--- /dev/null
+
+
+ THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD
+
+
+ [Picture: Rochester castle]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I—THE DAWN
+
+
+An ancient English Cathedral Tower? How can the ancient English
+Cathedral tower be here! The well-known massive gray square tower of its
+old Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty iron in
+the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect.
+What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe it is
+set up by the Sultan’s orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish
+robbers, one by one. It is so, for cymbals clash, and the Sultan goes by
+to his palace in long procession. Ten thousand scimitars flash in the
+sunlight, and thrice ten thousand dancing-girls strew flowers. Then,
+follow white elephants caparisoned in countless gorgeous colours, and
+infinite in number and attendants. Still the Cathedral Tower rises in
+the background, where it cannot be, and still no writhing figure is on
+the grim spike. Stay! Is the spike so low a thing as the rusty spike on
+the top of a post of an old bedstead that has tumbled all awry? Some
+vague period of drowsy laughter must be devoted to the consideration of
+this possibility.
+
+Shaking from head to foot, the man whose scattered consciousness has thus
+fantastically pieced itself together, at length rises, supports his
+trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He is in the meanest
+and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged window-curtain, the light
+of early day steals in from a miserable court. He lies, dressed, across
+a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed given way under the
+weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and also across the bed, not
+longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman. The two first
+are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to
+kindle it. And as she blows, and shading it with her lean hand,
+concentrates its red spark of light, it serves in the dim morning as a
+lamp to show him what he sees of her.
+
+‘Another?’ says this woman, in a querulous, rattling whisper. ‘Have
+another?’
+
+He looks about him, with his hand to his forehead.
+
+‘Ye’ve smoked as many as five since ye come in at midnight,’ the woman
+goes on, as she chronically complains. ‘Poor me, poor me, my head is so
+bad. Them two come in after ye. Ah, poor me, the business is slack, is
+slack! Few Chinamen about the Docks, and fewer Lascars, and no ships
+coming in, these say! Here’s another ready for ye, deary. Ye’ll
+remember like a good soul, won’t ye, that the market price is dreffle
+high just now? More nor three shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful!
+And ye’ll remember that nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t’other side the
+court; but he can’t do it as well as me) has the true secret of mixing
+it? Ye’ll pay up accordingly, deary, won’t ye?’
+
+She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, occasionally bubbling at it,
+inhales much of its contents.
+
+‘O me, O me, my lungs is weak, my lungs is bad! It’s nearly ready for
+ye, deary. Ah, poor me, poor me, my poor hand shakes like to drop off!
+I see ye coming-to, and I ses to my poor self, “I’ll have another ready
+for him, and he’ll bear in mind the market price of opium, and pay
+according.” O my poor head! I makes my pipes of old penny ink-bottles,
+ye see, deary—this is one—and I fits-in a mouthpiece, this way, and I
+takes my mixter out of this thimble with this little horn spoon; and so I
+fills, deary. Ah, my poor nerves! I got Heavens-hard drunk for sixteen
+year afore I took to this; but this don’t hurt me, not to speak of. And
+it takes away the hunger as well as wittles, deary.’
+
+She hands him the nearly-emptied pipe, and sinks back, turning over on
+her face.
+
+He rises unsteadily from the bed, lays the pipe upon the hearth-stone,
+draws back the ragged curtain, and looks with repugnance at his three
+companions. He notices that the woman has opium-smoked herself into a
+strange likeness of the Chinaman. His form of cheek, eye, and temple,
+and his colour, are repeated in her. Said Chinaman convulsively wrestles
+with one of his many Gods or Devils, perhaps, and snarls horribly. The
+Lascar laughs and dribbles at the mouth. The hostess is still.
+
+ [Picture: In the Court]
+
+‘What visions can _she_ have?’ the waking man muses, as he turns her face
+towards him, and stands looking down at it. ‘Visions of many butchers’
+shops, and public-houses, and much credit? Of an increase of hideous
+customers, and this horrible bedstead set upright again, and this
+horrible court swept clean? What can she rise to, under any quantity of
+opium, higher than that!—Eh?’
+
+He bends down his ear, to listen to her mutterings.
+
+‘Unintelligible!’
+
+As he watches the spasmodic shoots and darts that break out of her face
+and limbs, like fitful lightning out of a dark sky, some contagion in
+them seizes upon him: insomuch that he has to withdraw himself to a lean
+arm-chair by the hearth—placed there, perhaps, for such emergencies—and
+to sit in it, holding tight, until he has got the better of this unclean
+spirit of imitation.
+
+Then he comes back, pounces on the Chinaman, and seizing him with both
+hands by the throat, turns him violently on the bed. The Chinaman
+clutches the aggressive hands, resists, gasps, and protests.
+
+‘What do you say?’
+
+A watchful pause.
+
+‘Unintelligible!’
+
+Slowly loosening his grasp as he listens to the incoherent jargon with an
+attentive frown, he turns to the Lascar and fairly drags him forth upon
+the floor. As he falls, the Lascar starts into a half-risen attitude,
+glares with his eyes, lashes about him fiercely with his arms, and draws
+a phantom knife. It then becomes apparent that the woman has taken
+possession of this knife, for safety’s sake; for, she too starting up,
+and restraining and expostulating with him, the knife is visible in her
+dress, not in his, when they drowsily drop back, side by side.
+
+There has been chattering and clattering enough between them, but to no
+purpose. When any distinct word has been flung into the air, it has had
+no sense or sequence. Wherefore ‘unintelligible!’ is again the comment
+of the watcher, made with some reassured nodding of his head, and a
+gloomy smile. He then lays certain silver money on the table, finds his
+hat, gropes his way down the broken stairs, gives a good morning to some
+rat-ridden doorkeeper, in bed in a black hutch beneath the stairs, and
+passes out.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+That same afternoon, the massive gray square tower of an old Cathedral
+rises before the sight of a jaded traveller. The bells are going for
+daily vesper service, and he must needs attend it, one would say, from
+his haste to reach the open Cathedral door. The choir are getting on
+their sullied white robes, in a hurry, when he arrives among them, gets
+on his own robe, and falls into the procession filing in to service.
+Then, the Sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divide the sanctuary
+from the chancel, and all of the procession having scuttled into their
+places, hide their faces; and then the intoned words, ‘WHEN THE WICKED
+MAN—’ rise among groins of arches and beams of roof, awakening muttered
+thunder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II—A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO
+
+
+Whosoever has observed that sedate and clerical bird, the rook, may
+perhaps have noticed that when he wings his way homeward towards
+nightfall, in a sedate and clerical company, two rooks will suddenly
+detach themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight for some
+distance, and will there poise and linger; conveying to mere men the
+fancy that it is of some occult importance to the body politic, that this
+artful couple should pretend to have renounced connection with it.
+
+Similarly, service being over in the old Cathedral with the square tower,
+and the choir scuffling out again, and divers venerable persons of
+rook-like aspect dispersing, two of these latter retrace their steps, and
+walk together in the echoing Close.
+
+Not only is the day waning, but the year. The low sun is fiery and yet
+cold behind the monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the Cathedral
+wall has showered half its deep-red leaves down on the pavement. There
+has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes among the little
+pools on the cracked, uneven flag-stones, and through the giant elm-trees
+as they shed a gust of tears. Their fallen leaves lie strewn thickly
+about. Some of these leaves, in a timid rush, seek sanctuary within the
+low arched Cathedral door; but two men coming out resist them, and cast
+them forth again with their feet; this done, one of the two locks the
+door with a goodly key, and the other flits away with a folio music-book.
+
+‘Mr. Jasper was that, Tope?’
+
+‘Yes, Mr. Dean.’
+
+‘He has stayed late.’
+
+‘Yes, Mr. Dean. I have stayed for him, your Reverence. He has been took
+a little poorly.’
+
+‘Say “taken,” Tope—to the Dean,’ the younger rook interposes in a low
+tone with this touch of correction, as who should say: ‘You may offer bad
+grammar to the laity, or the humbler clergy, not to the Dean.’
+
+Mr. Tope, Chief Verger and Showman, and accustomed to be high with
+excursion parties, declines with a silent loftiness to perceive that any
+suggestion has been tendered to him.
+
+‘And when and how has Mr. Jasper been taken—for, as Mr. Crisparkle has
+remarked, it is better to say taken—taken—’ repeats the Dean; ‘when and
+how has Mr. Jasper been Taken—’
+
+‘Taken, sir,’ Tope deferentially murmurs.
+
+‘—Poorly, Tope?’
+
+‘Why, sir, Mr. Jasper was that breathed—’
+
+‘I wouldn’t say “That breathed,” Tope,’ Mr. Crisparkle interposes with
+the same touch as before. ‘Not English—to the Dean.’
+
+‘Breathed to that extent,’ the Dean (not unflattered by this indirect
+homage) condescendingly remarks, ‘would be preferable.’
+
+‘Mr. Jasper’s breathing was so remarkably short’—thus discreetly does Mr.
+Tope work his way round the sunken rock—‘when he came in, that it
+distressed him mightily to get his notes out: which was perhaps the cause
+of his having a kind of fit on him after a little. His memory grew
+DAZED.’ Mr. Tope, with his eyes on the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle, shoots
+this word out, as defying him to improve upon it: ‘and a dimness and
+giddiness crept over him as strange as ever I saw: though he didn’t seem
+to mind it particularly, himself. However, a little time and a little
+water brought him out of his DAZE.’ Mr. Tope repeats the word and its
+emphasis, with the air of saying: ‘As I _have_ made a success, I’ll make
+it again.’
+
+‘And Mr. Jasper has gone home quite himself, has he?’ asked the Dean.
+
+‘Your Reverence, he has gone home quite himself. And I’m glad to see
+he’s having his fire kindled up, for it’s chilly after the wet, and the
+Cathedral had both a damp feel and a damp touch this afternoon, and he
+was very shivery.’
+
+They all three look towards an old stone gatehouse crossing the Close,
+with an arched thoroughfare passing beneath it. Through its latticed
+window, a fire shines out upon the fast-darkening scene, involving in
+shadow the pendent masses of ivy and creeper covering the building’s
+front. As the deep Cathedral-bell strikes the hour, a ripple of wind
+goes through these at their distance, like a ripple of the solemn sound
+that hums through tomb and tower, broken niche and defaced statue, in the
+pile close at hand.
+
+‘Is Mr. Jasper’s nephew with him?’ the Dean asks.
+
+‘No, sir,’ replied the Verger, ‘but expected. There’s his own solitary
+shadow betwixt his two windows—the one looking this way, and the one
+looking down into the High Street—drawing his own curtains now.’
+
+‘Well, well,’ says the Dean, with a sprightly air of breaking up the
+little conference, ‘I hope Mr. Jasper’s heart may not be too much set
+upon his nephew. Our affections, however laudable, in this transitory
+world, should never master us; we should guide them, guide them. I find
+I am not disagreeably reminded of my dinner, by hearing my dinner-bell.
+Perhaps, Mr. Crisparkle, you will, before going home, look in on Jasper?’
+
+‘Certainly, Mr. Dean. And tell him that you had the kindness to desire
+to know how he was?’
+
+‘Ay; do so, do so. Certainly. Wished to know how he was. By all means.
+Wished to know how he was.’
+
+With a pleasant air of patronage, the Dean as nearly cocks his quaint hat
+as a Dean in good spirits may, and directs his comely gaiters towards the
+ruddy dining-room of the snug old red-brick house where he is at present,
+‘in residence’ with Mrs. Dean and Miss Dean.
+
+Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, fair and rosy, and perpetually pitching
+himself head-foremost into all the deep running water in the surrounding
+country; Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, early riser, musical, classical,
+cheerful, kind, good-natured, social, contented, and boy-like; Mr.
+Crisparkle, Minor Canon and good man, lately ‘Coach’ upon the chief Pagan
+high roads, but since promoted by a patron (grateful for a well-taught
+son) to his present Christian beat; betakes himself to the gatehouse, on
+his way home to his early tea.
+
+‘Sorry to hear from Tope that you have not been well, Jasper.’
+
+‘O, it was nothing, nothing!’
+
+‘You look a little worn.’
+
+‘Do I? O, I don’t think so. What is better, I don’t feel so. Tope has
+made too much of it, I suspect. It’s his trade to make the most of
+everything appertaining to the Cathedral, you know.’
+
+‘I may tell the Dean—I call expressly from the Dean—that you are all
+right again?’
+
+The reply, with a slight smile, is: ‘Certainly; with my respects and
+thanks to the Dean.’
+
+‘I’m glad to hear that you expect young Drood.’
+
+‘I expect the dear fellow every moment.’
+
+‘Ah! He will do you more good than a doctor, Jasper.’
+
+‘More good than a dozen doctors. For I love him dearly, and I don’t love
+doctors, or doctors’ stuff.’
+
+Mr. Jasper is a dark man of some six-and-twenty, with thick, lustrous,
+well-arranged black hair and whiskers. He looks older than he is, as
+dark men often do. His voice is deep and good, his face and figure are
+good, his manner is a little sombre. His room is a little sombre, and
+may have had its influence in forming his manner. It is mostly in
+shadow. Even when the sun shines brilliantly, it seldom touches the
+grand piano in the recess, or the folio music-books on the stand, or the
+book-shelves on the wall, or the unfinished picture of a blooming
+schoolgirl hanging over the chimneypiece; her flowing brown hair tied
+with a blue riband, and her beauty remarkable for a quite childish,
+almost babyish, touch of saucy discontent, comically conscious of itself.
+(There is not the least artistic merit in this picture, which is a mere
+daub; but it is clear that the painter has made it humorously—one might
+almost say, revengefully—like the original.)
+
+‘We shall miss you, Jasper, at the “Alternate Musical Wednesdays”
+to-night; but no doubt you are best at home. Good-night. God bless you!
+“Tell me, shep-herds, te-e-ell me; tell me-e-e, have you seen (have you
+seen, have you seen, have you seen) my-y-y Flo-o-ora-a pass this way!”’
+Melodiously good Minor Canon the Reverend Septimus Crisparkle thus
+delivers himself, in musical rhythm, as he withdraws his amiable face
+from the doorway and conveys it down-stairs.
+
+Sounds of recognition and greeting pass between the Reverend Septimus and
+somebody else, at the stair-foot. Mr. Jasper listens, starts from his
+chair, and catches a young fellow in his arms, exclaiming:
+
+‘My dear Edwin!’
+
+‘My dear Jack! So glad to see you!’
+
+‘Get off your greatcoat, bright boy, and sit down here in your own
+corner. Your feet are not wet? Pull your boots off. Do pull your boots
+off.’
+
+‘My dear Jack, I am as dry as a bone. Don’t moddley-coddley, there’s a
+good fellow. I like anything better than being moddley-coddleyed.’
+
+With the check upon him of being unsympathetically restrained in a genial
+outburst of enthusiasm, Mr. Jasper stands still, and looks on intently at
+the young fellow, divesting himself of his outward coat, hat, gloves, and
+so forth. Once for all, a look of intentness and intensity—a look of
+hungry, exacting, watchful, and yet devoted affection—is always, now and
+ever afterwards, on the Jasper face whenever the Jasper face is addressed
+in this direction. And whenever it is so addressed, it is never, on this
+occasion or on any other, dividedly addressed; it is always concentrated.
+
+‘Now I am right, and now I’ll take my corner, Jack. Any dinner, Jack?’
+
+Mr. Jasper opens a door at the upper end of the room, and discloses a
+small inner room pleasantly lighted and prepared, wherein a comely dame
+is in the act of setting dishes on table.
+
+‘What a jolly old Jack it is!’ cries the young fellow, with a clap of his
+hands. ‘Look here, Jack; tell me; whose birthday is it?’
+
+‘Not yours, I know,’ Mr. Jasper answers, pausing to consider.
+
+‘Not mine, you know? No; not mine, _I_ know! Pussy’s!’
+
+Fixed as the look the young fellow meets, is, there is yet in it some
+strange power of suddenly including the sketch over the chimneypiece.
+
+‘Pussy’s, Jack! We must drink Many happy returns to her. Come, uncle;
+take your dutiful and sharp-set nephew in to dinner.’
+
+As the boy (for he is little more) lays a hand on Jasper’s shoulder,
+Jasper cordially and gaily lays a hand on _his_ shoulder, and so
+Marseillaise-wise they go in to dinner.
+
+‘And, Lord! here’s Mrs. Tope!’ cries the boy. ‘Lovelier than ever!’
+
+‘Never you mind me, Master Edwin,’ retorts the Verger’s wife; ‘I can take
+care of myself.’
+
+‘You can’t. You’re much too handsome. Give me a kiss because it’s
+Pussy’s birthday.’
+
+‘I’d Pussy you, young man, if I was Pussy, as you call her,’ Mrs. Tope
+blushingly retorts, after being saluted. ‘Your uncle’s too much wrapt up
+in you, that’s where it is. He makes so much of you, that it’s my
+opinion you think you’ve only to call your Pussys by the dozen, to make
+’em come.’
+
+‘You forget, Mrs. Tope,’ Mr. Jasper interposes, taking his place at the
+table with a genial smile, ‘and so do you, Ned, that Uncle and Nephew are
+words prohibited here by common consent and express agreement. For what
+we are going to receive His holy name be praised!’
+
+‘Done like the Dean! Witness, Edwin Drood! Please to carve, Jack, for I
+can’t.’
+
+This sally ushers in the dinner. Little to the present purpose, or to
+any purpose, is said, while it is in course of being disposed of. At
+length the cloth is drawn, and a dish of walnuts and a decanter of
+rich-coloured sherry are placed upon the table.
+
+‘I say! Tell me, Jack,’ the young fellow then flows on: ‘do you really
+and truly feel as if the mention of our relationship divided us at all?
+_I_ don’t.’
+
+‘Uncles as a rule, Ned, are so much older than their nephews,’ is the
+reply, ‘that I have that feeling instinctively.’
+
+‘As a rule! Ah, may-be! But what is a difference in age of half-a-dozen
+years or so? And some uncles, in large families, are even younger than
+their nephews. By George, I wish it was the case with us!’
+
+‘Why?’
+
+‘Because if it was, I’d take the lead with you, Jack, and be as wise as
+Begone, dull Care! that turned a young man gray, and Begone, dull Care!
+that turned an old man to clay.—Halloa, Jack! Don’t drink.’
+
+‘Why not?’
+
+‘Asks why not, on Pussy’s birthday, and no Happy returns proposed!
+Pussy, Jack, and many of ’em! Happy returns, I mean.’
+
+Laying an affectionate and laughing touch on the boy’s extended hand, as
+if it were at once his giddy head and his light heart, Mr. Jasper drinks
+the toast in silence.
+
+‘Hip, hip, hip, and nine times nine, and one to finish with, and all
+that, understood. Hooray, hooray, hooray!—And now, Jack, let’s have a
+little talk about Pussy. Two pairs of nut-crackers? Pass me one, and
+take the other.’ Crack. ‘How’s Pussy getting on Jack?’
+
+‘With her music? Fairly.’
+
+‘What a dreadfully conscientious fellow you are, Jack! But _I_ know,
+Lord bless you! Inattentive, isn’t she?’
+
+‘She can learn anything, if she will.’
+
+‘_If_ she will! Egad, that’s it. But if she won’t?’
+
+Crack!—on Mr. Jasper’s part.
+
+‘How’s she looking, Jack?’
+
+Mr. Jasper’s concentrated face again includes the portrait as he returns:
+‘Very like your sketch indeed.’
+
+‘I _am_ a little proud of it,’ says the young fellow, glancing up at the
+sketch with complacency, and then shutting one eye, and taking a
+corrected prospect of it over a level bridge of nut-crackers in the air:
+‘Not badly hit off from memory. But I ought to have caught that
+expression pretty well, for I have seen it often enough.’
+
+Crack!—on Edwin Drood’s part.
+
+Crack!—on Mr. Jasper’s part.
+
+‘In point of fact,’ the former resumes, after some silent dipping among
+his fragments of walnut with an air of pique, ‘I see it whenever I go to
+see Pussy. If I don’t find it on her face, I leave it there.—You know I
+do, Miss Scornful Pert. Booh!’ With a twirl of the nut-crackers at the
+portrait.
+
+Crack! crack! crack. Slowly, on Mr. Jasper’s part.
+
+Crack. Sharply on the part of Edwin Drood.
+
+Silence on both sides.
+
+‘Have you lost your tongue, Jack?’
+
+‘Have you found yours, Ned?’
+
+‘No, but really;—isn’t it, you know, after all—’
+
+Mr. Jasper lifts his dark eyebrows inquiringly.
+
+‘Isn’t it unsatisfactory to be cut off from choice in such a matter?
+There, Jack! I tell you! If I could choose, I would choose Pussy from
+all the pretty girls in the world.’
+
+‘But you have not got to choose.’
+
+‘That’s what I complain of. My dead and gone father and Pussy’s dead and
+gone father must needs marry us together by anticipation. Why the—Devil,
+I was going to say, if it had been respectful to their memory—couldn’t
+they leave us alone?’
+
+‘Tut, tut, dear boy,’ Mr. Jasper remonstrates, in a tone of gentle
+deprecation.
+
+‘Tut, tut? Yes, Jack, it’s all very well for _you_. _You_ can take it
+easily. _Your_ life is not laid down to scale, and lined and dotted out
+for you, like a surveyor’s plan. _You_ have no uncomfortable suspicion
+that you are forced upon anybody, nor has anybody an uncomfortable
+suspicion that she is forced upon you, or that you are forced upon her.
+_You_ can choose for yourself. Life, for _you_, is a plum with the
+natural bloom on; it hasn’t been over-carefully wiped off for _you_—’
+
+‘Don’t stop, dear fellow. Go on.’
+
+‘Can I anyhow have hurt your feelings, Jack?’
+
+‘How can you have hurt my feelings?’
+
+‘Good Heaven, Jack, you look frightfully ill! There’s a strange film
+come over your eyes.’
+
+Mr. Jasper, with a forced smile, stretches out his right hand, as if at
+once to disarm apprehension and gain time to get better. After a while
+he says faintly:
+
+‘I have been taking opium for a pain—an agony—that sometimes overcomes
+me. The effects of the medicine steal over me like a blight or a cloud,
+and pass. You see them in the act of passing; they will be gone
+directly. Look away from me. They will go all the sooner.’
+
+With a scared face the younger man complies by casting his eyes downward
+at the ashes on the hearth. Not relaxing his own gaze on the fire, but
+rather strengthening it with a fierce, firm grip upon his elbow-chair,
+the elder sits for a few moments rigid, and then, with thick drops
+standing on his forehead, and a sharp catch of his breath, becomes as he
+was before. On his so subsiding in his chair, his nephew gently and
+assiduously tends him while he quite recovers. When Jasper is restored,
+he lays a tender hand upon his nephew’s shoulder, and, in a tone of voice
+less troubled than the purport of his words—indeed with something of
+raillery or banter in it—thus addresses him:
+
+‘There is said to be a hidden skeleton in every house; but you thought
+there was none in mine, dear Ned.’
+
+‘Upon my life, Jack, I did think so. However, when I come to consider
+that even in Pussy’s house—if she had one—and in mine—if I had one—’
+
+‘You were going to say (but that I interrupted you in spite of myself)
+what a quiet life mine is. No whirl and uproar around me, no distracting
+commerce or calculation, no risk, no change of place, myself devoted to
+the art I pursue, my business my pleasure.’
+
+‘I really was going to say something of the kind, Jack; but you see, you,
+speaking of yourself, almost necessarily leave out much that I should
+have put in. For instance: I should have put in the foreground your
+being so much respected as Lay Precentor, or Lay Clerk, or whatever you
+call it, of this Cathedral; your enjoying the reputation of having done
+such wonders with the choir; your choosing your society, and holding such
+an independent position in this queer old place; your gift of teaching
+(why, even Pussy, who don’t like being taught, says there never was such
+a Master as you are!), and your connexion.’
+
+‘Yes; I saw what you were tending to. I hate it.’
+
+‘Hate it, Jack?’ (Much bewildered.)
+
+‘I hate it. The cramped monotony of my existence grinds me away by the
+grain. How does our service sound to you?’
+
+‘Beautiful! Quite celestial!’
+
+‘It often sounds to me quite devilish. I am so weary of it. The echoes
+of my own voice among the arches seem to mock me with my daily drudging
+round. No wretched monk who droned his life away in that gloomy place,
+before me, can have been more tired of it than I am. He could take for
+relief (and did take) to carving demons out of the stalls and seats and
+desks. What shall I do? Must I take to carving them out of my heart?’
+
+‘I thought you had so exactly found your niche in life, Jack,’ Edwin
+Drood returns, astonished, bending forward in his chair to lay a
+sympathetic hand on Jasper’s knee, and looking at him with an anxious
+face.
+
+‘I know you thought so. They all think so.’
+
+‘Well, I suppose they do,’ says Edwin, meditating aloud. ‘Pussy thinks
+so.’
+
+‘When did she tell you that?’
+
+‘The last time I was here. You remember when. Three months ago.’
+
+‘How did she phrase it?’
+
+‘O, she only said that she had become your pupil, and that you were made
+for your vocation.’
+
+The younger man glances at the portrait. The elder sees it in him.
+
+‘Anyhow, my dear Ned,’ Jasper resumes, as he shakes his head with a grave
+cheerfulness, ‘I must subdue myself to my vocation: which is much the
+same thing outwardly. It’s too late to find another now. This is a
+confidence between us.’
+
+‘It shall be sacredly preserved, Jack.’
+
+‘I have reposed it in you, because—’
+
+‘I feel it, I assure you. Because we are fast friends, and because you
+love and trust me, as I love and trust you. Both hands, Jack.’
+
+As each stands looking into the other’s eyes, and as the uncle holds the
+nephew’s hands, the uncle thus proceeds:
+
+‘You know now, don’t you, that even a poor monotonous chorister and
+grinder of music—in his niche—may be troubled with some stray sort of
+ambition, aspiration, restlessness, dissatisfaction, what shall we call
+it?’
+
+‘Yes, dear Jack.’
+
+‘And you will remember?’
+
+‘My dear Jack, I only ask you, am I likely to forget what you have said
+with so much feeling?’
+
+‘Take it as a warning, then.’
+
+In the act of having his hands released, and of moving a step back, Edwin
+pauses for an instant to consider the application of these last words.
+The instant over, he says, sensibly touched:
+
+‘I am afraid I am but a shallow, surface kind of fellow, Jack, and that
+my headpiece is none of the best. But I needn’t say I am young; and
+perhaps I shall not grow worse as I grow older. At all events, I hope I
+have something impressible within me, which feels—deeply feels—the
+disinterestedness of your painfully laying your inner self bare, as a
+warning to me.’
+
+Mr. Jasper’s steadiness of face and figure becomes so marvellous that his
+breathing seems to have stopped.
+
+‘I couldn’t fail to notice, Jack, that it cost you a great effort, and
+that you were very much moved, and very unlike your usual self. Of
+course I knew that you were extremely fond of me, but I really was not
+prepared for your, as I may say, sacrificing yourself to me in that way.’
+
+Mr. Jasper, becoming a breathing man again without the smallest stage of
+transition between the two extreme states, lifts his shoulders, laughs,
+and waves his right arm.
+
+‘No; don’t put the sentiment away, Jack; please don’t; for I am very much
+in earnest. I have no doubt that that unhealthy state of mind which you
+have so powerfully described is attended with some real suffering, and is
+hard to bear. But let me reassure you, Jack, as to the chances of its
+overcoming me. I don’t think I am in the way of it. In some few months
+less than another year, you know, I shall carry Pussy off from school as
+Mrs. Edwin Drood. I shall then go engineering into the East, and Pussy
+with me. And although we have our little tiffs now, arising out of a
+certain unavoidable flatness that attends our love-making, owing to its
+end being all settled beforehand, still I have no doubt of our getting on
+capitally then, when it’s done and can’t be helped. In short, Jack, to
+go back to the old song I was freely quoting at dinner (and who knows old
+songs better than you?), my wife shall dance, and I will sing, so merrily
+pass the day. Of Pussy’s being beautiful there cannot be a doubt;—and
+when you are good besides, Little Miss Impudence,’ once more
+apostrophising the portrait, ‘I’ll burn your comic likeness, and paint
+your music-master another.’
+
+Mr. Jasper, with his hand to his chin, and with an expression of musing
+benevolence on his face, has attentively watched every animated look and
+gesture attending the delivery of these words. He remains in that
+attitude after they, are spoken, as if in a kind of fascination attendant
+on his strong interest in the youthful spirit that he loves so well.
+Then he says with a quiet smile:
+
+‘You won’t be warned, then?’
+
+‘No, Jack.’
+
+‘You can’t be warned, then?’
+
+‘No, Jack, not by you. Besides that I don’t really consider myself in
+danger, I don’t like your putting yourself in that position.’
+
+‘Shall we go and walk in the churchyard?’
+
+‘By all means. You won’t mind my slipping out of it for half a moment to
+the Nuns’ House, and leaving a parcel there? Only gloves for Pussy; as
+many pairs of gloves as she is years old to-day. Rather poetical, Jack?’
+
+Mr. Jasper, still in the same attitude, murmurs: ‘“Nothing half so sweet
+in life,” Ned!’
+
+‘Here’s the parcel in my greatcoat-pocket. They must be presented
+to-night, or the poetry is gone. It’s against regulations for me to call
+at night, but not to leave a packet. I am ready, Jack!’
+
+Mr. Jasper dissolves his attitude, and they go out together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III—THE NUNS’ HOUSE
+
+
+For sufficient reasons, which this narrative will itself unfold as it
+advances, a fictitious name must be bestowed upon the old Cathedral town.
+Let it stand in these pages as Cloisterham. It was once possibly known
+to the Druids by another name, and certainly to the Romans by another,
+and to the Saxons by another, and to the Normans by another; and a name
+more or less in the course of many centuries can be of little moment to
+its dusty chronicles.
+
+An ancient city, Cloisterham, and no meet dwelling-place for any one with
+hankerings after the noisy world. A monotonous, silent city, deriving an
+earthy flavour throughout from its Cathedral crypt, and so abounding in
+vestiges of monastic graves, that the Cloisterham children grow small
+salad in the dust of abbots and abbesses, and make dirt-pies of nuns and
+friars; while every ploughman in its outlying fields renders to once
+puissant Lord Treasurers, Archbishops, Bishops, and such-like, the
+attention which the Ogre in the story-book desired to render to his
+unbidden visitor, and grinds their bones to make his bread.
+
+A drowsy city, Cloisterham, whose inhabitants seem to suppose, with an
+inconsistency more strange than rare, that all its changes lie behind it,
+and that there are no more to come. A queer moral to derive from
+antiquity, yet older than any traceable antiquity. So silent are the
+streets of Cloisterham (though prone to echo on the smallest
+provocation), that of a summer-day the sunblinds of its shops scarce dare
+to flap in the south wind; while the sun-browned tramps, who pass along
+and stare, quicken their limp a little, that they may the sooner get
+beyond the confines of its oppressive respectability. This is a feat not
+difficult of achievement, seeing that the streets of Cloisterham city are
+little more than one narrow street by which you get into it and get out
+of it: the rest being mostly disappointing yards with pumps in them and
+no thoroughfare—exception made of the Cathedral-close, and a paved Quaker
+settlement, in colour and general confirmation very like a Quakeress’s
+bonnet, up in a shady corner.
+
+In a word, a city of another and a bygone time is Cloisterham, with its
+hoarse Cathedral-bell, its hoarse rooks hovering about the Cathedral
+tower, its hoarser and less distinct rooks in the stalls far beneath.
+Fragments of old wall, saint’s chapel, chapter-house, convent and
+monastery, have got incongruously or obstructively built into many of its
+houses and gardens, much as kindred jumbled notions have become
+incorporated into many of its citizens’ minds. All things in it are of
+the past. Even its single pawnbroker takes in no pledges, nor has he for
+a long time, but offers vainly an unredeemed stock for sale, of which the
+costlier articles are dim and pale old watches apparently in a slow
+perspiration, tarnished sugar-tongs with ineffectual legs, and odd
+volumes of dismal books. The most abundant and the most agreeable
+evidences of progressing life in Cloisterham are the evidences of
+vegetable life in many gardens; even its drooping and despondent little
+theatre has its poor strip of garden, receiving the foul fiend, when he
+ducks from its stage into the infernal regions, among scarlet-beans or
+oyster-shells, according to the season of the year.
