The Coast of Chance

E >> Esther Chamberlain >> The Coast of Chance

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Yet Clara would do a kindness if it did not inconvenience her, and
surely this morning she had been kind. Still Flora felt she didn't want
to reveal anything until she was a little surer of her own position.
When she knew better where she stood she would know what she could
confide to Clara. Meanwhile, if there was any one to whom she could turn
now it would surely be Harry.

Yet, if she did, what a lot of awkward explanations! She could not
return the sapphire without giving a reason, and what a thing to
explain--that she had not only worn it, but, in a freak, shown it to the
one of all people he most objected to.

Nevertheless the most sensible thing clearly was to go through with it
and confess to Harry. Then she must communicate with him at once.
No--she would wait until after breakfast. There was plenty of time. Kerr
would not come until the afternoon. But after breakfast, she wondered if
it wouldn't be as well to ring him up at luncheon time? Then she would
be sure of finding him at the club.

Meanwhile she dared not let the sapphire out of her grasp; and yet she
could not wear it on her hand. She had thought of the tear-shaped pouch
of gold which it was her custom to wear; but the slender length of chain
that linked it to her neck was too frail for such a precious weight. At
last she had fastened it around her neck on the strongest chain she
owned, and thus she carried it all the morning under her bodice with a
quieter mind than had been hers on the first day she had worn it, when
there had been nothing to explain her uneasiness.

She was quite sure she was going to give back the sapphire to Harry, yet
she couldn't help picturing to herself what her meeting with Kerr would
have been, supposing she had decided differently. As the morning slipped
by she found herself doubting that he would come at all. Her attitude of
the night before had surely been enough to discourage any one. Yet if he
didn't come she knew that she would be disappointed.

She was alone at luncheon, and in a dream. She glanced now and then at
the clock. She rose only ten minutes before the hour that Harry was in
the habit of leaving the club. She went up-stairs slowly and stopped in
front of the telephone. She touched the receiver, drew her hand back and
turned away. She shut the door of her own rooms smartly after her.

She did not try to--because she couldn't--understand her own proceeding.
She merely sat, listening, as it seemed to her, for hours.

But when at last Kerr's card was handed in to her, it gave her a shock,
as if something which couldn't happen, and yet which she had all along
expected, had come to pass.

In her instant of indecision Marrika had got away from her, but she
called the girl back from the door and told her to say to Mrs. Britton
that Mr. Kerr had called, but that Miss Gilsey would see him herself.

She started with a rush. Half-way down the stairs she stopped, horrified
to find what her fingers were doing. They were closed around the little
lump that the ring made in the bosom of her gown, and she had not known
it. What if she had rushed in to Kerr with this extraordinary
manifestation? What if, while she was talking to him, her hand should
continue to creep up again and yet again to that place, and close around
the jewel, and make it evident, even in its hiding-place? The time had
come when she must even hide it from herself. And yet, to creep back up
the stair when she made sure Kerr must have heard her tumultuous
downward rush! It would never do to soundlessly retreat. She must go
back boldly, as if she had forgotten nothing more considerable than a
pocket handkerchief.

Yet before she reached the top again she found herself going tiptoe, as
if she were on an expedition so secret that her own ears should not hear
her footsteps. But she went direct and unhesitating. It had come to her
all in a flash where she would put the sapphire. The little buttoned
pocket of her bath-robe. There it hung in the bath-room on one unvarying
peg, the most immovable of all her garments, safe from the excursions of
Marrika's needle or brushes, not to be disturbed for hours to come.

She passed through her bedroom, through her dressing-room into the
bath-room. The robe was hanging behind the door. It took her a moment to
draw out the ring and disentangle its chain, and while she was doing
this she became aware of movings to and fro in her bedroom. She drew the
door half open, the better to conceal herself behind it, and at the same
time, through the widened crack of the jamb, to keep an eye on the
dressing-room, and hurried lest Marrika should surprise her. But
nevertheless she had barely slipped the ring into the little pocket and
refastened the flap, when Clara opened the bedroom door and stood
looking into the dressing-room.

