apprehension. "There are few things so bad as that," she said slowly,
"and those are the ones we must not touch."
Flora paused a moment on the brink of her last plunge. "Do you think
what I am going to do is such a thing as that?"
"Oh, my poor child, how do I know? I hope, I pray it is not!" Her
fingers closed on Flora's hand, and the girl clung to the kind grasp. It
was a comfort, though it could not save her from the real finality.
In spite of the consciousness of a friendly presence in the house her
fears increased as the afternoon waned, and her thoughts went back to
what she had left behind her, and forward to what might be coming--the
one person whom she so longed for, and so dreaded to see. He might be on
his way now. He might at this moment be hurrying down the hedged lane
from the station; and when he should come, and when they two were face
to face, there would be no other "next time" for them. Everything was
crystalizing, getting hard. Everything was getting too near the end to
be malleable any more. It was her last chance to make him relinquish his
unworthy purpose; perhaps his last chance to save himself from
captivity. She found she hadn't a thing left unsaid, an argument left
unused. What could she do that she had not done before, except to show
him by just being here, accessible and ready to serve him at any risk,
how much she cared? Could his generosity resist that?
Beyond the fact of getting him away safe she didn't think. Beyond that
nothing looked large to her, nothing looked definite. The returning of
the sapphire itself seemed simple beside it, and the fact that her
position in the matter might never be explained of no importance.
Now while every moment drew her nearer her greatest moment she grew more
absent, more strained, more restless, more intently listening, more
easily starting at the lightest sound; until, at last, when the late day
touched the rooms with fiery sunset colors, her friend, watchful of her
changing mood, ready at every point to palliate circumstance, drew her
out into the garden.
The wind, which had fallen with approaching evening, was only a whisper
among the trees. The greenish-white bodies of statues in the shrubbery
glowed ruddy. Gathering their skirts from the grass that glittered with
the drops of the last shower, arm in arm the two women walked down the
broad central gravel drive between ribbon beds of flowers. From here
numerous paths paved with white stone went wandering under snowball
trees and wild apple, losing themselves in shrubbery. But one made a
clear turn across the lawn for the rose-garden, where in the midst a
round pool of water lay like a flaming bit of the sunset sky. Among the
bushes red and rose and white, the elder woman in her black, the younger
in her gown more glowing, with a veil over her hair, walked, and,
loitering, looked down into the water, seeing their faces reflected,
and, behind, the tangled brambles and the crimson sky. They did not
speak, but at last their companionship was peaceful, was perfect. The
only sounds were the sleepy notes of birds and that faint, high whisper
of the tree tops on an evening that is not still.
Loud and shrill and shriller and more piercing, from the west wing of
the house, overhanging the garden, the sound reached them--an alarum
that set Flora's heart to leaping. Startled apart, they listened.
"Would that be--is that for you?"
"I think it's for me."
The words came from them simultaneously, and almost at the same instant
Flora had started across the lawn. The sight of an aproned maid coming
out on the veranda and peering down the garden set her running fleetly.
"It's a telephone for Miss Gilsey," the girl said.
"Oh, thank you," Flora panted.
She knew so well the voice she had expected at the other end of the wire
that the husky, boyish note which reached her, attenuated by distance,
struck her with dismay and disappointment.
"Ella, oh, yes; yes; Ella." What was she saying? Ella was using the
telephone as if it were a cabinet for secrets.
"Clara told me you were down there," she was explaining. "I saw her this
morning, yes. Well,"--and she could hear Ella draw in her breath--"I'm
so relieved! I thought you'd be, too, to know. I _was_ perfectly right.
She was after him."
Flora faltered, "After whom?" There flashed through her mind more than
one person that, by this time, Clara might possibly be after.
"Why, after papa, of course!" Ella's injured surprise brought her back
to the romance of Judge Buller. Her voice rose in sheer bewilderment.
"Well?"
Ella's voice rose triumphantly. "I got it out of her myself. I just came
right out to her at last. She seemed awfully surprised that I knew; but
she owned up to it, and what do you think? I bought her off!"
"Bought her off?" Flora cried. Each fact that Ella brought forth seemed
to her more preposterous than the last.
"Why, yes, it's too ridiculous; what do you think she wanted?"
