she had never known great anxiety before. she had had many worries, many troublesome moments, when she wanted money, but never such a weight of care as this. there had always been cocky, on to whose shoulders she had been able to throw the blame of everything; and whose ingenuity had frequently (for a consideration) been of exceeding use to her. now she was alone, without even the solace of having harry to quarrel with and upbraid; and she had put herself and her secret and her signature into the hands of william massarene. when she thought of it she felt as if a rush of ice-cold wind passed over her.
it was sunday. she went to a fashionable church and took boo with her, looking a picture of childish loveliness in the crape frock, and her big black hat and her little black silk legs displayed far above the knee.
“mammy’s got a lot o’ bills to pay,” said boo at the schoolroom dinner.
“how d’you know?” asked jack.
“cos she prayed such a deal,” said his sister. “she flopped down on her knees and i think she cried.”
“there must be bills then,” said jack seriously. “or p’rhaps,” he added, “’twas only the church. churches is always sorrowful.”
“i don’t mind ’em,” said boo. “there’s a lot o’ fun in people’s bonnets. i drawed two or three bonnets in my prayer book.”
their mother was, indeed, as boo’s observant eyes had discovered, greatly disturbed and apprehensive. throughout the service of the fashionable church she was absorbed in one thought: would billy play her false? would he, if he were true to her, be in time? might not beaumont be away from paris for the sunday, like so many parisian tradesmen; he had a country house, she knew, at[315] compigne. what would happen to her if, when the men from coutts’s came, and she had not the veritable diamonds to give?
exposure, complete and inevitable, must follow; when the jewels should be brought to valuation hurstmanceaux and the ormes must at least know the truth, and that seemed to her worse than to be pilloried, as people were of old, and stoned by the multitude.
she thought she could trust “billy”; she felt that a hard-headed man of business would not go over to paris on so grave an errand and leave it undone; but she could not be sure, a thousand things might happen. channel steamers never do get wrecked, but the one in which he crossed might do so; the train might come to grief; paris might be in revolution; paris made revolutions as rapidly as it made omeletts for breakfast; she was not naturally imaginative, but in this tension of terror her fancy conjured up innumerable horrors as she apparently kneeled in prayer.
when she came home she shut herself up in her bedroom, said she had a headache and took a little chloral. as she lay on her sofa, with a handkerchief over her eyes, she heard the children trundling down the staircase to go for their afternoon drive; they always were driven somewhere into the country on sunday afternoons to avoid the crowds and noise of the parks. she heard jack’s voice shouting a negro melody as he jumped down three stairs at a time. she got up despite her headache and her chloral, opened her door which led on to the stairs, and caught the little sinner as he passed her by his blouse.
“how can you let the duke disgrace himself so?” she said sternly to the governess. “the very boys in the street respect the seventh day.”
then, still with her fair hand closed fast on the blouse she said to the wearer of it: “i am shocked at you, jack! go upstairs to your room and stay there. you do not go out to-day.”
the great tears brimmed up in jack’s eyes, but he would not cry; he looked at her with a fixed reproachful, indignant look, very like brancepeth.
the governess and the nurses all pleaded for him;[316] everyone in the household loved jack as they hated boo. but it was in vain; his mother was in that kind of mood when every woman must have a victim, and he was all that offered to her. he was taken upstairs to be locked in his chamber by a sympathetic under-nurse, who whispered consolation. boo, half vexed, half pleased, called after him with much self-righteousness: “i telled you never to sing those naughty songs. didn’t i tell you, jack?”
jack did not reply or look round; he went manfully onward and upward to his doom. his mother retired to her own repose, whilst boo, with the two other little boys, descended down to the entrance-hall. she was glad to think of jack shut up in solitude and fretting his heart out this fine clear rainless afternoon in may.
the governess and the head nurse whispered together in the landau as to the duchess’s strange unkindness to her eldest son. boo, who never lost a word of their whispering, when she sat between them, turned up her pretty nose: “mammy don’t like jack ’cos he’s got everything; she’s got to give him her jewels.”
for boo, unseen and forgotten, had been sitting in the next room, playing with her big doll which talked, whilst the scene concerning the jewels had taken place between her mother and her uncle. boo enjoyed anything which bothered mammy. only boo was of opinion that the jewels ought to be her own, not jack’s.
meantime poor jack, crying his heart out on his bed, thought, “whatever good is it being a duke? two of ’em have had to die one after the other, and i’ve got to be shut up here. and how mean it was of boo to crow over me. boo’s so like mammy. i wish there were no women and no girls.”
at that moment the sympathetic under-nurse brought him two peaches and a raspberry ice, which she had begged for from the kitchen, and jack kissed her and thought better of her sex.
“i wish all women were dead ’cept you, harriet,” he said tenderly.
“oh, your grace, don’t say that,” said harriet. “but it was to be sure cruel unkind of your mamma.”
[317]“i hate mammy,” said jack with a deep drawn breath. “she took away my punch, and she’s sent away harry.”
“oh, your grace, don’t let yourself blame your mamma,” said the good nursemaid. “but for sure it is hard to be shut up here on a bright breezy day. but eat your peaches, dear, ’twill all be the same to-morrow.”
“but you’re shut up too, harriet,” said jack, regarding her thoughtfully.
“law, yes, sir, i never hardly gets an hour out.”
“but you’d like to go out?”
“yes, sir; but them as it above me, you see, don’t think of that.”
jack ceased munching his peach and looked at her gravely. “i think that’s very wrong. when i’m a man, harriet, everybody shall have hours out.”
“you dear little soul,” thought harriet, “you think so now, but when you’re a man i dessay you’ll be like all the others, and think only of yourself.”
“no, harriet,” said jack, solemnly divining her thoughts, “no, i sha’n’t forget.”
the solace of having hurt jack only momentarily diverted his mother from her torturing thoughts for a brief space of time. her mind returned in fretting and feverish anxiety to the mission on which william massarene had gone.
two or three intimate friends were coming to dine with her at eight o’clock. she wrote a few hasty words and put them off on the score of her headache; they were intimate friends, and what is intimacy worth if it does not enable us to sacrifice our intimates to ourselves? the notes sent, she went to sleep and slept fitfully for some hours. she really felt ill, for she was so unused to severe mental disturbance that it affected her physical health. she would have liked to send for her physician, but she was afraid he would perceive that she had something on her mind. she saw in the mirror that she did not look like herself.
she was so unused to being alone, that solitude was in itself an illness to her. she had no resource of any kind; everything bored her except the life she was used to lead. she could never imagine why people read books or wrote[318] them. even the newspapers she had never read, except when they had had something about herself or cocky.
william massarene had said, “mind you are alone,” and she felt that it would be the height of imprudence to have any of her friends with her when he should make his appearance at ten o’clock. she took a bowl of hot soup, a little claret, and a little fruit, and felt better. she had herself arrayed in a tea-gown of crape, with loose floating sleeves and a long train which trailed after her; it was very becoming; her hair was loosely wound round her head, and a high jet comb was stuck in it. she went down and into her boudoir. it was eight o’clock. she had forgotten jack. lights shaded with big butterfly shades were burning low. the room was full of the scent of lilies of the valley. it was a nest for human nightingales. and she had to wait for an odious brute out of dakota, who had got her signature for twelve thousand pounds! how disgracefully inappropriate to the boudoir and to herself!
there were several rings at the door-bell which echoed through the hall below; but no one came for her.
she felt it was a blessing that harry could not come; he had been used to racing up the stairs when he heard she was unwell, and forcing his entry by right of usage. and yet in a way she missed harry. she had always been able to make him believe anything.
ten o’clock struck at last. she shivered when she heard it. if the man did not come, what on earth would she do in the morning? she almost resolved to take the jewel-safe and go out of england. certainly neither ronald nor the ormes would pursue her as a common thief. but after a moment’s consideration she knew that to do this would be useless. they would find her wherever she went, and her life would be ruined. no, she reflected, there was nothing but to trust to billy. she had always had immeasurable power over him, and moved him about like a pawn at chess. she did not doubt that she would always be able to do the same. ce que femme vent! was her gospel.
she belonged to a world in which the grace and charm of women are still very dominant features; but william[319] massarene belonged to one in which woman was represented by a round o, except in as far as she was wanted for child-bearing and household work. in her latest transaction with him she had confided in him as if he had been a gentleman; she had ignored what she knew so well, that he was but a low brute varnished by money. she expected him to behave as a gentleman would have done in similar circumstances, forgetting that he had neither blood nor breeding in him.
she watched the movements of the hands of the little timepiece with intense anxiety. the tidal train arrived in cannon street at half-past nine. he might have been here by ten. it was twenty minutes past ten when the bell downstairs rang loudly. it was he! a few moments later a manservant ushered him into her presence; she had given orders that they should do so immediately on his arrival.
he was hot from his journey and dusty, and had some of the smoke of funnel and engine upon him; he had never been more unlovely: he had his hat on his head as he entered and his overcoat on his shoulders; he took both off slowly as a man does in whose eyes good clothes are precious, and she watched them with her nerves strung to the highest pitch, yet her intense agitation not excluding a vivid anger at his want of ceremony. his coat carefully laid on a chair, and his gloves on the top of it, he came and sat down before her, square, solid, hard as a piece of old roman masonry.
