The Moonstone
“Discovery?” repeated my aunt. “What can you possibly mean? Discovery
through Mr. Luker? Discovery through my nephew?”
As the word passed her lips, a special providence occurred. The servant
opened the door, and announced Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.
CHAPTER II
Mr. Godfrey followed the announcement of his name—as Mr. Godfrey does
everything else—exactly at the right time. He was not so close on the
servant’s heels as to startle us. He was not so far behind as to cause
us the double inconvenience of a pause and an open door. It is in the
completeness of his daily life that the true Christian appears. This
dear man was very complete.
“Go to Miss Verinder,” said my aunt, addressing the servant, “and tell
her Mr. Ablewhite is here.”
We both inquired after his health. We both asked him together whether
he felt like himself again, after his terrible adventure of the past
week. With perfect tact, he contrived to answer us at the same moment.
Lady Verinder had his reply in words. I had his charming smile.
“What,” he cried, with infinite tenderness, “have I done to deserve all
this sympathy? My dear aunt! my dear Miss Clack! I have merely been
mistaken for somebody else. I have only been blindfolded; I have only
been strangled; I have only been thrown flat on my back, on a very thin
carpet, covering a particularly hard floor. Just think how much worse
it might have been! I might have been murdered; I might have been
robbed. What have I lost? Nothing but Nervous Force—which the law
doesn’t recognise as property; so that, strictly speaking, I have lost
nothing at all. If I could have had my own way, I would have kept my
adventure to myself—I shrink from all this fuss and publicity. But Mr.
Luker made _his_ injuries public, and _my_ injuries, as the necessary
consequence, have been proclaimed in their turn. I have become the
property of the newspapers, until the gentle reader gets sick of the
subject. I am very sick indeed of it myself. May the gentle reader soon
be like me! And how is dear Rachel? Still enjoying the gaieties of
London? So glad to hear it! Miss Clack, I need all your indulgence. I
am sadly behind-hand with my Committee Work and my dear Ladies. But I
really do hope to look in at the Mothers’-Small-Clothes next week. Did
you make cheering progress at Monday’s Committee? Was the Board hopeful
about future prospects? And are we nicely off for Trousers?”
The heavenly gentleness of his smile made his apologies irresistible.
The richness of his deep voice added its own indescribable charm to the
interesting business question which he had just addressed to me. In
truth, we were almost _too_ nicely off for Trousers; we were quite
overwhelmed by them. I was just about to say so, when the door opened
again, and an element of worldly disturbance entered the room, in the
person of Miss Verinder.
She approached dear Mr. Godfrey at a most unladylike rate of speed,
with her hair shockingly untidy, and her face, what _I_ should call,
unbecomingly flushed.
“I am charmed to see you, Godfrey,” she said, addressing him, I grieve
to add, in the off-hand manner of one young man talking to another. “I
wish you had brought Mr. Luker with you. You and he (as long as our
present excitement lasts) are the two most interesting men in all
London. It’s morbid to say this; it’s unhealthy; it’s all that a
well-regulated mind like Miss Clack’s most instinctively shudders at.
Never mind that. Tell me the whole of the Northumberland Street story
directly. I know the newspapers have left some of it out.”
Even dear Mr. Godfrey partakes of the fallen nature which we all
inherit from Adam—it is a very small share of our human legacy, but,
alas! he has it. I confess it grieved me to see him take Rachel’s hand
in both of his own hands, and lay it softly on the left side of his
waistcoat. It was a direct encouragement to her reckless way of
talking, and her insolent reference to me.
“Dearest Rachel,” he said, in the same voice which had thrilled me when
he spoke of our prospects and our trousers, “the newspapers have told
you everything—and they have told it much better than I can.”
“Godfrey thinks we all make too much of the matter,” my aunt remarked.
“He has just been saying that he doesn’t care to speak of it.”
“Why?”
She put the question with a sudden flash in her eyes, and a sudden look
up into Mr. Godfrey’s face. On his side, he looked down at her with an
indulgence so injudicious and so ill-deserved, that I really felt
called on to interfere.
“Rachel, darling!” I remonstrated gently, “true greatness and true
courage are ever modest.”
“You are a very good fellow in your way, Godfrey,” she said—not taking
the smallest notice, observe, of me, and still speaking to her cousin
as if she was one young man addressing another. “But I am quite sure
you are not great; I don’t believe you possess any extraordinary
courage; and I am firmly persuaded—if you ever had any modesty—that
your lady-worshippers relieved you of that virtue a good many years
since. You have some private reason for not talking of your adventure
in Northumberland Street; and I mean to know it.”
“My reason is the simplest imaginable, and the most easily
acknowledged,” he answered, still bearing with her. “I am tired of the
subject.”
“You are tired of the subject? My dear Godfrey, I am going to make a
remark.”
“What is it?”
“You live a great deal too much in the society of women. And you have
contracted two very bad habits in consequence. You have learnt to talk
nonsense seriously, and you have got into a way of telling fibs for the
pleasure of telling them. You can’t go straight with your
lady-worshippers. I mean to make you go straight with _me_. Come, and
sit down. I am brimful of downright questions; and I expect you to be
brimful of downright answers.”
