The Annam Jewel (9 page)

“What on earth were you doing all day?” he said gloomily to Sylvia after dinner.

They were having coffee outside on the terrace. Cyril Marling had just risen to get the sugar, and Peter had taken his chair.

“What on earth were you doing?”

Sylvia in the moonlight made a very pretty picture. She gazed ecstatically at Peter, and said:

“We had a lovely time. Cyril read poetry to me.”

“Poetry!” said Peter, in disgusted tones.

“Yes, poetry. Lovely, lovely verses written specially for me.”

“Good lord! You don't mean to say he writes it?”

“Of course he does; he's a poet.”

“How rotten!”

There was real conviction in Peter's tones. He seemed to be oblivious of the fact that Cyril Marling had returned. He continued to sprawl in the chair which he had annexed.

Sylvia laughed.

“Oh, Peter, how rude! I love poetry. Cyril, why on earth don't you find yourself a chair?”

“
That's
my chair,” said Cyril rather peevishly.

Peter merely hunched himself and said nothing. He looked very large and heavy. After a moment's indecision Cyril sat down on Sylvia's other side.

“Poetry is rotten stuff,” said Peter. “It's dead easy, too. I know a chap at school who does it. He's a bit of a rotter, no good at games, and all that sort of thing. He says writing poetry's as easy as falling out of bed.”

“Is it, Cyril?” said Sylvia wickedly.

“It depends on what you call poetry,” said Cyril loftily.

Sylvia giggled. She was enjoying herself very much.

“Oh!” she said, clapping her hands. “I've got the loveliest idea. It really is simply the loveliest. You shall both write some poetry for me. It will be too exciting. You know I simply adore poetry. I suppose it's because I was born in the East, and I always think the East is so frightfully romantic and poetic.”

Peter had been fidgeting with a loose piece of cane on the arm of his chair. Suddenly his fingers were still, and he said slowly:

“I was born in the East, too.”

Sylvia clapped her hands again.

“That's another Link,” she said. “I mean a Link between us—between Peter and me.”

She nodded at Cyril Marling, who seemed far from pleased.

“Peter's saving my life was the first Link; and our both being born in the East is the second. I do wonder what the third will be. Of course there'll have to be a third. Things always go in threes, you know.”

“Where were you born?” said Peter in a slow, deep voice.

“I was born in Annam,” said Sylvia Coverdale.

Peter got up with a jerk that upset his chair. Without a word he strode across the terrace and went stumbling down the steps that led into the garden.

Sylvia and the Jewel; the Jewel and Sylvia. That was the third Link. Peter felt the wonder and the glory of it as an overwhelming wave. Practically it stunned him. He did not know where his feet had carried him until he found himself on the river's brink. His feet were almost in the water. Dark willows swept down into the stream, the moonlight lay upon it like light upon a looking-glass. Peter saw nothing but Sylvia's face and Sylvia's eyes, more beautiful than any jewel in the world.

CHAPTER X

Next day Sylvia smiled sweetly upon Peter, and asked him if he would take her on the river. She was out with him all the morning. In the afternoon she and Cyril detached themselves from the rest of the party and were seen no more.

Peter penetrated into the library, discovered and took down Beeton's
Great Book of Poetry
, and sat for two hours, alternately glaring at the printed page and tapping out metres upon the library table. At the end of the time he compiled what he thought would be a useful list of rhymes, and plunged into verse.

Miss Coverdale came into Sylvia's room that evening and found her in a state of high amusement and delight.

“Oh, Sylvia, you'll be late for dinner,” said Miss Coverdale.

Sylvia shook her head. She was seated before her looking-glass attired in a very flimsy white slip. She had just finished doing her hair, and was engaged in improving the arch of her eyebrows with a soft pencil. She giggled and looked over her shoulder at Miss Coverdale.

“Guess what's happened, Jane Anne,” she said. “A perfectly priceless thing.”

Her cheeks were very pink, and her eyes very blue.

“Oh, my dear, nothing dreadful, I hope.”

“Now, Jane Ann—dreadful? No, it's Peter.”

“What about him?” Miss Coverdale's tone was anxious.

