Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman
Page 829
And so it was. He had committed some serious forgery — he had always been wild, though his father, slow to see it, had only lately closed his purse to him — and the forged signatures had come into his brother’s power. He had cheated his brother before. There had long been bad blood between them, the one being as cold, business-like, and masterful as the other was idle and jealous.
“I told him,” the elder said to me, shading his eyes with his hand, “that I should let him be prosecuted — that I would not protect or shelter him. The threat nearly drove him mad; and while it was hanging over him, I wrote to disclose the matter to Sir Charles. Gerald thought his last chance lay in recovering this letter unread. The proofs against him destroyed, he might laugh at me. His first attempt failed; then he planned with Barnes’ cognisance to get possession of the packet by drugging my father. Barnes’ courage deserted him at the last; he called you in, and — you know the rest.”
“But,” I said softly, “your brother did get the letter — at Liverpool.”
George Ritherdon groaned. “Yes,” he said, “he did. But the proofs were not in it. After writing the outside letter I changed my mind and withheld them, explaining my reasons within. He found his plot was in vain; and it was under the shock of this disappointment — the packet lay before him, re-sealed and directed to me — that he — that he did it. Poor Gerald!”
“Poor Gerald!” I said. What else remained to be said?
It may be a survival of superstition, yet, when I dine in Baker Street now, I take some care to go home by any other route than that which leads through Fitzhardinge Square.
JOANNA’S BRACELET
On a morning early in the spring of last year, two men stood leaning against the mantelpiece of a room in one of the Government offices. The taller of the two — he who was at home in the room — was a slim, well-dressed man, wearing his hair parted in the middle, and a diamond pin in the sailor knot of his tie. He had his frock-coat open, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. The attitude denoted complacency, and the man was complacent.
“Well, the funny part of it is,” he said lightly, his shoulders pressed against the mantelpiece, “that I am dining at the Burton Smiths’ this evening!”
“Ah?” his companion answered, looking at him with eyes of envy. “And so you will see her?”
“Of course. She is to come to them to-day. But they do not know of our engagement yet, and as she does not want to blurt it out the moment she arrives — why, for this evening, it is a secret. Still I thought I would tell you.”
He stepped away as he spoke, to straighten a red morocco-covered despatch-box, which stood on the table behind him. It bore, in addition to the flaunting gilt capitals “I.O.,” a modest plate with the name “Ernest Wibberley” — his name.
The other waited until he resumed his place. Then, holding out his hand, “Well, I am glad you told me, old boy,” he said. “I congratulate you most heartily, believe me.”
“Thank you, Jack,” Wibberley replied. “I knew you would. I rather feel myself that ‘Fate cannot harm me. I have dined to-day.’”
“Happy dog!” said Jack; and presently he took himself off.
The Burton Smiths, of whom we’ve heard them speak, are tolerably well known in London. Burton Smith himself is a barrister with money and many relations — Irish landlords, Scotch members, Indian judges, and the like. His wife is young, gracious, and fond of society. Their drawing-rooms, though on the topmost flat of Onslow Mansions — rooms with sloping ceilings and a dozen quaint nooks and corners — are seldom empty during the regulation hours.
This particular dinner-party had been planned with some care. “Lady Linacre will come, no doubt,” Mrs. Burton Smith had said one day at breakfast, conning a list she held in her hand; “and Mr. May.”
But Burton Smith objected to May. “He will talk about nothing but India,” he protested, “and the superiority of Calcutta to London. A little of these Bombay ducks goes a long way, my dear.”
“Well, James,” Mrs. Burton Smith replied placidly — the Hon. Vereker May is a son of Lord Hawthorn— “he will take me in, and I do not mind. Only I must have Mr. Wibberley on the other side to make conversation and keep me alive. Let me see — that will be three. And Joanna Burton — she comes that afternoon — four. Do you know, James, when we were at Rothley for Christmas I thought there was something between your cousin and Mr. Wibberley?”
