The Elect Lady, George MacDonald [smallest ebook reader TXT] 📗

bed, that might have been a cup."

"It is a thing of great value-of pure gold, and every stone in it a gem."

"Indeed!" returned Alexa, with marked indifference.

"Yes; it was the work of the famous Benvenuto Cellini, made for Pope Clement the Seventh, for his own communion-chalice. Your father priced it at three thousand pounds. In his last moments, when his mind was wandering, he fancied it the Holy Grail He had it in the bed with him when he died; that I know."

"And it is missing?"

"Perhaps Dawtie could tell us what has become of it. She was with the laird at the last."

Dawtie, who had stood aside to let him pass to the open door, looked up with a flash in her eyes, but said nothing.

"Have you seen the cup, Dawtie?" asked her mistress.

"No, ma'am."

"Do you know it?"

"Very well, ma'am."

"Then you don't know what has become of it?"

"No, ma'am; I know nothing about it."

"Take care, Dawtie," said George. "This is a matter that will have to be searched into."

"When did you last see it, Dawtie?" inquired Alexa.

"The very day my master died, ma'am. He was looking at it, but when he saw I saw him he took it inside the bed-clothes."

"And you have not seen it since?"

"No, ma'am."

"And you do not know where it is?" said George.

"No, sir. How should I?"

"You never touched it?"

"I can not say that, sir; I brought it him from his closet; he sent me for it."

"What do you think may have become of it?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Would you allow me to make a thorough search in the place where it was last seen?" asked George, turning to his cousin.

"By all means. Dawtie, go and help Mr. Crawford to look."

"Please, ma'am, it can't be there. We've had the carpet up, and the floor scrubbed. There's not a hole or a corner we haven't been into-and that yesterday."

"We must find it," said George. "It must be in the house."

"It must, sir," said Dawtie.

But George more than doubted it

"I do believe," he said, "the laird would rather have lost his whole collection."

"Indeed, sir, I think he would."

"Then you have talked to him about it?"

"Yes, I have, sir," answered Dawtie, sorry she had brought out the question.

"And you know the worth of the thing?"

"Yes, sir; that is, I don't know how much it was worth, but I should say pounds and pounds."

"Then, Dawtie, I must ask you again, where is it? "

"I know nothing about it, sir. I wish I did!"

"Why do you wish you did?"

"Because-" began Dawtie, and stopped short; she shrunk from impugning the honesty of the dead man-and in the presence of his daughter.

"It looks a little fishy, don't it, Dawtie? Why not speak straight out? Perhaps you would not mind searching Meg's trunk for me. She may have taken it for a bit of old brass, you know."

"I will answer for my servants, Mr. Crawford," said Alexa. "I will not have old Meg's box searched."

"It is desirable to get rid of any suspicion," replied George.

"I have none," returned Alexa.

George was silent

"I will ask Meg, if you like, sir," said Dawtie; "but I am sure it will be no use. A servant in this house soon learns not to go by the look of things. We don't treat anything here as if we knew all about it."

"When did you see the goblet first?" persisted George.

"Goblet, sir? I thought you were speaking of the gold cup."

By goblet Dawtie understood a small iron pot.

"Goblet, or cup, or chalice-whatever you like to call it-I ask how you came to know about it."

"I know very little about it."

"It is plain you know more than you care to tell. If you will not answer me you will have to answer a magistrate."

"Then I will answer a magistrate," said Dawtie, beginning to grow angry.

"You had better answer me, Dawtie. It will be easier for you. What do you know about the cup?"

"I know it was not master's, and is not yours-really and truly."

"What can have put such a lie in your head?"

"If it be a lie, sir, it is told in plain print."

"Where?"

But Dawtie judged it time to stop. She bethought herself that she would not have said so much had she not been angry.

"Sir," she answered, "you have been asking me questions all this time, and I have been answering them; it is your turn to answer me one."

"If I see proper."

"Did my old master tell you the history of that cup?"

"I do not choose to answer the question."

"Very well, sir."

Dawtie turned to leave the room.

"Stop! stop!" cried Crawford; "I have not done with you yet, my girl. You have not told me what you meant when you said the cup did not belong to the laird."

"I do not choose to answer the question," said Dawtie.

"Then you shall answer it to a magistrate."

"I will, sir," she replied, and stood.

Crawford left the room.

