The Moonstone
justify them, He has his reasons for concealment; we decline to believe
him on his oath. Shameful! shameful!”
Rachel looked at him very strangely—I can’t well describe how—while he
was speaking. When he had done, she said, “Considering that Mr. Luker
is only a chance acquaintance of yours, you take up his cause, Godfrey,
rather warmly.”
My gifted friend made her one of the most truly evangelical answers I
ever heard in my life.
“I hope, Rachel, I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather
warmly,” he said.
The tone in which those words were spoken might have melted a stone.
But, oh dear, what is the hardness of stone? Nothing, compared to the
hardness of the unregenerate human heart! She sneered. I blush to
record it—she sneered at him to his face.
“Keep your noble sentiments for your Ladies’ Committees, Godfrey. I am
certain that the scandal which has assailed Mr. Luker, has not spared
You.”
Even my aunt’s torpor was roused by those words.
“My dear Rachel,” she remonstrated, “you have really no right to say
that!”
“I mean no harm, mamma—I mean good. Have a moment’s patience with me,
and you will see.”
She looked back at Mr. Godfrey, with what appeared to be a sudden pity
for him. She went the length—the very unladylike length—of taking him
by the hand.
“I am certain,” she said, “that I have found out the true reason of
your unwillingness to speak of this matter before my mother and before
me. An unlucky accident has associated you in people’s minds with Mr.
Luker. You have told me what scandal says of _him_. What does scandal
say of _you?_”
Even at the eleventh hour, dear Mr. Godfrey—always ready to return good
for evil—tried to spare her.
“Don’t ask me!” he said. “It’s better forgotten, Rachel—it is, indeed.”
“I _will_ hear it!” she cried out, fiercely, at the top of her voice.
“Tell her, Godfrey!” entreated my aunt. “Nothing can do her such harm
as your silence is doing now!”
Mr. Godfrey’s fine eyes filled with tears. He cast one last appealing
look at her—and then he spoke the fatal words:
“If you will have it, Rachel—scandal says that the Moonstone is in
pledge to Mr. Luker, and that I am the man who has pawned it.”
She started to her feet with a scream. She looked backwards and
forwards from Mr. Godfrey to my aunt, and from my aunt to Mr. Godfrey,
in such a frantic manner that I really thought she had gone mad.
“Don’t speak to me! Don’t touch me!” she exclaimed, shrinking back from
all of us (I declare like some hunted animal!) into a corner of the
room. “This is my fault! I must set it right. I have sacrificed
myself—I had a right to do that, if I liked. But to let an innocent man
be ruined; to keep a secret which destroys his character for life—Oh,
good God, it’s too horrible! I can’t bear it!”
My aunt half rose from her chair, then suddenly sat down again. She
called to me faintly, and pointed to a little phial in her work-box.
“Quick!” she whispered. “Six drops, in water. Don’t let Rachel see.”
Under other circumstances, I should have thought this strange. There
was no time now to think—there was only time to give the medicine. Dear
Mr. Godfrey unconsciously assisted me in concealing what I was about
from Rachel, by speaking composing words to her at the other end of the
room.
“Indeed, indeed, you exaggerate,” I heard him say. “My reputation
stands too high to be destroyed by a miserable passing scandal like
this. It will be all forgotten in another week. Let us never speak of
it again.” She was perfectly inaccessible, even to such generosity as
this. She went on from bad to worse.
“I must, and will, stop it,” she said. “Mamma! hear what I say. Miss
Clack! hear what I say. I know the hand that took the Moonstone. I
know—” she laid a strong emphasis on the words; she stamped her foot in
the rage that possessed her—“_I know that Godfrey Ablewhite is
innocent!_ Take me to the magistrate, Godfrey! Take me to the
magistrate, and I will swear it!”
My aunt caught me by the hand, and whispered, “Stand between us for a
minute or two. Don’t let Rachel see me.” I noticed a bluish tinge in
her face which alarmed me. She saw I was startled. “The drops will put
me right in a minute or two,” she said, and so closed her eyes, and
waited a little.
While this was going on, I heard dear Mr. Godfrey still gently
remonstrating.
“You must not appear publicly in such a thing as this,” he said.
“_Your_ reputation, dearest Rachel, is something too pure and too
sacred to be trifled with.”
“_My_ reputation!” She burst out laughing. “Why, I am accused, Godfrey,
as well as you. The best detective officer in England declares that I
have stolen my own Diamond. Ask him what he thinks—and he will tell you
that I have pledged the Moonstone to pay my private debts!” She
stopped, ran across the room—and fell on her knees at her mother’s
feet. “Oh mamma! mamma! mamma! I must be mad—mustn’t I?—not to own the
truth _now!_” She was too vehement to notice her mother’s condition—she
was on her feet again, and back with Mr. Godfrey, in an instant. “I
won’t let you—I won’t let any innocent man—be accused and disgraced
through my fault. If you won’t take me before the magistrate, draw out
a declaration of your innocence on paper, and I will sign it. Do as I
tell you, Godfrey, or I’ll write it to the newspapers—I’ll go out, and
cry it in the streets!”
We will not say this was the language of remorse—we will say it was the
language of hysterics. Indulgent Mr. Godfrey pacified her by taking a
sheet of paper, and drawing out the declaration. She signed it in a
feverish hurry. “Show it everywhere—don’t think of _me_,” she said, as
she gave it to him. “I am afraid, Godfrey, I have not done you justice,
hitherto, in my thoughts. You are more unselfish—you are a better man
than I believed you to be. Come here when you can, and I will try and
repair the wrong I have done you.”
