Esther Chamberlain

My Dear Flora—I am going out early and shall not be back to dinner.

Clara.

Flora let the little note fall as if she disliked the touch of it. She was relieved to think she would not have to see Clara that day. It was her desire never to see Clara again. If only they could part here and now! How she wanted to shake the whole thing off her shoulders! How foolish not to have gone to Harry when she had first made up her mind to! For why, after all, make him any explanations? Suppose she should just take the ring to him and say: "It gives me the shivers, Harry. Let's take it back and get something else." If he didn't suspect the sapphire already, he would never suspect it from that. The worst he could do would be to laugh, to tease, to tell her she could not live up to her own romantic notions, since, after all, she had weakened and was wanting the usual thing.

But there had been times when she had thought that he did suspect the sapphire. Well, if he did, giving it back to him would practically be giving it back into public custody in the most decorous manner for a properly bred young woman. And how beautifully it would extricate her from her wretched situation! Logically, there was no fault to be found with such a course. It was eminently sane and safe. Yet it still appeared to her as if she were acting a coward's part. She was neither frankly giving the jewel to the authorities with the proper information, nor frankly handing it over to Kerr. But she was trying to slip it back into the questionable nook from which it had been taken, and she grew hot at the thought of how Kerr would despise her if he knew the craven course she was meditating. She seemed to hear him saying, "I had thought braver things of you."

Of course, that was his way of expecting that she would give him the ring. And she felt a sort of rage against him that he should want that, and only that, so very much. Yet she didn't know what else she wanted him to want. Every time she thought of Kerr she found herself growing unreasonable; and she had to whip up her resolution with the hard facts of the case to prevent herself from drifting over on to his side completely.

But did she really want Harry to rid her of the ring? She would get hold of him first and then she would see what she would do.

She stepped into the hall with all the confidence of one who has fully made up her mind to carry matters with a high hand; but at the telephone she hesitated. Calling him up at such an hour of the morning demanding his attendance on such a fanciful errand—wouldn't he think it odd? No, he would think it the most natural thing in the world for her to be so flighty. Reassured, she gave the club number and stood waiting, listening to the half-syllables of switched-off voices and the crossing click, click, that was bringing her fate nearer to her. She heard some one coming up the stairs and down the hall toward her. Marrika stood stolid at her elbow.

"Mr. Cressy," she pronounced.

"Yes, yes," said Flora, with the club clamoring in her left ear.

"He is down-stairs," said Marrika.

Flora nearly let the receiver fall. Harry here? What a piece of luck! But here on his own account, at such an hour—how extraordinary!

"Hello, hello," persisted the club. "What's wanted?"

"Why, I—" Flora stammered. "It's a mistake; never mind. I don't want him now." She hoped that Harry had not heard her as he came in, since it was his informal fashion to await her in the large entrance hall. She didn't want to spoil the chance he had given her of seeming offhand about the ring. But the hall was empty, and as she descended the stairs she amused herself with the fancy that Shima had had a vision, and that she would still have to ring up the club and explain to the attendant that, after all, she wanted Mr. Cressy.

Then from the drawing-room threshold she caught sight of Harry standing in the big bay window of the drawing-room, in the same spot where Kerr had awaited her the afternoon before. Harry was tall and large and freshly colored, and yet he did not fill the room to her as the other man had done. He met her, kissed her, and she turned her head so that his lips met her cheek close beside her ear. She did not positively object to his kissing her on the lips, but her instinct was strong to offer him her cheek. He had sometimes laughed at this, but now he resented it. He insisted on his privilege, and she was passive to him, conscious of less love in this than assertion of possession.

"You are not going to Burlingame, are you?" she asked him with her first breath.He looked down at her with a flushed and sulky air. "What difference would that make to you? I am, as it happens, but I suppose you think that's no reason for disturbing you so early." He was angry, but at what, she wondered, with creeping uneasiness. He held her and caressed her with a morose satisfaction, as if he had to make sure to himself that she was really his, and she permitted it and abetted it with a guile that astonished her.

"What is the matter?" she urged. "Are things going crookedly at Burlingame?"

"Things are going as crooked as you please, but not at Burlingame. Sit over there," he said, nodding toward the window-bench; "I want to talk to you."

Harry had the air of one about to scold, and certainly Flora thought if anybody was carrying matters with a high hand, it wasn't herself; but she didn't follow his direction. She continued to stand, while he, sitting on the table's edge, drumming the top of his hat, gloomily regarded her."Well?" she persisted, troubled by this look of his, and this silence.

"Look here," he began, "I have to be away a couple of days and I wish you'd do me a favor."

Flora's thought flew to the ring. Was he going to ask for it back, to have it reset, as he had promised on the threshold of the goldsmith's shop? Here might be the chance she had hoped for of getting rid of it. She grasped at it before she had time to waver.

"I wonder if it's the very favor I was going to ask of you."

But he didn't take it up. He seemed hardly to hear her, as if his mind was too much absorbed with quite another question—a question that the next moment came out flat. "What was that Kerr doing here yesterday?"

She was taken aback, so far had her apprehension of Harry's jealousy slipped into the background in the last twenty-four hours. But her consciousness that Harry was not behaving well, even for a jealous man, made her take it up all the more lightly.

"Why, he was calling, chatting, taking tea—what anybody else would do from four to six. What in the world gave you the idea that he was doing anything extraordinary?"

"Well," he said, "you shouldn't do the sort of thing that makes you talked about."

