Bab Bab 25 · Chapter II

Mr. Godfrey followed the announcement of his name—as Mr. Godfrey does

everything else—exactly at the right time. He was not so close on the

servant’s heels as to startle us. He was not so far behind as to cause

us the double inconvenience of a pause and an open door. It is in the

completeness of his daily life that the true Christian appears. This

dear man was very complete.

“Go to Miss Verinder,” said my aunt, addressing the servant, “and tell

her Mr. Ablewhite is here.”

We both inquired after his health. We both asked him together whether

he felt like himself again, after his terrible adventure of the past

week. With perfect tact, he contrived to answer us at the same moment.

Lady Verinder had his reply in words. I had his charming smile.

“What,” he cried, with infinite tenderness, “have I done to deserve all

this sympathy? My dear aunt! my dear Miss Clack! I have merely been

mistaken for somebody else. I have only been blindfolded; I have only

been strangled; I have only been thrown flat on my back, on a very thin

carpet, covering a particularly hard floor. Just think how much worse

it might have been! I might have been murdered; I might have been

robbed. What have I lost? Nothing but Nervous Force—which the law

doesn’t recognise as property; so that, strictly speaking, I have lost

nothing at all. If I could have had my own way, I would have kept my

adventure to myself—I shrink from all this fuss and publicity. But Mr.

Luker made _his_ injuries public, and _my_ injuries, as the necessary

consequence, have been proclaimed in their turn. I have become the

property of the newspapers, until the gentle reader gets sick of the

subject. I am very sick indeed of it myself. May the gentle reader soon

be like me! And how is dear Rachel? Still enjoying the gaieties of

London? So glad to hear it! Miss Clack, I need all your indulgence. I

am sadly behind-hand with my Committee Work and my dear Ladies. But I

really do hope to look in at the Mothers’-Small-Clothes next week. Did

you make cheering progress at Monday’s Committee? Was the Board hopeful

about future prospects? And are we nicely off for Trousers?”

The heavenly gentleness of his smile made his apologies irresistible.

The richness of his deep voice added its own indescribable charm to the

interesting business question which he had just addressed to me. In

truth, we were almost _too_ nicely off for Trousers; we were quite

overwhelmed by them. I was just about to say so, when the door opened

again, and an element of worldly disturbance entered the room, in the

person of Miss Verinder.

She approached dear Mr. Godfrey at a most unladylike rate of speed,

with her hair shockingly untidy, and her face, what _I_ should call,

unbecomingly flushed.

“I am charmed to see you, Godfrey,” she said, addressing him, I grieve

to add, in the off-hand manner of one young man talking to another. “I

wish you had brought Mr. Luker with you. You and he (as long as our

present excitement lasts) are the two most interesting men in all

London. It’s morbid to say this; it’s unhealthy; it’s all that a

well-regulated mind like Miss Clack’s most instinctively shudders at.

Never mind that. Tell me the whole of the Northumberland Street story

directly. I know the newspapers have left some of it out.”

Even dear Mr. Godfrey partakes of the fallen nature which we all

inherit from Adam—it is a very small share of our human legacy, but,

alas! he has it. I confess it grieved me to see him take Rachel’s hand

in both of his own hands, and lay it softly on the left side of his

waistcoat. It was a direct encouragement to her reckless way of

talking, and her insolent reference to me.

“Dearest Rachel,” he said, in the same voice which had thrilled me when

he spoke of our prospects and our trousers, “the newspapers have told

you everything—and they have told it much better than I can.”

“Godfrey thinks we all make too much of the matter,” my aunt remarked.

“He has just been saying that he doesn’t care to speak of it.”

“Why?”

She put the question with a sudden flash in her eyes, and a sudden look

up into Mr. Godfrey’s face. 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.

“Rachel, darling!” I remonstrated gently, “true greatness and true

courage are ever modest.”

