the information which I possess! Harmless as it is, I cannot prevail
upon myself to give it up to you, unless you first satisfy me that
there is a reason for doing so. He was so miserably ill, Mr. Blake! and
he was so helplessly dependent upon Me! Is it too much to ask, if I
request you only to hint to me what your interest is in the lost
recollection—or what you believe that lost recollection to be?”
To have answered him with the frankness which his language and his
manner both claimed from me, would have been to commit myself to openly
acknowledging that I was suspected of the theft of the Diamond.
Strongly as Ezra Jennings had intensified the first impulsive interest
which I had felt in him, he had not overcome my unconquerable
reluctance to disclose the degrading position in which I stood. I took
refuge once more in the explanatory phrases with which I had prepared
myself to meet the curiosity of strangers.
This time I had no reason to complain of a want of attention on the
part of the person to whom I addressed myself. Ezra Jennings listened
patiently, even anxiously, until I had done.
“I am sorry to have raised your expectations, Mr. Blake, only to
disappoint them,” he said. “Throughout the whole period of Mr. Candy’s
illness, from first to last, not one word about the Diamond escaped his
lips. The matter with which I heard him connect your name has, I can
assure you, no discoverable relation whatever with the loss or the
recovery of Miss Verinder’s jewel.”
We arrived, as he said those words, at a place where the highway along
which we had been walking branched off into two roads. One led to Mr.
Ablewhite’s house, and the other to a moorland village some two or
three miles off. Ezra Jennings stopped at the road which led to the
village.
“My way lies in this direction,” he said. “I am really and truly sorry,
Mr. Blake, that I can be of no use to you.”
His voice told me that he spoke sincerely. His soft brown eyes rested
on me for a moment with a look of melancholy interest. He bowed, and
went, without another word, on his way to the village.
For a minute or more I stood and watched him, walking farther and
farther away from me; carrying farther and farther away with him what I
now firmly believed to be the clue of which I was in search. He turned,
after walking on a little way, and looked back. Seeing me still
standing at the place where we had parted, he stopped, as if doubting
whether I might not wish to speak to him again. There was no time for
me to reason out my own situation—to remind myself that I was losing my
opportunity, at what might be the turning point of my life, and all to
flatter nothing more important than my own self-esteem! There was only
time to call him back first, and to think afterwards. I suspect I am
one of the rashest of existing men. I called him back—and then I said
to myself, “Now there is no help for it. I must tell him the truth!”
He retraced his steps directly. I advanced along the road to meet him.
“Mr. Jennings,” I said. “I have not treated you quite fairly. My
interest in tracing Mr. Candy’s lost recollection is not the interest
of recovering the Moonstone. A serious personal matter is at the bottom
of my visit to Yorkshire. I have but one excuse for not having dealt
frankly with you in this matter. It is more painful to me than I can
say, to mention to anybody what my position really is.”
Ezra Jennings looked at me with the first appearance of embarrassment
which I had seen in him yet.
“I have no right, Mr. Blake, and no wish,” he said, “to intrude myself
into your private affairs. Allow me to ask your pardon, on my side, for
having (most innocently) put you to a painful test.”
“You have a perfect right,” I rejoined, “to fix the terms on which you
feel justified in revealing what you heard at Mr. Candy’s bedside. I
understand and respect the delicacy which influences you in this
matter. How can I expect to be taken into your confidence if I decline
to admit you into mine? You ought to know, and you shall know, why I am
interested in discovering what Mr. Candy wanted to say to me. If I turn
out to be mistaken in my anticipations, and if you prove unable to help
me when you are really aware of what I want, I shall trust to your
honour to keep my secret—and something tells me that I shall not trust
in vain.”
“Stop, Mr. Blake. I have a word to say, which must be said before you
go any farther.”
I looked at him in astonishment. The grip of some terrible emotion
seemed to have seized him, and shaken him to the soul. His gipsy
complexion had altered to a livid greyish paleness; his eyes had
suddenly become wild and glittering; his voice had dropped to a
tone—low, stern, and resolute—which I now heard for the first time. The
latent resources in the man, for good or for evil—it was hard, at that
moment, to say which—leapt up in him and showed themselves to me, with
the suddenness of a flash of light.
“Before you place any confidence in me,” he went on, “you ought to
know, and you _must_ know, under what circumstances I have been
received into Mr. Candy’s house. It won’t take long. I don’t profess,
sir, to tell my story (as the phrase is) to any man. My story will die
with me. All I ask, is to be permitted to tell you, what I have told
Mr. Candy. If you are still in the mind, when you have heard that, to
say what you have proposed to say, you will command my attention and
command my services. Shall we walk on?”
The suppressed misery in his face silenced me. I answered his question
by a sign. We walked on.
After advancing a few hundred yards, Ezra Jennings stopped at a gap in
the rough stone wall which shut off the moor from the road, at this
part of it.
“Do you mind resting a little, Mr. Blake?” he asked. “I am not what I
was—and some things shake me.”
I agreed, of course. He led the way through the gap to a patch of turf
on the heathy ground, screened by bushes and dwarf trees on the side
nearest to the road, and commanding in the opposite direction a grandly
desolate view over the broad brown wilderness of the moor. The clouds
had gathered, within the last half hour. The light was dull; the
distance was dim. The lovely face of Nature met us, soft and still
colourless—met us without a smile.
We sat down in silence. Ezra Jennings laid aside his hat, and passed
his hand wearily over his forehead, wearily through his startling white
and black hair. He tossed his little nosegay of wild flowers away from
him, as if the remembrances which it recalled were remembrances which
hurt him now.
“Mr. Blake!” he said, suddenly. “You are in bad company. The cloud of a
horrible accusation has rested on me for years. I tell you the worst at
once. I am a man whose life is a wreck, and whose character is gone.”
I attempted to speak. He stopped me.
“No,” he said. “Pardon me; not yet. Don’t commit yourself to
expressions of sympathy which you may afterwards wish to recall. I have
mentioned an accusation which has rested on me for years. There are
circumstances in connexion with it that tell against me. I cannot bring
myself to acknowledge what the accusation is. And I am incapable,
perfectly incapable, of proving my innocence. I can only assert my
innocence. I assert it, sir, on my oath, as a Christian. It is useless
to appeal to my honour as a man.”
He paused again. I looked round at him. He never looked at me in
return. His whole being seemed to be absorbed in the agony of
recollecting, and in the effort to speak.
“There is much that I might say,” he went on, “about the merciless
treatment of me by my own family, and the merciless enmity to which I
have fallen a victim. But the harm is done; the wrong is beyond all
remedy. I decline to weary or distress you, sir, if I can help it. At
the outset of my career in this country, the vile slander to which I
have referred struck me down at once and for ever. I resigned my
aspirations in my profession—obscurity was the only hope left for me. I
parted with the woman I loved—how could I condemn her to share my
disgrace? A medical assistant’s place offered itself, in a remote
corner of England. I got the place. It promised me peace; it promised
me obscurity, as I thought. I was wrong. Evil report, with time and
chance to help it, travels patiently, and travels far. The accusation
from which I had fled followed me. I got warning of its approach. I was
able to leave my situation voluntarily, with the testimonials that I
had earned. They got me another situation in another remote district.
Time passed again; and again the slander that was death to my character
found me out. On this occasion I had no warning. My employer said, ‘Mr.
Jennings, I have no complaint to make against you; but you must set
yourself right, or leave me.’ I had but one choice—I left him. It’s
useless to dwell on what I suffered after that. I am only forty years
old now. Look at my face, and let it tell for me the story of some
miserable years. It ended in my drifting to this place, and meeting
with Mr. Candy. He wanted an assistant. I referred him, on the question
of capacity, to my last employer. The question of character remained. I
told him what I have told you—and more. I warned him that there were
difficulties in the way, even if he believed me. ‘Here, as elsewhere,’
I said ‘I scorn the guilty evasion of living under an assumed name: I
am no safer at Frizinghall than at other places from the cloud that
follows me, go where I may.’ He answered, ‘I don’t do things by
halves—I believe you, and I pity you. If _you_ will risk what may
happen, _I_ will risk it too.’ God Almighty bless him! He has given me
shelter, he has given me employment, he has given me rest of mind—and I
have the certain conviction (I have had it for some months past) that
nothing will happen now to make him regret it.”
“The slander has died out?” I said.
“The slander is as active as ever. But when it follows me here, it will
come too late.”
“You will have left the place?”
“No, Mr. Blake—I shall be dead. For ten years past I have suffered from
an incurable internal complaint. I don’t disguise from you that I
should have let the agony of it kill me long since, but for one last
interest in life, which makes my existence of some importance to me
still. I want to provide for a person—very dear to me—whom I shall
never see again. My own little patrimony is hardly sufficient to make
her independent of the world. The hope, if I could only live long
enough, of increasing it to a certain sum, has impelled me to resist
the disease by such palliative means as I could devise. The one
effectual palliative in my case, is—opium. To that all-potent and
all-merciful drug I am indebted for a respite of many years from my
sentence of death. But even the virtues of opium have their limit. The
progress of the disease has gradually forced me from the use of opium
to the abuse of it. I am feeling the penalty at last. My nervous system
is shattered; my nights are nights of horror. The end is not far off
now. Let it come—I have not lived and worked in vain. The little sum is
nearly made up; and I have the means of completing it, if my last
reserves of life fail me sooner than I expect. I hardly know how I have
wandered into telling you this. I don’t think I am mean enough to
appeal to your pity. Perhaps, I fancy you may be all the readier to
believe me, if you know that what I have said to you, I have said with
the certain knowledge in me that I am a dying man. There is no
disguising, Mr. Blake, that you interest me. I have attempted to make
my poor friend’s loss of memory the means of bettering my acquaintance
with you. I have speculated on the chance of your feeling a passing
curiosity about what he wanted to say, and of my being able to satisfy
it. Is there no excuse for my intruding myself on you? Perhaps there is
some excuse. A man who has lived as I have lived has his bitter moments
when he ponders over human destiny. You have youth, health, riches, a
place in the world, a prospect before you. You, and such as you, show
me the sunny side of human life, and reconcile me with the world that I
am leaving, before I go. However this talk between us may end, I shall
not forget that you have done me a kindness in doing that. It rests
with you, sir, to say what you proposed saying, or to wish me good
morning.”
I had but one answer to make to that appeal. Without a moment’s
hesitation I told him the truth, as unreservedly as I have told it in
these pages.
He started to his feet, and looked at me with breathless eagerness as I
approached the leading incident of my story.
“It is certain that I went into the room,” I said; “it is certain that
I took the Diamond. I can only meet those two plain facts by declaring
that, do what I might, I did it without my own knowledge——”
Ezra Jennings caught me excitedly by the arm.
“Stop!” he said. “You have suggested more to me than you suppose. Have
_you_ ever been accustomed to the use of opium?”
“I never tasted it in my life.”
“Were your nerves out of order, at this time last year? Were you
unusually restless and irritable?”
“Yes.”
“Did you sleep badly?”
“Wretchedly. Many nights I never slept at all.”
“Was the birthday night an exception? Try, and remember. Did you sleep
well on that one occasion?”
“I do remember! I slept soundly.”
He dropped my arm as suddenly as he had taken it—and looked at me with
the air of a man whose mind was relieved of the last doubt that rested
on it.
“This is a marked day in your life, and in mine,” he said, gravely. “I
am absolutely certain, Mr. Blake, of one thing—I have got what Mr.
