Shutting her eyes, the girl pressed her fingers against the lids as if they ached with weariness. The countess did show some signs of sympathy.
"My poor dear Violet, do get between the sheets, and get all the sleep you can; sleep the clock round, if you like. Is your foot still bad? Shall I come up and help you into bed?"
"No, thank you, Margaret; my foot isn't all that I could wish it to be, but I think I can manage. If you only knew how much I want to be alone!"
There was a pathetic something in the girl's voice which touched the other's heart; there was such a ring of sincerity in the expression of her desire to be alone.
She suffered the girl to go, so conscious of her wish to escape the scrutiny of even friendly eyes that she did not turn to look at her. When the pit-pat of her slippered feet had died away, her ladyship said to herself, with rueful visage:
"That girl's in a mood for anything; I'm not sure that I was wise to let her go alone; but how could I thrust myself upon her craving for solitude? I only hope she'll do nothing worse than she's done already. Now, who's that? Is she coming back again, or is it Jane Simmons? Those steps belong to neither-that's Rupert; he's found out that I'm missing, and he's coming dashing after me."
The lady's surmise proved to be correct; someone was "dashing" after her, two or three stairs at a time-a gentleman who, rushing out into the hall, looked about him; then, espying her, exclaimed:
"Margaret! You little wretch! If you only knew what a fright you gave me. What the dickens made you get out of bed, out of the room, at this time of the morning and slip down here?"
"Business."
"Business! What in thunder do you mean by business?"
The gentleman approached close to the lady's side; she was looking up at him with the demurest smile.
"Rupert, I've had a dream."
"You've had a what? What's that you're holding?"
"That's the dream."
"The dream? What are you talking about-it's a bag."
"Precisely, it is a bag, and the bag's the dream."
She observed him with a look in her big, wide open eyes which made them seem almost as if they were a child's.
"Are you dreaming still, or am I?"
She replied to his question with another.
"Rupert, do you always believe every word I say?"
"Well" – he made a sound as if he might have been clearing his throat-"that depends."
"At least you must believe every word I am going to tell you now; you hear, Rupert, you must. You know what those people said last night about the things they had lost?"
"Am I likely to have forgotten? Am I ever likely to forget?"
"Rupert-now this is the part which you have to believe-I dreamt that all those things were in a leather bag which was in this chest."
"Great Cæsar's ghost!"
"The dream was so real that, when I woke, I had to come downstairs to see if it was true-and it was."
"You don't mean it!"
"There is the chest; in it was this bag; and in the bag I do believe are all the jewels which were lost-including my own. Isn't that-wonderful?"
"It's more than wonderful, young woman, it's-"
She put her small hand up to his lips and stopped him, commenting on his sentence as if it had been finished.
"I quite agree with you, Rupert, it is delightful; nothing more fortunate could possibly have happened."
CHAPTER XXI
An Envelope
What the various ladies who had spent the night at Avonham thought when their presence was desired in Lady Cantyre's boudoir, and they found spread out upon a table an amazing assemblage of triumphs of the jeweller's art, and the countess told them that story about the dream and the bag, was not quite clear. Because, in telling her tale, the countess made it plain, not only that criticism was not invited, but also that questions would be resented, and, more, not answered.
When each lady was requested to choose her own property there ensued an animated scene. It was a regrettable fact that discussion actually arose as to who was the owner of certain trinkets. There were three diamond brooches; three ladies had lost a diamond brooch; the question arose as to which of those brooches belonged to each of them; before it was solved some very undesirable things had been said, and worse had been hinted. Nor was that the only instance of the kind; there were a couple of diamond pendants over which two ladies nearly came to blows. As one of them was unmistakably much the better of the two, it is difficult to evade the conclusion that one of them must have been a conscious liar, and, it is to be feared, even more than that.
The countess, when her guests would let her, was content to look on and smile; only when she could not help it did she essay the part of peacemaker. Although the choosing of each one's property ought to have been the simplest thing in the world, it would seem, when the task of selection was done, as if no one lady was on the best of terms with any other; a fact on which it is inconceivable that the countess had calculated as likely to prevent any undesirable discussion of her story of the dream.
