The Coast of Chance Part 29

The words sounded ominous in Flora's ears. She turned away. Was everything to be finished just as she had light enough to move, but before she had a chance?

The sound of spinning wheels on the drive startled her to fresh hope, and sent her hurrying down the stair. It was the phaeton returning from the last train. Through the open door she saw the figure of Mrs. Herrick expectant on the veranda. Then the carriage came into the porte-cochere and pa.s.sed. With a rush she reached the veranda, and stood there looking after it. She wouldn't believe her eyes--she couldn't--that it had returned again empty.

Mrs. Herrick's voice was asking her, "What shall we do? Shall we serve dinner now, or wait a little longer?"

"Oh, it's no use," Flora murmured, "he won't come to-night. He'll never come." She drooped against the tall porch pillar.

"My poor child!" Mrs. Herrick took her pa.s.sive hand. If she read in the profound discouragement of Flora's face that something more had transpired than a mere non-appearance, she did not show it, but waited, alert and quiet, while they gazed together out over the darkening garden.

It was the time of twilight when the sky is so much brighter than the earth. Across the lawns between the bushes from hedge to hedge the veil of the obscuring light was coming in; and through it the avenue of willows marched darkly. Their leaves moved a little. Flora watched the ripple of their tops, clear on the bright sky, and deeper down among mysterious branches there was a sense of movement where the eyes could not see. There was a curious flick, flick, flicker--a progression, a pa.s.sing from the far dark end of the willow avenue toward where it met the vista of the drive. Flora's eyes, absently, involuntarily, followed the movement. She felt Mrs. Herrick's hand suddenly close on hers.

"Is some one coming?"

They clung to each other, peering timorously down the drive. A little gust of wind took the garden, and before the trees had ceased to tremble and whiten a man had emerged from their shadow and was advancing upon them up the middle of the drive.

Flora's heart leaped at sight of him. All her impulse was to fly to meet him, but she felt Mrs. Herrick's hand tighten upon her wrist as if it divined her madness.

His light stick aswing in his hand, his step free and incautious as ever, gray and slender and seeming to look more at the ground than at them, the two women watched him drawing near. His was the seeming of a quiet guest at the quietest of house parties. To meet him Flora saw she must meet him on the high ground of his reserve. As he came under the light of the porte-cochere his look, his greeting, his hand, were first for Mrs. Herrick.

"We were afraid we had missed you altogether," said she.

"It was I who somehow missed your carriage, was hardly expecting to be expected at such an hour."

Flora watched them meeting each other so gallantly with a trembling compunction. Mrs. Herrick, who trusted her, was giving her hand in sublime ignorance. It was vain that Flora told herself she had given warning. She knew she had thrown the softening veil of her spiritual crisis over the ugly material fact. Had she said, "I want you to uphold me while I meet a thief whom I love and wish to protect. He's magnificent in all other ways except for this one obsession," she knew Mrs. Herrick simply would have cried, "Impossible, outrageous!" Yet there they stood together, and as Flora looked at them she could not have told which was of the finer temper. Kerr's bearing was so unruffled that it seemed as if he had flown too high to feel the storm Flora was pa.s.sing through. But when he turned toward her, in spite of himself, there was eagerness in his manner. He looked questioningly at her, as if no time had intervened, as if a moment before he had said to her through the carriage window, "I will give you twenty-four hours," and now her time had come to speak.

Only the thought that time was crowding him into a bag's end gave her courage to vow she would speak that night. Yet not now, while they stood just met in the deepening dusk, in the sweet breath of the early flowers; nor later when they pa.s.sed in friendly fashion, the three of them, through fairy labyrinths of arch and mirror, into the long, high, glistening room, whose round table, spread, seemed dwarfed to mushroom height; nor yet, while this semblance of companionship was between them, and the great proportions of the place lifting oppression, left them as unconscious of walls and roof as though they were met in the open. The clock twice marked the pa.s.sing hour. She had never heard Mrs. Herrick speak so flowingly nor Kerr listen so well, placing his questions nicely to draw out the thread of her theme. Yet Flora guessed his thought must be fixed on their approaching moment, as hers was--on the moment when they should be ready to quit the table and Mrs. Herrick would leave them to themselves.

It was the appearance of the ap.r.o.ned maid that broke their unity. The last course was on the table, the last taste of its pungent fruit essence on their tongues--and what was the girl's errand now? The eye of her mistress was inquiring.

"Some one has come, Mrs. Herrick." The woman's proper formula seemed to fail her. She looked as if she had been frightened.

"Some one?" Mrs. Herrick showed asperity. "What name?"

"He is coming in." As she spoke the girl shrank a little to one side.

With his long coat open, hanging from the armpits, with ruffled hair, and lips apart, and from breathlessness a little smiling, Harry appeared in the doorway. Kerr leaned forward. Mrs. Herrick did not move. She was facing the last arrival and she was smiling more flexibly, more naturally, than Harry; but it was Flora who found the first word.

"You! I--I thought it was Clara." She was struggling for nonchalance, for poise, at this worst blow, so unexpected.

"Clara won't be down," Harry said, advancing. "How d'ye do, Mrs.

Herrick? How d'ye do, Kerr?"

"How d'ye do?" said the Englishman, without rising.

Flora gripped the arms of her chair to keep from springing up in sheer nervous terror. A possible purpose in Harry's coming, that even Mrs.

Herrick's presence would not defer, shot through her mind. Was he alone?

