The Mystery of Edwin Drood (22 page)

 

  Her full heart broke into tears again.
He put his arm about her waist, and they walked by the river-side together.

 

  “Your guardian has spoken to me too,
Rosa dear. I saw him before I left London.” His right hand was in his breast,
seeking the ring; but he checked it, as he thought: “If I am to take it back,
why should I tell her of it?”

 

  “And that made you more serious about
it, didn't it, Eddy? And if I had not spoken to you, as I have, you would have
spoken to me? I hope you can tell me so? I don't like it to be ALL my doing,
though it IS so much better for us.”

 

  “Yes, I should have spoken; I should
have put everything before you; I came intending to do it. But I never could
have spoken to you as you have spoken to me, Rosa.”

 

  “Don't say you mean so coldly or
unkindly, Eddy, please, if you can help it.”

 

  “I mean so sensibly and delicately, so
wisely and affectionately.”

 

  “That's my dear brother!” She kissed his
hand in a little rapture. “The dear girls will be dreadfully disappointed,”
added Rosa, laughing, with the dewdrops glistening in her bright eyes. “They
have looked forward to it so, poor pets!”

 

  “Ah! but I fear it will be a worse
disappointment to Jack,” said Edwin Drood, with a start. “I never thought of
Jack!”

 

  Her swift and intent look at him as he
said the words could no more be recalled than a flash of lightning can. But it
appeared as though she would have instantly recalled it, if she could; for she
looked down, confused, and breathed quickly.

 

  “You don't doubt its being a blow to
Jack, Rosa?”

 

  She merely replied, and that evasively
and hurriedly: Why should she? She had not thought about it. He seemed, to her,
to have so little to do with it.

 

  “My dear child! can you suppose that any
one so wrapped up in another—Mrs. Tope's expression: not mine—as Jack is in me,
could fail to be struck all of a heap by such a sudden and complete change in
my life? I say sudden, because it will be sudden to HIM, you know.”

 

  She nodded twice or thrice, and her lips
parted as if she would have assented. But she uttered no sound, and her
breathing was no slower.

 

  “How shall I tell Jack?” said Edwin,
ruminating. If he had been less occupied with the thought, he must have seen
her singular emotion. “I never thought of Jack. It must be broken to him,
before the town-crier knows it. I dine with the dear fellow tomorrow and next
day—Christmas Eve and Christmas Day—but it would never do to spoil his
feast-days. He always worries about me, and moddley-coddleys in the merest trifles.
The news is sure to overset him. How on earth shall this be broken to Jack?”

 

  “He must be told, I suppose?” said Rosa.

 

  “My dear Rosa! who ought to be in our
confidence, if not Jack?”

 

  “My guardian promised to come down, if I
should write and ask him. I am going to do so. Would you like to leave it to
him?”

 

  “A bright idea!” cried Edwin. “The other
trustee. Nothing more natural. He comes down, he goes to Jack, he relates what
we have agreed upon, and he states our case better than we could. He has already
spoken feelingly to you, he has already spoken feelingly to me, and he'll put
the whole thing feelingly to Jack. That's it! I am not a coward, Rosa, but to
tell you a secret, I am a little afraid of Jack.”

 

  “No, no! you are not afraid of him!”
cried Rosa, turning white, and clasping her hands.

 

  “Why, sister Rosa, sister Rosa, what do
you see from the turret?” said Edwin, rallying her. “My dear girl!”

 

  “You frightened me.”

 

  “Most unintentionally, but I am as sorry
as if I had meant to do it. Could you possibly suppose for a moment, from any
loose way of speaking of mine, that I was literally afraid of the dear fond
fellow? What I mean is, that he is subject to a kind of paroxysm, or fit—I saw
him in it once—and I don't know but that so great a surprise, coming upon him direct
from me whom he is so wrapped up in, might bring it on perhaps. Which—and this
is the secret I was going to tell you—is another reason for your guardian's
making the communication. He is so steady, precise, and exact, that he will
talk Jack's thoughts into shape, in no time: whereas with me Jack is always
impulsive and hurried, and, I may say, almost womanish.”

