The Moonstone

he foregoing correspondence will sufficiently explain why no choice is
left to me but to pass over Lady Verinder’s death with the simple
announcement of the fact which ends my fifth chapter.

Keeping myself for the future strictly within the limits of my own
personal experience, I have next to relate that a month elapsed from
the time of my aunt’s decease before Rachel Verinder and I met again.
That meeting was the occasion of my spending a few days under the same
roof with her. In the course of my visit, something happened, relative
to her marriage-engagement with Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, which is
important enough to require special notice in these pages. When this
last of many painful family circumstances has been disclosed, my task
will be completed; for I shall then have told all that I know, as an
actual (and most unwilling) witness of events.

My aunt’s remains were removed from London, and were buried in the
little cemetery attached to the church in her own park. I was invited
to the funeral with the rest of the family. But it was impossible (with
my religious views) to rouse myself in a few days only from the shock
which this death had caused me. I was informed, moreover, that the
rector of Frizinghall was to read the service. Having myself in past
times seen this clerical castaway making one of the players at Lady
Verinder’s whist-table, I doubt, even if I had been fit to travel,
whether I should have felt justified in attending the ceremony.

Lady Verinder’s death left her daughter under the care of her
brother-in-law, Mr. Ablewhite the elder. He was appointed guardian by
the will, until his niece married, or came of age. Under these
circumstances, Mr. Godfrey informed his father, I suppose, of the new
relation in which he stood towards Rachel. At any rate, in ten days
from my aunt’s death, the secret of the marriage-engagement was no
secret at all within the circle of the family, and the grand question
for Mr. Ablewhite senior—another confirmed castaway!—was how to make
himself and his authority most agreeable to the wealthy young lady who
was going to marry his son.

Rachel gave him some trouble at the outset, about the choice of a place
in which she could be prevailed upon to reside. The house in Montagu
Square was associated with the calamity of her mother’s death. The
house in Yorkshire was associated with the scandalous affair of the
lost Moonstone. Her guardian’s own residence at Frizinghall was open to
neither of these objections. But Rachel’s presence in it, after her
recent bereavement, operated as a check on the gaieties of her cousins,
the Miss Ablewhites—and she herself requested that her visit might be
deferred to a more favourable opportunity. It ended in a proposal,
emanating from old Mr. Ablewhite, to try a furnished house at Brighton.
His wife, an invalid daughter, and Rachel were to inhabit it together,
and were to expect him to join them later in the season. They would see
no society but a few old friends, and they would have his son Godfrey,
travelling backwards and forwards by the London train, always at their
disposal.

I describe this aimless flitting about from one place of residence to
another—this insatiate restlessness of body and appalling stagnation of
soul—merely with the view to arriving at results. The event which
(under Providence) proved to be the means of bringing Rachel Verinder
and myself together again, was no other than the hiring of the house at
Brighton.

My Aunt Ablewhite is a large, silent, fair-complexioned woman, with one
noteworthy point in her character. From the hour of her birth she has
never been known to do anything for herself. She has gone through life,
accepting everybody’s help, and adopting everybody’s opinions. A more
hopeless person, in a spiritual point of view, I have never met
with—there is absolutely, in this perplexing case, no obstructive
material to work upon. Aunt Ablewhite would listen to the Grand Lama of
Thibet exactly as she listens to Me, and would reflect his views quite
as readily as she reflects mine. She found the furnished house at
Brighton by stopping at an hotel in London, composing herself on a
sofa, and sending for her son. She discovered the necessary servants by
breakfasting in bed one morning (still at the hotel), and giving her
maid a holiday on condition that the girl “would begin enjoying herself
by fetching Miss Clack.” I found her placidly fanning herself in her
dressing-gown at eleven o’clock. “Drusilla, dear, I want some servants.
You are so clever—please get them for me.” I looked round the untidy
room. The church-bells were going for a week-day service; they
suggested a word of affectionate remonstrance on my part. “Oh, aunt!” I
said sadly. “Is this worthy of a Christian Englishwoman? Is the
passage from time to eternity to be made in this manner?” My aunt
answered, “I’ll put on my gown, Drusilla, if you will be kind enough to
help me.” What was to be said after that? I have done wonders with
murderesses—I have never advanced an inch with Aunt Ablewhite. “Where
is the list,” I asked, “of the servants whom you require?” My aunt
shook her head; she hadn’t even energy enough to keep the list. “Rachel
has got it, dear,” she said, “in the next room.” I went into the next
room, and so saw Rachel again for the first time since we had parted in
Montagu Square.

