บทที่ บทที่ 39 · Chapter V

Having told me the name of Mr. Candy’s assistant, Betteredge appeared

to think that we had wasted enough of our time on an insignificant

subject. He resumed the perusal of Rosanna Spearman’s letter.

On my side, I sat at the window, waiting until he had done. Little by

little, the impression produced on me by Ezra Jennings—it seemed

perfectly unaccountable, in such a situation as mine, that any human

being should have produced an impression on me at all!—faded from my

mind. My thoughts flowed back into their former channel. Once more, I

forced myself to look my own incredible position resolutely in the

face. Once more, I reviewed in my own mind the course which I had at

last summoned composure enough to plan out for the future.

To go back to London that day; to put the whole case before Mr. Bruff;

and, last and most important, to obtain (no matter by what means or at

what sacrifice) a personal interview with Rachel—this was my plan of

action, so far as I was capable of forming it at the time. There was

more than an hour still to spare before the train started. And there

was the bare chance that Betteredge might discover something in the

unread portion of Rosanna Spearman’s letter, which it might be useful

for me to know before I left the house in which the Diamond had been

lost. For that chance I was now waiting.

The letter ended in these terms:

“You have no need to be angry, Mr. Franklin, even if I did feel some

little triumph at knowing that I held all your prospects in life in my

own hands. Anxieties and fears soon came back to me. With the view

Sergeant Cuff took of the loss of the Diamond, he would be sure to end

in examining our linen and our dresses. There was no place in my

room—there was no place in the house—which I could feel satisfied would

be safe from him. How to hide the nightgown so that not even the

Sergeant could find it? and how to do that without losing one moment of

precious time?—these were not easy questions to answer. My

uncertainties ended in my taking a way that may make you laugh. I

undressed, and put the nightgown on me. You had worn it—and I had

another little moment of pleasure in wearing it after you.

“The next news that reached us in the servants’ hall showed that I had

not made sure of the nightgown a moment too soon. Sergeant Cuff wanted

to see the washing-book.

“I found it, and took it to him in my lady’s sitting-room. The Sergeant

and I had come across each other more than once in former days. I was

certain he would know me again—and I was _not_ certain of what he might

do when he found me employed as servant in a house in which a valuable

jewel had been lost. In this suspense, I felt it would be a relief to

me to get the meeting between us over, and to know the worst of it at

once.

“He looked at me as if I was a stranger, when I handed him the

washing-book; and he was very specially polite in thanking me for

bringing it. I thought those were both bad signs. There was no knowing

what he might say of me behind my back; there was no knowing how soon I

might not find myself taken in custody on suspicion, and searched. It

was then time for your return from seeing Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite off by

the railway; and I went to your favourite walk in the shrubbery, to try

for another chance of speaking to you—the last chance, for all I knew

to the contrary, that I might have.

“You never appeared; and, what was worse still, Mr. Betteredge and

Sergeant Cuff passed by the place where I was hiding—and the Sergeant

saw me.

“I had no choice, after that, but to return to my proper place and my

proper work, before more disasters happened to me. Just as I was going

to step across the path, you came back from the railway. You were

making straight for the shrubbery, when you saw me—I am certain, sir,

you saw me—and you turned away as if I had got the plague, and went

into the house.*

* NOTE; by Franklin Blake.—The writer is entirely mistaken, poor

creature. I never noticed her. My intention was certainly to have taken

a turn in the shrubbery. But, remembering at the same moment that my

aunt might wish to see me, after my return from the railway, I altered

my mind, and went into the house.

“I made the best of my way indoors again, returning by the servants’

entrance. There was nobody in the laundry-room at that time; and I sat

down there alone. I have told you already of the thoughts which the

Shivering Sand put into my head. Those thoughts came back to me now. I

wondered in myself which it would be harder to do, if things went on in

this manner—to bear Mr. Franklin Blake’s indifference to me, or to jump

into the quicksand and end it for ever in that way?

“It’s useless to ask me to account for my own conduct, at this time. I

try—and I can’t understand it myself.

