hand, he watched her with a gloomy sort of brooding. "You know what it
is I'm waiting for. You know I won't go without it." His words came
sadly, but doggedly, with a grim finality, as if he gave himself up to
the course he was following as something he knew was inevitable. The
faintness of despair came over her. Only the narrow table was between
them, yet all at once, with the mention of the ring, he seemed a long
way off. What was this terrible obsession that outweighed every other
consideration with him? How get at it? How get through it? Or was it
between them for ever?
"Do you care for it so very much?" she asked him, trembling but valiant.
"I care so very much," he repeated slowly, and after a moment of wonder:
"Why, don't you?"
"Oh, not for that," she cried sharply. "Not for the sapphire!"
He stared. She had startled him clean out of his brooding. "In Heaven's
name, for what, then?"
Oh, she could never tell him it was for him! In her distress and
embarrassment she looked all ways.
His quick white finger touched her on the wrist. "For Cressy?"
The abrupt stern note of his question startled her. She held herself
stiff and still for a moment, then: "For every one in this wretched
business. I have to."
"Ah," he sighed out the satisfaction of his long uncertainty, "then
Cressy _is_ in it."
"No, I didn't mean that--you mustn't think it--I can't discuss him with
you!" She was hot to recapture her fugitive admission.
"Don't let that disturb you. You haven't given him away to me. I had all
I'm likely to get from the man himself."
"He--he told you?" she faltered.
"He told me nothing. Don't you know that he misdoubts me? I got it out
of him, by sleight of hand--where we had met before. Has he never told
you anything of that morning when we left your house together?"
"Never." The admission cost her an effort.
He mused at her. "As I said, he told _me_ nothing, but it occurred to me
when he came in that we might be there on the same errand."
She paled. "You mean--?"
"I mean I thought it might be safer all around that you should not see
him that morning; so I got him away. He hasn't asked you for it since?"
"The sapphire?" she faltered. "No!" The more her instinct warned that it
had been the jewel Harry had returned for, the more she repudiated the
idea to Kerr.
"Why should you think he came for that? What has he to do with it?" she
murmured.
"My God! how you do champion him!" He leaned forward sharply across the
table. "What is this man to you?"
He was going too far. He had no right to that question. "The man I have
promised to marry." Her hot look, her cold manner defied him to command
her here. Yet for a moment, leaning forward with his clenched hands on
the table, he looked ready to spring up and force her words back on
her. The next he let it go and dropped back in his chair again.
"Quite so," he said. "But I didn't believe it." He stared at her with a
dull, profound resentment. "Yet it's most possible; since it isn't the
sapphire it would be that." He mused. "But, you extraordinary woman, why
on earth--" he broke off, still looking at her, looking with a
persistent, sharp, studying eye, as if she were the most puzzling and,
it came to her gradually, the most dubious thing on earth. He was verily
a magician, a worker of black magic; for under the spell of his eyes she
felt herself turning into something horrible. However innocent she was
in intention, the ugly appearance was covering her.
"Then what are you doing here with the ring on you?" he demanded
solemnly. "Why are you dealing with me? What do you think you'll get out
of it? Good God! women are hideous! How can you betray the man you
love?"
"Oh," she cried, with a wail of horror. She stood up trembling and pale.
"I don't--I don't--I don't! I've kept it from them. I'm standing
against them all. I shall never give it to them. When have I ever
betrayed you?"
He drew back, away from her, as if to ward off her meaning, but she
leaned toward him, her hands flung out, holding herself up to him for
all she meant. He got up slowly and the creeping tide of red, dusky and
violent, rising over his face, swelling his features, darkening his
eyes, hung before her like a banner of shame.
"I didn't know, I didn't know," he repeated in a low voice. His eyes
were on the ground. Then, with a sharp motion, as if merely standing in
front of her was unendurable, "Oh, Lord!" he said, and, turning, walked
from her toward the window. He went precipitately, as if he meant to go
through it, but he only leaned against it and stood motionless; and from
her side of the table, trembling, breathless, she watched his stricken
silhouette black upon the gray, fading light.
