of their interview had made that plain. His manner, when he had declared
his intention of taking the ring, had been anything but the manner of a
care-free lover merely concerned with pleasing his lady. Then they were
all of them racing each other for the same thing--the thing she held in
her possession; and whether she feared most to be felled by a blow from
Harry, or hunted far afield by Kerr, or trapped by Clara, she could not
tell. She stood hesitating, looking out into the obscurity of the fog,
as if she hoped to read the answer there. Presently she returned to the
fact that Shima was waiting to close the door. Half-way across the hall
she paused again, looking thoughtfully down the rose-colored vista of
the drawing-room, and up at the broad black march of the stair. Vague
mysteries peered at her from every side. Which should she flee from?
Which walk boldly up to and dispel?
She went up-stairs slowly. She stood in her dressing-room absently
before the mirror. She touched the hard, unyielding stone of the ring
under the thin bodice of her gown. She recalled the morning when she had
gone to get it, before anything had happened and the lure of life had
been so exquisite. Now that it had come near--if this indeed were life
that she was laboring in--it was steep and crabbed, like the brown hills
in summer, far off, like velvet, to climb, plowed ground and stubble.
And yet she didn't wish herself back, but only forward. Now she had no
leisure to imagine, to pretend, to enjoy, only the breathless sense
that she must get forward. The chattering clock on her mantel warned her
of the passing time and set her hurrying into her walking-gown, her hat,
her gloves, as if the object of her errand would only wait for her a
moment longer. When, for the second time, she opened the house door, she
didn't hesitate. She descended into the white fog that covered all the
city.
Above her the stone façade of her house loomed huge and pinkish in the
mist. Her spirits rose with the feeling that she was going adventuring
again, leaving that house where for the last two days she had awaited
events with such vivid apprehensions. She hurried fast down the damp,
glistening pavement, seeing long, dim gray faces of houses glimmer by,
seeing figures come toward her through the fog, grow vivid, pass, and
hearing at intervals the hoarse, lonely voice of the fog-horn at "The
Heads" reaching her over many intervening hills. She did not feel sure
what she should do at the end of her journey or what awaited her there.
She knew herself a most unpractised hunter, she, who, all her life, had
been the most artful of quarries. A quarry she was still, but in this
chase she had to come out and stalk the facts in order to see which way
to run; if, she told herself in her exhilaration, she decided to run at
all.
She turned in at the low gate of imitation grill in front of an enormous
wooden mansion, with towers and cupolas painted all a chill slate gray,
with fuchsias, purple and red, clambering up the front. She rang, and
was admitted into a hall, ornate and very high, with a wide staircase
sweeping down into the middle of it.
The maid looked dubiously at Flora and thought Miss Buller was not at
home, but would see. Flora turned into the room on her left and sat down
among the Louis Quinze sofas and potted palms with a feeling that Miss
Buller was at home, and, for one reason or another, preferred not to be
seen. She waited apprehensively, wondering whether Ella was not seeing
the world-in-general, or had really specified against herself. Could it
be that Ella was one of those women whom Harry had alluded to as
running after Kerr? In the short twenty-four hours every individual help
she had counted upon had seemed to draw away from her--Kerr, whose
understanding she had been so sure of; Clara, whose propriety had never
failed; Harry, whose comfortable good nature she had so taken for
granted! It seemed as if the sapphire, whose presence she was never
unconscious of, for all she wore it out of sight, had a power like the
evil eye over these people. But if it could turn such as Ella against
her, why, the Brussels carpet beneath her might well open and let her
down to deeper abysses than Judge Buller's wine-cellar.
She started nervously at the step of the maid returning. The message
brought was unexpected. "Miss Buller says will you please walk
up-stairs?"
Flora was amazed. That invitation would have been odd enough at any
time, for she and Ella were hardly on such intimate footing. But now she
was ushered up the majestic stair, and from the majestic upper hall
abruptly into a wild little cluttered sewing-room, and thence into a
wilder but more spacious bedroom, large curtains at the windows, large
roses on the carpet, and over all objects in the room a clutter of
miscellaneous articles, as if Ella's band-boxes, bureaus, and
work-baskets habitually refused to contain themselves.
From the midst of this Ella confronted her, still in her "wrapper" and
with the large puff of her hair a little awry. Under it her face was
curiously pink, a color deepening to the tip of her nose and puffing out
under her eyes.
