JULIE
ODDLY enough, that very morning Mrs. Burmer said to her husband, ‘ It is very foolish, Edward, but I wish I had some diamonds. When I was young it didn’t matter.’
He looked up a little surprised. This was very odd, he thought.
‘ What’s the good of them?’ he asked. ‘ You have your sapphires, and the pearls I gave you on our wedding day, my mother’s topazes, and your aunt’s garnets.’
‘ Yes, but every woman who has been married ten years has a diamond necklace; or a bracelet at any rate. If she hasn’t, it looks as though her husband didn’t care for her, or she never had a birthday.’
‘ Well, no one would suspect you of having had many birthdays,’ he answered ingeniously. ‘ But why should you hanker after diamonds?—you are neither a countess nor an actress.’
‘ Yes, but Edward dear,’ she went on earnestly, ‘ diamonds are very becoming; every woman longs for a few.’
‘ A lady mayoress generally has stacks of them,’ he remarked provokingly.
‘ It’s not as if we were really poor,’ she went on. ‘ We are living at the rate of two thousand a year.’
‘ Getting into debt at that rate, you mean. We have five or six hundred pounds at the bank just now, but it is a mere fluke. Really, it is very difficult to make two ends meet in London, if one lives with any comfort at all. The farmers are determined not to pay any rent, and repairs are the devil. We shall have to give up the Engadine this August, and to let the shooting in the autumn. So there doesn’t seem much margin for diamonds, eh?’
‘ Yes, but every one with land says the same, you know, and it doesn’t prevent other women from having ornaments. They are not like things that want renewing, they wear for ever.’
He looked at her for a moment. Her hair was a dull light brown, her complexion pale, her outlines clear cut, her features somewhat massive, her movements slow and deliberate. He remembered that she would be thirty-six next October. ‘ I expect she is beginning to care for ornaments and velvet gowns and lap-dogs and the sort of thing,’ he thought. ‘ She is the type of woman who does, and it is a shame not to give them to her. After all, her pleasures are rather limited.’ He always felt sorry for her limitations. There was no humour in her; it must be so deadly dull to have no humour. She had no quickness either mental or physical; she was merely one of the well-behaved, well-meaning, rather dull-witted women who seem to have been born by the score to form the rank and file of the class that lives in west-end squares and drives out diligently every day.
‘ I must go and see what the letters are about,’ he said, getting up. ‘ We’ll talk about the diamonds when we have let those two farms.’ He went to his study and thought over the conversation. There had been something absurd in it. To go out and buy diamonds at this time of day would be ridiculous. It ought to have been done before if at all, at the same time and in the same spirit as the plate and linen had been bought at the beginning of his unadventurous career as a married man.
And then he thought of a bracelet—a splendid one—he had given Julie Leloire years ago, long before he had ever set eyes on Emily. How well he remembered the morning he first saw it in the jeweller’s window in the Rue de la Paix! He turned and looked back at it and thought of Julie, but did not seriously think of buying it till the Sunday he won four hundred on the Grand Prix. Awfully lucky he was that year, to be sure. His grandmother had died in the early spring and left him a few thousands. Funny thing to have had a grandmother alive! It sounded so young; he felt as if it must have been a century ago. He gave Julie no end of treats on the strength of his grandmother’s ghost—not nearly so many as he had wished, for there were trustees who kept an eye upon him in those days; and they insisted on investments. Pretty waste of time and money he had thought investments at three and a half per cent; but he had altered his opinion since then. But Julie had nothing besides the treats out of his grandmother’s legacy; it would not admit, or that portion of it that came directly into his hands would not, of anything more extravagant.
When he won the money on the Grand Prix he felt that it was his very own and not to spend it on ‘ a gorgeous lark’ would be an insult to his youthful energies. Julies was a cormorant for ornaments and trash of all sorts, excellent judge of them too, which was more than he was; so he determined that for once he would give her something worth having. That bracelet in its blue velvet case on the little brass stand in the shop window, with the neat little ticket stating that its price was 5000 francs, seemed to project itself farther and farther towards him every time he passed the shop; till at last, with a roll of notes in his pocket, he walked into the shop with the air of a man who is making a plunge. He picked up Julie by the Opera House, they drove straight off to the Gare St. Lazare, and took the train for St. Germainen-Laye. He gave her the bracelet in the railway carriage. She clapped her hands for joy, and kissed it, and laughed, and showed her little white teeth, and kissed him, and laughed again. They dined at the Henri Quatre that evening on a dinner a king would not have despised; and walked about the forest afterwards, till they found themselves shut in and had no end of trouble to get out again. By Jove! what days they were. He wondered what Emily would say if she knew about them—luckily she didn’t, and she wasn’t likely to know either. What a look there had been in Julie’s eyes. You could never tell what she was going to do next; that was her great charm. And the way she shook her dress when she was in a rage! it was like a little whisk of the devil’s tail: he told her so once, and she laughed with delight. Great heavens! and to think that he had settled down to his humdrum life—to Emily and respectability, to middle-age and dinner parties. The dinner parties bored him horribly; but if he didn’t got to them he was expected to dine at home with Emily, which was nearly as bad. She did not approve of too many evenings at the club—besides, they were expensive. Emily was awfully good, not a grain of vice in her: perhaps that was why he found her so slow. But after all there was nothing like respectability when you had to take life seriously. He had had his fling at the other thing, and it had come to an end—and so much the better. With this philosophical tag to his thoughts he proceeded to open his letters; for he never allowed them to spoil his appetite by being put on the breakfast table.
