Читать книгу The Carcellini Emerald, With Other Tales - Burton Mrs. Harrison - Страница 5

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At this crisis of the matter of the Carcellini emerald Eunice Farnsworth, who had seen her lord depart for a banquet of public men, from which even her claims could not appropriately detain him, sat, one evening, quite alone. She had eaten a ridiculous little dinner of the kind affected by women deserted on like occasions, had retired to her morning-room upstairs, and was now sitting buried in the depths of an easy-chair, with an open letter upon her knee.

For the first time in her married life Eunice was unhappy. She had received that day, inclosed by her friend Mrs. Ellison, a copy of the mysterious newspaper article hinting darkly that the suspicions of those who knew were now turned upon a guest at the famous dinner where the jewel had disappeared. Read by a casual person the paragraphs were void of specific application; to the initiated there could be but one interpretation, and that connected with a most odious act Mrs. Farnsworth’s own dear brother, Tom!

“I am still far too wretched and broken up to think of coming back to town,” said her correspondent, who wrote from a Southern health resort; “and Gertrude is just getting back her nerve and tone. But rather than let such an insinuation pass unchallenged we would do anything, make any exertion. Of course, there are only a few people who could understand the detestable suggestion; but the hint that more is to follow fills me with dismay. Why can’t they let the whole affair alone? It is my loss, my misfortune. I have accepted it, and that ought to be the end. I have definitely withdrawn the case from the hands of the detectives, feeling assured that I could never take my place at the head of my own table again if I pushed the misery of suspicion into an innocent person’s life—and that person my friend and chosen guest. Arden may say, and probably does, to you, ‘Elizabeth was always obstinate.’ Perhaps I am; but in this case I have already had more than my share of distress and annoyance from outside comment. They will be having it next that my own Gertrude took the wretched emerald. I wish my poor husband had never spent a fortune in buying it for me. But this much is certain: if it is necessary for me to come back to town in order to refute the abominable insinuation against your brother, I will do so—at any sacrifice. The only thing that occurs to me is that Arden may be able to choke off any further mention of the affair in the newspaper that has done us this injury.”

“I could tell her,” thought Eunice, bitterly, “that Arden has already been in treaty with the editor to that effect, and that he could get no satisfaction, the man declaring that if the ‘gentleman’ alluded to was guilty of the theft, his high place in society makes it a public duty to expose him, especially since the owner of the lost jewel has so weakly backed out of her responsibility to justice.”

It was not a pleasant theme for thought. Eunice longed for the bright, strong presence of her brother to dissipate the clouds that seemed to close her in. But Tom was away in the West for an indefinite period. He had left town the morning after Mrs. Ellison’s unlucky dinner, from which he and his sister had withdrawn simply because it was impossible for them, in self-respect, to remain for a dance of which Carmichael was the leader. Carmichael no doubt had recognized their motive in quitting the house. For this offense against his vanity, and the refusal to know him that had preceded it, was it possible that he—

Eunice sprang upon her feet. She had solved the motive of the attack upon her brother. It was Carmichael they had to thank for the foul imputation. And upon this poor, lying, truckling creature, living upon his wits and the patronage of wealthy friends, she had once lavished the treasure of her young, impulsive love! A flood of shame and disgust ran over her. Then anger filled up the measure of her emotions. If she could only meet him—crush him with her disdain—make him confess the new offense he had committed against his former benefactor!

For Eunice, despite her marriage and the dignity that fact gave her, despite her husband’s wise control, was still a very young, impulsive woman, and in that moment felt strong enough for any deed of righteous wrath.

A servant, coming noiselessly into the room, presented at her side a little tray containing a card.

“But I told you I am not receiving, Jasper,” she said, without offering to take up the card.

“The gentleman said it is about a matter of business, madam, and that he will detain you a few moments only.”

She glanced at the name, and felt a throb of the heart that almost choked her utterance, for it was the card of Ashton Carmichael!