"They can talk as much as they like about it afterwards," the countess had said to her husband, "but they won't have a chance of talking to me; because you and I are going for a yachting cruise which will occupy us all the spring and summer."
"What! Aren't you going to spend the season in town?"
"I am not."
"But you've had the house done up, and-no end!"
"Rupert, my health will not permit it. You are going to wire to your captain man to have the yacht ready to-morrow. I am going to see Sir James Jeffreys, and he is going to order me on board at once, because I must have sea air, and Violet Forster is coming with us."
"Is she-is that because that ankle of hers must have sea air too?"
"Surely you must be aware that there is nothing so restful to an injured ankle as the sort of life one leads on board a yacht. Please send your wire, or shall I?"
This conversation took place before the lady and gentleman had yet quitted their own apartment; he was dressed, and she had dismissed her maid. When she said that about the wire he began to snap his thumb-nail against his teeth, which was a trick he had when he was worried.
"Aren't you forgetting one thing? It's all very well for you to have a dream about that blessed bag, but I can't have a dream about that fellow Draycott. I can't start off yachting while that's in the wind."
The lady was standing, with her hands behind her back, looking down with a contemplative air at the toe of her tiny shoe as it peeped from under the hem of her dress.
"I don't see why not. Our Easter ball has not been, in all respects, the success I had hoped it would be, and usually is; but I don't see what is to be gained by your hanging about while somebody is looking into that very unpleasant affair. Indeed, it seems in itself to be a sufficient reason why you should go yachting."
The gentleman was still worriedly clicking his thumb-nail.
"It's all very well for you to talk, but things are not going to be so easy for me as they've been for you. I tell you I can't dream about a bag; I don't at all suppose that I shall be able to get away with anything like decency-not what you would call get away-for, at any rate, some days to come."
"Very well, then Violet and I will go alone; we will chaperone each other; and you will join us when you can. I presume you don't suggest that it is necessary that I should stay?"
His lordship pulled a rueful face.
"It certainly isn't necessary, because I don't suppose you'll be able to do anything, but-" He gave a little groan. "Well, I expect you're right, and after all perhaps you'd better go, and, of course, if you like, take Vi with you; she'll be a companion. I shouldn't wonder-I've a feeling in my bones that there will be a fuss made about Noel Draycott; and if there is, you'd certainly better be out of it. Upon my word, I wish we'd never had this ball; I've a kind of a sort of a feeling that the Easter ball at Avonham is going to bulk rather largely in the public eye; I see myself figuring in the public prints, and I certainly don't want to have you there. I'll wire to Slocock right away."
Captain Slocock was the officer in command of the Earl of Cantyre's well-known steam yacht Sea Bird.
The prophet was justified, there was a fuss; nothing had yet been heard of Mr. Draycott. It became a moot point whether something ought not to have been done in the matter, even in the dead of the night; it might, more than one person in the establishment became presently aware, become a very awkward subject for unpleasant future comment.
His lordship's point of view was easy to grasp; there really had been nothing to show that anything serious had happened.
Scandal was the thing most to be avoided; if the police had been called in, there would have had to be a scandal, and nothing might have suited Noel Draycott less. There might, his lordship put it, have been a discussion between Noel Draycott and, say, someone else, of a strictly personal kind, in which Draycott might have got the worst of it. It was a most regrettable incident, that such a thing should have occurred at Avonham, on the night of the Easter ball. Mr. Draycott owed an apology to his hosts and their guests; he would be called to a severe account at the very first possible moment.
Of course, Major Reith had been under a misapprehension. In the first shock of his surprise at finding the man in such a dreadful condition on the floor, he jumped to the not unnatural conclusion that he was dead, which, though natural, was absurd. Who had ever heard of a dead man picking himself up and taking himself off? Which was what Noel Draycott had done.
Where he had taken himself to was another story. He was not at the barracks, as they had learned on the telephone, but then it was hardly likely that he would be there. In that discussion with someone else, he had been pretty badly knocked about; the major's story made that clear. He would doubtless be ashamed of himself; there was probably something not nice at the back of it all. He would probably have preferred to take his broken head somewhere where there was a chance of his wounds being healed without their ever coming to the knowledge of his brother officers. What had to be ascertained was the hiding-place in which he had taken shelter.
