The Danvers Jewels, And Sir Charles Danvers - free ebook by Mary Cholmondeley

Mary Cholmondeley

NEW YORK HARPER &amp; BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1890 TO MY SISTER "DI" I AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATE THE STORY WHICH SHE HELPED ME TO WRITE...

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CHAPTER I.

I was on the point of leaving India and returning to England when he sent for me. At least, to be accurate—and I am always accurate—I was not quite on the point, but nearly, for I was going to start by the mail on the following day. I had been up to Government House to take my leave a few days before, but Sir John had been too ill to see me, or at least he had said he was. And now he was much worse—dying, it seemed, from all accounts; and he had sent down a native servant in the noon-day heat wi

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CHAPTER II.

I was all right next day. I suppose I had had what women call nerves . I never knew what nerves meant before, because no two women I ever met seemed to have the same kind. If it is slamming a door that upsets one woman's nerves, it may be coming in on tiptoe that will upset another's. You never can tell. But I am sure it was nerves with me that first night; I know I have never felt so queer since. Oh yes I have, though—once. I was forgetting; but I have not come to that yet. We had a splendid pa

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CHAPTER III.

I did not much like the arrangement of Jane's new house when I came to stay in it. The way the two bedrooms, hers and mine, were shut off from the rest of the house by a door, barred and locked at night for fear of burglars, was, I thought, unpleasant, especially as, once in my room for the night, there was no possibility of getting out of it, the key of the door of the passage not being even allowed to remain in the lock, but retiring with Jane, the canary cage, and other valuables, into her ow

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CHAPTER IV.

I really think adventures, like misfortunes, never come single. Would you believe it? Our house was broken into that very night. Nothing serious came of it, wonderful to relate, owing to Jane's extraordinary presence of mind. She had been unable to sleep after my thrilling account of the cab accident, and had consoled herself by reading Baxter's "Saint's Rest" by her night-light, for the canary became restless and liable to sudden bursts of song if a candle were lighted. While so engaged she bec

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CHAPTER V.

Stoke Moreton is a fine old Elizabethan house standing on rising ground. As we drove up the straight wide approach between two rows of ancient fantastically clipped hollies, I was impressed by the stately dignity of the place, which was not lessened as we drew up before a great arched door-way, and were ushered into a long hall supported by massive pillars of carved white stone. A roaring log-fire in the immense fireplace threw a ruddy glow over the long array of armor and gleaming weapons which

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CHAPTER VI.

But far from being better the following morning, Denis was much worse. Charles, who had sat up most of the night with him, and who came down to breakfast more cool and indifferent than ever, at once extinguished any hope that still remained that he would be able to take his part that night. Great was the consternation of the whole party. A vague feeling of resentment against Denis prevailed among the womankind, who, having all preserved their own healths intact for the occasion (and each by her

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CHAPTER VII.

It was nearly eight o'clock when I came down. The play was to begin at eight. The hall, which was brilliantly lighted, was one moving mass of black coats, with here and there a red one, and evening-dresses many colored—the people in them, chatting, bowing, laughing, being ushered to their places. Lady Mary and Sir George Danvers side by side received their guests at the foot of the grand staircase, Lady Mary, resplendent in diamond tiara and riviere, smiling as if she could never frown; Sir Geor

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CHAPTER VIII.

It is very seldom I cannot sleep, but I could not that night. There was something in the intense quiet and repose of the great house, after all the excitement of the last few hours, that oppressed me. Everything seemed, as I lay awake, so unnaturally silent. There was not a sound in the wide grate, where the last ashes of the fire were silently giving up the ghost, not a rumble of wind in the old chimney which had had so much to say the night before. I tossed and turned, and vainly sought for sl

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CHAPTER IX.

The two pairs of steel eyes met, and looked fixedly at each other. A tap came to the door. Sir George winced, and made a sign to Ralph, who rushed to it and bolted it. "I am coming in, George," said Lady Mary's voice. "Send her away," came a whisper from the bed. This was easier said than done. But it was done after a sufficiently long parley; and Lady Mary retired under the impression that Ralph was sitting alone with his father, who thought he might get a little sleep. "Now," whispered Sir Geo

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CHAPTER X

The room seemed strangely quiet after the stormy interview in the sick-chamber which we had just left. The pale winter sunlight was stealing in aslant through the low windows. The fire had sunk to a deep red glow, and in an arm-chair drawn up in front of it, newspaper in hand, was Carr, evidently fast asleep. "'Oh, my prophetic soul!'" whispered Charles, nudging Marston; and then he went forward and shouted "Luncheon!" in a voice that would have waked the dead. Carr started up and rubbed his eye

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CHAPTER XI.

