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The Mystery of Edwin Drood

by Charles Dickens · English · Gutenberg #564 · 559,220 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Author: Charles Dickens


        
Release date: June 1, 1996 [eBook #564]
                Most recently updated: March 25, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/564


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD ***




The Mystery of Edwin Drood

by Charles Dickens


Contents

 CHAPTER I. THE DAWN
 CHAPTER II. A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO
 CHAPTER III. THE NUNS’ HOUSE
 CHAPTER IV. MR. SAPSEA
 CHAPTER V. MR. DURDLES AND FRIEND
 CHAPTER VI. PHILANTHROPY IN MINOR CANON CORNER
 CHAPTER VII. MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE
 CHAPTER VIII. DAGGERS DRAWN
 CHAPTER IX. BIRDS IN THE BUSH
 CHAPTER X. SMOOTHING THE WAY
 CHAPTER XI. A PICTURE AND A RING
 CHAPTER XII. A NIGHT WITH DURDLES
 CHAPTER XIII. BOTH AT THEIR BEST
 CHAPTER XIV. WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN?
 CHAPTER XV. IMPEACHED
 CHAPTER XVI. DEVOTED
 CHAPTER XVII. PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL AND UNPROFESSIONAL
 CHAPTER XVIII. A SETTLER IN CLOISTERHAM
 CHAPTER XIX. SHADOW ON THE SUN-DIAL
 CHAPTER XX. A FLIGHT
 CHAPTER XXI. A RECOGNITION
 CHAPTER XXII. A GRITTY STATE OF THINGS COMES ON
 CHAPTER XXIII. THE DAWN AGAIN




THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

[Illustration: Rochester castle]




CHAPTER I.
THE DAWN


An ancient English Cathedral Tower? How can the ancient English
Cathedral tower be here! The well-known massive gray square tower of
its old Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty
iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real
prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up?
Maybe it is set up by the Sultan’s orders for the impaling of a horde
of Turkish robbers, one by one. It is so, for cymbals clash, and the
Sultan goes by to his palace in long procession. Ten thousand scimitars
flash in the sunlight, and thrice ten thousand dancing-girls strew
flowers. Then, follow white elephants caparisoned in countless gorgeous
colours, and infinite in number and attendants. Still the Cathedral
Tower rises in the background, where it cannot be, and still no
writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay! Is the spike so low a thing
as the rusty spike on the top of a post of an old bedstead that has
tumbled all awry? Some vague period of drowsy laughter must be devoted
to the consideration of this possibility.

Shaking from head to foot, the man whose scattered consciousness has
thus fantastically pieced itself together, at length rises, supports
his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He is in the
meanest and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged window-curtain,
the light of early day steals in from a miserable court. He lies,
dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed
given way under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and also across
the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman.
The two first are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at a kind
of pipe, to kindle it. And as she blows, and shading it with her lean
hand, concentrates its red spark of light, it serves in the dim morning
as a lamp to show him what he sees of her.

“Another?” says this woman, in a querulous, rattling whisper. “Have
another?”

He looks about him, with his hand to his forehead.

“Ye’ve smoked as many as five since ye come in at midnight,” the woman
goes on, as she chronically complains. “Poor me, poor me, my head is so
bad. Them two come in after ye. Ah, poor me, the business is slack, is
slack! Few Chinamen about the Docks, and fewer Lascars, and no ships
coming in, these say! Here’s another ready for ye, deary. Ye’ll
remember like a good soul, won’t ye, that the market price is dreffle
high just now? More nor three shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful!
And ye’ll remember that nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t’other side
the court; but he can’t do it as well as me) has the true secret of
mixing it? Ye’ll pay up accordingly, deary, won’t ye?”

She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, occasionally bubbling at it,
inhales much of its contents.

“O me, O me, my lungs is weak, my lungs is bad! It’s nearly ready for
ye, deary. Ah, poor me, poor me, my poor hand shakes like to drop off!
I see ye coming-to, and I ses to my poor self, ‘I’ll have another ready
for him, and he’ll bear in mind the market price of opium, and pay
according.’ O my poor head! I makes my pipes of old penny ink-bottles,
ye see, deary—this is one—and I fits-in a mouthpiece, this way, and I
takes my mixter out of this thimble with this little horn spoon; and so
I fills, deary. Ah, my poor nerves! I got Heavens-hard drunk for
sixteen year afore I took to this; but this don’t hurt me, not to speak
of. And it takes away the hunger as well as wittles, deary.”

She hands him the nearly-emptied pipe, and sinks back, turning over on
her face.

He rises unsteadily from the bed, lays the pipe upon the hearth-stone,
draws back the ragged curtain, and looks with repugnance at his three
companions. He notices that the woman has opium-smoked herself into a
strange likeness of the Chinaman. His form of cheek, eye, and temple,
and his colour, are repeated in her. Said Chinaman convulsively
wrestles with one of his many Gods or Devils, perhaps, and snarls
horribly. The Lascar laughs and dribbles at the mouth. The hostess is
still.

[Illustration: In the Court]


“What visions can _she_ have?” the waking man muses, as he turns her
face towards him, and stands looking down at it. “Visions of many
butchers’ shops, and public-houses, and much credit? Of an increase of
hideous customers, and this horrible bedstead set upright again, and
this horrible court swept clean? What can she rise to, under any
quantity of opium, higher than that!—Eh?”

He bends down his ear, to listen to her mutterings.

“Unintelligible!”

As he watches the spasmodic shoots and darts that break out of her face
and limbs, like fitful lightning out of a dark sky, some contagion in
them seizes upon him: insomuch that he has to withdraw himself to a
lean arm-chair by the hearth—placed there, perhaps, for such
emergencies—and to sit in it, holding tight, until he has got the
better of this unclean spirit of imitation.

Then he comes back, pounces on the Chinaman, and seizing him with both
hands by the throat, turns him violently on the bed. The Chinaman
clutches the aggressive hands, resists, gasps, and protests.

“What do you say?”

A watchful pause.

“Unintelligible!”

Slowly loosening his grasp as he listens to the incoherent jargon with
an attentive frown, he turns to the Lascar and fairly drags him forth
upon the floor. As he falls, the Lascar starts into a half-risen
attitude, glares with his eyes, lashes about him fiercely with his
arms, and draws a phantom knife. It then becomes apparent that the
woman has taken possession of this knife, for safety’s sake; for, she
too starting up, and restraining and expostulating with him, the knife
is visible in her dress, not in his, when they drowsily drop back, side
by side.

There has been chattering and clattering enough between them, but to no
purpose. When any distinct word has been flung into the air, it has had
no sense or sequence. Wherefore “unintelligible!” is again the comment
of the watcher, made with some reassured nodding of his head, and a
gloomy smile. He then lays certain silver money on the table, finds his
hat, gropes his way down the broken stairs, gives a good morning to
some rat-ridden doorkeeper, in bed in a black hutch beneath the stairs,
and passes out.

That same afternoon, the massive gray square tower of an old Cathedral
rises before the sight of a jaded traveller. The bells are going for
daily vesper service, and he must needs attend it, one would say, from
his haste to reach the open Cathedral door. The choir are getting on
their sullied white robes, in a hurry, when he arrives among them, gets
on his own robe, and falls into the procession filing in to service.
Then, the Sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divide the
sanctuary from the chancel, and all of the procession having scuttled
into their places, hide their faces; and then the intoned words, “WHEN
THE WICKED MAN—” rise among groins of arches and beams of roof,
awakening muttered thunder.




CHAPTER II.
A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO


Whosoever has observed that sedate and clerical bird, the rook, may
perhaps have noticed that when he wings his way homeward towards
nightfall, in a sedate and clerical company, two rooks will suddenly
detach themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight for some
distance, and will there poise and linger; conveying to mere men the
fancy that it is of some occult importance to the body politic, that
this artful couple should pretend to have renounced connection with it.

Similarly, service being over in the old Cathedral with the square
tower, and the choir scuffling out again, and divers venerable persons
of rook-like aspect dispersing, two of these latter retrace their
steps, and walk together in the echoing Close.

Not only is the day waning, but the year. The low sun is fiery and yet
cold behind the monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the
Cathedral wall has showered half its deep-red leaves down on the
pavement. There has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes
among the little pools on the cracked, uneven flag-stones, and through
the giant elm-trees as they shed a gust of tears. Their fallen leaves
lie strewn thickly about. Some of these leaves, in a timid rush, seek
sanctuary within the low arched Cathedral door; but two men coming out
resist them, and cast them forth again with their feet; this done, one
of the two locks the door with a goodly key, and the other flits away
with a folio music-book.

“Mr. Jasper was that, Tope?”

“Yes, Mr. Dean.”

“He has stayed late.”

“Yes, Mr. Dean. I have stayed for him, your Reverence. He has been took
a little poorly.”

“Say ‘taken,’ Tope—to the Dean,” the younger rook interposes in a low
tone with this touch of correction, as who should say: “You may offer
bad grammar to the laity, or the humbler clergy, not to the Dean.”

Mr. Tope, Chief Verger and Showman, and accustomed to be high with
excursion parties, declines with a silent loftiness to perceive that
any suggestion has been tendered to him.

“And when and how has Mr. Jasper been taken—for, as Mr. Crisparkle has
remarked, it is better to say taken—taken—” repeats the Dean; “when and
how has Mr. Jasper been Taken—”

“Taken, sir,” Tope deferentially murmurs.

“—Poorly, Tope?”

“Why, sir, Mr. Jasper was that breathed—”

“I wouldn’t say ‘That breathed,’ Tope,” Mr. Crisparkle interposes with
the same touch as before. “Not English—to the Dean.”

“Breathed to that extent,” the Dean (not unflattered by this indirect
homage) condescendingly remarks, “would be preferable.”

“Mr. Jasper’s breathing was so remarkably short”—thus discreetly does
Mr. Tope work his way round the sunken rock—“when he came in, that it
distressed him mightily to get his notes out: which was perhaps the
cause of his having a kind of fit on him after a little. His memory
grew DAZED.” Mr. Tope, with his eyes on the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle,
shoots this word out, as defying him to improve upon it: “and a dimness
and giddiness crept over him as strange as ever I saw: though he didn’t
seem to mind it particularly, himself. However, a little time and a
little water brought him out of his DAZE.” Mr. Tope repeats the word
and its emphasis, with the air of saying: “As I _have_ made a success,
I’ll make it again.”

“And Mr. Jasper has gone home quite himself, has he?” asked the Dean.

“Your Reverence, he has gone home quite himself. And I’m glad to see
he’s having his fire kindled up, for it’s chilly after the wet, and the
Cathedral had both a damp feel and a damp touch this afternoon, and he
was very shivery.”

They all three look towards an old stone gatehouse crossing the Close,
with an arched thoroughfare passing beneath it. Through its latticed
window, a fire shines out upon the fast-darkening scene, involving in
shadow the pendent masses of ivy and creeper covering the building’s
front. As the deep Cathedral-bell strikes the hour, a ripple of wind
goes through these at their distance, like a ripple of the solemn sound
that hums through tomb and tower, broken niche and defaced statue, in
the pile close at hand.

“Is Mr. Jasper’s nephew with him?” the Dean asks.

“No, sir,” replied the Verger, “but expected. There’s his own solitary
shadow betwixt his two windows—the one looking this way, and the one
looking down into the High Street—drawing his own curtains now.”

“Well, well,” says the Dean, with a sprightly air of breaking up the
little conference, “I hope Mr. Jasper’s heart may not be too much set
upon his nephew. Our affections, however laudable, in this transitory
world, should never master us; we should guide them, guide them. I find
I am not disagreeably reminded of my dinner, by hearing my dinner-bell.
Perhaps, Mr. Crisparkle, you will, before going home, look in on
Jasper?”

“Certainly, Mr. Dean. And tell him that you had the kindness to desire
to know how he was?”

“Ay; do so, do so. Certainly. Wished to know how he was. By all means.
Wished to know how he was.”

With a pleasant air of patronage, the Dean as nearly cocks his quaint
hat as a Dean in good spirits may, and directs his comely gaiters
towards the ruddy dining-room of the snug old red-brick house where he
is at present, “in residence” with Mrs. Dean and Miss Dean.

Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, fair and rosy, and perpetually pitching
himself head-foremost into all the deep running water in the
surrounding country; Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, early riser, musical,
classical, cheerful, kind, good-natured, social, contented, and
boy-like; Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon and good man, lately “Coach” upon
the chief Pagan high roads, but since promoted by a patron (grateful
for a well-taught son) to his present Christian beat; betakes himself
to the gatehouse, on his way home to his early tea.

“Sorry to hear from Tope that you have not been well, Jasper.”

“O, it was nothing, nothing!”

“You look a little worn.”

“Do I? O, I don’t think so. What is better, I don’t feel so. Tope has
made too much of it, I suspect. It’s his trade to make the most of
everything appertaining to the Cathedral, you know.”

“I may tell the Dean—I call expressly from the Dean—that you are all
right again?”

The reply, with a slight smile, is: “Certainly; with my respects and
thanks to the Dean.”

“I’m glad to hear that you expect young Drood.”

“I expect the dear fellow every moment.”

“Ah! He will do you more good than a doctor, Jasper.”

“More good than a dozen doctors. For I love him dearly, and I don’t
love doctors, or doctors’ stuff.”

Mr. Jasper is a dark man of some six-and-twenty, with thick, lustrous,
well-arranged black hair and whiskers. He looks older than he is, as
dark men often do. His voice is deep and good, his face and figure are
good, his manner is a little sombre. His room is a little sombre, and
may have had its influence in forming his manner. It is mostly in
shadow. Even when the sun shines brilliantly, it seldom touches the
grand piano in the recess, or the folio music-books on the stand, or
the book-shelves on the wall, or the unfinished picture of a blooming
schoolgirl hanging over the chimneypiece; her flowing brown hair tied
with a blue riband, and her beauty remarkable for a quite childish,
almost babyish, touch of saucy discontent, comically conscious of
itself. (There is not the least artistic merit in this picture, which
is a mere daub; but it is clear that the painter has made it
humorously—one might almost say, revengefully—like the original.)

“We shall miss you, Jasper, at the ‘Alternate Musical Wednesdays’
to-night; but no doubt you are best at home. Good-night. God bless you!
‘Tell me, shep-herds, te-e-ell me; tell me-e-e, have you seen (have you
seen, have you seen, have you seen) my-y-y Flo-o-ora-a pass this way!’”
Melodiously good Minor Canon the Reverend Septimus Crisparkle thus
delivers himself, in musical rhythm, as he withdraws his amiable face
from the doorway and conveys it down-stairs.

Sounds of recognition and greeting pass between the Reverend Septimus
and somebody else, at the stair-foot. Mr. Jasper listens, starts from
his chair, and catches a young fellow in his arms, exclaiming:

“My dear Edwin!”

“My dear Jack! So glad to see you!”

“Get off your greatcoat, bright boy, and sit down here in your own
corner. Your feet are not wet? Pull your boots off. Do pull your boots
off.”

“My dear Jack, I am as dry as a bone. Don’t moddley-coddley, there’s a
good fellow. I like anything better than being moddley-coddleyed.”

With the check upon him of being unsympathetically restrained in a
genial outburst of enthusiasm, Mr. Jasper stands still, and looks on
intently at the young fellow, divesting himself of his outward coat,
hat, gloves, and so forth. Once for all, a look of intentness and
intensity—a look of hungry, exacting, watchful, and yet devoted
affection—is always, now and ever afterwards, on the Jasper face
whenever the Jasper face is addressed in this direction. And whenever
it is so addressed, it is never, on this occasion or on any other,
dividedly addressed; it is always concentrated.

“Now I am right, and now I’ll take my corner, Jack. Any dinner, Jack?”

Mr. Jasper opens a door at the upper end of the room, and discloses a
small inner room pleasantly lighted and prepared, wherein a comely dame
is in the act of setting dishes on table.

“What a jolly old Jack it is!” cries the young fellow, with a clap of
his hands. “Look here, Jack; tell me; whose birthday is it?”

“Not yours, I know,” Mr. Jasper answers, pausing to consider.

“Not mine, you know? No; not mine, _I_ know! Pussy’s!”

Fixed as the look the young fellow meets is, there is yet in it some
strange power of suddenly including the sketch over the chimneypiece.

“Pussy’s, Jack! We must drink Many happy returns to her. Come, uncle;
take your dutiful and sharp-set nephew in to dinner.”

As the boy (for he is little more) lays a hand on Jasper’s shoulder,
Jasper cordially and gaily lays a hand on _his_ shoulder, and so
Marseillaise-wise they go in to dinner.

“And, Lord! here’s Mrs. Tope!” cries the boy. “Lovelier than ever!”

“Never you mind me, Master Edwin,” retorts the Verger’s wife; “I can
take care of myself.”

“You can’t. You’re much too handsome. Give me a kiss because it’s
Pussy’s birthday.”

“I’d Pussy you, young man, if I was Pussy, as you call her,” Mrs. Tope
blushingly retorts, after being saluted. “Your uncle’s too much wrapt
up in you, that’s where it is. He makes so much of you, that it’s my
opinion you think you’ve only to call your Pussys by the dozen, to make
’em come.”

“You forget, Mrs. Tope,” Mr. Jasper interposes, taking his place at the
table with a genial smile, “and so do you, Ned, that Uncle and Nephew
are words prohibited here by common consent and express agreement. For
what we are going to receive His holy name be praised!”

“Done like the Dean! Witness, Edwin Drood! Please to carve, Jack, for I
can’t.”

This sally ushers in the dinner. Little to the present purpose, or to
any purpose, is said, while it is in course of being disposed of. At
length the cloth is drawn, and a dish of walnuts and a decanter of
rich-coloured sherry are placed upon the table.

“I say! Tell me, Jack,” the young fellow then flows on: “do you really
and truly feel as if the mention of our relationship divided us at all?
_I_ don’t.”

“Uncles as a rule, Ned, are so much older than their nephews,” is the
reply, “that I have that feeling instinctively.”

“As a rule! Ah, may-be! But what is a difference in age of half-a-dozen
years or so? And some uncles, in large families, are even younger than
their nephews. By George, I wish it was the case with us!”

“Why?”

“Because if it was, I’d take the lead with you, Jack, and be as wise as
Begone, dull Care! that turned a young man gray, and Begone, dull Care!
that turned an old man to clay.—Halloa, Jack! Don’t drink.”

“Why not?”

“Asks why not, on Pussy’s birthday, and no Happy returns proposed!
Pussy, Jack, and many of ’em! Happy returns, I mean.”

Laying an affectionate and laughing touch on the boy’s extended hand,
as if it were at once his giddy head and his light heart, Mr. Jasper
drinks the toast in silence.

“Hip, hip, hip, and nine times nine, and one to finish with, and all
that, understood. Hooray, hooray, hooray!—And now, Jack, let’s have a
little talk about Pussy. Two pairs of nut-crackers? Pass me one, and
take the other.” Crack. “How’s Pussy getting on Jack?”

“With her music? Fairly.”

“What a dreadfully conscientious fellow you are, Jack! But _I_ know,
Lord bless you! Inattentive, isn’t she?”

“She can learn anything, if she will.”

“_If_ she will! Egad, that’s it. But if she won’t?”

Crack!—on Mr. Jasper’s part.

“How’s she looking, Jack?”

Mr. Jasper’s concentrated face again includes the portrait as he
returns: “Very like your sketch indeed.”

“I _am_ a little proud of it,” says the young fellow, glancing up at
the sketch with complacency, and then shutting one eye, and taking a
corrected prospect of it over a level bridge of nut-crackers in the
air: “Not badly hit off from memory. But I ought to have caught that
expression pretty well, for I have seen it often enough.”

Crack!—on Edwin Drood’s part.

Crack!—on Mr. Jasper’s part.

“In point of fact,” the former resumes, after some silent dipping among
his fragments of walnut with an air of pique, “I see it whenever I go
to see Pussy. If I don’t find it on her face, I leave it there.—You
know I do, Miss Scornful Pert. Booh!” With a twirl of the nut-crackers
at the portrait.

Crack! crack! crack. Slowly, on Mr. Jasper’s part.

Crack. Sharply on the part of Edwin Drood.

Silence on both sides.

“Have you lost your tongue, Jack?”

“Have you found yours, Ned?”

“No, but really;—isn’t it, you know, after all—”

Mr. Jasper lifts his dark eyebrows inquiringly.

“Isn’t it unsatisfactory to be cut off from choice in such a matter?
There, Jack! I tell you! If I could choose, I would choose Pussy from
all the pretty girls in the world.”

“But you have not got to choose.”

“That’s what I complain of. My dead and gone father and Pussy’s dead
and gone father must needs marry us together by anticipation. Why
the—Devil, I was going to say, if it had been respectful to their
memory—couldn’t they leave us alone?”

“Tut, tut, dear boy,” Mr. Jasper remonstrates, in a tone of gentle
deprecation.

“Tut, tut? Yes, Jack, it’s all very well for _you_. _You_ can take it
easily. _Your_ life is not laid down to scale, and lined and dotted out
for you, like a surveyor’s plan. _You_ have no uncomfortable suspicion
that you are forced upon anybody, nor has anybody an uncomfortable
suspicion that she is forced upon you, or that you are forced upon her.
_You_ can choose for yourself. Life, for _you_, is a plum with the
natural bloom on; it hasn’t been over-carefully wiped off for _you_—”

“Don’t stop, dear fellow. Go on.”

“Can I anyhow have hurt your feelings, Jack?”

“How can you have hurt my feelings?”

“Good Heaven, Jack, you look frightfully ill! There’s a strange film
come over your eyes.”

Mr. Jasper, with a forced smile, stretches out his right hand, as if at
once to disarm apprehension and gain time to get better. After a while
he says faintly:

“I have been taking opium for a pain—an agony—that sometimes overcomes
me. The effects of the medicine steal over me like a blight or a cloud,
and pass. You see them in the act of passing; they will be gone
directly. Look away from me. They will go all the sooner.”