And here something a trifle awkward cropped up; it seemed possible that he had never been either at Avonham or in that part of the country before. Then, in his state, at that hour of the night, for what quarter could he have set out, and how?
The presumption was that he had got out of the window, and shut it after him, which was in itself to presume a good deal; but as it seemed impossible that he could have gone wandering about the house-they had searched it from cellar to basement, to make sure that he was not hidden in it somewhere-he could have gone no other way. But after he had got out of the window, what then? In his then state, in the darkness, in a strange place, for what goal could he have been aiming?
The obvious answer seemed to be, none. He could not have had any cut-and-dried scheme formulated in his brain. The probability was that he had gone wandering, aimlessly, on. Then, in that case, he could scarcely have gone far; not beyond the park which extended for vast spaces about the house; he would never have found the way, even if he had been able to go the distance.
The conclusion therefore was that Noel Draycott must be somewhere within the precincts of the park, so search parties were sent off in all directions to look for him. There were quite a number of houses in the park; inquiries were made at each of these without result. One small fact did leak out, if it could be called a fact. At one of the keepers' cottages, a small child, a girl of eleven or twelve, declared that she had been awakened in the night by the noise made by a motor-car. If the child's tale was true, then it must have been after half-past three in the morning, probably after four. Her father had been kept up by the ball at the house; he had had something to do with expediting the departing guests. It was half-past three when he went home; the child was then awake, had spoken to him. She said that after her father had left her she fell asleep, and was disturbed by the motor-car; the cars and carriages, she said, had been waking her up all through the night. No one could trace that motorcar, whose it was. At that hour what could it have been doing there? The last vehicle had borne away the latest guests long before then. No one seemed to have observed the hour, but it was probably about that time that Major Reith had found Noel Draycott lying on the floor-to lose him directly afterwards. Had the belated motor-car, which that small girl asserted she had heard, anything to do with the loss?
It was not an easy question to answer.
The problem which the Earl of Cantyre, and in a lesser degree, his friend, had to solve, was, what was to be done? Should they wait for news of Noel Draycott, emanating probably from himself, or should communication be made with the police? The latter all the parties seemed to be most unwilling to do. It meant publicity. The news that the police had been summoned to Avonham would be flashed all over England inside an hour. It was just the spicy sort of tale the public would like. "Strange Occurrence in a Nobleman's Mansion": the earl could see that sort of headline staring at him from the principal news-page of a dozen different journals. "The Avonham Mystery" – that was the kind of title which some inspired journalist would fit to a commonplace, vulgar, sordid incident.
No, thank you. His lordship decided that he would not risk that sort of thing until compelled by circumstances. He would have inquiries set on foot, in a quiet way, in every possible direction; if nothing came of them it would be time to speak to the police.
One small, yet curious occurrence did, however, induce in him a momentary qualm of doubt as to whether it was really the wisest course which he was pursuing.
They had been talking in the hall-the amount of talk which was got through at Avonham that morning was beyond credibility. The earl was just marching off to his own particular sanctum, wishing with all his heart that the people would go, and that there might be peace, when he saw in the hand of a bronze figure which stood on a pedestal-an envelope. It was so placed that he could not help but notice it; as he came along it caught him full in the eye. He had passed that figure only a minute or two before; the envelope had not been there then, or he would certainly have seen it. He took it from the fingers of the outstretched hand. It was inscribed, in Roman letters which had been formed with a soft pen, "To the Earl of Cantyre."
He glanced around; no one was in sight who seemed likely to have put it there. It struck him, even in that moment of irritation, as a little odd. He tore it open. Within was a sheet of his own notepaper. On it, again in Roman letters, formed with the same soft pen, was written:
"Who stole the Ditchling diamonds?
"Sydney Beaton.
"Who killed Noel Draycott?
"Sydney Beaton.
"If in doubt apply for information to Violet Forster."
