Virginia Tracy

“ My friends come to no good, Mr. Herrick—they are parted from me by a trouble as wide as the world, or else—" She put one hand over her eyes. "What is it?—a curse, a darkness?—I don't know! It's like a trap! It's as if vengeance baited a circle with me and, whenever a kindness advanced toward me, the trap fell. Even my poor Herr Hermy, who lost his picture-shop with the plush curtains, may lose his superintendency because I sent Mr. Ingham to his house. You would do better to take my word; to believe me when I tell you that somehow I bring danger. ”

“ When I speak of beauty's handicap, I am not joining the general chorus of beauty's detractors. The handicap I refer to is not that which will be only too readily granted me—the handicap from within, the temptation of one's mirror, the desire of loveliness to shine and dazzle. No, my fellows in the audience, the essential handicap is the handicap from without, the handicap of our making—nothing more or less than the public's terrible preoccupation with appearance; the very thing, of course, that is commonly supposed to work in beauty's favor. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ But as I understand the more articulate voices from the audience, all this "box-office" pressure, all this clamor that fairness must be pink and smiling, all this hampering indifference to newer and finer uses for personal beauty, comes from the riffraff—from the matinée girl and the tired business man. It is true that an actor's audience does consist of three estates: the general public, to which, of course, nobody belongs; the superior public, to which we all belong; and the professional critics. It is this general public of nobodies, then, which rivets beauty's chains? ”

“ He was himself very restless, and, sniffing the fresh dark, he dismissed the cab. He had begun to be really in dread lest Christina should break down; after he had crossed the street he turned, with anxious lingering, to look up at her window, and he saw the light spring forth behind it as he looked. It was so hard to leave the sense of her nearness that Herrick, like a boy, stood still and there rose in his breast a tenderness that seemed to turn his heart to water. He had no desire, ever again, on any blind, to see a woman's shadow. ”

“ By and by I rejoice to hear that there is trouble with Jim Ingham. He is not the boy I found him. He has let himself go wild so long he cannot tame himself, all at once, and then he is exacting, like a fiend, and jealous and suspicious, not believing in himself, nor anything, nor anybody; and I laugh to myself, if she should know why! For were there nothing else at all, it would annoy me that chit should marry him! But I am pleased, and in that moment I let her bring out to me her Will Denny and her Nancy Cornish. And so I spoil my life and break my heart, and do not know myself with love. ”

“ If we condemn ourselves, can we save Nicola Pascoe? But if we condemn Nicola Pascoe, we still do save ourselves! All must not die—a few it is better to die! It is well I should say this, for I am a man of gentle speech. I do not wish to be thought like a bad murderer nor the companion of murderers. I am a business-man—a dealer in tortoise-shells which I send mostly to Chicago, and I am unique for the perfection of my wares. I have now the one hope for the support of my family and small children—that the Society if it suppresses us all will leave upon each of us its mark. ”

“ If he is to be punished, at least he will never be punished by you! But you, Mr. Ten Euyck, who exulted in his trouble, who are afraid, as he is not, who will perish at the scorn of every fool, as he has not, you, who of shame are about to die, I salute you! Your career as a criminal, your career as a shining light, they are both at an end!—And why? Because you declared war against people without money, without position, without influence, whom you despised! Because you weren't strong enough to fight Christina Hope! ”

“ The ladies passed him in taking their leave and Christina slipped her hand through his arm. "Mr. Herrick," she said, "Herr Hermy does not look wise—no, Herr Hermy, you don't,—but if ever I puzzle you, ask him. Do not ask Tante Deutch, she will tell you something noble and solid, for she herself is wise, and so she can never understand me. But Herr Hermy is a little foolish, just as I am. He is flighty; he has the artistic temperament and understands us; he knows me to the core.—Herr Hermy, he is coming to see me act; tell him I am really Sal, not Evadne; tell him that I am a hardworking girl." ”

“ Every eye was fastened upon Deutch.
He had no need for words. What he had believed himself to have seen, what he had suffered, the mad relief, the almost ludicrous exultation in what he now learned, passed one after the other across that tormented visage and broke in one happy blubber as he ducked his head in his wife's skirts.
The relief that shook Herrick touched, too, every one in the room. No man there had really wished to sentence a girl. It was as though, at last, they had all got air to breathe. When into this new air Denny's voice broke with a sick snarl. ”