Or were there others--men here for a fearful purpose--waiting beyond in the hall? But Harry had turned his back upon the door behind him with a finality that declared whatever danger had come into the house was complete in his presence.

"I've dined, thanks," he said, but, stripping off his greatcoat, accepted a chair and the gla.s.s of cordial Mrs. Herrick offered him. The ruddy, hard quality of his face, were it divested of its present smile, Flora thought, might well have frightened the maid; but, for all that, it was not so implacable as Kerr's face confronting it. The look with which he met the intrusion had a quality more bitter than the challenge of an antagonist, more jealous than a mere lover's; and that bitterness, that jealousy which was between them came out stingingly through their small pleasantness. It could not be, Flora thought in terror, that Mrs.

Herrick intended to leave these two enemies to each other! Mrs. Herrick had risen; and Flora, following, saw both men, also uprisen, hang hesitatingly, as if unready to be deserted; yet with well-filled gla.s.ses, and newly smoking tobacco, both were caught.

Then Kerr, with a quick dash of his hand, picked up his gla.s.s. "Let us be Continental," he begged, and followed close at Flora's side. Without moving his lips Kerr was speaking. "What does this mean?"

She sensed the anger in his smothered voice, but she dared not look at him.

"I have no idea; but I will see you."

"When?"

Her answer leaped to her mind and her lips at the same moment.

"In the rotunda when the house is quiet."

Harry had followed leisurely in their wake. The flush of haste had subsided in his face, and when the four regrouped themselves in the high, darkly-paneled room, among the low lights, Flora remarked his extraordinary composure. Bitter he might be; but all the nervousness, suspicion, uneasiness, that he had shown of late had vanished. There was a tremendous confidence about him, the confidence of the player who holds cards that must win the game, and sits back waiting for his moment.

But she was ready to laugh at him in his security. He had underestimated his opponent. In spite of him she was to have her meeting with Kerr!

Harry had waited too long to prevent that, whatever he might do afterward. In this inspired moment she felt herself touching conquering heights which before she had only touched in imagination. She felt enough power in herself to move even such a mountain of obstinacy as Kerr. She stole a look at him--a look of glad intelligence. He understood as if she had spoken. They were to meet, while all the house slept fast, to meet for his great renunciation. Then, in the morning, when Harry was ready with whatever move he was holding back, Kerr would be gone. There would be no Kerr--but she must not think of that! She glanced at him again in the thick of the talk, and caught his eye upon her, puzzled, and, she thought, with a glimmer of doubt.

She smiled; and smiled again at the ease with which she rea.s.sured him, merely by looking at him. He should see, in the end, how true she could be!

He was talking tremendously, flinging off fireworks of words, but she was curiously aware that Mrs. Herrick and Harry were looking more at her than at Kerr. She felt herself the dominant spirit. She saw them acknowledge it, swept along by the high tide of her mood that was rising to meet her great decisive moment. Yet on the surface the strong pulse of it appeared as ripples--words, smiles, gay gestures, laughter--rising like the last bubble on a wave's crest. She was not consciously acting; she was inspired by the power of what she concealed and must conceal.

And when she left them it was like a triumphant exit; almost it seemed to her as if she might hear their applause following her.

In the room where, some eight hours before, she and Mrs. Herrick had talked, Flora waited, fully dressed. It had been early when they had separated. The strain of the four together had been terrific; and she was still feeling it, though an hour had pa.s.sed. She was feeling that, now her situation was upon her, she was alone. Mrs. Herrick could only be near her, not with her, and Kerr was still an unknown quant.i.ty--except that he was fire.

And there was Harry, with his terrible certainty, and no apparent thing to account for it. It could not be there were men in the house without the servants remarking it; but in the garden? She peered out upon it.

Only tree shadows moved upon the lawn. Nothing glimmered in the walks or drives. The solitude held her like an enchantment. She listened for the small sounds in the house to cease, for the lights in the lower story to go out, proclaiming all the servants were in bed. Even after the stillness she waited--waited to be sure it was the long stillness.

Finally she crept to the door and opened it boldly wide.

She stood where she was upon the threshold trembling in a cruel fright.

A gas-jet burning far up at the end of the hall, threw a dim light down the pale, pinkish, naked vista, void of furniture, window or curtain; and, leaning against the blank wall almost opposite her door, and directly facing her, was Harry.

Without speaking they looked at each other. He was fully dressed, but lacking his shoes, as she noted in the acuteness of her startled senses.

The furtive suggestion of those shoeless feet struck her with horror--formless, unreasoning. It was like an evil dream to find him there, stolen to her door in the night, waiting outside it without a sound, looking her steadily, hardily in the eye without a word.

She tried to speak, but, with terror sobbing in her throat, the words failed. She made a step forward with a crazy impulse to rush past him.

He straightened, with a quick movement toward her. She recoiled before him, precipitately retreated, closed the door, shot the bolt, and leaned, for faintness, against the wall. She expected each moment to hear him tap. She neither heard a knock nor the sound of soft, departing feet. He was still there! He was on guard! He had had good reason for his terrible certainty! He had foreseen what her plan might be, and she knew he would no more let her get past him down the hall than the turnkey will let the wretched prisoner escape.

The last flicker of her courage died at that thought. All her fine exultation was beaten out by the fact of the brute force outside her door. She could not get to Kerr now. Cowering behind her door she could only fancy him waiting for her in the rotunda while the moments lengthened into hours, each moment distrusting her more.

XXII

CLARA'S MARKET