+
+In the midst of Cloisterham stands the Nuns’ House: a venerable brick
+edifice, whose present appellation is doubtless derived from the legend
+of its conventual uses. On the trim gate enclosing its old courtyard is
+a resplendent brass plate flashing forth the legend: ‘Seminary for Young
+Ladies. Miss Twinkleton.’ The house-front is so old and worn, and the
+brass plate is so shining and staring, that the general result has
+reminded imaginative strangers of a battered old beau with a large modern
+eye-glass stuck in his blind eye.
+
+Whether the nuns of yore, being of a submissive rather than a
+stiff-necked generation, habitually bent their contemplative heads to
+avoid collision with the beams in the low ceilings of the many chambers
+of their House; whether they sat in its long low windows telling their
+beads for their mortification, instead of making necklaces of them for
+their adornment; whether they were ever walled up alive in odd angles and
+jutting gables of the building for having some ineradicable leaven of
+busy mother Nature in them which has kept the fermenting world alive ever
+since; these may be matters of interest to its haunting ghosts (if any),
+but constitute no item in Miss Twinkleton’s half-yearly accounts. They
+are neither of Miss Twinkleton’s inclusive regulars, nor of her extras.
+The lady who undertakes the poetical department of the establishment at
+so much (or so little) a quarter has no pieces in her list of recitals
+bearing on such unprofitable questions.
+
+As, in some cases of drunkenness, and in others of animal magnetism,
+there are two states of consciousness which never clash, but each of
+which pursues its separate course as though it were continuous instead of
+broken (thus, if I hide my watch when I am drunk, I must be drunk again
+before I can remember where), so Miss Twinkleton has two distinct and
+separate phases of being. Every night, the moment the young ladies have
+retired to rest, does Miss Twinkleton smarten up her curls a little,
+brighten up her eyes a little, and become a sprightlier Miss Twinkleton
+than the young ladies have ever seen. Every night, at the same hour,
+does Miss Twinkleton resume the topics of the previous night,
+comprehending the tenderer scandal of Cloisterham, of which she has no
+knowledge whatever by day, and references to a certain season at
+Tunbridge Wells (airily called by Miss Twinkleton in this state of her
+existence ‘The Wells’), notably the season wherein a certain finished
+gentleman (compassionately called by Miss Twinkleton, in this stage of
+her existence, ‘Foolish Mr. Porters’) revealed a homage of the heart,
+whereof Miss Twinkleton, in her scholastic state of existence, is as
+ignorant as a granite pillar. Miss Twinkleton’s companion in both states
+of existence, and equally adaptable to either, is one Mrs. Tisher: a
+deferential widow with a weak back, a chronic sigh, and a suppressed
+voice, who looks after the young ladies’ wardrobes, and leads them to
+infer that she has seen better days. Perhaps this is the reason why it
+is an article of faith with the servants, handed down from race to race,
+that the departed Tisher was a hairdresser.
+
+The pet pupil of the Nuns’ House is Miss Rosa Bud, of course called
+Rosebud; wonderfully pretty, wonderfully childish, wonderfully whimsical.
+An awkward interest (awkward because romantic) attaches to Miss Bud in
+the minds of the young ladies, on account of its being known to them that
+a husband has been chosen for her by will and bequest, and that her
+guardian is bound down to bestow her on that husband when he comes of
+age. Miss Twinkleton, in her seminarial state of existence, has combated
+the romantic aspect of this destiny by affecting to shake her head over
+it behind Miss Bud’s dimpled shoulders, and to brood on the unhappy lot
+of that doomed little victim. But with no better effect—possibly some
+unfelt touch of foolish Mr. Porters has undermined the endeavour—than to
+evoke from the young ladies an unanimous bedchamber cry of ‘O, what a
+pretending old thing Miss Twinkleton is, my dear!’
+
+The Nuns’ House is never in such a state of flutter as when this allotted
+husband calls to see little Rosebud. (It is unanimously understood by
+the young ladies that he is lawfully entitled to this privilege, and that
+if Miss Twinkleton disputed it, she would be instantly taken up and
+transported.) When his ring at the gate-bell is expected, or takes
+place, every young lady who can, under any pretence, look out of window,
+looks out of window; while every young lady who is ‘practising,’
+practises out of time; and the French class becomes so demoralised that
+the mark goes round as briskly as the bottle at a convivial party in the
+last century.
+
+On the afternoon of the day next after the dinner of two at the
+gatehouse, the bell is rung with the usual fluttering results.
+
+‘Mr. Edwin Drood to see Miss Rosa.’
+
+This is the announcement of the parlour-maid in chief. Miss Twinkleton,
+with an exemplary air of melancholy on her, turns to the sacrifice, and
+says, ‘You may go down, my dear.’ Miss Bud goes down, followed by all
+eyes.
+
+Mr. Edwin Drood is waiting in Miss Twinkleton’s own parlour: a dainty
+room, with nothing more directly scholastic in it than a terrestrial and
+a celestial globe. These expressive machines imply (to parents and
+guardians) that even when Miss Twinkleton retires into the bosom of
+privacy, duty may at any moment compel her to become a sort of Wandering
+Jewess, scouring the earth and soaring through the skies in search of
+knowledge for her pupils.
+
+The last new maid, who has never seen the young gentleman Miss Rosa is
+engaged to, and who is making his acquaintance between the hinges of the
+open door, left open for the purpose, stumbles guiltily down the kitchen
+stairs, as a charming little apparition, with its face concealed by a
+little silk apron thrown over its head, glides into the parlour.
+
+‘O! _it is_ so ridiculous!’ says the apparition, stopping and shrinking.
+‘Don’t, Eddy!’
+
+‘Don’t what, Rosa?’
+
+‘Don’t come any nearer, please. It _is_ so absurd.’
+
+‘What is absurd, Rosa?’
+
+‘The whole thing is. It _is_ so absurd to be an engaged orphan and it
+_is_ so absurd to have the girls and the servants scuttling about after
+one, like mice in the wainscot; and it _is_ so absurd to be called upon!’
+
+The apparition appears to have a thumb in the corner of its mouth while
+making this complaint.
+
+‘You give me an affectionate reception, Pussy, I must say.’
+
+‘Well, I will in a minute, Eddy, but I can’t just yet. How are you?’
+(very shortly.)
+
+‘I am unable to reply that I am much the better for seeing you, Pussy,
+inasmuch as I see nothing of you.’
+
+This second remonstrance brings a dark, bright, pouting eye out from a
+corner of the apron; but it swiftly becomes invisible again, as the
+apparition exclaims: ‘O good gracious! you have had half your hair cut
+off!’
+
+‘I should have done better to have had my head cut off, I think,’ says
+Edwin, rumpling the hair in question, with a fierce glance at the
+looking-glass, and giving an impatient stamp. ‘Shall I go?’
+
+‘No; you needn’t go just yet, Eddy. The girls would all be asking
+questions why you went.’
+
+‘Once for all, Rosa, will you uncover that ridiculous little head of
+yours and give me a welcome?’
+
+The apron is pulled off the childish head, as its wearer replies: ‘You’re
+very welcome, Eddy. There! I’m sure that’s nice. Shake hands. No, I
+can’t kiss you, because I’ve got an acidulated drop in my mouth.’
+
+‘Are you at all glad to see me, Pussy?’
+
+‘O, yes, I’m dreadfully glad.—Go and sit down.—Miss Twinkleton.’
+
+It is the custom of that excellent lady when these visits occur, to
+appear every three minutes, either in her own person or in that of Mrs.
+Tisher, and lay an offering on the shrine of Propriety by affecting to
+look for some desiderated article. On the present occasion Miss
+Twinkleton, gracefully gliding in and out, says in passing: ‘How do you
+do, Mr. Drood? Very glad indeed to have the pleasure. Pray excuse me.
+Tweezers. Thank you!’
+
+‘I got the gloves last evening, Eddy, and I like them very much. They
+are beauties.’
+
+‘Well, that’s something,’ the affianced replies, half grumbling. ‘The
+smallest encouragement thankfully received. And how did you pass your
+birthday, Pussy?’
+
+‘Delightfully! Everybody gave me a present. And we had a feast. And we
+had a ball at night.’
+
+‘A feast and a ball, eh? These occasions seem to go off tolerably well
+without me, Pussy.’
+
+‘De-lightfully!’ cries Rosa, in a quite spontaneous manner, and without
+the least pretence of reserve.
+
+‘Hah! And what was the feast?’
+
+‘Tarts, oranges, jellies, and shrimps.’
+
+‘Any partners at the ball?’
+
+‘We danced with one another, of course, sir. But some of the girls made
+game to be their brothers. It _was_ so droll!’
+
+‘Did anybody make game to be—’
+
+‘To be you? O dear yes!’ cries Rosa, laughing with great enjoyment.
+‘That was the first thing done.’
+
+‘I hope she did it pretty well,’ says Edwin rather doubtfully.
+
+‘O, it was excellent!—I wouldn’t dance with you, you know.’
+
+Edwin scarcely seems to see the force of this; begs to know if he may
+take the liberty to ask why?
+
+‘Because I was so tired of you,’ returns Rosa. But she quickly adds, and
+pleadingly too, seeing displeasure in his face: ‘Dear Eddy, you were just
+as tired of me, you know.’
+
+‘Did I say so, Rosa?’
+
+‘Say so! Do you ever say so? No, you only showed it. O, she did it so
+well!’ cries Rosa, in a sudden ecstasy with her counterfeit betrothed.
+
+‘It strikes me that she must be a devilish impudent girl,’ says Edwin
+Drood. ‘And so, Pussy, you have passed your last birthday in this old
+house.’
+
+‘Ah, yes!’ Rosa clasps her hands, looks down with a sigh, and shakes her
+head.
+
+‘You seem to be sorry, Rosa.’
+
+‘I am sorry for the poor old place. Somehow, I feel as if it would miss
+me, when I am gone so far away, so young.’
+
+‘Perhaps we had better stop short, Rosa?’
+
+She looks up at him with a swift bright look; next moment shakes her
+head, sighs, and looks down again.
+
+‘That is to say, is it, Pussy, that we are both resigned?’
+
+She nods her head again, and after a short silence, quaintly bursts out
+with: ‘You know we must be married, and married from here, Eddy, or the
+poor girls will be so dreadfully disappointed!’
+
+For the moment there is more of compassion, both for her and for himself,
+in her affianced husband’s face, than there is of love. He checks the
+look, and asks: ‘Shall I take you out for a walk, Rosa dear?’
+
+Rosa dear does not seem at all clear on this point, until her face, which
+has been comically reflective, brightens. ‘O, yes, Eddy; let us go for a
+walk! And I tell you what we’ll do. You shall pretend that you are
+engaged to somebody else, and I’ll pretend that I am not engaged to
+anybody, and then we shan’t quarrel.’
+
+‘Do you think that will prevent our falling out, Rosa?’
+
+‘I know it will. Hush! Pretend to look out of window—Mrs. Tisher!’
+
+Through a fortuitous concourse of accidents, the matronly Tisher heaves
+in sight, says, in rustling through the room like the legendary ghost of
+a dowager in silken skirts: ‘I hope I see Mr. Drood well; though I
+needn’t ask, if I may judge from his complexion. I trust I disturb no
+one; but there _was_ a paper-knife—O, thank you, I am sure!’ and
+disappears with her prize.
+
+‘One other thing you must do, Eddy, to oblige me,’ says Rosebud. ‘The
+moment we get into the street, you must put me outside, and keep close to
+the house yourself—squeeze and graze yourself against it.’
+
+‘By all means, Rosa, if you wish it. Might I ask why?’
+
+‘O! because I don’t want the girls to see you.’
+
+‘It’s a fine day; but would you like me to carry an umbrella up?’
+
+‘Don’t be foolish, sir. You haven’t got polished leather boots on,’
+pouting, with one shoulder raised.
+
+‘Perhaps that might escape the notice of the girls, even if they did see
+me,’ remarks Edwin, looking down at his boots with a sudden distaste for
+them.
+
+‘Nothing escapes their notice, sir. And then I know what would happen.
+Some of them would begin reflecting on me by saying (for _they_ are free)
+that they never will on any account engage themselves to lovers without
+polished leather boots. Hark! Miss Twinkleton. I’ll ask for leave.’
+
+That discreet lady being indeed heard without, inquiring of nobody in a
+blandly conversational tone as she advances: ‘Eh? Indeed! Are you quite
+sure you saw my mother-of-pearl button-holder on the work-table in my
+room?’ is at once solicited for walking leave, and graciously accords it.
+And soon the young couple go out of the Nuns’ House, taking all
+precautions against the discovery of the so vitally defective boots of
+Mr. Edwin Drood: precautions, let us hope, effective for the peace of
+Mrs. Edwin Drood that is to be.
+
+‘Which way shall we take, Rosa?’
+
+Rosa replies: ‘I want to go to the Lumps-of-Delight shop.’
+
+‘To the—?’
+
+‘A Turkish sweetmeat, sir. My gracious me, don’t you understand
+anything? Call yourself an Engineer, and not know _that_?’
+
+‘Why, how should I know it, Rosa?’
+
+‘Because I am very fond of them. But O! I forgot what we are to pretend.
+No, you needn’t know anything about them; never mind.’
+
+So he is gloomily borne off to the Lumps-of-Delight shop, where Rosa
+makes her purchase, and, after offering some to him (which he rather
+indignantly declines), begins to partake of it with great zest:
+previously taking off and rolling up a pair of little pink gloves, like
+rose-leaves, and occasionally putting her little pink fingers to her rosy
+lips, to cleanse them from the Dust of Delight that comes off the Lumps.
+
+‘Now, be a good-tempered Eddy, and pretend. And so you are engaged?’
+
+‘And so I am engaged.’
+
+‘Is she nice?’
+
+‘Charming.’
+
+‘Tall?’
+
+‘Immensely tall!’ Rosa being short.
+
+‘Must be gawky, I should think,’ is Rosa’s quiet commentary.
+
+‘I beg your pardon; not at all,’ contradiction rising in him.
+
+‘What is termed a fine woman; a splendid woman.’
+
+‘Big nose, no doubt,’ is the quiet commentary again.
+
+‘Not a little one, certainly,’ is the quick reply, (Rosa’s being a little
+one.)
+
+‘Long pale nose, with a red knob in the middle. I know the sort of
+nose,’ says Rosa, with a satisfied nod, and tranquilly enjoying the
+Lumps.
+
+‘You _don’t_ know the sort of nose, Rosa,’ with some warmth; ‘because
+it’s nothing of the kind.’
+
+‘Not a pale nose, Eddy?’
+
+‘No.’ Determined not to assent.
+
+‘A red nose? O! I don’t like red noses. However; to be sure she can
+always powder it.’
+
+‘She would scorn to powder it,’ says Edwin, becoming heated.
+
+‘Would she? What a stupid thing she must be! Is she stupid in
+everything?’
+
+‘No; in nothing.’
+
+After a pause, in which the whimsically wicked face has not been
+unobservant of him, Rosa says:
+
+‘And this most sensible of creatures likes the idea of being carried off
+to Egypt; does she, Eddy?’
+
+‘Yes. She takes a sensible interest in triumphs of engineering skill:
+especially when they are to change the whole condition of an undeveloped
+country.’
+
+‘Lor!’ says Rosa, shrugging her shoulders, with a little laugh of wonder.
+
+‘Do you object,’ Edwin inquires, with a majestic turn of his eyes
+downward upon the fairy figure: ‘do you object, Rosa, to her feeling that
+interest?’
+
+‘Object? my dear Eddy! But really, doesn’t she hate boilers and things?’
+
+‘I can answer for her not being so idiotic as to hate Boilers,’ he
+returns with angry emphasis; ‘though I cannot answer for her views about
+Things; really not understanding what Things are meant.’
+
+‘But don’t she hate Arabs, and Turks, and Fellahs, and people?’
+
+‘Certainly not.’ Very firmly.
+
+‘At least she _must_ hate the Pyramids? Come, Eddy?’
+
+‘Why should she be such a little—tall, I mean—goose, as to hate the
+Pyramids, Rosa?’
+
+‘Ah! you should hear Miss Twinkleton,’ often nodding her head, and much
+enjoying the Lumps, ‘bore about them, and then you wouldn’t ask.
+Tiresome old burying-grounds! Isises, and Ibises, and Cheopses, and
+Pharaohses; who cares about them? And then there was Belzoni, or
+somebody, dragged out by the legs, half-choked with bats and dust. All
+the girls say: Serve him right, and hope it hurt him, and wish he had
+been quite choked.’
+
+The two youthful figures, side by side, but not now arm-in-arm, wander
+discontentedly about the old Close; and each sometimes stops and slowly
+imprints a deeper footstep in the fallen leaves.
+
+‘Well!’ says Edwin, after a lengthy silence. ‘According to custom. We
+can’t get on, Rosa.’
+
+Rosa tosses her head, and says she don’t want to get on.
+
+‘That’s a pretty sentiment, Rosa, considering.’
+
+‘Considering what?’
+
+‘If I say what, you’ll go wrong again.’
+
+‘_You’ll_ go wrong, you mean, Eddy. Don’t be ungenerous.’
+
+‘Ungenerous! I like that!’
+
+‘Then I _don’t_ like that, and so I tell you plainly,’ Rosa pouts.
+
+‘Now, Rosa, I put it to you. Who disparaged my profession, my
+destination—’
+
+‘You are not going to be buried in the Pyramids, I hope?’ she interrupts,
+arching her delicate eyebrows. ‘You never said you were. If you are,
+why haven’t you mentioned it to me? I can’t find out your plans by
+instinct.’
+
+‘Now, Rosa, you know very well what I mean, my dear.’
+
+‘Well then, why did you begin with your detestable red-nosed giantesses?
+And she would, she would, she would, she would, she WOULD powder it!’
+cries Rosa, in a little burst of comical contradictory spleen.
+
+‘Somehow or other, I never can come right in these discussions,’ says
+Edwin, sighing and becoming resigned.
+
+‘How is it possible, sir, that you ever can come right when you’re always
+wrong? And as to Belzoni, I suppose he’s dead;—I’m sure I hope he is—and
+how can his legs or his chokes concern you?’
+
+‘It is nearly time for your return, Rosa. We have not had a very happy
+walk, have we?’
+
+‘A happy walk? A detestably unhappy walk, sir. If I go up-stairs the
+moment I get in and cry till I can’t take my dancing lesson, you are
+responsible, mind!’
+
+‘Let us be friends, Rosa.’
+
+‘Ah!’ cries Rosa, shaking her head and bursting into real tears, ‘I wish
+we _could_ be friends! It’s because we can’t be friends, that we try one
+another so. I am a young little thing, Eddy, to have an old heartache;
+but I really, really have, sometimes. Don’t be angry. I know you have
+one yourself too often. We should both of us have done better, if What
+is to be had been left What might have been. I am quite a little serious
+thing now, and not teasing you. Let each of us forbear, this one time,
+on our own account, and on the other’s!’
+
+Disarmed by this glimpse of a woman’s nature in the spoilt child, though
+for an instant disposed to resent it as seeming to involve the enforced
+infliction of himself upon her, Edwin Drood stands watching her as she
+childishly cries and sobs, with both hands to the handkerchief at her
+eyes, and then—she becoming more composed, and indeed beginning in her
+young inconstancy to laugh at herself for having been so moved—leads her
+to a seat hard by, under the elm-trees.
+
+ [Picture: Under the trees]
+
+‘One clear word of understanding, Pussy dear. I am not clever out of my
+own line—now I come to think of it, I don’t know that I am particularly
+clever in it—but I want to do right. There is not—there may be—I really
+don’t see my way to what I want to say, but I must say it before we
+part—there is not any other young—’
+
+‘O no, Eddy! It’s generous of you to ask me; but no, no, no!’
+
+They have come very near to the Cathedral windows, and at this moment the
+organ and the choir sound out sublimely. As they sit listening to the
+solemn swell, the confidence of last night rises in young Edwin Drood’s
+mind, and he thinks how unlike this music is to that discordance.
+
+‘I fancy I can distinguish Jack’s voice,’ is his remark in a low tone in
+connection with the train of thought.
+
+‘Take me back at once, please,’ urges his Affianced, quickly laying her
+light hand upon his wrist. ‘They will all be coming out directly; let us
+get away. O, what a resounding chord! But don’t let us stop to listen
+to it; let us get away!’
+
+Her hurry is over as soon as they have passed out of the Close. They go
+arm-in-arm now, gravely and deliberately enough, along the old
+High-street, to the Nuns’ House. At the gate, the street being within
+sight empty, Edwin bends down his face to Rosebud’s.
+
+She remonstrates, laughing, and is a childish schoolgirl again.
+
+‘Eddy, no! I’m too sticky to be kissed. But give me your hand, and I’ll
+blow a kiss into that.’
+
+He does so. She breathes a light breath into it and asks, retaining it
+and looking into it:—
+
+‘Now say, what do you see?’
+
+‘See, Rosa?’
+
+‘Why, I thought you Egyptian boys could look into a hand and see all
+sorts of phantoms. Can’t you see a happy Future?’
+
+For certain, neither of them sees a happy Present, as the gate opens and
+closes, and one goes in, and the other goes away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV—MR. SAPSEA
+
+
+Accepting the Jackass as the type of self-sufficient stupidity and
+conceit—a custom, perhaps, like some few other customs, more conventional
+than fair—then the purest jackass in Cloisterham is Mr. Thomas Sapsea,
+Auctioneer.
+
+Mr. Sapsea ‘dresses at’ the Dean; has been bowed to for the Dean, in
+mistake; has even been spoken to in the street as My Lord, under the
+impression that he was the Bishop come down unexpectedly, without his
+chaplain. Mr. Sapsea is very proud of this, and of his voice, and of his
+style. He has even (in selling landed property) tried the experiment of
+slightly intoning in his pulpit, to make himself more like what he takes
+to be the genuine ecclesiastical article. So, in ending a Sale by Public
+Auction, Mr. Sapsea finishes off with an air of bestowing a benediction
+on the assembled brokers, which leaves the real Dean—a modest and worthy
+gentleman—far behind.
+
+Mr. Sapsea has many admirers; indeed, the proposition is carried by a
+large local majority, even including non-believers in his wisdom, that he
+is a credit to Cloisterham. He possesses the great qualities of being
+portentous and dull, and of having a roll in his speech, and another roll
+in his gait; not to mention a certain gravely flowing action with his
+hands, as if he were presently going to Confirm the individual with whom
+he holds discourse. Much nearer sixty years of age than fifty, with a
+flowing outline of stomach, and horizontal creases in his waistcoat;
+reputed to be rich; voting at elections in the strictly respectable
+interest; morally satisfied that nothing but he himself has grown since
+he was a baby; how can dunder-headed Mr. Sapsea be otherwise than a
+credit to Cloisterham, and society?
+
+Mr. Sapsea’s premises are in the High-street, over against the Nuns’
+House. They are of about the period of the Nuns’ House, irregularly
+modernised here and there, as steadily deteriorating generations found,
+more and more, that they preferred air and light to Fever and the Plague.
+Over the doorway is a wooden effigy, about half life-size, representing
+Mr. Sapsea’s father, in a curly wig and toga, in the act of selling. The
+chastity of the idea, and the natural appearance of the little finger,
+hammer, and pulpit, have been much admired.
+
+Mr. Sapsea sits in his dull ground-floor sitting-room, giving first on
+his paved back yard; and then on his railed-off garden. Mr. Sapsea has a
+bottle of port wine on a table before the fire—the fire is an early
+luxury, but pleasant on the cool, chilly autumn evening—and is
+characteristically attended by his portrait, his eight-day clock, and his
+weather-glass. Characteristically, because he would uphold himself
+against mankind, his weather-glass against weather, and his clock against
+time.
+
+By Mr. Sapsea’s side on the table are a writing-desk and writing
+materials. Glancing at a scrap of manuscript, Mr. Sapsea reads it to
+himself with a lofty air, and then, slowly pacing the room with his
+thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, repeats it from memory: so
+internally, though with much dignity, that the word ‘Ethelinda’ is alone
+audible.
+
+There are three clean wineglasses in a tray on the table. His
+serving-maid entering, and announcing ‘Mr. Jasper is come, sir,’ Mr.
+Sapsea waves ‘Admit him,’ and draws two wineglasses from the rank, as
+being claimed.
+
+‘Glad to see you, sir. I congratulate myself on having the honour of
+receiving you here for the first time.’ Mr. Sapsea does the honours of
+his house in this wise.
+
+‘You are very good. The honour is mine and the self-congratulation is
+mine.’
+
+‘You are pleased to say so, sir. But I do assure you that it is a
+satisfaction to me to receive you in my humble home. And that is what I
+would not say to everybody.’ Ineffable loftiness on Mr. Sapsea’s part
+accompanies these words, as leaving the sentence to be understood: ‘You
+will not easily believe that your society can be a satisfaction to a man
+like myself; nevertheless, it is.’
+
+‘I have for some time desired to know you, Mr. Sapsea.’
+
+‘And I, sir, have long known you by reputation as a man of taste. Let me
+fill your glass. I will give you, sir,’ says Mr. Sapsea, filling his
+own:
+
+ ‘When the French come over,
+ May we meet them at Dover!’
+
+This was a patriotic toast in Mr. Sapsea’s infancy, and he is therefore
+fully convinced of its being appropriate to any subsequent era.
+
+‘You can scarcely be ignorant, Mr. Sapsea,’ observes Jasper, watching the
+auctioneer with a smile as the latter stretches out his legs before the
+fire, ‘that you know the world.’
+
+‘Well, sir,’ is the chuckling reply, ‘I think I know something of it;
+something of it.’
+
+‘Your reputation for that knowledge has always interested and surprised
+me, and made me wish to know you. For Cloisterham is a little place.
+Cooped up in it myself, I know nothing beyond it, and feel it to be a
+very little place.’
+
+‘If I have not gone to foreign countries, young man,’ Mr. Sapsea begins,
+and then stops:—‘You will excuse me calling you young man, Mr. Jasper?
+You are much my junior.’
+
+‘By all means.’
+
+‘If I have not gone to foreign countries, young man, foreign countries
+have come to me. They have come to me in the way of business, and I have
+improved upon my opportunities. Put it that I take an inventory, or make
+a catalogue. I see a French clock. I never saw him before, in my life,
+but I instantly lay my finger on him and say “Paris!” I see some cups
+and saucers of Chinese make, equally strangers to me personally: I put my
+finger on them, then and there, and I say “Pekin, Nankin, and Canton.”
+It is the same with Japan, with Egypt, and with bamboo and sandalwood
+from the East Indies; I put my finger on them all. I have put my finger
+on the North Pole before now, and said “Spear of Esquimaux make, for half
+a pint of pale sherry!”’
+
+‘Really? A very remarkable way, Mr. Sapsea, of acquiring a knowledge of
+men and things.’
+
+‘I mention it, sir,’ Mr. Sapsea rejoins, with unspeakable complacency,
+‘because, as I say, it don’t do to boast of what you are; but show how
+you came to be it, and then you prove it.’
+
+‘Most interesting. We were to speak of the late Mrs. Sapsea.’
+
+‘We were, sir.’ Mr. Sapsea fills both glasses, and takes the decanter
+into safe keeping again. ‘Before I consult your opinion as a man of
+taste on this little trifle’—holding it up—‘which is _but_ a trifle, and
+still has required some thought, sir, some little fever of the brow, I
+ought perhaps to describe the character of the late Mrs. Sapsea, now dead
+three quarters of a year.’
+
+Mr. Jasper, in the act of yawning behind his wineglass, puts down that
+screen and calls up a look of interest. It is a little impaired in its
+expressiveness by his having a shut-up gape still to dispose of, with
+watering eyes.
+
+‘Half a dozen years ago, or so,’ Mr. Sapsea proceeds, ‘when I had
+enlarged my mind up to—I will not say to what it now is, for that might
+seem to aim at too much, but up to the pitch of wanting another mind to
+be absorbed in it—I cast my eye about me for a nuptial partner. Because,
+as I say, it is not good for man to be alone.’
+
+Mr. Jasper appears to commit this original idea to memory.
+
+‘Miss Brobity at that time kept, I will not call it the rival
+establishment to the establishment at the Nuns’ House opposite, but I
+will call it the other parallel establishment down town. The world did
+have it that she showed a passion for attending my sales, when they took
+place on half holidays, or in vacation time. The world did put it about,
+that she admired my style. The world did notice that as time flowed by,
+my style became traceable in the dictation-exercises of Miss Brobity’s
+pupils. Young man, a whisper even sprang up in obscure malignity, that
+one ignorant and besotted Churl (a parent) so committed himself as to
+object to it by name. But I do not believe this. For is it likely that
+any human creature in his right senses would so lay himself open to be
+pointed at, by what I call the finger of scorn?’
+
+Mr. Jasper shakes his head. Not in the least likely. Mr. Sapsea, in a
+grandiloquent state of absence of mind, seems to refill his visitor’s
+glass, which is full already; and does really refill his own, which is
+empty.
+
+‘Miss Brobity’s Being, young man, was deeply imbued with homage to Mind.
+She revered Mind, when launched, or, as I say, precipitated, on an
+extensive knowledge of the world. When I made my proposal, she did me
+the honour to be so overshadowed with a species of Awe, as to be able to
+articulate only the two words, “O Thou!” meaning myself. Her limpid blue
+eyes were fixed upon me, her semi-transparent hands were clasped
+together, pallor overspread her aquiline features, and, though encouraged
+to proceed, she never did proceed a word further. I disposed of the
+parallel establishment by private contract, and we became as nearly one
+as could be expected under the circumstances. But she never could, and
+she never did, find a phrase satisfactory to her perhaps-too-favourable
+estimate of my intellect. To the very last (feeble action of liver), she
+addressed me in the same unfinished terms.’
+
+Mr. Jasper has closed his eyes as the auctioneer has deepened his voice.
+He now abruptly opens them, and says, in unison with the deepened voice
+‘Ah!’—rather as if stopping himself on the extreme verge of adding—‘men!’
+
+‘I have been since,’ says Mr. Sapsea, with his legs stretched out, and
+solemnly enjoying himself with the wine and the fire, ‘what you behold
+me; I have been since a solitary mourner; I have been since, as I say,
+wasting my evening conversation on the desert air. I will not say that I
+have reproached myself; but there have been times when I have asked
+myself the question: What if her husband had been nearer on a level with
+her? If she had not had to look up quite so high, what might the
+stimulating action have been upon the liver?’
+
+Mr. Jasper says, with an appearance of having fallen into dreadfully low
+spirits, that he ‘supposes it was to be.’
+
+‘We can only suppose so, sir,’ Mr. Sapsea coincides. ‘As I say, Man
+proposes, Heaven disposes. It may or may not be putting the same thought
+in another form; but that is the way I put it.’
+
+Mr. Jasper murmurs assent.
+
+‘And now, Mr. Jasper,’ resumes the auctioneer, producing his scrap of
+manuscript, ‘Mrs. Sapsea’s monument having had full time to settle and
+dry, let me take your opinion, as a man of taste, on the inscription I
+have (as I before remarked, not without some little fever of the brow)
+drawn out for it. Take it in your own hand. The setting out of the
+lines requires to be followed with the eye, as well as the contents with
+the mind.’
+
+Mr. Jasper complying, sees and reads as follows:
+
+ ETHELINDA,
+ Reverential Wife of
+ MR. THOMAS SAPSEA,
+ AUCTIONEER, VALUER, ESTATE AGENT, &c.,
+ OF THIS CITY.
+ Whose Knowledge of the World,
+ Though somewhat extensive,
+ Never brought him acquainted with
+ A SPIRIT
+ More capable of
+ LOOKING UP TO HIM.
+ STRANGER, PAUSE
+ And ask thyself the Question,
+ CANST THOU DO LIKEWISE?
+ If Not,
+ WITH A BLUSH RETIRE.
+
+Mr. Sapsea having risen and stationed himself with his back to the fire,
+for the purpose of observing the effect of these lines on the countenance
+of a man of taste, consequently has his face towards the door, when his
+serving-maid, again appearing, announces, ‘Durdles is come, sir!’ He
+promptly draws forth and fills the third wineglass, as being now claimed,
+and replies, ‘Show Durdles in.’
