The Moonstone(Illustrated) E-Book

Wilkie Collins

• Herausgeber: Jillian Wayne
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

• Illustrated edition featuring 20 evocative artworks
• Includes a concise summary of the plot
• Complete characters list for quick reference
• Author biography of Wilkie Collins

A priceless yellow diamond. A vanished heirloom. A household brimming with secrets. Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone—often hailed as the first great English detective novel—unfurls a spellbinding mystery that begins with a midnight theft and ripples through drawing rooms, law offices, and London’s shadowy streets.
On Rachel Verinder’s eighteenth birthday, she receives the legendary Moonstone, a gem seized during British conquest in India. By dawn, it’s gone. What follows is a brilliantly orchestrated investigation told in multiple voices—faithful steward Gabriel Betteredge, pious (and hilariously self-righteous) Miss Clack, cool-headed lawyer Mr. Bruff, and the unforgettable Sergeant Cuff, a rose-loving detective whose quiet methods cut straight to the truth. As clues tangle with confidences, Collins turns testimony into drama, asking who gets believed—and why.
This handsome, reader-friendly edition heightens the experience with 20 atmospheric illustrations and helpful extras. Whether you’re discovering the novel for the first time or returning to savor its ingenious twists, you’ll find a richly layered story of love, reputation, empire, and the cost of stolen treasure.

Inside you’ll find:
A fast, engaging summary to get oriented—or refresh your memory
A characters list to keep every suspect, sleuth, and bystander straight
A succinct biography of Wilkie Collins to place the novel in its Victorian moment
Perfect for: fans of classic mysteries, literature students, book clubs, and anyone who loves a page-turner with brains and heart.

Step into the case that inspired a century of detective fiction—and let The Moonstone keep you turning pages deep into the night.

 

Leseprobe

The Moonstone                                                                                                                                       By                                                                                                                                                                              Wilkie Collins

ABOUT COLLINS

William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) helped invent the modern appetite for stories that keep readers up at night. Before “crime fiction” and “psychological thriller” were shelving categories, Collins was braiding mystery, law, and social anxiety into page-turners that felt shockingly contemporary to his Victorian audience—and still do.

Born in Marylebone, London, Collins grew up in an artistic household. His father, William Collins, was a successful landscape painter and Royal Academician, and the family’s travels (including a formative stint in Italy) gave the boy a museum-grade education in looking hard at people and places. Collins was groomed, briefly, for commerce—he spent several years as a tea merchant’s apprentice—and then for the law. He studied at Lincoln’s Inn, learning the tangle of equity, inheritance, and property that would later power the engines of his fiction. Though he never practiced seriously, legal thinking—documents, testimony, conflicting accounts—became his native narrative mode.

Collins’s first book was a loving act of filial duty: a biography of his father (1848). Fiction followed. He tried the stage, wrote early novels such as Basil (1852), and published travel writing on Cornwall in Rambles Beyond Railways (1851). The decisive turn came when he met Charles Dickens in the 1850s. Collins joined Dickens’s circle, acted with him in amateur theatricals, and wrote for Dickens’s journals Household Words and All the Year Round. The friendship was mutually energizing: Dickens offered reach and discipline; Collins brought an experimental streak and a fascination with the undercurrents of respectable life.

That fascination erupted into The Woman in White (1859–60), serialized to instant mania. Its multi-voiced dossier—letters, statements, diaries—invited readers to play detective, while its plot, built around identity theft and a conspiracy within marriage, turned domestic space into a pressure cooker. Collins followed with a run of audacious “sensation novels”: No Name (1862) probed the legal status and economic precarity of illegitimate daughters; Armadale (1866) pushed destiny, secrecy, and moral ambiguity to gothic extremes; and The Moonstone (1868) gave English literature Sergeant Cuff and, arguably, its first fully modern detective novel, complete with red herrings, a country-house crime, and a chorus of unreliable narrators.

