The Moonstone

eeping my private sentiments to myself, I respectfully requested Mr.
Franklin to go on. Mr. Franklin replied, “Don’t fidget, Betteredge,”
and went on.

Our young gentleman’s first words informed me that his discoveries,
concerning the wicked Colonel and the Diamond, had begun with a visit
which he had paid (before he came to us) to the family lawyer, at
Hampstead. A chance word dropped by Mr. Franklin, when the two were
alone, one day, after dinner, revealed that he had been charged by his
father with a birthday present to be taken to Miss Rachel. One thing
led to another; and it ended in the lawyer mentioning what the present
really was, and how the friendly connexion between the late Colonel and
Mr. Blake, senior, had taken its rise. The facts here are really so
extraordinary, that I doubt if I can trust my own language to do
justice to them. I prefer trying to report Mr. Franklin’s discoveries,
as nearly as may be, in Mr. Franklin’s own words.

“You remember the time, Betteredge,” he said, “when my father was
trying to prove his title to that unlucky Dukedom? Well! that was also
the time when my uncle Herncastle returned from India. My father
discovered that his brother-in-law was in possession of certain papers
which were likely to be of service to him in his lawsuit. He called on
the Colonel, on pretence of welcoming him back to England. The Colonel
was not to be deluded in that way. ‘You want something,’ he said, ‘or
you would never have compromised your reputation by calling on me.’
My father saw that the one chance for him was to show his hand; he
admitted, at once, that he wanted the papers. The Colonel asked for a
day to consider his answer. His answer came in the shape of a most
extraordinary letter, which my friend the lawyer showed me. The Colonel
began by saying that he wanted something of my father, and that he
begged to propose an exchange of friendly services between them. The
fortune of war (that was the expression he used) had placed him in
possession of one of the largest Diamonds in the world; and he had
reason to believe that neither he nor his precious jewel was safe in
any house, in any quarter of the globe, which they occupied together.
Under these alarming circumstances, he had determined to place his
Diamond in the keeping of another person. That person was not expected
to run any risk. He might deposit the precious stone in any place
especially guarded and set apart—like a banker’s or jeweller’s
strongroom—for the safe custody of valuables of high price. His main
personal responsibility in the matter was to be of the passive kind. He
was to undertake either by himself, or by a trustworthy
representative—to receive at a prearranged address, on certain
prearranged days in every year, a note from the Colonel, simply stating
the fact that he was a living man at that date. In the event of the
date passing over without the note being received, the Colonel’s
silence might be taken as a sure token of the Colonel’s death by
murder. In that case, and in no other, certain sealed instructions
relating to the disposal of the Diamond, and deposited with it, were to
be opened, and followed implicitly. If my father chose to accept this
strange charge, the Colonel’s papers were at his disposal in return.
That was the letter.”

“What did your father do, sir?” I asked.

“Do?” says Mr. Franklin. “I’ll tell you what he did. He brought the
invaluable faculty, called common sense, to bear on the Colonel’s
letter. The whole thing, he declared, was simply absurd. Somewhere in
his Indian wanderings, the Colonel had picked up with some wretched
crystal which he took for a diamond. As for the danger of his being
murdered, and the precautions devised to preserve his life and his
piece of crystal, this was the nineteenth century, and any man in his
senses had only to apply to the police. The Colonel had been a
notorious opium-eater for years past; and, if the only way of getting
at the valuable papers he possessed was by accepting a matter of opium
as a matter of fact, my father was quite willing to take the ridiculous
responsibility imposed on him—all the more readily that it involved no
trouble to himself. The Diamond and the sealed instructions went into
his banker’s strongroom, and the Colonel’s letters, periodically
reporting him a living man, were received and opened by our family
lawyer, Mr. Bruff, as my father’s representative. No sensible person,
in a similar position, could have viewed the matter in any other way.
Nothing in this world, Betteredge, is probable unless it appeals to our
own trumpery experience; and we only believe in a romance when we see
it in a newspaper.”

It was plain to me from this, that Mr. Franklin thought his father’s
notion about the Colonel hasty and wrong.

“What is your own private opinion about the matter, sir?” I asked.

“Let’s finish the story of the Colonel first,” says Mr. Franklin.
“There is a curious want of system, Betteredge, in the English mind;
and your question, my old friend, is an instance of it. When we are not
occupied in making machinery, we are (mentally speaking) the most
slovenly people in the universe.”

