them was Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite’s.
CHAPTER V
My hand dropped from the curtain. But don’t suppose—oh, don’t
suppose—that the dreadful embarrassment of my situation was the
uppermost idea in my mind! So fervent still was the sisterly interest I
felt in Mr. Godfrey, that I never stopped to ask myself why he was not
at the concert. No! I thought only of the words—the startling
words—which had just fallen from his lips. He would do it today. He had
said, in a tone of terrible resolution, he would do it today. What, oh
what, would he do? Something even more deplorably unworthy of him than
what he had done already? Would he apostatise from the faith? Would he
abandon us at the Mothers’-Small-Clothes? Had we seen the last of his
angelic smile in the committee-room? Had we heard the last of his
unrivalled eloquence at Exeter Hall? I was so wrought up by the bare
idea of such awful eventualities as these in connection with such a
man, that I believe I should have rushed from my place of concealment,
and implored him in the name of all the Ladies’ Committees in London to
explain himself—when I suddenly heard another voice in the room. It
penetrated through the curtains; it was loud, it was bold, it was
wanting in every female charm. The voice of Rachel Verinder.
“Why have you come up here, Godfrey?” she asked. “Why didn’t you go
into the library?”
He laughed softly, and answered, “Miss Clack is in the library.”
“Clack in the library!” She instantly seated herself on the ottoman in
the back drawing-room. “You are quite right, Godfrey. We had much
better stop here.”
I had been in a burning fever, a moment since, and in some doubt what
to do next. I became extremely cold now, and felt no doubt whatever. To
show myself, after what I had heard, was impossible. To retreat—except
into the fireplace—was equally out of the question. A martyrdom was
before me. In justice to myself, I noiselessly arranged the curtains so
that I could both see and hear. And then I met my martyrdom, with the
spirit of a primitive Christian.
“Don’t sit on the ottoman,” the young lady proceeded. “Bring a chair,
Godfrey. I like people to be opposite to me when I talk to them.”
He took the nearest seat. It was a low chair. He was very tall, and
many sizes too large for it. I never saw his legs to such disadvantage
before.
“Well?” she went on. “What did you say to them?”
“Just what you said, dear Rachel, to me.”
“That mamma was not at all well today? And that I didn’t quite like
leaving her to go to the concert?”
“Those were the words. They were grieved to lose you at the concert,
but they quite understood. All sent their love; and all expressed a
cheering belief that Lady Verinder’s indisposition would soon pass
away.”
“_You_ don’t think it’s serious, do you, Godfrey?”
“Far from it! In a few days, I feel quite sure, all will be well
again.”
“I think so, too. I was a little frightened at first, but I think so
too. It was very kind to go and make my excuses for me to people who
are almost strangers to you. But why not have gone with them to the
concert? It seems very hard that you should miss the music too.”
“Don’t say that, Rachel! If you only knew how much happier I am—here,
with you!”
He clasped his hands, and looked at her. In the position which he
occupied, when he did that, he turned my way. Can words describe how I
sickened when I noticed exactly the same pathetic expression on his
face, which had charmed me when he was pleading for destitute millions
of his fellow-creatures on the platform at Exeter Hall!
“It’s hard to get over one’s bad habits, Godfrey. But do try to get
over the habit of paying compliments—do, to please me.”
“I never paid _you_ a compliment, Rachel, in my life. Successful love
may sometimes use the language of flattery, I admit. But hopeless love,
dearest, always speaks the truth.”
He drew his chair close, and took her hand, when he said “hopeless
love.” There was a momentary silence. He, who thrilled everybody, had
doubtless thrilled _her_. I thought I now understood the words which
had dropped from him when he was alone in the drawing-room, “I’ll do it
today.” Alas! the most rigid propriety could hardly have failed to
discover that he was doing it now.
“Have you forgotten what we agreed on, Godfrey, when you spoke to me in
the country? We agreed that we were to be cousins, and nothing more.”
“I break the agreement, Rachel, every time I see you.”
“Then don’t see me.”
“Quite useless! I break the agreement every time I think of you. Oh,
Rachel! how kindly you told me, only the other day, that my place in
your estimation was a higher place than it had ever been yet! Am I mad
to build the hopes I do on those dear words? Am I mad to dream of some
future day when your heart may soften to me? Don’t tell me so, if I am!
Leave me my delusion, dearest! I must have _that_ to cherish, and to
comfort me, if I have nothing else!”
His voice trembled, and he put his white handkerchief to his eyes.
Exeter Hall again! Nothing wanting to complete the parallel but the
audience, the cheers, and the glass of water.
Even _her_ obdurate nature was touched. I saw her lean a little nearer
to him. I heard a new tone of interest in her next words.
“Are you really sure, Godfrey, that you are so fond of me as that?”
“Sure! You know what I was, Rachel. Let me tell you what I am. I have
lost every interest in life, but my interest in you. A transformation
has come over me which I can’t account for, myself. Would you believe
it? My charitable business is an unendurable nuisance to me; and when I
see a Ladies’ Committee now, I wish myself at the uttermost ends of the
earth!”
If the annals of apostasy offer anything comparable to such a
declaration as that, I can only say that the case in point is not
producible from the stores of _my_ reading. I thought of the
Mothers’-Small-Clothes. I thought of the Sunday-Sweetheart-Supervision.
I thought of the other Societies, too numerous to mention, all built up
on this man as on a tower of strength. I thought of the struggling
Female Boards, who, so to speak, drew the breath of their business-life
through the nostrils of Mr. Godfrey—of that same Mr. Godfrey who had
just reviled our good work as a “nuisance”—and just declared that he
wished he was at the uttermost ends of the earth when he found himself
in our company! My young female friends will feel encouraged to
persevere, when I mention that it tried even my discipline before I
could devour my own righteous indignation in silence. At the same time,
it is only justice to myself to add, that I didn’t lose a syllable of
the conversation. Rachel was the next to speak.
“You have made your confession,” she said. “I wonder whether it would
cure you of your unhappy attachment to me, if I made mine?”
He started. I confess I started too. He thought, and I thought, that
she was about to divulge the mystery of the Moonstone.
“Would you think, to look at me,” she went on, “that I am the
wretchedest girl living? It’s true, Godfrey. What greater wretchedness
can there be than to live degraded in your own estimation? That is my
life now.”
“My dear Rachel! it’s impossible you can have any reason to speak of
yourself in that way!”
“How do you know I have no reason?”
“Can you ask me the question! I know it, because I know _you_. Your
silence, dearest, has never lowered you in the estimation of your true
friends. The disappearance of your precious birthday gift may seem
strange; your unexplained connection with that event may seem stranger
still——”
“Are you speaking of the Moonstone, Godfrey?”
“I certainly thought that you referred——”
“I referred to nothing of the sort. I can hear of the loss of the
Moonstone, let who will speak of it, without feeling degraded in my own
estimation. If the story of the Diamond ever comes to light, it will be
known that I accepted a dreadful responsibility; it will be known that
I involved myself in the keeping of a miserable secret—but it will be
as clear as the sun at noon-day that I did nothing mean! You have
misunderstood me, Godfrey. It’s my fault for not speaking more plainly.
Cost me what it may, I will be plainer now. Suppose you were not in
love with me? Suppose you were in love with some other woman?”
“Yes?”
“Suppose you discovered that woman to be utterly unworthy of you?
Suppose you were quite convinced that it was a disgrace to you to waste
another thought on her? Suppose the bare idea of ever marrying such a
person made your face burn, only with thinking of it?”
“Yes?”
“And, suppose, in spite of all that—you couldn’t tear her from your
heart? Suppose the feeling she had roused in you (in the time when you
believed in her) was not a feeling to be hidden? Suppose the love this
wretch had inspired in you——? Oh, how can I find words to say it in!
How can I make a _man_ understand that a feeling which horrifies me at
myself, can be a feeling that fascinates me at the same time? It’s the
breath of my life, Godfrey, and it’s the poison that kills me—both in
one! Go away! I must be out of my mind to talk as I am talking now.
No! you mustn’t leave me—you mustn’t carry away a wrong impression. I
must say what is to be said in my own defence. Mind this! _He_ doesn’t
know—he never will know, what I have told _you_. I will never see him—I
don’t care what happens—I will never, never, never see him again! Don’t
ask me his name! Don’t ask me any more! Let’s change the subject. Are
you doctor enough, Godfrey, to tell me why I feel as if I was stifling
for want of breath? Is there a form of hysterics that bursts into words
instead of tears? I dare say! What does it matter? You will get over
any trouble I have caused you, easily enough now. I have dropped to my
right place in your estimation, haven’t I? Don’t notice me! Don’t pity
me! For God’s sake, go away!”
She turned round on a sudden, and beat her hands wildly on the back of
the ottoman. Her head dropped on the cushions; and she burst out
crying. Before I had time to feel shocked at this, I was horror-struck
by an entirely unexpected proceeding on the part of Mr. Godfrey. Will
it be credited that he fell on his knees at her feet?—on _both_ knees,
I solemnly declare! May modesty mention that he put his arms round her
next? And may reluctant admiration acknowledge that he electrified her
with two words?
“Noble creature!”
No more than that! But he did it with one of the bursts which have made
his fame as a public speaker. She sat, either quite thunderstruck, or
quite fascinated—I don’t know which—without even making an effort to
put his arms back where his arms ought to have been. As for me, my
sense of propriety was completely bewildered. I was so painfully
uncertain whether it was my first duty to close my eyes, or to stop my
ears, that I did neither. I attribute my being still able to hold the
curtain in the right position for looking and listening, entirely to
suppressed hysterics. In suppressed hysterics, it is admitted, even by
the doctors, that one must hold something.
“Yes,” he said, with all the fascination of his evangelical voice and
manner, “you are a noble creature! A woman who can speak the truth, for
the truth’s own sake—a woman who will sacrifice her pride, rather than
sacrifice an honest man who loves her—is the most priceless of all
treasures. When such a woman marries, if her husband only wins her
esteem and regard, he wins enough to ennoble his whole life. You have
spoken, dearest, of your place in my estimation. Judge what that place
is—when I implore you on my knees, to let the cure of your poor wounded
heart be my care. Rachel! will you honour me, will you bless me, by
being my wife?”
By this time I should certainly have decided on stopping my ears, if
Rachel had not encouraged me to keep them open, by answering him in the
first sensible words I had ever heard fall from her lips.
“Godfrey!” she said, “you must be mad!”
“I never spoke more reasonably, dearest—in your interests, as well as
in mine. Look for a moment to the future. Is your happiness to be
sacrificed to a man who has never known how you feel towards him, and
whom you are resolved never to see again? Is it not your duty to
yourself to forget this ill-fated attachment? and is forgetfulness to
be found in the life you are leading now? You have tried that life, and
you are wearying of it already. Surround yourself with nobler interests
than the wretched interests of the world. A heart that loves and
honours you; a home whose peaceful claims and happy duties win gently
on you day by day—try the consolation, Rachel, which is to be found
_there!_ I don’t ask for your love—I will be content with your
affection and regard. Let the rest be left, confidently left, to your
husband’s devotion, and to Time that heals even wounds as deep as
yours.”
She began to yield already. Oh, what a bringing-up she must have had!
Oh, how differently I should have acted in her place!
“Don’t tempt me, Godfrey,” she said; “I am wretched enough and reckless
enough as it is. Don’t tempt me to be more wretched and more wreckless
still!”
“One question, Rachel. Have you any personal objection to me?”
“I! I always liked you. After what you have just said to me, I should
be insensible indeed if I didn’t respect and admire you as well.”
