Story 6.
A Dear Lesson.
Some years ago every one on the Diamond Fields had heard of Mr Smythe’s parcel of diamonds. Buyers, brokers, and diggers were constantly talking of that wonderful collection of gems. No one had ever seen it, and some persons refused to believe in it. Smythe would not be such a fool, they said, as to keep a lot of money locked up in diamonds. But those who knew most about Smythe believed in his diamonds; in fact, some men knew of stones which he had added to his collection. In this case rumour had exaggerated wonderfully little; for, as a matter of fact, Mr Smythe’s parcel existed, and was little less valuable than it was reported to be. For some years the price of diamonds had been low, and Smythe had determined to hold; but he did not keep ordinary stuff, only picked stones of extraordinary quality. Whenever he bought a parcel, he would select any perfect stone there might be in it, and ship the rest. It was his opinion that diamonds would go up, and that he would realise a great profit when he brought his wonderful parcel home. In the mean time he could afford to be out of his money; for he was a fairly prosperous man, as he had some claims in the mine that brought him in a good deal, and had done very well diamond buying and digging. Though Mr Smythe was a very good man of business, he was in his private life by no means free from little weaknesses, and they were not all of them amiable ones. It was harmless, if not commendable, for him to be very careful of his get-up and appearance, and to dress with as much care on the South African Diamond Fields as he would have done in Pall Mall. No one would have any right to blame him for dyeing his twisted moustache black, and making a very game struggle against the ravages of time; nor did he hurt any one by his habit of continually bragging and boasting of the position he held and the people he knew ‘at home’—for this is a weakness common to many worthy and respectable dwellers in the distant parts of our empire. But he had one failing which was rather mischievous: although he was by no means a young man—for he was nearer fifty than forty—he was as vain as a girl, or rather as a vain man, and he was convinced that he was so attractive and fascinating that the other sex found him irresistible. He loved to pose in the character of a Don Juan, and though his past successes were his favourite topic of conversation, he took care to let it be known that, if he cared, he could continue these little histories up to the present time. In fact, he had gained the reputation of being a man very dangerous to the domestic peace of his neighbours, and he took no little pride and pleasure in having such a reputation, and was careful to maintain it, even sometimes by rather unjustly damaging the fair fame of some of the ladies who had the privilege of his friendship.
It was his custom every year to vary the monotony of Diamond-Field life by making a little visit to the coast; and, from the hints and suggestions he would give when he came back, it would seem that when on his travels he was always on the watch for an opportunity to get up the flirtations he delighted in carrying on. It was on one of those trips that he became acquainted with Captain and Mrs Hamilton. Captain Hamilton was supposed to have lately sold out of the army, and, from what he said, he seemed to be possessed of a nice little capital, which he hoped to double in some colonial venture. He didn’t care what he went in for—farming, diamond-mining, gold-digging. He didn’t care much what it was, so long as it paid. Soldiering, he said, was a bad game for a married man, and he intended to double his capital before he went home; for England was no country for a man to live in who had not some thousands a year. Mr Smythe did not at first take very kindly to the Captain, who seemed a dullish, heavy sort of man, and cared to talk about very little besides betting and sport. But Mrs Hamilton quite made up for any defects in her husband. She was an extremely pretty young woman, so young-looking that she might have been hardly out of her teens, with a half-mischievous, half-demure manner, which our friend found very fascinating; and it is needless to say that he came to the conclusion that she had fallen in love with him; for it was his idiosyncrasy to believe that he was irresistible with all women. Certainly she was a woman whom any man might fall in love with—a brown-haired, blue-eyed little thing, with a delightfully neat little figure, and always becomingly dressed. “Begad, she’s a devilish nice little woman! I must persuade them to come up to Kimberley. Hamilton would do well there, though he’s a stupid oaf a fellow,” said Mr Smythe to himself, as he gave his moustache a twist, looking at himself in the glass, and putting on a Mephistophelean grin on which he prided himself. Accordingly he suggested it to Hamilton that he had better make his home on the Diamond Fields, as it was the best place for a man of energy and capital. Captain Hamilton at once fell into the trap which this artful schemer had laid for him. “Dare say it was as good a place to go to as any other,” said he. It seemed to him it was a beastly country; while Mrs Hamilton was so enthusiastic in persuading her husband, and so anxious to go to the Fields, that Mr Smythe put the most flattering inference on her support.