With a scared face the younger man complies by casting his eyes
downward at the ashes on the hearth. Not relaxing his own gaze on the
fire, but rather strengthening it with a fierce, firm grip upon his
elbow-chair, the elder sits for a few moments rigid, and then, with
thick drops standing on his forehead, and a sharp catch of his breath,
becomes as he was before. On his so subsiding in his chair, his nephew
gently and assiduously tends him while he quite recovers. When Jasper
is restored, he lays a tender hand upon his nephew’s shoulder, and, in
a tone of voice less troubled than the purport of his words—indeed with
something of raillery or banter in it—thus addresses him:

“There is said to be a hidden skeleton in every house; but you thought
there was none in mine, dear Ned.”

“Upon my life, Jack, I did think so. However, when I come to consider
that even in Pussy’s house—if she had one—and in mine—if I had one—”

“You were going to say (but that I interrupted you in spite of myself)
what a quiet life mine is. No whirl and uproar around me, no
distracting commerce or calculation, no risk, no change of place,
myself devoted to the art I pursue, my business my pleasure.”

“I really was going to say something of the kind, Jack; but you see,
you, speaking of yourself, almost necessarily leave out much that I
should have put in. For instance: I should have put in the foreground
your being so much respected as Lay Precentor, or Lay Clerk, or
whatever you call it, of this Cathedral; your enjoying the reputation
of having done such wonders with the choir; your choosing your society,
and holding such an independent position in this queer old place; your
gift of teaching (why, even Pussy, who don’t like being taught, says
there never was such a Master as you are!), and your connexion.”

“Yes; I saw what you were tending to. I hate it.”

“Hate it, Jack?” (Much bewildered.)

“I hate it. The cramped monotony of my existence grinds me away by the
grain. How does our service sound to you?”

“Beautiful! Quite celestial!”

“It often sounds to me quite devilish. I am so weary of it. The echoes
of my own voice among the arches seem to mock me with my daily drudging
round. No wretched monk who droned his life away in that gloomy place,
before me, can have been more tired of it than I am. He could take for
relief (and did take) to carving demons out of the stalls and seats and
desks. What shall I do? Must I take to carving them out of my heart?”

“I thought you had so exactly found your niche in life, Jack,” Edwin
Drood returns, astonished, bending forward in his chair to lay a
sympathetic hand on Jasper’s knee, and looking at him with an anxious
face.

“I know you thought so. They all think so.”

“Well, I suppose they do,” says Edwin, meditating aloud. “Pussy thinks
so.”

“When did she tell you that?”

“The last time I was here. You remember when. Three months ago.”

“How did she phrase it?”

“O, she only said that she had become your pupil, and that you were
made for your vocation.”

The younger man glances at the portrait. The elder sees it in him.

“Anyhow, my dear Ned,” Jasper resumes, as he shakes his head with a
grave cheerfulness, “I must subdue myself to my vocation: which is much
the same thing outwardly. It’s too late to find another now. This is a
confidence between us.”

“It shall be sacredly preserved, Jack.”

“I have reposed it in you, because—”

“I feel it, I assure you. Because we are fast friends, and because you
love and trust me, as I love and trust you. Both hands, Jack.”

As each stands looking into the other’s eyes, and as the uncle holds
the nephew’s hands, the uncle thus proceeds:

“You know now, don’t you, that even a poor monotonous chorister and
grinder of music—in his niche—may be troubled with some stray sort of
ambition, aspiration, restlessness, dissatisfaction, what shall we call
it?”

“Yes, dear Jack.”

“And you will remember?”

“My dear Jack, I only ask you, am I likely to forget what you have said
with so much feeling?”

“Take it as a warning, then.”

In the act of having his hands released, and of moving a step back,
Edwin pauses for an instant to consider the application of these last
words. The instant over, he says, sensibly touched:

“I am afraid I am but a shallow, surface kind of fellow, Jack, and that
my headpiece is none of the best. But I needn’t say I am young; and
perhaps I shall not grow worse as I grow older. At all events, I hope I
have something impressible within me, which feels—deeply feels—the
disinterestedness of your painfully laying your inner self bare, as a
warning to me.”

Mr. Jasper’s steadiness of face and figure becomes so marvellous that
his breathing seems to have stopped.

“I couldn’t fail to notice, Jack, that it cost you a great effort, and
that you were very much moved, and very unlike your usual self. Of
course I knew that you were extremely fond of me, but I really was not
prepared for your, as I may say, sacrificing yourself to me in that
way.”

Mr. Jasper, becoming a breathing man again without the smallest stage
of transition between the two extreme states, lifts his shoulders,
laughs, and waves his right arm.

“No; don’t put the sentiment away, Jack; please don’t; for I am very
much in earnest. I have no doubt that that unhealthy state of mind
which you have so powerfully described is attended with some real
suffering, and is hard to bear. But let me reassure you, Jack, as to
the chances of its overcoming me. I don’t think I am in the way of it.
In some few months less than another year, you know, I shall carry
Pussy off from school as Mrs. Edwin Drood. I shall then go engineering
into the East, and Pussy with me. And although we have our little tiffs
now, arising out of a certain unavoidable flatness that attends our
love-making, owing to its end being all settled beforehand, still I
have no doubt of our getting on capitally then, when it’s done and
can’t be helped. In short, Jack, to go back to the old song I was
freely quoting at dinner (and who knows old songs better than you?), my
wife shall dance, and I will sing, so merrily pass the day. Of Pussy’s
being beautiful there cannot be a doubt;—and when you are good besides,
Little Miss Impudence,” once more apostrophising the portrait, “I’ll
burn your comic likeness, and paint your music-master another.”

Mr. Jasper, with his hand to his chin, and with an expression of musing
benevolence on his face, has attentively watched every animated look
and gesture attending the delivery of these words. He remains in that
attitude after they are spoken, as if in a kind of fascination
attendant on his strong interest in the youthful spirit that he loves
so well. Then he says with a quiet smile:

“You won’t be warned, then?”

“No, Jack.”

“You can’t be warned, then?”

“No, Jack, not by you. Besides that I don’t really consider myself in
danger, I don’t like your putting yourself in that position.”

“Shall we go and walk in the churchyard?”

“By all means. You won’t mind my slipping out of it for half a moment
to the Nuns’ House, and leaving a parcel there? Only gloves for Pussy;
as many pairs of gloves as she is years old to-day. Rather poetical,
Jack?”

Mr. Jasper, still in the same attitude, murmurs: “‘Nothing half so
sweet in life,’ Ned!”

“Here’s the parcel in my greatcoat-pocket. They must be presented
to-night, or the poetry is gone. It’s against regulations for me to
call at night, but not to leave a packet. I am ready, Jack!”

Mr. Jasper dissolves his attitude, and they go out together.




CHAPTER III.
THE NUNS’ HOUSE


For sufficient reasons, which this narrative will itself unfold as it
advances, a fictitious name must be bestowed upon the old Cathedral
town. Let it stand in these pages as Cloisterham. It was once possibly
known to the Druids by another name, and certainly to the Romans by
another, and to the Saxons by another, and to the Normans by another;
and a name more or less in the course of many centuries can be of
little moment to its dusty chronicles.

An ancient city, Cloisterham, and no meet dwelling-place for any one
with hankerings after the noisy world. A monotonous, silent city,
deriving an earthy flavour throughout from its Cathedral crypt, and so
abounding in vestiges of monastic graves, that the Cloisterham children
grow small salad in the dust of abbots and abbesses, and make dirt-pies
of nuns and friars; while every ploughman in its outlying fields
renders to once puissant Lord Treasurers, Archbishops, Bishops, and
such-like, the attention which the Ogre in the story-book desired to
render to his unbidden visitor, and grinds their bones to make his
bread.

A drowsy city, Cloisterham, whose inhabitants seem to suppose, with an
inconsistency more strange than rare, that all its changes lie behind
it, and that there are no more to come. A queer moral to derive from
antiquity, yet older than any traceable antiquity. So silent are the
streets of Cloisterham (though prone to echo on the smallest
provocation), that of a summer-day the sunblinds of its shops scarce
dare to flap in the south wind; while the sun-browned tramps, who pass
along and stare, quicken their limp a little, that they may the sooner
get beyond the confines of its oppressive respectability. This is a
feat not difficult of achievement, seeing that the streets of
Cloisterham city are little more than one narrow street by which you
get into it and get out of it: the rest being mostly disappointing
yards with pumps in them and no thoroughfare—exception made of the
Cathedral-close, and a paved Quaker settlement, in colour and general
confirmation very like a Quakeress’s bonnet, up in a shady corner.

In a word, a city of another and a bygone time is Cloisterham, with its
hoarse Cathedral-bell, its hoarse rooks hovering about the Cathedral
tower, its hoarser and less distinct rooks in the stalls far beneath.
Fragments of old wall, saint’s chapel, chapter-house, convent and
monastery, have got incongruously or obstructively built into many of
its houses and gardens, much as kindred jumbled notions have become
incorporated into many of its citizens’ minds. All things in it are of
the past. Even its single pawnbroker takes in no pledges, nor has he
for a long time, but offers vainly an unredeemed stock for sale, of
which the costlier articles are dim and pale old watches apparently in
a slow perspiration, tarnished sugar-tongs with ineffectual legs, and
odd volumes of dismal books. The most abundant and the most agreeable
evidences of progressing life in Cloisterham are the evidences of
vegetable life in many gardens; even its drooping and despondent little
theatre has its poor strip of garden, receiving the foul fiend, when he
ducks from its stage into the infernal regions, among scarlet-beans or
oyster-shells, according to the season of the year.

In the midst of Cloisterham stands the Nuns’ House: a venerable brick
edifice, whose present appellation is doubtless derived from the legend
of its conventual uses. On the trim gate enclosing its old courtyard is
a resplendent brass plate flashing forth the legend: “Seminary for
Young Ladies. Miss Twinkleton.” The house-front is so old and worn, and
the brass plate is so shining and staring, that the general result has
reminded imaginative strangers of a battered old beau with a large
modern eye-glass stuck in his blind eye.

Whether the nuns of yore, being of a submissive rather than a
stiff-necked generation, habitually bent their contemplative heads to
avoid collision with the beams in the low ceilings of the many chambers
of their House; whether they sat in its long low windows telling their
beads for their mortification, instead of making necklaces of them for
their adornment; whether they were ever walled up alive in odd angles
and jutting gables of the building for having some ineradicable leaven
of busy mother Nature in them which has kept the fermenting world alive
ever since; these may be matters of interest to its haunting ghosts (if
any), but constitute no item in Miss Twinkleton’s half-yearly accounts.
They are neither of Miss Twinkleton’s inclusive regulars, nor of her
extras. The lady who undertakes the poetical department of the
establishment at so much (or so little) a quarter has no pieces in her
list of recitals bearing on such unprofitable questions.

As, in some cases of drunkenness, and in others of animal magnetism,
there are two states of consciousness which never clash, but each of
which pursues its separate course as though it were continuous instead
of broken (thus, if I hide my watch when I am drunk, I must be drunk
again before I can remember where), so Miss Twinkleton has two distinct
and separate phases of being. Every night, the moment the young ladies
have retired to rest, does Miss Twinkleton smarten up her curls a
little, brighten up her eyes a little, and become a sprightlier Miss
Twinkleton than the young ladies have ever seen. Every night, at the
same hour, does Miss Twinkleton resume the topics of the previous
night, comprehending the tenderer scandal of Cloisterham, of which she
has no knowledge whatever by day, and references to a certain season at
Tunbridge Wells (airily called by Miss Twinkleton in this state of her
existence “The Wells”), notably the season wherein a certain finished
gentleman (compassionately called by Miss Twinkleton, in this stage of
her existence, “Foolish Mr. Porters”) revealed a homage of the heart,
whereof Miss Twinkleton, in her scholastic state of existence, is as
ignorant as a granite pillar. Miss Twinkleton’s companion in both
states of existence, and equally adaptable to either, is one Mrs.
Tisher: a deferential widow with a weak back, a chronic sigh, and a
suppressed voice, who looks after the young ladies’ wardrobes, and
leads them to infer that she has seen better days. Perhaps this is the
reason why it is an article of faith with the servants, handed down
from race to race, that the departed Tisher was a hairdresser.

The pet pupil of the Nuns’ House is Miss Rosa Bud, of course called
Rosebud; wonderfully pretty, wonderfully childish, wonderfully
whimsical. An awkward interest (awkward because romantic) attaches to
Miss Bud in the minds of the young ladies, on account of its being
known to them that a husband has been chosen for her by will and
bequest, and that her guardian is bound down to bestow her on that
husband when he comes of age. Miss Twinkleton, in her seminarial state
of existence, has combated the romantic aspect of this destiny by
affecting to shake her head over it behind Miss Bud’s dimpled
shoulders, and to brood on the unhappy lot of that doomed little
victim. But with no better effect—possibly some unfelt touch of foolish
Mr. Porters has undermined the endeavour—than to evoke from the young
ladies an unanimous bedchamber cry of “O, what a pretending old thing
Miss Twinkleton is, my dear!”

The Nuns’ House is never in such a state of flutter as when this
allotted husband calls to see little Rosebud. (It is unanimously
understood by the young ladies that he is lawfully entitled to this
privilege, and that if Miss Twinkleton disputed it, she would be
instantly taken up and transported.) When his ring at the gate-bell is
expected, or takes place, every young lady who can, under any pretence,
look out of window, looks out of window; while every young lady who is
“practising,” practises out of time; and the French class becomes so
demoralised that the mark goes round as briskly as the bottle at a
convivial party in the last century.

On the afternoon of the day next after the dinner of two at the
gatehouse, the bell is rung with the usual fluttering results.

“Mr. Edwin Drood to see Miss Rosa.”

This is the announcement of the parlour-maid in chief. Miss Twinkleton,
with an exemplary air of melancholy on her, turns to the sacrifice, and
says, “You may go down, my dear.” Miss Bud goes down, followed by all
eyes.

Mr. Edwin Drood is waiting in Miss Twinkleton’s own parlour: a dainty
room, with nothing more directly scholastic in it than a terrestrial
and a celestial globe. These expressive machines imply (to parents and
guardians) that even when Miss Twinkleton retires into the bosom of
privacy, duty may at any moment compel her to become a sort of
Wandering Jewess, scouring the earth and soaring through the skies in
search of knowledge for her pupils.

The last new maid, who has never seen the young gentleman Miss Rosa is
engaged to, and who is making his acquaintance between the hinges of
the open door, left open for the purpose, stumbles guiltily down the
kitchen stairs, as a charming little apparition, with its face
concealed by a little silk apron thrown over its head, glides into the
parlour.

“O! it _is_ so ridiculous!” says the apparition, stopping and
shrinking. “Don’t, Eddy!”

“Don’t what, Rosa?”

“Don’t come any nearer, please. It _is_ so absurd.”

“What is absurd, Rosa?”

“The whole thing is. It _is_ so absurd to be an engaged orphan and it
_is_ so absurd to have the girls and the servants scuttling about after
one, like mice in the wainscot; and it _is_ so absurd to be called
upon!”

The apparition appears to have a thumb in the corner of its mouth while
making this complaint.

“You give me an affectionate reception, Pussy, I must say.”

“Well, I will in a minute, Eddy, but I can’t just yet. How are you?”
(very shortly.)

“I am unable to reply that I am much the better for seeing you, Pussy,
inasmuch as I see nothing of you.”

This second remonstrance brings a dark, bright, pouting eye out from a
corner of the apron; but it swiftly becomes invisible again, as the
apparition exclaims: “O good gracious! you have had half your hair cut
off!”

“I should have done better to have had my head cut off, I think,” says
Edwin, rumpling the hair in question, with a fierce glance at the
looking-glass, and giving an impatient stamp. “Shall I go?”

“No; you needn’t go just yet, Eddy. The girls would all be asking
questions why you went.”

“Once for all, Rosa, will you uncover that ridiculous little head of
yours and give me a welcome?”

The apron is pulled off the childish head, as its wearer replies:
“You’re very welcome, Eddy. There! I’m sure that’s nice. Shake hands.
No, I can’t kiss you, because I’ve got an acidulated drop in my mouth.”

“Are you at all glad to see me, Pussy?”

“O, yes, I’m dreadfully glad.—Go and sit down.—Miss Twinkleton.”

It is the custom of that excellent lady when these visits occur, to
appear every three minutes, either in her own person or in that of Mrs.
Tisher, and lay an offering on the shrine of Propriety by affecting to
look for some desiderated article. On the present occasion Miss
Twinkleton, gracefully gliding in and out, says in passing: “How do you
do, Mr. Drood? Very glad indeed to have the pleasure. Pray excuse me.
Tweezers. Thank you!”

“I got the gloves last evening, Eddy, and I like them very much. They
are beauties.”

“Well, that’s something,” the affianced replies, half grumbling. “The
smallest encouragement thankfully received. And how did you pass your
birthday, Pussy?”

“Delightfully! Everybody gave me a present. And we had a feast. And we
had a ball at night.”

“A feast and a ball, eh? These occasions seem to go off tolerably well
without me, Pussy.”

“De-lightfully!” cries Rosa, in a quite spontaneous manner, and without
the least pretence of reserve.

“Hah! And what was the feast?”

“Tarts, oranges, jellies, and shrimps.”

“Any partners at the ball?”

“We danced with one another, of course, sir. But some of the girls made
game to be their brothers. It _was_ so droll!”

“Did anybody make game to be—”

“To be you? O dear yes!” cries Rosa, laughing with great enjoyment.
“That was the first thing done.”

“I hope she did it pretty well,” says Edwin rather doubtfully.

“O, it was excellent!—I wouldn’t dance with you, you know.”

Edwin scarcely seems to see the force of this; begs to know if he may
take the liberty to ask why?

“Because I was so tired of you,” returns Rosa. But she quickly adds,
and pleadingly too, seeing displeasure in his face: “Dear Eddy, you
were just as tired of me, you know.”

“Did I say so, Rosa?”

“Say so! Do you ever say so? No, you only showed it. O, she did it so
well!” cries Rosa, in a sudden ecstasy with her counterfeit betrothed.

“It strikes me that she must be a devilish impudent girl,” says Edwin
Drood. “And so, Pussy, you have passed your last birthday in this old
house.”

“Ah, yes!” Rosa clasps her hands, looks down with a sigh, and shakes
her head.

“You seem to be sorry, Rosa.”

“I am sorry for the poor old place. Somehow, I feel as if it would miss
me, when I am gone so far away, so young.”

“Perhaps we had better stop short, Rosa?”

She looks up at him with a swift bright look; next moment shakes her
head, sighs, and looks down again.

“That is to say, is it, Pussy, that we are both resigned?”

She nods her head again, and after a short silence, quaintly bursts out
with: “You know we must be married, and married from here, Eddy, or the
poor girls will be so dreadfully disappointed!”

For the moment there is more of compassion, both for her and for
himself, in her affianced husband’s face, than there is of love. He
checks the look, and asks: “Shall I take you out for a walk, Rosa
dear?”

Rosa dear does not seem at all clear on this point, until her face,
which has been comically reflective, brightens. “O, yes, Eddy; let us
go for a walk! And I tell you what we’ll do. You shall pretend that you
are engaged to somebody else, and I’ll pretend that I am not engaged to
anybody, and then we shan’t quarrel.”

“Do you think that will prevent our falling out, Rosa?”

“I know it will. Hush! Pretend to look out of window—Mrs. Tisher!”

Through a fortuitous concourse of accidents, the matronly Tisher heaves
in sight, says, in rustling through the room like the legendary ghost
of a dowager in silken skirts: “I hope I see Mr. Drood well; though I
needn’t ask, if I may judge from his complexion. I trust I disturb no
one; but there _was_ a paper-knife—O, thank you, I am sure!” and
disappears with her prize.

“One other thing you must do, Eddy, to oblige me,” says Rosebud. “The
moment we get into the street, you must put me outside, and keep close
to the house yourself—squeeze and graze yourself against it.”

“By all means, Rosa, if you wish it. Might I ask why?”

“O! because I don’t want the girls to see you.”

“It’s a fine day; but would you like me to carry an umbrella up?”

“Don’t be foolish, sir. You haven’t got polished leather boots on,”
pouting, with one shoulder raised.

“Perhaps that might escape the notice of the girls, even if they did
see me,” remarks Edwin, looking down at his boots with a sudden
distaste for them.

“Nothing escapes their notice, sir. And then I know what would happen.
Some of them would begin reflecting on me by saying (for _they_ are
free) that they never will on any account engage themselves to lovers
without polished leather boots. Hark! Miss Twinkleton. I’ll ask for
leave.”

That discreet lady being indeed heard without, inquiring of nobody in a
blandly conversational tone as she advances: “Eh? Indeed! Are you quite
sure you saw my mother-of-pearl button-holder on the work-table in my
room?” is at once solicited for walking leave, and graciously accords
it. And soon the young couple go out of the Nuns’ House, taking all
precautions against the discovery of the so vitally defective boots of
Mr. Edwin Drood: precautions, let us hope, effective for the peace of
Mrs. Edwin Drood that is to be.

“Which way shall we take, Rosa?”

Rosa replies: “I want to go to the Lumps-of-Delight shop.”

“To the—?”

“A Turkish sweetmeat, sir. My gracious me, don’t you understand
anything? Call yourself an Engineer, and not know _that_?”

“Why, how should I know it, Rosa?”

“Because I am very fond of them. But O! I forgot what we are to
pretend. No, you needn’t know anything about them; never mind.”

So he is gloomily borne off to the Lumps-of-Delight shop, where Rosa
makes her purchase, and, after offering some to him (which he rather
indignantly declines), begins to partake of it with great zest:
previously taking off and rolling up a pair of little pink gloves, like
rose-leaves, and occasionally putting her little pink fingers to her
rosy lips, to cleanse them from the Dust of Delight that comes off the
Lumps.

“Now, be a good-tempered Eddy, and pretend. And so you are engaged?”

“And so I am engaged.”

“Is she nice?”

“Charming.”

“Tall?”

“Immensely tall!” Rosa being short.

“Must be gawky, I should think,” is Rosa’s quiet commentary.

“I beg your pardon; not at all,” contradiction rising in him.

“What is termed a fine woman; a splendid woman.”

“Big nose, no doubt,” is the quiet commentary again.

“Not a little one, certainly,” is the quick reply, (Rosa’s being a
little one.)

“Long pale nose, with a red knob in the middle. I know the sort of
nose,” says Rosa, with a satisfied nod, and tranquilly enjoying the
Lumps.

