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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins

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Title: The Moonstone

Author: Wilkie Collins

Release Date: January 12, 2006 [EBook #155]
Last updated: October 20, 2011
Last updated: January 29, 2013

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOONSTONE ***




Produced by John Hamm and David Widger







THE MOONSTONE

A Romance

by Wilkie Collins




PROLOGUE

THE STORMING OF SERINGAPATAM (1799)


Extracted from a Family Paper


I address these lines--written in India--to my relatives in England.

My object is to explain the motive which has induced me to refuse the
right hand of friendship to my cousin, John Herncastle. The reserve
which I have hitherto maintained in this matter has been misinterpreted
by members of my family whose good opinion I cannot consent to forfeit.
I request them to suspend their decision until they have read my
narrative. And I declare, on my word of honour, that what I am now about
to write is, strictly and literally, the truth.

The private difference between my cousin and me took its rise in a
great public event in which we were both concerned--the storming of
Seringapatam, under General Baird, on the 4th of May, 1799.

In order that the circumstances may be clearly understood, I must
revert for a moment to the period before the assault, and to the stories
current in our camp of the treasure in jewels and gold stored up in the
Palace of Seringapatam.



II


One of the wildest of these stories related to a Yellow Diamond--a
famous gem in the native annals of India.

The earliest known traditions describe the stone as having been set in
the forehead of the four-handed Indian god who typifies the Moon. Partly
from its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which represented
it as feeling the influence of the deity whom it adorned, and growing
and lessening in lustre with the waxing and waning of the moon, it
first gained the name by which it continues to be known in India to
this day--the name of THE MOONSTONE. A similar superstition was once
prevalent, as I have heard, in ancient Greece and Rome; not applying,
however (as in India), to a diamond devoted to the service of a god, but
to a semi-transparent stone of the inferior order of gems, supposed to
be affected by the lunar influences--the moon, in this latter case also,
giving the name by which the stone is still known to collectors in our
own time.

The adventures of the Yellow Diamond begin with the eleventh century of
the Christian era.

At that date, the Mohammedan conqueror, Mahmoud of Ghizni, crossed
India; seized on the holy city of Somnauth; and stripped of its
treasures the famous temple, which had stood for centuries--the shrine
of Hindoo pilgrimage, and the wonder of the Eastern world.

Of all the deities worshipped in the temple, the moon-god alone escaped
the rapacity of the conquering Mohammedans. Preserved by three Brahmins,
the inviolate deity, bearing the Yellow Diamond in its forehead, was
removed by night, and was transported to the second of the sacred cities
of India--the city of Benares.

Here, in a new shrine--in a hall inlaid with precious stones, under
a roof supported by pillars of gold--the moon-god was set up and
worshipped. Here, on the night when the shrine was completed, Vishnu the
Preserver appeared to the three Brahmins in a dream.

The deity breathed the breath of his divinity on the Diamond in the
forehead of the god. And the Brahmins knelt and hid their faces in their
robes. The deity commanded that the Moonstone should be watched, from
that time forth, by three priests in turn, night and day, to the end
of the generations of men. And the Brahmins heard, and bowed before his
will. The deity predicted certain disaster to the presumptuous mortal
who laid hands on the sacred gem, and to all of his house and name
who received it after him. And the Brahmins caused the prophecy to be
written over the gates of the shrine in letters of gold.

One age followed another--and still, generation after generation, the
successors of the three Brahmins watched their priceless Moonstone,
night and day. One age followed another until the first years of the
eighteenth Christian century saw the reign of Aurungzebe, Emperor of the
Moguls. At his command havoc and rapine were let loose once more among
the temples of the worship of Brahmah. The shrine of the four-handed
god was polluted by the slaughter of sacred animals; the images of
the deities were broken in pieces; and the Moonstone was seized by an
officer of rank in the army of Aurungzebe.

Powerless to recover their lost treasure by open force, the three
guardian priests followed and watched it in disguise. The generations
succeeded each other; the warrior who had committed the sacrilege
perished miserably; the Moonstone passed (carrying its curse with it)
from one lawless Mohammedan hand to another; and still, through all
chances and changes, the successors of the three guardian priests kept
their watch, waiting the day when the will of Vishnu the Preserver
should restore to them their sacred gem. Time rolled on from the first
to the last years of the eighteenth Christian century. The Diamond fell
into the possession of Tippoo, Sultan of Seringapatam, who caused it to
be placed as an ornament in the handle of a dagger, and who commanded
it to be kept among the choicest treasures of his armoury. Even then--in
the palace of the Sultan himself--the three guardian priests still kept
their watch in secret. There were three officers of Tippoo's household,
strangers to the rest, who had won their master's confidence by
conforming, or appearing to conform, to the Mussulman faith; and to
those three men report pointed as the three priests in disguise.



III


So, as told in our camp, ran the fanciful story of the Moonstone. It
made no serious impression on any of us except my cousin--whose love
of the marvellous induced him to believe it. On the night before the
assault on Seringapatam, he was absurdly angry with me, and with others,
for treating the whole thing as a fable. A foolish wrangle followed; and
Herncastle's unlucky temper got the better of him. He declared, in
his boastful way, that we should see the Diamond on his finger, if
the English army took Seringapatam. The sally was saluted by a roar of
laughter, and there, as we all thought that night, the thing ended.

Let me now take you on to the day of the assault. My cousin and I were
separated at the outset. I never saw him when we forded the river; when
we planted the English flag in the first breach; when we crossed the
ditch beyond; and, fighting every inch of our way, entered the town.
It was only at dusk, when the place was ours, and after General Baird
himself had found the dead body of Tippoo under a heap of the slain,
that Herncastle and I met.

We were each attached to a party sent out by the general's orders to
prevent the plunder and confusion which followed our conquest. The
camp-followers committed deplorable excesses; and, worse still, the
soldiers found their way, by a guarded door, into the treasury of the
Palace, and loaded themselves with gold and jewels. It was in the court
outside the treasury that my cousin and I met, to enforce the laws of
discipline on our own soldiers. Herncastle's fiery temper had been, as
I could plainly see, exasperated to a kind of frenzy by the terrible
slaughter through which we had passed. He was very unfit, in my opinion,
to perform the duty that had been entrusted to him.

There was riot and confusion enough in the treasury, but no violence
that I saw. The men (if I may use such an expression) disgraced
themselves good-humouredly. All sorts of rough jests and catchwords were
bandied about among them; and the story of the Diamond turned up
again unexpectedly, in the form of a mischievous joke. "Who's got
the Moonstone?" was the rallying cry which perpetually caused the
plundering, as soon as it was stopped in one place, to break out in
another. While I was still vainly trying to establish order, I heard a
frightful yelling on the other side of the courtyard, and at once ran
towards the cries, in dread of finding some new outbreak of the pillage
in that direction.

I got to an open door, and saw the bodies of two Indians (by their
dress, as I guessed, officers of the palace) lying across the entrance,
dead.

A cry inside hurried me into a room, which appeared to serve as an
armoury. A third Indian, mortally wounded, was sinking at the feet of a
man whose back was towards me. The man turned at the instant when I came
in, and I saw John Herncastle, with a torch in one hand, and a dagger
dripping with blood in the other. A stone, set like a pommel, in the end
of the dagger's handle, flashed in the torchlight, as he turned on me,
like a gleam of fire. The dying Indian sank to his knees, pointed to
the dagger in Herncastle's hand, and said, in his native language--"The
Moonstone will have its vengeance yet on you and yours!" He spoke those
words, and fell dead on the floor.

Before I could stir in the matter, the men who had followed me across
the courtyard crowded in. My cousin rushed to meet them, like a madman.
"Clear the room!" he shouted to me, "and set a guard on the door!" The
men fell back as he threw himself on them with his torch and his dagger.
I put two sentinels of my own company, on whom I could rely, to keep the
door. Through the remainder of the night, I saw no more of my cousin.

Early in the morning, the plunder still going on, General Baird
announced publicly by beat of drum, that any thief detected in the
fact, be he whom he might, should be hung. The provost-marshal was in
attendance, to prove that the General was in earnest; and in the throng
that followed the proclamation, Herncastle and I met again.

He held out his hand, as usual, and said, "Good morning."

I waited before I gave him my hand in return.

"Tell me first," I said, "how the Indian in the armoury met his death,
and what those last words meant, when he pointed to the dagger in your
hand."

"The Indian met his death, as I suppose, by a mortal wound," said
Herncastle. "What his last words meant I know no more than you do."

I looked at him narrowly. His frenzy of the previous day had all calmed
down. I determined to give him another chance.

"Is that all you have to tell me?" I asked.

He answered, "That is all."

I turned my back on him; and we have not spoken since.



IV


I beg it to be understood that what I write here about my cousin (unless
some necessity should arise for making it public) is for the information
of the family only. Herncastle has said nothing that can justify me in
speaking to our commanding officer. He has been taunted more than once
about the Diamond, by those who recollect his angry outbreak before
the assault; but, as may easily be imagined, his own remembrance of the
circumstances under which I surprised him in the armoury has been
enough to keep him silent. It is reported that he means to exchange into
another regiment, avowedly for the purpose of separating himself from
ME.

Whether this be true or not, I cannot prevail upon myself to become his
accuser--and I think with good reason. If I made the matter public, I
have no evidence but moral evidence to bring forward. I have not only no
proof that he killed the two men at the door; I cannot even declare that
he killed the third man inside--for I cannot say that my own eyes saw
the deed committed. It is true that I heard the dying Indian's words;
but if those words were pronounced to be the ravings of delirium,
how could I contradict the assertion from my own knowledge? Let our
relatives, on either side, form their own opinion on what I have
written, and decide for themselves whether the aversion I now feel
towards this man is well or ill founded.

Although I attach no sort of credit to the fantastic Indian legend of
the gem, I must acknowledge, before I conclude, that I am influenced by
a certain superstition of my own in this matter. It is my conviction,
or my delusion, no matter which, that crime brings its own fatality with
it. I am not only persuaded of Herncastle's guilt; I am even fanciful
enough to believe that he will live to regret it, if he keeps the
Diamond; and that others will live to regret taking it from him, if he
gives the Diamond away.




THE STORY




FIRST PERIOD

THE LOSS OF THE DIAMOND (1848)


The events related by GABRIEL BETTEREDGE, house-steward in the service
of JULIA, LADY VERINDER.



CHAPTER I


In the first part of ROBINSON CRUSOE, at page one hundred and
twenty-nine, you will find it thus written:

"Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we
count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go
through with it."

Only yesterday, I opened my ROBINSON CRUSOE at that place. Only this
morning (May twenty-first, Eighteen hundred and fifty), came my lady's
nephew, Mr. Franklin Blake, and held a short conversation with me, as
follows:--

"Betteredge," says Mr. Franklin, "I have been to the lawyer's about some
family matters; and, among other things, we have been talking of the
loss of the Indian Diamond, in my aunt's house in Yorkshire, two years
since. Mr. Bruff thinks as I think, that the whole story ought, in the
interests of truth, to be placed on record in writing--and the sooner
the better."

Not perceiving his drift yet, and thinking it always desirable for the
sake of peace and quietness to be on the lawyer's side, I said I thought
so too. Mr. Franklin went on.

"In this matter of the Diamond," he said, "the characters of innocent
people have suffered under suspicion already--as you know. The memories
of innocent people may suffer, hereafter, for want of a record of the
facts to which those who come after us can appeal. There can be no doubt
that this strange family story of ours ought to be told. And I think,
Betteredge, Mr. Bruff and I together have hit on the right way of
telling it."

Very satisfactory to both of them, no doubt. But I failed to see what I
myself had to do with it, so far.

