The Mystery of Edwin Drood (9 page)

 

  The dinner was a most doleful breakdown.
The philanthropist deranged the symmetry of the table, sat himself in the way
of the waiting, blocked up the thoroughfare, and drove Mr. Tope (who assisted
the parlour-maid) to the verge of distraction by passing plates and dishes on,
over his own head. Nobody could talk to anybody, because he held forth to
everybody at once, as if the company had no individual existence, but were a
Meeting. He impounded the Reverend Mr. Septimus, as an official personage to be
addressed, or kind of human peg to hang his oratorical hat on, and fell into
the exasperating habit, common among such orators, of impersonating him as a
wicked and weak opponent. Thus, he would ask: “And will you, sir, now stultify
yourself by telling me”—and so forth, when the innocent man had not opened his
lips, nor meant to open them. Or he would say: “Now see, sir, to what a
position you are reduced. I will leave you no escape. After exhausting all the
resources of fraud and falsehood, during years upon years; after exhibiting a
combination of dastardly meanness with ensanguined daring, such as the world
has not often witnessed; you have now the hypocrisy to bend the knee before the
most degraded of mankind, and to sue and whine and howl for mercy!” Whereat the
unfortunate Minor Canon would look, in part indignant and in part perplexed;
while his worthy mother sat bridling, with tears in her eyes, and the remainder
of the party lapsed into a sort of gelatinous state, in which there was no
flavour or solidity, and very little resistance.

 

  But the gush of philanthropy that burst
forth when the departure of Mr. Honeythunder began to impend, must have been
highly gratifying to the feelings of that distinguished man. His coffee was
produced, by the special activity of Mr. Tope, a full hour before he wanted it.
Mr. Crisparkle sat with his watch in his hand for about the same period, lest
he should overstay his time. The four young people were unanimous in believing
that the Cathedral clock struck three-quarters, when it actually struck but
one. Miss Twinkleton estimated the distance to the omnibus at five-and-twenty
minutes” walk, when it was really five. The affectionate kindness of the whole
circle hustled him into his greatcoat, and shoved him out into the moonlight,
as if he were a fugitive traitor with whom they sympathised, and a troop of
horse were at the back door. Mr. Crisparkle and his new charge, who took him to
the omnibus, were so fervent in their apprehensions of his catching cold, that
they shut him up in it instantly and left him, with still half-an-hour to
spare.

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER VII—MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE

 

   

 

  “I KNOW very little of that gentleman,
sir,” said Neville to the Minor Canon as they turned back.

 

  “You know very little of your guardian?”
the Minor Canon repeated.

 

  “Almost nothing!”

 

  “How came he—”

 

  “To BE my guardian? I'll tell you, sir.
I suppose you know that we come (my sister and I) from Ceylon?”

 

  “Indeed, no.”

 

  “I wonder at that. We lived with a
stepfather there. Our mother died there, when we were little children. We have
had a wretched existence. She made him our guardian, and he was a miserly
wretch who grudged us food to eat, and clothes to wear. At his death, he passed
us over to this man; for no better reason that I know of, than his being a
friend or connexion of his, whose name was always in print and catching his
attention.”

 

  “That was lately, I suppose?”

 

  “Quite lately, sir. This stepfather of ours
was a cruel brute as well as a grinding one. It is well he died when he did, or
I might have killed him.”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle stopped short in the
moonlight and looked at his hopeful pupil in consternation.

 

  “I surprise you, sir?” he said, with a
quick change to a submissive manner.

 

  “You shock me; unspeakably shock me.”

 

  The pupil hung his head for a little
while, as they walked on, and then said: “You never saw him beat your sister. I
have seen him beat mine, more than once or twice, and I never forgot it.”

 

  “Nothing,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “not
even a beloved and beautiful sister's tears under dastardly ill-usage;” he
became less severe, in spite of himself, as his indignation rose; “could
justify those horrible expressions that you used.”

 

  “I am sorry I used them, and especially
to you, sir. I beg to recall them. But permit me to set you right on one point.
You spoke of my sister's tears. My sister would have let him tear her to
pieces, before she would have let him believe that he could make her shed a
tear.”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle reviewed those mental
notes of his, and was neither at all surprised to hear it, nor at all disposed
to question it.

 

  “Perhaps you will think it strange,
sir,”—this was said in a hesitating voice—“that I should so soon ask you to
allow me to confide in you, and to have the kindness to hear a word or two from
me in my defence?”

 

  “Defence?” Mr. Crisparkle repeated. “You
are not on your defence, Mr. Neville.”

 

  “I think I am, sir. At least I know I
should be, if you were better acquainted with my character.”

 

  “Well, Mr. Neville,” was the rejoinder.
“What if you leave me to find it out?”

 

  “Since it is your pleasure, sir,”
answered the young man, with a quick change in his manner to sullen
disappointment: “since it is your pleasure to check me in my impulse, I must
submit.”

 

  There was that in the tone of this short
speech which made the conscientious man to whom it was addressed uneasy. It
hinted to him that he might, without meaning it, turn aside a trustfulness
beneficial to a mis-shapen young mind and perhaps to his own power of directing
and improving it. They were within sight of the lights in his windows, and he
stopped.

 

  “Let us turn back and take a turn or two
up and down, Mr. Neville, or you may not have time to finish what you wish to
say to me. You are hasty in thinking that I mean to check you. Quite the
contrary. I invite your confidence.”

 

  “You have invited it, sir, without
knowing it, ever since I came here. I say “ever since,” as if I had been here a
week. The truth is, we came here (my sister and I) to quarrel with you, and
affront you, and break away again.”

 

  “Really?” said Mr. Crisparkle, at a dead
loss for anything else to say.

 

  “You see, we could not know what you
were beforehand, sir; could we?”

 

  “Clearly not,” said Mr. Crisparkle.

 

  “And having liked no one else with whom
we have ever been brought into contact, we had made up our minds not to like
you.”

 

  “Really?” said Mr. Crisparkle again.

 

  “But we do like you, sir, and we see an
unmistakable difference between your house and your reception of us, and
anything else we have ever known. This—and my happening to be alone with
you—and everything around us seeming so quiet and peaceful after Mr.
Honeythunder's departure—and Cloisterham being so old and grave and beautiful,
with the moon shining on it—these things inclined me to open my heart.”

 

  “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!”