The Mystery of Edwin Drood (29 page)

 

  “I want to see a ruddier touch here,
Neville,” he said, indicating his own healthy cheek by way of pattern. “I want
more sun to shine upon you.”

 

  Neville drooped suddenly, as he replied in
a lowered voice: “I am not hardy enough for that, yet. I may become so, but I
cannot bear it yet. If you had gone through those Cloisterham streets as I did;
if you had seen, as I did, those averted eyes, and the better sort of people
silently giving me too much room to pass, that I might not touch them or come
near them, you wouldn't think it quite unreasonable that I cannot go about in
the daylight.”

 

  “My poor fellow!” said the Minor Canon,
in a tone so purely sympathetic that the young man caught his hand, “I never
said it was unreasonable; never thought so. But I should like you to do it.”

 

  “And that would give me the strongest
motive to do it. But I cannot yet. I cannot persuade myself that the eyes of
even the stream of strangers I pass in this vast city look at me without
suspicion. I feel marked and tainted, even when I go out—as I do only—at night.
But the darkness covers me then, and I take courage from it.”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle laid a hand upon his
shoulder, and stood looking down at him.

 

  “If I could have changed my name,” said
Neville, “I would have done so. But as you wisely pointed out to me, I can't do
that, for it would look like guilt. If I could have gone to some distant place,
I might have found relief in that, but the thing is not to be thought of, for
the same reason. Hiding and escaping would be the construction in either case.
It seems a little hard to be so tied to a stake, and innocent; but I don't
complain.”

 

  “And you must expect no miracle to help
you, Neville,” said Mr. Crisparkle, compassionately.

 

  “No, sir, I know that. The ordinary
fulness of time and circumstances is all I have to trust to.”

 

  “It will right you at last, Neville.”

 

  “So I believe, and I hope I may live to
know it.”

 

  But perceiving that the despondent mood
into which he was falling cast a shadow on the Minor Canon, and (it may be)
feeling that the broad hand upon his shoulder was not then quite as steady as
its own natural strength had rendered it when it first touched him just now, he
brightened and said:

 

  “Excellent circumstances for study,
anyhow! and you know, Mr. Crisparkle, what need I have of study in all ways.
Not to mention that you have advised me to study for the difficult profession
of the law, specially, and that of course I am guiding myself by the advice of
such a friend and helper. Such a good friend and helper!”

 

  He took the fortifying hand from his
shoulder, and kissed it. Mr. Crisparkle beamed at the books, but not so
brightly as when he had entered.

 

  “I gather from your silence on the
subject that my late guardian is adverse, Mr. Crisparkle?”

 

  The Minor Canon answered: “Your late
guardian is a—a most unreasonable person, and it signifies nothing to any
reasonable person whether he is ADverse, PERverse, or the REverse.”

 

  “Well for me that I have enough with
economy to live upon,” sighed Neville, half wearily and half cheerily, “while I
wait to be learned, and wait to be righted! Else I might have proved the
proverb, that while the grass grows, the steed starves!”

 

  He opened some books as he said it, and
was soon immersed in their interleaved and annotated passages; while Mr.
Crisparkle sat beside him, expounding, correcting, and advising. The Minor
Canon's Cathedral duties made these visits of his difficult to accomplish, and
only to be compassed at intervals of many weeks. But they were as serviceable
as they were precious to Neville Landless.

 

  When they had got through such studies
as they had in hand, they stood leaning on the window-sill, and looking down
upon the patch of garden. “Next week,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “you will cease to
be alone, and will have a devoted companion.”

 

  “And yet,” returned Neville, “this seems
an uncongenial place to bring my sister to.”

 

  “I don't think so,” said the Minor
Canon. “There is duty to be done here; and there are womanly feeling, sense,
and courage wanted here.”

 

  “I meant,” explained Neville, “that the
surroundings are so dull and unwomanly, and that Helena can have no suitable
friend or society here.”

 

  “You have only to remember,” said Mr.
Crisparkle, “that you are here yourself, and that she has to draw you into the
sunlight.”

 

  They were silent for a little while, and
then Mr. Crisparkle began anew.

