Part 21 (1/2)

She felt herself judged--judged from the outside, it is true--but still there was justice in it. She had been flying in the face of custom, ignoring common good behavior, in short, sticking to her own convictions in defiance of the world's. And she must pay the penalty--the loss of the possibility of such a friend.

But it was hard, she thought, to pay the price without getting the thing she had paid for. It was more like a gamble in which she had staked all on a chance. And never had this chance appeared more improbable to her than now. For if Kerr valued the ring more than he valued his safety, what argument was left her? She thought--if only she had been a different sort of woman--the sort with whom men fall in love--ah, then she might have been able to make one further appeal to him--one that surely would not have failed.

XVII

THE DEMIG.o.d

On the third day she opened her eyes to the sun with the thought: Where is he? From the windows of her room she could see the two pale points and the narrow way of water that led into the western ocean. Had he sailed out yonder west into the east, into that oblivion which was his only safety, for ever out of her sight? Or was he still at hand, ignoring warning, defying fate? ”What difference can that make to me now?” she thought, ”since whether he is here or yonder I've come to the end.”

She drew out the sapphire and held it in her hand. The cloud of events had cast no film over its l.u.s.ter, but she looked at it now without pleasure. For all its beauty it wasn't worth what they were doing for it. Well, to-day they were both of them to see the last of it. To-day she was going to take it to Mr. Purdie to deliver it into his hands, to tell him how it had fallen into hers in the goldsmith's shop--all of the story that was possible for her to tell. For the rest, how she came to fix suspicion on the jewel, he might think her fanciful or morbid. It didn't matter as long as the weary thing was out of her hands. It couldn't matter!

She had made it out all clear in her mind that this was the right thing to do. It hadn't occurred to her she had made it out only on the hypothesis of Kerr's certainly going. It had not occurred to her that she might have to make her great moral move in the dark; or, what was worse, in the face of his most gallant resistance. In this discouraging light she saw her intention dwindle to the vanis.h.i.+ng point, but the great move was just as good as it had been before--just as solid, just as advisable. Being so very solid, wouldn't it wait until she had time to show him that she really meant what she said, supposing she ever had a chance to see him again? The possibility that at this moment he might actually have gone had almost escaped her. She recalled it with a disagreeable shock, but, after all, that was the best she could hope, never to see him again! She ought to be grateful to be sure of that, and yet if she were, oh, never could she deprive him of so much beauty and light by her keeping of the sapphire as he would then have taken away from her!

She would come down then, indeed, level with plainest, palest, hardest things--people and facts. Her romance--she had seen it; she had had it in her hands, and it had somehow eluded her. It had vanished, evaporated. It had come to her in rather a terrific guise, presented to her on that night at the club by the first debonair wave of the man's hand; and now he might have gone out through that white way into the east, taking back her romance as the fairy takes back his unappreciated gift.

She leaned and looked through the thin veil of her curtains at the splendid day. It was one of February's freaks. It was hot. The white ghost of noon lay over sh.o.r.e and sea. Beneath her the city seemed to sleep gray and glistening. The tops of hills that rose above the up-creeping houses were misted green. Across the bay, along the northern sh.o.r.e, there was a pale green coast of hills dividing blue and blue.

s.h.i.+ps in the bay hung out white canvas drying, and the sky showed whiter clouds, slow-moving, like sails upon a languid sea. Beneath her, directly down, through hanging darts of eucalyptus leaves, hemmed with high hedges, the oval of her garden showed her a pattern like a Persian carpet. Roofs sloped beyond it, and beyond these the diagram of streets and houses, and empty unbuilt gra.s.sy lots.

She looked down upon all, as lone and lonely as a deserted lady in a tower, lifted above these happy, peaceful things by her strange responsibility. Her thoughts could not stay with them; her eyes traveled seaward. She parted the curtains and, leaning a little out, looked westward at the white sea gate.

A whistle, as of some child calling his mate, came sweetly in the silence. It was near, and the questing, expectant note caught her ear.

Again it came, sharper, imperative, directly beneath her. She looked down; she was speechless. There was a sudden wild current of blood in her veins. There he stood, the whistler, neither child nor bird, but the man himself--Kerr, looking up at her from the gay oval of her garden.

She hung over the window-sill. She looked directly down upon him, foreshortened to a face, and even with the distance and the broad glare of noon between them she recognized his aspect--his gayest, of diabolic glee. There lurked about him the impish quality of the whistle that had summoned her.

”Come down,” he called.

All sorts of wonders and terrors were beating around her. He had transcended her wildest wish; he had come to her more openly, more daringly, more romantically than she could have dreamed. All the amazement of why and how he had braved the battery of the windows of her house was swallowed up in the greater joy of seeing him there, standing in his ”grays,” with stiff black hat pushed off his hot forehead, hands behind him, looking up at her from the middle of anemones and daffodils.

”Come down,” he called again, and waved at her with his slim, glittering stick. How far he had come since their last encounter, to wave at and command her, as if she were verily his own! She left the window, left the room, ran quickly down the stair. The house was hushed; no pa.s.sing but her own, no butler in the hall, no kitchen-maid on the back stair.

Only grim faces of pictures--ancestors not her own--glimmered reproachful upon her as she fled past. Light echoes called her back along the hall. The furniture, the m.u.f.fling curtains, her own reflection flying through the mirrors, held up to her her madness, and by their mute stability seemed to remind her of the shelter she was leaving--seemed to forbid.

She ran. This was not shelter; it was prison. He was rescue; he was light itself. The only chance for her was to get near enough to him.

Near him no shadow lived. The thing was to get near enough. She rushed direct from shadow into light. She came out into the sun, into the garden with its blaze of wintry summer, its whispering life and the free air over it. The man standing in the middle of it, for all his pot hat and Gothic stick, was none the less its demiG.o.d waiting for her, laughing. He might well laugh that she who had written that unflinching letter should come thus flying at his call; but there was more than laughter, there was more than mischief in him. The high tide of his spirits was only the sparkle of his excitement. It was evident that he was there with something of mighty importance to say.

Was it that her letter had finally touched him? Had he come at last to transcend her idea with some even greater purpose? She seemed to see the power, the will for that and the kindness--she could not call it by another word--but though she was beseeching him with all her silent att.i.tude to tell her instantly what the great thing was, he kept it back a moment, looking at her whimsically, indulgently, even tenderly.

”I have come for you,” he said.

”Oh, for me!” she murmured. Surely he couldn't mean that! He was simply putting her off with that.

”I mean it, I mean it,” he a.s.sured her. ”This doesn't make it any less real, my getting at you through a garden. Better,” he added, ”and sweet of you to make the duller way impossible.”

She took a step back. It had not been play to her; but he would have it nothing else. He, too, stepped back and away from her.

”Come,” he said, and behind him she saw the lower garden gate that opened on the gra.s.sy pitch of the hill, swinging idle and open. The sight of him about to vanish lured her on, and as he continued to walk backward she advanced, following.

”Oh, where?” she pleaded.

”With me!” Such a guaranty of good faith he made it!