome. He will never bray about me—this is two-edged; it would avenge me. It is a pity none will ever read it, for it is a good story and I should like every one to know about me. Then, too, sometimes, I almost think that when I am far away and sheltered with my friends, I will send word of it to high places forhissake. For I shall be always in torment if they kill him. That is, if by then there shall be no Nancy Cornish. To send him, free, to the arms of another woman—no, that would be a little too much!
I am a remarkable girl. It has taken to crush me the same as to crush Napoleon—bad luck. My bad luck began when I was born, with the two colors of my eyes. Thus a mark was put upon me, keeping me always in holes and corners unless I would be known, and making most men, who love me by nature, growing in time to weary of my face. If it had not been for the blue eye and the brown, my mother would never have noticed, among the children in the park, the American baby with the fair down upon its head who, when she came to look at it, was made with a shaped face like mine, and who also had a brown eye and a blue. She would never have made friends with the nurse and learned how the child was named Allegra Hope, and how the rich Americans had been married but four months before it was born, and were to wait in Italy till it could be brought home a year younger than it was. This the nurse had picked up, not being supposed to speak much English. And then came the telegram to come home, somebody was dying. And at the same time the nurse was sick, and there was no one with whom to leave the child. And then the nurse brings forth her friend who has always showed so fond of the child, and there is rejoicing because she is American, and the English doctor says she is healthy and the child is left with her. It is treated well; it grows; it grows more and more like me, who am but one year the older, so that all laugh to see us, and I am more like that other mother than my own, showing in what class it would have been just I should be born. And the old creature in America does not die, but hangs and hangs, and money is always sent for the baby, and by and by when it is three years old it catches the fever and it dies. And the English doctor is to write to the parents, but he does not write—he does an injury to one of the great clan of the Camorra and he writes no more. And I grow every day more beautiful, more strong, more strange to have sprung out of the mud, and the money keeps coming and coming; but that the dead one was fair in the head, and I am red like the sun, there is no great difference from what she might have been, and that she is dead and buried and the money spent and spent on me, is never told. But they there in America, thinking to be gone but a month at most, never said there was a daughter, so they know not how, now, one is to be produced.
So that when I am seven years old, comes the Hope man; he looks upon the child with the blue eye and the brown, and sighs his great breath on my hair, and takes me to the English school. But I come every summer to my own people, so that I have all that is best of both kinds, and grow to be so beautiful and have such fascination, that when there comes sometimes a Hope father or Hope mother to take me on a trip and be sorry for me, I laugh at their backs! The mother I do not like, and she does not like me. She is a fool, and she has, too, another child. It is a girl and it is said to be pretty; but the picture she carries with her resembles a pale, shapeless child with dull hair,—not like mine that burns men's hearts like fire! Moreover this child has things that I should have, more money, more fuss, she is more shown. I am proud to be what I am; my mother, who is scarcely more than a common servant, had the great luck to marry into the Camorra, and my brother Nicola at eighteen takes the oath, so I am not come alone from dull peasants and these cackling Yankees, but from free men, born to judge, born to strike, born to live wild and to satisfy their blood. But all the same, as to this brat, Christina, I am the elder sister and I should have all,all! I make up my mind to be even with her and to spoil what things she has. I hear how she is strange, and is a lonely child, and plays she has a sister to talk to, a little girl who lives in the looking-glass; and how it is a game of hers that when she is in a gown of pink the sister is in blue, and when they buy her a doll there is another for the sister, and a place set at the dolls' teas, and Christina talks for the two. Then I know she is a fool, like her mother.
When I am fifteen, and of the right age for passion and to break men's hearts, my bad luck comes and breaks my own. It could not leave me with the poor to be like the poor, it raised me up so that my nose sniffed at sight of them, and then it brought me together with Alonzo Pasquale, the son of a millionaire. He was mad for me, and well he might be, and I liked him so well, being young and fanciful, that I gave him encouragement. I ran away from school with him and we would have been happy forever, he having so much to give me, but that he grew weary of my blue eye and my brown. He told me so, for he was a dog and a devil, and I took little Filippi Alieni, and married him! It was wise. It was as well to be married, and he was a gentleman, with money. All was done as a wise girl should do, and yet see how my luck pursued me!
