There was a rush, a hurried murmur, a pause, then a sudden cry so fraught with wonder and yet so surcharged with triumph, that I could scarcely believe it proceeded from Mr. Winchester’s lips, till a sudden swaying in thebended form of Philippa revealed to me Mrs. Winchester lying with the neck of her dress thrown back, and on the throat thus displayed, a glistening cordon of gems which by their brilliancy and size could only be the famous and costly ones for which we had been seeking.
It was the culmination of the evening’s surprises.
“The diamonds, the diamonds!” exclaimed Mr. Winchester, and regardless of the still insensible condition of his wife, he stooped and dragged them from her neck, and stood holding them out and looking at them, as if he could hardly credit his good fortune.
As for Mr. Sutton and Philippa, they gave one startled glance at the jewels, another at each other, and then set about restoring their mother.
I was the most thoroughly overcome of them all.
It took some few minutes to bring Mrs. Winchester back to consciousness. Meanwhile, I employed myself in looking at her husband. He had by this time thrust the gems into his pocket,and was gazing at her with a half-sinister, half-pitying glance. But at the first movement on her part he was all attention to her, while, on the contrary, Mr. Sutton and Philippa drew back as if they dreaded to meet her unclosing eye. They might well feel so; it was terrible, and so was her gesture, as, rising from the sofa on which she had been laid, she looked about on them all. But suddenly, and before she could speak, she felt the wind on her throat, and, lifting her hand to it, a great change passed over her.
“Who—who has presumed—” she began; but here she caught her husband’s eye, and losing her self-possession, felt around for a chair and fell into it.
“If you are looking for your jewels,” that husband remarked, “I have them. It was a curious freak to wear them under instead of over your dress, and then to forget where you had put them and imagine them stolen.”
She lifted one thin, white hand as if in protest, but her regal spirit seemed broken, and her eyes filled with something like tears.
“Lawrence!” she exclaimed brokenly, “whathave I not done for you! and this is how you repay me.”
“Mother,” said the young man, with a closer grip of Philippa’s hand, “could you ask for any better repayment than the regenerate life I offer you? A year ago I was the shame and disgrace of this family; a man for whom the world had scorn and you only a pitying forbearance. To-day I can walk the streets and drop my eyes before no man’s glance; I am a man again, and this—this dear woman is the cause. Is it not enough to make you overlook the trifling disadvantages which annoy your pride but cannot affect your heart?”
But Mrs. Winchester’s nature was not one to be touched by any such appeal as this. Indeed, it seemed to restore some of her former hauteur.
“Your mother’s love was then insufficient to recall you to a sense of what you owed yourself and her? My sacrifices, my sympathy, my endeavors to uphold you in face of the disapprobation of the whole world were as nothing to you. You had to wait till a puny girl smiled upon you, a waiting-woman, a—”
“Mother,” broke in the son, this time withseverity in his tone, “Philippa is a lady; she is, moreover, my wife, and so of equal social station with yourself. Let us not be bitter but thankful. For me, an angel has stepped into my life.”
It was not wise, but when was love ever wise? Mrs. Winchester’s face hardened, and a reckless smile broke out on her lips.
“An angel that has brought ruin to me,” said she. “What confidence do you suppose there can henceforth be between my husband and myself since he has found I can deceive him, and deceive him for you?”
“For me?”
“Yes; you can play with my heart, trifle with my pride, marry my waiting-maid before my eyes, never asking whence came the freedom which enables you to do all these things, or what price your mother is paying for the sins her forbearance was not sufficient to make you regret and forsake.”
“Mother, what do you mean? I do not understand you at all. What price have you been paying for sins of mine?”
She smiled ironically.
“It is time you showed some curiosity on the subject.” Then, with a side glance at her husband, full of bitterness and despair, she went on: “Did you ever ask yourself where the money came from with which I paid your debts two years ago, in Paris?”
“No—that is, I supposed, of course, it came out of your own pocket. Mr. Winchester is a rich man—”
“And I, his wife, must therefore be a rich woman. Well, I may be; but even rich women do not always have a hundred thousand francs at their disposal; and that sum I gave you, and you took from me. Where do you think I obtained it? Not from him, as his face only too plainly testifies.”
“Where, then, mother—where, then? Tell me, for I—”
But Mr. Winchester had taken a step forward, and his face was very white.
“Let her answer my questions,” said he. “You gave your son, that scapegrace, a hundred thousand francs, two years ago, in Paris?”
She bowed her head, trembling with something more than wrath.
“It was a great sum,” he continued, “a great sum! I do not wonder you hesitated to ask me for it. He would never have got it, never. I wonder that you found any friend willing to throw so much money to the dogs.”
“It was not a friend,” she murmured. “O William!” she went on, with almost a pleading sound in her voice, “we have never had any children, and you do not know what it is to love a son. To see him in peril, disgrace, or necessity, and not seek to relieve him, is impossible. You must make allowances for a mother’s heart.”
“But this money—these thousands—where did they come from, where?”