“You _don’t_ know the sort of nose, Rosa,” with some warmth; “because
it’s nothing of the kind.”

“Not a pale nose, Eddy?”

“No.” Determined not to assent.

“A red nose? O! I don’t like red noses. However; to be sure she can
always powder it.”

“She would scorn to powder it,” says Edwin, becoming heated.

“Would she? What a stupid thing she must be! Is she stupid in
everything?”

“No; in nothing.”

After a pause, in which the whimsically wicked face has not been
unobservant of him, Rosa says:

“And this most sensible of creatures likes the idea of being carried
off to Egypt; does she, Eddy?”

“Yes. She takes a sensible interest in triumphs of engineering skill:
especially when they are to change the whole condition of an
undeveloped country.”

“Lor!” says Rosa, shrugging her shoulders, with a little laugh of
wonder.

“Do you object,” Edwin inquires, with a majestic turn of his eyes
downward upon the fairy figure: “do you object, Rosa, to her feeling
that interest?”

“Object? my dear Eddy! But really, doesn’t she hate boilers and
things?”

“I can answer for her not being so idiotic as to hate Boilers,” he
returns with angry emphasis; “though I cannot answer for her views
about Things; really not understanding what Things are meant.”

“But don’t she hate Arabs, and Turks, and Fellahs, and people?”

“Certainly not.” Very firmly.

“At least she _must_ hate the Pyramids? Come, Eddy?”

“Why should she be such a little—tall, I mean—goose, as to hate the
Pyramids, Rosa?”

“Ah! you should hear Miss Twinkleton,” often nodding her head, and much
enjoying the Lumps, “bore about them, and then you wouldn’t ask.
Tiresome old burying-grounds! Isises, and Ibises, and Cheopses, and
Pharaohses; who cares about them? And then there was Belzoni, or
somebody, dragged out by the legs, half-choked with bats and dust. All
the girls say: Serve him right, and hope it hurt him, and wish he had
been quite choked.”

The two youthful figures, side by side, but not now arm-in-arm, wander
discontentedly about the old Close; and each sometimes stops and slowly
imprints a deeper footstep in the fallen leaves.

“Well!” says Edwin, after a lengthy silence. “According to custom. We
can’t get on, Rosa.”

Rosa tosses her head, and says she don’t want to get on.

“That’s a pretty sentiment, Rosa, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“If I say what, you’ll go wrong again.”

“_You’ll_ go wrong, you mean, Eddy. Don’t be ungenerous.”

“Ungenerous! I like that!”

“Then I _don’t_ like that, and so I tell you plainly,” Rosa pouts.

“Now, Rosa, I put it to you. Who disparaged my profession, my
destination—”

“You are not going to be buried in the Pyramids, I hope?” she
interrupts, arching her delicate eyebrows. “You never said you were. If
you are, why haven’t you mentioned it to me? I can’t find out your
plans by instinct.”

“Now, Rosa, you know very well what I mean, my dear.”

“Well then, why did you begin with your detestable red-nosed
giantesses? And she would, she would, she would, she would, she WOULD
powder it!” cries Rosa, in a little burst of comical contradictory
spleen.

“Somehow or other, I never can come right in these discussions,” says
Edwin, sighing and becoming resigned.

“How is it possible, sir, that you ever can come right when you’re
always wrong? And as to Belzoni, I suppose he’s dead;—I’m sure I hope
he is—and how can his legs or his chokes concern you?”

“It is nearly time for your return, Rosa. We have not had a very happy
walk, have we?”

“A happy walk? A detestably unhappy walk, sir. If I go up-stairs the
moment I get in and cry till I can’t take my dancing lesson, you are
responsible, mind!”

“Let us be friends, Rosa.”

“Ah!” cries Rosa, shaking her head and bursting into real tears, “I
wish we _could_ be friends! It’s because we can’t be friends, that we
try one another so. I am a young little thing, Eddy, to have an old
heartache; but I really, really have, sometimes. Don’t be angry. I know
you have one yourself too often. We should both of us have done better,
if What is to be had been left What might have been. I am quite a
little serious thing now, and not teasing you. Let each of us forbear,
this one time, on our own account, and on the other’s!”

Disarmed by this glimpse of a woman’s nature in the spoilt child,
though for an instant disposed to resent it as seeming to involve the
enforced infliction of himself upon her, Edwin Drood stands watching
her as she childishly cries and sobs, with both hands to the
handkerchief at her eyes, and then—she becoming more composed, and
indeed beginning in her young inconstancy to laugh at herself for
having been so moved—leads her to a seat hard by, under the elm-trees.

[Illustration: Under the trees]


“One clear word of understanding, Pussy dear. I am not clever out of my
own line—now I come to think of it, I don’t know that I am particularly
clever in it—but I want to do right. There is not—there may be—I really
don’t see my way to what I want to say, but I must say it before we
part—there is not any other young—”

“O no, Eddy! It’s generous of you to ask me; but no, no, no!”

They have come very near to the Cathedral windows, and at this moment
the organ and the choir sound out sublimely. As they sit listening to
the solemn swell, the confidence of last night rises in young Edwin
Drood’s mind, and he thinks how unlike this music is to that
discordance.

“I fancy I can distinguish Jack’s voice,” is his remark in a low tone
in connection with the train of thought.

“Take me back at once, please,” urges his Affianced, quickly laying her
light hand upon his wrist. “They will all be coming out directly; let
us get away. O, what a resounding chord! But don’t let us stop to
listen to it; let us get away!”

Her hurry is over as soon as they have passed out of the Close. They go
arm-in-arm now, gravely and deliberately enough, along the old
High-street, to the Nuns’ House. At the gate, the street being within
sight empty, Edwin bends down his face to Rosebud’s.

She remonstrates, laughing, and is a childish schoolgirl again.

“Eddy, no! I’m too sticky to be kissed. But give me your hand, and I’ll
blow a kiss into that.”

He does so. She breathes a light breath into it and asks, retaining it
and looking into it:—

“Now say, what do you see?”

“See, Rosa?”

“Why, I thought you Egyptian boys could look into a hand and see all
sorts of phantoms. Can’t you see a happy Future?”

For certain, neither of them sees a happy Present, as the gate opens
and closes, and one goes in, and the other goes away.




CHAPTER IV.
MR. SAPSEA


Accepting the Jackass as the type of self-sufficient stupidity and
conceit—a custom, perhaps, like some few other customs, more
conventional than fair—then the purest jackass in Cloisterham is Mr.
Thomas Sapsea, Auctioneer.

Mr. Sapsea “dresses at” the Dean; has been bowed to for the Dean, in
mistake; has even been spoken to in the street as My Lord, under the
impression that he was the Bishop come down unexpectedly, without his
chaplain. Mr. Sapsea is very proud of this, and of his voice, and of
his style. He has even (in selling landed property) tried the
experiment of slightly intoning in his pulpit, to make himself more
like what he takes to be the genuine ecclesiastical article. So, in
ending a Sale by Public Auction, Mr. Sapsea finishes off with an air of
bestowing a benediction on the assembled brokers, which leaves the real
Dean—a modest and worthy gentleman—far behind.

Mr. Sapsea has many admirers; indeed, the proposition is carried by a
large local majority, even including non-believers in his wisdom, that
he is a credit to Cloisterham. He possesses the great qualities of
being portentous and dull, and of having a roll in his speech, and
another roll in his gait; not to mention a certain gravely flowing
action with his hands, as if he were presently going to Confirm the
individual with whom he holds discourse. Much nearer sixty years of age
than fifty, with a flowing outline of stomach, and horizontal creases
in his waistcoat; reputed to be rich; voting at elections in the
strictly respectable interest; morally satisfied that nothing but he
himself has grown since he was a baby; how can dunder-headed Mr. Sapsea
be otherwise than a credit to Cloisterham, and society?

Mr. Sapsea’s premises are in the High-street, over against the Nuns’
House. They are of about the period of the Nuns’ House, irregularly
modernised here and there, as steadily deteriorating generations found,
more and more, that they preferred air and light to Fever and the
Plague. Over the doorway is a wooden effigy, about half life-size,
representing Mr. Sapsea’s father, in a curly wig and toga, in the act
of selling. The chastity of the idea, and the natural appearance of the
little finger, hammer, and pulpit, have been much admired.

Mr. Sapsea sits in his dull ground-floor sitting-room, giving first on
his paved back yard; and then on his railed-off garden. Mr. Sapsea has
a bottle of port wine on a table before the fire—the fire is an early
luxury, but pleasant on the cool, chilly autumn evening—and is
characteristically attended by his portrait, his eight-day clock, and
his weather-glass. Characteristically, because he would uphold himself
against mankind, his weather-glass against weather, and his clock
against time.

By Mr. Sapsea’s side on the table are a writing-desk and writing
materials. Glancing at a scrap of manuscript, Mr. Sapsea reads it to
himself with a lofty air, and then, slowly pacing the room with his
thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, repeats it from memory: so
internally, though with much dignity, that the word “Ethelinda” is
alone audible.

There are three clean wineglasses in a tray on the table. His
serving-maid entering, and announcing “Mr. Jasper is come, sir,” Mr.
Sapsea waves “Admit him,” and draws two wineglasses from the rank, as
being claimed.

“Glad to see you, sir. I congratulate myself on having the honour of
receiving you here for the first time.” Mr. Sapsea does the honours of
his house in this wise.

“You are very good. The honour is mine and the self-congratulation is
mine.”

“You are pleased to say so, sir. But I do assure you that it is a
satisfaction to me to receive you in my humble home. And that is what I
would not say to everybody.” Ineffable loftiness on Mr. Sapsea’s part
accompanies these words, as leaving the sentence to be understood: “You
will not easily believe that your society can be a satisfaction to a
man like myself; nevertheless, it is.”

“I have for some time desired to know you, Mr. Sapsea.”

“And I, sir, have long known you by reputation as a man of taste. Let
me fill your glass. I will give you, sir,” says Mr. Sapsea, filling his
own:

“When the French come over,
May we meet them at Dover!”


This was a patriotic toast in Mr. Sapsea’s infancy, and he is therefore
fully convinced of its being appropriate to any subsequent era.

“You can scarcely be ignorant, Mr. Sapsea,” observes Jasper, watching
the auctioneer with a smile as the latter stretches out his legs before
the fire, “that you know the world.”

“Well, sir,” is the chuckling reply, “I think I know something of it;
something of it.”

“Your reputation for that knowledge has always interested and surprised
me, and made me wish to know you. For Cloisterham is a little place.
Cooped up in it myself, I know nothing beyond it, and feel it to be a
very little place.”

“If I have not gone to foreign countries, young man,” Mr. Sapsea
begins, and then stops:—“You will excuse me calling you young man, Mr.
Jasper? You are much my junior.”

“By all means.”

“If I have not gone to foreign countries, young man, foreign countries
have come to me. They have come to me in the way of business, and I
have improved upon my opportunities. Put it that I take an inventory,
or make a catalogue. I see a French clock. I never saw him before, in
my life, but I instantly lay my finger on him and say ‘Paris!’ I see
some cups and saucers of Chinese make, equally strangers to me
personally: I put my finger on them, then and there, and I say ‘Pekin,
Nankin, and Canton.’ It is the same with Japan, with Egypt, and with
bamboo and sandalwood from the East Indies; I put my finger on them
all. I have put my finger on the North Pole before now, and said ‘Spear
of Esquimaux make, for half a pint of pale sherry!’”

“Really? A very remarkable way, Mr. Sapsea, of acquiring a knowledge of
men and things.”

“I mention it, sir,” Mr. Sapsea rejoins, with unspeakable complacency,
“because, as I say, it don’t do to boast of what you are; but show how
you came to be it, and then you prove it.”

“Most interesting. We were to speak of the late Mrs. Sapsea.”

“We were, sir.” Mr. Sapsea fills both glasses, and takes the decanter
into safe keeping again. “Before I consult your opinion as a man of
taste on this little trifle”—holding it up—“which is _but_ a trifle,
and still has required some thought, sir, some little fever of the
brow, I ought perhaps to describe the character of the late Mrs.
Sapsea, now dead three quarters of a year.”

Mr. Jasper, in the act of yawning behind his wineglass, puts down that
screen and calls up a look of interest. It is a little impaired in its
expressiveness by his having a shut-up gape still to dispose of, with
watering eyes.

“Half a dozen years ago, or so,” Mr. Sapsea proceeds, “when I had
enlarged my mind up to—I will not say to what it now is, for that might
seem to aim at too much, but up to the pitch of wanting another mind to
be absorbed in it—I cast my eye about me for a nuptial partner.
Because, as I say, it is not good for man to be alone.”

Mr. Jasper appears to commit this original idea to memory.

“Miss Brobity at that time kept, I will not call it the rival
establishment to the establishment at the Nuns’ House opposite, but I
will call it the other parallel establishment down town. The world did
have it that she showed a passion for attending my sales, when they
took place on half holidays, or in vacation time. The world did put it
about, that she admired my style. The world did notice that as time
flowed by, my style became traceable in the dictation-exercises of Miss
Brobity’s pupils. Young man, a whisper even sprang up in obscure
malignity, that one ignorant and besotted Churl (a parent) so committed
himself as to object to it by name. But I do not believe this. For is
it likely that any human creature in his right senses would so lay
himself open to be pointed at, by what I call the finger of scorn?”

Mr. Jasper shakes his head. Not in the least likely. Mr. Sapsea, in a
grandiloquent state of absence of mind, seems to refill his visitor’s
glass, which is full already; and does really refill his own, which is
empty.

“Miss Brobity’s Being, young man, was deeply imbued with homage to
Mind. She revered Mind, when launched, or, as I say, precipitated, on
an extensive knowledge of the world. When I made my proposal, she did
me the honour to be so overshadowed with a species of Awe, as to be
able to articulate only the two words, ‘O Thou!’ meaning myself. Her
limpid blue eyes were fixed upon me, her semi-transparent hands were
clasped together, pallor overspread her aquiline features, and, though
encouraged to proceed, she never did proceed a word further. I disposed
of the parallel establishment by private contract, and we became as
nearly one as could be expected under the circumstances. But she never
could, and she never did, find a phrase satisfactory to her
perhaps-too-favourable estimate of my intellect. To the very last
(feeble action of liver), she addressed me in the same unfinished
terms.”

Mr. Jasper has closed his eyes as the auctioneer has deepened his
voice. He now abruptly opens them, and says, in unison with the
deepened voice “Ah!”—rather as if stopping himself on the extreme verge
of adding—“men!”

“I have been since,” says Mr. Sapsea, with his legs stretched out, and
solemnly enjoying himself with the wine and the fire, “what you behold
me; I have been since a solitary mourner; I have been since, as I say,
wasting my evening conversation on the desert air. I will not say that
I have reproached myself; but there have been times when I have asked
myself the question: What if her husband had been nearer on a level
with her? If she had not had to look up quite so high, what might the
stimulating action have been upon the liver?”

Mr. Jasper says, with an appearance of having fallen into dreadfully
low spirits, that he “supposes it was to be.”

“We can only suppose so, sir,” Mr. Sapsea coincides. “As I say, Man
proposes, Heaven disposes. It may or may not be putting the same
thought in another form; but that is the way I put it.”

Mr. Jasper murmurs assent.

“And now, Mr. Jasper,” resumes the auctioneer, producing his scrap of
manuscript, “Mrs. Sapsea’s monument having had full time to settle and
dry, let me take your opinion, as a man of taste, on the inscription I
have (as I before remarked, not without some little fever of the brow)
drawn out for it. Take it in your own hand. The setting out of the
lines requires to be followed with the eye, as well as the contents
with the mind.”

Mr. Jasper complying, sees and reads as follows:

ETHELINDA,
Reverential Wife of
MR. THOMAS SAPSEA,
AUCTIONEER, VALUER, ESTATE AGENT, &c.,
OF THIS CITY.
Whose Knowledge of the World,
Though somewhat extensive,
Never brought him acquainted with
A SPIRIT
More capable of
LOOKING UP TO HIM.
STRANGER, PAUSE
And ask thyself the Question,
CANST THOU DO LIKEWISE?
If Not,
WITH A BLUSH RETIRE.


Mr. Sapsea having risen and stationed himself with his back to the
fire, for the purpose of observing the effect of these lines on the
countenance of a man of taste, consequently has his face towards the
door, when his serving-maid, again appearing, announces, “Durdles is
come, sir!” He promptly draws forth and fills the third wineglass, as
being now claimed, and replies, “Show Durdles in.”

“Admirable!” quoth Mr. Jasper, handing back the paper.

“You approve, sir?”

“Impossible not to approve. Striking, characteristic, and complete.”

The auctioneer inclines his head, as one accepting his due and giving a
receipt; and invites the entering Durdles to take off that glass of
wine (handing the same), for it will warm him.

Durdles is a stonemason; chiefly in the gravestone, tomb, and monument
way, and wholly of their colour from head to foot. No man is better
known in Cloisterham. He is the chartered libertine of the place. Fame
trumpets him a wonderful workman—which, for aught that anybody knows,
he may be (as he never works); and a wonderful sot—which everybody
knows he is. With the Cathedral crypt he is better acquainted than any
living authority; it may even be than any dead one. It is said that the
intimacy of this acquaintance began in his habitually resorting to that
secret place, to lock-out the Cloisterham boy-populace, and sleep off
fumes of liquor: he having ready access to the Cathedral, as contractor
for rough repairs. Be this as it may, he does know much about it, and,
in the demolition of impedimental fragments of wall, buttress, and
pavement, has seen strange sights. He often speaks of himself in the
third person; perhaps, being a little misty as to his own identity,
when he narrates; perhaps impartially adopting the Cloisterham
nomenclature in reference to a character of acknowledged distinction.
Thus he will say, touching his strange sights: “Durdles come upon the
old chap,” in reference to a buried magnate of ancient time and high
degree, “by striking right into the coffin with his pick. The old chap
gave Durdles a look with his open eyes, as much as to say, ‘Is your
name Durdles? Why, my man, I’ve been waiting for you a devil of a
time!’ And then he turned to powder.” With a two-foot rule always in
his pocket, and a mason’s hammer all but always in his hand, Durdles
goes continually sounding and tapping all about and about the
Cathedral; and whenever he says to Tope: “Tope, here’s another old ’un
in here!” Tope announces it to the Dean as an established discovery.

In a suit of coarse flannel with horn buttons, a yellow neckerchief
with draggled ends, an old hat more russet-coloured than black, and
laced boots of the hue of his stony calling, Durdles leads a hazy,
gipsy sort of life, carrying his dinner about with him in a small
bundle, and sitting on all manner of tombstones to dine. This dinner of
Durdles’s has become quite a Cloisterham institution: not only because
of his never appearing in public without it, but because of its having
been, on certain renowned occasions, taken into custody along with
Durdles (as drunk and incapable), and exhibited before the Bench of
justices at the townhall. These occasions, however, have been few and
far apart: Durdles being as seldom drunk as sober. For the rest, he is
an old bachelor, and he lives in a little antiquated hole of a house
that was never finished: supposed to be built, so far, of stones stolen
from the city wall. To this abode there is an approach, ankle-deep in
stone chips, resembling a petrified grove of tombstones, urns,
draperies, and broken columns, in all stages of sculpture. Herein two
journeymen incessantly chip, while other two journeymen, who face each
other, incessantly saw stone; dipping as regularly in and out of their
sheltering sentry-boxes, as if they were mechanical figures
emblematical of Time and Death.

To Durdles, when he had consumed his glass of port, Mr. Sapsea intrusts
that precious effort of his Muse. Durdles unfeelingly takes out his
two-foot rule, and measures the lines calmly, alloying them with
stone-grit.

“This is for the monument, is it, Mr. Sapsea?”

“The Inscription. Yes.” Mr. Sapsea waits for its effect on a common
mind.

“It’ll come in to a eighth of a inch,” says Durdles. “Your servant, Mr.
Jasper. Hope I see you well.”

“How are you Durdles?”

“I’ve got a touch of the Tombatism on me, Mr. Jasper, but that I must
expect.”

“You mean the Rheumatism,” says Sapsea, in a sharp tone. (He is nettled
by having his composition so mechanically received.)

“No, I don’t. I mean, Mr. Sapsea, the Tombatism. It’s another sort from
Rheumatism. Mr. Jasper knows what Durdles means. You get among them
Tombs afore it’s well light on a winter morning, and keep on, as the
Catechism says, a-walking in the same all the days of your life, and
_you’ll_ know what Durdles means.”

“It is a bitter cold place,” Mr. Jasper assents, with an antipathetic
shiver.

“And if it’s bitter cold for you, up in the chancel, with a lot of live
breath smoking out about you, what the bitterness is to Durdles, down
in the crypt among the earthy damps there, and the dead breath of the
old ’uns,” returns that individual, “Durdles leaves you to judge.—Is
this to be put in hand at once, Mr. Sapsea?”

Mr. Sapsea, with an Author’s anxiety to rush into publication, replies
that it cannot be out of hand too soon.

“You had better let me have the key then,” says Durdles.

“Why, man, it is not to be put inside the monument!”

“Durdles knows where it’s to be put, Mr. Sapsea; no man better. Ask
’ere a man in Cloisterham whether Durdles knows his work.”

Mr. Sapsea rises, takes a key from a drawer, unlocks an iron safe let
into the wall, and takes from it another key.

“When Durdles puts a touch or a finish upon his work, no matter where,
inside or outside, Durdles likes to look at his work all round, and see
that his work is a-doing him credit,” Durdles explains, doggedly.

The key proffered him by the bereaved widower being a large one, he
slips his two-foot rule into a side-pocket of his flannel trousers made
for it, and deliberately opens his flannel coat, and opens the mouth of
a large breast-pocket within it before taking the key to place it in
that repository.

“Why, Durdles!” exclaims Jasper, looking on amused, “you are undermined
with pockets!”

“And I carries weight in ’em too, Mr. Jasper. Feel those!” producing
two other large keys.

“Hand me Mr. Sapsea’s likewise. Surely this is the heaviest of the
three.”

“You’ll find ’em much of a muchness, I expect,” says Durdles. “They all
belong to monuments. They all open Durdles’s work. Durdles keeps the
keys of his work mostly. Not that they’re much used.”

