The Moonstone
consult his experience, we may see the matter under a new light. For
the present, let us return to our experiment with the opium. We have
decided that you leave off the habit of smoking from this moment.”
“From this moment.”
“That is the first step. The next step is to reproduce, as nearly as we
can, the domestic circumstances which surrounded you last year.”
How was this to be done? Lady Verinder was dead. Rachel and I, so long
as the suspicion of theft rested on me, were parted irrevocably.
Godfrey Ablewhite was away travelling on the Continent. It was simply
impossible to reassemble the people who had inhabited the house, when I
had slept in it last. The statement of this objection did not appear to
embarrass Ezra Jennings. He attached very little importance, he said,
to reassembling the same people—seeing that it would be vain to expect
them to reassume the various positions which they had occupied towards
me in the past times. On the other hand, he considered it essential to
the success of the experiment, that I should see the same objects about
me which had surrounded me when I was last in the house.
“Above all things,” he said, “you must sleep in the room which you
slept in, on the birthday night, and it must be furnished in the same
way. The stairs, the corridors, and Miss Verinder’s sitting-room, must
also be restored to what they were when you saw them last. It is
absolutely necessary, Mr. Blake, to replace every article of furniture
in that part of the house which may now be put away. The sacrifice of
your cigars will be useless, unless we can get Miss Verinder’s
permission to do that.”
“Who is to apply to her for permission?” I asked.
“Is it not possible for _you_ to apply?”
“Quite out of the question. After what has passed between us on the
subject of the lost Diamond, I can neither see her, nor write to her,
as things are now.”
Ezra Jennings paused, and considered for a moment.
“May I ask you a delicate question?” he said.
I signed to him to go on.
“Am I right, Mr. Blake, in fancying (from one or two things which have
dropped from you) that you felt no common interest in Miss Verinder, in
former times?”
“Quite right.”
“Was the feeling returned?”
“It was.”
“Do you think Miss Verinder would be likely to feel a strong interest
in the attempt to prove your innocence?”
“I am certain of it.”
“In that case, _I_ will write to Miss Verinder—if you will give me
leave.”
“Telling her of the proposal that you have made to me?”
“Telling her of everything that has passed between us today.”
It is needless to say that I eagerly accepted the service which he had
offered to me.
“I shall have time to write by today’s post,” he said, looking at his
watch. “Don’t forget to lock up your cigars, when you get back to the
hotel! I will call tomorrow morning and hear how you have passed the
night.”
I rose to take leave of him; and attempted to express the grateful
sense of his kindness which I really felt.
He pressed my hand gently. “Remember what I told you on the moor,” he
answered. “If I can do you this little service, Mr. Blake, I shall feel
it like a last gleam of sunshine, falling on the evening of a long and
clouded day.”
We parted. It was then the fifteenth of June. The events of the next
ten days—every one of them more or less directly connected with the
experiment of which I was the passive object—are all placed on record,
exactly as they happened, in the Journal habitually kept by Mr. Candy’s
assistant. In the pages of Ezra Jennings nothing is concealed, and
nothing is forgotten. Let Ezra Jennings tell how the venture with the
opium was tried, and how it ended.
FOURTH NARRATIVE.
_Extracted from the Journal of Ezra Jennings._
1849.—June 15.... With some interruption from patients, and some
interruption from pain, I finished my letter to Miss Verinder in time
for today’s post. I failed to make it as short a letter as I could have
wished. But I think I have made it plain. It leaves her entirely
mistress of her own decision. If she consents to assist the experiment,
she consents of her own free will, and not as a favour to Mr. Franklin
Blake or to me.
June 16th.—Rose late, after a dreadful night; the vengeance of
yesterday’s opium, pursuing me through a series of frightful dreams. At
one time I was whirling through empty space with the phantoms of the
dead, friends and enemies together. At another, the one beloved face
which I shall never see again, rose at my bedside, hideously
phosphorescent in the black darkness, and glared and grinned at me. A
slight return of the old pain, at the usual time in the early morning,
was welcome as a change. It dispelled the visions—and it was bearable
because it did that.
My bad night made it late in the morning, before I could get to Mr.
Franklin Blake. I found him stretched on the sofa, breakfasting on
brandy and soda water, and a dry biscuit.
“I am beginning, as well as you could possibly wish,” he said. “A
miserable, restless night; and a total failure of appetite this
morning. Exactly what happened last year, when I gave up my cigars. The
sooner I am ready for my second dose of laudanum, the better I shall be
pleased.”
“You shall have it on the earliest possible day,” I answered. “In the
meantime, we must be as careful of your health as we can. If we allow
you to become exhausted, we shall fail in that way. You must get an
appetite for your dinner. In other words, you must get a ride or a walk
this morning, in the fresh air.”
“I will ride, if they can find me a horse here. By-the-bye, I wrote to
Mr. Bruff, yesterday. Have you written to Miss Verinder?”
“Yes—by last night’s post.”
