The Coast of Chance Part 11

Under these garish lights, in the middle of this theater of people, facing the bland, almost ba.n.a.l, stare of that monocle, it looked exceedingly probable that, after all, in spite of her dreaming, this was what life would prove to be. But she hated the thought, as she hated that Kerr should be the one to show it to her; as she would have hated her ring if, after all its splendor in the shop, it should have turned out to be a piece of colored gla.s.s.

"No, no! I won't believe you," she stoutly denied him. "There _is_ more in life than you can touch. You're not like yourself to say there is not."

He laughed, but rather shortly.

"My dear child, forgive me; I'm sulky to-night. I feel, as I felt at eighteen, that the world has treated me badly. I've lost my luck."

The way his voice dropped at the last sounded to her the weariest thing she had ever heard. He settled back in his chair again, and looked moodily out across the brilliant house.

"I'm sorry." Her tone was sweetly vague. What could be the matter with him? Then, half timidly, she rallied him. "If you go on like this, I shall have to show you my talisman."

"Oh, have you indeed a talisman?" he humored her. And it was as if he said, "Oh, have you a doll?" He did not even turn his head to look at her.

She was chilled. She felt the disappointment, that his quick smile had lightened, return upon her. She hardly noticed the rise of the curtain on the second little play, and the singing voices did not reach her with any poignancy. She was vaguely aware of movements in the box--of Harry's coming in, of Clara's little rustle making room for him, of the shift of Ella's chair away from the business of listening, toward him, and her husky whisper going on with some prolonged tale of dull escapade; but to Flora they all made only a ba.n.a.l background for the brooding silence of her companion. He had thrown his mood over her until she was ready to doubt even the potency of her talisman to counteract it.

She felt of the stone. She drew off her glove and tried to look at it in the dim light, but couldn't get a gleam out of it. She was as impatient for the lights to go up that she might secretly be cheered by its wonder, as she had been that afternoon to get back from the luncheon, and make sure it was still in the drawer. She must see it in spite of Clara at her right hand, whose little chiseled profile might turn upon her at any moment a full face of inquiry.

She held her left hand low in the shadow of her chair; and if, as the lights went up again, there was any change in the sapphire, it was merely a sharper brilliance, as if, like an eye, it had moods, and this was one of its moments of excitement. In its extraordinary l.u.s.ter it seemed to possess a beauty that could not be valued; and she wanted to hold it up to Kerr, to see if she couldn't startle him out of his mood--to see if he wouldn't respond to it, "Yes, there is more in it than you can touch."

She turned to him with the daring flash of timid spirits. It was so sharp a motion that he started instantly from his reverie to meet it, but his alacrity was mechanical. She felt the smile he summoned was slow, as if he returned, from a long distance, a little painfully to his present surroundings.

The _Intermezzo_ was playing, and to speak under the music he leaned so close his shoulder touched her chair. Through that narrow s.p.a.ce between them, almost beneath his eyes, she moved her hand--a gesture so slightly emphasized as to seem accident. He had started to speak, but her motion seemed to stop his tongue. He looked hard at her hand, and something violent in his intentness made her clutch the side of the chair.

Instantly she met his look, so fiercely, cruelly challenging, that it took her like a blow. For a moment they looked at each other, her eyes wide with fright, his narrowed to a glare under the terrible intentness of his brows. What had she done? What threatened her? What could save her in this sea of people? Then, while she gazed, his challenge burned out to a pale hard scrutiny, that faded to no expression at all--or was it that any expression would have seemed dim after the terrible one that had flashed across his face?

She was as shaken as if he had seized hold of her. If he had s.n.a.t.c.hed the ring off her finger she wouldn't have been more shocked. The whole box must be transfixed by him, and the whole house be looking at nothing but their little circle of horror! She was ready for it. She was braced for anything but the fact which actually confronted her--that no one had noticed them at all. It was monstrous that such a thing could have been without their knowing! But there was no face in all the orchestra, the crowded galleries, or the tiers of boxes to affirm that anything had happened; no face in their own box had even stirred, but Clara's, and that had merely turned from profile to the full, faintly inquiring, mild, and palely pink in the warm reflections of the red velvet curtains.

And what could Clara have seen, if she had seen at all, but Flora a little paler than usual with a hand that trembled; and what worse could Clara conjecture than that she was being silly about Kerr? She turned slowly toward him, and looked at him with a courage that was part of her fear. But wasn't she, in a way, being silly about Kerr? What had become of his expression that had threatened her? There was nothing left of it but her own violent impression--and the longer Kerr sat there, talking from her to Clara, from Clara to Judge Buller, his eyes keeping pace with his light conversational flights, the less Flora felt sure he had ever fixed her with that intensity.

And yet the thing had actually happened. Its evidence was before her. He had been silent. Now he was talking. He had been absent. Now she thought she had never seen him more vividly concerned with the moment. Yet for all his cool looks and diffuse talk around the box, she felt uneasily that his concern was pointed at her, and that he would never let her go.

