Lizzie Eustace was speechless as she continued to look up into the Corsair’s face. She ought to have answered him briskly, either with indignation or with a touch of humour. But she could not answer him at all. She was desired to tell him all that she knew about the robbery, and she was unable to declare that she knew nothing. How much did he suspect? What did he believe? Had she been watched by Mrs. Carbuncle, and had something of the truth been told to him? And then would it not be better for her that he should know it all? Unsupported and alone she could not bear the trouble which was on her. If she were driven to tell her secret to any one, had she not better tell it to him? She knew that if she did so, she would be a creature in his hands to be dealt with as he pleased; but would there not be a certain charm in being so mastered? He was but a pinchbeck lord. She had wit enough to know that; but then she had wit enough also to feel that she herself was but a pinchbeck lady. He would be fit for her, and she for him, if only he would take her. Since her daydreams first began, she had been longing for a Corsair; and here he was, not kneeling at her feet, but standing over her, as became a Corsair. At any rate he had mastered her now, and she could not speak to him.
He waited perhaps a minute, looking at her, before he renewed his question; and the minute seemed to her to be an age. During every second her power beneath his gaze sank lower and lower. There gradually came a grim smile over his face, and she was sure that he could read her very heart. Then he called her by her Christian name, as he had never called her before. “Come, Lizzie,” he said, “you might as well tell me all about it. You know.”
“Know what?” The words were audible to him, though they were uttered in the lowest whisper.
“About this d —— necklace. What is it all? Where are they? And how did you manage it?”
“I didn’t manage anything!”
“But you know where they are?” He paused again, still gazing at her. Gradually there came across his face, or she fancied that it was so, a look of ferocity which thoroughly frightened her. If he should turn against her, and be leagued with the police against her, what chance would she have? “You know where they are,” he said, repeating his words. Then at last she nodded her head, assenting to his assertion. “And where are they? Come, out with it! If you won’t tell me, you must tell some one else. There has been a deal too much of this already.”
“You won’t betray me?”
“Not if you deal openly with me.”
“I will; indeed I will. And it was all an accident. When I took them out of the box, I only did it for safety.”
“You did take them out of the box then?” Again she nodded her head. “And have got them now?” There was another nod. “And where are they? Come; with such an enterprising spirit as yours, you ought to be able to speak. Has Benjamin got them?”
“Oh, no.”
“And he knows nothing about them?”
“Nothing.”
“Then I have wronged in my thoughts that son of Abraham.”
“Nobody knows anything,” said Lizzie.
“Not even Jane or Lucinda?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Then you have kept your secret marvellously. And where are they?”
“Up-stairs.”
“In your bedroom?”
“In my desk in the little sitting-room.”
“The Lord be good to us!” ejaculated Lord George. “All the police in London, from the chief downwards, are agog about this necklace. Every well-known thief in the town is envied by every other thief because he is thought to have had a finger in the pie. I am suspected, and Mr. Benjamin is suspected; Sir Griffin is suspected, and half the jewellers in London and Paris are supposed to have the stones in their keeping. Every man and woman is talking about it, and people are quarrelling about it till they almost cut each other’s throats; and all the while you have got them locked up in your desk! How on earth did you get the box broken open and then conveyed out of your room at Carlisle?”
Then Lizzie, in a frightened whisper, with her eyes often turned on the floor, told the whole story. “If I’d had a minute to think of it,” she said, “I would have confessed the truth at Carlisle. Why should I want to steal what was my own? But they came to me all so quickly, and I didn’t like to say that I had them under my pillow.”
“I dare say not.”
“And then I couldn’t tell anybody afterwards. I always meant to tell you, from the very first, because I knew you would be good to me. They are my own. Surely I might do what I liked with my own?”
“Well, yes; in one way. But you see there was a lawsuit in Chancery going on about them; and then you committed perjury at Carlisle. And altogether, it’s not quite straight sailing, you know.”
“I suppose not.”
“Hardly. Major Mackintosh, and the magistrates, and Messrs. Bunfit and Gager won’t settle down, peaceable and satisfied, when they hear the end of the story. And I think Messrs. Camperdown will have a bill against you. It’s been uncommonly clever, but I don’t see the use of it.”
“I’ve been very foolish,” said Lizzie; “but you won’t desert me?”
“Upon my word I don’t know what I’m to do.”
“Will you have them as a present?”
“Certainly not.”
“They’re worth ever so much; ten thousand pounds! And they are my own, to do just what I please with them.”
“You are very good; but what should I do with them?”
“Sell them.”
“Who’d buy them? And before a week was over I should be in prison, and in a couple of months should be standing at the Old Bailey at my trial. I couldn’t just do that, my dear.”
“What will you do for me? You are my friend — ain’t you?” The diamond necklace was not a desirable possession in the eyes of Lord George de Bruce Carruthers; but Portray Castle, with its income, and the fact that Lizzie Eustace was still a very young woman, was desirable. Her prettiness too was not altogether thrown away on Lord George, though, as he was wont to say to himself, he was too old now to sacrifice much for such a toy as that. Something he must do, if only because of the knowledge which had come to him. He could not go away and leave her, and neither say nor do anything in the matter. And he could not betray her to the police.
“You will not desert me,” she said, taking hold of his hand, and kissing it as a suppliant.
He passed his arm round her waist, but more as though she were a child than a woman, as he stood thinking. Of all the affairs in which he had ever been engaged, it was the most difficult. She submitted to his embrace, and leaned upon his shoulder, and looked up into his face. If he would only tell her that he loved her, then he would be bound to her, then must he share with her the burthen of the diamonds, then must he be true to her. “George,” she said, and burst into a low suppressed wailing, with her face hidden upon his arm.
“That’s all very well,” said he, still holding her, for she was pleasant to hold, “but what the d —— is a fellow to do? I don’t see my way out of it. I think you’d better go to Camperdown, and give them up to him, and tell him the truth.” Then she sobbed more violently than before, till her quick ear caught the sound of a footstep on the stairs, and in a moment she was out of his arms and seated on the sofa, with hardly a trace of tears in her eyes. It was the footman, who desired to know whether Lady Eustace would want the carriage that afternoon. Lady Eustace, with her cheeriest voice, sent her love to Mrs. Carbuncle, and her assurance that she would not want the carriage before the evening. “I don’t know that you can do anything else,” continued Lord George, “except just give them up and brazen it out. I don’t suppose they’d prosecute you.”
“Prosecute me!” ejaculated Lizzie.
“For perjury, I mean.”
“And what could they do to me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Lock you up for five years, perhaps.”
“Because I had my own necklace under the pillow in my own room?”
“Think of all the trouble you’ve given.”
“I’ll never give them up to Mr. Camperdown. They are mine; my very own. My cousin, Mr. Greystock, who is much more of a lawyer than Mr. Camperdown, says so. Oh, George, do think of something. Don’t tell me that I must give them up. Wouldn’t Mr. Benjamin buy them?”
“Yes, for half nothing; and then go and tell the whole story and get money from the other side. You can’t trust Benjamin.”
“But I can trust you.” She clung to him and implored him, and did get from him a renewed promise that he would not reveal her secret. She wanted him to take the terrible packet from her there and then, and use his own judgment in disposing of it. But this he positively refused to do. He protested that they were safer with her than they could be with him. He explained to her that if they were found in his hands, his offence in having them in his possession would be much greater than hers. They were her own, as she was ever so ready to assert; or if not her own, the ownership was so doubtful that she could not be accused of having stolen them. And then he needed to consider it all, to sleep upon it, before he could make up his mind what he would do.
But there was one other trouble on her mind as to which he was called upon to give her counsel before he was allowed to leave her. She had told the detective officer that she would submit her boxes and desks to be searched if her cousin Frank should advise it. If the policeman were to return with her cousin while the diamonds were still in her desk, what should she do? He might come at any time; and then she would be bound to obey him.
“And he thinks that they were stolen at Carlisle?” asked Lord George.
“Of course he thinks so,” said Lizzie, almost indignantly.
“They would never ask to search your person,” suggested Lord George. Lizzie could not say. She had simply declared that she would be guided by her cousin.
“Have them about you when he comes. Don’t take them out with you; but keep them in your pocket while you are in the house during the day. They will hardly bring a woman with them to search you.”
“But there was a woman with the man when he came before.”
“Then you must refuse in spite of your cousin. Show yourself angry with him and with everybody. Swear that you did not intend to submit yourself to such indignity as that. They can’t do it without a magistrate’s order, unless you permit it. I don’t suppose they will come at all; and if they do they will only look at your clothes and your boxes. If they ask to do more, be stout with them and refuse. Of course, they’ll suspect you, but they do that already. And your cousin will suspect you; but you must put up with that. It will be very bad; but I see nothing better. But, of all things, say nothing of me.”
“Oh, no,” said Lizzie, promising to be obedient to him. And then he took his leave of her.
“You will be true to me, will you not?” she said, still clinging to his arm. He promised her that he would. “Oh, George,” she said, “I have no friend now but you. You will care for me?” He took her in his arms and kissed her, and promised her that he would care for her. How was he to save himself from doing so? When he was gone, Lizzie sat down to think of it all, and felt sure that at last she had found her Corsair.
Mrs. Carbuncle and Lizzie Eustace did not, in these days, shut themselves up because there was trouble in the household. It would not have suited the creed of Mrs. Carbuncle on social matters to be shut up from the amusements of life. She had sacrificed too much in seeking them for that, and was too conscious of the price she paid for them. It was still mid-winter, but nevertheless there was generally some amusement arranged for every evening. Mrs. Carbuncle was very fond of the play, and made herself acquainted with every new piece as it came out. Every actor and actress of note on the stage was known to her, and she dealt freely in criticisms on their respective merits. The three ladies had a box at the Haymarket taken for this very evening, at which a new piece, “The Noble Jilt,” from the hand of a very eminent author, was to be produced. Mrs. Carbuncle had talked a great deal about “The Noble Jilt,” and could boast that she had discussed the merits of the two chief characters with the actor and actress who were to undertake them. Miss Talbot had assured her that the Margaret was altogether impracticable, and Mrs. Carbuncle was quite of the same opinion. And as for the hero, Steinmark, it was a part that no man could play so as to obtain the sympathy of an audience. There was a second hero, a Flemish Count, tame as rain-water, Mrs. Carbuncle said. She was very anxious for the success of the piece, which, as she said, had its merits; but she was sure that it wouldn’t do. She had talked about it a great deal, and now, when the evening came, she was not going to be deterred from seeing it by any trouble in reference to a diamond necklace. Lizzie, when she was left by Lord George, had many doubts on the subject, whether she would go or stay at home. If he would have come to her, or her cousin Frank, or if, had it been possible, Lord Fawn would have come, she would have given up the play very willingly. But to be alone, with her necklace in the desk up-stairs, or in her pocket, was terrible to her. And then, they could not search her or her boxes while she was at the theatre. She must not take the necklace with her there. He had told her to leave it in her desk when she went from home.
Lucinda, also, was quite determined that she would see the new piece. She declared to her aunt, in Lizzie’s presence, without a vestige of a smile, that it might be well to see how a jilt could behave herself, so as to do her work of jilting in any noble fashion.
“My dear,” said her aunt, “you let things weigh upon your heart a great deal too much.”
“Not upon my heart, Aunt Jane,” the young lady had answered. She also intended to go, and when she had made up her mind to anything, nothing would deter her. She had no desire to stay at home in order that she might see Sir Griffin. “I dare say the play may be very bad,” she said, “but it can hardly be so bad as real life.”
Lizzie, when Lord George had left her, crept up-stairs, and sat for a while thinking of her condition, with the key of her desk in her hand. Should there come a knock at the door, the case of diamonds would be in her pocket in a moment. Her own room door was bolted on the inside, so that she might have an instant for her preparation. She was quite resolved that she would carry out Lord George’s recommendation, and that no policeman or woman should examine her person, unless it were done by violence. There she sat, almost expecting that at every moment her cousin would be there with Bunfit and the woman. But nobody came, and at six she went down to dinner. After much consideration she then left the diamonds in the desk. Surely no one would come to search at such an hour as that. No one had come when the carriage was announced, and the three ladies went off together.
During the whole way Mrs. Carbuncle talked of the terrible situation in which poor Lord George was placed by the robbery, and of all that Lizzie owed him on account of his trouble.
“My dear,” said Mrs. Carbuncle, “the least you can do for him is to give him all that you’ve got to give.”
“I don’t know that he wants me to give him anything,” said Lizzie.
“I think that’s quite plain,” said Mrs. Carbuncle, “and I’m sure I wish it may be so. He and I have been dear friends — very dear friends, and there is nothing I wish so much as to see him properly settled. Ill-natured people like to say all manner of things because everybody does not choose to live in their own heartless, conventional form. But I can assure you there is nothing between me and Lord George which need prevent him from giving his whole heart to you.”
“I don’t suppose there is,” said Lizzie, who loved an opportunity of giving Mrs. Carbuncle a little rap.
The play, as a play, was a failure; at least so said Mrs. Carbuncle. The critics, on the next morning, were somewhat divided — not only in judgment, but as to facts. To say how a play has been received is of more moment than to speak of its own merits or of the merits of the actors. Three or four of the papers declared that the audience was not only eulogistic, but enthusiastic. One or two others averred that the piece fell very flatly. As it was not acted above four or five dozen times consecutively, it must be regarded as a failure. On their way home Mrs. Carbuncle declared that Minnie Talbot had done her very best with such a part as Margaret, but that the character afforded no scope for sympathy.
“A noble jilt, my dears,” said Mrs. Carbuncle eloquently, “is a contradiction in terms. There can be no such thing. A woman, when she has once said the word, is bound to stick to it. The delicacy of the female character should not admit of hesitation between two men. The idea is quite revolting.”
“But may not one have an idea of no man at all?” asked Lucinda. “Must that be revolting also?”
“Of course a young woman may entertain such an idea; though for my part I look upon it as unnatural. But when she has once given herself there can be no taking back without the loss of that aroma which should be the apple of a young woman’s eye.”
“If she finds that she has made a mistake —?” said Lucinda fiercely. “Why shouldn’t a young woman make a mistake as well as an old woman? Her aroma won’t prevent her from having been wrong and finding it out.”
“My dear, such mistakes, as you call them, always arise from fantastic notions. Look at this piece. Why does the lady jilt her lover? Not because she doesn’t like him. She’s just as fond of him as ever.”
“He’s a stupid sort of a fellow, and I think she was quite right,” said Lizzie. “I’d never marry a man merely because I said I would. If I found I didn’t like him, I’d leave him at the altar. I’d leave him any time I found I didn’t like him. It’s all very well to talk of aroma, but to live with a man you don’t like — is the devil.”
“My dear, those whom God has joined together shouldn’t be separated — for any mere likings or dislikings.” This Mrs. Carbuncle said in a high tone of moral feeling, just as the carriage stopped at the door in Hertford Street. They at once perceived that the hall-door was open, and Mrs. Carbuncle, as she crossed the pavement, saw that there were two policemen in the hall. The footman had been with them to the theatre, but the cook and housemaid, and Mrs. Carbuncle’s own maid, were with the policemen in the passage. She gave a little scream, and then Lizzie, who had followed her, seized her by the arm. She turned round and saw by the gas-light that Lizzie’s face was white as a sheet, and that all the lines of her countenance were rigid and almost distorted. “Then she does know all about it,” said Mrs. Carbuncle to herself. Lizzie didn’t speak, but still hung on to Mrs. Carbuncle’s arm, and Lucinda, having seen how it was, was also supporting her. A policeman stepped forward and touched his hat. He was not Bunfit — neither was he Gager. Indeed, though the ladies had not perceived the difference, he was not at all like Bunfit or Gager. This man was dressed in a policeman’s uniform, whereas Bunfit and Gager always wore plain clothes.
“My lady,” said the policeman, addressing Mrs. Carbuncle, “there’s been a robbery here.”
“A robbery!” ejaculated Mrs. Carbuncle.
“Yes, my lady. The servants all out, all to one; and she’s off. They’ve taken jewels, and, no doubt, money, if there was any. They don’t mostly come unless they know what they comes for.”
With a horrid spasm across her heart, which seemed really to kill her, so sharp was the pain, Lizzie recovered the use of her legs and followed Mrs. Carbuncle into the dining-room. She had been hardly conscious of hearing; but she had heard, and it had seemed to her that the robbery spoken of was something distinct from her own affair. The policeman did not speak of having found the diamonds. It was of something lost that they spoke. She seated herself in a chair against the wall, but did not utter a word. “We’ve been up-stairs, my lady, and they’ve been in most of the rooms. There’s a desk broke open.” Lizzie gave an involuntary little scream. “Yes, mum, a desk,” continued the policeman turning to Lizzie,” and a bureau, and a dressing-case. What’s gone your ladyship can tell when you sees. And one of the young women is off. It’s she as done it.” Then the cook explained. She and the housemaid, and Mrs. Carbuncle’s lady’s maid, had just stepped out, only round the corner, to get a little air, leaving Patience Crabstick in charge of the house; and when they came back, the area gate was locked against them, the front door was locked, and finding themselves unable to get in after many knockings, they had at last obtained the assistance of a policeman. He had got into the place over the area gate, had opened the front door from within, and then the robbery had been discovered. It was afterwards found that the servants had all gone out to what they called a tea-party, at a public-house in the neighbourhood, and that by previous agreement Patience Crabstick had remained in charge. When they came back Patience Crabstick was gone, and the desk, and bureau, and dressing-case were found to have been opened. “She had a reg’lar thief along with her, my lady,” said the policeman, still addressing himself to Mrs. Carbuncle, “‘cause of the way the things was opened.”
“I always knew that young woman was downright bad,” said Mrs. Carbuncle in her first expression of wrath.