When I came down before dinner I found Ralph and Charles talking earnestly by the hall-fire, Ralph's hand on his brother's shoulder. "You see we are no farther forward than we were," he was saying. "We shall have Marston back to-morrow," said Charles, as the gong began to sound. "We cannot take any step till then, especially if we don't want to put our foot in it. I have been racking my brains all the afternoon without the vestige of a result. We must just hold our hands for the moment." Dinner

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CHAPTER XII.

I passed an uneasy night. The wind moaned wearily round the house, at one moment seeming to die away altogether, at another returning with redoubled fury, roaring down the wide chimney, shaking the whole building. It dropped completely towards dawn, and after hours of fitful slumber I slept heavily. In the gray of the early morning I was awakened by some one coming into my room, and started up to find Charles standing by my bedside, dressed, and with a candle in his hand. His face was worn and h

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CHAPTER XIII.

The engine and trucks stopped, the men shouldered their tools and tumbled out, and we followed them. A few hundred paces in front of us was a railway bridge, over which a road passed, and under which the rail went at a sharp curve. The snow had drifted heavily against the bridge, with its high earth embankment, making manifest at a glance the cause of the disaster. The bridge was crowded with human figures, and on the line below men were working in the drift, amid piles of débris and splintered

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CHAPTER I.

"Dear heart, Miss Ruth, my dear, now don't ye be a-going yet, and me that hasn't set eyes on ye this month and more—and as hardly hears a body speak from morning till night." "Come, come, Mrs. Eccles, I am always finding people sitting here. I expect to see the latch go every minute." "Well, and if they do; and some folks are always a-dropping in, and a-setting theirselves down, and a clack-clacking till a body can't get a bit of peace! And the things they say! Eh? Miss Ruth, the things I have h

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CHAPTER II.

On this particular July afternoon Mr. Alwynn, or, as his parishioners called him, "The Honorable John," was sitting in his arm-chair in the little drawing-room of Slumberleigh Rectory. Mrs. Honorable John was pouring out tea; and here, once and for all, let it be known that meals, particularly five o'clock tea, will occupy a large place in this chronicle, not because of any importance especially attaching to them, but because in the country, at least in Slumberleigh, the day is not divided by ho

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CHAPTER III.

Atherstone was a rambling, old-fashioned, black-and-white house, half covered with ivy, standing in a rambling, old-fashioned garden—a charming garden, with clipped yews, and grass paths, and straggling flowers and herbs growing up in unexpected places. In front of the house, facing the drawing-room windows, was a bowling-green, across which, at this time of the afternoon, the house had laid a cool green shadow. Two ladies were sitting under its shelter, each with her work. It was hot still, but

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CHAPTER IV.

"I've done Uncle Charles a button-hole, and put it in his water-bottle," said Molly, in an important affairé whisper, as she came into Ruth's room a few minutes before dinner, where Ruth and her maid were struggling with a black-lace dress. "Mrs. Jones, you must be very quick. Why do you have pins in your mouth, Mrs. Jones? James has got his coat on, and he is going to ring the bell in one minute. I told him you had only just got your hair done; but he said he could not help that. Uncle Charles,

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CHAPTER V.

Molly awoke early on the following morning, and early informed the rest of the household that the weather was satisfactory. She flew into Ruth's room with the hot water, to wake her and set her mind at rest on a subject of such engrossing interest; she imparted it repeatedly to Charles through his key-hole, until a low incoherent muttering convinced her that he also was rejoicing in the good news. She took all the dolls out of the baskets in which Ruth's careful hands had packed them the evening

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CHAPTER VI.

After the glare and the noise, the shrill blasts of penny trumpets, and the sustained beating of penny drums, the silence of the Slumberleigh woods was delightful to Ruth; the comparative silence, that is to say, for where Molly was, absolute silence need never be feared. Long before the first gate had been reached Balaam had, of course, returned to the mode of procedure which suited him and his race best, and it was only when the road inclined to be downhill that he could be urged into anything

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CHAPTER VII.

Vandon was considered by many people to be the most beautiful house in ----shire. In these days of great brand-new imitation of intensely old houses, where the amount of ground covered measures the purse of the builder, it is pleasant to come upon a place like Vandon, a quiet old manor-house, neither large nor small, built of ancient bricks, blent to a dim purple and a dim red by that subtle craftsman Time. Whoever in the years that were no more had chosen the place whereon to build had chosen w

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CHAPTER VIII.

