Esther Chamberlain

“ There was something searching, seeking, baffled in the look she gave Longacre as he helped her into the carryall. He was so vital, so alive, that he seemed to have taken from Julia some of her gorgeous magnetism. But Florence knew it was from another source the vitality had sprung. She was flushed and warm and sparkling with the thought of it. It kept her brilliant through the long ride back in the cold sea wind toward the cold saffron east. She was a whirl of feeling. She rushed along with her sensations as if she dared not think. The spin of the automobile helped her. ”

“ Kerr inquired, and Flora caught a glimmer of irony in his voice.
"Well, can you see one of those chaps trusting the other with more than half of it?" The judge was scornful. "And a fellow needs a whole ring if he is after a reward." He rolled his head waggishly. "Oh, I could have been a crook myself!" he chuckled, but his was the only smiling face in the party.
For Kerr's was pale, schooled to a rigid self-control.
And Harry's was crimson and swollen, as if with a sudden rush of blood. His twitching hands, his sullen eyes, responded to Judge Buller's last word as if it had been an accusation. ”

“ To Florence the house was nothing else than a shelter from herself. In its restrained atmosphere, hemmed in by the monotonous, dripping rain, it was easier to lose emotion, to keep a quiet pulse; easier also to perceive in what direction these people, forced into constant conjunction of contradictory motives, would turn circumstance. However strongly she herself desired to mold it, she felt that now she must leave it alone. Even the fact of Cissy Fitz Hugh’s persistent hovering in Julia’s vicinity, mischievous as it looked, might only serve to shape events the faster. ”

“ Flora's eyes, absently, involuntarily, followed the 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 little gust of wind took the garden, and before the trees had ceased to tremble and whiten a man had emerged from their shadow and was advancing upon them up the middle of the drive.
Flora's heart leaped at sight of him. All her impulse was to fly to meet him, but she felt Mrs. Herrick's hand tighten upon her wrist as if it divined her madness. ”

“ Budd, nervous, vacillating, strung to the verge of tears; she, herself, out of love with everything but the hope of one man’s life; all were desperately at odds, no one trusting another.
Thair, alone, had given her the sense of an outsider. If he were in the midst of it as much as any one, it didn’t touch him. The very perfection of his manner, meeting those anxious, studying looks Mrs. Budd threw at him, was assurance that he knew his uneasy place in her conjecture. To Florence he had been, with his unconcern, like fresh air in a close room. ”

“ It might be transformation; it might be only a swift increase of his original power. Whatever it was, he seemed to her superhuman. The house was full of him—full of his rapid movement, his ringing orders. If he knew that the sapphire was gone, what was the meaning of this bold command? Was he, knowing all lost, plunging gallantly into the clutches of his enemies? Or was this only a blind, a splendid piece of effrontery to cover his too long delayed retreat? She sat like a jointless thing on the fauteuil in the large hall, and all at once saw him in front of her. ”

“ Neither Julia nor Bessie Lewis had appeared at luncheon. Julia had sent word that she would be late, to her mother’s absent-minded distraction. Mrs. Budd’s desire to rush away and fetch her fluttered before the faces of her guests like a flag of distress. In the end she was deflected by an imperative telephone that caught her just as her guests were rising. While they loitered between the dining-room and living-hall, chatting in groups, Julia, with Bessie Lewis at her heels, came down the stairs, habited, hatted, booted, drawing on her gloves, her riding-whip under her arm. ”

“ Apparently the dominant note of their party was Ella's clamorous selection for the supper; but to Flora the more real thing was the atmosphere of excitement and mystery she had been moving in all the evening. She was pursued by the obsession of something more about to happen—something imminent—though, of course, nothing would; at least, how could anything happen here, to them? And by "them," she meant herself and these people around her so stupidly talking—the eternal repetition of the story she had read out that evening to Clara, and not one glimmer of light! ”

“ But when the rapid motion in the sharp half-light had changed for the long upward house-stair; when Longacre’s good night was but the memory of a hand-clasp around her fingers,—then she hurried to escape what was crowding on her elation. She shut the door of her room. She locked it; but the shadow that threatened had been too quick for her. The four walls closed it in. She turned up all the lights in the room. In their glare the shadow was fainter. She drew the curtains over the windows. She shut herself away from the growing light. ”