But Lizzie sat in her chair without saying a word, still pale with that almost awful look of agony in her face. Within ten minutes of their entering the house, Mrs. Carbuncle was making her way up-stairs, with the two policemen following her. That her bureau and her dressing-case should have been opened was dreadful to her, though the value that she could thus lose was very small. She also possessed diamonds, but her diamonds were paste; and whatever jewelry she had of any value, a few rings, and a brooch, and such like, had been on her person in the theatre. What little money she had by her was in the drawing-room, and the drawing-room, as it seemed, had not been entered. In truth, all Mrs. Carbuncle’s possessions in the house were not sufficient to have tempted a well-bred, well-instructed thief. But it behooved her to be indignant; and she could be indignant with grace, as the thief was discovered to be, not her maid, but Patience Crabstick. The policemen followed Mrs. Carbuncle, and the maids followed the policemen; but Lizzie Eustace kept her seat in the chair by the wall. “Do you think they have taken much of yours?” said Lucinda, coming up to her and speaking very gently. Lizzie made a motion with her two hands upon her heart, and struggled, and gasped, as though she wished to speak but could not. “I suppose it is that girl who has done it all,” said Lucinda. Lizzie nodded her head, and tried to smile. The attempt was so ghastly that Lucinda, though not timid by nature, was frightened. She sat down and took Lizzie’s hand, and tried to comfort her. “It is very hard upon you,” she said, “to be twice robbed.” Lizzie again nodded her head. “I hope it is not much now. Shall we go up and see?” The poor creature did get upon her legs, but she gasped so terribly that Lucinda feared that she was dying. “Shall I send for some one?” she said. Lizzie made an effort to speak, was shaken convulsively while the other supported her, and then burst into a flood of tears.
When that had come she was relieved, and could again act her part. “Yes,” she said, “we will go with them. It is so dreadful; is it not?”
“Very dreadful; but how much better that we weren’t at home. Shall we go now?” Then together they followed the others, and on the stairs Lizzie explained that in her desk, of which she always carried the key round her neck, there was what money she had by her — two ten-pound notes, and four five-pound notes, and three sovereigns; in all, forty-three pounds. Her other jewels, the jewels which she had possessed over and above the fatal diamond necklace, were in her dressing-case. Patience, she did not doubt, had known that the money was there, and certainly knew of her jewels. So they went up-stairs. The desk was open and the money gone. Five or six rings and a bracelet had been taken also from Lizzie’s dressing-case, which she had left open. Of Mrs. Carbuncle’s property sufficient had been stolen to make a long list in that lady’s handwriting. Lucinda Roanoke’s room had not been entered, as far as they could judge. The girl had taken the best of her own clothes, and a pair of strong boots belonging to the cook. A superintendent of police was there before they went to bed, and a list was made out. The superintendent was of opinion that the thing had been done very cleverly, but also thought that the thieves had expected to find more plunder.
“They don’t care so much about banknotes, my lady, because they fetches such a low price with them as they deal with. The three sovereigns is more to them than all the forty pounds in notes.” The superintendent had heard of the diamond necklace, and expressed an opinion that poor Lady Eustace was especially marked out for misfortune.
“It all comes of having such a girl as that about her,” said Mrs. Carbuncle. The superintendent, who intended to be consolatory to Lizzie, expressed his opinion that it was very hard to know what a young woman was.
“They looks as soft as butter, and they’re as sly as foxes, and as quick, as quick — as quick as greased lightning, my lady.” Such a piece of business as this which has just occurred will make people intimate at a very short notice.
And so the diamond necklace, known to be worth ten thousand pounds, had at last been stolen in earnest! Lizzie, when the policemen were gone, and the noise was over, and the house was closed, slunk away to her bedroom, refusing any aid in lieu of that of the wicked Patience. She herself had examined the desk beneath the eyes of her two friends and of the policemen, and had seen at once that the case was gone. The money was gone too, as she was rejoiced to find. She perceived at once that had the money been left, the very leaving of it would have gone to prove that other prize had been there. But the money was gone — money of which she had given a correct account — and she could now honestly allege that she had been robbed. But she had at last really lost her great treasure; and if the treasure should be found then would she infallibly be exposed. She had talked twice of giving away her necklace, and had seriously thought of getting rid of it by burying it deep in the sea. But now that it was in very truth gone from her, the loss of it was horrible to her. Ten thousand pounds, for which she had struggled so much and borne so many things, which had come to be the prevailing fact of her life, gone from her forever! Nevertheless it was not that sorrow, that regret, which had so nearly overpowered her in the dining-parlour. At that moment she hardly knew, had hardly thought, whether the diamonds had or had not been taken. But the feeling came upon her at once that her own disgrace was every hour being brought nearer to her. Her secret was no longer quite her own. One man knew it, and he had talked to her of perjury and of five years’ imprisonment. Patience must have known it too; and now some one else also knew it. The police, of course, would find it out, and then horrid words would be used against her. She hardly knew what perjury was. It sounded like forgery and burglary. To stand up before a judge and be tried, and then to be locked up for five years in prison! What an end would this be to all her glorious success! And what evil had she done to merit all this terrible punishment? When they came to her in her bedroom at Carlisle she had simply been too much frightened to tell them all that the necklace was at that moment under her pillow.
She tried to think of it all, and to form some idea in her mind of what might be the truth. Of course Patience Crabstick had known her secret, but how long had the girl known it? And how had the girl discovered it? She was almost sure, from certain circumstances, from words which the girl had spoken, and from signs which she had observed, that Patience had not even suspected that the necklace had been brought with them from Carlisle to London. Of course the coming of Bunfit and the woman would have set the girl’s mind to work in that direction; but then Bunfit and the woman had only been there on that morning. The Corsair knew the facts, and no one but the Corsair. That the Corsair was a Corsair the suspicions of the police had proved to her. She had offered the necklace to the Corsair; but when so offered he had refused to take it. She could understand that he should see the danger of accepting the diamonds from her hand, and yet should be desirous of having them. And might not he have thought that he could best relieve her from the burden of their custody in this manner? She felt no anger against the Corsair as she weighed the probability of his having taken them in this fashion. A Corsair must be a Corsair. Were he to come to her and confess the deed, she would almost like him the better for it, admiring his skill and enterprise. But how very clever he must have been, and how brave! He had known, no doubt, that the three ladies were all going to the theatre; but in how short a time had he got rid of the other women and availed himself of the services of Patience Crabstick!
But in what way would she conduct herself when the police should come to her on the following morning, the police and all the other people who would crowd to the house? How should she receive her cousin Frank? How should she look when the coincidence of the double robbery should be spoken of in her hearing? How should she bear herself when, as of course would be the case, she should again be taken before the magistrates, and made to swear as to the loss of her property? Must she commit more perjury, with the certainty that various people must know that her oath was false? All the world would suspect her. All the world would soon know the truth. Might it not be possible that the diamonds were at this moment in the hands of Messrs. Camperdown, and that they would be produced before her eyes, as soon as her second false oath had been registered against her? And yet how could she tell the truth? And what would the Corsair think of her, the Corsair who would know everything? She made one resolution during the night. She would not be taken into court. The magistrates and the people might come to her, but she would not go before them. When the morning came she said that she was ill, and refused to leave her bed. Policemen, she knew, were in the house early. At about nine Mrs. Carbuncle and Lucinda were up and in her room. The excitement of the affair had taken them from their beds, but she would not stir. If it were absolutely necessary, she said, the men must come into her room. She had been so overset by what had occurred on the previous night that she could not leave her room. She appealed to Lucinda as to the fact of her illness. The trouble of these robberies was so great upon her that her heart was almost broken. If her deposition must be taken, she would make it in bed. In the course of the day the magistrate did come into her room and the deposition was taken. Forty-three pounds had been taken from her desk, and certain jewels, which she described, from her dressing-case. As far as she was aware, no other property of hers was missing. This she said in answer to a direct question from the magistrate, which, as she thought, was asked with a stern voice and searching eye. And so, a second time, she had sworn falsely. But this at least was gained, that Lord George de Bruce Carruthers was not looking at her as she swore.
Lord George was in the house for a great part of the day, but he did not ask to be admitted to Lizzie’s room; nor did she ask to see him. Frank Greystock was there late in the afternoon, and went up at once to see his cousin. The moment that she saw him she stretched out her arms to him, and burst into tears. “My poor girl,” said he, “what is the meaning of it all?”
“I don’t know. I think they will kill me. They want to kill me. How can I bear it all? The robbers were here last night, and magistrates and policemen and people have been here all day.” Then she fell into a fit of sobbing and wailing, which was, in truth, hysterical. For, if the readers think of it, the poor woman had a great deal to bear.
Frank, into whose mind no glimmer of suspicion against his cousin had yet entered, and who firmly believed that she had been made a victim because of the value of her diamonds, and who had a theory of his own about the robbery at Carlisle, to the circumstances of which he was now at some pains to make these latter circumstances adhere, was very tender with his cousin, and remained in the house for more than an hour. “Oh, Frank, what had I better do?” she asked him.
“I would leave London, if I were you.”
“Yes; of course. I will. Oh yes, I will.”
“If you don’t fear the cold of Scotland ——”
“I fear nothing, nothing but being where these policemen can come to me. Oh!” and then she shuddered and was again hysterical. Nor was she acting the condition. As she remembered the magistrates, and the detectives, and the policemen in their uniforms, and reflected that she might probably see much more of them before the game was played out, the thoughts that crowded on her were almost more than she could bear.
“Your child is there, and it is your own house. Go there till all this passes by.” Whereupon she promised him that, as soon as she was well enough, she would at once go to Scotland.
In the mean time, the Eustace diamonds were locked up in a small safe fixed into the wall at the back of a small cellar beneath the establishment of Messrs. Harter & Benjamin, in Minto Lane, in the City. Messrs. Harter & Benjamin always kept a second place of business. Their great shop was at the West End; but they had accommodation in the City.
The chronicler states this at once, as he scorns to keep from his reader any secret that is known to himself.
When the Hertford Street robbery was three days old, and was still the talk of all the town, Lizzie Eustace was really ill. She had promised to go down to Scotland in compliance with the advice given to her by her cousin Frank, and at the moment of promising would have been willing enough to be transported at once to Portray, had that been possible — so as to be beyond the visits of policemen and the authority of lawyers and magistrates; but as the hours passed over her head, and as her presence of mind returned to her, she remembered that even at Portray she would not be out of danger, and that she could do nothing in furtherance of her plans if once immured there. Lord George was in London, Frank Greystock was in London, and Lord Fawn was in London. It was more than ever necessary to her that she should find a husband among them, a husband who would not be less her husband when the truth of that business at Carlisle should be known to all the world. She had, in fact, stolen nothing. She endeavoured to comfort herself by repeating to herself over and over again that assurance. She had stolen nothing; and she still thought that if she could obtain the support of some strong arm on which to lean, she might escape punishment for those false oaths which she had sworn. Her husband might take her abroad, and the whole thing would die away. If she should succeed with Lord George, of course he would take her abroad, and there would be no need for any speedy return. They might roam among islands in pleasant warm suns, and the dreams of her youth might be realised. Her income was still her own. They could not touch that. So she thought, at least, oppressed by some slight want of assurance in that respect. Were she to go at once to Scotland, she must for the present give up that game altogether. If Frank would pledge himself to become her husband in three or four, or even in six months, she would go at once. She had more confidence in Frank than even in Lord George. As for love, she would sometimes tell herself that she was violently in love; but she hardly knew with which. Lord George was certainly the best representative of that perfect Corsair which her dreams had represented to her; but, in regard to working life, she thought that she liked her cousin Frank better than she had ever yet liked any other human being. But, in truth, she was now in that condition, as she acknowledged to herself, that she was hardly entitled to choose. Lord Fawn had promised to marry her, and to him as a husband she conceived that she still had a right. Nothing had as yet been proved against her which could justify him in repudiating his engagement. She had, no doubt, asserted with all vehemence to her cousin that no consideration would now induce her to give her hand to Lord Fawn; and when making that assurance she had been, after her nature, sincere. But circumstances were changed since that. She had not much hope that Lord Fawn might be made to succumb, though evidence had reached her before the last robbery which induced her to believe that he did not consider himself to be quite secure. In these circumstances she was unwilling to leave London though she had promised, and was hardly sorry to find an excuse in her recognised illness.
And she was ill. Though her mind was again at work with schemes on which she would not have busied herself without hope, yet she had not recovered from the actual bodily prostration to which she had been compelled to give way when first told of the robbery on her return from the theatre. There had been moments then in which she thought that her heart would have broken; moments in which, but that the power of speech was wanting, she would have told everything to Lucinda Roanoke. When Mrs. Carbuncle was marching up-stairs with the policemen at her heels she would willingly have sold all her hopes, Portray Castle, her lovers, her necklace, her income, her beauty, for any assurance of the humblest security. With that quickness of intellect which was her peculiar gift, she had soon understood, in the midst of her sufferings, that her necklace had been taken by thieves whose robbery might assist her for a while in keeping her secret, rather than lead to the immediate divulging of it. Neither Camperdown nor Bunfit had been at work among the boxes. Her secret had been discovered, no doubt, by Patience Crabstick, and the diamonds were gone. But money also was taken, and the world need not know that the diamonds had been there. But Lord George knew. And then there arose to her that question: Had the diamonds been taken in consequence of that revelation to Lord George? It was not surprising that in the midst of all this Lizzie should be really ill.
She was most anxious to see Lord George; but, if what Mrs. Carbuncle said to her was true, Lord George refused to see her. She did not believe Mrs. Carbuncle, and was, therefore, quite in the dark about her Corsair. As she could communicate with him only through Mrs. Carbuncle, it might well be the case that he should have been told that he could not have access to her. Of course there were difficulties. That her cousin Frank should see her in her bedroom — her cousin Frank, with whom it was essentially necessary that she should hold counsel as to her present great difficulties — was a matter of course. There was no hesitation about that. A fresh nightcap, and a clean pocket handkerchief with a bit of lace round it, and perhaps some pretty covering to her shoulders if she were to be required to sit up in bed, and the thing was arranged. He might have spent the best part of his days in her bedroom if he could have spared the time. But the Corsair was not a cousin, nor as yet an acknowledged lover. There was difficulty even in framing a reason for her request, when she made it to Mrs. Carbuncle; and the very reason which she gave was handed back to her as the Corsair’s reason for not coming to her. She desired to see him because he had been so mixed up in the matter of these terrible robberies. But Mrs. Carbuncle declared to her that Lord George would not come to her because his name had been so frequently mentioned in connection with the diamonds. “You see, my dear,” said Mrs. Carbuncle, “there can be no real reason for his seeing you up in your bedroom. If there had been anything between you, as I once thought there would ——.” There was something in the tone of Mrs. Carbuncle’s voice which grated on Lizzie’s ear, something which seemed to imply that all that prospect was over.
“Of course,” said Lizzie querulously, “I am very anxious to know what he thinks. I care more about his opinion than anybody else’s. As to his name being mixed up in it, that is all a joke.”
“It has been no joke to him, I can assure you,” said Mrs. Carbuncle. Lizzie could not press her request. Of course she knew more about it than did Mrs. Carbuncle. The secret was in her own bosom, the secret as to the midnight robbery at Carlisle, and that secret she had told to Lord George. As to the robbery in London she knew nothing, except that it had been perpetrated through the treachery of Patience Crabstick. Did Lord George know more about it than she knew? and if so, was he now deterred by that knowledge from visiting her? “You see, my dear,” said Mrs. Carbuncle, “that a gentleman visiting a lady with whom he has no connection, in her bedroom, is in itself something very peculiar.” Lizzie made a motion of impatience under the bedclothes. Any such argument was trash to her, and she knew that it was trash to Mrs. Carbuncle also. What was one man in her bedroom more than another? She could see a dozen doctors if she pleased, and if so, why not this man, whose real powers of doctoring her would be so much more efficacious? “You would want to see him alone, too,” continued Mrs. Carbuncle, “and, of course, the police would hear of it. I am not at all surprised that he should stay away.” Lizzie’s condition did not admit of much argument on her side, and she only showed her opposition to Mrs. Carbuncle by being cross and querulous.
Frank Greystock came to her with great constancy almost every day, and from him she did hear about the robbery all that he knew or heard. When three days had passed, when six days, and even when ten days were gone, nobody had been as yet arrested. The police, according to Frank, were much on the alert, but were very secret. They either would not or could not tell anything. To him the two robberies, that at Carlisle and the last affair in Hertford Street, were of course distinct. There were those who believed that the Hertford Street thieves and the Carlisle thieves were not only the same, but that they had been in quest of the same plunder, and had at last succeeded. But Frank was not one of these. He never for a moment doubted that the diamonds had been taken at Carlisle, and explained the second robbery by the supposition that Patience Crabstick had been emboldened by success. The iron box had no doubt been taken by her assistance, and her familiarity with the thieves, then established, had led to the second robbery. Lizzie’s loss in that second robbery had amounted to some hundred pounds. This was Frank Greystock’s theory, and of course it was one very comfortable to Lizzie.
“They all seem to think that the diamonds are at Paris,” he said to her one day.
“If you only knew how little I care about them! It seems as though I had almost forgotten them in these after troubles.”
“Mr. Camperdown cares about them. I’m told he says that he can make you pay for them out of your jointure.”
“That would be very terrible, of course,” said Lizzie, to whose mind there was something consolatory in the idea that the whole affair of the robbery might perhaps remain so mysterious as to remove her from the danger of other punishment than this.
“I feel sure that he couldn’t do it,” said Frank, “and I don’t think he’ll try it. John Eustace would not let him. It would be persecution.”
“Mr. Camperdown has always chosen to persecute me,” said Lizzie.
“I can understand that he shouldn’t like the loss of the diamonds. I don’t think, Lizzie, you ever realized their true value.”
“I suppose not. After all, a necklace is only a necklace. I cared nothing for it — except that I could not bear the idea that that man should dictate to me. I would have given it up at once, at the slightest word from you.” He did not care to remind her then, as she lay in bed, that he had been very urgent in his advice to her to abandon the diamonds; and not the less urgent because he had thought that the demand for them was unjust. “I told you often;” she continued, “that I was tempted to throw them among the waves. It was true, quite true. I offered to give them to you, and should have been delighted to have been relieved from them.”
“That was of course simply impossible.”
“I know it was impossible on your part; but I would have been delighted. Of what use were they to me? I wore them twice because that man”— meaning Lord Fawn —“disputed my right to them. Before that I never even looked at them. Do you think I had pleasure in wearing them, or pleasure in looking at them? Never. They were only a trouble to me. It was a point of honour with me to keep them, because I was attacked. But I am glad they are gone — thoroughly glad.” This was all very well, and was not without its effect on Frank Greystock. It is hardly expected of a woman in such a condition, with so many troubles on her mind, who had been so persecuted, that every word uttered by her should be strictly true. Lizzie with her fresh nightcap and her lace handkerchief, pale, and with her eyes just glittering with tears, was very pretty.
