The Moonstone

“etteredge!” I said, pointing to the well-remembered book on his knee,
“has Robinson Crusoe informed you, this evening, that you might
expect to see Franklin Blake?”

“By the lord Harry, Mr. Franklin!” cried the old man, “that’s exactly
what Robinson Crusoe has done!”

He struggled to his feet with my assistance, and stood for a moment,
looking backwards and forwards between Robinson Crusoe and me,
apparently at a loss to discover which of us had surprised him most.
The verdict ended in favour of the book. Holding it open before him in
both hands, he surveyed the wonderful volume with a stare of
unutterable anticipation—as if he expected to see Robinson Crusoe
himself walk out of the pages, and favour us with a personal interview.

“Here’s the bit, Mr. Franklin!” he said, as soon as he had recovered
the use of his speech. “As I live by bread, sir, here’s the bit I was
reading, the moment before you came in! Page one hundred and fifty-six
as follows:—‘I stood like one Thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an
Apparition.’ If that isn’t as much as to say: ‘Expect the sudden
appearance of Mr. Franklin Blake’—there’s no meaning in the English
language!” said Betteredge, closing the book with a bang, and getting
one of his hands free at last to take the hand which I offered him.

I had expected him, naturally enough under the circumstances, to
overwhelm me with questions. But no—the hospitable impulse was the
uppermost impulse in the old servant’s mind, when a member of the
family appeared (no matter how!) as a visitor at the house.

“Walk in, Mr. Franklin,” he said, opening the door behind him, with his
quaint old-fashioned bow. “I’ll ask what brings you here afterwards—I
must make you comfortable first. There have been sad changes, since you
went away. The house is shut up, and the servants are gone. Never mind
that! I’ll cook your dinner; and the gardener’s wife will make your
bed—and if there’s a bottle of our famous Latour claret left in the
cellar, down your throat, Mr. Franklin, that bottle shall go. I bid you
welcome, sir! I bid you heartily welcome!” said the poor old fellow,
fighting manfully against the gloom of the deserted house, and
receiving me with the sociable and courteous attention of the bygone
time.

It vexed me to disappoint him. But the house was Rachel’s house, now.
Could I eat in it, or sleep in it, after what had happened in London?
The commonest sense of self-respect forbade me—properly forbade me—to
cross the threshold.

I took Betteredge by the arm, and led him out into the garden. There
was no help for it. I was obliged to tell him the truth. Between his
attachment to Rachel, and his attachment to me, he was sorely puzzled
and distressed at the turn things had taken. His opinion, when he
expressed it, was given in his usual downright manner, and was
agreeably redolent of the most positive philosophy I know—the
philosophy of the Betteredge school.

“Miss Rachel has her faults—I’ve never denied it,” he began. “And
riding the high horse, now and then, is one of them. She has been
trying to ride over you—and you have put up with it. Lord, Mr.
Franklin, don’t you know women by this time better than that? You have
heard me talk of the late Mrs. Betteredge?”

I had heard him talk of the late Mrs. Betteredge pretty
often—invariably producing her as his one undeniable example of the
inbred frailty and perversity of the other sex. In that capacity he
exhibited her now.

“Very well, Mr. Franklin. Now listen to me. Different women have
different ways of riding the high horse. The late Mrs. Betteredge took
her exercise on that favourite female animal whenever I happened to
deny her anything that she had set her heart on. So sure as I came home
from my work on these occasions, so sure was my wife to call to me up
the kitchen stairs, and to say that, after my brutal treatment of her,
she hadn’t the heart to cook me my dinner. I put up with it for some
time—just as you are putting up with it now from Miss Rachel. At last
my patience wore out. I went downstairs, and I took Mrs.
Betteredge—affectionately, you understand—up in my arms, and carried
her, holus-bolus, into the best parlour where she received her company.
I said ‘That’s the right place for you, my dear,’ and so went back to
the kitchen. I locked myself in, and took off my coat, and turned up my
shirt-sleeves, and cooked my own dinner. When it was done, I served it
up in my best manner, and enjoyed it most heartily. I had my pipe and
my drop of grog afterwards; and then I cleared the table, and washed
the crockery, and cleaned the knives and forks, and put the things
away, and swept up the hearth. When things were as bright and clean
again, as bright and clean could be, I opened the door and let Mrs.
Betteredge in. ‘I’ve had my dinner, my dear,’ I said; ‘and I hope you
will find that I have left the kitchen all that your fondest wishes can
desire.’ For the rest of that woman’s life, Mr. Franklin, I never had
to cook my dinner again! Moral: You have put up with Miss Rachel in
London; don’t put up with her in Yorkshire. Come back to the house!”

