Part 5 (1/2)

The gay London crowd that was accustomed to pa.s.s continuously within a stone's throw of its walls, without giving a thought to those dubious stories of the underworld which were daily elucidated there, had made of it the centre of their interest this morning. Many more than could be accommodated had sought for admission, in order to witness a scene in which the parts would be taken, not by the squalid professionals of crime, but by amateurs of their own high standing. The seedy loafers who were accustomed to congregate there had been shouldered out by a fas.h.i.+onable crowd, amongst which the actors who were to take part in the play found themselves the objects of attentions which some of them could well have dispensed with.

Joan sat between her father and mother, outwardly subdued, inwardly deeply interested. Behind the natural shrinking of a young girl, compelled to stand up and be questioned in public, there was the pluck of her race to support her. It would not be worse than having a tooth stopped, and that prospect had never deterred her from appreciation of the ill.u.s.trated papers in the dentist's waiting-room. So now she sat absorbed by the expectation of what was about to happen, and felt exactly as if she were waiting for the curtain to go up on the first scene of a play she eagerly wanted to see.

She had almost come to feel as if she had been brought up to London to be accused of a crime herself. Her father had been very trying, continually harping back upon that old grievance of her having gone to Brummels in the first instance, and adding to it irritable censure of her fault in unburdening herself to Bobby Trench without consulting him beforehand. She held herself free of offence on either count, but had diplomatically refrained from a.s.serting her innocence, to avoid still further arraignment. She had been inundated with instructions, often contradictory, as to how she should act and speak in the ordeal that lay before her; and if she had been of a nervous temperament might well have been driven into a panic long before she had come within measurable distance of undergoing it, and thus have acquitted herself in such a way as to draw an entirely new range of rebukes upon her head. Her mother had simply told her that she must think before she said anything, and not say more than was necessary; and her uncle, the Judge, at whose house they were staying, had repeated much the same advice, and had made light of what she would have to undergo. So, with her mind not greatly disturbed on that score, she felt a sense of relief at being now beyond her father's fussy attempts to blame and direct her at the same time, and able to turn her mind to the interests at hand.

The Squire would probably, even now, have been at her ear with repet.i.tions of oft-given advice had not his own ear been engaged by Lord Sedbergh, who sat on the other side of him.

Lord Sedbergh was an amiable, easy-going n.o.bleman, not without some force of character, but too well off and indolent to care to exercise it in opposition to the society in which circ.u.mstances compelled him to move. He and the Squire had been friends at Eton, and also at Cambridge, after which Lord Sedbergh had embraced a diplomatic career, until such time as he had succeeded to the family honours, while Edward Clinton, after a brief period of metropolitan glory as a cornet in the Royal Horse Guards, had married early and settled down to a life of undiluted squiredom. The two had actually never met for over thirty years, and were now discovering that their youthful intimacy had not entirely evaporated during that period. At a moment more free from preoccupation they would have embarked on reminiscences which would have shed considerable warmth on this late meeting; and even as it was the Squire felt that his old friend was still a friend, and that it was not such a bad thing after all to be in a position to lend strength to his just cause.

”That's a very charming girl of yours, Edward,” Lord Sedbergh was saying. ”Bright and clever and pretty without being spoilt, as young women so quickly are now-a-days. We made great friends, she and I, when she stayed with us. I wish we could have spared her this, but I don't think she will be much bothered. They are bound to send the case for trial, and I should think the lady would reserve any defence she may have thought of putting up. Still, I don't like to see young girls brought into a business of this sort, and if we could have done without little Joan's evidence I should have been pleased.”

The Squire was soothed by the expression of this very proper spirit, and after a little further conversation was even inclined to think with less annoyance of Joan's disastrous visit to Brummels, since the owner of that house was apparently sane and right-minded, whatever might be said of his family and their a.s.sociates.

”My boy Bobby,” said Lord Sedbergh, ”has thrown himself into clearing this up heart and soul. He has a head on his shoulders, and I doubt if we should have been in the position we are if it hadn't been for him.”

But the Squire was still incensed against Bobby Trench, and was not prepared to give him credit for being anything but the shallow-pated young fool with the over-free manners who had figured so frequently of late in his diatribes. He might have given some expression to this view of his friend's son, for he had not been accustomed in those early years of comrades.h.i.+p to hold back his opinions, and he was getting to feel more than ever that time and absence had wrought little change between them. But at this moment the curtain rang up for the play, and his attention was diverted.

