XVI
THE HEART OF THE DILEMMA
There is, in the heart of each gale of events, a storm center of quiet.It is the very deadlock of contending forces, in which the individualhas space for breath and apprehension. Into this lull Flora fell pantingfrom her last experience, more frightened by this false calm than by thewhirlwind that had landed her there. Now she had time to mark the echoesof the storm about her, and to realize her position. Her absorption hadpeopled the world for her with four people at most. Now she had time tolook at the larger aspect.
From the middle of her calm she saw many inexplicable appearances. Shesaw them everywhere, from the small round of Clara's movement to thelarger wheel of the public aspect. Clara was taking tea with theBullers, and the papers had ceased to mention the Crew Idol.
It had not even been a nine days' wonder. It had not dwindled. It hadsimply dropped from head-lines to nothing; and after the first murmur ofastonishment at this strange vanishing, after a little vain conjectureas to the reason of it, the subject dropped out of the public mouth. Thesilence was so sudden it was like a suppression. To Flora it shadowedsome forces working so secretly, so surely, that they had extinguishedthe light of publicity. They must be going on with concentrated andterrible activity in cycles, which perhaps had not yet touched her.
So, seeing Major Purdie among the crowd at some one's "afternoon" whereshe was pouring tea, she looked up at his cheerful face and high balddome with a passionate curiosity. He knew why the press had beenextinguished, and what they were doing in the dark. She knew where thesapphire was--and where the culprit was to be found. And to think thatthey could tell each other, if they would, each a tale the other wouldhardly dare believe. Amazing appearances! How far away, how foreign fromthe facts they covered! But Major Purdie had the best of it. He at leastwas doing his duty. He was standing stiffly on one side, while shehesitated between, trying desperately to push Kerr out of sight beforeshe dared uncover the jewel. But he wouldn't move. In spite of all shehad done, he wouldn't.
Across the room that very afternoon she caught the twinkle of hisresisting smile. He had had her letter then for two days, and still hehad come here, though he'd been bidden to stay away; though he had beenwarned to keep away from all places where she, or these people aroundher, might find him; though he had been implored to go, finally, as faraway as the round surface of the world would let him.
By what he had heard and seen in the red room that night, he must knowher warning had not been ridiculous. And there was another threat lessapparent on the face of things, but evident enough to her. It was thechange in Clara after she had begun her attack on the Bullers, herappearance of being busy with something, absorbed with, intent upon,something, which, if she had not secured it yet, at least she had wellin reach. And that thing--suppose it had to do with the Crew Idol; andsuppose Clara should play into Harry's hands!
For Kerr's escape Flora had been holding the ring, fighting off events,and yet all the while she had not wanted to lose the sight of him. Well,now, when she had made up her mind finally to resign herself to thedreariness of that, might he not at least have done his part of it anddecently disappeared? So much he might have done for her. Instead ofsmiling at her across crowded tea-rooms, and obliquely glancing at herdown decorous dinner-tables, and with the same fatal facility he haddisplayed in getting at her, now keeping away from her, out of allpossible reach.
He was playing her own trick on her, but her chances for getting at himagain were fewer than his had been with her. She could not besiege himin his abode; and in the places where they met, large houses crowdedwith people, the eye of the world was upon her. For how long had sheforgotten it--she who had been all her life so deferential toward it!Even now she remembered it only because it interfered with what shewanted to do.
For the eye of her small society was very keenly upon Kerr. Sherealized, all at once, that he had become a personage; and then, bysmiles, by lifted eyebrows, by glances, she gathered that her name wasbeing linked with his. She was astonished. How could their luncheontogether at the Purdies', their words that night in the opera box, theirfew minutes' talk in the shop, have crystallized into this gossip? Itvexed her--alarmed her, how it had got about when she had seen him soseldom, had known him scarcely more than a week. It was simply in theair. It was in her attitude and in his, but how far it had gone she didnot dream, until in the dense crowd of some one's at-home she caught thewords of a young girl. The voice was so sweet and so prettily modulatedthat at its first notes Flora turned involuntarily to glimpse thespeaker, a slender creature in a delicate mist of muslin, with anindeterminate chin and the cheek of a pale peach.
"Just think," Flora heard her saying, "he went to see her three times intwo days, but to-day, did you notice, he wouldn't look at her until shewent up and spoke to him. I don't see how a girl can! Harry Cressy--"
She moved away and the words were lost. Flora looked after her. For themoment she felt only scorn for the creatures who had clapped thatinterpretation upon her great responsibility. These people around herseemed poor indeed, absorbed only in petty considerations, and seeingeverything down the narrow vista of the "correct." Her eyes followed theyoung girl's course through the room, easy to trace by her shining blondhead, and the unusual deliciousness of her muslin gown. She stoppedbeside two women, and with a certain sense of pleasure and embarrassmentFlora recognized one of them--Mrs. Herrick. She caught the lady's eyeand bowed. Mrs. Herrick smiled, with a gracious inclination in which hergraceful shoulders had a part.
It gave Flora the sense Mrs. Herrick's presence always brought her, ofprotection, or security, and the possibility of friendship finer thanshe had ever known. She started forward. But Mrs. Herrick, presentinginstantly her profile, drew the young girl's hand through her arm andmoved away.
Flora winced as if she had received a blow. The other people who hadheard the same gossip of her had been, on account of it, all the moreamused, and anxious to talk to her. But Mrs. Herrick, though she bowedand smiled, did not want her too near her daughter; perhaps, herself,would have preferred not to speak to her.
She felt herself judged--judged from the outside, it is true--but stillthere was justice in it. She had been flying in the face of custom,ignoring common good behavior, in short, sticking to her own convictionsin defiance of the world's. And she must pay the penalty--the loss ofthe possibility of such a friend.
But it was hard, she thought, to pay the price without getting the thingshe had paid for. It was more like a gamble in which she had staked allon a chance. And never had this chance appeared more improbable to herthan now. For if Kerr valued the ring more than he valued his safety,what argument was left her? She thought--if only she had been adifferent sort of woman--the sort with whom men fall in love--ah, thenshe might have been able to make one further appeal to him--one thatsurely would not have failed.