Читать книгу The Carcellini Emerald, With Other Tales - Burton Mrs. Harrison - Страница 4

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“It was so good of you to come early,” murmured Carmichael’s hostess to him, when her guests for the dinner were beginning to drop in. “Now that you are here I feel a great weight off my mind. This kind of thing is rather a tax when there is no man at the head of the house, don’t you think so? Please manage to slip off and look into the dining-room to see if the lights and ventilation are all right. I arranged the cards myself, so I know that is as it should be. You take in Gertrude, and on your other side I have put the very prettiest young matron of my acquaintance—Mrs. Arden Farnsworth, who married my cousin, don’t you know? I knew your fastidious taste would be pleased by her, and it would be a sort of reward for your leading our cotillon afterward. Here comes another raft of people. Do look at the table, won’t you, and tell my butler if you want any changes made?”

Carmichael was accustomed to be deputy sovereign in many fine houses. But he had never felt as grateful for the privilege as now. His plan was executed quickly. So eager was he to effect a transfer of the cards of Eunice and her companion away over to the other side of the broad oval of damask bedecked with pallid orchids in silver vases, silver flagons, and platters of hothouse grapes, he did not think to notice for whom was reserved the place next Miss Ellison, whom he was to take in.

“What an escape!” he murmured inwardly, when Mrs. Farnsworth’s cards were safely exchanged for two others, taken at hazard from the opposite side. “Our good hostess will think it was her own carelessness, but I am safe. I wish I had dared face the music, and sit next to my late betrothed. There isn’t a woman of the year that compares with her, and I’d like to force her to notice me again. However, all comes to him who knows how to wait, and Eunice may once again be made to thrill at my words of—”

He started guiltily; but it was only Mrs. Ellison’s sleek butler asking at his elbow if all was to the dictator’s fancy.

“Very good, Masters, though I see you have taken on a little red-headed cub of a waiter who spilled champagne down my neck at the last Assembly supper. If I were you I wouldn’t have the little brute at any price.”

“Beg pardon, Mr. Carmichael, the man shall not be engaged here again,” said Masters, in deep humility. And Ashton, having partially settled his score with a poor menial who had had the temerity to smile when he was laying down the law about the terrapin at a subscription ball, returned to the drawing-room.

It was quite filled up now with guests who had come in—the women complacent in gorgeous gowns, the men lagging, beginning to be bored, eager for food, and inclined to take pessimistic views of life by and large. They were waiting for some one, it appeared; and presently, as the door was thrown open, “Mr. and Mrs. Farnsworth and Mr. Oliver” were heralded.

Eunice, hurrying forward to explain to the hostess that one of their horses had slipped and fallen upon the asphalt, was royal in her young beauty. In her robes of shimmering rose color, her head, neck, and bodice coruscating with jewels, she stirred Carmichael’s selfish heart as nothing in woman’s shape had done before. He had to turn away to avoid showing his emotion.

“Don’t stare after Mrs. Farnsworth and forget you’ve got to take me in,” said, in his ear, the piqued voice of Miss Gertrude Ellison. “I declare, she has just bewitched all the men. I wish mamma hadn’t thought it necessary to put her next to you. At this rate I shan’t get the least notice taken of me. Luckily, I’ve got on my other hand her brother, Tom Oliver, who is as much a beauty as she is, in his way.”

Carmichael could not repress a movement of tremor. At that moment he saw going in ahead of them Oliver, who had been his dearest friend, his most loyal benefactor, whom he had betrayed. And for an hour and a half he was to sit so near him that their glances could not fail to meet. He wished now he had taken the advice of his sister, and stayed at home.

“Dear me!” exclaimed little Miss Ellison, coming to a halt behind their places. “It’s Mrs. Dick Anstey who’s next to you, after all. I suppose mamma changed her mind about Mrs. Farnsworth.”