“Do you know many wives, my dear Rachel, who respect and admire their
husbands? And yet they and their husbands get on very well. How many
brides go to the altar with hearts that would bear inspection by the
men who take them there? And yet it doesn’t end unhappily—somehow or
other the nuptial establishment jogs on. The truth is, that women try
marriage as a Refuge, far more numerously than they are willing to
admit; and, what is more, they find that marriage has justified their
confidence in it. Look at your own case once again. At your age, and
with your attractions, is it possible for you to sentence yourself to a
single life? Trust my knowledge of the world—nothing is less possible.
It is merely a question of time. You may marry some other man, some
years hence. Or you may marry the man, dearest, who is now at your
feet, and who prizes your respect and admiration above the love of any
other woman on the face of the earth.”
“Gently, Godfrey! you are putting something into my head which I never
thought of before. You are tempting me with a new prospect, when all my
other prospects are closed before me. I tell you again, I am miserable
enough and desperate enough, if you say another word, to marry you on
your own terms. Take the warning, and go!”
“I won’t even rise from my knees, till you have said yes!”
“If I say yes you will repent, and I shall repent, when it is too
late!”
“We shall both bless the day, darling, when I pressed, and when you
yielded.”
“Do you feel as confidently as you speak?”
“You shall judge for yourself. I speak from what I have seen in my own
family. Tell me what you think of our household at Frizinghall. Do my
father and mother live unhappily together?”
“Far from it—so far as I can see.”
“When my mother was a girl, Rachel (it is no secret in the family), she
had loved as you love—she had given her heart to a man who was unworthy
of her. She married my father, respecting him, admiring him, but
nothing more. Your own eyes have seen the result. Is there no
encouragement in it for you and for me?”*
* See Betteredge’s Narrative, chapter viii.
“You won’t hurry me, Godfrey?”
“My time shall be yours.”
“You won’t ask me for more than I can give?”
“My angel! I only ask you to give me yourself.”
“Take me!”
In those two words, she accepted him!
He had another burst—a burst of unholy rapture this time. He drew her
nearer and nearer to him till her face touched his; and then—No! I
really cannot prevail upon myself to carry this shocking disclosure any
farther. Let me only say, that I tried to close my eyes before it
happened, and that I was just one moment too late. I had calculated,
you see, on her resisting. She submitted. To every right-feeling person
of my own sex, volumes could say no more.
Even my innocence in such matters began to see its way to the end of
the interview now. They understood each other so thoroughly by this
time, that I fully expected to see them walk off together, arm in arm,
to be married. There appeared, however, judging by Mr. Godfrey’s next
words, to be one more trifling formality which it was necessary to
observe. He seated himself—unforbidden this time—on the ottoman by her
side. “Shall I speak to your dear mother?” he asked. “Or will you?”
She declined both alternatives.
“Let my mother hear nothing from either of us, until she is better. I
wish it to be kept a secret for the present, Godfrey. Go now, and come
back this evening. We have been here alone together quite long enough.”
She rose, and, in rising, looked for the first time towards the little
room in which my martyrdom was going on.
“Who has drawn those curtains?” she exclaimed. “The room is close
enough, as it is, without keeping the air out of it in that way.”
She advanced to the curtains. At the moment when she laid her hand on
them—at the moment when the discovery of me appeared to be quite
inevitable—the voice of the fresh-coloured young footman, on the
stairs, suddenly suspended any further proceedings on her side or on
mine. It was unmistakably the voice of a man in great alarm.
“Miss Rachel!” he called out, “where are you, Miss Rachel?”
She sprang back from the curtains, and ran to the door.
The footman came just inside the room. His ruddy colour was all gone.
He said, “Please to come downstairs, Miss! My lady has fainted, and we
can’t bring her to again.”
In a moment more I was alone, and free to go downstairs in my turn,
quite unobserved.
Mr. Godfrey passed me in the hall, hurrying out, to fetch the doctor.
“Go in, and help them!” he said, pointing to the room. I found Rachel
on her knees by the sofa, with her mother’s head on her bosom. One look
at my aunt’s face (knowing what I knew) was enough to warn me of the
dreadful truth. I kept my thoughts to myself till the doctor came in.
It was not long before he arrived. He began by sending Rachel out of
the room—and then he told the rest of us that Lady Verinder was no
more. Serious persons, in search of proofs of hardened scepticism, may
be interested in hearing that he showed no signs of remorse when he
looked at Me.
At a later hour I peeped into the breakfast-room, and the library. My
aunt had died without opening one of the letters which I had addressed
to her. I was so shocked at this, that it never occurred to me, until
some days afterwards, that she had also died without giving me my
little legacy.
CHAPTER VI
(1.) “Miss Clack presents her compliments to Mr. Franklin Blake; and,
in sending him the fifth chapter of her humble narrative, begs to say
that she feels quite unequal to enlarge as she could wish on an event
so awful, under the circumstances, as Lady Verinder’s death. She has,
therefore, attached to her own manuscripts, copious Extracts from
precious publications in her possession, all bearing on this terrible
subject. And may those Extracts (Miss Clack fervently hopes) sound as
the blast of a trumpet in the ears of her respected kinsman, Mr.
Franklin Blake.”
(2.) “Mr. Franklin Blake presents his compliments to Miss Clack, and
begs to thank her for the fifth chapter of her narrative. In returning
the extracts sent with it, he will refrain from mentioning any personal
objection which he may entertain to this species of literature, and
will merely say that the proposed additions to the manuscript are not
necessary to the fulfilment of the purpose that he has in view.”
(3.) “Miss Clack begs to acknowledge the return of her Extracts. She
affectionately reminds Mr. Franklin Blake that she is a Christian, and
that it is, therefore, quite impossible for him to offend her. Miss C.
persists in feeling the deepest interest in Mr. Blake, and pledges
herself, on the first occasion when sickness may lay him low, to offer
him the use of her Extracts for the second time. In the meanwhile she
would be glad to know, before beginning the final chapters of her
narrative, whether she may be permitted to make her humble contribution
complete, by availing herself of the light which later discoveries have
thrown on the mystery of the Moonstone.”
(4.) “Mr. Franklin Blake is sorry to disappoint Miss Clack. He can only
repeat the instructions which he had the honour of giving her when she
began her narrative. She is requested to limit herself to her own
individual experience of persons and events, as recorded in her diary.
Later discoveries she will be good enough to leave to the pens of those
persons who can write in the capacity of actual witnesses.”
(5.) “Miss Clack is extremely sorry to trouble Mr. Franklin Blake with
another letter. Her Extracts have been returned, and the expression of
her matured views on the subject of the Moonstone has been forbidden.
Miss Clack is painfully conscious that she ought (in the worldly
phrase) to feel herself put down. But, no—Miss C. has learnt
Perseverance in the School of Adversity. Her object in writing is to
know whether Mr. Blake (who prohibits everything else) prohibits the
appearance of the present correspondence in Miss Clack’s narrative?
Some explanation of the position in which Mr. Blake’s interference has
placed her as an authoress, seems due on the ground of common justice.
And Miss Clack, on her side, is most anxious that her letters should be
produced to speak for themselves.”
(6.) “Mr. Franklin Blake agrees to Miss Clack’s proposal, on the
understanding that she will kindly consider this intimation of his
consent as closing the correspondence between them.”
(7.) “Miss Clack feels it an act of Christian duty (before the
correspondence closes) to inform Mr. Franklin Blake that his last
letter—evidently intended to offend her—has not succeeded in
accomplishing the object of the writer. She affectionately requests Mr.
Blake to retire to the privacy of his own room, and to consider with
himself whether the training which can thus elevate a poor weak woman
above the reach of insult, be not worthy of greater admiration than he
is now disposed to feel for it. On being favoured with an intimation to
that effect, Miss C. solemnly pledges herself to send back the complete
series of her Extracts to Mr. Franklin Blake.”
[To this letter no answer was received. Comment is needless.
(Signed) DRUSILLA CLACK.]
CHAPTER VII
The foregoing correspondence will sufficiently explain why no choice is
left to me but to pass over Lady Verinder’s death with the simple
announcement of the fact which ends my fifth chapter.
Keeping myself for the future strictly within the limits of my own
personal experience, I have next to relate that a month elapsed from
the time of my aunt’s decease before Rachel Verinder and I met again.
That meeting was the occasion of my spending a few days under the same
roof with her. In the course of my visit, something happened, relative
to her marriage-engagement with Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, which is
important enough to require special notice in these pages. When this
last of many painful family circumstances has been disclosed, my task
will be completed; for I shall then have told all that I know, as an
actual (and most unwilling) witness of events.
My aunt’s remains were removed from London, and were buried in the
little cemetery attached to the church in her own park. I was invited
to the funeral with the rest of the family. But it was impossible (with
my religious views) to rouse myself in a few days only from the shock
which this death had caused me. I was informed, moreover, that the
rector of Frizinghall was to read the service. Having myself in past
times seen this clerical castaway making one of the players at Lady
Verinder’s whist-table, I doubt, even if I had been fit to travel,
whether I should have felt justified in attending the ceremony.
Lady Verinder’s death left her daughter under the care of her
brother-in-law, Mr. Ablewhite the elder. He was appointed guardian by
the will, until his niece married, or came of age. Under these
circumstances, Mr. Godfrey informed his father, I suppose, of the new
relation in which he stood towards Rachel. At any rate, in ten days
from my aunt’s death, the secret of the marriage-engagement was no
secret at all within the circle of the family, and the grand question
for Mr. Ablewhite senior—another confirmed castaway!—was how to make
himself and his authority most agreeable to the wealthy young lady who
was going to marry his son.
Rachel gave him some trouble at the outset, about the choice of a place
in which she could be prevailed upon to reside. The house in Montagu
Square was associated with the calamity of her mother’s death. The
house in Yorkshire was associated with the scandalous affair of the
lost Moonstone. Her guardian’s own residence at Frizinghall was open to
neither of these objections. But Rachel’s presence in it, after her
recent bereavement, operated as a check on the gaieties of her cousins,
the Miss Ablewhites—and she herself requested that her visit might be
deferred to a more favourable opportunity. It ended in a proposal,
emanating from old Mr. Ablewhite, to try a furnished house at Brighton.
His wife, an invalid daughter, and Rachel were to inhabit it together,
and were to expect him to join them later in the season. They would see
no society but a few old friends, and they would have his son Godfrey,
travelling backwards and forwards by the London train, always at their
disposal.
I describe this aimless flitting about from one place of residence to
another—this insatiate restlessness of body and appalling stagnation of
soul—merely with the view to arriving at results. The event which
(under Providence) proved to be the means of bringing Rachel Verinder
and myself together again, was no other than the hiring of the house at
Brighton.
My Aunt Ablewhite is a large, silent, fair-complexioned woman, with one
noteworthy point in her character. From the hour of her birth she has
never been known to do anything for herself. She has gone through life,
accepting everybody’s help, and adopting everybody’s opinions. A more
hopeless person, in a spiritual point of view, I have never met
with—there is absolutely, in this perplexing case, no obstructive
material to work upon. Aunt Ablewhite would listen to the Grand Lama of
Thibet exactly as she listens to Me, and would reflect his views quite
as readily as she reflects mine. She found the furnished house at
Brighton by stopping at an hotel in London, composing herself on a
sofa, and sending for her son. She discovered the necessary servants by
breakfasting in bed one morning (still at the hotel), and giving her
maid a holiday on condition that the girl “would begin enjoying herself
by fetching Miss Clack.” I found her placidly fanning herself in her
dressing-gown at eleven o’clock. “Drusilla, dear, I want some servants.
