The Moonstone
light which was not of this world—a light shining prophetically from an
unmade grave—dawned on my mind. My aunt’s secret was a secret no
longer.
CHAPTER III
Consideration for poor Lady Verinder forbade me even to hint that I had
guessed the melancholy truth, before she opened her lips. I waited her
pleasure in silence; and, having privately arranged to say a few
sustaining words at the first convenient opportunity, felt prepared for
any duty that could claim me, no matter how painful it might be.
“I have been seriously ill, Drusilla, for some time past,” my aunt
began. “And, strange to say, without knowing it myself.”
I thought of the thousands and thousands of perishing human creatures
who were all at that moment spiritually ill, without knowing it
themselves. And I greatly feared that my poor aunt might be one of the
number. “Yes, dear,” I said, sadly. “Yes.”
“I brought Rachel to London, as you know, for medical advice,” she went
on. “I thought it right to consult two doctors.”
Two doctors! And, oh me (in Rachel’s state), not one clergyman! “Yes,
dear?” I said once more. “Yes?”
“One of the two medical men,” proceeded my aunt, “was a stranger to me.
The other had been an old friend of my husband’s, and had always felt a
sincere interest in me for my husband’s sake. After prescribing for
Rachel, he said he wished to speak to me privately in another room. I
expected, of course, to receive some special directions for the
management of my daughter’s health. To my surprise, he took me gravely
by the hand, and said, ‘I have been looking at you, Lady Verinder, with
a professional as well as a personal interest. You are, I am afraid,
far more urgently in need of medical advice than your daughter.’ He put
some questions to me, which I was at first inclined to treat lightly
enough, until I observed that my answers distressed him. It ended in
his making an appointment to come and see me, accompanied by a medical
friend, on the next day, at an hour when Rachel would not be at home.
The result of that visit—most kindly and gently conveyed to
me—satisfied both the physicians that there had been precious time
lost, which could never be regained, and that my case had now passed
beyond the reach of their art. For more than two years I have been
suffering under an insidious form of heart disease, which, without any
symptoms to alarm me, has, by little and little, fatally broken me
down. I may live for some months, or I may die before another day has
passed over my head—the doctors cannot, and dare not, speak more
positively than this. It would be vain to say, my dear, that I have not
had some miserable moments since my real situation has been made known
to me. But I am more resigned than I was, and I am doing my best to set
my worldly affairs in order. My one great anxiety is that Rachel should
be kept in ignorance of the truth. If she knew it, she would at once
attribute my broken health to anxiety about the Diamond, and would
reproach herself bitterly, poor child, for what is in no sense her
fault. Both the doctors agree that the mischief began two, if not three
years since. I am sure you will keep my secret, Drusilla—for I am sure
I see sincere sorrow and sympathy for me in your face.”
Sorrow and sympathy! Oh, what Pagan emotions to expect from a Christian
Englishwoman anchored firmly on her faith!
Little did my poor aunt imagine what a gush of devout thankfulness
thrilled through me as she approached the close of her melancholy
story. Here was a career of usefulness opened before me! Here was a
beloved relative and perishing fellow-creature, on the eve of the great
change, utterly unprepared; and led, providentially led, to reveal her
situation to Me! How can I describe the joy with which I now remembered
that the precious clerical friends on whom I could rely, were to be
counted, not by ones or twos, but by tens and twenties. I took my aunt
in my arms—my overflowing tenderness was not to be satisfied, _now_,
with anything less than an embrace. “Oh!” I said to her, fervently,
“the indescribable interest with which you inspire me! Oh! the good I
mean to do you, dear, before we part!” After another word or two of
earnest prefatory warning, I gave her her choice of three precious
friends, all plying the work of mercy from morning to night in her own
neighbourhood; all equally inexhaustible in exhortation; all
affectionately ready to exercise their gifts at a word from _me_. Alas!
the result was far from encouraging. Poor Lady Verinder looked puzzled
and frightened, and met everything I could say to her with the purely
worldly objection that she was not strong enough to face strangers. I
yielded—for the moment only, of course. My large experience (as Reader
and Visitor, under not less, first and last, than fourteen beloved
clerical friends) informed me that this was another case for
preparation by books. I possessed a little library of works, all
suitable to the present emergency, all calculated to arouse, convince,
prepare, enlighten, and fortify my aunt. “You will read, dear, won’t
you?” I said, in my most winning way. “You will read, if I bring you my
own precious books? Turned down at all the right places, aunt. And
marked in pencil where you are to stop and ask yourself, ‘Does this
apply to me?’” Even that simple appeal—so absolutely heathenising is
the influence of the world—appeared to startle my aunt. She said, “I
will do what I can, Drusilla, to please you,” with a look of surprise,
which was at once instructive and terrible to see. Not a moment was to
be lost. The clock on the mantelpiece informed me that I had just time
to hurry home; to provide myself with a first series of selected
readings (say a dozen only); and to return in time to meet the lawyer,
and witness Lady Verinder’s Will. Promising faithfully to be back by
five o’clock, I left the house on my errand of mercy.
