"If I only _knew_! If I only were sure!" She locked her fingers closer, staring hard. If it had been the whole Crew Idol, the undismembered G.o.d himself, then there would have been less terror, and one plain thing to do. She looked hard at the sapphire setting, as if she hoped to discover upon its brilliance some tell-tale trace of old soft gold; but there was only one great, gla.s.sy, polished eye, and out of what head it had come, whether from the forehead of the Crew Idol, or from that of some unheralded deity, who was there who could tell her?
She tried to summon a coherent thought, but again it was only a flash out of the darkness.
"Kerr! Why, he knows more than I." She looked at this stupidly for a moment as if it were too large to take in at once. Of course he must have known! Why hadn"t she thought of that before? Why hadn"t she thought of it that first moment, when he had turned on her in the box with such terrible eyes? She drew in her shoulders, looking all around at the dim corners of the room which the lamp flame failed to penetrate.
Behind her present lively fear a second shadow was growing, more dim, more formless, more vast and dubious.
What series of circ.u.mstances might have led up to Kerr"s knowledge she could not dream. He was one of whom nothing was incredible. From the first moment his face had shot into the light, from the moment she had heard his voice, like color in the level voices around him, she had been bewildered by his variety. He had caught her up to the clouds. He had whirled her along dubious levels, and more than once he had shown her that the lines she had supposed drawn so sharply between this and that could no more be discerned than meridians on green earth.
If she had noticed any earnestness in him, it was his relish, his gusto for the whole of life. He had no theory to set up. Just as it was he took it. If he persisted in requiring people to be themselves it was for no good to themselves, but for the pleasure he himself got out of it. If he made society into a little ball, and threw it away, it was only to show it could be done.
And where, she asked herself in a summing up, might such a man not be found? But there were few places, indeed, in even the broadest plain of possibility, which could hold knowledge of so particular and piercing a quality as his look had implied. There had been so much more than curiosity or surprise in it. She could hardly face the memory of it, so cruelly it had struck her. There was no doubt in her mind that Kerr had seen the ring. Somewhere in the pageant of his experience he had met it, known it--but what he wanted of it--
She broke off that thought, and looked long at the little flame of the lamp. It was strange, but there was no doubt in her mind but that he wanted it. That had been the strongest thing in his look. She felt herself picking her way along a very narrow path, one step over either edge of which would plunge her chasms deep. Now she s.n.a.t.c.hed at a frail sapling to save herself. The fact that Kerr knew her stone didn"t prove it belonged to the Crew Idol. And if it didn"t--if it wasn"t the crown of the heathen G.o.d, then her whole dreadful supposition fell to pieces.
But she hadn"t proved it and the simplest way was just to ask Kerr. Her chance for that was the chance he had fought so hard for, the chance of their meeting the next day.
She hadn"t wanted that meeting when he had first asked her for it in the box. She had feared it then, and all the more she feared it now, because now she would have to do more than defend herself. She would take the offensive; she would make the attack, now that she had a question to ask. Why should the thought of it frighten her? If this was not the Crew sapphire she would be no worse off than she had been. If it was, her course would be clear. It seemed it should be simple, it should be easy to face Kerr with her question; but she was possessed by the apprehension that it would be neither. Would the question she had to ask be a safe thing to give him? And if she dared undertake it and should be overpowered after all--then everything would be lost.
What the "everything" was she feared to lose would not come clear to her. The only thing that did emerge definitely from the agitation of her mind was the knowledge that this question that had been thrust upon her made it tenfold more difficult to meet Kerr. And yet, to refuse to meet him now would be as cowardly as throwing the ring out of the window.
X
A LADY UNVEILED
She wakened in the morning to some one knocking. She thought the sound had been going on for a long time, but, now she was finally roused, it had stopped. This was odd, for no one came to her in the morning except Marrika, and it was tiresome to be thus imperatively beset before she was half awake. Now the knocking came again with a level, unimpatient repet.i.tion, and she called, "Come in!" at which Clara, in a pale morning gown, promptly entered--an apparition as cool and smooth and burnished as if she had spent the night, like a French doll, in tissue paper.
