第30章

O NE on the top of the other the rest of the company followed the Ablewhites, till we had the whole tale of them complete.Including the family, they were twenty-four in all.It was a noble sight to see, when they were settled in their places round the dinner-table, and the Rector of Frizinghall (with beautiful elocution) rose and said grace.

There is no need to worry you with a list of the guests.You will meet none of them a second time--in my part of the story, at any rate--with the exception of two.

Those two sat on either side of Miss Rachel, who, as queen of the day, was naturally the great attraction of the party.On this occasion she was more particularly the centre-point towards which everybody's eyes were directed; for (to my lady's secret annoyance) she wore her wonderful birthday present, which eclipsed all the rest--the Moonstone.It was without any setting when it had been placed in her hands; but that universal genius, Mr.Franklin, had contrived, with the help of his neat little fingers and a bit of silver wire, to fix it as a brooch in the bosom of her white dress.

Everybody wondered at the prodigious size and beauty of the Diamond, as a matter of course.But the only two of the company who said anything out of the common way about it were those two guests I have mentioned, who sat by Miss Rachel on her right hand and her left.

The guest on her left was Mr.Candy, our doctor at Frizinghall.

This was a pleasant, companionable little man, with the draw-back, however, I must own, of being too fond, in season and out of season, of his joke, and of his plunging in rather a headlong manner into talk with strangers, without waiting to feel his way first.In society he was constantly making mistakes, and setting people unintentionally by the ears together.In his medical practice he was a more prudent man; picking up his discretion (as his enemies said) by a kind of instinct, and proving to be generally right where more carefully conducted doctors turned out to be wrong.What he said about the Diamond to Miss Rachel was said, as usual, by way of a mystification or joke.He gravely entreated her (in the interests of science) to let him take it home and burn it.`We will first heat it, Miss Rachel,' says the doctor, `to such and such a degree; then we will expose it to a current of air; and, little by little--puff!--we evaporate the Diamond, and spare you a world of anxiety about the safe keeping of a valuable precious stone!'

My lady, listening with rather a careworn expression on her face, seemed to wish that the doctor had been in earnest, and that he could have found Miss Rachel zealous enough in the cause of science to sacrifice her birthday gift.

The other guest, who sat on my young lady's right hand, was an eminent public character--being no other than the celebrated Indian traveller, Mr.Murthwaite, who, at risk of his life, had penetrated in disguise where no European had ever set foot before.

This was a long, lean, wiry, brown, silent man.He had a weary look, and a very steady, attentive eye.It was rumoured that he was tired of the humdrum life among the people in our parts, and longing to go back and wander off on the tramp again in the wild places of the East.Except what he said to Miss Rachel about her jewel, I doubt if he spoke six words or drank so much as a single glass of wine, all through the dinner.The Moonstone was the only object that interested him in the smallest degree.

The fame of it seemed to have reached him, in some of those perilous Indian places where his wanderings had lain.After looking at it silently for so long a time that Miss Rachel began to get confused, he said to her in his cool immovable way, `If you ever go to India, Miss Verinder, don't take your uncle's birthday gift with you.A Hindoo diamond is sometimes part of a Hindoo religion.I know a certain city, and a certain temple in that city, where, dressed as you are now, your life would not be worth five minutes' purchase.' Miss Rachel, safe in England, was quite delighted to hear of her danger in India.The Bouncers were more delighted still;they dropped their knives and forks with a crash, and burst out together vehemently, `O! how interesting!' My lady fidgeted in her chair, and changed the subject.

As the dinner got on, I became aware, little by little, that this festival was not prospering as other like festivals had prospered before it.

Looking back at the birthday now, by the light of what happened afterwards, I am half inclined to think that the cursed Diamond must have cast a blight on the whole company.I plied them well with wine; and being a privileged character, followed the unpopular dishes round the table, and whispered to the company confidentially, `Please to change your mind and try it;for I know it will do you good.' Nine times out of ten they changed their minds--out of regard for their old original Betteredge, they were pleased to say--but all to no purpose.There were gaps of silence in the talk, as the dinner got on, that made me feel personally uncomfortable.When they did use their tongues again, they used them innocently, in the most unfortunate manner and to the worst possible purpose.Mr.Candy, the doctor, for instance, said more unlucky things than I ever knew him to say before.

Take one sample of the way in which he went on, and you will understand what I had to put up with at the sideboard, officiating as I was in the character of a man who had the prosperity of the festival at heart.

One of our ladies present at dinner was worthy Mrs.Threadgall, widow of the late Professor of that name.Talking of her deceased husband perpetually, this good lady never mentioned to strangers that he was deceased.

She thought, I suppose, that every able-bodied adult in England ought to know as much as that.In one of the gaps of silence, somebody mentioned the dry and rather nasty subject of human anatomy; whereupon good Mrs.