"'That makes me talked about'?" It made her pause in front of him.

"Why, yes, it isn't like you. It's never happened before. Look here. I drop into the Bullers' yesterday; find Clara sidled up to the judge; look around for you. 'Hello,' I say, 'where's Flora?' 'Oh,' says she, 'Flora's at home amusing Mr. Kerr.' 'Amusing Mr. Kerr!'" he repeated. "That's a nice thing to hear."

Flora went red. She walked down the room from him to give her suddenly tumultuous heart time. However little he might guess the real trend of her interview with Kerr, she couldn't hear him come near it without apprehension. She was angry, helplessly angry at Harry that he had taken this moment for his stupid jealousy. But she was more angry at Clara, since such a speech on Clara's part wasn't carelessness. She had meant it to work upon him, and here he stood, like the fine animal that he was, smoldering with the suspicion of encroachment on his prey.

She tried to laugh him out of it.

"Why, Harry, I never saw you jealous before!"

"It's all very well to say that—and you know I've never made a row about the other Johnnies. I knew you didn't care for any of them."

Her eyes narrowed and darkened.

"And you take it for granted I care for Mr. Kerr?"

"Oh, no, no!" He pushed his hand through his hair with an irascible gesture. "But it's plain enough you like him—you women always like a fellow that flourishes—but that's not the sort of man I care to see hanging around my girl."Flora stood leaning on the table, breathing a little hurriedly, feeling rather as if she had been shaken. Harry, standing with his hands in his pockets, looked not unlike the threatening image he had appeared in the back of the goldsmith's shop.

"Of course, the fellow can talk," he admitted, "and he has a manner. But Lord knows where he comes from or who he is. Why, even the Bullers don't know."

Flora turned sharply on him. "Who told you that?"

"The judge. He picked him up at the club."

"Well," she kept it up, "some one had to introduce him there."

Harry smiled. "You wouldn't care to bow to some of those club members."

"Harry, do you know how you sound to me?" She was trembling at the daring of what she was going to say. "You talk as if you knew something against him."

Her statement seemed to bring him up short. "No, no, I don't," he said hastily.She made a little gesture of despair. How was she to count on Harry if he was going to behave like this? How trust him when he was shuffling so?

She made one more bold stroke to make him speak out.

"Harry, you do know something about him! I know you have seen him before."

"Why, yes, I've seen him before. But that's got nothing to do with it."

He looked surprised that she should seem to accuse him of it, and she wondered if he could have forgotten how he had denied it before.

"And that isn't why you distrust him?"

The devil's tattoo that he beat on his hat stopped.

"I don't distrust him."

"Well, dislike him, then. When was it that you saw him before?"

"Isn't it enough for me to tell you that I don't want you to see him?"

"Oh!" She turned away from him. Every nerve in her was in revolt. Then he really wasn't going to tell her anything. He was keeping her out of it as if she were a child. She had relied on him to return the ring. She had counted upon his indifference and good nature. And he was neither indifferent nor good-natured. All desire of even mentioning the ring to him left her; and as to giving him her confidence—These hints that he had thrown out about Kerr—they might be mere jealousy—but he might have actual knowledge, knowledge that, with her own fitted to it, would make for him a complete figure. She caught her breath at the thought of how near she had come to actually betraying Kerr. Until that moment she had not realized that through all her waverings her one fixed intention had been not to betray him.

Harry had risen and was buttoning his overcoat. "You know you're never at home if you don't want to be," he said.

She stood misleadingly drooping before him. But though her appearance was passive enough for the most exacting lover her will had never been in more vigorous revolt. She knew Harry was taking her weariness for acquiescence, and she let him take it so. She even followed him into the hall, and with a vague idea of further propitiation, nodded away Shima and opened the door for him herself.

The fog was a chasm of white outside. Harry turned on the brink of it. "By the way, where's Clara?"

"Why, do you want to see her? She'll be out all day. She's dining with the Willie Herricks."

"No, I don't want to see her, but, by the way, she's not dining with the Willie Herricks; she's dining with the Bullers. I heard her make the engagement yesterday."

"Oh, no, Harry, I'm sure you're mistaken."

"Well, it doesn't matter. All I want to know is, why did you show that ring to Clara before it was set?"

She was genuinely aghast. "I didn't," she flashed. "What made you think I had?"

He shrugged. "Well, she asked me where we got it. I don't see why women always talk those things over." He was looking at her inquiringly.

"Well, I haven't," she said quickly. "Have you?"

He looked out upon the fog. "Told her where we got it, do you mean? No, I just chaffed her. I'd look out, if I were you. She strikes me as damned curious." He stood a moment on the threshold, looking from Flora to the chasm of fog outside, as if he were choosing between two chances. "I think I'll take that ring this morning," he said slowly.

The deliberate words came to her with a shock. But in the moment, while she looked into Harry's moody face, she realized how impossible to make a scene over what must still be maintained as a trivial matter betwixt them—the mere resetting of a jewel; what should she do to put him off? She looked up at him, and saw with relief that his face was turned from her to the fog, as if he had forgotten her. Then, still with averted head, as if he addressed the whiteness, or himself,—"No," he determined, "I won't. I'll take it when I come back." He pulled himself together with an effort, with a smile. "That is," he turned to her, "if you're in no great hurry about the setting? Very well, then. In a day or two."

He plunged away into the fog. A few rods from the door he disappeared, but she could still hear his footsteps growing thinner, lighter, passing away in the whiteness.