If Dickens’s fiction often led outward to community, Collins’s looked inward at institutions—marriage law, property rights, mental health—and asked who is believed and why. He made narrative method (who speaks, who is silenced, what counts as evidence) the substance of the story. He also wrote across experience often absent from polite fiction: blindness in Poor Miss Finch (1872), the legal ‘trap’ of marriage in Man and Wife (1870), a woman sleuthing within male legal systems in The Law and the Lady (1875). The result is fiction that feels both theatrical and forensic: melodrama with footnotes, testimony with pulse.

Collins’s personal life was quietly radical. He never married, keeping long relationships with two women—Caroline Graves and Martha Rudd—maintaining, in effect, two households. With Rudd he had children, who used the surname “Dawson.” The arrangement scandalized some contemporaries and pleased others who appreciated the honesty of his domestic arrangements compared to conventional façades. Health was a more punishing constant: crippling gout and neuralgia led him to sustained laudanum (opium) use, which managed pain but shadowed his later years and sometimes his prose.

Even as his popularity ebbed after the 1870s—taste shifted, and his own illnesses made sustained composition harder—Collins kept writing with missionary zeal. He attacked social cruelties head-on: Heart and Science (1883) condemned vivisection; The Fallen Leaves (1879) advocated for the vulnerable and “fallen,” insisting on dignity over punishment. His later novels can be uneven, but they remain ethically fierce and structurally curious, the work of a writer who believed fiction should investigate society, not flatter it.

Collins died in London in 1889 and is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. For decades he was remembered chiefly as Dickens’s gifted junior partner, but modern scholarship has restored his independence and influence. You can see his fingerprints across the twentieth century: in the cool procedural intelligence of detective fiction; in the documentary collage of modernist narratives; in domestic noir’s distrust of the home; in legal thrillers where paperwork is plot and voice is evidence.

What makes Collins feel singular today is less any single twist than his governing intuition: that stories are arguments about truth assembled from partial, human testimony. He built novels like case files and trusted readers to weigh them. In doing so, he taught generations how to read suspiciously—and gave them irresistible reasons to keep turning the page.

SUMMARY

A dazzling yellow diamond—plundered during British conquest in India and guarded by three silent priests—arrives in a quiet English country house. On Rachel Verinder’s 18th birthday, the gem (the “Moonstone”) is gifted by a dubious relative. By midnight, it’s gone. What follows is the blueprint of the modern detective novel: a crime in a locked house, a circle of suspects, and a chorus of narrators whose testimonies seldom agree.

Enter Sergeant Cuff, cool as a metronome and fond of roses, who suspects the solution is closer to home than anyone wants to admit. Suspicion falls on servants, on Rachel herself, and even on Franklin Blake—the charming cousin who can’t explain his own movements on the night of the theft. The narrative baton passes between voices—faithful steward Gabriel Betteredge (and his beloved Robinson Crusoe), zealously moral Miss Clack, the candid Franklin, and the haunted physician Ezra Jennings—each adding evidence, bias, and surprise.

The twist is both ingenious and eerie: Franklin, unknowingly dosed with laudanum (opium), sleepwalks the diamond out of Rachel’s room to “protect” it, setting a domino run of secrecy, pride, and misplaced accusation. The real villain, the respectable philanthropist Godfrey Ablewhite, has pawned the gem to cover his debts. In a tense finale, the Moonstone completes its long orbit: the Indian guardians track it across Europe, and the diamond is ultimately restored to its sacred shrine.

Why it still grips:

Multiple Voices, One Mystery: Collins turns the case file itself into drama—every diary, letter, and deposition is a clue and a character study.

Modern Before “Modern”: Red herrings, forensic hunches, and a brilliant detective laid the groundwork for every country-house whodunit that followed.

A Moral Undercurrent: Beneath the thrills run questions about empire, justice, class hypocrisy, and addiction.

In short, The Moonstone is not just a mystery about a stolen jewel. It’s a shimmering puzzle about truth—how we see it, bend it, hide it—and the cost of stealing what was never ours.

CHARACTERS LIST

The Verinder Circle

Rachel Verinder —Heiress who receives the Moonstone on her 18th birthday; central figure of the mystery.

Lady Verinder —Rachel’s widowed mother; protective and composed.

Gabriel Betteredge —The Verinders’ loyal steward (and narrator); commonsense observer with a soft spot for Robinson Crusoe.