"We have certain events to relate," Mr. Franklin proceeded; "and we have
certain persons concerned in those events who are capable of relating
them. Starting from these plain facts, the idea is that we should all
write the story of the Moonstone in turn--as far as our own personal
experience extends, and no farther. We must begin by showing how the
Diamond first fell into the hands of my uncle Herncastle, when he was
serving in India fifty years since. This prefatory narrative I have
already got by me in the form of an old family paper, which relates the
necessary particulars on the authority of an eye-witness. The next thing
to do is to tell how the Diamond found its way into my aunt's house in
Yorkshire, two years ago, and how it came to be lost in little more than
twelve hours afterwards. Nobody knows as much as you do, Betteredge,
about what went on in the house at that time. So you must take the pen
in hand, and start the story."

In those terms I was informed of what my personal concern was with the
matter of the Diamond. If you are curious to know what course I took
under the circumstances, I beg to inform you that I did what you would
probably have done in my place. I modestly declared myself to be quite
unequal to the task imposed upon me--and I privately felt, all the time,
that I was quite clever enough to perform it, if I only gave my own
abilities a fair chance. Mr. Franklin, I imagine, must have seen my
private sentiments in my face. He declined to believe in my modesty; and
he insisted on giving my abilities a fair chance.

Two hours have passed since Mr. Franklin left me. As soon as his back
was turned, I went to my writing desk to start the story. There I have
sat helpless (in spite of my abilities) ever since; seeing what Robinson
Crusoe saw, as quoted above--namely, the folly of beginning a work
before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own
strength to go through with it. Please to remember, I opened the book
by accident, at that bit, only the day before I rashly undertook the
business now in hand; and, allow me to ask--if THAT isn't prophecy, what
is?

I am not superstitious; I have read a heap of books in my time; I am
a scholar in my own way. Though turned seventy, I possess an active
memory, and legs to correspond. You are not to take it, if you please,
as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such
a book as ROBINSON CRUSOE never was written, and never will be written
again. I have tried that book for years--generally in combination with
a pipe of tobacco--and I have found it my friend in need in all the
necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad--ROBINSON
CRUSOE. When I want advice--ROBINSON CRUSOE. In past times when my wife
plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much--ROBINSON
CRUSOE. I have worn out six stout ROBINSON CRUSOES with hard work in my
service. On my lady's last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop
too much on the strength of it; and ROBINSON CRUSOE put me right again.
Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into
the bargain.

Still, this don't look much like starting the story of the Diamond--does
it? I seem to be wandering off in search of Lord knows what, Lord knows
where. We will take a new sheet of paper, if you please, and begin over
again, with my best respects to you.



CHAPTER II


I spoke of my lady a line or two back. Now the Diamond could never have
been in our house, where it was lost, if it had not been made a present
of to my lady's daughter; and my lady's daughter would never have been
in existence to have the present, if it had not been for my lady who
(with pain and travail) produced her into the world. Consequently, if we
begin with my lady, we are pretty sure of beginning far enough back. And
that, let me tell you, when you have got such a job as mine in hand, is
a real comfort at starting.

If you know anything of the fashionable world, you have heard tell of
the three beautiful Miss Herncastles. Miss Adelaide; Miss Caroline;
and Miss Julia--this last being the youngest and the best of the three
sisters, in my opinion; and I had opportunities of judging, as you shall
presently see. I went into the service of the old lord, their father
(thank God, we have got nothing to do with him, in this business of the
Diamond; he had the longest tongue and the shortest temper of any man,
high or low, I ever met with)--I say, I went into the service of the old
lord, as page-boy in waiting on the three honourable young ladies, at
the age of fifteen years. There I lived till Miss Julia married the late
Sir John Verinder. An excellent man, who only wanted somebody to manage
him; and, between ourselves, he found somebody to do it; and what is
more, he throve on it and grew fat on it, and lived happy and died
easy on it, dating from the day when my lady took him to church to be
married, to the day when she relieved him of his last breath, and closed
his eyes for ever.

I have omitted to state that I went with the bride to the bride's
husband's house and lands down here. "Sir John," she says, "I can't
do without Gabriel Betteredge." "My lady," says Sir John, "I can't do
without him, either." That was his way with her--and that was how I
went into his service. It was all one to me where I went, so long as my
mistress and I were together.

Seeing that my lady took an interest in the out-of-door work, and the
farms, and such like, I took an interest in them too--with all the more
reason that I was a small farmer's seventh son myself. My lady got me
put under the bailiff, and I did my best, and gave satisfaction, and got
promotion accordingly. Some years later, on the Monday as it might be,
my lady says, "Sir John, your bailiff is a stupid old man. Pension him
liberally, and let Gabriel Betteredge have his place." On the Tuesday
as it might be, Sir John says, "My lady, the bailiff is pensioned
liberally; and Gabriel Betteredge has got his place." You hear more than
enough of married people living together miserably. Here is an
example to the contrary. Let it be a warning to some of you, and an
encouragement to others. In the meantime, I will go on with my story.

Well, there I was in clover, you will say. Placed in a position of trust
and honour, with a little cottage of my own to live in, with my rounds
on the estate to occupy me in the morning, and my accounts in the
afternoon, and my pipe and my ROBINSON CRUSOE in the evening--what more
could I possibly want to make me happy? Remember what Adam wanted when
he was alone in the Garden of Eden; and if you don't blame it in Adam,
don't blame it in me.

The woman I fixed my eye on, was the woman who kept house for me at my
cottage. Her name was Selina Goby. I agree with the late William Cobbett
about picking a wife. See that she chews her food well and sets her foot
down firmly on the ground when she walks, and you're all right. Selina
Goby was all right in both these respects, which was one reason for
marrying her. I had another reason, likewise, entirely of my own
discovering. Selina, being a single woman, made me pay so much a week
for her board and services. Selina, being my wife, couldn't charge for
her board, and would have to give me her services for nothing. That was
the point of view I looked at it from. Economy--with a dash of love. I
put it to my mistress, as in duty bound, just as I had put it to myself.

"I have been turning Selina Goby over in my mind," I said, "and I think,
my lady, it will be cheaper to marry her than to keep her."

My lady burst out laughing, and said she didn't know which to be most
shocked at--my language or my principles. Some joke tickled her, I
suppose, of the sort that you can't take unless you are a person of
quality. Understanding nothing myself but that I was free to put it next
to Selina, I went and put it accordingly. And what did Selina say? Lord!
how little you must know of women, if you ask that. Of course she said,
Yes.

As my time drew nearer, and there got to be talk of my having a new coat
for the ceremony, my mind began to misgive me. I have compared notes
with other men as to what they felt while they were in my interesting
situation; and they have all acknowledged that, about a week before it
happened, they privately wished themselves out of it. I went a trifle
further than that myself; I actually rose up, as it were, and tried to
get out of it. Not for nothing! I was too just a man to expect she would
let me off for nothing. Compensation to the woman when the man gets
out of it, is one of the laws of England. In obedience to the laws,
and after turning it over carefully in my mind, I offered Selina Goby a
feather-bed and fifty shillings to be off the bargain. You will hardly
believe it, but it is nevertheless true--she was fool enough to refuse.

After that it was all over with me, of course. I got the new coat as
cheap as I could, and I went through all the rest of it as cheap as I
could. We were not a happy couple, and not a miserable couple. We were
six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. How it was I don't understand,
but we always seemed to be getting, with the best of motives, in one
another's way. When I wanted to go up-stairs, there was my wife coming
down; or when my wife wanted to go down, there was I coming up. That is
married life, according to my experience of it.

After five years of misunderstandings on the stairs, it pleased an
all-wise Providence to relieve us of each other by taking my wife. I
was left with my little girl Penelope, and with no other child. Shortly
afterwards Sir John died, and my lady was left with her little girl,
Miss Rachel, and no other child. I have written to very poor purpose
of my lady, if you require to be told that my little Penelope was taken
care of, under my good mistress's own eye, and was sent to school and
taught, and made a sharp girl, and promoted, when old enough, to be Miss
Rachel's own maid.

As for me, I went on with my business as bailiff year after year up to
Christmas 1847, when there came a change in my life. On that day, my
lady invited herself to a cup of tea alone with me in my cottage. She
remarked that, reckoning from the year when I started as page-boy in the
time of the old lord, I had been more than fifty years in her service,
and she put into my hands a beautiful waistcoat of wool that she had
worked herself, to keep me warm in the bitter winter weather.

I received this magnificent present quite at a loss to find words to
thank my mistress with for the honour she had done me. To my great
astonishment, it turned out, however, that the waistcoat was not an
honour, but a bribe. My lady had discovered that I was getting old
before I had discovered it myself, and she had come to my cottage to
wheedle me (if I may use such an expression) into giving up my hard
out-of-door work as bailiff, and taking my ease for the rest of my
days as steward in the house. I made as good a fight of it against the
indignity of taking my ease as I could. But my mistress knew the weak
side of me; she put it as a favour to herself. The dispute between us
ended, after that, in my wiping my eyes, like an old fool, with my new
woollen waistcoat, and saying I would think about it.

The perturbation in my mind, in regard to thinking about it, being truly
dreadful after my lady had gone away, I applied the remedy which I have
never yet found to fail me in cases of doubt and emergency. I smoked a
pipe and took a turn at ROBINSON CRUSOE. Before I had occupied myself
with that extraordinary book five minutes, I came on a comforting bit
(page one hundred and fifty-eight), as follows: "To-day we love, what
to-morrow we hate." I saw my way clear directly. To-day I was all for
continuing to be farm-bailiff; to-morrow, on the authority of ROBINSON
CRUSOE, I should be all the other way. Take myself to-morrow while in
to-morrow's humour, and the thing was done. My mind being relieved
in this manner, I went to sleep that night in the character of Lady
Verinder's farm bailiff, and I woke up the next morning in the character
of Lady Verinder's house-steward. All quite comfortable, and all through
ROBINSON CRUSOE!

My daughter Penelope has just looked over my shoulder to see what I have
done so far. She remarks that it is beautifully written, and every word
of it true. But she points out one objection. She says what I have done
so far isn't in the least what I was wanted to do. I am asked to tell
the story of the Diamond and, instead of that, I have been telling the
story of my own self. Curious, and quite beyond me to account for. I
wonder whether the gentlemen who make a business and a living out of
writing books, ever find their own selves getting in the way of their
subjects, like me? If they do, I can feel for them. In the meantime,
here is another false start, and more waste of good writing-paper.
What's to be done now? Nothing that I know of, except for you to keep
your temper, and for me to begin it all over again for the third time.



CHAPTER III


The question of how I am to start the story properly I have tried to
settle in two ways. First, by scratching my head, which led to nothing.
Second, by consulting my daughter Penelope, which has resulted in an
entirely new idea.

Penelope's notion is that I should set down what happened, regularly day
by day, beginning with the day when we got the news that Mr. Franklin
Blake was expected on a visit to the house. When you come to fix your
memory with a date in this way, it is wonderful what your memory will
pick up for you upon that compulsion. The only difficulty is to fetch
out the dates, in the first place. This Penelope offers to do for me by
looking into her own diary, which she was taught to keep when she was
at school, and which she has gone on keeping ever since. In answer to an
improvement on this notion, devised by myself, namely, that she should
tell the story instead of me, out of her own diary, Penelope observes,
with a fierce look and a red face, that her journal is for her own
private eye, and that no living creature shall ever know what is in
it but herself. When I inquire what this means, Penelope says,
"Fiddlesticks!" I say, Sweethearts.

Beginning, then, on Penelope's plan, I beg to mention that I was
specially called one Wednesday morning into my lady's own sitting-room,
the date being the twenty-fourth of May, Eighteen hundred and
forty-eight.

"Gabriel," says my lady, "here is news that will surprise you. Franklin
Blake has come back from abroad. He has been staying with his father in
London, and he is coming to us to-morrow to stop till next month, and
keep Rachel's birthday."

