The Moonstone - Page 150/404

Don't suppose, however, that I was quit of Mr. Franklin on such easy

terms as these. Drifting again, out of the morning-room into the hall,

he found his way to the offices next, smelt my pipe, and was instantly

reminded that he had been simple enough to give up smoking for Miss

Rachel's sake. In the twinkling of an eye, he burst in on me with his

cigar-case, and came out strong on the one everlasting subject, in his

neat, witty, unbelieving, French way. "Give me a light, Betteredge.

Is it conceivable that a man can have smoked as long as I have without

discovering that there is a complete system for the treatment of women

at the bottom of his cigar-case? Follow me carefully, and I will prove

it in two words. You choose a cigar, you try it, and it disappoints you.

What do you do upon that? You throw it away and try another. Now observe

the application! You choose a woman, you try her, and she breaks your

heart. Fool! take a lesson from your cigar-case. Throw her away, and try

another!"

I shook my head at that. Wonderfully clever, I dare say, but my

own experience was dead against it. "In the time of the late Mrs.

Betteredge," I said, "I felt pretty often inclined to try your

philosophy, Mr. Franklin. But the law insists on your smoking your

cigar, sir, when you have once chosen it." I pointed that observation

with a wink. Mr. Franklin burst out laughing--and we were as merry as

crickets, until the next new side of his character turned up in due

course. So things went on with my young master and me; and so (while the

Sergeant and the gardener were wrangling over the roses) we two spent

the interval before the news came back from Frizinghall.

The pony-chaise returned a good half hour before I had ventured to

expect it. My lady had decided to remain for the present, at her

sister's house. The groom brought two letters from his mistress; one

addressed to Mr. Franklin, and the other to me.

Mr. Franklin's letter I sent to him in the library--into which refuge

his driftings had now taken him for the second time. My own letter,

I read in my own room. A cheque, which dropped out when I opened it,

informed me (before I had mastered the contents) that Sergeant Cuff's

dismissal from the inquiry after the Moonstone was now a settled thing.

I sent to the conservatory to say that I wished to speak to the Sergeant

directly. He appeared, with his mind full of the gardener and the

dog-rose, declaring that the equal of Mr. Begbie for obstinacy never

had existed yet, and never would exist again. I requested him to dismiss

such wretched trifling as this from our conversation, and to give his

best attention to a really serious matter. Upon that he exerted himself

sufficiently to notice the letter in my hand. "Ah!" he said in a weary

way, "you have heard from her ladyship. Have I anything to do with it,

Mr. Betteredge?"