ground angrily, "and the least we can do is to go into quarantine. Oh,
I'm so sorry and so ashamed! The poor bishop! I'll take good care that
no one else shall meet that woman here. You did your best for me, Uncle
Paul, and managed admirably, but it was all no use. I hoped against hope
that what between the dusk of the drawing-room before dinner, and being
put at opposite ends of the table, we might get through without a
meeting--"
"But, my dear, explain. Why shouldn't the bishop and Lady Carwitchet
meet? Why is it worse for him than anyone else?"
"Why? I thought everybody had heard of that dreadful wife of his who
nearly broke his heart. If he married her for her money it served him
right, but Lady Landor says she was very handsome and really in love
with him at first. Then Lady Carwitchet got hold of her and led her into
all sorts of mischief. She left her husband--he was only a rector with a
country living in those days--and went to live in town, got into a
horrid fast set, and made herself notorious. You _must_ have heard of
her."
"I heard of her sapphires, my dear. But I was in Brazil at the time."
"I wish you had been at home. You might have found her out. She was
furious because her husband refused to let her wear the great Valdez
sapphire. It had been in the Montanaro family for some generations, and
her father settled it first on her and then on her little girl--the
bishop being trustee. He felt obliged to take away the little girl, and
send her off to be brought up by some old aunts in the country, and he
locked up the sapphire. Lady Carwitchet tells as a splendid joke how
they got the copy made in Paris, and it did just as well for the people
to stare at. No wonder the bishop hates the very name of the stone."
"How long will she stay here?" I asked dismally.
"Till Lord Carwitchet can come and escort her to Paris to visit some
American friends. Goodness knows when that will be! Do go up to town,
Uncle Paul!"
I refused indignantly. The very least I could do was to stand by my poor
young relatives in their troubles and help them through. I did so. I
wore that inferior cat's eye for six weeks!
It is a time I cannot think of even now without a shudder. The more I
saw of that terrible old woman the more I detested her, and we saw a
very great deal of her. Leta kept her word, and neither accepted nor
gave invitations all that time. We were cut off from all society but
that of old General Fairford, who would go anywhere and meet anyone to
get a rubber after dinner; the doctor, a sporting widower; and the
Duberlys, a giddy, rather rackety young couple who had taken the Dower
House for a year. Lady Carwitchet seemed perfectly content. She revelled
in the soft living and good fare of the Manor House, the drives in
Leta's big barouche, and Domenico's dinners, as one to whom short
commons were not unknown. She had a hungry way of grabbing and grasping
at everything she could--the shillings she won at whist, the best fruit
at dessert, the postage stamps in the library inkstand--that was
infinitely suggestive. Sometimes I could have pitied her, she was so
greedy, so spiteful, so friendless. She always made me think of some
wicked old pirate putting into a peaceful port to provision and repair
his battered old hulk, obliged to live on friendly terms with the
natives, but his piratical old nostrils asniff for plunder and his
piratical old soul longing to be off marauding once more. When would
that be? Not till the arrival in Paris of her distinguished American
friends, of whom we heard a great deal. "Charming people, the Bokums of
Chicago, the American branch of the English Beauchamps, you know!" They
seemed to be taking an unconscionable time to get there. She would have
insisted on being driven over to Northchurch to call at the palace, but
that the bishop was understood to be holding confirmations at the other
end of the diocese.
I was alone in the house one afternoon sitting by my window, toying with
the key of my safe, and wondering whether I dare treat myself to a peep
at my treasures, when a suspicious movement in the park below caught my
attention. A black figure certainly dodged from behind one tree to the
next, and then into the shadow of the park paling instead of keeping to
the footpath. It looked queer. I caught up my field glass and marked him
at one point where he was bound to come into the open for a few steps.
He crossed the strip of turf with giant strides and got into cover
again, but not quick enough to prevent me recognizing him. It was--great
heavens!--the bishop! In a soft hat pulled over his forehead, with a
long cloak and a big stick he looked like a poacher.
Guided by some mysterious instinct I hurried to meet him. I opened the
conservatory door, and in he rushed like a hunted rabbit. Without
explanation I led him up the wide staircase to my room, where he dropped
into a chair and wiped his face.
"You are astonished, Mr. Acton," he panted. "I will explain directly.
Thanks." He tossed off the glass of brandy I had poured out without
waiting for the qualifying soda, and looked better.
