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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. I address these lines - written in India - to my relatives in England.
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CHAPTER I
Ā Ā In the first part of ROBINSON CRUSOE, at page one
hundred and twenty-nine, you will find it thus written:
Ā Ā "Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning
a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our
own Strength to go through with it."
Ā Ā Only yesterday, I opened my ROBINSON CRUSOE at that
place. Only this morning (May twenty-first, Eighteen hundred and
fifty), came my lady's nephew, Mr. Franklin Blake, and held a short
conversation with me, as follows: -
Ā Ā "Betteredge," says Mr. Franklin, "I have been to the
lawyer's about some family matters; and, among other things, we
have been talking of the loss of the Indian Diamond, in my aunt's
house in Yorkshire, two years since. Mr. Bruff thinks as I think,
that the whole story ought, in the interests of truth, to be placed
on record in writing - and the sooner the better."
Ā Ā Not perceiving his drift yet, and thinking it always
desirable for the sake of peace and quietness to be on the lawyer's
side, I said I thought so too. Mr. Franklin went on.
Ā Ā "In this matter of the Diamond," he said, "the
characters of innocent people have suffered under suspicion already
- as you know. The memories of innocent people may suffer,
hereafter, for want of a record of the facts to which those who
come after us can appeal. There can be no doubt that this strange
family story of ours ought to be told. And I think, Betteredge, Mr.
Bruff and I together have hit on the right way of telling it."
Ā Ā Very satisfactory to both of them, no doubt. But I
failed to see what I myself had to do with it, so far.
Ā Ā "We have certain events to relate," Mr. Franklin
proceeded; "and we have certain persons concerned in those events
who are capable of relating them. Starting from these plain facts,
the idea is that we should all write the story of the Moonstone in
turn - as far as our own personal experience extends, and no
farther. We must begin by showing how the Diamond first fell into
the hands of my uncle Herncastle, when he was serving in India
fifty years since. This prefatory narrative I have already got by
me in the form of an old family paper, which relates the necessary
particulars on the authority of an eye-witness. The next thing to
do is to tell how the Diamond found its way into my aunt's house in
Yorkshire, two years ago, and how it came to be lost in little more
than twelve hours afterwards. Nobody knows as much as you do,
Betteredge, about what went on in the house at that time. So you
must take the pen in hand, and start the story."
Ā Ā In those terms I was informed of what my personal
concern was with the matter of the Diamond. If you are curious to
know what course I took under the circumstances, I beg to inform
you that I did what you would probably have done in my place. I
modestly declared myself to be quite unequal to the task imposed
upon me - and I privately felt, all the time, that I was quite
clever enough to perform it, if I only gave my own abilities a fair
chance. Mr. Franklin, I imagine, must have seen my private
sentiments in my face. He declined to believe in my modesty; and he
insisted on giving my abilities a fair chance.
Ā Ā Two hours have passed since Mr. Franklin left me. As
soon as his back was turned, I went to my writing desk to start the
story. There I have sat helpless (in spite of my abilities) ever
since; seeing what Robinson Crusoe saw, as quoted above - namely,
the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before
we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it. Please
to remember, I opened the book by accident, at that bit, only the
day before I rashly undertook the business now in hand; and, allow
me to ask - if THAT isn't prophecy, what is?
Ā Ā I am not superstitious; I have read a heap of books
in my time; I am a scholar in my own way. Though turned seventy, I
possess an active memory, and legs to correspond. You are not to
take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I
express my opinion that such a book as ROBINSON CRUSOE never was
written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book
for years - generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco - and I
have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this
mortal life. When my spirits are bad - ROBINSON CRUSOE. When I want
advice - ROBINSON CRUSOE. In past times when my wife plagued me; in
present times when I have had a drop too much - ROBINSON CRUSOE. I
have worn out six stout ROBINSON CRUSOES with hard work in my
service. On my lady's last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a
drop too much on the strength of it; and ROBINSON CRUSOE put me
right again. Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with
a picture into the bargain.
Ā Ā Still, this don't look much like starting the story
of the Diamond - does it? I seem to be wandering off in search of
Lord knows what, Lord knows where. We will take a new sheet of
paper, if you please, and begin over again, with my best respects
to you.
CHAPTER II
Ā Ā I spoke of my lady a line or two back. Now the
Diamond could never have been in our house, where it was lost, if
it had not been made a present of to my lady's daughter; and my
lady's daughter would never have been in existence to have the
present, if it had not been for my lady who (with pain and travail)
produced her into the world. Consequently, if we begin with my
lady, we are pretty sure of beginning far enough back. And that,
let me tell you, when you have got such a job as mine in hand, is a
real comfort at starting.
