CHAPTER VIII
Here, for one moment, I find it necessary to call a halt.
On summoning up my own recollections--and on getting Penelope to helpme, by consulting her journal--I find that we may pass pretty rapidlyover the interval between Mr. Franklin Blake's arrival and Miss Rachel'sbirthday. For the greater part of that time the days passed, and broughtnothing with them worth recording. With your good leave, then, andwith Penelope's help, I shall notice certain dates only in this place;reserving to myself to tell the story day by day, once more, as soon aswe get to the time when the business of the Moonstone became the chiefbusiness of everybody in our house.
This said, we may now go on again--beginning, of course, with the bottleof sweet-smelling ink which I found on the gravel walk at night.
On the next morning (the morning of the twenty-sixth) I showed Mr.Franklin this article of jugglery, and told him what I have already toldyou. His opinion was, not only that the Indians had been lurking aboutafter the Diamond, but also that they were actually foolish enough tobelieve in their own magic--meaning thereby the making of signs on aboy's head, and the pouring of ink into a boy's hand, and then expectinghim to see persons and things beyond the reach of human vision. In ourcountry, as well as in the East, Mr. Franklin informed me, there arepeople who practise this curious hocus-pocus (without the ink, however);and who call it by a French name, signifying something like brightnessof sight. "Depend upon it," says Mr. Franklin, "the Indians took it forgranted that we should keep the Diamond here; and they brought theirclairvoyant boy to show them the way to it, if they succeeded in gettinginto the house last night."
"Do you think they'll try again, sir?" I asked.
"It depends," says Mr. Franklin, "on what the boy can really do. If hecan see the Diamond through the iron safe of the bank at Frizinghall, weshall be troubled with no more visits from the Indians for the present.If he can't, we shall have another chance of catching them in theshrubbery, before many more nights are over our heads."
I waited pretty confidently for that latter chance; but, strange torelate, it never came.
Whether the jugglers heard, in the town, of Mr. Franklin having beenseen at the bank, and drew their conclusions accordingly; or whether theboy really did see the Diamond where the Diamond was now lodged (whichI, for one, flatly disbelieve); or whether, after all, it was a mereeffect of chance, this at any rate is the plain truth--not the ghostof an Indian came near the house again, through the weeks that passedbefore Miss Rachel's birthday. The jugglers remained in and about thetown plying their trade; and Mr. Franklin and I remained waiting to seewhat might happen, and resolute not to put the rogues on their guardby showing our suspicions of them too soon. With this report of theproceedings on either side, ends all that I have to say about theIndians for the present.
On the twenty-ninth of the month, Miss Rachel and Mr. Franklin hit ona new method of working their way together through the time which mightotherwise have hung heavy on their hands. There are reasons for takingparticular notice here of the occupation that amused them. You will findit has a bearing on something that is still to come.
Gentlefolks in general have a very awkward rock ahead in life--therock ahead of their own idleness. Their lives being, for the most part,passed in looking about them for something to do, it is curious tosee--especially when their tastes are of what is called the intellectualsort--how often they drift blindfold into some nasty pursuit. Ninetimes out of ten they take to torturing something, or to spoilingsomething--and they firmly believe they are improving their minds, whenthe plain truth is, they are only making a mess in the house. I haveseen them (ladies, I am sorry to say, as well as gentlemen) go out,day after day, for example, with empty pill-boxes, and catch newts, andbeetles, and spiders, and frogs, and come home and stick pins throughthe miserable wretches, or cut them up, without a pang of remorse, intolittle pieces. You see my young master, or my young mistress, poringover one of their spiders' insides with a magnifying-glass; or you meetone of their frogs walking downstairs without his head--and when youwonder what this cruel nastiness means, you are told that it meansa taste in my young master or my young mistress for natural history.Sometimes, again, you see them occupied for hours together in spoilinga pretty flower with pointed instruments, out of a stupid curiosityto know what the flower is made of. Is its colour any prettier, or itsscent any sweeter, when you DO know? But there! the poor souls must getthrough the time, you see--they must get through the time. You dabbledin nasty mud, and made pies, when you were a child; and you dabble innasty science, and dissect spiders, and spoil flowers, when you grow up.In the one case and in the other, the secret of it is, that you have gotnothing to think of in your poor empty head, and nothing to do with yourpoor idle hands. And so it ends in your spoiling canvas with paints, andmaking a smell in the house; or in keeping tadpoles in a glass box fullof dirty water, and turning everybody's stomach in the house; or inchipping off bits of stone here, there, and everywhere, and droppinggrit into all the victuals in the house; or in staining your fingersin the pursuit of photography, and doing justice without mercy oneverybody's face in the house. It often falls heavy enough, no doubt, onpeople who are really obliged to get their living, to be forced to workfor the clothes that cover them, the roof that shelters them, and thefood that keeps them going. But compare the hardest day's work youever did with the idleness that splits flowers and pokes its way intospiders' stomachs, and thank your stars that your head has got somethingit MUST think of, and your hands something that they MUST do.
