The Moonstone - Page 23/404

"Help me up," I said. "You're late for dinner, Rosanna--and I have come

to fetch you in."

"You, Mr. Betteredge!" says she.

"They told Nancy to fetch you," I said. "But thought you might like your

scolding better, my dear, if it came from me."

Instead of helping me up, the poor thing stole her hand into mine, and

gave it a little squeeze. She tried hard to keep from crying again,

and succeeded--for which I respected her. "You're very kind, Mr.

Betteredge," she said. "I don't want any dinner to-day--let me bide a

little longer here."

"What makes you like to be here?" I asked. "What is it that brings you

everlastingly to this miserable place?"

"Something draws me to it," says the girl, making images with her finger

in the sand. "I try to keep away from it, and I can't. Sometimes,"

says she in a low voice, as if she was frightened at her own fancy,

"sometimes, Mr. Betteredge, I think that my grave is waiting for me

here."

"There's roast mutton and suet-pudding waiting for you!" says I. "Go in

to dinner directly. This is what comes, Rosanna, of thinking on an empty

stomach!" I spoke severely, being naturally indignant (at my time of

life) to hear a young woman of five-and-twenty talking about her latter

end!

She didn't seem to hear me: she put her hand on my shoulder, and kept me

where I was, sitting by her side.

"I think the place has laid a spell on me," she said. "I dream of it

night after night; I think of it when I sit stitching at my work. You

know I am grateful, Mr. Betteredge--you know I try to deserve your

kindness, and my lady's confidence in me. But I wonder sometimes whether

the life here is too quiet and too good for such a woman as I am, after

all I have gone through, Mr. Betteredge--after all I have gone through.

It's more lonely to me to be among the other servants, knowing I am not

what they are, than it is to be here. My lady doesn't know, the matron

at the reformatory doesn't know, what a dreadful reproach honest people

are in themselves to a woman like me. Don't scold me, there's a dear

good man. I do my work, don't I? Please not to tell my lady I am

discontented--I am not. My mind's unquiet, sometimes, that's all." She

snatched her hand off my shoulder, and suddenly pointed down to the

quicksand. "Look!" she said "Isn't it wonderful? isn't it terrible? I

have seen it dozens of times, and it's always as new to me as if I had

never seen it before!"

I looked where she pointed. The tide was on the turn, and the horrid

sand began to shiver. The broad brown face of it heaved slowly, and then

dimpled and quivered all over. "Do you know what it looks like to ME?"

says Rosanna, catching me by the shoulder again. "It looks as if it had

hundreds of suffocating people under it--all struggling to get to the

surface, and all sinking lower and lower in the dreadful deeps! Throw a

stone in, Mr. Betteredge! Throw a stone in, and let's see the sand suck

it down!"