The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers | Page 2

look about him, laying a spasmodic clutch on the bag. "I'm watched! I know I'm watched!" he said in a whisper, his pale eyes turning slowly in their sockets. "I shall be killed for them if I keep them much longer, and I won't be hurried into my grave. I'll take my own time."
"There is no one here," I said, "and no one in sight except Cathcart, smoking in the veranda, and I can only see his legs, so he can't see us."
He seemed to recover himself, and laughed. I had never liked his laugh, especially when, as had often happened, it had been directed against myself; but I liked it still less now.
"See here!" he repeated, chuckling; and he turned the bag inside out upon the table.
Such jewels I had never seen. They fell like cut flame upon the marble table--green and red and burning white. A large diamond rolled and fell upon the floor. I picked it up and put it back among the confused blaze of precious stones, too much astonished for a moment to speak.
"Beautiful! aren't they?" the old man chuckled, passing his wasted hands over them. "You won't match that necklace in any jeweller's in England. I tore it off an old she-devil of a Rhanee's neck after the Mutiny, and got a bite in the arm for my trouble. But she'll tell no tales. He! he! he! I don't mind saying now how I got them. I am a humble Christian, now I am so near heaven--eh, Middleton? He! he! You don't like to contradict me. Look at those emeralds. The hasp is broken, but it makes a pretty bracelet. I don't think I'll tell you how the hasp got broken--little accident as the lady who wore it gave it to me. Rather brown, isn't it, on one side? but it will come off. No, you need not be afraid of touching it, it isn't wet. He! he! And this crescent. Look at those diamonds. A duchess would be proud of them. I had them from a private soldier. I gave him two rupees for them. Dear me! how the sight of them brings back old times. But I won't leave them out any longer. We must put them away--put them away." And the glittering mass was gathered up and shovelled back into the old brown bag. He looked into it once with hungry eyes, and then he pulled the string and pushed it over to me. "Take it," he said. "Put it away now. Put it away," he repeated, as I hesitated.
I put the bag into my pocket. He gave a long sigh as he watched it disappear.
"Now what you have got to do with that bag," he said, a moment afterwards, "is to take it to Ralph Danvers, the second son of Sir George Danvers, of Stoke Moreton, in D----shire. Sir George has got two sons. I have never seen him or his sons, but I don't mean the eldest to have them. He is a spendthrift. They are all for Ralph, who is a steady fellow, and going to marry a nice girl--at least, I suppose she is a nice girl. Girls who are going to be married always are nice. Those jewels will sweeten matrimony for Mr. Ralph, and if she is like other women it will need sweetening. There, now you have got them, and that is what you have got to do with them. There is the address written on this card. With my compliments, you perceive. He! he! I don't suppose they will remember who I am."
"Have you no relations?" I asked; for I am always strongly of opinion that property should be bequeathed to relatives, especially near relatives, rather than to entire strangers.
"None," he replied, "not even poor relations. I have no deserving nephew or Scotch cousin. If I had, they would be here at this moment smoothing the pillow of the departing saint, and wondering how much they would get. You may make your mind easy on that score."
"Then who is this Ralph whom you have never seen, and to whom you are leaving so much?" I asked, with my usual desire for information.
He glared at me for a moment, and then he turned his face away.
"D----n it! What does it matter, now I'm dying?" he said. And then he added, hoarsely, "I knew his mother."
I could not speak, but involuntarily I put out my hand and took his leaden one and held it. He scowled at me, and then the words came out, as if in spite of himself--
"She--if she had married me, who knows what might--But she married Danvers. She called her second son Ralph. My first name is Ralph." Then, with a sudden change of tone, pulling away his hand, "There! now