“You are a very good fellow in your way, Godfrey,” she said—not taking

the smallest notice, observe, of me, and still speaking to her cousin

as if she was one young man addressing another. “But I am quite sure

you are not great; I don’t believe you possess any extraordinary

courage; and I am firmly persuaded—if you ever had any modesty—that

your lady-worshippers relieved you of that virtue a good many years

since. You have some private reason for not talking of your adventure

in Northumberland Street; and I mean to know it.”

“My reason is the simplest imaginable, and the most easily

acknowledged,” he answered, still bearing with her. “I am tired of the

subject.”

“You are tired of the subject? My dear Godfrey, I am going to make a

remark.”

“What is it?”

“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.”

She actually dragged him across the room to a chair by the window,

where the light would fall on his face. I deeply feel being obliged to

report such language, and to describe such conduct. But, hemmed in, as

I am, between Mr. Franklin Blake’s cheque on one side and my own sacred

regard for truth on the other, what am I to do? I looked at my aunt.

She sat unmoved; apparently in no way disposed to interfere. I had

never noticed this kind of torpor in her before. It was, perhaps, the

reaction after the trying time she had had in the country. Not a

pleasant symptom to remark, be it what it might, at dear Lady

Verinder’s age, and with dear Lady Verinder’s autumnal exuberance of

figure.

In the meantime, Rachel had settled herself at the window with our

amiable and forbearing—our too forbearing—Mr. Godfrey. She began the

string of questions with which she had threatened him, taking no more

notice of her mother, or of myself, than if we had not been in the

room.

“Have the police done anything, Godfrey?”

“Nothing whatever.”

“It is certain, I suppose, that the three men who laid the trap for you

were the same three men who afterwards laid the trap for Mr. Luker?”

“Humanly speaking, my dear Rachel, there can be no doubt of it.”

“And not a trace of them has been discovered?”

“Not a trace.”

“It is thought—is it not?—that these three men are the three Indians

who came to our house in the country.”

“Some people think so.”

“Do you think so?”

“My dear Rachel, they blindfolded me before I could see their faces. I

know nothing whatever of the matter. How can I offer an opinion on it?”

Even the angelic gentleness of Mr. Godfrey was, you see, beginning to

give way at last under the persecution inflicted on him. Whether

unbridled curiosity, or ungovernable dread, dictated Miss Verinder’s

questions I do not presume to inquire. I only report that, on Mr.

Godfrey’s attempting to rise, after giving her the answer just

described, she actually took him by the two shoulders, and pushed him

back into his chair—Oh, don’t say this was immodest! don’t even hint

that the recklessness of guilty terror could alone account for such

conduct as I have described! We must not judge others. My Christian

friends, indeed, indeed, indeed, we must not judge others!

She went on with her questions, unabashed. Earnest Biblical students

will perhaps be reminded—as I was reminded—of the blinded children of

the devil, who went on with their orgies, unabashed, in the time before

the Flood.

“I want to know something about Mr. Luker, Godfrey.”

“I am again unfortunate, Rachel. No man knows less of Mr. Luker than I

do.”

“You never saw him before you and he met accidentally at the bank?”

“Never.”

“You have seen him since?”

“Yes. We have been examined together, as well as separately, to assist

the police.”

“Mr. Luker was robbed of a receipt which he had got from his

banker’s—was he not? What was the receipt for?”

“For a valuable gem which he had placed in the safe keeping of the

bank.”

“That’s what the newspapers say. It may be enough for the general

reader; but it is not enough for me. The banker’s receipt must have

mentioned what the gem was?”

“The banker’s receipt, Rachel—as I have heard it described—mentioned

nothing of the kind. A valuable gem, belonging to Mr. Luker; deposited

by Mr. Luker; sealed with Mr. Luker’s seal; and only to be given up on

Mr. Luker’s personal application. That was the form, and that is all I

know about it.”

She waited a moment, after he had said that. She looked at her mother,

and sighed. She looked back again at Mr. Godfrey, and went on.

“Some of our private affairs, at home,” she said, “seem to have got

into the newspapers?”

“I grieve to say, it is so.”

