saw them everywhere, from the small round of Clara's movement to the
larger wheel of the public aspect. Clara was taking tea with the
Bullers, and the papers had ceased to mention the Crew Idol.
It had not even been a nine days' wonder. It had not dwindled. It had
simply dropped from head-lines to nothing; and after the first murmur of
astonishment at this strange vanishing, after a little vain conjecture
as to the reason of it, the subject dropped out of the public mouth. The
silence was so sudden it was like a suppression. To Flora it shadowed
some forces working so secretly, so surely, that they had extinguished
the light of publicity. They must be going on with concentrated and
terrible activity in cycles, which perhaps had not yet touched her.
So, seeing Major Purdie among the crowd at some one's "afternoon" where
she was pouring tea, she looked up at his cheerful face and high bald
dome with a passionate curiosity. He knew why the press had been
extinguished, and what they were doing in the dark. She knew where the
sapphire was--and where the culprit was to be found. And to think that
they could tell each other, if they would, each a tale the other would
hardly dare believe. Amazing appearances! How far away, how foreign from
the facts they covered! But Major Purdie had the best of it. He at least
was doing his duty. He was standing stiffly on one side, while she
hesitated between, trying desperately to push Kerr out of sight before
she dared uncover the jewel. But he wouldn't move. In spite of all she
had done, he wouldn't.
Across the room that very afternoon she caught the twinkle of his
resisting smile. He had had her letter then for two days, and still he
had come here, though he'd been bidden to stay away; though he had been
warned to keep away from all places where she, or these people around
her, might find him; though he had been implored to go, finally, as far
away as the round surface of the world would let him.
By what he had heard and seen in the red room that night, he must know
her warning had not been ridiculous. And there was another threat less
apparent on the face of things, but evident enough to her. It was the
change in Clara after she had begun her attack on the Bullers, her
appearance of being busy with something, absorbed with, intent upon,
something, which, if she had not secured it yet, at least she had well
in reach. And that thing--suppose it had to do with the Crew Idol; and
suppose Clara should play into Harry's hands!
For Kerr's escape Flora had been holding the ring, fighting off events,
and yet all the while she had not wanted to lose the sight of him. Well,
now, when she had made up her mind finally to resign herself to the
dreariness of that, might he not at least have done his part of it and
decently disappeared? So much he might have done for her. Instead of
smiling at her across crowded tea-rooms, and obliquely glancing at her
down decorous dinner-tables, and with the same fatal facility he had
displayed in getting at her, now keeping away from her, out of all
possible reach.
He was playing her own trick on her, but her chances for getting at him
again were fewer than his had been with her. She could not besiege him
in his abode; and in the places where they met, large houses crowded
with people, the eye of the world was upon her. For how long had she
forgotten it--she who had been all her life so deferential toward it!
Even now she remembered it only because it interfered with what she
wanted to do.
For the eye of her small society was very keenly upon Kerr. She
realized, all at once, that he had become a personage; and then, by
smiles, by lifted eyebrows, by glances, she gathered that her name was
being linked with his. She was astonished. How could their luncheon
together at the Purdies', their words that night in the opera box, their
few minutes' talk in the shop, have crystallized into this gossip? It
vexed her--alarmed her, how it had got about when she had seen him so
seldom, had known him scarcely more than a week. It was simply in the
air. It was in her attitude and in his, but how far it had gone she did
not dream, until in the dense crowd of some one's at-home she caught the
words of a young girl. The voice was so sweet and so prettily modulated
that at its first notes Flora turned involuntarily to glimpse the
speaker, a slender creature in a delicate mist of muslin, with an
indeterminate chin and the cheek of a pale peach.
"Just think," Flora heard her saying, "he went to see her three times in
two days, but to-day, did you notice, he wouldn't look at her until she
went up and spoke to him. I don't see how a girl can! Harry Cressy--"
She moved away and the words were lost. Flora looked after her. For the
moment she felt only scorn for the creatures who had clapped that
interpretation upon her great responsibility. These people around her
seemed poor indeed, absorbed only in petty considerations, and seeing
everything down the narrow vista of the "correct." Her eyes followed the
young girl's course through the room, easy to trace by her shining blond
head, and the unusual deliciousness of her muslin gown. She stopped
beside two women, and with a certain sense of pleasure and embarrassment
Flora recognized one of them--Mrs. Herrick. She caught the lady's eye
and bowed. Mrs. Herrick smiled, with a gracious inclination in which her
graceful shoulders had a part.
