Least Said, Soonest Mended
Copyright© 2025 by Agnes Giberne
Chapter 7: The Search
MOTHER was as good as her word. She didn’t leave a corner of the house unsearched. There wasn’t a cupboard, nor a drawer, nor a box that she didn’t empty. But of course it was no good.
I was poorly enough all the evening to have a good excuse for not helping her. Not being strong, any sort of worry was apt to put me into an ailing state. Nobody wondered that I was worried at the watch being gone: though mother did tell me I needn’t cry so every time it was spoken about, or a question was asked me. I couldn’t help the crying, for I felt downright miserable; and, besides, it was a sort of protection. If I hadn’t cried, I should have had to answer a lot more questions; and so, as was natural, the tears came.
As for helping mother in her search, I couldn’t, and that’s the long and short of it. I hadn’t the face to go about turning out drawers, and pulling everything upside down, when all the while I knew where the watch was. At least, if I didn’t exactly know where the watch was just then, I knew in what direction it had gone, and how one might hear of it.
Another thought had come to me, which somehow I hadn’t got hold of before. I didn’t see how in the world I was ever to get out of the muddle I was in.
Supposing Mr. Russell brought back the watch in a week or two, as he had promised—and as I tried to feel sure he would—what was I to say to father and mother?
Was I to pretend I had stumbled upon it somewhere by accident, and make up a story of where it had been hidden? But that would be a carrying on of miserable deceit, a course of evil through and through. Was I just to bring it out, and obstinately refuse to answer any questions? But that would puzzle everybody, and be a great distress to father and mother. Then what was I to do? I couldn’t see my way at all.
When mother had come to the end of her hunting, she walked into the parlour—we had the use of our little parlour again, which was the only good thing to do with Mary’s going—and she says, “It’s the most extraordinary thing I ever heard of.”
“It’s a case of thieving, I’m afraid,” father said. He looked bothered, for he had valued the Earl’s gift not a little, and no wonder.
“I shall have to put it in the hands of the police,” said he; “and the sooner the better.” So he got up. “I’ll wire to-night for one to come in the morning,” said he; for we hadn’t a policeman actually living in Claxton, though there was one who went to and fro through the place as part of his beat.
That terrified me. I had a notion that the police could always ferret out anything; and the thought of the questions which a policeman would ask me, and which I should have to answer, was too dreadful. I started up out of my chair and cried—
“O father, don’t!”
“Don’t—what?” says he.
“Don’t go to the police,” I begged. “Please, please don’t, father!”
Father almost laughed, for all he was so worried.
“Why, you little goose of a kittenkins,” said he; and then he patted me on the cheek. “Don’t you want to get the watch back? For if you don’t, I do.”
But I could only say, “Please, please don’t.”
“Why not?” said he.
And I hung my head, and muttered, “He’ll ask such a lot of questions.”
“He’ll be bound to do that,” father said. “The more he asks, the better, so as he finds the watch. Why, Kitty, what’s come over you to-day?”
“I shan’t be able to answer him—I know I shan’t,” I said. “I shall be so—so—”
“So what?” says father.
“So frightened,” I said. “O father, don’t—please don’t send for a policeman.”
“One would think the child had made away with the watch herself,” father said; and all this time mother stood watching us in her silent way, “I declare I wouldn’t have believed you hadn’t more sense, Kitty. Frightened at a policeman! I never heard of such a thing.”
Then he patted my cheek again, and gave it a kiss.
“Come, come, Kitty, you’ve cried enough for one day,” says he. “We won’t have any more nonsense. It’s a trouble losing the watch, no doubt about that; but we don’t blame our Kitty. Somebody’s managed to steal in, and to walk off with it, and we’ve got to find that somebody. I shall send for a policeman, of course: why shouldn’t I? The thief isn’t going to get off so easy, I can tell him! It wouldn’t be right for me not to act; and what’s more, it wouldn’t be right for the sake of other people. And as for the policeman’s questions, you just take your time, and answer him slow, and don’t get into a flurry. Take care you tell him the very exact truth, and not a word more nor less. That’s all you’ve got to do, and then you’ll have no call to be frightened.”