If I had had a hat in my hand, nothing but respect would have prevented
me from throwing that hat up to the ceiling. I had not seen Mr. Franklin
since he was a boy, living along with us in this house. He was, out of
all sight (as I remember him), the nicest boy that ever spun a top or
broke a window. Miss Rachel, who was present, and to whom I made
that remark, observed, in return, that SHE remembered him as the most
atrocious tyrant that ever tortured a doll, and the hardest driver of an
exhausted little girl in string harness that England could produce. "I
burn with indignation, and I ache with fatigue," was the way Miss Rachel
summed it up, "when I think of Franklin Blake."

Hearing what I now tell you, you will naturally ask how it was that Mr.
Franklin should have passed all the years, from the time when he was
a boy to the time when he was a man, out of his own country. I answer,
because his father had the misfortune to be next heir to a Dukedom, and
not to be able to prove it.

In two words, this was how the thing happened:

My lady's eldest sister married the celebrated Mr. Blake--equally famous
for his great riches, and his great suit at law. How many years he
went on worrying the tribunals of his country to turn out the Duke in
possession, and to put himself in the Duke's place--how many lawyer's
purses he filled to bursting, and how many otherwise harmless people
he set by the ears together disputing whether he was right or wrong--is
more by a great deal than I can reckon up. His wife died, and two of his
three children died, before the tribunals could make up their minds to
show him the door and take no more of his money. When it was all over,
and the Duke in possession was left in possession, Mr. Blake discovered
that the only way of being even with his country for the manner in
which it had treated him, was not to let his country have the honour
of educating his son. "How can I trust my native institutions," was the
form in which he put it, "after the way in which my native institutions
have behaved to ME?" Add to this, that Mr. Blake disliked all boys,
his own included, and you will admit that it could only end in one
way. Master Franklin was taken from us in England, and was sent to
institutions which his father COULD trust, in that superior country,
Germany; Mr. Blake himself, you will observe, remaining snug in England,
to improve his fellow-countrymen in the Parliament House, and to publish
a statement on the subject of the Duke in possession, which has remained
an unfinished statement from that day to this.

There! thank God, that's told! Neither you nor I need trouble our heads
any more about Mr. Blake, senior. Leave him to the Dukedom; and let you
and I stick to the Diamond.

The Diamond takes us back to Mr. Franklin, who was the innocent means of
bringing that unlucky jewel into the house.

Our nice boy didn't forget us after he went abroad. He wrote every now
and then; sometimes to my lady, sometimes to Miss Rachel, and sometimes
to me. We had had a transaction together, before he left, which
consisted in his borrowing of me a ball of string, a four-bladed knife,
and seven-and-sixpence in money--the colour of which last I have not
seen, and never expect to see again. His letters to me chiefly related
to borrowing more. I heard, however, from my lady, how he got on
abroad, as he grew in years and stature. After he had learnt what the
institutions of Germany could teach him, he gave the French a turn next,
and the Italians a turn after that. They made him among them a sort of
universal genius, as well as I could understand it. He wrote a
little; he painted a little; he sang and played and composed a
little--borrowing, as I suspect, in all these cases, just as he had
borrowed from me. His mother's fortune (seven hundred a year) fell to
him when he came of age, and ran through him, as it might be through a
sieve. The more money he had, the more he wanted; there was a hole in
Mr. Franklin's pocket that nothing would sew up. Wherever he went, the
lively, easy way of him made him welcome. He lived here, there, and
everywhere; his address (as he used to put it himself) being "Post
Office, Europe--to be left till called for." Twice over, he made up his
mind to come back to England and see us; and twice over (saving your
presence), some unmentionable woman stood in the way and stopped him.
His third attempt succeeded, as you know already from what my lady told
me. On Thursday the twenty-fifth of May, we were to see for the first
time what our nice boy had grown to be as a man. He came of good blood;
he had a high courage; and he was five-and-twenty years of age, by our
reckoning. Now you know as much of Mr. Franklin Blake as I did--before
Mr. Franklin Blake came down to our house.

The Thursday was as fine a summer's day as ever you saw: and my lady and
Miss Rachel (not expecting Mr. Franklin till dinner-time) drove out to
lunch with some friends in the neighbourhood.

When they were gone, I went and had a look at the bedroom which had
been got ready for our guest, and saw that all was straight. Then,
being butler in my lady's establishment, as well as steward (at my own
particular request, mind, and because it vexed me to see anybody but
myself in possession of the key of the late Sir John's cellar)--then,
I say, I fetched up some of our famous Latour claret, and set it in the
warm summer air to take off the chill before dinner. Concluding to set
myself in the warm summer air next--seeing that what is good for old
claret is equally good for old age--I took up my beehive chair to go out
into the back court, when I was stopped by hearing a sound like the soft
beating of a drum, on the terrace in front of my lady's residence.

Going round to the terrace, I found three mahogany-coloured Indians, in
white linen frocks and trousers, looking up at the house.

The Indians, as I saw on looking closer, had small hand-drums slung in
front of them. Behind them stood a little delicate-looking light-haired
English boy carrying a bag. I judged the fellows to be strolling
conjurors, and the boy with the bag to be carrying the tools of their
trade. One of the three, who spoke English and who exhibited, I must
own, the most elegant manners, presently informed me that my judgment
was right. He requested permission to show his tricks in the presence of
the lady of the house.

Now I am not a sour old man. I am generally all for amusement, and the
last person in the world to distrust another person because he happens
to be a few shades darker than myself. But the best of us have our
weaknesses--and my weakness, when I know a family plate-basket to be
out on a pantry-table, is to be instantly reminded of that basket by the
sight of a strolling stranger whose manners are superior to my own. I
accordingly informed the Indian that the lady of the house was out; and
I warned him and his party off the premises. He made me a beautiful bow
in return; and he and his party went off the premises. On my side, I
returned to my beehive chair, and set myself down on the sunny side of
the court, and fell (if the truth must be owned), not exactly into a
sleep, but into the next best thing to it.

I was roused up by my daughter Penelope running out at me as if the
house was on fire. What do you think she wanted? She wanted to have the
three Indian jugglers instantly taken up; for this reason, namely, that
they knew who was coming from London to visit us, and that they meant
some mischief to Mr. Franklin Blake.

Mr. Franklin's name roused me. I opened my eyes, and made my girl
explain herself.

It appeared that Penelope had just come from our lodge, where she had
been having a gossip with the lodge-keeper's daughter. The two girls
had seen the Indians pass out, after I had warned them off, followed by
their little boy. Taking it into their heads that the boy was ill-used
by the foreigners--for no reason that I could discover, except that
he was pretty and delicate-looking--the two girls had stolen along the
inner side of the hedge between us and the road, and had watched the
proceedings of the foreigners on the outer side. Those proceedings
resulted in the performance of the following extraordinary tricks.

They first looked up the road, and down the road, and made sure that
they were alone. Then they all three faced about, and stared hard in
the direction of our house. Then they jabbered and disputed in their
own language, and looked at each other like men in doubt. Then they
all turned to their little English boy, as if they expected HIM to help
them. And then the chief Indian, who spoke English, said to the boy,
"Hold out your hand."

On hearing those dreadful words, my daughter Penelope said she didn't
know what prevented her heart from flying straight out of her. I thought
privately that it might have been her stays. All I said, however,
was, "You make my flesh creep." (NOTA BENE: Women like these little
compliments.)

Well, when the Indian said, "Hold out your hand," the boy shrunk back,
and shook his head, and said he didn't like it. The Indian, thereupon,
asked him (not at all unkindly), whether he would like to be sent back
to London, and left where they had found him, sleeping in an empty
basket in a market--a hungry, ragged, and forsaken little boy. This, it
seems, ended the difficulty. The little chap unwillingly held out his
hand. Upon that, the Indian took a bottle from his bosom, and poured out
of it some black stuff, like ink, into the palm of the boy's hand. The
Indian--first touching the boy's head, and making signs over it in the
air--then said, "Look." The boy became quite stiff, and stood like a
statue, looking into the ink in the hollow of his hand.

(So far, it seemed to me to be juggling, accompanied by a foolish waste
of ink. I was beginning to feel sleepy again, when Penelope's next words
stirred me up.)

The Indians looked up the road and down the road once more--and then
the chief Indian said these words to the boy; "See the English gentleman
from foreign parts."

The boy said, "I see him."

The Indian said, "Is it on the road to this house, and on no other, that
the English gentleman will travel to-day?"

The boy said, "It is on the road to this house, and on no other, that
the English gentleman will travel to-day." The Indian put a second
question--after waiting a little first. He said: "Has the English
gentleman got It about him?"

The boy answered--also, after waiting a little first--"Yes."

The Indian put a third and last question: "Will the English gentleman
come here, as he has promised to come, at the close of day?"

The boy said, "I can't tell."

The Indian asked why.

The boy said, "I am tired. The mist rises in my head, and puzzles me. I
can see no more to-day."

With that the catechism ended. The chief Indian said something in his
own language to the other two, pointing to the boy, and pointing towards
the town, in which (as we afterwards discovered) they were lodged. He
then, after making more signs on the boy's head, blew on his forehead,
and so woke him up with a start. After that, they all went on their way
towards the town, and the girls saw them no more.

Most things they say have a moral, if you only look for it. What was the
moral of this?

The moral was, as I thought: First, that the chief juggler had heard Mr.
Franklin's arrival talked of among the servants out-of-doors, and saw
his way to making a little money by it. Second, that he and his men and
boy (with a view to making the said money) meant to hang about till
they saw my lady drive home, and then to come back, and foretell
Mr. Franklin's arrival by magic. Third, that Penelope had heard them
rehearsing their hocus-pocus, like actors rehearsing a play. Fourth,
that I should do well to have an eye, that evening, on the plate-basket.
Fifth, that Penelope would do well to cool down, and leave me, her
father, to doze off again in the sun.

That appeared to me to be the sensible view. If you know anything of
the ways of young women, you won't be surprised to hear that Penelope
wouldn't take it. The moral of the thing was serious, according to my
daughter. She particularly reminded me of the Indian's third question,
Has the English gentleman got It about him? "Oh, father!" says Penelope,
clasping her hands, "don't joke about this. What does 'It' mean?"

"We'll ask Mr. Franklin, my dear," I said, "if you can wait till Mr.
Franklin comes." I winked to show I meant that in joke. Penelope took it
quite seriously. My girl's earnestness tickled me. "What on earth should
Mr. Franklin know about it?" I inquired. "Ask him," says Penelope. "And
see whether HE thinks it a laughing matter, too." With that parting
shot, my daughter left me.

I settled it with myself, when she was gone, that I really would ask Mr.
Franklin--mainly to set Penelope's mind at rest. What was said between
us, when I did ask him, later on that same day, you will find set
out fully in its proper place. But as I don't wish to raise your
expectations and then disappoint them, I will take leave to warn you
here--before we go any further--that you won't find the ghost of a
joke in our conversation on the subject of the jugglers. To my great
surprise, Mr. Franklin, like Penelope, took the thing seriously. How
seriously, you will understand, when I tell you that, in his opinion,
"It" meant the Moonstone.



CHAPTER IV


I am truly sorry to detain you over me and my beehive chair. A sleepy
old man, in a sunny back yard, is not an interesting object, I am well
aware. But things must be put down in their places, as things actually
happened--and you must please to jog on a little while longer with me,
in expectation of Mr. Franklin Blake's arrival later in the day.

Before I had time to doze off again, after my daughter Penelope had left
me, I was disturbed by a rattling of plates and dishes in the servants'
hall, which meant that dinner was ready. Taking my own meals in my own
sitting-room, I had nothing to do with the servants' dinner, except to
wish them a good stomach to it all round, previous to composing myself
once more in my chair. I was just stretching my legs, when out
bounced another woman on me. Not my daughter again; only Nancy, the
kitchen-maid, this time. I was straight in her way out; and I observed,
as she asked me to let her by, that she had a sulky face--a thing which,
as head of the servants, I never allow, on principle, to pass me without
inquiry.

"What are you turning your back on your dinner for?" I asked. "What's
wrong now, Nancy?"

