Читать книгу The Great Pearl Secret - C. N. Williamson - Страница 4

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A perfectly charming young man came in—a young man so delightful to look at that it seemed almost too much that he should be a duke. With that merry brown face (the war had left a scar across cheek and temple), those Celtic grey eyes, that jet-black hair, that "figure for a fencer," and above all that engaging grin of his, the merest Nobody might hope to make his mark as Somebody.

"Breezing in" (as Emmy had put it), he smiled his nice smile that brought a dimple like a cut line into each thin, tanned cheek. The smile was for Juliet, whose velvet throne was opposite the door, and for her he waved aloft a small, sealed white parcel. Then he saw Lady West, and his expression changed. As the saying is, his "face fell," but in half a second he had controlled his features.

"How do you do?" he enquired. His voice was as pleasant as his grin, but there was a slight stiffness in his tone for the red-haired war-widow.

"I'm going strong, thanks! Going in every sense of the word," Emmy assured him. "I should have taken myself off before now, only Juliet pretended not to be expecting you. Of course, the day before the wedding is supposed by old-fashioned folk to be close time for brides, where their loving bridegrooms are concerned, and so——"

"I'm not old-fashioned," said Claremanagh.

"Rather not! I've every reason for knowing that. We all have. But Juliet had some story about a 'bad luck' superstition. I thought you were the last man to be superstitious, Irish as you are, but it didn't sound like a joke——"

"It wasn't a joke. I'm as superstitious as the deuce about one or two things," the man confessed. "Juliet wasn't 'pretending' but"—and he turned to the girl—"I had to come. There was something I didn't want to explain in a letter, and—hang 'bad luck!' It's a cross dog that would dare bite us."

As Emmy West saw the look he gave Juliet, she felt as though her heart had been sharply pinched between a thumb and a finger. She had believed till now that his "superstition" was an excuse for spending his time with someone whose society he preferred to the bride's. Yet here he was, bouncing in like a bomb, with that eager light in his eyes, and in his hand a packet which might be the pearls!

When Juliet explained that there "was a reason" why Claremanagh "couldn't give his present till to-day," an exciting thought had tumbled into Emmy's head: What if Lyda Pavoya had refused to return the pearls he'd been teased into lending her, and had taken them to New York, where she was now dancing? Emmy visioned the poor Duke frantically cabling, the moment he had secured the American heiress; or perhaps engaging a lawyer to frighten the Polish siren. Lyda wouldn't be easy to frighten, Emmy imagined, admiringly. (She, in fact, admired the dancer so sincerely, that her own attempts at sirenhood were copied from Pavoya.) Even if Lyda had disgorged the booty, would there have been time for it to arrive from across the Atlantic? Only the opening of that little parcel would show, and Emmy's jealous pain was complicated by curiosity.

Still, she decided, it would be useless to wear out her welcome by lingering. The chances were that Claremanagh wouldn't break those thrilling seals till she had gone. Besides, Juliet was in a state of suppressed fury, and was capable in that mood of banishing her with rudeness. In some moods, the girl was capable of anything! So Lady West "kissed air" in the neighbourhood of Miss Phayre's burning cheeks, and accepted defeat with one sole satisfaction: If the pearls had come—or if they ever came!—she had pretty well spoiled them for the future Duchess.

"Au revoir, dearest child," she said. "I shall be in church to-morrow, of course. Au revoir, Peter, and good luck in spite of the Claremanagh curse. I do hope it won't put on seven-league boots and follow you to New York."

"Leather's too dear since the war for superannuated old curses to buy seven-league boots," replied the Duke, unflatteringly prompt in opening the door.

The pretty lady went to it with wormlike meekness, but turned on the threshold. "If I meet the Curse, I'll tell it to mind its business," she laughed. "The Claremanaghs have had enough bad luck. You'll create a new record, working out your democratic notions in a new country, with one or two old friends there to applaud them."

With this exit speech she put herself in charge of Parker, who would ring up the lift for her. The Duke shut the salon door, and turned to the girl. He didn't even say "Thank goodness, the woman's gone!" He seemed to have forgotten her existence.

