‘Mr. Jennings, do you happen to be acquainted with Robinson Crusoe?’
I answered that I had read Robinson Crusoe when I was a child.
‘Not since then?’ inquired Betteredge.
‘Not since then.’
He fell back a few steps, and looked at me with an expression of compassionate curiosity, tempered by superstitious awe.
‘He has not read Robinson Crusoe since he was a child,’ said Betteredge, speaking to himself—not to me. ‘Let’s try how Robinson Crusoe strikes him now!’
He unlocked a cupboard in a corner, and produced a dirty and dog’s-eared book, which exhaled a strong odour of stale tobacco as he turned over the leaves. Having found a passage of which he was apparently in search, he requested me to join him in the corner; still mysteriously confidential, and still speaking under his breath.
‘In respect to this hocus-pocus of yours, sir, with the laudanum and Mr. Franklin Blake,’ he began. ‘While the workpeople are in the house, my duty as a servant gets the better of my feelings as a man. When the workpeople are gone, my feelings as a man get the better of my duty as a servant. Very good. Last night, Mr. Jennings, it was borne in powerfully on my mind that this new medical enterprise of yours would end badly. If I had yielded to that secret Dictate, I should have put all the furniture away again with my own hand, and have warned the workmen off the premises when they came the next morning.’
‘I am glad to find, from what I have seen up-stairs,’ I said, ‘that you resisted the secret Dictate.’
‘Resisted isn’t the word,’ answered Betteredge. ‘Wrostled is the word. I wrestled, sir, between the silent orders in my bosom pulling me one way, and the written orders in my pocket-book pushing me the other, until (saving your presence) I was in a cold sweat. In that dreadful perturbation of mind and laxity of body, to what remedy did I apply? To the remedy, sir, which has never failed me yet for the last thirty years and more—to This Book!’
He hit the book a sounding blow with his open hand, and struck out of it a stronger smell of stale tobacco than ever.
‘What did I find here,’ pursued Betteredge, ‘at the first page I opened? This awful bit, sir, page one hundred and seventy-eight, as follows:—”Upon these, and many like Reflections, I afterwards made it a certain rule with me, That whenever I found those secret Hints or Pressings of my Mind, to doing, or not doing any Thing that presented; or to going this Way, or that Way, I never failed to obey the secret Dictate.”—As I live by bread, Mr. Jennings, those were the first words that met my eye, exactly at the time when I myself was setting the secret Dictate at defiance! You don’t see anything at all out of the common in that, do you, sir?’
‘I see a coincidence—nothing more.’
‘You don’t feel at all shaken, Mr. Jennings, in respect to this medical enterprise of yours?’
‘Not the least in the world.’
Betteredge stared hard at me, in dead silence. He closed the book with great deliberation; he locked it up again in the cupboard with extraordinary care; he wheeled round, and stared hard at me once more. Then he spoke.
‘Sir,’ he said gravely, ‘there are great allowances to be made for a man who has not read Robison Crusoe since he was a child. I wish you good morning.’
He opened his door with a low bow, and left me at liberty to find my own way into the garden. I met Mr. Blake returning to the house.
‘You needn’t tell me what has happened,’ he said. ‘Betteredge has played his last card: he has made another prophetic discovery in Robinson Crusoe. Have you humoured his favourite delusion? No? You have let him see that you don’t believe in Robinson Crusoe? Mr. Jennings! you have fallen to the lowest possible place in Betteredge’s estimation. Say what you like, and do what you like, for the future. You will find that he won’t waste another word on you now.’
June 21st.—A short entry must suffice in my journal to-day. Mr. Blake has had the worst night that he has passed yet. I have been obliged, greatly against my will, to prescribe for him. Men of his sensitive organisation are fortunately quick in feeling the effect of remedial measures. Otherwise, I should be inclined to fear that he will be totally unfit for the experiment when the time comes to try it.
As for myself, after some little remission of my pains for the last two days I had an attack this morning, of which I shall say nothing but that it has decided me to return to the opium. I shall close this book, and take my full dose—five hundred drops.
June 22nd.—Our prospects look better to-day. Mr. Blake’s nervous suffering is greatly allayed. He slept a little last night. My night, thanks to the opium, was the night of a man who is stunned. I can’t say that I woke this morning; the fitter expression would be, that I recovered my senses.
We drove to the house to see if the refurnishing was done. It will be completed to-morrow—Saturday. As Mr. Blake foretold, Betteredge raised no further obstacles. From first to last, he was ominously polite, and ominously silent.
My medical enterprise (as Betteredge calls it) must now, inevitably, be delayed until Monday next. To-morrow evening the workmen will be late in the house. On the next day, the established Sunday tyranny which is one of the institutions of this free country, so times the trains as to make it impossible to ask anybody to travel to us from London. Until Monday comes, there is nothing to be done but to watch Mr. Blake carefully, and to keep him, if possible, in the same state in which I find him to-day.
In the meanwhile, I have prevailed on him to write to Mr. Bruff, making a point of it that he shall be present as one of the witnesses. I especially choose the lawyer, because he is strongly prejudiced against us. If we convince him, we place our victory beyond the possibility of dispute.
Mr. Blake has also written to Sergeant Cuff; and I have sent a line to Miss Verinder. With these, and with old Betteredge (who is really a person of importance in the family) we shall have witnesses enough for the purpose—without including Mrs. Merridew, if Mrs. Merridew persists in sacrificing herself to the opinion of the world.
June 23rd.—The vengeance of the opium overtook me again last night. No matter; I must go on with it now till Monday is past and gone.
Mr. Blake is not so well again to-day. At two this morning, he confesses that he opened the drawer in which his cigars are put away. He only succeeded in locking it up again by a violent effort. His next proceeding, in case of temptation, was to throw the key out of window. The waiter brought it in this morning, discovered at the bottom of an empty cistern—such is Fate! I have taken possession of the key until Tuesday next.
June 24th.—Mr. Blake and I took a long drive in an open carriage. We both felt beneficially the blessed influence of the soft summer air. I dined with him at the hotel. To my great relief—for I found him in an over-wrought, over-excited state this morning—he had two hours’ sound sleep on the sofa after dinner. If he has another bad night, now—I am not afraid of the consequence.
June 25th, Monday.—The day of the experiment! It is five o’clock in the afternoon. We have just arrived at the house.
The first and foremost question, is the question of Mr. Blake’s health.
So far as it is possible for me to judge, he promises (physically speaking) to be quite as susceptible to the action of the opium to-night as he was at this time last year. He is, this afternoon, in a state of nervous sensitiveness which just stops short of nervous irritation. He changes colour readily; his hand is not quite steady; and he starts at chance noises, and at unexpected appearances of persons and things.
These results have all been produced by deprivation of sleep, which is in its turn the nervous consequence of a sudden cessation in the habit of smoking, after that habit has been carried to an extreme. Here are the same causes at work again, which operated last year; and here are, apparently, the same effects. Will the parallel still hold good, when the final test has been tried? The events of the night must decide.
While I write these lines, Mr. Blake is amusing himself at the billiard table in the inner hall, practising different strokes in the game, as he was accustomed to practise them when he was a guest in this house in June last. I have brought my journal here, partly with a view to occupying the idle hours which I am sure to have on my hands between this and to-morrow morning; partly in the hope that something may happen which it may be worth my while to place on record at the time.