“ The tallest eucalyptus top was all of the garden that was touched with sun when Flora came out of the house in the morning. She stood a space looking at that little cone of brightness far above all the other trees, swaying on the delicate sky. It was not higher lifted nor brighter burnished than her spirit then. Shorn of her locket chain, her golden pouch, free of her fears, she poised looking over the garden. Then with a leap she went from the veranda to the grass and, regardless of dew, skimmed the lawn for the fountain and the rose garden. ”

“ He kept her pace, not in response to her reckless spirit, but for fear of what might happen, with the desperate hope of averting disaster. They flew down the field toward the thunder of the sea, with the sun and the salt wind strong in their eyes; crashed through the hedge; scrambled down into a road, up the sandy bank on the other side, through the scrub-oaks with a rush, and at once the salt-meadows were before them, their skirts of cypress black on a purple sea. Over the ocean a white arm of fog extended stealthily. ”

“ She had brought out a question that had been teasing her fancy at intervals all the while he had been talking, and he hadn't even heard it. He wasn't even looking at her. She had caught him off his guard. He was looking across her shoulder straight down the dim vista of the room to the little blaze of bordering light. He was looking at Harry. No, Harry was looking at him. Harry was looking with a steady, an intent gaze, and Kerr meeting it—it might have been merely the blank glare of his monocle—seemed, to Flora, to meet it a little insolently. ”

“ He had never had so much that air to her as now, this afternoon, when he encountered her stepping through the tall French window upon the veranda, and turned and lifted the passion-vines for her to pass under—such a pretty thing, she thought, for a man to do for a woman as old, as haggard, as self-absorbed as she. They went the length of the fennel walk together. She remembered the morning when Longacre had left Julia so impetuously to follow her as something that had happened a very long time ago—something into which Thair’s voice dropped sharply, shattering the image. ”

“ The pale tints of her gown blended with the pale tones of her hair and flesh. Beside Clara's exquisite gradations Flora felt herself without shades, a creature of violent contrasts and impulses. If Clara had been going to carry the ring about with her she would have had a reason for it. But Flora had nothing but a silly fancy.
She made up her mind to leave the sapphire at home; but in her last moment in her room the resolution failed her. Harry, of course, would be angry if he knew, but Harry wouldn't see the thing under her glove. ”

“ How could it be Julia’s, when Longacre had told her—? Florence filled her lungs with a deep, slow-drawn breath, as if she were drawing in courage to face what was rising in her mind. It was Longacre’s face as it had peered up into hers that morning, and his voice restlessly repeating, “I am something no woman could forgive!” Her quickening comprehension embraced what that might be. Longacre had told Julia nothing! She put her hand out behind her, touched the table to steady herself. ”

“ The room, hot, polished, flaring reflections of electric lights from its glistening floor, announced itself the heart of high festivity, through the midst of which their entrance made an added ripple. The flushed faces of the women under their flowers, under their pale-tinted hats, with their smiling recognitions to Clara, to Flora, to Ella, smiled with a sharpened interest. It proclaimed that Kerr was a stranger, and, in a circle which found itself a little stale for lack of innovations, a desirable one. ”

“ Yet he looked at Julia.
Silent as she was, helpless, and not a little awkward, her very nearness elated him. When she turned to go he felt deserted. He snatched at any excuse to keep beside her.
“May I walk to the house with you?” He knew that had been the wrong thing to say.
“Of course,” she answered. Her lips trembled around the words. She had forgotten Cissy’s communication. Strange that a fact could be so unstable in the face of a personality! But in that moment her world was a short, green walk between fennel borders to a glass door.
They drank in the overwhelming sweet of heliotrope. ”

“ Presently she returned to the fact that Shima was waiting to close the door. Half-way across the hall she paused again, looking thoughtfully down the rose-colored vista of the drawing-room, and up at the broad black march of the stair. Vague mysteries 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 absently before the mirror. She touched the hard, unyielding stone of the ring under the thin bodice of her gown. ”

“ Her eyes had a fire that seldom burned in their somber pupils; a color and a fire that Holden marked in his greater leisure, with the slackened speed of the horses rising the steep hill.
“You look so lit up,” he told her, half wonderingly.
“It’s the driving,” she explained, “or rather flying. We hardly seemed to touch earth.”
“Just driving!” He was amused. “Well, I like it. It’s my play. It’s famous to have a strong, lively pair of brutes under your hand to hurry or pull up as you like.”
Florence looked as though that pleasure were quite within her comprehension. ”

