The Moonstone | Page 7

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!
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