Chapter Chapter 4 · Chapter IV

I am truly sorry to detain you over me and my beehive chair. A sleepy

old man, in a sunny back yard, is not an interesting object, I am well

aware. But things must be put down in their places, as things actually

happened—and you must please to jog on a little while longer with me,

in expectation of Mr. Franklin Blake’s arrival later in the day.

Before I had time to doze off again, after my daughter Penelope had

left me, I was disturbed by a rattling of plates and dishes in the

servants’ hall, which meant that dinner was ready. Taking my own meals

in my own sitting-room, I had nothing to do with the servants’ dinner,

except to wish them a good stomach to it all round, previous to

composing myself once more in my chair. I was just stretching my legs,

when out bounced another woman on me. Not my daughter again; only

Nancy, the kitchen-maid, this time. I was straight in her way out; and

I observed, as she asked me to let her by, that she had a sulky face—a

thing which, as head of the servants, I never allow, on principle, to

pass me without inquiry.

“What are you turning your back on your dinner for?” I asked. “What’s

wrong now, Nancy?”

Nancy tried to push by, without answering; upon which I rose up, and

took her by the ear. She is a nice plump young lass, and it is

customary with me to adopt that manner of showing that I personally

approve of a girl.

“What’s wrong now?” I said once more.

“Rosanna’s late again for dinner,” says Nancy. “And I’m sent to fetch

her in. All the hard work falls on my shoulders in this house. Let me

alone, Mr. Betteredge!”

The person here mentioned as Rosanna was our second housemaid. Having a

kind of pity for our second housemaid (why, you shall presently know),

and seeing in Nancy’s face, that she would fetch her fellow-servant in

with more hard words than might be needful under the circumstances, it

struck me that I had nothing particular to do, and that I might as well

fetch Rosanna myself; giving her a hint to be punctual in future, which

I knew she would take kindly from _me_.

“Where is Rosanna?” I inquired.

“At the sands, of course!” says Nancy, with a toss of her head. “She

had another of her fainting fits this morning, and she asked to go out

and get a breath of fresh air. I have no patience with her!”

“Go back to your dinner, my girl,” I said. “I have patience with her,

and I’ll fetch her in.”

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.

No! it won’t do to set off yet. I am sorry again to detain you; but you

really must hear the story of the sands, and the story of Rosanna—for

this reason, that the matter of the Diamond touches them both nearly.

How hard I try to get on with my statement without stopping by the way,

and how badly I succeed! But, there!—Persons and Things do turn up so

vexatiously in this life, and will in a manner insist on being noticed.

Let us take it easy, and let us take it short; we shall be in the thick

of the mystery soon, I promise you!

Rosanna (to put the Person before the Thing, which is but common

politeness) was the only new servant in our house. About four months

before the time I am writing of, my lady had been in London, and had

gone over a Reformatory, intended to save forlorn women from drifting

back into bad ways, after they had got released from prison. The

matron, seeing my lady took an interest in the place, pointed out a

girl to her, named Rosanna Spearman, and told her a most miserable

story, which I haven’t the heart to repeat here; for I don’t like to be

made wretched without any use, and no more do you. The upshot of it

was, that Rosanna Spearman had been a thief, and not being of the sort

that get up Companies in the City, and rob from thousands, instead of

only robbing from one, the law laid hold of her, and the prison and the

reformatory followed the lead of the law. The matron’s opinion of

Rosanna was (in spite of what she had done) that the girl was one in a

thousand, and that she only wanted a chance to prove herself worthy of

any Christian woman’s interest in her. My lady (being a Christian

woman, if ever there was one yet) said to the matron, upon that,

“Rosanna Spearman shall have her chance, in my service.” In a week

afterwards, Rosanna Spearman entered this establishment as our second

housemaid.

Not a soul was told the girl’s story, excepting Miss Rachel and me. My

lady, doing me the honour to consult me about most things, consulted me

about Rosanna. Having fallen a good deal latterly into the late Sir

John’s way of always agreeing with my lady, I agreed with her heartily

about Rosanna Spearman.

A fairer chance no girl could have had than was given to this poor girl

of ours. None of the servants could cast her past life in her teeth,

for none of the servants knew what it had been. She had her wages and

her privileges, like the rest of them; and every now and then a

friendly word from my lady, in private, to encourage her. In return,

she showed herself, I am bound to say, well worthy of the kind

treatment bestowed upon her. Though far from strong, and troubled

occasionally with those fainting-fits already mentioned, she went about

her work modestly and uncomplainingly, doing it carefully, and doing it

well. But, somehow, she failed to make friends among the other women

servants, excepting my daughter Penelope, who was always kind to

Rosanna, though never intimate with her.

