Mr. Bruff had his parting word of mockery for me, before he too hurried out, in his turn.
‘You had better not have explained yourself, Miss Clack,’ he said, and bowed, and left the room.
The person with the cap-ribbons followed.
‘It’s easy to see who has set them all by the ears together,’ she said. ‘I’m only a poor servant—but I declare I’m ashamed of you!’ She too went out, and banged the door after her.
I was left alone in the room. Reviled by them all, deserted by them all, I was left alone in the room.
Is there more to be added to this plain statement of facts—to this touching picture of a Christian persecuted by the world? No! my diary reminds me that one more of the many chequered chapters in my life ends here. From that day forth, I never saw Rachel Verinder again. She had my forgiveness at the time when she insulted me. She has had my prayerful good wishes ever since. And when I die—to complete the return on my part of good for evil—she will have the Life, Letters, and Labours of Miss Jane Ann Stamper left her as a legacy by my will.
1 Note. Added by Franklin Blake.—Miss Clack may make her mind quite easy on this point. Nothing will be added, altered, or removed, in her manuscript, or in any of the other manuscripts which pass through my hands. Whatever opinions any of the writers may express, whatever peculiarities of treatment may mark, and perhaps, in a literary sense, disfigure, the narratives which I am now collecting, not a line will be tampered with anywhere, from first to last. As genuine documents they are sent to me—and as genuine documents I shall preserve them; endorsed by the attestations of witnesses who can speak to the facts. It only remains to be added, that ‘the person chiefly concerned’ in Miss Clack’s narrative, is happy enough at the present moment, not only to brave the smartest exercise of Miss Clack’s pen, but even to recognise its unquestionable value as an instrument for the exhibition of Miss Clack’s character.
2 See Betteredge’s Narrative, chapter viii.
Second Narrative
Contributed by Mathew Bruff, solicitor, of Gray’s Inn Square.
Chapter I
MY 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 begin 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.