“And some idle people, perfect strangers to us, are trying to trace a

connexion between what happened at our house in Yorkshire and what has

happened since, here in London?”

“The public curiosity, in certain quarters, is, I fear, taking that

turn.”

“The people who say that the three unknown men who ill-used you and Mr.

Luker are the three Indians, also say that the valuable gem——”

There she stopped. She had become gradually, within the last few

moments, whiter and whiter in the face. The extraordinary blackness of

her hair made this paleness, by contrast, so ghastly to look at, that

we all thought she would faint, at the moment when she checked herself

in the middle of her question. Dear Mr. Godfrey made a second attempt

to leave his chair. My aunt entreated her to say no more. 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_.”

Those were the exact words she used—taken down in my diary the moment I

got home. But, oh, don’t let us judge! My Christian friends, don’t let

us judge!

She turned once more to Mr. Godfrey. With an obstinacy dreadful to see,

she went back again to the place where she had checked herself, and

completed her question in these words:

“I spoke to you, a minute since, about what people were saying in

certain quarters. Tell me plainly, Godfrey, do they any of them say

that Mr. Luker’s valuable gem is—the Moonstone?”

As the name of the Indian Diamond passed her lips, I saw a change come

over my admirable friend. His complexion deepened. He lost the genial

suavity of manner which is one of his greatest charms. A noble

indignation inspired his reply.

“They _do_ say it,” he answered. “There are people who don’t hesitate

to accuse Mr. Luker of telling a falsehood to serve some private

interests of his own. He has over and over again solemnly declared

that, until this scandal assailed him, he had never even heard of the

Moonstone. And these vile people reply, without a shadow of proof to

justify them, He has his reasons for concealment; we decline to believe

him on his oath. Shameful! shameful!”

Rachel looked at him very strangely—I can’t well describe how—while he

was speaking. When he had done, she said, “Considering that Mr. Luker

is only a chance acquaintance of yours, you take up his cause, Godfrey,

rather warmly.”

My gifted friend made her one of the most truly evangelical answers I

ever heard in my life.

“I hope, Rachel, I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather

warmly,” he said.

The tone in which those words were spoken might have melted a stone.

But, oh dear, what is the hardness of stone? Nothing, compared to the

hardness of the unregenerate human heart! She sneered. I blush to

record it—she sneered at him to his face.

“Keep your noble sentiments for your Ladies’ Committees, Godfrey. I am

certain that the scandal which has assailed Mr. Luker, has not spared

You.”

Even my aunt’s torpor was roused by those words.

“My dear Rachel,” she remonstrated, “you have really no right to say

that!”

“I mean no harm, mamma—I mean good. Have a moment’s patience with me,

and you will see.”

She looked back at Mr. Godfrey, with what appeared to be a sudden pity

for him. She went the length—the very unladylike length—of taking him

by the hand.

“I am certain,” she said, “that I have found out the true reason of

your unwillingness to speak of this matter before my mother and before

me. An unlucky accident has associated you in people’s minds with Mr.

Luker. You have told me what scandal says of _him_. What does scandal

say of _you?_”

Even at the eleventh hour, dear Mr. Godfrey—always ready to return good

for evil—tried to spare her.

“Don’t ask me!” he said. “It’s better forgotten, Rachel—it is, indeed.”

“I _will_ hear it!” she cried out, fiercely, at the top of her voice.

“Tell her, Godfrey!” entreated my aunt. “Nothing can do her such harm

as your silence is doing now!”

Mr. Godfrey’s fine eyes filled with tears. He cast one last appealing

look at her—and then he spoke the fatal words:

“If you will have it, Rachel—scandal says that the Moonstone is in

pledge to Mr. Luker, and that I am the man who has pawned it.”

She started to her feet with a scream. She looked backwards and

forwards from Mr. Godfrey to my aunt, and from my aunt to Mr. Godfrey,

in such a frantic manner that I really thought she had gone mad.

