They went into the orchard, and sat under the crab-apple tree. Its branches, heavy with tiny rose-flushed apples, hung down over Rose Ellen’s head. She leaned against the tree, and Peter lay full length on the grass beside her and talked. He always talked to Rose Ellen, and Rose Ellen always listened. She wore a brown linen dress, and her thick, curly plait of hair hung over one shoulder. She still had the rose-leaf complexion of her babyhood. Her brown eyes were like pools.
Peter told her all about Sylvia, speaking in the rapt whisper of the devotee, and Rose Ellen listened, not looking at him. She was plaiting a yellow grass stalk into a ring.
“She must be lovely,” she said when Peter paused for breath.
“She’s frightfully lovely,” said Peter. “She is … Rose Ellen, if you could see her, you’d know that you’d never seen a really lovely person before. That’s how I felt the very first minute.”
“Oh, Peter de—ah,” said Rose Ellen.
She said “Petah” as she had always said it. Sometimes Peter teased her about it, but she went on doing it. Rose Ellen could be very determined and she liked saying “Petah”—that was the way she always thought of him.
“She’s like—I’ll tell you what she’s like,” said Peter in gruff, impassioned tones. “You know what a stained-glass window looks like when you see it from outside all rough and dull. That’s what most people are like. Then you go inside, and you see the light coming through the window, all the colours frightfully bright and shining like—like jewels. That’s what she’s like. She’s like a jewel herself. She’s like the most wonderful jewel in the world.”
His voice dropped to a whisper, and he looked past Rose Ellen without seeing her. He was seeing Sylvia and the Jewel, the Jewel and Sylvia; each the only one in the world, the heart’s desire of men.
Rose Ellen looked at him with troubled eyes. She said at last in a small, low voice:
“Is she fond of you, Peter?”
Peter exclaimed and flung out an impatient hand.
“You don’t understand a bit,” he said. “You talk as if she was just an ordinary sort of girl. I don’t expect her to be fond of me. I don’t expect her to be fond of anyone. You wouldn’t talk about a queen being fond of the people who—who think it an honour to serve her, would you? She’s like that.”
“Isn’t she fond of people, then?” said Rose Ellen.
“I tell you she’s like a queen or a princess. People ought to wait on her, and do things because of her, and—and love her frightfully, of course.”
“She isn’t fond of people, then?” said Rose Ellen, still with those troubled eyes.
“She’s like a jewel,” said Peter; “she’s like a beautiful, shining jewel.”
Rose Ellen was silent. She slipped the plaited ring on to one of her fingers, and then, very slowly, she pulled it off again. She looked at Peter, and saw his eyes full of something which hurt.
She said, “Oh, Peter, is she?” and then, “Peter, I don’t like jewels much.”
Peter stared at her, all angry scorn.
“You little mug, you don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Rose Ellen nodded wisely. Her hands clasped one another very tight.
“I do. I do,” she said. “Dearest has lots, and, indeed, I don’t like them—not very much, Peter de—ah. They’re hard, and they’re cold, and the colour in them doesn’t change. They’re not like flowers.”
“Of course they’re not,” said Peter. “Who wants them to be?”
“I do,” said Rose Ellen. “I would like them much better if they were flowers. I like things to be soft, and to smell sweet like flowers do. I think I don’t really like jewels at all, Peter de—ah.”
Peter laughed rather angrily.
“You’re just a little, stupid thing that doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he said. “But then you haven’t seen Sylvia. If you did see her, you’d simply adore her.”
Rose Ellen did not speak, she played with her plaited ring. After a long pause Peter said under his breath:
“Rose Ellen, can you keep a secret?”
Rose Ellen nodded.
“Sure? Girls are such awful blabs.”
“I’m not,” she said.
“You’d tell your Mrs. Mortimer.”
She shook her head again.
“Promise, then.”
She frowned.
“I won’t promise. I said I wouldn’t tell.”
“Better promise, to make sure.”
She shook her head.
“Little mug!”
He caught her hand and squeezed it teasingly. For a moment he was the old Peter again, her Peter.