Penelope Betteredge —Gabriel’s sharp-eyed daughter and Rachel’s maid.

The Blake & Ablewhite Connections

Franklin Blake —Rachel’s cousin and suitor (narrator); gentleman traveler who becomes entangled in the theft.

Godfrey Ablewhite —Another cousin and suitor; popular philanthropist with hidden depths.

Mrs. Ablewhite —Godfrey’s mother; socially ambitious and talkative.

Mr. Ablewhite (Sr.) —Godfrey’s father; more practical, less dazzled by reputation.

Investigators & Professionals

Sergeant Cuff — Celebrated London detective; cool, methodical, and oddly fond of roses.

Superintendent Seegrave —Local officer; officious but out of his depth.

Mr. Bruff — The Verinder family lawyer; pragmatic, loyal, and occasionally a narrator.

Dr. Candy —Local physician; a small slight at a party leads to big consequences.

Ezra Jennings —Dr. Candy’s enigmatic assistant (narrator); pivotal in the case’s reconstruction.

Household Staff & Locals

Rosanna Spearman —Housemaid with a troubled past; acts mysteriously after the theft.

Limping Lucy (Lucy Yolland) —Rosanna’s blunt friend from the Shivering Sand; fiercely loyal.

Origin & Outer Circle

Colonel John Herncastle —Rachel’s disreputable uncle who once seized the Moonstone in India; his bequest ignites the plot.

Mr. Murthwaite —Worldly traveler and India hand; offers insight into the diamond’s history and pursuers.

The Three Indian Brahmins —Silent guardians of the Moonstone, determined to recover their sacred gem.

Septimus Luker —London moneylender and collector; the diamond passes through his orbit.

“Gooseberry” (Octavius Guy) —Street-savvy errand boy; unexpectedly useful to the investigation.

If you’d like, I can mark who narrates which sections and flag the chapters where each character is most active.

Contents

PROLOGUE

THE STORY

FIRST PERIOD

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

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

SIXTH NARRATIVE

I

II

III

IV

V

SEVENTH NARRATIVE

EIGHTH NARRATIVE

EPILOGUE

I

II

III

PROLOGUE

THE STORMING OF SERINGAPATAM (1799):

(Extracted from a Family Paper.)

I

I address these lines—written in India—to my relatives in England.

My object is to explain the motive which has induced me to refuse the right

hand of friendship to my cousin, John Herncastle. The reserve which I have hitherto maintained in this matter has been misinterpreted by members of my family whose good opinion I cannot consent to forfeit. I request them to suspend

their decision until they have read my narrative. And I declare, on my word of

honour, that what I am now about to write is, strictly and literally, the truth.

The private difference between my cousin and me took its rise in a great public event in which we were both concerned—the storming of Seringapatam,

under General Baird, on the 4th of May, 1799.

In order that the circumstances may be clearly understood, I must revert for a

moment to the period before the assault, and to the stories current in our camp of

the treasure in jewels and gold stored up in the Palace of Seringapatam.

II

One of the wildest of these stories related to a Yellow Diamond—a famous

gem in the native annals of India.

The earliest known traditions describe the stone as having been set in the forehead of the four-handed Indian god who typifies the Moon. Partly from its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which represented it as feeling the influence of the deity whom it adorned, and growing and lessening in lustre with

the waxing and waning of the moon, it first gained the name by which it continues to be known in India to this day—the name of THE MOONSTONE. A

similar superstition was once prevalent, as I have heard, in ancient Greece and Rome; not applying, however (as in India), to a diamond devoted to the service

of a god, but to a semi-transparent stone of the inferior order of gems, supposed to be affected by the lunar influences—the moon, in this latter case also, giving

the name by which the stone is still known to collectors in our own time.

The adventures of the Yellow Diamond begin with the eleventh century of the

Christian era.

At that date, the Mohammedan conqueror, Mahmoud of Ghizni, crossed India;

seized on the holy city of Somnauth; and stripped of its treasures the famous temple, which had stood for centuries—the shrine of Hindoo pilgrimage, and the

wonder of the Eastern world.

