THE SECRET
Knight and Annesley had a suite of rooms on the ground floor in what was
known as "the new wing" at Valley House. On the floor above were the
rooms occupied by Lord and Lady Annesley-Seton.
This wing was a dreadful anachronism, shocking to architects, for it had
been tacked on to the house in the eighteenth century by some member of
the family who had made the "grand tour" and fallen in love with Italy.
Seeing no reason why a classic addition with a high-pillared loggia
should be unsuitable to a house in England built in Elizabethan and
Jacobean days, he had made it.
Fortunately it was so situated as not to be seen from the front of the
building, or anywhere else except from the one side which it deformed;
and there a more artistic grandson had hidden the abortion as much as
possible by planting a grove of beautiful stone-pines.
As for the wing itself, the interior was the most "liveable" part of the
house, and with the modern improvements put in to please the American
bride before her fortune vanished, it had become charming within.
Annesley's bedroom and her husband's adjoining had long windows opening
out on the loggia and looking between tall, straight trunks of umbrella
pines toward the distant sea.
It was late before she could slip away to her own quarters, for she had
been wanted for bridge, an amusement which she secretly thought the last
refuge for the mentally destitute. She had told her maid not to sit up;
and she was thankful to close the door of the small corridor or vestibule
which led into the suite, knowing that until Knight came she would be
alone.
She wanted him to come, and meant to wait (it did not matter how long)
until they could have that talk she wished for yet dreaded intensely.
Meanwhile, however, it was good to have a few minutes in which to compose
her mind, to decide whether she should begin, or expect Knight to do so;
and how she could frankly let him see her state of mind without seeming
too harsh, too relentless, to the man who had given her happiness with
both hands--the only real happiness she had ever known.
She sat for a while in the boudoir, thinking that Knight might come soon,
before she began to undress. There was a dying glow of coal and logs in
the fireplace, but staring into the rosy mass brought no inspiration. She
could not concentrate her thoughts on the scene which must presently be
enacted; they would go straggling wearily to other scenes already acted,
even as far back as that hour at the Savoy when a young man who looked to
her like the hero of a novel begged to sit at her table.
He still seemed as much as ever like the hero of a novel in which he had
splendidly made her the heroine; but it was not a pleasant chapter she
had to read now. It reminded her too intensely of the mystery surrounding
the hero, and forced her to realize that stories of real life have not
always happy endings.
"But ours must!" she said to herself, springing up, unable to rest.
"Nothing can break our love; and while we have that we have everything!"
She could no longer sit still, and going into her bedroom she peeped
through the door into Knight's room beyond. It was dark, as she expected
to find it; for she had been almost sure that she would have heard him if
he had entered the vestibule.
Returning to her own rooms, she pulled back the sea-blue curtains
which covered the large window looking on to the loggia. The sky was
silver-white with moonlight between the black stems of the tall pines,
and a flood of radiance poured into the room. It was so beautiful and
bright, bringing with it so heavenly a sense of peace, that the girl
could not bear to draw the curtains again. She began slowly to undress
by moonlight and the faint red glow in the fireplace.
Her first act was to recover the blue diamond ring and to drop it with
shrinking fingers into the jewel-case on her dressing table.
Taking off her dinner frock, she put on a white silk gown which turned
her into a pale spirit flitting hither and thither in the silver dusk.
Still Knight had not come. She pulled out the four great tortoise-shell
pins which held up her hair, and let it tumble over her shoulders. As she
began to twist it into one heavy plait, she walked to the window and
stood looking out.
It seemed to her that the black trunks and outstretched branches of the
trees were like prison bars across the moonlight. She wished she had not
had that thought, but as it persisted, a figure moved behind the bars,
the figure of a man.
At first she was startled, for it was very late, long after one o'clock;
but as the man came nearer, she recognized him, although the light was at
his back. It was Knight; and as though her thought called to him, he
stopped suddenly, pausing on the lawn not far from the loggia. She could
not see his face, but it seemed that he was staring straight up at her
window.
"He has been walking in the moonlight, thinking things over just as I
have in here!" the girl told herself. Surely he could see her! But no,
he turned, and was striding away with his head down, when she knocked
sharply and impulsively on the pane.
Hearing the sound, yet not knowing whence it came, he stopped again, and
so gave Annesley time to open the window.