‘ Humph, a bill. I thought so. Another. They are coming thick and fast. No good paying them; we should only run up some more, so we may as well be content with those we have. Why,’—he took up a letter with a French stamp on it, and looked at the handwriting unbelievingly. ‘ Can’t be—yet I think it is. Very odd if it is. Just when I’ve been thinking of her; sort of thing that gives excuse for the nonsense they talk about psychical research and electric waves.’
He opened the envelope as if it held something uncanny, and took out the sheet of thin paper it contained:—
‘ CHER AMI—I have come to England to-morrow, and will be at the Hôtel de Paris, opposite Victoria Station, at 11·30; and for the sake of our old friendship I ask you to come and see me there, or if you prefer it, I will instantly go to you.—À vous,
J. L.’
‘ Who would have thought of Julie turning up again?’ He read her letter a second time, and looked at it almost ruefully. ‘ I wish she hadn’t written; it is awkward, and I don’t want to see her.’ He had done with all that sort of thing. He was married and had settled down for life. Emily was a good sensible wife. He didn’t pretend that he was very much in love with her, but he had married her for half a dozen excellent reasons, though love was not one of them; and he meant to be faithful to her, even if it were a bit slow. And he didn’t want to get entangled, or to have any nonsense with Julie. Besides, Julie was married too. She had behaved rather badly about her marriage; sprung it on him suddenly one day when it was obvious that his resources were somewhat crippled. He didn’t think she could be poor, for he had heard that her husband was fairly well off; besides, she had inherited from her mother one or two little houses, which she let furnished, along the St. Germain line. What on earth could she want to see him for? Looking back, he didn’t feel that she had ever been violently in love with him, though he had made a fool of himself about her for a couple of years. She must be quite five-and-thirty now; and probably she was fat. She had had a slight tendency that way even as a girl. He had never liked fat women: he had a theory that they were stupid and selfish. He felt with a little shrinking that he knew precisely what Julie looked like—round, comfortable, and keen-eyed, with her back hair flattened down and shining. No doubt, too, she had the particular manner that characterises Frenchwomen of the lower middle class who look after the business of life while their husbands loaf about cafés and take things easily.
No, he didn’t want to see her again; and yet already he could feel as if she had cast out a spell that reached him, and slowly and surely would drag him to her. He struggled against it; but every moment it grew stronger. A quarter of an hour went by, it seemed as if things had come to a standstill in his life; the road before him was blocked by a grave fifteen years deep, that unflinchingly, though without any tragic force, was being hacked open. He knew that he would have at least to look down it; and not till then, at any rate, would it be filled up again, and he allowed to go peacefully on his way. He got up and looked out of window, and sat down and answered his letters—all but the one from Paris. It was eleven o’clock when he had finished. He got up again and hesitated, then with a sudden movement, as if to take advantage of a passing courageous mood, he went out into the hall, put on his hat, and walked quickly out of the house.
The hotel was small and obscure; its proper description would have been coffee-house rather than hotel. He looked at it doubtfully before he entered, and was uncertain by what name to ask for her: he had never known her married one.
‘ I want to see a French lady who arrived this morning—’ he began. The waiter evidently expected him, and showed him upstairs to a sitting-room on the next floor. The furniture was covered with maroon velveteen; there were white anitmacassars on the chairs; a bright fire was burning in the grate. On the round table, which was covered by a heavy chenille cloth, there was a little bulging handbag with a silver chain to it; and beside it a pair of half-worn suède gloves smoothed and pulled out long. He stood for a moment looking at them. There was a little sound: a woman had entered behind him, and shut the door. He turned round quickly.
There stood Julie, looking not one atom like the woman he had pictured to himself an hour ago; but more like the girl he remembered, the girl grown into a woman, slim and graceful and supple, her features refined and toned down with thought and gravity. How well he remembered the little flickering smile round her mouth and in her eyes!
‘ By Jove, she has worn uncommonly well: she is better-looking than she used to be,’ he thought. ‘ Julie,’ he said, and stood hesitating, wondering what sort of greeting she expected.
