The Coast of Chance

E >> Esther Chamberlain >> The Coast of Chance

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It was awkward to have to announce this sudden change of plan after her
pretenses of the morning, but of late she had lived too constantly with
danger for Clara's lifted eyebrows to daunt her. The mere trivial act of
being dressed each day was fraught with danger. To get the sapphire off
her person before Marrika should appear; to put it back somehow after
Marrika had done; to shift it from one place to another as she wore
gowns cut high or low--and every moment in fear lest she be discovered
in the act! This was her daily manoeuver. To-night she clasped the
chain around her waist beneath her petticoats. But Marrika's sensitive
fingers, smoothing over, for the last time, the close-fitting front of
the gown, felt the sapphire, fumbled with it, and tried to adjust it
like a button.

"That is all right," Flora said quickly. "Nothing shows." Was it always
to make itself known, she thought uneasily, no matter how it was hid?

She was ready early, in the hope that Harry might come, as he had been
wont to do, a little before the appointed hour. But he turned up without
a moment to spare. Clara was down-stairs in her cloak when he appeared.
There was no chance for a word at dinner. But if she could not manage it
later in the wider field of the reception, why, then she deserved to
fail in everything.

But she found, upon their arrival that even this was going to be hard to
bring about. For she was immediately pounced upon--first, by Ella
Buller.

"Why, Flora," at the top of her voice, "where have you been all these
days!" Then in a hot whisper, "Did you speak to her? It hasn't done one
bit of good."

"I think you are mistaken," Flora murmured. "But be careful, and let me
know--" She had only time for that broken sentence before she was
surrounded; and other voices took up the chorus.

She was getting to be a perfect hermit.

She was forgetting all her old friends.

And a less kindly voice in the background added, "Yes, for new ones."

She realized with some alarm that though she had forgotten her public,
it had kept its eye on her. She answered, laughing, that she was keeping
Lent early, and allowed herself to be drifted about through the crowd
by more or less entertaining people, now and then getting glimpses of
Harry, tracking him by his burnished brown head, waiting her opportunity
to get him cornered. At last she saw him making for the smoking-room.
Connecting this with the drawing-room where she stood was a small red
lounging-room, walls, floor and furniture all covered with crimson
velvet. It had a third door which communicated indirectly with the
reception-rooms, by means of a little hall. She was near that hall, and
it would be the work of a moment to slip by way of it into the red room
and stop Harry on his way through. She had not played at such a game
since, as a child, she had jumped out on people from dark closets, and
Harry was as much astonished as she could remember they had been. He was
cutting the end of a cigar and he all but dropped it.

"What in the world are you doing here alone?" He spoke peevishly. "I
don't see how a crowd of men can leave such a bundle of fascination at
large!"

She made him a low courtesy and said she was preventing him from doing
so.

"It's very good of you, and you are very pretty, Flora," he admitted
with a grudging smile, "but I've got to see a man in there." His eyes
went to the door of the smoking-room whence was audible a discussion of
voices, and among them Judge Buller's basso. She was between Harry and
the door. Laughingly, he made as if to put her aside, when the door
through which she had entered opened again sharply; and Kerr came in.

"Forgive me. I followed you," he began. Then he saw Harry.
"I--ha--ha--I've been hunting for you, Cressy, all the evening!"

[Illustration: "FORGIVE ME, I FOLLOWED YOU."]

Harry accepted the statement with a cynical smile. It was too evidently
not for him Kerr had been hunting, and after the first stammer of
embarrassment, the Englishman made no attempt to conceal his real
intentions. His words merely served him as an excuse not to retreat.

"This is a good place to sit," he said, pushing forward a chair for
Flora. She sank into it, wondering weakly what daring or what danger had
brought him into a house where he was not known, to seek her. He sat
down in the compartment of a double settee near her. Harry still stood
with a dubious smile on his face. The look the two men exchanged
appeared to her a prolongment of their earnest interrogation in the
picture gallery; but this time it struck her that both carried it off
less well. Harry, especially, bore it badly.

"Did you say you were looking for me?" he remarked. "Well, Buller's been
looking for _you_. He wants to know about some Englishman that they're
trying to put up at the club."

"How's that? Oh, yes! I remember." Kerr shrugged. "Never heard of him at
home, and can't vouch for every fellow who comes along, just because he
is English."