The knowledge of how far she had gone, of how much she had betrayed
herself, swelled and swelled before her mind until it seemed to fill
her life, but she looked at it hardily and unabashed. All the decencies
in the world should sink before he thought her a traitor. She came
softly up beside him.
"Don't be sorry for what I told you."
"I'm not," he said. His voice sounded muffled. He did not look at her,
only held out his arm in a mute sign to her to come. She felt it around
her, but it was a mere symbol of protection. It lay limp on her
shoulder, and he continued to stare through the window at the street.
"I'm not sorry for what you said," he repeated slowly. "I'm glad; but,
child, I wish it wasn't true."
"Don't, don't!" she besought him, "for I don't."
He gave her a look. "That's beautiful of you, but"--and he turned to the
window again and spoke to himself--"it puts an awful face on my
business. All along you've made me think for you, and of you, more than
you deserve, more than I can afford." The stare she gave this forced out
of him a reluctant smile. "Why, didn't you know it? Do you think I
couldn't have had the sapphire that first night I saw it on your hand,
if it hadn't been--well, for the way I thought of you? I fancied you
knew that then." He made a restless movement. His arm fell from her
shoulder. "There's been only one thing to do from the first," he said,
"and I don't see my way to it."
"Oh, don't take it! Leave it!" she pleaded. "Leave it with me! What does
it matter so much? A jewel! If only you would leave it and go away from
me!"
He whirled on her. "In Heaven's name, a fine piece of logic! Leave the
sapphire to people who can make no better use of it than I? Leave you to
go on with this business and marry this Cressy? Even suppose you gave me
the sapphire, I couldn't let you do that!"
"If I gave you the sapphire," Flora said, "oh, he wouldn't marry me
then!" She couldn't tell how this had come to her, but all at once it
was clear, like a sign of her complete failure; but Kerr only wondered
at her distress.
"Well, if you don't want to marry him, what do you care?"
"Oh, I don't, I don't care for that." She sank back listlessly in her
chair again. She couldn't explain, but in her own mind she knew that if
she lost the sapphire she would so lose in her own esteem; so fail at
every point that counted, that she would never be able to see or be seen
in the world again as the same creature. Even to Kerr--even to him to
whom she would have yielded she would have become a different thing. She
realized now she had staked everything on the premise that she wouldn't
have to yield; and now it began to appear to her that she would. His
weakness was appearing now as a terrible strength, a strength that
seemed on the point of crushing her, but it could never convince her.
That strength of his had brought her here. Was it to happen here, that
strange thing she had foreseen, the end of her? Was it here she was to
lose the sapphire, and him?
She looked vaguely around the room, at the most impassive aspect of the
place, as at a place she never expected to leave; the darkening
windows, the fast-shut door, the child leaning on the desk, watching
them with sharp, incurious eyes--this would be her niche for ever. She
would be left for ever with the crusts and the dregs. And Kerr's figure
in the twilight seemed each time it moved to be on the point of
vanishing into the grayness. He moved continually up and down the narrow
spaces between the tables. He troubled the dry repose of the place.
Sometimes he looked at her, studying, questioning, undecided. Once he
stopped, as if just there an idea had arrested him. He looked at her, as
if, she thought, he were afraid of her. Then for long moments he stood
looking blankly, steadily out of the window. He did not approach her. He
seemed to avoid her, until, as though he had come at last to his
decision, he walked straight up to her and stood above her. She rose to
meet him. He was smiling.
"Don't you know that you could easily get rid of me?" he demanded.
"Cressy would be too glad to do it for you; and there are more ways
than one that I could get the sapphire from you, if I could face the
idea of it--but really, really we care too much for each other. There's
only one way out for you and me and the sapphire. I'll take you both."
Her clenched hands opened and fell at her sides. A great wave of
helplessness flowed over her. Her eyes, her throat filled up with a rush
of blinding tears. She put out her hands, trying to thrust him off, but
he took the wrists and held them apart, and held her a moment helpless
before him.
"Oh, no," she whispered.
"But I love you."
Her head fell back. She looked at him as if he had spoken the
incredible.
"I love you," he repeated, "though God knows how it has happened!"
The blood rushed to her heart.
He was drawing her nearer.