‘ Ah, Edouard, mon cher ami!’ she exclaimed, with a little cry that was half sorrow and half joy. Quite simply she went forward and put her hands on his shoulders, and looked at his face, as if she only half believed it could really be himself. ‘ It is too good to see you again,’ she said in a whisper. She dropped her head on his shoulder as if she expected him to kiss her cheek, and for the life of him he couldn’t help doing so. Her arms crept round his neck, but there was no passion in the movement; it was one of regret yet relief; of satisfaction, yet reluctance: it was impossible either to draw back or to object. ‘ It is really you!’ she said in a low, sweet voice. ‘ It is you—it is you,’ she repeated, with a little gasp. ‘ And you are not changed, you are not different; you are more—more handsome. Oh! I never thought to see this day.’ He felt a little embarrassed, and wondered what the deuce Emily would say. ‘ You are well?’ she went on: ‘ you are very glad to see me? say you are glad, Edouard.’ She was holding his hands and looking at his face still, as though she thought the sight a goodly one.
‘ I’m very glad to see you, my dear,’ he answered, in a clear, matter-of-fact voice. ‘ Come and sit down, and let’s tell each other how we are after all these years. Where is your husband?’ he asked, with the blunt manner of an Englishman in difficulties with his conscience.
She gave a little sigh.
‘ Ah! my poor Charles,’ she said. ‘ Did you not know, then? He is dead.’ She opened the little bulging bag on the table and looked for her handkerchief. ‘ It is four years since he died.’
‘ Oh, the devil!’ he thought, ‘ then she’s a widow.’ Still it was some comfort to know that there was no husband in the background to come forward and break his head. Not that he gave any Frenchman alive credit for the muscular strength to do it: pistols would be more likely. On the whole, though, pistols would be worse than fisticuffs. ‘ Dead, is he?’ he said rather awkwardly. ‘ I’m sorry to hear that: however, you’ve got over it by this time, I suppose, if it’s four years ago?’
‘ Ah, no!’ she said sadly, ‘ the great grief are so strong, they conquer us—they get over us sometimes. But tell me about yourself; you are well—you are happy—you are rich—you are altogether content with your life?’
‘ Oh yes, I suppose so—no very rich, though.’
It was just as well to let her know that, he thought.
‘ And you are married?’ she asked in a low tone.
‘ Married these ten years,’ he answered with determination, wishing that Emily voice had the sweetness of Julie’s.
‘ Et des enfants?’ Her eyes were pathetic and her tone half breathless.
‘ No, no children. Have you got any?’
‘ I have two. For the moment they are at the Convent at St. Germain. They are very little. One of them sometimes makes me think of you, Edouard; she has disposition that is as gentle.’
‘ Oh! has she? Well—what made you come to this precious hotel?’
‘ Ah!’ she sighed, ‘ I did not know—’
‘ It’s not quite the right place for you to stay at.’ He felt reassured: Julie’s manner was so different from formerly, and he liked her for sending the children to the Convent; it looked as if she were all right. ‘ You should go to a better place than this.’ He spoke in the slightly masterful tone on which the average man who does not cultivate fine manners prides himself.
‘ It is not too dear,’ she said; ‘ and it does not matter just for one day; but you are right, it is horrible.’
‘ One day?’
‘ Yes, just for one day,’ she repeated. ‘ I am going back to-night.’ He was infinitely relieved to hear it; especially as for the life of him he could not help looking at her—she was so graceful, so grave: he thought she must have turned religious. She looked it. A Roman Catholic woman who was very devout often did manage to look her religion as well as to feel it. It got into her dress somehow, and the tones of her voice. Still Julie did not appear to be indifferent to the pleasures of life. ‘ It is horrible, this place,’ she said, looking round. ‘ But, after all, it does not matter, for you are here.’ There was tenderness as well as sadness in her voice. He thought it was accidental, and was touched.
The brass clock on the mantelpiece struck one.
‘ Look here,’ he said, with a sudden inspiration, ‘ let’s go out and lunch somewhere together. You ought to have something to eat, and I don’t believe you’ll get anything here.’ It could not matter for once, he thought; besides, as she was going away that night he felt reckless.
‘ But it is not possible to get anything to eat in England?’
‘ Oh yes it is, if you know where to go. They’ll give us an excellent lunch at the Café Royal.’
‘ I will put on my bonnet,’ she cried, with a charming air of enterprise.
‘ All right; go and get your bonnet.’ She smiled; he was very English she told herself.
‘ I will go,’ she answered simply. In three minutes she returned, with a little black bonnet on her head, and a veil tied well back over her dark hair. He wondered how it was that a Frenchwoman always looked so compact. There was a jaunty black cape over her shoulders, and she stood by the glass tying a bit of ribbon round her neck, with almost an air of coquetry. ‘ I will not come back here any more,’ she said, taking up the little handbag from the table; ‘ it will not be necessary. The train starts at 4·30 from Victoria. You will stay with me till then, Edouard, and see me to the station?’