“So much,” I thought to myself, “for a foreign education! He has
learned that way of girding at us in France, I suppose.”

Mr. Franklin took up the lost thread, and went on.

“My father,” he said, “got the papers he wanted, and never saw his
brother-in-law again from that time. Year after year, on the
prearranged days, the prearranged letter came from the Colonel, and was
opened by Mr. Bruff. I have seen the letters, in a heap, all of them
written in the same brief, business-like form of words: ‘Sir,—This is
to certify that I am still a living man. Let the Diamond be. John
Herncastle.’ That was all he ever wrote, and that came regularly to the
day; until some six or eight months since, when the form of the letter
varied for the first time. It ran now: ‘Sir,—They tell me I am dying.
Come to me, and help me to make my will.’ Mr. Bruff went, and found
him, in the little suburban villa, surrounded by its own grounds, in
which he had lived alone, ever since he had left India. He had dogs,
cats, and birds to keep him company; but no human being near him,
except the person who came daily to do the house-work, and the doctor
at the bedside. The will was a very simple matter. The Colonel had
dissipated the greater part of his fortune in his chemical
investigations. His will began and ended in three clauses, which he
dictated from his bed, in perfect possession of his faculties. The
first clause provided for the safe keeping and support of his animals.
The second founded a professorship of experimental chemistry at a
northern university. The third bequeathed the Moonstone as a birthday
present to his niece, on condition that my father would act as
executor. My father at first refused to act. On second thoughts,
however, he gave way, partly because he was assured that the
executorship would involve him in no trouble; partly because Mr. Bruff
suggested, in Rachel’s interest, that the Diamond might be worth
something, after all.”

“Did the Colonel give any reason, sir,” I inquired, “why he left the
Diamond to Miss Rachel?”

“He not only gave the reason—he had the reason written in his will,”
said Mr. Franklin. “I have got an extract, which you shall see
presently. Don’t be slovenly-minded, Betteredge! One thing at a time.
You have heard about the Colonel’s Will; now you must hear what
happened after the Colonel’s death. It was formally necessary to have
the Diamond valued, before the Will could be proved. All the jewellers
consulted, at once confirmed the Colonel’s assertion that he possessed
one of the largest diamonds in the world. The question of accurately
valuing it presented some serious difficulties. Its size made it a
phenomenon in the diamond market; its colour placed it in a category by
itself; and, to add to these elements of uncertainty, there was a
defect, in the shape of a flaw, in the very heart of the stone. Even
with this last serious draw-back, however, the lowest of the various
estimates given was twenty thousand pounds. Conceive my father’s
astonishment! He had been within a hair’s-breadth of refusing to act as
executor, and of allowing this magnificent jewel to be lost to the
family. The interest he took in the matter now, induced him to open the
sealed instructions which had been deposited with the Diamond. Mr.
Bruff showed this document to me, with the other papers; and it
suggests (to my mind) a clue to the nature of the conspiracy which
threatened the Colonel’s life.”

“Then you do believe, sir,” I said, “that there was a conspiracy?”

“Not possessing my father’s excellent common sense,” answered Mr.
Franklin, “I believe the Colonel’s life was threatened, exactly as the
Colonel said. The sealed instructions, as I think, explain how it was
that he died, after all, quietly in his bed. In the event of his death
by violence (that is to say, in the absence of the regular letter from
him at the appointed date), my father was then directed to send the
Moonstone secretly to Amsterdam. It was to be deposited in that city
with a famous diamond-cutter, and it was to be cut up into from four to
six separate stones. The stones were then to be sold for what they
would fetch, and the proceeds were to be applied to the founding of
that professorship of experimental chemistry, which the Colonel has
since endowed by his Will. Now, Betteredge, exert those sharp wits of
yours, and observe the conclusion to which the Colonel’s instructions
point!”

I instantly exerted my wits. They were of the slovenly English sort;
and they consequently muddled it all, until Mr. Franklin took them in
hand, and pointed out what they ought to see.

“Remark,” says Mr. Franklin, “that the integrity of the Diamond, as a
whole stone, is here artfully made dependent on the preservation from
violence of the Colonel’s life. He is not satisfied with saying to the
enemies he dreads, ‘Kill me—and you will be no nearer to the Diamond
than you are now; it is where you can’t get at it—in the guarded
strongroom of a bank.’ He says instead, ‘Kill me—and the Diamond will
be the Diamond no longer; its identity will be destroyed.’ What does
that mean?”

