The Mystery of Edwin Drood (32 page)

 

  This time he does touch her with his
outstretched hand. In shrinking from it, she shrinks into her seat again.

 

  “We must sometimes act in opposition to
our wishes,” he tells her in a low voice. “You must do so now, or do more harm
to others than you can ever set right.”

 

  “What harm?”

 

  “Presently, presently. You question ME,
you see, and surely that's not fair when you forbid me to question you.
Nevertheless, I will answer the question presently. Dearest Rosa! Charming
Rosa!”

 

  She starts up again.

 

  This time he does not touch her. But his
face looks so wicked and menacing, as he stands leaning against the
sun-dial-setting, as it were, his black mark upon the very face of day—that her
flight is arrested by horror as she looks at him.

 

  “I do not forget how many windows
command a view of us,” he says, glancing towards them. “I will not touch you
again; I will come no nearer to you than I am. Sit down, and there will be no
mighty wonder in your music-master's leaning idly against a pedestal and
speaking with you, remembering all that has happened, and our shares in it. Sit
down, my beloved.”

 

  She would have gone once more—was all
but gone—and once more his face, darkly threatening what would follow if she
went, has stopped her. Looking at him with the expression of the instant frozen
on her face, she sits down on the seat again.

 

  “Rosa, even when my dear boy was
affianced to you, I loved you madly; even when I thought his happiness in
having you for his wife was certain, I loved you madly; even when I strove to
make him more ardently devoted to you, I loved you madly; even when he gave me
the picture of your lovely face so carelessly traduced by him, which I feigned
to hang always in my sight for his sake, but worshipped in torment for years, I
loved you madly; in the distasteful work of the day, in the wakeful misery of
the night, girded by sordid realities, or wandering through Paradises and Hells
of visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my arms, I loved you
madly.”

 

  If anything could make his words more
hideous to her than they are in themselves, it would be the contrast between
the violence of his look and delivery, and the composure of his assumed
attitude.

 

  “I endured it all in silence. So long as
you were his, or so long as I supposed you to be his, I hid my secret loyally.
Did I not?”

 

  This lie, so gross, while the mere words
in which it is told are so true, is more than Rosa can endure. She answers with
kindling indignation: “You were as false throughout, sir, as you are now. You
were false to him, daily and hourly. You know that you made my life unhappy by
your pursuit of me. You know that you made me afraid to open his generous eyes,
and that you forced me, for his own trusting, good, good sake, to keep the
truth from him, that you were a bad, bad man!”

 

  His preservation of his easy attitude
rendering his working features and his convulsive hands absolutely diabolical,
he returns, with a fierce extreme of admiration:

 

  “How beautiful you are! You are more
beautiful in anger than in repose. I don't ask you for your love; give me yourself
and your hatred; give me yourself and that pretty rage; give me yourself and
that enchanting scorn; it will be enough for me.”

 

  Impatient tears rise to the eyes of the
trembling little beauty, and her face flames; but as she again rises to leave
him in indignation, and seek protection within the house, he stretches out his
hand towards the porch, as though he invited her to enter it.

 

  “I told you, you rare charmer, you sweet
witch, that you must stay and hear me, or do more harm than can ever be undone.
You asked me what harm. Stay, and I will tell you. Go, and I will do it!”

 

  Again Rosa quails before his threatening
face, though innocent of its meaning, and she remains. Her panting breathing
comes and goes as if it would choke her; but with a repressive hand upon her
bosom, she remains.

 

  “I have made my confession that my love
is mad. It is so mad, that had the ties between me and my dear lost boy been
one silken thread less strong, I might have swept even him from your side, when
you favoured him.”

 

  A film come over the eyes she raises for
an instant, as though he had turned her faint.

 

  “Even him,” he repeats. “Yes, even him!
Rosa, you see me and you hear me. Judge for yourself whether any other admirer
shall love you and live, whose life is in my hand.”

 

  “What do you mean, sir?”

