Part 29 (1/2)

The words sounded ominous in Flora's ears. She turned away. Was everything to be finished just as she had light enough to move, but before she had a chance?

The sound of spinning wheels on the drive startled her to fresh hope, and sent her hurrying down the stair. It was the phaeton returning from the last train. Through the open door she saw the figure of Mrs. Herrick expectant on the veranda. Then the carriage came into the porte-cochere and pa.s.sed. With a rush she reached the veranda, and stood there looking after it. She wouldn't believe her eyes--she couldn't--that it had returned again empty.

Mrs. Herrick's voice was asking her, ”What shall we do? Shall we serve dinner now, or wait a little longer?”

”Oh, it's no use,” Flora murmured, ”he won't come to-night. He'll never come.” She drooped against the tall porch pillar.

”My poor child!” Mrs. Herrick took her pa.s.sive hand. If she read in the profound discouragement of Flora's face that something more had transpired than a mere non-appearance, she did not show it, but waited, alert and quiet, while they gazed together out over the darkening garden.

It was the time of twilight when the sky is so much brighter than the earth. Across the lawns between the bushes from hedge to hedge the veil of the obscuring light was coming in; and through it the avenue of willows marched darkly. Their leaves moved a little. Flora watched the ripple of their tops, clear on the bright sky, and deeper down among mysterious branches there was a sense of movement where the eyes could not see. There was a curious flick, flick, flicker--a progression, a pa.s.sing from the far dark end of the willow avenue toward where it met the vista of the drive. Flora's eyes, absently, involuntarily, followed the movement. She felt Mrs. Herrick's hand suddenly close on hers.

”Is some one coming?”

They clung to each other, peering timorously down the drive. A little gust of wind took the garden, and before the trees had ceased to tremble and whiten a man had emerged from their shadow and was advancing upon them up the middle of the drive.

Flora's heart leaped at sight of him. All her impulse was to fly to meet him, but she felt Mrs. Herrick's hand tighten upon her wrist as if it divined her madness.

His light stick aswing in his hand, his step free and incautious as ever, gray and slender and seeming to look more at the ground than at them, the two women watched him drawing near. His was the seeming of a quiet guest at the quietest of house parties. To meet him Flora saw she must meet him on the high ground of his reserve. As he came under the light of the porte-cochere his look, his greeting, his hand, were first for Mrs. Herrick.

”We were afraid we had missed you altogether,” said she.

”It was I who somehow missed your carriage, was hardly expecting to be expected at such an hour.”

Flora watched them meeting each other so gallantly with a trembling compunction. Mrs. Herrick, who trusted her, was giving her hand in sublime ignorance. It was vain that Flora told herself she had given warning. She knew she had thrown the softening veil of her spiritual crisis over the ugly material fact. Had she said, ”I want you to uphold me while I meet a thief whom I love and wish to protect. He's magnificent in all other ways except for this one obsession,” she knew Mrs. Herrick simply would have cried, ”Impossible, outrageous!” Yet there they stood together, and as Flora looked at them she could not have told which was of the finer temper. Kerr's bearing was so unruffled that it seemed as if he had flown too high to feel the storm Flora was pa.s.sing through. But when he turned toward her, in spite of himself, there was eagerness in his manner. He looked questioningly at her, as if no time had intervened, as if a moment before he had said to her through the carriage window, ”I will give you twenty-four hours,” and now her time had come to speak.

Only the thought that time was crowding him into a bag's end gave her courage to vow she would speak that night. Yet not now, while they stood just met in the deepening dusk, in the sweet breath of the early flowers; nor later when they pa.s.sed in friendly fas.h.i.+on, the three of them, through fairy labyrinths of arch and mirror, into the long, high, glistening room, whose round table, spread, seemed dwarfed to mushroom height; nor yet, while this semblance of companions.h.i.+p was between them, and the great proportions of the place lifting oppression, left them as unconscious of walls and roof as though they were met in the open. The clock twice marked the pa.s.sing hour. She had never heard Mrs. Herrick speak so flowingly nor Kerr listen so well, placing his questions nicely to draw out the thread of her theme. Yet Flora guessed his thought must be fixed on their approaching moment, as hers was--on the moment when they should be ready to quit the table and Mrs. Herrick would leave them to themselves.

It was the appearance of the ap.r.o.ned maid that broke their unity. The last course was on the table, the last taste of its pungent fruit essence on their tongues--and what was the girl's errand now? The eye of her mistress was inquiring.

”Some one has come, Mrs. Herrick.” The woman's proper formula seemed to fail her. She looked as if she had been frightened.

”Some one?” Mrs. Herrick showed asperity. ”What name?”

”He is coming in.” As she spoke the girl shrank a little to one side.

With his long coat open, hanging from the armpits, with ruffled hair, and lips apart, and from breathlessness a little smiling, Harry appeared in the doorway. Kerr leaned forward. Mrs. Herrick did not move. She was facing the last arrival and she was smiling more flexibly, more naturally, than Harry; but it was Flora who found the first word.

”You! I--I thought it was Clara.” She was struggling for nonchalance, for poise, at this worst blow, so unexpected.

”Clara won't be down,” Harry said, advancing. ”How d'ye do, Mrs.

Herrick? How d'ye do, Kerr?”

”How d'ye do?” said the Englishman, without rising.

Flora gripped the arms of her chair to keep from springing up in sheer nervous terror. A possible purpose in Harry's coming, that even Mrs.

Herrick's presence would not defer, shot through her mind. Was he alone?

Or were there others--men here for a fearful purpose--waiting beyond in the hall? But Harry had turned his back upon the door behind him with a finality that declared whatever danger had come into the house was complete in his presence.

”I've dined, thanks,” he said, but, stripping off his greatcoat, accepted a chair and the gla.s.s of cordial Mrs. Herrick offered him. The ruddy, hard quality of his face, were it divested of its present smile, Flora thought, might well have frightened the maid; but, for all that, it was not so implacable as Kerr's face confronting it. The look with which he met the intrusion had a quality more bitter than the challenge of an antagonist, more jealous than a mere lover's; and that bitterness, that jealousy which was between them came out stingingly through their small pleasantness. It could not be, Flora thought in terror, that Mrs.