"Persons Unknown"

by Virginia Tracy

IN WHICH CHRISTINA HOPE DOES POSITIVELY REAPPEAR

"Oh, then, I'll marry Sally! For she is the darling of my heart—"

"But is she?" queried Christina, swinging round from the piano, "Is she?" And she looked wistfully at Herrick as he took her outstretched hand. "Oh, if she's a very troublesome person, tell me at least she brought the author luck! Was it any wonder, eh, that the pulse of your life changed when you saw a shadow on the blind? Since at that very moment my hand was on the door? Oh, I can perhaps rouse luck with the best 'when I come knocking!'"

It was Sunday evening, a month from that September Twentieth when, to a public that perhaps had never given quite such a welcome, Christina Hope had positively reappeared. This occasion was of a very homely gathering, an hour when Christina had simply confessed to the need of seeing all the people of one episode "alive together." She had spent the month in watching Nancy grow strong, here, in her house, and to-morrow was the day of Nancy's wedding. "Once I have packed off my daughter," Christina had been saying, "I shall marry myself out of hand—quite simply, by just stepping round the corner—to the patientest fellow living. The public and I meet often enough—it shall not stick its head in at my marriage!"

But Herrick's sister was to arrive to-morrow and this seemed to have made Christina restive. "You know very well that you are marrying an actress. But there has been too much glare—to her you must be marrying, as some play says, 'The Queen of the Gipsies!' Ah, but Bryce—it's easy enough to be fond of me, now! After all, I behaved admirably, like a good girl. I was as grand as Evadne and as energetic as Sal! I had a very hard time and, really, I was quite a heroine. But my hard times are done and God send I may never be a heroine again! Well, what price the Queen of the Gipsies, dear, as a nice young lady? And through what rent in my admirable behavior will next—to try your patience—the real Christina Hope too positively reappear? I wonder!" Thus she spoke, a little sadly. And, then, at the ringing of the door-bell called out for her mother and Mrs. Deutch. "For heaven forbid," added Christina, "that ever I should be seen without a chaperone!"

It was the simplest of supper-parties, at a table that jumbled Joe Patrick with the District-Attorney; but the great kindness of good-will still showed, inevitably, against a somber background. Before that company there continued to rise in vivid silences, sharp as though edged with acid, a wild space of death and hiding, of prison and darkness, when suddenly Christina's perverse lip twitched with a small, soft laugh. "And to think that, all the time, we were just as respectable as we could be!"

"I don't know how respectable you can be," said Denny. "I think I could do better."

"I think it's a pretty good thing for you," said Wheeler, "that she is as she is. You appear to have what I don't mind calling—in a lean, black party of no particular stature—an almost inexplicable charm for the ladies!"

"In that case," said Christina, "you can see what a waste it is for him to play villains. Give him to me for the hero of Bryce's play, when I star next year."

"Thank you for waiting a year. You must have arranged your production with Ten Euyck so quickly that it makes a manager's hair raise!"

"As fast as I could learn my lines!" Christina cried. "But sometimes he did throw me out. Ah, if I could only have spoken his speeches too!"

"Many stars in your profession have made that complaint! But I forgive you everything, Christina, since you notified me for an advance sale!"

"She broke her word to me," said Kane, "to do that! I was so anxious not a breath should get out—it might have ruined everything. I caught her second message—to you, Herrick—and stopped it."

Herrick asked, "Will it always be the first which goes to Wheeler?"

She responded with surprised earnestness, "Why, but, dearest, that was business!"

He laughed; and there was no bitterness in his laugh. He was glad of her quick, earnest interest. A month and three days had softened the tragic brooding of Christina's face and drawn them all far from pain and fear, deep waters and dark night. But this first attempt to mention that time with any ease showed him how they all still winced at scars; even this ripple of mirth, glowing and vibrating like the air of all that house with love and joy, had glowed and vibrated too sharply. He wanted some happening that should clear the air, and he did not know what. Work was the safest thing he knew. And even his work, now they had begun, was a good thing to talk of.