Here I had (as I thought) a flash of the wonderful foreign brightness.

“I know,” I said. “It means lowering the value of the stone, and
cheating the rogues in that way!”

“Nothing of the sort,” says Mr. Franklin. “I have inquired about that.
The flawed Diamond, cut up, would actually fetch more than the Diamond
as it now is; for this plain reason—that from four to six perfect
brilliants might be cut from it, which would be, collectively, worth
more money than the large—but imperfect single stone. If robbery for
the purpose of gain was at the bottom of the conspiracy, the Colonel’s
instructions absolutely made the Diamond better worth stealing. More
money could have been got for it, and the disposal of it in the diamond
market would have been infinitely easier, if it had passed through the
hands of the workmen of Amsterdam.”

“Lord bless us, sir!” I burst out. “What was the plot, then?”

“A plot organised among the Indians who originally owned the jewel,”
says Mr. Franklin—“a plot with some old Hindoo superstition at the
bottom of it. That is my opinion, confirmed by a family paper which I
have about me at this moment.”

I saw, now, why the appearance of the three Indian jugglers at our
house had presented itself to Mr. Franklin in the light of a
circumstance worth noting.

“I don’t want to force my opinion on you,” Mr. Franklin went on. “The
idea of certain chosen servants of an old Hindoo superstition devoting
themselves, through all difficulties and dangers, to watching the
opportunity of recovering their sacred gem, appears to me to be
perfectly consistent with everything that we know of the patience of
Oriental races, and the influence of Oriental religions. But then I am
an imaginative man; and the butcher, the baker, and the tax-gatherer,
are not the only credible realities in existence to my mind. Let the
guess I have made at the truth in this matter go for what it is worth,
and let us get on to the only practical question that concerns us. Does
the conspiracy against the Moonstone survive the Colonel’s death? And
did the Colonel know it, when he left the birthday gift to his niece?”

I began to see my lady and Miss Rachel at the end of it all, now. Not a
word he said escaped me.

“I was not very willing, when I discovered the story of the Moonstone,”
said Mr. Franklin, “to be the means of bringing it here. But Mr. Bruff
reminded me that somebody must put my cousin’s legacy into my cousin’s
hands—and that I might as well do it as anybody else. After taking the
Diamond out of the bank, I fancied I was followed in the streets by a
shabby, dark-complexioned man. I went to my father’s house to pick up
my luggage, and found a letter there, which unexpectedly detained me in
London. I went back to the bank with the Diamond, and thought I saw the
shabby man again. Taking the Diamond once more out of the bank this
morning, I saw the man for the third time, gave him the slip, and
started (before he recovered the trace of me) by the morning instead of
the afternoon train. Here I am, with the Diamond safe and sound—and
what is the first news that meets me? I find that three strolling
Indians have been at the house, and that my arrival from London, and
something which I am expected to have about me, are two special objects
of investigation to them when they believe themselves to be alone. I
don’t waste time and words on their pouring the ink into the boy’s
hand, and telling him to look in it for a man at a distance, and for
something in that man’s pocket. The thing (which I have often seen done
in the East) is ‘hocus-pocus’ in my opinion, as it is in yours. The
present question for us to decide is, whether I am wrongly attaching a
meaning to a mere accident? or whether we really have evidence of the
Indians being on the track of the Moonstone, the moment it is removed
from the safe keeping of the bank?”

Neither he nor I seemed to fancy dealing with this part of the inquiry.
We looked at each other, and then we looked at the tide, oozing in
smoothly, higher and higher, over the Shivering Sand.

“What are you thinking of?” says Mr. Franklin, suddenly.

“I was thinking, sir,” I answered, “that I should like to shy the
Diamond into the quicksand, and settle the question in that way.”

“If you have got the value of the stone in your pocket,” answered Mr.
Franklin, “say so, Betteredge, and in it goes!”

It’s curious to note, when your mind’s anxious, how very far in the way
of relief a very small joke will go. We found a fund of merriment, at
the time, in the notion of making away with Miss Rachel’s lawful
property, and getting Mr. Blake, as executor, into dreadful
trouble—though where the merriment was, I am quite at a loss to
discover now.

Mr. Franklin was the first to bring the talk back to the talk’s proper
purpose. He took an envelope out of his pocket, opened it, and handed
to me the paper inside.

