The Palliser Novels (264 page)

“I didn’t mean for money,” said Lucy, hotter than ever, with her eyes full of tears.

“She should not be in any respect at his disposal till he has bound himself to her at the altar. You may believe me, Lucy, when I tell you so. It is only because I love you so that I say so.”

“I know that, Lady Fawn.”

“When your time here is over, just put up your things and come back to Richmond. You need fear nothing with us. Frederic quite liked your way of parting with him at last, and all that little affair is forgotten. At Fawn Court you’ll be safe; — and you shall be happy, too, if we can make you happy. It’s the proper place for you.”

“Of course you’ll come,” said Diana Fawn.

“You’ll be the worst little thing in the world if you don’t,” said Lydia. “We don’t know what to do without you. Do we, mamma?”

“Lucy will please us all by coming back to her old home,” said Lady Fawn. The tears were now streaming down Lucy’s face, so that she was hardly able to say a word in answer to all this kindness. And she did not know what word to say. Were she to accept the offer made to her, and acknowledge that she could do nothing better than creep back under her old friend’s wing, — would she not thereby be showing that she doubted her lover? And yet she could not go to the dean’s house unless the dean and his wife were pleased to take her; and, suspecting as she did, that they would not be pleased, would it become her to throw upon her lover the burthen of finding for her a home with people who did not want her? Had she been welcome at Bobsborough, Mrs. Greystock would surely have so told her before this. “You needn’t say a word, my dear,” said Lady Fawn. “You’ll come, and there’s an end of it.”

“But you don’t want me any more,” said Lucy, from amidst her sobs.

“That’s just all that you know about it,” said Lydia. “We do want you, — more than anything.”

“I wonder whether I may come in now,” said Lady Linlithgow, entering the room. As it was the countess’s own drawing-room, as it was now mid-winter, and as the fire in the dining-room had been allowed, as was usual, to sink almost to two hot coals, the request was not unreasonable. Lady Fawn was profuse in her thanks, and immediately began to account for Lucy’s tears, pleading their dear friendship and their long absence, and poor Lucy’s emotional state of mind. Then she took her leave, and Lucy, as soon as she had been kissed by her friends outside the drawing-room door, took herself to her bedroom, and finished her tears in the cold.

“Have you heard the news?” said Lady Linlithgow to her companion about a month after this. Lady Linlithgow had been out, and asked the question immediately on her return. Lucy, of course, had heard no news. “Lizzie Eustace has just come back to London, and has had all her jewels stolen on the road.”

“The diamonds?” asked Lucy, with amaze.

“Yes, — the Eustace diamonds! And they didn’t belong to her any more than they did to you. They’ve been taken, anyway; and from what I hear I shouldn’t be at all surprised if she had arranged the whole matter herself.”

“Arranged that they should be stolen?”

“Just that, my dear. It would be the very thing for Lizzie Eustace to do. She’s clever enough for anything.”

“But, Lady Linlithgow — “

“I know all about that. Of course, it would be very wicked, and if it were found out she’d be put in the dock and tried for her life. It is just what I expect she’ll come to some of these days. She has gone and got up a friendship with some disreputable people, and was travelling with them. There was a man who calls himself Lord George de Bruce Carruthers. I know him, and can remember when he was errand-boy to a disreputable lawyer at Aberdeen.” This assertion was a falsehood on the part of the countess; Lord George had never been an errand-boy, and the Aberdeen lawyer, — as provincial Scotch lawyers go, — had been by no means disreputable. “I’m told that the police think that he has got them.”

“How very dreadful!”

“Yes; — it’s dreadful enough. At any rate, men got into Lizzie’s room at night and took away the iron box and diamonds and all. It may be she was asleep at the time; — but she’s one of those who pretty nearly always sleep with one eye open.”

“She can’t be so bad as that, Lady Linlithgow.”

“Perhaps not. We shall see. They had just begun a lawsuit about the diamonds, — to get them back. And then all at once, — they’re stolen. It looks what the men call — fishy. I’m told that all the police in London are up about it.”

On the very next day who should come to Brook Street, but Lizzie Eustace herself. She and her aunt had quarrelled, and they hated each other; — but the old woman had called upon Lizzie, advising her, as the reader will perhaps remember, to give up the diamonds, and now Lizzie returned the visit. “So you’re here, installed in poor Macnulty’s place,” began Lizzie to her old friend, the countess at the moment being out of the room.