 

  “I mean to show you how mad my love is.
It was hawked through the late inquiries by Mr. Crisparkle, that young Landless
had confessed to him that he was a rival of my lost boy. That is an inexpiable
offence in my eyes. The same Mr. Crisparkle knows under my hand that I have
devoted myself to the murderer's discovery and destruction, be he whom he
might, and that I determined to discuss the mystery with no one until I should
hold the clue in which to entangle the murderer as in a net. I have since
worked patiently to wind and wind it round him; and it is slowly winding as I
speak.”

 

  “Your belief, if you believe in the
criminality of Mr. Landless, is not Mr. Crisparkle's belief, and he is a good
man,” Rosa retorts.

 

  “My belief is my own; and I reserve it,
worshipped of my soul! Circumstances may accumulate so strongly EVEN AGAINST AN
INNOCENT MAN, that directed, sharpened, and pointed, they may slay him. One
wanting link discovered by perseverance against a guilty man, proves his guilt,
however slight its evidence before, and he dies. Young Landless stands in
deadly peril either way.”

 

  “If you really suppose,” Rosa pleads
with him, turning paler, “that I favour Mr. Landless, or that Mr. Landless has
ever in any way addressed himself to me, you are wrong.”

 

  He puts that from him with a slighting
action of his hand and a curled lip.

 

  “I was going to show you how madly I
love you. More madly now than ever, for I am willing to renounce the second
object that has arisen in my life to divide it with you; and henceforth to have
no object in existence but you only. Miss Landless has become your bosom
friend. You care for her peace of mind?”

 

  “I love her dearly.”

 

  “You care for her good name?”

 

  “I have said, sir, I love her dearly.”

 

  “I am unconsciously,” he observes with a
smile, as he folds his hands upon the sun-dial and leans his chin upon them, so
that his talk would seem from the windows (faces occasionally come and go
there) to be of the airiest and playfullest—“I am unconsciously giving offence
by questioning again. I will simply make statements, therefore, and not put
questions. You do care for your bosom friend's good name, and you do care for
her peace of mind. Then remove the shadow of the gallows from her, dear one!”

 

  “You dare propose to me to—”

 

  “Darling, I dare propose to you. Stop
there. If it be bad to idolise you, I am the worst of men; if it be good, I am
the best. My love for you is above all other love, and my truth to you is above
all other truth. Let me have hope and favour, and I am a forsworn man for your
sake.”

 

  Rosa puts her hands to her temples, and,
pushing back her hair, looks wildly and abhorrently at him, as though she were
trying to piece together what it is his deep purpose to present to her only in
fragments.

 

  “Reckon up nothing at this moment,
angel, but the sacrifices that I lay at those dear feet, which I could fall
down among the vilest ashes and kiss, and put upon my head as a poor savage
might. There is my fidelity to my dear boy after death. Tread upon it!”

 

  With an action of his hands, as though
he cast down something precious.

 

  “There is the inexpiable offence against
my adoration of you. Spurn it!”

 

  With a similar action.

 

  “There are my labours in the cause of a
just vengeance for six toiling months. Crush them!”

 

  With another repetition of the action.

 

  “There is my past and my present wasted
life. There is the desolation of my heart and my soul. There is my peace; there
is my despair. Stamp them into the dust; so that you take me, were it even
mortally hating me!”

 

  The frightful vehemence of the man, now
reaching its full height, so additionally terrifies her as to break the spell
that has held her to the spot. She swiftly moves towards the porch; but in an
instant he is at her side, and speaking in her ear.

 

  “Rosa, I am self-repressed again. I am
walking calmly beside you to the house. I shall wait for some encouragement and
hope. I shall not strike too soon. Give me a sign that you attend to me.”

 

  She slightly and constrainedly moves her
hand.

 

  “Not a word of this to any one, or it will
bring down the blow, as certainly as night follows day. Another sign that you
attend to me.”

 

  She moves her hand once more.