Candy wanted to say to you this morning, in the notes that I took at my
patient’s bedside. Wait! that is not all. I am firmly persuaded that I
can prove you to have been unconscious of what you were about, when you
entered the room and took the Diamond. Give me time to think, and time
to question you. I believe the vindication of your innocence is in my
hands!”
“Explain yourself, for God’s sake! What do you mean?”
In the excitement of our colloquy, we had walked on a few steps, beyond
the clump of dwarf trees which had hitherto screened us from view.
Before Ezra Jennings could answer me, he was hailed from the high road
by a man, in great agitation, who had been evidently on the look-out
for him.
“I am coming,” he called back; “I am coming as fast as I can!” He
turned to me. “There is an urgent case waiting for me at the village
yonder; I ought to have been there half an hour since—I must attend to
it at once. Give me two hours from this time, and call at Mr. Candy’s
again—and I will engage to be ready for you.”
“How am I to wait!” I exclaimed, impatiently. “Can’t you quiet my mind
by a word of explanation before we part?”
“This is far too serious a matter to be explained in a hurry, Mr.
Blake. I am not wilfully trying your patience—I should only be adding
to your suspense, if I attempted to relieve it as things are now. At
Frizinghall, sir, in two hours’ time!”
The man on the high road hailed him again. He hurried away, and left
me.
CHAPTER X
How the interval of suspense in which I was now condemned might have
affected other men in my position, I cannot pretend to say. The
influence of the two hours’ probation upon _my_ temperament was simply
this. I felt physically incapable of remaining still in any one place,
and morally incapable of speaking to any one human being, until I had
first heard all that Ezra Jennings had to say to me.
In this frame of mind, I not only abandoned my contemplated visit to
Mrs. Ablewhite—I even shrank from encountering Gabriel Betteredge
himself.
Returning to Frizinghall, I left a note for Betteredge, telling him
that I had been unexpectedly called away for a few hours, but that he
might certainly expect me to return towards three o’clock in the
afternoon. I requested him, in the interval, to order his dinner at the
usual hour, and to amuse himself as he pleased. He had, as I well knew,
hosts of friends in Frizinghall; and he would be at no loss how to fill
up his time until I returned to the hotel.
This done, I made the best of my way out of the town again, and roamed
the lonely moorland country which surrounds Frizinghall, until my watch
told me that it was time, at last, to return to Mr. Candy’s house.
I found Ezra Jennings ready and waiting for me.
He was sitting alone in a bare little room, which communicated by a
glazed door with a surgery. Hideous coloured diagrams of the ravages of
hideous diseases decorated the barren buff-coloured walls. A bookcase
filled with dingy medical works, and ornamented at the top with a
skull, in place of the customary bust; a large deal table copiously
splashed with ink; wooden chairs of the sort that are seen in kitchens
and cottages; a threadbare drugget in the middle of the floor; a sink
of water, with a basin and waste-pipe roughly let into the wall,
horribly suggestive of its connection with surgical
operations—comprised the entire furniture of the room. The bees were
humming among a few flowers placed in pots outside the window; the
birds were singing in the garden, and the faint intermittent jingle of
a tuneless piano in some neighbouring house forced itself now and again
on the ear. In any other place, these everyday sounds might have spoken
pleasantly of the everyday world outside. Here, they came in as
intruders on a silence which nothing but human suffering had the
privilege to disturb. I looked at the mahogany instrument case, and at
the huge roll of lint, occupying places of their own on the
bookshelves, and shuddered inwardly as I thought of the sounds,
familiar and appropriate to the everyday use of Ezra Jennings’ room.
“I make no apology, Mr. Blake, for the place in which I am receiving
you,” he said. “It is the only room in the house, at this hour of the
day, in which we can feel quite sure of being left undisturbed. Here
are my papers ready for you; and here are two books to which we may
have occasion to refer, before we have done. Bring your chair to the
table, and we shall be able to consult them together.”
I drew up to the table; and Ezra Jennings handed me his manuscript
notes. They consisted of two large folio leaves of paper. One leaf
contained writing which only covered the surface at intervals. The
other presented writing, in red and black ink, which completely filled
the page from top to bottom. In the irritated state of my curiosity, at
that moment, I laid aside the second sheet of paper in despair.
“Have some mercy on me!” I said. “Tell me what I am to expect, before I
attempt to read this.”
“Willingly, Mr. Blake! Do you mind my asking you one or two more
questions?”
“Ask me anything you like!”
He looked at me with the sad smile on his lips, and the kindly interest
in his soft brown eyes.
“You have already told me,” he said, “that you have never—to your
knowledge—tasted opium in your life.”
“To my knowledge,” I repeated.
“You will understand directly why I speak with that reservation. Let us
go on. You are not aware of ever having taken opium. At this time, last
year, you were suffering from nervous irritation, and you slept
wretchedly at night. On the night of the birthday, however, there was
an exception to the rule—you slept soundly. Am I right, so far?”
“Quite right!”
“Can you assign any cause for the nervous suffering, and your want of
sleep?”
“I can assign no cause. Old Betteredge made a guess at the cause, I
remember. But that is hardly worth mentioning.”
“Pardon me. Anything is worth mentioning in such a case as this.
Betteredge attributed your sleeplessness to something. To what?”
“To my leaving off smoking.”
“Had you been an habitual smoker?”
“Yes.”
“Did you leave off the habit suddenly?”
“Yes.”
“Betteredge was perfectly right, Mr. Blake. When smoking is a habit a
man must have no common constitution who can leave it off suddenly
without some temporary damage to his nervous system. Your sleepless
nights are accounted for, to my mind. My next question refers to Mr.
Candy. Do you remember having entered into anything like a dispute with
him—at the birthday dinner, or afterwards—on the subject of his
profession?”
The question instantly awakened one of my dormant remembrances in
connection with the birthday festival. The foolish wrangle which took
place, on that occasion, between Mr. Candy and myself, will be found
described at much greater length than it deserves in the tenth chapter
of Betteredge’s Narrative. The details there presented of the
dispute—so little had I thought of it afterwards—entirely failed to
recur to my memory. All that I could now recall, and all that I could
tell Ezra Jennings was, that I had attacked the art of medicine at the
dinner-table with sufficient rashness and sufficient pertinacity to put
even Mr. Candy out of temper for the moment. I also remembered that
Lady Verinder had interfered to stop the dispute, and that the little
doctor and I had “made it up again,” as the children say, and had
become as good friends as ever, before we shook hands that night.
“There is one thing more,” said Ezra Jennings, “which it is very
important I should know. Had you any reason for feeling any special
anxiety about the Diamond, at this time last year?”
“I had the strongest reasons for feeling anxiety about the Diamond. I
knew it to be the object of a conspiracy; and I was warned to take
measures for Miss Verinder’s protection, as the possessor of the
stone.”
“Was the safety of the Diamond the subject of conversation between you
and any other person, immediately before you retired to rest on the
birthday night?”
“It was the subject of a conversation between Lady Verinder and her
daughter——”
“Which took place in your hearing?”
“Yes.”
Ezra Jennings took up his notes from the table, and placed them in my
hands.
“Mr. Blake,” he said, “if you read those notes now, by the light which
my questions and your answers have thrown on them, you will make two
astounding discoveries concerning yourself. You will find:—First, that
you entered Miss Verinder’s sitting-room and took the Diamond, in a
state of trance, produced by opium. Secondly, that the opium was given
to you by Mr. Candy—without your own knowledge—as a practical
refutation of the opinions which you had expressed to him at the
birthday dinner.”
I sat with the papers in my hand completely stupefied.
“Try and forgive poor Mr. Candy,” said the assistant gently. “He has
done dreadful mischief, I own; but he has done it innocently. If you
will look at the notes, you will see that—but for his illness—he would
have returned to Lady Verinder’s the morning after the party, and would
have acknowledged the trick that he had played you. Miss Verinder would
have heard of it, and Miss Verinder would have questioned him—and the
truth which has laid hidden for a year would have been discovered in a
day.”
I began to regain my self-possession. “Mr. Candy is beyond the reach of
my resentment,” I said angrily. “But the trick that he played me is not
the less an act of treachery, for all that. I may forgive, but I shall
not forget it.”
“Every medical man commits that act of treachery, Mr. Blake, in the
course of his practice. The ignorant distrust of opium (in England) is
by no means confined to the lower and less cultivated classes. Every
doctor in large practice finds himself, every now and then, obliged to
deceive his patients, as Mr. Candy deceived you. I don’t defend the
folly of playing you a trick under the circumstances. I only plead with
you for a more accurate and more merciful construction of motives.”
“How was it done?” I asked. “Who gave me the laudanum, without my
knowing it myself?”
“I am not able to tell you. Nothing relating to that part of the matter
dropped from Mr. Candy’s lips, all through his illness. Perhaps your
own memory may point to the person to be suspected.”
“No.”
“It is useless, in that case, to pursue the inquiry. The laudanum was
secretly given to you in some way. Let us leave it there, and go on to
matters of more immediate importance. Read my notes, if you can.
Familiarise your mind with what has happened in the past. I have
something very bold and very startling to propose to you, which relates
to the future.”
Those last words roused me.
I looked at the papers, in the order in which Ezra Jennings had placed
them in my hands. The paper which contained the smaller quantity of
writing was the uppermost of the two. On this, the disconnected words,
and fragments of sentences, which had dropped from Mr. Candy in his
delirium, appeared as follows:
“... Mr. Franklin Blake ... and agreeable ... down a peg ... medicine
... confesses ... sleep at night ... tell him ... out of order ...
medicine ... he tells me ... and groping in the dark mean one and the
same thing ... all the company at the dinner-table ... I say ...
groping after sleep ... nothing but medicine ... he says ... leading
the blind ... know what it means ... witty ... a night’s rest in spite
of his teeth ... wants sleep ... Lady Verinder’s medicine chest ...
five-and-twenty minims ... without his knowing it ... tomorrow morning
... Well, Mr. Blake ... medicine today ... never ... without it ...
out, Mr. Candy ... excellent ... without it ... down on him ... truth
... something besides ... excellent ... dose of laudanum, sir ... bed
... what ... medicine now.”
There, the first of the two sheets of paper came to an end. I handed it
back to Ezra Jennings.
“That is what you heard at his bedside?” I said.
“Literally and exactly what I heard,” he answered—“except that the
repetitions are not transferred here from my short-hand notes. He
reiterated certain words and phrases a dozen times over, fifty times
over, just as he attached more or less importance to the idea which
they represented. The repetitions, in this sense, were of some
assistance to me in putting together those fragments. Don’t suppose,”
he added, pointing to the second sheet of paper, “that I claim to have
reproduced the expressions which Mr. Candy himself would have used if
he had been capable of speaking connectedly. I only say that I have
penetrated through the obstacle of the disconnected expression, to the
thought which was underlying it connectedly all the time. Judge for
yourself.”
I turned to the second sheet of paper, which I now knew to be the key
to the first.
Once more, Mr. Candy’s wanderings appeared, copied in black ink; the
intervals between the phrases being filled up by Ezra Jennings in red
ink. I reproduce the result here, in one plain form; the original
language and the interpretation of it coming close enough together in
these pages to be easily compared and verified.
“... Mr. Franklin Blake is clever and agreeable, but he wants taking
down a peg when he talks of medicine. He confesses that he has been
suffering from want of sleep at night. I tell him that his nerves are
out of order, and that he ought to take medicine. He tells me that
taking medicine and groping in the dark mean one and the same thing.