She seemed a little helpless, and spoke appealingly. He liked it. He thought self-reliant women odious, and made a point of snubbing them.
‘ At 4·30? I thought you said you were going back to-night?’ This was when they were in the hansom, and he had carefully had the glass let down.
‘ I came by Dieppe,’ she answered; ‘ but I do not love the sea, so I have determined to return by Dover, and the train starts at 4·30.’
‘ Why did you come for such a short time?’
‘ I came to see you, cher ami, on some very important business.’ He felt uncomfortable.
‘ But I have not yet gathered courage to speak. I will before I take leave.’ He was discreetly silent. ‘ Why did you put down this window?’ she asked. ‘ I thought you Englishmen loved everything open.’
‘ Oh well, you know, we don’t want any one to see us.’
‘ You do not fear to be seen with me?’ She looked at him with an expression in her grey eyes that was very unsettling. But he was determined not to be sentimental. That sort of thing was ridiculous in a man with a wife of ten years’ standing.
‘ Why should I fear to be seen with you?’
‘ I do not know,’ she answered softly. ‘ How should I know, Edouard?’
‘ I am not at all afraid,’ he said, and pattered her hand.
She turned her head away quickly, and, opening her bag, pulled out a little white handkerchief. He felt certain that she touched her eyes with it. ‘ Ah!’ she sighed.
‘ Poor Julie, I am awfully sorry for her,’ he thought; ‘ I daresay her husband was a brute and ill-treated her, and that now her relations put upon her. You must keep up your courage,’ he added aloud.
‘ Oh yes,’ she said, with a little smile; ‘ and it gives me courage to see you again.’ The cab stopped. She followed him in the Café Royal with the happy, adventurous look on her face that he remembered of old. His spirits revived: she gave her dress a little kick behind; it made him feel ten years younger to see it. Besides, after all, he wasn’t committing a crime. Lots of men took a woman to lunch now and then, and if she were pretty—why, so much the better. He hesitated for a moment and looked round.
‘ I wanted to get a table to ourselves,’ he said.
‘ Edouard,’ she said, with a little dismay in her voice, ‘ it is pleasant here—it is gay; it looks like France; but I want to talk to you—it is why I have come to England—and we shall not be alone.’ The waiter was arranging a table for them; she looked at him almost resentfully. ‘ Is it not possible,’ she whispered quickly, ‘ to find a little place apart where we could talk? It is very important what I have to say to you. I do not wish—’
‘ Private room, sir?’ asked the waiter.
Mr. Burmer had not the courage to demur. In a moment they were walking up the carpeted staircase. They were shown into the little room upholstered in red velvet, and decorated with many looking-glasses. A table in the middle was laid ready for luncheon. She went up to the window delightedly.
‘ I like your Regent Street,’ she said. ‘ The world in it is quick; it is not like sombre England: only it has the wrong sky over it—so grey, so grey.’ Her voice was pathetic, but it was thrown away on Mr. Burmer. ‘ If it had another sky it would be charming.’
He was examining the bill of fare, and did not even hear her. She turned away from the window and watched him. He looked up when the waiter had gone, and saw the pleasure in her eyes.
‘ Won’t you take off your bonnet?’
‘ Oh no: I will lift the veil—that is enough.’
She hesitated, with the bag in her hand.
‘ Let me put this down,’ he said, and took it from her. ‘ You hold it as if it contained a great treasure.’
‘ That is true’; and she gave a little sigh. ‘ It contains something that is most precious to me.’ She followed him anxiously with her eye while he put it on the sofa. ‘ It contains the reason why I have come to England.’
The waiter entered with the lunch.
‘ That’s lucky,’ Mr. Burmer thought.
‘ Ah! here is the déjeuner,’ she said, with a sudden change of tone. ‘ And champagne!’ she laughed. ‘ It will do us good. Mon cher, this is our fête day; it will be like the days long past. Do you remember’—and with much satisfaction she settled down in her place by the table—‘ the day we went to St. Germain, after you had won all that money at the Grand Prix? It was the day you gave me my bracelet—my beautiful bracelet.’ Her voice grew sad again. ‘ We went to St. Germain and dined: I often look at the Henri Quatre, and think of it when I am going to the Convent to see my children.’
He thought it rather an odd association, but he supposed it was all right; things altered so much when they became a mere remembrance.
She ate her cutlet with evident relish.
‘ Good health!’ she exclaimed, proud of her English, and raised her glass to her lips. ‘ It is good to see you again.’
She held out her hand. He shook it, and after a moment’s hesitation kissed it with a kiss that had too much sound for sentimental effect, and went on with his lunch.
‘ We must behave properly,’ he said, in a firm and cheerful voice. ‘ Have another cutlet?’
She looked up at him with a little dismay in her soft eyes.