"Quite so!" said Harry, with a straight look at Kerr that made Flora
uncomfortable.

"But Judge Buller has already vouched for that man," she said quickly,
"so he must be all right."

Kerr inclined his head to her with a smile.

"Buller is easily taken in," said Harry calmly. Under the direct, the
insolent meaning of his look Flora felt her face grow hot--her hands
cold. Harry could sit there taunting this man, hitting him over another
man's back, and Kerr could not resent it. He could only sit--his head a
little canted forward--looking at Harry with the traces of a dry smile
upon his lips.

She thought the next moment everything would be declared. She sprang up,
and, with an impulse for rescue, went to the door of the smoking-room.
"Judge Buller," she called.

There was a sudden cessation of talk; a movement of forms dimly seen in
the thick blue element; and then through wreaths of smoke, the judge's
face dawned upon her like a sun through fog.

"Well, well, Miss Flora," he wanted to know, "to what bad action of
mine do I owe this good fortune?"

She retreated, beckoning him to the middle of the room. "You owe it to
the bad action of another," she said gaily. "Your friends are being
slandered."

Harry made a movement as if he would have stopped her, and the
expression of his face, in its alarm, was comic. But she paid no heed.
She laid her hand on Harry's arm. "Mr. Kerr is just about to accuse us
of being impostors," she announced. She had robbed the situation of its
peril by gaily turning it exactly inside out.

The judge blinked, puzzled at this extraordinary statement. Harry was
disconcerted; but Kerr showed an astonishment that amazed her--a concern
that she could not understand. He stared at her. Then he laughed rather
shakily as he turned to her with a mock gallant bow.

"All women impose upon us, madam. And as for Mr. Cressy"--he fixed Harry
with a look--"I could not accuse him of being an impostor since we have
met in the sacred limits of of St. James'."

The two glances that crossed before Flora's watchful eyes were keen as
thrust and parry of rapiers. Harry bowed stiffly.

"I believe, for a fact, we did _not_ meet, but I think I saw you there
once--at some Embassy ball."

The words rang, to Flora's ears, as if they had been shouted from the
housetops. In the speaking pause that followed there was audible an
unknown hortatory voice from the smoking-room.

"I tell you it's a damn-fool way to manage it! What's the good of twenty
thousand dollars' reward?" Flora clutched nervously at the back of her
chair. She seemed to see the danger of discovery piling up above Kerr
like a mountain.

The judge chuckled. "You see what you saved me from. They've been at it
hammer and tongs all the evening. Every man in town has his idea on
that subject."

"For instance, what is that one?" Kerr's casual voice was in contrast to
his guarded eyes.

The judge looked pleased. "That one? Why, that's my own--was, at least,
half an hour ago. You see, about that twenty-thousand-dollar
proposition--" They moved nearer him. They stood, the four, around the
red velvet-covered table, like people waiting to be served. "The trouble
is right here," said the judge, emphasizing with blunt forefinger. "The
crook has a pal. That's probable, isn't it?"

Harry nodded. Flora felt Kerr's eyes upon her, but she could not look at
him.

"And we see the thing is at a deadlock, don't we? Well, now," the judge
went on triumphantly, "we know if any one person had the whole ring it
would be turned in by this time. That is the weak spot in the reward
policy. They didn't reckon on the thing's being split."

"Split? No, really, do you think that possible?" Kerr inquired, and
Flora caught a glimmer of irony in his voice.

"Well, can you see one of those chaps trusting the other with more than
half of it?" The judge was scornful. "And a fellow needs a whole ring if
he is after a reward." He rolled his head waggishly. "Oh, I could have
been a crook myself!" he chuckled, but his was the only smiling face in
the party.

For Kerr's was pale, schooled to a rigid self-control.

And Harry's was crimson and swollen, as if with a sudden rush of blood.
His twitching hands, his sullen eyes, responded to Judge Buller's last
word as if it had been an accusation.

"It makes me damned sick, the way you fellows talk--as if it was the
easiest thing in the world to--" He broke off. It was such a tone,
loose, harsh and uncontrolled, as made Flora shrink.

As if he sensed that movement in her, he turned upon her furiously.

"Well, are we going to stand here all night?" He took her by the arm.

She felt as if he had struck her. Buller was staring at him, but Kerr
had opened the door through which she had entered, and now, turning his
back upon Harry, silently motioned her out.

