She wakened languid and weak. She lay looking about the room_The Coast of Chance

a person recovering after a heavy blow, wondering what had happened.

Then her hand, as with her first waking thought it had done for the last

week, went to the locket chain around her neck. Oh, yes, yes; she had

forgotten. The sapphire was gone. Gone by fraud, gone at a kiss for ever

with Harry--no, with Farrell Wand.

For Harry was not Harry; and Kerr was not Farrell Wand. He was indeed an

unknown quantity. Since she had found Harry she had lost both Kerr's

name and his place in her fairy-tale. She had seen his very demeanor

change before her eyes. Indeed, her hour had come without her knowing

it. The spell had been snapped which had made him wear the semblance of

evil. His sinister form was dissolving; but what was to be his identity

when finally he stood before her restored and perfect? If he were not

the thief whom she had struggled so to shield, why, then he was that

very strength of law and right which, for his sake, she had betrayed.

She sat up quickened with humiliation. The thing was not a tragedy, it

was a grotesque. Blushing more and more crimson, struggling with strange

mingled crying and laughter, she slipped out of the bed, and, still in

her nightgown, ran down the hall, and knocked on Mrs. Herrick's door,

until the dismayed lady opened it.

"I thought it was he," Flora gasped. "I thought it was he who had taken

the ring! Why didn't he tell me? Why did he keep it secret? I would have

done anything to have saved it for him, and I let Harry get it! Oh,

isn't it cruel? Isn't it pitiful? Isn't it ridiculous?"

Mrs. Herrick, who, for the last thirty-six hours, had so departed from

her curriculum of safety, and courageously met many strange appearances,

now was to hear stranger facts. For Flora had let go completely, and

Mrs. Herrick, without hinting at hysterics, let her laugh, let her cry,

let her tell piece by piece, as she could, the story of the two men,

from the night when Kerr had spoken so strangely at the club on the

virtues of thieves to the moment when, in the willow walk, they

discovered that the jewel was gone. Clara's part in the affair, and the

price she had exacted, even in this unnerved moment, Flora's instinct

withheld, to save Mrs. Herrick the last cruelest touch. But for the

rest--she let Mrs. Herrick have it all--and under the shadow of the grim

facts the two women clung together, as if to make sure of their own

identities.

"I don't even know who he is," Flora said faintly.

Mrs. Herrick gave her a quick glance. She had not a moment's hesitation

as to whom the "he" meant. "You will have to ask him when he comes."

"Do you think he will come back?"

Mrs. Herrick had the heart to smile.

"But think of what I have done. I have lost him the sapphire, and he

loves it--loves it as much as he does me."

Again the glance. "Did he tell you that?"

Flora nodded. The other seemed intently to consider. "He will come

back," she declared.

Upheld by her friend's assurance, Flora found the endurance necessary to

spend the day, an empty, stagnant day, in moving about a house and

garden where a few hours ago had passed such a storm of events. She

reviewed them, lived them over again, but without taking account of

them. Her mind, that had worked so sharply, was now in abeyance. She

lived in emotion, but with a tantalizing sense of something unexplained

which her understanding had not the power to reach out to and grasp. For

a day more she existed under the same roof with Clara, for Clara stayed

on.

At first it seemed to Flora extraordinary that she dared, but presently

it began to appear how much more extraordinary it would have been if

Clara had promptly fled. By waiting a discreet length of time, as if

nothing had happened, she put herself indubitably on the right side of

things. Indeed, when one thought, had she ever been legally off it?

That was the very horror. Clara had simply turned the situation over and

seen its market value, and how enormously she had made it pay! Flora

herself had paid; and she had seen the evidence that Harry had paid,

paid for his poor little hour of escape which a mere murderer might have

granted him in pity. Yet Clara could walk beside them, meet them at

dinner with the same smooth face, chat upon the terrace with the

unsuspecting Mrs. Herrick, and even face Flora in a security which had

the appearance of serenity, since she knew that nothing ever would be

told. At every turn in the day's business Flora kept meeting that placid

presence; and it was not until the end of the day that she met it primed

for departure. Flora was with Mrs. Herrick, and Clara, coming to seek

them out, had an air of casual farewell. The small, sweet smile she

presented behind her misty veil, the delicate white-gloved hand she

offered were symbols of enduring friendship, as if she were leaving them

only for a few hours; as if, when Flora returned to town, she would find

Clara waiting for them in the house. But Flora knew it was only Clara's

wonderful way. This uprising and departure were her last.

