Part 3

The surprise of the occasion and the touching nature of the whole scene, made me for the instant forget the diamonds and what my very presence in that spot implied. But, when the final words had been said, and the few congratulations offered, the young people faced about and I caught a glimpse of the bride’s countenance, I remembered with a shock the gloomy nature of the shadow which surrounded them; and while I could not help but give my sympathy to a condition of things at once so novel and so interesting, I also felt my determination as a detective return. For Philippa’s face wore not the look of a happy bride, but that of a woman who has just dared everything that some cherished scheme might be fulfilled or some dreadful ill averted. Indeed, there was terror in the eye with which she regarded her husband; a terror so mixed with love and the light of something like hope as she met his glance of triumphant satisfaction, that I felt I must probe the matter of the diamonds to the bottom if only to solve the mystery of her action, and the motives by which she had been governed in this gift of herself at a moment so manifestly unpropitious to happiness and honor.

Meanwhile, Mr. Randall was saying some words of courtesy and farewell, and, seeing that in another moment his steps might be turned in my direction, I pushed to the doors at which I was standing, with even a greater caution than that with which I had separated them, and falling back to my old station on the sofa, I awaited with equal interest and impatience his entrance and the sound of the young couple’s departure.

Mr. Randall appeared and the front door closed at the same time. Resigning Mr. Sutton and his bride to the care of the man without, I turned my attention to the clergyman. I knew enough of his character and life to be certain he had not married them without knowing something of their history and condition, and that knowledge I meant to have.

Some of my readers may not need to be told that I, Horace Byrd, was not always on the detective force; that I had had my bringing up in different circles, and that I was by birth and education what is called a gentleman. I speak of this here to account for the affability with which Mr. Randall greeted me, and his readiness to satisfy what, under ordinary circumstances, might have been considered a most impertinent and inexcusable curiosity. He was my father’s friend, and he listened with respect while I made my excuses, and opened at once upon the subject that occupied my thoughts.

“Mr. Randall,” said I, “the errand with which I approach you is of a most singular nature. The couple you have just married——pardon me, my ears are good and my presence here is in connection with that same couple——lie under a suspicion of wrong-doing that may or may not lead to consequences of the most serious nature. What that wrong-doing is I had rather not state, since it is as yet merely a suspicion from which they may be able to clear themselves. But what I will say is, that you will be furthering their welfare and assisting at the unravelment of a most mysterious occurrence if you will tell me what you know about them, and the causes which led to this evidently hasty and clandestine marriage.”

“I am greatly astonished,” were his first words; “and feel strongly inclined to ask you what these poor young folks could have done beyond loving each other and marrying in despite of the pride and ambitious projects of Mr. and Mrs. Winchester. But curiosity pure and simple is unworthy of a clergyman, so I will merely say if they are doing or have done anything that could be called really wrong I was in complete ignorance of it, and that their marriage is but the culmination of an intention long known to me if not to the world and that society to which the groom if not the bride belongs.”

“Now,” returned I, “you astonish me. They were engaged, then, and you knew it; something which I can scarcely believe his own mother did.”

“Very likely,” was the quiet retort. “Mrs. Winchester is not one whom a proud man would take into his confidence if he meant to make what is called a poor and unequal match.”

