Bab Bab 41 · Chapter VII

At the moment when I showed myself in the doorway, Rachel rose from the

piano.

I closed the door behind me. We confronted each other in silence, with

the full length of the room between us. The movement she had made in

rising appeared to be the one exertion of which she was capable. All

use of every other faculty, bodily or mental, seemed to be merged in

the mere act of looking at me.

A fear crossed my mind that I had shown myself too suddenly. I advanced

a few steps towards her. I said gently, “Rachel!”

The sound of my voice brought the life back to her limbs, and the

colour to her face. She advanced, on her side, still without speaking.

Slowly, as if acting under some influence independent of her own will,

she came nearer and nearer to me; the warm dusky colour flushing her

cheeks, the light of reviving intelligence brightening every instant in

her eyes. I forgot the object that had brought me into her presence; I

forgot the vile suspicion that rested on my good name; I forgot every

consideration, past, present, and future, which I was bound to

remember. I saw nothing but the woman I loved coming nearer and nearer

to me. She trembled; she stood irresolute. I could resist it no

longer—I caught her in my arms, and covered her face with kisses.

There was a moment when I thought the kisses were returned; a moment

when it seemed as if she, too, might have forgotten. Almost before the

idea could shape itself in my mind, her first voluntary action made me

feel that she remembered. With a cry which was like a cry of

horror—with a strength which I doubt if I could have resisted if I had

tried—she thrust me back from her. I saw merciless anger in her eyes; I

saw merciless contempt on her lips. She looked me over, from head to

foot, as she might have looked at a stranger who had insulted her.

“You coward!” she said. “You mean, miserable, heartless coward!”

Those were her first words! The most unendurable reproach that a woman

can address to a man, was the reproach that she picked out to address

to Me.

“I remember the time, Rachel,” I said, “when you could have told me

that I had offended you, in a worthier way than that. I beg your

pardon.”

Something of the bitterness that I felt may have communicated itself to

my voice. At the first words of my reply, her eyes, which had been

turned away the moment before, looked back at me unwillingly. She

answered in a low tone, with a sullen submission of manner which was

quite new in my experience of her.

“Perhaps there is some excuse for me,” she said. “After what you have

done, is it a manly action, on your part, to find your way to me as you

have found it today? It seems a cowardly experiment, to try an

experiment on my weakness for you. It seems a cowardly surprise, to

surprise me into letting you kiss me. But that is only a woman’s view.

I ought to have known it couldn’t be your view. I should have done

better if I had controlled myself, and said nothing.”

The apology was more unendurable than the insult. The most degraded man

living would have felt humiliated by it.

“If my honour was not in your hands,” I said, “I would leave you this

instant, and never see you again. You have spoken of what I have done.

What have I done?”

“What have you done! _You_ ask that question of _me_?”

“I ask it.”

“I have kept your infamy a secret,” she answered. “And I have suffered

the consequences of concealing it. Have I no claim to be spared the

insult of your asking me what you have done? Is _all_ sense of

gratitude dead in you? You were once a gentleman. You were once dear to

my mother, and dearer still to me——”

Her voice failed her. She dropped into a chair, and turned her back on

me, and covered her face with her hands.

I waited a little before I trusted myself to say any more. In that

moment of silence, I hardly know which I felt most keenly—the sting

which her contempt had planted in me, or the proud resolution which

shut me out from all community with her distress.

“If you will not speak first,” I said, “I must. I have come here with

something serious to say to you. Will you do me the common justice of

listening while I say it?”

She neither moved, nor answered. I made no second appeal to her; I

never advanced an inch nearer to her chair. With a pride which was as

obstinate as her pride, I told her of my discovery at the Shivering

Sand, and of all that had led to it. The narrative, of necessity,

occupied some little time. From beginning to end, she never looked

round at me, and she never uttered a word.

I kept my temper. My whole future depended, in all probability, on my

not losing possession of myself at that moment. The time had come to

put Mr. Bruff’s theory to the test. In the breathless interest of

trying that experiment, I moved round so as to place myself in front of

her.