At that question Flora's heart seemed fairly to stand still. That was
the very question she had been asking herself for days, and asking in
vain.
Ella's voice was coming to her faint as a voice from another world. "She
wanted that little, little picture--that picture of the man called
Farrell Wand. Don't you remember, papa mentioned it at supper that
evening at the club? Isn't it funny she remembered it all this time?
Well, she wanted it dreadfully, but Harry wanted it, too, and papa said
he had promised it to Harry; but I got it first and gave it to her."
Ella's voice ended on a high note of triumph.
Flora's, if anything, rose higher in despair. "Oh, Ella!"
"Doesn't it seem ridiculous," Ella argued, "that if she really wanted
him she'd give him up for that?"
"Oh, no--I mean yes," Flora stammered. "Yes, of course! thank you, Ella,
very much--very much." The last words were hardly audible. The receiver
fell jangling into its bracket, and Flora leaned against the wall by the
telephone and closed her eyes.
For a moment all she could see was Clara with that little, little
picture. How well she could remember how Clara had looked that night of
the club supper!
From the moment Judge Buller had spoken of the picture, how all three of
them had changed, Clara and Kerr and Harry. Everything that had seemed
so phantasmal then, everything she had put down as a figment of her own
imagination, had meant just this plain fact. All three of them had
wanted the picture. For his own reason Kerr had turned aside from the
chase, but Harry had stood with it to the last, and now, when finally
the prize had been assured to him, Clara had it!
At this moment she had it in her hand. At this moment she knew what was
the aspect of the figure in the picture, whether it showed a face, and,
if a face, whose. Flora's hands opened and closed. "Oh," she whispered
to the great silence of the great house awaiting him; "where is he? Why
isn't he here?"
All those terrible things which might be happening beyond her reach
processioned before her. Had Clara already snapped the trap of the law
upon Kerr? And if she hadn't yet, what could be done to hold her off?
Flora turned again to the telephone. Slowly she took down the receiver
and gave into the bright mouthpiece of the instrument the number of her
own house.
Presently the voice of Shima spoke to her. Mrs. Britton had gone out to
dinner.
"Tell her, Shima," Flora commanded, "tell her to come down on the
earliest train." She hesitated, then finished in a firm voice. "Tell her
not to do anything until she has seen me."
Shima would tell her--but Mrs. Britton had been out all day. He did not
know when she would be back.
The words sounded ominous in Flora's ears. She turned away. Was
everything to be finished just as she had light enough to move, but
before she had a chance?
The sound of spinning wheels on the drive startled her to fresh hope,
and sent her hurrying down the stair. It was the phaëton returning from
the last train. Through the open door she saw the figure of Mrs. Herrick
expectant on the veranda. Then the carriage came into the porte-cochère
and passed. With a rush she reached the veranda, and stood there looking
after it. She wouldn't believe her eyes--she couldn't--that it had
returned again empty.
Mrs. Herrick's voice was asking her, "What shall we do? Shall we serve
dinner now, or wait a little longer?"
"Oh, it's no use," Flora murmured, "he won't come to-night. He'll never
come." She drooped against the tall porch pillar.
"My poor child!" Mrs. Herrick took her passive hand. If she read in the
profound discouragement of Flora's face that something more had
transpired than a mere non-appearance, she did not show it, but waited,
alert and quiet, while they gazed together out over the darkening
garden.
It was the time of twilight when the sky is so much brighter than the
earth. Across the lawns between the bushes from hedge to hedge the veil
of the obscuring light was coming in; and through it the avenue of
willows marched darkly. Their leaves moved a little. Flora watched the
ripple of their tops, clear on the bright sky, and deeper down among
mysterious branches there was a sense of movement where the eyes could
not see. There was a curious flick, flick, flicker--a progression, a
passing from the far dark end of the willow avenue toward where it met
the vista of the drive. Flora's eyes, absently, involuntarily, followed
the movement. She felt Mrs. Herrick's hand suddenly close on hers.
"Is some one coming?"
They clung to each other, peering timorously down the drive. A little
gust of wind took the garden, and before the trees had ceased to tremble
and whiten a man had emerged from their shadow and was advancing upon
them up the middle of the drive.