‘ Edouard,’ she said earnestly, ‘ do you not know that I am different—that I am religious? There is great happiness in being that, and nothing in the world is worth while—that prevents us from being good.’
‘ Quite right,’ he said. ‘ I agree with you that, on the whole, it pays best to do the right thing. Of course we all go a few croppers in our youth, but we get wiser as we grow older.’
‘ Ah, yes, that is true. You are very good, Edouard,’ and she raised her eyes again and looked at him; ‘ but you were always good—always, always—and gentle and generous.’
‘ Oh, well, I don’t know about that.’ He felt it was quite possible that he might be the possessor of the virtues she attributed to him; still, he didn’t want more praise than he deserved, or even quite so much—unless it was administered so judiciously that it was impossible to object.
‘ And now,’ she said, after a pause, ‘ I must tell you of the business for which I have come.’
He shifted uneasily in his chair.
‘ All right,’ he answered, not very encouragingly. ‘ Go on.’
‘ Edouard, my poor Charles who is dead was very unfortunate, and—he was not good,’ she added sadly. ‘ I have had not many masses said for his soul. But I was not good either, Edouard; I was very wicked, for I did not love him much. It was too late—I used to think of you: I could not help thinking of you.’ She said it with a penitent air and a simplicity that was charming.
He filled her glass, and took a little credit to himself for remaining silent and immovable.
‘ They are stupid these Englishmen,’ she thought, and ground her little shoe into the soft carpet under the table. ‘ Since he died,’ she went on, ‘ I have learnt many things which I did not know before, and it has been money, money—money.’
‘ It is money, then, by Jove!’ he thought.
‘ I have sold my house and my rentes; I have sold everything I possessed, and still there is wanted more and more.’
‘ That’s a bore,’ he said, giving her some champagne. ‘ Everybody wants more and more: I do, I know.’ And he thought, ‘ I wonder how much she means to be down on me for? I shall have to give something to get rid of her.’
‘ Now, I must have three thousands francs,’ she went on. ‘ If I do not have three thousand francs by to-morrow night—to-morrow night, I shall be in prison, and my little children will be left without a mother.’
‘ I thought you said they were at a Convent?’ He was trying to gain time.
‘ Yes, they are at the Convent all the week; but they come home on Saturdays. We go to the confectioner’s on Saturday afternoons—that same one at the corner of the Rue du Marché where you and I went so many times together.’ She stopped just for a moment, as if for remembrance. ‘ And on Sundays,’ she continued, with a little sigh—he felt that the sigh was given to the past, it was like a little mass said to its soul—‘ we go to mass, and in the afternoon we have some pleasure—some little simple pleasure; and we are content—mes pauvres enfants!’
She pulled out her handkerchief; its perfume took him back in a moment to the old days far more vividly than any words had done; but all the same he didn’t want to throw away a hundred and twenty pounds for the sake of a memory. It wouldn’t be fair to Emily.
‘ My dear Julie,’ he said, ‘ I am very sorry; but every one’s hard up sometimes.’
‘ I do not want you to give me this money.’ Her voice was clear and sad. He was immensely relieved, and rather touched. ‘ It would not be just; but I must get it by to-morrow night, and I have but one thing left in the world.’ She took up the little bag and squeezed it between her hands. ‘ I have but one thing,’ she repeated—‘ it is a bracelet that is very dear to me,’ and she looked into his eyes in a manner that was altogether too much for him. ‘ Yes, I have a bracelet, and I would rather go to prison than let a stranger have it. But I cannot do without the money; it is impossible that I can do with the money, Eduoard; and I have thought—I have thought,’ she hesitated, as if she could hardly bring out the words, ‘ that perhaps you would take it, and give me what it cost.’ She stood up and held out her hands to him; he rose and took them. ‘ At least, I do not want so much. If you would let me have just enough money to pay my debts, then I would give you all the rest.’
There was almost desperation in her tone, and somehow—it seemed as if, unknown to her, they were merely expressing the longing in her heart—her arms had stolen round his neck.
‘ I say, you know,’ he said, in a voice as low as hers had been, ‘ you are awfully pretty; upon my life, you are. I shouldn’t like to see much of you; I believe you are prettier than when you were a girl.’
‘ Perhaps it is because I have thought so much of you,’ she answered. ‘ But it is too late for that,—you are married, and the English are so good, so generous, so constant,’ and she dropped her head on his shoulder.
‘ Oh, the deuce!’ he said to himself, and thought of Emily—Good Heavens, if she saw him!
‘ Ah! my dear Edouard, ah! mon Dieu!’ and with another long sigh she drew her arms away. Then she opened the bulgy bag and pulled out a pale-blue velvet case.
‘ What’s the good of bringing it to me?’ he asked.
‘ I cannot let any one else touch it: it is too precious.’
‘ Don’t you want to wear it again?’