But to tell “the very exact truth, and not a word more nor less,” was the trouble; for there was my promise to Mr. Russell; and more than the promise, there was my wish to shield him from blame. More than the promise, I say; for if it came to a question of breaking that, promise, or telling a lot of other lies, I’m sure I should have done best in breaking that promise. One crooked step had landed me where a straight step was hardly possible, and the quickest way out of the coil was the wisest. But I couldn’t bear to think of bringing blame to him.
It’s hard to say, in such a coil, what one ought or ought not to do. Only, there’s no doubt I had given a promise which I had no right to give; and my father and mother had a right to hear the whole. All the same, it’s a terrible thing to break through one’s pledged word. I’ve learnt from those days how slow folks ought to be to pledge their word, and how wrong hasty promises are. “Least said, soonest mended,” you know.
Father went away, leaving me in tears, and mother came to the table. She didn’t speak at first. She had such a fashion of weighing her words. I remember how she smoothed the tablecloth, and put straight one or two books on it that had gut awry. Then all of a sudden she said—
“Kitty, are you hiding anything from us about the watch?”
Mother’s eyes had seen deeper than father’s. Such an idea hadn’t come to him. The words seemed to take my breath, for I didn’t know what to say. I remembered again that I had to shelter Mr. Russell, and I saw that if I went on crying like this, I should not be able. People would begin to suspect.
She didn’t put the question again, but waited, standing quiet, and I dried my eyes and tried to be more cheerful.
“If only father wouldn’t have a policeman!” I said. “It does seem so horrid—a policeman hunting all over our rooms. And I don’t believe it’ll do any good.”
“You nor I can’t judge of that,” mother said.
“If father was to speak to people, and advertise,” I said—feeling that I must talk, or mother would ask again the question I hadn’t answered.
“Advertise for the thief to bring back stolen goods!” Mother gave a little laugh. “Kitty, have you taken leave of your senses?” says she.
“I do hate the thought of a policeman coming,” I said.
“Maybe it’s not what we would have chosen,” said she. “But if I’m willing, you needn’t worry. Don’t you think father knows best how to manage?”
We didn’t go on talking, and mother let alone the question she had put; but I knew she hadn’t forgotten it.
At family prayers that evening father read the chapter in Acts about Ananias and Sapphira: not by choice, for it came in regular order. I couldn’t help shivering as I listened; and when we got up from prayers, father said—
“That’s a fearful chapter, isn’t it? I always think so, every time I read it. Shows so plain what God thinks of untruth. And it wasn’t even as if Ananias had told a downright outspoken lie. It was just shuffling and deceiving.”
I thought over those words of father’s, lying in bed, and pictured the awful end of husband and wife, struck dead in the very act and word of falsehood. I couldn’t bear to remember the untruths I had already been led into, and I made up my mind that I would not say another word that wasn’t true. I would only refuse to answer, and take the consequences.
But it is no easy matter, if one steps down into evil, to keep one’s self from going farther than just a certain point.
The policeman came next morning: a tall man, with a grave face, almost as sparing of his words as mother. He listened to the whole story from father, and then he went upstairs to see my room, paying particular attention to the way of getting there. He looked into the drawer where I had always kept the watch, and made mother turn everything out that was in it; and then he examined the other drawers, as if to make sure that I hadn’t slipped it in elsewhere by mistake. He put a question now and then to mother by the way, and I waited in a fright, knowing my turn must come soon, as indeed it did.
“Quite sure you always kept the watch and chain in this drawer?” says he at last, looking at me.
“Yes,” I said, under my breath.
“Speak out, Kitty. Don’t be afraid,” says father.
“And the drawer wasn’t locked?” says the policeman.
“No.”
“Never?”
“No,” I said.
“Anybody except yourselves know where the watch was kept?”
“No.”
“Yes,” mother put in; “Mary Russell knew.”
