"I ask you, how could it, with that battle-ax? She cheated my poor ladies, and she bullied Miss Christina, and used to take the books she was always reading and burn 'em up, and say nasty common things to her, when she got older, about the young gentlemen that were always on her heels even then, and that she'd like well enough, one day, and the next she couldn't stand the sight of. If there's one thing Miss Christina has, more than another, it's a high spirit; she has what I'd call a plenty of it. They had fierce fights. Often, when she'd come to me with a little breastpin or other to pawn for her, so her and her mama'd have a mite o' cash, she'd put her pretty head down on my wife's shoulder and cry; and my wife'd make her a cup o' tea. She'd say then she was going to run away and be an actress. And, when she was sixteen yet, she ran. Two years afterward, her and her mama turned up in my first little flat-house; a cheap one, down Eighth Avenue, in the twenties. She was on the stage, all right, and what a time she'd had! It'd been cruel, Mr. Herrick; cruel hard work and, just at the first, cruel little of it. But now she's a leading lady. And this fall she's going to open in New York, in a big part. It's the play they call 'The Victors'; I guess you've heard. Mr. Wheeler, he's the star, and Miss Christina's part's better than what his is. But now—"
There was a pause. Mr. Deutch mopped his face, and Herrick, cogitating, bit his lip.
"This engagement to Ingham—"
"She met him about two years ago, when she had her first leading part, and they went right off their heads about each other. I never expected I should see Miss Christina act so regular loony over any man. But she refused him time and again. She said she'd always been a curse to herself and she wasn't going to bring her curse on him. In the end, of course, she gave in. She said she'd marry him this winter, if he'd go away for the summer and leave her alone. You knew it was only day before yesterday he got back from Europe?"
"Yes. I know."
"My wife and me have seen a lot more of her this summer than since she was a little girl. There's been years at a time, all the while she was on the road, that we wouldn't know if she was alive or dead. And then some day I'd come home, and find her sitting in our apartment—it's a basement apartment, Mr. Herrick!—as easy as if she'd just stepped across the street. But I wouldn't like you should think it's Miss Christina's talked to us very much about her engagement. She's a pretty close-mouthed girl, in her way, and a simply elegant lady. Not but what Mrs. Hope is an elegant lady, too. But still she is—if you know what I mean—gabby! Miss Christina's always been a puzzle to her; and she's a great hand to sit and make guesses at her with my wife. Mr. Ingham left a key with Miss Christina when he went abroad so she could come and play his piano and read his books whenever it suited her, and she'd have a quiet place to study her part. Every once in a while Mrs. Hope would take a notion it wasn't quite the proper thing she should come by herself. But after she'd seen her inside, she'd drop down our way and wait. She wasn't just exactly gone on Mr. Ingham, and my wife wasn't either."
Herrick lifted his head with a flash of interest. "Mrs. Hope opposed the marriage?"
"Well, not opposed. She never opposed the young lady in anything, when you came down to it. But he wanted she should leave the stage. And he wasn't ever faithful to her, Mr. Herrick! For all he was so crazy about her and so wild-animal jealous of the very air she had to breathe, he wasn't ever faithful to her—and if ever you'd seen her, that'd make your blood boil! She'd hear things; and he'd lie. And she'd believe him, and believe him! If it wasn't for his money, she'd be well rid of him, to my mind."
He sat nursing his wrath. And Herrick, still watching him, felt sorry. For, in Herrick's mind it was now all so clear; so pitiably clear! Poor little chap!—he didn't know how scanty was the reassurance in his portrait of his Miss Christina! The indulged, imperious child, choosing "her own" friends; the unhappy, bold, bedeviled girl, already with young men at her heels, whom she encouraged one day and flouted the next; pawning her trinkets at sixteen and plunging alone into the world, the world of the stage; the ambitious, adventurous woman capable of holding such a devotion as that of the good Deutch by so capricious and high-handed a return, snaring such a man of the world as Ingham by an adroit blending of abandon and retreat, putting up with the humiliations of his flagrant inconstancies only, perhaps, to find herself, after her stipulated summer alone, on the verge of losing him through his insensate jealousy—were there no materials here for tragic quarrel? Was not this the very figure that last night he had seen fling out an arm in unexampled passion and grace? In his heart he saw Christina Hope, while her betrothed, whether as accuser or accused, taunted her from the piano, kill James Ingham. And he profoundly knew that he had almost seen this with his eyes. His pulse beat high; but it was with a sobered mind that he beheld Mr. Deutch preparing to depart.
"Well, you see how I had to ask you, Mr. Herrick, not to say that lady's shadow made you think any of an actress?"