Here, in her house! He had ventured to cross her threshold! It must indeed be a matter of importance that had nerved him to come here!

“Say I shall be down at once, Jasper.”

Her spirit rose as she went down the broad stairway of her husband’s home. She was on her own ground, safely intrenched; he was the intruder whom a word could thrust from her door.

Something of this was apparent in her beautiful face, in her erect head, her eyes sparkling with indignation.

Carmichael, who had not sat down in the formal room of state into which they had ushered him, felt it, and winced. He had come there relying upon his unconquerable audacity, and to be so soon put at a disadvantage he resented bitterly. But he did not mean to let her speak first.

“I know what you would say,” he began, with an assumption of humility. “I am a pretender, a man who pushes himself where he is not bidden; a villain, if you like. But I have some feeling left, and I mean to prove it to you.”

She inclined her head with cold disdain, still standing before him.

“I put out of the question everything that relates to our own two selves—though if you knew all the story of that year—”

“You asked to see me on business, I understood,” she interrupted, as if he had come to peddle his wares in her drawing-room.

Carmichael blushed crimson. The sting of her manner was intolerable.

“I came, if you will have it outright, to offer to save you and your brother Tom from the scandals that are already attacking his good name,” he exclaimed, angrily. “For the sake of old times I can forgive your inhospitality, and even the insulting rudeness of your, and his, and your husband’s manner to me at the Ellisons’ dinner. I suppose you did not dream that entertainment was to terminate so unfortunately for you. The mischief this article in the —— has done him is, in point of fact, incredible. I happen to have some control over the situation—”

“Then it is your work! I thought so,” she said, cutting him short. “May I ask why you presume to come to me?”

“You are determined to think the worst of me,” he answered, growing white where he had been red. “I repeat that I came in friendship. I can be of service to you, and I offer to do my best. I can, in two words, get the forthcoming article suppressed, and will do so upon condition that you withdraw your enmity to me before the world; that you acknowledge and receive me in your house, and consent to overlook the past; that you induce your husband to treat me with common civility. This is not so much for me to ask from you—Eunice—the only woman I ever loved, who has gone from me forever.”

For one moment her eyes met his, and she saw that he spoke the truth in what he had said last—that in all his poor, mean, warped life his feeling for her had been the best he had known. But even this feeling he would now make the vehicle of his selfish schemes. Eunice tried to compass, but could not, the infinite pettiness of the bargain he strove to make with her. Her brain, confused and shocked, refused to see, what came to her afterward, that he could not, at this crisis, afford to meet the open suspicion and hostility of a man of Arden Farnsworth’s importance.

“I do not see—I cannot believe—that we should owe this to you,” she replied, more softly. “I can speak certainly for Tom, that he would resent your interference in any affair of his. If I have done you injustice in supposing you are responsible for our annoyance, I am willing to ask your pardon. But I am sure—quite, quite sure—we can none of us ever believe in you again.”

“You are indeed implacable,” he muttered.

That she did not ask him to be seated cut him to the quick. He lingered uncertainly for a few moments, then bowing to her, took his leave. The footman, standing in the hall outside, opened the door for him, then was summoned back by Mrs. Farnsworth.

“You will remember, Jasper, and tell the others to remember, that I am never at home to Mr. Ashton Carmichael again.”

The man, who, like the rest of his fraternity, knew all the figure-heads of polite society, went below and told his mates that there was “one house, anyhow, that cheeky young feller Carmichael was not to boss,” and he was glad to see him made to eat a little humble pie. More than ever her servants admired their fair young mistress, whose wit and spirit and beauty, joined to her friendly consideration for their feelings, had elicited their unanimous and not-to-be-despised applause.

“You are very brave and sagacious, my little wife,” said her husband, when she told him later on of her interview; “but you are playing an unequal game. That fellow, if my instinct is not at fault, will stop at nothing. And the key to the present overture to you, my dear, is that he’s afraid of me!”

