The Moonstone
Mr. Murthwaite, who, at risk of his life, had penetrated in disguise
where no European had ever set foot before.
This was a long, lean, wiry, brown, silent man. He had a weary look,
and a very steady, attentive eye. It was rumoured that he was tired of
the humdrum life among the people in our parts, and longing to go back
and wander off on the tramp again in the wild places of the East.
Except what he said to Miss Rachel about her jewel, I doubt if he spoke
six words or drank so much as a single glass of wine, all through the
dinner. The Moonstone was the only object that interested him in the
smallest degree. The fame of it seemed to have reached him, in some of
those perilous Indian places where his wanderings had lain. After
looking at it silently for so long a time that Miss Rachel began to get
confused, he said to her in his cool immovable way, “If you ever go to
India, Miss Verinder, don’t take your uncle’s birthday gift with you. A
Hindoo diamond is sometimes part of a Hindoo religion. I know a certain
city, and a certain temple in that city, where, dressed as you are now,
your life would not be worth five minutes’ purchase.” Miss Rachel, safe
in England, was quite delighted to hear of her danger in India. The
Bouncers were more delighted still; they dropped their knives and forks
with a crash, and burst out together vehemently, “O! how interesting!”
My lady fidgeted in her chair, and changed the subject.
As the dinner got on, I became aware, little by little, that this
festival was not prospering as other like festivals had prospered
before it.
Looking back at the birthday now, by the light of what happened
afterwards, I am half inclined to think that the cursed Diamond must
have cast a blight on the whole company. I plied them well with wine;
and being a privileged character, followed the unpopular dishes round
the table, and whispered to the company confidentially, “Please to
change your mind and try it; for I know it will do you good.” Nine
times out of ten they changed their minds—out of regard for their old
original Betteredge, they were pleased to say—but all to no purpose.
There were gaps of silence in the talk, as the dinner got on, that made
me feel personally uncomfortable. When they did use their tongues
again, they used them innocently, in the most unfortunate manner and to
the worst possible purpose. Mr. Candy, the doctor, for instance, said
more unlucky things than I ever knew him to say before. Take one sample
of the way in which he went on, and you will understand what I had to
put up with at the sideboard, officiating as I was in the character of
a man who had the prosperity of the festival at heart.
One of our ladies present at dinner was worthy Mrs. Threadgall, widow
of the late Professor of that name. Talking of her deceased husband
perpetually, this good lady never mentioned to strangers that he _was_
deceased. She thought, I suppose, that every able-bodied adult in
England ought to know as much as that. In one of the gaps of silence,
somebody mentioned the dry and rather nasty subject of human anatomy;
whereupon good Mrs. Threadgall straightway brought in her late husband
as usual, without mentioning that he was dead. Anatomy she described as
the Professor’s favourite recreation in his leisure hours. As ill-luck
would have it, Mr. Candy, sitting opposite (who knew nothing of the
deceased gentleman), heard her. Being the most polite of men, he seized
the opportunity of assisting the Professor’s anatomical amusements on
the spot.
“They have got some remarkably fine skeletons lately at the College of
Surgeons,” says Mr. Candy, across the table, in a loud cheerful voice.
“I strongly recommend the Professor, ma’am, when he next has an hour to
spare, to pay them a visit.”
You might have heard a pin fall. The company (out of respect to the
Professor’s memory) all sat speechless. I was behind Mrs. Threadgall at
the time, plying her confidentially with a glass of hock. She dropped
her head, and said in a very low voice, “My beloved husband is no
more.”
Unluckily Mr. Candy, hearing nothing, and miles away from suspecting
the truth, went on across the table louder and politer than ever.
“The Professor may not be aware,” says he, “that the card of a member
of the College will admit him, on any day but Sunday, between the hours
of ten and four.”
Mrs. Threadgall dropped her head right into her tucker, and, in a lower
voice still, repeated the solemn words, “My beloved husband is no
more.”
I winked hard at Mr. Candy across the table. Miss Rachel touched his
arm. My lady looked unutterable things at him. Quite useless! On he
went, with a cordiality that there was no stopping anyhow. “I shall be
delighted,” says he, “to send the Professor my card, if you will oblige
me by mentioning his present address.”
“His present address, sir, is _the grave_,” says Mrs. Threadgall,
suddenly losing her temper, and speaking with an emphasis and fury that
made the glasses ring again. “The Professor has been dead these ten
years.”
“Oh, good Heavens!” says Mr. Candy. Excepting the Bouncers, who burst
out laughing, such a blank now fell on the company, that they might all
have been going the way of the Professor, and hailing as he did from
the direction of the grave.
So much for Mr. Candy. The rest of them were nearly as provoking in
their different ways as the doctor himself. When they ought to have
spoken, they didn’t speak; or when they did speak they were perpetually
at cross purposes. Mr. Godfrey, though so eloquent in public, declined
to exert himself in private. Whether he was sulky, or whether he was
bashful, after his discomfiture in the rose-garden, I can’t say. He
kept all his talk for the private ear of the lady (a member of our
family) who sat next to him. She was one of his committee-women—a
spiritually-minded person, with a fine show of collar-bone and a pretty
taste in champagne; liked it dry, you understand, and plenty of it.