It gave Flora the sense Mrs. Herrick's presence always brought her, of
protection, or security, and the possibility of friendship finer than
she had ever known. She started forward. But Mrs. Herrick, presenting
instantly her profile, drew the young girl's hand through her arm and
moved away.
Flora winced as if she had received a blow. The other people who had
heard the same gossip of her had been, on account of it, all the more
amused, and anxious to talk to her. But Mrs. Herrick, though she bowed
and smiled, did not want her too near her daughter; perhaps, herself,
would have preferred not to speak to her.
She felt herself judged--judged from the outside, it is true--but still
there was justice in it. She had been flying in the face of custom,
ignoring common good behavior, in short, sticking to her own convictions
in defiance of the world's. And she must pay the penalty--the loss of
the possibility of such a friend.
But it was hard, she thought, to pay the price without getting the thing
she had paid for. It was more like a gamble in which she had staked all
on a chance. And never had this chance appeared more improbable to her
than now. For if Kerr valued the ring more than he valued his safety,
what argument was left her? She thought--if only she had been a
different sort of woman--the sort with whom men fall in love--ah, then
she might have been able to make one further appeal to him--one that
surely would not have failed.
XVII
THE DEMIGOD
On the third day she opened her eyes to the sun with the thought: Where
is he? From the windows of her room she could see the two pale points
and the narrow way of water that led into the western ocean. Had he
sailed out yonder west into the east, into that oblivion which was his
only safety, for ever out of her sight? Or was he still at hand,
ignoring warning, defying fate? "What difference can that make to me
now?" she thought, "since whether he is here or yonder I've come to the
end."
She drew out the sapphire and held it in her hand. The cloud of events
had cast no film over its luster, but she looked at it now without
pleasure. For all its beauty it wasn't worth what they were doing for
it. Well, to-day they were both of them to see the last of it. To-day
she was going to take it to Mr. Purdie to deliver it into his hands, to
tell him how it had fallen into hers in the goldsmith's shop--all of the
story that was possible for her to tell. For the rest, how she came to
fix suspicion on the jewel, he might think her fanciful or morbid. It
didn't matter as long as the weary thing was out of her hands. It
couldn't matter!
She had made it out all clear in her mind that this was the right thing
to do. It hadn't occurred to her she had made it out only on the
hypothesis of Kerr's certainly going. It had not occurred to her that
she might have to make her great moral move in the dark; or, what was
worse, in the face of his most gallant resistance. In this discouraging
light she saw her intention dwindle to the vanishing point, but the
great move was just as good as it had been before--just as solid, just
as advisable. Being so very solid, wouldn't it wait until she had time
to show him that she really meant what she said, supposing she ever had
a chance to see him again? The possibility that at this moment he might
actually have gone had almost escaped her. She recalled it with a
disagreeable shock, but, after all, that was the best she could hope,
never to see him again! She ought to be grateful to be sure of that, and
yet if she were, oh, never could she deprive him of so much beauty and
light by her keeping of the sapphire as he would then have taken away
from her!
She would come down then, indeed, level with plainest, palest, hardest
things--people and facts. Her romance--she had seen it; she had had it
in her hands, and it had somehow eluded her. It had vanished,
evaporated. It had come to her in rather a terrific guise, presented to
her on that night at the club by the first debonair wave of the man's
hand; and now he might have gone out through that white way into the
east, taking back her romance as the fairy takes back his unappreciated
gift.
She leaned and looked through the thin veil of her curtains at the
splendid day. It was one of February's freaks. It was hot. The white
ghost of noon lay over shore and sea. Beneath her the city seemed to
sleep gray and glistening. The tops of hills that rose above the
up-creeping houses were misted green. Across the bay, along the northern
shore, there was a pale green coast of hills dividing blue and blue.