“Very good. We shall have some news worth hearing, to tell each other
tomorrow. Don’t go yet! I have a word to say to you. You appeared to
think, yesterday, that our experiment with the opium was not likely to
be viewed very favourably by some of my friends. You were quite right.
I call old Gabriel Betteredge one of my friends; and you will be amused
to hear that he protested strongly when I saw him yesterday. ‘You have
done a wonderful number of foolish things in the course of your life,
Mr. Franklin, but this tops them all!’ There is Betteredge’s opinion!
You will make allowance for his prejudices, I am sure, if you and he
happen to meet?”
I left Mr. Blake, to go my rounds among my patients; feeling the better
and the happier even for the short interview that I had had with him.
What is the secret of the attraction that there is for me in this man?
Does it only mean that I feel the contrast between the frankly kind
manner in which he has allowed me to become acquainted with him, and
the merciless dislike and distrust with which I am met by other people?
Or is there really something in him which answers to the yearning that
I have for a little human sympathy—the yearning, which has survived the
solitude and persecution of many years; which seems to grow keener and
keener, as the time comes nearer and nearer when I shall endure and
feel no more? How useless to ask these questions! Mr. Blake has given
me a new interest in life. Let that be enough, without seeking to know
what the new interest is.
June 17th.—Before breakfast, this morning, Mr. Candy informed me that
he was going away for a fortnight, on a visit to a friend in the south
of England. He gave me as many special directions, poor fellow, about
the patients, as if he still had the large practice which he possessed
before he was taken ill. The practice is worth little enough now! Other
doctors have superseded _him;_ and nobody who can help it will employ
_me_.
It is perhaps fortunate that he is to be away just at this time. He
would have been mortified if I had not informed him of the experiment
which I am going to try with Mr. Blake. And I hardly know what
undesirable results might not have happened, if I had taken him into my
confidence. Better as it is. Unquestionably, better as it is.
The post brought me Miss Verinder’s answer, after Mr. Candy had left
the house.
A charming letter! It gives me the highest opinion of her. There is no
attempt to conceal the interest that she feels in our proceedings. She
tells me, in the prettiest manner, that my letter has satisfied her of
Mr. Blake’s innocence, without the slightest need (so far as she is
concerned) of putting my assertion to the proof. She even upbraids
herself—most undeservedly, poor thing!—for not having divined at the
time what the true solution of the mystery might really be. The motive
underlying all this proceeds evidently from something more than a
generous eagerness to make atonement for a wrong which she has
innocently inflicted on another person. It is plain that she has loved
him, throughout the estrangement between them. In more than one place
the rapture of discovering that he has deserved to be loved, breaks its
way innocently through the stoutest formalities of pen and ink, and
even defies the stronger restraint still of writing to a stranger. Is
it possible (I ask myself, in reading this delightful letter) that I,
of all men in the world, am chosen to be the means of bringing these
two young people together again? My own happiness has been trampled
under foot; my own love has been torn from me. Shall I live to see a
happiness of others, which is of my making—a love renewed, which is of
my bringing back? Oh merciful Death, let me see it before your arms
enfold me, before your voice whispers to me, “Rest at last!”
There are two requests contained in the letter. One of them prevents me
from showing it to Mr. Franklin Blake. I am authorised to tell him that
Miss Verinder willingly consents to place her house at our disposal;
and, that said, I am desired to add no more.
So far, it is easy to comply with her wishes. But the second request
embarrasses me seriously.
Not content with having written to Mr. Betteredge, instructing him to
carry out whatever directions I may have to give, Miss Verinder asks
leave to assist me, by personally superintending the restoration of her
own sitting-room. She only waits a word of reply from me to make the
journey to Yorkshire, and to be present as one of the witnesses on the
night when the opium is tried for the second time.
Here, again, there is a motive under the surface; and, here again, I
fancy that I can find it out.
What she has forbidden me to tell Mr. Franklin Blake, she is (as I
interpret it) eager to tell him with her own lips, _before_ he is put
to the test which is to vindicate his character in the eyes of other
people. I understand and admire this generous anxiety to acquit him,
without waiting until his innocence may, or may not, be proved. It is
the atonement that she is longing to make, poor girl, after having
innocently and inevitably wronged him. But the thing cannot be done. I
have no sort of doubt that the agitation which a meeting between them
would produce on both sides—reviving dormant feelings, appealing to old
memories, awakening new hopes—would, in their effect on the mind of Mr.
Blake, be almost certainly fatal to the success of our experiment. It
is hard enough, as things are, to reproduce in him the conditions as
they existed, or nearly as they existed, last year. With new interests
and new emotions to agitate him, the attempt would be simply useless.
And yet, knowing this, I cannot find it in my heart to disappoint her.
I must try if I can discover some new arrangement, before post-time,
which will allow me to say Yes to Miss Verinder, without damage to the
service which I have bound myself to render to Mr. Franklin Blake.
Two o’clock.—I have just returned from my round of medical visits;
having begun, of course, by calling at the hotel.