‘What the devil,’ wrote Dysart, without preamble, ‘is the use of setting up a squawk for me to come and see you if the next thing you do is to go jauntering off to a picnic? I can’t wait to see you, for I’m going out of town for a day or two, but you may as well stop fretting and fuming, because I have hit on a way of setting all to rights, and more besides. I shan’t tell you what it is because ten to one you would not like it, for I never knew anyone with more buffleheaded scruples. I daresay you would have tried to throw a rub in the way, had you been at home, so I am just as glad you are not. If that hog-grubbing mantua-maker of yours starts dunning you again before I get back to town tell her she shall be paid before the week’s out. Now, don’t be in a pucker, my dear Sister, for we shan’t fail this time, and don’t get to wondering if I’ve sold your precious sapphires, or anything else you doat on, for I have not. Your affectionate brother, Dysart. P.S. I greased Farley in the fist not to tell Cardross I was in the house, and your porter too – at least, I shall – so don’t go blurting it out to him like a ninny-hammer.’
Having read this twice, Nell’s spirits rose a little. There seemed to be no doubt that Dysart really had discovered a way of paying her debt, though what it could be she had not the remotest guess. It made her uneasy to read that she would not like it; but since he had been indignant with her for supposing that he would play the highwayman in earnest, and had now assured her that he had not taken her jewels, she did not think it could be anything very bad. He wrote with such certainty that her first sharp fear died: even Dysart would not have stated so positively that they would not fail this time had the matter rested on the turn of a card, or the fall of the dice. The worst would be if he had backed himself to perform some crazy exploit, and his going out of town made this appear rather probable. Nell knew that he had jumped his horse over that famous dinner-table because someone had betted heavily against his being able to perform the feat. She knew also that no dependence could be placed on his refusing a dangerous wager, because he was so much a stranger to fear that his anxious relatives had more than once entertained the unnerving suspicion that he was incapable of recognizing peril, even though it stared at him in the face. Vague but hideous possibilities began to suggest themselves to her, but before she had made herself quite sick with apprehension common sense reasserted itself, and she thought what a fool she was to suppose that even the most totty-headed of his cronies would offer him a wager the acceptance of which would put him in danger of breaking his neck.
For twenty-four hours she hung between hope and fear, and then a blow more crushing than any she had thought possible almost annihilated her. She had come in to find a message awaiting her that called for an immediate answer, and taking it upstairs with her, sat down at the tambour-top writing-table in her dressing-room to scribble a reply before ringing for Sutton to dress her for dinner. She had just signed her name and was about to shake the pounce-box over the single sheet of paper, when the door opened behind her, and Sutton’s voice said: ‘Oh, my lady!’
Sutton sounded agitated. Thinking that she must suppose herself to have been sent for long since (for the only thing that ever ruffled her stately calm was the degrading suspicion that she had fallen short of her own rigid standard), Nell said cheerfully: ‘Yes, I am come home, but I had not pulled my bell, so don’t be thinking you are late! The India mull-muslin with the short train will do very well for tonight.’
‘It’s not that, my lady!’ Sutton said. ‘It is the necklace!’
‘The necklace?’ Nell repeated uncomprehendingly.
‘The necklace of diamonds and emeralds which your ladyship never wears, and which we placed for safety in this very cupboard!’ said Sutton tragically. ‘Between the folds of the blue velvet pelisse your ladyship wore last winter, where no one would think to look for such a thing! Oh, my lady, it is more than an hour since I made the discovery, and how I have found the strength to keep me on my feet I know not! Never in all my years of service has such a thing happened to any of my ladies! Gone, my lady!’
Nell sat turned to stone. As the appalling implication flashed into her brain she found herself unable to move or to speak. The colour drained away from her very lips, but her back was still turned to her dresser, and Sutton did not see how near she was to fainting.
