Part 5 (2/2)

No volubility would disguise the truth of that, and it had what weight it deserved.

Mrs. Amberley asked no more questions, but her solicitor cross-examined Lady Sedbergh as to the means she had taken to preserve the knowledge of the hiding-place from her own maid, for instance, or from the other servants of the house. He made it appear rather absurd that in a great house, overrun with servants, like Brummels, she could always have carried cases of jewels to and fro without being observed, or that her own maid would have had no curiosity as to where she kept them. The poor lady explained eagerly that she seldom wore the things she kept in her hiding-place when she was in the country, and that there was a safe in her husband's room in which she was supposed to keep what valuables she did not keep upstairs; but she explained so much and so incoherently that it had small effect in view of his persistence. It did seem rather absurd to everybody when her cross-examination was over, that anyone so foolish as she should have been able for so long to keep such a secret from everybody about her, especially in view of the irresponsible and causeless way in which she was shown finally to have let it out. If the case had rested on her testimony alone, Mrs.

Amberley would have been acquitted, with hardly an additional stain on her character.

Joan, standing up bravely in her fresh girlhood to tell her story, was far more damaging. Between Mrs. Amberley, completely self-possessed, and showing indignation only by the vibrations of her low voice, and Lady Sedbergh, with her flurried, rather pathetic efforts to put herself everywhere in the right, the advantage was on the side of the accused. She had no such foil in the frank bearing of the young girl, whose delicate bloom contrasted with her own exotic beauty only to show that whatever quality it may have had was not that of innocence. Joan repeated what she had told Bobby Trench, in much the same words, and the only discount that could be taken off her evidence was the admission that she had thought nothing of it at all until after she had been told of what Mrs. Amberley was suspected.

It was when she was just about to leave the witness-stand, and the Squire, who had been following the process of question and answer with spasms of nervousness at each fresh speech, was beginning to breathe freely once more, that Mrs. Amberley looked at her with a glance from which, with all her care to avoid the expression of feeling, she could not banish the malice, and asked her, ”Would you have said what you did if it had been anybody but Mr. Trench who asked you?”

The insinuation was plain enough, and Joan met it with a warm blush which she would have given worlds to have been able to hold back. She felt the blood warming and reddening her cheeks and her neck, but she answered immediately in spite of it, ”It was my sister who asked me what I had seen, when Mr. Trench told us both of what you were suspected”; and Mrs. Amberley let the answer pa.s.s, with an air of not finding it worth while to take further notice of such a childish person.

Joan made her way back to her seat between her father and mother, the blush slowly fading from her cheeks. She felt outraged at having had such a question put to her, and in such a tone, before all these knowing, sn.i.g.g.e.ring people; and her distress was not lightened by her father saying to her in an angry whisper, ”There now, you see what comes of making yourself free in that sort of company.” He added, ”Confound the woman's impudence!” in a tone still more angry, which took off a little of the edge of his previous speech; and Mrs. Clinton took Joan's hand in hers and pressed it. So presently she recovered her equanimity, and only blushed intermittently when she remembered what had been said to her.

A French jeweller gave evidence of Mrs. Amberley having sold pearls to him in Paris. She had been veiled and hooded, but he was sure it was the same lady. He should have recognised her by her voice alone. He gave the dates of the transactions, three in number; and other evidence was duly brought forward to show that Mrs. Amberley had been in Paris on each of those dates.

A London p.a.w.nbroker's a.s.sistant gave evidence of her having p.a.w.ned a single pearl, which he produced. She had done it in her own name. He proved to be an indecisive witness under the pressure of Mrs.

Amberley's lawyer, and said he was not sure now that it was the same lady, although he was nearly sure. But there was the transaction duly recorded, and Mrs. Amberley's name and London address entered in his books at the time. Asked whether he thought it likely that a lady who was p.a.w.ning stolen property, obviously with no idea of redeeming it, would give her own well-known name and address, he recovered himself sufficiently to answer very properly that he had nothing to do with what was likely or unlikely; there was his book.

When all the witnesses had been examined, Mrs. Amberley's lawyer said that he should not oppose the case going for trial. He had advised his client to reserve her defence, but he might say that she had a full and convincing answer to the charge.

When Mrs. Amberley had been duly committed for trial, there was a wrangle as to her being admitted to bail. It was stated in opposition that she was known to have contemplated leaving the country; she had in no way met the convincing evidence that had been brought against her, and in view of the gravity of the offence, &c., &c. Finally, she was admitted to bail on heavy securities, which were immediately forthcoming. One of them was offered by Sir Roger Amberley, her late husband's father, an old man who looked bowed down by shame; the other by Lord Colne, an elderly roue, who, so far from showing shame, appeared proud of his position as friend and supporter of the accused lady. Mrs. Amberley left the court with her father-in-law, and some who were within hearing when she thanked her other sponsor remarked that he did not seem likely to get much change out of his liability of two thousand pounds.