“Didn’t somebody once give some one a garment which scorched him up when he wore it — some woman who sent it because she loved the man so much?”
“The shirt, you mean, which Deianira sent to Hercules. Yes, Hercules was a good deal scorched.”
“And that necklace, which my husband gave me because he loved me so well, has scorched me horribly. It has nearly killed me. It has been like the white elephant which the Eastern king gives to his subject when he means to ruin him. Only poor Florian didn’t mean to hurt me. He gave it all in love. If these people bring a lawsuit against me, Frank, you must manage it for me.”
“There will be no lawsuit. Your brother-inlaw will stop it.‘r
“I wonder who will really get the diamonds after all, Frank? They were very valuable. Only think that the ten thousand pounds should disappear in such a way!” The subject was a very dangerous one, but there was a fascination about it which made it impossible for her to refrain from it.
“A dishonest dealer in diamonds will probably realise the plunder — after some years. There would be something very alluring in the theft of articles of great value, were it not that, when got, they at once become almost valueless by the difficulty of dealing with them. Supposing I had the necklace!”
“I wish you had, Frank.”
“I could do nothing with it. Ten sovereigns would go further with me — or ten shillings. The burden of possessing it would in itself be almost more than I could bear. The knowledge that I had the thing, and might be discovered in having it, would drive me mad. By my own weakness I should be compelled to tell my secret to some one. And then I should never sleep for fear my partner in the matter should turn against me.” How well she understood it all! How probable it was that Lord George should turn against her! How exact was Frank’s description of that burden of a secret so heavy that it cannot be borne alone! “A little reflection,” continued Frank, “soon convinces a man that rough downright stealing is an awkward, foolish trade; and it therefore falls into the hands of those who want education for the higher efforts of dishonesty. To get into a bank at midnight and steal what little there may be in the till, or even an armful of banknotes, with the probability of a policeman catching you as you creep out of the chimney and through a hole, is clumsy work; but to walk in amidst the smiles and bows of admiring managers and draw out money over the counter by thousands and tens of thousands, which you have never put in and which you can never repay, and which, when all is done, you have only borrowed — that is a great feat.”
“Do you really think so?”
“The courage, the ingenuity, and the self-confidence needed are certainly admirable. And then there is a cringing and almost contemptible littleness about honesty, which hardly allows it to assert itself. The really honest man can never say a word to make those who don’t know of his honesty believe that it is there. He has one foot in the grave before his neighbours have learned that he is possessed of an article for the use of which they would so willingly have paid, could they have been made to see that it was there. The dishonest man almost doubts whether in him dishonesty is dishonest, let it be practised ever so widely. The honest man almost doubts whether his honesty be honest, unless it be kept hidden. Let two unknown men be competitors for any place, with nothing to guide the judges but their own words and their own looks, and who can doubt but the dishonest man would be chosen rather than the honest? Honesty goes about with a hang-dog look about him, as though knowing that he cannot be trusted till he be proved. Dishonesty carries his eyes high, and assumes that any question respecting him must be considered to be unnecessary.”
“Oh, Frank, what a philosopher you are.”
“Well, yes; meditating about your diamonds has brought my philosophy out. When do you think you will go to Scotland?”
“I am hardly strong enough for the journey yet. I fear the cold so much.”
“You would not find it cold there by the seaside. To tell you the truth, Lizzie, I want to get you out of this house. I don’t mean to say a word against Mrs. Carbuncle; but after all that has occurred, it would be better that you should be away. People talk about you and Lord George.”
“How can I help it, Frank?”
“By going away — that is, if I may presume one thing. I don’t want to pry into your secrets.”
“I have none from you.”
“Unless there be truth in the assertion that you are engaged to marry Lord George Carruthers.”
“There is no truth in it.”
“And you do not wish to stay here in order that there may be an engagement? I am obliged to ask you home questions, Lizzie, as I could not otherwise advise you.”
“You do, indeed, ask home questions.”
“I will desist at once, if they be disagreeable.”
“Frank, you are false to me.” As she said this she rose in her bed, and sat with her eyes fixed upon his, and her thin hands stretched out upon the bedclothes. “You know that I cannot wish to be engaged to him or to any other man. You know, better almost than I can know myself, how my heart stands. There has, at any rate, been no hypocrisy with me in regard to you. Everything has been told to you — at what cost I will not now say. The honest woman, I fear, fares worse even than the honest man of whom you spoke. I think you admitted that he would be appreciated at last. She to her dying day must pay the penalty of her transgressions. Honesty in a woman the world never forgives.” When she had done speaking, he sat silent by her bedside, but, almost unconsciously, he stretched out his left hand and took her right hand in his. For a few seconds she admitted this, and she lay there with their hands clasped. Then with a start she drew back her arm, and retreated as it were from his touch. “How dare you,” said she, “press my hand when you know that such pressure from you is treacherous and damnable?”
“Damnable, Lizzie!”
“Yes — damnable. I will not pick my words for you. Coming from you, what does such pressure mean?”
“Affection.”
“Yes — and of what sort? You are wicked enough to feed my love by such tokens, when you know that you do not mean to return it. Oh, Frank, Frank, will you give me back my heart? What was it that you promised me when we sat together upon the rocks at Portray?”
It is inexpressibly difficult for a man to refuse the tender of a woman’s love. We may almost say that a man should do so as a matter of course — that the thing so offered becomes absolutely valueless by the offer — that the woman who can make it has put herself out of court by her own abandonment of privileges due to her as a woman — that stern rebuke and even expressed contempt are justified by such conduct — and that the fairest beauty and most alluring charms of feminine grace should lose their attraction when thus tendered openly in the market. No doubt such is our theory as to love and lovemaking. But the action to be taken by us in matters as to which the plainest theory prevails for the guidance of our practice, depends so frequently on accompanying circumstances and correlative issues, that the theory, as often as not, falls to the ground. Frank could not despise this woman, and could not be stern to her. He could not bring himself to tell her boldly that he would have nothing to say to her in the way of love. He made excuses for her, and persuaded himself that there were peculiar circumstances in her position justifying unwomanly conduct, although, had he examined himself on the subject, he would have found it difficult to say what those circumstances were. She was rich, beautiful, clever — and he was flattered. Nevertheless he knew that he could not marry her; and he knew also that much as he liked her he did not love her. “Lizzie,” he said, “I think you hardly understand my position.”
“Yes, I do. That little girl has cozened you out of a promise.”
“If it be so, you would not have me break it?”
“Yes, I would, if you think she is not fit to be your wife. Is a man such as you are, to be tied by the leg for life, have all his ambition clipped, and his high hopes shipwrecked, because a girl has been clever enough to extract a word from him? Is it not true that you are in debt?”
“What of that? At any rate, Lizzie, I do not want help from you.”
“That is so like a man’s pride! Do we not all know that in such a career as you have marked out for yourself, wealth, or at any rate an easy income, is necessary? Do you think that I cannot put two and two together? Do you believe so meanly of me as to imagine that I should have said to you what I have said, if I did not know that I could help you? A man, I believe, cannot understand that love which induces a woman to sacrifice her pride simply for his advantage. I want to see you prosper. I want to see you a great man and a lord, and I know that you cannot become so without an income. Ah, I wish I could give you all that I have got, and save you from the encumbrance that is attached to it!”
It might be that he would then have told her of his engagement to Lucy, and of his resolution to adhere to that promise, had not Mrs. Carbuncle at that moment entered the room. Frank had been there for above an hour, and as Lizzie was still an invalid, and to some extent under the care of Mrs. Carbuncle, it was natural that that lady should interfere. “You know, my dear, you should not exhaust yourself altogether. Mr. Emilius is to come to you this afternoon.”
“Mr. Emilius!” said Greystock.
“Yes — the clergyman. Don’t you remember him at Portray? A dark man with eyes close together! You used to be very wicked, and say that he was once a Jew boy in the streets.” Lizzie, as she spoke of her spiritual guide, was evidently not desirous of doing him much honour.
“I remember him well enough. He made sheep’s eyes at Miss Macnulty, and drank a great deal of wine at dinner.”
“Poor Macnulty! I don’t believe a word about the wine; and as for Macnulty, I don’t see why she should not be converted as well as another. He is coming here to read to me. I hope you don’t object.”
“Not in the least — if you like it.”
“One does have solemn thoughts sometimes, Frank — especially when one is ill.”
“Oh, yes. Well or ill, one does have solemn thoughts — ghosts, as it were, which will appear. But is Mr. Emilius good at laying such apparitions?”
“He is a clergyman, Mr. Greystock,” said Mrs. Carbuncle, with something of rebuke in her voice.
“So they tell me. I was not present at his ordination, but I dare say it was done according to rule. When one reflects what a deal of harm a bishop may do, one wishes that there was some surer way of getting bishops.”
“Do you know anything against Mr. Emilius?” asked Lizzie.
“Nothing at all but his looks, and manners, and voice, unless it be that he preaches popular sermons, and drinks too much wine, and makes sheep’s eyes at Miss Macnulty. Look after your silver spoons, Mrs. Carbuncle, if the last thieves have left you any. You were asking after the fate of your diamonds, Lizzie. Perhaps they will endow a Protestant church in Mr. Emilius’s native land.”
Mr. Emilius did come and read to Lady Eustace that afternoon. A clergyman is as privileged to enter the bedroom of a sick lady as is a doctor or a cousin. There was another clean cap, and another laced handkerchief, and on this occasion a little shawl over Lizzie’s shoulders. Mr. Emilius first said a prayer, kneeling at Lizzie’s bedside; then he read a chapter in the Bible; and after that he read the first half of the fourth canto of Childe Harold so well, that Lizzie felt for the moment that after all poetry was life, and life was poetry.
The second robbery to which Lady Eustace had been subjected by no means decreased the interest which was attached to her and her concerns in the fashionable world. Parliament had now met, and the party at Matching Priory, Lady Glencora Palliser’s party in the country, had been to some extent broken up. All those gentlemen who were engaged in the service of Her Majesty’s Government had necessarily gone to London, and they who had wives at Matching had taken their wives with them. Mr. and Mrs. Bonteen had seen the last of their holiday; Mr. Palliser himself was, of course, at his post; and all the private secretaries were with the public secretaries on the scene of action. On the 13th of February Mr. Palliser made his first great statement in Parliament on the matter of the five-farthinged penny, and pledged himself to do his very best to carry that stupendous measure through Parliament in the present session. The City men who were in the House that night, and all the directors of the Bank of England, were in the gallery, and every chairman of a great banking company, and every Baring and every Rothschild, if there be Barings and Rothschilds who have not been returned by constituencies, and have not seats in the House by right, agreed in declaring that the job in hand was too much for any one member or any one session. Some said that such a measure never could be passed, because the unfinished work of one session could not be used in lessening the labours of the next. Everything must be recommenced; and therefore, so said these hopeless ones, the penny with five farthings, the penny of which a hundred would make ten shillings, the halcyon penny which would make all future pecuniary calculations easy to the meanest British capacity, could never become the law of the land. Others, more hopeful, were willing to believe that gradually the thing would so sink into the minds of members of Parliament, of writers of leading articles, and of the active public generally, as to admit of certain established axioms being taken as established, and placed, as it were, beyond the procrastinating power of debate. It might, for instance, at last be taken for granted that a decimal system was desirable, so that a month or two of the spring need not be consumed on that preliminary question. But this period had not as yet been reached, and it was thought by the entire City that Mr. Palliser was much too sanguine. It was so probable, many said, that he might kill himself by labour which would be Herculean in all but success, and that no financier after him would venture to face the task. It behooved Lady Glencora to see that her Hercules did not kill himself.
In this state of affairs Lady Glencora, into whose hands the custody of Mr. Palliser’s uncle, the duke, had now altogether fallen, had a divided duty between Matching and London. When the members of Parliament went up to London, she went there also, leaving some half-dozen friends whom she could trust to amuse the duke; but she soon returned, knowing that there might be danger in a long absence. The duke, though old, was his own master; he much affected the company of Madame Goesler, and that lady’s kindness to him was considerate and incessant; but there might still be danger, and Lady Glencora felt that she was responsible that the old nobleman should do nothing, in the feebleness of age, to derogate from the splendour of his past life. What if some day his grace should be off to Paris and insist on making Madame Goesler a duchess in the chapel of the Embassy? Madame Goesler had hitherto behaved very well; would probably continue to behave well. Lady Glencora really loved Madame Goesler. But then the interests at stake were very great! So circumstanced, Lady Glencora found herself compelled to be often on the road between Matching and London.
But though she was burthened with great care, Lady Glencora by no means dropped her interest in the Eustace diamonds; and when she learned that on the top of the great Carlisle robbery a second robbery had been superadded, and that this had been achieved while all the London police were yet astray about the former operation, her solicitude was of course enhanced. The duke himself, too, took the matter up so strongly that he almost wanted to be carried up to London, with some view, as it was supposed by the ladies who were so good to him, of seeing Lady Eustace personally.
“It’s out of the question, my dear,” Lady Glencora said to Madame Goesler, when the duke’s fancy was first mentioned to her by that lady.
“I told him that the trouble would be too much for him.”
“Of course it would be too much,” said Lady Glencora. “It is quite out of the question.” Then after a moment she added, in a whisper, “Who knows but what he’d insist on marrying her? It isn’t every woman that can resist temptation.” Madame Goesler smiled and shook her head, but made no answer to Lady Glencora’s suggestion. Lady Glencora assured her uncle that everything should be told to him. She would write about it daily, and send him the latest news by the wires if the post should be too slow.
“Ah, yes,” said the duke. “I like telegrams best. I think, you know, that that Lord George Carruthers had had something to do with it. Don’t you, Madame Goesler?” It had long been evident that the duke was anxious that one of his own order should be proved to have been the thief, as the plunder taken was so lordly.
In regard to Lizzie herself, Lady Glencora, on her return to London, took it into her head to make a diversion in our heroine’s favour. It had hitherto been a matter of faith with all the liberal party that Lady Eustace had had something to do with stealing her own diamonds. That esprit de corps which is the glorious characteristic of English statesmen had caused the whole Government to support Lord Fawn, and Lord Fawn could be supported only on the supposition that Lizzie Eustace had been a wicked culprit. But Lady Glencora, though very true as a politician, was apt to have opinions of her own, and to take certain flights in which she chose that others of the party should follow her. She now expressed an opinion that Lady Eustace was a victim, and all the Mrs. Bonteens, with some even of the Mr. Bonteens, found themselves compelled to agree with her. She stood too high among her set to be subject to that obedience which restrained others; too high, also, for others to resist her leading. As a member of a party she was erratic and dangerous, but from her position and peculiar temperament she was powerful. When she declared that poor Lady Eustace was a victim, others were obliged to say so too. This was particularly hard upon Lord Fawn, and the more so as Lady Glencora took upon her to assert that Lord Fawn had no right to jilt the young woman. And Lady Glencora had this to support her views — that for the last week past, indeed ever since the depositions which had been taken after the robbery in Hertford Street, the police had expressed no fresh suspicions in regard to Lizzie Eustace. She heard daily from Barrington Erie that Major Mackintosh and Bunfit and Gager were as active as ever in their inquiries, that all Scotland Yard was determined to unravel the mystery, and that there were emissaries at work tracking the diamonds at Hamburg, Paris, Vienna, and New York. It had been whispered to Mr. Erie that the whereabouts of Patience Crabstick had been discovered, and that many of the leading thieves in London were assisting the police; but nothing more was done in the way of fixing any guilt upon Lizzie Eustace. “Upon my word, I am beginning to think that she has been more sinned against than sinning.” This was said to Lady Glencora on the morning after Mr. Palliser’s great speech about the five farthings, by Barrington Erie, who, as it seemed, had been specially told off by the party to watch this investigation.
“I am sure she has had nothing to do with it. I have thought so ever since the last robbery. Sir Simon Slope told me yesterday afternoon that Mr. Camperdown has given it up altogether.” Sir Simon Slope was the Solicitor-General of that day.
“It would be absurd for him to go on with his bill in Chancery now that the diamonds are gone, unless he meant to make her pay for them.”
“That would be rank persecution. Indeed, she has been persecuted. I shall call upon her.” Then she wrote the following letter to the duke:
“FEBRUARY 14, 18 —.
“MY DEAR DUKE: Plantagenet was on his legs last night for three hours and three-quarters, and I sat through it all. As far as I could observe through the bars I was the only person in the House who listened to him. I’m sure Mr. Gresham was fast asleep. It was quite piteous to see some of them yawning. Plantagenet did it very well, and I almost think I understood him. They seem to say that nobody on the other side will take trouble enough to make a regular opposition, but there are men in the City who will write letters to the newspapers, and get up a sort of Bank clamour. Plantagenet says nothing about it, but there is a do-or-die manner with him which is quite tragical. The House was up at eleven, when he came home and eat three oysters; drank a glass of beer, and slept well. They say the real work will come when it’s in Committee; that is, if it gets there. The bill is to be brought in, and will be read the first time next Monday week.
“As to the robberies, I believe there is no doubt that the police have got hold of the young woman. They don’t arrest her, but deal with her in a friendly sort of way. Barrington Erle says that a sergeant is to marry her in order to make quite sure of her. I suppose they know their business; but that wouldn’t strike me as being the safest way. They seem to think the diamonds went to Paris, but have since been sent on to New York.
“As to the little widow, I do believe she has been made a victim. She first lost her diamonds, and now her other jewels and her money have gone. I cannot see what she was to gain by treachery, and I think she has been ill-used. She is staying at the house of that Mrs. Carbuncle, but all the same I shall go and call on her. I wish you could see her, because she is such a little beauty, just what you would like; not so much colour as our friend, but perfect features, with infinite play, not perhaps always in the best taste; but then we can’t have everything, can we, dear duke?