"Heavens, what hair you have!" he exclaimed. "I knew it must be gorgeous, but I didn't dream of this. To-night I shall dream of it! By rights, I oughtn't to have seen this show till to-morrow night, ought I? But I'm glad I have. All your beauties bursting upon me at once would be too much for my brain."

"Don't make fun of me," Juliet laughed, with a wistfulness rather pathetic in so pretty and so rich a girl.

"Make fun of you!" Claremanagh snatched her up from the low seat, and crushed the yielding, thinly clad young body in his arms. On the sweet-scented, damp hair he rained kisses. "Am I a wooden man? Take that—and that, to punish you! Mavourneen—if it were to-morrow!"

Between warm joy and chilling doubt Juliet Phayre shivered. If only she could believe him—believe that he cared for her, and not for the money! She almost had believed—before Emmy West came.

The girl burned to tell "Pat" what Emmy had said and hinted. If he could reassure her, it would be balm on a wound never quite healed. But—if he couldn't. If questioning should make bad things worse? Then she would wish in vain that she'd "let sleeping dogs lie," because she loved the man too much to give him up. She had wanted him as a child wants the moon, ever since the day she, a gilt-edged Red Cross nurse, had met him, a soldier on leave, in Paris. Now she had got him—or almost—and the future might be so wonderful!

He had promised her uncle, Henry Phayre, to live for at least half of each year in America, there to work as other men worked (Phayre would supply the employment), and Juliet had looked forward to being proud of her adorable husband, happy with him; a living proof—the pair of them—that an American girl can marry a duke for himself, not for his title; that a duke can make an American heiress his wife for love. But now, Emmy had raked up those old rags of gossip, nearly forgotten. And Juliet had read in the paper only a few days ago about Pavoya's first night in New York; the furore her "wild eastern dancing and strange, Slavic fascination" had created. The girl felt sick at heart as she asked herself if Pat's pleasure in the thought of "seeing New York" had any connection with Pavoya's presence there.

It was all she could do not to purr out her complaints of "that cat, Emmy West," but native prudence prevailed over hot impulse. She enjoyed as much as Emmy permitted Pat's praise of her glorious hair (surely Pavoya's wasn't as long or thick, and probably its "rusty red" was due to dye), and then she reminded him of the parcel.

"Is it my present from you?" she asked, almost shyly, nodding toward the table where Pat had thrown the neat white square.

Instantly he let her go, and took the little parcel again in his hand.

"Yes, sweet, it is my present for you," he said. "But not the present I wanted to give you. That's why I risked the 'curse' and came to explain."

"Oh!" was the girl's noncommittal answer. Her heart sank. The pearls were not in the packet, she knew now, but her disappointment was not so much in missing them as in the thought that Emmy could say "I told you so!"

"Before you open these silly seals, and see what I've brought," the Duke went on, "I want to make my explanation, and be sure you understand the whole business. Come and sit by me on the sofa, will you?"

He drew her down beside him, and gathered her close.

"Of course, you know all about our pearls, the one ewe lamb of ancient glory left to us poor Claremanaghs," he said.

"I don't know all about them," amended Juliet, her heart missing a beat.

"Tell me just what you do know, and then I shan't bore you with repetitions."

"Oh, people have told me things," she hedged. "Didn't a Tsarina of Russia sell the pearls to some old ancestor of yours?"

"Good lord, no!" he chuckled. "Never was a Claremanagh so stony broke as yours truly; yet never was there one since the days of pterodactyls who could run to the price of a Tsarina's pearls; that is, in lucre. My great-great-grandfather bought them with kisses. But joking apart, it's rather a romantic tale. He was a soldier and offered his services to Russia because he'd seen a portrait of the Tsarina, which the Prince of Wales had, and fell in love with it. Well, she fell in love with him, too, at sight. He wasn't bad to look at, judging from his portrait——"

"Was he like you?" cut in Juliet.

