"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? What did they 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.