The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (10 ebook reader .TXT) 📕

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?”

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 today; 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 moneylender 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