This before all the company at the dinner-table. I say to him, you are
groping after sleep, and nothing but medicine can help you to find it.
He says to me, I have heard of the blind leading the blind, and now I
know what it means. Witty—but I can give him a night’s rest in spite of
his teeth. He really wants sleep; and Lady Verinder’s medicine chest is
at my disposal. Give him five-and-twenty minims of laudanum tonight,
without his knowing it; and then call tomorrow morning. ‘Well, Mr.
Blake, will you try a little medicine today? You will never sleep
without it.’—‘There you are out, Mr. Candy: I have had an excellent
night’s rest without it.’ Then, come down on him with the truth! ‘You
have had something besides an excellent night’s rest; you had a dose of
laudanum, sir, before you went to bed. What do you say to the art of
medicine, now?’”
Admiration of the ingenuity which had woven this smooth and finished
texture out of the ravelled skein was naturally the first impression
that I felt, on handing the manuscript back to Ezra Jennings. He
modestly interrupted the first few words in which my sense of surprise
expressed itself, by asking me if the conclusion which he had drawn
from his notes was also the conclusion at which my own mind had
arrived.
“Do you believe as I believe,” he said, “that you were acting under the
influence of the laudanum in doing all that you did, on the night of
Miss Verinder’s birthday, in Lady Verinder’s house?”
“I am too ignorant of the influence of laudanum to have an opinion of
my own,” I answered. “I can only follow your opinion, and feel
convinced that you are right.”
“Very well. The next question is this. You are convinced; and I am
convinced—how are we to carry our conviction to the minds of other
people?”
I pointed to the two manuscripts, lying on the table between us. Ezra
Jennings shook his head.
“Useless, Mr. Blake! Quite useless, as they stand now for three
unanswerable reasons. In the first place, those notes have been taken
under circumstances entirely out of the experience of the mass of
mankind. Against them, to begin with! In the second place, those notes
represent a medical and metaphysical theory. Against them, once more!
In the third place, those notes are of _my_ making; there is nothing
but _my_ assertion to the contrary, to guarantee that they are not
fabrications. Remember what I told you on the moor—and ask yourself
what my assertion is worth. No! my notes have but one value, looking to
the verdict of the world outside. Your innocence is to be vindicated;
and they show how it can be done. We must put our conviction to the
proof—and You are the man to prove it!”
“How?” I asked.
He leaned eagerly nearer to me across the table that divided us.
“Are you willing to try a bold experiment?”
“I will do anything to clear myself of the suspicion that rests on me
now.”
“Will you submit to some personal inconvenience for a time?”
“To any inconvenience, no matter what it may be.”
“Will you be guided implicitly by my advice? It may expose you to the
ridicule of fools; it may subject you to the remonstrances of friends
whose opinions you are bound to respect.”
“Tell me what to do!” I broke out impatiently. “And, come what may,
I’ll do it.”
“You shall do this, Mr. Blake,” he answered. “You shall steal the
Diamond, unconsciously, for the second time, in the presence of
witnesses whose testimony is beyond dispute.”
I started to my feet. I tried to speak. I could only look at him.
“I believe it _can_ be done,” he went on. “And it _shall_ be done—if
you will only help me. Try to compose yourself—sit down, and hear what
I have to say to you. You have resumed the habit of smoking; I have
seen that for myself. How long have you resumed it.”
“For nearly a year.”
“Do you smoke more or less than you did?”
“More.”
“Will you give up the habit again? Suddenly, mind!—as you gave it up
before.”
I began dimly to see his drift. “I will give it up, from this moment,”
I answered.
“If the same consequences follow, which followed last June,” said Ezra
Jennings—“if you suffer once more as you suffered then, from sleepless
nights, we shall have gained our first step. We shall have put you back
again into something assimilating to your nervous condition on the
birthday night. If we can next revive, or nearly revive, the domestic
circumstances which surrounded you; and if we can occupy your mind
again with the various questions concerning the Diamond which formerly
agitated it, we shall have replaced you, as nearly as possible in the
same position, physically and morally, in which the opium found you
last year. In that case we may fairly hope that a repetition of the
dose will lead, in a greater or lesser degree, to a repetition of the
result. There is my proposal, expressed in a few hasty words. You shall
now see what reasons I have to justify me in making it.”
He turned to one of the books at his side, and opened it at a place
marked by a small slip of paper.
“Don’t suppose that I am going to weary you with a lecture on
physiology,” he said. “I think myself bound to prove, in justice to
both of us, that I am not asking you to try this experiment in
deference to any theory of my own devising. Admitted principles, and
recognised authorities, justify me in the view that I take. Give me
five minutes of your attention; and I will undertake to show you that
Science sanctions my proposal, fanciful as it may seem. Here, in the
first place, is the physiological principle on which I am acting,
stated by no less a person than Dr. Carpenter. Read it for yourself.”
He handed me the slip of paper which had marked the place in the book.
It contained a few lines of writing, as follows:—
“There seems much ground for the belief, that _every_ sensory
impression which has once been recognised by the perceptive
consciousness, is registered (so to speak) in the brain, and may be
reproduced at some subsequent time, although there may be no
consciousness of its existence in the mind during the whole
intermediate period.”
“Is that plain, so far?” asked Ezra Jennings.
“Perfectly plain.”
He pushed the open book across the table to me, and pointed to a
passage, marked by pencil lines.
“Now,” he said, “read that account of a case, which has—as I believe—a
direct bearing on your own position, and on the experiment which I am
tempting you to try. Observe, Mr. Blake, before you begin, that I am
now referring you to one of the greatest of English physiologists. The
book in your hand is Doctor Elliotson’s _Human Physiology_; and the
case which the doctor cites rests on the well-known authority of Mr.
Combe.”
The passage pointed out to me was expressed in these terms:—
“Dr. Abel informed me,” says Mr. Combe, “of an Irish porter to a
warehouse, who forgot, when sober, what he had done when drunk; but,
being drunk, again recollected the transactions of his former state of
intoxication. On one occasion, being drunk, he had lost a parcel of
some value, and in his sober moments could give no account of it. Next
time he was intoxicated, he recollected that he had left the parcel at
a certain house, and there being no address on it, it had remained
there safely, and was got on his calling for it.”
“Plain again?” asked Ezra Jennings.
“As plain as need be.”
He put back the slip of paper in its place, and closed the book.
“Are you satisfied that I have not spoken without good authority to
support me?” he asked. “If not, I have only to go to those bookshelves,
and you have only to read the passages which I can point out to you.”
“I am quite satisfied,” I said, “without reading a word more.”
“In that case, we may return to your own personal interest in this
matter. I am bound to tell you that there is something to be said
against the experiment as well as for it. If we could, this year,
exactly reproduce, in your case, the conditions as they existed last
year, it is physiologically certain that we should arrive at exactly
the same result. But this—there is no denying it—is simply impossible.
We can only hope to approximate to the conditions; and if we don’t
succeed in getting you nearly enough back to what you were, this
venture of ours will fail. If we do succeed—and I am myself hopeful of
success—you may at least so far repeat your proceedings on the birthday
night, as to satisfy any reasonable person that you are guiltless,
morally speaking, of the theft of the Diamond. I believe, Mr. Blake, I
have now stated the question, on both sides of it, as fairly as I can,
within the limits that I have imposed on myself. If there is anything
that I have not made clear to you, tell me what it is—and if I can
enlighten you, I will.”
“All that you have explained to me,” I said, “I understand perfectly.
But I own I am puzzled on one point, which you have not made clear to
me yet.”
“What is the point?”
“I don’t understand the effect of the laudanum on me. I don’t
understand my walking downstairs, and along corridors, and my opening
and shutting the drawers of a cabinet, and my going back again to my
own room. All these are active proceedings. I thought the influence of
opium was first to stupefy you, and then to send you to sleep.”
“The common error about opium, Mr. Blake! I am, at this moment,
exerting my intelligence (such as it is) in your service, under the
influence of a dose of laudanum, some ten times larger than the dose
Mr. Candy administered to you. But don’t trust to my authority—even on
a question which comes within my own personal experience. I anticipated
the objection you have just made: and I have again provided myself with
independent testimony which will carry its due weight with it in your
own mind, and in the minds of your friends.”
He handed me the second of the two books which he had by him on the
table.
“There,” he said, “are the far-famed _Confessions of an English Opium
Eater_! Take the book away with you, and read it. At the passage which
I have marked, you will find that when De Quincey had committed what he
calls ‘a debauch of opium,’ he either went to the gallery at the Opera
to enjoy the music, or he wandered about the London markets on Saturday
night, and interested himself in observing all the little shifts and
bargainings of the poor in providing their Sunday’s dinner. So much for
the capacity of a man to occupy himself actively, and to move about
from place to place under the influence of opium.”
“I am answered so far,” I said; “but I am not answered yet as to the
effect produced by the opium on myself.”
“I will try to answer you in a few words,” said Ezra Jennings. “The
action of opium is comprised, in the majority of cases, in two
influences—a stimulating influence first, and a sedative influence
afterwards. Under the stimulating influence, the latest and most vivid
impressions left on your mind—namely, the impressions relating to the
Diamond—would be likely, in your morbidly sensitive nervous condition,
to become intensified in your brain, and would subordinate to
themselves your judgment and your will exactly as an ordinary dream
subordinates to itself your judgment and your will. Little by little,
under this action, any apprehensions about the safety of the Diamond
which you might have felt during the day would be liable to develop
themselves from the state of doubt to the state of certainty—would
impel you into practical action to preserve the jewel—would direct your
steps, with that motive in view, into the room which you entered—and
would guide your hand to the drawers of the cabinet, until you had
found the drawer which held the stone. In the spiritualised
intoxication of opium, you would do all that. Later, as the sedative
action began to gain on the stimulant action, you would slowly become
inert and stupefied. Later still you would fall into a deep sleep. When
the morning came, and the effect of the opium had been all slept off,
you would wake as absolutely ignorant of what you had done in the night
as if you had been living at the Antipodes. Have I made it tolerably
clear to you so far?”
“You have made it so clear,” I said, “that I want you to go farther.
You have shown me how I entered the room, and how I came to take the
Diamond. But Miss Verinder saw me leave the room again, with the jewel
in my hand. Can you trace my proceedings from that moment? Can you
guess what I did next?”
“That is the very point I was coming to,” he rejoined. “It is a
question with me whether the experiment which I propose as a means of
vindicating your innocence, may not also be made a means of recovering
the lost Diamond as well. When you left Miss Verinder’s sitting-room,
with the jewel in your hand, you went back in all probability to your
own room——”
“Yes? and what then?”
“It is possible, Mr. Blake—I dare not say more—that your idea of
preserving the Diamond led, by a natural sequence, to the idea of
hiding the Diamond, and that the place in which you hid it was
somewhere in your bedroom. In that event, the case of the Irish porter
may be your case. You may remember, under the influence of the second
dose of opium, the place in which you hid the Diamond under the
influence of the first.”
It was my turn, now, to enlighten Ezra Jennings. I stopped him, before
he could say any more.
“You are speculating,” I said, “on a result which cannot possibly take
place. The Diamond is, at this moment, in London.”
He started, and looked at me in great surprise.
“In London?” he repeated. “How did it get to London from Lady
Verinder’s house?”
“Nobody knows.”
“You removed it with your own hand from Miss Verinder’s room. How was
it taken out of your keeping?”