Pat laughed. "They say so. When we can get those Pill people out of Castle Claremanagh (their lease has a year to run) you shall tell me if you find a likeness. There was an 'affair' between the two; and great-great-grandfather Pat (he was Patrick, too, like all the eldest sons) had it politely intimated to him, through his friend Wales, that he'd better come home—a marriage had been arranged for him. He'd not have stirred a foot if it hadn't been for his Love. She begged him to go. There was a plot to murder him, it seems, and as for her, she'd ceased to be very popular with the Tsar, her husband. She made her sweetheart promise to marry the English girl, and she gave him the rope of pearls which since then have been called after her—the 'Tsarina's pearls.' They were for his wife, as a gift from her, so the girl shouldn't hate the thought of their love."

"I should have hated it all the more!" cried Juliet. "I wouldn't have worn the things if I'd been his bride."

"Well, as my bride I hope you will wear them often. They'll be dashed becoming to your blondness, for the things are unique in one way: they're blue; a hundred and eighty immense and perfectly matched blue pearls. Never has anything been seen like them, the expert johnnies say."

"Was the Tsarina a blonde?" the girl wanted to know.

"A copper-headed blonde. You shall see her miniature."

Juliet said nothing. But she thought of Lyda Pavoya's head. She had never seen the Polish dancer, but she had heard her described: the traditional "siren-green" eyes, white face, and red hair. And she knew that Emmy West modelled herself, so far as Nature permitted, on Pavoya.

"In the ordinary sense of the word, the Tsarina pearls aren't an heirloom in our family," Claremanagh continued. "But the first bride who received them passed on the gift to her eldest son's bride. So it has gone on ever since. The thing falls to the heir, or his wife; and it's tacitly understood that neither the rope as a whole, nor even one of the pearls, shall be sold. Well, I came into the inheritance (if you can call it that) seven years ago, when I was twenty-one. I'm afraid I'd have sold the bally thing more than once if I could have done it in common decency. But I couldn't. So there you are!"

"What did you do with it?" Juliet ventured, half dreading the answer. Her head was pressed close to Pat's shoulder. She could not look up at his face, but she thought a muscle jumped in the arm that held her, and that there was a sudden change in his tone.

"Do with it?" he echoed. "Why, what should I do but keep it in the bank waiting for the Lady of my Dreams? I couldn't wear it round my neck, you know! But, well, I did get it out of the bank now and then, to show to beautiful beings who begged to see it. Once it was in a Loan Exhibition for the benefit of something or other, I forget what. The confession I have to make, though, is this: only two months before I met the dearest girl on earth I was so hard up I'd have had to grind a monkey-organ in the streets if I hadn't been engaged in fighting for King and Country. I'd had some beastly bad luck with a speculation an alleged pal had let me in for, and honest Injun, I didn't know which way to turn, until a chap I know offered me two hundred thousand francs on the security of the pearls."

"Francs?" echoed Juliet.

"Yes. The man's a Frenchman. And the business was done in France. He's a dashed good fellow in his way. But it's a queer way. He's a kind of gilded, super money-lender. His transactions are only with his friends, and the interest he takes is fair and square: twenty per cent. instead of sixty or so, as the sharks do—to my bitter knowledge. With what I got from Louis Mayen I paid my debts, and hung onto a bit, a few thousands. Then, two months later, I met you—and the fat was in the fire!"

"How, in the fire?"

"Why, I made up my mind at first sight to grab you if I could——"

Juliet broke out laughing like a child, forgetful of her secret burden. "Did you—really? So did I you!"

"Bold hussy!" He kissed her with passion. "But it was worse for me than you. I'd just lost my chance of giving you your legitimate wedding present—if you'd have me. The day you said 'Yes', instead of walking on air I could have thrown myself in the sea, I felt such a fool."

"Silly boy!" cried the girl. "Any real money-lender, or even your super, gilded one, would have let you have all you wanted if you'd said you were marrying Silas Phayre's heiress. I mayn't know much about business, but I know that!"

