The Warrielaw Jewel, page 4
“But if Annie is as mad as that, Miss Jessica, you should really have her medically examined and got into some home. Has she owned up to it?”
“No, but Effie is going to keep an eye upon her till she leaves in a few weeks,” said Jessica indifferently.
“It’s all very well to talk like that now, Jessica.” Mary leant across the border table and spoke with surprising venom. “You were as frightened as any of us on Thursday, and last night you came to my room because you thought you heard noises. You’re only pretending to make nothing of it all because you dislike poor Rhoda!”
“Mary!” Before Jessica’s voice Mary’s sudden courage failed. She turned to me suddenly and produced another album full of Warrielaws, who all, I noted, irrespective of age or sex, looked at me with those queer, round eyes with narrowed pupils. Then she asked me hurriedly if I liked walking and if I were fond of dogs and especially spaniels. “All Warrielaws like walking and dogs,” she added, and had just murmured that she feared John’s wife was a little town-bird when Effie entered with the tea.
A truce obtained as we sat round the table, and Miss Jessica asked if I were fond of embroidery and turned from the tea-table to show me her own large, grimy, hand-worked bedspread.
“I’ve some other work on hand,” she said, pointing to a pile of fine linen handkerchiefs. “I’m embroidering these initials for my nephew Neil, but I shall lay them aside till I’ve finished my bedspread. My sister and I have been working at them for a year, and I mustn’t let her get ahead of me! The handkerchiefs can wait, for Neil won’t be back till the end of March.”
Evidently Miss Jessica had heard her sister’s remarks, for she cast a glance of unkind triumph in her direction. Near the immaculate handkerchiefs lay a dirty little square of the cheapest cotton. That was evidently good enough for Miss Warrielaw herself, and somehow the contrast between the dowdy old lady and the spoilt nephew, for whom no equipment could be too perfect, made my eyes smart suddenly. Here at least was a Warrielaw who loved another, however unworthy he might be! There was no further chance for sentiment, however, as Miss Jessica dropped the subject suddenly and turned to my husband.
“Well, the result of all this, John, is that I’ve finally determined to take the fairy jewel up to London and sell it to that American dealer, Elves, when he comes over in the spring. We have corresponded about it already. I shall be glad to get rid of it, and the responsibility of such a valuable, and all this ridiculous quarrelling about it. After all, Neil would only sell it himself when he inherits it. Now John, if you’ve finished tea, come up and look at the scene of the burglary, and you come with us too, my dear,” she added, turning to me. “I should like John’s wife to see the jewel before it goes to other hands.”
I was not a little sorry for Miss Mary as I followed Jessica meekly down the passage and through the swing door back into the big hall.
It was only the lower rooms of the front of the house which were deserted, for the Misses Warrielaw chose to accentuate the inconvenience of the place by inhabiting two large bedrooms on the first floor. Jessica’s was at the eastern extremity of the long gallery, above the drawing-room, and Mary’s at the opposite end, looking west. So Jessica told me as she led me into her room and produced a small bunch of keys from a black ribbon tucked into the front of her black blouse.
“I always keep the jewel locked up, my dear,” she explained. “It is of great value and unique historic interest.”
Whatever historic or financial value the jewel might have, I would, I decided then, have sold it and spent the proceeds, not on the unknown nephew Neil, but on doing up the bedroom. I was to see other rooms on this floor of this house in months to come, and all alike were supremely gloomy. They had been furnished, when the addition was made to the house, with all the Victorian respect for suites of furniture. This suite was of yellow satin-wood, but it was unpolished and grimy with age, and lest it should have produced any sense of cheerfulness, so alien to the spirit of the decorator, the carpet was of a dingy brown and red pattern, faded with wear, and the hangings of the be-canopied bed and window curtains were of a dismal olive-green chintz. Vast gloomy representations of scenes from the Scriptures glared out of black frames, and over all the available space swept a spate of photographs and little bookcases and china ornaments. Jessica, standing, black-robed and tired, sullen and lined, by the safe, fitted perfectly into the room, and so did the battered leather case which she extracted. But the story and the jewel itself belonged to another world.
