The Moonstone
to higher things! Greatly to my surprise, Rachel rose when I entered
the room, and came forward to meet me with outstretched hand.
“I am glad to see you,” she said. “Drusilla, I have been in the habit
of speaking very foolishly and very rudely to you, on former occasions.
I beg your pardon. I hope you will forgive me.”
My face, I suppose, betrayed the astonishment I felt at this. She
coloured up for a moment, and then proceeded to explain herself.
“In my poor mother’s lifetime,” she went on, “her friends were not
always my friends, too. Now I have lost her, my heart turns for comfort
to the people she liked. She liked you. Try to be friends with me,
Drusilla, if you can.”
To any rightly-constituted mind, the motive thus acknowledged was
simply shocking. Here in Christian England was a young woman in a state
of bereavement, with so little idea of where to look for true comfort,
that she actually expected to find it among her mother’s friends! Here
was a relative of mine, awakened to a sense of her shortcomings towards
others, under the influence, not of conviction and duty, but of
sentiment and impulse! Most deplorable to think of—but, still,
suggestive of something hopeful, to a person of my experience in plying
the good work. There could be no harm, I thought, in ascertaining the
extent of the change which the loss of her mother had wrought in
Rachel’s character. I decided, as a useful test, to probe her on the
subject of her marriage-engagement to Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.
Having first met her advances with all possible cordiality, I sat by
her on the sofa, at her own request. We discussed family affairs and
future plans—always excepting that one future plan which was to end in
her marriage. Try as I might to turn the conversation that way, she
resolutely declined to take the hint. Any open reference to the
question, on my part, would have been premature at this early stage of
our reconciliation. Besides, I had discovered all I wanted to know. She
was no longer the reckless, defiant creature whom I had heard and seen,
on the occasion of my martyrdom in Montagu Square. This was, of itself,
enough to encourage me to take her future conversion in hand—beginning
with a few words of earnest warning directed against the hasty
formation of the marriage tie, and so getting on to higher things.
Looking at her, now, with this new interest—and calling to mind the
headlong suddenness with which she had met Mr. Godfrey’s matrimonial
views—I felt the solemn duty of interfering with a fervour which
assured me that I should achieve no common results. Rapidity of
proceeding was, as I believed, of importance in this case. I went back
at once to the question of the servants wanted for the furnished house.
“Where is the list, dear?”
Rachel produced it.
“Cook, kitchen-maid, housemaid, and footman,” I read. “My dear Rachel,
these servants are only wanted for a term—the term during which your
guardian has taken the house. We shall have great difficulty in finding
persons of character and capacity to accept a temporary engagement of
that sort, if we try in London. Has the house in Brighton been found
yet?”
“Yes. Godfrey has taken it; and persons in the house wanted him to hire
them as servants. He thought they would hardly do for us, and came back
having settled nothing.”
“And you have no experience yourself in these matters, Rachel?”
“None whatever.”
“And Aunt Ablewhite won’t exert herself?”
“No, poor dear. Don’t blame her, Drusilla. I think she is the only
really happy woman I have ever met with.”
“There are degrees in happiness, darling. We must have a little talk,
some day, on that subject. In the meantime I will undertake to meet the
difficulty about the servants. Your aunt will write a letter to the
people of the house——”
“She will sign a letter, if I write it for her, which comes to the same
thing.”
“Quite the same thing. I shall get the letter, and I will go to
Brighton tomorrow.”
“How extremely kind of you! We will join you as soon as you are ready
for us. And you will stay, I hope, as _my_ guest. Brighton is so
lively; you are sure to enjoy it.”
In those words the invitation was given, and the glorious prospect of
interference was opened before me.
It was then the middle of the week. By Saturday afternoon the house was
ready for them. In that short interval I had sifted, not the characters
only, but the religious views as well, of all the disengaged servants
who applied to me, and had succeeded in making a selection which my
conscience approved. I also discovered, and called on two serious
friends of mine, residents in the town, to whom I knew I could confide
the pious object which had brought me to Brighton. One of them—a
clerical friend—kindly helped me to take sittings for our little party
in the church in which he himself ministered. The other—a single lady,
like myself—placed the resources of her library (composed throughout of
precious publications) entirely at my disposal. I borrowed half-a-dozen
works, all carefully chosen with a view to Rachel. When these had been
judiciously distributed in the various rooms she would be likely to
occupy, I considered that my preparations were complete. Sound doctrine
in the servants who waited on her; sound doctrine in the minister who
preached to her; sound doctrine in the books that lay on her table—such
was the treble welcome which my zeal had prepared for the motherless
girl! A heavenly composure filled my mind, on that Saturday afternoon,
as I sat at the window waiting the arrival of my relatives. The giddy
throng passed and repassed before my eyes. Alas! how many of them felt
my exquisite sense of duty done? An awful question. Let us not pursue
it.
Between six and seven the travellers arrived. To my indescribable
surprise, they were escorted, not by Mr. Godfrey (as I had
anticipated), but by the lawyer, Mr. Bruff.
“How do you do, Miss Clack?” he said. “I mean to stay this time.”
