VII
A SPELL IS CAST
It was hers! She did not believe it. It had been done too quickly. Itseemed to her she had hardly felt Harry slip it on her finger beforethey had left the shop; that she had hardly shaken off the mustyinclosed atmosphere, before Harry had left her on the corner ofCalifornia and Powell Streets--left her alone with the ring! Still, shedidn't believe she had it, even while she looked at the large lump itmade under her glove. She kept feeling it with a cautious finger-tip.
A trio of girls she knew flocked off the California Street car andsurrounded her. They were going to the White House for bargains in shirtwaists. They wanted to carry her off in their company. They encompassedher in a chatter of lace and lingerie. There were held up to her allthe interests of her every-day existence; but these seemed to have nopart in her real life. They had never appeared more remote and trivial.She kept her conscious hand in the folds of her skirt. She would haveliked to strip off her glove and show them the ring. It would haveentertained them so much. To herself its entertainment was of theArabian Nights--the way of its finding, its beauty in the false setting,the struggle over it in the shop--all were wine to her imagination. Itwas a thing to conjure adventure; it was a talisman of romance.
She colored faintly as she mentally corrected herself. It was herengagement ring, and as such she had never once thought of it. Strange,when all the forms of her engagement had been so well observed; whenHarry himself represented that side of life to which she had tried toform herself from as far back as the old days when her mother had madefun of her fancies. It must be right, she thought, this life ofconventions and forms; and the queer way she saw things, somethingwrong in her. But because she knew herself different, and because shefelt life without understanding it, she feared it. It was too big totake hold of alone. And she was so alone; and Harry was so strong, somatter-of-fact; alone like herself, yet adequate in the world she wasafraid of. She had accepted him as naturally, and yet as unreally, asshe took all that life, and to the moment she had never questioned thewisdom or the happiness. She didn't question now. She only was shockedthat so large a fact in her life as her engagement could be completelywiped out for the moment by a thing so trivial. It was not even thering. It was the feeling she had about the ring. Her imagination wasalways running away with her, as it had the night at the club. And hereit was, still uncurbed, speeding her forward into fields of romance.
She went over whole dramas--imaginary histories of chance andcircumstance--woven about the ring, as she walked up and down the long,windy hills, westward and homeward, the blue bay on the one hand beatengreen under the rising "trade," and the fog coming in before her. Withthe experience of the morning, and the exercise and the lively air, herspirits were riding high. From time to time she had the greatest longingto peep again at the sapphire, but not until the house door had closedafter her did she dare draw off her glove and look. It was stillglorious. What a pity she must take it off! Yet that point Harry hadmade about not showing it had been too sharp to be disregarded. But whatcould she say, supposing Clara asked about the morning's expedition? Atthis thought all her spring deserted her, and she went slowly up thestair. Perhaps Clara had forgotten about it, and then it recurredreassuringly to her mind how seldom Clara touched anywhere near thesubject of her engagement.
None the less, she went very softly down the hall, anxious lest Claramight open her door and ask what she had brought home with her.
But even in the refuge of her own rooms the ring encircled Flora withunease. The light of it on her finger made her restless. It wasn't thatshe was apprehensive of it, but she could not forget it. She could hearthe maid Marrika moving about in the room beyond. She could hear therustle of clothes carried to and fro. She knew there were things todress for--a luncheon, and a bevy of teas--things which must be gonethrough with, things which at other times she had found sufficientlypleasurable. But now, try as she would to turn her mind to these, itpersistently wandered back to the jewel. All the fine, simple pleasureof the morning was dazzled out by it. She slipped it off her finger onto the dressing-table, and it lay among her laces like a purple prism,cast by some unearthly sun in a magic glass. She had jewels, rubieseven--the most precious--but nothing that gave her this sense ofindividual beauty, of beauty so keen as to be disturbing. She emptiedher jewel casket in a glittering heap around it. It shone outunquenched. It had not been the dingy little shop, and the dingy littlestreet, and the odds and ends of jade and tarnished silver that hadmade it of such a value. It seemed to her that any eye would fix it, anyhand pluck it out first from that shining heap before her.
Marrika was coming in, and quickly Flora swept the jewels and thesapphire back into the casket, turned the key upon them, and thrust itback in the far corner of the drawer. She would give every one a greatsurprise when the ring was properly set. She glanced nervously over hershoulder to see if Marrika had noticed her action. The Russian had beenmoving to and fro between the wardrobe and the dressing-table with adroning thread of song. And now she took up the combs and brushes, andfilling her mouth with pins, began on the long river of yellow-brownhair that flowed down Flora's back. The broad, pale face reflectedbeside her own in the mirror was reassuring by its serene indifference.She had soothing hands, Marrika. It was a luxury to be dressed by her, amental soporific. But to-day it wrought no relaxation in Flora'stightened nerves. All the while she was being combed and laced andhooked her eyes were alertly on the dressing-table drawer, that remaineda little open; and presently she caught herself vaguely speculating onhow, after she had been fastened up and into her clothes so securely,she could dispose upon herself the sapphire. How had she arrived at thisconsideration? No course of reasoning led up to it. She was annoyed withherself. If she wasn't going to wear the ring on her finger, and showit, why did she want to take it with her at all? For fear it might belost? Lost, in her jewel box, in the back of the drawer! She blushed forherself. She looked severely at her guilty reflection in the mirror.Perhaps she did look tall; yes, and outwardly sophisticated, butunderneath that bold exterior Flora knew she was only the smallest,youngest, most ridiculous child ever born. There were moments when thisfact appeared to her more vividly than at others. One had been the othernight when Kerr's eyes had looked through and through her; and here shewas again, when she was going to a girls' luncheon, and most wanted tofeel competent, stared out of countenance by the wonderful eye of aring.