"Well, Flora," she greeted her guest. "You were just the person I wanted
to see. Sit down. No, not there--that's my bird of paradise feather! Oh,
no, not there--that's the breakfast. Well, I guess you'll have to sit on
the bed."
Flora swept aside the clothes that streamed across it and throned
herself on the edge of the high, white plateau of Ella's four-poster.
Ella, for all her eager greeting, looked upon her friend doubtfully,
and Flora recognized in herself a similar hesitation, as if each were
trying to make out, without asking, what thoughts the other harbored.
"I was afraid I shouldn't see you at all," Flora began at last.
"Well, you wouldn't if it hadn't happened to be you," said Ella
paradoxically. "Look at me; did you ever see such a sight?"
"You don't look very well," Flora cautiously admitted. "Why, Ella,
you've been crying!"
"Yes, I've been crying," said Ella, mopping her nose, which still showed
a tendency to distil a tear at its tip. "And it's perfectly awful to me
to think you've been living so long in the same house with her."
Flora murmured breathlessly, "What in the world do you mean?"
"If you don't know, I certainly ought to tell you. I mean Clara," said
Ella distinctly.
Flora, sitting up on the edge of the high bed with the tips of her
little shoes hardly touching the floor, looked at Ella fascinated, her
lips a little apart. Ella had so exactly pronounced her own secret
thought of Clara. She was breathless to know what had been Clara's
performance at the Bullers'.
"Of course I've always known she was like that," said Ella, leaning back
in her chair with an air of resignation. "She's always getting
something. It's awful. It was the same even when we were at
boarding-school. I suppose she never did have enough money, though her
people were awfully nice; but she worked us all for invitations and
rides in our carriages, and I remember she got lots through Lillie
Lewis' elder brother, and he thought she was going to marry him, but she
didn't. She married Lulu Britton's father; and I guess she worked him
until he went under and they found there really was no money. So she's
been living on people ever since." Ella rocked gloomily.
"But she does it so nicely," Flora suggested. She still had the feeling
that it was not decent to own up to these most secret facts of people's
failings.
"Oh, yes, she's a perfect wonder," Ella admitted grudgingly; "look at
what she's done for you!" Ella's gesticulation was eloquent of how much
that had been. "But don't you imagine she cares about you any more than
she cares about me!" Ella began to cry again. "You were an awfully good
thing for her, Flora, and now that you're going to be married she's got
to have something else. But I do think she might have taken somebody
besides papa."
Flora gasped. "'Taken!' Ella, what do you mean?"
"I mean married," said Ella.
"'Married!'" For the time Flora had become a helpless echo.
"Oh, not yet," Ella defiantly nodded. "Not while there's anything left
of me."
Flora stammered. "Oh, Ella, no. Oh, Ella, are you sure?" She felt a
hysterical impulse to giggle.
"Sure?" Miss Buller cried. "I should think so! Why, she's simply making
a dead set for him."
This dénouement, this climax to her somber expectations, struck Flora as
something wildly and indecently ridiculous. "Why, but it's impossible!"
she protested, and began helplessly to laugh.
"Well, I'd like to know why?" Ella snapped. "I'm sure papa is twice as
rich as old Britton was, and twice as easy." She went off into sobs
behind her handkerchief.
"Oh, don't, Ella, don't cry!" Flora begged, petting the large expanse of
heaving shoulders. "I didn't mean anything. I was just silly. Of course
it may be that she wants to marry him. But she never has before--at
least, I mean, I don't believe she wants to now. What makes you think
she does? What has she done?"
"Well," Ella burst out, "why is she coming here all the time, when she
never used to, and petting papa? Why does she bother to be so agreeable
to me when she never was before? Why does she make me ask her to
dinner, when I don't want to?"
Each question knocked on Flora's brain to the accompaniment of Ella's
furious rocking. She could not answer them, and Ella's explanation,
absurd as it seemed, coming on top of her high expectations, wasn't
impossible. It was like Clara to have more than one iron in the fire;
but when Flora remembered the passionate intentness with which Clara had
demolished the order of her room, she couldn't believe that Clara would
pause in the midst of such pursuit to pounce on Judge Buller.