Ships in the bay hung out white canvas drying, and the sky showed whiter
clouds, slow-moving, like sails upon a languid sea. Beneath her,
directly down, through hanging darts of eucalyptus leaves, hemmed with
high hedges, the oval of her garden showed her a pattern like a Persian
carpet. Roofs sloped beyond it, and beyond these the diagram of streets
and houses, and empty unbuilt grassy lots.
She looked down upon all, as lone and lonely as a deserted lady in a
tower, lifted above these happy, peaceful things by her strange
responsibility. Her thoughts could not stay with them; her eyes traveled
seaward. She parted the curtains and, leaning a little out, looked
westward at the white sea gate.
A whistle, as of some child calling his mate, came sweetly in the
silence. It was near, and the questing, expectant note caught her ear.
Again it came, sharper, imperative, directly beneath her. She looked
down; she was speechless. There was a sudden wild current of blood in
her veins. There he stood, the whistler, neither child nor bird, but the
man himself--Kerr, looking up at her from the gay oval of her garden.
She hung over the window-sill. She looked directly down upon him,
foreshortened to a face, and even with the distance and the broad glare
of noon between them she recognized his aspect--his gayest, of diabolic
glee. There lurked about him the impish quality of the whistle that had
summoned her.
"Come down," he called.
All sorts of wonders and terrors were beating around her. He had
transcended her wildest wish; he had come to her more openly, more
daringly, more romantically than she could have dreamed. All the
amazement of why and how he had braved the battery of the windows of
her house was swallowed up in the greater joy of seeing him there,
standing in his "grays," with stiff black hat pushed off his hot
forehead, hands behind him, looking up at her from the middle of
anemones and daffodils.
"Come down," he called again, and waved at her with his slim, glittering
stick. How far he had come since their last encounter, to wave at and
command her, as if she were verily his own! She left the window, left
the room, ran quickly down the stair. The house was hushed; no passing
but her own, no butler in the hall, no kitchen-maid on the back stair.
Only grim faces of pictures--ancestors not her own--glimmered
reproachful upon her as she fled past. Light echoes called her back
along the hall. The furniture, the muffling curtains, her own reflection
flying through the mirrors, held up to her her madness, and by their
mute stability seemed to remind her of the shelter she was
leaving--seemed to forbid.
She ran. This was not shelter; it was prison. He was rescue; he was
light itself. The only chance for her was to get near enough to him.
Near him no shadow lived. The thing was to get near enough. She rushed
direct from shadow into light. She came out into the sun, into the
garden with its blaze of wintry summer, its whispering life and the free
air over it. The man standing in the middle of it, for all his pot hat
and Gothic stick, was none the less its demigod waiting for her,
laughing. He might well laugh that she who had written that unflinching
letter should come thus flying at his call; but there was more than
laughter, there was more than mischief in him. The high tide of his
spirits was only the sparkle of his excitement. It was evident that he
was there with something of mighty importance to say.
Was it that her letter had finally touched him? Had he come at last to
transcend her idea with some even greater purpose? She seemed to see the
power, the will for that and the kindness--she could not call it by
another word--but though she was beseeching him with all her silent
attitude to tell her instantly what the great thing was, he kept it
back a moment, looking at her whimsically, indulgently, even tenderly.
"I have come for you," he said.
"Oh, for me!" she murmured. Surely he couldn't mean that! He was simply
putting her off with that.
"I mean it, I mean it," he assured her. "This doesn't make it any less
real, my getting at you through a garden. Better," he added, "and sweet
of you to make the duller way impossible."
She took a step back. It had not been play to her; but he would have it
nothing else. He, too, stepped back and away from her.
"Come," he said, and behind him she saw the lower garden gate that
opened on the grassy pitch of the hill, swinging idle and open. The
sight of him about to vanish lured her on, and as he continued to walk
backward she advanced, following.
"Oh, where?" she pleaded.
"With me!" Such a guaranty of good faith he made it!
She tried to summon her reluctance.
"But why?"
"We'll talk about it as we go along." His hand was on the gate. "We
can't stop here, you know. She'll be watching us from the window."