Nancy tried to push by, without answering; upon which I rose up, and
took her by the ear. She is a nice plump young lass, and it is customary
with me to adopt that manner of showing that I personally approve of a
girl.

"What's wrong now?" I said once more.

"Rosanna's late again for dinner," says Nancy. "And I'm sent to fetch
her in. All the hard work falls on my shoulders in this house. Let me
alone, Mr. Betteredge!"

The person here mentioned as Rosanna was our second housemaid. Having a
kind of pity for our second housemaid (why, you shall presently know),
and seeing in Nancy's face, that she would fetch her fellow-servant in
with more hard words than might be needful under the circumstances, it
struck me that I had nothing particular to do, and that I might as well
fetch Rosanna myself; giving her a hint to be punctual in future, which
I knew she would take kindly from ME.

"Where is Rosanna?" I inquired.

"At the sands, of course!" says Nancy, with a toss of her head. "She had
another of her fainting fits this morning, and she asked to go out and
get a breath of fresh air. I have no patience with her!"

"Go back to your dinner, my girl," I said. "I have patience with her,
and I'll fetch her in."

Nancy (who has a fine appetite) looked pleased. When she looks pleased,
she looks nice. When she looks nice, I chuck her under the chin. It
isn't immorality--it's only habit.

Well, I took my stick, and set off for the sands.

No! it won't do to set off yet. I am sorry again to detain you; but you
really must hear the story of the sands, and the story of Rosanna--for
this reason, that the matter of the Diamond touches them both nearly.
How hard I try to get on with my statement without stopping by the way,
and how badly I succeed! But, there!--Persons and Things do turn up so
vexatiously in this life, and will in a manner insist on being noticed.
Let us take it easy, and let us take it short; we shall be in the thick
of the mystery soon, I promise you!

Rosanna (to put the Person before the Thing, which is but common
politeness) was the only new servant in our house. About four months
before the time I am writing of, my lady had been in London, and had
gone over a Reformatory, intended to save forlorn women from drifting
back into bad ways, after they had got released from prison. The matron,
seeing my lady took an interest in the place, pointed out a girl to her,
named Rosanna Spearman, and told her a most miserable story, which I
haven't the heart to repeat here; for I don't like to be made wretched
without any use, and no more do you. The upshot of it was, that Rosanna
Spearman had been a thief, and not being of the sort that get up
Companies in the City, and rob from thousands, instead of only robbing
from one, the law laid hold of her, and the prison and the reformatory
followed the lead of the law. The matron's opinion of Rosanna was (in
spite of what she had done) that the girl was one in a thousand, and
that she only wanted a chance to prove herself worthy of any Christian
woman's interest in her. My lady (being a Christian woman, if ever there
was one yet) said to the matron, upon that, "Rosanna Spearman shall
have her chance, in my service." In a week afterwards, Rosanna Spearman
entered this establishment as our second housemaid.

Not a soul was told the girl's story, excepting Miss Rachel and me. My
lady, doing me the honour to consult me about most things, consulted
me about Rosanna. Having fallen a good deal latterly into the late Sir
John's way of always agreeing with my lady, I agreed with her heartily
about Rosanna Spearman.

A fairer chance no girl could have had than was given to this poor girl
of ours. None of the servants could cast her past life in her teeth, for
none of the servants knew what it had been. She had her wages and her
privileges, like the rest of them; and every now and then a friendly
word from my lady, in private, to encourage her. In return, she showed
herself, I am bound to say, well worthy of the kind treatment bestowed
upon her. Though far from strong, and troubled occasionally with those
fainting-fits already mentioned, she went about her work modestly and
uncomplainingly, doing it carefully, and doing it well. But, somehow,
she failed to make friends among the other women servants, excepting my
daughter Penelope, who was always kind to Rosanna, though never intimate
with her.

I hardly know what the girl did to offend them. There was certainly no
beauty about her to make the others envious; she was the plainest woman
in the house, with the additional misfortune of having one shoulder
bigger than the other. What the servants chiefly resented, I think, was
her silent tongue and her solitary ways. She read or worked in leisure
hours when the rest gossiped. And when it came to her turn to go out,
nine times out of ten she quietly put on her bonnet, and had her turn by
herself. She never quarrelled, she never took offence; she only kept a
certain distance, obstinately and civilly, between the rest of them and
herself. Add to this that, plain as she was, there was just a dash of
something that wasn't like a housemaid, and that WAS like a lady, about
her. It might have been in her voice, or it might have been in her face.
All I can say is, that the other women pounced on it like lightning the
first day she came into the house, and said (which was most unjust) that
Rosanna Spearman gave herself airs.

Having now told the story of Rosanna, I have only to notice one of the
many queer ways of this strange girl to get on next to the story of the
sands.

Our house is high up on the Yorkshire coast, and close by the sea. We
have got beautiful walks all round us, in every direction but one. That
one I acknowledge to be a horrid walk. It leads, for a quarter of
a mile, through a melancholy plantation of firs, and brings you out
between low cliffs on the loneliest and ugliest little bay on all our
coast.

The sand-hills here run down to the sea, and end in two spits of rock
jutting out opposite each other, till you lose sight of them in the
water. One is called the North Spit, and one the South. Between the two,
shifting backwards and forwards at certain seasons of the year, lies the
most horrible quicksand on the shores of Yorkshire. At the turn of the
tide, something goes on in the unknown deeps below, which sets the
whole face of the quicksand shivering and trembling in a manner most
remarkable to see, and which has given to it, among the people in our
parts, the name of the Shivering Sand. A great bank, half a mile out,
nigh the mouth of the bay, breaks the force of the main ocean coming
in from the offing. Winter and summer, when the tide flows over the
quicksand, the sea seems to leave the waves behind it on the bank,
and rolls its waters in smoothly with a heave, and covers the sand in
silence. A lonesome and a horrid retreat, I can tell you! No boat ever
ventures into this bay. No children from our fishing-village, called
Cobb's Hole, ever come here to play. The very birds of the air, as it
seems to me, give the Shivering Sand a wide berth. That a young woman,
with dozens of nice walks to choose from, and company to go with her, if
she only said "Come!" should prefer this place, and should sit and work
or read in it, all alone, when it's her turn out, I grant you, passes
belief. It's true, nevertheless, account for it as you may, that this
was Rosanna Spearman's favourite walk, except when she went once
or twice to Cobb's Hole, to see the only friend she had in our
neighbourhood, of whom more anon. It's also true that I was now setting
out for this same place, to fetch the girl in to dinner, which brings us
round happily to our former point, and starts us fair again on our way
to the sands.

I saw no sign of the girl in the plantation. When I got out, through the
sand-hills, on to the beach, there she was, in her little straw bonnet,
and her plain grey cloak that she always wore to hide her deformed
shoulder as much as might be--there she was, all alone, looking out on
the quicksand and the sea.

She started when I came up with her, and turned her head away from me.
Not looking me in the face being another of the proceedings, which,
as head of the servants, I never allow, on principle, to pass without
inquiry--I turned her round my way, and saw that she was crying. My
bandanna handkerchief--one of six beauties given to me by my lady--was
handy in my pocket. I took it out, and I said to Rosanna, "Come and sit
down, my dear, on the slope of the beach along with me. I'll dry your
eyes for you first, and then I'll make so bold as to ask what you have
been crying about."

When you come to my age, you will find sitting down on the slope of
a beach a much longer job than you think it now. By the time I
was settled, Rosanna had dried her own eyes with a very inferior
handkerchief to mine--cheap cambric. She looked very quiet, and very
wretched; but she sat down by me like a good girl, when I told her. When
you want to comfort a woman by the shortest way, take her on your knee.
I thought of this golden rule. But there! Rosanna wasn't Nancy, and
that's the truth of it!

"Now, tell me, my dear," I said, "what are you crying about?"

"About the years that are gone, Mr. Betteredge," says Rosanna quietly.
"My past life still comes back to me sometimes."

"Come, come, my girl," I said, "your past life is all sponged out. Why
can't you forget it?"

She took me by one of the lappets of my coat. I am a slovenly old man,
and a good deal of my meat and drink gets splashed about on my clothes.
Sometimes one of the women, and sometimes another, cleans me of my
grease. The day before, Rosanna had taken out a spot for me on the
lappet of my coat, with a new composition, warranted to remove anything.
The grease was gone, but there was a little dull place left on the nap
of the cloth where the grease had been. The girl pointed to that place,
and shook her head.

"The stain is taken off," she said. "But the place shows, Mr.
Betteredge--the place shows!"

A remark which takes a man unawares by means of his own coat is not
an easy remark to answer. Something in the girl herself, too, made me
particularly sorry for her just then. She had nice brown eyes, plain as
she was in other ways--and she looked at me with a sort of respect for
my happy old age and my good character, as things for ever out of her
own reach, which made my heart heavy for our second housemaid. Not
feeling myself able to comfort her, there was only one other thing to
do. That thing was--to take her in to dinner.

"Help me up," I said. "You're late for dinner, Rosanna--and I have come
to fetch you in."

"You, Mr. Betteredge!" says she.

"They told Nancy to fetch you," I said. "But thought you might like your
scolding better, my dear, if it came from me."

Instead of helping me up, the poor thing stole her hand into mine, and
gave it a little squeeze. She tried hard to keep from crying again,
and succeeded--for which I respected her. "You're very kind, Mr.
Betteredge," she said. "I don't want any dinner to-day--let me bide a
little longer here."

"What makes you like to be here?" I asked. "What is it that brings you
everlastingly to this miserable place?"

"Something draws me to it," says the girl, making images with her finger
in the sand. "I try to keep away from it, and I can't. Sometimes,"
says she in a low voice, as if she was frightened at her own fancy,
"sometimes, Mr. Betteredge, I think that my grave is waiting for me
here."

"There's roast mutton and suet-pudding waiting for you!" says I. "Go in
to dinner directly. This is what comes, Rosanna, of thinking on an empty
stomach!" I spoke severely, being naturally indignant (at my time of
life) to hear a young woman of five-and-twenty talking about her latter
end!

She didn't seem to hear me: she put her hand on my shoulder, and kept me
where I was, sitting by her side.

"I think the place has laid a spell on me," she said. "I dream of it
night after night; I think of it when I sit stitching at my work. You
know I am grateful, Mr. Betteredge--you know I try to deserve your
kindness, and my lady's confidence in me. But I wonder sometimes whether
the life here is too quiet and too good for such a woman as I am, after
all I have gone through, Mr. Betteredge--after all I have gone through.
It's more lonely to me to be among the other servants, knowing I am not
what they are, than it is to be here. My lady doesn't know, the matron
at the reformatory doesn't know, what a dreadful reproach honest people
are in themselves to a woman like me. Don't scold me, there's a dear
good man. I do my work, don't I? Please not to tell my lady I am
discontented--I am not. My mind's unquiet, sometimes, that's all." She
snatched her hand off my shoulder, and suddenly pointed down to the
quicksand. "Look!" she said "Isn't it wonderful? isn't it terrible? I
have seen it dozens of times, and it's always as new to me as if I had
never seen it before!"

I looked where she pointed. The tide was on the turn, and the horrid
sand began to shiver. The broad brown face of it heaved slowly, and then
dimpled and quivered all over. "Do you know what it looks like to ME?"
says Rosanna, catching me by the shoulder again. "It looks as if it had
hundreds of suffocating people under it--all struggling to get to the
surface, and all sinking lower and lower in the dreadful deeps! Throw a
stone in, Mr. Betteredge! Throw a stone in, and let's see the sand suck
it down!"

Here was unwholesome talk! Here was an empty stomach feeding on an
unquiet mind! My answer--a pretty sharp one, in the poor girl's own
interests, I promise you!--was at my tongue's end, when it was snapped
short off on a sudden by a voice among the sand-hills shouting for me
by my name. "Betteredge!" cries the voice, "where are you?" "Here!"
I shouted out in return, without a notion in my mind of who it was.
Rosanna started to her feet, and stood looking towards the voice. I was
just thinking of getting on my own legs next, when I was staggered by a
sudden change in the girl's face.

