"'When I came to Aunt Maldon's the night before I left for South Africa I wanted a wash, and I went into the back room--I mean the room behind the parlour--and took off my coat preparatory to going into the scullery to perform my ablutions. While in the back room I noticed that the picture nearest the cupboard opposite the door was hung very crooked. When I came back to put my coat on again after washing, my eye again caught the picture. There was a chair almost beneath it.

I got on the chair and put the picture into an horizontal position.

While I was standing on the chair I could see on the top of the cupboard, where something white struck my attention. It was behind the cornice of the cupboard, but I could see it. I took it off the top of the cupboard and carefully scrutinized it by the gas, which, as you know, is at the corner of the fireplace, close to the cupboard. It was a roll consisting of Bank of England notes, to the value of four hundred and fifty pounds. I counted them at once, while I was standing on the chair. I then put them in the pocket of my coat which I had already put on. I wish to point out that if the chair had not been under the picture I should in all human probability not have attempted to straighten the picture. Also--'"

"But surely, Julian," Louis interrupted him, in a constrained voice, "you could have reached the picture without standing on the chair?" He interrupted solely from a tremendous desire for speech. It would have been impossible for him to remain silent. He had to speak or perish.

"I couldn't," Julian denied vehemently. "The picture's practically as high as the top of the cupboard--or was."

"And could _you_ see on to the top of the cupboard from a chair?"

Louis, with a peculiar gaze, was apparently estimating Julian's total height from the ground when raised on a chair.

Julian dashed down the papers.

"Here! Come and look for yourself!" he exclaimed with furious pugnacity. "Come and look." He jumped up and moved towards the door.

Rachel and Louis followed him obediently. In the back room it was he who struck a match and lighted the gas.

"You've shifted the picture!" he cried, as soon as the room was illuminated.

"Yes, we have," Louis admitted.

"But there's where it was!" Julian almost shouted, pointing. "You can't deny it! There's the marks. Are they as high as the top of the cupboard, or aren't they?" Then he dragged along a chair to the cupboard and stood on it, puffing at his pipe. "Can I see on to the top of the cupboard or can't I?" he demanded. Obviously he could see on to the top of the cupboard.

"I didn't think the top was so low," said Louis.

"Well, you shouldn't contradict," Julian chastised him.

"It's just as your great-aunt said," put in Rachel, in a meditative tone. "I remember she told us she pushed a chair forward with her knee. I dare say in getting on to the chair she knocked her elbow or something against the picture, and no doubt she left the chair more or less where she'd pushed it. That would be it."

"Did she say that to you?" Louis questioned Rachel.

"It doesn't matter much what she said," Julian growled. "That's how it _was_, anyway. I'm telling you. I'm not here to listen to theories."

"Well," said Louis amiably, "you put the notes into your pocket. What then?"

Julian removed his pipe from his mouth.

"What then? I walked off with 'em."

"But you don't mean to tell us you meant--to appropriate them, Julian?

You don't mean that!" Louis spoke rea.s.suringly, good-naturedly, and with a slight superiority.

"No, I don't. I don't mean I appropriated 'em." Julian's voice rose defiantly. "I mean I stole them.... I stole them, and what's more, I meant to steal them. And so there ye are! But come back to the parlour. I must finish my reading."

He strode away into the parlour, and the other two had no alternative but to follow him. They followed him like guilty things; for the manner of his confession was such as apparently to put his hearers, more than himself, in the wrong. He confessed as one who accuses.

"Sit down," said he, in the parlour.

"But surely," Louis protested, "if you're serious--"

"If I'm serious, man! Do you take me for a bally mountebank? Do you suppose I'm doing this for fun?"

"Well," said Louis, "if you _are_ serious, you needn't tell us any more. We know, and that's enough, isn't it?"

Julian replied curtly, "You've got to hear me out."

And picking up his doc.u.ment from the floor, he resumed the perusal.

"'Also, if the gas hadn't been where it is, I should not have noticed anything on the top of the cupboard. I took the notes because I was badly in need of money, and also because I was angry at money being left like that on the tops of cupboards. I had no idea Aunt Maldon was such a foolish woman.'"

Louis interjected soothingly: "But you only meant to teach the old lady a lesson and give the notes back."

"I didn't," said Julian, again extremely irritated. "Can't ye understand plain English? I say I stole the money, and I meant to steal it. Don't let me have to tell ye that any more. I'll go on: 'The sight of the notes was too sore a temptation for me, and I yielded to it. And all the more shame to me, for I had considered myself an honest man up to that very hour. I never thought about the consequences to my Aunt Maldon, nor how I was going to get rid of the notes. I wanted money bad, and I took it. As soon as I'd left the house I was stricken with remorse. I could not decide what to do. The fact is I had no time to reflect until I was on the steamer, and it was then too late. Upon arriving at Cape Town I found the cable stating that Aunt Maldon was dead. I draw a veil over my state of mind, which, however, does not concern you. I ought to have returned to England at once, but I could not. I might have sent to Batchgrew and told him to take half of four hundred and fifty pounds off my share of Aunt Maldon's estate and put it into yours. But that would not have helped my conscience. I had it on my conscience, as it might have been on my stomach. I tried religion, but it was no good to me.

It was between a prayer-meeting and an experience-meeting at Durban that I used part of the ill-gotten money. I had not touched it till then. But two days later I got back the very note that I'd spent.

A prey to remorse, I wandered from town to town, trying to do business.'"

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 pa.s.sionately. "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 n.o.body 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."