XXIV
THE COMIC MASK
She listened to the sound of wheels, first rattling loud on the gravel,slowly growing fainter. Then stillness was with her again, andinanition. She looked around and up, and had no start at seeing Clara'ssmall face watching her over the gallery of the rotunda. It seemed toher that appearance was natural to her existence now, like her shadow.She looked away. When she raised her eyes again Clara was coming downthe stairs, and even at that distance Flora saw she carried something inher hand--something flat and small and wrapped in a filmy bit of paper.
Out of the chaos of her feeling rose the solitary thought--the picturewhich she had bought that morning, the picture of Farrell Wand. Shewatched it drawing near her with wonder. She sat up trembling. She had agreat longing and a horror to tear away the filmy paper and see Kerr atlast brutally revealed. She could not have told afterward whether Claraspoke to her. She was conscious of her pausing; conscious of the faintrustle of her skirt passing; conscious, finally, that the small swathedsquare was in her hand.
She tore the tissue paper through. She held a photograph, a mountedkodak print. She made out the background to be sky and water and therail of a ship with silhouettes of heads and shoulders, a jungle ofblack; and in the middle distance caught in full motion the singlefigure of a man, back turned and head in profile. He was moving from herout of the picture, and with the first look she knew it was not Kerr.
Her first thought was that there had been a trick played on her! Butno--across the bottom of the picture, in Judge Buller's full round hand,was written, "Farrell Wand boarding the _Loch Ettive_." She held it highto the light. Clara had been faithful to her bargain. It was thepicture that had deceived her. She studied it with passionateearnestness. She did not know the bearded profile; but in the burlyshoulders, in the set and swing of the body in motion, more than all inthe lowering, peering aspect of the whole figure, she began to see afamiliar something. She held it away from her by both thin edges, andthat aspect swelled and swelled in her startled eyes, until suddenly thefigure in the picture seemed to be moving from her, not up a gang-plank,but through a glare of sun over grass between broad beds of flowers.
She was faint. She was going to fall. She caught at the chair to saveherself, and still she was dropping down, down, into a gulf of spinningdarkness. "Oh, Harry!" she whispered, and let her head roll back againstthe arm of the fauteuil.
With a dim sense of rising through immeasurable distances back to lightshe opened her eyes. She saw Mrs. Herrick's face, and as this wasconnected in her mind with protection she smiled.
"Do you feel better?" Mrs. Herrick asked her. Then she opened her eyeswide and saw the walls and the high-arched ceiling of the hall directlyabove her, knew herself lying on the floor, saw above her the figure ofClara standing with a bottle of salts, and then remembered; and, with amoan, buried her face in Mrs. Herrick's lap. "Oh, no, no, no; don'tbring me back; I don't want to come back!"
Their voices sounding high above her were speaking. Mrs. Herrick said:"What is that?" Then Clara murmured. Then there was the light rustlingof paper. Flora moved her hand.
"Give it to me; I want it." She felt the stiff little square ofcardboard between her fingers, and closed them around it fast.
After a little she went up-stairs holding tight to the baluster with onehand and to Mrs. Herrick with the other. After a little of sitting onthe edge of her bed she lay down, still holding to Mrs. Herrick. Shefelt as though some cord within her had been drawn tight, too tight toendure, and every moment she hoped it would snap and set her free.
"You don't think I'm mad, do you?" she asked. Her friend earnestlydisclaimed it. "Then things are," Flora said, "everything. Oh, oh!" Thememory overwhelmed her. "He took me there as if by chance! He gave thesapphire to me for my engagement ring. Oh, dreadful! Oh, poor Harry!"
All that afternoon and all night she slept fitfully, starting up atintervals, trembling at nameless horrors--the glittering goldsmith'sshop, the Chinaman, the great eye of the sapphire, and, worst of all,Harry's face, always the same calm, ruddy, good-natured,innocent-looking face that had led her to the goldsmith's shop, that hadsmiled at her, falling under the spell of the sapphire, that hadcovered, all those days, God knew what ravages of stress and strain,until the man had finally broken. That face appeared and reappearedthrough the flashing terrors of her dreams like the presiding genius ofthem all. Finally, drifting into complete repose, she slept far into themorning.
