Part 30 (2/2)
”'Robbed'!” Catching the word, Annesley heard none of those that followed. ”_Robbed!_ Oh, it's not possible you mean----”
Her voice broke. With both hands against his breast she pushed him off, and struggled to rise, to tear herself loose from him. But he would not let her go.
”What's the matter? How have I hurt you worse than you were hurt already by finding out?” he appealed to her, his arms like a band of steel round her shuddering body. ”When you heard the truth about the diamond, it was the same as if you'd heard everything, wasn't it? You guessed Ruthven Smith suspected--someone must have told him--Madalena perhaps. You guessed he had some trick to play, and in the quietest, cleverest way you checkmated him, without hint or help from any one. You saved me from ruin, and not only me, but others. And on top of all that, when I hoped for nothing more from you, you promised me forgiveness. That's what I understood. Was I mistaken?”
”_I_ was mistaken,” she answered, almost coldly; then broke down with one agonized sob. ”I thought--oh, what good is it now to tell you what I thought?”
”You must tell me!”
”I thought you had bought the blue diamond, knowing it had been stolen, but wanting it so much you didn't care how you got it. I didn't dream that you were a----”
”That I was--what?”
”A thief--and a cheat!”
”My G.o.d! And now you know I'm both, you hate me, Anita? You must, or you wouldn't throw those words at me like stones.”
”Let me go,” she panted, pus.h.i.+ng him from her again with trembling, ice-cold hands.
He obeyed instantly. The band of steel that had held her fell apart. She stumbled up from the low sofa, and trying to pa.s.s him as he knelt, she would have fallen if he had not sprung to his feet and caught her.
But recovering herself she turned away quickly and almost ran to a chair in front of the dressing table not far off. There she flung herself down and buried her face on her bare arms.
Knight followed, to stand staring in stunned silence at the bowed head and shaking shoulders. He could hear the ticking of a small, nervous-sounding clock on the mantelpiece. It was like the beating of a heart that must soon break. At last, when the ticking had gone on unbearably long, he spoke.
”Anita, you called me a cheat,” he said. ”I suppose you mean that I cheated you by playing the hero that night at the Savoy, and stealing your sympathy and help under false pretenses; that I've been steadily cheating you and your friends every day since. That's true, in a way--or it was at first. But lately it's not been the same sort of cheating. It began to be the real thing with me. I mean I felt it in me to be the real thing. As for the other name you gave me--thief--I'm not exactly that--not a thief who steals with his own hands, though I dare say I'm as bad.
”If I haven't stolen, I've shown others the most artistic way to steal.
I've shown men and women how to make stealing a fine art, and I've been in with them in the game. Indeed, it was my game. Madalena de Santiago, and the two men you knew first as the 'watchers,' then as Torrance and Morello, now as Charrington and Char, have been no more than the p.a.w.ns I used, or rather they've been my cat's paws. There's only one other man at the head of the show besides me, and that is one whose name I can't give away even to you.
”But he's a great man, a kind of financial Napoleon--a great artist, too.
He doesn't call himself a thief. He's honoured by society in Europe and America; yet what I've done in comparison to what he's done is like a brook to the size of the ocean. He has a picture gallery and a private museum which are famous; but there's another gallery of pictures and another museum which n.o.body except himself has ever seen. His real life, his real joy, are in them. Most of the masterpieces and treasures of this world which have disappeared are safe in that hidden place, which I've helped to fill.
”That man has no regrets. He revels in what he calls his 'secret orchard.' He thinks I ought to be proud of what I've done for him; and so I was once. I came here and brought the other people over to England to work for him.
”Not that that fact will whitewash me in your eyes; not that I wasn't working for myself, too, and not that I'm trying to make more excuses by explaining this. But I'd like you to understand, at least for the sake of your own pride, that you haven't been cheated into loving and living with a common thief. Does that make it hurt less?”
”No,” she said in a strange tone which made her voice sound like that of an old woman. ”That doesn't make it hurt less. It makes no difference.
I think nothing can ever make any difference. My life is--over.”
”Don't, for G.o.d's sake, say that! Don't force me to feel a murderer!” he cried out, sharply.
”There's nothing else to say. I wish I could die to-night.”
”If one of us is to die,” he said, ”let it be me. If you hadn't happened to see me and call me in when I was under the trees bidding good-bye to your window, by this time I might have found a way out of the difficulty without any scandal or trouble to you whatever. No one would have known that it wasn't an accident----”
”I should have known.”
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