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<h2> CHAPTER V </h2>
<p>Having told me the name of Mr. Candy's assistant, Betteredge appeared to
think that we had wasted enough of our time on an insignificant subject.
He resumed the perusal of Rosanna Spearman's letter.</p>
<p>On my side, I sat at the window, waiting until he had done. Little by
little, the impression produced on me by Ezra Jennings—it seemed
perfectly unaccountable, in such a situation as mine, that any human being
should have produced an impression on me at all!—faded from my mind.
My thoughts flowed back into their former channel. Once more, I forced
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 last summoned
composure enough to plan out for the future.</p>
<p>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 at
what sacrifice) a personal interview with Rachel—this was my plan of
action, so far as I was capable of forming it at the time. There was more
than an hour still to spare before the train started. And there was the
bare chance that Betteredge might discover something in the unread portion
of Rosanna Spearman's letter, which it might be useful for me to know
before I left the house in which the Diamond had been lost. For that
chance I was now waiting.</p>
<p>The letter ended in these terms:</p>
<p>"You have no need to be angry, Mr. Franklin, even if I did feel some
little triumph at knowing that I held all your prospects in life in my own
hands. Anxieties and fears soon came back to me. With the view Sergeant
Cuff took of the loss of the Diamond, he would be sure to end in examining
our linen and our dresses. There was no place in my room—there was
no place in the house—which I could feel satisfied would be safe
from him. How to hide the nightgown so that not even the Sergeant could
find it? and how to do that without losing one moment of precious time?—these
were not easy questions to answer. My uncertainties ended in my taking a
way that may make you laugh. I undressed, and put the nightgown on me. You
had worn it—and I had another little moment of pleasure in wearing
it after you.</p>
<p>"The next news that reached us in the servants' hall showed that I had not
made sure of the nightgown a moment too soon. Sergeant Cuff wanted to see
the washing-book.</p>
<p>"I found it, and took it to him in my lady's sitting-room. The Sergeant
and I had come across each other more than once in former days. I was
certain he would know me again—and I was NOT certain of what he
might do when he found me employed as servant in a house in which a
valuable jewel had been lost. In this suspense, I felt it would be a
relief to me to get the meeting between us over, and to know the worst of
it at once.</p>
<p>"He looked at me as if I was a stranger, when I handed him the
washing-book; and he was very specially polite in thanking me for bringing
it. I thought those were both bad signs. There was no knowing what he
might say of me behind my back; there was no knowing how soon I might not
find myself taken in custody on suspicion, and searched. It was then time
for your return from seeing Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite off by the railway; and
I went to your favourite walk in the shrubbery, to try for another chance
of speaking to you—the last chance, for all I knew to the contrary,
that I might have.</p>
<p>"You never appeared; and, what was worse still, Mr. Betteredge and
Sergeant Cuff passed by the place where I was hiding—and the
Sergeant saw me.</p>
<p>"I had no choice, after that, but to return to my proper place and my
proper work, before more disasters happened to me. Just as I was going to
step across the path, you came back from the railway. You were making
straight for the shrubbery, when you saw me—I am certain, sir, you
saw me—and you turned away as if I had got the plague, and went into
the house.*</p>
<p>* NOTE: by Franklin Blake.—The writer is entirely mistaken,<br/>
poor creature. I never noticed her. My intention was<br/>
certainly to have taken a turn in the shrubbery. But,<br/>
remembering at the same moment that my aunt might wish to<br/>
see me, after my return from the railway, I altered my mind,<br/>
and went into the house.<br/></p>
<p>"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 sat
down there alone. I have told you already of the thoughts which the
Shivering Sand put into my head. Those thoughts came back to me now. I
wondered in myself which it would be harder to do, if things went on in
this manner—to bear Mr. Franklin Blake's indifference to me, or to
jump into the quicksand and end it for ever in that way?</p>
<p>"It's useless to ask me to account for my own conduct, at this time. I try—and
I can't understand it myself.</p>
<p>"Why didn't I stop you, when you avoided me in that cruel manner? Why
didn'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 at my mercy—I
had got the whip-hand of you, as they say. And better than that, I had the
means (if I could only make you trust me) of being useful to you in the
future. Of course, I never supposed that you—a gentleman—had
stolen the Diamond for the mere pleasure of stealing it. No. Penelope had
heard Miss Rachel, and I had heard Mr. Betteredge, talk about your
extravagance and your debts. It was plain enough to me that you had taken
the Diamond to sell it, or pledge it, and so to get the money of which you
stood in need. Well! I could have told you of a man in London who would
have advanced a good large sum on the jewel, and who would have asked no
awkward questions about it either.</p>
<p>"Why didn't I speak to you! why didn't I speak to you!</p>
<p>"I wonder whether the risks and difficulties of keeping the nightgown were
as much as I could manage, without having other risks and difficulties
added to them? This might have been the case with some women—but how
could it be the case with me? In the days when I was a thief, I had run
fifty times greater risks, and found my way out of difficulties to which
THIS difficulty was mere child's play. I had been apprenticed, as you may
say, to frauds and deceptions—some of them on such a grand scale,
and managed so cleverly, that they became famous, and appeared in the
newspapers. Was such a little thing as the keeping of the nightgown likely
to weigh on my spirits, and to set my heart sinking within me, at the time
when I ought to have spoken to you? What nonsense to ask the question! The
thing couldn't be.</p>
<p>"Where is the use of my dwelling in this way on my own folly? The plain
truth is plain enough, surely? Behind your back, I loved you with all my
heart and soul. Before your face—there's no denying it—I was
frightened of you; frightened of making you angry with me; frightened of
what you might say to me (though you HAD taken the Diamond) if I presumed
to tell you that I had found it out. I had gone as near to it as I dared
when I spoke to you in the library. You had not turned your back on me
then. You had not started away from me as if I had got the plague. I tried
to provoke myself into feeling angry with you, and to rouse up my courage
in that way. No! I couldn't feel anything but the misery and the
mortification of it. You're a plain girl; you have got a crooked shoulder;
you're only a housemaid—what do you mean by attempting to speak to
Me?" You never uttered a word of that, Mr. Franklin; but you said it all
to me, nevertheless! Is such madness as this to be accounted for? No.