You are so clever—please get them for me.” I looked round the untidy
room. The church-bells were going for a week-day service; they
suggested a word of affectionate remonstrance on my part. “Oh, aunt!” I
said sadly. “Is _this_ worthy of a Christian Englishwoman? Is the
passage from time to eternity to be made in _this_ manner?” My aunt
answered, “I’ll put on my gown, Drusilla, if you will be kind enough to
help me.” What was to be said after that? I have done wonders with
murderesses—I have never advanced an inch with Aunt Ablewhite. “Where
is the list,” I asked, “of the servants whom you require?” My aunt
shook her head; she hadn’t even energy enough to keep the list. “Rachel
has got it, dear,” she said, “in the next room.” I went into the next
room, and so saw Rachel again for the first time since we had parted in
Montagu Square.
She looked pitiably small and thin in her deep mourning. If I attached
any serious importance to such a perishable trifle as personal
appearance, I might be inclined to add that hers was one of those
unfortunate complexions which always suffer when not relieved by a
border of white next the skin. But what are our complexions and our
looks? Hindrances and pitfalls, dear girls, which beset us on our way
to higher things! Greatly to my surprise, Rachel rose when I entered
the room, and came forward to meet me with outstretched hand.
“I am glad to see you,” she said. “Drusilla, I have been in the habit
of speaking very foolishly and very rudely to you, on former occasions.
I beg your pardon. I hope you will forgive me.”
My face, I suppose, betrayed the astonishment I felt at this. She
coloured up for a moment, and then proceeded to explain herself.
“In my poor mother’s lifetime,” she went on, “her friends were not
always my friends, too. Now I have lost her, my heart turns for comfort
to the people she liked. She liked you. Try to be friends with me,
Drusilla, if you can.”
To any rightly-constituted mind, the motive thus acknowledged was
simply shocking. Here in Christian England was a young woman in a state
of bereavement, with so little idea of where to look for true comfort,
that she actually expected to find it among her mother’s friends! Here
was a relative of mine, awakened to a sense of her shortcomings towards
others, under the influence, not of conviction and duty, but of
sentiment and impulse! Most deplorable to think of—but, still,
suggestive of something hopeful, to a person of my experience in plying
the good work. There could be no harm, I thought, in ascertaining the
extent of the change which the loss of her mother had wrought in
Rachel’s character. I decided, as a useful test, to probe her on the
subject of her marriage-engagement to Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.
Having first met her advances with all possible cordiality, I sat by
her on the sofa, at her own request. We discussed family affairs and
future plans—always excepting that one future plan which was to end in
her marriage. Try as I might to turn the conversation that way, she
resolutely declined to take the hint. Any open reference to the
question, on my part, would have been premature at this early stage of
our reconciliation. Besides, I had discovered all I wanted to know. She
was no longer the reckless, defiant creature whom I had heard and seen,
on the occasion of my martyrdom in Montagu Square. This was, of itself,
enough to encourage me to take her future conversion in hand—beginning
with a few words of earnest warning directed against the hasty
formation of the marriage tie, and so getting on to higher things.
Looking at her, now, with this new interest—and calling to mind the
headlong suddenness with which she had met Mr. Godfrey’s matrimonial
views—I felt the solemn duty of interfering with a fervour which
assured me that I should achieve no common results. Rapidity of
proceeding was, as I believed, of importance in this case. I went back
at once to the question of the servants wanted for the furnished house.
“Where is the list, dear?”
Rachel produced it.
“Cook, kitchen-maid, housemaid, and footman,” I read. “My dear Rachel,
these servants are only wanted for a term—the term during which your
guardian has taken the house. We shall have great difficulty in finding
persons of character and capacity to accept a temporary engagement of
that sort, if we try in London. Has the house in Brighton been found
yet?”
“Yes. Godfrey has taken it; and persons in the house wanted him to hire
them as servants. He thought they would hardly do for us, and came back
having settled nothing.”
“And you have no experience yourself in these matters, Rachel?”
“None whatever.”
“And Aunt Ablewhite won’t exert herself?”
“No, poor dear. Don’t blame her, Drusilla. I think she is the only
really happy woman I have ever met with.”
“There are degrees in happiness, darling. We must have a little talk,
some day, on that subject. In the meantime I will undertake to meet the
difficulty about the servants. Your aunt will write a letter to the
people of the house——”
“She will sign a letter, if I write it for her, which comes to the same
thing.”
“Quite the same thing. I shall get the letter, and I will go to
Brighton tomorrow.”
“How extremely kind of you! We will join you as soon as you are ready
for us. And you will stay, I hope, as _my_ guest. Brighton is so
lively; you are sure to enjoy it.”
In those words the invitation was given, and the glorious prospect of
interference was opened before me.
It was then the middle of the week. By Saturday afternoon the house was
ready for them. In that short interval I had sifted, not the characters
only, but the religious views as well, of all the disengaged servants
who applied to me, and had succeeded in making a selection which my
conscience approved. I also discovered, and called on two serious
friends of mine, residents in the town, to whom I knew I could confide
the pious object which had brought me to Brighton. One of them—a
clerical friend—kindly helped me to take sittings for our little party
in the church in which he himself ministered. The other—a single lady,
like myself—placed the resources of her library (composed throughout of
precious publications) entirely at my disposal. I borrowed half-a-dozen
works, all carefully chosen with a view to Rachel. When these had been
judiciously distributed in the various rooms she would be likely to
occupy, I considered that my preparations were complete. Sound doctrine
in the servants who waited on her; sound doctrine in the minister who
preached to her; sound doctrine in the books that lay on her table—such
was the treble welcome which my zeal had prepared for the motherless
girl! A heavenly composure filled my mind, on that Saturday afternoon,
as I sat at the window waiting the arrival of my relatives. The giddy
throng passed and repassed before my eyes. Alas! how many of them felt
my exquisite sense of duty done? An awful question. Let us not pursue
it.
Between six and seven the travellers arrived. To my indescribable
surprise, they were escorted, not by Mr. Godfrey (as I had
anticipated), but by the lawyer, Mr. Bruff.
“How do you do, Miss Clack?” he said. “I mean to stay this time.”
That reference to the occasion on which I had obliged him to postpone
his business to mine, when we were both visiting in Montagu Square,
satisfied me that the old worldling had come to Brighton with some
object of his own in view. I had prepared quite a little Paradise for
my beloved Rachel—and here was the Serpent already!
“Godfrey was very much vexed, Drusilla, not to be able to come with
us,” said my Aunt Ablewhite. “There was something in the way which kept
him in town. Mr. Bruff volunteered to take his place, and make a
holiday of it till Monday morning. By-the-bye, Mr. Bruff, I’m ordered
to take exercise, and I don’t like it. That,” added Aunt Ablewhite,
pointing out of window to an invalid going by in a chair on wheels,
drawn by a man, “is my idea of exercise. If it’s air you want, you get
it in your chair. And if it’s fatigue you want, I am sure it’s fatigue
enough to look at the man.”
Rachel stood silent, at a window by herself, with her eyes fixed on the
sea.
“Tired, love?” I inquired.
“No. Only a little out of spirits,” she answered. “I have often seen
the sea, on our Yorkshire coast, with that light on it. And I was
thinking, Drusilla, of the days that can never come again.”
Mr. Bruff remained to dinner, and stayed through the evening. The more
I saw of him, the more certain I felt that he had some private end to
serve in coming to Brighton. I watched him carefully. He maintained the
same appearance of ease, and talked the same godless gossip, hour after
hour, until it was time to take leave. As he shook hands with Rachel, I
caught his hard and cunning eyes resting on her for a moment with a
peculiar interest and attention. She was plainly concerned in the
object that he had in view. He said nothing out of the common to her or
to anyone on leaving. He invited himself to luncheon the next day, and
then he went away to his hotel.
It was impossible the next morning to get my Aunt Ablewhite out of her
dressing-gown in time for church. Her invalid daughter (suffering from
nothing, in my opinion, but incurable laziness, inherited from her
mother) announced that she meant to remain in bed for the day. Rachel
and I went alone together to church. A magnificent sermon was preached
by my gifted friend on the heathen indifference of the world to the
sinfulness of little sins. For more than an hour his eloquence
(assisted by his glorious voice) thundered through the sacred edifice.
I said to Rachel, when we came out, “Has it found its way to your
heart, dear?” And she answered, “No; it has only made my head ache.”
This might have been discouraging to some people; but, once embarked on
a career of manifest usefulness, nothing discourages Me.
We found Aunt Ablewhite and Mr. Bruff at luncheon. When Rachel declined
eating anything, and gave as a reason for it that she was suffering
from a headache, the lawyer’s cunning instantly saw, and seized, the
chance that she had given him.
“There is only one remedy for a headache,” said this horrible old man.
“A walk, Miss Rachel, is the thing to cure you. I am entirely at your
service, if you will honour me by accepting my arm.”
“With the greatest pleasure. A walk is the very thing I was longing
for.”
“It’s past two,” I gently suggested. “And the afternoon service,
Rachel, begins at three.”
“How can you expect me to go to church again,” she asked, petulantly,
“with such a headache as mine?”
Mr. Bruff officiously opened the door for her. In another minute more
they were both out of the house. I don’t know when I have felt the
solemn duty of interfering so strongly as I felt it at that moment. But
what was to be done? Nothing was to be done but to interfere at the
first opportunity, later in the day.
On my return from the afternoon service I found that they had just got
back. One look at them told me that the lawyer had said what he wanted
to say. I had never before seen Rachel so silent and so thoughtful. I
had never before seen Mr. Bruff pay her such devoted attention, and
look at her with such marked respect. He had (or pretended that he had)
an engagement to dinner that day—and he took an early leave of us all;
intending to go back to London by the first train the next morning.
“Are you sure of your own resolution?” he said to Rachel at the door.
“Quite sure,” she answered—and so they parted.
The moment his back was turned, Rachel withdrew to her own room. She
never appeared at dinner. Her maid (the person with the cap-ribbons)
was sent downstairs to announce that her headache had returned. I ran
up to her and made all sorts of sisterly offers through the door. It
was locked, and she kept it locked. Plenty of obstructive material to
work on here! I felt greatly cheered and stimulated by her locking the
door.
When her cup of tea went up to her the next morning, I followed it in.
I sat by her bedside and said a few earnest words. She listened with
languid civility. I noticed my serious friend’s precious publications
huddled together on a table in a corner. Had she chanced to look into
them?—I asked. Yes—and they had not interested her. Would she allow me
to read a few passages of the deepest interest, which had probably
escaped her eye? No, not now—she had other things to think of. She gave
these answers, with her attention apparently absorbed in folding and
refolding the frilling on her nightgown. It was plainly necessary to
rouse her by some reference to those worldly interests which she still
had at heart.
“Do you know, love,” I said, “I had an odd fancy, yesterday, about Mr.
Bruff? I thought, when I saw you after your walk with him, that he had
been telling you some bad news.”
Her fingers dropped from the frilling of her nightgown, and her fierce
black eyes flashed at me.
“Quite the contrary!” she said. “It was news I was interested in
hearing—and I am deeply indebted to Mr. Bruff for telling me of it.”
“Yes?” I said, in a tone of gentle interest.
Her fingers went back to the frilling, and she turned her head sullenly
away from me. I had been met in this manner, in the course of plying
the good work, hundreds of times. She merely stimulated me to try
again. In my dauntless zeal for her welfare, I ran the great risk, and
openly alluded to her marriage engagement.