“Little obstinate mug. Won’t promise, won’t tell?”
“I won’t tell, Peter de—ah,” said Rose Ellen very seriously.
He told her all he knew about the Annam Jewel.
Rose Ellen listened, looking down at him as he lay propped on his elbows, his chin resting between two large fists, his eyes looking past Rose Ellen and the orchard, on through the years.
“When I am twenty-five …” he said, and broke off.
“Yes, Peter?”
He started, threw a fleeting glance at her, hesitated, and said, frowning:
“When I am twenty-five I shall marry Sylvia, and give her the Jewel to wear.”
It was out of his inmost heart that he spoke. Rose Ellen knew that. She said:
“It’s a long time till you’re twenty-five, Peter de—ah.”
Peter said nothing. After a long minute he made a sudden movement and buried his face in Rose Ellen’s lap.
“I love her so frightfully,” he whispered.
Rose Ellen saw his shoulders heave. Her soft mouth trembled a little, but she did not speak. After a minute or two she dropped her little ring of plaited grass and laid a small brown hand on Peter’s head.
CHAPTER XII
In 1914, Peter was twenty and Rose Ellen sixteen. Peter was in the Argentine on a horse ranch, and Rose Ellen was at a finishing school—a most expensive finishing school.
Mrs. Mortimer was a good deal relieved when she heard that Peter had left the country after a flaring row with his uncle.
The cause of the row was Peter’s unqualified refusal to enter his uncle’s office. Matthew Waring behaved as many another man has behaved in like circumstances. His own disappointment blinded him; he became incapable of seeing anything else. He accused Peter of ingratitude, and paraded his hurt feelings, his loneliness, and his affection for Peter, and ended with an unconditional surrender, an introduction to people of repute in the Argentine, and some really generous financial backing.
Peter’s twenty-first birthday found him in France.
At twenty-five the war was behind him, and he had inherited eight hundred a year from Matthew Waring.
The years had brought odd changes. Mrs. Mortimer had turned Merton Clevery into a convalescent home. In the second year of the war she married one of her patients, an excellent, dull, jocose man of the name of Gaisford. Rose Ellen, thrilled to the depths of an unselfish heart, had shared in Dearest’s happiness. It was only when she discovered that it was going to be impossible to break Major Gaisford of his habit of calling her Rosie that her romantic feelings received a slight chill.
Mrs. Gaisford continued to love Rose Ellen, but Rose Ellen was no longer the one supreme object of her existence. In 1917 her cup of happiness overflowed; she became the proud mother of a remarkably fine little boy—a healthy, red-faced, jolly infant, whom everyone pronounced to be the living image of his father. Rose Ellen adored the baby. The news, broken to her with much tact, that she must no longer consider herself the heiress of Merton Clevery left her quite unruffled. Only, after four years, instead of being at the centre of the family, she found herself, as it were, upon its edge.
During the years of the war she only saw Peter four times. At twenty she was a little lonely, without knowing it.
A week before his twenty-fifth birthday Peter went down
to Merton Clevery for a few days. His affairs had kept him busy during the month that had elapsed since he had been demobilized, but he responded now to quite a gracious invitation from Mrs. Gaisford. The situation had changed: she was no longer jealous; Rose Ellen was no longer an heiress; and Peter was no longer quite ineligible.
Peter took the train, not to Merton, but to Hastney Mere. It was a fine spring day, and he had a fancy to cross the water-meadows and climb up through the beech woods to the heathery upland beyond, as he had done thirteen years before with little Rose Ellen.
The road that had seemed so long then was nothing of a tramp to Peter now. He came out on the heath in full sunshine, and walked along the grassy track until he came to the hollow where he had left Rose Ellen in the wind and the rain whilst he went forward to spy out the land. He hesitated a moment, and then turned off the path and went down into the hollow.
Rose Ellen was sitting there—not the little Rose Ellen of whom he had been thinking, with her cropped head and drenched sweater, but a quite grown up Rose Ellen in a green linen dress and a wide rush hat. She was singing under her breath.
