The Moonstone

y fair friend, Miss Clack, having laid down the pen, there are two
reasons for my taking it up next, in my turn.

In the first place, I am in a position to throw the necessary light on
certain points of interest which have thus far been left in the dark.
Miss Verinder had her own private reason for breaking her marriage
engagement—and I was at the bottom of it. Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite had his
own private reason for withdrawing all claim to the hand of his
charming cousin—and I discovered what it was.

In the second place, it was my good or ill fortune, I hardly know
which, to find myself personally involved—at the period of which I am
now writing—in the mystery of the Indian Diamond. I had the honour of
an interview, at my own office, with an Oriental stranger of
distinguished manners, who was no other, unquestionably, than the chief
of the three Indians. Add to this, that I met with the celebrated
traveller, Mr. Murthwaite, the day afterwards, and that I held a
conversation with him on the subject of the Moonstone, which has a very
important bearing on later events. And there you have the statement of
my claims to fill the position which I occupy in these pages.

The true story of the broken marriage engagement comes first in point
of time, and must therefore take the first place in the present
narrative. Tracing my way back along the chain of events, from one end
to the other, I find it necessary to open the scene, oddly enough as
you will think, at the bedside of my excellent client and friend, the
late Sir John Verinder.

Sir John had his share—perhaps rather a large share—of the more
harmless and amiable of the weaknesses incidental to humanity. Among
these, I may mention as applicable to the matter in hand, an invincible
reluctance—so long as he enjoyed his usual good health—to face the
responsibility of making his will. Lady Verinder exerted her influence
to rouse him to a sense of duty in this matter; and I exerted my
influence. He admitted the justice of our views—but he went no further
than that, until he found himself afflicted with the illness which
ultimately brought him to his grave. Then, I was sent for at last, to
take my client’s instructions on the subject of his will. They proved
to be the simplest instructions I had ever received in the whole of my
professional career.

Sir John was dozing, when I entered the room. He roused himself at the
sight of me.

“How do you do, Mr. Bruff?” he said. “I sha’n’t be very long about
this. And then I’ll go to sleep again.” He looked on with great
interest while I collected pens, ink, and paper. “Are you ready?” he
asked. I bowed and took a dip of ink, and waited for my instructions.

“I leave everything to my wife,” said Sir John. “That’s all.” He turned
round on his pillow, and composed himself to sleep again.

I was obliged to disturb him.

“Am I to understand,” I asked, “that you leave the whole of the
property, of every sort and description, of which you die possessed,
absolutely to Lady Verinder?”

“Yes,” said Sir John. “Only, I put it shorter. Why can’t you put it
shorter, and let me go to sleep again? Everything to my wife. That’s my
Will.”

His property was entirely at his own disposal, and was of two kinds.
Property in land (I purposely abstain from using technical language),
and property in money. In the majority of cases, I am afraid I should
have felt it my duty to my client to ask him to reconsider his Will. In
the case of Sir John, I knew Lady Verinder to be, not only worthy of
the unreserved trust which her husband had placed in her (all good
wives are worthy of that)—but to be also capable of properly
administering a trust (which, in my experience of the fair sex, not one
in a thousand of them is competent to do). In ten minutes, Sir John’s
Will was drawn, and executed, and Sir John himself, good man, was
finishing his interrupted nap.

Lady Verinder amply justified the confidence which her husband had
placed in her. In the first days of her widowhood, she sent for me, and
made her Will. The view she took of her position was so thoroughly
sound and sensible, that I was relieved of all necessity for advising
her. My responsibility began and ended with shaping her instructions
into the proper legal form. Before Sir John had been a fortnight in his
grave, the future of his daughter had been most wisely and most
affectionately provided for.

The Will remained in its fireproof box at my office, through more years
than I like to reckon up. It was not till the summer of eighteen
hundred and forty-eight that I found occasion to look at it again under
very melancholy circumstances.

At the date I have mentioned, the doctors pronounced the sentence on
poor Lady Verinder, which was literally a sentence of death. I was the
first person whom she informed of her situation; and I found her
anxious to go over her Will again with me.