Quite unanswerable! I could only assure my good friend that even his
powers of persuasion were, in this case, thrown away on me.

“It’s a lovely evening,” I said. “I shall walk to Frizinghall, and stay
at the hotel, and you must come tomorrow morning and breakfast with me.
I have something to say to you.”

Betteredge shook his head gravely.

“I am heartily sorry for this,” he said. “I had hoped, Mr. Franklin, to
hear that things were all smooth and pleasant again between you and
Miss Rachel. If you must have your own way, sir,” he continued, after a
moment’s reflection, “there is no need to go to Frizinghall tonight for
a bed. It’s to be had nearer than that. There’s Hotherstone’s Farm,
barely two miles from here. You can hardly object to that on Miss
Rachel’s account,” the old man added slily. “Hotherstone lives, Mr.
Franklin, on his own freehold.”

I remembered the place the moment Betteredge mentioned it. The
farm-house stood in a sheltered inland valley, on the banks of the
prettiest stream in that part of Yorkshire: and the farmer had a spare
bedroom and parlour, which he was accustomed to let to artists,
anglers, and tourists in general. A more agreeable place of abode,
during my stay in the neighbourhood, I could not have wished to find.

“Are the rooms to let?” I inquired.

“Mrs. Hotherstone herself, sir, asked for my good word to recommend the
rooms, yesterday.”

“I’ll take them, Betteredge, with the greatest pleasure.”

We went back to the yard, in which I had left my travelling-bag. After
putting a stick through the handle, and swinging the bag over his
shoulder, Betteredge appeared to relapse into the bewilderment which my
sudden appearance had caused, when I surprised him in the beehive
chair. He looked incredulously at the house, and then he wheeled about,
and looked more incredulously still at me.

“I’ve lived a goodish long time in the world,” said this best and
dearest of all old servants—“but the like of this, I never did expect
to see. There stands the house, and here stands Mr. Franklin Blake—and,
Damme, if one of them isn’t turning his back on the other, and going to
sleep in a lodging!”

He led the way out, wagging his head and growling ominously. “There’s
only one more miracle that can happen,” he said to me, over his
shoulder. “The next thing you’ll do, Mr. Franklin, will be to pay me
back that seven-and-sixpence you borrowed of me when you were a boy.”

This stroke of sarcasm put him in a better humour with himself and with
me. We left the house, and passed through the lodge gates. Once clear
of the grounds, the duties of hospitality (in Betteredge’s code of
morals) ceased, and the privileges of curiosity began.

He dropped back, so as to let me get on a level with him. “Fine evening
for a walk, Mr. Franklin,” he said, as if we had just accidentally
encountered each other at that moment. “Supposing you had gone to the
hotel at Frizinghall, sir?”

“Yes?”

“I should have had the honour of breakfasting with you, tomorrow
morning.”

“Come and breakfast with me at Hotherstone’s Farm, instead.”

“Much obliged to you for your kindness, Mr. Franklin. But it wasn’t
exactly breakfast that I was driving at. I think you mentioned that you
had something to say to me? If it’s no secret, sir,” said Betteredge,
suddenly abandoning the crooked way, and taking the straight one, “I’m
burning to know what’s brought you down here, if you please, in this
sudden way.”

“What brought me here before?” I asked.

“The Moonstone, Mr. Franklin. But what brings you now, sir?”

“The Moonstone again, Betteredge.”

The old man suddenly stood still, and looked at me in the grey twilight
as if he suspected his own ears of deceiving him.

“If that’s a joke, sir,” he said, “I’m afraid I’m getting a little dull
in my old age. I don’t take it.”

“It’s no joke,” I answered. “I have come here to take up the inquiry
which was dropped when I left England. I have come here to do what
nobody has done yet—to find out who took the Diamond.”

“Let the Diamond be, Mr. Franklin! Take my advice, and let the Diamond
be! That cursed Indian jewel has misguided everybody who has come near
it. Don’t waste your money and your temper—in the fine spring time of
your life, sir—by meddling with the Moonstone. How can you hope to
succeed (saving your presence), when Sergeant Cuff himself made a mess
of it? Sergeant Cuff!” repeated Betteredge, shaking his forefinger at
me sternly. “The greatest policeman in England!”

“My mind is made up, my old friend. Even Sergeant Cuff doesn’t daunt
me. By-the-bye, I may want to speak to him, sooner or later. Have you
heard anything of him lately?”

“The Sergeant won’t help you, Mr. Franklin.”

“Why not?”

“There has been an event, sir, in the police-circles, since you went
away. The great Cuff has retired from business. He has got a little
cottage at Dorking; and he’s up to his eyes in the growing of roses. I
have it in his own handwriting, Mr. Franklin. He has grown the white
moss rose, without budding it on the dog-rose first. And Mr. Begbie the
gardener is to go to Dorking, and own that the Sergeant has beaten him
at last.”