There was something of a sensation when Mrs. Amberley stood up before the Court ready to meet her accusers. The Squire's face, as he set eyes upon her for the first time, expressed surprise, condemnation, and disgust. The surprise was at the appearance of a woman of striking if somewhat strange and to him repellent beauty, whose eyes and cheeks flamed indignant protest against her situation, when he had expected to see some sort of haggard siren in an att.i.tude combined of shame and impudence. The condemnation was directed against her air of arrogant scorn, and the bold way in which she looked round upon the a.s.sembled throng, allowing her gaze to rest upon those who had brought her there in such a way that she seemed to be the accuser and they the accused, and Lady Sedbergh for one dropped her eyes, unable to meet it. The disgust was at her appearance and attire, which seemed to the Squire a bold flaunting of impudent wickedness in face of highly-placed respectability, as represented by the wives of people like himself, who were not ashamed to show the years which the Almighty had caused to pa.s.s over their heads, and wore clothes which might indicate their rank, but were not intended to exhibit the unholy seductions of s.e.x.

Joan, with the merciless arrogance of youth, had said that Mrs.

Amberley had struck her as being old. She would not have said so if she had seen her now for the first time. Whether it was owing to art, or to the stimulating flame of her indignation, her face showed none of the ravages of years. If that was owing to art alone, it was supreme art, for on a skin that was almost ivory in its pallor the flush stood, not crudely contrasted, but as if a rare variant of that strange whiteness. The great ma.s.ses of her dull red hair even Lady Sedbergh, now violently antagonistic to her, must have acknowledged herself familiar with from before a time when art would have been brought to their production, whatever share it may have had now in preserving their arresting effect. Her figure, in a gown of clear green, had all the slim suppleness of youth; her great black hat with its heavy plumes, might have been worn by Joan herself. And yet, if she did not look old, or even middle-aged, still less did she look young. Her eager l.u.s.trous eyes had seen the weariness of life as well as its consuming pleasures, and could not hide their knowledge; the lines of her face, delicate enough, were not those of youth.

When the preliminaries had been gone through, Lady Sedbergh had to tell her story, which she did with a jumpy loquacity that seemed to indicate that whatever benefit she had obtained from her late rest-cure had by this time evaporated.

The gist of it was that she and Mrs. Amberley had been discussing jewel robberies, and Mrs. Amberley had said that no place was safe for jewels if a clever thief was determined to get hold of them. They had been sitting by the morning-room fire, and the hiding-place in which she had always kept her own more valuable jewels was just at her side. She had not been able to refrain from mentioning it, and showing, under a promise of secrecy, where it was. You pressed a spring in the panelling, and found a recess in the stone of the thick wall behind.

That might well have been discovered by chance; but what no one who did not know of the secret would expect was that, by turning one of the solid-looking stones on a pivot, a further receptacle was disclosed.

No one had known of this but herself and husband, until she had told Mrs. Amberley.

She was accustomed to carry her more valuable jewels with her wherever she went, especially the pearl necklace, and the diamond star, which had also been stolen. This she valued for sentimental reasons, which she did not disclose to the Court. They were both in the secret receptacle when she showed it to Mrs. Amberley, as well as a few other cases containing more or less valuable jewels, none of which had been taken.

It was on the day before her party was to break up that she had showed Mrs. Amberley her hiding-place. She had not worn any of the jewels she had put there that evening, nor visited it again until a month later, when she was about to return to London. Then she had missed the necklace and the star. She had sent a telegram to her husband, who had come down at once, and after hearing her story had gone to see Mrs.

Amberley with her. Neither of them had any doubt that she was the only person who could possibly have taken the jewels, as she was the only person who knew where they were kept.

”Have you any questions to ask of the witness?”

”Yes.”

Mrs. Amberley spoke in a low-pitched vibrating voice. She was completely at her ease, and the contemptuous tone in which she asked her questions, and the significant pauses which she made after each confused voluble reply, not commenting upon it, but pa.s.sing on to the next question, would have been effective if she had been a skilled criminal lawyer, and was much more so considering what she was and what she had at stake.

”We have been intimate friends all our lives, you and I, haven't we?”

Lady Sedbergh admitted it, but explained that she would never have made an intimate friend of anyone who would behave in that way, if she had known what she was really like.

She was permitted to have her say out, with those scornful eyes fixed on her, until she trailed off into ineffective silence, when the next question came.

”What was the first thing that I said to you when you had shown me the cupboard, and shut it up again?”

It needed more than one intervention on the part of the magistrate before it was elicited that Mrs. Amberley had said, ”Well, now, if anything happens you can't accuse me. You would know I should be the last person.” Lady Sedbergh volunteered the additional information that she had remembered those words, and even repeated them to her husband, but added that she put them down to Mrs. Amberley's cunning.

”But isn't it true that if I had stolen your necklace I should have known positively that you would have suspected me at once?”