"Oh, Ella," Flora sympathetically urged, "I don't believe there's really
any danger. And surely, even if she meant it, Judge Buller wouldn't
be--"
"Oh, yes, he would," Ella cut her short. "Why, when she came yesterday
he was just going out, and she went for him and made him stop to tea.
Think of it--papa stopping to tea! And he was as pleased as Punch to
have her make up to him. He hasn't the least idea of what she's after.
Papa isn't used to ladies. He's always just lived with me."
This astonishing statement looking at Flora through Ella's unsuspecting
eyes had nevertheless a pathos of its own. It conjured up a long vista
of harmonious existence which the two, the daughter and the father, had
made out of their mutual simplicity, and their mutual gusto for the
material comforts which came comfortably.
"But I'll tell you one thing," Ella ended, still rocking vigorously; "if
she comes here to-night to dinner when she knows I don't want her I
shall tell her what I think of her, before she leaves this house! See if
I don't."
"Don't do that, Ella," Flora entreated, "that would be awful." She was
certain that such an interview would only end in Clara's making Ella
more ridiculous than she was already. "Let me speak to her. I don't mind
at all," she declared bravely, and in a manner truly, though she was
fully aware that speaking to Clara would be anything but a treat.
"Oh, would you?" said Ella eagerly. "I really would be awfully obliged.
I hated to ask you, Flora, but I thought perhaps you might be able
to--to, well, perhaps be able to do something," she ended vaguely. "Do
you think you could?"
"I'll speak to Clara to-night," said Flora heroically, "or to-morrow,"
she added; "I'm afraid I won't see her to-night."
"Well, I'll let you know if it makes any difference," said Ella
hopefully.
Flora knew that nothing either of them could say would make any
difference to Clara, or turn her from the thing she was pursuing; but by
speaking she might at least find out if Judge Buller himself were really
her object. And Ella's wail of assured calamity, "Papa has always been
so happy with me," touched her with its absurd pathos.
She kissed Ella's misty cheek at parting. It wasn't fair, she thought
remorsefully, for people like the Bullers to be at large on the same
planet with people like Clara--and herself--and--and like--Her thoughts
ran off into the fog. At least, thank heaven, it was the judge Clara
was trailing and not Kerr.
The bells and whistles of one o'clock were making clangor as she ran up
the steps of her house again. In the hall Shima presented her with a
card. She looked at it with a quickening pulse. "Is he waiting?"
"No, madam. Mr. Kerr has gone. He waited half an hour."
Down went her spirits again. Yet surely after their last interview she
ought not to be eager to meet him again. "In the morning," she thought,
"and waited half an hour. How he must have wanted to see me!" She didn't
know whether she liked that or not. "When did he come?"
"At eleven o'clock."
At this she was frightened; he had missed Harry by less than half an
hour.
"He waited all that time alone?"
"No. Mr. Cressy came."
Flora felt a cold thrill in her nerves. Then Harry had come back! What
had he come for?
"He also would wait," the Japanese explained.
Flora gasped. "They waited together!"
The Japanese shook his head. "They went away together."
She didn't believe her ears. "Mr. Kerr went away with Mr. Cressy?"
The Japanese seemed to revolve the problem of mastery. "No, Mr. Cressy
accompanied Mr. Kerr." He had made a delicate oriental distinction. It
put the whole thing before her in a moment. Harry had been the
resistant, and the other with his brilliant initiative attacking, always
attacking when he should have been hiding, had carried him off. "What
had he done, and how had he managed, when Harry must have had such
pressing reasons for wanting to stay?" Ah, she knew only too well Kerr's
exquisite knowledge of managing; but why must he make such a reckless
exposure of himself? Did he suppose Harry was to be managed? Had he no
idea where Harry stood in this affair? In pity's name, didn't he know
that Harry had seen him before--had seen him under circumstances of
which Harry wouldn't talk? They were circumstances of which she knew
nothing, and yet from that very fact there was left a horrible
impression in her mind that they had been of a questionable character.
XV
A LADY IN DISTRESS
She had returned, ready for pitched battle with Clara, and on the
threshold there had met her the very turn in the affair that she had
dreaded all along--the setting of Kerr and Harry upon each other.