“ Save for that glitter of gold on his glass plate, and the grin of a lighted brazier, all was dark, discolored and cluttered.
And the way Harry bloomed upon this background of dubious antiquity! He leaned on the little counter, which creaked under his weight, in his big, fresh coat, with his clear, fresh face bent above the shallow tray of trinkets—doubtful jades, dim-eyed rings, dull clasps and coins—his large, fastidious finger poked among. He was the one vital thing in the shop.
Over everything else was spread a dimness of age like dust. ”

“ The slamming of the car door brought her back shrewdly to her surroundings. She looked up. In the pictures of her memory Longacre had figured always as a boy, a Viennese student as she had seen him first. Now the sight of him as he was, coming down the aisle upon her, struck her as freshly as the impression of a stranger. He was no longer youth, painted in full curves and raw colors, but young maturity grayed over, sharp-lined, strenuous with the vital endeavor he had put into living. ”

“ Talking at Ella as if he hardly saw her, but like some magician flinging out a brilliant train of pyrotechnics to hypnotize the senses, before he proceeds with his trick. And the way Ella was looking at him—her bewildered alacrity, the way she was struggling with what was being so rapidly shot at her—appeared to Flora the prototype of her own struggle to understand what reality these appearances around her could possibly shadow. Never before had her sense of standing on the outside edge of life been so strong. ”

“ Hounds in front and hunters behind were forgotten; between the cypresses crowding down from the hills, and the oblivion of fog beating in from sea, they sped, wild with the elation of flight, unmindful of beginning, oblivious of end.
Fog was already streaming among the fantastic trees of the Point of Pines, cutting them off in front; but Julia held an unswerving course until the damp breath blew on her hot cheeks, and moisture stood in pearls in her hair. ”

“ She did not ask herself whether women ever married for greater reasons than these. She only wondered sometimes if he did not stand out more brilliantly against Clara and the others than he intrinsically was. But these moments when she was obliged to defend him to herself were always when he was not with her. Even in the dusky carriage she had been as aware of the splendor of his attraction as now when they had stopped between the high lamps of the club entrance, and she saw clearly the broad lines of his shoulders and the stoop of his square-set head as he stepped swingingly to the pavement. ”

“ Instead she walked among oleanders and pampas plumes with a rigorous composure. The placid face of the garden, with its blended sweets and colors, was cloying; the passionless blue sky, defiant.
She had let him go! After that she had hoped at least for quiet—even the quiet of hopelessness. But here was only irritating unrest, a striving to understand what, after all, she had done. She had meant that release to be so much to him! She kept seeing Longacre as he had left her. She kept hearing him reproach her: “Why didn’t you tell me before?” ”

“ 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 individual has space for breath and apprehension. Into this lull Flora fell panting from her last experience, more frightened by this false calm than by the whirlwind that had landed her there. Now she had time to mark the echoes of the storm about her, and to realize her position. Her absorption had peopled the world for her with four people at most. Now she had time to look at the larger aspect. ”

“ She was younger far than Florence Essington, younger than Cissy Fitz Hugh, younger even than her own daughter, whom she presently came upon, teasing the dachshunds on the grassplot beside the “glass room.”
The girl was on her knees. Each separate thread of her gorgeous bush of hair glistening in the dazzle of the late morning sun, her flushing cheeks, her somber brows, her hot, bright eyes, were all a part of the ripple of color and motion she made in the dead, warm greenness. The two long, wriggling dogs threw themselves upon her with yelps and scramblings. ”

“ It was the time of twilight when the sky is so much brighter than the earth. Across the lawns between the bushes from hedge to hedge the veil of the obscuring light was coming in; and through it the avenue of willows marched darkly. Their leaves moved a little. Flora watched the ripple of their tops, clear on the bright sky, and deeper down among mysterious [Pg 398] branches there was a sense of movement where the eyes could not see. There was a curious flick, flick, flicker—a progression, a passing from the far dark end of the willow avenue toward where it met the vista of the drive. ”

“ She took Julia by the shoulders, who had slid to the floor, half kneeling, half sitting, the tears slipping down her cheeks.
“Even if you love him,” she cried, “isn’t he human? Can’t you forgive him that much? He will forgive you—men forgive more in women!”
Julia’s hands held the folds of her gown. “But what can I do?” she implored. She hung on the other’s words with a passionate dependence.
Florence, with an impulse, took the face between her hands. ”