She looked pitiably small and thin in her deep mourning. If I attached
any serious importance to such a perishable trifle as personal
appearance, I might be inclined to add that hers was one of those
unfortunate complexions which always suffer when not relieved by a
border of white next the skin. But what are our complexions and our
looks? Hindrances and pitfalls, dear girls, which beset us on our way
to higher things! Greatly to my surprise, Rachel rose when I entered
the room, and came forward to meet me with outstretched hand.

“I am glad to see you,” she said. “Drusilla, I have been in the habit
of speaking very foolishly and very rudely to you, on former occasions.
I beg your pardon. I hope you will forgive me.”

My face, I suppose, betrayed the astonishment I felt at this. She
coloured up for a moment, and then proceeded to explain herself.

“In my poor mother’s lifetime,” she went on, “her friends were not
always my friends, too. Now I have lost her, my heart turns for comfort
to the people she liked. She liked you. Try to be friends with me,
Drusilla, if you can.”

To any rightly-constituted mind, the motive thus acknowledged was
simply shocking. Here in Christian England was a young woman in a state
of bereavement, with so little idea of where to look for true comfort,
that she actually expected to find it among her mother’s friends! Here
was a relative of mine, awakened to a sense of her shortcomings towards
others, under the influence, not of conviction and duty, but of
sentiment and impulse! Most deplorable to think of—but, still,
suggestive of something hopeful, to a person of my experience in plying
the good work. There could be no harm, I thought, in ascertaining the
extent of the change which the loss of her mother had wrought in
Rachel’s character. I decided, as a useful test, to probe her on the
subject of her marriage-engagement to Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.

Having first met her advances with all possible cordiality, I sat by
her on the sofa, at her own request. We discussed family affairs and
future plans—always excepting that one future plan which was to end in
her marriage. Try as I might to turn the conversation that way, she
resolutely declined to take the hint. Any open reference to the
question, on my part, would have been premature at this early stage of
our reconciliation. Besides, I had discovered all I wanted to know. She
was no longer the reckless, defiant creature whom I had heard and seen,
on the occasion of my martyrdom in Montagu Square. This was, of itself,
enough to encourage me to take her future conversion in hand—beginning
with a few words of earnest warning directed against the hasty
formation of the marriage tie, and so getting on to higher things.
Looking at her, now, with this new interest—and calling to mind the
headlong suddenness with which she had met Mr. Godfrey’s matrimonial
views—I felt the solemn duty of interfering with a fervour which
assured me that I should achieve no common results. Rapidity of
proceeding was, as I believed, of importance in this case. I went back
at once to the question of the servants wanted for the furnished house.

“Where is the list, dear?”

Rachel produced it.

“Cook, kitchen-maid, housemaid, and footman,” I read. “My dear Rachel,
these servants are only wanted for a term—the term during which your
guardian has taken the house. We shall have great difficulty in finding
persons of character and capacity to accept a temporary engagement of
that sort, if we try in London. Has the house in Brighton been found
yet?”

“Yes. Godfrey has taken it; and persons in the house wanted him to hire
them as servants. He thought they would hardly do for us, and came back
having settled nothing.”

“And you have no experience yourself in these matters, Rachel?”

“None whatever.”

“And Aunt Ablewhite won’t exert herself?”

“No, poor dear. Don’t blame her, Drusilla. I think she is the only
really happy woman I have ever met with.”

“There are degrees in happiness, darling. We must have a little talk,
some day, on that subject. In the meantime I will undertake to meet the
difficulty about the servants. Your aunt will write a letter to the
people of the house——”

“She will sign a letter, if I write it for her, which comes to the same
thing.”

