The Moonstone quotes

The dying Indian sank to his knees, pointed to the dagger in Herncastle’s hand, and said, in his native language—

“The Moonstone will have its vengeance yet on you and yours!”

He spoke those words, and fell dead on the floor.

Although I attach no sort of credit to the fantastic Indian legend of the gem, I must acknowledge, before I conclude, that I am influenced by a certain superstition of my own in this matter.

It is my conviction, or my delusion, no matter which, that crime brings its own fatality with it.

I am not only persuaded of Herncastle’s guilt; I am even fanciful enough to believe that he will live to regret it, if he keeps the Diamond; and that others will live to regret taking it from him, if he gives the Diamond away.

That was the point of view I looked at it from. Economy—with a dash of love. I put it to my mistress, as in duty bound, just as I had put it to myself.

“I have been turning Selina Goby over in my mind,” I said, “and I think, my lady, it will be cheaper to marry her than to keep her.”

My lady burst out laughing, and said she didn’t know which to be most shocked at—my language or my principles. Some joke tickled her, I suppose, of the sort that you can’t take unless you are a person of quality.

We were not a happy couple, and not a miserable couple. We were six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. How it was I don’t understand, but we always seemed to be getting, with the best of motives, in one another’s way.

When I wanted to go upstairs, there was my wife coming down; or when my wife wanted to go down, there was I coming up. That is married life, according to my experience of it.

After five years of misunderstandings on the stairs, it pleased an all-wise Providence to relieve us of each other by taking my wife. I was left with my little girl Penelope, and with no other child.

When I wanted to go upstairs, there was my wife coming down; or when my wife wanted to go down, there was I coming up. That is married life, according to my experience of it.

After five years of misunderstandings on the stairs, it pleased an all-wise Providence to relieve us of each other by taking my wife.

I was left with my little girl Penelope, and with no other child. Shortly afterwards Sir John died, and my lady was left with her little girl, Miss Rachel, and no other child.

Nancy (who has a fine appetite) looked pleased. When she looks pleased, she looks nice. When she looks nice, I chuck her under the chin.

It isn’t immorality⁠—it’s only habit.

Well, I took my stick, and set off for the sands.

The grease was gone, but there was a little dull place left on the nap of the cloth where the grease had been. The girl pointed to that place, and shook her head.

“The stain is taken off,” she said. “But the place shows, Mr. Betteredge⁠—the place shows!”

A remark which takes a man unawares by means of his own coat is not an easy remark to answer. Something in the girl herself, too, made me particularly sorry for her just then.

He had kept the Diamond, in flat defiance of assassination, in India. He kept the Diamond, in flat defiance of public opinion, in England.

There you have the portrait of the man before you, as in a picture: a character that braved everything; and a face, handsome as it was, that looked possessed by the devil.

We heard different rumours about him from time to time. Sometimes they said he was given up to smoking opium and collecting old books; sometimes he was reported to be trying strange things in chemistry;

There was our situation as revealed to me in Mr. Franklin’s last words! Who ever heard the like of it—in the nineteenth century, mind; in an age of progress, and in a country which rejoices in the blessings of the British constitution?

Nobody ever heard the like of it, and, consequently, nobody can be expected to believe it.

I shall go on with my story, however, in spite of that.

What did I want? I didn’t tell him; but I’ll tell you, in confidence.

I wanted a whiff of my pipe, and a turn at Robinson Crusoe.

Bruff, as my father’s representative. No sensible person, in a similar position, could have viewed the matter in any other way.

Nothing in this world, Betteredge, is probable unless it appeals to our own trumpery experience; and we only believe in a romance when we see it in a newspaper.

”

“If you have got the value of the stone in your pocket,” answered Mr. Franklin, “say so, Betteredge, and in it goes!”

It’s curious to note, when your mind’s anxious, how very far in the way of relief a very small joke will go.

We found a fund of merriment, at the time, in the notion of making away with Miss Rachel’s lawful property, and getting Mr. Blake, as executor, into dreadful trouble—though where the merriment was, I am quite at a loss to discover now.

“How did he know that Rachel might not refuse to accept it, too?”

“Is there any young lady in existence, sir, who could resist the temptation of accepting such a birthday present as The Moonstone?”

“That’s the Subjective view,” says Mr. Franklin. “It does you great credit, Betteredge, to be able to take the Subjective view. But there’s another mystery about the Colonel’s legacy which is not accounted for yet.

And what about her disposition next? Had this charming creature no faults?

She had just as many faults as you have, ma’am⁠—neither more nor less.

To put it seriously, my dear pretty Miss Rachel, possessing a host of graces and attractions, had one defect, which strict impartiality compels me to acknowledge.

In little things and great, with people she loved, and people she hated (and she did both with equal heartiness), Miss Rachel always went on a way of her own, sufficient for herself in the joys and sorrows of her life.