+
+‘Admirable!’ quoth Mr. Jasper, handing back the paper.
+
+‘You approve, sir?’
+
+‘Impossible not to approve. Striking, characteristic, and complete.’
+
+The auctioneer inclines his head, as one accepting his due and giving a
+receipt; and invites the entering Durdles to take off that glass of wine
+(handing the same), for it will warm him.
+
+Durdles is a stonemason; chiefly in the gravestone, tomb, and monument
+way, and wholly of their colour from head to foot. No man is better
+known in Cloisterham. He is the chartered libertine of the place. Fame
+trumpets him a wonderful workman—which, for aught that anybody knows, he
+may be (as he never works); and a wonderful sot—which everybody knows he
+is. With the Cathedral crypt he is better acquainted than any living
+authority; it may even be than any dead one. It is said that the
+intimacy of this acquaintance began in his habitually resorting to that
+secret place, to lock-out the Cloisterham boy-populace, and sleep off
+fumes of liquor: he having ready access to the Cathedral, as contractor
+for rough repairs. Be this as it may, he does know much about it, and,
+in the demolition of impedimental fragments of wall, buttress, and
+pavement, has seen strange sights. He often speaks of himself in the
+third person; perhaps, being a little misty as to his own identity, when
+he narrates; perhaps impartially adopting the Cloisterham nomenclature in
+reference to a character of acknowledged distinction. Thus he will say,
+touching his strange sights: ‘Durdles come upon the old chap,’ in
+reference to a buried magnate of ancient time and high degree, ‘by
+striking right into the coffin with his pick. The old chap gave Durdles
+a look with his open eyes, as much as to say, “Is your name Durdles?
+Why, my man, I’ve been waiting for you a devil of a time!” And then he
+turned to powder.’ With a two-foot rule always in his pocket, and a
+mason’s hammer all but always in his hand, Durdles goes continually
+sounding and tapping all about and about the Cathedral; and whenever he
+says to Tope: ‘Tope, here’s another old ’un in here!’ Tope announces it
+to the Dean as an established discovery.
+
+In a suit of coarse flannel with horn buttons, a yellow neckerchief with
+draggled ends, an old hat more russet-coloured than black, and laced
+boots of the hue of his stony calling, Durdles leads a hazy, gipsy sort
+of life, carrying his dinner about with him in a small bundle, and
+sitting on all manner of tombstones to dine. This dinner of Durdles’s
+has become quite a Cloisterham institution: not only because of his never
+appearing in public without it, but because of its having been, on
+certain renowned occasions, taken into custody along with Durdles (as
+drunk and incapable), and exhibited before the Bench of justices at the
+townhall. These occasions, however, have been few and far apart: Durdles
+being as seldom drunk as sober. For the rest, he is an old bachelor, and
+he lives in a little antiquated hole of a house that was never finished:
+supposed to be built, so far, of stones stolen from the city wall. To
+this abode there is an approach, ankle-deep in stone chips, resembling a
+petrified grove of tombstones, urns, draperies, and broken columns, in
+all stages of sculpture. Herein two journeymen incessantly chip, while
+other two journeymen, who face each other, incessantly saw stone; dipping
+as regularly in and out of their sheltering sentry-boxes, as if they were
+mechanical figures emblematical of Time and Death.
+
+To Durdles, when he had consumed his glass of port, Mr. Sapsea intrusts
+that precious effort of his Muse. Durdles unfeelingly takes out his
+two-foot rule, and measures the lines calmly, alloying them with
+stone-grit.
+
+‘This is for the monument, is it, Mr. Sapsea?’
+
+‘The Inscription. Yes.’ Mr. Sapsea waits for its effect on a common
+mind.
+
+‘It’ll come in to a eighth of a inch,’ says Durdles. ‘Your servant, Mr.
+Jasper. Hope I see you well.’
+
+‘How are you Durdles?’
+
+‘I’ve got a touch of the Tombatism on me, Mr. Jasper, but that I must
+expect.’
+
+‘You mean the Rheumatism,’ says Sapsea, in a sharp tone. (He is nettled
+by having his composition so mechanically received.)
+
+‘No, I don’t. I mean, Mr. Sapsea, the Tombatism. It’s another sort from
+Rheumatism. Mr. Jasper knows what Durdles means. You get among them
+Tombs afore it’s well light on a winter morning, and keep on, as the
+Catechism says, a-walking in the same all the days of your life, and
+_you’ll_ know what Durdles means.’
+
+‘It is a bitter cold place,’ Mr. Jasper assents, with an antipathetic
+shiver.
+
+‘And if it’s bitter cold for you, up in the chancel, with a lot of live
+breath smoking out about you, what the bitterness is to Durdles, down in
+the crypt among the earthy damps there, and the dead breath of the old
+’uns,’ returns that individual, ‘Durdles leaves you to judge.—Is this to
+be put in hand at once, Mr. Sapsea?’
+
+Mr. Sapsea, with an Author’s anxiety to rush into publication, replies
+that it cannot be out of hand too soon.
+
+‘You had better let me have the key then,’ says Durdles.
+
+‘Why, man, it is not to be put inside the monument!’
+
+‘Durdles knows where it’s to be put, Mr. Sapsea; no man better. Ask ’ere
+a man in Cloisterham whether Durdles knows his work.’
+
+Mr. Sapsea rises, takes a key from a drawer, unlocks an iron safe let
+into the wall, and takes from it another key.
+
+‘When Durdles puts a touch or a finish upon his work, no matter where,
+inside or outside, Durdles likes to look at his work all round, and see
+that his work is a-doing him credit,’ Durdles explains, doggedly.
+
+The key proffered him by the bereaved widower being a large one, he slips
+his two-foot rule into a side-pocket of his flannel trousers made for it,
+and deliberately opens his flannel coat, and opens the mouth of a large
+breast-pocket within it before taking the key to place it in that
+repository.
+
+‘Why, Durdles!’ exclaims Jasper, looking on amused, ‘you are undermined
+with pockets!’
+
+‘And I carries weight in ’em too, Mr. Jasper. Feel those!’ producing two
+other large keys.
+
+‘Hand me Mr. Sapsea’s likewise. Surely this is the heaviest of the
+three.’
+
+‘You’ll find ’em much of a muchness, I expect,’ says Durdles. ‘They all
+belong to monuments. They all open Durdles’s work. Durdles keeps the
+keys of his work mostly. Not that they’re much used.’
+
+‘By the bye,’ it comes into Jasper’s mind to say, as he idly examines the
+keys, ‘I have been going to ask you, many a day, and have always
+forgotten. You know they sometimes call you Stony Durdles, don’t you?’
+
+‘Cloisterham knows me as Durdles, Mr. Jasper.’
+
+‘I am aware of that, of course. But the boys sometimes—’
+
+‘O! if you mind them young imps of boys—’ Durdles gruffly interrupts.
+
+‘I don’t mind them any more than you do. But there was a discussion the
+other day among the Choir, whether Stony stood for Tony;’ clinking one
+key against another.
+
+(‘Take care of the wards, Mr. Jasper.’)
+
+‘Or whether Stony stood for Stephen;’ clinking with a change of keys.
+
+(‘You can’t make a pitch pipe of ’em, Mr. Jasper.’)
+
+‘Or whether the name comes from your trade. How stands the fact?’
+
+Mr. Jasper weighs the three keys in his hand, lifts his head from his
+idly stooping attitude over the fire, and delivers the keys to Durdles
+with an ingenuous and friendly face.
+
+But the stony one is a gruff one likewise, and that hazy state of his is
+always an uncertain state, highly conscious of its dignity, and prone to
+take offence. He drops his two keys back into his pocket one by one, and
+buttons them up; he takes his dinner-bundle from the chair-back on which
+he hung it when he came in; he distributes the weight he carries, by
+tying the third key up in it, as though he were an Ostrich, and liked to
+dine off cold iron; and he gets out of the room, deigning no word of
+answer.
+
+Mr. Sapsea then proposes a hit at backgammon, which, seasoned with his
+own improving conversation, and terminating in a supper of cold roast
+beef and salad, beguiles the golden evening until pretty late. Mr.
+Sapsea’s wisdom being, in its delivery to mortals, rather of the diffuse
+than the epigrammatic order, is by no means expended even then; but his
+visitor intimates that he will come back for more of the precious
+commodity on future occasions, and Mr. Sapsea lets him off for the
+present, to ponder on the instalment he carries away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V—MR. DURDLES AND FRIEND
+
+
+John Jasper, on his way home through the Close, is brought to a
+stand-still by the spectacle of Stony Durdles, dinner-bundle and all,
+leaning his back against the iron railing of the burial-ground enclosing
+it from the old cloister-arches; and a hideous small boy in rags flinging
+stones at him as a well-defined mark in the moonlight. Sometimes the
+stones hit him, and sometimes they miss him, but Durdles seems
+indifferent to either fortune. The hideous small boy, on the contrary,
+whenever he hits Durdles, blows a whistle of triumph through a jagged
+gap, convenient for the purpose, in the front of his mouth, where half
+his teeth are wanting; and whenever he misses him, yelps out ‘Mulled
+agin!’ and tries to atone for the failure by taking a more correct and
+vicious aim.
+
+‘What are you doing to the man?’ demands Jasper, stepping out into the
+moonlight from the shade.
+
+‘Making a cock-shy of him,’ replies the hideous small boy.
+
+‘Give me those stones in your hand.’
+
+‘Yes, I’ll give ’em you down your throat, if you come a-ketching hold of
+me,’ says the small boy, shaking himself loose, and backing. ‘I’ll smash
+your eye, if you don’t look out!’
+
+‘Baby-Devil that you are, what has the man done to you?’
+
+‘He won’t go home.’
+
+‘What is that to you?’
+
+‘He gives me a ’apenny to pelt him home if I ketches him out too late,’
+says the boy. And then chants, like a little savage, half stumbling and
+half dancing among the rags and laces of his dilapidated boots:—
+
+ ‘Widdy widdy wen!
+ I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—ten,
+ Widdy widdy wy!
+ Then—E—don’t—go—then—I—shy—
+ Widdy Widdy Wake-cock warning!’
+
+—with a comprehensive sweep on the last word, and one more delivery at
+Durdles.
+
+This would seem to be a poetical note of preparation, agreed upon, as a
+caution to Durdles to stand clear if he can, or to betake himself
+homeward.
+
+John Jasper invites the boy with a beck of his head to follow him
+(feeling it hopeless to drag him, or coax him), and crosses to the iron
+railing where the Stony (and stoned) One is profoundly meditating.
+
+‘Do you know this thing, this child?’ asks Jasper, at a loss for a word
+that will define this thing.
+
+‘Deputy,’ says Durdles, with a nod.
+
+‘Is that its—his—name?’
+
+‘Deputy,’ assents Durdles.
+
+‘I’m man-servant up at the Travellers’ Twopenny in Gas Works Garding,’
+this thing explains. ‘All us man-servants at Travellers’ Lodgings is
+named Deputy. When we’re chock full and the Travellers is all a-bed I
+come out for my ’elth.’ Then withdrawing into the road, and taking aim,
+he resumes:—
+
+ ‘Widdy widdy wen!
+ I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—’
+
+‘Hold your hand,’ cries Jasper, ‘and don’t throw while I stand so near
+him, or I’ll kill you! Come, Durdles; let me walk home with you
+to-night. Shall I carry your bundle?’
+
+‘Not on any account,’ replies Durdles, adjusting it. ‘Durdles was making
+his reflections here when you come up, sir, surrounded by his works, like
+a poplar Author.—Your own brother-in-law;’ introducing a sarcophagus
+within the railing, white and cold in the moonlight. ‘Mrs. Sapsea;’
+introducing the monument of that devoted wife. ‘Late Incumbent;’
+introducing the Reverend Gentleman’s broken column. ‘Departed Assessed
+Taxes;’ introducing a vase and towel, standing on what might represent
+the cake of soap. ‘Former pastrycook and Muffin-maker, much respected;’
+introducing gravestone. ‘All safe and sound here, sir, and all Durdles’s
+work. Of the common folk, that is merely bundled up in turf and
+brambles, the less said the better. A poor lot, soon forgot.’
+
+‘This creature, Deputy, is behind us,’ says Jasper, looking back. ‘Is he
+to follow us?’
+
+The relations between Durdles and Deputy are of a capricious kind; for,
+on Durdles’s turning himself about with the slow gravity of beery
+suddenness, Deputy makes a pretty wide circuit into the road and stands
+on the defensive.
+
+‘You never cried Widdy Warning before you begun to-night,’ says Durdles,
+unexpectedly reminded of, or imagining, an injury.
+
+‘Yer lie, I did,’ says Deputy, in his only form of polite contradiction.
+
+‘Own brother, sir,’ observes Durdles, turning himself about again, and as
+unexpectedly forgetting his offence as he had recalled or conceived it;
+‘own brother to Peter the Wild Boy! But I gave him an object in life.’
+
+‘At which he takes aim?’ Mr. Jasper suggests.
+
+‘That’s it, sir,’ returns Durdles, quite satisfied; ‘at which he takes
+aim. I took him in hand and gave him an object. What was he before? A
+destroyer. What work did he do? Nothing but destruction. What did he
+earn by it? Short terms in Cloisterham jail. Not a person, not a piece
+of property, not a winder, not a horse, nor a dog, nor a cat, nor a bird,
+nor a fowl, nor a pig, but what he stoned, for want of an enlightened
+object. I put that enlightened object before him, and now he can turn
+his honest halfpenny by the three penn’orth a week.’
+
+‘I wonder he has no competitors.’
+
+‘He has plenty, Mr. Jasper, but he stones ’em all away. Now, I don’t
+know what this scheme of mine comes to,’ pursues Durdles, considering
+about it with the same sodden gravity; ‘I don’t know what you may
+precisely call it. It ain’t a sort of a—scheme of a—National Education?’
+
+‘I should say not,’ replies Jasper.
+
+‘I should say not,’ assents Durdles; ‘then we won’t try to give it a
+name.’
+
+‘He still keeps behind us,’ repeats Jasper, looking over his shoulder;
+‘is he to follow us?’
+
+‘We can’t help going round by the Travellers’ Twopenny, if we go the
+short way, which is the back way,’ Durdles answers, ‘and we’ll drop him
+there.’
+
+So they go on; Deputy, as a rear rank one, taking open order, and
+invading the silence of the hour and place by stoning every wall, post,
+pillar, and other inanimate object, by the deserted way.
+
+‘Is there anything new down in the crypt, Durdles?’ asks John Jasper.
+
+‘Anything old, I think you mean,’ growls Durdles. ‘It ain’t a spot for
+novelty.’
+
+‘Any new discovery on your part, I meant.’
+
+‘There’s a old ’un under the seventh pillar on the left as you go down
+the broken steps of the little underground chapel as formerly was; I make
+him out (so fur as I’ve made him out yet) to be one of them old ’uns with
+a crook. To judge from the size of the passages in the walls, and of the
+steps and doors, by which they come and went, them crooks must have been
+a good deal in the way of the old ’uns! Two on ’em meeting promiscuous
+must have hitched one another by the mitre pretty often, I should say.’
+
+Without any endeavour to correct the literality of this opinion, Jasper
+surveys his companion—covered from head to foot with old mortar, lime,
+and stone grit—as though he, Jasper, were getting imbued with a romantic
+interest in his weird life.
+
+‘Yours is a curious existence.’
+
+Without furnishing the least clue to the question, whether he receives
+this as a compliment or as quite the reverse, Durdles gruffly answers:
+‘Yours is another.’
+
+‘Well! inasmuch as my lot is cast in the same old earthy, chilly,
+never-changing place, Yes. But there is much more mystery and interest
+in your connection with the Cathedral than in mine. Indeed, I am
+beginning to have some idea of asking you to take me on as a sort of
+student, or free ’prentice, under you, and to let me go about with you
+sometimes, and see some of these odd nooks in which you pass your days.’
+
+The Stony One replies, in a general way, ‘All right. Everybody knows
+where to find Durdles, when he’s wanted.’ Which, if not strictly true,
+is approximately so, if taken to express that Durdles may always be found
+in a state of vagabondage somewhere.
+
+‘What I dwell upon most,’ says Jasper, pursuing his subject of romantic
+interest, ‘is the remarkable accuracy with which you would seem to find
+out where people are buried.—What is the matter? That bundle is in your
+way; let me hold it.’
+
+Durdles has stopped and backed a little (Deputy, attentive to all his
+movements, immediately skirmishing into the road), and was looking about
+for some ledge or corner to place his bundle on, when thus relieved of
+it.
+
+‘Just you give me my hammer out of that,’ says Durdles, ‘and I’ll show
+you.’
+
+Clink, clink. And his hammer is handed him.
+
+‘Now, lookee here. You pitch your note, don’t you, Mr. Jasper?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘So I sound for mine. I take my hammer, and I tap.’ (Here he strikes
+the pavement, and the attentive Deputy skirmishes at a rather wider
+range, as supposing that his head may be in requisition.) ‘I tap, tap,
+tap. Solid! I go on tapping. Solid still! Tap again. Holloa!
+Hollow! Tap again, persevering. Solid in hollow! Tap, tap, tap, to try
+it better. Solid in hollow; and inside solid, hollow again! There you
+are! Old ’un crumbled away in stone coffin, in vault!’
+
+‘Astonishing!’
+
+‘I have even done this,’ says Durdles, drawing out his two-foot rule
+(Deputy meanwhile skirmishing nearer, as suspecting that Treasure may be
+about to be discovered, which may somehow lead to his own enrichment, and
+the delicious treat of the discoverers being hanged by the neck, on his
+evidence, until they are dead). ‘Say that hammer of mine’s a wall—my
+work. Two; four; and two is six,’ measuring on the pavement. ‘Six foot
+inside that wall is Mrs. Sapsea.’
+
+‘Not really Mrs. Sapsea?’
+
+‘Say Mrs. Sapsea. Her wall’s thicker, but say Mrs. Sapsea. Durdles
+taps, that wall represented by that hammer, and says, after good
+sounding: “Something betwixt us!” Sure enough, some rubbish has been
+left in that same six-foot space by Durdles’s men!’
+
+Jasper opines that such accuracy ‘is a gift.’
+
+‘I wouldn’t have it at a gift,’ returns Durdles, by no means receiving
+the observation in good part. ‘I worked it out for myself. Durdles
+comes by _his_ knowledge through grubbing deep for it, and having it up
+by the roots when it don’t want to come.—Holloa you Deputy!’
+
+‘Widdy!’ is Deputy’s shrill response, standing off again.
+
+‘Catch that ha’penny. And don’t let me see any more of you to-night,
+after we come to the Travellers’ Twopenny.’
+
+‘Warning!’ returns Deputy, having caught the halfpenny, and appearing by
+this mystic word to express his assent to the arrangement.
+
+They have but to cross what was once the vineyard, belonging to what was
+once the Monastery, to come into the narrow back lane wherein stands the
+crazy wooden house of two low stories currently known as the Travellers’
+Twopenny:—a house all warped and distorted, like the morals of the
+travellers, with scant remains of a lattice-work porch over the door, and
+also of a rustic fence before its stamped-out garden; by reason of the
+travellers being so bound to the premises by a tender sentiment (or so
+fond of having a fire by the roadside in the course of the day), that
+they can never be persuaded or threatened into departure, without
+violently possessing themselves of some wooden forget-me-not, and bearing
+it off.
+
+The semblance of an inn is attempted to be given to this wretched place
+by fragments of conventional red curtaining in the windows, which rags
+are made muddily transparent in the night-season by feeble lights of rush
+or cotton dip burning dully in the close air of the inside. As Durdles
+and Jasper come near, they are addressed by an inscribed paper lantern
+over the door, setting forth the purport of the house. They are also
+addressed by some half-dozen other hideous small boys—whether twopenny
+lodgers or followers or hangers-on of such, who knows!—who, as if
+attracted by some carrion-scent of Deputy in the air, start into the
+moonlight, as vultures might gather in the desert, and instantly fall to
+stoning him and one another.
+
+‘Stop, you young brutes,’ cries Jasper angrily, ‘and let us go by!’
+
+This remonstrance being received with yells and flying stones, according
+to a custom of late years comfortably established among the police
+regulations of our English communities, where Christians are stoned on
+all sides, as if the days of Saint Stephen were revived, Durdles remarks
+of the young savages, with some point, that ‘they haven’t got an object,’
+and leads the way down the lane.
+
+At the corner of the lane, Jasper, hotly enraged, checks his companion
+and looks back. All is silent. Next moment, a stone coming rattling at
+his hat, and a distant yell of ‘Wake-Cock! Warning!’ followed by a crow,
+as from some infernally-hatched Chanticleer, apprising him under whose
+victorious fire he stands, he turns the corner into safety, and takes
+Durdles home: Durdles stumbling among the litter of his stony yard as if
+he were going to turn head foremost into one of the unfinished tombs.
+
+John Jasper returns by another way to his gatehouse, and entering softly
+with his key, finds his fire still burning. He takes from a locked press
+a peculiar-looking pipe, which he fills—but not with tobacco—and, having
+adjusted the contents of the bowl, very carefully, with a little
+instrument, ascends an inner staircase of only a few steps, leading to
+two rooms. One of these is his own sleeping chamber: the other is his
+nephew’s. There is a light in each.
+
+His nephew lies asleep, calm and untroubled. John Jasper stands looking
+down upon him, his unlighted pipe in his hand, for some time, with a
+fixed and deep attention. Then, hushing his footsteps, he passes to his
+own room, lights his pipe, and delivers himself to the Spectres it
+invokes at midnight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI—PHILANTHROPY IN MINOR CANON CORNER
+
+
+The Reverend Septimus Crisparkle (Septimus, because six little brother
+Crisparkles before him went out, one by one, as they were born, like six
+weak little rushlights, as they were lighted), having broken the thin
+morning ice near Cloisterham Weir with his amiable head, much to the
+invigoration of his frame, was now assisting his circulation by boxing at
+a looking-glass with great science and prowess. A fresh and healthy
+portrait the looking-glass presented of the Reverend Septimus, feinting
+and dodging with the utmost artfulness, and hitting out from the shoulder
+with the utmost straightness, while his radiant features teemed with
+innocence, and soft-hearted benevolence beamed from his boxing-gloves.
+
+It was scarcely breakfast-time yet, for Mrs. Crisparkle—mother, not wife
+of the Reverend Septimus—was only just down, and waiting for the urn.
+Indeed, the Reverend Septimus left off at this very moment to take the
+pretty old lady’s entering face between his boxing-gloves and kiss it.
+Having done so with tenderness, the Reverend Septimus turned to again,
+countering with his left, and putting in his right, in a tremendous
+manner.
+
+‘I say, every morning of my life, that you’ll do it at last, Sept,’
+remarked the old lady, looking on; ‘and so you will.’
+
+‘Do what, Ma dear?’
+
+‘Break the pier-glass, or burst a blood-vessel.’
+
+‘Neither, please God, Ma dear. Here’s wind, Ma. Look at this!’ In a
+concluding round of great severity, the Reverend Septimus administered
+and escaped all sorts of punishment, and wound up by getting the old
+lady’s cap into Chancery—such is the technical term used in scientific
+circles by the learned in the Noble Art—with a lightness of touch that
+hardly stirred the lightest lavender or cherry riband on it.
+Magnanimously releasing the defeated, just in time to get his gloves into
+a drawer and feign to be looking out of window in a contemplative state
+of mind when a servant entered, the Reverend Septimus then gave place to
+the urn and other preparations for breakfast. These completed, and the
+two alone again, it was pleasant to see (or would have been, if there had
+been any one to see it, which there never was), the old lady standing to
+say the Lord’s Prayer aloud, and her son, Minor Canon nevertheless,
+standing with bent head to hear it, he being within five years of forty:
+much as he had stood to hear the same words from the same lips when he
+was within five months of four.
+
+What is prettier than an old lady—except a young lady—when her eyes are
+bright, when her figure is trim and compact, when her face is cheerful
+and calm, when her dress is as the dress of a china shepherdess: so
+dainty in its colours, so individually assorted to herself, so neatly
+moulded on her? Nothing is prettier, thought the good Minor Canon
+frequently, when taking his seat at table opposite his long-widowed
+mother. Her thought at such times may be condensed into the two words
+that oftenest did duty together in all her conversations: ‘My Sept!’
+
+They were a good pair to sit breakfasting together in Minor Canon Corner,
+Cloisterham. For Minor Canon Corner was a quiet place in the shadow of
+the Cathedral, which the cawing of the rooks, the echoing footsteps of
+rare passers, the sound of the Cathedral bell, or the roll of the
+Cathedral organ, seemed to render more quiet than absolute silence.
+Swaggering fighting men had had their centuries of ramping and raving
+about Minor Canon Corner, and beaten serfs had had their centuries of
+drudging and dying there, and powerful monks had had their centuries of
+being sometimes useful and sometimes harmful there, and behold they were
+all gone out of Minor Canon Corner, and so much the better. Perhaps one
+of the highest uses of their ever having been there, was, that there
+might be left behind, that blessed air of tranquillity which pervaded
+Minor Canon Corner, and that serenely romantic state of the
+mind—productive for the most part of pity and forbearance—which is
+engendered by a sorrowful story that is all told, or a pathetic play that
+is played out.
+
+Red-brick walls harmoniously toned down in colour by time, strong-rooted
+ivy, latticed windows, panelled rooms, big oaken beams in little places,
+and stone-walled gardens where annual fruit yet ripened upon monkish
+trees, were the principal surroundings of pretty old Mrs. Crisparkle and
+the Reverend Septimus as they sat at breakfast.
+
+‘And what, Ma dear,’ inquired the Minor Canon, giving proof of a
+wholesome and vigorous appetite, ‘does the letter say?’
+
+The pretty old lady, after reading it, had just laid it down upon the
+breakfast-cloth. She handed it over to her son.
+
+Now, the old lady was exceedingly proud of her bright eyes being so clear
+that she could read writing without spectacles. Her son was also so
+proud of the circumstance, and so dutifully bent on her deriving the
+utmost possible gratification from it, that he had invented the pretence
+that he himself could _not_ read writing without spectacles. Therefore
+he now assumed a pair, of grave and prodigious proportions, which not
+only seriously inconvenienced his nose and his breakfast, but seriously
+impeded his perusal of the letter. For, he had the eyes of a microscope
+and a telescope combined, when they were unassisted.
+
+‘It’s from Mr. Honeythunder, of course,’ said the old lady, folding her
+arms.
+
+‘Of course,’ assented her son. He then lamely read on:
+
+ ‘“Haven of Philanthropy,
+ Chief Offices, London, Wednesday.
+
+‘“DEAR MADAM,
+
+‘“I write in the—;” In the what’s this? What does he write in?’
+
+‘In the chair,’ said the old lady.
+
+The Reverend Septimus took off his spectacles, that he might see her
+face, as he exclaimed:
+
+‘Why, what should he write in?’
+
+‘Bless me, bless me, Sept,’ returned the old lady, ‘you don’t see the
+context! Give it back to me, my dear.’
+
+Glad to get his spectacles off (for they always made his eyes water), her
+son obeyed: murmuring that his sight for reading manuscript got worse and
+worse daily.
+
+‘“I write,”’ his mother went on, reading very perspicuously and
+precisely, ‘“from the chair, to which I shall probably be confined for
+some hours.”’
+
+Septimus looked at the row of chairs against the wall, with a
+half-protesting and half-appealing countenance.
+
+‘“We have,”’ the old lady read on with a little extra emphasis, ‘“a
+meeting of our Convened Chief Composite Committee of Central and District
+Philanthropists, at our Head Haven as above; and it is their unanimous
+pleasure that I take the chair.”’
+
+Septimus breathed more freely, and muttered: ‘O! if he comes to _that_,
+let him.’
+
+‘“Not to lose a day’s post, I take the opportunity of a long report being
+read, denouncing a public miscreant—”’
+
+‘It is a most extraordinary thing,’ interposed the gentle Minor Canon,
+laying down his knife and fork to rub his ear in a vexed manner, ‘that
+these Philanthropists are always denouncing somebody. And it is another
+most extraordinary thing that they are always so violently flush of
+miscreants!’
+
+‘“Denouncing a public miscreant—”’—the old lady resumed, ‘“to get our
+little affair of business off my mind. I have spoken with my two wards,
+Neville and Helena Landless, on the subject of their defective education,
+and they give in to the plan proposed; as I should have taken good care
+they did, whether they liked it or not.”’
+
+‘And it is another most extraordinary thing,’ remarked the Minor Canon in
+the same tone as before, ‘that these philanthropists are so given to
+seizing their fellow-creatures by the scruff of the neck, and (as one may
+say) bumping them into the paths of peace.—I beg your pardon, Ma dear,
+for interrupting.’
+
+‘“Therefore, dear Madam, you will please prepare your son, the Rev. Mr.
+Septimus, to expect Neville as an inmate to be read with, on Monday next.
+On the same day Helena will accompany him to Cloisterham, to take up her
+quarters at the Nuns’ House, the establishment recommended by yourself
+and son jointly. Please likewise to prepare for her reception and
+tuition there. The terms in both cases are understood to be exactly as
+stated to me in writing by yourself, when I opened a correspondence with
+you on this subject, after the honour of being introduced to you at your
+sister’s house in town here. With compliments to the Rev. Mr. Septimus,
+I am, Dear Madam, Your affectionate brother (In Philanthropy), LUKE
+HONEYTHUNDER.”’
+
+‘Well, Ma,’ said Septimus, after a little more rubbing of his ear, ‘we
+must try it. There can be no doubt that we have room for an inmate, and
+that I have time to bestow upon him, and inclination too. I must confess
+to feeling rather glad that he is not Mr. Honeythunder himself. Though
+that seems wretchedly prejudiced—does it not?—for I never saw him. Is he
+a large man, Ma?’
+
+‘I should call him a large man, my dear,’ the old lady replied after some
+hesitation, ‘but that his voice is so much larger.’
+
+‘Than himself?’
+
+‘Than anybody.’
+
+‘Hah!’ said Septimus. And finished his breakfast as if the flavour of
+the Superior Family Souchong, and also of the ham and toast and eggs,
+were a little on the wane.
+
+Mrs. Crisparkle’s sister, another piece of Dresden china, and matching
+her so neatly that they would have made a delightful pair of ornaments
+for the two ends of any capacious old-fashioned chimneypiece, and by
+right should never have been seen apart, was the childless wife of a
+clergyman holding Corporation preferment in London City. Mr.
+Honeythunder in his public character of Professor of Philanthropy had
+come to know Mrs. Crisparkle during the last re-matching of the china
+ornaments (in other words during her last annual visit to her sister),
+after a public occasion of a philanthropic nature, when certain devoted
+orphans of tender years had been glutted with plum buns, and plump
+bumptiousness. These were all the antecedents known in Minor Canon
+Corner of the coming pupils.
+
+‘I am sure you will agree with me, Ma,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, after
+thinking the matter over, ‘that the first thing to be done, is, to put
+these young people as much at their ease as possible. There is nothing
+disinterested in the notion, because we cannot be at our ease with them
+unless they are at their ease with us. Now, Jasper’s nephew is down here
+at present; and like takes to like, and youth takes to youth. He is a
+cordial young fellow, and we will have him to meet the brother and sister
+at dinner. That’s three. We can’t think of asking him, without asking
+Jasper. That’s four. Add Miss Twinkleton and the fairy bride that is to
+be, and that’s six. Add our two selves, and that’s eight. Would eight
+at a friendly dinner at all put you out, Ma?’
+
+‘Nine would, Sept,’ returned the old lady, visibly nervous.
+
+‘My dear Ma, I particularise eight.’
+
+‘The exact size of the table and the room, my dear.’
+
+So it was settled that way: and when Mr. Crisparkle called with his
+mother upon Miss Twinkleton, to arrange for the reception of Miss Helena
+Landless at the Nuns’ House, the two other invitations having reference
+to that establishment were proffered and accepted. Miss Twinkleton did,
+indeed, glance at the globes, as regretting that they were not formed to
+be taken out into society; but became reconciled to leaving them behind.
