The Coast of Chance

E >> Esther Chamberlain >> The Coast of Chance

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"Oh, confound it, if I can't get at my oysters!" he complained, leaning
back into his group again with a sigh.

"You divide the honors with the mysterious unknown, eh?" Kerr inquired
across the table.

"Hang it, there's no division! I'd offer you a share!" Harry laughed,
and it occurred to Flora how much Kerr could have made of it.

"Purdie'd like to share something," Buller vouchsafed. "He's been pawing
the air ever since Crew cabled, and this has blown him up completely."

"Crew?" Flora wondered. Here was something more happening. Crew? She had
not heard that name before. It made a stir among them all; but if Kerr
looked sharp, Clara looked sharper. She looked at Harry and Harry was
vexed.

"Who's Crew?" said Ella; and the judge looked around on the silence.

"Why, bless my soul, isn't it--Oh, anyway, it will all be out to-morrow.
But I thought Harry'd told you. The Chatworth ring wasn't Bessie's."

It had the effect of startling them all apart, and then drawing them
closer together again around the table over the uncorked bottles.

"Why," Judge Buller went on, "this ring is a celebrated thing. It's the
'Crew Idol'!" He threw the name out as if that in itself explained
everything, but the three women, at least, were blank.

"Why celebrated?" Clara objected. "The stones were only sapphires."

Kerr smiled at this measure of fame.

"Quite so," he nodded to her, "but there are several sorts of value
about that ring. Its age, for one."

He had the attention of the table, as if they sensed behind his words
more even than Judge Buller could have told them.

"And then the superstition about it. It's rather a pretty tale," said
Kerr, looking at Flora. "You've seen the ring--a figure of Vishnu bent
backward into a circle, with a head of sapphire; two yellow stones for
the cheeks and the brain of him of the one blue. Just as a piece of
carving it is so fine that Cellini couldn't have equaled it, but no one
knows when or where it was made. The first that is known, the Shah Jehan
had it in his treasure-house. The story is he stole it, but, however
that may be, he gave it as a betrothal gift to his wife--possibly the
most beautiful"--his eyebrows signaled to Flora his uncertainty of that
fact--"without doubt the best-loved woman in the world. When she died it
was buried with her--not in the tomb itself, but in the Taj Mehal; and
for a century or so it lay there and gathered legends about it as thick
as dust. It was believed to be a talisman of good fortune--especially in
love.

"It had age; it had intrinsic value; it had beauty, and that one other
quality no man can resist--it was the only thing of its kind in the
world. At all events, it was too much for old Neville Crew, when he saw
it there some couple of hundred years ago. When he left India the ring
went with him. He never told how he got it, but lucky marriages came
with it, and the Crews would not take the House of Lords for it. Their
women have worn it ever since."

For a moment the wonder of the tale and the curious spark of excitement
it had produced in the teller kept the listeners silent. Clara was the
first to return to facts. "Then Bessie--" she prompted eagerly.

Kerr turned his glass in meditative fingers. "She wore it as young
Chatworth's wife." He held them all in an increasing tension, as if he
drew them toward him.

"The elder Chatworth, Lord Crew, is a bachelor, but, of course, the
ring reverted to him on Chatworth's death."

"And Lord only knows," the judge broke in, "how it got shipped with
Bessie's property. Crew was out of England at the time. He kept the
wires hot about it, and they managed to keep the fact of what the ring
was quiet--but it got out to-day when Purdie found it was gone. You see
he was showing it--and without special permission."

Flora had a bewildered feeling that this judicial summing up of facts
wasn't the sort of thing the evening had led up to. She couldn't see, if
this was what it amounted to, why Harry had changed his mind about
telling them at the dinner table. She could not even understand where
this belonged in the march of events in their story, but Clara took it
up, clipped it out, and fitted it into its place.

"Then there will be pressure--enormous pressure, brought to bear to
recover it?"

"Oh-o-oh!" Buller drew out the syllable with unctuous relish. "They'll
rip the town inside out. They'll do worse. There'll be a string of
detectives across the country--yes, and at intervals to China--so tight
you couldn't step from Kalamazoo to Oshkosh without running into one.
The thing is too big to be covered. The chap who took it will play a
lone game; and to do that--Lord knows there aren't many who could--to do
that he'd have to be a--a--"

"Farrell Wand?" Flora flung it out as a challenge among these prosaic
people; but the effect of it was even sharper than she had expected. She
fancied she saw them all start; that Harry squared himself, that Kerr
met it as if he swallowed it with almost a facial grimace; that Judge
Buller blinked it hard in the face--the most bothered of the lot. He
came at it first in words.