Her complexion turned of a beautiful red, which I had never seen in it
before; she brightened all over with a kind of speechless and breathless
surprise. "Who is it?" I asked. Rosanna gave me back my own question.
"Oh! who is it?" she said softly, more to herself than to me. I twisted
round on the sand and looked behind me. There, coming out on us from
among the hills, was a bright-eyed young gentleman, dressed in a
beautiful fawn-coloured suit, with gloves and hat to match, with a rose
in his button-hole, and a smile on his face that might have set the
Shivering Sand itself smiling at him in return. Before I could get on my
legs, he plumped down on the sand by the side of me, put his arm round
my neck, foreign fashion, and gave me a hug that fairly squeezed the
breath out of my body. "Dear old Betteredge!" says he. "I owe you
seven-and-sixpence. Now do you know who I am?"

Lord bless us and save us! Here--four good hours before we expected
him--was Mr. Franklin Blake!

Before I could say a word, I saw Mr. Franklin, a little surprised to all
appearance, look up from me to Rosanna. Following his lead, I looked at
the girl too. She was blushing of a deeper red than ever, seemingly at
having caught Mr. Franklin's eye; and she turned and left us suddenly,
in a confusion quite unaccountable to my mind, without either making her
curtsey to the gentleman or saying a word to me. Very unlike her usual
self: a civiller and better-behaved servant, in general, you never met
with.

"That's an odd girl," says Mr. Franklin. "I wonder what she sees in me
to surprise her?"

"I suppose, sir," I answered, drolling on our young gentleman's
Continental education, "it's the varnish from foreign parts."

I set down here Mr. Franklin's careless question, and my foolish answer,
as a consolation and encouragement to all stupid people--it being, as I
have remarked, a great satisfaction to our inferior fellow-creatures to
find that their betters are, on occasions, no brighter than they are.
Neither Mr. Franklin, with his wonderful foreign training, nor I, with
my age, experience, and natural mother-wit, had the ghost of an idea of
what Rosanna Spearman's unaccountable behaviour really meant. She was
out of our thoughts, poor soul, before we had seen the last flutter of
her little grey cloak among the sand-hills. And what of that? you will
ask, naturally enough. Read on, good friend, as patiently as you can,
and perhaps you will be as sorry for Rosanna Spearman as I was, when I
found out the truth.



CHAPTER V


The first thing I did, after we were left together alone, was to make a
third attempt to get up from my seat on the sand. Mr. Franklin stopped
me.

"There is one advantage about this horrid place," he said; "we have got
it all to ourselves. Stay where you are, Betteredge; I have something to
say to you."

While he was speaking, I was looking at him, and trying to see something
of the boy I remembered, in the man before me. The man put me out. Look
as I might, I could see no more of his boy's rosy cheeks than of his
boy's trim little jacket. His complexion had got pale: his face, at the
lower part was covered, to my great surprise and disappointment, with a
curly brown beard and mustachios. He had a lively touch-and-go way with
him, very pleasant and engaging, I admit; but nothing to compare with
his free-and-easy manners of other times. To make matters worse, he
had promised to be tall, and had not kept his promise. He was neat, and
slim, and well made; but he wasn't by an inch or two up to the middle
height. In short, he baffled me altogether. The years that had passed
had left nothing of his old self, except the bright, straightforward
look in his eyes. There I found our nice boy again, and there I
concluded to stop in my investigation.

"Welcome back to the old place, Mr. Franklin," I said. "All the more
welcome, sir, that you have come some hours before we expected you."

"I have a reason for coming before you expected me," answered Mr.
Franklin. "I suspect, Betteredge, that I have been followed and watched
in London, for the last three or four days; and I have travelled by
the morning instead of the afternoon train, because I wanted to give a
certain dark-looking stranger the slip."

Those words did more than surprise me. They brought back to my mind, in
a flash, the three jugglers, and Penelope's notion that they meant some
mischief to Mr. Franklin Blake.

"Who's watching you, sir,--and why?" I inquired.

"Tell me about the three Indians you have had at the house to-day,"
says Mr. Franklin, without noticing my question. "It's just possible,
Betteredge, that my stranger and your three jugglers may turn out to be
pieces of the same puzzle."

"How do you come to know about the jugglers, sir?" I asked, putting one
question on the top of another, which was bad manners, I own. But you
don't expect much from poor human nature--so don't expect much from me.

"I saw Penelope at the house," says Mr. Franklin; "and Penelope told me.
Your daughter promised to be a pretty girl, Betteredge, and she has kept
her promise. Penelope has got a small ear and a small foot. Did the late
Mrs. Betteredge possess those inestimable advantages?"

"The late Mrs. Betteredge possessed a good many defects, sir," says I.
"One of them (if you will pardon my mentioning it) was never keeping to
the matter in hand. She was more like a fly than a woman: she couldn't
settle on anything."

"She would just have suited me," says Mr. Franklin. "I never settle
on anything either. Betteredge, your edge is better than ever. Your
daughter said as much, when I asked for particulars about the jugglers.
'Father will tell you, sir. He's a wonderful man for his age; and he
expresses himself beautifully.' Penelope's own words--blushing divinely.
Not even my respect for you prevented me from--never mind; I knew her
when she was a child, and she's none the worse for it. Let's be serious.
What did the jugglers do?"

I was something dissatisfied with my daughter--not for letting Mr.
Franklin kiss her; Mr. Franklin was welcome to THAT--but for forcing me
to tell her foolish story at second hand. However, there was no help for
it now but to mention the circumstances. Mr. Franklin's merriment all
died away as I went on. He sat knitting his eyebrows, and twisting his
beard. When I had done, he repeated after me two of the questions which
the chief juggler had put to the boy--seemingly for the purpose of
fixing them well in his mind.

"'Is it on the road to this house, and on no other, that the English
gentleman will travel to-day?' 'Has the English gentleman got It about
him?' I suspect," says Mr. Franklin, pulling a little sealed paper
parcel out of his pocket, "that 'It' means THIS. And 'this,' Betteredge,
means my uncle Herncastle's famous Diamond."

"Good Lord, sir!" I broke out, "how do you come to be in charge of the
wicked Colonel's Diamond?"

"The wicked Colonel's will has left his Diamond as a birthday present
to my cousin Rachel," says Mr. Franklin. "And my father, as the wicked
Colonel's executor, has given it in charge to me to bring down here."

If the sea, then oozing in smoothly over the Shivering Sand, had been
changed into dry land before my own eyes, I doubt if I could have been
more surprised than I was when Mr. Franklin spoke those words.

"The Colonel's Diamond left to Miss Rachel!" says I. "And your father,
sir, the Colonel's executor! Why, I would have laid any bet you like,
Mr. Franklin, that your father wouldn't have touched the Colonel with a
pair of tongs!"

"Strong language, Betteredge! What was there against the Colonel. He
belonged to your time, not to mine. Tell me what you know about him, and
I'll tell you how my father came to be his executor, and more besides.
I have made some discoveries in London about my uncle Herncastle and his
Diamond, which have rather an ugly look to my eyes; and I want you to
confirm them. You called him the 'wicked Colonel' just now. Search your
memory, my old friend, and tell me why."

I saw he was in earnest, and I told him.

Here follows the substance of what I said, written out entirely for your
benefit. Pay attention to it, or you will be all abroad, when we get
deeper into the story. Clear your mind of the children, or the dinner,
or the new bonnet, or what not. Try if you can't forget politics,
horses, prices in the City, and grievances at the club. I hope you won't
take this freedom on my part amiss; it's only a way I have of appealing
to the gentle reader. Lord! haven't I seen you with the greatest authors
in your hands, and don't I know how ready your attention is to wander
when it's a book that asks for it, instead of a person?

I spoke, a little way back, of my lady's father, the old lord with the
short temper and the long tongue. He had five children in all. Two sons
to begin with; then, after a long time, his wife broke out breeding
again, and the three young ladies came briskly one after the other,
as fast as the nature of things would permit; my mistress, as before
mentioned, being the youngest and best of the three. Of the two sons,
the eldest, Arthur, inherited the title and estates. The second, the
Honourable John, got a fine fortune left him by a relative, and went
into the army.

It's an ill bird, they say, that fouls its own nest. I look on the noble
family of the Herncastles as being my nest; and I shall take it as a
favour if I am not expected to enter into particulars on the subject
of the Honourable John. He was, I honestly believe, one of the greatest
blackguards that ever lived. I can hardly say more or less for him than
that. He went into the army, beginning in the Guards. He had to leave
the Guards before he was two-and-twenty--never mind why. They are very
strict in the army, and they were too strict for the Honourable John. He
went out to India to see whether they were equally strict there, and to
try a little active service. In the matter of bravery (to give him his
due), he was a mixture of bull-dog and game-cock, with a dash of the
savage. He was at the taking of Seringapatam. Soon afterwards he changed
into another regiment, and, in course of time, changed into a third. In
the third he got his last step as lieutenant-colonel, and, getting that,
got also a sunstroke, and came home to England.

He came back with a character that closed the doors of all his family
against him, my lady (then just married) taking the lead, and declaring
(with Sir John's approval, of course) that her brother should never
enter any house of hers. There was more than one slur on the Colonel
that made people shy of him; but the blot of the Diamond is all I need
mention here.

It was said he had got possession of his Indian jewel by means which,
bold as he was, he didn't dare acknowledge. He never attempted to sell
it--not being in need of money, and not (to give him his due again)
making money an object. He never gave it away; he never even showed it
to any living soul. Some said he was afraid of its getting him into a
difficulty with the military authorities; others (very ignorant indeed
of the real nature of the man) said he was afraid, if he showed it, of
its costing him his life.

There was perhaps a grain of truth mixed up with this last report. It
was false to say that he was afraid; but it was a fact that his life
had been twice threatened in India; and it was firmly believed that the
Moonstone was at the bottom of it. When he came back to England, and
found himself avoided by everybody, the Moonstone was thought to be at
the bottom of it again. The mystery of the Colonel's life got in the
Colonel's way, and outlawed him, as you may say, among his own people.
The men wouldn't let him into their clubs; the women--more than
one--whom he wanted to marry, refused him; friends and relations got too
near-sighted to see him in the street.

Some men in this mess would have tried to set themselves right with
the world. But to give in, even when he was wrong, and had all society
against him, was not the way of the Honourable John. He had kept the
Diamond, in flat defiance of assassination, in India. He kept the
Diamond, in flat defiance of public opinion, in England. There you have
the portrait of the man before you, as in a picture: a character that
braved everything; and a face, handsome as it was, that looked possessed
by the devil.

We heard different rumours about him from time to time. Sometimes
they said he was given up to smoking opium and collecting old books;
sometimes he was reported to be trying strange things in chemistry;
sometimes he was seen carousing and amusing himself among the lowest
people in the lowest slums of London. Anyhow, a solitary, vicious,
underground life was the life the Colonel led. Once, and once only,
after his return to England, I myself saw him, face to face.

About two years before the time of which I am now writing, and about
a year and a half before the time of his death, the Colonel came
unexpectedly to my lady's house in London. It was the night of Miss
Rachel's birthday, the twenty-first of June; and there was a party in
honour of it, as usual. I received a message from the footman to say
that a gentleman wanted to see me. Going up into the hall, there I found
the Colonel, wasted, and worn, and old, and shabby, and as wild and as
wicked as ever.

"Go up to my sister," says he; "and say that I have called to wish my
niece many happy returns of the day."