She flushed, and her head drooped, but her natural haughtiness soon lifted it again. Rising, she asked, in her turn—
“Mr. Winchester, why did you send for me to-night, as I was dressing for the reception, and, after inquiring if I were going to wear my diamonds, say it was your pleasure that I should do so, and then add, that you wished to borrow them of me to-morrow as you desired to show them to a dealer?”
“Why? because—” It was his turn to flush now—“because I do wish to show them to a dealer.”
“And what has a dealer to do with my diamonds?”
“Nothing—a freak of mine. I took a notion to find out just what they were worth.”
“And don’t you know?” Her voice was very low, her eyes burned on his face.
“Only approximately, madam, approximately.”
The glance she had fixed on him, fell. She took a step nearer, but did not speak at once.
“What is it?” he cried. “Why do you hesitate to answer my questions?”
“William,” said she, “were it not more to the point to ask why I, who have always been considered an honorable woman, should resort to the subterfuge of stealing my own jewels in order to escape the delivery of them up into other hands?”
“Perhaps,” he muttered; “but we will not go into that. No woman enjoys parting with such gems as these even for a few days.”
She laughed. “But a woman does not resortto crime, run the risk of police investigation and submit to such indignities as are inflicted upon her by the so-called detective agent, for the mere sake of retaining in her possession jewels of any price. She must have another motive—a motive of terror lest an evil greater than these should come upon her—the loss of her husband’s love or trust, the—the—”
“Madam, what have you been doing? What secret underlies all these words?”
“A little one; only a little one. William, do you intend showing that necklace to a dealer to-morrow?”
“Yes, to ascertain its value.”
“You had better not.”
“Why?”
“Because he would laugh in your face. William, the gems are false—false; there is not a diamond amongst them; only glass, worthless glass!”
He stared at her incredulously; he tore the jewels from his pocket and held them up to the light. Their flash and brilliance seemed to reassure him.
“You are making sport of me, madam. Seehow they sparkle and throw back the light. Only diamonds shine like that. You do not wish me to take them away from you. Perhaps you fear you may lose them permanently.”
“I tell you they are false,” she insisted. “I had the exchange made in Paris. I received a hundred thousand francs and these imitations for the necklace. Had not the man who manufactured them been an expert, do you suppose I should have dared the experiment of wearing them as I have done, for a whole year now, at every large assemblage I have attended?”
“Millicent! Millicent, is this true?” He looked more than angry, more than dismayed. She herself seemed astonished at the intensity of the emotions she had aroused.
“Yes,” she returned, “it is true.” And her glance took in the face of her son standing abashed and troubled beside his bride. “This I was doing for you,” she declared. “While you were seeking inspiration and delight from the smile of Philippa Irwin, I was meeting the eyes of the world with a circle of false gems about my throat, and in my heart the dread of such a scene as this, with its worse to-morrow.”
“Mother—”
“No words now. I have done with you, Lawrence Sutton; let me see if I am to lose a husband as well as a son.”
But Mr. Winchester was in no mood for sentiment. He had flung the glittering bauble from him, and was standing with clenched hands and working brow near the threshold of the door. As she spoke he flung the door open, and when she ceased he gave her one look, and passing out into the hall, disappeared from view.
She stood still and made no effort to follow him.
“It is the deception,” I heard her murmur. “He could not care for a few thousands so much as this.” And then her haughty lip trembled, her imperious air gave way, and tottering toward the door, she held her two hands out in seeming forgetfulness of everything but her love for her husband. “William!” she cried, “William!”
But her son was already between her and the door.
“Mother!” he exclaimed, “you shall hearme. Indifferent as you consider me to have been, this debt I have owed you has weighed heavily upon me. Of course I knew nothing of the sacrifice you had made in giving me the large sum you did. I supposed it came, as you led me to suppose, from your husband; but, even so, it has troubled me and caused me many an anxious thought as to how I was to repay you. I did not find a way. But to prove to you that my remorse did not expend itself entirely in thought, I will now reveal to you the secret of my absence night after night. I am working, mother, working like a slave, for a position which, if once obtained, will give me support for my wife, and a pretty sum over every year for my mother. There is a likelihood that I shall get it, and if, in that event, I allow myself one luxury or Philippa one gewgaw till those you parted with for my sake are paid for, then say you are done with Lawrence Sutton, but not now, not while there is any hope of his proving himself your son, indeed.”
But the barrier he had raised between them by his marriage was too formidable to be overthrown in an instant; and with some partingwords of scorn she left him, and I heard her go up to her own room.
I hoped they would follow her, and so allow me to escape, but they had too much to say to each other, too many explanations to make. I had to be present at another confidential interview. Philippa, who, the moment they were left alone, had assumed a totally different bearing from that which seemed natural to her in Mrs. Winchester’s presence, waited for her husband’s first emotion of grief to subside, then turned to him, and taking his two hands in hers, drew him down beside her on the sofa.
“Lawrence,” said she, with a womanly sweetness inexpressibly winning after the scene of stormy passions which had just passed, “do you think you can ever forgive me?”
“Forgiveyou, my heart’s idol! What have I to forgive you for? The consolation that you give me for my past, the hope that you bring me for my future?”