“News you were interested in hearing?” I repeated. “I suppose, my dear
Rachel, that must be news of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite?”
She started up in the bed, and turned deadly pale. It was evidently on
the tip of her tongue to retort on me with the unbridled insolence of
former times. She checked herself—laid her head back on the
pillow—considered a minute—and then answered in these remarkable words:
“_I shall never marry Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite._”
It was my turn to start at that.
“What can you possibly mean?” I exclaimed. “The marriage is considered
by the whole family as a settled thing!”
“Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite is expected here today,” she said doggedly.
“Wait till he comes—and you will see.”
“But my dear Rachel——”
She rang the bell at the head of her bed. The person with the
cap-ribbons appeared.
“Penelope! my bath.”
Let me give her her due. In the state of my feelings at that moment, I
do sincerely believe that she had hit on the only possible way of
forcing me to leave the room.
By the mere worldly mind my position towards Rachel might have been
viewed as presenting difficulties of no ordinary kind. I had reckoned
on leading her to higher things by means of a little earnest
exhortation on the subject of her marriage. And now, if she was to be
believed, no such event as her marriage was to take place at all. But
ah, my friends! a working Christian of my experience (with an
evangelising prospect before her) takes broader views than these.
Supposing Rachel really broke off the marriage, on which the
Ablewhites, father and son, counted as a settled thing, what would be
the result? It could only end, if she held firm, in an exchanging of
hard words and bitter accusations on both sides. And what would be the
effect on Rachel when the stormy interview was over? A salutary moral
depression would be the effect. Her pride would be exhausted, her
stubbornness would be exhausted, by the resolute resistance which it
was in her character to make under the circumstances. She would turn
for sympathy to the nearest person who had sympathy to offer. And I was
that nearest person—brimful of comfort, charged to overflowing with
seasonable and reviving words. Never had the evangelising prospect
looked brighter, to _my_ eyes, than it looked now.
She came down to breakfast, but she ate nothing, and hardly uttered a
word.
After breakfast she wandered listlessly from room to room—then suddenly
roused herself, and opened the piano. The music she selected to play
was of the most scandalously profane sort, associated with performances
on the stage which it curdles one’s blood to think of. It would have
been premature to interfere with her at such a time as this. I
privately ascertained the hour at which Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite was
expected, and then I escaped the music by leaving the house.
Being out alone, I took the opportunity of calling upon my two resident
friends. It was an indescribable luxury to find myself indulging in
earnest conversation with serious persons. Infinitely encouraged and
refreshed, I turned my steps back again to the house, in excellent time
to await the arrival of our expected visitor. I entered the
dining-room, always empty at that hour of the day, and found myself
face to face with Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite!
He made no attempt to fly the place. Quite the contrary. He advanced to
meet me with the utmost eagerness.
“Dear Miss Clack, I have been only waiting to see _you!_ Chance set me
free of my London engagements today sooner than I had expected, and I
have got here, in consequence, earlier than my appointed time.”
Not the slightest embarrassment encumbered his explanation, though this
was his first meeting with me after the scene in Montagu Square. He was
not aware, it is true, of my having been a witness of that scene. But
he knew, on the other hand, that my attendances at the Mothers’
Small-Clothes, and my relations with friends attached to other
charities, must have informed me of his shameless neglect of his Ladies
and of his Poor. And yet there he was before me, in full possession of
his charming voice and his irresistible smile!
“Have you seen Rachel yet?” I asked.
He sighed gently, and took me by the hand. I should certainly have
snatched my hand away, if the manner in which he gave his answer had
not paralysed me with astonishment.
“I have seen Rachel,” he said with perfect tranquillity. “You are
aware, dear friend, that she was engaged to me? Well, she has taken a
sudden resolution to break the engagement. Reflection has convinced her
that she will best consult her welfare and mine by retracting a rash
promise, and leaving me free to make some happier choice elsewhere.
That is the only reason she will give, and the only answer she will
make to every question that I can ask of her.”
“What have you done on your side?” I inquired. “Have you submitted?”
“Yes,” he said with the most unruffled composure, “I have submitted.”
His conduct, under the circumstances, was so utterly inconceivable,
that I stood bewildered with my hand in his. It is a piece of rudeness
to stare at anybody, and it is an act of indelicacy to stare at a
gentleman. I committed both those improprieties. And I said, as if in a
dream, “What does it mean?”
“Permit me to tell you,” he replied. “And suppose we sit down?”
He led me to a chair. I have an indistinct remembrance that he was very
affectionate. I don’t think he put his arm round my waist to support
me—but I am not sure. I was quite helpless, and his ways with ladies
were very endearing. At any rate, we sat down. I can answer for that,
if I can answer for nothing more.
CHAPTER VIII
“I have lost a beautiful girl, an excellent social position, and a
handsome income,” Mr. Godfrey began; “and I have submitted to it
without a struggle. What can be the motive for such extraordinary
conduct as that? My precious friend, there is no motive.”
“No motive?” I repeated.
“Let me appeal, my dear Miss Clack, to your experience of children,” he
went on. “A child pursues a certain course of conduct. You are greatly
struck by it, and you attempt to get at the motive. The dear little
thing is incapable of telling you its motive. You might as well ask the
grass why it grows, or the birds why they sing. Well! in this matter, I
am like the dear little thing—like the grass—like the birds. I don’t
know why I made a proposal of marriage to Miss Verinder. I don’t know
why I have shamefully neglected my dear Ladies. I don’t know why I have
apostatised from the Mothers’ Small-Clothes. You say to the child, Why
have you been naughty? And the little angel puts its finger into its
mouth, and doesn’t know. My case exactly, Miss Clack! I couldn’t
confess it to anybody else. I feel impelled to confess it to _you!_”
I began to recover myself. A mental problem was involved here. I am
deeply interested in mental problems—and I am not, it is thought,
without some skill in solving them.
“Best of friends, exert your intellect, and help me,” he proceeded.
“Tell me—why does a time come when these matrimonial proceedings of
mine begin to look like something done in a dream? Why does it suddenly
occur to me that my true happiness is in helping my dear Ladies, in
going my modest round of useful work, in saying my few earnest words
when called on by my Chairman? What do I want with a position? I have
got a position! What do I want with an income? I can pay for my bread
and cheese, and my nice little lodging, and my two coats a year. What
do I want with Miss Verinder? She has told me with her own lips (this,
dear lady, is between ourselves) that she loves another man, and that
her only idea in marrying me is to try and put that other man out of
her head. What a horrid union is this! Oh, dear me, what a horrid union
is this! Such are my reflections, Miss Clack, on my way to Brighton. I
approach Rachel with the feeling of a criminal who is going to receive
his sentence. When I find that she has changed her mind too—when I hear
her propose to break the engagement—I experience (there is no sort of
doubt about it) a most overpowering sense of relief. A month ago I was
pressing her rapturously to my bosom. An hour ago, the happiness of
knowing that I shall never press her again, intoxicates me like strong
liquor. The thing seems impossible—the thing can’t be. And yet there
are the facts, as I had the honour of stating them when we first sat
down together in these two chairs. I have lost a beautiful girl, an
excellent social position, and a handsome income; and I have submitted
to it without a struggle. Can _you_ account for it, dear friend? It’s
quite beyond _me_.”
His magnificent head sank on his breast, and he gave up his own mental
problem in despair.
I was deeply touched. The case (if I may speak as a spiritual
physician) was now quite plain to me. It is no uncommon event, in the
experience of us all, to see the possessors of exalted ability
occasionally humbled to the level of the most poorly-gifted people
about them. The object, no doubt, in the wise economy of Providence, is
to remind greatness that it is mortal and that the power which has
conferred it can also take it away. It was now—to my mind—easy to
discern one of these salutary humiliations in the deplorable
proceedings on dear Mr. Godfrey’s part, of which I had been the unseen
witness. And it was equally easy to recognise the welcome reappearance
of his own finer nature in the horror with which he recoiled from the
idea of a marriage with Rachel, and in the charming eagerness which he
showed to return to his Ladies and his Poor.
I put this view before him in a few simple and sisterly words. His joy
was beautiful to see. He compared himself, as I went on, to a lost man
emerging from the darkness into the light. When I answered for a loving
reception of him at the Mothers’ Small-Clothes, the grateful heart of
our Christian Hero overflowed. He pressed my hands alternately to his
lips. Overwhelmed by the exquisite triumph of having got him back among
us, I let him do what he liked with my hands. I closed my eyes. I felt
my head, in an ecstasy of spiritual self-forgetfulness, sinking on his
shoulder. In a moment more I should certainly have swooned away in his
arms, but for an interruption from the outer world, which brought me to
myself again. A horrid rattling of knives and forks sounded outside the
door, and the footman came in to lay the table for luncheon.
Mr. Godfrey started up, and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.
“How time flies with _you!_” he exclaimed. “I shall barely catch the
train.”
I ventured on asking why he was in such a hurry to get back to town.
His answer reminded me of family difficulties that were still to be
reconciled, and of family disagreements that were yet to come.
“I have heard from my father,” he said. “Business obliges him to leave
Frizinghall for London today, and he proposes coming on here, either
this evening or tomorrow. I must tell him what has happened between
Rachel and me. His heart is set on our marriage—there will be great
difficulty, I fear, in reconciling him to the breaking-off of the
engagement. I must stop him, for all our sakes, from coming here till
he _is_ reconciled. Best and dearest of friends, we shall meet again!”
With those words he hurried out. In equal haste on my side, I ran
upstairs to compose myself in my own room before meeting Aunt Ablewhite
and Rachel at the luncheon-table.
I am well aware—to dwell for a moment yet on the subject of Mr.
Godfrey—that the all-profaning opinion of the world has charged him
with having his own private reasons for releasing Rachel from her
engagement, at the first opportunity she gave him. It has also reached
my ears, that his anxiety to recover his place in my estimation has
been attributed in certain quarters, to a mercenary eagerness to make
his peace (through me) with a venerable committee-woman at the Mothers’
Small-Clothes, abundantly blessed with the goods of this world, and a
beloved and intimate friend of my own. I only notice these odious
slanders for the sake of declaring that they never had a moment’s
influence on my mind. In obedience to my instructions, I have exhibited
the fluctuations in my opinion of our Christian Hero, exactly as I find
them recorded in my diary. In justice to myself, let me here add that,
once reinstated in his place in my estimation, my gifted friend never
lost that place again. I write with the tears in my eyes, burning to
say more. But no—I am cruelly limited to my actual experience of
persons and things. In less than a month from the time of which I am
now writing, events in the money-market (which diminished even _my_
miserable little income) forced me into foreign exile, and left me with
nothing but a loving remembrance of Mr. Godfrey which the slander of
the world has assailed, and assailed in vain.
Let me dry my eyes, and return to my narrative.
I went downstairs to luncheon, naturally anxious to see how Rachel was
affected by her release from her marriage engagement.
It appeared to me—but I own I am a poor authority in such matters—that
the recovery of her freedom had set her thinking again of that other
man whom she loved, and that she was furious with herself for not being
able to control a revulsion of feeling of which she was secretly
ashamed. Who was the man? I had my suspicions—but it was needless to
waste time in idle speculation. When I had converted her, she would, as
a matter of course, have no concealments from Me. I should hear all
about the man; I should hear all about the Moonstone. If I had had no
higher object in stirring her up to a sense of spiritual things, the
motive of relieving her mind of its guilty secrets would have been
enough of itself to encourage me to go on.
Aunt Ablewhite took her exercise in the afternoon in an invalid chair.