“Quite the same thing. I shall get the letter, and I will go to
Brighton tomorrow.”

“How extremely kind of you! We will join you as soon as you are ready
for us. And you will stay, I hope, as my guest. Brighton is so
lively; you are sure to enjoy it.”

In those words the invitation was given, and the glorious prospect of
interference was opened before me.

It was then the middle of the week. By Saturday afternoon the house was
ready for them. In that short interval I had sifted, not the characters
only, but the religious views as well, of all the disengaged servants
who applied to me, and had succeeded in making a selection which my
conscience approved. I also discovered, and called on two serious
friends of mine, residents in the town, to whom I knew I could confide
the pious object which had brought me to Brighton. One of them—a
clerical friend—kindly helped me to take sittings for our little party
in the church in which he himself ministered. The other—a single lady,
like myself—placed the resources of her library (composed throughout of
precious publications) entirely at my disposal. I borrowed half-a-dozen
works, all carefully chosen with a view to Rachel. When these had been
judiciously distributed in the various rooms she would be likely to
occupy, I considered that my preparations were complete. Sound doctrine
in the servants who waited on her; sound doctrine in the minister who
preached to her; sound doctrine in the books that lay on her table—such
was the treble welcome which my zeal had prepared for the motherless
girl! A heavenly composure filled my mind, on that Saturday afternoon,
as I sat at the window waiting the arrival of my relatives. The giddy
throng passed and repassed before my eyes. Alas! how many of them felt
my exquisite sense of duty done? An awful question. Let us not pursue
it.

Between six and seven the travellers arrived. To my indescribable
surprise, they were escorted, not by Mr. Godfrey (as I had
anticipated), but by the lawyer, Mr. Bruff.

“How do you do, Miss Clack?” he said. “I mean to stay this time.”

That reference to the occasion on which I had obliged him to postpone
his business to mine, when we were both visiting in Montagu Square,
satisfied me that the old worldling had come to Brighton with some
object of his own in view. I had prepared quite a little Paradise for
my beloved Rachel—and here was the Serpent already!

“Godfrey was very much vexed, Drusilla, not to be able to come with
us,” said my Aunt Ablewhite. “There was something in the way which kept
him in town. Mr. Bruff volunteered to take his place, and make a
holiday of it till Monday morning. By-the-bye, Mr. Bruff, I’m ordered
to take exercise, and I don’t like it. That,” added Aunt Ablewhite,
pointing out of window to an invalid going by in a chair on wheels,
drawn by a man, “is my idea of exercise. If it’s air you want, you get
it in your chair. And if it’s fatigue you want, I am sure it’s fatigue
enough to look at the man.”

Rachel stood silent, at a window by herself, with her eyes fixed on the
sea.

“Tired, love?” I inquired.

“No. Only a little out of spirits,” she answered. “I have often seen
the sea, on our Yorkshire coast, with that light on it. And I was
thinking, Drusilla, of the days that can never come again.”

Mr. Bruff remained to dinner, and stayed through the evening. The more
I saw of him, the more certain I felt that he had some private end to
serve in coming to Brighton. I watched him carefully. He maintained the
same appearance of ease, and talked the same godless gossip, hour after
hour, until it was time to take leave. As he shook hands with Rachel, I
caught his hard and cunning eyes resting on her for a moment with a
peculiar interest and attention. She was plainly concerned in the
object that he had in view. He said nothing out of the common to her or
to anyone on leaving. He invited himself to luncheon the next day, and
then he went away to his hotel.

It was impossible the next morning to get my Aunt Ablewhite out of her
dressing-gown in time for church. Her invalid daughter (suffering from
nothing, in my opinion, but incurable laziness, inherited from her
mother) announced that she meant to remain in bed for the day. Rachel
and I went alone together to church. A magnificent sermon was preached
by my gifted friend on the heathen indifference of the world to the
sinfulness of little sins. For more than an hour his eloquence
(assisted by his glorious voice) thundered through the sacred edifice.
I said to Rachel, when we came out, “Has it found its way to your
heart, dear?” And she answered, “No; it has only made my head ache.”
This might have been discouraging to some people; but, once embarked on
a career of manifest usefulness, nothing discourages Me.