Flora's heart leaped at sight of him. All her impulse was to fly to meet
him, but she felt Mrs. Herrick's hand tighten upon her wrist as if it
divined her madness.
His light stick aswing in his hand, his step free and incautious as
ever, gray and slender and seeming to look more at the ground than at
them, the two women watched him drawing near. His was the seeming of a
quiet guest at the quietest of house parties. To meet him Flora saw she
must meet him on the high ground of his reserve. As he came under the
light of the porte-cochère his look, his greeting, his hand, were first
for Mrs. Herrick.
"We were afraid we had missed you altogether," said she.
"It was I who somehow missed your carriage, was hardly expecting to be
expected at such an hour."
Flora watched them meeting each other so gallantly with a trembling
compunction. Mrs. Herrick, who trusted her, was giving her hand in
sublime ignorance. It was vain that Flora told herself she had given
warning. She knew she had thrown the softening veil of her spiritual
crisis over the ugly material fact. Had she said, "I want you to uphold
me while I meet a thief whom I love and wish to protect. He's
magnificent in all other ways except for this one obsession," she knew
Mrs. Herrick simply would have cried, "Impossible, outrageous!" Yet
there they stood together, and as Flora looked at them she could not
have told which was of the finer temper. Kerr's bearing was so unruffled
that it seemed as if he had flown too high to feel the storm Flora was
passing through. But when he turned toward her, in spite of himself,
there was eagerness in his manner. He looked questioningly at her, as if
no time had intervened, as if a moment before he had said to her through
the carriage window, "I will give you twenty-four hours," and now her
time had come to speak.
Only the thought that time was crowding him into a bag's end gave her
courage to vow she would speak that night. Yet not now, while they stood
just met in the deepening dusk, in the sweet breath of the early
flowers; nor later when they passed in friendly fashion, the three of
them, through fairy labyrinths of arch and mirror, into the long, high,
glistening room, whose round table, spread, seemed dwarfed to mushroom
height; nor yet, while this semblance of companionship was between them,
and the great proportions of the place lifting oppression, left them as
unconscious of walls and roof as though they were met in the open. The
clock twice marked the passing hour. She had never heard Mrs. Herrick
speak so flowingly nor Kerr listen so well, placing his questions nicely
to draw out the thread of her theme. Yet Flora guessed his thought must
be fixed on their approaching moment, as hers was--on the moment when
they should be ready to quit the table and Mrs. Herrick would leave them
to themselves.
It was the appearance of the aproned maid that broke their unity. The
last course was on the table, the last taste of its pungent fruit
essence on their tongues--and what was the girl's errand now? The eye of
her mistress was inquiring.
"Some one has come, Mrs. Herrick." The woman's proper formula seemed to
fail her. She looked as if she had been frightened.
"Some one?" Mrs. Herrick showed asperity. "What name?"
"He is coming in." As she spoke the girl shrank a little to one side.
With his long coat open, hanging from the armpits, with ruffled hair,
and lips apart, and from breathlessness a little smiling, Harry appeared
in the doorway. Kerr leaned forward. Mrs. Herrick did not move. She was
facing the last arrival and she was smiling more flexibly, more
naturally, than Harry; but it was Flora who found the first word.
"You! I--I thought it was Clara." She was struggling for nonchalance,
for poise, at this worst blow, so unexpected.
"Clara won't be down," Harry said, advancing. "How d'ye do, Mrs.
Herrick? How d'ye do, Kerr?"
"How d'ye do?" said the Englishman, without rising.
Flora gripped the arms of her chair to keep from springing up in sheer
nervous terror. A possible purpose in Harry's coming, that even Mrs.
Herrick's presence would not defer, shot through her mind. Was he alone?
Or were there others--men here for a fearful purpose--waiting beyond in
the hall? But Harry had turned his back upon the door behind him with a
finality that declared whatever danger had come into the house was
complete in his presence.
"I've dined, thanks," he said, but, stripping off his greatcoat,
accepted a chair and the glass of cordial Mrs. Herrick offered him. The
ruddy, hard quality of his face, were it divested of its present smile,
Flora thought, might well have frightened the maid; but, for all that,
it was not so implacable as Kerr's face confronting it. The look with
which he met the intrusion had a quality more bitter than the challenge
of an antagonist, more jealous than a mere lover's; and that bitterness,
that jealousy which was between them came out stingingly through their
small pleasantness. It could not be, Flora thought in terror, that Mrs.
