I did not wait to learn his answer – I had learnt enough. What his sister thought of my demeanour I did not care; I had been dimly conscious that she had been talking to me all the while, but what she was saying I do not know. My attention had been wholly taken up with what I did not hear. Before he began his reply to Miss Goodridge’s genial inquiry I got up from my chair and marched out of the lounge, without saying a word to Miss Sterndale. When I had gone a little way I remembered that I had left my handkerchief – my best lace handkerchief – on the table by which I had been sitting. Even in the midst of my agitation I was conscious that I could not afford to lose it, so went back for it.
Miss Sterndale had joined her brother and Miss Goodridge. Two or three other people were standing by them, evidently interested in what was being said. I found my handkerchief. As I was going off with it Miss Sterndale turned round in my direction, without, however, thinking it worth her while to break off the remark she was making, taking it for granted, of course, that it was inaudible to me. I came in, as it were, for the tail end of it.
‘… I am so disappointed in her; I have tried to like her, and now I fear it is only too certain that she is one of those creatures of whom the less said the better.’
That these words referred to me I had not the slightest doubt. Yet, while they were still on her lips, presuming on her conviction that they were hidden from me, she nodded and smiled as if she were wishing me a friendly goodnight.
The treachery of it! Now that I am able to look back calmly, I think it was that which galled me most. Her brother, with his gratuitous, horrible lies, had actually been pretending to make love to me – I am sure that was what he wished me to think he was doing. What a fool he must have thought me!
That was a sleepless night. It was hours before I got between the sheets, and when I did it was not to slumber. The feeling that I was so entirely alone, and that there was not a soul within miles and miles to whom I could turn for help, coupled with the consciousness that I had scarcely enough money to pay the hotel bill, and, what was even worse, that Mr and Mrs Travers had gone off with the return-half of my ticket to London, so that I could not go back home however much I might want to – these things were hard enough to bear; but they seemed to be as nothing compared to that man and woman’s treachery. What was their motive, what could have induced them, was beyond my comprehension. It was a problem which I strove all night to solve. But the solution came on the morrow.
I soon knew what had happened when I went downstairs. Miss Goodridge had told her story of the pendant, and Mr Sterndale had circulated his lie about his clerical friend. Everybody shunned me. Some persons had the grace to pretend not to see me; others looked me full in the face and cut me dead. The only persons who were disposed to show any perception of my presence were the Sterndales. As, entering the breakfast-room, I passed their table, they both smiled and nodded, but I showed no consciousness of them. As I took a seat at my own table, I saw him say to his sister:
‘Our young friend seems to have got her back up – little idiot!’
Little idiot, was I? Only yesterday he had called me something else. The feeling that he was saying such things behind my back hurt me more than if he had shouted them to my face. I averted my gaze, keeping my eyes fixed on my plate. I would learn no more of what he said about me, or of what anyone said. I was conscious that life might become unendurable if I were made acquainted with the comments which people were making on me then. Yet, as I sat there with downcast face, might they not construe that as the bearing of a conscience-stricken and guilty wretch? I felt sure that that was what they were doing. But I could not help it; I would not see what they were saying.
Later in the morning matters turned out so that I did see, so that practically I had to see what the Sterndales said to each other. And perhaps, on the whole, it was fortunate for me that I did. I had spent the morning out of doors. On the terrace the Sterndales were standing close together, talking; so engrossed were they by what they were saying that they did not notice me; while, though I did not wish to look at them, something made me. That may seem to be an exaggeration. It is not – it is the truth. My wish was to have nothing more to do with them for ever and ever; but some instinct, which came I know not whence, made me turn my eyes in their direction and see what they were saying. And, as I have already said, it was well for me that I did.
They both seemed to be rather excited. He was speaking quickly and with emphasis.
‘I tell you,’ he was saying, as I paused to watch, ‘we will do it today.’
His sister said something which, as she was standing sideways, was lost to me. He replied:
‘The little idiot has cooked her own goose; there’s no need for us to waste time in cooking it any more – she’s done. I tell you we can strip the house of all it contains, and they’d lock her up for doing it.’
Again his sister spoke; without, because of her position, giving herself away to me. He went on again:
‘There are only two things in the house worth having – I could give you a catalogue of what everyone has got. Mrs Anstruther’s diamonds – the necklace is first-rate, and the rest of them aren’t bad; and that American woman’s pearls. Those five ropes of pearls are worth – I hope they’ll be worth a good deal to us. The rest of the things you may make a present of to our young friend. The odium will fall on her – you’ll see. We shall be able to depart with the only things worth having, at our distinguished leisure, without a stain upon our characters.’
He smiled – some people might have thought it a pleasant smile – to me it seemed a horrid one. That smile finished me – it reminded me of the traitor’s kiss. I passed into the house still unnoticed, though I do not suppose that if I had been noticed it would have made any difference to them.
