The Mystery of Edwin Drood (62 page)

 

  The bright, frosty day declined as they
walked and spoke together. The sun dipped in the river far behind them, and the
old city lay red before them, as their walk drew to a close. The moaning water
cast its seaweed duskily at their feet, when they turned to leave its margin;
and the rooks hovered above them with hoarse cries, darker splashes in the
darkening air.

 

  “I will prepare Jack for my flitting
soon,” said Edwin, in a low voice, “and I will but see your guardian when he
comes, and then go before they speak together. It will be better done without
my being by. Don't you think so?”

 

  “Yes.”

 

  “We know we have done right, Rosa?”

 

  “Yes.”

 

  “We know we are better so, even now?”

 

  “And shall be far, far better so by-and-by.”

 

  Still there was that lingering
tenderness in their hearts towards the old positions they were relinquishing,
that they prolonged their parting. When they came among the elm-trees by the
Cathedral, where they had last sat together, they stopped as by consent, and
Rosa raised her face to his, as she had never raised it in the old days;—for
they were old already.

 

  “God bless you, dear! Good-bye!”

 

  “God bless you, dear! Good-bye!”

 

  They kissed each other fervently.

 

  “Now, please take me home, Eddy, and let
me be by myself.”

 

  “Don't look round, Rosa,” he cautioned
her, as he drew her arm through his, and led her away. “Didn't you see Jack?”

 

  “No! Where?”

 

  “Under the trees. He saw us, as we took
leave of each other. Poor fellow! he little thinks we have parted. This will be
a blow to him, I am much afraid!”

 

  She hurried on, without resting, and
hurried on until they had passed under the gatehouse into the street; once
there, she asked:

 

  “Has he followed us? You can look
without seeming to. Is he behind?”

 

  “No. Yes, he is! He has just passed out
under the gateway. The dear, sympathetic old fellow likes to keep us in sight.
I am afraid he will be bitterly disappointed!”

 

  She pulled hurriedly at the handle of
the hoarse old bell, and the gate soon opened. Before going in, she gave him
one last, wide, wondering look, as if she would have asked him with imploring
emphasis: “O! don't you understand?” And out of that look he vanished from her
view.

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER XIV—WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN?

 

   

 

  CHRISTMAS EVE in Cloisterham. A few
strange faces in the streets; a few other faces, half strange and half
familiar, once the faces of Cloisterham children, now the faces of men and
women who come back from the outer world at long intervals to find the city
wonderfully shrunken in size, as if it had not washed by any means well in the
meanwhile. To these, the striking of the Cathedral clock, and the cawing of the
rooks from the Cathedral tower, are like voices of their nursery time. To such
as these, it has happened in their dying hours afar off, that they have
imagined their chamber-floor to be strewn with the autumnal leaves fallen from
the elm-trees in the Close: so have the rustling sounds and fresh scents of
their earliest impressions revived when the circle of their lives was very
nearly traced, and the beginning and the end were drawing close together.

 

  Seasonable tokens are about. Red berries
shine here and there in the lattices of Minor Canon Corner; Mr. and Mrs. Tope
are daintily sticking sprigs of holly into the carvings and sconces of the
Cathedral stalls, as if they were sticking them into the coatbutton-holes of
the Dean and Chapter. Lavish profusion is in the shops: particularly in the articles
of currants, raisins, spices, candied peel, and moist sugar. An unusual air of gallantry
and dissipation is abroad; evinced in an immense bunch of mistletoe hanging in
the greengrocer's shop doorway, and a poor little Twelfth Cake, culminating in
the figure of a Harlequin—such a very poor little Twelfth Cake, that one would
rather called it a Twenty-fourth Cake or a Forty-eighth Cake—to be raffled for
at the pastrycook's, terms one shilling per member. Public amusements are not
wanting. The Wax-Work which made so deep an impression on the reflective mind
of the Emperor of China is to be seen by particular desire during Christmas
Week only, on the premises of the bankrupt livery-stable-keeper up the lane;
and a new grand comic Christmas pantomime is to be produced at the Theatre: the
latter heralded by the portrait of Signor Jacksonini the clown, saying “How do
you do to-morrow?” quite as large as life, and almost as miserably. In short,
Cloisterham is up and doing: though from this description the High School and
Miss Twinkleton's are to be excluded. From the former establishment the scholars
have gone home, every one of them in love with one of Miss Twinkleton's young
ladies (who knows nothing about it); and only the handmaidens flutter
occasionally in the windows of the latter. It is noticed, by the bye, that
these damsels become, within the limits of decorum, more skittish when thus
intrusted with the concrete representation of their sex, than when dividing the
representation with Miss Twinkleton's young ladies.