+Instructions were then despatched to the Philanthropist for the departure
+and arrival, in good time for dinner, of Mr. Neville and Miss Helena; and
+stock for soup became fragrant in the air of Minor Canon Corner.
+
+In those days there was no railway to Cloisterham, and Mr. Sapsea said
+there never would be. Mr. Sapsea said more; he said there never should
+be. And yet, marvellous to consider, it has come to pass, in these days,
+that Express Trains don’t think Cloisterham worth stopping at, but yell
+and whirl through it on their larger errands, casting the dust off their
+wheels as a testimony against its insignificance. Some remote fragment
+of Main Line to somewhere else, there was, which was going to ruin the
+Money Market if it failed, and Church and State if it succeeded, and (of
+course), the Constitution, whether or no; but even that had already so
+unsettled Cloisterham traffic, that the traffic, deserting the high road,
+came sneaking in from an unprecedented part of the country by a back
+stable-way, for many years labelled at the corner: ‘Beware of the Dog.’
+
+To this ignominious avenue of approach, Mr. Crisparkle repaired, awaiting
+the arrival of a short, squat omnibus, with a disproportionate heap of
+luggage on the roof—like a little Elephant with infinitely too much
+Castle—which was then the daily service between Cloisterham and external
+mankind. As this vehicle lumbered up, Mr. Crisparkle could hardly see
+anything else of it for a large outside passenger seated on the box, with
+his elbows squared, and his hands on his knees, compressing the driver
+into a most uncomfortably small compass, and glowering about him with a
+strongly-marked face.
+
+‘Is this Cloisterham?’ demanded the passenger, in a tremendous voice.
+
+‘It is,’ replied the driver, rubbing himself as if he ached, after
+throwing the reins to the ostler. ‘And I never was so glad to see it.’
+
+‘Tell your master to make his box-seat wider, then,’ returned the
+passenger. ‘Your master is morally bound—and ought to be legally, under
+ruinous penalties—to provide for the comfort of his fellow-man.’
+
+The driver instituted, with the palms of his hands, a superficial
+perquisition into the state of his skeleton; which seemed to make him
+anxious.
+
+‘Have I sat upon you?’ asked the passenger.
+
+‘You have,’ said the driver, as if he didn’t like it at all.
+
+‘Take that card, my friend.’
+
+‘I think I won’t deprive you on it,’ returned the driver, casting his
+eyes over it with no great favour, without taking it. ‘What’s the good
+of it to me?’
+
+‘Be a Member of that Society,’ said the passenger.
+
+‘What shall I get by it?’ asked the driver.
+
+‘Brotherhood,’ returned the passenger, in a ferocious voice.
+
+‘Thankee,’ said the driver, very deliberately, as he got down; ‘my mother
+was contented with myself, and so am I. I don’t want no brothers.’
+
+‘But you must have them,’ replied the passenger, also descending,
+‘whether you like it or not. I am your brother.’
+
+‘I say!’ expostulated the driver, becoming more chafed in temper, ‘not
+too fur! The worm _will_, when—’
+
+But here, Mr. Crisparkle interposed, remonstrating aside, in a friendly
+voice: ‘Joe, Joe, Joe! don’t forget yourself, Joe, my good fellow!’ and
+then, when Joe peaceably touched his hat, accosting the passenger with:
+‘Mr. Honeythunder?’
+
+‘That is my name, sir.’
+
+‘My name is Crisparkle.’
+
+‘Reverend Mr. Septimus? Glad to see you, sir. Neville and Helena are
+inside. Having a little succumbed of late, under the pressure of my
+public labours, I thought I would take a mouthful of fresh air, and come
+down with them, and return at night. So you are the Reverend Mr.
+Septimus, are you?’ surveying him on the whole with disappointment, and
+twisting a double eyeglass by its ribbon, as if he were roasting it, but
+not otherwise using it. ‘Hah! I expected to see you older, sir.’
+
+‘I hope you will,’ was the good-humoured reply.
+
+‘Eh?’ demanded Mr. Honeythunder.
+
+‘Only a poor little joke. Not worth repeating.’
+
+‘Joke? Ay; I never see a joke,’ Mr. Honeythunder frowningly retorted.
+‘A joke is wasted upon me, sir. Where are they? Helena and Neville,
+come here! Mr. Crisparkle has come down to meet you.’
+
+An unusually handsome lithe young fellow, and an unusually handsome lithe
+girl; much alike; both very dark, and very rich in colour; she of almost
+the gipsy type; something untamed about them both; a certain air upon
+them of hunter and huntress; yet withal a certain air of being the
+objects of the chase, rather than the followers. Slender, supple, quick
+of eye and limb; half shy, half defiant; fierce of look; an indefinable
+kind of pause coming and going on their whole expression, both of face
+and form, which might be equally likened to the pause before a crouch or
+a bound. The rough mental notes made in the first five minutes by Mr.
+Crisparkle would have read thus, _verbatim_.
+
+He invited Mr. Honeythunder to dinner, with a troubled mind (for the
+discomfiture of the dear old china shepherdess lay heavy on it), and gave
+his arm to Helena Landless. Both she and her brother, as they walked all
+together through the ancient streets, took great delight in what he
+pointed out of the Cathedral and the Monastery ruin, and wondered—so his
+notes ran on—much as if they were beautiful barbaric captives brought
+from some wild tropical dominion. Mr. Honeythunder walked in the middle
+of the road, shouldering the natives out of his way, and loudly
+developing a scheme he had, for making a raid on all the unemployed
+persons in the United Kingdom, laying them every one by the heels in
+jail, and forcing them, on pain of prompt extermination, to become
+philanthropists.
+
+Mrs. Crisparkle had need of her own share of philanthropy when she beheld
+this very large and very loud excrescence on the little party. Always
+something in the nature of a Boil upon the face of society, Mr.
+Honeythunder expanded into an inflammatory Wen in Minor Canon Corner.
+Though it was not literally true, as was facetiously charged against him
+by public unbelievers, that he called aloud to his fellow-creatures:
+‘Curse your souls and bodies, come here and be blessed!’ still his
+philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it
+and animosity was hard to determine. You were to abolish military force,
+but you were first to bring all commanding officers who had done their
+duty, to trial by court-martial for that offence, and shoot them. You
+were to abolish war, but were to make converts by making war upon them,
+and charging them with loving war as the apple of their eye. You were to
+have no capital punishment, but were first to sweep off the face of the
+earth all legislators, jurists, and judges, who were of the contrary
+opinion. You were to have universal concord, and were to get it by
+eliminating all the people who wouldn’t, or conscientiously couldn’t, be
+concordant. You were to love your brother as yourself, but after an
+indefinite interval of maligning him (very much as if you hated him), and
+calling him all manner of names. Above all things, you were to do
+nothing in private, or on your own account. You were to go to the
+offices of the Haven of Philanthropy, and put your name down as a Member
+and a Professing Philanthropist. Then, you were to pay up your
+subscription, get your card of membership and your riband and medal, and
+were evermore to live upon a platform, and evermore to say what Mr.
+Honeythunder said, and what the Treasurer said, and what the
+sub-Treasurer said, and what the Committee said, and what the
+sub-Committee said, and what the Secretary said, and what the
+Vice-Secretary said. And this was usually said in the
+unanimously-carried resolution under hand and seal, to the effect: ‘That
+this assembled Body of Professing Philanthropists views, with indignant
+scorn and contempt, not unmixed with utter detestation and loathing
+abhorrence’—in short, the baseness of all those who do not belong to it,
+and pledges itself to make as many obnoxious statements as possible about
+them, without being at all particular as to facts.
+
+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 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, 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 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.
+
+ [Picture: At the piano]
+
+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!’
+
+With one swift turn of her lithe figures 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
+accomplishments, 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 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!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII—DAGGERS DRAWN
+
+
+The two young men, having seen the damsels, their charges, enter the
+courtyard of the Nuns’ House, and finding themselves coldly stared at by
+the brazen door-plate, as if the battered old beau with the glass in his
+eye were insolent, look at one another, look along the perspective of the
+moonlit street, and slowly walk away together.
+
+‘Do you stay here long, Mr. Drood?’ says Neville.
+
+‘Not this time,’ is the careless answer. ‘I leave for London again,
+to-morrow. But I shall be here, off and on, until next Midsummer; then I
+shall take my leave of Cloisterham, and England too; for many a long day,
+I expect.’
+
+‘Are you going abroad?’
+
+‘Going to wake up Egypt a little,’ is the condescending answer.
+
+‘Are you reading?’
+
+‘Reading?’ repeats Edwin Drood, with a touch of contempt. ‘No. Doing,
+working, engineering. My small patrimony was left a part of the capital
+of the Firm I am with, by my father, a former partner; and I am a charge
+upon the Firm until I come of age; and then I step into my modest share
+in the concern. Jack—you met him at dinner—is, until then, my guardian
+and trustee.’
+
+‘I heard from Mr. Crisparkle of your other good fortune.’
+
+‘What do you mean by my other good fortune?’
+
+Neville has made his remark in a watchfully advancing, and yet furtive
+and shy manner, very expressive of that peculiar air already noticed, of
+being at once hunter and hunted. Edwin has made his retort with an
+abruptness not at all polite. They stop and interchange a rather heated
+look.
+
+‘I hope,’ says Neville, ‘there is no offence, Mr. Drood, in my innocently
+referring to your betrothal?’
+
+‘By George!’ cries Edwin, leading on again at a somewhat quicker pace;
+‘everybody in this chattering old Cloisterham refers to it I wonder no
+public-house has been set up, with my portrait for the sign of The
+Betrothed’s Head. Or Pussy’s portrait. One or the other.’
+
+‘I am not accountable for Mr. Crisparkle’s mentioning the matter to me,
+quite openly,’ Neville begins.
+
+‘No; that’s true; you are not,’ Edwin Drood assents.
+
+‘But,’ resumes Neville, ‘I am accountable for mentioning it to you. And
+I did so, on the supposition that you could not fail to be highly proud
+of it.’
+
+Now, there are these two curious touches of human nature working the
+secret springs of this dialogue. Neville Landless is already enough
+impressed by Little Rosebud, to feel indignant that Edwin Drood (far
+below her) should hold his prize so lightly. Edwin Drood is already
+enough impressed by Helena, to feel indignant that Helena’s brother (far
+below her) should dispose of him so coolly, and put him out of the way so
+entirely.
+
+However, the last remark had better be answered. So, says Edwin:
+
+‘I don’t know, Mr. Neville’ (adopting that mode of address from Mr.
+Crisparkle), ‘that what people are proudest of, they usually talk most
+about; I don’t know either, that what they are proudest of, they most
+like other people to talk about. But I live a busy life, and I speak
+under correction by you readers, who ought to know everything, and I
+daresay do.’
+
+By this time they had both become savage; Mr. Neville out in the open;
+Edwin Drood under the transparent cover of a popular tune, and a stop now
+and then to pretend to admire picturesque effects in the moonlight before
+him.
+
+‘It does not seem to me very civil in you,’ remarks Neville, at length,
+‘to reflect upon a stranger who comes here, not having had your
+advantages, to try to make up for lost time. But, to be sure, I was not
+brought up in “busy life,” and my ideas of civility were formed among
+Heathens.’
+
+‘Perhaps, the best civility, whatever kind of people we are brought up
+among,’ retorts Edwin Drood, ‘is to mind our own business. If you will
+set me that example, I promise to follow it.’
+
+‘Do you know that you take a great deal too much upon yourself?’ is the
+angry rejoinder, ‘and that in the part of the world I come from, you
+would be called to account for it?’
+
+‘By whom, for instance?’ asks Edwin Drood, coming to a halt, and
+surveying the other with a look of disdain.
+
+But, here a startling right hand is laid on Edwin’s shoulder, and Jasper
+stands between them. For, it would seem that he, too, has strolled round
+by the Nuns’ House, and has come up behind them on the shadowy side of
+the road.
+
+‘Ned, Ned, Ned!’ he says; ‘we must have no more of this. I don’t like
+this. I have overheard high words between you two. Remember, my dear
+boy, you are almost in the position of host to-night. You belong, as it
+were, to the place, and in a manner represent it towards a stranger. Mr.
+Neville is a stranger, and you should respect the obligations of
+hospitality. And, Mr. Neville,’ laying his left hand on the inner
+shoulder of that young gentleman, and thus walking on between them, hand
+to shoulder on either side: ‘you will pardon me; but I appeal to you to
+govern your temper too. Now, what is amiss? But why ask! Let there be
+nothing amiss, and the question is superfluous. We are all three on a
+good understanding, are we not?’
+
+After a silent struggle between the two young men who shall speak last,
+Edwin Drood strikes in with: ‘So far as I am concerned, Jack, there is no
+anger in me.’
+
+‘Nor in me,’ says Neville Landless, though not so freely; or perhaps so
+carelessly. ‘But if Mr. Drood knew all that lies behind me, far away
+from here, he might know better how it is that sharp-edged words have
+sharp edges to wound me.’
+
+‘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.’
+
+ [Picture: On dangerous ground]
+
+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.’
+
+‘Ah!’ thinks Mr. Crisparkle, ‘so he said!’
+
+‘You, my dear sir,’ pursues Jasper, taking his hand, ‘even you, have
+accepted a dangerous charge.’
+
+‘You need have no fear for me, Jasper,’ returns Mr. Crisparkle, with a
+quiet smile. ‘I have none for myself.’
+
+‘I have none for myself,’ returns Jasper, with an emphasis on the last
+pronoun, ‘because I am not, nor am I in the way of being, the object of
+his hostility. But you may be, and my dear boy has been. Good night!’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle goes in, with the hat that has so easily, so almost
+imperceptibly, acquired the right to be hung up in his hall; hangs it up;
+and goes thoughtfully to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX—BIRDS IN THE BUSH
+
+
+Rosa, having no relation that she knew of in the world, had, from the
+seventh year of her age, known no home but the Nuns’ House, and no mother
+but Miss Twinkleton. Her remembrance of her own mother was of a pretty
+little creature like herself (not much older than herself it seemed to
+her), who had been brought home in her father’s arms, drowned. The fatal
+accident had happened at a party of pleasure. Every fold and colour in
+the pretty summer dress, and even the long wet hair, with scattered
+petals of ruined flowers still clinging to it, as the dead young figure,
+in its sad, sad beauty lay upon the bed, were fixed indelibly in Rosa’s
+recollection. So were the wild despair and the subsequent bowed-down
+grief of her poor young father, who died broken-hearted on the first
+anniversary of that hard day.
+
+The betrothal of Rosa grew out of the soothing of his year of mental
+distress by his fast friend and old college companion, Drood: who
+likewise had been left a widower in his youth. But he, too, went the
+silent road into which all earthly pilgrimages merge, some sooner, and
+some later; and thus the young couple had come to be as they were.
+
+The atmosphere of pity surrounding the little orphan girl when she first
+came to Cloisterham, had never cleared away. It had taken brighter hues
+as she grew older, happier, prettier; now it had been golden, now
+roseate, and now azure; but it had always adorned her with some soft
+light of its own. The general desire to console and caress her, had
+caused her to be treated in the beginning as a child much younger than
+her years; the same desire had caused her to be still petted when she was
+a child no longer. Who should be her favourite, who should anticipate
+this or that small present, or do her this or that small service; who
+should take her home for the holidays; who should write to her the
+oftenest when they were separated, and whom she would most rejoice to see
+again when they were reunited; even these gentle rivalries were not
+without their slight dashes of bitterness in the Nuns’ House. Well for
+the poor Nuns in their day, if they hid no harder strife under their
+veils and rosaries!
+
+Thus Rosa had grown to be an amiable, giddy, wilful, winning little
+creature; spoilt, in the sense of counting upon kindness from all around
+her; but not in the sense of repaying it with indifference. Possessing
+an exhaustless well of affection in her nature, its sparkling waters had
+freshened and brightened the Nuns’ House for years, and yet its depths
+had never yet been moved: what might betide when that came to pass; what
+developing changes might fall upon the heedless head, and light heart,
+then; remained to be seen.
+
+By what means the news that there had been a quarrel between the two
+young men overnight, involving even some kind of onslaught by Mr. Neville
+upon Edwin Drood, got into Miss Twinkleton’s establishment before
+breakfast, it is impossible to say. Whether it was brought in by the
+birds of the air, or came blowing in with the very air itself, when the
+casement windows were set open; whether the baker brought it kneaded into
+the bread, or the milkman delivered it as part of the adulteration of his
+milk; or the housemaids, beating the dust out of their mats against the
+gateposts, received it in exchange deposited on the mats by the town
+atmosphere; certain it is that the news permeated every gable of the old
+building before Miss Twinkleton was down, and that Miss Twinkleton
+herself received it through Mrs. Tisher, while yet in the act of
+dressing; or (as she might have expressed the phrase to a parent or
+guardian of a mythological turn) of sacrificing to the Graces.
+
+Miss Landless’s brother had thrown a bottle at Mr. Edwin Drood.
+
+Miss Landless’s brother had thrown a knife at Mr. Edwin Drood.
+
+A knife became suggestive of a fork; and Miss Landless’s brother had
+thrown a fork at Mr. Edwin Drood.
+
+As in the governing precedence of Peter Piper, alleged to have picked the
+peck of pickled pepper, it was held physically desirable to have evidence
+of the existence of the peck of pickled pepper which Peter Piper was
+alleged to have picked; so, in this case, it was held psychologically
+important to know why Miss Landless’s brother threw a bottle, knife, or
+fork-or bottle, knife, _and_ fork—for the cook had been given to
+understand it was all three—at Mr. Edwin Drood?
+
+Well, then. Miss Landless’s brother had said he admired Miss Bud. Mr.
+Edwin Drood had said to Miss Landless’s brother that he had no business
+to admire Miss Bud. Miss Landless’s brother had then ‘up’d’ (this was
+the cook’s exact information) with the bottle, knife, fork, and decanter
+(the decanter now coolly flying at everybody’s head, without the least
+introduction), and thrown them all at Mr. Edwin Drood.
+
+Poor little Rosa put a forefinger into each of her ears when these
+rumours began to circulate, and retired into a corner, beseeching not to
+be told any more; but Miss Landless, begging permission of Miss
+Twinkleton to go and speak with her brother, and pretty plainly showing
+that she would take it if it were not given, struck out the more definite
+course of going to Mr. Crisparkle’s for accurate intelligence.
+
+When she came back (being first closeted with Miss Twinkleton, in order
+that anything objectionable in her tidings might be retained by that
+discreet filter), she imparted to Rosa only, what had taken place;
+dwelling with a flushed cheek on the provocation her brother had
+received, but almost limiting it to that last gross affront as crowning
+‘some other words between them,’ and, out of consideration for her new
+friend, passing lightly over the fact that the other words had originated
+in her lover’s taking things in general so very easily. To Rosa direct,
+she brought a petition from her brother that she would forgive him; and,
+having delivered it with sisterly earnestness, made an end of the
+subject.
+
+It was reserved for Miss Twinkleton to tone down the public mind of the
+Nuns’ House. That lady, therefore, entering in a stately manner what
+plebeians might have called the school-room, but what, in the patrician
+language of the head of the Nuns’ House, was euphuistically, not to say
+round-aboutedly, denominated ‘the apartment allotted to study,’ and
+saying with a forensic air, ‘Ladies!’ all rose. Mrs. Tisher at the same
+time grouped herself behind her chief, as representing Queen Elizabeth’s
+first historical female friend at Tilbury fort. Miss Twinkleton then
+proceeded to remark that Rumour, Ladies, had been represented by the bard
+of Avon—needless were it to mention the immortal SHAKESPEARE, also called
+the Swan of his native river, not improbably with some reference to the
+ancient superstition that that bird of graceful plumage (Miss Jennings
+will please stand upright) sang sweetly on the approach of death, for
+which we have no ornithological authority,—Rumour, Ladies, had been
+represented by that bard—hem!—
+
+ ‘who drew
+ The celebrated Jew,’
+
+as painted full of tongues. Rumour in Cloisterham (Miss Ferdinand will
+honour me with her attention) was no exception to the great limner’s
+portrait of Rumour elsewhere. A slight _fracas_ between two young
+gentlemen occurring last night within a hundred miles of these peaceful
+walls (Miss Ferdinand, being apparently incorrigible, will have the
+kindness to write out this evening, in the original language, the first
+four fables of our vivacious neighbour, Monsieur La Fontaine) had been
+very grossly exaggerated by Rumour’s voice. In the first alarm and
+anxiety arising from our sympathy with a sweet young friend, not wholly
+to be dissociated from one of the gladiators in the bloodless arena in
+question (the impropriety of Miss Reynolds’s appearing to stab herself in
+the hand with a pin, is far too obvious, and too glaringly unladylike, to
+be pointed out), we descended from our maiden elevation to discuss this
+uncongenial and this unfit theme. Responsible inquiries having assured
+us that it was but one of those ‘airy nothings’ pointed at by the Poet
+(whose name and date of birth Miss Giggles will supply within half an
+hour), we would now discard the subject, and concentrate our minds upon
+the grateful labours of the day.
+
+But the subject so survived all day, nevertheless, that Miss Ferdinand
+got into new trouble by surreptitiously clapping on a paper moustache at
+dinner-time, and going through the motions of aiming a water-bottle at
+Miss Giggles, who drew a table-spoon in defence.
+
+Now, Rosa thought of this unlucky quarrel a great deal, and thought of it
+with an uncomfortable feeling that she was involved in it, as cause, or
+consequence, or what not, through being in a false position altogether as
+to her marriage engagement. Never free from such uneasiness when she was
+with her affianced husband, it was not likely that she would be free from
+it when they were apart. To-day, too, she was cast in upon herself, and
+deprived of the relief of talking freely with her new friend, because the
+quarrel had been with Helena’s brother, and Helena undisguisedly avoided
+the subject as a delicate and difficult one to herself. At this critical
+time, of all times, Rosa’s guardian was announced as having come to see
+her.
+
+Mr. Grewgious had been well selected for his trust, as a man of
+incorruptible integrity, but certainly for no other appropriate quality
+discernible on the surface. He was an arid, sandy man, who, if he had
+been put into a grinding-mill, looked as if he would have ground
+immediately into high-dried snuff. He had a scanty flat crop of hair, in
+colour and consistency like some very mangy yellow fur tippet; it was so
+unlike hair, that it must have been a wig, but for the stupendous
+improbability of anybody’s voluntarily sporting such a head. The little
+play of feature that his face presented, was cut deep into it, in a few
+hard curves that made it more like work; and he had certain notches in
+his forehead, which looked as though Nature had been about to touch them
+into sensibility or refinement, when she had impatiently thrown away the
+chisel, and said: ‘I really cannot be worried to finish off this man; let
+him go as he is.’
+
+With too great length of throat at his upper end, and too much ankle-bone
+and heel at his lower; with an awkward and hesitating manner; with a
+shambling walk; and with what is called a near sight—which perhaps
+prevented his observing how much white cotton stocking he displayed to
+the public eye, in contrast with his black suit—Mr. Grewgious still had
+some strange capacity in him of making on the whole an agreeable
+impression.
+
+Mr. Grewgious was discovered by his ward, much discomfited by being in
+Miss Twinkleton’s company in Miss Twinkleton’s own sacred room. Dim
+forebodings of being examined in something, and not coming well out of
+it, seemed to oppress the poor gentleman when found in these
+circumstances.
+
+‘My dear, how do you do? I am glad to see you. My dear, how much
+improved you are. Permit me to hand you a chair, my dear.’
+
+Miss Twinkleton rose at her little writing-table, saying, with general
+sweetness, as to the polite Universe: ‘Will you permit me to retire?’
+
+‘By no means, madam, on my account. I beg that you will not move.’
+
+‘I must entreat permission to _move_,’ returned Miss Twinkleton,
+repeating the word with a charming grace; ‘but I will not withdraw, since
+you are so obliging. If I wheel my desk to this corner window, shall I
+be in the way?’
+
+‘Madam! In the way!’
+
+‘You are very kind.—Rosa, my dear, you will be under no restraint, I am
+sure.’
+
+Here Mr. Grewgious, left by the fire with Rosa, said again: ‘My dear, how
+do you do? I am glad to see you, my dear.’ And having waited for her to
+sit down, sat down himself.
+
+‘My visits,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘are, like those of the angels—not that
+I compare myself to an angel.’
+
+‘No, sir,’ said Rosa.
+
+‘Not by any means,’ assented Mr. Grewgious. ‘I merely refer to my
+visits, which are few and far between. The angels are, we know very
+well, up-stairs.’
+
+Miss Twinkleton looked round with a kind of stiff stare.
+
+‘I refer, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious, laying his hand on Rosa’s, as the
+possibility thrilled through his frame of his otherwise seeming to take
+the awful liberty of calling Miss Twinkleton my dear; ‘I refer to the
+other young ladies.’
+
+Miss Twinkleton resumed her writing.
+
+Mr. Grewgious, with a sense of not having managed his opening point quite
+as neatly as he might have desired, smoothed his head from back to front
+as if he had just dived, and were pressing the water out—this smoothing
+action, however superfluous, was habitual with him—and took a pocket-book
+from his coat-pocket, and a stump of black-lead pencil from his
+waistcoat-pocket.
+
+‘I made,’ he said, turning the leaves: ‘I made a guiding memorandum or
+so—as I usually do, for I have no conversational powers whatever—to which
+I will, with your permission, my dear, refer. “Well and happy.” Truly.
+You are well and happy, my dear? You look so.’
+
+‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ answered Rosa.
+
+‘For which,’ said Mr. Grewgious, with a bend of his head towards the
+corner window, ‘our warmest acknowledgments are due, and I am sure are
+rendered, to the maternal kindness and the constant care and
+consideration of the lady whom I have now the honour to see before me.’
+
+This point, again, made but a lame departure from Mr. Grewgious, and
+never got to its destination; for, Miss Twinkleton, feeling that the
+courtesies required her to be by this time quite outside the
+conversation, was biting the end of her pen, and looking upward, as
+waiting for the descent of an idea from any member of the Celestial Nine
+who might have one to spare.
+
+Mr. Grewgious smoothed his smooth head again, and then made another
+reference to his pocket-book; lining out ‘well and happy,’ as disposed
+of.
+
+‘“Pounds, shillings, and pence,” is my next note. A dry subject for a
+young lady, but an important subject too. Life is pounds, shillings, and
+pence. Death is—’ A sudden recollection of the death of her two parents
+seemed to stop him, and he said in a softer tone, and evidently inserting
+the negative as an after-thought: ‘Death is _not_ pounds, shillings, and
+pence.’
+
+His voice was as hard and dry as himself, and Fancy might have ground it
+straight, like himself, into high-dried snuff. And yet, through the very
+limited means of expression that he possessed, he seemed to express
+kindness. If Nature had but finished him off, kindness might have been
+recognisable in his face at this moment. But if the notches in his
+forehead wouldn’t fuse together, and if his face would work and couldn’t
+play, what could he do, poor man!
+
+‘“Pounds, shillings, and pence.” You find your allowance always
+sufficient for your wants, my dear?’
+
+Rosa wanted for nothing, and therefore it was ample.
+
+‘And you are not in debt?’
+
+Rosa laughed at the idea of being in debt. It seemed, to her
+inexperience, a comical vagary of the imagination. Mr. Grewgious
+stretched his near sight to be sure that this was her view of the case.
+‘Ah!’ he said, as comment, with a furtive glance towards Miss Twinkleton,
+and lining out pounds, shillings, and pence: ‘I spoke of having got among
+the angels! So I did!’
+
+Rosa felt what his next memorandum would prove to be, and was blushing
+and folding a crease in her dress with one embarrassed hand, long before
+he found it.
+
+‘“Marriage.” Hem!’ Mr. Grewgious carried his smoothing hand down over
+his eyes and nose, and even chin, before drawing his chair a little
+nearer, and speaking a little more confidentially: ‘I now touch, my dear,
+upon the point that is the direct cause of my troubling you with the
+present visit. Othenwise, being a particularly Angular man, I should not
+have intruded here. I am the last man to intrude into a sphere for which
+I am so entirely unfitted. I feel, on these premises, as if I was a
+bear—with the cramp—in a youthful Cotillon.’
+
+His ungainliness gave him enough of the air of his simile to set Rosa off
+laughing heartily.
+
+‘It strikes you in the same light,’ said Mr. Grewgious, with perfect
+calmness. ‘Just so. To return to my memorandum. Mr. Edwin has been to
+and fro here, as was arranged. You have mentioned that, in your
+quarterly letters to me. And you like him, and he likes you.’
+
+‘I _like_ him very much, sir,’ rejoined Rosa.
+
+‘So I said, my dear,’ returned her guardian, for whose ear the timid
+emphasis was much too fine. ‘Good. And you correspond.’
+
+‘We write to one another,’ said Rosa, pouting, as she recalled their
+epistolary differences.
+
+‘Such is the meaning that I attach to the word “correspond” in this
+application, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘Good. All goes well, time
+works on, and at this next Christmas-time it will become necessary, as a
+matter of form, to give the exemplary lady in the corner window, to whom
+we are so much indebted, business notice of your departure in the ensuing
+half-year. Your relations with her are far more than business relations,
+no doubt; but a residue of business remains in them, and business is
+business ever. I am a particularly Angular man,’ proceeded Mr.
+Grewgious, as if it suddenly occurred to him to mention it, ‘and I am not
+used to give anything away. If, for these two reasons, some competent
+Proxy would give _you_ away, I should take it very kindly.’
+
+Rosa intimated, with her eyes on the ground, that she thought a
+substitute might be found, if required.
+
+‘Surely, surely,’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘For instance, the gentleman who
+teaches Dancing here—he would know how to do it with graceful propriety.
+He would advance and retire in a manner satisfactory to the feelings of
+the officiating clergyman, and of yourself, and the bridegroom, and all
+parties concerned. I am—I am a particularly Angular man,’ said Mr.
+Grewgious, as if he had made up his mind to screw it out at last: ‘and
+should only blunder.’
+
+Rosa sat still and silent. Perhaps her mind had not got quite so far as
+the ceremony yet, but was lagging on the way there.
+
+‘Memorandum, “Will.” Now, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious, referring to his
+notes, disposing of ‘Marriage’ with his pencil, and taking a paper from
+his pocket; ‘although. I have before possessed you with the contents of
+your father’s will, I think it right at this time to leave a certified
+copy of it in your hands. And although Mr. Edwin is also aware of its
+contents, I think it right at this time likewise to place a certified
+copy of it in Mr. Jasper’s hand—’
+
+‘Not in his own!’ asked Rosa, looking up quickly. ‘Cannot the copy go to
+Eddy himself?’
+
+‘Why, yes, my dear, if you particularly wish it; but I spoke of Mr.
+Jasper as being his trustee.’
+
+‘I do particularly wish it, if you please,’ said Rosa, hurriedly and
+earnestly; ‘I don’t like Mr. Jasper to come between us, in any way.’
+
+‘It is natural, I suppose,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘that your young husband
+should be all in all. Yes. You observe that I say, I suppose. The fact
+is, I am a particularly Unnatural man, and I don’t know from my own
+knowledge.’
+
+Rosa looked at him with some wonder.
+
+‘I mean,’ he explained, ‘that young ways were never my ways. I was the
+only offspring of parents far advanced in life, and I half believe I was
+born advanced in life myself. No personality is intended towards the
+name you will so soon change, when I remark that while the general growth
+of people seem to have come into existence, buds, I seem to have come
+into existence a chip. I was a chip—and a very dry one—when I first
+became aware of myself. Respecting the other certified copy, your wish
+shall be complied with. Respecting your inheritance, I think you know
+all. It is an annuity of two hundred and fifty pounds. The savings upon
+that annuity, and some other items to your credit, all duly carried to
+account, with vouchers, will place you in possession of a lump-sum of
+money, rather exceeding Seventeen Hundred Pounds. I am empowered to
+advance the cost of your preparations for your marriage out of that fund.
+All is told.’
+
+‘Will you please tell me,’ said Rosa, taking the paper with a prettily
+knitted brow, but not opening it: ‘whether I am right in what I am going
+to say? I can understand what you tell me, so very much better than what
+I read in law-writings. My poor papa and Eddy’s father made their
+agreement together, as very dear and firm and fast friends, in order that
+we, too, might be very dear and firm and fast friends after them?’
