as if he gave silence leave to answer for him what it would. It answered
with a hundred echoes ringing up to her from long corridors of
conjecture, half-articulated words breathing of how extraordinary the
answer must be that he did not dare to make. He looked her up and down
carefully, impersonally, with that air he had of regarding a rare
specimen, thoughtfully; as if he weighed such ephemeral substance as
chance.
"What will you take for it?" he said at last.
She was silent. With a sick distrust it came to her that it was the
very worst thing he could have said after that speaking silence.
She stepped away from him. "This thing is not for sale."
He stared at her with amazement; then threw back his head and laughed as
if something had amused him above all tragedy.
"You are an extraordinary creature," he said, "but really I must have
it. I can't explain the why of it; only give the sapphire to me, and
you'll never be sorry for having done that for me. Whatever happens, you
may be sure I won't talk. Even if the thing comes out, you shan't be
mixed up in it." He had come near her again, and the point of his long
forefinger rested on her arm. She was motionless, overwhelmed with pure
terror, with despair. He was smiling, but there was a desperate
something about him, stronger than the common desire of possession,
terrifying in its intensity. She looked behind her. The thick glass of
the window was there, a glimpse of the empty street and the figure of a
woman in a blowing green veil turning the corner.
"Why not give it to me now," he urged, "since, of course, you can't keep
it? I could have it now in spite of you."
Everything in her sprang up in antagonism to meet him. "I know what you
are," she cried, "but you shan't have it. You have no more right to it
than I. You can't get it away from me, and I shan't give it to you."
He had grown suddenly paler; his eyes were dancing, fastened upon her
breast. His long hands closed and opened. She looked down, arrested at
the sight of her hand clenched just where her breath was shortest, over
the sapphire's hiding-place.
He smiled. How easily she had betrayed herself! But she abated not a jot
of her defiance, challenging him, now he knew its hiding-place, to take
the sapphire if he could. But he did not move. And it came to her then
that she had been ridiculous to think for an instant that this man would
take anything from her by force. What she had to fear was his will at
work upon hers, his persuasion, his ingenuity. She thought of the purple
irises, and how he had drawn them toward him in the crook of his
cane--and her dread was lest he meant to overcome her with some subtlety
she could not combat. For that he was secret, that he was daring, that
he was fearless beyond belief, he showed her all too plainly, since here
he stood, condemned by his own evidence, alone, in the midst of her
household, within call of her servants, and had the sublime effrontery
to look at her with admiration, and, it occurred to her, even with a
little pity.
The click of a moving latch brought his eyes from hers to the door.
"Some one is coming in," he said in a guarded voice. It warned her that
her face showed too much, but she could not hope to recover her
composure. She hardly wanted to. She was in a state to fancy that a
secret could be kept by main force; and she turned without abatement of
her reckless mood and took her hand from where she had held it clenched
upon her breast and stretched it out to Mrs. Herrick.
The lady had stood in the doorway a moment--a long-featured, whitish,
modeled face, draped in a dull green veil, a tall figure whose flowing
skirts of black melted away into the background of the hall--before she
came forward and met her hostess' hand with a clasp firm and ready.
"I'm so glad to find you here," she said. She looked directly into
Flora's eyes, into the very center of her agitation. She held her
tremulous hand as if neither of these manifestations surprised her; as
if a young woman and a young man in colloquy might often be found in
such a state of mind.
Flora's first emotion was a guilty relief that, after all, her face had
not betrayed Kerr. But she had no sooner murmured his name to Mrs.
Herrick, no sooner had that lady's gray eyes lighted upon him, than they
altered their clear confidence. The situation as reflected in Flora
looked naïve enough, but there was nothing naïve about Kerr. The very
perfection of his coolness, there in the face of her burning agitation,
was appalling. Oh, why couldn't he see, Flora thought wildly, how it was
damning him--how it was showing him so practised, so marvelously equal
to any emergency, that his presence here among fleeces could be nothing
less than wolfish?