 

  Three are to meet at the gatehouse
to-night. How does each one of the three get through the day?

 

   

 

  Neville Landless, though absolved from
his books for the time by Mr. Crisparkle—whose fresh nature is by no means
insensible to the charms of a holiday—reads and writes in his quiet room, with
a concentrated air, until it is two hours past noon. He then sets himself to
clearing his table, to arranging his books, and to tearing up and burning his
stray papers. He makes a clean sweep of all untidy accumulations, puts all his
drawers in order, and leaves no note or scrap of paper undestroyed, save such
memoranda as bear directly on his studies. This done, he turns to his wardrobe,
selects a few articles of ordinary wear—among them, change of stout shoes and
socks for walking—and packs these in a knapsack. This knapsack is new, and he bought
it in the High Street yesterday. He also purchased, at the same time and at the
same place, a heavy walking-stick; strong in the handle for the grip of the
hand, and iron-shod. He tries this, swings it, poises it, and lays it by, with
the knapsack, on a window-seat. By this time his arrangements are complete.

 

  He dresses for going out, and is in the
act of going—indeed has left his room, and has met the Minor Canon on the
staircase, coming out of his bedroom upon the same story—when he turns back
again for his walking-stick, thinking he will carry it now. Mr. Crisparkle, who
has paused on the staircase, sees it in his hand on his immediately
reappearing, takes it from him, and asks him with a smile how he chooses a
stick?

 

  “Really I don't know that I understand
the subject,” he answers. “I chose it for its weight.”

 

  “Much too heavy, Neville; MUCH too
heavy.”

 

  “To rest upon in a long walk, sir?”

 

  “Rest upon?” repeats Mr. Crisparkle,
throwing himself into pedestrian form. “You don't rest upon it; you merely balance
with it.”

 

  “I shall know better, with practice,
sir. I have not lived in a walking country, you know.”

 

  “True,” says Mr. Crisparkle. “Get into a
little training, and we will have a few score miles together. I should leave
you nowhere now. Do you come back before dinner?”

 

  “I think not, as we dine early.”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle gives him a bright nod
and a cheerful good-bye; expressing (not without intention) absolute confidence
and ease

 

  Neville repairs to the Nuns' House, and
requests that Miss Landless may be informed that her brother is there, by
appointment. He waits at the gate, not even crossing the threshold; for he is
on his parole not to put himself in Rosa's way.

 

  His sister is at least as mindful of the
obligation they have taken on themselves as he can be, and loses not a moment
in joining him. They meet affectionately, avoid lingering there, and walk
towards the upper inland country.

 

  “I am not going to tread upon forbidden
ground, Helena,” says Neville, when they have walked some distance and are
turning; “you will understand in another moment that I cannot help referring
to—what shall I say?—my infatuation.”

 

  “Had you not better avoid it, Neville?
You know that I can hear nothing.”

 

  “You can hear, my dear, what Mr.
Crisparkle has heard, and heard with approval.”

 

  “Yes; I can hear so much.”