“I suppose so,” said Carmichael, stooping mechanically to tuck in a corner of Mrs. Anstey’s apple-green velvet skirt, as that lady took her chair, having permitted a servant to advance it toward her and the table. “That gown of yours should be treasured, Mrs. Anstey,” he added. “It is the most charming you have worn this season, and that is saying much.”

Mrs. Anstey, who lived to dress, fluttered with excitement at this compliment. It was unlooked for from Carmichael, who, until now, had snubbed her unmercifully wherever they had met. He followed it up by devoting himself to her so exclusively that three courses of the dinner had passed before he gave heed to the heroine of the feast.

“You are civil,” said Gertrude, finally. “I don’t care, though; I have been well taken care of. Do you know Mr. Carmichael, Mr. Oliver?” she went on, with a coquettish glance back at her right-hand neighbor, to include the two.

“I know Mr. Carmichael,” was the answer. Full upon his false friend’s countenance flashed Tom’s gaze of scorn. Little Miss Ellison, whose attention was distracted by some one opposite, did not observe this by-play. Carmichael was enraged at himself for dropping his eyes upon his plate. When he gained courage to lift them, Tom had entered into close conversation with Miss Cowper, who for some moments had been awaiting attention on his other side.

“What’s the matter with you? You look quite pale and rattled,” went on Miss Ellison, who had a talent for attack. “One would think you had seen a ghost. See, there is Mrs. Farnsworth looking this way, to make sure I am taking good care of her big brother, I suppose. Let us both nod to her and she’ll know—Goodness! What has she got against you, Mr. Carmichael? I never in all my days saw such a full-fledged specimen of the cut direct!”

Nor had Carmichael, in a much wider experience. His ears tingled, his heart beat with angry resentment. By not the quiver of an eyelash had Eunice betrayed emotion at sight of him, face to face. If he had been the footman, just then engaged in projecting a silver dish between her arm and her neighbor’s, she could not more utterly have ignored his claim to her acquaintance.

“Evidently it’s just as well Mrs. Farnsworth did not sit next to you,” pursued Gertrude, at an age to look for little beyond externals. “I did not expect ever to see the great Mr. Carmichael come such a nasty cropper. She must be the only one of the ‘crowned heads’ who doesn’t smile on you. But I must say she’s the freshest and prettiest of the lot. When I get to be as old as some women I know, I’m going to stop playing kitten and settle down to be plain cat. Eunice Farnsworth’s jewels are simply wonderful. Not as showy as some, but very fine. Mamma says our Cousin Arden has always had the most perfect taste in precious stones. The only time mamma ever got ahead of him in a purchase was in the Carcellini emerald, a relic from an old cardinal’s sale, I think. It was offered in Paris when papa and mamma were there—oh, long ago, when I was a little kid. Cousin Arden’s order by cable, to buy it, came to the dealer just after papa had drawn a check in payment. Don’t know the Carcellini emerald? Why, it’s famous everywhere. The only thing approaching it in beauty and value belongs to one of the Russian Grand Duchesses. Mamma generally wears it at dinner, and I dare say she has it on now. If you have really never seen it, I’ll ask her to send the ring down for us to look at.”

“Do you think she will trust us?” asked Mrs. Anstey, who had turned to catch the latter part of Gertrude’s chatter. “I have always been dying to have a good look at the Carcellini emerald.”

“Trust us? Of course. She often sends it around the table for her friends to handle. Now watch me telegraph her, and see if she doesn’t understand.”

Leaning forward, the young lady managed to convey to her mother the request. Shaking her finger at the suppliant, yet amiably acquiescent, Mrs. Ellison drew from her left hand an object, which, amid flattering enthusiasm from her guests, began its journey around the table. Little cries of delight from the women, more restrained expressions of admiration from the men, followed the beautiful well of green fire in its progress.