As for Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel, they tortured nothing, I am gladto say. They simply confined themselves to making a mess; and all theyspoilt, to do them justice, was the panelling of a door.
Mr. Franklin's universal genius, dabbling in everything, dabbled in whathe called "decorative painting." He had invented, he informed us, a newmixture to moisten paint with, which he described as a "vehicle."What it was made of, I don't know. What it did, I can tell you in twowords--it stank. Miss Rachel being wild to try her hand at the newprocess, Mr. Franklin sent to London for the materials; mixed them up,with accompaniment of a smell which made the very dogs sneeze when theycame into the room; put an apron and a bib over Miss Rachel's gown, andset her to work decorating her own little sitting-room--called, for wantof English to name it in, her "boudoir." They began with the insideof the door. Mr. Franklin scraped off all the nice varnish withpumice-stone, and made what he described as a surface to work on. MissRachel then covered the surface, under his directions and with his help,with patterns and devices--griffins, birds, flowers, cupids, and suchlike--copied from designs made by a famous Italian painter, whose nameescapes me: the one, I mean, who stocked the world with Virgin Maries,and had a sweetheart at the baker's. Viewed as work, this decorationwas slow to do, and dirty to deal with. But our young lady and gentlemannever seemed to tire of it. When they were not riding, or seeingcompany, or taking their meals, or piping their songs, there they werewith their heads together, as busy as bees, spoiling the door. Who wasthe poet who said that Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands todo? If he had occupied my place in the family, and had seen Miss Rachelwith her brush, and Mr. Franklin with his vehicle, he could have writtennothing truer of either of them than that.
The next date worthy of notice is Sunday the fourth of June.
On that evening we, in the servants' hall, debated a domestic questionfor the first time, which, like the decoration of the door, has itsbearing on something that is still to come.
Seeing the pleasure which Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel took in eachother's society, and noting what a pretty match they were in allpersonal respects, we naturally speculated on the chance of theirputting their heads together with other objects in view besides theornamenting of a door. Some of us said there would be a wedding in thehouse before the summer was over. Others (led by me) admitted it waslikely enough Miss Rachel might be married; but we doubted (for reasonswhich will presently appear) whether her bridegroom would be
Mr.Franklin Blake.
That Mr. Franklin was in love, on his side, nobody who saw and heard himcould doubt. The difficulty was to fathom Miss Rachel. Let me do myselfthe honour of making you acquainted with her; after which, I will leaveyou to fathom for yourself--if you can.
My young lady's eighteenth birthday was the birthday now coming, onthe twenty-first of June. If you happen to like dark women (who, I aminformed, have gone out of fashion latterly in the gay world), and ifyou have no particular prejudice in favour of size, I answer for MissRachel as one of the prettiest girls your eyes ever looked on. She wassmall and slim, but all in fine proportion from top to toe. To see hersit down, to see her get up, and specially to see her walk, was enoughto satisfy any man in his senses that the graces of her figure (if youwill pardon me the expression) were in her flesh and not in her clothes.Her hair was the blackest I ever saw. Her eyes matched her hair. Hernose was not quite large enough, I admit. Her mouth and chin were (toquote Mr. Franklin) morsels for the gods; and her complexion (on thesame undeniable authority) was as warm as the sun itself, with thisgreat advantage over the sun, that it was always in nice order to lookat. Add to the foregoing that she carried her head as upright as a dart,in a dashing, spirited, thoroughbred way--that she had a clear voice,with a ring of the right metal in it, and a smile that began veryprettily in her eyes before it got to her lips--and there behold theportrait of her, to the best of my painting, as large as life!
