The Moonstone
me, and who were easily within my reach. These were my relatives, the
Ablewhites, and Mr. Candy. The doctor had expressed a special wish to
see me, and the doctor lived in the next street. So to Mr. Candy I went
first.
After what Betteredge had told me, I naturally anticipated finding
traces in the doctor’s face of the severe illness from which he had
suffered. But I was utterly unprepared for such a change as I saw in
him when he entered the room and shook hands with me. His eyes were
dim; his hair had turned completely grey; his face was wizen; his
figure had shrunk. I looked at the once lively, rattlepated, humorous
little doctor—associated in my remembrance with the perpetration of
incorrigible social indiscretions and innumerable boyish jokes—and I
saw nothing left of his former self, but the old tendency to vulgar
smartness in his dress. The man was a wreck; but his clothes and his
jewellery—in cruel mockery of the change in him—were as gay and as
gaudy as ever.
“I have often thought of you, Mr. Blake,” he said; “and I am heartily
glad to see you again at last. If there is anything I can do for you,
pray command my services, sir—pray command my services!”
He said those few commonplace words with needless hurry and eagerness,
and with a curiosity to know what had brought me to Yorkshire, which he
was perfectly—I might say childishly—incapable of concealing from
notice.
With the object that I had in view, I had of course foreseen the
necessity of entering into some sort of personal explanation, before I
could hope to interest people, mostly strangers to me, in doing their
best to assist my inquiry. On the journey to Frizinghall I had arranged
what my explanation was to be—and I seized the opportunity now offered
to me of trying the effect of it on Mr. Candy.
“I was in Yorkshire, the other day, and I am in Yorkshire again now, on
rather a romantic errand,” I said. “It is a matter, Mr. Candy, in which
the late Lady Verinder’s friends all took some interest. You remember
the mysterious loss of the Indian Diamond, now nearly a year since?
Circumstances have lately happened which lead to the hope that it may
yet be found—and I am interesting myself, as one of the family, in
recovering it. Among the obstacles in my way, there is the necessity of
collecting again all the evidence which was discovered at the time, and
more if possible. There are peculiarities in this case which make it
desirable to revive my recollection of everything that happened in the
house, on the evening of Miss Verinder’s birthday. And I venture to
appeal to her late mother’s friends who were present on that occasion,
to lend me the assistance of their memories——”
I had got as far as that in rehearsing my explanatory phrases, when I
was suddenly checked by seeing plainly in Mr. Candy’s face that my
experiment on him was a total failure.
The little doctor sat restlessly picking at the points of his fingers
all the time I was speaking. His dim watery eyes were fixed on my face
with an expression of vacant and wistful inquiry very painful to see.
What he was thinking of, it was impossible to divine. The one thing
clearly visible was that I had failed, after the first two or three
words, in fixing his attention. The only chance of recalling him to
himself appeared to lie in changing the subject. I tried a new topic
immediately.
“So much,” I said, gaily, “for what brings me to Frizinghall! Now, Mr.
Candy, it’s your turn. You sent me a message by Gabriel Betteredge——”
He left off picking at his fingers, and suddenly brightened up.
“Yes! yes! yes!” he exclaimed eagerly. “That’s it! I sent you a
message!”
“And Betteredge duly communicated it by letter,” I went on. “You had
something to say to me, the next time I was in your neighbourhood.
Well, Mr. Candy, here I am!”
“Here you are!” echoed the doctor. “And Betteredge was quite right. I
had something to say to you. That was my message. Betteredge is a
wonderful man. What a memory! At his age, what a memory!”
He dropped back into silence, and began picking at his fingers again.
Recollecting what I had heard from Betteredge about the effect of the
fever on his memory, I went on with the conversation, in the hope that
I might help him at starting.
“It’s a long time since we met,” I said. “We last saw each other at the
last birthday dinner my poor aunt was ever to give.”
“That’s it!” cried Mr. Candy. “The birthday dinner!” He started
impulsively to his feet, and looked at me. A deep flush suddenly
overspread his faded face, and he abruptly sat down again, as if
conscious of having betrayed a weakness which he would fain have
concealed. It was plain, pitiably plain, that he was aware of his own
defect of memory, and that he was bent on hiding it from the
observation of his friends.
Thus far he had appealed to my compassion only. But the words he had
just said—few as they were—roused my curiosity instantly to the highest
pitch. The birthday dinner had already become the one event in the
past, at which I looked back with strangely-mixed feelings of hope and
distrust. And here was the birthday dinner unmistakably proclaiming
itself as the subject on which Mr. Candy had something important to say
to me!
I attempted to help him out once more. But, this time, my own interests
were at the bottom of my compassionate motive, and they hurried me on a
little too abruptly, to the end I had in view.
“It’s nearly a year now,” I said, “since we sat at that pleasant table.
Have you made any memorandum—in your diary, or otherwise—of what you
wanted to say to me?”
Mr. Candy understood the suggestion, and showed me that he understood
it, as an insult.
“I require no memorandum, Mr. Blake,” he said, stiffly enough. “I am
not such a very old man, yet—and my memory (thank God) is to be
thoroughly depended on!”
It is needless to say that I declined to understand that he was
offended with me.
