CHAPTER VIII
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!"