Long, long ago, it appeared, when the Warrielaws inhabited a border fortress in the days of James II of Scotland, the black Laird of the house strayed out into his black woods by moonlight and met a fairy. He had carried the little, fair, glittering lady off to his castle and married her, with priest and bell and book. All the dowry she brought him was the jewel she wore, straight from the dim caverns of elf lands, but he was a devoted husband and she was a dutiful wife. She bore him ten sons and daughters and bequeathed to them all her fair hair and gold-green eyes—“for before those days, my dear, we were all black Borderers,” said Miss Warrielaw, with a fine contempt for Mendelian questioning of the laws of heredity.
She took the jewel out of the case as she spoke and held it up to the window. This was the only occasion on which I saw the famous talisman at close quarters, and the original treasure seemed to me frankly disappointing. It was nothing but a lump of dull amber, interesting no doubt to an antiquarian, suggestive to the family of their queer optical legacy, but in itself, like the house to-day, dull and dead. But history in the interval had given life and colour to the legacy. A gay Warrielaw had been in the embassy which fetched Queen Mary of Guise to Scotland from Italy. He had employed a Renaissance workman to set round the amber a design of emeralds and pearls and exquisitely worked enamel. Two hundred years later a Warrielaw, before he set out on the journey after the Prince of Highland hearts which led him to Tower Hill, had invested half his fortune in five marvellous diamonds which hung pendant to the Renaissance frame and added incredible value to its beauty. It was a strange, piecemeal, muddled thing, but it was marvellously interesting.
“It’s lovely!” I said reverently.
“Yes, it’s well enough, but I see no point in hoarding relics,” said Jessica detachedly. “It’s supposed to bring a curse on its owner too, and we can do without that. But its value is undoubted. I’ve had absurd offers for it from America. It’s the only fairy relic, you see, except that absurd flag in Skye, and the Yankees like that kind of thing. My niece Rhoda brought an American medium here, who held it, and chattered about little green men on a hillside and tiny swords clashing and little red wounds. Oh yes! it’s interesting, specially to people with no history. We have really quite enough behind us without bothering about relics, and it would remove a cause of family dissension if it went. There’s not one of them”, said Jessica, closing the safe firmly, “who wouldn’t steal it if they got the chance, except Neil. Now, John, what do you make of the safe? I can’t see anything very convincing about those few scratches.”
The little safe was let into the wall near the window. The ebony panel, and the huge dressing-table with its branching candlesticks, suggested a vision of some magnificent Victorian lady standing in her crinoline, selecting her jewellery, while the house blazed with light and warmth to welcome an assembling party below. Now the shadow of Jessica’s scraggy hand waved oddly on the walls by the light of her candle when she took the jewel from me, replaced it and slammed the door, as if assailed by a sudden suspicion of my honesty. John offered no very definite opinion about the scratches on the plate round the key, and was merely murmuring that at least the lock had not been forced, when Jessica raised her head in sudden annoyance at the sound of a voice downstairs.
“That girl again!” she said fiercely. “Why can’t she leave us alone?”
She hurried out of the room so unceremoniously that she was half-way down the stairs before John and I reached the top. In the darkening hall we saw a little excited group of women, and one of them came forward suddenly towards John.
“If you please, Sir,” said Effie, “I’ve been thinking that I’d be glad, now you’re here, if you’d take a look round the basement. I know well enough what some have in their minds, and if you’d been through my things and poor Annie’s there’d be nothing left for Miss Rhoda to say. I’d be glad if Miss Jessica and Miss Mary were to see for themselves in your presence that it’s no thieves they’ve been harbouring in their house.” She turned defiantly to her companions as she spoke and I saw that it was Rhoda who stood there, beside Miss Mary.
“Come, come, Effie,” said my husband with an involuntary glance of longing towards our car in the drive. “I’m not the police, you know. That’s hardly my job.”
