“I understand,” he replied, rubbing, his head. “But that is a good sum.”
“It is over a thousand pounds,” the Indian Civilian put in stonily, “at the present rate of exchange.”
“But, good gracious, James!” Mrs. Burton Smith said impatiently, “why are you valuing Lady Linacre’s jewellery — instead of finding it for her? The question is, ‘Where is it?’ It must be here. It was on this table fifteen minutes ago. It cannot have been spirited away.”
“If any one,” her husband began seriously, “is doing this for a joke, I do hope — —”
“For a joke!” the hostess cried sharply. “Impossible! No one would be so foolish!”
“I say, my dear,” he persisted, “if any one is doing this for a joke, I hope he will own up. It seems to me that it has been carried far enough.” There was a chorus of assent, half-indignant, half-exculpatory. But no one owned to the joke. No one produced the bracelet.
“Well!” Mrs. Burton Smith exclaimed. And as the company looked at one another, it seemed as if they also had never known anything quite so extraordinary as this.
“Really, Lady Linacre, I think that it must be somewhere about you,” the host said at last. “Would you mind giving yourself a good shake?”
She rose, and was solemnly preparing to agitate her skirts, when a guest interfered. It was the Hon. Vereker May. “You need not trouble yourself, Lady Linacre,” he said, with a curious dryness. He was still standing by the fireplace. “It is not about you.”
“Then where in the world is it?” retorted Mrs. Galantine. “Do you know?”
“If you do, for goodness’ sake speak out,” Mrs. Burton Smith added indignantly. Every one turned and stared at the Civilian.
“You had better,” he said, “ask Mr. Wibberley!”
That was all. But something in his tone produced an electrical effect. Joanna, in her corner — remote, like the Indian, from the centre of the disturbance — turned red and pale, and flashed angry glances round her. For the rest, they wished themselves away. It was impossible to overlook the insinuation. The words, simple as they were, in a moment put a graver complexion on the matter. Even Mrs. Burton Smith was silent, looking to her husband. He looked furtively at Wibberley.
And Wibberley? So far he had merely thought himself in an unpleasant fix, from which he must escape as best he could, at the expense of a little embarrassment and a slight loss of self-respect. Even the latter he might regain to-morrow, if he saw fit, by telling the truth to Mrs. Burton Smith; and in time the whole thing would become a subject for laughter, a stock dinner-party anecdote. But now, at the first sound of the Indian’s voice, he recognised his danger; and saw in the hundredth part of a second that ruin, social damnation, perhaps worse, threatened him. His presence of mind seemed to fail him at sight of the pit opening at his feet. He felt himself reeling, choking, his head surcharged with blood. The room, the expectant faces all turned to him, all with that strange expression on them, swam round before him. He had to lay his hand on a chair to steady himself.
But he did steady himself; to such an extent that those who marked his agitation did not know whether it proceeded from anger or fear. He drew himself up and looked at his accuser, holding the chair suspended in his hands. “What do you mean?” he said hoarsely.
“I should not have spoken,” the Civilian answered, returning his gaze, and speaking in measured accents, “if Mr. Burton Smith had not twice appealed to us to confess the joke, if a joke it was.”
“Well?”
“Well, only this,” the other replied. “I saw you take Lady Linacre’s bracelet from that table a few moments before it was missed, Mr. Wibberley.”
“You saw me?” Wibberley cried. This time there was the ring of honest defiance, of indignant innocence, in his tone. For if he felt certain of one thing it was that no one had been looking at him when the unlucky deed was done.
“I did,” the Civilian replied dispassionately. “My back was towards you. But my eyes were on this mirror” — he touched an oval glass in a Venetian frame which stood on the mantelpiece— “and I saw quite clearly. I am bound to say that, judging from the expression of your face, I was assured that it was a trick you were playing.”
Ernest Wibberley tried to frame the words, “And now?” — tried to force a smile. But he could not. The perspiration stood in great beads on his face. He shook all over. He felt himself — and this time it was no fancy — growing livid.
“To the best of my belief,” the Civilian added quietly, “the bracelet is on your left arm now.”
