The Coast of Chance Part 27

It made Flora start, but she met it gallantly. "Because he won't. I shall have to make him."

"You!" For a moment Flora knew that she was preposterous in Mrs.

Herrick's eyes--and then that she was pathetic. Her companion was looking at her with a sad sort of humor. "My dear, are you sure that that is your responsibility?"

Flora's answering smile was faint. "It seems as strange to me as it seems absurd to you, but I think I have done something already."

"Are you sure, or has he only let you think so? We have all at some time longed, or even thought it was our duty, to adjust something when it would have been safer to have kept our hand off," Mrs. Herrick went on gently.

"Oh, safer," Flora breathed. "Oh, yes; indeed, I know. But if something had been put into your hands without your choice; if all the life of some one that you cared about depended on you, would you think of being _safe_?" Flora, leaning forward, chin in hand, with shining eyes, seemed fairly to impart a reflection of her own pa.s.sionate concentration to the woman before her.

Mrs. Herrick, so calm in her reposeful att.i.tude, calm as the old portrait on the wall behind her, none the less began to show a curious sparkle of excitement in her face. "If I were sure that person's life _did_ depend on me," she measured out her words deliberately. "But that so seldom happens, and it is so hard to tell."

"But if you were sure, sure, sure!" Flora rang it out certainly.

Mrs. Herrick in her turn leaned forward. "Ah, even then it would depend on him. And do you think you can make a man do otherwise than his nature?"

"You think I should fail?" Flora took it up fearlessly. "Well, if I do, at least I shall have done my best. I shall have to have done my best or I can never forgive myself."

"I see," Mrs. Herrick sighed. "But it sounds to me a risk too great for any reward that could come of its success." She thought. "If you could tell me more." Then, as Flora only looked at her wistfully and silently: "Isn't there some one you can confide in? Not Mrs. Britton?"

"Clara? Oh, no; never!" Flora startled Mrs. Herrick with the pa.s.sionate repudiation.

"But could not Mr. Cressy--" and with that broken sentence several things that Mrs. Herrick had been keeping back looked out of her face.

Flora answered with a stare of misery. "I know what you must be thinking--what you can not help thinking," she said, "that the whole thing is unheard-of--outrageous--especially for a girl so soon to--to be--" She caught her breath with a sob, for the words she could not speak. "But there is nothing in this disloyal to my engagement, even though I can not speak of it to Harry Cressy; and nothing I hope to gain for myself by what I am trying to do. If I succeed it will only mean I shall never see him--the other one--again."

Mrs. Herrick rose, in her turn beseeching. "Oh, I can't help you go into it! It is too dubious. My dear, I know so much better than you what the end may mean."

"I know what the end may mean, and I can't keep out of it."

"But I can not go with you." There was a stern note in Mrs. Herrick's voice.

Flora looked around the room, the sunny windows, the still shadows, the tall, monotonous clock, as if this were the last glimpse of peace and protection she would ever have. She rose and put out her hand.

"I'm afraid I didn't quite realize how much I was asking of you. You have been very good even to listen to me. It's right, I suppose, that I should go alone."

Mrs. Herrick looked at her in dismay. "But that is impossible!" Then, as Flora turned away, she kept her hand. "Think, think," she urged, "how you will be misunderstood."

"Oh, I shall have to bear that--from the people who don't know."

"Yes, and even from the one for whom you are spending yourself!"

Flora gave her head a quick shake. "He understands," she said.

"My dear, he is not worth it."

Flora turned on her with anger. "You don't know what he is worth to me!"

Mrs. Herrick looked steadily at this unanswerable argument. Her hold on Flora's hand relaxed, but she did not quite release it. Her brows drew together. "You are quite sure you must go?"

Flora nodded. She was speechless.

"Did Mrs. Britton know you were coming to me?"

"No. She doesn't even know that I am going out of town. She must not,"

Flora protested.

"Indeed she must. You must not place yourself in such a false position.

Write her and tell her you are going to San Mateo with me."

"Oh, if you would!" Tears sprang to Flora's eyes. "But will you, even if I can't tell you anything?"

"I shall not ask you anything. Now write her immediately. You can do it here while I am getting ready."

She had taken authoritative command of the details of their expedition, and Flora willingly obeyed her. She was still trembling from the stress of their interview, and she blinked back tears before she was able to see what she was writing.

It had all been brought about more quickly and completely than she had hoped, but it was in her mind all the while she indited her message to Clara, that Kerr, for whom it had been accomplished, was not yet informed of the existence of the scheme, or the part of guest he was to play. Yet she was sure that if she asked he would be promptly there. She wrote to him briefly:

At San Mateo, at the Herricks'. I want you there to-night. I have made up my mind.

As she was sealing it she started at a step approaching in the hall. She had wanted to conceal that betraying letter before Mrs. Herrick came back. She glanced quickly behind her, and saw standing between the half-open folding doors, the slim figure of a girl--slimmer, younger even than the one who had pa.s.sed her at the gate, but like her, with the same large eyes, the same small indeterminate chin. Just at the chin the likeness to Mrs. Herrick failed with the strength of her last generation--but the eyes were perfect; and they gazed at Flora wondering. With the sixth sense of youth they recognized the enactment of something strange and thrilling.

Another instant and Mrs. Herrick's presence dawned behind her daughter--and her voice--"Why, child, what are you doing there?"--and her hands seemed apprehensive in their haste to hurry the child away, as if, truly, in this drawing-room, for the first time, something was dangerous.

XXI

THE HOUSE OF QUIET

The day which had dawned so still and gloomy was wakening to something like wildness, threatening, brightening, gusty, when they stepped out of the train upon the platform of the San Mateo station. Clouds were piling gray and castle-like from the east up toward the zenith, and dark fragments kept tearing off the edges and spinning away across the sky.

But between them the bright face of the sun flashed out with double splendor, and the thinned atmosphere made the sky seem high and far, and all form beneath it clarified and intense.

There upon the narrow platform Mrs. Herrick hesitated a moment, looking at Flora. "What train do you want to meet?" she asked.

Flora stood perplexed. "I hardly know. You see I can't tell how soon my letter would reach--would be received."

"Then we would better meet them all," the elder woman decided.

They drove away into the face of the wet, fresh wind and flying drops of rain. Flora, leaning back in the carriage, looked out through the window with quiet eyes. The spirited movement of the sky, the racing of its shadows on the gra.s.s, the rolling foliage of the trees, seen tempestuous against flying cloud, were alike to her consoling and inspiring. She had never felt so free as now, driving through the fitful weather, nor so safe as with this companion who was sitting silent by her side. She was driving away from all her complications. She was retreating to a fresh stronghold, where her conflict would be a duel hand to hand, and where the outside forces, which had hara.s.sed her and threatened ign.o.bly to down her antagonist with a stab in the back, could be held at bay.

Already she was looking toward the house which she had never seen as her own kindly castle; and the generous opening of its gate--old granite crowned with rose of sharon--did not disappoint her. The house was hidden in the swelling trees, but the drive winding beneath them gave glimpses through of lawns, of roses wreathing scarletly the old gray fountain basin, of magnolia and acacia, doubly delicate and white and fragile beneath the thunderous sky.

The house, when finally it loomed upon them, with its irregular roofs topped by curious square turrets, with its tremendous ground floor rambling away in wings on every side, with its deep upper and lower verandas, looked out upon by a mult.i.tude of long French windows, seemed too large, too strangely imposing for a structure of wood. But whatever of original ugliness had been there was hidden now under a splendid tapestry of vines, and Flora, looking up at the rose and honeysuckle that panoplied its front, felt her throat swell for sheer delight.