Ā Ā If you know anything of the fashionable world, you
have heard tell of the three beautiful Miss Herncastles. Miss
Adelaide; Miss Caroline; and Miss Julia - this last being the
youngest and the best of the three sisters, in my opinion; and I
had opportunities of judging, as you shall presently see. I went
into the service of the old lord, their father (thank God, we have
got nothing to do with him, in this business of the Diamond; he had
the longest tongue and the shortest temper of any man, high or low,
I ever met with) - I say, I went into the service of the old lord,
as page-boy in waiting on the three honourable young ladies, at the
age of fifteen years. There I lived till Miss Julia married the
late Sir John Verinder. An excellent man, who only wanted somebody
to manage him; and, between ourselves, he found somebody to do it;
and what is more, he throve on it and grew fat on it, and lived
happy and died easy on it, dating from the day when my lady took
him to church to be married, to the day when she relieved him of
his last breath, and closed his eyes for ever.
Ā Ā I have omitted to state that I went with the bride
to the bride's husband's house and lands down here. "Sir John," she
says, "I can't do without Gabriel Betteredge." "My lady," says Sir
John, "I can't do without him, either." That was his way with her -
and that was how I went into his service. It was all one to me
where I went, so long as my mistress and I were together.
Ā Ā Seeing that my lady took an interest in the
out-of-door work, and the farms, and such like, I took an interest
in them too - with all the more reason that I was a small farmer's
seventh son myself. My lady got me put under the bailiff, and I did
my best, and gave satisfaction, and got promotion accordingly. Some
years later, on the Monday as it might be, my lady says, "Sir John,
your bailiff is a stupid old man. Pension him liberally, and let
Gabriel Betteredge have his place." On the Tuesday as it might be,
Sir John says, "My lady, the bailiff is pensioned liberally; and
Gabriel Betteredge has got his place." You hear more than enough of
married people living together miserably. Here is an example to the
contrary. Let it be a warning to some of you, and an encouragement
to others. In the meantime, I will go on with my story.
Ā Ā Well, there I was in clover, you will say. Placed in
a position of trust and honour, with a little cottage of my own to
live in, with my rounds on the estate to occupy me in the morning,
and my accounts in the afternoon, and my pipe and my ROBINSON
CRUSOE in the evening - what more could I possibly want to make me
happy? Remember what Adam wanted when he was alone in the Garden of
Eden; and if you don't blame it in Adam, don't blame it in me.
Ā Ā The woman I fixed my eye on, was the woman who kept
house for me at my cottage. Her name was Selina Goby. I agree with
the late William Cobbett about picking a wife. See that she chews
her food well and sets her foot down firmly on the ground when she
walks, and you're all right. Selina Goby was all right in both
these respects, which was one reason for marrying her. I had
another reason, likewise, entirely of my own discovering. Selina,
being a single woman, made me pay so much a week for her board and
services. Selina, being my wife, couldn't charge for her board, and
would have to give me her services for nothing. That was the point
of view I looked at it from. Economy - with a dash of love. I put
it to my mistress, as in duty bound, just as I had put it to
myself.
Ā Ā "I have been turning Selina Goby over in my mind," I
said, "and I think, my lady, it will be cheaper to marry her than
to keep her."
Ā Ā My lady burst out laughing, and said she didn't know
which to be most shocked at - my language or my principles. Some
joke tickled her, I suppose, of the sort that you can't take unless
you are a person of quality. Understanding nothing myself but that
I was free to put it next to Selina, I went and put it accordingly.
And what did Selina say? Lord! how little you must know of women,
if you ask that. Of course she said, Yes.
Ā Ā As my time drew nearer, and there got to be talk of
my having a new coat for the ceremony, my mind began to misgive me.
I have compared notes with other men as to what they felt while
they were in my interesting situation; and they have all
acknowledged that, about a week before it happened, they privately
wished themselves out of it. I went a trifle further than that
myself; I actually rose up, as it were, and tried to get out of it.
Not for nothing! I was too just a man to expect she would let me
off for nothing. Compensation to the woman when the man gets out of
it, is one of the laws of England. In obedience to the laws, and
after turning it over carefully in my mind, I offered Selina Goby a
feather-bed and fifty shillings to be off the bargain. You will
hardly believe it, but it is nevertheless true - she was fool
enough to refuse.
