The Coast of Chance

E >> Esther Chamberlain >> The Coast of Chance

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It was the appearance of the aproned maid that broke their unity. The
last course was on the table, the last taste of its pungent fruit
essence on their tongues--and what was the girl's errand now? The eye of
her mistress was inquiring.

"Some one has come, Mrs. Herrick." The woman's proper formula seemed to
fail her. She looked as if she had been frightened.

"Some one?" Mrs. Herrick showed asperity. "What name?"

"He is coming in." As she spoke the girl shrank a little to one side.

With his long coat open, hanging from the armpits, with ruffled hair,
and lips apart, and from breathlessness a little smiling, Harry appeared
in the doorway. Kerr leaned forward. Mrs. Herrick did not move. She was
facing the last arrival and she was smiling more flexibly, more
naturally, than Harry; but it was Flora who found the first word.

"You! I--I thought it was Clara." She was struggling for nonchalance,
for poise, at this worst blow, so unexpected.

"Clara won't be down," Harry said, advancing. "How d'ye do, Mrs.
Herrick? How d'ye do, Kerr?"

"How d'ye do?" said the Englishman, without rising.

Flora gripped the arms of her chair to keep from springing up in sheer
nervous terror. A possible purpose in Harry's coming, that even Mrs.
Herrick's presence would not defer, shot through her mind. Was he alone?
Or were there others--men here for a fearful purpose--waiting beyond in
the hall? But Harry had turned his back upon the door behind him with a
finality that declared whatever danger had come into the house was
complete in his presence.

"I've dined, thanks," he said, but, stripping off his greatcoat,
accepted a chair and the glass of cordial Mrs. Herrick offered him. The
ruddy, hard quality of his face, were it divested of its present smile,
Flora thought, might well have frightened the maid; but, for all that,
it was not so implacable as Kerr's face confronting it. The look with
which he met the intrusion had a quality more bitter than the challenge
of an antagonist, more jealous than a mere lover's; and that bitterness,
that jealousy which was between them came out stingingly through their
small pleasantness. It could not be, Flora thought in terror, that Mrs.
Herrick intended to leave these two enemies to each other! Mrs. Herrick
had risen; and Flora, following, saw both men, also uprisen, hang
hesitatingly, as if unready to be deserted; yet with well-filled
glasses, and newly smoking tobacco, both were caught.

Then Kerr, with a quick dash of his hand, picked up his glass. "Let us
be Continental," he begged, and followed close at Flora's side. Without
moving his lips Kerr was speaking. "What does this mean?"

She sensed the anger in his smothered voice, but she dared not look at
him.

"I have no idea; but I will see you."

"When?"

Her answer leaped to her mind and her lips at the same moment.

"In the rotunda when the house is quiet."

Harry had followed leisurely in their wake. The flush of haste had
subsided in his face, and when the four regrouped themselves in the
high, darkly-paneled room, among the low lights, Flora remarked his
extraordinary composure. Bitter he might be; but all the nervousness,
suspicion, uneasiness, that he had shown of late had vanished. There
was a tremendous confidence about him, the confidence of the player who
holds cards that must win the game, and sits back waiting for his
moment.

But she was ready to laugh at him in his security. He had underestimated
his opponent. In spite of him she was to have her meeting with Kerr!
Harry had waited too long to prevent that, whatever he might do
afterward. In this inspired moment she felt herself touching conquering
heights which before she had only touched in imagination. She felt
enough power in herself to move even such a mountain of obstinacy as
Kerr. She stole a look at him--a look of glad intelligence. He
understood as if she had spoken. They were to meet, while all the house
slept fast, to meet for his great renunciation. Then, in the morning,
when Harry was ready with whatever move he was holding back, Kerr would
be gone. There would be no Kerr--but she must not think of that! She
glanced at him again in the thick of the talk, and caught his eye upon
her, puzzled, and, she thought, with a glimmer of doubt.

She smiled; and smiled again at the ease with which she reassured him,
merely by looking at him. He should see, in the end, how true she could
be!

He was talking tremendously, flinging off fireworks of words, but she
was curiously aware that Mrs. Herrick and Harry were looking more at her
than at Kerr. She felt herself the dominant spirit. She saw them
acknowledge it, swept along by the high tide of her mood that was rising
to meet her great decisive moment. Yet on the surface the strong pulse
of it appeared as ripples--words, smiles, gay gestures, laughter--rising
like the last bubble on a wave's crest. She was not consciously acting;
she was inspired by the power of what she concealed and must conceal.
And when she left them it was like a triumphant exit; almost it seemed
to her as if she might hear their applause following her.

In the room where, some eight hours before, she and Mrs. Herrick had
talked, Flora waited, fully dressed. It had been early when they had
separated. The strain of the four together had been terrific; and she
was still feeling it, though an hour had passed. She was feeling that,
now her situation was upon her, she was alone. Mrs. Herrick could only
be near her, not with her, and Kerr was still an unknown
quantity--except that he was fire.