That reference to the occasion on which I had obliged him to postpone
his business to mine, when we were both visiting in Montagu Square,
satisfied me that the old worldling had come to Brighton with some
object of his own in view. I had prepared quite a little Paradise for
my beloved Rachel—and here was the Serpent already!
“Godfrey was very much vexed, Drusilla, not to be able to come with
us,” said my Aunt Ablewhite. “There was something in the way which kept
him in town. Mr. Bruff volunteered to take his place, and make a
holiday of it till Monday morning. By-the-bye, Mr. Bruff, I’m ordered
to take exercise, and I don’t like it. That,” added Aunt Ablewhite,
pointing out of window to an invalid going by in a chair on wheels,
drawn by a man, “is my idea of exercise. If it’s air you want, you get
it in your chair. And if it’s fatigue you want, I am sure it’s fatigue
enough to look at the man.”
Rachel stood silent, at a window by herself, with her eyes fixed on the
sea.
“Tired, love?” I inquired.
“No. Only a little out of spirits,” she answered. “I have often seen
the sea, on our Yorkshire coast, with that light on it. And I was
thinking, Drusilla, of the days that can never come again.”
Mr. Bruff remained to dinner, and stayed through the evening. The more
I saw of him, the more certain I felt that he had some private end to
serve in coming to Brighton. I watched him carefully. He maintained the
same appearance of ease, and talked the same godless gossip, hour after
hour, until it was time to take leave. As he shook hands with Rachel, I
caught his hard and cunning eyes resting on her for a moment with a
peculiar interest and attention. She was plainly concerned in the
object that he had in view. He said nothing out of the common to her or
to anyone on leaving. He invited himself to luncheon the next day, and
then he went away to his hotel.
It was impossible the next morning to get my Aunt Ablewhite out of her
dressing-gown in time for church. Her invalid daughter (suffering from
nothing, in my opinion, but incurable laziness, inherited from her
mother) announced that she meant to remain in bed for the day. Rachel
and I went alone together to church. A magnificent sermon was preached
by my gifted friend on the heathen indifference of the world to the
sinfulness of little sins. For more than an hour his eloquence
(assisted by his glorious voice) thundered through the sacred edifice.
I said to Rachel, when we came out, “Has it found its way to your
heart, dear?” And she answered, “No; it has only made my head ache.”
This might have been discouraging to some people; but, once embarked on
a career of manifest usefulness, nothing discourages Me.
We found Aunt Ablewhite and Mr. Bruff at luncheon. When Rachel declined
eating anything, and gave as a reason for it that she was suffering
from a headache, the lawyer’s cunning instantly saw, and seized, the
chance that she had given him.
“There is only one remedy for a headache,” said this horrible old man.
“A walk, Miss Rachel, is the thing to cure you. I am entirely at your
service, if you will honour me by accepting my arm.”
“With the greatest pleasure. A walk is the very thing I was longing
for.”
“It’s past two,” I gently suggested. “And the afternoon service,
Rachel, begins at three.”
“How can you expect me to go to church again,” she asked, petulantly,
“with such a headache as mine?”
Mr. Bruff officiously opened the door for her. In another minute more
they were both out of the house. I don’t know when I have felt the
solemn duty of interfering so strongly as I felt it at that moment. But
what was to be done? Nothing was to be done but to interfere at the
first opportunity, later in the day.
On my return from the afternoon service I found that they had just got
back. One look at them told me that the lawyer had said what he wanted
to say. I had never before seen Rachel so silent and so thoughtful. I
had never before seen Mr. Bruff pay her such devoted attention, and
look at her with such marked respect. He had (or pretended that he had)
an engagement to dinner that day—and he took an early leave of us all;
intending to go back to London by the first train the next morning.
“Are you sure of your own resolution?” he said to Rachel at the door.
“Quite sure,” she answered—and so they parted.
The moment his back was turned, Rachel withdrew to her own room. She
never appeared at dinner. Her maid (the person with the cap-ribbons)
was sent downstairs to announce that her headache had returned. I ran
up to her and made all sorts of sisterly offers through the door. It
was locked, and she kept it locked. Plenty of obstructive material to
work on here! I felt greatly cheered and stimulated by her locking the
door.
When her cup of tea went up to her the next morning, I followed it in.
I sat by her bedside and said a few earnest words. She listened with
languid civility. I noticed my serious friend’s precious publications
huddled together on a table in a corner. Had she chanced to look into
them?—I asked. Yes—and they had not interested her. Would she allow me
to read a few passages of the deepest interest, which had probably
escaped her eye? No, not now—she had other things to think of. She gave
these answers, with her attention apparently absorbed in folding and
refolding the frilling on her nightgown. It was plainly necessary to
rouse her by some reference to those worldly interests which she still
had at heart.
“Do you know, love,” I said, “I had an odd fancy, yesterday, about Mr.
Bruff? I thought, when I saw you after your walk with him, that he had
been telling you some bad news.”
Her fingers dropped from the frilling of her nightgown, and her fierce
black eyes flashed at me.
“Quite the contrary!” she said. “It was news I was interested in