And what about her disposition next? Had this charming creature nofaults? She had just as many faults as you have, ma'am--neither more norless.
To put it seriously, my dear pretty Miss Rachel, possessing a hostof graces and attractions, had one defect, which strict impartialitycompels me to acknowledge. She was unlike most other girls of her age,in this--that she had ideas of her own, and was stiff-necked enough toset the fashions themselves at defiance, if the fashions didn't suit herviews. In trifles, this independence of hers was all well enough; butin matters of importance, it carried her (as my lady thought, and as Ithought) too far. She judged for herself, as few women of twice her agejudge in general; never asked your advice; never told you beforehandwhat she was going to do; never came with secrets and confidences toanybody, from her mother downwards. In little things and great, withpeople she loved, and people she hated (and she did both with equalheartiness), Miss Rachel always went on a way of her own, sufficient forherself in the joys and sorrows of her life. Over and over again I haveheard 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.
With all her secrecy, and self-will, there was not so much as the shadowof anything false in her. I never remember her breaking her word; Inever remember her saying No, and meaning Yes. I can call to mind, inher childhood, more than one occasion when the good little soul tookthe blame, and suffered the punishment, for some fault committed by aplayfellow whom she loved. Nobody ever knew her to confess to it, whenthe thing was found out, and she was charged with it afterwards. Butnobody ever knew her to lie about it, either. She looked you straightin the face, and shook her little saucy head, and said plainly, "I won'ttell you!" Punished again for this, she would own to being sorry forsaying "won't;" but, bread and water notwithstanding, she never toldyou. Self-willed--devilish self-willed sometimes--I grant; but thefinest creature, nevertheless, that ever walked the ways of this lowerworld. Perhaps you think you see a certain contradiction here? Inthat case, a word in your ear. Study your wife closely, for the nextfour-and-twenty hours. If your good lady doesn't exhibit something inthe shape of a contradiction in that time, Heaven help you!--you havemarried a monster.
I have now brought you acquainted with Miss Rachel, which you willfind puts us face to face, next, with the question of that young lady'smatrimonial views.
On June the twelfth, an invitation from my mistress was sent to agentleman in London, to come and help to keep Miss Rachel's birthday.This was the fortunate individual on whom I believed her heart to beprivately set! Like Mr. Franklin, he was a cousin of hers. His name wasMr. Godfrey Ablewhite.
My lady's second sister (don't be alarmed; we are not going very deepinto family matters this time)--my lady's second sister, I say, had adisappointment in love; and taking a husband afterwards, on the neck ornothing principle, made what they call a misalliance. There was terriblework in the family when the Honourable Caroline insisted on marryingplain Mr. Ablewhite, the banker at Frizinghall. He was very rich andvery respectable, and he begot a prodigious large family--all in hisfavour, so far. But he had presumed to raise himself from a low stationin the world--and that was against him. However, Time and the progressof modern enlightenment put things right; and the misalliance passedmuster very well. We are all getting liberal now; and (provided you canscratch me, if I scratch you) what do I care, in or out of Parliament,whether you are a Dustman or a Duke? That's the modern way of lookingat it--and I keep up with the modern way. The Ablewhites lived in a finehouse and grounds, a little out of Frizinghall. Very worthy people, andgreatly respected in the neighbourhood. We shall not be much troubledwith them in these pages--excepting Mr. Godfrey, who was Mr. Ablewhite'ssecond son, and who must take his proper place here, if you please, forMiss Rachel's sake.
With all his brightness and cleverness and general good qualities, Mr.Franklin's chance of topping Mr. Godfrey in our young lady's estimationwas, in my opinion, a very poor chance indeed.
