The Moonstone
the house, with nothing to talk of but Miss Rachel’s treatment of him;
and with nobody to address himself to but me. I found him (for example)
in the library, sitting under the map of Modern Italy, and quite
unaware of any other method of meeting his troubles, except the method
of talking about them. “I have several worthy aspirations, Betteredge;
but what am I to do with them now? I am full of dormant good qualities,
if Rachel would only have helped me to bring them out!” He was so
eloquent in drawing the picture of his own neglected merits, and so
pathetic in lamenting over it when it was done, that I felt quite at my
wits’ end how to console him, when it suddenly occurred to me that here
was a case for the wholesome application of a bit of _Robinson Crusoe_.
I hobbled out to my own room, and hobbled back with that immortal book.
Nobody in the library! The map of Modern Italy stared at _me_; and _I_
stared at the map of Modern Italy.
I tried the drawing-room. There was his handkerchief on the floor, to
prove that he had drifted in. And there was the empty room to prove
that he had drifted out again.
I tried the dining-room, and discovered Samuel with a biscuit and a
glass of sherry, silently investigating the empty air. A minute since,
Mr. Franklin had rung furiously for a little light refreshment. On its
production, in a violent hurry, by Samuel, Mr. Franklin had vanished
before the bell downstairs had quite done ringing with the pull he had
given to it.
I tried the morning-room, and found him at last. There he was at the
window, drawing hieroglyphics with his finger in the damp on the glass.
“Your sherry is waiting for you, sir,” I said to him. I might as well
have addressed myself to one of the four walls of the room; he was down
in the bottomless deep of his own meditations, past all pulling up.
“How do _you_ explain Rachel’s conduct, Betteredge?” was the only
answer I received. Not being ready with the needful reply, I produced
_Robinson Crusoe_, in which I am firmly persuaded some explanation
might have been found, if we had only searched long enough for it. Mr.
Franklin shut up _Robinson Crusoe_, and floundered into his
German-English gibberish on the spot. “Why not look into it?” he said,
as if I had personally objected to looking into it. “Why the devil lose
your patience, Betteredge, when patience is all that’s wanted to arrive
at the truth? Don’t interrupt me. Rachel’s conduct is perfectly
intelligible, if you will only do her the common justice to take the
Objective view first, and the Subjective view next, and the
Objective-Subjective view to wind up with. What do we know? We know
that the loss of the Moonstone, on Thursday morning last, threw her
into a state of nervous excitement, from which she has not recovered
yet. Do you mean to deny the Objective view, so far? Very well,
then—don’t interrupt me. Now, being in a state of nervous excitement,
how are we to expect that she should behave as she might otherwise have
behaved to any of the people about her? Arguing in this way, from
within-outwards, what do we reach? We reach the Subjective view. I defy
you to controvert the Subjective view. Very well then—what follows?
Good Heavens! the Objective-Subjective explanation follows, of course!
Rachel, properly speaking, is _not_ Rachel, but Somebody Else. Do I
mind being cruelly treated by Somebody Else? You are unreasonable
enough, Betteredge; but you can hardly accuse me of that. Then how does
it end? It ends, in spite of your confounded English narrowness and
prejudice, in my being perfectly happy and comfortable. Where’s the
sherry?”
My head was by this time in such a condition, that I was not quite sure
whether it was my own head, or Mr. Franklin’s. In this deplorable
state, I contrived to do, what I take to have been, three Objective
things. I got Mr. Franklin his sherry; I retired to my own room; and I
solaced myself with the most composing pipe of tobacco I ever remember
to have smoked in my life.
Don’t suppose, however, that I was quit of Mr. Franklin on such easy
terms as these. Drifting again, out of the morning-room into the hall,
he found his way to the offices next, smelt my pipe, and was instantly
reminded that he had been simple enough to give up smoking for Miss
Rachel’s sake. In the twinkling of an eye, he burst in on me with his
cigar-case, and came out strong on the one everlasting subject, in his
neat, witty, unbelieving, French way. “Give me a light, Betteredge. Is
it conceivable that a man can have smoked as long as I have without
discovering that there is a complete system for the treatment of women
at the bottom of his cigar-case? Follow me carefully, and I will prove
it in two words. You choose a cigar, you try it, and it disappoints
you. What do you do upon that? You throw it away and try another. Now
observe the application! You choose a woman, you try her, and she
breaks your heart. Fool! take a lesson from your cigar-case. Throw her
away, and try another!”
I shook my head at that. Wonderfully clever, I dare say, but my own
experience was dead against it. “In the time of the late Mrs.
Betteredge,” I said, “I felt pretty often inclined to try your
philosophy, Mr. Franklin. But the law insists on your smoking your
cigar, sir, when you have once chosen it.” I pointed that observation
with a wink. Mr. Franklin burst out laughing—and we were as merry as
crickets, until the next new side of his character turned up in due
course. So things went on with my young master and me; and so (while
the Sergeant and the gardener were wrangling over the roses) we two
spent the interval before the news came back from Frizinghall.
The pony-chaise returned a good half hour before I had ventured to
expect it. My lady had decided to remain for the present, at her
sister’s house. The groom brought two letters from his mistress; one
addressed to Mr. Franklin, and the other to me.