"Knight!" she called, softly.
Then he came straight to her across the strip of lawn and up the two
steps that led to the loggia. She met him on the threshold and saw his
face deadly pale in the moonlight. Perhaps it was only an effect of
light, but she thought that he looked tired, even ill. Still he did not
speak.
"Knight, you almost frightened me!" she said. "I was afraid for an
instant you might be--might be----"
"A thief!" he finished for her.
"Or a ghost," she amended. "Weren't you coming in?"
"No," he said. "I hadn't thought of it. Do you want--shall I come in?"
"Yes, please do. I--I've been waiting for you."
"I'm sorry! I hoped you'd have gone to bed. But I might have known you
wouldn't."
As she retreated from the window, he followed her, as if reluctantly,
into the room.
"Shall I draw the curtains?" he asked. There was weariness in his voice,
as in his face. Annesley's heart went out to her beloved sinner with even
more tenderness than before.
"No, let's talk in the moonlight," she answered. "Oh, Knight, I _am_ glad
you've come! I began to think you never would!"
"Did you? That's not strange, for I was saying to myself that same
thing."
"What same thing? I don't understand."
"That I--well, that I never ought to come to you again."
She sank down on a low sofa near the window, and looked up to him as he
stood tall and straight, seeming to tower over her like one of the pine
trees out there under the moon.
"Oh, Knight!" she faltered. "It's not--so bad as that!"
"Isn't it?" he caught her up sharply, eagerly. "Do you mean what you say?
Isn't it, to you--as bad as that?"
"No--no," she soothed him. "You see, I love you. That's all the
difference, isn't it? You've been everything to me. You've made my
life--that used to be so gray--so bright, so sweet. Only the blackest
thing--oh, an unimaginably blackest thing!--could come between us,
or----"
Before she could finish, he was on his knees at her feet, holding her in
his arms, crushing her against his breast, soft and yielding in her light
dressing-gown, with her flowing hair.
"My God, Annesley, it's too good to be true!" he said, his breath hot
on her face as he kissed her cheek, her hair, her eyes. "You can
_forgive_ me? I thought you'd go away. I thought you'd refuse to let
me come near you. I was walking out there wondering how to make it easy
for you--whether I could get rid of myself without scandal."
She had been sure that he must have repented long ago, and that it would
hurt him dreadfully to have her find out the thing he had done, but she
had not dreamed that his self-abasement would be so complete. She put
her arms around him as he held her, and pressed his head against her
neck--the dear, smooth black head which she loved better than ever in
this rush of pardoning pity.
"Dearest!" she whispered. "Never, never think or speak of such a dreadful
way out! Of course it was horribly wrong, and of course it was a great
shock to me, but you might have known from my doing what I could to help
that I didn't hate you. I said to myself there must be some excuse--some
_big_ excuse. And now, if only you wouldn't mind telling me about it from
the beginning, I believe it would be the best way for us both. Then I
might understand."
"You are God's own angel, Anita!" he said in a choked voice. "You don't
know how I've learned to love you, better than anything in this world or
the next--if there is a next. I knew you were a saint, but I didn't know
that saints forgave men like me.... Shall I really tell you from the
beginning? You'll listen--and bear it? It's a long story."
Annesley did not see why the story of his buying the historic stolen
diamond and giving it to her should be so very long, even with its
explanations; but she did not say this.
"I don't care how long it is," she told him. "But you will be tired--down
on your knees----"
"I couldn't tell my story to you in any way except on my knees," he
answered. And the new humility of the man she had loved half fearfully
for his daring, his defiant way of facing life, almost hurt, as his
sudden passion had startled the girl.
"I hardly know how to begin," he said. "Perhaps it had better be with my
father and mother, because it was the tragedy of their lives that shaped
mine." He was silent for a moment, as if thinking. Then he drew a long
breath, as a man does when he is ready to take a plunge into deep water.
"My mother was a Russian. Her people were noble, but that didn't keep
them from going to Siberia. She was brought to America by a man and woman
who'd been servants in her family. She was very young, only fifteen. Her
name was Michaela. I'm named after her--Michael. The three had only money
enough to be allowed to land as immigrants, and to get out west--though
her people had been rich." He paused a moment for a sigh.
