الفصل الفصل 43 · Chapter IX

The doctor’s pretty housemaid stood waiting for me, with the street

door open in her hand. Pouring brightly into the hall, the morning

light fell full on the face of Mr. Candy’s assistant when I turned, and

looked at him.

It was impossible to dispute Betteredge’s assertion that the appearance

of Ezra Jennings, speaking from a popular point of view, was against

him. His gipsy-complexion, his fleshless cheeks, his gaunt facial

bones, his dreamy eyes, his extraordinary parti-coloured hair, the

puzzling contradiction between his face and figure which made him look

old and young both together—were all more or less calculated to produce

an unfavourable impression of him on a stranger’s mind. And yet—feeling

this as I certainly did—it is not to be denied that Ezra Jennings made

some inscrutable appeal to my sympathies, which I found it impossible

to resist. While my knowledge of the world warned me to answer the

question which he had put, acknowledging that I did indeed find Mr.

Candy sadly changed, and then to proceed on my way out of the house—my

interest in Ezra Jennings held me rooted to the place, and gave him the

opportunity of speaking to me in private about his employer, for which

he had been evidently on the watch.

“Are you walking my way, Mr. Jennings?” I said, observing that he held

his hat in his hand. “I am going to call on my aunt, Mrs. Ablewhite.”

Ezra Jennings replied that he had a patient to see, and that he was

walking my way.

We left the house together. I observed that the pretty servant girl—who

was all smiles and amiability, when I wished her good morning on my way

out—received a modest little message from Ezra Jennings, relating to

the time at which he might be expected to return, with pursed-up lips,

and with eyes which ostentatiously looked anywhere rather than look in

his face. The poor wretch was evidently no favourite in the house. Out

of the house, I had Betteredge’s word for it that he was unpopular

everywhere. “What a life!” I thought to myself, as we descended the

doctor’s doorsteps.

Having already referred to Mr. Candy’s illness on his side, Ezra

Jennings now appeared determined to leave it to me to resume the

subject. His silence said significantly, “It’s your turn now.” I, too,

had my reasons for referring to the doctor’s illness: and I readily

accepted the responsibility of speaking first.

“Judging by the change I see in him,” I began, “Mr. Candy’s illness

must have been far more serious than I had supposed?”

“It is almost a miracle,” said Ezra Jennings, “that he lived through

it.”

“Is his memory never any better than I have found it today? He has been

trying to speak to me——”

“Of something which happened before he was taken ill?” asked the

assistant, observing that I hesitated.

“Yes.”

“His memory of events, at that past time, is hopelessly enfeebled,”

said Ezra Jennings. “It is almost to be deplored, poor fellow, that

even the wreck of it remains. While he remembers dimly plans that he

formed—things, here and there, that he had to say or do before his

illness—he is perfectly incapable of recalling what the plans were, or

what the thing was that he had to say or do. He is painfully conscious

of his own deficiency, and painfully anxious, as you must have seen, to

hide it from observation. If he could only have recovered in a complete

state of oblivion as to the past, he would have been a happier man.

Perhaps we should all be happier,” he added, with a sad smile, “if we

could but completely forget!”

“There are some events surely in all men’s lives,” I replied, “the

memory of which they would be unwilling entirely to lose?”

“That is, I hope, to be said of most men, Mr. Blake. I am afraid it

cannot truly be said of _all_. Have you any reason to suppose that the

lost remembrance which Mr. Candy tried to recover—while you were

speaking to him just now—was a remembrance which it was important to

_you_ that he should recall?”

In saying those words, he had touched, of his own accord, on the very

point upon which I was anxious to consult him. The interest I felt in

this strange man had impelled me, in the first instance, to give him

the opportunity of speaking to me; reserving what I might have to say,

on my side, in relation to his employer, until I was first satisfied

that he was a person in whose delicacy and discretion I could trust.

The little that he had said, thus far, had been sufficient to convince

me that I was speaking to a gentleman. He had what I may venture to

describe as the _unsought self-possession_, which is a sure sign of

good breeding, not in England only, but everywhere else in the

civilised world. Whatever the object which he had in view, in putting

the question that he had just addressed to me, I felt no doubt that I

was justified—so far—in answering him without reserve.

“I believe I have a strong interest,” I said, “in tracing the lost

remembrance which Mr. Candy was unable to recall. May I ask whether you

can suggest to me any method by which I might assist his memory?”

Ezra Jennings looked at me, with a sudden flash of interest in his

dreamy brown eyes.

