XXI
THE HOUSE OF QUIET
The day which had dawned so still and gloomy was wakening to somethinglike wildness, threatening, brightening, gusty, when they stepped out ofthe train upon the platform of the San Mateo station. Clouds were pilinggray and castle-like from the east up toward the zenith, and darkfragments kept tearing off the edges and spinning away across the sky.But between them the bright face of the sun flashed out with doublesplendor, and the thinned atmosphere made the sky seem high and far, andall form beneath it clarified and intense.
There upon the narrow platform Mrs. Herrick hesitated a moment, lookingat Flora. "What train do you want to meet?" she asked.
Flora stood perplexed. "I hardly know. You see I can't tell how soon myletter would reach--would be received."
"Then we would better meet them all," the elder woman decided.
They drove away into the face of the wet, fresh wind and flying drops ofrain. Flora, leaning back in the carriage, looked out through the windowwith quiet eyes. The spirited movement of the sky, the racing of itsshadows on the grass, the rolling foliage of the trees, seen tempestuousagainst flying cloud, were alike to her consoling and inspiring. She hadnever felt so free as now, driving through the fitful weather, nor sosafe as with this companion who was sitting silent by her side. She wasdriving away from all her complications. She was retreating to a freshstronghold, where her conflict would be a duel hand to hand, and wherethe outside forces, which had harassed her and threatened ignobly todown her antagonist with a stab in the back, could be held at bay.
Already she was looking toward the house which she had never seen asher own kindly castle; and the generous opening of its gate--old granitecrowned with rose of sharon--did not disappoint her. The house washidden in the swelling trees, but the drive winding beneath them gaveglimpses through of lawns, of roses wreathing scarletly the old grayfountain basin, of magnolia and acacia, doubly delicate and white andfragile beneath the thunderous sky.
The house, when finally it loomed upon them, with its irregular roofstopped by curious square turrets, with its tremendous ground floorrambling away in wings on every side, with its deep upper and lowerverandas, looked out upon by a multitude of long French windows, seemedtoo large, too strangely imposing for a structure of wood. But whateverof original ugliness had been there was hidden now under a splendidtapestry of vines, and Flora, looking up at the rose and honeysucklethat panoplied its front, felt her throat swell for sheer delight.
For a moment after they had left the carriage they stood together in theporte-cochere, looking around them. Then half wistfully, halfhumorously, Mrs. Herrick turned to Flora. "I do hope you won't want tobuy it!"
"Oh, I'm afraid I shall," Flora murmured, "that is, if--" She left hersentence hanging, as one who would have said "if I come out of thisalive," and Mrs. Herrick, with a quick start of protection, laid herhand on Flora's arm.
"If you must," she said lightly, "if you do buy it, then at least Ishall know it is in good hands."
Flora gave her a look of gratitude, not so much for the slight kindnessof her words as for the great kindness of her attitude in thus soreadily resuming the first assumption on which her presence there hadbeen invited. That was the house itself.
It was plain to Flora from the moment she set foot over the thresholdthat the house was to be no mean ally of theirs, but Mrs. Herrick wasmaking it help them doubly in their hard interval of waiting. Alonetogether with unspoken, unspeakable things between them--things thatfor mere decency or honor could not be uttered--with nothing but theseto think of, nothing but each other to look at, they must yet, in sheerdesperation and suspense, have inevitably burst out with question orconfession, had not the great house been there to interpose itspersonality. And the way Mrs. Herrick was making the most of that! Theway immediately, even before she had shown anything, she began torevivify the spirit of the place, as the two women stood with their hatsnot yet off in the room that was to be Flora's, talking and looking outupon the lawn!
With her silences, with her expressive self as well as with her words,Mrs. Herrick was reanimating it all the while they lunched and rested,still in the upper-rooms overlooking the garden. And later, when theymade the tour of the house, she began unwinding from her memoryincidents of its early beginnings, pieces of its intimate, personalhistory, as one would make a friend familiar to another friend. Andthese past histories and the rooms themselves were leading Flora awayout of her anxious self, were soothing her prying apprehensions, weregiving her a detachment in the present, till what she so anticipated layquiescent at the back of her brain.