His lordship had but time to get a cursory glance at these singular questions and answers, when his wife, coming along with the Duchess of Ditchling beside her, snatched the piece of paper from his hand; it was done with a laugh, but it was none the less a snatch.
"My dear boy," she cried, "what have you got there which makes you pull such faces?"
She glanced at the paper she had captured-and her countenance was changed. Something was flashed to each other by the married couple's two pairs of eyes. Then the countess crushed the sheet of paper in her hand, and, without a word to her husband, went on with the duchess.
CHAPTER XXII
The Countess and Violet
Miss Forster's bedroom door was gently opened, and the Countess of Cantyre went softly in. She closed the door as gently as she had opened it, and, remaining motionless, looked inquiringly about her. All was still. The curtains had not yet been drawn. In the apartment, despite its size, was the stuffy smell which comes to a bedroom when the windows have not been opened through the night. Her ladyship, crossing the room, drew the curtains and threw the windows wide open. It was a lovely day; the clean, fresh air came pouring in. The room looked on to the park, over a waving expanse of green which stretched as far as the eye could reach. She stood for a moment to enjoy the glory of the morning.
"That's better," she said out loud. Then she turned to the bed.
Miss Forster's form was dimly outlined beneath the clothes. She had not moved when her visitor entered, or even when the windows were thrown open. She was either sleeping very soundly or she refused to allow herself to notice what was going on.
The countess, going to the side of the bed towards which her face was turned, stood waiting for her to show some signs of life. Presently there was a slight movement beneath the clothes, and a faint voice inquired:
"Who's that?"
"You know very well who it is."
"Margaret, is that you?"
"You know very well it's me. Who but me would take the liberty of coming into your room, drawing the curtains and opening the windows and letting in the air? If you only knew what an atmosphere you've been living in! Do you always sleep with your windows closed?"
The only answer was a sound which might have meant anything, followed by a movement beneath the clothes.
"How's the foot?"
"It seems better." The words were whispered rather than spoken.
"How are you?"
"I'm all right."
"You don't sound as if you were all right. What's become of your voice? And, if you are all right, what are you doing in bed at this hour of the day?"
"I was just going to get up."
"Were you? That's good news. There were no immediate signs of it that I could see. Vi, you and I are going yachting."
"Going what?"
"Yachting. I said yachting. Do you want me to shout? We are leaving here to-day; we are starting on the Sea Bird to-morrow for wherever Captain Slocock likes to take us; you and I alone together."
"Are we?"
"Yes, we are. Is that the dying-duck-in-a-thunderstorm sort of fashion in which you take my surprising piece of information? Move some of those bedclothes and let me see your face, or, if you won't, I will."
Her ladyship did. It was a white, wan face which looked out at her from between the sheets, so white and so wan that her ladyship was quite startled.
"Vi, what do you mean by telling me you're all right? You look like a ghost."
"I wish I were."
"What does the child mean! Whatever for?"
"If I were a ghost I should be dead."
"I see, that's it; and a good, sound, healthy idea, especially for a young woman who is scarcely more than a child."
Her ladyship, drawing forward a big arm-chair, placed herself, not on the seat, but on the back; her feet she placed on the seat. She was such a small person that if she had occupied the position which people usually do upon a chair, Violet, on her high spring mattress, would have been above the level of her head, and she, for the purpose she had in view, at a disadvantage. Balanced on the top of the back of the chair, she was at least on a level with the girl in the bed.
"Vi, I am going to talk to you. I wish I'd been made a foot longer; then I shouldn't be forced to take positions on furniture which people were never meant to take. You're going to tell me all about it. You and I have had our share of troubles in our time, and we've always made a clean breast of them to each other. Now start confessing to me."
"It's easy for you to talk."
"Of course it is; and it will be easy for you when you've once got going."
"You don't understand."
"Oh, yes, I do. Sydney Beaton was here last night."
"Margaret! How do you know?" The girl threw the bedclothes off for herself, starting up from her pillow. "Has that wretch told you?"
Her ladyship regarded the girl attentively; then shook her dainty head.
"No one has told me anything. I just guessed, though perhaps you've told me as much as you very well could."
"I told you? What do you mean?"
