The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins (ebook reader screen TXT) 📗

miles off. Ezra Jennings stopped at the road which led to the village.

“My way lies in this direction,” he said. “I am really and truly sorry, Mr. Blake, that I can be of no use to you.”

His voice told me that he spoke sincerely. His soft brown eyes rested on me for a moment with a look of melancholy interest. He bowed, and went, without another word, on his way to the village.

For a minute or more I stood and watched him, walking farther and farther away from me; carrying farther and farther away with him what I now firmly believed to be the clue of which I was in search. He turned, after walking on a little way, and looked back. Seeing me still standing at the place where we had parted, he stopped, as if doubting whether I might not wish to speak to him again. There was no time for me to reason out my own situation⁠—to remind myself that I was losing my opportunity, at what might be the turning point of my life, and all to flatter nothing more important than my own self-esteem! There was only time to call him back first, and to think afterwards. I suspect I am one of the rashest of existing men. I called him back⁠—and then I said to myself, “Now there is no help for it. I must tell him the truth!”

He retraced his steps directly. I advanced along the road to meet him.

“Mr. Jennings,” I said. “I have not treated you quite fairly. My interest in tracing Mr. Candy’s lost recollection is not the interest of recovering the Moonstone. A serious personal matter is at the bottom of my visit to Yorkshire. I have but one excuse for not having dealt frankly with you in this matter. It is more painful to me than I can say, to mention to anybody what my position really is.”

Ezra Jennings looked at me with the first appearance of embarrassment which I had seen in him yet.

“I have no right, Mr. Blake, and no wish,” he said, “to intrude myself into your private affairs. Allow me to ask your pardon, on my side, for having (most innocently) put you to a painful test.”

“You have a perfect right,” I rejoined, “to fix the terms on which you feel justified in revealing what you heard at Mr. Candy’s bedside. I understand and respect the delicacy which influences you in this matter. How can I expect to be taken into your confidence if I decline to admit you into mine? You ought to know, and you shall know, why I am interested in discovering what Mr. Candy wanted to say to me. If I turn out to be mistaken in my anticipations, and if you prove unable to help me when you are really aware of what I want, I shall trust to your honour to keep my secret⁠—and something tells me that I shall not trust in vain.”

“Stop, Mr. Blake. I have a word to say, which must be said before you go any farther.” I looked at him in astonishment. The grip of some terrible emotion seemed to have seized him, and shaken him to the soul. His gipsy complexion had altered to a livid greyish paleness; his eyes had suddenly become wild and glittering; his voice had dropped to a tone⁠—low, stern, and resolute⁠—which I now heard for the first time. The latent resources in the man, for good or for evil⁠—it was hard, at that moment, to say which⁠—leapt up in him and showed themselves to me, with the suddenness of a flash of light.

“Before you place any confidence in me,” he went on, “you ought to know, and you must know, under what circumstances I have been received into Mr. Candy’s house. It won’t take long. I don’t profess, sir, to tell my story (as the phrase is) to any man. My story will die with me. All I ask, is to be permitted to tell you, what I have told Mr. Candy. If you are still in the mind, when you have heard that, to say what you have proposed to say, you will command my attention and command my services. Shall we walk on?”

The suppressed misery in his face silenced me. I answered his question by a sign. We walked on.

After advancing a few hundred yards, Ezra Jennings stopped at a gap in the rough stone wall which shut off the moor from the road, at this part of it.

“Do you mind resting a little, Mr. Blake?” he asked. “I am not what I was⁠—and some things shake me.”

I agreed of course. He led the way through the gap to a patch of turf on the heathy ground, screened by bushes and dwarf trees on the side nearest to the road, and commanding in the opposite direction a grandly desolate view over the broad brown wilderness of the moor. The clouds had gathered, within the last half hour. The light was dull; the distance was dim. The lovely face of Nature met us, soft and still colourless⁠—met us without a smile.

We sat down in silence. Ezra Jennings laid aside his hat, and passed his hand wearily over his forehead, wearily through his startling white and black hair. He tossed his little nosegay of wild flowers away from him, as if the remembrances which it recalled were remembrances which hurt him now.

“Mr. Blake!” he said, suddenly. “You are in bad company. The cloud of a horrible accusation has rested on me for years. I tell you the worst at once. I am a man whose life is a wreck, and whose character is gone.”

I attempted to speak. He stopped me.

“No,” he said. “Pardon me; not yet. Don’t commit yourself to expressions of sympathy which you may afterwards wish to recall. I have mentioned an accusation which has rested on me for years. There are circumstances in connection with it that tell against me. I cannot bring myself to acknowledge what the accusation is. And I am incapable, perfectly