But it was there. And now and then, when in a gust of wind the lightsand shadows danced on the dim, polished floors, it stirred; and at thesound of wheels on the drive below it leaped, and all her fears againwere in her face. At such moments the two women did look deeply at eachother, and the suspense, the premonition, hovered in Mrs. Herrick'seyes. It was as unconscious, as involuntary, as Flora's start at theswinging of a door; but no question crossed her lips. She let the matteras severely alone as if it had been a jewel not her own. Yet, it came toFlora all at once that here, for the first time, she was with one towhom she could have revealed the sapphire on her neck and yet remainunchallenged.
"Ah, you're too lovely!" she burst out at last. "It is more than Ideserve that you should take it all like this, as if there reallywasn't anything." The elder lady's eyes wavered a little at the plainwords.
"I'm too deeply doubtful of it to take it any other way," she said.
"That is why I feel most guilty," Flora explained. "For dragging youinto it and then--bringing it into your house." She glanced around atthe high, quiet, damasked room. "Such a thing to happen here!"
"Ah, my dear,"--Mrs. Herrick's laugh was uncertain--"the things thathave happened here--the things that have happened and been endured andbeen forgotten! and see," she said, laying her hand on one of the walls,"the peace of it now!"
Flora wondered. She seemed to feel such distances of life extending yetbeyond her sight as dwindled her, tiny and innocent.
"It isn't what happens, but the way we take it that makes theafterward," Mrs. Herrick added.
The thought of an afterward had stood very dim in Flora's mind, andeven now that Mrs. Herrick's words confronted her with it she couldn'tfancy what it would be like. She couldn't imagine her existence going onat all on the other side of failure.
"But suppose," she tremulously urged, "suppose there seemed only one wayto take what had happened to you, and that way, if it failed, wouldleave you no afterward at all, no peace, no courage, nothing."
Mrs. Herrick's eyes fixed her with their deep pity and their deeperapprehension. "There are few things so bad as that," she said slowly,"and those are the ones we must not touch."
Flora paused a moment on the brink of her last plunge. "Do you thinkwhat I am going to do is such a thing as that?"
"Oh, my poor child, how do I know? I hope, I pray it is not!" Herfingers closed on Flora's hand, and the girl clung to the kind grasp. Itwas a comfort, though it could not save her from the real finality.
In spite of the consciousness of a friendly presence in the house herfears increased as the afternoon waned, and her thoughts went back towhat she had left behind her, and forward to what might be coming--theone person whom she so longed for, and so dreaded to see. He might be onhis way now. He might at this moment be hurrying down the hedged lanefrom the station; and when he should come, and when they two were faceto face, there would be no other "next time" for them. Everything wascrystalizing, getting hard. Everything was getting too near the end tobe malleable any more. It was her last chance to make him relinquish hisunworthy purpose; perhaps his last chance to save himself fromcaptivity. She found she hadn't a thing left unsaid, an argument leftunused. What could she do that she had not done before, except to showhim by just being here, accessible and ready to serve him at any risk,how much she cared? Could his generosity resist that?
Beyond the fact of
getting him away safe she didn't think. Beyond thatnothing looked large to her, nothing looked definite. The returning ofthe sapphire itself seemed simple beside it, and the fact that herposition in the matter might never be explained of no importance.
Now while every moment drew her nearer her greatest moment she grew moreabsent, more strained, more restless, more intently listening, moreeasily starting at the lightest sound; until, at last, when the late daytouched the rooms with fiery sunset colors, her friend, watchful of herchanging mood, ready at every point to palliate circumstance, drew herout into the garden.
