Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (661 page)

I had expected him, naturally enough under the circumstances, to overwhelm me with questions. But no — the hospitable impulse was the uppermost impulse in the old servant’s mind, when a member of the family appeared (no matter how!) as a visitor at the house.

“Walk in, Mr. Franklin,” he said, opening the door behind him, with his quaint old-fashioned bow. “I’ll ask what brings you here afterwards — I must make you comfortable first. There have been sad changes, since you went away. The house is shut up, and the servants are gone. Never mind that! I’ll cook your dinner; and the gardener’s wife will make your bed — and if there’s a bottle of our famous Latour claret left in the cellar, down your throat, Mr. Franklin, that bottle shall go. I bid you welcome, sir! I bid you heartily welcome!” said the poor old fellow, fighting manfully against the gloom of the deserted house, and receiving me with the sociable and courteous attention of the bygone time.

It vexed me to disappoint him. But the house was Rachel’s house, now. Could I eat in it, or sleep in it, after what had happened in London? The commonest sense of self-respect forbade me — properly forbade me — to cross the threshold.

I took Betteredge by the arm, and led him out into the garden. There was no help for it. I was obliged to tell him the truth. Between his attachment to Rachel, and his attachment to me, he was sorely puzzled and distressed at the turn things had taken. His opinion, when he expressed it, was given in his usual downright manner, and was agreeably redolent of the most positive philosophy I know — the philosophy of the Betteredge school.

“Miss Rachel has her faults — I’ve never denied it,” he began. “And riding the high horse, now and then, is one of them. She has been trying to ride over you — and you have put up with it. Lord, Mr. Franklin, don’t you know women by this time better than that? You have heard me talk of the late Mrs. Betteredge?”

I had heard him talk of the late Mrs. Betteredge pretty often — invariably producing her as his one undeniable example of the inbred frailty and perversity of the other sex. In that capacity he exhibited her now.

“Very well, Mr. Franklin. Now listen to me. Different women have different ways of riding the high horse. The late Mrs. Betteredge took her exercise on that favourite female animal whenever I happened to deny her anything that she had set her heart on. So sure as I came home from my work on these occasions, so sure was my wife to call to me up the kitchen stairs, and to say that, after my brutal treatment of her, she hadn’t the heart to cook me my dinner. I put up with it for some time — just as you are putting up with it now from Miss Rachel. At last my patience wore out. I went downstairs, and I took Mrs. Betteredge — affectionately, you understand — up in my arms, and carried her, holus-bolus, into the best parlour where she received her company. I said ‘That’s the right place for you, my dear,’ and so went back to the kitchen. I locked myself in, and took off my coat, and turned up my shirt-sleeves, and cooked my own dinner. When it was done, I served it up in my best manner, and enjoyed it most heartily. I had my pipe and my drop of grog afterwards; and then I cleared the table, and washed the crockery, and cleaned the knives and forks, and put the things away, and swept up the hearth. When things were as bright and clean again, as bright and clean could be, I opened the door and let Mrs. Betteredge in. ‘I’ve had my dinner, my dear,’ I said; ‘and I hope you will find that I have left the kitchen all that your fondest wishes can desire.’ For the rest of that woman’s life, Mr. Franklin, I never had to cook my dinner again! Moral: You have put up with Miss Rachel in London; don’t put up with her in Yorkshire. Come back to the house!”

Quite unanswerable! I could only assure my good friend that even HIS powers of persuasion were, in this case, thrown away on me.

“It’s a lovely evening,” I said. “I shall walk to Frizinghall, and stay at the hotel, and you must come to-morrow morning and breakfast with me. I have something to say to you.”

Betteredge shook his head gravely.

“I am heartily sorry for this,” he said. “I had hoped, Mr. Franklin, to hear that things were all smooth and pleasant again between you and Miss Rachel. If you must have your own way, sir,” he continued, after a moment’s reflection, “there is no need to go to Frizinghall to-night for a bed. It’s to be had nearer than that. There’s Hotherstone’s Farm, barely two miles from here. You can hardly object to THAT on Miss Rachel’s account,” the old man added slily. “Hotherstone lives, Mr. Franklin, on his own freehold.”

I remembered the place the moment Betteredge mentioned it. The farm-house stood in a sheltered inland valley, on the banks of the prettiest stream in that part of Yorkshire: and the farmer had a spare bedroom and parlour, which he was accustomed to let to artists, anglers, and tourists in general. A more agreeable place of abode, during my stay in the neighbourhood, I could not have wished to find.

“Are the rooms to let?” I inquired.

“Mrs. Hotherstone herself, sir, asked for my good word to recommend the rooms, yesterday.”

“I’ll take them, Betteredge, with the greatest pleasure.”

We went back to the yard, in which I had left my travelling-bag. After putting a stick through the handle, and swinging the bag over his shoulder, Betteredge appeared to relapse into the bewilderment which my sudden appearance had caused, when I surprised him in the beehive chair. He looked incredulously at the house, and then he wheeled about, and looked more incredulously still at me.

“I’ve lived a goodish long time in the world,” said this best and dearest of all old servants — ”but the like of this, I never did expect to see. There stands the house, and here stands Mr. Franklin Blake — and, Damme, if one of them isn’t turning his back on the other, and going to sleep in a lodging!”

He led the way out, wagging his head and growling ominously. “There’s only one more miracle that CAN happen,” he said to me, over his shoulder. “The next thing you’ll do, Mr. Franklin, will be to pay me back that seven-and-sixpence you borrowed of me when you were a boy.”

