The Datchet Diamonds Part 31

_alias_, in all probability, twenty other names. From the beginning to the end he bore himself with perfect self-possession, never leading any one to suppose, either by look or gesture, that he took any particular amount of interest in what was going on. A second was Isaac Bergstein, _alias_ "The Baron." His behaviour, especially when the chief and most d.a.m.ning testimony was being given against him, was certainly not marked by the repose which, if we are to believe the poet, is a characteristic of the caste of Vere de Vere. Cyril Paxton was a third; while the tail consisted of the three gentlemen who had fallen into the hands of the Philistines on the road to Brighton.

Before the case was opened the counsel for the prosecution intimated that he proposed to offer no evidence against the defendant, Cyril Paxton, but, with the permission of the Bench, would call him as a witness for the Crown. The Bench making no objection, Mr. Paxton stepped from the dock to the box, his whilom fellow-prisoners following him on his pa.s.sage with what were very far from being looks of love.

Mr. William Cooper and Mr. Paxton were the chief witnesses for the prosecution. It was they who made the fate of the accused a certainty.

Mr. Cooper, in particular, had had with them such long and such an intimate acquaintance that the light which he was enabled to cast on their proceedings was a vivid one. At the same time, beyond all sort of doubt, Mr. Paxton's evidence was the sensation of the case. Seldom has a more curious story than that which he unfolded been told, even in that place in which all the strangest stories have been told, a court of justice. He had more than one bad quarter of an hour, especially at the hands of cross-examining counsel. But, when he was finally allowed to leave the box, it was universally felt that, so far as hope of escape for the prisoners was concerned, already the case was over. Their defenders would have to work something like a miracle if Mr. Paxton's evidence was to be adequately reb.u.t.ted.

That miracle was never worked. When the matter came before the judge at the a.s.sizes, his lordship's summing-up was brief and trenchant, and, without leaving their places, the jury returned a verdict of guilty against the whole of the accused. Mr. Hargraves and Mr.

Bergstein--who have figured in these pages under other names--was each sent to penal servitude for twenty years, their colleagues being sentenced to various shorter periods of punishment. Mr. Hargraves--or Mr. Lawrence, whichever you please--bowed to the judge with quiet courtesy as he received his sentence. Mr. Bergstein, or the "Baron,"

however, looked as if he felt disposed to signify his sentiments in an altogether different fashion.

CHAPTER XIX

A WOMAN'S LOGIC

The boom in the shares of the Trumpit Gold Mine continued long enough to enable Mr. Paxton to realise his holding, if not at the top price--that had been touched while he had been fighting for his life in bed--still for a sum which was large enough to ensure his complete comfort, so far as pecuniary troubles were concerned, for the rest of his life. It was his final speculation. The ready money which he obtained he invested in consols. He lives on the interest, and protests that nothing will ever again induce him to gamble in stocks and shares. Since a lady who is largely interested in his movements has endorsed his promise, it is probable that he will keep his word.

Immediately after the trial Mr. Cyril Paxton and Miss Daisy Strong were married quietly at a certain church in Brighton; if you find their names upon its register of marriages you will know which church it was. In the first flush of his remorse and self-reproach--one should always remember that "when the devil was ill, the devil a saint would be"--Mr. Paxton declared that his conduct in connection with the Datchet diamonds had made him unworthy of an alliance with a decent woman. When he said this, urged thereto by his new-born humility and sense of shame, Miss Strong's conduct really was outrageous. She abused him for calling himself unworthy, a.s.serted that all along she had known that, when it came to the marrying-point, he meant to jilt her; and that, since her expectations on that subject were now so fully realised, to her most desperate undoing, all that there remained for her to do was to throw herself into the sea from the end of the pier. She vowed that everything had been her fault, exclaiming that if she had never fallen away from the high estate which is woman's proper appanage, so far as to accept of the shelter of Mr. Lawrence's umbrella in that storm upon the d.y.k.e, but suffered herself to be drowned and blown to shreds instead, nothing would have happened which had happened; and that, therefore, all the evil had been wrought by her. Though she had never thought--never for an instant--that he would, or could, have been so unforgiving! When she broke into tears, affirming that, in the face of his hardheartedness, nothing was left to her but death, he succ.u.mbed to this latest example of the beautiful simplicity of feminine logic, and admitted that he might after all be a more desirable _parti_ than he had himself supposed.

"You have pa.s.sed through the cleansing fires," she murmured, when, her reasoning having prevailed, a reconciliation had ensued. "And you have issued from them, if possible, truer metal than you went in."

Mr. Paxton felt that that indeed was very possible. He allowed the compliment to go unheeded--conscious, no doubt, that it was undeserved.

"G.o.d grant that I may never again be led into such temptation!"

That was what he said. We, on our part, may hope that his prayer may be granted.