“ Herrick.
The lady had stood in the doorway a moment—a long-featured, whitish, modeled face, draped in a dull green veil, a tall figure whose flowing skirts of black melted away into the background of the hall—before she came forward and met her hostess' hand with a clasp firm and ready.
"I'm so glad to find you here," she said. She looked directly into Flora's eyes, into the very center of her agitation. She held her tremulous hand as if neither of these manifestations surprised her; as if a young woman and a young man in colloquy might often be found in such a state of mind. ”

“ She left him—Longacre, who habitually loafed out a ball,—with a desire to dance—to dance wildly, madly, with any one!
Safely and slowly steered around the room in Thair’s practised arm, Florence saw him whirling recklessly through the crowd, dancing double time in fine Viennese fashion, twice as fast as the rhythmic swing of the room, with Julia Budd a half-alarmed, half-angry, wholly excited partner. She seemed holding back, objecting; he was urging her on, domineering. He swept her along against her will.
“Oh, no, no; you don’t want to stop!” ”

“ For the first time since the thing began Clara was left out completely. Flora knew she was even left out of a possibility of listening at the keyhole. For the bright, tight, little room into which Harry followed her was approached by a square entry and a double door. The room itself overhung the garden as a ship's deck overhangs the sea. Leather books and long red curtains were the note of it. She and Harry had often been here together before. Harry had made love to her here, and she had found it pleasurable enough. ”

“ But Harry—Harry—" she stammered, hardly knowing how to put it, then put it most truly: "Harry is not quite himself to-night."
Flora lay back in the carriage. She was dimly aware of Clara's presence beside her, but for the moment Clara had ceased to be a factor. The shape that filled all the foreground of her thought was Harry. He loomed alarming to her imagination—all the more so since, for the moment, he had seemed to lose his grip. That was another thing she could not quite understand. That burst of violent irritation following, as it had, Judge Buller's words! ”

“ She ran. From the moment he had confounded her she had dropped all consideration of appearances. On the stair she passed a maid, her arms heaped with newly ironed linen and delicate flowered fabrics—frocks Julia had worn about the house. Then she must be packing. She would be in her room. Half-way down the upper hall, Florence heard the rushing approach of sweeping silk. She stopped, almost opposite her own door, and waited. Julia came down the hall, headlong even when walking. She saw Florence not until she was upon her. She started, drew herself together, made to go on, hesitated. ”

“ It was Clara who spoke to her, past Harry's blank astonishment. "Why, we don't mind waiting a few moments more while you dress."
"I shan't have to dress." Such a statement Flora felt must amaze even Shima, waiting like an image on the threshold of the dining-room. But if these people were waiting to be amazed she felt herself equal to amazing them to the top of their expectations.
"Oh, but at least go up and let Marrika give you some pins," Clara protested, hurrying forward as if fairly to drive her. ”

“ Longacre leaned across the table with a question to Florence, and she fancied that Julia listened to it. Her eyes and ears were unwontedly keen and sensitive for tones and expressions. The atmosphere was charged with diverse elements. The sense of cross-purposes around the table was as vivid to her mind as, to her eyes, the general disintegration upon the rising, and the confused crystallizations of people.
Cissy Fitz Hugh was already complaisantly established in the back seat of Thair’s automobile when Florence came out on the veranda. ”

“ For Clara was sharp and pale, with silvery lights in eyes and hair, and confronted the facts with an alert and calculating observation; but Flora was tawny, toned from brown to ivory through all the gamut of gold—hair color of a panther's hide, eyes dark hazel, glinting through dust-colored lashes, chin round like a fruit. The pressure of her fingers accented the slight uptilt of her brows to elfishness, and her look was introspective. She might, instead of wondering on the [Pg 8] outside, have been the very center of the mystery itself, toying with unthinkable possibilities of revelation. ”

“ The women faced each other in a moment's suspense, a moment of expectation, such as the advance column may feel at sight of a scout hotfoot from the field of battle. There were muffled movements in the hall, then light, even steps crossing the drawing-room. Those light steps always suggested a slight frame, and, as always, Flora was re-surprised at his bulk as now it appeared between the parted curtains, the dull black and sharp white of his evening clothes topped by his square, fresh-colored face. ”

“ After all her fruitless mousings, Clara had too evidently got on the scent of something at last. How much she knew or guessed as yet, Flora could not be sure, but certainly, now, she couldn't let Clara go. For that would be turning adrift a dangerous person with a stronger motive than ever for pursuing her quest, and the opportunity for pursuing it unobserved, out of Flora's sight. Clara was at it even now, and the only consolation Flora had was that Harry, at least, would not play into her hands. ”