by Ellen Wood
They turned round in surprise.
“Miss Deveen’s studs!” exclaimed Helen. “We are not likely to have seen them, Lettice. Why do you ask?”
“Because, Miss Helen, they are gone — that is, Miss Cattledon says they are. But, with so much jewellery as there is in that case, it is very easy to overlook two or three little things.”
Why Lettice Lane should have shaken all over in telling this, was a marvel. Her very teeth chattered. Anna inquired; but all the answer given by the girl was, that it had “put her into a twitter.” Sophie Chalk’s countenance was full of compassion, and I liked her for it.
“Don’t let it trouble you, Lettice,” she said kindly. “If the studs are missing, I dare say they will be found. Just before I came down here my sister lost a brooch from her dressing-table. The whole house was searched for it, the servants were uncomfortable — —”
“And was it found, miss?” interrupted Lettice, too eager to let her finish.
“Of course it was found. Jewels don’t get hopelessly lost in gentlemen’s houses. It had fallen down, and, caught in the lace of the toilette drapery, was lying hid within its folds.”
“Oh, thank you, miss; yes, perhaps the studs have fallen too,” said Lettice Lane as she went out. Helen looked after her in some curiosity.
“Why should the loss trouble her? Lettice has nothing to do with Miss Deveen’s jewels.”
“Look here, Helen, I wish we had never said we should like to steal the things,” spoke Sophie Chalk. “It was all in jest, of course, but this would not be a nice sequel to it.”
“Why — yes — you did say it, some of you,” cried Anna, who, until then, had seemed buried in thought; and her face flushed.
“What if we did?” retorted Helen, looking at her in some slight surprise.
Soon after this, in going up to Bill’s room, I met Lettice Lane. She was running down with a plate, and looked whiter than ever.
“Are the studs found, Lettice?”
“No, sir.”
The answer was short, the manner scared. Helen had wondered why the loss should affect her; and so did I.
“Where’s the use of your being put out over it, Lettice? You did not take them.”
“No, Master Johnny, I did not; but — but — —” looking round and dropping her voice, “I am afraid I know who did; and it was through me. I’m a’most mad.”
This was rather mysterious. She gave no opportunity for more, but ran down as though the stairs were on fire.
I went on to Bill’s chamber, and found Tod and Harry with him: they were laughing over a letter from some fellow at Oxford. Standing at the window close by the inner door, which was ajar, I heard Lettice Lane go into the dressing-room and speak to Mrs. Lease in a half whisper.
“I can’t bear this any longer,” she said. “If you have taken those studs, for Heaven’s sake put them back. I’ll make some excuse — say I found them under the carpet, or slipped under the drawers — anything — only put them back!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” replied Mrs. Lease, who always spoke as though she had only half a voice.
“Yes, you do. You have got the studs.”
By the pause that ensued, Nurse Lease seemed to have lost the power of speech. Lettice took the opportunity to put it more strongly.
“If you’ve got them about you, give them into my hand now, and I’ll manage the rest. Not a living soul shall ever know of this if you will. Oh, do give them to me!”
Mrs. Lease spoke then. “If you say this again, Lettice Lane, I’ll tell my lady all. And indeed, I have been wanting to tell her ever since I heard that something had gone. It was for your sake I did not.”
“For my sake!” shrieked Lettice.
“Well, it was. I’m sure I’d not like to say it if I could help, Lettice Lane; but it did strike me that you might have been tempted to — to — you know.”
So it was accusation and counter-accusation. Which of the two confessed first was uncertain; but in a short time the whole was known to the house, and to Lady Whitney.