“I have a question to ask you,” I said. “It obliges me to refer again

to a painful subject. Did Rosanna Spearman show you the nightgown? Yes,

or No?”

She started to her feet; and walked close up to me of her own accord.

Her eyes looked me searchingly in the face, as if to read something

there which they had never read yet.

“Are you mad?” she asked.

I still restrained myself. I said quietly, “Rachel, will you answer my

question?”

She went on, without heeding me.

“Have you some object to gain which I don’t understand? Some mean fear

about the future, in which I am concerned? They say your father’s death

has made you a rich man. Have you come here to compensate me for the

loss of my Diamond? And have you heart enough left to feel ashamed of

your errand? Is _that_ the secret of your pretence of innocence, and

your story about Rosanna Spearman? Is there a motive of shame at the

bottom of all the falsehood, this time?”

I stopped her there. I could control myself no longer.

“You have done me an infamous wrong!” I broke out hotly. “You suspect

me of stealing your Diamond. I have a right to know, and I _will_ know,

the reason why!”

“Suspect you!” she exclaimed, her anger rising with mine. “_You

villain, I saw you take the Diamond with my own eyes!_”

The revelation which burst upon me in those words, the overthrow which

they instantly accomplished of the whole view of the case on which Mr.

Bruff had relied, struck me helpless. Innocent as I was, I stood before

her in silence. To her eyes, to any eyes, I must have looked like a man

overwhelmed by the discovery of his own guilt.

She drew back from the spectacle of my humiliation and of her triumph.

The sudden silence that had fallen upon me seemed to frighten her. “I

spared you, at the time,” she said. “I would have spared you now, if

you had not forced me to speak.” She moved away as if to leave the

room—and hesitated before she got to the door. “Why did you come here

to humiliate yourself?” she asked. “Why did you come here to humiliate

me?” She went on a few steps, and paused once more. “For God’s sake,

say something!” she exclaimed, passionately. “If you have any mercy

left, don’t let me degrade myself in this way! Say something—and drive

me out of the room!”

I advanced towards her, hardly conscious of what I was doing. I had

possibly some confused idea of detaining her until she had told me

more. From the moment when I knew that the evidence on which I stood

condemned in Rachel’s mind, was the evidence of her own eyes,

nothing—not even my conviction of my own innocence—was clear to my

mind. I took her by the hand; I tried to speak firmly and to the

purpose. All I could say was, “Rachel, you once loved me.”

She shuddered, and looked away from me. Her hand lay powerless and

trembling in mine. “Let go of it,” she said faintly.

My touch seemed to have the same effect on her which the sound of my

voice had produced when I first entered the room. After she had said

the word which called me a coward, after she had made the avowal which

branded me as a thief—while her hand lay in mine I was her master

still!

I drew her gently back into the middle of the room. I seated her by the

side of me. “Rachel,” I said, “I can’t explain the contradiction in

what I am going to tell you. I can only speak the truth as you have

spoken it. You saw me—with your own eyes, you saw me take the Diamond.

Before God who hears us, I declare that I now know I took it for the

first time! Do you doubt me still?”

She had neither heeded nor heard me. “Let go of my hand,” she repeated

faintly. That was her only answer. Her head sank on my shoulder; and

her hand unconsciously closed on mine, at the moment when she asked me

to release it.

I refrained from pressing the question. But there my forbearance

stopped. My chance of ever holding up my head again among honest men

depended on my chance of inducing her to make her disclosure complete.

The one hope left for me was the hope that she might have overlooked

something in the chain of evidence—some mere trifle, perhaps, which

might nevertheless, under careful investigation, be made the means of

vindicating my innocence in the end. I own I kept possession of her

hand. I own I spoke to her with all that I could summon back of the

sympathy and confidence of the bygone time.

“I want to ask you something,” I said. “I want you to tell me

everything that happened, from the time when we wished each other

good-night, to the time when you saw me take the Diamond.”