Rachel accompanied her. “I wish I could drag the chair,” she broke out,
recklessly. “I wish I could fatigue myself till I was ready to drop.”
She was in the same humour in the evening. I discovered in one of my
friend’s precious publications—the _Life, Letters, and Labours of Miss
Jane Ann Stamper_, forty-fourth edition—passages which bore with a
marvellous appropriateness on Rachel’s present position. Upon my
proposing to read them, she went to the piano. Conceive how little she
must have known of serious people, if she supposed that my patience was
to be exhausted in that way! I kept Miss Jane Ann Stamper by me, and
waited for events with the most unfaltering trust in the future.
Old Mr. Ablewhite never made his appearance that night. But I knew the
importance which his worldly greed attached to his son’s marriage with
Miss Verinder—and I felt a positive conviction (do what Mr. Godfrey
might to prevent it) that we should see him the next day. With his
interference in the matter, the storm on which I had counted would
certainly come, and the salutary exhaustion of Rachel’s resisting
powers would as certainly follow. I am not ignorant that old Mr.
Ablewhite has the reputation generally (especially among his inferiors)
of being a remarkably good-natured man. According to my observation of
him, he deserves his reputation as long as he has his own way, and not
a moment longer.
The next day, exactly as I had foreseen, Aunt Ablewhite was as near to
being astonished as her nature would permit, by the sudden appearance
of her husband. He had barely been a minute in the house, before he was
followed, to _my_ astonishment this time, by an unexpected complication
in the shape of Mr. Bruff.
I never remember feeling the presence of the lawyer to be more
unwelcome than I felt it at that moment. He looked ready for anything
in the way of an obstructive proceeding—capable even of keeping the
peace with Rachel for one of the combatants!
“This is a pleasant surprise, sir,” said Mr. Ablewhite, addressing
himself with his deceptive cordiality to Mr. Bruff. “When I left your
office yesterday, I didn’t expect to have the honour of seeing you at
Brighton today.”
“I turned over our conversation in my mind, after you had gone,”
replied Mr. Bruff. “And it occurred to me that I might perhaps be of
some use on this occasion. I was just in time to catch the train, and I
had no opportunity of discovering the carriage in which you were
travelling.”
Having given that explanation, he seated himself by Rachel. I retired
modestly to a corner—with Miss Jane Ann Stamper on my lap, in case of
emergency. My aunt sat at the window; placidly fanning herself as
usual. Mr. Ablewhite stood up in the middle of the room, with his bald
head much pinker than I had ever seen it yet, and addressed himself in
the most affectionate manner to his niece.
“Rachel, my dear,” he said, “I have heard some very extraordinary news
from Godfrey. And I am here to inquire about it. You have a
sitting-room of your own in this house. Will you honour me by showing
me the way to it?”
Rachel never moved. Whether she was determined to bring matters to a
crisis, or whether she was prompted by some private sign from Mr.
Bruff, is more than I can tell. She declined doing old Mr. Ablewhite
the honour of conducting him into her sitting-room.
“Whatever you wish to say to me,” she answered, “can be said here—in
the presence of my relatives, and in the presence” (she looked at Mr.
Bruff) “of my mother’s trusted old friend.”
“Just as you please, my dear,” said the amiable Mr. Ablewhite. He took
a chair. The rest of them looked at his face—as if they expected it,
after seventy years of worldly training, to speak the truth. I looked
at the top of his bald head; having noticed on other occasions that the
temper which was really in him had a habit of registering itself
_there_.
“Some weeks ago,” pursued the old gentleman, “my son informed me that
Miss Verinder had done him the honour to engage herself to marry him.
Is it possible, Rachel, that he can have misinterpreted—or presumed
upon—what you really said to him?”
“Certainly not,” she replied. “I did engage myself to marry him.”
“Very frankly answered!” said Mr. Ablewhite. “And most satisfactory, my
dear, so far. In respect to what happened some weeks since, Godfrey has
made no mistake. The error is evidently in what he told me yesterday. I
begin to see it now. You and he have had a lovers’ quarrel—and my
foolish son has interpreted it seriously. Ah! I should have known
better than that at his age.”
The fallen nature in Rachel—the mother Eve, so to speak—began to chafe
at this.
“Pray let us understand each other, Mr. Ablewhite,” she said. “Nothing
in the least like a quarrel took place yesterday between your son and
me. If he told you that I proposed breaking off our marriage
engagement, and that he agreed on his side—he told you the truth.”
The self-registering thermometer at the top of Mr. Ablewhite’s bald
head began to indicate a rise of temper. His face was more amiable than
ever—but _there_ was the pink at the top of his face, a shade deeper
already!
“Come, come, my dear!” he said, in his most soothing manner, “now don’t
be angry, and don’t be hard on poor Godfrey! He has evidently said some
unfortunate thing. He was always clumsy from a child—but he means well,
Rachel, he means well!”
“Mr. Ablewhite, I have either expressed myself very badly, or you are
purposely mistaking me. Once for all, it is a settled thing between
your son and myself that we remain, for the rest of our lives, cousins
and nothing more. Is that plain enough?”
The tone in which she said those words made it impossible, even for old
Mr. Ablewhite, to mistake her any longer. His thermometer went up
another degree, and his voice when he next spoke, ceased to be the
voice which is appropriate to a notoriously good-natured man.
“I am to understand, then,” he said, “that your marriage engagement is
broken off?”
“You are to understand that, Mr. Ablewhite, if you please.”
“I am also to take it as a matter of fact that the proposal to withdraw
from the engagement came, in the first instance, from _you?_”
“It came, in the first instance, from me. And it met, as I have told
you, with your son’s consent and approval.”
The thermometer went up to the top of the register. I mean, the pink
changed suddenly to scarlet.
“My son is a mean-spirited hound!” cried this furious old worldling.
“In justice to myself as his father—not in justice to _him_—I beg to
ask you, Miss Verinder, what complaint you have to make of Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite?”
Here Mr. Bruff interfered for the first time.
“You are not bound to answer that question,” he said to Rachel.
Old Mr. Ablewhite fastened on him instantly.
“Don’t forget, sir,” he said, “that you are a self-invited guest here.
Your interference would have come with a better grace if you had waited
until it was asked for.”
Mr. Bruff took no notice. The smooth varnish on _his_ wicked old face
never cracked. Rachel thanked him for the advice he had given to her,
and then turned to old Mr. Ablewhite—preserving her composure in a
manner which (having regard to her age and her sex) was simply awful to
see.
“Your son put the same question to me which you have just asked,” she
said. “I had only one answer for him, and I have only one answer for
you. I proposed that we should release each other, because reflection
had convinced me that I should best consult his welfare and mine by
retracting a rash promise, and leaving him free to make his choice
elsewhere.”
“What has my son done?” persisted Mr. Ablewhite. “I have a right to
know that. What has my son done?”
She persisted just as obstinately on her side.
“You have had the only explanation which I think it necessary to give
to you, or to him,” she answered.
“In plain English, it’s your sovereign will and pleasure, Miss
Verinder, to jilt my son?”
Rachel was silent for a moment. Sitting close behind her, I heard her
sigh. Mr. Bruff took her hand, and gave it a little squeeze. She
recovered herself, and answered Mr. Ablewhite as boldly as ever.
“I have exposed myself to worse misconstruction than that,” she said.
“And I have borne it patiently. The time has gone by, when you could
mortify me by calling me a jilt.”
She spoke with a bitterness of tone which satisfied me that the scandal
of the Moonstone had been in some way recalled to her mind. “I have no
more to say,” she added, wearily, not addressing the words to anyone in
particular, and looking away from us all, out of the window that was
nearest to her.
Mr. Ablewhite got upon his feet, and pushed away his chair so violently
that it toppled over and fell on the floor.
“I have something more to say on my side,” he announced, bringing down
the flat of his hand on the table with a bang. “I have to say that if
my son doesn’t feel this insult, I do!”
Rachel started, and looked at him in sudden surprise.
“Insult?” she repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Insult!” reiterated Mr. Ablewhite. “I know your motive, Miss Verinder,
for breaking your promise to my son! I know it as certainly as if you
had confessed it in so many words. Your cursed family pride is
insulting Godfrey, as it insulted _me_ when I married your aunt. Her
family—her beggarly family—turned their backs on her for marrying an
honest man, who had made his own place and won his own fortune. I had
no ancestors. I wasn’t descended from a set of cut-throat scoundrels
who lived by robbery and murder. I couldn’t point to the time when the
Ablewhites hadn’t a shirt to their backs, and couldn’t sign their own
names. Ha! ha! I wasn’t good enough for the Herncastles, when _I_
married. And now it comes to the pinch, my son isn’t good enough for
_you_. I suspected it, all along. You have got the Herncastle blood in
you, my young lady! I suspected it all along.”
“A very unworthy suspicion,” remarked Mr. Bruff. “I am astonished that
you have the courage to acknowledge it.”
Before Mr. Ablewhite could find words to answer in, Rachel spoke in a
tone of the most exasperating contempt.
“Surely,” she said to the lawyer, “this is beneath notice. If he can
think in _that_ way, let us leave him to think as he pleases.”
From scarlet, Mr. Ablewhite was now becoming purple. He gasped for
breath; he looked backwards and forwards from Rachel to Mr. Bruff in
such a frenzy of rage with both of them that he didn’t know which to
attack first. His wife, who had sat impenetrably fanning herself up to
this time, began to be alarmed, and attempted, quite uselessly, to
quiet him. I had, throughout this distressing interview, felt more than
one inward call to interfere with a few earnest words, and had
controlled myself under a dread of the possible results, very unworthy
of a Christian Englishwoman who looks, not to what is meanly prudent,
but to what is morally right. At the point at which matters had now
arrived, I rose superior to all considerations of mere expediency. If I
had contemplated interposing any remonstrance of my own humble
devising, I might possibly have still hesitated. But the distressing
domestic emergency which now confronted me, was most marvellously and
beautifully provided for in the Correspondence of Miss Jane Ann
Stamper—Letter one thousand and one, on “Peace in Families.” I rose in
my modest corner, and I opened my precious book.
“Dear Mr. Ablewhite,” I said, “one word!”
When I first attracted the attention of the company by rising, I could
see that he was on the point of saying something rude to me. My
sisterly form of address checked him. He stared at me in heathen
astonishment.
“As an affectionate well-wisher and friend,” I proceeded, “and as one
long accustomed to arouse, convince, prepare, enlighten, and fortify
others, permit me to take the most pardonable of all liberties—the
liberty of composing your mind.”
He began to recover himself; he was on the point of breaking out—he
_would_ have broken out, with anybody else. But my voice (habitually
gentle) possesses a high note or so, in emergencies. In this emergency,
I felt imperatively called upon to have the highest voice of the two.
I held up my precious book before him; I rapped the open page
impressively with my forefinger. “Not my words!” I exclaimed, in a
burst of fervent interruption. “Oh, don’t suppose that I claim
attention for My humble words! Manna in the wilderness, Mr. Ablewhite!
Dew on the parched earth! Words of comfort, words of wisdom, words of
love—the blessed, blessed, blessed words of Miss Jane Ann Stamper!”
I was stopped there by a momentary impediment of the breath. Before I
could recover myself, this monster in human form shouted out furiously,
“Miss Jane Ann Stamper be ——!”
