Part 5 (1/2)
”It is indeed,” growled Hewston, who had been absorbed in sulky meditation for some time. ”I'd be contented if I thought she had enough head on her shoulders to keep straight and not involve good old Hepworth in G.o.d knows what.”
Wallace laughed. ”I'll lay you a wager, Mrs. Wilstead,” he whispered, tapping her fan with his finger-tips, ”that the way things are going now there will be a split in the Hepworth household within three months.”
”Do not say it,” she cried quickly. ”I can not bear to think of such a thing.”
”I'll give you heavy odds, too,” he went on cynically, leaning forward to regard the group at the piano. ”I'll make it a bracelet against a box of cigars, provided I'm allowed to choose the brand of cigars.”
”You might as well put in another provision then,” she retorted, ”provided I am allowed to choose the bracelet. My taste in ornaments, dear Wallace, is both unique and expensive. I like only odd jewelry.”
”Odd jewelry! That is an old fad of yours, Alice,” said Hepworth's voice behind her.
She started slightly, she had not noticed his approach. ”And your own,”
she smiled up at him. ”Have you secured any new amulets lately, Cresswell?”
”Yes, one. It is a beauty, a scarab. I must show it to you; also another, a carved bloodstone set in very curiously wrought iron. I got that from a Gipsy woman. It is an old Romany talisman.”
”Do let us see them,” pleaded Mrs. Hewston.
”Certainly, I shall be delighted to. Excuse me a few moments. I will get the box myself. Naturally I would not trust it to the servants.” He smiled at his weakness.
”Naturally,” said Hewston. ”Come, let us all get into the drawing-room to look at them. It is beginning to rain anyway.”
It was only a few moments before Hepworth returned bearing a large, black leather box. He placed it on a table just under the light and then choosing a key from a ring, fitted it into the lock.
”I hold one key,” he said to the group pressing about him as he lifted the lid, ”and Perdita the other. That is in case she may want to wear any of these trinkets.”
Alice Wilstead had been looking at Mrs. Hepworth at the moment her husband entered the room and she alone had noticed that Dita started violently when her eyes had fallen on the box and that all the rich color had fled her cheek, leaving her, for a second or two, white as a ghost.
The box held a series of trays, each padded and velvet lined and upon these were fastened Cresswell Hepworth's noted collection of amulets.
Most of these talismans were very ancient, many of them revealed the most beautiful workmans.h.i.+p. All of them were distinctive. Each one, almost without exception, had a history, strange, romantic or sinister, and these were all duly catalogued, but it was never necessary for Hepworth to refer to this written history. He had not only the symbolic significance of his favorite toys, but also the vicissitudes through which they had pa.s.sed, at his finger ends.
The top trays held scarabs, one of the most remarkable collections of them extant, commemorating certain mighty and fallen dynasties; or this reign or that of remote Egyptian rulers long crumbled to dust, and Hepworth lifted them lovingly from their trays and turning them deftly in his fingers explained their histories and expatiated on their beauty.
Beneath the scarabs lay the jade talismans exquisitely carved and handed down from distant centuries. The hearts that had once beat beneath them had long been dust, but the talismans, with no stain of time upon them to dim their l.u.s.ter, would still serve as emblems of good luck to future generations. Then there were quaint amber charms preserving the warmth and flooding radiance of the sunlight that sparkles on sea foam in their depths, and opals delicately clouded with mystery, their ”hearts of fire bedreamed in haze,” carbuncles, jasper and hyacinth, all in their time the almost priceless possessions of their owners because of the mystic significance attaching to them. And then there were trays containing a somewhat heterogeneous collection of old pieces of beaten silver and iron with odd characters on them, representing periods of even greater antiquity than scarab or jade.
These amulets were in many instances the memorials of bitter feuds and hot duels, fought on the moment, at the gleam of a talisman which both contestants claimed. More than one had been hastily rifled from the dead, and more than one had been bestowed by a great lady on an unt.i.tled lover of empty purse to aid him in winning fame and fortune.
”By the way, Alice,” said Hepworth suddenly, ”you have seen Dita's amulet, have you not? It is almost, if not quite the gem of the collection.”
”No, I have never seen it,” Mrs. Wilstead's whole piquant face was alive with interest. ”But I have heard of it. It was through it that you met, was it not?”
Dita nodded. The color had come back to her face. ”It was that old talisman he was really interested in,” she said. ”I always tell him he married me to get it.”
Hepworth laughed. ”It is well worth any one's interest. It has been in her family for generations, and there are all sorts of legends and traditions connected with it. It is said to give his heart's desire to whomever possesses it, isn't it, Dita?”
”More than that,” she replied, a little strangely, or at least so it seemed to Alice Wilstead. ”He to whom it is given--and it can not be bought or bartered, it must always be bestowed--must sooner or later reveal himself in his true character, either his baseness or his n.o.bility.”
”Fascinating!” cried the women in chorus. ”What is it like?”