What he meant by what he had said I did not clearly understand. The only thing I quite realised was that he was still making sport of me. I also gathered that that was an amusement which he proposed to continue, though just how I did not see. Nor did I grasp the inner meaning of his allusion to Mrs Anstruther’s diamonds and Mrs Newball’s pearls – no doubt it was Mrs Newball he meant when he spoke of the American woman. The fine jewels of those two ladies, which they aired at every opportunity, were, as I knew perfectly well, the talk of the whole hotel. Probably that was what they meant they should be. When Mrs Anstruther had diamonds round her neck and on her bosom and in her ears and hair and round her wrists and on her fingers – I myself had seen her wear diamond rings on all the fingers of both hands and two diamond bracelets on each wrist – she was a sight to be remembered; while Mrs Newball, with her five strings of splendid pearls, which she sometimes wore all together as a necklace and sometimes twisted as bracelets round her wrists, together with a heterogeneous collection of ornaments of all sorts and kinds, made a pretty good second.
Not a person spoke to me the whole of that day. Everyone avoided me in a most ostentatious manner: and everyone, or nearly everyone, had been so friendly. It was dreadful. If I had had enough money to pay the hotel bill, as well as the return-half of my ticket home, I believe I should have left Interlaken there and then. But the choice of whether I would go or stay, as it turned out, was not to be left to me.
Depressed, miserable, homesick, devoutly wishing that I had never left home, almost resolved that I would never leave it again, I was about to go up to my room to dress for what I very well knew would only be the ghastly farce of dinner, when, as I reached the lift, a waiter came up to me and said that the manager wished to see me in his office. I did not like the man’s manner; it is quite easy for a Swiss waiter to be rude, and I was on the point of telling him that at the moment I was engaged and that the manager would have to wait, when something which I thought I saw in his eye caused me to change my mind, and, with an indefinable sense of discomfort, I allowed him to show me to the managerial sanctum. I never had liked the look of that manager; I liked it less than
ever when I found myself alone in his room with him. He was a youngish man, with a moustache, and hair parted mathematically in the centre. In general his bearing was too saccharine to be pleasant; he did not err in that respect just then – it was most offensive. He looked me up and down as if I were one of his employees who had done something wrong, and, without waiting for me to speak, he said:
‘You are Miss Judith Lee – or you pretend that is your name?’
He spoke English very well, as most of the Swiss one meets in hotels seem to do. Nothing could have been more impertinent than his tone, unless it was the look which accompanied it. I stared at him.
‘I am Miss Lee. I do not pretend that is my name; it is.’
‘Very well – that is your affair, not mine. You will no longer be allowed to occupy a room in this hotel. You can go at once.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. The man was incredible.
‘You know very well what I mean. Don’t you try that sort of thing with me. You have stolen an article of jewellery belonging to a guest in my hotel. She is a very kind-hearted lady, and she is not willing to hand you over to the police. You owe me some money; here’s your bill. Are you going to pay it?’
He handed me a long strip of paper which was covered with figures. One glance at the total was enough to tell me that I had not enough money. Mrs Travers was acting as my banker. She had left me with ample funds to serve as pocket-money till she returned, but with nothing like enough money to pay that bill.
‘Mrs Travers will pay you when she comes back, either tomorrow or the day after.’
‘Will she?’ The sneer with which he said it! ‘How am I to know that you’re not at the same game together?’
‘The same game! What do you mean? How dare you look at me like that, and talk to me as if I were one of your servants!’
‘I’m not going to talk to you at all, my girl; I’m going to do. I’m not going to allow a person who robs my guests to remain in my house under any pretext whatever. Your luggage, such as it is, will remain here until my bill is paid.’ He rang a bell which was on the table by which he was standing. The waiter entered who had showed me there. He was a big man, with a square, dark face. ‘This young woman must go at once. If she won’t leave of her own accord we must put her out, by the back door. Now, my girl – out you go!’
The waiter approached me. He spoke to me as he might have done to a dog.
‘Now, then, come along.’
He actually put his hand upon my shoulder. Another second, and I believe he would have swung me round and out of the room. But just as he touched me the door was opened and someone came rushing in – Mrs Anstruther, in a state of the greatest excitement.
‘My diamonds have been stolen!’ she cried. ‘Someone has stolen my diamonds!’
‘Your diamonds?’ The manager looked at her and then at me. ‘I trust, madam, you are mistaken?’
‘I’m not mistaken.’ She sank on to a chair. She was a big woman of about fifty, and, at the best of times, was scant of breath. Such was her agitation that just then she could scarcely breathe at all. ‘As if I could be mistaken about a thing like that! I went up to my bedroom – to dress for dinner – and I unlocked my trunk – I always keep it locked; I took out my jewel-case – and unlocked that – and my diamonds were gone. They’ve been stolen! – stolen! – stolen!’
She repeated the word ‘stolen’ three times over, as if the heinousness of the fact required to be emphasised by repetition. The manager was evidently uneasy, which even I felt was not to be wondered at.
‘This is a very serious matter, Mrs Anstruther –’
She cut him short.