His people cast him off, on my account, their own daughters being ugly; and Nicola, who has been the best of brothers to me, Nicola got him into the Camorra, where his gentlemanly manners would make him able to get, first, confidence, and then money, from the best.
Yet when I had been but three months married and was not yet sixteen, he gets himself caught. And in prison he tells, he betrays his comrades, so that he is released, and for this Nicola does not kill him. No, he keeps the secret of that disgrace, and ships us to America, where I am to introduce my husband to the Hopes. All so well planned, and yet such luck!
One of those to whom he had confessed loses his place, and then, by blackmail, that he will give my husband's treachery to the Camorra, he gets from him all the money that he now has. So that I have to lose him quickly; to take the little, ah, so little! there is left, and slip away! I do not wish a Camorra knife in my back!
I am afraid to go to the Hopes, for there he will follow me, and he is a snivelling, watering thing to make a fuss and spoil all. So I ask for work to teach Italian, and I live for a little while as if I were quite commonplace. And so I meet with the great Jim.
Hail and farewell, my poor Jim! You were only twenty-three and you cared too much! You did so many things for me, you thought such things about me, and were of such a considerate politeness and care, it made me laugh! But you were a beautiful lover, and I would have loved you, if I could! I would have been glad to marry you, as you made me so weary begging of me. I was very happy with you; you gave more to me and I think you loved me better than any one. But you were very silly to believe me, and silly to leave me when you found me out! That little whimpering puppy came; and, since you left me, and he had a good hint from Nicola how to get money from an Italian family here, what was I to do? We did very well, for a while, besides the money the Hopes sent me—I told them I came here to escape impertinence and was teaching Italian—and then they lost their money and I wrote to them no more.
But Mrs. Hope, because of her sick conscience, was always trying, in sly ways, to find where I was. And it seems when her brat was come to fourteen years old it chanced upon my last letter and learned all. Heavens, what a row it raised! And how I was written to and written to; and some letters being forwarded me that they had tried sending me to Italy, were all about how she cried for me, and pitied and loved me and rejoiced, and said, again and again: "Oh, mother, I have a sister! I have a sister!" "Bene!" I thought, "she sounds like a tiresome little minx; but at least it is a thing to know!"
So that by and by—when Filippi is clumsy again and goes to jail for four years, and they dare to put me there for two—when I come out I go to my sentimental miss, who is now more than sixteen and makes already a little money. Not a dollar has she made since but I have had the half of it. She has no frugality; she is all luxuries and caprices and always in debt; and for a while it seemed as if really she would be scarcely of any use at all. But it is strange how pale she is, and yet attracts and shoots onward! Since then I have found a letter about those two years when I was silent. She wrote it to Will Denny, who thought she did too much for me. Like this:
"As I grew up and understood, and saw what little girls can come to in a world like this, I thought here was I and where was she?—My elder sister, born in wedlock, born of my father and my mother, grown up among peasants, among hardships, and if she had come to harm, lost, thrown away, forsaken and denied—for what? For any fault of hers? For a convention, a cowardice, done in obedience to the chatter of fools and in order to stand well with those that have no hearts! What can I think of my poor mother but that her weakness forsook and denied her child to please the world? What can I think of any shame or sorrow that touches Allegra but that this is what the world and her own family have made of her? Oh, Will, it came to be my madness to find her and to ask her forgiveness for being in her place. All that I am and have and ever shall be I stole from her, and only give her back again to repay what can never in this world be repaid!"
"As I grew up and understood, and saw what little girls can come to in a world like this, I thought here was I and where was she?—My elder sister, born in wedlock, born of my father and my mother, grown up among peasants, among hardships, and if she had come to harm, lost, thrown away, forsaken and denied—for what? For any fault of hers? For a convention, a cowardice, done in obedience to the chatter of fools and in order to stand well with those that have no hearts! What can I think of my poor mother but that her weakness forsook and denied her child to please the world? What can I think of any shame or sorrow that touches Allegra but that this is what the world and her own family have made of her? Oh, Will, it came to be my madness to find her and to ask her forgiveness for being in her place. All that I am and have and ever shall be I stole from her, and only give her back again to repay what can never in this world be repaid!"
