Theft Part 47

But it is not as if we had done this thing deliberately and selfishly. We have renounced. We have struggled against it until we were beaten. And now we are driven together, not by our doing but Fate's. After this affair this morning there is nothing for you but to come to me. And as for me, despite my best, I am finished. I have failed. As I told you, the papers are stolen.

There will be no speech this afternoon.

{Margaret}

(_Quietly._) Yes there will.

{Knox}

Impossible. I would make a triple fool of myself. I would be unable to substantiate my charges.

{Margaret}

You will substantiate them. What a chain of theft it is. My father steals from the people. The doc.u.ments that prove his stealing are stolen by Gherst. Hubbard steals them from you and returns them to my father. And I steal them from my father and pa.s.s them back to you.

{Knox} (_Astounded._) You?--You?--

{Margaret}

Yes; this very morning. That was the cause of all the trouble.

If I hadn't stolen them nothing would have happened. Hubbard had just returned them to my father.

{Knox}

(_Profoundly touched._) And you did this for me--?

{Margaret}

Dear man, I didn't do it for you. I wasn't brave enough. I should have given in. I don't mind confessing that I started to do it for you, but it soon grew so terrible that I was afraid. It grew so terrible that had it been for you alone I should have surrendered. But out of the terror of it all I caught a wider vision, and all that you said last night rose before me. And I knew that you were right. I thought of all the people, and of the little children. I did it for them, after all. You speak for them. I stole the papers so that you could use them in speaking for the people. Don't you see, dear man?

(_Changing to angry recollection._) Do you know what they cost me? Do you know what was done to me, to-day, this morning, in my father's house? I was shamed, humiliated, as I would never have dreamed it possible. Do you know what they did to me?

The servants were called in, and by them I was stripped before everybody--my family, Hubbard, the Reverend Mr. Rutland, the secretary, everybody.

{Knox}

(_Stunned._) Stripped--you?

{Margaret}

Every st.i.tch. My father commanded it

{Knox}

(_Suddenly visioning the scene._) My G.o.d!

{Margaret}

(_Recovering herself and speaking cynically, with a laugh at his shocked face._) No; it was not so bad as that. There was a screen.

(_Knox appears somewhat relieved._) But it fell down in the midst of the struggle.

{Knox}

But in heaven's name why was this done to you?

{Margaret}

Searching for the lost letters. They knew I had taken them.

(_Speaking gravely._)

So you see, I have earned those papers. And I have earned the right to say what shall be done with them. I shall give them to you, and you will use them in your speech this afternoon.

{Knox}

I don't want them.

{Margaret}

(_Going to bell and ringing._) Oh yes you do. They are more valuable right now than anything else in the world.

{Knox}

(_Shaking his head._) I wish it hadn't happened.

{Margaret}

(_Returning to him, pausing by his chair, and caressing his hair._) What?

{Knox}

This morning--your recovering the letters. I had adjusted myself to their loss, and the loss of the fight, and the finding of--you.

(_He reaches up, draws down her hand, and presses it to his lips._) So--give them back to your father.

(_Margaret draws quickly away from him._) (_Enter Man-servant at right rear._)

{Margaret}

Send Linda to me.

(_Exit Man-servant._)

{Knox}

What are you doing?

{Margaret}

(_Sitting down._) I am going to send Linda for them. They are still in my father's house, hidden, of all places, behind Lincoln's portrait. He will guard them safely, I know.