The Coast of Chance, Page 2

  II

  A NAME GOES ROUND A TABLE

  For to-night, from the moment he had appeared, she had recognized anunfamiliar mood in him, and it had come out more the more they haddiscussed the Chatworth ring. It was not in any special word or actionon his part. It was in his whole presence that she felt the difference,as if the afternoon's scandal had been a stimulant to him--not throughits romantic aspect, as it had affected her, but merely by the daring ofthe theft itself.

  She wondered, as he heaped her ermine on her shoulders, if Harry mightnot have more surprises for her than she had supposed. Perhaps she hadtaken him too much for granted. After all, she had known him only for ayear.

  She herself was but three years old in San Francisco, and to her neweyes Harry had seemed an old resident thoroughly established. So firmlyestablished was he in his bachelor quarters, in his clubs, in thedemands made upon him by the city's society, that it had never occurredto her he had ever lived anywhere else. Nor had he happened to mentionanything of his previous life until to-night, when he had given her, inthat mention of a London ball, one flashing glimpse of formerexperiences.

  Impulsively she summed up the possibilities of what these might havebeen. She gave him a look, incredulous, delighted, as he handed her intothe carriage. She had actually got a thrill out of easy-going,matter-of-fact, well-tubbed Harry! It was a comradeship in itself. Notthat she would have told him. This capacity of hers for thrills she hadfound need always to keep carefully covered. In the days when she was ashoeless child--those days of her father's labor in shaft and dump--shehad dimly felt her world to be a creature of a keen, a fairly cruelhumor, for all things that did not pertain to the essence of the lifeit struggled for. The wonder of the western flare of day, the magic inthe white eyes of the stars before sunrise, the mystery in the pulse ofthe pounding mine heard in the dark--of such it had been as ruthless asthis new world that looked as narrowly forth at as starved a prospectwith even keener ridicule. Instinctively she had turned to both thehard, bright face they required. It seemed that in the world at largethis faculty of hers was queer. And to be queer, to have anything thatother people had not, except money, was to be open to suspicion. And yetfrom the first she had had to be queer.

  Fatherless, motherless, alone upon the pinnacle of her fortune, she hadknown that such an extraordinary entrance, even at this rather widesocial portal, would only be acceptable if toned down, glossed over, anddrawn out by a personality sufficiently neutral, sufficiently potent,and sufficiently in need of what she had to give. The successiveflickers of the gas-lamps through the carriage window made of Clara'sprofile so hard and fine a little medallion that it was impossible toconceive it in need of anything. And yet it was just their mutual needthat had drawn these two women together, and after three years it wasstill the only thing that held them. As much of a fight as she had putup with the rest--the people who had taken her in--she had put up thehardest with Clara. Yet of them all Clara was the only one she hadfailed to capture. Clara was always there in the middle of her affairs,but surveying them from a distance, and Flora's struggle with her hadresolved itself into the attempt to keep her from seeing too much, fromseeing more than she herself saw. Clara's seeing, thus far, had alwaysbeen to help, but Flora sometimes wondered whether in an emergency thishelp could be depended on--whether Clara could give anything withoutexacting a price.

  Their dubious intimacy had created for Flora a special sort ofloneliness--a loneliness which lacked the security of solitude; and itwas partly as an escape from this that she had accepted Harry Cressy.By herself she could never have escaped. The initiative was not hers.But he had presented himself, he had insisted, had overruled herobjections, had captured her before she knew whether she wanted it ornot--and held her now, fascinated by his very success in capturing her,and by his beautiful ruddy masculinity. She did not ask herself whetherwomen ever married for greater reasons than these. She only wonderedsometimes if he did not stand out more brilliantly against Clara and theothers than he intrinsically was. But these moments when she was obligedto defend him to herself were always when he was not with her. Even inthe dusky carriage she had been as aware of the splendor of hisattraction as now when they had stopped between the high lamps of theclub entrance, and she saw clearly the broad lines of his shoulders andthe stoop of his square-set head as he stepped swingingly to thepavement. After all, she ought to be glad to think that he was going tostand up as tall and protectingly between her and the world, as now hedid between her and the press of people which, like a tide of water,swept them forward down the hall, sucked them back in its eddy, andfinally cast them, ruffled like birds that have ridden a storm, on themore generous space of the wide, upward stair.