We found Aunt Ablewhite and Mr. Bruff at luncheon. When Rachel declined
eating anything, and gave as a reason for it that she was suffering
from a headache, the lawyer’s cunning instantly saw, and seized, the
chance that she had given him.

“There is only one remedy for a headache,” said this horrible old man.
“A walk, Miss Rachel, is the thing to cure you. I am entirely at your
service, if you will honour me by accepting my arm.”

“With the greatest pleasure. A walk is the very thing I was longing
for.”

“It’s past two,” I gently suggested. “And the afternoon service,
Rachel, begins at three.”

“How can you expect me to go to church again,” she asked, petulantly,
“with such a headache as mine?”

Mr. Bruff officiously opened the door for her. In another minute more
they were both out of the house. I don’t know when I have felt the
solemn duty of interfering so strongly as I felt it at that moment. But
what was to be done? Nothing was to be done but to interfere at the
first opportunity, later in the day.

On my return from the afternoon service I found that they had just got
back. One look at them told me that the lawyer had said what he wanted
to say. I had never before seen Rachel so silent and so thoughtful. I
had never before seen Mr. Bruff pay her such devoted attention, and
look at her with such marked respect. He had (or pretended that he had)
an engagement to dinner that day—and he took an early leave of us all;
intending to go back to London by the first train the next morning.

“Are you sure of your own resolution?” he said to Rachel at the door.

“Quite sure,” she answered—and so they parted.

The moment his back was turned, Rachel withdrew to her own room. She
never appeared at dinner. Her maid (the person with the cap-ribbons)
was sent downstairs to announce that her headache had returned. I ran
up to her and made all sorts of sisterly offers through the door. It
was locked, and she kept it locked. Plenty of obstructive material to
work on here! I felt greatly cheered and stimulated by her locking the
door.

When her cup of tea went up to her the next morning, I followed it in.
I sat by her bedside and said a few earnest words. She listened with
languid civility. I noticed my serious friend’s precious publications
huddled together on a table in a corner. Had she chanced to look into
them?—I asked. Yes—and they had not interested her. Would she allow me
to read a few passages of the deepest interest, which had probably
escaped her eye? No, not now—she had other things to think of. She gave
these answers, with her attention apparently absorbed in folding and
refolding the frilling on her nightgown. It was plainly necessary to
rouse her by some reference to those worldly interests which she still
had at heart.

“Do you know, love,” I said, “I had an odd fancy, yesterday, about Mr.
Bruff? I thought, when I saw you after your walk with him, that he had
been telling you some bad news.”

Her fingers dropped from the frilling of her nightgown, and her fierce
black eyes flashed at me.

“Quite the contrary!” she said. “It was news I was interested in
hearing—and I am deeply indebted to Mr. Bruff for telling me of it.”

“Yes?” I said, in a tone of gentle interest.

Her fingers went back to the frilling, and she turned her head sullenly
away from me. I had been met in this manner, in the course of plying
the good work, hundreds of times. She merely stimulated me to try
again. In my dauntless zeal for her welfare, I ran the great risk, and
openly alluded to her marriage engagement.

“News you were interested in hearing?” I repeated. “I suppose, my dear
Rachel, that must be news of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite?”

She started up in the bed, and turned deadly pale. It was evidently on
the tip of her tongue to retort on me with the unbridled insolence of
former times. She checked herself—laid her head back on the
pillow—considered a minute—and then answered in these remarkable words:

“I shall never marry Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.”

It was my turn to start at that.

“What can you possibly mean?” I exclaimed. “The marriage is considered
by the whole family as a settled thing!”

“Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite is expected here today,” she said doggedly.
“Wait till he comes—and you will see.”

“But my dear Rachel——”

She rang the bell at the head of her bed. The person with the
cap-ribbons appeared.

“Penelope! my bath.”

Let me give her her due. In the state of my feelings at that moment, I
do sincerely believe that she had hit on the only possible way of
forcing me to leave the room.

By the mere worldly mind my position towards Rachel might have been
viewed as presenting difficulties of no ordinary kind. I had reckoned
on leading her to higher things by means of a little earnest
exhortation on the subject of her marriage. And now, if she was to be
believed, no such event as her marriage was to take place at all. But
ah, my friends! a working Christian of my experience (with an
evangelising prospect before her) takes broader views than these.
Supposing Rachel really broke off the marriage, on which the
Ablewhites, father and son, counted as a settled thing, what would be
the result? It could only end, if she held firm, in an exchanging of
hard words and bitter accusations on both sides. And what would be the
effect on Rachel when the stormy interview was over? A salutary moral
depression would be the effect. Her pride would be exhausted, her
stubbornness would be exhausted, by the resolute resistance which it
was in her character to make under the circumstances. She would turn
for sympathy to the nearest person who had sympathy to offer. And I was
that nearest person—brimful of comfort, charged to overflowing with
seasonable and reviving words. Never had the evangelising prospect
looked brighter, to my eyes, than it looked now.

She came down to breakfast, but she ate nothing, and hardly uttered a
word.

After breakfast she wandered listlessly from room to room—then suddenly
roused herself, and opened the piano. The music she selected to play
was of the most scandalously profane sort, associated with performances
on the stage which it curdles one’s blood to think of. It would have
been premature to interfere with her at such a time as this. I
privately ascertained the hour at which Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite was
expected, and then I escaped the music by leaving the house.

Being out alone, I took the opportunity of calling upon my two resident
friends. It was an indescribable luxury to find myself indulging in
earnest conversation with serious persons. Infinitely encouraged and
refreshed, I turned my steps back again to the house, in excellent time
to await the arrival of our expected visitor. I entered the
dining-room, always empty at that hour of the day, and found myself
face to face with Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite!

He made no attempt to fly the place. Quite the contrary. He advanced to
meet me with the utmost eagerness.

“Dear Miss Clack, I have been only waiting to see you! Chance set me
free of my London engagements today sooner than I had expected, and I
have got here, in consequence, earlier than my appointed time.”

Not the slightest embarrassment encumbered his explanation, though this
was his first meeting with me after the scene in Montagu Square. He was
not aware, it is true, of my having been a witness of that scene. But
he knew, on the other hand, that my attendances at the Mothers’
Small-Clothes, and my relations with friends attached to other
charities, must have informed me of his shameless neglect of his Ladies
and of his Poor. And yet there he was before me, in full possession of
his charming voice and his irresistible smile!

“Have you seen Rachel yet?” I asked.

He sighed gently, and took me by the hand. I should certainly have
snatched my hand away, if the manner in which he gave his answer had
not paralysed me with astonishment.

“I have seen Rachel,” he said with perfect tranquillity. “You are
aware, dear friend, that she was engaged to me? Well, she has taken a
sudden resolution to break the engagement. Reflection has convinced her
that she will best consult her welfare and mine by retracting a rash
promise, and leaving me free to make some happier choice elsewhere.
That is the only reason she will give, and the only answer she will
make to every question that I can ask of her.”

“What have you done on your side?” I inquired. “Have you submitted.”

“Yes,” he said with the most unruffled composure, “I have submitted.”

His conduct, under the circumstances, was so utterly inconceivable,
that I stood bewildered with my hand in his. It is a piece of rudeness
to stare at anybody, and it is an act of indelicacy to stare at a
gentleman. I committed both those improprieties. And I said, as if in a
dream, “What does it mean?”

“Permit me to tell you,” he replied. “And suppose we sit down?”

He led me to a chair. I have an indistinct remembrance that he was very
affectionate. I don’t think he put his arm round my waist to support
me—but I am not sure. I was quite helpless, and his ways with ladies
were very endearing. At any rate, we sat down. I can answer for that,
if I can answer for nothing more.