“Why didn’t I stop you, when you avoided me in that cruel manner? Why

didn’t I call out, ‘Mr. Franklin, I have got something to say to you;

it concerns yourself, and you must, and shall, hear it?’ You were at my

mercy—I had got the whip-hand of you, as they say. And better than

that, I had the means (if I could only make you trust me) of being

useful to you in the future. Of course, I never supposed that you—a

gentleman—had stolen the Diamond for the mere pleasure of stealing it.

No. Penelope had heard Miss Rachel, and I had heard Mr. Betteredge,

talk about your extravagance and your debts. It was plain enough to me

that you had taken the Diamond to sell it, or pledge it, and so to get

the money of which you stood in need. Well! I could have told you of a

man in London who would have advanced a good large sum on the jewel,

and who would have asked no awkward questions about it either.

“Why didn’t I speak to you! why didn’t I speak to you!

“I wonder whether the risks and difficulties of keeping the nightgown

were as much as I could manage, without having other risks and

difficulties added to them? This might have been the case with some

women—but how could it be the case with me? In the days when I was a

thief, I had run fifty times greater risks, and found my way out of

difficulties to which _this_ difficulty was mere child’s play. I had

been apprenticed, as you may say, to frauds and deceptions—some of them

on such a grand scale, and managed so cleverly, that they became

famous, and appeared in the newspapers. Was such a little thing as the

keeping of the nightgown likely to weigh on my spirits, and to set my

heart sinking within me, at the time when I ought to have spoken to

you? What nonsense to ask the question! The thing couldn’t be.

“Where is the use of my dwelling in this way on my own folly? The plain

truth is plain enough, surely? Behind your back, I loved you with all

my heart and soul. Before your face—there’s no denying it—I was

frightened of you; frightened of making you angry with me; frightened

of what you might say to me (though you _had_ taken the Diamond) if I

presumed to tell you that I had found it out. I had gone as near to it

as I dared when I spoke to you in the library. You had not turned your

back on me then. You had not started away from me as if I had got the

plague. I tried to provoke myself into feeling angry with you, and to

rouse up my courage in that way. No! I couldn’t feel anything but the

misery and the mortification of it. ‘You’re a plain girl; you have got a

crooked shoulder; you’re only a housemaid—what do you mean by

attempting to speak to Me?’ You never uttered a word of that, Mr.

Franklin; but you said it all to me, nevertheless! Is such madness as

this to be accounted for? No. There is nothing to be done but to

confess it, and let it be.

“I ask your pardon, once more, for this wandering of my pen. There is

no fear of its happening again. I am close at the end now.

“The first person who disturbed me by coming into the empty room was

Penelope. She had found out my secret long since, and she had done her

best to bring me to my senses—and done it kindly too.

“‘Ah!’ she said, ‘I know why you’re sitting here, and fretting, all by

yourself. The best thing that can happen for your advantage, Rosanna,

will be for Mr. Franklin’s visit here to come to an end. It’s my belief

that he won’t be long now before he leaves the house.”

“In all my thoughts of you I had never thought of your going away. I

couldn’t speak to Penelope. I could only look at her.

“‘I’ve just left Miss Rachel,’ Penelope went on. ‘And a hard matter I

have had of it to put up with her temper. She says the house is

unbearable to her with the police in it; and she’s determined to speak

to my lady this evening, and to go to her Aunt Ablewhite tomorrow. If

she does that, Mr. Franklin will be the next to find a reason for going

away, you may depend on it!’

“I recovered the use of my tongue at that. ‘Do you mean to say Mr.

Franklin will go with her?’ I asked.

“‘Only too gladly, if she would let him; but she won’t. _He_ has been

made to feel her temper; _he_ is in her black books too—and that after

having done all he can to help her, poor fellow! No! no! If they don’t

make it up before tomorrow, you will see Miss Rachel go one way, and

Mr. Franklin another. Where he may betake himself to I can’t say. But

he will never stay here, Rosanna, after Miss Rachel has left us.’

“I managed to master the despair I felt at the prospect of your going

away. To own the truth, I saw a little glimpse of hope for myself if

there was really a serious disagreement between Miss Rachel and you.

‘Do you know,’ I asked, ‘what the quarrel is between them?’