“Betteredge,” he said, “we must face the question of the Colonel’s
motive in leaving this legacy to his niece, for my aunt’s sake. Bear in
mind how Lady Verinder treated her brother from the time when he
returned to England, to the time when he told you he should remember
his niece’s birthday. And read that.”

He gave me the extract from the Colonel’s Will. I have got it by me
while I write these words; and I copy it, as follows, for your benefit:

“Thirdly, and lastly, I give and bequeath to my niece, Rachel Verinder,
daughter and only child of my sister, Julia Verinder, widow—if her
mother, the said Julia Verinder, shall be living on the said Rachel
Verinder’s next Birthday after my death—the yellow Diamond belonging to
me, and known in the East by the name of The Moonstone: subject to this
condition, that her mother, the said Julia Verinder, shall be living at
the time. And I hereby desire my executor to give my Diamond, either by
his own hands or by the hands of some trustworthy representative whom
he shall appoint, into the personal possession of my said niece Rachel,
on her next birthday after my death, and in the presence, if possible,
of my sister, the said Julia Verinder. And I desire that my said sister
may be informed, by means of a true copy of this, the third and last
clause of my Will, that I give the Diamond to her daughter Rachel, in
token of my free forgiveness of the injury which her conduct towards me
has been the means of inflicting on my reputation in my lifetime; and
especially in proof that I pardon, as becomes a dying man, the insult
offered to me as an officer and a gentleman, when her servant, by her
orders, closed the door of her house against me, on the occasion of her
daughter’s birthday.”

More words followed these, providing if my lady was dead, or if Miss
Rachel was dead, at the time of the testator’s decease, for the Diamond
being sent to Holland, in accordance with the sealed instructions
originally deposited with it. The proceeds of the sale were, in that
case, to be added to the money already left by the Will for the
professorship of chemistry at the university in the north.

I handed the paper back to Mr. Franklin, sorely troubled what to say to
him. Up to that moment, my own opinion had been (as you know) that the
Colonel had died as wickedly as he had lived. I don’t say the copy from
his Will actually converted me from that opinion: I only say it
staggered me.

“Well,” says Mr. Franklin, “now you have read the Colonel’s own
statement, what do you say? In bringing the Moonstone to my aunt’s
house, am I serving his vengeance blindfold, or am I vindicating him in
the character of a penitent and Christian man?”

“It seems hard to say, sir,” I answered, “that he died with a horrid
revenge in his heart, and a horrid lie on his lips. God alone knows the
truth. Don’t ask me.”

Mr. Franklin sat twisting and turning the extract from the Will in his
fingers, as if he expected to squeeze the truth out of it in that
manner. He altered quite remarkably, at the same time. From being brisk
and bright, he now became, most unaccountably, a slow, solemn, and
pondering young man.

“This question has two sides,” he said. “An Objective side, and a
Subjective side. Which are we to take?”

He had had a German education as well as a French. One of the two had
been in undisturbed possession of him (as I supposed) up to this time.
And now (as well as I could make out) the other was taking its place.
It is one of my rules in life, never to notice what I don’t understand.
I steered a middle course between the Objective side and the Subjective
side. In plain English I stared hard, and said nothing.

“Let’s extract the inner meaning of this,” says Mr. Franklin. “Why did
my uncle leave the Diamond to Rachel? Why didn’t he leave it to my
aunt?”

“That’s not beyond guessing, sir, at any rate,” I said. “Colonel
Herncastle knew my lady well enough to know that she would have refused
to accept any legacy that came to her from him.”

“How did he know that Rachel might not refuse to accept it, too?”

“Is there any young lady in existence, sir, who could resist the
temptation of accepting such a birthday present as The Moonstone?”

“That’s the Subjective view,” says Mr. Franklin. “It does you great
credit, Betteredge, to be able to take the Subjective view. But there’s
another mystery about the Colonel’s legacy which is not accounted for
yet. How are we to explain his only giving Rachel her birthday present
conditionally on her mother being alive?”

“I don’t want to slander a dead man, sir,” I answered. “But if he has
purposely left a legacy of trouble and danger to his sister, by the
means of her child, it must be a legacy made conditional on his
sister’s being alive to feel the vexation of it.”

“Oh! That’s your interpretation of his motive, is it? The Subjective
interpretation again! Have you ever been in Germany, Betteredge?”

“No, sir. What’s your interpretation, if you please?”