"Sir Charles!" "Miss Deyncourt!" "I fear," with a glance at the yellow-back in his hand, "I am interrupting a studious hour, but—" "Not in the least, I assure you," said Charles, shutting his novel. "What is regarded as study by the feminine intellect is to the masculine merely relaxation. I was 'unbending over a book,' that was all." The process of "unbending" was being performed in the summer-house, whither he had retired after Evelyn and Ralph had started on their afternoon's ride to Vandon,

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CHAPTER IX.

Dare arrived at Atherstone the following afternoon. Evelyn and Ralph, who had enlarged on the state of morbid depression of the lonely inhabitant of Vandon, were rather taken aback by the jaunty appearance of the sufferer when he appeared, overflowing with evident satisfaction and small-talk, his face wreathed with smiles. "He bears up wonderfully," said Charles aside to Ruth, later in the evening, as Dare warbled a very discreet selection of his best songs after dinner. "No one knows better tha

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CHAPTER X.

"My dear," said Mrs. Alwynn to her husband that morning, as they started for church across the glebe, "if any of the Atherstone party are in church, as they ought to be, for I hear from Mrs. Smith that they are not at all regular at Greenacre—only went once last Sunday, and then late—I shall just tell Ruth that she is to come back to me to-morrow. A few days won't make any difference to her, and it will fit in so nicely her coming back the day you go to the palace. After all I've done for Ruth—n

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CHAPTER XI.

It was the end of August. The little lawn at Slumberleigh Rectory was parched and brown. The glebe beyond was brown; so was the field beyond that. The thirsty road was ash-white between its gray hedge-rows. It was hotter in the open air than in the house, but Ruth had brought her books out into the garden all the same, and had made a conscientious effort to read under the chestnut-tree. For under the same roof with Mrs. Alwynn she had soon learned that application or study of any kind was an imp

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CHAPTER XII.

During the whole of the following week Dare appeared no more at Slumberleigh. Mrs. Alwynn, whose time was much occupied as a rule in commenting on the smallest doings of her neighbors, and in wondering why they left undone certain actions which she herself would have performed in their place, Mrs. Alwynn would infallibly have remarked upon his absence many times during every hour of the day, had not her attention been distracted for the time being by a one-horse fly which she had seen go up the

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CHAPTER XIII.

At Slumberleigh you have time to notice the change of the seasons. There is no hurry at Slumberleigh. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter, each in their turn, take quite a year to come and go. Three months ago it was August; now September had arrived. It was actually the time of damsons. Those damsons which Ruth had seen dangling for at least three years in the cottage orchards were ripe at last. It seemed ages ago since April, when the village was a foaming mass of damson blossom, and the "plum

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CHAPTER XIV.

It was Sunday morning at Atherstone. In the dining-room, breakfasting alone, for he had come down late, was Sir Charles Danvers. His sudden arrival on the previous Saturday was easily accounted for. When he had casually walked into the drawing-room late in the evening, he had immediately and thoroughly explained the reasons of his unexpected arrival. It seemed odd that he should have come to Atherstone, in the midland counties, "on his way" between two shooting visits in the north, but so it was

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CHAPTER XV.

Great philosophers and profound metaphysicians should by rights have lived at Slumberleigh. Those whose lines have fallen to them "ten miles from a lemon," have time to think, if so inclined. Only elementary natures complain of their surroundings; and though at first Ruth had been impatient and depressed, after a time she found that, better than to live in an atmosphere of thought, was to be thrown entirely on her own resources, and to do her thinking for herself. Some minds, of course, sink int

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CHAPTER XVI.

For many years nothing had given Mr. Alwynn such heart-felt pleasure as the news Ruth had to tell him, as he drove her back next morning to Slumberleigh, behind Mrs. Alwynn's long-tailed ponies. It was a still September morning, with a faint pearl sky and half-veiled silver sun. Pale gleams of sunshine wandered across the busy harvest fields, and burnished the steel of the river. Decisions of any kind rarely look their best after a sleepless night; but as Ruth saw the expression of happiness and

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CHAPTER XVII.

The last week of September found Charles back at Stoke Moreton to receive the "friends" of whom Mrs. Alwynn spoke. People whose partridges he had helped to kill were now to be gathered from the east and from the west to help to kill his. From the north also guests were coming, were leaving their mountains to—But the remainder of the line is invidious. The Hope-Actons had written to offer a visit at Stoke Moreton on the strength of an old promise to Charles, a promise so old that he had forgotten

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CHAPTER XVIII.