He rode home in a rage. Dawtie went about her work with a bright spot on each cheek, indignant at the man's rudeness, but praying God to take her heart in His hand, and cool the fever of it.

The words rose in her mind:

"It must needs be that offenses come, but woe onto that man by whom they come."

She was at once filled with pity for the man who could side with the wrong, and want everything his own way, for, sooner or later, confusion must be his portion; the Lord had said: "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known."

"He needs to be shamed," she said, "but he is thy child; care for him, too."

George felt that he had not borne a dignified part, and knew that his last chance with Alexa was gone. Then he too felt the situation unendurable, and set about removing his property. He wrote to Alexa that he could no longer doubt it her wish to be rid of the collection, and able to use the room. It was desirable also, he said, that a thorough search should be made in those rooms before he placed the matter of the missing cup in the hands of the magistrates.

Dawtie's last words had sufficed to remove any lingering doubt as to what had become of the chalice. It did not occur to him that one so anxious to do the justice of restoration would hardly be capable of telling lies, of defiling her soul that a bit of property might be recovered; he took it for granted that she meant to be liberally rewarded by the earl.

George would have ill understood the distinction Dawtie made-that the body of the cup might belong to him, but the soul of the cup did belong to another; or her assertion that where the soul was there the body ought to be; or her argument that He who had the soul had the right to ransom the body-a reasoning possible to a child-like nature only; she had pondered to find the true law of the case, and this was her conclusion.

George suspected, and grew convinced that Alexa was a party to the abstraction of the cup. She had, he said, begun to share in the extravagant notions of a group of pietists whose leader was that detestable fellow, Ingram. Alexa was attached to Dawtie, and Dawtie was one of them. He believed Alexa would do anything to spite him. To bring trouble on Dawtie would be to punish her mistress, and the pious farmer, too.


CHAPTER XXXI.


THE PROSECUTION.

As soon as Crawford had his things away from Potlurg, satisfied the cup was nowhere among them, he made a statement of the case to a magistrate he knew; and so represented it, as the outcome of the hypocrisy of pietism, that the magistrate, hating everything called fanatical, at once granted him a warrant to apprehend Dawtie on the charge of theft.

It was a terrible shock. Alexa cried out with indignation. Dawtie turned white and then red, but uttered never a word.

"Dawtie," said her mistress, "tell me what you know about the cup. You do know something that you have not told me!"

"I do, ma'am, but I will not tell it except I am forced."

"That you are going to be, my poor girl! I am very sorry, for I am perfectly sure you have done nothing you know to be wrong!"

"I have done nothing you or anybody would think wrong, ma'am."

She put on her Sunday frock, and went down to go with the policeman. To her joy she found her mistress at the door, ready to accompany her. They had two miles or more to walk, but that was nothing to either.

Questioned by the magistrate, not unkindly, for her mistress was there, Dawtie told everything-how first she came upon the likeness and history of the cup, and then saw the cup itself in her master's hands.

Crawford told how the laird had warned him against Dawtie, giving him to understand that she had been seized with a passion for the goblet such that she would peril her soul to possess it, and that he dared not let her know where it was.

"Sir," said Dawtie, "he could na hae distrusted me like that, for he gae me his keys, and sent me to fetch the cup when he was ower ill to gang till't."

"If that be true, your worship," said Crawford, "it does not affect the fact that the cup was in the hands of the old man when I left him and she went to him, and from that moment it has not been seen."

"Did he have it when you went to him?" asked the magistrate.

"I didna see't, sir. He was in a kind o' faint when I got up."

Crawford said that, hearing a cry, he ran up again, and found the old man at the point of death, with just strength to cry out before he died, that Dawtie had taken the cup from him. Dawtie was leaning over him, but he had not imagined the accusation more than the delirious fancy of a dying man, till it appeared that the cup was not to be found.

The magistrate made out Dawtie's commitment for trial. He remarked that she might have been misled by a false notion of duty: he had been informed that she belonged to a sect claiming the right to think for themselves on the profoundest mysteries-and here was the result! There was not a man in Scotland less capable of knowing what any woman was thinking, or more incapable of doubting his own insight.

Doubtless, he went on, she had superstitiously regarded the cup as exercising a Satanic influence on the mind of her master; but even if she confessed it now, he must make an example of one whose fanaticism would set wrong right after the notions of an illiterate sect, and not