“By the bye,” it comes into Jasper’s mind to say, as he idly examines
the keys, “I have been going to ask you, many a day, and have always
forgotten. You know they sometimes call you Stony Durdles, don’t you?”

“Cloisterham knows me as Durdles, Mr. Jasper.”

“I am aware of that, of course. But the boys sometimes—”

“O! if you mind them young imps of boys—” Durdles gruffly interrupts.

“I don’t mind them any more than you do. But there was a discussion the
other day among the Choir, whether Stony stood for Tony;” clinking one
key against another.

(“Take care of the wards, Mr. Jasper.”)

“Or whether Stony stood for Stephen;” clinking with a change of keys.

(“You can’t make a pitch pipe of ’em, Mr. Jasper.”)

“Or whether the name comes from your trade. How stands the fact?”

Mr. Jasper weighs the three keys in his hand, lifts his head from his
idly stooping attitude over the fire, and delivers the keys to Durdles
with an ingenuous and friendly face.

But the stony one is a gruff one likewise, and that hazy state of his
is always an uncertain state, highly conscious of its dignity, and
prone to take offence. He drops his two keys back into his pocket one
by one, and buttons them up; he takes his dinner-bundle from the
chair-back on which he hung it when he came in; he distributes the
weight he carries, by tying the third key up in it, as though he were
an Ostrich, and liked to dine off cold iron; and he gets out of the
room, deigning no word of answer.

Mr. Sapsea then proposes a hit at backgammon, which, seasoned with his
own improving conversation, and terminating in a supper of cold roast
beef and salad, beguiles the golden evening until pretty late. Mr.
Sapsea’s wisdom being, in its delivery to mortals, rather of the
diffuse than the epigrammatic order, is by no means expended even then;
but his visitor intimates that he will come back for more of the
precious commodity on future occasions, and Mr. Sapsea lets him off for
the present, to ponder on the instalment he carries away.




CHAPTER V.
MR. DURDLES AND FRIEND


John Jasper, on his way home through the Close, is brought to a
stand-still by the spectacle of Stony Durdles, dinner-bundle and all,
leaning his back against the iron railing of the burial-ground
enclosing it from the old cloister-arches; and a hideous small boy in
rags flinging stones at him as a well-defined mark in the moonlight.
Sometimes the stones hit him, and sometimes they miss him, but Durdles
seems indifferent to either fortune. The hideous small boy, on the
contrary, whenever he hits Durdles, blows a whistle of triumph through
a jagged gap, convenient for the purpose, in the front of his mouth,
where half his teeth are wanting; and whenever he misses him, yelps out
“Mulled agin!” and tries to atone for the failure by taking a more
correct and vicious aim.

“What are you doing to the man?” demands Jasper, stepping out into the
moonlight from the shade.

“Making a cock-shy of him,” replies the hideous small boy.

“Give me those stones in your hand.”

“Yes, I’ll give ’em you down your throat, if you come a-ketching hold
of me,” says the small boy, shaking himself loose, and backing. “I’ll
smash your eye, if you don’t look out!”

“Baby-Devil that you are, what has the man done to you?”

“He won’t go home.”

“What is that to you?”

“He gives me a ’apenny to pelt him home if I ketches him out too late,”
says the boy. And then chants, like a little savage, half stumbling and
half dancing among the rags and laces of his dilapidated boots:—

“Widdy widdy wen!
I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—ten,
Widdy widdy wy!
Then—E—don’t—go—then—I—shy—
Widdy Widdy Wake-cock warning!”


—with a comprehensive sweep on the last word, and one more delivery at
Durdles.

This would seem to be a poetical note of preparation, agreed upon, as a
caution to Durdles to stand clear if he can, or to betake himself
homeward.

John Jasper invites the boy with a beck of his head to follow him
(feeling it hopeless to drag him, or coax him), and crosses to the iron
railing where the Stony (and stoned) One is profoundly meditating.

“Do you know this thing, this child?” asks Jasper, at a loss for a word
that will define this thing.

“Deputy,” says Durdles, with a nod.

“Is that its—his—name?”

“Deputy,” assents Durdles.

“I’m man-servant up at the Travellers’ Twopenny in Gas Works Garding,”
this thing explains. “All us man-servants at Travellers’ Lodgings is
named Deputy. When we’re chock full and the Travellers is all a-bed I
come out for my ’elth.” Then withdrawing into the road, and taking aim,
he resumes:—

“Widdy widdy wen!
I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—”


“Hold your hand,” cries Jasper, “and don’t throw while I stand so near
him, or I’ll kill you! Come, Durdles; let me walk home with you
to-night. Shall I carry your bundle?”

“Not on any account,” replies Durdles, adjusting it. “Durdles was
making his reflections here when you come up, sir, surrounded by his
works, like a poplar Author.—Your own brother-in-law;” introducing a
sarcophagus within the railing, white and cold in the moonlight. “Mrs.
Sapsea;” introducing the monument of that devoted wife. “Late
Incumbent;” introducing the Reverend Gentleman’s broken column.
“Departed Assessed Taxes;” introducing a vase and towel, standing on
what might represent the cake of soap. “Former pastrycook and
Muffin-maker, much respected;” introducing gravestone. “All safe and
sound here, sir, and all Durdles’s work. Of the common folk, that is
merely bundled up in turf and brambles, the less said the better. A
poor lot, soon forgot.”

“This creature, Deputy, is behind us,” says Jasper, looking back. “Is
he to follow us?”

The relations between Durdles and Deputy are of a capricious kind; for,
on Durdles’s turning himself about with the slow gravity of beery
suddenness, Deputy makes a pretty wide circuit into the road and stands
on the defensive.

“You never cried Widdy Warning before you begun to-night,” says
Durdles, unexpectedly reminded of, or imagining, an injury.

“Yer lie, I did,” says Deputy, in his only form of polite
contradiction.

“Own brother, sir,” observes Durdles, turning himself about again, and
as unexpectedly forgetting his offence as he had recalled or conceived
it; “own brother to Peter the Wild Boy! But I gave him an object in
life.”

“At which he takes aim?” Mr. Jasper suggests.

“That’s it, sir,” returns Durdles, quite satisfied; “at which he takes
aim. I took him in hand and gave him an object. What was he before? A
destroyer. What work did he do? Nothing but destruction. What did he
earn by it? Short terms in Cloisterham jail. Not a person, not a piece
of property, not a winder, not a horse, nor a dog, nor a cat, nor a
bird, nor a fowl, nor a pig, but what he stoned, for want of an
enlightened object. I put that enlightened object before him, and now
he can turn his honest halfpenny by the three penn’orth a week.”

“I wonder he has no competitors.”

“He has plenty, Mr. Jasper, but he stones ’em all away. Now, I don’t
know what this scheme of mine comes to,” pursues Durdles, considering
about it with the same sodden gravity; “I don’t know what you may
precisely call it. It ain’t a sort of a—scheme of a—National
Education?”

“I should say not,” replies Jasper.

“I should say not,” assents Durdles; “then we won’t try to give it a
name.”

“He still keeps behind us,” repeats Jasper, looking over his shoulder;
“is he to follow us?”

“We can’t help going round by the Travellers’ Twopenny, if we go the
short way, which is the back way,” Durdles answers, “and we’ll drop him
there.”

So they go on; Deputy, as a rear rank one, taking open order, and
invading the silence of the hour and place by stoning every wall, post,
pillar, and other inanimate object, by the deserted way.

“Is there anything new down in the crypt, Durdles?” asks John Jasper.

“Anything old, I think you mean,” growls Durdles. “It ain’t a spot for
novelty.”

“Any new discovery on your part, I meant.”

“There’s a old ’un under the seventh pillar on the left as you go down
the broken steps of the little underground chapel as formerly was; I
make him out (so fur as I’ve made him out yet) to be one of them old
’uns with a crook. To judge from the size of the passages in the walls,
and of the steps and doors, by which they come and went, them crooks
must have been a good deal in the way of the old ’uns! Two on ’em
meeting promiscuous must have hitched one another by the mitre pretty
often, I should say.”

Without any endeavour to correct the literality of this opinion, Jasper
surveys his companion—covered from head to foot with old mortar, lime,
and stone grit—as though he, Jasper, were getting imbued with a
romantic interest in his weird life.

“Yours is a curious existence.”

Without furnishing the least clue to the question, whether he receives
this as a compliment or as quite the reverse, Durdles gruffly answers:
“Yours is another.”

“Well! inasmuch as my lot is cast in the same old earthy, chilly,
never-changing place, Yes. But there is much more mystery and interest
in your connection with the Cathedral than in mine. Indeed, I am
beginning to have some idea of asking you to take me on as a sort of
student, or free ’prentice, under you, and to let me go about with you
sometimes, and see some of these odd nooks in which you pass your
days.”

The Stony One replies, in a general way, “All right. Everybody knows
where to find Durdles, when he’s wanted.” Which, if not strictly true,
is approximately so, if taken to express that Durdles may always be
found in a state of vagabondage somewhere.

“What I dwell upon most,” says Jasper, pursuing his subject of romantic
interest, “is the remarkable accuracy with which you would seem to find
out where people are buried.—What is the matter? That bundle is in your
way; let me hold it.”

Durdles has stopped and backed a little (Deputy, attentive to all his
movements, immediately skirmishing into the road), and was looking
about for some ledge or corner to place his bundle on, when thus
relieved of it.

“Just you give me my hammer out of that,” says Durdles, “and I’ll show
you.”

Clink, clink. And his hammer is handed him.

“Now, lookee here. You pitch your note, don’t you, Mr. Jasper?”

“Yes.”

“So I sound for mine. I take my hammer, and I tap.” (Here he strikes
the pavement, and the attentive Deputy skirmishes at a rather wider
range, as supposing that his head may be in requisition.) “I tap, tap,
tap. Solid! I go on tapping. Solid still! Tap again. Holloa! Hollow!
Tap again, persevering. Solid in hollow! Tap, tap, tap, to try it
better. Solid in hollow; and inside solid, hollow again! There you are!
Old ’un crumbled away in stone coffin, in vault!”

“Astonishing!”

“I have even done this,” says Durdles, drawing out his two-foot rule
(Deputy meanwhile skirmishing nearer, as suspecting that Treasure may
be about to be discovered, which may somehow lead to his own
enrichment, and the delicious treat of the discoverers being hanged by
the neck, on his evidence, until they are dead). “Say that hammer of
mine’s a wall—my work. Two; four; and two is six,” measuring on the
pavement. “Six foot inside that wall is Mrs. Sapsea.”

“Not really Mrs. Sapsea?”

“Say Mrs. Sapsea. Her wall’s thicker, but say Mrs. Sapsea. Durdles
taps, that wall represented by that hammer, and says, after good
sounding: ‘Something betwixt us!’ Sure enough, some rubbish has been
left in that same six-foot space by Durdles’s men!”

Jasper opines that such accuracy “is a gift.”

“I wouldn’t have it at a gift,” returns Durdles, by no means receiving
the observation in good part. “I worked it out for myself. Durdles
comes by _his_ knowledge through grubbing deep for it, and having it up
by the roots when it don’t want to come.—Holloa you Deputy!”

“Widdy!” is Deputy’s shrill response, standing off again.

“Catch that ha’penny. And don’t let me see any more of you to-night,
after we come to the Travellers’ Twopenny.”

“Warning!” returns Deputy, having caught the halfpenny, and appearing
by this mystic word to express his assent to the arrangement.

They have but to cross what was once the vineyard, belonging to what
was once the Monastery, to come into the narrow back lane wherein
stands the crazy wooden house of two low stories currently known as the
Travellers’ Twopenny:—a house all warped and distorted, like the morals
of the travellers, with scant remains of a lattice-work porch over the
door, and also of a rustic fence before its stamped-out garden; by
reason of the travellers being so bound to the premises by a tender
sentiment (or so fond of having a fire by the roadside in the course of
the day), that they can never be persuaded or threatened into
departure, without violently possessing themselves of some wooden
forget-me-not, and bearing it off.

The semblance of an inn is attempted to be given to this wretched place
by fragments of conventional red curtaining in the windows, which rags
are made muddily transparent in the night-season by feeble lights of
rush or cotton dip burning dully in the close air of the inside. As
Durdles and Jasper come near, they are addressed by an inscribed paper
lantern over the door, setting forth the purport of the house. They are
also addressed by some half-dozen other hideous small boys—whether
twopenny lodgers or followers or hangers-on of such, who knows!—who, as
if attracted by some carrion-scent of Deputy in the air, start into the
moonlight, as vultures might gather in the desert, and instantly fall
to stoning him and one another.

“Stop, you young brutes,” cries Jasper angrily, “and let us go by!”

This remonstrance being received with yells and flying stones,
according to a custom of late years comfortably established among the
police regulations of our English communities, where Christians are
stoned on all sides, as if the days of Saint Stephen were revived,
Durdles remarks of the young savages, with some point, that “they
haven’t got an object,” and leads the way down the lane.

At the corner of the lane, Jasper, hotly enraged, checks his companion
and looks back. All is silent. Next moment, a stone coming rattling at
his hat, and a distant yell of “Wake-Cock! Warning!” followed by a
crow, as from some infernally-hatched Chanticleer, apprising him under
whose victorious fire he stands, he turns the corner into safety, and
takes Durdles home: Durdles stumbling among the litter of his stony
yard as if he were going to turn head foremost into one of the
unfinished tombs.

John Jasper returns by another way to his gatehouse, and entering
softly with his key, finds his fire still burning. He takes from a
locked press a peculiar-looking pipe, which he fills—but not with
tobacco—and, having adjusted the contents of the bowl, very carefully,
with a little instrument, ascends an inner staircase of only a few
steps, leading to two rooms. One of these is his own sleeping chamber:
the other is his nephew’s. There is a light in each.

His nephew lies asleep, calm and untroubled. John Jasper stands looking
down upon him, his unlighted pipe in his hand, for some time, with a
fixed and deep attention. Then, hushing his footsteps, he passes to his
own room, lights his pipe, and delivers himself to the Spectres it
invokes at midnight.




CHAPTER VI.
PHILANTHROPY IN MINOR CANON CORNER


The Reverend Septimus Crisparkle (Septimus, because six little brother
Crisparkles before him went out, one by one, as they were born, like
six weak little rushlights, as they were lighted), having broken the
thin morning ice near Cloisterham Weir with his amiable head, much to
the invigoration of his frame, was now assisting his circulation by
boxing at a looking-glass with great science and prowess. A fresh and
healthy portrait the looking-glass presented of the Reverend Septimus,
feinting and dodging with the utmost artfulness, and hitting out from
the shoulder with the utmost straightness, while his radiant features
teemed with innocence, and soft-hearted benevolence beamed from his
boxing-gloves.

It was scarcely breakfast-time yet, for Mrs. Crisparkle—mother, not
wife of the Reverend Septimus—was only just down, and waiting for the
urn. Indeed, the Reverend Septimus left off at this very moment to take
the pretty old lady’s entering face between his boxing-gloves and kiss
it. Having done so with tenderness, the Reverend Septimus turned to
again, countering with his left, and putting in his right, in a
tremendous manner.

“I say, every morning of my life, that you’ll do it at last, Sept,”
remarked the old lady, looking on; “and so you will.”

“Do what, Ma dear?”

“Break the pier-glass, or burst a blood-vessel.”

“Neither, please God, Ma dear. Here’s wind, Ma. Look at this!” In a
concluding round of great severity, the Reverend Septimus administered
and escaped all sorts of punishment, and wound up by getting the old
lady’s cap into Chancery—such is the technical term used in scientific
circles by the learned in the Noble Art—with a lightness of touch that
hardly stirred the lightest lavender or cherry riband on it.
Magnanimously releasing the defeated, just in time to get his gloves
into a drawer and feign to be looking out of window in a contemplative
state of mind when a servant entered, the Reverend Septimus then gave
place to the urn and other preparations for breakfast. These completed,
and the two alone again, it was pleasant to see (or would have been, if
there had been any one to see it, which there never was), the old lady
standing to say the Lord’s Prayer aloud, and her son, Minor Canon
nevertheless, standing with bent head to hear it, he being within five
years of forty: much as he had stood to hear the same words from the
same lips when he was within five months of four.

What is prettier than an old lady—except a young lady—when her eyes are
bright, when her figure is trim and compact, when her face is cheerful
and calm, when her dress is as the dress of a china shepherdess: so
dainty in its colours, so individually assorted to herself, so neatly
moulded on her? Nothing is prettier, thought the good Minor Canon
frequently, when taking his seat at table opposite his long-widowed
mother. Her thought at such times may be condensed into the two words
that oftenest did duty together in all her conversations: “My Sept!”

They were a good pair to sit breakfasting together in Minor Canon
Corner, Cloisterham. For Minor Canon Corner was a quiet place in the
shadow of the Cathedral, which the cawing of the rooks, the echoing
footsteps of rare passers, the sound of the Cathedral bell, or the roll
of the Cathedral organ, seemed to render more quiet than absolute
silence. Swaggering fighting men had had their centuries of ramping and
raving about Minor Canon Corner, and beaten serfs had had their
centuries of drudging and dying there, and powerful monks had had their
centuries of being sometimes useful and sometimes harmful there, and
behold they were all gone out of Minor Canon Corner, and so much the
better. Perhaps one of the highest uses of their ever having been
there, was, that there might be left behind, that blessed air of
tranquillity which pervaded Minor Canon Corner, and that serenely
romantic state of the mind—productive for the most part of pity and
forbearance—which is engendered by a sorrowful story that is all told,
or a pathetic play that is played out.

Red-brick walls harmoniously toned down in colour by time,
strong-rooted ivy, latticed windows, panelled rooms, big oaken beams in
little places, and stone-walled gardens where annual fruit yet ripened
upon monkish trees, were the principal surroundings of pretty old Mrs.
Crisparkle and the Reverend Septimus as they sat at breakfast.

“And what, Ma dear,” inquired the Minor Canon, giving proof of a
wholesome and vigorous appetite, “does the letter say?”

The pretty old lady, after reading it, had just laid it down upon the
breakfast-cloth. She handed it over to her son.

Now, the old lady was exceedingly proud of her bright eyes being so
clear that she could read writing without spectacles. Her son was also
so proud of the circumstance, and so dutifully bent on her deriving the
utmost possible gratification from it, that he had invented the
pretence that he himself could _not_ read writing without spectacles.
Therefore he now assumed a pair, of grave and prodigious proportions,
which not only seriously inconvenienced his nose and his breakfast, but
seriously impeded his perusal of the letter. For, he had the eyes of a
microscope and a telescope combined, when they were unassisted.

“It’s from Mr. Honeythunder, of course,” said the old lady, folding her
arms.

“Of course,” assented her son. He then lamely read on:

“‘Haven of Philanthropy,
Chief Offices, London, Wednesday.


“‘DEAR MADAM,


“‘I write in the—;’ In the what’s this? What does he write in?”

“In the chair,” said the old lady.

The Reverend Septimus took off his spectacles, that he might see her
face, as he exclaimed:

“Why, what should he write in?”

“Bless me, bless me, Sept,” returned the old lady, “you don’t see the
context! Give it back to me, my dear.”

Glad to get his spectacles off (for they always made his eyes water),
her son obeyed: murmuring that his sight for reading manuscript got
worse and worse daily.

“‘I write,’” his mother went on, reading very perspicuously and
precisely, “‘from the chair, to which I shall probably be confined for
some hours.’”

Septimus looked at the row of chairs against the wall, with a
half-protesting and half-appealing countenance.

“‘We have,’” the old lady read on with a little extra emphasis, “‘a
meeting of our Convened Chief Composite Committee of Central and
District Philanthropists, at our Head Haven as above; and it is their
unanimous pleasure that I take the chair.’”

Septimus breathed more freely, and muttered: “O! if he comes to _that_,
let him.”

“‘Not to lose a day’s post, I take the opportunity of a long report
being read, denouncing a public miscreant—’”

“It is a most extraordinary thing,” interposed the gentle Minor Canon,
laying down his knife and fork to rub his ear in a vexed manner, “that
these Philanthropists are always denouncing somebody. And it is another
most extraordinary thing that they are always so violently flush of
miscreants!”

“‘Denouncing a public miscreant—’”—the old lady resumed, “‘to get our
little affair of business off my mind. I have spoken with my two wards,
Neville and Helena Landless, on the subject of their defective
education, and they give in to the plan proposed; as I should have
taken good care they did, whether they liked it or not.’”

“And it is another most extraordinary thing,” remarked the Minor Canon
in the same tone as before, “that these philanthropists are so given to
seizing their fellow-creatures by the scruff of the neck, and (as one
may say) bumping them into the paths of peace.—I beg your pardon, Ma
dear, for interrupting.”

“‘Therefore, dear Madam, you will please prepare your son, the Rev. Mr.
Septimus, to expect Neville as an inmate to be read with, on Monday
next. On the same day Helena will accompany him to Cloisterham, to take
up her quarters at the Nuns’ House, the establishment recommended by
yourself and son jointly. Please likewise to prepare for her reception
and tuition there. The terms in both cases are understood to be exactly
as stated to me in writing by yourself, when I opened a correspondence
with you on this subject, after the honour of being introduced to you
at your sister’s house in town here. With compliments to the Rev. Mr.
Septimus, I am, Dear Madam, Your affectionate brother (In
Philanthropy), LUKE HONEYTHUNDER.’”

“Well, Ma,” said Septimus, after a little more rubbing of his ear, “we
must try it. There can be no doubt that we have room for an inmate, and
that I have time to bestow upon him, and inclination too. I must
confess to feeling rather glad that he is not Mr. Honeythunder himself.
Though that seems wretchedly prejudiced—does it not?—for I never saw
him. Is he a large man, Ma?”

“I should call him a large man, my dear,” the old lady replied after
some hesitation, “but that his voice is so much larger.”

“Than himself?”

“Than anybody.”

“Hah!” said Septimus. And finished his breakfast as if the flavour of
the Superior Family Souchong, and also of the ham and toast and eggs,
were a little on the wane.

