In two years' time, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Ada Cambridge

CHAPTER VI.

TOM SMITH’S FAMILY DIAMONDS.

I have often felt very sorry, and very much ashamed of myself, when I have thought of the way I treated my father and mother—particularly mother—at this time. I seldom spoke to either of them; and when I did, without being exactly impertinent, I contrived to frame my remarks in as unpleasant a form as possible, so that they might get no satisfaction out of them. I showed them no tender observances, beyond the regulation kiss morning and night, into which I infused as much indifference and formality as I decently could. I sat at table during meals with my head poised proudly in the air, and studiously refrained from smiling when father made his little jokes, and from gratifying mother by the slightest appearance of interest when she chattered of her English preparations and plans. I was too proud to be pettish, and tell her that I wished, as Caddy Jellaby did about America, that England was dead, which would have expressed my sentiments clearly in a simple form; but by a disparaging silence, or an implied disbelief in the infallible accuracy of her memory, or an ostentatious display of colonial prejudices, I did what in me lay, with considerable ingenuity, to take the flavour out of all her pleasant anticipations. They knew what it meant as well as I did, and they bore it with a patient gentleness that I do not now like to think of. Only when my ill-temper betrayed me into ill-manners, mother brought me to my senses with her customary directness; but they took all my covert slights with such a delicate forbearance that they would not even let me see that they noticed them. What hurt them most, I am sure, was my refusal to be talked to and reasoned with respecting the condition of my love affairs. Mother made several efforts to open the subject, and I always stubbornly declined to respond to them. I made her see that I expected no true sympathy from parents who could treat their only child in such a cruel fashion; and that since it would be impossible to understand one another’s feelings, the fewer confidences we indulged in the better. When she gave me work to do, I did not sew with her in our little morning-room as usual, but carried my basket and materials into my bedroom, and locked myself in to do it there. When either of them asked me to play to them after dinner, I went at once to the piano, and plodded through all my pieces as they came till they told me to stop, as if they were so many five-finger exercises. I was dearly fond of music, and I played well, with a poetic appreciation of the subtleties of sweet sounds; but now I carefully eliminated every trace of feeling or sympathy from the tender passages that my répertoire was full of, and laid no more emphasis or expression upon them than if I were a machine. I petted and fondled Spring with absurd extravagance, until the poor dog’s head was quite turned—letting him paw me over as he liked, and lick my face, and grovel on the skirts of my best dresses—by way of giving my parents to understand that, if no one else cared about me, here, at least, I had one true friend.

Poor father and mother! If they had done their duty in the matter, as I feel sure was the case, they had to be satisfied with virtue for its own reward. It was all the reward they got. For, besides this difference amongst ourselves, there sprang up a coolness with Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Of course these old people considered (and a perfect right they had to do so) that there was no one in the world to compare with their son; and, of course, they felt it a great indignity that my parents had not shown themselves overwhelmed with delight at getting the chance of such a husband for a little chit like me. They were both too well-bred to express this sentiment, either by speech or manner; but they entertained it cordially all the same.

The first outward change occurred on Sunday, when we all met at church again, after that long, empty, wretched week. The Smiths arrived there first on this occasion; the old people were in their places, and Tom, of course, was in the choir. When I saw him there, on entering the porch at mother’s heels (and our eyes met at once in an intense and solemn look of welcome), I took a sudden resolution to follow my parents up the aisle, and seat myself demurely in the family pew beside them. I was quite sure they did not wish me to leave the choir because Tom was there; on the contrary, it would be very repugnant to mother’s delicacy to make such a public demonstration. But it was highly gratifying to me to show them that I supposed, as a matter of course, that I was to keep as far away from him as space permitted. It made them look like tyrants, and me like an interesting martyr, to the whole Smith family, if to no one else; and of course the villagers found a topic for gossip and speculation in such a mysterious departure from our established habits. When we went out to the buggies, father shook hands with Tom cordially, and with his old friends, and then, with visible embarrassment, but ostentatious warmth, he offered the stereotyped invitation to Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

The old lady, with her little figure, and her delicate face that was like a carving in ivory, received it with the gentle dignity of a dowager empress. “Not to-day, I thank you, Mr. Chamberlayne,” she replied. “We have allowed so many of the servants to have a Sunday out to-day that we are wanted at home to keep house.”