She lifted her head from my shoulder, and made an effort to release her

hand. “Oh, why go back to it!” she said. “Why go back to it!”

“I will tell you why, Rachel. You are the victim, and I am the victim,

of some monstrous delusion which has worn the mask of truth. If we look

at what happened on the night of your birthday together, we may end in

understanding each other yet.”

Her head dropped back on my shoulder. The tears gathered in her eyes,

and fell slowly over her cheeks. “Oh!” she said, “have _I_ never had

that hope? Have _I_ not tried to see it, as you are trying now?”

“You have tried by yourself,” I answered. “You have not tried with me

to help you.”

Those words seemed to awaken in her something of the hope which I felt

myself when I uttered them. She replied to my questions with more than

docility—she exerted her intelligence; she willingly opened her whole

mind to me.

“Let us begin,” I said, “with what happened after we had wished each

other good-night. Did you go to bed? or did you sit up?”

“I went to bed.”

“Did you notice the time? Was it late?”

“Not very. About twelve o’clock, I think.”

“Did you fall asleep?”

“No. I couldn’t sleep that night.”

“You were restless?”

“I was thinking of you.”

The answer almost unmanned me. Something in the tone, even more than in

the words, went straight to my heart. It was only after pausing a

little first that I was able to go on.

“Had you any light in your room?” I asked.

“None—until I got up again, and lit my candle.”

“How long was that, after you had gone to bed?”

“About an hour after, I think. About one o’clock.”

“Did you leave your bedroom?”

“I was going to leave it. I had put on my dressing-gown; and I was

going into my sitting-room to get a book——”

“Had you opened your bedroom door?”

“I had just opened it.”

“But you had not gone into the sitting-room?”

“No—I was stopped from going into it.”

“What stopped you?

“I saw a light, under the door; and I heard footsteps approaching it.”

“Were you frightened?”

“Not then. I knew my poor mother was a bad sleeper; and I remembered

that she had tried hard, that evening, to persuade me to let her take

charge of my Diamond. She was unreasonably anxious about it, as I

thought; and I fancied she was coming to me to see if I was in bed, and

to speak to me about the Diamond again, if she found that I was up.”

“What did you do?”

“I blew out my candle, so that she might think I was in bed. I was

unreasonable, on my side—I was determined to keep my Diamond in the

place of my own choosing.”

“After blowing out the candle, did you go back to bed?”

“I had no time to go back. At the moment when I blew the candle out,

the sitting-room door opened, and I saw——”

“You saw?”

“You.”

“Dressed as usual?”

“No.”

“In my nightgown?”

“In your nightgown—with your bedroom candle in your hand.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

“Could you see my face?”

“Yes.”

“Plainly?”

“Quite plainly. The candle in your hand showed it to me.”

“Were my eyes open?”

“Yes.”

“Did you notice anything strange in them? Anything like a fixed, vacant

expression?”

“Nothing of the sort. Your eyes were bright—brighter than usual. You

looked about in the room, as if you knew you were where you ought not

to be, and as if you were afraid of being found out.”

“Did you observe one thing when I came into the room—did you observe

how I walked?”

“You walked as you always do. You came in as far as the middle of the

room—and then you stopped and looked about you.”

“What did you do, on first seeing me?”

“I could do nothing. I was petrified. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t call

out, I couldn’t even move to shut my door.”

“Could I see you, where you stood?”

“You might certainly have seen me. But you never looked towards me.

It’s useless to ask the question. I am sure you never saw me.”

“How are you sure?”

“Would you have taken the Diamond? would you have acted as you did

afterwards? would you be here now—if you had seen that I was awake and

looking at you? Don’t make me talk of that part of it! I want to answer

you quietly. Help me to keep as calm as I can. Go on to something

else.”

She was right—in every way, right. I went on to other things.

“What did I do, after I had got to the middle of the room, and had

stopped there?”

“You turned away, and went straight to the corner near the window—where

my Indian cabinet stands.”

“When I was at the cabinet, my back must have been turned towards you.

How did you see what I was doing?”