‘Serious? Do you think I need you to tell me that it’s serious? You don’t know how serious. Those diamonds are worth thousands and thousands of pounds – more than the whole of your twopenny-halfpenny hotel – and they’ve been stolen. From my trunk, in my bedroom, in your hotel, they’ve been stolen!’
The way she hurled the words at him! He looked at me, and he asked:
‘What do you know about this?’
What did I know? In the midst of my confusion and distress I was asking myself what I did know. Before I could speak the door was opened again and Mrs Newball came in. And not Mrs Newball only, but six or seven other women, some of them accompanied by men – their husbands and their brothers. And they all told the same tale. Something had been stolen from each: from Mrs Newball her five strings of pearls, from Mrs This and Miss That the article of jewellery which was valued most. I am convinced that that manager, or his room, or probably his hotel, had never witnessed such a scene before. They were all as excited as could be, and they were all talking at once, and every second or two, someone else kept coming in with some fresh tale of a dreadful loss. How that man kept his head at all was, and is, a mystery to me. At last he reduced them to something like silence, and in the presence of them all he said to me – pointing at me with his finger, as if I were a thing to be pointed at:
‘It is you who have done this! You!’
Someone exclaimed in the crowd: ‘I saw her coming out of Mrs Anstruther’s room.’
The manager demanded: ‘Who spoke? Who was it said that?’
A slight, faded, fair-haired woman came out into the public gaze.
‘I am Mrs Anstruther’s maid. I was going along to her room when I saw this young lady come out of the door. Whether she saw me or not I can’t say; she might have done, because she ran off as fast as ever she could. I wondered what she was doing there, and when my mistress came I told her what I had seen, and that’s what made her open her trunk.’
‘What Perkins says is quite true,’ corroborated Mrs Anstruther. ‘She did tell me, and that made me uneasy; I had heard something about a diamond pendant having been stolen last night, so I opened my jewel-case, and my diamonds were gone.’
‘Mine was the diamond pendant which was stolen by this creature last night,’ interposed Miss Goodridge. ‘She came to my room and took it out of my trunk. Since she did that it seems not impossible that she has played the same trick on other people today. If she has, she must have had a pretty good haul, because I don’t believe there is a person in the hotel who hasn’t lost something.’
The manager spoke to an under-strapper:
‘Have this young woman’s luggage searched at once, in the presence of witnesses, and let me know the result as soon as you possibly can.’
As the under-strapper went out I noticed for the first time that Mr Sterndale was present with the rest, and almost at the same instant his sister came in. She looked about her as if wondering what was the cause of all the fuss. Then she went up to her brother, and he whispered something to her, and she whispered something to him. Only three or four words in each case, but my heart gave a leap in my bosom – I mean that, really, because it did feel as if it actually had jumped – courage came into me, and strength, and something better than hope: certainty; because they had delivered themselves into my hands. I was never more thankful that I had the power of eavesdropping – you can call it eavesdropping, if you like! – than I was at that moment. Only a second before I had been fearing that I was in a tight place, from which there was no way out; which would mean something for me from which my very soul seemed to shrink. But God had given me a gift, a talent, which I had striven with all my might to improve ten, twenty fold, and that would deliver me from the wiles of those two people, even when hope of deliverance there seemed none. I feel confident that I held myself straighter, that trouble went from my face as it had done from my heart, and that, though each moment the case against me seemed to be growing blacker and blacker, I grew calmer and more self-possessed. I knew I had only to wait till the proper moment came, and the toils in which they thought they had caught me would prove to be mere nothings; they would be caught, and I should be free.
All the same, until that moment for which I was
waiting came, it was not nice for me – standing there amidst all those excited people, between two porters, who kept close to either side of me, as if I were a prisoner and they had me in charge; though I dare say it was as well that they did keep as close to me as they did, because I fancy that some of the injured guests at that hotel would have liked to give me a practical demonstration of what their feelings towards me were.
That under-strapper came back in a surprisingly short space of time with a hand-bag – a brown bag, which I recognised to be my own.
The agitated guests crowded round him like a swarm of bees. He had difficulty in forcing his way through them. The manager did his best to keep them in something like order – first with a show of mildness.
‘Ladies, gentlemen – gently, gently, if you please.’ Then, with sudden ferocity: ‘Stand back, there! If you will not stand back, if you will not make room, how can anything be done? Keep these people back!’
To whom this order was addressed was not quite clear. Thus admonished, the people kept themselves back – at least, sufficiently to enable that under-strapper to pass with my bag to the table. The manager said to him:
‘Go to the other side; what have you in that bag?’ When, as he said this, his guests evinced an inclination to press forward, he threw out his arms on either side of him and positively shouted:
‘Will you not keep back? If you will keep back, everything shall be done in order before you all. I ask you only to be a little sensible. If there is so much confusion, we shall not know what we are doing. I beg of you that you will be calm.’
If they were not precisely calm, the people did show some slight inclination to behave with an approach to common sense. They permitted the bag to be placed on the table, and the manager to open it, having first put some questions to the young man who brought it in.
‘Where did you find this bag?’
‘In her room.’ I was the ‘her’ which he made clear by pointing his finger straight at me.
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