The Coast of Chance

E >> Esther Chamberlain >> The Coast of Chance

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Row upon row of street lamps flared in the traveling gusts. The midnight
noises of the city were at their loudest; and half their volume seemed
to be a scattered chorus of hoarse voices yelling all together like a
pack of wolves. Thin, ragged shapes shot in and out among the crowd,
ducked under horses' feet and cut wild zigzags across the street like
flying goblins. The sense of their cry was indistinguishable, but it was
the same--the same inarticulate shape of sound on every tongue. First
one throat, then another took up the raucous singsong shout, then all
together again, as if the pack were in full cry on the scent of
something. What was this fresh quarry of the press, Flora wondered, that
made it give tongue so hideously? The hunting note of it made her want
to cover her ears, and yet she strained to catch its meaning.

She had stooped her head to the carriage door, when Harry stopped and
took one of the damp papers from a crier in the pack. She saw the
head-line. It covered half the sheet--the great figure that was offered
for the return of the Chatworth ring.

IX

ILLUMINATION

Just when the two ideas had coalesced in her mind Flora couldn't be
sure. It had been some time in the first dark hour that she had spent
wide awake in her bed. There had been two ideas distinctly. Two
impressions of the evening remained with her; and the last one, the
great figures that had stared at her from the paper, the fact that had
been Harry's secret, made common now in round numbers, had for the
moment swallowed up the first.

For all the way home that sum was kept before her by Clara's talk. She
could remember nothing of that talk except that it hadn't been able for
a moment to leave the Chatworth ring alone. It had been aimed at Harry,
but it had fallen to Flora herself to answer Clara's quick
speculations, for Harry had been obstinately silent, though not
indifferent, as if in his own mind he was as unable to leave it alone as
Clara. One with his silence, one with her talk, they had written the
figures of the reward so blazingly in Flora's mind that for the moment
she could see nothing else. Yet now she was alone her first adventure
recurred to her. As soon as she was quiet in the dark there came back
with reminiscent terror the look that Kerr had given her in the box. She
wasn't really afraid of Kerr himself. She was afraid of the meaning of
his look which she didn't understand. It only established in her mind a
great significance for the sapphire, if it could produce such an
expression on a human face. It had given him more than a mere
expression. It had given him an impulse for pursuit, as if, like a
magnet, it was fairly dragging him. He had covered his impulse by his
very frankness, but she knew he had pursued her--that for the matter of
seeing her again he had hunted her down. And what had followed that?
Why, she was back again to the great figures in the paper.

At first it seemed as though she had taken a clean leap from one subject
to another. She had in no way connected them. But all at once they were
connected. She couldn't separate them. She didn't know whether she had
been stupid not to have seen them so before, or whether she was stupid
to see them so now. For the thought that had sprung up in her mind was
monstrous. It startled her so broad awake that she sat up in bed to meet
it the more alertly. She sat up trembling. She felt like one who has
walked a long way in a wood, hearing crafty footsteps following in the
bushes. And now the beast had sprung out, and she was panting,
terrified, not knowing which way to run.

The room was dark except for now and again the yellow square of light,
from some passing cable car, traveling along the ceiling. The four walls
around her, their dark bulks of furniture and light ripple of moving
curtains, shut her up with this monster of her mind. The longer she
looked at it the less she felt sure it was real, and yet it was before
her. It was there with none of the loveliness of her first fancies about
the ring. It was there with grisly reality. It had not been conjured up.
It had sprung upon her from the solid actualities of the night. And,
yes, of the day before--and the night before that. Oh, she had known
well enough that there had been something wrong at the goldsmith's shop.
She had felt it even before she had seen the sapphire; and afterward how
it had held them, both herself and Harry! To have moved Harry it must be
something indeed! Had he suspected it then, or had he only wondered?

If he had suspected why hadn't he spoken of it? Well, her appalling
fancy prompted, hadn't he spoken of it?--though not to her. There
flashed back to her the memory of him there in the back of the shop with
the blue-eyed Chinaman. How furiously he had assailed the little man!
How uneasily, with what a dissatisfied air he had looked at the ring
even after it was on her finger, as if, after all, he had not compassed
what he had wanted. She could be almost sure that the monstrous idea
which had just overtaken her had, however fleetingly, flashed before
Harry's mind in the goldsmith's shop. But surely he couldn't have
entertained it for a moment. That was impossible, or he would never have
let her take the sapphire--Harry, who had seen the ring, the very Crew
Idol itself, within the twenty-four hours.