"Farrell Wand?" He felt it over, as if, like a doubtful coin, it might
have rung false. "Now, what did I know of Farrell Wand?"

"Farrell Wand?" Kerr took it up rapidly. "Why, he was the great Johnnie
who went through the Scotland Yard men at Perth in '94, and got off.
Don't you remember? He took a great assortment of things under the most
peculiar circumstances--took the Tilton emeralds off Lady Tilton's neck
at St. James'."

"Why, Harry, you--" Flora began. "You told us that," was what she had
meant to say, but Harry stopped her. Stopped her just with a look, with
a nod; but it was as if he had shaken his head at her. His tawny lashes,
half drooped over watching eyes, gave him more than ever the look of a
great, still cat; a domestic, good-humored cat, but in sight of
legitimate prey. Her eyes went back to Kerr with a sense of
bewilderment. His voice was still going on, expansively, brilliantly,
juggling his subject.

"He knew them all, the big-wigs up in Parliament, the big-wigs on
'Change, the little duchesses in Mayfair, and they all liked him, asked
him, dined him, and--great Scott, they paid! Paid in hereditary jewels,
or the shock to their decency when the thing came out--but, poor devil,
so did he!"

And through it all Buller gloomed unsmiling, with out-thrust underlip.

"No, no," he said slowly, "that's not my connection with Farrell Wand.
What happened afterward? What did they do with him?"

Kerr was silent, and Flora thought his face seemed suddenly at its
sharpest.

It was Clara who answered with another question. "Didn't he get to the
colonies? Didn't he die there?"

Judge Buller caught it with a snap of his fingers. "Got it!" he
triumphed, and the two men turned square upon him. "They ran him to
earth in Australia. That was the year I was there--'96. I got a snapshot
of him at the time."

It was now the whole table that turned on him, and Flora felt, with that
unanimous movement, something crucial, the something that she had been
waiting for; and yet she could in no way connect it with what had
happened, nor understand why Clara, why Harry, why Kerr above all should
be so alert. For more than all he looked expectant, poised, and ready
for whatever was coming next.

"What sort of a chap?" he mused and fixed the judge a moment with the
same stare that Flora remembered to have first confronted her.

"What sort? Sort of a criminal," the judge smiled. "They all look
alike."

"Still," Clara suggested, "such a man could hardly have been ordinary--"

"In the chain-gang--oh, yes," said Buller with conviction.

"Oh! Then the picture wasn't worth anything?"

"Why, no," Buller admitted slowly, "though, come to think of it, it
wasn't the chain-gang either. They were taking him aboard the ship. The
crowd was so thick I hardly saw him, and--only got one shot at him. But
the name was a queer one. It stuck in my mind."

"But then," Clara insisted, "what became of him?"

"Oh, gave them the slip," the judge chuckled. "He always did. Reported
to have changed ships in mid-ocean. Hal, is that another bottle?"

Harry stretched his hand for it, but it stayed suspended--and, for an
instant, it seemed as if the whole table waited expectant. Had Buller's
camera caught the clear face of Farrell Wand, or only a dim figure?
Flora wondered if that was the question Harry wanted to ask. He
wanted--and yet he hesitated, as if he did not quite dare touch it. He
laughed and filled the glasses. He had dropped his question, and there
was no one at the table who seemed ready to put another.

And yet there were questions there, in all the eyes; but some impassable
barrier seemed to have come between these eager people, and what, for
incalculable reasons, they so much wanted to know. It was not the genial
indifference with which Buller had dropped the subject for the
approaching bottle. It seemed rather their own timidity that withheld
them from touching this subject which at every turn produced upon some
one of the eager three some fresh startling effect the others could not
understand. They were restless; Clara notably, even under her calm.