‘I took your ladyship’s winter garments out to brush them, and be sure there was no moth crept in, which is always my practice, for too often, my lady, and particularly when a garment is trimmed with fur, will it be found that camphor does not prevail! The case the necklace was laid in was there still, but when I lifted it I thought it felt too light, and the dreadful suspicion came to me – My lady, I opened it, and it was empty!’
A voice which Nell knew must be her own, for all it did not seem to belong to her, said: ‘Good God, what a fright you put me into, Sutton!’
‘My lady?’
Sutton sounded startled. Nell set the pounce-box down with a shaking hand, her underlip gripped between her teeth. She had overcome her faintness: one must not faint in such an extremity as this. ‘But surely I told you, Sutton?’ she said.
‘Told me, my lady?’
She was beginning to see her way: not more than a few steps of it yet. ‘Did I not? How stupid! Yet I thought I had done so. Don’t – don’t be afraid! It hasn’t been stolen.’
‘You have it safe, my lady?’ Sutton cried eagerly.
‘Yes. That is – no, it – I took it to Jeffreys.’
‘You took it to Jeffreys, my lady?’ Sutton repeated, in an astonished tone. ‘Indeed you never told me! And to remove it from the case – ! Never say you stuffed it into your reticule! My lady, it is not my place to say so, but you should not! Why, you might have dropped it, or had it snatched from you! It gives one palpitations only to think of it!’
‘Nonsense! It was safer by far in my reticule. I hope you may not have told anyone – any of the other servants – that it was stolen? If you have, it must make them very – very uncomfortable – in case they should be suspected of having taken it!’
‘Not to a living soul have I opened my lips!’ declared Sutton, drawing herself up rather rigidly. ‘I should think it very improper, my lady, to make such a disclosure to anyone other than your ladyship.’
‘I am so glad! The thing is, you see, that I have some notion of wearing it – at our own ball here. I thought, perhaps, with the pale green gauze I might not dislike it. So – I put it on, to see how it would be – yes, on Thursday last, when you went to visit your sister! – and it seemed to me that the clasp was not quite safe. That is why I took it to Jeffreys.’
‘Well, my lady,’ said Sutton, rapidly recovering her poise, ‘it is a prodigious relief to me to know that my alarm need not have been. I am sure I was never nearer in my life to suffering a spasm.’
She then folded her lips tightly, dropped a stiff curtsey, and withdrew to the adjoining room to lay out the evening-gown of India mull-muslin.
Nell tried to rise from her chair, found that her knees were shaking, and sank back again. She had staved off immediate discovery, but what to do next she had no idea, nor could she, for many minutes, force her stunned mind to think. Only pictures as useless as they were unwelcome presented themselves to her: of herself, taking the necklace from its hiding-place to show it to Dysart – oh, months ago! of Dysart, seated at this very desk, and writing to tell her that he had not taken her sapphires, or anything else she doted on; of Cardross’s face, when he had spoken to her so harshly about Dysart, and then, quite suddenly, had checked himself. She uttered a stifled moan, and covered her eyes with her hand. Dysart knew she didn’t like the Cardross necklace, but how could he have supposed that it was hers to dispose of at will? Or didn’t he care?
It was fruitless to ask herself such questions as that: no answer could be forthcoming until Dysart himself gave it to her. And that at once raised another question, and a far more ur
gent one: where was Dysart? It seemed to her at first incomprehensible that he should have left London; but presently it occurred to her that it might be very dangerous to sell the necklace to any London jeweller or pawnbroker. She knew very little about such matters, but she believed it was quite a famous piece; and certainly there could be no mistaking it, if once one had seen it. It had been made a long time ago, in the time of Elizabeth, as a wedding-gift from the Cardross of that age to his bride, and it figured in more than one family portrait. It was, moreover, of unusual workmanship, for the jewels were set in the semblance of flowers and foliage, and every flower trembled on the end of a tiny spiral of gold. Nell had worn it once only, at a Drawing-Room, but although it had excited a good deal of admiration, and not a little curiosity (for no one could imagine what held the jewel-clusters quite half an inch clear of Nell’s breast, or what caused them to nod and quiver with every movement she made), she knew that it did not really become her; there were too many clusters, too much twisted gold in the foundation from which they sprang, too many leaves of flashing emeralds. She had once told Cardross that he ought to lend it to a museum, but although he had agreed that the proper place for it was in a glass case he liked her to wear it on state occasions, and so it had never gone to a museum. But even though it had not been publicly shown she supposed it must be well enough known to make Dysart seek a buyer for it in the provinces. She wondered hopelessly how he expected her to conceal the loss, whether he had found some craftsman skilled enough to copy the necklace, or whether (and this was the best she could hope) he had not sold, but pledged it.
