The Eustace Diamonds (57 page)

She tried to think of it all, and to form some idea in her mind of what might be the truth. Of course, Patience Crabstick had known her secret, but how long had the girl known it? And how had the girl discovered it? She was almost certain, from certain circumstances, from words which the girl had spoken, and from signs which she had observed, that Patience had not even suspected that the necklace had been brought with them from Carlisle to London. Of course, the coming of Bunfit and the woman would have set the girl's mind to work in that direction; but then Bunfit and the woman had only been there on that morning. The Corsair knew the facts, and no one but the Corsair. That the Corsair was a Corsair, the suspicions of the police had proved to her. She had offered the necklace to the Corsair; but when so offered, he had refused to take it. She could understand that he should see the danger of accepting the diamonds from her hand, and yet should be desirous of having them. And might not he have thought that he could best relieve her from the burthen of their
custody in this manner? She felt no anger against the Corsair as she weighed the probability of his having taken them in this fashion. A Corsair must be a Corsair. Were he to come to her and confess the deed, she would almost like him the better for it – admiring his skill and enterprise. But how very clever he must have been, and how brave! He had known, no doubt, that the three ladies were all going to the theatre; but in how short a time had he got rid of the other women and availed himself of the services of Patience Crabstick!

But in what way would she conduct herself when the police should come to her on the following morning – the police and all the other people who would crowd the house? How should she receive her cousin Frank? How should she look when the coincidence of the double robbery should be spoken of in her hearing? How should she bear herself when, as of course would be the case, she should again be taken before the magistrates, and made to swear as to the loss of her property? Must she commit more perjury, with the certainty that various people must know that her oath was false? All the world might suspect her. All the world would soon know the truth. Might it not be possible that the diamonds were at this moment in the hands of Messrs Camper-down, and that they would be produced before her eyes, as soon as her second false oath had been registered against her? And yet how could she tell the truth? And what would the Corsair think of her – the Corsair, who would know everything? She made one resolution during the night. She would not be taken into court. The magistrates and the people might come to her, but she would not go before them. When the morning came she said that she was ill, and refused to leave her bed. Policemen, she knew, were in the house early. At about nine Mrs Carbuncle and Lucinda were up and in her room. The excitement of the affair had taken them from their beds – but she would not stir. If it were absolutely necessary, she said, the men must come into her room. She had been so overset by what had occurred on the previous night, that she could not leave her room. She appealed to Lucinda as to the fact of her illness. The trouble of these robberies was so great upon her that her heart was almost broken. If her deposition must be taken, she
would make it in her bed. In the course of the day the magistrate did come into her room and the deposition was taken. Forty-three pounds had been taken from her desk, and certain jewels, which she described, from her dressing-case. As far as she was aware, no other property of hers was missing. This she said in answer to a direct question from the magistrate, which, as she thought, was asked with a stern voice and searching eye. And so, a second time, she had sworn falsely. But this at least was gained – that Lord George de Bruce Carruthers was not looking at her as she swore.

Lord George was in the house for a great part of the day, but he did not ask to be admitted to Lizzie's room; – nor did she ask to see him. Frank Greystock was there late in the afternoon, and went up at once to his cousin. The moment that she saw him she stretched out her arms to him, and burst into tears. ‘My poor girl,' said he, ‘what is the meaning of it all?'

‘I don't know. I think they will kill me. They want to kill me. They want to kill me. How can I bear it all? The robbers were here last night, and magistrates and policemen and people have been here all day.' Then she fell into a fit of sobbing and wailing, which was, in truth, hysterical. For – if the readers think of it – the poor woman had a great deal to bear.

Frank, into whose mind no glimmer of suspicion against his cousin had yet entered, and who firmly believed that she had been made a victim because of the value of her diamonds – and who had a theory of his own about the robbery at Carlisle, to the circumstances of which he was now at some pains to make these latter circumstances adhere – was very tender with his cousin, and remained in the house for more than an hour. ‘Oh, Frank, what had I better do?' she asked him.

‘I would leave London, if I were you.'

‘Yes; – of course. I will. Oh yes, I will!'