Of course it was a polite excuse, and father knew it. Mother would have accepted it, and said no more, but he could not help blundering on, even to the extent of mentioning Tom by name as included in the invitation. Of course he got nothing by it except a distressed feeling that things were somehow all wrong. “I want to have a talk with you,” he urged, in quite a pleading tone; “I have been looking forward to to-day to talk matters all over.”

“Another time, Mr. Chamberlayne, another time,” she replied, with a touch of asperity in her polite, high-pitched tones. She made it evident to him, at last, that she did not intend to accept his hospitality, as heretofore; and he left off pressing her.

Tom, during this time, had been quietly harnessing his horses; and now he handed his mother into her seat, saw his father tucked up beside her, mounted the box, and gathered his reins together. “Good morning, Mrs. Chamberlayne; good-bye, Kitty,” he called in a quiet, clear voice as he raised his hat to us. “Mr. Chamberlayne, I will leave the gates open for you.” And away they drove, and were soon out of sight.

Poor father fumbled at his harness, flurried and silent, cut to the heart, I knew, by this sad change in the familiar custom of years. I don’t know anything that could have hurt him so much as the refusal of his old friends to eat his dinner. Mother, too, looked sad and dispirited; and, altogether, we were by no means a cheerful party. “Oh how different it was last Sunday!” I said to myself over and over again.

When we reached our own house how the sight of the well-spread table smote us. There were the six places set, as they had been set nearly every Sunday for I don’t know how long (for the Smiths, like us, were most punctual church-goers), and the fat turkey, and the monstrous round of beef, the portly ham, the piled-up bowl of salad—all the plentiful dishes of the regular “cold collection,” as Tom called it, which was prepared for Sunday, mocked us with their now absurd abundance. When mother rang the bell, and ordered the potatoes to be brought in, Bridget stood still and looked at her, with mouth and eyes open, wondering what had happened.

We did not sit over our dinners on this occasion; nor did we on the Sunday following, when we again dined alone, with no leaf put into the table. But, after that, the little differences between the two families were swallowed up in the sorrow that came upon them both in their now fast-approaching separation. Our house was by this time getting disorganized and upset. Travelling-boxes and packing-cases, and messes of all sorts, were strewn about the dainty rooms, which were stripped of ornaments and curtains, and sometimes of carpets also—one or two of these latter, which had been made to order for us in England, and some Persian rugs, being too precious and pretty to part with. Mother’s best glass and china were heaped on a table, to be no more used at Narraporwidgee; her linen closet was emptied and its contents spread in neat piles on her bedroom floor, all her hoards of household treasures were like drapers’ goods at stock-taking time; she could not bear to have her “sets” meddled with, and we had not things to use that we wanted. We were just beginning to feel very desolate and uncomfortable, when one morning after breakfast old Mrs. Smith drove up to the door and begged us, with tears in her eyes, to come and make our home at Booloomooroo until the sale was over and it was time to start for Melbourne. Mother, who went to the door herself, put her arms round her old friend, kissed her warmly, and accepted the invitation; and the day after we found ourselves transferred from our mess and muddle to cool, sweet, orderly rooms again; and any breach there might have been between the two families was healed up.

It was very strange and pleasant to find myself under the same roof with my proscribed lover, meeting him familiarly at all hours of the day. Many precious, if brief, moments of happy privacy fell to us in the accidental course of things; but we were honourable, and we did not seek them. We took no walks, we contrived no stolen interviews; we played whist and billiards with our parents during those lovely evenings when we should have chosen to be out of doors, with the utmost propriety—though, I believe, if we had done otherwise in those last days, father and mother would have carefully shut their eyes and have taken no notice. Every day some of us went over to Narraporwidgee with a luncheon basket, and stayed there until dinner-time. Sometimes Tom went too, and helped mother to lift and carry, and to do the rough part of her packing, or helped father with his outdoor arrangements. On these occasions I seldom accompanied them, though mostly left to please myself, but stayed with Mrs. Smith.

