The passage of text that inspired Gooseberry

I thought readers might like to see the passage of text that inspired me to write Gooseberry and had a profound effect when it came to distilling its narrative voice. It is Mr Bruff, the lawyer, who is currently narrating:
I felt another pull at my coat-tails. Gooseberry had not done with me yet.
‘Robbery!’ whispered the boy, pointing, in high delight, to the empty box.
‘You were told to wait down-stairs,’ I said. ‘Go away!’
‘And Murder!’ added Gooseberry, pointing, with a keener relish still, to the man on the bed.
There was something so hideous in the boy’s enjoyment of the horror of the scene, that I took him by the two shoulders and put him out of the room.
At the moment when I crossed the threshold of the door, I heard Sergeant Cuff’s voice, asking where I was. He met me, as I returned into the room, and forced me to go back with him to the bedside.
‘Mr. Blake!’ he said. ‘Look at the man’s face. It is a face disguised—and here’s a proof of it!’
He traced with his finger a thin line of livid white, running backward from the dead man’s forehead, between the swarthy complexion, and the slightly-disturbed black hair. ‘Let’s see what is under this,’ said the Sergeant, suddenly seizing the black hair, with a firm grip of his hand.
My nerves were not strong enough to bear it. I turned away again from the bed.
The first sight that met my eyes, at the other end of the room, was the irrepressible Gooseberry, perched on a chair, and looking with breathless interest, over the heads of his elders, at the Sergeant’s proceedings.
‘He’s pulling off his wig!’ whispered Gooseberry, compassionating my position, as the only person in the room who could see nothing.
There was a pause—and then a cry of astonishment among the people round the bed.
‘He’s pulled off his beard!’ cried Gooseberry.
There was another pause—Sergeant Cuff asked for something. The landlord went to the wash-hand-stand, and returned to the bed with a basin of water and a towel.
Gooseberry danced with excitement on the chair. ‘Come up here, along with me, sir! He's washing off his complexion now!’
—From The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Compassionating. Now there’s a word you don’t see very often. But isn’t Gooseberry a beautifully drawn and very comic character?
Fancy a free download of The Moonstone for the perfect Gothic holiday read? Visit my website for a link.
Happy holidays! Happy reading!
Michael
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Published on December 01, 2015 03:51
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