 

  Rosa seemed convinced. Perhaps from her
own very different point of view of “Jack,” she felt comforted and protected by
the interposition of Mr. Grewgious between herself and him.

 

  And now, Edwin Drood's right hand closed
again upon the ring in its little case, and again was checked by the
consideration: “It is certain, now, that I am to give it back to him; then why
should I tell her of it?” That pretty sympathetic nature which could be so
sorry for him in the blight of their childish hopes of happiness together, and
could so quietly find itself alone in a new world to weave fresh wreaths of
such flowers as it might prove to bear, the old world's flowers being withered,
would be grieved by those sorrowful jewels; and to what purpose? Why should it
be? They were but a sign of broken joys and baseless projects; in their very
beauty they were (as the unlikeliest of men had said) almost a cruel satire on
the loves, hopes, plans, of humanity, which are able to forecast nothing, and
are so much brittle dust. Let them be. He would restore them to her guardian
when he came down; he in his turn would restore them to the cabinet from which
he had unwillingly taken them; and there, like old letters or old vows, or
other records of old aspirations come to nothing, they would be disregarded,
until, being valuable, they were sold into circulation again, to repeat their
former round.

 

  Let them be. Let them lie unspoken of,
in his breast. However distinctly or indistinctly he entertained these
thoughts, he arrived at the conclusion, Let them be. Among the mighty store of
wonderful chains that are for ever forging, day and night, in the vast
iron-works of time and circumstance, there was one chain forged in the moment
of that small conclusion, riveted to the foundations of heaven and earth, and
gifted with invincible force to hold and drag.

 

  They walked on by the river. They began
to speak of their separate plans. He would quicken his departure from England,
and she would remain where she was, at least as long as Helena remained. The
poor dear girls should have their disappointment broken to them gently, and, as
the first preliminary, Miss Twinkleton should be confided in by Rosa, even in
advance of the reappearance of Mr. Grewgious. It should be made clear in all
quarters that she and Edwin were the best of friends. There had never been so
serene an understanding between them since they were first affianced. And yet
there was one reservation on each side; on hers, that she intended through her
guardian to withdraw herself immediately from the tuition of her music-master;
on his, that he did already entertain some wandering speculations whether it
might ever come to pass that he would know more of Miss Landless.

 

  The bright, frosty day declined as they
walked and spoke together. The sun dipped in the river far behind them, and the
old city lay red before them, as their walk drew to a close. The moaning water
cast its seaweed duskily at their feet, when they turned to leave its margin;
and the rooks hovered above them with hoarse cries, darker splashes in the
darkening air.

 

  “I will prepare Jack for my flitting
soon,” said Edwin, in a low voice, “and I will but see your guardian when he
comes, and then go before they speak together. It will be better done without
my being by. Don't you think so?”

 

  “Yes.”

 

  “We know we have done right, Rosa?”

 

  “Yes.”

 

  “We know we are better so, even now?”

 

  “And shall be far, far better so by-and-by.”

 

  Still there was that lingering
tenderness in their hearts towards the old positions they were relinquishing,
that they prolonged their parting. When they came among the elm-trees by the
Cathedral, where they had last sat together, they stopped as by consent, and
Rosa raised her face to his, as she had never raised it in the old days;—for
they were old already.

 

  “God bless you, dear! Good-bye!”

 

  “God bless you, dear! Good-bye!”

 

  They kissed each other fervently.

 

  “Now, please take me home, Eddy, and let
me be by myself.”

 

  “Don't look round, Rosa,” he cautioned
her, as he drew her arm through his, and led her away. “Didn't you see Jack?”

 

  “No! Where?”

 

  “Under the trees. He saw us, as we took
leave of each other. Poor fellow! he little thinks we have parted. This will be
a blow to him, I am much afraid!”

 

  She hurried on, without resting, and
hurried on until they had passed under the gatehouse into the street; once
there, she asked:

 

  “Has he followed us? You can look
without seeming to. Is he behind?”

 

  “No. Yes, he is! He has just passed out
under the gateway. The dear, sympathetic old fellow likes to keep us in sight.
I am afraid he will be bitterly disappointed!”

