The Coast of Chance

E >> Esther Chamberlain >> The Coast of Chance

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Flora saw the evil spirit of tragic-comedy. He fairly grinned at her.

XII

DISENCHANTMENT

Then this was the end of all romance? She must turn her back on the
charm, the power, the spell that had been wrought around her, and,
horror-struck, pry into her own mind to discover what lawless thing
could be in her to have drawn her to such a person, and to keep her,
even now that she knew the worst, unwilling to relinquish the thought of
him. His depravity loomed to her enormous; but was that all there was to
be said of him? Did his delicacy, his insight, his tempered fineness,
count for nothing beside it? Must their talks, their walking through the
trees, the very memory of his voice, be lost inspiration?

She couldn't believe that this one spot could make him rotten
throughout. Her mind ran back into the past. She could not recall a
word, an action, or a glance of his that had shown the color of decay.
He had not even been insincere with her. He had come out with his
convictions so flatly that when she thought of it his nonchalance
appalled her. He had been the same then that he was now. But the thing
that was natural for him was impossible for her, and she had found it
out--that was all.

Yet the mere consideration of him and his obsession as one thing was
intolerable. She curiously separated his act from himself. She thought
of it, not as a part of him, but as something that had invaded him--a
disease--something inimical to himself and others, that mixed the
thought of him with terrors, and filled her way with difficulties. Now
it was no longer a question of how to meet him, but of how she was not
to. It was not his strength she feared, but her own weakness where he
was concerned. Her tendency to shield him--she must guard against
that--and that disturbing influence he exercised over her, too
evidently without intention. But he would be hard to avoid. This way and
that she looked for a way out of her danger, yet all the while she was
conscious that there was but one plain way of escape open to her. She
could give the sapphire back to Harry within the twenty-four hours.

XIII

THRUST AND PARRY

MY DEAR FLORA--I am going out early and shall not be back to
dinner. CLARA.

Flora let the little note fall as if she disliked the touch of it. She
was relieved to think she would not have to see Clara that day. It was
her desire never to see Clara again. If only they could part here and
now! How she wanted to shake the whole thing off her shoulders! How
foolish not to have gone to Harry when she had first made up her mind
to! For why, after all, make him any explanations? Suppose she should
just take the ring to him and say: "It gives me the shivers, Harry.
Let's take it back and get something else." If he didn't suspect the
sapphire already, he would never suspect it from that. The worst he
could do would be to laugh, to tease, to tell her she could not live up
to her own romantic notions, since, after all, she had weakened and was
wanting the usual thing.

But there had been times when she had thought that he did suspect the
sapphire. Well, if he did, giving it back to him would practically be
giving it back into public custody in the most decorous manner for a
properly bred young woman. And how beautifully it would extricate her
from her wretched situation! Logically, there was no fault to be found
with such a course. It was eminently sane and safe. Yet it still
appeared to her as if she were acting a coward's part. She was neither
frankly giving the jewel to the authorities with the proper information,
nor frankly handing it over to Kerr. But she was trying to slip it back
into the questionable nook from which it had been taken, and she grew
hot at the thought of how Kerr would despise her if he knew the craven
course she was meditating. She seemed to hear him saying, "I had
thought braver things of you."

Of course, that was his way of expecting that she would give him the
ring. And she felt a sort of rage against him that he should want that,
and only that, so very much. Yet she didn't know what else she wanted
him to want. Every time she thought of Kerr she found herself growing
unreasonable; and she had to whip up her resolution with the hard facts
of the case to prevent herself from drifting over on to his side
completely.

But did she really want Harry to rid her of the ring? She would get hold
of him first and then she would see what she would do.

She stepped into the hall with all the confidence of one who has fully
made up her mind to carry matters with a high hand; but at the telephone
she hesitated. Calling him up at such an hour of the morning demanding
his attendance on such a fanciful errand--wouldn't he think it odd? No,
he would think it the most natural thing in the world for her to be so
flighty. Reassured, she gave the club number and stood waiting,
listening to the half-syllables of switched-off voices and the crossing
click, click, that was bringing her fate nearer to her. She heard some
one coming up the stairs and down the hall toward her. Marrika stood
stolid at her elbow.

"Mr. Cressy," she pronounced.

"Yes, yes," said Flora, with the club clamoring in her left ear.