"I am in serious trouble. You can help me. I've had a shock to-day--a
grievous shock." He stopped and tried to pull himself together. "I must
trust you implicitly, Mr. Acton, I have no choice. Tell me what you
think of this." He drew a case from his breast pocket and opened it. "I
promised you should see the Valdez sapphire. Look there!"
The Valdez sapphire! A great big shining lump of blue crystal--flawless
and of perfect colour--that was all. I took it up, breathed on it, drew
out my magnifier, looked at it in one light and another. What was wrong
with it? I could not say. Nine experts out of ten would undoubtedly have
pronounced the stone genuine. I, by virtue of some mysterious instinct
that has hitherto always guided me aright, was the unlucky tenth. I
looked at the bishop. His eyes met mine. There was no need of spoken
word between us.
"Has Lady Carwitchet shown you her sapphire?" was his most unexpected
question. "She has? Now, Mr. Acton, on your honour as a connoisseur and
a gentleman, which of the two is the Valdez?"
"Not this one." I could say naught else.
"You were my last hope." He broke off, and dropped his face on his
folded arms with a groan that shook the table on which he rested, while
I stood dismayed at myself for having let so hasty a judgment escape me.
He lifted a ghastly countenance to me. "She vowed she would see me
ruined and disgraced. I made her my enemy by crossing some of her
schemes once, and she never forgives. She will keep her word. I shall
appear before the world as a fraudulent trustee. I can neither produce
the valuable confided to my charge nor make the loss good. I have only
an incredible story to tell," he dropped his head and groaned again.
"Who will believe me?"
"I will, for one."
"Ah, you? Yes, you know her. She took my wife from me, Mr. Acton. Heaven
only knows what the hold was that she had over poor Mira. She encouraged
her to set me at defiance and eventually to leave me. She was answerable
for all the scandalous folly and extravagance of poor Mira's life in
Paris--spare me the telling of the story. She left her at last to die
alone and uncared for. I reached my wife to find her dying of a fever
from which Lady Carwitchet and her crew had fled. She was raving in
delirium, and died without recognizing me. Some trouble she had been in
which I must never know oppressed her. At the very last she roused from
a long stupor and spoke to the nurse. 'Tell him to get the sapphire
back--she stole it. She has robbed my child.' Those were her last words.
The nurse understood no English, and treated them as wandering; but _I_
heard them, and knew she was sane when she spoke."
"What did you do?"
"What could I? I saw Lady Carwitchet, who laughed at me, and defied me
to make her confess or disgorge. I took the pendant to more than one
eminent jeweller on pretense of having the setting seen to, and all have
examined and admired without giving a hint of there being anything
wrong. I allowed a celebrated mineralogist to see it; he gave no sign--"
"Perhaps they are right and we are wrong."
"No, no. Listen. I heard of an old Dutchman celebrated for his
imitations. I went to him, and he told me at once that he had been
allowed by Montanaro to copy the Valdez--setting and all--for the Paris
Exhibition. I showed him this, and he claimed it for his own work at
once, and pointed out his private mark upon it. You must take your
magnifier to find it; a Greek Beta. He also told me that he had sold it
to Lady Carwitchet more than a year ago."
"It is a terrible position."
"It is. My co-trustee died lately. I have never dared to have another
appointed. I am bound to hand over the sapphire to my daughter on her
marriage, if her husband consents to take the name of Montanaro."
The bishop's face was ghastly pale, and the moisture started on his
brow. I racked my brain for some word of comfort.
"Miss Panton may never marry."
"But she will!" he shouted. "That is the blow that has been dealt me
to-day. My chaplain--actually, my chaplain--tells me that he is going
out as a temperance missionary to equatorial Africa, and has the
assurance to add that he believes my daughter is not indisposed to
accompany him!" His consummating wrath acted as a momentary stimulant.
He sat upright, his eyes flashing and his brow thunderous. I felt for
that chaplain. Then he collapsed miserably. "The sapphires will have to
be produced, identified, revalued. How shall I come out of it? Think of
the disgrace, the ripping up of old scandals! Even if I were to compound
with Lady Carwitchet, the sum she hinted at was too monstrous. She wants
more than my money. Help me, Mr. Acton! For the sake of your own family
interest, help me!"
"I beg your pardon--family interests? I don't understand."
"If my daughter is childless, her next of kin is poor Marmaduke Panton,
who is dying at Cannes, not married, or likely to marry; and failing
him, your nephew, Sir Thomas Acton, succeeds."
