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Page 27
"That's all a preamble. Here is what you must know: I am the thief who
stole Mr. Litterny's diamonds."
The letter fell, and the man caught at it as it fell. His hand shook,
but he laughed aloud.
"It is a joke," he said, in a queer, dry voice. "A wretched joke. How
can she?" And he read on:
"You won't believe this at first; you will think I am making a poor
joke; but you will have to believe it in the end. I will try to put the
case before you as an outside person would put it, without softening or
condoning. My mother was very ill; the specialist, to pay whom we had
sold her last jewel, said that she would die if she were not taken
south; we had no money to take her south. That night my brother lost
his self-control and raved about breaking into a shop and stealing
diamonds, to get money to save her life. That put the thought into my
mind, and I made a plan. Randolph, my brother, is a clever amateur
actor, and the rich Burr Claflin is our distant cousin. We both know him
fairly well, and it was easy enough for Randolph to copy his mannerisms.
We knew also, of course, more or less, his way of living, and that it
would not be out of drawing that he should send up diamonds to his wife
unexpectedly. I planned it all, and I made Randolph do it. I have always
been able to influence him to what I pleased. The sin is all mine, not
his. We had been selling my mother's jewels little by little for several
years, so we had no difficulty in getting rid of the stones, which
Randolph took from their settings and sold to different dealers. My
mother knows nothing of where the money came from. We are living in
Bermuda now, in comfort and luxury, I as well as she, on the profits of
my thievery. I am not sorry. It has wrecked life, perhaps eternity, for
me, but I would do it again to save my mother.
"I put this confession into your hands to do with, as far as I am
concerned, what you like. If the saint in you believes that I ought to
be sent to jail, take this to Mr. Litterny and have him send me to
jail. But you shan't touch Randolph--you are not free there. It was I
who did it--he was my tool,--any one will tell you I have the stronger
will. You shall not hurt Randolph--that is barred.
"You see now why I couldn't be engaged to you--you wouldn't want to
marry a thief, would you, Norman? I can never make restitution, you
know, for the money will be mostly gone before we get home, and there is
no more to come. You could not, either, for you said that you had little
beyond your salary. We could never make it good to Mr. Litterny, even if
you wanted to marry me after this. Mr. Litterny is your best friend; you
are bound to him by a thousand ties of gratitude and affection. You
can't marry a thief who has robbed him of five thousand dollars, and
never tell him, and go on taking his gifts. That is the way the saint
will look at it--the saint who thundered awful warnings at me in the
little church at St. George's. But even that day there was something
gentler than the dreadful holiness of you. Do you remember how you
pleaded, begged as if of your father, for your brothers and sisters?
'Deal not with us according to our sins, neither reward us according to
our iniquities,' you said. Do you remember? As you said that to God, I
say it to you, I love you. I leave my fate at your mercy. But don't
forget that you yourself begged that, with your hands stretched out to
heaven, as I stretch my hands to you, Norman, Norman--'Deal not with me
according to my sins, neither reward me according to my iniquities.'"
The noises of a ship moving across a quiet ocean went on steadily. Many
feet tramped back and forth on the deck, and cheerful voices and
laughter floated through the skylight, and down below a man knelt in a
narrow cabin with his head buried in his arms, motionless.
CROWNED WITH GLORY AND HONOR
Mists blew about the mountains across the river, and over West Point
hung a raw fog. Some of the officers who stood with bared heads by the
heap of earth and the hole in the ground shivered a little. The young
Chaplain read, solemnly, the solemn and grand words of the service, and
the evenness of his voice was unnatural enough to show deep feeling. He
remembered how, a year before, he had seen the hero of this scene
playing football on just such a day, tumbling about and shouting, his
hair wild and matted and his face filled with fresh color. Such a mere
boy he was, concerned over the question as to where he could hide his
contraband dress boots, excited by an invitation to dine out Saturday
night. The dear young chap! There were tears in the Chaplain's eyes as
he thought of little courtesies to himself, of little generosities to
other cadets, of a manly and honest heart shown everywhere that
character may show in the guarded life of the nation's schoolboys.
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