with a start. They were standing close together, and between them, on
the glare of the white table-cloth, lay a little heap of gold. As they
peered at her she saw that both were highly excited, but in Clara it
showed like a cold sparkle; in Harry it gloomed like a menace. His hand
hovered, clenched, above the money in a panic of irresolution; then, as
if with an involuntary relax of nerves, opened and let fall one last
piece of gold. Like a flash the whole disappeared in a sweep of Clara's
hand. It passed before Flora's eyes like a prestidigitator's trick, so
rapid as to seem unreal, and left her staring. Harry gave Clara a look,
half suspicious, half entreating; and then, to Flora's astonishment,
turned away without a word to either of them.
Clara stood still, even after the door had closed upon Harry, and oddly,
and rather horridly, she wore the same aspect she had worn the day when
she had looked intently and absorbedly upon the rifled contents of
Flora's room.
"Good morning," she said, and, pushing up her little misty veil, sat
down with her back to the deserted breakfast table, and waited meekly,
like one who has been summoned.
"I am very glad you've come," Flora said. Her wits were still all
a-flutter from the appearance of that little heap of gold. She came
forward and stood in Harry's place. She was face to face with the person
and the question, but before the great import of it, and before the
marble front of Clara's patience, she felt helpless. There was silence
in the room, perfect silence in the garden; but moving along the hedged
walk all at once she saw the flutter of Mrs. Herrick's gown, and then in
profile Kerr beside her. The sight of him gave her her proper
inspiration. She turned upon Clara.
"What are you going to do with the picture of Farrell Wand?"
For the first time she saw Clara startled. Her lips parted, and the
breath that came and went between them was audible. But she was herself
again before she spoke. "Do with it? Why I don't know." Her fingers
drummed the table.
"Whatever you do," Flora began, "please, oh, please don't do anything
immediately."
Clara's eyebrows rose like graceful swallows. "You seem to anticipate
pretty clearly what I _am_ going to do."
"I suppose you're going to do what any one would who had a clue, and
could bring a person to justice," Flora candidly responded. "But if ever
I have made anything easy for you, Clara, won't you this time make it
easy for me? I'm not asking you to give up the picture, I'm only asking
you to wait."
Clara nodded toward the window, through which Kerr could still be seen
with Mrs. Herrick. "On account of him?"
"On account of him."
For the first time Clara smiled. It crept out upon her face, as it were
involuntarily, but she sat there smiling in contemplation for quite ten
seconds. At last, "You want me to suppress my information? My dear
Flora, don't you think you want me to do more than is honest?"
"Honest!" Flora cried. The words sounded hideous to her on Clara's
tongue; and yet what right had she, she thought with shame, to judge of
Clara's honesty when she herself was leagued with a thief? "Clara," she
said humbly, before this upholder of the right, "I can't pretend I'm not
suppressing things. I've only asked you to see me before you do anything
more. Now, you've come. Will you tell me one thing--did you bring the
picture with you?"
Clara weighed it. "Well, if I did--"
This was the considering Clara, and Flora realized whatever she could
expect from her she couldn't expect mercy. It was another thing she must
appeal to.
"Clara," she urged, "wait three days, and you shall have the whole of
it. You have only the picture now. You shall have the jewel, too. Then
you can get the reward and still be--honest."
She let the word fall into the silence fearfully, as if she were afraid
Clara might detect its sneer. But this time Clara neither smiled nor
frowned.
"It isn't the reward I'm thinking about. That's really very little,
considering."
"Twenty thousand dollars!"
"Would that be much to you?"
"No," Flora admitted; "at least I mean I could pay it."
"Well, then," Clara triumphed, "why, the picture alone, if it's worth
anything, is worth more than that." With a bird-like lifting of the head
she gave a sidelong interrogative glance.
Flora, for a moment, steadily returned the look. It was coming over her
what Clara meant; a meaning so simple it was absurd she had not thought
of it before--so hateful that it was all she could do to face it. She
felt a tightness in her throat that was not tears. Shame and anger
contended in her. Oh, for the power to have refused that shameful
bargain--to have scorned it! She turned away. She closed her eyes. In
her mind she saw the figure of Kerr moving quietly about the winding
walks with Mrs. Herrick. She faced sharply about. "What is it worth to
you?"
