The Coast of Chance Part 31

All sums had become the same to Flora, even her year's income. As if she were verily afraid Clara might take it back, she turned precipitately to a writing-table. But Clara had risen, and though still pale, in a measure she seemed to have recovered herself.

"Wait. I can't give it to you now. I will meet you here in two hours and bring the picture. You can let me have it then."

"Oh, two hours!" Flora objected.

But Clara was firm. "No, I can't bring it sooner. It will make no difference in your affair." She was panting in her excitement. "In two hours you shall have the picture here. I promise you."

Flora wondered. Depth below depth! She could never seem to get to the bottom of this business. There was only one thing she could count on, and that was Clara's impeccable honor in living up to a bargain. Flora sealed that bargain now. She held out her fluttering slip of paper, still wet with ink.

"Very well, in two hours--but take this now. I would rather you did."

Clara reached the tips of her fingers, touched the paper--and then it was no longer in Flora's hand, and Clara was walking from her across the room.

XXIII

TOUCHE

Left alone, Flora glanced rapidly around her. Now for a sally, now for a dash straight for Kerr. The shortest way was what she wanted. Opening doors lately had led to too many surprises. She pushed aside the long curtains and stepped out through the French window upon the veranda.

Rapidly her eyes swept the garden. Far down between the gray, slim branches of willows at last she made out the flutter of a skirt. She sighed relief to think Mrs. Herrick still at her post, and began to hurry down the broad unshaded drive. Her steps sounded loud on the gravel, and presently to her excited ears they sounded double. Then she realized the truth. Some one else was walking behind her. She thought by not looking over her shoulder she could avoid stopping; but in a moment Harry's voice hailed her. It was still far enough behind for her to hope she could ignore it. She swept on as if she had not heard. Once around the turn of the drive, she would be in sight of succor. She could trust to Mrs. Herrick to manage Harry. She made a little rush around the loop and looked down the long vista of the willows.

A hundred yards distant she saw the two standing. Kerr presented his back, and with his head a little canted forward seemed to listen, absorbed in his companion. But that companion was a smaller figure than Mrs. Herrick, and her veil made an aura of filmy white around her face.

The sight of her was enough to stop Flora short, and in that instant Harry, making a cut across the flower-beds, caught up with her. He stopped as abruptly as she, and gazed with a dismay that surpa.s.sed her own. For an instant she thought he was about to make a dash down the walk for them. Then he caught Flora's hand and pulled her back. There was no help for it, she thought. Her other hand crept downward stealthily and gathered up her swinging pouch of gold. Trembling, she let him drag her back, but when they faced each other behind the plumes and swords of a great pampas clump she was shocked at the emotion in his face; and as if what he had just seen had given the last touch, his voice had risen a key, and between every half-dozen words it broke for breath.

"Look here, Flora," he began; "I know you've been trying to give me the slip ever since night before last. I frightened you then. I didn't mean to, but you had no business to keep the ring after what I told you. No, I'm not going to touch you," as she shrank back against the pampas swords, "but I want you to give it to me, yourself, right here and now."

She looked up into his face, burning fiery in the sun beating down on his bare head. "No, no, Harry; I shan't give it to you. Last time I said I would give it to you for a good reason, but now I wouldn't give it to you for anything."

"You don't know what you're doing," he cried.

"I do; I know as well as you that this is a part of the Crew Idol. I've known it all along, and when the time comes I'm going to give it myself to Mr. Purdie, but not until that time."

Harry pa.s.sed his hand over his face with an inarticulate sound. Then, "You will ruin us!" he choked.

"I shall tell the truth, whatever comes," she exulted. To tell the truth and keep on telling it--that, in her pa.s.sion of relief at speaking out at last, was all she wanted! But Harry fell back. He changed countenance. He recovered himself.

"Look here, Flora; if you do I'm going to leave you. I'm going to leave you to what you've chosen."

She met it steadily. "I'm glad you say so. I've been thinking for days that it would be better so."

"Have you?" he said in a low voice, looking at her earnestly. "Of course, I know the reason of that. I meant it to be different, but now there's no help. I--"

With a motion too quick for her to escape he stooped and kissed her lightly. To that moment she had pitied him, but his touch she loathed.

She thrust him away with both hands. He turned. Without speaking, without looking at her again he walked away. She watched him with a desperate feeling of being abandoned, of losing something powerful and valuable. The faint, thin screech of a locomotive from a station far down the line made him pause, and turn, and gaze under his hand in the strong sun. So for a moment she saw him, a lowering, peering figure moving away from her over the lawn between broad flower-beds. Then he disappeared among the shrubbery.