  From here, looking down on the current sweeping past them, the littleislands of black coats seemed fairly drowned in the feminine sea aroundthem--the flow of white, of pale blue and rose, and the high chatter,like a cage of birds, that for the evening held possession.

  "Ladies' Night!" Harry Cressy mopped his flushed face. "It's awful!"

  Flora laughed in the effervescence of her spirits. She wanted to know,teasingly, as they mounted, if this were why he had brought two more toadd to the lot. He only looked at her, with his short note of laughterthat made her keenly conscious of his right to be proud of her. She wasproud of herself, inasmuch as herself was shown in the long trail ofdaring blue her gown made up the stair, and the powdery blue of theaigrette that shivered in her bright, soft puffs and curls--proud thather daring, as it appeared in these things, was still discriminatingenough to make her right.

  She could recall a time when she had not even been quite sure of herclothes. Not Clara's subdued rustle at her side could make her doubtthem now; but her security was still recent enough to be sometimesconscious of itself. It was so short a time since all these talkinggroups, that made a personage of her, had had the power to put her quiteout of countenance. The women who craned over their shoulders to speakto her--how hard she had had to work to make them see her at all! Andnow she did not know which she felt more like laughing at, herself orthem, for having taken it so seriously. For, when one thought of it,wasn't it absurd that people out of nowhere should suppose themselvesexclusive? And people out of nowhere they were, herself and all the restof them. From causes not far dissimilar they had drifted or scrambled towhere they now stood. It was a question of squatter rights. The first onthe ground were dictators, and how long they could hold their claimagainst invaders a dubious cast of fate. For there were for ever freshinvasions, and departures; swift risings from obscurity, sudden fallingsback into oblivion, brilliant shootings through of strange meteors; andin the tide of fluctuation, the things that were established ortraditional upon this coast of chance were mere islands in the wash ofocean. It was amazing, it was almost frightening, the fluid, unstablequality of life; the rapid, inconsequent changes; yet it was also thisvery quality of transformation that most stirred and delighted her.

  And to-night it was not the picture exhibition, nor the function itselfthat elated her, but the fancy she had as she looked over the movingmass below her that the crowning excitement of the day, the vanishingmystery, hovered over them all. It was fantastic, but it persisted; forhad not the Chatworth ring itself proved that the most ordinaryappearances might cover unimagined wonders? Which of those bland,satisfied faces might not change shockingly at the whisper "Chatworth"in its ear? She wanted to confide the naughty thought to Harry. But no,he wasn't the one. If Harry were apprehensive of anything at all it wasonly of being caught in too hot a crush. He saw no possibilities in themob below except boredom. He saw no possibilities in the evening but hisconventional duty; and Flora could read in his eye his intention ofgetting through that as comfortably as possible. His suggestion thatthey have a look at the pictures brought the two women's eyes togetherin a rare gleam of mutual mirth. They knew he suspected that the picturegallery would be the emptiest place in the club, since to have a look atthe pictures was what they were all supposed to be there fo
r. That wasso infallibly the note of their life, Flora thought, as she followed upthe wide sweep of the middle stair, and along the high-ceiled, gildedhall whose open arches overlooked the rooms below.

  The picture gallery was new, an addition; and the plain, narrow,unexpected door in this place, where all was high, arched, elaborateand flourished, was like a loophole through which to slip into a foreignatmosphere. This atmosphere was resinous of fresh wood; the light wasthick with drifting motes; the carpets harshly new, slipping beneath thefeet on the too polished floor; the bare bones of the place yet scarcelycovered. But its quiet was after all comparative. There were plenty ofpeople lingering in groups in the center of the gallery which was dusky,eclipsed by the great reflectors that circled the room, throwing out thepictures in a bright band of color around the walls. People leaning fromthis border of light back into the dusk to murmur together, vanished andreappeared with such fascinating abruptness that Flora caught herselfguessing what sort of face, where this nearest group stood just on theedge of shadow, would pop out of the dark next.