The wind, which had fallen with approaching evening, was only a whisperamong the trees. The greenish-white bodies of statues in the shrubberyglowed ruddy. Gathering their skirts from the grass that glittered withthe drops of the last shower, arm in arm the two women walked down thebroad central gravel drive between ribbon beds of flowers. From herenumerous paths paved with white stone went wandering under snowballtrees and wild apple, losing themselves in shrubbery. But one made aclear turn across the lawn for the rose-garden, where in the midst around pool of water lay like a flaming bit of the sunset sky. Among thebushes red and rose and white, the elder woman in her black, the youngerin her gown more glowing, with a veil over her hair, walked, and,loitering, looked down into the water, seeing their faces reflected,and, behind, the tangled brambles and the crimson sky. They did notspeak, but at last their companionship was peaceful, was perfect. Theonly sounds were the sleepy notes of birds and that faint, high whisperof the tree tops on an evening that is not still.
Loud and shrill and shriller and more piercing, from the west wing ofthe house, overhanging the garden, the sound reached them--an alarumthat set Flora's heart to leaping. Startled apart, they listened.
"Would that be--is that for you?"
"I think it's for me."
The words came from them simultaneously, and almost at the same instantFlora had started across the lawn. The sight of an aproned maid comingout on the veranda and peering down the garden set her running fleetly.
"It's a telephone for Miss Gilsey," the girl said.
"Oh, thank you," Flora panted.
She knew so well the voice she had expected at the other end of the wirethat the husky, boyish note which reached her, attenuated by distance,struck her with dismay and disappointment.
"Ella, oh, yes; yes; Ella." What was she saying? Ella was using thetelephone as if it were a cabinet for secrets.
"Clara told me you were down there," she was explaining. "I saw her thismorning, yes. Well,"--and she could hear Ella draw in her breath--"I'mso relieved! I thought you'd be, too, to know. I _was_ perfectly right.She was after him."
Flora faltered, "After whom?" There flashed through her mind more thanone person that, by this time, Clara might possibly be after.
"Why, after papa, of course!" Ella's injured surprise brought her backto the romance of Judge Buller. Her voice rose in sheer bewilderment."Well?"
Ella's voice rose triumphantly. "I got it out of her myself. I just cameright out to her at last. She seemed awfully surprised that I knew; butshe owned up to it, and what do you think? I bought her off!"
"Bought her off?" Flora cried. Each fact that Ella brought forth seemedto her more preposterous than the last.
"Why, yes, it's too ridiculous; what do you think she wanted?"
At that question Flora's heart seemed fairly to stand still. That wasthe very question she had been asking herself for days, and asking invain.
Ella's voice was coming to her faint as a voice from another world. "Shewanted that little, little picture--that picture of the man calledFarrell Wand. Don't you remember, papa mentioned it at supper thatevening at the club? Isn't it funny she remembered it all this time?Well, she wanted it dreadfully, but Harry wanted it, too, and papa saidhe had promised it to Harry; but I got it first and gave it to her."Ella's voice ended on a high note of triumph.
Flora's, if anything, rose higher in despair. "Oh, Ella!"
"Doesn't it seem ridiculous," Ella argued, "that if she really wantedhim she'd give him up for that?"
"Oh, no--I mean yes," Flora stammered. "Yes, of course! thank you, Ella,very much--very much." The last words were hardly audible. The receiverfell jangling into its bracket, and Flora leaned against the wall by thetelephone and closed her eyes.
For a moment all she could see was Clara with that little, littlepicture. How well she could remember how Clara had looked that night ofthe club supper!
From the moment Judge Buller had spoken of the picture, how all three ofthem had changed, Clara and Kerr and Harry. Everything that had seemedso phantasmal then, everything she had put down as a figment of her ownimagination, had meant just this plain fact. All three of them hadwanted the picture. For his own reason Kerr had turned aside from thechase, but Harry had stood with it to the last, and now, when finallythe prize had been assured to him, Clara had it!
