The Annam Jewel (29 page)

She got up with the box in her hand. Her colour was deeper than usual. She wanted to open her parcel when she was alone. It was so odd that Peter should send her flowers. It was so odd that he should send her anything that needed to be registered. She held the box tightly, looked at Mrs. Gaisford with rather a startled, pleading expression, and said, speaking quickly and low:

“They'll make a dreadful mess in here; flowers always do.”

Mrs. Gaisford nodded and smiled indulgently.

“Yes, yes, take them away,” she said. “And, my dear, will you look after Jimmy for an hour whilst Nurse gets settled down a little? I thought perhaps you'd take him out to the end of the garden on the cliff. Nurse'll fetch him in at half past eleven.”

“Yes, I'd love to,” said Rose Ellen at the door. She shut it after her next moment, and Mrs. Gaisford turned to her husband.

“Now, James,” she said, “you're not to tease, or look, or make jokes. You're to leave the child alone. I do really think there's something in it with Peter Waring, and you're to be good and not take any notice.”

“Oh, nonsense! Girls like to be teased about their lovers,” said Major Gaisford easily. He got up and strolled to the window.

“Toppin'
day, isn't it?” he said.

Rose Ellen took a flat glass dish from the pantry, and went up to her own room. The parcel smelt mossy. The flowers were sure to be wild flowers—people didn't send garden flowers in moss. She would fill the glass dish with moss and stick the little wild things in it so that they should look as though they were growing. There would be violets and primroses for certain—perhaps anemones and wood sorrel. Major Gaisford was forgotten.

She came into her sunny room, and set the glass dish on the wide window-seat. The window looked across the garden towards the sea. There were pine trees beyond the flower-beds, and beyond the pine trees blue water and blue sky.

Rose Ellen cut the string of her parcel, and sat down on the window-ledge to open it—first brown paper and string; then Mrs. Merewether's box; and then Peter's letter, rather damp and mossy. Rose Ellen picked it up, but before she read it she looked for a moment at the sea, and the sky, and the pine trees. It was such a blue day. There was so much light. The air moved as if it were alive.

Rose Ellen held the letter very tightly. After her storm of tears and bitter pain there had come a calm. And now, quite suddenly, she felt that something was going to happen, something big. She was not afraid, but she felt awe. She sat with Peter's letter in her hand, and could not read it. It seemed a long time before she could read it. When she lifted it she was rather pale, but her eyes shone. She read:

Dear Rose Ellen
,

Don't unpack this box until there's no one there. It is in a bit of paper under the moss. Keep it safe for me till I come, and don't tell anyone. I'll come as soon as I can
.

Peter
.

PS.—The primroses and violets are out of a wood, but the forget-me-nots were in the post office garden. The woman says the pink ones are called “No-never”
.

“Oh!” said Rose Ellen, when she had finished reading. She laughed a little, happy, shaky laugh. Then she said very softly, “Oh, Peter de—ah.”

The blue sky and the light seemed to be in the room with her; it was such a sunny, sunny day. And the scent of the pines—Rose Ellen would always love the scent of the pines.

She took out the blue forget-me-nots and the pink no-nevers. Next came the wood violets and primroses, very sweet. She laid each bunch by itself, and began to lift the moss. It was fern moss, very green, the sort she loved best of all—perhaps Peter remembered how much she liked it. She lifted the moss, and found something doubled up in an old envelope.

“Keep it safe till I come, and don't tell anyone.” What was she to keep safe for Peter? Her hand shook a little as she tore away the sodden paper. Then she cried out. The Annam Jewel slipped between her fingers, and lay upon the moss. She cried out, and shut her eyes. The room seemed to tremble a little. She caught at the edge of the window-seat, bent forward, and looked again.

It was the Annam Jewel. Peter had sent her the Annam Jewel. It lay there on the moss, and the sun shone on it. It was living colour. It was sky, and sunset, and golden moon.

A great many thoughts came into Rose Ellen's mind as she looked at the Jewel. Quite suddenly she pushed it down into the moss and covered it. Her eyes went back to the sky and the sea.