“When you moved, I moved.”

“So as to see what I was about with my hands?”

“There are three glasses in my sitting-room. As you stood there, I saw

all that you did, reflected in one of them.”

“What did you see?”

“You put your candle on the top of the cabinet. You opened, and shut,

one drawer after another, until you came to the drawer in which I had

put my Diamond. You looked at the open drawer for a moment. And then

you put your hand in, and took the Diamond out.”

“How do you know I took the Diamond out?”

“I saw your hand go into the drawer. And I saw the gleam of the stone

between your finger and thumb, when you took your hand out.”

“Did my hand approach the drawer again—to close it, for instance?”

“No. You had the Diamond in your right hand; and you took the candle

from the top of the cabinet with your left hand.”

“Did I look about me again, after that?”

“No.”

“Did I leave the room immediately?”

“No. You stood quite still, for what seemed a long time. I saw your

face sideways in the glass. You looked like a man thinking, and

dissatisfied with his own thoughts.”

“What happened next?”

“You roused yourself on a sudden, and you went straight out of the

room.”

“Did I close the door after me?”

“No. You passed out quickly into the passage, and left the door open.”

“And then?”

“Then, your light disappeared, and the sound of your steps died away,

and I was left alone in the dark.”

“Did nothing happen—from that time, to the time when the whole house

knew that the Diamond was lost?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure of that? Might you not have been asleep a part of the

time?”

“I never slept. I never went back to my bed. Nothing happened until

Penelope came in, at the usual time in the morning.”

I dropped her hand, and rose, and took a turn in the room. Every

question that I could put had been answered. Every detail that I could

desire to know had been placed before me. I had even reverted to the

idea of sleep-walking, and the idea of intoxication; and, again, the

worthlessness of the one theory and the other had been proved—on the

authority, this time, of the witness who had seen me. What was to be

said next? what was to be done next? There rose the horrible fact of

the Theft—the one visible, tangible object that confronted me, in the

midst of the impenetrable darkness which enveloped all besides! Not a

glimpse of light to guide me, when I had possessed myself of Rosanna

Spearman’s secret at the Shivering Sand. And not a glimpse of light

now, when I had appealed to Rachel herself, and had heard the hateful

story of the night from her own lips.

She was the first, this time, to break the silence.

“Well?” she said, “you have asked, and I have answered. You have made

me hope something from all this, because _you_ hoped something from it.

What have you to say now?”

The tone in which she spoke warned me that my influence over her was a

lost influence once more.

“We were to look at what happened on my birthday night, together,” she

went on; “and we were then to understand each other. Have we done

that?”

She waited pitilessly for my reply. In answering her I committed a

fatal error—I let the exasperating helplessness of my situation get the

better of my self-control. Rashly and uselessly, I reproached her for

the silence which had kept me until that moment in ignorance of the

truth.

“If you had spoken when you ought to have spoken,” I began; “if you had

done me the common justice to explain yourself——”

She broke in on me with a cry of fury. The few words I had said seemed

to have lashed her on the instant into a frenzy of rage.

“Explain myself!” she repeated. “Oh! is there another man like this in

the world? I spare him, when my heart is breaking; I screen him when my

own character is at stake; and _he_—of all human beings, _he_—turns on

me now, and tells me that I ought to have explained myself! After

believing in him as I did, after loving him as I did, after thinking of

him by day, and dreaming of him by night—he wonders I didn’t charge him

with his disgrace the first time we met: ‘My heart’s darling, you are a

Thief! My hero whom I love and honour, you have crept into my room

under cover of the night, and stolen my Diamond!’ That is what I ought

to have said. You villain, you mean, mean, mean villain, I would have

lost fifty diamonds, rather than see your face lying to me, as I see it

lying now!”

I took up my hat. In mercy to _her_—yes! I can honestly say it—in mercy

to _her_, I turned away without a word, and opened the door by which I

had entered the room.

She followed, and snatched the door out of my hand; she closed it, and

pointed back to the place that I had left.