Peter stood and looked at her. She was nice to look at. He decided approvingly that Rose Ellen grown up was a very pretty girl. He called out to her, and she jumped up and came to meet him.
For the first time, Peter did not kiss her. He had always kissed Rose Ellen. He had certainly meant to kiss her now, but somehow he didn’t do it. He had not the slightest idea that it was Rose Ellen who had stopped him. She gave him both her hands and a lovely smile, and she said:
“Oh, Petah de—ah!” And quite suddenly Peter was as unable to kiss her as if they had never met before.
They sat on the grass and talked, falling quickly and easily into the old intimacy; and, as usual, it was Peter who talked and Rose Ellen who listened. He was full of his plans and at a word they came pouring out.
“You’re not going back to the Argentine, are you, Peter?”
Rose Ellen’s voice shook just a very little as she put the question. The Argentine was a long way off. After the war she didn’t feel as if she could bear Peter to go right away to the other side of the map.
Peter shook his head.
“No, I’m not going back. I’m a bit fed up with Dagos. I want to be in England; and Uncle Matthew’s money makes it possible. It was frightfully decent of him to leave it to me, wasn’t it?”
Rose Ellen nodded. Little warm waves of thankfulness were beating upon her. She felt so dreadfully glad that she couldn’t speak, so she nodded, and her delicate pink colour rose a little.
“There’s a friend of mine, a fellow called Tressilian—you’d like him awfully, he’s a most amusing chap—we’re going into partnership. We’re going to breed horses. He’s got family acres in Devonshire and no money; and I’ve got Uncle Matthew’s money and no acres. I think we ought to make quite a good thing of it. He’s down there now, and I’m seeing to things in town. There’s a good deal of business connected with Uncle Matthew’s estate that had to stand over till I got back.”
“It sounds lovely,” said Rose Ellen.
They walked home slowly, Peter still discoursing.
It was next day when they were in the orchard that Rose Ellen asked him about Sylvia Coverdale. They were sitting under the very tree where they had sat when Rose Ellen made her little plaited ring, and Peter told her that when he was twenty-five he was going to marry Sylvia and give her the Annam Jewel. From that day to this he had never mentioned Sylvia again. In a week Peter would be twenty-five. Rose Ellen could keep the question back no longer. The apple tree was full of pink-and-white blossom. Rose Ellen filled her hands with the fallen petals and made a little pile of them on the lap of her rose-coloured gown. She looked down at the pink and white, and she said:
“Do you ever see Sylvia Coverdale, Peter?”
“Oh, she’s married,” said Peter carelessly. “Yes, I see her sometimes. She’s is a widow now. Her name’s Moreland, Lady Moreland.”
“Is she as pretty as ever?” said Rose Ellen.
She didn’t look at Peter.
“Oh, prettier, much prettier,” said Peter.
Rose Ellen laughed.
“Oh, Peter!” she said. “How could she be?”
“Why?”
“Because she was so very lovely then. I didn’t think anyone could be prettier than that.”
“I was fearfully keen on her when I was seventeen,” said Peter.
“And not now?”
This time Rose Ellen did look. She had to see Peter’s face, because she simply had to know what perhaps he would not tell her in words. She kept her soft voice steady.
“Oh, lord, no—not like that. She’s frightfully pretty and—and an awfully good sort, and we’re great friends.”
“Have you seen much of her?”
“Well, I always seemed to run across her if I was ever on leave. I’d like you to meet her. You’d like her immensely. She’s very sympathetic and feminine, you know—not a bit like most of the girls one comes across. You’d like her no end.”
“Should I?” said Rose Ellen. Then her colour rose, and she said with a sudden smile. “Are you still going to give her the Annam Jewel, Peter?”
“Not much!” said Peter cheerfully.
The day he went away was the last of the hot spring days. Clouds were already piling up from the south-west when Rose Ellen walked with him across the fields to Merton. She was happy because Dearest had been very kind indeed and Peter was coming down again quite soon.