She had a moment's fear that Harry's grasp, even then, wouldn't let go.
Indeed, for a moment he stood clutching her, as if, now that his rage
had spent itself, she was the one thing he could hold to. Then she felt
his fingers loosen. He stood there alone, looking, with his great bulk,
and his great strength, and his abashed bewilderment, rather pathetic.

But that aspect reached her dimly, for the fear of him was uppermost.
Her arm still burned where he had grasped it. She moved away from him
toward the door Kerr had opened for her. She passed from the light of
the crimson room into the dark of the passage. Some one followed her and
closed the door. Some one caught step with her. It was Kerr. He bent
his dark head to speak low.

"I don't know why you did it, you quixotic child, but you must not
expose yourself in this way, for any reason whatsoever."

The light of the crowded rooms burst upon them again.

"Oh," she turned to him beseechingly, "can't you get me away?"

"Surely." His manner was as if nothing had happened. His smile was
reassuring. "I'll call your carriage, and find Mrs. Britton."

When Flora came down from the dressing-room she found Clara already in
the carriage, and Kerr mounting guard in the hall. As he handed her in,
Clara leaned forward.

"Where is Mr. Cressy?" she inquired.

"He sent his apologies," Kerr explained. "He is not able to get away
just now."

Clara could not control a look of astonishment. As the carriage began to
move and Kerr's face disappeared from the square of the window, she
turned to Flora.

"Have you and Harry quarreled over that man?"

Flora's voice was low. "No. But Harry--Harry--" she stammered, hardly
knowing how to put it, then put it most truly: "Harry is not quite
himself to-night."

Flora lay back in the carriage. She was dimly aware of Clara's presence
beside her, but for the moment Clara had ceased to be a factor. The
shape that filled all the foreground of her thought was Harry. He loomed
alarming to her imagination--all the more so since, for the moment, he
had seemed to lose his grip. That was another thing she could not quite
understand. That burst of violent irritation following, as it had, Judge
Buller's words! If Kerr had been the speaker it would have been natural
enough, since all through this interview Harry's evident antagonism had
seemed strained to the snapping point.

But poor Judge Buller had been harmless enough. He had been merely
theorizing. But--wait! She made so sharp a movement that Clara looked
at her. The judge's theory might be close to facts that Harry was
cognizant of.

For herself she had had no way of finding out how the sapphire had got
adrift. But hadn't Harry? Hadn't he followed up that singular scene with
the blue-eyed Chinaman by other visits to the goldsmith's shop? Why,
yesterday, when he was supposed to be in Burlingame, Clara had seen him
in Chinatown. The idea burst upon her then. Harry was after the whole
ring. He counted the part she held already his, and for the rest he was
groping in Chinatown; he was trying to reach it through the
imperturbable little goldsmith. But he had not reached it yet--and she
could read his irritation at his failure in his violent outburst when
Judge Buller so innocently flung the difficulties in his face. She knew
as much now as she could bear. If Harry did not suspect Kerr, it would
be strange. But--Harry waiting to make sure of a reward before he
unmasked a thief! It was an ugly thought!

And would he wait for the rest now--now that the situation was so
galling to him? Might not he just decide to take the sapphire, and with
the evidence of that, risk his putting his hand on the "Idol" when he
grasped the thief?

The carriage was stopping. Clara was making ready to get out. She braced
herself to face Clara, in the light, with a casual exterior--but when
she had reached her own rooms she sank in a heap in the chair before her
writing-table, and laid her head upon the table between her arms.

In her wretchedness she found herself turning to Kerr. How stoically he
had endured it all, though it must have borne on him most heavily! How
kind he had been to her! He had not even spoken of himself, though he
must have known the shadows were closing over his head. Any moment he
might be enshrouded. If it came to a choice between having him taken and
giving him the blue jewel, she wondered which she would do.

In the gray hours of the morning she wrote him. She dared not put the
perils into words, but she implied them. She vaguely threatened; and
she implored him to go, avoiding them all, herself more than any; and,
quaking at the possibility that he might, after all, overcome _her_, she
declared that before he went she would not see him again. She closed
with the forbidding statement that whether he stayed or went, at the end
of three days she would make a sure disposal of the ring. She put all
this in reckless black and white and sent it by the hand of Shima. Then
she waited. She waited, in her little isolation, with the sapphire
always hung about her neck, waited with what anticipation of marvelous
results--avowals, ideal farewells, or possibly some incredible
transformation of the grim face of the business. And the answer was
silence.