“Now look!” said Mrs. Anstey, when it came to her. Slipping the ring upon her hand—a pretty hand, we may be sure—where it sent into prompt eclipse all the rest of her outfit of jewels, she held it up for Carmichael to view. “Did you ever see such a beauty?” she exclaimed. “I declare I shall go home and never sleep a wink to-night for coveting it! Such color, such luster, and such size! It ought to be on the turban of a Grand Mogul.”

Carmichael said nothing, but he stirred uneasily upon his chair. The childish raptures of the speaker seemed to him like the crackling of thorns under the pot.

“There, Gertrude, take the tempter!” concluded Mrs. Anstey, plucking the ring from her hand and extending it with affected resignation.

“I tell mamma I will accept nothing less than this for my wedding present,” answered Gertrude, receiving it in her outstretched palm. “But so far I can’t get her to promise it to me. She says it must go by will to my eldest brother, a boy at school, who doesn’t know the difference between an emerald and a bit of glass, the wretch! Look, Mr. Carmichael and Mr. Oliver; I will show you something nobody else at the table has seen. The prettiest thing about the Carcellini is the way it answers to a shaft of light. It leaps up like a fountain and fairly bubbles radiance. See! I will lean over and hold it between my thumb and finger sidewise under this candle nearest us, and you can get the effect.”

As she did so Carmichael’s eyes glittered and his breath came quick. A moment later a shiver of alarm and excitement ran around their quarter of the table. In inclining her head to catch the best light from the candle Gertrude Ellison had set fire to the fanciful aigrette of twisted tulle that soared high from her hair behind. The young men on either side of her sprang upon their feet. It was Oliver who, seizing the now blazing ornament, plucked it easily from the girl’s mass of fluffy hair and crushed out the flames between his strong brown fingers.

“It is all over; I was not even singed, mamma, thanks to Mr. Oliver,” called out Gertrude to her mother, who had just perceived the commotion. At once the inexorable law of conventional society closed upon the little incident. People resumed their interrupted chat, the servants circled the board as before, everybody had some anecdote to relate about a narrow escape from burning that had come under his experience.

And then, amid the murmur of voices, the tinkle of glasses, the strains from an orchestra that had begun to play a waltz upon the upper landing of the stairs, Gertrude Ellison turned upon Carmichael a perfectly blanched face.

“Don’t give any sign,” she whispered, “but tell me what I am to do. I have lost the Carcellini emerald.”

Carmichael darted one swift glance toward Tom Oliver, like the tongue of a toad flashing out to catch a fly and withdrawing with its morsel.

“He knows nothing,” she went on, petulantly. “He has been listening all this time to an interminable story Annie Cowper has been telling him. Who cares about her great-grandaunt’s feathers catching fire from the chandelier at a Colonial ball? I suppose the ring slipped off down the satin of my skirt, and has rolled under the table. I can’t make a fuss now, but I won’t leave this spot while another person remains in the room after me.”

“You are quite right to keep the thing quiet,” he said, with consoling deliberation. “In a little while your mother will be leaving the table. You and I can hang back and intercept her after every one has gone, unless you prefer to look first and tell her afterward.”

“Oh, no; I dare not! I must tell her at once!”

“Very well, then; I will help you. If I stay behind while the other men go up to the smoking-room it will be thought I have matters to discuss with Mrs. Ellison about the cotillon.”

As the company arose from table, catching the eye of Masters, the butler, he bade the men remain behind their chairs, and let no one approach the spot. He and Gertrude then hastened to intercept Mrs. Ellison at the end of the long procession, and make known to her the loss.

“I always told you, child, what would happen if you persisted in putting on a ring too large for you,” she said, agitated, but (to do her justice) courageous in calamity. “In that flurry about the fire you must have let it slip to the floor, and being unused to wearing it you didn’t at first notice its absence. Let this be a lesson to you, Gertrude, though I am sure you will find the ring, with Mr. Carmichael’s kind aid. I will make excuses for you. People will understand your wanting to rearrange your hair. Mr. Carmichael, I trust everything to you; and I shall go on and receive the people who have already begun to come for the cotillon. Tell Masters to shut all the doors, and let not a soul cross the threshold of the dining-room until you give him leave.”