“I have no idea how it was taken out of my keeping.”
“Did you see it, when you woke in the morning?”
“No.”
“Has Miss Verinder recovered possession of it?”
“No.”
“Mr. Blake! there seems to be something here which wants clearing up.
May I ask how you know that the Diamond is, at this moment, in London?”
I had put precisely the same question to Mr. Bruff when I made my first
inquiries about the Moonstone, on my return to England. In answering
Ezra Jennings, I accordingly repeated what I had myself heard from the
lawyer’s own lips—and what is already familiar to the readers of these
pages.
He showed plainly that he was not satisfied with my reply.
“With all deference to you,” he said, “and with all deference to your
legal adviser, I maintain the opinion which I expressed just now. It
rests, I am well aware, on a mere assumption. Pardon me for reminding
you, that your opinion also rests on a mere assumption as well.”
The view he took of the matter was entirely new to me. I waited
anxiously to hear how he would defend it.
“_I_ assume,” pursued Ezra Jennings, “that the influence of the
opium—after impelling you to possess yourself of the Diamond, with the
purpose of securing its safety—might also impel you, acting under the
same influence and the same motive, to hide it somewhere in your own
room. _You_ assume that the Hindoo conspirators could by no possibility
commit a mistake. The Indians went to Mr. Luker’s house after the
Diamond—and, therefore, in Mr. Luker’s possession the Diamond must be!
Have you any evidence to prove that the Moonstone was taken to London
at all? You can’t even guess how, or by whom, it was removed from Lady
Verinder’s house! Have you any evidence that the jewel was pledged to
Mr. Luker? He declares that he never heard of the Moonstone; and his
bankers’ receipt acknowledges nothing but the deposit of a valuable of
great price. The Indians assume that Mr. Luker is lying—and you assume
again that the Indians are right. All I say, in differing with you,
is—that my view is possible. What more, Mr. Blake, either logically, or
legally, can be said for yours?”
It was put strongly; but there was no denying that it was put truly as
well.
“I confess you stagger me,” I replied. “Do you object to my writing to
Mr. Bruff, and telling him what you have said?”
“On the contrary, I shall be glad if you will write to Mr. Bruff. If we
consult his experience, we may see the matter under a new light. For
the present, let us return to our experiment with the opium. We have
decided that you leave off the habit of smoking from this moment.”
“From this moment.”
“That is the first step. The next step is to reproduce, as nearly as we
can, the domestic circumstances which surrounded you last year.”
How was this to be done? Lady Verinder was dead. Rachel and I, so long
as the suspicion of theft rested on me, were parted irrevocably.
Godfrey Ablewhite was away travelling on the Continent. It was simply
impossible to reassemble the people who had inhabited the house, when I
had slept in it last. The statement of this objection did not appear to
embarrass Ezra Jennings. He attached very little importance, he said,
to reassembling the same people—seeing that it would be vain to expect
them to reassume the various positions which they had occupied towards
me in the past times. On the other hand, he considered it essential to
the success of the experiment, that I should see the same objects about
me which had surrounded me when I was last in the house.
“Above all things,” he said, “you must sleep in the room which you
slept in, on the birthday night, and it must be furnished in the same
way. The stairs, the corridors, and Miss Verinder’s sitting-room, must
also be restored to what they were when you saw them last. It is
absolutely necessary, Mr. Blake, to replace every article of furniture
in that part of the house which may now be put away. The sacrifice of
your cigars will be useless, unless we can get Miss Verinder’s
permission to do that.”
“Who is to apply to her for permission?” I asked.
“Is it not possible for _you_ to apply?”
“Quite out of the question. After what has passed between us on the
subject of the lost Diamond, I can neither see her, nor write to her,
as things are now.”
Ezra Jennings paused, and considered for a moment.
“May I ask you a delicate question?” he said.
I signed to him to go on.
“Am I right, Mr. Blake, in fancying (from one or two things which have
dropped from you) that you felt no common interest in Miss Verinder, in
former times?”
“Quite right.”
“Was the feeling returned?”
“It was.”
“Do you think Miss Verinder would be likely to feel a strong interest
in the attempt to prove your innocence?”
“I am certain of it.”
“In that case, _I_ will write to Miss Verinder—if you will give me
leave.”
“Telling her of the proposal that you have made to me?”
“Telling her of everything that has passed between us today.”
It is needless to say that I eagerly accepted the service which he had
offered to me.
“I shall have time to write by today’s post,” he said, looking at his
watch. “Don’t forget to lock up your cigars, when you get back to the
hotel! I will call tomorrow morning and hear how you have passed the
night.”
I rose to take leave of him; and attempted to express the grateful
sense of his kindness which I really felt.
He pressed my hand gently. “Remember what I told you on the moor,” he
answered. “If I can do you this little service, Mr. Blake, I shall feel
it like a last gleam of sunshine, falling on the evening of a long and
clouded day.”
We parted. It was then the fifteenth of June. The events of the next
ten days—every one of them more or less directly connected with the
experiment of which I was the passive object—are all placed on record,
exactly as they happened, in the Journal habitually kept by Mr. Candy’s
assistant. In the pages of Ezra Jennings nothing is concealed, and
nothing is forgotten. Let Ezra Jennings tell how the venture with the
opium was tried, and how it ended.
FOURTH NARRATIVE.
_Extracted from the Journal of Ezra Jennings._
1849.—June 15.... With some interruption from patients, and some
interruption from pain, I finished my letter to Miss Verinder in time
for today’s post. I failed to make it as short a letter as I could have
wished. But I think I have made it plain. It leaves her entirely
mistress of her own decision. If she consents to assist the experiment,
she consents of her own free will, and not as a favour to Mr. Franklin
Blake or to me.
June 16th.—Rose late, after a dreadful night; the vengeance of
yesterday’s opium, pursuing me through a series of frightful dreams. At
one time I was whirling through empty space with the phantoms of the
dead, friends and enemies together. At another, the one beloved face
which I shall never see again, rose at my bedside, hideously
phosphorescent in the black darkness, and glared and grinned at me. A
slight return of the old pain, at the usual time in the early morning,
was welcome as a change. It dispelled the visions—and it was bearable
because it did that.
My bad night made it late in the morning, before I could get to Mr.
Franklin Blake. I found him stretched on the sofa, breakfasting on
brandy and soda water, and a dry biscuit.
“I am beginning, as well as you could possibly wish,” he said. “A
miserable, restless night; and a total failure of appetite this
morning. Exactly what happened last year, when I gave up my cigars. The
sooner I am ready for my second dose of laudanum, the better I shall be
pleased.”
“You shall have it on the earliest possible day,” I answered. “In the
meantime, we must be as careful of your health as we can. If we allow
you to become exhausted, we shall fail in that way. You must get an
appetite for your dinner. In other words, you must get a ride or a walk
this morning, in the fresh air.”
“I will ride, if they can find me a horse here. By-the-bye, I wrote to
Mr. Bruff, yesterday. Have you written to Miss Verinder?”
“Yes—by last night’s post.”
“Very good. We shall have some news worth hearing, to tell each other
tomorrow. Don’t go yet! I have a word to say to you. You appeared to
think, yesterday, that our experiment with the opium was not likely to
be viewed very favourably by some of my friends. You were quite right.
I call old Gabriel Betteredge one of my friends; and you will be amused
to hear that he protested strongly when I saw him yesterday. ‘You have
done a wonderful number of foolish things in the course of your life,
Mr. Franklin, but this tops them all!’ There is Betteredge’s opinion!
You will make allowance for his prejudices, I am sure, if you and he
happen to meet?”
I left Mr. Blake, to go my rounds among my patients; feeling the better
and the happier even for the short interview that I had had with him.
What is the secret of the attraction that there is for me in this man?
Does it only mean that I feel the contrast between the frankly kind
manner in which he has allowed me to become acquainted with him, and
the merciless dislike and distrust with which I am met by other people?
Or is there really something in him which answers to the yearning that
I have for a little human sympathy—the yearning, which has survived the
solitude and persecution of many years; which seems to grow keener and
keener, as the time comes nearer and nearer when I shall endure and
feel no more? How useless to ask these questions! Mr. Blake has given
me a new interest in life. Let that be enough, without seeking to know
what the new interest is.
June 17th.—Before breakfast, this morning, Mr. Candy informed me that
he was going away for a fortnight, on a visit to a friend in the south
of England. He gave me as many special directions, poor fellow, about
the patients, as if he still had the large practice which he possessed
before he was taken ill. The practice is worth little enough now! Other
doctors have superseded _him;_ and nobody who can help it will employ
_me_.
It is perhaps fortunate that he is to be away just at this time. He
would have been mortified if I had not informed him of the experiment
which I am going to try with Mr. Blake. And I hardly know what
undesirable results might not have happened, if I had taken him into my
confidence. Better as it is. Unquestionably, better as it is.
The post brought me Miss Verinder’s answer, after Mr. Candy had left
the house.
A charming letter! It gives me the highest opinion of her. There is no
attempt to conceal the interest that she feels in our proceedings. She
tells me, in the prettiest manner, that my letter has satisfied her of
Mr. Blake’s innocence, without the slightest need (so far as she is
concerned) of putting my assertion to the proof. She even upbraids
herself—most undeservedly, poor thing!—for not having divined at the
time what the true solution of the mystery might really be. The motive
underlying all this proceeds evidently from something more than a
generous eagerness to make atonement for a wrong which she has
innocently inflicted on another person. It is plain that she has loved
him, throughout the estrangement between them. In more than one place
the rapture of discovering that he has deserved to be loved, breaks its
way innocently through the stoutest formalities of pen and ink, and
even defies the stronger restraint still of writing to a stranger. Is
it possible (I ask myself, in reading this delightful letter) that I,
of all men in the world, am chosen to be the means of bringing these
two young people together again? My own happiness has been trampled
under foot; my own love has been torn from me. Shall I live to see a
happiness of others, which is of my making—a love renewed, which is of
my bringing back? Oh merciful Death, let me see it before your arms
enfold me, before your voice whispers to me, “Rest at last!”
There are two requests contained in the letter. One of them prevents me
from showing it to Mr. Franklin Blake. I am authorised to tell him that
Miss Verinder willingly consents to place her house at our disposal;
and, that said, I am desired to add no more.
So far, it is easy to comply with her wishes. But the second request
embarrasses me seriously.
Not content with having written to Mr. Betteredge, instructing him to
carry out whatever directions I may have to give, Miss Verinder asks
leave to assist me, by personally superintending the restoration of her
own sitting-room. She only waits a word of reply from me to make the
journey to Yorkshire, and to be present as one of the witnesses on the
night when the opium is tried for the second time.
Here, again, there is a motive under the surface; and, here again, I
fancy that I can find it out.
What she has forbidden me to tell Mr. Franklin Blake, she is (as I
interpret it) eager to tell him with her own lips, _before_ he is put
to the test which is to vindicate his character in the eyes of other
people. I understand and admire this generous anxiety to acquit him,
without waiting until his innocence may, or may not, be proved. It is
the atonement that she is longing to make, poor girl, after having
innocently and inevitably wronged him. But the thing cannot be done. I
have no sort of doubt that the agitation which a meeting between them
would produce on both sides—reviving dormant feelings, appealing to old
memories, awakening new hopes—would, in their effect on the mind of Mr.
Blake, be almost certainly fatal to the success of our experiment. It
is hard enough, as things are, to reproduce in him the conditions as
they existed, or nearly as they existed, last year. With new interests
and new emotions to agitate him, the attempt would be simply useless.
