The Moonstone: Second Period: First–Second Narratives

I am to re-open wounds that Time has barely closed; I am to recall the most intensely painful remembrances—and this done, I am to feel myself compensated by a new laceration, in the shape of Mr. Blake’s cheque.

I was also deprived, at the time, of the inestimable advantage of hearing the events related by the fervid eloquence of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.

Thoughtless and superficial people may say, Here is surely a very trumpery little incident related in an absurdly circumstantial manner.

My wealthy relative’s cheque—henceforth, the incubus of my existence—warns me that I have not done with this record of violence yet.

On his side, he looked down at her with an indulgence so injudicious and so ill-deserved, that I really felt called on to interfere.

I remonstrated gently, “true greatness and true courage are ever modest.”

I had never noticed this kind of torpor in her before.

Indulgent Mr. Godfrey pacified her by taking a sheet of paper, and drawing out the declaration.

I looked through the window, and saw the World, the Flesh, and the Devil waiting before the house—as typified in a carriage and horses, a powdered footman, and three of the most audaciously dressed women I ever beheld in my life.

I looked with interest at the momentary softening of that obdurate heart.

After another word or two of earnest prefatory warning, I gave her her choice of three precious friends, all plying the work of mercy from morning to night in her own neighbourhood; all equally inexhaustible in exhortation; all affectionately ready to exercise their gifts at a word from me.

If my aunt, possessed of thousands, had remembered poor Me, to whom five pounds is an object—if my name had appeared in the Will, with a little comforting legacy attached to it—my enemies might have doubted the motive which had loaded me with the choicest treasures of my library, and had drawn upon my failing resources for the prodigal expenses of a cab.

Feeling bound, after what had passed in my presence that afternoon, to assert the innocence of my admirable friend, whenever I found it called in question—I own to having also felt bound to include in the accomplishment of this righteous purpose, a stinging castigation in the case of Mr. Bruff.

Over and over again in my past experience among my perishing fellow-creatures, the members of the notoriously infidel profession of Medicine had stepped between me and my mission of mercy—on the miserable pretence that the patient wanted quiet, and that the disturbing influence of all others which they most dreaded, was the influence of Miss Clack and her Books.

If the annals of apostasy offer anything comparable to such a declaration as that, I can only say that the case in point is not producible from the stores of my reading.

I thought of the struggling Female Boards, who, so to speak, drew the breath of their business-life through the nostrils of Mr. Godfrey—of that same Mr. Godfrey who had just reviled our good work as a “nuisance”—and just declared that he wished he was at the uttermost ends of the earth when he found himself in our company!

He thought, and I thought, that she was about to divulge the mystery of the Moonstone.

She has, therefore, attached to her own manuscripts, copious Extracts from precious publications in her possession, all bearing on this terrible subject.

“Mr. Franklin Blake agrees to Miss Clack’s proposal, on the understanding that she will kindly consider this intimation of his consent as closing the correspondence between them.”

“How can you expect me to go to church again,” she asked, petulantly, “with such a headache as mine?”

I had reckoned on leading her to higher things by means of a little earnest exhortation on the subject of her marriage.

It could only end, if she held firm, in an exchanging of hard words and bitter accusations on both sides.

“Yes,” he said with the most unruffled composure, “I have submitted.”

It has also reached my ears, that his anxiety to recover his place in my estimation has been attributed in certain quarters, to a mercenary eagerness to make his peace (through me) with a venerable committee-woman at the Mothers’ Small-Clothes, abundantly blessed with the goods of this world, and a beloved and intimate friend of my own.

“In plain English, it’s your sovereign will and pleasure, Miss Verinder, to jilt my son?”

At the point at which matters had now arrived, I rose superior to all considerations of mere expediency.

“A very unworthy suspicion,” remarked Mr. Bruff. “I am astonished that you have the courage to acknowledge it.”

Her astonishing quickness of perception, detected a change in my voice, or my manner, when I put that question, which warned her that I had been speaking all along with some ulterior object in view.

I can’t tell him to his face that he is the most contemptible of living creatures, after that!

And, lastly, I combated Mr. Franklin Blake’s scruples, and induced him to be the means of transporting the Diamond to Lady Verinder’s house.

If anyone can claim a prescriptive right of interest in the Moonstone, and in everything connected with it, I think it is hardly to be denied that I am the man.

The more carefully I reflected on what had passed between us, the more shrewdly I suspected the production of the casket, and the application for the loan, of having been mere formalities, designed to pave the way for the parting inquiry addressed to me.

It struck me as an experiment worth attempting, to try whether a judicious allusion to the subject of the Moonstone would keep him awake, and, if it did, to see what HE thought of the last new complication in the Indian conspiracy, as revealed in the prosaic precincts of my office.

That copy would inform them that the Moonstone was bequeathed to the daughter of Lady Verinder, and that Mr. Blake the elder, or some person appointed by him, was to place it in her hands.

In putting this difficulty to Mr. Murthwaite, I thought it right to add that I had heard of the little boy, and the drop of ink, and the rest of it, and that any explanation based on the theory of clairvoyance was an explanation which would carry no conviction whatever with it, to MY mind.

In the course of his statement he referred, if you remember, to a foreign workman in his employment, whom he had just dismissed on suspicion of attempted theft, and whom he also distrusted as possibly acting in collusion with the Indians who had annoyed him.

The inference is pretty plain, Mr. Bruff, as to who wrote that letter which puzzled you just now, and as to which of Mr. Luker’s Oriental treasures the workman had attempted to steal.

The loss of their second chance of seizing the Diamond is mainly attributable, as I think, to the cunning and foresight of Mr. Luker—who doesn’t stand at the top of the prosperous and ancient profession of usury for nothing!

By the prompt transport of the Moonstone to his banker’s, he took the conspirators by surprise before they were prepared with a new plan for robbing him.

If the unknown person who has pledged the Moonstone can redeem it in a year, the jewel will be in that person’s possession again at the end of June, ‘forty-nine.