So it came about that Captain and Mrs Hamilton were Mr Smythe’s fellow-passengers from Capetown to the Diamond Fields, and, more or less under his auspices, settled amongst the queer community who toil for wealth in that land of dust and diamonds. They took one of those little iron houses in one of the principal streets in Kimberley, in which at that time the most prosperous citizens sweltered in the summer and shivered in the winter. From their first arrival, we all took a good deal of interest in the Hamiltons. It was never Mr Smythe’s habit to be over-careful not to compromise the ladies he admired; and there was from the first a little scandal about Mrs Hamilton, and a good many stories told about her. Captain Hamilton became a very interesting person, when the fact that he was possessed of some little capital which he wished to invest was well-known, and a good many plans were made for his safely investing it. There was little Mo Abrahams, who came up to him, and told him how a few thousands would turn the Victory Mine, lately known as Fools Rush, into one of the grandest mining properties in the world; and the Captain seemed to be much struck with the advantages of the speculation, and thanked Mo for giving him such a chance; but he did not settle to go in for it at once, though he freely admitted that, in Mo’s words, nothing could be fairer between man and man than the terms suggested. “We must have another talk over it,” he said; and Mo went off rejoicing. After Mo went away, Bill Bowker, that fine specimen of the rugged honest digger and pioneer of the Fields, came up to the Captain, and, with much bad language, which it was his rugged honest custom to use, asked him what that little Jew wanted. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but he be going to let you in with that swindling mine of his. The place was salted before they washed up; and I know where they first got the diamonds they found there. I don’t like to see a gentleman like you let in. Now, what you want to go in for is digging in a established mine, not for a wild-cat speculation;” and the rugged honest one went on to urge upon the Captain the advantage of investing his money in some claims that were in that portion of the Du Toits Pan Mine, which had somehow gained the name of the graveyard, on account of so many persons having buried their fortunes there. Captain Hamilton was very much obliged to his kind friend, though he said that he refused to believe that Mo was not bonâ fide; “over sanguine, perhaps, but means well,” he said; “still, I think that what you mention would just suit me. We must have another talk about it.” Thus the Captain for some time did not settle how he would embark his fortune, but treated with every one who came to him, almost always entertaining the highest opinion of the suggestions made to him. In the mean time, the owners of valuable mining properties were constant in paying him the greatest attention, and he was asked to share so many small bottles of champagne that the bar-keepers looked upon him as a perfect godsend, and dated the revival of prosperity on the Fields from his arrival. As the Captain had a good deal of spare time on his hands, he was able to indulge in some of the pastimes in which he excelled. After some little time he was recognised as a very fine billiard-player. At first there were one or two young men who thought they could beat him, and it was a costly mistake for them; but the Captain explained he was only just getting back his form, and so accounted for the great improvement which could be noticed in his play, after he had got a little money on. At cards he was very lucky: a fortunate whist-player, a good écarté-player, while he had wonderfully good luck, when several times he was persuaded, protesting that it was not at all in his line, to sit down to a game of poker. However, though his card and billiard playing did not lighten his purse, they compelled him to neglect his wife more than was wise, perhaps. Night after night, while Hamilton was at the club, the dangerous Mr Smythe would be sitting smoking cigarettes in Jenny Hamilton’s little sitting-room.