"She and the servants--they passed as her father and mother--found work
in Chicago. My father was a lawyer there. He was an Englishman, you
know--I've told you that before--but he thought his profession was
overstocked at home, so he tried his luck on the other side. The old
Russian chap was hurt in the factory where he worked, and that's the
way my father--whose name was Robert Donaldson--got to know my mother.
There was a question of compensation, and my father conducted the case.
He won it.
"And he won a wife, too. She was nineteen when I was born. Father was
getting on, but they were poor and had a hard time to make ends meet.
They worshipped each other and worshipped me. You can think whether I
adored them!
"Mother was the most beautiful creature you ever saw. Everyone looked
at her. I used to notice that when I was a wee chap, walking with my
hand in hers. When I was ten and going to school my father had a bad
illness--rheumatic fever. We got hard up while he was sick; and then came
a letter for mother from Russia. Some distant relations in Moscow had had
her traced by detectives. It seemed there was quite a lot of money which
ought to come to her, and if she would go to Russia and prove who she was
she could get it.
"If father'd been well and making enough for us all he'd never have let
her go, but he was weak and anxious about the future, so she took things
into her own hands and went, without waiting for yes or no, or anything
except to find a woman who'd look after father and me while she was gone.
Well, she never came back. Can you guess what became of her?" he asked,
huskily.
"She died?" Annesley asked, forgetting in her interest, which grew with
the story, to wonder what the history of Knight's childhood and his
parents' troubles had to do with the Malindore diamond.
"She died before my father could find her; but not for a long time.
God--what a time of agony for her! Things happened I can't tell you
about. We heard nothing, after a letter from the ship and a cable from
Moscow with two words--'Well. Love.'
"For a while father waited and tried not to be too anxious; but after a
time he telegraphed, and then again and again. No answer. He went nearly
mad. Before he was well enough to travel he borrowed money and started
for Russia to look for her. I stayed in Chicago--and kept on going to
school. The friends who took care of me made me do that ... or thought
so.
"But when I could, I played truant. I was in a restless state. I remember
how I felt as if it were yesterday. Nothing seemed real, except my father
and mother. I thought about them all the time. I couldn't sleep, and I
couldn't study. I couldn't bear to sit at a desk. I picked up some queer
pals in those months--or they picked me up. I suppose that was the
beginning of the end.
"I think while he was away, finding out terrible, unspeakable things, my
father forgot about me--or else he didn't realize I was big enough to
mind. He never wrote. When he came back, after eleven months, he was an
old man, with gray hair. I'll never forget the night he came, and how he
told me about mother. It was a moonlight night, like this--with no light
in the room. It was the last night of my childhood."
As the man talked, he had lifted his head from the soft pillow of the
girl's white neck, and was looking into her eyes, his face close to hers.
Annesley was not thinking about the diamond.
"For a long time," Knight went on, slowly, "father could not trace my
mother. He expected to find the relations who had sent her word about the
legacy, but they were gone--nobody could tell where. Nobody wanted to
speak of them. They seemed afraid. Father went to the British and
American Embassies; no use! But at last he got to know, in subterranean
ways, that mother hadn't realized how dangerous it is to speak your mind
in Russia. She'd left there before she was sixteen!
"She had said things about her father and mother, and what she thought
of the ruling powers, and that same night--she'd been in Moscow two
days--she and her relatives disappeared. It leaked out through a
member of the secret police that she could have been saved by her
beauty--someone high up offered to get her free. But she preferred
another fate.
"She was sent to Siberia where her father and mother had gone, and had
died years before. My father met a man who had seen her on the way as he
was coming back. She was only just alive. The man was sure she couldn't
have lived more than a few weeks.
"Yet father wouldn't give up. He went after her.... But what's the use of
going on? He found the place where she had died.... Which ends that part
of the story, as a story.
"Only it didn't end it for us. It filled our hearts with bitterness. We
wanted revenge. Yet my father was too good a man to take it when his
chance came. His conscience held him back. But he talked--talked like an
anarchist, a man out to fight and smash all the hypocritical institutions
of society. If it hadn't been for me he'd have killed himself in Siberia
where his wife had died a martyr; and it would have been well for him if
he had!
