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Passage Illustrated

If I had stayed a moment more, I know not what words might have escaped me which I should have remembered with vain repentance and regret. I passed by her, and opened the door for the second time. For the second time — with the frantic perversity of a roused woman — she caught me by the arm, and barred my way out.

"Let me go, Rachel" I said. "It will be better for both of us. Let me go."

The hysterical passion swelled in her bosom — her quickened convulsive breathing almost beat on my face, as she held me back at the door.

"Why did you come here?" she persisted, desperately. "I ask you again — why did you come here? Are you afraid I shall expose you? Now you are a rich man, now you have got a place in the world, now you may marry the best lady in the land — are you afraid I shall say the words which I have never said yet to anybody but you? I can't say the words! I can't expose you! I am worse, if worse can be, than you are yourself." Sobs and tears burst from her. She struggled with them fiercely; she held me more and more firmly. "I can't tear you out of my heart," she said, "even now! You may trust in the shameful, shameful weakness which can only struggle against you in this way!" She suddenly let go of me — she threw up her hands, and wrung them frantically in the air. "Any other woman living would shrink from the disgrace of touching him!" she exclaimed. "Oh, God! I despise myself even more heartily than I despise him!"

The tears were forcing their way into my eyes in spite of me — the horror of it was to be endured no longer.

"You shall know that you have wronged me, yet," I said. "Or you shall never see me again!"

With those words, I left her. She started up from the chair on which she had dropped the moment before: she started up — the noble creature! — and followed me across the outer room, with a last merciful word at parting. — "Second Period, Third Narrative,​Contributed by Franklin Blake," Chapter 7, p. 390.

Commentary

Travelling to London from Yorkshire by rail after he and Betteredge have retrieved Rosanna Spearman's letter and box from the Shivering Sand, Franklin Blake hopes to clear his name with Rachel by reviewing events on the night of her birthday. He hopes to persuade her out of her prejudice against him, and learn the cause of her suspicions: is it merely that she overheard or learned through her mother about Blake's having defaulted on his loan to the Frenchman? What he is about to learn in his interview with Rachel at Mr. Bruff's house in Hampstead is that she actually saw take the Diamond. He has absolutely no memory of having committed the theft, and so is stunned by her revelation that he does not know quite how to respond, other than to ask her to review the events of that night with him. Although the evidence of the paint-smeared nightgown which he has acquired from Rosanna Spearman's box supports Rachel's assertion, he cannot bring himself to believe that he is the thief. The original illustrators of this sequence in Harper's Weekly (13 and 20 June 1868) felt that this reunion of the lovers at Mr. Bruff's home was so significant that they devoted four illustrations in the two successive instalment to it: the flashback of Rachel in her nightgown, presumably watching Franklin Blake take the diamond (headnote vignette, 20 June), Rachel at the piano in the conservatory at Bruff's home (headnote vignette, 13 June), Franklin Blake at the door of the conservatory (full-scale illustration, 13 June), and the climactic Rachel and Franklin together (20 June). Whereas F. A. Fraser and Alfred Pearse show Rachel angrily reproaching Franklin for trying to take advantage of her and continuing to pretend that he knows nothing about the theft, the Harper's illustrators in "She caught me by the arm and barred my way out" (20 June 1868, p. 389) are attempting to convey the notion that the lovers may yet be reunited if they can get to the bottom of why Blake cannot remember taking the Diamond. The mystery, then, is redefined, for it is not the theft of the Moonstone that is unknown, but rather the circumstances and motivations of the theft and, in particular, why Franklin Blake has no memory whatsoever of having gone to Rachel's room in the early morning hours of 22 June 1848. Three of these four crucial illustrations (which give the reader hope that the lovers can yet revive their "romance," the subtitle of the novel, if they can uncover the truth) are what Surridge and Leighton call "threshold" scenes:

The Harper's illustrators also repeatedly deploy threshold settings, locating Collins’s characters near doors or windows. These thresholds, we argue, visually suggest the sensation genre's propensity for disrupting boundaries of gender and class, as well as this particular novel's violation of barriers between the known and the unknown, white and nonwhite, England and its foreign others, law and desire, the conscious and the unconscious. The illustrations show Rachel watching the man she loves steal her gemstone (chapter head, Part 25); Rachel watching the investigation and wishing that Franklin might escape (Part 6, fig. 7); and Franklin sleepwalking, midway between conscious and unconscious states (chapter head, Part 30). All of these events place characters in positions where their conscious ethics and their basic drives collide, suggesting how the novel presses beyond the surface of identity, probing its margins. The illustrations contribute, then, to the novel’s status as sensation fiction, suggesting the text's roiling undercurrents, its deep-set fears of colonial invasion at the heart of England, and its capacity to undermine or cross boundaries fundamental to self and social identities. — 222.

Indeed, the reader seems to be on a threshold here as the final stage of the story — the discovery of Dr. Candy's dosing Franklin Blake with laudanum, Blake's attempting to protect the Moonstone, and Godfrey Ablewhite's taking it from Blake and pawning it with Septimus Luker. Franklin Blake has just crossed another barrier in polite, upper-middle-class society: he has endeavoured to have an unchaperoned interview with a young woman who is no longer his fiancée. The Fraser and Pearse illustrations, although realising the same conversation, are markedly different in their depiction of the characters. Fraser clearly establishes the setting by the piano behind Franklin Blake and Rachel Verinder. He is taken aback by the ferocity of her response, even though she is trying to maintain her composure (as suggested by her left hand touching table). His posture implies self-defence, but his gaze is unwavering. Quite the opposite situation exists in the Pearse illustration, in which Franklin Blake is clearly the agressor and Rachel recoils in a standard theatrical pose for shock and surprise as she supports herself by touching the table while raising the other hand to her chest.

Relevant Serial (1868) and Collins Clear-Type Edition (1910) Illustrations

Left: F. A. Fraser's treatment of the scene in Mr. Bruff's conservatory "You villain, I saw you take the Diamond with my own eyes." (1890). Right: Alfred Pearse's reiteration of the Fraser illustration, with Rachel striking a theatrical pose and Blake in an agressive posture, "You coward!" she said. (1910). [Click on images to enlarge them.]

Related Materials

• The Moonstone and British India (1857, 1868, and 1876)
• Detection and Disruption inside and outside the 'quiet English home' in The Moonstone
• Illustrations by F. A. Fraser for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance (1890)
• Illustrations by John Sloan for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance (1908)
• Illustrations by Alfred Pearse for The Moonstone: A Romance (1910)
• The 1944 illustrations by William Sharp for The Moonstone (1946).

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Last updated 23 August 2016