“I am staying with your aunt for a few months, — as her companion. Is it true, Lizzie, that all your diamonds have been stolen?” Lizzie gave an account of the robbery, true in every respect, except in regard to the contents of the box. Poor Lizzie had been wronged in that matter by the countess, for the robbery had been quite genuine. The man had opened her room and taken her box, and she had slept through it all. And then the broken box had been found, and was in the hands of the police, and was evidence of the fact.

“People seem to think it possible,” said Lizzie, “that Mr. Camperdown the lawyer arranged it all.” As this suggestion was being made Lady Linlithgow came in, and then Lizzie repeated the whole story of the robbery. Though the aunt and niece were open and declared enemies, the present circumstances were so peculiar and full of interest that conversation, for a time almost amicable, took place between them. “As the diamonds were so valuable, I thought it right, Aunt Susanna, to come and tell you myself.”

“It’s very good of you, but I’d heard it already. I was telling Miss Morris yesterday what very odd things there are being said about it.”

“Weren’t you very much frightened?” asked Lucy.

“You see, my child, I knew nothing about it till it was all over. The man cut the bit out of the door in the most beautiful way, without my ever hearing the least sound of the saw.”

“And you that sleep so light,” said the countess.

“They say that perhaps something was put into the wine at dinner to make me sleep.”

“Ah!” ejaculated the countess, who did not for a moment give up her own erroneous suspicion; — “very likely.”

“And they do say these people can do things without making the slightest tittle of noise. At any rate, the box was gone.”

“And the diamonds?” asked Lucy.

“Oh yes; — of course. And now there is such a fuss about it! The police keep on coming to me almost every day.”

“And what do the police think?” asked Lady Linlithgow. “I’m told that they have their suspicions.”

“No doubt they have their suspicions,” said Lizzie.

“You travelled up with friends, I suppose.”

“Oh yes, — with Lord George de Bruce Carruthers; and with Mrs. Carbuncle, — who is my particular friend, and with Lucinda Roanoke, who is just going to be married to Sir Griffin Tewett. We were quite a large party.”

“And Macnulty?”

“No. I left Miss Macnulty at Portray with my darling. They thought he had better remain a little longer in Scotland.”

“Ah, yes; — perhaps Lord George de Bruce Carruthers does not care for babies. I can easily believe that. I wish Macnulty had been with you.”

“Why do you wish that?” said Lizzie, who already was beginning to feel that the countess intended, as usual, to make herself disagreeable.

“She’s a stupid, dull, pig-headed creature; but one can believe what she says.”

“And don’t you believe what I say?” demanded Lizzie.

“It’s all true, no doubt, that the diamonds are gone.”

“Indeed it is.”

“But I don’t know much about Lord George de Bruce Carruthers.”

“He’s the brother of a marquis, anyway,” said Lizzie, who thought that she might thus best answer the mother of a Scotch Earl.

“I remember when he was plain George Carruthers, running about the streets of Aberdeen, and it was well with him when his shoes weren’t broken at the toes and down at heel. He earned his bread then, such as it was; — nobody knows how he gets it now. Why does he call himself de Bruce, I wonder?”

“Because his godfathers and godmothers gave him that name when he was made a child of Christ, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven,” said Lizzie, ever so pertly.

“I don’t believe a bit of it.”

“I wasn’t there to see, Aunt Susanna; and therefore I can’t swear to it. That’s his name in all the peerages, and I suppose they ought to know.”

“And what does Lord George de Bruce say about the diamonds?”

Now it had come to pass that Lady Eustace herself did not feel altogether sure that Lord George had not had a hand in this robbery. It would have been a trick worthy of a genuine Corsair to arrange and carry out such a scheme for the appropriation of so rich a spoil. A watch or a brooch would, of course, be beneath the notice of a good genuine Corsair, — of a Corsair who was written down in the peerage as a marquis’s brother; — but diamonds worth ten thousand pounds are not to be had every day. A Corsair must live, and if not by plunder rich as that, — how then? If Lord George had concocted this little scheme, he would naturally be ignorant of the true event of the robbery till he should meet the humble executors of his design, and would, as Lizzie thought, have remained unaware of the truth till his arrival in London. That he had been ignorant of the truth during the journey was evident to her. But they had now been three days in London, during which she had seen him once. At that interview he had been sullen and almost cross, — and had said next to nothing about the robbery. He made but one remark about it. “I have told the chief man here,” he said, “that I shall be ready to give any evidence in my power when called upon. Till then I shall take no further steps in the matter. I have been asked questions that should not have been asked.” In saying this he had used a tone which prevented further conversation on the subject, but Lizzie, as she thought of it all, remembered his jocular remark, made in the railway carriage, as to the suspicion which had already been expressed on the matter in regard to himself. If he had been the perpetrator, and had then found that he had only stolen the box, how wonderful would be the mystery! “He hasn’t got anything to say,” replied Lizzie to the question of the countess.