At this moment she had it in her hand. At this moment she knew what wasthe aspect of the figure in the picture, whether it showed a face, and,if a face, whose. Flora's hands opened and closed. "Oh," she whisperedto the great silence of the great house awaiting him; "where is he? Whyisn't he here?"
All those terrible things which might be happening beyond her reachprocessioned before her. Had Clara already snapped the trap of the lawupon Kerr? And if she hadn't yet, what could be done to hold her off?Flora turned again to the telephone. Slowly she took down the receiverand gave into the bright mouthpiece of the instrument the number of herown house.
Presently the voice of Shima spoke to her. Mrs. Britton had gone out todinner.
"Tell her, Shima," Flora commanded, "tell her to come down on theearliest train." She hesitated, then finished in a firm voice. "Tell hernot to do anything until she has seen me."
Shima would tell her--but Mrs. Britton had been out all day. He did notknow when she would be back.
The words sounded ominous in Flora's ears. She turned away. Waseverything to be finished just as she had light enough to move, butbefore she had a chance?
The sound of spinning wheels on the drive startled her to fresh hope,and sent her hurrying down the stair. It was the phaeton returning fromthe last train. Through the open door she saw the figure of Mrs. Herrickexpectant on the veranda. Then the carriage came into the porte-cochereand passed. With a rush she reached the veranda, and stood there lookingafter it. She wouldn't believe her eyes--she couldn't--that it hadreturned again empty.
Mrs. Herrick's voice was asking her, "What shall we do? Shall we servedinner now, or wait a little longer?"
"Oh, it's no use," Flora murmured, "he won't come to-night. He'll nevercome." She drooped against the tall porch pillar.
"My poor child!" Mrs. Herrick took her passive hand. If she read in theprofound discouragement of Flora's face that something more hadtranspired than a mere non-appearance, she did not show it, but waited,alert and quiet, while they gazed together out over the darkeninggarden.
It was the time of twilight when the sky is so much brighter than theearth. Across the lawns between the bushes from hedge to hedge the veilof the obscuring light was coming in; and through it the avenue ofwillows marched darkly. Their leaves moved a little. Flora watched theripple of their tops, clear on the bright sky, and deeper down amongmysterious branches there was a sense of movement where the eyes couldnot see. There was a curious flick, flick, flicker--a progression, apassing from the far dark end of the willow avenue toward where it metthe vista of the drive. Flora's eyes, absently, involuntarily, followedthe movement. She felt Mrs. Herrick's hand suddenly close on hers.
"Is some one coming?"
They clung to each other, peering timorously down the drive. A littlegust of wind took the garden, and before the trees had ceased to trembleand whiten a man had emerged from their shadow and was advancing uponthem up the middle of the drive.
Flora's heart leaped at sight of him. All her impulse was to fly to meethim, but she felt Mrs. Herrick's hand tighten upon her wrist as i
f itdivined her madness.
His light stick aswing in his hand, his step free and incautious asever, gray and slender and seeming to look more at the ground than atthem, the two women watched him drawing near. His was the seeming of aquiet guest at the quietest of house parties. To meet him Flora saw shemust meet him on the high ground of his reserve. As he came under thelight of the porte-cochere his look, his greeting, his hand, were firstfor Mrs. Herrick.
"We were afraid we had missed you altogether," said she.
"It was I who somehow missed your carriage, was hardly expecting to beexpected at such an hour."
Flora watched them meeting each other so gallantly with a tremblingcompunction. Mrs. Herrick, who trusted her, was giving her hand insublime ignorance. It was vain that Flora told herself she had givenwarning. She knew she had thrown the softening veil of her spiritualcrisis over the ugly material fact. Had she said, "I want you to upholdme while I meet a thief whom I love and wish to protect. He'smagnificent in all other ways except for this one obsession," she knewMrs. Herrick simply would have cried, "Impossible, outrageous!" Yetthere they stood together, and as Flora looked at them she could nothave told which was of the finer temper. Kerr's bearing was so unruffledthat it seemed as if he had flown too high to feel the storm Flora waspassing through. But when he turned toward her, in spite of himself,there was eagerness in his manner. He looked questioningly at her, as ifno time had intervened, as if a moment before he had said to her throughthe carriage window, "I will give you twenty-four hours," and now hertime had come to speak.