Perhaps, though people did talk a good deal, there was not much harm in it; and Jenny Hamilton, though she did look so young, was, perhaps, pretty well able to take care of herself. Still, she became far more confidential with her friend Mr Smythe than it was wise for a young woman to be with such a very fascinating man. Certainly, when she told him all her grievances against her husband—how he neglected her, and was always at billiards or cards, leaving her all by herself, how he drank too much, and was generally rather a disappointment—she was taking a course which seemed rather indiscreet. But it was not only about her own affairs she would talk; she took the greatest interest in all he had to say about himself, and would listen to his stories of English society with never-failing interest. She would encourage him to read poetry to her, for, though his education had been rather commercial than classical, he fancied that he could read well. “Ah,” she would say, “how nice it is to be fond of poetry and art! Now, Jack cares for nothing but billiards, cards, sport, and drink; not even for me, I am afraid.” Then she would change the conversation, and talk about Smythe’s affairs. “Was it true,” she would ask, “that he had such a splendid collection of diamonds? She was so fond of seeing them. Couldn’t he show them to her?” Smythe made rather a favour of this, for he said that no one had ever seen his diamonds! still, of course, he would show them to Mrs Hamilton, only she must come down to the office to see them. Mrs Hamilton didn’t altogether like that; she would sooner he brought the diamonds up to the house. However, she said she was determined to see them, and she would constantly return to this subject. On one occasion, when Mr Smythe called, he found Hamilton at home instead of at the club, and so he did the next time after that; and, rather to his annoyance, he found the Captain had taken to stop at home. He used usually to sit in the verandah, smoking, paying very little heed to his wife or her friend. Still, Mr Smythe found him a good deal in the way, and began to look upon his presence in his own house as little less than an intrusion.
“Do you know that Jack is fearfully jealous of you?” said pretty Mrs Hamilton to him one evening. “Some one has said something to him, and since then he has never left me out of his sight.”
“That’s very stupid of him!” said Mr Smythe.
“Yes, it is very silly,” she said; “but I’m afraid you’re a dreadful man! Anyhow, Jack thinks you are, for he has taken to stop at home all day looking after me.”
“When is he going to get something to do? If he had more work and less drink he wouldn’t take fancies into his head.”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’m afraid he will go away to some other place. Won’t that be wretched?” she said.
“Wretched, my dear! of course it will,” said Mr Smythe; and he would have said a good deal more, only the smoke of his cigarette made Jenny choke; and then her husband came into the room, scowled at his guest, helped himself to some whiskey, and left it again.
“By the by,” said Jenny, when he had gone, “I’ve never seen those diamonds: now, you know, you promised I should.”
“You must come to the office and see them,” he said. “I don’t like to bring them up here, unless he’s out, for I don’t like any one to see them but you.”
“Yes, I know that it’s a great privilege for me to see them, though I don’t know what harm it can do for a poor little woman like me to see diamonds she can’t hope ever to have; you must bring them up here, and show them to me when he’s out of the room.”
“No, I can’t do that; he is always in and out. You must come to the office.”
“You wretch,” she said, “you want me to go to your office by myself, but I won’t; it wouldn’t do at all. Besides, do you know, he never lets me out of his sight for a minute; he hardly ever sleeps for long, and he gets so fearfully violent, I think it’s the whiskey he takes. Do you know, the other day I thought he would strike me.”
Mr Smythe was a good deal impressed with this information, and he looked with no little awe at the culprit, who fidgeted in and out of the room with no particular object. Though he despised the man, he felt a good deal afraid of him. “By Jove,” he thought to himself, “suppose he took a fancy to go for me—the brute looks pretty strong!”
“If I was you,” he said, “I’d give him a strong sleeping draught; he is a misery to himself and every one else, like this.”
“I only wish I could,” she said. “He gets more nervous and cross every evening; but he won’t take anything.”
“Well, I’d make him; I’d put a dose into his whiskey-and-water, which would send him off fast enough. I’d tell you what to give.”
For one second Jenny seemed to be thinking the matter over. Then she answered,—
“Oh, I wish you would; I would—I’d do it to-morrow; and then you could bring up the diamonds to show me, and we should be alone. Now, write down the stuff I am to get.”
Mr Smythe knew a little about doctoring, so he wrote out the quantities of a drug on a leaf of his note-book, and gave it her.
“Now promise to bring up the diamonds to-morrow, and we will look at them when we are alone and he is asleep.”