Between Mrs. Smith and me there existed at this time a close attachment. I took no care to avoid hurting my dear mother by an ostentatious display of affectionate attentiveness to her; but, at the same time, there was a decided clandestine element in our intercourse. When we were alone we had long talks about Tom, and exchanged confidences that neither of us shared with anybody else. I made Mrs. Smith understand and believe that I should never love another man, if I lived to be a hundred, and that I should consider myself as good as married to him all the two years that we were to be separated; and, in return, Mrs. Smith assured me that his heart had been bound up in me ever since we were boy and girl together, and that she had long looked forward to having me for her daughter some day. She was a chatty old body, very imperious, very highly accomplished, and well versed in the ways of the polite world, in spite of the length of time that she had been absent from it; and she interested me in the profoundest manner with the few glimpses she gave me of the life she had so long done with, which I was just beginning.

We used to sit in her bedroom mostly, which was as peculiar as she was herself. Two or three of the original chambers had been thrown together to make it, and it was in the shape of a letter L. Her sleeping and dressing apparatus was in one limb of the apartment, and the other was filled with couches, tables, cabinets, very old armchairs, and all the appliances of an ancient boudoir. Such queer old chintz the curtains and sofa covers were made of; such spidery legs supported such curious articles of furniture, the like of which I never saw before or since. I often used to think how beautifully they must have been packed to have stood the voyage from England so many years ago, especially considering what ramshackle old ships they had in those times. Over the chimney-piece there were some comical little silhouettes and miniatures in ebony and brass frames; and one day I got up from my chair to study them carefully, while she counted the stitches of a long piece of knitting, with her gold-rimmed spectacles on her thin aquiline nose.

“I suppose these are Tom’s ancestors,” I said presently; “but I can’t find the faintest resemblance in any of them to him.”

“Oh yes, my dear,” she replied quickly; “you have not looked well. That lady with the powdered hair was as like what he is now as a delicate woman could be like a large strong man; and in that old soldier, with all the orders on his breast, you will also see his very image.”

I certainly did not see anything of the sort. Two more absurd frumps never were limned by any painter, and to compare Tom with them was simply preposterous. However, I supposed the originals were better-looking than the portraits, and that her memory was truer than her eyes.

“Are any of these you?” I asked, after a fruitless search for the rudiments of her striking face.

She pointed with her knitting-pin to a fat-cheeked child, with a great shock of hair and no clothes to speak of, than which anything less resembling the stately delicacy and dignity of that aristocratic old lady could not possibly be conceived.

“But I have another,” said she, laying down her work and taking off her spectacles. “I have long been intending to show it to you, my dear, and also some other things that I hope will be yours some day.”

With which she went to an ancient Indian cabinet, unlocked it, and, pointing to a modern Chubb safe, wedged into a place that had evidently been cleared for it out of a labyrinth of tiny shelves, drawers, and cupboards, asked me to be good enough to carry it to a table for her. I did so, in great curiosity, and she drew up her chair before it.

“Lock the door, Kitty, and then come and sit by me,” she said with an air of solemn preparation that quite awed me. This done (though we were quite alone in that part of the house), we sat down to our investigations.

First she took out a tray of many compartments, which was covered with a thick layer of cotton wool; then another similar tray, then a third; and this she began to uncover at one corner.

“Here is the miniature,” she said, drawing it out. “Now, Kitty, if you do marry Tom, and these become yours, I should be much obliged to you if you would keep this just as it is, and instruct your eldest son to do so also. The others you can reset as you please. You don’t mind promising me that?”

