III
Rachel stood up.
"Julian!"
It was the first time in her life that she had called him by his Christian name.
"What?"
"Give me that." As he hesitated, she added, "I want it."
He handed her the written confession.
"I simply can't bear to hear you reading it," said Rachel passionately. "All about a prey to remorse and so on and so on! Why do you want to confess? Why couldn't you have paid back the money and have done with it, instead of all this fuss?"
"I must finish it now I've begun," Julian insisted sullenly.
"You'll do no such thing—not in my house."
And, repeating pleasurably the phrase "not in my house," Rachel stuck the confession into the fire, and feverishly forced it into the red coals with lunges of the poker. When she turned away from the fire she was flushing scarlet. Julian stood close by her on the hearth-rug.
"You don't understand," he said, with half-fearful resentment. "I had to punish myself. I doubt I'm not a religious man, but I had to punish myself. There's nobody in the world as I should hate confessing to as much as Louis here, and so I said to myself, I said, 'I'll confess to Louis.' I've been wandering about all the evening trying to bring myself to do it.... Well, I've done it."
His voice trembled, and though the vibration in it was almost imperceptible, it was sufficient to nullify the ridiculousness of Julian's demeanour as a wearer of sackcloth, and to bring a sudden lump into Rachel's throat. The comical absurdity of his bellicose pride because he had accomplished something which he had sworn to accomplish was extinguished by the absolutely painful sincerity of his final words, which seemed somehow to damage the reputation of Louis. Rachel could feel her emotion increasing, but she could not have defined what her emotion was. She knew not what to do. She was in the midst of a new and intense experience, which left her helpless. All she was clearly conscious of was an unrepentant voice in her heart repeating the phrase: "I don't care! I'm glad I stuck it in the fire! I don't care! I'm glad I stuck it in the fire." She waited for the next development. They were all waiting, aware that individual forces had been loosed, but unable to divine their resultant, and afraid of that resultant. Rachel glanced furtively at Louis. His face had an uneasy, stiff smile.
With an aggrieved air Julian knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
"Anyhow," said Louis at length, "this accounts for four hundred and fifty out of nine sixty-five. What we have to find out now, all of us, is what happened to the balance."
"I don't care a fig about the balance," said Julian impetuously. "I've said what I had to say and that's enough for me."
And he did not, in fact, care a fig about the balance. And if the balance had been five thousand odd instead of five hundred odd, he still probably would not have cared. Further, he privately considered that nobody else ought to care about the balance, either, having regard to the supreme moral importance to himself of the four hundred and fifty.
"Have you said anything to Mr. Batchgrew?" Louis asked, trying to adopt a casual tone, and to keep out of his voice the relief and joy which were gradually taking possession of his soul. The upshot of Julian's visit was so amazingly different from the apprehension of it that he could have danced in his glee.
"Not I!" Julian answered ferociously. "The old robber has been writing me, wanting me to put money into some cinema swindle or other. I gave him a bit of my mind."
"He was trying the same here," said Rachel. The words popped by themselves out of her mouth, and she instantly regretted them. However, Louis seemed to be unconscious of the implied reproach on a subject presumably still highly delicate.
"But you can tell him, if you've a mind," Julian went on challengingly.
"We shan't do any such thing," said Rachel, words again popping by themselves out of her mouth. But this time she put herself right by adding, "Shall we, Louis?"
"Of course not," Louis agreed very amiably.
Rachel began to feel sympathetic towards the thief. She thought: "How strange to have some one close to me, and talking quite naturally, who has stolen such a lot of money and might be in prison for it—a convict!" Nevertheless, the thief seemed to be remarkably like ordinary people.
"Oh!" Julian ejaculated. "Well, here's the notes." He drew a lot of notes from a pocket-book and banged them down on the table. "Four hundred and fifty. The identical notes. Count 'em." He glared afresh, and with even increased virulence.
"That's all right," said Louis. "That's all right. Besides, we only want half of them."
Sundry sheets of the confession, which had not previously caught fire, suddenly blazed up with a roar in the grate, and all looked momentarily at the flare.
"You've got to have it all!" said Julian, flushing.
"My dear fellow," Louis repeated, "we shall only take half. The other half's yours."
"As God sees me," Julian urged, "I'll never take a penny of that money! Here—"
He snatched up all the notes and dashed wrathfully out of the parlour. Rachel followed quickly. He went to the back room, where the gas had been left burning high, sprang on to a chair in front of the cupboard, and deposited the notes on the top of the cupboard, in the very place from which he had originally taken them.
"There!" he exclaimed, jumping down from the chair. The symbolism of the action appeared to tranquillize him.