These were two whom she had kept apart even in her mind--the man to whom
she was pledged, with whom she had supposed herself in love, and the man
for whom she was flying in the face of all her traditions. She had not
scrutinized the reason of her extraordinary behavior; not since that
dreadful day when the vanishing mystery had taken positive form in him
had she dared to think how she felt about Kerr. She had only acted,
acted; only asked herself what to do next, and never why; only taken his
cause upon herself and made it her own, as if that was her natural
right. She could hardly believe that it was she who had let herself go
to this extent. All her life she had been docile to public opinion,
buxom to conventions, respectful of those legal and moral rules laid
down by some rigid material spirit lurking in mankind. But now when the
moment had come, when the responsibility had descended upon her, she
found that these things had in no way persuaded her. They were not vital
enough for her proposition. They had no meaning now--no more than proper
parlor furniture for a castaway on a desert island.
Then this was herself, a creature too much concerned with the primal
harmonies of life to be impressed by the modulations her decade set upon
them. This was that self which she had obscurely cherished as no more
real than a fairy; but at Kerr's acclamation it had proclaimed itself
more real than flesh and blood, and Kerr himself the most real thing in
all her life.
Then what was Harry? The bland implacable pronouncement of Shima had
summoned him up to stand beside Kerr more clearly than her own eyes
could have shown him. Surely she was giving to Kerr what belonged to
Harry, or else she had already given to Harry what ought to have been
Kerr's. That was her last conclusion. It was horrible, it was hopeless,
but it was not untrue. It had crept upon her so softly that it had taken
her unawares. She was appalled at the unreason of passion. Unsought by
him, unclaimed, in every common sense a stranger to him--how could she
belong to him? And yet of that she was sure by the way he had unveiled
her the first night, by the way he had quickened her dreaming into life.
As many times as she had fancied what love was like she had never
dreamed it could be like this. It was mockery that she could be
concerned for one who only wanted of her--plunder. Yet it was so. She
was as tremblingly concerned for his fate as if she owned his whole
devotion; and his fate at this moment, she was convinced, was in Harry's
hands.
Kerr, with his brilliant initiative, might carry him off, but Kerr was
still the quarry. For had not Harry, from the very beginning, known
something about him? Hadn't he at first denied having seen him before,
and then admitted it? Hadn't he dropped hints and innuendoes without
ever an explanation? She remembered the singular fact of the Embassy
ball, twice mentioned, each time with that singular name of Farrell
Wand. And to know--if that _was_ what Harry knew--that a man of such
fame was in a community where a ring of such fame had disappeared--what
further proof was wanted?
Then why didn't Harry speak? And what was going on on his side of the
affair? Harry's side would have been her side a few days before. Now,
unaccountably, it was not. Nor was Kerr's side hers either. She was
standing between the two--standing hesitating between her love of one
and her loyalty to the other and what he represented. The power might be
hers to tip the scales Harry held, either to Kerr's undoing, or to his
protection. At least she thought she might protect him, if she could
discover Harry's secret. Her special, authorized relation to him--her
right to see him often, question him freely--even cajole--should make
that easy. But she shrank from what seemed like betrayal, even though
she did not betray him to Kerr by name.
Then, on the other hand, she doubted how much she could do with Harry.
She wasn't sure how far she was prepared to try him after that scene of
theirs. She had no desire to pique him further by seeing too much of
Kerr. On her own account she wanted for the present to avoid Kerr. He
roused a feeling in her that she feared--a feeling intoxicating to the
senses, dazzling to the mind, unknitting to the will. How could she
tell, if they were left alone together for a long enough space of time,
that she might not take the jewel from her neck, at his request, and
hand it to him--and damn them both? If only she could escape seeing him
altogether until she could find out what Harry was doing, and what she
must do!
Meanwhile, there was her promise to Ella. She recalled it with
difficulty. It seemed a vague thing in the light of her latest
discovery, though she could never meet Clara in disagreement without a
qualm. But she made the plunge that evening, before Clara left for the
Bullers', while she was at her dressing-table in the half-disarray which
brings out all the softness and the disarming physical charm of women.
From her low chair Flora spoke laughingly of Ella's perturbation. Clara
paused, with the powder puff in her hand, while she listened to Flora's
explanation of how Ella feared that some one might, after all these
years, be going to marry Judge Buller. Who this might be she did not
even hint at. She left it ever so sketchy. But the little stare with
which Clara met it, the amusement, the surprise, and then the shortest
possible little laugh, were guarantee that Clara had seen it all. She
had filled out Flora's sketch to the full outline, and pronounced it, as
Flora had, an absurdity. But though Clara had laughed she had gone away
with her delicate brows a little drawn together, as if she'd really
found more than a laugh, something worth considering, in Ella's state of
mind.