Clara put her off with the last sweet meekness of her cleverness.
"Whatever it's worth to you--and him."
Flora was in command of herself now. "There are some things I can not
set a price on. If this is what you have come down for, we are simply
waiting for you to name it." She looked over Clara's head. She had stood
abashed when Clara had put on the majesty of right, but now it was Clara
herself who was abashed, not at the thing itself, but at the fact of
having to utter it. She sat grasping one of her gloves in her doubled
fist; and, leaning forward, with her eyes like jewels in her little pale
face and the white aura of her veil, waited as if she thought that by
some silent agency of understanding Flora would presently take up a pen
and write the desired figure in her check-book.
But Flora stood inexorable, straight and black, crowned with her helmet
of gleaming hair; and, with her hands behind her, looked over Clara's
head through the window into the garden. She would not help Clara gloss
over this ugly fact.
A curious grimace distorted Clara's features, as if with an effort she
gulped something bitter, and then into the silence her voice fell--a
gasp, a breath--"Fifty thousand."
All sums had become the same to Flora, even her year's income. As if she
were verily afraid Clara might take it back, she turned precipitately to
a writing-table. But Clara had risen, and though still pale, in a
measure she seemed to have recovered herself.
"Wait. I can't give it to you now. I will meet you here in two hours and
bring the picture. You can let me have it then."
"Oh, two hours!" Flora objected.
But Clara was firm. "No, I can't bring it sooner. It will make no
difference in your affair." She was panting in her excitement. "In two
hours you shall have the picture here. I promise you."
Flora wondered. Depth below depth! She could never seem to get to the
bottom of this business. There was only one thing she could count on,
and that was Clara's impeccable honor in living up to a bargain. Flora
sealed that bargain now. She held out her fluttering slip of paper,
still wet with ink.
"Very well, in two hours--but take this now. I would rather you did."
Clara reached the tips of her fingers, touched the paper--and then it
was no longer in Flora's hand, and Clara was walking from her across the
room.
XXIII
TOUCHE
Left alone, Flora glanced rapidly around her. Now for a sally, now for a
dash straight for Kerr. The shortest way was what she wanted. Opening
doors lately had led to too many surprises. She pushed aside the long
curtains and stepped out through the French window upon the veranda.
Rapidly her eyes swept the garden. Far down between the gray, slim
branches of willows at last she made out the flutter of a skirt. She
sighed relief to think Mrs. Herrick still at her post, and began to
hurry down the broad unshaded drive. Her steps sounded loud on the
gravel, and presently to her excited ears they sounded double. Then she
realized the truth. Some one else was walking behind her. She thought by
not looking over her shoulder she could avoid stopping; but in a moment
Harry's voice hailed her. It was still far enough behind for her to hope
she could ignore it. She swept on as if she had not heard. Once around
the turn of the drive, she would be in sight of succor. She could trust
to Mrs. Herrick to manage Harry. She made a little rush around the loop
and looked down the long vista of the willows.
A hundred yards distant she saw the two standing. Kerr presented his
back, and with his head a little canted forward seemed to listen,
absorbed in his companion. But that companion was a smaller figure than
Mrs. Herrick, and her veil made an aura of filmy white around her face.
The sight of her was enough to stop Flora short, and in that instant
Harry, making a cut across the flower-beds, caught up with her. He
stopped as abruptly as she, and gazed with a dismay that surpassed her
own. For an instant she thought he was about to make a dash down the
walk for them. Then he caught Flora's hand and pulled her back. There
was no help for it, she thought. Her other hand crept downward
stealthily and gathered up her swinging pouch of gold. Trembling, she
let him drag her back, but when they faced each other behind the plumes
and swords of a great pampas clump she was shocked at the emotion in his
face; and as if what he had just seen had given the last touch, his
voice had risen a key, and between every half-dozen words it broke for
breath.
"Look here, Flora," he began; "I know you've been trying to give me the
slip ever since night before last. I frightened you then. I didn't mean
to, but you had no business to keep the ring after what I told you. No,
I'm not going to touch you," as she shrank back against the pampas
swords, "but I want you to give it to me, yourself, right here and now."
She looked up into his face, burning fiery in the sun beating down on
his bare head. "No, no, Harry; I shan't give it to you. Last time I said
I would give it to you for a good reason, but now I wouldn't give it to
you for anything."
