Ainslee's Magazine/The Disquieting Diamonds

by Eleanor H. Porter

 

THE DISQUIETING DIAMONDS

BY

Eleanor H. Porter

 

IT was early in the third week of December that Marjorie Carrolton and Stewart Harding had eaten the twin kernels of the filbert together. In less than two days afterward he had taken a cup of tea from her entrapping fingers, and had heard her low-spoken: “Philopena, sir—I've won!”

The delicate cup had tinkled his perturbation against the saucer, and the tremor of his hand had been duplicated in his voice when he spoke—possibly because of his defeat; probably because of the light meeting of their finger tips beneath the cup of tea.

“You have, indeed,” he had acknowledged. “And I—I'll speedily pay my debts. Watch out at—Christmas time!” he had finished significantly.

Marjorie Carrolton never opened her Christmas presents until the morning of December twenty-fifth. No matter how tantalizing the appearance of the parcel nor how premature its arrival, it was banished at once to the obscurity of a certain drawer in the library. On Christmas morning the family gifts, together with the accumulations of the postman's and the express-man's visits through the week, were all placed together on a table at the head of Marjorie's bed. Marjorie, in spite of her twenty-four years and accredited dignity, was a bit of a child at heart, and this aggregation of many-shaped, many-sized packages to greet her waking eyes was the nearest approach to her childhood's dearly-loved stocking-hanging that she could devise.

Upon this particular Christmas morning the table was crowded with boxes, and the boxes were crowded with good things; yet all faded into colorless insignificance when Marjorie's pink thumb pressed the spring on the round, leather-covered box and disclosed the diamond necklace.

“Oh—oh—oh!” cried the girl, in a crescendo of admiration, feasting her eyes on the scintillating loveliness before her. “What a dear old dad he is!”

Half an hour later she threw herself into the arms of a gray-haired man standing before the fireplace in the breakfast room.

“Oh, dad, dad, you old darling! It's a beauty—a perfect beauty!”

“Hm-m; liked it, did you?” chuckled the man. “Hm-m; thought you would!”

“'Liked' it? As if I didn't adore it!”

“Thought I'd give you something practical,” chuckled the man again.

“'Practical'! Oh, dad!” laughed Marjorie.

“Besides, you're always complaining of your old one, and saying—-”

“'Old' one!” Marjorie's eyes were dazed.

“Yes; that it didn't keep good time, and——”

“Father, what are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about? Your old watch, to be sure, and the new one I gave you this morning. What else should I be talking about, pray?”

“Watch? Oh, I got that, and 'twas a dear—just what I wanted; but you know very well I didn't mean that. 'Twas the other one—you know 'twas the other one! You're teasing me, dad—you rogue!”

“The other one!”

The man's amazement was unmistakable. Marjorie hurried from the room and came back a minute later with the round, leather-covered box.

“Well, by Jove!” said Mr. Carrolton, weakly, as the diamonds flashed into his eyes.

“But who could have given it, if not you?” demanded Marjorie.

“Wasn't there a card—a name?” he asked.

“Not a thing.”

“Where's the wrapper?”

Again Marjorie hurried from the room, only to come back five minutes later with a clouded face.

“Mary has taken away every vestige of the papers,” she announced, despairingly. “It's the ashman's day, and he has already come and gone.”

“Maybe your aunt Helen sent it—from 'The Maples.'”

“Maybe she did! I'll write.”

And Marjorie did write. Aunt Helen—a maiden aunt, whose millions it was supposed would one day fall to Marjorie—replied at once with a stilted little note. Its words merely told Marjorie that no diamond necklace had been sent from “The Maples”; but its air of distinct disapproval told more that, in the writer's opinion, a young woman who was so overjoyed at the acquisition of frivolous gewgaws was scarcely a fit young person to have charge of great wealth. Certain it is that Marjorie, after reading the note, cast about in her mind for the names of her cousins—now possible heirs to her aunt's money.