Ā Ā After that it was all over with me, of course. I got
the new coat as cheap as I could, and I went through all the rest
of it as cheap as I could. We were not a happy couple, and not a
miserable couple. We were six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.
How it was I don't understand, but we always seemed to be getting,
with the best of motives, in one another's way. When I wanted to go
up-stairs, there was my wife coming down; or when my wife wanted to
go down, there was I coming up. That is married life, according to
my experience of it.
Ā Ā After five years of misunderstandings on the stairs,
it pleased an all-wise Providence to relieve us of each other by
taking my wife. I was left with my little girl Penelope, and with
no other child. Shortly afterwards Sir John died, and my lady was
left with her little girl, Miss Rachel, and no other child. I have
written to very poor purpose of my lady, if you require to be told
that my little Penelope was taken care of, under my good mistress's
own eye, and was sent to school and taught, and made a sharp girl,
and promoted, when old enough, to be Miss Rachel's own maid.
Ā Ā As for me, I went on with my business as bailiff
year after year up to Christmas 1847, when there came a change in
my life. On that day, my lady invited herself to a cup of tea alone
with me in my cottage. She remarked that, reckoning from the year
when I started as page-boy in the time of the old lord, I had been
more than fifty years in her service, and she put into my hands a
beautiful waistcoat of wool that she had worked herself, to keep me
warm in the bitter winter weather.
Ā Ā I received this magnificent present quite at a loss
to find words to thank my mistress with for the honour she had done
me. To my great astonishment, it turned out, however, that the
waistcoat was not an honour, but a bribe. My lady had discovered
that I was getting old before I had discovered it myself, and she
had come to my cottage to wheedle me (if I may use such an
expression) into giving up my hard out-of-door work as bailiff, and
taking my ease for the rest of my days as steward in the house. I
made as good a fight of it against the indignity of taking my ease
as I could. But my mistress knew the weak side of me; she put it as
a favour to herself. The dispute between us ended, after that, in
my wiping my eyes, like an old fool, with my new woollen waistcoat,
and saying I would think about it.
Ā Ā The perturbation in my mind, in regard to thinking
about it, being truly dreadful after my lady had gone away, I
applied the remedy which I have never yet found to fail me in cases
of doubt and emergency. I smoked a pipe and took a turn at ROBINSON
CRUSOE. Before I had occupied myself with that extraordinary book
five minutes, I came on a comforting bit (page one hundred and
fifty-eight), as follows: "To-day we love, what to-morrow we hate."
I saw my way clear directly. To-day I was all for continuing to be
farm-bailiff; to-morrow, on the authority of ROBINSON CRUSOE, I
should be all the other way. Take myself to-morrow while in
to-morrow's humour, and the thing was done. My mind being relieved
in this manner, I went to sleep that night in the character of Lady
Verinder's farm bailiff, and I woke up the next morning in the
character of Lady Verinder's house-steward. All quite comfortable,
and all through ROBINSON CRUSOE!
Ā Ā My daughter Penelope has just looked over my
shoulder to see what I have done so far. She remarks that it is
beautifully written, and every word of it true. But she points out
one objection. She says what I have done so far isn't in the least
what I was wanted to do. I am asked to tell the story of the
Diamond and, instead of that, I have been telling the story of my
own self. Curious, and quite beyond me to account for. I wonder
whether the gentlemen who make a business and a living out of
writing books, ever find their own selves getting in the way of
their subjects, like me? If they do, I can feel for them. In the
meantime, here is another false start, and more waste of good
writing-paper. What's to be done now? Nothing that I know of,
except for you to keep your temper, and for me to begin it all over
again for the third time.
CHAPTER III
The question of how I am to start the story properly I have tried to settle in two ways. First, by scratching my head, which led to nothing. Second, by consulting my daughter Penelope, which has resulted in an entirely new idea.
Penelope's notion is that I should set down what happened, regularly day by day, beginning with the day when we got the news that Mr. Franklin Blake was expected on a visit to the house. When you come to fix your memory with a date in this way, it is wonderful what your memory will pick up for you upon that compulsion. The only difficulty is to fetch out the dates, in the first place. This Penelope offers to do for me by looking into her own diary, which she was taught to keep when she was at school, and which she has gone on keeping ever since. In answer to an improvement on this notion, devised by myself, namely, that she should tell the story instead of me, out of her own diary, Penelope observes, with a fierce look and a red face, that her journal is for her own private eye, and that no living creature shall ever know what is in it but herself. When I inquire what this means, Penelope says, "Fiddlesticks!" I say, Sweethearts.