Herrick intended to leave these two enemies to each other! Mrs. Herrick
had risen; and Flora, following, saw both men, also uprisen, hang
hesitatingly, as if unready to be deserted; yet with well-filled
glasses, and newly smoking tobacco, both were caught.
Then Kerr, with a quick dash of his hand, picked up his glass. "Let us
be Continental," he begged, and followed close at Flora's side. Without
moving his lips Kerr was speaking. "What does this mean?"
She sensed the anger in his smothered voice, but she dared not look at
him.
"I have no idea; but I will see you."
"When?"
Her answer leaped to her mind and her lips at the same moment.
"In the rotunda when the house is quiet."
Harry had followed leisurely in their wake. The flush of haste had
subsided in his face, and when the four regrouped themselves in the
high, darkly-paneled room, among the low lights, Flora remarked his
extraordinary composure. Bitter he might be; but all the nervousness,
suspicion, uneasiness, that he had shown of late had vanished. There
was a tremendous confidence about him, the confidence of the player who
holds cards that must win the game, and sits back waiting for his
moment.
But she was ready to laugh at him in his security. He had underestimated
his opponent. In spite of him she was to have her meeting with Kerr!
Harry had waited too long to prevent that, whatever he might do
afterward. In this inspired moment she felt herself touching conquering
heights which before she had only touched in imagination. She felt
enough power in herself to move even such a mountain of obstinacy as
Kerr. She stole a look at him--a look of glad intelligence. He
understood as if she had spoken. They were to meet, while all the house
slept fast, to meet for his great renunciation. Then, in the morning,
when Harry was ready with whatever move he was holding back, Kerr would
be gone. There would be no Kerr--but she must not think of that! She
glanced at him again in the thick of the talk, and caught his eye upon
her, puzzled, and, she thought, with a glimmer of doubt.
She smiled; and smiled again at the ease with which she reassured him,
merely by looking at him. He should see, in the end, how true she could
be!
He was talking tremendously, flinging off fireworks of words, but she
was curiously aware that Mrs. Herrick and Harry were looking more at her
than at Kerr. She felt herself the dominant spirit. She saw them
acknowledge it, swept along by the high tide of her mood that was rising
to meet her great decisive moment. Yet on the surface the strong pulse
of it appeared as ripples--words, smiles, gay gestures, laughter--rising
like the last bubble on a wave's crest. She was not consciously acting;
she was inspired by the power of what she concealed and must conceal.
And when she left them it was like a triumphant exit; almost it seemed
to her as if she might hear their applause following her.
In the room where, some eight hours before, she and Mrs. Herrick had
talked, Flora waited, fully dressed. It had been early when they had
separated. The strain of the four together had been terrific; and she
was still feeling it, though an hour had passed. She was feeling that,
now her situation was upon her, she was alone. Mrs. Herrick could only
be near her, not with her, and Kerr was still an unknown
quantity--except that he was fire.
And there was Harry, with his terrible certainty, and no apparent thing
to account for it. It could not be there were men in the house without
the servants remarking it; but in the garden? She peered out upon it.
Only tree shadows moved upon the lawn. Nothing glimmered in the walks or
drives. The solitude held her like an enchantment. She listened for the
small sounds in the house to cease, for the lights in the lower story to
go out, proclaiming all the servants were in bed. Even after the
stillness she waited--waited to be sure it was the long stillness.
Finally she crept to the door and opened it boldly wide.
She stood where she was upon the threshold trembling in a cruel fright.
A gas-jet burning far up at the end of the hall, threw a dim light down
the pale, pinkish, naked vista, void of furniture, window or curtain;
and, leaning against the blank wall almost opposite her door, and
directly facing her, was Harry.
Without speaking they looked at each other. He was fully dressed, but
lacking his shoes, as she noted in the acuteness of her startled senses.
The furtive suggestion of those shoeless feet struck her with
horror--formless, unreasoning. It was like an evil dream to find him
there, stolen to her door in the night, waiting outside it without a
sound, looking her steadily, hardily in the eye without a word.
