The Mystery of Edwin Drood (49 page)

 

  “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
illnature, 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 drawingroom, 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.

 

  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 figures
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.”