The Moonstone
morning. Is this the conduct that might have been expected from a man
placed in my horrible position? I can only answer that the sight of old
Betteredge’s familiar face was an inexpressible comfort to me, and that
the drinking of old Betteredge’s grog helped me, as I believe nothing
else would have helped me, in the state of complete bodily and mental
prostration into which I had fallen. I can only offer this excuse for
myself; and I can only admire that invariable preservation of dignity,
and that strictly logical consistency of conduct which distinguish
every man and woman who may read these lines, in every emergency of
their lives from the cradle to the grave.
“Now, Mr. Franklin, there’s one thing certain, at any rate,” said
Betteredge, throwing the nightgown down on the table between us, and
pointing to it as if it was a living creature that could hear him.
“_He’s_ a liar, to begin with.”
This comforting view of the matter was not the view that presented
itself to my mind.
“I am as innocent of all knowledge of having taken the Diamond as you
are,” I said. “But there is the witness against me! The paint on the
nightgown, and the name on the nightgown are facts.”
Betteredge lifted my glass, and put it persuasively into my hand.
“Facts?” he repeated. “Take a drop more grog, Mr. Franklin, and you’ll
get over the weakness of believing in facts! Foul play, sir!” he
continued, dropping his voice confidentially. “That is how I read the
riddle. Foul play somewhere—and you and I must find it out. Was there
nothing else in the tin case, when you put your hand into it?”
The question instantly reminded me of the letter in my pocket. I took
it out, and opened it. It was a letter of many pages, closely written.
I looked impatiently for the signature at the end. “Rosanna Spearman.”
As I read the name, a sudden remembrance illuminated my mind, and a
sudden suspicion rose out of the new light.
“Stop!” I exclaimed. “Rosanna Spearman came to my aunt out of a
reformatory? Rosanna Spearman had once been a thief?”
“There’s no denying that, Mr. Franklin. What of it now, if you please?”
“What of it now? How do we know she may not have stolen the Diamond
after all? How do we know she may not have smeared my nightgown
purposely with the paint?”
Betteredge laid his hand on my arm, and stopped me before I could say
any more.
“You will be cleared of this, Mr. Franklin, beyond all doubt. But I
hope you won’t be cleared in _that_ way. See what the letter says, sir.
In justice to the girl’s memory, see what it says.”
I felt the earnestness with which he spoke—felt it as a friendly rebuke
to me. “You shall form your own judgment on her letter,” I said. “I
will read it out.”
I began—and read these lines:
“Sir—I have something to own to you. A confession which means much
misery, may sometimes be made in very few words. This confession can be
made in three words. I love you.”
The letter dropped from my hand. I looked at Betteredge. “In the name
of Heaven,” I said, “what does it mean?”
He seemed to shrink from answering the question.
“You and Limping Lucy were alone together this morning, sir,” he said.
“Did she say nothing about Rosanna Spearman?”
“She never even mentioned Rosanna Spearman’s name.”
“Please to go back to the letter, Mr. Franklin. I tell you plainly, I
can’t find it in my heart to distress you, after what you have had to
bear already. Let her speak for herself, sir. And get on with your
grog. For your own sake, get on with your grog.”
I resumed the reading of the letter.
“It would be very disgraceful to me to tell you this, if I was a living
woman when you read it. I shall be dead and gone, sir, when you find my
letter. It is that which makes me bold. Not even my grave will be left
to tell of me. I may own the truth—with the quicksand waiting to hide
me when the words are written.
“Besides, you will find your nightgown in my hiding-place, with the
smear of the paint on it; and you will want to know how it came to be
hidden by me? and why I said nothing to you about it in my life-time? I
have only one reason to give. I did these strange things, because I
loved you.
“I won’t trouble you with much about myself, or my life, before you
came to my lady’s house. Lady Verinder took me out of a reformatory. I
had gone to the reformatory from the prison. I was put in the prison,
because I was a thief. I was a thief, because my mother went on the
streets when I was quite a little girl. My mother went on the streets,
because the gentleman who was my father deserted her. There is no need
to tell such a common story as this, at any length. It is told quite
often enough in the newspapers.
“Lady Verinder was very kind to me, and Mr. Betteredge was very kind to
me. Those two, and the matron at the reformatory, are the only good
people I have ever met with in all my life. I might have got on in my
place—not happily—but I might have got on, if you had not come
visiting. I don’t blame _you_, sir. It’s my fault—all my fault.
“Do you remember when you came out on us from among the sandhills, that
morning, looking for Mr. Betteredge? You were like a prince in a
fairy-story. You were like a lover in a dream. You were the most
adorable human creature I had ever seen. Something that felt like the
happy life I had never led yet, leapt up in me at the instant I set
eyes on you. Don’t laugh at this if you can help it. Oh, if I could
only make you feel how serious it is to _me!_
“I went back to the house, and wrote your name and mine in my work-box,
and drew a true lovers’ knot under them. Then, some devil—no, I ought
to say some good angel—whispered to me, ‘Go and look in the glass.’ The
glass told me—never mind what. I was too foolish to take the warning. I
went on getting fonder and fonder of you, just as if I was a lady in
your own rank of life, and the most beautiful creature your eyes ever
rested on. I tried—oh, dear, how I tried—to get you to look at me. If
you had known how I used to cry at night with the misery and the
mortification of your never taking any notice of me, you would have
pitied me perhaps, and have given me a look now and then to live on.