 

  “When we first spoke together, Neville,
you told me that your sister had risen out of the disadvantages of your past
lives as superior to you as the tower of Cloisterham Cathedral is higher than
the chimneys of Minor Canon Corner. Do you remember that?”

 

  “Right well!”

 

  “I was inclined to think it at the time
an enthusiastic flight. No matter what I think it now. What I would emphasise
is, that under the head of Pride your sister is a great and opportune example
to you.”

 

  “Under ALL heads that are included in
the composition of a fine character, she is.”

 

  “Say so; but take this one. Your sister
has learnt how to govern what is proud in her nature. She can dominate it even
when it is wounded through her sympathy with you. No doubt she has suffered
deeply in those same streets where you suffered deeply. No doubt her life is
darkened by the cloud that darkens yours. But bending her pride into a grand composure
that is not haughty or aggressive, but is a sustained confidence in you and in
the truth, she has won her way through those streets until she passes along
them as high in the general respect as any one who treads them. Every day and
hour of her life since Edwin Drood's disappearance, she has faced malignity and
folly—for you—as only a brave nature well directed can. So it will be with her
to the end. Another and weaker kind of pride might sink broken-hearted, but
never such a pride as hers: which knows no shrinking, and can get no mastery
over her.”

 

  The pale cheek beside him flushed under
the comparison, and the hint implied in it.

 

  “I will do all I can to imitate her,”
said Neville.

 

  “Do so, and be a truly brave man, as she
is a truly brave woman,” answered Mr. Crisparkle stoutly. “It is growing dark.
Will you go my way with me, when it is quite dark? Mind! it is not I who wait
for darkness.”

 

  Neville replied, that he would accompany
him directly. But Mr. Crisparkle said he had a moment's call to make on Mr.
Grewgious as an act of courtesy, and would run across to that gentleman's
chambers, and rejoin Neville on his own doorstep, if he would come down there
to meet him.

 

  Mr. Grewgious, bolt upright as usual,
sat taking his wine in the dusk at his open window; his wineglass and decanter
on the round table at his elbow; himself and his legs on the window-seat; only
one hinge in his whole body, like a bootjack.

 

  “How do you do, reverend sir?” said Mr.
Grewgious, with abundant offers of hospitality, which were as cordially
declined as made. “And how is your charge getting on over the way in the set
that I had the pleasure of recommending to you as vacant and eligible?”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle replied suitably.

 

  “I am glad you approve of them,” said
Mr. Grewgious, “because I entertain a sort of fancy for having him under my
eye.”

 

  As Mr. Grewgious had to turn his eye up
considerably before he could see the chambers, the phrase was to be taken
figuratively and not literally.

 

  “And how did you leave Mr. Jasper,
reverend sir?” said Mr. Grewgious.

 

  Mr. Crisparkle had left him pretty well.

 

  “And where did you leave Mr. Jasper,
reverend sir?” Mr. Crisparkle had left him at Cloisterham.

 

  “And when did you leave Mr. Jasper,
reverend sir?” That morning.

 

  “Umps!” said Mr. Grewgious. “He didn't
say he was coming, perhaps?”

 

  “Coming where?”

 

  “Anywhere, for instance?” said Mr.
Grewgious.

 

  “No.”

 

  “Because here he is,” said Mr.
Grewgious, who had asked all these questions, with his preoccupied glance
directed out at window. “And he don't look agreeable, does he?”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle was craning towards the
window, when Mr. Grewgious added:

 

  “If you will kindly step round here
behind me, in the gloom of the room, and will cast your eye at the second-floor
landing window in yonder house, I think you will hardly fail to see a slinking
individual in whom I recognise our local friend.”

 

  “You are right!” cried Mr. Crisparkle.

 

  “Umps!” said Mr. Grewgious. Then he
added, turning his face so abruptly that his head nearly came into collision
with Mr. Crisparkle's: “what should you say that our local friend was up to?”

 

  The last passage he had been shown in
the Diary returned on Mr. Crisparkle's mind with the force of a strong recoil,
and he asked Mr. Grewgious if he thought it possible that Neville was to be
harassed by the keeping of a watch upon him?

