The Coast of Chance Part 25

It was Clara who spoke to her, past Harry's blank astonishment. "Why, we don't mind waiting a few moments more while you dress."

"I shan't have to dress." Such a statement Flora felt must amaze even Shima, waiting like an image on the threshold of the dining-room. But if these people were waiting to be amazed she felt herself equal to amazing them to the top of their expectations.

"Oh, but at least go up and let Marrika give you some pins," Clara protested, hurrying forward as if fairly to drive her.

"Thank you, no, this will do," Flora said. On one point she was quite clear. She wasn't going to leave those two together for a moment to discuss her plight; not till she could first get at Harry alone. Then and there she turned to the mirror and with her combs began to catch back and smooth the disorder of her hair, seeing all the while Clara's reflection hovering perturbed and vigilant in the background of her own.

While her hands were busy seeming to accommodate Clara, her mind was marshaled to Clara's outwitting. The only thing to do was to tell nothing. Let Clara spend her time in guessing. Unless by some wild chance she had seen Kerr in the garden she couldn't come near the truth of what had happened. But what was to be done with Harry? Harry was too close to her to be ignored. Her att.i.tude toward him had undergone a change. In the moment in the red room, when she had seen him break the one feeling that had held her to him, the feeling of awe and respect had evaporated. She felt that it was quite impossible now for them to go on on the same footing; yet, as long as she kept the sapphire she must somehow manage to keep up an appearance of it. She must tell him something.

At that dreadful dinner, where she sat a conscious frustrater of these two silent ones, glancing at Harry's face, she knew that if she didn't attack she would be attacked by him. It was here in the midst of the noiseless pa.s.sings of Shima, watching Harry's suspicious glances flashing across the table at her strange disorder, that the idea occurred to her of a way out of it. She was bold enough to try a daring thrust at the mystery. If ever a hunter was to be led off on a false scent, Harry was that one. She was amazed at the sudden, fearless impulse that had sprung up in her. She wasn't even afraid to say to him under Clara's nose, "Harry, I want you to myself after dinner. Come up into the garden study."

He was very willing to follow her. She thought she detected in his alacrity something more than curiosity or concern. It seemed almost as if Harry was ashamed of that scene in the red room, and anxious to make it up with her. He even tried before they had reached the head of the stairs. "Oh, Flora--I say, Flora, I--"

But an explanation between them was the last thing she wanted just then.

She fairly ran, leaving him panting in the wake of her airy skirts.

For the first time since the thing began Clara was left out completely.

Flora knew she was even left out of a possibility of listening at the keyhole. For the bright, tight, little room into which Harry followed her was approached by a square entry and a double door. The room itself overhung the garden as a ship's deck overhangs the sea. Leather books and long red curtains were the note of it. She and Harry had often been here together before. Harry had made love to her here, and she had found it pleasurable enough. But the fact that she could recall it now with distaste made this familiar surrounding seem strange, and they themselves strangest of all.

He hadn't got his breath. He had hardly shut the door on them before she began. "Well, something has happened." She had his attention. His other purpose was arrested. "Oh, something extraordinary. I would have told you on the spot, only I thought you would rather Clara didn't know it."

"I?" That left him staring. "What have I to do with it?"

At this she gave him a long look. "It was through you he ever had the chance of seeing me. I mean the blue-eyed Chinaman. He has followed me all the evening. He followed me here to the very door." Flora's array of facts fell so fast, so hard, so pointed, that for a moment they held him speechless in the middle of the room.

Any fleeting suspicion she might have had of his complicity in the Chinaman's pursuit vanished. He showed plain bewilderment. For a moment he was more at sea than herself. The next she saw the shadow of a thought so disturbing that it sharpened his ruddy face to harshness. He stepped toward her. "What did he say to you?" He loomed directly above her, threatening.

"Nothing. He didn't say anything. But I know he followed me quite to the house, for I saw his shadow all the way down the hill."

Harry still breathed quickly. "Where--how did he come across you?"

She'd been prepared for that question.

"I was driving down Sutter Street and he saw me at the carriage window."

Harry stood tense, poised, catching everything as she tossed it off; then as if all at once he felt the full weight of the burden, "Lord!" he said, and let himself down heavily into a chair. It was plain in his helpless stare that he knew exactly what it all meant. Laying her hands on the high chair-arms, leaning down so that she could look into his face, Flora made her thrust.

"What do you think he wants?" she gently asked. It was as if she would coax it out of him. His answer was correspondingly low and soft.

"It's that d.a.m.ned ring."

She heard her secret fear spoken aloud with such a.s.surance that she waited, certain at the next moment Harry's voice would people the silence with all the facts that had so far escaped her. But when, after a moment of looking before him he did speak, he went back to the beginning, which they both knew.

"You know he didn't want to part with it in the first place."