"You don't know what you're doing," he cried.
"I do; I know as well as you that this is a part of the Crew Idol. I've
known it all along, and when the time comes I'm going to give it myself
to Mr. Purdie, but not until that time."
Harry passed his hand over his face with an inarticulate sound. Then,
"You will ruin us!" he choked.
"I shall tell the truth, whatever comes," she exulted. To tell the truth
and keep on telling it--that, in her passion of relief at speaking out
at last, was all she wanted! But Harry fell back. He changed
countenance. He recovered himself.
"Look here, Flora; if you do I'm going to leave you. I'm going to leave
you to what you've chosen."
She met it steadily. "I'm glad you say so. I've been thinking for days
that it would be better so."
"Have you?" he said in a low voice, looking at her earnestly. "Of
course, I know the reason of that. I meant it to be different, but now
there's no help. I--"
With a motion too quick for her to escape he stooped and kissed her
lightly. To that moment she had pitied him, but his touch she loathed.
She thrust him away with both hands. He turned. Without speaking,
without looking at her again he walked away. She watched him with a
desperate feeling of being abandoned, of losing something powerful and
valuable. The faint, thin screech of a locomotive from a station far
down the line made him pause, and turn, and gaze under his hand in the
strong sun. So for a moment she saw him, a lowering, peering figure
moving away from her over the lawn between broad flower-beds. Then he
disappeared among the shrubbery.
This encounter, that had stopped her in full open field, had not been
the fatal thing she had feared. It had been a peril met that nerved her
to a higher courage. Now she could walk gallantly to the most uncertain
moment of her life. Between the glimmering willows down the long still
avenue she passed, her flowing draperies borne backwards as by
triumphant airs. The wind of her approach seemed to reach the two still
far in front of her.
They turned and watched her drawing nearer, and before she had quite
reached them Kerr stretched out his hand as if to help her over a last
rough place, and drew her toward him and held her beside him with his
fingers lightly clasped around her wrist. She saw that he looked pale,
worn, as he had not been last night, and, what struck her most
strangely, angry. The hand that held hers shook with the violent pulse
that was beating in it. He turned to Clara.
"Will you pardon us, Mrs. Britton?" Then after another patient moment,
"Miss Gilsey has something to say to me." Still he made no motion to
move away, and at last Clara seemed to understand what was expected of
her. She flushed, and in the middle of that color her eyes flashed
double steel. For the first time in Flora's memory she was at a loss.
She passed them without a word.
Kerr looked after the little brilliant figure, moving daintily away
through sun and shadow, with deep disgust in his face. But when he
turned to Flora disgust lifted to high severity. It was she who appeared
the guilty one, and he the accuser.
"Why didn't you come, last night?"
"I couldn't. _He_ was there, Harry, outside my door."
"In God's name! What did you tell him?"
"Nothing. We did not speak--but I couldn't get past him!" The suspicion
in his face was more than she could bear. "You must believe me--for, if
you don't, we're both lost!"
He had her by both wrists, now, and gently made her face him. "I have
believed in you to the extent of coming alone to a place I know nothing
of, because you wanted me. Now that I am here, what is it you have to
say to me?"
"Oh, nothing more than I have said before," she pleaded; "only that, ten
times more earnestly."
"You extraordinary child!" At first, he was pure amazement. "You've
brought me so far, you've come so far yourself--you've got us both here
in such danger, to tell me only this? How could you be so mad--so
cruel?"
She had locked her hands in front of her until the nails showed white
with the pressure. "It was more dangerous there than here. You don't
know what has happened since I saw you. And I thought if you and I could
only be alone together, without the fear of _them_ always between us, I
could show you, I could persuade you--" Before his look she broke down.
"Well--you see, they followed us--they're here."
"Grant it, they are." He seemed to laugh at them. "You have still your
chance. Give everything to me and I can save you still."
"'Save _me_?' Oh, nothing could happen to me so terrible as having you
break my heart like this! If I should give the sapphire to you I should
lose you--even the thought of you--for ever. Nothing could ever be right
with us again! Won't you--" she pleaded, "won't you go?" and lifting her
hands, taking his face between them, "Won't you, because I love you?"