It was impossible to improve the provisions relating to her daughter.
But, in the lapse of time, her wishes in regard to certain minor
legacies, left to different relatives, had undergone some modification;
and it became necessary to add three or four Codicils to the original
document. Having done this at once, for fear of accident, I obtained
her ladyship’s permission to embody her recent instructions in a second
Will. My object was to avoid certain inevitable confusions and
repetitions which now disfigured the original document, and which, to
own the truth, grated sadly on my professional sense of the fitness of
things.

The execution of this second Will has been described by Miss Clack, who
was so obliging as to witness it. So far as regarded Rachel Verinder’s
pecuniary interests, it was, word for word, the exact counterpart of
the first Will. The only changes introduced related to the appointment
of a guardian, and to certain provisions concerning that appointment,
which were made under my advice. On Lady Verinder’s death, the Will was
placed in the hands of my proctor to be “proved” (as the phrase is) in
the usual way.

In about three weeks from that time—as well as I can remember—the first
warning reached me of something unusual going on under the surface. I
happened to be looking in at my friend the proctor’s office, and I
observed that he received me with an appearance of greater interest
than usual.

“I have some news for you,” he said. “What do you think I heard at
Doctors’ Commons this morning? Lady Verinder’s Will has been asked for,
and examined, already!”

This was news indeed! There was absolutely nothing which could be
contested in the Will; and there was nobody I could think of who had
the slightest interest in examining it. (I shall perhaps do well if I
explain in this place, for the benefit of the few people who don’t know
it already, that the law allows all Wills to be examined at Doctors’
Commons by anybody who applies, on the payment of a shilling fee.)

“Did you hear who asked for the Will?” I asked.

“Yes; the clerk had no hesitation in telling me. Mr. Smalley, of the
firm of Skipp and Smalley, asked for it. The Will has not been copied
yet into the great Folio Registers. So there was no alternative but to
depart from the usual course, and to let him see the original document.
He looked it over carefully, and made a note in his pocket-book. Have
you any idea of what he wanted with it?”

I shook my head. “I shall find out,” I answered, “before I am a day
older.” With that I went back at once to my own office.

If any other firm of solicitors had been concerned in this
unaccountable examination of my deceased client’s Will, I might have
found some difficulty in making the necessary discovery. But I had a
hold over Skipp and Smalley which made my course in this matter a
comparatively easy one. My common-law clerk (a most competent and
excellent man) was a brother of Mr. Smalley’s; and, owing to this sort
of indirect connection with me, Skipp and Smalley had, for some years
past, picked up the crumbs that fell from my table, in the shape of
cases brought to my office, which, for various reasons, I did not think
it worth while to undertake. My professional patronage was, in this
way, of some importance to the firm. I intended, if necessary, to
remind them of that patronage, on the present occasion.

The moment I got back I spoke to my clerk; and, after telling him what
had happened, I sent him to his brother’s office, “with Mr. Bruff’s
compliments, and he would be glad to know why Messrs. Skipp and Smalley
had found it necessary to examine Lady Verinder’s will.”

This message brought Mr. Smalley back to my office in company with his
brother. He acknowledged that he had acted under instructions received
from a client. And then he put it to me, whether it would not be a
breach of professional confidence on his part to say more.

We had a smart discussion upon that. He was right, no doubt; and I was
wrong. The truth is, I was angry and suspicious—and I insisted on
knowing more. Worse still, I declined to consider any additional
information offered me, as a secret placed in my keeping: I claimed
perfect freedom to use my own discretion. Worse even than that, I took
an unwarrantable advantage of my position. “Choose, sir,” I said to Mr.
Smalley, “between the risk of losing your client’s business and the
risk of losing Mine.” Quite indefensible, I admit—an act of tyranny,
and nothing less. Like other tyrants, I carried my point. Mr. Smalley
chose his alternative, without a moment’s hesitation.

He smiled resignedly, and gave up the name of his client:

Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.

That was enough for me—I wanted to know no more.