Over and over again I have heard my lady say, “Rachel’s best friend and Rachel’s worst enemy are, one and the other⁠—Rachel herself.”

Add one thing more to this, and I have done.

but, bread and water notwithstanding, she never told you. Self-willed—devilish self-willed sometimes—I grant; but the finest creature, nevertheless, that ever walked the ways of this lower world. Perhaps you think you see a certain contradiction here? In that case, a word in your ear.

Study your wife closely, for the next four-and-twenty hours. If your good lady doesn’t exhibit something in the shape of a contradiction in that time, Heaven help you!⁠—you have married a monster.

I have now brought you acquainted with Miss Rachel, which you will find puts us face to face, next, with the question of that young lady’s matrimonial views.

The last time I was in London, my mistress gave me two treats. She sent me to the theatre to see a dancing woman who was all the rage; and she sent me to Exeter Hall to hear Mr. Godfrey.

The lady did it, with a band of music. The gentleman did it, with a handkerchief and a glass of water.

Crowds at the performance with the legs. Ditto at the performance with the tongue. And with all this, the sweetest tempered person (I allude to Mr. Godfrey)—the simplest and pleasantest and easiest to please—you ever met with. He loved everybody. And everybody loved him.

Crowds at the performance with the legs. Ditto at the performance with the tongue. And with all this, the sweetest tempered person (I allude to Mr. Godfrey)—the simplest and pleasantest and easiest to please—you ever met with.

He loved everybody. And everybody loved him.

What chance had Mr. Franklin—what chance had anybody of average reputation and capacities—against such a man as this?

Lord bless us! it was a Diamond! As large, or nearly, as a plover’s egg!

The light that streamed from it was like the light of the harvest moon.

When you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow deep that drew your eyes into it so that they saw nothing else. It seemed unfathomable; this jewel, that you could hold between your finger and thumb, seemed unfathomable as the heavens themselves.

“If we once lose our ancient safeguards, Mr. Blake, I beg to ask you, what have we got left?”—what do you say to Mr. Franklin answering, from the Italian point of view:

“We have got three things left, sir⁠—Love, Music, and Salad”

? He not only terrified the company with such outbreaks as these, but, when the English side of him turned up in due course, he lost his foreign smoothness;

Murthwaite. “I can’t doubt, after what you have told me, that the restoration of the Moonstone to its place on the forehead of the Indian idol, is the motive and the justification of that sacrifice of caste which I alluded to just now.

Those men will wait their opportunity with the patience of cats, and will use it with the ferocity of tigers.

How you have escaped them I can’t imagine,” says the eminent traveller, lighting his cheroot again, and staring hard at Mr. Franklin. “You have been carrying the Diamond backwards and forwards, here and in London, and you are still a living man!

Before I had been at it five minutes, I came to this amazing bit—page one hundred and sixty-one—as follows:

“Fear of Danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than Danger itself, when apparent to the Eyes; and we find the Burden of Anxiety greater, by much, than the Evil which we are anxious about.”

The man who doesn’t believe in Robinson Crusoe, after that, is a man with a screw loose in his understanding, or a man lost in the mist of his own self-conceit! Argument is thrown away upon him;

Godfrey. Upon the whole, things were prospering better than the experience of the dinner gave us any right to expect. If we could only hold on for another hour, old Father Time would bring up their carriages, and relieve us of them altogether.

Everything wears off in this world; and even the comforting effect of Robinson Crusoe wore off, after Penelope left me.

I got fidgety again, and resolved on making a survey of the grounds before the rain came. Instead of taking the footman, whose nose was human, and therefore useless in any emergency, I took the bloodhound with me.

The more I turned it over in my mind, the less satisfactory Mr. Franklin’s explanation appeared to be.

We had our breakfasts⁠—whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn’t matter, you must have your breakfast.

When we had done, my lady sent for me; and I found myself compelled to tell her all that I had hitherto concealed, relating to the Indians and their plot.

Franklin came back. The resolute side of him had, to all appearance, given way, in the interval since his departure, under the stress that had been laid on it. He had left us at a gallop; he came back to us at a walk.

When he went away, he was made of iron. When he returned, he was stuffed with cotton, as limp as limp could be.

“Well,” says my lady, “are the police coming?”

They had ignorantly done something (I forget what) in the town, which barely brought them within the operation of the law.

Every human institution (justice included) will stretch a little, if you only pull it the right way.

The worthy magistrate was an old friend of my lady’s, and the Indians were “committed” for a week, as soon as the court opened that morning.

I can hardly tell whether I was more startled or distressed at hearing him say that. If I had been younger, I might have confessed as much to Mr. Franklin.