And there was Harry, with his terrible certainty, and no apparent thing
to account for it. It could not be there were men in the house without
the servants remarking it; but in the garden? She peered out upon it.
Only tree shadows moved upon the lawn. Nothing glimmered in the walks or
drives. The solitude held her like an enchantment. She listened for the
small sounds in the house to cease, for the lights in the lower story to
go out, proclaiming all the servants were in bed. Even after the
stillness she waited--waited to be sure it was the long stillness.

Finally she crept to the door and opened it boldly wide.

She stood where she was upon the threshold trembling in a cruel fright.
A gas-jet burning far up at the end of the hall, threw a dim light down
the pale, pinkish, naked vista, void of furniture, window or curtain;
and, leaning against the blank wall almost opposite her door, and
directly facing her, was Harry.

Without speaking they looked at each other. He was fully dressed, but
lacking his shoes, as she noted in the acuteness of her startled senses.
The furtive suggestion of those shoeless feet struck her with
horror--formless, unreasoning. It was like an evil dream to find him
there, stolen to her door in the night, waiting outside it without a
sound, looking her steadily, hardily in the eye without a word.

She tried to speak, but, with terror sobbing in her throat, the words
failed. She made a step forward with a crazy impulse to rush past him.

He straightened, with a quick movement toward her. She recoiled before
him, precipitately retreated, closed the door, shot the bolt, and
leaned, for faintness, against the wall. She expected each moment to
hear him tap. She neither heard a knock nor the sound of soft, departing
feet. He was still there! He was on guard! He had had good reason for
his terrible certainty! He had foreseen what her plan might be, and she
knew he would no more let her get past him down the hall than the
turnkey will let the wretched prisoner escape.

The last flicker of her courage died at that thought. All her fine
exultation was beaten out by the fact of the brute force outside her
door. She could not get to Kerr now. Cowering behind her door she could
only fancy him waiting for her in the rotunda while the moments
lengthened into hours, each moment distrusting her more.

XXII

CLARA'S MARKET

All night she sat awake huddled under her greatcoat in the chilly
darkness. She could not lie down, she could not close her eyes. At long
intervals she heard the tread of unshod feet along the hall, and then
she held her breath lest at her slightest stir they approach her door.
Why, since he wanted the sapphire, hadn't he tried to get it from her
when he had had her unawares, upon her threshold with the house asleep?
It began to seem to her as if he were waiting, as if he were forced to
wait, for some appointed moment. She knew if it were his moment it would
be hers, too, as long as she had the sapphire upon her. She recalled
fearfully the moment when she had crouched against the window with her
hand protecting the jewel, and Harry's hand grasping her wrist. He
would know well enough where to find it now. Oh, the restless
unconcealable thing! Where could she hide it?

She took the pear-shaped pouch that swung always before her on her long
gold chain. She had repudiated that hiding-place before, but now the
more obvious the better--now that both men supposed she carried the
jewel far hidden out of sight. Without moving from the bed where she was
crouched, cramped and cold, she made the exchange, leaving the chain
still around her neck, dropping the jewel into the pouch, where it would
swing free, so carelessly dangling as to be beyond suspicion, but never
beyond the reach of her hand.

It was a pale, splendid dawning full of clouds when she feel asleep.

Broad sunlight filled her room when she was awakened by a knocking at
her door. She sprang from the bed and went to it. She was not to be come
in upon by any unwelcome visitor. But it was Mrs. Herrick; and Flora,
with a murmur of relief, since this was the one person she did want to
see, drew her inside.

"Why, my child, you haven't slept, at least not properly." Mrs. Herrick
herself looked anxious and weary. "I've come to tell you that Mrs.
Britton is here. She came an hour ago."

"Where is she?"

"In the breakfast-room with Mr. Cressy."

"Oh," Flora cried, "you know I didn't expect them. I didn't want them.
It wasn't for them I asked you to come."

"But can't you tell me what it is you're afraid of?" the other urged.
"Between us can't we prevent it? Is there nothing I can do to help you?"

"Ah, if you knew how much you have already helped me by just being
here."

Her companion laughed a little. "Can't I do something more active than
that?"

Flora pondered. "Where is Mr. Kerr?"

"In the garden, in the willow walk."

"Do you think you can manage that the others don't get at him?"

"I can; if he doesn't want to get at them," Mrs. Herrick replied.
"Against a man like that, my dear," she aimed it gravely at Flora, "one
can do nothing."

But Flora had no answer for the warning. "I must see Clara immediately,"
she said.

"But not without breakfast," Mrs. Herrick protested. "I will send you up
something. Remember that _she_ never abuses herself, so she's always
fresh--and so she's always equal to the occasion."

Mrs. Herrick went. Flora looked into the mirror. Almost for the first
time in ten days she thought of her appearance. If it was, as Mrs.
Herrick said, a factor of success, something must be done for it, for it
was dreadful. The best she could do revived a pale replica of the vivid
creature who had been wont to regard her from her glass. Yet her black
gown, thin and trailing far behind her, and her hair wound high, by very
force of their contrasted color gave her a real brilliance as they gave
her a seeming height. But she descended to the breakfast-room with
trepidation, and stood a full minute before the door gathering courage
to go in.

When she did open it, it was so suddenly that both occupants faced her
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!"

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