On the previous night the upper housemaid was in bed with some slight illness, and it fell to Lettice Lane to put the rooms to rights after the ladies had dressed. Instead of calling one of the other servants she asked Mrs. Lease to help her — which must have been for nothing but to gossip with the nurse, as Lady Whitney said. On Miss Deveen’s dressing-table stood her case of jewels, the key in the lock. Lettice lifted the lid. On the top tray glittered a heap of ornaments, and the two women feasted their eyes with them. Nurse Lease declared that she never put “a finger’s end” on a single article. Lettice could not say as much. Neither (if they were to be believed) had observed the green studs; and the upper tray was not lifted to see what was underneath. Miss Cattledon, who made one at the uproar, put in her word at this, to say they were telling a falsehood, and her face had enough vinegar in it to pickle a salmon. Other people might like Miss Cattledon, but I did not. She was in a silent rage with Miss Deveen for having chosen to keep the jewel-case during their stay at Whitney Hall, and for carelessly leaving the key in it. Miss Deveen took the loss calmly, and was as cool as a cucumber.
“I don’t know that the emerald studs were in the upper tray last night; I don’t remember to have seen them,” Miss Deveen said, as if bearing out the assertion of the two women.
“Begging your pardon, madam, they were there,” stiffly corrected Miss Cattledon. “I saw them. I thought you would put them on, as you were going to wear your green satin gown, and asked if I should lay them out; but you told me you would choose for yourself.”
Miss Deveen had worn diamonds; we had noticed their lustre.
“I’m sure it is a dreadful thing to have happened!” said poor Lady Whitney, looking flurried. “I dare not tell Sir John; he would storm the windows out of their frames. Lease, I am astonished at you. How could you dare open the box?”
“I never did open it, my lady,” was the answer. “When I got round from the bed, Lettice was standing with it open before her.”
“I don’t think there need be much doubt as to the guilty party,” struck in Miss Cattledon with intense acrimony, her eyes swooping down upon Lettice. And if they were not sly and crafty eyes, never you trust me again.
“I do not think there need be so much trouble made about it,” corrected Miss Deveen. “It’s not your loss, Cattledon — it is mine: and my own fault too.”
But Miss Cattledon would not take the hint. She stuck to it like a leech, and sifted evidence as subtly as an Old Bailey lawyer. Mrs. Lease carried innocence on the surface; no one could doubt it: Lettice might have been taken for a seven-years’ thief. She sobbed, and choked, and rambled in her tale, and grew as confused as a hunted hare, contradicting herself at every second word. The Australian scheme (though it might have been nothing but foolish talk) told against her now.
Things grew more uncomfortable as the day went on, the house being ransacked from head to foot. Sophie Chalk cried. She was not rich, she said to me, but she would give every shilling of money she had with her for the studs to be found; and she thought it was very wrong to accuse Lettice, when so many strangers had been in the house. I liked Sophie better than I had liked her yet: she looked regularly vexed.
Sir John got to know of it: Miss Cattledon told him. He did not storm the windows out, but he said the police must come in and see Lettice Lane. Miss Deveen, hearing of this, went straight to Sir John, and assured him that if he took any serious steps while the affair was so doubtful, she would quit his house on the instant, and never put foot in it again. He retorted that it must have been Lettice Lane — common sense and Miss Cattledon could not be mistaken — and that it ought to be investigated.
They came to a compromise. Lettice was not to be given into custody at present; but she must quit the Hall. That, said Miss Deveen, was of course as Sir John and Lady Whitney pleased. To tell the truth, suspicion did seem strong against her.
She went away at eventide. One
of the men was charged to drive her to her mother’s, about five miles off. I and Anna, hastening home from our walk — for we had lost the others, and the stars were coming out in the wintry sky — saw them as we passed the beeches. Lettice’s face was swollen with crying.
“We are so sorry this has happened, Lettice,” Anna gently said, going up to the gig. “I do hope it will be cleared up soon. Remember one thing — I shall think well of you, until it is. I do not suspect you.”
“I am turned out like a criminal, Miss Anna,” sobbed the girl. “They searched me to the skin; that Miss Cattledon standing on to see that the housekeeper did it properly; and they have searched my boxes. The only one to speak a kind word to me as I came away, was Miss Deveen herself. It’s a disgrace I shall never get over.”
“That’s rubbish, Lettice, you know,” — for I thought I’d put in a good word, too. “You will soon forget it, once the right fellow is pitched upon. Good luck to you, Lettice.”
Anna shook hands with her, and the man drove on, Lettice sobbing aloud. Not hearing Anna’s footsteps, I looked round and saw she had sat down on one of the benches, though it was white with frost. I went back.
“Don’t you go and catch cold, Anna.”
“Johnny, you cannot think how this is troubling me.”
“Why you — in particular?”
“Well — for one thing I can’t believe that she is guilty. I have always liked Lettice.”
“So did we at Dyke Manor. But if she is not guilty, who is?”
“I don’t know, Johnny,” she continued, her eyes taking a thoughtful, far-off look. “What I cannot help thinking, is this — though I feel half ashamed to say it. Several visitors were in the house last night; suppose one should have found her way into the room, and taken them? If so, how cruel this must be on Lettice Lane.”
“Sophie Chalk suggested the same thing to me to-day. But a visitor would not do such a thing. Fancy a lady stealing jewels!”
“The open box might prove a strong temptation. People do things in such moments, Johnny, that they would fly from at other times.”
“Sophie said that too. You have been talking together.”
“I have not exchanged a word with Sophie Chalk on the subject. The ideas might occur naturally to any of us.”
I did not think it at all likely to have been a visitor. How should a visitor know there was an open jewel-box in Miss Deveen’s room? The chamber, too, was an inner one, and therefore not liable to be entered accidentally. To get to it you had to go through Miss Cattledon’s.
“The room is not easy of access, you know, Anna.”
“Not very. But it might be reached.”
“I say, are you saying this for any purpose?”
She turned round and looked at me rather sharply.
“Yes. Because I do not believe it was Lettice Lane.”
“Was it Miss Cattledon herself, Anna? I have heard of such curious things. Her eyes took a greedy look to-day when they rested on the jewels.”
As if the suggestion frightened her — and I hardly know how I came to whisper it — Anna started up, and ran across the lawn, never looking back or stopping until she reached the house.
XIV.
AT MISS DEVEEN’S.
The table was between us as we stood in the dining-room at Dyke Manor — I and Mrs. Todhetley — and on it lay a three-cornered article of soft geranium-coloured wool, which she called a “fichu.” I had my great coat on my arm ready for travelling, for I was going up to London on a visit to Miss Deveen.
It was Easter now. Soon after the trouble, caused by the loss of the emerald studs at Whitney Hall in January, the party had dispersed. Sophie Chalk returned to London; Tod and I came home; Miss Deveen was going to Bath. The studs had not been traced — had never been heard of since; and Lettice Lane, after a short stay in disgrace at her mother’s cottage, had suddenly disappeared. Of course there were not wanting people to affirm that she had gone off to her favourite land of promise, Australia, carrying the studs with her.
The Whitneys were now in London. They did not go in for London seasons; in fact, Lady Whitney hardly remembered to have had a season in London at all, and she quite dreaded this one, saying she should feel like a fish out of water. Sir John occupied a bedroom when he went up for Parliament, and dined at his club. But Helen was nineteen, and they thought she ought to be presented to the Queen. So Miss Deveen was consulted about a furnished house, and she and Sir John took one for six weeks from just before Easter. They left Whitney Hall at once to take possession; and Bill Whitney and Tod, who got an invitation, joined them the day before Good Friday.
The next Tuesday I received a letter from Miss Deveen. We were very good friends at Whitney, and she had been polite enough to say she should be glad to see me in London. I never expected to go, for three-parts of those invitations do not come to anything. She wrote now to ask me to go up; it might be pleasant for me, she added, as Joseph Todhetley was staying with the Whitneys.