“As to the real thief — of course you must burn this at once, and keep it strictly private as coming from me — I fancy that delightful Scotch lord managed it entirely. The idea is, that he did it on commission for the Jew jewellers. I don’t suppose he had money enough to carry it out himself. As to the second robbery, whether he had or had not a hand in that, I can’t make up my mind. I don’t see why he shouldn’t. If a man does go into a business, he ought to make the best of it. Of course it was a poor thing after the diamonds; but still it was worth having. There is some story about a Sir Griffin Tewett. He’s a real Sir Griffin, as you’ll find by the peerage. He was to marry a young woman, and our Lord George insists that he shall marry her. I don’t understand all about it, but the girl lives in the same house with Lady Eustace, and if I call I shall find out. They say that Sir Griffin knows all about the necklace, and threatens to tell unless he is let off marrying. I rather think the girl is Lord George’s daughter, so that there is a thorough complication.
“I shall go down to Matching on Saturday. If anything turns up before that, I’ll write again, or send a message. I don’t know whether Plantagenet will be able to leave London. He says he must be back on Monday, and that he loses too much time on the road. Kiss my little darlings for me”— the darlings were Lady Glencora’s children, and the duke’s playthings —“and give my love to Madame Max. I suppose you don’t see much of the others.
“Most affectionately yours,
“GLENCORA.”
On the next day Lady Glencora actually did call in Hertford Street and saw our friend Lizzie. She was told by the servant that Lady Eustace was in bed; but, with her usual persistence, she asked questions, and when she found that Lizzie did receive visitors in her room, she sent up her card. The compliment was one much too great to be refused. Lady Glencora stood so high in the world that her countenance would be almost as valuable as another lover. If Lord George would keep her secret, and Lady Glencora would be her friend, might she not still be a successful woman? So Lady Glencora Palliser was shown up to Lizzie’s chamber. Lizzie was found with her nicest nightcap and prettiest handkerchief, with a volume of Tennyson’s poetry, and a scent-bottle. She knew that it behooved her to be very clever at this interview. Her instinct told her that her first greeting should show more of surprise than of gratification. Accordingly, in a pretty, feminine, almost childish way, she was very much surprised. “I’m doing the strangest thing in the world, I know, Lady Eustace,” said Lady Glencora with a smile.
“I’m sure you mean to do a kind thing.”
“Well, yes, I do. I think we have not met since you were at my house near the end of last season.”
“No, indeed. I have been in London six weeks, but have not been out much. For the last fortnight I have been in bed. I have had things to trouble me so much that they have made me ill.”
“So I have heard, Lady Eustace, and I have just come to offer you my sympathy. When I was told that you did see people, I thought that perhaps you would admit me.”
“So willingly, Lady Glencora!”
“I have heard, of course, of your terrible losses.”
“The loss has been as nothing to the vexation that has accompanied it. I don’t know how to speak of it. Ladies have lost their jewels before now, but I don’t know that any lady before me has ever been accused of stealing them herself.”
“There has been no accusation, surely?”
“I haven’t exactly been put in prison, Lady Glencora, but I have had policemen here wanting to search my things; and then you know yourself what reports have been spread.”
“Oh, yes, I do. Only for that, to tell you plainly, I should hardly have been here now.” Then Lady Glencora poured out her sympathy — perhaps with more eloquence and grace than discretion. She was, at any rate, both graceful and eloquent. “As for the loss of the diamonds, I think you bear it wonderfully,” said Lady Glencora.
“If you could imagine how little I care about it!” said Lizzie with enthusiasm. “They had lost the delight which I used to feel in them as a present from my husband. People had talked about them, and I had been threatened because I chose to keep what I knew to be my own. Of course I would not give them up. Would you have given them up, Lady Glencora?”
“Certainly not.”
“Nor would I. But when once all that had begun, they became an irrepressible burden to me. I often used to say that I would throw them into the sea.”
“I don’t think I would have done that,” said Lady Glencora.
“Ah — you have never suffered as I have suffered.”
“We never know where each other’s shoes pinch each other’s toes.”
“You have never been left desolate. You have a husband and friends.”
“A husband that wants to put five farthings into a penny! All is not gold that glistens, Lady Eustace.”
“You can never have known trials such as mine,” continued Lizzie, not understanding in the least her new friend’s allusion to the great currency question. “Perhaps you may have heard that in the course of last summer I became engaged to marry a nobleman, with whom I am aware that you are acquainted.” This she said in her softest whisper.
“Oh, yes — Lord Fawn. I know him very well. Of course I heard of it. We all heard of it.”
“And you have heard how he has treated me?”
“Yes — indeed.”
“I will say nothing about him — to you, Lady Glencora. It would not be proper that I should do so. But all that came of this wretched necklace. After that, can you wonder that I should say that I wish these stones had been thrown into the sea?”
“I suppose Lord Fawn will — will come all right again now?” said Lady Glencora.
“All right!” exclaimed Lizzie in astonishment.
“His objection to the marriage will now be over.”
“I’m sure I do not in the least know what are his lordship’s views,” said Lizzie in scorn, “and, to tell the truth, I do not very much care.”
“What I mean is, that he didn’t like you to have the Eustace diamonds ——”
“They were not Eustace diamonds. They were my diamonds.”
“But he did not like you to have them; and as they are now gone — forever ——”
“Oh, yes, they are gone forever.”
“His objection is gone too. Why don’t you write to him, and make him come and see you? That’s what I should do.”
Lizzie, of course, repudiated vehemently any idea of forcing Lord Fawn into a marriage which had become distasteful to him — let the reason be what it might.
“His lordship is perfectly free, as far as I am concerned,” said Lizzie with a little show of anger. But all this Lady Glencora took at its worth. Lizzie Eustace had been a good deal knocked about, and Lady Glencora did not doubt but that she would be very glad to get back her betrothed husband. The little woman had suffered hardships, so thought Lady Glencora — and a good thing would be done by bringing her into fashion, and setting the marriage up again. As to Lord Fawn — the fortune was there, as good now as it had been when he first sought it; and the lady was very pretty, a baronet’s widow too — and in all respects good enough for Lord Fawn. A very pretty little baronet’s widow she was, with four thousand a year, and a house in Scotland, and a history. Lady Glencora determined that she would remake the match. “I think, you know, friends who have been friends should be brought together. I suppose I may say a word to Lord Fawn?” Lizzie hesitated would be sweet to her. She had sworn that she would be revenged upon Lord Fawn. After all, might it not suit her best to carry out her oath by marrying him? But whether so or otherwise, it could not but be well for her that he should be again at her feet. “Yes, if you think good will come of it.” The acquiescence was given with much hesitation; but the circumstances required that it should be so, and Lady Glencora fully understood the circumstances. When she took her leave, Lizzie was profuse in her gratitude. “Oh, Lady Glencora, it has been so good of you to come. Pray come again, if you can spare me another moment.” Lady Glencora said that she would come again.
During the visit she had asked some question concerning Lucinda and Sir Griffin, and had been informed that that marriage was to go on. A hint had been thrown out as to Lucinda’s parentage; but Lizzie had not understood the hint, and the question had not been pressed.
The task which Lady Glencora had taken upon herself was not a very easy one. No doubt Lord Fawn was a man subservient to the leaders of his party, much afraid of the hard judgment of those with whom, he was concerned, painfully open to impression from what he would have called public opinion, to a certain extent a coward, most anxious to do right so that he might not be accused of being in the wrong, and at the same time gifted with but little of that insight into things which teaches men to know what is right and what is wrong. Lady Glencora, having perceived all this, felt that he was a man upon whom a few words from her might have an effect. But even Lady Glencora might hesitate to tell a gentleman that he ought to marry a lady, when the gentleman had already declared his intention of not marrying and had attempted to justify his decision almost publicly by a reference to the lady’s conduct! Lady Glencora almost felt that she had undertaken too much as she turned over in her mind the means she had of performing her promise to Lady Eustace.
The five-farthing bill had been laid upon the table on a Tuesday, and was to be read the first time on the following Monday week. On the Wednesday Lady Glencora had written to the duke, and had called in Hertford Street. On the following Sunday she was at Matching, looking after the duke; but she returned to London on the Tuesday, and on the Wednesday there was a little dinner at Mr. Palliser’s house, given avowedly with the object of further friendly discussion respecting the new Palliser penny. The prime minister was to be there, and Mr. Bonteen, and Barrington Erle, and those special members of the Government who would be available for giving special help to the financial Hercules of the day. A question, perhaps of no great practical importance, had occurred to Mr. Palliser, but one which, if overlooked, might be fatal to the ultimate success of the measure. There is so much in a name, and then an ounce of ridicule is often more potent than a hundredweight of argument. By what denomination should the fifth part of a penny be hereafter known? Some one had, ill-naturedly, whispered to Mr. Palliser that a farthing meant a fourth, and at once there arose a new trouble, which for a time bore very heavily on him. Should he boldly disregard the original meaning of the useful old word; or should he venture on the dangers of new nomenclature? October, as he said to himself, is still the tenth month of the year, November the eleventh, and so on, though by these names they are so plainly called the eighth and ninth. All France tried to rid itself of this absurdity and failed. Should he stick by the farthing; or should he call it a fifthing, a quint, or a semitenth? “There’s the ‘Fortnightly Review’ comes out but once a month,” he said to his friend Mr. Bonteen, “and I’m told that it does very well.” Mr. Bonteen, who was a rational man, thought the “Review” would do better if it were called by a more rational name, and was very much in favour of “a quint.” Mr. Gresham had expressed an opinion, somewhat off hand, that English people would never be got to talk about quints, and so there was a difficulty. A little dinner was therefore arranged, and Mr. Palliser, as was his custom in such matters, put the affair of the dinner into his wife’s hands. When he was told that she had included Lord Fawn among the guests he opened his eyes. Lord Fawn, who might be good enough at the India Office, knew literally nothing about the penny.
“He’ll take it as the greatest compliment in the world,” said Lady Glencora.
“I don’t want to pay Lord Fawn a compliment,” said Mr. Palliser.
“But I do,” said Lady Glencora. And so the matter was arranged.
It was a very nice little dinner. Mrs. Gresham and Mrs. Bonteen were there, and the great question of the day was settled in two minutes, before the guests went out of the drawing-room.
“Stick to your farthing,” said Mr. Gresham.
“I think so,” said Mr. Palliser.
“Quint’s a very easy word,” said Mr. Bonteen.
“But squint is an easier,” said Mr. Gresham, with all a prime minister’s jocose authority.
“They’d certainly be called cock-eyes,” said Barrington Erie.
“There’s nothing of the sound of a quarter in farthing,” said Mr. Palliser.
“Stick to the old word,” said Mr. Gresham. And so the matter was decided while Lady Glencora was flattering Lord Fawn as to the manner in which he had finally arranged the affair of the Sawab of Mygawb. Then they went down to dinner, and not a word more was said that evening about the new penny by Mr. Palliser.
Before dinner Lady Glencora had exacted a promise from Lord Fawn that he would return to the drawing-room. Lady Glencora was very clever at such work, and said nothing then of her purpose. She did not want her guests to run away, and therefore Lord Fawn — Lord Fawn especially — must stay. If he were to go there would be nothing spoken of all the evening, but that weary new penny. To oblige her he must remain; and, of course, he did remain. “Whom do you think I saw the other day?” said Lady Glencora, when she got her victim into a corner. Of course Lord Fawn had no idea whom she might have seen. Up to that moment no suspicion of what was coming upon him had crossed his mind. “I called upon poor Lady Eustace and found her in bed.” Then did Lord Fawn blush up to the roots of his hair, and for a moment he was stricken dumb. “I do feel for her so much! I think she has been so hardly used!”
He was obliged to say something. “My name has of course been much mixed up with hers.”
“Yes, Lord Fawn, I know it has. And it is because I am so sure of your high-minded generosity and — and thorough devotion, that I have ventured to speak to you. I am sure there is nothing you would wish so much as to get at the truth.”
“Certainly, Lady Glencora.”
“All manner of stories have been told about her, and, as I believe, without the slightest foundation. They tell me now that she had an undoubted right to keep the diamonds; that even if Sir Florian did not give them to her, they were hers under his will. Those lawyers have given up all idea of proceeding against her.”
“Because the necklace has been stolen.”
“Altogether independently of that. Do you see Mr. Eustace, and ask him if what I say is not true. If it had not been her own she would have been responsible for the value, even though it were stolen; and with such a fortune as hers they would never have allowed her to escape. They were as bitter against her as they could be; weren’t they?”
“Mr. Camperdown thought that the property should be given up.”
“Oh yes; that’s the man’s name; a horrid man. I am told that he was really most cruel to her. And then, because a lot of thieves had got about her — after the diamonds, you know, like flies round a honeypot — and took first her necklace and then her money, they were impudent enough to say that she had stolen her own things!”
“I don’t think they quite said that, Lady Glencora.”
“Something very much like it, Lord Fawn. I have no doubt in my own mind who did steal all the things.”
“Who was it?”
“Oh, one mustn’t mention names in such an affair without evidence. At any rate she has been very badly treated, and I shall take her up. If I were you I would go and call upon her. I would indeed. I think you owe it to her. Well, duke, what do you think of Plantagenet’s penny now? Will it ever be worth two half-pence?” This question was asked of the Duke of St. Bungay, a great nobleman whom all Liberals loved, and a member of the Cabinet. He had come in since dinner, and had been asking a question or two as to what had been decided.
“Well, yes; if properly invested I think it will. I’m glad it is not to contain five semitenths. A semitenth would never have been a popular form of money in England. We hate new names so much that we have not yet got beyond talking of fourpenny bits.”
“There’s a great deal in a name, isn’t there? You don’t think they’ll call them Pallisers, or Palls, or anything of that sort, do you? I shouldn’t like to hear that under the new regime two lollypops were to cost three Palls. But they say it never can be carried this session, and we sha’n’t be in, in the next year.”
“Who says so? Don’t be such a prophetess of evil, Lady Glencora. I mean to be in for the next three sessions, and I mean to see Palliser’s measure carried through the House of Lords next session. I shall be paying for my mutton chops at so many quints a chop yet. Don’t you think so, Fawn?”
“I don’t know what to think,” said Lord Fawn, whose mind was intent on other matters. After that he left the room as quickly as he could, and escaped out into the street. His mind was very much disturbed. If Lady Glencora was determined to take up the cudgels for the woman he had rejected, the comfort and peace of his life would be over. He knew well enough how strong was Lady Glencora.
Mrs. Carbuncle and Lady Eustace had now been up in town between six and seven weeks, and the record of their doings has necessarily dealt chiefly with robberies and the rumours of robberies. But at intervals the minds of the two ladies had been intent on other things. The former was still intent on marrying her niece, Lucinda Roanoke, to Sir Griffin, and the latter had never for a moment forgotten the imperative duty which lay upon her of revenging herself upon Lord Fawn. The match between Sir Griffin and Lucinda was still to be a match. Mrs. Carbuncle persevered in the teeth both of the gentleman and or the lady, and still promised herself success. And our Lizzie, in the midst of all her troubles, had not been idle. In doing her justice we must acknowledge that she had almost abandoned the hope of becoming Lady Fawn. Other hopes and other ambitions had come upon her. Latterly the Corsair had been all in all to her, with exceptional moments in which she told herself that her heart belonged exclusively to her cousin Frank. But Lord Fawn’s offences were not to be forgotten, and she continually urged upon her cousin the depth of the wrongs which she had suffered.
On the part of Frank Greystock there was certainly no desire to let the Under-Secretary escape. It is hoped that the reader, to whom every tittle of this story has been told without reserve, and every secret unfolded, will remember that others were not treated with so much open candour. The reader knows much more of Lizzie Eustace than did her cousin Frank. He, indeed, was not quite in love with Lizzie; but to him she was a pretty, graceful young woman, to whom he was bound by many ties, and who had been cruelly injured. Dangerous she was doubtless, and perhaps a little artificial. To have had her married to Lord Fawn would have been a good thing, and would still be a good thing. According to all the rules known in such matters Lord Fawn was bound to marry her. He had become engaged to her, and Lizzie had done nothing to forfeit her engagement. As to the necklace, the plea made for jilting her on that ground was a disgraceful pretext. Everybody was beginning to perceive that Mr. Camperdown would never have succeeded in getting the diamonds from her, even if they had not been stolen. It was “preposterous,” as Frank said over and over again to his friend Herriot, that a man when he was engaged to a lady, should take upon himself to judge her conduct as Lord Fawn had done, and then ride out of his engagement on a verdict found by himself. Frank had therefore willingly displayed alacrity in persecuting his lordship, and had not been altogether without hope that he might drive the two into a marriage yet, in spite of the protestations made by Lizzie at Portray.
Lord Fawn had certainly not spent a happy winter. Between Mrs. Hittaway on one side and Frank Greystock on the other, his life had been a burthen to him. It had been suggested to him by various people that he was behaving badly to the lady, who was represented as having been cruelly misused by fortune and by himself. On the other hand it had been hinted to him, that nothing was too bad to believe of Lizzie Eustace, and that no calamity could be so great as that by which he would be overwhelmed were he still to allow himself to be forced into that marriage. “It would be better,” Mrs. Hittaway had said, “to retire to Ireland at once and cultivate your demesne in Tipperary.” This was a grievous sentence, and one which had greatly excited the brother’s wrath; but it had shown how very strong was his sister’s opinion against the lady to whom he had unfortunately offered his hand. Then there came to him a letter from Mr. Greystock, in which he was asked for his “written explanation.” If there be a proceeding which an official man dislikes worse than another, it is a demand for a written explanation. “It is impossible,” Frank had said, “that your conduct to my cousin should be allowed to drop without further notice. Hers has been without reproach. Your engagement with her has been made public, chiefly by you, and it is out of the question that she should be treated as you are treating her, and that your lordship should escape without punishment.” What the punishment was to be he did not say; but there did come a punishment on Lord Fawn from the eyes of every man whose eyes met his own, and in the tones of every voice that addressed him. The looks of the very clerks in the India Office accused him of behaving badly to a young woman, and the doorkeeper at the House of Lords seemed to glance askance at him. And now Lady Glencora, who was the social leader of his own party, the feminine pole-star of the Liberal heavens, the most popular and the most daring woman in London, had attacked him personally, and told him that he ought to call on Lady Eustace!