"Yes, yes; but he did," Flora insisted.

"Well," he answered quickly, "but that was before--" He caught himself and went on with a scarcely perceptible break: "He may have had a better offer for it since."

He couldn't have put it more mildly, and yet that temperate phrase brought back to her in a flash a windy night full of raucous voices and the great figures in the paper that had covered half a page--the reward for the Crew Idol. Could it be that--that sum so overwhelming to human caution and human decency which Harry had cloaked by his grudging phrase "some better offer"? What else could he mean? And what else could the blue-eyed Chinaman mean by his strange pursuit of her?

"Some one must have wanted it awfully," Flora tried again, keeping step with his mild admission.

Harry covered her with an impressive stare. "There's something queer about that ring," he nodded to her. He was going to tell her at last!

She gazed at him in expectation, but presently she realized that nothing more was coming. He had stopped at the beginning. She tried to urge him on.

"Queer, what do you mean?" She was feigning surprise.

He looked at her cautiously. "Why, you must have noticed it yourself when we were at the shop. And now, to-night, his having followed you."

She could see him hesitate, choosing his words. She knew well enough her own fear of saying too much--but, what was Harry afraid of? Did he suspect her feeling for Kerr? Was that why he was holding back, leaving out, giving her the small, expurgated version of what he knew. She tried again, making it plainer.

"You think the ring is something he ought not to have had; something that belongs somewhere else?"

He looked away from her, around the room, as if to pick up his answer from some of the corners. "Well, anyway, it's lucky we waited about that setting," he said with quick irrelevance. "If you're going to be annoyed in this way you'd better let me have it."

Why hadn't she thought of that! It was what any man might say, after hearing such a story as hers, yet it was the last thing she had thought of, and the last thing she wanted.

"Oh, leave it with me," she quavered, "at least till you're sure!"

"Oh, no!" He gave his head a quick, decided shake. "If something should come out you wouldn't want to be mixed up in it."

"Then why not give it back to the Chinaman?" she tried him.

"Oh, that's ridiculous." He was in a pa.s.sion. His darkening eyes, his swelling nostrils, his aspect so out of proportion to her mild and almost playful suggestion, frightened her. He saw it and instantly his mood dropped to mere irritation. "Oh, Flora, don't make a scene about it. This thing has been on my mind for days--the thought that you had the ring. I was afraid I had no business to let you have it in the first place, and what you've told me to-night has clean knocked me out. I don't know what I'm saying. Come, let me have it; and if there's anything queer about the business, at least we'll get it cleared up."

But, smiling, she retreated before him.

"Why, Flora," he argued, half laughing, but still with that dry end of irritation in his voice, "what on earth do you want to keep the thing for?"

By this time she backed against the window, and faced him. "Why, it's my engagement ring."

He looked at her. She couldn't tell whether he was readiest to laugh or rage.

"You gave it to me for that," she pleaded. "Why shouldn't I keep it, until you give me a real reason for giving it up? If you really know anything, why don't you tell me?" She was sure she had him there; but he burst out at last:

"Well, for a fact, I know it is stolen!" He leaned toward her; and his arms, still flung out with the hands open as argument had left them, seemed to her frightened eyes all ready for her, ready with his last argument, his strength.

Once before she had feared herself face to face with the same threat in the eyes and body of another man, but here, her only fear was lest Harry should get the sapphire away from her. His doing so would dash down no ideal of him. It was mere physical terror that made her tremble and raise her hand to her breast. Instantly she saw how she had betrayed the sapphire again. He had taken hold of her wrist, and, twist as she might, he held it, horribly gentle.

She pressed back against the gla.s.s until she felt it hard behind her.

"Harry," she whispered, "if you care anything, if you ever want me for yours, you'll take your hands away." She meant it; she was sincere in that moment, for all she shrank from him. Her body and mind would not have been too great a price to give him for the sapphire.

But these he seemed to set aside as trivial. These he expected as a matter of course; he was going to have that other thing, too--the thing she had clung to as a man clings to life; and that now, parting from, she would give up not without a struggle as sharp as that with which the body gives up breath. She wrestled. He seemed all hands. He put aside her struggles, her pleadings, as if they were thistle-down.

Then all at once she felt his arm around her neck. She couldn't move her body. She could only turn her head from his hot breath. For a moment he held her, and yet another moment; and then, terrified at what this strange immobility might mean, she raised her eyes and saw he was not looking at her. Though he held her fast he was not conscious of her.

Straight over her head he looked, through the window and down, into the garden. Her eyes followed. It lay beneath, the wonder of its morning aspect all blanched and dim. She saw the silhouette of rose branches in black on the sky. She saw the flowers and bushes all one dull tone. But in the midst of them the oval of the path shone white; and there, as in the afternoon, standing, looking upward, was the dark figure of a man.