“Still,” I began——

“Still,” he interrupted, “a son should show a certain consideration and respect to the mother who bore him and who always has displayed, as he himself declares, forbearance to his faults and sympathy for the weakness that caused them. I know all this,” Mr. Randall continued, “and I agree with you in your opinion; but there were certain peculiarities in this special case which offer at least some excuse for his action and my sympathy with it. Lawrence Sutton was not always a respectable member of society. He was a wild boy, an extravagant youth, and a more than dissipated man. His mother loved him but could not control him, powerful and determined spirit though she is. Nor had his step-father’s position and enormous wealth any influence in controlling passions that partook almost of the recklessness of the foreign fast society amongst which he was more or less unfortunately cast. He seemed to be without aspiration, and yet he was not shallow, nor ungenerous, nor mean. His mother, whose thoughts few can penetrate, looked on and was silent; his step-father, who had not nature to help him to a consideration for his faults, showed his anger and threatened to show him his door but never did. He lived an outcast from the best and showed no prospect of amendment till suddenly——it was a year ago——the greatest and most startling change took place in his habits and general style of living; and from being a careless man about town, he became the courteous, careful gentleman, alive to the place of honor he had lost in society and active in his endeavor to regain it. His mother, always hopeful for her boy, naturally attributed to her own quiet influence and unbroken faith this wonderful restoration to manhood and honor: but I knew better; I to whom human nature has been an open book for twenty-five years, knew that something fresher and more ideal than any influence Mrs. Winchester was capable of exerting had led this young man to reject a course which had become almost a second nature to him.

“Frequent and prolonged visits at Mr. Winchester’s house did not serve to explain the mystery to me. I found Mr. Sutton sitting with the family,——something which I had not seen him do for years,——but how was I to connect this fact with the presence now and then of the quiet young woman, without any special attraction, whom Mrs. Winchester once rather carelessly introduced to me as Miss Irwin; and yet this girl with the subdued look and meek, almost humble aspect, was the force which had acted on this man’s nature and turned its impulses, as it were, completely about. To him she was the manifestation of all that was ideal and desirable in womanhood; and from the first moment he saw her, as he afterwards told me, he made up his mind to win her for his wife if it cost him all and every indulgence of his hitherto much to be reprobated life. That he cherished this hope in his heart and did not make a confidant of either of his parents is not to be wondered at. Mrs. Winchester looks upon Philippa as a dependent; a being too insignificant to be regarded, much less admired or feared. Nothing, not even the change in her son’s moral life, would ever have convinced her that this girl possessed influence; or if by any means that belief was forced upon her, that it arose from any merit or powers she was bound to acknowledge or respect. A handsome, elegant, worldly-wise woman herself, she sees no excellence that is not linked to those qualities, and would rather, I verily believe, have seen her son thrown back into his old course than owe his redemption to a source so insignificant in appearance and out of all accord with her own views of what was in keeping with her son’s prospects and her own social position.

“At least, this is the judgment I have formed of her, and this the explanation which young Sutton gave me of his conduct, in an interview he held with me some six months ago. ‘She’——that is, his mother——‘shall know nothing of what Philippa is to me till she sees her at my side as my wife,’ was his remark to me at that time. ‘And that I look to you to make her,’ he continued, ‘when by perseverance and a proper probation I have induced this pure and uncontaminated being to trust me with her fate and make me what I now believe I am capable of becoming, a man of purpose, ambition, and social standing.’

“Such hopes, such resolution, and such spirit in a man of his type and with his record could not but enlist my sympathy. A soul which I had long thought lost had found its motive to better things, and though this motive was not the highest, it was high enough to give hope for the continuance of the good work to the end of all I could fondly wish for him. I therefore entered into his plans with cordial interest, and though I deprecated his taking any serious step without at least acquainting his mother with his intentions, I promised and have kept my word, that when he came to me with Philippa I would marry them, trusting to his own sense of propriety and her discretion, that the event would be for the honor and happiness of the family as well as for their own mutual joy and satisfaction. But what you tell me now disturbs me where I never thought to be disturbed. They are under suspicion of some evil——what, I cannot imagine——and you know it; which means that it is flagrant, and possibly makes them amenable to the law.”

I did not answer this, for I was full of thoughts. Could it be that this pure and touching story of seemingly true love was destined to be besmirched by the shadow of crime? Had Lawrence Sutton taken the diamonds, and did Philippa Irwin know it; or was Mrs. Winchester’s story correct, and the deed one of the common order of burglary?