When no interests but my own are involved, I am humbly content to get
from place to place by the omnibus. Permit me to give an idea of my
devotion to my aunt’s interests by recording that, on this occasion, I
committed the prodigality of taking a cab.
I drove home, selected and marked my first series of readings, and
drove back to Montagu Square, with a dozen works in a carpet-bag, the
like of which, I firmly believe, are not to be found in the literature
of any other country in Europe. I paid the cabman exactly his fare. He
received it with an oath; upon which I instantly gave him a tract. If I
had presented a pistol at his head, this abandoned wretch could hardly
have exhibited greater consternation. He jumped up on his box, and,
with profane exclamations of dismay, drove off furiously. Quite
useless, I am happy to say! I sowed the good seed, in spite of him, by
throwing a second tract in at the window of the cab.
The servant who answered the door—not the person with the cap-ribbons,
to my great relief, but the footman—informed me that the doctor had
called, and was still shut up with Lady Verinder. Mr. Bruff, the
lawyer, had arrived a minute since and was waiting in the library. I
was shown into the library to wait too.
Mr. Bruff looked surprised to see me. He is the family solicitor, and
we had met more than once, on previous occasions, under Lady Verinder’s
roof. A man, I grieve to say, grown old and grizzled in the service of
the world. A man who, in his hours of business, was the chosen prophet
of Law and Mammon; and who, in his hours of leisure, was equally
capable of reading a novel and of tearing up a tract.
“Have you come to stay here, Miss Clack?” he asked, with a look at my
carpet-bag.
To reveal the contents of my precious bag to such a person as this
would have been simply to invite an outburst of profanity. I lowered
myself to his own level, and mentioned my business in the house.
“My aunt has informed me that she is about to sign her Will,” I
answered. “She has been so good as to ask me to be one of the
witnesses.”
“Aye? aye? Well, Miss Clack, you will do. You are over twenty-one, and
you have not the slightest pecuniary interest in Lady Verinder’s Will.”
Not the slightest pecuniary interest in Lady Verinder’s Will. Oh, how
thankful I felt when I heard that! If my aunt, possessed of thousands,
had remembered poor Me, to whom five pounds is an object—if my name had
appeared in the Will, with a little comforting legacy attached to it—my
enemies might have doubted the motive which had loaded me with the
choicest treasures of my library, and had drawn upon my failing
resources for the prodigal expenses of a cab. Not the cruellest scoffer
of them all could doubt now. Much better as it was! Oh, surely, surely,
much better as it was!
I was aroused from these consoling reflections by the voice of Mr.
Bruff. My meditative silence appeared to weigh upon the spirits of this
worldling, and to force him, as it were, into talking to me against his
own will.
“Well, Miss Clack, what’s the last news in the charitable circles? How
is your friend Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, after the mauling he got from the
rogues in Northumberland Street? Egad! they’re telling a pretty story
about that charitable gentleman at my club!”
I had passed over the manner in which this person had remarked that I
was more than twenty-one, and that I had no pecuniary interest in my
aunt’s Will. But the tone in which he alluded to dear Mr. Godfrey was
too much for my forbearance. Feeling bound, after what had passed in my
presence that afternoon, to assert the innocence of my admirable
friend, whenever I found it called in question—I own to having also
felt bound to include in the accomplishment of this righteous purpose,
a stinging castigation in the case of Mr. Bruff.
“I live very much out of the world,” I said; “and I don’t possess the
advantage, sir, of belonging to a club. But I happen to know the story
to which you allude; and I also know that a viler falsehood than that
story never was told.”
“Yes, yes, Miss Clack—you believe in your friend. Natural enough. Mr.
Godfrey Ablewhite won’t find the world in general quite so easy to
convince as a committee of charitable ladies. Appearances are dead
against him. He was in the house when the Diamond was lost. And he was
the first person in the house to go to London afterwards. Those are
ugly circumstances, ma’am, viewed by the light of later events.”
I ought, I know, to have set him right before he went any farther. I
ought to have told him that he was speaking in ignorance of a testimony
to Mr. Godfrey’s innocence, offered by the only person who was
undeniably competent to speak from a positive knowledge of the subject.
Alas! the temptation to lead the lawyer artfully on to his own
discomfiture was too much for me. I asked what he meant by “later
events”—with an appearance of the utmost innocence.
“By later events, Miss Clack, I mean events in which the Indians are
concerned,” proceeded Mr. Bruff, getting more and more superior to poor
Me, the longer he went on. “What do the Indians do, the moment they are
let out of the prison at Frizinghall? They go straight to London, and
fix on Mr. Luker. What follows? Mr. Luker feels alarmed for the safety
of ‘a valuable of great price,’ which he has got in the house. He
lodges it privately (under a general description) in his bankers’
strongroom. Wonderfully clever of him: but the Indians are just as
clever on their side. They have their suspicions that the ‘valuable of
great price’ is being shifted from one place to another; and they hit
on a singularly bold and complete way of clearing those suspicions up.
Whom do they seize and search? Not Mr. Luker only—which would be
intelligible enough—but Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite as well. Why? Mr.
Ablewhite’s explanation is, that they acted on blind suspicion, after