“ I am proud to be what I am; my mother, who is scarcely more than a common servant, had the great luck to marry into the Camorra, and my brother Nicola at eighteen takes the oath, so I am not come alone from dull peasants and these cackling Yankees, but from free men, born to judge, born to strike, born to live wild and to satisfy their blood. But all the same, as to this brat, Christina, I am the elder sister and I should have all, all! I make up my mind to be even with her and to spoil what things she has. ”

“ Is, then, the sentence of the Mother Society the only sentence that we have to fear? Is there not a sentence that will strike at us and, perhaps, through us at her? The foe which has enchained Angelo's brother, the foe from which, suspecting us not at all, Nicola flees—the policemen of the Americans! Ay di me—listen, my dears! Does not this cold foe ever seek and question night and day, with pictures always in the journals, for one who perhaps knows too much and who has a girl's tongue to talk? You think all will be well when you have suppressed the traitor. ”

“ If there is violence—why not? In self-defense! But if I sinned, at least I have succeeded in my sin. For here you are! While you—you have forfeited even your price. But when Denny is dead, talk over with Allegra, in her prison, the story of his death—it may divert you both! For now she, too, is lost, as well as he. And through your fault as Herrick is!"
She lifted her white face and questioned him, with the darkness of her eyes.
"Let him go! After all that he has heard? How could I? You gave your signal and now I must give mine!—It's been a hard fight, Christina! ”

“ Herrick and Gumama both sprang to her. Herrick lifted her head upon his knee, but she lay limp and shook from head to foot with sobbing laughter.
Gumama shrugged and stood back. "Is it," he asked, "the silver bracelet?" Then they all saw that the bracelet snatched from Nancy was on Christina's wrist.
Herrick nodded; his soul was sick with that horror. There was no triumph, now, in victory.
"Tell her," said the tall Sicilian, "when she avenges her friend to think of me. I will come. Always. She is the pearl of everything. All would not see it. But I have the piercing eye. I see." ”

“ And Christina, in the changing lusters of her gold and silver gown, stood half in shadow; flushed and radiant, a little shaken with triumph, as a spent runner who has touched his goal, and with her hand above the letter on her heaving breast. Ten Euyck did not make one sound. But his face had a paralyzed, chalky stiffness, and the jaw dropped, like the jaw of a corpse.
"You fatuous hypocrite!" cried the girl. "You pillar of society! And could you ever imagine it was for you I came! For your name, for your position! I thank you, I prefer my own! For your protection? Can you protect yourself? ”

“ Herrick carried her hand to his lips. "Christina, don't think me a cursed schoolmaster. But it's imagination, dear. You've driven yourself wild with all this worry and excitement. Why, believe me, they're not so clumsy! If they were following you, you wouldn't know it."
"I tell you I've known it for at least two weeks! I'm an actress, and if, as they say, we've no intelligence, only instincts, well then, our instincts are extraordinarily developed. And mine tells me that, over my shoulder, there is a shadow creeping, creeping, looming on my path." ”

“ In a childish terror of broken nerves, "Bryce!" Christina shrieked. Then her shrieking, outstretched fingers touched a rough, damp sleeve, and "Bryce!" she sobbed contentedly. They met with a bump, and clutched each other, laughing with joy, in this little moment before the last. Already they could hear the hurrying men; dark figures blackened on the darkness, the terraces came alive with sound, lights showed and were gone; and Herrick, holding the empty gun, sought vainly to put Christina back from him. She held to him, leaning on him, hardly breathing. "It's death, dear!" ”

“ Hope with lowered eyes, breathed deep of a success that passed her dreams; Ten Euyck, compressing his lips, his arms folded, never took his eyes from Christina's face. And Bryce Herrick, watching her move, watching her speak, not accepting this, as did the public, for a gift from heaven, but aware to the bone of its being all made ground, of the art that had lifted her as it were from off the wrack into this divine power of breathing and creating loveliness, could have dropped down before her and begged to be forgiven. ”

“ They examined the place from the small, bare, air-chamber into which Stanley, mounting on Herrick's shoulders, stuck his head, to the cellar; where only a coal-bin, almost empty beneath their flinching quest, an ice-box, and an admirable array of preserves confronted them.
Upstairs, clothes had been found in all the closets—the clothes of working people for the most part; but in one, the long, slim, sophisticatedly simple gowns of a pretty woman. In that room they had forced another desk, which kept them busy for a while with tradesmen's bills, all made out, regularly enough, to Nicola Pascoe. ”