"He is down-stairs," said Marrika.

Flora nearly let the receiver fall. Harry here? What a piece of luck!
But here on his own account, at such an hour--how extraordinary!

"Hello, hello," persisted the club. "What's wanted?"

"Why, I--" Flora stammered. "It's a mistake; never mind. I don't want
him now." She hoped that Harry had not heard her as he came in, since it
was his informal fashion to await her in the large entrance hall. She
didn't want to spoil the chance he had given her of seeming offhand
about the ring. But the hall was empty, and as she descended the stairs
she amused herself with the fancy that Shima had had a vision, and that
she would still have to ring up the club and explain to the attendant
that, after all, she wanted Mr. Cressy.

Then from the drawing-room threshold she caught sight of Harry standing
in the big bay window of the drawing-room, in the same spot where Kerr
had awaited her the afternoon before. Harry was tall and large and
freshly colored, and yet he did not fill the room to her as the other
man had done. He met her, kissed her, and she turned her head so that
his lips met her cheek close beside her ear. She did not positively
object to his kissing her on the lips, but her instinct was strong to
offer him her cheek. He had sometimes laughed at this, but now he
resented it. He insisted on his privilege, and she was passive to him,
conscious of less love in this than assertion of possession.

"You are not going to Burlingame, are you?" she asked him with her first
breath.

He looked down at her with a flushed and sulky air. "What difference
would that make to you? I am, as it happens, but I suppose you think
that's no reason for disturbing you so early." He was angry, but at
what, she wondered, with creeping uneasiness. He held her and caressed
her with a morose satisfaction, as if he had to make sure to himself
that she was really his, and she permitted it and abetted it with a
guile that astonished her.

"What is the matter?" she urged. "Are things going crookedly at
Burlingame?"

"Things are going as crooked as you please, but not at Burlingame. Sit
over there," he said, nodding toward the window-bench; "I want to talk
to you."

Harry had the air of one about to scold, and certainly Flora thought if
anybody was carrying matters with a high hand, it wasn't herself; but
she didn't follow his direction. She continued to stand, while he,
sitting on the table's edge, drumming the top of his hat, gloomily
regarded her.

"Well?" she persisted, troubled by this look of his, and this silence.

"Look here," he began, "I have to be away a couple of days and I wish
you'd do me a favor."

Flora's thought flew to the ring. Was he going to ask for it back, to
have it reset, as he had promised on the threshold of the goldsmith's
shop? Here might be the chance she had hoped for of getting rid of it.
She grasped at it before she had time to waver.

"I wonder if it's the very favor I was going to ask of you."

But he didn't take it up. He seemed hardly to hear her, as if his mind
was too much absorbed with quite another question--a question that the
next moment came out flat. "What was that Kerr doing here yesterday?"

She was taken aback, so far had her apprehension of Harry's jealousy
slipped into the background in the last twenty-four hours. But her
consciousness that Harry was not behaving well, even for a jealous man,
made her take it up all the more lightly.

"Why, he was calling, chatting, taking tea--what anybody else would do
from four to six. What in the world gave you the idea that he was doing
anything extraordinary?"

"Well," he said, "you shouldn't do the sort of thing that makes you
talked about."

"'That makes me talked about'?" It made her pause in front of him.

"Why, yes, it isn't like you. It's never happened before. Look here. I
drop into the Bullers' yesterday; find Clara sidled up to the judge;
look around for you. 'Hello,' I say, 'where's Flora?' 'Oh,' says she,
'Flora's at home amusing Mr. Kerr.' 'Amusing Mr. Kerr!'" he repeated.
"That's a nice thing to hear."

Flora went red. She walked down the room from him to give her suddenly
tumultuous heart time. However little he might guess the real trend of
her interview with Kerr, she couldn't hear him come near it without
apprehension. She was angry, helplessly angry at Harry that he had
taken this moment for his stupid jealousy. But she was more angry at
Clara, since such a speech on Clara's part wasn't carelessness. She had
meant it to work upon him, and here he stood, like the fine animal that
he was, smoldering with the suspicion of encroachment on his prey.

She tried to laugh him out of it.

"Why, Harry, I never saw you jealous before!"

"It's all very well to say that--and you know I've never made a row
about the other Johnnies. I knew you didn't care for any of _them_."

Her eyes narrowed and darkened.