 

  “A watch?” repeated Mr. Grewgious
musingly. “Ay!”

 

  “Which would not only of itself haunt
and torture his life,” said Mr. Crisparkle warmly, “but would expose him to the
torment of a perpetually reviving suspicion, whatever he might do, or wherever
he might go.”

 

  “Ay!” said Mr. Grewgious musingly still.
“Do I see him waiting for you?”

 

  “No doubt you do.”

 

  “Then WOULD you have the goodness to
excuse my getting up to see you out, and to go out to join him, and to go the
way that you were going, and to take no notice of our local friend?” said Mr.
Grewgious. “I entertain a sort of fancy for having HIM under my eye to-night,
do you know?”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle, with a significant need
complied; and rejoining Neville, went away with him. They dined together, and
parted at the yet unfinished and undeveloped railway station: Mr. Crisparkle to
get home; Neville to walk the streets, cross the bridges, make a wide round of
the city in the friendly darkness, and tire himself out.

 

  It was midnight when he returned from
his solitary expedition and climbed his staircase. The night was hot, and the
windows of the staircase were all wide open. Coming to the top, it gave him a
passing chill of surprise (there being no rooms but his up there) to find a
stranger sitting on the window-sill, more after the manner of a venturesome glazier
than an amateur ordinarily careful of his neck; in fact, so much more outside
the window than inside, as to suggest the thought that he must have come up by
the waterspout instead of the stairs.

 

  The stranger said nothing until Neville
put his key in his door; then, seeming to make sure of his identity from the
action, he spoke:

 

  “I beg your pardon,” he said, coming
from the window with a frank and smiling air, and a prepossessing address; “the
beans.”

 

  Neville was quite at a loss.

 

  “Runners,” said the visitor. “Scarlet.
Next door at the back.”

 

  “O,” returned Neville. “And the
mignonette and wall-flower?”

 

  “The same,” said the visitor.

 

  “Pray walk in.”

 

  “Thank you.”

 

  Neville lighted his candles, and the
visitor sat down. A handsome gentleman, with a young face, but with an older
figure in its robustness and its breadth of shoulder; say a man of
eight-andtwenty, or at the utmost thirty; so extremely sunburnt that the
contrast between his brown visage and the white forehead shaded out of doors by
his hat, and the glimpses of white throat below the neckerchief, would have
been almost ludicrous but for his broad temples, bright blue eyes, clustering
brown hair, and laughing teeth.

 

  “I have noticed,” said he; “—my name is
Tartar.”

 

  Neville inclined his head.

 

  “I have noticed (excuse me) that you
shut yourself up a good deal, and that you seem to like my garden aloft here.
If you would like a little more of it, I could throw out a few lines and stays between
my windows and yours, which the runners would take to directly. And I have some
boxes, both of mignonette and wallflower, that I could shove on along the
gutter (with a boathook I have by me) to your windows, and draw back again when
they wanted watering or gardening, and shove on again when they were shipshape;
so that they would cause you no trouble. I couldn't take this liberty without
asking your permission, so I venture to ask it. Tartar, corresponding set, next
door.”

 

  “You are very kind.”

 

  “Not at all. I ought to apologise for
looking in so late. But having noticed (excuse me) that you generally walk out
at night, I thought I should inconvenience you least by awaiting your return. I
am always afraid of inconveniencing busy men, being an idle man.”

 

  “I should not have thought so, from your
appearance.”

 

  “No? I take it as a compliment. In fact,
I was bred in the Royal Navy, and was First Lieutenant when I quitted it. But,
an uncle disappointed in the service leaving me his property on condition that I
left the Navy, I accepted the fortune, and resigned my commission.”

 

  “Lately, I presume?”

 

  “Well, I had had twelve or fifteen years
of knocking about first. I came here some nine months before you; I had had one
crop before you came. I chose this place, because, having served last in a
little corvette, I knew I should feel more at home where I had a constant
opportunity of knocking my head against the ceiling. Besides, it would never do
for a man who had been aboard ship from his boyhood to turn luxurious all at
once. Besides, again; having been accustomed to a very short allowance of land
all my life, I thought I'd feel my way to the command of a landed estate, by
beginning in boxes.”