The Eustace Diamonds

It was admitted by all her friends, and also by her enemies⁠—who were in truth the more numerous and active body of the two⁠—that Lizzie Greystock had done very well with herself. We will tell the story of Lizzie Greystock from the beginning, but we will not dwell over it at great length, as we might do if we loved her. She was the only child of old Admiral Greystock, who in the latter years of his life was much perplexed by the possession of a daughter. The admiral was a man who liked whist, wine⁠—and wickedness in general we may perhaps say, and whose ambition it was to live every day of his life up to the end of it. People say that he succeeded, and that the whist, wine, and wickedness were there, at the side even of his dying bed. He had no particular fortune, and yet his daughter, when she was little more than a child, went about everywhere with jewels on her fingers, and red gems hanging round her neck, and yellow gems pendent from her ears, and white gems shining in her black hair. She was hardly nineteen when her father died and she was taken home by that dreadful old termagant, her aunt, Lady Linlithgow. Lizzie would have sooner gone to any other friend or relative, had there been any other friend or relative to take her possessed of a house in town.

When the countess entered the drawing-room Lizzie rose upon her legs, but did not come forward from her chair. The old woman was not tall;⁠—but her face was long, and at the same time large, square at the chin and square at the forehead, and gave her almost an appearance of height. Her nose was very prominent, not beaked, but straight and strong, and broad at the bridge, and of a dark-red colour. Her eyes were sharp and grey. Her mouth was large, and over it there was almost beard enough for a young man’s moustache. Her chin was firm, and large, and solid. Her hair was still brown, and was only just grizzled in parts. Nothing becomes an old woman like grey hair, but Lady Linlithgow’s hair would never be grey. Her appearance on the whole was not prepossessing, but it gave one an idea of honest, real strength. What one saw was not buckram, whalebone, paint, and false hair. It was all human⁠—hardly feminine, certainly not angelic, with perhaps a hint in the other direction⁠—but a human body, and not a thing of pads and patches. Lizzie, as she saw her aunt, made up her mind for the combat. Who is there that has lived to be a man or woman, and has not experienced a moment in which a combat has impended, and a call for such sudden courage has been necessary? Alas!⁠—sometimes the combat comes, and the courage is not there. Lady Eustace was not at her ease as she saw her aunt enter the room. “Oh, come ye in peace, or come ye in war?” she would have said had she dared.

“A very valuable thing. I’ll tell you all about it, Frederic. Of course I’ll tell you everything now. I never could keep back anything from one that I loved. It’s not my nature. There; you might as well read that note.” Then she put her hand back and brought Mr. Camperdown’s letter from under the Bible. Lord Fawn read it very attentively, and as he read it there came upon him a great doubt. What sort of woman was this to whom he had engaged himself because she was possessed of an income? That Mr. Camperdown should be in the wrong in such a matter was an idea which never occurred to Lord Fawn. There is no form of belief stronger than that which the ordinary English gentleman has in the discretion and honesty of his own family lawyer. What his lawyer tells him to do, he does. What his lawyer tells him to sign, he signs. He buys and sells in obedience to the same direction, and feels perfectly comfortable in the possession of a guide who is responsible and all but divine. “What diamonds are they?” asked Lord Fawn in a very low voice.

“They are my own⁠—altogether my own. Sir Florian gave them to me. When he put them into my hands, he said that they were to be my own forever and ever. ‘There,’ said he⁠—‘those are yours to do what you choose with them.’ After that they oughtn’t to ask me to give them back⁠—ought they? If you had been married before, and your wife had given you a keepsake⁠—to keep forever and ever, would you give it up to a lawyer? You would not like it;⁠—would you, Frederic?” She had put her hand on his, and was looking up into his face as she asked the question. Again, perhaps, the acting was a little overdone; but there were the tears in her eyes, and the tone of her voice was perfect.

“I don’t know what that means;”⁠—she did know well enough what it meant;⁠—“but sometimes to me she is almost frightful to look at.”

“In what way?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you. She looks like a beautiful animal that you are afraid to caress for fear it should bite you;⁠—an animal that would be beautiful if its eyes were not so restless, and its teeth so sharp and so white.”

“How very odd.”

“Why odd, Mr. Greystock?”

“Because I feel exactly in the same way about her. I am not in the least afraid that she’ll bite me; and as for caressing the animal⁠—that kind of caressing which you mean⁠—it seems to me to be just what she’s made for. But, I do feel sometimes, that she is like a cat.”

“Something not quite so tame as a cat,” said Lucy.

“Nevertheless she is very lovely⁠—and very clever. Sometimes I think her the most beautiful woman I ever saw in the world.”

The subject was not unpleasant, and while she was considering it, she fell asleep.

It was, perhaps, about two in the morning when a man, very efficient at the trade which he was then following, knelt outside Lady Eustace’s door, and, with a delicately-made saw, aided, probably, by some other equally well-finished tools, absolutely cut out that portion of the bedroom door on which the bolt was fastened. He must have known the spot exactly, for he did not doubt a moment as he commenced his work; and yet there was nothing on the exterior of the door to show where the bolt was placed. The bit was cut out without the slightest noise, and then, when the door was opened, was placed, just inside, upon the floor. The man then with perfectly noiseless step entered the room, knelt again⁠—just where poor Lizzie had knelt as she said her prayers⁠—so that he might the more easily raise the iron box without a struggle, and left the room with it in his arms without disturbing the lovely sleeper. He then descended the stairs, passed into the coffee-room at the bottom of them, and handed the box through an open window to a man who was crouching on the outside in the dark. He then followed the box, pulled down the window, put on a pair of boots which his friend had ready for him; and the two, after lingering a few moments in the shade of the dark wall, retreated with their prize round a corner.