And yet, knowing this, I cannot find it in my heart to disappoint her.
I must try if I can discover some new arrangement, before post-time,
which will allow me to say Yes to Miss Verinder, without damage to the
service which I have bound myself to render to Mr. Franklin Blake.
Two o’clock.—I have just returned from my round of medical visits;
having begun, of course, by calling at the hotel.
Mr. Blake’s report of the night is the same as before. He has had some
intervals of broken sleep, and no more. But he feels it less today,
having slept after yesterday’s dinner. This after-dinner sleep is the
result, no doubt, of the ride which I advised him to take. I fear I
shall have to curtail his restorative exercise in the fresh air. He
must not be too well; he must not be too ill. It is a case (as a sailor
would say) of very fine steering.
He has not heard yet from Mr. Bruff. I found him eager to know if I had
received any answer from Miss Verinder.
I told him exactly what I was permitted to tell, and no more. It was
quite needless to invent excuses for not showing him the letter. He
told me bitterly enough, poor fellow, that he understood the delicacy
which disinclined me to produce it. “She consents, of course, as a
matter of common courtesy and common justice,” he said. “But she keeps
her own opinion of me, and waits to see the result.” I was sorely
tempted to hint that he was now wronging her as she had wronged him. On
reflection, I shrank from forestalling her in the double luxury of
surprising and forgiving him.
My visit was a very short one. After the experience of the other night,
I have been compelled once more to give up my dose of opium. As a
necessary result, the agony of the disease that is in me has got the
upper hand again. I felt the attack coming on, and left abruptly, so as
not to alarm or distress him. It only lasted a quarter of an hour this
time, and it left me strength enough to go on with my work.
Five o’clock.—I have written my reply to Miss Verinder.
The arrangement I have proposed reconciles the interests on both sides,
if she will only consent to it. After first stating the objections that
there are to a meeting between Mr. Blake and herself, before the
experiment is tried, I have suggested that she should so time her
journey as to arrive at the house privately, on the evening when we
make the attempt. Travelling by the afternoon train from London, she
would delay her arrival until nine o’clock. At that hour, I have
undertaken to see Mr. Blake safely into his bedchamber; and so to leave
Miss Verinder free to occupy her own rooms until the time comes for
administering the laudanum. When that has been done, there can be no
objection to her watching the result, with the rest of us. On the next
morning, she shall show Mr. Blake (if she likes) her correspondence
with me, and shall satisfy him in that way that he was acquitted in her
estimation, before the question of his innocence was put to the proof.
In that sense, I have written to her. This is all that I can do today.
Tomorrow I must see Mr. Betteredge, and give the necessary directions
for re-opening the house.
June 18th.—Late again, in calling on Mr. Franklin Blake. More of that
horrible pain in the early morning; followed, this time, by complete
prostration, for some hours. I foresee, in spite of the penalties which
it exacts from me, that I shall have to return to the opium for the
hundredth time. If I had only myself to think of, I should prefer the
sharp pains to the frightful dreams. But the physical suffering
exhausts me. If I let myself sink, it may end in my becoming useless to
Mr. Blake at the time when he wants me most.
It was nearly one o’clock before I could get to the hotel today. The
visit, even in my shattered condition, proved to be a most amusing
one—thanks entirely to the presence on the scene of Gabriel Betteredge.
I found him in the room, when I went in. He withdrew to the window and
looked out, while I put my first customary question to my patient. Mr.
Blake had slept badly again, and he felt the loss of rest this morning
more than he had felt it yet.
I asked next if he had heard from Mr. Bruff.
A letter had reached him that morning. Mr. Bruff expressed the
strongest disapproval of the course which his friend and client was
taking under my advice. It was mischievous—for it excited hopes that
might never be realised. It was quite unintelligible to _his_ mind,
except that it looked like a piece of trickery, akin to the trickery of
mesmerism, clairvoyance, and the like. It unsettled Miss Verinder’s
house, and it would end in unsettling Miss Verinder herself. He had put
the case (without mentioning names) to an eminent physician; and the
eminent physician had smiled, had shaken his head, and had
said—nothing. On these grounds, Mr. Bruff entered his protest, and left
it there.
My next inquiry related to the subject of the Diamond. Had the lawyer
produced any evidence to prove that the jewel was in London?
No, the lawyer had simply declined to discuss the question. He was
himself satisfied that the Moonstone had been pledged to Mr. Luker. His
eminent absent friend, Mr. Murthwaite (whose consummate knowledge of
the Indian character no one could deny), was satisfied also. Under
these circumstances, and with the many demands already made on him, he
must decline entering into any disputes on the subject of evidence.
Time would show; and Mr. Bruff was willing to wait for time.
It was quite plain—even if Mr. Blake had not made it plainer still by
reporting the substance of the letter, instead of reading what was
actually written—that distrust of _me_ was at the bottom of all this.
Having myself foreseen that result, I was neither mortified nor
surprised. I asked Mr. Blake if his friend’s protest had shaken him. He
answered emphatically, that it had not produced the slightest effect on
his mind. I was free after that to dismiss Mr. Bruff from
consideration—and I did dismiss him accordingly.
A pause in the talk between us, followed—and Gabriel Betteredge came
out from his retirement at the window.
“Can you favour me with your attention, sir?” he inquired, addressing
himself to me.
“I am quite at your service,” I answered.
Betteredge took a chair and seated himself at the table. He produced a
huge old-fashioned leather pocket-book, with a pencil of dimensions to
match. Having put on his spectacles, he opened the pocket-book, at a
blank page, and addressed himself to me once more.
“I have lived,” said Betteredge, looking at me sternly, “nigh on fifty
years in the service of my late lady. I was page-boy before that, in
the service of the old lord, her father. I am now somewhere between
seventy and eighty years of age—never mind exactly where! I am reckoned
to have got as pretty a knowledge and experience of the world as most
men. And what does it all end in? It ends, Mr. Ezra Jennings, in a
conjuring trick being performed on Mr. Franklin Blake, by a doctor’s
assistant with a bottle of laudanum—and by the living jingo, I’m
appointed, in my old age, to be conjurer’s boy!”
Mr. Blake burst out laughing. I attempted to speak. Betteredge held up
his hand, in token that he had not done yet.
“Not a word, Mr. Jennings!” he said, “It don’t want a word, sir, from
you. I have got my principles, thank God. If an order comes to me,
which is own brother to an order come from Bedlam, it don’t matter. So
long as I get it from my master or mistress, as the case may be, I obey
it. I may have my own opinion, which is also, you will please to
remember, the opinion of Mr. Bruff—the Great Mr. Bruff!” said
Betteredge, raising his voice, and shaking his head at me solemnly. “It
don’t matter; I withdraw my opinion, for all that. My young lady says,
‘Do it.’ And I say, ‘Miss, it shall be done.’ Here I am, with my book
and my pencil—the latter not pointed so well as I could wish, but when
Christians take leave of their senses, who is to expect that pencils
will keep their points? Give me your orders, Mr. Jennings. I’ll have
them in writing, sir. I’m determined not to be behind ’em, or before
’em, by so much as a hair’s breadth. I’m a blind agent—that’s what I
am. A blind agent!” repeated Betteredge, with infinite relish of his
own description of himself.
“I am very sorry,” I began, “that you and I don’t agree——”
“Don’t bring _me_, into it!” interposed Betteredge. “This is not a
matter of agreement, it’s a matter of obedience. Issue your directions,
sir—issue your directions!”
Mr. Blake made me a sign to take him at his word. I “issued my
directions” as plainly and as gravely as I could.
“I wish certain parts of the house to be re-opened,” I said, “and to be
furnished, exactly as they were furnished at this time last year.”
Betteredge gave his imperfectly-pointed pencil a preliminary lick with
his tongue. “Name the parts, Mr. Jennings!” he said loftily.
“First, the inner hall, leading to the chief staircase.”
“‘First, the inner hall,’” Betteredge wrote. “Impossible to furnish
that, sir, as it was furnished last year—to begin with.”
“Why?”
“Because there was a stuffed buzzard, Mr. Jennings, in the hall last
year. When the family left, the buzzard was put away with the other
things. When the buzzard was put away—he burst.”
“We will except the buzzard then.”
Betteredge took a note of the exception. “‘The inner hall to be
furnished again, as furnished last year. A burst buzzard alone
excepted.’ Please to go on, Mr. Jennings.”
“The carpet to be laid down on the stairs, as before.”
“‘The carpet to be laid down on the stairs, as before.’ Sorry to
disappoint you, sir. But that can’t be done either.”
“Why not?”
“Because the man who laid that carpet down is dead, Mr. Jennings—and
the like of him for reconciling together a carpet and a corner, is not
to be found in all England, look where you may.”
“Very well. We must try the next best man in England.”
Betteredge took another note; and I went on issuing my directions.
“Miss Verinder’s sitting-room to be restored exactly to what it was
last year. Also, the corridor leading from the sitting-room to the
first landing. Also, the second corridor, leading from the second
landing to the best bedrooms. Also, the bedroom occupied last June by
Mr. Franklin Blake.”
Betteredge’s blunt pencil followed me conscientiously, word by word.
“Go on, sir,” he said, with sardonic gravity. “There’s a deal of
writing left in the point of this pencil yet.”
I told him that I had no more directions to give. “Sir,” said
Betteredge, “in that case, I have a point or two to put on my own
behalf.” He opened the pocket-book at a new page, and gave the
inexhaustible pencil another preliminary lick.
“I wish to know,” he began, “whether I may, or may not, wash my
hands——”
“You may decidedly,” said Mr. Blake. “I’ll ring for the waiter.”
“——of certain responsibilities,” pursued Betteredge, impenetrably
declining to see anybody in the room but himself and me. “As to Miss
Verinder’s sitting-room, to begin with. When we took up the carpet last
year, Mr. Jennings, we found a surprising quantity of pins. Am I
responsible for putting back the pins?”
“Certainly not.”
Betteredge made a note of that concession, on the spot.
“As to the first corridor next,” he resumed. “When we moved the
ornaments in that part, we moved a statue of a fat naked
child—profanely described in the catalogue of the house as ‘Cupid, god
of Love.’ He had two wings last year, in the fleshy part of his
shoulders. My eye being off him, for the moment, he lost one of them.
Am I responsible for Cupid’s wing?”
I made another concession, and Betteredge made another note.
“As to the second corridor,” he went on. “There having been nothing in
it, last year, but the doors of the rooms (to every one of which I can
swear, if necessary), my mind is easy, I admit, respecting that part of
the house only. But, as to Mr. Franklin’s bedroom (if _that_ is to be
put back to what it was before), I want to know who is responsible for
keeping it in a perpetual state of litter, no matter how often it may
be set right—his trousers here, his towels there, and his French novels
everywhere. I say, who is responsible for untidying the tidiness of Mr.
Franklin’s room, him or me?”
Mr. Blake declared that he would assume the whole responsibility with
the greatest pleasure. Betteredge obstinately declined to listen to any
solution of the difficulty, without first referring it to my sanction
and approval. I accepted Mr. Blake’s proposal; and Betteredge made a
last entry in the pocket-book to that effect.