Flora experienced a sharp start of surprise, and then of wonder. Here
was Clara again seeking her out! Here she stood, brushed and polished,
and finished to a pitch of virtue, again taking Flora at a disadvantage,
hiding behind her own door. But at the least she was grateful that Clara
had not seen her. She stood a minute collecting herself. She wasn't
doing anything she need be ashamed of, or that she need explain, or that
need even awaken suspicion. But before she could take her courage in
both hands and come out of her retreat, Clara had reached the middle of
the dressing-room, and stood still.

Her lifted veil made a fine mist above the luster of her eyes. She was
perfect to the tips of her immaculate white gloves, and she wore the
simple, sober look of a person who thinks himself alone. Then it wasn't
Flora, Clara was looking for! She was looking all around--over the
surface of every object in the room. Presently she went up to the
dressing-table. She laid her gloved hands upon it, and looked at the
small objects strewn over its top. She took a step backward and opened
the top drawer. She reached into it, and delicately explored.

Flora could see the white gloves going to and fro among her white
handkerchiefs, could see them find, open and examine the contents of her
jewel-box. And the only thing that kept her from shrieking out was the
feeling that this abominable thing which was being enacted before her
eyes couldn't be a fact at all.

Clara took out an old pocket-book, shiny with years, shook from it a
shower of receipts, newspaper clippings, verses. She let them lie. She
took out a long violet box with a perfumer's seal upon it. It held a
bunch of dried violets. She took out a bonbonniere of gold filigree. It
was empty. A powder box, a glove box, a froth of lace, a handful of
jewelers' boxes, a jewel flung loose into the drawer. This she pounced
upon. It was a brooch! She let it fall--turned to the chiffonier;
upended the two vases of Venetian glass, lifted the lids of jars and
boxes, finally came to the drawers. One by one she took them out, turned
the contents of each rapidly over, and left them standing, gaping white
ruffles and lace upon the floor. She took up daintily, in her white kid
fingers, slippers, shook them upside down. She opened the door of the
closet, and disappeared within. There was audible the flutterings of all
the distressed garments, with little busy pauses. Then Clara came out,
with her hat a little crooked; and stood in the middle of the room still
with her absorbed and sober face, looking over the gaping drawers,
pulled out and rifled, with their contents heaped up and streaming over
the floor.

Her eye fell upon the waste basket. She turned it upside down, and
stooped over the litter. She gathered it up in her white gloves and
dropped it back. Then, for the first time, she glanced at the bath-room
door; stood looking at it, as if it had occurred to her to look in the
soap dish. Then she turned again to the room, to the dressing-table. She
put back the paste-board jewelers' boxes, the jeweled pin, the laces,
which she shook out and folded daintily, the glove and powder boxes, the
gold bonbonniere, the long violet box, the leather pocket-book,--each
deftly and unhesitatingly in the place from which she had taken it, and
all the heaps of white handkerchiefs.

One by one she laid back in the chiffonier drawers, the garments,
properly and neatly folded, that she had so hastily snatched out of
them. The sun, streaming full into the room, caught gleams in her pale
hair, and struck blindingly upon the heaps of white around her, and made
two dazzling points of her gloved hands that moved as deftly as hands
uncovered. She slid back the last drawer into the chiffonier, and rose
from her knees, lightly dusting off the front of her gown; went to the
closet door and closed it. She stood before it a moment with a face
perplexed and thoughtful, then turned alertly toward the outer door. As
she passed the mirror she looked into it, and touched her hat straight
again, but the action was subconscious. Clara wasn't thinking of it.

Flora stood as if she were afraid to move, while Clara crossed her
bedroom, stopped, went on and closed the outer door behind her. And even
after that soft little concussion she stood still, burning, choking,
struggling with the overwhelming force of an affront whose import she
did not yet realize. Out in her sunny dressing-room all the outraged
furniture stood meek and in order, frauding the eye to believe that
nothing had happened! She felt she couldn't look things in the face a
moment longer. She hid her face in the folds of her dressing-gown.

Why, she had thought that such things couldn't happen! She had thought
that people's private belongings, like their persons, were inviolable.
They all always talked, she had talked, about such things as if they
were mere nothings. They had talked about the very taking of the Crew
Idol as if it were a splendid joke! But she had not dreamed what such
things were like when they were near. When they were held up to you
naked they were like this! In the shame of it she could no more have
faced Clara than if she had surprised Clara naked.

She snatched the ring out of the pocket of her gown and clutched it in
her hand. Was there no place in the world where she could be sure of
safety for this?

