Contributed by GABRIEL BETTEREDGE
I am the person (as you remember no doubt) who led the way in these
pages, and opened the story. I am also the person who is left behind, as
it were, to close the story up.
Let nobody suppose that I have any last words to say here concerning the
Indian Diamond. I hold that unlucky jewel in abhorrence--and I refer you
to other authority than mine, for such news of the Moonstone as you may,
at the present time, be expected to receive. My purpose, in this place,
is to state a fact in the history of the family, which has been passed
over by everybody, and which I won't allow to be disrespectfully
smothered up in that way. The fact to which I allude is--the marriage of
Miss Rachel and Mr. Franklin Blake. This interesting event took place at
our house in Yorkshire, on Tuesday, October ninth, eighteen hundred and
forty-nine. I had a new suit of clothes on the occasion. And the married
couple went to spend the honeymoon in Scotland.
Family festivals having been rare enough at our house, since my poor
mistress's death, I own--on this occasion of the wedding--to having
(towards the latter part of the day) taken a drop too much on the
strength of it.
If you have ever done the same sort of thing yourself you will
understand and feel for me. If you have not, you will very likely say,
"Disgusting old man! why does he tell us this?" The reason why is now to
come.
Having, then, taken my drop (bless you! you have got your favourite
vice, too; only your vice isn't mine, and mine isn't yours), I next
applied the one infallible remedy--that remedy being, as you know,
ROBINSON CRUSOE. Where I opened that unrivalled book, I can't say. Where
the lines of print at last left off running into each other, I know,
however, perfectly well. It was at page three hundred and eighteen--a
domestic bit concerning Robinson Crusoe's marriage, as follows: "With those Thoughts, I considered my new Engagement, that I had a Wife
"--(Observe! so had Mr. Franklin!)--"one Child born"--(Observe again!
that might yet be Mr. Franklin's case, too!)--"and my Wife then"--What
Robinson Crusoe's wife did, or did not do, "then," I felt no desire to
discover. I scored the bit about the Child with my pencil, and put a
morsel of paper for a mark to keep the place; "Lie you there," I said,
"till the marriage of Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel is some months
older--and then we'll see!"