The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (little readers .TXT) đ
- Author: Wilkie Collins
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âWhy do you ask?â said my lady.
âThe last time I saw her,â answered the Sergeant, âshe was in prison for theft.â
After that, there was no help for it, but to tell him the truth. My mistress dwelt strongly on Rosannaâs good conduct in her service, and on the high opinion entertained of her by the matron at the Reformatory. âYou donât suspect her, I hope?â my lady added, in conclusion, very earnestly.
âI have already told your ladyship that I donât suspect any person in the house of thievingâup to the present time.â
After that answer, my lady rose to go upstairs, and ask for Miss Rachelâs keys. The Sergeant was beforehand with me in opening the door for her. He made a very low bow. My lady shuddered as she passed him.
We waited, and waited, and no keys appeared. Sergeant Cuff made no remark to me. He turned his melancholy face to the window; he put his lanky hands into his pockets; and he whistled âThe Last Rose of Summerâ softly to himself.
At last, Samuel came in, not with the keys, but with a morsel of paper for me. I got at my spectacles, with some fumbling and difficulty, feeling the Sergeantâs dismal eyes fixed on me all the time. There were two or three lines on the paper, written in pencil by my lady. They informed me that Miss Rachel flatly refused to have her wardrobe examined. Asked for her reasons, she had burst out crying. Asked again, she had said: âI wonât, because I wonât. I must yield to force if you use it, but I will yield to nothing else.â I understood my ladyâs disinclination to face Sergeant Cuff with such an answer from her daughter as that. If I had not been too old for the amiable weaknesses of youth, I believe I should have blushed at the notion of facing him myself.
âAny news of Miss Verinderâs keys?â asked the Sergeant.
âMy young lady refuses to have her wardrobe examined.â
âAh!â said the Sergeant.
His voice was not quite in such a perfect state of discipline as his face. When he said âAh!â he said it in the tone of a man who had heard something which he expected to hear. He half angered and half frightened meâwhy, I couldnât tell, but he did it.
âMust the search be given up?â I asked.
âYes,â said the Sergeant, âthe search must be given up, because your young lady refuses to submit to it like the rest. We must examine all the wardrobes in the house or none. Send Mr. Ablewhiteâs portmanteau to London by the next train, and return the washing-book, with my compliments and thanks, to the young woman who brought it in.â
He laid the washing-book on the table, and taking out his penknife, began to trim his nails.
âYou donât seem to be much disappointed,â I said.
âNo,â said Sergeant Cuff; âI am not much disappointed.â
I tried to make him explain himself.
âWhy should Miss Rachel put an obstacle in your way?â I inquired. âIsnât it her interest to help you?â
âWait a little, Mr. Betteredgeâwait a little.â
Cleverer heads than mine might have seen his drift. Or a person less fond of Miss Rachel than I was, might have seen his drift. My ladyâs horror of him might (as I have since thought) have meant that she saw his drift (as the scripture says) âin a glass darkly.â I didnât see it yetâthatâs all I know.
âWhatâs to be done next?â I asked.
Sergeant Cuff finished the nail on which he was then at work, looked at it for a moment with a melancholy interest, and put up his penknife.
âCome out into the garden,â he said, âand letâs have a look at the roses.â
The nearest way to the garden, on going out of my ladyâs sitting-room, was by the shrubbery path, which you already know of. For the sake of your better understanding of what is now to come, I may add to this, that the shrubbery path was Mr. Franklinâs favourite walk. When he was out in the grounds, and when we failed to find him anywhere else, we generally found him here.
I am afraid I must own that I am rather an obstinate old man. The more firmly Sergeant Cuff kept his thoughts shut up from me, the more firmly I persisted in trying to look in at them. As we turned into the shrubbery path, I attempted to circumvent him in another way.
âAs things are now,â I said, âif I was in your place, I should be at my witsâ end.â
âIf you were in my place,â answered the Sergeant, âyou would have formed an opinionâand, as things are now, any doubt you might previously have felt about your own conclusions would be completely set at rest. Never mind for the present what those conclusions are, Mr. Betteredge. I havenât brought you out here to draw me like a badger; I have brought you out here to ask for some information. You might have given it to me no doubt, in the house, instead of out of it. But doors and listeners have a knack of getting together; and, in my line of life, we cultivate a healthy taste for the open air.â
Who was to circumvent this man? I gave inâand waited as patiently as I could to hear what was coming next.