Flora knew she was not giving up the quest of Farrell Wand, but only
setting it aside with her unfailing thrift, which saved everything. But
why, in this case? And Harry, who had been so merry with the mystery at
dinner--why had he suddenly tried to suppress her, to want to ignore the
whole business; why had he hesitated over his question, and finally let
it fall? And why, above all, was Kerr so brilliantly talking at Ella, in
the same way he had begun at Flora herself? Talking at Ella as if he
hardly saw her, but like some magician flinging out a brilliant train of
pyrotechnics to hypnotize the senses, before he proceeds with his trick.
And the way Ella was looking at him--her bewildered alacrity, the way
she was struggling with what was being so rapidly shot at her--appeared
to Flora the prototype of her own struggle to understand what reality
these appearances around her could possibly shadow. Never before had her
sense of standing on the outside edge of life been so strong. It seemed
as though there were some large, impalpable thing growing in the midst
of them, around the edges of which they were tiptoeing, daringly,
fearfully, each one for himself. But though it loomed so large that she
felt herself in the very shadow of it, rub her eyes as she would, she
couldn't see it.

Often enough in the crowds she moved among she had felt herself lonely
and not wondered at it. But now and here, sitting among her close,
intimate circle, her friends and her lover, it seemed like a horrible
obsession--yet it was true. As clear as if it had been shown her in a
revelation she saw herself absolutely alone.

III

ENCOUNTERS ON PARADE

Flora, before the mirror, gaily stabbing in her long hat-pins, confessed
to herself that last night had been queer, as queer as queer could be;
but this morning, luckily, was real again. Her fancy last night
had--yes, she was afraid it really had--run away with her. And she
turned and held the hand-mirror high, to be sure of the line of her
tilted hat, gave a touch to the turn of her wide, close belt, a flirt to
the frills of her bodice.

The wind was lightly ruffling and puffing out the muslin curtains of the
windows, and from the garden below came the long, silvery clash of
eucalyptus leaves. She leaned on the high window-ledge to look downward
over red roofs, over terraced green, over steep streets running
abruptly to the broken blue of the bay. She tried to fancy how Kerr
would look in this morning sun. He seemed to belong only beneath the
high artificial lights, in the thicker atmosphere of evening. Would he
return again, with renewed potency, with the same singular, almost
sinister charm, as a wizard who works his will only by moonlight? When
she should see him again, what, she wondered, would be his extraordinary
mood? On what new breathless flights might he not take her--or would he
see her at all? It was too fantastic. The sunlight thinned him to an
impalpable ghost.

It was Clara, standing at the foot of the stairs, who belonged to the
morning, so brisk, so fresh, so practical she appeared. She held a book
in her hand. The door, open for her immediate departure, showed, beyond
the descent of marble steps, the landau glistening black against white
pavements. It was unusual for this formal vehicle to put in an
appearance so early.

"I am going to drive over to the Purdies'," Clara explained. "I have an
errand there."

Flora smiled at the thought of how many persons would be having errands
to the Purdies' now. It was refreshing to catch Clara in this weakness.
She felt a throb of it herself when she recalled the breathless moment
at the supper table last evening. "Oh, that will be a heavenly drive,"
she said. "Please ask me to go with you. My errand can wait."

"Why, certainly. I should like to have you," said Clara. But if she had
returned a flat "no," Flora would not have had a dryer sense of
unwelcome. Still, she had gone too far to retreat. After all, this was
only Clara's manner, and her buoyant interest in the expedition was
stronger than her diffidence.

Mischievous reflections of the doctrine the Englishman had startled her
with the night before flickered in her mind, as they drove from the
door. Was this part of "the big red game," not being accommodating, nor
so very polite? The streets were still wet with early fog, and, turning
in at the Presidio gate, the cypresses dripped dankly on their heads,
and hung out cobwebs pearled with dew. She was sure, even under their
dripping, that the "damnable dust" was alive.

Down the broad slopes that were swept by the drive all was green to the
water's edge. The long line of barracks, the officers' quarters, the
great parade-ground, set in the flat land between hills and bay, looked
like a child's toy, pretty and little. They heard the note of a bugle,
thin and silver clear, and they could see the tiny figures mustering;
but in her preoccupation it did not occur to Flora that they were
arriving just in time for parade. But when the carriage had crossed the
viaduct, and swung them past the acacias, and around the last white
curve into the white dust of the parade-ground, Clara turned, as if with
a fresh idea.

"Wouldn't you like to stop and watch it?"

"Why, yes," Flora assented. The brilliance of light and color, the
precision of movement, the sound of the brasses under the open sky were
an intermezzo in harmony with her spirited mood.

The carriage stopped under the scanty shadow of trees that bordered the
walk to the officers' quarters. Clara, book in hand, alertly rose.

"I'll just run up to the Purdies' and leave this," she said.