After a little while she got up, and filled the glass dish with water. Then she laid the moss in it, and made the little bunches of flowers stand upright in the moss as if they had roots and were really growing. When she had finished, the Annam Jewel lay alone, with the light upon it. Without looking at it, Rose Ellen carried her little moss garden to the other side of the room and set it down on a table out of the sun. Then she went back.

Peter had said, “Keep it safe for me till I come.” Peter had said, “I will come as soon as I can.” She must keep it safe for Peter.

She picked up the Jewel, knotted it in a little handkerchief with a net border, and pushed it down inside the front of her brown holland dress. She put Peter's letter there too. Then she put on a shady rush hat, and went to find Jimmy.

CHAPTER XXXV

Peter arrived at Lenton at a quarter to eleven, and took a taxi out to Cliff Edge. The driver took a sharp turn to the right just before reaching Chark, and for the last half-mile they followed an unmetalled track across the rising moor. Cliff Edge had a right to its name; the space of the garden beyond it, the cliff fell sheer to the sea.

Peter paid and dismissed his taxi, and was prepared with an apology when Mrs. Gaisford came into the drawing-room. She wore the air of a woman who had been torn from her unpacking.

“No, not a bit too early, if you don't mind looking after yourself,” she said. “After all, it's Rose Ellen you want to see, isn't it? Now, do you mind finding your own way down the garden? She's out on the cliff, beyond those trees, with Jimmy. I'm just going to send Nurse for him.” She stood by the open glass doors and pointed. “Straight down the path past the tulip beds,” she said.

Peter walked down the path between beds of orange, and lilac, and rose-coloured tulips. Where the flower-beds ended there was a shrubbery. Beyond the shrubbery there were seven pine-trees. The path took a winding turn and came out on the real edge of the cliff. The ground was very uneven; yellow patches of sand showed between the tussocks of coarse grass. A heaped parapet of rough stones guarded the dangerous edge. Beyond it was the sea.

Peter saw Rose Ellen. She was leaning against the parapet with one arm about the infant Jimmy, who had fallen asleep. He slept, as many children do, with his eyes only half shut; some of the blue showed through the lashes, and looked all the bluer because his cheeks were so red. Rose Ellen's head was bent so that the shade of her hat fell upon Jimmy's face.

Peter stood still for a moment, and looked. Something tugged at his heart. Rose Ellen looked up and saw him.

There was just a moment of silence, and then Rose Ellen said, “S-s-h!” and held out a little, brown left hand. Before Peter could say anything, there was a sound of footsteps and a rustle of starched linen, followed by the appearance of Jimmy's nurse. She removed Jimmy, still sleeping. Peter sat down on the grass beside Rose Ellen.

“Did you get it?” he said. “My parcel, I mean. It ought to have come. Did you get it?”

Rose Ellen looked at him with a very little smile which began by being teasing, and then trembled into sweetness.

“I got your flowers,” she said.

“You did? Did you like them? Did you find the Jewel?”

Rose Ellen nodded.

“Why did you send it to me?” she said.

Peter frowned. He might tell Rose Ellen that he had sent her the Jewel because he wanted her to have it—he thought of doing this—he began to dig little holes in the sand and to frown at them ferociously. Or he might tell her that he had sent her the Jewel because he knew that it would be safe with her. But then she might not understand—even Rose Ellen might not understand.

“Oh, Peter, your hands, your poor hands!” said Rose Ellen in a quick, distressed voice. “What
have
you done to them?”

Peter's indecision passed. He rolled over, with his elbows on the ground and his chin in his hands.

“It's nothing,” he said, “only scratches. But I've been going rather strong in the adventure line ever since I left Merton Clevery. It doesn't feel like two days; it feels like years. And I want to tell you all about it. That's why I've come.”

“Is it all about the Jewel?” said Rose Ellen.

“Some of it's about the Jewel.”

Peter was not going to commit himself. He had made a plan. First of all he was going to tell Rose Ellen about the Jewel and his adventures; and then he was going to tell her how frightfully he loved her. He couldn't think how he hadn't known it all the time. There was something so dear about Rose Ellen. Now that he was with her he felt as if nothing could ever go wrong again. Rose Ellen made you feel like that.

“Tell me, Peter de—ah,” she said.