‘If you don't fear the cold of Scotland –'

‘I fear nothing – nothing but being where these policemen can come to me. Oh!' – and then she shuddered and was again hysterical. Nor was she acting the condition. As she remembered the magistrates, and the detectives, and the policemen in their uniforms – and reflected that she might probably see much more of
them before the game was played out, the thoughts that crowded on her were almost more than she could bear.

‘Your child is there, and it is your own house. Go there till all this passes by.' Whereupon she promised him that, as soon as she was well enough, she would at once go to Scotland.

In the meantime, the Eustace diamonds were locked up in a small safe fixed into the wall at the back of a small cellar beneath the establishment of Messrs Harter and Benjamin, in Mint Lane, in the City. Messrs Harter and Benjamin always kept a second place of business. Their great shop was at the West-end; but they had accommodation in the City.

The chronicler states this at once, as he scorns to keep from his reader any secret that is known to himself.

*       *       *       

And she was ill. Though her mind was again at work with schemes on which she would not have busied herself without hope, yet she had not recovered from the actual bodily prostration to which she had been compelled to give way when first told of the robbery on her return from the theatre. There had been moments, then, in which she thought her heart would have broken – moments in which, but that the power of speech was wanting, she would have told everything to Lucinda Roanoke. When Mrs Carbuncle was marching upstairs with the policeman at her heels she would have willingly sold all her hopes, Portray Castle, her lovers, her necklace, her income, her beauty, for any assurance of the humblest security. With that quickness of intellect which was her peculiar gift, she had soon understood, in the midst of her sufferings, that her necklace had been taken by thieves whose robbery might assist her for awhile in keeping her secret, rather than lead to the immediate divulging of it. Neither
Camperdown nor Bunfit had been at work among the boxes. Her secret had been discovered, no doubt, by Patience Crabstick, and the diamonds were gone. But money also was taken, and the world need not know that the diamonds had been there. But Lord George knew. And then there arose to her that question. Had the diamonds been taken in consequence of that revelation to Lord George? It was not surprising that in the midst of all this Lizzie should be really ill.

She was most anxious to see Lord George; but, if what Mrs Carbuncle said to her was true, Lord George refused to see her. She did not believe Mrs Carbuncle, and was, therefore, quite in the dark about her Corsair. As she could only communicate with him through Mrs Carbuncle, it might well be the case that he should have been told that he could not have access to her. Of course there were difficulties. That her cousin Frank should see her in her bedroom – her cousin Frank, with whom it was essentially necessary that she should hold counsel as to her present great difficulties, was a matter of course. There was no hesitation about that. A fresh nightcap and a clean pocket-handkerchief with a bit of lace round it, and perhaps some pretty covering to her shoulders if she were to be required to sit up in bed, and the thing was arranged. He might have spent the best part of his days in her bedroom if he could have spared the time. But the Corsair was not a cousin – nor as yet an acknowledged lover. There was difficulty, even, in framing a reason for her request, when she made it to Mrs Carbuncle; and the very reason which she gave was handed back to her as the Corsair's reason for not coming to her. She desired to see him because he had been so much mixed up in the matter of these terrible robberies. But Mrs Carbuncle declared to her that Lord George would not come to her because his name had been so frequently mentioned in connexion with the diamonds. ‘You see, my dear,' said Mrs Carbuncle, ‘there can be no real reason for his seeing you up in your bedroom. If there had been anything between you, as I once thought there would –' There was something in the tone of Mrs Carbuncle's voice which grated on Lizzie's ear – something which seemed to imply that all that prospect was over.

‘Of course' said Lizzie querulously, ‘I am very anxious to know what he thinks. I care more about his opinion than anybody else's. As to his name being mixed up in it – that is all a joke.'

‘It has been no joke to him, I can assure you,' said Mrs Car buncle. Lizzie could not press her request. Of course, she knew more about it than did Mrs Carbuncle. The secret was in her own bosom – the secret as to the midnight robbery at Carlisle, and that secret she had told to Lord George. As to the robbery in London she knew nothing – except that it had been perpetrated through the treachery of Patience Crabstick. Did Lord George know more about it than she knew? – and if so, was he now deterred by that knowledge from visiting her? ‘You see, my dear,' said Mrs Carbuncle, 'that a gentleman visiting a lady with whom he has no connexion in her bedroom, is in itself something very peculiar.' Lizzie made a motion of impatience under the bedclothes. Any such argument was trash to her, and she knew that it was trash to Mrs Carbuncle also. What was one man in her bedroom more than another? She could see a dozen doctors if she pleased, and if so, why not this man, whose real powers of doctoring her would be so much more efficacious? ‘You would want to see him alone, too,' continued Mrs Carbuncle, ‘and, of course, the police would hear of it. I am not at all surprised that he should stay away.' Lizzie's condition did not admit of much argument on her side, and she only showed her opposition to Mrs Carbuncle by being cross and querulous.

