Statement of Gladys, Marchioness ofCastlecourt.
I AM sure if any one was ever punished for their misdeeds it was I. I suppose I ought to say sins, but it is such an unpleasant word! I can not imagine myself committing sins, and yet that is just what I seem to have done. I couldn’t have been more astonished if some one had told me I was going to commit a murder. One thing I have learned—you do not know what you may do till you have been tried and tempted. And then you do wrong before you realize it, and all of a sudden it comes upon you that you are a criminal quite unexpectedly, and no one is more surprised than you. I certainly know Iwas the most surprised person in London when I realized that I— But there, I am wandering all about, and I want to tell my story simply and shortly.
Everybody knows that when I married Lord Castlecourt I was poor. What everybody does not know is that I was a natural spend-thrift. Extravagance was in my blood, as drinking or the love of cards is in the blood of some men. I had never had any money at all. I used to wear the same gloves for years, and always made my own frocks—not badly, either. I’ve made gowns that Lady Bundy said— But that has nothing to do with it; I’m getting away from the point.
As I said before, I was poor. I didn’t know how extravagant I wastill I married and Lord Castlecourt gave me six hundred pounds a year to dress on. It was a fortune to me. I’d never thought one woman could have so much. The first two years of our married life I did not run over it, because we lived most of the time in the country, and I was unused to it, and spent it slowly and carefully. I was still unaccustomed to it when, after my second boy was born, Herbert brought me to town for my first season since our marriage.
Then I began to spend money, quantities of it, for it seemed to me that six hundred pounds a year was absolutely inexhaustible. When I saw anything pretty in a shop I bought it, and I generally forgot to ask the price. The shop people were always kind and agreeable, andseemed to have forgotten about it as completely as I.
After I had bought one thing they would urge me to look at something else, which was put away in a drawer or laid out in a cardboard box, and if I liked it I bought that too. If I ever paused to think that I was buying a great deal, I contented myself with the assurance that I had six hundred pounds a year, which was so much I would never get to the end of it.
After that first season a great many bills came in, and I was quite surprised to see I’d spent already, with the year hardly half gone, more than my six hundred pounds. I could not understand how it had happened, and I asked Herbert about it and showed him some of mybills, and for the first time in our married life he was angry with me. He scolded me quite sharply, and told me I must keep within my allowance. I was hurt, and also rather muddled, with all these different accounts—most of which I could not remember—and I made up my mind not to consult Herbert any more, as it only vexed him and made him cross to me, and that I can not bear. All the world must love me. If there is a servant-maid in the house who does not like me—and I can feel it in a minute if she doesn’t—I must make her, or she must go away. But my husband, the best and finest man in the world, to have him annoyed with me and scolding me over stupid bills! Never again would that happen. I showed him no more of them;in fact, I generally tore them up as they came in, for fear I should leave them lying about and he would find them. If I could help it, nothing in the world was ever going to come between Herbert and me.
I also made good resolutions to be more careful in my expenditures. And I really tried to keep them. I don’t know how it happened that they did not seem to get kept. But both in London and in Paris I certainly did spend a great deal—I’m sure I don’t know how much. I did little accounts on the back of notes, and they were so confusing, and I seemed to have spent so much more than I thought I had, that I gave up doing them. After I’d covered the back of two or three notes with figures, I became so low-spirited Icouldn’t enjoy anything for the rest of the day. I did not see that that did anybody any good, so I ceased keeping the accounts. And what was the use of keeping them? If I had not the money to pay them with, why should I make myself miserable by thinking about them? I thought it much more sensible to try to forget them, and most of the time I did!