It is impossible for me to write the awful word, which is here
represented by a blank. I shrieked as it passed his lips; I flew to my
little bag on the side table; I shook out all my tracts; I seized the
one particular tract on profane swearing, entitled, “Hush, for Heaven’s
Sake!”; I handed it to him with an expression of agonised entreaty. He
tore it in two, and threw it back at me across the table. The rest of
them rose in alarm, not knowing what might happen next. I instantly sat
down again in my corner. There had once been an occasion, under
somewhat similar circumstances, when Miss Jane Ann Stamper had been
taken by the two shoulders and turned out of a room. I waited, inspired
by _her_ spirit, for a repetition of _her_ martyrdom.
But no—it was not to be. His wife was the next person whom he
addressed. “Who—who—who,” he said, stammering with rage, “who asked
this impudent fanatic into the house? Did you?”
Before Aunt Ablewhite could say a word, Rachel answered for her.
“Miss Clack is here,” she said, “as my guest.”
Those words had a singular effect on Mr. Ablewhite. They suddenly
changed him from a man in a state of red-hot anger to a man in a state
of icy-cold contempt. It was plain to everybody that Rachel had said
something—short and plain as her answer had been—which gave him the
upper hand of her at last.
“Oh?” he said. “Miss Clack is here as _your_ guest—in _my_ house?”
It was Rachel’s turn to lose her temper at that. Her colour rose, and
her eyes brightened fiercely. She turned to the lawyer, and, pointing
to Mr. Ablewhite, asked haughtily, “What does he mean?”
Mr. Bruff interfered for the third time.
“You appear to forget,” he said, addressing Mr. Ablewhite, “that you
took this house as Miss Verinder’s guardian, for Miss Verinder’s use.”
“Not quite so fast,” interposed Mr. Ablewhite. “I have a last word to
say, which I should have said some time since, if this——” He looked my
way, pondering what abominable name he should call me—“if this Rampant
Spinster had not interrupted us. I beg to inform you, sir, that, if my
son is not good enough to be Miss Verinder’s husband, I cannot presume
to consider his father good enough to be Miss Verinder’s guardian.
Understand, if you please, that I refuse to accept the position which
is offered to me by Lady Verinder’s will. In your legal phrase, I
decline to act. This house has necessarily been hired in my name. I
take the entire responsibility of it on my shoulders. It is my house. I
can keep it, or let it, just as I please. I have no wish to hurry Miss
Verinder. On the contrary, I beg her to remove her guest and her
luggage, at her own entire convenience.” He made a low bow, and walked
out of the room.
That was Mr. Ablewhite’s revenge on Rachel, for refusing to marry his
son!
The instant the door closed, Aunt Ablewhite exhibited a phenomenon
which silenced us all. She became endowed with energy enough to cross
the room!
“My dear,” she said, taking Rachel by the hand, “I should be ashamed of
my husband, if I didn’t know that it is his temper which has spoken to
you, and not himself. You,” continued Aunt Ablewhite, turning on me in
my corner with another endowment of energy, in her looks this time
instead of her limbs—“you are the mischievous person who irritated him.
I hope I shall never see you or your tracts again.” She went back to
Rachel and kissed her. “I beg your pardon, my dear,” she said, “in my
husband’s name. What can I do for you?”
Consistently perverse in everything—capricious and unreasonable in all
the actions of her life—Rachel melted into tears at those commonplace
words, and returned her aunt’s kiss in silence.
“If I may be permitted to answer for Miss Verinder,” said Mr. Bruff,
“might I ask you, Mrs. Ablewhite, to send Penelope down with her
mistress’s bonnet and shawl. Leave us ten minutes together,” he added,
in a lower tone, “and you may rely on my setting matters right, to your
satisfaction as well as to Rachel’s.”
The trust of the family in this man was something wonderful to see.
Without a word more, on her side, Aunt Ablewhite left the room.
“Ah!” said Mr. Bruff, looking after her. “The Herncastle blood has its
drawbacks, I admit. But there _is_ something in good breeding after
all!”
Having made that purely worldly remark, he looked hard at my corner, as
if he expected me to go. My interest in Rachel—an infinitely higher
interest than his—riveted me to my chair.
Mr. Bruff gave it up, exactly as he had given it up at Aunt Verinder’s,
in Montagu Square. He led Rachel to a chair by the window, and spoke to
her there.
“My dear young lady,” he said, “Mr. Ablewhite’s conduct has naturally
shocked you, and taken you by surprise. If it was worth while to
contest the question with such a man, we might soon show him that he is
not to have things all his own way. But it isn’t worth while. You were
quite right in what you said just now; he is beneath our notice.”
He stopped, and looked round at my corner. I sat there quite immovable,
with my tracts at my elbow and with Miss Jane Ann Stamper on my lap.
“You know,” he resumed, turning back again to Rachel, “that it was part
of your poor mother’s fine nature always to see the best of the people
about her, and never the worst. She named her brother-in-law your
guardian because she believed in him, and because she thought it would
please her sister. I had never liked Mr. Ablewhite myself, and I
induced your mother to let me insert a clause in the will, empowering
her executors, in certain events, to consult with me about the
appointment of a new guardian. One of those events has happened today;
and I find myself in a position to end all these dry business details,
I hope agreeably, with a message from my wife. Will you honour Mrs.
Bruff by becoming her guest? And will you remain under my roof, and be
one of my family, until we wise people have laid our heads together,
and have settled what is to be done next?”
At those words, I rose to interfere. Mr. Bruff had done exactly what I
had dreaded he would do, when he asked Mrs. Ablewhite for Rachel’s
bonnet and shawl.
Before I could interpose a word, Rachel had accepted his invitation in
the warmest terms. If I suffered the arrangement thus made between them
to be carried out—if she once passed the threshold of Mr. Bruff’s
door—farewell to the fondest hope of my life, the hope of bringing my
lost sheep back to the fold! The bare idea of such a calamity as this
quite overwhelmed me. I cast the miserable trammels of worldly
discretion to the winds, and spoke with the fervour that filled me, in
the words that came first.
“Stop!” I said—“stop! I must be heard. Mr. Bruff! you are not related
to her, and I am. I invite her—I summon the executors to appoint _me_
guardian. Rachel, dearest Rachel, I offer you my modest home; come to
London by the next train, love, and share it with me!”
Mr. Bruff said nothing. Rachel looked at me with a cruel astonishment
which she made no effort to conceal.
“You are very kind, Drusilla,” she said. “I shall hope to visit you
whenever I happen to be in London. But I have accepted Mr. Bruff’s
invitation, and I think it will be best, for the present, if I remain
under Mr. Bruff’s care.”
“Oh, don’t say so!” I pleaded. “I can’t part with you, Rachel—I can’t
part with you!”
I tried to fold her in my arms. But she drew back. My fervour did not
communicate itself; it only alarmed her.
“Surely,” she said, “this is a very unnecessary display of agitation? I
don’t understand it.”
“No more do I,” said Mr. Bruff.
Their hardness—their hideous, worldly hardness—revolted me.
“Oh, Rachel! Rachel!” I burst out. “Haven’t you seen _yet_, that my
heart yearns to make a Christian of you? Has no inner voice told you
that I am trying to do for _you_, what I was trying to do for your dear
mother when death snatched her out of my hands?”
Rachel advanced a step nearer, and looked at me very strangely.
“I don’t understand your reference to my mother,” she said. “Miss
Clack, will you have the goodness to explain yourself?”
Before I could answer, Mr. Bruff came forward, and offering his arm to
Rachel, tried to lead her out of the room.
“You had better not pursue the subject, my dear,” he said. “And Miss
Clack had better not explain herself.”
If I had been a stock or a stone, such an interference as this must
have roused me into testifying to the truth. I put Mr. Bruff aside
indignantly with my own hand, and, in solemn and suitable language, I
stated the view with which sound doctrine does not scruple to regard
the awful calamity of dying unprepared.
Rachel started back from me—I blush to write—with a scream of horror.
“Come away!” she said to Mr. Bruff. “Come away, for God’s sake, before
that woman can say any more! Oh, think of my poor mother’s harmless,
useful, beautiful life! You were at the funeral, Mr. Bruff; you saw how
everybody loved her; you saw the poor helpless people crying at her
grave over the loss of their best friend. And that wretch stands there,
and tries to make me doubt that my mother, who was an angel on earth,
is an angel in heaven now! Don’t stop to talk about it! Come away! It
stifles me to breathe the same air with her! It frightens me to feel
that we are in the same room together!”
Deaf to all remonstrance, she ran to the door.
At the same moment, her maid entered with her bonnet and shawl. She
huddled them on anyhow. “Pack my things,” she said, “and bring them to
Mr. Bruff’s.” I attempted to approach her—I was shocked and grieved,
but, it is needless to say, not offended. I only wished to say to her,
“May your hard heart be softened! I freely forgive you!” She pulled
down her veil, and tore her shawl away from my hand, and, hurrying out,
shut the door in my face. I bore the insult with my customary
fortitude. I remember it now with my customary superiority to all
feeling of offence.
Mr. Bruff had his parting word of mockery for me, before he too hurried
out, in his turn.
“You had better not have explained yourself, Miss Clack,” he said, and
bowed, and left the room.
The person with the cap-ribbons followed.
“It’s easy to see who has set them all by the ears together,” she said.
“I’m only a poor servant—but I declare I’m ashamed of you!” She too
went out, and banged the door after her.
I was left alone in the room. Reviled by them all, deserted by them
all, I was left alone in the room.
Is there more to be added to this plain statement of facts—to this
touching picture of a Christian persecuted by the world? No! my diary
reminds me that one more of the many chequered chapters in my life ends
here. From that day forth, I never saw Rachel Verinder again. She had
my forgiveness at the time when she insulted me. She has had my
prayerful good wishes ever since. And when I die—to complete the return
on my part of good for evil—she will have the _Life, Letters, and
Labours of Miss Jane Ann Stamper_ left her as a legacy by my will.
SECOND NARRATIVE.
_Contributed by Mathew Bruff, Solicitor, of Gray’s Inn Square._
CHAPTER I
My fair friend, Miss Clack, having laid down the pen, there are two
reasons for my taking it up next, in my turn.
In the first place, I am in a position to throw the necessary light on
certain points of interest which have thus far been left in the dark.
Miss Verinder had her own private reason for breaking her marriage
engagement—and I was at the bottom of it. Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite had his
own private reason for withdrawing all claim to the hand of his
charming cousin—and I discovered what it was.
In the second place, it was my good or ill fortune, I hardly know
which, to find myself personally involved—at the period of which I am
now writing—in the mystery of the Indian Diamond. I had the honour of
an interview, at my own office, with an Oriental stranger of
distinguished manners, who was no other, unquestionably, than the chief
of the three Indians. Add to this, that I met with the celebrated
traveller, Mr. Murthwaite, the day afterwards, and that I held a
conversation with him on the subject of the Moonstone, which has a very
important bearing on later events. And there you have the statement of
my claims to fill the position which I occupy in these pages.
The true story of the broken marriage engagement comes first in point
of time, and must therefore take the first place in the present
narrative. Tracing my way back along the chain of events, from one end
to the other, I find it necessary to open the scene, oddly enough as
you will think, at the bedside of my excellent client and friend, the
late Sir John Verinder.
Sir John had his share—perhaps rather a large share—of the more
harmless and amiable of the weaknesses incidental to humanity. Among
these, I may mention as applicable to the matter in hand, an invincible
reluctance—so long as he enjoyed his usual good health—to face the
responsibility of making his will. Lady Verinder exerted her influence
to rouse him to a sense of duty in this matter; and I exerted my
influence. He admitted the justice of our views—but he went no further
than that, until he found himself afflicted with the illness which
ultimately brought him to his grave. Then, I was sent for at last, to
take my client’s instructions on the subject of his will. They proved
to be the simplest instructions I had ever received in the whole of my
professional career.
