There are violences to nature in which she is reined up so suddenly that after them we are left stupid rather than unhappy. In such a mood of held-in turmoil Herrick walked home and waited for to-morrow. His appointment with Christina was at twelve, noon, and until noon he struggled not to think at all. Anything was better than thought; yet nothing would now answer save security—security past, present and future—a full understanding of her life, of her trouble, of her actions, of what game she was playing and of what part in it she was ready to give him. By-and-by the wound began to throb, but he merely kept it closed with a firm hand. Till noon to-morrow!
With the morning the papers he had ordered, in a time that seemed long ago, came to his door; he found himself opening them, and tracing the dazzling streams of Christina's notices. Their flaming praises left him cold; already they seemed to be written about some one whom he did not know.
Here, at any rate, was a Christina Hope with whom he could imagine parting. The greatness of her destiny was full upon her; she seemed ringed with a cold fire, brilliant as the golden collar of the world and passible, perhaps, by Cuyler Ten Euycks, but hardly by a young literary man from the country. Never again, whether she wished or no, could she be quite the same girl in the gray gown who had sat in a corner of the coroner's office beside her mother. Hermann Deutch's Miss Christina had become one of the great successes of all time. And Herrick shrank a little at the loud clang of her fame.
He was going that morning to the Ingham offices at ten o'clock to sign his contract. The day was oppressively warm, with hot glints of sunshine, and it seemed to Herrick that the bright, feverish streets swarmed with the rumors of Christina's triumph. He wondered if it had got in to that man in jail and acquainted him with the strange difference in their fates. His contract meant nothing to him; he got away as soon as he could. Yet already the atmosphere was changed, the sky was overcast, and as the clocks about Herald Square struck eleven, a warm, dusty wind, even now bearing heavy drops of rain, swept down the street. If Herrick took a car he would reach the Hopes a good half hour too early, and he had no mind, after walking in the wet, to present himself in muddied boots and a wilted collar before Christina. He looked about him. He could choose between hotel bars—where actors might be talking of her glory—dry goods shops and a moving-picture show. Perhaps because Christina had gratefully mentioned moving-pictures, he chose the latter. His longing and dread were so concentrated upon twelve o'clock that he had no consciousness of buying his ticket. Only of wondering—wondering—
The place was not yet full enough to be oppressive, and Herrick sat there in the welcome dark, with the rhythmic pounding of the music stunning his nerves. He closed his eyes; and immediately there sprang up before his consciousness the eternal, monotonous procession of questions—What had she meant last night, by throwing over everything for Ten Euyck? Why had she fainted at the sight of Nancy Cornish's hair and what strange bond linked Nancy with Ingham's murder? Why had Nancy disappeared a few hours before the shot; who had said, in Ingham's room, "Ask Nancy Cornish," and to whom had they said it? Why had her visiting-card broken down Christina's earlier evidence, and was that her scarf which had frightened Christina so, or did it belong to that woman of the shadow? And who was that woman? Why had an uncontrolled and variable man, such as Denny had described himself, suffered six hours of the third degree rather than risk revealing her name? By what authority did Christina promise to produce her, that very afternoon, at the office of the District Attorney? Had she made Christina break with Ingham, as she had made Denny kill him, by that story of his betrayal of her youth? He felt intuitively that in this woman was the key to the entire situation. She had created it; she would be found, more than they now knew, to have controlled it; and she, and perhaps she alone, could solve its manifold involutions. She had arrived before Denny, she had spoken boldly and insolently to Joe of Ingham; she had forced herself in upon him when he did not want her; she had come openly in a white lace dress—he remembered the lace that hung from the shadow's sleeve—and made herself as conspicuous as possible—why? And as Herrick asked himself these questions in the darkness he could almost have believed himself surrounded by the darkness of that night; the brisk strumming of the orchestra was not much like Ingham's piano, but it had the same excited hurry of those last few moments; and Herrick's mind called up again the light, bright surface of the blind and then the shadow of the woman cast upon it, lithe and tense, with uplifted arm, the fingers stiffening in the air. His eyes sprang open, and there before him, on the pictured screen, among the moving figures of the play, was the same shadow, with uplifted arm, the fingers spreading and stiffening in the air. Then in the movement of the scene, the shadow turned clean round and disclosed Christina's face.
CHAPTER XV
"WHEN STARS GROW COLD"
Herrick sat without moving while the shadows played out their play. But he saw them no longer. They had begun and ended for him with that certainty which it seemed to him, now, that he had always felt.
When Christina's film came round again he watched it carefully all through from the beginning. The play was of some western episode, and he saw Christina come on, a spare slip of a girl in short skirts and long braids, a little awkward, a little jerky, like a suspicious colt, and he observed quite coolly what she had gained in five years. He saw Denny come on, dressed as a Mexican—cast for the villain even then!—and he saw for himself how greatly Denny had been her superior in those days, and all the method and knowledge which she had absorbed from him as she absorbed everything from everybody; and Herrick smiled there, in the darkness, to think of it. As the action of the play quickened it shook the novice from her self-consciousness; the promise of her great talent began to show; already she did things that were magnificent; and when at last her wedding was interrupted at the church door by the Mexican's attempt to claim her as his sweetheart, her fire and fury became superb. Herrick leaned forward watching. He saw Denny pour out his accusation, he saw the bridegroom hesitate, he saw Christina sweep round denouncing them both, saw the lithe, tense length of her, and her proudly lifted head, saw her suddenly fling one arm up and out in her strange and splendid gesture of her free, her desperate passion; the hand clenched for an instant and then the fingers slowly spreading and stiffening in the air. He waited for the shot, but no shot came. Only once more the shadow turned and revealed the young face of Christina, as she was at seventeen, and shone upon him through the darkness with Christina's eyes. Herrick rose to his feet and pushed out of the theater. The streets were full of wind and rain, but he did not know it, and along the crowded crossings, among multitudes that he did not see, he had the luck of the drunken and the blind.