  She was ready for something extraordinary, but now, when it came, shewas taken aback by it. It gave her a start, that toss of black hair,that long, irregular, pale face whose scintillant, sardonic smile wasmercilessly upon the poor, inadequate picture-face fronting him. Hisstoop above the rail was so abrupt that his long, lean back was almosthorizontal, yet even thus there was something elegant in the swing ofhim--in the careless twist of his head, around, to speak to the womanbehind him. The light above struck blind on the glass in one eye, butthe other danced with a genial, a mad scintillation. The light of itcaught like contagion, and touched the merest glancer at him with thespark of its warm, ironic mirth. The question which naturally rose toFlora's lips--"Who in the world is that?"--she checked; why, she didn'task herself. She only felt as she followed Clara, trailing away acrossthe floor, that the interest of the evening which had promised so well,beginning with the Chatworth ring, had been raised even a note higher.Her restive fancy was beginning again. All the footlights of her littlesecret stage were up.

  Clara turned to the right, following a beckoning fan, and Flora,dallying with her anticipation, reasoned that now they must circle theroom before they should face him--the interesting apparition. It was apilgrimage of which he on the other side was performing his half.Perfunctorily talking from group to group, conscious now and again ofthe lagging Clara or Harry, she could nevertheless keep a sly eye on thestranger's equal progress. The flash of jet, and the voluble,substantial shoulders of the lady so profusely introducing him, were anassurance of how that pilgrimage would terminate, since it was EllaBuller who was parading him. She even wondered before which of theflorid pictures at the far, other end of the room, as before a shrine,the ceremony would take place.

  She kept her eyes fixed on the paintings before her, and as she moveddown from one to another, and the voices of the approaching group drewnearer, one separated itself from the general murmur, so clear, soresonantly carried, so clean-clipped off the tongue, that it stood outin syllables on the blur of sound which was Ella Buller's conversation.It had color, that voice; it had a quality so sharp, so individual thatit touched her with a mischievous wonder that he dared speak sodifferently from all the world about him. Then, six pictures away, sheheard her own name.

  "Why, Flora Gilsey!" It was Ella's husky, boyish note. "I've beenlooking for you all the evening! How d'y'do, Harry?" She waved her handat him. "Why, how d'y'do, Mrs. Britton? I wouldn't let papa go to supperuntil I'd found you. 'Papa,' I said, 'wait; Flora and Harry will behere.' Besides," she had quite reached Flora's side by this time andcommunicated it in an impressive whisper, "I want you to meet myEnglishman." She looked over her shoulder, and largely beckoned to wherethe blunt and florid Buller and his companion, with their backs to whatthey were supposed to be looking at, were exchanging an anecdote ofinfinite amusement.

  Buller's expression came around slowly to his daughter's beckoning hand,but the Englishman's face seemed to flash at the instant from what hewas enjoying to what was expected of him. In the flourish ofintroductions, across and across, Flora found herself thinking thereality less extraordinary than she had at first supposed. Now that Mr.Kerr was fairly before her, presented to her, and taking her in with thesame lively, impersonal interest with which he took in the whole room,"as if," she put it vexedly to herself, "I were a specimen poked at himon the end of a pin," it stirred in her a vague resentment; andinvoluntarily she held him up to Harry. The comparison showed him alittle worn, a little battered, a little too perfunctory in manner; buthis genial eyes, deep under threatening brows, made Harry's eyes seem tostare rather coldly; and the fine form of his long, plain face, and thesensitive line of his long thin lips made Harry's beauty look,--well,how did it look? Hardly callous.

  This mixed impression the two men gave her was disconcerting. She wasall the more ready to be wary of the stranger. She had begun with him inthe way she did with every one--instinctively throwing out a breastworkof conversation from behind which she could observe the enemy. Butthough he had blinked at it, he had not taken her up, nor helped herout; but had merely stood with his head a little canted forward, as ifhe watched her through her defenses.

  "But San Francisco must seem so limited after London," she had wound up;and the way he had considered it, a little humorously, down his longnose, made her doubt the interest of cities to be reckoned in roundnumbers.