Mrs. Crisparkle’s sister, another piece of Dresden china, and matching
her so neatly that they would have made a delightful pair of ornaments
for the two ends of any capacious old-fashioned chimneypiece, and by
right should never have been seen apart, was the childless wife of a
clergyman holding Corporation preferment in London City. Mr.
Honeythunder in his public character of Professor of Philanthropy had
come to know Mrs. Crisparkle during the last re-matching of the china
ornaments (in other words during her last annual visit to her sister),
after a public occasion of a philanthropic nature, when certain devoted
orphans of tender years had been glutted with plum buns, and plump
bumptiousness. These were all the antecedents known in Minor Canon
Corner of the coming pupils.

“I am sure you will agree with me, Ma,” said Mr. Crisparkle, after
thinking the matter over, “that the first thing to be done, is, to put
these young people as much at their ease as possible. There is nothing
disinterested in the notion, because we cannot be at our ease with them
unless they are at their ease with us. Now, Jasper’s nephew is down
here at present; and like takes to like, and youth takes to youth. He
is a cordial young fellow, and we will have him to meet the brother and
sister at dinner. That’s three. We can’t think of asking him, without
asking Jasper. That’s four. Add Miss Twinkleton and the fairy bride
that is to be, and that’s six. Add our two selves, and that’s eight.
Would eight at a friendly dinner at all put you out, Ma?”

“Nine would, Sept,” returned the old lady, visibly nervous.

“My dear Ma, I particularise eight.”

“The exact size of the table and the room, my dear.”

So it was settled that way: and when Mr. Crisparkle called with his
mother upon Miss Twinkleton, to arrange for the reception of Miss
Helena Landless at the Nuns’ House, the two other invitations having
reference to that establishment were proffered and accepted. Miss
Twinkleton did, indeed, glance at the globes, as regretting that they
were not formed to be taken out into society; but became reconciled to
leaving them behind. Instructions were then despatched to the
Philanthropist for the departure and arrival, in good time for dinner,
of Mr. Neville and Miss Helena; and stock for soup became fragrant in
the air of Minor Canon Corner.

In those days there was no railway to Cloisterham, and Mr. Sapsea said
there never would be. Mr. Sapsea said more; he said there never should
be. And yet, marvellous to consider, it has come to pass, in these
days, that Express Trains don’t think Cloisterham worth stopping at,
but yell and whirl through it on their larger errands, casting the dust
off their wheels as a testimony against its insignificance. Some remote
fragment of Main Line to somewhere else, there was, which was going to
ruin the Money Market if it failed, and Church and State if it
succeeded, and (of course), the Constitution, whether or no; but even
that had already so unsettled Cloisterham traffic, that the traffic,
deserting the high road, came sneaking in from an unprecedented part of
the country by a back stable-way, for many years labelled at the
corner: “Beware of the Dog.”

To this ignominious avenue of approach, Mr. Crisparkle repaired,
awaiting the arrival of a short, squat omnibus, with a disproportionate
heap of luggage on the roof—like a little Elephant with infinitely too
much Castle—which was then the daily service between Cloisterham and
external mankind. As this vehicle lumbered up, Mr. Crisparkle could
hardly see anything else of it for a large outside passenger seated on
the box, with his elbows squared, and his hands on his knees,
compressing the driver into a most uncomfortably small compass, and
glowering about him with a strongly-marked face.

“Is this Cloisterham?” demanded the passenger, in a tremendous voice.

“It is,” replied the driver, rubbing himself as if he ached, after
throwing the reins to the ostler. “And I never was so glad to see it.”

“Tell your master to make his box-seat wider, then,” returned the
passenger. “Your master is morally bound—and ought to be legally, under
ruinous penalties—to provide for the comfort of his fellow-man.”

The driver instituted, with the palms of his hands, a superficial
perquisition into the state of his skeleton; which seemed to make him
anxious.

“Have I sat upon you?” asked the passenger.

“You have,” said the driver, as if he didn’t like it at all.

“Take that card, my friend.”

“I think I won’t deprive you on it,” returned the driver, casting his
eyes over it with no great favour, without taking it. “What’s the good
of it to me?”

“Be a Member of that Society,” said the passenger.

“What shall I get by it?” asked the driver.

“Brotherhood,” returned the passenger, in a ferocious voice.

“Thankee,” said the driver, very deliberately, as he got down; “my
mother was contented with myself, and so am I. I don’t want no
brothers.”

“But you must have them,” replied the passenger, also descending,
“whether you like it or not. I am your brother.”

“I say!” expostulated the driver, becoming more chafed in temper, “not
too fur! The worm _will_, when—”

But here, Mr. Crisparkle interposed, remonstrating aside, in a friendly
voice: “Joe, Joe, Joe! don’t forget yourself, Joe, my good fellow!” and
then, when Joe peaceably touched his hat, accosting the passenger with:
“Mr. Honeythunder?”

“That is my name, sir.”

“My name is Crisparkle.”

“Reverend Mr. Septimus? Glad to see you, sir. Neville and Helena are
inside. Having a little succumbed of late, under the pressure of my
public labours, I thought I would take a mouthful of fresh air, and
come down with them, and return at night. So you are the Reverend Mr.
Septimus, are you?” surveying him on the whole with disappointment, and
twisting a double eye-glass by its ribbon, as if he were roasting it,
but not otherwise using it. “Hah! I expected to see you older, sir.”

“I hope you will,” was the good-humoured reply.

“Eh?” demanded Mr. Honeythunder.

“Only a poor little joke. Not worth repeating.”

“Joke? Ay; I never see a joke,” Mr. Honeythunder frowningly retorted.
“A joke is wasted upon me, sir. Where are they? Helena and Neville,
come here! Mr. Crisparkle has come down to meet you.”

An unusually handsome lithe young fellow, and an unusually handsome
lithe girl; much alike; both very dark, and very rich in colour; she of
almost the gipsy type; something untamed about them both; a certain air
upon them of hunter and huntress; yet withal a certain air of being the
objects of the chase, rather than the followers. Slender, supple, quick
of eye and limb; half shy, half defiant; fierce of look; an indefinable
kind of pause coming and going on their whole expression, both of face
and form, which might be equally likened to the pause before a crouch
or a bound. The rough mental notes made in the first five minutes by
Mr. Crisparkle would have read thus, _verbatim_.

He invited Mr. Honeythunder to dinner, with a troubled mind (for the
discomfiture of the dear old china shepherdess lay heavy on it), and
gave his arm to Helena Landless. Both she and her brother, as they
walked all together through the ancient streets, took great delight in
what he pointed out of the Cathedral and the Monastery ruin, and
wondered—so his notes ran on—much as if they were beautiful barbaric
captives brought from some wild tropical dominion. Mr. Honeythunder
walked in the middle of the road, shouldering the natives out of his
way, and loudly developing a scheme he had, for making a raid on all
the unemployed persons in the United Kingdom, laying them every one by
the heels in jail, and forcing them, on pain of prompt extermination,
to become philanthropists.

Mrs. Crisparkle had need of her own share of philanthropy when she
beheld this very large and very loud excrescence on the little party.
Always something in the nature of a Boil upon the face of society, Mr.
Honeythunder expanded into an inflammatory Wen in Minor Canon Corner.
Though it was not literally true, as was facetiously charged against
him by public unbelievers, that he called aloud to his
fellow-creatures: “Curse your souls and bodies, come here and be
blessed!” still his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the
difference between it and animosity was hard to determine. You were to
abolish military force, but you were first to bring all commanding
officers who had done their duty, to trial by court-martial for that
offence, and shoot them. You were to abolish war, but were to make
converts by making war upon them, and charging them with loving war as
the apple of their eye. You were to have no capital punishment, but
were first to sweep off the face of the earth all legislators, jurists,
and judges, who were of the contrary opinion. You were to have
universal concord, and were to get it by eliminating all the people who
wouldn’t, or conscientiously couldn’t, be concordant. You were to love
your brother as yourself, but after an indefinite interval of maligning
him (very much as if you hated him), and calling him all manner of
names. Above all things, you were to do nothing in private, or on your
own account. You were to go to the offices of the Haven of
Philanthropy, and put your name down as a Member and a Professing
Philanthropist. Then, you were to pay up your subscription, get your
card of membership and your riband and medal, and were evermore to live
upon a platform, and evermore to say what Mr. Honeythunder said, and
what the Treasurer said, and what the sub-Treasurer said, and what the
Committee said, and what the sub-Committee said, and what the Secretary
said, and what the Vice-Secretary said. And this was usually said in
the unanimously-carried resolution under hand and seal, to the effect:
“That this assembled Body of Professing Philanthropists views, with
indignant scorn and contempt, not unmixed with utter detestation and
loathing abhorrence”—in short, the baseness of all those who do not
belong to it, and pledges itself to make as many obnoxious statements
as possible about them, without being at all particular as to facts.

The dinner was a most doleful breakdown. The philanthropist deranged
the symmetry of the table, sat himself in the way of the waiting,
blocked up the thoroughfare, and drove Mr. Tope (who assisted the
parlour-maid) to the verge of distraction by passing plates and dishes
on, over his own head. Nobody could talk to anybody, because he held
forth to everybody at once, as if the company had no individual
existence, but were a Meeting. He impounded the Reverend Mr. Septimus,
as an official personage to be addressed, or kind of human peg to hang
his oratorical hat on, and fell into the exasperating habit, common
among such orators, of impersonating him as a wicked and weak opponent.
Thus, he would ask: “And will you, sir, now stultify yourself by
telling me”—and so forth, when the innocent man had not opened his
lips, nor meant to open them. Or he would say: “Now see, sir, to what a
position you are reduced. I will leave you no escape. After exhausting
all the resources of fraud and falsehood, during years upon years;
after exhibiting a combination of dastardly meanness with ensanguined
daring, such as the world has not often witnessed; you have now the
hypocrisy to bend the knee before the most degraded of mankind, and to
sue and whine and howl for mercy!” Whereat the unfortunate Minor Canon
would look, in part indignant and in part perplexed; while his worthy
mother sat bridling, with tears in her eyes, and the remainder of the
party lapsed into a sort of gelatinous state, in which there was no
flavour or solidity, and very little resistance.

But the gush of philanthropy that burst forth when the departure of Mr.
Honeythunder began to impend, must have been highly gratifying to the
feelings of that distinguished man. His coffee was produced, by the
special activity of Mr. Tope, a full hour before he wanted it. Mr.
Crisparkle sat with his watch in his hand for about the same period,
lest he should overstay his time. The four young people were unanimous
in believing that the Cathedral clock struck three-quarters, when it
actually struck but one. Miss Twinkleton estimated the distance to the
omnibus at five-and-twenty minutes’ walk, when it was really five. The
affectionate kindness of the whole circle hustled him into his
greatcoat, and shoved him out into the moonlight, as if he were a
fugitive traitor with whom they sympathised, and a troop of horse were
at the back door. Mr. Crisparkle and his new charge, who took him to
the omnibus, were so fervent in their apprehensions of his catching
cold, that they shut him up in it instantly and left him, with still
half-an-hour to spare.




CHAPTER VII.
MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE


“I know very little of that gentleman, sir,” said Neville to the Minor
Canon as they turned back.

“You know very little of your guardian?” the Minor Canon repeated.

“Almost nothing!”

“How came he—”

“To _be_ my guardian? I’ll tell you, sir. I suppose you know that we
come (my sister and I) from Ceylon?”

“Indeed, no.”

“I wonder at that. We lived with a stepfather there. Our mother died
there, when we were little children. We have had a wretched existence.
She made him our guardian, and he was a miserly wretch who grudged us
food to eat, and clothes to wear. At his death, he passed us over to
this man; for no better reason that I know of, than his being a friend
or connexion of his, whose name was always in print and catching his
attention.”

“That was lately, I suppose?”

“Quite lately, sir. This stepfather of ours was a cruel brute as well
as a grinding one. It is well he died when he did, or I might have
killed him.”

Mr. Crisparkle stopped short in the moonlight and looked at his hopeful
pupil in consternation.

“I surprise you, sir?” he said, with a quick change to a submissive
manner.

“You shock me; unspeakably shock me.”

The pupil hung his head for a little while, as they walked on, and then
said: “You never saw him beat your sister. I have seen him beat mine,
more than once or twice, and I never forgot it.”

“Nothing,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “not even a beloved and beautiful
sister’s tears under dastardly ill-usage;” he became less severe, in
spite of himself, as his indignation rose; “could justify those
horrible expressions that you used.”

“I am sorry I used them, and especially to you, sir. I beg to recall
them. But permit me to set you right on one point. You spoke of my
sister’s tears. My sister would have let him tear her to pieces, before
she would have let him believe that he could make her shed a tear.”

Mr. Crisparkle reviewed those mental notes of his, and was neither at
all surprised to hear it, nor at all disposed to question it.

“Perhaps you will think it strange, sir,”—this was said in a hesitating
voice—“that I should so soon ask you to allow me to confide in you, and
to have the kindness to hear a word or two from me in my defence?”

“Defence?” Mr. Crisparkle repeated. “You are not on your defence, Mr.
Neville.”

“I think I am, sir. At least I know I should be, if you were better
acquainted with my character.”

“Well, Mr. Neville,” was the rejoinder. “What if you leave me to find
it out?”

“Since it is your pleasure, sir,” answered the young man, with a quick
change in his manner to sullen disappointment: “since it is your
pleasure to check me in my impulse, I must submit.”

There was that in the tone of this short speech which made the
conscientious man to whom it was addressed uneasy. It hinted to him
that he might, without meaning it, turn aside a trustfulness beneficial
to a mis-shapen young mind and perhaps to his own power of directing
and improving it. They were within sight of the lights in his windows,
and he stopped.

“Let us turn back and take a turn or two up and down, Mr. Neville, or
you may not have time to finish what you wish to say to me. You are
hasty in thinking that I mean to check you. Quite the contrary. I
invite your confidence.”

“You have invited it, sir, without knowing it, ever since I came here.
I say ‘ever since,’ as if I had been here a week. The truth is, we came
here (my sister and I) to quarrel with you, and affront you, and break
away again.”

“Really?” said Mr. Crisparkle, at a dead loss for anything else to say.

“You see, we could not know what you were beforehand, sir; could we?”

“Clearly not,” said Mr. Crisparkle.

“And having liked no one else with whom we have ever been brought into
contact, we had made up our minds not to like you.”

“Really?” said Mr. Crisparkle again.

“But we do like you, sir, and we see an unmistakable difference between
your house and your reception of us, and anything else we have ever
known. This—and my happening to be alone with you—and everything around
us seeming so quiet and peaceful after Mr. Honeythunder’s departure—and
Cloisterham being so old and grave and beautiful, with the moon shining
on it—these things inclined me to open my heart.”

“I quite understand, Mr. Neville. And it is salutary to listen to such
influences.”

“In describing my own imperfections, sir, I must ask you not to suppose
that I am describing my sister’s. She has come out of the disadvantages
of our miserable life, as much better than I am, as that Cathedral
tower is higher than those chimneys.”

Mr. Crisparkle in his own breast was not so sure of this.

“I have had, sir, from my earliest remembrance, to suppress a deadly
and bitter hatred. This has made me secret and revengeful. I have been
always tyrannically held down by the strong hand. This has driven me,
in my weakness, to the resource of being false and mean. I have been
stinted of education, liberty, money, dress, the very necessaries of
life, the commonest pleasures of childhood, the commonest possessions
of youth. This has caused me to be utterly wanting in I don’t know what
emotions, or remembrances, or good instincts—I have not even a name for
the thing, you see!—that you have had to work upon in other young men
to whom you have been accustomed.”

“This is evidently true. But this is not encouraging,” thought Mr.
Crisparkle as they turned again.

“And to finish with, sir: I have been brought up among abject and
servile dependents, of an inferior race, and I may easily have
contracted some affinity with them. Sometimes, I don’t know but that it
may be a drop of what is tigerish in their blood.”

“As in the case of that remark just now,” thought Mr. Crisparkle.

“In a last word of reference to my sister, sir (we are twin children),
you ought to know, to her honour, that nothing in our misery ever
subdued her, though it often cowed me. When we ran away from it (we ran
away four times in six years, to be soon brought back and cruelly
punished), the flight was always of her planning and leading. Each time
she dressed as a boy, and showed the daring of a man. I take it we were
seven years old when we first decamped; but I remember, when I lost the
pocket-knife with which she was to have cut her hair short, how
desperately she tried to tear it out, or bite it off. I have nothing
further to say, sir, except that I hope you will bear with me and make
allowance for me.”

“Of that, Mr. Neville, you may be sure,” returned the Minor Canon. “I
don’t preach more than I can help, and I will not repay your confidence
with a sermon. But I entreat you to bear in mind, very seriously and
steadily, that if I am to do you any good, it can only be with your own
assistance; and that you can only render that, efficiently, by seeking
aid from Heaven.”

“I will try to do my part, sir.”

“And, Mr. Neville, I will try to do mine. Here is my hand on it. May
God bless our endeavours!”

They were now standing at his house-door, and a cheerful sound of
voices and laughter was heard within.

“We will take one more turn before going in,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “for
I want to ask you a question. When you said you were in a changed mind
concerning me, you spoke, not only for yourself, but for your sister
too?”

“Undoubtedly I did, sir.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Neville, but I think you have had no opportunity of
communicating with your sister, since I met you. Mr. Honeythunder was
very eloquent; but perhaps I may venture to say, without ill-nature,
that he rather monopolised the occasion. May you not have answered for
your sister without sufficient warrant?”

Neville shook his head with a proud smile.

“You don’t know, sir, yet, what a complete understanding can exist
between my sister and me, though no spoken word—perhaps hardly as much
as a look—may have passed between us. She not only feels as I have
described, but she very well knows that I am taking this opportunity of
speaking to you, both for her and for myself.”

Mr. Crisparkle looked in his face, with some incredulity; but his face
expressed such absolute and firm conviction of the truth of what he
said, that Mr. Crisparkle looked at the pavement, and mused, until they
came to his door again.

“I will ask for one more turn, sir, this time,” said the young man,
with a rather heightened colour rising in his face. “But for Mr.
Honeythunder’s—I think you called it eloquence, sir?” (somewhat slyly.)

“I—yes, I called it eloquence,” said Mr. Crisparkle.

“But for Mr. Honeythunder’s eloquence, I might have had no need to ask
you what I am going to ask you. This Mr. Edwin Drood, sir: I think
that’s the name?”

“Quite correct,” said Mr. Crisparkle. “D-r-double o-d.”

“Does he—or did he—read with you, sir?”

“Never, Mr. Neville. He comes here visiting his relation, Mr. Jasper.”

“Is Miss Bud his relation too, sir?”

(“Now, why should he ask that, with sudden superciliousness?” thought
Mr. Crisparkle.) Then he explained, aloud, what he knew of the little
story of their betrothal.

“O! _that’s_ it, is it?” said the young man. “I understand his air of
proprietorship now!”

This was said so evidently to himself, or to anybody rather than Mr.
Crisparkle, that the latter instinctively felt as if to notice it would
be almost tantamount to noticing a passage in a letter which he had
read by chance over the writer’s shoulder. A moment afterwards they
re-entered the house.

Mr. Jasper was seated at the piano as they came into his drawing-room,
and was accompanying Miss Rosebud while she sang. It was a consequence
of his playing the accompaniment without notes, and of her being a
heedless little creature, very apt to go wrong, that he followed her
lips most attentively, with his eyes as well as hands; carefully and
softly hinting the key-note from time to time. Standing with an arm
drawn round her, but with a face far more intent on Mr. Jasper than on
her singing, stood Helena, between whom and her brother an
instantaneous recognition passed, in which Mr. Crisparkle saw, or
thought he saw, the understanding that had been spoken of, flash out.
Mr. Neville then took his admiring station, leaning against the piano,
opposite the singer; Mr. Crisparkle sat down by the china shepherdess;
Edwin Drood gallantly furled and unfurled Miss Twinkleton’s fan; and
that lady passively claimed that sort of exhibitor’s proprietorship in
the accomplishment on view, which Mr. Tope, the Verger, daily claimed
in the Cathedral service.

[Illustration: At the piano]


The song went on. It was a sorrowful strain of parting, and the fresh
young voice was very plaintive and tender. As Jasper watched the pretty
lips, and ever and again hinted the one note, as though it were a low
whisper from himself, the voice became less steady, until all at once
the singer broke into a burst of tears, and shrieked out, with her
hands over her eyes: “I can’t bear this! I am frightened! Take me
away!”

With one swift turn of her lithe figure, Helena laid the little beauty
on a sofa, as if she had never caught her up. Then, on one knee beside
her, and with one hand upon her rosy mouth, while with the other she
appealed to all the rest, Helena said to them: “It’s nothing; it’s all
over; don’t speak to her for one minute, and she is well!”

Jasper’s hands had, in the same instant, lifted themselves from the
keys, and were now poised above them, as though he waited to resume. In
that attitude he yet sat quiet: not even looking round, when all the
rest had changed their places and were reassuring one another.

“Pussy’s not used to an audience; that’s the fact,” said Edwin Drood.
“She got nervous, and couldn’t hold out. Besides, Jack, you are such a
conscientious master, and require so much, that I believe you make her
afraid of you. No wonder.”

“No wonder,” repeated Helena.

“There, Jack, you hear! You would be afraid of him, under similar
circumstances, wouldn’t you, Miss Landless?”

“Not under any circumstances,” returned Helena.

Jasper brought down his hands, looked over his shoulder, and begged to
thank Miss Landless for her vindication of his character. Then he fell
to dumbly playing, without striking the notes, while his little pupil
was taken to an open window for air, and was otherwise petted and
restored. When she was brought back, his place was empty. “Jack’s gone,
Pussy,” Edwin told her. “I am more than half afraid he didn’t like to
be charged with being the Monster who had frightened you.” But she
answered never a word, and shivered, as if they had made her a little
too cold.

Miss Twinkleton now opining that indeed these were late hours, Mrs.
Crisparkle, for finding ourselves outside the walls of the Nuns’ House,
and that we who undertook the formation of the future wives and mothers
of England (the last words in a lower voice, as requiring to be
communicated in confidence) were really bound (voice coming up again)
to set a better example than one of rakish habits, wrappers were put in
requisition, and the two young cavaliers volunteered to see the ladies
home. It was soon done, and the gate of the Nuns’ House closed upon
them.