But when you are old, you acquire one excellent habit. In cases where you don’t see your way clearly, you hold your tongue.

“She came in here with a ring I dropped in my bedroom,” Mr. Franklin went on. “When I had thanked her, of course I expected her to go.

“If you will look about you (which most people won’t do),” says Sergeant Cuff, “you will see that the nature of a man’s tastes is, most times, as opposite as possible to the nature of a man’s business.

Show me any two things more opposite one from the other than a rose and a thief; and I’ll correct my tastes accordingly⁠—if it isn’t too late at my time of life.

You find the damask rose a goodish stock for most of the tender sorts, don’t you, Mr. Gardener? Ah! I thought so. Here’s a lady coming. Is it Lady Verinder?”

“I made a private inquiry last week, Mr. Superintendent,” he said. “At one end of the inquiry there was a murder, and at the other end there was a spot of ink on a table cloth that nobody could account for.

In all my experience along the dirtiest ways of this dirty little world, I have never met with such a thing as a trifle yet.

Before we go a step further in this business we must see the petticoat that made the smear, and we must know for certain when that paint was wet.”

“

There is also such a thing as making nothing out of a molehill, in consequence of your head being too high to see it.

” Having returned his brother-officer’s compliments in those terms, Sergeant Cuff wheeled about, and walked away to the window by himself.

I am afraid I must own that I am rather an obstinate old man.

The more firmly Sergeant Cuff kept his thoughts shut up from me, the more firmly I persisted in trying to look in at them.

As we turned into the shrubbery path, I attempted to circumvent him in another way.

You think Mr. Franklin Blake hasn’t got a suspicion of the girl’s fancy for him? Ah! he would have found it out fast enough if she had been nice-looking.

The ugly women have a bad time of it in this world; let’s hope it will be made up to them in another.

You have got a nice garden here, and a well-kept lawn. See for yourself how much better the flowers look with grass about them instead of gravel. No, thank you. I won’t take a rose.

Reaching these conclusions, I looked in on them, casually as it might be, in the servants’ hall, and, finding tea going forward, instantly invited myself to that meal. (

For, nota bene, a drop of tea is to a woman’s tongue what a drop of oil is to a wasting lamp.

)

She stopped in the cottage for some time, and she came out with (as I believe) something hidden under her cloak.

A cloak (on a woman’s back) is an emblem of charity⁠—it covers a multitude of sins.

I saw her set off northwards along the coast, after leaving the cottage. Is your seashore here considered a fine specimen of marine landscape, Mr. Betteredge?”

“This is a miserable world,” says the Sergeant. “

Human life, Mr. Betteredge, is a sort of target⁠—misfortune is always firing at it, and always hitting the mark.

But for that outfit, we should have discovered a new nightgown or petticoat among Rosanna’s things, and have nailed her in that way. You’re not at a loss to follow me, are you?

“Don’t distress yourself, Mr. Betteredge,” says the Sergeant, with more kindness than I had any right to expect from him. “

In my line of life if we were quick at taking offence, we shouldn’t be worth salt to our porridge.

If it’s any comfort to you, collar me again. You don’t in the least know how to do it; but I’ll overlook your awkwardness in consideration of your feelings.”

“I wish you a good appetite to it, Sergeant,” I said. “My appetite is gone. I’ll wait and see you served, and then I’ll ask you to excuse me, if I go away, and try to get the better of this by myself.”

I saw him served with the best of everything⁠—and I shouldn’t have been sorry if the best of everything had choked him.

The head gardener (Mr. Begbie) came in at the same time, with his weekly account. The Sergeant got on the subject of roses and the merits of grass walks and gravel walks immediately. I left the two together, and went out with a heavy heart.

“As to listening, sir,” I remarked (keeping the other point to myself), “we shall all be rowing in the same boat if this sort of thing goes on much longer.

Prying, and peeping, and listening are the natural occupations of people situated as we are.

In another day or two, Mr. Franklin, we shall all be struck dumb together—for this reason, that we shall all be listening to surprise each other’s secrets, and all know it. Excuse my breaking out, sir.

he said I was an old man; he said the discovery had shaken me; he said, “Let him alone a little.” Then he turned to Yolland, and asked, “Is there any chance of finding her, when the tide ebbs again?” And Yolland answered, “None.

What the Sand gets, the Sand keeps for ever.

” Having said that, the fisherman came a step nearer, and addressed himself to me.

There was no more than that. Little as it was, I hadn’t manhood enough to hold up against it.

Your tears come easy, when you’re young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you’re old, and leaving it.

I burst out crying.

The Sergeant went to the window, and stood there looking out. I thought it right to thank him for considering us both in this way—and I did.

People in high life have all the luxuries to themselves⁠—among others, the luxury of indulging their feelings.