  "It's all extraordinary," he said. "You're quite as extraordinary inyour way as we in ours."

  "Oh," she wondered, still vexed with his inventory, "I had alwayssupposed us awfully commonplace. What _is_ our way, please?"

  "Ah," he said, measuring his long step to hers as they sauntered alittle, "for one thing, you're so awfully good to a fellow. InLondon"--and he nodded back, as if London were merely across theroom--"they're awfully good to the somebodies. It's the way you take inthe nobodies over here that is so astonishing--the stray leaves thatblow in with your 'trade,' and can't show any credentials but a letteror two, and their faces; and those"--his _diablerie_ danced outagain--"sometimes such deucedly damaged ones."

  It was almost indecent, this parade of his nonentity! She wanted to say,"Oh, hush! Those are the things one only enjoys--never talks about." Butinstead, somewhere up at the top of her voice, she said: "Oh, we alwayslock up our silver!"

  "But even then," he quizzed her, "I wonder how you dare to do it?"

  "Perhaps we have to, because we ourselves are all--" ("without anycredentials but those you mention,") she had been about to say--butthere she caught herself on the very edge of giving herself and all therest of them away to him; "--all so awfully bored," she mischievouslyended with the daintiest, faintest possible yawn behind her spread fan.

  He looked as if she had taken him by surprise; then laughed out. "Oh,that is the way they don't do here," he provoked her. "You mustn't,when I'm not expecting it."

  "Then what are you expecting?" she inquired a little coolly.

  "Well," he deliberated, "not expecting you to get me ready for a sweet,and then pop in a pickle; and presently expecting, hoping, anxiouslyanticipating, what you really care to say."

  He was expecting, she looked maliciously, more than he was likely toget; but the fact that he did see through her to that extent was at oncedelightful and alarming. She swayed back into the shadow beyond thedazzling line of light. She wanted to escape his scrutiny, to be able tolook him over from a safe vantage-ground. But he wouldn't have it. Aninstant he stood under the torrent of white radiance, challenging her tosee what she could--then followed her into her retreat. "Shall we sithere?" he said, and she found herself hopelessly cut off and isolatedwith the enemy.

  She couldn't withhold a little grudging pleasure in the sharpness withwhich he had turned her maneuver, and the way it had detached them fromthe surrounding crowd. For there, in the dusky center of the room, itwas as if they watched from safe covert the rest of their party exposedin the glare of light; though not, as Flora presently
noted, quiteescaping observation themselves. For an instant Harry turned and peeredtoward them with a look in his intentness that struck Flora as somethingnew in him, and made her wonder if he could be jealous. She turnedtentatively to see if Kerr had noticed it, and surprised his glance in aquick transition back to hers.

  "By your leave," he said, and took away her fan, which in his handpresently assumed such rhythmic motion that it ceased to be any morepresent to her than a delicate current of air upon her face. Her face,which in the first place he had so well looked over, he now looked intowith something more personal in his quest, as if under the low brows andcrowding lashes there was a puzzle to solve in the timid, unassuredglances of such splendid eyes.

  He was not, she felt sure, in spite of his light manipulation of herfan, a person who cared to please women, but one of that devastatingsort who care above everything to please themselves, and who are skilfulwithout practice; too skilful, she feared, for her defenses to hold outagainst if he intended to find out what she really thought. "Aren't wesupposed to be looking at the pictures?" she wanted to know.

  He turned his back on the wall and its attendant glare. "Why pictures,"he inquired, "when there are live people to look at? Pictures for placeswhere they're all half dead. But here, where even the damnable dust inthe street is alive, why should they paint, or write, or sculpt, or doanything but live?" His irascible brows shot the query at her.

  Again the proposition of life--whatever that was--was held up beforeher, and as ever she faltered in the face of it. "I suppose they do ithere," she murmured, with a vague glance at the paintings around her,"because people do it everywhere else."

  His disparagement was almost a snarl. "That's the rotten part ofit--because they do it everywhere else! As if there wasn't enoughmonotony in the world already without every chap trying to be like thenext instead of being himself!"