The Squire, with his wife and daughter, lunched at the extremely private hotel which he had patronised all his life, and left London for Kencote by an early afternoon train. They were accompanied by Humphrey and Lady Susan Clinton, who had paid no visit to Kencote since they had committed the fault of taking Joan to Brummels; and would not have paid the visit now if they could have got out of it.

But the Squire had insisted. He had sent Mrs. Clinton and Joan on to his brother-in-law's house on their arrival in London the afternoon before, and had gone himself to his son's flat, with the object of unburdening his mind both to Humphrey and his wife. But Humphrey and Susan had been out. He had waited for an hour, getting more and more angry, and convinced that they were seeking to evade him. He had then written a peremptory note, ordering them to join him at the station on the following afternoon, ready to go down to Kencote, with instructions to wire acquiescence immediately on receipt of the order.

The wire had arrived at his brother-in-law's house before he had reached it. ”Exceedingly sorry to have missed you. Both delighted come Kencote to-morrow. Humphrey.”

The uncalled for expression of delight had not in the least softened his mood of anger, but he had gained a grim satisfaction from feeling that his word was law if he chose to make it so. This was added to by the determination to make the visit anything but an occasion of delight, and the antic.i.p.ation of having somebody fresh on whom to wreak his anger; the satisfaction of relieving his feelings by censure of Joan having now begun to wear rather thin.

If Humphrey was bent on smoothing out the situation, as was probably the case, it was impolitic of him to bring his own man to Kencote as well as his wife's maid. The Squire himself never took a man away with him, except on the rare occasions on which he went anywhere to shoot, and Humphrey's servant was an additional offence. The Squire's temper was not improved when Humphrey, relieved of all anxieties about luggage and tickets and the rest of it, strolled up to him on the platform, dressed in the latest variety of summer country clothes, with the correct thing in spats, and the most modern shade in soft felt hats, and found him fussing over details that he might safely have left to Mrs. Clinton's capable maid.

”Oh, here you are,” he said ungraciously. ”If you're quite sure that your fellow has done everything for your own comfort, you might tell him to help Parker with those things. I've engaged a carriage, but if I had thought you couldn't travel without your whole establishment I'd have told 'em to put on a saloon.”

”We've left the cook and the housemaid behind,” said Humphrey, outwardly undisturbed. ”Here, Grant, take these things into your carriage.”

The Squire turned his back and went up to the compartment at which his wife was standing with her daughter-in-law and Joan. ”Better get in.

Better get in,” he said. ”We don't want to be left behind. How are you, Susan? We've just had a pleasant result from your taking Joan into the company of people like your precious Mrs. Amberley.”

Lady Susan made no attempt to avert his displeasure, which had evidently worked itself up to a point at which it must have immediate vent. She shook hands with him, and got into the carriage after Mrs.

Clinton. She was a tall, fas.h.i.+onably-dressed woman, with a young, rather foolish face, not remarkably good-looking, but making the most of such points as she possessed. The Squire rather liked her, in spite of his disapproval of many of her ways, partly because she had always treated him with deference, partly--although he would indignantly and conscientiously have denied it--because her t.i.tle was a suitable ornament to the name she bore. He himself was the head of the family of which hers was a junior branch, but that branch had been enn.o.bled at a date of quite respectable antiquity, and an Earl's daughter is an Earl's daughter wherever she may be found. The mild degree of satisfaction, however, that he felt on this head was quite sub-conscious, and did not lead him to pay any more deference to Lady Susan than he was accustomed to pay to the rest of the women of his family. The only lady in that position whom he treated with marked deference was the wife of his eldest son, who was an American, of no ancestry that he would have recognised as significant, who had once for a short period lowered even the ancestry she could claim by dancing on the stage. That story has been told elsewhere, and if the reader is inclined to cry sn.o.b, because the Squire is admitted to have been pleased that one of his daughters-in-law bore a t.i.tle, let it be considered that Virginia, d.i.c.k's wife, had made a complete conquest of him, and that he valued her little finger above Lady Susan's body.

He began directly the train had started. ”Now look here, I've got a word to say to you two, and I may as well say it at once and get it over.”

Humphrey, knowing that it was bound to come, was quite ready, but was also aware that to get it over was really the last thing his father wanted. Whatever att.i.tude he might take upon the subject, it would be returned to again and again as long as his visit to the paternal mansion should last. The best he could do was to get it over for the time being, and gain a respite in which to read the ”Field” and the other papers with which he had provided himself. To this end he put up no opposition, but admitted with grave face that he and his wife had done wrong, and agreed that subsequent events proved that they had done very wrong indeed.

The Squire would perhaps have preferred to have his annoyance warmed up by a difference of opinion, and was obliged to express it with all the more force, so that it might spontaneously acquire the requisite amount of heat.

<script>