The Moonstone
Rachel hasn’t suspected you on the evidence of the nightgown only.”
“Good God, how coolly you talk of Rachel suspecting me!” I broke out.
“What right has she to suspect Me, on any evidence, of being a thief?”
“A very sensible question, my dear sir. Rather hotly put—but well worth
considering for all that. What puzzles you, puzzles me too. Search your
memory, and tell me this. Did anything happen while you were staying at
the house—not, of course, to shake Rachel’s belief in your honour—but,
let us say, to shake her belief (no matter with how little reason) in
your principles generally?”
I started, in ungovernable agitation, to my feet. The lawyer’s question
reminded me, for the first time since I had left England, that
something _had_ happened.
In the eighth chapter of Betteredge’s Narrative, an allusion will be
found to the arrival of a foreigner and a stranger at my aunt’s house,
who came to see me on business. The nature of his business was this.
I had been foolish enough (being, as usual, straitened for money at the
time) to accept a loan from the keeper of a small restaurant in Paris,
to whom I was well known as a customer. A time was settled between us
for paying the money back; and when the time came, I found it (as
thousands of other honest men have found it) impossible to keep my
engagement. I sent the man a bill. My name was unfortunately too well
known on such documents: he failed to negotiate it. His affairs had
fallen into disorder, in the interval since I had borrowed of him;
bankruptcy stared him in the face; and a relative of his, a French
lawyer, came to England to find me, and to insist upon the payment of
my debt. He was a man of violent temper; and he took the wrong way with
me. High words passed on both sides; and my aunt and Rachel were
unfortunately in the next room, and heard us. Lady Verinder came in,
and insisted on knowing what was the matter. The Frenchman produced his
credentials, and declared me to be responsible for the ruin of a poor
man, who had trusted in my honour. My aunt instantly paid him the
money, and sent him off. She knew me better of course than to take the
Frenchman’s view of the transaction. But she was shocked at my
carelessness, and justly angry with me for placing myself in a
position, which, but for her interference, might have become a very
disgraceful one. Either her mother told her, or Rachel heard what
passed—I can’t say which. She took her own romantic, high-flown view of
the matter. I was “heartless”; I was “dishonourable”; I had “no
principle”; there was “no knowing what I might do next”—in short, she
said some of the severest things to me which I had ever heard from a
young lady’s lips. The breach between us lasted for the whole of the
next day. The day after, I succeeded in making my peace, and thought no
more of it. Had Rachel reverted to this unlucky accident, at the
critical moment when my place in her estimation was again, and far more
seriously, assailed? Mr. Bruff, when I had mentioned the circumstances
to him, answered the question at once in the affirmative.
“It would have its effect on her mind,” he said gravely. “And I wish,
for your sake, the thing had not happened. However, we have discovered
that there _was_ a predisposing influence against you—and there is one
uncertainty cleared out of our way, at any rate. I see nothing more
that we can do now. Our next step in this inquiry must be the step that
takes us to Rachel.”
He rose, and began walking thoughtfully up and down the room. Twice, I
was on the point of telling him that I had determined on seeing Rachel
personally; and twice, having regard to his age and his character, I
hesitated to take him by surprise at an unfavourable moment.
“The grand difficulty is,” he resumed, “how to make her show her whole
mind in this matter, without reserve. Have you any suggestions to
offer?”
“I have made up my mind, Mr. Bruff, to speak to Rachel myself.”
“You!” He suddenly stopped in his walk, and looked at me as if he
thought I had taken leave of my senses. “You, of all the people in the
world!” He abruptly checked himself, and took another turn in the room.
“Wait a little,” he said. “In cases of this extraordinary kind, the
rash way is sometimes the best way.” He considered the question for a
moment or two, under that new light, and ended boldly by a decision in
my favour. “Nothing venture, nothing have,” the old gentleman resumed.
“You have a chance in your favour which I don’t possess—and you shall
be the first to try the experiment.”
“A chance in my favour?” I repeated, in the greatest surprise.
Mr. Bruff’s face softened, for the first time, into a smile.
“This is how it stands,” he said. “I tell you fairly, I don’t trust
your discretion, and I don’t trust your temper. But I do trust in
Rachel’s still preserving, in some remote little corner of her heart, a
certain perverse weakness for _you_. Touch that—and trust to the
consequences for the fullest disclosures that can flow from a woman’s
lips! The question is—how are you to see her?”
“She has been a guest of yours at this house,” I answered. “May I
venture to suggest—if nothing was said about me beforehand—that I might
see her here?”
“Cool!” said Mr. Bruff. With that one word of comment on the reply that
I had made to him, he took another turn up and down the room.
“In plain English,” he said, “my house is to be turned into a trap to
catch Rachel; with a bait to tempt her, in the shape of an invitation
from my wife and daughters. If you were anybody else but Franklin
Blake, and if this matter was one atom less serious than it really is,
I should refuse point-blank. As things are, I firmly believe Rachel
will live to thank me for turning traitor to her in my old age.