You see, she was a crazy girl from the beginning. As soon as ever I see her I know the thing to tell her is that I have been in prison for stealing—I do not tell her I am innocent; I tell her I was starving! It was funny to see her—I was like a saint to her! I think of all I can that is piteous and wild and of a great pride, broken, like a sick eagle! I tell her about Ingham, but all wrong and round the other way, and how he cannot marry me because I am without money or place, and leaves me, when I am eighteen, without a dollar and without a name. And how when that had come to a young girl I could not write. All, all because society had kept me from my place in life and, having turned me out, had locked me into jail because I could not starve.
Eh me, you should have seen her! She used herself like a maid to me, and a mother and a little lover, all in one. And I might have done very well with her, and the world would have been all for me to walk,—or this little running colt, she would have known the reason!—but for my bad luck. Nicola who would do better in this country with education wishes me to work with him. And how can I guess the growing brat will grow so far and high? So I am glad enough to make a little butter to my bread. Try living once, three women, the Hope woman and Christina and me, off the salary of a girl younger than eighteen and you will see. But who would think that all the while this monkey girl was looking in the glass of my grace, to steal and steal and steal from me? And would steal once too often, for the moving-picture show, and gets herself into a corner! That was, indeed, the justice of the gods.
All this time I have made Christina keep me secret. I have still the brown and the blue eye, to be noticed everywhere, and I do not want Filippi on my hands, nor yet Jim Ingham. And for all she begs me to know this Denny, whom she persists to tell about me, I think he has a look that is not simple—the look of a man who has been about, and may guess too much—and so I will not—I am too sensitive and proud, and cannot face a person in the world except my little sister, whom I love so much and who is all I have! Except, I want the poor, devoted, kind, good folk who brought me up! So when she is eighteen she begins to buy for me this farm and here she welcomes my mother and Nicola. Nicola has found out friends of ours and kinsfolk who have long run, among people of our nation in New York, a business called the Arm of Justice, and we work for that; I having the best ideas, but, alas, ever doomed to hide. And on the farm we live in innocence and peace, and conduct our business excellently, out of the way of those from whom we make a little money, and here comes at last the sick puppy, Filippi, not to be kept off, who can but sit quiet and lick his paws in the background, that Christina shall not know of him.
And then, it is the first year of Ten Euyck being coroner, and a man who has been paying us, unfortunately, dies, and Ten Euyck, nosing, nosing, he comes upon our trail. And he sees how we have had nothing to do with the death, only the man had no more to pay and so he killed himself. And Ten Euyck sends for me, and tells me he is sorry for me and he will not inform against me. He tells me of a young girl he knows in the highest of society, for whom a friend of his had so great a fancy he was ready to marry her, and I knew he was that friend. And the girl dare not but lead him on, but all the time she prefers some one else and is in trouble; and he tells me all he has found out and he says, "I would not tell this to you, if I did not think you grateful to me and too discreet to use it otherwise than as I wish, when you know liberty is in my hand!" So I know what I am to do, and the girl goes mad. And he pays me by and by, but not enough. But what can I do?
We are going mad, too, for money, for our bad luck is always there! That man who made Filippi pay has found us out, and exacts of us more and more. We are in terror of the law from Ten Euyck, who has let none see him but me, and not one strand to hold him by, and of the Camorra from this brute. We work hard, we run great danger, and we remain poor, so that if we lose Christina we have nothing but what we must make and pay away—and Christina engages herself to Ingham! Was it not enough to break the heart! What use is it to work, to struggle, to be beautiful, and to have nothing? And here is this silly girl, not worth my little finger, who has all!
Three times more I work for Ten Euyck, and that man Kane gets after us. It is all the fault of Ten Euyck, who has made us conspicuous, and he knows Kane thinks there is something strange, and he loses his nerve. He comes always to the farm like a caller, when I have sent all away but me, for he will put nothing in writing, and he drives his own machine. And one day he is raging against Ingham and Christina, and what he would give to know against them, any more than Ingham's dissipation, and I think "Maybe I can make something out of this!"
By and by I rejoice to hear that there is trouble with Jim Ingham. He is not the boy I found him. He has let himself go wild so long he cannot tame himself, all at once, and then he is exacting, like a fiend, and jealous and suspicious, not believing in himself, nor anything, nor anybody; and I laugh to myself, if she should know why! For were there nothing else at all, it would annoy me that chit should marry him! But I am pleased, and in that moment I let her bring out to me her Will Denny and her Nancy Cornish. And so I spoil my life and break my heart, and do not know myself with love.