“What adds to my concern,” the good clergyman went on, after waiting a suitable time for me to speak, “is that some folks think——some members of his own family in fact——that the change in his nature, to which I allude, is not so thorough as I have made you understand. They insist that he still carries on his old practices, but more secretly. And they have a reason for this; for whereas, at one time, that is, in the beginning of his acquaintance with Philippa, he used to remain at home during the evening, he has for some months now confined his attentions in that quarter to Sunday night merely, going out as regularly after dinner as he used to do in his wildest days of dissipation. Only he does not come home intoxicated any more, and his eyes, which once looked bleared and heavy, are now clear and wide-awake. I——I wish we knew where he is accustomed to spend his nights.”

“Well, we will find out,” I assured him, getting up and moving towards the door; “and though I fear the result may not be all we could wish, I will remember your anxiety and relieve as much of it as is possible to-morrow. I must say good-night, now, for this matter is not one that will keep.” And merely pausing to thank him for his goodness, I left Mr. Randall and proceeded directly back to the house of Mr. Winchester.

My reflections on the way there were not of a wholly satisfactory nature. If Mr. Sutton and his bride were in possession of the diamonds, there was no telling what they would do or where they would go; separate, possibly, and thus put Hawkins at his wits’ end as to which of the two to follow. If they were not in possession of the diamonds, I fully believed I should find them at the house before me. But that was a contingency only satisfactory to my sympathy; for, if the gems were not with them, where were they? Not in Mr. Winchester’s house by this time; of that I could be perfectly sure.

So it was with anything but a light heart that I rang the bell this time, and greeting Mr. Winchester’s countenance as before, entered again into this dwelling of mystery.

“We have come back,” were his hurried words, uttered with feverish intensity. “And you? Have you got the diamonds?”

I shook my head and hastened after him into the reception-room.

“But you followed him? You know where he is? And Philippa? What took her out, too?”

“Wait,” I said, “have they come back?”

“Who? Lawrence and Philippa?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“I fear they will not come, then,” said I.

“They? Why do you associate Lawrence’s name with Philippa’s?”

I was spared the answer. At that instant I heard the well-known call of my colleague without, and simultaneously with this encouraging sound, the click of the night-key in the door proclaiming the return of Mr. Sutton.

“No,” cried I, “here they are; and as I am sure they will have something to say to you which it would embarrass them to utter before a stranger, I will just step out of sight for the moment.” And making a dash for the portière behind me, I pulled it aside and stepped into the darkness beyond.

Mr. Winchester made no effort to stop me; he was too much astonished at the sight of his step-son entering with Philippa on his arm. And I, who, without calculation, had stumbled into the first refuge I espied, was equally surprised, not at what I saw, but at the quarters in which I found myself; for the portière, instead of shutting off a room, shielded a closet, and it was amongst a litter of bric-à-brac and old pictures that I now drew myself up, prepared to listen and to see, since this was all that was left to my indiscretion.

“Father,”——it was Mr. Sutton who spoke,——“will you call mother down? There is something I wish to say to her before I take another step in this house.”

“But——but no matter about your mother,” came in Mr. Winchester’s hasty and now deeply agitated tones. “If you have the diamonds, give them to me; give them to me quickly, and nothing more shall ever be said about them. I am not hard on young folks, and——”

“The diamonds? I know nothing about the diamonds,” the other broke in, with an impatience that was more startling than anger would have been. “What I wish to say is on a wholly different subject.” And I judge that he turned with a look towards Philippa, for the old man’s voice became quite shrill as he cried:

“What do you want to say? That you and Philippa are friends? That she did not see you come out of your mother’s room two minutes before the diamonds were missed? That you are a saint and every one knows it, and she——”

“Stop!”

Was that the voice of a man stained by the meanest of crimes? I pushed aside the portière and looked out. He was standing like a statue of wrath between Mr. Winchester and the glowing, brilliant, almost transformed Philippa.

“When you speak of her,” cried he, letting his hand fall on her arm, with the pride of triumphant possession, “you are speaking of my wife.”