“No, no,” she murmured; “for having married you; for having—”
“Philippa!” he cried, lifting her face with the tenderest touch, and gazing long and earnestlyinto her eyes, “you are my wife. The holy words that made us one have hardly ceased to echo. Do not let us mar the moment, which can never come again, by any expression of doubt as regards the wisdom or the happiness of what we have done. Let us enjoy the delight of being all in all to each other, leaving to future hours, perhaps, the grief of knowing that, in seeking our own welfare, we have had to inflict disappointment upon others.”
“But—but—” she faltered, “you do not understand. I allude to my marrying you to-night, in this haste, contrary to all my declarations and every resolution I had formed.”
“And do you think I blame you for that? That my heart gave anything but a leap of joy when you stopped me in the hall and whispered in my ear, ‘I am ready, Lawrence, ready to do what you so often have urged me to do. I will marry you to-night if you say so’?”
“Oh!” she cried, and a flush of shame crept over her face, growing lovelier with every moment that passed till I wondered I had not seen at first glance that she was beautiful; “you reproach me with every word; you makeme feel that there is no one less deserving of such faith and devotion than Philippa Irwin.”
“Philippa Sutton, darling; there is a difference,” he smiled.
The words seemed to strike her. She looked at him very earnestly for a moment.
“Yes,” she assented. “What were wisdom in Philippa Irwin may not be wisdom in Philippa Sutton. But truth is always wisdom, and I cannot enter upon our married life with the shadow of a falsehood on my heart. At the risk of losing your love, of seeing you turn away from me never to come back, I must be frank with you and open to the very heart’s core. Lawrence, I would not have married you to-night if—if it had not been for the disappearance of those diamonds.”
“Philippa!”
“I know, I know I should have trusted you. That I should have seen and felt that you were incapable of doing so mean and wicked a thing as—as my suspicions suggested to me, but, coming up-stairs while your mother was below, I had seen you pass into her room on tiptoe, stay but a moment, and then comecreeping out again, thrusting something that glittered into your breast. I had seen this; and though I thought nothing of it at the moment I—I did fear and tremble when from the back room, into which I had stepped, I beheld her come back, walk over to the mantel-piece where she stood for a moment gazing at her jewel-case, and then, rushing to the window and throwing it open, run out again into the hall crying that her diamonds were gone and that a thief must have crawled in from the street and taken them while she was below. For—it is my only excuse, Lawrence—I could not dream she had taken advantage of that moment’s pause before the mantel to snatch the jewels from their case and hide them in her own bosom. That would imply a knowledge of facts and motives to which I was necessarily a stranger. I could only think she was influenced in her action by a conviction that one she loved had done this act, and this apparent conviction of hers awakened mine; for she was a woman and a mother, and knew, as I believed, her own son well, while I was but a simple girl who loved. Yet see, yetsee, she was the one who did the wrong, if wrong were done, while you—” Philippa’s head sank on her breast and the tears came.
He let her weep for a moment; then with a slow and mechanical motion he thrust his hand into his breast and took out a simple bracelet made of silver coils and held it towards her.
“This is what I went for,” said he, “and this is what I brought out. I had seen it lying on the sofa, Philippa, when I went in before dinner, and my heart coveted it and my lips burned to kiss it, and—”
“O Lawrence!” was her cry, “my bracelet!” and then there was silence, during which he sat with his eyes on her face in a mute reproach, evidently worse to her than death. At last she could bear it no longer, and lifting her head she gave him one look.
It seemed to recall him to himself. Grasping her hand, he uttered one short sentence, but that was full of meaning. It was this: “And yet you married me!”
The pallor of her cheek disappeared in a flush that made her absolutely dazzling.
“I loved you,” she murmured, “and I knew, that is, I had heard, that a wife could not be called upon to testify against her husband.”
He gave a sudden cry, and his arms closed passionately round her. He did not tell her that that was an old and antiquated law, no longer in force at this day; he only whispered words of love and consolation, and when, ten minutes from that time, they left the room and I at last succeeded in escaping from my hiding-place and from the house, it was with the conviction that I had left two noble hearts behind me, whose happiness, if not their worldly prosperity, was assured.
Early the next morning I sent a line to Mr. Randall effectually relieving him from all the doubts I had left in his mind as to Mr. Sutton’s integrity and genuine change of character. This duty done I thought the story ended, as far as outsiders were concerned. But it was not so. Scarcely three days had elapsed when New York society was startled and her business men confounded by the announcementthat Mr. Winchester had disappeared from town, leaving debts of an enormous nature behind him and no assets wherewith to pay those debts. Then and not till then did I understand his passionate anxiety about the diamonds. To a man on the verge of ruin twenty-five thousand dollars may hold out the promise of salvation. At all events it is a convenient sum with which to facilitate flight, and its loss must have been a heavy blow to him.
His wife, whose pride was perhaps phenomenal in its way, never recovered from the shock thus given her. When the last load was driven away from the house she was obliged to abandon, her indomitable spirit broke, and it was a depressed and humiliated woman that at last consented to take up her abode with the son she had cast off and the woman she once looked upon with contempt.