“Look in when you like, Mr. Jennings, beginning from tomorrow,” he
said, getting on his legs. “You will find me at work, with the
necessary persons to assist me. I respectfully beg to thank you, sir,
for overlooking the case of the stuffed buzzard, and the other case of
the Cupid’s wing—as also for permitting me to wash my hands of all
responsibility in respect of the pins on the carpet, and the litter in
Mr. Franklin’s room. Speaking as a servant, I am deeply indebted to
you. Speaking as a man, I consider you to be a person whose head is
full of maggots, and I take up my testimony against your experiment as
a delusion and a snare. Don’t be afraid, on that account, of my
feelings as a man getting in the way of my duty as a servant! You shall
be obeyed. The maggots notwithstanding, sir, you shall be obeyed. If it
ends in your setting the house on fire, Damme if I send for the
engines, unless you ring the bell and order them first!”
With that farewell assurance, he made me a bow, and walked out of the
room.
“Do you think we can depend on him?” I asked.
“Implicitly,” answered Mr. Blake. “When we go to the house, we shall
find nothing neglected, and nothing forgotten.”
June 19th.—Another protest against our contemplated proceedings! From a
lady this time.
The morning’s post brought me two letters. One from Miss Verinder,
consenting, in the kindest manner, to the arrangement that I have
proposed. The other from the lady under whose care she is living—one
Mrs. Merridew.
Mrs. Merridew presents her compliments, and does not pretend to
understand the subject on which I have been corresponding with Miss
Verinder, in its scientific bearings. Viewed in its social bearings,
however, she feels free to pronounce an opinion. I am probably, Mrs.
Merridew thinks, not aware that Miss Verinder is barely nineteen years
of age. To allow a young lady, at her time of life, to be present
(without a “chaperone”) in a house full of men among whom a medical
experiment is being carried on, is an outrage on propriety which Mrs.
Merridew cannot possibly permit. If the matter is allowed to proceed,
she will feel it to be her duty—at a serious sacrifice of her own
personal convenience—to accompany Miss Verinder to Yorkshire. Under
these circumstances, she ventures to request that I will kindly
reconsider the subject; seeing that Miss Verinder declines to be guided
by any opinion but mine. Her presence cannot possibly be necessary; and
a word from me, to that effect, would relieve both Mrs. Merridew and
myself of a very unpleasant responsibility.
Translated from polite commonplace into plain English, the meaning of
this is, as I take it, that Mrs. Merridew stands in mortal fear of the
opinion of the world. She has unfortunately appealed to the very last
man in existence who has any reason to regard that opinion with
respect. I won’t disappoint Miss Verinder; and I won’t delay a
reconciliation between two young people who love each other, and who
have been parted too long already. Translated from plain English into
polite commonplace, this means that Mr. Jennings presents his
compliments to Mrs. Merridew, and regrets that he cannot feel justified
in interfering any farther in the matter.
Mr. Blake’s report of himself, this morning, was the same as before. We
determined not to disturb Betteredge by overlooking him at the house
today. Tomorrow will be time enough for our first visit of inspection.
June 20th.—Mr. Blake is beginning to feel his continued restlessness at
night. The sooner the rooms are refurnished, now, the better.
On our way to the house, this morning, he consulted me, with some
nervous impatience and irresolution, about a letter (forwarded to him
from London) which he had received from Sergeant Cuff.
The Sergeant writes from Ireland. He acknowledges the receipt (through
his housekeeper) of a card and message which Mr. Blake left at his
residence near Dorking, and announces his return to England as likely
to take place in a week or less. In the meantime, he requests to be
favoured with Mr. Blake’s reasons for wishing to speak to him (as
stated in the message) on the subject of the Moonstone. If Mr. Blake
can convict him of having made any serious mistake, in the course of
his last year’s inquiry concerning the Diamond, he will consider it a
duty (after the liberal manner in which he was treated by the late Lady
Verinder) to place himself at that gentleman’s disposal. If not, he
begs permission to remain in his retirement, surrounded by the peaceful
horticultural attractions of a country life.
After reading the letter, I had no hesitation in advising Mr. Blake to
inform Sergeant Cuff, in reply, of all that had happened since the
inquiry was suspended last year, and to leave him to draw his own
conclusions from the plain facts.
On second thoughts I also suggested inviting the Sergeant to be present
at the experiment, in the event of his returning to England in time to
join us. He would be a valuable witness to have, in any case; and, if I
proved to be wrong in believing the Diamond to be hidden in Mr. Blake’s
room, his advice might be of great importance, at a future stage of the
proceedings over which I could exercise no control. This last
consideration appeared to decide Mr. Blake. He promised to follow my
advice.
The sound of the hammer informed us that the work of refurnishing was
in full progress, as we entered the drive that led to the house.
Betteredge, attired for the occasion in a fisherman’s red cap, and an
apron of green baize, met us in the outer hall. The moment he saw me,
he pulled out the pocket-book and pencil, and obstinately insisted on
taking notes of everything that I said to him. Look where we might, we
found, as Mr. Blake had foretold, that the work was advancing as rapidly
and as intelligently as it was possible to desire. But there was still
much to be done in the inner hall, and in Miss Verinder’s room. It
seemed doubtful whether the house would be ready for us before the end
of the week.
Having congratulated Betteredge on the progress that he had made (he
persisted in taking notes every time I opened my lips; declining, at
the same time, to pay the slightest attention to anything said by Mr.
Blake); and having promised to return for a second visit of inspection
in a day or two, we prepared to leave the house, going out by the back
way. Before we were clear of the passages downstairs, I was stopped by
Betteredge, just as I was passing the door which led into his own room.
“Could I say two words to you in private?” he asked, in a mysterious
whisper.
I consented of course. Mr. Blake walked on to wait for me in the
garden, while I accompanied Betteredge into his room. I fully
anticipated a demand for certain new concessions, following the
precedent already established in the cases of the stuffed buzzard, and
the Cupid’s wing. To my great surprise, Betteredge laid his hand
confidentially on my arm, and put this extraordinary question to me:
“Mr. Jennings, do you happen to be acquainted with _Robinson Crusoe_?”
I answered that I had read _Robinson Crusoe_ when I was a child.
“Not since then?” inquired Betteredge.
“Not since then.”
He fell back a few steps, and looked at me with an expression of
compassionate curiosity, tempered by superstitious awe.
“He has not read _Robinson Crusoe_ since he was a child,” said
Betteredge, speaking to himself—not to me. “Let’s try how _Robinson
Crusoe_ strikes him now!”
He unlocked a cupboard in a corner, and produced a dirty and
dog’s-eared book, which exhaled a strong odour of stale tobacco as he
turned over the leaves. Having found a passage of which he was
apparently in search, he requested me to join him in the corner; still
mysteriously confidential, and still speaking under his breath.
“In respect to this hocus-pocus of yours, sir, with the laudanum and
Mr. Franklin Blake,” he began. “While the workpeople are in the house,
my duty as a servant gets the better of my feelings as a man. When the
workpeople are gone, my feelings as a man get the better of my duty as
a servant. Very good. Last night, Mr. Jennings, it was borne in
powerfully on my mind that this new medical enterprise of yours would
end badly. If I had yielded to that secret Dictate, I should have put
all the furniture away again with my own hand, and have warned the
workmen off the premises when they came the next morning.”
“I am glad to find, from what I have seen upstairs,” I said, “that you
resisted the secret Dictate.”
“Resisted isn’t the word,” answered Betteredge. “Wrostled is the word.
I wrostled, sir, between the silent orders in my bosom pulling me one
way, and the written orders in my pocket-book pushing me the other,
until (saving your presence) I was in a cold sweat. In that dreadful
perturbation of mind and laxity of body, to what remedy did I apply? To
the remedy, sir, which has never failed me yet for the last thirty
years and more—to This Book!”
He hit the book a sounding blow with his open hand, and struck out of
it a stronger smell of stale tobacco than ever.
“What did I find here,” pursued Betteredge, “at the first page I
opened? This awful bit, sir, page one hundred and seventy-eight, as
follows:—‘Upon these, and many like Reflections, I afterwards made it a
certain rule with me, That whenever I found those secret Hints or
Pressings of my Mind, to doing, or not doing any Thing that presented;
or to going this Way, or that Way, I never failed to obey the secret
Dictate.’ As I live by bread, Mr. Jennings, those were the first words
that met my eye, exactly at the time when I myself was setting the
secret Dictate at defiance! You don’t see anything at all out of the
common in that, do you, sir?”
“I see a coincidence—nothing more.”
“You don’t feel at all shaken, Mr. Jennings, in respect to this medical
enterprise of yours?
“Not the least in the world.”
Betteredge stared hard at me, in dead silence. He closed the book with
great deliberation; he locked it up again in the cupboard with
extraordinary care; he wheeled round, and stared hard at me once more.
Then he spoke.
“Sir,” he said gravely, “there are great allowances to be made for a
man who has not read _Robinson Crusoe_ since he was a child. I wish you
good morning.”
He opened his door with a low bow, and left me at liberty to find my
own way into the garden. I met Mr. Blake returning to the house.
“You needn’t tell me what has happened,” he said. “Betteredge has
played his last card: he has made another prophetic discovery in
_Robinson Crusoe_. Have you humoured his favourite delusion? No? You
have let him see that you don’t believe in _Robinson Crusoe_? Mr.
Jennings! you have fallen to the lowest possible place in Betteredge’s
estimation. Say what you like, and do what you like, for the future.
You will find that he won’t waste another word on you now.”
June 21st.—A short entry must suffice in my journal today.
Mr. Blake has had the worst night that he has passed yet. I have been
obliged, greatly against my will, to prescribe for him. Men of his
sensitive organisation are fortunately quick in feeling the effect of
remedial measures. Otherwise, I should be inclined to fear that he will
be totally unfit for the experiment when the time comes to try it.
As for myself, after some little remission of my pains for the last two
days I had an attack this morning, of which I shall say nothing but
that it has decided me to return to the opium. I shall close this book,
and take my full dose—five hundred drops.
June 22nd.—Our prospects look better today. Mr. Blake’s nervous
suffering is greatly allayed. He slept a little last night. _My_ night,
thanks to the opium, was the night of a man who is stunned. I can’t say
that I woke this morning; the fitter expression would be, that I
recovered my senses.
We drove to the house to see if the refurnishing was done. It will be
completed tomorrow—Saturday. As Mr. Blake foretold, Betteredge raised
no further obstacles. From first to last, he was ominously polite, and
ominously silent.
My medical enterprise (as Betteredge calls it) must now, inevitably, be
delayed until Monday next. Tomorrow evening the workmen will be late in
the house. On the next day, the established Sunday tyranny which is one
of the institutions of this free country, so times the trains as to
make it impossible to ask anybody to travel to us from London. Until
Monday comes, there is nothing to be done but to watch Mr. Blake
carefully, and to keep him, if possible, in the same state in which I
find him today.
In the meanwhile, I have prevailed on him to write to Mr. Bruff, making
a point of it that he shall be present as one of the witnesses. I
especially choose the lawyer, because he is strongly prejudiced against
us. If we convince _him_, we place our victory beyond the possibility
of dispute.
Mr. Blake has also written to Sergeant Cuff; and I have sent a line to
Miss Verinder. With these, and with old Betteredge (who is really a
person of importance in the family) we shall have witnesses enough for
the purpose—without including Mrs. Merridew, if Mrs. Merridew persists
in sacrificing herself to the opinion of the world.
June 23rd.—The vengeance of the opium overtook me again last night. No
matter; I must go on with it now till Monday is past and gone.
