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.