He had made attempts by letter, more than once already, to be reconciled
with my lady, for no other purpose, I am firmly persuaded, than to annoy
her. But this was the first time he had actually come to the house. I
had it on the tip of my tongue to say that my mistress had a party that
night. But the devilish look of him daunted me. I went up-stairs with
his message, and left him, by his own desire, waiting in the hall. The
servants stood staring at him, at a distance, as if he was a walking
engine of destruction, loaded with powder and shot, and likely to go off
among them at a moment's notice.

My lady had a dash--no more--of the family temper. "Tell Colonel
Herncastle," she said, when I gave her her brother's message, "that Miss
Verinder is engaged, and that I decline to see him." I tried to plead
for a civiller answer than that; knowing the Colonel's constitutional
superiority to the restraints which govern gentlemen in general. Quite
useless! The family temper flashed out at me directly. "When I want your
advice," says my lady, "you know that I always ask for it. I don't ask
for it now." I went downstairs with the message, of which I took the
liberty of presenting a new and amended edition of my own contriving, as
follows: "My lady and Miss Rachel regret that they are engaged, Colonel;
and beg to be excused having the honour of seeing you."

I expected him to break out, even at that polite way of putting it.
To my surprise he did nothing of the sort; he alarmed me by taking the
thing with an unnatural quiet. His eyes, of a glittering bright grey,
just settled on me for a moment; and he laughed, not out of himself,
like other people, but INTO himself, in a soft, chuckling, horridly
mischievous way. "Thank you, Betteredge," he said. "I shall remember my
niece's birthday." With that, he turned on his heel, and walked out of
the house.

The next birthday came round, and we heard he was ill in bed. Six months
afterwards--that is to say, six months before the time I am now writing
of--there came a letter from a highly respectable clergyman to my lady.
It communicated two wonderful things in the way of family news. First,
that the Colonel had forgiven his sister on his death-bed. Second, that
he had forgiven everybody else, and had made a most edifying end. I have
myself (in spite of the bishops and the clergy) an unfeigned respect for
the Church; but I am firmly persuaded, at the same time, that the devil
remained in undisturbed possession of the Honourable John, and that the
last abominable act in the life of that abominable man was (saving your
presence) to take the clergyman in!

This was the sum-total of what I had to tell Mr. Franklin. I remarked
that he listened more and more eagerly the longer I went on. Also, that
the story of the Colonel being sent away from his sister's door, on the
occasion of his niece's birthday, seemed to strike Mr. Franklin like a
shot that had hit the mark. Though he didn't acknowledge it, I saw that
I had made him uneasy, plainly enough, in his face.

"You have said your say, Betteredge," he remarked. "It's my turn now.
Before, however, I tell you what discoveries I have made in London, and
how I came to be mixed up in this matter of the Diamond, I want to know
one thing. You look, my old friend, as if you didn't quite understand
the object to be answered by this consultation of ours. Do your looks
belie you?"

"No, sir," I said. "My looks, on this occasion at any rate, tell the
truth."

"In that case," says Mr. Franklin, "suppose I put you up to my point
of view, before we go any further. I see three very serious questions
involved in the Colonel's birthday-gift to my cousin Rachel. Follow me
carefully, Betteredge; and count me off on your fingers, if it will
help you," says Mr. Franklin, with a certain pleasure in showing how
clear-headed he could be, which reminded me wonderfully of old times
when he was a boy. "Question the first: Was the Colonel's Diamond the
object of a conspiracy in India? Question the second: Has the conspiracy
followed the Colonel's Diamond to England? Question the third: Did the
Colonel know the conspiracy followed the Diamond; and has he purposely
left a legacy of trouble and danger to his sister, through the innocent
medium of his sister's child? THAT is what I am driving at, Betteredge.
Don't let me frighten you."

It was all very well to say that, but he HAD frightened me.

If he was right, here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by
a devilish Indian Diamond--bringing after it a conspiracy of living
rogues, set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man. There was our
situation as revealed to me in Mr. Franklin's last words! Who ever heard
the like of it--in the nineteenth century, mind; in an age of progress,
and in a country which rejoices in the blessings of the British
constitution? Nobody ever heard the like of it, and, consequently,
nobody can be expected to believe it. I shall go on with my story,
however, in spite of that.

When you get a sudden alarm, of the sort that I had got now, nine times
out of ten the place you feel it in is your stomach. When you feel it
in your stomach, your attention wanders, and you begin to fidget. I
fidgeted silently in my place on the sand. Mr. Franklin noticed me,
contending with a perturbed stomach or mind--which you please; they mean
the same thing--and, checking himself just as he was starting with his
part of the story, said to me sharply, "What do you want?"

What did I want? I didn't tell HIM; but I'll tell YOU, in confidence. I
wanted a whiff of my pipe, and a turn at ROBINSON CRUSOE.



CHAPTER VI


Keeping my private sentiments to myself, I respectfully requested Mr.
Franklin to go on. Mr. Franklin replied, "Don't fidget, Betteredge," and
went on.

Our young gentleman's first words informed me that his discoveries,
concerning the wicked Colonel and the Diamond, had begun with a visit
which he had paid (before he came to us) to the family lawyer, at
Hampstead. A chance word dropped by Mr. Franklin, when the two were
alone, one day, after dinner, revealed that he had been charged by his
father with a birthday present to be taken to Miss Rachel. One thing
led to another; and it ended in the lawyer mentioning what the present
really was, and how the friendly connexion between the late Colonel
and Mr. Blake, senior, had taken its rise. The facts here are really so
extraordinary, that I doubt if I can trust my own language to do justice
to them. I prefer trying to report Mr. Franklin's discoveries, as nearly
as may be, in Mr. Franklin's own words.

"You remember the time, Betteredge," he said, "when my father was trying
to prove his title to that unlucky Dukedom? Well! that was also the time
when my uncle Herncastle returned from India. My father discovered that
his brother-in-law was in possession of certain papers which were likely
to be of service to him in his lawsuit. He called on the Colonel, on
pretence of welcoming him back to England. The Colonel was not to be
deluded in that way. 'You want something,' he said, 'or you would never
have compromised your reputation by calling on ME.' My father saw that
the one chance for him was to show his hand; he admitted, at once,
that he wanted the papers. The Colonel asked for a day to consider his
answer. His answer came in the shape of a most extraordinary letter,
which my friend the lawyer showed me. The Colonel began by saying that
he wanted something of my father, and that he begged to propose an
exchange of friendly services between them. The fortune of war (that
was the expression he used) had placed him in possession of one of the
largest Diamonds in the world; and he had reason to believe that neither
he nor his precious jewel was safe in any house, in any quarter of the
globe, which they occupied together. Under these alarming circumstances,
he had determined to place his Diamond in the keeping of another person.
That person was not expected to run any risk. He might deposit the
precious stone in any place especially guarded and set apart--like a
banker's or jeweller's strong-room--for the safe custody of valuables of
high price. His main personal responsibility in the matter was to be
of the passive kind. He was to undertake either by himself, or by a
trustworthy representative--to receive at a prearranged address, on
certain prearranged days in every year, a note from the Colonel, simply
stating the fact that he was a living man at that date. In the event
of the date passing over without the note being received, the Colonel's
silence might be taken as a sure token of the Colonel's death by murder.
In that case, and in no other, certain sealed instructions relating to
the disposal of the Diamond, and deposited with it, were to be opened,
and followed implicitly. If my father chose to accept this strange
charge, the Colonel's papers were at his disposal in return. That was
the letter."

"What did your father do, sir?" I asked.

"Do?" says Mr. Franklin. "I'll tell you what he did. He brought the
invaluable faculty, called common sense, to bear on the Colonel's
letter. The whole thing, he declared, was simply absurd. Somewhere in
his Indian wanderings, the Colonel had picked up with some wretched
crystal which he took for a diamond. As for the danger of his being
murdered, and the precautions devised to preserve his life and his piece
of crystal, this was the nineteenth century, and any man in his senses
had only to apply to the police. The Colonel had been a notorious
opium-eater for years past; and, if the only way of getting at the
valuable papers he possessed was by accepting a matter of opium as
a matter of fact, my father was quite willing to take the ridiculous
responsibility imposed on him--all the more readily that it involved no
trouble to himself. The Diamond and the sealed instructions went into
his banker's strong-room, and the Colonel's letters, periodically
reporting him a living man, were received and opened by our family
lawyer, Mr. Bruff, as my father's representative. No sensible person,
in a similar position, could have viewed the matter in any other way.
Nothing in this world, Betteredge, is probable unless it appeals to our
own trumpery experience; and we only believe in a romance when we see it
in a newspaper."

It was plain to me from this, that Mr. Franklin thought his father's
notion about the Colonel hasty and wrong.

"What is your own private opinion about the matter, sir?" I asked.

"Let's finish the story of the Colonel first," says Mr. Franklin. "There
is a curious want of system, Betteredge, in the English mind; and your
question, my old friend, is an instance of it. When we are not occupied
in making machinery, we are (mentally speaking) the most slovenly people
in the universe."

"So much," I thought to myself, "for a foreign education! He has learned
that way of girding at us in France, I suppose."

Mr. Franklin took up the lost thread, and went on.

"My father," he said, "got the papers he wanted, and never saw his
brother-in-law again from that time. Year after year, on the prearranged
days, the prearranged letter came from the Colonel, and was opened by
Mr. Bruff. I have seen the letters, in a heap, all of them written in
the same brief, business-like form of words: 'Sir,--This is to certify
that I am still a living man. Let the Diamond be. John Herncastle.' That
was all he ever wrote, and that came regularly to the day; until some
six or eight months since, when the form of the letter varied for the
first time. It ran now: 'Sir,--They tell me I am dying. Come to me, and
help me to make my will.' Mr. Bruff went, and found him, in the little
suburban villa, surrounded by its own grounds, in which he had lived
alone, ever since he had left India. He had dogs, cats, and birds to
keep him company; but no human being near him, except the person who
came daily to do the house-work, and the doctor at the bedside. The will
was a very simple matter. The Colonel had dissipated the greater part of
his fortune in his chemical investigations. His will began and ended in
three clauses, which he dictated from his bed, in perfect possession
of his faculties. The first clause provided for the safe keeping
and support of his animals. The second founded a professorship of
experimental chemistry at a northern university. The third bequeathed
the Moonstone as a birthday present to his niece, on condition that
my father would act as executor. My father at first refused to act. On
second thoughts, however, he gave way, partly because he was assured
that the executorship would involve him in no trouble; partly because
Mr. Bruff suggested, in Rachel's interest, that the Diamond might be
worth something, after all."

"Did the Colonel give any reason, sir," I inquired, "why he left the
Diamond to Miss Rachel?"

"He not only gave the reason--he had the reason written in his
will," said Mr. Franklin. "I have got an extract, which you shall see
presently. Don't be slovenly-minded, Betteredge! One thing at a time.
You have heard about the Colonel's Will; now you must hear what happened
after the Colonel's death. It was formally necessary to have the Diamond
valued, before the Will could be proved. All the jewellers consulted,
at once confirmed the Colonel's assertion that he possessed one of the
largest diamonds in the world. The question of accurately valuing it
presented some serious difficulties. Its size made it a phenomenon in
the diamond market; its colour placed it in a category by itself; and,
to add to these elements of uncertainty, there was a defect, in the
shape of a flaw, in the very heart of the stone. Even with this last
serious draw-back, however, the lowest of the various estimates given
was twenty thousand pounds. Conceive my father's astonishment! He had
been within a hair's-breadth of refusing to act as executor, and of
allowing this magnificent jewel to be lost to the family. The interest
he took in the matter now, induced him to open the sealed instructions
which had been deposited with the Diamond. Mr. Bruff showed this
document to me, with the other papers; and it suggests (to my mind)
a clue to the nature of the conspiracy which threatened the Colonel's
life."

"Then you do believe, sir," I said, "that there was a conspiracy?"