 

  “Well, it is this. I am not only
unsettled and unhappy myself, but I am conscious of unsettling and interfering
with other people. How do I know that, but for my unfortunate presence, you,
and—and—the rest of that former party, our engaging guardian excepted, might be
dining cheerfully in Minor Canon Corner to-morrow? Indeed it probably would be
so. I can see too well that I am not high in the old lady's opinion, and it is
easy to understand what an irksome clog I must be upon the hospitalities of her
orderly house—especially at this time of year—when I must be kept asunder from
this person, and there is such a reason for my not being brought into contact
with that person, and an unfavourable reputation has preceded me with such
another person; and so on. I have put this very gently to Mr. Crisparkle, for
you know his selfdenying ways; but still I have put it. What I have laid much
greater stress upon at the same time is, that I am engaged in a miserable
struggle with myself, and that a little change and absence may enable me to
come through it the better. So, the weather being bright and hard, I am going
on a walking expedition, and intend taking myself out of everybody's way (my
own included, I hope) to-morrow morning.”

 

  “When to come back?”

 

  “In a fortnight.”

 

  “And going quite alone?”

 

  “I am much better without company, even
if there were any one but you to bear me company, my dear Helena.”

 

  “Mr. Crisparkle entirely agrees, you
say?”

 

  “Entirely. I am not sure but that at
first he was inclined to think it rather a moody scheme, and one that might do
a brooding mind harm. But we took a moonlight walk last Monday night, to talk
it over at leisure, and I represented the case to him as it really is. I showed
him that I do want to conquer myself, and that, this evening well got over, it
is surely better that I should be away from here just now, than here. I could
hardly help meeting certain people walking together here, and that could do no
good, and is certainly not the way to forget. A fortnight hence, that chance
will probably be over, for the time; and when it again arises for the last
time, why, I can again go away. Farther, I really do feel hopeful of bracing
exercise and wholesome fatigue. You know that Mr. Crisparkle allows such things
their full weight in the preservation of his own sound mind in his own sound
body, and that his just spirit is not likely to maintain one set of natural
laws for himself and another for me. He yielded to my view of the matter, when
convinced that I was honestly in earnest; and so, with his full consent, I
start to-morrow morning. Early enough to be not only out of the streets, but
out of hearing of the bells, when the good people go to church.”

 

  Helena thinks it over, and thinks well
of it. Mr. Crisparkle doing so, she would do so; but she does originally, out
of her own mind, think well of it, as a healthy project, denoting a sincere
endeavour and an active attempt at self-correction. She is inclined to pity
him, poor fellow, for going away solitary on the great Christmas festival; but
she feels it much more to the purpose to encourage him. And she does encourage
him.

 

  He will write to her?

 

  He will write to her every alternate
day, and tell her all his adventures.

 

  Does he send clothes on in advance of
him?

 

  “My dear Helena, no. Travel like a
pilgrim, with wallet and staff. My wallet—or my knapsack—is packed, and ready
for strapping on; and here is my staff!”

 

  He hands it to her; she makes the same
remark as Mr. Crisparkle, that it is very heavy; and gives it back to him,
asking what wood it is? Iron-wood.

 

  Up to this point he has been extremely
cheerful. Perhaps, the having to carry his case with her, and therefore to
present it in its brightest aspect, has roused his spirits. Perhaps, the having
done so with success, is followed by a revulsion. As the day closes in, and the
city-lights begin to spring up before them, he grows depressed.

 

  “I wish I were not going to this dinner,
Helena.”

 

  “Dear Neville, is it worth while to care
much about it? Think how soon it will be over.”

 

  “How soon it will be over!” he repeats
gloomily. “Yes. But I don't like it.”

 

  There may be a moment's awkwardness, she
cheeringly represents to him, but it can only last a moment. He is quite sure
of himself.

 

  “I wish I felt as sure of everything
else, as I feel of myself,” he answers her.

 

  “How strangely you speak, dear! What do
you mean?”

 

  “Helena, I don't know. I only know that
I don't like it. What a strange dead weight there is in the air!”

 

  She calls his attention to those
copperous clouds beyond the river, and says that the wind is rising. He
scarcely speaks again, until he takes leave of her, at the gate of the Nuns'
House. She does not immediately enter, when they have parted, but remains looking
after him along the street. Twice he passes the gatehouse, reluctant to enter.
At length, the Cathedral clock chiming one quarter, with a rapid turn he
hurries in.