She felt his breath upon her face; she saw the image of herself in his
eyes. She started to herself on the edge of danger, and made a struggle
to release her wrists. He let them go. She sank down into her chair.
"Why not? Why won't you go with me?" she heard him say again, still
close beside her.
"I can't, I can't!" She clung to the words, but for the moment she had
forgotten her reasons. She had forgotten everything but the wonderful
fact that he loved her. He was there within reach, and she had only to
stretch out her hand, only to say one word, and he would cut through the
ranks of her perplexities and terrors, and carry her away.
"Why not, if you love me?" he insisted. "Are you afraid of those people?
Are you afraid of Cressy? He shall never come near you."
She shook her head. "No, it isn't that."
He stooped and looked into her face. "Then what keeps you?"
She looked up slowly.
"My honor."
"Your honor!" For a moment her answer seemed to have him by surprise. He
mused, and again it came dreamily back to her that he was looking at
her across a vast difference no will of hers could ever bridge.
"Don't you see what I am?" she murmured. "Can't you imagine where I
stand in this hideous business? It's my trust. I'm on their side; and,
oh, in spite of everything, I can't make myself believe in giving it to
you!"
He pondered this very gravely.
"Yes, I can see how you might feel that way. But is the feeling really
yours? Are you sure they haven't put it on you? Might not my honor do as
well for you, if you were mine?" It struck her she had never connected
him with honor, and he read her thought with a flash of humor.
"Evidently it hasn't occurred to you that I have an honor."
She looked at him sadly. "In spite of everything I'm on the other side.
I belong to them."
"You belong to me." His hand closed on hers. "Mine is the only honor you
have to think of. Can't you trust that I am right? Can't you see it
through my eyes? Can't you make yourself all mine?" His arm was around
her now, holding her fast, but she turned her face away, and his kisses
fell only on her cheek and hair.
"Oh," she cried, "if only I could!"
"Don't you love me?"
"Oh, yes, but that makes me see, all the more, the dreadful difference
between us."
"You silly child, there is no difference, really."
"Ah, yes, you know it as well as I. You were afraid of it, too. All that
long time you were walking around you were wondering whether you dared
to take me."
He denied her steadily, "Never!"
She loved him for that gallant denial, for she knew he had been afraid,
horribly afraid, more afraid than she was now; but that strange quality
of his that gave to a double risk a double zest had set him all the
hotter on this resolution.
He sat for some long moments thoughtfully looking straight before him.
She, glancing at his profile, white and faintly glimmering in the
twilight, thought it looked sharp, absorbed and set. She could see his
great determination growing there in the gloom between them, looming
and overshadowing them both.
"I see," he said at last. "I'll simply have to take you in spite of it."
He turned around to her, and reached his hands down through the dusk.
She was being drawn up into arms which she could not see. Her hands were
clasped around a neck, her cheek was against a face which she had never
hoped to touch. Her reason and her fears were stifled and caught away
from her lips with her breath. She was giving up to her awful weakness.
She was giving up to the power of love. She was letting herself sink
into it as she would sink into deep water. The sense of drowning in this
profound, unfathomable element, of shutting her eyes and opening her
arms to it, was the highest she had ever touched; but all at once the
memory of what she was leaving behind her, like a last glimpse of sky,
swept her with fear. She made a desperate effort to rescue herself
before the waters quite closed over her head.
She pulled herself free. Without his arms around her for the first
moment she could hardly stand. She took an uncertain step forward; then
with a rush she reached the white curtains. They flapped behind her. She
heard Kerr laugh, a note, quiet, caressing, almost content. It came from
the gloom like a disembodied voice of triumph. Her rush had carried her
into the middle of the anteroom. At this last moment was there to be no
miracle to save her? There was no rescue among these dumb walls and
closed-up windows. The purple child gave her a sharp, bird-like glance,
as if the most that this wild woman could want was "change." Flora
looked behind her and saw Kerr, who had put aside the curtains and was
standing looking at her. He was bright and triumphant in that twilight
room. He was not afraid of losing her now. He knew in that one moment he
had imprisoned her for ever! She saw him approaching, but though all her
mind and spirit strained for flight, something had happened to her will.
It tottered like her knees.
