XIV
COMEDY CONVEYS A WARNING
She stood where he had left her in the open doorway, with the damp eddyof the fog blowing on her. She had had a narrow escape; but after thefirst fullness of her relief there returned upon her again the weight ofher responsibility. There was no slipping out of it now, and it wasgoing to be worse than she had imagined. So much had come out in thelast half-hour that she felt bewildered by it. What Harry had let slipabout Clara alarmed her. What in the world was Clara about? With onewell-aimed observation she had stirred up Harry against Kerr and againstFlora herself. And meanwhile she was running after the Bullers. Twice intwo days, if Harry was not mistaken, and she was even nearing anotherengagement.
After all her fruitless mousings, Clara had too evidently got on thescent of something at last. How much she knew or guessed as yet, Floracould not be sure, but certainly, now, she couldn't let Clara go. Forthat would be turning adrift a dangerous person with a stronger motivethan ever for pursuing her quest, and the opportunity for pursuing itunobserved, out of Flora's sight. Clara was at it even now, and the onlyconsolation Flora had was that Harry, at least, would not play into herhands.
For Harry had a special secret interest of his own. The last ten minutesof their interview had made that plain. His manner, when he had declaredhis intention of taking the ring, had been anything but the manner of acare-free lover merely concerned with pleasing his lady. Then they wereall of them racing each other for the same thing--the thing she held inher possession; and whether she feared most to be felled by a blow fromHarry, or hunted far afield by Kerr, or trapped by Clara, she could nottell. She stood hesitating, looking out into the obscurity of the fog,as if she hoped to read the answer there. Presently she returned to thefact that Shima was waiting to close the door. Half-way across the hallshe paused again, looking thoughtfully down the rose-colored vista ofthe drawing-room, and up at the broad black march of the stair. Vaguemysteries peered at her from every side. Which should she flee from?Which walk boldly up to and dispel?
She went up-stairs slowly. She stood in her dressing-room absentlybefore the mirror. She touched the hard, unyielding stone of the ringunder the thin bodice of her gown. She recalled the morning when she hadgone to get it, before anything had happened and the lure of life hadbeen so exquisite. Now that it had come near--if this indeed were lifethat she was laboring in--it was steep and crabbed, like the brown hillsin summer, far off, like velvet, to climb, plowed ground and stubble.
And yet she didn't wish herself back, but only forward. Now she had noleisure to imagine, to pretend, to enjoy, only the breathless sensethat she must get forward. The chattering clock on her mantel warned herof the passing time and set her hurrying into her walking-gown, her hat,her gloves, as if the object of her errand would only wait for her amoment longer. When, for the second time, she opened the house door, shedidn't hesitate. She descended into the white fog that covered all thecity.
Above her the stone facade of her house loomed huge and pinkish in themist. Her spirits rose with the feeling that she was going adventuringagain, leaving that house where for the last two days she had awaitedevents with such vivid apprehensions. She hurried fast down the damp,glistening pavement, seeing long, dim gray faces of houses glimmer by,seeing figures come toward her through the fog, grow vivid, pass, andhearing at intervals the hoarse, lonely voice of the fog-horn at "TheHeads" reaching her over many intervening hills. She did not feel surewhat she should do at the end of her journey or what awaited her there.She knew herself a most unpractised hunter, she, who, all her life, hadbeen the most artful of quarries. A quarry she was still, but in thischase she had to come out and stalk the facts in order to see which wayto run; if, she told herself in her exhilaration, she decided to run atall.
She turned in at the low gate of imitation grill in front of an enormouswooden mansion, with towers and cupolas painted all a chill slate gray,with fuchsias, purple and red, clambering up the front. She rang, andwas admitted into a hall, ornate and very high, with a wide staircasesweeping down into the middle of it.
The maid looked dubiously at Flora and thought Miss Buller was not athome, but would see. Flora turned into the room on her left and sat downamong the Louis Quinze sofas and potted palms with a feeling that MissBuller was at home, and, for one reason or another, preferred not to beseen. She waited apprehensively, wondering whether Ella was not seeingthe world-in-general, or had really specified against herself. Could itbe that Ella was one of those women whom Harry had alluded to asrunning after Kerr? In the short twenty-four hours every individual helpshe had counted upon had seemed to draw away from her--Kerr, whoseunderstanding she had been so sure of; Clara, whose propriety had neverfailed; Harry, whose comfortable good nature she had so taken forgranted! It seemed as if the sapphire, whose presence she was neverunconscious of, for all she wore it out of sight, had a power like theevil eye over these people. But if it could turn such as Ella againsther, why, the Brussels carpet beneath her might well open and let herdown to deeper abysses than Judge Buller's wine-cellar.
