The Moonstone - Page 240/404

The prominent personage among the guests at the dinner party I found to

be Mr. Murthwaite.

On his appearance in England, after his wanderings, society had been

greatly interested in the traveller, as a man who had passed through

many dangerous adventures, and who had escaped to tell the tale. He had

now announced his intention of returning to the scene of his exploits,

and of penetrating into regions left still unexplored. This magnificent

indifference to placing his safety in peril for the second time, revived

the flagging interest of the worshippers in the hero. The law of chances

was clearly against his escaping on this occasion. It is not every day

that we can meet an eminent person at dinner, and feel that there is

a reasonable prospect of the news of his murder being the news that we

hear of him next.

When the gentlemen were left by themselves in the dining-room, I found

myself sitting next to Mr. Murthwaite. The guests present being all

English, it is needless to say that, as soon as the wholesome check

exercised by the presence of the ladies was removed, the conversation

turned on politics as a necessary result.

In respect to this all-absorbing national topic, I happen to be one of

the most un-English Englishmen living. As a general rule, political talk

appears to me to be of all talk the most dreary and the most profitless.

Glancing at Mr. Murthwaite, when the bottles had made their first round

of the table, I found that he was apparently of my way of thinking. He

was doing it very dexterously--with all possible consideration for

the feelings of his host--but it is not the less certain that he

was composing himself for a nap. It struck me as an experiment worth

attempting, to try whether a judicious allusion to the subject of the

Moonstone would keep him awake, and, if it did, to see what HE thought

of the last new complication in the Indian conspiracy, as revealed in

the prosaic precincts of my office.

"If I am not mistaken, Mr. Murthwaite," I began, "you were acquainted

with the late Lady Verinder, and you took some interest in the strange

succession of events which ended in the loss of the Moonstone?"

The eminent traveller did me the honour of waking up in an instant, and

asking me who I was.

I informed him of my professional connection with the Herncastle family,

not forgetting the curious position which I had occupied towards the

Colonel and his Diamond in the bygone time.

Mr. Murthwaite shifted round in his chair, so as to put the rest of the

company behind him (Conservatives and Liberals alike), and concentrated

his whole attention on plain Mr. Bruff, of Gray's Inn Square.

"Have you heard anything, lately, of the Indians?" he asked.