Of all the deities worshipped in the temple, the moon-god alone escaped the rapacity of the conquering Mohammedans. Preserved by three Brahmins, the

inviolate deity, bearing the Yellow Diamond in its forehead, was removed by night, and was transported to the second of the sacred cities of India—the city of

Benares.

Here, in a new shrine—in a hall inlaid with precious stones, under a roof supported by pillars of gold—the moon-god was set up and worshipped. Here, on the night when the shrine was completed, Vishnu the Preserver appeared to the three Brahmins in a dream.

The deity breathed the breath of his divinity on the Diamond in the forehead

of the god. And the Brahmins knelt and hid their faces in their robes. The deity

commanded that the Moonstone should be watched, from that time forth, by

three priests in turn, night and day, to the end of the generations of men. And the

Brahmins heard, and bowed before his will. The deity predicted certain disaster

to the presumptuous mortal who laid hands on the sacred gem, and to all of his

house and name who received it after him. And the Brahmins caused the

prophecy to be written over the gates of the shrine in letters of gold.

One age followed another—and still, generation after generation, the

successors of the three Brahmins watched their priceless Moonstone, night and

day. One age followed another until the first years of the eighteenth Christian century saw the reign of Aurungzebe, Emperor of the Moguls. At his command

havoc and rapine were let loose once more among the temples of the worship of

Brahmah. The shrine of the four-handed god was polluted by the slaughter of sacred animals; the images of the deities were broken in pieces; and the

Moonstone was seized by an officer of rank in the army of Aurungzebe.

Powerless to recover their lost treasure by open force, the three guardian priests followed and watched it in disguise. The generations succeeded each other; the warrior who had committed the sacrilege perished miserably; the

Moonstone passed (carrying its curse with it) from one lawless Mohammedan hand to another; and still, through all chances and changes, the successors of the

three guardian priests kept their watch, waiting the day when the will of Vishnu

the Preserver should restore to them their sacred gem. Time rolled on from the

first to the last years of the eighteenth Christian century. The Diamond fell into

the possession of Tippoo, Sultan of Seringapatam, who caused it to be placed as

an ornament in the handle of a dagger, and who commanded it to be kept among

the choicest treasures of his armoury. Even then—in the palace of the Sultan himself—the three guardian priests still kept their watch in secret. There were three officers of Tippoo’s household, strangers to the rest, who had won their master’s confidence by conforming, or appearing to conform, to the Mussulman

faith; and to those three men report pointed as the three priests in disguise.

III

So, as told in our camp, ran the fanciful story of the Moonstone. It made no

serious impression on any of us except my cousin—whose love of the

marvellous induced him to believe it. On the night before the assault on

Seringapatam, he was absurdly angry with me, and with others, for treating the

whole thing as a fable. A foolish wrangle followed; and Herncastle’s unlucky temper got the better of him. He declared, in his boastful way, that we should see

the Diamond on his finger, if the English army took Seringapatam. The sally was

saluted by a roar of laughter, and there, as we all thought that night, the thing ended.

Let me now take you on to the day of the assault.

My cousin and I were separated at the outset. I never saw him when we forded

the river; when we planted the English flag in the first breach; when we crossed

the ditch beyond; and, fighting every inch of our way, entered the town. It was

only at dusk, when the place was ours, and after General Baird himself had found the dead body of Tippoo under a heap of the slain, that Herncastle and I

met.

We were each attached to a party sent out by the general’s orders to prevent the plunder and confusion which followed our conquest. The camp-followers

committed deplorable excesses; and, worse still, the soldiers found their way, by

a guarded door, into the treasury of the Palace, and loaded themselves with gold

and jewels. It was in the court outside the treasury that my cousin and I met, to

enforce the laws of discipline on our own soldiers. Herncastle’s fiery temper had

been, as I could plainly see, exasperated to a kind of frenzy by the terrible slaughter through which we had passed. He was very unfit, in my opinion, to

perform the duty that had been entrusted to him.

