Lady Jane Carruthers was one of those elderly ladies who are never quite well, yet seldom actually ill. She was a great believer in what she called "air."
"If you breathe the right air you're all right; and if you breathe the wrong air you're all wrong, and there's the whole science of medicine in a nutshell; believe me, my dear, because I know; mine's the teaching of actual experience. So long as I'm well in a place I stay there; I know the air's right; but so soon as I begin to feel a little out of sorts I know the air has ceased to be right, I go away at once; the consequence is that there are very few people who move about as much as I do."
It chanced that, in one of her pursuits after the right air, Lady Jane went to Littlehampton; and, being there, with nothing to do except breathe the right air, by way of doing something she sent for her nephew, the Hon. Robert Spencer. She dispatched to him this telegram--
"Come down to me this afternoon. I wish to speak to you."
When he received the telegram the Honourable Robert pulled a face; he happened to have a good deal to do. His impulse was to wire back--
"Can't come. Speak on."
However, he felt that the result of such a message might be disastrous; so, instead of sending it, he obeyed his aunt's commands, and went down to Littlehampton.
On his arrival, in response to his inquiries, Lady Jane informed him that the local air was still on its trial; she was not yet quite sure if it was, or was not, all right. It was true that she had had a touch of indigestion; but she was not certain if that had anything to do with the lobster salad she had had for luncheon three days running, or with some peculiarity in the neighbouring atmosphere. It was true that too much ozone was a disturbing influence; on the other hand she admitted that yesterday she had eaten rather more of the salad than she had meant to eat. Certainly the local lobsters were delicious; she had determined so much; but, for the present, the question of the quality of the local air was in suspense. The nephew knew his aunt. He was aware that if he asked her if there actually was anything which she wished to speak to him about she would look at him with chilly gaze, and inquire if she had not been speaking to him on matters of the most serious import already. Was he a Christian? Was he void of all human feeling? Did he take no interest in her health? Then what did he mean? As he did not wish to be asked what he meant in a tone of voice he had heard before, he listened to her ladyship doubting, now the lobsters, now the air, with the best grace in the world; for the Honourable Robert Spencer really was an excellent fellow. And, in course of time, his virtue was rewarded.
After dinner--at which there was no fish at all, as if it had been he who had suffered from the lobsters--she assumed a portentous air, and requested him to bring a dispatch-box, which stood on a side table, and place it in front of her; which he did.
"Robert," she began, "I regret to have to tell you that you are one of the most careless persons I have ever encountered." He admitted it; inwardly wondering of what act of carelessness he had been guilty this time, and what the dispatch-box had to do with it anyhow. Her ladyship went on. "When you were staying with me in Cairo, after you left me, you lost a suit-case; or, at least, you said you lost a suit-case."
"My dear aunt, I not only said, I actually did lose a suit-case; and a most important loss it was; for all I can tell it may have transformed the whole course of my life; and--and somebody else's life as well. By some stroke of good fortune you haven't come across it, have you?"
"No, Robert, I have not; nor do I imagine that anybody ever will, in this world." Whether she thought it likely that somebody would in another world was not quite clear. "I do not know if you are aware that, apart from your suit-case, you lost something else when you were staying with me at Cairo. I imagine, from your manner, that you have not discovered your loss even yet."
"It's very possible; I seem to have such a genius for losing things that sometimes I don't know what I do lose."
"I am grieved to hear you say so; it amazes me. It only shows how incapable a man is of looking after his own belongings; as I have always maintained. I never lost anything in my life, except a pair of house-shoes, which I left at Horsham House, and which have never been returned to me to this hour."
"I hope it was nothing very important I left."
"It depends upon what you call important. There are different standards in such matters; though you appear to have none. I should call it important; but then my wardrobe is limited. You left a coat and waistcoat."
"Well, I rather fancy that my wardrobe is more limited than yours; but--I don't recall that coat and waistcoat."
"I am not surprised; after what you have just said, nothing would surprise me. Baker brought them to me after you had gone; an admirable servant, Baker. Were I to repeat to her what you have admitted she would credit it with difficulty; she knows my ways. In the inside pocket of the coat were some papers."
"Papers? Aunt! What papers?"
Lady Jane unlocked the dispatch-box; took from it a small packet; and, placing her glasses on her nose, proceeded to read what was written on half-a-sheet of note-paper.
"This is an inventory of what was contained in the pockets of your two garments. Unlike you, fortunately, or I don't know where I should be, I am a creature of method; I do everything by rule. I drew up this list after Baker had searched the garments in my presence. In the waistcoat were three pockets; which contained, one penknife; two toothpicks--which I threw away; one pencil, or, rather, part of a pencil; three wax matches, loose, which were most dangerous, and which I had destroyed; a cigar-cutter, or, rather, what I presume is a cigar-cutter, Baker didn't know what it was; four visiting-cards, three of them your own, and the fourth somebody else's, and all of them shockingly untidy; and the return half of a ticket from Brighton to London, which was then more than three months old. In the coat were five pockets; it has always been a mystery to me what men want with so many pockets; judging from what was in yours I am inclined to think that they use them merely as receptacles for rubbish. Some of the things which were in yours I had thrown away; the following are what I have kept. One pocket-handkerchief; one pair of gloves; one tobacco-pouch; one pipe, a horrid, smelling thing which I had boiled in soapy water, but which still smells; one matchbox--empty. I suppose it was meant to contain the matches which were loose in your waistcoat; a cigar-case; a golf ball; while in the inside pocket were the papers of which I have told you."
"I don't suppose they're anything very serious, after what you've just been reading."
"Don't you? Then you must have your own ideas of what is serious; if I had thought they were of no interest I shouldn't have troubled you to come to Littlehampton."
"But, my dear aunt, what are they? You--you do keep a man on tenter-hooks."
"I don't know why you say that. I am going to tell you what they are; but, as you are of opinion that they are not serious, I should have imagined that you were in no hurry. There are letters written to you by Miss Lindsay; there are nine of them; some men would have thought them serious."
As he took the packet which she held out to him his countenance changed in a manner which was almost comically sudden.
"Letters written by---- Why, they're Nora's! But--I thought----"
"Never mind what you thought, Robert; you see what they are. As this envelope is sealed, and is inscribed that it is not to be opened till after the writer's death, some persons might have thought that that was of interest also."
He regarded the envelope she offered as if he found it difficult to believe that his eyes were not playing him a trick. "Aunt, it's--it's the envelope which Donald Lindsay sent me, and---- But I don't understand; it's incredible! Aunt, why didn't you let me know this before?"
"Why should I? It was in a coat of which you thought so little that you didn't even know you'd lost it; the natural inference was that you were hardly likely to leave anything of the least importance in the pocket of a coat which you valued at nothing."
"But--I thought I put it in my suit-case--I've chased the case half round the world. Aunt, what have you done?"
"What have I done? You mean, what have you done? If anything has been done I trust it is something from which you will learn a lesson. I said to myself, if these are of the least consequence, he will ask for them; since he has been guilty of such culpable carelessness I'll wait till he do............