Having reached this point in my narrative, it now becomes necessary to
place the reader of these lines—so far as Lady Verinder’s Will is
concerned—on a footing of perfect equality, in respect of information,
with myself.

Let me state, then, in the fewest possible words, that Rachel Verinder
had nothing but a life-interest in the property. Her mother’s excellent
sense, and my long experience, had combined to relieve her of all
responsibility, and to guard her from all danger of becoming the victim
in the future of some needy and unscrupulous man. Neither she, nor her
husband (if she married), could raise sixpence, either on the property
in land, or on the property in money. They would have the houses in
London and in Yorkshire to live in, and they would have the handsome
income—and that was all.

When I came to think over what I had discovered, I was sorely perplexed
what to do next.

Hardly a week had passed since I had heard (to my surprise and
distress) of Miss Verinder’s proposed marriage. I had the sincerest
admiration and affection for her; and I had been inexpressibly grieved
when I heard that she was about to throw herself away on Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite. And now, here was the man—whom I had always believed to be a
smooth-tongued impostor—justifying the very worst that I had thought of
him, and plainly revealing the mercenary object of the marriage, on his
side! And what of that?—you may reply—the thing is done every day.
Granted, my dear sir. But would you think of it quite as lightly as you
do, if the thing was done (let us say) with your own sister?

The first consideration which now naturally occurred to me was this.
Would Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite hold to his engagement, after what his
lawyer had discovered for him?

It depended entirely on his pecuniary position, of which I knew
nothing. If that position was not a desperate one, it would be well
worth his while to marry Miss Verinder for her income alone. If, on the
other hand, he stood in urgent need of realising a large sum by a given
time, then Lady Verinder’s Will would exactly meet the case, and would
preserve her daughter from falling into a scoundrel’s hands.

In the latter event, there would be no need for me to distress Miss
Rachel, in the first days of her mourning for her mother, by an
immediate revelation of the truth. In the former event, if I remained
silent, I should be conniving at a marriage which would make her
miserable for life.

My doubts ended in my calling at the hotel in London, at which I knew
Mrs. Ablewhite and Miss Verinder to be staying. They informed me that
they were going to Brighton the next day, and that an unexpected
obstacle prevented Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite from accompanying them. I at
once proposed to take his place. While I was only thinking of Rachel
Verinder, it was possible to hesitate. When I actually saw her, my mind
was made up directly, come what might of it, to tell her the truth.

I found my opportunity, when I was out walking with her, on the day
after my arrival.

“May I speak to you,” I asked, “about your marriage engagement?”

“Yes,” she said, indifferently, “if you have nothing more interesting
to talk about.”

“Will you forgive an old friend and servant of your family, Miss
Rachel, if I venture on asking whether your heart is set on this
marriage?”

“I am marrying in despair, Mr. Bruff—on the chance of dropping into
some sort of stagnant happiness which may reconcile me to my life.”

Strong language! and suggestive of something below the surface, in the
shape of a romance. But I had my own object in view, and I declined (as
we lawyers say) to pursue the question into its side issues.

“Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite can hardly be of your way of thinking,” I said.
“His heart must be set on the marriage at any rate?”

“He says so, and I suppose I ought to believe him. He would hardly
marry me, after what I have owned to him, unless he was fond of me.”

Poor thing! the bare idea of a man marrying her for his own selfish and
mercenary ends had never entered her head. The task I had set myself
began to look like a harder task than I had bargained for.

“It sounds strangely,” I went on, “in my old-fashioned ears——”

“What sounds strangely?” she asked.

“To hear you speak of your future husband as if you were not quite sure
of the sincerity of his attachment. Are you conscious of any reason in
your own mind for doubting him?”

Her astonishing quickness of perception, detected a change in my voice,
or my manner, when I put that question, which warned her that I had
been speaking all along with some ulterior object in view. She stopped,
and taking her arm out of mine, looked me searchingly in the face.

“Mr. Bruff,” she said, “you have something to tell me about Godfrey
Ablewhite. Tell it.”

I knew her well enough to take her at her word. I told it.