"Not possessing my father's excellent common sense," answered Mr.
Franklin, "I believe the Colonel's life was threatened, exactly as the
Colonel said. The sealed instructions, as I think, explain how it was
that he died, after all, quietly in his bed. In the event of his death
by violence (that is to say, in the absence of the regular letter from
him at the appointed date), my father was then directed to send the
Moonstone secretly to Amsterdam. It was to be deposited in that city
with a famous diamond-cutter, and it was to be cut up into from four to
six separate stones. The stones were then to be sold for what they
would fetch, and the proceeds were to be applied to the founding of that
professorship of experimental chemistry, which the Colonel has since
endowed by his Will. Now, Betteredge, exert those sharp wits of yours,
and observe the conclusion to which the Colonel's instructions point!"

I instantly exerted my wits. They were of the slovenly English sort; and
they consequently muddled it all, until Mr. Franklin took them in hand,
and pointed out what they ought to see.

"Remark," says Mr. Franklin, "that the integrity of the Diamond, as a
whole stone, is here artfully made dependent on the preservation from
violence of the Colonel's life. He is not satisfied with saying to the
enemies he dreads, 'Kill me--and you will be no nearer to the Diamond
than you are now; it is where you can't get at it--in the guarded
strong-room of a bank.' He says instead, 'Kill me--and the Diamond will
be the Diamond no longer; its identity will be destroyed.' What does
that mean?"

Here I had (as I thought) a flash of the wonderful foreign brightness.

"I know," I said. "It means lowering the value of the stone, and
cheating the rogues in that way!"

"Nothing of the sort," says Mr. Franklin. "I have inquired about that.
The flawed Diamond, cut up, would actually fetch more than the Diamond
as it now is; for this plain reason--that from four to six perfect
brilliants might be cut from it, which would be, collectively, worth
more money than the large--but imperfect single stone. If robbery for
the purpose of gain was at the bottom of the conspiracy, the Colonel's
instructions absolutely made the Diamond better worth stealing. More
money could have been got for it, and the disposal of it in the diamond
market would have been infinitely easier, if it had passed through the
hands of the workmen of Amsterdam."

"Lord bless us, sir!" I burst out. "What was the plot, then?"

"A plot organised among the Indians who originally owned the jewel,"
says Mr. Franklin--"a plot with some old Hindoo superstition at the
bottom of it. That is my opinion, confirmed by a family paper which I
have about me at this moment."

I saw, now, why the appearance of the three Indian jugglers at our house
had presented itself to Mr. Franklin in the light of a circumstance
worth noting.

"I don't want to force my opinion on you," Mr. Franklin went on. "The
idea of certain chosen servants of an old Hindoo superstition devoting
themselves, through all difficulties and dangers, to watching the
opportunity of recovering their sacred gem, appears to me to be
perfectly consistent with everything that we know of the patience of
Oriental races, and the influence of Oriental religions. But then I am
an imaginative man; and the butcher, the baker, and the tax-gatherer,
are not the only credible realities in existence to my mind. Let the
guess I have made at the truth in this matter go for what it is worth,
and let us get on to the only practical question that concerns us. Does
the conspiracy against the Moonstone survive the Colonel's death? And
did the Colonel know it, when he left the birthday gift to his niece?"

I began to see my lady and Miss Rachel at the end of it all, now. Not a
word he said escaped me.

"I was not very willing, when I discovered the story of the Moonstone,"
said Mr. Franklin, "to be the means of bringing it here. But Mr. Bruff
reminded me that somebody must put my cousin's legacy into my cousin's
hands--and that I might as well do it as anybody else. After taking the
Diamond out of the bank, I fancied I was followed in the streets by a
shabby, dark-complexioned man. I went to my father's house to pick up
my luggage, and found a letter there, which unexpectedly detained me in
London. I went back to the bank with the Diamond, and thought I saw
the shabby man again. Taking the Diamond once more out of the bank
this morning, I saw the man for the third time, gave him the slip, and
started (before he recovered the trace of me) by the morning instead
of the afternoon train. Here I am, with the Diamond safe and sound--and
what is the first news that meets me? I find that three strolling
Indians have been at the house, and that my arrival from London, and
something which I am expected to have about me, are two special objects
of investigation to them when they believe themselves to be alone. I
don't waste time and words on their pouring the ink into the boy's hand,
and telling him to look in it for a man at a distance, and for something
in that man's pocket. The thing (which I have often seen done in the
East) is 'hocus-pocus' in my opinion, as it is in yours. The present
question for us to decide is, whether I am wrongly attaching a meaning
to a mere accident? or whether we really have evidence of the Indians
being on the track of the Moonstone, the moment it is removed from the
safe keeping of the bank?"

Neither he nor I seemed to fancy dealing with this part of the inquiry.
We looked at each other, and then we looked at the tide, oozing in
smoothly, higher and higher, over the Shivering Sand.

"What are you thinking of?" says Mr. Franklin, suddenly.

"I was thinking, sir," I answered, "that I should like to shy the
Diamond into the quicksand, and settle the question in THAT way."

"If you have got the value of the stone in your pocket," answered Mr.
Franklin, "say so, Betteredge, and in it goes!"

It's curious to note, when your mind's anxious, how very far in the way
of relief a very small joke will go. We found a fund of merriment,
at the time, in the notion of making away with Miss Rachel's
lawful property, and getting Mr. Blake, as executor, into dreadful
trouble--though where the merriment was, I am quite at a loss to
discover now.

Mr. Franklin was the first to bring the talk back to the talk's proper
purpose. He took an envelope out of his pocket, opened it, and handed to
me the paper inside.

"Betteredge," he said, "we must face the question of the Colonel's
motive in leaving this legacy to his niece, for my aunt's sake. Bear
in mind how Lady Verinder treated her brother from the time when he
returned to England, to the time when he told you he should remember his
niece's birthday. And read that."

He gave me the extract from the Colonel's Will. I have got it by me
while I write these words; and I copy it, as follows, for your benefit:

"Thirdly, and lastly, I give and bequeath to my niece, Rachel Verinder,
daughter and only child of my sister, Julia Verinder, widow--if her
mother, the said Julia Verinder, shall be living on the said Rachel
Verinder's next Birthday after my death--the yellow Diamond belonging to
me, and known in the East by the name of The Moonstone: subject to this
condition, that her mother, the said Julia Verinder, shall be living at
the time. And I hereby desire my executor to give my Diamond, either by
his own hands or by the hands of some trustworthy representative whom he
shall appoint, into the personal possession of my said niece Rachel, on
her next birthday after my death, and in the presence, if possible, of
my sister, the said Julia Verinder. And I desire that my said sister may
be informed, by means of a true copy of this, the third and last clause
of my Will, that I give the Diamond to her daughter Rachel, in token of
my free forgiveness of the injury which her conduct towards me has been
the means of inflicting on my reputation in my lifetime; and especially
in proof that I pardon, as becomes a dying man, the insult offered to me
as an officer and a gentleman, when her servant, by her orders, closed
the door of her house against me, on the occasion of her daughter's
birthday."

More words followed these, providing if my lady was dead, or if Miss
Rachel was dead, at the time of the testator's decease, for the Diamond
being sent to Holland, in accordance with the sealed instructions
originally deposited with it. The proceeds of the sale were, in
that case, to be added to the money already left by the Will for the
professorship of chemistry at the university in the north.

I handed the paper back to Mr. Franklin, sorely troubled what to say to
him. Up to that moment, my own opinion had been (as you know) that the
Colonel had died as wickedly as he had lived. I don't say the copy
from his Will actually converted me from that opinion: I only say it
staggered me.

"Well," says Mr. Franklin, "now you have read the Colonel's own
statement, what do you say? In bringing the Moonstone to my aunt's
house, am I serving his vengeance blindfold, or am I vindicating him in
the character of a penitent and Christian man?"

"It seems hard to say, sir," I answered, "that he died with a horrid
revenge in his heart, and a horrid lie on his lips. God alone knows the
truth. Don't ask me."

Mr. Franklin sat twisting and turning the extract from the Will in
his fingers, as if he expected to squeeze the truth out of it in that
manner. He altered quite remarkably, at the same time. From being brisk
and bright, he now became, most unaccountably, a slow, solemn, and
pondering young man.

"This question has two sides," he said. "An Objective side, and a
Subjective side. Which are we to take?"

He had had a German education as well as a French. One of the two had
been in undisturbed possession of him (as I supposed) up to this time.
And now (as well as I could make out) the other was taking its place. It
is one of my rules in life, never to notice what I don't understand. I
steered a middle course between the Objective side and the Subjective
side. In plain English I stared hard, and said nothing.

"Let's extract the inner meaning of this," says Mr. Franklin. "Why
did my uncle leave the Diamond to Rachel? Why didn't he leave it to my
aunt?"

"That's not beyond guessing, sir, at any rate," I said. "Colonel
Herncastle knew my lady well enough to know that she would have refused
to accept any legacy that came to her from HIM."

"How did he know that Rachel might not refuse to accept it, too?"

"Is there any young lady in existence, sir, who could resist the
temptation of accepting such a birthday present as The Moonstone?"

"That's the Subjective view," says Mr. Franklin. "It does you great
credit, Betteredge, to be able to take the Subjective view. But there's
another mystery about the Colonel's legacy which is not accounted for
yet. How are we to explain his only giving Rachel her birthday present
conditionally on her mother being alive?"

"I don't want to slander a dead man, sir," I answered. "But if he HAS
purposely left a legacy of trouble and danger to his sister, by the
means of her child, it must be a legacy made conditional on his sister's
being alive to feel the vexation of it."

"Oh! That's your interpretation of his motive, is it? The Subjective
interpretation again! Have you ever been in Germany, Betteredge?"

"No, sir. What's your interpretation, if you please?"

"I can see," says Mr. Franklin, "that the Colonel's object may, quite
possibly, have been--not to benefit his niece, whom he had never even
seen--but to prove to his sister that he had died forgiving her, and to
prove it very prettily by means of a present made to her child. There is
a totally different explanation from yours, Betteredge, taking its
rise in a Subjective-Objective point of view. From all I can see, one
interpretation is just as likely to be right as the other."

Having brought matters to this pleasant and comforting issue, Mr.
Franklin appeared to think that he had completed all that was required
of him. He laid down flat on his back on the sand, and asked what was to
be done next.

He had been so clever, and clear-headed (before he began to talk the
foreign gibberish), and had so completely taken the lead in the business
up to the present time, that I was quite unprepared for such a sudden
change as he now exhibited in this helpless leaning upon me. It was not
till later that I learned--by assistance of Miss Rachel, who was
the first to make the discovery--that these puzzling shifts and
transformations in Mr. Franklin were due to the effect on him of his
foreign training. At the age when we are all of us most apt to take
our colouring, in the form of a reflection from the colouring of other
people, he had been sent abroad, and had been passed on from one nation
to another, before there was time for any one colouring more than
another to settle itself on him firmly. As a consequence of this, he
had come back with so many different sides to his character, all more or
less jarring with each other, that he seemed to pass his life in a state
of perpetual contradiction with himself. He could be a busy man, and
a lazy man; cloudy in the head, and clear in the head; a model of
determination, and a spectacle of helplessness, all together. He had
his French side, and his German side, and his Italian side--the original
English foundation showing through, every now and then, as much as
to say, "Here I am, sorely transmogrified, as you see, but there's
something of me left at the bottom of him still." Miss Rachel used to
remark that the Italian side of him was uppermost, on those occasions
when he unexpectedly gave in, and asked you in his nice sweet-tempered
way to take his own responsibilities on your shoulders. You will do him
no injustice, I think, if you conclude that the Italian side of him was
uppermost now.

"Isn't it your business, sir," I asked, "to know what to do next? Surely
it can't be mine?"

Mr. Franklin didn't appear to see the force of my question--not being in
a position, at the time, to see anything but the sky over his head.

"I don't want to alarm my aunt without reason," he said. "And I don't
want to leave her without what may be a needful warning. If you were in
my place, Betteredge, tell me, in one word, what would you do?"

In one word, I told him: "Wait."