Frank Greystock came to her with great constancy almost every day, and from him she did hear about the robbery all that he knew or heard. When three days had passed – when six days, and even when ten days were gone, nobody had been as yet arrested. The police, according to Frank, were much on the alert, but were very secret. They either would not, or could not, tell anything. To him the two robberies, that at Carlisle and the last affair in Hertford Street, were of course distinct. There were those who believed that the Hertford Street thieves and the Carlisle thieves were not only the same, but that they had been in quest of the same plunder – and had at last succeeded. But Frank was
not one of these. He never for a moment doubted that the diamonds had been taken at Carlisle, and explained the second robbery by the supposition that Patience Crabstick had been emboldened by success. The iron box had no doubt been taken by her assistance, and her familiarity with the thieves then established, had led to the second robbery. Lizzie's loss in that second robbery had amounted to some hundred pounds. This was Frank Grey-stock's theory, and of course it was one very comfortable to Lizzie.

‘They all seem to think that the diamonds are at Paris,' he said to her one day.

‘If you only knew how little I care about them. It seems as though I had almost forgotten them in these after troubles.'

‘Mr Camperdown cares about them. I'm told he says that he can make you pay for them out of your jointure.'

‘That would be very terrible, of course,' said lizzie, to whose mind there was something consolatory in the idea that the whole affair of the robbery might perhaps remain so mysterious as to remove her from the danger of other punishment than this.

‘I feel sure that he couldn't do it,' said Frank, ‘and I don't think he'll try it. John Eustace would not let him. It would be persecution.'

‘Mr Camperdown has always chosen to persecute me', said Lizzie.

‘I can understand that he shouldn't like the loss of the diamonds. I don't think, Lizzie, you ever realized their true value.'

‘I suppose not. After all, a necklace is only a necklace. I cared nothing for it – except that I could not bear the idea that that man should dictate to me. I would have given it up at once, at the slightest word from you.' He did not care to remind her then, as she lay in bed, that he had been very urgent in his advice to her to abandon the diamonds – and not the less urgent because he had thought that the demand for them was unjust. ‘I told you often,' she continued, 'that I was tempted to throw them among the waves. It was true; – quite true. I offered to give them to you,
and should have been delighted to have been relieved from them.'

‘That was, of course, simply impossible',

‘I know it was; – impossible on your part; but I would have been delighted. Of what use were they to me? I wore them twice because that man' – meaning Lord Fawn – ‘disputed my right to them. Before that I never even looked at them. Do you think I had pleasure in wearing them, or pleasure in looking at them? Never. They were only a trouble to me. It was a point of honour with me to keep them, because I was attacked. But I am glad they are gone – thoroughly glad.' This was all very well, and was not without its effect on Frank Greystock. It is hardly expected of a woman in such a condition, with so many troubles on her mind, who had been so persecuted, that every word uttered by her should be strictly true. Lizzie, with her fresh nightcap, and her laced handkerchief, pale, and with her eyes just glittering with tears, was very pretty. ‘Didn't somebody once give someone a garment which scorched him up when he wore it – some woman who sent it because she loved the man so much?'

‘The shirt, you mean, which Dejanira sent to Hercules.
¹
Yes; –Hercules was a good deal scorched.'

‘And that necklace, which my husband gave me because he loved me so well, has scorched me horribly. It has nearly killed me. It has been like the white elephant which the Eastern king gives to his subject when he means to ruin him. Only poor Florian didn't mean to hurt me. He gave it all in love. If these people bring a lawsuit against me, Frank, you must manage it for me.'

‘There will be no lawsuit. Your brother-in-law will stop it.'