“No!” she said. “Not yet! It seems that _I_ owe a justification of my

conduct to _you_. You shall stay and hear it. Or you shall stoop to the

lowest infamy of all, and force your way out.”

It wrung my heart to see her; it wrung my heart to hear her. I answered

by a sign—it was all I could do—that I submitted myself to her will.

The crimson flush of anger began to fade out of her face, as I went

back, and took my chair in silence. She waited a little, and steadied

herself. When she went on, but one sign of feeling was discernible in

her. She spoke without looking at me. Her hands were fast clasped in

her lap, and her eyes were fixed on the ground.

“I ought to have done you the common justice to explain myself,” she

said, repeating my own words. “You shall see whether I did try to do

you justice, or not. I told you just now that I never slept, and never

returned to my bed, after you had left my sitting-room. It’s useless to

trouble you by dwelling on what I thought—you would not understand my

thoughts—I will only tell you what I did, when time enough had passed

to help me to recover myself. I refrained from alarming the house, and

telling everybody what had happened—as I ought to have done. In spite

of what I had seen, I was fond enough of you to believe—no matter

what!—any impossibility, rather than admit it to my own mind that you

were deliberately a thief. I thought and thought—and I ended in writing

to you.”

“I never received the letter.”

“I know you never received it. Wait a little, and you shall hear why.

My letter would have told you nothing openly. It would not have ruined

you for life, if it had fallen into some other person’s hands. It would

only have said—in a manner which you yourself could not possibly have

mistaken—that I had reason to know you were in debt, and that it was in

my experience and in my mother’s experience of you, that you were not

very discreet, or very scrupulous about how you got money when you

wanted it. You would have remembered the visit of the French lawyer,

and you would have known what I referred to. If you had read on with

some interest after that, you would have come to an offer I had to make

to you—the offer, privately (not a word, mind, to be said openly about

it between us!), of the loan of as large a sum of money as I could

get.—And I would have got it!” she exclaimed, her colour beginning to

rise again, and her eyes looking up at me once more. “I would have

pledged the Diamond myself, if I could have got the money in no other

way! In those words I wrote to you. Wait! I did more than that. I

arranged with Penelope to give you the letter when nobody was near. I

planned to shut myself into my bedroom, and to have the sitting-room

left open and empty all the morning. And I hoped—with all my heart and

soul I hoped!—that you would take the opportunity, and put the Diamond

back secretly in the drawer.”

I attempted to speak. She lifted her hand impatiently, and stopped me.

In the rapid alternations of her temper, her anger was beginning to

rise again. She got up from her chair, and approached me.

“I know what you are going to say,” she went on. “You are going to

remind me again that you never received my letter. I can tell you why.

I tore it up.

“For what reason?” I asked.

“For the best of reasons. I preferred tearing it up to throwing it away

upon such a man as you! What was the first news that reached me in the

morning? Just as my little plan was complete, what did I hear? I heard

that you—you!!!—were the foremost person in the house in fetching the

police. You were the active man; you were the leader; you were working

harder than any of them to recover the jewel! You even carried your

audacity far enough to ask to speak to _me_ about the loss of the

Diamond—the Diamond which you yourself had stolen; the Diamond which

was all the time in your own hands! After that proof of your horrible

falseness and cunning, I tore up my letter. But even then—even when I

was maddened by the searching and questioning of the policeman, whom

_you_ had sent in—even then, there was some infatuation in my mind

which wouldn’t let me give you up. I said to myself, ‘He has played his

vile farce before everybody else in the house. Let me try if he can

play it before me.’ Somebody told me you were on the terrace. I went

down to the terrace. I forced myself to look at you; I forced myself to

speak to you. Have you forgotten what I said?”

I might have answered that I remembered every word of it. But what

purpose, at that moment, would the answer have served?

How could I tell her that what she had said had astonished me, had

distressed me, had suggested to me that she was in a state of dangerous

nervous excitement, had even roused a moment’s doubt in my mind whether

the loss of the jewel was as much a mystery to her as to the rest of

us—but had never once given me so much as a glimpse at the truth?