It is of no use going on until I have said a word about Tod. If ever a fellow was hopelessly in love with a girl, he was with Sophie Chalk. I don’t mean hopeless as to the love, but as to getting out of it. On the day that we were quitting Whitney Hall — it was on the 26th of January, and the icicles were clustering on the trees — they had taken a long walk together. What Tod said I don’t know, but I think he let her know how much he loved her, and asked her to wait until he should be of age and could ask the question — would she be his wife? We went with her to the station, and the way Tod wrapped her up in the railway-carriage was as good as a show. (Pretty little Mrs. Hughes, who had been visiting old Featherston, went up by the same train and in the same carriage.) They corresponded a little, she and Tod. Nothing particular in her letters, at any rate — nothing but what the world might see, or that she might have written to Mrs. Todhetley, who had one from her on occasion — but I know Tod just lived on those letters and her remembrance; he could not hide it from me; and I saw without wishing to see or being able to help myself. Why, he had gone up to London now in one sole hope — that of meeting again with Miss Chalk!
Mrs. Todhetley saw it too — had seen it from the time when Sophie Chalk was at Dyke Manor — and it grieved and worried her. But not the Squire: he no more supposed Tod was going to take up seriously with Sophie Chalk, than with the pink-eyed lady exhibited the past year at Pershore Fair.
Well, that’s all of explanation. This was Wednesday morning, and the Squire was going to drive me to the station for the London train. Mrs. Todhetley at the last moment was giving me charge of the fichu, which she had made for Sophie Chalk’s sister.
“I did not send it by Joseph; I thought it as well not to do so,” she observed, as she began to pack it up in tissue paper. “Will you take it down to Mrs. Smith yourself, Johnny, and deliver it?”
“All right.”
“I — you know, Johnny, I have the greatest dislike to anything that is mean or underhand,” she went on, dropping her voice a little. “But I do not think it would be wrong, under the circumstances, if I ask you to take a little notice of what these Smiths are. I don’t mean in the way of being fashionable, Johnny; I suppose they are all that; but whether they are nice, good people. Somehow I did not like Miss Chalk, with all her fascinations, and it is of no use to pretend that I did.”
“She was too fascinating for ordinary folk, good mother.”
“Yes, that was it. She seemed to put the fascinations on. And, Johnny, though we were to hear that she had a thousand a year to her fortune, I should be miserable if I thought Joe would choose her for his wife.”
“She used to say she was poor.”
“But she seemed to have a whole list of lords and ladies for her friends, so I conclude she and her connections must be people of note. It is not that, Johnny — rich or poor — it is that I don’t like her for herself, and I do not think she is the one to make Joe happy. She never spoke openly about her friends, you know, or about herself. At any
rate, you take down this little parcel to Mrs. Smith, with my kind regards, and then you’ll see them for yourself. And in judgment and observation you are worth fifty of Joe, any day.”
“Not in either judgment or observation; only in instinct.”
“And that’s for yourself,” she added, slipping a sovereign into my pocket. “I don’t know how much Mr. Todhetley has given you. Mind you spend your money in right things, Johnny. But I am not afraid; I could trust you all over the world.”
Giles put in my portmanteau, and we drove off. The hedges were beginning to bud; the fields looked green. From observations about the young lambs, and a broken fence that he went into a passion over, the Squire suddenly plunged into something else.
“You take care of yourself, sir, in London! Boys get into all kinds of pitfalls there, if they don’t mind.”
“But I do not call myself a boy, sir, now.”
“Not call yourself a boy!” retorted the Squire, staring. “I’d like to know what else you are. Tod’s a boy, sir, and nothing else, though he does count twenty years. I wonder what the world’s coming to!” he added, lashing up Bob and Blister. “In my days, youngsters did not think themselves men before they had done growing.”
“What I meant was that I am old enough to take care of myself. Mrs. Todhetley has just said she could trust me all over the world.”
“Just like her foolishness! Take care you don’t get your pockets picked: there’s sure to be a thief at every corner. And don’t you pick them yourself, Master Johnny. I knew a young fellow once who went up to London with ten pounds in his pocket. He was staying at the Castle and Falcon Hotel, near the place where the mails used to start from — and a fine sight it was to see them bowl out, one after another, with their lamps lighted. Well, Johnny, this young fellow got back again in four days by one of these very mails, every shilling spent, and his fare down not paid. You’d not think that was steady old Jacobson; but it was.”
I laughed. The Squire looked more inclined to cry.