The boarders had retired, and only Mrs. Tisher in solitary vigil
awaited the new pupil. Her bedroom being within Rosa’s, very little
introduction or explanation was necessary, before she was placed in
charge of her new friend, and left for the night.

“This is a blessed relief, my dear,” said Helena. “I have been dreading
all day, that I should be brought to bay at this time.”

“There are not many of us,” returned Rosa, “and we are good-natured
girls; at least the others are; I can answer for them.”

“I can answer for you,” laughed Helena, searching the lovely little
face with her dark, fiery eyes, and tenderly caressing the small
figure. “You will be a friend to me, won’t you?”

“I hope so. But the idea of my being a friend to you seems too absurd,
though.”

“Why?”

“O, I am such a mite of a thing, and you are so womanly and handsome.
You seem to have resolution and power enough to crush me. I shrink into
nothing by the side of your presence even.”

“I am a neglected creature, my dear, unacquainted with all
accomplishments, sensitively conscious that I have everything to learn,
and deeply ashamed to own my ignorance.”

“And yet you acknowledge everything to me!” said Rosa.

“My pretty one, can I help it? There is a fascination in you.”

“O! is there though?” pouted Rosa, half in jest and half in earnest.
“What a pity Master Eddy doesn’t feel it more!”

Of course her relations towards that young gentleman had been already
imparted in Minor Canon Corner.

“Why, surely he must love you with all his heart!” cried Helena, with
an earnestness that threatened to blaze into ferocity if he didn’t.

“Eh? O, well, I suppose he does,” said Rosa, pouting again; “I am sure
I have no right to say he doesn’t. Perhaps it’s my fault. Perhaps I am
not as nice to him as I ought to be. I don’t think I am. But it _is_ so
ridiculous!”

Helena’s eyes demanded what was.

“_We_ are,” said Rosa, answering as if she had spoken. “We are such a
ridiculous couple. And we are always quarrelling.”

“Why?”

“Because we both know we are ridiculous, my dear!” Rosa gave that
answer as if it were the most conclusive answer in the world.

Helena’s masterful look was intent upon her face for a few moments, and
then she impulsively put out both her hands and said:

“You will be my friend and help me?”

“Indeed, my dear, I will,” replied Rosa, in a tone of affectionate
childishness that went straight and true to her heart; “I will be as
good a friend as such a mite of a thing can be to such a noble creature
as you. And be a friend to me, please; I don’t understand myself: and I
want a friend who can understand me, very much indeed.”

Helena Landless kissed her, and retaining both her hands said:

“Who is Mr. Jasper?”

Rosa turned aside her head in answering: “Eddy’s uncle, and my
music-master.”

“You do not love him?”

“Ugh!” She put her hands up to her face, and shook with fear or horror.

“You know that he loves you?”

“O, don’t, don’t, don’t!” cried Rosa, dropping on her knees, and
clinging to her new resource. “Don’t tell me of it! He terrifies me. He
haunts my thoughts, like a dreadful ghost. I feel that I am never safe
from him. I feel as if he could pass in through the wall when he is
spoken of.” She actually did look round, as if she dreaded to see him
standing in the shadow behind her.

“Try to tell me more about it, darling.”

“Yes, I will, I will. Because you are so strong. But hold me the while,
and stay with me afterwards.”

“My child! You speak as if he had threatened you in some dark way.”

“He has never spoken to me about—that. Never.”

“What has he done?”

“He has made a slave of me with his looks. He has forced me to
understand him, without his saying a word; and he has forced me to keep
silence, without his uttering a threat. When I play, he never moves his
eyes from my hands. When I sing, he never moves his eyes from my lips.
When he corrects me, and strikes a note, or a chord, or plays a
passage, he himself is in the sounds, whispering that he pursues me as
a lover, and commanding me to keep his secret. I avoid his eyes, but he
forces me to see them without looking at them. Even when a glaze comes
over them (which is sometimes the case), and he seems to wander away
into a frightful sort of dream in which he threatens most, he obliges
me to know it, and to know that he is sitting close at my side, more
terrible to me than ever.”

“What is this imagined threatening, pretty one? What is threatened?”

“I don’t know. I have never even dared to think or wonder what it is.”

“And was this all, to-night?”

“This was all; except that to-night when he watched my lips so closely
as I was singing, besides feeling terrified I felt ashamed and
passionately hurt. It was as if he kissed me, and I couldn’t bear it,
but cried out. You must never breathe this to any one. Eddy is devoted
to him. But you said to-night that you would not be afraid of him,
under any circumstances, and that gives me—who am so much afraid of
him—courage to tell only you. Hold me! Stay with me! I am too
frightened to be left by myself.”

The lustrous gipsy-face drooped over the clinging arms and bosom, and
the wild black hair fell down protectingly over the childish form.
There was a slumbering gleam of fire in the intense dark eyes, though
they were then softened with compassion and admiration. Let whomsoever
it most concerned look well to it!




CHAPTER VIII.
DAGGERS DRAWN


The two young men, having seen the damsels, their charges, enter the
courtyard of the Nuns’ House, and finding themselves coldly stared at
by the brazen door-plate, as if the battered old beau with the glass in
his eye were insolent, look at one another, look along the perspective
of the moonlit street, and slowly walk away together.

“Do you stay here long, Mr. Drood?” says Neville.

“Not this time,” is the careless answer. “I leave for London again,
to-morrow. But I shall be here, off and on, until next Midsummer; then
I shall take my leave of Cloisterham, and England too; for many a long
day, I expect.”

“Are you going abroad?”

“Going to wake up Egypt a little,” is the condescending answer.

“Are you reading?”

“Reading?” repeats Edwin Drood, with a touch of contempt. “No. Doing,
working, engineering. My small patrimony was left a part of the capital
of the Firm I am with, by my father, a former partner; and I am a
charge upon the Firm until I come of age; and then I step into my
modest share in the concern. Jack—you met him at dinner—is, until then,
my guardian and trustee.”

“I heard from Mr. Crisparkle of your other good fortune.”

“What do you mean by my other good fortune?”

Neville has made his remark in a watchfully advancing, and yet furtive
and shy manner, very expressive of that peculiar air already noticed,
of being at once hunter and hunted. Edwin has made his retort with an
abruptness not at all polite. They stop and interchange a rather heated
look.

“I hope,” says Neville, “there is no offence, Mr. Drood, in my
innocently referring to your betrothal?”

“By George!” cries Edwin, leading on again at a somewhat quicker pace;
“everybody in this chattering old Cloisterham refers to it. I wonder no
public-house has been set up, with my portrait for the sign of The
Betrothed’s Head. Or Pussy’s portrait. One or the other.”

“I am not accountable for Mr. Crisparkle’s mentioning the matter to me,
quite openly,” Neville begins.

“No; that’s true; you are not,” Edwin Drood assents.

“But,” resumes Neville, “I am accountable for mentioning it to you. And
I did so, on the supposition that you could not fail to be highly proud
of it.”

Now, there are these two curious touches of human nature working the
secret springs of this dialogue. Neville Landless is already enough
impressed by Little Rosebud, to feel indignant that Edwin Drood (far
below her) should hold his prize so lightly. Edwin Drood is already
enough impressed by Helena, to feel indignant that Helena’s brother
(far below her) should dispose of him so coolly, and put him out of the
way so entirely.

However, the last remark had better be answered. So, says Edwin:

“I don’t know, Mr. Neville” (adopting that mode of address from Mr.
Crisparkle), “that what people are proudest of, they usually talk most
about; I don’t know either, that what they are proudest of, they most
like other people to talk about. But I live a busy life, and I speak
under correction by you readers, who ought to know everything, and I
daresay do.”

By this time they had both become savage; Mr. Neville out in the open;
Edwin Drood under the transparent cover of a popular tune, and a stop
now and then to pretend to admire picturesque effects in the moonlight
before him.

“It does not seem to me very civil in you,” remarks Neville, at length,
“to reflect upon a stranger who comes here, not having had your
advantages, to try to make up for lost time. But, to be sure, I was not
brought up in ‘busy life,’ and my ideas of civility were formed among
Heathens.”

“Perhaps, the best civility, whatever kind of people we are brought up
among,” retorts Edwin Drood, “is to mind our own business. If you will
set me that example, I promise to follow it.”

“Do you know that you take a great deal too much upon yourself?” is the
angry rejoinder, “and that in the part of the world I come from, you
would be called to account for it?”

“By whom, for instance?” asks Edwin Drood, coming to a halt, and
surveying the other with a look of disdain.

But, here a startling right hand is laid on Edwin’s shoulder, and
Jasper stands between them. For, it would seem that he, too, has
strolled round by the Nuns’ House, and has come up behind them on the
shadowy side of the road.

“Ned, Ned, Ned!” he says; “we must have no more of this. I don’t like
this. I have overheard high words between you two. Remember, my dear
boy, you are almost in the position of host to-night. You belong, as it
were, to the place, and in a manner represent it towards a stranger.
Mr. Neville is a stranger, and you should respect the obligations of
hospitality. And, Mr. Neville,” laying his left hand on the inner
shoulder of that young gentleman, and thus walking on between them,
hand to shoulder on either side: “you will pardon me; but I appeal to
you to govern your temper too. Now, what is amiss? But why ask! Let
there be nothing amiss, and the question is superfluous. We are all
three on a good understanding, are we not?”

After a silent struggle between the two young men who shall speak last,
Edwin Drood strikes in with: “So far as I am concerned, Jack, there is
no anger in me.”

“Nor in me,” says Neville Landless, though not so freely; or perhaps so
carelessly. “But if Mr. Drood knew all that lies behind me, far away
from here, he might know better how it is that sharp-edged words have
sharp edges to wound me.”

“Perhaps,” says Jasper, in a soothing manner, “we had better not
qualify our good understanding. We had better not say anything having
the appearance of a remonstrance or condition; it might not seem
generous. Frankly and freely, you see there is no anger in Ned. Frankly
and freely, there is no anger in you, Mr. Neville?”

“None at all, Mr. Jasper.” Still, not quite so frankly or so freely;
or, be it said once again, not quite so carelessly perhaps.

“All over then! Now, my bachelor gatehouse is a few yards from here,
and the heater is on the fire, and the wine and glasses are on the
table, and it is not a stone’s throw from Minor Canon Corner. Ned, you
are up and away to-morrow. We will carry Mr. Neville in with us, to
take a stirrup-cup.”

“With all my heart, Jack.”

“And with all mine, Mr. Jasper.” Neville feels it impossible to say
less, but would rather not go. He has an impression upon him that he
has lost hold of his temper; feels that Edwin Drood’s coolness, so far
from being infectious, makes him red-hot.

Mr. Jasper, still walking in the centre, hand to shoulder on either
side, beautifully turns the Refrain of a drinking song, and they all go
up to his rooms. There, the first object visible, when he adds the
light of a lamp to that of the fire, is the portrait over the
chimneypiece. It is not an object calculated to improve the
understanding between the two young men, as rather awkwardly reviving
the subject of their difference. Accordingly, they both glance at it
consciously, but say nothing. Jasper, however (who would appear from
his conduct to have gained but an imperfect clue to the cause of their
late high words), directly calls attention to it.

“You recognise that picture, Mr. Neville?” shading the lamp to throw
the light upon it.

“I recognise it, but it is far from flattering the original.”

“O, you are hard upon it! It was done by Ned, who made me a present of
it.”

“I am sorry for that, Mr. Drood.” Neville apologises, with a real
intention to apologise; “if I had known I was in the artist’s
presence—”

“O, a joke, sir, a mere joke,” Edwin cuts in, with a provoking yawn. “A
little humouring of Pussy’s points! I’m going to paint her gravely, one
of these days, if she’s good.”

The air of leisurely patronage and indifference with which this is
said, as the speaker throws himself back in a chair and clasps his
hands at the back of his head, as a rest for it, is very exasperating
to the excitable and excited Neville. Jasper looks observantly from the
one to the other, slightly smiles, and turns his back to mix a jug of
mulled wine at the fire. It seems to require much mixing and
compounding.

“I suppose, Mr. Neville,” says Edwin, quick to resent the indignant
protest against himself in the face of young Landless, which is fully
as visible as the portrait, or the fire, or the lamp: “I suppose that
if you painted the picture of your lady love—”

“I can’t paint,” is the hasty interruption.

“That’s your misfortune, and not your fault. You would if you could.
But if you could, I suppose you would make her (no matter what she was
in reality), Juno, Minerva, Diana, and Venus, all in one. Eh?”

“I have no lady love, and I can’t say.”

“If I were to try my hand,” says Edwin, with a boyish boastfulness
getting up in him, “on a portrait of Miss Landless—in earnest, mind
you; in earnest—you should see what I could do!”

“My sister’s consent to sit for it being first got, I suppose? As it
never will be got, I am afraid I shall never see what you can do. I
must bear the loss.”

Jasper turns round from the fire, fills a large goblet glass for
Neville, fills a large goblet glass for Edwin, and hands each his own;
then fills for himself, saying:

“Come, Mr. Neville, we are to drink to my nephew, Ned. As it is his
foot that is in the stirrup—metaphorically—our stirrup-cup is to be
devoted to him. Ned, my dearest fellow, my love!”

Jasper sets the example of nearly emptying his glass, and Neville
follows it. Edwin Drood says, “Thank you both very much,” and follows
the double example.

“Look at him,” cries Jasper, stretching out his hand admiringly and
tenderly, though rallyingly too. “See where he lounges so easily, Mr.
Neville! The world is all before him where to choose. A life of
stirring work and interest, a life of change and excitement, a life of
domestic ease and love! Look at him!”

Edwin Drood’s face has become quickly and remarkably flushed with the
wine; so has the face of Neville Landless. Edwin still sits thrown back
in his chair, making that rest of clasped hands for his head.

“See how little he heeds it all!” Jasper proceeds in a bantering vein.
“It is hardly worth his while to pluck the golden fruit that hangs ripe
on the tree for him. And yet consider the contrast, Mr. Neville. You
and I have no prospect of stirring work and interest, or of change and
excitement, or of domestic ease and love. You and I have no prospect
(unless you are more fortunate than I am, which may easily be), but the
tedious unchanging round of this dull place.”

“Upon my soul, Jack,” says Edwin, complacently, “I feel quite
apologetic for having my way smoothed as you describe. But you know
what I know, Jack, and it may not be so very easy as it seems, after
all. May it, Pussy?” To the portrait, with a snap of his thumb and
finger. “We have got to hit it off yet; haven’t we, Pussy? You know
what I mean, Jack.”

[Illustration: On dangerous ground]


His speech has become thick and indistinct. Jasper, quiet and
self-possessed, looks to Neville, as expecting his answer or comment.
When Neville speaks, _his_ speech is also thick and indistinct.

“It might have been better for Mr. Drood to have known some hardships,”
he says, defiantly.

“Pray,” retorts Edwin, turning merely his eyes in that direction, “pray
why might it have been better for Mr. Drood to have known some
hardships?”

“Ay,” Jasper assents, with an air of interest; “let us know why?”

“Because they might have made him more sensible,” says Neville, “of
good fortune that is not by any means necessarily the result of his own
merits.”

Mr. Jasper quickly looks to his nephew for his rejoinder.

“Have _you_ known hardships, may I ask?” says Edwin Drood, sitting
upright.

Mr. Jasper quickly looks to the other for his retort.

“I have.”

“And what have they made you sensible of?”

Mr. Jasper’s play of eyes between the two holds good throughout the
dialogue, to the end.

“I have told you once before to-night.”

“You have done nothing of the sort.”

“I tell you I have. That you take a great deal too much upon yourself.”

“You added something else to that, if I remember?”

“Yes, I did say something else.”

“Say it again.”

“I said that in the part of the world I come from, you would be called
to account for it.”

“Only there?” cries Edwin Drood, with a contemptuous laugh. “A long way
off, I believe? Yes; I see! That part of the world is at a safe
distance.”

“Say here, then,” rejoins the other, rising in a fury. “Say anywhere!
Your vanity is intolerable, your conceit is beyond endurance; you talk
as if you were some rare and precious prize, instead of a common
boaster. You are a common fellow, and a common boaster.”

“Pooh, pooh,” says Edwin Drood, equally furious, but more collected;
“how should you know? You may know a black common fellow, or a black
common boaster, when you see him (and no doubt you have a large
acquaintance that way); but you are no judge of white men.”

This insulting allusion to his dark skin infuriates Neville to that
violent degree, that he flings the dregs of his wine at Edwin Drood,
and is in the act of flinging the goblet after it, when his arm is
caught in the nick of time by Jasper.

“Ned, my dear fellow!” he cries in a loud voice; “I entreat you, I
command you, to be still!” There has been a rush of all the three, and
a clattering of glasses and overturning of chairs. “Mr. Neville, for
shame! Give this glass to me. Open your hand, sir. I WILL have it!”

But Neville throws him off, and pauses for an instant, in a raging
passion, with the goblet yet in his uplifted hand. Then, he dashes it
down under the grate, with such force that the broken splinters fly out
again in a shower; and he leaves the house.

When he first emerges into the night air, nothing around him is still
or steady; nothing around him shows like what it is; he only knows that
he stands with a bare head in the midst of a blood-red whirl, waiting
to be struggled with, and to struggle to the death.

But, nothing happening, and the moon looking down upon him as if he
were dead after a fit of wrath, he holds his steam-hammer beating head
and heart, and staggers away. Then, he becomes half-conscious of having
heard himself bolted and barred out, like a dangerous animal; and
thinks what shall he do?

Some wildly passionate ideas of the river dissolve under the spell of
the moonlight on the Cathedral and the graves, and the remembrance of
his sister, and the thought of what he owes to the good man who has but
that very day won his confidence and given him his pledge. He repairs
to Minor Canon Corner, and knocks softly at the door.

It is Mr. Crisparkle’s custom to sit up last of the early household,
very softly touching his piano and practising his favourite parts in
concerted vocal music. The south wind that goes where it lists, by way
of Minor Canon Corner on a still night, is not more subdued than Mr.
Crisparkle at such times, regardful of the slumbers of the china
shepherdess.

His knock is immediately answered by Mr. Crisparkle himself. When he
opens the door, candle in hand, his cheerful face falls, and
disappointed amazement is in it.

“Mr. Neville! In this disorder! Where have you been?”

“I have been to Mr. Jasper’s, sir. With his nephew.”

“Come in.”

The Minor Canon props him by the elbow with a strong hand (in a
strictly scientific manner, worthy of his morning trainings), and turns
him into his own little book-room, and shuts the door.

“I have begun ill, sir. I have begun dreadfully ill.”

“Too true. You are not sober, Mr. Neville.”

“I am afraid I am not, sir, though I can satisfy you at another time
that I have had a very little indeed to drink, and that it overcame me
in the strangest and most sudden manner.”

“Mr. Neville, Mr. Neville,” says the Minor Canon, shaking his head with
a sorrowful smile; “I have heard that said before.”

“I think—my mind is much confused, but I think—it is equally true of
Mr. Jasper’s nephew, sir.”

“Very likely,” is the dry rejoinder.

“We quarrelled, sir. He insulted me most grossly. He had heated that
tigerish blood I told you of to-day, before then.”

“Mr. Neville,” rejoins the Minor Canon, mildly, but firmly: “I request
you not to speak to me with that clenched right hand. Unclench it, if
you please.”

“He goaded me, sir,” pursues the young man, instantly obeying, “beyond
my power of endurance. I cannot say whether or no he meant it at first,
but he did it. He certainly meant it at last. In short, sir,” with an
irrepressible outburst, “in the passion into which he lashed me, I
would have cut him down if I could, and I tried to do it.”

“You have clenched that hand again,” is Mr. Crisparkle’s quiet
commentary.

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“You know your room, for I showed it you before dinner; but I will
accompany you to it once more. Your arm, if you please. Softly, for the
house is all a-bed.”

Scooping his hand into the same scientific elbow-rest as before, and
backing it up with the inert strength of his arm, as skilfully as a
Police Expert, and with an apparent repose quite unattainable by
novices, Mr. Crisparkle conducts his pupil to the pleasant and orderly
old room prepared for him. Arrived there, the young man throws himself
into a chair, and, flinging his arms upon his reading-table, rests his
head upon them with an air of wretched self-reproach.

The gentle Minor Canon has had it in his thoughts to leave the room,
without a word. But looking round at the door, and seeing this dejected
figure, he turns back to it, touches it with a mild hand, says “Good
night!” A sob is his only acknowledgment. He might have had many a
worse; perhaps, could have had few better.

Another soft knock at the outer door attracts his attention as he goes
down-stairs. He opens it to Mr. Jasper, holding in his hand the pupil’s
hat.

“We have had an awful scene with him,” says Jasper, in a low voice.

“Has it been so bad as that?”

“Murderous!”

Mr. Crisparkle remonstrates: “No, no, no. Do not use such strong
words.”

“He might have laid my dear boy dead at my feet. It is no fault of his,
that he did not. But that I was, through the mercy of God, swift and
strong with him, he would have cut him down on my hearth.”

The phrase smites home. “Ah!” thinks Mr. Crisparkle, “his own words!”

“Seeing what I have seen to-night, and hearing what I have heard,” adds
Jasper, with great earnestness, “I shall never know peace of mind when
there is danger of those two coming together, with no one else to
interfere. It was horrible. There is something of the tiger in his dark
blood.”

“Ah!” thinks Mr. Crisparkle, “so he said!”

“You, my dear sir,” pursues Jasper, taking his hand, “even you, have
accepted a dangerous charge.”

“You need have no fear for me, Jasper,” returns Mr. Crisparkle, with a
quiet smile. “I have none for myself.”

“I have none for myself,” returns Jasper, with an emphasis on the last
pronoun, “because I am not, nor am I in the way of being, the object of
his hostility. But you may be, and my dear boy has been. Good night!”

Mr. Crisparkle goes in, with the hat that has so easily, so almost
imperceptibly, acquired the right to be hung up in his hall; hangs it
up; and goes thoughtfully to bed.