âWe wonât enter into your young ladyâs motives,â the Sergeant went on; âwe will only say itâs a pity she declines to assist me, because, by so doing, she makes this investigation more difficult than it might otherwise have been. We must now try to solve the mystery of the smear on the doorâwhich, you may take my word for it, means the mystery of the Diamond alsoâin some other way. I have decided to see the servants, and to search their thoughts and actions, Mr. Betteredge, instead of searching their wardrobes. Before I begin, however, I want to ask you a question or two. You are an observant manâdid you notice anything strange in any of the servants (making due allowance, of course, for fright and fluster), after the loss of the Diamond was found out? Any particular quarrel among them? Anyone of them not in his or her usual spirits? Unexpectedly out of temper, for instance? or unexpectedly taken ill?â
I had just time to think of Rosanna Spearmanâs sudden illness at yesterdayâs dinnerâbut not time to make any answerâwhen I saw Sergeant Cuffâs eyes suddenly turn aside towards the shrubbery; and I heard him say softly to himself, âHullo!â
âWhatâs the matter?â I asked.
âA touch of the rheumatics in my back,â said the Sergeant, in a loud voice, as if he wanted some third person to hear us. âWe shall have a change in the weather before long.â
A few steps further brought us to the corner of the house. Turning off sharp to the right, we entered on the terrace, and went down, by the steps in the middle, into the garden below. Sergeant Cuff stopped there, in the open space, where we could see round us on every side.
âAbout that young person, Rosanna Spearman?â he said. âIt isnât very likely, with her personal appearance, that she has got a lover. But, for the girlâs own sake, I must ask you at once whether she has provided herself with a sweetheart, poor wretch, like the rest of them?â
What on earth did he mean, under present circumstances, by putting such a question to me as that? I stared at him, instead of answering him.
âI saw Rosanna Spearman hiding in the shrubbery as we went by,â said the Sergeant.
âWhen you said âHulloâ?â
âYesâwhen I said âHullo!â If thereâs a sweetheart in the case, the hiding doesnât much matter. If there isnâtâas things are in this houseâthe hiding is a highly suspicious circumstance, and it will be my painful duty to act on it accordingly.â
What, in Godâs name, was I to say to him? I knew the shrubbery was Mr. Franklinâs favourite walk; I knew he would most likely turn that way when he came back from the station; I knew that Penelope had over and over again caught her fellow-servant hanging about there, and had always declared to me that Rosannaâs object was to attract Mr. Franklinâs attention. If my daughter was right, she might well have been lying in wait for Mr. Franklinâs return when the Sergeant noticed her. I was put between the two difficulties of mentioning Penelopeâs fanciful notion as if it was mine, or of leaving an unfortunate creature to suffer the consequences, the very serious consequences, of exciting the suspicion of Sergeant Cuff. Out of pure pity for the girlâon my soul and my character, out of pure pity for the girlâI gave the Sergeant the necessary explanations, and told him that Rosanna had been mad enough to set her heart on Mr. Franklin Blake.
Sergeant Cuff never laughed. On the few occasions when anything amused him, he curled up a little at the corners of the lips, nothing more. He curled up now.
âHadnât you better say sheâs mad enough to be an ugly girl and only a servant?â he asked. âThe falling in love with a gentleman of Mr. Franklin Blakeâs manners and appearance doesnât seem to me to be the maddest part of her conduct by any means. However, Iâm glad the thing is cleared up: it relieves oneâs mind to have things cleared up. Yes, Iâll keep it a secret, Mr. Betteredge. I like to be tender to human infirmityâthough I donât get many chances of exercising that virtue in my line of life. You think Mr. Franklin Blake hasnât got a suspicion of the girlâs fancy for him? Ah! he would have found it out fast enough if she had been nice-looking. The ugly women have a bad time of it in this world; letâs hope it will be made up to them in another. You have got a nice garden here, and a well-kept lawn. See for yourself how much better the flowers look with grass about them instead of gravel. No, thank you. I wonât take a rose. It goes to my heart to break them off the stem. Just as it goes to your heart, you know, when thereâs something wrong in the servantsâ hall. Did you notice anything you couldnât account for in any of the servants when the loss of the Diamond was first found out?â
I had got on very fairly well with Sergeant Cuff so far. But the slyness with which he slipped in that last question put me on my guard. In plain English, I didnât at all relish the notion of helping his inquiries, when those inquiries took him (in the capacity of snake in the grass) among my fellow-servants.
âI noticed nothing,â I said, âexcept that we all lost our heads together, myself included.â
âOh,â says the Sergeant, âthatâs all you have to tell me, is it?â
I answered, with (as I flattered myself) an unmoved countenance, âThat is all.â
Sergeant Cuffâs dismal eyes looked me hard in the face.
âMr. Betteredge,â he said, âhave you any objection to oblige me by shaking hands? I have taken an extraordinary liking to you.â
(Why he should have chosen the exact moment when I was deceiving him to give me that proof of his good opinion, is beyond all comprehension! I felt a little proudâI really did feel a little proud of having been one too many at last for the celebrated Cuff!)
We went back to the house; the Sergeant requesting that I would give him a room to himself, and then send in the servants (the indoor servants only), one after another, in the order of their rank, from first to last.
I showed Sergeant Cuff into my own room, and then called the servants together in the hall. Rosanna Spearman appeared among them, much as usual. She was as quick in her way as the Sergeant in his, and I suspect she had heard what
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