CHAPTER V
Having told me the name of Mr. Candy's assistant, Betteredge appeared tothink that we had wasted enough of our time on an insignificant subject.He resumed the perusal of Rosanna Spearman's letter.
On my side, I sat at the window, waiting until he had done. Littleby little, the impression produced on me by Ezra Jennings--it seemedperfectly unaccountable, in such a situation as mine, that any humanbeing should have produced an impression on me at all!--faded from mymind. My thoughts flowed back into their former channel. Once more, Iforced myself to look my own incredible position resolutely in the face.Once more, I reviewed in my own mind the course which I had at lastsummoned composure enough to plan out for the future.
To go back to London that day; to put the whole case before Mr. Bruff;and, last and most important, to obtain (no matter by what means or atwhat sacrifice) a personal interview with Rachel--this was my plan ofaction, so far as I was capable of forming it at the time. There wasmore than an hour still to spare before the train started. And there wasthe bare chance that Betteredge might discover something in the unreadportion of Rosanna Spearman's letter, which it might be useful for meto know before I left the house in which the Diamond had been lost. Forthat chance I was now waiting.
The letter ended in these terms:
"You have no need to be angry, Mr. Franklin, even if I did feel somelittle triumph at knowing that I held all your prospects in life inmy own hands. Anxieties and fears soon came back to me. With the viewSergeant Cuff took of the loss of the Diamond, he would be sure toend in examining our linen and our dresses. There was no place in myroom--there was no place in the house--which I could feel satisfiedwould be safe from him. How to hide the nightgown so that not even theSergeant could find it? and how to do that without losing one momentof precious time?--these were not easy questions to answer. Myuncertainties ended in my taking a way that may make you laugh. Iundressed, and put the nightgown on me. You had worn it--and I hadanother little moment of pleasure in wearing it after you.
"The next news that reached us in the servants' hall showed that I hadnot made sure of the nightgown a moment too soon. Sergeant Cuff wantedto see the washing-book.
"I found it, and took it to him in my lady's sitting-room. The Sergeantand I had come across each other more than once in former days. I wascertain he would know me again--and I was NOT certain of what he mightdo when he found me employed as servant in a house in which a valuablejewel had been lost. In this suspense, I felt it would be a relief to meto get the meeting between us over, and to know the worst of it at once.
"He looked at me as if I was a stranger, when I handed him thewashing-book; and he was very specially polite in thanking me forbringing it. I thought those were both bad signs. There was no knowingwhat he might say of me behind my back; there was no knowing how soonI might not find myself taken in custody on suspicion, and searched. Itwas then time for your return from seeing Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite off bythe railway; and I went to your favourite walk in the shrubbery, to tryfor another chance of speaking to you--the last chance, for all I knewto the contrary, that I might have.
"You never appeared; and, what was worse still, Mr. Betteredge andSergeant Cuff passed by the place where I was hiding--and the Sergeantsaw me.
"I had no choice, after that, but to return to my proper place and myproper work, before more disasters happened to me. Just as I was goingto step across the path, you came back from the railway. You were makingstraight for the shrubbery, when you saw me--I am certain, sir, you sawme--and you turned away as if I had got the plague, and went into thehouse.*
* NOTE: by Franklin Blake.--The writer is entirely mistaken, poor creature. I never noticed her. My intention was certainly to have taken a turn in the shrubbery. But, remembering at the same moment that my aunt might wish to see me, after my return from the railway, I altered my mind, and went into the house.
"I made the best of my way indoors again, returning by the servants'entrance. There was nobody in the laundry-room at that time; and I satdown there alone. I have told you already of the thoughts which theShivering Sand put into my head. Those thoughts came back to me now. Iwondered in myself which it would be harder to do, if things went on inthis manner--to bear Mr. Franklin Blake's indifference to me, or to jumpinto the quicksand and end it for ever in that way?
"It's useless to ask me to account for my own conduct, at this time. Itry--and I can't understand it myself.
"Why didn't I stop you, when you avoided me in that cruel manner? Whydidn't I call out, 'Mr. Franklin, I have got something to say to you;it concerns yourself, and you must, and shall, hear it?' You were atmy mercy--I had got the whip-hand of you, as they say. And better thanthat, I had the means (if I could only make you trust me) of beinguseful to you in the future. Of course, I never supposed that you--agentleman--had stolen the Diamond for the mere pleasure of stealing it.No. Penelope had heard Miss Rachel, and I had heard Mr. Betteredge, talkabout your extravagance and your debts. It was plain enough to me thatyou had taken the Diamond to sell it, or pledge it, and so to get themoney of which you stood in need. Well! I could have told you of a manin London who would have advanced a good large sum on the jewel, and whowould have asked no awkward questions about it either.
"Why didn't I speak to you! why didn't I speak to you!