+
+‘Just so.’
+
+‘For the lasting good of both of us, and the lasting happiness of both of
+us?’
+
+‘Just so.’
+
+‘That we might be to one another even much more than they had been to one
+another?’
+
+‘Just so.’
+
+‘It was not bound upon Eddy, and it was not bound upon me, by any
+forfeit, in case—’
+
+‘Don’t be agitated, my dear. In the case that it brings tears into your
+affectionate eyes even to picture to yourself—in the case of your not
+marrying one another—no, no forfeiture on either side. You would then
+have been my ward until you were of age. No worse would have befallen
+you. Bad enough perhaps!’
+
+‘And Eddy?’
+
+‘He would have come into his partnership derived from his father, and
+into its arrears to his credit (if any), on attaining his majority, just
+as now.’
+
+Rosa, with her perplexed face and knitted brow, bit the corner of her
+attested copy, as she sat with her head on one side, looking abstractedly
+on the floor, and smoothing it with her foot.
+
+‘In short,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘this betrothal is a wish, a sentiment, a
+friendly project, tenderly expressed on both sides. That it was strongly
+felt, and that there was a lively hope that it would prosper, there can
+be no doubt. When you were both children, you began to be accustomed to
+it, and it _has_ prospered. But circumstances alter cases; and I made
+this visit to-day, partly, indeed principally, to discharge myself of the
+duty of telling you, my dear, that two young people can only be betrothed
+in marriage (except as a matter of convenience, and therefore mockery and
+misery) of their own free will, their own attachment, and their own
+assurance (it may or it may not prove a mistaken one, but we must take
+our chance of that), that they are suited to each other, and will make
+each other happy. Is it to be supposed, for example, that if either of
+your fathers were living now, and had any mistrust on that subject, his
+mind would not be changed by the change of circumstances involved in the
+change of your years? Untenable, unreasonable, inconclusive, and
+preposterous!’
+
+Mr. Grewgious said all this, as if he were reading it aloud; or, still
+more, as if he were repeating a lesson. So expressionless of any
+approach to spontaneity were his face and manner.
+
+‘I have now, my dear,’ he added, blurring out ‘Will’ with his pencil,
+‘discharged myself of what is doubtless a formal duty in this case, but
+still a duty in such a case. Memorandum, “Wishes.” My dear, is there
+any wish of yours that I can further?’
+
+Rosa shook her head, with an almost plaintive air of hesitation in want
+of help.
+
+‘Is there any instruction that I can take from you with reference to your
+affairs?’
+
+‘I—I should like to settle them with Eddy first, if you please,’ said
+Rosa, plaiting the crease in her dress.
+
+‘Surely, surely,’ returned Mr. Grewgious. ‘You two should be of one mind
+in all things. Is the young gentleman expected shortly?’
+
+‘He has gone away only this morning. He will be back at Christmas.’
+
+‘Nothing could happen better. You will, on his return at Christmas,
+arrange all matters of detail with him; you will then communicate with
+me; and I will discharge myself (as a mere business acquaintance) of my
+business responsibilities towards the accomplished lady in the corner
+window. They will accrue at that season.’ Blurring pencil once again.
+‘Memorandum, “Leave.” Yes. I will now, my dear, take my leave.’
+
+‘Could I,’ said Rosa, rising, as he jerked out of his chair in his
+ungainly way: ‘could I ask you, most kindly to come to me at Christmas,
+if I had anything particular to say to you?’
+
+‘Why, certainly, certainly,’ he rejoined; apparently—if such a word can
+be used of one who had no apparent lights or shadows about
+him—complimented by the question. ‘As a particularly Angular man, I do
+not fit smoothly into the social circle, and consequently I have no other
+engagement at Christmas-time than to partake, on the twenty-fifth, of a
+boiled turkey and celery sauce with a—with a particularly Angular clerk I
+have the good fortune to possess, whose father, being a Norfolk farmer,
+sends him up (the turkey up), as a present to me, from the neighbourhood
+of Norwich. I should be quite proud of your wishing to see me, my dear.
+As a professional Receiver of rents, so very few people _do_ wish to see
+me, that the novelty would be bracing.’
+
+For his ready acquiescence, the grateful Rosa put her hands upon his
+shoulders, stood on tiptoe, and instantly kissed him.
+
+‘Lord bless me!’ cried Mr. Grewgious. ‘Thank you, my dear! The honour
+is almost equal to the pleasure. Miss Twinkleton, madam, I have had a
+most satisfactory conversation with my ward, and I will now release you
+from the incumbrance of my presence.’
+
+‘Nay, sir,’ rejoined Miss Twinkleton, rising with a gracious
+condescension: ‘say not incumbrance. Not so, by any means. I cannot
+permit you to say so.’
+
+‘Thank you, madam. I have read in the newspapers,’ said Mr. Grewgious,
+stammering a little, ‘that when a distinguished visitor (not that I am
+one: far from it) goes to a school (not that this is one: far from it),
+he asks for a holiday, or some sort of grace. It being now the afternoon
+in the—College—of which you are the eminent head, the young ladies might
+gain nothing, except in name, by having the rest of the day allowed them.
+But if there is any young lady at all under a cloud, might I solicit—’
+
+‘Ah, Mr. Grewgious, Mr. Grewgious!’ cried Miss Twinkleton, with a
+chastely-rallying forefinger. ‘O you gentlemen, you gentlemen! Fie for
+shame, that you are so hard upon us poor maligned disciplinarians of our
+sex, for your sakes! But as Miss Ferdinand is at present weighed down by
+an incubus’—Miss Twinkleton might have said a pen-and-ink-ubus of writing
+out Monsieur La Fontaine—‘go to her, Rosa my dear, and tell her the
+penalty is remitted, in deference to the intercession of your guardian,
+Mr. Grewgious.’
+
+Miss Twinkleton here achieved a curtsey, suggestive of marvels happening
+to her respected legs, and which she came out of nobly, three yards
+behind her starting-point.
+
+As he held it incumbent upon him to call on Mr. Jasper before leaving
+Cloisterham, Mr. Grewgious went to the gatehouse, and climbed its postern
+stair. But Mr. Jasper’s door being closed, and presenting on a slip of
+paper the word ‘Cathedral,’ the fact of its being service-time was borne
+into the mind of Mr. Grewgious. So he descended the stair again, and,
+crossing the Close, paused at the great western folding-door of the
+Cathedral, which stood open on the fine and bright, though short-lived,
+afternoon, for the airing of the place.
+
+‘Dear me,’ said Mr. Grewgious, peeping in, ‘it’s like looking down the
+throat of Old Time.’
+
+Old Time heaved a mouldy sigh from tomb and arch and vault; and gloomy
+shadows began to deepen in corners; and damps began to rise from green
+patches of stone; and jewels, cast upon the pavement of the nave from
+stained glass by the declining sun, began to perish. Within the
+grill-gate of the chancel, up the steps surmounted loomingly by the
+fast-darkening organ, white robes could be dimly seen, and one feeble
+voice, rising and falling in a cracked, monotonous mutter, could at
+intervals be faintly heard. In the free outer air, the river, the green
+pastures, and the brown arable lands, the teeming hills and dales, were
+reddened by the sunset: while the distant little windows in windmills and
+farm homesteads, shone, patches of bright beaten gold. In the Cathedral,
+all became gray, murky, and sepulchral, and the cracked monotonous mutter
+went on like a dying voice, until the organ and the choir burst forth,
+and drowned it in a sea of music. Then, the sea fell, and the dying
+voice made another feeble effort, and then the sea rose high, and beat
+its life out, and lashed the roof, and surged among the arches, and
+pierced the heights of the great tower; and then the sea was dry, and all
+was still.
+
+Mr. Grewgious had by that time walked to the chancel-steps, where he met
+the living waters coming out.
+
+‘Nothing is the matter?’ Thus Jasper accosted him, rather quickly. ‘You
+have not been sent for?’
+
+‘Not at all, not at all. I came down of my own accord. I have been to
+my pretty ward’s, and am now homeward bound again.’
+
+‘You found her thriving?’
+
+‘Blooming indeed. Most blooming. I merely came to tell her, seriously,
+what a betrothal by deceased parents is.’
+
+‘And what is it—according to your judgment?’
+
+Mr. Grewgious noticed the whiteness of the lips that asked the question,
+and put it down to the chilling account of the Cathedral.
+
+‘I merely came to tell her that it could not be considered binding,
+against any such reason for its dissolution as a want of affection, or
+want of disposition to carry it into effect, on the side of either
+party.’
+
+‘May I ask, had you any especial reason for telling her that?’
+
+Mr. Grewgious answered somewhat sharply: ‘The especial reason of doing my
+duty, sir. Simply that.’ Then he added: ‘Come, Mr. Jasper; I know your
+affection for your nephew, and that you are quick to feel on his behalf.
+I assure you that this implies not the least doubt of, or disrespect to,
+your nephew.’
+
+‘You could not,’ returned Jasper, with a friendly pressure of his arm, as
+they walked on side by side, ‘speak more handsomely.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious pulled off his hat to smooth his head, and, having smoothed
+it, nodded it contentedly, and put his hat on again.
+
+‘I will wager,’ said Jasper, smiling—his lips were still so white that he
+was conscious of it, and bit and moistened them while speaking: ‘I will
+wager that she hinted no wish to be released from Ned.’
+
+‘And you will win your wager, if you do,’ retorted Mr. Grewgious. ‘We
+should allow some margin for little maidenly delicacies in a young
+motherless creature, under such circumstances, I suppose; it is not in my
+line; what do you think?’
+
+‘There can be no doubt of it.’
+
+‘I am glad you say so. Because,’ proceeded Mr. Grewgious, who had all
+this time very knowingly felt his way round to action on his remembrance
+of what she had said of Jasper himself: ‘because she seems to have some
+little delicate instinct that all preliminary arrangements had best be
+made between Mr. Edwin Drood and herself, don’t you see? She don’t want
+us, don’t you know?’
+
+Jasper touched himself on the breast, and said, somewhat indistinctly:
+‘You mean me.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious touched himself on the breast, and said: ‘I mean us.
+Therefore, let them have their little discussions and councils together,
+when Mr. Edwin Drood comes back here at Christmas; and then you and I
+will step in, and put the final touches to the business.’
+
+‘So, you settled with her that you would come back at Christmas?’
+observed Jasper. ‘I see! Mr. Grewgious, as you quite fairly said just
+now, there is such an exceptional attachment between my nephew and me,
+that I am more sensitive for the dear, fortunate, happy, happy fellow
+than for myself. But it is only right that the young lady should be
+considered, as you have pointed out, and that I should accept my cue from
+you. I accept it. I understand that at Christmas they will complete
+their preparations for May, and that their marriage will be put in final
+train by themselves, and that nothing will remain for us but to put
+ourselves in train also, and have everything ready for our formal release
+from our trusts, on Edwin’s birthday.’
+
+‘That is my understanding,’ assented Mr. Grewgious, as they shook hands
+to part. ‘God bless them both!’
+
+‘God save them both!’ cried Jasper.
+
+‘I said, bless them,’ remarked the former, looking back over his
+shoulder.
+
+‘I said, save them,’ returned the latter. ‘Is there any difference?’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X—SMOOTHING THE WAY
+
+
+It has been often enough remarked that women have a curious power of
+divining the characters of men, which would seem to be innate and
+instinctive; seeing that it is arrived at through no patient process of
+reasoning, that it can give no satisfactory or sufficient account of
+itself, and that it pronounces in the most confident manner even against
+accumulated observation on the part of the other sex. But it has not
+been quite so often remarked that this power (fallible, like every other
+human attribute) is for the most part absolutely incapable of
+self-revision; and that when it has delivered an adverse opinion which by
+all human lights is subsequently proved to have failed, it is
+undistinguishable from prejudice, in respect of its determination not to
+be corrected. Nay, the very possibility of contradiction or disproof,
+however remote, communicates to this feminine judgment from the first, in
+nine cases out of ten, the weakness attendant on the testimony of an
+interested witness; so personally and strongly does the fair diviner
+connect herself with her divination.
+
+‘Now, don’t you think, Ma dear,’ said the Minor Canon to his mother one
+day as she sat at her knitting in his little book-room, ‘that you are
+rather hard on Mr. Neville?’
+
+‘No, I do _not_, Sept,’ returned the old lady.
+
+‘Let us discuss it, Ma.’
+
+‘I have no objection to discuss it, Sept. I trust, my dear, I am always
+open to discussion.’ There was a vibration in the old lady’s cap, as
+though she internally added: ‘and I should like to see the discussion
+that would change _my_ mind!’
+
+‘Very good, Ma,’ said her conciliatory son. ‘There is nothing like being
+open to discussion.’
+
+‘I hope not, my dear,’ returned the old lady, evidently shut to it.
+
+‘Well! Mr. Neville, on that unfortunate occasion, commits himself under
+provocation.’
+
+‘And under mulled wine,’ added the old lady.
+
+‘I must admit the wine. Though I believe the two young men were much
+alike in that regard.’
+
+‘I don’t,’ said the old lady.
+
+‘Why not, Ma?’
+
+‘Because I _don’t_,’ said the old lady. ‘Still, I am quite open to
+discussion.’
+
+‘But, my dear Ma, I cannot see how we are to discuss, if you take that
+line.’
+
+‘Blame Mr. Neville for it, Sept, and not me,’ said the old lady, with
+stately severity.
+
+‘My dear Ma! why Mr. Neville?’
+
+‘Because,’ said Mrs. Crisparkle, retiring on first principles, ‘he came
+home intoxicated, and did great discredit to this house, and showed great
+disrespect to this family.’
+
+‘That is not to be denied, Ma. He was then, and he is now, very sorry
+for it.’
+
+‘But for Mr. Jasper’s well-bred consideration in coming up to me, next
+day, after service, in the Nave itself, with his gown still on, and
+expressing his hope that I had not been greatly alarmed or had my rest
+violently broken, I believe I might never have heard of that disgraceful
+transaction,’ said the old lady.
+
+‘To be candid, Ma, I think I should have kept it from you if I could:
+though I had not decidedly made up my mind. I was following Jasper out,
+to confer with him on the subject, and to consider the expediency of his
+and my jointly hushing the thing up on all accounts, when I found him
+speaking to you. Then it was too late.’
+
+‘Too late, indeed, Sept. He was still as pale as gentlemanly ashes at
+what had taken place in his rooms overnight.’
+
+‘If I _had_ kept it from you, Ma, you may be sure it would have been for
+your peace and quiet, and for the good of the young men, and in my best
+discharge of my duty according to my lights.’
+
+The old lady immediately walked across the room and kissed him: saying,
+‘Of course, my dear Sept, I am sure of that.’
+
+‘However, it became the town-talk,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, rubbing his ear,
+as his mother resumed her seat, and her knitting, ‘and passed out of my
+power.’
+
+‘And I said then, Sept,’ returned the old lady, ‘that I thought ill of
+Mr. Neville. And I say now, that I think ill of Mr. Neville. And I said
+then, and I say now, that I hope Mr. Neville may come to good, but I
+don’t believe he will.’ Here the cap vibrated again considerably.
+
+‘I am sorry to hear you say so, Ma—’
+
+‘I am sorry to say so, my dear,’ interposed the old lady, knitting on
+firmly, ‘but I can’t help it.’
+
+‘—For,’ pursued the Minor Canon, ‘it is undeniable that Mr. Neville is
+exceedingly industrious and attentive, and that he improves apace, and
+that he has—I hope I may say—an attachment to me.’
+
+‘There is no merit in the last article, my dear,’ said the old lady,
+quickly; ‘and if he says there is, I think the worse of him for the
+boast.’
+
+‘But, my dear Ma, he never said there was.’
+
+‘Perhaps not,’ returned the old lady; ‘still, I don’t see that it greatly
+signifies.’
+
+There was no impatience in the pleasant look with which Mr. Crisparkle
+contemplated the pretty old piece of china as it knitted; but there was,
+certainly, a humorous sense of its not being a piece of china to argue
+with very closely.
+
+‘Besides, Sept, ask yourself what he would be without his sister. You
+know what an influence she has over him; you know what a capacity she
+has; you know that whatever he reads with you, he reads with her. Give
+her her fair share of your praise, and how much do you leave for him?’
+
+At these words Mr. Crisparkle fell into a little reverie, in which he
+thought of several things. He thought of the times he had seen the
+brother and sister together in deep converse over one of his own old
+college books; now, in the rimy mornings, when he made those sharpening
+pilgrimages to Cloisterham Weir; now, in the sombre evenings, when he
+faced the wind at sunset, having climbed his favourite outlook, a
+beetling fragment of monastery ruin; and the two studious figures passed
+below him along the margin of the river, in which the town fires and
+lights already shone, making the landscape bleaker. He thought how the
+consciousness had stolen upon him that in teaching one, he was teaching
+two; and how he had almost insensibly adapted his explanations to both
+minds—that with which his own was daily in contact, and that which he
+only approached through it. He thought of the gossip that had reached
+him from the Nuns’ House, to the effect that Helena, whom he had
+mistrusted as so proud and fierce, submitted herself to the fairy-bride
+(as he called her), and learnt from her what she knew. He thought of the
+picturesque alliance between those two, externally so very different. He
+thought—perhaps most of all—could it be that these things were yet but so
+many weeks old, and had become an integral part of his life?
+
+As, whenever the Reverend Septimus fell a-musing, his good mother took it
+to be an infallible sign that he ‘wanted support,’ the blooming old lady
+made all haste to the dining-room closet, to produce from it the support
+embodied in a glass of Constantia and a home-made biscuit. It was a most
+wonderful closet, worthy of Cloisterham and of Minor Canon Corner. Above
+it, a portrait of Handel in a flowing wig beamed down at the spectator,
+with a knowing air of being up to the contents of the closet, and a
+musical air of intending to combine all its harmonies in one delicious
+fugue. No common closet with a vulgar door on hinges, openable all at
+once, and leaving nothing to be disclosed by degrees, this rare closet
+had a lock in mid-air, where two perpendicular slides met; the one
+falling down, and the other pushing up. The upper slide, on being pulled
+down (leaving the lower a double mystery), revealed deep shelves of
+pickle-jars, jam-pots, tin canisters, spice-boxes, and agreeably
+outlandish vessels of blue and white, the luscious lodgings of preserved
+tamarinds and ginger. Every benevolent inhabitant of this retreat had
+his name inscribed upon his stomach. The pickles, in a uniform of rich
+brown double-breasted buttoned coat, and yellow or sombre drab
+continuations, announced their portly forms, in printed capitals, as
+Walnut, Gherkin, Onion, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Mixed, and other members of
+that noble family. The jams, as being of a less masculine temperament,
+and as wearing curlpapers, announced themselves in feminine caligraphy,
+like a soft whisper, to be Raspberry, Gooseberry, Apricot, Plum, Damson,
+Apple, and Peach. The scene closing on these charmers, and the lower
+slide ascending, oranges were revealed, attended by a mighty japanned
+sugar-box, to temper their acerbity if unripe. Home-made biscuits waited
+at the Court of these Powers, accompanied by a goodly fragment of
+plum-cake, and various slender ladies’ fingers, to be dipped into sweet
+wine and kissed. Lowest of all, a compact leaden-vault enshrined the
+sweet wine and a stock of cordials: whence issued whispers of Seville
+Orange, Lemon, Almond, and Caraway-seed. There was a crowning air upon
+this closet of closets, of having been for ages hummed through by the
+Cathedral bell and organ, until those venerable bees had made sublimated
+honey of everything in store; and it was always observed that every
+dipper among the shelves (deep, as has been noticed, and swallowing up
+head, shoulders, and elbows) came forth again mellow-faced, and seeming
+to have undergone a saccharine transfiguration.
+
+The Reverend Septimus yielded himself up quite as willing a victim to a
+nauseous medicinal herb-closet, also presided over by the china
+shepherdess, as to this glorious cupboard. To what amazing infusions of
+gentian, peppermint, gilliflower, sage, parsley, thyme, rue, rosemary,
+and dandelion, did his courageous stomach submit itself! In what
+wonderful wrappers, enclosing layers of dried leaves, would he swathe his
+rosy and contented face, if his mother suspected him of a toothache!
+What botanical blotches would he cheerfully stick upon his cheek, or
+forehead, if the dear old lady convicted him of an imperceptible pimple
+there! Into this herbaceous penitentiary, situated on an upper
+staircase-landing: a low and narrow whitewashed cell, where bunches of
+dried leaves hung from rusty hooks in the ceiling, and were spread out
+upon shelves, in company with portentous bottles: would the Reverend
+Septimus submissively be led, like the highly popular lamb who has so
+long and unresistingly been led to the slaughter, and there would he,
+unlike that lamb, bore nobody but himself. Not even doing that much, so
+that the old lady were busy and pleased, he would quietly swallow what
+was given him, merely taking a corrective dip of hands and face into the
+great bowl of dried rose-leaves, and into the other great bowl of dried
+lavender, and then would go out, as confident in the sweetening powers of
+Cloisterham Weir and a wholesome mind, as Lady Macbeth was hopeless of
+those of all the seas that roll.
+
+In the present instance the good Minor Canon took his glass of Constantia
+with an excellent grace, and, so supported to his mother’s satisfaction,
+applied himself to the remaining duties of the day. In their orderly and
+punctual progress they brought round Vesper Service and twilight. The
+Cathedral being very cold, he set off for a brisk trot after service; the
+trot to end in a charge at his favourite fragment of ruin, which was to
+be carried by storm, without a pause for breath.
+
+He carried it in a masterly manner, and, not breathed even then, stood
+looking down upon the river. The river at Cloisterham is sufficiently
+near the sea to throw up oftentimes a quantity of seaweed. An unusual
+quantity had come in with the last tide, and this, and the confusion of
+the water, and the restless dipping and flapping of the noisy gulls, and
+an angry light out seaward beyond the brown-sailed barges that were
+turning black, foreshadowed a stormy night. In his mind he was
+contrasting the wild and noisy sea with the quiet harbour of Minor Canon
+Corner, when Helena and Neville Landless passed below him. He had had
+the two together in his thoughts all day, and at once climbed down to
+speak to them together. The footing was rough in an uncertain light for
+any tread save that of a good climber; but the Minor Canon was as good a
+climber as most men, and stood beside them before many good climbers
+would have been half-way down.
+
+‘A wild evening, Miss Landless! Do you not find your usual walk with
+your brother too exposed and cold for the time of year? Or at all
+events, when the sun is down, and the weather is driving in from the
+sea?’
+
+Helena thought not. It was their favourite walk. It was very retired.
+
+‘It is very retired,’ assented Mr. Crisparkle, laying hold of his
+opportunity straightway, and walking on with them. ‘It is a place of all
+others where one can speak without interruption, as I wish to do. Mr.
+Neville, I believe you tell your sister everything that passes between
+us?’
+
+‘Everything, sir.’
+
+‘Consequently,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘your sister is aware that I have
+repeatedly urged you to make some kind of apology for that unfortunate
+occurrence which befell on the night of your arrival here.’ In saying it
+he looked to her, and not to him; therefore it was she, and not he, who
+replied:
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘I call it unfortunate, Miss Helena,’ resumed Mr. Crisparkle, ‘forasmuch
+as it certainly has engendered a prejudice against Neville. There is a
+notion about, that he is a dangerously passionate fellow, of an
+uncontrollable and furious temper: he is really avoided as such.’
+
+‘I have no doubt he is, poor fellow,’ said Helena, with a look of proud
+compassion at her brother, expressing a deep sense of his being
+ungenerously treated. ‘I should be quite sure of it, from your saying
+so; but what you tell me is confirmed by suppressed hints and references
+that I meet with every day.’
+
+‘Now,’ Mr. Crisparkle again resumed, in a tone of mild though firm
+persuasion, ‘is not this to be regretted, and ought it not to be amended?
+These are early days of Neville’s in Cloisterham, and I have no fear of
+his outliving such a prejudice, and proving himself to have been
+misunderstood. But how much wiser to take action at once, than to trust
+to uncertain time! Besides, apart from its being politic, it is right.
+For there can be no question that Neville was wrong.’
+
+‘He was provoked,’ Helena submitted.
+
+‘He was the assailant,’ Mr. Crisparkle submitted.
+
+They walked on in silence, until Helena raised her eyes to the Minor
+Canon’s face, and said, almost reproachfully: ‘O Mr. Crisparkle, would
+you have Neville throw himself at young Drood’s feet, or at Mr. Jasper’s,
+who maligns him every day? In your heart you cannot mean it. From your
+heart you could not do it, if his case were yours.’
+
+‘I have represented to Mr. Crisparkle, Helena,’ said Neville, with a
+glance of deference towards his tutor, ‘that if I could do it from my
+heart, I would. But I cannot, and I revolt from the pretence. You
+forget however, that to put the case to Mr. Crisparkle as his own, is to
+suppose to have done what I did.’
+
+‘I ask his pardon,’ said Helena.
+
+‘You see,’ remarked Mr. Crisparkle, again laying hold of his opportunity,
+though with a moderate and delicate touch, ‘you both instinctively
+acknowledge that Neville did wrong. Then why stop short, and not
+otherwise acknowledge it?’
+
+‘Is there no difference,’ asked Helena, with a little faltering in her
+manner; ‘between submission to a generous spirit, and submission to a
+base or trivial one?’
+
+Before the worthy Minor Canon was quite ready with his argument in
+reference to this nice distinction, Neville struck in:
+
+‘Help me to clear myself with Mr. Crisparkle, Helena. Help me to
+convince him that I cannot be the first to make concessions without
+mockery and falsehood. My nature must be changed before I can do so, and
+it is not changed. I am sensible of inexpressible affront, and
+deliberate aggravation of inexpressible affront, and I am angry. The
+plain truth is, I am still as angry when I recall that night as I was
+that night.’
+
+‘Neville,’ hinted the Minor Canon, with a steady countenance, ‘you have
+repeated that former action of your hands, which I so much dislike.’
+
+‘I am sorry for it, sir, but it was involuntary. I confessed that I was
+still as angry.’
+
+‘And I confess,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘that I hoped for better things.’
+
+‘I am sorry to disappoint you, sir, but it would be far worse to deceive
+you, and I should deceive you grossly if I pretended that you had
+softened me in this respect. The time may come when your powerful
+influence will do even that with the difficult pupil whose antecedents
+you know; but it has not come yet. Is this so, and in spite of my
+struggles against myself, Helena?’
+
+She, whose dark eyes were watching the effect of what he said on Mr.
+Crisparkle’s face, replied—to Mr. Crisparkle, not to him: ‘It is so.’
+After a short pause, she answered the slightest look of inquiry
+conceivable, in her brother’s eyes, with as slight an affirmative bend of
+her own head; and he went on:
+
+‘I have never yet had the courage to say to you, sir, what in full
+openness I ought to have said when you first talked with me on this
+subject. It is not easy to say, and I have been withheld by a fear of
+its seeming ridiculous, which is very strong upon me down to this last
+moment, and might, but for my sister, prevent my being quite open with
+you even now.—I admire Miss Bud, sir, so very much, that I cannot bear
+her being treated with conceit or indifference; and even if I did not
+feel that I had an injury against young Drood on my own account, I should
+feel that I had an injury against him on hers.’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle, in utter amazement, looked at Helena for corroboration,
+and met in her expressive face full corroboration, and a plea for advice.
+
+‘The young lady of whom you speak is, as you know, Mr. Neville, shortly
+to be married,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, gravely; ‘therefore your admiration,
+if it be of that special nature which you seem to indicate, is
+outrageously misplaced. Moreover, it is monstrous that you should take
+upon yourself to be the young lady’s champion against her chosen husband.
+Besides, you have seen them only once. The young lady has become your
+sister’s friend; and I wonder that your sister, even on her behalf, has
+not checked you in this irrational and culpable fancy.’
+
+‘She has tried, sir, but uselessly. Husband or no husband, that fellow
+is incapable of the feeling with which I am inspired towards the
+beautiful young creature whom he treats like a doll. I say he is as
+incapable of it, as he is unworthy of her. I say she is sacrificed in
+being bestowed upon him. I say that I love her, and despise and hate
+him!’ This with a face so flushed, and a gesture so violent, that his
+sister crossed to his side, and caught his arm, remonstrating, ‘Neville,
+Neville!’
+
+Thus recalled to himself, he quickly became sensible of having lost the
+guard he had set upon his passionate tendency, and covered his face with
+his hand, as one repentant and wretched.
+
+Mr. Crisparkle, watching him attentively, and at the same time meditating
+how to proceed, walked on for some paces in silence. Then he spoke:
+
+‘Mr. Neville, Mr. Neville, I am sorely grieved to see in you more traces
+of a character as sullen, angry, and wild, as the night now closing in.
+They are of too serious an aspect to leave me the resource of treating
+the infatuation you have disclosed, as undeserving serious consideration.
+I give it very serious consideration, and I speak to you accordingly.
+This feud between you and young Drood must not go on. I cannot permit it
+to go on any longer, knowing what I now know from you, and you living
+under my roof. Whatever prejudiced and unauthorised constructions your
+blind and envious wrath may put upon his character, it is a frank,
+good-natured character. I know I can trust to it for that. Now, pray
+observe what I am about to say. On reflection, and on your sister’s
+representation, I am willing to admit that, in making peace with young
+Drood, you have a right to be met half-way. I will engage that you shall
+be, and even that young Drood shall make the first advance. This
+condition fulfilled, you will pledge me the honour of a Christian
+gentleman that the quarrel is for ever at an end on your side. What may
+be in your heart when you give him your hand, can only be known to the
+Searcher of all hearts; but it will never go well with you, if there be
+any treachery there. So far, as to that; next as to what I must again
+speak of as your infatuation. I understand it to have been confided to
+me, and to be known to no other person save your sister and yourself. Do
+I understand aright?’
+
+Helena answered in a low voice: ‘It is only known to us three who are
+here together.’
+
+‘It is not at all known to the young lady, your friend?’
+
+‘On my soul, no!’
+
+‘I require you, then, to give me your similar and solemn pledge, Mr.
+Neville, that it shall remain the secret it is, and that you will take no
+other action whatsoever upon it than endeavouring (and that most
+earnestly) to erase it from your mind. I will not tell you that it will
+soon pass; I will not tell you that it is the fancy of the moment; I will
+not tell you that such caprices have their rise and fall among the young
+and ardent every hour; I will leave you undisturbed in the belief that it
+has few parallels or none, that it will abide with you a long time, and
+that it will be very difficult to conquer. So much the more weight shall
+I attach to the pledge I require from you, when it is unreservedly
+given.’
+
+The young man twice or thrice essayed to speak, but failed.
+
+‘Let me leave you with your sister, whom it is time you took home,’ said
+Mr. Crisparkle. ‘You will find me alone in my room by-and-by.’
+
+‘Pray do not leave us yet,’ Helena implored him. ‘Another minute.’
+
+‘I should not,’ said Neville, pressing his hand upon his face, ‘have
+needed so much as another minute, if you had been less patient with me,
+Mr. Crisparkle, less considerate of me, and less unpretendingly good and
+true. O, if in my childhood I had known such a guide!’
+
+‘Follow your guide now, Neville,’ murmured Helena, ‘and follow him to
+Heaven!’
+
+There was that in her tone which broke the good Minor Canon’s voice, or
+it would have repudiated her exaltation of him. As it was, he laid a
+finger on his lips, and looked towards her brother.
+
+‘To say that I give both pledges, Mr. Crisparkle, out of my innermost
+heart, and to say that there is no treachery in it, is to say nothing!’
+Thus Neville, greatly moved. ‘I beg your forgiveness for my miserable
+lapse into a burst of passion.’
+
+‘Not mine, Neville, not mine. You know with whom forgiveness lies, as
+the highest attribute conceivable. Miss Helena, you and your brother are
+twin children. You came into this world with the same dispositions, and
+you passed your younger days together surrounded by the same adverse
+circumstances. What you have overcome in yourself, can you not overcome
+in him? You see the rock that lies in his course. Who but you can keep
+him clear of it?’
+
+‘Who but you, sir?’ replied Helena. ‘What is my influence, or my weak
+wisdom, compared with yours!’