  "Ah!" Her small, uncertain smile in the midst of her outward splendorwas pathetic. "But it is different to you. You're a man. You're not oneof us."

  "One of what? I'm a man. I'm myself. Which, pardon me, dear lady, isjust what you won't be--yourself."

  "But if you have to be what people expect?" She clung to her firstprinciple of safety in the midst of this onslaught.

  "People don't want what they expect--if you care for that." He waved itaway with his quick, white hand.

  "But you have to care, unless you want to be queer." Her poor littlesecret was out before she knew, and he looked at it, laughingimmoderately, yet somehow delightfully.

  "Ah, if you think the social game is the game that counts! I hadexpected braver things of you. The game that counts, my girl," hepreached it at her with his long white hand, "the game that is going onout here is the big, red game of life. That's the only one that's wortha guinea; and there's no winning or losing, there's no right or wrong toit, and it doesn't matter what a man is in it as long as he's a goodone."

  "Even if he is a thief?" The question was out of Flora's lips before shecould catch it. It was a challenge. She had meant to confound him; buthe caught it as if it delighted him.

  "Well, what would you think?"

  He threw it back at her.

  What hadn't she thought! How persistently her fancy had played with thequestion of what sort of man that one might be who had so wonderfullyput his hand under a glass case and drawn out the Chatworth ring. Why,outwardly, he must have been like all the crowd around him, to haveescaped unnoticed; but, inwardly, how much superior in power and skillto have so completely overreached them!

  "Oh," she laughed dubiously, "I suppose he is a good one as long as heisn't caught."

  "What!" His face disowned her. "You think he's a renegade, do you? Achap in perpetual flight, taking things because he has to, more or lesspursued by the law? Bah! It's a guild as old, and a deal more honorable,than the beggar's. Your good thief is born to it. It's his caste. It'sin his blood. It isn't money that he wants. If he had a million he'd bethe same. And it isn't a mania either. It's a profession." TheEnglishman leaned back and smiled at her over the elegance of his long,joined finger-tips.

  She looked at him with a delighted alarm, with an increasing elation;but whether these arose from his lawless declarations and the singularway they kept setting before her more vividly moment by moment thepossible character of the present keeper of the Chatworth ring, orwhether it was just the sight of Kerr himself as he sat there thatstirred her, she didn't try to distinguish.

  "But suppose he was your own thief," she urged; "took your own things, Imean," she hastily amended, "and suppose he turned out to be--some oneyou knew and liked--" She hesitated. She had come at last to what shereally wanted to say. She had brought out a question that had beenteasing her fancy at intervals all the while he had been talking, and hehadn't even heard it. He wasn't even looking at her. She had caught himoff his guard. He was looking across her shoulder straight down the dimvista of the room to the little blaze of bordering light. He was lookingat 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 blankglare of his monocle--seemed, to Flora, to meet it a little insolently.She fancied in the instant something to pass between the two men,something which, this time, she did not mistake for jealousy--a shadetoo dim for defiance or suspicion, a deep scrutiny that struggled toplace something, some one.

  Flora felt a sudden wish to break that curious scrutiny. It had brokenher little moment. It had shattered the personal, almost intimate notethat had been sounded between them. The look Kerr turned back to her wasvague, and stirred in her a dim resentment that he could drop it all soeasily.

  "Shall we join the others?" It was the voice with which she had begunwith him, but her eyes were hot through their light mist of lashes, andhe threw her a comprehending glance of amusement.

  "Oh, no," he assured her, "we can't help ourselves. They are going tojoin us."

  Ella Buller, in the van of her procession, was already descending uponthem. Her approach dissipated the last remnant of their personal moment.Her presence always insisted that there was nothing worth while butinstant participation in her geniality, and whatever subject it might atthe moment be taken up with. This conviction of Ella's had been wont tooverawe Flora, and it still overwhelmed her; so that now, as shefollowed in the tail of Ella's marshaled force, she had a guilty feelingthat there should be nothing in her mind but a normal desire for supper.

