There were a few personal possessions of her own, too, which were of value—an old diamond pendant, a pearl necklace which her grandmother had left her, a sapphire bracelet her godmother had given her at her marriage, and a few other wedding presents which were marketable. She telephoned to a jeweller whom she could trust, and interviewed him in the afternoon. The result exceeded her expectations; she was able to leave over two hundred and fifty pounds in bank-notes and cash in the table drawer, for her husband to dispose of as he chose.
Five o'clock struck before Evelyn had time to think of herself. And then it was only a very ordinary incident that recalled her. In her bedroom, on her mantelpiece, there stood a plaster cross which she had bought in Italy some years before. It was unusual in its way, the work of a man she had rescued from starvation. The cross was shaped conventionally enough, but the Figure upon it was clumsy and distorted. It looked like a travesty of suffering, an almost grotesque image of the sublime sacrifice. Of late, she had noticed that the pedestal on the right side of the cross had worn away a little; in her hurried dusting, the maid had perhaps given it a knock which made it likely to overbalance. Evelyn came into the room suddenly, and the Image fell, shattered, at her feet—crushed into so many pieces that nothing would mend it. She lifted it up with a little cry of dismay; one may renounce one's creed, in action, yet worship it in the temple of the heart.
She did not often enter Brand's dressing-room, so full was it of little things which jarred. Over his bed there was the figure of a satyr chasing a nude figure; water dripped from the woman's limbs, surprised while bathing. The walls had been distempered in a pale green tone which gave significance to the frames of the other pictures, mostly reproductions of French impressionist studies, types of the art of Claude Monet and his followers. One showed a naked woman lying on a bed with black sheets and black pillows; round her neck was a narrow band of black velvet. Another was the picture of a ballet-dancer, done by a leading member of the New English Art Club, a clever study in its way. In the foreground was the flare of footlights, concentrating their illumination upon the bare boards of a Paris music-hall stage. The central figure was that of a ballet-girl with whirling skirts and disordered hair; she was leaning forward, smiling, as she danced, at an audience roused to the utmost pitch of frenzy by the suggestion of pose and gesture. Another was the copy of an old French print, called in simple language, "Le Bouquet." A woman was lying in a wood, her head resting on a mound; her lover was kneeling beside her, looking down; he was crushing a bunch of roses against her breast and its disordered drapery.
The writing-table was in the window. Evelyn crossed to it; it was dusty. She cleaned and tidied this room herself, remaking the bed, which the servant had made carelessly; washing the glasses of the pictures, and the frames; tidying the dressing-table and polishing the wardrobe. When all was done she stopped to look back at her work, to see if anything was forgotten. The waste-paper basket was still full.
She slipped off her apron and emptied the contents of the basket in the folds. She was just gathering the bundle up when a stray word caught her eye. She glanced back at it, puzzled, suddenly suspicious. "Concession?"—that was not a term of which one made general use. She took up the torn slip of paper—"... garding the terms of the concession."
The first word was broken, but it was obvious enough: "Regarding the terms of the concession." What did that mean? The note was in Brand's handwriting; to what concession did he refer? Forgotten words and acts returned to her; the terrible suspicion raised by Lady Wereminster's innocent words—the scene in the hall, now some time back.
She stood for a moment looking down, bewildered; then bolted the door and prepared slowly to sift, one by one, the contents of the basket. Brand was a careful man. He had disposed of the torn-up pieces of his notes of the Treaty which he had stolen from Farquharson in various channels. Some had been thrown from the window; others scattered in the wind on his way to the Strand; there were but a few pieces of the original paper upon which he had scrawled his first rough translation of the cypher in the waste-paper basket, which Evelyn's careless maid-servant had left there for more than a week, because it was not noticeably full.
She had set out upon the table certain familiar words and phrases in an unfamiliar shape. As yet she did not take in their full force. Yet they rang, with curious insistence, at the door of her heart; she was sure that in some way they affected the welfare both of herself and him she loved. Fate—rather, God—had decreed that she should find them and act upon her knowledge.
She looked at them again, amazed and stupefied. They had been written in a hurry, and blotted, seemingly, upon soiled blotting-paper; the words, even the separate words, were blurred and almost unintelligible. Yet some stood out, clear and distinct: "Treaty—concession—negotiations," the very name of the Power involved. And all these she recalled; she had read them on the morning after the great scene in the House; they were the terms of the Treaty which Farquharson was supposed to have sold to the Power that coveted England's supremacy.
Why should Brand have copied them when he could have cut out the more concise account that was printed in the daily papers? ... And this work showed signs of obliteration and change, as though translated by an unaccustomed hand; there were many erasures and corrections. In one case, for instance, there was the revision of a complete sentence which had obviously been misunderstood at first by a reader unversed in the code.