“Mr. Candy’s memory is beyond the reach of assistance,” he said. “I

have tried to help it often enough since his recovery, to be able to

speak positively on that point.”

This disappointed me; and I owned it.

“I confess you led me to hope for a less discouraging answer than

that,” I said.

Ezra Jennings smiled. “It may not, perhaps, be a final answer, Mr.

Blake. It may be possible to trace Mr. Candy’s lost recollection,

without the necessity of appealing to Mr. Candy himself.”

“Indeed? Is it an indiscretion, on my part, to ask how?”

“By no means. My only difficulty in answering your question, is the

difficulty of explaining myself. May I trust to your patience, if I

refer once more to Mr. Candy’s illness: and if I speak of it this time

without sparing you certain professional details?”

“Pray go on! You have interested me already in hearing the details.”

My eagerness seemed to amuse—perhaps, I might rather say, to please

him. He smiled again. We had by this time left the last houses in the

town behind us. Ezra Jennings stopped for a moment, and picked some

wild flowers from the hedge by the roadside. “How beautiful they are!”

he said, simply, showing his little nosegay to me. “And how few people

in England seem to admire them as they deserve!”

“You have not always been in England?” I said.

“No. I was born, and partly brought up, in one of our colonies. My

father was an Englishman; but my mother—We are straying away from our

subject, Mr. Blake; and it is my fault. The truth is, I have

associations with these modest little hedgeside flowers—It doesn’t

matter; we were speaking of Mr. Candy. To Mr. Candy let us return.”

Connecting the few words about himself which thus reluctantly escaped

him, with the melancholy view of life which led him to place the

conditions of human happiness in complete oblivion of the past, I felt

satisfied that the story which I had read in his face was, in two

particulars at least, the story that it really told. He had suffered as

few men suffer; and there was the mixture of some foreign race in his

English blood.

“You have heard, I dare say, of the original cause of Mr. Candy’s

illness?” he resumed. “The night of Lady Verinder’s dinner-party was a

night of heavy rain. My employer drove home through it in his gig, and

reached the house wetted to the skin. He found an urgent message from a

patient, waiting for him; and he most unfortunately went at once to

visit the sick person, without stopping to change his clothes. I was

myself professionally detained, that night, by a case at some distance

from Frizinghall. When I got back the next morning, I found Mr. Candy’s

groom waiting in great alarm to take me to his master’s room. By that

time the mischief was done; the illness had set in.”

“The illness has only been described to me, in general terms, as a

fever,” I said.

“I can add nothing which will make the description more accurate,”

answered Ezra Jennings. “From first to last the fever assumed no

specific form. I sent at once to two of Mr. Candy’s medical friends in

the town, both physicians, to come and give me their opinion of the

case. They agreed with me that it looked serious; but they both

strongly dissented from the view I took of the treatment. We differed

entirely in the conclusions which we drew from the patient’s pulse. The

two doctors, arguing from the rapidity of the beat, declared that a

lowering treatment was the only treatment to be adopted. On my side, I

admitted the rapidity of the pulse, but I also pointed to its alarming

feebleness as indicating an exhausted condition of the system, and as

showing a plain necessity for the administration of stimulants. The two

doctors were for keeping him on gruel, lemonade, barley-water, and so

on. I was for giving him champagne, or brandy, ammonia, and quinine. A

serious difference of opinion, as you see! A difference between two

physicians of established local repute, and a stranger who was only an

assistant in the house. For the first few days, I had no choice but to

give way to my elders and betters; the patient steadily sinking all the

time. I made a second attempt to appeal to the plain, undeniably plain,

evidence of the pulse. Its rapidity was unchecked, and its feebleness

had increased. The two doctors took offence at my obstinacy. They said,

‘Mr. Jennings, either we manage this case, or you manage it. Which is

it to be?’ I said, ‘Gentlemen, give me five minutes to consider, and

that plain question shall have a plain reply.’ When the time expired, I

was ready with my answer. I said, ‘You positively refuse to try the

stimulant treatment?’ They refused in so many words. ‘I mean to try it

at once, gentlemen.’—‘Try it, Mr. Jennings, and we withdraw from the

case.’ I sent down to the cellar for a bottle of champagne; and I

administered half a tumbler-full of it to the patient with my own hand.

The two physicians took up their hats in silence, and left the house.”

“You had assumed a serious responsibility,” I said. “In your place, I

am afraid I should have shrunk from it.”