Mother gave a little laugh. “But she is one of ourselves.”
The policeman wanted to know all about Mary— who she was, where she lived, how long she had been with us, when she had left. Mother answered these questions; and the name of Walter came in too. I wouldn’t say a word.
“Then the watch was missed two days after she left?” says the policeman.
Mother smiled.
“Oh, you needn’t think anything of that,” says she. “I’d as soon suspect myself as Mary Russell—if not sooner. We know her well.”
The policeman didn’t look quite so certain, but he only asked—
“What about the young fellow, her brother?”
“A schoolmaster: clever young fellow, and most respectable every way,” father declared.
“Didn’t know where the watch was, of course?” says the policeman.
Mother said “No,” and so did I; but I could see the policeman’s mind to be hankering after Mr. Russell.
“When was he here last?” says he.
I wanted mother to answer, but neither she nor father spoke, and I had to say—
“He went away a whole month before his sister.”
“Never been to the place since?”
“Not to my knowledge,” said mother; but the policeman kept looking at me, and I couldn’t help my colour getting up.
“Never been since?” said he.
“He meant to come and fetch his sister—but he—didn’t!” I said, almost whispering. In a sort of way that was true, for sure enough he hadn’t been to fetch Mary. But, on the other hand, it was not true, for I was trying to make the policeman think that he had not been at all, when he had been.
The policeman made an odd sort of a click with his tongue.
“When did you see your watch last?” says he.
“Not long—” I said.
“How long ago?”
“Just a few days.”
“How many days?” says he, as determined as he could be.
“The day Mary Russell went,” I said.
“That’s three days ago,” says father. “Why, Kitty, you didn’t tell us that,” says he. “I thought it was ever so much longer.”
“Did you see the watch last before that young woman left, or after she was gone?” says the policeman.
“After,” I said; and I heard mother give a sort of sigh of relief.
“Sure?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What hour did the young woman leave?” says he. “Two-fifty-five train,” mother said. “We saw her off ourselves.”
“And you saw the watch—when?” says the policeman to me.
“A good deal later,” I told him. “After I came in from a walk.”
“What hour?” says he again.
“I don’t know—exactly,” I said, though I could have told pretty near. I was frightened at all this questioning.
“When you went to take off your hat?” says mother.
I said “Yes.”
“Then it couldn’t have been before six,” says she. “I know it wasn’t long after you were in before it got dark, for you didn’t sit many minutes over your work, before you took a turn in the garden, and it was dark then.”
“Took a turn in the garden after dark!” says the policeman, and he had his eyes on me.
“She was upset about Mary Russell going, and wanted a breath of air,” mother said. “I spoke about Mary, and she couldn’t stand it.”
“Had a walk just before,” says the policeman.
“Yes. She wasn’t five minutes in the garden,” says mother.
“And when you saw the watch,” says the policeman to me, “was between the walk and the five minutes in the garden, eh? When you went upstairs to take off your hat, eh?”
I said “Yes.”
“You didn’t take the watch into the garden with you?”
Here was the point where the real pull came. If I said “Yes,” how could I shield Walter? The temptation was too much for me, and no wonder, for I’d put myself in the way of it, and couldn’t look to be kept from evil.
“No,” I said, under my breath.
But I had waited a moment, and the colour came red and hot to my face. The policeman looked hard at me.
“You saw the watch just before you went into the garden,” says he. “How did you happen to see it? Did you open the drawer?”
“Yes,” I said.
“On purpose to look at the watch?”
“Yes.”
“And you took it out, and handled it?”
“Yes.”
“And put it back in the drawer—watch and chain too?”
I couldn’t answer him straight off; but after a moment’s stop, I said “Yes” again. Another lie!
“Sure you didn’t put on the watch and chain to wear?”
“No.”
“Nor have them anywhere about you?”
“No,” I said.
See how one falsehood dragged other falsehoods in its train, and how every untruth I spoke made it harder for me to go back! It’s a horrible slippery road I was on. And it was Walter Russell, the man I loved, who had led me there!
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