Mrs. Herrick's face was taking on an expression no less than wary. What
he was, Mrs. Herrick could not dream. She could not even suspect what
Flora believed. But in the light of her terrible discovery Flora dared
not have him suspected at all. The chasms of distrust and suspicion that
had been opening between them she forgot. In a flash she was ready to
throw herself in front of this man, to cover him from suspicion, even
though by so doing she took it upon herself.
Now, if she had ever in her life, she talked over the top of her
feelings; and though at first to her ears her voice rang out horribly
alone, presently Mrs. Herrick was helping her, adding words to words.
It was the house they spoke of, the San Mateo house, the subject about
which Flora knew Mrs. Herrick had come to talk; but to Flora it was no
longer a subject. It was a barrier, a shield. In this emergency it was
the only subject large enough to fill the gap, and much as Flora had
liked the idea of it, she had never built the house so large, so vivid,
so wonderfully towering to please her fancy as she was doing now to
cover Kerr. With questions she led Mrs. Herrick on to spin out the
subject, to play it over with lights and shades, to beat all around it.
And all the while she knew that Kerr was watching her; watching her once
again in dubious admiration. It was a look that made Mrs. Herrick seem
ready at a movement of his to lay her hand on Flora in protection.
The lady's clear gray eyes traveled between Flora's face and his. Under
their steady light there was a strange alertness, as if she sat there
ready enough to avert whatever threatened, but anxious to draw her
skirts aside from it, distrusting the quality, hating to have come in
upon anything so dubious. When the hall door opened and closed she
listened as if for a deliverer; and when Clara appeared between the
portières she turned to her and met her with a flash of relief, as if
here at last was a safe quantity. Clara was still wearing her hat, with
the veil pushed up in a little mist above her eyes, and still had her
white gloves on. The sight of Mrs. Herrick's hand soliciting the clasp
of those gave Flora a curious sensation.
She looked from one face to another, and last at Kerr's. She shut her
eyes an instant. Here was a thief. He was standing in her drawing-room
now. She had been talking with him. She opened her eyes. The fact
acknowledged had not altered the color of daylight. It was strange that
things--furniture and walls and landscape--should remain so stolidly the
same when such a thing had happened to her! For she had not only spoken
with a thief, but she had shielded him. It struck her grotesquely that
perhaps Mrs. Herrick's instinct was right, after all. Wasn't Clara the
safest of the lot? Clara at least kept her gloves on, while she herself
was shamelessly arrayed on the side of disorder. She was clinging to a
piece of property that wasn't hers, and whatever way she dressed her
motives they looked too much of a piece with the operations of the
original miscreant.
Flora saw the evil spirit of tragic-comedy. He fairly grinned at her.
XII
DISENCHANTMENT
Then this was the end of all romance? She must turn her back on the
charm, the power, the spell that had been wrought around her, and,
horror-struck, pry into her own mind to discover what lawless thing
could be in her to have drawn her to such a person, and to keep her,
even now that she knew the worst, unwilling to relinquish the thought of
him. His depravity loomed to her enormous; but was that all there was to
be said of him? Did his delicacy, his insight, his tempered fineness,
count for nothing beside it? Must their talks, their walking through the
trees, the very memory of his voice, be lost inspiration?
She couldn't believe that this one spot could make him rotten
throughout. Her mind ran back into the past. She could not recall a
word, an action, or a glance of his that had shown the color of decay.
He had not even been insincere with her. He had come out with his
convictions so flatly that when she thought of it his nonchalance
appalled her. He had been the same then that he was now. But the thing
that was natural for him was impossible for her, and she had found it
out--that was all.
Yet the mere consideration of him and his obsession as one thing was
intolerable. She curiously separated his act from himself. She thought
of it, not as a part of him, but as something that had invaded him--a
disease--something inimical to himself and others, that mixed the
thought of him with terrors, and filled her way with difficulties. Now
it was no longer a question of how to meet him, but of how she was not
to. It was not his strength she feared, but her own weakness where he
was concerned. Her tendency to shield him--she must guard against
that--and that disturbing influence he exercised over her, too
evidently without intention. But he would be hard to avoid. This way and
that she looked for a way out of her danger, yet all the while she was
conscious that there was but one plain way of escape open to her. She
could give the sapphire back to Harry within the twenty-four hours.