He stood steady to this assault, and smiled down upon her. "Without you
and without it I will not budge. Come now, this is the end. I never
meant to do another thing."
She covered her face with her hands.
"Come, come." His voice was urging her, now very gentle. "It's more for
your sake than for the jewel now." And his arm around her shoulders was
gently forcing her to walk beside him not toward the drive, but away
into the tree-grown sheltered wing of the garden. By interlacing paths,
from the tremulous gray willows under the somber, clashing eucalyptus
spears, under dark wings of cypress they were moving. She was bracing in
every nerve against the unnerving of his presence.
It had been always so. Even across the distance of a room the mere sight
of him had had for her the power to summon those wild spirits of the
soul and body that turn reason to a vapor. And now so close, with his
arm around her, that same power she had felt when she saw him first, the
power that had made her come out and be herself then, the power that
had overwhelmed her in the little restaurant, was leagued against her
again to make her do this one more thing, which she wouldn't do. Never,
never! Despairing, she wondered that such an evil motive could have such
strength.
"Where have you got it now?" she heard him asking, and she pointed
downward toward where the pouch at her knee was swinging to and fro.
"Take it up, then," and like a hypnotized creature she gathered it into
her hand. But, once she had it, she held it clenched against him.
"You're going to give it to me," he prompted, "aren't you?--aren't you?"
and looking steadily in her face his hand shut softly on her wrist, and
held out her clenched hand in front of her. And still they walked,
slowly. Like a pendulum the long gold chain swung from her clenched
fingers. To the tree-top birds they seemed as quiet as two lovers
speaking of their wedding-day. She felt her tension give way in this
quiet--her hand relax.
"Dearest." The word brought up her eyes to his with a start of
tenderness. "Open it," he said, and her hand, involuntarily, sprung the
pouch wide. They stared together into it. The little hollow golden shell
was empty.
For a moment it held her incredulous. Then, faint and sick, all the
foundations of her faith reeling, she slowly raised her eyes to him in
accusation. She was not ready for the terrible sternness in his.
"Have you lied to me?" he asked in a low voice. "Have you given it to
Cressy?"
"No, no, no!" she cried in horror. "It was there! I put it there myself
this morning!" They looked at each other now equally sincere and aghast.
"But you have seen him; you've been near him?" he demanded.
She gasped out the whole truth. "This morning! He left me. He kissed
me."
"Then, my God, where is he?" He gave a wide glance around him. Then
raising his voice, "Stay where you are!" he commanded, and began to run
from her through the trees.
She stood with her hand to her breast, with the empty pouch spinning in
front of her, hearing him crashing in the shrubbery. Then, in sudden
panic at finding herself alone, she fled back down the willow avenue,
and burst out on the broad drive in full view of the house.
Kerr was not in sight, but there was a tremor of disturbance where all
had been still. Clara's face appeared at one of the upper windows and
looked down into the garden. Then Mrs. Herrick came down the stairs,
and, showing an anxious profile as she passed the door, hurried away
along the lower hall. There was a flutter in the servants' quarter, and
from a side door the coachman appeared hatless, in his shirt sleeves,
and ran toward the stable. All the people of the house seemed to be
running to and fro, but she didn't see Harry. This struck her with
unreasoning terror. She fled up the drive, and Clara's small face at the
window watched her.
As she came into the hall she heard Kerr's voice. He was at the
telephone speaking names she had never heard in sentences whose meaning
was too much for her stunned senses to take in; but none the less while
she listened the feeling crept over her that there was some strange
revolution taking place in him. It might be transformation; it might be
only a swift increase of his original power. Whatever it was, he seemed
to her superhuman. The house was full of him--full of his rapid
movement, his ringing orders. If he knew that the sapphire was gone,
what was the meaning of this bold command? Was he, knowing all lost,
plunging gallantly into the clutches of his enemies? Or was this only a
blind, a splendid piece of effrontery to cover his too long delayed
retreat? She sat like a jointless thing on the fauteuil in the large
hall, and all at once saw him in front of her.
She looked at his hat, his overcoat, his slim, glittering stick--all
symbols of departure.
"Wait here," he said, and turned away.
She watched his shadow dance across the flagging, and as it slipped over
the threshold she thought dully that now the sapphire was gone every one
was going from her.
