Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you donât realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (top 5 books to read .txt) đ
- Author: Wilkie Collins
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Some men in this mess would have tried to set themselves right with the world. But to give in, even when he was wrong, and had all society against him, was not the way of the Honourable John. He had kept the Diamond, in flat defiance of assassination, in India. He kept the Diamond, in flat defiance of public opinion, in England. There you have the portrait of the man before you, as in a picture: a character that braved everything; and a face, handsome as it was, that looked possessed by the devil.
We heard different rumours about him from time to time. Sometimes they said he was given up to smoking opium and collecting old books; sometimes he was reported to be trying strange things in chemistry; sometimes he was seen carousing and amusing himself among the lowest people in the lowest slums of London. Anyhow, a solitary, vicious, underground life was the life the Colonel led. Once, and once only, after his return to England, I myself saw him, face to face.
About two years before the time of which I am now writing, and about a year and a half before the time of his death, the Colonel came unexpectedly to my ladyâs house in London. It was the night of Miss Rachelâs birthday, the twenty-first of June; and there was a party in honour of it, as usual. I received a message from the footman to say that a gentleman wanted to see me. Going up into the hall, there I found the Colonel, wasted, and worn, and old, and shabby, and as wild and as wicked as ever.
âGo up to my sister,â says he; âand say that I have called to wish my niece many happy returns of the day.â
He had made attempts by letter, more than once already, to be reconciled with my lady, for no other purpose, I am firmly persuaded, than to annoy her. But this was the first time he had actually come to the house. I had it on the tip of my tongue to say that my mistress had a party that night. But the devilish look of him daunted me. I went upstairs with his message, and left him, by his own desire, waiting in the hall. The servants stood staring at him, at a distance, as if he was a walking engine of destruction, loaded with powder and shot, and likely to go off among them at a momentâs notice.
My lady had a dashâno moreâof the family temper. âTell Colonel Herncastle,â she said, when I gave her her brotherâs message, âthat Miss Verinder is engaged, and that I decline to see him.â I tried to plead for a civiller answer than that; knowing the Colonelâs constitutional superiority to the restraints which govern gentlemen in general. Quite useless! The family temper flashed out at me directly. âWhen I want your advice,â says my lady, âyou know that I always ask for it. I donât ask for it now.â I went downstairs with the message, of which I took the liberty of presenting a new and amended edition of my own contriving, as follows: âMy lady and Miss Rachel regret that they are engaged, Colonel; and beg to be excused having the honour of seeing you.â
I expected him to break out, even at that polite way of putting it. To my surprise he did nothing of the sort; he alarmed me by taking the thing with an unnatural quiet. His eyes, of a glittering bright grey, just settled on me for a moment; and he laughed, not out of himself, like other people, but into himself, in a soft, chuckling, horridly mischievous way. âThank you, Betteredge,â he said. âI shall remember my nieceâs birthday.â With that, he turned on his heel, and walked out of the house.
The next birthday came round, and we heard he was ill in bed. Six months afterwardsâthat is to say, six months before the time I am now writing ofâthere came a letter from a highly respectable clergyman to my lady. It communicated two wonderful things in the way of family news. First, that the Colonel had forgiven his sister on his death-bed. Second, that he had forgiven everybody else, and had made a most edifying end. I have myself (in spite of the bishops and the clergy) an unfeigned respect for the Church; but I am firmly persuaded, at the same time, that the devil remained in undisturbed possession of the Honourable John, and that the last abominable act in the life of that abominable man was (saving your presence) to take the clergyman in!
This was the sum-total of what I had to tell Mr. Franklin. I remarked that he listened more and more eagerly the longer I went on. Also, that the story of the Colonel being sent away from his sisterâs door, on the occasion of his nieceâs birthday, seemed to strike Mr. Franklin like a shot that had hit the mark. Though he didnât acknowledge it, I saw that I had made him uneasy, plainly enough, in his face.
âYou have said your say, Betteredge,â he remarked. âItâs my turn now. Before, however, I tell you what discoveries I have made in London, and how I came to be mixed up in this matter of the Diamond, I want to know one thing. You look, my old friend, as if you didnât quite understand the object to be answered by this consultation of ours. Do your looks belie you?â
âNo, sir,â I said. âMy looks, on this occasion at any rate, tell the truth.â
âIn that case,â says Mr. Franklin, âsuppose I put you up to my point of view, before we go any further. I see three very serious questions involved in the Colonelâs birthday-gift to my cousin Rachel. Follow me carefully, Betteredge; and count me off on your fingers, if it will help you,â says Mr. Franklin, with a certain pleasure in showing how clear-headed he could be, which reminded me wonderfully of old times when he was a boy. âQuestion the first: Was the Colonelâs Diamond the object of a conspiracy in India? Question the second: Has the conspiracy followed the Colonelâs Diamond to England? Question the third: Did the Colonel know the conspiracy followed the Diamond; and has he purposely left a legacy of trouble and danger to his sister, through the innocent medium of his sisterâs child? That is what I am driving at, Betteredge. Donât let me frighten you.â
It was all very well to say that, but he had frightened me.
