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 specially2 called one Wednesday morning into my lady’s own sitting-room3, 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 spun4 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 tyrant5 that ever tortured a doll, and the hardest driver of an exhausted6 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 eldest7 sister married the celebrated8 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 snug9 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 stature10. 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 sieve11. 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 steward12 (at my own particular request, mind, and because it vexed13 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 linen14 frocks and trousers, looking up at the house.
The Indians, as I saw on looking closer, had small hand-drums slung15 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 spoke16 English and who exhibited, I must own, the most elegant manners, presently informed me that my judgment17 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 premises18. 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 mischief20 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 lodge21, 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 proceedings22 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 jabbered23 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 privately24 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, ragged25, and forsaken26 little boy. This, it seems, ended the difficulty. The little chap unwillingly27 held out his hand. Upon that, the Indian took a bottle from his bosom28, and poured out of it some black stuff, like ink, into the palm of the boy’s hand. The Indian—first touching29 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 juggling30, 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 lodged31. 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 juggler19 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 foretell32 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 doze33 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 winked34 to show I meant that in joke. Penelope took it quite seriously. My girl’s earnestness tickled35 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 fully36 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.
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1
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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tyrant
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| n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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7
eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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8
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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9
snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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10
stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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sieve
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| n.筛，滤器，漏勺 | |
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steward
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| n.乘务员，服务员；看管人；膳食管理员 | |
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13
vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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14
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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15
slung
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| 抛( sling的过去式和过去分词 )； 吊挂； 遣送； 押往 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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17
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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juggler
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| n. 变戏法者, 行骗者 | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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jabbered
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| v.急切而含混不清地说( jabber的过去式和过去分词 )；急促兴奋地说话 | |
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privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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unwillingly
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| adv.不情愿地 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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29
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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30
juggling
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| n. 欺骗, 杂耍(=jugglery) adj. 欺骗的, 欺诈的 动词juggle的现在分词 | |
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31
lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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foretell
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| v.预言，预告，预示 | |
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33
doze
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| v.打瞌睡；n.打盹，假寐 | |
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34
winked
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| v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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35
tickled
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| （使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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