XXIV
THE COMIC MASK
She listened to the sound of wheels, first rattling loud on the gravel,
slowly growing fainter. Then stillness was with her again, and
inanition. She looked around and up, and had no start at seeing Clara's
small face watching her over the gallery of the rotunda. It seemed to
her that appearance was natural to her existence now, like her shadow.
She looked away. When she raised her eyes again Clara was coming down
the stairs, and even at that distance Flora saw she carried something in
her hand--something flat and small and wrapped in a filmy bit of paper.
Out of the chaos of her feeling rose the solitary thought--the picture
which she had bought that morning, the picture of Farrell Wand. She
watched it drawing near her with wonder. She sat up trembling. She had a
great longing and a horror to tear away the filmy paper and see Kerr at
last brutally revealed. She could not have told afterward whether Clara
spoke to her. She was conscious of her pausing; conscious of the faint
rustle of her skirt passing; conscious, finally, that the small swathed
square was in her hand.
She tore the tissue paper through. She held a photograph, a mounted
kodak print. She made out the background to be sky and water and the
rail of a ship with silhouettes of heads and shoulders, a jungle of
black; and in the middle distance caught in full motion the single
figure of a man, back turned and head in profile. He was moving from her
out of the picture, and with the first look she knew it was not Kerr.
Her first thought was that there had been a trick played on her! But
no--across the bottom of the picture, in Judge Buller's full round hand,
was written, "Farrell Wand boarding the _Loch Ettive_." She held it high
to the light. Clara had been faithful to her bargain. It was the
picture that had deceived her. She studied it with passionate
earnestness. She did not know the bearded profile; but in the burly
shoulders, in the set and swing of the body in motion, more than all in
the lowering, peering aspect of the whole figure, she began to see a
familiar something. She held it away from her by both thin edges, and
that aspect swelled and swelled in her startled eyes, until suddenly the
figure in the picture seemed to be moving from her, not up a gang-plank,
but through a glare of sun over grass between broad beds of flowers.
She was faint. She was going to fall. She caught at the chair to save
herself, and still she was dropping down, down, into a gulf of spinning
darkness. "Oh, Harry!" she whispered, and let her head roll back against
the arm of the fauteuil.
With a dim sense of rising through immeasurable distances back to light
she opened her eyes. She saw Mrs. Herrick's face, and as this was
connected in her mind with protection she smiled.
"Do you feel better?" Mrs. Herrick asked her. Then she opened her eyes
wide and saw the walls and the high-arched ceiling of the hall directly
above her, knew herself lying on the floor, saw above her the figure of
Clara standing with a bottle of salts, and then remembered; and, with a
moan, buried her face in Mrs. Herrick's lap. "Oh, no, no, no; don't
bring me back; I don't want to come back!"
Their voices sounding high above her were speaking. Mrs. Herrick said:
"What is that?" Then Clara murmured. Then there was the light rustling
of paper. Flora moved her hand.
"Give it to me; I want it." She felt the stiff little square of
cardboard between her fingers, and closed them around it fast.
After a little she went up-stairs holding tight to the baluster with one
hand and to Mrs. Herrick with the other. After a little of sitting on
the edge of her bed she lay down, still holding to Mrs. Herrick. She
felt as though some cord within her had been drawn tight, too tight to
endure, and every moment she hoped it would snap and set her free.
"You don't think I'm mad, do you?" she asked. Her friend earnestly
disclaimed it. "Then things are," Flora said, "everything. Oh, oh!" The
memory overwhelmed her. "He took me there as if by chance! He gave the
sapphire to me for my engagement ring. Oh, dreadful! Oh, poor Harry!"
All that afternoon and all night she slept fitfully, starting up at
intervals, trembling at nameless horrors--the glittering goldsmith's
shop, the Chinaman, the great eye of the sapphire, and, worst of all,
Harry's face, always the same calm, ruddy, good-natured,
innocent-looking face that had led her to the goldsmith's shop, that had
smiled at her, falling under the spell of the sapphire, that had
covered, all those days, God knew what ravages of stress and strain,
until the man had finally broken. That face appeared and reappeared
through the flashing terrors of her dreams like the presiding genius of
them all. Finally, drifting into complete repose, she slept far into the
morning.