XVI

THE HEART OF THE DILEMMA

There is, in the heart of each gale of events, a storm center of quiet.
It is the very deadlock of contending forces, in which the individual
has space for breath and apprehension. Into this lull Flora fell panting
from her last experience, more frightened by this false calm than by the
whirlwind that had landed her there. Now she had time to mark the echoes
of the storm about her, and to realize her position. Her absorption had
peopled the world for her with four people at most. Now she had time to
look at the larger aspect.

From the middle of her calm she saw many inexplicable appearances. She
saw them everywhere, from the small round of Clara's movement to the
larger wheel of the public aspect. Clara was taking tea with the
Bullers, and the papers had ceased to mention the Crew Idol.

It had not even been a nine days' wonder. It had not dwindled. It had
simply dropped from head-lines to nothing; and after the first murmur of
astonishment at this strange vanishing, after a little vain conjecture
as to the reason of it, the subject dropped out of the public mouth. The
silence was so sudden it was like a suppression. To Flora it shadowed
some forces working so secretly, so surely, that they had extinguished
the light of publicity. They must be going on with concentrated and
terrible activity in cycles, which perhaps had not yet touched her.

So, seeing Major Purdie among the crowd at some one's "afternoon" where
she was pouring tea, she looked up at his cheerful face and high bald
dome with a passionate curiosity. He knew why the press had been
extinguished, and what they were doing in the dark. She knew where the
sapphire was--and where the culprit was to be found. And to think that
they could tell each other, if they would, each a tale the other would
hardly dare believe. Amazing appearances! How far away, how foreign from
the facts they covered! But Major Purdie had the best of it. He at least
was doing his duty. He was standing stiffly on one side, while she
hesitated between, trying desperately to push Kerr out of sight before
she dared uncover the jewel. But he wouldn't move. In spite of all she
had done, he wouldn't.

Across the room that very afternoon she caught the twinkle of his
resisting smile. He had had her letter then for two days, and still he
had come here, though he'd been bidden to stay away; though he had been
warned to keep away from all places where she, or these people around
her, might find him; though he had been implored to go, finally, as far
away as the round surface of the world would let him.

By what he had heard and seen in the red room that night, he must know
her warning had not been ridiculous. And there was another threat less
apparent on the face of things, but evident enough to her. It was the
change in Clara after she had begun her attack on the Bullers, her
appearance of being busy with something, absorbed with, intent upon,
something, which, if she had not secured it yet, at least she had well
in reach. And that thing--suppose it had to do with the Crew Idol; and
suppose Clara should play into Harry's hands!

For Kerr's escape Flora had been holding the ring, fighting off events,
and yet all the while she had not wanted to lose the sight of him. Well,
now, when she had made up her mind finally to resign herself to the
dreariness of that, might he not at least have done his part of it and
decently disappeared? So much he might have done for her. Instead of
smiling at her across crowded tea-rooms, and obliquely glancing at her
down decorous dinner-tables, and with the same fatal facility he had
displayed in getting at her, now keeping away from her, out of all
possible reach.

He was playing her own trick on her, but her chances for getting at him
again were fewer than his had been with her. She could not besiege him
in his abode; and in the places where they met, large houses crowded
with people, the eye of the world was upon her. For how long had she
forgotten it--she who had been all her life so deferential toward it!
Even now she remembered it only because it interfered with what she
wanted to do.

For the eye of her small society was very keenly upon Kerr. She
realized, all at once, that he had become a personage; and then, by
smiles, by lifted eyebrows, by glances, she gathered that her name was
being linked with his. She was astonished. How could their luncheon
together at the Purdies', their words that night in the opera box, their
few minutes' talk in the shop, have crystallized into this gossip? It
vexed her--alarmed her, how it had got about when she had seen him so
seldom, had known him scarcely more than a week. It was simply in the
air. It was in her attitude and in his, but how far it had gone she did
not dream, until in the dense crowd of some one's at-home she caught the
words of a young girl. The voice was so sweet and so prettily modulated
that at its first notes Flora turned involuntarily to glimpse the
speaker, a slender creature in a delicate mist of muslin, with an
indeterminate chin and the cheek of a pale peach.