Flora glanced behind her. The windows were all discreetly draped--most
likely ambush--but that he should apprehend Clara's eyes behind them!
Ah, then, he did know what he was about! He saw Clara as she did. She
would almost have been ready to trust him on the strength of that alone.
Still she hung back.
"But my things!" she protested. She held up her garden hat. "And my
gown!" She looked down at her frail silk flounces. Was ever any woman
seen on the street like this!
"Oh, la, la, la," he cut her short. "We can't stop to dress the part.
You'll forget 'em."
She smiled at him suddenly, looked back at the house, put on her
hat--the garden hat. The moment she had dreaded was upon her. In spite
of her warning reason, in spite of everything, she was going with him.
Beyond the looming roofs as they descended the hill she saw white sails
sink out of sight. All the little panorama upon which she had looked
down sprang up around her, large and living. He whistled to the car as
he helped her down the last steep pitch, whistled and waved, and they
ran for it. No time for back-looking, no time now for a faint heart.
Before she knew they were fairly crowded into the narrow front seat, and
the long street was running up to them and streaming by.
This was never the car one went out the front door to take. This creaked
and crawled low, taking the corners comfortably, past houses with all
their windows blinking recognition. Hadn't it passed them so for twenty
years? Old houses in long gardens, and little houses creeping back
behind their yards, not yet encroached upon by fresher ties of living.
Past all these and gliding down under high, ragged banks, green grass
above with wooden stairways straggling up their naked faces; past these
again; past lower levels; past little gray and cluttered houses; past
loaded carts of vegetables; past children playing shrilly, bearing down
always on the green square of the plaza wide, worn and foreign, and the
Greek church "domed" with blue and yellow, bearing down as if it had
fairly determined to make its course straight through this stable
center. Then in the very shadow it swerved aside to clatter off in quite
another direction along a wider street with whiter shops, and more
glittering windows with gilded letters flashing foreign names, with more
marked and brilliant colors moving in the crowd, with a clearer stamp on
all of Latin living.
Then suddenly for them the sliding panorama ceased. The car had stopped
and they had left it, and were standing upon the corner of a still
street that came down from the high hills behind them and crossed the
car-track and climbed again a little way to curve over into the sky.
Dingy houses two blocks above them stood silhouetted against the blue.
They were walking upward toward this horizon, leaving color and motion
behind them. With every step the street grew more empty, lonely and
colorless. Many of the windows that glimmered at them, passing, were
the blank windows of empty houses. Were they taking this way, this
curious roundabout out-of-the-world way, of dropping over into the
shipping which lay under the hill? For all she knew this might really be
his notion, for since they had left the garden gate, though they had
looked together at the light and color of the pictures moving past their
eyes, they had not exchanged a word.
But all at once he stopped at the intersection of two dusty streets, and
his eyes veered down the four perspectives like a voyageur taking his
soundings. Elegant as ever and odd enough, yet he wasn't any odder here
at the jumping off place of nowhere than he had appeared in the box at
the theater, or in the picture gallery. She had the clear impression all
at once that he wasn't too odd for anything.
"Here we are!" he said, and indicated with his glittering stick straight
before them a little house. It was low, as if it crouched against the
wind, faded and beaten by the sun to the drab of the rock itself, and
made so secret with tight-drawn curtains that it seemed to have shut
itself up against the world for ever. She wavered. She wasn't afraid of
herself out here, out-of-doors under the sky, but she was afraid that
those four walls might shut out her new unreasoning joy, might steal
away his new tenderness, and bring her back face to face with the same
ugly fact that had confronted her in her drawing-room.
"Oh, no," she said, and put her hands behind her with a determination
that she wasn't going to move.
"Oh, yes," he said, but he didn't smile. He looked at her quite gravely,
reproachfully, and the touch of his fingers on her arm was fine, was
delicate, as if to say, "I wouldn't harm you for the world."