People in low life have no such privilege. Necessity, which spares our betters, has no pity on us. We learn to put our feelings back into ourselves, and to jog on with our duties as patiently as may be.

People in high life have all the luxuries to themselves—among others, the luxury of indulging their feelings. People in low life have no such privilege.

Necessity, which spares our betters, has no pity on us.

We learn to put our feelings back into ourselves, and to jog on with our duties as patiently as may be. I don’t complain of this—I only notice it.

I left him, miserable enough, leaning on the sill of my window, with his face hidden in his hands and Penelope peeping through the door, longing to comfort him. In Mr. Franklin’s place, I should have called her in.

When you are ill-used by one woman, there is great comfort in telling it to another⁠—because, nine times out of ten, the other always takes your side.

Perhaps, when my back was turned, he did call her in? In that case it is only doing my daughter justice to declare that she would stick at nothing, in the way of comforting Mr. Franklin Blake.

“Very well. Now, before you begin, I have to tell you, as Miss Verinder’s mother, that she is absolutely incapable of doing what you suppose her to have done.

Your knowledge of her character dates from a day or two since. My knowledge of her character dates from the beginning of her life.

State your suspicion of her as strongly as you please—it is impossible that you can offend me by doing so. I am sure, beforehand, that (with all your experience) the circumstances have fatally misled you in this case. Mind!

This time he looked my way. It was downright frightful to hear him piling up proof after proof against Miss Rachel, and to know, while one was longing to defend her, that there was no disputing the truth of what he said.

I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason. This enabled me to hold firm to my lady’s view, which was my view also.

This roused my spirit, and made me put a bold face on it before Sergeant Cuff. Profit, good friends, I beseech you, by my example. It will save you from many troubles of the vexing sort.

This roused my spirit, and made me put a bold face on it before Sergeant Cuff. Profit, good friends, I beseech you, by my example. It will save you from many troubles of the vexing sort.

Cultivate a superiority to reason, and see how you pare the claws of all the sensible people when they try to scratch you for your own good!

Finding that I made no remark, and that my mistress made no remark, Sergeant Cuff proceeded. Lord! how it did enrage me to notice that he was not in the least put out by our silence!

“I think,” answered Sergeant Cuff, “that Lady Verinder is one of the cleverest women in England.

I also think a rose much better worth looking at than a diamond.

Where is the gardener, Mr. Betteredge?”

Arguing in this way, from within-outwards, what do we reach? We reach the Subjective view. I defy you to controvert the Subjective view. Very well then—what follows? Good Heavens! the Objective-Subjective explanation follows, of course!

Rachel, properly speaking, is not Rachel, but Somebody Else.

Do I mind being cruelly treated by Somebody Else? You are unreasonable enough, Betteredge; but you can hardly accuse me of that. Then how does it end? It ends, in spite of your confounded English narrowness and prejudice, in my being perfectly happy and comfortable.

She refuses, with tears, when I appeal to her to speak out for my sake. ‘The day will come when you will know why I am careless about being suspected, and why I am silent even to you.

I have done much to make my mother pity me⁠—nothing to make my mother blush for me.

’ Those are my daughter’s own words.

“

Mr. Betteredge, consider it as a warning to yourself, and you will be nearer the mark.

”

Away they went together, fighting the battle of the roses without asking or giving quarter on either side. The last I saw of them, Mr. Begbie was shaking his obstinate head, and Sergeant Cuff had got him by the arm like a prisoner in charge.

Ah, well! well! I own I couldn’t help liking the Sergeant⁠—though I hated him all the time.

Explain that state of mind, if you can. You will soon be rid, now, of me and my contradictions. When I have reported Mr. Franklin’s departure, the history of the Saturday’s events will be finished at last.

My practice with the late Mrs. Betteredge came in handy here.

Whenever a woman tries to put you out of temper, turn the tables, and put her out of temper instead.

They are generally prepared for every effort you can make in your own defence, but that. One word does it as well as a hundred; and one word did it with Limping Lucy. I looked her pleasantly in the face; and I said—“Pooh!”

Luker must have got together, and that the Moonstone must be now in pledge in the moneylender’s house—I own, I can’t blame you for arriving at that conclusion.

In the dark, I have brought you thus far. In the dark I am compelled to leave you, with my best respects.

Why compelled? it may be asked. Why not take the persons who have gone along with me, so far, up into those regions of superior enlightenment in which I sit myself?

… it plainer, I am to keep strictly within the limits of my own experience, and am not to inform you of what other persons told me—for the very sufficient reason that you are to have the information from those other persons themselves, at first hand.

In this matter of the Moonstone the plan is, not to present reports, but to produce witnesses.

I picture to myself a member of the family reading these pages fifty years hence. Lord! what a compliment he will feel it, to be asked to take nothing on hearsay, and to be treated in all respects like a Judge on the bench.

