The Mystery of Edwin Drood (11 page)

 

  “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
chimneypicce. 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.”

 

  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.”