Mr. Blake is not so well again today. At two this morning, he confesses
that he opened the drawer in which his cigars are put away. He only
succeeded in locking it up again by a violent effort. His next
proceeding, in case of temptation, was to throw the key out of window.
The waiter brought it in this morning, discovered at the bottom of an
empty cistern—such is Fate! I have taken possession of the key until
Tuesday next.
June 24th.—Mr. Blake and I took a long drive in an open carriage. We
both felt beneficially the blessed influence of the soft summer air. I
dined with him at the hotel. To my great relief—for I found him in an
over-wrought, over-excited state this morning—he had two hours’ sound
sleep on the sofa after dinner. If he has another bad night, now—I am
not afraid of the consequences.
June 25th, Monday.—The day of the experiment! It is five o’clock in the
afternoon. We have just arrived at the house.
The first and foremost question, is the question of Mr. Blake’s health.
So far as it is possible for me to judge, he promises (physically
speaking) to be quite as susceptible to the action of the opium tonight
as he was at this time last year. He is, this afternoon, in a state of
nervous sensitiveness which just stops short of nervous irritation. He
changes colour readily; his hand is not quite steady; and he starts at
chance noises, and at unexpected appearances of persons and things.
These results have all been produced by deprivation of sleep, which is
in its turn the nervous consequence of a sudden cessation in the habit
of smoking, after that habit has been carried to an extreme. Here are
the same causes at work again, which operated last year; and here are,
apparently, the same effects. Will the parallel still hold good, when
the final test has been tried? The events of the night must decide.
While I write these lines, Mr. Blake is amusing himself at the billiard
table in the inner hall, practising different strokes in the game, as
he was accustomed to practise them when he was a guest in this house in
June last. I have brought my journal here, partly with a view to
occupying the idle hours which I am sure to have on my hands between
this and tomorrow morning; partly in the hope that something may happen
which it may be worth my while to place on record at the time.
Have I omitted anything, thus far? A glance at yesterday’s entry shows
me that I have forgotten to note the arrival of the morning’s post. Let
me set this right before I close these leaves for the present, and join
Mr. Blake.
I received a few lines then, yesterday, from Miss Verinder. She has
arranged to travel by the afternoon train, as I recommended. Mrs.
Merridew has insisted on accompanying her. The note hints that the old
lady’s generally excellent temper is a little ruffled, and requests all
due indulgence for her, in consideration of her age and her habits. I
will endeavour, in my relations with Mrs. Merridew, to emulate the
moderation which Betteredge displays in his relations with me. He
received us today, portentously arrayed in his best black suit, and his
stiffest white cravat. Whenever he looks my way, he remembers that I
have not read _Robinson Crusoe_ since I was a child, and he
respectfully pities me.
Yesterday, also, Mr. Blake had the lawyer’s answer. Mr. Bruff accepts
the invitation—under protest. It is, he thinks, clearly necessary that
a gentleman possessed of the average allowance of common sense, should
accompany Miss Verinder to the scene of, what we will venture to call,
the proposed exhibition. For want of a better escort, Mr. Bruff himself
will be that gentleman.—So here is poor Miss Verinder provided with two
“chaperones.” It is a relief to think that the opinion of the world
must surely be satisfied with this!
Nothing has been heard of Sergeant Cuff. He is no doubt still in
Ireland. We must not expect to see him tonight.
Betteredge has just come in, to say that Mr. Blake has asked for me. I
must lay down my pen for the present.
Seven o’clock.—We have been all over the refurnished rooms and
staircases again; and we have had a pleasant stroll in the shrubbery,
which was Mr. Blake’s favourite walk when he was here last. In this
way, I hope to revive the old impressions of places and things as
vividly as possible in his mind.
We are now going to dine, exactly at the hour at which the birthday
dinner was given last year. My object, of course, is a purely medical
one in this case. The laudanum must find the process of digestion, as
nearly as may be, where the laudanum found it last year.
At a reasonable time after dinner I propose to lead the conversation
back again—as inartificially as I can—to the subject of the Diamond,
and of the Indian conspiracy to steal it. When I have filled his mind
with these topics, I shall have done all that it is in my power to do,
before the time comes for giving him the second dose.
Half-past eight.—I have only this moment found an opportunity of
attending to the most important duty of all; the duty of looking in the
family medicine chest, for the laudanum which Mr. Candy used last year.
Ten minutes since, I caught Betteredge at an unoccupied moment, and
told him what I wanted. Without a word of objection, without so much as
an attempt to produce his pocket-book, he led the way (making
allowances for me at every step) to the store-room in which the
medicine chest is kept.
I discovered the bottle, carefully guarded by a glass stopper tied over
with leather. The preparation which it contained was, as I had
anticipated, the common Tincture of Opium. Finding the bottle still
well filled, I have resolved to use it, in preference to employing
either of the two preparations with which I had taken care to provide
myself, in case of emergency.
The question of the quantity which I am to administer presents certain
difficulties. I have thought it over, and have decided on increasing
the dose.
My notes inform me that Mr. Candy only administered twenty-five minims.
This is a small dose to have produced the results which followed—even
in the case of a person so sensitive as Mr. Blake. I think it highly
probable that Mr. Candy gave more than he supposed himself to have
given—knowing, as I do, that he has a keen relish of the pleasures of
the table, and that he measured out the laudanum on the birthday, after
dinner. In any case, I shall run the risk of enlarging the dose to
forty minims. On this occasion, Mr. Blake knows beforehand that he is
going to take the laudanum—which is equivalent, physiologically
speaking, to his having (unconsciously to himself) a certain capacity
in him to resist the effects. If my view is right, a larger quantity is
therefore imperatively required, this time, to repeat the results which
the smaller quantity produced, last year.
Ten o’clock.—The witnesses, or the company (which shall I call them?)
reached the house an hour since.
A little before nine o’clock, I prevailed on Mr. Blake to accompany me
to his bedroom; stating, as a reason, that I wished him to look round
it, for the last time, in order to make quite sure that nothing had
been forgotten in the refurnishing of the room. I had previously
arranged with Betteredge, that the bedchamber prepared for Mr. Bruff
should be the next room to Mr. Blake’s, and that I should be informed
of the lawyer’s arrival by a knock at the door. Five minutes after the
clock in the hall had struck nine, I heard the knock; and, going out
immediately, met Mr. Bruff in the corridor.
My personal appearance (as usual) told against me. Mr. Bruff’s distrust
looked at me plainly enough out of Mr. Bruff’s eyes. Being well used to
producing this effect on strangers, I did not hesitate a moment in
saying what I wanted to say, before the lawyer found his way into Mr.
Blake’s room.
“You have travelled here, I believe, in company with Mrs. Merridew and
Miss Verinder?” I said.
“Yes,” answered Mr. Bruff, as drily as might be.
“Miss Verinder has probably told you, that I wish her presence in the
house (and Mrs. Merridew’s presence of course) to be kept a secret from
Mr. Blake, until my experiment on him has been tried first?”
“I know that I am to hold my tongue, sir!” said Mr. Bruff, impatiently.
“Being habitually silent on the subject of human folly, I am all the
readier to keep my lips closed on this occasion. Does that satisfy
you?”
I bowed, and left Betteredge to show him to his room. Betteredge gave
me one look at parting, which said, as if in so many words, “You have
caught a Tartar, Mr. Jennings—and the name of him is Bruff.”
It was next necessary to get the meeting over with the two ladies. I
descended the stairs—a little nervously, I confess—on my way to Miss
Verinder’s sitting-room.
The gardener’s wife (charged with looking after the accommodation of
the ladies) met me in the first-floor corridor. This excellent woman
treats me with an excessive civility which is plainly the offspring of
down-right terror. She stares, trembles, and curtseys, whenever I speak
to her. On my asking for Miss Verinder, she stared, trembled, and would
no doubt have curtseyed next, if Miss Verinder herself had not cut that
ceremony short, by suddenly opening her sitting-room door.
“Is that Mr. Jennings?” she asked.
Before I could answer, she came out eagerly to speak to me in the
corridor. We met under the light of a lamp on a bracket. At the first
sight of me, Miss Verinder stopped, and hesitated. She recovered
herself instantly, coloured for a moment—and then, with a charming
frankness, offered me her hand.
“I can’t treat you like a stranger, Mr. Jennings,” she said. “Oh, if
you only knew how happy your letters have made me!”
She looked at my ugly wrinkled face, with a bright gratitude so new to
me in _my_ experience of my fellow-creatures, that I was at a loss how
to answer her. Nothing had prepared me for her kindness and her beauty.
The misery of many years has not hardened my heart, thank God. I was as
awkward and as shy with her, as if I had been a lad in my teens.
“Where is he now?” she asked, giving free expression to her one
dominant interest—the interest in Mr. Blake. “What is he doing? Has he
spoken of me? Is he in good spirits? How does he bear the sight of the
house, after what happened in it last year? When are you going to give
him the laudanum? May I see you pour it out? I am so interested; I am
so excited—I have ten thousand things to say to you, and they all crowd
together so that I don’t know what to say first. Do you wonder at the
interest I take in this?”
“No,” I said. “I venture to think that I thoroughly understand it.”
She was far above the paltry affectation of being confused. She
answered me as she might have answered a brother or a father.
“You have relieved me of indescribable wretchedness; you have given me
a new life. How can I be ungrateful enough to have any concealment from
_you?_ I love him,” she said simply, “I have loved him from first to
last—even when I was wronging him in my own thoughts; even when I was
saying the hardest and the cruellest words to him. Is there any excuse
for me, in that? I hope there is—I am afraid it is the only excuse I
have. When tomorrow comes, and he knows that I am in the house, do you
think——”
She stopped again, and looked at me very earnestly.
“When tomorrow comes,” I said, “I think you have only to tell him what
you have just told me.”
Her face brightened; she came a step nearer to me. Her fingers trifled
nervously with a flower which I had picked in the garden, and which I
had put into the button-hole of my coat.
“You have seen a great deal of him lately,” she said. “Have you, really
and truly, seen _that?_”
“Really and truly,” I answered. “I am quite certain of what will happen
tomorrow. I wish I could feel as certain of what will happen tonight.”
At that point in the conversation, we were interrupted by the
appearance of Betteredge with the tea-tray. He gave me another
significant look as he passed on into the sitting-room. “Aye! aye! make
your hay while the sun shines. The Tartar’s upstairs, Mr. Jennings—the
Tartar’s upstairs!”
We followed him into the room. A little old lady, in a corner, very
nicely dressed, and very deeply absorbed over a smart piece of
embroidery, dropped her work in her lap, and uttered a faint little
scream at the first sight of my gipsy complexion and my piebald hair.
“Mrs. Merridew,” said Miss Verinder, “this is Mr. Jennings.”
“I beg Mr. Jennings’s pardon,” said the old lady, looking at Miss
Verinder, and speaking at _me_. “Railway travelling always makes me
nervous. I am endeavouring to quiet my mind by occupying myself as
usual. I don’t know whether my embroidery is out of place, on this
extraordinary occasion. If it interferes with Mr. Jennings’s medical
views, I shall be happy to put it away of course.”
I hastened to sanction the presence of the embroidery, exactly as I had
sanctioned the absence of the burst buzzard and the Cupid’s wing. Mrs.
Merridew made an effort—a grateful effort—to look at my hair. No! it
was not to be done. Mrs. Merridew looked back again at Miss Verinder.
