The Coast of Chance

E >> Esther Chamberlain >> The Coast of Chance

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Flora's answering smile was faint. "It seems as strange to me as it
seems absurd to you, but I think I have done something already."

"Are you sure, or has he only let you think so? We have all at some time
longed, or even thought it was our duty, to adjust something when it
would have been safer to have kept our hand off," Mrs. Herrick went on
gently.

"Oh, safer," Flora breathed. "Oh, yes; indeed, I know. But if something
had been put into your hands without your choice; if all the life of
some one that you cared about depended on you, would you think of being
_safe_?" Flora, leaning forward, chin in hand, with shining eyes, seemed
fairly to impart a reflection of her own passionate concentration to the
woman before her.

Mrs. Herrick, so calm in her reposeful attitude, calm as the old
portrait on the wall behind her, none the less began to show a curious
sparkle of excitement in her face. "If I were sure that person's life
_did_ depend on me," she measured out her words deliberately. "But that
so seldom happens, and it is so hard to tell."

"But if you were sure, sure, sure!" Flora rang it out certainly.

Mrs. Herrick in her turn leaned forward. "Ah, even then it would depend
on him. And do you think you can make a man do otherwise than his
nature?"

"You think I should fail?" Flora took it up fearlessly. "Well, if I do,
at least I shall have done my best. I shall have to have done my best or
I can never forgive myself."

"I see," Mrs. Herrick sighed. "But it sounds to me a risk too great for
any reward that could come of its success." She thought. "If you could
tell me more." Then, as Flora only looked at her wistfully and silently:
"Isn't there some one you can confide in? Not Mrs. Britton?"

"Clara? Oh, no; never!" Flora startled Mrs. Herrick with the passionate
repudiation.

"But could not Mr. Cressy--" and with that broken sentence several
things that Mrs. Herrick had been keeping back looked out of her face.

Flora answered with a stare of misery. "I know what you must be
thinking--what you can not help thinking," she said, "that the whole
thing is unheard-of--outrageous--especially for a girl so soon to--to
be--" She caught her breath with a sob, for the words she could not
speak. "But there is nothing in this disloyal to my engagement, even
though I can not speak of it to Harry Cressy; and nothing I hope to gain
for myself by what I am trying to do. If I succeed it will only mean I
shall never see him--the other one--again."

Mrs. Herrick rose, in her turn beseeching. "Oh, I can't help you go into
it! It is too dubious. My dear, I know so much better than you what the
end may mean."

"I know what the end may mean, and I can't keep out of it."

"But I can not go with you." There was a stern note in Mrs. Herrick's
voice.

Flora looked around the room, the sunny windows, the still shadows, the
tall, monotonous clock, as if this were the last glimpse of peace and
protection she would ever have. She rose and put out her hand.

"I'm afraid I didn't quite realize how much I was asking of you. You
have been very good even to listen to me. It's right, I suppose, that I
should go alone."

Mrs. Herrick looked at her in dismay. "But that is impossible!" Then, as
Flora turned away, she kept her hand. "Think, think," she urged, "how
you will be misunderstood."

"Oh, I shall have to bear that--from the people who don't know."

"Yes, and even from the one for whom you are spending yourself!"

Flora gave her head a quick shake. "He understands," she said.

"My dear, he is not worth it."

Flora turned on her with anger. "You don't know what he is worth to me!"

Mrs. Herrick looked steadily at this unanswerable argument. Her hold on
Flora's hand relaxed, but she did not quite release it. Her brows drew
together. "You are quite sure you must go?"

Flora nodded. She was speechless.

"Did Mrs. Britton know you were coming to me?"

"No. She doesn't even know that I am going out of town. She must not,"
Flora protested.

"Indeed she must. You must not place yourself in such a false position.
Write her and tell her you are going to San Mateo with me."

"Oh, if you would!" Tears sprang to Flora's eyes. "But will you, even if
I can't tell you anything?"

"I shall not ask you anything. Now write her immediately. You can do it
here while I am getting ready."

She had taken authoritative command of the details of their expedition,
and Flora willingly obeyed her. She was still trembling from the stress
of their interview, and she blinked back tears before she was able to
see what she was writing.

It had all been brought about more quickly and completely than she had
hoped, but it was in her mind all the while she indited her message to
Clara, that Kerr, for whom it had been accomplished, was not yet
informed of the existence of the scheme, or the part of guest he was to
play. Yet she was sure that if she asked he would be promptly there. She
wrote to him briefly:

At San Mateo, at the Herricks'. I want you there to-night. I have
made up my mind.

As she was sealing it she started at a step approaching in the hall. She
had wanted to conceal that betraying letter before Mrs. Herrick came
back. She glanced quickly behind her, and saw standing between the
half-open folding doors, the slim figure of a girl--slimmer, younger
even than the one who had passed her at the gate, but like her, with the
same large eyes, the same small indeterminate chin. Just at the chin the
likeness to Mrs. Herrick failed with the strength of her last
generation--but the eyes were perfect; and they gazed at Flora
wondering. With the sixth sense of youth they recognized the enactment
of something strange and thrilling.

Another instant and Mrs. Herrick's presence dawned behind her
daughter--and her voice--"Why, child, what are you doing there?"--and
her hands seemed apprehensive in their haste to hurry the child away, as
if, truly, in this drawing-room, for the first time, something was
dangerous.

XXI

THE HOUSE OF QUIET

The day which had dawned so still and gloomy was wakening to something
like wildness, threatening, brightening, gusty, when they stepped out of
the train upon the platform of the San Mateo station. Clouds were piling
gray and castle-like from the east up toward the zenith, and dark
fragments kept tearing off the edges and spinning away across the sky.
But between them the bright face of the sun flashed out with double
splendor, and the thinned atmosphere made the sky seem high and far, and
all form beneath it clarified and intense.

