The Moonstone
Lord bless us and save us! Here—four good hours before we expected
him—was Mr. Franklin Blake!
Before I could say a word, I saw Mr. Franklin, a little surprised to
all appearance, look up from me to Rosanna. Following his lead, I
looked at the girl too. She was blushing of a deeper red than ever,
seemingly at having caught Mr. Franklin’s eye; and she turned and left
us suddenly, in a confusion quite unaccountable to my mind, without
either making her curtsey to the gentleman or saying a word to me. Very
unlike her usual self: a civiller and better-behaved servant, in
general, you never met with.
“That’s an odd girl,” says Mr. Franklin. “I wonder what she sees in me
to surprise her?”
“I suppose, sir,” I answered, drolling on our young gentleman’s
Continental education, “it’s the varnish from foreign parts.”
I set down here Mr. Franklin’s careless question, and my foolish
answer, as a consolation and encouragement to all stupid people—it
being, as I have remarked, a great satisfaction to our inferior
fellow-creatures to find that their betters are, on occasions, no
brighter than they are. Neither Mr. Franklin, with his wonderful
foreign training, nor I, with my age, experience, and natural
mother-wit, had the ghost of an idea of what Rosanna Spearman’s
unaccountable behaviour really meant. She was out of our thoughts, poor
soul, before we had seen the last flutter of her little grey cloak
among the sandhills. And what of that? you will ask, naturally enough.
Read on, good friend, as patiently as you can, and perhaps you will be
as sorry for Rosanna Spearman as I was, when I found out the truth.
CHAPTER V
The first thing I did, after we were left together alone, was to make a
third attempt to get up from my seat on the sand. Mr. Franklin stopped
me.
“There is one advantage about this horrid place,” he said; “we have got
it all to ourselves. Stay where you are, Betteredge; I have something
to say to you.”
While he was speaking, I was looking at him, and trying to see
something of the boy I remembered, in the man before me. The man put me
out. Look as I might, I could see no more of his boy’s rosy cheeks than
of his boy’s trim little jacket. His complexion had got pale: his face,
at the lower part was covered, to my great surprise and disappointment,
with a curly brown beard and moustachios. He had a lively touch-and-go
way with him, very pleasant and engaging, I admit; but nothing to
compare with his free-and-easy manners of other times. To make matters
worse, he had promised to be tall, and had not kept his promise. He was
neat, and slim, and well made; but he wasn’t by an inch or two up to
the middle height. In short, he baffled me altogether. The years that
had passed had left nothing of his old self, except the bright,
straightforward look in his eyes. There I found our nice boy again, and
there I concluded to stop in my investigation.
“Welcome back to the old place, Mr. Franklin,” I said. “All the more
welcome, sir, that you have come some hours before we expected you.”
“I have a reason for coming before you expected me,” answered Mr.
Franklin. “I suspect, Betteredge, that I have been followed and watched
in London, for the last three or four days; and I have travelled by the
morning instead of the afternoon train, because I wanted to give a
certain dark-looking stranger the slip.”
Those words did more than surprise me. They brought back to my mind, in
a flash, the three jugglers, and Penelope’s notion that they meant some
mischief to Mr. Franklin Blake.
“Who’s watching you, sir,—and why?” I inquired.
“Tell me about the three Indians you have had at the house today,” says
Mr. Franklin, without noticing my question. “It’s just possible,
Betteredge, that my stranger and your three jugglers may turn out to be
pieces of the same puzzle.”
“How do you come to know about the jugglers, sir?” I asked, putting one
question on the top of another, which was bad manners, I own. But you
don’t expect much from poor human nature—so don’t expect much from me.
“I saw Penelope at the house,” says Mr. Franklin; “and Penelope told
me. Your daughter promised to be a pretty girl, Betteredge, and she has
kept her promise. Penelope has got a small ear and a small foot. Did
the late Mrs. Betteredge possess those inestimable advantages?”
“The late Mrs. Betteredge possessed a good many defects, sir,” says I.
“One of them (if you will pardon my mentioning it) was never keeping to
the matter in hand. She was more like a fly than a woman: she couldn’t
settle on anything.”
“She would just have suited me,” says Mr. Franklin. “I never settle on
anything either. Betteredge, your edge is better than ever. Your
daughter said as much, when I asked for particulars about the jugglers.
‘Father will tell you, sir. He’s a wonderful man for his age; and he
expresses himself beautifully.’ Penelope’s own words—blushing divinely.
Not even my respect for you prevented me from—never mind; I knew her
when she was a child, and she’s none the worse for it. Let’s be
serious. What did the jugglers do?”
I was something dissatisfied with my daughter—not for letting Mr.
Franklin kiss her; Mr. Franklin was welcome to _that_—but for forcing
me to tell her foolish story at second hand. However, there was no help
for it now but to mention the circumstances. Mr. Franklin’s merriment
all died away as I went on. He sat knitting his eyebrows, and twisting
his beard. When I had done, he repeated after me two of the questions
which the chief juggler had put to the boy—seemingly for the purpose of
fixing them well in his mind.
