Persons Unknown
CHAPTER VI
THE DARKEST HOUR: "OF WOUNDS AND SORE DEFEAT I MADE MY BATTLE STAY!"
Christina's stream of Italian left Herrick so far behind that he couldonly watch the incredulity of Gumama's face turn to doubt and then toreflection. The word "American" was often repeated, and then cameGumama's slower answer, puzzling out the question--But was not theSignora Alieni herself much American? Did not she to-night meet here inthis house her brother Nicola? And was she not to run away at sunrisewith--and he pointed to Herrick--an American? And how well was it notknown that the Signora Alieni was bella, bella donna?--"Bella--bella!"with mounting fervor he violently repeated.
"But you, yourself? You never saw her?"
"The Signora Alieni goes always veiled."
"Are there none--out there--who know her?"
"Old friends ten years ago in Naples. And the laborers of Nicola."
"When they come, they will know at once she is not here," saidChristina, with an odd, proud calm. "Ah, please, let me see what theyare about!" And she persistently advanced to a window and peered betweenthe slats of a blind.
Blackness was lifting from the earth. That clear gray light, clearer andgrimmer than ever they had seen it, of the slowly rising dawn had begunto fill the open spaces. Under the trees it was still a dusk of livingshadows, and, from within the house, the half-muffled, surroundingpressure strained closer still against the walls. Christina facedround, uttered a piercing shriek and pointed toward the panel. To this,the men who watched her turned. And on the instant, the shuttersclicking as she flung them open, the girl flashed through and ranstraight into the dawn on the white terrace. "You who know AllegraAlieni, am I she? Am I she?"
A wail of amazement and denial greeted her. The men within, the menwithout, came to a standstill.--"If you ever loved me," said Christinato Herrick, "keep back from me, now!" He replied only by swingingforward Gumama, who thereupon stood in the sight of his friends with themute argument of a revolver at his head. Not a voice replied. But not ashot was fired.
In the pause produced by the concerned and puzzled hesitation of thebesiegers, Christina gathered up her voice. She was used to send it far,to hush and rouse with it, to pierce and move at will, and neithermisery nor fatigue seemed now to have weakened its flexible and winningmelody. "Sirs," cried the girl, "I ask you the one thing. Are you nothere as the executioners of the great Camorra? Do you, then, wish todisobey?"
She had centered upon herself a bewildered stare.
"And do you not disobey if you blunder? Do you wish to bring all the newworld about your ears for the wrong thing? Believe me, we four, we arestrong persons in that world--we do not fall unavenged! If we are to diehere, now, and the great society of the Camorra is to wreck itself uponour death, let it not be in a mistake!--Ah, you see! Believe me! We arenot false brethren of yours, we are Americans, every one! But in a wayyou and I are brethren, for I, like you, have seen my heart's good faithbetrayed--and by the same hand!"
A startled murmur rose.
"I, too, was brought to come here by the ruin of my life throughAllegra Alieni! Of her husband I never knew. Only hold back the forcethat masses at our door and here is a plan. We are here four--three menand a woman. Send us four men--mask them, if you will--and let them lookat us close and well; they will see that we cannot be those whom youseek. But we have with us the body of Nicola whom this one here, callinghimself Giuseppe Gumama, slew, and who was brother to the Alienis. Letyour men take this Nicola from our house, for we, no more than you, haveany use for traitors!"
These words produced an extraordinary effect. A murmur of admiration, offellowship, exclamations, argument, a sort of congratulation traversedthe green spaces through the still strengthening dawn. Christina, asalways, had found her audience.
"Oh, sirs," cried the girl, in a softer cadence, advancing to the veryedge of the terrace, and still eagerly baring her face to the palelight, "you seek our lives and I am so weary I am almost glad to die.But die or live, oh, now, for the dear love of God, let me go down tothe river! Let me see who is still alive there! Send whom you will withme, but let me go!" And Christina stretched out her arms to the men ofthe Camorra as to the brothers of her soul and for the moment they wereall more than her brothers in their inflammable hearts.
