The Moonstone
of saying a private word to Mr. Franklin in the hall.
“Have you got the Diamond safe, sir?”
He nodded, and tapped the breast-pocket of his coat.
“Have you seen anything of the Indians?”
“Not a glimpse.” With that answer, he asked for my lady, and, hearing
she was in the small drawing-room, went there straight. The bell rang,
before he had been a minute in the room, and Penelope was sent to tell
Miss Rachel that Mr. Franklin Blake wanted to speak to her.
Crossing the hall, about half an hour afterwards, I was brought to a
sudden standstill by an outbreak of screams from the small
drawing-room. I can’t say I was at all alarmed; for I recognised in the
screams the favourite large O of the Miss Ablewhites. However, I went
in (on pretence of asking for instructions about the dinner) to
discover whether anything serious had really happened.
There stood Miss Rachel at the table, like a person fascinated, with
the Colonel’s unlucky Diamond in her hand. There, on either side of
her, knelt the two Bouncers, devouring the jewel with their eyes, and
screaming with ecstasy every time it flashed on them in a new light.
There, at the opposite side of the table, stood Mr. Godfrey, clapping
his hands like a large child, and singing out softly, “Exquisite!
exquisite!” There sat Mr. Franklin in a chair by the bookcase, tugging
at his beard, and looking anxiously towards the window. And there, at
the window, stood the object he was contemplating—my lady, having the
extract from the Colonel’s Will in her hand, and keeping her back
turned on the whole of the company.
She faced me, when I asked for my instructions; and I saw the family
frown gathering over her eyes, and the family temper twitching at the
corners of her mouth.
“Come to my room in half an hour,” she answered. “I shall have
something to say to you then.”
With those words, she went out. It was plain enough that she was posed
by the same difficulty which had posed Mr. Franklin and me in our
conference at the Shivering Sand. Was the legacy of the Moonstone a
proof that she had treated her brother with cruel injustice? or was it
a proof that he was worse than the worst she had ever thought of him?
Serious questions those for my lady to determine, while her daughter,
innocent of all knowledge of the Colonel’s character, stood there with
the Colonel’s birthday gift in her hand.
Before I could leave the room in my turn, Miss Rachel, always
considerate to the old servant who had been in the house when she was
born, stopped me. “Look, Gabriel!” she said, and flashed the jewel
before my eyes in a ray of sunlight that poured through the window.
Lord bless us! it _was_ a Diamond! As large, or nearly, as a plover’s
egg! The light that streamed from it was like the light of the harvest
moon. When you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow
deep that drew your eyes into it so that they saw nothing else. It
seemed unfathomable; this jewel, that you could hold between your
finger and thumb, seemed unfathomable as the heavens themselves. We set
it in the sun, and then shut the light out of the room, and it shone
awfully out of the depths of its own brightness, with a moony gleam, in
the dark. No wonder Miss Rachel was fascinated: no wonder her cousins
screamed. The Diamond laid such a hold on _me_ that I burst out with as
large an “O” as the Bouncers themselves. The only one of us who kept
his senses was Mr. Godfrey. He put an arm round each of his sisters’
waists, and, looking compassionately backwards and forwards between the
Diamond and me, said, “Carbon, Betteredge! mere carbon, my good friend,
after all!”
His object, I suppose, was to instruct me. All he did, however, was to
remind me of the dinner. I hobbled off to my army of waiters
downstairs. As I went out, Mr. Godfrey said, “Dear old Betteredge, I
have the truest regard for him!” He was embracing his sisters, and
ogling Miss Rachel, while he honoured me with that testimony of
affection. Something like a stock of love to draw on _there!_ Mr.
Franklin was a perfect savage by comparison with him.
At the end of half an hour, I presented myself, as directed, in my
lady’s room.
What passed between my mistress and me, on this occasion, was, in the
main, a repetition of what had passed between Mr. Franklin and me at
the Shivering Sand—with this difference, that I took care to keep my
own counsel about the jugglers, seeing that nothing had happened to
justify me in alarming my lady on this head. When I received my
dismissal, I could see that she took the blackest view possible of the
Colonel’s motives, and that she was bent on getting the Moonstone out
of her daughter’s possession at the first opportunity.
On my way back to my own part of the house, I was encountered by Mr.
Franklin. He wanted to know if I had seen anything of his cousin
Rachel. I had seen nothing of her. Could I tell him where his cousin
Godfrey was? I didn’t know; but I began to suspect that cousin Godfrey
might not be far away from cousin Rachel. Mr. Franklin’s suspicions
apparently took the same turn. He tugged hard at his beard, and went
and shut himself up in the library with a bang of the door that had a
world of meaning in it.
I was interrupted no more in the business of preparing for the birthday
dinner till it was time for me to smarten myself up for receiving the
company. Just as I had got my white waistcoat on, Penelope presented
herself at my toilet, on pretence of brushing what little hair I have
got left, and improving the tie of my white cravat. My girl was in high
spirits, and I saw she had something to say to me. She gave me a kiss
on the top of my bald head, and whispered, “News for you, father! Miss
Rachel has refused him.”
“Who’s ‘_him_’?” I asked.
