The Opal Serpent

On the previous day he had departed hastily, after committing the old man to Deborah's care. At first he had lingered to see Aaron revive, but when the unconscious man came to his senses and opened his eyes he fainted again when his gaze fell on Paul. Deborah, therefore, in her rough, practical way, suggested that as Beecot was "upsetting him" he had better go. It was in a state of perplexity that Paul had gone away, but he was cheered on his homeward way by a hasty assurance given by Miss Junk that Sylvia would meet him in the gardens, "near them niggers without clothes," said Deborah.

It was strange that the sight of the brooch should have produced such an effect on Aaron, and his fainting confirmed Paul's suspicions that the old man had not a clean conscience. But what the serpent brooch had to do with the matter Beecot could not conjecture. It was certainly an odd piece of jewellery, and not particularly pretty, but that the merest glimpse of it should make Norman faint was puzzling in the extreme.

"Apparently it is associated with something disagreeable in the man's mind," soliloquised Paul, pacing the pavement and keeping a sharp look-out for Sylvia, "perhaps with death, else the effect would scarcely have been so powerful as to produce a fainting fit. Yet Aaron can't know my mother. Hum! I wonder what it means."

While he was trying to solve the mystery a light touch on his arm made him wheel round, and he beheld Sylvia smiling at him. While he was looking along the Embankment for her coming she had slipped down Norfolk Street and through the gardens, to where the wrestlers clutched at empty air. In her low voice, which was the sweetest of all sounds to Paul, she explained this, looking into his dark eyes meanwhile. "But I can't stay long," finished Sylvia. "My father is still ill, and he wants me to return and nurse him."

"Has he explained why he fainted?" asked Paul, anxiously.

"No; he refuses to speak on the matter. Why did he faint, Paul?"

The young man looked puzzled. "Upon my word I don't know," he said. "Just as I was showing him a brooch I wished to pawn he went off."

"What kind of a brooch?" asked the girl, also perplexed.

Paul took the case out of his breast pocket, where it had been since the previous day. "My mother sent it to me," he explained; "you see she guesses that I am hard up, and, thanks to my father, she can't send me money. This piece of jewellery she has had for many years, but as it is rather old-fashioned she never wears it. So she sent it to me, hoping that I might get ten pounds or so on it. A friend of mine wished to buy it, but I was anxious to get it back again, so that I might return it to my mother. Therefore I thought your father might lend me money on it."

Sylvia examined the brooch with great attention. It was evidently of Indian workmanship, delicately chased, and thickly set with jewels. The serpent, which was apparently wriggling across the stout gold pin of the brooch, had its broad back studded with opals, large in the centre of the body and small at head and tail. These were set round with tiny diamonds, and the head was of chased gold with a ruby tongue. Sylvia admired the workmanship and the jewels, and turned the brooch over. On the flat smooth gold underneath she found the initial "R" scratched with a pin. This she showed to Paul. "I expect your mother made this mark to identify the brooch," she said.

"My mother's name is Anne," replied Paul, looking more puzzled than ever, "Anne Beecot. Why should she mark this with an initial which has nothing to do with her name?"

"Perhaps it is a present," suggested Sylvia.

Paul snapped the case to, and replaced it in his pocket. "Perhaps it is," he said. "However, when I next write to my mother I'll ask her where she got the brooch. She has had it for many years," he added musingly, "for I remember playing with it when a small boy."

"Don't tell your mother that my father fainted."

"Why not? Does it matter?"

Sylvia folded her slender hands and looked straight in front of her. For some time they had been seated on a bench in a retired part of the gardens, and the laughter of playing children, the music of the band playing the merriest airs from the last musical comedy, came faintly to their ears. "I think it does matter," said the girl, seriously; "for some reason my father wants to keep himself as quiet as possible. He talks of going away."

"Going away. Oh, Sylvia, and you never told me."

"He only spoke of going away when I came to see how he was this morning," she replied. "I wonder if his fainting has anything to do with this determination. He never talked of going away before."

Paul wondered also. It seemed strange that after so unusual an event the old man should turn restless and wish to leave a place where he had lived for over twenty years. "I'll come and have an explanation," said Paul, after a pause.

"I think that will be best, dear. Father said that he would like to see you again, and told Bart to bring you in if he saw you."

"I'll call to-day – this afternoon, and perhaps your father will explain. And now, Sylvia, that is enough about other people and other things. Let us talk of ourselves."