Through the long afternoon it was more apparent to her than the faces ofthe people around her. She was restless to get back to it, but peopletalked interminably. At the luncheon they talked of Kerr. Flora knewthese girls felt a little resentment that she had so easily capturedHarry Cressy; for Harry had been more than an eligible man in the littlecity. He had been an eligible personage. Not that he had money; not thathis family tree was plainly planted in their midst; but that withoutthese two things he had achieved what, with these things, the people heknew were all striving for. He stood before them as the embodiment ofwhat they most believed in--perfect bodily splendor, and perfectknowledge of how to get on with the world; and the fact that he wouldn'tquite be one of them, but after five years still stood a littleoff--made him shine with greater brilliance, especially in the eyes ofthese young girls. It was hard, they seemed to feel, that such anapparently remote and difficult person should have succumbed so easily;and now that a new luminary of equal luster was apparent in their sky,Flora felt their remarks a little triumphantly aimed at her. It was oddto her that they should envy her anything, especially those one or twoexquisite flowers of old families, whose lovely eyes saw not one inchfarther than her turquoise collar. And the way they talked of Kerr, withflourishes, made her feel a faint, responsive irritation that he hadtalked to so many of them in exactly the same way.
But between the threads of interest the table group wove together, keptflashing up her furtive desire to be away, to be at home, to see whathad happened to the sapphire. Of course, she knew that nothing couldhave happened; but she wanted to lo
ok at it, to open the casket and seethe flash of it before her eyes. For was she quite sure that it was notone of those fairy gifts, which, put into the hand in a blaze of beauty,may be found in the pocket as withered leaves? Yet her tenacious netsof duty caught and caught, and again caught her, so that when thecarriage finally fetched her home it was between lighted street-lamps.
They were dining early that night on account of the Bullers' box party,but it was nearly eight o'clock before Flora reached the house. And itwas, of course, for that reason that she ran up-stairs--ran wildly,regardlessly, before the eyes of Shima--and along the hall, her highheels clacking on the hard floors, and through her bedroom to thedressing-room, snatched open the table drawer, unlocked the casket witha twitch of the key--and, ah, it was there! It was really real! Why,what had she expected? She was laughing at herself.
She was gay in her relief at getting back to the sapphire, but at thesame time she was already wondering what she should do about it thatnight--take it with her or leave it alone? Dared she wear it on herfinger under her glove? Clara might notice the unfamiliar form of thejewel through the thin kid. Harry's warning had been phrasedconventionally enough, but the hints his words conveyed had expanded inher mind--fear not only of Clara's laughter, that such a jewel had comefrom a junk shop, but of her wonder, her questions, her ability ofgetting out the story of the whole erratic proceeding, even to thestrange pantomime between Harry and the blue-eyed Chinaman. Clara wasmarvelous!
Flora watched her curiously across the table that evening, wonderingwhat was that quality of hers by which she acquired. Hitherto Flora hadaccepted it as a fact without question, but now she had a desire toplace it. It was not beauty, for though Clara was pretty, like apolished Greuze, she was colorless and flavorless, lacking the vividheat of magnetism. More probably it consisted in a certain sort ofsweetness Clara could produce on occasions, a way she had of looking andspeaking which Flora could only describe as smooth. But smooth withouttexture or softness; smooth as quick-flowing water, smooth as glass--asurface upon which even caution might lose its equilibrium. For thedanger in Clara was that she was disarming. There was nothingantagonistic in her. One noticed her slowly. The flat tones of her voicemade background for other people's conversations. The pale tints of hergown blended with the pale tones of her hair and flesh. Beside Clara'sexquisite gradations Flora felt herself without shades, a creature ofviolent contrasts and impulses. If Clara had been going to carry thering about with her she would have had a reason for it. But Flora hadnothing but a silly fancy.
She made up her mind to leave the sapphire at home; but in her lastmoment in her room the resolution failed her. Harry, of course, would beangry if he knew, but Harry wouldn't see the thing under her glove.
She came down to where Clara was waiting for her, with the guiltyfeeling of a child who has concealed a contraband cake; but the wayClara looked her over made her conscious that she had not concealed herexcitement. Clara was always cool. What would it be like, she wondered,to feel the same about everything? How would it seem to be no moreelated by the expectation of listening to the most beautiful of tenorsthan over the next meeting of the Decade Club? Was that what she wascoming to in time? Not to-night, she thought; and not, at least, whilethat talisman of romance clasped her around the third finger.