‘Dearest Rachel,’ he said, in the same voice which had thrilled me when he spoke of our prospects and our trousers, ‘the newspapers have told you everything—and they have told it much better than I can.’
‘Godfrey thinks we all make too much of the matter,’ my aunt remarked. ‘He has just been saying that he doesn’t care to speak of it.’
‘Why?’
She put the question with a sudden flash in her eyes, and a sudden look up into Mr. Godfrey’s face. On his side, he looked down at her with an indulgence so injudicious and so ill-deserved, that I really felt called on to interfere.
‘Rachel, darling!’ I remonstrated gently, ‘true greatness and true courage are ever modest.’
‘You are a very good fellow in your way, Godfrey,’ she said—not taking the smallest notice, observe, of me, and still speaking to her cousin as if she was one young man addressing another. ‘But I am quite sure you are not great; I don’t believe you possess any extraordinary courage; and I am firmly persuaded—if you ever had any modesty—that your lady-worshippers relieved you of that virtue a good many years since. You have some private reason for not talking of your adventure in Northumberland Street; and I mean to know it.’
‘My reason is the simplest imaginable, and the most easily acknowledged,’ he answered, still bearing with her. ‘I am tired of the subject.’
‘You are tired of the subject? My dear Godfrey, I am going to make a remark.’
What is it?’
‘You live a great deal too much in the society of women. And you have contracted two very bad habits in consequence. You have learnt to talk nonsense seriously, and you have got into a way of telling fibs for the pleasure of telling them. You can’t go straight with your lady-worshippers. I mean to make you go straight with me. Come, and sit down. I am brimful of downright questions; and I expect you to be brimful of downright answers.’
She actually dragged him across the room to a chair by the window, where the light would fall on his face. I deeply feel being obliged to report such language, and to describe such conduct. But, hemmed in as I am, between Mr. Franklin Blake’s cheque on one side and my own sacred regard for truth on the other, what am I to do? I looked at my aunt. She sat unmoved; apparently in no way disposed to interfere. I had never noticed this kind of torpor in her before. It was, perhaps, the reaction after the trying time she had had in the country. Not a pleasant symptom to remark, be it what it might, at dear Lady Verinder’s age, and with dear Lady Verinder’s autumnal exuberance of figure.
In the meantime, Rachel had settled herself at the window with our amiable and forbearing—our too forbearing—Mr. Godfrey. She began the string of questions with which she had threatened him, taking no more notice of her mother, or of myself, than if we had not been in the room.
‘Have the police done anything, Godfrey?’
‘Nothing whatever.’
‘It is certain, I suppose, that the three men who laid the trap for you were the same three men who afterwards laid the trap for Mr. Luker?’
‘Humanly speaking, my dear Rachel, there can be no doubt of it.’
‘And not a trace of them has been discovered?’
‘Not a trace.’
‘It is thought—is it not?—that these three men are the three Indians who came to our house in the country.’
‘Some people think so.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘My dear Rachel, they blindfolded me before I could see their faces. I know nothing whatever of the matter. How can I offer an opinion on it?’
Even the angelic gentleness of Mr. Godfrey was, you see, beginning to give way at last under the persecution inflicted on him. Whether unbridled curiosity, or ungovernable dread, dictated Miss Verinder’s questions I do not presume to inquire. I only report that, on Mr. Godfrey’s attempting to rise, after giving her the answer just described, she actually took him by the two shoulders, and pushed him back into his chair.—Oh, don’t say this was immodest! don’t even hint that the recklessness of guilty terror could alone account for such conduct as I have described! We must not judge others. My Christian friends, indeed, indeed, indeed, we must not judge others!
She went on with her questions, unabashed. Earnest Biblical students will perhaps be reminded—as I was reminded—of the blinded children of the devil, who went on with their orgies, unabashed, in the time before the Flood.
‘I want to know something about Mr. Luker, Godfrey.’
‘I am again unfortunate, Rachel. No man knows less of Mr. Luker than I do.’
‘You never saw him before you and he met accidentally at the bank?’
‘Never.’
‘You have seen him since?’
‘Yes. We have been examined together, as well as separately, to assist the police.’
‘Mr. Luker was robbed of a receipt which he had got from his banker’s—was he not? What was the receipt for?’
‘For a valuable gem which he had placed in the safe keeping of the bank.’
‘That’s what the newspapers say. It may be enough for the general reader; but it is not enough for me. The banker’s receipt must have mentioned what the gem was?’
‘The banker’s receipt, Rachel—as I have heard it described—mentioned nothing of the kind. A valuable gem, belonging to Mr. Luker; deposited by Mr. Luker; sealed with Mr. Luker’s seal; and only to be given up on Mr. Luker’s personal application. That was the form, and that is all I know about it.’
She waited a moment, after he had said that. She looked at her mother, and sighed. She looked back again at Mr. Godfrey, and went on.
‘Some of our private affairs, at home,’ she said, ‘seem to have got into the newspapers?’
‘I grieve to say, it is so.’
‘And some idle people, perfect strangers to us, are trying to trace a connection between what happened at our house in Yorkshire and what has happened since, here in London?’
‘The public curiosity, in certain quarters, is, I fear, taking that turn.’
‘The people who say that the three unknown men who ill-used you and Mr. Luker are the three Indians, also say that the valuable gem—’
There she stopped. She had become gradually, within the last few moments, whiter and whiter in the face. The extraordinary blackness of her hair made this paleness, by contrast, so ghastly to look at, that we all thought she would faint, at the moment when she checked herself in the middle of her question. Dear Mr. Godfrey made a second attempt to leave his chair. My aunt entreated her to say no more. I followed my aunt with a modest medicinal peace-offering, in the shape of a bottle of salts. We none of us produced the slightest effect on her. ‘Godfrey, stay where you are. Mamma, there is not the least reason to be alarmed about me. Clack, you’re dying to hear the end of it—I won’t faint, expressly to oblige you.’
Those were the exact words she used—taken down in my diary the moment I got home. But, oh, don’t let us judge! My Christian friends, don’t let us judge!
She turned once more to Mr. Godfrey. With an obstinacy dreadful to see, she went back again to the place where she had checked herself, and completed her question in these words:
‘I spoke to you, a minute since, about what people were saying in certain quarters. Tell me plainly, Godfrey, do they any of them say that Mr. Luker’s valuable gem is—The Moonstone?’
As the name of the Indian Diamond passed her lips, I saw a change come over my admirable friend. His complexion deepened. He lost the genial suavity of manner which is one of his greatest charms. A noble indignation inspired his reply.
‘They do say it,’ he answered. ‘There are people who don’t hesitate to accuse Mr. Luker of telling a falsehood to serve some private interests of his own. He has over and over again solemnly declared that, until this scandal assailed him, he had never even heard of The Moonstone. And these vile people reply, without a shadow of proof to justify them, He has his reasons for concealment; we decline to believe him on his oath. Shameful! shameful!’
Rachel looked at him very strangely—I can’t well describe how—while he was speaking. When he had done, she said,
‘Considering that Mr. Luker is only a chance acquaintance of yours, you take up his cause, Godfrey, rather warmly.’
My gifted friend made her one of the most truly evangelical answers I ever heard in my life.
‘I hope, Rachel, I take up the cause of all oppressed people rather warmly,’ he said.
The tone in which those words were spoken might have melted a stone. But, oh dear, what is the hardness of stone? Nothing, compared to the hardness of the unregenerate human heart! She sneered. I blush to record it—she sneered at him to his face.