I have come to be twenty-eight years old and nothing has counted. Then I meet him, and nothing else can count. I say to myself that I will have him, and I know it is not possible but I shall get him. But still he is all eyes and ears for a rag of a girl, who is so sick with love she knows not even how to charm. She knows nothing at all but to love him; and to love him nicely—so that she would not make him unhappy, even to hold him forever! It makes me ill to look at her, and still I cannot get him to look at me. But I can make him seem to look at me. I can make him ever with me, and amused by me, and of a manner a little sweet and tender to me—the poor sister of Christina, whom he can see to be dying on her feet for love of him. And the little rag of a girl sees how beautiful I am and full of life and far above her every way and fit for him, and knows no better than to grow pale and to keep out of the way, and to be silent and cold with him. And he begins to be hurt and not to follow her so hard, and then she finds me crying, crying. And at first I will not tell, but then I say how I must go away, because I love him. By and by I say that I would not have to go but I am afraid if I stay I will steal him from her. And at last, very reluctant, I show her a letter—for Nicola, who has done something in that line, too, was ever a good brother to me and taught and helped me well, so that it was in Will's hand. It said how he would never forsake Nancy, who loved him, for she could not live without him, but I was brave and strong and he must be so, too. It said how we were each other's mates, he and I, but met too late, and his heart would be mine forever, but he could never forsake nor pain his poor Nancy. Crack, she broke her engagement, the little fool! Who never had scarcely been able to understand how he should love her, as no more could I—and she shuts herself away from him, and will not answer and will tell him nothing! Only, she's changed her mind. And he says to Christina, "I am too old for her, and not so gay!" And I see him tear up the photographs she has sent back, and sneer at them, and say how God knows she could never have taken him for a beauty! And oh, I am so kind to him! I am so gentle and so sad, and I get new clothes and dress my hair, and always he can see me die of love. And so there comes a day when he asks me if I would be afraid to take the pieces of our lives and see what we could make of them together.—Ah me! and to think it all had to be kept secret because I was still so proud and sad! For bethink you, there was Filippi!
I think at last what a fool I am not to have divorced Filippi long ago! Here I am, betrothed to marry and it is all to do yet! Long ago, had I not been so soft-hearted, or had I thought of it, I might have been rid of fearing the spy who threatens him with the Camorra, in being rid of him. I wonder how much Filippi will take to set me free, and he makes a horrible fuss and will take nothing at all! But his spy is begun all fresh, killing him by inches with demands for five thousand dollars. And he asks also five thousand, now, not to report Nicola who has remained silent and a friend to us! It is all like a mad spider's web which but entangles more and more. And I think I will get that ten thousand from Ingham because I do not publish the story I have told Christina. Or else from Ten Euyck, because I do.
I send the Arm of Justice letter to Ingham's office that it may be forwarded to Europe. And then I hear from Christina that she cares for him no longer and has written him, and already he is coming back to argue with her. Oh, my luck, my bad luck! If he has lost her already, he will fight my lies! He will get my letter, too; he will connect that with her broken promise, he will ask her if she knows a girl with a brown eye and a blue, and what may he not guess and put into her head about my business? I am in despair, I have a fit of crazy rage, and I think, too, I will get ahead of him, so she will not listen to him. I say to her, "That man who ruined my life years ago, that was James Ingham!" I say to her, "I could not let it go on, dear sister. But don't let him know where I am." He comes straight to her, before he has my letter, and all she says to him is, "You have never known all these years that I had a sister." And then she tells him her sister's name, and he goes away.
But Nicola ever hopes that perhaps he will pay and at four o'clock watches his window for my ribbon. Then he sees go in Nancy Cornish, and he thinks that very queer and comes to tell me, who am round the corner in the car. We watch and see her come out, and turn east, and we follow her, and I see her going into the Park; a thing to drive me wild, for I know well she used to meet Will Denny in the Park. She came much, much too soon this time, but did not care. Till she saw me.