It went on that way for two years. When I got bills with things written across the bottom in red ink I paid part of them—never all; I never paid all of anything. Once or twice tradesmen wrote me letters, saying they must have their money, and then I went to see them, and told them how kind it was of them to trust me, and how I would pay them everything soon, and they seemedquite pleased and satisfied. I always intended doing it. I don’t know where I thought the money was coming from, but you never can tell what may happen. Some friends of Herbert had a place near the Scotch border, and found a coal-mine in the forest. Herbert has no lands near Scotland, but he has in other places, and he may find a coal-mine too. I merely cite this as an example of the strange ways things turn out. I didn’t exactly expect that Herbert would find a coal-mine, but I did expect that money would turn up in some unexpected way and help me out of my difficulties.
The beginning of the series of really terrible events of which I am writing was the purchase of a Russian sable jacket from a furrier inParis called Bolkonsky. It was in the early spring of last year. I had had no dealings with Bolkonsky before. A friend told me of the jacket, and took me there. It was a realoccasion. I knew the moment that I saw it that it was one of those chances with which one rarely meets. It fitted me like a charm, and I bought it for a thousand pounds. That miserable Bolkonsky told me the payments might be made in any way I liked, and at “madame’s own time.” I also bought some good turquoises, that were going for nothing, from a jeweler up-stairs somewhere near the Rue de La Paix, who was selling out the jewels of an actress. It was these two people who wrecked me.
Not that they were my only debtors. I knew by this time that Iowed a great deal. When I thought about it I was frightened, and so I tried not to think. But sometimes when I was awake at night, and everything looked dark and depressed, I wondered what I would do if something did not happen. In these moments I thought of telling my husband, and I buried my head in the pillow and turned cold with misery. What would Herbert say when he found out his wife was thousands of pounds in debt—the Marquis of Castlecourt, who had never owed a penny and considered it a disgrace.
Perhaps he would be so horrified and disgusted he would send me away from him—back to Ireland, or to the Continent. And what would happen to me then?
That summer we went to Castlecourt Marsh Manor, and there my anxieties became almost unbearable. Bolkonsky began to dun me most cruelly. Other creditors wrote me letters, urging for payments. The jeweler from whom I had bought the turquoises sent me a letter, telling me if I didn’t settle his account by September he would sue me. And finally Bolkonsky sent a man over, whom I saw in London, and who told me that unless the sable jacket was paid for within two months he would “lay the matter before Lord Castlecourt.”
We went across to Paris in September, and there I saw those dreadful people. My other French and English creditors I could manage, but I could do nothing with either Bolkonskyor the jeweler. They spoke harshly to me—as no one has ever spoken to me before; and Bolkonsky told me that “it was known Lord Castlecourt was honest and paid his debts, whatever his wife was.” I prayed him for time, and finally wept—wept to that horrible Jew; and there was another man in the office, too, who saw me. But I was lost to all sense of pride or reserve. I had only one feeling left in me—terror, agony, that they would tell my husband, and he would despise me and leave me.
My misery seemed to have some effect on Bolkonsky, and he told me he would give me a month to pay up. It was then the tenth of September. I waited for a week in a sort of frenzy of hope that a miracle wouldoccur, and the money come into my hands in some unexpected way. But, of course, nothing did occur. By the first of October the one thousand pounds was no nearer. It was then that the desperate idea entered my mind which has nearly ruined me, and caused me such suffering that the memory of it will stay with me forever.
The Castlecourt diamonds, set in a necklace and valued at nine thousand pounds, were in my possession. I often wore them, and they were carried about by my maid—a faithful and honest creature called Sophy Jeffers. On one of my first trips to Paris a friend of mine had taken me to the office of a well-known dealer in precious and artificial stones who, without its being generally known,did a sort of pawnbroking business among the upper classes. My friend had gone there to pawn a pearl necklace, and had told me all about it—how much she obtained on the necklace, and how she hoped to redeem it within the year, and how she was to have it copied in imitation pearls. The idea that came to me was to go to this place and pawn the Castlecourt diamonds, having them duplicated in paste.