She wakened languid and weak. She lay looking about the room, and, likea person recovering after a heavy blow, wondering what had happened.Then her hand, as with her first waking thought it had done for the lastweek, went to the locket chain around her neck. Oh, yes, yes; she hadforgotten. The sapphire was gone. Gone by fraud, gone at a kiss for everwith Harry--no, with Farrell Wand.
For Harry was not Harry; and Kerr was not Farrell Wand. He was indeed anunknown quantity. Since she had found Harry she had lost both Kerr'sname and his place in her fairy-tale. She had seen his very demeanorchange before her eyes. Indeed, her hour had come without her knowingit. The spell had been snapped which had made him wear the semblance ofevil. His sinister form was dissolving; but what was to be his identitywhen finally he stood before her restored and perfect? If he were notthe thief whom she had struggled so to shield, why, then he was thatvery strength of law and right which, for his sake, she had betrayed.
She sat up quickened with humiliation. The thing was not a tragedy, itwas a grotesque. Blushing more and more crimson, struggling with strangemingled crying and laughter, she slipped out of the bed, and, still inher nightgown, ran down the hall, and knocked on Mrs. Herrick's door,until the dismayed lady opened it.
"I thought it was he," Flora gasped. "I thought it was he who had takenthe ring! Why didn't he tell me? Why did he keep it secret? I would havedone anything to have saved it for him, and I let Harry get it! Oh,isn't it cruel? Isn't it pitiful? Isn't it ridiculous?"
Mrs. Herrick, who, for the last thirty-six hours, had so departed fromher curriculum of safety, and courageously met many strange appearances,now was to hear stranger facts. For Flora had let go completely, andMrs. Herrick, without hinting at hysterics, let her laugh, let her cry,let her tell piece by piece, as she could, the story of the two men,from the night when Kerr had spoken so strangely at the club on thevirtues of thieves to the moment when, in the willow walk, theydiscovered that the jewel was gone. Clara's part in the affair, and theprice she had exacted, even in this unnerved moment, Flora's instinctwithheld, to save Mrs. Herrick the last cruelest touch. But for therest--she let Mrs. Herrick have it all--and under the shadow of the grimfacts the two women clung together, as if to make sure of their ownidentities.
"I don't even know who he is," Flora said faintly.
Mrs. Herrick gave her a quick glance. She had not a moment's hesitationas to whom the "he" meant. "You will have to ask him when he comes."
"Do you think he will come back?"
Mrs. Herrick had the heart to smile.
"But think of what I have done. I have lost him the sapphire, and heloves it--loves it as much as he does me."
Again the glance. "Did he tell you that?"
Flora nodded. The other seemed intently to consider. "He will comeback," she declared.
Upheld by her friend's assurance, Flora found the endurance necessary tospend the day, an empty, stagnant day, in moving about a house andgarden where a few hours ago had passed such a storm of events. Shereviewed them, lived them over again, but without taking account ofthem. Her mind, that had worked so sharply, was now in abeyance. Shelived in emotion, but with a tantalizing sense of something unexplainedwhich her understanding had not the power to reach out to and grasp. Fora day more she existed under the same roof with Clara, for Clara stayedon.
At first it seemed to Flora extraordinary that she dared, but presentlyit began to appear how much more extraordinary it would have been ifClara had promptly fled. By waiting a discreet length of time, as ifnothing had happened,
she put herself indubitably on the right side ofthings. Indeed, when one thought, had she ever been legally off it?
That was the very horror. Clara had simply turned the situation over andseen its market value, and how enormously she had made it pay! Floraherself had paid; and she had seen the evidence that Harry had paid,paid for his poor little hour of escape which a mere murderer might havegranted him in pity. Yet Clara could walk beside them, meet them atdinner with the same smooth face, chat upon the terrace with theunsuspecting Mrs. Herrick, and even face Flora in a security which hadthe appearance of serenity, since she knew that nothing ever would betold. At every turn in the day's business Flora kept meeting that placidpresence; and it was not until the end of the day that she met it primedfor departure. Flora was with Mrs. Herrick, and Clara, coming to seekthem out, had an air of casual farewell. The small, sweet smile shepresented behind her misty veil, the delicate white-gloved hand sheoffered were symbols of enduring friendship, as if she were leaving themonly for a few hours; as if, when Flora returned to town, she would findClara waiting for them in the house. But Flora knew it was only Clara'swonderful way. This uprising and departure were her last.
