The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

‘One word!’ I interposed eagerly. ‘Did my name occur in any of his wanderings?’

‘You shall hear, Mr. Blake. Among my written proofs of the assertion which I have just advanced—or, I ought to say, among the written experiments, tending to put my assertion to the proof—there is one, in which your name occurs. For nearly the whole of one night Mr. Candy’s mind was occupied with something between himself and you. I have got the broken words, as they dropped from his lips, on one sheet of paper. And I have got the links of my own discovering which connect those words together, on another sheet of paper. The product (as the arithmeticians would say) is an intelligible statement—first, of something actually done in the past; secondly, of something which Mr. Candy contemplated doing in the future, if his illness had not got in the way, and stopped him. The question is whether this does, or does not, represent the lost recollection which he vainly attempted to find when you called on him this morning?’

‘Not a doubt of it!’ I answered. ‘Let us go back directly, and look at the papers!’

‘Quite impossible, Mr. Blake.’

‘Why?’

‘Put yourself in my position for a moment,’ said Ezra Jennings. ‘Would you disclose to another person what had dropped unconsciously from the lips of your suffering patient and your helpless friend, without first knowing that there was a necessity to justify you in opening your lips?’

I felt that he was unanswerable, here; but I tried to argue the question, nevertheless.

‘My conduct in such a delicate matter as you describe,’ I replied, ‘would depend greatly on whether the disclosure was of a nature to compromise my friend or not.’

‘I have disposed of all necessity for considering that side of the question, long since,’ said Ezra Jennings. ‘Wherever my notes included anything which Mr. Candy might have wished to keep secret, those notes have been destroyed. My manuscript experiments at my friend’s bedside include nothing, now, which he would have hesitated to communicate to others, if he had recovered the use of his memory. In your case, I have every reason to suppose that my notes contain something which he actually wished to say to you—’

‘And yet, you hesitate?’

‘And yet, I hesitate. Remember the circumstances under which I obtained the information which I possess! Harmless as it is, I cannot prevail upon myself to give it up to you, unless you first satisfy me that there is a reason for doing so. He was so miserably ill, Mr. Blake! and he was so helplessly dependent upon Me! Is it too much to ask, if I request you only to hint to me what your interest is in the lost recollection—or what you believe that lost recollection to be?’

To have answered him with the frankness which his language and his manner both claimed from me, would have been to commit myself to openly acknowledging that I was suspected of the theft of the Diamond. Strongly as Ezra Jennings had intensified the first impulsive interest which I had felt in him, he had not overcome my unconquerable reluctance to disclose the degrading position in which I stood. I took refuge once more in the explanatory phrases with which I had prepared myself to meet the curiosity of strangers.

This time I had no reason to complain of a want of attention on the part of the person to whom I addressed myself Ezra Jennings listened patiently, even anxiously, until I had done.

‘I am sorry to have raised your expectations, Mr. Blake, only to disappoint them,’ he said. ‘Throughout the whole period of Mr. Candy’s illness, from first to last, not one word about the Diamond escaped his lips. The matter with which I heard him connect your name has, I can assure you, no discoverable relation whatever with the loss or the recovery of Miss Verinder’s jewel.’

We arrived, as he said those words, at a place where the highway along which we had been walking branched off into two roads. One led to Mr. Ablewhite’s house, and the other to a moorland village some two or three miles off. Ezra Jennings stopped at the road which led to the village.

‘My way lies in this direction,’ he said. ‘I am really and truly sorry, Mr. Blake, that I can be of no use to you.’

His voice told me that he spoke sincerely. His soft brown eyes rested on me for a moment with a look of melancholy interest. He bowed, and went, without another word, on his way to the village.

For a minute or more I stood and watched him, walking farther and farther away from me; carrying farther and farther away with him what I now firmly believed to be the clue of which I was in search. He turned, after walking on a little way, and looked back. Seeing me still standing at the place where we had parted, he stopped, as if doubting whether I might not wish to speak to him again. There was no time for me to reason out my own situation—to remind myself that I was losing my opportunity, at what might be the turning point of my life, and all to flatter nothing more important than my own self-esteem! There was only time to call him back first, and to think afterwards. I suspect I am one of the rashest of existing men. I called him back—and then I said to myself, ‘Now there is no help for it. I must tell him the truth!’

He retraced his steps directly. I advanced along the road to meet him.

‘Mr. Jennings,’ I said. ‘I have not treated you quite fairly. My interest in tracing Mr. Candy’s lost recollection is not the interest of recovering the Moonstone. A serious personal matter is at the bottom of my visit to Yorkshire. I have but one excuse for not having dealt frankly with you in this matter. It is more painful to me than I can say, to mention to anybody what my position really is.’

Ezra Jennings looked at me with the first appearance of embarrassment which I had seen in him yet.

‘I have no right, Mr. Blake, and no wish,’ he said, ‘to intrude myself into your private affairs. Allow me to ask your pardon, on my side, for having (most innocently) put you to a painful test.’

‘You have a perfect right,’ I rejoined, ‘to fix the terms on which you feel justified in revealing what you heard at Mr. Candy’s bedside. I understand and respect the delicacy which influences you in this matter. How can I expect to be taken into your confidence if I decline to admit you into mine? You ought to know, and you shall know, why I am interested in discovering what Mr. Candy wanted to say to me. If I turn out to be mistaken in my anticipations, and if you prove unable to help me when you are really aware of what I want, I shall trust to your honour to keep my secret—and something tells me that I shall not trust in vain.’

‘Stop, Mr. Blake. I have a word to say, which must be said before you go any farther.’ I looked at him in astonishment. The grip of some terrible emotion seemed to have seized him, and shaken him to the soul. His gipsy complexion had altered to a livid greyish paleness; his eyes had suddenly become wild and glittering; his voice had dropped to a tone—low, stern, and resolute—which I now heard for the first time. The latent resources in the man, for good or for evil—it was hard, at that moment, to say which—leapt up in him and showed themselves to me, with the suddenness of a flash of light.

‘Before you place any confidence in me,’ he went on, ‘you ought to know, and you must know, under what circumstances I have been received into Mr. Candy’s house. It won’t take long. I don’t profess, sir, to tell my story (as the phrase is) to any man. My story will die with me. All I ask, is to be permitted to tell you, what I have told Mr. Candy. If you are still in the mind, when you have heard that, to say what you have proposed to say, you will command my attention and command my services. Shall we walk on?’

The suppressed misery in his face silenced me. I answered his question by a sign. We walked on.

After advancing a few hundred yards, Ezra Jennings stopped at a gap in the rough stone wall which shut off the moor from the road, at this part of it.

‘Do you mind resting a little, Mr. Blake?’ he asked. ‘I am not what I was—and some things shake me.’

I agreed of course. He led the way through the gap to a patch of turf on the healthy ground, screened by bushes and dwarf trees on the side nearest to the road, and commanding in the opposite direction a grandly desolate view over the broad brown wilderness of the moor. The clouds had gathered, within the last half hour. The light was dull; the distance was dim. The lovely face of Nature met us, soft and still colourless—met us without a smile.