Mr. Franklin’s letter I sent to him in the library—into which refuge
his driftings had now taken him for the second time. My own letter, I
read in my own room. A cheque, which dropped out when I opened it,
informed me (before I had mastered the contents) that Sergeant Cuff’s
dismissal from the inquiry after the Moonstone was now a settled thing.
I sent to the conservatory to say that I wished to speak to the
Sergeant directly. He appeared, with his mind full of the gardener and
the dog-rose, declaring that the equal of Mr. Begbie for obstinacy
never had existed yet, and never would exist again. I requested him to
dismiss such wretched trifling as this from our conversation, and to
give his best attention to a really serious matter. Upon that he
exerted himself sufficiently to notice the letter in my hand. “Ah!” he
said in a weary way, “you have heard from her ladyship. Have I anything
to do with it, Mr. Betteredge?”
“You shall judge for yourself, Sergeant.” I thereupon read him the
letter (with my best emphasis and discretion), in the following words:
“MY GOOD GABRIEL,—I request that you will inform Sergeant Cuff, that I
have performed the promise I made to him; with this result, so far as
Rosanna Spearman is concerned. Miss Verinder solemnly declares, that
she has never spoken a word in private to Rosanna, since that unhappy
woman first entered my house. They never met, even accidentally, on the
night when the Diamond was lost; and no communication of any sort
whatever took place between them, from the Thursday morning when the
alarm was first raised in the house, to this present Saturday
afternoon, when Miss Verinder left us. After telling my daughter
suddenly, and in so many words, of Rosanna Spearman’s suicide—this is
what has come of it.”
Having reached that point, I looked up, and asked Sergeant Cuff what he
thought of the letter, so far?
“I should only offend you if I expressed _my_ opinion,” answered the
Sergeant. “Go on, Mr. Betteredge,” he said, with the most exasperating
resignation, “go on.”
When I remembered that this man had had the audacity to complain of our
gardener’s obstinacy, my tongue itched to “go on” in other words than
my mistress’s. This time, however, my Christianity held firm. I
proceeded steadily with her ladyship’s letter:
“Having appealed to Miss Verinder in the manner which the officer
thought most desirable, I spoke to her next in the manner which I
myself thought most likely to impress her. On two different occasions,
before my daughter left my roof, I privately warned her that she was
exposing herself to suspicion of the most unendurable and most
degrading kind. I have now told her, in the plainest terms, that my
apprehensions have been realised.
“Her answer to this, on her own solemn affirmation, is as plain as
words can be. In the first place, she owes no money privately to any
living creature. In the second place, the Diamond is not now, and never
has been, in her possession, since she put it into her cabinet on
Wednesday night.
“The confidence which my daughter has placed in me goes no further than
this. She maintains an obstinate silence, when I ask her if she can
explain the disappearance of the Diamond. She refuses, with tears, when
I appeal to her to speak out for my sake. ‘The day will come when you
will know why I am careless about being suspected, and why I am silent
even to _you_. I have done much to make my mother pity me—nothing to
make my mother blush for me.’ Those are my daughter’s own words.
“After what has passed between the officer and me, I think—stranger as
he is—that he should be made acquainted with what Miss Verinder has
said, as well as you. Read my letter to him, and then place in his
hands the cheque which I enclose. In resigning all further claim on his
services, I have only to say that I am convinced of his honesty and his
intelligence; but I am more firmly persuaded than ever, that the
circumstances, in this case, have fatally misled him.”
There the letter ended. Before presenting the cheque, I asked Sergeant
Cuff if he had any remark to make.
“It’s no part of my duty, Mr. Betteredge,” he answered, “to make
remarks on a case, when I have done with it.”
I tossed the cheque across the table to him. “Do you believe in _that_
part of her ladyship’s letter?” I said, indignantly.
The Sergeant looked at the cheque, and lifted up his dismal eyebrows in
acknowledgment of her ladyship’s liberality.
“This is such a generous estimate of the value of my time,” he said,
“that I feel bound to make some return for it. I’ll bear in mind the
amount in this cheque, Mr. Betteredge, when the occasion comes round
for remembering it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Her ladyship has smoothed matters over for the present very cleverly,”
said the Sergeant. “But _this_ family scandal is of the sort that
bursts up again when you least expect it. We shall have more
detective-business on our hands, sir, before the Moonstone is many
months older.”
If those words meant anything, and if the manner in which he spoke them
meant anything—it came to this. My mistress’s letter had proved, to his
mind, that Miss Rachel was hardened enough to resist the strongest
appeal that could be addressed to her, and that she had deceived her
own mother (good God, under what circumstances!) by a series of
abominable lies. How other people, in my place, might have replied to
the Sergeant, I don’t know. I answered what he said in these plain
terms:
“Sergeant Cuff, I consider your last observation as an insult to my
lady and her daughter!”
“Mr. Betteredge, consider it as a warning to yourself, and you will be
nearer the mark.”
Hot and angry as I was, the infernal confidence with which he gave me
that answer closed my lips.
I walked to the window to compose myself. The rain had given over; and,