‘Some such suspicion,’ I answered, ‘crossed my own mind, as soon as I opened the letter.’
‘Exactly! And when you had read the letter, you pitied the poor creature, and couldn’t find it in your heart to suspect her. Does you credit, my dear sir—does you credit!’
‘But suppose it turns out that I did wear the nightgown? What then?’
‘I don’t see how the fact is to be proved,’ said Mr. Bruff. ‘But assuming the proof to be possible, the vindication of your innocence would be no easy matter. We won’t go into that, now. Let us wait and see whether Rachel hasn’t suspected you on the evidence of the nightgown only.’
‘Good God, how coolly you talk of Rachel suspecting me!’ I broke out. ‘What right has she to suspect Me, on any evidence, of being a thief?’
‘A very sensible question, my dear sir. Rather hotly put—but well worth considering for all that. What puzzles you, puzzles me too. Search your memory, and tell me this. Did anything happen while you were staying at the house—not, of course, to shake Rachel’s belief in your honour—but, let us say, to shake her belief (no matter with how little reason) in your principles generally?’
I started, in ungovernable agitation, to my feet. The lawyer’s question reminded me, for the first time since I had left England, that something had happened.
In the eighth chapter of Betteredge’s Narrative, an allusion will be found to the arrival of a foreigner and a stranger at my aunt’s house, who came to see me on business. The nature of his business was this.
I had been foolish enough (being, as usual, straitened for money at the time) to accept a loan from the keeper of a small restaurant in Paris, to whom I was well known as a customer. A time was settled between us for paying the money back; and when the time came, I found it (as thousands of other honest men have found it) impossible to keep my engagement. I sent the man a bill. My name was unfortunately too well known on such documents: he failed to negotiate it. His affairs had fallen into disorder, in the interval since I had borrowed of him; bankruptcy stared him in the face; and a relative of his, a French lawyer, came to England to find me, and to insist upon the payment of my debt. He was a man of violent temper; and he took the wrong way with me. High words passed on both sides; and my aunt and Rachel were unfortunately in the next room, and heard us. Lady Verinder came in, and insisted on knowing what was the matter. The Frenchman produced his credentials, and declared me to be responsible for the ruin of a poor man, who had trusted in my honour. My aunt instantly paid him the money, and sent him off. She knew me better of course than to take the Frenchman’s view of the transaction. But she was shocked at my carelessness, and justly angry with me for placing myself in a position, which, but for her interference, might have become a very disgraceful one. Either her mother told her, or Rachel heard what passed—I can’t say which. She took her own romantic, high-flown view of the matter. I was ‘heartless’; I was ‘dishonourable’; I had ‘no principle’; there was ‘no knowing what I might do next’—in short, she said some of the severest things to me which I had ever heard from a young lady’s lips. The breach between us lasted for the whole of the next day. The day after, I succeeded in making my peace, and thought no more of it. Had Rachel reverted to this unlucky accident, at the critical moment when my place in her estimation was again, and far more seriously, assailed? Mr. Bruff, when I had mentioned the circumstances to him, answered the question at once in the affirmative.
‘It would have its effect on her mind,’ he said gravely. ‘And I wish, for your sake, the thing had not happened. However, we have discovered that there was a predisposing influence against you—and there is one uncertainty cleared out of our way, at any rate. I see nothing more that we can do now. Our next step in this inquiry must be the step that takes us to Rachel.’
He rose, and began walking thoughtfully up and down the room. Twice, I was on the point of telling him that I had determined on seeing Rachel personally; and twice, having regard to his age and his character, I hesitated to take him by surprise at an unfavourable moment.
‘The grand difficulty is,’ he resumed, ‘how to make her show her whole mind in this matter, without reserve. Have you any suggestions to offer?’
‘I have made up my mind, Mr. Bruff, to speak to Rachel myself.’
‘You!’ He suddenly stopped in his walk, and looked at me as if he thought I had taken leave of my senses. ‘You, of all the people in the world!’ He abruptly checked himself, and took another turn in the room. ‘Wait a little,’ he said. ‘In cases of this extraordinary kind, the rash way is sometimes the best way.’ He considered the question for a moment or two, under that new light, and ended boldly by a decision in my favour. ‘Nothing venture, nothing have,’ the old gentleman resumed. ‘You have a chance in your favour which I don’t possess—and you shall be the first to try the experiment.’
‘A chance in my favour?’ I repeated, in the greatest surprise.
Mr. Bruff’s face softened, for the first time, into a smile.
‘This is how it stands,’ he said. ‘I tell you fairly, I don’t trust your discretion, and I don’t trust your temper. But I do trust in Rachel’s still preserving, in some remote little corner of her heart, a certain perverse weakness for you. Touch that—and trust to the consequences for the fullest disclosures that can flow from a woman’s lips! The question is—how are you to see her?’
‘She has been a guest of yours at this house,’ I answered. ‘May I venture to suggest—if nothing was said about me beforehand—that I might see her here?’
‘Cool!’ said Mr. Bruff. With that one word of comment on the reply that I had made to him, he took another turn up and down the room.
‘In plain English,’ he said, ‘my house is to be turned into a trap to catch Rachel; with a bait to tempt her, in the shape of an invitation from my wife and daughters. If you were anybody else but Franklin Blake, and if this matter was one atom less serious than it really is, I should refuse point-blank. As things are, I firmly believe Rachel will live to thank me for turning traitor to her in my old age. Consider me your accomplice. Rachel shall be asked to spend the day here; and you shall receive due notice of it.’
‘When? To-morrow?’
‘To-morrow won’t give us time enough to get her answer. Say the day after.’
‘How shall I hear from you?’
‘Stay at home all the morning and expect me to call on you.’
I thanked him for the inestimable assistance which he was rendering to me, with the gratitude that I really felt; and, declining a hospitable invitation to sleep that night at Hampstead, returned to my lodgings in London.
Of the day that followed, I have only to say that it was the longest day of my life. Innocent as I knew myself to be, certain as I was that the abominable imputation which rested on me must sooner or later be cleared off, there was nevertheless a sense of self-abasement in my mind which instinctively disinclined me to see any of my friends. We often hear (almost invariably, however, from superficial observers) that guilt can look like innocence. I believe it to be infinitely the truer axiom of the two that innocence can look like guilt. I caused myself to be denied all day, to every visitor who called; and I only ventured out under cover of the night.
The next morning, Mr. Bruff surprised me at the breakfast-table He handed me a large key, and announced that he felt ashamed of himself for the first time in his life.
‘Is she coming?’
‘She is coming to-day, to lunch and spend the afternoon with my wife and my girls.’
‘Are Mrs. Bruff, and your daughters, in the secret?’
‘Inevitably. But women, as you may have observed, have no principles. My family don’t feel my pangs of conscience. The end being to bring you and Rachel together again, my wife and daughters pass over the means employed to gain it, as composedly as if they were Jesuits.’
‘I am infinitely obliged to them. What is this key?’
‘The key of the gate in my back-garden wall. Be there at three this afternoon. Let yourself into the garden, and make your way in by the conservatory door. Cross the small drawing-room, and open the door in front of you which leads into the music-room. There, you will find Rachel—and find her, alone.’