Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (667 page)

“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 to-night — or, if not, I may succeed better to-morrow 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.

CHAPTER VI

I walked to the railway station accompanied, it is needless to say, by Gabriel Betteredge. I had the letter in my pocket, and the nightgown safely packed in a little bag — both to be submitted, before I slept that night, to the investigation of Mr. Bruff.

We left the house in silence. For the first time in my experience of him, I found old Betteredge in my company without a word to say to me. Having something to say on my side, I opened the conversation as soon as we were clear of the lodge gates.

“Before I go to London,” I began, “I have two questions to ask you. They relate to myself, and I believe they will rather surprise you.”

“If they will put that poor creature’s letter out of my head, Mr. Franklin, they may do anything else they like with me. Please to begin surprising me, sir, as soon as you can.”

“My first question, Betteredge, is this. Was I drunk on the night of Rachel’s Birthday?”

“YOU drunk!” exclaimed the old man. “Why it’s the great defect of your character, Mr. Franklin that you only drink with your dinner, and never touch a drop of liquor afterwards!”

“But the birthday was a special occasion. I might have abandoned my regular habits, on that night of all others.”

Betteredge considered for a moment.

“You did go out of your habits, sir,” he said. “And I’ll tell you how. You looked wretchedly ill — and we persuaded you to have a drop of brandy and water to cheer you up a little.”

“I am not used to brandy and water. It is quite possible —
 
— ”

“Wait a bit, Mr. Franklin. I knew you were not used, too. I poured you out half a wineglass-full of our fifty year old Cognac; and (more shame for me!) I drowned that noble liquor in nigh on a tumbler-full of cold water. A child couldn’t have got drunk on it — let alone a grown man!”

I knew I could depend on his memory, in a matter of this kind. It was plainly impossible that I could have been intoxicated. I passed on to the second question.

“Before I was sent abroad, Betteredge, you saw a great deal of me when I was a boy? Now tell me plainly, do you remember anything strange of me, after I had gone to bed at night? Did you ever discover me walking in my sleep?”

Betteredge stopped, looked at me for a moment, nodded his head, and walked on again.

“I see your drift now, Mr. Franklin!” he said “You’re trying to account for how you got the paint on your nightgown, without knowing it yourself. It won’t do, sir. You’re miles away still from getting at the truth. Walk in your sleep? You never did such a thing in your life!”

Here again, I felt that Betteredge must be right. Neither at home nor abroad had my life ever been of the solitary sort. If I had been a sleep-walker, there were hundreds on hundreds of people who must have discovered me, and who, in the interest of my own safety, would have warned me of the habit, and have taken precautions to restrain it.

Still, admitting all this, I clung — with an obstinacy which was surely natural and excusable, under the circumstances — to one or other of the only two explanations that I could see which accounted for the unendurable position in which I then stood. Observing that I was not yet satisfied, Betteredge shrewdly adverted to certain later events in the history of the Moonstone; and scattered both my theories to the wind at once and for ever.

“Let’s try it another way, sir,” he said. “Keep your own opinion, and see how far it will take you towards finding out the truth. If we are to believe the nightgown — which I don’t for one — you not only smeared off the paint from the door, without knowing it, but you also took the Diamond without knowing it. Is that right, so far?”

“Quite right. Go on.”

“Very good, sir. We’ll say you were drunk, or walking in your sleep, when you took the jewel. That accounts for the night and morning, after the birthday. But how does it account for what has happened since that time? The Diamond has been taken to London, since that time. The Diamond has been pledged to Mr. Luker, since that time. Did you do those two things, without knowing it, too? Were you drunk when I saw you off in the pony-chaise on that Saturday evening? And did you walk in your sleep to Mr. Luker’s, when the train had brought you to your journey’s end? Excuse me for saying it, Mr. Franklin, but this business has so upset you, that you’re not fit yet to judge for yourself. The sooner you lay your head alongside Mr. Bruff’s head, the sooner you will see your way out of the dead-lock that has got you now.”

We reached the station, with only a minute or two to spare.

I hurriedly gave Betteredge my address in London, so that he might write to me, if necessary; promising, on my side, to inform him of any news which I might have to communicate. This done, and just as I was bidding him farewell, I happened to glance towards the book-and-newspaper stall. There was Mr. Candy’s remarkable-looking assistant again, speaking to the keeper of the stall! Our eyes met at the same moment. Ezra Jennings took off his hat to me. I returned the salute, and got into a carriage just as the train started. It was a relief to my mind, I suppose, to dwell on any subject which appeared to be, personally, of no sort of importance to me. At all events, I began the momentous journey back which was to take me to Mr. Bruff, wondering — absurdly enough, I admit — that I should have seen the man with the piebald hair twice in one day!

The hour at which I arrived in London precluded all hope of my finding Mr. Bruff at his place of business. I drove from the railway to his private residence at Hampstead, and disturbed the old lawyer dozing alone in his dining-room, with his favourite pug-dog on his lap, and his bottle of wine at his elbow.

I shall best describe the effect which my story produced on the mind of Mr. Bruff by relating his proceedings when he had heard it to the end. He ordered lights, and strong tea, to be taken into his study; and he sent a message to the ladies of his family, forbidding them to disturb us on any pretence whatever. These preliminaries disposed of, he first examined the nightgown, and then devoted himself to the reading of Rosanna Spearman’s letter.

The reading completed, Mr. Bruff addressed me for the first time since we had been shut up together in the seclusion of his own room.

“Franklin Blake,” said the old gentleman, “this is a very serious matter, in more respects than one. In my opinion, it concerns Rachel quite as nearly as it concerns you. Her extraordinary conduct is no mystery NOW. She believes you have stolen the Diamond.”

I had shrunk from reasoning my own way fairly to that revolting conclusion. But it had forced itself on me, nevertheless. My resolution to obtain a personal interview with Rachel, rested really and truly on the ground just stated by Mr. Bruff.

“The first step to take in this investigation,” the lawyer proceeded, “is to appeal to Rachel. She has been silent all this time, from motives which I (who know her character) can readily understand. It is impossible, after what has happened, to submit to that silence any longer. She must be persuaded to tell us, or she must be forced to tell us, on what grounds she bases her belief that you took the Moonstone. The chances are, that the whole of this case, serious as it seems now, will tumble to pieces, if we can only break through Rachel’s inveterate reserve, and prevail upon her to speak out.”