Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (671 page)

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 to-day; 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.

CHAPTER VIII

Late that evening, I was surprised at my lodgings by a visit from Mr. Bruff.

There was a noticeable change in the lawyer’s manner. It had lost its usual confidence and spirit. He shook hands with me, for the first time in his life, in silence.

“Are you going back to Hampstead?” I asked, by way of saying something.

“I have just left Hampstead,” he answered. “I know, Mr. Franklin, that you have got at the truth at last. But, I tell you plainly, if I could have foreseen the price that was to be paid for it, I should have preferred leaving you in the dark.”

“You have seen Rachel?”

“I have come here after taking her back to Portland Place; it was impossible to let her return in the carriage by herself. I can hardly hold you responsible — considering that you saw her in my house and by my permission — for the shock that this unlucky interview has inflicted on her. All I can do is to provide against a repetition of the mischief. She is young — she has a resolute spirit — she will get over this, with time and rest to help her. I want to be assured that you will do nothing to hinder her recovery. May I depend on your making no second attempt to see her — except with my sanction and approval?”

“After what she has suffered, and after what I have suffered,” I said, “you may rely on me.”

“I have your promise?”

“You have my promise.”

Mr. Bruff looked relieved. He put down his hat, and drew his chair nearer to mine.

“That’s settled!” he said. “Now, about the future — your future, I mean. To my mind, the result of the extraordinary turn which the matter has now taken is briefly this. In the first place, we are sure that Rachel has told you the whole truth, as plainly as words can tell it. In the second place — though we know that there must be some dreadful mistake somewhere — we can hardly blame her for believing you to be guilty, on the evidence of her own senses; backed, as that evidence has been, by circumstances which appear, on the face of them, to tell dead against you.”

There I interposed. “I don’t blame Rachel,” I said. “I only regret that she could not prevail on herself to speak more plainly to me at the time.”

“You might as well regret that Rachel is not somebody else,” rejoined Mr. Bruff. “And even then, I doubt if a girl of any delicacy, whose heart had been set on marrying you, could have brought herself to charge you to your face with being a thief. Anyhow, it was not in Rachel’s nature to do it. In a very different matter to this matter of yours — which placed her, however, in a position not altogether unlike her position towards you — I happen to know that she was influenced by a similar motive to the motive which actuated her conduct in your case. Besides, as she told me herself, on our way to town this evening, if she had spoken plainly, she would no more have believed your denial then than she believes it now. What answer can you make to that? There is no answer to be made to it. Come, come, Mr. Franklin! my view of the case has been proved to be all wrong, I admit — but, as things are now, my advice may be worth having for all that. I tell you plainly, we shall be wasting our time, and cudgelling our brains to no purpose, if we attempt to try back, and unravel this frightful complication from the beginning. Let us close our minds resolutely to all that happened last year at Lady Verinder’s country house; and let us look to what we CAN discover in the future, instead of to what we can NOT discover in the past.”

“Surely you forget,” I said, “that the whole thing is essentially a matter of the past — so far as I am concerned?”

“Answer me this,” retorted Mr. Bruff. “Is the Moonstone at the bottom of all the mischief — or is it not?”

“It is — of course.”

“Very good. What do we believe was done with the Moonstone, when it was taken to London?”

“It was pledged to Mr. Luker.”

“We know that you are not the person who pledged it. Do we know who did?”

“No.”

“Where do we believe the Moonstone to be now?”

“Deposited in the keeping of Mr. Luker’s bankers.”

“Exactly. Now observe. We are already in the month of June. Towards the end of the month (I can’t be particular to a day) a year will have elapsed from the time when we believe the jewel to have been pledged. There is a chance — to say the least — that the person who pawned it, may be prepared to redeem it when the year’s time has expired. If he redeems it, Mr. Luker must himself — according to the terms of his own arrangement — take the Diamond out of his banker’s hands. Under these circumstances, I propose setting a watch at the bank, as the present month draws to an end, and discovering who the person is to whom Mr. Luker restores the Moonstone. Do you see it now?”

I admitted (a little unwillingly) that the idea was a new one, at any rate.

“It’s Mr. Murthwaite’s idea quite as much as mine,” said Mr. Bruff. “It might have never entered my head, but for a conversation we had together some time since. If Mr. Murthwaite is right, the Indians are likely to be on the lookout at the bank, towards the end of the month too — and something serious may come of it. What comes of it doesn’t matter to you and me except as it may help us to lay our hands on the mysterious Somebody who pawned the Diamond. That person, you may rely on it, is responsible (I don’t pretend to know how) for the position in which you stand at this moment; and that person alone can set you right in Rachel’s estimation.”

“I can’t deny,” I said, “that the plan you propose meets the difficulty in a way that is very daring, and very ingenious, and very new. But —
 
— ”

“But you have an objection to make?”

“Yes. My objection is, that your proposal obliges us to wait.”

“Granted. As I reckon the time, it requires you to wait about a fortnight — more or less. Is that so very long?”

“It’s a life-time, Mr. Bruff, in such a situation as mine. My existence will be simply unendurable to me, unless I do something towards clearing my character at once.”

“Well, well, I understand that. Have you thought yet of what you can do?”

“I have thought of consulting Sergeant Cuff.”

“He has retired from the police. It’s useless to expect the Sergeant to help you.”

“I know where to find him; and I can but try.”

“Try,” said Mr. Bruff, after a moment’s consideration. “The case has assumed such an extraordinary aspect since Sergeant Cuff’s time, that you may revive his interest in the inquiry. Try, and let me hear the result. In the meanwhile,” he continued, rising, “if you make no discoveries between this, and the end of the month, am I free to try, on my side, what can be done by keeping a lookout at the bank?”

“Certainly,” I answered — ”unless I relieve you of all necessity for trying the experiment in the interval.”

Mr. Bruff smiled, and took up his hat.

“Tell Sergeant Cuff,” he rejoined, “that I say the discovery of the truth depends on the discovery of the person who pawned the Diamond. And let me hear what the Sergeant’s experience says to that.”

So we parted.

Early the next morning, I set forth for the little town of Dorking — the place of Sergeant Cuff’s retirement, as indicated to me by Betteredge.