She put her arm again into mine, and walked on with me slowly. I felt
her hand tightening its grasp mechanically on my arm, and I saw her
getting paler and paler as I went on—but, not a word passed her lips
while I was speaking. When I had done, she still kept silence. Her head
drooped a little, and she walked by my side, unconscious of my
presence, unconscious of everything about her; lost—buried, I might
almost say—in her own thoughts.

I made no attempt to disturb her. My experience of her disposition
warned me, on this, as on former occasions, to give her time.

The first instinct of girls in general, on being told of anything which
interests them, is to ask a multitude of questions, and then to run
off, and talk it all over with some favourite friend. Rachel Verinder’s
first instinct, under similar circumstances, was to shut herself up in
her own mind, and to think it over by herself. This absolute
self-dependence is a great virtue in a man. In a woman it has a serious
drawback of morally separating her from the mass of her sex, and so
exposing her to misconstruction by the general opinion. I strongly
suspect myself of thinking as the rest of the world think in this
matter—except in the case of Rachel Verinder. The self-dependence in
her character, was one of its virtues in my estimation; partly, no
doubt, because I sincerely admired and liked her; partly, because the
view I took of her connexion with the loss of the Moonstone was based
on my own special knowledge of her disposition. Badly as appearances
might look, in the matter of the Diamond—shocking as it undoubtedly was
to know that she was associated in any way with the mystery of an
undiscovered theft—I was satisfied nevertheless that she had done
nothing unworthy of her, because I was also satisfied that she had not
stirred a step in the business, without shutting herself up in her own
mind, and thinking it over first.

We had walked on, for nearly a mile I should say, before Rachel roused
herself. She suddenly looked up at me with a faint reflection of her
smile of happier times—the most irresistible smile I have ever seen on
a woman’s face.

“I owe much already to your kindness,” she said. “And I feel more
deeply indebted to it now than ever. If you hear any rumours of my
marriage when you get back to London contradict them at once, on my
authority.”

“Have you resolved to break your engagement?” I asked.

“Can you doubt it?” she returned proudly, “after what you have told
me!”

“My dear Miss Rachel, you are very young—and you may find more
difficulty in withdrawing from your present position than you
anticipate. Have you no one—I mean a lady, of course—whom you could
consult?”

“No one,” she answered.

It distressed me, it did indeed distress me, to hear her say that. She
was so young and so lonely—and she bore it so well! The impulse to help
her got the better of any sense of my own unfitness which I might have
felt under the circumstances; and I stated such ideas on the subject as
occurred to me on the spur of the moment, to the best of my ability. I
have advised a prodigious number of clients, and have dealt with some
exceedingly awkward difficulties, in my time. But this was the first
occasion on which I had ever found myself advising a young lady how to
obtain her release from a marriage engagement. The suggestion I offered
amounted briefly to this. I recommended her to tell Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite—at a private interview, of course—that he had, to her certain
knowledge, betrayed the mercenary nature of the motive on his side. She
was then to add that their marriage, after what she had discovered, was
a simple impossibility—and she was to put it to him, whether he thought
it wisest to secure her silence by falling in with her views, or to
force her, by opposing them, to make the motive under which she was
acting generally known. If he attempted to defend himself, or to deny
the facts, she was, in that event, to refer him to me.

Miss Verinder listened attentively till I had done. She then thanked me
very prettily for my advice, but informed me at the same time that it
was impossible for her to follow it.

“May I ask,” I said, “what objection you see to following it?”

She hesitated—and then met me with a question on her side.

“Suppose you were asked to express your opinion of Mr. Godfrey
Ablewhite’s conduct?” she began.

“Yes?”

“What would you call it?”

“I should call it the conduct of a meanly deceitful man.”

“Mr. Bruff! I have believed in that man. I have promised to marry that
man. How can I tell him he is mean, how can I tell him he has deceived
me, how can I disgrace him in the eyes of the world after that? I have
degraded myself by ever thinking of him as my husband. If I say what
you tell me to say to him—I am owning that I have degraded myself to
his face. I can’t do that. After what has passed between us, I can’t do
that! The shame of it would be nothing to him. But the shame of it
would be unendurable to me.”