"With all my heart," says Mr. Franklin. "How long?"

I proceeded to explain myself.

"As I understand it, sir," I said, "somebody is bound to put this plaguy
Diamond into Miss Rachel's hands on her birthday--and you may as well
do it as another. Very good. This is the twenty-fifth of May, and the
birthday is on the twenty-first of June. We have got close on four weeks
before us. Let's wait and see what happens in that time; and let's warn
my lady, or not, as the circumstances direct us."

"Perfect, Betteredge, as far as it goes!" says Mr. Franklin. "But
between this and the birthday, what's to be done with the Diamond?"

"What your father did with it, to be sure, sir!" I answered. "Your
father put it in the safe keeping of a bank in London. You put in the
safe keeping of the bank at Frizinghall." (Frizinghall was our nearest
town, and the Bank of England wasn't safer than the bank there.) "If
I were you, sir," I added, "I would ride straight away with it to
Frizinghall before the ladies come back."

The prospect of doing something--and, what is more, of doing that
something on a horse--brought Mr. Franklin up like lightning from the
flat of his back. He sprang to his feet, and pulled me up, without
ceremony, on to mine. "Betteredge, you are worth your weight in
gold," he said. "Come along, and saddle the best horse in the stables
directly."

Here (God bless it!) was the original English foundation of him showing
through all the foreign varnish at last! Here was the Master Franklin
I remembered, coming out again in the good old way at the prospect of a
ride, and reminding me of the good old times! Saddle a horse for him?
I would have saddled a dozen horses, if he could only have ridden them
all!

We went back to the house in a hurry; we had the fleetest horse in the
stables saddled in a hurry; and Mr. Franklin rattled off in a hurry, to
lodge the cursed Diamond once more in the strong-room of a bank. When
I heard the last of his horse's hoofs on the drive, and when I turned
about in the yard and found I was alone again, I felt half inclined to
ask myself if I hadn't woke up from a dream.



CHAPTER VII


While I was in this bewildered frame of mind, sorely needing a little
quiet time by myself to put me right again, my daughter Penelope got in
my way (just as her late mother used to get in my way on the stairs),
and instantly summoned me to tell her all that had passed at the
conference between Mr. Franklin and me. Under present circumstances,
the one thing to be done was to clap the extinguisher upon Penelope's
curiosity on the spot. I accordingly replied that Mr. Franklin and I had
both talked of foreign politics, till we could talk no longer, and had
then mutually fallen asleep in the heat of the sun. Try that sort of
answer when your wife or your daughter next worries you with an awkward
question at an awkward time, and depend on the natural sweetness of
women for kissing and making it up again at the next opportunity.

The afternoon wore on, and my lady and Miss Rachel came back.

Needless to say how astonished they were, when they heard that Mr.
Franklin Blake had arrived, and had gone off again on horseback.
Needless also to say, that THEY asked awkward questions directly, and
that the "foreign politics" and the "falling asleep in the sun" wouldn't
serve a second time over with THEM. Being at the end of my invention, I
said Mr. Franklin's arrival by the early train was entirely attributable
to one of Mr. Franklin's freaks. Being asked, upon that, whether his
galloping off again on horseback was another of Mr. Franklin's freaks,
I said, "Yes, it was;" and slipped out of it--I think very cleverly--in
that way.

Having got over my difficulties with the ladies, I found more
difficulties waiting for me when I went back to my own room. In came
Penelope--with the natural sweetness of women--to kiss and make it
up again; and--with the natural curiosity of women--to ask another
question. This time she only wanted me to tell her what was the matter
with our second housemaid, Rosanna Spearman.

After leaving Mr. Franklin and me at the Shivering Sand, Rosanna, it
appeared, had returned to the house in a very unaccountable state of
mind. She had turned (if Penelope was to be believed) all the colours of
the rainbow. She had been merry without reason, and sad without reason.
In one breath she asked hundreds of questions about Mr. Franklin Blake,
and in another breath she had been angry with Penelope for presuming to
suppose that a strange gentleman could possess any interest for her. She
had been surprised, smiling, and scribbling Mr. Franklin's name inside
her workbox. She had been surprised again, crying and looking at her
deformed shoulder in the glass. Had she and Mr. Franklin known anything
of each other before to-day? Quite impossible! Had they heard anything
of each other? Impossible again! I could speak to Mr. Franklin's
astonishment as genuine, when he saw how the girl stared at him.
Penelope could speak to the girl's inquisitiveness as genuine, when she
asked questions about Mr. Franklin. The conference between us, conducted
in this way, was tiresome enough, until my daughter suddenly ended it
by bursting out with what I thought the most monstrous supposition I had
ever heard in my life.

"Father!" says Penelope, quite seriously, "there's only one explanation
of it. Rosanna has fallen in love with Mr. Franklin Blake at first
sight!"

You have heard of beautiful young ladies falling in love at first
sight, and have thought it natural enough. But a housemaid out of a
reformatory, with a plain face and a deformed shoulder, falling in love,
at first sight, with a gentleman who comes on a visit to her mistress's
house, match me that, in the way of an absurdity, out of any story-book
in Christendom, if you can! I laughed till the tears rolled down my
cheeks. Penelope resented my merriment, in rather a strange way. "I
never knew you cruel before, father," she said, very gently, and went
out.

My girl's words fell upon me like a splash of cold water. I was savage
with myself, for feeling uneasy in myself the moment she had spoken
them--but so it was. We will change the subject, if you please. I am
sorry I drifted into writing about it; and not without reason, as you
will see when we have gone on together a little longer.

The evening came, and the dressing-bell for dinner rang, before Mr.
Franklin returned from Frizinghall. I took his hot water up to his
room myself, expecting to hear, after this extraordinary delay, that
something had happened. To my great disappointment (and no doubt to
yours also), nothing had happened. He had not met with the Indians,
either going or returning. He had deposited the Moonstone in the
bank--describing it merely as a valuable of great price--and he had got
the receipt for it safe in his pocket. I went down-stairs, feeling
that this was rather a flat ending, after all our excitement about the
Diamond earlier in the day.

How the meeting between Mr. Franklin and his aunt and cousin went off,
is more than I can tell you.

I would have given something to have waited at table that day. But, in
my position in the household, waiting at dinner (except on high
family festivals) was letting down my dignity in the eyes of the other
servants--a thing which my lady considered me quite prone enough to do
already, without seeking occasions for it. The news brought to me from
the upper regions, that evening, came from Penelope and the footman.
Penelope mentioned that she had never known Miss Rachel so particular
about the dressing of her hair, and had never seen her look so bright
and pretty as she did when she went down to meet Mr. Franklin in the
drawing-room. The footman's report was, that the preservation of a
respectful composure in the presence of his betters, and the waiting
on Mr. Franklin Blake at dinner, were two of the hardest things to
reconcile with each other that had ever tried his training in service.
Later in the evening, we heard them singing and playing duets, Mr.
Franklin piping high, Miss Rachel piping higher, and my lady, on the
piano, following them as it were over hedge and ditch, and seeing them
safe through it in a manner most wonderful and pleasant to hear through
the open windows, on the terrace at night. Later still, I went to Mr.
Franklin in the smoking-room, with the soda-water and brandy, and found
that Miss Rachel had put the Diamond clean out of his head. "She's the
most charming girl I have seen since I came back to England!" was all I
could extract from him, when I endeavoured to lead the conversation to
more serious things.

Towards midnight, I went round the house to lock up, accompanied by my
second in command (Samuel, the footman), as usual. When all the doors
were made fast, except the side door that opened on the terrace, I sent
Samuel to bed, and stepped out for a breath of fresh air before I too
went to bed in my turn.

The night was still and close, and the moon was at the full in the
heavens. It was so silent out of doors, that I heard from time to time,
very faint and low, the fall of the sea, as the ground-swell heaved
it in on the sand-bank near the mouth of our little bay. As the house
stood, the terrace side was the dark side; but the broad moonlight
showed fair on the gravel walk that ran along the next side to the
terrace. Looking this way, after looking up at the sky, I saw the shadow
of a person in the moonlight thrown forward from behind the corner of
the house.

Being old and sly, I forbore to call out; but being also, unfortunately,
old and heavy, my feet betrayed me on the gravel. Before I could steal
suddenly round the corner, as I had proposed, I heard lighter feet
than mine--and more than one pair of them as I thought--retreating in
a hurry. By the time I had got to the corner, the trespassers, whoever
they were, had run into the shrubbery at the off side of the walk, and
were hidden from sight among the thick trees and bushes in that part of
the grounds. From the shrubbery, they could easily make their way, over
our fence into the road. If I had been forty years younger, I might have
had a chance of catching them before they got clear of our premises.
As it was, I went back to set a-going a younger pair of legs than mine.
Without disturbing anybody, Samuel and I got a couple of guns, and went
all round the house and through the shrubbery. Having made sure that
no persons were lurking about anywhere in our grounds, we turned back.
Passing over the walk where I had seen the shadow, I now noticed, for
the first time, a little bright object, lying on the clean gravel, under
the light of the moon. Picking the object up, I discovered it was a
small bottle, containing a thick sweet-smelling liquor, as black as ink.

I said nothing to Samuel. But, remembering what Penelope had told me
about the jugglers, and the pouring of the little pool of ink into the
palm of the boy's hand, I instantly suspected that I had disturbed the
three Indians, lurking about the house, and bent, in their heathenish
way, on discovering the whereabouts of the Diamond that night.



CHAPTER VIII


Here, for one moment, I find it necessary to call a halt.

On summoning up my own recollections--and on getting Penelope to help
me, by consulting her journal--I find that we may pass pretty rapidly
over the interval between Mr. Franklin Blake's arrival and Miss Rachel's
birthday. For the greater part of that time the days passed, and brought
nothing with them worth recording. With your good leave, then, and
with Penelope's help, I shall notice certain dates only in this place;
reserving to myself to tell the story day by day, once more, as soon as
we get to the time when the business of the Moonstone became the chief
business of everybody in our house.

This said, we may now go on again--beginning, of course, with the bottle
of sweet-smelling ink which I found on the gravel walk at night.

On the next morning (the morning of the twenty-sixth) I showed Mr.
Franklin this article of jugglery, and told him what I have already told
you. His opinion was, not only that the Indians had been lurking about
after the Diamond, but also that they were actually foolish enough to
believe in their own magic--meaning thereby the making of signs on a
boy's head, and the pouring of ink into a boy's hand, and then expecting
him to see persons and things beyond the reach of human vision. In our
country, as well as in the East, Mr. Franklin informed me, there are
people who practise this curious hocus-pocus (without the ink, however);
and who call it by a French name, signifying something like brightness
of sight. "Depend upon it," says Mr. Franklin, "the Indians took it for
granted that we should keep the Diamond here; and they brought their
clairvoyant boy to show them the way to it, if they succeeded in getting
into the house last night."

"Do you think they'll try again, sir?" I asked.

"It depends," says Mr. Franklin, "on what the boy can really do. If he
can see the Diamond through the iron safe of the bank at Frizinghall, we
shall be troubled with no more visits from the Indians for the present.
If he can't, we shall have another chance of catching them in the
shrubbery, before many more nights are over our heads."

I waited pretty confidently for that latter chance; but, strange to
relate, it never came.

Whether the jugglers heard, in the town, of Mr. Franklin having been
seen at the bank, and drew their conclusions accordingly; or whether the
boy really did see the Diamond where the Diamond was now lodged (which
I, for one, flatly disbelieve); or whether, after all, it was a mere
effect of chance, this at any rate is the plain truth--not the ghost
of an Indian came near the house again, through the weeks that passed
before Miss Rachel's birthday. The jugglers remained in and about the
town plying their trade; and Mr. Franklin and I remained waiting to see
what might happen, and resolute not to put the rogues on their guard
by showing our suspicions of them too soon. With this report of the
proceedings on either side, ends all that I have to say about the