Only the thought that time was crowding him into a bag's end gave hercourage to vow she would speak that night. Yet not now, while they stoodjust met in the deepening dusk, in the sweet breath of the earlyflowers; nor later when they passed in friendly fashion, the three ofthem, through fairy labyrinths of arch and mirror, into the long, high,glistening room, whose round table, spread, seemed dwarfed to mushroomheight; nor yet, while this semblance of companionship was between them,and the great proportions of the place lifting oppression, left them asunconscious of walls and roof as though they were met in the open. Theclock twice marked the passing hour. She had never heard Mrs. Herrickspeak so flowingly nor Kerr listen so well, placing his questions nicelyto draw out the thread of her theme. Yet Flora guessed his thought mustbe fixed on their approaching moment, as hers was--on the moment whenthey should be ready to quit the table and Mrs. Herrick would leave themto themselves.
It was the appearance of the aproned maid that broke their unity. Thelast course was on the table, the last taste of its pungent fruitessence on their tongues--and what was the girl's errand now? The eye ofher mistress was inquiring.
"Some one has come, Mrs. Herrick." The woman's proper formula seemed tofail her. She looked as if she had been frightened.
"Some one?" Mrs. Herrick showed asperity. "What name?"
"He is coming in." As she spoke the girl shrank a little to one side.
With his long coat open, hanging from the armpits, with ruffled hair,and lips apart, and from breathlessness a little smiling, Harry appearedin the doorway. Kerr leaned forward. Mrs. Herrick did not move. She wasfacing the last arrival and she was smiling more flexibly, morenaturally, than Harry; but it was Flora who found the first word.
"You! I--I thought it was Clara." She was struggling for nonchalance,for poise, at this worst blow, so unexpected.
"Clara won't be down," Harry said, advancing. "How d'ye do, Mrs.Herrick? How d'ye do, Kerr?"
"How d'ye do?" said the Englishman, without rising.
Flora gripped the arms of her chair to keep from springing up in sheernervous terror. A possible purpose in Harry's coming, that even Mrs.Herrick's presence would not defer, shot through her mind. Was he alone?Or were there others--men here for a fearful purpose--waiting beyond inthe hall? But Harry had turned his back upon the door behind him with afinality that declared whatever danger had come into the house wascomplete in his presence.
"I've dined, thanks," he said, but, stripping off his greatcoat,accepted a chair and the glass of cordial Mrs. Herrick offered him. Theruddy, hard quality of his face, were it divested of its present smile,Flora thought, might well have frightened the maid; but, for all that,it was not so implacable as Kerr's face confronting it. The look withwhich he met the intrusion had a quality more bitter than the challengeof an antagonist, more jealous than a mere lover's; and that bitterness,that jealousy which was between them came out stingingly through theirsmall pleasantness. It could not be, Flora thought in terror, that Mrs.Herrick intended to leave these two enemies to each other! Mrs. Herrickhad risen; and Flora, following, saw both men, also uprisen, hanghesitatingly, as if unready to be deserted; yet with well-filledglasses, and newly smoking tobacco, both were caught.
Then Kerr, with a quick dash of his hand, picked up his glass. "Let usbe Continental," he begged, and followed close at Flora's side. Withoutmoving his lips Kerr was speaking. "What does this mean?"
She sensed the anger in his smothered voice, but she dared not look athim.
"I have no idea; but I will see you."
"When?"
Her answer leaped to her mind and her lips at the same moment.
"In the rotunda when the house is quiet."
Harry had followed leisurely in their wake. The flush of haste hadsubsided in his face, and when the four regrouped themselves in thehigh, darkly-paneled room, among the low lights, Flora remarked hisextraordinary composure. Bitter he might be; but all the nervousness,suspicion, uneasiness, that he had shown of late had vanished. Therewas a tremendous confidence about him, the confidence of the player whoholds cards that must win the game, and sits back waiting for hismoment.