Now all her waiting was for Kerr's returning. She did not know how she

should face him, but she wanted him. A telegram came an hour before him,

came to Mrs. Herrick announcing him; and then himself, driven up on the

high seat of the cart, just as daylight was closing. She and Mrs.

Herrick had walked half-way out toward the rose garden; and, seeing them

there, he stopped the cart in the drive, leaped down and ran across the

grass. Both hurried to meet him. The three encountered like friends,

like intimates, with hand-clasps and hurried glances searching each

other's faces.

"Did you save it?" Flora asked.

He looked at Mrs. Herrick, hesitating.

"You can tell, she knows," Flora assured him.

"No, I haven't saved it--not so far," he said. He had taken off his hat

and the strong light showed on his face lines of fatigue and anxiety.

"He gave me the slip--no trace of him. No one saw him come into the

city; nothing turned up in the goldsmith's shop. His friend, the

blue-eyed Chinaman, has dropped out of sight. I haven't made it public,"

he glanced at Flora--"but our men think he's gone out by the water

route--Lord knows in what or where! He must have had this planned for

days." He didn't look at Flora now. He turned his communication

carefully on Mrs. Herrick. "There were seven vessels sailed, that day,

and all were searched; but there are ways of smuggling opium, and why

not men?"

They were walking toward the house. Kerr looked up at the window where,

a short time before, Clara's face had looked down upon the confusion in

the garden.

"Is that paid woman still here?"

"Oh, no; she's gone." Flora looked at him warningly. But Mrs. Herrick

had caught his tone. "Why shouldn't she be?" she demanded with delicate

asperity.

Kerr had dropped his monocle. "Because, in common decency, she

couldn't. She sold Cressy to me for a good round sum."

Flora and Mrs. Herrick exchanged a look of horror.

"I'd suspected him," said Kerr. "I knew where I'd seen him, but I

couldn't be sure of his identity till she showed me the picture."

"What picture?" cried Flora.

"The picture Buller mentioned at the club that night: Farrell Wand,

boarding the _Loch Ettive_. Don't you remember?" He spoke gently, as if

afraid that a hasty phrase in such connection might do her harm. Now,

when he saw how white she looked, he steadied her with his arm. "We

won't talk of this business any more," he said.

"But I must talk of it," Flora insisted tremblingly. "I don't even know

what you are."

For the first time he showed apologetic. He looked from one to the other

with a sort of helpless simplicity.

"Why, I'm Chatworth--I'm Crew; I'm the chap that owns the confounded

thing!"

To see him stand there, announced in that name, gave the tragic farce

its last touch. Flora had an instant of panic when flight seemed the

solution. It took all her courage to keep her there, facing him,

watching, as if from afar off, Mrs. Herrick's acknowledgment of the

informal introduction.

"I came here, quietly," he was saying, "so as to get at it without

making a row. Only Purdie, good man! knew--and he's been wondering all

along why I've held so heavy a hand on him. We'll have to lunch with

them again, eh?" He turned and looked at Flora. "And make all those

explanations necessitated by this lady's wonderful sense of honor!"

It was here, somewhere in the neighborhood of this sentence of doubtful

meaning, that Mrs. Herrick left them. In looking back, Flora could never

recall the exact moment of the departure. But when she raised her eyes

from the grass where they had been fixed for what seemed to her eternity

she found only Kerr--no, Chatworth--standing there, looking at her with

a grave face.

"Eh?" he said, "and what about that honor of yours? What shall we say

about it, now that the sapphire's gone and no longer in our way?"

She was breathing quick to keep from crying. "I told you that day at the

restaurant."

"Yes, yes; you told me why you kept the sapphire from me, but"--he hung

fire, then fetched it out with an effort--"why did you take it in the

first place?"

She looked at him in clear astonishment. "I didn't know what it was."

"You didn't!"

