The Moonstone
hearing—and I am deeply indebted to Mr. Bruff for telling me of it.”
“Yes?” I said, in a tone of gentle interest.
Her fingers went back to the frilling, and she turned her head sullenly
away from me. I had been met in this manner, in the course of plying
the good work, hundreds of times. She merely stimulated me to try
again. In my dauntless zeal for her welfare, I ran the great risk, and
openly alluded to her marriage engagement.
“News you were interested in hearing?” I repeated. “I suppose, my dear
Rachel, that must be news of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite?”
She started up in the bed, and turned deadly pale. It was evidently on
the tip of her tongue to retort on me with the unbridled insolence of
former times. She checked herself—laid her head back on the
pillow—considered a minute—and then answered in these remarkable words:
“_I shall never marry Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite._”
It was my turn to start at that.
“What can you possibly mean?” I exclaimed. “The marriage is considered
by the whole family as a settled thing!”
“Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite is expected here today,” she said doggedly.
“Wait till he comes—and you will see.”
“But my dear Rachel——”
She rang the bell at the head of her bed. The person with the
cap-ribbons appeared.
“Penelope! my bath.”
Let me give her her due. In the state of my feelings at that moment, I
do sincerely believe that she had hit on the only possible way of
forcing me to leave the room.
By the mere worldly mind my position towards Rachel might have been
viewed as presenting difficulties of no ordinary kind. I had reckoned
on leading her to higher things by means of a little earnest
exhortation on the subject of her marriage. And now, if she was to be
believed, no such event as her marriage was to take place at all. But
ah, my friends! a working Christian of my experience (with an
evangelising prospect before her) takes broader views than these.
Supposing Rachel really broke off the marriage, on which the
Ablewhites, father and son, counted as a settled thing, what would be
the result? It could only end, if she held firm, in an exchanging of
hard words and bitter accusations on both sides. And what would be the
effect on Rachel when the stormy interview was over? A salutary moral
depression would be the effect. Her pride would be exhausted, her
stubbornness would be exhausted, by the resolute resistance which it
was in her character to make under the circumstances. She would turn
for sympathy to the nearest person who had sympathy to offer. And I was
that nearest person—brimful of comfort, charged to overflowing with
seasonable and reviving words. Never had the evangelising prospect
looked brighter, to _my_ eyes, than it looked now.
She came down to breakfast, but she ate nothing, and hardly uttered a
word.
After breakfast she wandered listlessly from room to room—then suddenly
roused herself, and opened the piano. The music she selected to play
was of the most scandalously profane sort, associated with performances
on the stage which it curdles one’s blood to think of. It would have
been premature to interfere with her at such a time as this. I
privately ascertained the hour at which Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite was
expected, and then I escaped the music by leaving the house.
Being out alone, I took the opportunity of calling upon my two resident
friends. It was an indescribable luxury to find myself indulging in
earnest conversation with serious persons. Infinitely encouraged and
refreshed, I turned my steps back again to the house, in excellent time
to await the arrival of our expected visitor. I entered the
dining-room, always empty at that hour of the day, and found myself
face to face with Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite!
He made no attempt to fly the place. Quite the contrary. He advanced to
meet me with the utmost eagerness.
“Dear Miss Clack, I have been only waiting to see _you!_ Chance set me
free of my London engagements today sooner than I had expected, and I
have got here, in consequence, earlier than my appointed time.”
Not the slightest embarrassment encumbered his explanation, though this
was his first meeting with me after the scene in Montagu Square. He was
not aware, it is true, of my having been a witness of that scene. But
he knew, on the other hand, that my attendances at the Mothers’
Small-Clothes, and my relations with friends attached to other
charities, must have informed me of his shameless neglect of his Ladies
and of his Poor. And yet there he was before me, in full possession of
his charming voice and his irresistible smile!
“Have you seen Rachel yet?” I asked.
He sighed gently, and took me by the hand. I should certainly have
snatched my hand away, if the manner in which he gave his answer had
not paralysed me with astonishment.
“I have seen Rachel,” he said with perfect tranquillity. “You are
aware, dear friend, that she was engaged to me? Well, she has taken a
sudden resolution to break the engagement. Reflection has convinced her
that she will best consult her welfare and mine by retracting a rash
promise, and leaving me free to make some happier choice elsewhere.
That is the only reason she will give, and the only answer she will
make to every question that I can ask of her.”
“What have you done on your side?” I inquired. “Have you submitted?”
“Yes,” he said with the most unruffled composure, “I have submitted.”
His conduct, under the circumstances, was so utterly inconceivable,
that I stood bewildered with my hand in his. It is a piece of rudeness
to stare at anybody, and it is an act of indelicacy to stare at a
gentleman. I committed both those improprieties. And I said, as if in a
dream, “What does it mean?”
“Permit me to tell you,” he replied. “And suppose we sit down?”
He led me to a chair. I have an indistinct remembrance that he was very
affectionate. I don’t think he put his arm round my waist to support
me—but I am not sure. I was quite helpless, and his ways with ladies
were very endearing. At any rate, we sat down. I can answer for that,
if I can answer for nothing more.