"Then she really did want to be rid of me," Flora mused, as she watched
the brisk back moving away; "and how beautifully she has done it!" Her
eyes followed Clara's little figure retreating up the neat and narrow
board walk, to where it disappeared in overarching depths of eucalyptus
trees. Further on, beyond the trees, two figures, smaller than Clara's
in their greater distance, were coming down. Flora almost grinned as she
recognized the large linen umbrella that Mrs. Purdie invariably carried
when abroad in the reservation, and presently the trim and bounding
figure of Mrs. Purdie herself, under it. The Purdies were coming down to
parade--at least Mrs. Purdie was. But the tall figure beside her--that
was not the major. She took up her lorgnon. It was--no it could not
be--yet surely it _was_ Harry! Lazy Harry, up and out, and squiring
Mrs. Purdie to the review at half-past ten in the morning! "Are we all
mad?" Flora thought.

The three little figures, the one going up, the two coming down, touched
opposite fringes of the grove--disappeared within it. On which side
would they come out together? Flora wondered. They emerged on her side
with Harry a little in advance. He came swingingly down the walk,
straight toward her, and across the road to the carriage, his hat
lifted, his hand out.

"Well, Flora," he said, "this is luck!"

"What in the world has got you out so early?" she rallied him.

"Came out to see Purdie on business, and here you are all ready to drive
me back."

"That's your reward."

He brushed his handkerchief over his damp forehead. "Well, there's one
coming to me, for I haven't found Purdie."

Her eyes were dancing with mischief. "Harry, I believe you're out here
about the Crew Idol, too!"

He shook his head at her, smiling. "I wouldn't talk too much about that,
Flora. It flicks poor Purdie on the raw every time that--" His sentence
trailed off into something else, for Mrs. Purdie and Clara had come up.

The book had changed hands, together, evidently, with several
explanations, and Mrs. Purdie, with her foot on the carriage step, was
ready to make one of these over again.

"The major'll be so sorry. He's gone in town. It's so unusual for him to
get off at this hour, but he said he had to catch a man. As Mrs. Britton
and I were saying, he's likely to be very busy until this dreadful
affair is straightened out. If you can only wait a little longer, Mr.
Cressy," she went on, "I am expecting him every moment."

"Oh, it's of no importance," said Harry, but he looked at his watch with
a fold between his brows, and then at the car that was coming in.

"Well, at least, you'll have time to see the parade," said Mrs. Purdie.
"I always think it's a pretty sight, though most of the women get tired
of it."

Clara's face showed that she belonged to the latter class; but Flora,
too keenly attuned to sounds and sights not to be swayed by outward
circumstances, was content for the time to watch, in the cloud of dust,
the wheeling platoons and rhythmic columns.

Yet through all--even when she was not looking at him--she was aware of
Harry's restlessness, of his impatience; and as the last company swung
barrackward, and the cloud began to settle over the empty field, he
snapped his watch-case smartly, and remarked, "Still no major."

"Why, there he is now!" Mrs. Purdie screamed, pointing across the
parade-ground.

Flora looked. Half-way down on the adjoining side of the parallelogram,
back toward her, the redoubtable Kerr was standing. She recognized him
on the instant, as if he were the most familiar figure in her life. Yet
she was more surprised to see him here than she had been to see Harry.
She felt inclined to rub her eyes. It took a moment for her to realize
that his companion was indeed Major Purdie.

The major had recognized his wife's signaling umbrella. Now he turned
toward it, but Kerr, with a quick motion of hand toward hat, turned in
the opposite direction. In her mind Flora was with the major who ran
after him. The two men stood for a little, expostulating. Then both
walked toward the landau and the linen umbrella.

The carriage group waited, watching with flagging conversation, which
finally fell into silence. But the two approaching strolled easily and
talked. Even in cold daylight Kerr still gave Flora the impression that
the open was not big enough to hold him, but she saw a difference in his
mood, a graver eye, a colder mouth, and when he finally greeted them, a
manner that was brusk. It showed uncivil beside the major's urbanity.

The major was glad, very glad, to see them all. He was evidently also a
little flurried. He seemed to know that they had all met Kerr before.
Had it been at the moment of his attempted departure that Kerr had told
him, Flora wondered? And had he given them as his excuse for going away?
It hurt her; though why should she be hurt because a stranger had not
wanted to cross the parade-ground to shake hands with her? He was less
interested in her than he was in Harry, at whom he had looked keenly.