“I want you to read my father's notes first. I got them when I was twenty-five, with a sham Jewel. Read it, and you'll see.”

He dragged the exercise-book out of a pocket and laid it on her lap. Rose Ellen opened it and read in silence. While she read, Peter watched her face. Rose Ellen was frightfully fascinating to watch, because her colour kept changing; all the changes were beautiful. It came to Peter as a sort of surprise that Rose Ellen was beautiful.

She finished reading, and looked at him across the open page.

“Peter, it's dreadful,” she said. “Oh, Peter, I hate it.”

She put her hand to her breast, took out the little knotted handkerchief with the net border, and set it on the grass at arm's length.

“Yes, it makes you feel like that,” said Peter. “It's all rather beastly, really. I want to tell you about it—the rest of it. These two men whom my father speaks of—Henderson and Dale—well, one of them is this man Hendebakker that the papers are so full of, the new millionaire; and the other is Mr. Coverdale.” He paused, and then added, “Sylvia's father.”

Rose Ellen cried out softly. Her hands took hold of one another.

Peter began to tell her the whole story. It was always easy to talk to Rose Ellen, because, even if she didn't say a single word, you felt that she was going with you all the way.

The beginning was the most difficult part. Sylvia—he didn't want to talk about Sylvia, but he couldn't leave her out, not to Rose Ellen. The scene at The Luxe when Sylvia gave him the Jewel, got three short sentences. The scene in the beech-wood, when he saw Rose Ellen's tears and knew how much he loved her, did not get a sentence at all. He went on with a rush to his visit to Sunnings and Roden Coverdale.

“He was awfully decent to me. He told me things. I'd like to tell you all about it, if you don't mind.”

Rose Ellen didn't mind; she said so. Peter went on. He gave her Coverdale's story in full; passed hastily over his own encounter with Hendebakker; and then rather spread himself on his tramp in the dark, his night in the wood, and the superlative excellence of Mrs. Merewether's bacon. As he talked he dug little sandpits, making patterns of them.

“She was
frightfully
nice to me,” he said. “She thought I was a lost soul, but she fed me and gave me William's overcoat—at least, I'm not sure if it was William's or her husband's. I
was
a sight; you've no idea what I looked like. It does seem ages ago. I mean it seems like last year since Coverdale shoved the Jewel at me in the dark. I hope he got away all right. I liked him most awfully, you know; it seems odd, but I did.” He began to make a little rampart all round the sandpits. It was about three inches high, and he took great pains with it.

“And—and Sylvia?” said Rose Ellen. She hadn't meant to speak, but the words seemed to say themselves. She said, “And Sylvia?” and caught her breath lest she should say any more.

“That's the perfectly beastly part of it,” said Peter gloomily. “All the part about Sylvia's absolutely rotten. I don't want to talk about it, I couldn't talk about it to anyone but you; it's too beastly.”

He was looking at his sand wall and not at Rose Ellen. He did not see that she was getting paler and paler. In very short, jerky sentences he gave her to understand that Sylvia had fetched him from the club, and that they had gone to a house in Wimbledon where Hendebakker had trapped him.

Rose Ellen could hardly bear it. The part about the cellar was dreadful. It was all dreadful. She couldn't bear it. She cried out. Peter told her not to be a little mug, and proceeded to illustrate his escape. It made him rather sandy, but he showed her how he had broken the bottle and used the glass to free his wrists. He was by now a good deal pleased with his escape.

“I only wonder there's any skin left on my hands at all,” he said in conclusion.

But Rose Ellen came back again to Sylvia.

“Peter, how could she? I can't bear it. She went away and left you—in that horrible place with that horrible man? Oh, Peter, why?”

“She's afraid of him. He's a brute, you know, and he's got a hold over her. It's simply beastly, but I'm afraid she took some diamonds belonging to his wife, and he knows it.”

Rose Ellen said, “Oh!” in a shocked whisper, and looked away. There was something she must say, and she didn't know how to say it. She caught at her courage, and said in the merest breath of a voice:

“I want to say something—I must say it, but I'm frightened.”

Peter put his left hand over her left hand and gripped it. He had to come nearer in order to do this. He felt Rose Ellen's hand tremble under his.