“well?” she said breathlessly. how cruel it was to keep her in such suspense!
“it’s all right, my lady,” he replied briefly.
she raised herself on her couch, animation and color returning to her face, light to her eyes, warmth to her face.
“oh, that is very good of you!” she exclaimed. “i am very grateful, indeed i am.”
william massarene laughed a little, deep down in his throat.
“gratitude don’t wash, my dear. i never took a red cent of it in change for any goods of mine.”
“but i am grateful,” she said, disconcerted and vaguely[320] distressed. “it was very good of you. what have you done with them? where are they?”
he took a large packet out of his inner breast-pocket.
“i had the tiara dismounted because ’twas safer to carry it so. you’ll know how to put it together, i guess.”
with a scream of relief and delight she sprang up and seized the packet, tears of joy welling up into her eyes.
“verify ’em,” said massarene, and she undid the parcel and saw once more the great dazzling egg diamond and all its lesser luminaries. he watched her as a tom-cat on the tiles with gloating eyes may watch some white graceful feline form walking amongst roses in a garden.
“verify ’em,” he repeated—“count ’em.”
“i have, i have,” she said in her ecstasy. “they are the otterbourne diamonds just as i gave them to beaumont. oh, my dear good man, how can i thank you?”
he did not answer; he breathed so loudly and heavily that she thought he was going to have a fit, and she could not but wish that he might have one. like a child with a toy she took the jewels and began fitting them together to make the ornament she had so often worn.
“oh, how can i ever be seen without them! it is so monstrous, so brutal to shut them up at coutts’s unseen for all those years!”
as soon as she had escaped from one danger she, woman-like, bewailed another affliction.
“how did you get over beaumont,” she asked: “was he disagreeable about me?”
“no; like a man of sense he was glad to get his money and asked no questions whence it came. here is his receipt.”
he held it before her, but he did not let it go out of his hands. she saw that beaumont had received of william massarene, on behalf of the duchess of otterbourne, the sum of three hundred thousand francs plus interest. a painful flush rose over her face as she saw that, and she realized more distinctly what she had done.
“how can i ever repay you?” she murmured.
william massarene’s thin tight-shut lips smiled, not agreeably. he put the receipt back in his breast-pocket.
“and my signature?” she said timidly, the first time in all her life that timidity had ever assailed her.
[321]then he smiled outright.
“i ain’t billy the scorned no more, am i, my dear? where’s your cheek, my lady?”
mouse, bending over the tiara which she was building up, turned sick at his tone. she dared not resent it. she was vaguely but intensely alarmed, and she was aware that this man, so long her butt and jest, was her master.
he sat with his hands still on his knees and with a horrible leer on his dull eyes, gazing at her as a fox might look at a silver pheasant from which nothing divided him. he had always succeeded in everything, and now he had succeeded in getting quid pro quo for all he had endured and expended for her.
as far as his sluggish passions could be aroused they were excited for her; she had aroused in him one of those passions of mature years which are more slow yet more brutal than those of youth. but stronger still than this was his grim pleasure in her humiliation, in her silence, in her subserviency.
and what a fool she was, despite all her fine airs, and cool wit, and sovereign disdain!
he continued to gaze at her fixedly, the veins swelling like cords on his forehead, his stertorous breath as loud as the gasp of an engine, his small grey eyes grown red and shining luridly.
“my signature?” she repeated in an unsteady voice.
“you’ve got the jewels, my beauty. you can’t have no more.”
“then it is not generosity!” said mouse passionately, and very unwarily betraying her unfounded hopes.
“no, my dear,” he answered, “i never said ’twas.” then he put his two big knotted yellow hands one on each knee, and looked at her mercilessly. “think i’ll take my payment now, or else the di’monds,” he said, with a vile chuckle.
she felt his odious grasp on her bare arms and his loathsome breath on her cheek.
“don’t cry out, my beauty, or you’ll lose your di’monds,” he said, with his lips on her shell-like ear. “you’ve got to be fond of billy now!”
