The Annam Jewel (11 page)

For the first time, Peter did not kiss her. He had always kissed Rose Ellen. He had certainly meant to kiss her now, but somehow he didn't do it. He had not the slightest idea that it was Rose Ellen who had stopped him. She gave him both her hands and a lovely smile, and she said:

“Oh, Petah de—ah!” And quite suddenly Peter was as unable to kiss her as if they had never met before.

They sat on the grass and talked, falling quickly and easily into the old intimacy; and, as usual, it was Peter who talked and Rose Ellen who listened. He was full of his plans and at a word they came pouring out.

“You're not going back to the Argentine, are you, Peter?”

Rose Ellen's voice shook just a very little as she put the question. The Argentine was a long way off. After the war she didn't feel as if she could bear Peter to go right away to the other side of the map.

Peter shook his head.

“No, I'm not going back. I'm a bit fed up with Dagos. I want to be in England; and Uncle Matthew's money makes it possible. It was frightfully decent of him to leave it to me, wasn't it?”

Rose Ellen nodded. Little warm waves of thankfulness were beating upon her. She felt so dreadfully glad that she couldn't speak, so she nodded, and her delicate pink colour rose a little.

“There's a friend of mine, a fellow called Tressilian—you'd like him awfully, he's a most amusing chap—we're going into partnership. We're going to breed horses. He's got family acres in Devonshire and no money; and I've got Uncle Matthew's money and no acres. I think we ought to make quite a good thing of it. He's down there now, and I'm seeing to things in town. There's a good deal of business connected with Uncle Matthew's estate that had to stand over till I got back.”

“It sounds lovely,” said Rose Ellen.

They walked home slowly, Peter still discoursing.

It was next day when they were in the orchard that Rose Ellen asked him about Sylvia Coverdale. They were sitting under the very tree where they had sat when Rose Ellen made her little plaited ring, and Peter told her that when he was twenty-five he was going to marry Sylvia and give her the Annam Jewel. From that day to this he had never mentioned Sylvia again. In a week Peter would be twenty-five. Rose Ellen could keep the question back no longer. The apple tree was full of pink-and-white blossom. Rose Ellen filled her hands with the fallen petals and made a little pile of them on the lap of her rose-coloured gown. She looked down at the pink and white, and she said:

“Do you ever see Sylvia Coverdale, Peter?”

“Oh, she's married,” said Peter carelessly. “Yes, I see her sometimes. She's is a widow now. Her name's Moreland, Lady Moreland.”

“Is she as pretty as ever?” said Rose Ellen.

She didn't look at Peter.

“Oh, prettier, much prettier,” said Peter.

Rose Ellen laughed.

“Oh, Peter!” she said. “How could she be?”

“Why?”

“Because she was so very lovely then. I didn't think anyone could be prettier than that.”

“I was fearfully keen on her when I was seventeen,” said Peter.

“And not now?”

This time Rose Ellen did look. She had to see Peter's face, because she simply had to know what perhaps he would not tell her in words. She kept her soft voice steady.

“Oh, lord, no—not like that. She's frightfully pretty and—and an awfully good sort, and we're great friends.”

“Have you seen much of her?”

“Well, I always seemed to run across her if I was ever on leave. I'd like you to meet her. You'd like her immensely. She's very sympathetic and feminine, you know—not a bit like most of the girls one comes across. You'd like her no end.”

“Should I?” said Rose Ellen. Then her colour rose, and she said with a sudden smile. “Are you still going to give her the Annam Jewel, Peter?”

“Not much!” said Peter cheerfully.

The day he went away was the last of the hot spring days. Clouds were already piling up from the south-west when Rose Ellen walked with him across the fields to Merton. She was happy because Dearest had been very kind indeed and Peter was coming down again quite soon.

Peter talked about his horse farm. He was very keen about it. When they reached the station there was not too much time. Peter took his ticket, got into an empty third-class carriage, and went on talking about horses, and Devonshire, and Jim Tressilian.

“You'll have to come and keep house for us,” he said cheerfully as the train began to move. “Mrs. Mortimer doesn't want you now. She's got old Gaisford and the baby, and can very well spare you.”