Let it not for a moment be supposed that Lord Fawn was without conscience in the matter or indifferent to moral obligations. There was not a man in London less willing to behave badly to a young woman than Lord Fawn; or one who would more diligently struggle to get back to the right path, if convinced that he was astray. But he was one who detested interference in his private matters, and who was nearly driven mad between his sister and Frank Greystock. When he left Lady Glencora’s house he walked toward his own abode with a dark cloud upon his brow. He was at first very angry with Lady Glencora. Even her position gave her no right to meddle with his most private affairs as she had done. He would resent it, and would quarrel with Lady Glencora. What right could she have to advise him to call upon any woman? But by degrees this wrath died away, and gave place to fears, and qualms, and inward questions. He, too, had found a change in general opinion about the diamonds. When he had taken upon himself with a high hand to dissolve his own engagement, everybody had, as he thought, acknowledged that Lizzie Eustace was keeping property which did not belong to her. Now people talked of her losses as though the diamonds had been undoubtedly her own. On the next morning Lord Fawn took an opportunity of seeing Mr. Camperdown.
“My dear lord,” said Mr. Camperdown, “I shall wash my hands of the matter altogether. The diamonds are gone, and the questions now are, who stole them, and where are they? In our business we can’t meddle with such questions as those.”
“You will drop the bill in Chancery then?”
“What good can the bill do us when the diamonds are gone? If Lady Eustace had anything to do with the robbery ——”
“You suspect her, then?”
“No, my lord; no. I cannot say that. I have no right to say that. Indeed it is not Lady Eustace that I suspect. She has got into bad hands, perhaps; but I do not think that she is a thief.”
“You were suggesting that, if she had anything to do with the robbery ——”
“Well; yes; if she had, it would not be for us to take steps against her in the matter. In fact, the trustees have decided that they will do nothing more, and my hands are tied. If the minor, when he comes of age, claims the property from them, they will prefer to replace it. It isn’t very likely; but that’s what they say.”
“But if it was an heirloom —,” suggested Lord Fawn, going back to the old claim.
“That’s exploded,” said Mr. Camperdown. “Mr. Dove was quite clear about that.”
This was the end of the filing of that bill in Chancery as to which Mr. Camperdown had been so very enthusiastic! Now it certainly was the case that poor Lord Fawn in his conduct toward Lizzie had trusted greatly to the support of Mr. Camperdown’s legal proceeding. The world could hardly have expected him to marry a woman against whom a bill in Chancery was being carried on for the recovery of diamonds which did not belong to her. But that support was now altogether withdrawn from him. It was acknowledged that the necklace was not an heirloom, clearly acknowledged by Mr. Camperdown! And even Mr. Camperdown would not express an opinion that the lady had stolen her own diamonds.
How would it go with him, if, after all, he were to marry her? The bone of contention between them had at any rate been made to vanish. The income was still there, and Lady Glencora Palliser had all but promised her friendship. As he entered the India Office on his return from Mr. Camperdown’s chambers, he almost thought that that would be the best way out of his difficulty. In his room he found his brother-inlaw, Mr. Hittaway, waiting for him. It is almost necessary that a man should have some friend whom he can trust in delicate affairs, and Mr. Hittaway was selected as Lord Fawn’s friend. He was not at all points the man whom Lord Fawn would have chosen, but for their close connection. Mr. Hittaway was talkative, perhaps a little loud, and too apt to make capital out of every incident of his life. But confidential friends are not easily found, and one does not wish to increase the circle to whom one’s family secrets must become known. Mr. Hittaway was at any rate zealous for the Fawn family, and then his character as an official man stood high. He had been asked on the previous evening to step across from the Civil Appeal Office to give his opinion respecting that letter from Frank Greystock demanding a written explanation. The letter had been sent to him; and Mr. Hittaway had carried it home and shown it to his wife. “He’s a cantankerous Tory, and determined to make himself disagreeable,” said Mr. Hittaway, taking the letter from his pocket and beginning the conversation. Lord Fawn seated himself in his great armchair, and buried his face in his hands. “I am disposed, after much consideration, to advise you to take no notice of the letter,” said Mr. Hittaway, giving his counsel in accordance with instructions received from his wife. Lord Fawn still buried his face. “Of course the thing is painful, very painful. But out of two evils one should choose the least. The writer of this letter is altogether unable to carry out his threat.”
“What can the man do to him!” Mrs. Hittaway had asked, almost snapping at her husband as she did so.
“And then,” continued Mr. Hittaway, “we all know that public opinion is with you altogether. The conduct of Lady Eustace is notorious.”
“Everybody is taking her part,” said Lord Fawn, almost crying.
“Surely not.”
“Yes; they are. The bill in Chancery has been withdrawn, and it’s my belief that if the necklace were found tomorrow, there would be nothing to prevent her keeping it, just as she did before.”
“But it was an heirloom?”
“No, it wasn’t. The lawyers were all wrong about it. As far as I can see, lawyers always are wrong. About those nine lacs of rupees for the sawab, Finlay was all wrong. Camperdown owns that he was wrong. If, after all, the diamonds were hers, I’m sure I don’t know what I am to do. Thank you, Hittaway, for coming over. That’ll do for the present. Just leave that ruffian’s letter, and I’ll think about it.”
This was considered by Mrs. Hittaway to be a very bad state of things, and there was great consternation in Warwick Square when Mr. Hittaway told his wife this new story of her brother’s weakness. She was not going to be weak. She did not intend to withdraw her opposition to the marriage. She was not going to be frightened by Lizzie Eustace and Frank Greystock, knowing as she did that they were lovers, and very improper lovers, too. “Of course she stole them herself,” said Mrs. Hittaway; “and I don’t doubt but she stole her own money afterwards There’s nothing she wouldn’t do. I’d sooner see Frederic in his grave than married to such a woman as that. Men don’t know how sly women can be; that’s the truth. And Frederic has been so spoilt among them down at Richmond, that he has no real judgment left. I don’t suppose he means to marry her.”
“Upon my word I don’t know,” said Mr. Hittaway. Then Mrs. Hittaway made up her mind that she would at once write a letter to Scotland.
There was an old lord about London in those days, or rather one who was an old Liberal but a young lord, one Lord Mount Thistle, who had sat in the Cabinet, and had lately been made a peer when his place in the Cabinet was wanted. He was a pompous, would-be important, silly old man, well acquainted with all the traditions of his party, and perhaps on that account useful, but a bore, and very apt to meddle when he was not wanted. Lady Glencora, on the day after her dinner-party, whispered into his ear that Lord Fawn was getting himself into trouble, and that a few words of caution, coming to him from one whom he respected so much as he did Lord Mount Thistle, would be of service to him. Lord Mount Thistle had known Lord Fawn’s father, and declared himself at once to be quite entitled to interfere. “He is really behaving badly to Lady Eustace,” said Lady Glencora, “and I don’t think that he knows it.” Lord Mount Thistle, proud of a commission from the hands of Lady Glencora, went almost at once to his old friend’s son. He found him at the House that night, and whispered his few words of caution in one of the lobbies.
“I know you will excuse me, Fawn,” Lord Mount Thistle said, “but people seem to think that you are not behaving quite well to Lady Eustace.”
“What people?” demanded Lord Fawn.
“My dear fellow, that is a question that cannot be answered. You know that I am the last man to interfere if I didn’t think it my duty as a friend. You were engaged to her?”— Lord Fawn only frowned. “If so,” continued the late cabinet minister, “and if you have broken it off, you ought to give your reasons. She has a right to demand as much as that.”
On the next morning, Friday, there came to him the note which Lady Glencora had recommended Lizzie to write. It was very short. “Had you not better come and see me? You can hardly think that things should be left as they are now. L. E.— Hertford Street, Thursday.” He had hoped — he had ventured to hope — that things might be left, and that they would arrange themselves; that he could throw aside his engagement without further trouble, and that the subject would drop. But it was not so. His enemy, Frank Greystock, had demanded from him a “written explanation” of his conduct. Mr. Camperdown had deserted him. Lady Glencora Palliser, with whom he had not the honour of any intimate acquaintance, had taken upon herself to give him advice. Lord Mount Thistle had found fault with him. And now there had come a note from Lizzie Eustace herself, which he could hardly venture to leave altogether unnoticed. On that Friday he dined at his club, and then went to his sister’s house in Warwick Square. If assistance might be had anywhere, it would be from his sister. She, at any rate, would not want courage in carrying on the battle on his behalf.
“Ill-used!” she said, as soon as they were closeted together. “Who dares to say so?”
“That old fool, Mount Thistle, has been with me.”
“I hope, Frederic, you don’t mind what such a man as that says. He has probably been prompted by some friend of hers. And who else?”
“Camperdown turns round now and says that they don’t mean to do anything more about the necklace. Lady Glencora Palliser told me the other day that all the world believes that the thing was her own.”
“What does Lady Glencora Palliser know about it? If Lady Glencora Palliser would mind her own affairs it would be much better for her. I remember when she had troubles enough of her own, without meddling with other people’s.”
“And now I’ve got this note.” Lord Fawn had already shown Lizzie’s few scrawled words to his sister. “I think I must go and see her.”
“Do no such thing, Frederic.”
“Why not? I must answer it, and what can I say?”
“If you go there, that woman will be your wife, you’ll never have a happy day again as long as you live. The match is broken off, and she knows it. I shouldn’t take the slightest notice of her, or of her cousin, or of any of them. If she chooses to bring an action against you, that is another thing.”
Lord Fawn paused for a few moments before he answered. “I think I ought to go,” he said.
“And I am sure that you ought not. It is not only about the diamonds, though that was quite enough to break off any engagement. Have you forgotten what I told you that the man saw at Portray?”
“I don’t know that the man spoke the truth.”
“But he did.”
“And I hate that kind of espionage. It is so very likely that mistakes should be made.”
“When she was sitting in his arms — and kissing him! If you choose to do it, Frederic, of course you must. We can’t prevent it. You are free to marry any one you please.”
“I’m not talking of marrying her.”
“What do you suppose she wants you to go there for? As for political life, I am quite sure it would be the death of you. If I were you I wouldn’t go near her. You have got out of the scrape, and I would remain out.”
“But I haven’t got out,” said Lord Fawn.
On the next day, Saturday, he did nothing in the matter. He went down, as was his custom, to Richmond, and did not once mention Lizzie’s name. Lady Fawn and her daughters never spoke of her now — neither of her, nor in his presence, of poor Lucy Morris. But on his return to London on the Sunday evening he found another note from Lizzie. “You will hardly have the hardihood to leave my note unanswered. Pray let me know when you will come to me.” Some answer must, as he felt, be made to her. For a moment he thought of asking his mother to call; but he at once saw that by doing so he might lay himself open to terrible ridicule. Could he induce Lord Mount Thistle to be his Mercury? It would, he felt, be quite impossible to make Lord Mount Thistle understand all the facts of his position. His sister, Mrs. Hittaway, might have gone, were it not that she herself was violently opposed to any visit. The more he thought of it the more convinced he became that, should it be known that he had received two such notes from a lady and that he had not answered or noticed them, the world would judge him to have behaved badly. So at last he wrote — on that Sunday evening — fixing a somewhat distant day for his visit to Hertford street. His note was as follows:
“Lord Fawn presents his compliments to Lady Eustace. In accordance with the wish expressed in Lady Eustace’s two notes of the 23d instant and this date, Lord Fawn will do himself the honour of waiting upon Lady Eustace on Saturday next, March 3d, at 12, noon. Lord Fawn had thought that under circumstances as they now exist, no further personal interview could lead to the happiness of either party; but as Lady Eustace thinks otherwise, he feels himself constrained to comply with her desire.
“SUNDAY EVENING, February 25, 18 —.”
“I am going to see her in the course of this week,” he said, in answer to a further question from Lady Glencora, who, chancing to meet him in society, had again addressed him on the subject. He lacked the courage to tell Lady Glencora to mind her own business and to allow him to do the same. Had she been a little less great than she was, either as regarded herself or her husband, he would have done so. But Lady Glencora was the social queen of the party to which he belonged, and Mr. Palliser was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and would some day be Duke of Omnium.
“As you are great, be merciful, Lord Fawn,” said Lady Glencora. “You men, I believe, never realise what it is that women feel when they love. It is my belief that she will die unless you are reunited to her. And then she is so beautiful.”
“It is a subject that I cannot discuss, Lady Glencora.”
“I dare say not. And I’m sure I am the last person to wish to give you pain. But you see, if the poor lady has done nothing to merit your anger, it does seem rather a strong measure to throw her off and give her no reason whatever. How would you defend yourself, suppose she published it all?” Lady Glencora’s courage was very great, and perhaps we may say her impudence also. This last question Lord Fawn left unanswered, walking away in great dudgeon.
In the course of the week he told his sister of the interview which he had promised, and she endeavoured to induce him to postpone it till a certain man should arrive from Scotland. She had written for Mr. Andrew Gowran — sending down funds for Mr. Gowran’s journey — so that her brother might hear Mr. Gowran’s evidence out of Mr. Gowran’s own mouth. Would not Frederic postpone the interview till he should have seen Mr. Gowran? But to this request Frederic declined to accede. He had fixed a day and an hour. He had made an appointment. Of course he must keep it.
The robbery at the house in Hertford Street took place on the 30th of January, and on the morning of the 28th of February Bunfit and Gager were sitting together in a melancholy, dark little room in Scotland Yard, discussing the circumstances of that nefarious act. A month had gone by and nobody was yet in custody. A month had passed since that second robbery; but nearly eight weeks had passed since the robbery at Carlisle, and even that was still a mystery. The newspapers had been loud in their condemnation of the police. It had been asserted over and over again that in no other civilised country in the world could so great an amount of property have passed through the hands of thieves without leaving some clue by which the police would have made their way to the truth. Major Mackintosh had been declared to be altogether incompetent, and all the Bunfits and Gagers of the force had been spoken of as drones and moles and ostriches. They were idle and blind, and so stupid as to think that when they saw nothing others saw less. The Major, who was a broad-shouldered, philosophical man, bore all this as though it were, of necessity, a part of the burthen of his profession: but the Bunfits and Gagers were very angry, and at their wits’ ends. It did not. occur to them to feel animosity against the newspapers which abused them. The thieves who would not be caught were their great enemies; and there was common to them a conviction that men so obstinate as these thieves — men to whom a large amount of grace and liberty for indulgence had accrued — should be treated with uncommon severity when they were caught. There was this excuse always on their lips, that had it been an affair simply of thieves, such as thieves ordinarily are, everything would have been discovered long since. But when lords and ladies with titles come to be mixed up with such an affair — folk in whose house a policeman can’t have his will at searching and browbeating — how is a detective to detect anything? Bunfit and Gager had both been driven to recast their theories as to the great Carlisle affair by the circumstances of the later affair in Hertford Street. They both thought that Lord George had been concerned in the robbery. That, indeed, had now become the general opinion of the world at large. He was a man of doubtful character, with large expenses, and with no recognised means of living. He had formed a great intimacy with Lady Eustace at a period in which she was known to be carrying these diamonds about with her, had been staying with her at Portray Castle when the diamonds were there, and had been her companion on the journey during which the diamonds were stolen. The only men in London supposed to be capable of dealing advantageously with such a property were Harter & Benjamin, as to whom it was known that they were conversant with the existence of the diamonds, and known also that they were in the habit of having dealings with Lord George. It was, moreover, known that Lord George had been closeted with Mr. Benjamin on the morning after his arrival in London. These things put together made it almost a certainty that Lord George had been concerned in the matter. Bunfit had always been sure of it. Gager, though differing much from Bunfit as to details, had never been unwilling to suspect Lord George. But the facts known could not be got to dovetail themselves pleasantly. If Lord George had possessed himself of the diamonds at Carlisle, or with Lizzie’s connivance before they reached Carlisle, then, why had there been a second robbery? Bunfit, who was very profound in his theory, suggested that the second robbery was an additional plant, got up with the view of throwing more dust into the eyes of the police. Patience Crabstick had, of course, been one of the gang throughout, and she had now been allowed to go off with her mistress’s money and lesser trinkets, so that the world of Scotland Yard might be thrown more and more into the mire of ignorance and darkness of doubt. To this view Gager was altogether opposed. He was inclined to think that Lord George had taken the diamonds at Carlisle with Lizzie’s connivance; that he had restored them in London to her keeping, finding the suspicion against him too heavy to admit of his dealing with them, and that now he had stolen them a second time, again with Lizzie’s connivance; but in this latter point Gager did not pretend to the assurance of any conviction.
But Gager at the present moment had achieved a triumph in the matter which he was not at all disposed to share with his elder officer. Perhaps, on the whole, more power is lost than gained by habits of secrecy. To be discreet is a fine thing, especially for a policeman; but when discretion is carried to such a length in the direction of self-confidence as to produce a belief that no aid is wanted for the achievement of great results, it will often militate against all achievement. Had Scotland Yard been less discreet and more confidential, the mystery might perhaps have been sooner unravelled. Gager at this very moment had reason to believe that a man whom he knew could — and would, if operated upon duly — communicate to him, Gager, the secret of the present whereabouts of Patience Crabstick! That belief was a great possession, and much too important, as Gager thought, to be shared lightly with such a one as Mr. Bunfit — a thick-headed sort of man, in Gager’s opinion, although no doubt he had by means of industry been successful in some difficult cases.
“‘Is lordship ain’t stirred,” said Bunfit.
“How do you mean — stirred, Mr. Bunfit?”
“Ain’t moved nowheres out of London.”
“What should he move out of London for? What could he get by cutting? There ain’t nothing so bad when anything’s up against one as letting on that one wants to bolt. He knows all that. He’ll stand his ground. He won’t bolt.”
“I don’t suppose as he will, Gager. It’s a rum go, ain’t it? the rummiest as I ever see.” This remark had been made so often by Mr. Bunfit, that Gager had become almost weary of hearing it.
“Oh — rum; rum be b ——. What’s the use of all that? From what the governor told me this morning, there isn’t a shadow of doubt where the diamonds are.”
“In Paris, of course,” said Bunfit.
“They never went to Paris. They were taken from here to Hamburg in a commercial man’s kit — a fellow as travels in knives and scissors. Then they was recut. They say the cutting was the quickest bit of work ever done by one man in Hamburg. And now they’re in New York. That’s what has come of the diamonds.”
“Benjamin, in course,” said Bunfit, in a low whisper, just taking the pipe from between his lips.