‘ Ah, no! I am too poor to wear anything so beautiful. I must pay the money that is owed, and then I want to take my children to Africa, to my brother who is there. He will take care of us—so that that you will not see me in Paris any more if it is possible to get away,’ she sighed; ‘ but I cannot go while we are in debt; and if I have not money to pay, I shall be in prison.’
‘ Nonsense; they wouldn’t put you in prison, Julie.’ The idea of Julie in prison was too ridiculous.
‘ Oh yes, it is a wicked world, it will do anything,’ she said absently; and then with a little vehemence she went on, ‘ Edouard, what a day it was—what a good day—when you gave me my bracelet. And now, because I love it—and because I love you, I want you to take it back and to give me the money instead. Just because you loved me, and because,’ and she put up her eyes imploringly, ‘ you love me a little—little bit still.’
‘ I can’t afford it; besides I’m not going to take it away from you.’
‘ Then I could not take your money; it would not be right’— she spoke with the decision of newly acquired virtue: it impressed him a good deal. ‘ I must do what is right, and if you will not take it, then I must go to prison.’ Her eyes were really ravishing with the terror that came into them at the last words.
‘ Besides, my dear,’—he felt himself growing tender, and there didn’t seem to be any harm in calling her my dear: it was a platonic expression of endearment that extended itself to relations and children or anybody,—‘it is valuable, and I am rather hard up too—’
‘ But I do not want you to give me all that it is worth. I only want three thousand francs fro my debt: it cost five thousand francs, do you not remember?’
‘ And what on earth should I do with it?’
‘ You can keep it—or—you can give it to your wife. I should not be jealous if you gave it to her; it would not matter at all.’ Her voice showed plainly that she would no more dream of being jealous of a wife than of a grandmother.
Then suddenly he remembered how Emily had asked him for diamonds that very morning. Of course she would be delighted with the bracelet. But he couldn’t give it to her: to see her wearing anything he had once given Julie would make him feel himself an awful cad. Yet now that he saw how generous he had been to Julie, he felt that his wife had really cause for some complaint. He was in a fix. He couldn’t for the life of him see how he was going to get out of giving Julie what she wanted; but he had never made any secret of the balance at his banker’s to Emily, and how was he to account to her for the vanishing of so large a sum?
‘ I could not take money from you as a gift; but three thousand francs for that which is so much more valuable,’ she pleaded, misunderstanding his silence; ‘ and I would like to feel that through me your wife had such a beautiful thing.’
He felt that he was being demoralised, not by Julie, but by the remembrance of his old folly, perhaps, and the complication it had led him into.
‘ I couldn’t give you three thousand francs for a thing that cost five,’ he said. ‘ I am not a Jew or a dealer; and really I cannot afford a couple of hundred.’
‘ You shall give me anything you like, so that it pays my debts, and that is three thousand francs.’
‘ But how will you get to Africa?’
‘ That would be only five thousand francs,’ and she shrugged her shoulders. ‘ Altogether, if you would let me have three thousand five hundred francs it would be enough: it would be better than if I had more. I do not want to feel that I have sold my bracelet for money, but only to save myself from going to prison, and to pay for the journey to Algiers.’
‘ A hundred and fifty,’ he muttered to himself, and hesitated. She opened the case and the gems flashed in the sunshine. ‘ Upon my word,’ he thought, ‘ I believe it’s worth much more than I gave for it; and, after all, Emily would never know.
I don’t see why I need have any feeling about her wearing it. It isn’t as if I cared for Julie, or as if she were not a good woman. I shouldn’t get anything like it for the money now.—Why didn’t you sell it before?’ he asked.
‘ Do you think I have no heart? I could not part with it. I loved it too much, and have kept it hidden away.’
He looked at it again.
‘ They are beautiful stones,’ he said.
‘ Of the first water’—her tone was quick and business-like.
‘ Besides, I shouldn’t like to take it for a hundred and fifty.’
‘ I will not let you have it for any more,’ she answered firmly.
‘ And upon my word I don’t want it at all, and really I am pretty hard up too. When do you want the money?’
‘ I want it now,’ she said anxiously. ‘ I want it to-day. I cannot go back without it.’
‘ That’s awkward; I don’t carry a sum like that about in my pocket.’ She looked at him for a moment dismayed. ‘And I have no cheque-book with me,’ he added. Her dismay increased.
‘ But the bank—where is the bank?’ she cried. ‘ Is it far? Oh! I must have it to-day, Edouard; it is like my life: it is like the life of my children. Can we not go in a cab to the bank?’ She opened the case again, and moved the bracelet about in the sunlight. ‘ Look at it!’ she exclaimed; ‘ it is superb! Your wife, would she not be transported if you took it to her, and it will cost so little money—three thousand francs! Where is the bank? Let us go to it.’