There are heroines in all walks of life, and Mrs. Ellison, going forth to receive a set of gay people, consumed by gnawing anxiety to see the Carcellini emerald safely upon her finger, must be numbered high up among them.

“My dear Arden,” she said later on, capturing her cousin as he appeared in the doorway, coming down from the smoking-room, “I am so thankful you have come. Your wife has gone home. She bade me tell you she did not feel equal to the cotillon, but that she wanted you to stop and help me out. Her brother took her home. How nice to see you, Mrs. Arbuthnot. Your daughters are looking charming; I hope they both have partners for the cotillon. Gertrude will be in directly. You know they are joking her about having set her aigrette afire at dinner, but it might have been something worse. Arden, I really can’t endure this another minute. For goodness sake, go into the dining-room and see if Gertrude and Mr. Carmichael have found the Carcellini emerald!”

“The Carcellini emerald!” repeated Farnsworth, who, between vexation at his wife’s unaccountable departure and stupefaction at his cousin’s speech, did not know where to find himself. “Is it possible you intrusted it to Gertrude?”

“Their delay distracts me. If it had been underneath the table, at Gertrude’s feet, where it might naturally have slipped down her satin skirt, they would have returned by now.”

“What’s Carmichael got to do with it?” asked Farnsworth, wrathfully. He, better than any other, appreciated the enormous loss of the splendid gem. “If I were you, Elizabeth, I would not intrust the duties of a host to a pretentious nobody like that fellow. Of course I’ll go. I never heard of such a thing in all my life.”

He found the dining-room shut, every door barricaded by Carmichael’s orders. Servants and waiters were gathered curiously outside. At the sound of Farnsworth’s voice demanding admittance, Gertrude threw open the door and ran to meet him, ghostly pale and trembling in every limb. Behind her, candles in hand, with which they had been going over the floor, already lighted in every part by the full power of electricity, stood Masters and Carmichael, both anxious and perturbed.

“Oh, Cousin Arden, I’m almost crazy!” cried the girl. “I can find no trace of it.”

In broken words she narrated the circumstances of the ring’s disappearance.

“I was kept in here during the search by no wish of mine, Mr. Farnsworth,” said the butler, respectfully but firmly, when his young lady had ceased speaking. “It’s a hard thing on a man that has to live on the character he gets in a place to be mixed up in an affair like this. And when you are convinced, as I am sir, that the ring is not to be found about this room, I should take it very kind of you if you’d go upstairs with me and make a search of my clothes without letting me out of your sight.”

“Absurd, Masters,” put in Carmichael, sharply. “Why, any one, to look at you, man, can see you’re as much bothered as any one of us. He has been invaluable, Mr. Farnsworth; no one could have done more in our thorough search.”

“You must excuse me for not inviting your opinion, sir,” said Farnsworth, stiffly, confronting the last speaker. “I think the man is quite right in his request. Stay where you are, Masters, and when I have been over the ground here, and have satisfied myself the ring is missing, I will go with you to your room. Gertrude, my dear, do you, too, go upstairs and search every portion of your clothes. Don’t call a maid; we need take nobody more than is necessary into our confidence. I’m inclined, as it is, to think the matter might better have been kept exclusively between the members of the family.”

“I beg to be excused, Miss Ellison,” said Carmichael, hotly. “Perhaps you will ask Mrs. Ellison to tell Mr. Farnsworth that I remained here at her particular request, to assist you in your search. The whole matter is abhorrent to me; but I think no gentleman could have refused to be of service to his hostess under the circumstances. And if Mr. Farnsworth has at any time any other remarks to make to me upon this subject I am quite at his disposition.”

