The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [230]
She interrupted him quickly. 'What nonsense! Do be sensible, Mr Trent. You had only seen me on two occasions in your life before you came to me with your solution of the mystery.' Again the quaint expression came and was gone. 'If you talk of folly, it really is folly for a man like you to pretend to a woman like me that I had innocence written all over me in large letters--so large that you couldn't believe very strong evidence against me after seeing me twice.'
'What do you mean by "a man like me"?' he demanded with a sort of fierceness. 'Do you take me for a person without any normal instincts? I don't say you impress people as a simple, transparent sort of character--what Mr Calvin Bunner calls a case of open-work; I don't say a stranger might not think you capable of wickedness, if there was good evidence for it: but I say that a man who, after seeing you and being in your atmosphere, could associate you with the particular kind of abomination I imagined, is a fool--the kind of fool who is afraid to trust his senses .... As for my making it hard for you to approach the subject, as you say, it is true. It was simply moral cowardice. I understood that you wished to clear the matter up; and I was revolted at the notion of my injurious blunder being discussed. I tried to show you by my actions that it was as if it had never been. I hoped you would pardon me without any words. I can't forgive myself, and I never shall. And yet if you could know--' He stopped short, and then added quietly, 'Well, will you accept all that as an apology? The very scrubbiest sackcloth made, and the grittiest ashes on the heap....I didn't mean to get worked up,' he ended lamely.
Mrs Manderson laughed, and her laugh carried him away with it. He knew well by this time that sudden rush of cascading notes of mirth, the perfect expression of enjoyment; he had many times tried to amuse her merely for his delight in the sound of it.
'But I love to see you worked up,' she said. 'The bump with which you always come down as soon as you realize that you are up in the air at all is quite delightful. Oh, we're actually both laughing. What a triumphant end to our explanations, after all my dread of the time when I should have it out with you. And now it's all over, and you know; and we'll never speak of it any more.'
'I hope not,' Trent said in sincere relief. 'If you're resolved to be so kind as this about it, I am not high-principled enough to insist on your blasting me with your lightnings. And now, Mrs Manderson, I had better go. Changing the subject after this would be like playing puss-in-the-corner after an earthquake.' He rose to his feet.
'You are right,' she said. 'But no! Wait. There is another thing--part of the same subject; and we ought to pick up all the pieces now while we are about it. Please sit down.' She took the envelope containing Trent's manuscript dispatch from the table where he had laid it. 'I want to speak about this.'
His brows bent, and he looked at her questioningly. 'So do I, if you do,' he said slowly. 'I want very much to know one thing.'
'Tell me.'
'Since my reason for suppressing that information was all a fantasy, why did you never make any use of it? When I began to realize that I had been wrong about you, I explained your silence to myself by saying that you could not bring yourself to do a thing that would put a rope round a man's neck, whatever he might have done. I can quite understand that feeling. Was that what it was? Another possibility I thought of was that you knew of something that was by way of justifying or excusing Marlowe's act. Or I thought you might have a simple horror, quite apart from humanitarian scruples, of appearing publicly in connection with a murder trial. Many important witnesses in such cases have to be practically forced into giving their evidence. They feel there is defilement even in the shadow of the scaffold.'
Mrs Manderson tapped her lips with the envelope without quite concealing a smile. 'You didn't think of another possibility, I suppose, Mr Trent,' she