The Moonstone
upstairs to compose myself in my own room before meeting Aunt Ablewhite
and Rachel at the luncheon-table.
I am well aware—to dwell for a moment yet on the subject of Mr.
Godfrey—that the all-profaning opinion of the world has charged him
with having his own private reasons for releasing Rachel from her
engagement, at the first opportunity she gave him. It has also reached
my ears, that his anxiety to recover his place in my estimation has
been attributed in certain quarters, to a mercenary eagerness to make
his peace (through me) with a venerable committee-woman at the Mothers’
Small-Clothes, abundantly blessed with the goods of this world, and a
beloved and intimate friend of my own. I only notice these odious
slanders for the sake of declaring that they never had a moment’s
influence on my mind. In obedience to my instructions, I have exhibited
the fluctuations in my opinion of our Christian Hero, exactly as I find
them recorded in my diary. In justice to myself, let me here add that,
once reinstated in his place in my estimation, my gifted friend never
lost that place again. I write with the tears in my eyes, burning to
say more. But no—I am cruelly limited to my actual experience of
persons and things. In less than a month from the time of which I am
now writing, events in the money-market (which diminished even _my_
miserable little income) forced me into foreign exile, and left me with
nothing but a loving remembrance of Mr. Godfrey which the slander of
the world has assailed, and assailed in vain.
Let me dry my eyes, and return to my narrative.
I went downstairs to luncheon, naturally anxious to see how Rachel was
affected by her release from her marriage engagement.
It appeared to me—but I own I am a poor authority in such matters—that
the recovery of her freedom had set her thinking again of that other
man whom she loved, and that she was furious with herself for not being
able to control a revulsion of feeling of which she was secretly
ashamed. Who was the man? I had my suspicions—but it was needless to
waste time in idle speculation. When I had converted her, she would, as
a matter of course, have no concealments from Me. I should hear all
about the man; I should hear all about the Moonstone. If I had had no
higher object in stirring her up to a sense of spiritual things, the
motive of relieving her mind of its guilty secrets would have been
enough of itself to encourage me to go on.
Aunt Ablewhite took her exercise in the afternoon in an invalid chair.
Rachel accompanied her. “I wish I could drag the chair,” she broke out,
recklessly. “I wish I could fatigue myself till I was ready to drop.”
She was in the same humour in the evening. I discovered in one of my
friend’s precious publications—the _Life, Letters, and Labours of Miss
Jane Ann Stamper_, forty-fourth edition—passages which bore with a
marvellous appropriateness on Rachel’s present position. Upon my
proposing to read them, she went to the piano. Conceive how little she
must have known of serious people, if she supposed that my patience was
to be exhausted in that way! I kept Miss Jane Ann Stamper by me, and
waited for events with the most unfaltering trust in the future.
Old Mr. Ablewhite never made his appearance that night. But I knew the
importance which his worldly greed attached to his son’s marriage with
Miss Verinder—and I felt a positive conviction (do what Mr. Godfrey
might to prevent it) that we should see him the next day. With his
interference in the matter, the storm on which I had counted would
certainly come, and the salutary exhaustion of Rachel’s resisting
powers would as certainly follow. I am not ignorant that old Mr.
Ablewhite has the reputation generally (especially among his inferiors)
of being a remarkably good-natured man. According to my observation of
him, he deserves his reputation as long as he has his own way, and not
a moment longer.
The next day, exactly as I had foreseen, Aunt Ablewhite was as near to
being astonished as her nature would permit, by the sudden appearance
of her husband. He had barely been a minute in the house, before he was
followed, to _my_ astonishment this time, by an unexpected complication
in the shape of Mr. Bruff.
I never remember feeling the presence of the lawyer to be more
unwelcome than I felt it at that moment. He looked ready for anything
in the way of an obstructive proceeding—capable even of keeping the
peace with Rachel for one of the combatants!
“This is a pleasant surprise, sir,” said Mr. Ablewhite, addressing
himself with his deceptive cordiality to Mr. Bruff. “When I left your
office yesterday, I didn’t expect to have the honour of seeing you at
Brighton today.”
“I turned over our conversation in my mind, after you had gone,”
replied Mr. Bruff. “And it occurred to me that I might perhaps be of
some use on this occasion. I was just in time to catch the train, and I
had no opportunity of discovering the carriage in which you were
travelling.”
Having given that explanation, he seated himself by Rachel. I retired
modestly to a corner—with Miss Jane Ann Stamper on my lap, in case of
emergency. My aunt sat at the window; placidly fanning herself as
usual. Mr. Ablewhite stood up in the middle of the room, with his bald
head much pinker than I had ever seen it yet, and addressed himself in
the most affectionate manner to his niece.
“Rachel, my dear,” he said, “I have heard some very extraordinary news
from Godfrey. And I am here to inquire about it. You have a
sitting-room of your own in this house. Will you honour me by showing
me the way to it?”
Rachel never moved. Whether she was determined to bring matters to a
crisis, or whether she was prompted by some private sign from Mr.
Bruff, is more than I can tell. She declined doing old Mr. Ablewhite
the honour of conducting him into her sitting-room.
“Whatever you wish to say to me,” she answered, “can be said here—in
the presence of my relatives, and in the presence” (she looked at Mr.
