The Moonstone
She looked at my ugly wrinkled face, with a bright gratitude so new to
me in _my_ experience of my fellow-creatures, that I was at a loss how
to answer her. Nothing had prepared me for her kindness and her beauty.
The misery of many years has not hardened my heart, thank God. I was as
awkward and as shy with her, as if I had been a lad in my teens.
“Where is he now?” she asked, giving free expression to her one
dominant interest—the interest in Mr. Blake. “What is he doing? Has he
spoken of me? Is he in good spirits? How does he bear the sight of the
house, after what happened in it last year? When are you going to give
him the laudanum? May I see you pour it out? I am so interested; I am
so excited—I have ten thousand things to say to you, and they all crowd
together so that I don’t know what to say first. Do you wonder at the
interest I take in this?”
“No,” I said. “I venture to think that I thoroughly understand it.”
She was far above the paltry affectation of being confused. She
answered me as she might have answered a brother or a father.
“You have relieved me of indescribable wretchedness; you have given me
a new life. How can I be ungrateful enough to have any concealment from
_you?_ I love him,” she said simply, “I have loved him from first to
last—even when I was wronging him in my own thoughts; even when I was
saying the hardest and the cruellest words to him. Is there any excuse
for me, in that? I hope there is—I am afraid it is the only excuse I
have. When tomorrow comes, and he knows that I am in the house, do you
think——”
She stopped again, and looked at me very earnestly.
“When tomorrow comes,” I said, “I think you have only to tell him what
you have just told me.”
Her face brightened; she came a step nearer to me. Her fingers trifled
nervously with a flower which I had picked in the garden, and which I
had put into the button-hole of my coat.
“You have seen a great deal of him lately,” she said. “Have you, really
and truly, seen _that?_”
“Really and truly,” I answered. “I am quite certain of what will happen
tomorrow. I wish I could feel as certain of what will happen tonight.”
At that point in the conversation, we were interrupted by the
appearance of Betteredge with the tea-tray. He gave me another
significant look as he passed on into the sitting-room. “Aye! aye! make
your hay while the sun shines. The Tartar’s upstairs, Mr. Jennings—the
Tartar’s upstairs!”
We followed him into the room. A little old lady, in a corner, very
nicely dressed, and very deeply absorbed over a smart piece of
embroidery, dropped her work in her lap, and uttered a faint little
scream at the first sight of my gipsy complexion and my piebald hair.
“Mrs. Merridew,” said Miss Verinder, “this is Mr. Jennings.”
“I beg Mr. Jennings’s pardon,” said the old lady, looking at Miss
Verinder, and speaking at _me_. “Railway travelling always makes me
nervous. I am endeavouring to quiet my mind by occupying myself as
usual. I don’t know whether my embroidery is out of place, on this
extraordinary occasion. If it interferes with Mr. Jennings’s medical
views, I shall be happy to put it away of course.”
I hastened to sanction the presence of the embroidery, exactly as I had
sanctioned the absence of the burst buzzard and the Cupid’s wing. Mrs.
Merridew made an effort—a grateful effort—to look at my hair. No! it
was not to be done. Mrs. Merridew looked back again at Miss Verinder.
“If Mr. Jennings will permit me,” pursued the old lady, “I should like
to ask a favour. Mr. Jennings is about to try a scientific experiment
tonight. I used to attend scientific experiments when I was a girl at
school. They invariably ended in an explosion. If Mr. Jennings will be
so very kind, I should like to be warned of the explosion this time.
With a view to getting it over, if possible, before I go to bed.”
I attempted to assure Mrs. Merridew that an explosion was not included
in the programme on this occasion.
“No,” said the old lady. “I am much obliged to Mr. Jennings—I am aware
that he is only deceiving me for my own good. I prefer plain dealing. I
am quite resigned to the explosion—but I _do_ want to get it over, if
possible, before I go to bed.”
Here the door opened, and Mrs. Merridew uttered another little scream.
The advent of the explosion? No: only the advent of Betteredge.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Jennings,” said Betteredge, in his most
elaborately confidential manner. “Mr. Franklin wishes to know where you
are. Being under your orders to deceive him, in respect to the presence
of my young lady in the house, I have said I don’t know. That, you will
please to observe, was a lie. Having one foot already in the grave,
sir, the fewer lies you expect me to tell, the more I shall be indebted
to you, when my conscience pricks me and my time comes.”
There was not a moment to be wasted on the purely speculative question
of Betteredge’s conscience. Mr. Blake might make his appearance in
search of me, unless I went to him at once in his own room. Miss
Verinder followed me out into the corridor.
“They seem to be in a conspiracy to persecute you,” she said. “What
does it mean?”
“Only the protest of the world, Miss Verinder—on a very small
scale—against anything that is new.”
“What are we to do with Mrs. Merridew?”
“Tell her the explosion will take place at nine tomorrow morning.”
“So as to send her to bed?”
“Yes—so as to send her to bed.”
Miss Verinder went back to the sitting-room, and I went upstairs to Mr.
Blake.
To my surprise I found him alone; restlessly pacing his room, and a
little irritated at being left by himself.
“Where is Mr. Bruff?” I asked.
He pointed to the closed door of communication between the two rooms.