It was on New Year's Day that the note came, and it was on New Year's Day that Marjorie first saw Stewart Harding after his absence of two weeks from the city.

“Well, my fair creditor—that was,” he began, lightly—“now that my debts are paid, I can look the world in the face once more.”

“P-paid?—debts?” stammered Marjorie.

“Surely; my philopena. Didn't you get my package at Christmas?”

Marjorie caught her breath sharply. Was this the explanation of the mystery? It could not be—he would not have presumed to send so valuable a gift! And yet he was fabulously rich and noted for his wild expenditures of money.

She frowned; then her face cleared. After all, it was absurd even to think of it. His gift must have been mis-sent.

“Package?” she laughed back at him. “I received lots of packages at Christmas, but not one with your name, sir—not one.”

“Oh, I didn't put my name to it,” he retorted, airily.

Again Marjorie caught her breath with a little gasp.

“Didn't put your name to it!” she cried.

He looked at her with puzzled eyes.

“Miss Carrolton, you—you did get it.” he hazarded.

“How do I know, if your name wasn't there?” she temporized, loath to credit her fears.

Again his puzzled eyes sought hers.

“Surely you must have received it,” he insisted.

Marjorie opened her lips, then closed them irresolutely. Twice already she had given thanks for those miserable diamonds only to have her gratitude thrust back in her face. She could picture the polite amazement in this young man's eyes if she thanked him for a diamond necklace!—and she could picture her own chagrin that he should think her capable of supposing for an instant such a gift could come from him. On the other hand, if he had sent it, it must be returned at once, of course, and——

“Well,” suggested the man, with an elaborate air of patience, “evidently it's a weighty matter.”

“It is,” she retorted; then, a little hysterically: “I'll tell you, we'll play it's a game! I'll guess it. You shall describe it by answers to my questions. Is it pretty?”

“What's that? Oh, certainly—I understand,” he laughed. “Well—I think it pretty.”

“Hm-m. Good to eat?”—hopefully.

“I should hate to try it.”

“Oh! To—to read?” This was said with decision.

“Not a bit of it!”

“Well, then, good to—to look at?”

He smiled quizzically.

“Well, it isn't exactly—ugly.”

Marjorie moistened her lips.

“Is it to—wear?”

“Yes.”

“Oh!"—it was almost a cry of pain. “To—to wear,” she repeated, faintly. She hesitated a moment, then ventured: “Er—useful?”

“Hm-m—hardly—in the strict sense of the word,” he acknowledged. “It wouldn't keep you—well, warm, for instance.”

“Oh, then it isn't a sealskin coat!” laughed Marjorie, nervously—and bit her tongue with vexation the minute the words had left her lips.

“It certainly isn't,” he chuckled. “It's—well, smaller, you know.”

“Oh, 'smaller,'” echoed Marjorie, hastily. “Hm-m; made of silk?”

“No.”

“Cotton?”

“No.”

“Wood?”

“No.”

“Silver?”

“No.”

“Er—gold?”

“Partly.”

“Oh! Then it's an ornament?” Marjorie's voice shook.

“That's about it.”

She stirred uneasily.

“Well, really, I—I—Mr. Harding, I can't possibly keep it,” she finished, desperately.

“Can't keep it!” remonstrated the man. “Why, Miss Carrolton, a philopena?—a little thing like that?”

“Oh, it's a little thing—a little thing, is it?"

“Why, of course,” he assured her. “It's just nothing at all!”

Marjorie drew a long breath, and her face cleared. Another question trembled on her lips when an interruption came and she was forced to give her attention elsewhere.

“Continued in our next,” she laughed, softly, as she turned away.

“Nothing—'just nothing at all,'” mused Marjorie that night, taking the shimmering mass of diamonds from the leather case. “Of course he didn't send them—but who did?—and where is the philopena he did send? 'Nothing'!—indeed!” And Marjorie swung the necklace back and forth and gloried in its dazzling flashes of orange and red and green.

In the days that immediately followed, Marjorie turned herself into an amateur detective.