“Don’t speak to me! Don’t touch me!” she exclaimed, shrinking back from

all of us (I declare like some hunted animal!) into a corner of the

room. “This is my fault! I must set it right. I have sacrificed

myself—I had a right to do that, if I liked. But to let an innocent man

be ruined; to keep a secret which destroys his character for life—Oh,

good God, it’s too horrible! I can’t bear it!”

My aunt half rose from her chair, then suddenly sat down again. She

called to me faintly, and pointed to a little phial in her work-box.

“Quick!” she whispered. “Six drops, in water. Don’t let Rachel see.”

Under other circumstances, I should have thought this strange. There

was no time now to think—there was only time to give the medicine. Dear

Mr. Godfrey unconsciously assisted me in concealing what I was about

from Rachel, by speaking composing words to her at the other end of the

room.

“Indeed, indeed, you exaggerate,” I heard him say. “My reputation

stands too high to be destroyed by a miserable passing scandal like

this. It will be all forgotten in another week. Let us never speak of

it again.” She was perfectly inaccessible, even to such generosity as

this. She went on from bad to worse.

“I must, and will, stop it,” she said. “Mamma! hear what I say. Miss

Clack! hear what I say. I know the hand that took the Moonstone. I

know—” she laid a strong emphasis on the words; she stamped her foot in

the rage that possessed her—“_I know that Godfrey Ablewhite is

innocent!_ Take me to the magistrate, Godfrey! Take me to the

magistrate, and I will swear it!”

My aunt caught me by the hand, and whispered, “Stand between us for a

minute or two. Don’t let Rachel see me.” I noticed a bluish tinge in

her face which alarmed me. She saw I was startled. “The drops will put

me right in a minute or two,” she said, and so closed her eyes, and

waited a little.

While this was going on, I heard dear Mr. Godfrey still gently

remonstrating.

“You must not appear publicly in such a thing as this,” he said.

“_Your_ reputation, dearest Rachel, is something too pure and too

sacred to be trifled with.”

“_My_ reputation!” She burst out laughing. “Why, I am accused, Godfrey,

as well as you. The best detective officer in England declares that I

have stolen my own Diamond. Ask him what he thinks—and he will tell you

that I have pledged the Moonstone to pay my private debts!” She

stopped, ran across the room—and fell on her knees at her mother’s

feet. “Oh mamma! mamma! mamma! I must be mad—mustn’t I?—not to own the

truth _now!_” She was too vehement to notice her mother’s condition—she

was on her feet again, and back with Mr. Godfrey, in an instant. “I

won’t let you—I won’t let any innocent man—be accused and disgraced

through my fault. If you won’t take me before the magistrate, draw out

a declaration of your innocence on paper, and I will sign it. Do as I

tell you, Godfrey, or I’ll write it to the newspapers—I’ll go out, and

cry it in the streets!”

We will not say this was the language of remorse—we will say it was the

language of hysterics. Indulgent Mr. Godfrey pacified her by taking a

sheet of paper, and drawing out the declaration. She signed it in a

feverish hurry. “Show it everywhere—don’t think of _me_,” she said, as

she gave it to him. “I am afraid, Godfrey, I have not done you justice,

hitherto, in my thoughts. You are more unselfish—you are a better man

than I believed you to be. Come here when you can, and I will try and

repair the wrong I have done you.”

She gave him her hand. Alas, for our fallen nature! Alas, for Mr.

Godfrey! He not only forgot himself so far as to kiss her hand—he

adopted a gentleness of tone in answering her which, in such a case,

was little better than a compromise with sin. “I will come, dearest,”

he said, “on condition that we don’t speak of this hateful subject

again.” Never had I seen and heard our Christian Hero to less advantage

than on this occasion.

Before another word could be said by anybody, a thundering knock at the

street door startled us all. 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.

Rachel started, and composed herself. She crossed the room to her

mother.

“They have come to take me to the flower-show,” she said. “One word,

mamma, before I go. I have not distressed you, have I?”

(Is the bluntness of moral feeling which could ask such a question as

that, after what had just happened, to be pitied or condemned? I like

to lean towards mercy. Let us pity it.)