It seemed to Flora the whole situation was turning exactly inside out.

The light that was breaking upon her was more than she could bear. "Oh,"

she wailed, "you couldn't have thought I meant to take it!"

"Then if you didn't," he burst out, "why, when I told you what it was,

didn't you give it to me?"

The cruel comic muse, who makes our serious suffering ridiculous, had

drawn aside the last curtain. Flora felt the laughter rising in her

throat, the tears in her eyes.

"You guessed who I was," he insisted, advancing, "at least what I

represented."

She hid her face in her hands, and her voice dropped, tiny, into the

stillness.

"I guessed you were Farrell Wand."

XXV

THE LAST ENCHANTMENT

The tallest eucalyptus top was all of the garden that was touched with

sun when Flora came out of the house in the morning. She stood a space

looking at that little cone of brightness far above all the other trees,

swaying on the delicate sky. It was not higher lifted nor brighter

burnished than her spirit then. Shorn of her locket chain, her golden

pouch, free of her fears, she poised looking over the garden. Then with

a leap she went from the veranda to the grass and, regardless of dew,

skimmed the lawn for the fountain and the rose garden.

There she saw him--the one man--already awaiting her. He stood back to

back with a mossy nymph languishing on her pedestal, and Flora hoped by

running softly to steal up behind him, and make of the helpless marble

lady a buffer between their greetings. But either she underestimated the

nymph's bulk, or forgot how invariably direct was the man's attack; for

turning and seeing her, without any circumvention, with one sweep of his

long arm, he included the statue in his grasp of her. With a laugh of

triumph he drew her out of her concealment.

To her the splendor of skies and trees and morning light melted into

that wonderful moment. For the first time in weary days she had all to

give, nothing to fear or withhold. She was at peace. She was ready to

stop, to stand here in her life for always--here in the glowing garden

with him, and their youth. But he was impatient. He did not want to

loiter in the morning. He was hot to hurry on out of the present which

was so mysterious, so untried to her, as if these ecstasies had no

mystery to him but their complete fulfilment. He filled her with a

trembling premonition of the undreamed-of things that were waiting for

her in the long aisle of life.

"Come, speak," he urged, as they paced around the fountain. "When am I

to take you away?"

She hung back in fear of her very eagerness to go, to plunge head over

ears into life in a strange country with a stranger. "Next month," she

ventured.

"Next month! why not next week? why not to-morrow?" he declared with

confidence. "Who is to say no? I am the head of my house and you have no

one but me. To be sure, there is Mrs. Herrick--excellent woman. But she

has her own daughters to look out for, and," he added slyly, "much as

she thinks of you, I doubt if she thinks you a good example for them. As

for that other, as for the paid woman--"

"Oh, hush, hush!" Flora cried, hurt with a certain hardness in his

voice; "I don't want to see her. I shall never go near her! And

Harry--"

"I wasn't going to speak of him," said Chatworth quickly.

"I know," she answered, "but do you mind my speaking of him?" They had

sat down on the broad lip of the fountain basin. He was looking at her

intently. "It is strange," she said, "but in spite of his doing this

terrible thing I can't feel that he himself is terrible--like Clara."

"And yet," he answered in a grave voice, "I would rather you did."

She turned a troubled face. "Ah, have you forgotten what you said the

first night I met you? You said it doesn't matter what a man is, even if

he's a thief, as long as he's a good one."

At this he laughed a little grudgingly. "Oh, I don't go back on that,

but I was looking through the great impartial eye of the universe.

Whereas a man may be good of his kind, he's only good in his kind. Tip

out a cat among canaries and see what happens. My dear girl, we were the

veriest birds in his paws! And notice that it isn't moral law--it's

instinct. We recognize by scent before we see the shape. You never knew

him. You never could. And you never trusted him."

"But," she interrupted eagerly, "I would have done anything for you when

I thought you were a thief."

"Anything?" he caught her up with laughter. "Oh, yes, anything to haul

me over the dead line on to your side. That was the very point you made.

That was where you would have dropped me--if I had stuck by my kind, as

you thought it, and not come over to yours."

She saw herself fairly caught. She heard her mental process stated to

perfection.