Sir John was dozing, when I entered the room. He roused himself at the
sight of me.
“How do you do, Mr. Bruff?” he said. “I sha’n’t be very long about
this. And then I’ll go to sleep again.” He looked on with great
interest while I collected pens, ink, and paper. “Are you ready?” he
asked. I bowed and took a dip of ink, and waited for my instructions.
“I leave everything to my wife,” said Sir John. “That’s all.” He turned
round on his pillow, and composed himself to sleep again.
I was obliged to disturb him.
“Am I to understand,” I asked, “that you leave the whole of the
property, of every sort and description, of which you die possessed,
absolutely to Lady Verinder?”
“Yes,” said Sir John. “Only, _I_ put it shorter. Why can’t _you_ put it
shorter, and let me go to sleep again? Everything to my wife. That’s my
Will.”
His property was entirely at his own disposal, and was of two kinds.
Property in land (I purposely abstain from using technical language),
and property in money. In the majority of cases, I am afraid I should
have felt it my duty to my client to ask him to reconsider his Will. In
the case of Sir John, I knew Lady Verinder to be, not only worthy of
the unreserved trust which her husband had placed in her (all good
wives are worthy of that)—but to be also capable of properly
administering a trust (which, in my experience of the fair sex, not one
in a thousand of them is competent to do). In ten minutes, Sir John’s
Will was drawn, and executed, and Sir John himself, good man, was
finishing his interrupted nap.
Lady Verinder amply justified the confidence which her husband had
placed in her. In the first days of her widowhood, she sent for me, and
made her Will. The view she took of her position was so thoroughly
sound and sensible, that I was relieved of all necessity for advising
her. My responsibility began and ended with shaping her instructions
into the proper legal form. Before Sir John had been a fortnight in his
grave, the future of his daughter had been most wisely and most
affectionately provided for.
The Will remained in its fireproof box at my office, through more years
than I like to reckon up. It was not till the summer of eighteen
hundred and forty-eight that I found occasion to look at it again under
very melancholy circumstances.
At the date I have mentioned, the doctors pronounced the sentence on
poor Lady Verinder, which was literally a sentence of death. I was the
first person whom she informed of her situation; and I found her
anxious to go over her Will again with me.
It was impossible to improve the provisions relating to her daughter.
But, in the lapse of time, her wishes in regard to certain minor
legacies, left to different relatives, had undergone some modification;
and it became necessary to add three or four Codicils to the original
document. Having done this at once, for fear of accident, I obtained
her ladyship’s permission to embody her recent instructions in a second
Will. My object was to avoid certain inevitable confusions and
repetitions which now disfigured the original document, and which, to
own the truth, grated sadly on my professional sense of the fitness of
things.
The execution of this second Will has been described by Miss Clack, who
was so obliging as to witness it. So far as regarded Rachel Verinder’s
pecuniary interests, it was, word for word, the exact counterpart of
the first Will. The only changes introduced related to the appointment
of a guardian, and to certain provisions concerning that appointment,
which were made under my advice. On Lady Verinder’s death, the Will was
placed in the hands of my proctor to be “proved” (as the phrase is) in
the usual way.
In about three weeks from that time—as well as I can remember—the first
warning reached me of something unusual going on under the surface. I
happened to be looking in at my friend the proctor’s office, and I
observed that he received me with an appearance of greater interest
than usual.
“I have some news for you,” he said. “What do you think I heard at
Doctors’ Commons this morning? Lady Verinder’s Will has been asked for,
and examined, already!”
This was news indeed! There was absolutely nothing which could be
contested in the Will; and there was nobody I could think of who had
the slightest interest in examining it. (I shall perhaps do well if I
explain in this place, for the benefit of the few people who don’t know
it already, that the law allows all Wills to be examined at Doctors’
Commons by anybody who applies, on the payment of a shilling fee.)
“Did you hear who asked for the Will?” I asked.
“Yes; the clerk had no hesitation in telling _me_. Mr. Smalley, of the
firm of Skipp and Smalley, asked for it. The Will has not been copied
yet into the great Folio Registers. So there was no alternative but to
depart from the usual course, and to let him see the original document.
He looked it over carefully, and made a note in his pocket-book. Have
you any idea of what he wanted with it?”
I shook my head. “I shall find out,” I answered, “before I am a day
older.” With that I went back at once to my own office.
If any other firm of solicitors had been concerned in this
unaccountable examination of my deceased client’s Will, I might have
found some difficulty in making the necessary discovery. But I had a
hold over Skipp and Smalley which made my course in this matter a
comparatively easy one. My common-law clerk (a most competent and
excellent man) was a brother of Mr. Smalley’s; and, owing to this sort
of indirect connection with me, Skipp and Smalley had, for some years
past, picked up the crumbs that fell from my table, in the shape of
cases brought to my office, which, for various reasons, I did not think
it worth while to undertake. My professional patronage was, in this
way, of some importance to the firm. I intended, if necessary, to
remind them of that patronage, on the present occasion.
The moment I got back I spoke to my clerk; and, after telling him what
had happened, I sent him to his brother’s office, “with Mr. Bruff’s
compliments, and he would be glad to know why Messrs. Skipp and Smalley
had found it necessary to examine Lady Verinder’s will.”
This message brought Mr. Smalley back to my office in company with his
brother. He acknowledged that he had acted under instructions received
from a client. And then he put it to me, whether it would not be a
breach of professional confidence on his part to say more.
We had a smart discussion upon that. He was right, no doubt; and I was
wrong. The truth is, I was angry and suspicious—and I insisted on
knowing more. Worse still, I declined to consider any additional
information offered me, as a secret placed in my keeping: I claimed
perfect freedom to use my own discretion. Worse even than that, I took
an unwarrantable advantage of my position. “Choose, sir,” I said to Mr.
Smalley, “between the risk of losing your client’s business and the
risk of losing Mine.” Quite indefensible, I admit—an act of tyranny,
and nothing less. Like other tyrants, I carried my point. Mr. Smalley
chose his alternative, without a moment’s hesitation.
He smiled resignedly, and gave up the name of his client:
Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.
That was enough for me—I wanted to know no more.
Having reached this point in my narrative, it now becomes necessary to
place the reader of these lines—so far as Lady Verinder’s Will is
concerned—on a footing of perfect equality, in respect of information,
with myself.
Let me state, then, in the fewest possible words, that Rachel Verinder
had nothing but a life-interest in the property. Her mother’s excellent
sense, and my long experience, had combined to relieve her of all
responsibility, and to guard her from all danger of becoming the victim
in the future of some needy and unscrupulous man. Neither she, nor her
husband (if she married), could raise sixpence, either on the property
in land, or on the property in money. They would have the houses in
London and in Yorkshire to live in, and they would have the handsome
income—and that was all.
When I came to think over what I had discovered, I was sorely perplexed
what to do next.
Hardly a week had passed since I had heard (to my surprise and
distress) of Miss Verinder’s proposed marriage. I had the sincerest
admiration and affection for her; and I had been inexpressibly grieved
when I heard that she was about to throw herself away on Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite. And now, here was the man—whom I had always believed to be a
smooth-tongued impostor—justifying the very worst that I had thought of
him, and plainly revealing the mercenary object of the marriage, on his
side! And what of that?—you may reply—the thing is done every day.
Granted, my dear sir. But would you think of it quite as lightly as you
do, if the thing was done (let us say) with your own sister?
The first consideration which now naturally occurred to me was this.
Would Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite hold to his engagement, after what his
lawyer had discovered for him?
It depended entirely on his pecuniary position, of which I knew
nothing. If that position was not a desperate one, it would be well
worth his while to marry Miss Verinder for her income alone. If, on the
other hand, he stood in urgent need of realising a large sum by a given
time, then Lady Verinder’s Will would exactly meet the case, and would
preserve her daughter from falling into a scoundrel’s hands.
In the latter event, there would be no need for me to distress Miss
Rachel, in the first days of her mourning for her mother, by an
immediate revelation of the truth. In the former event, if I remained
silent, I should be conniving at a marriage which would make her
miserable for life.
My doubts ended in my calling at the hotel in London, at which I knew
Mrs. Ablewhite and Miss Verinder to be staying. They informed me that
they were going to Brighton the next day, and that an unexpected
obstacle prevented Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite from accompanying them. I at
once proposed to take his place. While I was only thinking of Rachel
Verinder, it was possible to hesitate. When I actually saw her, my mind
was made up directly, come what might of it, to tell her the truth.
I found my opportunity, when I was out walking with her, on the day
after my arrival.
“May I speak to you,” I asked, “about your marriage engagement?”
“Yes,” she said, indifferently, “if you have nothing more interesting
to talk about.”
“Will you forgive an old friend and servant of your family, Miss
Rachel, if I venture on asking whether your heart is set on this
marriage?”
“I am marrying in despair, Mr. Bruff—on the chance of dropping into
some sort of stagnant happiness which may reconcile me to my life.”
Strong language! and suggestive of something below the surface, in the
shape of a romance. But I had my own object in view, and I declined (as
we lawyers say) to pursue the question into its side issues.
“Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite can hardly be of your way of thinking,” I said.
“_His_ heart must be set on the marriage at any rate?”
“He says so, and I suppose I ought to believe him. He would hardly
marry me, after what I have owned to him, unless he was fond of me.”
Poor thing! the bare idea of a man marrying her for his own selfish and
mercenary ends had never entered her head. The task I had set myself
began to look like a harder task than I had bargained for.
“It sounds strangely,” I went on, “in my old-fashioned ears——”
“What sounds strangely?” she asked.
“To hear you speak of your future husband as if you were not quite sure
of the sincerity of his attachment. Are you conscious of any reason in
your own mind for doubting him?”
Her astonishing quickness of perception, detected a change in my voice,
or my manner, when I put that question, which warned her that I had
been speaking all along with some ulterior object in view. She stopped,
and taking her arm out of mine, looked me searchingly in the face.
“Mr. Bruff,” she said, “you have something to tell me about Godfrey
Ablewhite. Tell it.”
I knew her well enough to take her at her word. I told it.
She put her arm again into mine, and walked on with me slowly. I felt
her hand tightening its grasp mechanically on my arm, and I saw her
getting paler and paler as I went on—but, not a word passed her lips
while I was speaking. When I had done, she still kept silence. Her head
drooped a little, and she walked by my side, unconscious of my
presence, unconscious of everything about her; lost—buried, I might
almost say—in her own thoughts.
I made no attempt to disturb her. My experience of her disposition
warned me, on this, as on former occasions, to give her time.
The first instinct of girls in general, on being told of anything which
interests them, is to ask a multitude of questions, and then to run
off, and talk it all over with some favourite friend. Rachel Verinder’s
first instinct, under similar circumstances, was to shut herself up in
her own mind, and to think it over by herself. This absolute
self-dependence is a great virtue in a man. In a woman it has a serious
drawback of morally separating her from the mass of her sex, and so
exposing her to misconstruction by the general opinion. I strongly
suspect myself of thinking as the rest of the world think in this
matter—except in the case of Rachel Verinder. The self-dependence in
_her_ character, was one of its virtues in my estimation; partly, no
doubt, because I sincerely admired and liked her; partly, because the
view I took of her connexion with the loss of the Moonstone was based
on my own special knowledge of her disposition. Badly as appearances
might look, in the matter of the Diamond—shocking as it undoubtedly was
to know that she was associated in any way with the mystery of an
undiscovered theft—I was satisfied nevertheless that she had done
nothing unworthy of her, because I was also satisfied that she had not
stirred a step in the business, without shutting herself up in her own
mind, and thinking it over first.