Clara"s coming in in the morning was an unheard-of thing. Flora was taken aback.
"Why, Clara!" She was blank with astonishment. She sat up, flushed and tumbled, and still blinking. "I hope I didn"t keep you knocking long."
"Oh, no, indeed; only three taps." Clara looked straight through Flora"s astonishment, as if there had been no such thing in evidence. She drew up a chair and sat down beside the bed. It was a rocking-chair, but it did not sway with her calm poise. In the fine finish of her morning attire, with her hands placidly folded on her knee, she made Flora feel taken at a disadvantage, thus scarcely awake, disheveled and all but stripped. But Clara, if she looked at anything but Flora"s eyes, looked only at her hands, one and then the other as they lay upon the coverlet.
"It isn"t so very late," she said, "but I have ordered your breakfast. I thought you would want it if you had that ten-o"clock appointment; and there is something I want to ask you before you go out." Flora was conscious of a little apprehension. "It"s about that place you talked of taking for the summer." She felt vaguely relieved, though she had had no actual grounds for antic.i.p.ating an awkward question. "I came upon something in the oddest way you can imagine," Clara pursued her subject.
"Had you any idea the Herricks were in straits?"
"The young Herricks?"
"Oh, no! The old Herricks, _the_ Herricks, Mrs. Herrick whom you so much admire! Of course, one isn"t told; but they must be, to be willing to let the old place."
"Not the San Mateo place?" said Flora, with a stir of interest. She felt as astonished as if some Confucian fanatic had set up his joss at auction.
Clara complacently nodded.
"Mrs. Herrick spoke to me herself. They don"t want any publicity about it, but she had heard that we were looking, and she did me the favor"--Clara smiled a little dryly--"of telling me first."
Flora looked reflective. "I"ve never seen it, but they say it"s beautiful."
"It is, in a way," Clara grudgingly admitted, "but it isn"t new; and the ridiculous part is that she will let it only on condition that it shall not be done over. It is in sufficiently good shape, but it stands now just as Colonel Herrick furnished it forty years ago."
"Why, I should love that!" Flora frankly confessed, and gave a wistful glance at the walls around her, wondering how long before the soft, dark bloom of time, of use and wont, should descend on their crude faces.
"Well," Clara conceded, "at any rate we know it"s genuine, and that"s a consolation. The number of imitations going about and the way people pick them up is appalling! While I was getting that rug for you at Vigo"s yesterday, Ella Buller came in and bought three imitation Bokharas, with the greatest enthusiasm. She buys quant.i.ties, and she"s always taken in. It is enough to make one nervous about the people one sits next to at dinner there. One can not help suspecting them of being some of Ella"s bargains. I wonder, now, where she picked up that Kerr."
This finale failed to take Flora off her guard. "At any rate, he is odd enough to be genuine," she said with a gleam of malice.
"Oh, no doubt of that," Clara mildly a.s.sented, "but genuine what?"
"Why, gentleman at large," said Flora, and quickly wanted to recall it, for Clara"s glance seemed to give it a double significance. "I mean,"
she added, "just one of those chronic travelers who have nothing else to do, and whose way must be paved with letters of introduction"--she floundered. "At least, that was the idea he gave of himself." She broke off, doubly angry that she had tried to explain Kerr, and tried to explain herself, when the circ.u.mstances required nothing of the sort.
She was sure Clara had not missed her nervousness, though Clara made no sign. Her eyes only traveled a second time to Flora"s hands, as if among the flare of red and white jewels she was expecting to see another color. To Flora"s palpitating consciousness this look made a perfect connection with Clara"s next remark.
"At least his manners are odd enough! There was a minute last night when he was really quite startling."
Flora felt a small, warm spot of color increasing in the middle of each cheek. She drew a long breath, as if to draw in courage. Then Clara had really seen! That smooth, blindish look of hers, last night, had seen everything! And here she was owning up to it, and affably offering herself as a confidante; and for what reason under the sun unless to find out what it was that had so startled Kerr? Flora felt like crying out, "If you only knew what that thing may be, you would never want to come nearer to it!"