"But if you hadn't felt all along I was your kind, if you hadn't had an

idea that I was a stray from the original fold, you would never have

wanted to go in for me," he explained it.

Flora had her doubts about the truth of this. For a time she had been

certain of his belonging to the lawless other fold, and at times she

would have gone with him in spite of it, but this last knowledge she

withheld. She withheld it because she could make out now, that, for all

his seeming wildness, he had no lawless instincts in himself.

Generations of great doing and great mixing among men had created him, a

creature perfectly natural and therefore eccentric; but the same

generations had handed down from father to son the law-abiding instinct

of the rulers of the people. He could be careless of the law. He was

strong in it. In his own mind he and the law were one. His perception of

the relations of life was so complete that he had no further use for the

written law; and Farrell Wand's was so limited that he had never found

the use for it. Lawless both; but--the two extremes. They might seem to

meet--but between those two extremes, between a Chatworth and a Farrell

Wand--why, there was all the world's experience between!

She raised her eyes and smiled at him in thinking of it, but the smile

faltered and she drew away. They were about to be disturbed. Beyond the

rose branches far down the drive she saw a figure moving toward them at

a slow, uncertain pace, looking to and fro. "See, there's some one

coming."

"Oh, the gardener!" he said as one would say "Oh, fiddlesticks!"

The gardener had been her first thought. But now she rose uneasily,

since she saw it was not he, asking herself, "Who else, at such an

hour?"

By this time Chatworth, still seated, had caught sight of it. "Hello,"

he said, "what sort of a thing is that?"

It was a short, shabby, nondescript little figure, shuffling rapidly

along the winding walk between the rose bushes. Now they saw the top of

his round black felt hat. Now only a twinkling pair of legs. Now, around

the last clump of bushes he appeared full length, and, suddenly dropping

his businesslike shuffle, approached them at a languid walk.

Flora grasped Chatworth's arm in nervous terror. "Tell him to go," she

whispered; "make him go away."

The blue-eyed Chinaman was planted before them stolidly, with the

curious blind look of his guarded eyes blinking in his withered face. He

wore for the first time the blouse of his people, and his hands were

folded in his sleeves.

"Who's this?" said Chatworth, appealing to Flora.

At this the Chinaman spoke. "Mr. Crew," he croaked.

The Englishman, looking from the Oriental to Flora, still demanded

explanations with expostulating gesture.

"It is the man who sold us the sapphire," she whispered; and "Oh, what

does he want of you?"

"Eh?" said Chatworth, interrogating the goldsmith with his monocle.

"What do you want?"

The little man finished his long, and, what had seemed his blind, stare;

then dived into his sleeve. He drew forth a crumpled thing which seemed

to be a pellet and this he proceeded to unfold. Flora crept cautiously

forward, loath to come near, but curious, and saw him spread out and

hold up a roughly torn triangle of newspaper. She gave a cry at sight

of it. Across the top in thick black type ran the figures $20,000.

Chatworth pointed a stern forefinger. "What is it?" he said, though by

his tone he knew.

The Chinaman also pointed at it, but cautious and apologetic. "Twenty

thousand dollar. You likee twenty thousand dollar?" He waited a moment.

Then, with a glimmer as of returning sight, presented the alternative.

"You likee god?--little joss?--come so?" And with his finger he traced

in the air a curve of such delicate accuracy that the Englishman with an

exclamation made a step toward him. But the Chinaman did not move.

"Twenty thousand dollar," he stated. It sounded an impersonal statement,

but nevertheless it was quite evident this time to whom it applied.

The Englishman measured off his words slowly as if to an incomplete

understanding, which Flora was aware was all too miraculously quick.

"This little god, this ring--do you know where it is? Can you take me to

it?"

The goldsmith nodded emphatically at each word, but when all was said

he only reiterated, "Twenty thousand dollar."

Chatworth gave Flora an almost shamefaced glance, and she saw with a

curious twinge of jealousy that he was intensely excited. "Might as well

have a pot-shot at it," he said; and sitting down on the edge of the

fountain and taking out his check-book, rested it on his knee and wrote.

Then he rose; he held up the filled-in slip before the Chinaman's eyes.