"How about that realistic tone?" Wheeler was asking. "Our experience doesn't leave much of Herrick's idea about the commonplaceness of crime—"

"Oh, yes, it does!" Christina interrupted. "They were commonplace enough, to themselves. It was only where we rushed in that it turned into melodrama. That's the way with amateurs! They have to," she flung at Denny, "be more like Dago organ-grinders than any Dago organ-grinder ever was!"

"I thank you," returned that unabashed young man. "It was quite realistic enough for me. If all my foreign traitors had done as well by me as this one!" His eyes sought Nancy's. For an instant neither of them could speak. But the girl could not resist putting out her hand. And no one minded when he took it. "But I thanked the gods," he could then say with a laugh, "for my Italian accent! I knew two or three phrases from the Garibaldi play—and then I knew the sound and some of the sense from—Chris's farm. But I could have wished, none the less, to be better equipped."

"Rotten to have to make out so much funk!" contributed Stanley. "So's to seem like that scared-to-death fellow."

"On the whole, that was the best thing I did. It came quite easy!"

"But the choice?" inquired Mrs. Deutch. "How did you make that choice, dear sir, amidst the goblets?"

"Only luck—I just chanced it. Gold, silver, and lead—can't you guess?"

He looked at Christina, and Christina blushed. Deutch glanced up twinkling.

"Ah, tante," said the girl, "you will never understand—you have not the artistic temperament! 'What find I here? Fair Portia's counterfeit!' That was it, Will? Ah, my dear, and to think you've never played the scene!"

Her pensiveness turned sterner. She looked at him with reproving eyes. "You took it out of a part!" she said. "Heaven help us, of what are we made? That shot I fired—that last shot—I took that out of a part, too! 'A Princess Imprisoned,' the end of the third act. And you with your 'Merchant of Venice' and your casket scene! It's true what they say of us—we're stuffed with sawdust!"

"We'd be fools not to use it, then," Denny comfortably retorted. "Though you might certainly have chosen a better play."

"No, you don't understand me. It's too bad, it's wrong—all wrong! It cheapens life. It dulls the value of what we feel. To think of written things at such a moment and throw oneself on them—it's like an insincerity of the heart. It's like acting a lie. And with all my faults, that one fault I never had," Christina said. "I was never a liar!" And she turned on them the ineffable starry candor of her wide, cool eyes.

A smile traversed the board. Christina looked puzzled.

"Never mind, old girl," Wheeler came to her assistance. "Some lies are made in heaven. How about your pretending, at the inquest, not to know who Nancy was?"

"Ah, that card of Nancy's! There, surely, was a dreadful moment! It was a shock. I didn't know what to say. Why, it was like seeing that horrible story fastened round her neck—it was like seeing Will pointed out! Oh, and I'd tried to keep away even the thought of them!"

"I don't wonder that knocked you out all right. But, Miss Christina," pondered Deutch, "before that—a thing starts the trouble for you at that inquest always gives me a puzzle. Miss Christina, why did you holler when you saw the scarf? That wasn't a surprise, anyhow. You knew he had it!"

"Yes," said Christina, "but it was such a thrilling point! I'd worked so much further up into an accused murderess than I'd ever gone before, and I did so long to know how it would feel—"

An aghast laugh silenced her. It rang about the room, it swept with gay and topsy-turvy cleansing through every heart and blew the cobwebs far away. The air was cleared for good and all. No more shudders skulked in emotional underbrush. Christina Hope had quite too positively reappeared.

"Christina, you she-devil!" Denny cried. But he bent his black head with the words and kissed her hand. There were tears that were like worship in the teasing, jeering smile that lit his eyes.

Christina caught his hand and stood up, flushing. Her eyes traveled round the table and came back to Herrick's face. He had never seen her thus bathed in rosy color before she sobered again to that meek gravity, like a good child's.

"Very well, then, very well—there I am! Well, take me as I am! I will—myself! I will say, let's get down to it, then: the dearest or most terrible experience I ever had is none too terrible or too dear for Bryce's play! Is yours, Will? Is your own, Bryce? Ah, and then, we zealous ones, when we want to know the hardest, hardest, passive part, the loneliest suffering, the simplest courage, the deepest depths, we needn't experiment, we can humbly inquire—we can ask Nancy Cornish!"