This encounter, that had stopped her in full open field, had not been the fatal thing she had feared. It had been a peril met that nerved her to a higher courage. Now she could walk gallantly to the most uncertain moment of her life. Between the glimmering willows down the long still avenue she pa.s.sed, her flowing draperies borne backwards as by triumphant airs. The wind of her approach seemed to reach the two still far in front of her.

They turned and watched her drawing nearer, and before she had quite reached them Kerr stretched out his hand as if to help her over a last rough place, and drew her toward him and held her beside him with his fingers lightly clasped around her wrist. She saw that he looked pale, worn, as he had not been last night, and, what struck her most strangely, angry. The hand that held hers shook with the violent pulse that was beating in it. He turned to Clara.

"Will you pardon us, Mrs. Britton?" Then after another patient moment, "Miss Gilsey has something to say to me." Still he made no motion to move away, and at last Clara seemed to understand what was expected of her. She flushed, and in the middle of that color her eyes flashed double steel. For the first time in Flora's memory she was at a loss.

She pa.s.sed them without a word.

Kerr looked after the little brilliant figure, moving daintily away through sun and shadow, with deep disgust in his face. But when he turned to Flora disgust lifted to high severity. It was she who appeared the guilty one, and he the accuser.

"Why didn't you come, last night?"

"I couldn't. _He_ was there, Harry, outside my door."

"In G.o.d's name! What did you tell him?"

"Nothing. We did not speak--but I couldn't get past him!" The suspicion in his face was more than she could bear. "You must believe me--for, if you don't, we're both lost!"

He had her by both wrists, now, and gently made her face him. "I have believed in you to the extent of coming alone to a place I know nothing of, because you wanted me. Now that I am here, what is it you have to say to me?"

"Oh, nothing more than I have said before," she pleaded; "only that, ten times more earnestly."

"You extraordinary child!" At first, he was pure amazement. "You've brought me so far, you've come so far yourself--you've got us both here in such danger, to tell me only this? How could you be so mad--so cruel?"

She had locked her hands in front of her until the nails showed white with the pressure. "It was more dangerous there than here. You don't know what has happened since I saw you. And I thought if you and I could only be alone together, without the fear of _them_ always between us, I could show you, I could persuade you--" Before his look she broke down.

"Well--you see, they followed us--they're here."

"Grant it, they are." He seemed to laugh at them. "You have still your chance. Give everything to me and I can save you still."

"'Save _me_?' Oh, nothing could happen to me so terrible as having you break my heart like this! If I should give the sapphire to you I should lose you--even the thought of you--for ever. Nothing could ever be right with us again! Won't you--" she pleaded, "won't you go?" and lifting her hands, taking his face between them, "Won't you, because I love you?"

He stood steady to this a.s.sault, and smiled down upon her. "Without you and without it I will not budge. Come now, this is the end. I never meant to do another thing."

She covered her face with her hands.

"Come, come." His voice was urging her, now very gentle. "It's more for your sake than for the jewel now." And his arm around her shoulders was gently forcing her to walk beside him not toward the drive, but away into the tree-grown sheltered wing of the garden. By interlacing paths, from the tremulous gray willows under the somber, clashing eucalyptus spears, under dark wings of cypress they were moving. She was bracing in every nerve against the unnerving of his presence.

It had been always so. Even across the distance of a room the mere sight of him had had for her the power to summon those wild spirits of the soul and body that turn reason to a vapor. And now so close, with his arm around her, that same power she had felt when she saw him first, the power that had made her come out and be herself then, the power that had overwhelmed her in the little restaurant, was leagued against her again to make her do this one more thing, which she wouldn't do. Never, never! Despairing, she wondered that such an evil motive could have such strength.

"Where have you got it now?" she heard him asking, and she pointed downward toward where the pouch at her knee was swinging to and fro.

"Take it up, then," and like a hypnotized creature she gathered it into her hand. But, once she had it, she held it clenched against him.

"You're going to give it to me," he prompted, "aren't you?--aren't you?"

and looking steadily in her face his hand shut softly on her wrist, and held out her clenched hand in front of her. And still they walked, slowly. Like a pendulum the long gold chain swung from her clenched fingers. To the tree-top birds they seemed as quiet as two lovers speaking of their wedding-day. She felt her tension give way in this quiet--her hand relax.

"Dearest." The word brought up her eyes to his with a start of tenderness. "Open it," he said, and her hand, involuntarily, sprung the pouch wide. They stared together into it. The little hollow golden sh.e.l.l was empty.

For a moment it held her incredulous. Then, faint and sick, all the foundations of her faith reeling, she slowly raised her eyes to him in accusation. She was not ready for the terrible sternness in his.

"Have you lied to me?" he asked in a low voice. "Have you given it to Cressy?"