"And you take it for granted I care for Mr. Kerr?"

"Oh, no, no!" He pushed his hand through his hair with an irascible
gesture. "But it's plain enough you like him--you women always like a
fellow that flourishes--but that's not the sort of man I care to see
hanging around my girl."

Flora stood leaning on the table, breathing a little hurriedly, feeling
rather as if she had been shaken. Harry, standing with his hands in his
pockets, looked not unlike the threatening image he had appeared in the
back of the goldsmith's shop.

"Of course, the fellow can talk," he admitted, "and he has a manner. But
Lord knows where he comes from or who he is. Why, even the Bullers don't
know."

Flora turned sharply on him. "Who told you that?"

"The judge. He picked him up at the club."

"Well," she kept it up, "some one had to introduce him there."

Harry smiled. "You wouldn't care to bow to some of those club members."

"Harry, do you know how you sound to me?" She was trembling at the
daring of what she was going to say. "You talk as if you knew something
against him."

Her statement seemed to bring him up short. "No, no, I don't," he said
hastily.

She made a little gesture of despair. How was she to count on Harry if
he was going to behave like this? How trust him when he was shuffling
so?

She made one more bold stroke to make him speak out.

"Harry, you _do_ know something about him! I know you have seen him
before."

"Why, yes, I've seen him before. But that's got nothing to do with it."

He looked surprised that she should seem to accuse him of it, and she
wondered if he could have forgotten how he had denied it before.

"And that isn't why you distrust him?"

The devil's tattoo that he beat on his hat stopped.

"I don't distrust him."

"Well, dislike him, then. When was it that you saw him before?"

"Isn't it enough for me to tell you that I don't want _you_ to see him?"

"Oh!" She turned away from him. Every nerve in her was in revolt. Then
he really wasn't going to tell her anything. He was keeping her out of
it as if she were a child. She had relied on him to return the ring. She
had counted upon his indifference and good nature. And he was neither
indifferent nor good-natured. All desire of even mentioning the ring to
him left her; and as to giving him her confidence--These hints that he
had thrown out about Kerr--they might be mere jealousy--but he might
have actual knowledge, knowledge that, with her own fitted to it, would
make for him a complete figure. She caught her breath at the thought of
how near she had come to actually betraying Kerr. Until that moment she
had not realized that through all her waverings her one fixed intention
had been not to betray him.

Harry had risen and was buttoning his overcoat. "You know you're never
at home if you don't want to be," he said.

She stood misleadingly drooping before him. But though her appearance
was passive enough for the most exacting lover her will had never been
in more vigorous revolt. She knew Harry was taking her weariness for
acquiescence, and she let him take it so. She even followed him into the
hall, and with a vague idea of further propitiation, nodded away Shima
and opened the door for him herself.

The fog was a chasm of white outside. Harry turned on the brink of it.
"By the way, where's Clara?"

"Why, do you want to see her? She'll be out all day. She's dining with
the Willie Herricks."

"No, I don't want to see her, but, by the way, she's not dining with the
Willie Herricks; she's dining with the Bullers. I heard her make the
engagement yesterday."

"Oh, no, Harry, I'm sure you're mistaken."

"Well, it doesn't matter. All I want to know is, why did you show that
ring to Clara before it was set?"

She was genuinely aghast. "I didn't," she flashed. "What made you think
I had?"

He shrugged. "Well, she asked me where we got it. I don't see why women
always talk those things over." He was looking at her inquiringly.

"Well, I haven't," she said quickly. "Have you?"

He looked out upon the fog. "Told her where we got it, do you mean? No,
I just chaffed her. I'd look out, if I were you. She strikes me as
damned curious." He stood a moment on the threshold, looking from Flora
to the chasm of fog outside, as if he were choosing between two chances.
"I think I'll take that ring this morning," he said slowly.

The deliberate words came to her with a shock. But in the moment, while
she looked into Harry's moody face, she realized how impossible to make
a scene over what must still be maintained as a trivial matter betwixt
them--the mere resetting of a jewel; what should she do to put him off?
She looked up at him, and saw with relief that his face was turned from
her to the fog, as if he had forgotten her. Then, still with averted
head, as if he addressed the whiteness, or himself,--"No," he
determined, "I won't. I'll take it when I come back." He pulled himself
together with an effort, with a smile. "That is," he turned to her, "if
you're in no great hurry about the setting? Very well, then. In a day or
two."