+
+‘You have the wisdom of Love,’ returned the Minor Canon, ‘and it was the
+highest wisdom ever known upon this earth, remember. As to mine—but the
+less said of that commonplace commodity the better. Good night!’
+
+She took the hand he offered her, and gratefully and almost reverently
+raised it to her lips.
+
+‘Tut!’ said the Minor Canon softly, ‘I am much overpaid!’ and turned
+away.
+
+ [Picture: Mr. Crisparkle is overpaid]
+
+Retracing his steps towards the Cathedral Close, he tried, as he went
+along in the dark, to think out the best means of bringing to pass what
+he had promised to effect, and what must somehow be done. ‘I shall
+probably be asked to marry them,’ he reflected, ‘and I would they were
+married and gone! But this presses first.’
+
+He debated principally whether he should write to young Drood, or whether
+he should speak to Jasper. The consciousness of being popular with the
+whole Cathedral establishment inclined him to the latter course, and the
+well-timed sight of the lighted gatehouse decided him to take it. ‘I
+will strike while the iron is hot,’ he said, ‘and see him now.’
+
+Jasper was lying asleep on a couch before the fire, when, having ascended
+the postern-stair, and received no answer to his knock at the door, Mr.
+Crisparkle gently turned the handle and looked in. Long afterwards he
+had cause to remember how Jasper sprang from the couch in a delirious
+state between sleeping and waking, and crying out: ‘What is the matter?
+Who did it?’
+
+‘It is only I, Jasper. I am sorry to have disturbed you.’
+
+The glare of his eyes settled down into a look of recognition, and he
+moved a chair or two, to make a way to the fireside.
+
+‘I was dreaming at a great rate, and am glad to be disturbed from an
+indigestive after-dinner sleep. Not to mention that you are always
+welcome.’
+
+‘Thank you. I am not confident,’ returned Mr. Crisparkle, as he sat
+himself down in the easy-chair placed for him, ‘that my subject will at
+first sight be quite as welcome as myself; but I am a minister of peace,
+and I pursue my subject in the interests of peace. In a word, Jasper, I
+want to establish peace between these two young fellows.’
+
+A very perplexed expression took hold of Mr. Jasper’s face; a very
+perplexing expression too, for Mr. Crisparkle could make nothing of it.
+
+‘How?’ was Jasper’s inquiry, in a low and slow voice, after a silence.
+
+‘For the “How” I come to you. I want to ask you to do me the great
+favour and service of interposing with your nephew (I have already
+interposed with Mr. Neville), and getting him to write you a short note,
+in his lively way, saying that he is willing to shake hands. I know what
+a good-natured fellow he is, and what influence you have with him. And
+without in the least defending Mr. Neville, we must all admit that he was
+bitterly stung.’
+
+Jasper turned that perplexed face towards the fire. Mr. Crisparkle
+continuing to observe it, found it even more perplexing than before,
+inasmuch as it seemed to denote (which could hardly be) some close
+internal calculation.
+
+‘I know that you are not prepossessed in Mr. Neville’s favour,’ the Minor
+Canon was going on, when Jasper stopped him:
+
+‘You have cause to say so. I am not, indeed.’
+
+‘Undoubtedly; and I admit his lamentable violence of temper, though I
+hope he and I will get the better of it between us. But I have exacted a
+very solemn promise from him as to his future demeanour towards your
+nephew, if you do kindly interpose; and I am sure he will keep it.’
+
+‘You are always responsible and trustworthy, Mr. Crisparkle. Do you
+really feel sure that you can answer for him so confidently?’
+
+‘I do.’
+
+The perplexed and perplexing look vanished.
+
+‘Then you relieve my mind of a great dread, and a heavy weight,’ said
+Jasper; ‘I will do it.’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle, delighted by the swiftness and completeness of his
+success, acknowledged it in the handsomest terms.
+
+‘I will do it,’ repeated Jasper, ‘for the comfort of having your
+guarantee against my vague and unfounded fears. You will laugh—but do
+you keep a Diary?’
+
+‘A line for a day; not more.’
+
+‘A line for a day would be quite as much as my uneventful life would
+need, Heaven knows,’ said Jasper, taking a book from a desk, ‘but that my
+Diary is, in fact, a Diary of Ned’s life too. You will laugh at this
+entry; you will guess when it was made:
+
+ ‘“Past midnight.—After what I have just now seen, I have a morbid
+ dread upon me of some horrible consequences resulting to my dear boy,
+ that I cannot reason with or in any way contend against. All my
+ efforts are vain. The demoniacal passion of this Neville Landless,
+ his strength in his fury, and his savage rage for the destruction of
+ its object, appal me. So profound is the impression, that twice
+ since I have gone into my dear boy’s room, to assure myself of his
+ sleeping safely, and not lying dead in his blood.”
+
+‘Here is another entry next morning:
+
+ ‘“Ned up and away. Light-hearted and unsuspicious as ever. He
+ laughed when I cautioned him, and said he was as good a man as
+ Neville Landless any day. I told him that might be, but he was not
+ as bad a man. He continued to make light of it, but I travelled with
+ him as far as I could, and left him most unwillingly. I am unable to
+ shake off these dark intangible presentiments of evil—if feelings
+ founded upon staring facts are to be so called.”
+
+‘Again and again,’ said Jasper, in conclusion, twirling the leaves of the
+book before putting it by, ‘I have relapsed into these moods, as other
+entries show. But I have now your assurance at my back, and shall put it
+in my book, and make it an antidote to my black humours.’
+
+‘Such an antidote, I hope,’ returned Mr. Crisparkle, ‘as will induce you
+before long to consign the black humours to the flames. I ought to be
+the last to find any fault with you this evening, when you have met my
+wishes so freely; but I must say, Jasper, that your devotion to your
+nephew has made you exaggerative here.’
+
+‘You are my witness,’ said Jasper, shrugging his shoulders, ‘what my
+state of mind honestly was, that night, before I sat down to write, and
+in what words I expressed it. You remember objecting to a word I used,
+as being too strong? It was a stronger word than any in my Diary.’
+
+‘Well, well. Try the antidote,’ rejoined Mr. Crisparkle; ‘and may it
+give you a brighter and better view of the case! We will discuss it no
+more now. I have to thank you for myself, thank you sincerely.’
+
+‘You shall find,’ said Jasper, as they shook hands, ‘that I will not do
+the thing you wish me to do, by halves. I will take care that Ned,
+giving way at all, shall give way thoroughly.’
+
+On the third day after this conversation, he called on Mr. Crisparkle
+with the following letter:
+
+ ‘MY DEAR JACK,
+
+ ‘I am touched by your account of your interview with Mr. Crisparkle,
+ whom I much respect and esteem. At once I openly say that I forgot
+ myself on that occasion quite as much as Mr. Landless did, and that I
+ wish that bygone to be a bygone, and all to be right again.
+
+ ‘Look here, dear old boy. Ask Mr. Landless to dinner on Christmas
+ Eve (the better the day the better the deed), and let there be only
+ we three, and let us shake hands all round there and then, and say no
+ more about it.
+
+ ‘My dear Jack,
+ ‘Ever your most affectionate,
+ ‘EDWIN DROOD.
+
+ ‘P.S. Love to Miss Pussy at the next music-lesson.’
+
+‘You expect Mr. Neville, then?’ said Mr. Crisparkle.
+
+‘I count upon his coming,’ said Mr. Jasper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI—A PICTURE AND A RING
+
+
+Behind the most ancient part of Holborn, London, where certain gabled
+houses some centuries of age still stand looking on the public way, as if
+disconsolately looking for the Old Bourne that has long run dry, is a
+little nook composed of two irregular quadrangles, called Staple Inn. It
+is one of those nooks, the turning into which out of the clashing street,
+imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton in
+his ears, and velvet soles on his boots. It is one of those nooks where
+a few smoky sparrows twitter in smoky trees, as though they called to one
+another, ‘Let us play at country,’ and where a few feet of garden-mould
+and a few yards of gravel enable them to do that refreshing violence to
+their tiny understandings. Moreover, it is one of those nooks which are
+legal nooks; and it contains a little Hall, with a little lantern in its
+roof: to what obstructive purposes devoted, and at whose expense, this
+history knoweth not.
+
+In the days when Cloisterham took offence at the existence of a railroad
+afar off, as menacing that sensitive constitution, the property of us
+Britons: the odd fortune of which sacred institution it is to be in
+exactly equal degrees croaked about, trembled for, and boasted of,
+whatever happens to anything, anywhere in the world: in those days no
+neighbouring architecture of lofty proportions had arisen to overshadow
+Staple Inn. The westering sun bestowed bright glances on it, and the
+south-west wind blew into it unimpeded.
+
+Neither wind nor sun, however, favoured Staple Inn one December afternoon
+towards six o’clock, when it was filled with fog, and candles shed murky
+and blurred rays through the windows of all its then-occupied sets of
+chambers; notably from a set of chambers in a corner house in the little
+inner quadrangle, presenting in black and white over its ugly portal the
+mysterious inscription:
+
+ P
+ J T
+ 1747
+
+In which set of chambers, never having troubled his head about the
+inscription, unless to bethink himself at odd times on glancing up at it,
+that haply it might mean Perhaps John Thomas, or Perhaps Joe Tyler, sat
+Mr. Grewgious writing by his fire.
+
+Who could have told, by looking at Mr. Grewgious, whether he had ever
+known ambition or disappointment? He had been bred to the Bar, and had
+laid himself out for chamber practice; to draw deeds; ‘convey the wise it
+call,’ as Pistol says. But Conveyancing and he had made such a very
+indifferent marriage of it that they had separated by consent—if there
+can be said to be separation where there has never been coming together.
+
+No. Coy Conveyancing would not come to Mr. Grewgious. She was wooed,
+not won, and they went their several ways. But an Arbitration being
+blown towards him by some unaccountable wind, and he gaining great credit
+in it as one indefatigable in seeking out right and doing right, a pretty
+fat Receivership was next blown into his pocket by a wind more traceable
+to its source. So, by chance, he had found his niche. Receiver and
+Agent now, to two rich estates, and deputing their legal business, in an
+amount worth having, to a firm of solicitors on the floor below, he had
+snuffed out his ambition (supposing him to have ever lighted it), and had
+settled down with his snuffers for the rest of his life under the dry
+vine and fig-tree of P. J. T., who planted in seventeen-forty-seven.
+
+Many accounts and account-books, many files of correspondence, and
+several strong boxes, garnished Mr. Grewgious’s room. They can scarcely
+be represented as having lumbered it, so conscientious and precise was
+their orderly arrangement. The apprehension of dying suddenly, and
+leaving one fact or one figure with any incompleteness or obscurity
+attaching to it, would have stretched Mr. Grewgious stone-dead any day.
+The largest fidelity to a trust was the life-blood of the man. There are
+sorts of life-blood that course more quickly, more gaily, more
+attractively; but there is no better sort in circulation.
+
+There was no luxury in his room. Even its comforts were limited to its
+being dry and warm, and having a snug though faded fireside. What may be
+called its private life was confined to the hearth, and all easy-chair,
+and an old-fashioned occasional round table that was brought out upon the
+rug after business hours, from a corner where it elsewise remained turned
+up like a shining mahogany shield. Behind it, when standing thus on the
+defensive, was a closet, usually containing something good to drink. An
+outer room was the clerk’s room; Mr. Grewgious’s sleeping-room was across
+the common stair; and he held some not empty cellarage at the bottom of
+the common stair. Three hundred days in the year, at least, he crossed
+over to the hotel in Furnival’s Inn for his dinner, and after dinner
+crossed back again, to make the most of these simplicities until it
+should become broad business day once more, with P. J. T., date
+seventeen-forty-seven.
+
+As Mr. Grewgious sat and wrote by his fire that afternoon, so did the
+clerk of Mr. Grewgious sit and write by _his_ fire. A pale, puffy-faced,
+dark-haired person of thirty, with big dark eyes that wholly wanted
+lustre, and a dissatisfied doughy complexion, that seemed to ask to be
+sent to the baker’s, this attendant was a mysterious being, possessed of
+some strange power over Mr. Grewgious. As though he had been called into
+existence, like a fabulous Familiar, by a magic spell which had failed
+when required to dismiss him, he stuck tight to Mr. Grewgious’s stool,
+although Mr. Grewgious’s comfort and convenience would manifestly have
+been advanced by dispossessing him. A gloomy person with tangled locks,
+and a general air of having been reared under the shadow of that baleful
+tree of Java which has given shelter to more lies than the whole
+botanical kingdom, Mr. Grewgious, nevertheless, treated him with
+unaccountable consideration.
+
+‘Now, Bazzard,’ said Mr. Grewgious, on the entrance of his clerk: looking
+up from his papers as he arranged them for the night: ‘what is in the
+wind besides fog?’
+
+‘Mr. Drood,’ said Bazzard.
+
+‘What of him?’
+
+‘Has called,’ said Bazzard.
+
+‘You might have shown him in.’
+
+‘I am doing it,’ said Bazzard.
+
+The visitor came in accordingly.
+
+‘Dear me!’ said Mr. Grewgious, looking round his pair of office candles.
+‘I thought you had called and merely left your name and gone. How do you
+do, Mr. Edwin? Dear me, you’re choking!’
+
+‘It’s this fog,’ returned Edwin; ‘and it makes my eyes smart, like
+Cayenne pepper.’
+
+‘Is it really so bad as that? Pray undo your wrappers. It’s fortunate I
+have so good a fire; but Mr. Bazzard has taken care of me.’
+
+‘No I haven’t,’ said Mr. Bazzard at the door.
+
+‘Ah! then it follows that I must have taken care of myself without
+observing it,’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘Pray be seated in my chair. No. I
+beg! Coming out of such an atmosphere, in _my_ chair.’
+
+Edwin took the easy-chair in the corner; and the fog he had brought in
+with him, and the fog he took off with his greatcoat and neck-shawl, was
+speedily licked up by the eager fire.
+
+‘I look,’ said Edwin, smiling, ‘as if I had come to stop.’
+
+‘—By the by,’ cried Mr. Grewgious; ‘excuse my interrupting you; do stop.
+The fog may clear in an hour or two. We can have dinner in from just
+across Holborn. You had better take your Cayenne pepper here than
+outside; pray stop and dine.’
+
+‘You are very kind,’ said Edwin, glancing about him as though attracted
+by the notion of a new and relishing sort of gipsy-party.
+
+‘Not at all,’ said Mr. Grewgious; ‘_you_ are very kind to join issue with
+a bachelor in chambers, and take pot-luck. And I’ll ask,’ said Mr.
+Grewgious, dropping his voice, and speaking with a twinkling eye, as if
+inspired with a bright thought: ‘I’ll ask Bazzard. He mightn’t like it
+else.—Bazzard!’
+
+Bazzard reappeared.
+
+‘Dine presently with Mr. Drood and me.’
+
+‘If I am ordered to dine, of course I will, sir,’ was the gloomy answer.
+
+‘Save the man!’ cried Mr. Grewgious. ‘You’re not ordered; you’re
+invited.’
+
+‘Thank you, sir,’ said Bazzard; ‘in that case I don’t care if I do.’
+
+‘That’s arranged. And perhaps you wouldn’t mind,’ said Mr. Grewgious,
+‘stepping over to the hotel in Furnival’s, and asking them to send in
+materials for laying the cloth. For dinner we’ll have a tureen of the
+hottest and strongest soup available, and we’ll have the best made-dish
+that can be recommended, and we’ll have a joint (such as a haunch of
+mutton), and we’ll have a goose, or a turkey, or any little stuffed thing
+of that sort that may happen to be in the bill of fare—in short, we’ll
+have whatever there is on hand.’
+
+These liberal directions Mr. Grewgious issued with his usual air of
+reading an inventory, or repeating a lesson, or doing anything else by
+rote. Bazzard, after drawing out the round table, withdrew to execute
+them.
+
+‘I was a little delicate, you see,’ said Mr. Grewgious, in a lower tone,
+after his clerk’s departure, ‘about employing him in the foraging or
+commissariat department. Because he mightn’t like it.’
+
+‘He seems to have his own way, sir,’ remarked Edwin.
+
+‘His own way?’ returned Mr. Grewgious. ‘O dear no! Poor fellow, you
+quite mistake him. If he had his own way, he wouldn’t be here.’
+
+‘I wonder where he would be!’ Edwin thought. But he only thought it,
+because Mr. Grewgious came and stood himself with his back to the other
+corner of the fire, and his shoulder-blades against the chimneypiece, and
+collected his skirts for easy conversation.
+
+‘I take it, without having the gift of prophecy, that you have done me
+the favour of looking in to mention that you are going down yonder—where
+I can tell you, you are expected—and to offer to execute any little
+commission from me to my charming ward, and perhaps to sharpen me up a
+bit in any proceedings? Eh, Mr. Edwin?’
+
+‘I called, sir, before going down, as an act of attention.’
+
+‘Of attention!’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘Ah! of course, not of impatience?’
+
+‘Impatience, sir?’
+
+Mr. Grewgious had meant to be arch—not that he in the remotest degree
+expressed that meaning—and had brought himself into scarcely supportable
+proximity with the fire, as if to burn the fullest effect of his archness
+into himself, as other subtle impressions are burnt into hard metals.
+But his archness suddenly flying before the composed face and manner of
+his visitor, and only the fire remaining, he started and rubbed himself.
+
+‘I have lately been down yonder,’ said Mr. Grewgious, rearranging his
+skirts; ‘and that was what I referred to, when I said I could tell you
+you are expected.’
+
+‘Indeed, sir! Yes; I knew that Pussy was looking out for me.’
+
+‘Do you keep a cat down there?’ asked Mr. Grewgious.
+
+Edwin coloured a little as he explained: ‘I call Rosa Pussy.’
+
+‘O, really,’ said Mr. Grewgious, smoothing down his head; ‘that’s very
+affable.’
+
+Edwin glanced at his face, uncertain whether or no he seriously objected
+to the appellation. But Edwin might as well have glanced at the face of
+a clock.
+
+‘A pet name, sir,’ he explained again.
+
+‘Umps,’ said Mr. Grewgious, with a nod. But with such an extraordinary
+compromise between an unqualified assent and a qualified dissent, that
+his visitor was much disconcerted.
+
+‘Did PRosa—’ Edwin began by way of recovering himself.
+
+‘PRosa?’ repeated Mr. Grewgious.
+
+‘I was going to say Pussy, and changed my mind;—did she tell you anything
+about the Landlesses?’
+
+‘No,’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘What is the Landlesses? An estate? A villa?
+A farm?’
+
+‘A brother and sister. The sister is at the Nuns’ House, and has become
+a great friend of P—’
+
+‘PRosa’s,’ Mr. Grewgious struck in, with a fixed face.
+
+‘She is a strikingly handsome girl, sir, and I thought she might have
+been described to you, or presented to you perhaps?’
+
+‘Neither,’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘But here is Bazzard.’
+
+Bazzard returned, accompanied by two waiters—an immovable waiter, and a
+flying waiter; and the three brought in with them as much fog as gave a
+new roar to the fire. The flying waiter, who had brought everything on
+his shoulders, laid the cloth with amazing rapidity and dexterity; while
+the immovable waiter, who had brought nothing, found fault with him. The
+flying waiter then highly polished all the glasses he had brought, and
+the immovable waiter looked through them. The flying waiter then flew
+across Holborn for the soup, and flew back again, and then took another
+flight for the made-dish, and flew back again, and then took another
+flight for the joint and poultry, and flew back again, and between whiles
+took supplementary flights for a great variety of articles, as it was
+discovered from time to time that the immovable waiter had forgotten them
+all. But let the flying waiter cleave the air as he might, he was always
+reproached on his return by the immovable waiter for bringing fog with
+him, and being out of breath. At the conclusion of the repast, by which
+time the flying waiter was severely blown, the immovable waiter gathered
+up the tablecloth under his arm with a grand air, and having sternly (not
+to say with indignation) looked on at the flying waiter while he set the
+clean glasses round, directed a valedictory glance towards Mr. Grewgious,
+conveying: ‘Let it be clearly understood between us that the reward is
+mine, and that Nil is the claim of this slave,’ and pushed the flying
+waiter before him out of the room.
+
+It was like a highly-finished miniature painting representing My Lords of
+the Circumlocution Department, Commandership-in-Chief of any sort,
+Government. It was quite an edifying little picture to be hung on the
+line in the National Gallery.
+
+As the fog had been the proximate cause of this sumptuous repast, so the
+fog served for its general sauce. To hear the out-door clerks sneezing,
+wheezing, and beating their feet on the gravel was a zest far surpassing
+Doctor Kitchener’s. To bid, with a shiver, the unfortunate flying waiter
+shut the door before he had opened it, was a condiment of a profounder
+flavour than Harvey. And here let it be noticed, parenthetically, that
+the leg of this young man, in its application to the door, evinced the
+finest sense of touch: always preceding himself and tray (with something
+of an angling air about it), by some seconds: and always lingering after
+he and the tray had disappeared, like Macbeth’s leg when accompanying him
+off the stage with reluctance to the assassination of Duncan.
+
+The host had gone below to the cellar, and had brought up bottles of
+ruby, straw-coloured, and golden drinks, which had ripened long ago in
+lands where no fogs are, and had since lain slumbering in the shade.
+Sparkling and tingling after so long a nap, they pushed at their corks to
+help the corkscrew (like prisoners helping rioters to force their gates),
+and danced out gaily. If P. J. T. in seventeen-forty-seven, or in any
+other year of his period, drank such wines—then, for a certainty, P. J.
+T. was Pretty Jolly Too.
+
+Externally, Mr. Grewgious showed no signs of being mellowed by these
+glowing vintages. Instead of his drinking them, they might have been
+poured over him in his high-dried snuff form, and run to waste, for any
+lights and shades they caused to flicker over his face. Neither was his
+manner influenced. But, in his wooden way, he had observant eyes for
+Edwin; and when at the end of dinner, he motioned Edwin back to his own
+easy-chair in the fireside corner, and Edwin sank luxuriously into it
+after very brief remonstrance, Mr. Grewgious, as he turned his seat round
+towards the fire too, and smoothed his head and face, might have been
+seen looking at his visitor between his smoothing fingers.
+
+‘Bazzard!’ said Mr. Grewgious, suddenly turning to him.
+
+‘I follow you, sir,’ returned Bazzard; who had done his work of consuming
+meat and drink in a workmanlike manner, though mostly in speechlessness.
+
+‘I drink to you, Bazzard; Mr. Edwin, success to Mr. Bazzard!’
+
+‘Success to Mr. Bazzard!’ echoed Edwin, with a totally unfounded
+appearance of enthusiasm, and with the unspoken addition: ‘What in, I
+wonder!’
+
+‘And May!’ pursued Mr. Grewgious—‘I am not at liberty to be
+definite—May!—my conversational powers are so very limited that I know I
+shall not come well out of this—May!—it ought to be put imaginatively,
+but I have no imagination—May!—the thorn of anxiety is as nearly the mark
+as I am likely to get—May it come out at last!’
+
+Mr. Bazzard, with a frowning smile at the fire, put a hand into his
+tangled locks, as if the thorn of anxiety were there; then into his
+waistcoat, as if it were there; then into his pockets, as if it were
+there. In all these movements he was closely followed by the eyes of
+Edwin, as if that young gentleman expected to see the thorn in action.
+It was not produced, however, and Mr. Bazzard merely said: ‘I follow you,
+sir, and I thank you.’
+
+‘I am going,’ said Mr. Grewgious, jingling his glass on the table with
+one hand, and bending aside under cover of the other, to whisper to
+Edwin, ‘to drink to my ward. But I put Bazzard first. He mightn’t like
+it else.’
+
+This was said with a mysterious wink; or what would have been a wink, if,
+in Mr. Grewgious’s hands, it could have been quick enough. So Edwin
+winked responsively, without the least idea what he meant by doing so.
+
+‘And now,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘I devote a bumper to the fair and
+fascinating Miss Rosa. Bazzard, the fair and fascinating Miss Rosa!’
+
+‘I follow you, sir,’ said Bazzard, ‘and I pledge you!’
+
+‘And so do I!’ said Edwin.
+
+‘Lord bless me,’ cried Mr. Grewgious, breaking the blank silence which of
+course ensued: though why these pauses _should_ come upon us when we have
+performed any small social rite, not directly inducive of
+self-examination or mental despondency, who can tell? ‘I am a
+particularly Angular man, and yet I fancy (if I may use the word, not
+having a morsel of fancy), that I could draw a picture of a true lover’s
+state of mind, to-night.’
+
+‘Let us follow you, sir,’ said Bazzard, ‘and have the picture.’
+
+‘Mr. Edwin will correct it where it’s wrong,’ resumed Mr. Grewgious, ‘and
+will throw in a few touches from the life. I dare say it is wrong in
+many particulars, and wants many touches from the life, for I was born a
+Chip, and have neither soft sympathies nor soft experiences. Well! I
+hazard the guess that the true lover’s mind is completely permeated by
+the beloved object of his affections. I hazard the guess that her dear
+name is precious to him, cannot be heard or repeated without emotion, and
+is preserved sacred. If he has any distinguishing appellation of
+fondness for her, it is reserved for her, and is not for common ears. A
+name that it would be a privilege to call her by, being alone with her
+own bright self, it would be a liberty, a coldness, an insensibility,
+almost a breach of good faith, to flaunt elsewhere.’
+
+It was wonderful to see Mr. Grewgious sitting bolt upright, with his
+hands on his knees, continuously chopping this discourse out of himself:
+much as a charity boy with a very good memory might get his catechism
+said: and evincing no correspondent emotion whatever, unless in a certain
+occasional little tingling perceptible at the end of his nose.
+
+‘My picture,’ Mr. Grewgious proceeded, ‘goes on to represent (under
+correction from you, Mr. Edwin), the true lover as ever impatient to be
+in the presence or vicinity of the beloved object of his affections; as
+caring very little for his case in any other society; and as constantly
+seeking that. If I was to say seeking that, as a bird seeks its nest, I
+should make an ass of myself, because that would trench upon what I
+understand to be poetry; and I am so far from trenching upon poetry at
+any time, that I never, to my knowledge, got within ten thousand miles of
+it. And I am besides totally unacquainted with the habits of birds,
+except the birds of Staple Inn, who seek their nests on ledges, and in
+gutter-pipes and chimneypots, not constructed for them by the beneficent
+hand of Nature. I beg, therefore, to be understood as foregoing the
+bird’s-nest. But my picture does represent the true lover as having no
+existence separable from that of the beloved object of his affections,
+and as living at once a doubled life and a halved life. And if I do not
+clearly express what I mean by that, it is either for the reason that
+having no conversational powers, I cannot express what I mean, or that
+having no meaning, I do not mean what I fail to express. Which, to the
+best of my belief, is not the case.’
+
+Edwin had turned red and turned white, as certain points of this picture
+came into the light. He now sat looking at the fire, and bit his lip.
+
+‘The speculations of an Angular man,’ resumed Mr. Grewgious, still
+sitting and speaking exactly as before, ‘are probably erroneous on so
+globular a topic. But I figure to myself (subject, as before, to Mr.
+Edwin’s correction), that there can be no coolness, no lassitude, no
+doubt, no indifference, no half fire and half smoke state of mind, in a
+real lover. Pray am I at all near the mark in my picture?’
+
+As abrupt in his conclusion as in his commencement and progress, he
+jerked this inquiry at Edwin, and stopped when one might have supposed
+him in the middle of his oration.
+
+‘I should say, sir,’ stammered Edwin, ‘as you refer the question to me—’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘I refer it to you, as an authority.’
+
+‘I should say, then, sir,’ Edwin went on, embarrassed, ‘that the picture
+you have drawn is generally correct; but I submit that perhaps you may be
+rather hard upon the unlucky lover.’
+
+‘Likely so,’ assented Mr. Grewgious, ‘likely so. I am a hard man in the
+grain.’
+
+‘He may not show,’ said Edwin, ‘all he feels; or he may not—’
+
+There he stopped so long, to find the rest of his sentence, that Mr.
+Grewgious rendered his difficulty a thousand times the greater by
+unexpectedly striking in with:
+
+‘No to be sure; he _may_ not!’
+
+After that, they all sat silent; the silence of Mr. Bazzard being
+occasioned by slumber.
+
+‘His responsibility is very great, though,’ said Mr. Grewgious at length,
+with his eyes on the fire.
+
+Edwin nodded assent, with _his_ eyes on the fire.
+
+‘And let him be sure that he trifles with no one,’ said Mr. Grewgious;
+‘neither with himself, nor with any other.’
+
+Edwin bit his lip again, and still sat looking at the fire.
+
+‘He must not make a plaything of a treasure. Woe betide him if he does!
+Let him take that well to heart,’ said Mr. Grewgious.
+
+Though he said these things in short sentences, much as the
+supposititious charity boy just now referred to might have repeated a
+verse or two from the Book of Proverbs, there was something dreamy (for
+so literal a man) in the way in which he now shook his right forefinger
+at the live coals in the grate, and again fell silent.
+
+But not for long. As he sat upright and stiff in his chair, he suddenly
+rapped his knees, like the carved image of some queer Joss or other
+coming out of its reverie, and said: ‘We must finish this bottle, Mr.
+Edwin. Let me help you. I’ll help Bazzard too, though he _is_ asleep.
+He mightn’t like it else.’
+
+He helped them both, and helped himself, and drained his glass, and stood
+it bottom upward on the table, as though he had just caught a bluebottle
+in it.
+
+‘And now, Mr. Edwin,’ he proceeded, wiping his mouth and hands upon his
+handkerchief: ‘to a little piece of business. You received from me, the
+other day, a certified copy of Miss Rosa’s father’s will. You knew its
+contents before, but you received it from me as a matter of business. I
+should have sent it to Mr. Jasper, but for Miss Rosa’s wishing it to come
+straight to you, in preference. You received it?’
+
+‘Quite safely, sir.’
+
+‘You should have acknowledged its receipt,’ said Mr. Grewgious; ‘business
+being business all the world over. However, you did not.’
+
+‘I meant to have acknowledged it when I first came in this evening, sir.’
+
+‘Not a business-like acknowledgment,’ returned Mr. Grewgious; ‘however,
+let that pass. Now, in that document you have observed a few words of
+kindly allusion to its being left to me to discharge a little trust,
+confided to me in conversation, at such time as I in my discretion may
+think best.’
+
+‘Yes, sir.’
+
+‘Mr. Edwin, it came into my mind just now, when I was looking at the
+fire, that I could, in my discretion, acquit myself of that trust at no
+better time than the present. Favour me with your attention, half a
+minute.’
+
+He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, singled out by the candle-light
+the key he wanted, and then, with a candle in his hand, went to a bureau
+or escritoire, unlocked it, touched the spring of a little secret drawer,
+and took from it an ordinary ring-case made for a single ring. With this
+in his hand, he returned to his chair. As he held it up for the young
+man to see, his hand trembled.
+
+‘Mr. Edwin, this rose of diamonds and rubies delicately set in gold, was
+a ring belonging to Miss Rosa’s mother. It was removed from her dead
+hand, in my presence, with such distracted grief as I hope it may never
+be my lot to contemplate again. Hard man as I am, I am not hard enough
+for that. See how bright these stones shine!’ opening the case. ‘And
+yet the eyes that were so much brighter, and that so often looked upon
+them with a light and a proud heart, have been ashes among ashes, and
+dust among dust, some years! If I had any imagination (which it is
+needless to say I have not), I might imagine that the lasting beauty of
+these stones was almost cruel.’
+
+He closed the case again as he spoke.
+
+‘This ring was given to the young lady who was drowned so early in her
+beautiful and happy career, by her husband, when they first plighted
+their faith to one another. It was he who removed it from her
+unconscious hand, and it was he who, when his death drew very near,
+placed it in mine. The trust in which I received it, was, that, you and
+Miss Rosa growing to manhood and womanhood, and your betrothal prospering
+and coming to maturity, I should give it to you to place upon her finger.
+Failing those desired results, it was to remain in my possession.’
+
+Some trouble was in the young man’s face, and some indecision was in the
+action of his hand, as Mr. Grewgious, looking steadfastly at him, gave
+him the ring.
+
+‘Your placing it on her finger,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘will be the solemn
+seal upon your strict fidelity to the living and the dead. You are going
+to her, to make the last irrevocable preparations for your marriage.