“It would have been no very kind look, perhaps, if you had known how I
hated Miss Rachel. I believe I found out you were in love with her,
before you knew it yourself. She used to give you roses to wear in your
button-hole. Ah, Mr. Franklin, you wore _my_ roses oftener than either
you or she thought! The only comfort I had at that time, was putting my
rose secretly in your glass of water, in place of hers—and then
throwing her rose away.
“If she had been really as pretty as you thought her, I might have
borne it better. No; I believe I should have been more spiteful against
her still. Suppose you put Miss Rachel into a servant’s dress, and took
her ornaments off? I don’t know what is the use of my writing in this
way. It can’t be denied that she had a bad figure; she was too thin.
But who can tell what the men like? And young ladies may behave in a
manner which would cost a servant her place. It’s no business of mine.
I can’t expect you to read my letter, if I write it in this way. But it
does stir one up to hear Miss Rachel called pretty, when one knows all
the time that it’s her dress does it, and her confidence in herself.
“Try not to lose patience with me, sir. I will get on as fast as I can
to the time which is sure to interest you—the time when the Diamond was
lost.
“But there is one thing which I have got it on my mind to tell you
first.
“My life was not a very hard life to bear, while I was a thief. It was
only when they had taught me at the reformatory to feel my own
degradation, and to try for better things, that the days grew long and
weary. Thoughts of the future forced themselves on me now. I felt the
dreadful reproach that honest people—even the kindest of honest
people—were to me in themselves. A heart-breaking sensation of
loneliness kept with me, go where I might, and do what I might, and see
what persons I might. It was my duty, I know, to try and get on with my
fellow-servants in my new place. Somehow, I couldn’t make friends with
them. They looked (or I thought they looked) as if they suspected what
I had been. I don’t regret, far from it, having been roused to make the
effort to be a reformed woman—but, indeed, indeed it was a weary life.
You had come across it like a beam of sunshine at first—and then you
too failed me. I was mad enough to love you; and I couldn’t even
attract your notice. There was great misery—there really was great
misery in that.
“Now I am coming to what I wanted to tell you. In those days of
bitterness, I went two or three times, when it was my turn to go out,
to my favourite place—the beach above the Shivering Sand. And I said to
myself, ‘I think it will end here. When I can bear it no longer, I
think it will end here.’ You will understand, sir, that the place had
laid a kind of spell on me before you came. I had always had a notion
that something would happen to me at the quicksand. But I had never
looked at it, with the thought of its being the means of my making away
with myself, till the time came of which I am now writing. Then I did
think that here was a place which would end all my troubles for me in a
moment or two—and hide me for ever afterwards.
“This is all I have to say about myself, reckoning from the morning
when I first saw you, to the morning when the alarm was raised in the
house that the Diamond was lost.
“I was so aggravated by the foolish talk among the women servants, all
wondering who was to be suspected first; and I was so angry with you
(knowing no better at that time) for the pains you took in hunting for
the jewel, and sending for the police, that I kept as much as possible
away by myself, until later in the day, when the officer from
Frizinghall came to the house.
“Mr. Seegrave began, as you may remember, by setting a guard on the
women’s bedrooms; and the women all followed him upstairs in a rage, to
know what he meant by the insult he had put on them. I went with the
rest, because if I had done anything different from the rest, Mr.
Seegrave was the sort of man who would have suspected me directly. We
found him in Miss Rachel’s room. He told us he wouldn’t have a lot of
women there; and he pointed to the smear on the painted door, and said
some of our petticoats had done the mischief, and sent us all
downstairs again.
“After leaving Miss Rachel’s room, I stopped a moment on one of the
landings, by myself, to see if I had got the paint-stain by any chance
on _my_ gown. Penelope Betteredge (the only one of the women with whom
I was on friendly terms) passed, and noticed what I was about.
“‘You needn’t trouble yourself, Rosanna,’ she said. ‘The paint on Miss
Rachel’s door has been dry for hours. If Mr. Seegrave hadn’t set a
watch on our bedrooms, I might have told him as much. I don’t know what
_you_ think—_I_ was never so insulted before in my life!’
“Penelope was a hot-tempered girl. I quieted her, and brought her back
to what she had said about the paint on the door having been dry for
hours.
“‘How do you know that?’ I asked.
“‘I was with Miss Rachel, and Mr. Franklin, all yesterday morning,’
Penelope said, ‘mixing the colours, while they finished the door. I
heard Miss Rachel ask whether the door would be dry that evening, in
time for the birthday company to see it. And Mr. Franklin shook his
head, and said it wouldn’t be dry in less than twelve hours. It was
long past luncheon-time—it was three o’clock before they had done. What
does your arithmetic say, Rosanna? Mine says the door was dry by three
this morning.’
“‘Did some of the ladies go upstairs yesterday evening to see it?’ I