"Uncle John," said Ruth next morning, taking Mr. Alwynn aside after breakfast, "we are leaving by the early train, are we not?" "No, my love, it is quite impossible. I have several papers to identify and rearrange." "We have stayed a day longer than we intended as it is. Most of the others go early. Do let us go too." "It is most natural, I am sure, my dear, that you should wish to get home," said Mr. Alwynn, looking with sympathetic concern at his niece; "and why your aunt has not forwarded you

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CHAPTER XIX.

In the long evening that followed Ruth's departure from Stoke Moreton, Charles was alone for once in his own home. He was leaving again early on the morrow, but for the time he was alone, and heavy at heart. He sat for hours without stirring, looking into the fire. He had no power or will to control his thoughts. They wandered hither and thither, and up and down, never for a moment easing the dull miserable pain that lay beneath them all. Fool! fool that he had been! To have found her after all

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CHAPTER XX.

Dare returned to Vandon in the highest spirits, with an enormous emerald engagement-ring in an inner waistcoat-pocket. He put it on Ruth's third finger a few days later, under the ancient cedar on the terrace at Vandon, a spot which, he informed her (for he was not without poetic flights at times), his inner consciousness associated with all the love scenes of his ancestors that were no more. He was stricken to the heart when, after duly admiring it, Ruth gently explained to him that she could n

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CHAPTER XXI.

The 18th of October had arrived. Slumberleigh Hall was filling. The pheasants, reprieved till then, supposed it was only for partridge shooting, and thinking no evil, ate Indian-corn, and took no thought for the annual St. Bartholomew of their race. Mabel Thursby had met Ruth out walking that day, and had informed her that Charles was to be one of the guns, also Dare, though, as she remembered to add, suspecting Dare admired Ruth, the latter was a bad shot, and was only asked out of neighborly f

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CHAPTER XXII.

Reserved people pay dear for their reserve when they are in trouble, when the iron enters into their soul, and their eyes meet the eyes of the world tearless, unflinching, making no sign. Enviable are those whose sorrows are only pen and ink deep, who take every one into their confidence, who are comforted by sympathy, and fly to those who will weep with them. There is an utter solitude, a silence in the grief of a proud, reserved nature, which adds a frightful weight to its intensity; and when

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CHAPTER XXIII.

Charles sat quite still where Ruth had left him, looking straight in front of him. He had not thought for a moment of following her, of speaking to her again. Her decision was final, and he knew it. And now he also knew how much he had built upon the wild new hope of the last two days. Presently a slight discreet cough broke upon his ear, apparently close at hand. He started up, and, wheeling round in the direction of the sound, called out, in sudden anger, "Who is there?" If there is a time whe

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CHAPTER XXIV.

If conformity to type is indeed the one great mark towards which humanity should press, Mrs. Thursby may honestly be said to have attained to it. Everything she said or did had been said or done before, or she would never have thought of saying or doing it. Her whole life was a feeble imitation of the imitative lives of others; in short, it was the life of the ordinary country gentlewoman, who lives on her husband's property, and who, as Augustus Hare says, "has never looked over the garden-wall

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CHAPTER XXV.

Dare left Slumberleigh Hall early the following morning, and drove up to the rectory on his way to Vandon. After being closeted with Mr. Alwynn in the study for a short time, they both came out and drove away together. Ruth, invisible in her own room with a headache, her only means of defence against Mrs. Alwynn's society, heard the coming and the going, and was not far wrong in her surmise that Dare had come to beg Mr. Alwynn to accompany him to Vandon—being afraid to face alone the mysterious

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CHAPTER XXVI.

Charles left Slumberleigh Hall a few hours later than Dare had done, but only to go back to Atherstone. He could not leave the neighborhood. This burning fever of suspense would be unbearable at any other place, and in any case he must return by Saturday, the day on which he had promised to meet Raymond. His hand was really slightly injured, and he made the most of it. He kept it bound up, telegraphed to put off his next shooting engagement on the strength of it, and returned to Atherstone, even

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CHAPTER XXVII.

Charles watched the detective and the policeman hoist Raymond into the dog-cart and drive away, supporting him between them. No doubt it had been the wheels of that dog-cart which they had heard in the distance. Then he turned to Brooks. "How is it you remained behind?" he asked, sharply. Brooks's face fell, and he explained that just as he was starting in the pursuit he had caught his legs on "Sir Chawles sir's" stick, and "barked hisself." "I remember," said Charles. "You got in my way. You sh

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CHAPTER XXVIII.