He stooped and picked up an artificial rose, which had fallen from her
hat, and put it into her hand. A moment, with his head bent, he stood
looking into her face, but without touching her.
"Sit down over there," he said, and pointed toward a chair against the
wall. She went meekly like a prisoner. He spoke to the child in the
purple apron, who was still sitting behind the desk. He put some money
on the cash-desk in front of her. It was gold. It shone gorgeously in
the dull surrounding, and the child pounced upon it, incredulous of her
luck. Then he turned, crossed the room, soundlessly opened the door, and
went out into the violet dark of the street.
The child furtively tested her coin, biting it as if to taste the
glitter, and Flora waited, lost, given up by herself, passively watching
for the room to be filled again with his presence. He was back after a
long minute, and this time took up his stand at the door, where, pushing
aside the tight-drawn curtain a little, from time to time he looked out
into the street. Sometimes his eyes followed the cracks of the
plastered wall, sometimes he studied the floor at his feet; every moment
she saw he was alert, expectantly watching and waiting; and though he
never looked at her sitting behind him, she felt his protection between
her and the darkening street. She sat in the shadow of it, feeling it
all around her, claiming her as it would claim her henceforth, from, the
world. A ghost of light glimmered along the curtains of the window, and
stopped, quivering, in the middle of the curtained door. Then he turned
about and beckoned her. Sheer weakness kept her sitting. He went to her,
took her face between his hands, and looked into it long and intently.
"You don't want to go!" The words fell from his lips like an accusal.
His sudden realization of what she felt held him there dumb with
disappointment. "You have won me," her look was saying, "and yet I have
immediately become a worthless thing, because I am going; and I don't
believe in going." She felt she had failed him--how cruelly, was written
in his face. But it was only for a moment that she made him hesitate.
The next he shook himself free.
"Well, come," he said.
She felt that all doors would fly open at his bidding. She felt herself
swept powerless at his will with all the yielding in her soul that she
had felt in her body when his arms were around her. He had taken her by
the hand--he was leading her out into the gusty night, where all lights
flared--the gas-lights marching up the street over the hill into the
unknown, and the lights gleaming at her like eyes in the dark bulk of
the carriage waiting before the door. It all glimmered before her--a
picture she might never see again--might not see after she passed
through the carriage door that gaped for her. The will that had swept
her out of the door was moving her beyond her own will, as it had moved
her that morning in the garden, beyond all things that she knew. There
was no feeling left in her but the despair of extreme surrender.
She found herself in the carriage. She saw his face in the carriage door
as pale as anger, yet not angry; it was some bigger thing that looked
at her from his eyes. He looked a long while, as if he bade her never to
forget this moment. Then, "I'll give you twenty-four hours," he said.
"This man will take you home." He shut the carriage door--shut it
between them. Before she had gathered breath he had straightened, fallen
back, raised his hat, and the carriage was turning. Flora thrust her
head, straw hat and ribbons out of the window.
"Oh, I love you!" she called to him. She sank back in the cushions and
covered her face with her hands.
XVIII
GOBLIN TACTICS
For a little she kept her face hidden, shutting out the present,
jealously living with the wonderful thing that had happened to her. It
was as wonderful as anything she had dreamed might come when she had
written him that letter. And if she needed any proof of his love, she
had had it in the moment when he had let her go. There he had
transcended her hope. She felt lifted up, she felt triumphant, though
the triumph had not been hers. It was all his; he had saved her from her
own weakness; his was the miracle. How he shone to her! The dark,
swaying hollow of the carriage seemed still full of his presence, full
of his hurried whispering; and again she seemed to see him standing
outside the window in the deep blue evening holding out his hands to her
cry of "I love you!"
He had been wonderful in a way she had not expected. He had shown her so
beautifully that he could be reached in spite of his obsession. Might
not she hope to touch him just a little further? Was there any height
now that he might not rise to? She seemed to see the possible end of it
all shaping itself out of his magnanimity. She seemed to see him finally
relinquishing his passion for the jewel, and his passion for her for the
sake of something finer than both. She had seen it foreshadowed in what
he had done this day--having them both in his hands, he had put them
away from him. Yet in that action she knew there had been no finality.
She had touched him, but she had not convinced him, and as long as he
was unconvinced he would be at her again in some other way.