Rose Ellen walked back with a scarlet colour in her cheeks and two wounds in her heart. One of the wounds was just a surface one, because, although it was true in a sense that Dearest could do without her, she had accustomed herself to the thought. The other wound was a very deep one; Rose Ellen's happiness was draining away through it. She had thought, yes, she had really thought—the scarlet burned her cheeks—but Peter would never have said that about coming to keep house unless he was just thinking of her as his sister.

“And I'm not, I'm not! I won't be, and I'm not.”

She stood quite still in the middle of a field, and remembered how Peter had said, “When we're grown up I'll marry you, and then your name will really be Waring.” That was years and years before he had said that he would marry Sylvia when he was twenty-five. Now he was going back to London. Something in Rose Ellen said that he was going back to Sylvia.

She walked home very slowly.

CHAPTER XIII

At twelve o'clock on the morning of his twenty-fifth birthday Peter Waring emerged from the offices of Messrs. Wadsgrove, Wadsgrove, Spenlow & Walton, with a dispatch case in his hand. He called a taxi, and drove straight to his rooms in Bury Street.

Twenty minutes later he was breaking the seals which had guarded his father's papers for twenty-five years. The seals bore the Waring crest—a clenched fist and the words “Be Ware”. The ring which had made the impression was on the little finger of Peter's left hand. He unlocked the box and threw back the lid. His hand did not shake, but it was a tremendous moment. He had the feeling that here, at this instant, he was leaving the land of everyday behind, and passing into some place of adventurous dreams beyond. He was about to possess the Annam Jewel, to see and handle the Annam Jewel; and always the Annam Jewel had meant for him romance, the something beyond. Once it had meant Sylvia Coverdale to him. When he was twenty-five he would receive the Annam Jewel and he would marry Sylvia.

He paused for a moment, with his hand on the papers under the lid, and thought about Sylvia.

She had married well, if not brilliantly. She was Lady Moreland when Peter went to the Argentine. Now she was a widow of three years' standing. Peter had met her only the day before. He was dining with her tonight.

Peter thought of her with an admiration untinged by romance. It was no longer Sylvia and the Jewel, the Jewel and Sylvia. The Jewel reigned alone.

He lifted a sheet of foolscap and saw, written across it in pencil, “For my son Peter when he is twenty-five”, and a scrawled “Henry Waring”. Under the sheet of paper was an exercise-book with a black cover. Peter laid it aside, and saw in the bottom of the case a small, square cardboard box. He took it up, opened it, pulled back a layer of discoloured cotton wool, and saw the Jewel. It was a little smaller than his thumb nail. It was not like any jewel that he had ever seen. There was red in it, but it was not a ruby; there was blue in it, and green, but it was neither a sapphire nor an emerald; there were all these colours, but it was not an opal.

Peter set down the box, picked up the Jewel between his finger and thumb, and walked with it to the window, frowning The day was dull; that was why the Jewel had no fire. It was May, but the sky was leaden. The colours in the Jewel seemed dull. He pulled down the blind with a jerk, switched on the centre drop light, and held the Jewel right under it, turning it this way and that. It was dull and cold.

Peter knew very little about precious stones, but it seemed to him that the thing was too light by half. He went back to the window and tried the edge of the Jewel on the glass. After a moment's puzzled scrutiny he sat down at the table, dropped the Jewel back upon the stained cotton wool, and took up the black exercise-book. He turned the leaves and saw that they were closely written on, partly in ink and partly in pencil.

He left the light burning, and settled himself to read. The entries began abruptly, at the top of a left-hand page, with part of an old letter attached by its corners. There was no beginning to the first sentence:

…
found James pretty far gone, but able to dictate and sign a will. He couldn't speak much, but he told me he had got the Jewel. He said the old priest gave it to him. Then he had a row with his partners. One of them got the Jewel away from him
—
a man called Henderson
—
Dutch-American. The other man is called Dale, but that's not his name. James did not know his real name, but said he found by accident that his Christian name was Roden
—
an unusual name
—
might be a clue
.

Henderson got away with the Jewel. James fell sick, and couldn't follow at once. When we found him there was a fight. I don't know if Dale was there or not. James wandered rather. James was hurt, but he got away with the Jewel. He left it to me in his will, and he gave it to me last night before he died. I shall take the next boat back
…

Here the fragment of the letter ended.