My nephew Tom! Leta, or Leta's baby, might come to be the possible
inheritor of the great Valdez sapphire! The blood rushed to my head as I
looked at the great shining swindle before me. "What diabolic jugglery
was at work when the exchange was made?" I demanded fiercely.
"It must have been on the last occasion of her wearing the sapphires in
London. I ought never to have let her out of my sight."
"You must put a stop to Miss Panton's marriage in the first place," I
pronounced as autocratically as he could have done himself.
"Not to be thought of," he admitted helplessly. "Mira has my force of
character. She knows her rights, and she will have her jewels. I want
you to take charge of the--thing for me. If it's in the house she'll
make me produce it. She'll inquire at the banker's. If _you_ have it we
can gain time, if but for a day or two." He broke off. Carriage wheels
were crashing on the gravel outside. We looked at one another in
consternation. Flight was imperative. I hurried him downstairs and out
of the conservatory just as the door-bell rang. I think we both lost our
heads in the confusion. He shoved the case into my hands, and I pocketed
it, without a thought of the awful responsibility I was incurring, and
saw him disappear into the shelter of the friendly night.
When I think of what my feelings were that evening--of my murderous
hatred of that smirking jesting Jezebel who sat opposite me at dinner,
my wrathful indignation at the thought of the poor little expected heir
defrauded ere his birth; of the crushing contempt I felt for myself and
the bishop as a pair of witless idiots unable to see our way out of the
dilemma; all this boiling and surging through my soul, I can only
wonder--Domenico having given himself a holiday, and the kitchen-maid
doing her worst and wickedest--that gout or jaundice did not put an end
to this story at once.
"Uncle Paul!" Leta was looking her sweetest when she tripped into my
room next morning. "I've news for you. She," pointing a delicate
forefinger in the direction of the corridor, "is going! Her Bokums have
reached Paris at last, and sent for her to join them at the Grand
Hotel."
I was thunderstruck. The longed-for deliverance had but come to remove
hopelessly and forever out of my reach Lady Carwitchet and the great
Valdez sapphire.
"Why, aren't you overjoyed? I am. We are going to celebrate the event by
a dinner-party. Tom's hospitable soul is vexed by the lack of
entertainment we had provided for her. We must ask the Brownleys some
day or other, and they will be delighted to meet anything in the way of
a ladyship, or such smart folks as the Duberly-Parkers. Then we may as
well have the Blomfields, and air that awful modern Sevres
dessert-service she gave us when we were married." I had no objection to
make, and she went on, rubbing her soft cheek against my shoulder like
the purring little cat she was: "Now I want you to do something to
please me--and Mrs. Blomfield. She has set her heart on seeing your
rubies, and though I know you hate her about as much as you do that
Sevres china--"
"What! Wear my rubies with that! I won't. I'll tell you what I will do,
though. I've got some carbuncles as big as prize gooseberries, a whole
set. Then you have only to put those Bohemian glass vases and candelabra
on the table, and let your gardener do his worst with his great forced,
scentless, vulgar blooms, and we shall all be in keeping." Leta pouted.
An idea struck me. "Or I'll do as you wish, on one condition. You get
Lady Carwitchet to wear her big sapphire, and don't tell her I wish it."
I lived through the next few days as one in some evil dream. The
sapphires, like twin spectres, haunted me day and night. Was ever man so
tantalized? To hold the shadow and see the substance dangled temptingly
within reach. The bishop made no sign of ridding me of my unwelcome
charge, and the thought of what might happen in a case of
burglary--fire--earthquake--made me start and tremble at all sorts of
inopportune moments.
I kept faith with Leta, and reluctantly produced my beautiful rubies on
the night of her dinner party. Emerging from my room I came full upon
Lady Carwitchet in the corridor. She was dressed for dinner, and at her
throat I caught the blue gleam of the great sapphire. Leta had kept
faith with me. I don't know what I stammered in reply to her ladyship's
remarks; my whole soul was absorbed in the contemplation of the
intoxicating loveliness of the gem. _That_ a Palais Royal deception!
Incredible! My fingers twitched, my breath came short and fierce with
the lust of possession. She must have seen the covetous glare in my
eyes. A look of gratified spiteful complacency overspread her features,
as she swept on ahead and descended the stairs before me. I followed her
to the drawing-room door. She stopped suddenly, and murmuring something
unintelligible hurried back again.