‘I wonder who will really get the diamonds after all, Frank? They were very valuable. Only think that the ten thousand pounds should disappear in such a way!' The subject was a very dangerous one, but there was a fascination about it which made it impossible for her to refrain from it.

‘A dishonest dealer in diamonds will probably realise the plunder – after some years. There would be something very alluring in the theft of articles of great value, were it not that when
got, they at once become almost valueless by the difficulty of dealing with them. Supposing I had the necklace!'

‘I wish you had, Frank.'

‘I could do nothing with it. Ten sovereigns would go further with me – or ten shillings. The burthen of possessing it would in itself be almost more than I could bear. The knowledge that I had the thing, and might be discovered in having it, would drive me mad. By my own weakness I should be compelled to tell my secret to someone. And then I should never sleep for fear my partner in the matter should turn against me.' How well she understood it all! How probable it was that Lord George should turn against her! How exact was Frank's description of that burthen of a secret so heavy that it cannot be borne alone! ‘A little reflection,' continued Frank, 'soon convinces a man that rough downright stealing is an awkward, foolish trade; and it therefore falls into the hands of those who want education for the higher efforts of dishonesty. To get into a bank at midnight and steal what little there may be in the till, or even an armful of bank-notes, with the probability of a policeman catching you as you creep out of the chimney and through a hole, is clumsy work; but to walk in amidst the smiles and bows of admiring managers and draw out money over the counter by thousands and tens of thousands, which you have never put in and which you can never repay; and which, when all is done, you have only borrowed; – that is a great feat'.

‘Do you really think so?'

The courage, the ingenuity, and the self-confidence needed are certainly admirable. And then there is a cringing and almost contemptible littleness about honesty, which hardly allows it to assert itself. The really honest man can never say a word to make those who don't know of his honesty believe that it is there. He has one foot in the grave before his neighbours have learned that he is possessed of an article for the use of which they would so willingly have paid, could they have been made to see that it was there. The dishonest man almost doubts whether in him dishonesty is dishonest, let it be practised ever so widely. The honest man almost doubts whether his honesty be honest, unless it be
kept hidden. Let two unknown men be competitors for any place, with nothing to guide the judges but their own words and their own looks, and who can doubt but the dishonest man would be chosen rather than the honest? Honesty goes about with a hangdog look about him, as though knowing that he cannot be trusted till he be proved. Dishonesty carries his eyes high, and assumes that any question respecting him must be considered to be unnecessary.'

‘Oh, Frank, what a philosopher you are!'

‘Well, yes; meditating about your diamonds has brought my philosophy out. When do you think you will go to Scotland?'

‘I am hardly strong enough for the journey yet. I fear the cold so much.'

‘You would not find it cold there by the sea-side.
²
To tell you the truth, Lizzie, I want to get you out of this house. I don't mean to say a word against Mrs Carbuncle; but after all that has occurred, it would be better that you should be away. People talk about you and Lord George.'

‘How can I help it, Frank?'

‘By going away; – that is, if I may presume one thing. I don't want to pry into your secrets'

‘I have none from you.'

‘Unless there be truth in the assertion that you are engaged to marry Lord George Carruthers.'

‘There is no truth in it.'

‘And you do not wish to stay here in order that there may be an engagement? I am obliged to ask you home questions, Lizzie, as I could not otherwise advise you.'

‘You do, indeed, ask home questions.'

‘I will desist at once, if they be disagreeable.'

‘Frank, you are false to me!' As she said this she rose in her bed, and sat with her eyes fixed upon his, and her thin hands stretched out upon the bedclothes. ‘You know that I cannot wish to be engaged to him or to any other man. You know better almost than I can know myself, how my heart stands. There has, at any rate, been no hypocrisy with me in regard to you. Everything
has been told to you; – at what cost I will not now say. The honest woman, I fear, fares worse than even the honest man of whom you spoke. I think you admitted that he would be appreciated at last. She to her dying day must pay the penalty of her transgressions. Honesty in a woman the world never forgives.' When she had done speaking, he sat silent by her bedside, but, almost unconsciously, he stretched out his left hand and took her right hand in his. For a few seconds she admitted this, and she lay there with their hands clasped. Then with a start she drew back her arm, and retreated as it were from his touch. ‘How dare you,' said she, ‘press my hand, when you know that such pressure from you is treacherous and damnable!'