But she was ready to laugh at him in his security. He had underestimatedhis opponent. In spite of him she was to have her meeting with Kerr!Harry had waited too long to prevent that, whatever he might doafterward. In this inspired moment she felt herself touching conqueringheights which before she had only touched in imagination. She feltenough power in herself to move even such a mountain of obstinacy asKerr. She stole a look at him--a look of glad intelligence. Heunderstood as if she had spoken. They were to meet, while all the houseslept fast, to meet for his great renunciation. Then, in the morning,when Harry was ready with whatever move he was holding back, Kerr wouldbe gone. There would be no Kerr--but she must not think of that! Sheglanced at him again in the thick of the talk, and caught his eye uponher, puzzled, and, she thought, with a glimmer of doubt.
She smiled; and smiled again at the ease with which she reassured him,merely by looking at him. He should see, in the end, how true she couldbe!
He was talking tremendously, flinging off fireworks of words, but shewas curiously aware that Mrs. Herrick and Harry were looking more at herthan at Kerr. She felt herself the dominant spirit. She saw themacknowledge it, swept along by the high tide of her mood that was risingto meet her great decisive moment. Yet on the surface the strong pulseof it appeared as ripples--words, smiles, gay gestures, laughter--risinglike the last bubble on a wave's crest. She was not consciously acting;she was inspired by the power of what she concealed and must conceal.And when she left them it was like a triumphant exit; almost it seemedto her as if she might hear their applause following her.
In the room where, some eight hours before, she and Mrs. Herrick hadtalked, Flora waited, fully dressed. It had been early when they hadseparated. The strain of the four together had been terrific; and shewas still feeling it, though an hour had passed. She was feeling that,now her situation was upon her, she was alone. Mrs. Herrick could onlybe near her, not with her, and Kerr was still an unknownquantity--except that he was fire.
And there was Harry, with his terrible certainty, and no apparent thingto account for it. It could not be there were men in the house withoutthe servants remarking it; but in the garden? She peered out upon it.Only tree shadows moved upon the lawn. Nothing glimmered in the walks ordrives. The solitude held her like an enchantment. She listened for thesmall sound
s in the house to cease, for the lights in the lower story togo out, proclaiming all the servants were in bed. Even after thestillness she waited--waited to be sure it was the long stillness.
Finally she crept to the door and opened it boldly wide.
She stood where she was upon the threshold trembling in a cruel fright.A gas-jet burning far up at the end of the hall, threw a dim light downthe pale, pinkish, naked vista, void of furniture, window or curtain;and, leaning against the blank wall almost opposite her door, anddirectly facing her, was Harry.
Without speaking they looked at each other. He was fully dressed, butlacking his shoes, as she noted in the acuteness of her startled senses.The furtive suggestion of those shoeless feet struck her withhorror--formless, unreasoning. It was like an evil dream to find himthere, stolen to her door in the night, waiting outside it without asound, looking her steadily, hardily in the eye without a word.
She tried to speak, but, with terror sobbing in her throat, the wordsfailed. She made a step forward with a crazy impulse to rush past him.
He straightened, with a quick movement toward her. She recoiled beforehim, precipitately retreated, closed the door, shot the bolt, andleaned, for faintness, against the wall. She expected each moment tohear him tap. She neither heard a knock nor the sound of soft, departingfeet. He was still there! He was on guard! He had had good reason forhis terrible certainty! He had foreseen what her plan might be, and sheknew he would no more let her get past him down the hall than theturnkey will let the wretched prisoner escape.
The last flicker of her courage died at that thought. All her fineexultation was beaten out by the fact of the brute force outside herdoor. She could not get to Kerr now. Cowering behind her door she couldonly fancy him waiting for her in the rotunda while the momentslengthened into hours, each moment distrusting her more.