The next entry was long, and had evidently been written bit by bit. It began in ink. As it proceeded, the writer had had recourse oftener and oftener to pencil. Some of the sentences were hardly legible. It ran:

“Half an hour after posting my letter to Olivia I discovered that the Jewel was false, a bad fake clumsily made. I had hardly looked at it before. The room was dark and my mind fully taken up with James' state. I sat down and thought, and became convinced, first, that there was a real Jewel, and second, that James had had it in his possession. It seemed certain that Henderson had somehow managed to get the Jewel copied and, on being tracked down, had let James get away with the fake. I began to make inquiries. I found that Dale had a wife and child up country and was supposed to be visiting them. I discovered that Henderson was lodging in the bazaar, in the house of a native jeweller.

“I made my plans, put on native dress, and went to see Henderson. There was a way up the back of the house from a veranda roof which an active man could climb. I was active enough then. I climbed to the window and looked in. There was a lamp burning on a table. Henderson sat with his back to me, bending forward, working at something. He is a heavy, square-built man, quite young, light-haired, and very strong. He has a round, white scar the size of a threepenny-bit on the back of his right hand. It looks like a burn—some acid, I should judge. I was very quiet, and he didn't hear me. He went on working. All at once he picked something up and held it to the light. I saw it over his shoulder. It was the Jewel. The sight of it took away my breath. I've never seen anything like it in my life, nor has anyone else. There isn't anything like it. There is only one Annam Jewel.

“I'm writing this quite soberly. You'll see the fake, and I want you to remember, when you see it, that it gives you no idea of what the living Jewel is. To compare the fake with the Jewel is like comparing a photograph with a beautiful woman. The life isn't there. The Jewel is like a breathing thing. It's the way the colours come and go, and mix and blend—red, blue, green, and gold. It's not an opal. I don't know what it is. It's just the Jewel.

“I'm writing this to make you feel that no risk, no labour will be too great if you can only get the Jewel in the end. And whilst I can write it, remember the Jewel is yours. The old priest gave it to James, James left it by will to me, and I have left it by will to you. Neither Dale nor Henderson have a shadow of a claim. The Jewel is yours, my son. Now I must get on.

“Henderson and I both looked at the Jewel, then he said with a Dutch oath, ‘I'll beat you. I'll beat you yet. You're hard to beat, but I'll make a jewel yet that will cheat all the world except me.' He said it in a whisper, but I heard the words just as I've set them down.

“I have found out since that Henderson was apprenticed to a man called Michel, who made copies of famous jewels for people who didn't want to risk their real ones, or who wanted to pawn them, perhaps. He was a well-known man in Paris, and came smash over some big fraudulent deal. Henderson disappeared. His real name is Henders—I'm sure from what I have found out that it is the same man.

“He leant back in his chair and held the Jewel to the light. I got my knee on to the window-sill, and then I saw that he heard something. He turned, and I sprang at the same time. He was much stronger than I, but I tripped him, and we went down together. His head struck against a copper water-vessel. The Jewel rolled across the floor. I was up first. I snatched it and made for the window. As I dropped to the veranda roof I heard him stumble across the room. He fired through the window, and I knew that I was hit, but I didn't think very much of it. I got back to my place, took James' papers, and went over to the hotel.

“There was a boat leaving next day. I meant to take it. I was a fool. I ought to have sat up all night with a revolver, but I didn't. I had a bullet through my shoulder, and I went to bed. I didn't mean to sleep, but the next thing I knew was waking in the pitch dark to feel the muzzle of a revolver tight against my temple. There was a hand over my mouth, a very strong, thin hand—not Henderson's—and a voice—not Henderson's voice—whispered in my ear, ‘You won't move, will you? It's quite useless, and I'd really hate to shoot you.' It was a gentleman's voice, not like Henderson's. I knew it must be Dale. Then a match was struck in the middle of the room, and I saw Henderson there. He'd a little bit of candle about two inches high in his hand. He lit it and put it on the table. I saw Dale's face close to mine, thin, dark, clean-shaven—a smallish man, probably a wastrel of good family. He said, ‘Quick now, Waring, where's the Jewel?' Then with sudden ferocity, ‘Quick, or I'll let Henderson smash you! It'll make less noise than shooting.' There was just one slender chance. I took it.