“Oh, of course not, Mrs. Smith,—whatever you wish,” I stammered earnestly, with the reddest red face I ever had in my life, as I took the jewel from her. It was a jewel, indeed. The miniature, which was done on ivory, with the finish of a mediæval missal painting, was of a lovely, smiling, fair-haired girl—one of the sweetest little pictures I ever looked upon; but I hardly could look at it, for the ring of great diamonds in which it was framed, which positively made my eyes ache.

“Oh-oh!” I cried out in ecstasy. “Was there ever such a locket!”

“Plenty, my dear,” the old lady replied carelessly, “only you have not been in the way to see them. But these stones are much finer than most, certainly. I don’t suppose you will see much better ones when you go into society.”

I looked and looked, and sighed, and looked again, perfectly fascinated by this blazing splendour, and all the curious workmanship about it, until she took it from my hand and laid it back in its nest.

“Here are the others,” she said, drawing off the sheet of wool and pushing the tray before me.

I did not want any bribing to keep faith with Tom, but many a woman, I fancy, would have had an imperative inducement to do so, whether she cared for him or not, in the prospect of becoming possessed of such diamonds as those. Earrings, pins, stars, buckles, necklace, tiara, bracelets, and brooches. All quaintly fashioned in their old silver settings, but thickly studded with great, pure drops of liquid light, rimmed all about with sparks of fire. I was speechless, almost stunned, with admiration and astonishment.

“They are a fine set,” said Mrs. Smith, composedly, as she fingered them with her slender ivory hands; “but they will want resetting before you can wear them. Don’t let them use gold, my dear; that is what they do nowadays, but it is often only a device to hide a want of pure colour in the stones. I would keep them in silver if I were you.”

“Oh, Mrs. Smith, it seems such a preposterous thing for me to think of ever wearing those!”

“They will be in their most suitable place when worn by my son’s wife,” she replied, with dignity. “They did not come from Mr. Smith’s side, you understand, Kitty; I inherited them, by special bequest. And I should have been grieved,” she added, with a sigh, “to have left them to just anybody—a woman I had never seen—who, perhaps, would be unworthy to wear them. Though,” correcting herself, “I can trust my son not to marry an unworthy woman.”

I threw my arms round the old lady’s neck, and kissed her eagerly. “If ever I have them I will value them, and take care of them as never diamonds were taken care of before,” I cried, almost in tears; “but oh, dear Mrs. Smith, you think I am good enough for Tom, and that is more to me than all the diamonds, lovely as they are.”

“My dearest child, if I live for two years longer, to see you and him made happy, I shall not have much more to live for,” she responded, tenderly. “Be assured I think you good enough for Tom, and the only girl good enough that I have ever met with. There, there, don’t cry! Let us look at the other jewels now. They are not much, compared with the diamonds, of course; but there are some very fine stones amongst them—particularly emeralds.”

So we investigated the remaining trays and compartments, and inspected all the lesser jewels, which, without the diamonds, would have been a splendid possession in the eyes of a reasonable woman—emeralds, opals, rubies, sapphires, strings of pearls, antique watches, lovely cameos and mosaic work, and all sorts of things. Out of these she presently selected a curious and beautiful Maltese cross, and laid it on the table before me. It was of silver, though not much silver was to be seen; there was a large emerald in each of its points, and all the rest was filled in with little diamonds as thickly as they would lie together. She hunted amongst a heap of chains until she found one that would suit it—a chain made of little beads of silver, with a spark of diamond between each bead; and on this she slipped the ring of the Maltese cross, and fastened them round my neck.

“It is not a marriage gift, as the others will be, Kitty,” she said; “this is a little token of friendship from an old woman who has loved you and yours better than she ever expected to love anybody again;” and here her voice changed, and she sighed heavily.

“How lovely! How exquisite! How beautiful!” I murmured, quite overcome with grateful emotion. “Oh, Mrs. Smith, how I shall value it! How very good you are to me!”

