The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (10 ebook reader .TXT) 📕

told them that a fatal accident must have happened to her. He then picked out the fisherman from the rest, and put a question to him, turning about again towards the sea: “Tell me,” he said. “Could a boat have taken her off, in such weather as this, from those rocks where her footmarks stop?”

The fisherman pointed to the rollers tumbling in on the sandbank, and to the great waves leaping up in clouds of foam against the headlands on either side of us.

“No boat that ever was built,” he answered, “could have got to her through that.”

Sergeant Cuff looked for the last time at the footmarks on the sand, which the rain was now fast blurring out.

“There,” he said, “is the evidence that she can’t have left this place by land. And here,” he went on, looking at the fisherman, “is the evidence that she can’t have got away by sea.” He stopped, and considered for a minute. “She was seen running towards this place, half an hour before I got here from the house,” he said to Yolland. “Some time has passed since then. Call it, altogether, an hour ago. How high would the water be, at that time, on this side of the rocks?” He pointed to the south side⁠—otherwise, the side which was not filled up by the quicksand.

“As the tide makes today,” said the fisherman, “there wouldn’t have been water enough to drown a kitten on that side of the Spit, an hour since.”

Sergeant Cuff turned about northward, towards the quicksand.

“How much on this side?” he asked.

“Less still,” answered Yolland. “The Shivering Sand would have been just awash, and no more.”

The Sergeant turned to me, and said that the accident must have happened on the side of the quicksand. My tongue was loosened at that. “No accident!” I told him. “When she came to this place, she came weary of her life, to end it here.”

He started back from me. “How do you know?” he asked. The rest of them crowded round. The Sergeant recovered himself instantly. He put them back from me; he said I was an old man; he said the discovery had shaken me; he said, “Let him alone a little.” Then he turned to Yolland, and asked, “Is there any chance of finding her, when the tide ebbs again?” And Yolland answered, “None. What the Sand gets, the Sand keeps for ever.” Having said that, the fisherman came a step nearer, and addressed himself to me.

“Mr. Betteredge,” he said, “I have a word to say to you about the young woman’s death. Four foot out, broadwise, along the side of the Spit, there’s a shelf of rock, about half fathom down under the sand. My question is⁠—why didn’t she strike that? If she slipped, by accident, from off the Spit, she fell in where there’s foothold at the bottom, at a depth that would barely cover her to the waist. She must have waded out, or jumped out, into the Deeps beyond⁠—or she wouldn’t be missing now. No accident, sir! The Deeps of the Quicksand have got her. And they have got her by her own act.”

After that testimony from a man whose knowledge was to be relied on, the Sergeant was silent. The rest of us, like him, held our peace. With one accord, we all turned back up the slope of the beach.

At the sand-hillocks we were met by the under-groom, running to us from the house. The lad is a good lad, and has an honest respect for me. He handed me a little note, with a decent sorrow in his face. “Penelope sent me with this, Mr. Betteredge,” he said. “She found it in Rosanna’s room.”

It was her last farewell word to the old man who had done his best⁠—thank God, always done his best⁠—to befriend her.

“You have often forgiven me, Mr. Betteredge, in past times. When you next see the Shivering Sand, try to forgive me once more. I have found my grave where my grave was waiting for me. I have lived, and died, sir, grateful for your kindness.”

There was no more than that. Little as it was, I hadn’t manhood enough to hold up against it. Your tears come easy, when you’re young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you’re old, and leaving it. I burst out crying.

Sergeant Cuff took a step nearer to me⁠—meaning kindly, I don’t doubt. I shrank back from him. “Don’t touch me,” I said. “It’s the dread of you, that has driven her to it.”

“You are wrong, Mr. Betteredge,” he answered, quietly. “But there will be time enough to speak of it when we are indoors again.”

I followed the rest of them, with the help of the groom’s arm. Through the driving rain we went back⁠—to meet the trouble and the terror that were waiting for us at the house.

XX

Those in front had spread the news before us. We found the servants in a state of panic. As we passed my lady’s door, it was thrown open violently from the inner side. My mistress came out among us (with Mr. Franklin following, and trying vainly to compose her), quite beside herself with the horror of the thing.

“You are answerable for this!” she cried out, threatening the Sergeant wildly with her hand. “Gabriel! give that wretch his money⁠—and release me from the sight of him!”

The Sergeant was the only one among us who was fit to cope with her⁠—being the only one among us who was in possession of himself.

“I am no more answerable for this distressing calamity, my lady, than you are,” he said. “If, in half an hour from this, you still insist on my leaving the house, I will accept your ladyship’s dismissal, but not your ladyship’s money.”

It was spoken very respectfully, but very firmly at the same time⁠—and it had its effect on my mistress as well as on me. She suffered Mr. Franklin to lead her back into the room. As the door closed