There was riot and confusion enough in the treasury, but no violence that I saw. The men (if I may use such an expression) disgraced themselves good-humouredly. All sorts of rough jests and catchwords were bandied about among

them; and the story of the Diamond turned up again unexpectedly, in the form of

a mischievous joke. “Who’s got the Moonstone?” was the rallying cry which

perpetually caused the plundering, as soon as it was stopped in one place, to break out in another. While I was still vainly trying to establish order, I heard a

frightful yelling on the other side of the courtyard, and at once ran towards the

cries, in dread of finding some new outbreak of the pillage in that direction.

I got to an open door, and saw the bodies of two Indians (by their dress, as I

guessed, officers of the palace) lying across the entrance, dead.

A cry inside hurried me into a room, which appeared to serve as an armoury. A

third Indian, mortally wounded, was sinking at the feet of a man whose back was

towards me. The man turned at the instant when I came in, and I saw John Herncastle, with a torch in one hand, and a dagger dripping with blood in the other. A stone, set like a pommel, in the end of the dagger’s handle, flashed in

the torchlight, as he turned on me, like a gleam of fire. The dying Indian sank to

his knees, pointed to the dagger in Herncastle’s hand, and said, in his native language—“The Moonstone will have its vengeance yet on you and yours!” He

spoke those words, and fell dead on the floor.

Before I could stir in the matter, the men who had followed me across the courtyard crowded in. My cousin rushed to meet them, like a madman. “Clear the room!” he shouted to me, “and set a guard on the door!” The men fell back

as he threw himself on them with his torch and his dagger. I put two sentinels of

my own company, on whom I could rely, to keep the door. Through the

remainder of the night, I saw no more of my cousin.

Early in the morning, the plunder still going on, General Baird announced

publicly by beat of drum, that any thief detected in the fact, be he whom he might, should be hung. The provost-marshal was in attendance, to prove that the

General was in earnest; and in the throng that followed the proclamation,

Herncastle and I met again.

He held out his hand, as usual, and said, “Good morning.”

I waited before I gave him my hand in return.

“Tell me first,” I said, “how the Indian in the armoury met his death, and what

those last words meant, when he pointed to the dagger in your hand.”

“The Indian met his death, as I suppose, by a mortal wound,” said Herncastle.

“What his last words meant I know no more than you do.”

I looked at him narrowly. His frenzy of the previous day had all calmed down.

I determined to give him another chance.

“Is that all you have to tell me?” I asked.

He answered, “That is all.”

I turned my back on him; and we have not spoken since.

IV

I beg it to be understood that what I write here about my cousin (unless some

necessity should arise for making it public) is for the information of the family

only. Herncastle has said nothing that can justify me in speaking to our

commanding officer. He has been taunted more than once about the Diamond, by

those who recollect his angry outbreak before the assault; but, as may easily be

imagined, his own remembrance of the circumstances under which I surprised

him in the armoury has been enough to keep him silent. It is reported that he means to exchange into another regiment, avowedly for the purpose of

separating himself from me.

Whether this be true or not, I cannot prevail upon myself to become his

accuser—and I think with good reason. If I made the matter public, I have no evidence but moral evidence to bring forward. I have not only no proof that he

killed the two men at the door; I cannot even declare that he killed the third man

inside—for I cannot say that my own eyes saw the deed committed. It is true that

I heard the dying Indian’s words; but if those words were pronounced to be the

ravings of delirium, how could I contradict the assertion from my own

knowledge? Let our relatives, on either side, form their own opinion on what I

have written, and decide for themselves whether the aversion I now feel towards

this man is well or ill founded.

Although I attach no sort of credit to the fantastic Indian legend of the gem, I

must acknowledge, before I conclude, that I am influenced by a certain

superstition of my own in this matter. It is my conviction, or my delusion, no matter which, that crime brings its own fatality with it. I am not only persuaded

of Herncastle’s guilt; I am even fanciful enough to believe that he will live to regret it, if he keeps the Diamond; and that others will live to regret taking it from him, if he gives the Diamond away.

THE STORY

FIRST PERIOD

THE LOSS OF THE DIAMOND (1848)

The Events related by Gabriel Betteredge, house-steward in the service of Julia,

Lady Verinder.

CHAPTER I

In the first part of Robinson Crusoe, at page one hundred and twenty-nine, you will find it thus written:

“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.”