"A little heathen god curled round himself with a big blue stone on the
top-of his head." Harry hadn't said what sort of stone it was; but Kerr
had said it was a sapphire. There was a sapphire on her hand now. She
touched it with her finger-tips cautiously, as if to touch something
hot. So near to her! In the same room with her! On her own hand! It was
too much to be alone with in the dark! She reached out softly, as if she
feared to disturb some threatening presence lurking around her, and lit
the small night lamp on the low table by her bed. The shade was yellow,
and that contended with the blue of the sapphire, but couldn't break
its light. With the first flash of its splendor in her face she felt
certainty threatening her. She shook the ring quickly off her finger and
it fell with a light clatter on the table's marble top--fell with the
sapphire face down, and all its light hidden. She took it up again a
little fearfully, as if it might have got some harm; and again while she
looked at it it seemed to her that nothing that happened about this
jewel could be too extraordinary. If only it had been less wonderful,
less beautiful, she would not have felt so terribly afraid! She put it
back on the table and for a moment held her hand over it, as if she
imprisoned a living thing.

Then, without looking again, she got out of bed and went to the window.
It overlooked the dark steep of the garden, the moving trees and the
lighter plane of the water. She leaned out, far out. Black housetops
marched against the bay, and between them, light by light, her eyes
followed the street-lamps down to the shore. If one could recover from
such a nightmare as she had it would be by leaning out into and facing
this wide soft dark. These shapeless roofs just below her the night made
mysterious; and yet they covered people that she knew--her
friends--kind, safe people! There had been nights when the city, through
this very window, had seemed to her a savage place; but now the wicked
fear that stood behind her--the fear that had got inside her house, that
had slipped unseen through the circle of friends, that stood behind her
now, filling her own room with its shadowy menace--had transformed the
city into a very haven of security.

Oh, to escape out of this window into the innocent, sleeping city, away
from the horror at her back! To look in from the outside and be even
sure there was a horror! And if there was, to run away into the wide
soft dark! But how did she know, her fantastic idea persisted, that the
sapphire wouldn't follow her--the sapphire itself--the embodiment of her
fear? Then she dared not be driven out.

But there was another way to be rid of it. The real idea occurred to
her. How easy it would be to take it--that beautiful thing--and throw
it; throw it as hard as she could, and let the night take care of it.
The window was open, as if it stood ready, and there was the ring on the
table. She went to it, looked at it a moment without touching it,
holding her hands away.

Then with a little shiver she backed away from it and sat down on the
foot of the bed. She looked pale and little, as if the eye of the ring,
blazing under the feeble lamp, like the evil eye, had sapped her fire
and youth. The only thing about her of any size and color was the heavy
braid of hair fallen over her shoulder. She hugged her arms around her
updrawn knees, and resting her chin upon them eyed the sapphire bravely.

"What shall I do with you?" she somberly inquired of it. "You are a
dreadful thing. I don't know where you came from nor what you are, but I
am afraid--I am afraid you are--" She hesitated. The sapphire lay
shining like some idol set up for worship, and in spite of herself its
beauty moved her, if not to worship, at least to awe and fear.

"I suppose you know I can't throw you away," she murmured, "and yet I
can't keep you!" She pondered, chin in hand. To take it to Harry! That
seemed the natural thing to do--the simplest way to be rid of it. She
hesitated.

"If I only _knew_! If I only were sure!" She locked her fingers closer,
staring hard. If it had been the whole Crew Idol, the undismembered god
himself, then there would have been less terror, and one plain thing to
do. She looked hard at the sapphire setting, as if she hoped to discover
upon its brilliance some tell-tale trace of old soft gold; but there was
only one great, glassy, polished eye, and out of what head it had come,
whether from the forehead of the Crew Idol, or from that of some
unheralded deity, who was there who could tell her?

She tried to summon a coherent thought, but again it was only a flash
out of the darkness.

"Kerr! Why, he knows more than I." She looked at this stupidly for a
moment as if it were too large to take in at once. Of course he must
have known! Why hadn't she thought of that before? Why hadn't she
thought of it that first moment, when he had turned on her in the box
with such terrible eyes? She drew in her shoulders, looking all around
at the dim corners of the room which the lamp flame failed to penetrate.
Behind her present lively fear a second shadow was growing, more dim,
more formless, more vast and dubious.

What series of circumstances might have led up to Kerr's knowledge she
could not dream. He was one of whom nothing was incredible. From the
first moment his face had shot into the light, from the moment she had
heard his voice, like color in the level voices around him, she had been
bewildered by his variety. He had caught her up to the clouds. He had
whirled her along dubious levels, and more than once he had shown her
that the lines she had supposed drawn so sharply between this and that
could no more be discerned than meridians on green earth.

If she had noticed any earnestness in him, it was his relish, his gusto
for the whole of life. He had no theory to set up. Just as it was he
took it. If he persisted in requiring people to be themselves it was for
no good to themselves, but for the pleasure he himself got out of it. If
he made society into a little ball, and threw it away, it was only to
show it could be done.

And where, she asked herself in a summing up, might such a man not be
found? But there were few places, indeed, in even the broadest plain of
possibility, which could hold knowledge of so particular and piercing a
quality as his look had implied. There had been so much more than
curiosity or surprise in it. She could hardly face the memory of it, so
cruelly it had struck her. There was no doubt in her mind that Kerr had
seen the ring. Somewhere in the pageant of his experience he had met it,
known it--but what he wanted of it--

She broke off that thought, and looked long at the little flame of the
lamp. It was strange, but there was no doubt in her mind but that he
wanted it. That had been the strongest thing in his look. She felt
herself picking her way along a very narrow path, one step over either
edge of which would plunge her chasms deep. Now she snatched at a frail
sapling to save herself. The fact that Kerr knew her stone didn't prove
it belonged to the Crew Idol. And if it didn't--if it wasn't the crown
of the heathen god, then her whole dreadful supposition fell to pieces.
But she hadn't proved it and the simplest way was just to ask Kerr. Her
chance for that was the chance he had fought so hard for, the chance of
their meeting the next day.

She hadn't wanted that meeting when he had first asked her for it in the
box. She had feared it then, and all the more she feared it now, because
now she would have to do more than defend herself. She would take the
offensive; she would make the attack, now that she had a question to
ask. Why should the thought of it frighten her? If this was not the Crew
sapphire she would be no worse off than she had been. If it was, her
course would be clear. It seemed it should be simple, it should be easy
to face Kerr with her question; but she was possessed by the
apprehension that it would be neither. Would the question she had to
ask be a safe thing to give him? And if she dared undertake it and
should be overpowered after all--then everything would be lost.

What the "everything" was she feared to lose would not come clear to
her. The only thing that did emerge definitely from the agitation of her
mind was the knowledge that this question that had been thrust upon her
made it tenfold more difficult to meet Kerr. And yet, to refuse to meet
him now would be as cowardly as throwing the ring out of the window.

X

A LADY UNVEILED

She wakened in the morning to some one knocking. She thought the sound
had been going on for a long time, but, now she was finally roused, it
had stopped. This was odd, for no one came to her in the morning except
Marrika, and it was tiresome to be thus imperatively beset before she
was half awake. Now the knocking came again with a level, unimpatient
repetition, and she called, "Come in!" at which Clara, in a pale morning
gown, promptly entered--an apparition as cool and smooth and burnished
as if she had spent the night, like a French doll, in tissue paper.

Clara's coming in in the morning was an unheard-of thing. Flora was
taken aback.

"Why, Clara!" She was blank with astonishment. She sat up, flushed and
tumbled, and still blinking. "I hope I didn't keep you knocking long."

"Oh, no, indeed; only three taps." Clara looked straight through Flora's
astonishment, as if there had been no such thing in evidence. She drew
up a chair and sat down beside the bed. It was a rocking-chair, but it
did not sway with her calm poise. In the fine finish of her morning
attire, with her hands placidly folded on her knee, she made Flora feel
taken at a disadvantage, thus scarcely awake, disheveled and all but
stripped. But Clara, if she looked at anything but Flora's eyes, looked
only at her hands, one and then the other as they lay upon the coverlet.

"It isn't so very late," she said, "but I have ordered your breakfast. I
thought you would want it if you had that ten-o'clock appointment; and
there is something I want to ask you before you go out." Flora was
conscious of a little apprehension. "It's about that place you talked of
taking for the summer." She felt vaguely relieved, though she had had no
actual grounds for anticipating an awkward question. "I came upon
something in the oddest way you can imagine," Clara pursued her subject.
"Had you any idea the Herricks were in straits?"

"The young Herricks?"

"Oh, no! The old Herricks, _the_ Herricks, Mrs. Herrick whom you so much
admire! Of course, one isn't told; but they must be, to be willing to
let the old place."

"Not the San Mateo place?" said Flora, with a stir of interest. She felt
as astonished as if some Confucian fanatic had set up his joss at
auction.

Clara complacently nodded.

"Mrs. Herrick spoke to me herself. They don't want any publicity about
it, but she had heard that we were looking, and she did me the
favor"--Clara smiled a little dryly--"of telling me first."

Flora looked reflective. "I've never seen it, but they say it's
beautiful."

"It is, in a way," Clara grudgingly admitted, "but it isn't new; and the
ridiculous part is that she will let it only on condition that it shall
not be done over. It is in sufficiently good shape, but it stands now
just as Colonel Herrick furnished it forty years ago."

"Why, I should love that!" Flora frankly confessed, and gave a wistful
glance at the walls around her, wondering how long before the soft, dark
bloom of time, of use and wont, should descend on their crude faces.

"Well," Clara conceded, "at any rate we know it's genuine, and that's a
consolation. The number of imitations going about and the way people
pick them up is appalling! While I was getting that rug for you at
Vigo's yesterday, Ella Buller came in and bought three imitation
Bokharas, with the greatest enthusiasm. She buys quantities, and she's
always taken in. It is enough to make one nervous about the people one
sits next to at dinner there. One can not help suspecting them of being
some of Ella's bargains. I wonder, now, where she picked up that Kerr."

This finale failed to take Flora off her guard. "At any rate, he is odd
enough to be genuine," she said with a gleam of malice.

"Oh, no doubt of that," Clara mildly assented, "but genuine what?"

"Why, gentleman at large," said Flora, and quickly wanted to recall it,
for Clara's glance seemed to give it a double significance. "I mean,"
she added, "just one of those chronic travelers who have nothing else to
do, and whose way must be paved with letters of introduction"--she
floundered. "At least, that was the idea he gave of himself." She broke
off, doubly angry that she had tried to explain Kerr, and tried to
explain herself, when the circumstances required nothing of the sort.
She was sure Clara had not missed her nervousness, though Clara made no
sign. Her eyes only traveled a second time to Flora's hands, as if among
the flare of red and white jewels she was expecting to see another
color. To Flora's palpitating consciousness this look made a perfect
connection with Clara's next remark.

"At least his manners are odd enough! There was a minute last night
when he was really quite startling."

Flora felt a small, warm spot of color increasing in the middle of each
cheek. She drew a long breath, as if to draw in courage. Then Clara had
really seen! That smooth, blindish look of hers, last night, had seen
everything! And here she was owning up to it, and affably offering
herself as a confidante; and for what reason under the sun unless to
find out what it was that had so startled Kerr? Flora felt like crying
out, "If you only knew what that thing may be, you would never want to
come nearer to it!"

"I am afraid he annoyed you, Flora."

The girl looked into the kindly solicitude of Clara's face with a hard,
almost passionate incredulity. Was that really all Clara had supposed?

"These Continentals," she went on, now lightly swaying to and fro in her
chair, "have singular notions of American women. They take us for
savages, my dear."

"Then isn't it for us to show them that we are more than usually
civilized? I can't run away from him like a frightened little native."

"Of course not; but that is where I come in; it's what I'm for--to get
rid of such things for you." That small, cool smile made Flora feel more
than ever the immature barbarian of her simile. Clara sat throwing the
protection of her superior knowledge and capability around her, like a
missionary garment; but Flora could have laughed with relief. Then Clara
merely supposed Kerr had been impertinent. Her little invasion had been
really nothing but pure kindness and protection; and Flora couldn't but
feel grateful for it. Last night she had thought herself so absolutely
alone; and here was a friend coming forward again, and stepping between
her and the thing above all others she was helpless about--the real
world.