“And who is your Mrs. Carbuncle?” asked the old woman.

“A particular friend of mine with whom I am staying at present. You don’t go about a great deal, Aunt Linlithgow, but surely you must have met Mrs. Carbuncle.”

“I’m an ignorant old woman, no doubt. My dear, I’m not at all surprised at your losing your diamonds. The pity is that they weren’t your own.”

“They were my own.”

“The loss will fall on you, no doubt, because the Eustace people will make you pay for them. You’ll have to give up half your jointure for your life. That’s what it will come to. To think of your travelling about with those things in a box!”

“They were my own, and I had a right to do what I liked with them. Nobody accuses you of taking them.”

“That’s quite true. Nobody will accuse me. I suppose Lord George has left England for the benefit of his health. It would not at all surprise me if I were to hear that Mrs. Carbuncle had followed him; — not in the least.”

“You’re just like yourself, Aunt Susanna,” said Lizzie, getting up and taking her leave. “Good-bye, Lucy, — I hope you’re happy and comfortable here. Do you ever see a certain friend of ours now?”

“If you mean Mr. Greystock, I haven’t seen him since I left Fawn Court,” said Lucy, with dignity.

When Lizzie was gone, Lady Linlithgow spoke her mind freely about her niece. “Lizzie Eustace won’t come to any good. When I heard that she was engaged to that prig, Lord Fawn, I had some hopes that she might be kept out of harm. That’s all over, of course. When he heard about the necklace he wasn’t going to put his neck into that scrape. But now she’s getting among such a set that nothing can save her. She has taken to hunting, and rides about the country like a madwoman.”

“A great many ladies hunt,” said Lucy.

“And she’s got hold of this Lord George, and of that horrid American woman that nobody knows anything about. They’ve got the diamonds between them, I don’t doubt. I’ll bet you sixpence that the police find out all about it, and that there is some terrible scandal. The diamonds were no more hers than they were mine, and she’ll be made to pay for them.”

The necklace, the meanwhile, was still locked up in Lizzie’s desk, — with a patent Bramah key, — in Mrs. Carbuncle’s house, and was a terrible trouble to our unhappy friend.

Before the end of January everybody in London had heard of the great robbery at Carlisle, — and most people had heard also that there was something very peculiar in the matter, — something more than a robbery. Various rumours were afloat. It had become widely known that the diamonds were to be the subject of litigation between the young widow and the trustees of the Eustace estate; and it was known also that Lord Fawn had engaged himself to marry the widow, and had then retreated from his engagement simply on account of this litigation. There were strong parties formed in the matter, — whom we may call Lizzieites and anti-Lizzieites. The Lizzieites were of opinion that poor Lady Eustace was being very ill-treated; — that the diamonds did probably belong to her, and that Lord Fawn, at any rate, clearly ought to be her own. It was worthy of remark that these Lizzieites were all of them Conservatives. Frank Greystock had probably set the party on foot; — and it was natural that political opponents should believe that a noble young Under-Secretary of State on the Liberal side, — such as Lord Fawn, — had misbehaved himself. When the matter at last became of such importance as to demand leading articles in the newspapers, those journals which had devoted themselves to upholding the Conservative politicians of the day were very heavy indeed upon Lord Fawn. The whole force of the Government, however, was anti-Lizzieite; and as the controversy advanced, every good Liberal became aware that there was nothing so wicked, so rapacious, so bold, or so cunning but that Lady Eustace might have done it, or caused it to be done, without delay, without difficulty, and without scruple. Lady Glencora Palliser for a while endeavoured to defend Lizzie in Liberal circles, — from generosity rather than from any real belief, and instigated, perhaps, by a feeling that any woman in society who was capable of doing anything extraordinary ought to be defended. But even Lady Glencora was forced to abandon her generosity, and to confess, on behalf of her party, that Lizzie Eustace was — a very wicked young woman, indeed. All this, no doubt, grew out of the diamonds, and chiefly arose from the robbery; but there had been enough of notoriety attached to Lizzie before the affair at Carlisle to make people fancy that they had understood her character long before that.