“Then, for goodness’ sake, do not let them sit together!” Burton Smith cried, “or they will talk to one another and to no one else.”
“Very well,” Mrs. Smith assented. “They shall sit facing one another, and Mr. Wibberley shall take in Mrs. Galantine. She will be sure to flirt with him, and we can watch Joanna’s face. I shall soon see if there is anything between them.”
Mr. Wibberley was a young man of some importance, if only in his capacity of private secretary to a Minister. He had a thousand acquaintances, and two friends — perhaps three. He might be something some day — was bound to be. He dressed well, looked well, and talked well. He was a little presumptuous, perhaps a trifle conceited; but women like these things in young men, and he had tact. At any rate, he had never yet found himself in a place too strait for him.
This evening as he dressed for dinner — as he brushed his hair, or paused to smile at some reflection — his own, but not in the glass — he was in his happiest mood. Everything seemed to be going well with him. He had no presentiment of evil. He was going to a house where he was appreciated. Mrs. Burton Smith was a great ally of his. And then there would be, as we know, some one else. Happy man!
“Lady Linacre,” said his hostess, as she introduced him to a stout personage with white hair, a double chin, and diamonds. Wibberley bowed, making up his mind that the dowager was one of those ladies with strong prejudices, who drag their skirts together if you prove to be a Home Ruler, and leave the room if you mention Sir Charles Dilke. “Mr. May, you have met before,” Mrs. Smith continued; “and you know Miss Burton, I think?”
He murmured assent, while she — Joanna — shook hands with him frankly and with the ghost of a smile, perhaps. He played his part well, for a moment; but halted in his sentence as it flashed across his mind that this was their first meeting since she had said “Yes.” He recovered from his momentary embarrassment, however, before even Mrs. Burton Smith could note it, and promptly offered Mrs. Galantine his arm.
She was an old friend of his — as friends go in society. He had taken her in to dinner half a dozen times. “Who is that girl?” she asked, when they were seated; and she raised her glasses and stared through them at her vis-à-vis. “I declare she would be pretty if her nose were not so short.”
He seized the excuse to put up his glass too, and take a long look. “It is rather short,” he admitted, gazing with a whimsical sense of propriety at the deficient organ. “But some people like short noses, you know, Mrs. Galantine.”
“Ah! And theatres in August!” she replied incredulously. “And drawing-room games! But, seriously, she would be pretty if it were not for that.”
“Would she?” he questioned. “Well, I think she would, do you know?”
And certainly Joanna was pretty, though her forehead was too large, and her nose too small, and her lips too full. For her eyes were bright and her complexion perfect, and her face told of wit, and good temper, and freshness. She had beautiful arms, too, for a chit of nineteen. Mrs. Galantine said nothing about the arms — not out of modesty, but because her own did not form one of her strong points. Wibberley, however, was thinking of them, and whether a bracelet he had by him would fit them. He saw Joanna wore a bracelet — a sketchy gold thing. He considered whether he should take it for a pattern, or whether it might not be more pleasant to measure the wrist for himself.
But Mrs. Galantine returned to the charge. “She is a cousin, is she not?” she asked, speaking so loudly that Joanna looked across and smiled. “I have never met her before. Tell me all about her.”
The lady dropped her knife and fork with a clatter. “A potato, Mr. Wibberley? What do you mean?”
“What I say,” he answered simply. “You see my plate? It is a picture. You have there the manly beef, and the feminine peas, so young, so tender! And the potato! The potato is the confidante. It is insipid. Do you not agree with me?”
“Bravo, Mr. Wibberley! But am I to apply your parable?” she spoke sharply, glancing across the table, with her fork uplifted, and a pea upon it. “Am I to be the potato?”
“The choice is with you,” he replied gallantly. “Shall it be the potato? or the peas?”