 

  She pulled hurriedly at the handle of
the hoarse old bell, and the gate soon opened. Before going in, she gave him
one last, wide, wondering look, as if she would have asked him with imploring
emphasis: “O! don't you understand?” And out of that look he vanished from her
view.

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER XIV—WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN?

 

   

 

  CHRISTMAS EVE in Cloisterham. A few
strange faces in the streets; a few other faces, half strange and half
familiar, once the faces of Cloisterham children, now the faces of men and
women who come back from the outer world at long intervals to find the city
wonderfully shrunken in size, as if it had not washed by any means well in the
meanwhile. To these, the striking of the Cathedral clock, and the cawing of the
rooks from the Cathedral tower, are like voices of their nursery time. To such
as these, it has happened in their dying hours afar off, that they have
imagined their chamber-floor to be strewn with the autumnal leaves fallen from
the elm-trees in the Close: so have the rustling sounds and fresh scents of
their earliest impressions revived when the circle of their lives was very
nearly traced, and the beginning and the end were drawing close together.

 

  Seasonable tokens are about. Red berries
shine here and there in the lattices of Minor Canon Corner; Mr. and Mrs. Tope
are daintily sticking sprigs of holly into the carvings and sconces of the
Cathedral stalls, as if they were sticking them into the coatbutton-holes of
the Dean and Chapter. Lavish profusion is in the shops: particularly in the articles
of currants, raisins, spices, candied peel, and moist sugar. An unusual air of gallantry
and dissipation is abroad; evinced in an immense bunch of mistletoe hanging in
the greengrocer's shop doorway, and a poor little Twelfth Cake, culminating in
the figure of a Harlequin—such a very poor little Twelfth Cake, that one would
rather called it a Twenty-fourth Cake or a Forty-eighth Cake—to be raffled for
at the pastrycook's, terms one shilling per member. Public amusements are not
wanting. The Wax-Work which made so deep an impression on the reflective mind
of the Emperor of China is to be seen by particular desire during Christmas
Week only, on the premises of the bankrupt livery-stable-keeper up the lane;
and a new grand comic Christmas pantomime is to be produced at the Theatre: the
latter heralded by the portrait of Signor Jacksonini the clown, saying “How do
you do to-morrow?” quite as large as life, and almost as miserably. In short,
Cloisterham is up and doing: though from this description the High School and
Miss Twinkleton's are to be excluded. From the former establishment the scholars
have gone home, every one of them in love with one of Miss Twinkleton's young
ladies (who knows nothing about it); and only the handmaidens flutter
occasionally in the windows of the latter. It is noticed, by the bye, that
these damsels become, within the limits of decorum, more skittish when thus
intrusted with the concrete representation of their sex, than when dividing the
representation with Miss Twinkleton's young ladies.

 

  Three are to meet at the gatehouse
to-night. How does each one of the three get through the day?

 

   

 

  Neville Landless, though absolved from
his books for the time by Mr. Crisparkle—whose fresh nature is by no means
insensible to the charms of a holiday—reads and writes in his quiet room, with
a concentrated air, until it is two hours past noon. He then sets himself to
clearing his table, to arranging his books, and to tearing up and burning his
stray papers. He makes a clean sweep of all untidy accumulations, puts all his
drawers in order, and leaves no note or scrap of paper undestroyed, save such
memoranda as bear directly on his studies. This done, he turns to his wardrobe,
selects a few articles of ordinary wear—among them, change of stout shoes and
socks for walking—and packs these in a knapsack. This knapsack is new, and he bought
it in the High Street yesterday. He also purchased, at the same time and at the
same place, a heavy walking-stick; strong in the handle for the grip of the
hand, and iron-shod. He tries this, swings it, poises it, and lays it by, with
the knapsack, on a window-seat. By this time his arrangements are complete.

 

  He dresses for going out, and is in the
act of going—indeed has left his room, and has met the Minor Canon on the
staircase, coming out of his bedroom upon the same story—when he turns back
again for his walking-stick, thinking he will carry it now. Mr. Crisparkle, who
has paused on the staircase, sees it in his hand on his immediately
reappearing, takes it from him, and asks him with a smile how he chooses a
stick?