Her hands dropped from her face, and she confronted the fact drearily.
"No," she thought, "he never gives up what he wants."
She looked out of the window. The flickers of gas-lamps fell
intermittently through it upon her. Her queer vehicle was rattling
crazily--jolting as if every spring were at its last leap. She was out
of the quiet, blue street. Montgomery Avenue, with its lights, its
glittering gilt names and Latin insignia, was traveling by on either
side of her. The voice of the city was growing louder in her ears, the
crowd on the pavement increased. At intervals the carriage dipped
through glares of electric lights that illuminated its interior in a
flash broader than day--the ragged cushions, the raveled tassels, the
limp-swinging shutters, and, glimmering in the midst, wild and
disheveled, herself in all the little wavy mirrors. She sat looking out
at the maze of moving lights and figures without seeing them, intent on
an idea that was growing clearer, larger, moment by moment in her mind.
Kerr's appearance in her garden--his capture of her--had not been the
fantastic freak it had seemed. He had had his purpose. He had taken her
out of her environment; he had carried her beyond succor or menace just
that he might carry them both so much further and faster through their
differences. They had not reached the point of agreement yet, but might
they not on some other ground, where they could be unchallenged? It
seemed to her if she could only meet him on her own ground for
once--instead of for ever on Clara's or Harry's--only meet him alone,
somewhere beyond their reach, it might be accomplished, it might be
brought to the end she so wished. Yet where to go to be rid of Clara and
Harry, the two so closely associated with every fact of her life?
The hack, which had been moving along at a rapid pace, slowed now to a
walk among the thickening traffic, and from a mere moving mass the crowd
appeared as individuals--a stream of dark figures and white faces. Her
eyes slipped from one to another. Here one stood still on the lamp-lit
corner, looking down, with lips moving quickly and silently. It was
strange to see those rapid, eager, moving lips with no sound from them
audible. Then her eyes were startled by something familiar in the
figure, though the direct down-glare of the ball of light above him
distorted the features with shadows. She pressed her face against the
window-glass in palpitating doubt. It was Harry.
She cowered in the corner of the carriage. In a moment the risks of her
situation were before her. Had he seen her? Oh, no, at least not yet. He
had been too intent on whomever he was talking to. She peered to make
sure that he was still safely on the street corner. He was just
opposite, and now that the eddy of the crowd had left a little clear
space around him she saw with whom he was talking. It was a small, very
small, shabby, nondescript man--possibly only a boy, so short he seemed.
His back was toward her. His clothes hung upon him with an odd
un-Anglo-Saxon air. He was foreign with a foreignness no country could
explain--Italian, Portuguese, Greek--whatever he was, he was a strange
foil to Harry, so bright and burnished.
The hack was turning. She realized with dismay that it was turning sharp
around that very corner where they stood. Suppose Harry should chance to
glance through its window and see Flora Gilsey sitting trembling within.
The hack wheezed and cramped, and all at once she heard it scrape the
curb. Then she was lost! She looked up brave in her desperation, ready
to meet Harry's eyes. She saw the back of his head. For a moment it
loomed directly above her, then it moved. He was separating from his
companion. With one stride he vanished out of the square frame of the
window, and there remained full fronting her, staring in upon her, the
face of his companion.
Back flashed to her memory the goldsmith's shop--dull hues and odors all
at once--and that wide unwinking stare that had fixed her from the other
side of the counter. The blue-eyed Chinaman! In the glare of white
light, in his terrible clearness and nearness, she knew him instantly.
The hack plunged forward, the face was gone. But she remained nerveless,
powerless to move, frozen in her stupefaction, while her vehicle pursued
its crazy course. It was clattering up Sutter Street toward Kearney,
where at this hour the town was widest awake, and the crowd was a crowd
she knew. At any instant people she knew might be going in and out of
the florists' shops and restaurants, or passing her in carriages. And
what of Flora Gilsey in her morning dress and garden hat, in a
night-hawk of a Telegraph Hill hack, flying through their midst like a
mad woman? They were the least of her fears. She had forgotten them. The
only thing that remained to her was the memory of Harry and the
blue-eyed Chinaman together on the street corner.