She blushed a slow, painful crimson. She hadn't meant that. She hadn't
even thought of it; but, since he had, there was nothing for it but to
go in. The door shut behind her sharply, with a click like a little
trap; and she breathed such an atmosphere, flat, faint and stale, the
mere ghost of some fuller, more fragrant flavor. In the little anteroom
where they stood, whose faded ceiling all but brushed their heads, and
in the larger little room beyond the Nottingham lace curtains, prevailed
a mild shabbiness, a respectable decay. Curtains and table-cloths alike
showed a dull and tempered whiteness as if the shadow of time had fallen
dim across the whole. The little restaurant seemed left behind in the
onward march of the city, and its faded, kindly face was but a shadow of
what had been of the vigor and flourish of bourgeois Spain thirty years
before. There was no one eating at the little tables, no one sitting
behind the high cash-desk in the anteroom. Not a stir of human life in
all the place.
"Hello," said Kerr among the tables looking around him, "we've caught
them asleep." He rapped on the wall with his cane. Flora peered at him
between the curtains, all her fascinated apprehension of what was to
follow plain upon her face. "Shall it be a giant or dwarf?" he asked
her. "There's nothing I won't do for you, you know."
The door opened and a little girl with a long black braid and purple
apron came in.
"A dwarf," cried Flora. She laughed with a quick relaxing of her
strained nerves. It might almost have been the truth from that old
little swarthy face and sedate demeanor that hardly noticed them. The
child walked gravely up to the desk and mounting to the high stool
struck a faint-voiced bell.
"There," said Kerr, "ends formality. Now let the real magic begin!"
"Not black magic," Flora took up his fancy.
He had drawn out a chair for her. "That depends on you. I'm not the
magic maker. I have no talisman."
She felt the conscious jewel burn in her possession. She looked up
beseechingly at him, but he only laughed, and, with a swing, lifted the
chair a little off the ground as he set her up to the table, as if to
show how easily he could put forth strength. There was nothing defiant
in him. He was taking her with him--taking her upon the wings of his
high spirits; but mischievously, obstinately, he would not show her
where the flight was leading, nor let her listen to anything but the
rustling of those wings. He was determined to make holiday, whatever was
to follow. For the glimpse of blue through the dim window might be the
Bay of Naples; and, ah! Chianti. Perhaps the sort one gets down Monte
Video way, where France fades into Italy--perhaps, at least if her kind
fancy could get the better of the reality. In Sicily there were just
such table-cloths as these, and just such fat floor-shaking contadini to
wait upon you. And look now at the purple one behind the desk--child or
gnome--feet not touching the floor--centuries of Italy in her face. Oh,
calculation, indifference!
"She wouldn't care if you jumped up and threw me out of the window," he
affirmed. "That's why this hole is so harmless. Oh, isn't that harmless?
What's more harmless than to let one alone? There's only one dangerous
thing here," he grinned and let her take her choice of which.
She came straight at it.
"You know I can't let you alone."
He laughed. "Well, isn't that why we're here at last--that you may
dictate your terms?"
"I have. Didn't you get my letter?"
"Oh, indeed I did. Haven't I obeyed it? Haven't I kept away from your
house? Have I tried to approach you?"
"Haven't you, though?" she threw at him accusingly.
"Ah," he deprecated, "you came to me. I was down in the garden."
She looked at him through his persiflage wistfully, searchingly. "But
there were other things in that letter."
"There were?" He regarded her with grave surprise. Oh, how she
mistrusted his gravity! "Why, to be sure there were things--things that
you didn't mean--one thing above all others you couldn't mean, that you
want me to drop out when the game is half done, to slink away and leave
it all like this--abandon you and my Idol so to each other! My dear, for
what do you take me?"
She burst out. "But can't you see the danger?"
He met it quietly.
"Certainly. I have been seeing nothing else but the danger--to you. Do
you think I've been idle all these days? Every line I have followed has
ended in that. It's brought me finally to this." The gesture of his hand
included their predicament and the dingy little room. "You'll really
have to help me, after all."
"Oh, haven't I tried to? That is why I wrote. Don't you see your own
danger at all?"
"No, but I'd like to." He leaned toward her, brows lifted to a quizzical
peak.
"Oh, I can't tell you," she despaired. "But somehow I shall have to make
you go."