 

  “I love you, love you, love you! If you
were to cast me off now—but you will not—you would never be rid of me. No one
should come between us. I would pursue you to the death.”

 

  The handmaid coming out to open the gate
for him, he quietly pulls off his hat as a parting salute, and goes away with
no greater show of agitation than is visible in the effigy of Mr. Sapsea's
father opposite. Rosa faints in going up-stairs, and is carefully carried to
her room and laid down on her bed. A thunderstorm is coming on, the maids say,
and the hot and stifling air has overset the pretty dear: no wonder; they have
felt their own knees all of a tremble all day long.

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER XX—A FLIGHT

 

   

 

  ROSA no sooner came to herself than the
whole of the late interview was before her. It even seemed as if it had pursued
her into her insensibility, and she had not had a moment's unconsciousness of
it. What to do, she was at a frightened loss to know: the only one clear
thought in her mind was, that she must fly from this terrible man.

 

  But where could she take refuge, and how
could she go? She had never breathed her dread of him to any one but Helena. If
she went to Helena, and told her what had passed, that very act might bring
down the irreparable mischief that he threatened he had the power, and that she
knew he had the will, to do. The more fearful he appeared to her excited memory
and imagination, the more alarming her responsibility appeared; seeing that a
slight mistake on her part, either in action or delay, might let his malevolence
loose on Helena's brother.

 

  Rosa's mind throughout the last six
months had been stormily confused. A half-formed, wholly unexpressed suspicion
tossed in it, now heaving itself up, and now sinking into the deep; now gaining
palpability, and now losing it. Jasper's self-absorption in his nephew when he
was alive, and his unceasing pursuit of the inquiry how he came by his death,
if he were dead, were themes so rife in the place, that no one appeared able to
suspect the possibility of foul play at his hands. She had asked herself the
question, “Am I so wicked in my thoughts as to conceive a wickedness that
others cannot imagine?” Then she had considered, Did the suspicion come of her
previous recoiling from him before the fact? And if so, was not that a proof of
its baselessness? Then she had reflected, “What motive could he have, according
to my accusation?” She was ashamed to answer in her mind, “The motive of
gaining ME!” And covered her face, as if the lightest shadow of the idea of
founding murder on such an idle vanity were a crime almost as great.

 

  She ran over in her mind again, all that
he had said by the sundial in the garden. He had persisted in treating the
disappearance as murder, consistently with his whole public course since the
finding of the watch and shirt-pin. If he were afraid of the crime being traced
out, would he not rather encourage the idea of a voluntary disappearance? He
had even declared that if the ties between him and his nephew had been less
strong, he might have swept “even him” away from her side. Was that like his
having really done so? He had spoken of laying his six months” labours in the
cause of a just vengeance at her feet. Would he have done that, with that
violence of passion, if they were a pretence? Would he have ranged them with
his desolate heart and soul, his wasted life, his peace and his despair? The
very first sacrifice that he represented himself as making for her, was his
fidelity to his dear boy after death. Surely these facts were strong against a
fancy that scarcely dared to hint itself. And yet he was so terrible a man! In
short, the poor girl (for what could she know of the criminal intellect, which
its own professed students perpetually misread, because they persist in trying
to reconcile it with the average intellect of average men, instead of
identifying it as a horrible wonder apart) could get by no road to any other
conclusion than that he WAS a terrible man, and must be fled from.

 

  She had been Helena's stay and comfort
during the whole time. She had constantly assured her of her full belief in her
brother's innocence, and of her sympathy with him in his misery. But she had
never seen him since the disappearance, nor had Helena ever spoken one word of
his avowal to Mr. Crisparkle in regard of Rosa, though as a part of the
interest of the case it was well known far and wide. He was Helena's
unfortunate brother, to her, and nothing more. The assurance she had given her
odious suitor was strictly true, though it would have been better (she
considered now) if she could have restrained herself from so giving it. Afraid
of him as the bright and delicate little creature was, her spirit swelled at
the thought of his knowing it from her own lips.