There is nothing to be done but to confess it, and let it be.</p>
<p>"I ask your pardon, once more, for this wandering of my pen. There is no
fear of its happening again. I am close at the end now.</p>
<p>"The first person who disturbed me by coming into the empty room was
Penelope. She had found out my secret long since, and she had done her
best to bring me to my senses—and done it kindly too.</p>
<p>"'Ah!' she said, 'I know why you're sitting here, and fretting, all by
yourself. 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 belief that he
won't be long now before he leaves the house."</p>
<p>"In all my thoughts of you I had never thought of your going away. I
couldn't speak to Penelope. I could only look at her.</p>
<p>"'I've just left Miss Rachel,' Penelope went on. 'And a hard matter I have
had of it to put up with her temper. She says the house is unbearable to
her with the police in it; and she's determined to speak to my lady this
evening, and to go to her Aunt Ablewhite to-morrow. If she does that, Mr.
Franklin will be the next to find a reason for going away, you may depend
on it!'</p>
<p>"I recovered the use of my tongue at that. 'Do you mean to say Mr.
Franklin will go with her?' I asked.</p>
<p>"'Only too gladly, if she would let him; but she won't. HE has been made
to feel her temper; HE is in her black books too—and that after
having done all he can to help her, poor fellow! No! no! If they don't
make it 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 he will
never stay here, Rosanna, after Miss Rachel has left us.'</p>
<p>"I managed to master the despair I felt at the prospect of your going
away. To own the truth, I saw a little glimpse of hope for myself if there
was really a serious disagreement between Miss Rachel and you. 'Do you
know,' I asked, 'what the quarrel is between them?'</p>
<p>"'It is all on Miss Rachel's side,' Penelope said. 'And, for anything I
know 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 notion that
Mr. Franklin is ever likely to quarrel with HER. He's a great deal too
fond of her for that!'</p>
<p>"She had only just spoken those cruel words when there came a call to us
from Mr. Betteredge. All the indoor servants were to assemble in the hall.
And then we were to go in, one by one, and be questioned in Mr.
Betteredge's room by Sergeant Cuff.</p>
<p>"It came to my turn to go in, after her ladyship's maid and the upper
housemaid had been questioned first. Sergeant Cuff's inquiries—though
he wrapped them up very cunningly—soon showed me that those two
women (the bitterest enemies I had in the house) had made their
discoveries outside my door, on the Tuesday afternoon, and again on the
Thursday night. They had told the Sergeant enough to open his eyes to some
part of the truth. He rightly believed me to have made a new nightgown
secretly, but he wrongly believed the paint-stained nightgown to be mine.
I felt satisfied of another thing, from what he said, which it puzzled me
to understand. He suspected me, of course, of being concerned in the
disappearance of the Diamond. But, at the same time, he let me see—purposely,
as I thought—that he did not consider me as the person chiefly
answerable for the loss of the jewel. He appeared to think that I had been
acting under the direction of somebody else. Who that person might be, I
couldn't guess then, and can't guess now.</p>
<p>"In this uncertainty, one thing was plain—that Sergeant Cuff was
miles away from knowing the whole truth. You were safe as long as the
nightgown was safe—and not a moment longer.</p>
<p>"I quite despair of making you understand the distress and terror which
pressed upon me now. It was impossible for me to risk wearing your
nightgown any longer. I might find myself taken off, at a moment's notice,
to the police court at Frizinghall, to be charged on suspicion, and
searched accordingly. While Sergeant Cuff still left me free, I had to
choose—and at once—between destroying the nightgown, or hiding
it in some safe place, at some safe distance from the house.</p>
<p>"If I had only been a little less fond of you, I think I should have
destroyed it. But oh! how could I destroy the only thing I had which
proved that I had saved you from discovery? If we did come to an
explanation 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 had the
nightgown to produce? Was it wronging you to believe, as I did and do
still, that you might hesitate to let a poor girl like me be the sharer of
your secret, and your accomplice in the theft which your money-troubles
had tempted you to commit? Think of your cold behaviour to me, sir, and
you will hardly wonder at my unwillingness to destroy the only claim on
your confidence and your gratitude which it was my fortune to possess.</p>
<p>"I determined to hide it; and the place I fixed on was the place I knew
best—the Shivering Sand.</p>
<p>"As soon as the questioning was over, I made the first excuse that came
into my head, and got leave to go out for a breath of fresh air. I went
straight to Cobb's Hole, to Mr. Yolland's cottage. His wife and daughter
were the best friends I had. Don't suppose I trusted them with your secret—I
have trusted nobody. All I wanted was to write this letter to 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 of security, at the
house.</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"And, when that's done, what then?</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"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?</p>
<p>"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!</p>
<p>"I beg to remain, sir, your true lover and humble servant,</p>
<p>"ROSANNA SPEARMAN."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"Betteredge," I said, "is there any hint to guide me at the end of the
letter?"</p>
<p>He looked up slowly, with a heavy sigh.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>I put the letter away in my pocket-book.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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