Sylvia jumped up and began to dance round the room, holding up her short skirts and singing in her pretty, clear voice:

“Peter's fallen in love with me,

Peter's fallen in love with me;

With me, with capital M, E, Me.

Jane Ann, he's fallen in love with me.”

“Nonsense, Sylvia.”

“Oh, people do, you know.”

Sylvia stopped dancing and picked up a frightfully crumpled sheet of paper from among the odds and ends which littered her dressing-table.

“Read this, you unbelieving Jewess of a Jane Ann,” she said. “No, I'll read it out to you, or you'll miss the full beauty of it.”

She struck an attitude and declaimed:

“T
O
S
YLVIA

“You are the fairest star that ever shone,

Bar none.

I really think you are

Quite like a star,

Because a star looks bright

At night,

And you

Look stunning in the evening too.

So, Sylvia, marry me and be a darling,

Don't marry Marling.

“You see, Jane Ann, it's a proposal. That's my sixth, if I count Jimmy Brown when I was thirteen, which, I suppose, isn't really fair.”

“Sylvia darling,” said Miss Coverdale, “you know I don't like finding fault with you, but I don't really—no, I mean, do you really—no, I don't seem to be able to express just what I do mean—but is it, is it really quite delicate to talk like that?”

Sylvia had taken up her hand-glass and was deepening the red of her mouth a little. She looked up, brilliant with mischief.

“My blessed Jane Ann, when I'm married I shall furnish a darling little ark for you to live in, and then you'll feel really at home. I simply love people falling in love with me,” she added, “and I do call it a triumph to have got a poem out of Peter.”

On Sunday, Peter suffered the pangs of neglect. Sylvia and Cyril had had a
rapprochement
following upon a violent scene. They wandered about together, looking sentimental and making other people feel
de trop
.

Peter sat on the terrace all the afternoon. When Sylvia and Cyril were in sight he stared at them. When they were not in sight he stared into vacancy. After tea he went for a walk. On the way he passed Sylvia and Cyril in a boat, and received the impression that Cyril was reciting an ardent love poem. Sylvia was actually blushing. On the way home he walked into Sylvia and Cyril at a stile. They were leaning against it, very close together, and, just as Peter came up, Cyril kissed Sylvia, and Sylvia let him do it. Peter crashed past them, and went home with all the demons of jealousy tearing him.

That evening things came to a head. Afterwards Miss Coverdale was never quite sure what had happened. It was a most lovely evening, and Sylvia said that she wanted to walk in the rose garden and feel romantic. She invited Peter to escort her there, and Peter, who had not uttered a single word for at least two hours, got up and stalked away beside her in total silence.

About half an hour later Sylvia came back to the house alone. She looked very white, and said she was going to bed. Peter did not return. When the dinner bell rang he was still absent. Miss Coverdale and Cyril Marling dined
tête-â-tête
, and both seemed to be relieved when the meal was over. Cyril vanished almost immediately, and at ten Miss Coverdale was just thinking of going to her room when the door was violently wrenched open, and in rushed Sylvia in her dressing-gown. Her face was ashy, and in her hands she grasped a crumpled paper.

“Jane Ann,” she cried, “Oh, Jane Ann!” and dropped on her knees at Miss Coverdale's side. “What shall I do, what shall I do, what shall I
do
?”

She thrust the paper into the old lady's trembling hands and began to sob miserably. Miss Coverdale straightened the paper out and read, in Peter's untidy hand, his second and last effort at Poetry:

“I cannot bear it when you smile

At other people on a stile.

I cannot bear it when you float

With other people in a boat.

The pains of love have riven me,

The pains of love have driven me

To do what many a broken-hearted

Lover has done when he is parted

From the being he adores in vain

And fears he'll never see again.

My love for you is past all bearing.

Perhaps you'll sometimes think of Peter Waring.”

“No!” said Miss Coverdale, in a sharp, high voice that was not quite a scream. “Oh no, no! It's not
possible
!”

Sylvia's teeth were chattering.