But even a little noise could still distract them. And this time it wasthe noise of the unhinged shutter as it slid, bumping, for a second andthen fell with a crash upon the terrace. In the half-light Ten Euyck'shand, holding a pistol, was visible at the window and above it the whiteleer of his face. Voices cried, "A fourth man! A man of whom she did nottell!"
A prisoner from the yellow farmhouse called out in an insufferable,fawning yelp, "I know him! He used to visit the signora! He is theconfidant of the signora and of her brother!"
A roar rose and drowned out Christina's voice. "That man--how comes hethere! The friends of Allegra Alieni are her friends!"
The crowd did not advance for the ring of Herrick's gun was stillpressed against Mr. Gumama's beautiful brow. But some shrill voice rose,a-quiver with exhorting hate. "The hour is come! For what have wewaited? Till they had not a shot left! They have none now! If they hadthey would have shot Gumama when he came in! They do not shoot him,now--they have nothing to shoot! Give the signal! They hid the friend ofAllegra Alieni behind the window--how shall they tell us her friends arenot their friends? How shall they tell us they can injure our Gumama?Close in! Close in!"
The tide of the Camorra washed forward, and surged up the first terrace.But it came to a halt.
"How?" Christina had cried. And then, extending the revolver thatcarried the last shot, she had fired straight into the dead face of TenEuyck.
The jar shattered that perilous equilibrium. The corpse fell in uponitself, its weapon dropping with a clank, the tongue suddenly protrudingbeneath the shattered cheekbones and the head goggling on the breast.The note of one still unaffrighted bird came through the perfectstillness.
The invading army shivered, shocked and applausive; then,apprehensively, it glanced at Gumama. It drew together in consultingknots. Some men, coming from round the house, joined the counsel andcreated a sensation. A puzzled but now rather friendly voice shouted,"Some one lies! Alieni was seen to enter where you are!"
They all looked at Christina. But the wire had snapped at last. Shestood with a scared vagueness on her white face, the pistol swingingloose in her hand and her eyes fixed on the hunched clutter of what hadbeen Ten Euyck. Herrick made out to translate the message and Kane said,"Ask 'em if they'll send up that investigating committee?"
Christina's shot had made, however, too great an impression. If they hadammunition to spare, they were no hosts for the Camorra. Would theAmericans come out, each one, upon the second terrace?--bringing, also,the dead and wounded, till Gumama shall tell us there are no more?
"When the devil drives--! Say we'll begin with the dead!"
They began with Ten Euyck. Sheriff Buckley took the head, Kane the feet;the long, bony figure sagged between them and the tails of itsdress-coat flopped as if pointing jocularly toward the ground. As theybore this burden down the terraces and laid it on the smooth greennessof the lawn, amid the ever brightening daylight and the ever growingchirp and twitter of the slowly calming birds, various disheveledfigures began to hurry into view along the drive from the river. Thesearrivals had all the air of refugees and continued to excite, incounsel, an increasing perturbation. Yet the truce remained unbroken. Solong as Kane and Buckley, exposed, defenseless, to the first marksman,carried forth Nicola no word nor movement was given in enmity. But thedelay in reaching the figure in the gallery produced great restiveness.Taunts and outcries of nervous impatience gave way, when the two menappeared with their slighter burden, to a chorus of half-derisivewelcome. The Camorra had begun to be in a hurry.
Its nervousness communicated itself to the men who bore this third bodydown the great stone steps and laid it at Ten Euyck's right hand. Athick sweat stood out upon them when a sharp storm
of curses, geysersand downpours of venom broke suddenly from heavens and earth. But thetempest was not for them. The face of their last burden had becomevisible to the advance guard stationed among the foremost trees and thisnow leaned violently forth, tossing like branches with the shriek,"Alieni! Traditore! Alieni!"
Upon that the shadow of the woodland broke at last. A dozen men, theirhats screened low to shield their faces, detached themselves from themass which crouched greedily after them and, racing out upon the lawn,threw themselves prostrate on the soft, supine thing that lay there.Behind them the tide became ungovernable; rose, swelled forward; coveredthe road, the lowest terrace; raving, shrieking, leaping and falling;biting the grass upon which it rolled in frenzy. There were perhaps twominutes of pandemonium. Then a whistle sounded. Then another. The tiderolled back; the groves of oak and pine and maple swallowed it intotheir shadow; and of that orgy of living hate no trace remained in thefull clearness of the fresh morning but the trampled, mangled body ofFilippi Alieni, pierced with fifty-eight wounds and still bearingbetween the shoulder blades a triangular knife. The will of the Camorrawas satisfied.
A chorus of whistles sounded from the wood. Then arose a single voice,demanding Gumama. His captors realized that the war was over; theprisoner was released. Despite the hurrying bird-calls of his mates hepaused, thoughtfully knitting his Saracen brows, for a look atChristina.
The girl was standing perfectly still, with her eyes intent upon TenEuyck's empty chair, as if she had not observed his removal; her gazewas fixed, but her lower lip strained and quivered. As Gumama paused thepistol slid from her hand; the noise of its dropping at her feetattracted her eyes; she shivered violently; broke into trembling mirthand sank, till her soft cheek and the convulsive throbbing of her youngbody lay pressed upon the stone. Herrick and Gumama both sprang to her.Herrick lifted her head upon his knee, but she lay limp and shook fromhead to foot with sobbing laughter.
Gumama shrugged and stood back. "Is it," he asked, "the silverbracelet?" Then they all saw that the bracelet snatched from Nancy wason Christina's wrist.
Herrick nodded; his soul was sick with that horror. There was notriumph, now, in victory.
"Tell her," said the tall Sicilian, "when she avenges her friend tothink of me. I will come. Always. She is the pearl of everything. Allwould not see it. But I have the piercing eye. I see."
He ran off swiftly; and the sort of uproarious twitter which welcomedhim under the trees ended in a final message. "Farewell, Americans. Youdo us the courtesy of our beloved Gumama! We do you our courtesy--Flee!Whoever you are, the policemen are upon you! They are coming from thegate, they are coming from the river! In ten minutes they will be here!Americans, farewell!"
It was the last word of the Camorra in their lives. The undergrowth ofthe wood seemed to grow scantier; it was the backward fading of theshadows, it was the passing of a great, black bulk; the disappearance ofinnumerable unknown persons whom they had never even seen, of whoseexistence they had never even known, out of their path. Nothing remainedbut the signaling whistles of the Camorra, gathering its children in itsretreat. The thing was over. The last consequence of the Ingham murder,of the birth of the Hopes' first child twenty-eight years ago in Naples,was over and done. And the three men regarded each other with a strangefeeling of vacancy.
But in the mouths of Kane and the sheriff the morning air was good andlife ran sweet in their veins. Even to Herrick, with the exhausted girllaughing and shuddering in his arms, there seemed to rise a kind offuture hope when forgetfulness should deal tenderly with her. Soon shemust begin to weep and the other side of weeping a kind of consolationlies. "Why, her own youth and life must heal her!" Kane said. "It'shard, it's bitter hard! But there's her feeling for you, her future, herwork--Don't look at her as if she were dying! Time, my boy, she needstime, that's all!--As for Nancy Cornish, she fell with one shot. Andsince she was so much in love with that poor fellow, believe me, she'sbetter off!"
Herrick looked up in alarm, lest Christina should hear bad news. But shewas lost in the hot surge of tears that had come to her at last and layonly quieter and quieter in his hold. Till at length, since there was atime coming when she must know if Fate had played her doubly false, hefetched a coat to put under her head and drew Kane aside. "You meantjust now--?"
"I meant what I've had on my mind through all this night, as somethingwith which I didn't know how to face Miss Hope. I meant that this chapDenny was never a very lucky fellow--"
"_Was?_"
"But that never was anything unluckier than his consenting to leave theTombs."
"Because they followed and brought him back?"
"They followed. But they didn't bring him back!--I forgot you wouldn'tknow. The Italians somehow palmed off on Ten Euyck's men another Italianmade up with the things in which they took Denny from the Tombs. It'seasy enough to understand now why Ten Euyck, with discreet mercy, calledthis substitute simply a mistake and let him go." He paused, studyingthe driveway with clouded eyes. "The Italians must have got clear awaywith Denny, but why did they take so much pains? Were they really goingto hand over to Allegra a man whom they certainly considered in someway 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 himwhen he was first imprisoned in the Tombs? Don't groan, my boy! It's theone 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 hiscaptors didn't get away, if he's been retaken with them, then marryChristina Hope as fast as may be and get her out of this country forawhile. You understand?" Herrick looked up. "I intend, with all mystrength, to keep my bargain. I'll go to the Governor to-morrow. But helet 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 amove is always the unpardonable sin! Against it the mere justifyingprovocation 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 thistime, is either dead or run away. So must be every witness to it. Evenas evidence against the blackmailers, if there are any left, Miss Hopecan't force the state to sell her his life for this, now. Well, someday, perhaps, you can make her see that whatever happens, police orCamorra, he managed to get his way, poor chap! If she weren't fooled bylife's being hope she would see, well enough, that he was the last manto thank her for a light sentence. He was keen against jail, youremember?"
They were both silent. Yes, Herrick remembered. "The best friendChristina ever had" she would surely some day see could not havelingered in the black durance that he loathed.--Rest, rest, perturbedspirit!
It was the hour for resolution, for new birth. Herrick felt a strengthof pity in his breast whose tide should lift Christina from thewhirlpools of which the lessening eddies still plucked at her sick soul.Poor girl, poor, brave, spoiled, wilful, imperious, generous heart! Tohave fought so hard and to be checked thus at the end! To haveoutwatched, outstalked, outrun the hounds for this! "Thus far shalt thougo...." Hers had been a heroic presumption, but it had been presumptionall the same. You cannot outface consequences nor outdare naturaltragedy; no, not even you, Christina Hope! After all, could she haveexpected to clear out from a morass like this without a loss? Ah, forher 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 alittle ceased to weep?
For she lifted her exhausted face, where the wild, wet eyes still seemedto listen, just as Herrick remembered their continual guard six weeksago. She was listening to those chorusing signals, still whistled fromfar stations nearer road and river and returned in such imitation ofbird voices that bird after bird replied. They were growingfainter--they were retreating on every hand--all but one, which seemedto advance and to give forth a more familiar note. And suddenlyChristina answered it.
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p; Herrick caught her closer, in a new terror of delirium. The girl rose toher 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 orquestioned in articulate notes with which hers joined in a familiarbar--"Since auld lang syne, my dear--" Through the colorless day astrong yellow light had begun to flood the earth; the clouds were carvedout sharp in it, the woods stood black; the light had a blush of happyfire 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 singlefigure stepped from the border of the wood and came straight up theterraces.
Not so tall as Mr. Gumama but still vaguely Sicilian in cut, themessenger or fugitive or whatever he might be advanced under the gaze ofthose who grew terribly pale and could not speak; Christina peeringforward, shaking from head to foot, her clenched hands hanging at herside and her lips caught between the knocking of her teeth. The echoing,ominous whistles, the noises of rescue approaching from two sides, thehails of the police, the sound of wheels, tires, horses' hoofs andrunning feet did not deter the single figure which, mounting with a kindof steady stumble, like one far spent, blind, now, to the danger ofsudden bullets, indifferent to arrest or punishment or anything inheaven or earth but his own ends, gained at length the foot of the stonesteps and lifted his face. At the same instant the risen sun glinted onthe swinging gold of sailors' earrings, on the bracelet slipped outbelow a ragged cuff, on the red cord of a scapular and on the scarf inthe Sicilian colors that had helped to play their part in the Duel byWine in the loft above the garage. The wearer was damp from the riverand stained with earth, yet smelling of singed cloth and grimed withsmoke; torn, wounded, blackened, haggard, with bright, steady eyes. Itwas Will Denny. He carried the unconscious but still breathing figure ofNancy Cornish in his arms.
* * * * *
The first thing she woke to was Allegra's letter and Kane's question,"Do you know what this document contains? Can you witness its truth?"
And then answered Nancy Cornish, "Of course I can! I saw her come out inChristina's cloak. They kept me waiting in the motor outside while sheshot Mr. Ingham."