Beginning, then, on Penelope's plan, I beg to mention that I was specially called one Wednesday morning into my lady's own sitting-room, the date being the twenty-fourth of May, Eighteen hundred and forty-eight.
"Gabriel," says my lady, "here is news that will surprise you. Franklin Blake has come back from abroad. He has been staying with his father in London, and he is coming to us to-morrow to stop till next month, and keep Rachel's birthday."
If I had had a hat in my hand, nothing but respect would have prevented me from throwing that hat up to the ceiling. I had not seen Mr. Franklin since he was a boy, living along with us in this house. He was, out of all sight (as I remember him), the nicest boy that ever spun a top or broke a window. Miss Rachel, who was present, and to whom I made that remark, observed, in return, that SHE remembered him as the most atrocious tyrant that ever tortured a doll, and the hardest driver of an exhausted little girl in string harness that England could produce. "I burn with indignation, and I ache with fatigue," was the way Miss Rachel summed it up, "when I think of Franklin Blake."
Hearing what I now tell you, you will naturally ask how it was that Mr. Franklin should have passed all the years, from the time when he was a boy to the time when he was a man, out of his own country. I answer, because his father had the misfortune to be next heir to a Dukedom, and not to be able to prove it.
In two words, this was how the thing happened:
My lady's eldest sister married the celebrated Mr. Blake - equally famous for his great riches, and his great suit at law. How many years he went on worrying the tribunals of his country to turn out the Duke in possession, and to put himself in the Duke's place - how many lawyer's purses he filled to bursting, and how many otherwise harmless people he set by the ears together disputing whether he was right or wrong - is more by a great deal than I can reckon up. His wife died, and two of his three children died, before the tribunals could make up their minds to show him the door and take no more of his money. When it was all over, and the Duke in possession was left in possession, Mr. Blake discovered that the only way of being even with his country for the manner in which it had treated him, was not to let his country have the honour of educating his son. "How can I trust my native institutions," was the form in which he put it, "after the way in which my native institutions have behaved to ME?" Add to this, that Mr. Blake disliked all boys, his own included, and you will admit that it could only end in one way. Master Franklin was taken from us in England, and was sent to institutions which his father COULD trust, in that superior country, Germany; Mr. Blake himself, you will observe, remaining snug in England, to improve his fellow-countrymen in the Parliament House, and to publish a statement on the subject of the Duke in possession, which has remained an unfinished statement from that day to this.
There! thank God, that's told! Neither you nor I need trouble our heads any more about Mr. Blake, senior. Leave him to the Dukedom; and let you and I stick to the Diamond.
The Diamond takes us back to Mr. Franklin, who was the innocent means of bringing that unlucky jewel into the house.
Our nice boy didn't forget us after he went abroad. He wrote every now and then; sometimes to my lady, sometimes to Miss Rachel, and sometimes to me. We had had a transaction together, before he left, which consisted in his borrowing of me a ball of string, a four-bladed knife, and seven-and-sixpence in money - the colour of which last I have not seen, and never expect to see again. His letters to me chiefly related to borrowing more. I heard, however, from my lady, how he got on abroad, as he grew in years and stature. After he had learnt what the institutions of Germany could teach him, he gave the French a turn next, and the Italians a turn after that. They made him among them a sort of universal...
Table of contents
- PROLOGUE - THE STORMING OF SERINGAPATAM (1799)
- I
- II
- III
- IV
- THE STORY
- FIRST PERIOD - THE LOSS OF THE DIAMOND (1848)
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- CHAPTER X
- CHAPTER XI
- CHAPTER XII
- CHAPTER XIII
- CHAPTER XIV
- CHAPTER XV
- CHAPTER XVI
- CHAPTER XVII
- CHAPTER XVIII
- CHAPTER XIX
- CHAPTER XX
- CHAPTER XXI
- CHAPTER XXII
- CHAPTER XXIII
- SECOND PERIOD - THE DISCOVERY OF THE TRUTH (1848-1849)
- FIRST NARRATIVE
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- SECOND NARRATIVE
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- THIRD NARRATIVE
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- CHAPTER X
- FOURTH NARRATIVE
- FIFTH NARRATIVE
- CHAPTER I
- SIXTH NARRATIVE
- I
- II
- III
- IV
- V
- SEVENTH NARRATIVE
- EIGHTH NARRATIVE
- EPILOGUE - THE FINDING OF THE DIAMOND
- I
- II
- III
- Copyright