“Well — yes. No doubt it was Benjamin. But how did Benjamin get ’em?”
“Lord George — in course,” said Bunfit.
“And how did he get ’em?”
“Well — that’s where it is; isn’t it?” Then there was a pause, during which Bunfit continued to smoke. “As sure as your name’s Gager, he got ’em at Carlisle.”
“And what took Smiler down to Carlisle?”
“Just to put a face on it,” said Bunfit.
“And who cut the door?”
“Billy Cann did,” said Bunfit.
“And who forced the box?”
“Them two did,” said Bunfit.
“And all to put a face on it?”
“Yes — just that. And an uncommon good face they did put on it between ’em — the best as I ever see.”
“All right,” said Gager. “So far, so good. I don’t agree with you, Mr. Bunfit; because the thing, when it was done, wouldn’t be worth the money. Lord love you, what would all that have cost? And what was to prevent the lady and Lord George together taking the diamonds to Benjamin and getting their price? It never does to be too clever, Mr. Bunfit. And when that was all done, why did the lady go and get herself robbed again? No — I don’t say but what you’re a clever man, in your way, Mr. Bunfit; but you’ve not got a hold of the thing here. Why was Smiler going about like a mad dog — only that he found himself took in?”
“Maybe he expected something else in the box — more than the necklace — as was to come to him,” suggested Bunfit.
“Gammon.”
“I don’t see why you say gammon, Gager. It ain’t polite.”
“It is gammon — running away with ideas like them, just as if you was one of the public. When they two opened that box at Carlisle, which they did as certain as you sit there, they believed as the diamonds were there. They were not there.”
“I don’t think as they was,” said Bunfit.
“Very well; where were they! Just walk up to it, Mr. Bunfit, making your ground good as you go. They two men cut the door, and took the box and opened it, and when they’d opened it, they didn’t get the swag. Where was the swag?”
“Lord George,” said Bunfit again.
“Very well, Lord George. Like enough. But it comes to this. Benjamin, and they two men of his, had laid themselves out for the robbery. Now, Mr. Bunfit, whether Lord George and Benjamin were together in that first affair, or whether they weren’t, I can’t see my way just at present, and I don’t know as you can see yours — not saying but what you’re as quick as most men, Mr. Bunfit. If he was — and I rayther think that’s about it — then he and Benjamin must have had a few words, and he must have got the jewels from the lady over night.”
“Of course he did; and Smiler and Billy Cann knew as they weren’t there.”
“There you are, all back again, Mr. Bunfit, not making your ground good as you go. Smiler and Cann did their job according to order — and precious sore hearts they had when they’d got the box open. Those fellows at Carlisle — just like all the provincials — went to work open mouthed, and before the party left Carlisle it was known that Lord George was suspected.”
“You can’t trust those fellows any way,” said Mr. Bunfit.
“Well — what happens next? Lord George, he goes to Benjamin, but he isn’t goin’ to take the diamonds with him. He has had words with Benjamin or he has not. Any ways he isn’t goin’ to take the necklace with him on that morning. He hasn’t been goin’ to keep the diamonds about him, not since what was up at Carlisle. So he gives the diamonds back to the lady.”
“And she had ’em all along?”
“I don’t say it was so, but I can see my way upon that hypothesis.”
“There was something as she had to conceal, Gager. I’ve said that all through. I knew it in a moment when I seed her ‘aint.”
“She’s had a deal to conceal, I don’t doubt. Well, there they are — with her still — and the box is gone, and the people as is bringing the lawsuit, Mr. Camperdown and the rest of ’em, is off their tack. What’s she to do with ’em?”
“Take ’em to Benjamin,” said Bunfit with confidence.
“That’s all very well, Mr. Bunfit. But there’s a quarrel up already with Benjamin. Benjamin was to have had ’em before. Benjamin has spent a goodish bit of money, and has been thrown over rather. I dare say Benjamin was as bad as Smiler, or worse. No doubt Benjamin let on to Smiler, and thought as Smiler was too many for him. I dare say there was a few words between him and Smiler. I wouldn’t wonder if Smiler didn’t threaten to punch Benjamin’s head — which well he could do it — and if there wasn’t a few playful remarks between ’em about penal servitude for life. You see, Mr. Bunfit, it couldn’t have been pleasant for any of ’em.”
“They’d’ve split,” said Bunfit.
“But they didn’t, not downright. Well, there we are. The diamonds is with the lady. Lord George has done it all. Lord George and Lady Eustace — they’re keeping company, no doubt, after their own fashion. He’s a-robbing of her, and she has to do pretty much as she’s bid. The diamonds is with the lady, and Lord George is pretty well afraid to look at ’em. After all that’s being done there isn’t much to wonder at in that. Then comes the second robbery.”
“And Lord George planned that too?” asked Bunfit.
“I don’t pretend to say I know, but just put it this way, Mr. Bunfit. Of course the thieves were let in by the woman Crabstick?”
“Not a doubt.”
“Of course they was Smiler and Billy Cann?”
“I suppose they was.”
“She was always about the lady, a-doing for her in everything. Say she goes to Benjamin and tells him as how her lady still has the necklace, and then he puts up the second robbery. Then you’d have it all round.”
“And Lord George would have lost ’em? It can’t be. Lord George and he are thick as thieves up to this day.”
“Very well. I don’t say anything against that. Lord George knows as she has ’em; indeed he’d given ’em back to her to keep. We’ve got as far as that, Mr. Bunfit.”
“I think she did ‘ave ’em.”
“Very well. What does Lord George do then? He can’t make money of ’em. They’re too hot for his fingers, and so he finds when he thinks of taking ’em into the market. So he puts Benjamin up to the second robbery.”
“Who’s drawing it fine, now, Gager; eh?”
“Mr. Bunfit, I’m not saying as I’ve got the truth beyond this, that Benjamin and his two men were clean done at Carlisle, that Lord George and his lady brought the jewels up to town between ’em, and that the party who didn’t get ’em at Carlisle tried their hand again, and did get ’em in Hertford Street.” In all of which the ingenious Gager would have been right if he could have kept his mind clear from the alluring conviction that a lord had been the chief of the thieves.
“We shall never make a case of it now,” said Bunfit despondently.
“I mean to try it on all the same. There’s Smiler about town as bold as brass, and dressed to the nines. He had the cheek to tell me as he was going down to the Newmarket Spring to look after a horse he’s got a share in.”
“I was talking to Billy only yesterday,” added Bunfit. “I’ve got it on my mind that they didn’t treat Billy quite on the square. He didn’t let on anything about Benjamin; but he told me out plain, as how he was very much disgusted. ‘Mr. Bunfit,’ said he, ‘there’s that roguery about, that a plain man like me can’t touch it. There’s them as’d pick my eyes out while I was sleeping, and then swear it against my very self,’ Them were his words, and I knew as how Benjamin hadn’t been on the square with him.”
“You didn’t let on anything, Mr. Bunfit?”
“Well, I just reminded him as how there was five hundred pounds going a-begging from Mr. Camperdown.”
“And what did he say to that, Mr. Bunfit?”
“Well, he said a good deal. He’s a sharp little fellow, is Billy, as has read a deal. You’ve heard of ‘Umpty Dumpty, Gager? ‘Umpty Dumpty was a hegg.”
“All right.”
“As had a fall, and was smashed, and there’s a little poem about him.”
“I know.”
“Well; Billy says to me: ‘Mr. Camperdown don’t want no hinformation; he wants the diamonds.’ Them diamonds is like ‘Umpty Dumpty, Mr. Bunfit. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put ‘Umpty Dumpty up again.”
“Billy was about right there,” said the younger officer, rising from his seat.
Late on the afternoon of the same day, when London had already been given over to the gaslights, Mr. Gager, having dressed himself especially for the occasion of the friendly visit which he intended to make, sauntered into a small public-house at the corner of Meek Street and Pineapple Court, which locality, as all men well versed with London are aware, lies within one minute’s walk of the top of Gray’s Inn Lane. Gager, during his conference with his colleague Bunfit, had been dressed in plain black clothes; but in spite of his plain clothes he looked every inch a policeman. There was a stiffness about his limbs, and, at the same time, a sharpness in his eyes, which, in the conjunction with the locality in which he was placed, declared his profession beyond the possibility of mistake. Nor, in that locality, would he have desired to be taken for anything else. But as he entered the “Rising Sun” in Meek Street, there was nothing of the policeman about him. He might probably have been taken for a betting man, with whom the world had latterly gone well enough to enable him to maintain that sleek, easy, greasy appearance which seems to be the beau ideal of a betting man’s personal ambition. “Well, Mr. Howard,” said the lady at the bar, “a sight of you is good for sore eyes.”
“Six penn’orth of brandy — warm, if you please, my dear,” said the pseudo-Howard, as he strolled easily into an inner room, with which he seemed to be quite familiar. He seated himself in an old-fashioned wooden arm-chair, gazed up at the gas lamp, and stirred his liquor slowly. Occasionally he raised the glass to his lips, but he did not seem to be at all intent upon his drinking. When he entered the room, there had been a gentleman and a lady there, whose festive moments seemed to be disturbed by some slight disagreement; but Howard, as he gazed at the lamp, paid no attention to them whatever. They soon left the room, their quarrel and their drink finished together, and others dropped in and out. Mr. Howard’s “warm” must almost have become cold, so long did he sit there, gazing at the gas lamps rather than attending to his brandy and water. Not a word did he speak to any one for more than an hour, and not a sign did he show of impatience. At last he was alone; but had not been so for above a minute when in stepped a jaunty little man, certainly not more than five feet high, about three or four and twenty years of age, dressed with great care, with his trousers sticking to his legs, with a French chimneypot hat on his head, very much peaked fore and aft and closely turned up at the sides. He had a bright-coloured silk-handkerchief round his neck, and a white shirt, of which the collar and wristbands were rather larger and longer than suited the small dimensions of the man. He wore a white greatcoat tight buttoned round his waist, but so arranged as to show the glories of the coloured handkerchief; and in his hand he carried a diminutive cane with a little silver knob. He stepped airily into the room, and as he did so he addressed our friend the policeman with much cordiality.
“My dear Mr. ‘Oward,” he said, “this is a pleasure. This is a pleasure. This is a pleasure.”
“What is it to be?” asked Gager.
“Well; ay, what? Shall I say a little port wine negus, with the nutmeg in it rayther strong?” This suggestion he made to a young lady from the bar, who had followed him into the room. The negus was brought and paid for by Gager, who then requested that they might be left there undisturbed for five minutes. The young lady promised to do her best, and then closed the door. “And now, Mr. ‘Oward, what can I do for you?” said Mr. Cann, the burglar.
Gager, before he answered, took a pipe-case out of his pocket, and lit the pipe. “Will you smoke, Billy?” said he.
“Well — no, I don’t know that I will smoke. A very little tobacco goes a long way with me, Mr. ‘Oward. One cigar before I turn in; that’s about the outside of it. You see, Mr. ‘Oward, pleasures should never be made necessities, when the circumstances of a gentleman’s life may perhaps require that they shall be abandoned for prolonged periods. In your line of life, Mr. ‘Oward, which has its objections, smoking may be pretty well a certainty.” Mr. Cann, as he made these remarks, skipped about the room, and gave point to his argument by touching Mr. Howard’s waistcoat with the end of his cane.
“And now, Billy, how about the young woman?”
“I haven’t set eyes on her these six weeks, Mr. ‘Oward. I never see her but once in my life, Mr. ‘Oward; or, maybe, twice, for one’s memory is deceitful; and I don’t know that I ever wish to see her again. She ain’t one of my sort, Mr. ‘Oward. I likes ’em soft, and sweet, and coming. This one, she has her good p’ints about her, as clean a foot and ankle as I’d wish to see; but, laws, what a nose, Mr. ‘Oward. And then for manner; she’s no more manner than a stable dog.”
“She’s in London, Billy?”
“How am I to know, Mr. ‘Oward?”
“What’s the good, then, of your coming here?” asked Gager, with no little severity in his voice.
“I don’t know as it is good. I ‘aven’t said nothing about any good, Mr. ‘Oward. What you wants to find is them diamonds?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well; you won’t find ’em. I knows nothing about ’em, in course, except just what I’m told. You know my line of life, Mr. ‘Oward?”
“Not a doubt about it.”
“And I know yours. I’m in the way of hearing about these things, and for the matter of that, so are you too. It may be, my ears are the longer. I ‘ave ‘eard. You don’t expect me to tell you more than just that. I ‘ave ‘eard. It was a pretty thing, wasn’t it? But I wasn’t in it myself, more’s the pity. You can’t expect fairer than that, Mr. ‘Oward?”
“And what have you heard?”
“Them diamonds is gone where none of you can get at ’em. That five hundred pounds as the lawyers ‘ave offered is just nowhere. If you want information, Mr. ‘Oward, you should say information.”
“And you could give it; eh, Billy?”
“No — no —” He uttered these two negatives in a low voice, and with much deliberation. “I couldn’t give it. A man can’t give what he hasn’t got; but perhaps I could get it.”
“What an ass you are, Billy. Don’t you know that I know all about it?”
“What an ass you are, Mr. ‘Oward. Don’t I know that you don’t know; or you wouldn’t come to me. You guess. You’re always a-guessing. But guessing ain’t knowing. You don’t know; nor yet don’t I. What is it to be, if I find out where that young woman is?”
“A tenner, Billy.”
“Five quid now, and five when you’ve seen her?”
“All right, Billy.”
“She’s a-going to be married to Smiler next Sunday as ever is down at Ramsgate; and at Ramsgate she is now. You’ll find her, Mr. ‘Oward, if you’ll keep your eyes open, somewhere about the ‘Fiddle with One String.’ “
This information was so far recognised by Mr. Howard as correct, that he paid Mr. Cann five sovereigns down for it at once.
Mr. Gager reached Ramsgate by the earliest train on the following morning, and was not long in finding out the “Fiddle with One String.” The “Fiddle with One String” was a public-house, very humble in appearance, in the outskirts of the town, on the road leading to Pegwell Bay. On this occasion Mr. Gager was dressed in his ordinary plain clothes, and though the policeman’s calling might not be so manifestly declared by his appearance at Ramsgate as it was in Scotland Yard, still, let a hint in that direction have ever been given, and the ordinary citizens of Ramsgate would at once be convinced that the man was what he was. Gager had doubtless considered all the circumstances of his day’s work carefully, and had determined that success would more probably attend him with this than with any other line of action. He walked at once into the house, and asked whether a young woman was not lodging there. The man of the house was behind the bar, with his wife, and to him Gager whispered a few words. The man stood dumb for a moment, and then his wife spoke. “What’s up now?” said she, “There’s no young women here. We don’t have no young women.” Then the man whispered a word to his wife, during which Gager stood among the customers before the bar with an easy, unembarrassed air.
“Well, what’s the odds?” said the wife. “There ain’t anything wrong with us.”
“Never thought there was, ma’am,” said Gager. “And there’s nothing wrong as I know of with the young woman.” Then the husband and wife consulted together, and Mr. Gager was asked to take a seat in a little parlour, while the woman ran upstairs for half an instant. Gager looked about him quickly, and took in at a glance the system of the construction of the “Fiddle with One String.” He did sit down in the little parlour, with the door open, and remained there for perhaps a couple of minutes. Then he went to the front door, and glanced up at the roof.
“It’s all right,” said the keeper of the house, following him. “She ain’t a-going to get away. She ain’t just very well, and she’s a-lying down.”
“You tell her, with my regards,” said Gager, “that she needn’t be a bit the worse because of me.” The man looked at him suspiciously. “You tell her what I say. And tell her, too, the quicker the better. She has a gentleman a-looking after her, I daresay. Perhaps I’d better be off before he comes.” The message was taken up to the lady, and Gager again seated himself in the little parlour.
We are often told that all is fair in love and war, and perhaps the operation on which Mr. Gager was now intent may be regarded as warlike. But he now took advantage of a certain softness in the character of the lady whom he wished to meet, which hardly seems to be justifiable even in a policeman. When Lizzie’s tall footman had been in trouble about the necklace, a photograph had been taken from him which had not been restored to him. This was a portrait of Patience Crabstick, which she, poor girl, in a tender moment, had given to him who, had not things gone roughly with them, was to have been her lover. The little picture had fallen into Gager’s hands, and he now pulled it from his pocket. He himself had never visited the house in Hertford Street till after the second robbery, and, in the flesh, had not as yet seen Miss Crabstick; but he had studied her face carefully, expecting, or at any rate hoping, that he might some day enjoy the pleasure of personal acquaintance. That pleasure was now about to come to him, and he prepared himself for it by making himself intimate with the lines of the lady’s face as the sun had portrayed them. There was even yet some delay, and Mr. Gager more than once testified uneasiness.
“She ain’t a-going to get away,” said the mistress of the house, “but a lady as is going to see a gentleman can’t jump into her things as a man does.” Gager intimated his acquiescence in all this, and again waited.
“The sooner she comes, the less trouble for her,” said Gager to the woman. “If you’ll only make her believe that.” At last, when he had been somewhat over an hour in the house, he was asked to walk upstairs, and then, in a little sitting-room over the bar, he had the opportunity, so much desired, of making personal acquaintance with Patience Crabstick.
It may be imagined that the poor waiting-woman had not been in a happy state of mind since she had been told that a gentleman was waiting to see her down-stairs, who had declared himself to be a policeman immediately on entering the shop. To escape was of course her first idea, but she was soon made to understand that this was impracticable. In the first place there was but one staircase, at the bottom of which was the open door of the room in which the policeman was sitting; and then, the woman of the house was very firm in declaring that she would connive at nothing which might cost her and her husband their license. “You got to face it,” said the woman.
“I suppose they can’t make me get out of bed unless I pleases,” said Patience firmly. But she knew that even that resource would fail her, and that a policeman, when aggravated, can take upon him all the duties of a lady’s maid. She had to face it, and she did face it.
“I’ve just got to have a few words with you, my dear,” said Gager.
“I suppose, then, we’d better be alone,” said Patience; whereupon the woman of the house discreetly left the room.
