The Case of the Two Pearl Necklaces. Dorothy Fielding
hand—to save Arthur from damnation."
"Marriage with Violet Finch doesn't mean damnation—necessarily," she protested indignantly. "I wish, of course, that she were one of us. But she may come to be—given time and fair play."
Ambrose looked very much the priest. His face stiffened, his look grew inscrutable. He was clearly not taken with the notion of a converted Violet.
There was a short silence. Kitty felt done. She had come for nothing. Ambrose had no light to shed on this matter. Or if he had, he was keeping it for his own use. But she stood to her guns.
"Ambrose, Ann, of course, has told you her version—"
"I think she's told me the truth," he said deliberately, dispassionately. "I questioned her closely."
"I don't think she has!" Kitty blazed out. "Not by a long, long lot! Ann Lovelace would do anything to get her knife into Violet, to get Arthur from her—for herself!"
Her cousin, Ambrose, seemed, on this, to have grown very chilling, very distant, as he looked down at her with eyes veiled and inscrutable.
"At least, whatever may be her faults, she is a lady and a religious woman at heart," he answered sternly.
"Oh, stuff, Ambrose!" Kitty said hotly, throwing off the awe of the priest. "That's her cloak. She's just a—" But she stopped herself. For the Reverend Ambrose Walsh did not seem to hear her. She recognised clearly that his mind was definitely closed to any further discussion of Violet's case.
"Evidently you're on Ann's side," she concluded coldly.
And at that Father Ambrose gave a fleeting smile as he said calmly, "I'm on her side, certainly, if she can rightly prevent Arthur's disastrous marriage to Miss Finch."
Kitty rose to leave. Coldly asking, as she glanced at his writing-table overflowing with papers and books: "What is your coming book about?"
"The Church Militant," he said in a ringing tone. "There's far too much talk of converts slithering from the Anglican Church into ours as though there were small difference between them. I want the gates, on the contrary, to be barred and locked, except to those who show the right credentials for admission. I want there to be an end to marriages between ourselves and heretics—no matter though we do get their children, who are not worth the having, as a rule.
"I would rather—" He stopped himself. To Ambrose Walsh the sheep and the goats were born to be separated. And only he himself knew what a blow it had been to him to learn that his cousin Arthur was going to marry outside his Church, even apart from other considerations. There had been a time when he had seen a great deal of Arthur...when he had cherished strong hopes of getting him, too, to enter a Religious Life, either as a Priest or as a Brother. But in these last years Arthur had drawn away more and more from Ambrose, had left his letters unanswered, had refused to be in when he called...To any one who knew Ambrose Walsh at all, Arthur could have done nothing better calculated to make his cousin more firmly determined on getting his own way—even had there been no religious dynamic involved.
In silence he opened the door now for Kitty's departure and she felt herself still in pinafores, morally, as she said good-bye to him. She went down at once to Friar's Halt, and saw, as she stepped into Colonel Walsh's study, that he knew. He looked as though he had had a great shock.
"You've seen Ann," she said without hesitation.
He nodded. "She met me going to my club." He paused as Arthur came hurrying into the house and the room. He had driven Violet home, and had had a hard task to convince her that to him she was beyond suspicion, far above reproach. But he had succeeded in doing so. Now, as soon as he saw his father's face, he, too, knew that the Colonel had been met by Ann and her story.
His own face hardened; his back straightened; his jaw set.
"I'd like you to stay, Kitty," was his greeting, "as Violet's friend. Thank God, you're not prejudiced against her!"
"No, I'm not," Kitty replied. Hearing which, the Colonel wheeled on her.
"What? You don't believe—?" He checked himself. "Look here," he began again, "I don't think we need drag you into this harrowing question, Kitty, except for one vital query. Have you ever known Ann Lovelace to tell a lie? I don't mean those polite, stereotyped words which we all use as 'delighted' to meet people, or 'sorry' to see them go, etcetera. I mean by a 'lie' a deliberate, downright falsehood. Have you ever heard her utter one?"
"No," Kitty answered reluctantly. "But I've known her do still worse when it suited her game. I've known her so to put the truth so that it sounded more false than any outright lie could be."
"Oh, quite possible,"—agreed the Colonel promptly. "But subtlety of that sort need not be considered here, even if a fact. For here Ann makes certain definite assertions. She declares that she lent a considerable sum of money to Miss Finch on the pledged security of a certain necklace which was not, as Miss Finch stated them to be, her own property, and which, moreover, is not a string of real pearls, but a wax imitation. Ann and I went to Rinks', and saw the assistant manager who dealt with the affair. He assured me that the necklace shown him by Miss Lovelace earlier this morning was an exact facsimile of the shorter of the two necklaces which you, Arthur, bought of them.
"He agreed, too, with Ann that such a copy could only have been made from the original; and then only by an expert craftsman. He also further affirmed that the imitation Ann showed him was an exact duplicate of the original pearl necklace in weight and colour. For Ann had made him go into the matter very thoroughly indeed before coming to you, Arthur.
"Now, my boy, I'm inexpressibly sorry for your terrible shock; but I can't see that there's any possibility that Ann is not telling the absolute truth about it. She says you have taken possession of the paper written by Violet herself—" At this point Colonel Walsh caught sight of aghast Kitty, and insisted on her leaving them. He had quite forgotten her presence. And this was no question of attitude to one or the other girl. It was a question of actual facts; and the Colonel uncompromisingly held that he and his only son must sift these to the bottom together.
Kitty glanced back at her cousin. He looked like a man bracing himself for a bitter struggle, but firmly determined not to yield an inch of ground. And something in her leapt to meet this new Arthur, while her heart seemed a stricken thing.
As the door closed behind her, there was a second's silence, then Arthur said: "I have just given Violet those pearls outright, sir, though they will still be my wedding present to her. So she has a perfect right to raise money on them in such a position as she found herself in last night; a position, too, into which she had been jockeyed by Ann Violet had no other way of paying her gaming debt there and then. And, seeing that clearly, she took it. Ann had grossly deceived her as to the value of the discs with which they were playing. She had told her that they represented shillings, whereas they were pounds. Violet's no practised gambler, sir."
"Even though her mother had long kept what were essentially gambling hells?" the Colonel asked gently, for he was desperately sorry for his unhappy son.
"Just because of that, sir," Arthur said soberly. "I didn't conceal from you that, had I known beforehand whose daughter she was, I wouldn't have avoided her. But as it was...and is... she's the only woman in the world for me. She's quite incapable of the charge against her." He stopped. Arthur was never given to long speeches. His father's eyes were unrelenting, although his voice had real compunction in its tones.
"Sorry, my dear boy; but after what has come indubitably to light there can be no going on with the wedding. Surely you must see that, too?"
"I surely do not, sir!" Arthur's tones were no less firm than his father's. "It's a vile plot, Ann Lovelace's plot against Violet. I won't let her, or any one, come between me and the girl I love I Violet's as true as steel. Honest, loyal, honourable. Without a crooked fibre in her."
"She lied deliberately when she pledged those pearls as her own property," the Colonel said in a grim voice. "No, no "—as Arthur made a violent movement. "That's not all by a long way. But it is a thing to which you can't shut your eyes. Ann