CHAPTER IX.
BIRDS IN THE BUSH


Rosa, having no relation that she knew of in the world, had, from the
seventh year of her age, known no home but the Nuns’ House, and no
mother but Miss Twinkleton. Her remembrance of her own mother was of a
pretty little creature like herself (not much older than herself it
seemed to her), who had been brought home in her father’s arms,
drowned. The fatal accident had happened at a party of pleasure. Every
fold and colour in the pretty summer dress, and even the long wet hair,
with scattered petals of ruined flowers still clinging to it, as the
dead young figure, in its sad, sad beauty lay upon the bed, were fixed
indelibly in Rosa’s recollection. So were the wild despair and the
subsequent bowed-down grief of her poor young father, who died
broken-hearted on the first anniversary of that hard day.

The betrothal of Rosa grew out of the soothing of his year of mental
distress by his fast friend and old college companion, Drood: who
likewise had been left a widower in his youth. But he, too, went the
silent road into which all earthly pilgrimages merge, some sooner, and
some later; and thus the young couple had come to be as they were.

The atmosphere of pity surrounding the little orphan girl when she
first came to Cloisterham, had never cleared away. It had taken
brighter hues as she grew older, happier, prettier; now it had been
golden, now roseate, and now azure; but it had always adorned her with
some soft light of its own. The general desire to console and caress
her, had caused her to be treated in the beginning as a child much
younger than her years; the same desire had caused her to be still
petted when she was a child no longer. Who should be her favourite, who
should anticipate this or that small present, or do her this or that
small service; who should take her home for the holidays; who should
write to her the oftenest when they were separated, and whom she would
most rejoice to see again when they were reunited; even these gentle
rivalries were not without their slight dashes of bitterness in the
Nuns’ House. Well for the poor Nuns in their day, if they hid no harder
strife under their veils and rosaries!

Thus Rosa had grown to be an amiable, giddy, wilful, winning little
creature; spoilt, in the sense of counting upon kindness from all
around her; but not in the sense of repaying it with indifference.
Possessing an exhaustless well of affection in her nature, its
sparkling waters had freshened and brightened the Nuns’ House for
years, and yet its depths had never yet been moved: what might betide
when that came to pass; what developing changes might fall upon the
heedless head, and light heart, then; remained to be seen.

By what means the news that there had been a quarrel between the two
young men overnight, involving even some kind of onslaught by Mr.
Neville upon Edwin Drood, got into Miss Twinkleton’s establishment
before breakfast, it is impossible to say. Whether it was brought in by
the birds of the air, or came blowing in with the very air itself, when
the casement windows were set open; whether the baker brought it
kneaded into the bread, or the milkman delivered it as part of the
adulteration of his milk; or the housemaids, beating the dust out of
their mats against the gateposts, received it in exchange deposited on
the mats by the town atmosphere; certain it is that the news permeated
every gable of the old building before Miss Twinkleton was down, and
that Miss Twinkleton herself received it through Mrs. Tisher, while yet
in the act of dressing; or (as she might have expressed the phrase to a
parent or guardian of a mythological turn) of sacrificing to the
Graces.

Miss Landless’s brother had thrown a bottle at Mr. Edwin Drood.

Miss Landless’s brother had thrown a knife at Mr. Edwin Drood.

A knife became suggestive of a fork; and Miss Landless’s brother had
thrown a fork at Mr. Edwin Drood.

As in the governing precedence of Peter Piper, alleged to have picked
the peck of pickled pepper, it was held physically desirable to have
evidence of the existence of the peck of pickled pepper which Peter
Piper was alleged to have picked; so, in this case, it was held
psychologically important to know why Miss Landless’s brother threw a
bottle, knife, or fork—or bottle, knife, _and_ fork—for the cook had
been given to understand it was all three—at Mr. Edwin Drood?

Well, then. Miss Landless’s brother had said he admired Miss Bud. Mr.
Edwin Drood had said to Miss Landless’s brother that he had no business
to admire Miss Bud. Miss Landless’s brother had then “up’d” (this was
the cook’s exact information) with the bottle, knife, fork, and
decanter (the decanter now coolly flying at everybody’s head, without
the least introduction), and thrown them all at Mr. Edwin Drood.

Poor little Rosa put a forefinger into each of her ears when these
rumours began to circulate, and retired into a corner, beseeching not
to be told any more; but Miss Landless, begging permission of Miss
Twinkleton to go and speak with her brother, and pretty plainly showing
that she would take it if it were not given, struck out the more
definite course of going to Mr. Crisparkle’s for accurate intelligence.

When she came back (being first closeted with Miss Twinkleton, in order
that anything objectionable in her tidings might be retained by that
discreet filter), she imparted to Rosa only, what had taken place;
dwelling with a flushed cheek on the provocation her brother had
received, but almost limiting it to that last gross affront as crowning
“some other words between them,” and, out of consideration for her new
friend, passing lightly over the fact that the other words had
originated in her lover’s taking things in general so very easily. To
Rosa direct, she brought a petition from her brother that she would
forgive him; and, having delivered it with sisterly earnestness, made
an end of the subject.

It was reserved for Miss Twinkleton to tone down the public mind of the
Nuns’ House. That lady, therefore, entering in a stately manner what
plebeians might have called the school-room, but what, in the patrician
language of the head of the Nuns’ House, was euphuistically, not to say
round-aboutedly, denominated “the apartment allotted to study,” and
saying with a forensic air, “Ladies!” all rose. Mrs. Tisher at the same
time grouped herself behind her chief, as representing Queen
Elizabeth’s first historical female friend at Tilbury fort. Miss
Twinkleton then proceeded to remark that Rumour, Ladies, had been
represented by the bard of Avon—needless were it to mention the
immortal SHAKESPEARE, also called the Swan of his native river, not
improbably with some reference to the ancient superstition that that
bird of graceful plumage (Miss Jennings will please stand upright) sang
sweetly on the approach of death, for which we have no ornithological
authority,—Rumour, Ladies, had been represented by that bard—hem!—

        “who drew
The celebrated Jew,”


as painted full of tongues. Rumour in Cloisterham (Miss Ferdinand will
honour me with her attention) was no exception to the great limner’s
portrait of Rumour elsewhere. A slight _fracas_ between two young
gentlemen occurring last night within a hundred miles of these peaceful
walls (Miss Ferdinand, being apparently incorrigible, will have the
kindness to write out this evening, in the original language, the first
four fables of our vivacious neighbour, Monsieur La Fontaine) had been
very grossly exaggerated by Rumour’s voice. In the first alarm and
anxiety arising from our sympathy with a sweet young friend, not wholly
to be dissociated from one of the gladiators in the bloodless arena in
question (the impropriety of Miss Reynolds’s appearing to stab herself
in the hand with a pin, is far too obvious, and too glaringly
unladylike, to be pointed out), we descended from our maiden elevation
to discuss this uncongenial and this unfit theme. Responsible inquiries
having assured us that it was but one of those “airy nothings” pointed
at by the Poet (whose name and date of birth Miss Giggles will supply
within half an hour), we would now discard the subject, and concentrate
our minds upon the grateful labours of the day.

But the subject so survived all day, nevertheless, that Miss Ferdinand
got into new trouble by surreptitiously clapping on a paper moustache
at dinner-time, and going through the motions of aiming a water-bottle
at Miss Giggles, who drew a table-spoon in defence.

Now, Rosa thought of this unlucky quarrel a great deal, and thought of
it with an uncomfortable feeling that she was involved in it, as cause,
or consequence, or what not, through being in a false position
altogether as to her marriage engagement. Never free from such
uneasiness when she was with her affianced husband, it was not likely
that she would be free from it when they were apart. To-day, too, she
was cast in upon herself, and deprived of the relief of talking freely
with her new friend, because the quarrel had been with Helena’s
brother, and Helena undisguisedly avoided the subject as a delicate and
difficult one to herself. At this critical time, of all times, Rosa’s
guardian was announced as having come to see her.

Mr. Grewgious had been well selected for his trust, as a man of
incorruptible integrity, but certainly for no other appropriate quality
discernible on the surface. He was an arid, sandy man, who, if he had
been put into a grinding-mill, looked as if he would have ground
immediately into high-dried snuff. He had a scanty flat crop of hair,
in colour and consistency like some very mangy yellow fur tippet; it
was so unlike hair, that it must have been a wig, but for the
stupendous improbability of anybody’s voluntarily sporting such a head.
The little play of feature that his face presented, was cut deep into
it, in a few hard curves that made it more like work; and he had
certain notches in his forehead, which looked as though Nature had been
about to touch them into sensibility or refinement, when she had
impatiently thrown away the chisel, and said: “I really cannot be
worried to finish off this man; let him go as he is.”

With too great length of throat at his upper end, and too much
ankle-bone and heel at his lower; with an awkward and hesitating
manner; with a shambling walk; and with what is called a near
sight—which perhaps prevented his observing how much white cotton
stocking he displayed to the public eye, in contrast with his black
suit—Mr. Grewgious still had some strange capacity in him of making on
the whole an agreeable impression.

Mr. Grewgious was discovered by his ward, much discomfited by being in
Miss Twinkleton’s company in Miss Twinkleton’s own sacred room. Dim
forebodings of being examined in something, and not coming well out of
it, seemed to oppress the poor gentleman when found in these
circumstances.

“My dear, how do you do? I am glad to see you. My dear, how much
improved you are. Permit me to hand you a chair, my dear.”

Miss Twinkleton rose at her little writing-table, saying, with general
sweetness, as to the polite Universe: “Will you permit me to retire?”

“By no means, madam, on my account. I beg that you will not move.”

“I must entreat permission to _move_,” returned Miss Twinkleton,
repeating the word with a charming grace; “but I will not withdraw,
since you are so obliging. If I wheel my desk to this corner window,
shall I be in the way?”

“Madam! In the way!”

“You are very kind.—Rosa, my dear, you will be under no restraint, I am
sure.”

Here Mr. Grewgious, left by the fire with Rosa, said again: “My dear,
how do you do? I am glad to see you, my dear.” And having waited for
her to sit down, sat down himself.

“My visits,” said Mr. Grewgious, “are, like those of the angels—not
that I compare myself to an angel.”

“No, sir,” said Rosa.

“Not by any means,” assented Mr. Grewgious. “I merely refer to my
visits, which are few and far between. The angels are, we know very
well, up-stairs.”

Miss Twinkleton looked round with a kind of stiff stare.

“I refer, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious, laying his hand on Rosa’s, as
the possibility thrilled through his frame of his otherwise seeming to
take the awful liberty of calling Miss Twinkleton my dear; “I refer to
the other young ladies.”

Miss Twinkleton resumed her writing.

Mr. Grewgious, with a sense of not having managed his opening point
quite as neatly as he might have desired, smoothed his head from back
to front as if he had just dived, and were pressing the water out—this
smoothing action, however superfluous, was habitual with him—and took a
pocket-book from his coat-pocket, and a stump of black-lead pencil from
his waistcoat-pocket.

“I made,” he said, turning the leaves: “I made a guiding memorandum or
so—as I usually do, for I have no conversational powers whatever—to
which I will, with your permission, my dear, refer. ‘Well and happy.’
Truly. You are well and happy, my dear? You look so.”

“Yes, indeed, sir,” answered Rosa.

“For which,” said Mr. Grewgious, with a bend of his head towards the
corner window, “our warmest acknowledgments are due, and I am sure are
rendered, to the maternal kindness and the constant care and
consideration of the lady whom I have now the honour to see before me.”

This point, again, made but a lame departure from Mr. Grewgious, and
never got to its destination; for, Miss Twinkleton, feeling that the
courtesies required her to be by this time quite outside the
conversation, was biting the end of her pen, and looking upward, as
waiting for the descent of an idea from any member of the Celestial
Nine who might have one to spare.

Mr. Grewgious smoothed his smooth head again, and then made another
reference to his pocket-book; lining out “well and happy,” as disposed
of.

“‘Pounds, shillings, and pence,’ is my next note. A dry subject for a
young lady, but an important subject too. Life is pounds, shillings,
and pence. Death is—” A sudden recollection of the death of her two
parents seemed to stop him, and he said in a softer tone, and evidently
inserting the negative as an after-thought: “Death is _not_ pounds,
shillings, and pence.”

His voice was as hard and dry as himself, and Fancy might have ground
it straight, like himself, into high-dried snuff. And yet, through the
very limited means of expression that he possessed, he seemed to
express kindness. If Nature had but finished him off, kindness might
have been recognisable in his face at this moment. But if the notches
in his forehead wouldn’t fuse together, and if his face would work and
couldn’t play, what could he do, poor man!

“‘Pounds, shillings, and pence.’ You find your allowance always
sufficient for your wants, my dear?”

Rosa wanted for nothing, and therefore it was ample.

“And you are not in debt?”

Rosa laughed at the idea of being in debt. It seemed, to her
inexperience, a comical vagary of the imagination. Mr. Grewgious
stretched his near sight to be sure that this was her view of the case.
“Ah!” he said, as comment, with a furtive glance towards Miss
Twinkleton, and lining out pounds, shillings, and pence: “I spoke of
having got among the angels! So I did!”

Rosa felt what his next memorandum would prove to be, and was blushing
and folding a crease in her dress with one embarrassed hand, long
before he found it.

“‘Marriage.’ Hem!” Mr. Grewgious carried his smoothing hand down over
his eyes and nose, and even chin, before drawing his chair a little
nearer, and speaking a little more confidentially: “I now touch, my
dear, upon the point that is the direct cause of my troubling you with
the present visit. Otherwise, being a particularly Angular man, I
should not have intruded here. I am the last man to intrude into a
sphere for which I am so entirely unfitted. I feel, on these premises,
as if I was a bear—with the cramp—in a youthful Cotillon.”

His ungainliness gave him enough of the air of his simile to set Rosa
off laughing heartily.

“It strikes you in the same light,” said Mr. Grewgious, with perfect
calmness. “Just so. To return to my memorandum. Mr. Edwin has been to
and fro here, as was arranged. You have mentioned that, in your
quarterly letters to me. And you like him, and he likes you.”

“I _like_ him very much, sir,” rejoined Rosa.

“So I said, my dear,” returned her guardian, for whose ear the timid
emphasis was much too fine. “Good. And you correspond.”

“We write to one another,” said Rosa, pouting, as she recalled their
epistolary differences.

“Such is the meaning that I attach to the word ‘correspond’ in this
application, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious. “Good. All goes well, time
works on, and at this next Christmas-time it will become necessary, as
a matter of form, to give the exemplary lady in the corner window, to
whom we are so much indebted, business notice of your departure in the
ensuing half-year. Your relations with her are far more than business
relations, no doubt; but a residue of business remains in them, and
business is business ever. I am a particularly Angular man,” proceeded
Mr. Grewgious, as if it suddenly occurred to him to mention it, “and I
am not used to give anything away. If, for these two reasons, some
competent Proxy would give _you_ away, I should take it very kindly.”

Rosa intimated, with her eyes on the ground, that she thought a
substitute might be found, if required.

“Surely, surely,” said Mr. Grewgious. “For instance, the gentleman who
teaches Dancing here—he would know how to do it with graceful
propriety. He would advance and retire in a manner satisfactory to the
feelings of the officiating clergyman, and of yourself, and the
bridegroom, and all parties concerned. I am—I am a particularly Angular
man,” said Mr. Grewgious, as if he had made up his mind to screw it out
at last: “and should only blunder.”

Rosa sat still and silent. Perhaps her mind had not got quite so far as
the ceremony yet, but was lagging on the way there.

“Memorandum, ‘Will.’ Now, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious, referring to
his notes, disposing of “Marriage” with his pencil, and taking a paper
from his pocket; “although I have before possessed you with the
contents of your father’s will, I think it right at this time to leave
a certified copy of it in your hands. And although Mr. Edwin is also
aware of its contents, I think it right at this time likewise to place
a certified copy of it in Mr. Jasper’s hand—”

“Not in his own!” asked Rosa, looking up quickly. “Cannot the copy go
to Eddy himself?”

“Why, yes, my dear, if you particularly wish it; but I spoke of Mr.
Jasper as being his trustee.”

“I do particularly wish it, if you please,” said Rosa, hurriedly and
earnestly; “I don’t like Mr. Jasper to come between us, in any way.”

“It is natural, I suppose,” said Mr. Grewgious, “that your young
husband should be all in all. Yes. You observe that I say, I suppose.
The fact is, I am a particularly Unnatural man, and I don’t know from
my own knowledge.”

Rosa looked at him with some wonder.

“I mean,” he explained, “that young ways were never my ways. I was the
only offspring of parents far advanced in life, and I half believe I
was born advanced in life myself. No personality is intended towards
the name you will so soon change, when I remark that while the general
growth of people seem to have come into existence, buds, I seem to have
come into existence a chip. I was a chip—and a very dry one—when I
first became aware of myself. Respecting the other certified copy, your
wish shall be complied with. Respecting your inheritance, I think you
know all. It is an annuity of two hundred and fifty pounds. The savings
upon that annuity, and some other items to your credit, all duly
carried to account, with vouchers, will place you in possession of a
lump-sum of money, rather exceeding Seventeen Hundred Pounds. I am
empowered to advance the cost of your preparations for your marriage
out of that fund. All is told.”

“Will you please tell me,” said Rosa, taking the paper with a prettily
knitted brow, but not opening it: “whether I am right in what I am
going to say? I can understand what you tell me, so very much better
than what I read in law-writings. My poor papa and Eddy’s father made
their agreement together, as very dear and firm and fast friends, in
order that we, too, might be very dear and firm and fast friends after
them?”

“Just so.”

“For the lasting good of both of us, and the lasting happiness of both
of us?”

“Just so.”

“That we might be to one another even much more than they had been to
one another?”

“Just so.”

“It was not bound upon Eddy, and it was not bound upon me, by any
forfeit, in case—”

“Don’t be agitated, my dear. In the case that it brings tears into your
affectionate eyes even to picture to yourself—in the case of your not
marrying one another—no, no forfeiture on either side. You would then
have been my ward until you were of age. No worse would have befallen
you. Bad enough perhaps!”

“And Eddy?”

“He would have come into his partnership derived from his father, and
into its arrears to his credit (if any), on attaining his majority,
just as now.”

Rosa, with her perplexed face and knitted brow, bit the corner of her
attested copy, as she sat with her head on one side, looking
abstractedly on the floor, and smoothing it with her foot.

“In short,” said Mr. Grewgious, “this betrothal is a wish, a sentiment,
a friendly project, tenderly expressed on both sides. That it was
strongly felt, and that there was a lively hope that it would prosper,
there can be no doubt. When you were both children, you began to be
accustomed to it, and it _has_ prospered. But circumstances alter
cases; and I made this visit to-day, partly, indeed principally, to
discharge myself of the duty of telling you, my dear, that two young
people can only be betrothed in marriage (except as a matter of
convenience, and therefore mockery and misery) of their own free will,
their own attachment, and their own assurance (it may or it may not
prove a mistaken one, but we must take our chance of that), that they
are suited to each other, and will make each other happy. Is it to be
supposed, for example, that if either of your fathers were living now,
and had any mistrust on that subject, his mind would not be changed by
the change of circumstances involved in the change of your years?
Untenable, unreasonable, inconclusive, and preposterous!”

Mr. Grewgious said all this, as if he were reading it aloud; or, still
more, as if he were repeating a lesson. So expressionless of any
approach to spontaneity were his face and manner.

“I have now, my dear,” he added, blurring out “Will” with his pencil,
“discharged myself of what is doubtless a formal duty in this case, but
still a duty in such a case. Memorandum, ‘Wishes.’ My dear, is there
any wish of yours that I can further?”

Rosa shook her head, with an almost plaintive air of hesitation in want
of help.

“Is there any instruction that I can take from you with reference to
your affairs?”

“I—I should like to settle them with Eddy first, if you please,” said
Rosa, plaiting the crease in her dress.

“Surely, surely,” returned Mr. Grewgious. “You two should be of one
mind in all things. Is the young gentleman expected shortly?”

“He has gone away only this morning. He will be back at Christmas.”

“Nothing could happen better. You will, on his return at Christmas,
arrange all matters of detail with him; you will then communicate with
me; and I will discharge myself (as a mere business acquaintance) of my
business responsibilities towards the accomplished lady in the corner
window. They will accrue at that season.” Blurring pencil once again.
“Memorandum, ‘Leave.’ Yes. I will now, my dear, take my leave.”

“Could I,” said Rosa, rising, as he jerked out of his chair in his
ungainly way: “could I ask you, most kindly to come to me at Christmas,
if I had anything particular to say to you?”

“Why, certainly, certainly,” he rejoined; apparently—if such a word can
be used of one who had no apparent lights or shadows about
him—complimented by the question. “As a particularly Angular man, I do
not fit smoothly into the social circle, and consequently I have no
other engagement at Christmas-time than to partake, on the
twenty-fifth, of a boiled turkey and celery sauce with a—with a
particularly Angular clerk I have the good fortune to possess, whose
father, being a Norfolk farmer, sends him up (the turkey up), as a
present to me, from the neighbourhood of Norwich. I should be quite
proud of your wishing to see me, my dear. As a professional Receiver of
rents, so very few people _do_ wish to see me, that the novelty would
be bracing.”

For his ready acquiescence, the grateful Rosa put her hands upon his
shoulders, stood on tiptoe, and instantly kissed him.

“Lord bless me!” cried Mr. Grewgious. “Thank you, my dear! The honour
is almost equal to the pleasure. Miss Twinkleton, madam, I have had a
most satisfactory conversation with my ward, and I will now release you
from the incumbrance of my presence.”

“Nay, sir,” rejoined Miss Twinkleton, rising with a gracious
condescension: “say not incumbrance. Not so, by any means. I cannot
permit you to say so.”

“Thank you, madam. I have read in the newspapers,” said Mr. Grewgious,
stammering a little, “that when a distinguished visitor (not that I am
one: far from it) goes to a school (not that this is one: far from it),
he asks for a holiday, or some sort of grace. It being now the
afternoon in the—College—of which you are the eminent head, the young
ladies might gain nothing, except in name, by having the rest of the
day allowed them. But if there is any young lady at all under a cloud,
might I solicit—”

“Ah, Mr. Grewgious, Mr. Grewgious!” cried Miss Twinkleton, with a
chastely-rallying forefinger. “O you gentlemen, you gentlemen! Fie for
shame, that you are so hard upon us poor maligned disciplinarians of
our sex, for your sakes! But as Miss Ferdinand is at present weighed
down by an incubus”—Miss Twinkleton might have said a pen-and-ink-ubus
of writing out Monsieur La Fontaine—“go to her, Rosa my dear, and tell
her the penalty is remitted, in deference to the intercession of your
guardian, Mr. Grewgious.”