  Yet all the way down the great stair, "the Corridors of Time," where thewhite owl glared his glassy wisdom on the passings and counter-passings,she was haunted with the thought that Harry had seen the extraordinaryKerr before; not shaken hands with him, perhaps--perhaps not even heardhis name; but somewhere, across some distance, once glimpsed him, andhad never quite shaken the memory from his mind. For there was somethingmarked, notable, unforgettable in that lean distinctiveness. Against thesleek form of the men they met and shook hands with, he flashedout--seemed in contrast fairly electric. She saw him, just ahead of herwhere the crowd was thickening in the door of the supper-room, makingway for Clara through the press with that exasperating solicitude ofhis that was half ironic. And the large broadside offered by herelegant Harry, matter-of-factly towing Ella by the elbow, herselfconscious of a curl or two awry, and Judge Buller tramping heavily ather side, all took on to her the aspect of a well-chosen peep-show withthe satanic Kerr officiating as showman. Even the smooth and pallidClara, who usually coerced by her sheer correctness, failed to dominatethis fantastic image; rather, she took on, as she was handed into thesupper-room, the aspect of his chief exhibit.

  The room, hot, polished, flaring reflections of electric lights from itsglistening floor, announced itself the heart of high festivity, throughthe midst of which their entrance made an added ripple. The flushedfaces of the women under their flowers, under their pale-tinted hats,with their smiling recognitions to Clara, to Flora, to Ella, smiled witha sharpened interest. It proclaimed that Kerr was a stranger, and, in acircle which found itself a l
ittle stale for lack of innovations, adesirable one. Exclamatory greetings, running into skirmishes of talk,here and there halted their progress, and even after they had settledabout their table in the center of the room the attention of one andanother was drawn over the shoulder to some special, trans-tablerecognition.

  Apparently the dominant note of their party was Ella's clamorousselection for the supper; but to Flora the more real thing was theatmosphere of excitement and mystery she had been moving in all theevening. She was pursued by the obsession of something more about tohappen--something imminent--though, of course, nothing would; at least,how could anything happen here, to them? And by "them," she meantherself and these people around her so stupidly talking--the eternalrepetition of the story she had read out that evening to Clara, and notone glimmer of light! She wondered if her obsession was all her own--ordid it reach to one of them? Certainly not Ella; not Judge Buller,settled into his collar, choosing champagnes. Clara? She had to skipClara. One never knew whether Clara had not more behind her smoothprettiness than ever she brought to light. Kerr? Perhaps. With him shefelt potentialities enormous. Harry? Never. Harry was being appealed toby all the women who could get at him as to his part in the affair--whathad been his sensations and emotions? But Flora knew perfectly well hehad had none. He was only oppressed by the attention his fame in thematter, and the central position of their table, brought upon him.Protesting, he made his part as small as possible.

  "Oh, confound it, if I can't get at my oysters!" he complained, leaningback into his group again with a sigh.

  "You divide the honors with the mysterious unknown, eh?" Kerr inquiredacross the table.

  "Hang it, there's no division! I'd offer you a share!" Harry laughed,and it occurred to Flora how much Kerr could have made of it.

  "Purdie'd like to share something," Buller vouchsafed. "He's been pawingthe air ever since Crew cabled, and this has blown him up completely."

  "Crew?" Flora wondered. Here was something more happening. Crew? She hadnot heard that name before. It made a stir among them all; but if Kerrlooked sharp, Clara looked sharper. She looked at Harry and Harry wasvexed.

  "Who's Crew?" said Ella; and the judge looked around on the silence.

  "Why, bless my soul, isn't it--Oh, anyway, it will all be out to-morrow.But I thought Harry'd told you. The Chatworth ring wasn't Bessie's."

  It had the effect of startling them all apart, and then drawing themcloser together again around the table over the uncorked bottles.

  "Why," Judge Buller went on, "this ring is a celebrated thing. It's the'Crew Idol'!" He threw the name out as if that in itself explainedeverything, but the three women, at least, were blank.

  "Why celebrated?" Clara objected. "The stones were only sapphires."

  Kerr smiled at this measure of fame.

  "Quite so," he nodded to her, "but there are several sorts of valueabout that ring. Its age, for one."

  He had the attention of the table, as if they sensed behind his wordsmore even than Judge Buller could have told them.