"I wonder whether the risks and difficulties of keeping the nightgownwere as much as I could manage, without having other risks anddifficulties added to them? This might have been the case with somewomen--but how could it be the case with me? In the days when I wasa thief, I had run fifty times greater risks, and found my way out ofdifficulties to which THIS difficulty was mere child's play. I had beenapprenticed, as you may say, to frauds and deceptions--some of them onsuch a grand scale, and managed so cleverly, that they became famous,and appeared in the newspapers. Was such a little thing as the keepingof the nightgown likely to weigh on my spirits, and to set my heartsinking within me, at the time when I ought to have spoken to you? Whatnonsense to ask the question! The thing couldn't be.
"Where is the use of my dwelling in this way on my own folly? The plaintruth is plain enough, surely? Behind your back, I loved you with allmy heart and soul. Before your face--there's no denying it--I wasfrightened of you; frightened of making you angry with me; frightenedof what you might say to me (though you HAD taken the Diamond) if Ipresumed to tell you that I had found it out. I had gone as near to itas I dared when I spoke to you in the library. You had not turned yourback on me then. You had not started away from me as if I had got theplague. I tried to provoke myself into feeling angry with you, and torouse up my courage in that way. No! I couldn't feel anything but themisery and the mortification of it. You're a plain girl; you have gota crooked shoulder; you're only a housemaid--what do you mean byattempting to speak to Me?" You never uttered a word of that, Mr.Franklin; but you said it all to me, nevertheless! Is such madness asthis to be accounted for? No. There is nothing to be done but to confessit, and let it be.
"I ask your pardon, once more, for this wandering of my pen. There is nofear of its happening again. I am close at the end now.
"The first person who disturbed me by coming into the empty room wasPenelope. She had found out my secret long since, and she had done herbest to bring me to my senses--and done it kindly too.
"'Ah!' she said, 'I know why you're sitting here, and fretting, all byyourself. The best thing that can happen for your advantage, Rosanna,will be for Mr. Franklin's visit here to come to an end. It's my beliefthat he won't be long now before he leaves the house."
"In all my thoughts of you I had never thought of your going away. Icouldn't speak to Penelope. I could only look at her.
"'I've just left Miss Rachel,' Penelope went on. 'And a hard matterI have had of it to put up with her temper. She says the house isunbearable to her with the police in it; and she's determined to speakto my lady this evening, and to go to her Aunt Ablewhite to-morrow. Ifshe does that, Mr. Franklin will be
the next to find a reason for goingaway, you may depend on it!'
"I recovered the use of my tongue at that. 'Do you mean to say Mr.Franklin will go with her?' I asked.
"'Only too gladly, if she would let him; but she won't. HE has been madeto feel her temper; HE is in her black books too--and that after havingdone all he can to help her, poor fellow! No! no! If they don't makeit up before to-morrow, you will see Miss Rachel go one way, and Mr.Franklin another. Where he may betake himself to I can't say. But hewill never stay here, Rosanna, after Miss Rachel has left us.'
"I managed to master the despair I felt at the prospect of your goingaway. To own the truth, I saw a little glimpse of hope for myself ifthere was really a serious disagreement between Miss Rachel and you. 'Doyou know,' I asked, 'what the quarrel is between them?'
"'It is all on Miss Rachel's side,' Penelope said. 'And, for anything Iknow to the contrary, it's all Miss Rachel's temper, and nothing else.I am loth to distress you, Rosanna; but don't run away with the notionthat Mr. Franklin is ever likely to quarrel with HER. He's a great dealtoo fond of her for that!'
"She had only just spoken those cruel words when there came a call tous from Mr. Betteredge. All the indoor servants were to assemble in thehall. And then we were to go in, one by one, and be questioned in Mr.Betteredge's room by Sergeant Cuff.
"It came to my turn to go in, after her ladyship's maid and the upperhousemaid had been questioned first. Sergeant Cuff's inquiries--thoughhe wrapped them up very cunningly--soon showed me that those two women(the bitterest enemies I had in the house) had made their discoveriesoutside my door, on the Tuesday afternoon, and again on the Thursdaynight. They had told the Sergeant enough to open his eyes to somepart of the truth. He rightly believed me to have made a new nightgownsecretly, but he wrongly believed the paint-stained nightgown to bemine. I felt satisfied of another thing, from what he said, which itpuzzled me to understand. He suspected me, of course, of being concernedin the disappearance of the Diamond. But, at the same time, he let mesee--purposely, as I thought--that he did not consider me as the personchiefly answerable for the loss of the jewel. He appeared to think thatI had been acting under the direction of somebody else. Who that personmight be, I couldn't guess then, and can't guess now.
"In this uncertainty, one thing was plain--that Sergeant Cuff wasmiles away from knowing the whole truth. You were safe as long as thenightgown was safe--and not a moment longer.
"I quite despair of making you understand the distress and terror whichpressed upon me now. It was impossible for me to risk wearing yournightgown any longer. I might find myself taken off, at a moment'snotice, to the police court at Frizinghall, to be charged on suspicion,and searched accordingly. While Sergeant Cuff still left me free, I hadto choose--and at once--between destroying the nightgown, or hiding itin some safe place, at some safe distance from the house.