“I can see,” says Mr. Franklin, “that the Colonel’s object may, quite
possibly, have been—not to benefit his niece, whom he had never even
seen—but to prove to his sister that he had died forgiving her, and to
prove it very prettily by means of a present made to her child. There
is a totally different explanation from yours, Betteredge, taking its
rise in a Subjective-Objective point of view. From all I can see, one
interpretation is just as likely to be right as the other.”

Having brought matters to this pleasant and comforting issue, Mr.
Franklin appeared to think that he had completed all that was required
of him. He laid down flat on his back on the sand, and asked what was
to be done next.

He had been so clever, and clear-headed (before he began to talk the
foreign gibberish), and had so completely taken the lead in the
business up to the present time, that I was quite unprepared for such a
sudden change as he now exhibited in this helpless leaning upon me.
It was not till later that I learned—by assistance of Miss Rachel, who
was the first to make the discovery—that these puzzling shifts and
transformations in Mr. Franklin were due to the effect on him of his
foreign training. At the age when we are all of us most apt to take our
colouring, in the form of a reflection from the colouring of other
people, he had been sent abroad, and had been passed on from one nation
to another, before there was time for anyone colouring more than
another to settle itself on him firmly. As a consequence of this, he
had come back with so many different sides to his character, all more
or less jarring with each other, that he seemed to pass his life in a
state of perpetual contradiction with himself. He could be a busy man,
and a lazy man; cloudy in the head, and clear in the head; a model of
determination, and a spectacle of helplessness, all together. He had
his French side, and his German side, and his Italian side—the original
English foundation showing through, every now and then, as much as to
say, “Here I am, sorely transmogrified, as you see, but there’s
something of me left at the bottom of him still.” Miss Rachel used to
remark that the Italian side of him was uppermost, on those occasions
when he unexpectedly gave in, and asked you in his nice sweet-tempered
way to take his own responsibilities on your shoulders. You will do him
no injustice, I think, if you conclude that the Italian side of him was
uppermost now.

“Isn’t it your business, sir,” I asked, “to know what to do next?
Surely it can’t be mine?”

Mr. Franklin didn’t appear to see the force of my question—not being in
a position, at the time, to see anything but the sky over his head.

“I don’t want to alarm my aunt without reason,” he said. “And I don’t
want to leave her without what may be a needful warning. If you were in
my place, Betteredge, tell me, in one word, what would you do?”

In one word, I told him: “Wait.”

“With all my heart,” says Mr. Franklin. “How long?”

I proceeded to explain myself.

“As I understand it, sir,” I said, “somebody is bound to put this
plaguy Diamond into Miss Rachel’s hands on her birthday—and you may as
well do it as another. Very good. This is the twenty-fifth of May, and
the birthday is on the twenty-first of June. We have got close on four
weeks before us. Let’s wait and see what happens in that time; and
let’s warn my lady, or not, as the circumstances direct us.”

“Perfect, Betteredge, as far as it goes!” says Mr. Franklin. “But
between this and the birthday, what’s to be done with the Diamond?”

“What your father did with it, to be sure, sir!” I answered. “Your
father put it in the safe keeping of a bank in London. You put in the
safe keeping of the bank at Frizinghall.” (Frizinghall was our nearest
town, and the Bank of England wasn’t safer than the bank there.) “If I
were you, sir,” I added, “I would ride straight away with it to
Frizinghall before the ladies come back.”

The prospect of doing something—and, what is more, of doing that
something on a horse—brought Mr. Franklin up like lightning from the
flat of his back. He sprang to his feet, and pulled me up, without
ceremony, on to mine. “Betteredge, you are worth your weight in gold,”
he said. “Come along, and saddle the best horse in the stables
directly.”

Here (God bless it!) was the original English foundation of him showing
through all the foreign varnish at last! Here was the Master Franklin I
remembered, coming out again in the good old way at the prospect of a
ride, and reminding me of the good old times! Saddle a horse for him? I
would have saddled a dozen horses, if he could only have ridden them
all!

We went back to the house in a hurry; we had the fleetest horse in the
stables saddled in a hurry; and Mr. Franklin rattled off in a hurry, to
lodge the cursed Diamond once more in the strongroom of a bank. When I
heard the last of his horse’s hoofs on the drive, and when I turned
about in the yard and found I was alone again, I felt half inclined to
ask myself if I hadn’t woke up from a dream.