“We quarrelled,” she whispered. “I said dreadful things. I said …” She broke off, shuddering. “He didn't say anything after that. He didn't speak, he only looked. Oh, Jane Ann, I can see him looking at me.” She sobbed and clung to the trembling Miss Coverdale. “The river!” she said, only just above her breath.

This time Miss Coverdale really screamed.

“No, no!” she cried. “Oh, Sylvia, my darling, no!”

There was a dreadful silence. Sylvia's face was hidden, her whole body shook. Suddenly she flung up her head and looked about her wildly.

“I'm a wicked girl,” she said. “Oh, Jane Ann, I'm wicked all through. Oh, don't let me be punished like this, and I promise, I
promise
, I'll never flirt again.”

Mr. Coverdale, who had opened the door quietly a moment before, now closed it behind him and crossed the room.

“My child, what an admirable resolution!” he said.

Both women screamed. His tone changed, taking on a slight shade of impatience.

“Jane, what's the matter? Has anything happened?”

“Yes—yes—dreadful!” gasped Miss Coverdale.

“Well, in heaven's name, what? If it's Sylvia's ridiculous engagement that has gone smash, I may as well tell you that I can support the blow.”

“Not Cyril—Peter!” said Sylvia, with white lips.

“Peter? Oh yes, the Link, the romantic cub. So you've been devastating him? Well, my dear, he'll get over it—we do, you know.”

“No—not if he's drowned,” sobbed Sylvia.

“Drowned? Rubbish!” said Mr. Coverdale. “What's this?”

He took the paper which Sylvia pushed into his hand, turned so as to get a good light upon it, and read Peter's horrible composition aloud in a voice tinged with sarcastic amusement.

“My
dear
Sylvia,” he said, half-way through—and then suddenly, on the last words, his tone altered and hardened. He said, “Peter Waring?” And then very sharply, “Wareham—you told me his name was Wareham.”

“No, no,” said Sylvia, “it's Waring—it always was.”

She was still on her knees, clutching Miss Coverdale's chair with one hand. With the other she put back her disordered fair hair. She stared at her father and saw in his face something that she did not understand. He folded up the paper and put it in his pocket before he spoke. Then he turned to his sister.

“My dear Jane, you've distressed yourself quite unnecessarily. I met young Waring on his way to the junction, and offered him a lift which he refused. Now, perhaps, you will leave us, as I wish to speak to Sylvia.”

When the door had closed upon Miss Coverdale's good nights, he laid his hand on Sylvia's shoulder, pulled her to her feet, and turned her so that she faced the light.

“Now,” he said, “why did you lie to me about the boy's name?”

“I didn't, I didn't.”

“You wrote Wareham to me.”

“N—never. It's m—my wr—writing. Jane Ann knew his name was Waring. Everybody kn—knew it.”

The colour was beginning to come back into Sylvia's face. Peter wasn't drowned. She had nothing to reproach herself with. Fear, going out, left room for curiosity.

“Why shouldn't his name be Waring?” she asked.

“What's his father's name? Do you know?”

He had never heard that James Waring had a son. Perhaps the whole thing was a false alarm. But there was the young brother who came over to Tourane afterwards—the soldier. What was his name? He looked back into memory, and saw again the lifted blind, the native servant standing there with a visiting-card, and the name on it, clear black on white: “Captain Henry Waring, R.A.”

“What was his father's name? Who was he?” He thought his voice sounded as if it came from a great distance, and, as if from a distance, he heard Sylvia reply:

“His father was a soldier, a gunner. His name was Henry. And when I told him where I was born—”

Coverdale became aware that his hand still lay on Sylvia's shoulder. She cried out under the sudden pressure, and he said harshly:

“You told him where you were born! And, pray, who told
you
where you were born?”

Sylvia's breath came fast.

“It was in the old desk, my mother's desk—you gave it me. There was a little diary stuck at the back of one of the drawers, with all the leaves torn out but one. It had the date and the place where I was born in Annam. It had—”

Coverdale uttered an impatient exclamation, pushed his daughter away from him, and, turning, walked the length of the room and back. Sylvia stood still and watched him, curious, fascinated, afraid. He returned, came to a standstill before her, looked her steadily in the face, and said: