CHAPTER X
One on the top of the other the rest of the company followed theAblewhites, till we had the whole tale of them complete. Including thefamily, they were twenty-four in all. It was a noble sight to see, whenthey were settled in their places round the dinner-table, and the Rectorof Frizinghall (with beautiful elocution) rose and said grace.
There is no need to worry you with a list of the guests. You will meetnone of them a second time--in my part of the story, at any rate--withthe exception of two.
Those two sat on either side of Miss Rachel, who, as queen of the day,was naturally the great attraction of the party. On this occasion shewas more particularly the centre-point towards which everybody'seyes were directed; for (to my lady's secret annoyance) she wore herwonderful birthday present, which eclipsed all the rest--the Moonstone.It was without any setting when it had been placed in her hands; butthat universal genius, Mr. Franklin, had contrived, with the help of hisneat fingers and a little bit of silver wire, to fix it as a brooch inthe bosom of her white dress. Everybody wondered at the prodigious sizeand beauty of the Diamond, as a matter of course. But the only two ofthe company who said anything out of the common way about it were thosetwo guests I have mentioned, who sat by Miss Rachel on her right handand her left.
The guest on her left was Mr. Candy, our doctor at Frizinghall.
This was a pleasant, companionable little man, with the drawback,however, I must own, of being too fond, in season and out of season, ofhis joke, and of his plunging in rather a headlong manner into talkwith strangers, without waiting to feel his way first. In society he wasconstantly making mistakes, and setting people unintentionally bythe ears together. In his medical practice he was a more prudent man;picking up his discretion (as his enemies said) by a kind of instinct,and proving to be generally right where more carefully conducted doctorsturned out to be wrong.
What HE said about the Diamond to Miss Rachel was said, as usual, by wayof a mystification or joke. He gravely entreated her (in the interestsof science) to let him take it home and burn it. "We will first heat it,Miss Rachel," says the doctor, "to such and such a degree; then wewill expose it to a current of air; and, little by little--puff!--weevaporate the Diamond, and spare you a world of anxiety about the safekeeping of a valuable precious stone!" My lady, listening with rather acareworn expression on her face, seemed to wish that the doctor had beenin earnest, and that he could have found Miss Rachel zealous enough inthe cause of science to sacrifice her birthday gift.
The other guest, who sat on my young lady's right hand, was an eminentpublic character--being no other than the celebrated Indian traveller,Mr. Murthwaite, who, at risk of his life, had penetrated in disguisewhere no European had ever set foot before.
This was a long, lean, wiry, brown, silent man. He had a weary look, anda very steady, attentive eye. It was rumoured that he was tired of thehumdrum life among the people in our parts, and longing to go back andwander off on the tramp again in the wild places of the East. Exceptwhat he said to Miss Rachel about her jewel, I doubt if he spoke sixwords or drank so much as a single glass of wine, all through thedinner. The Moonstone was the only object that interested him in thesmallest degree. The fame of it seemed to have reached him, in someof those perilous Indian places where his wanderings had lain. Afterlooking at it silently for so long a time that Miss Rachel began to getconfused, he said to her in his cool immovable way, "If you ever go toIndia, Miss Verinder, don't take your uncle's birthday gift with you. AHindoo diamond is sometimes part of a Hindoo religion. I know a certaincity, and a certain temple in that city, where, dressed as you are now,your life would not be worth five minutes' purchase." Miss Rachel, safein England, was quite delighted to hear of her danger in India. TheBouncers were more delighted still; they dropped their knives and forkswith a crash, and burst out together vehemently, "O! how interesting!"My lady fidgeted in her chair, and changed the subject.
As the dinner got on, I became aware, little by little, that thisfestival was not prospering as other like festivals had prospered beforeit.
Looking back at the birthday now, by the light of what happenedafterwards, I am half inclined to think that the cursed Diamond musthave cast a blight on the whole company. I plied them well with wine;and being a privileged character, followed the unpopular dishes roundthe table, and whispered to the company confidentially, "Please tochange your mind and try it; for I know it will do you good." Ninetimes out of ten they changed their minds--out of regard for their oldoriginal Betteredge, they were pleased to say--but all to no purpose.There were gaps of silence in the talk, as the dinner got on, that mademe feel personally uncomfortable. When they did use their tongues again,they used them innocently, in the most unfortunate manner and to theworst possible purpose. Mr. Candy, the doctor, for instance, said moreunlucky things than I ever knew him to say before. Take one sample ofthe way in which he went on, and you will understand what I had to putup with at the sideboard, officiating as I was in the character of a manwho had the prosperity of the festival at heart.
One of our ladies present at dinner was worthy Mrs. Threadgall, widowof the late Professor of that name. Talking of her deceased husbandperpetually, this good lady never mentioned to strangers that he WASdeceased. She thought, I suppose, that every able-bodied adult inEngland ought to know as much as that. In one of the gaps of silence,somebody mentioned the dry and rather nasty subject of human anatomy;whereupon good Mrs. Threadgall straightway brought in her late husbandas usual, without mentioning that he was dead. Anatomy she described asthe Professor's favourite recreation in his leisure hours. As ill-luckwould have it, Mr. Candy, sitting opposite (who knew nothing of thedeceased gentleman), heard her. Being the most polite of men, he seizedthe opportunity of assisting the Professor's anatomical amusements onthe spot.
"They have got some remarkably fine skeletons lately at the College ofSurgeons," says Mr. Candy, across the table, in a loud cheerful voice."I strongly recommend the Professor, ma'am, when he next has an hour tospare, to pay them a visit."
You might have heard a pin fall. The company (out of respect to theProfessor's memory) all sat speechless. I was behind Mrs. Threadgall atthe time, plying her confidentially with a glass of hock. She droppedher head, and said in a very low voice, "My beloved husband is no more."
Unluckily Mr. Candy, hearing nothing, and miles away from suspecting thetruth, went on across the table louder and politer than ever.
"The Professor may not be aware," says he, "that the card of a member ofthe College will admit him, on any day but Sunday, between the hours often and four."
Mrs. Threadgall dropped her head right into her tucker, and, in a lowervoice still, repeated the solemn words, "My beloved husband is no more."
I winked hard at Mr. Candy across the table. Miss Rachel touched hisarm. My lady looked unutterable things at him. Quite useless! On hewent, with a cordiality that there was no stopping anyhow. "I shall bedelighted," says he, "to send the Professor my card, if you will obligeme by mentioning his present address."
"His present address, sir, is THE GRAVE," says Mrs. Threadgall, suddenlylosing her temper, and speaking with an emphasis and fury that made theglasses ring again. "The Professor has been dead these ten years."
"Oh, good heavens!" says Mr. Candy. Excepting the Bouncers, who burstout laughing, such a blank now fell on the company, that they might allhave been going the way of the Professor, and hailing as he did from thedirection of the grave.
So much for Mr. Candy. The rest of them were nearly as provoking intheir different ways as the doctor himself. When they ought to havespoken, they didn't speak; or when they did speak they were perpetuallyat cross purposes. Mr. Godfrey, though so eloquent in public, declinedto exert himself in private. Whether he was sulky, or whether he wasbashful, after his discomfiture in the rose-garden, I can't say. He keptall his talk for the private ear of the lady (a member of ourfamily) who sat next to him. She was one of his committee-women--aspiritually-minded person, with a fine show of
collar-bone and a prettytaste in champagne; liked it dry, you understand, and plenty of it.Being close behind these two at the sideboard, I can testify, from whatI heard pass between them, that the company lost a good deal of veryimproving conversation, which I caught up while drawing the corks, andcarving the mutton, and so forth. What they said about their Charities Ididn't hear. When I had time to listen to them, they had got a long waybeyond their women to be confined, and their women to be rescued, andwere disputing on serious subjects. Religion (I understand Mr. Godfreyto say, between the corks and the carving) meant love. And love meantreligion. And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. Andheaven was earth, done up again to look like new. Earth had some veryobjectionable people in it; but, to make amends for that, all thewomen in heaven would be members of a prodigious committee that neverquarrelled, with all the men in attendance on them as ministeringangels. Beautiful! beautiful! But why the mischief did Mr. Godfrey keepit all to his lady and himself?
Mr. Franklin again--surely, you will say, Mr. Franklin stirred thecompany up into making a pleasant evening of it?
Nothing of the sort! He had quite recovered himself, and he was inwonderful force and spirits, Penelope having informed him, I suspect, ofMr. Godfrey's reception in the rose-garden. But, talk as he might,nine times out of ten he pitched on the wrong subject, or he addressedhimself to the wrong person; the end of it being that he offended some,and puzzled all of them. That foreign training of his--those French andGerman and Italian sides of him, to which I have already alluded--cameout, at my lady's hospitable board, in a most bewildering manner.
What do you think, for instance, of his discussing the lengths to whicha married woman might let her admiration go for a man who was not herhusband, and putting it in his clear-headed witty French way to themaiden aunt of the Vicar of Frizinghall? What do you think, when heshifted to the German side, of his telling the lord of the manor,while that great authority on cattle was quoting his experience in thebreeding of bulls, that experience, properly understood counted fornothing, and that the proper way to breed bulls was to look deep intoyour own mind, evolve out of it the idea of a perfect bull, and producehim? What do you say, when our county member, growing hot, at cheeseand salad time, about the spread of democracy in England, burst out asfollows: "If we once lose our ancient safeguards, Mr. Blake, I begto ask you, what have we got left?"--what do you say to Mr. Franklinanswering, from the Italian point of view: "We have got three thingsleft, sir--Love, Music, and Salad"? He not only terrified the companywith such outbreaks as these, but, when the English side of him turnedup in due course, he lost his foreign smoothness; and, getting onthe subject of the medical profession, said such downright things inridicule of doctors, that he actually put good-humoured little Mr. Candyin a rage.
The dispute between them began in Mr. Franklin being led--I forgethow--to acknowledge that he had latterly slept very badly at night. Mr.Candy thereupon told him that his nerves were all out of order and thathe ought to go through a course of medicine immediately. Mr. Franklinreplied that a course of medicine, and a course of groping in the dark,meant, in his estimation, one and the same thing. Mr. Candy, hittingback smartly, said that Mr Franklin himself was, constitutionallyspeaking, groping in the dark after sleep, and that nothing but medicinecould help him to find it. Mr. Franklin, keeping the ball up on hisside, said he had often heard of the blind leading the blind, and now,for the first time, he knew what it meant. In this way, they kept itgoing briskly, cut and thrust, till they both of them got hot--Mr.Candy, in particular, so completely losing his self-control, in defenceof his profession, that my lady was obliged to interfere, and forbidthe dispute to go on. This necessary act of authority put the lastextinguisher on the spirits of the company. The talk spurted up againhere and there, for a minute or two at a time; but there was a miserablelack of life and sparkle in it. The Devil (or the Diamond) possessedthat dinner-party; and it was a relief to everybody when my mistressrose, and gave the ladies the signal to leave the gentlemen over theirwine.
I had just ranged the decanters in a row before old Mr. Ablewhite (whorepresented the master of the house), when there came a sound from theterrace which, startled me out of my company manners on the instant.Mr. Franklin and I looked at each other; it was the sound of the Indiandrum. As I live by bread, here were the jugglers returning to us withthe return of the Moonstone to the house!
As they rounded the corner of the terrace, and came in sight, I hobbledout to warn them off. But, as ill-luck would have it, the two Bouncerswere beforehand with me. They whizzed out on to the terrace like acouple of skyrockets, wild to see the Indians exhibit their tricks. Theother ladies followed; the gentlemen came out on their side. Before youcould say, "Lord bless us!" the rogues were making their salaams; andthe Bouncers were kissing the pretty little boy.
Mr. Franklin got on one side of Miss Rachel, and I put myself behindher. If our suspicions were right, there she stood, innocent of allknowledge of the truth, showing the Indians the Diamond in the bosom ofher dress!
I can't tell you what tricks they performed, or how they did it. Whatwith the vexation about the dinner, and what with the provocation of therogues coming back just in the nick of time to see the jewel with theirown eyes, I own I lost my head. The first thing that I remember noticingwas the sudden appearance on the scene of the Indian traveller, Mr.Murthwaite. Skirting the half-circle in which the gentlefolks stood orsat, he came quietly behind the jugglers and spoke to them on a suddenin the language of their own country.
If he had pricked them with a bayonet, I doubt if the Indians could havestarted and turned on him with a more tigerish quickness than they did,on hearing the first words that passed his lips. The next moment theywere bowing and salaaming to him in their most polite and snaky way.After a few words in the unknown tongue had passed on either side, Mr.Murthwaite withdrew as quietly as he had approached. The chief Indian,who acted as interpreter, thereupon wheeled about again towards thegentlefolks. I noticed that the fellow's coffee-coloured face had turnedgrey since Mr. Murthwaite had spoken to him. He bowed to my lady, andinformed her that the exhibition was over. The Bouncers, indescribablydisappointed, burst out with a loud "O!" directed against Mr. Murthwaitefor stopping the performance. The chief Indian laid his hand humblyon his breast, and said a second time that the juggling was over.The little boy went round with the hat. The ladies withdrew to thedrawing-room; and the gentlemen (excepting Mr. Franklin and Mr.Murthwaite) returned to their wine. I and the footman followed theIndians, and saw them safe off the premises.
Going back by way of the shrubbery, I smelt tobacco, and found Mr.Franklin and Mr. Murthwaite (the latter smoking a cheroot) walkingslowly up and down among the trees. Mr. Franklin beckoned to me to jointhem.
"This," says Mr. Franklin, presenting me to the great traveller, "isGabriel Betteredge, the old servant and friend of our family of whom Ispoke to you just now. Tell him, if you please, what you have just toldme."
Mr. Murthwaite took his cheroot out of his mouth, and leaned, in hisweary way, against the trunk of a tree.
"Mr. Betteredge," he began, "those three Indians are no more jugglersthan you and I are."
Here was a new surprise! I naturally asked the traveller if he had evermet with the Indians before.
"Never," says Mr. Murthwaite; "but I know what Indian juggling reallyis. All you have seen to-night is a very bad and clumsy imitation ofit. Unless, after long experience, I am utterly mistaken, those men arehigh-caste Brahmins. I charged them with being disguised, and you sawhow it told on them, clever as the Hindoo people are in concealing theirfeelings. There is a mystery about their conduct that I can't explain.They have doubly sacrificed their caste--first, in crossing the sea;secondly, in disguising themselves as jugglers. In the land they live inthat is a tremendous sacrifice to make. There must be some very seriousmotive at the bottom of it, and some justification of no ordinary kindto plead for them, in recovery of their caste, when they return to theirown country."
; I was struck dumb. Mr. Murthwaite went on with his cheroot. Mr.Franklin, after what looked to me like a little private veering aboutbetween the different sides of his character, broke the silence asfollows:
"I feel some hesitation, Mr. Murthwaite, in troubling you with familymatters, in which you can have no interest and which I am not verywilling to speak of out of our own circle. But, after what you havesaid, I feel bound, in the interests of Lady Verinder and her daughter,to tell you something which may possibly put the clue into your hands.I speak to you in confidence; you will oblige me, I am sure, by notforgetting that?"
With this preface, he told the Indian traveller all that he had toldme at the Shivering Sand. Even the immovable Mr. Murthwaite was sointerested in what he heard, that he let his cheroot go out.
"Now," says Mr. Franklin, when he had done, "what does your experiencesay?"
"My experience," answered the traveller, "says that you have had morenarrow escapes of your life, Mr. Franklin Blake, than I have had ofmine; and that is saying a great deal."
It was Mr. Franklin's turn to be astonished now.
"Is it really as serious as that?" he asked.
"In my opinion it is," answered Mr. Murthwaite. "I can't doubt, afterwhat you have told me, that the restoration of the Moonstone toits place on the forehead of the Indian idol, is the motive and thejustification of that sacrifice of caste which I alluded to just now.Those men will wait their opportunity with the patience of cats, andwill use it with the ferocity of tigers. How you have escaped them Ican't imagine," says the eminent traveller, lighting his cheroot again,and staring hard at Mr. Franklin. "You have been carrying the Diamondbackwards and forwards, here and in London, and you are still a livingman! Let us try and account for it. It was daylight, both times, Isuppose, when you took the jewel out of the bank in London?"
"Broad daylight," says Mr. Franklin.
"And plenty of people in the streets?"
"Plenty."
"You settled, of course, to arrive at Lady Verinder's house at a certaintime? It's a lonely country between this and the station. Did you keepyour appointment?"
"No. I arrived four hours earlier than my appointment."
"I beg to congratulate you on that proceeding! When did you take theDiamond to the bank at the town here?"
"I took it an hour after I had brought it to this house--and three hoursbefore anybody was prepared for seeing me in these parts."
"I beg to congratulate you again! Did you bring it back here alone?"
"No. I happened to ride back with my cousins and the groom."
"I beg to congratulate you for the third time! If you ever feel inclinedto travel beyond the civilised limits, Mr. Blake, let me know, and Iwill go with you. You are a lucky man."
Here I struck in. This sort of thing didn't at all square with myEnglish ideas.
"You don't really mean to say, sir," I asked, "that they would havetaken Mr. Franklin's life, to get their Diamond, if he had given themthe chance?"
"Do you smoke, Mr. Betteredge?" says the traveller.
"Yes, sir.
"Do you care much for the ashes left in your pipe when you empty it?"
"No, sir."
"In the country those men came from, they care just as much aboutkilling a man, as you care about emptying the ashes out of your pipe.If a thousand lives stood between them and the getting back of theirDiamond--and if they thought they could destroy those lives withoutdiscovery--they would take them all. The sacrifice of caste is a seriousthing in India, if you like. The sacrifice of life is nothing at all."
I expressed my opinion upon this, that they were a set of murderingthieves. Mr. Murthwaite expressed HIS opinion that they were a wonderfulpeople. Mr. Franklin, expressing no opinion at all, brought us back tothe matter in hand.
"They have seen the Moonstone on Miss Verinder's dress," he said. "Whatis to be done?"
"What your uncle threatened to do," answered Mr. Murthwaite. "ColonelHerncastle understood the people he had to deal with. Send the Diamondto-morrow (under guard of more than one man) to be cut up at Amsterdam.Make half a dozen diamonds of it, instead of one. There is an end ofits sacred identity as The Moonstone--and there is an end of theconspiracy."
Mr. Franklin turned to me.
"There is no help for it," he said. "We must speak to Lady Verinderto-morrow."
"What about to-night, sir?" I asked. "Suppose the Indians come back?"
Mr. Murthwaite answered me before Mr. Franklin could speak.
"The Indians won't risk coming back to-night," he said. "The direct wayis hardly ever the way they take to anything--let alone a matter likethis, in which the slightest mistake might be fatal to their reachingtheir end."
"But suppose the rogues are bolder than you think, sir?" I persisted.
"In that case," says Mr. Murthwaite, "let the dogs loose. Have you gotany big dogs in the yard?"
"Two, sir. A mastiff and a bloodhound."
"They will do. In the present emergency, Mr. Betteredge, the mastiff andthe bloodhound have one great merit--they are not likely to be troubledwith your scruples about the sanctity of human life."
The strumming of the piano reached us from the drawing-room, as he firedthat shot at me. He threw away his cheroot, and took Mr. Franklin's arm,to go back to the ladies. I noticed that the sky was clouding overfast, as I followed them to the house. Mr. Murthwaite noticed it too. Helooked round at me, in his dry, droning way, and said:
"The Indians will want their umbrellas, Mr. Betteredge, to-night!"
It was all very well for HIM to joke. But I was not an eminenttraveller--and my way in this world had not led me into playingducks and drakes with my own life, among thieves and murderers in theoutlandish places of the earth. I went into my own little room, and satdown in my chair in a perspiration, and wondered helplessly what was tobe done next. In this anxious frame of mind, other men might have endedby working themselves up into a fever; I ended in a different way. I litmy pipe, and took a turn at ROBINSON CRUSOE.
Before I had been at it five minutes, I came to this amazing bit--pageone hundred and sixty-one--as follows:
"Fear of Danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than Dangeritself, when apparent to the Eyes; and we find the Burthen of Anxietygreater, by much, than the Evil which we are anxious about."
The man who doesn't believe in ROBINSON CRUSOE, after THAT, is a manwith a screw loose in his understanding, or a man lost in the mist ofhis own self-conceit! Argument is thrown away upon him; and pity isbetter reserved for some person with a livelier faith.
I was far on with my second pipe, and still lost in admiration of thatwonderful book, when Penelope (who had been handing round the tea) camein with her report from the drawing-room. She had left the Bouncerssinging a duet--words beginning with a large "O," and music tocorrespond. She had observed that my lady made mistakes in her gameof whist for the first time in our experience of her. She had seenthe great traveller asleep in a corner. She had overheard Mr. Franklinsharpening his wits on Mr. Godfrey, at the expense of Ladies' Charitiesin general; and she had noticed that Mr. Godfrey hit him back againrather more smartly than became a gentleman of his benevolent character.She had detected Miss Rachel, apparently engaged in appeasing Mrs.Threadgall by showing her some photographs, and really occupied instealing looks at Mr. Franklin, which no intelligent lady's maid couldmisinterpret for a single instant. Finally, she had missed Mr. Candy,the doctor, who had mysteriously disappeared from the drawing-room, andhad then mysteriously returned, and entered into conversation withMr. Godfrey. Upon the whole, things were prospering better than theexperience of the dinner gave us any right to expect. If we couldonly hold on for another hour, old Father Time would bring up theircarriages, and relieve us of them altogether.
Everything wears off in this world; and even the comforting effect ofROBINSON CRUSOE wore off, after Penelope left me. I got fidgety again,and resolved on making a survey of the grounds before the rain came.Instead of taking the footman, whose nose w
as human, and thereforeuseless in any emergency, I took the bloodhound with me. HIS nose for astranger was to be depended on. We went all round the premises, and outinto the road--and returned as wise as we went, having discovered nosuch thing as a lurking human creature anywhere.
The arrival of the carriages was the signal for the arrival of the rain.It poured as if it meant to pour all night. With the exception of thedoctor, whose gig was waiting for him, the rest of the company went homesnugly, under cover, in close carriages. I told Mr. Candy that I wasafraid he would get wet through. He told me, in return, that he wonderedI had arrived at my time of life, without knowing that a doctor's skinwas waterproof. So he drove away in the rain, laughing over his ownlittle joke; and so we got rid of our dinner company.
The next thing to tell is the story of the night.
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