In the first place, Mr. Godfrey was, in point of size, the finest man byfar of the two. He stood over six feet high; he had a beautiful red andwhite colour; a smooth round face, shaved as bare as your hand; and ahead of lovely long flaxen hair, falling negligently over the poll ofhis neck. But why do I try to give you this personal description ofhim? If you ever subscribed to a Ladies' Charity in London, you know Mr.Godfrey Ablewhite as well as I do. He was a barrister by profession;a ladies' man by temperament; and a good Samaritan by choice. Femalebenevolence and female destitution could do nothing without him.Maternal societies for confining poor women; Magdalen societies forrescuing poor women; strong-minded societies for putting poor women intopoor men's places, and leaving the men to shift for themselves;--he wasvice-president, manager, referee to them all. Wherever there was a tablewith a committee of ladies sitting round it in council there was Mr.Godfrey at the bottom of the board, keeping the temper of the committee,and leading the dear creatures along the thorny ways of business, hat inhand. I do suppose this was the most accomplished philanthropist (ona small independence) that England ever produced. As a speaker atcharitable meetings the like of him for drawing your tears and yourmoney was not easy to find. He was quite a public character. The lasttime I was in London, my mistress gave me two treats. She sent me to thetheatre to see a dancing woman who was all the rage; and she sent me toExeter 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. Crowdsat the performance with the legs. Ditto at the performance with thetongue. And with all this, the sweetest tempered person (I allude to Mr.Godfrey)--the simplest and pleasantest and easiest to please--you evermet with. He loved everybody. And everybody loved HIM. What chancehad Mr. Franklin--what chance had anybody of average reputation andcapacities--against such a man as this?
On the fourteenth, came Mr. Godfrey's answer.
He accepted my mistress's invitation, from the Wednesday of the birthdayto the evening of Friday--when his duties to the Ladies' Charities wouldoblige him to return to town. He also enclosed a copy of verses onwhat he elegantly called his cousin's "natal day." Miss Rachel, I wasinformed, joined Mr. Franklin in making fun of the verses at dinner;and Penelope, who was all on Mr. Franklin's side, asked me, in greattriumph, what I thought of that. "Miss Rachel has led you off on a falsescent, my dear," I replied; "but MY nose is not so easily mystified.Wait till Mr. Ablewhite's verses are followed by Mr. Ablewhite himself."
My daughter replied, that Mr. Franklin might strike in, and tr
y hisluck, before the verses were followed by the poet. In favour of thisview, I must acknowledge that Mr. Franklin left no chance untried ofwinning Miss Rachel's good graces.
Though one of the most inveterate smokers I ever met with, he gave uphis cigar, because she said, one day, she hated the stale smell of itin his clothes. He slept so badly, after this effort of self-denial, forwant of the composing effect of the tobacco to which he was used, andcame down morning after morning looking so haggard and worn, that MissRachel herself begged him to take to his cigars again. No! he would taketo nothing again that could cause her a moment's annoyance; he wouldfight it out resolutely, and get back his sleep, sooner or later, bymain force of patience in waiting for it. Such devotion as this, you maysay (as some of them said downstairs), could never fail of producingthe right effect on Miss Rachel--backed up, too, as it was, by thedecorating work every day on the door. All very well--but she had aphotograph of Mr. Godfrey in her bed-room; represented speaking at apublic meeting, with all his hair blown out by the breath of his owneloquence, and his eyes, most lovely, charming the money out of yourpockets. What do you say to that? Every morning--as Penelope herselfowned to me--there was the man whom the women couldn't do without,looking on, in effigy, while Miss Rachel was having her hair combed. Hewould be looking on, in reality, before long--that was my opinion of it.
June the sixteenth brought an event which made Mr. Franklin's chancelook, to my mind, a worse chance than ever.
