Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (670 page)

“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?”