"Just think," Flora heard her saying, "he went to see her three times in
two days, but to-day, did you notice, he wouldn't look at her until she
went up and spoke to him. I don't see how a girl can! Harry Cressy--"

She moved away and the words were lost. Flora looked after her. For the
moment she felt only scorn for the creatures who had clapped that
interpretation upon her great responsibility. These people around her
seemed poor indeed, absorbed only in petty considerations, and seeing
everything down the narrow vista of the "correct." Her eyes followed the
young girl's course through the room, easy to trace by her shining blond
head, and the unusual deliciousness of her muslin gown. She stopped
beside two women, and with a certain sense of pleasure and embarrassment
Flora recognized one of them--Mrs. Herrick. She caught the lady's eye
and bowed. Mrs. Herrick smiled, with a gracious inclination in which her
graceful shoulders had a part.

It gave Flora the sense Mrs. Herrick's presence always brought her, of
protection, or security, and the possibility of friendship finer than
she had ever known. She started forward. But Mrs. Herrick, presenting
instantly her profile, drew the young girl's hand through her arm and
moved away.

Flora winced as if she had received a blow. The other people who had
heard the same gossip of her had been, on account of it, all the more
amused, and anxious to talk to her. But Mrs. Herrick, though she bowed
and smiled, did not want her too near her daughter; perhaps, herself,
would have preferred not to speak to her.

She felt herself judged--judged from the outside, it is true--but still
there was justice in it. She had been flying in the face of custom,
ignoring common good behavior, in short, sticking to her own convictions
in defiance of the world's. And she must pay the penalty--the loss of
the possibility of such a friend.

But it was hard, she thought, to pay the price without getting the thing
she had paid for. It was more like a gamble in which she had staked all
on a chance. And never had this chance appeared more improbable to her
than now. For if Kerr valued the ring more than he valued his safety,
what argument was left her? She thought--if only she had been a
different sort of woman--the sort with whom men fall in love--ah, then
she might have been able to make one further appeal to him--one that
surely would not have failed.

XVII

THE DEMIGOD

On the third day she opened her eyes to the sun with the thought: Where
is he? From the windows of her room she could see the two pale points
and the narrow way of water that led into the western ocean. Had he
sailed out yonder west into the east, into that oblivion which was his
only safety, for ever out of her sight? Or was he still at hand,
ignoring warning, defying fate? "What difference can that make to me
now?" she thought, "since whether he is here or yonder I've come to the
end."

She drew out the sapphire and held it in her hand. The cloud of events
had cast no film over its luster, but she looked at it now without
pleasure. For all its beauty it wasn't worth what they were doing for
it. Well, to-day they were both of them to see the last of it. To-day
she was going to take it to Mr. Purdie to deliver it into his hands, to
tell him how it had fallen into hers in the goldsmith's shop--all of the
story that was possible for her to tell. For the rest, how she came to
fix suspicion on the jewel, he might think her fanciful or morbid. It
didn't matter as long as the weary thing was out of her hands. It
couldn't matter!

She had made it out all clear in her mind that this was the right thing
to do. It hadn't occurred to her she had made it out only on the
hypothesis of Kerr's certainly going. It had not occurred to her that
she might have to make her great moral move in the dark; or, what was
worse, in the face of his most gallant resistance. In this discouraging
light she saw her intention dwindle to the vanishing point, but the
great move was just as good as it had been before--just as solid, just
as advisable. Being so very solid, wouldn't it wait until she had time
to show him that she really meant what she said, supposing she ever had
a chance to see him again? The possibility that at this moment he might
actually have gone had almost escaped her. She recalled it with a
disagreeable shock, but, after all, that was the best she could hope,
never to see him again! She ought to be grateful to be sure of that, and
yet if she were, oh, never could she deprive him of so much beauty and
light by her keeping of the sapphire as he would then have taken away
from her!

She would come down then, indeed, level with plainest, palest, hardest
things--people and facts. Her romance--she had seen it; she had had it
in her hands, and it had somehow eluded her. It had vanished,
evaporated. It had come to her in rather a terrific guise, presented to
her on that night at the club by the first debonair wave of the man's
hand; and now he might have gone out through that white way into the
east, taking back her romance as the fairy takes back his unappreciated
gift.

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