"Because of the wild way he talked when suspicion of fraud was thrown on
him by a partner the fool public believed in his guilt. He died in prison
when I was fifteen, and I swore to punish the beast of a world that had
killed all I loved. I swore I'd make that my life's work, and I have.
But--God!--I've punished myself, too, at last. I'm punished through you,
because I've fallen in love with you, Anita, and for your sake I'd give
the years that may be in front of me--all time but one day to be glad in,
if I could blot out the past!"
"Maybe," the girl faltered, "maybe you're too hard on yourself. I can't
believe that you, who have been so good to me, could have been very bad
to others."
"If I could hope you wouldn't be too hard on me, that's all I care for
now!" he cried, passionately. "You remember my saying that night in the
taxi that the worst I'd ever done was to try and pay back a great wrong,
and take revenge on society? If I could hope you meant what you said
about understanding I'd tell you the story of that revenge."
"I _did_ mean it, Knight. My love will help me to understand."
"You make me believe in a God, for surely only God could have sent such
an angel as you into my life.... In a way, I haven't deceived you about
myself, for I warned you I was a bad man. But when I think of the night
we met and the trick I played on you, it makes me sick! I thought you'd
loathe me if you ever found out. But I didn't intend to let you find out.
It was to be a dead secret forever, like the rest. Yet if I tell you what
my life has been you'll have to know that part, too. If I kept it back
you might think it worse than it was."
"A trick?" echoed Annesley.
"Yes. A trick to interest you--to make you like and want to help me.
Besides, it was to be a test of your courage and presence of mind. If you
hadn't those qualities you'd have been a failure from my point of view.
You see, I hadn't had time to fall in love with you then. And I wanted
you for a 'help-mate' in the literal sense of the word. It seems a pretty
sordid sense, looking back from where we've got to now. But that was my
scheme. A mean, cowardly scheme! And it's thanks to you and your blessed
dearness I see it in its true light.... Do you begin to understand,
Anita--knowing something of what my life has been, or must I explain?"
"I--I'm afraid you must explain," she answered in a small voice, like a
child's. She felt suddenly weak and sick, as if she might collapse in the
man's arms. It was as if some terrible weapon wrapped round and half
hidden in folds of velvet were lifted above her head to strike her down.
She shrank from the blow, yet asked for it. Already she guessed dimly
that Knight's confession was to be very different from and far more
terrible than anything she had expected.
"I was the man whose advertisement you answered--the man who wrote you
the stiff letter in the handwriting you didn't like, signed N. Smith."
"Oh!" The word broke from her in a moan.
"Darling! Have I lost you if I go on?"
"You must go on!" she cried out, sharply. "For both our sakes you must go
on!"
"I know how it looks to you. And it was vile. But I couldn't be sure when
I advertised what an angel would answer to my call, and what a brute I
should be to deceive her. I thought the sort of girl who'd reply to an
'ad' for a wife would be fair game; that I should be giving her an
equivalent for what she'd give me.
"For my business that I had to carry out in England I needed a wife of
another sort from any woman I knew, or could get to know, in an ordinary
way; she had to be of good birth and education, nice-looking and
pleasant-mannered--if possible with highly placed friends or relatives.
Money didn't matter. I had enough--or would have. I got a lot of answers,
but the only one that seemed good was yours. I felt nearly certain you
were the woman I wanted, so I rigged up a plan. You know how it worked
out."
"Maybe I'm stupid," Annesley said, dry-lipped. "I don't understand yet."
"Why, I thought the thing over, and it seemed to me that married life--if
it came to that--would be easier for both if the man could make some sort
of appeal to the love of romance in a girl. Well, she wouldn't think the
man who had to get the right sort of wife by advertising much of a figure
of romance. So the idea came to me of--of starting two personalities. I
wrote you a stiff, precise sort of letter in a disguised business hand,
making an appointment at the Savoy. When that was done, the writer went
out of your life.
"He just ceased to exist, except that he sat behind a big screen of
newspaper and watched for a girl in gray-and-purple, wearing a white
rose, to pass through the foyer. That was his way of finding out if she'd
suit. Jove, how beastly it does sound, put into words, and confessed to
_you_! But you said I must go on."
"Yes--go on," Annesley breathed.
