Part 6 (1/2)
”And who else knows anything when he's settled with?” he asked angrily.
”Why,” said I quite calmly, ”you and I, perhaps.”
He looked at me as though his glance was all-consuming and would wither me, but I met him with a placid smile and continued,--
”It seems to me that I want what Mr. Stevenson calls 'a good memory for forgetting.' Do you know, Lord Harningham, that if you paid my bill--gave me, say, eight thousand pounds on account, I believe my mind would be quite oblivious to the events of last night.”
The shot struck home--in the very center of my target. He thought over it for some while, and spoke but once between Sevenoaks and Charing Cross. His remark was more forcible than convincing, for he exclaimed suddenly, and _a propos_ of nothing in particular, ”Sutton to blazes with all jewels!” Then he subsided, and came with me quietly to my rooms, where he wrote a check for eight thousand pounds and signed it with considerable firmness. The ink was hardly dry, however, before he dropped heavily upon the carpet, and lay p.r.o.ne in a fit.
The shock of parting with so much money had been too much for him. He is now in Madeira seeking a climate.
TREASURE OF WHITE CREEK.
TREASURE OF WHITE CREEK.
She was the daughter of Colonel Kershaw Klein, and he was worth a million, as the society papers said. I had danced with her for the first time in the ball-room of the magnificent house her father had rented in Grosvenor Crescent, on the occasion of her coming of age; and I agreed with the men that she was beyond criticism, an exquisite vision of dark and matured girlhood, so incomparably fascinating that you forget in her company some of her bluntness in speech, and set down the voluptuousness of her glance and mien to the southern luxuriance amidst which she had been reared, and to those ”other” notions which prevail in Chili, the land of fleeting republics.
Some part of this perhaps unnecessary adulation may have been due to the fact that I had helped in the production of her perfect picture on the night of which I am speaking. The commercial element will intrude at such times; and I could not help but see that she wore at least eight hundred pounds' worth of my jewels. Had the value of them been double, it would have been the same to me, for of her father's stability I had then no doubt. He had been received and made much of in the highest places, accorded the chief seats at the feasts; entrusted--as the old ladies told you--with the most important missions by Government; and a share in the Western Hill diamond mine at South Africa was not the least substantial factor in the sum of his income. Any and every gem to which he took a fancy I had let him have readily, being a.s.sured by an important personage at the Emba.s.sy that his credit was unquestionable; and it was a pretty pleasure to me when I first met his daughter to observe how well my diamonds sat upon her, and how shapely were her arms clasped in the ruby bracelets which had been amongst the treasures of Bond Street but three months before. She was, indeed, a sunny child of the South, radiating a warming light about her, tempting you to wait long for a single press of her hand, luring you to follow the sparkle of her eyes even when she looked at you over the shoulder of a dancer who for the moment had the privilege of holding her in the entrancement of the _deux temps_. There was keen contention for her programme, but somehow I found her disposed to favor me, and danced no less than four with her, to the infinite annoyance of the many youths who eyed me angrily from their watching-ground by the door. They said that they had never seen her brighter; and I was ready to believe them, for she kept her tongue going merrily through the waltzes, and leant upon my arm in a languorous way that was completely entrancing.
At the end of the dance--the next being some newfangled ”Barn Dance”
wherein men scarce put their hands upon their partners--she said that she would sit in the conservatory and eat ices; and for the first time during the long evening I found myself able to talk easily with her.
”Well,” she said, when we had composed ourselves behind a huge fern, and had made a successful attack upon the _meringues glaces_, ”well, this is about splendid; don't you think so?”
I said that nothing could be more delightful.
”And to think that I've never danced with you before; why, you're just perfect,” she went on. ”I haven't enjoyed myself right along like this since I was in Valparaiso.”
”Are the Chilians such wonderful dancers then?” I asked, as she looked up at me bewitchingly.
”They just make a profession of it between the shooting times,” said she; and then changing the subject quickly, she asked, ”What do you think of the crystals now I've got them on?”
It is not particularly consoling to hear your rubies spoken of as crystals, but her description was accompanied by such a pretty laugh, and she opened her great black eyes so widely, that I smiled when I answered,--
”Why, they're to be envied in such a setting.”
”You're the fourth man that has said the same to-night,” she exclaimed, putting her gla.s.s down and tugging at her glove. ”I think that Britishers learn their compliments out of copy-books; they're all presents for good girls. Let's see if you're cleverer at getting a glove on than at making pretty speeches.”
The arm that she held out was gloriously white; and as every man knows, the operation of pulling on the glove of a pretty girl is apt to be prolonged. There are fingers to fit, and a little thumb to stroke daintily; while the grip upon the more substantial part of the forearm will bear repet.i.tion so long as time serves. I must have occupied myself at least five minutes with her b.u.t.tons, she finding it necessary to press close to me when I did so; and the task was none the less pleasant when her rich brown hair touched my face, and her dress rustled with her long-drawn breathing. How long the process would have lasted, or what I should have said foolishly in the end, I do not know; but of a sudden she drew her arm away and exclaimed,--
”Oh, I'd quite forgotten; I wanted to ask you about the bull's-eye.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”I wanted to ask you about the bull's-eye.”
--_Page 82_]
This was her description, I may mention without anger, of the famous White Creek Diamond, which, as all London knows, I have had in my possession for the last two years. Her father, who was reputed to have some commission to buy it for a Persian, was then negotiating with me for its purchase for the sum of one hundred and thirty thousand pounds.