Here was another of the marked peculiarities in her character
disclosing itself to me without reserve. Here was her sensitive horror
of the bare contact with anything mean, blinding her to every
consideration of what she owed to herself, hurrying her into a false
position which might compromise her in the estimation of all her
friends! Up to this time, I had been a little diffident about the
propriety of the advice I had given to her. But, after what she had
just said, I had no sort of doubt that it was the best advice that
could have been offered; and I felt no sort of hesitation in pressing
it on her again.

She only shook her head, and repeated her objection in other words.

“He has been intimate enough with me to ask me to be his wife. He has
stood high enough in my estimation to obtain my consent. I can’t tell
him to his face that he is the most contemptible of living creatures,
after that!”

“But, my dear Miss Rachel,” I remonstrated, “it’s equally impossible
for you to tell him that you withdraw from your engagement without
giving some reason for it.”

“I shall say that I have thought it over, and that I am satisfied it
will be best for both of us if we part.

“No more than that?”

“No more.”

“Have you thought of what he may say, on his side?”

“He may say what he pleases.”

It was impossible not to admire her delicacy and her resolution, and it
was equally impossible not to feel that she was putting herself in the
wrong. I entreated her to consider her own position. I reminded her
that she would be exposing herself to the most odious misconstruction
of her motives. “You can’t brave public opinion,” I said, “at the
command of private feeling.”

“I can,” she answered. “I have done it already.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have forgotten the Moonstone, Mr. Bruff. Have I not braved public
opinion, there, with my own private reasons for it?”

Her answer silenced me for the moment. It set me trying to trace the
explanation of her conduct, at the time of the loss of the Moonstone,
out of the strange avowal which had just escaped her. I might perhaps
have done it when I was younger. I certainly couldn’t do it now.

I tried a last remonstrance before we returned to the house. She was
just as immovable as ever. My mind was in a strange conflict of
feelings about her when I left her that day. She was obstinate; she was
wrong. She was interesting; she was admirable; she was deeply to be
pitied. I made her promise to write to me the moment she had any news
to send. And I went back to my business in London, with a mind
exceedingly ill at ease.

On the evening of my return, before it was possible for me to receive
my promised letter, I was surprised by a visit from Mr. Ablewhite the
elder, and was informed that Mr. Godfrey had got his dismissal—and had
accepted it—that very day.

With the view I already took of the case, the bare fact stated in the
words that I have underlined, revealed Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite’s motive
for submission as plainly as if he had acknowledged it himself. He
needed a large sum of money; and he needed it by a given time. Rachel’s
income, which would have helped him to anything else, would not help
him here; and Rachel had accordingly released herself, without
encountering a moment’s serious opposition on his part. If I am told
that this is a mere speculation, I ask, in my turn, what other theory
will account for his giving up a marriage which would have maintained
him in splendour for the rest of his life?

Any exultation I might otherwise have felt at the lucky turn which
things had now taken, was effectually checked by what passed at my
interview with old Mr. Ablewhite.

He came, of course, to know whether I could give him any explanation of
Miss Verinder’s extraordinary conduct. It is needless to say that I was
quite unable to afford him the information he wanted. The annoyance
which I thus inflicted, following on the irritation produced by a
recent interview with his son, threw Mr. Ablewhite off his guard. Both
his looks and his language convinced me that Miss Verinder would find
him a merciless man to deal with, when he joined the ladies at Brighton
the next day.

I had a restless night, considering what I ought to do next. How my
reflections ended, and how thoroughly well founded my distrust of Mr.
Ablewhite proved to be, are items of information which (as I am told)
have already been put tidily in their proper places, by that exemplary
person, Miss Clack. I have only to add—in completion of her
narrative—that Miss Verinder found the quiet and repose which she sadly
needed, poor thing, in my house at Hampstead. She honoured us by making
a long stay. My wife and daughters were charmed with her; and, when the
executors decided on the appointment of a new guardian, I feel sincere
pride and pleasure in recording that my guest and my family parted like
old friends, on either side.