In this matter of the Moonstone the plan is, not to present reports, but to produce witnesses. I picture to myself a member of the family reading these pages fifty years hence.

Lord! what a compliment he will feel it, to be asked to take nothing on hearsay, and to be treated in all respects like a Judge on the bench.

At this place, then, we part—for the present, at least—after long journeying together, with a companionable feeling, I hope, on both sides. The devil’s dance of the Indian Diamond has threaded its way to London;

Nothing escaped me at the time I was visiting dear Aunt Verinder. Everything was entered (thanks to my early training) day by day as it happened; and everything down to the smallest particular, shall be told here.

My sacred regard for truth is (thank God) far above my respect for persons.

It will be easy for Mr. Blake to suppress what may not prove to be sufficiently flattering in these pages to the person chiefly concerned in them. He has purchased my time, but not even his wealth can purchase my conscience too.

My sacred regard for truth is (thank God) far above my respect for persons. It will be easy for Mr. Blake to suppress what may not prove to be sufficiently flattering in these pages to the person chiefly concerned in them.

He has purchased my time, but not even his wealth can purchase my conscience too.

My diary informs me, that I was accidentally passing Aunt Verinder’s house in Montagu Square, on Monday, 3rd July, 1848.

Thoughtless and superficial people may say, Here is surely a very trumpery little incident related in an absurdly circumstantial manner. Oh, my young friends and fellow-sinners! beware of presuming to exercise your poor carnal reason. Oh, be morally tidy.

Let your faith be as your stockings, and your stockings as your faith. Both ever spotless, and both ready to put on at a moment’s notice!

I beg a thousand pardons. I have fallen insensibly into my Sunday-school style. Most inappropriate in such a record as this. Let me try to be worldly—let me say that trifles, in this case as in many others, led to terrible results.

A man’s voice below exclaimed “Hullo!” A man’s feet ascended the stairs. Mr. Godfrey felt Christian fingers unfastening his bandage, and extracting his gag. He looked in amazement at two respectable strangers, and faintly articulated, “What does it mean?”

The two respectable strangers looked back, and said, “Exactly the question we were going to ask you.”

The inevitable explanation followed. No! Let me be scrupulously particular. Sal volatile and water followed, to compose dear Mr. Godfrey’s nerves. The explanation came next.

The inevitable explanation followed.

No! Let me be scrupulously particular. Sal volatile and water followed, to compose dear Mr. Godfrey’s nerves. The explanation came next.

It appeared from the statement of the landlord and landlady of the house (persons of good repute in the neighbourhood), that their first and second floor apartments had been engaged, on the previous day, for a week certain, by a most respectable-looking gentleman—the same who …

“You live a great deal too much in the society of women. And you have contracted two very bad habits in consequence.

You have learnt to talk nonsense seriously, and you have got into a way of telling fibs for the pleasure of telling them.

You can’t go straight with your lady-worshippers. I mean to make you go straight with me. Come, and sit down. I am brimful of downright questions; and I expect you to be brimful of downright answers.”

I followed my aunt with a modest medicinal peace-offering, in the shape of a bottle of salts. We none of us produced the slightest effect on her. “Godfrey, stay where you are. Mamma, there is not the least reason to be alarmed about me.

Clack, you’re dying to hear the end of it⁠—I won’t faint, expressly to oblige you.

”

I felt inclined to say a few earnest words. Alas! my well-meant sympathy only gave offence. “What do you mean by pitying me?” she asked in a bitter whisper, as she passed to the door. “

Don’t you see how happy I am? I’m going to the flower-show, Clack; and I’ve got the prettiest bonnet in London.

” She completed the hollow mockery of that address by blowing me a kiss—and so left the room.

Mr. Bruff looked surprised to see me. He is the family solicitor, and we had met more than once, on previous occasions, under Lady Verinder’s roof.

A man, I grieve to say, grown old and grizzled in the service of the world. A man who, in his hours of business, was the chosen prophet of Law and Mammon; and who, in his hours of leisure, was equally capable of reading a novel and of tearing up a tract.

“Have you come to stay here, Miss Clack?” he asked, with a look at my carpetbag.

I admit that she has her faults—she is secret, and self-willed; odd and wild, and unlike other girls of her age. But true as steel, and high-minded and generous to a fault.

If the plainest evidence in the world pointed one way, and if nothing but Rachel’s word of honour pointed the other, I would take her word before the evidence, lawyer as I am!

Strong language, Miss Clack; but I mean it.”

In the meantime, allow me to congratulate you on the masterly manner in which you have opened the full fire of your batteries on me at the moment when I least expected it.

You would have done great things in my profession, ma’am, if you had happened to be a man.

”

But oh, what of that?

It is a poor Christian that is afraid of being insulted.