Being close behind these two at the sideboard, I can testify, from what
I heard pass between them, that the company lost a good deal of very
improving conversation, which I caught up while drawing the corks, and
carving the mutton, and so forth. What they said about their Charities
I didn’t hear. When I had time to listen to them, they had got a long
way beyond their women to be confined, and their women to be rescued,
and were disputing on serious subjects. Religion (I understand Mr.
Godfrey to say, between the corks and the carving) meant love. And love
meant religion. And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And
heaven was earth, done up again to look like new. Earth had some very
objectionable people in it; but, to make amends for that, all the women
in heaven would be members of a prodigious committee that never
quarrelled, with all the men in attendance on them as ministering
angels. Beautiful! beautiful! But why the mischief did Mr. Godfrey keep
it all to his lady and himself?
Mr. Franklin again—surely, you will say, Mr. Franklin stirred the
company up into making a pleasant evening of it?
Nothing of the sort! He had quite recovered himself, and he was in
wonderful force and spirits, Penelope having informed him, I suspect,
of Mr. Godfrey’s reception in the rose-garden. But, talk as he might,
nine times out of ten he pitched on the wrong subject, or he addressed
himself to the wrong person; the end of it being that he offended some,
and puzzled all of them. That foreign training of his—those French and
German and Italian sides of him, to which I have already alluded—came
out, at my lady’s hospitable board, in a most bewildering manner.
What do you think, for instance, of his discussing the lengths to which
a married woman might let her admiration go for a man who was not her
husband, and putting it in his clear-headed witty French way to the
maiden aunt of the Vicar of Frizinghall? What do you think, when he
shifted to the German side, of his telling the lord of the manor, while
that great authority on cattle was quoting his experience in the
breeding of bulls, that experience, properly understood, counted for
nothing, and that the proper way to breed bulls was to look deep into
your own mind, evolve out of it the idea of a perfect bull, and produce
him? What do you say, when our county member, growing hot, at cheese
and salad time, about the spread of democracy in England, burst out as
follows: “If we once lose our ancient safeguards, Mr. Blake, I beg to
ask you, what have we got left?”—what do you say to Mr. Franklin
answering, from the Italian point of view: “We have got three things
left, sir—Love, Music, and Salad”? He not only terrified the company
with such outbreaks as these, but, when the English side of him turned
up in due course, he lost his foreign smoothness; and, getting on the
subject of the medical profession, said such downright things in
ridicule of doctors, that he actually put good-humoured little Mr.
Candy in a rage.
The dispute between them began in Mr. Franklin being led—I forget
how—to acknowledge that he had latterly slept very badly at night. Mr.
Candy thereupon told him that his nerves were all out of order and that
he ought to go through a course of medicine immediately. Mr. Franklin
replied that a course of medicine, and a course of groping in the dark,
meant, in his estimation, one and the same thing. Mr. Candy, hitting
back smartly, said that Mr. Franklin himself was, constitutionally
speaking, groping in the dark after sleep, and that nothing but
medicine could help him to find it. Mr. Franklin, keeping the ball up
on his side, said he had often heard of the blind leading the blind,
and now, for the first time, he knew what it meant. In this way, they
kept it going briskly, cut and thrust, till they both of them got
hot—Mr. Candy, in particular, so completely losing his self-control, in
defence of his profession, that my lady was obliged to interfere, and
forbid the dispute to go on. This necessary act of authority put the
last extinguisher on the spirits of the company. The talk spurted up
again here and there, for a minute or two at a time; but there was a
miserable lack of life and sparkle in it. The Devil (or the Diamond)
possessed that dinner-party; and it was a relief to everybody when my
mistress rose, and gave the ladies the signal to leave the gentlemen
over their wine.
I had just ranged the decanters in a row before old Mr. Ablewhite (who
represented the master of the house), when there came a sound from the
terrace which startled me out of my company manners on the instant.
Mr. Franklin and I looked at each other; it was the sound of the Indian
drum. As I live by bread, here were the jugglers returning to us with
the return of the Moonstone to the house!
As they rounded the corner of the terrace, and came in sight, I hobbled
out to warn them off. But, as ill-luck would have it, the two Bouncers
were beforehand with me. They whizzed out on to the terrace like a
couple of skyrockets, wild to see the Indians exhibit their tricks. The
other ladies followed; the gentlemen came out on their side. Before you
could say, “Lord bless us!” the rogues were making their salaams; and
the Bouncers were kissing the pretty little boy.
Mr. Franklin got on one side of Miss Rachel, and I put myself behind
her. If our suspicions were right, there she stood, innocent of all
knowledge of the truth, showing the Indians the Diamond in the bosom of
her dress!
I can’t tell you what tricks they performed, or how they did it. What
with the vexation about the dinner, and what with the provocation of
the rogues coming back just in the nick of time to see the jewel with
their own eyes, I own I lost my head. The first thing that I remember