Peter talked about his horse farm. He was very keen about it. When they reached the station there was not too much time. Peter took his ticket, got into an empty third-class carriage, and went on talking about horses, and Devonshire, and Jim Tressilian.
“You’ll have to come and keep house for us,” he said cheerfully as the train began to move. “Mrs. Mortimer doesn’t want you now. She’s got old Gaisford and the baby, and can very well spare you.”
Rose Ellen walked back with a scarlet colour in her cheeks and two wounds in her heart. One of the wounds was just a surface one, because, although it was true in a sense that Dearest could do without her, she had accustomed herself to the thought. The other wound was a very deep one; Rose Ellen’s happiness was draining away through it. She had thought, yes, she had really thought—the scarlet burned her cheeks—but Peter would never have said that about coming to keep house unless he was just thinking of her as his sister.
“And I’m not, I’m not! I won’t be, and I’m not.”
She stood quite still in the middle of a field, and remembered how Peter had said, “When we’re grown up I’ll marry you, and then your name will really be Waring.” That was years and years before he had said that he would marry Sylvia when he was twenty-five. Now he was going back to London. Something in Rose Ellen said that he was going back to Sylvia.
She walked home very slowly.
CHAPTER XIII
At twelve o’clock on the morning of his twenty-fifth birthday Peter Waring emerged from the offices of Messrs. Wadsgrove, Wadsgrove, Spenlow & Walton, with a dispatch case in his hand. He called a taxi, and drove straight to his rooms in Bury Street.
Twenty minutes later he was breaking the seals which had guarded his father’s papers for twenty-five years. The seals bore the Waring crest—a clenched fist and the words “Be Ware”. The ring which had made the impression was on the little finger of Peter’s left hand. He unlocked the box and threw back the lid. His hand did not shake, but it was a tremendous moment. He had the feeling that here, at this instant, he was leaving the land of everyday behind, and passing into some place of adventurous dreams beyond. He was about to possess the Annam Jewel, to see and handle the Annam Jewel; and always the Annam Jewel had meant for him romance, the something beyond. Once it had meant Sylvia Coverdale to him. When he was twenty-five he would receive the Annam Jewel and he would marry Sylvia.
He paused for a moment, with his hand on the papers under the lid, a
nd thought about Sylvia.
She had married well, if not brilliantly. She was Lady Moreland when Peter went to the Argentine. Now she was a widow of three years’ standing. Peter had met her only the day before. He was dining with her tonight.
Peter thought of her with an admiration untinged by romance. It was no longer Sylvia and the Jewel, the Jewel and Sylvia. The Jewel reigned alone.
He lifted a sheet of foolscap and saw, written across it in pencil, “For my son Peter when he is twenty-five”, and a scrawled “Henry Waring”. Under the sheet of paper was an exercise-book with a black cover. Peter laid it aside, and saw in the bottom of the case a small, square cardboard box. He took it up, opened it, pulled back a layer of discoloured cotton wool, and saw the Jewel. It was a little smaller than his thumb nail. It was not like any jewel that he had ever seen. There was red in it, but it was not a ruby; there was blue in it, and green, but it was neither a sapphire nor an emerald; there were all these colours, but it was not an opal.
Peter set down the box, picked up the Jewel between his finger and thumb, and walked with it to the window, frowning The day was dull; that was why the Jewel had no fire. It was May, but the sky was leaden. The colours in the Jewel seemed dull. He pulled down the blind with a jerk, switched on the centre drop light, and held the Jewel right under it, turning it this way and that. It was dull and cold.
Peter knew very little about precious stones, but it seemed to him that the thing was too light by half. He went back to the window and tried the edge of the Jewel on the glass. After a moment’s puzzled scrutiny he sat down at the table, dropped the Jewel back upon the stained cotton wool, and took up the black exercise-book. He turned the leaves and saw that they were closely written on, partly in ink and partly in pencil.
He left the light burning, and settled himself to read. The entries began abruptly, at the top of a left-hand page, with part of an old letter attached by its corners. There was no beginning to the first sentence:
The Annam Jewel Page 8