I went there on the second day of October. How awful it was! I wore a heavy veil, and gave a fictitious name. Several men looked at the diamonds, and I noticed that they looked at me and whispered together. Finally they told me they would give me four thousand pounds on them, at some interest—I’ve forgottenwhat it was now—and that they would replace them with paste, so that only an expert could tell the difference. The next day I went back, and they gave me the money. I do not think they had any idea who I was. At any rate, while the papers were full of speculations about the Castlecourt diamonds, they made no sign.
I paid off all my debts, both in Paris and London; I even paid a year’s interest on the diamonds. For a short time I breathed again, and was gay and light-hearted. My husband would never know that I had not paid my bills for five years and had been threatened with a lawsuit. It was delightful to get rid of this fear, and I was quite my old self. I suppose I ought to have felt moreguilty; but when one is relieved of a great weight, one’s conscience is not so sensitive as it gets when there is really nothing to be sensitive about.
It was after I had grown accustomed to feeling free and unworried that I began to realize what I had done. I had stolen the diamonds. I was a thief! It did not comfort me much to think that no one might ever find it out; in fact, I do not think it comforted me at all, and I know in the beginning I expected it would. It was what I had done that rankled in me. I felt that I would never be peaceful again till they were redeemed and put back in their old settings. That was what I continually dreamed of. It seemed to me if I could see them once morein their own case I would be happy and care free, as I had been in those first perfect years of my married life.
The fear that at this time most haunted me and was most terrifying was that my husband might discover what I had done. His wife, that he had so loved and trusted, had become a thief! No one who has not gone through it knows how I felt. I did not know any one could suffer so. I went out constantly, to try and forget; and, when things were very cheerful and amusing, I sometimes did. And then I remembered—I was a thief; I had stolen my husband’s diamonds, and, if he ever found it out, what would happen to me?
This was the position I was in when the false diamonds were taken.It was the last thing in the world I had thought could happen. When, that night of the Duke of Duxbury’s dinner, I saw the empty case and Jeffers’ terrified face, the world reeled around me. I could not for a moment take it in. Only, in my mind, the diamonds had become a sort of nightmare; anything to do with them was a menace, and I followed an instinct that had possession of me when I tried to hide the empty case from my husband.
Then, when my mind had cleared and I had time to think, I saw that if they recovered the paste necklace they might find out that it was not real, and all would be lost. It was a horrible predicament. I really did not know what I wanted. If the diamonds were found, and seen to befalse, it would all come out, and Herbert would know I was a thief. When I thought of this I tried to divert the detectives from hunting for them, and I told that silly, sheepish Mr. Brison that I did not see how he could be so sure they were stolen, that they might have been mislaid. Mr. Brison seemed surprised, and that made me angry, because, after all, a diamond necklace is not the sort of thing that gets mislaid, and I felt I had been foolish and had not gained anything by being so.
The days passed, and nothing was heard of the necklace. I wished desperately now that it would be found. For how, unless it was, could I eventually redeem the real diamonds, and once more feel honestand respectable? If I suddenly appeared with them, how could I explain it? Everybody would say I had stolen them, unless I invented some story about their being lost and then found, and I am not clever at inventing stories. As to where I should get the money to redeem them, I often thought of that; but never could think of any way that sounded possible and reasonable. I have always waited for “things to turn up,” and they generally did; but in this case nothing that I wanted or expected turned up. Besides, four thousand pounds is a good deal of money to come into one’s hands suddenly and unexpectedly. If it were a smaller sum it might, but four thousand pounds was too much. There was nobody to die and leaveit to me, and I certainly could not steal it, or make it myself.
So, as one may see, I was beset with troubles on all sides. The season wore itself away, and I was glad to be done with it. For the first time, there had been no pleasure in it. Anxieties that no one guessed were always with me, and always I found myself surreptitiously watching my husband to see if he suspected, to see if he showed any symptoms of growing cold to me and being indifferent. As I drove through the Park in the carriage these dreary thoughts were always at my heart, and it was heavy as lead. I forgot the passers-by who were so amusing, and, with my head hanging, looked into my lap. Suppose Herbert guessed? Suppose Herbert foundout? These were the questions that went circling through my brain and never stopped. Sometimes, when Herbert was beside me, I suddenly wanted to cry out:
“Herbert,Itook the diamonds!Iwas the thief! I can’t hide it any more, or live in this uncertainty. All I want to know is, do you hate me and are you going to leave me?”