Consider me your accomplice. Rachel shall be asked to spend the day
here; and you shall receive due notice of it.”
“When? Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow won’t give us time enough to get her answer. Say the day
after.”
“How shall I hear from you?”
“Stay at home all the morning and expect me to call on you.”
I thanked him for the inestimable assistance which he was rendering to
me, with the gratitude that I really felt; and, declining a hospitable
invitation to sleep that night at Hampstead, returned to my lodgings in
London.
Of the day that followed, I have only to say that it was the longest
day of my life. Innocent as I knew myself to be, certain as I was that
the abominable imputation which rested on me must sooner or later be
cleared off, there was nevertheless a sense of self-abasement in my
mind which instinctively disinclined me to see any of my friends. We
often hear (almost invariably, however, from superficial observers)
that guilt can look like innocence. I believe it to be infinitely the
truer axiom of the two that innocence can look like guilt. I caused
myself to be denied all day, to every visitor who called; and I only
ventured out under cover of the night.
The next morning, Mr. Bruff surprised me at the breakfast-table. He
handed me a large key, and announced that he felt ashamed of himself
for the first time in his life.
“Is she coming?”
“She is coming today, to lunch and spend the afternoon with my wife and
my girls.”
“Are Mrs. Bruff, and your daughters, in the secret?”
“Inevitably. But women, as you may have observed, have no principles.
My family don’t feel my pangs of conscience. The end being to bring you
and Rachel together again, my wife and daughters pass over the means
employed to gain it, as composedly as if they were Jesuits.”
“I am infinitely obliged to them. What is this key?”
“The key of the gate in my back-garden wall. Be there at three this
afternoon. Let yourself into the garden, and make your way in by the
conservatory door. Cross the small drawing-room, and open the door in
front of you which leads into the music-room. There, you will find
Rachel—and find her, alone.”
“How can I thank you!”
“I will tell you how. Don’t blame _me_ for what happens afterwards.”
With those words, he went out.
I had many weary hours still to wait through. To while away the time, I
looked at my letters. Among them was a letter from Betteredge.
I opened it eagerly. To my surprise and disappointment, it began with
an apology warning me to expect no news of any importance. In the next
sentence the everlasting Ezra Jennings appeared again! He had stopped
Betteredge on the way out of the station, and had asked who I was.
Informed on this point, he had mentioned having seen me to his master
Mr. Candy. Mr. Candy hearing of this, had himself driven over to
Betteredge, to express his regret at our having missed each other. He
had a reason for wishing particularly to speak to me; and when I was
next in the neighbourhood of Frizinghall, he begged I would let him
know. Apart from a few characteristic utterances of the Betteredge
philosophy, this was the sum and substance of my correspondent’s
letter. The warm-hearted, faithful old man acknowledged that he had
written “mainly for the pleasure of writing to me.”
I crumpled up the letter in my pocket, and forgot it the moment after,
in the all-absorbing interest of my coming interview with Rachel.
As the clock of Hampstead church struck three, I put Mr. Bruff’s key
into the lock of the door in the wall. When I first stepped into the
garden, and while I was securing the door again on the inner side, I
own to having felt a certain guilty doubtfulness about what might
happen next. I looked furtively on either side of me; suspicious of the
presence of some unexpected witness in some unknown corner of the
garden. Nothing appeared, to justify my apprehensions. The walks were,
one and all, solitudes; and the birds and the bees were the only
witnesses.
I passed through the garden; entered the conservatory; and crossed the
small drawing-room. As I laid my hand on the door opposite, I heard a
few plaintive chords struck on the piano in the room within. She had
often idled over the instrument in this way, when I was staying at her
mother’s house. I was obliged to wait a little, to steady myself. The
past and present rose side by side, at that supreme moment—and the
contrast shook me.
After the lapse of a minute, I roused my manhood, and opened the door.
CHAPTER VII
At the moment when I showed myself in the doorway, Rachel rose from the
piano.
I closed the door behind me. We confronted each other in silence, with
the full length of the room between us. The movement she had made in
rising appeared to be the one exertion of which she was capable. All
use of every other faculty, bodily or mental, seemed to be merged in
the mere act of looking at me.
A fear crossed my mind that I had shown myself too suddenly. I advanced
a few steps towards her. I said gently, “Rachel!”
The sound of my voice brought the life back to her limbs, and the
colour to her face. She advanced, on her side, still without speaking.
Slowly, as if acting under some influence independent of her own will,
she came nearer and nearer to me; the warm dusky colour flushing her
cheeks, the light of reviving intelligence brightening every instant in
her eyes. I forgot the object that had brought me into her presence; I
forgot the vile suspicion that rested on my good name; I forgot every
consideration, past, present, and future, which I was bound to
remember. I saw nothing but the woman I loved coming nearer and nearer
to me. She trembled; she stood irresolute. I could resist it no
longer—I caught her in my arms, and covered her face with kisses.
There was a moment when I thought the kisses were returned; a moment
when it seemed as if she, too, might have forgotten. Almost before the
idea could shape itself in my mind, her first voluntary action made me