Flora was left with the uneasy feeling that perhaps she had unwittingly
delivered Ella into Clara's hands; that Ella, too, was in danger of
becoming part of Clara's schemes. Danger seemed to be spreading like
contagion. It was borne in upon her that from this time forward dangers
would multiply. That nothing was going to be easier, but everything
infinitely harder, to the end; and now was the time to act if ever she
hoped to make way through the tangle.
She heard the wheels of Clara's departing conveyance. Now was her chance
for an interview with Harry. She spent twenty minutes putting together
three sentences that would not arouse his suspicions. She made two
copies, and sent them by separate messengers, one to his rooms, one to
the club, with orders they be brought back if he was not there to
receive them. Then--the miserable business of waiting in the large
house full of echoes and the round ghostly globes of electric lights,
with that thing around her neck for which--did they but know of it--half
the town would break in her windows and doors.
The wind traveled the streets without, and shook the window-casings. She
cowered over the library fire, listening. The leaping flames set her
shadow dancing like a goblin. A bell rang, and the shadow and the flame
gave a higher leap as if in welcome of what had arrived. She went to the
library door. In the glooms and lights outside Shima was standing, and
two messengers. It was odd that both should arrive at once. She stepped
back and stood waiting with a quicker pulse. Shima entered with two
letters upon his tray. She had a moment's anxiety lest both her notes
had been brought back to her, but no--the envelope which lay on top
showed Harry's writing. She tore it open hastily. Harry wrote that he
would be delighted, and might he bring a friend with him; a bully fellow
whom he wanted her to meet? He added she might send over for some girl
and they could have a jolly little party.
Flora looked at this communication blankly. Was Harry, who had always
jumped at the chance of a tête-à-tête, dodging her? In her astonishment
she let the other envelope fall. She stooped, and then for a moment
remained thus, bent above it. The superscription was not hers. The note
was not addressed to Harry, but to her, and in a handwriting she had
never seen before!
Again the peal of the electric bell. Shima appeared with a third
envelope. This time it was her own note returned to her. With the
feeling she was bewitched she took up the mysterious letter from the
floor and opened it. She read the strange handwriting:
May I see you, anywhere, at any time, to-night?
ROBERT KERR.
It was as if Kerr himself had entered the room, masked and muffled
beyond recognition, and then, face to face with her, let fall his
disguise. She gazed at the words, at the signature, thrilled and
frightened. She looked at Harry's note, hesitated; caught a glimpse
between the half-open doors of the two messengers waiting stolidly in
the hall. Waiting for answers! Answers to such communications! She made
a dash for the table where were pens and ink and on one sheet scrawled:
"Certainly. Bring him," appending her initials; on the other the word
"Impossible," and her full name. Then she hurried the letters into
Shima's hands, lest her courage should fail her--lest she should regret
her choice.
"Anywhere, at any time, to-night," she repeated softly. Why, the man
must be mad! Yet she permitted herself a moment of imagining what might
have been if her answers had been reversed.
But no, she dared not meet Kerr's impetuous attacks yet. First she must
get at Harry. And how was that to be managed if he insisted on
surrounding himself with "a jolly little party?"
She found a moment that evening in which to ask him to walk out to the
Presidio with her the next morning. But he was going to Burlingame on
the early train. He was woefully sorry. It was ages since he had had a
moment with her alone, but at least he would see her that evening. She
had not forgotten? They were going to that dinner--and then the
reception afterward? Her suspicion that he was deliberately dodging
wavered before his boyish, cheerful, unconscious face. And yet,
following on the heels of his tendency to question and coerce her, this
reticence was amazing. The next day would be lost with Harry beyond
reach--twelve hours while Kerr was at the mercy of chance, and she was
at the mercy of Kerr.
His tactics did not leave her breathing space. She felt as the lilies
wavering just beyond his reach. She remembered his ingenuity. She
thought of the blows of his cane. Lucky for her she was not rooted like
the lilies! The only safety was in keeping beyond his reach.