I hardly know what the girl did to offend them. There was certainly no

beauty about her to make the others envious; she was the plainest woman

in the house, with the additional misfortune of having one shoulder

bigger than the other. What the servants chiefly resented, I think, was

her silent tongue and her solitary ways. She read or worked in leisure

hours when the rest gossiped. And when it came to her turn to go out,

nine times out of ten she quietly put on her bonnet, and had her turn

by herself. She never quarrelled, she never took offence; she only kept

a certain distance, obstinately and civilly, between the rest of them

and herself. Add to this that, plain as she was, there was just a dash

of something that wasn’t like a housemaid, and that _was_ like a lady,

about her. It might have been in her voice, or it might have been in

her face. All I can say is, that the other women pounced on it like

lightning the first day she came into the house, and said (which was

most unjust) that Rosanna Spearman gave herself airs.

Having now told the story of Rosanna, I have only to notice one of the

many queer ways of this strange girl to get on next to the story of the

sands.

Our house is high up on the Yorkshire coast, and close by the sea. We

have got beautiful walks all round us, in every direction but one. That

one I acknowledge to be a horrid walk. It leads, for a quarter of a

mile, through a melancholy plantation of firs, and brings you out

between low cliffs on the loneliest and ugliest little bay on all our

coast.

The sandhills here run down to the sea, and end in two spits of rock

jutting out opposite each other, till you lose sight of them in the

water. One is called the North Spit, and one the South. Between the

two, shifting backwards and forwards at certain seasons of the year,

lies the most horrible quicksand on the shores of Yorkshire. At the

turn of the tide, something goes on in the unknown deeps below, which

sets the whole face of the quicksand shivering and trembling in a

manner most remarkable to see, and which has given to it, among the

people in our parts, the name of the Shivering Sand. A great bank, half

a mile out, nigh the mouth of the bay, breaks the force of the main

ocean coming in from the offing. Winter and summer, when the tide flows

over the quicksand, the sea seems to leave the waves behind it on the

bank, and rolls its waters in smoothly with a heave, and covers the

sand in silence. A lonesome and a horrid retreat, I can tell you! No

boat ever ventures into this bay. No children from our fishing-village,

called Cobb’s Hole, ever come here to play. The very birds of the air,

as it seems to me, give the Shivering Sand a wide berth. That a young

woman, with dozens of nice walks to choose from, and company to go with

her, if she only said “Come!”, should prefer this place, and should sit

and work or read in it, all alone, when it’s her turn out, I grant you,

passes belief. It’s true, nevertheless, account for it as you may, that

this was Rosanna Spearman’s favourite walk, except when she went once

or twice to Cobb’s Hole, to see the only friend she had in our

neighbourhood, of whom more anon. It’s also true that I was now setting

out for this same place, to fetch the girl in to dinner, which brings

us round happily to our former point, and starts us fair again on our

way to the sands.

I saw no sign of the girl in the plantation. When I got out, through

the sandhills, on to the beach, there she was, in her little straw

bonnet, and her plain grey cloak that she always wore to hide her

deformed shoulder as much as might be—there she was, all alone, looking

out on the quicksand and the sea.

She started when I came up with her, and turned her head away from me.

Not looking me in the face being another of the proceedings, which, as

head of the servants, I never allow, on principle, to pass without

inquiry—I turned her round my way, and saw that she was crying. My

bandanna handkerchief—one of six beauties given to me by my lady—was

handy in my pocket. I took it out, and I said to Rosanna, “Come and sit

down, my dear, on the slope of the beach along with me. I’ll dry your

eyes for you first, and then I’ll make so bold as to ask what you have

been crying about.”

When you come to my age, you will find sitting down on the slope of a

beach a much longer job than you think it now. By the time I was

settled, Rosanna had dried her own eyes with a very inferior

handkerchief to mine—cheap cambric. She looked very quiet, and very

wretched; but she sat down by me like a good girl, when I told her.

When you want to comfort a woman by the shortest way, take her on your

knee. I thought of this golden rule. But there! Rosanna wasn’t Nancy,

and that’s the truth of it!

“Now, tell me, my dear,” I said, “what are you crying about?”

“About the years that are gone, Mr. Betteredge,” says Rosanna quietly.

“My past life still comes back to me sometimes.”

“Come, come, my girl,” I said, “your past life is all sponged out. Why

can’t you forget it?”

She took me by one of the lappets of my coat. I am a slovenly old man,

and a good deal of my meat and drink gets splashed about on my clothes.

Sometimes one of the women, and sometimes another, cleans me of my

grease. The day before, Rosanna had taken out a spot for me on the

lappet of my coat, with a new composition, warranted to remove

anything. 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. She had nice brown eyes, plain as

she was in other ways—and she looked at me with a sort of respect for

my happy old age and my good character, as things for ever out of her

own reach, which made my heart heavy for our second housemaid. Not

feeling myself able to comfort her, there was only one other thing to

do. That thing was—to take her in to dinner.

“Help me up,” I said. “You’re late for dinner, Rosanna—and I have come

to fetch you in.”

“You, Mr. Betteredge!” says she.

“They told Nancy to fetch you,” I said. “But I thought you might like

your scolding better, my dear, if it came from me.”

Instead of helping me up, the poor thing stole her hand into mine, and

gave it a little squeeze. She tried hard to keep from crying again, and

succeeded—for which I respected her. “You’re very kind, Mr.

Betteredge,” she said. “I don’t want any dinner today—let me bide a

little longer here.”