I went upstairs, prepared to bear anything. All was silent and solitary—it was the servants’ teatime, I suppose. My aunt’s room was in front. The miniature of my late dear uncle, Sir John, hung on the wall opposite the bed.

Can words express my exquisite sense of duty done, when I had slipped out of the house, unsuspected by any of them, and when I found myself in the street with my empty bag under my arm?

Oh, my worldly friends, pursuing the phantom, pleasure, through the guilty mazes of dissipation, how easy it is to be happy, if you will only be good!

When I folded up my things that night—when I reflected on the true riches which I had scattered with such a lavish hand, from top to bottom of the house of my wealthy aunt—I declare I felt as free from all anxiety as if I …

… things that night—when I reflected on the true riches which I had scattered with such a lavish hand, from top to bottom of the house of my wealthy aunt—I declare I felt as free from all anxiety as if I had been a child again.

I was so lighthearted that I sang a verse of the Evening Hymn. I was so lighthearted that I fell asleep before I could sing another.

Quite like a child again! quite like a child again!

Taxation may be the consequence of a mission; riots may be the consequence of a mission; wars may be the consequence of a mission: we go on with our work, irrespective of every human consideration which moves the world outside us.

We are above reason; we are beyond ridicule; we see with nobody’s eyes, we hear with nobody’s ears, we feel with nobody’s hearts, but our own.

Glorious, glorious privilege! And how is it earned? Ah, my friends, you may spare yourselves the useless inquiry! We are the only people who can earn it—for we are the only people who are always right.

We are above reason; we are beyond ridicule; we see with nobody’s eyes, we hear with nobody’s ears, we feel with nobody’s hearts, but our own. Glorious, glorious privilege! And how is it earned? Ah, my friends, you may spare yourselves the useless inquiry!

We are the only people who can earn it⁠—for we are the only people who are always right.

In the case of my misguided aunt, the form which pious perseverance was next to take revealed itself to me plainly enough.

“I never paid you a compliment, Rachel, in my life. Successful love may sometimes use the language of flattery, I admit.

But hopeless love, dearest, always speaks the truth.

”

Suppose the love this wretch had inspired in you—? Oh, how can I find words to say it in! How can I make a man understand that a feeling which horrifies me at myself, can be a feeling that fascinates me at the same time?

It’s the breath of my life, Godfrey, and it’s the poison that kills me⁠—both in one!

Go away! I must be out of my mind to talk as I am talking now. No! you mustn’t leave me—you mustn’t carry away a wrong impression. I must say what is to be said in my own defence. Mind this!

“

Do you know many wives, my dear Rachel, who respect and admire their husbands? And yet they and their husbands get on very well.

How many brides go to the altar with hearts that would bear inspection by the men who take them there? And yet it doesn’t end unhappily—somehow or other the nuptial establishment jogs on.

“Is this worthy of a Christian Englishwoman? Is the passage from time to eternity to be made in this manner?” My aunt answered, “I’ll put on my gown, Drusilla, if you will be kind enough to help me.” What was to be said after that?

I have done wonders with murderesses⁠—I have never advanced an inch with Aunt Ablewhite.

“Where is the list,” I asked, “of the servants whom you require?” My aunt shook her head; she hadn’t even energy enough to keep the list. “Rachel has got it, dear,” she said, “in the next room.”

She has gone through life, accepting everybody’s help, and adopting everybody’s opinions. A more hopeless person, in a spiritual point of view, I have never met with—there is absolutely, in this perplexing case, no obstructive material to work upon.

Aunt Ablewhite would listen to the Grand Lama of Tibet exactly as she listens to me, and would reflect his views quite as readily as she reflects mine.

She found the furnished house at Brighton by stopping at an hotel in London, composing herself on a sofa, and sending for her son.

By the by, Mr. Bruff, I’m ordered to take exercise, and I don’t like it. That,” added Aunt Ablewhite, pointing out of window to an invalid going by in a chair on wheels, drawn by a man, “is my idea of exercise.

If it’s air you want, you get it in your chair. And if it’s fatigue you want, I am sure it’s fatigue enough to look at the man.

”

She never appeared at dinner. Her maid (the person with the cap-ribbons) was sent downstairs to announce that her headache had returned. I ran up to her and made all sorts of sisterly offers through the door. It was locked, and she kept it locked.

Plenty of obstructive material to work on here! I felt greatly cheered and stimulated by her locking the door.

When her cup of tea went up to her the next morning, I followed it in. I sat by her bedside and said a few earnest words. She listened with languid civility.

“A child pursues a certain course of conduct. You are greatly struck by it, and you attempt to get at the motive. The dear little thing is incapable of telling you its motive.

You might as well ask the grass why it grows, or the birds why they sing.