The interview was so long that the reader would be fatigued were he asked to study a record of all that was said on the occasion. The gentleman and lady were closeted together for more than an hour, and so amicably was the conversation carried on that when the time was half over Gager stepped down-stairs and interested himself in procuring Miss Crabstick’s breakfast. He even condescended himself to pick a few shrimps and drink a glass of beer in her company. A great deal was said and something was even settled, as may be learned from a few concluding words of that very memorable conversation. “Just don’t you say anything about it, my dear, but leave word for him that you’ve gone up to town on business.”
“Lord love you, Mr. Gager, he’ll know all about it.”
“Let him know. Of course he’ll know if he comes down. It’s my belief he’ll never show himself at Ramsgate again.”
“But, Mr. Gager ——”
“Well, my dear.”
“You aren’t a perjuring of yourself?”
“What; about making you my wife? That I ain’t. I’m upright and always was. There’s no mistake about me when you’ve got my word. As soon as this work is off my mind you shall be Mrs. Gager, my dear. And you’ll be all right. You’ve been took in, that’s what you have.”
“That I have, Mr. Gager,” said Patience, wiping her eyes.
“You’ve been took in and you must be forgiven.”
“I didn’t get — not nothing out of the necklace; and as fot the other things, they’ve frightened me so that I let ’em all go for just what I tell you. And as for Mr. Smiler, I never didn’t care for him; that I didn’t. He ain’t the man to touch my heart; not at all; and it was not likely either. A plain fellow, very, Mr. Gager.”
“He’ll be plainer before long, my dear.”
“But I’ve been that worrited among ’em, Mr. Gager, since first they made their wicked prepositions, that I’ve been jest — I don’t know how I’ve been. And though my lady was not a lady as any girl could like, and did deserve to have her things took if anybody’s things ever should be took, still, Mr. Gager, I knows I did wrong. I do know it and I’m a-repenting of it in sackcloth and ashes; so I am. But you’ll be as good as your word, Mr. Gager?”
It must be acknowledged that Mr. Gager had bidden high for success, and had allowed himself to be carried away by his zeal almost to the verge of imprudence. It was essential to him that he should take Patience Crabstick back with him to London, and that he should take her as witness and not as a criminal. Mr. Benjamin was the game at which he was flying — Mr. Benjamin, and if possible, Lord George — and he conceived that his net might be big enough to hold Smiler as well as the other two greater fishes, if he could induce Patience Crabstick and Billy Cann to co-operate with him cordially in his fishing.
But his mind was still disturbed on one point. Let him press his beloved Patience as closely as he might with questions, there was one point on which he could not get from her what he believed to be the truth. She persisted that Lord George de Bruce Carruthers had had no hand in either robbery, and Gager had so firmly committed himself to a belief on this matter, that he could not throw the idea away from him, even on the testimony of Patience Crabstick.
On that evening he returned triumphant to Scotland Yard with Patience Crabstick under his wing; and that lady was housed there with every comfort she could desire, except that of personal liberty.
In the mean time Mrs. Hittaway was diligently spreading a report that Lizzie Eustace either was engaged to marry her cousin Frank, or ought to be so engaged. This she did, no doubt, with the sole object of saving her brother; but she did it with a zeal that dealt as freely with Frank’s name as with Lizzie’s. They, with all their friends, were her enemies, and she was quite sure that they were, altogether, a wicked degraded set of people. Of Lord George and Mrs. Carbuncle, of Miss Roanoke and Sir Griffin Tewett she believed all manner of evil. She had theories of her own about the jewels, stories — probably of her own manufacture in part, although no doubt she believed them to be true — as to the manner of living at Portray, little histories of Lizzie’s debts, and the great fact of the scene which Mr. Gowran had seen with his own eyes. Lizzie Eustace was an abomination to her, and this abominable woman her brother was again in danger of marrying! She was very loud in her denunciations, and took care that they should reach even Lady Linlithgow, so that poor Lucy Morris might know of what sort was the lover in whom she trusted. Andy Gowran had been sent for to town, and was on his journey while Mr. Gager was engaged at Ramsgate. It was at present the great object of Mrs. Hittaway’s life to induce her brother to see Mr. Gowran before he kept his appointment with Lady Eustace.
Poor Lucy received the wound which was intended for her. The enemy’s weapons had repeatedly struck her, but hitherto they had alighted on the strong shield of her faith. But let a shield be never so strong, it may at last be battered out of all form and service. On Lucy’s shield there had been much of such batterings, and the blows which had come from him in whom she most trusted had not been the lightest. She had not seen him for months, and his letters were short, unsatisfactory, and rare. She had declared to herself and to her friend Lady Fawn that no concurrence of circumstances, no absence, however long, no rumours that might reach her ears, would make her doubt the man she loved. She was still steadfast in the same resolution; but in spite of her resolution her heart began to fail her. She became weary, unhappy, and ill at ease, and though she would never acknowledge to herself that she doubted, she did doubt.
“So, after all, your Mr. Greystock is to marry my niece, Lizzie Greystock.” This good-natured speech was made one morning to poor Lucy by her present patroness, Lady Linlithgow.
“I rather think not,” said Lucy, plucking up her spirits and smiling as she spoke.
“Everybody says so. As for Lizzie, she has become quite a heroine. What with her necklace, and her two robberies, and her hunting, and her various lovers — two lords and a member of Parliament, my dear — there is nothing to equal her. Lady Glencora Palliser has been calling on her. She took care to let me know that. And I’m told that she certainly is engaged to her cousin.”
“According to your own showing, Lady Linlithgow, she has got two other lovers. Couldn’t you oblige me by letting her marry one of the lords?”
“I’m afraid, my dear, that Mr. Greystock is to be the chosen one.” Then after a pause the old woman became serious. “What is the use, Miss Morris, of not looking the truth in the face? Mr. Greystock is neglecting you.”
“He is not neglecting me. You won’t let him come to see me.”
“Certainly not; but if he were not neglecting you, you would not be here. And there he is with Lizzie Eustace every day of his life. He can’t afford to marry you, and he can afford to marry her. It’s a deal better that you should look it all in the face and know what it must all come to.”
“I shall just wait, and never believe a word till he speaks it.”
“You hardly know what men are, my dear.”
“Very likely not, Lady Linlithgow. It may be that I shall have to pay dear for learning. Of course I may be mistaken as well as another, only I don’t believe I am mistaken.”
When this little scene took place, only a month remained of the time for which Lucy’s services were engaged to Lady Linlithgow, and no definite arrangement had been made as to her future residence. Lady Fawn was prepared to give her a home, and to Lady Fawn, as it seemed, she must go. Lady Linlithgow had declared herself unwilling to continue the existing arrangement because, as she said, it did not suit her that her companion should be engaged to marry her late sister’s nephew. Not a word had been said about the deanery for the last month or two, and Lucy, though her hopes in that direction had once been good, was far too high spirited to make any suggestion herself as to her reception by her lover’s family. In the ordinary course of things she would have to look out for another situation, like any other governess in want of a place; but she could do this only by consulting Lady Fawn; and Lady Fawn when consulted would always settle the whole matter by simply bidding her young friend to come to Fawn Court.
There must be some end of her living at Fawn Court. So much Lucy told herself over and over again. It could be but a temporary measure. If — if it was to be her fate to be taken away from Fawn Court a happy, glorious, triumphant bride, then the additional obligation put upon her by her dear friends would not be more than she could bear. But to go to Fawn Court, and, by degrees, to have it acknowledged that another place must be found for her, would be very bad. She would infinitely prefer any intermediate hardship. How, then, should she know? As soon as she was able to escape from the countess, she went up to her own room, and wrote the following letter. She studied the words with great care as she wrote them — sitting and thinking before she allowed her pen to run on the paper.
“MY DEAR FRANK: It is a long time since we met — is it not? I do not write this as a reproach, but because my friends tell me that I should not continue to think myself engaged to you. They say that, situated as you are, you cannot afford to marry a penniless girl, and that I ought not to wish you to sacrifice yourself. I do understand enough of your affairs to know that an imprudent marriage may ruin you, and I certainly do not wish to be the cause of injury to you. All I ask is that you should tell me the truth. It is not that I am impatient; but that I must decide what to do with myself when I leave Lady Linlithgow. Your most affectionate friend,
“LUCY MORRIS.
“March 2, 18 —.”
She read this letter over and over again, thinking of all that it said and of all that it omitted to say. She was at first half disposed to make protestations of forgiveness, to assure him that not even within her own heart would she reproach him, should he feel himself bound to retract the promise he had made her. She longed to break out into love, but so to express her love that her lover should know that it was strong enough even to sacrifice itself for his sake. But though her heart longed to speak freely, her judgment told her that it would be better that she should be reticent and tranquil in her language. Any warmth on her part would be in itself a reproach to him. If she really wished to assist him in extricating himself from a difficulty into which he had fallen in her behalf, she would best do so by offering him his freedom in the fewest and plainest words which she could select.
But even when the letter was written she doubted as to the wisdom of sending it. She kept it that she might sleep upon it. She did sleep upon it, and when the morning came she would not send it. Had not absolute faith in her lover been the rock on which she had declared to herself that she would build the house of her future hopes? Had not she protested again and again that no caution from others should induce her to waver in her belief? Was it not her great doctrine to trust, to trust implicitly, even though all should be lost if her trust should be misplaced? And was it well that she should depart from all this, merely because it might be convenient for her to make arrangements as to the coming months? If it were to be her fate to be rejected, thrown over, and deceived, of what use to her could be any future arrangements? All to her would be ruin, and it would matter to her nothing whither she should be taken. And then, why should she lie to him as she would lie in sending such a letter? If he did throw her over he would be a traitor, and her heart would be full of reproaches. Whatever might be his future lot in life, he owed it to her to share it with her, and if he evaded his debt he would be a traitor and a miscreant. She would never tell him so. She would be far too proud to condescend to spoken or written reproaches. But she would know that it would be so, and why should she lie to him by saying that it would not be so? Thinking of all this, when the morning came, she left the letter lying within her desk.
Lord Fawn was to call upon Lady Eustace on the Saturday, and on Friday afternoon Mr. Andrew Gowran was in Mrs. Hittaway’s back parlour in Warwick Square. After many efforts, and with much persuasion, the brother had agreed to see his sister’s great witness. Lord Fawn had felt that he would lower himself by any intercourse with such a one as Andy Gowran in regard to the conduct of the woman whom he had proposed to make his wife, and had endeavoured to avoid the meeting. He had been angry, piteous, haughty, and sullen by turns; but Mrs. Hittaway had overcome him by dogged perseverance; and poor Lord Fawn had at last consented. He was to come to Warwick Square as soon as the House was up on Friday evening, and dine there. Before dinner he was to be introduced to Mr. Gowran. Andy arrived at the house at half-past five, and after some conversation with Mrs. Hittaway, was left there all alone to await the coming of Lord Fawn. He was in appearance and manners very different from the Andy Gowran familiarly known among the braes and crofts of Portray. He had a heavy stiff hat, which he carried in his hand. He wore a black swallow-tail coat and black trousers, and a heavy red waistcoat buttoned up nearly to his throat, round which was lightly tied a dingy black silk handkerchief. At Portray no man was more voluble, no man more self-confident, no man more equal to his daily occupations than Andy Gowran; but the unaccustomed clothes, and the journey to London, and the town houses overcame him, and for a while almost silenced him. Mrs. Hittaway found him silent, cautious, and timid. Not knowing what to do with him, fearing to ask him to go and eat in the kitchen, and not liking to have meat and unlimited drink brought for him into the parlour, she directed the servant to supply him with a glass of sherry and a couple of biscuits. He had come an hour before the time named, and there, with nothing to cheer him beyond these slight creature comforts, he was left to wait all alone till Lord Fawn should be ready to see him.
Andy had seen lords before. Lords are not rarer in Ayrshire than in other Scotch counties; and then, had not Lord George de Bruce Carruthers been staying at Portray half the winter? But Lord George was not to Andy a real lord, and then a lord down in his own county was so much less to him than a lord up in London. And this lord was a lord of Parliament, and a government lord, and might probably have the power of hanging such a one as Andy Gowran were he to commit perjury, or say anything which the lord might choose to call perjury. What it was that Lord Fawn wished him to say, he could not make himself sure. That the lord’s sister wished him to prove Lady Eustace to be all that was bad, he knew very well. But he thought that he was able to perceive that the brother and sister were not at one, and more than once during his journey up to London he had almost made up his mind that he would turn tail and go back to Portray. No doubt there was enmity between him and his mistress; but then his mistress did not attempt to hurt him even though he had insulted her grossly; and were she to tell him to leave her service, it would be from Mr. John Eustace, and not from Mrs. Hittaway, that he must look for the continuation of his employment. Nevertheless he had taken Mrs. Hittaway’s money and there he was.
At half-past seven Lord Fawn was brought into the room by his sister, and Andy Gowran, rising from his chair, three times ducked his head. “Mr. Gowran,” said Mrs. Hittaway, “my brother is desirous that you should tell him exactly what you have seen of Lady Eustace’s conduct down at Portray. You may speak quite freely, and I know you will speak truly.” Andy again ducked his head. “Frederic,” continued the lady, “I am sure that you may implicitly believe all that Mr. Gowran will say to you.” Then Mrs. Hittaway left the room, as her brother had expressly stipulated that she should do.
Lord Fawn was quite at a loss how to begin, and Andy was by no means prepared to help him. “If I am rightly informed,” said the lord, “you have been for many years employed on the Portray property?”
“A’ my life, so please your lairdship.”
“Just so; just so. And of course interested in the welfare of the Eustace family?”
“Nae doobt, my laird, nae doobt; vera interasted indeed.”
“And being an honest man, have felt sorrow that the Portray property should — should — should — that anything bad should happen to it.” Andy nodded his head, and Lord Fawn perceived that he was nowhere near the beginning of his matter. “Lady Eustace is at present your mistress?”
“Just in a fawshion, my laird, as a mon may say. That is she is, and she is nae. There’s a mony things at Portray as ha’ to be lookit after.”
“She pays you your wages?” said Lord Fawn shortly.
“Eh — wages! Yes, my laird, she does a’ that.”
“Then she’s your mistress.” Andy again nodded his head, and Lord Fawn again struggled to find some way in which he might approach the subject. “Her cousin, Mr. Greystock, has been staying at Portray lately?”
“More coothie than coosinly,” said Andy, winking his eye.
It was dreadful to Lord Fawn that the man should wink his eye at him. He did not quite understand what Andy had last said, but he did understand that some accusation as to indecent familiarity with her cousin was intended to be brought by this Scotch steward against the woman to whom he had engaged himself. Every feeling of his nature revolted against the task before him, and he found that on trial it became absolutely impracticable. He could not bring himself to inquire minutely as to poor Lizzie’s flirting down among the rocks. He was weak and foolish, and in many respects ignorant, but he was a gentleman. As he got nearer to the point which it had been intended that he should reach, the more he hated Andy Gowran, and the more he hated himself for having submitted to such contact. He paused a moment and then he declared that the conversation was at an end. “I think that will do, Mr. Gowran,” he said. “I don’t know that you can tell me anything I want to hear. I think you had better go back to Scotland.” So saying, he left Andy alone and stalked up to the drawing-room. When he entered it both Mr. Hittaway and his sister were there. “Clara,” he said very sternly, “you had better send some one to dismiss that man. I shall not speak to him again.”
Lord Fawn did not speak to Andy Gowran again, but Mrs. Hittaway did. After a faint and futile endeavour made by her to ascertain what had taken place in the parlour down-stairs, she descended and found Andy seated in his chair, still holding his hat in his hand, as stiff as a wax figure. He had been afraid of the lord, but as soon as the lord had left him he was very angry with the lord. He had been brought up all that way to tell his story to the lord, and the lord had gone away without hearing a word of it, had gone away and had absolutely insulted him, had asked him who paid him his wages, and had then told him that Lady Eustace was his mistress. Andy Gowran felt strongly that this was not that kind of confidential usage which he had had a right to expect. And after his experience of the last hour and a half, he did not at all relish his renewed solitude in that room. “A drap of puir thin liquor-poored out too-in a weeny glass nae deeper than an egg shell, and twa cookies; that’s what she ca’ed rafrashment!” It was thus that Andy afterwards spoke to his wife of the hospitalities offered to him in Warwick Square, regarding which his anger was especially hot, in that he had been treated like a child or a common labourer, instead of having the decanter left with him to be used at his own discretion. When, therefore, Mrs. Hittaway returned to him, the awe with which new circumstances and the lord had filled him was fast vanishing and giving place to that stubborn indignation against people in general, which was his normal condition. “I suppose I’m jist to gang bock again to Portray, Mrs. Heetaway, and that’ll be a’ you’ll want o’ me?” This he said the moment the lady entered the room.
But Mrs. Hittaway did not want to lose his services quite so soon. She expressed regret that her brother should have found himself unable to discuss a subject that was naturally so very distasteful to him, and begged Mr. Gowran to come to her again the next morning. “What I saw wi’ my ain twa e’es, Mrs. Heetaway, I saw, and nane the less because his lairdship may nae find it jist tasteful, as your leddyship was saying. There were them twa a-colloguing, and a-seetting ilk in ither’s laps a’ o’er, and a-keessing — yes, my leddy, a-keessing as females, not to say males, ought nae to keess unless they be mon and wife — and then not amang the rocks, my leddy; and if his lairdship does nae care to hear tell o’ it, and finds it nae tasteful, as your leddyship was saying, he should nae ha’ sent for Andy Gowran a’ the way from Portray, jist to tell him what he wanna hear, now I’m come to tell’t to him!”
All this was said with so much unction that even Mrs. Hittaway herself found it to be not “tasteful.” She shrunk and shivered under Mr. Gowran’s eloquence, and almost repented of her zeal. But women, perhaps, feel less repugnance than men do at using ignoble assistance in the achievement of good purposes. Though Mrs. Hittaway shrunk and shivered under the strong action with which Mr. Gowran garnished his strong words, still she was sure of the excellence of her purpose; and believing that useful aid might still be obtained from Andy Gowran, and perhaps prudently anxious to get value in return for the cost of the journey up from Ayrshire, she made the man promise to return to her on the following morning.
