"Oh, yes, yes," said the major indulgently. "It will do for young ladies to make romances about. It"ll be a two days" wonder, and then you"ll suddenly find out it"s something very tame indeed."
"Why, have they fixed the suspicion?" said Clara.
There was a restless movement from Kerr.
"No, no, nothing of that sort," said the major quickly.
Harry pa.s.sed his hand through his arm. "May I see you for five minutes, Major?"
The excellent major looked hara.s.sed.
"Suppose we all step up to the house," he suggested. "Why, you"re not going, man?" he objected, for Kerr had fallen back a step, and, with lifted hat and balanced cane, was signaling his farewells.
"Do let us go up to the house," said Clara. "And Mrs. Purdie, won"t you drive up with me? Flora wants to walk."
Flora stood up. She had a confused impression that she had expressed no such desire, and that there was room for three in the landau; but the mental shove that Clara had administered gave her an impetus that carried her out of the carriage before she realized what she was about.
Some one had offered a hand to help her, and when she was on the ground she saw it was Kerr, who had come back and was standing beside her. He was smiling quizzically.
"I feel rather like walking, myself," he said. "Do you want a companion?"
She turned to him with grat.i.tude. "I should be glad of one," she said quickly. She was touched. She had not thought he could be so gentle.
Harry was already moving off up the board walk with the major. The carriage was turning. Kerr looked at the backs of the two women being driven away, and then at Flora. "Very good," he said, raising her parasol; "you are the deposed heir, and I am your faithful servant."
"But indeed I do want to walk," she protested, a little shy at the way he read her case.
"But you didn"t think of it until she gave you the suggestion, eh?" he quizzed.
"She probably had something to say to Mrs. Purdie that--"
"My dear child," he caught her up earnestly, "don"t think I"m criticizing your friend"s motive. I am only saying I saw something done that was not pretty, though really, if you will forgive me--it was very funny."
Flora smiled ruefully. "It must have been--absurd. I am afraid I often am. But what else could I have done?"
He seemed to ponder a moment. "I fancy _you_ couldn"t have done anything different. That"s why I came back for you," he volunteered gaily.
The casual words seemed in her ears fraught with deeper meaning. Her cheeks were hot behind her thin veil. They were strolling slowly up the board walk, and for a moment she could not look at him. She could only listen to the flutter of the fringes of the parasol carried above her head. She felt herself small and stupid. She could not understand what he could see in her to come back to. Then she gave a side glance at him.
She saw an unsmiling profile. The lines in his face were indeed extraordinary, but none was hard. She liked that wonderful mobility that had survived the batterings of experience.
As if he were conscious of her eyes, he looked down and smiled; but vaguely. He did not speak; and she was aware that it was at her appearance he had smiled, as if that only reached him through his preoccupation and pleased him. And since he seemed content with this vague looking, she was content to move beside him silent, a mere image of youth and--since he liked it--of prettiness, with a fleeting color and a gust of little curls blowing out under a fluttering veil.
But what was he thinking about so seriously between those smiling glances? Not her problem, she was sure.
Yet he had stayed for her when he had not meant to stay. He had been anxious to get away since he had first sighted them. Surely he must like her more than he disliked some other member of her party. Or had he simply reached forth out of his kindness to rescue her, as he might have rescued a blind kitten that he pitied? "No," he had said, "_you_ could not have done anything different."
They had almost reached the major"s gate, and it was now or never to find out what he thought of her. She looked up at him suddenly, with inquiring eyes.
"Do you think I am weak?" she demanded.
The lines of his face broke up into laughter. "No," he said, "I think you are misplaced."
She knitted her brows in perplexity, but his hand was on the white picket gate, and she had to walk through it ahead of him as he set it open for her.
Of their party only the two women were in sight waiting on the diminutive veranda. Clara had a mild domestic appearance, rocking there behind the potted geraniums. All the windows were open into the little sh.e.l.l of a house. Trunks still stood in the hall, though the Purdies had been quartered at the Presidio for nine months. From the rear of the house came the sound of bowl and chopper, where the Chinese cook was preparing luncheon, and the major"s man appeared, walking around the garden to the veranda, with a cl.u.s.ter of mint juleps on a copper tray.
In this easy atmosphere, how was it that the thread of restraint ran so sharply defined? Clara and Mrs. Purdie were matching crewels; and, sitting on the top step Flora instructed Kerr as to the composition of the tropical glacier they were drinking. Ten girls had probably so instructed him before, but it would do to fill up the gap. It was so, Flora thought, they were all feeling. Even the carriage, driving slowly round and round the rectangle of officers" row, added its note of restlessness.
Like a stone plumped into a pool the major and Harry reentered this stagnation. They were brisk and buoyant. Harry, especially, had the air of a man who sees stimulating business before him. Immediately all talked at once.
"Now that we"ve got you here, you must all stay to luncheon," Mrs.
Purdie determined.
It looked as if they were about to accept her invitation unanimously, but Harry demurred. He had to be at Montgomery Street and Jackson by one o"clock. "I hoped," he added, glancing at Flora, "that some one was to drive me--part of the way, at least."
Flora, with an unruly sense of disappointment, yet opened her lips for the courteous answer. But Clara was quicker. She rose.
"Yes," she said, "I"ll drive you back with pleasure."
Harry"s glimmer of annoyance was comic.
"I have to be at the house for luncheon," Clara explained to her hostess as she b.u.t.toned her glove, "but there is no reason why Flora shouldn"t stay."
"Oh, I should love to," Flora murmured, not knowing whether she was more embarra.s.sed or pleased at this high-handed dispensation which placed her where she wanted to be.
But the way Clara had leaped at her opportunity! Flora looked curiously at Harry.
He seemed uneasy at being pounced upon, but that might be merely because he was balked of a tete-a-tete with herself. For while Clara went on to the gate with their hostess he lingered a moment with Flora.
"May I see you to-night?"
"All you have to do is to come."
She gave him an oblique, upward glance, and had a pleasant sense of power in seeing his face relax and smile. She had a dance for that evening; but she thrust it aside without regret. For suppose Harry should have something to tell her about the Chatworth ring? She wondered if Clara would get it out of him first on the way home.
The four left on the veranda watched the two driving away with a sudden clearing of the social atmosphere. In vain Flora told herself it was only the relief she always felt in getting free of Clara. For in the return of the major"s elderly blandishments, in Kerr"s kindlier mood, as well as in her own lightened spirits, she had the proofs that, with them all, some tension had relaxed. It seemed to her as if those two, departing, were bearing away between them the very mystery of the Crew Idol.
IV
FLOWERS BY THE WAY
Flora liked this funny little dining-room with walls as frail as box-boards, low-ceiled and flooded with sun. It recalled surroundings she had known later than the mining camp, but long before the great red house. It seemed to her that she fitted here better than the Purdies.
She looked across at Kerr, sitting opposite, to see if perhaps he fitted too. But he was foreign, decidedly. He kept about him still the hint of delicate masquerade that she had noticed the night before. Out of doors, alone with her, he had lost it. For a moment he had been absolutely off his guard. And even now he was more off his guard than he had been last night. She was surprised to see him so unstudied, so uncritical, so humorously anecdotal. If she and the major, between them, had dragged him into this against his will he did not show it. She rose from the table with the feeling that in an hour all three of them had become quite old friends of his, though without knowing anything further about him.
"We must do this again," Mrs. Purdie said, as they parted from her in the garden.