He plunged away into the fog. A few rods from the door he disappeared,
but she could still hear his footsteps growing thinner, lighter, passing
away in the whiteness.

XIV

COMEDY CONVEYS A WARNING

She stood where he had left her in the open doorway, with the damp eddy
of the fog blowing on her. She had had a narrow escape; but after the
first fullness of her relief there returned upon her again the weight of
her responsibility. There was no slipping out of it now, and it was
going to be worse than she had imagined. So much had come out in the
last half-hour that she felt bewildered by it. What Harry had let slip
about Clara alarmed her. What in the world was Clara about? With one
well-aimed observation she had stirred up Harry against Kerr and against
Flora herself. And meanwhile she was running after the Bullers. Twice in
two days, if Harry was not mistaken, and she was even nearing another
engagement.

After all her fruitless mousings, Clara had too evidently got on the
scent of something at last. How much she knew or guessed as yet, Flora
could not be sure, but certainly, now, she couldn't let Clara go. For
that would be turning adrift a dangerous person with a stronger motive
than ever for pursuing her quest, and the opportunity for pursuing it
unobserved, out of Flora's sight. Clara was at it even now, and the only
consolation Flora had was that Harry, at least, would not play into her
hands.

For Harry had a special secret interest of his own. The last ten minutes
of their interview had made that plain. His manner, when he had declared
his intention of taking the ring, had been anything but the manner of a
care-free lover merely concerned with pleasing his lady. Then they were
all of them racing each other for the same thing--the thing she held in
her possession; and whether she feared most to be felled by a blow from
Harry, or hunted far afield by Kerr, or trapped by Clara, she could not
tell. She stood hesitating, looking out into the obscurity of the fog,
as if she hoped to read the answer there. Presently she returned to the
fact that Shima was waiting to close the door. Half-way across the hall
she paused again, looking thoughtfully down the rose-colored vista of
the drawing-room, and up at the broad black march of the stair. Vague
mysteries peered at her from every side. Which should she flee from?
Which walk boldly up to and dispel?

She went up-stairs slowly. She stood in her dressing-room absently
before the mirror. She touched the hard, unyielding stone of the ring
under the thin bodice of her gown. She recalled the morning when she had
gone to get it, before anything had happened and the lure of life had
been so exquisite. Now that it had come near--if this indeed were life
that she was laboring in--it was steep and crabbed, like the brown hills
in summer, far off, like velvet, to climb, plowed ground and stubble.

And yet she didn't wish herself back, but only forward. Now she had no
leisure to imagine, to pretend, to enjoy, only the breathless sense
that she must get forward. The chattering clock on her mantel warned her
of the passing time and set her hurrying into her walking-gown, her hat,
her gloves, as if the object of her errand would only wait for her a
moment longer. When, for the second time, she opened the house door, she
didn't hesitate. She descended into the white fog that covered all the
city.

Above her the stone facade of her house loomed huge and pinkish in the
mist. Her spirits rose with the feeling that she was going adventuring
again, leaving that house where for the last two days she had awaited
events with such vivid apprehensions. She hurried fast down the damp,
glistening pavement, seeing long, dim gray faces of houses glimmer by,
seeing figures come toward her through the fog, grow vivid, pass, and
hearing at intervals the hoarse, lonely voice of the fog-horn at "The
Heads" reaching her over many intervening hills. She did not feel sure
what she should do at the end of her journey or what awaited her there.
She knew herself a most unpractised hunter, she, who, all her life, had
been the most artful of quarries. A quarry she was still, but in this
chase she had to come out and stalk the facts in order to see which way
to run; if, she told herself in her exhilaration, she decided to run at
all.

She turned in at the low gate of imitation grill in front of an enormous
wooden mansion, with towers and cupolas painted all a chill slate gray,
with fuchsias, purple and red, clambering up the front. She rang, and
was admitted into a hall, ornate and very high, with a wide staircase
sweeping down into the middle of it.