  "And then the superstition about it. It's rather a pretty tale," saidKerr, looking at Flora. "You've seen the ring--a figure of Vishnu bentbackward into a circle, with a head of sapphire; two yellow stones forthe cheeks and the brain of him of the one blue. Just as a piece ofcarving it is so fine that Cellini couldn't have equaled it, but no oneknows when or where it was made. The first that is known, the Shah Jehanhad it in his treasure-house. The story is he stole it, but, howeverthat may be, he gave it as a betrothal gift to his wife--possibly themost beautiful"--his eyebrows signaled to Flora his uncertainty of thatfact--"without doubt the best-loved woman in the world. When she died itwas buried with her--not in the tomb itself, but in the Taj Mehal; andfor a century or so it lay there and gathered legends about it as thickas dust. It was believed to be a talisman of good fortune--especially inlove.

  "It had age; it had intrinsic value; it had beauty, and that one otherquality no man can resist--it was the only thing of its kind in theworld. At all events, it was too much for old Neville Crew, when he sawit there some couple of hundred years ago. When he left India the ringwent with him. He never told how he got it, but lucky marriages camewith it, and the Crews would not take the House of Lords for it. Theirwomen have worn it ever since."

  For a moment the wonder of the tale and the curious spark of excitementit had produced in the teller kept the listeners silent. Clara was thefirst to return to facts. "Then Bessie--" she prompted eagerly.

  Kerr turned his glass in meditative fingers. "She wore it as youngChatworth's wife." He held them all in an increasing tension, as if hedrew them toward him.

  "The elder Chatworth, Lord Crew, is a bachelor, but, of course, thering reverted to him on Chatworth's death."

  "And Lord only knows," the judge broke in, "how it got shipped withBessie's property. Crew was out of England at the time. He kept thewires hot about it, and they managed to keep the fact of what the ringwas quiet--but it got out to-day when Purdie found it was gone. You seehe was showing it--and without special permission."

  Flora had a bewildered feeling that this judicial summing up of factswasn't the sort of thing the evening had led up to. She couldn't see, ifthis was what it amounted to, why Harry had changed his mind abouttelling them at the dinner table. She could not even understand wherethis belonged in the march of events in their story, but Clara took itup, clipped it out, and fitted it into its place.

  "Then there will be pressure--enormous pressure, brought to bear torecover it?"

  "Oh-o-oh!" Buller drew out the syllable with unctuous relish. "They'llrip the town inside out. They'll do worse. There'll be a string ofdetectives across the country--yes, and at intervals to China--so tightyou couldn't step from Kalamazoo to Oshkosh without running into one.The thing is too big to be covered. The chap who took it will play alone game; and to do that--Lord knows there aren't many who could--to dothat he'd have to be a--a--"

  "Farrell Wand?" Flora flung it out as a challenge among these prosaicpeople; but the effect of it was even sharper than she had expected. Shefancied she saw them all start; that Harry squared himself, that Kerrmet it as if he swallowed it with almost a facial grimace; that JudgeBuller blinked it hard in the face--the most bothered of the lot. Hecame at it first in words.

  "Farrell Wand?" He felt it over, as if, like a doubtful coin, it mighthave rung false. "Now, what did I know of Farrell Wand?"

  "Farrell Wand?" Kerr took it up rapidly. "Why, he was the great Johnniewho went through the Scotland Yard men at Perth in '94, and got off.Don't you remember? He took a great assortment of things under the mostpeculiar circumstances--took the Tilton emeralds off Lady Tilton's neckat St. James'."

  "Why, Harry, you--" Flora began. "You told us that," was what she hadmeant to say, but Harry stopped her. Stopped her just with a look, witha nod; but it was as if he had shaken his head at her. His tawny lashes,half drooped over watching eyes, gave him more than ever the look of agreat, still cat; a domestic, good-humored cat, but in sight oflegitimate prey. Her eyes went back to Kerr with a sense ofbewilderment. His voice was still going on, expansively, brilliantly,juggling his subject.

