I gave her my card, having first written on it in pencil: "I have
something to say about the Moonstone. Let me hear from you as soon
as you get back." That done, there was nothing left but to submit to
circumstances, and return to London.
In the irritable condition of my mind, at the time of which I am now
writing, the abortive result of my journey to the Sergeant's cottage
simply aggravated the restless impulse in me to be doing something. On
the day of my return from Dorking, I determined that the next morning
should find me bent on a new effort at forcing my way, through all
obstacles, from the darkness to the light.
What form was my next experiment to take?
If the excellent Betteredge had been present while I was considering
that question, and if he had been let into the secret of my thoughts, he
would, no doubt, have declared that the German side of me was, on this
occasion, my uppermost side. To speak seriously, it is perhaps possible
that my German training was in some degree responsible for the labyrinth
of useless speculations in which I now involved myself. For the greater
part of the night, I sat smoking, and building up theories, one more
profoundly improbable than another. When I did get to sleep, my
waking fancies pursued me in dreams. I rose the next morning, with
Objective-Subjective and Subjective-Objective inextricably entangled
together in my mind; and I began the day which was to witness my next
effort at practical action of some kind, by doubting whether I had any
sort of right (on purely philosophical grounds) to consider any sort of
thing (the Diamond included) as existing at all.
How long I might have remained lost in the mist of my own metaphysics,
if I had been left to extricate myself, it is impossible for me to say.
As the event proved, accident came to my rescue, and happily delivered
me. I happened to wear, that morning, the same coat which I had worn on
the day of my interview with Rachel. Searching for something else in one
of the pockets, I came upon a crumpled piece of paper, and, taking it
out, found Betteredge's forgotten letter in my hand.
It seemed hard on my good old friend to leave him without a reply. I
went to my writing-table, and read his letter again.
A letter which has nothing of the slightest importance in it, is
not always an easy letter to answer. Betteredge's present effort at
corresponding with me came within this category. Mr. Candy's assistant,
otherwise Ezra Jennings, had told his master that he had seen me; and
Mr. Candy, in his turn, wanted to see me and say something to me, when
I was next in the neighbourhood of Frizinghall. What was to be said in
answer to that, which would be worth the paper it was written on? I sat
idly drawing likenesses from memory of Mr. Candy's remarkable-looking
assistant, on the sheet of paper which I had vowed to dedicate
to Betteredge--until it suddenly occurred to me that here was the
irrepressible Ezra Jennings getting in my way again! I threw a dozen
portraits, at least, of the man with the piebald hair (the hair in every
case, remarkably like), into the waste-paper basket--and then and
there, wrote my answer to Betteredge. It was a perfectly commonplace
letter--but it had one excellent effect on me. The effort of writing
a few sentences, in plain English, completely cleared my mind of the
cloudy nonsense which had filled it since the previous day.