"My dear Vi, consider. Could your conduct have been more suggestive? Don't I know you? Aren't I aware that you're the coolest, calmest, most levelheaded of young women? Do you suppose that you acted up to that character last night? My dear Vi, something was wrong with you, so wrong that it had turned the girl I knew into one I didn't. What could it be? We know all about each other that there is to know, so that I knew that there was only one thing which could have on you such a dire effect. How did you know that leather bag was in that chest? Mind you, I'm not asking a question; I'm not trying to force your confidence; I'm only putting it to you if it isn't obvious that there was only one conclusion I could draw?"
The girl was sitting up in bed, white-faced, wild-eyed.
"Then, now you know why I wished that I was a ghost."
Again her ladyship observed her closely, her head a little on one side.
"Aren't you-doesn't it occur to you as being just barely possible that you're a goose?"
"Why am I a goose?"
"May I speak?"
"I can't stop you. You've evidently come here for that express purpose."
"I know you will misunderstand me, and fly at me, and scratch me, and do all sorts of pretty things."
Her ladyship sighed; her tone breathed resignation.
"You needn't be afraid."
"I'm not; only-Vi, if you only knew how sorry I am for you."
"I don't want your sorrow."
"Vi, I am afraid that your Sydney Beaton is a bad lot."
"Don't you dare to say it-you!"
"You can't believe that he isn't."
"I can, and I do."
"Was he Jane Simmons's catspaw, or was Jane Simmons his? I presume they were confederates. Only that could explain the little talk you had with her."
The girl clenched her fists; she drew a great breath.
"Margaret, I want to tell you just how it is with me."
"Tell on."
"I'd give-I'd jump at the chance of marrying him to-morrow."
"I'll do you the justice to say that I don't believe you. Even if you're a lunatic, you can't be absolutely raving."
"Let me explain."
"With pleasure. Your remark will need all the explanation you can lay your hands on."
"Do you know what it is-to love a man?"
"I'm rather fond of mine."
"Fond!" Nothing could have exceeded the scorn which the girl's manner was meant to convey. "Do you know what it is for your love for a man to have become so part and parcel of your being that life means nothing without him?"
"I'm glad to say I don't."
"Then, I do. So that, you see, is where we differ."
"Poor Vi!"
"Don't talk nonsense, Margaret; there's no poverty in such a state as mine. I'm far richer than you, because I have the only thing which life has to offer worth having. Don't speak; let me continue. You've read the fairy tale in which the heroine gets the gift of sight-it's an allegory. She meets one person in whose nature there is nothing hidden from her; she can see into his very heart. Now start laughing: I can see into Sydney Beaton's very heart."
"My dear, I'm very far from laughing. You're not the only girl who has thought she had that gift where a particular man was concerned. What would the police have said if they had caught the gentleman you name in the very act? You know, they don't consider motives, or peer into hearts; they only deal with facts."
"You don't understand."
"Well, make me."
"Aren't I trying to? But you will keep interrupting. Sydney has never been exactly wise-"
"So you've told me."
The girl took no heed of the interruption; she only glared.
"But I will answer for his standard of honour, and honesty, as I would for my own."
"I wouldn't."
"That's because you don't know him, as I do. They lied when they said he cheated. I spoke to some of them last night. Mr. Tickell, who was playing against him, admitted that he knew nothing about it, that he saw no wrong in anything that Sydney did, nothing in the least suspicious in his behaviour. Captain Draycott as good as owned that, in supporting Anthony Dodwell's accusation, he might have been in error; I could see for myself that that consciousness was weighing on his mind. Major Reith tells me that it was all done in the hurry and whirl of a few mad moments. They talked it over after Sydney had gone; they were all agreed that they would have liked to have him back, to have questioned him when he was cooler and they also. I haven't seen Colonel Sandys, who, you know, was in command of the regiment. I haven't had a chance. He's been abroad ever since. But I've been given to understand that, although he wasn't present, he expressed himself on the matter in terms which were unflattering to all concerned; and I've a suspicion that his feeling on the subject had something to do with his retiring. Anthony Dodwell has not become more popular since; I believe, that if the mess was polled, they'd exchange him for Sydney to-morrow."