Mr. Winchester fell slowly back. It was the only surprise, perhaps, that could have taken his mind off the diamonds.

“Your wife,” he repeated, and his eyes slowly traveled to Philippa’s face, as if he found it difficult to take in a statement so unexpected.

Mr. Sutton took advantage of the moment to step to the foot of the stairs.

“Mother!” he called, “will you come here?”

She was already in the hall as he, doubtless, perceived, for he hastened back and took Philippa by the hand, and was standing thus when the stately woman crossed the threshold in all the splendor of the rich garments I have hitherto endeavored to describe.

“My son!” was her first startled exclamation, quickly followed by an indescribable murmur, as she saw whom he held by the hand, and noted the fervor of that clasp, and the expression with which he regarded her. “What does this mean?” she asked at length, her hauteur battling with an anger that was yet new, but terrible in its promise of growth.

“Happiness, I hope,” was the steady reply. “If not, it at least means a better life on my part and a less humble and dependent one on hers. We are married, mother, and it is my wish——”

He did not finish; at that word _married_, the haughty woman, struck in the full pride of her hopes and ambitious projects, tottered, and before help could reach her, fell, laying her gray but queenly head at the feet of her whom an hour back she would have scorned to associate with herself in any higher connection than she did the inanimate objects that surrounded her and ministered to her comfort.

There was a rush, a hurried murmur, a pause, then a sudden cry so fraught with wonder and yet so surcharged with triumph, that I could scarcely believe it proceeded from Mr. Winchester’s lips, till a sudden swaying in the bended form of Philippa revealed to me Mrs. Winchester lying with the neck of her dress thrown back, and on the throat thus displayed, a glistening cordon of gems which by their brilliancy and size could only be the famous and costly ones for which we had been seeking.

It was the culmination of the evening’s surprises.

“The diamonds, the diamonds!” exclaimed Mr. Winchester, and regardless of the still insensible condition of his wife, he stooped and dragged them from her neck, and stood holding them out and looking at them, as if he could hardly credit his good fortune.

As for Mr. Sutton and Philippa, they gave one startled glance at the jewels, another at each other, and then set about restoring their mother.

I was the most thoroughly overcome of them all.

It took some few minutes to bring Mrs. Winchester back to consciousness. Meanwhile, I employed myself in looking at her husband. He had by this time thrust the gems into his pocket, and was gazing at her with a half-sinister, half-pitying glance. But at the first movement on her part he was all attention to her, while, on the contrary, Mr. Sutton and Philippa drew back as if they dreaded to meet her unclosing eye. They might well feel so; it was terrible, and so was her gesture, as, rising from the sofa on which she had been laid, she looked about on them all. But suddenly, and before she could speak, she felt the wind on her throat, and, lifting her hand to it, a great change passed over her.

“Who——who has presumed——” she began; but here she caught her husband’s eye, and losing her self-possession, felt around for a chair and fell into it.

“If you are looking for your jewels,” that husband remarked, “I have them. It was a curious freak to wear them under instead of over your dress, and then to forget where you had put them and imagine them stolen.”

She lifted one thin, white hand as if in protest, but her regal spirit seemed broken, and her eyes filled with something like tears.

“Lawrence!” she exclaimed brokenly, “what have I not done for you! and this is how you repay me.”

“Mother,” said the young man, with a closer grip of Philippa’s hand, “could you ask for any better repayment than the regenerate life I offer you? A year ago I was the shame and disgrace of this family; a man for whom the world had scorn and you only a pitying forbearance. To-day I can walk the streets and drop my eyes before no man’s glance; I am a man again, and this——this dear woman is the cause. Is it not enough to make you overlook the trifling disadvantages which annoy your pride but cannot affect your heart?”

But Mrs. Winchester’s nature was not one to be touched by any such appeal as this. Indeed, it seemed to restore some of her former hauteur.