If she had not come so soon, if she had kept her mouth shut, how different all would be to-day! No! Out she came with it—Filippi has told her! He has told her we are married! She has telephoned to my betrothed, she is to tell him here! Filippi has done worse. He has said to her, "This I would not tell to every one. But if she should seek to injure you and get him back, say to her—What do you know of the Arm of Justice? She will let you alone, then!" With those words did she not seal her own fate? He must have got drunk on talk, Filippi,—not being used to be listened to—for he tells her that Nicola and I wrote that letter from Will I gave her to read. He gives this girl the address of my cousin, and says if Will comes there, directly, he will show him the papers of our marriage. Thus do these two little jealous, peeping fools spoil everything!
In the meanwhile Ingham has got my letter, and has guessed I wrote it. And he calls up this girl, whom he knows to be Christina's dearest friend, and asks her, does she know Christina's sister? He tells her that though all is broken between Christina and him, there are things Christina must not believe, and perhaps there is something she must know. He asks when he can see this Cornish girl, and she tells him after rehearsal, but before five. She is very much excited, and she says how always in her own room girls run out and in and so she will come to him—She, mind you, the baby-girl! And there she tells him her tale and he tells her his, my letter for the money and all, and she gives him the address of my cousin, and there he has gone to find Filippi,—for she is not so crazy Will shall go!—while she is telling me what she thinks of me, softly, in a low voice, in the Park. I think how Will Denny is coming, and I make a little sign. And Nicola hits her once, and picks her up limp; I following with her hat, like a sister, in case we meet a policeman. And we lift her in the automobile and put up the hood, going fast as we dare. At my cousin's they have denied to know of Filippi. For Filippi, out of the window, saw it was not Will, but Ingham. And we take her in there. She comes to, before long, and all we can do with her is to take her out of town. Only I must leave her at my cousin's now, for I am to dine with Will before his rehearsal.
It seems to me that any person of a pitiful heart, who also admires courage and address, must be sorry for me, now. Here am I, born for love and to command and charm, tied to Filippi and to lowly life; having planned so wisely and dared so well, now with this rag of a girl on my hands, not knowing what to do with her; with the Camorra itself, all unconscious, closing ever in and in, by its offer to absorb our Arm of Justice; with the spite of Ingham on my heels and tattlers and spies on all sides, just when I need all my wit to win my love. For he has not had time to learn to love me as he would love me before long. He is very, very sweet to me, but he does not care. Just when he first turned to me there was one flash. I hope and I pray to all the saints, I plan and watch and make myself fair and think of all that can please him; I spend my days and nights to feed the fire; but it burns out. He is kind, he thinks he is to marry me, he is fond of me, because I am sad and so is he. But he is sick for that Cornish girl who is not worth one hair of my head, and I have no time to wait till his love grows. I think how I am to defend myself with him if Ingham talks; and when I get to the restaurant where we have a private room—I am so shy and so sensitive, lest people laugh at my queer eyes!—there I find he has met Christina on the street and carried her along to ask her does she know why Nancy did not come in the Park.
Well, I tell him. I tell him Ingham's name, as I have told it to Christina. And he does not like Ingham, whom he has seen fascinate Christina against her will, and whom he has heard of as a brute to women. And always Ingham has wished Christina to be less friends with him, and has done many little things in hate of him. So that he is all ready to believe what I say; how his Nancy was afraid to face him this long while, and meant to try this afternoon and failed; and how it is Ingham who has given her money to go away. I think it will make him hate her. I think it will make him not listen to Ingham. I do not know it will make him perfectly cold and perfectly still, not speaking a word—not even when Christina, for the first time in her whole life, is angry with me and tells me I deceive myself, I misunderstood Nancy, he does not speak.
He talks nicely about other things at dinner, but he does not go toward the theater afterwards. And when Christina asks him why not, he says he forgot something which he has at home. And she says to him, "You cannot go to Ingham now, you have a dress-rehearsal." And he says, "I have not forgotten that." So she takes me with her to Nancy's boarding-house, and there they who are busy and notice no better, say she has gone out to dinner, before the theater, with a Miss Grayce. And Christina goes home to see if she can get word to Ingham to keep out of Will's way and I go back to my cousin's table d'hôte.
Now we have never said to Christina that we have a car. She cannot afford us one, however she tries, and we do not want her to know we have ever a dollar but from her. We sell a little from the farm, and she knows we send this in to market by a man with a truck, and she is willing to spend so much on her own fancies that she even arranges with him to bring her my flowers. But for us she buys a little wagon with two seats and a plug of a horse. She needs not to know everything and watch all our movements. So mostly we keep the car at the other place; and half the time I am there myself. If she comes visiting to the farm I can take the Cornish girl out there.