“Surely,” she told herself, “a diamond necklace is not so slight a thing that its giver can long remain hidden. The friends who have the means and the right and a probable inclination to present me with a gift so valuable are not so numerous that I need to despair of finding the most generous one of them all.”

Sly hints were dropped and diplomatic notes were written. Relatives were adroitly questioned and old family friends were trapped into making supposedly incriminating statements; but all in vain. The mystery appeared to be unsolvable.

On one point only Marjorie thought she was sure—Harding had not sent the jewels. It was when she heard him say one day, in speaking of a yacht he had just bought: “'Twas only a matter of four thousand dollars more than the other one—and what's four thousand dollars? Nothing—just nothing at all!”—it was then that the phrase, “just nothing at all,” struck her as strangely familiar. Suddenly she remembered—and grew faint with dismay.

“So that was what he considered 'nothing—just nothing at all'! Four thousand dollars! Was it possible, after all, that he had sent the necklace? Stray bits of gossip came to her ears of the way Harding flung his money right and left. Twice she almost spoke to him, and once she wrapped the round leather box ready for its return; but always the memory of her past failures silenced her lips and stayed her hands.

She came to hate the jewels, and she had not even once worn them. For a while she had reveled in their sparkling, ever-changing loveliness; but now she kept them securely locked in the library safe, and thought of them with daily increasing bitterness.

In some way, indefinable to Marjorie, they seemed to stand always between herself and the man she had come to love. Did Harding smile oddly or let fall an enigmatical remark, Marjorie laid it at once to the necklace—he had sent it. Did he resume his old frankness and ease of manner, and joke as in days gone by, again Marjorie thought of the necklace—he had not sent it. There was ever before her vision the gleam of the hidden diamonds, and from day to day her conduct, when she was with Harding, began to resemble more and more the changeableness and the brilliancy of the gems locked away in her father's safe.

It was on a grand opera night that Marjorie yielded to her father's appeals and put on the diamond necklace. It had taken some urging and more bantering to accomplish this; but now that it was done, Marjorie quite approved of the effect of the gleaming jewels against her satiny skin. She was in excellent spirits as she sat in her father's box, and between the acts she welcomed most cordially the various visitors as they came to chat; but when Harding appeared, she changed color.

She noticed his eyes as they so quickly dropped to the necklace, and at once the stones seemed to burn into her flesh. The hot blood swept to her forehead, and her eyes wavered as they met his gaze.

“I thought you were out of town,” she said, with an attempt at lightness.

“I was—until seven o'clock,” he returned, softly. “I hurried back on purpose for to-night—for this!”

His tone and his manner were unmistakable. To him, her heightened color and evident embarrassment could mean but one thing—she loved him. The thought sent the blood pounding through his veins, and nearly swept him off his feet for very joy. To Marjorie, his glorified face meant only a confirmation of her fears—he had sent the necklace and was rejoicing at his first sight of it worn by herself.

“And now,” he continued, “I'm more than rewarded for my hurry of the last eight hours. You—you never looked lovelier, Miss Carrolton. They become you—jewels. Some eyes are dimmed by the luster of diamonds, but not yours.”

“Flatterer!” she laughed, nervously, with a sudden determination to end once for all the vexed question. “As if I'd never worn diamonds before!”

“But not these, Miss Carrolton.”

“No, not these,” she agreed, with averted eyes; then her breath came more quickly. “By the way, Mr. Harding, did we ever settle that little philopena matter? Did I ever find out what it was?” she asked.

“As if you didn't know!” he smiled back at her.

“But how should I,” she challenged, “with no card to tell?”

“Did you need one, Miss Carrolton?”

His eyes sought hers, and her own fell.

“Is that why you've not worn my gift all these weeks?” he went on, gravely. “Is it?”

“But—I could not, I cannot; that is, I—Mr. Harding, it must go back to-morrow. I can't possibly keep it!”

“Can't keep it! But, my dear Miss Carrolton, we fought that little matter out long ago, I thought.”