The drops had produced their effect. My poor aunt’s complexion was like

itself again. “No, no, my dear,” she said. “Go with our friends, and

enjoy yourself.”

Her daughter stooped, and kissed her. I had left the window, and was

near the door, when Rachel approached it to go out. Another change had

come over her—she was in tears. I looked with interest at the momentary

softening of that obdurate heart. 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.

I wish I could describe in words the compassion I felt for this

miserable and misguided girl. But I am almost as poorly provided with

words as with money. Permit me to say—my heart bled for her.

Returning to my aunt’s chair, I observed dear Mr. Godfrey searching for

something softly, here and there, in different parts of the room.

Before I could offer to assist him he had found what he wanted. He came

back to my aunt and me, with his declaration of innocence in one hand,

and with a box of matches in the other.

“Dear aunt, a little conspiracy!” he said. “Dear Miss Clack, a pious

fraud which even your high moral rectitude will excuse! Will you leave

Rachel to suppose that I accept the generous self-sacrifice which has

signed this paper? And will you kindly bear witness that I destroy it

in your presence, before I leave the house?” He kindled a match, and,

lighting the paper, laid it to burn in a plate on the table. “Any

trifling inconvenience that I may suffer is as nothing,” he remarked,

“compared with the importance of preserving that pure name from the

contaminating contact of the world. There! We have reduced it to a

little harmless heap of ashes; and our dear impulsive Rachel will never

know what we have done! How do you feel? My precious friends, how do

you feel? For my poor part, I am as light-hearted as a boy!”

He beamed on us with his beautiful smile; he held out a hand to my

aunt, and a hand to me. I was too deeply affected by his noble conduct

to speak. I closed my eyes; I put his hand, in a kind of spiritual

self-forgetfulness, to my lips. He murmured a soft remonstrance. Oh the

ecstasy, the pure, unearthly ecstasy of that moment! I sat—I hardly

know on what—quite lost in my own exalted feelings. When I opened my

eyes again, it was like descending from heaven to earth. There was

nobody but my aunt in the room. He had gone.

I should like to stop here—I should like to close my narrative with the

record of Mr. Godfrey’s noble conduct. Unhappily there is more, much

more, which the unrelenting pecuniary pressure of Mr. Blake’s cheque

obliges me to tell. The painful disclosures which were to reveal

themselves in my presence, during that Tuesday’s visit to Montagu

Square, were not at an end yet.

Finding myself alone with Lady Verinder, I turned naturally to the

subject of her health; touching delicately on the strange anxiety which

she had shown to conceal her indisposition, and the remedy applied to

it, from the observation of her daughter.

My aunt’s reply greatly surprised me.

“Drusilla,” she said (if I have not already mentioned that my Christian

name is Drusilla, permit me to mention it now), “you are touching—quite

innocently, I know—on a very distressing subject.”

I rose immediately. Delicacy left me but one alternative—the

alternative, after first making my apologies, of taking my leave. Lady

Verinder stopped me, and insisted on my sitting down again.

“You have surprised a secret,” she said, “which I had confided to my

sister Mrs. Ablewhite, and to my lawyer Mr. Bruff, and to no one else.

I can trust in their discretion; and I am sure, when I tell you the

circumstances, I can trust in yours. Have you any pressing engagement,

Drusilla? or is your time your own this afternoon?”

It is needless to say that my time was entirely at my aunt’s disposal.

“Keep me company then,” she said, “for another hour. I have something

to tell you which I believe you will be sorry to hear. And I shall have

a service to ask of you afterwards, if you don’t object to assist me.”

It is again needless to say that, so far from objecting, I was all

eagerness to assist her.

“You can wait here,” she went on, “till Mr. Bruff comes at five. And

you can be one of the witnesses, Drusilla, when I sign my Will.”

Her Will! I thought of the drops which I had seen in her work-box. I

thought of the bluish tinge which I had noticed in her complexion. A

light which was not of this world—a light shining prophetically from an

unmade grave—dawned on my mind. My aunt’s secret was a secret no

longer.