“All right,” he said; “but I don’t think they will interest you, and I hardly like bringing them out; but I can’t refuse you anything, my dear.”
Just then Captain Hamilton came in again, and, as he seemed inclined to stay, Mr Smythe took leave of his host and hostess, the latter giving him a look which seemed to say “Don’t forget.”
“By gad, she is a plucky little woman, and dead gone on me! Why, I believe, if I told her to, she’d put a drop of prussic acid in his whiskey!” said Mr Smythe to himself, as he swaggered down to the club from Hamilton’s house.
That evening he was in very great force, and his anecdotes and epigrams were unusually brilliant. Every one understood the point of what he said, and knew to whom his hints referred; and his toadies told him that he was a bad lot, a very bad lot, for they knew that this sort of reproach was the most grateful flattery to him. “What an insufferable cad that little brute is! hope he comes to grief soon,” was the remark of one man who probably didn’t like him.
The next evening Mr Smythe opened his safe, and took out his parcel of diamonds. After all there was no danger in taking them as far as the Hamiltons’ house, though they were so valuable, for the Hamiltons lived in one of the principal streets in the town. It was rather a silly whim of the little woman, he thought, being so set on seeing the diamonds; but he knew enough of the sex to be aware that she was determined to have it granted. The diamonds were in a large snuff-box. There were about a hundred diamonds weighing from ten to fifty carats each, and they were worth about 20,000 pounds. Something seemed to prompt him to put the diamonds back into the safe; but on the Diamond Fields men get used to the idea of carrying about stones of great value; and then he thought of Jenny Hamilton’s bewitching little face, so he put the diamonds in his pocket, and started off for her house. The house stood in what was called a garden, though very little grew there. On either side it was only a few yards from the house next door. As Smythe walked up to the door Jenny Hamilton came out to meet him.
“Hush!” she said, holding her hand up to her mouth; “he is asleep! I’ve given it him; I put it into the whiskey-bottle, and he took it all.”
She beckoned him to follow, and they both went indoors into the sitting-room. From the next room they could hear the heavy breathing of the Captain.
“Now, have you brought them?” she said.
“Yes; I’ve done what you told me to do,” he answered. “Let me show you them.”
“Stop,” she said first; “let me see if he is fast asleep.” She went into the next room and came back again. “He’s fast asleep, poor old boy,” she said.
Smythe thought that he never had seen her look so pretty. She was dressed very prettily; had a very brilliant colour on her cheeks, which became her; and her eyes glittered with excitement. They sat down, and he poured the diamonds out of the box on to a sheet of white paper, which looked grey contrasted with some of them.
“And these diamonds are worth twenty thousand pounds! How good to bring them!”
Smythe thought that he never had seen such a pretty little face as hers was, as she looked at the diamonds with a longing glance; but he was rather surprised when she looked up into his face and said, “Give them to me.” Of course he had no intention of doing any such thing; the idea was simply absurd, considering their value. And Smythe didn’t half like this eccentricity of his pretty little friend; still she looked so pretty that Smythe could not feel angry with her. Her face was close to his—she was looking up at him; he stooped down and kissed her. Just then he heard a step behind him, and as he turned round, his head struck against something hard: it was the muzzle of a revolver, which Hamilton was holding. Hamilton was wide awake, and there was a very ugly grin of triumph in his face.
“Well, you’re a nice young man, you are, to drop in friendly of an evening! Hush! don’t speak out loud, or I’ll blow your brains out at once,” said the Captain.
Jenny Hamilton didn’t seem to be one bit disconcerted. She had snatched up the diamonds, and she was turning them over, watching their sheen with evident pleasure. Mr Smythe, however, felt anything but at his ease. The situation was a very strange one, for if he shouted out “Murder!” he would be heard by his neighbours on both sides, who were only separated from him by a few feet of open space and a few inches of tin wall. One of them was a young diamond-buyer, with a taste for comic singing, who had just returned from a trip home, and was entertaining his friends with the cream of the melody of the London music-halls, and as he stood shivering with fear, with the revolver held up to his head, Smythe could hear the chorus of one of the songs of the day. He had never cared less about comic singing. But though help was so near he felt completely in the power of Hamilton, who looked very resolute and reckless, and seemed to be quite in earnest.