“Tchut!—nonsense!” she replied, brusquely. “It is nothing to make a fuss about. Not but what,” she added, “it is a fine jewel in its way. It was given to me by a princess, and those eight emeralds are such as you won’t see often. Put it on to-night, and let Tom see it; it will please him, dear boy. And, Kitty, whenever you wear it let it remind you, my love, of your promise to him, and all you and I have talked about.”

“It shall—it shall!” I replied, earnestly, “though I shall not need any reminding, dear Mrs. Smith.”

The buggy returned late that evening from Narraporwidgee, and I did not meet my parents and Tom until the gong summoned us all to the dining-room. Here I presented myself in my best black silk dress that Tom liked so much, the bosom of which, fitting to me like a soft glove, without a wrinkle or any kind of trimming, made what I considered the most effective background for my chain and cross, which in lamplight glittered in the most amazing manner. I had been standing before my looking-glass to admire myself for about a quarter of an hour beforehand, waving a candle backwards and forwards in front of me; and never till now did I know what fire could burn in the depths of pure emeralds. Even that mass of well-cut and perfect little diamonds, in themselves “enemies of mankind,” as Mr. Ruskin calls them, of the most “destructive” character, could not overpower the intense glow and lustre of mine. My unwonted magnificence caught the attention of everybody, down to the sedate butler who waited at table, as soon as I approached the light. Mrs. Smith looked at me in complacent triumph; her husband, whose life was spent in looking at her, withdrew his gaze from that object for a second, and then returned it with extra interest. Mother regarded me with a startled surprise; father with an astonished “Hallo, Kitty!” and Tom with beaming satisfaction.

“That cross hasn’t seen the light for a dozen years at least, Kitty,” said Tom. “Have you given it to Kitty, mother?”

“Yes, my dear; it is a little keepsake Kitty has been good enough to accept,” she replied demurely. Whereupon he stooped over her chair and kissed her.

Mother called me round the table, and, taking the jewel in her hand, examined it closely, and as she did so the colour rose in her pale face. “It is much too valuable for a young girl like Kitty,” she said, turning troubled eyes to Mrs. Smith. “Why, these stones must be quite priceless.”

“They are very fair stones,” our hostess replied coolly, beginning to ladle out the soup; “but they are not at all too good for Kitty. It gives me great pleasure to see her wearing them; they will be something to remind her of old friends when she is far away from us.”

“She is so very, very careless,” began mother again; but here I broke in to ask her indignantly if she supposed I should be careless of such a thing as that?

“I will give you a little Chubb to keep it in, Kitty,” said father, with moist eyes. “I don’t think Mrs. Smith need be afraid of it’s not being well taken care of; the child is not likely to have many such treasures of her own. But I do think with Mary, Mrs. Smith, that it is too valuable to”—father hesitated and cleared his throat—“to be taken out of the family, you know.”

Poor father and mother! they thought Mrs. Smith had been making over Tom’s inheritance to me, thereby implying that she regarded me as his future wife. They knew nothing of the existence of that treasure of diamonds in the Indian cabinet, compared with which this was almost a trifle. Tom, who guessed what we had been about during the afternoon, looked across at me significantly when father spoke, and then we both looked at our plates, and I blushed furiously.

I was coming out of my bedroom earlier in the evening, having gone to fetch some music, when I met him striding along the passage on his way to his usual nightly interview with the overseer. We did not think it wrong to stop and indulge ourselves in a fervent hug and kiss.

“I am so glad mother has given you something out of that old iron box,” he said, touching my precious cross. “Now, you mind what your father said, Kitty, and don’t take it out of the family.”

“No fear of that,” I answered, nestling up to him. “It will stand to me in the place of my engagement ring, Tom. Only I can’t wear it always, unfortunately.”

“Wear it that day when we meet in England, Kitty, will you? Then, when I see it round your dear white throat, it will be a sign to me that you have kept true, and are ready for me.”

“I will,” I said solemnly.