Bruff) “of my mother’s trusted old friend.”
“Just as you please, my dear,” said the amiable Mr. Ablewhite. He took
a chair. The rest of them looked at his face—as if they expected it,
after seventy years of worldly training, to speak the truth. I looked
at the top of his bald head; having noticed on other occasions that the
temper which was really in him had a habit of registering itself
_there_.
“Some weeks ago,” pursued the old gentleman, “my son informed me that
Miss Verinder had done him the honour to engage herself to marry him.
Is it possible, Rachel, that he can have misinterpreted—or presumed
upon—what you really said to him?”
“Certainly not,” she replied. “I did engage myself to marry him.”
“Very frankly answered!” said Mr. Ablewhite. “And most satisfactory, my
dear, so far. In respect to what happened some weeks since, Godfrey has
made no mistake. The error is evidently in what he told me yesterday. I
begin to see it now. You and he have had a lovers’ quarrel—and my
foolish son has interpreted it seriously. Ah! I should have known
better than that at his age.”
The fallen nature in Rachel—the mother Eve, so to speak—began to chafe
at this.
“Pray let us understand each other, Mr. Ablewhite,” she said. “Nothing
in the least like a quarrel took place yesterday between your son and
me. If he told you that I proposed breaking off our marriage
engagement, and that he agreed on his side—he told you the truth.”
The self-registering thermometer at the top of Mr. Ablewhite’s bald
head began to indicate a rise of temper. His face was more amiable than
ever—but _there_ was the pink at the top of his face, a shade deeper
already!
“Come, come, my dear!” he said, in his most soothing manner, “now don’t
be angry, and don’t be hard on poor Godfrey! He has evidently said some
unfortunate thing. He was always clumsy from a child—but he means well,
Rachel, he means well!”
“Mr. Ablewhite, I have either expressed myself very badly, or you are
purposely mistaking me. Once for all, it is a settled thing between
your son and myself that we remain, for the rest of our lives, cousins
and nothing more. Is that plain enough?”
The tone in which she said those words made it impossible, even for old
Mr. Ablewhite, to mistake her any longer. His thermometer went up
another degree, and his voice when he next spoke, ceased to be the
voice which is appropriate to a notoriously good-natured man.
“I am to understand, then,” he said, “that your marriage engagement is
broken off?”
“You are to understand that, Mr. Ablewhite, if you please.”
“I am also to take it as a matter of fact that the proposal to withdraw
from the engagement came, in the first instance, from _you?_”
“It came, in the first instance, from me. And it met, as I have told
you, with your son’s consent and approval.”
The thermometer went up to the top of the register. I mean, the pink
changed suddenly to scarlet.
“My son is a mean-spirited hound!” cried this furious old worldling.
“In justice to myself as his father—not in justice to _him_—I beg to
ask you, Miss Verinder, what complaint you have to make of Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite?”
Here Mr. Bruff interfered for the first time.
“You are not bound to answer that question,” he said to Rachel.
Old Mr. Ablewhite fastened on him instantly.
“Don’t forget, sir,” he said, “that you are a self-invited guest here.
Your interference would have come with a better grace if you had waited
until it was asked for.”
Mr. Bruff took no notice. The smooth varnish on _his_ wicked old face
never cracked. Rachel thanked him for the advice he had given to her,
and then turned to old Mr. Ablewhite—preserving her composure in a
manner which (having regard to her age and her sex) was simply awful to
see.
“Your son put the same question to me which you have just asked,” she
said. “I had only one answer for him, and I have only one answer for
you. I proposed that we should release each other, because reflection
had convinced me that I should best consult his welfare and mine by
retracting a rash promise, and leaving him free to make his choice
elsewhere.”
“What has my son done?” persisted Mr. Ablewhite. “I have a right to
know that. What has my son done?”
She persisted just as obstinately on her side.
“You have had the only explanation which I think it necessary to give
to you, or to him,” she answered.
“In plain English, it’s your sovereign will and pleasure, Miss
Verinder, to jilt my son?”
Rachel was silent for a moment. Sitting close behind her, I heard her
sigh. Mr. Bruff took her hand, and gave it a little squeeze. She
recovered herself, and answered Mr. Ablewhite as boldly as ever.
“I have exposed myself to worse misconstruction than that,” she said.
“And I have borne it patiently. The time has gone by, when you could
mortify me by calling me a jilt.”
She spoke with a bitterness of tone which satisfied me that the scandal
of the Moonstone had been in some way recalled to her mind. “I have no
more to say,” she added, wearily, not addressing the words to anyone in
particular, and looking away from us all, out of the window that was
nearest to her.
Mr. Ablewhite got upon his feet, and pushed away his chair so violently
that it toppled over and fell on the floor.
“I have something more to say on my side,” he announced, bringing down
the flat of his hand on the table with a bang. “I have to say that if
my son doesn’t feel this insult, I do!”
Rachel started, and looked at him in sudden surprise.
“Insult?” she repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Insult!” reiterated Mr. Ablewhite. “I know your motive, Miss Verinder,
for breaking your promise to my son! I know it as certainly as if you
had confessed it in so many words. Your cursed family pride is