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:—

“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.”

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.

“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.”

Very satisfactory to both of them, no doubt. But I failed to see what I myself

had to do with it, so far.

“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.”

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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 upstairs, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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: “Today we love, what tomorrow we hate.” I saw my way clear

directly. Today I was all for continuing to be farm-bailiff; tomorrow, on the authority of Robinson Crusoe, I should be all the other way. Take myself tomorrow while in tomorrow’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 RobinsonCrusoe!

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 tomorrow 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 genius, as well as I could understand it. He wrote a little; he painted a little; he sang and played and composed a little—borrowing, as I suspect, in all

these cases, just as he had borrowed from me. His mother’s fortune (seven hundred a year) fell to him when he came of age, and ran through him, as it might be through a sieve. The more money he had, the more he wanted; there was a hole in Mr. Franklin’s pocket that nothing would sew up. Wherever he went, the lively, easy way of him made him welcome. He lived here, there, and

everywhere; his address (as he used to put it himself) being “Post Office, Europe

—to be left till called for.” Twice over, he made up his mind to come back to England and see us; and twice over (saving your presence), some unmentionable

woman stood in the way and stopped him. His third attempt succeeded, as you

know already from what my lady told me. On Thursday the twenty-fifth of May,

we were to see for the first time what our nice boy had grown to be as a man. He

came of good blood; he had a high courage; and he was five-and-twenty years of

age, by our reckoning. Now you know as much of Mr. Franklin Blake as I did—

before Mr. Franklin Blake came down to our house.

The Thursday was as fine a summer’s day as ever you saw: and my lady and

Miss Rachel (not expecting Mr. Franklin till dinner-time) drove out to lunch with

some friends in the neighbourhood.

When they were gone, I went and had a look at the bedroom which had been

got ready for our guest, and saw that all was straight. Then, being butler in my

lady’s establishment, as well as steward (at my own particular request, mind, and

because it vexed me to see anybody but myself in possession of the key of the

late Sir John’s cellar)—then, I say, I fetched up some of our famous Latour claret, and set it in the warm summer air to take off the chill before dinner.

Concluding to set myself in the warm summer air next—seeing that what is good

for old claret is equally good for old age—I took up my beehive chair to go out

into the back court, when I was stopped by hearing a sound like the soft beating

of a drum, on the terrace in front of my lady’s residence.

Going round to the terrace, I found three mahogany-coloured Indians, in white

linen frocks and trousers, looking up at the house.

The Indians, as I saw on looking closer, had small hand-drums slung in front

of them. Behind them stood a little delicate-looking light-haired English boy carrying a bag. I judged the fellows to be strolling conjurors, and the boy with

the bag to be carrying the tools of their trade. One of the three, who spoke English and who exhibited, I must own, the most elegant manners, presently

informed me that my judgment was right. He requested permission to show his tricks in the presence of the lady of the house.

Now I am not a sour old man. I am generally all for amusement, and the last

person in the world to distrust another person because he happens to be a few shades darker than myself. But the best of us have our weaknesses—and my

weakness, when I know a family plate-basket to be out on a pantry-table, is to be

instantly reminded of that basket by the sight of a strolling stranger whose manners are superior to my own. I accordingly informed the Indian that the lady

of the house was out; and I warned him and his party off the premises. He made

me a beautiful bow in return; and he and his party went off the premises. On my

side, I returned to my beehive chair, and set myself down on the sunny side of

the court, and fell (if the truth must be owned), not exactly into a sleep, but into

the next best thing to it.

I was roused up by my daughter Penelope running out at me as if the house was on fire. What do you think she wanted? She wanted to have the three Indian

jugglers instantly taken up; for this reason, namely, that they knew who was coming from London to visit us, and that they meant some mischief to Mr.

Franklin Blake.

Mr. Franklin’s name roused me. I opened my eyes, and made my girl explain

herself.