Wibberley tried to master, but could not, the impulse — the traitor impulse? — which urged him to glance at his wrist. The idea that the bracelet might be visible — that the damning evidence might be plain to every eye — overcame him. He looked down. Of course there was nothing to be seen; he might have known it, for he felt the hot grip of the horrible thing burning his arm inches higher. But when he looked up again — fleeting as had been his glance — he found that something had happened. He faltered, and the chair dropped from his hands. He read in every face save one suspicion or condemnation. Thief and liar! He read the words in their eyes. Yet he would, he must, brazen it out. And though he could not utter a word he looked from them to — Joanna.
The girl’s face was pale. But her eyes answered his eagerly, and they were ablaze with indignation. They held doubt, no suspicion. The moment his look fell on her, she spoke. “Show them your arm!” she cried impulsively. “Show them that you have not got it, Ernest!” she repeated with such scorn, such generous passion that it did not need the tell-tale name which fell from her lips to betray the secret to every woman in the room.
“Show them your arm!” Ah, but that was just what he could not do! And as he comprehended this he gnashed his teeth. He saw himself entrapped, and his misery was so plainly written in his face that the best and most merciful of those about him turned from him in pity. Even the girl who loved him shrank back, clutching the mantelpiece in the first spasm of doubt, and fear, and anguish. Her words, her suggestion, had taken from him his last chance. He saw that it was so. He felt the Nemesis the more bitterly on that account; and with a wild gesture, and some reckless word of defiance, he turned blindly and hurried from the room, seized his hat, and went down to the street.
His feelings when he found himself outside were such as it is impossible to describe in passionless sentences. He had wrecked his honour and happiness in an hour. He had lost his place among men through a thoughtless word. We talk and read of a thunderbolt from the blue; still the thing is to us unnatural. Some law-abiding citizen whom a moment’s passion has made a murderer, some strong man whom a stunning blow has left writhing on the ground, a twisted cripple — only these could fitly describe his misery and despair as he passed through the streets. It was misery he had brought on himself; and yet how far the punishment exceeded the offence! How immensely the shame exceeded the guilt! He had lied in careless will, with no evil intent; and the lie had made him a thief!
He went up to his rooms like one in a dream, and, scarcely knowing what he did, he tore the bauble from his arm and flung it on the mantel-shelf. By his last act — by bringing it away — he had made his position a hundred times more serious. But he did not at once remember this. After he had sat a while, however, with his head between his hands, wondering if this really were himself — if this really had happened to himself, this irrevocable thing! — he began to see things more clearly. But he could not at once make up his mind what to do. Beyond a hazy idea of returning the bracelet by the first post, and going on the Continent — of course, he must resign his employment — he had settled nothing, when a step mounting the staircase made him start to his feet. Some one knocked at the door of his chambers. He stood pallid and listened, struck by a sudden fear.
“The police!” he said to himself.
A moment’s thought satisfied him that it was improbable, if not impossible, that they could be on his track so soon; and
he went to the door listlessly and threw it open. On the mat stood Burton Smith, in a soft slouched hat, his hands thrust into the pockets of his overcoat. Wibberley glanced at him, and saw that he was alone; then leaving him to shut the door, he returned to his chair, and sat down in his old attitude, with his head between his hands. He looked already a broken man.
Burton Smith followed him in, and stood a moment looking at him uncomfortably enough. It is bad to have had such a scene as has been described in your house; it is worse, if a man be a man, to face a fellow-creature in his hour of shame. At any rate, Burton Smith felt it so. “Look here, Wibberley,” he said at length, as much embarrassed as if he had been the thief. “Look here, it will be better to hush this up. Give me the d —— d bracelet to hand back to Lady Linacre, and the thing shall go no farther.”
His tone was suggestive both of old friendship and of present pity. But when he had to repeat his question, when Wibberley gave him no answer, his voice grew more harsh. Even then the man with the hidden face did not speak, but pointed with an impatient gesture to the mantel-shelf.