Clara had risen, and stood considering a moment with that same sweet,
impersonal eye which Flora found it hardest to comprehend.

"What I mean," she explicitly stated, "is that if he should undertake to
carry out his preposterous suggestion, and call this afternoon, I am
quite ready, if you wish, to take him off your hands."

This last took Flora's breath away. It had not occurred to her that
Clara had overheard. It shocked her, frightened her; and yet Clara's way
of stating the fact, as if it were the most natural thing in the world,
made Flora feel that she herself was in the wrong to feel thus. For,
after all, Clara had been most tactful, most considerate and delicate in
conveying her knowledge, not hinting that Flora could have been in the
slightest degree responsible for Kerr's behavior; but simply sweetly
taking it for granted that they, of course, were banded together to
exclude this outlander. Under her sense of obligation, and what she felt
ought to be gratitude, Flora floundered for words.

"You're very kind," she managed to get out; and that seemed to leave her
committed to hand Kerr over, tied hand and foot, when she wasn't at all
sure she wanted to.

"Then shall I tell Mrs. Herrick that you will consider the house?" said
Clara, already in the act of departure. "She is to call to-day to go
into it with me more thoroughly. Thus far we've only played about the
edges."

Her eyes strayed toward the dressing-table as she passed it, and as she
reached the door she glanced over the chiffonier. It was on the tip of
Flora's tongue to ask if she had mislaid something, when Clara turned
and smiled her small, tight-curled smile, as if she were offering it as
a symbol of mutual understanding. Curiously enough, it checked Flora's
query about the straying glances, and made her wonder that this was the
first time in their relation that she had thought Clara sweet.

But there was another quality in Clara she did not lose sight of, and
she waited for the closing of a door further down the hall before she
drew the sapphire from under her pillow.

With the knocking at the door her first act had been to thrust it there.
The feeling that it was going to be hard to hide was still her strongest
instinct about it; but the morning had dissipated the element of the
supernatural and the horrid that it had shown her the night before. It
seemed to have a clearer and a simpler beauty; and the hope revived in
her that its beauty, after all, was the only remarkable thing about it.

Her conviction of the night before had sunk to a shadowy hypothesis. She
knew nothing--nothing that would justify her in taking any step; and her
only chance of knowing more lay in what she would get out of Kerr; for
that he knew more about her ring than she, she was convinced. She was
afraid of him, yet, in spite of her fear, she had no intention of
handing him over to Clara. For on reflection she knew that Clara's offer
must have a deeper motive than mere kindness, and she had a most
unreasonable feeling that it would not be safe. She felt a little guilty
to have seemed to take her companion's help, while she left her so much
at sea as to the real facts. But, after all, it was Clara who had forced
the issue.

She thought a good deal about Clara while she was dressing. A good many
times lately she had looked forward to the fall, the time of her
marriage, when their rather tense relationship would be ended. This
house in the country, which was to be her last little bachelor fling,
was to be Clara's last commission for her.

Think how she would, she could but feel as if she were ungratefully
abandoning Clara. Clara had done so well by her in their three years
together! There surely must be immediately forthcoming for such a
remarkable person another large opportunity, and yet she couldn't help
recalling their first encounter in the particularly dull boarding-house
where Clara was temporarily shelved; where, nevertheless, she had not
conceded an inch of her class, nor a ray of her luster to circumstance.
This surprising luster was the gloss of her body, the quality of her
clothes and accessories, the way she traveled and the way she smiled. It
was the bloom of luxury she kept about her person through all her
varying surroundings. She had never to rise to the level of a new
position; she was there already; and she never came down.

Flora knew it was for just her air of being ready that she had trusted
Clara, and for the three years of their association she had never failed
to find her companion ready wherever their common interests were
concerned. She had no reason for not trusting Clara now, except the
knowledge that, by her own approaching marriage, their interests would
be separated, and her feeling that Clara's prudence must already be by
way of looking out for itself alone.

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