The Mystery of Edwin Drood (51 page)

 

  “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 boweddown 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! —