With trembling fingers she fastened it again to the chain about her
neck. She thought of Kerr down-stairs waiting for her. Well, she would
rather keep it with her. Then, at least, she would know when it was
taken from her. Still in the fury of her outraged faith, she passed
through her violated rooms, and slowly along the hall and down the
stairs.

XI

THE MYSTERY TAKES HUMAN FORM

He turned from the window where he had presented a long, drooping,
patient back, and his warm, ironic mirth--the same that had played with
her the first night--flashed out at sight of her. But after a moment
another expression mixed with it, sharpened it, and fastened upon her
with an incredulous intentness.

She stood on the threshold, pale, and brilliant still in her blaze of
anger, equal, at last, to anything. Kerr, as he signaled to her with
every lineament of his enlivened face, his interest, his defiance, his
uncontrollability, was not the man of her imaginary conversations. He
was not here to be used and disposed of; but, as he came toward her,
the new admiration in his face was bringing her reassurance that neither
was she. The thought that her moment of bitter incredulity had made her
formidable gave her courage to fight even him, of whom she was so much
in awe; gave her courage even to smile, though she grew hot at the first
words he spoke.

"You should not be brave and then run away, you know."

She thought of her rush up the stairs again. "I had to go back to see
Mrs. Britton." (Oh, how she had seen her!)

It seemed to Flora that everything she had been through in the last few
moments was blazoned on her face. But he only looked a little more
gravely at her, though his sardonic eye-brow twitched.

"Ah, I thought you only ran back to hide in your doll's house."

She laughed. Such a picture of her!

"Well, at any rate, now I've come out, what have you to say to me?"

"Now you've come out," he repeated, and looked at her this time with
full gravity, as if he realized finally how far she'd come.

She had taken the chair in the light of the eastern windows. She lay
back in the cushions, her head a little bent, her hands interlaced with
a perfect imitation of quietude. The dull satin of her slender foot was
the only motion about her, but the long, slow rise and fall of her
breath was just too deep-drawn for repose.

He looked down upon her from his height.

"I'm sorry I frightened you last night," he said, "but I'm not sorry I
came, since you've seen me. You needn't have, you know, if you didn't
want to. You could have stayed in the doll's house; and there, I
suppose, you think I should never have found you--or _it_ again?"

He was silent a moment, leaning on the chair opposite, watching her with
knitted forehead, while her apprehension fluttered for what he should do
next. He had done away with all the amenities of meeting and attacked
his point with a directness that took her breath.

"You know what I've come for," he said, "but now I'm here, now that I
see you, I wonder if there's something I haven't reckoned on." He looked
at her earnestly. "If you think I've taken advantage of you--if you say
so--I'll go away, and give you a chance to think it over."

It would have been so easy to have nodded him out, but instead she half
put out her hand toward him. "No; stay."

He gave her a quick look--surprise and approbation at her courage. He
dropped into a chair. "Then tell me about it."

Flora's heart went quick and little. She held herself very still, afraid
in her intense consciousness lest her slightest movement might betray
her. She only moved her eyes to look up at him questioningly, suspending
acknowledgment of what he meant until he should further commit himself.

"I mean the sapphire," he said. He waited.

"Yes," she answered coolly. "I saw that it interested you last night,
but I couldn't think especially why. It's a beautiful stone."

He laughed without a sound--shook noiselessly for a minute. "Meaning
that a gentleman shouldn't pounce upon any beautiful stone he may happen
to see?" He got up and moved about restlessly in the little space
between their two chairs. "Quite so; lay it to my being more than a
gentleman; lay it to my being a crack-brained enthusiast, a confounded
beauty worshiper, a vicious curio dealer, an ill-mannered ass! But"--and
he flashed around at her with a snap of his nervous fingers--"where did
you get it?"

For the life of her she couldn't help her wave of color, but through it
all she clung to her festal smile. Sheer nervousness made it easy.

"Well, suppose it was begged, borrowed, or--given to me? Suppose it came
from here or far away yonder? What's that to do with its beauty?" She
gave him question for question. "Did you ever see it before?"

He never left off looking at her, looking at her with a hard inquiry, as
if she were some simple puzzle that he unaccountably failed to solve.