  "He knew them all, the big-wigs up in Parliament, the big-wigs on'Change, the little duchesses in Mayfair, and they all liked him, askedhim, dined him, and--great Scott, they paid! Paid in hereditary jewels,or the shock to their decency when the thing came out--but, poor devil,so did he!"

  And through it all Buller gloomed unsmiling, with out-thrust underlip.

  "No, no," he said slowly, "that's not my connection with Farrell Wand.What happened afterward? What did they do with him?"

  Kerr was silent, and Flora thought his face seemed suddenly at itssharpest.

  It was Clara who answered with another question. "Didn't he get to thecolonies? Didn't he die there?"

  Judge Buller caught it with a snap of his fingers. "Got it!" hetriumphed, and the two men turned square upon him. "They ran him toearth in Australia. That was the year I was th
ere--'96. I got a snapshotof him at the time."

  It was now the whole table that turned on him, and Flora felt, with thatunanimous movement, something crucial, the something that she had beenwaiting for; and yet she could in no way connect it with what hadhappened, nor understand why Clara, why Harry, why Kerr above all shouldbe so alert. For more than all he looked expectant, poised, and readyfor whatever was coming next.

  "What sort of a chap?" he mused and fixed the judge a moment with thesame stare that Flora remembered to have first confronted her.

  "What sort? Sort of a criminal," the judge smiled. "They all lookalike."

  "Still," Clara suggested, "such a man could hardly have been ordinary--"

  "In the chain-gang--oh, yes," said Buller with conviction.

  "Oh! Then the picture wasn't worth anything?"

  "Why, no," Buller admitted slowly, "though, come to think of it, itwasn't the chain-gang either. They were taking him aboard the ship. Thecrowd was so thick I hardly saw him, and--only got one shot at him. Butthe name was a queer one. It stuck in my mind."

  "But then," Clara insisted, "what became of him?"

  "Oh, gave them the slip," the judge chuckled. "He always did. Reportedto have changed ships in mid-ocean. Hal, is that another bottle?"

  Harry stretched his hand for it, but it stayed suspended--and, for aninstant, it seemed as if the whole table waited expectant. Had Buller'scamera caught the clear face of Farrell Wand, or only a dim figure?Flora wondered if that was the question Harry wanted to ask. Hewanted--and yet he hesitated, as if he did not quite dare touch it. Helaughed and filled the glasses. He had dropped his question, and therewas no one at the table who seemed ready to put another.

  And yet there were questions there, in all the eyes; but some impassablebarrier seemed to have come between these eager people, and what, forincalculable reasons, they so much wanted to know. It was not the genialindifference with which Buller had dropped the subject for theapproaching bottle. It seemed rather their own timidity that withheldthem from touching this subject which at every turn produced upon someone of the eager three some fresh startling effect the others could notunderstand. They were restless; Clara notably, even under her calm.

  Flora knew she was not giving up the quest of Farrell Wand, but onlysetting it aside with her unfailing thrift, which saved everything. Butwhy, in this case? And Harry, who had been so merry with the mystery atdinner--why had he suddenly tried to suppress her, to want to ignore thewhole business; why had he hesitated over his question, and finally letit fall? And why, above all, was Kerr so brilliantly talking at Ella, inthe same way he had begun at Flora herself? Talking at Ella as if hehardly saw her, but like some magician flinging out a brilliant train ofpyrotechnics to hypnotize the senses, before he proceeds with his trick.And the way Ella was looking at him--her bewildered alacrity, the wayshe was struggling with what was being so rapidly shot at her--appearedto Flora the prototype of her own struggle to understand what realitythese appearances around her could possibly shadow. Never before had hersense of standing on the outside edge of life been so strong. It seemedas though there were some large, impalpable thing growing in the midstof them, around the edges of which they were tiptoeing, daringly,fearfully, each one for himself. But though it loomed so large that shefelt herself in the very shadow of it, rub her eyes as she would, shecouldn't see it.

  Often enough in the crowds she moved among she had felt herself lonelyand not wondered at it. But now and here, sitting among her close,intimate circle, her friends and her lover, it seemed like a horribleobsession--yet it was true. As clear as if it had been shown her in arevelation she saw herself absolutely alone.