But I must first see Ingham and beg him to be merciful to me. And, indeed, he has loved me so much, I think he cannot resist to be a little kind. And I leave Nancy in the car with Nicola and the boys and with her mouth stopped, across the street from Ingham's house under the windows of that Herrick. So, without thought of fear, I enter. Afterward, when I read about the elevator boy, I remember I have on a favorite of Christina's dresses. For, naturally, of hers, I take what I choose.
Well, there is nothing to be done with Ingham—he is mean, mean through. He will give me up to the police. He has heard before of the Arm of Justice; he says that he will break it. And then I tell him he would better clear out, for I know Christina thinks that Will will kill him. And it is then Will rings and when he, grinning, welcomes Will in, he sees, and any one may see, that Will has his revolver in his hand. But when Will finds me there he is stricken dumb. And Ingham laughs and says, "You wonder what this injured lady is doing here? Ask Nancy Cornish!"
And Will cries out at him, not so very loud, but as a sword goes through the air, "Ask Nancy Cornish!" and then, very low, "Do not imagine but that I shall ask Nancy Cornish! And you shall tell me where she is!"
Then Ingham says, "Well, if you didn't wish her to have done with you, my dear fellow, why did you throw her over for this married lady?"
Will never gets any further than to stand by that panel of wall, between the portières and the door. He looks to me and not to Ingham, and it is the one time in my life when I can think of nothing to say. I talk on and on, but I say nothing. It is the fault of that Ingham who continues to laugh, and to play like an angel who is a devil, too.
I tell him that Filippi married me when I was an ignorant child, with poor people, for the sake of the Hopes' money; how he brought me to this country and deserted me and came back after I had thought I was free, and had made friends with Ingham because I was destitute and alone. And he does not speak. But he does not believe me. I fall down on my knees and tell him, before Ingham's face, how I love him, and only him; how there never was any other man who had my heart! How when I saw him I knew he was my life, and I was born anew in knowing him. I tell him how I fear to let him know I am married. But how I am trying all the time to get free, and how I would have been free before I married him; how not for years have I been a wife to Filippi who hangs upon us and will not work and does not care for me! And I take his hand and cover it with kisses and with tears, and I implore him not to leave me, I shall die if he leaves me! And I ask him if he himself has never in his life done wrong! And I swear if I lied to him it was for love for him! He knows that is true; he cannot look at me, and not know! And I throw myself down, before his feet.
He lifts me up by one shoulder, and he looks at me long and long; still kind but very cold and still, and what he says is, "Then was it a lie you told me about her—and this man?" He has not one thought of me, at all.
It throws me into a great rage. I spring up and round the table, and Jim, who has not ceased to play, laughs loud, and gives one crash of chords. It is his triumph and I could kill him for it. I am all one fire of hate that tosses in the wind, and I lift my arm and Herrick sees my shadow on the blind. But quick I put my hand over my mouth, petrified. For at that moment there is a soft, quick knocking on the door and Christina's voice saying, "Let me in, both of you! Let me in!"
By good luck, she has come while I am silent. And I leap forward and catch my hat up off the table and fly behind the curtains. For I know I have lost Will. And if I lose her, too, I have nothing. And Ingham breaks into the march from "Faust," triumphing, and just then I see through the curtain crack on the little chair at Will's side his pistol that he has dropped. And I hear Ingham say, now all in fury, "Shall I let her come in? Shall I tell at last what you are, through and through?—" And the door opens. She had her key, Christina, that she had forgot to give him back. And she calls out, sharp, to Will. But she turns to Ingham and says, "I implore you, leave me with him a moment!" And he swirls round to see where I have run. I snatch up Will's pistol and fire past him from behind the curtain into Ingham's heart. Will reaches back to catch my hand and shakes the pistol out of it. It has not taken one breath and his first thought is for Christina, yes, and for me, and he snaps off the light. There she stands in the doorway; the light in the hall on Ingham fallen back dead. And when she turns her eyes again, there is still no one there but Will. Will stoops for the pistol that still smokes and drops it loose in his pocket.