Personal courage never was Mr Smythe’s strong point, and now for a minute he felt too startled to think; in fact, he only had sufficient sense left to make him restrain his inclination to shout out for help. After a second or two he began to feel more assured. It seemed so unlikely that he should be murdered in the middle of the town, within calling distance of several men; only the revolver was real enough. When a man is holding a revolver up to your head, you have the worst of the position. He mayn’t care to shoot; but, on the other hard, he may; and, whatever the ultimate consequences may be to him, the immediate consequences to you are sure.
In a half-hearted way for one second Smythe thought of resisting, and he made a movement with his hand towards his pocket.
“Keep your hands up; you’d better,” said the other.
Smythe obeyed him, and sat holding his hand above his head, looking very ridiculous.
“You’d better take that from him, Jen,” said Hamilton; and Jenny Hamilton put her hand into her dear friend’s pocket and deftly eased him of his revolver. A gleam of hope came into Mr Smythe’s heart. After all, he thought, people don’t commit homicide without reason; and he saw that he had not to deal with an outraged husband, but with a pair of sharpers. He certainly began to wish that his diamonds were in his safe at home; but he knew they were difficult property to deal with, and hoped to get off without making any great sacrifice.
“What the devil do you mean by this, Captain Hamilton?” he said, trying to put on an air of unconcern he didn’t feel. “Surely it’s a poor joke to steal into your own drawing-room, and hold a revolver up to the head of a man you find calling on your wife.”
“I don’t set up for being a good joker,” said the Captain; “but my jokes are eminently practical, as you’d learn if the police of London, New York, and ’Frisco told you what they know of Jack Hamilton.”
“Well, you’d better say what you hope to make out of this,” said Mr Smythe.
“I intend,” said the Captain, “to make a job for the crowner’s inquest of you, and those diamonds for myself.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, man; you won’t frighten me, I’m not so easily fooled. Why, if I don’t turn up, a dozen men will know where to look for me; besides that, they will hear you shoot next door. Why, if you shoot, you’d be hung.”
“You’ve no call to bother your head about me. I can play this hand without your advice,” said the Captain. “See here: first I shoot you; then Jen puts the diamonds away; then I give myself up to the police; Jen confesses; I take my trial, like a man, and show that I shot you because I found you here alone with my wife, after you’d got her to drug my liquor. See here: the whiskey-bottle in the next room is drugged. Jen has got the paper you wrote out. The chemist she got the stuff from can be found, and you’ve taken care to let every one know what your game is. What do you think a jury would do to me? You’d have to look a long time before you’d get one who would find me guilty of murder. Hung! why, I shall be looked upon as the vindicator of the sanctity of domestic life. Guess they’d get up a testimonial for me.”
Then Mr Smythe realised the awkward position in which he was placed. The man seemed to be in earnest, and there was a determined look in his cruel hard face which made Smythe believe that he dared do what he said; and if he did, it was true that he would be in very little danger of being punished. Smythe could remember a somewhat similar case, in which a jury had endorsed the popular verdict of “Served him right,” by finding a prisoner, who had killed the man who had wronged him, not guilty.
He could hear the words of the song which were being sung next door, and he knew that if he shouted out murder he could summon help, but he daren’t shout out. Help was near, but the revolver was nearer.
“Stop,” he said, catching at a last straw; “you don’t know that some one can’t prove I had the diamonds with me!”
“I’ll chance that,” said Hamilton. “You see, no one has ever seen the diamonds but us.”
As Hamilton said this Jenny left the room with the diamonds in her hand, and then came back again without them. Smythe felt that he had seen the last of the stones, which were likely to cost him so dear.
“Spare me! for Heaven’s sake, spare me! What have I done that you should kill me? Keep the diamonds, and let me go.”