She actually dragged him across the room to a chair by the window,
where the light would fall on his face. I deeply feel being obliged to
report such language, and to describe such conduct. But, hemmed in, as
I am, between Mr. Franklin Blake’s cheque on one side and my own sacred
regard for truth on the other, what am I to do? I looked at my aunt.
She sat unmoved; apparently in no way disposed to interfere. I had
never noticed this kind of torpor in her before. It was, perhaps, the
reaction after the trying time she had had in the country. Not a
pleasant symptom to remark, be it what it might, at dear Lady
Verinder’s age, and with dear Lady Verinder’s autumnal exuberance of
figure.
In the meantime, Rachel had settled herself at the window with our
amiable and forbearing—our too forbearing—Mr. Godfrey. She began the
string of questions with which she had threatened him, taking no more
notice of her mother, or of myself, than if we had not been in the
room.
“Have the police done anything, Godfrey?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“It is certain, I suppose, that the three men who laid the trap for you
were the same three men who afterwards laid the trap for Mr. Luker?”
“Humanly speaking, my dear Rachel, there can be no doubt of it.”
“And not a trace of them has been discovered?”
“Not a trace.”
“It is thought—is it not?—that these three men are the three Indians
who came to our house in the country.”
“Some people think so.”
“Do you think so?”
“My dear Rachel, they blindfolded me before I could see their faces. I
know nothing whatever of the matter. How can I offer an opinion on it?”
Even the angelic gentleness of Mr. Godfrey was, you see, beginning to
give way at last under the persecution inflicted on him. Whether
unbridled curiosity, or ungovernable dread, dictated Miss Verinder’s
questions I do not presume to inquire. I only report that, on Mr.
Godfrey’s attempting to rise, after giving her the answer just
described, she actually took him by the two shoulders, and pushed him
back into his chair—Oh, don’t say this was immodest! don’t even hint
that the recklessness of guilty terror could alone account for such
conduct as I have described! We must not judge others. My Christian
friends, indeed, indeed, indeed, we must not judge others!
She went on with her questions, unabashed. Earnest Biblical students
will perhaps be reminded—as I was reminded—of the blinded children of
the devil, who went on with their orgies, unabashed, in the time before
the Flood.
“I want to know something about Mr. Luker, Godfrey.”
“I am again unfortunate, Rachel. No man knows less of Mr. Luker than I
do.”
“You never saw him before you and he met accidentally at the bank?”
“Never.”
“You have seen him since?”
“Yes. We have been examined together, as well as separately, to assist
the police.”
“Mr. Luker was robbed of a receipt which he had got from his
banker’s—was he not? What was the receipt for?”
“For a valuable gem which he had placed in the safe keeping of the
bank.”
“That’s what the newspapers say. It may be enough for the general
reader; but it is not enough for me. The banker’s receipt must have
mentioned what the gem was?”
“The banker’s receipt, Rachel—as I have heard it described—mentioned
nothing of the kind. A valuable gem, belonging to Mr. Luker; deposited
by Mr. Luker; sealed with Mr. Luker’s seal; and only to be given up on
Mr. Luker’s personal application. That was the form, and that is all I
know about it.”
She waited a moment, after he had said that. She looked at her mother,
and sighed. She looked back again at Mr. Godfrey, and went on.
“Some of our private affairs, at home,” she said, “seem to have got
into the newspapers?”
“I grieve to say, it is so.”
“And some idle people, perfect strangers to us, are trying to trace a
connexion between what happened at our house in Yorkshire and what has
happened since, here in London?”
“The public curiosity, in certain quarters, is, I fear, taking that
turn.”
“The people who say that the three unknown men who ill-used you and Mr.
Luker are the three Indians, also say that the valuable gem——”
There she stopped. She had become gradually, within the last few
moments, whiter and whiter in the face. The extraordinary blackness of
her hair made this paleness, by contrast, so ghastly to look at, that
we all thought she would faint, at the moment when she checked herself
in the middle of her question. Dear Mr. Godfrey made a second attempt
to leave his chair. My aunt entreated her to say no more. I followed my
aunt with a modest medicinal peace-offering, in the shape of a bottle
of salts. We none of us produced the slightest effect on her. “Godfrey,
stay where you are. Mamma, there is not the least reason to be alarmed
about me. Clack, you’re dying to hear the end of it—I won’t faint,
expressly to oblige _you_.”
Those were the exact words she used—taken down in my diary the moment I
got home. But, oh, don’t let us judge! My Christian friends, don’t let
us judge!
She turned once more to Mr. Godfrey. With an obstinacy dreadful to see,
she went back again to the place where she had checked herself, and
completed her question in these words:
“I spoke to you, a minute since, about what people were saying in
certain quarters. Tell me plainly, Godfrey, do they any of them say
that Mr. Luker’s valuable gem is—the Moonstone?”
As the name of the Indian Diamond passed her lips, I saw a change come
over my admirable friend. His complexion deepened. He lost the genial
suavity of manner which is one of his greatest charms. A noble
indignation inspired his reply.
“They _do_ say it,” he answered. “There are people who don’t hesitate
to accuse Mr. Luker of telling a falsehood to serve some private
interests of his own. He has over and over again solemnly declared
that, until this scandal assailed him, he had never even heard of the
Moonstone. And these vile people reply, without a shadow of proof to