“In my place, Mr. Blake, you would have remembered that Mr. Candy had

taken you into his employment, under circumstances which made you his

debtor for life. In my place, you would have seen him sinking, hour by

hour; and you would have risked anything, rather than let the one man

on earth who had befriended you, die before your eyes. Don’t suppose

that I had no sense of the terrible position in which I had placed

myself! There were moments when I felt all the misery of my

friendlessness, all the peril of my dreadful responsibility. If I had

been a happy man, if I had led a prosperous life, I believe I should

have sunk under the task I had imposed on myself. But _I_ had no happy

time to look back at, no past peace of mind to force itself into

contrast with my present anxiety and suspense—and I held firm to my

resolution through it all. I took an interval in the middle of the day,

when my patient’s condition was at its best, for the repose I needed.

For the rest of the four-and-twenty hours, as long as his life was in

danger, I never left his bedside. Towards sunset, as usual in such

cases, the delirium incidental to the fever came on. It lasted more or

less through the night; 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. After an interval

of suspense—the like of which I hope to God I shall never feel

again—there came a day when the rapidity of the pulse slightly, but

appreciably, diminished; and, better still, there came also a change in

the beat—an unmistakable change to steadiness and strength. _Then_, I

knew that I had saved him; and then I own I broke down. I laid the poor

fellow’s wasted hand back on the bed, and burst out crying. An

hysterical relief, Mr. Blake—nothing more! Physiology says, and says

truly, that some men are born with female constitutions—and I am one of

them!”

He made that bitterly professional apology for his tears, speaking

quietly and unaffectedly, as he had spoken throughout. His tone and

manner, from beginning to end, showed him to be especially, almost

morbidly, anxious not to set himself up as an object of interest to me.

“You may well ask, why I have wearied you with all these details?” he

went on. “It is the only way I can see, Mr. Blake, of properly

introducing to you what I have to say next. Now you know exactly what

my position was, at the time of Mr. Candy’s illness, you will the more

readily understand the sore need I had of lightening the burden on my

mind by giving it, at intervals, some sort of relief. I have had the

presumption to occupy my leisure, for some years past, in writing a

book, addressed to the members of my profession—a book on the intricate

and delicate subject of the brain and the nervous system. My work will

probably never be finished; and it will certainly never be published.

It has none the less been the friend of many lonely hours; and it

helped me to while away the anxious time—the time of waiting, and

nothing else—at Mr. Candy’s bedside. I told you he was delirious, I

think? And I mentioned the time at which his delirium came on?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I had reached a section of my book, at that time, which touched

on this same question of delirium. I won’t trouble you at any length

with my theory on the subject—I will confine myself to telling you only

what it is your present interest to know. It has often occurred to me

in the course of my medical practice, to doubt whether we can

justifiably infer—in cases of delirium—that the loss of the faculty of

speaking connectedly, implies of necessity the loss of the faculty of

thinking connectedly as well. Poor Mr. Candy’s illness gave me an

opportunity of putting this doubt to the test. I understand the art of

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

aspirations in my profession—obscurity was the only hope left for me. I

parted with the woman I loved—how could I condemn her to share my

disgrace? A medical assistant’s place offered itself, in a remote

corner of England. I got the place. It promised me peace; it promised

me obscurity, as I thought. I was wrong. Evil report, with time and

chance to help it, travels patiently, and travels far. The accusation

from which I had fled followed me. I got warning of its approach. I was

able to leave my situation voluntarily, with the testimonials that I

had earned. They got me another situation in another remote district.

Time passed again; and again the slander that was death to my character

found me out. On this occasion I had no warning. My employer said, ‘Mr.

Jennings, I have no complaint to make against you; but you must set

yourself right, or leave me.’ I had but one choice—I left him. It’s

useless to dwell on what I suffered after that. I am only forty years

old now. Look at my face, and let it tell for me the story of some

miserable years. It ended in my drifting to this place, and meeting

with Mr. Candy. He wanted an assistant. I referred him, on the question

of capacity, to my last employer. The question of character remained. I

told him what I have told you—and more. I warned him that there were

difficulties in the way, even if he believed me. ‘Here, as elsewhere,’

I said ‘I scorn the guilty evasion of living under an assumed name: I

am no safer at Frizinghall than at other places from the cloud that

follows me, go where I may.’ He answered, ‘I don’t do things by

halves—I believe you, and I pity you. If _you_ will risk what may

happen, _I_ will risk it too.’ God Almighty bless him! He has given me

shelter, he has given me employment, he has given me rest of mind—and I

have the certain conviction (I have had it for some months past) that

nothing will happen now to make him regret it.”

“The slander has died out?” I said.