“But you represent the Law, John,” said Miss Jessica briskly. “Of course you do. It’s a very good idea of Effie’s. It may teach Rhoda to hold her tongue and leave us alone!”
Across the silence of the hall there reached us suddenly the distant sounds of sobbing, the loud, unrestrained sobbing of a perplexed, ill-used child.
“She’s been at it again ever since she saw Miss Rhoda’s bicycle in the drive,” said Effie miserably. “Mr. John, I’d be unco’ grateful if you’d come.” Jessica led the way through the swing door, and without a word we all followed her and passed through a doorway opposite the library, down the stone stairs to the basement. I was last of the group and realised that my presence was unnecessary, if not unwelcome, but on no account would I have remained alone in the gloomy library.
At the bottom of the stairs the sisters turned to the left, and, followed by Effie and the unwilling John, went off to the maids’ bedrooms. The sound of Annie’s sobbing filled the damp, musty stone passage as Rhoda turned swiftly to the right and pushed open the big kitchen door. From within came the only glow of warmth and light in the house, and, hesitatingly, I followed Rhoda, unobserved, and sat down in the shadow. Rhoda had already walked firmly up to the table where the victim, or the cause, of all this disturbance sat sobbing, her head in her arms. At Rhoda’s voice she looked up and so, for the first time, I saw Annie.
Twenty-five years ago the study of psychology was still, comparatively, in its infancy. The line between the normal and sub-normal intellect was far less clearly defined, and probation officers, rescue homes and mental specialists themselves had no very definite theory of treatment for the class to which Annie evidently belonged. No doctor could have certified her as mentally defective, and yet, as she got up mechanically at Rhoda’s approach, and stood there, big and defenceless before her, she inspired me at once with that slight repulsion most of us feel towards the not wholly normal being. Her big, stupid, unhappy face, smeared with the traces of coal and greasy fingers, her small sullen eyes and big open mouth filled me with vague distaste rather than pity. She was of that type, big and clumsy, well-developed yet childish, uncomplaining yet helpless, which arouses even in the kindest and most patient of instructors a strange instinct to bully and browbeat. In the charge of firm, competent little Rhoda she would find no mercy, I imagined, and yet, in answer to some command of Rhoda’s which I had missed, her face grew sullen and her eyes cunning and she left off sobbing to mutter rebelliously:
“No, I’m no going down that passage, Miss.”
“Oh yes, you will,” replied Rhoda. Her voice was almost casual, her back turned to me, but I recognised in her a strength before which Annie would be powerless. The girl’s eyes fell, she turned uncertainly, her figure casting an ungainly shadow on the wall, and opened a door leading from the far side of the kitchen into yet another warren of stone corridors.
“Stop crying,” said Rhoda, with a cool self-assurance which suddenly reminded me of some showman of wild animals in a circus, and the sobbing ceased.
Left alone, I crept up to the range with its smouldering coals, in the hope of attaining some little warmth at last in that cold draughty house. The big room was lit now only by the fire, and its reflection in the array of polished copper dish-covers which had presumably sheltered vast joints and entries at the great parties of bygone years. All the contrivances for the cooking of a vast country house and rows of deal chairs surrounded the wall, but by the range stood only a small table covered by a pastry-board, two cracked tea-cups, a penny novelette and Effie’s knitting. I was thinking with almost passionate longing of the warm cosy kitchen in my old home, when I was startled by a sob so violent that it seemed like the howl of an animal in distress, and Rhoda’s voice from the further passage reached me.
“Stop that at once,” she said. “This is just what I expected.”
I looked down the passage curiously. From a low doorway Rhoda had just emerged with a candle, her short upper lip curled in fastidious disgust.
“Whom have you kept in there, Annie?” she demanded. “No, it’s no use for you to say you’ve been sleeping there! There’s a shaving-brush by that filthy basin and that’s a man’s cap on the door. Who’s been here? You’ve been sheltering someone and you’d better tell me the truth at once!”
Annie followed Rhoda out of the room, her hand to her mouth as if to repress her howls by force. Standing fascinated before the demure little figure, she broke into her story in the high, excited voice of a guilty child.