“It doesn’t much matter,” I said. “I must do without Sergeant Cuff’s
help. And I must trust to you, at starting.”

It is likely enough that I spoke rather carelessly.

At any rate, Betteredge seemed to be piqued by something in the reply
which I had just made to him. “You might trust to worse than me, Mr.
Franklin—I can tell you that,” he said a little sharply.

The tone in which he retorted, and a certain disturbance, after he had
spoken, which I detected in his manner, suggested to me that he was
possessed of some information which he hesitated to communicate.

“I expect you to help me,” I said, “in picking up the fragments of
evidence which Sergeant Cuff has left behind him. I know you can do
that. Can you do no more?”

“What more can you expect from me, sir?” asked Betteredge, with an
appearance of the utmost humility.

“I expect more—from what you said just now.”

“Mere boasting, Mr. Franklin,” returned the old man obstinately. “Some
people are born boasters, and they never get over it to their dying
day. I’m one of them.”

There was only one way to take with him. I appealed to his interest in
Rachel, and his interest in me.

“Betteredge, would you be glad to hear that Rachel and I were good
friends again?”

“I have served your family, sir, to mighty little purpose, if you doubt
it!”

“Do you remember how Rachel treated me, before I left England?”

“As well as if it was yesterday! My lady herself wrote you a letter
about it; and you were so good as to show the letter to me. It said
that Miss Rachel was mortally offended with you, for the part you had
taken in trying to recover her jewel. And neither my lady, nor you, nor
anybody else could guess why.

“Quite true, Betteredge! And I come back from my travels, and find her
mortally offended with me still. I knew that the Diamond was at the
bottom of it, last year, and I know that the Diamond is at the bottom
of it now. I have tried to speak to her, and she won’t see me. I have
tried to write to her, and she won’t answer me. How, in Heaven’s name,
am I to clear the matter up? The chance of searching into the loss of
the Moonstone, is the one chance of inquiry that Rachel herself has
left me.”

Those words evidently put the case before him, as he had not seen it
yet. He asked a question which satisfied me that I had shaken him.

“There is no ill-feeling in this, Mr. Franklin, on your side—is there?”

“There was some anger,” I answered, “when I left London. But that is
all worn out now. I want to make Rachel come to an understanding with
me—and I want nothing more.”

“You don’t feel any fear, sir—supposing you make any discoveries—in
regard to what you may find out about Miss Rachel?”

I understood the jealous belief in his young mistress which prompted
those words.

“I am as certain of her as you are,” I answered. “The fullest
disclosure of her secret will reveal nothing that can alter her place
in your estimation, or in mine.”

Betteredge’s last-left scruples vanished at that.

“If I am doing wrong to help you, Mr. Franklin,” he exclaimed, “all I
can say is—I am as innocent of seeing it as the babe unborn! I can put
you on the road to discovery, if you can only go on by yourself. You
remember that poor girl of ours—Rosanna Spearman?”

“Of course!”

“You always thought she had some sort of confession in regard to this
matter of the Moonstone, which she wanted to make to you?”

“I certainly couldn’t account for her strange conduct in any other
way.”

“You may set that doubt at rest, Mr. Franklin, whenever you please.”

It was my turn to come to a standstill now. I tried vainly, in the
gathering darkness, to see his face. In the surprise of the moment, I
asked a little impatiently what he meant.

“Steady, sir!” proceeded Betteredge. “I mean what I say. Rosanna
Spearman left a sealed letter behind her—a letter addressed to you.”

“Where is it?”

“In the possession of a friend of hers, at Cobb’s Hole. You must have
heard tell, when you were here last, sir, of Limping Lucy—a lame girl
with a crutch.”

“The fisherman’s daughter?”

“The same, Mr. Franklin.”

“Why wasn’t the letter forwarded to me?”

“Limping Lucy has a will of her own, sir. She wouldn’t give it into any
hands but yours. And you had left England before I could write to you.”

“Let’s go back, Betteredge, and get it at once!”

“Too late, sir, tonight. They’re great savers of candles along our
coast; and they go to bed early at Cobb’s Hole.”

“Nonsense! We might get there in half an hour.”

“You might, sir. And when you did get there, you would find the door
locked. He pointed to a light, glimmering below us; and, at the same
moment, I heard through the stillness of the evening the bubbling of a
stream. ‘There’s the Farm, Mr. Franklin! Make yourself comfortable for
tonight, and come to me tomorrow morning if you’ll be so kind?’”

“You will go with me to the fisherman’s cottage?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Early?”

“As early, Mr. Franklin, as you like.”

We descended the path that led to the Farm.