The Moonstone
going on.
“Isn’t that Miss Verinder’s room?” asked Sergeant Cuff.
I replied that it was, and invited him to go in with me to supper. The
Sergeant remained in his place, and said something about enjoying the
smell of the garden at night. I left him to his enjoyment. Just as I
was turning in at the door, I heard “The Last Rose of Summer” at the
wicket-gate. Sergeant Cuff had made another discovery! And my young
lady’s window was at the bottom of it this time!
The latter reflection took me back again to the Sergeant, with a polite
intimation that I could not find it in my heart to leave him by
himself. “Is there anything you don’t understand up there?” I added,
pointing to Miss Rachel’s window.
Judging by his voice, Sergeant Cuff had suddenly risen again to the
right place in his own estimation. “You are great people for betting in
Yorkshire, are you not?” he asked.
“Well?” I said. “Suppose we are?”
“If I was a Yorkshireman,” proceeded the Sergeant, taking my arm, “I
would lay you an even sovereign, Mr. Betteredge, that your young lady
has suddenly resolved to leave the house. If I won on that event, I
should offer to lay another sovereign, that the idea has occurred to
her within the last hour.” The first of the Sergeant’s guesses startled
me. The second mixed itself up somehow in my head with the report we
had heard from the policeman, that Rosanna Spearman had returned from
the sands within the last hour. The two together had a curious effect
on me as we went in to supper. I shook off Sergeant Cuff’s arm, and,
forgetting my manners, pushed by him through the door to make my own
inquiries for myself.
Samuel, the footman, was the first person I met in the passage.
“Her ladyship is waiting to see you and Sergeant Cuff,” he said, before
I could put any questions to him.
“How long has she been waiting?” asked the Sergeant’s voice behind me.
“For the last hour, sir.”
There it was again! Rosanna had come back; Miss Rachel had taken some
resolution out of the common; and my lady had been waiting to see the
Sergeant—all within the last hour! It was not pleasant to find these
very different persons and things linking themselves together in this
way. I went on upstairs, without looking at Sergeant Cuff, or speaking
to him. My hand took a sudden fit of trembling as I lifted it to knock
at my mistress’s door.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” whispered the Sergeant over my shoulder,
“if a scandal was to burst up in the house tonight. Don’t be alarmed! I
have put the muzzle on worse family difficulties than this, in my
time.”
As he said the words I heard my mistress’s voice calling to us to come
in.
CHAPTER XVI
We found my lady with no light in the room but the reading-lamp. The
shade was screwed down so as to overshadow her face. Instead of looking
up at us in her usual straightforward way, she sat close at the table,
and kept her eyes fixed obstinately on an open book.
“Officer,” she said, “is it important to the inquiry you are
conducting, to know beforehand if any person now in this house wishes
to leave it?”
“Most important, my lady.”
“I have to tell you, then, that Miss Verinder proposes going to stay
with her aunt, Mrs. Ablewhite, of Frizinghall. She has arranged to
leave us the first thing tomorrow morning.”
Sergeant Cuff looked at me. I made a step forward to speak to my
mistress—and, feeling my heart fail me (if I must own it), took a step
back again, and said nothing.
“May I ask your ladyship _when_ Miss Verinder informed you that she was
going to her aunt’s?” inquired the Sergeant.
“About an hour since,” answered my mistress.
Sergeant Cuff looked at me once more. They say old people’s hearts are
not very easily moved. _My_ heart couldn’t have thumped much harder
than it did now, if I had been five-and-twenty again!
“I have no claim, my lady,” says the Sergeant, “to control Miss
Verinder’s actions. All I can ask you to do is to put off her
departure, if possible, till later in the day. I must go to Frizinghall
myself tomorrow morning—and I shall be back by two o’clock, if not
before. If Miss Verinder can be kept here till that time, I should wish
to say two words to her—unexpectedly—before she goes.”
My lady directed me to give the coachman her orders, that the carriage
was not to come for Miss Rachel until two o’clock. “Have you more to
say?” she asked of the Sergeant, when this had been done.
“Only one thing, your ladyship. If Miss Verinder is surprised at this
change in the arrangements, please not to mention Me as being the cause
of putting off her journey.”
My mistress lifted her head suddenly from her book as if she was going
to say something—checked herself by a great effort—and, looking back
again at the open page, dismissed us with a sign of her hand.
“That’s a wonderful woman,” said Sergeant Cuff, when we were out in the
hall again. “But for her self-control, the mystery that puzzles you,
Mr. Betteredge, would have been at an end tonight.”
At those words, the truth rushed at last into my stupid old head. For
the moment, I suppose I must have gone clean out of my senses. I seized
the Sergeant by the collar of his coat, and pinned him against the
wall.
“Damn you!” I cried out, “there’s something wrong about Miss Rachel—and
you have been hiding it from me all this time!”
Sergeant Cuff looked up at me—flat against the wall—without stirring a
hand, or moving a muscle of his melancholy face.
“Ah,” he said, “you’ve guessed it at last.”
My hand dropped from his collar, and my head sunk on my breast. Please
to remember, as some excuse for my breaking out as I did, that I had
served the family for fifty years. Miss Rachel had climbed upon my
knees, and pulled my whiskers, many and many a time when she was a
child. Miss Rachel, with all her faults, had been, to my mind, the
dearest and prettiest and best young mistress that ever an old servant
waited on, and loved. I begged Sergeant’s Cuff’s pardon, but I am
afraid I did it with watery eyes, and not in a very becoming way.