"You were about one hundred times better than my highest hopes. And
seeing what you were, I was glad I'd thought out that plan. Even then, it
was borne in on me that it wouldn't be long before I found myself falling
in love, if I had the luck to secure you. And from that minute the
business turned into an exciting play for me, just as I meant to make it
for you. I let you wait for a while, but if you'd showed any signs of
vanishing I'd have stepped up. I'd got a trick ready for that emergency.
"But I hoped you'd follow instructions and go to the restaurant. Once
there, I was sure the head-waiter'd persuade you to sit down at a table;
and the rest went exactly as I planned. The two men we called the
'watchers' used to be vaudeville actors--did a turn together, and their
specialty was lightning changes. Their make-ups, even at short notice,
could fool Sherlock Holmes. Even though you despise me for it, Anita, you
must admit it was a smart way to make you take an interest, and prove
your character.
"Lord, but you stood the test! I wouldn't have given you up at any price
then, even if I hadn't begun falling in love. I saw how good you were;
and in that taxi going to Torrington Square I felt mean as dirt for
tricking you. But of course I had to go on as I'd begun.
"At first I thought it was luck, tumbling into the same house with
Ruthven Smith; but now I see it was the devil's luck. If it hadn't been
for Ruthven Smith I might have gone on living the part I played. You need
never have known the truth. And I swear to you, Annesley, I'd made up my
mind, after finishing off my work with the men who are with me, that I'd
run straight for the rest of my days. The business was making me sick,
for being close to your goodness threw a light into dark places.
"By heaven, Anita, it does seem hard, just as I was near to being the man
you thought me, that that dried-up curmudgeon Ruthven Smith should call
my hand and make me show you the man I was! But I can't help seeing
there's a kind of--what they call poetical justice in it, the blow coming
from him. I've always been like that: seeing both sides of a thing even
when I wanted to see only one. But if _you_ can see both sides, you will
make the good grow, as the bright side of the moon grows, and turns the
dark side to gold.
"Can you do that, do you think, Anita? Can you see any excuse for me in
going against the world to pay it out for going against me and mine? If
you've been piecing bits of evidence together since Ruthven Smith spoke,
you'll have remembered that only heirlooms and things insured by, or
belonging to, public companies, have been taken; no poor people have been
robbed; and except in the case of Mrs. Ellsworth, where I wanted to see
her paid out for her treatment of you----"
"'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 God! 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, pushing 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 pass 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 pawns 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 nobody 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 God'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."
"But if you had, it would have been a relief----"
"No. Because I--I hadn't heard the truth. I didn't understand at all. I
thought you had done _one_ unscrupulous thing. I didn't dream your whole
life was--what it is. I loved you as much as ever. It would have broken
my heart if you----"
"But now that you don't love me, it wouldn't break your heart."
"I don't seem to have any heart," Annesley sighed. "It feels as if it
had crumbled to dust. But it would break my life if you ended yours. If
anything could be worse than what is, it would be that."
"Very well, you can rid yourself of me in another way," the man answered.
"You can denounce me--give me up to 'justice.' If you hand over the
Malindore diamond to Ruthven Smith and tell him how you got it----"
"You must know I wouldn't do that!"
"Why not?"
"Because I--couldn't."
"It needn't spoil your life. No one could blame you. I would tell the
story of how I deceived you. You could free yourself--get a divorce----"
"Don't!" the girl cut him short. "I'm not thinking of myself. I'm
thinking of you. I can't love you again, and I wouldn't if I could, now
that I--know. You're a different man. The one I loved doesn't exist and
never did; yet you've told me your secret, and I'm bound to keep it. I
don't need to stop and reflect about that. But as for what's to become
of me, and how we're to manage not to let people guess that everything's
changed, I don't know! I must think. I must think all to-night, until
to-morrow. Perhaps by that time I can decide. Now--I beg of you to go
and leave me--this moment. I can't bear any more and live."
He stood looking at her, but she turned her head away with a petulant
gesture of repulsion; and lest her eyes might feel the call of his she
covered them with her hands. Her hopelessness, her loathing of him
enclosed her like a wall of ice.
"So! The dream's over!" he said. "'This woman to this man'! What a
farce--what a tragedy!"
When she looked up again he had gone and the door between their rooms was
shut.
The moon no longer lit the high window. With Knight's going darkness
fell.