“‘It is all on Miss Rachel’s side,’ Penelope said. ‘And, for anything I

know to the contrary, it’s all Miss Rachel’s temper, and nothing else.

I am loth to distress you, Rosanna; but don’t run away with the notion

that Mr. Franklin is ever likely to quarrel with _her_. He’s a great

deal too fond of her for that!’

“She had only just spoken those cruel words when there came a call to

us from Mr. Betteredge. All the indoor servants were to assemble in the

hall. And then we were to go in, one by one, and be questioned in Mr.

Betteredge’s room by Sergeant Cuff.

“It came to my turn to go in, after her ladyship’s maid and the upper

housemaid had been questioned first. Sergeant Cuff’s inquiries—though

he wrapped them up very cunningly—soon showed me that those two women

(the bitterest enemies I had in the house) had made their discoveries

outside my door, on the Tuesday afternoon, and again on the Thursday

night. They had told the Sergeant enough to open his eyes to some part

of the truth. He rightly believed me to have made a new nightgown

secretly, but he wrongly believed the paint-stained nightgown to be

mine. I felt satisfied of another thing, from what he said, which it

puzzled me to understand. He suspected me, of course, of being

concerned in the disappearance of the Diamond. But, at the same time,

he let me see—purposely, as I thought—that he did not consider me as

the person chiefly answerable for the loss of the jewel. He appeared to

think that I had been acting under the direction of somebody else. Who

that person might be, I couldn’t guess then, and can’t guess now.

“In this uncertainty, one thing was plain—that Sergeant Cuff was miles

away from knowing the whole truth. You were safe as long as the

nightgown was safe—and not a moment longer.

“I quite despair of making you understand the distress and terror which

pressed upon me now. It was impossible for me to risk wearing your

nightgown any longer. I might find myself taken off, at a moment’s

notice, to the police court at Frizinghall, to be charged on suspicion,

and searched accordingly. While Sergeant Cuff still left me free, I had

to choose—and at once—between destroying the nightgown, or hiding it in

some safe place, at some safe distance from the house.

“If I had only been a little less fond of you, I think I should have

destroyed it. But oh! how could I destroy the only thing I had which

proved that I had saved you from discovery? If we did come to an

explanation together, and if you suspected me of having some bad

motive, and denied it all, how could I win upon you to trust me, unless

I had the nightgown to produce? Was it wronging you to believe, as I

did and do still, that you might hesitate to let a poor girl like me be

the sharer of your secret, and your accomplice in the theft which your

money-troubles had tempted you to commit? Think of your cold behaviour

to me, sir, and you will hardly wonder at my unwillingness to destroy

the only claim on your confidence and your gratitude which it was my

fortune to possess.

“I determined to hide it; and the place I fixed on was the place I knew

best—the Shivering Sand.

“As soon as the questioning was over, I made the first excuse that came

into my head, and got leave to go out for a breath of fresh air. I went

straight to Cobb’s Hole, to Mr. Yolland’s cottage. His wife and

daughter were the best friends I had. Don’t suppose I trusted them with

your secret—I have trusted nobody. All I wanted was to write this

letter to you, and to have a safe opportunity of taking the nightgown

off me. Suspected as I was, I could do neither of those things with any

sort of security, at the house.

“And now I have nearly got through my long letter, writing it alone in

Lucy Yolland’s bedroom. When it is done, I shall go downstairs with the

nightgown rolled up, and hidden under my cloak. I shall find the means

I want for keeping it safe and dry in its hiding-place, among the

litter of old things in Mrs. Yolland’s kitchen. And then I shall go to

the Shivering Sand—don’t be afraid of my letting my footmarks betray

me!—and hide the nightgown down in the sand, where no living creature

can find it without being first let into the secret by myself.

“And, when that’s done, what then?

“Then, Mr. Franklin, I shall have two reasons for making another

attempt to say the words to you which I have not said yet. If you leave

the house, as Penelope believes you will leave it, and if I haven’t

spoken to you before that, I shall lose my opportunity forever. That is

one reason. Then, again, there is the comforting knowledge—if my

speaking does make you angry—that I have got the nightgown ready to

plead my cause for me as nothing else can. That is my other reason. If

these two together don’t harden my heart against the coldness which has

hitherto frozen it up (I mean the coldness of your treatment of me),

there will be the end of my efforts—and the end of my life.

