The Moonstone
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?”