“I wish I could say the same of _my_ memory,” I answered. “When _I_ try
to think of matters that are a year old, I seldom find my remembrance
as vivid as I could wish it to be. Take the dinner at Lady Verinder’s,
for instance——”
Mr. Candy brightened up again, the moment the allusion passed my lips.
“Ah! the dinner, the dinner at Lady Verinder’s!” he exclaimed, more
eagerly than ever. “I have got something to say to you about that.”
His eyes looked at me again with the painful expression of inquiry, so
wistful, so vacant, so miserably helpless to see. He was evidently
trying hard, and trying in vain, to recover the lost recollection. “It
was a very pleasant dinner,” he burst out suddenly, with an air of
saying exactly what he wanted to say. “A very pleasant dinner, Mr.
Blake, wasn’t it?” He nodded and smiled, and appeared to think, poor
fellow, that he had succeeded in concealing the total failure of his
memory, by a well-timed exertion of his own presence of mind.
It was so distressing that I at once shifted the talk—deeply as I was
interested in his recovering the lost remembrance—to topics of local
interest.
Here, he got on glibly enough. Trumpery little scandals and quarrels in
the town, some of them as much as a month old, appeared to recur to his
memory readily. He chattered on, with something of the smooth gossiping
fluency of former times. But there were moments, even in the full flow
of his talkativeness, when he suddenly hesitated—looked at me for a
moment with the vacant inquiry once more in his eyes—controlled
himself—and went on again. I submitted patiently to my martyrdom (it is
surely nothing less than martyrdom to a man of cosmopolitan sympathies,
to absorb in silent resignation the news of a country town?) until the
clock on the chimney-piece told me that my visit had been prolonged
beyond half an hour. Having now some right to consider the sacrifice as
complete, I rose to take leave. As we shook hands, Mr. Candy reverted
to the birthday festival of his own accord.
“I am so glad we have met again,” he said. “I had it on my mind—I
really had it on my mind, Mr. Blake, to speak to you. About the dinner
at Lady Verinder’s, you know? A pleasant dinner—really a pleasant
dinner now, wasn’t it?”
On repeating the phrase, he seemed to feel hardly as certain of having
prevented me from suspecting his lapse of memory, as he had felt on the
first occasion. The wistful look clouded his face again; and, after
apparently designing to accompany me to the street door, he suddenly
changed his mind, rang the bell for the servant, and remained in the
drawing-room.
I went slowly down the doctor’s stairs, feeling the disheartening
conviction that he really had something to say which it was vitally
important to me to hear, and that he was morally incapable of saying
it. The effort of remembering that he wanted to speak to me was, but
too evidently, the only effort that his enfeebled memory was now able
to achieve.
Just as I reached the bottom of the stairs, and had turned a corner on
my way to the outer hall, a door opened softly somewhere on the ground
floor of the house, and a gentle voice said behind me:—
“I am afraid, sir, you find Mr. Candy sadly changed?”
I turned round, and found myself face to face with Ezra Jennings.
CHAPTER IX
The doctor’s pretty housemaid stood waiting for me, with the street
door open in her hand. Pouring brightly into the hall, the morning
light fell full on the face of Mr. Candy’s assistant when I turned, and
looked at him.
It was impossible to dispute Betteredge’s assertion that the appearance
of Ezra Jennings, speaking from a popular point of view, was against
him. His gipsy-complexion, his fleshless cheeks, his gaunt facial
bones, his dreamy eyes, his extraordinary parti-coloured hair, the
puzzling contradiction between his face and figure which made him look
old and young both together—were all more or less calculated to produce
an unfavourable impression of him on a stranger’s mind. And yet—feeling
this as I certainly did—it is not to be denied that Ezra Jennings made
some inscrutable appeal to my sympathies, which I found it impossible
to resist. While my knowledge of the world warned me to answer the
question which he had put, acknowledging that I did indeed find Mr.
Candy sadly changed, and then to proceed on my way out of the house—my
interest in Ezra Jennings held me rooted to the place, and gave him the
opportunity of speaking to me in private about his employer, for which
he had been evidently on the watch.
“Are you walking my way, Mr. Jennings?” I said, observing that he held
his hat in his hand. “I am going to call on my aunt, Mrs. Ablewhite.”
Ezra Jennings replied that he had a patient to see, and that he was
walking my way.
We left the house together. I observed that the pretty servant girl—who
was all smiles and amiability, when I wished her good morning on my way
out—received a modest little message from Ezra Jennings, relating to
the time at which he might be expected to return, with pursed-up lips,
and with eyes which ostentatiously looked anywhere rather than look in
his face. The poor wretch was evidently no favourite in the house. Out
of the house, I had Betteredge’s word for it that he was unpopular
everywhere. “What a life!” I thought to myself, as we descended the
doctor’s doorsteps.
Having already referred to Mr. Candy’s illness on his side, Ezra
Jennings now appeared determined to leave it to me to resume the
subject. His silence said significantly, “It’s your turn now.” I, too,
had my reasons for referring to the doctor’s illness: and I readily
accepted the responsibility of speaking first.
“Judging by the change I see in him,” I began, “Mr. Candy’s illness
must have been far more serious than I had supposed?”
“It is almost a miracle,” said Ezra Jennings, “that he lived through