The maid looked dubiously at Flora and thought Miss Buller was not at
home, but would see. Flora turned into the room on her left and sat down
among the Louis Quinze sofas and potted palms with a feeling that Miss
Buller was at home, and, for one reason or another, preferred not to be
seen. She waited apprehensively, wondering whether Ella was not seeing
the world-in-general, or had really specified against herself. Could it
be that Ella was one of those women whom Harry had alluded to as
running after Kerr? In the short twenty-four hours every individual help
she had counted upon had seemed to draw away from her--Kerr, whose
understanding she had been so sure of; Clara, whose propriety had never
failed; Harry, whose comfortable good nature she had so taken for
granted! It seemed as if the sapphire, whose presence she was never
unconscious of, for all she wore it out of sight, had a power like the
evil eye over these people. But if it could turn such as Ella against
her, why, the Brussels carpet beneath her might well open and let her
down to deeper abysses than Judge Buller's wine-cellar.

She started nervously at the step of the maid returning. The message
brought was unexpected. "Miss Buller says will you please walk
up-stairs?"

Flora was amazed. That invitation would have been odd enough at any
time, for she and Ella were hardly on such intimate footing. But now she
was ushered up the majestic stair, and from the majestic upper hall
abruptly into a wild little cluttered sewing-room, and thence into a
wilder but more spacious bedroom, large curtains at the windows, large
roses on the carpet, and over all objects in the room a clutter of
miscellaneous articles, as if Ella's band-boxes, bureaus, and
work-baskets habitually refused to contain themselves.

From the midst of this Ella confronted her, still in her "wrapper" and
with the large puff of her hair a little awry. Under it her face was
curiously pink, a color deepening to the tip of her nose and puffing out
under her eyes.

"Well, Flora," she greeted her guest. "You were just the person I wanted
to see. Sit down. No, not there--that's my bird of paradise feather! Oh,
no, not there--that's the breakfast. Well, I guess you'll have to sit on
the bed."

Flora swept aside the clothes that streamed across it and throned
herself on the edge of the high, white plateau of Ella's four-poster.
Ella, for all her eager greeting, looked upon her friend doubtfully,
and Flora recognized in herself a similar hesitation, as if each were
trying to make out, without asking, what thoughts the other harbored.

"I was afraid I shouldn't see you at all," Flora began at last.

"Well, you wouldn't if it hadn't happened to be you," said Ella
paradoxically. "Look at me; did you ever see such a sight?"

"You don't look very well," Flora cautiously admitted. "Why, Ella,
you've been crying!"

"Yes, I've been crying," said Ella, mopping her nose, which still showed
a tendency to distil a tear at its tip. "And it's perfectly awful to me
to think you've been living so long in the same house with her."

Flora murmured breathlessly, "What in the world do you mean?"

"If you don't know, I certainly ought to tell you. I mean Clara," said
Ella distinctly.

Flora, sitting up on the edge of the high bed with the tips of her
little shoes hardly touching the floor, looked at Ella fascinated, her
lips a little apart. Ella had so exactly pronounced her own secret
thought of Clara. She was breathless to know what had been Clara's
performance at the Bullers'.

"Of course I've always known she was like that," said Ella, leaning back
in her chair with an air of resignation. "She's always getting
something. It's awful. It was the same even when we were at
boarding-school. I suppose she never did have enough money, though her
people were awfully nice; but she worked us all for invitations and
rides in our carriages, and I remember she got lots through Lillie
Lewis' elder brother, and he thought she was going to marry him, but she
didn't. She married Lulu Britton's father; and I guess she worked him
until he went under and they found there really was no money. So she's
been living on people ever since." Ella rocked gloomily.

"But she does it so nicely," Flora suggested. She still had the feeling
that it was not decent to own up to these most secret facts of people's
failings.

"Oh, yes, she's a perfect wonder," Ella admitted grudgingly; "look at
what she's done for you!" Ella's gesticulation was eloquent of how much
that had been. "But don't you imagine she cares about you any more than
she cares about me!" Ella began to cry again. "You were an awfully good
thing for her, Flora, and now that you're going to be married she's got
to have something else. But I do think she might have taken somebody
besides papa."

Flora gasped. "'Taken!' Ella, what do you mean?"

"I mean married," said Ella.

"'Married!'" For the time Flora had become a helpless echo.

"Oh, not yet," Ella defiantly nodded. "Not while there's anything left
of me."

Flora stammered. "Oh, Ella, no. Oh, Ella, are you sure?" She felt a
hysterical impulse to giggle.

"Sure?" Miss Buller cried. "I should think so! Why, she's simply making
a dead set for him."

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