Laid up in Lavender Part 24

"John must have moved it when he brought in the tea. That must be it.

Ring the bell, James, and we will ask him."

It was done. John came in, and the question was put to him.

"Yes, sir," he said readily; "I saw a bracelet. On the table by the lamp." He indicated the table near Lady Linacre.

"Did you move it?"

"Move it, sir?" the man repeated, surprised by the question, the silence, and the strained faces turned to him. "No, sir; certainly not. I saw it when I was handing the tea to--to Mr. Wibberley, I think it was."

"Ah, very well," his master answered. "That is all. You may go."

It was not possible to doubt the man's face and manner. But when he had left the room, an uncomfortable silence ensued. "It is very strange," Burton Smith said, looking from one to another, and then, for the twentieth time, he groped under the table.

"It is very strange," Wibberley murmured. He felt bound to say something. He could not free himself from an idea that the others, and particularly the Indian Civilian, were casting odd looks at him. He appeared calm enough, but he could not be sure of this. He felt as if he were each instant changing colour, and betraying himself. His very voice sounded forced to his ear as he repeated fussily, "It is very odd--very odd! Where can it be?"

"It cost," Lady Linacre quavered--irrelevantly, but by no means impertinently--"it cost fourteen thousand out there. Indeed it did.

And that was before it was set."

A hush as of awe fell upon the room. "Fourteen thousand pounds!"

Burton Smith said softly, his hair rising on end.

"No, no," said the old lady, who had not intended to mystify them.

"Not pounds; rupees."

"I understand," he replied, rubbing, his head. "But that is a good sum."

"It is over a thousand pounds," the Indian Civilian put in stonily, "at the present rate of exchange."

"But, good gracious, James!" Mrs. Burton Smith said impatiently, "why are you valuing Lady Linacre's jewellery--instead of finding it for her? The question is, 'Where is it?' It must be here. It was on this table fifteen minutes ago. It cannot have been spirited away."

"If any one," her husband began seriously, "is doing this for a joke, I do hope----"

"For a joke!" the hostess cried sharply. "Impossible! No one would be so foolis.h.!.+"

"I say, my dear," he persisted, "if any one is doing this for a joke, I hope he will own up. It seems to me that it has been carried far enough." There was a chorus of a.s.sent, half-indignant, half-exculpatory. But no one owned to the joke. No one produced the bracelet.

"Well!" Mrs. Burton Smith exclaimed. And as the company looked at one another, it seemed as if they also had never known anything quite so extraordinary as this.

"Really, Lady Linacre, I think that it must be somewhere about you,"

the host said at last. "Would you mind giving yourself a good shake?"

She rose, and was solemnly preparing to agitate her skirts, when a guest interfered. It was the Hon. Vereker May. "You need not trouble yourself, Lady Linacre," he said, with a curious dryness. He was still standing by the fireplace. "It is not about you."

"Then where in the world is it?" retorted Mrs. Galantine. "Do you know?"

"If you do, for goodness' sake speak out," Mrs. Burton Smith added indignantly. Every one turned and stared at the Civilian.

"You had better," he said, "ask Mr. Wibberley!"

That was all. But something in his tone produced an electrical effect.

Joanna, in her corner--remote, like the Indian, from the centre of the disturbance--turned red and pale, and flashed angry glances round her.

For the rest, they wished themselves away. It was impossible to overlook the insinuation. The words, simple as they were, in a moment put a graver complexion on the matter. Even Mrs. Burton Smith was silent, looking to her husband. He looked furtively at Wibberley.

And Wibberley? So far he had merely thought himself in an unpleasant fix, from which he must escape as best he could, at the expense of a little embarra.s.sment and a slight loss of self-respect. Even the latter he might regain to-morrow, if he saw fit, by telling the truth to Mrs. Burton Smith; and in time the whole thing would become a subject for laughter, a stock dinner-party anecdote. But now, at the first sound of the Indian's voice, he recognised his danger; and saw in the hundredth part of a second that ruin, social d.a.m.nation, perhaps worse, threatened him. His presence of mind seemed to fail him at sight of the pit opening at his feet. He felt himself reeling, choking, his head surcharged with blood. The room, the expectant faces all turned to him, all with that strange expression on them, swam round before him. He had to lay his hand on a chair to steady himself.

But he did steady himself; to such an extent that those who marked his agitation did not know whether it proceeded from anger or fear. He drew himself up and looked at his accuser, holding the chair suspended in his hands. "What do you mean?" he said hoa.r.s.ely.

"I should not have spoken," the Civilian answered, returning his gaze, and speaking in measured accents, "if Mr. Burton Smith had not twice appealed to us to confess the joke, if a joke it was."

"Well?"

"Well, only this," the other replied. "I saw you take Lady Linacre's bracelet from that table a few moments before it was missed, Mr.

Wibberley."

"You saw me?" Wibberley cried. This time there was the ring of honest defiance, of indignant innocence, in his tone. For if he felt certain of one thing it was that no one had been looking at him when the unlucky deed was done.