She gave him her hand. Alas, for our fallen nature! Alas, for Mr.
Godfrey! He not only forgot himself so far as to kiss her hand—he
adopted a gentleness of tone in answering her which, in such a case,
was little better than a compromise with sin. “I will come, dearest,”
he said, “on condition that we don’t speak of this hateful subject
again.” Never had I seen and heard our Christian Hero to less advantage
than on this occasion.
Before another word could be said by anybody, a thundering knock at the
street door startled us all. I looked through the window, and saw the
World, the Flesh, and the Devil waiting before the house—as typified in
a carriage and horses, a powdered footman, and three of the most
audaciously dressed women I ever beheld in my life.
Rachel started, and composed herself. She crossed the room to her
mother.
“They have come to take me to the flower-show,” she said. “One word,
mamma, before I go. I have not distressed you, have I?”
(Is the bluntness of moral feeling which could ask such a question as
that, after what had just happened, to be pitied or condemned? I like
to lean towards mercy. Let us pity it.)
The drops had produced their effect. My poor aunt’s complexion was like
itself again. “No, no, my dear,” she said. “Go with our friends, and
enjoy yourself.”
Her daughter stooped, and kissed her. I had left the window, and was
near the door, when Rachel approached it to go out. Another change had
come over her—she was in tears. I looked with interest at the momentary
softening of that obdurate heart. I felt inclined to say a few earnest
words. Alas! my well-meant sympathy only gave offence. “What do you
mean by pitying me?” she asked in a bitter whisper, as she passed to
the door. “Don’t you see how happy I am? I’m going to the flower-show,
Clack; and I’ve got the prettiest bonnet in London.” She completed the
hollow mockery of that address by blowing me a kiss—and so left the
room.
I wish I could describe in words the compassion I felt for this
miserable and misguided girl. But I am almost as poorly provided with
words as with money. Permit me to say—my heart bled for her.
Returning to my aunt’s chair, I observed dear Mr. Godfrey searching for
something softly, here and there, in different parts of the room.
Before I could offer to assist him he had found what he wanted. He came
back to my aunt and me, with his declaration of innocence in one hand,
and with a box of matches in the other.
“Dear aunt, a little conspiracy!” he said. “Dear Miss Clack, a pious
fraud which even your high moral rectitude will excuse! Will you leave
Rachel to suppose that I accept the generous self-sacrifice which has
signed this paper? And will you kindly bear witness that I destroy it
in your presence, before I leave the house?” He kindled a match, and,
lighting the paper, laid it to burn in a plate on the table. “Any
trifling inconvenience that I may suffer is as nothing,” he remarked,
“compared with the importance of preserving that pure name from the
contaminating contact of the world. There! We have reduced it to a
little harmless heap of ashes; and our dear impulsive Rachel will never
know what we have done! How do you feel? My precious friends, how do
you feel? For my poor part, I am as light-hearted as a boy!”
He beamed on us with his beautiful smile; he held out a hand to my
aunt, and a hand to me. I was too deeply affected by his noble conduct
to speak. I closed my eyes; I put his hand, in a kind of spiritual
self-forgetfulness, to my lips. He murmured a soft remonstrance. Oh the
ecstasy, the pure, unearthly ecstasy of that moment! I sat—I hardly
know on what—quite lost in my own exalted feelings. When I opened my
eyes again, it was like descending from heaven to earth. There was
nobody but my aunt in the room. He had gone.
I should like to stop here—I should like to close my narrative with the
record of Mr. Godfrey’s noble conduct. Unhappily there is more, much
more, which the unrelenting pecuniary pressure of Mr. Blake’s cheque
obliges me to tell. The painful disclosures which were to reveal
themselves in my presence, during that Tuesday’s visit to Montagu
Square, were not at an end yet.
Finding myself alone with Lady Verinder, I turned naturally to the
subject of her health; touching delicately on the strange anxiety which
she had shown to conceal her indisposition, and the remedy applied to
it, from the observation of her daughter.
My aunt’s reply greatly surprised me.
“Drusilla,” she said (if I have not already mentioned that my Christian
name is Drusilla, permit me to mention it now), “you are touching—quite
innocently, I know—on a very distressing subject.”
I rose immediately. Delicacy left me but one alternative—the
alternative, after first making my apologies, of taking my leave. Lady
Verinder stopped me, and insisted on my sitting down again.
“You have surprised a secret,” she said, “which I had confided to my
sister Mrs. Ablewhite, and to my lawyer Mr. Bruff, and to no one else.
I can trust in their discretion; and I am sure, when I tell you the
circumstances, I can trust in yours. Have you any pressing engagement,
Drusilla? or is your time your own this afternoon?”
It is needless to say that my time was entirely at my aunt’s disposal.
“Keep me company then,” she said, “for another hour. I have something
to tell you which I believe you will be sorry to hear. And I shall have
a service to ask of you afterwards, if you don’t object to assist me.”
It is again needless to say that, so far from objecting, I was all
eagerness to assist her.
“You can wait here,” she went on, “till Mr. Bruff comes at five. And
you can be one of the witnesses, Drusilla, when I sign my Will.”
Her Will! I thought of the drops which I had seen in her work-box. I
thought of the bluish tinge which I had noticed in her complexion. A