XIII
THRUST AND PARRY
MY DEAR FLORA--I am going out early and shall not be back to
dinner. CLARA.
Flora let the little note fall as if she disliked the touch of it. She
was relieved to think she would not have to see Clara that day. It was
her desire never to see Clara again. If only they could part here and
now! How she wanted to shake the whole thing off her shoulders! How
foolish not to have gone to Harry when she had first made up her mind
to! For why, after all, make him any explanations? Suppose she should
just take the ring to him and say: "It gives me the shivers, Harry.
Let's take it back and get something else." If he didn't suspect the
sapphire already, he would never suspect it from that. The worst he
could do would be to laugh, to tease, to tell her she could not live up
to her own romantic notions, since, after all, she had weakened and was
wanting the usual thing.
But there had been times when she had thought that he did suspect the
sapphire. Well, if he did, giving it back to him would practically be
giving it back into public custody in the most decorous manner for a
properly bred young woman. And how beautifully it would extricate her
from her wretched situation! Logically, there was no fault to be found
with such a course. It was eminently sane and safe. Yet it still
appeared to her as if she were acting a coward's part. She was neither
frankly giving the jewel to the authorities with the proper information,
nor frankly handing it over to Kerr. But she was trying to slip it back
into the questionable nook from which it had been taken, and she grew
hot at the thought of how Kerr would despise her if he knew the craven
course she was meditating. She seemed to hear him saying, "I had
thought braver things of you."
Of course, that was his way of expecting that she would give him the
ring. And she felt a sort of rage against him that he should want that,
and only that, so very much. Yet she didn't know what else she wanted
him to want. Every time she thought of Kerr she found herself growing
unreasonable; and she had to whip up her resolution with the hard facts
of the case to prevent herself from drifting over on to his side
completely.
But did she really want Harry to rid her of the ring? She would get hold
of him first and then she would see what she would do.
She stepped into the hall with all the confidence of one who has fully
made up her mind to carry matters with a high hand; but at the telephone
she hesitated. Calling him up at such an hour of the morning demanding
his attendance on such a fanciful errand--wouldn't he think it odd? No,
he would think it the most natural thing in the world for her to be so
flighty. Reassured, she gave the club number and stood waiting,
listening to the half-syllables of switched-off voices and the crossing
click, click, that was bringing her fate nearer to her. She heard some
one coming up the stairs and down the hall toward her. Marrika stood
stolid at her elbow.
"Mr. Cressy," she pronounced.
"Yes, yes," said Flora, with the club clamoring in her left ear.
"He is down-stairs," said Marrika.
Flora nearly let the receiver fall. Harry here? What a piece of luck!
But here on his own account, at such an hour--how extraordinary!
"Hello, hello," persisted the club. "What's wanted?"
"Why, I--" Flora stammered. "It's a mistake; never mind. I don't want
him now." She hoped that Harry had not heard her as he came in, since it
was his informal fashion to await her in the large entrance hall. She
didn't want to spoil the chance he had given her of seeming offhand
about the ring. But the hall was empty, and as she descended the stairs
she amused herself with the fancy that Shima had had a vision, and that
she would still have to ring up the club and explain to the attendant
that, after all, she wanted Mr. Cressy.
Then from the drawing-room threshold she caught sight of Harry standing
in the big bay window of the drawing-room, in the same spot where Kerr
had awaited her the afternoon before. Harry was tall and large and
freshly colored, and yet he did not fill the room to her as the other
man had done. He met her, kissed her, and she turned her head so that
his lips met her cheek close beside her ear. She did not positively
object to his kissing her on the lips, but her instinct was strong to
offer him her cheek. He had sometimes laughed at this, but now he
resented it. He insisted on his privilege, and she was passive to him,
conscious of less love in this than assertion of possession.
"You are not going to Burlingame, are you?" she asked him with her first
breath.
He looked down at her with a flushed and sulky air. "What difference
would that make to you? I am, as it happens, but I suppose you think
that's no reason for disturbing you so early." He was angry, but at
what, she wondered, with creeping uneasiness. He held her and caressed
her with a morose satisfaction, as if he had to make sure to himself
that she was really his, and she permitted it and abetted it with a
guile that astonished her.