"I did," the Civilian replied dispa.s.sionately. "My back was towards you. But my eyes were on this mirror"--he touched an oval gla.s.s in a Venetian frame which stood on the mantelpiece--"and I saw quite clearly. I am bound to say that, judging from the expression of your face, I was a.s.sured that it was a trick you were playing."

Ernest Wibberley tried to frame the words, "And now?"--tried to force a smile. But he could not. The perspiration stood in great beads on his face. He shook all over. He felt himself--and this time it was no fancy--growing livid.

"To the best of my belief," the Civilian added quietly, "the bracelet is on your left arm now."

Wibberley tried to master, but could not, the impulse--the traitor impulse?--which urged him to glance at his wrist. The idea that the bracelet might be visible--that the d.a.m.ning evidence might be plain to every eye--overcame him. He looked down. Of course there was nothing to be seen; he might have known it, for he felt the hot grip of the horrible thing burning his arm inches higher. But when he looked up again--fleeting as had been his glance--he found that something had happened. He faltered, and the chair dropped from his hands. He read in every face save one suspicion or condemnation. Thief and liar! He read the words in their eyes. Yet he would, he must, brazen it out.

And though he could not utter a word he looked from them to--Joanna.

The girl's face was pale. But her eyes answered his eagerly, and they were ablaze with indignation. They held doubt, no suspicion. The moment his look fell on her, she spoke. "Show them your arm!" she cried impulsively. "Show them that you have not got it, Ernest!" she repeated with such scorn, such generous pa.s.sion that it did not need the tell-tale name which fell from her lips to betray the secret to every woman in the room.

"Show them your arm!" Ah, but that was just what he could not do! And as he comprehended this he gnashed his teeth. He saw himself entrapped, and his misery was so plainly written in his face that the best and most merciful of those about him turned from him in pity.

Even the girl who loved him shrank back, clutching the mantelpiece in the first spasm of doubt, and fear, and anguish. Her words, her suggestion, had taken from him his last chance. He saw that it was so.

He felt the Nemesis the more bitterly on that account; and with a wild gesture, and some reckless word of defiance, he turned blindly and hurried from the room, seized his hat, and went down to the street.

His feelings when he found himself outside were such as it is impossible to describe in pa.s.sionless sentences. He had wrecked his honour and happiness in an hour. He had lost his place among men through a thoughtless word. We talk and read of a thunderbolt from the blue; still the thing is to us unnatural. Some law-abiding citizen whom a moment's pa.s.sion has made a murderer, some strong man whom a stunning blow has left writhing on the ground, a twisted cripple--only these could fitly describe his misery and despair as he pa.s.sed through the streets. It was misery he had brought on himself; and yet how far the punishment exceeded the offence! How immensely the shame exceeded the guilt! He had lied in careless will, with no evil intent; and the lie had made him a thief!

He went up to his rooms like one in a dream, and, scarcely knowing what he did, he tore the bauble from his arm and flung it on the mantel-shelf. By his last act--by bringing it away--he had made his position a hundred times more serious. But he did not at once remember this. After he had sat a while, however, with his head between his hands, wondering if this really were himself--if this really had happened to himself, this irrevocable thing!--he began to see things more clearly. But he could not at once make up his mind what to do.

Beyond a hazy idea of returning the bracelet by the first post, and going on the Continent--of course, he must resign his employment--he had settled nothing, when a step mounting the staircase made him start to his feet. Some one knocked at the door of his chambers. He stood pallid and listened, struck by a sudden fear.

"The police!" he said to himself.

A moment's thought satisfied him that it was improbable, if not impossible, that they could be on his track so soon; and he went to the door listlessly and threw it open. On the mat stood Burton Smith, in a soft slouched hat, his hands thrust into the pockets of his overcoat. Wibberley glanced at him, and saw that he was alone; then leaving him to shut the door, he returned to his chair, and sat down in his old att.i.tude, with his head between his hands. He looked already a broken man.

Burton Smith followed him in, and stood a moment looking at him uncomfortably enough. It is bad to have had such a scene as has been described in your house; it is worse, if a man be a man, to face a fellow-creature in his hour of shame. At any rate, Burton Smith felt it so. "Look here, Wibberley," he said at length, as much embarra.s.sed as if he had been the thief. "Look here, it will be better to hush this up. Give me the d----d bracelet to hand back to Lady Linacre, and the thing shall go no farther."

His tone was suggestive both of old friends.h.i.+p and of present pity.

But when he had to repeat his question, when Wibberley gave him no answer, his voice grew more harsh. Even then the man with the hidden face did not speak, but pointed with an impatient gesture to the mantel-shelf.

Burton Smith stepped to the fire-place and looked. He was anxious to spare the culprit as far as possible. Yes, there was the bracelet. He took possession of it, anxious to escape from the place with all speed. But he laid it down the next instant as quickly as he had taken it up; and his brows came together as he turned upon his companion.