Now all her waiting was for Kerr's returning. She did not know how sheshould face him, but she wanted him. A telegram came an hour before him,came to Mrs. Herrick announcing him; and then himself, driven up on thehigh seat of the cart, just as daylight was closing. She and Mrs.Herrick had walked half-way out toward the rose garden; and, seeing themthere, he stopped the cart in the drive, leaped down and ran across thegrass. Both hurried to meet him. The three encountered like friends,like intimates, with hand-clasps and hurried glances searching eachother's faces.
"Did you save it?" Flora asked.
He looked at Mrs. Herrick, hesitating.
"You can tell, she knows," Flora assured him.
"No, I haven't saved it--not so far," he said. He had taken off his hatand the strong light showed on his face lines of fatigue and anxiety."He gave me the slip--no trace of him. No one saw him come into thecity; nothing turned up in the goldsmith's shop. His friend, theblue-eyed Chinaman, has dropped out of sight. I haven't made it public,"he glanced at Flora--"but our men think he's gone out by the waterroute--Lord knows in what or where! He must have had this planned fordays." He didn't look at Flora now. He turned his communicationcarefully on Mrs. Herrick. "There were seven vessels sailed, that day,and all were searched; but there are ways of smuggling opium, and whynot men?"
They were walking toward the house. Kerr looked up at the window where,a short time before, Clara's face had looked down upon the confusion inthe garden.
"Is that paid woman still here?"
"Oh, no; she's gone." Flora looked at him warningly. But Mrs. Herrickhad caught his tone. "Why shouldn't she be?" she demanded with delicateasperity.
Kerr had dropped his monocle. "Because, in common decency, shecouldn't. She sold Cressy to me for a good round sum."
Flora and Mrs. Herrick exchanged a look of horror.
"I'd suspected him," said Kerr. "I knew where I'd seen him, but Icouldn't be sure of his identity till she showed me the picture."
"What picture?" cried Flora.
"The picture Buller mentioned at the club that night: Farrell Wand,boarding the _Loch Ettive_. Don't you remember?" He spoke gently, as ifafraid that a hasty phrase in such connection might do her harm. Now,when he saw how white she looked, he steadied her with his arm. "Wewon't talk of this business any more," he said.
"But I must talk of it," Flora insisted tremblingly. "I don't even knowwhat you are."
For the first time he showed apologetic. He looked from one to the otherwith a sort of helpless simplicity.
"Why, I'm Chatworth--I'm Crew; I'm the chap that owns the confoundedthing!"
To see him stand there, announced in that name, gave the tragic farceits last touch. Flora had an instant of panic when flight seemed thesolution. It took all her courage to keep her there, facing him,watching, as if from afar off, Mrs. Herrick's acknowledgment of theinformal introduction.
"I came here, quietly," he was saying, "so as to get at it withoutmaking a row. Only Purdie, good man! knew--and he's been wondering allalong why I've held so heavy a hand on him. We'll have to lunch withthem again, eh?" He turned and looked at Flora. "And make all thoseexplanations necessitated by this lady's wonderful sense of honor!"
It was here, somewhere in the neighborhood of this sentence of doubtfulmeaning, that Mrs. Herrick left them. In looking back, Flora could neverrecall the exact moment of the departure. But when she raised her eyesfrom the grass where they had been fixed for what seemed to her eternityshe found only Kerr--no, Chatworth--standing there, looking at her witha grave face.
"Eh?" he said, "and what about that honor of yours? What shall we sayabout it, now that the sapphire's gone and no longer in our way?"
She was breathing quick to keep from crying. "I told you that day at therestaurant."
"Yes, yes; you told me why you kept the sapphire from me, but"--he hungfire, then fetched it out with an effort--"why did you take it in thefirst place?"
She looked at him in clear astonishment. "I didn't know what it was."
"You didn't!"
It seemed to Flora the whole situation was turning exactly inside out.The light that was breaking upon her was more than she could bear. "Oh,"she wailed, "you couldn't have thought I meant to take it!"
"Then if you didn't," he burst out, "why, when I told you what it was,didn't you give it to me?"
The cruel comic muse, who makes our serious suffering ridiculous, haddrawn aside the last curtain. Flora felt the laughter rising in herthroat, the tears in her eyes.
"You guessed who I was," he insisted, advancing, "at least what Irepresented."
She hid her face in her hands, and her voice dropped, tiny, into thestillness.
"I guessed you were Farrell Wand."