Well! in this matter, I am like the dear little thing—like the grass—like the birds. I don’t know why I made a proposal of marriage to Miss Verinder. I don’t know why I have shamefully neglected my dear ladies.

I only wished to say to her, “May your hard heart be softened! I freely forgive you!” She pulled down her veil, and tore her shawl away from my hand, and, hurrying out, shut the door in my face.

I bore the insult with my customary fortitude. I remember it now with my customary superiority to all feeling of offence.

Mr. Bruff had his parting word of mockery for me, before he too hurried out, in his turn.

“I shan’t be very long about this. And then I’ll go to sleep again.” He looked on with great interest while I collected pens, ink, and paper. “Are you ready?” he asked. I bowed and took a dip of ink, and waited for my instructions.

“I leave everything to my wife,” said Sir John. “That’s all.”

He turned round on his pillow, and composed himself to sleep again.

“Will you forgive an old friend and servant of your family, Miss Rachel, if I venture on asking whether your heart is set on this marriage?”

“I am marrying in despair, Mr. Bruff⁠—on the chance of dropping into some sort of stagnant happiness which may reconcile me to my life.”

Strong language! and suggestive of something below the surface, in the shape of a romance. But I had my own object in view, and I declined (as we lawyers say) to pursue the question into its side issues.

At the same time, and barring that slight drawback, I am bound to testify that he was the perfect model of a client.

He might not have respected my life. But he did what none of my own countrymen had ever done, in all my experience of them⁠—he respected my time.

“I am sorry,” I said, “that you should have had the trouble of coming to me. Mr. Luker is quite mistaken in sending you here. I am trusted, like other men in my profession, with money to lend.

I bowed on my side.

Only one question at parting! The average in my experience was fifty.

“Supposing, sir, it had been possible (and customary) for you to lend me the money,” he said, “in what space of time would it have been possible (and customary) for me to pay it back?”

This magnificent indifference to placing his safety in peril for the second time, revived the flagging interest of the worshippers in the hero. The law of chances was clearly against his escaping on this occasion.

It is not every day that we can meet an eminent person at dinner, and feel that there is a reasonable prospect of the news of his murder being the news that we hear of him next.

When the gentlemen were left by themselves in the dining-room, I found myself sitting next to Mr. Murthwaite.

“Let the Diamond be, Mr. Franklin! Take my advice, and let the Diamond be!

That cursed Indian jewel has misguided everybody who has come near it.

Don’t waste your money and your temper—in the fine spring time of your life, sir—by meddling with the Moonstone. How can you hope to succeed (saving your presence), when Sergeant Cuff himself made a mess of it? Sergeant Cuff!”

“Do you feel an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach, sir? and a nasty thumping at the top of your head? Ah! not yet? It will lay hold of you at Cobb’s Hole, Mr. Franklin.

I call it the detective-fever; and I first caught it in the company of Sergeant Cuff.

”

“Sir—I have something to own to you.

A confession which means much misery, may sometimes be made in very few words. This confession can be made in three words. I love you.

”

“Do you remember when you came out on us from among the sand hills, that morning, looking for Mr. Betteredge?

You were like a prince in a fairy-story. You were like a lover in a dream.

You were the most adorable human creature I had ever seen. Something that felt like the happy life I had never led yet, leapt up in me at the instant I set eyes on you. Don’t laugh at this if you can help it.

it keeps me from getting sour with thinking of the past.” He put on his spectacles, and wagged his head gloomily. “There’s a bottom of good sense, Mr. Franklin, in our conduct to our mothers, when they first start us on the journey of life.

We are all of us more or less unwilling to be brought into the world. And we are all of us right.

”

… 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.

“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.”

It seemed hard on my good old friend to leave him without a reply. I went to my writing-table, and read his letter again.

A letter which has nothing of the slightest importance in it, is not always an easy letter to answer.

Betteredge’s present effort at corresponding with me came within this category. Mr. Candy’s assistant, otherwise Ezra Jennings, had told his master that he had seen me; and Mr.

and then intermitted, at that terrible time in the early morning—from two o’clock to five—when the vital energies even of the healthiest of us are at their lowest. It is then that Death gathers in his human harvest most abundantly.

It was then that Death and I fought our fight over the bed, which should have the man who lay on it.

I never hesitated in pursuing the treatment on which I had staked everything. When wine failed, I tried brandy. When the other stimulants lost their influence, I doubled the dose.

“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.

”

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.

”

“

Because there was a stuffed buzzard, Mr. Jennings, in the hall last year. When the family left, the buzzard was put away with the other things. When the buzzard was put away⁠—he burst.

”

Franklin’s room.

Speaking as a servant, I am deeply indebted to you. Speaking as a man, I consider you to be a person whose head is full of maggots, and I take up my testimony against your experiment as a delusion and a snare.