Between her son, and her married daughter, and Lucy Morris, poor Lady Fawn’s life had become a burthen to her. Everything was astray, and there was no happiness or tranquillity at Fawn Court. Of all simply human creeds, the strongest existing creed for the present in the minds of the Fawn ladies was that which had reference to the general iniquity of Lizzie Eustace. She had been the cause of all these sorrows, and she was hated so much the more because she had not been proved to be iniquitous before all the world. There had been a time when it seemed to be admitted that she was so wicked in keeping the diamonds in opposition to the continued demands made for them by Mr. Camperdown, that all people would be justified in dropping her, and Lord Fawn among the number. But since the two robberies public opinion had veered round three or four points in Lizzie’s favour and people were beginning to say that she had been ill-used. Then had come Mrs. Hittaway’s evidence as to Lizzie’s wicked doings down in Scotland — the wicked doings which Andy Gowran had described with a vehemence so terribly moral — and that which had been at first, as it were, added to the diamonds, as a supplementary weight thrown into the scale so that Lizzie’s iniquities might bring her absolutely to the ground, had gradually assumed the position of being the first charge against her. Lady Fawn had felt no aversion to discussing the diamonds. When Lizzie was called a “thief,” and a “robber,” and a “swindler,” by one or another of the ladies of the family — who, in using those strong terms, whispered the words as ladies are wont to do when they desire to lessen the impropriety of the strength of their language by the gentleness of the tone in which the words are spoken — when Lizzie was thus described in Lady Fawn’s hearing in her own house, she had felt no repugnance to it. It was well that the fact should be known, so that everybody might be aware that her son was doing right in refusing to marry so wicked a lady. But when the other thing was added to it; when the story was told of what Mr. Gowran had seen among the rocks, and when gradually that became the special crime which was to justify her son in dropping the lady’s acquaintance, then Lady Fawn became very unhappy, and found the subject to be, as Mrs. Hittaway had described it, very distasteful.
And this trouble hit Lucy Morris as hard as it did Lord Fawn. If Lizzie Eustace was unfit to marry Lord Fawn because of these things, then was Frank Greystock not only unfit to marry Lucy, but most unlikely to do so, whether fit or unfit. For a week or two Lady Fawn had allowed herself to share Lucy’s joy, and to believe that Mr. Greystock would prove himself true to the girl whose heart he had made all his own; but she had soon learned to distrust the young member of Parliament who was always behaving insolently to her son, who spent his holidays down with Lizzie Eustace, who never visited and rarely wrote to the girl he had promised to marry, and as to whom all the world agreed in saying that he was far too much in debt to marry any woman who had not means to help him. It was all sorrow and vexation together; and yet when her married daughter would press the subject upon her, and demand her co-operation, she had no power of escaping.
“Mamma,” Mrs. Hittaway had said, “Lady Glencora Palliser has been with her, and everybody is taking her up, and if her conduct down in Scotland isn’t proved, Frederic will be made to marry her.”
“But what can I do, my dear?” Lady Fawn had asked, almost in tears.
“Insist that Frederic shall know the whole truth,” replied Mrs. Hittaway with energy. “Of course it is very disagreeable. Nobody can feel it more than I do. It is horrible to have to talk about such things, and to think of them.”
“Indeed it is, Clara, very horrible.”
“But anything, mamma, is better than that Frederic should be allowed to marry such a woman as that. It must be proved to him — how unfit she is to be his wife.” With the view of carrying out this intention, Mrs. Hittaway had, as we have seen, received Andy Gowran at her own house; and with the same view she took Andy Gowran the following morning down to Richmond.
Mrs. Hittaway, and her mother, and Andy were closeted together for half an hour, and Lady Fawn suffered grievously. Lord Fawn had found that he couldn’t hear the story, and he had not heard it. He had been strong enough to escape, and had, upon the whole, got the best of it in the slight skirmish which had taken place between him and the Scotchman, but poor old Lady Fawn could not escape. Andy was allowed to be eloquent, and the whole story was told to her, though she would almost sooner have been flogged at a cart’s tail than have heard it. Then “rafrashments” were administered to Andy of a nature which made him prefer Fawn Court to Warwick Square, and he was told that he might go back to Portray as soon as he pleased.
When he was gone, Mrs. Hittaway opened her mind to her mother altogether. “The truth is, mamma, that Frederic will marry her.”
“But why? I thought that he had declared that he would give it up. I thought that he had said so to herself.”
“What of that, if he retracts what he said? He is so weak. Lady Glencora Palliser has made him promise to go and see her; and he is to go today. He is there now, probably, at this very moment. If he had been firm, the thing was done. After all that has taken place, nobody would ever have supposed that his engagement need go for anything. But what can he say to her now that he is in with her, except just do the mischief all over again? I call it quite wicked in that woman’s interfering. I do, indeed! She’s a nasty, insolent, impertinent creature; that’s what she is. After all the trouble I’ve taken, she comes and undoes it all with one word.”
“What can we do, Clara?”
“Well; I do believe that if Frederic could be made to act as he ought to do, just for a while, she would marry her cousin, Mr. Greystock, and then there would be an end of it altogether. I really think that she likes him best, and from all that I can hear she would take him now, if Frederic would only keep out of the way. As for him, of course he is doing his very best to get her. He has not one shilling to rub against another, and is over head and ears in debt.”
“Poor Lucy!” ejaculated Lady Fawn.
“Well, yes; but really that is a matter of course. I always thought, mamma, that you and Amelia were a little wrong to coax her up in that belief.”
“But, my dear, the man proposed for her in the plainest possible manner. I saw his letter.”
“No doubt; men do propose. We all know that. I’m sure I don’t know what they get by it, but I suppose it amuses them. There used to be a sort of feeling that if a man behaved badly something would be done to him; but that’s all over now. A man may propose to whom he likes, and if he chooses to say afterwards that it doesn’t mean anything, there’s nothing in the world to bring him to book.”
“That’s very hard,” said the elder lady, of whom everybody said that she did not understand the world as well as her daughter.
“The girls — they all know that it is so, and I suppose it comes to the same thing in the long run. The men have to marry, and what one girl loses another girl gets.”
“It will kill Lucy.”
“Girls ain’t killed so easy, mamma — not now-a-days. Saying that it will kill her won’t change the man’s nature. It wasn’t to be expected that such a man as Frank Greystock, in debt, and in Parliament, and going to all the best houses, should marry your governess. What was he to get by it? That’s what I want to know.”
“I suppose he loved her.”
“Laws, mamma, how antediluvian you are! No doubt he did like her — after his fashion; though what he saw in her, I never could tell. I think Miss Morris would make a very nice wife for a country clergyman who didn’t care how poor things were. But she has no style; and as far as I can see she has no beauty. Why should such a man as Frank Greystock tie himself by the leg for ever to such a girl as that? But, mamma, he doesn’t mean to marry Lucy Morris. Would he have been going on in that way with his cousin down in Scotland had he meant it? He means nothing of the kind. He means to marry Lady Eustace’s income if he can get it; and she would marry him before the summer, if only we could keep Frederic away from her.”
Mrs. Hittaway demanded from her mother that in season and out of season she should be urgent with Lord Fawn, impressing upon him the necessity of waiting, in order that he might see how false Lady Eustace was to him; and also that she should teach Lucy Morris how vain were all her hopes. If Lucy Morris would withdraw her claims altogether the thing might probably be more quickly and more surely managed. If Lucy could be induced to tell Frank that she withdrew her claim, and that she saw how impossible it was that they should ever be man and wife, then — so argued Mrs. Hittaway — Frank would at once throw himself at his cousin’s feet, and all the difficulty would be over. The abominable, unjustifiable, and insolent interference of Lady Glencora just at the present moment would be the means of undoing all the good that had been done, unless it could be neutralised by some such activity as this. The necklace had absolutely faded away into nothing. The sly creature was almost becoming a heroine on the strength of the necklace. The very mystery with which the robberies were pervaded was acting in her favour. Lord Fawn would absolutely be made to marry her — forced into it by Lady Glencora and that set — unless the love affair between her and her cousin, of which Andy Gowran was able to give such sufficient testimony, could in some way be made available to prevent it.
The theory of life and system on which social matters should be managed, as displayed by her married daughter, was very painful to poor old Lady Fawn. When she was told that under the new order of things promises from gentlemen were not to be looked upon as binding, that love was to go for nothing, that girls were to be made contented by being told that when one lover was lost another could be found, she was very unhappy. She could not disbelieve it all, and throw herself back upon her faith in virtue, constancy, and honesty. She rather thought that things had changed for the worse since she was young, and that promises were not now as binding as they used to be. She herself had married into a Liberal family, had a Liberal son, and would have called herself a Liberal; but she could not fail to hear from others, her neighbours, that the English manners, and English principles, and English society were all going to destruction in consequence of the so-called liberality of the age. Gentlemen, she thought, certainly did do things which gentlemen would not have done forty years ago; and as for ladies — they, doubtless, were changed altogether. Most assuredly she could not have brought an Andy Gowran to her mother to tell such tales in their joint presence as this man had told!
Mrs. Hittaway had ridiculed her for saying that poor Lucy would die when forced to give up her lover. Mrs. Hittaway had spoken of the necessity of breaking up that engagement without a word of anger against Frank Greystock. According to Mrs. Hittaway’s views Frank Greystock had amused himself in the most natural way in the world when he asked Lucy to be his wife. A governess like Lucy had been quite foolish to expect that such a man as Greystock was in earnest. Of course she must give up her lover; and if there must be blame she, must blame herself for her folly! Nevertheless, Lady Fawn was so soft-hearted that she believed that the sorrow would crush Lucy, even if it did not kill her.
But not the less was it her duty to tell Lucy what she thought to be the truth. The story of what had occurred among the rocks at Portray was very disagreeable, but she believed it to be true. The man had been making love to his cousin after his engagement to Lucy. And then, was it not quite manifest that he was neglecting poor Lucy in every way? He had not seen her for nearly six months. Had he intended to marry her, would he not have found a home for her at the deanery? Did he in any respect treat her as he would treat the girl whom he intended to marry? Putting all these things together, Lady Fawn thought that she saw that Lucy’s case was hopeless; and, so thinking, wrote to her the following letter:
“FAWN COURT, 3d March, 18 —
“DEAREST LUCY: I have so much to say to you that I did think of getting Lady Linlithgow to let you come to us here for a day, but I believe it will perhaps be better that I should write. I think you leave Lady Linlithgow after the first week in April, and it is quite necessary that you should come to some fixed arrangement as to the future. If that were all, there need not be any trouble, as you will come here, of course. Indeed, this is your natural home, as we all feel; and I must say that we have missed you most terribly since you went, not only for Cecilia and Nina, but for all of us. And I don’t know that I should write at all if it wasn’t for something else, that must be said sooner or later; because, as to your coming here in April, that is so much a matter of course. The only mistake was, that you should ever have gone away. So we shall expect you here on whatever day you may arrange with Lady Linlithgow as to leaving her.” (The poor, dear lady went on repeating her affectionate invitation, because of the difficulty she encountered in finding words with which to give the cruel counsel which she thought that it was her duty to offer.)
“And now, dearest Lucy, I must say what I believe to be the truth about Mr. Greystock. I think that you should teach yourself to forget him, or at any rate, that you should teach yourself to forget the offer which he made to you last autumn. Whether he was or was not in earnest then, I think that he has now determined to forget it. I fear there is no doubt that he has been making love to his cousin, Lady Eustace. You well know that I should not mention such a thing, if I had not the strongest possible grounds to convince me that I ought to do so. But, independent of this, his conduct to you during the last six months has been such as to make us all feel sure that the engagement is distasteful to him. He has probably found himself so placed that he cannot marry without money, and has wanted the firmness, or perhaps you will say the hardness of heart, to say so openly. I am sure of this, and so is Amelia, that it will be better for you to give the matter up altogether, and to come here and recover the blow among friends who will be as kind to you as possible. I know all that you will feel, and you have my fullest sympathy; but even such sorrows as that are cured by time, and by the mercy of God, which is not only infinite, but all-powerful.
“Your most affectionate friend,
“C. FAWN.”
Lady Fawn, when she had written her letter, discussed it with Amelia, and the two together agreed that Lucy would never surmount the ill effects of the blow which was thus prophesied. “As to saying it will kill her, mamma,” said Amelia, “I don’t believe in that. If I were to break my leg, the accident might shorten my life, and this may shorten hers. It won’t kill her in any other way. But it will alter her altogether. Nobody ever used to make herself happy so easily as Lucy Morris, but all that will be gone now.”
When Lucy received the letter, the immediate effect upon her, the effect which came from the first reading of it, was not very great. She succeeded for some half-hour in putting it aside, as referring to a subject on which she had quite made up her mind in a direction contrary to that indicated by her correspondent’s advice. Lady Fawn told her that her lover intended to be false to her. She had thought the matter over very carefully within the last day or two, and had altogether made up her mind that she would continue to trust her lover. She had abstained from sending to him the letter which she had written, and had abstained on that resolution. Lady Fawn, of course, was as kind and friendly as a friend could be. She loved Lady Fawn dearly. But she was not bound to think Lady Fawn right, and in this instance she did not think Lady Fawn right. So she folded up the letter and put it in her pocket.
But by putting the letter into her pocket she could not put it out of her mind. Though she had resolved, of what use to her was a resolution in which she could not trust? Day had passed by after day, week after week, and month after month, and her very soul within her had become sad for want of seeing this man, who was living almost in the next street to her. She was ashamed to own to herself how many hours she had sat at the window, thinking that, perhaps, he might walk before the house in which he knew that she was immured. And, even had it been impossible that he should come to her, the post was open to him. She had scorned to write to him oftener than he would write to her, and now their correspondence had dwindled almost to nothing. He knew as well as did Lady Fawn when the period of her incarceration in Lady Linlithgow’s dungeon would come to an end; and he knew, too, how great had been her hope that she might be accepted as a guest at the deanery when that period should arrive. He knew that she must look for a new home, unless he would tell her where she should live. Was it likely, was it possible, that he should be silent so long if he still intended to make her his wife? No doubt he had come to remember his debts, to remember his ambition, to think of his cousin’s wealth, and to think also of his cousin’s beauty. What right had she ever had to hope for such a position as that of his wife, she who had neither money nor beauty, she who had nothing to give him in return for his name and the shelter of his house beyond her mind and her heart? As she thought of it all, she looked down upon her faded gray frock, and stood up that she might glance at her features in the glass; and she saw how small she was and insignificant, and reminded herself that all she had in the world was a few pounds which she had saved and was still saving in order that she might go to him with decent clothes upon her back. Was it reasonable that she should expect it?
But why had he come to her and made her thus wretched? She could acknowledge to herself that she had been foolish, vain, utterly ignorant of her own value in venturing to hope; perhaps unmaidenly in allowing it to be seen that she had hoped; but what was he in having first exalted her before all her friends, and then abasing her so terribly and bringing her to such utter shipwreck? From spoken or written reproaches she could of course abstain. She would neither write or speak any; but from unuttered reproaches how could she abstain? She had called him a traitor once in playful, loving irony, during those few hours in which her love had been to her a luxury that she could enjoy. But now he was a traitor indeed. Had he left her alone she would have loved him in silence, and not have been wretched in her love. She would, she knew, in that case, have had vigour enough and sufficient strength of character to bear her burden without outward signs of suffering, without any inward suffering that would have disturbed the current of her life. But now everything was over with her. She had no thought of dying, but her future life was a blank to her.
She came down-stairs to sit at lunch with Lady Linlithgow, and the old woman did not perceive that anything was amiss with her companion. Further news had been heard of Lizzie Eustace, and of Lord Fawn, and of the robberies, and the countess declared how she had read in the newspapers that one man was already in custody for the burglary at the house in Hertford Street. From that subject she went on to tidings which had reached her from her old friend Lady Clantantram that the Fawn marriage was on again. “Not that I believe it, my dear; because I think that Mr. Greystock has made it quite safe in that quarter.” All this Lucy heard, and never showed by a single sign, or by a motion of a muscle, that she was in pain. Then Lady Linlithgow asked her what she meant to do after the 5th of April. “I don’t see at all why you shouldn’t stay here, if you like it, Miss Morris; that is, if you have abandoned the stupid idea of an engagement with Frank Greystock.” Lucy smiled, and even thanked the countess, and said that she had made up her mind to go back to Richmond for a month or two, till she could get another engagement as a governess. Then she returned to her room and sat again at her window, looking out upon the street.
What did it matter now where she went? And yet she must go somewhere, and do something. There remained to her the wearisome possession of herself, and while she lived she must eat, and have clothes, and require shelter. She could not dawdle out a bitter existence under Lady Fawn’s roof, eating the bread of charity, hanging about the rooms and shrubberies useless and idle. How bitter to her was that possession of herself, as she felt that there was nothing good to be done with the thing so possessed! She doubted even whether ever again she could become serviceable as a governess, and whether the energy would be left to her of earning her bread by teaching adequately the few things that she knew. But she must make the attempt, and must go on making it, till God in his mercy should take her to himself.
And yet but a few months since life had been so sweet to her! As she felt this she was not thinking of those short days of excited feverish bliss, in which she had believed that all the good things of the world were to be showered into her lap; but of previous years in which everything had been with her as it was now — with the one exception that she had not then been deceived. She had been full of smiles, and humour, and mirth, absolutely happy among her friends, though conscious of the necessity of earning her bread by the exercise of a most precarious profession, while elated by no hope. Though she had loved the man and had been hopeless, she was happy. But now, surely, of all maidens, and of all women, she was the most forlorn.
Having once acceded to the truth of Lady Fawn’s views, she abandoned all hope. Everybody said so, and it was so. There was no word from any side to encourage her. The thing was done and over, and she would never mention his name again. She would simply beg of all the Fawns that no allusion might be made to him in her presence. She would never blame him, and certainly she would never praise him. As far as she could rule her tongue, she would never have his name upon her lips again.
She thought for a time that she would send the letter which she had already written. Any other letter she could not bring herself to write. Even to think of him was an agony to her; but to communicate her thoughts to him was worse than agony. It would be almost madness. What need was there for any letter? If the thing was done it was done. Perhaps there remained with her, staying by her without her own knowledge, some faint spark of hope, that even yet he might return to her. At last she resolved that there should be no letter, and she destroyed that which she had written.
But she did write a note to Lady Fawn, in which she gratefully accepted her old friend’s kindness till such time as she could “find a place.” “As to that other subject,” she said, “I know that you are right. Please let it all be as though it had never been.”