“The slander is as active as ever. But when it follows me here, it will

come too late.”

“You will have left the place?”

“No, Mr. Blake—I shall be dead. For ten years past I have suffered from

an incurable internal complaint. I don’t disguise from you that I

should have let the agony of it kill me long since, but for one last

interest in life, which makes my existence of some importance to me

still. I want to provide for a person—very dear to me—whom I shall

never see again. My own little patrimony is hardly sufficient to make

her independent of the world. The hope, if I could only live long

enough, of increasing it to a certain sum, has impelled me to resist

the disease by such palliative means as I could devise. The one

effectual palliative in my case, is—opium. To that all-potent and

all-merciful drug I am indebted for a respite of many years from my

sentence of death. But even the virtues of opium have their limit. The

progress of the disease has gradually forced me from the use of opium

to the abuse of it. I am feeling the penalty at last. My nervous system

is shattered; my nights are nights of horror. The end is not far off

now. Let it come—I have not lived and worked in vain. The little sum is

nearly made up; and I have the means of completing it, if my last

reserves of life fail me sooner than I expect. I hardly know how I have

wandered into telling you this. I don’t think I am mean enough to

appeal to your pity. Perhaps, I fancy you may be all the readier to

believe me, if you know that what I have said to you, I have said with

the certain knowledge in me that I am a dying man. There is no

disguising, Mr. Blake, that you interest me. I have attempted to make

my poor friend’s loss of memory the means of bettering my acquaintance

with you. I have speculated on the chance of your feeling a passing

curiosity about what he wanted to say, and of my being able to satisfy

it. Is there no excuse for my intruding myself on you? Perhaps there is

some excuse. A man who has lived as I have lived has his bitter moments

when he ponders over human destiny. You have youth, health, riches, a

place in the world, a prospect before you. You, and such as you, show

me the sunny side of human life, and reconcile me with the world that I

am leaving, before I go. However this talk between us may end, I shall

not forget that you have done me a kindness in doing that. It rests

with you, sir, to say what you proposed saying, or to wish me good

morning.”

I had but one answer to make to that appeal. Without a moment’s

hesitation I told him the truth, as unreservedly as I have told it in

these pages.

He started to his feet, and looked at me with breathless eagerness as I

approached the leading incident of my story.

“It is certain that I went into the room,” I said; “it is certain that

I took the Diamond. I can only meet those two plain facts by declaring

that, do what I might, I did it without my own knowledge——”

Ezra Jennings caught me excitedly by the arm.

“Stop!” he said. “You have suggested more to me than you suppose. Have

_you_ ever been accustomed to the use of opium?”

“I never tasted it in my life.”

“Were your nerves out of order, at this time last year? Were you

unusually restless and irritable?”

“Yes.”

“Did you sleep badly?”

“Wretchedly. Many nights I never slept at all.”

“Was the birthday night an exception? Try, and remember. Did you sleep

well on that one occasion?”

“I do remember! I slept soundly.”

He dropped my arm as suddenly as he had taken it—and looked at me with

the air of a man whose mind was relieved of the last doubt that rested

on it.

“This is a marked day in your life, and in mine,” he said, gravely. “I

am absolutely certain, Mr. Blake, of one thing—I have got what Mr.

Candy wanted to say to you this morning, in the notes that I took at my

patient’s bedside. Wait! that is not all. I am firmly persuaded that I

can prove you to have been unconscious of what you were about, when you

entered the room and took the Diamond. Give me time to think, and time

to question you. I believe the vindication of your innocence is in my

hands!”

“Explain yourself, for God’s sake! What do you mean?”

In the excitement of our colloquy, we had walked on a few steps, beyond

the clump of dwarf trees which had hitherto screened us from view.

Before Ezra Jennings could answer me, he was hailed from the high road

by a man, in great agitation, who had been evidently on the look-out

for him.

“I am coming,” he called back; “I am coming as fast as I can!” He

turned to me. “There is an urgent case waiting for me at the village

yonder; I ought to have been there half an hour since—I must attend to

it at once. Give me two hours from this time, and call at Mr. Candy’s

again—and I will engage to be ready for you.”

“How am I to wait!” I exclaimed, impatiently. “Can’t you quiet my mind

by a word of explanation before we part?”

“This is far too serious a matter to be explained in a hurry, Mr.

Blake. I am not wilfully trying your patience—I should only be adding

to your suspense, if I attempted to relieve it as things are now. At

Frizinghall, sir, in two hours’ time!”

The man on the high road hailed him again. He hurried away, and left

me.