“No, no, you don't understand! I did not know—until to-night I was not sure 'twas from you.”

“Not sure!” began Harding, but a long, sweet note from the first violins interrupted, the curtain rose, and Miss Carrolton turned toward the stage.

It was eleven o'clock the next morning when Harding rang the bell at the Carrolton residence on Fifth Avenue. Marjorie came promptly into the little reception room, but she started back in dismay at sight of his drawn face and trouble-laden eyes.

“Why, what is it?” she cried.

“Marjorie,” he began, sweeping aside the restraints of conventionality, “you—you'll probably never forgive me, but—I had to come. There was no other way. It—it's about the necklace.”

A scarlet flush mounted to the girl's forehead.

“You need not have troubled,” she said, coldly. “It is already packed to go.”

His jaw fell.

“Then it was—then you knew—you found out?”

“Found out?”

“That 'twas stolen, I mean.”

Things grew black before Marjorie's eyes, and the room swam round and round. The blood beat against her ear-drums and thundered the word in great throbs of pain—“stolen”! Harding's troubled face danced before her eyes in a horrible blur of unreality, and to her perverted vision, each woeful line and pallid feature spelled “thief—thief!”

“After all,” continued Harding, “I'm glad you knew something of it—though how you could have found it out, I don't see. It's a beastly mess all around. Only think how I felt to have to come to you and tell you that the jewels you wore were originally stolen, and that you must give an account of how they came into your possession! I flatly refused at first, but in the end I had to come—'twas the only way out of it. Banks said he'd come if I didn't, and I thought you'd rather learn it from me than from him.”

“B-banks?” stammered Marjorie.

“The detective. I knew him at college. He saw me with you last night in the box, and came to my rooms at once.”

Marjorie brushed the backs of her fingers across her eyes.

What was this thing to which she was listening?—this horrible nightmare of a story? What sort of a farce—farce?—it was a tragedy—was this that was playing itself out before her eyes? Surely this man standing there was Harding—Harding, her good friend; this was no thief!

“You see, he knew the jewels the minute he'd laid eyes on them,” Harding went on. “He sat close to your box and examined them very carefully through his opera glasses. The peculiar design, and the way they were mounted—in set of threes and fives, you know—gave them away. But tell me, do; how did you come by the miserable things?”

Something seemed to snap in Marjorie's brain. She sprang to her feet and took one step forward.

“And you—you don't know?” she cried.

“I? Of course not. How should I?”

“Not a thing?”

“Only what Banks told me—and that certainly doesn't include an account of how the jewels came to be in your possession—he's completely dumfounded himself over the matter. My dear Miss Carrolton, what do you mean?” added Harding, his eyes growing more and more puzzled. “What have I to do with this thing?”

Marjorie pulled herself together and drew a long breath.

“Do? You have everything in the world to do with it,” she cried. “You have to tell me straight from the beginning just what that man Banks said to you!”

Forty-eight hours afterward there appeared in a New York paper the following:

A certain forty-five-thousand-dollar diamond necklace which was supposed to have been sent from this city to Boston, and which was thought to have been stolen, has been found. The necklace had been made to order from a very peculiar design, and was thus the more easily recognized if seen. A private detective of the jewelry firm, while at the opera, discovered the gems on the neck of a young and beautiful woman—a member of one of New York's most exclusive families. Inquiry disclosed the fact that the necklace had been received among other Christmas presents, and that the fair recipient had been for weeks vainly searching for some one to thank for her princely gift. An error of a trusted clerk caused the mistake, and the sudden fatal illness of this same clerk immediately afterward complicated matters very considerably. The necklace is now in the possession of the lady for whom it was originally designed.

It must have been a year later that a brilliant wedding was extensively reported in the society papers. One paragraph in particular was of unusual interest. It read:

The only ornament the bride wore was a tiny locket suspended from a slender gold chain. The locket was shaped like a filbert. It was beautifully chased, and bore the bride's initials in seed pearls.