We had walked on, for nearly a mile I should say, before Rachel roused
herself. She suddenly looked up at me with a faint reflection of her
smile of happier times—the most irresistible smile I have ever seen on
a woman’s face.
“I owe much already to your kindness,” she said. “And I feel more
deeply indebted to it now than ever. If you hear any rumours of my
marriage when you get back to London, contradict them at once, on my
authority.”
“Have you resolved to break your engagement?” I asked.
“Can you doubt it?” she returned proudly, “after what you have told
me!”
“My dear Miss Rachel, you are very young—and you may find more
difficulty in withdrawing from your present position than you
anticipate. Have you no one—I mean a lady, of course—whom you could
consult?”
“No one,” she answered.
It distressed me, it did indeed distress me, to hear her say that. She
was so young and so lonely—and she bore it so well! The impulse to help
her got the better of any sense of my own unfitness which I might have
felt under the circumstances; and I stated such ideas on the subject as
occurred to me on the spur of the moment, to the best of my ability. I
have advised a prodigious number of clients, and have dealt with some
exceedingly awkward difficulties, in my time. But this was the first
occasion on which I had ever found myself advising a young lady how to
obtain her release from a marriage engagement. The suggestion I offered
amounted briefly to this. I recommended her to tell Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite—at a private interview, of course—that he had, to her certain
knowledge, betrayed the mercenary nature of the motive on his side. She
was then to add that their marriage, after what she had discovered, was
a simple impossibility—and she was to put it to him, whether he thought
it wisest to secure her silence by falling in with her views, or to
force her, by opposing them, to make the motive under which she was
acting generally known. If he attempted to defend himself, or to deny
the facts, she was, in that event, to refer him to _me_.
Miss Verinder listened attentively till I had done. She then thanked me
very prettily for my advice, but informed me at the same time that it
was impossible for her to follow it.
“May I ask,” I said, “what objection you see to following it?”
She hesitated—and then met me with a question on her side.
“Suppose you were asked to express your opinion of Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite’s conduct?” she began.
“Yes?”
“What would you call it?”
“I should call it the conduct of a meanly deceitful man.”
“Mr. Bruff! I have believed in that man. I have promised to marry that
man. How can I tell him he is mean, how can I tell him he has deceived
me, how can I disgrace him in the eyes of the world after that? I have
degraded myself by ever thinking of him as my husband. If I say what
you tell me to say to him—I am owning that I have degraded myself to
his face. I can’t do that. After what has passed between us, I can’t do
that! The shame of it would be nothing to _him_. But the shame of it
would be unendurable to _me_.”
Here was another of the marked peculiarities in her character
disclosing itself to me without reserve. Here was her sensitive horror
of the bare contact with anything mean, blinding her to every
consideration of what she owed to herself, hurrying her into a false
position which might compromise her in the estimation of all her
friends! Up to this time, I had been a little diffident about the
propriety of the advice I had given to her. But, after what she had
just said, I had no sort of doubt that it was the best advice that
could have been offered; and I felt no sort of hesitation in pressing
it on her again.
She only shook her head, and repeated her objection in other words.
“He has been intimate enough with me to ask me to be his wife. He has
stood high enough in my estimation to obtain my consent. I can’t tell
him to his face that he is the most contemptible of living creatures,
after that!”
“But, my dear Miss Rachel,” I remonstrated, “it’s equally impossible
for you to tell him that you withdraw from your engagement without
giving some reason for it.”
“I shall say that I have thought it over, and that I am satisfied it
will be best for both of us if we part.”
“No more than that?”
“No more.”
“Have you thought of what he may say, on his side?”
“He may say what he pleases.”
It was impossible not to admire her delicacy and her resolution, and it
was equally impossible not to feel that she was putting herself in the
wrong. I entreated her to consider her own position. I reminded her
that she would be exposing herself to the most odious misconstruction
of her motives. “You can’t brave public opinion,” I said, “at the
command of private feeling.”
“I can,” she answered. “I have done it already.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have forgotten the Moonstone, Mr. Bruff. Have I not braved public
opinion, _there_, with my own private reasons for it?”
Her answer silenced me for the moment. It set me trying to trace the
explanation of her conduct, at the time of the loss of the Moonstone,
out of the strange avowal which had just escaped her. I might perhaps
have done it when I was younger. I certainly couldn’t do it now.
I tried a last remonstrance before we returned to the house. She was
just as immovable as ever. My mind was in a strange conflict of
feelings about her when I left her that day. She was obstinate; she was
wrong. She was interesting; she was admirable; she was deeply to be
pitied. I made her promise to write to me the moment she had any news
to send. And I went back to my business in London, with a mind
exceedingly ill at ease.
On the evening of my return, before it was possible for me to receive
my promised letter, I was surprised by a visit from Mr. Ablewhite the
elder, and was informed that Mr. Godfrey had got his dismissal—_and had
accepted it_—that very day.
With the view I already took of the case, the bare fact stated in the
words that I have underlined, revealed Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite’s motive
for submission as plainly as if he had acknowledged it himself. He
needed a large sum of money; and he needed it by a given time. Rachel’s
income, which would have helped him to anything else, would not help
him here; and Rachel had accordingly released herself, without
encountering a moment’s serious opposition on his part. If I am told
that this is a mere speculation, I ask, in my turn, what other theory
will account for his giving up a marriage which would have maintained
him in splendour for the rest of his life?
Any exultation I might otherwise have felt at the lucky turn which
things had now taken, was effectually checked by what passed at my
interview with old Mr. Ablewhite.
He came, of course, to know whether I could give him any explanation of
Miss Verinder’s extraordinary conduct. It is needless to say that I was
quite unable to afford him the information he wanted. The annoyance
which I thus inflicted, following on the irritation produced by a
recent interview with his son, threw Mr. Ablewhite off his guard. Both
his looks and his language convinced me that Miss Verinder would find
him a merciless man to deal with, when he joined the ladies at Brighton
the next day.
I had a restless night, considering what I ought to do next. How my
reflections ended, and how thoroughly well founded my distrust of Mr.
Ablewhite proved to be, are items of information which (as I am told)
have already been put tidily in their proper places, by that exemplary
person, Miss Clack. I have only to add—in completion of her
narrative—that Miss Verinder found the quiet and repose which she sadly
needed, poor thing, in my house at Hampstead. She honoured us by making
a long stay. My wife and daughters were charmed with her; and, when the
executors decided on the appointment of a new guardian, I feel sincere
pride and pleasure in recording that my guest and my family parted like
old friends, on either side.
CHAPTER II
The next thing I have to do, is to present such additional information
as I possess on the subject of the Moonstone, or, to speak more
correctly, on the subject of the Indian plot to steal the Diamond. The
little that I have to tell is (as I think I have already said) of some
importance, nevertheless, in respect of its bearing very remarkably on
events which are still to come.
About a week or ten days after Miss Verinder had left us, one of my
clerks entered the private room at my office, with a card in his hand,
and informed me that a gentleman was below, who wanted to speak to me.
I looked at the card. There was a foreign name written on it, which has
escaped my memory. It was followed by a line written in English at the
bottom of the card, which I remember perfectly well:
“Recommended by Mr. Septimus Luker.”
The audacity of a person in Mr. Luker’s position presuming to recommend
anybody to _me_, took me so completely by surprise, that I sat silent
for the moment, wondering whether my own eyes had not deceived me. The
clerk, observing my bewilderment, favoured me with the result of his
own observation of the stranger who was waiting downstairs.
“He is rather a remarkable-looking man, sir. So dark in the complexion
that we all set him down in the office for an Indian, or something of
that sort.”
Associating the clerk’s idea with the line inscribed on the card in my
hand, I thought it possible that the Moonstone might be at the bottom
of Mr. Luker’s recommendation, and of the stranger’s visit at my
office. To the astonishment of my clerk, I at once decided on granting
an interview to the gentleman below.
In justification of the highly unprofessional sacrifice to mere
curiosity which I thus made, permit me to remind anybody who may read
these lines, that no living person (in England, at any rate) can claim
to have had such an intimate connexion with the romance of the Indian
Diamond as mine has been. I was trusted with the secret of Colonel
Herncastle’s plan for escaping assassination. I received the Colonel’s
letters, periodically reporting himself a living man. I drew his Will,
leaving the Moonstone to Miss Verinder. I persuaded his executor to
act, on the chance that the jewel might prove to be a valuable
acquisition to the family. And, lastly, I combated Mr. Franklin Blake’s
scruples, and induced him to be the means of transporting the Diamond
to Lady Verinder’s house. If anyone can claim a prescriptive right of
interest in the Moonstone, and in everything connected with it, I think
it is hardly to be denied that I am the man.
The moment my mysterious client was shown in, I felt an inner
conviction that I was in the presence of one of the three
Indians—probably of the chief. He was carefully dressed in European
costume. But his swarthy complexion, his long lithe figure, and his
grave and graceful politeness of manner were enough to betray his
Oriental origin to any intelligent eyes that looked at him.
I pointed to a chair, and begged to be informed of the nature of his
business with me.
After first apologising—in an excellent selection of English words—for
the liberty which he had taken in disturbing me, the Indian produced a
small parcel the outer covering of which was of cloth of gold. Removing
this and a second wrapping of some silken fabric, he placed a little
box, or casket, on my table, most beautifully and richly inlaid in
jewels, on an ebony ground.
“I have come, sir,” he said, “to ask you to lend me some money. And I
leave this as an assurance to you that my debt will be paid back.”
I pointed to his card. “And you apply to me,” I rejoined, “at Mr.
Luker’s recommendation?”
The Indian bowed.
“May I ask how it is that Mr. Luker himself did not advance the money
that you require?”
“Mr. Luker informed me, sir, that he had no money to lend.”
“And so he recommended you to come to me?”
The Indian, in his turn, pointed to the card. “It is written there,” he
said.
Briefly answered, and thoroughly to the purpose! If the Moonstone had
been in my possession, this Oriental gentleman would have murdered me,
I am well aware, without a moment’s hesitation. At the same time, and
barring that slight drawback, I am bound to testify that he was the
perfect model of a client. He might not have respected my life. But he
did what none of my own countrymen had ever done, in all my experience
of them—he respected my time.
“I am sorry,” I said, “that you should have had the trouble of coming
to me. Mr. Luker is quite mistaken in sending you here. I am trusted,
like other men in my profession, with money to lend. But I never lend
it to strangers, and I never lend it on such a security as you have
produced.”
Far from attempting, as other people would have done, to induce me to
relax my own rules, the Indian only made me another bow, and wrapped up
his box in its two coverings without a word of protest. He rose—this
admirable assassin rose to go, the moment I had answered him!
“Will your condescension towards a stranger, excuse my asking one
question,” he said, “before I take my leave?”
I bowed on my side. Only one question at parting! The average in my
experience was fifty.
“Supposing, sir, it had been possible (and customary) for _you_ to lend
me the money,” he said, “in what space of time would it have been
possible (and customary) for _me_ to pay it back?”
“According to the usual course pursued in this country,” I answered,
“you would have been entitled to pay the money back (if you liked) in
one year’s time from the date at which it was first advanced to you.”
The Indian made me a last bow, the lowest of all—and suddenly and
softly walked out of the room.
It was done in a moment, in a noiseless, supple, cat-like way, which a
little startled me, I own. As soon as I was composed enough to think, I
arrived at one distinct conclusion in reference to the otherwise
incomprehensible visitor who had favoured me with a call.