Everybody was assembled there that I expected to see, with an addition.
Not a welcome one by the look on Tom's face. He stood on the hearth-rug
conversing with a great hulking, high-shouldered fellow, sallow-faced,
with a heavy moustache and drooping eyelids, from the corners of which
flashed out a sudden suspicious look as I approached, which lighted up
into a greedy one as it rested on my rubies, and seemed unaccountably
familiar to me, till Lady Carwitchet tripping past me exclaimed:
"He has come at last! My naughty, naughty boy! Mr. Acton, this is my
son, Lord Carwitchet!"
I broke off short in the midst of my polite acknowledgments to stare
blankly at her. The sapphire was gone! A great gilt cross, with a Scotch
pebble like an acid drop, was her sole decoration.
"I had to put my pendant away," she explained confidentially; "the clasp
had got broken somehow." I didn't believe a word.
Lord Carwitchet contributed little to the general entertainment at
dinner, but fell into confidential talk with Mrs. Duberly-Parker. I
caught a few unintelligible remarks across the table. They referred, I
subsequently discovered, to the lady's little book on Northchurch races,
and I recollected that the Spring Meeting was on, and to-morrow "Cup
Day." After dinner there was great talk about getting up a party to go
on General Fairford's drag. Lady Carwitchet was in ecstasies and tried
to coax me into joining. Leta declined positively. Tom accepted sulkily.
The look in Lord Carwitchet's eye returned to my mind as I locked up my
rubies that night. It made him look so like his mother! I went round my
fastenings with unusual care. Safe and closets and desk and doors, I
tried them all. Coming at last to the bathroom, it opened at once. It
was the housemaid's doing. She had evidently taken advantage of my
having abandoned the room to give it "a thorough spring cleaning," and I
anathematized her. The furniture was all piled together and veiled with
sheets, the carpet and felt curtain were gone, there were new brooms
about. As I peered around, a voice close at my ear made me jump--Lady
Carwitchet's!
"I tell you I have nothing, not a penny! I shall have to borrow my train
fare before I can leave this. They'll be glad enough to lend it."
Not only had the _portiere_ been removed, but the door behind it had
been unlocked and left open for convenience of dusting behind the
wardrobe. I might as well have been in the bedroom.
"Don't tell me," I recognized Carwitchet's growl. "You've not been here
all this time for nothing. You've been collecting for a Kilburn cot or
getting subscriptions for the distressed Irish landlords. I know you.
Now I'm not going to see myself ruined for the want of a paltry hundred
or so. I tell you the colt is a dead certainty. If I could have got a
thousand or two on him last week, we might have ended our dog days
millionaires. Hand over what you can. You've money's worth, if not
money. Where's that sapphire you stole?"
"I didn't. I can show you the receipted bill. All _I_ possess is
honestly come by. What could you do with it, even if I gave it you? You
couldn't sell it as the Valdez, and you can't get it cut up as you might
if it were real."
"If it's only bogus, why are you always in such a flutter about it? I'll
do something with it, never fear. Hand over."
"I can't. I haven't got it. I had to raise something on it before I left
town."
"Will you swear it's not in that wardrobe? I dare say you will. I mean
to see. Give me those keys."
I heard a struggle and a jingle, then the wardrobe door must have been
flung open, for a streak of light struck through a crack in the wood of
the back. Creeping close and peeping through, I could see an awful
sight. Lady Carwitchet in a flannel wrapper, minus hair, teeth,
complexion, pointing a skinny forefinger that quivered with rage at her
son, who was out of the range of my vision.
"Stop that, and throw those keys down here directly, or I'll rouse the
house. Sir Thomas is a magistrate, and will lock you up as soon as look
at you." She clutched at the bell rope as she spoke. "I'll swear I'm in
danger of my life from you and give you in charge. Yes, and when you're
in prison I'll keep you there till you die. I've often thought I'd do
it. How about the hotel robberies last summer at Cowes, eh? Mightn't the
police be grateful for a hint or two? And how about--"
The keys fell with a crash on the bed, accompanied by some bad language
in an apologetic tone, and the door slammed to. I crept trembling to
bed.
