Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0055/00553.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 20KB | 442 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00553}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Mystery Of Edwin Drood, The
Chapter VII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{sir
crisparkle
am
never
little
neville
without
helena
rosa
sister}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Mystery Of Edwin Drood, The
Author:      Dickens, Charles

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,' with 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 to 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 endeavors!'

     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 ill-nature, 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?' 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 drawing-
room, 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 shieked out, with her hands
over her eyes: 'I can't bear this!  I am frightened!  Take me away!'

     With one swift turn of her lithe figure, Helena laid the little beauty on
a sofa, as if she had never caught her up.  Then, on one knee beside her, and
with one hand upon her rosy mouth, while with the other she appealed to all
the rest, Helena said to them: 'It's nothing; it's all over; don't speak to
her for one minute, and she is well!'

     Jasper's hands had, in the same instant, lifted themselves from the
keys, and were now poised above them, as though he waited to resume.  In
that attitude he yet sat quiet: not even looking round, when all the rest
had changed their places and were reassuring one another.

     'Pussy's not used to an audience; that's the fact,' said Edwin Drood.
'She got nervous, and couldn't hold out.  Besides, Jack, you are such a
conscientious master, and require so much, that I believe you make her
afraid of you.  No wonder.'

     'No wonder,' repeated Helena.

     'There, Jack, you hear!  You would be afraid of him, under similar
circumstances, wouldn't you, Miss Landless?'

     'Not under any circumstances,' returned Helena.

     Jasper brought down his hands, looked over his shoulder, and begged
to thank Miss Landless for her vindication of his character.  Then he fell
to dumbly playing, without striking the notes, while his little pupil was
taken to an open window for air, and was otherwise petted and restored.
When she was brought back, his place was empty.  'Jack's gone, Pussy,'
Edwin told her.  'I am more than half afraid he didn't like to be charged
with being the Monster who had frightened you.' But she answered never a
word, and shivered, as if they had made her a little too cold.

     Miss Twinkleton now opining that indeed these were late hours, Mrs.
Crisparkle, for finding ourselves outside the walls of the Nuns' House,
and that we who undertook the formation of the future wives and mothers of
England (the last words in a lower voice, as requiring to be communicated
in confidence) were really bound (voice coming up again) to set a better
example than one of rakish habits, wrappers were put in requisition, and
the two young cavaliers volunteered to see the ladies home.  It was soon
done, and the gate of the Nuns' House closed upon them.

     The boarders had retired, and only Mrs. Tisher in solitary vigil
awaited the new pupil.  Her bedroom being within Rosa's, very little
introduction or explanation was necessary, before she was placed in charge
of her new friend, and left for the night.

     'This is a blessed relief, my dear,' said Helena.  'I have been
dreading all day, that I should be brought to bay at this time.'

     'There are not many of us,' returned Rosa, 'and we are good-natured
girls; at least the others are; I can answer for them.'

     'I can answer for you,' laughed Helena, searching the lovely little
face with her dark, fiery eyes, and tenderly caressing the small figure.
'You will be a friend to me, won't you?'

     'I hope so.  But the idea of my being a friend to you seems too
absurd, though.'

     'Why?'

     'O, I am such a mite of a thing, and you are so womanly and handsome.
You seem to have resolution and power enough to crush me.  I shrink into
nothing by the side of your presence even.'

     'I am a neglected creature, my dear, unacquainted with all
accomplishment, sensitively conscious that I have everything to learn, and
deeply ashamed to own my ignorance.'

     'And yet you acknowledge everything to me!' said Rosa.

     'My pretty one, can I help it?  There is a fascination in you'

     'O!  is there though?' pouted Rosa, half in jest and half in earnest.
'What a pity Master Eddy doesn't feel it more!'

     Of course her relations towards that young gentleman had been already
imparted in Minor Canon Corner.

     'Why, surely he must love you with all his heart!' cried Helena, with
an earnestness that threatened to blaze into ferocity if he didn't.

     'Eh?  O, well, I suppose he does,' said Rosa, pouting again; 'I am
sure I have no right to say he doesn't.  Perhaps it's my fault.  Perhaps I
am not as nice to him as I ought to be.  I don't think I am.  But it is so
ridiculous!'

     Helena's eyes demanded what was.

     'We are,' said Rosa, answering as if she had spoken.  'We are such a
ridiculous couple.  And we are always quarrelling.'

     'Why?'

     'Because we both know we are ridiculous, my dear!' Rosa gave that
answer as if it were the most conclusive answer in the world.

     Helena's masterful look was intent upon her face for a few moments,
and then she impulsively put out both her hands and said:

     'You will be my friend and help me?'

     'Indeed, my dear, I will,' replied Rosa, in a tone of affectionate
childishness that went straight and true to her heart; 'I will be as good
a friend as such a mite of a thing can be to such a noble creature as you.
And be a friend to me, please; I don't understand myself: and I want a
friend who can understand me, very much indeed.'

     Helena Landless kissed her, and retaining both her hands said:

     'Who is Mr. Jasper?'

     Rosa turned aside her head in answering: 'Eddy's uncle, and my music-
master.'

     'You do not love him?'

     'Ugh!' She put her hands up to her face, and shook with fear or horror.

     'You know that he loves you?'

     'O, don't, don't, don't!' cried Rosa, dropping on her knees, and clinging
to her new resource.  'Don't tell me of it!  He terrifies me.  He haunts my
thoughts, like a dreadful ghost.  I feel that I am never safe from him.  I
feel as if he could pass in through the wall when he is spoken of.' She
actually did look round, as if she dreaded to see him standing in the shadow
behind her.

     'Try to tell me more about it, darling.'

     'Yes, I will, I will.  Because you are so strong.  But hold me the while,
and stay with me afterwards.'

     'My child!  You speak as if he had threatened you in some dark way.'

     'He has never spoken to me about - that.  Never.'

     'What has he done?'

     'He has made a slave of me with his looks.  He has forced me to
understand him, without his saying a word; and he has forced me to keep
silence, without his saying a word; and he has forced me to keep silence,
without his uttering a threat.  When I play, he never moves his eyes from my
hands.  When I sing, he never moves his eyes from my lips.  When he corrects
me, and strikes a note, or a chord, or plays a passage, he himself is in the
sounds, whispering that he pursues me as a lover, and commanding me to keep
his secret.  I avoid his eyes, but he forces me to see them without looking at
them.  Even when a glaze comes over them (which is sometimes the case), and he
seems to wander away into a frightful sort of dream in which he threatens
most, he obliges me to know it, and to know that he is sitting close at my
side, more terrible to me than ever.'

     'What is this imagined threatening, pretty one?  What is threatened?'

     'I don't know.  I have never even dared to think or wonder what it is.'

     'And was this all, to-night?'

     'This was all; except that to-night when he watched my lips so closely as
I was singing, besides feeling terrified I felt ashamed and passionately hurt.
It was as if he kissed me, and I couldn't bear it, but cried out.  You must
never breathe this to any one.  Eddy is devoted to him.  But you said to-night
that you would not be afraid of him, under any circumstances, and that gives
me - who am so much afraid of him - courage to tell only you.  Hold me!  Stay
with me!  I am too frightened to be left by myself.'

     The lustrous gipsy-face drooped over the clinging arms and bosom, and the
wild black hair fell down protectingly over the childish form.  There was a
slumbering gleam of fire in the intense dark eyes, though they were then
softened with compassion and admiration.  Let whomsoever it most concerned
look well to it!