"And I mayn't be a saint, but I'm not a cad," Claremanagh capped her. "I wouldn't go to a money-lender on the strength of being engaged to you. I don't say that if Louis Mayen had been in France then I'd not have wheedled the pearls back from him, on the mere strength of friendship, and an I.O.U., or some such arrangement. He'd have trusted me," Pat laughed; "anyhow, in the circumstances! But you and I were engaged a fortnight after the Armistice, you remember. Just a week before our own Great Day (yours and mine) Mayen went to Russia with a lot of important Frenchmen of Hebrew blood, on a diplomatic mission. He had a bad time in Petrograd. He and his lot were stuck into the prison of St. Peter and St. Paul, by the Bolchies. I didn't know where the pearls were and couldn't find out. That was two months ago. But after six weeks in a cell, Mayen was released by order of Lenine; and it was expected in Paris that he and the rest would be back in France by now.

"We were there ourselves—you and your uncle in Paris, and I at G.H.Q. you know, till just ten days ago—though it seems longer. And I was hoping against hope that Mayen might turn up. I wouldn't say a word to you, for I didn't want you to be disappointed. And even as late as last night I wouldn't quite give up. Your Cousin Jack Manners, who is the best fellow on earth, has been watching things for me in Paris. He'd heard that Mayen had quietly sneaked back, and hadn't let any one know, in order to get a good rest cure. But this turns out to be a canard. Now you see why I had to go out and find you a 'fairing' as the Scots say. I couldn't afford anything worth while unless I borrowed; so I thought things over, and decided that you'd prefer a little remembrance of our wedding, bought with my own 'pocket-money,' and supplemented by a souvenir of my mother. Am I right?"

"Absolutely! Whatever you give me, I shall love it," said Juliet. "I wouldn't care if it cost sixpence. It's from you; that makes the value for me. But, Pat, I can't bear to think of your being poor! You won't be after to-morrow. I haven't liked to talk of such things, but I told Uncle Henry I wanted a million dollars settled on you, to use as you pleased. Surely he did what I——"

"He did, my child. But I 'wasn't taking any'. I meant to tell you this myself when we were old married people—a week after the wedding, let's say! But since you've brought up the subject, we might as well have it out. Your money is going to restore Claremanagh, and the jolly old London house in Queen Anne's gate that my great-grandfather bought. I don't so much mind that. You'll enjoy the places. And it won't be till the tenants there turn out. I'm to have a screw from your uncle for pretending to work in the S. P. Phayre Bank: a hundred dollars a week to begin with (he offered more, but I wouldn't have it), about a fiftieth part of which I'll really earn. But even that will bring me nearly a hundred pounds a month, so I shan't disgrace my wife by wearing paper collars or elastic-sided boots, or not getting my hair cut. Then, as my earning power increases, so will my pay. Besides, your noble guardian wants to buy my place at Maidenhead, when it's free, next spring. He'll give sixty thousand pounds, which will leave me fifty when the mortgage is paid off; and Mr. Phayre will advise me about investments. So you see, you're not marrying a pauper after all, my good girl! As for the pearls, it's only a delay—an annoying delay. When Mayen really does get back to Paris, he'll find a letter from me containing a post-dated cheque for the two hundred thousand francs, and interest. That will come out of the fifty thousand pounds, and still leave me a decent pile. Mayen will at once take steps to get the pearls to me."

"But we'll be in New York," objected Juliet. "How can Monsieur Mayen send them without danger of their being stolen?"

"Trust him to arrange that," Claremanagh soothed her. "There must be lots of ways. Besides, they'll be insured for their full value, which is supposed to be—intrinsic, not sentimental—one hundred thousand pounds. What I hope is, they'll be in time for you to make a show in your box at the opera—Metropolitan Opera House, you call it, don't you? You see, I've been reading up a guide book to New York! And now I've made all my explanations and excuses, my darling, you'd better open the poor little box."

His arm still round her, the girl broke the jeweller's seals. Inside the white paper was a white velvet case, and inside the white velvet case was a string of white pearls. They were small, but good, and from them depended an old-fashioned, open-faced locket containing an ivory miniature of a beautiful boy.

"The pearls are from me," Pat said. "The locket and miniature are from my mother. She used always to wear the locket. And when she died, eight years ago, one of the last things she did was to give it to me, 'for my bride'."

Juliet Phayre would not have been human if she had not forgotten, in that moment, both Emmy West and Lyda Pavoya.