“If Mr. Jennings will permit me,” pursued the old lady, “I should like
to ask a favour. Mr. Jennings is about to try a scientific experiment
tonight. I used to attend scientific experiments when I was a girl at
school. They invariably ended in an explosion. If Mr. Jennings will be
so very kind, I should like to be warned of the explosion this time.
With a view to getting it over, if possible, before I go to bed.”
I attempted to assure Mrs. Merridew that an explosion was not included
in the programme on this occasion.
“No,” said the old lady. “I am much obliged to Mr. Jennings—I am aware
that he is only deceiving me for my own good. I prefer plain dealing. I
am quite resigned to the explosion—but I _do_ want to get it over, if
possible, before I go to bed.”
Here the door opened, and Mrs. Merridew uttered another little scream.
The advent of the explosion? No: only the advent of Betteredge.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Jennings,” said Betteredge, in his most
elaborately confidential manner. “Mr. Franklin wishes to know where you
are. Being under your orders to deceive him, in respect to the presence
of my young lady in the house, I have said I don’t know. That, you will
please to observe, was a lie. Having one foot already in the grave,
sir, the fewer lies you expect me to tell, the more I shall be indebted
to you, when my conscience pricks me and my time comes.”
There was not a moment to be wasted on the purely speculative question
of Betteredge’s conscience. Mr. Blake might make his appearance in
search of me, unless I went to him at once in his own room. Miss
Verinder followed me out into the corridor.
“They seem to be in a conspiracy to persecute you,” she said. “What
does it mean?”
“Only the protest of the world, Miss Verinder—on a very small
scale—against anything that is new.”
“What are we to do with Mrs. Merridew?”
“Tell her the explosion will take place at nine tomorrow morning.”
“So as to send her to bed?”
“Yes—so as to send her to bed.”
Miss Verinder went back to the sitting-room, and I went upstairs to Mr.
Blake.
To my surprise I found him alone; restlessly pacing his room, and a
little irritated at being left by himself.
“Where is Mr. Bruff?” I asked.
He pointed to the closed door of communication between the two rooms.
Mr. Bruff had looked in on him, for a moment; had attempted to renew
his protest against our proceedings; and had once more failed to
produce the smallest impression on Mr. Blake. Upon this, the lawyer had
taken refuge in a black leather bag, filled to bursting with
professional papers. “The serious business of life,” he admitted, “was
sadly out of place on such an occasion as the present. But the serious
business of life must be carried on, for all that. Mr. Blake would
perhaps kindly make allowance for the old-fashioned habits of a
practical man. Time was money—and, as for Mr. Jennings, he might depend
on it that Mr. Bruff would be forthcoming when called upon.” With that
apology, the lawyer had gone back to his own room, and had immersed
himself obstinately in his black bag.
I thought of Mrs. Merridew and her embroidery, and of Betteredge and
his conscience. There is a wonderful sameness in the solid side of the
English character—just as there is a wonderful sameness in the solid
expression of the English face.
“When are you going to give me the laudanum?” asked Mr. Blake
impatiently.
“You must wait a little longer,” I said. “I will stay and keep you
company till the time comes.”
It was then not ten o’clock. Inquiries which I had made, at various
times, of Betteredge and Mr. Blake, had led me to the conclusion that
the dose of laudanum given by Mr. Candy could not possibly have been
administered before eleven. I had accordingly determined not to try the
second dose until that time.
We talked a little; but both our minds were preoccupied by the coming
ordeal. The conversation soon flagged—then dropped altogether. Mr.
Blake idly turned over the books on his bedroom table. I had taken the
precaution of looking at them, when we first entered the room. _The
Guardian_; _The Tatler_; Richardson’s _Pamela_; Mackenzie’s _Man of
Feeling_; Roscoe’s _Lorenzo de’ Medici_; and Robertson’s _Charles the
Fifth_—all classical works; all (of course) immeasurably superior to
anything produced in later times; and all (from my present point of
view) possessing the one great merit of enchaining nobody’s interest,
and exciting nobody’s brain. I left Mr. Blake to the composing
influence of Standard Literature, and occupied myself in making this
entry in my journal.
My watch informs me that it is close on eleven o’clock. I must shut up
these leaves once more.
Two o’clock A.M.—The experiment has been tried. With what result, I am
now to describe.
At eleven o’clock, I rang the bell for Betteredge, and told Mr. Blake
that he might at last prepare himself for bed.
I looked out of the window at the night. It was mild and rainy,
resembling, in this respect, the night of the birthday—the twenty-first
of June, last year. Without professing to believe in omens, it was at
least encouraging to find no direct nervous influences—no stormy or
electric perturbations—in the atmosphere. Betteredge joined me at the
window, and mysteriously put a little slip of paper into my hand. It
contained these lines:
“Mrs. Merridew has gone to bed, on the distinct understanding that the
explosion is to take place at nine tomorrow morning, and that I am not
to stir out of this part of the house until she comes and sets me free.
She has no idea that the chief scene of the experiment is my
sitting-room—or she would have remained in it for the whole night! I am
alone, and very anxious. Pray let me see you measure out the laudanum;
I want to have something to do with it, even in the unimportant
character of a mere looker-on.—R.V.”
I followed Betteredge out of the room, and told him to remove the
medicine-chest into Miss Verinder’s sitting-room.
The order appeared to take him completely by surprise. He looked as if
he suspected me of some occult medical design on Miss Verinder! “Might
I presume to ask,” he said, “what my young lady and the medicine-chest
have got to do with each other?”
“Stay in the sitting-room, and you will see.”
Betteredge appeared to doubt his own unaided capacity to superintend me
effectually, on an occasion when a medicine-chest was included in the
proceedings.
“Is there any objection, sir” he asked, “to taking Mr. Bruff into this
part of the business?”
“Quite the contrary! I am now going to ask Mr. Bruff to accompany me
downstairs.”
Betteredge withdrew to fetch the medicine-chest, without another word.
I went back into Mr. Blake’s room, and knocked at the door of
communication. Mr. Bruff opened it, with his papers in his
hand—immersed in Law; impenetrable to Medicine.
“I am sorry to disturb you,” I said. “But I am going to prepare the
laudanum for Mr. Blake; and I must request you to be present, and to
see what I do.”
“Yes?” said Mr. Bruff, with nine-tenths of his attention riveted on his
papers, and with one-tenth unwillingly accorded to me. “Anything else?”
“I must trouble you to return here with me, and to see me administer
the dose.”
“Anything else?”
“One thing more. I must put you to the inconvenience of remaining in
Mr. Blake’s room, and of waiting to see what happens.”
“Oh, very good!” said Mr. Bruff. “My room, or Mr. Blake’s room—it
doesn’t matter which; I can go on with my papers anywhere. Unless you
object, Mr. Jennings, to my importing _that_ amount of common sense
into the proceedings?”
Before I could answer, Mr. Blake addressed himself to the lawyer,
speaking from his bed.
“Do you really mean to say that you don’t feel any interest in what we
are going to do?” he asked. “Mr. Bruff, you have no more imagination
than a cow!”
“A cow is a very useful animal, Mr. Blake,” said the lawyer. With that
reply he followed me out of the room, still keeping his papers in his
hand.
We found Miss Verinder, pale and agitated, restlessly pacing her
sitting-room from end to end. At a table in a corner stood Betteredge,
on guard over the medicine-chest. Mr. Bruff sat down on the first chair
that he could find, and (emulating the usefulness of the cow) plunged
back again into his papers on the spot.
Miss Verinder drew me aside, and reverted instantly to her one
all-absorbing interest—her interest in Mr. Blake.
“How is he now?” she asked. “Is he nervous? is he out of temper? Do you
think it will succeed? Are you sure it will do no harm?”
“Quite sure. Come, and see me measure it out.”
“One moment! It is past eleven now. How long will it be before anything
happens?”
“It is not easy to say. An hour perhaps.”
“I suppose the room must be dark, as it was last year?”
“Certainly.”
“I shall wait in my bedroom—just as I did before. I shall keep the door
a little way open. It was a little way open last year. I will watch the
sitting-room door; and the moment it moves, I will blow out my light.
It all happened in that way, on my birthday night. And it must all
happen again in the same way, musn’t it?”
“Are you sure you can control yourself, Miss Verinder?”
“In _his_ interests, I can do anything!” she answered fervently.
One look at her face told me that I could trust her. I addressed myself
again to Mr. Bruff.
“I must trouble you to put your papers aside for a moment,” I said.
“Oh, certainly!” He got up with a start—as if I had disturbed him at a
particularly interesting place—and followed me to the medicine-chest.
There, deprived of the breathless excitement incidental to the practice
of his profession, he looked at Betteredge—and yawned wearily.
Miss Verinder joined me with a glass jug of cold water, which she had
taken from a side-table. “Let me pour out the water,” she whispered. “I
_must_ have a hand in it!”
I measured out the forty minims from the bottle, and poured the
laudanum into a medicine glass. “Fill it till it is three parts full,”
I said, and handed the glass to Miss Verinder. I then directed
Betteredge to lock up the medicine chest; informing him that I had done
with it now. A look of unutterable relief overspread the old servant’s
countenance. He had evidently suspected me of a medical design on his
young lady!
After adding the water as I had directed, Miss Verinder seized a
moment—while Betteredge was locking the chest, and while Mr. Bruff was
looking back to his papers—and slyly kissed the rim of the medicine
glass. “When you give it to him,” said the charming girl, “give it to
him on that side!”
I took the piece of crystal which was to represent the Diamond from my
pocket, and gave it to her.
“You must have a hand in this, too,” I said. “You must put it where you
put the Moonstone last year.”
She led the way to the Indian cabinet, and put the mock Diamond into
the drawer which the real Diamond had occupied on the birthday night.
Mr. Bruff witnessed this proceeding, under protest, as he had witnessed
everything else. But the strong dramatic interest which the experiment
was now assuming, proved (to my great amusement) to be too much for
Betteredge’s capacity of self-restraint. His hand trembled as he held
the candle, and he whispered anxiously, “Are you sure, miss, it’s the
right drawer?”
I led the way out again, with the laudanum and water in my hand. At the
door, I stopped to address a last word to Miss Verinder.
“Don’t be long in putting out the lights,” I said.
“I will put them out at once,” she answered. “And I will wait in my
bedroom, with only one candle alight.”
She closed the sitting-room door behind us. Followed by Mr. Bruff and
Betteredge, I went back to Mr. Blake’s room.
We found him moving restlessly from side to side of the bed, and
wondering irritably whether he was to have the laudanum that night. In
the presence of the two witnesses, I gave him the dose, and shook up
his pillows, and told him to lie down again quietly and wait.
His bed, provided with light chintz curtains, was placed, with the head
against the wall of the room, so as to leave a good open space on
either side of it. On one side, I drew the curtains completely—and in
the part of the room thus screened from his view, I placed Mr. Bruff
and Betteredge, to wait for the result. At the bottom of the bed I half
drew the curtains—and placed my own chair at a little distance, so that
I might let him see me or not see me, speak to me or not speak to me,
just as the circumstances might direct. Having already been informed
that he always slept with a light in the room, I placed one of the two
lighted candles on a little table at the head of the bed, where the
glare of the light would not strike on his eyes. The other candle I
gave to Mr. Bruff; the light, in this instance, being subdued by the
screen of the chintz curtains. The window was open at the top, so as to
ventilate the room. The rain fell softly, the house was quiet. It was
twenty minutes past eleven, by my watch, when the preparations were
completed, and I took my place on the chair set apart at the bottom of
the bed.