If he was right, here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by a devilish Indian Diamondâbringing after it a conspiracy of living rogues, set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man. There was our situation as revealed to me in Mr. Franklinâs last words! Who ever heard the like of itâin the nineteenth century, mind; in an age of progress, and in a country which rejoices in the blessings of the British constitution? Nobody ever heard the like of it, and, consequently, nobody can be expected to believe it. I shall go on with my story, however, in spite of that.
When you get a sudden alarm, of the sort that I had got now, nine times out of ten the place you feel it in is your stomach. When you feel it in your stomach, your attention wanders, and you begin to fidget. I fidgeted silently in my place on the sand. Mr. Franklin noticed me, contending with a perturbed stomach or mindâwhich you please; they mean the same thingâand, checking himself just as he was starting with his part of the story, said to me sharply, âWhat do you want?â
What did I want? I didnât tell him; but Iâll tell you, in confidence. I wanted a whiff of my pipe, and a turn at Robinson Crusoe.
Keeping my private sentiments to myself, I respectfully requested Mr. Franklin to go on. Mr. Franklin replied, âDonât fidget, Betteredge,â and went on.
Our young gentlemanâs first words informed me that his discoveries, concerning the wicked Colonel and the Diamond, had begun with a visit which he had paid (before he came to us) to the family lawyer, at Hampstead. A chance word dropped by Mr. Franklin, when the two were alone, one day, after dinner, revealed that he had been charged by his father with a birthday present to be taken to Miss Rachel. One thing led to another; and it ended in the lawyer mentioning what the present really was, and how the friendly connexion between the late Colonel and Mr. Blake, senior, had taken its rise. The facts here are really so extraordinary, that I doubt if I can trust my own language to do justice to them. I prefer trying to report Mr. Franklinâs discoveries, as nearly as may be, in Mr. Franklinâs own words.
âYou remember the time, Betteredge,â he said, âwhen my father was trying to prove his title to that unlucky Dukedom? Well! that was also the time when my uncle Herncastle returned from India. My father discovered that his brother-in-law was in possession of certain papers which were likely to be of service to him in his lawsuit. He called on the Colonel, on pretence of welcoming him back to England. The Colonel was not to be deluded in that way. âYou want something,â he said, âor you would never have compromised your reputation by calling on me.â My father saw that the one chance for him was to show his hand; he admitted, at once, that he wanted the papers. The Colonel asked for a day to consider his answer. His answer came in the shape of a most extraordinary letter, which my friend the lawyer showed me. The Colonel began by saying that he wanted something of my father, and that he begged to propose an exchange of friendly services between them. The fortune of war (that was the expression he used) had placed him in possession of one of the largest Diamonds in the world; and he had reason to believe that neither he nor his precious jewel was safe in any house, in any quarter of the globe, which they occupied together. Under these alarming circumstances, he had determined to place his Diamond in the keeping of another person. That person was not expected to run any risk. He might deposit the precious stone in any place especially guarded and set apartâlike a bankerâs or jewellerâs strongroomâfor the safe custody of valuables of high price. His main personal responsibility in the matter was to be of the passive kind. He was to undertake either by himself, or by a trustworthy representativeâto receive at a prearranged address, on certain prearranged days in every year, a note from the Colonel, simply stating the fact that he was a living man at that date. In the event of the date passing over without the note being received, the Colonelâs silence might be taken as a sure token of the Colonelâs death by murder. In that case, and in no other, certain sealed instructions relating to the disposal of the Diamond, and deposited with it, were to be opened, and followed implicitly. If my father chose to accept this strange charge, the Colonelâs papers were at his disposal in return. That was the letter.â
âWhat did your father do, sir?â I asked.
âDo?â says Mr. Franklin. âIâll tell you what he did. He brought the invaluable faculty, called common sense, to bear on the Colonelâs letter. The whole thing, he declared, was simply absurd. Somewhere in his Indian wanderings, the Colonel had picked up with some wretched crystal which he took for a diamond. As for the danger of his being murdered, and the precautions devised to preserve his life and his piece of crystal, this was the nineteenth century, and any man in his senses had only to apply to the police. The Colonel had been a notorious opium-eater for years past; and, if the only way of getting at the valuable papers he possessed was by accepting a matter of opium as a matter of fact, my father was quite willing to take the ridiculous responsibility imposed on himâall the more readily that it involved no trouble to himself. The Diamond and the sealed instructions went into his bankerâs strongroom, and the Colonelâs letters, periodically reporting him a living man, were received and opened by our family lawyer, Mr. Bruff, as my fatherâs representative. No sensible person, in a similar position, could have viewed the matter in any other way. Nothing in this world, Betteredge, is probable unless it appeals to our own trumpery experience; and we only believe in a romance when we see it in a newspaper.â
It was plain to me from
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