+Take it with you.’
+
+The young man took the little case, and placed it in his breast.
+
+‘If anything should be amiss, if anything should be even slightly wrong,
+between you; if you should have any secret consciousness that you are
+committing yourself to this step for no higher reason than because you
+have long been accustomed to look forward to it; then,’ said Mr.
+Grewgious, ‘I charge you once more, by the living and by the dead, to
+bring that ring back to me!’
+
+Here Bazzard awoke himself by his own snoring; and, as is usual in such
+cases, sat apoplectically staring at vacancy, as defying vacancy to
+accuse him of having been asleep.
+
+‘Bazzard!’ said Mr. Grewgious, harder than ever.
+
+‘I follow you, sir,’ said Bazzard, ‘and I have been following you.’
+
+‘In discharge of a trust, I have handed Mr. Edwin Drood a ring of
+diamonds and rubies. You see?’
+
+Edwin reproduced the little case, and opened it; and Bazzard looked into
+it.
+
+‘I follow you both, sir,’ returned Bazzard, ‘and I witness the
+transaction.’
+
+Evidently anxious to get away and be alone, Edwin Drood now resumed his
+outer clothing, muttering something about time and appointments. The fog
+was reported no clearer (by the flying waiter, who alighted from a
+speculative flight in the coffee interest), but he went out into it; and
+Bazzard, after his manner, ‘followed’ him.
+
+Mr. Grewgious, left alone, walked softly and slowly to and fro, for an
+hour and more. He was restless to-night, and seemed dispirited.
+
+‘I hope I have done right,’ he said. ‘The appeal to him seemed
+necessary. It was hard to lose the ring, and yet it must have gone from
+me very soon.’
+
+He closed the empty little drawer with a sigh, and shut and locked the
+escritoire, and came back to the solitary fireside.
+
+‘Her ring,’ he went on. ‘Will it come back to me? My mind hangs about
+her ring very uneasily to-night. But that is explainable. I have had it
+so long, and I have prized it so much! I wonder—’
+
+He was in a wondering mood as well as a restless; for, though he checked
+himself at that point, and took another walk, he resumed his wondering
+when he sat down again.
+
+‘I wonder (for the ten-thousandth time, and what a weak fool I, for what
+can it signify now!) whether he confided the charge of their orphan child
+to me, because he knew—Good God, how like her mother she has become!’
+
+‘I wonder whether he ever so much as suspected that some one doted on
+her, at a hopeless, speechless distance, when he struck in and won her.
+I wonder whether it ever crept into his mind who that unfortunate some
+one was!’
+
+‘I wonder whether I shall sleep to-night! At all events, I will shut out
+the world with the bedclothes, and try.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious crossed the staircase to his raw and foggy bedroom, and was
+soon ready for bed. Dimly catching sight of his face in the misty
+looking-glass, he held his candle to it for a moment.
+
+‘A likely some one, _you_, to come into anybody’s thoughts in such an
+aspect!’ he exclaimed. ‘There! there! there! Get to bed, poor man, and
+cease to jabber!’
+
+With that, he extinguished his light, pulled up the bedclothes around
+him, and with another sigh shut out the world. And yet there are such
+unexplored romantic nooks in the unlikeliest men, that even old tinderous
+and touchwoody P. J. T. Possibly Jabbered Thus, at some odd times, in or
+about seventeen-forty-seven.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII—A NIGHT WITH DURDLES
+
+
+When Mr. Sapsea has nothing better to do, towards evening, and finds the
+contemplation of his own profundity becoming a little monotonous in spite
+of the vastness of the subject, he often takes an airing in the Cathedral
+Close and thereabout. He likes to pass the churchyard with a swelling
+air of proprietorship, and to encourage in his breast a sort of
+benignant-landlord feeling, in that he has been bountiful towards that
+meritorious tenant, Mrs. Sapsea, and has publicly given her a prize. He
+likes to see a stray face or two looking in through the railings, and
+perhaps reading his inscription. Should he meet a stranger coming from
+the churchyard with a quick step, he is morally convinced that the
+stranger is ‘with a blush retiring,’ as monumentally directed.
+
+Mr. Sapsea’s importance has received enhancement, for he has become Mayor
+of Cloisterham. Without mayors, and many of them, it cannot be disputed
+that the whole framework of society—Mr. Sapsea is confident that he
+invented that forcible figure—would fall to pieces. Mayors have been
+knighted for ‘going up’ with addresses: explosive machines intrepidly
+discharging shot and shell into the English Grammar. Mr. Sapsea may ‘go
+up’ with an address. Rise, Sir Thomas Sapsea! Of such is the salt of
+the earth.
+
+Mr. Sapsea has improved the acquaintance of Mr. Jasper, since their first
+meeting to partake of port, epitaph, backgammon, beef, and salad. Mr.
+Sapsea has been received at the gatehouse with kindred hospitality; and
+on that occasion Mr. Jasper seated himself at the piano, and sang to him,
+tickling his ears—figuratively—long enough to present a considerable area
+for tickling. What Mr. Sapsea likes in that young man is, that he is
+always ready to profit by the wisdom of his elders, and that he is sound,
+sir, at the core. In proof of which, he sang to Mr. Sapsea that evening,
+no kickshaw ditties, favourites with national enemies, but gave him the
+genuine George the Third home-brewed; exhorting him (as ‘my brave boys’)
+to reduce to a smashed condition all other islands but this island, and
+all continents, peninsulas, isthmuses, promontories, and other
+geographical forms of land soever, besides sweeping the seas in all
+directions. In short, he rendered it pretty clear that Providence made a
+distinct mistake in originating so small a nation of hearts of oak, and
+so many other verminous peoples.
+
+Mr. Sapsea, walking slowly this moist evening near the churchyard with
+his hands behind him, on the look-out for a blushing and retiring
+stranger, turns a corner, and comes instead into the goodly presence of
+the Dean, conversing with the Verger and Mr. Jasper. Mr. Sapsea makes
+his obeisance, and is instantly stricken far more ecclesiastical than any
+Archbishop of York or Canterbury.
+
+‘You are evidently going to write a book about us, Mr. Jasper,’ quoth the
+Dean; ‘to write a book about us. Well! We are very ancient, and we
+ought to make a good book. We are not so richly endowed in possessions
+as in age; but perhaps you will put _that_ in your book, among other
+things, and call attention to our wrongs.’
+
+Mr. Tope, as in duty bound, is greatly entertained by this.
+
+‘I really have no intention at all, sir,’ replies Jasper, ‘of turning
+author or archæologist. It is but a whim of mine. And even for my whim,
+Mr. Sapsea here is more accountable than I am.’
+
+‘How so, Mr. Mayor?’ says the Dean, with a nod of good-natured
+recognition of his Fetch. ‘How is that, Mr. Mayor?’
+
+‘I am not aware,’ Mr. Sapsea remarks, looking about him for information,
+‘to what the Very Reverend the Dean does me the honour of referring.’
+And then falls to studying his original in minute points of detail.
+
+‘Durdles,’ Mr. Tope hints.
+
+‘Ay!’ the Dean echoes; ‘Durdles, Durdles!’
+
+‘The truth is, sir,’ explains Jasper, ‘that my curiosity in the man was
+first really stimulated by Mr. Sapsea. Mr. Sapsea’s knowledge of mankind
+and power of drawing out whatever is recluse or odd around him, first led
+to my bestowing a second thought upon the man: though of course I had met
+him constantly about. You would not be surprised by this, Mr. Dean, if
+you had seen Mr. Sapsea deal with him in his own parlour, as I did.’
+
+‘O!’ cries Sapsea, picking up the ball thrown to him with ineffable
+complacency and pomposity; ‘yes, yes. The Very Reverend the Dean refers
+to that? Yes. I happened to bring Durdles and Mr. Jasper together. I
+regard Durdles as a Character.’
+
+‘A character, Mr. Sapsea, that with a few skilful touches you turn inside
+out,’ says Jasper.
+
+‘Nay, not quite that,’ returns the lumbering auctioneer. ‘I may have a
+little influence over him, perhaps; and a little insight into his
+character, perhaps. The Very Reverend the Dean will please to bear in
+mind that I have seen the world.’ Here Mr. Sapsea gets a little behind
+the Dean, to inspect his coat-buttons.
+
+‘Well!’ says the Dean, looking about him to see what has become of his
+copyist: ‘I hope, Mr. Mayor, you will use your study and knowledge of
+Durdles to the good purpose of exhorting him not to break our worthy and
+respected Choir-Master’s neck; we cannot afford it; his head and voice
+are much too valuable to us.’
+
+Mr. Tope is again highly entertained, and, having fallen into respectful
+convulsions of laughter, subsides into a deferential murmur, importing
+that surely any gentleman would deem it a pleasure and an honour to have
+his neck broken, in return for such a compliment from such a source.
+
+‘I will take it upon myself, sir,’ observes Sapsea loftily, ‘to answer
+for Mr. Jasper’s neck. I will tell Durdles to be careful of it. He will
+mind what _I_ say. How is it at present endangered?’ he inquires,
+looking about him with magnificent patronage.
+
+‘Only by my making a moonlight expedition with Durdles among the tombs,
+vaults, towers, and ruins,’ returns Jasper. ‘You remember suggesting,
+when you brought us together, that, as a lover of the picturesque, it
+might be worth my while?’
+
+‘I remember!’ replies the auctioneer. And the solemn idiot really
+believes that he does remember.
+
+‘Profiting by your hint,’ pursues Jasper, ‘I have had some day-rambles
+with the extraordinary old fellow, and we are to make a moonlight
+hole-and-corner exploration to-night.’
+
+‘And here he is,’ says the Dean.
+
+Durdles with his dinner-bundle in his hand, is indeed beheld slouching
+towards them. Slouching nearer, and perceiving the Dean, he pulls off
+his hat, and is slouching away with it under his arm, when Mr. Sapsea
+stops him.
+
+‘Mind you take care of my friend,’ is the injunction Mr. Sapsea lays upon
+him.
+
+‘What friend o’ yourn is dead?’ asks Durdles. ‘No orders has come in for
+any friend o’ yourn.’
+
+‘I mean my live friend there.’
+
+‘O! him?’ says Durdles. ‘He can take care of himself, can Mister
+Jarsper.’
+
+‘But do you take care of him too,’ says Sapsea.
+
+Whom Durdles (there being command in his tone) surlily surveys from head
+to foot.
+
+‘With submission to his Reverence the Dean, if you’ll mind what concerns
+you, Mr. Sapsea, Durdles he’ll mind what concerns him.’
+
+‘You’re out of temper,’ says Mr. Sapsea, winking to the company to
+observe how smoothly he will manage him. ‘My friend concerns me, and Mr.
+Jasper is my friend. And you are my friend.’
+
+‘Don’t you get into a bad habit of boasting,’ retorts Durdles, with a
+grave cautionary nod. ‘It’ll grow upon you.’
+
+ [Picture: Durdles cautions Mr. Sapsea against boasting]
+
+‘You are out of temper,’ says Sapsea again; reddening, but again sinking
+to the company.
+
+‘I own to it,’ returns Durdles; ‘I don’t like liberties.’
+
+Mr. Sapsea winks a third wink to the company, as who should say: ‘I think
+you will agree with me that I have settled _his_ business;’ and stalks
+out of the controversy.
+
+Durdles then gives the Dean a good evening, and adding, as he puts his
+hat on, ‘You’ll find me at home, Mister Jarsper, as agreed, when you want
+me; I’m a-going home to clean myself,’ soon slouches out of sight. This
+going home to clean himself is one of the man’s incomprehensible
+compromises with inexorable facts; he, and his hat, and his boots, and
+his clothes, never showing any trace of cleaning, but being uniformly in
+one condition of dust and grit.
+
+The lamplighter now dotting the quiet Close with specks of light, and
+running at a great rate up and down his little ladder with that
+object—his little ladder under the sacred shadow of whose inconvenience
+generations had grown up, and which all Cloisterham would have stood
+aghast at the idea of abolishing—the Dean withdraws to his dinner, Mr.
+Tope to his tea, and Mr. Jasper to his piano. There, with no light but
+that of the fire, he sits chanting choir-music in a low and beautiful
+voice, for two or three hours; in short, until it has been for some time
+dark, and the moon is about to rise.
+
+Then he closes his piano softly, softly changes his coat for a
+pea-jacket, with a goodly wicker-cased bottle in its largest pocket, and
+putting on a low-crowned, flap-brimmed hat, goes softly out. Why does he
+move so softly to-night? No outward reason is apparent for it. Can
+there be any sympathetic reason crouching darkly within him?
+
+Repairing to Durdles’s unfinished house, or hole in the city wall, and
+seeing a light within it, he softly picks his course among the
+gravestones, monuments, and stony lumber of the yard, already touched
+here and there, sidewise, by the rising moon. The two journeymen have
+left their two great saws sticking in their blocks of stone; and two
+skeleton journeymen out of the Dance of Death might be grinning in the
+shadow of their sheltering sentry-boxes, about to slash away at cutting
+out the gravestones of the next two people destined to die in
+Cloisterham. Likely enough, the two think little of that now, being
+alive, and perhaps merry. Curious, to make a guess at the two;—or say
+one of the two!
+
+‘Ho! Durdles!’
+
+The light moves, and he appears with it at the door. He would seem to
+have been ‘cleaning himself’ with the aid of a bottle, jug, and tumbler;
+for no other cleansing instruments are visible in the bare brick room
+with rafters overhead and no plastered ceiling, into which he shows his
+visitor.
+
+‘Are you ready?’
+
+‘I am ready, Mister Jarsper. Let the old ’uns come out if they dare,
+when we go among their tombs. My spirit is ready for ’em.’
+
+‘Do you mean animal spirits, or ardent?’
+
+‘The one’s the t’other,’ answers Durdles, ‘and I mean ’em both.’
+
+He takes a lantern from a hook, puts a match or two in his pocket
+wherewith to light it, should there be need; and they go out together,
+dinner-bundle and all.
+
+Surely an unaccountable sort of expedition! That Durdles himself, who is
+always prowling among old graves, and ruins, like a Ghoul—that he should
+be stealing forth to climb, and dive, and wander without an object, is
+nothing extraordinary; but that the Choir-Master or any one else should
+hold it worth his while to be with him, and to study moonlight effects in
+such company is another affair. Surely an unaccountable sort of
+expedition, therefore!
+
+‘’Ware that there mound by the yard-gate, Mister Jarsper.’
+
+‘I see it. What is it?’
+
+‘Lime.’
+
+Mr. Jasper stops, and waits for him to come up, for he lags behind.
+‘What you call quick-lime?’
+
+‘Ay!’ says Durdles; ‘quick enough to eat your boots. With a little handy
+stirring, quick enough to eat your bones.’
+
+They go on, presently passing the red windows of the Travellers’
+Twopenny, and emerging into the clear moonlight of the Monks’ Vineyard.
+This crossed, they come to Minor Canon Corner: of which the greater part
+lies in shadow until the moon shall rise higher in the sky.
+
+The sound of a closing house-door strikes their ears, and two men come
+out. These are Mr. Crisparkle and Neville. Jasper, with a strange and
+sudden smile upon his face, lays the palm of his hand upon the breast of
+Durdles, stopping him where he stands.
+
+At that end of Minor Canon Corner the shadow is profound in the existing
+state of the light: at that end, too, there is a piece of old dwarf wall,
+breast high, the only remaining boundary of what was once a garden, but
+is now the thoroughfare. Jasper and Durdles would have turned this wall
+in another instant; but, stopping so short, stand behind it.
+
+‘Those two are only sauntering,’ Jasper whispers; ‘they will go out into
+the moonlight soon. Let us keep quiet here, or they will detain us, or
+want to join us, or what not.’
+
+Durdles nods assent, and falls to munching some fragments from his
+bundle. Jasper folds his arms upon the top of the wall, and, with his
+chin resting on them, watches. He takes no note whatever of the Minor
+Canon, but watches Neville, as though his eye were at the trigger of a
+loaded rifle, and he had covered him, and were going to fire. A sense of
+destructive power is so expressed in his face, that even Durdles pauses
+in his munching, and looks at him, with an unmunched something in his
+cheek.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Crisparkle and Neville walk to and fro, quietly talking
+together. What they say, cannot be heard consecutively; but Mr. Jasper
+has already distinguished his own name more than once.
+
+‘This is the first day of the week,’ Mr. Crisparkle can be distinctly
+heard to observe, as they turn back; ‘and the last day of the week is
+Christmas Eve.’
+
+‘You may be certain of me, sir.’
+
+The echoes were favourable at those points, but as the two approach, the
+sound of their talking becomes confused again. The word ‘confidence,’
+shattered by the echoes, but still capable of being pieced together, is
+uttered by Mr. Crisparkle. As they draw still nearer, this fragment of a
+reply is heard: ‘Not deserved yet, but shall be, sir.’ As they turn away
+again, Jasper again hears his own name, in connection with the words from
+Mr. Crisparkle: ‘Remember that I said I answered for you confidently.’
+Then the sound of their talk becomes confused again; they halting for a
+little while, and some earnest action on the part of Neville succeeding.
+When they move once more, Mr. Crisparkle is seen to look up at the sky,
+and to point before him. They then slowly disappear; passing out into
+the moonlight at the opposite end of the Corner.
+
+It is not until they are gone, that Mr. Jasper moves. But then he turns
+to Durdles, and bursts into a fit of laughter. Durdles, who still has
+that suspended something in his cheek, and who sees nothing to laugh at,
+stares at him until Mr. Jasper lays his face down on his arms to have his
+laugh out. Then Durdles bolts the something, as if desperately resigning
+himself to indigestion.
+
+Among those secluded nooks there is very little stir or movement after
+dark. There is little enough in the high tide of the day, but there is
+next to none at night. Besides that the cheerfully frequented High
+Street lies nearly parallel to the spot (the old Cathedral rising between
+the two), and is the natural channel in which the Cloisterham traffic
+flows, a certain awful hush pervades the ancient pile, the cloisters, and
+the churchyard, after dark, which not many people care to encounter. Ask
+the first hundred citizens of Cloisterham, met at random in the streets
+at noon, if they believed in Ghosts, they would tell you no; but put them
+to choose at night between these eerie Precincts and the thoroughfare of
+shops, and you would find that ninety-nine declared for the longer round
+and the more frequented way. The cause of this is not to be found in any
+local superstition that attaches to the Precincts—albeit a mysterious
+lady, with a child in her arms and a rope dangling from her neck, has
+been seen flitting about there by sundry witnesses as intangible as
+herself—but it is to be sought in the innate shrinking of dust with the
+breath of life in it from dust out of which the breath of life has
+passed; also, in the widely diffused, and almost as widely
+unacknowledged, reflection: ‘If the dead do, under any circumstances,
+become visible to the living, these are such likely surroundings for the
+purpose that I, the living, will get out of them as soon as I can.’
+Hence, when Mr. Jasper and Durdles pause to glance around them, before
+descending into the crypt by a small side door, of which the latter has a
+key, the whole expanse of moonlight in their view is utterly deserted.
+One might fancy that the tide of life was stemmed by Mr. Jasper’s own
+gatehouse. The murmur of the tide is heard beyond; but no wave passes
+the archway, over which his lamp burns red behind his curtain, as if the
+building were a Lighthouse.
+
+They enter, locking themselves in, descend the rugged steps, and are down
+in the Crypt. The lantern is not wanted, for the moonlight strikes in at
+the groined windows, bare of glass, the broken frames for which cast
+patterns on the ground. The heavy pillars which support the roof
+engender masses of black shade, but between them there are lanes of
+light. Up and down these lanes they walk, Durdles discoursing of the
+‘old uns’ he yet counts on disinterring, and slapping a wall, in which he
+considers ‘a whole family on ’em’ to be stoned and earthed up, just as if
+he were a familiar friend of the family. The taciturnity of Durdles is
+for the time overcome by Mr. Jasper’s wicker bottle, which circulates
+freely;—in the sense, that is to say, that its contents enter freely into
+Mr. Durdles’s circulation, while Mr. Jasper only rinses his mouth once,
+and casts forth the rinsing.
+
+They are to ascend the great Tower. On the steps by which they rise to
+the Cathedral, Durdles pauses for new store of breath. The steps are
+very dark, but out of the darkness they can see the lanes of light they
+have traversed. Durdles seats himself upon a step. Mr. Jasper seats
+himself upon another. The odour from the wicker bottle (which has
+somehow passed into Durdles’s keeping) soon intimates that the cork has
+been taken out; but this is not ascertainable through the sense of sight,
+since neither can descry the other. And yet, in talking, they turn to
+one another, as though their faces could commune together.
+
+‘This is good stuff, Mister Jarsper!’
+
+‘It is very good stuff, I hope.—I bought it on purpose.’
+
+‘They don’t show, you see, the old uns don’t, Mister Jarsper!’
+
+‘It would be a more confused world than it is, if they could.’
+
+‘Well, it _would_ lead towards a mixing of things,’ Durdles acquiesces:
+pausing on the remark, as if the idea of ghosts had not previously
+presented itself to him in a merely inconvenient light, domestically or
+chronologically. ‘But do you think there may be Ghosts of other things,
+though not of men and women?’
+
+‘What things? Flower-beds and watering-pots? horses and harness?’
+
+‘No. Sounds.’
+
+‘What sounds?’
+
+‘Cries.’
+
+‘What cries do you mean? Chairs to mend?’
+
+‘No. I mean screeches. Now I’ll tell you, Mr. Jarsper. Wait a bit till
+I put the bottle right.’ Here the cork is evidently taken out again, and
+replaced again. ‘There! _Now_ it’s right! This time last year, only a
+few days later, I happened to have been doing what was correct by the
+season, in the way of giving it the welcome it had a right to expect,
+when them town-boys set on me at their worst. At length I gave ’em the
+slip, and turned in here. And here I fell asleep. And what woke me?
+The ghost of a cry. The ghost of one terrific shriek, which shriek was
+followed by the ghost of the howl of a dog: a long, dismal, woeful howl,
+such as a dog gives when a person’s dead. That was _my_ last Christmas
+Eve.’
+
+‘What do you mean?’ is the very abrupt, and, one might say, fierce
+retort.
+
+‘I mean that I made inquiries everywhere about, and, that no living ears
+but mine heard either that cry or that howl. So I say they was both
+ghosts; though why they came to me, I’ve never made out.’
+
+‘I thought you were another kind of man,’ says Jasper, scornfully.
+
+‘So I thought myself,’ answers Durdles with his usual composure; ‘and yet
+I was picked out for it.’
+
+Jasper had risen suddenly, when he asked him what he meant, and he now
+says, ‘Come; we shall freeze here; lead the way.’
+
+Durdles complies, not over-steadily; opens the door at the top of the
+steps with the key he has already used; and so emerges on the Cathedral
+level, in a passage at the side of the chancel. Here, the moonlight is
+so very bright again that the colours of the nearest stained-glass window
+are thrown upon their faces. The appearance of the unconscious Durdles,
+holding the door open for his companion to follow, as if from the grave,
+is ghastly enough, with a purple hand across his face, and a yellow
+splash upon his brow; but he bears the close scrutiny of his companion in
+an insensible way, although it is prolonged while the latter fumbles
+among his pockets for a key confided to him that will open an iron gate,
+so to enable them to pass to the staircase of the great tower.
+
+‘That and the bottle are enough for you to carry,’ he says, giving it to
+Durdles; ‘hand your bundle to me; I am younger and longer-winded than
+you.’ Durdles hesitates for a moment between bundle and bottle; but
+gives the preference to the bottle as being by far the better company,
+and consigns the dry weight to his fellow-explorer.
+
+Then they go up the winding staircase of the great tower, toilsomely,
+turning and turning, and lowering their heads to avoid the stairs above,
+or the rough stone pivot around which they twist. Durdles has lighted
+his lantern, by drawing from the cold, hard wall a spark of that
+mysterious fire which lurks in everything, and, guided by this speck,
+they clamber up among the cobwebs and the dust. Their way lies through
+strange places. Twice or thrice they emerge into level, low-arched
+galleries, whence they can look down into the moon-lit nave; and where
+Durdles, waving his lantern, waves the dim angels’ heads upon the corbels
+of the roof, seeming to watch their progress. Anon they turn into
+narrower and steeper staircases, and the night-air begins to blow upon
+them, and the chirp of some startled jackdaw or frightened rook precedes
+the heavy beating of wings in a confined space, and the beating down of
+dust and straws upon their heads. At last, leaving their light behind a
+stair—for it blows fresh up here—they look down on Cloisterham, fair to
+see in the moonlight: its ruined habitations and sanctuaries of the dead,
+at the tower’s base: its moss-softened red-tiled roofs and red-brick
+houses of the living, clustered beyond: its river winding down from the
+mist on the horizon, as though that were its source, and already heaving
+with a restless knowledge of its approach towards the sea.
+
+Once again, an unaccountable expedition this! Jasper (always moving
+softly with no visible reason) contemplates the scene, and especially
+that stillest part of it which the Cathedral overshadows. But he
+contemplates Durdles quite as curiously, and Durdles is by times
+conscious of his watchful eyes.
+
+Only by times, because Durdles is growing drowsy. As aëronauts lighten
+the load they carry, when they wish to rise, similarly Durdles has
+lightened the wicker bottle in coming up. Snatches of sleep surprise him
+on his legs, and stop him in his talk. A mild fit of calenture seizes
+him, in which he deems that the ground so far below, is on a level with
+the tower, and would as lief walk off the tower into the air as not.
+Such is his state when they begin to come down. And as aëronauts make
+themselves heavier when they wish to descend, similarly Durdles charges
+himself with more liquid from the wicker bottle, that he may come down
+the better.
+
+The iron gate attained and locked—but not before Durdles has tumbled
+twice, and cut an eyebrow open once—they descend into the crypt again,
+with the intent of issuing forth as they entered. But, while returning
+among those lanes of light, Durdles becomes so very uncertain, both of
+foot and speech, that he half drops, half throws himself down, by one of
+the heavy pillars, scarcely less heavy than itself, and indistinctly
+appeals to his companion for forty winks of a second each.
+
+‘If you will have it so, or must have it so,’ replies Jasper, ‘I’ll not
+leave you here. Take them, while I walk to and fro.’
+
+Durdles is asleep at once; and in his sleep he dreams a dream.
+
+It is not much of a dream, considering the vast extent of the domains of
+dreamland, and their wonderful productions; it is only remarkable for
+being unusually restless and unusually real. He dreams of lying there,
+asleep, and yet counting his companion’s footsteps as he walks to and
+fro. He dreams that the footsteps die away into distance of time and of
+space, and that something touches him, and that something falls from his
+hand. Then something clinks and gropes about, and he dreams that he is
+alone for so long a time, that the lanes of light take new directions as
+the moon advances in her course. From succeeding unconsciousness he
+passes into a dream of slow uneasiness from cold; and painfully awakes to
+a perception of the lanes of light—really changed, much as he had
+dreamed—and Jasper walking among them, beating his hands and feet.
+
+‘Holloa!’ Durdles cries out, unmeaningly alarmed.
+
+‘Awake at last?’ says Jasper, coming up to him. ‘Do you know that your
+forties have stretched into thousands?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘They have though.’
+
+‘What’s the time?’
+
+‘Hark! The bells are going in the Tower!’
+
+They strike four quarters, and then the great bell strikes.
+
+‘Two!’ cries Durdles, scrambling up; ‘why didn’t you try to wake me,
+Mister Jarsper?’
+
+‘I did. I might as well have tried to wake the dead—your own family of
+dead, up in the corner there.’
+
+‘Did you touch me?’
+
+‘Touch you! Yes. Shook you.’
+
+As Durdles recalls that touching something in his dream, he looks down on
+the pavement, and sees the key of the crypt door lying close to where he
+himself lay.
+
+‘I dropped you, did I?’ he says, picking it up, and recalling that part
+of his dream. As he gathers himself up again into an upright position,
+or into a position as nearly upright as he ever maintains, he is again
+conscious of being watched by his companion.
+
+‘Well?’ says Jasper, smiling, ‘are you quite ready? Pray don’t hurry.’
+
+‘Let me get my bundle right, Mister Jarsper, and I’m with you.’ As he
+ties it afresh, he is once more conscious that he is very narrowly
+observed.
+
+‘What do you suspect me of, Mister Jarsper?’ he asks, with drunken
+displeasure. ‘Let them as has any suspicions of Durdles name ’em.’
+
+‘I’ve no suspicions of you, my good Mr. Durdles; but I have suspicions
+that my bottle was filled with something stiffer than either of us
+supposed. And I also have suspicions,’ Jasper adds, taking it from the
+pavement and turning it bottom upwards, ‘that it’s empty.’
+
+Durdles condescends to laugh at this. Continuing to chuckle when his
+laugh is over, as though remonstrant with himself on his drinking powers,
+he rolls to the door and unlocks it. They both pass out, and Durdles
+relocks it, and pockets his key.
+
+‘A thousand thanks for a curious and interesting night,’ says Jasper,
+giving him his hand; ‘you can make your own way home?’
+
+‘I should think so!’ answers Durdles. ‘If you was to offer Durdles the
+affront to show him his way home, he wouldn’t go home.
+
+ Durdles wouldn’t go home till morning;
+ And _then_ Durdles wouldn’t go home,
+
+Durdles wouldn’t.’ This with the utmost defiance.
+
+‘Good-night, then.’
+
+‘Good-night, Mister Jarsper.’
+
+Each is turning his own way, when a sharp whistle rends the silence, and
+the jargon is yelped out:
+
+ Widdy widdy wen!
+ I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—ten.
+ Widdy widdy wy!
+ Then—E—don’t—go—then—I—shy—
+ Widdy Widdy Wake-cock warning!’
+
+Instantly afterwards, a rapid fire of stones rattles at the Cathedral
+wall, and the hideous small boy is beheld opposite, dancing in the
+moonlight.
+
+‘What! Is that baby-devil on the watch there!’ cries Jasper in a fury:
+so quickly roused, and so violent, that he seems an older devil himself.
+‘I shall shed the blood of that impish wretch! I know I shall do it!’
+Regardless of the fire, though it hits him more than once, he rushes at
+Deputy, collars him, and tries to bring him across. But Deputy is not to
+be so easily brought across. With a diabolical insight into the
+strongest part of his position, he is no sooner taken by the throat than
+he curls up his legs, forces his assailant to hang him, as it were, and
+gurgles in his throat, and screws his body, and twists, as already
+undergoing the first agonies of strangulation. There is nothing for it
+but to drop him. He instantly gets himself together, backs over to
+Durdles, and cries to his assailant, gnashing the great gap in front of
+his mouth with rage and malice:
+
+‘I’ll blind yer, s’elp me! I’ll stone yer eyes out, s’elp me! If I
+don’t have yer eyesight, bellows me!’ At the same time dodging behind
+Durdles, and snarling at Jasper, now from this side of him, and now from
+that: prepared, if pounced upon, to dart away in all manner of
+curvilinear directions, and, if run down after all, to grovel in the
+dust, and cry: ‘Now, hit me when I’m down! Do it!’
+
+‘Don’t hurt the boy, Mister Jarsper,’ urges Durdles, shielding him.
+‘Recollect yourself.’
+
+‘He followed us to-night, when we first came here!’
+
+‘Yer lie, I didn’t!’ replies Deputy, in his one form of polite
+contradiction.
+
+‘He has been prowling near us ever since!’
+
+‘Yer lie, I haven’t,’ returns Deputy. ‘I’d only jist come out for my
+’elth when I see you two a-coming out of the Kin-freederel. If
+
+ I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—ten!’
+
+(with the usual rhythm and dance, though dodging behind Durdles), ‘it
+ain’t _any_ fault, is it?’
+
+‘Take him home, then,’ retorts Jasper, ferociously, though with a strong
+check upon himself, ‘and let my eyes be rid of the sight of you!’