Mrs. Burton Smith, seeing him absorbed in his companion, was puzzled. Look as she might at Joanna, she saw no sign of jealousy or self-consciousness. Joanna seemed to be getting on perfectly with her partner; to be enjoying herself to the full, and to be as much interested as any one at table. Mrs. Burton Smith sighed. She had the instinct of matchmaking. And she saw clearly now that there was nothing between the two; that if there had been any philandering at Rothley neither of the young people had put out a hand — or a heart — beyond recovery.
But this success of Wibberley’s with Mrs. Galantine had its consequences. After the ladies had withdrawn he grew a trifle presumptuous. By ill-luck, the Hon. Vereker May had reached that period of the evening when India — as seen through the glasses of his memory — was accustomed to put on its rosiest tints; and the two facing one another fell to debating on a subject of which the returned Civilian had seen much and thought little, and the private secretary had read more and thought not at all. They were therefore on a par as to information, and what the younger man lacked in obstinacy he made up in readiness. It was in vain the Nabob blustered, asserted, contradicted — finally grew sulky, silent, stertorous. Wibberley pushed his triumph, and soon paid dearly for it.
It happened that he was the last to enter the drawing-room. The evening was chilly, and the ladies had grouped themselves about the fire, protected from assault, by a couple of gipsy-tables bearing shaded lamps. The incomers, one by one, passed through these outworks — all but Wibberley. He cast a glance of comic despair at Joanna, who was by the fireplace in the heart of the citadel; then, resigning himself to separation, he took a low chair by one of the tables, and began to turn over the books which lay on the latter. There were but half a dozen. He scanned them all, and then his eyes fell on a bracelet which lay beside them; a sketchy gold bracelet, with one big boss — Joanna’s.
He looked at the party — himself sitting a little aside, as we have said. They were none of them facing his way. They were discussing a photograph on the overmantel, a photograph of children. He extended his hand and covered the bracelet. He would take it for a pattern, and to-morrow Joanna should ransom it. He tried, as his fingers closed on it, to catch her eye. He would fain have seen her face change and her colour rise. It would have added to the charm which the boyish, foolish act had for him, if she had been privy to it — yet unable to prevent it.
But she would not look; and he was obliged to be content with his plunder. He slid the gold trifle deftly under the fringe of the table, and clasped it round his arm — not a lusty arm — thrusting it as high as it would go that no movement of his shirt-cuff might disclose it. He had a keen sense of the ridiculous, and he would not for the world that any besides Joanna should see the act: that doddering old fossil May, for instance, who, however, was safe enough — standing on the rug with his back turned, and his slow mind forming an opinion on the photograph.
Then — or within a few minutes, at any rate — Wibberley began to find the party dull. He saw no chance of a private word with Joanna. Lady Linacre, his nearest neighbour, was prosing on to Mrs. Burton Smith, his next nearest. And he himself, after shining at dinner, had fallen into the background. Hang it, he would go! It was ten o’clock.
He rose, and was stooping across the table, murmuring his excuses to Mrs. Burton Smith, when Lady Linacre uttered an exclamation. He was leaning across her between her head and the lamp, and he fancied he had touched her head-dress. “Pray pardon me, Lady Linacre!” he cried gaily. “I am just going — I have to leave early. So the encroachment will be but for a moment.”
“It is not that,” the old lady replied. “But where is my bracelet?” She was feeling about the table as she spoke, shifting with her white, podgy hands the volumes that lay on it.
No one on the instant took in the situation. Mrs. Burton Smith had risen, and was listening to Wibberley. The others were talking. But Lady Linacre was used to attention; and when she spoke again her voice was shrill, and almost indecently loud. “Where is my bracelet?” she repeated. “The one with the Agra diamond that I was showing you, Mrs. Burton Smith. It was here a moment ago, and it is gone! It is gone!”
Wibberley was still speaking to his hostess. He heard the old lady’s words, but did not at once apply them. He finished his leave-taking at his leisure, and only as he turned recollected himself, and said, with polite solicitude, “What is it, Lady Linacre? Have you dropped something? Can I find it for you?”
