The Moonstone
that was the only proof against you! And not a living creature knew
it—yourself included! I am afraid to tell you how I felt when I called
these things to mind—you would hate my memory for ever afterwards.”
At that place, Betteredge looked up from the letter.
“Not a glimmer of light so far, Mr. Franklin,” said the old man, taking
off his heavy tortoiseshell spectacles, and pushing Rosanna Spearman’s
confession a little away from him. “Have you come to any conclusion,
sir, in your own mind, while I have been reading?”
“Finish the letter first, Betteredge; there may be something to
enlighten us at the end of it. I shall have a word or two to say to you
after that.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll just rest my eyes, and then I’ll go on again. In
the meantime, Mr. Franklin—I don’t want to hurry you—but would you mind
telling me, in one word, whether you see your way out of this dreadful
mess yet?”
“I see my way back to London,” I said, “to consult Mr. Bruff. If he
can’t help me——”
“Yes, sir?”
“And if the Sergeant won’t leave his retirement at Dorking——”
“He won’t, Mr. Franklin!”
“Then, Betteredge—as far as I can see now—I am at the end of my
resources. After Mr. Bruff and the Sergeant, I don’t know of a living
creature who can be of the slightest use to me.”
As the words passed my lips, some person outside knocked at the door of
the room.
Betteredge looked surprised as well as annoyed by the interruption.
“Come in,” he called out, irritably, “whoever you are!”
The door opened, and there entered to us, quietly, the most
remarkable-looking man that I had ever seen. Judging him by his figure
and his movements, he was still young. Judging him by his face, and
comparing him with Betteredge, he looked the elder of the two. His
complexion was of a gipsy darkness; his fleshless cheeks had fallen
into deep hollows, over which the bone projected like a penthouse. His
nose presented the fine shape and modelling so often found among the
ancient people of the East, so seldom visible among the newer races of
the West. His forehead rose high and straight from the brow. His marks
and wrinkles were innumerable. From this strange face, eyes, stranger
still, of the softest brown—eyes dreamy and mournful, and deeply sunk
in their orbits—looked out at you, and (in my case, at least) took your
attention captive at their will. Add to this a quantity of thick
closely-curling hair, which, by some freak of Nature, had lost its
colour in the most startlingly partial and capricious manner. Over the
top of his head it was still of the deep black which was its natural
colour. Round the sides of his head—without the slightest gradation of
grey to break the force of the extraordinary contrast—it had turned
completely white. The line between the two colours preserved no sort of
regularity. At one place, the white hair ran up into the black; at
another, the black hair ran down into the white. I looked at the man
with a curiosity which, I am ashamed to say, I found it quite
impossible to control. His soft brown eyes looked back at me gently;
and he met my involuntary rudeness in staring at him, with an apology
which I was conscious that I had not deserved.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I had no idea that Mr. Betteredge was
engaged.” He took a slip of paper from his pocket, and handed it to
Betteredge. “The list for next week,” he said. His eyes just rested on
me again—and he left the room as quietly as he had entered it.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“Mr. Candy’s assistant,” said Betteredge. “By-the-bye, Mr. Franklin,
you will be sorry to hear that the little doctor has never recovered
that illness he caught, going home from the birthday dinner. He’s
pretty well in health; but he lost his memory in the fever, and he has
never recovered more than the wreck of it since. The work all falls on
his assistant. Not much of it now, except among the poor. _They_ can’t
help themselves, you know. _They_ must put up with the man with the
piebald hair, and the gipsy complexion—or they would get no doctoring
at all.”
“You don’t seem to like him, Betteredge?”
“Nobody likes him, sir.”
“Why is he so unpopular?”
“Well, Mr. Franklin, his appearance is against him, to begin with. And
then there’s a story that Mr. Candy took him with a very doubtful
character. Nobody knows who he is—and he hasn’t a friend in the place.
How can you expect one to like him, after that?”
“Quite impossible, of course! May I ask what he wanted with you, when
he gave you that bit of paper?”
“Only to bring me the weekly list of the sick people about here, sir,
who stand in need of a little wine. My lady always had a regular
distribution of good sound port and sherry among the infirm poor; and
Miss Rachel wishes the custom to be kept up. Times have changed! times
have changed! I remember when Mr. Candy himself brought the list to my
mistress. Now it’s Mr. Candy’s assistant who brings the list to me.
I’ll go on with the letter, if you will allow me, sir,” said
Betteredge, drawing Rosanna Spearman’s confession back to him. “It
isn’t lively reading, I grant you. But, there! it keeps me from getting
sour with thinking of the past.” He put on his spectacles, and wagged
his head gloomily. “There’s a bottom of good sense, Mr. Franklin, in
our conduct to our mothers, when they first start us on the journey of
life. We are all of us more or less unwilling to be brought into the
world. And we are all of us right.”
Mr. Candy’s assistant had produced too strong an impression on me to be
immediately dismissed from my thoughts. I passed over the last
unanswerable utterance of the Betteredge philosophy; and returned to
the subject of the man with the piebald hair.
“What is his name?” I asked.
