The Moonstone
of what I myself witnessed while visiting at Aunt Verinder’s house in
London. Pecuniary remuneration is offered to me—with the want of
feeling peculiar to the rich. I am to re-open wounds that Time has
barely closed; I am to recall the most intensely painful
remembrances—and this done, I am to feel myself compensated by a new
laceration, in the shape of Mr. Blake’s cheque. My nature is weak. It
cost me a hard struggle, before Christian humility conquered sinful
pride, and self-denial accepted the cheque.
Without my diary, I doubt—pray let me express it in the grossest
terms!—if I could have honestly earned my money. With my diary, the
poor labourer (who forgives Mr. Blake for insulting her) is worthy of
her hire. Nothing escaped me at the time I was visiting dear Aunt
Verinder. Everything was entered (thanks to my early training) day by
day as it happened; and everything, down to the smallest particular,
shall be told here. My sacred regard for truth is (thank God) far above
my respect for persons. It will be easy for Mr. Blake to suppress what
may not prove to be sufficiently flattering in these pages to the
person chiefly concerned in them. He has purchased my time, but not
even _his_ wealth can purchase my conscience too.*
[*Note. _Added by Franklin Blake._—Miss Clack may make her mind quite
easy on this point. Nothing will be added, altered or removed, in her
manuscript, or in any of the other manuscripts which pass through my
hands. Whatever opinions any of the writers may express, whatever
peculiarities of treatment may mark, and perhaps in a literary sense,
disfigure the narratives which I am now collecting, not a line will be
tampered with anywhere, from first to last. As genuine documents they
are sent to me—and as genuine documents I shall preserve them, endorsed
by the attestations of witnesses who can speak to the facts. It only
remains to be added that “the person chiefly concerned” in Miss Clack’s
narrative, is happy enough at the present moment, not only to brave the
smartest exercise of Miss Clack’s pen, but even to recognise its
unquestionable value as an instrument for the exhibition of Miss
Clack’s character.]
My diary informs me, that I was accidentally passing Aunt Verinder’s
house in Montagu Square, on Monday, 3rd July, 1848.
Seeing the shutters opened, and the blinds drawn up, I felt that it
would be an act of polite attention to knock, and make inquiries. The
person who answered the door, informed me that my aunt and her daughter
(I really cannot call her my cousin!) had arrived from the country a
week since, and meditated making some stay in London. I sent up a
message at once, declining to disturb them, and only begging to know
whether I could be of any use.
The person who answered the door, took my message in insolent silence,
and left me standing in the hall. She is the daughter of a heathen old
man named Betteredge—long, too long, tolerated in my aunt’s family. I
sat down in the hall to wait for my answer—and, having always a few
tracts in my bag, I selected one which proved to be quite
providentially applicable to the person who answered the door. The hall
was dirty, and the chair was hard; but the blessed consciousness of
returning good for evil raised me quite above any trifling
considerations of that kind. The tract was one of a series addressed to
young women on the sinfulness of dress. In style it was devoutly
familiar. Its title was, “A Word With You On Your Cap-Ribbons.”
“My lady is much obliged, and begs you will come and lunch tomorrow at
two.”
I passed over the manner in which she gave her message, and the
dreadful boldness of her look. I thanked this young castaway; and I
said, in a tone of Christian interest, “Will you favour me by accepting
a tract?”
She looked at the title. “Is it written by a man or a woman, Miss? If
it’s written by a woman, I had rather not read it on that account. If
it’s written by a man, I beg to inform him that he knows nothing about
it.” She handed me back the tract, and opened the door. We must sow the
good seed somehow. I waited till the door was shut on me, and slipped
the tract into the letter-box. When I had dropped another tract through
the area railings, I felt relieved, in some small degree, of a heavy
responsibility towards others.
We had a meeting that evening of the Select Committee of the
Mothers’-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society. The object of this excellent
Charity is—as all serious people know—to rescue unredeemed fathers’
trousers from the pawnbroker, and to prevent their resumption, on the
part of the irreclaimable parent, by abridging them immediately to suit
the proportions of the innocent son. I was a member, at that time, of
the select committee; and I mention the Society here, because my
precious and admirable friend, Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, was associated
with our work of moral and material usefulness. I had expected to see
him in the boardroom, on the Monday evening of which I am now writing,
and had proposed to tell him, when we met, of dear Aunt Verinder’s
arrival in London. To my great disappointment he never appeared. On my
expressing a feeling of surprise at his absence, my sisters of the
Committee all looked up together from their trousers (we had a great
pressure of business that night), and asked in amazement, if I had not
heard the news. I acknowledged my ignorance, and was then told, for the
first time, of an event which forms, so to speak, the starting-point of
this narrative. On the previous Friday, two gentlemen—occupying
widely-different positions in society—had been the victims of an
outrage which had startled all London. One of the gentlemen was Mr.
Septimus Luker, of Lambeth. The other was Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.