A strange gentleman, speaking English with a foreign accent, came thatmorning to the house, and asked to see Mr. Franklin Blake on business.The business could not possibly have been connected with the Diamond,for these two reasons--first, that Mr. Franklin told me nothing aboutit; secondly, that he communicated it (when the gentleman had gone, as Isuppose) to my lady. She probably hinted something about it next to herdaughter. At any rate, Miss Rachel was reported to have said some severethings to Mr. Franklin, at the piano that evening, about the people hehad lived among, and the principles he had adopted in foreign parts. Thenext day, for the first time, nothing was done towards the decorationof the door. I suspect some imprudence of Mr. Franklin's on theContinent--with a woman or a debt at the bottom of it--had followedhim to England. But that is all guesswork. In this case, not only Mr.Franklin, but my lady too, for a wonder, left me in the dark.
On the seventeenth, to all appearance, the cloud passed away again. Theyreturned to their decorating work on the door, and seemed to be as goodfriends as ever. If Penelope was to be believed, Mr. Franklin had seizedthe opportunity of the reconciliation to make an offer to Miss Rachel,and had neither been accepted nor refused. My girl was sure (from signsand tokens which I need not trouble you with) that her young mistresshad fought Mr. Franklin off by declining to believe that he was inearnest, and had then secretly regretted treating him in that wayafterwards. Though Penelope was admitted to more familiarity with heryoung mistress than maids generally are--for the two had been almostbrought up together as children--still I knew Miss Rachel's reservedcharacter too well to believe that she would show her mind to anybody inthis way. What my daughter told me, on the present occasion, was, as Isuspected, more what she wished than what she really knew.
On the nineteenth another event happened. We had the doctor in the houseprofessionally. He was summoned to prescribe for a person whom I havehad occasion to present to you in these pages--our second housemaid,Rosanna Spearman.
This poor girl--who had puzzled me, as you know already, at theShivering Sand--puzzled me more than once again, in the interval time ofwhich I am now writing. Penelope's notion that her fellow-servant was inlove with Mr. Franklin (which my daughter, by my orders, kept strictlysecret) seemed to be just as absurd as ever. But I must own that whatI myself saw, and what my daughter saw also, of our second housemaid'sconduct, began to look mysterious, to say the least of it.
For example, the girl constantly put herself in Mr. Franklin's way--veryslyly and quietly, but she did it. He took about as much notice of heras he took of the cat; it never seemed to occur to him to waste a lookon Rosanna's plain face. The poor thing's appetite, never much, fellaway dreadfully; and her eyes in the morning showed plain signs ofwaking and crying at night. One day Penelope made an awkward discovery,which we hushed up on the spot. She caught Rosanna at Mr. Franklin'sdressing-table, secretly removing a rose which Miss Rachel had given himto wear in his button-hole, and putting another rose like it, of her ownpicking, in its place. She was, after that, once or twice impudentto me, when I gave her a well-meant general hint to be careful in herconduct; and, worse still, she was not over-respectful now, on the fewoccasions when Miss Rachel accidentally spoke to her.
My lady noticed the change, and asked me what I thought about it. Itried to screen the girl by answering that I thought she was out ofhealth; and it ended in the doctor being sent for, as already mentioned,on the nineteenth. He said it was her nerves, and doubted if she was fitfor service. My lady offered to remove her for change of air to one ofour farms, inland. She begged and prayed, with the tears in her eyes, tobe let to stop; and, in an evil hour, I advised my lady to try her fora little longer. As the event proved, and as you will soon see, thiswas the worst advice I could have given. If I could only have looked alittle way into the future, I would have taken Rosanna Spearman out ofthe house, then and there, with my own hand.
On the twentieth, there came a note from Mr. Godfrey. He had arranged tostop at Frizinghall that night, having occasion to consult his fatheron business. On the afternoon of the next day, he and his two eldestsisters would ride over to us on horseback, in good time before dinner.An elegant little casket in China accompanied the note, presented toMiss Rachel, with her cousin's love and best wishes. Mr. Franklin hadonly given her a plain locket not worth half the money. My daughterPenelope, nevertheless--such is the obstinacy of women--still backed himto win.
Thanks be to Heaven, we have arrived at the eve of the birthday at last!You will own, I think, that I have got you over the ground this time,without much loitering by the way. Cheer up! I'll ease you with anothernew chapter here--and, what is more, that chapter shall take youstraight into the thick of the story.