“As ugly a name as need be,” Betteredge answered gruffly. “Ezra
Jennings.”
CHAPTER V
Having told me the name of Mr. Candy’s assistant, Betteredge appeared
to think that we had wasted enough of our time on an insignificant
subject. He resumed the perusal of Rosanna Spearman’s letter.
On my side, I sat at the window, waiting until he had done. Little by
little, the impression produced on me by Ezra Jennings—it seemed
perfectly unaccountable, in such a situation as mine, that any human
being should have produced an impression on me at all!—faded from my
mind. My thoughts flowed back into their former channel. Once more, I
forced myself to look my own incredible position resolutely in the
face. Once more, I reviewed in my own mind the course which I had at
last summoned composure enough to plan out for the future.
To go back to London that day; to put the whole case before Mr. Bruff;
and, last and most important, to obtain (no matter by what means or at
what sacrifice) a personal interview with Rachel—this was my plan of
action, so far as I was capable of forming it at the time. There was
more than an hour still to spare before the train started. And there
was the bare chance that Betteredge might discover something in the
unread portion of Rosanna Spearman’s letter, which it might be useful
for me to know before I left the house in which the Diamond had been
lost. For that chance I was now waiting.
The letter ended in these terms:
“You have no need to be angry, Mr. Franklin, even if I did feel some
little triumph at knowing that I held all your prospects in life in my
own hands. Anxieties and fears soon came back to me. With the view
Sergeant Cuff took of the loss of the Diamond, he would be sure to end
in examining our linen and our dresses. There was no place in my
room—there was no place in the house—which I could feel satisfied would
be safe from him. How to hide the nightgown so that not even the
Sergeant could find it? and how to do that without losing one moment of
precious time?—these were not easy questions to answer. My
uncertainties ended in my taking a way that may make you laugh. I
undressed, and put the nightgown on me. You had worn it—and I had
another little moment of pleasure in wearing it after you.
“The next news that reached us in the servants’ hall showed that I had
not made sure of the nightgown a moment too soon. Sergeant Cuff wanted
to see the washing-book.
“I found it, and took it to him in my lady’s sitting-room. The Sergeant
and I had come across each other more than once in former days. I was
certain he would know me again—and I was _not_ certain of what he might
do when he found me employed as servant in a house in which a valuable
jewel had been lost. In this suspense, I felt it would be a relief to
me to get the meeting between us over, and to know the worst of it at
once.
“He looked at me as if I was a stranger, when I handed him the
washing-book; and he was very specially polite in thanking me for
bringing it. I thought those were both bad signs. There was no knowing
what he might say of me behind my back; there was no knowing how soon I
might not find myself taken in custody on suspicion, and searched. It
was then time for your return from seeing Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite off by
the railway; and I went to your favourite walk in the shrubbery, to try
for another chance of speaking to you—the last chance, for all I knew
to the contrary, that I might have.
“You never appeared; and, what was worse still, Mr. Betteredge and
Sergeant Cuff passed by the place where I was hiding—and the Sergeant
saw me.
“I had no choice, after that, but to return to my proper place and my
proper work, before more disasters happened to me. Just as I was going
to step across the path, you came back from the railway. You were
making straight for the shrubbery, when you saw me—I am certain, sir,
you saw me—and you turned away as if I had got the plague, and went
into the house.*
* NOTE; by Franklin Blake.—The writer is entirely mistaken, poor
creature. I never noticed her. My intention was certainly to have taken
a turn in the shrubbery. But, remembering at the same moment that my
aunt might wish to see me, after my return from the railway, I altered
my mind, and went into the house.
“I made the best of my way indoors again, returning by the servants’
entrance. There was nobody in the laundry-room at that time; and I sat
down there alone. I have told you already of the thoughts which the
Shivering Sand put into my head. Those thoughts came back to me now. I
wondered in myself which it would be harder to do, if things went on in
this manner—to bear Mr. Franklin Blake’s indifference to me, or to jump
into the quicksand and end it for ever in that way?
“It’s useless to ask me to account for my own conduct, at this time. I
try—and I can’t understand it myself.
“Why didn’t I stop you, when you avoided me in that cruel manner? Why
didn’t I call out, ‘Mr. Franklin, I have got something to say to you;
it concerns yourself, and you must, and shall, hear it?’ You were at my
mercy—I had got the whip-hand of you, as they say. And better than
that, I had the means (if I could only make you trust me) of being
useful to you in the future. Of course, I never supposed that you—a
gentleman—had stolen the Diamond for the mere pleasure of stealing it.
No. Penelope had heard Miss Rachel, and I had heard Mr. Betteredge,
talk about your extravagance and your debts. It was plain enough to me
that you had taken the Diamond to sell it, or pledge it, and so to get
the money of which you stood in need. Well! I could have told you of a
man in London who would have advanced a good large sum on the jewel,
and who would have asked no awkward questions about it either.
“Why didn’t I speak to you! why didn’t I speak to you!
“I wonder whether the risks and difficulties of keeping the nightgown
were as much as I could manage, without having other risks and
difficulties added to them? This might have been the case with some