He only waited for the cover of the last act to come back to her single-handed.

She would have deflected his attack, but it was too quick, too unexpected for her to do more than sit helpless, and let him lift up her left hand, delicately between thumb and finger, as if in itself it was some rare, fine curio, and, bending close, contemplate the sapphire unwinkingly. She had an instant when she thought she must cry out, but how impossible in the awful publicity of her place--a pinnacle in the face of thousands! And after the first fluttered impulse came a certain rea.s.surance in such a frank and trivial action. For all its intensity, how could it be construed otherwise than a lively if unconventional interest? It must have been her own fancy which had discerned anything more than that in his first look at her. And yet, when he had laid her hand lightly back, and readjusted his monocle, and looked out, away from her, across the black house, she didn't know whether she was more rea.s.sured or troubled because he had not spoken a word. Yet the next moment he looked around at her.

"We shan't meet every evening in such a way as this," he said, and left the statement dangling unanswerable between them. It sounded portentous--final. She wondered that in the middle of her fear it could strike such a sharp note of regret in her. She knew she would regret not meeting him again; and yet she shrank from the thought she could still want to meet him. By one look her whole feeling of sympathy, of reliance, of admiration, that had flowed out to him so naturally she had scarcely been aware of it, had been troubled and mixed with fear. She couldn't answer. She could only look at him with a reflection of her trouble in her face.

"Are you surprised that I thought of that?" he inquired. "It's not so odd as you seem to think that I should want to see you again. I don't want to leave it to chance; do you?" He shot the question at her so suddenly, with such a casual eye, and such dry gravity of mouth, that he had her admission out of her before she realized the extent of its meaning. And the way he took that admission for granted, and overlooked her confusion, made her feel that for the sake of whatever he was after he was intentionally ignoring what it did not suit his convenience to see. She knew he must have seen; that every moment while she had changed and fluttered his eye had never left her.

"Then when are you at home?" he asked her; and by his tone, he conveyed the impression that he was only making courteous response to some invitation she had offered him; though, when she thought, she had not offered it, he had got it out of her. He had got it by sheer impertinence. But none the less he had it. She couldn't escape him there.

She answered somewhat stiffly: "Fridays, second and fourth."

He looked at her with a humorous twist of mouth. "What? So seldom?"

She was impotent if he wouldn't be snubbed; but at the worst she wouldn't be cornered. "Oh, dear, no--but people who come at other times take a chance."

"Does that mean that I may take mine to-morrow?"

He was pressing her too hard. Why was he so anxious to see her, as he had not been the first night or yesterday, or even ten minutes ago? She, who, ten minutes ago, would have been glad, now was doing her best to put him off. She was silent a moment, considering the conventions, and then, like him, she abandoned them. Without a word she turned away from him. Whatever she said, he had her. But, if she said nothing and still he came to-morrow, whatever she did then, he would have to take the consequences of his insistence. Her only desire now was to evade him, lest he should force her out of her non-committal att.i.tude. She wanted to shield herself from further pursuit.

She couldn't escape yet, for the figures on the stage were still gesticulating and trilling, and the people around her, in the small inclosure where she sat, hemmed her in so that she could no more move away from Kerr than if she had been that impaled specimen he had made her feel at their first meeting. The most she could do was to turn away, but even thus, with her eyes averted and her ears full of Ella's voice, she was still acutely aware of him, sitting looking straight before him across the black house with a face worn, wary, weathered to any catastrophe, and such an air of being alertly fixed on something a long way off, that her silence made no more difference to him than her flutterings and her rudeness. And yet she knew he was only waiting; waiting his chance to get at her again and make her commit herself; and that, she was determined, should not happen.

What had already happened, through its very violence, had left an impression like a dream. It seemed unreal, and yet it had made her forget everything else--the stage, the people around her, and even the very sapphire that had generated her inexplicable situation. She drew her glove over the ring. The lights were imminent. It would be hard to hide the great flash of the jewel. And besides, she didn't trust it. She couldn't tell in what direction it might not strike out a spark of horror next.

The rustle of final departure was all over the house. The people in the box were stirring and beginning to stand up; and Flora saw Kerr turn and look at her. She wanted some one to stand between herself and Kerr, and it was to Harry that she turned; not alone that he was so large and adequate, but because she thought she saw in him an inclination to step into that very place where she wanted him. She saw he was a little sullen, and though she didn't suspect him quite of jealousy, she wondered if he had not a right to blame her for the appearance of flirtation that she and Kerr must have presented. Then how much more might he blame her for what she had actually done--for deliberately showing the sapphire to Kerr! The very thought of it frightened her. She knew she was rattling to Harry all the while he fetched her cloak and put it on her, and she was glad now of that ability she had cultivated in herself of making a smooth crust of talk over her seething feelings.

She talked the harder, she even took hold of Harry's arm to be sure of keeping him there between her and what she was afraid of, as they came out on the sidewalk and stood waiting in the windy night for the approach of their carriage lights.

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 hoa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sailed 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 compa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 sh.o.r.e. 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.