"What is the matter?" she urged. "Are things going crookedly at
Burlingame?"
"Things are going as crooked as you please, but not at Burlingame. Sit
over there," he said, nodding toward the window-bench; "I want to talk
to you."
Harry had the air of one about to scold, and certainly Flora thought if
anybody was carrying matters with a high hand, it wasn't herself; but
she didn't follow his direction. She continued to stand, while he,
sitting on the table's edge, drumming the top of his hat, gloomily
regarded her.
"Well?" she persisted, troubled by this look of his, and this silence.
"Look here," he began, "I have to be away a couple of days and I wish
you'd do me a favor."
Flora's thought flew to the ring. Was he going to ask for it back, to
have it reset, as he had promised on the threshold of the goldsmith's
shop? Here might be the chance she had hoped for of getting rid of it.
She grasped at it before she had time to waver.
"I wonder if it's the very favor I was going to ask of you."
But he didn't take it up. He seemed hardly to hear her, as if his mind
was too much absorbed with quite another question--a question that the
next moment came out flat. "What was that Kerr doing here yesterday?"
She was taken aback, so far had her apprehension of Harry's jealousy
slipped into the background in the last twenty-four hours. But her
consciousness that Harry was not behaving well, even for a jealous man,
made her take it up all the more lightly.
"Why, he was calling, chatting, taking tea--what anybody else would do
from four to six. What in the world gave you the idea that he was doing
anything extraordinary?"
"Well," he said, "you shouldn't do the sort of thing that makes you
talked about."
"'That makes me talked about'?" It made her pause in front of him.
"Why, yes, it isn't like you. It's never happened before. Look here. I
drop into the Bullers' yesterday; find Clara sidled up to the judge;
look around for you. 'Hello,' I say, 'where's Flora?' 'Oh,' says she,
'Flora's at home amusing Mr. Kerr.' 'Amusing Mr. Kerr!'" he repeated.
"That's a nice thing to hear."
Flora went red. She walked down the room from him to give her suddenly
tumultuous heart time. However little he might guess the real trend of
her interview with Kerr, she couldn't hear him come near it without
apprehension. She was angry, helplessly angry at Harry that he had
taken this moment for his stupid jealousy. But she was more angry at
Clara, since such a speech on Clara's part wasn't carelessness. She had
meant it to work upon him, and here he stood, like the fine animal that
he was, smoldering with the suspicion of encroachment on his prey.
She tried to laugh him out of it.
"Why, Harry, I never saw you jealous before!"
"It's all very well to say that--and you know I've never made a row
about the other Johnnies. I knew you didn't care for any of _them_."
Her eyes narrowed and darkened.
"And you take it for granted I care for Mr. Kerr?"
"Oh, no, no!" He pushed his hand through his hair with an irascible
gesture. "But it's plain enough you like him--you women always like a
fellow that flourishes--but that's not the sort of man I care to see
hanging around my girl."
Flora stood leaning on the table, breathing a little hurriedly, feeling
rather as if she had been shaken. Harry, standing with his hands in his
pockets, looked not unlike the threatening image he had appeared in the
back of the goldsmith's shop.
"Of course, the fellow can talk," he admitted, "and he has a manner. But
Lord knows where he comes from or who he is. Why, even the Bullers don't
know."
Flora turned sharply on him. "Who told you that?"
"The judge. He picked him up at the club."
"Well," she kept it up, "some one had to introduce him there."
Harry smiled. "You wouldn't care to bow to some of those club members."
"Harry, do you know how you sound to me?" She was trembling at the
daring of what she was going to say. "You talk as if you knew something
against him."
Her statement seemed to bring him up short. "No, no, I don't," he said
hastily.
She made a little gesture of despair. How was she to count on Harry if
he was going to behave like this? How trust him when he was shuffling
so?
She made one more bold stroke to make him speak out.
"Harry, you _do_ know something about him! I know you have seen him
before."
"Why, yes, I've seen him before. But that's got nothing to do with it."
He looked surprised that she should seem to accuse him of it, and she
wondered if he could have forgotten how he had denied it before.
"And that isn't why you distrust him?"