This stroke of sarcasm put him in a better humour with himself and with me. We left the house, and passed through the lodge gates. Once clear of the grounds, the duties of hospitality (in Betteredge’s code of morals) ceased, and the privileges of curiosity began.

He dropped back, so as to let me get on a level with him. “Fine evening for a walk, Mr. Franklin,” he said, as if we had just accidentally encountered each other at that moment. “Supposing you had gone to the hotel at Frizinghall, sir?”

“Yes?”

“I should have had the honour of breakfasting with you, to-morrow morning.”

“Come and breakfast with me at Hotherstone’s Farm, instead.”

“Much obliged to you for your kindness, Mr. Franklin. But it wasn’t exactly breakfast that I was driving at. I think you mentioned that you had something to say to me? If it’s no secret, sir,” said Betteredge, suddenly abandoning the crooked way, and taking the straight one, “I’m burning to know what’s brought you down here, if you please, in this sudden way.”

“What brought me here before?” I asked.

“The Moonstone, Mr. Franklin. But what brings you now, sir?”

“The Moonstone again, Betteredge.”

The old man suddenly stood still, and looked at me in the grey twilight as if he suspected his own ears of deceiving him.

“If that’s a joke, sir,” he said, “I’m afraid I’m getting a little dull in my old age. I don’t take it.”

“It’s no joke,” I answered. “I have come here to take up the inquiry which was dropped when I left England. I have come here to do what nobody has done yet — to find out who took the Diamond.”

“Let the Diamond be, Mr. Franklin! Take my advice, and let the Diamond be! That cursed Indian jewel has misguided everybody who has come near it. Don’t waste your money and your temper — in the fine spring time of your life, sir — by meddling with the Moonstone. How can YOU hope to succeed (saving your presence), when Sergeant Cuff himself made a mess of it? Sergeant Cuff!” repeated Betteredge, shaking his forefinger at me sternly. “The greatest policeman in England!”

“My mind is made up, my old friend. Even Sergeant Cuff doesn’t daunt me. By-the-bye, I may want to speak to him, sooner or later. Have you heard anything of him lately?”

“The Sergeant won’t help you, Mr. Franklin.”

“Why not?”

“There has been an event, sir, in the police-circles, since you went away. The great Cuff has retired from business. He has got a little cottage at Dorking; and he’s up to his eyes in the growing of roses. I have it in his own handwriting, Mr. Franklin. He has grown the white moss rose, without budding it on the dog-rose first. And Mr. Begbie the gardener is to go to Dorking, and own that the Sergeant has beaten him at last.”

“It doesn’t much matter,” I said. “I must do without Sergeant Cuff’s help. And I must trust to you, at starting.”

It is likely enough that I spoke rather carelessly.

At any rate, Betteredge seemed to be piqued by something in the reply which I had just made to him. “You might trust to worse than me, Mr. Franklin — I can tell you that,” he said a little sharply.

The tone in which he retorted, and a certain disturbance, after he had spoken, which I detected in his manner, suggested to me that he was possessed of some information which he hesitated to communicate.

“I expect you to help me,” I said, “in picking up the fragments of evidence which Sergeant Cuff has left behind him. I know you can do that. Can you do no more?”

“What more can you expect from me, sir?” asked Betteredge, with an appearance of the utmost humility.

“I expect more — from what you said just now.”

“Mere boasting, Mr. Franklin,” returned the old man obstinately. “Some people are born boasters, and they never get over it to their dying day. I’m one of them.”

There was only one way to take with him. I appealed to his interest in Rachel, and his interest in me.

“Betteredge, would you be glad to hear that Rachel and I were good friends again?”

“I have served your family, sir, to mighty little purpose, if you doubt it!”

“Do you remember how Rachel treated me, before I left England?”

“As well as if it was yesterday! My lady herself wrote you a letter about it; and you were so good as to show the letter to me. It said that Miss Rachel was mortally offended with you, for the part you had taken in trying to recover her jewel. And neither my lady, nor you, nor anybody else could guess why.

“Quite true, Betteredge! And I come back from my travels, and find her mortally offended with me still. I knew that the Diamond was at the bottom of it, last year, and I know that the Diamond is at the bottom of it now. I have tried to speak to her, and she won’t see me. I have tried to write to her, and she won’t answer me. How, in Heaven’s name, am I to clear the matter up? The chance of searching into the loss of the Moonstone, is the one chance of inquiry that Rachel herself has left me.”

Those words evidently put the case before him, as he had not seen it yet. He asked a question which satisfied me that I had shaken him.

“There is no ill-feeling in this, Mr. Franklin, on your side — is there?”

“There was some anger,” I answered, “when I left London. But that is all worn out now. I want to make Rachel come to an understanding with me — and I want nothing more.”

“You don’t feel any fear, sir — supposing you make any discoveries — in regard to what you may find out about Miss Rachel?”

I understood the jealous belief in his young mistress which prompted those words.

“I am as certain of her as you are,” I answered. “The fullest disclosure of her secret will reveal nothing that can alter her place in your estimation, or in mine.”

Betteredge’s last-left scruples vanished at that.

“If I am doing wrong to help you, Mr. Franklin,” he exclaimed, “all I can say is — I am as innocent of seeing it as the babe unborn! I can put you on the road to discovery, if you can only go on by yourself. You remember that poor girl of ours — Rosanna Spearman?”