It appeared that Penelope had just come from our lodge, where she had been

having a gossip with the lodge-keeper’s daughter. The two girls had seen the Indians pass out, after I had warned them off, followed by their little boy. Taking

it into their heads that the boy was ill-used by the foreigners—for no reason that

I could discover, except that he was pretty and delicate-looking—the two girls had stolen along the inner side of the hedge between us and the road, and had watched the proceedings of the foreigners on the outer side. Those proceedings

resulted in the performance of the following extraordinary tricks.

They first looked up the road, and down the road, and made sure that they were alone. Then they all three faced about, and stared hard in the direction of

our house. Then they jabbered and disputed in their own language, and looked at

each other like men in doubt. Then they all turned to their little English boy, as if they expected him to help them. And then the chief Indian, who spoke English, said to the boy, “Hold out your hand.”

On hearing those dreadful words, my daughter Penelope said she didn’t know

what prevented her heart from flying straight out of her. I thought privately that

it might have been her stays. All I said, however, was, “You make my flesh

creep.” ( Nota bene: Women like these little compliments.)

Well, when the Indian said, “Hold out your hand,” the boy shrunk back, and

shook his head, and said he didn’t like it. The Indian, thereupon, asked him (not

at all unkindly), whether he would like to be sent back to London, and left where

they had found him, sleeping in an empty basket in a market—a hungry, ragged,

and forsaken little boy. This, it seems, ended the difficulty. The little chap unwillingly held out his hand. Upon that, the Indian took a bottle from his bosom, and poured out of it some black stuff, like ink, into the palm of the boy’s

hand. The Indian—first touching the boy’s head, and making signs over it in the

air—then said, “Look.” The boy became quite stiff, and stood like a statue, looking into the ink in the hollow of his hand.

(So far, it seemed to me to be juggling, accompanied by a foolish waste of ink.

I was beginning to feel sleepy again, when Penelope’s next words stirred me up.)

The Indians looked up the road and down the road once more—and then the

chief Indian said these words to the boy; “See the English gentleman from foreign parts.”

The boy said, “I see him.”

The Indian said, “Is it on the road to this house, and on no other, that the English gentleman will travel today?”

The boy said, “It is on the road to this house, and on no other, that the English

gentleman will travel today.”

The Indian put a second question—after waiting a little first. He said: “Has the

English gentleman got It about him?”

The boy answered—also, after waiting a little first—“Yes.”

The Indian put a third and last question: “Will the English gentleman come here, as he has promised to come, at the close of day?”

The boy said, “I can’t tell.”

The Indian asked why.

The boy said, “I am tired. The mist rises in my head, and puzzles me. I can see

no more today.”

With that the catechism ended. The chief Indian said something in his own language to the other two, pointing to the boy, and pointing towards the town, in

which (as we afterwards discovered) they were lodged. He then, after making more signs on the boy’s head, blew on his forehead, and so woke him up with a

start. After that, they all went on their way towards the town, and the girls saw

them no more.

Most things they say have a moral, if you only look for it. What was the moral of this?

The moral was, as I thought: First, that the chief juggler had heard Mr.

Franklin’s arrival talked of among the servants out-of-doors, and saw his way to

making a little money by it. Second, that he and his men and boy (with a view to

making the said money) meant to hang about till they saw my lady drive home,

and then to come back, and foretell Mr. Franklin’s arrival by magic. Third, that

Penelope had heard them rehearsing their hocus-pocus, like actors rehearsing a

play. Fourth, that I should do well to have an eye, that evening, on the plate-basket. Fifth, that Penelope would do well to cool down, and leave me, her father, to doze off again in the sun.

That appeared to me to be the sensible view. If you know anything of the ways

of young women, you won’t be surprised to hear that Penelope wouldn’t take it.

The moral of the thing was serious, according to my daughter. She particularly

reminded me of the Indian’s third question, Has the English gentleman got It about him? “Oh, father!” says Penelope, clasping her hands, “don’t joke about this. What does ‘It’ mean?”

“We’ll ask Mr. Franklin, my dear,” I said, “if you can wait till Mr. Franklin comes.” I winked to show I meant that in joke. Penelope took it quite seriously.

My girl’s earnestness tickled me. “What on earth should Mr. Franklin know

about it?” I inquired. “Ask him,” says Penelope. “And see whether he thinks it a laughing matter, too.” With that parting shot, my daughter left me.

