The Moonstone
writing in shorthand; and I was able to take down the patient’s
‘wanderings’, exactly as they fell from his lips.—Do you see, Mr.
Blake, what I am coming to at last?”
I saw it clearly, and waited with breathless interest to hear more.
“At odds and ends of time,” Ezra Jennings went on, “I reproduced my
shorthand notes, in the ordinary form of writing—leaving large spaces
between the broken phrases, and even the single words, as they had
fallen disconnectedly from Mr. Candy’s lips. I then treated the result
thus obtained, on something like the principle which one adopts in
putting together a child’s ‘puzzle.’ It is all confusion to begin with;
but it may be all brought into order and shape, if you can only find
the right way. Acting on this plan, I filled in each blank space on the
paper, with what the words or phrases on either side of it suggested to
me as the speaker’s meaning; altering over and over again, until my
additions followed naturally on the spoken words which came before
them, and fitted naturally into the spoken words which came after them.
The result was, that I not only occupied in this way many vacant and
anxious hours, but that I arrived at something which was (as it seemed
to me) a confirmation of the theory that I held. In plainer words,
after putting the broken sentences together I found the superior
faculty of thinking going on, more or less connectedly, in my patient’s
mind, while the inferior faculty of expression was in a state of almost
complete incapacity and confusion.”
“One word!” I interposed eagerly. “Did my name occur in any of his
wanderings?”
“You shall hear, Mr. Blake. Among my written proofs of the assertion
which I have just advanced—or, I ought to say, among the written
experiments, tending to put my assertion to the proof—there _is_ one,
in which your name occurs. For nearly the whole of one night, Mr.
Candy’s mind was occupied with _something_ between himself and you. I
have got the broken words, as they dropped from his lips, on one sheet
of paper. And I have got the links of my own discovering which connect
those words together, on another sheet of paper. The product (as the
arithmeticians would say) is an intelligible statement—first, of
something actually done in the past; secondly, of something which Mr.
Candy contemplated doing in the future, if his illness had not got in
the way, and stopped him. The question is whether this does, or does
not, represent the lost recollection which he vainly attempted to find
when you called on him this morning?”
“Not a doubt of it!” I answered. “Let us go back directly, and look at
the papers!”
“Quite impossible, Mr. Blake.”
“Why?”
“Put yourself in my position for a moment,” said Ezra Jennings. “Would
_you_ disclose to another person what had dropped unconsciously from
the lips of your suffering patient and your helpless friend, without
first knowing that there was a necessity to justify you in opening your
lips?”
I felt that he was unanswerable, here; but I tried to argue the
question, nevertheless.
“My conduct in such a delicate matter as you describe,” I replied,
“would depend greatly on whether the disclosure was of a nature to
compromise my friend or not.”
“I have disposed of all necessity for considering that side of the
question, long since,” said Ezra Jennings. “Wherever my notes included
anything which Mr. Candy might have wished to keep secret, those notes
have been destroyed. My manuscript experiments at my friend’s bedside,
include nothing, now, which he would have hesitated to communicate to
others, if he had recovered the use of his memory. In your case, I have
every reason to suppose that my notes contain something which he
actually wished to say to you.”
“And yet, you hesitate?”
“And yet, I hesitate. Remember the circumstances under which I obtained
the information which I possess! Harmless as it is, I cannot prevail
upon myself to give it up to you, unless you first satisfy me that
there is a reason for doing so. He was so miserably ill, Mr. Blake! and
he was so helplessly dependent upon Me! Is it too much to ask, if I
request you only to hint to me what your interest is in the lost
recollection—or what you believe that lost recollection to be?”
To have answered him with the frankness which his language and his
manner both claimed from me, would have been to commit myself to openly
acknowledging that I was suspected of the theft of the Diamond.
Strongly as Ezra Jennings had intensified the first impulsive interest
which I had felt in him, he had not overcome my unconquerable
reluctance to disclose the degrading position in which I stood. I took
refuge once more in the explanatory phrases with which I had prepared
myself to meet the curiosity of strangers.
This time I had no reason to complain of a want of attention on the
part of the person to whom I addressed myself. Ezra Jennings listened
patiently, even anxiously, until I had done.
“I am sorry to have raised your expectations, Mr. Blake, only to
disappoint them,” he said. “Throughout the whole period of Mr. Candy’s
illness, from first to last, not one word about the Diamond escaped his
lips. The matter with which I heard him connect your name has, I can
assure you, no discoverable relation whatever with the loss or the
recovery of Miss Verinder’s jewel.”
We arrived, as he said those words, at a place where the highway along
which we had been walking branched off into two roads. One led to Mr.
Ablewhite’s house, and the other to a moorland village some two or
three miles off. Ezra Jennings stopped at the road which led to the
village.
“My way lies in this direction,” he said. “I am really and truly sorry,
Mr. Blake, that I can be of no use to you.”
His voice told me that he spoke sincerely. His soft brown eyes rested
on me for a moment with a look of melancholy interest. He bowed, and
went, without another word, on his way to the village.