Without the shadow of a proof to produce in vindication of my

innocence, how could I persuade her that I knew no more than the

veriest stranger could have known of what was really in her thoughts

when she spoke to me on the terrace?

“It may suit your convenience to forget; it suits my convenience to

remember,” she went on. “I know what I said—for I considered it with

myself, before I said it. I gave you one opportunity after another of

owning the truth. I left nothing unsaid that I _could_ say—short of

actually telling you that I knew you had committed the theft. And all

the return you made, was to look at me with your vile pretence of

astonishment, and your false face of innocence—just as you have looked

at me today; just as you are looking at me now! I left you, that

morning, knowing you at last for what you were—for what you are—as base

a wretch as ever walked the earth!”

“If you had spoken out at the time, you might have left me, Rachel,

knowing that you had cruelly wronged an innocent man.”

“If I had spoken out before other people,” she retorted, with another

burst of indignation, “you would have been disgraced for life! If I had

spoken out to no ears but yours, you would have denied it, as you are

denying it now! Do you think I should have believed you? Would a man

hesitate at a lie, who had done what I saw _you_ do—who had behaved

about it afterwards, as I saw _you_ behave? I tell you again, I shrank

from the horror of hearing you lie, after the horror of seeing you

thieve. You talk as if this was a misunderstanding which a few words

might have set right! Well! the misunderstanding is at an end. Is the

thing set right? No! the thing is just where it was. I don’t believe

you _now!_ I don’t believe you found the nightgown, I don’t believe in

Rosanna Spearman’s letter, I don’t believe a word you have said. You

stole it—I saw you! You affected to help the police—I saw you! You

pledged the Diamond to the money-lender in London—I am sure of it! You

cast the suspicion of your disgrace (thanks to my base silence!) on an

innocent man! You fled to the Continent with your plunder the next

morning! After all that vileness, there was but one thing more you

_could_ do. You could come here with a last falsehood on your lips—you

could come here, and tell me that I have wronged you!”

If I had stayed a moment more, I know not what words might have escaped

me which I should have remembered with vain repentance and regret. I

passed by her, and opened the door for the second time. For the second

time—with the frantic perversity of a roused woman—she caught me by the

arm, and barred my way out.

“Let me go, Rachel” I said. “It will be better for both of us. Let me

go.”

The hysterical passion swelled in her bosom—her quickened convulsive

breathing almost beat on my face, as she held me back at the door.

“Why did you come here?” she persisted, desperately. “I ask you

again—why did you come here? Are you afraid I shall expose you? Now you

are a rich man, now you have got a place in the world, now you may

marry the best lady in the land—are you afraid I shall say the words

which I have never said yet to anybody but you? I can’t say the words!

I can’t expose you! I am worse, if worse can be, than you are

yourself.” Sobs and tears burst from her. She struggled with them

fiercely; she held me more and more firmly. “I can’t tear you out of my

heart,” she said, “even now! You may trust in the shameful, shameful

weakness which can only struggle against you in this way!” She suddenly

let go of me—she threw up her hands, and wrung them frantically in the

air. “Any other woman living would shrink from the disgrace of touching

him!” she exclaimed. “Oh, God! I despise myself even more heartily than

I despise _him_!”

The tears were forcing their way into my eyes in spite of me—the horror

of it was to be endured no longer.

“You shall know that you have wronged me, yet,” I said. “Or you shall

never see me again!”

With those words, I left her. She started up from the chair on which

she had dropped the moment before: she started up—the noble

creature!—and followed me across the outer room, with a last merciful

word at parting.

“Franklin!” she said, “I forgive you! Oh, Franklin, Franklin! we shall

never meet again. Say you forgive _me!_”

I turned, so as to let my face show her that I was past speaking—I

turned, and waved my hand, and saw her dimly, as in a vision, through

the tears that had conquered me at last.

The next moment, the worst bitterness of it was over. I was out in the

garden again. I saw her, and heard her, no more.