Sylvia turned her face with a fond smile. She was a delicate and dainty little lady, with large grey eyes and soft brown hair. Her complexion was transparent, and she had little color in her cheeks. With her oval face, her thin nose and charming mouth she looked very pretty and sweet. But it was her expression that Paul loved. That was a trifle sad, but when she smiled her looks changed as an overcast sky changes when the sun bursts through the clouds. Her figure was perfect, her hands and feet showed marks of breeding, and although her grey dress was as demure as any worn by a Quakeress, she looked bright and merry in the sunshine of her lover's presence. Everything about Sylvia was dainty and neat and exquisitely clean: but she was hopelessly out of the fashion. It was this odd independence in her dress which constituted another charm in Paul's eyes.

The place was too public to indulge in love-making, and it was very tantalising to sit near this vision of beauty without gaining the delight of a kiss. Paul feasted his eyes, and held Sylvia's grey-gloved hand under cover of her dress. Further he could not go.

"But if you put up your sunshade," he suggested artfully.

"Paul!" That was all Sylvia said, but it suggested a whole volume of rebuke. Brought up in seclusion, like the princess in an enchanted castle, the girl was exceedingly shy. Paul's ardent looks and eager wooing startled her at times, and he thought disconsolately that his chivalrous love-making was coarse and common when he gazed on the delicate, dainty, shrinking maid he adored.

"You should not have stepped out of your missal, Sylvia," he said sadly.

"Whatever do you mean, dearest?"

"I mean that you are a saint – an angel – a thing to be adored and worshipped. You are exactly like one of those lovely creations one sees in mass-books of the Middle Ages. I fear, Sylvia," Paul sighed, "that you are too dainty and holy for this work-a-day world."

"What nonsense, Paul! I'm a poor girl without position or friends, living in a poor street. You are the first person who ever thought me pretty."

"You are not pretty," said the ardent Beecot, "you are divine – you are Beatrice – you are Elizabeth of Thuringia – you are everything that is lovely and adorable."

"And you are a silly boy," replied Sylvia, blushing, but loving this poetic talk all the same. "Do you want to put me in a glass case when we marry? If you do, I sha'n't become Mrs. Beecot. I want to see the world and to enjoy myself."

"Then other men will admire you and I shall grow jealous."

"Can you be jealous – Paul?"

"Horribly! You don't know half my bad qualities. I am poor and needy, and ambitious and jealous, and – "

"There – there. I won't hear you run yourself down. You are the best boy in the world."

"Poor world, if I am that," he laughed, and squeezed the little hand. "Oh, my love, do you really think of me?"

"Always! Always! You know I do. Why, ever since I saw you enter the shop six months ago I have always loved you. I told Debby, and Debby said that I could."

"Supposing Debby had said that you couldn't."

"Oh, she would never have said that. Why, Paul, she saw you."

The young man laughed and colored. "Do I carry my character in my face?" he asked. "Sylvia, don't think too well of me."

"That is impossible," she declared. "You are my fairy prince."

"Well, I certainly have found an enchanted princess sleeping in a jealously-guarded castle. What would your father say did he know?"

Sylvia looked startled. "I am afraid of my father," she replied, indirectly. "Yes – he is so strange. Sometimes he seems to love me, and at other times to hate me. We have nothing in common. I love books and art, and gaiety and dresses. But father only cares for jewels. He has a lot down in the cellar. I have never seen them, you know," added Sylvia, looking at her lover, "nor have Deborah or Bart. But they are there. Bart and Deborah say so."

"Has your father ever said so?"

"No. He won't speak of his business in the cellar. When the shop is closed at seven he sends Bart away home and locks Deborah and I in the house. That is," she explained anxiously, lest Paul should think her father a tyrant, "he locks the door which leads to the shop. We can walk over all the house. But there we stop till next morning, when father unlocks the door at seven and Bart takes down the shutters. We have lived like that for years. On Sunday evenings, however, father does not go to the cellar, but takes me to church. He has supper with me upstairs, and then locks the door at ten."

"But he sleeps upstairs?"

"No. He sleeps in the cellar."

"Impossible. There is no accommodation for sleeping there."

Sylvia explained. "There is another cellar – a smaller one – off the large place he has the safes in. The door is in a dark corner almost under the street line. This smaller cellar is fitted up as a bedroom, and my father has slept there all his life. I suppose he is afraid of his jewels being stolen. I don't think it is good for his health," added the girl, wisely, "for often in the morning he looks ill and his hands shake."

"Sylvia, does your father drink alcohol?"