For a minute or more I stood and watched him, walking farther and
farther away from me; carrying farther and farther away with him what I
now firmly believed to be the clue of which I was in search. He turned,
after walking on a little way, and looked back. Seeing me still
standing at the place where we had parted, he stopped, as if doubting
whether I might not wish to speak to him again. There was no time for
me to reason out my own situation—to remind myself that I was losing my
opportunity, at what might be the turning point of my life, and all to
flatter nothing more important than my own self-esteem! There was only
time to call him back first, and to think afterwards. I suspect I am
one of the rashest of existing men. I called him back—and then I said
to myself, “Now there is no help for it. I must tell him the truth!”
He retraced his steps directly. I advanced along the road to meet him.
“Mr. Jennings,” I said. “I have not treated you quite fairly. My
interest in tracing Mr. Candy’s lost recollection is not the interest
of recovering the Moonstone. A serious personal matter is at the bottom
of my visit to Yorkshire. I have but one excuse for not having dealt
frankly with you in this matter. It is more painful to me than I can
say, to mention to anybody what my position really is.”
Ezra Jennings looked at me with the first appearance of embarrassment
which I had seen in him yet.
“I have no right, Mr. Blake, and no wish,” he said, “to intrude myself
into your private affairs. Allow me to ask your pardon, on my side, for
having (most innocently) put you to a painful test.”
“You have a perfect right,” I rejoined, “to fix the terms on which you
feel justified in revealing what you heard at Mr. Candy’s bedside. I
understand and respect the delicacy which influences you in this
matter. How can I expect to be taken into your confidence if I decline
to admit you into mine? You ought to know, and you shall know, why I am
interested in discovering what Mr. Candy wanted to say to me. If I turn
out to be mistaken in my anticipations, and if you prove unable to help
me when you are really aware of what I want, I shall trust to your
honour to keep my secret—and something tells me that I shall not trust
in vain.”
“Stop, Mr. Blake. I have a word to say, which must be said before you
go any farther.”
I looked at him in astonishment. The grip of some terrible emotion
seemed to have seized him, and shaken him to the soul. His gipsy
complexion had altered to a livid greyish paleness; his eyes had
suddenly become wild and glittering; his voice had dropped to a
tone—low, stern, and resolute—which I now heard for the first time. The
latent resources in the man, for good or for evil—it was hard, at that
moment, to say which—leapt up in him and showed themselves to me, with
the suddenness of a flash of light.
“Before you place any confidence in me,” he went on, “you ought to
know, and you _must_ know, under what circumstances I have been
received into Mr. Candy’s house. It won’t take long. I don’t profess,
sir, to tell my story (as the phrase is) to any man. My story will die
with me. All I ask, is to be permitted to tell you, what I have told
Mr. Candy. If you are still in the mind, when you have heard that, to
say what you have proposed to say, you will command my attention and
command my services. Shall we walk on?”
The suppressed misery in his face silenced me. I answered his question
by a sign. We walked on.
After advancing a few hundred yards, Ezra Jennings stopped at a gap in
the rough stone wall which shut off the moor from the road, at this
part of it.
“Do you mind resting a little, Mr. Blake?” he asked. “I am not what I
was—and some things shake me.”
I agreed, of course. He led the way through the gap to a patch of turf
on the heathy ground, screened by bushes and dwarf trees on the side
nearest to the road, and commanding in the opposite direction a grandly
desolate view over the broad brown wilderness of the moor. The clouds
had gathered, within the last half hour. The light was dull; the
distance was dim. The lovely face of Nature met us, soft and still
colourless—met us without a smile.
We sat down in silence. Ezra Jennings laid aside his hat, and passed
his hand wearily over his forehead, wearily through his startling white
and black hair. He tossed his little nosegay of wild flowers away from
him, as if the remembrances which it recalled were remembrances which
hurt him now.
“Mr. Blake!” he said, suddenly. “You are in bad company. The cloud of a
horrible accusation has rested on me for years. I tell you the worst at
once. I am a man whose life is a wreck, and whose character is gone.”
I attempted to speak. He stopped me.
“No,” he said. “Pardon me; not yet. Don’t commit yourself to
expressions of sympathy which you may afterwards wish to recall. I have
mentioned an accusation which has rested on me for years. There are
circumstances in connexion with it that tell against me. I cannot bring
myself to acknowledge what the accusation is. And I am incapable,
perfectly incapable, of proving my innocence. I can only assert my
innocence. I assert it, sir, on my oath, as a Christian. It is useless
to appeal to my honour as a man.”
He paused again. I looked round at him. He never looked at me in
return. His whole being seemed to be absorbed in the agony of
recollecting, and in the effort to speak.
“There is much that I might say,” he went on, “about the merciless
treatment of me by my own family, and the merciless enmity to which I
have fallen a victim. But the harm is done; the wrong is beyond all
remedy. I decline to weary or distress you, sir, if I can help it. At
the outset of my career in this country, the vile slander to which I
have referred struck me down at once and for ever. I resigned my