Уильям Коллинз - Лучшие романы Уилки Коллинза / The Best of Wilkie Collins

“Let me go, Rachel” I said. “It will be better for both of us. Let me go.”

The hysterical passion swelled in her bosom – her quickened convulsive breathing almost beat on my face, as she held me back at the door.

“Why did you come here?” she persisted, desperately. “I ask you again – why did you come here? Are you afraid I shall expose you? Now you are a rich man, now you have got a place in the world, now you may marry the best lady in the land – are you afraid I shall say the words which I have never said yet to anybody but you? I can’t say the words! I can’t expose you! I am worse, if worse can be, than you are yourself.” Sobs and tears burst from her. She struggled with them fiercely; she held me more and more firmly. “I can’t tear you out of my heart,” she said, “even now! You may trust in the shameful, shameful weakness which can only struggle against you in this way!” She suddenly let go of me – she threw up her hands, and wrung them frantically in the air. “Any other woman living would shrink from the disgrace of touching him!” she exclaimed. “Oh, God! I despise myself even more heartily than I despise HIM!”

The tears were forcing their way into my eyes in spite of me – the horror of it was to be endured no longer.

“You shall know that you have wronged me, yet,” I said. “Or you shall never see me again!”

With those words, I left her. She started up from the chair on which she had dropped the moment before: she started up – the noble creature! – and followed me across the outer room, with a last merciful word at parting.

“Franklin!” she said, “I forgive you! Oh, Franklin, Franklin! we shall never meet again. Say you forgive ME!”

I turned, so as to let my face show her that I was past speaking – I turned, and waved my hand, and saw her dimly, as in a vision, through the tears that had conquered me at last.

The next moment, the worst bitterness of it was over. I was out in the garden again. I saw her, and heard her, no more.

Late that evening, I was surprised at my lodgings by a visit from Mr. Bruff.

There was a noticeable change in the lawyer’s manner. It had lost its usual confidence and spirit. He shook hands with me, for the first time in his life, in silence.

“Are you going back to Hampstead?” I asked, by way of saying something.

“I have just left Hampstead,” he answered. “I know, Mr. Franklin, that you have got at the truth at last. But, I tell you plainly, if I could have foreseen the price that was to be paid for it, I should have preferred leaving you in the dark.”

“You have seen Rachel?”

“I have come here after taking her back to Portland Place; it was impossible to let her return in the carriage by herself. I can hardly hold you responsible – considering that you saw her in my house and by my permission – for the shock that this unlucky interview has inflicted on her. All I can do is to provide against a repetition of the mischief. She is young – she has a resolute spirit – she will get over this, with time and rest to help her. I want to be assured that you will do nothing to hinder her recovery. May I depend on your making no second attempt to see her – except with my sanction and approval?”

“After what she has suffered, and after what I have suffered,” I said, “you may rely on me.”

“I have your promise?”

“You have my promise.”

Mr. Bruff looked relieved. He put down his hat, and drew his chair nearer to mine.

“That’s settled!” he said. “Now, about the future – your future, I mean. To my mind, the result of the extraordinary turn which the matter has now taken is briefly this. In the first place, we are sure that Rachel has told you the whole truth, as plainly as words can tell it. In the second place – though we know that there must be some dreadful mistake somewhere – we can hardly blame her for believing you to be guilty, on the evidence of her own senses; backed, as that evidence has been, by circumstances which appear, on the face of them, to tell dead against [100]you.”

There I interposed. “I don’t blame Rachel,” I said. “I only regret that she could not prevail on herself to speak more plainly to me at the time.”

“You might as well regret that Rachel is not somebody else,” rejoined Mr. Bruff. “And even then, I doubt if a girl of any delicacy, whose heart had been set on marrying you, could have brought herself to charge you to your face with being a thief. Anyhow, it was not in Rachel’s nature to do it. In a very different matter to this matter of yours – which placed her, however, in a position not altogether unlike her position towards you – I happen to know that she was influenced by a similar motive to the motive which actuated her conduct in your case. Besides, as she told me herself, on our way to town this evening, if she had spoken plainly, she would no more have believed your denial then than she believes it now. What answer can you make to that? There is no answer to be made to it. Come, come, Mr. Franklin! my view of the case has been proved to be all wrong, I admit – but, as things are now, my advice may be worth having for all that. I tell you plainly, we shall be wasting our time, and cudgelling our brains to no purpose, if we attempt to try back, and unravel this frightful complication from the beginning. Let us close our minds resolutely to all that happened last year at Lady Verinder’s country house; and let us look to what we CAN discover in the future, instead of to what we can NOT discover in the past.”

“Surely you forget,” I said, “that the whole thing is essentially a matter of the past – so far as I am concerned?”

“Answer me this,” retorted Mr. Bruff. “Is the Moonstone at the bottom of all the mischief – or is it not?”

“It is – of course.”

“Very good. What do we believe was done with the Moonstone, when it was taken to London?”

“It was pledged to Mr. Luker.”

“We know that you are not the person who pledged it. Do we know who did?”

“No.”

“Where do we believe the Moonstone to be now?”

“Deposited in the keeping of Mr. Luker’s bankers.”

“Exactly. Now observe. We are already in the month of June. Towards the end of the month (I can’t be particular to a day) a year will have elapsed from the time when we believe the jewel to have been pledged. There is a chance – to say the least – that the person who pawned it, may be prepared to redeem it when the year’s time has expired. If he redeems it, Mr. Luker must himself – according to the terms of his own arrangement – take the Diamond out of his banker’s hands. Under these circumstances, I propose setting a watch at the bank, as the present month draws to an end, and discovering who the person is to whom Mr. Luker restores the Moonstone. Do you see it now?”

I admitted (a little unwillingly) that the idea was a new one, at any rate.

“It’s Mr. Murthwaite’s idea quite as much as mine,” said Mr. Bruff. “It might have never entered my head, but for a conversation we had together some time since. If Mr. Murthwaite is right, the Indians are likely to be on the lookout at the bank, towards the end of the month too – and something serious may come of it. What comes of it doesn’t matter to you and me except as it may help us to lay our hands on the mysterious Somebody who pawned the Diamond. That person, you may rely on it, is responsible (I don’t pretend to know how) for the position in which you stand at this moment; and that person alone can set you right in Rachel’s estimation.”

“I can’t deny,” I said, “that the plan you propose meets the difficulty in a way that is very daring, and very ingenious, and very new. But – ”