“What makes you like to be here?” I asked. “What is it that brings you

everlastingly to this miserable place?”

“Something draws me to it,” says the girl, making images with her

finger in the sand. “I try to keep away from it, and I can’t.

Sometimes,” says she in a low voice, as if she was frightened at her

own fancy, “sometimes, Mr. Betteredge, I think that my grave is waiting

for me here.”

“There’s roast mutton and suet pudding waiting for you!” says I. “Go in

to dinner directly. This is what comes, Rosanna, of thinking on an

empty stomach!” I spoke severely, being naturally indignant (at my time

of life) to hear a young woman of five-and-twenty talking about her

latter end!

She didn’t seem to hear me: she put her hand on my shoulder, and kept

me where I was, sitting by her side.

“I think the place has laid a spell on me,” she said. “I dream of it

night after night; I think of it when I sit stitching at my work. You

know I am grateful, Mr. Betteredge—you know I try to deserve your

kindness, and my lady’s confidence in me. But I wonder sometimes

whether the life here is too quiet and too good for such a woman as I

am, after all I have gone through, Mr. Betteredge—after all I have gone

through. It’s more lonely to me to be among the other servants, knowing

I am not what they are, than it is to be here. My lady doesn’t know,

the matron at the reformatory doesn’t know, what a dreadful reproach

honest people are in themselves to a woman like me. Don’t scold me,

there’s a dear good man. I do my work, don’t I? Please not to tell my

lady I am discontented—I am not. My mind’s unquiet, sometimes, that’s

all.” She snatched her hand off my shoulder, and suddenly pointed down

to the quicksand. “Look!” she said “Isn’t it wonderful? isn’t it

terrible? I have seen it dozens of times, and it’s always as new to me

as if I had never seen it before!”

I looked where she pointed. The tide was on the turn, and the horrid

sand began to shiver. The broad brown face of it heaved slowly, and

then dimpled and quivered all over. “Do you know what it looks like to

_me?_” says Rosanna, catching me by the shoulder again. “It looks as if

it had hundreds of suffocating people under it—all struggling to get to

the surface, and all sinking lower and lower in the dreadful deeps!

Throw a stone in, Mr. Betteredge! Throw a stone in, and let’s see the

sand suck it down!”

Here was unwholesome talk! Here was an empty stomach feeding on an

unquiet mind! My answer—a pretty sharp one, in the poor girl’s own

interests, I promise you!—was at my tongue’s end, when it was snapped

short off on a sudden by a voice among the sandhills shouting for me by

my name. “Betteredge!” cries the voice, “where are you?” “Here!” I

shouted out in return, without a notion in my mind of who it was.

Rosanna started to her feet, and stood looking towards the voice. I was

just thinking of getting on my own legs next, when I was staggered by a

sudden change in the girl’s face.

Her complexion turned of a beautiful red, which I had never seen in it

before; she brightened all over with a kind of speechless and

breathless surprise. “Who is it?” I asked. Rosanna gave me back my own

question. “Oh! who is it?” she said softly, more to herself than to me.

I twisted round on the sand and looked behind me. There, coming out on

us from among the hills, was a bright-eyed young gentleman, dressed in

a beautiful fawn-coloured suit, with gloves and hat to match, with a

rose in his button-hole, and a smile on his face that might have set

the Shivering Sand itself smiling at him in return. Before I could get

on my legs, he plumped down on the sand by the side of me, put his arm

round my neck, foreign fashion, and gave me a hug that fairly squeezed

the breath out of my body. “Dear old Betteredge!” says he. “I owe you

seven-and-sixpence. Now do you know who I am?”

Lord bless us and save us! Here—four good hours before we expected

him—was Mr. Franklin Blake!

Before I could say a word, I saw Mr. Franklin, a little surprised to

all appearance, look up from me to Rosanna. Following his lead, I

looked at the girl too. She was blushing of a deeper red than ever,

seemingly at having caught Mr. Franklin’s eye; and she turned and left

us suddenly, in a confusion quite unaccountable to my mind, without

either making her curtsey to the gentleman or saying a word to me. Very

unlike her usual self: a civiller and better-behaved servant, in

general, you never met with.

“That’s an odd girl,” says Mr. Franklin. “I wonder what she sees in me

to surprise her?”

“I suppose, sir,” I answered, drolling on our young gentleman’s

Continental education, “it’s the varnish from foreign parts.”

I set down here Mr. Franklin’s careless question, and my foolish

answer, as a consolation and encouragement to all stupid people—it

being, as I have remarked, a great satisfaction to our inferior

fellow-creatures to find that their betters are, on occasions, no

brighter than they are. Neither Mr. Franklin, with his wonderful

foreign training, nor I, with my age, experience, and natural

mother-wit, had the ghost of an idea of what Rosanna Spearman’s

unaccountable behaviour really meant. She was out of our thoughts, poor

soul, before we had seen the last flutter of her little grey cloak

among the sandhills. And what of that? you will ask, naturally enough.

Read on, good friend, as patiently as you can, and perhaps you will be

as sorry for Rosanna Spearman as I was, when I found out the truth.