"I am afraid he annoyed you, Flora."
The girl looked into the kindly solicitude of Clara"s face with a hard, almost pa.s.sionate incredulity. Was that really all Clara had supposed?
"These Continentals," she went on, now lightly swaying to and fro in her chair, "have singular notions of American women. They take us for savages, my dear."
"Then isn"t it for us to show them that we are more than usually civilized? I can"t run away from him like a frightened little native."
"Of course not; but that is where I come in; it"s what I"m for--to get rid of such things for you." That small, cool smile made Flora feel more than ever the immature barbarian of her simile. Clara sat throwing the protection of her superior knowledge and capability around her, like a missionary garment; but Flora could have laughed with relief. Then Clara merely supposed Kerr had been impertinent. Her little invasion had been really nothing but pure kindness and protection; and Flora couldn"t but feel grateful for it. Last night she had thought herself so absolutely alone; and here was a friend coming forward again, and stepping between her and the thing above all others she was helpless about--the real world.
Clara had risen, and stood considering a moment with that same sweet, impersonal eye which Flora found it hardest to comprehend.
"What I mean," she explicitly stated, "is that if he should undertake to carry out his preposterous suggestion, and call this afternoon, I am quite ready, if you wish, to take him off your hands."
This last took Flora"s breath away. It had not occurred to her that Clara had overheard. It shocked her, frightened her; and yet Clara"s way of stating the fact, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, made Flora feel that she herself was in the wrong to feel thus. For, after all, Clara had been most tactful, most considerate and delicate in conveying her knowledge, not hinting that Flora could have been in the slightest degree responsible for Kerr"s behavior; but simply sweetly taking it for granted that they, of course, were banded together to exclude this outlander. Under her sense of obligation, and what she felt ought to be grat.i.tude, Flora floundered for words.
"You"re very kind," she managed to get out; and that seemed to leave her committed to hand Kerr over, tied hand and foot, when she wasn"t at all sure she wanted to.
"Then shall I tell Mrs. Herrick that you will consider the house?" said Clara, already in the act of departure. "She is to call to-day to go into it with me more thoroughly. Thus far we"ve only played about the edges."
Her eyes strayed toward the dressing-table as she pa.s.sed it, and as she reached the door she glanced over the chiffonier. It was on the tip of Flora"s tongue to ask if she had mislaid something, when Clara turned and smiled her small, tight-curled smile, as if she were offering it as a symbol of mutual understanding. Curiously enough, it checked Flora"s query about the straying glances, and made her wonder that this was the first time in their relation that she had thought Clara sweet.
But there was another quality in Clara she did not lose sight of, and she waited for the closing of a door further down the hall before she drew the sapphire from under her pillow.
With the knocking at the door her first act had been to thrust it there.
The feeling that it was going to be hard to hide was still her strongest instinct about it; but the morning had dissipated the element of the supernatural and the horrid that it had shown her the night before. It seemed to have a clearer and a simpler beauty; and the hope revived in her that its beauty, after all, was the only remarkable thing about it.
Her conviction of the night before had sunk to a shadowy hypothesis. She knew nothing--nothing that would justify her in taking any step; and her only chance of knowing more lay in what she would get out of Kerr; for that he knew more about her ring than she, she was convinced. She was afraid of him, yet, in spite of her fear, she had no intention of handing him over to Clara. For on reflection she knew that Clara"s offer must have a deeper motive than mere kindness, and she had a most unreasonable feeling that it would not be safe. She felt a little guilty to have seemed to take her companion"s help, while she left her so much at sea as to the real facts. But, after all, it was Clara who had forced the issue.
She thought a good deal about Clara while she was dressing. A good many times lately she had looked forward to the fall, the time of her marriage, when their rather tense relationship would be ended. This house in the country, which was to be her last little bachelor fling, was to be Clara"s last commission for her.