She became aware of Sutton, coughing discreetly in the adjoining room. It was growing late, and though one might stand on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster one was still obliged to dress for dinner. She got up, steadier now, but with so white a face and such a look of strain in her eyes that Sutton, when she saw her come into the bedchamber, exclaimed that she was ill. She glanced at her own reflection in the mirror, and was startled to see how hagged she looked. She forced up a smile, and said: ‘Not ill, but I have had the headache all day. You must rouge my cheeks a little.’
‘If I may say it, my lady, I had as lief see you laid down in your bed. I am sure none knows better than I what it is to have the migraine.’
Nell shook her head, but she consented to swallow a few drops of laudanum in water, feeling that even though she had no migraine she had never stood in more urgent need of a composer.
The finishing touches had just been put to her toilette when Cardross sought admittance to the room. A sudden terror that Sutton might mention the disappearance of the necklace to him darted through Nell’s mind, and made her tongue cleave to the roof of her mouth; but Sutton did not speak. Her face was always rather immobile, and in Cardross’s presence it became mask-like. She dropped a slight curtsey, and at once withdrew, according to her correct practice. Nell remembered that she held men in abhorrence, and could breathe again.
Cardross was still habited in his morning-dress, and the sight of his blue coat and tasselled Hessians made Nell recollect, with relief, that he was not dining at home that evening. She said, with an effort at lightness: ‘Ah! Daffy Club, I collect!’
He smiled. ‘No: Cribb’s Parlour! You have no engagement for tonight?’
‘No, none. I am quite thankful for it! I have had the headache all day, and am not rid of it yet.’
‘For several days, I think.’
Her eyes flew to his, at once startled and wary. ‘No – but I own I am worn to a bone with dissipation!’
‘By something, at all events.’ He spoke very evenly, but his expression alarmed her. ‘I could almost suppose you to be love-lorn – as love-lorn as Letty!’
She looked rather blindly at him. A tragic little smile wavered on her lips, but she turned her head away, not answering.
‘I can only wish you a speedy recovery,’ he said. ‘Who is the man so fortunate as to have hit your fancy? No doubt some dashing sprig of fashion?’
‘I think you must be trying to joke me,’ she said, her face still averted. ‘It is not kind – when I have the headache!’
‘You must forgive me.’ After a slight pause, he added: ‘I came to tell you – and I trust it may relieve your headache – that I learned today that Allandale has gone into the country for a couple of nights, on a visit to an uncle, or some such thing. You may relax your vigilance – and I would he might remain out of town until he sets sail!’
‘I can’t blame you for that. I know you have had a great deal to vex you.’
‘Do you?’ he said. ‘Well! it is something that you should own it, I suppose!’