Don’t be afraid, on that account, of my feelings as a man getting in the way of my duty as a servant! You shall be obeyed. The maggots notwithstanding, sir, you shall be obeyed.

“

Only the protest of the world, Miss Verinder⁠—on a very small scale⁠—against anything that is new.

”

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.

“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!

”

“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.

The light which he was holding on the other side of us moved suddenly. The next moment he passed us, swift and noiseless, with the candle in his hand.

He opened the bedroom door, and went out.

We followed him along the corridor. We followed him down the stairs. We followed him along the second corridor. He never looked back; he never hesitated.

I thought of my own youth; I thought of the gentle eyes which had once looked love at me. In the heaviness of my heart I turned to my Journal for relief, and wrote in it what is written here.

So we kept our watch together in silence. One of us absorbed in his writing; the other absorbed in her love.

Hour after hour he lay in his deep sleep. The light of the new day grew and grew in the room, and still he never moved.

Eleven o’clock.—The house is empty again. They have arranged it among themselves; they have all gone to London by the ten o’clock train.

My brief dream of happiness is over. I have awakened again to the realities of my friendless and lonely life.

I dare not trust myself to write down, the kind words that have been said to me especially by Miss Verinder and Mr. Blake. Besides, it is needless.

My poor patients are waiting for me. Back again, this morning, to the old routine! Back again, tonight, to the dreadful alternative between the opium and the pain!

God be praised for His mercy! I have seen a little sunshine⁠—I have had a happy time.

Confining myself merely to results, I have to report that Rachel and I thoroughly understood each other, before a single word of explanation had passed on either side. I decline to account, and Rachel declines to account, for the extraordinary rapidity of our reconciliation.

Sir and Madam, look back at the time when you were passionately attached to each other⁠—and you will know what happened, after Ezra Jennings had shut the door of the sitting-room, as well as I know it myself.

I have, however, no objection to add, that we should have been certainly discovered by Mrs. Merridew, but for Rachel’s presence of mind. She heard the sound of the old lady’s dress in the corridor, and instantly ran out to meet her; I heard Mrs.

On her return to the house, she met me in the hall, and expressed herself as greatly struck by the vast improvement in Science, since the time when she was a girl at school. “Explosions, Mr. Blake, are infinitely milder than they were.

I assure you, I barely heard Mr. Jennings’s explosion from the garden.

And no smell afterwards, that I can detect, now we have come back to the house! I must really apologise to your medical friend. It is only due to him to say that he has managed it beautifully!”

So, after vanquishing Betteredge and Mr. Bruff, Ezra Jennings vanquished Mrs. Merridew herself.

There is a great deal of undeveloped liberal feeling in the world, after all!

At breakfast, Mr. Bruff made no secret of his reasons for wishing that I should accompany him to London by the morning train.

The man in the grey suit got into an omnibus, going westward. We got in after him.

There were latent reserves of youth still left in Mr. Bruff. I assert it positively⁠—when he took his seat in the omnibus, he blushed!

The man in the grey suit stopped the omnibus, and got out in Oxford Street. We followed him again. He went into a chemist’s shop.

“

Mr. Blake! you and I are the two worst amateur detectives that ever tried their hands at the trade.

The man in the grey suit has been thirty years in the chemist’s service. He was sent to the bank to pay money to his master’s account—and he knows no more of the Moonstone than the babe unborn.”

But that doesn’t alter the facts as they stand. I own that I made a mess of it. Not the first mess, Mr. Blake, which has distinguished my professional career!

It’s only in books that the officers of the detective force are superior to the weakness of making a mistake.

”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Blake,” rejoined the Sergeant. “

Now I have retired from business, I don’t care a straw about my reputation. I have done with my reputation, thank God!

I am here, sir, in grateful remembrance of the late Lady Verinder’s liberality to me. I will go back to my old work—if you want me, and if you will trust me—on that consideration, and on no other.

“You may speak before this gentleman,” I said. “He is here to assist me; and he knows all that has happened. Sergeant Cuff,” I added, “this is the boy from Mr. Bruff’s office.”

In our modern system of civilisation, celebrity (no matter of what kind) is the lever that will move anything.

The fame of the great Cuff had even reached the ears of the small Gooseberry. The boy’s ill-fixed eyes rolled, when I mentioned the illustrious name, till I thought they really must have dropped on the carpet.

“After a little,” pursued the Sergeant, “the cab moved on slowly down the street. The mechanic crossed the road, and went into the eating-house. The boy waited outside till he was hungry and tired—and then went into the eating-house, in his turn.

He had a shilling in his pocket; and he dined sumptuously, he tells me, on a black-pudding, an eel-pie, and a bottle of ginger-beer. What can a boy not digest? The substance in question has never been found yet.

”