But I never did it. I looked at Herbert, and was afraid. What would I do if he left me? Go back to Ireland and die.
We went to Castlecourt Marsh Manor in the end of June. By this time I had begun to feel quite ill. Herbert insisted on my consulting a doctor before I left town, and the doctor said my heart was all wrong and something was the matter withmy nerves. But it was only the sense of guilt, that every day grew more oppressive. I thought I might feel better in the country. I had always disliked it, and now it seemed like a harbor of refuge, where I could be quiet with my children. I had grown to hate London. It was London that had played upon my weaknesses and drawn me into all my trouble. I had not run into debt in the country, and, after all, I had never been as happy as I was the two years after our marriage, when we had lived at Castlecourt Marsh Manor. Those were mybeaux jours! How bright and beautiful they seemed now, when I looked back on them from these dark days of fear and disgrace!
It was not much better in thecountry. A change of scene can not make a difference when the trouble is a dark secret. And that dark secret kept growing darker every day. I feared to speak of the diamonds to Herbert, and yet every letter that came for him filled me with alarm, lest it was either to say that they were found or that they were not found. Herbert went up to London at intervals and saw Mr. Gilsey, and at night when he came home I trembled so that I found it difficult to stand till he had told me all that Mr. Gilsey had said. Once when he was beginning to tell me that Mr. Gilsey had some idea they had traced the diamonds to Paris I fainted, and it was some time before they could bring me back.
July was very hot, and I gavethat as the cause of my changed appearance and listless manner. I was really in wretched health, and Herbert became exceedingly worried about me. He suggested that we should go on the Continent for a trip, but I shrank from the thought of it. I felt as if the sight of Paris, where the diamonds were waiting to be redeemed, would kill me outright. I did not want to leave Castlecourt Marsh Manor to go anywhere. I only wanted to be happy again—to be the way I was before I had taken the diamonds.
And I knew now that this could never be till I told my husband. I knew that to win back my peace of mind I had to confess all, and hear him say he forgave me. I tried to several times, but it was impossible.As the moment that I had chosen for confession approached, my heart beat so that I could scarcely breathe, and I trembled like a person in a chill. With Herbert looking at me so kindly, so tenderly, the words died away on my lips, or I said something quite different to what I had intended saying. It was useless. As the days went by I knew that I would never dare tell, that for the rest of my life I would be crushed under the sense of guilt that seemed too heavy to be borne.
It was late one afternoon in the middle of July that the crash came. Never, never shall I forget that day! So dark and awful at first, and then— But I must follow the story just as it happened.
Herbert and I had had tea in thelibrary. It was warm weather, and the windows that led to the terrace were wide open. Through them I could see the beautiful landscape—rolling hills with great trees dotted over them, all the colors brighter and deeper than at midday, for the sun was getting low. I was sitting by one of the windows looking out on this, and thinking how different had been my feelings when I had come here as a bride and loved it all, and been so full of joy. My hands hung limp over the arms of the chair. I had no desire to move or speak. It is so agonizing, when you are miserable, looking back on days that were happy!
As I was sitting this way, Thomas, one of the footmen, came in with the letters. I noticed that he had quitea packet of them. Some were mine, and I laid them on the table at my elbow. Idly and without interest I saw that in Herbert’s bunch there was a small box, such as jewelry is sent about in. Thomas left the room, and I continued looking out of the window until I suddenly heard Herbert give a suppressed exclamation. I turned toward him, and saw that he had the open box in his hand.
“What does this mean?” he said. “What an extraordinary thing! Look here, Gladys.”