Eleven
The night, though she spent the better part of it in desperate thought, brought Nell no counsel, and certainly no comfort. While Dysart remained out of her reach there seemed to be nothing she could do. There was no way, even, of finding him, for though they might know, at his lodgings, where he had gone, she could not follow him. Yet of all things that was the most important, to find Dysart before he had sold the necklace. She wondered, since that could not be done, whether he would be able to recover it for her. Lavalle’s bill suddenly became a matter of little significance: so much so that she was vaguely surprised she should have thought it so impossible to tell Cardross about it. It seemed a trivial thing, set beside the loss of the necklace, and far too trivial a thing to have led to the disaster which now confronted her. The maxims of her childhood reproached her; almost she could see Miss Wilby’s grave countenance when she lectured her charges on the awful consequences of trying to conceal a fault. Miss Wilby had had plenty of examples to cite, but not even the awe-inspiring tale of the abandoned character whose dreadful end upon the scaffold could be traced back, through a series of crimes, to the fatal day when he had stolen the jam from his mother’s cupboard, and denied it, was more terrible than the consequences of Nell’s attempt to deceive Cardross. She had been afraid that confession would make it impossible for him to believe that she had married him for love, and not for his fortune; and now it seemed dreadfully probable that he would not care any longer whether she loved him or not. She had made him suspicious of her; there was a hard look in his eyes; and not once, since his return from Merion, had he attempted to do more than kiss her hand. If his love were not already dead, the discovery of her black wickedness would surely give it its coup de grâce.
She fell asleep with the dawn, but suffered uneasy dreams, and woke to full sunlight with heavy eyes, and a heavier heart.
She received no morning visit from Cardross, and he had left the house before she emerged from her room, looking, according to his sister, a perfect quiz, in a blue and yellow striped waistcoat, and a spotted cravat. From this unflattering description Nell realized that it must be one of the days when the Four-Horse Club met in George Street, and drove out to dine at Salt Hill. ‘Very likely!’ said Letty. ‘Though why they have to make such figures of themselves I cannot conceive!’
She then informed Nell that her cousin Selina had sent a note round to beg her to go with her in her mama’s carriage to choose a wedding-gift for Fanny. She added, with the light of battle in her eyes, that she supposed there could be no objection to that scheme.
Nell was glad to be able to acquiesce. She had no great liking for Miss Selina Thorne, but if Mr Allandale had gone into the country it was hard to see what harm could come of allowing Letty out of her sight for an hour or two. She did indeed suggest, when she saw that Mrs Thorne had not sent a maid with her daughter, that Martha should accompany the young ladies, but Letty scoffed at her for a prude; and Selina exclaimed rather pertly that of all odious things a servant listening to one’s private conversations was the worst. Nell had a momentary vision of the cousins with their heads together, giggling over secrets, and thought, not for the first time, that Selina would have been the better for a course of Miss Wilby’s discipline. She said no more, however; and
after arguing for a few minutes about the nature of the gifts to be chosen, the girls went away, their first objective, Nell guessed, being the Pantheon Bazaar, in which fascinating mart, though they might not discover a suitable wedding-gift, they would certainly fritter away a good deal of money on ingenious trifles for themselves. Nell was too glad to see Letty in better spirits, and too anxious to be left to the indulgence of some quiet reflection, to raise any objection to this programme.
Her quiet reflection did nothing to raise the tone of her own spirits; but when Letty returned, much later in the day, she was seen to be in a sunnier humour than she had been for some time. As Nell had expected, she was laden with parcels, most of which were found to contain such doubtful purchases as a pair of perkale gloves, which it had seemed a pity not to buy, since they were so cheap, but which, on second thoughts, Letty thought she would give to Martha; a stocking-purse; several faggots of artificial flowers, one of which she generously presented to Nell; a gauze apron; two muslin handkerchiefs; a box of honeysuckle soap; and a Turkish lappet, which had hit her fancy at the time, but which, now that she saw it again, was quite hideous. For Fanny she had purchased a gold armlet and ear-rings, a handsome gift which made Nell exclaim: ‘Good gracious! I had not thought you could afford anything so dear!’
‘No, but I asked Giles, and he said I might purchase what I liked,’ replied Letty unconcernedly.
This seemed to indicate that a truce had been declared. The impression was strengthened by Letty’s next words, which were uttered after a thoughtful pause. ‘He says it is true that he told you that you might invite Jeremy to dine here.’
‘Of course it is true!’
‘Well, I thought very likely it was a hum, but if it was not I expect it was your notion, and you coaxed him into it. I am very much obliged to you! When will you write to Jeremy?’