The Moonstone
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 downstairs, 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 Indians for the present.
On the twenty-ninth of the month, Miss Rachel and Mr. Franklin hit on a
new method of working their way together through the time which might
otherwise have hung heavy on their hands. There are reasons for taking
particular notice here of the occupation that amused them. You will
find it has a bearing on something that is still to come.
Gentlefolks in general have a very awkward rock ahead in life—the rock
ahead of their own idleness. Their lives being, for the most part,
passed in looking about them for something to do, it is curious to
see—especially when their tastes are of what is called the intellectual
sort—how often they drift blindfold into some nasty pursuit. Nine times
out of ten they take to torturing something, or to spoiling
something—and they firmly believe they are improving their minds, when
the plain truth is, they are only making a mess in the house. I have
seen them (ladies, I am sorry to say, as well as gentlemen) go out, day
after day, for example, with empty pill-boxes, and catch newts, and
beetles, and spiders, and frogs, and come home and stick pins through
the miserable wretches, or cut them up, without a pang of remorse, into
little pieces. You see my young master, or my young mistress, poring
over one of their spiders’ insides with a magnifying-glass; or you meet
one of their frogs walking downstairs without his head—and when you
wonder what this cruel nastiness means, you are told that it means a
taste in my young master or my young mistress for natural history.
Sometimes, again, you see them occupied for hours together in spoiling
a pretty flower with pointed instruments, out of a stupid curiosity to
know what the flower is made of. Is its colour any prettier, or its
scent any sweeter, when you _do_ know? But there! the poor souls must
get through the time, you see—they must get through the time. You
dabbled in nasty mud, and made pies, when you were a child; and you
dabble in nasty science, and dissect spiders, and spoil flowers, when
you grow up. In the one case and in the other, the secret of it is,
that you have got nothing to think of in your poor empty head, and
nothing to do with your poor idle hands. And so it ends in your
spoiling canvas with paints, and making a smell in the house; or in
keeping tadpoles in a glass box full of dirty water, and turning
everybody’s stomach in the house; or in chipping off bits of stone
here, there, and everywhere, and dropping grit into all the victuals in
the house; or in staining your fingers in the pursuit of photography,
and doing justice without mercy on everybody’s face in the house. It
often falls heavy enough, no doubt, on people who are really obliged to
get their living, to be forced to work for the clothes that cover them,
the roof that shelters them, and the food that keeps them going. But
compare the hardest day’s work you ever did with the idleness that
splits flowers and pokes its way into spiders’ stomachs, and thank your
stars that your head has got something it _must_ think of, and your
hands something that they _must_ do.
As for Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel, they tortured nothing, I am glad
to say. They simply confined themselves to making a mess; and all they
spoilt, to do them justice, was the panelling of a door.
Mr. Franklin’s universal genius, dabbling in everything, dabbled in
what he called “decorative painting.” He had invented, he informed us,