“Your mother’s love was then insufficient to recall you to a sense of what you owed yourself and her? My sacrifices, my sympathy, my endeavors to uphold you in face of the disapprobation of the whole world were as nothing to you. You had to wait till a puny girl smiled upon you, a waiting-woman, a——”

“Mother,” broke in the son, this time with severity in his tone, “Philippa is a lady; she is, moreover, my wife, and so of equal social station with yourself. Let us not be bitter but thankful. For me, an angel has stepped into my life.”

It was not wise, but when was love ever wise? Mrs. Winchester’s face hardened, and a reckless smile broke out on her lips.

“An angel that has brought ruin to me,” said she. “What confidence do you suppose there can henceforth be between my husband and myself since he has found I can deceive him, and deceive him for you?”

“For me?”

“Yes; you can play with my heart, trifle with my pride, marry my waiting-maid before my eyes, never asking whence came the freedom which enables you to do all these things, or what price your mother is paying for the sins her forbearance was not sufficient to make you regret and forsake.”

“Mother, what do you mean? I do not understand you at all. What price have you been paying for sins of mine?”

She smiled ironically.

“It is time you showed some curiosity on the subject.” Then, with a side glance at her husband, full of bitterness and despair, she went on: “Did you ever ask yourself where the money came from with which I paid your debts two years ago, in Paris?”

“No——that is, I supposed, of course, it came out of your own pocket. Mr. Winchester is a rich man——”

“And I, his wife, must therefore be a rich woman. Well, I may be; but even rich women do not always have a hundred thousand francs at their disposal; and that sum I gave you, and you took from me. Where do you think I obtained it? Not from him, as his face only too plainly testifies.”

“Where, then, mother——where, then? Tell me, for I——”

But Mr. Winchester had taken a step forward, and his face was very white.

“Let her answer my questions,” said he. “You gave your son, that scapegrace, a hundred thousand francs, two years ago, in Paris?”

She bowed her head, trembling with something more than wrath.

“It was a great sum,” he continued, “a great sum! I do not wonder you hesitated to ask me for it. He would never have got it, never. I wonder that you found any friend willing to throw so much money to the dogs.”

“It was not a friend,” she murmured. “O William!” she went on, with almost a pleading sound in her voice, “we have never had any children, and you do not know what it is to love a son. To see him in peril, disgrace, or necessity, and not seek to relieve him, is impossible. You must make allowances for a mother’s heart.”

“But this money——these thousands——where did they come from, where?”

She flushed, and her head drooped, but her natural haughtiness soon lifted it again. Rising, she asked, in her turn——

“Mr. Winchester, why did you send for me to-night, as I was dressing for the reception, and, after inquiring if I were going to wear my diamonds, say it was your pleasure that I should do so, and then add, that you wished to borrow them of me to-morrow as you desired to show them to a dealer?”

“Why? because——” It was his turn to flush now——“because I do wish to show them to a dealer.”

“And what has a dealer to do with my diamonds?”

“Nothing——a freak of mine. I took a notion to find out just what they were worth.”

“And don’t you know?” Her voice was very low, her eyes burned on his face.

“Only approximately, madam, approximately.”

The glance she had fixed on him, fell. She took a step nearer, but did not speak at once.

“What is it?” he cried. “Why do you hesitate to answer my questions?”

“William,” said she, “were it not more to the point to ask why I, who have always been considered an honorable woman, should resort to the subterfuge of stealing my own jewels in order to escape the delivery of them up into other hands?”

“Perhaps,” he muttered; “but we will not go into that. No woman enjoys parting with such gems as these even for a few days.”

She laughed. “But a woman does not resort to crime, run the risk of police investigation and submit to such indignities as are inflicted upon her by the so-called detective agent, for the mere sake of retaining in her possession jewels of any price. She must have another motive——a motive of terror lest an evil greater than these should come upon her——the loss of her husband’s love or trust, the——the——”

“Madam, what have you been doing? What secret underlies all these words?”