“Don’t distress yourself, Mr. Betteredge,” says the Sergeant, with more
kindness than I had any right to expect from him. “In my line of life
if we were quick at taking offence, we shouldn’t be worth salt to our
porridge. If it’s any comfort to you, collar me again. You don’t in the
least know how to do it; but I’ll overlook your awkwardness in
consideration of your feelings.”
He curled up at the corners of his lips, and, in his own dreary way,
seemed to think he had delivered himself of a very good joke.
I led him into my own little sitting-room, and closed the door.
“Tell me the truth, Sergeant,” I said. “What do you suspect? It’s no
kindness to hide it from me now.”
“I don’t suspect,” said Sergeant Cuff. “I know.”
My unlucky temper began to get the better of me again.
“Do you mean to tell me, in plain English,” I said, “that Miss Rachel
has stolen her own Diamond?”
“Yes,” says the Sergeant; “that is what I mean to tell you, in so many
words. Miss Verinder has been in secret possession of the Moonstone
from first to last; and she has taken Rosanna Spearman into her
confidence, because she has calculated on our suspecting Rosanna
Spearman of the theft. There is the whole case in a nutshell. Collar me
again, Mr. Betteredge. If it’s any vent to your feelings, collar me
again.”
God help me! my feelings were not to be relieved in that way. “Give me
your reasons!” That was all I could say to him.
“You shall hear my reasons tomorrow,” said the Sergeant. “If Miss
Verinder refuses to put off her visit to her aunt (which you will find
Miss Verinder will do), I shall be obliged to lay the whole case before
your mistress tomorrow. And, as I don’t know what may come of it, I
shall request you to be present, and to hear what passes on both sides.
Let the matter rest for tonight. No, Mr. Betteredge, you don’t get a
word more on the subject of the Moonstone out of me. There is your
table spread for supper. That’s one of the many human infirmities which
I always treat tenderly. If you will ring the bell, I’ll say grace.
‘For what we are going to receive——’”
“I wish you a good appetite to it, Sergeant,” I said. “_My_ appetite is
gone. I’ll wait and see you served, and then I’ll ask you to excuse me,
if I go away, and try to get the better of this by myself.”
I saw him served with the best of everything—and I shouldn’t have been
sorry if the best of everything had choked him. The head gardener (Mr.
Begbie) came in at the same time, with his weekly account. The Sergeant
got on the subject of roses and the merits of grass walks and gravel
walks immediately. I left the two together, and went out with a heavy
heart. This was the first trouble I remember for many a long year which
wasn’t to be blown off by a whiff of tobacco, and which was even beyond
the reach of _Robinson Crusoe_.
Being restless and miserable, and having no particular room to go to, I
took a turn on the terrace, and thought it over in peace and quietness
by myself. It doesn’t much matter what my thoughts were. I felt
wretchedly old, and worn out, and unfit for my place—and began to
wonder, for the first time in my life, when it would please God to take
me. With all this, I held firm, notwithstanding, to my belief in Miss
Rachel. If Sergeant Cuff had been Solomon in all his glory, and had
told me that my young lady had mixed herself up in a mean and guilty
plot, I should have had but one answer for Solomon, wise as he was,
“You don’t know her; and I do.”
My meditations were interrupted by Samuel. He brought me a written
message from my mistress.
Going into the house to get a light to read it by, Samuel remarked that
there seemed a change coming in the weather. My troubled mind had
prevented me from noticing it before. But, now my attention was roused,
I heard the dogs uneasy, and the wind moaning low. Looking up at the
sky, I saw the rack of clouds getting blacker and blacker, and hurrying
faster and faster over a watery moon. Wild weather coming—Samuel was
right, wild weather coming.
The message from my lady informed me, that the magistrate at
Frizinghall had written to remind her about the three Indians. Early in
the coming week, the rogues must needs be released, and left free to
follow their own devices. If we had any more questions to ask them,
there was no time to lose. Having forgotten to mention this, when she
had last seen Sergeant Cuff, my mistress now desired me to supply the
omission. The Indians had gone clean out of my head (as they have, no
doubt, gone clean out of yours). I didn’t see much use in stirring that
subject again. However, I obeyed my orders on the spot, as a matter of
course.
I found Sergeant Cuff and the gardener, with a bottle of Scotch whisky
between them, head over ears in an argument on the growing of roses.
The Sergeant was so deeply interested that he held up his hand, and
signed to me not to interrupt the discussion, when I came in. As far as
I could understand it, the question between them was, whether the white
moss rose did, or did not, require to be budded on the dog-rose to make
it grow well. Mr. Begbie said, Yes; and Sergeant Cuff said, No. They
appealed to me, as hotly as a couple of boys. Knowing nothing whatever
about the growing of roses, I steered a middle course—just as her
Majesty’s judges do, when the scales of justice bother them by hanging
even to a hair. “Gentlemen,” I remarked, “there is much to be said on
both sides.” In the temporary lull produced by that impartial sentence,
I laid my lady’s written message on the table, under the eyes of
Sergeant Cuff.
I had got by this time, as nearly as might be, to hate the Sergeant.
But truth compels me to acknowledge that, in respect of readiness of
mind, he was a wonderful man.