The Coast of Chance Part 22

"Not black magic," Flora took up his fancy.

He had drawn out a chair for her. "That depends on you. I'm not the magic maker. I have no talisman."

She felt the conscious jewel burn in her possession. She looked up beseechingly at him, but he only laughed, and, with a swing, lifted the chair a little off the ground as he set her up to the table, as if to show how easily he could put forth strength. There was nothing defiant in him. He was taking her with him--taking her upon the wings of his high spirits; but mischievously, obstinately, he would not show her where the flight was leading, nor let her listen to anything but the rustling of those wings. He was determined to make holiday, whatever was to follow. For the glimpse of blue through the dim window might be the Bay of Naples; and, ah! Chianti. Perhaps the sort one gets down Monte Video way, where France fades into Italy--perhaps, at least if her kind fancy could get the better of the reality. In Sicily there were just such table-cloths as these, and just such fat floor-shaking contadini to wait upon you. And look now at the purple one behind the desk--child or gnome--feet not touching the floor--centuries of Italy in her face. Oh, calculation, indifference!

"She wouldn't care if you jumped up and threw me out of the window," he affirmed. "That's why this hole is so harmless. Oh, isn't that harmless?

What's more harmless than to let one alone? There's only one dangerous thing here," he grinned and let her take her choice of which.

She came straight at it.

"You know I can't let you alone."

He laughed. "Well, isn't that why we're here at last--that you may dictate your terms?"

"I have. Didn't you get my letter?"

"Oh, indeed I did. Haven't I obeyed it? Haven't I kept away from your house? Have I tried to approach you?"

"Haven't you, though?" she threw at him accusingly.

"Ah," he deprecated, "you came to me. I was down in the garden."

She looked at him through his persiflage wistfully, searchingly. "But there were other things in that letter."

"There were?" He regarded her with grave surprise. Oh, how she mistrusted his gravity! "Why, to be sure there were things--things that you didn't mean--one thing above all others you couldn't mean, that you want me to drop out when the game is half done, to slink away and leave it all like this--abandon you and my Idol so to each other! My dear, for what do you take me?"

She burst out. "But can't you see the danger?"

He met it quietly.

"Certainly. I have been seeing nothing else but the danger--to you. Do you think I've been idle all these days? Every line I have followed has ended in that. It's brought me finally to this." The gesture of his hand included their predicament and the dingy little room. "You'll really have to help me, after all."

"Oh, haven't I tried to? That is why I wrote. Don't you see your own danger at all?"

"No, but I'd like to." He leaned toward her, brows lifted to a quizzical peak.

"Oh, I can't tell you," she despaired. "But somehow I shall have to make you go."

"That will be easy," he said. Leaning back, nursing his chin in his hand, he watched her with a gloomy sort of brooding. "You know what it is I'm waiting for. You know I won't go without it." His words came sadly, but doggedly, with a grim finality, as if he gave himself up to the course he was following as something he knew was inevitable. The faintness of despair came over her. Only the narrow table was between them, yet all at once, with the mention of the ring, he seemed a long way off. What was this terrible obsession that outweighed every other consideration with him? How get at it? How get through it? Or was it between them for ever?

"Do you care for it so very much?" she asked him, trembling but valiant.

"I care so very much," he repeated slowly, and after a moment of wonder: "Why, don't you?"

"Oh, not for that," she cried sharply. "Not for the sapphire!"

He stared. She had startled him clean out of his brooding. "In Heaven's name, for what, then?"

Oh, she could never tell him it was for him! In her distress and embarra.s.sment she looked all ways.

His quick white finger touched her on the wrist. "For Cressy?"

The abrupt stern note of his question startled her. She held herself stiff and still for a moment, then: "For every one in this wretched business. I have to."

"Ah," he sighed out the satisfaction of his long uncertainty, "then Cressy _is_ in it."

"No, I didn't mean that--you mustn't think it--I can't discuss him with you!" She was hot to recapture her fugitive admission.

"Don't let that disturb you. You haven't given him away to me. I had all I'm likely to get from the man himself."

"He--he told you?" she faltered.

"He told me nothing. Don't you know that he mis...o...b..s me? I got it out of him, by sleight of hand--where we had met before. Has he never told you anything of that morning when we left your house together?"

"Never." The admission cost her an effort.

He mused at her. "As I said, he told _me_ nothing, but it occurred to me when he came in that we might be there on the same errand."

She paled. "You mean--?"

"I mean I thought it might be safer all around that you should not see him that morning; so I got him away. He hasn't asked you for it since?"

"The sapphire?" she faltered. "No!" The more her instinct warned that it had been the jewel Harry had returned for, the more she repudiated the idea to Kerr.

"Why should you think he came for that? What has he to do with it?" she murmured.

"My G.o.d! how you do champion him!" He leaned forward sharply across the table. "What is this man to you?"

He was going too far. He had no right to that question. "The man I have promised to marry." Her hot look, her cold manner defied him to command her here. Yet for a moment, leaning forward with his clenched hands on the table, he looked ready to spring up and force her words back on her. The next he let it go and dropped back in his chair again.

"Quite so," he said. "But I didn't believe it." He stared at her with a dull, profound resentment. "Yet it's most possible; since it isn't the sapphire it would be that." He mused. "But, you extraordinary woman, why on earth--" he broke off, still looking at her, looking with a persistent, sharp, studying eye, as if she were the most puzzling and, it came to her gradually, the most dubious thing on earth. He was verily a magician, a worker of black magic; for under the spell of his eyes she felt herself turning into something horrible. However innocent she was in intention, the ugly appearance was covering her.

"Then what are you doing here with the ring on you?" he demanded solemnly. "Why are you dealing with me? What do you think you'll get out of it? Good G.o.d! women are hideous! How can you betray the man you love?"

"Oh," she cried, with a wail of horror. She stood up trembling and pale.

"I don't--I don't--I don't! I've kept it from them. I'm standing against them all. I shall never give it to them. When have I ever betrayed you?"

He drew back, away from her, as if to ward off her meaning, but she leaned toward him, her hands flung out, holding herself up to him for all she meant. He got up slowly and the creeping tide of red, dusky and violent, rising over his face, swelling his features, darkening his eyes, hung before her like a banner of shame.

"I didn't know, I didn't know," he repeated in a low voice. His eyes were on the ground. Then, with a sharp motion, as if merely standing in front of her was unendurable, "Oh, Lord!" he said, and, turning, walked from her toward the window. He went precipitately, as if he meant to go through it, but he only leaned against it and stood motionless; and from her side of the table, trembling, breathless, she watched his stricken silhouette black upon the gray, fading light.

The knowledge of how far she had gone, of how much she had betrayed herself, swelled and swelled before her mind until it seemed to fill her life, but she looked at it hardily and unabashed. All the decencies in the world should sink before he thought her a traitor. She came softly up beside him.

"Don't be sorry for what I told you."

"I'm not," he said. His voice sounded m.u.f.fled. He did not look at her, only held out his arm in a mute sign to her to come. She felt it around her, but it was a mere symbol of protection. It lay limp on her shoulder, and he continued to stare through the window at the street.

"I'm not sorry for what you said," he repeated slowly. "I'm glad; but, child, I wish it wasn't true."

"Don't, don't!" she besought him, "for I don't."