On the Sergeant describing the place, I recognized it as a cottage inhabited by a fisherman named Yolland, with his wife and two grown-up children, a son and a daughter.If you will look back, you will find that, in first presenting Rosanna Spearman to your notice, I have described her as occasionally varying her walk to the Shivering Sand, by a visit to some friends of hers at Cobb's Hole.Those friends were the Yollands--respectable, worthy people, a credit to the neighbourhood.Rosanna's acquaintance with them had begun by means of the daughter, who was afflicted with a misshapen foot, and who was known in our parts by the name of Limping Lucy.The two deformed girls had, I suppose, a kind of fellow-feeling for each other.Anyway, the Yollands and Rosanna always appeared to get on together, at the few chances they had of meeting, in a pleasant and friendly manner.The fact of Sergeant Cuff having traced the girl to their cottage, set the matter of my helping his inquiries in quite a new light.Rosanna had merely gone where she was in the habit of going; and to show that she had been in company with the fisherman and his family was as good as to prove that she had been innocently occupied, so far, at any rate.It would be doing the girl a service, therefore, instead of an injury, if I allowed myself to be convinced by Sergeant Cuff's logic.I professed myself convinced by it accordingly.
We went on to Cobb's Hole, seeing the footsteps on the sand, as long as the light lasted.
On reaching the cottage, the fisherman and his son proved to be out in the boat; and Limping Lucy, always weak and weary, was resting on her bed upstairs.Good Mrs.Yolland received us alone in her kitchen.When she heard that Sergeant Cuff was a celebrated character in London, she clapped a bottle of Dutch gin and a couple of clean pipes on the table, and stared as if she could never see enough of him.
I sat quiet in a corner, waiting to hear how the Sergeant would find his way to the subject of Rosanna Spearman.His usual roundabout manner of going to work proved, on this occasion, to be more roundabout than ever.
How he managed it is more than I could tell at the time, and more than I can tell now.But this is certain, he began with the Royal Family, the Primitive Methodists, and the price of fish; and he got from that (in his dismal, underground way) to the loss of the Moonstone, the spitefulness of our first housemaid, and the hard behaviour of the women-servants generally towards Rosanna Spearman.Having reached his subject in this fashion, he described himself as making his inquiries about the lost Diamond, partly with a view to find it, and partly for the purpose of clearing Rosanna from the unjust suspicions of her enemies in the house.In about a quarter of an hour from the time when we entered the kitchen, good Mrs.Yolland was persuaded that she was talking to Rosanna's best friend, and was pressing Sergeant Cuff to comfort his stomach and revive his spirits out of the Dutch bottle.
Being firmly persuaded that the Sergeant was wasting his breath to no purpose on Mrs.Yolland, I sat enjoying the talk between them, much as I have sat, in my time, enjoying a stage play.The great Cuff showed a wonderful patience; trying his luck drearily this way and that way, and firing shot after shot, as it were, at random, on the chance of hitting the mark.Everything to Rosanna's credit, nothing to Rosanna's prejudice--that was how it ended, try as he might; with Mrs.Yolland talking nineteen to the dozen, and placing the most entire confidence in him.His last effort was made, when we had looked at our watches, and had got on our legs previous to taking leave.
`I shall now wish you good night, ma'am,' says the Sergeant.`And Ishall only say, at parting, that Rosanna Spearman has a sincere well-wisher in myself, your obedient servant.But, oh dear me! she will never get on in her present place; and my advice to her is--leave it.'
`Bless your heart alive! she is going to leave it!' cries Mrs.
Yolland.( Nota bene --I translate Mrs.Yolland out of the Yorkshire language into the English language.When I tell you that the all-accomplished Cuff was every now and then puzzled to understand her until I helped him, you will draw your own conclusions as to what your state of mind would be if I reported her in her native tongue.)Rosanna Spearman going to leave us! I pricked up my ears at that.It seemed strange, to say the least of it, that she should have given no warning, in the first place, to my lady or to me.A certain doubt came up in my mind whether Sergeant Cuff's last random shot might not have hit the mark.
I began to question whether my share in the proceedings was quite as harmless a one as I had thought it.It might be all in the way of the Sergeant's business to mystify an honest woman by wrapping her round in a network of lies; but it was my duty to have remembered, as a good Protestant, that the father of lies is the Devil--and that mischief and the Devil are never far apart.Beginning to smell mischief in the air, I tried to take Sergeant Cuff out.He sat down again instantly, and asked for a little drop of comfort out of the Dutch bottle.Mrs.Yolland sat down opposite to him and gave him his nip.I went to the door, excessively uncomfortable, and said Ithought I must bid them good night--and yet I didn't go.
`So she means to leave?' says the Sergeant.`What is she to do when she does leave? Sad, sad! The poor creature has got no friends in the world, except you and me.'
`Ah, but she has though!' says Mrs.Yolland.`She came in here, as Itold you, this evening; and, after sitting and talking a little with my girl Lucy and me, she asked to go upstairs by herself, into Lucy's room.