It was close on dressing-time when Charles came into the drawing-room, where Evelyn and Molly were building castles on the hearth-rug in the ruddy firelight. After changing his damp clothes, he had gone to the smoking-room, but he had found Dare sitting there in a vast dressing-gown of Ralph's, in a state of such utter dejection, with his head in his hands, that he had silently retreated again before he had been perceived. He did not want to see Dare just now. He wished he were not in the house.

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CHAPTER XXIX.

Dare was down early the following morning, much too early for the convenience of the house-maids, who were dusting the drawing-room when he appeared there. He was usually as late as any of the young and gilded unemployed who feel it incumbent on themselves to show by these public demonstrations their superiority to the rules and fixed hours of the working and thinking world, with whom, however, their fear of being identified is a groundless apprehension. But to-day Dare experienced a mournful sa

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CHAPTER XXX.

Mr. Alwynn had returned from his eventful morning call at Vandon very grave and silent. He shook his head when Ruth came to him in the study to ask what the result had been, and said Dare would tell her himself on his return from London, whither he had gone on business. Ruth went back to the drawing-room. She had not strength or energy to try to escape from Mrs. Alwynn. Indeed it was a relief not to be alone with her own thoughts, and to allow her exhausted mind to be towed along by Mrs. Alwynn'

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CHAPTER XXXI.

It was still early on the following morning that Dare, forgetting, as we have seen, his promise to Charles, arrived at Slumberleigh Rectory—so early that Mrs. Alwynn was still ordering dinner, or, in other words, was dashing from larder to scullery, from kitchen to dairy, with her usual energy. He was shown into the empty drawing-room, where, after pacing up and down, he was reduced to the society of a photograph album, which, in his present excited condition, could do little to soothe the tumul

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THE END.

TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS CORRECTED The following typographical errors in the text were corrected as detailed here. In the text: " ... Mrs. Alwynn had the delight of taking her completely ..." the word "competely" was corrected to "completely." In the text: "You evidently imagine that I have gone in for the fashionable creed of the young man" the word "fashionble" was corrected to "fashionable." In the text: "Molly, tired of her castles, suggested that she might sit on his knee," the word "hnee" was

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THE ODD NUMBER.

Thirteen Tales by Guy de Maupassant . The Translation by Jonathan Sturges . An Introduction by Henry James . pp. xviii., 226. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00. The tales included in "The Odd Number" are little masterpieces, and done into very clear, sweet, simple English.— William Dean Howells . There is a charming individuality in each of these fascinating little tales; something elusive and subtle in every one, something quaint or surprising, which catches the fancy and gives a sense of satisfac

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MARÍA:

A South American Romance. By Jorge Isaacs . Translated by Rollo Ogden . An Introduction by Thomas A. Janvier . pp. xvi., 302. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00. ( The Odd Number Series. ) The great forests of cotton-wood, palms, and other tropical plants, the almost impassable rivers, the rich flowers which seem to spread their fragrance over every page, make a fascinating background to a story of tender sentiment.— Boston Journal. Jorge Isaacs has given such a picture of home life, and of pure, al

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STEPNIAK'S WORKS.

THE CAREER OF A NIHILIST. A Novel. 16mo, Cloth, 75 cents. THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY: Their Agrarian Condition, Social Life, and Religion. 16mo, Cloth, $1 25. All thinking and disinterested people for whom Russia has an interest should read this volume not only for Russia's sake, but for our own.— N.Y. Times. An absorbingly interesting volume.... Stepniak deserves the gratitude of his country and all mankind for painting Russian life as it is, and pointing out a practicable solution of its worst dist

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SEBASTOPOL.

By Count Leo Tolstoï . Translated by F.D. Millet from the French ( Scenes du Siége de Sebastopol ). With Introduction by W.D. Howells . With Portrait. 16mo, Cloth, 75 cents. In his Sebastopol sketches Tolstoï is at his best, and perhaps no more striking example of his manner and form can be found.— N.Y. Tribune. There is much strong writing in the book; indeed, it is strength itself, and there is much tenderness as well.— Boston Traveller. Its workmanship is superb, and morally its influence sho

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BEN-HUR: A TALE OF THE CHRIST.

By Lew Wallace . New Edition, pp. 552. 16mo, Cloth, $1 50. Anything so startling, new, and distinctive as the leading feature of this romance does not often appear in works of fiction.... Some of Mr. Wallace's writing is remarkable for its pathetic eloquence. The scenes described in the New Testament are rewritten with the power and skill of an accomplished master of style.— N.Y. Times. Its real basis is a description of the life of the Jews and Romans at the beginning of the Christian era, and

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