“Yes. If I miss my next opportunity—if you are as cruel as ever, and if

I feel it again as I have felt it already—good-bye to the world which

has grudged me the happiness that it gives to others. Good-bye to life,

which nothing but a little kindness from _you_ can ever make

pleasurable to me again. Don’t blame yourself, sir, if it ends in this

way. But try—do try—to feel some forgiving sorrow for me! I shall take

care that you find out what I have done for you, when I am past telling

you of it myself. Will you say something kind of me then—in the same

gentle way that you have when you speak to Miss Rachel? If you do that,

and if there are such things as ghosts, I believe my ghost will hear

it, and tremble with the pleasure of it.

“It’s time I left off. I am making myself cry. How am I to see my way

to the hiding-place if I let these useless tears come and blind me?

“Besides, why should I look at the gloomy side? Why not believe, while

I can, that it will end well after all? I may find you in a good humour

tonight—or, if not, I may succeed better tomorrow morning. I sha’n’t

improve my plain face by fretting—shall I? Who knows but I may have

filled all these weary long pages of paper for nothing? They will go,

for safety’s sake (never mind now for what other reason) into the

hiding-place along with the nightgown. It has been hard, hard work

writing my letter. Oh! if we only end in understanding each other, how

I shall enjoy tearing it up!

“I beg to remain, sir, your true lover and humble servant,

“ROSANNA SPEARMAN.”

The reading of the letter was completed by Betteredge in silence. After

carefully putting it back in the envelope, he sat thinking, with his

head bowed down, and his eyes on the ground.

“Betteredge,” I said, “is there any hint to guide me at the end of the

letter?”

He looked up slowly, with a heavy sigh.

“There is nothing to guide you, Mr. Franklin,” he answered. “If you

take my advice you will keep the letter in the cover till these present

anxieties of yours have come to an end. It will sorely distress you,

whenever you read it. Don’t read it now.”

I put the letter away in my pocket-book.

A glance back at the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of Betteredge’s

Narrative will show that there really was a reason for my thus sparing

myself, at a time when my fortitude had been already cruelly tried.

Twice over, the unhappy woman had made her last attempt to speak to me.

And twice over, it had been my misfortune (God knows how innocently!)

to repel the advances she had made to me. On the Friday night, as

Betteredge truly describes it, she had found me alone at the

billiard-table. Her manner and language suggested to me and would have

suggested to any man, under the circumstances—that she was about to

confess a guilty knowledge of the disappearance of the Diamond. For her

own sake, I had purposely shown no special interest in what was coming;

for her own sake, I had purposely looked at the billiard-balls, instead

of looking at _her_—and what had been the result? I had sent her away

from me, wounded to the heart! On the Saturday again—on the day when

she must have foreseen, after what Penelope had told her, that my

departure was close at hand—the same fatality still pursued us. She had

once more attempted to meet me in the shrubbery walk, and she had found

me there in company with Betteredge and Sergeant Cuff. In her hearing,

the Sergeant, with his own underhand object in view, had appealed to my

interest in Rosanna Spearman. Again for the poor creature’s own sake, I

had met the police-officer with a flat denial, and had declared—loudly

declared, so that she might hear _me_ too—that I felt “no interest

whatever in Rosanna Spearman.” At those words, solely designed to warn

her against attempting to gain my private ear, she had turned away and

left the place: cautioned of her danger, as I then believed;

self-doomed to destruction, as I know now. From that point, I have

already traced the succession of events which led me to the astounding

discovery at the quicksand. The retrospect is now complete. I may leave

the miserable story of Rosanna Spearman—to which, even at this distance

of time, I cannot revert without a pang of distress—to suggest for

itself all that is here purposely left unsaid. I may pass from the

suicide at the Shivering Sand, with its strange and terrible influence

on my present position and future prospects, to interests which concern

the living people of this narrative, and to events which were already

paving my way for the slow and toilsome journey from the darkness to

the light.