But Mr. Farnsworth had apparently no desire to hold further conversation of any kind with his cousin’s guest. Gertrude, much overcome, thanked Carmichael, and ran away to her own room. There was nothing for Carmichael to do but to withdraw likewise; but he did not leave the house, remaining to perform his usual functions as a cotillon leader, with “distinguished success,” as the newspapers said next day.

By the time the guests crowded again into the Ellison dining-room that night for a buffet supper, the strange tale of the loss of the famous ring was upon everybody’s lips. How it leaked out no one knew. When Carmichael was consulted, he announced himself to be in the confidence of the family, and therefore preferred not to speak. No one felt like alluding to it before the hostess or her daughter, who were observed to “keep up” with conspicuous courage.

When the last carriage had driven away, the two ladies went with Mr. Farnsworth and a quiet, gentlemanlike-looking man in morning dress, who appeared from the regions of the men’s dressing-rooms upstairs, into close council in Mrs. Ellison’s boudoir.

“Try to remember,” said Mr. Farnsworth, kindly, to Gertrude, who had begun to look drawn and haggard at the end of a lengthy discussion among the four, “upon which finger of which hand you had put the ring when you began to show the emerald to those gentlemen.”

“Why,” said the girl, suddenly, “I had never put it on at all! I was holding it—so—between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand, turned sidewise to catch the light, when I felt the blazing up of my aigrette. Then Mr. Oliver jumped up and snatched the burning thing out of my hair, and scorched his own hand in doing it. It was all over very quickly. But I was so startled, I did not think of the ring for some minutes; and when I did, to my horror it was gone.”

“Were there any servants behind or near you at the time, Miss Ellison?” said the quiet man in morning clothes.

“I think some of them may have run up to offer help, but I am not sure,” said Gertrude, tears of nervous distress filling her eyes.

“But you are sure about the position of the ring as you leaned forward beneath the candle?” went on the same unemotional voice.

“Perfectly,” said Gertrude, with emphasis. “In that I cannot be mistaken.”

There was silence for a few moments in the little room with its pale brocades and Dresden figurines and gilded furniture. Then the quiet man spoke deliberately, drumming with a pencil upon the edge of Mrs. Ellison’s dainty blotting-book.

“I have no sort of doubt, madam, that your emerald was stolen. Who took it, and who has it—whether we shall ever get it back—are questions to which I propose to devote my best abilities. If it was one of your own servants or employés from outside, the appearance and character of the jewel will soon put us on the track of it. But if—” He paused, and cleared his throat significantly.

“I had rather lose it,” interrupted Mrs. Ellison, tearfully, “than suspect one of my guests.”

“But you will surely not refuse to oblige me, madam,” said the detective, with a deprecating smile, “with the name and address of the gentleman who sat on the left hand of the young lady at the time?”

This was too much for the overwrought mistress of the house, who broke down in a fit of hysterics that necessitated her prompt removal to bed and the summons of a doctor, who for some days kept her in the seclusion of her room, then sent her with her daughter out of town.

Although a nine-days’ wonder in the conversations of society, the story of the Carcellini emerald had not, by a wonder, reached the public prints. The absolute refusal of Mrs. Ellison to proceed in the investigation, as far as her own friends were concerned, blocked effectually the roll of the wheels of justice in the direction of finding a possible thief. The other servants of her house, and the hired waiters present on the occasion, had, to all appearance, come out unscathed from the ordeal of suspicion, as well as had honest Masters. The whole affair seemed likely to remain among mysteries unsolved.

About a fortnight after the disappearance of the jewel, a newspaper not averse to the elaboration of savory personalities concerning the wealthy leisure class published a carefully veiled discussion of the affair at Mrs. Ellison’s. No names were given, but hints were made of suspicion attached in a certain high quarter, involving a family of character and antecedents hitherto beyond reproach. There was a light touch suggesting that gallantry in the service of the fair may sometimes be made to reap rich reward. And the article, worded to excite curiosity without conveying facts, ended by forecasting a new chapter, at an early date, about the lost gem that would surpass in excitement anything so far derived from its adventures.