There upon the narrow platform Mrs. Herrick hesitated a moment, looking
at Flora. "What train do you want to meet?" she asked.

Flora stood perplexed. "I hardly know. You see I can't tell how soon my
letter would reach--would be received."

"Then we would better meet them all," the elder woman decided.

They drove away into the face of the wet, fresh wind and flying drops of
rain. Flora, leaning back in the carriage, looked out through the window
with quiet eyes. The spirited movement of the sky, the racing of its
shadows on the grass, the rolling foliage of the trees, seen tempestuous
against flying cloud, were alike to her consoling and inspiring. She had
never felt so free as now, driving through the fitful weather, nor so
safe as with this companion who was sitting silent by her side. She was
driving away from all her complications. She was retreating to a fresh
stronghold, where her conflict would be a duel hand to hand, and where
the outside forces, which had harassed her and threatened ignobly to
down her antagonist with a stab in the back, could be held at bay.

Already she was looking toward the house which she had never seen as
her own kindly castle; and the generous opening of its gate--old granite
crowned with rose of sharon--did not disappoint her. The house was
hidden in the swelling trees, but the drive winding beneath them gave
glimpses through of lawns, of roses wreathing scarletly the old gray
fountain basin, of magnolia and acacia, doubly delicate and white and
fragile beneath the thunderous sky.

The house, when finally it loomed upon them, with its irregular roofs
topped by curious square turrets, with its tremendous ground floor
rambling away in wings on every side, with its deep upper and lower
verandas, looked out upon by a multitude of long French windows, seemed
too large, too strangely imposing for a structure of wood. But whatever
of original ugliness had been there was hidden now under a splendid
tapestry of vines, and Flora, looking up at the rose and honeysuckle
that panoplied its front, felt her throat swell for sheer delight.

For a moment after they had left the carriage they stood together in the
porte-cochere, looking around them. Then half wistfully, half
humorously, Mrs. Herrick turned to Flora. "I do hope you won't want to
buy it!"

"Oh, I'm afraid I shall," Flora murmured, "that is, if--" She left her
sentence hanging, as one who would have said "if I come out of this
alive," and Mrs. Herrick, with a quick start of protection, laid her
hand on Flora's arm.

"If you must," she said lightly, "if you do buy it, then at least I
shall know it is in good hands."

Flora gave her a look of gratitude, not so much for the slight kindness
of her words as for the great kindness of her attitude in thus so
readily resuming the first assumption on which her presence there had
been invited. That was the house itself.

It was plain to Flora from the moment she set foot over the threshold
that the house was to be no mean ally of theirs, but Mrs. Herrick was
making it help them doubly in their hard interval of waiting. Alone
together with unspoken, unspeakable things between them--things that
for mere decency or honor could not be uttered--with nothing but these
to think of, nothing but each other to look at, they must yet, in sheer
desperation and suspense, have inevitably burst out with question or
confession, had not the great house been there to interpose its
personality. And the way Mrs. Herrick was making the most of that! The
way immediately, even before she had shown anything, she began to
revivify the spirit of the place, as the two women stood with their hats
not yet off in the room that was to be Flora's, talking and looking out
upon the lawn!

With her silences, with her expressive self as well as with her words,
Mrs. Herrick was reanimating it all the while they lunched and rested,
still in the upper-rooms overlooking the garden. And later, when they
made the tour of the house, she began unwinding from her memory
incidents of its early beginnings, pieces of its intimate, personal
history, as one would make a friend familiar to another friend. And
these past histories and the rooms themselves were leading Flora away
out of her anxious self, were soothing her prying apprehensions, were
giving her a detachment in the present, till what she so anticipated lay
quiescent at the back of her brain.

But it was there. And now and then, when in a gust of wind the lights
and shadows danced on the dim, polished floors, it stirred; and at the
sound of wheels on the drive below it leaped, and all her fears again
were in her face. At such moments the two women did look deeply at each
other, and the suspense, the premonition, hovered in Mrs. Herrick's
eyes. It was as unconscious, as involuntary, as Flora's start at the
swinging of a door; but no question crossed her lips. She let the matter
as severely alone as if it had been a jewel not her own. Yet, it came to
Flora all at once that here, for the first time, she was with one to
whom she could have revealed the sapphire on her neck and yet remain
unchallenged.

"Ah, you're too lovely!" she burst out at last. "It is more than I
deserve that you should take it all like this, as if there really
wasn't anything." The elder lady's eyes wavered a little at the plain
words.

"I'm too deeply doubtful of it to take it any other way," she said.

"That is why I feel most guilty," Flora explained. "For dragging you
into it and then--bringing it into your house." She glanced around at
the high, quiet, damasked room. "Such a thing to happen here!"

"Ah, my dear,"--Mrs. Herrick's laugh was uncertain--"the things that
have happened here--the things that have happened and been endured and
been forgotten! and see," she said, laying her hand on one of the walls,
"the peace of it now!"

Flora wondered. She seemed to feel such distances of life extending yet
beyond her sight as dwindled her, tiny and innocent.

"It isn't what happens, but the way we take it that makes the
afterward," Mrs. Herrick added.

The thought of an afterward had stood very dim in Flora's mind, and
even now that Mrs. Herrick's words confronted her with it she couldn't
fancy what it would be like. She couldn't imagine her existence going on
at all on the other side of failure.

"But suppose," she tremulously urged, "suppose there seemed only one way
to take what had happened to you, and that way, if it failed, would
leave you no afterward at all, no peace, no courage, nothing."

Mrs. Herrick's eyes fixed her with their deep pity and their deeper
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 phaeton 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-cochere
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-cochere 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.

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