‘ Upon my soul,’ he thought, ‘ they are splendid stones.—All right,’ he said, ‘ we’ll take a hansom. You shall wait outside while I go in.’ It would never do to walk into Coutts’s with Julie by his side. ‘ Stay! here is the coffee,’ as the waiter entered with two cups; ‘ we’ll drink that first.’
‘ Could I write a little note?’ she asked, and he noticed that a smile had come to her beautiful lips, and her voice was quite different. She turned to the waiter. ‘ Have you paper and envelopes?’
‘ Certainly, madame.’
‘ Why do you want to write a letter here?’ Mr. Burmer asked, dropping two lumps of sugar into his coffee.
‘ Because there is so little time. The train goes from Victoria at 4·30.’
He paid the bill while she wrote her note. She held it in her hand when it was finished.
‘ While you have the goodness to post this?’ she asked the waiter, as he was going out of the door.
‘ Yes, madame.’
It flashed across Mr. Burmer that she did not want him to see the address, and just for a moment he felt a little odd jealously. ‘ Why on earth should she write a letter here?’ he said to himself. Then reluctantly he went on aloud: ‘ Well, we had better go to the bank if you are sure you want to sell your bracelet.’
She looked at him for a moment; he fancied that the tears were in her eyes.
‘ I do not want to sell it; I should like to keep it all my life. But what am I to do? You must never think that I have not loved you because I gave you back what you gave me in the days that are so long gone. Oh, money—money,’ she cried passionately: ‘ what a terrible thing it is!’
In spite of himself he was touched again. He hated taking it. He considered quickly whether it would be possible to make any reasonable excuse to Emily for the sudden decrease of the balance, or to hide the actual state of their finances from her. But no: he had encouraged her to look into their expenses with a view to keeping them down; he had told her it was almost a duty: nothing ever deterred Emily from doing a duty or investigating a mystery if she came across one.
‘ I’m awfully sorry,’ he said. ‘ I wish I could afford to give it you; upon my word I do.’
‘ It would not be just,’ she answered sadly; ‘ and I am content that you should have my bracelet. But I could not let a stranger—’ She turned to him as he was about to open the door.
‘ Edouard,’ she cried, ‘ promise me that you will give it to no woman—in the whole world—unless it is your wife.’
‘ All right, my dear,’ he said, putting his arm round her shoulders. ‘ Give me a kiss—just one, Julie, a good one—and I’ll promise you anything you like. I believe I’m fond of you still.’
‘ Ah,’ she said, in a whisper, as they went towards the staircase, ‘ it is very terrible to love. If I had only had no heart I should have been happy.’
They drove quickly to the bank. She looked after him eagerly as he went in. When he returned, she took the bundle of notes from him breathlessly. ‘ Oh, my dear children!’ she exclaimed, as if to herself.
‘ Now—where to?’
‘ To the Victoria Station: it is a quarter to four; there is not much time.’
‘ All right. I’ll see you off.’ He let down the hansom glass again as they drove away.
‘ Have you no luggage?’
‘ No; I have nothing,’ she said—‘ nothing but his money, which will save me from prison, and the memory of this day that will last me while I live.’
‘ I say,’ he said presently, as he watched her put away the notes, ‘ you will find they are for a couple of hundred. I wasn’t going to take advantage of your poverty, little woman.’
‘ For two hundred! Oh, Edouard, you are too good—you are too good; it is that which makes it so terrible for me who have always to live without you.’
‘ She really is fond of me,’ he thought. ‘ I expect her husband was a brute—’
‘ Ah, we have arrived!’
‘ Plenty of time,’ he said briskly, as they walked along the platform. ‘ I suppose you would like a carriage to yourself?’
Suddenly she stopped.
‘ Edouard,’ she said, ‘ I am forgetting—I have no ticket. I did not take one, because I came by Dieppe.’
‘ All right,’ he answered; ‘ wait here: I’ll get you one.’ He turned to the booking-office, took the ticket, put her into a corner of a first-class carriage, and looked round to see if there was anything else that could be done for her. She shivered a little.
‘ Oh, it is terrible what I suffer from the cold!’ she said.
‘ You ought to have a good warm rug. Why, you haven’t even a cloak.’ He was quite shocked when he saw that she had not the sign of a wrap with her. ‘ Didn’t you bring one?’
‘ Ah! but I have not one,’ she said, with a little smile. ‘ Everything is gone—my bracelet was the last. I shall think of it the next time I pass the Henri Quatre.’
Her voice was a little absent, her eyes were looking wistfully past him while she spoke: he followed their direction. Hung up by one corner on the left side of the bookstall was a beautiful fur-lined railway rug. He looked at it for a moment and turned resolutely away. She stroked his hand.
‘ My dear Edouard!’ she whispered softly.
‘ Look here: I’ll go and see if I can get you that,’ and he nodded at the rug. ‘ Only I’m afraid I am nearly cleared out,’ he thought. ‘ And, by Jove, it’ll be just as well when she’s gone to Africa.’