CHAPTER VIII
“I have lost a beautiful girl, an excellent social position, and a
handsome income,” Mr. Godfrey began; “and I have submitted to it
without a struggle. What can be the motive for such extraordinary
conduct as that? My precious friend, there is no motive.”
“No motive?” I repeated.
“Let me appeal, my dear Miss Clack, to your experience of children,” he
went on. “A child pursues a certain course of conduct. You are greatly
struck by it, and you attempt to get at the motive. The dear little
thing is incapable of telling you its motive. You might as well ask the
grass why it grows, or the birds why they sing. Well! in this matter, I
am like the dear little thing—like the grass—like the birds. I don’t
know why I made a proposal of marriage to Miss Verinder. I don’t know
why I have shamefully neglected my dear Ladies. I don’t know why I have
apostatised from the Mothers’ Small-Clothes. You say to the child, Why
have you been naughty? And the little angel puts its finger into its
mouth, and doesn’t know. My case exactly, Miss Clack! I couldn’t
confess it to anybody else. I feel impelled to confess it to _you!_”
I began to recover myself. A mental problem was involved here. I am
deeply interested in mental problems—and I am not, it is thought,
without some skill in solving them.
“Best of friends, exert your intellect, and help me,” he proceeded.
“Tell me—why does a time come when these matrimonial proceedings of
mine begin to look like something done in a dream? Why does it suddenly
occur to me that my true happiness is in helping my dear Ladies, in
going my modest round of useful work, in saying my few earnest words
when called on by my Chairman? What do I want with a position? I have
got a position! What do I want with an income? I can pay for my bread
and cheese, and my nice little lodging, and my two coats a year. What
do I want with Miss Verinder? She has told me with her own lips (this,
dear lady, is between ourselves) that she loves another man, and that
her only idea in marrying me is to try and put that other man out of
her head. What a horrid union is this! Oh, dear me, what a horrid union
is this! Such are my reflections, Miss Clack, on my way to Brighton. I
approach Rachel with the feeling of a criminal who is going to receive
his sentence. When I find that she has changed her mind too—when I hear
her propose to break the engagement—I experience (there is no sort of
doubt about it) a most overpowering sense of relief. A month ago I was
pressing her rapturously to my bosom. An hour ago, the happiness of
knowing that I shall never press her again, intoxicates me like strong
liquor. The thing seems impossible—the thing can’t be. And yet there
are the facts, as I had the honour of stating them when we first sat
down together in these two chairs. I have lost a beautiful girl, an
excellent social position, and a handsome income; and I have submitted
to it without a struggle. Can _you_ account for it, dear friend? It’s
quite beyond _me_.”
His magnificent head sank on his breast, and he gave up his own mental
problem in despair.
I was deeply touched. The case (if I may speak as a spiritual
physician) was now quite plain to me. It is no uncommon event, in the
experience of us all, to see the possessors of exalted ability
occasionally humbled to the level of the most poorly-gifted people
about them. The object, no doubt, in the wise economy of Providence, is
to remind greatness that it is mortal and that the power which has
conferred it can also take it away. It was now—to my mind—easy to
discern one of these salutary humiliations in the deplorable
proceedings on dear Mr. Godfrey’s part, of which I had been the unseen
witness. And it was equally easy to recognise the welcome reappearance
of his own finer nature in the horror with which he recoiled from the
idea of a marriage with Rachel, and in the charming eagerness which he
showed to return to his Ladies and his Poor.
I put this view before him in a few simple and sisterly words. His joy
was beautiful to see. He compared himself, as I went on, to a lost man
emerging from the darkness into the light. When I answered for a loving
reception of him at the Mothers’ Small-Clothes, the grateful heart of
our Christian Hero overflowed. He pressed my hands alternately to his
lips. Overwhelmed by the exquisite triumph of having got him back among
us, I let him do what he liked with my hands. I closed my eyes. I felt
my head, in an ecstasy of spiritual self-forgetfulness, sinking on his
shoulder. In a moment more I should certainly have swooned away in his
arms, but for an interruption from the outer world, which brought me to
myself again. A horrid rattling of knives and forks sounded outside the
door, and the footman came in to lay the table for luncheon.
Mr. Godfrey started up, and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.
“How time flies with _you!_” he exclaimed. “I shall barely catch the
train.”
I ventured on asking why he was in such a hurry to get back to town.
His answer reminded me of family difficulties that were still to be
reconciled, and of family disagreements that were yet to come.
“I have heard from my father,” he said. “Business obliges him to leave
Frizinghall for London today, and he proposes coming on here, either
this evening or tomorrow. I must tell him what has happened between
Rachel and me. His heart is set on our marriage—there will be great
difficulty, I fear, in reconciling him to the breaking-off of the
engagement. I must stop him, for all our sakes, from coming here till
he _is_ reconciled. Best and dearest of friends, we shall meet again!”
With those words he hurried out. In equal haste on my side, I ran