She started nervously at the step of the maid returning. The messagebrought was unexpected. "Miss Buller says will you please walkup-stairs?"
Flora was amazed. That invitation would have been odd enough at anytime, for she and Ella were hardly on such intimate footing. But now shewas ushered up the majestic stair, and from the majestic upper hallabruptly into a wild little cluttered sewing-room, and thence into awilder but more spacious bedroom, large curtains at the windows, largeroses on the carpet, and over all objects in the room a clutter ofmiscellaneous articles, as if Ella's band-boxes, bureaus, andwork-baskets habitually refused to contain themselves.
From the midst of this Ella confronted her, still in her "wrapper" andwith the large puff of her hair a little awry. Under it her face wascuriously pink, a color deepening to the tip of her nose and puffing outunder her eyes.
"Well, Flora," she greeted her guest. "You were just the person I wantedto see. Sit down. No, not there--that's my bird of paradise feather! Oh,no, not there--that's the breakfast. Well, I guess you'll have to sit onthe bed."
Flora swept aside the clothes that streamed across it and thronedherself on the edge of the high, white plateau of Ella's four-poster.Ella, for all her eager greeting, looked upon her friend doubtfully,and Flora recognized in herself a similar hesitation, as if each weretrying to make out, without asking, what thoughts the other harbored.
"I was afraid I shouldn't see you at all," Flora began at last.
"Well, you wouldn't if it hadn't happened to be you," said Ellaparadoxically. "Look at me; did you ever see such a sight?"
"You don't look very well," Flora cautiously admitted. "Why, Ella,you've been crying!"
"Yes, I've been crying," said Ella, mopping her nose, which still showeda tendency to distil a tear at its tip. "And it's perfectly awful to meto think you've been living so long in the same house with her."
Flora murmured breathlessly, "What in the world do you mean?"
"If you don't know, I certainly ought to tell you. I mean Clara," saidElla distinctly.
Flora, sitting up on the edge of the high bed with the tips of herlittle shoes hardly touching the floor, looked at Ella fascinated, herlips a little apart. Ella had so exactly pronounced her own secretthought of Clara. She was breathless to know what had been Clara'sperformance at the Bullers'.
"Of course I've always known she was like that," said Ella, leaning backin her chair with an air of resignation. "She's always gettingsomething. It's awful. It was the same even when we were atboarding-school. I suppose she never did have enough money, though herpeople were awfully nice; but she worked us all for invitations andrides in our carriages, and I remember she got lots through LillieLewis' elder brother, and he thought she was going to marry him, but shedidn't. She married Lulu Britton's father; and I guess she worked himuntil he went under and they found there really was no money. So she'sbeen living on people ever since." Ella rocked gloomily.
"But she does it so nicely," Flora suggested. She still had the feelingthat it was not decent to own up to these most secret facts of people'sfailings.
"Oh, yes, she's a perfect wonder," Ella admitted grudgingly; "look atwhat she's done for you!" Ella's gesticulation was eloquent of how muchthat had been. "But don't you imagine she cares about you any more thanshe cares about me!" Ella began to cry again. "You were an awfully goodthing for her, Flora, and now that you're going to be married she's gotto have something else. But I do think she might have taken somebodybesides papa."
Flora gasped. "'Taken!' Ella, what do you mean?"
"I mean married," said Ella.
"'Married!'" For the time Flora had become a helpless echo.
"Oh, not yet," Ella defiantly nodded. "Not while there's anything leftof me."
Flora stammered. "Oh, Ella, no. Oh, Ella, are you sure?" She felt ahysterical impulse to giggle.
"Sure?" Miss Buller cried. "I should think so! Why, she's simply makinga dead set for him."
This denouement, this climax to her somber expectations, struck Flora assomething wildly and indecently ridiculous. "Why, but it's impossible!"she protested, and began helplessly to laugh.
"Well, I'd like to know why?" Ella snapped. "I'm sure papa is twice asrich as old Britton was, and twice as easy." She went off into sobsbehind her handkerchief.
"Oh, don't, Ella, don't cry!" Flora begged, petting the large expanse ofheaving shoulders. "I didn't mean anything. I was just silly. Of courseit may be that she wants to marry him. But she never has before--atleast, I mean, I don't believe she wants to now. What makes you thinkshe does? What has she done?"
"Well," Ella burst out, "why is she coming here all the time, when shenever used to, and petting papa? Why does she bother to be so agreeableto me when she never was before? Why does she make me ask her todinner, when I don't want to?"
Each question knocked on Flora's brain to the accompaniment of Ella'sfurious rocking. She could not answer them, and Ella's explanation,absurd as it seemed, coming on top of her high expectations, wasn'timpossible. It was like Clara to have more than one iron in the fire;but when Flora remembered the passionate intentness with which Clara haddemolished the order of her room, she couldn't believe that Clara wouldpause in the midst of such pursuit to pounce on Judge Buller.
"Oh, Ella," Flora sympathetically urged, "I don't believe there's reallyany danger. And surely, even if she meant it, Judge Buller wouldn'tbe--"
"Oh, yes, he would," Ella cut her short. "Why, when she came yesterdayhe was just going out, and she went for him and made him stop to tea.Think of it--papa stopping to tea! And he was as pleased as Punch tohave her make up to him. He hasn't the least idea of what she's after.Papa isn't used to ladies. He's always just lived with me."
This astonishing statement looking at Flora through Ella's unsuspectingeyes had nevertheless a pathos of its own. It conjured up a long vistaof harmonious existence which the two, the daughter and the father, hadmade out of their mutual simplicity, and their mutual gusto for thematerial comforts which came comfortably.
"But I'll tell you one thing," Ella ended, still rocking vigorously; "ifshe comes here to-night to dinner when she knows I don't want her Ishall tell her what I think of her, before she leaves this house! See ifI don't."
"Don't do that, Ella," Flora entreated, "that would be awful." She wascertain that such an interview would only end in Clara's making Ellamore ridiculous than she was already. "Let me speak to her. I don't mindat all," she declared bravely, and in a manner truly, though she wasfully aware that speaking to Clara would be anything but a treat.
"Oh, would you?" said Ella eagerly. "I really would be awfully obliged.I hated to ask you, Flora, but I thought perhaps you might be ableto--to, well, perhaps be able to do something," she ended vaguely. "Doyou think you could?"
"I'll speak to Clara to-night," said Flora heroically, "or to-morrow,"she added; "I'm afraid I won't see her to-night."
"Well, I'll let you know if it makes any difference," said Ellahopefully.
Flora knew that nothing either of them could say would make anydifference to Clara, or turn her from the thing she was pursuing; but byspeaking she might at least find out if Judge Buller himself were reallyher object. And Ella's wail of assured calamity, "Papa has always beenso happy with me," touched her with its absurd pathos.
She kissed Ella's misty cheek at parting. It wasn't fair, she thoughtremorsefully, for people like the Bullers to be at large on the sameplanet with people like Clara--and herself--and--and like--Her thoughtsran off into the fog. At least, thank heaven, it was the judge Clarawas trailing and not Kerr.
The bells and whistles of one o'clock were making clangor as she ran upthe steps of her house again. In the hall Shima presented her with acard. She looked at it with a quickening pulse. "Is he waiting?"
"No, madam. Mr. Kerr has gone. He waited half an hour."
Down went her spirits again. Yet surely after their last interview sheought not to be eager to meet him again. "In the morning," she thought,"and waited half an hour. How he must have wanted to see me!" She didn'tknow whether she liked that or not. "When did he come?"
"At eleven o'clock."
At this she was frightened; he had missed Harry by less than half anhour.
"He waited all that time alone?"
"No. Mr. Cressy came."
Flora felt a cold thrill in her nerves. Then Harry had come back! Whathad he come for?
"He also would wait," the Japanese explained.
Flora gasped. "They waited together!"
The Japanese shook his head. "They went away together."
She didn't believe her ears. "Mr. Kerr went away with Mr. Cressy?"
The Japanese seemed to revolve the problem of mastery. "No, Mr. Cressyaccompanied Mr. Kerr." He had made a delicate oriental distinction. Itput the whole thing before her in a moment. Harry had been theresistant, and the other with his brilliant initiative attacking, alwaysattacking when he should have been hiding, had carried him off. "Whathad he done, and how had he managed, when Harry must have had suchpressing reasons for wanting to stay?" Ah, she knew only too well Kerr'sexquisite knowledge of managing; but why must he make such a recklessexposure of himself? Did he suppose Harry was to be managed? Had he noidea where Harry stood in this affair? In pity's name, didn't he knowthat Harry had seen him before--had seen him under circumstances ofwhich Harry wouldn't talk? They were circumstances of which she knewnothing, and yet from that very fact there was left a horribleimpression in her mind that they had been of a questionable character.