And he came toward me, holding out the box. It was full of cotton wool, and lying on this were a great quantity of unset diamonds of different sizes. My heart gave a leap into my throat. I sat up, clutching the arms of the chair.
“What are they?” I said, hearing my voice suddenly high and loud. “Where did they come from?”
“I don’t know anything about them! It’s too odd! See what’s written on this piece of paper that was inside the box.”
He held out a small piece of paper, on which the creases of several folds were plainly marked. Across it, in typing, ran two sentences. I snatched the paper and read the words:
We don’t wantyourdiamonds. You can keep them, and with them accept our kind regards.
We don’t wantyourdiamonds. You can keep them, and with them accept our kind regards.
The paper fluttered to my feet. I knew in a moment what it all meant. The thieves had discovered that the diamonds were paste, and had returned them. I was consciousof Herbert’s startled face suddenly charged with an expression of sharp anxiety as he cried:
“Why, Gladys, what is it? You’re as white as death!”
He came toward me, but I motioned him away and rose to my feet. I knew then that the hour had come, and tho I suspect Iwasvery white, I did not feel so frightened as I had done in the past.
“Thoseareyour diamonds, Herbert,” I said, quietly and distinctly, “or, perhaps, I ought to say those are the substitutes for them.Yourdiamonds are in Paris, at Barriere’s,au quatrème, on the Rue Croix des Petits Champs.”
“Gladys!” he exclaimed, “what do you mean? What are you talking about? You look so white andstrange! Sit down, darling, and tell me what you mean.”
“Oh, Herbert,” I cried, with my voice suddenly full of agony, “let me tell you! Don’t stop me. If you’re angry with me and hate me, wait till I’ve finished before you say so. I’ve got to confess it all. I’ve got to, dear. You must listen to me, and not frighten me till I have done; for if I don’t tell you now, I shall certainly die.”
And then I told—I told it all. I didn’t leave out a single thing. My first bills, and Bolkonsky, and the jeweler, and the pawnbroking place, and everything was in it. Once I was started, it was not so hard, and I poured it out. I didn’t try to make it better, or ask to be forgiven.But when it was all finished, I said, in a voice that I could hear was suddenly husky and trembling:
“And now I suppose you’ll not like me any more. It’s quite natural that you shouldn’t. I only ask one thing, and I know, of course, I have no right to ask it—that is, that you won’t send me away from you. I have been very wicked. I suppose I ought to be put in prison. But, oh, Herbert, no matter what I’ve been, I’ve loved you! That’s something.”
I could not go any further, and there was no need; for my dear husband did not seem angry at all. He took me, all weeping and trembling, into his arms, and said the sweetest things to me—the sort of thingsone doesn’t write down with a pen—just between him and me.
And I?—I turned my face into his shoulder and cried feebly. No one knows how happy I felt except a person who has been completely miserable and suddenly finds her misery ended. It is really worth being miserable to thoroughly appreciate the joy of being happy again.
Well, that is really the end of the statement. Herbert went to Paris a few days later and redeemed the diamonds, and they are now being set in imitation of the old settings, which are lost. I would not go to Paris with him. Nor will I go to London next season. Both places are too full of horrible memories. Perhaps some day I shall feel aboutthem as I did before the diamonds were taken, but now I do not want to leave the country at all. Besides, we can economize here, and the four thousand pounds necessary to get back the stones was a good deal for Herbert to have to pay out just now. And then it is so sweet and peaceful in the country. Nothing troubles one. Oh, how delightful a thing it is to have an easy conscience! One does not know how good it is till one has lost it.
This finishes my statement. I dare say it is a very bad one, for I am not clever at all. But it has the one merit of being entirely truthful, and I have told everything—just how wicked I was, and just why I was so wicked. Nothing has beenheld back, and nothing has been set down falsely. It is an unprejudiced and accurate account of my share in the Castlecourt diamond case.