The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

The same fatality which had made me just one day too late in calling on Sergeant Cuff, made me again one day too late in calling on Godfrey. He had left London, on the previous morning, by the tidal train, for Dover. He was to cross to Ostend; and his servant believed he was going on to Brussels. The time of his return was rather uncertain; but I might be sure he would be away at least three months.

I went back to my lodgings a little depressed in spirits. Three of the guests at the birthday dinner—and those three all exceptionally intelligent people—were out of my reach, at the very time when it was most important to be able to communicate with them. My last hopes now rested on Betteredge, and on the friends of the late Lady Verinder whom I might still find living in the neighbourhood of Rachel’s country house.

On this occasion, I travelled straight to Frizinghall—the town being now the central point in my field of inquiry. I arrived too late in the evening to be able to communicate with Betteredge. The next morning, I sent a messenger with a letter, requesting him to join me at the hotel, at his earliest convenience.

Having taken the precaution—partly to save time, partly to accommodate Betteredge—of sending my messenger in a fly, I had a reasonable prospect, if no delays occurred, of seeing the old man within less than two hours from the time when I had sent for him. During this interval, I arranged to employ myself in opening my contemplated inquiry, among the guests present at the birthday dinner who were personally known to me, and who were easily within my reach. These were my relatives, the Ablewhites, and Mr. Candy. The doctor had expressed a special wish to see me, and the doctor lived in the next street. So to Mr. Candy I went first.

After what Betteredge had told me, I naturally anticipated finding traces in the doctor’s face of the severe illness from which he had suffered. But I was utterly unprepared for such a change as I saw in him when he entered the room and shook hands with me. His eyes were dim; his hair had turned completely grey; his face was wizen; his figure had shrunk. I looked at the once lively, rattlepated, humorous little doctor—associated in my remembrance with the perpetration of incorrigible social indiscretions and innumerable boyish jokes—and I saw nothing left of his former self, but the old tendency to vulgar smartness in his dress. The man was a wreck; but his clothes and his jewellery—in cruel mockery of the change in him—were as gay and as gaudy as ever.

‘I have often thought of you, Mr. Blake,’ he said; ‘and I am heartily glad to see you again at last. If there is anything I can do for you, pray command my services, sir—pray command my services!’

He said those few commonplace words with needless hurry and eagerness, and with a curiosity to know what had brought me to Yorkshire, which he was perfectly—I might say childishly—incapable of concealing from notice.

With the object that I had in view, I had of course foreseen the necessity of entering into some sort of personal explanation, before I could hope to interest people, mostly strangers to me, in doing their best to assist my inquiry. On the journey to Frizinghall I had arranged what my explanation was to be—and I seized the opportunity now offered to me of trying the effect of it on Mr. Candy.

‘I was in Yorkshire, the other day, and I am in Yorkshire again now, on rather a romantic errand,’ I said. ‘It is a matter, Mr. Candy, in which the late Lady Verinder’s friends all took some interest. You remember the mysterious loss of the Indian Diamond, now nearly a year since? Circumstances have lately happened which lead to the hope that it may yet be found—and I am interesting myself, as one of the family, in recovering it. Among the obstacles in my way, there is the necessity of collecting again all the evidence which was discovered at the time, and more if possible. There are peculiarities in this case which make it desirable to revive my recollection of everything that happened in the house, on the evening of Miss Verinder’s birthday. And I venture to appeal to her late mother’s friends who were present on that occasion, to lend me the assistance of their memories—’

I had got as far as that in rehearsing my explanatory phrases, when I was suddenly checked by seeing plainly in Mr. Candy’s face that my experiment on him was a total failure.

The little doctor sat restlessly picking at the points of his fingers all the time I was speaking. His dim watery eyes were fixed on my face with an expression of vacant and wistful inquiry very painful to see. What he was thinking of, it was impossible to divine. The one thing clearly visible was that I had failed, after the first two or three words, in fixing his attention. The only chance of recalling him to himself appeared to lie in changing the subject. I tried a new topic immediately.

‘So much,’ I said, gaily, ‘for what brings me to Frizinghall!, Now, Mr. Candy, it’s your turn. You sent me a message by Gabriel Betteredge—’

He left off picking at his fingers, and suddenly brightened up.

‘Yes! yes! yes!’ he exclaimed eagerly. ‘That’s it! I sent you a message!’

‘And Betteredge duly communicated it by letter,’ I went on. ‘You had something to say to me, the next time I was in your neighbourhood. Well, Mr. Candy, here I am!’

‘Here you are!’ echoed the doctor. ‘And Betteredge was quite right. I had something to say to you. That was my message. Betteredge is a wonderful man. What a memory! At his age, what a memory!’

He dropped back into silence, and began picking at his fingers again. Recollecting what I had heard from Betteredge about the effect of the fever on his memory, I went on with the conversation, in the hope that I might help him at starting.

‘It’s a long time since we met,’ I said. ‘We last saw each other at the last birthday dinner my poor aunt was ever to give.’

‘That’s it!’ cried Mr. Candy. ‘The birthday dinner!’ He started impulsively to his feet, and looked at me. A deep flush suddenly overspread his faded face, and he abruptly sat down again, as if conscious of having betrayed a weakness which he would fain have concealed. It was plain, pitiably plain, that he was aware of his own defect of memory, and that he was bent on hiding it from the observation of his friends.

Thus far he had appealed to my compassion only. But the words he had just said—few as they were—roused my curiosity instantly to the highest pitch. The birthday dinner had already become the one event in the past, at which I looked back with strangely-mixed feelings of hope and distrust. And here was the birthday dinner unmistakably proclaiming itself as the subject on which Mr. Candy had something important to say to me!

I attempted to help him out once more. But, this time, my own interests were at the bottom of my compassionate motive, and they hurried me on a little too abruptly, to the end I had in view.

‘It’s nearly a year now,’ I said, ‘since we sat at that pleasant table. Have you made any memorandum—in your diary, or otherwise—of what you wanted to say to me?’

Mr. Candy understood the suggestion, and showed me that he understood it, as an insult.

‘I require no memorandums, Mr. Blake,’ he said, stiffly enough. ‘I am not such a very old man, yet—and my memory (thank God) is to be thoroughly depended on!’

It is needless to say that I declined to understand that he was offended with me.

‘I wish I could say the same of my memory,’ I answered. ‘When I try to think of matters that are a year old, I seldom find my remembrance as vivid as I could wish it to be. Take the dinner at Lady Verinder’s, for instance—’

Mr. Candy brightened up again, the moment the allusion passed my lips.

‘Ah! the dinner, the dinner at Lady Verinder’s!’ he exclaimed, more eagerly than ever. ‘I have got something to say to you about that.’

His eyes looked at me again with the painful expression of inquiry, so wistful, so vacant, so miserably helpless to see. He was evidently trying hard, and trying in vain, to recover the lost recollection. ‘It was a very pleasant dinner,’ he burst out suddenly, with an air of saying exactly what he wanted to say. ‘A very pleasant dinner, Mr. Blake, wasn’t it?’ He nodded and smiled, and appeared to think, poor fellow, that he had succeeded in concealing the total failure of his memory, by a well-timed exertion of his own presence of mind.