Miss Twinkleton here achieved a curtsey, suggestive of marvels
happening to her respected legs, and which she came out of nobly, three
yards behind her starting-point.

As he held it incumbent upon him to call on Mr. Jasper before leaving
Cloisterham, Mr. Grewgious went to the gatehouse, and climbed its
postern stair. But Mr. Jasper’s door being closed, and presenting on a
slip of paper the word “Cathedral,” the fact of its being service-time
was borne into the mind of Mr. Grewgious. So he descended the stair
again, and, crossing the Close, paused at the great western
folding-door of the Cathedral, which stood open on the fine and bright,
though short-lived, afternoon, for the airing of the place.

“Dear me,” said Mr. Grewgious, peeping in, “it’s like looking down the
throat of Old Time.”

Old Time heaved a mouldy sigh from tomb and arch and vault; and gloomy
shadows began to deepen in corners; and damps began to rise from green
patches of stone; and jewels, cast upon the pavement of the nave from
stained glass by the declining sun, began to perish. Within the
grill-gate of the chancel, up the steps surmounted loomingly by the
fast-darkening organ, white robes could be dimly seen, and one feeble
voice, rising and falling in a cracked, monotonous mutter, could at
intervals be faintly heard. In the free outer air, the river, the green
pastures, and the brown arable lands, the teeming hills and dales, were
reddened by the sunset: while the distant little windows in windmills
and farm homesteads, shone, patches of bright beaten gold. In the
Cathedral, all became gray, murky, and sepulchral, and the cracked
monotonous mutter went on like a dying voice, until the organ and the
choir burst forth, and drowned it in a sea of music. Then, the sea
fell, and the dying voice made another feeble effort, and then the sea
rose high, and beat its life out, and lashed the roof, and surged among
the arches, and pierced the heights of the great tower; and then the
sea was dry, and all was still.

Mr. Grewgious had by that time walked to the chancel-steps, where he
met the living waters coming out.

“Nothing is the matter?” Thus Jasper accosted him, rather quickly. “You
have not been sent for?”

“Not at all, not at all. I came down of my own accord. I have been to
my pretty ward’s, and am now homeward bound again.”

“You found her thriving?”

“Blooming indeed. Most blooming. I merely came to tell her, seriously,
what a betrothal by deceased parents is.”

“And what is it—according to your judgment?”

Mr. Grewgious noticed the whiteness of the lips that asked the
question, and put it down to the chilling account of the Cathedral.

“I merely came to tell her that it could not be considered binding,
against any such reason for its dissolution as a want of affection, or
want of disposition to carry it into effect, on the side of either
party.”

“May I ask, had you any especial reason for telling her that?”

Mr. Grewgious answered somewhat sharply: “The especial reason of doing
my duty, sir. Simply that.” Then he added: “Come, Mr. Jasper; I know
your affection for your nephew, and that you are quick to feel on his
behalf. I assure you that this implies not the least doubt of, or
disrespect to, your nephew.”

“You could not,” returned Jasper, with a friendly pressure of his arm,
as they walked on side by side, “speak more handsomely.”

Mr. Grewgious pulled off his hat to smooth his head, and, having
smoothed it, nodded it contentedly, and put his hat on again.

“I will wager,” said Jasper, smiling—his lips were still so white that
he was conscious of it, and bit and moistened them while speaking: “I
will wager that she hinted no wish to be released from Ned.”

“And you will win your wager, if you do,” retorted Mr. Grewgious. “We
should allow some margin for little maidenly delicacies in a young
motherless creature, under such circumstances, I suppose; it is not in
my line; what do you think?”

“There can be no doubt of it.”

“I am glad you say so. Because,” proceeded Mr. Grewgious, who had all
this time very knowingly felt his way round to action on his
remembrance of what she had said of Jasper himself: “because she seems
to have some little delicate instinct that all preliminary arrangements
had best be made between Mr. Edwin Drood and herself, don’t you see?
She don’t want us, don’t you know?”

Jasper touched himself on the breast, and said, somewhat indistinctly:
“You mean me.”

Mr. Grewgious touched himself on the breast, and said: “I mean us.
Therefore, let them have their little discussions and councils
together, when Mr. Edwin Drood comes back here at Christmas; and then
you and I will step in, and put the final touches to the business.”

“So, you settled with her that you would come back at Christmas?”
observed Jasper. “I see! Mr. Grewgious, as you quite fairly said just
now, there is such an exceptional attachment between my nephew and me,
that I am more sensitive for the dear, fortunate, happy, happy fellow
than for myself. But it is only right that the young lady should be
considered, as you have pointed out, and that I should accept my cue
from you. I accept it. I understand that at Christmas they will
complete their preparations for May, and that their marriage will be
put in final train by themselves, and that nothing will remain for us
but to put ourselves in train also, and have everything ready for our
formal release from our trusts, on Edwin’s birthday.”

“That is my understanding,” assented Mr. Grewgious, as they shook hands
to part. “God bless them both!”

“God save them both!” cried Jasper.

“I said, bless them,” remarked the former, looking back over his
shoulder.

“I said, save them,” returned the latter. “Is there any difference?”




CHAPTER X.
SMOOTHING THE WAY


It has been often enough remarked that women have a curious power of
divining the characters of men, which would seem to be innate and
instinctive; seeing that it is arrived at through no patient process of
reasoning, that it can give no satisfactory or sufficient account of
itself, and that it pronounces in the most confident manner even
against accumulated observation on the part of the other sex. But it
has not been quite so often remarked that this power (fallible, like
every other human attribute) is for the most part absolutely incapable
of self-revision; and that when it has delivered an adverse opinion
which by all human lights is subsequently proved to have failed, it is
undistinguishable from prejudice, in respect of its determination not
to be corrected. Nay, the very possibility of contradiction or
disproof, however remote, communicates to this feminine judgment from
the first, in nine cases out of ten, the weakness attendant on the
testimony of an interested witness; so personally and strongly does the
fair diviner connect herself with her divination.

“Now, don’t you think, Ma dear,” said the Minor Canon to his mother one
day as she sat at her knitting in his little book-room, “that you are
rather hard on Mr. Neville?”

“No, I do _not_, Sept,” returned the old lady.

“Let us discuss it, Ma.”

“I have no objection to discuss it, Sept. I trust, my dear, I am always
open to discussion.” There was a vibration in the old lady’s cap, as
though she internally added: “and I should like to see the discussion
that would change _my_ mind!”

“Very good, Ma,” said her conciliatory son. “There is nothing like
being open to discussion.”

“I hope not, my dear,” returned the old lady, evidently shut to it.

“Well! Mr. Neville, on that unfortunate occasion, commits himself under
provocation.”

“And under mulled wine,” added the old lady.

“I must admit the wine. Though I believe the two young men were much
alike in that regard.”

“I don’t,” said the old lady.

“Why not, Ma?”

“Because I _don’t_,” said the old lady. “Still, I am quite open to
discussion.”

“But, my dear Ma, I cannot see how we are to discuss, if you take that
line.”

“Blame Mr. Neville for it, Sept, and not me,” said the old lady, with
stately severity.

“My dear Ma! why Mr. Neville?”

“Because,” said Mrs. Crisparkle, retiring on first principles, “he came
home intoxicated, and did great discredit to this house, and showed
great disrespect to this family.”

“That is not to be denied, Ma. He was then, and he is now, very sorry
for it.”

“But for Mr. Jasper’s well-bred consideration in coming up to me, next
day, after service, in the Nave itself, with his gown still on, and
expressing his hope that I had not been greatly alarmed or had my rest
violently broken, I believe I might never have heard of that
disgraceful transaction,” said the old lady.

“To be candid, Ma, I think I should have kept it from you if I could:
though I had not decidedly made up my mind. I was following Jasper out,
to confer with him on the subject, and to consider the expediency of
his and my jointly hushing the thing up on all accounts, when I found
him speaking to you. Then it was too late.”

“Too late, indeed, Sept. He was still as pale as gentlemanly ashes at
what had taken place in his rooms overnight.”

“If I _had_ kept it from you, Ma, you may be sure it would have been
for your peace and quiet, and for the good of the young men, and in my
best discharge of my duty according to my lights.”

The old lady immediately walked across the room and kissed him: saying,
“Of course, my dear Sept, I am sure of that.”

“However, it became the town-talk,” said Mr. Crisparkle, rubbing his
ear, as his mother resumed her seat, and her knitting, “and passed out
of my power.”

“And I said then, Sept,” returned the old lady, “that I thought ill of
Mr. Neville. And I say now, that I think ill of Mr. Neville. And I said
then, and I say now, that I hope Mr. Neville may come to good, but I
don’t believe he will.” Here the cap vibrated again considerably.

“I am sorry to hear you say so, Ma—”

“I am sorry to say so, my dear,” interposed the old lady, knitting on
firmly, “but I can’t help it.”

“—For,” pursued the Minor Canon, “it is undeniable that Mr. Neville is
exceedingly industrious and attentive, and that he improves apace, and
that he has—I hope I may say—an attachment to me.”

“There is no merit in the last article, my dear,” said the old lady,
quickly; “and if he says there is, I think the worse of him for the
boast.”

“But, my dear Ma, he never said there was.”

“Perhaps not,” returned the old lady; “still, I don’t see that it
greatly signifies.”

There was no impatience in the pleasant look with which Mr. Crisparkle
contemplated the pretty old piece of china as it knitted; but there
was, certainly, a humorous sense of its not being a piece of china to
argue with very closely.

“Besides, Sept, ask yourself what he would be without his sister. You
know what an influence she has over him; you know what a capacity she
has; you know that whatever he reads with you, he reads with her. Give
her her fair share of your praise, and how much do you leave for him?”

At these words Mr. Crisparkle fell into a little reverie, in which he
thought of several things. He thought of the times he had seen the
brother and sister together in deep converse over one of his own old
college books; now, in the rimy mornings, when he made those sharpening
pilgrimages to Cloisterham Weir; now, in the sombre evenings, when he
faced the wind at sunset, having climbed his favourite outlook, a
beetling fragment of monastery ruin; and the two studious figures
passed below him along the margin of the river, in which the town fires
and lights already shone, making the landscape bleaker. He thought how
the consciousness had stolen upon him that in teaching one, he was
teaching two; and how he had almost insensibly adapted his explanations
to both minds—that with which his own was daily in contact, and that
which he only approached through it. He thought of the gossip that had
reached him from the Nuns’ House, to the effect that Helena, whom he
had mistrusted as so proud and fierce, submitted herself to the
fairy-bride (as he called her), and learnt from her what she knew. He
thought of the picturesque alliance between those two, externally so
very different. He thought—perhaps most of all—could it be that these
things were yet but so many weeks old, and had become an integral part
of his life?

As, whenever the Reverend Septimus fell a-musing, his good mother took
it to be an infallible sign that he “wanted support,” the blooming old
lady made all haste to the dining-room closet, to produce from it the
support embodied in a glass of Constantia and a home-made biscuit. It
was a most wonderful closet, worthy of Cloisterham and of Minor Canon
Corner. Above it, a portrait of Handel in a flowing wig beamed down at
the spectator, with a knowing air of being up to the contents of the
closet, and a musical air of intending to combine all its harmonies in
one delicious fugue. No common closet with a vulgar door on hinges,
openable all at once, and leaving nothing to be disclosed by degrees,
this rare closet had a lock in mid-air, where two perpendicular slides
met; the one falling down, and the other pushing up. The upper slide,
on being pulled down (leaving the lower a double mystery), revealed
deep shelves of pickle-jars, jam-pots, tin canisters, spice-boxes, and
agreeably outlandish vessels of blue and white, the luscious lodgings
of preserved tamarinds and ginger. Every benevolent inhabitant of this
retreat had his name inscribed upon his stomach. The pickles, in a
uniform of rich brown double-breasted buttoned coat, and yellow or
sombre drab continuations, announced their portly forms, in printed
capitals, as Walnut, Gherkin, Onion, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Mixed, and
other members of that noble family. The jams, as being of a less
masculine temperament, and as wearing curlpapers, announced themselves
in feminine caligraphy, like a soft whisper, to be Raspberry,
Gooseberry, Apricot, Plum, Damson, Apple, and Peach. The scene closing
on these charmers, and the lower slide ascending, oranges were
revealed, attended by a mighty japanned sugar-box, to temper their
acerbity if unripe. Home-made biscuits waited at the Court of these
Powers, accompanied by a goodly fragment of plum-cake, and various
slender ladies’ fingers, to be dipped into sweet wine and kissed.
Lowest of all, a compact leaden-vault enshrined the sweet wine and a
stock of cordials: whence issued whispers of Seville Orange, Lemon,
Almond, and Caraway-seed. There was a crowning air upon this closet of
closets, of having been for ages hummed through by the Cathedral bell
and organ, until those venerable bees had made sublimated honey of
everything in store; and it was always observed that every dipper among
the shelves (deep, as has been noticed, and swallowing up head,
shoulders, and elbows) came forth again mellow-faced, and seeming to
have undergone a saccharine transfiguration.

The Reverend Septimus yielded himself up quite as willing a victim to a
nauseous medicinal herb-closet, also presided over by the china
shepherdess, as to this glorious cupboard. To what amazing infusions of
gentian, peppermint, gilliflower, sage, parsley, thyme, rue, rosemary,
and dandelion, did his courageous stomach submit itself! In what
wonderful wrappers, enclosing layers of dried leaves, would he swathe
his rosy and contented face, if his mother suspected him of a
toothache! What botanical blotches would he cheerfully stick upon his
cheek, or forehead, if the dear old lady convicted him of an
imperceptible pimple there! Into this herbaceous penitentiary, situated
on an upper staircase-landing: a low and narrow whitewashed cell, where
bunches of dried leaves hung from rusty hooks in the ceiling, and were
spread out upon shelves, in company with portentous bottles: would the
Reverend Septimus submissively be led, like the highly popular lamb who
has so long and unresistingly been led to the slaughter, and there
would he, unlike that lamb, bore nobody but himself. Not even doing
that much, so that the old lady were busy and pleased, he would quietly
swallow what was given him, merely taking a corrective dip of hands and
face into the great bowl of dried rose-leaves, and into the other great
bowl of dried lavender, and then would go out, as confident in the
sweetening powers of Cloisterham Weir and a wholesome mind, as Lady
Macbeth was hopeless of those of all the seas that roll.

In the present instance the good Minor Canon took his glass of
Constantia with an excellent grace, and, so supported to his mother’s
satisfaction, applied himself to the remaining duties of the day. In
their orderly and punctual progress they brought round Vesper Service
and twilight. The Cathedral being very cold, he set off for a brisk
trot after service; the trot to end in a charge at his favourite
fragment of ruin, which was to be carried by storm, without a pause for
breath.

He carried it in a masterly manner, and, not breathed even then, stood
looking down upon the river. The river at Cloisterham is sufficiently
near the sea to throw up oftentimes a quantity of seaweed. An unusual
quantity had come in with the last tide, and this, and the confusion of
the water, and the restless dipping and flapping of the noisy gulls,
and an angry light out seaward beyond the brown-sailed barges that were
turning black, foreshadowed a stormy night. In his mind he was
contrasting the wild and noisy sea with the quiet harbour of Minor
Canon Corner, when Helena and Neville Landless passed below him. He had
had the two together in his thoughts all day, and at once climbed down
to speak to them together. The footing was rough in an uncertain light
for any tread save that of a good climber; but the Minor Canon was as
good a climber as most men, and stood beside them before many good
climbers would have been half-way down.

“A wild evening, Miss Landless! Do you not find your usual walk with
your brother too exposed and cold for the time of year? Or at all
events, when the sun is down, and the weather is driving in from the
sea?”

Helena thought not. It was their favourite walk. It was very retired.

“It is very retired,” assented Mr. Crisparkle, laying hold of his
opportunity straightway, and walking on with them. “It is a place of
all others where one can speak without interruption, as I wish to do.
Mr. Neville, I believe you tell your sister everything that passes
between us?”

“Everything, sir.”

“Consequently,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “your sister is aware that I have
repeatedly urged you to make some kind of apology for that unfortunate
occurrence which befell on the night of your arrival here.” In saying
it he looked to her, and not to him; therefore it was she, and not he,
who replied:

“Yes.”

“I call it unfortunate, Miss Helena,” resumed Mr. Crisparkle,
“forasmuch as it certainly has engendered a prejudice against Neville.
There is a notion about, that he is a dangerously passionate fellow, of
an uncontrollable and furious temper: he is really avoided as such.”

“I have no doubt he is, poor fellow,” said Helena, with a look of proud
compassion at her brother, expressing a deep sense of his being
ungenerously treated. “I should be quite sure of it, from your saying
so; but what you tell me is confirmed by suppressed hints and
references that I meet with every day.”

“Now,” Mr. Crisparkle again resumed, in a tone of mild though firm
persuasion, “is not this to be regretted, and ought it not to be
amended? These are early days of Neville’s in Cloisterham, and I have
no fear of his outliving such a prejudice, and proving himself to have
been misunderstood. But how much wiser to take action at once, than to
trust to uncertain time! Besides, apart from its being politic, it is
right. For there can be no question that Neville was wrong.”

“He was provoked,” Helena submitted.

“He was the assailant,” Mr. Crisparkle submitted.

They walked on in silence, until Helena raised her eyes to the Minor
Canon’s face, and said, almost reproachfully: “O Mr. Crisparkle, would
you have Neville throw himself at young Drood’s feet, or at Mr.
Jasper’s, who maligns him every day? In your heart you cannot mean it.
From your heart you could not do it, if his case were yours.”

“I have represented to Mr. Crisparkle, Helena,” said Neville, with a
glance of deference towards his tutor, “that if I could do it from my
heart, I would. But I cannot, and I revolt from the pretence. You
forget however, that to put the case to Mr. Crisparkle as his own, is
to suppose to have done what I did.”

“I ask his pardon,” said Helena.

“You see,” remarked Mr. Crisparkle, again laying hold of his
opportunity, though with a moderate and delicate touch, “you both
instinctively acknowledge that Neville did wrong. Then why stop short,
and not otherwise acknowledge it?”

“Is there no difference,” asked Helena, with a little faltering in her
manner; “between submission to a generous spirit, and submission to a
base or trivial one?”

Before the worthy Minor Canon was quite ready with his argument in
reference to this nice distinction, Neville struck in:

“Help me to clear myself with Mr. Crisparkle, Helena. Help me to
convince him that I cannot be the first to make concessions without
mockery and falsehood. My nature must be changed before I can do so,
and it is not changed. I am sensible of inexpressible affront, and
deliberate aggravation of inexpressible affront, and I am angry. The
plain truth is, I am still as angry when I recall that night as I was
that night.”

“Neville,” hinted the Minor Canon, with a steady countenance, “you have
repeated that former action of your hands, which I so much dislike.”

“I am sorry for it, sir, but it was involuntary. I confessed that I was
still as angry.”

“And I confess,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “that I hoped for better things.”

“I am sorry to disappoint you, sir, but it would be far worse to
deceive you, and I should deceive you grossly if I pretended that you
had softened me in this respect. The time may come when your powerful
influence will do even that with the difficult pupil whose antecedents
you know; but it has not come yet. Is this so, and in spite of my
struggles against myself, Helena?”

She, whose dark eyes were watching the effect of what he said on Mr.
Crisparkle’s face, replied—to Mr. Crisparkle, not to him: “It is so.”
After a short pause, she answered the slightest look of inquiry
conceivable, in her brother’s eyes, with as slight an affirmative bend
of her own head; and he went on:

“I have never yet had the courage to say to you, sir, what in full
openness I ought to have said when you first talked with me on this
subject. It is not easy to say, and I have been withheld by a fear of
its seeming ridiculous, which is very strong upon me down to this last
moment, and might, but for my sister, prevent my being quite open with
you even now.—I admire Miss Bud, sir, so very much, that I cannot bear
her being treated with conceit or indifference; and even if I did not
feel that I had an injury against young Drood on my own account, I
should feel that I had an injury against him on hers.”

Mr. Crisparkle, in utter amazement, looked at Helena for corroboration,
and met in her expressive face full corroboration, and a plea for
advice.

“The young lady of whom you speak is, as you know, Mr. Neville, shortly
to be married,” said Mr. Crisparkle, gravely; “therefore your
admiration, if it be of that special nature which you seem to indicate,
is outrageously misplaced. Moreover, it is monstrous that you should
take upon yourself to be the young lady’s champion against her chosen
husband. Besides, you have seen them only once. The young lady has
become your sister’s friend; and I wonder that your sister, even on her
behalf, has not checked you in this irrational and culpable fancy.”

“She has tried, sir, but uselessly. Husband or no husband, that fellow
is incapable of the feeling with which I am inspired towards the
beautiful young creature whom he treats like a doll. I say he is as
incapable of it, as he is unworthy of her. I say she is sacrificed in
being bestowed upon him. I say that I love her, and despise and hate
him!” This with a face so flushed, and a gesture so violent, that his
sister crossed to his side, and caught his arm, remonstrating,
“Neville, Neville!”

Thus recalled to himself, he quickly became sensible of having lost the
guard he had set upon his passionate tendency, and covered his face
with his hand, as one repentant and wretched.

Mr. Crisparkle, watching him attentively, and at the same time
meditating how to proceed, walked on for some paces in silence. Then he
spoke:

“Mr. Neville, Mr. Neville, I am sorely grieved to see in you more
traces of a character as sullen, angry, and wild, as the night now
closing in. They are of too serious an aspect to leave me the resource
of treating the infatuation you have disclosed, as undeserving serious
consideration. I give it very serious consideration, and I speak to you
accordingly. This feud between you and young Drood must not go on. I
cannot permit it to go on any longer, knowing what I now know from you,
and you living under my roof. Whatever prejudiced and unauthorised
constructions your blind and envious wrath may put upon his character,
it is a frank, good-natured character. I know I can trust to it for
that. Now, pray observe what I am about to say. On reflection, and on
your sister’s representation, I am willing to admit that, in making
peace with young Drood, you have a right to be met half-way. I will
e

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