“What can you have done to him, Arden, dear, besides scowling most unbecomingly whenever he has been near?”

“I stand, in a way, behind Elizabeth Ellison, who, if she changes her mind—and women have been known to do so—and takes my advice, will run a very good chance of recovering the Carcellini emerald.”

“Arden! What do you mean? It isn’t possible you think—”

“Never mind what I think. Even to you, dearest, I am not prepared to say it in plain words. But this visit of his to-night, and his proposition to put us under obligation through this matter of Tom’s, is the most impudent bluff I ever heard of. To-morrow I wire for Tom. He will reach here in the course of the week, probably; and we shall go together to that newspaper office and force a withdrawal of their threatened revelation. Depend on it, the matter of Mr. Ashton Carmichael will not rest upon this evening’s work. The Carcellini emerald scandal is about to assume a new and interesting phase.”

At the clubs that night, and in many homes next day, it seemed that people had, simultaneously and without apparent new provocation, adopted Mr. Farnsworth’s view of the late excitement. Flaring up from the coals, the gossip about it began to burn with tenfold vigor. Some oracles went so far as to declare that Mrs. Ellison had recovered her jewel, had forgiven the thief (who had gone to reside on a ranch in New Mexico), and in token of gratitude for her signal mercy was about to present the Carcellini emerald to the Metropolitan Museum in Central Park. The hint given by the offending newspaper had not so far, prompted the general public to bring Tom Oliver’s name into the affair. He was too little known to the makers of paragraphs and the purveyors of contemporaneous news items to tempt the fate adumbrated for him by Ashton Carmichael to his sister. But any number of wild, vague, irrelevant stories were started, and left to drift down the tide of idle talk.

When Oliver, much disgusted on arrival in New York by the revelations of his brother-in-law, was about to set forth with that gentleman upon the disagreeable mission of stirring up the erring newspaper office with a very long pole, Mr. Farnsworth, in leaving his front door, was intercepted by a visitor—a young woman, closely veiled, and wet by a driving rain, holding an open umbrella in her hand.

“Eh? Very sorry, but—private business, you say?—and I am not to speak for publication? My dear lady, if you could oblige me with the least idea of what you intend to say I could better—”

They were standing in the open door, Tom a little in the rear of Farnsworth. Both men were surprised at her sudden, impetuous gesture in throwing back her veil, and revealing a strong, excited face.

“Mr. Oliver! I must speak to you, too. Don’t you remember Alice Carmichael?”

“This lady is entitled to the best respect any man has to give her, Farnsworth,” said Tom, offering her his hand. “It is a long time since we have met, but I should have known you anywhere. Farnsworth, mayn’t we step back into your little study, to the fire, and let Miss Carmichael tell us what is on her mind?”

“It seems that I am always doomed to come to you, Mr. Oliver, under stress of circumstance. This time, however, my errand shall be of the briefest. I meant only to give this”—and she held out a large brown envelope—“to Mr. Farnsworth for you. It contains, as you will find, the original of an article that was to go to press to-night. It was surrendered to me of his own free will by the author, who happens to consider himself under some obligations to me for past services. And it will not in any shape be duplicated or repeated. The greatest favor you can do me in return is to ask me no questions concerning it.”

“Do you debar me from telling you that I am everlastingly obliged to you?” cried Oliver. “You can imagine what it was, Miss Carmichael, to be summoned back to New York by my good brother here, to find a mine of malice and filthy lies ready to explode under my feet. I can’t tell you yet what the whole confounded business means. Indeed, I should be tempted to doubt the existence of this rot”—he gave the envelope a scornful shake—“unless you and Farnsworth vouched for it.”

“If you don’t mind I will look over the contents, to satisfy myself they are what we desired to get hold of,” said Farnsworth, withdrawing with the parcel to his desk.