“That won’t do, I am afraid,” said Hamilton; “you might change your mind, and try and get the diamonds back. Of course I don’t want to shoot you, but it’s the way to play my game.”
Then Mrs Hamilton, who had come back into the room, spoke for the first time.
“What’s the good of all this talk, Jack? Make haste and get it all over.”
Just then, in his extremity, an idea came into Smythe’s mind, and again he began to hope.
“Stop,” he said. “Why kill me? I have money in the bank. Spare me, and I will write a cheque for five hundred.”
“It’s risky for me,” said Captain Hamilton. “Still, a little ready comes in handy. I will take a thou.”
With a very shaky hand Smythe wrote out the cheque for the amount asked for, the Captain still holding the revolver up to his head. Smythe handed over the cheque.
“Now I can go, I suppose?” he said, making for the door.
“Not yet,” said the other. “Get the paper, Jen. Now write out a note to me, enclosing the cheque for a card debt,” he added, as his wife took down some paper and placed it before their guest. Smythe wrote the letter he required.
“That will do. Now write to Jen, sending her the diamonds.”
“What am I to say?” said Smythe.
“What are you to say? Why, you don’t want me to write a love-letter to my own wife—it’s more in your line than mine; but make it pretty sweet, for I don’t know but that the old plan isn’t best after all.”
Smythe had written love-letters to other men’s wives before, but never under similar circumstances, with the husband witnessing the performance with a loaded revolver in his hand, nor had he ever made such a very expensive present. It was some time before he could pull himself together sufficiently to write, and one or two attempts were condemned by his severe critic, who said,—
“No, that sort of slush ain’t good enough. Put a little more sugar in it. Why, damn it, man, I thought you were so good at it!”
At last the right sort of note was written. “That will do. Here, what do you think of it, Jen?” said the Captain, passing the note across to his partner.
“Why, I think it a dear little note; it’s a beautiful note; the prettiest note I ever got. What a darling man you are to give me such a present, and yet what a wicked wretch you are to write like that to me!” and Mrs Hamilton looked at her correspondent, who was regarding her with no very loving glance, and then burst into a peal of silvery laughter.
The Captain seemed to take up the joke. “Why, hang it, man,” he said, “but you’re a generous big-hearted fellow. There are some men who wouldn’t care about their wives taking presents from such a gay cuss as you, but I know you mean no harm, old fellow;” and the Captain gave him a slap on the back with his unoccupied hand, which made him start with terror. “No,” he continued, as his visitor made as if he was going, “you sha’n’t go yet. Stop and drink, stop and drink,” he repeated, with a warning gesture with his revolver.
Mr Smythe sat down at this pressing invitation, and took one or two glasses of brandy-and-water. He felt that his nerve was altogether gone, and that he was obliged to obey the other. At last Hamilton let him go, and opening the door for him, took a noisy leave of him, that the neighbours must have heard; and then he lurched home in such a state of brandy and shock that he could hardly realise his loss before he tumbled into bed.
The next morning he did not wake up until it was late, past ten o’clock, and then he, by degrees, remembered the events of the night before. “Was it a dream?” he thought; and he went to his safe, and found out that it was no dream—the diamonds were not there! What could he do to get his diamonds back? was his first thought. He could think of nothing, for he remembered the letters he had written, and already it was too late to stop the cheque, for he knew it would have been presented as soon as the bank opened. Then he began to think that the best thing he could do would be to keep his sorrows to himself, for no one would believe his story; and the people who lived next door to the Hamiltons would have heard Captain Hamilton let him out of his house, and would never believe that anything of the sort had happened to him that evening. So Mr Smythe did nothing, and he was not surprised that evening to hear that among the passengers by the coach to Capetown were his friends the Hamiltons.
He never saw them again, nor did he wish to. They were last seen, some time ago, in Paris. Hamilton was the same stolid, heavy-dragoon looking man, and Jenny Hamilton was as young and charming-looking as ever; and they seemed to be very prosperous, so they probably did well with Smythe’s diamonds.