"If I had only been a little less fond of you, I think I should havedestroyed it. But oh! how could I destroy the only thing I had whichproved that I had saved you from discovery? If we did come to anexplanation together, and if you suspected me of having some bad motive,and denied it all, how could I win upon you to trust me, unless I hadthe nightgown to produce? Was it wronging you to believe, as I did anddo still, that you might hesitate to let a poor girl like me be thesharer of your secret, and your accomplice in the theft which yourmoney-troubles had tempted you to commit? Think of your cold behaviourto me, sir, and you will hardly wonder at my unwillingness to destroythe only claim on your confidence and your gratitude which it was myfortune to possess.
"I determined to hide it; and the place I fixed on was the place I knewbest--the Shivering Sand.
"As soon as the questioning was over, I made the first excuse that cameinto my head, and got leave to go out for a breath of fresh air. I wentstraight to Cobb's Hole, to Mr. Yolland's cottage. His wife and daughterwere the best friends I had. Don't suppose I trusted them with yoursecret--I have trusted nobody. All I wanted was to write this letterto you, and to have a safe opportunity of taking the nightgown off me.Suspected as I was, I could do neither of those things with any sort ofsecurity, at the house.
"And now I have nearly got through my long letter, writing it alone inLucy Yolland's bedroom. When it is done, I shall go downstairs with thenightgown rolled up, and hidden under my cloak. I shall find the meansI want for keeping it safe and dry in its hiding-place, among the litterof old things in Mrs. Yolland's kitchen. And then I shall go to theShivering Sand--don't be afraid of my letting my footmarks betrayme!--and hide the nightgown down in the sand, where no living creaturecan 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 attemptto say the words to you which I have not said yet. If you leave thehouse, as Penelope believes you will leave it, and if I haven't spokento you before that, I shall lose my opportunity forever. That is onereason. Then, again, there is the comforting knowledge--if my speakingdoes make you angry--that I have got the nightgown ready to plead mycause for me as nothing else can. That is my other reason. If these twotogether don't harden my heart against the coldness which has hithertofrozen it up (I mean the coldness of your treatment of me), there willbe 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 ifI feel it again as I have felt it already--good-bye to the world whichhas grudged me the happiness that it gives to others. Good-bye to life,which nothing but a little kindness from you can ever make pleasurableto me again. Don't blame yourself, sir, if it ends in this way. Buttry--do try--to feel some forgiving sorrow for me! I shall take carethat you find out what I have done for you, when I am past telling youof it myself. Will you say something kind of me then--in the same gentleway that you have when you speak to Miss Rachel? If you do that, and ifthere are such things as ghosts, I believe my ghost will hear it, andtremble with the pleasure of it.
"It's time I left off. I am making myself cry. How am I to see my way tothe hiding-place if I let these useless tears come and blind me?
"Besides, why should I look at the gloomy side? Why not believe, whileI can, that it will end well after all? I may find you in a good humourto-night--or, if not, I may succeed better to-morrow morning. I sha'n'timprove my plain face by fretting--shall I? Who knows but I may havefilled all these weary long pages of paper for nothing? They willgo, for safety's sake (never mind now for what other reason) into thehiding-place along with the nightgown. It has been hard, hard workwriting my letter. Oh! if we only end in understanding each other, how Ishall 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. Aftercarefully putting it back in the envelope, he sat thinking, with hishead bowed down, and his eyes on the ground.
"Betteredge," I said, "is there any hint to guide me at the end of theletter?"
He looked up slowly, with a heavy sigh.
"There is nothing to guide you, Mr. Franklin," he answered. "If youtake my advice you will keep the letter in the cover till these presentanxieties 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'sNarrative will show that there really was a reason for my thus sparingmyself, 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 thebilliard-table. Her manner and language suggested to me and would havesuggested to any man, under the circumstances--that she was about toconfess a guilty knowledge of the disappearance of the Diamond. For herown sake,
I had purposely shown no special interest in what was coming;for her own sake, I had purposely looked at the billiard-balls, insteadof looking at HER--and what had been the result? I had sent her awayfrom me, wounded to the heart! On the Saturday again--on the day whenshe must have foreseen, after what Penelope had told her, that mydeparture was close at hand--the same fatality still pursued us. She hadonce more attempted to meet me in the shrubbery walk, and she had foundme there in company with Betteredge and Sergeant Cuff. In her hearing,the Sergeant, with his own underhand object in view, had appealed to myinterest in Rosanna Spearman. Again for the poor creature's own sake, Ihad met the police-officer with a flat denial, and had declared--loudlydeclared, so that she might hear me too--that I felt "no interestwhatever in Rosanna Spearman." At those words, solely designed to warnher against attempting to gain my private ear, she had turned away andleft the place: cautioned of her danger, as I then believed; self-doomedto destruction, as I know now. From that point, I have already tracedthe succession of events which led me to the astounding discovery atthe quicksand. The retrospect is now complete. I may leave the miserablestory of Rosanna Spearman--to which, even at this distance of time, Icannot revert without a pang of distress--to suggest for itself allthat is here purposely left unsaid. I may pass from the suicide at theShivering Sand, with its strange and terrible influence on my presentposition and future prospects, to interests which concern the livingpeople of this narrative, and to events which were already paving my wayfor the slow and toilsome journey from the darkness to the light.
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