“Do, please,” said Oliver, with a shrug. “I certainly shall not glance at them. Pray sit down by the fire, Miss Carmichael. I am sure your feet are wet, and you seem to be shivering. Let me ask my sister to come—”

“No, no!” she exclaimed, woefully, compressing her lips to keep back the tears evoked by his apparition. “This is a moment snatched from business hours. I must be off. I am not cold; it is nervousness, I suppose. Oh, think when and how I saw you last, and you will not wonder! And I have lately had much care. Please forgive me, Mr. Oliver; I shall be all right soon.”

Many and varied had been the experiences of other people’s griefs falling to Alice’s lot in her professional career. For so long she had been in the habit of putting a lock upon her own feelings, while absorbing those of her studies for the press, she could hardly believe she was giving way to emotion on her own account.

She had spent the previous evening on duty in the Tombs prison, gathering for publication the last utterances of a wretched woman about to be consigned for her crimes to life imprisonment. From here she was going on to the tenement-house district to write up the case of a starving family for whom a newspaper fund was to be created. Later that day she was due at a crush reception, where there were dresses to describe. Everywhere and every day of her busy, lonely life, she was the human atom last to be considered.

“I suppose you think I am rather a lunatic,” she went on, with an attempt at sprightliness, seeing the deep concern in Oliver’s face. “But you must not mind my giving way to this weakness. It is a relief to think that anybody cares. Now I shall go, please—not to keep you and Mr. Farnsworth longer.”

Farnsworth, a sheaf of typed sheets in his hand, came forward to join them upon the hearth-rug.

“This is the most diabolically ingenious effort of imagination I ever saw!” he exclaimed, impulsively. “What would be a fair punishment for such a tissue of insinuations that can be read in two ways, yet would succeed effectually in damning the person they are aimed at, I cannot think.”

The young journalist crimsoned to the roots of her hair.

“I have not read it,” she said, in a faltering tone. “I only—became aware—that it was in existence—and I was anxious to save it getting into print.”

“You have placed us under an obligation no money could discharge,” went on Farnsworth, kindly; “but—er—it would give me genuine pleasure to express our gratitude in some substantial way.”

“No, no; do not speak of it!” she cried. “Your wife will tell you, Mr. Farnsworth, if this gentleman does not, what a debt I am trying to repay.”

Before they could interpose she had left the room. Tom, overtaking her in the hall, urged upon her to accept his escort, or his assistance in some way; but with a melancholy smile she waved him off, and taking up her wet umbrella from the servant’s hands went out alone into the rain.

“You don’t mean to tell me that fine, frank womanly creature is the sneak’s own sister?” enquired Farnsworth, when Tom, looking and feeling crestfallen, went back into the study to explain her identity. “It seems incredible! I think her shyness with us is because she knows Ashton inspired every word of this offending article, that she, by good luck, has been able to abstract from the writer’s clutches. Probably some poor devil of a reporter she’s come across and befriended. Jove! that girl was made for better things than a life like hers. I must set Eunice to work to get her out of it.”

“You will not succeed,” replied Tom. “She is fine and self-helpful and proud to a degree, as her brother is the reverse. There is only one scheme that suggests itself to me,” he added, after a pause. “Somebody should marry her.”

“It will be a very brave body who will saddle himself with such a brother-in-law,” said Farnsworth, meaningly. “Don’t let your chivalrous sentiment run away with you, my friend. Unless I am greatly mistaken, Ashton Carmichael has in his possession the Carcellini emerald, and will ultimately come to grief. What’s more, I believe she thinks so, and that that accounts for her nervousness with us. If I knew more about him in the past I could better tell. I wish, in the interests of justice, Tom, you would answer me one question. Was the affair she alluded to of a nature to justify us in suspecting him of an act of criminal intent?”

“I cannot answer you,” replied the young man, bluntly. “For years what I know of it has never passed my lips; and I shall never again tell that story.”