Burton Smith stepped to the fire-place and looked. He was anxious to spare the culprit as far as possible. Yes, there was the bracelet. He took possession of it, anxious to escape from the place with all speed. But he laid it down the next instant as quickly as he had taken it up; and his brows came together as he turned upon his companion.
“This is not the bracelet!” he said. There was no smack of affection in his tone now; it was wholly hostile. His patience was exhausted. “Lady Linacre’s was a diamond bracelet of great value, as you know,” he said. “This is a plain gold thing worth two or three pounds. For Heaven’s sake, man!” he added with sudden vehemence, “for your own sake, don’t play the fool now! Where is the bracelet?”
Doubtless despair had benumbed Wibberley’s mind, for he did not reply, and Burton Smith had to put his question more than once before he got an answer. When Wibberley at last looked up it was with a dazed face. “What is it?” he muttered, avoiding the other’s eyes.
“This is not Lady Linacre’s bracelet.”
“That’s not?”
“No; certainly not.”
Still confused, still shunning the other’s look, Wibberley rose, took the bracelet in his hand, and frowned at it. Burton Smith saw him start.
“It is of the same shape,” the barrister repeated, ice in his voice — he thought the exchange a foolish, transparent artifice — worse than the theft. “But Lady Linacre’s has a large brilliant where that has a plain boss. That is not the bracelet.”
Wibberley turned away, the thing in his hand, and went to the window, and stood there a long moment looking out into the darkness. The curtains were not drawn. As he stood, otherwise motionless, his shoulders trembled so violently that a dreadful suspicion seized his late host, who desisted from watching him and looked about, but in vain, for a phial or a glass.
At the end of the minute Wibberley turned. For the first time he confronted his visitor. His eyes were bright, his face very pale; but his mouth was set and firm. “I never said it was!” he answered.
“Was what?” the other cried impatiently.
“I never said it was Lady Linacre’s. It was you who said that,” he continued, his head high, a change in his demeanour, an incisiveness almost harsh in his tone. “It was you — you who suspected me! I could not show you my arm because I had that bracelet on it.”
“And whose bracelet is it?” Burton Smith murmured, shaken as much by the sudden change in the man’s demeanour as by his denial.
“It is your cousin’s — Miss Burton’s. We are engaged,” Wibberley continued sternly — so entirely had the two changed places. “She intended to tell you to-morrow. I saw it on the table, and secreted it when I thought that no one was looking. I needed a pattern — for a bracelet I am giving her.”
“And it was Joanna’s bracelet that Vereker May saw you take?”
“Precisely.”
Burton Smith said a word about the Civilian which we need not repeat. Then, “But why on earth, old fellow, did you not explain?” he asked.
“First,” Wibberley replied with force, “because I should have had to proclaim my engagement to all those fools; and I had not Joanna’s permission to do that. Secondly — well, I did not wish to confess to being such an idiot as I was.”
“Ah!” said Burton Smith, slowly, an odd light in his eyes. “I think you were a fool, but — I suppose you will shake hands?”
“Certainly, old man.” And they did so, warmly.
“Now,” continued the barrister, his face becoming serious again, “the question is, where is Lady Linacre’s bracelet?”
“I don’t care a d —— n,” Wibberley answered. “I am sure you will excuse me saying so. I have had trouble enough with it — I know that — and, if you do not mind, I am going to bed.”
But though his friend left him, Wibberley did not go to bed at once. Burton Smith hurrying homeward — to find when he reached Onslow Mansions that Lady Linacre’s bracelet had been discovered in a flounce of her dress — would have been surprised, very much surprised indeed, could he have looked into Wibberley’s chambers a minute after his departure. He would have seen his friend down on his knees before a great chair, his face hidden, his form shaken by hysterical sobbing. For Wibberley was moved to the inmost depths of his nature. It is not given to many men to awake and find their doom a dream. Only in dreams, indeed, does the cripple get his strength again, and the murderer his old place among his fellow-men. Wibberley was fortunate.
And the lesson? Did he take it to heart? Well, lessons and morals are out of fashion in these days. Or stay — ask Joanna. She should know.
THE BODY-BIRDS OF COURT
“Eighty-eight when he died! That is a great age,” I said.