"Here," he said, "twenty thousand dollars." He held the paper well out

of the little man's reach. "Now," he challenged, "tell me where it is?"

Into the goldsmith's eyes came a lightning flash of intelligence, such

as Flora remembered to have seen there when Farrell Wand, leaning on the

dusty counter, had bidden him go and bring something pretty. He seemed

to quiver a moment in indecision. Then he whipped his hand out of his

sleeve and held it forth palm upward. This time it was Chatworth who

cried out. The thing that lay on the goldsmith's palm Flora had never

seen, though once it had been described to her--"a bit of an old gold

heathen god, curled around himself, with his head of two yellow

sapphires and a big blue stone on top."

There it blazed at her, the jewel she had carried in her bosom, that she

had hidden in her pouch of gold, and that had vanished from it at the

touch of a magic hand, now cunningly restored to its right place in the

forehead of the Crew Idol, crowning him with living light.

Speechless they looked together at the magic thing. They had thought it

far at sea; and as if at a wave of a genii's wand it was here before

them flashing in the quiet garden.

With an effort Chatworth seemed to keep himself from seizing on ring and

man together. He looked searchingly at the goldsmith and seemed on the

point of asking a question, but, instead, he slowly held out his hand.

He held it out cup-fashion. It shook so that Flora saw the Chinaman

steady it to drop in the ring. Then, folding his check miraculously

small, enveloping it in the ragged piece of newspaper, the little man

turned and shuffled from them down the gravel walk.

Chatworth stood staring after him with his Idol in his palm. Then,

turning slow eyes to Flora, "How did he come by this?" he asked, as

sternly as if he demanded it of the mystery itself.

"He had it, from the very first." The pieces of the puzzle were flashing

together in Flora's mind. "That first time Harry left the exhibit he

took it there."

"But the blue sapphire?" Chatworth insisted.

"Harry," Flora whispered, "Harry gave it up to him."

"Gave it up to him!" Chatworth echoed in scorn.

But she had had an inspiration of understanding. "He had to--for money

to get off with. He gave Clara all he had so that she would let him get

away. Poor thing!" she added in a lower breath, but Chatworth did not

hear her. He had taken the Idol in his thumb and finger, and, holding it

up in the broadening light, looked fixedly at it with the passionate

incredulity with which one might hold and look at a friend thought dead.

She watched him with her jealous pang increasing to a greater feeling--a

feeling of being separated from him by this jewel which he loved, and

which had grown to seem hateful to her, which had shown itself a breeder

of all the greedy passions. She came softly up to him, and, lifting her

hand, covered the Idol.

He turned toward her in wonder.

"Ah, you love it too much," she whispered.

"That's unworthy of you," he reproached her. "I have loved you more; and

that in spite of what I believed of you, and what this means to me. To

me, this ring is not a pretty thing seen yesterday. It is the symbol of

my family. It is the power and pride of us, which our women have worn on

their hands as they have worn our honor in their hearts. It is part of

the life of my people and now it has made itself part of our life, of

yours and mine. Shall I ever forget how starkly you held it for the sake

of my honor, even against myself? Should I ever have known you without

it?" He put the ring into her hand, and, smiling with his old dare, held

it over the fountain. "Now, if you want to, drop it in." He released her

hand and turned to leave her to her will.

For a moment she stood with power in her hands and her eyes on his

averted head. Then with a little rush she crossed the space between

them. "Here, take it! You love it! I want you to keep it! but I can't

forget the dreadful things it has made people do. It makes me afraid."

In spite of his smiling he seemed to her very grave. "You dear, silly

child! The whole storm and trouble of life comes from things being in

the wrong place. This has been in the wrong place and made mischief."

"Like me," she murmured.

"Like you," he agreed. "Now we shall be as we should be. Give me your

hand."

He drew off all the rings with which she had once tried to dim the

sparkle of the sapphire, and, dropping them into his pocket like so

much dross, slipped on the Idol that covered her third finger in a

splendid bar from knuckle to joint. Holding her by just the tip of that

finger, leaning back a little, he looked into her eyes, and she, looking

back, knew that it wedded them once for all.

THE END

She wakened languid and weak. She lay looking about the room, and, like