“The ladies’ committee-man, father,” says Penelope. “A nasty sly
fellow! I hate him for trying to supplant Mr. Franklin!”
If I had had breath enough, I should certainly have protested against
this indecent way of speaking of an eminent philanthropic character.
But my daughter happened to be improving the tie of my cravat at that
moment, and the whole strength of her feelings found its way into her
fingers. I never was more nearly strangled in my life.
“I saw him take her away alone into the rose-garden,” says Penelope.
“And I waited behind the holly to see how they came back. They had gone
out arm-in-arm, both laughing. They came back, walking separate, as
grave as grave could be, and looking straight away from each other in a
manner which there was no mistaking. I never was more delighted,
father, in my life! There’s one woman in the world who can resist Mr.
Godfrey Ablewhite, at any rate; and, if I was a lady, I should be
another!”
Here I should have protested again. But my daughter had got the
hair-brush by this time, and the whole strength of her feelings had
passed into _that_. If you are bald, you will understand how she
sacrificed me. If you are not, skip this bit, and thank God you have
got something in the way of a defence between your hair-brush and your
head.
“Just on the other side of the holly,” Penelope went on, “Mr. Godfrey
came to a standstill. ‘You prefer,’ says he, ‘that I should stop here
as if nothing had happened?’ Miss Rachel turned on him like lightning.
‘You have accepted my mother’s invitation,’ she said; ‘and you are here
to meet her guests. Unless you wish to make a scandal in the house, you
will remain, of course!’ She went on a few steps, and then seemed to
relent a little. ‘Let us forget what has passed, Godfrey,’ she said,
‘and let us remain cousins still.’ She gave him her hand. He kissed it,
which _I_ should have considered taking a liberty, and then she left
him. He waited a little by himself, with his head down, and his heel
grinding a hole slowly in the gravel walk; you never saw a man look
more put out in your life. ‘Awkward!’ he said between his teeth, when
he looked up, and went on to the house—‘very awkward!’ If that was his
opinion of himself, he was quite right. Awkward enough, I’m sure. And
the end of it is, father, what I told you all along,” cries Penelope,
finishing me off with a last scarification, the hottest of all. “Mr.
Franklin’s the man!”
I got possession of the hair-brush, and opened my lips to administer
the reproof which, you will own, my daughter’s language and conduct
richly deserved.
Before I could say a word, the crash of carriage-wheels outside struck
in, and stopped me. The first of the dinner-company had come. Penelope
instantly ran off. I put on my coat, and looked in the glass. My head
was as red as a lobster; but, in other respects, I was as nicely
dressed for the ceremonies of the evening as a man need be. I got into
the hall just in time to announce the two first of the guests. You
needn’t feel particularly interested about them. Only the
philanthropist’s father and mother—Mr. and Mrs. Ablewhite.
CHAPTER X
One on the top of the other the rest of the company followed the
Ablewhites, till we had the whole tale of them complete. Including the
family, they were twenty-four in all. It was a noble sight to see, when
they were settled in their places round the dinner-table, and the
Rector of Frizinghall (with beautiful elocution) rose and said grace.
There is no need to worry you with a list of the guests. You will meet
none of them a second time—in my part of the story, at any rate—with
the exception of two.
Those two sat on either side of Miss Rachel, who, as queen of the day,
was naturally the great attraction of the party. On this occasion she
was more particularly the centre-point towards which everybody’s eyes
were directed; for (to my lady’s secret annoyance) she wore her
wonderful birthday present, which eclipsed all the rest—the Moonstone.
It was without any setting when it had been placed in her hands; but
that universal genius, Mr. Franklin, had contrived, with the help of
his neat fingers and a little bit of silver wire, to fix it as a brooch
in the bosom of her white dress. Everybody wondered at the prodigious
size and beauty of the Diamond, as a matter of course. But the only two
of the company who said anything out of the common way about it were
those two guests I have mentioned, who sat by Miss Rachel on her right
hand and her left.
The guest on her left was Mr. Candy, our doctor at Frizinghall.
This was a pleasant, companionable little man, with the drawback,
however, I must own, of being too fond, in season and out of season, of
his joke, and of his plunging in rather a headlong manner into talk
with strangers, without waiting to feel his way first. In society, he
was constantly making mistakes, and setting people unintentionally by
the ears together. In his medical practice he was a more prudent man;
picking up his discretion (as his enemies said) by a kind of instinct,
and proving to be generally right where more carefully conducted
doctors turned out to be wrong. What _he_ said about the Diamond to
Miss Rachel was said, as usual, by way of a mystification or joke. He
gravely entreated her (in the interests of science) to let him take it
home and burn it. “We will first heat it, Miss Rachel,” says the
doctor, “to such and such a degree; then we will expose it to a current
of air; and, little by little—puff!—we evaporate the Diamond, and spare
you a world of anxiety about the safe keeping of a valuable precious
stone!” My lady, listening with rather a careworn expression on her
face, seemed to wish that the doctor had been in earnest, and that he
could have found Miss Rachel zealous enough in the cause of science to
sacrifice her birthday gift.
The other guest, who sat on my young lady’s right hand, was an eminent
public character—being no other than the celebrated Indian traveller,