He stooped as he spoke; and she drew her skirt aside, and both peered at the floor, while there was a chorus from those sitting nearest of, “What is it, Lady Linacre? Dear Lady Linacre, what have you lost?”
“My Agra diamond!” she replied, her head quivering, her fingers groping about her dress.
“No?” some one said in surprise. “Why, it was here a moment ago. I saw it in your hand.”
The old lady held up her wrists. “See!” she said fussily, “I have not got it!”
“But are you sure it is not in your lap?” Burton Smith suggested. Lady Linacre had rather an ample lap. By this time the attention of the whole party had been drawn to the loss, and one or two of the most prudent were looking uncomfortable.
“No,” she answered; “I am quite sure that I placed it on the table by my side. I am sure I saw it there. I was going to put it on when the gentlemen came in, and I laid it down for a minute, and — it is gone!”
She was quite clear about it, and looked at Wibberley for confirmation. The table stood between them. She thought he must have seen it; Mrs. Burton Smith being the only other person close to the table.
Burton Smith saw the look. “I say, Wibberley,” he said, appealing to him, half in fun, half in earnest, “you have not hidden it for a joke, have you?”
“I? Certainly not!”
To this day Ernest Wibberley wonders when he made the disagreeable discovery of what he had done — that he had taken the wrong bracelet! It was not at once. It was not until the aggrieved owner had twice proclaimed her loss that he felt himself redden, and awoke to the consciousness that the bracelet was on his arm. Even then, if he had had presence of mind, he might have extricated himself. He might have said, “By Jove! I think I slipped it on my wrist in pure absence of mind,” or, he might have made some other excuse for his possession of it — an excuse which would have passed muster, though one or two might have thought him odd. But time was everything; and he hesitated. He hated to seem odd, even to one or two; he thought that presently he might find some chance of restoring the bracelet. So he hesitated, peering at the carpet, and the golden opportunity passed. Then each moment made the avowal more difficult, and less ordinary; until, when his host appealed to him— “If you have hidden it for a joke, old fellow, out with it!” — madness overcame him, and he answered as he did.
He looked up, indeed, with well acted surprise, and said his “I? Certainly not!” somewhat peremptorily.
Half a dozen of the guests were peering stupidly about as if they expected to find the lost articl
e in a flower-vase, or within the globe of a lamp. Presently their hostess stayed these explorations. “Wait a moment!” she said abruptly, raising her head. “I have it!”
“Well?”
“John must have moved it when he brought in the tea. That must be it. Ring the bell, James, and we will ask him.”
It was done. John came in, and the question was put to him.
“Yes, sir,” he said readily; “I saw a bracelet. On the table by the lamp.” He indicated the table near Lady Linacre.
“Did you move it?”
“Move it, sir?” the man repeated, surprised by the question, the silence, and the strained faces turned to him. “No, sir; certainly not. I saw it when I was handing the tea to — to Mr. Wibberley, I think it was.”
“Ah, very well,” his master answered. “That is all. You may go.”
It was not possible to doubt the man’s face and manner. But when he had left the room, an uncomfortable silence ensued. “It is very strange,” Burton Smith said, looking from one to another, and then, for the twentieth time, he groped under the table.
“It is very strange,” Wibberley murmured. He felt bound to say something. He could not free himself from an idea that the others, and particularly the Indian Civilian, were casting odd looks at him. He appeared calm enough, but he could not be sure of this. He felt as if he were each instant changing colour, and betraying himself. His very voice sounded forced to his ear as he repeated fussily, “It is very odd — very odd! Where can it be?”
“It cost,” Lady Linacre quavered — irrelevantly, but by no means impertinently— “it cost fourteen thousand out there. Indeed it did. And that was before it was set.”
A hush as of awe fell upon the room. “Fourteen thousand pounds!” Burton Smith said softly, his hair rising on end.
“No, no,” said the old lady, who had not intended to mystify them. “Not pounds; rupees.”