The devil's tattoo that he beat on his hat stopped.
"I don't distrust him."
"Well, dislike him, then. When was it that you saw him before?"
"Isn't it enough for me to tell you that I don't want _you_ to see him?"
"Oh!" She turned away from him. Every nerve in her was in revolt. Then
he really wasn't going to tell her anything. He was keeping her out of
it as if she were a child. She had relied on him to return the ring. She
had counted upon his indifference and good nature. And he was neither
indifferent nor good-natured. All desire of even mentioning the ring to
him left her; and as to giving him her confidence--These hints that he
had thrown out about Kerr--they might be mere jealousy--but he might
have actual knowledge, knowledge that, with her own fitted to it, would
make for him a complete figure. She caught her breath at the thought of
how near she had come to actually betraying Kerr. Until that moment she
had not realized that through all her waverings her one fixed intention
had been not to betray him.
Harry had risen and was buttoning his overcoat. "You know you're never
at home if you don't want to be," he said.
She stood misleadingly drooping before him. But though her appearance
was passive enough for the most exacting lover her will had never been
in more vigorous revolt. She knew Harry was taking her weariness for
acquiescence, and she let him take it so. She even followed him into the
hall, and with a vague idea of further propitiation, nodded away Shima
and opened the door for him herself.
The fog was a chasm of white outside. Harry turned on the brink of it.
"By the way, where's Clara?"
"Why, do you want to see her? She'll be out all day. She's dining with
the Willie Herricks."
"No, I don't want to see her, but, by the way, she's not dining with the
Willie Herricks; she's dining with the Bullers. I heard her make the
engagement yesterday."
"Oh, no, Harry, I'm sure you're mistaken."
"Well, it doesn't matter. All I want to know is, why did you show that
ring to Clara before it was set?"
She was genuinely aghast. "I didn't," she flashed. "What made you think
I had?"
He shrugged. "Well, she asked me where we got it. I don't see why women
always talk those things over." He was looking at her inquiringly.
"Well, I haven't," she said quickly. "Have you?"
He looked out upon the fog. "Told her where we got it, do you mean? No,
I just chaffed her. I'd look out, if I were you. She strikes me as
damned curious." He stood a moment on the threshold, looking from Flora
to the chasm of fog outside, as if he were choosing between two chances.
"I think I'll take that ring this morning," he said slowly.
The deliberate words came to her with a shock. But in the moment, while
she looked into Harry's moody face, she realized how impossible to make
a scene over what must still be maintained as a trivial matter betwixt
them--the mere resetting of a jewel; what should she do to put him off?
She looked up at him, and saw with relief that his face was turned from
her to the fog, as if he had forgotten her. Then, still with averted
head, as if he addressed the whiteness, or himself,--"No," he
determined, "I won't. I'll take it when I come back." He pulled himself
together with an effort, with a smile. "That is," he turned to her, "if
you're in no great hurry about the setting? Very well, then. In a day or
two."
He plunged away into the fog. A few rods from the door he disappeared,
but she could still hear his footsteps growing thinner, lighter, passing
away in the whiteness.
XIV
COMEDY CONVEYS A WARNING
She stood where he had left her in the open doorway, with the damp eddy
of the fog blowing on her. She had had a narrow escape; but after the
first fullness of her relief there returned upon her again the weight of
her responsibility. There was no slipping out of it now, and it was
going to be worse than she had imagined. So much had come out in the
last half-hour that she felt bewildered by it. What Harry had let slip
about Clara alarmed her. What in the world was Clara about? With one
well-aimed observation she had stirred up Harry against Kerr and against
Flora herself. And meanwhile she was running after the Bullers. Twice in
two days, if Harry was not mistaken, and she was even nearing another
engagement.
After all her fruitless mousings, Clara had too evidently got on the
scent of something at last. How much she knew or guessed as yet, Flora
could not be sure, but certainly, now, she couldn't let Clara go. For
that would be turning adrift a dangerous person with a stronger motive
than ever for pursuing her quest, and the opportunity for pursuing it
unobserved, out of Flora's sight. Clara was at it even now, and the only
consolation Flora had was that Harry, at least, would not play into her
hands.