“Yes, indeed. But he was a very clever man, was Robert Evans Court, and brewed good beer,” my companion answered. “His home-brewed was known, I am certain, for more than ten miles. You will have heard of his body-birds, sir?”
“His body-birds?” I exclaimed.
“Yes, to be sure. Robert Evans Court’s body-birds!” With which he looked at me, quick to suspect that his English was deficient. He had learned it in part from books; hence the curious mixture I presently noted of Welsh idioms and formal English phrases. It was his light trap in which I was being helped on my journey, and his genial chat that was lightening that journey; which lay through a part of Carnarvonshire usually traversed only by wool-merchants and cattle-dealers — a country of upland farms swept by the sea-breezes, where English is not spoken at this day by one person in a hundred, and even at inns and post-offices you get only “Dim Sassenach” for your answer. “Do you not say,” he went on, “body-birds in English? Oh, but to be sure, it is in the Bible!” with a sudden recovery of his self-esteem.
“To be sure!” I replied hurriedly. “Of course it is! But as to Mr. Robert Evans, cannot you tell me the story?”
“I’ll be bound there is no man in North or South Wales, or Carnarvonshire, that could tell it better, for Gwen Madoc, of whom you shall hear presently, was aunt to me. You see Robert Evans” — and my friend settled himself in his seat and prepared to go slowly up the long steep hill of Rhiw which rose before us— “Robert Evans lived in an old house called Court, near the sea, very windy and lonesome. He was a warm man. He had Court from his father, and he had mortgages, and as many as four lawsuits. But he was unlucky in his family. He had years back three sons who helped on the farm, or at times fished; for there is a cove at Court and good boats. Of these sons only one was married — to a Scotchwoman from Bristol, I have heard, who had had a husband before, a merchant captain; and she brought with her to Court a daughter, Peggy, ready-made as we say. Well, of those three fine men there was not one left in a year. They were out fishing in a boat together, and Evan — that was the married one — was steering as they came into the cove on a spring tide running very high with a south wind. He steered a little to
one side — not more than six inches, upon my honour — and pah! in an hour their bodies were thrown up on Robert Evans’ land just bits of seaweed. But that was not all. Evan’s wife was on the beach at the time, so near she could have thrown a stone into the boat. They do say that before that she was pining at Court — it was bleak, and lonesome, and cold in the winters, and she had been used to live in the towns. But, however, she never held up her head after Evan was drowned. She took to her bed, and died in the short month. And then, of all at Court, there were left only Robert Evans and the child, Peggy.”
“How old was the child then?” I asked. He had paused, and was looking to the front, thoughtfully, striving, it would seem, to make the situation clear to himself.
“She was twelve, and the old man eighty and more. She was in no way related to him, you will remember, but he had her stop, and let her want for nothing that did not cost money. He was very careful of money, as was right; it was that made him the man he was. But there were some who would have given money to be rid of her. Year in and year out they never let the old man rest but that he should send her to service at least — though her father had been the captain of a big ship; and if Robert Evans had not been a stiff man of his years, they would have had their will.”
“But who — —”
By a gesture he stopped the words on my lips; and then there rose mysteriously out of the silence about us the sound of wings, a chorus of shrill cries. A hundred white forms swept overhead, and fell a white cluster about something in a distant field. They were seagulls. “Just those same!” he said proudly, jerking his whip in their direction— “body-birds. When the news that Robert Evans’ sons were drowned got about, there was a pretty uprising in Carnarvonshire. There seemed to be Evanses where there had never been Evanses before. As many as twenty walked in the funeral, and you may be sure that afterwards they did not leave the old man to himself. The Llewellyn Evanses were foremost. They had had a lawsuit with Court, but made it up now, to be sure. Besides, there were Mr. and Mrs. Evan Bevan, and the three Evanses of Nant, and Owen Evans, and the Evanses of Sarn, and many more who were all forward to visit Court, and be friendly with old Gwen Madoc, Robert’s housekeeper. I am told they could look black at one another, but in this they were all in one tale, that the foreign child should be sent away; and at times one and another would give her the rough word.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 830