She tried to speak, but, with terror sobbing in her throat, the words
failed. She made a step forward with a crazy impulse to rush past him.
He straightened, with a quick movement toward her. She recoiled before
him, precipitately retreated, closed the door, shot the bolt, and
leaned, for faintness, against the wall. She expected each moment to
hear him tap. She neither heard a knock nor the sound of soft, departing
feet. He was still there! He was on guard! He had had good reason for
his terrible certainty! He had foreseen what her plan might be, and she
knew he would no more let her get past him down the hall than the
turnkey will let the wretched prisoner escape.
The last flicker of her courage died at that thought. All her fine
exultation was beaten out by the fact of the brute force outside her
door. She could not get to Kerr now. Cowering behind her door she could
only fancy him waiting for her in the rotunda while the moments
lengthened into hours, each moment distrusting her more.
XXII
CLARA'S MARKET
All night she sat awake huddled under her greatcoat in the chilly
darkness. She could not lie down, she could not close her eyes. At long
intervals she heard the tread of unshod feet along the hall, and then
she held her breath lest at her slightest stir they approach her door.
Why, since he wanted the sapphire, hadn't he tried to get it from her
when he had had her unawares, upon her threshold with the house asleep?
It began to seem to her as if he were waiting, as if he were forced to
wait, for some appointed moment. She knew if it were his moment it would
be hers, too, as long as she had the sapphire upon her. She recalled
fearfully the moment when she had crouched against the window with her
hand protecting the jewel, and Harry's hand grasping her wrist. He
would know well enough where to find it now. Oh, the restless
unconcealable thing! Where could she hide it?
She took the pear-shaped pouch that swung always before her on her long
gold chain. She had repudiated that hiding-place before, but now the
more obvious the better--now that both men supposed she carried the
jewel far hidden out of sight. Without moving from the bed where she was
crouched, cramped and cold, she made the exchange, leaving the chain
still around her neck, dropping the jewel into the pouch, where it would
swing free, so carelessly dangling as to be beyond suspicion, but never
beyond the reach of her hand.
It was a pale, splendid dawning full of clouds when she feel asleep.
Broad sunlight filled her room when she was awakened by a knocking at
her door. She sprang from the bed and went to it. She was not to be come
in upon by any unwelcome visitor. But it was Mrs. Herrick; and Flora,
with a murmur of relief, since this was the one person she did want to
see, drew her inside.
"Why, my child, you haven't slept, at least not properly." Mrs. Herrick
herself looked anxious and weary. "I've come to tell you that Mrs.
Britton is here. She came an hour ago."
"Where is she?"
"In the breakfast-room with Mr. Cressy."
"Oh," Flora cried, "you know I didn't expect them. I didn't want them.
It wasn't for them I asked you to come."
"But can't you tell me what it is you're afraid of?" the other urged.
"Between us can't we prevent it? Is there nothing I can do to help you?"
"Ah, if you knew how much you have already helped me by just being
here."
Her companion laughed a little. "Can't I do something more active than
that?"
Flora pondered. "Where is Mr. Kerr?"
"In the garden, in the willow walk."
"Do you think you can manage that the others don't get at him?"
"I can; if he doesn't want to get at them," Mrs. Herrick replied.
"Against a man like that, my dear," she aimed it gravely at Flora, "one
can do nothing."
But Flora had no answer for the warning. "I must see Clara immediately,"
she said.
"But not without breakfast," Mrs. Herrick protested. "I will send you up
something. Remember that _she_ never abuses herself, so she's always
fresh--and so she's always equal to the occasion."
Mrs. Herrick went. Flora looked into the mirror. Almost for the first
time in ten days she thought of her appearance. If it was, as Mrs.
Herrick said, a factor of success, something must be done for it, for it
was dreadful. The best she could do revived a pale replica of the vivid
creature who had been wont to regard her from her glass. Yet her black
gown, thin and trailing far behind her, and her hair wound high, by very
force of their contrasted color gave her a real brilliance as they gave
her a seeming height. But she descended to the breakfast-room with
trepidation, and stood a full minute before the door gathering courage
to go in.