Mr. Bruff had looked in on him, for a moment; had attempted to renew
his protest against our proceedings; and had once more failed to
produce the smallest impression on Mr. Blake. Upon this, the lawyer had
taken refuge in a black leather bag, filled to bursting with
professional papers. “The serious business of life,” he admitted, “was
sadly out of place on such an occasion as the present. But the serious
business of life must be carried on, for all that. Mr. Blake would
perhaps kindly make allowance for the old-fashioned habits of a
practical man. Time was money—and, as for Mr. Jennings, he might depend
on it that Mr. Bruff would be forthcoming when called upon.” With that
apology, the lawyer had gone back to his own room, and had immersed
himself obstinately in his black bag.
I thought of Mrs. Merridew and her embroidery, and of Betteredge and
his conscience. There is a wonderful sameness in the solid side of the
English character—just as there is a wonderful sameness in the solid
expression of the English face.
“When are you going to give me the laudanum?” asked Mr. Blake
impatiently.
“You must wait a little longer,” I said. “I will stay and keep you
company till the time comes.”
It was then not ten o’clock. Inquiries which I had made, at various
times, of Betteredge and Mr. Blake, had led me to the conclusion that
the dose of laudanum given by Mr. Candy could not possibly have been
administered before eleven. I had accordingly determined not to try the
second dose until that time.
We talked a little; but both our minds were preoccupied by the coming
ordeal. The conversation soon flagged—then dropped altogether. Mr.
Blake idly turned over the books on his bedroom table. I had taken the
precaution of looking at them, when we first entered the room. _The
Guardian_; _The Tatler_; Richardson’s _Pamela_; Mackenzie’s _Man of
Feeling_; Roscoe’s _Lorenzo de’ Medici_; and Robertson’s _Charles the
Fifth_—all classical works; all (of course) immeasurably superior to
anything produced in later times; and all (from my present point of
view) possessing the one great merit of enchaining nobody’s interest,
and exciting nobody’s brain. I left Mr. Blake to the composing
influence of Standard Literature, and occupied myself in making this
entry in my journal.
My watch informs me that it is close on eleven o’clock. I must shut up
these leaves once more.
Two o’clock A.M.—The experiment has been tried. With what result, I am
now to describe.
At eleven o’clock, I rang the bell for Betteredge, and told Mr. Blake
that he might at last prepare himself for bed.
I looked out of the window at the night. It was mild and rainy,
resembling, in this respect, the night of the birthday—the twenty-first
of June, last year. Without professing to believe in omens, it was at
least encouraging to find no direct nervous influences—no stormy or
electric perturbations—in the atmosphere. Betteredge joined me at the
window, and mysteriously put a little slip of paper into my hand. It
contained these lines:
“Mrs. Merridew has gone to bed, on the distinct understanding that the
explosion is to take place at nine tomorrow morning, and that I am not
to stir out of this part of the house until she comes and sets me free.
She has no idea that the chief scene of the experiment is my
sitting-room—or she would have remained in it for the whole night! I am
alone, and very anxious. Pray let me see you measure out the laudanum;
I want to have something to do with it, even in the unimportant
character of a mere looker-on.—R.V.”
I followed Betteredge out of the room, and told him to remove the
medicine-chest into Miss Verinder’s sitting-room.
The order appeared to take him completely by surprise. He looked as if
he suspected me of some occult medical design on Miss Verinder! “Might
I presume to ask,” he said, “what my young lady and the medicine-chest
have got to do with each other?”
“Stay in the sitting-room, and you will see.”
Betteredge appeared to doubt his own unaided capacity to superintend me
effectually, on an occasion when a medicine-chest was included in the
proceedings.
“Is there any objection, sir” he asked, “to taking Mr. Bruff into this
part of the business?”
“Quite the contrary! I am now going to ask Mr. Bruff to accompany me
downstairs.”
Betteredge withdrew to fetch the medicine-chest, without another word.
I went back into Mr. Blake’s room, and knocked at the door of
communication. Mr. Bruff opened it, with his papers in his
hand—immersed in Law; impenetrable to Medicine.
“I am sorry to disturb you,” I said. “But I am going to prepare the
laudanum for Mr. Blake; and I must request you to be present, and to
see what I do.”
“Yes?” said Mr. Bruff, with nine-tenths of his attention riveted on his
papers, and with one-tenth unwillingly accorded to me. “Anything else?”
“I must trouble you to return here with me, and to see me administer
the dose.”
“Anything else?”
“One thing more. I must put you to the inconvenience of remaining in
Mr. Blake’s room, and of waiting to see what happens.”
“Oh, very good!” said Mr. Bruff. “My room, or Mr. Blake’s room—it
doesn’t matter which; I can go on with my papers anywhere. Unless you
object, Mr. Jennings, to my importing _that_ amount of common sense
into the proceedings?”
Before I could answer, Mr. Blake addressed himself to the lawyer,
speaking from his bed.
“Do you really mean to say that you don’t feel any interest in what we
are going to do?” he asked. “Mr. Bruff, you have no more imagination
than a cow!”
“A cow is a very useful animal, Mr. Blake,” said the lawyer. With that
reply he followed me out of the room, still keeping his papers in his
hand.
We found Miss Verinder, pale and agitated, restlessly pacing her
sitting-room from end to end. At a table in a corner stood Betteredge,
on guard over the medicine-chest. Mr. Bruff sat down on the first chair
that he could find, and (emulating the usefulness of the cow) plunged
back again into his papers on the spot.