But Harry's nervousness had left him, now that Purdie was within his
reach. He returned the glance indifferently. He stood close to the
major--his hand on his shoulder. The major, with his bland blue eyes
twinkling from Clara to Flora, seemed the only man ready to devote
himself to the service of the ladies.

"And what's the news from the front?" said Clara gaily. Kerr gave her a
rapid glance; but the major blinked as if the allusion had got by him.

"I mean the mystery--the Chatworth ring," she explained. However
lightly and sweetly Clara said it, it was a little brazen to fling such
a question at poor Purdie, whose responsibility the ring had been.

He received it amicably enough, but conclusively. "No news whatever, my
dear Mrs. Britton."

She smiled. "We're all rather interested in the mystery. Flora has made
a dozen romances about it."

"Oh, yes, yes," said the major indulgently. "It will do for young ladies
to make romances about. It'll be a two days' wonder, and then you'll
suddenly find out it's something very tame indeed."

"Why, have they fixed the suspicion?" said Clara.

There was a restless movement from Kerr.

"No, no, nothing of that sort," said the major quickly.

Harry passed his hand through his arm. "May I see you for five minutes,
Major?"

The excellent major looked harassed.

"Suppose we all step up to the house," he suggested. "Why, you're not
going, man?" he objected, for Kerr had fallen back a step, and, with
lifted hat and balanced cane, was signaling his farewells.

"Do let us go up to the house," said Clara. "And Mrs. Purdie, won't you
drive up with me? Flora wants to walk."

Flora stood up. She had a confused impression that she had expressed no
such desire, and that there was room for three in the landau; but the
mental shove that Clara had administered gave her an impetus that
carried her out of the carriage before she realized what she was about.
Some one had offered a hand to help her, and when she was on the ground
she saw it was Kerr, who had come back and was standing beside her. He
was smiling quizzically.

"I feel rather like walking, myself," he said. "Do you want a
companion?"

She turned to him with gratitude. "I should be glad of one," she said
quickly. She was touched. She had not thought he could be so gentle.

Harry was already moving off up the board walk with the major. The
carriage was turning. Kerr looked at the backs of the two women being
driven away, and then at Flora. "Very good," he said, raising her
parasol; "you are the deposed heir, and I am your faithful servant."

"But indeed I do want to walk," she protested, a little shy at the way
he read her case.

"But you didn't think of it until she gave you the suggestion, eh?" he
quizzed.

"She probably had something to say to Mrs. Purdie that--"

"My dear child," he caught her up earnestly, "don't think I'm
criticizing your friend's motive. I am only saying I saw something done
that was not pretty, though really, if you will forgive me--it was very
funny."

Flora smiled ruefully. "It must have been--absurd. I am afraid I often
am. But what else could I have done?"

He seemed to ponder a moment. "I fancy _you_ couldn't have done anything
different. That's why I came back for you," he volunteered gaily.

The casual words seemed in her ears fraught with deeper meaning. Her
cheeks were hot behind her thin veil. They were strolling slowly up the
board walk, and for a moment she could not look at him. She could only
listen to the flutter of the fringes of the parasol carried above her
head. She felt herself small and stupid. She could not understand what
he could see in her to come back to. Then she gave a side glance at him.
She saw an unsmiling profile. The lines in his face were indeed
extraordinary, but none was hard. She liked that wonderful mobility that
had survived the batterings of experience.

As if he were conscious of her eyes, he looked down and smiled; but
vaguely. He did not speak; and she was aware that it was at her
appearance he had smiled, as if that only reached him through his
preoccupation and pleased him. And since he seemed content with this
vague looking, she was content to move beside him silent, a mere image
of youth and--since he liked it--of prettiness, with a fleeting color
and a gust of little curls blowing out under a fluttering veil.

But what was he thinking about so seriously between those smiling
glances? Not her problem, she was sure.

Yet he had stayed for her when he had not meant to stay. He had been
anxious to get away since he had first sighted them. Surely he must like
her more than he disliked some other member of her party. Or had he
simply reached forth out of his kindness to rescue her, as he might have
rescued a blind kitten that he pitied? "No," he had said, "_you_ could
not have done anything different."

They had almost reached the major's gate, and it was now or never to
find out what he thought of her. She looked up at him suddenly, with
inquiring eyes.

"Do you think I am weak?" she demanded.

The lines of his face broke up into laughter. "No," he said, "I think
you are misplaced."

She knitted her brows in perplexity, but his hand was on the white
picket gate, and she had to walk through it ahead of him as he set it
open for her.

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