I settled it with myself, when she was gone, that I really would ask Mr.

Franklin—mainly to set Penelope’s mind at rest. What was said between us,

when I did ask him, later on that same day, you will find set out fully in its proper place. But as I don’t wish to raise your expectations and then disappoint

them, I will take leave to warn you here—before we go any further—that you won’t find the ghost of a joke in our conversation on the subject of the jugglers.

To my great surprise, Mr. Franklin, like Penelope, took the thing seriously. How

seriously, you will understand, when I tell you that, in his opinion, “It” meant the

Moonstone.

CHAPTER IV

I am truly sorry to detain you over me and my beehive chair. A sleepy old man, in a sunny back yard, is not an interesting object, I am well aware. But things must be put down in their places, as things actually happened—and you

must please to jog on a little while longer with me, in expectation of Mr.

Franklin Blake’s arrival later in the day.

Before I had time to doze off again, after my daughter Penelope had left me, I

was disturbed by a rattling of plates and dishes in the servants’ hall, which meant

that dinner was ready. Taking my own meals in my own sitting-room, I had nothing to do with the servants’ dinner, except to wish them a good stomach to it

all round, previous to composing myself once more in my chair. I was just stretching my legs, when out bounced another woman on me. Not my daughter

again; only Nancy, the kitchen-maid, this time. I was straight in her way out; and

I observed, as she asked me to let her by, that she had a sulky face—a thing which, as head of the servants, I never allow, on principle, to pass me without inquiry.

“What are you turning your back on your dinner for?” I asked. “What’s wrong

now, Nancy?”

Nancy tried to push by, without answering; upon which I rose up, and took her

by the ear. She is a nice plump young lass, and it is customary with me to adopt

that manner of showing that I personally approve of a girl.

“What’s wrong now?” I said once more.

“Rosanna’s late again for dinner,” says Nancy. “And I’m sent to fetch her in.

All the hard work falls on my shoulders in this house. Let me alone, Mr.

Betteredge!”

The person here mentioned as Rosanna was our second housemaid. Having a

kind of pity for our second housemaid (why, you shall presently know), and seeing in Nancy’s face, that she would fetch her fellow-servant in with more hard words than might be needful under the circumstances, it struck me that I had nothing particular to do, and that I might as well fetch Rosanna myself; giving her a hint to be punctual in future, which I knew she would take kindly

from me.

“Where is Rosanna?” I inquired.

“At the sands, of course!” says Nancy, with a toss of her head. “She had another of her fainting fits this morning, and she asked to go out and get a breath

of fresh air. I have no patience with her!”

“Go back to your dinner, my girl,” I said. “I have patience with her, and I’ll

fetch her in.”

Nancy (who has a fine appetite) looked pleased. When she looks pleased, she

looks nice. When she looks nice, I chuck her under the chin. It isn’t immorality

—it’s only habit.

Well, I took my stick, and set off for the sands.

No! it won’t do to set off yet. I am sorry again to detain you; but you really

must hear the story of the sands, and the story of Rosanna—for this reason, that

the matter of the Diamond touches them both nearly. How hard I try to get on with my statement without stopping by the way, and how badly I succeed! But,

there!—Persons and Things do turn up so vexatiously in this life, and will in a

manner insist on being noticed. Let us take it easy, and let us take it short; we shall be in the thick of the mystery soon, I promise you!

Rosanna (to put the Person before the Thing, which is but common politeness)

was the only new servant in our house. About four months before the time I am

writing of, my lady had been in London, and had gone over a Reformatory, intended to save forlorn women from drifting back into bad ways, after they had

got released from prison. The matron, seeing my lady took an interest in the place, pointed out a girl to her, named Rosanna Spearman, and told her a most

miserable story, which I haven’t the heart to repeat here; for I don’t like to be made wretched without any use, and no more do you. The upshot of it was, that

Rosanna Spearman had been a thief, and not being of the sort that get up Companies in the City, and rob from thousands, instead of only robbing from one, the law laid hold of her, and the prison and the reformatory followed the lead of the law. The matron’s opinion of Rosanna was (in spite of what she had