This new and horrible complication of the situation filled me with
dismay. Lord Carwitchet's wolfish glance at my rubies took a new
meaning. They were safe enough, I believed--but the sapphire! If he
disbelieved his mother, how long would she be able to keep it from his
clutches? That she had some plot of her own of which the bishop would
eventually be the victim I did not doubt, or why had she not made her
bargain with him long ago? But supposing she took fright, lost her head,
allowed her son to wrest the jewel from her, or gave consent to its
being mutilated, divided! I lay in a cold perspiration till morning.
My terrors haunted me all day. They were with me at breakfast time when
Lady Carwitchet, tripping in smiling, made a last attempt to induce me
to accompany her and keep her "bad, bad boy" from getting among "those
horrid betting men."
They haunted me through the long peaceful day with Leta and the
_tete-a-tete_ dinner, but they swarmed around and beset me sorest when,
sitting alone over my sitting-room fire, I listened for the return of
the drag party. I read my newspaper and brewed myself some hot strong
drink, but there comes a time of night when no fire can warm and no
drink can cheer. The bishop's despairing face kept me company, and his
troubles and the wrongs of the future heir took possession of me. Then
the uncanny noises that make all old houses ghostly during the small
hours began to make themselves heard. Muffled footsteps trod the
corridor, stopping to listen at every door, door latches gently clicked,
boards creaked unreasonably, sounds of stealthy movements came from the
locked-up bathroom. The welcome crash of wheels at last, and the sound
of the front-door bell. I could hear Lady Carwitchet making her shrill
_adieux_ to her friends and her steps in the corridor. She was softly
humming a little song as she approached. I heard her unlock her bedroom
door before she entered--an odd thing to do. Tom came sleepily stumbling
to his room later. I put my head out. "Where is Lord Carwitchet?"
"Haven't you seen him? He left us hours ago. Not come home, eh? Well,
he's welcome to stay away. I don't want to see more of him." Tom's brow
was dark and his voice surly. "I gave him to understand as much."
Whatever had happened, Tom was evidently too disgusted to explain just
then.
I went back to my fire unaccountably relieved, and brewed myself another
and a stronger brew. It warmed me this time, but excited me foolishly.
There must be some way out of the difficulty. I felt now as if I could
almost see it if I gave my mind to it. Why--suppose--there might be no
difficulty after all! The bishop was a nervous old gentleman. He might
have been mistaken all through, Bogaerts might have been mistaken, I
might--no. I could not have been mistaken--or I thought not. I fidgeted
and fumed and argued with myself till I found I should have no peace of
mind without a look at the stone in my possession, and I actually went
to the safe and took the case out.
The sapphire certainly looked different by lamplight. I sat and stared,
and all but overpersuaded my better judgment into giving it a verdict.
Bogaerts's mark--I suddenly remembered it. I took my magnifier and held
the pendant to the light. There, scratched upon the stone, was the Greek
Beta! There came a tap on my door, and before I could answer, the handle
turned softly and Lord Carwitchet stood before me. I whipped the case
into my dressing-gown pocket and stared at him. He was not pleasant to
look at, especially at that time of night. He had a dishevelled,
desperate air, his voice was hoarse, his red-rimmed eyes wild.
"I beg your pardon," he began civilly enough. "I saw your light burning,
and thought, as we go by the early train to-morrow, you might allow me
to consult you now on a little business of my mother's." His eyes roved
about the room. Was he trying to find the whereabouts of my safe? "You
know a lot about precious stones, don't you?"
"So my friends are kind enough to say. Won't you sit down? I have
unluckily little chance of indulging the taste on my own account," was
my cautious reply.
"But you've written a book about them, and know them when you see them,
don't you? Now my mother has given me something, and would like you to
give a guess at its value. Perhaps you can put me in the way of
disposing of it?"
"I certainly can do so if it is worth anything. Is that it?" I was in a
fever of excitement, for I guessed what was clutched in his palm. He
held out to me the Valdez sapphire.
How it shone and sparkled like a great blue star! I made myself a
deprecating smile as I took it from him, but how dare I call it false to
its face? As well accuse the sun in heaven of being a cheap imitation. I
faltered and prevaricated feebly. Where was my moral courage, and where
was the good, honest, thumping lie that should have aided me? "I have
the best authority for recognizing this as a very good copy of a famous
stone in the possession of the Bishop of Northchurch." His scowl grew so
black that I saw he believed me, and I went on more cheerily: "This was
manufactured by Johannes Bogaerts--I can give you his address, and you
can make inquiries yourself--by special permission of the then owner,
the late Leone Montanaro."