“‘Is it on the road to this house, and on no other, that the English
gentleman will travel today?’ ‘Has the English gentleman got It about
him?’ I suspect,” says Mr. Franklin, pulling a little sealed paper
parcel out of his pocket, “that ‘It’ means _this_. And ‘this,’
Betteredge, means my uncle Herncastle’s famous Diamond.”
“Good Lord, sir!” I broke out, “how do you come to be in charge of the
wicked Colonel’s Diamond?”
“The wicked Colonel’s will has left his Diamond as a birthday present
to my cousin Rachel,” says Mr. Franklin. “And my father, as the wicked
Colonel’s executor, has given it in charge to me to bring down here.”
If the sea, then oozing in smoothly over the Shivering Sand, had been
changed into dry land before my own eyes, I doubt if I could have been
more surprised than I was when Mr. Franklin spoke those words.
“The Colonel’s Diamond left to Miss Rachel!” says I. “And your father,
sir, the Colonel’s executor! Why, I would have laid any bet you like,
Mr. Franklin, that your father wouldn’t have touched the Colonel with a
pair of tongs!”
“Strong language, Betteredge! What was there against the Colonel? He
belonged to your time, not to mine. Tell me what you know about him,
and I’ll tell you how my father came to be his executor, and more
besides. I have made some discoveries in London about my uncle
Herncastle and his Diamond, which have rather an ugly look to my eyes;
and I want you to confirm them. You called him the ‘wicked Colonel’
just now. Search your memory, my old friend, and tell me why.”
I saw he was in earnest, and I told him.
Here follows the substance of what I said, written out entirely for
your benefit. Pay attention to it, or you will be all abroad, when we
get deeper into the story. Clear your mind of the children, or the
dinner, or the new bonnet, or what not. Try if you can’t forget
politics, horses, prices in the City, and grievances at the club. I
hope you won’t take this freedom on my part amiss; it’s only a way I
have of appealing to the gentle reader. Lord! haven’t I seen you with
the greatest authors in your hands, and don’t I know how ready your
attention is to wander when it’s a book that asks for it, instead of a
person?
I spoke, a little way back, of my lady’s father, the old lord with the
short temper and the long tongue. He had five children in all. Two sons
to begin with; then, after a long time, his wife broke out breeding
again, and the three young ladies came briskly one after the other, as
fast as the nature of things would permit; my mistress, as before
mentioned, being the youngest and best of the three. Of the two sons,
the eldest, Arthur, inherited the title and estates. The second, the
Honourable John, got a fine fortune left him by a relative, and went
into the army.
It’s an ill bird, they say, that fouls its own nest. I look on the
noble family of the Herncastles as being my nest; and I shall take it
as a favour if I am not expected to enter into particulars on the
subject of the Honourable John. He was, I honestly believe, one of the
greatest blackguards that ever lived. I can hardly say more or less for
him than that. He went into the army, beginning in the Guards. He had
to leave the Guards before he was two-and-twenty—never mind why. They
are very strict in the army, and they were too strict for the
Honourable John. He went out to India to see whether they were equally
strict there, and to try a little active service. In the matter of
bravery (to give him his due), he was a mixture of bull-dog and
game-cock, with a dash of the savage. He was at the taking of
Seringapatam. Soon afterwards he changed into another regiment, and, in
course of time, changed into a third. In the third he got his last step
as lieutenant-colonel, and, getting that, got also a sunstroke, and
came home to England.
He came back with a character that closed the doors of all his family
against him, my lady (then just married) taking the lead, and declaring
(with Sir John’s approval, of course) that her brother should never
enter any house of hers. There was more than one slur on the Colonel
that made people shy of him; but the blot of the Diamond is all I need
mention here.
It was said he had got possession of his Indian jewel by means which,
bold as he was, he didn’t dare acknowledge. He never attempted to sell
it—not being in need of money, and not (to give him his due again)
making money an object. He never gave it away; he never even showed it
to any living soul. Some said he was afraid of its getting him into a
difficulty with the military authorities; others (very ignorant indeed
of the real nature of the man) said he was afraid, if he showed it, of
its costing him his life.
There was perhaps a grain of truth mixed up with this last report. It
was false to say that he was afraid; but it was a fact that his life
had been twice threatened in India; and it was firmly believed that the
Moonstone was at the bottom of it. When he came back to England, and
found himself avoided by everybody, the Moonstone was thought to be at
the bottom of it again. The mystery of the Colonel’s life got in the
Colonel’s way, and outlawed him, as you may say, among his own people.
The men wouldn’t let him into their clubs; the women—more than one—whom
he wanted to marry, refused him; friends and relations got too
near-sighted to see him in the street.
Some men in this mess would have tried to set themselves right with the
world. But to give in, even when he was wrong, and had all society
against him, was not the way of the Honourable John. He had kept the
Diamond, in flat defiance of assassination, in India. He kept the
Diamond, in flat defiance of public opinion, in England. There you have
the portrait of the man before you, as in a picture: a character that
braved everything; and a face, handsome as it was, that looked
possessed by the devil.
We heard different rumours about him from time to time. Sometimes they
said he was given up to smoking opium and collecting old books;
sometimes he was reported to be trying strange things in chemistry;
sometimes he was seen carousing and amusing himself among the lowest