“It wasna what you think, Miss Rhoda. It wasna the tinkers. It was ever so long ago and it was my own sister’s husband’s cousin, Jock Hay, that I put in there last Hogmanay. He came all the way down here to be our First Foot at the New Year, and Aunt Effie was in her bed asleep and I couldna turn him out into the rain. I didna dare to tell Aunt Effie I’d put him awa’, she’s aye hard on poor Jock, so when he was awa’ I just locked the door, lest she’d see, and hid the key in a press, and I couldna’ find it again to sort it till I was at the press again on Wednesday forenoon and got hold of it!”
“But he was here again on Thursday evening? I may as well tell you, to keep you from any more falsehoods, Annie, that I saw a light down here on Thursday evening, and I knew well enough that no one ever goes near these old larders and boot-rooms. You were here then?”
“Oh aye, I was just here to sort the room when Aunt Effie was awa’ with the dogs,” whimpered Annie. “That’s what I’m telling you. How could Jock Hay be here when he’s a porter away over at Bathgate, and in the Edinburgh Infirmary just now with a grown-in toe-nail, and Miss Mary herself went to see him in his bed on Tuesday?”
There was a long pause. Rhoda was evidently reassembling and reassorting her facts while Annie moaned softly.
“Even if all this is true, that Jock was only here at the New Year, and you’ve not been near the room since, you’ve behaved very badly, Annie. If my aunts knew they’d turn you away at once and they couldn’t give you any reference to a new place. People don’t want servants who take men into the house for the night. You know that well enough. No, don’t begin to howl again. I’m trying to think what is best for everyone. I do want to help you if I can. I don’t think I shall tell the Aunts about this. They would be so sorry for Effie’s sake, and there’s nowhere to send you just now, I understand. If I keep this from them and from Effie, will you try to settle down and be a good girl?”
“Oh I will, Miss, I will!” Annie gasped and choked at the kindliness in Rhoda’s quiet little voice.
“I think you know, too, that you should own up that it was you who left Aunt Jessica’s room in that dreadful state. Now don’t begin denying it! I expect you hardly knew what you were doing. You began in a temper and then ran off downstairs when you realised suddenly that Effie had gone out, and that you could get to this room and tidy it without being seen—”
“But—but—but—” Annie gasped out the words helplessly and no others seemed at her command. “But—but—” she repeated, tears falling helplessly, her grimy apron held to her swollen nose.
“There’s no need to say any more, Annie. Go in there quickly and tidy the room and I’ll do all I can for you with my aunts.” Rhoda must have heard voices from the other passage, for she pushed the great clumsy girl into the room, and slipped back into the kitchen, as the search-party entered at the door at the other end.
“Not a thing!” said Jessica triumphantly. “Of course we haven’t found a thing! I don’t know how anyone had the heart to accuse that poor simple girl of theft.”
“I’ve been talking to Annie,” said Rhoda slowly. She looked at me a little curiously as if she felt uncertain as to how much I had seen or heard. “She’s practically admitted that she did untidy your room in a temper, Aunt Jessica, and she’s promised to be good. I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble with her. These brain-storms don’t occur very frequently as a rule, I believe.”
“John, we must go at once,” I said, with a determination that was almost a match for Rhoda’s.
“Yes indeed,” said John. “Well, well, Miss Warrielaw, I can say no more if you are determined to leave things as they are. Effie will keep an eye on Annie till you can part with her, and the less said about it all the better, I imagine.”
“Yes indeed,” said Effie unexpectedly. “The poor girl’s been bullied from pillar to post enough these twa three days!”
Miss Jessica said nothing, but turned and led the way up the stairs. My husband followed her, Mary turned to speak to Effie, and I found Rhoda’s arm laid on mine as I reached the bottom step in the darkness.
“I hope she’s convinced—Aunt Jessica, I mean. I think so, don’t you?”
“I haven’t an idea,” I said coldly. That silly heartfelt protest—“But—but—but—” was still echoing in my ears.