"That's rather neat, the way you dodge me," he said, dodging in his
turn. "But I don't see it _now_. You're not wearing it?"

She played indifference with what a beating heart! "Oh, I only wear it
off and on."

"Off and on!" His voice suddenly rang at her. "Off and on! Why, my good
woman, it's just two days you could have worn it at all!"

She stood up--stood facing him. For a moment she knew nothing except
that her horrible idea was a fact. She had the eye of the Crew Idol, and
this man knew it! Yet the fact declared gave her courage. She could face
his accusal if only he could give the reason for it. But after a moment,
while they looked silently at each other, she saw he was not accusing
her. He was threatening her and beseeching her indulgence in the same
look. He opened his lips, hesitated, turned sharp about and walked away
from her.

She watched him with increasing doubt. After saying so much, was he
going to say nothing more? She had a feeling that she had not heard the
worst yet, and when he turned back to her from the other end of the room
there was something so haggard, so harassed, so fairly guilty about him
that if she had ever thought of telling him the truth of how she came by
the ring she put it away from her now.

But beneath his distress she recognized a desperate earnestness. There
was something he wanted at any cost, but he was going to be gentle with
her. She had felt before the potentiality of his gentleness, and she
doubted her power to resist it. She fanned up all the flame of anger
that had swept her into the room. She reminded herself that the greatest
gentleness might only be a blind; that there was nothing stronger than
wanting something very much, and that the protection of the jewel was
very thin. But when he stood beside her she realized he held a stronger
weapon against her than his gentleness, something apart from his
intention. She felt that in whatever circumstance, at whatever time she
should meet him he would make her feel thus--hot and cold, and happy for
the mere presence of his body beside her. In a confusion she heard what
he was saying.

He was speaking, almost coaxingly, as if to a child. "I understand," he
was saying. "I know all about it. It's a mistake. But surely you don't
expect to keep it now. It will only be an annoyance to you."

She turned on him. "What could it be to you?"

Kerr, planted before her, with his head dropped, looked, looked, looked,
as if he gave silence leave to answer for him what it would. It answered
with a hundred echoes ringing up to her from long corridors of
conjecture, half-articulated words breathing of how extraordinary the
answer must be that he did not dare to make. He looked her up and down
carefully, impersonally, with that air he had of regarding a rare
specimen, thoughtfully; as if he weighed such ephemeral substance as
chance.

"What will you take for it?" he said at last.

She was silent. With a sick distrust it came to her that it was the
very worst thing he could have said after that speaking silence.

She stepped away from him. "This thing is not for sale."

He stared at her with amazement; then threw back his head and laughed as
if something had amused him above all tragedy.

"You are an extraordinary creature," he said, "but really I must have
it. I can't explain the why of it; only give the sapphire to me, and
you'll never be sorry for having done that for me. Whatever happens, you
may be sure I won't talk. Even if the thing comes out, you shan't be
mixed up in it." He had come near her again, and the point of his long
forefinger rested on her arm. She was motionless, overwhelmed with pure
terror, with despair. He was smiling, but there was a desperate
something about him, stronger than the common desire of possession,
terrifying in its intensity. She looked behind her. The thick glass of
the window was there, a glimpse of the empty street and the figure of a
woman in a blowing green veil turning the corner.

"Why not give it to me now," he urged, "since, of course, you can't keep
it? I could have it now in spite of you."

Everything in her sprang up in antagonism to meet him. "I know what you
are," she cried, "but you shan't have it. You have no more right to it
than I. You can't get it away from me, and I shan't give it to you."

He had grown suddenly paler; his eyes were dancing, fastened upon her
breast. His long hands closed and opened. She looked down, arrested at
the sight of her hand clenched just where her breath was shortest, over
the sapphire's hiding-place.

He smiled. How easily she had betrayed herself! But she abated not a jot
of her defiance, challenging him, now he knew its hiding-place, to take
the sapphire if he could. But he did not move. And it came to her then
that she had been ridiculous to think for an instant that this man would
take anything from her by force. What she had to fear was his will at
work upon hers, his persuasion, his ingenuity. She thought of the purple
irises, and how he had drawn them toward him in the crook of his
cane--and her dread was lest he meant to overcome her with some subtlety
she could not combat. For that he was secret, that he was daring, that
he was fearless beyond belief, he showed her all too plainly, since here
he stood, condemned by his own evidence, alone, in the midst of her
household, within call of her servants, and had the sublime effrontery
to look at her with admiration, and, it occurred to her, even with a
little pity.