‘ You are very good,’ she said, as he returned with it. ‘ That is what I always say of you. See, we are going to start. It is only just in time. All my heart is with you. Adieu, mon ami!’ She put up her face to be kissed quit naturally, and went to the other end of the carriage and, in that one step, she gave another little kick to her dress behind.
‘ The whisk of the devil’s tail,’ he said to himself; and, as if in a flash, the spell she had exercised over him seemed to vanish into air.
He closed the door and looked at her through the open window: he could see a gleam in her eyes and a little impatience in the hand she waved to him as the train moved slowly away.
Oh his way home from the club that evening he stopped at a jeweller’s in Pall Mall. ‘ I want a case for this thing,’ he said; ‘ this blue velvet one is rather shabby.’ The shopman could not find one of the right shape, but offered to get one to fit the bracelet and send it a little later.
‘ That will do; you might clean it up if it wants it, and send it home looking quite new,’ he added. Emily would hardly ask any questions, he thought, if it came from the jeweller’s and had presumably been bought there.
He got back just in time to dress and hurry down to his wife when the gong sounded. They dined tête-à-tête, but he could not bring himself to speak of the bracelet. She looked rather handsome that evening—fair and solid as usual, with not a shade of piquancy about her. He could not help wondering what on earth made a woman of that sort long for diamonds: the innate folly of the sex, he supposed. He wished to Heaven he had bought her some in a legitimate way. He felt a dislike that increased every moment to giving her Julie’s bracelet; he had half a mind not to say a word about it. It would humiliate him every time he saw it on his wife’s wrist or thought of Julie in Africa without the trinket she had valued. He wished he had given it back to Julie—had thrown it into the carriage as the train moved off. But then how could he have accounted for the big deficit in the balance at the bank? It would have been no use expecting Emily not to find it out or not to ask questions. She would have done both, not merely as a matter of duty, but to provoke her husband’s admiration of her anxiety regarding important matters.
Then, almost without meaning it, he said, ‘ I bought you some diamonds to-day.’ It was too late to draw back; but he mentally called himself a fool, and felt that his manner would betray him if he didn’t take care.
‘ Really!’—she was quite excited—‘ what is it?’
‘ A bracelet—splendid one too,’ he answered, determined to make the best of it.
‘ Oh, Edward, dear, how kind of you! Where is it?’
‘ What’s-his-name is to send it round to-night.’
She put her arm through his as they went back to the drawing-room.
‘ Tell me what it’s like?’ she said. ‘ Is it valuable?’
‘ That was a pretty sordid question,’ he thought; but he was glad she had put it; it reconciled him in a measure to what he had done.
She gave a sigh, almost a gasp, of content, and sat down with slow dignity by the drawing-room fire. Already she saw it on her arm; she imagined herself in a velvet dress, dark red she thought, and with old lace in the sleeves.
‘ It was very good of you, Edward,’ she said. ‘ I wish it would come—’
There was a ring at the door bell; her acute ears heard it plainly; and a moment later the postman’s knock.
‘ This must be it,’ she said, and stood up as if to greet it.
The servant entered with a round package and a letter on a salver. Mr. Burmer took them both. The handwriting on the letter gave him a little shock; he put it into his pocket quickly, and handed the package to his wife.
She tore off the white paper on the outside. He watched her. The blue velvet case had been replaced by a red leather one that was thoroughly English. He was glad to see that. She touched the spring and a cry of joy escaped her.
‘ Oh, dear Edward, it is splendid!’ she cried, giving him an unhesitating wifely kiss. He thought of Julie’s—and the difference.
Then she tried it on and held out her arm to make the stones give little flashes in the light.
‘ Like it?’ he asked somewhat ruefully.
‘ Yes! It is very good of you.’ The tone was rapturous—for her.
She was still examining it while he went to the little green shaded lamp in the farther room to read his letter. The direction was in Julie’s hand, and he wondered what it meant. The paper had ‘Café Royal’ marked upon it, and he knew that it was the letter she had written that afternoon while they drank their coffee.
‘ It’s a perfectly wonderful bracelet,’ he heard his wife say. ‘ I shall take it back to the jeweller’s to have a little guard put on, or I might lose it.’
The note ran:—
‘CHER AMI—You need not have scruples in the least to give the bracelet to your wife, for it is not the same that you gave me; so if it is lost then so much money will not be lost also. But he assured the imitation is exact. It was made at the best shop in the Palais Royal, and no one who is not a judge will be able to tell that it is paste. Adieu. I shall always remember this day.
JULIE.’
He looked up dazed.
‘ Yes,’ repeated Emily, in a firm voice; ‘ I will wear it to the Luards’ to-morrow night, so I must take it to the jeweller’s the first thing in the morning, and have a guard put on.’