HE accursed gems lie sedately in the lowest drawer of my strong room, shining from a couple of dozen of prim leather cases, with a light which is full of strange memories. I call them accursed because I cannot sell them; yet there are those with other histories, stones about which the fancy of romance has sported, and the strong hand of tragedy has touched with an indelible brand. It may be that the impulse of sentiment, working deep down in the heart of the ostensibly commercial character, forbids me to cry some of these wares in the market-place with any vigour; it may be that the play of chance moves the mind of the jewel-buyer to a prejudice against them. In any case, they lie in my safe unhonoured and unsung—and, lacking that which Sewell called the "precious balsam" of reputation, are merely so much carbon or mineral matter giving light to iron walls which give no light again.
For the stones which have no history I am not an apologist. Some day, those excellent people who now decry them in every salon where jewels are discussed, will give up the hope of attempting to buy them cheaply; and I shall make my profit. Everything comes to him who can wait, and I am not in a hurry. As to the others, which have been the pivots of romance or serious story, they may well lie as they are while they serve my memory in the jotting down of some of these mysteries.
And that they do serve it I have no measure of doubt. Here, for instance, is a little bag of pearls and diamonds. It contains a black pearl from Koepang, so rich in silvery lustre, and so perfect in shape, that it should be worth eight hundred pounds in any market in Europe; a couple of pink pearls from the Bahamas, of fine orient yet pear-shaped, and therefore less valuable as fashion dictates; five old Brazilian diamonds averaging two carats each; a number of smaller diamonds for finish; and two great white pearls, which I find at the very bottom of the bag. Those stones were bought by the late Lord Maclaren a month before the date announced for his marriage with the Hon. Christine King. He had intended them as his gift to her, a handsome and sufficient gift, it must be admitted, yet so did fickle fortune work that his very generosity was the indirect cause of a commotion in the week of the wedding, and of as pretty a social scandal as society has known for a decade.
The matter was hushed up of course. For six weeks, as a wag said, it was a nine days' wonder. Aged ladies discussed it from every point of view, but could make nothing of it. The Society papers lacked enough information to lie about it. The principal actors held their tongues, and in due time the West forgot, for a new scandal arose, and the courts supplied the craving for the doubtful, which is a part of polite education nowadays. Yet I do not think that I make a boastful claim, in asserting that I alone, beyond those immediately concerned, became possessed of full knowledge of the occurrence. It was to me first of all that Lord Maclaren related the history of it, and, despite my advice to the contrary, laid it upon me that I should tell none in his lifetime. He is dead now, and the publication of the story will throw a light upon much that is well worth investigating. It may also help me to sell the pearls, which is infinitely more important, as any unprejudiced person will admit.