The Coast of Chance Part 4

Harry stretched his hand for it, but it stayed suspended--and, for an instant, it seemed as if the whole table waited expectant. Had Buller's camera caught the clear face of Farrell Wand, or only a dim figure?

Flora wondered if that was the question Harry wanted to ask. He wanted--and yet he hesitated, as if he did not quite dare touch it. He laughed and filled the gla.s.ses. He had dropped his question, and there was no one at the table who seemed ready to put another.

And yet there were questions there, in all the eyes; but some impa.s.sable barrier seemed to have come between these eager people, and what, for incalculable reasons, they so much wanted to know. It was not the genial indifference with which Buller had dropped the subject for the approaching bottle. It seemed rather their own timidity that withheld them from touching this subject which at every turn produced upon some one of the eager three some fresh startling effect the others could not understand. They were restless; Clara notably, even under her calm.

Flora knew she was not giving up the quest of Farrell Wand, but only setting it aside with her unfailing thrift, which saved everything. But why, in this case? And Harry, who had been so merry with the mystery at dinner--why had he suddenly tried to suppress her, to want to ignore the whole business; why had he hesitated over his question, and finally let it fall? And why, above all, was Kerr so brilliantly talking at Ella, in the same way he had begun at Flora herself? 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. It seemed as though there were some large, impalpable thing growing in the midst of them, around the edges of which they were tiptoeing, daringly, fearfully, each one for himself. But though it loomed so large that she felt herself in the very shadow of it, rub her eyes as she would, she couldn't see it.

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

III

ENCOUNTERS ON PARADE

Flora, before the mirror, gaily stabbing in her long hat-pins, confessed to herself that last night had been queer, as queer as queer could be; but this morning, luckily, was real again. Her fancy last night had--yes, she was afraid it really had--run away with her. And she turned and held the hand-mirror high, to be sure of the line of her tilted hat, gave a touch to the turn of her wide, close belt, a flirt to the frills of her bodice.

The wind was lightly ruffling and puffing out the muslin curtains of the windows, and from the garden below came the long, silvery clash of eucalyptus leaves. She leaned on the high window-ledge to look downward over red roofs, over terraced green, over steep streets running abruptly to the broken blue of the bay. She tried to fancy how Kerr would look in this morning sun. He seemed to belong only beneath the high artificial lights, in the thicker atmosphere of evening. Would he return again, with renewed potency, with the same singular, almost sinister charm, as a wizard who works his will only by moonlight? When she should see him again, what, she wondered, would be his extraordinary mood? On what new breathless flights might he not take her--or would he see her at all? It was too fantastic. The sunlight thinned him to an impalpable ghost.

It was Clara, standing at the foot of the stairs, who belonged to the morning, so brisk, so fresh, so practical she appeared. She held a book in her hand. The door, open for her immediate departure, showed, beyond the descent of marble steps, the landau glistening black against white pavements. It was unusual for this formal vehicle to put in an appearance so early.

"I am going to drive over to the Purdies'," Clara explained. "I have an errand there."

Flora smiled at the thought of how many persons would be having errands to the Purdies' now. It was refres.h.i.+ng to catch Clara in this weakness.

She felt a throb of it herself when she recalled the breathless moment at the supper table last evening. "Oh, that will be a heavenly drive,"

she said. "Please ask me to go with you. My errand can wait."

"Why, certainly. I should like to have you," said Clara. But if she had returned a flat "no," Flora would not have had a dryer sense of unwelcome. Still, she had gone too far to retreat. After all, this was only Clara's manner, and her buoyant interest in the expedition was stronger than her diffidence.

Mischievous reflections of the doctrine the Englishman had startled her with the night before flickered in her mind, as they drove from the door. Was this part of "the big red game," not being accommodating, nor so very polite? The streets were still wet with early fog, and, turning in at the Presidio gate, the cypresses dripped dankly on their heads, and hung out cobwebs pearled with dew. She was sure, even under their dripping, that the "d.a.m.nable dust" was alive.

Down the broad slopes that were swept by the drive all was green to the water's edge. The long line of barracks, the officers' quarters, the great parade-ground, set in the flat land between hills and bay, looked like a child's toy, pretty and little. They heard the note of a bugle, thin and silver clear, and they could see the tiny figures mustering; but in her preoccupation it did not occur to Flora that they were arriving just in time for parade. But when the carriage had crossed the viaduct, and swung them past the acacias, and around the last white curve into the white dust of the parade-ground, Clara turned, as if with a fresh idea.

"Wouldn't you like to stop and watch it?"

"Why, yes," Flora a.s.sented. The brilliance of light and color, the precision of movement, the sound of the bra.s.ses under the open sky were an intermezzo in harmony with her spirited mood.

The carriage stopped under the scanty shadow of trees that bordered the walk to the officers' quarters. Clara, book in hand, alertly rose.

"I'll just run up to the Purdies' and leave this," she said.