The click of a moving latch brought his eyes from hers to the door.

"Some one is coming in," he said in a guarded voice. It warned her that
her face showed too much, but she could not hope to recover her
composure. She hardly wanted to. She was in a state to fancy that a
secret could be kept by main force; and she turned without abatement of
her reckless mood and took her hand from where she had held it clenched
upon her breast and stretched it out to Mrs. Herrick.

The lady had stood in the doorway a moment--a long-featured, whitish,
modeled face, draped in a dull green veil, a tall figure whose flowing
skirts of black melted away into the background of the hall--before she
came forward and met her hostess' hand with a clasp firm and ready.

"I'm so glad to find you here," she said. She looked directly into
Flora's eyes, into the very center of her agitation. She held her
tremulous hand as if neither of these manifestations surprised her; as
if a young woman and a young man in colloquy might often be found in
such a state of mind.

Flora's first emotion was a guilty relief that, after all, her face had
not betrayed Kerr. But she had no sooner murmured his name to Mrs.
Herrick, no sooner had that lady's gray eyes lighted upon him, than they
altered their clear confidence. The situation as reflected in Flora
looked naive enough, but there was nothing naive about Kerr. The very
perfection of his coolness, there in the face of her burning agitation,
was appalling. Oh, why couldn't he see, Flora thought wildly, how it was
damning him--how it was showing him so practised, so marvelously equal
to any emergency, that his presence here among fleeces could be nothing
less than wolfish?

Mrs. Herrick's face was taking on an expression no less than wary. What
he was, Mrs. Herrick could not dream. She could not even suspect what
Flora believed. But in the light of her terrible discovery Flora dared
not have him suspected at all. The chasms of distrust and suspicion that
had been opening between them she forgot. In a flash she was ready to
throw herself in front of this man, to cover him from suspicion, even
though by so doing she took it upon herself.

Now, if she had ever in her life, she talked over the top of her
feelings; and though at first to her ears her voice rang out horribly
alone, presently Mrs. Herrick was helping her, adding words to words.
It was the house they spoke of, the San Mateo house, the subject about
which Flora knew Mrs. Herrick had come to talk; but to Flora it was no
longer a subject. It was a barrier, a shield. In this emergency it was
the only subject large enough to fill the gap, and much as Flora had
liked the idea of it, she had never built the house so large, so vivid,
so wonderfully towering to please her fancy as she was doing now to
cover Kerr. With questions she led Mrs. Herrick on to spin out the
subject, to play it over with lights and shades, to beat all around it.
And all the while she knew that Kerr was watching her; watching her once
again in dubious admiration. It was a look that made Mrs. Herrick seem
ready at a movement of his to lay her hand on Flora in protection.

The lady's clear gray eyes traveled between Flora's face and his. Under
their steady light there was a strange alertness, as if she sat there
ready enough to avert whatever threatened, but anxious to draw her
skirts aside from it, distrusting the quality, hating to have come in
upon anything so dubious. When the hall door opened and closed she
listened as if for a deliverer; and when Clara appeared between the
portieres she turned to her and met her with a flash of relief, as if
here at last was a safe quantity. Clara was still wearing her hat, with
the veil pushed up in a little mist above her eyes, and still had her
white gloves on. The sight of Mrs. Herrick's hand soliciting the clasp
of those gave Flora a curious sensation.

She looked from one face to another, and last at Kerr's. She shut her
eyes an instant. Here was a thief. He was standing in her drawing-room
now. She had been talking with him. She opened her eyes. The fact
acknowledged had not altered the color of daylight. It was strange that
things--furniture and walls and landscape--should remain so stolidly the
same when such a thing had happened to her! For she had not only spoken
with a thief, but she had shielded him. It struck her grotesquely that
perhaps Mrs. Herrick's instinct was right, after all. Wasn't Clara the
safest of the lot? Clara at least kept her gloves on, while she herself
was shamelessly arrayed on the side of disorder. She was clinging to a
piece of property that wasn't hers, and whatever way she dressed her
motives they looked too much of a piece with the operations of the
original miscreant.

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