Living in my present isolation, I have no means of introducing the
newspaper-account of the outrage into my narrative. I was also
deprived, at the time, of the inestimable advantage of hearing the
events related by the fervid eloquence of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite. All I
can do is to state the facts as they were stated, on that Monday
evening, to me; proceeding on the plan which I have been taught from
infancy to adopt in folding up my clothes. Everything shall be put
neatly, and everything shall be put in its place. These lines are
written by a poor weak woman. From a poor weak woman who will be cruel
enough to expect more?
The date—thanks to my dear parents, no dictionary that ever was written
can be more particular than I am about dates—was Friday, June 30th,
1848.
Early on that memorable day, our gifted Mr. Godfrey happened to be
cashing a cheque at a banking-house in Lombard Street. The name of the
firm is accidentally blotted in my diary, and my sacred regard for
truth forbids me to hazard a guess in a matter of this kind.
Fortunately, the name of the firm doesn’t matter. What does matter is a
circumstance that occurred when Mr. Godfrey had transacted his
business. On gaining the door, he encountered a gentleman—a perfect
stranger to him—who was accidentally leaving the office exactly at the
same time as himself. A momentary contest of politeness ensued between
them as to who should be the first to pass through the door of the
bank. The stranger insisted on making Mr. Godfrey precede him; Mr.
Godfrey said a few civil words; they bowed, and parted in the street.
Thoughtless and superficial people may say, Here is surely a very
trumpery little incident related in an absurdly circumstantial manner.
Oh, my young friends and fellow-sinners! beware of presuming to
exercise your poor carnal reason. Oh, be morally tidy. Let your faith
be as your stockings, and your stockings as your faith. Both ever
spotless, and both ready to put on at a moment’s notice!
I beg a thousand pardons. I have fallen insensibly into my
Sunday-school style. Most inappropriate in such a record as this. Let
me try to be worldly—let me say that trifles, in this case as in many
others, led to terrible results. Merely premising that the polite
stranger was Mr. Luker, of Lambeth, we will now follow Mr. Godfrey home
to his residence at Kilburn.
He found waiting for him, in the hall, a poorly clad but delicate and
interesting-looking little boy. The boy handed him a letter, merely
mentioning that he had been entrusted with it by an old lady whom he
did not know, and who had given him no instructions to wait for an
answer. Such incidents as these were not uncommon in Mr. Godfrey’s
large experience as a promoter of public charities. He let the boy go,
and opened the letter.
The handwriting was entirely unfamiliar to him. It requested his
attendance, within an hour’s time, at a house in Northumberland Street,
Strand, which he had never had occasion to enter before. The object
sought was to obtain from the worthy manager certain details on the
subject of the Mothers’-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society, and the
information was wanted by an elderly lady who proposed adding largely
to the resources of the charity, if her questions were met by
satisfactory replies. She mentioned her name, and she added that the
shortness of her stay in London prevented her from giving any longer
notice to the eminent philanthropist whom she addressed.
Ordinary people might have hesitated before setting aside their own
engagements to suit the convenience of a stranger. The Christian Hero
never hesitates where good is to be done. Mr. Godfrey instantly turned
back, and proceeded to the house in Northumberland Street. A most
respectable though somewhat corpulent man answered the door, and, on
hearing Mr. Godfrey’s name, immediately conducted him into an empty
apartment at the back, on the drawing-room floor. He noticed two
unusual things on entering the room. One of them was a faint odour of
musk and camphor. The other was an ancient Oriental manuscript, richly
illuminated with Indian figures and devices, that lay open to
inspection on a table.
He was looking at the book, the position of which caused him to stand
with his back turned towards the closed folding doors communicating
with the front room, when, without the slightest previous noise to warn
him, he felt himself suddenly seized round the neck from behind. He had
just time to notice that the arm round his neck was naked and of a
tawny-brown colour, before his eyes were bandaged, his mouth was
gagged, and he was thrown helpless on the floor by (as he judged) two
men. A third rifled his pockets, and—if, as a lady, I may venture to
use such an expression—searched him, without ceremony, through and
through to his skin.
Here I should greatly enjoy saying a few cheering words on the devout
confidence which could alone have sustained Mr. Godfrey in an emergency
so terrible as this. Perhaps, however, the position and appearance of
my admirable friend at the culminating period of the outrage (as above
described) are hardly within the proper limits of female discussion.
Let me pass over the next few moments, and return to Mr. Godfrey at the
time when the odious search of his person had been completed. The
outrage had been perpetrated throughout in dead silence. At the end of
it some words were exchanged, among the invisible wretches, in a
language which he did not understand, but in tones which were plainly
expressive (to his cultivated ear) of disappointment and rage. He was
suddenly lifted from the ground, placed in a chair, and bound there
hand and foot. The next moment he felt the air flowing in from the open
door, listened, and concluded that he was alone again in the room.
An interval elapsed, and he heard a sound below like the rustling sound
of a woman’s dress. It advanced up the stairs, and stopped. A female
scream rent the atmosphere of guilt. A man’s voice below exclaimed
“Hullo!” A man’s feet ascended the stairs. Mr. Godfrey felt Christian