"Then she really did want to be rid of me," Flora mused, as she watched the brisk back moving away; "and how beautifully she has done it!" Her eyes followed Clara's little figure retreating up the neat and narrow board walk, to where it disappeared in overarching depths of eucalyptus trees. Further on, beyond the trees, two figures, smaller than Clara's in their greater distance, were coming down. Flora almost grinned as she recognized the large linen umbrella that Mrs. Purdie invariably carried when abroad in the reservation, and presently the trim and bounding figure of Mrs. Purdie herself, under it. The Purdies were coming down to parade--at least Mrs. Purdie was. But the tall figure beside her--that was not the major. She took up her lorgnon. It was--no it could not be--yet surely it _was_ Harry! Lazy Harry, up and out, and squiring Mrs. Purdie to the review at half-past ten in the morning! "Are we all mad?" Flora thought.

The three little figures, the one going up, the two coming down, touched opposite fringes of the grove--disappeared within it. On which side would they come out together? Flora wondered. They emerged on her side with Harry a little in advance. He came swingingly down the walk, straight toward her, and across the road to the carriage, his hat lifted, his hand out.

"Well, Flora," he said, "this is luck!"

"What in the world has got you out so early?" she rallied him.

"Came out to see Purdie on business, and here you are all ready to drive me back."

"That's your reward."

He brushed his handkerchief over his damp forehead. "Well, there's one coming to me, for I haven't found Purdie."

Her eyes were dancing with mischief. "Harry, I believe you're out here about the Crew Idol, too!"

He shook his head at her, smiling. "I wouldn't talk too much about that, Flora. It flicks poor Purdie on the raw every time that--" His sentence trailed off into something else, for Mrs. Purdie and Clara had come up.

The book had changed hands, together, evidently, with several explanations, and Mrs. Purdie, with her foot on the carriage step, was ready to make one of these over again.

"The major'll be so sorry. He's gone in town. It's so unusual for him to get off at this hour, but he said he had to catch a man. As Mrs. Britton and I were saying, he's likely to be very busy until this dreadful affair is straightened out. If you can only wait a little longer, Mr.

Cressy," she went on, "I am expecting him every moment."

"Oh, it's of no importance," said Harry, but he looked at his watch with a fold between his brows, and then at the car that was coming in.

"Well, at least, you'll have time to see the parade," said Mrs. Purdie.

"I always think it's a pretty sight, though most of the women get tired of it."

Clara's face showed that she belonged to the latter cla.s.s; but Flora, too keenly attuned to sounds and sights not to be swayed by outward circ.u.mstances, was content for the time to watch, in the cloud of dust, the wheeling platoons and rhythmic columns.

Yet through all--even when she was not looking at him--she was aware of Harry's restlessness, of his impatience; and as the last company swung barrackward, and the cloud began to settle over the empty field, he snapped his watch-case smartly, and remarked, "Still no major."

"Why, there he is now!" Mrs. Purdie screamed, pointing across the parade-ground.

Flora looked. Half-way down on the adjoining side of the parallelogram, back toward her, the redoubtable Kerr was standing. She recognized him on the instant, as if he were the most familiar figure in her life. Yet she was more surprised to see him here than she had been to see Harry.

She felt inclined to rub her eyes. It took a moment for her to realize that his companion was indeed Major Purdie.

The major had recognized his wife's signaling umbrella. Now he turned toward it, but Kerr, with a quick motion of hand toward hat, turned in the opposite direction. In her mind Flora was with the major who ran after him. The two men stood for a little, expostulating. Then both walked toward the landau and the linen umbrella.

The carriage group waited, watching with flagging conversation, which finally fell into silence. But the two approaching strolled easily and talked. Even in cold daylight Kerr still gave Flora the impression that the open was not big enough to hold him, but she saw a difference in his mood, a graver eye, a colder mouth, and when he finally greeted them, a manner that was brusk. It showed uncivil beside the major's urbanity.

The major was glad, very glad, to see them all. He was evidently also a little flurried. He seemed to know that they had all met Kerr before.

Had it been at the moment of his attempted departure that Kerr had told him, Flora wondered? And had he given them as his excuse for going away?

It hurt her; though why should she be hurt because a stranger had not wanted to cross the parade-ground to shake hands with her? He was less interested in her than he was in Harry, at whom he had looked keenly.

But Harry's nervousness had left him, now that Purdie was within his reach. He returned the glance indifferently. He stood close to the major--his hand on his shoulder. The major, with his bland blue eyes twinkling from Clara to Flora, seemed the only man ready to devote himself to the service of the ladies.

"And what's the news from the front?" said Clara gaily. Kerr gave her a rapid glance; but the major blinked as if the allusion had got by him.

"I mean the mystery--the Chatworth ring," she explained. However lightly and sweetly Clara said it, it was a little brazen to fling such a question at poor Purdie, whose responsibility the ring had been.

He received it amicably enough, but conclusively. "No news whatever, my dear Mrs. Britton."

She smiled. "We're all rather interested in the mystery. Flora has made a dozen romances about it."