"Not after last night, my dear."
"I'm coming to that. Until now I've not felt that it became me to interfere. I felt that Sydney might resent my interfering; that he would prefer to take the matter up in his own way, at his own time. But after last night I see how mistaken I may have been. Margaret, if you were a man of honour, consider what your feelings would be if those whom you had esteemed your friends treated you as those men did Sydney."
"It's not easy for me to put myself into such a position; but if I had been in his place, and been innocent, I think I should have recognised the danger of my position, have kept calm, and have had the matter thrashed right out."
"My dear Margaret, you don't seem to realise that all these men were half beside themselves. I can quite fancy what men can be in such a moment. Sydney wanted to fly at Dodwell's throat. I'm sure that I can't blame him; I should have wanted to do the same, wouldn't you?"
"Well, that depends. I can't say that the little I have known of Captain Dodwell has moved me to affection. But, that apart, how do you explain last night?"
"Don't I tell you that I'm coming to that? Margaret, have patience. Sydney left the barracks that night with, it is nearly certain, very little money, and half mad with rage and shame and grief. Then the curtain falls; we know nothing of what happened to him afterwards. But, in the light of last night, can't you imagine?"
"That's the pity of it-I can."
"Yes; but from one point of view only. Can't you conceive of there being another? Can't you imagine what he may have suffered in what, to him, was a new and hideous world-hopeless, helpless, friendless, penniless, alone? I can't think of any way in which Sydney could have earned a farthing, circumstanced as he was. When his money was gone, which probably lasted only a very little time, he perhaps went hungry. Oh, you don't believe that men do go hungry! My dear, since Sydney went, I've seen crowds of men, in London streets and parks and public places, who, I am convinced, go hungry nearly all the time. Margaret-again I give you permission to laugh-as I've been lying here between the sheets I've seen Sydney starving in rags. I'm sure it has been like that. When a man of his position gets down to that, what is there for him to do?"
"That sort of thing would be pretty rough on him, I grant. But, you know, Vi, you're taking a very great deal for granted."
"I've admitted that Sydney was never the wisest or the strongest of men. It is quite possible that in those depths he met those who were even more desperate than himself, who pointed out to him a way of at least getting something to eat. There's something about that woman Simmons which convinces me that she has known something of the sort of thing of which I speak."
"Do you mean that she has known what it is to starve?"
"I shouldn't wonder. There was something about her when she came into this room last night which struck me. When I was talking to her this morning in the hall I saw what it was; it kept peeping out. Margaret, that woman has stood at despair's very gate; she has never forgotten it, and never will. It's taken from her something which you and I have, but which she will never have again; she is not a woman in the sense we are. Although she may not know it, she is as some wild creature which has its back against the wall, and which fights, straining every nerve and every faculty it has, against what must prevail."
The countess was regarding her with her eyes wide open.
"I always have credited you with imagination, but I certainly never guessed that it amounted to this. I must take a look at Simmons myself, and see what my imagination does for me. I don't want to be beaten in a game of that kind."
"I told you you could laugh, and so you can. If I had had my wits about me, I should have stopped Sydney last night; I should have stuck to him tight; I should have made him understand that, whether he would or wouldn't, I would stay by his side, lest worse befell him. I am going to do that now; I am going to leave no stone unturned to find him. When I have found him I'll not lose sight of him again. He has not been very wise; but the world has used him ill. I will stand by his side against the world."
"My dear, you talk as I've always fancied young women talk in plays I've never seen, the sort of plays which I have been given to understand were popular at the Adelphi once upon a time. It may be very beautiful, but it's frightfully silly. Suppose it gets generally known-and these things do get out-that the gentleman in question committed what was really an act of burglary last night, do you imagine that even the most catholic-minded people will want to cultivate his acquaintance, even with you at his side? And, Vi, you know there may be worse than burglary."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Hasn't it occurred to you as just possible that he may have had something to do with what happened to Captain Draycott, who, by the way, is still nowhere to be found? Rupert tries to pretend that he thinks everything is all right, but I can see that he is oppressed by a feeling that he is lying at the bottom of the lake."