+
+Deputy, with another sharp whistle, at once expressing his relief, and
+his commencement of a milder stoning of Mr. Durdles, begins stoning that
+respectable gentleman home, as if he were a reluctant ox. Mr. Jasper
+goes to his gatehouse, brooding. And thus, as everything comes to an
+end, the unaccountable expedition comes to an end—for the time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII—BOTH AT THEIR BEST
+
+
+Miss Twinkleton’s establishment was about to undergo a serene hush. The
+Christmas recess was at hand. What had once, and at no remote period,
+been called, even by the erudite Miss Twinkleton herself, ‘the half;’ but
+what was now called, as being more elegant, and more strictly collegiate,
+‘the term,’ would expire to-morrow. A noticeable relaxation of
+discipline had for some few days pervaded the Nuns’ House. Club suppers
+had occurred in the bedrooms, and a dressed tongue had been carved with a
+pair of scissors, and handed round with the curling tongs. Portions of
+marmalade had likewise been distributed on a service of plates
+constructed of curlpaper; and cowslip wine had been quaffed from the
+small squat measuring glass in which little Rickitts (a junior of weakly
+constitution) took her steel drops daily. The housemaids had been bribed
+with various fragments of riband, and sundry pairs of shoes more or less
+down at heel, to make no mention of crumbs in the beds; the airiest
+costumes had been worn on these festive occasions; and the daring Miss
+Ferdinand had even surprised the company with a sprightly solo on the
+comb-and-curlpaper, until suffocated in her own pillow by two
+flowing-haired executioners.
+
+Nor were these the only tokens of dispersal. Boxes appeared in the
+bedrooms (where they were capital at other times), and a surprising
+amount of packing took place, out of all proportion to the amount packed.
+Largess, in the form of odds and ends of cold cream and pomatum, and also
+of hairpins, was freely distributed among the attendants. On charges of
+inviolable secrecy, confidences were interchanged respecting golden youth
+of England expected to call, ‘at home,’ on the first opportunity. Miss
+Giggles (deficient in sentiment) did indeed profess that she, for her
+part, acknowledged such homage by making faces at the golden youth; but
+this young lady was outvoted by an immense majority.
+
+On the last night before a recess, it was always expressly made a point
+of honour that nobody should go to sleep, and that Ghosts should be
+encouraged by all possible means. This compact invariably broke down,
+and all the young ladies went to sleep very soon, and got up very early.
+
+The concluding ceremony came off at twelve o’clock on the day of
+departure; when Miss Twinkleton, supported by Mrs. Tisher, held a
+drawing-room in her own apartment (the globes already covered with brown
+Holland), where glasses of white-wine and plates of cut pound-cake were
+discovered on the table. Miss Twinkleton then said: Ladies, another
+revolving year had brought us round to that festive period at which the
+first feelings of our nature bounded in our—Miss Twinkleton was annually
+going to add ‘bosoms,’ but annually stopped on the brink of that
+expression, and substituted ‘hearts.’ Hearts; our hearts. Hem! Again a
+revolving year, ladies, had brought us to a pause in our studies—let us
+hope our greatly advanced studies—and, like the mariner in his bark, the
+warrior in his tent, the captive in his dungeon, and the traveller in his
+various conveyances, we yearned for home. Did we say, on such an
+occasion, in the opening words of Mr. Addison’s impressive tragedy:
+
+ ‘The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers,
+ And heavily in clouds brings on the day,
+ The great, th’ important day—?’
+
+Not so. From horizon to zenith all was _couleur de rose_, for all was
+redolent of our relations and friends. Might _we_ find _them_ prospering
+as _we_ expected; might _they_ find _us_ prospering as _they_ expected!
+Ladies, we would now, with our love to one another, wish one another
+good-bye, and happiness, until we met again. And when the time should
+come for our resumption of those pursuits which (here a general
+depression set in all round), pursuits which, pursuits which;—then let us
+ever remember what was said by the Spartan General, in words too trite
+for repetition, at the battle it were superfluous to specify.
+
+The handmaidens of the establishment, in their best caps, then handed the
+trays, and the young ladies sipped and crumbled, and the bespoken coaches
+began to choke the street. Then leave-taking was not long about; and
+Miss Twinkleton, in saluting each young lady’s cheek, confided to her an
+exceedingly neat letter, addressed to her next friend at law, ‘with Miss
+Twinkleton’s best compliments’ in the corner. This missive she handed
+with an air as if it had not the least connexion with the bill, but were
+something in the nature of a delicate and joyful surprise.
+
+So many times had Rosa seen such dispersals, and so very little did she
+know of any other Home, that she was contented to remain where she was,
+and was even better contented than ever before, having her latest friend
+with her. And yet her latest friendship had a blank place in it of which
+she could not fail to be sensible. Helena Landless, having been a party
+to her brother’s revelation about Rosa, and having entered into that
+compact of silence with Mr. Crisparkle, shrank from any allusion to Edwin
+Drood’s name. Why she so avoided it, was mysterious to Rosa, but she
+perfectly perceived the fact. But for the fact, she might have relieved
+her own little perplexed heart of some of its doubts and hesitations, by
+taking Helena into her confidence. As it was, she had no such vent: she
+could only ponder on her own difficulties, and wonder more and more why
+this avoidance of Edwin’s name should last, now that she knew—for so much
+Helena had told her—that a good understanding was to be reëstablished
+between the two young men, when Edwin came down.
+
+It would have made a pretty picture, so many pretty girls kissing Rosa in
+the cold porch of the Nuns’ House, and that sunny little creature peeping
+out of it (unconscious of sly faces carved on spout and gable peeping at
+her), and waving farewells to the departing coaches, as if she
+represented the spirit of rosy youth abiding in the place to keep it
+bright and warm in its desertion. The hoarse High Street became musical
+with the cry, in various silvery voices, ‘Good-bye, Rosebud darling!’ and
+the effigy of Mr. Sapsea’s father over the opposite doorway seemed to say
+to mankind: ‘Gentlemen, favour me with your attention to this charming
+little last lot left behind, and bid with a spirit worthy of the
+occasion!’ Then the staid street, so unwontedly sparkling, youthful, and
+fresh for a few rippling moments, ran dry, and Cloisterham was itself
+again.
+
+ [Picture: “Good-bye, Rosebud darling”]
+
+If Rosebud in her bower now waited Edwin Drood’s coming with an uneasy
+heart, Edwin for his part was uneasy too. With far less force of purpose
+in his composition than the childish beauty, crowned by acclamation fairy
+queen of Miss Twinkleton’s establishment, he had a conscience, and Mr.
+Grewgious had pricked it. That gentleman’s steady convictions of what
+was right and what was wrong in such a case as his, were neither to be
+frowned aside nor laughed aside. They would not be moved. But for the
+dinner in Staple Inn, and but for the ring he carried in the breast
+pocket of his coat, he would have drifted into their wedding-day without
+another pause for real thought, loosely trusting that all would go well,
+left alone. But that serious putting him on his truth to the living and
+the dead had brought him to a check. He must either give the ring to
+Rosa, or he must take it back. Once put into this narrowed way of
+action, it was curious that he began to consider Rosa’s claims upon him
+more unselfishly than he had ever considered them before, and began to be
+less sure of himself than he had ever been in all his easy-going days.
+
+‘I will be guided by what she says, and by how we get on,’ was his
+decision, walking from the gatehouse to the Nuns’ House. ‘Whatever comes
+of it, I will bear his words in mind, and try to be true to the living
+and the dead.’
+
+Rosa was dressed for walking. She expected him. It was a bright, frosty
+day, and Miss Twinkleton had already graciously sanctioned fresh air.
+Thus they got out together before it became necessary for either Miss
+Twinkleton, or the deputy high-priest Mrs. Tisher, to lay even so much as
+one of those usual offerings on the shrine of Propriety.
+
+‘My dear Eddy,’ said Rosa, when they had turned out of the High Street,
+and had got among the quiet walks in the neighbourhood of the Cathedral
+and the river: ‘I want to say something very serious to you. I have been
+thinking about it for a long, long time.’
+
+‘I want to be serious with you too, Rosa dear. I mean to be serious and
+earnest.’
+
+‘Thank you, Eddy. And you will not think me unkind because I begin, will
+you? You will not think I speak for myself only, because I speak first?
+That would not be generous, would it? And I know you are generous!’
+
+He said, ‘I hope I am not ungenerous to you, Rosa.’ He called her Pussy
+no more. Never again.
+
+‘And there is no fear,’ pursued Rosa, ‘of our quarrelling, is there?
+Because, Eddy,’ clasping her hand on his arm, ‘we have so much reason to
+be very lenient to each other!’
+
+‘We will be, Rosa.’
+
+‘That’s a dear good boy! Eddy, let us be courageous. Let us change to
+brother and sister from this day forth.’
+
+‘Never be husband and wife?’
+
+‘Never!’
+
+Neither spoke again for a little while. But after that pause he said,
+with some effort:
+
+‘Of course I know that this has been in both our minds, Rosa, and of
+course I am in honour bound to confess freely that it does not originate
+with you.’
+
+‘No, nor with you, dear,’ she returned, with pathetic earnestness. ‘That
+sprung up between us. You are not truly happy in our engagement; I am
+not truly happy in it. O, I am so sorry, so sorry!’ And there she broke
+into tears.
+
+‘I am deeply sorry too, Rosa. Deeply sorry for you.’
+
+‘And I for you, poor boy! And I for you!’
+
+This pure young feeling, this gentle and forbearing feeling of each
+towards the other, brought with it its reward in a softening light that
+seemed to shine on their position. The relations between them did not
+look wilful, or capricious, or a failure, in such a light; they became
+elevated into something more self-denying, honourable, affectionate, and
+true.
+
+‘If we knew yesterday,’ said Rosa, as she dried her eyes, ‘and we did
+know yesterday, and on many, many yesterdays, that we were far from right
+together in those relations which were not of our own choosing, what
+better could we do to-day than change them? It is natural that we should
+be sorry, and you see how sorry we both are; but how much better to be
+sorry now than then!’
+
+‘When, Rosa?’
+
+‘When it would be too late. And then we should be angry, besides.’
+
+Another silence fell upon them.
+
+‘And you know,’ said Rosa innocently, ‘you couldn’t like me then; and you
+can always like me now, for I shall not be a drag upon you, or a worry to
+you. And I can always like you now, and your sister will not tease or
+trifle with you. I often did when I was not your sister, and I beg your
+pardon for it.’
+
+‘Don’t let us come to that, Rosa; or I shall want more pardoning than I
+like to think of.’
+
+‘No, indeed, Eddy; you are too hard, my generous boy, upon yourself. Let
+us sit down, brother, on these ruins, and let me tell you how it was with
+us. I think I know, for I have considered about it very much since you
+were here last time. You liked me, didn’t you? You thought I was a nice
+little thing?’
+
+‘Everybody thinks that, Rosa.’
+
+‘Do they?’ She knitted her brow musingly for a moment, and then flashed
+out with the bright little induction: ‘Well, but say they do. Surely it
+was not enough that you should think of me only as other people did; now,
+was it?’
+
+The point was not to be got over. It was not enough.
+
+‘And that is just what I mean; that is just how it was with us,’ said
+Rosa. ‘You liked me very well, and you had grown used to me, and had
+grown used to the idea of our being married. You accepted the situation
+as an inevitable kind of thing, didn’t you? It was to be, you thought,
+and why discuss or dispute it?’
+
+It was new and strange to him to have himself presented to himself so
+clearly, in a glass of her holding up. He had always patronised her, in
+his superiority to her share of woman’s wit. Was that but another
+instance of something radically amiss in the terms on which they had been
+gliding towards a life-long bondage?
+
+‘All this that I say of you is true of me as well, Eddy. Unless it was,
+I might not be bold enough to say it. Only, the difference between us
+was, that by little and little there crept into my mind a habit of
+thinking about it, instead of dismissing it. My life is not so busy as
+yours, you see, and I have not so many things to think of. So I thought
+about it very much, and I cried about it very much too (though that was
+not your fault, poor boy); when all at once my guardian came down, to
+prepare for my leaving the Nuns’ House. I tried to hint to him that I
+was not quite settled in my mind, but I hesitated and failed, and he
+didn’t understand me. But he is a good, good man. And he put before me
+so kindly, and yet so strongly, how seriously we ought to consider, in
+our circumstances, that I resolved to speak to you the next moment we
+were alone and grave. And if I seemed to come to it easily just now,
+because I came to it all at once, don’t think it was so really, Eddy, for
+O, it was very, very hard, and O, I am very, very sorry!’
+
+Her full heart broke into tears again. He put his arm about her waist,
+and they walked by the river-side together.
+
+‘Your guardian has spoken to me too, Rosa dear. I saw him before I left
+London.’ His right hand was in his breast, seeking the ring; but he
+checked it, as he thought: ‘If I am to take it back, why should I tell
+her of it?’
+
+‘And that made you more serious about it, didn’t it, Eddy? And if I had
+not spoken to you, as I have, you would have spoken to me? I hope you
+can tell me so? I don’t like it to be _all_ my doing, though it _is_ so
+much better for us.’
+
+‘Yes, I should have spoken; I should have put everything before you; I
+came intending to do it. But I never could have spoken to you as you
+have spoken to me, Rosa.’
+
+‘Don’t say you mean so coldly or unkindly, Eddy, please, if you can help
+it.’
+
+‘I mean so sensibly and delicately, so wisely and affectionately.’
+
+‘That’s my dear brother!’ She kissed his hand in a little rapture. ‘The
+dear girls will be dreadfully disappointed,’ added Rosa, laughing, with
+the dewdrops glistening in her bright eyes. ‘They have looked forward to
+it so, poor pets!’
+
+‘Ah! but I fear it will be a worse disappointment to Jack,’ said Edwin
+Drood, with a start. ‘I never thought of Jack!’
+
+Her swift and intent look at him as he said the words could no more be
+recalled than a flash of lightning can. But it appeared as though she
+would have instantly recalled it, if she could; for she looked down,
+confused, and breathed quickly.
+
+‘You don’t doubt its being a blow to Jack, Rosa?’
+
+She merely replied, and that evasively and hurriedly: Why should she?
+She had not thought about it. He seemed, to her, to have so little to do
+with it.
+
+‘My dear child! can you suppose that any one so wrapped up in
+another—Mrs. Tope’s expression: not mine—as Jack is in me, could fail to
+be struck all of a heap by such a sudden and complete change in my life?
+I say sudden, because it will be sudden to _him_, you know.’
+
+She nodded twice or thrice, and her lips parted as if she would have
+assented. But she uttered no sound, and her breathing was no slower.
+
+‘How shall I tell Jack?’ said Edwin, ruminating. If he had been less
+occupied with the thought, he must have seen her singular emotion. ‘I
+never thought of Jack. It must be broken to him, before the town-crier
+knows it. I dine with the dear fellow to-morrow and next day—Christmas
+Eve and Christmas Day—but it would never do to spoil his feast-days. He
+always worries about me, and moddley-coddleys in the merest trifles. The
+news is sure to overset him. How on earth shall this be broken to Jack?’
+
+‘He must be told, I suppose?’ said Rosa.
+
+‘My dear Rosa! who ought to be in our confidence, if not Jack?’
+
+‘My guardian promised to come down, if I should write and ask him. I am
+going to do so. Would you like to leave it to him?’
+
+‘A bright idea!’ cried Edwin. ‘The other trustee. Nothing more natural.
+He comes down, he goes to Jack, he relates what we have agreed upon, and
+he states our case better than we could. He has already spoken feelingly
+to you, he has already spoken feelingly to me, and he’ll put the whole
+thing feelingly to Jack. That’s it! I am not a coward, Rosa, but to
+tell you a secret, I am a little afraid of Jack.’
+
+‘No, no! you are not afraid of him!’ cried Rosa, turning white, and
+clasping her hands.
+
+‘Why, sister Rosa, sister Rosa, what do you see from the turret?’ said
+Edwin, rallying her. ‘My dear girl!’
+
+‘You frightened me.’
+
+‘Most unintentionally, but I am as sorry as if I had meant to do it.
+Could you possibly suppose for a moment, from any loose way of speaking
+of mine, that I was literally afraid of the dear fond fellow? What I
+mean is, that he is subject to a kind of paroxysm, or fit—I saw him in it
+once—and I don’t know but that so great a surprise, coming upon him
+direct from me whom he is so wrapped up in, might bring it on perhaps.
+Which—and this is the secret I was going to tell you—is another reason
+for your guardian’s making the communication. He is so steady, precise,
+and exact, that he will talk Jack’s thoughts into shape, in no time:
+whereas with me Jack is always impulsive and hurried, and, I may say,
+almost womanish.’
+
+Rosa seemed convinced. Perhaps from her own very different point of view
+of ‘Jack,’ she felt comforted and protected by the interposition of Mr.
+Grewgious between herself and him.
+
+And now, Edwin Drood’s right hand closed again upon the ring in its
+little case, and again was checked by the consideration: ‘It is certain,
+now, that I am to give it back to him; then why should I tell her of it?’
+That pretty sympathetic nature which could be so sorry for him in the
+blight of their childish hopes of happiness together, and could so
+quietly find itself alone in a new world to weave fresh wreaths of such
+flowers as it might prove to bear, the old world’s flowers being
+withered, would be grieved by those sorrowful jewels; and to what
+purpose? Why should it be? They were but a sign of broken joys and
+baseless projects; in their very beauty they were (as the unlikeliest of
+men had said) almost a cruel satire on the loves, hopes, plans, of
+humanity, which are able to forecast nothing, and are so much brittle
+dust. Let them be. He would restore them to her guardian when he came
+down; he in his turn would restore them to the cabinet from which he had
+unwillingly taken them; and there, like old letters or old vows, or other
+records of old aspirations come to nothing, they would be disregarded,
+until, being valuable, they were sold into circulation again, to repeat
+their former round.
+
+Let them be. Let them lie unspoken of, in his breast. However
+distinctly or indistinctly he entertained these thoughts, he arrived at
+the conclusion, Let them be. Among the mighty store of wonderful chains
+that are for ever forging, day and night, in the vast iron-works of time
+and circumstance, there was one chain forged in the moment of that small
+conclusion, riveted to the foundations of heaven and earth, and gifted
+with invincible force to hold and drag.
+
+They walked on by the river. They began to speak of their separate
+plans. He would quicken his departure from England, and she would remain
+where she was, at least as long as Helena remained. The poor dear girls
+should have their disappointment broken to them gently, and, as the first
+preliminary, Miss Twinkleton should be confided in by Rosa, even in
+advance of the reappearance of Mr. Grewgious. It should be made clear in
+all quarters that she and Edwin were the best of friends. There had
+never been so serene an understanding between them since they were first
+affianced. And yet there was one reservation on each side; on hers, that
+she intended through her guardian to withdraw herself immediately from
+the tuition of her music-master; on his, that he did already entertain
+some wandering speculations whether it might ever come to pass that he
+would know more of Miss Landless.
+
+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 coat-button-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 self-denying 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.
+
+And so _he_ goes up the postern stair.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Edwin Drood passes a solitary day. Something of deeper moment than he
+had thought, has gone out of his life; and in the silence of his own
+chamber he wept for it last night. Though the image of Miss Landless
+still hovers in the background of his mind, the pretty little
+affectionate creature, so much firmer and wiser than he had supposed,
+occupies its stronghold. It is with some misgiving of his own
+unworthiness that he thinks of her, and of what they might have been to
+one another, if he had been more in earnest some time ago; if he had set
+a higher value on her; if, instead of accepting his lot in life as an
+inheritance of course, he had studied the right way to its appreciation
+and enhancement. And still, for all this, and though there is a sharp
+heartache in all this, the vanity and caprice of youth sustain that
+handsome figure of Miss Landless in the background of his mind.
+
+That was a curious look of Rosa’s when they parted at the gate. Did it
+mean that she saw below the surface of his thoughts, and down into their
+twilight depths? Scarcely that, for it was a look of astonished and keen
+inquiry. He decides that he cannot understand it, though it was
+remarkably expressive.
+
+As he only waits for Mr. Grewgious now, and will depart immediately after
+having seen him, he takes a sauntering leave of the ancient city and its
+neighbourhood. He recalls the time when Rosa and he walked here or
+there, mere children, full of the dignity of being engaged. Poor
+children! he thinks, with a pitying sadness.
+
+Finding that his watch has stopped, he turns into the jeweller’s shop, to
+have it wound and set. The jeweller is knowing on the subject of a
+bracelet, which he begs leave to submit, in a general and quite aimless
+way. It would suit (he considers) a young bride, to perfection;
+especially if of a rather diminutive style of beauty. Finding the
+bracelet but coldly looked at, the jeweller invites attention to a tray
+of rings for gentlemen; here is a style of ring, now, he remarks—a very
+chaste signet—which gentlemen are much given to purchasing, when changing
+their condition. A ring of a very responsible appearance. With the date
+of their wedding-day engraved inside, several gentlemen have preferred it
+to any other kind of memento.
+
+The rings are as coldly viewed as the bracelet. Edwin tells the tempter
+that he wears no jewellery but his watch and chain, which were his
+father’s; and his shirt-pin.
+
+‘That I was aware of,’ is the jeweller’s reply, ‘for Mr. Jasper dropped
+in for a watch-glass the other day, and, in fact, I showed these articles
+to him, remarking that if he _should_ wish to make a present to a
+gentleman relative, on any particular occasion—But he said with a smile
+that he had an inventory in his mind of all the jewellery his gentleman
+relative ever wore; namely, his watch and chain, and his shirt-pin.’
+Still (the jeweller considers) that might not apply to all times, though
+applying to the present time. ‘Twenty minutes past two, Mr. Drood, I set
+your watch at. Let me recommend you not to let it run down, sir.’
+
+Edwin takes his watch, puts it on, and goes out, thinking: ‘Dear old
+Jack! If I were to make an extra crease in my neckcloth, he would think
+it worth noticing!’
+
+He strolls about and about, to pass the time until the dinner-hour. It
+somehow happens that Cloisterham seems reproachful to him to-day; has
+fault to find with him, as if he had not used it well; but is far more
+pensive with him than angry. His wonted carelessness is replaced by a
+wistful looking at, and dwelling upon, all the old landmarks. He will
+soon be far away, and may never see them again, he thinks. Poor youth!
+Poor youth!
+
+As dusk draws on, he paces the Monks’ Vineyard. He has walked to and
+fro, full half an hour by the Cathedral chimes, and it has closed in
+dark, before he becomes quite aware of a woman crouching on the ground
+near a wicket gate in a corner. The gate commands a cross bye-path,
+little used in the gloaming; and the figure must have been there all the
+time, though he has but gradually and lately made it out.
+
+He strikes into that path, and walks up to the wicket. By the light of a
+lamp near it, he sees that the woman is of a haggard appearance, and that
+her weazen chin is resting on her hands, and that her eyes are
+staring—with an unwinking, blind sort of steadfastness—before her.
+
+Always kindly, but moved to be unusually kind this evening, and having
+bestowed kind words on most of the children and aged people he has met,
+he at once bends down, and speaks to this woman.
+
+‘Are you ill?’
+
+‘No, deary,’ she answers, without looking at him, and with no departure
+from her strange blind stare.
+
+‘Are you blind?’
+
+‘No, deary.’
+
+‘Are you lost, homeless, faint? What is the matter, that you stay here
+in the cold so long, without moving?’
+
+By slow and stiff efforts, she appears to contract her vision until it
+can rest upon him; and then a curious film passes over her, and she
+begins to shake.
+
+He straightens himself, recoils a step, and looks down at her in a dread
+amazement; for he seems to know her.
+
+‘Good Heaven!’ he thinks, next moment. ‘Like Jack that night!’
+
+As he looks down at her, she looks up at him, and whimpers: ‘My lungs is
+weakly; my lungs is dreffle bad. Poor me, poor me, my cough is rattling
+dry!’ and coughs in confirmation horribly.
+
+‘Where do you come from?’
+
+‘Come from London, deary.’ (Her cough still rending her.)
+
+‘Where are you going to?’
+
+‘Back to London, deary. I came here, looking for a needle in a haystack,
+and I ain’t found it. Look’ee, deary; give me three-and-sixpence, and
+don’t you be afeard for me. I’ll get back to London then, and trouble no
+one. I’m in a business.—Ah, me! It’s slack, it’s slack, and times is
+very bad!—but I can make a shift to live by it.’
+
+‘Do you eat opium?’
+
+‘Smokes it,’ she replies with difficulty, still racked by her cough.
+‘Give me three-and-sixpence, and I’ll lay it out well, and get back. If
+you don’t give me three-and-sixpence, don’t give me a brass farden. And
+if you do give me three-and-sixpence, deary, I’ll tell you something.’
+
+He counts the money from his pocket, and puts it in her hand. She
+instantly clutches it tight, and rises to her feet with a croaking laugh
+of satisfaction.
+
+‘Bless ye! Hark’ee, dear genl’mn. What’s your Chris’en name?’
+
+‘Edwin.’
+
+‘Edwin, Edwin, Edwin,’ she repeats, trailing off into a drowsy repetition
+of the word; and then asks suddenly: ‘Is the short of that name Eddy?’
+
+‘It is sometimes called so,’ he replies, with the colour starting to his
+face.
+
+‘Don’t sweethearts call it so?’ she asks, pondering.
+
+‘How should I know?’
+
+‘Haven’t you a sweetheart, upon your soul?’
+
+‘None.’
+
+She is moving away, with another ‘Bless ye, and thank’ee, deary!’ when he
+adds: ‘You were to tell me something; you may as well do so.’
+
+‘So I was, so I was. Well, then. Whisper. You be thankful that your
+name ain’t Ned.’
+
+He looks at her quite steadily, as he asks: ‘Why?’
+
+‘Because it’s a bad name to have just now.’
+
+‘How a bad name?’
+
+‘A threatened name. A dangerous name.’
+
+‘The proverb says that threatened men live long,’ he tells her, lightly.
+
+‘Then Ned—so threatened is he, wherever he may be while I am a-talking to
+you, deary—should live to all eternity!’ replies the woman.
+
+She has leaned forward to say it in his ear, with her forefinger shaking
+before his eyes, and now huddles herself together, and with another
+‘Bless ye, and thank’ee!’ goes away in the direction of the Travellers’
+Lodging House.
+
+This is not an inspiriting close to a dull day. Alone, in a sequestered
+place, surrounded by vestiges of old time and decay, it rather has a
+tendency to call a shudder into being. He makes for the better-lighted
+streets, and resolves as he walks on to say nothing of this to-night, but
+to mention it to Jack (who alone calls him Ned), as an odd coincidence,
+to-morrow; of course only as a coincidence, and not as anything better
+worth remembering.
+
+Still, it holds to him, as many things much better worth remembering
+never did. He has another mile or so, to linger out before the
+dinner-hour; and, when he walks over the bridge and by the river, the
+woman’s words are in the rising wind, in the angry sky, in the troubled
+water, in the flickering lights. There is some solemn echo of them even
+in the Cathedral chime, which strikes a sudden surprise to his heart as
+he turns in under the archway of the gatehouse.
+
+And so _he_ goes up the postern stair.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+John Jasper passes a more agreeable and cheerful day than either of his
+guests. Having no music-lessons to give in the holiday season, his time
+is his own, but for the Cathedral services. He is early among the
+shopkeepers, ordering little table luxuries that his nephew likes. His
+nephew will not be with him long, he tells his provision-dealers, and so
+must be petted and made much of. While out on his hospitable
+preparations, he looks in on Mr. Sapsea; and mentions that dear Ned, and
+that inflammable young spark of Mr. Crisparkle’s, are to dine at the
+gatehouse to-day, and make up their difference. Mr. Sapsea is by no
+means friendly towards the inflammable young spark. He says that his
+complexion is ‘Un-English.’ And when Mr. Sapsea has once declared
+anything to be Un-English, he considers that thing everlastingly sunk in
+the bottomless pit.
+
+John Jasper is truly sorry to hear Mr. Sapsea speak thus, for he knows
+right well that Mr. Sapsea never speaks without a meaning, and that he
+has a subtle trick of being right. Mr. Sapsea (by a very remarkable
+coincidence) is of exactly that opinion.
+
+Mr. Jasper is in beautiful voice this day. In the pathetic supplication
+to have his heart inclined to keep this law, he quite astonishes his
+fellows by his melodious power. He has never sung difficult music with
+such skill and harmony, as in this day’s Anthem. His nervous temperament
+is occasionally prone to take difficult music a little too quickly;
+to-day, his time is perfect.
+
+These results are probably attained through a grand composure of the
+spirits. The mere mechanism of his throat is a little tender, for he
+wears, both with his singing-robe and with his ordinary dress, a large
+black scarf of strong close-woven silk, slung loosely round his neck.
+But his composure is so noticeable, that Mr. Crisparkle speaks of it as
+they come out from Vespers.
+
+‘I must thank you, Jasper, for the pleasure with which I have heard you
+to-day. Beautiful! Delightful! You could not have so outdone yourself,
+I hope, without being wonderfully well.’
+
+‘I _am_ wonderfully well.’
+
+‘Nothing unequal,’ says the Minor Canon, with a smooth motion of his
+hand: ‘nothing unsteady, nothing forced, nothing avoided; all thoroughly
+done in a masterly manner, with perfect self-command.’
+
+‘Thank you. I hope so, if it is not too much to say.’
+
+‘One would think, Jasper, you had been trying a new medicine for that
+occasional indisposition of yours.’
+
+‘No, really? That’s well observed; for I have.’
+
+‘Then stick to it, my good fellow,’ says Mr. Crisparkle, clapping him on
+the shoulder with friendly encouragement, ‘stick to it.’
+
+‘I will.’
+
+‘I congratulate you,’ Mr. Crisparkle pursues, as they come out of the
+Cathedral, ‘on all accounts.’
+
+‘Thank you again. I will walk round to the Corner with you, if you don’t
+object; I have plenty of time before my company come; and I want to say a
+word to you, which I think you will not be displeased to hear.’
+
+‘What is it?’
+
+‘Well. We were speaking, the other evening, of my black humours.’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle’s face falls, and he shakes his head deploringly.
+
+‘I said, you know, that I should make you an antidote to those black
+humours; and you said you hoped I would consign them to the flames.’
+
+‘And I still hope so, Jasper.’
+
+‘With the best reason in the world! I mean to burn this year’s Diary at
+the year’s end.’
+
+‘Because you—?’ Mr. Crisparkle brightens greatly as he thus begins.
+
+‘You anticipate me. Because I feel that I have been out of sorts,
+gloomy, bilious, brain-oppressed, whatever it may be. You said I had
+been exaggerative. So I have.’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle’s brightened face brightens still more.
+
+‘I couldn’t see it then, because I _was_ out of sorts; but I am in a
+healthier state now, and I acknowledge it with genuine pleasure. I made
+a great deal of a very little; that’s the fact.’
+
+‘It does me good,’ cries Mr. Crisparkle, ‘to hear you say it!’
+
+‘A man leading a monotonous life,’ Jasper proceeds, ‘and getting his
+nerves, or his stomach, out of order, dwells upon an idea until it loses
+its proportions. That was my case with the idea in question. So I shall
+burn the evidence of my case, when the book is full, and begin the next
+volume with a clearer vision.’
+
+‘This is better,’ says Mr. Crisparkle, stopping at the steps of his own
+door to shake hands, ‘than I could have hoped.’
+
+‘Why, naturally,’ returns Jasper. ‘You had but little reason to hope
+that I should become more like yourself. You are always training
+yourself to be, mind and body, as clear as crystal, and you always are,
+and never change; whereas I am a muddy, solitary, moping weed. However,
+I have got over that mope. Shall I wait, while you ask if Mr. Neville
+has left for my place? If not, he and I may walk round together.’
+
+‘I think,’ says Mr. Crisparkle, opening the entrance-door with his key,
+‘that he left some time ago; at least I know he left, and I think he has
+not come back. But I’ll inquire. You won’t come in?’
+
+‘My company wait,’ said Jasper, with a smile.
+
+The Minor Canon disappears, and in a few moments returns. As he thought,
+Mr. Neville has not come back; indeed, as he remembers now, Mr. Neville
+said he would probably go straight to the gatehouse.
+
+‘Bad manners in a host!’ says Jasper. ‘My company will be there before
+me! What will you bet that I don’t find my company embracing?’
+
+‘I will bet—or I would, if ever I did bet,’ returns Mr. Crisparkle, ‘that
+your company will have a gay entertainer this evening.’
+
+Jasper nods, and laughs good-night!
+
+He retraces his steps to the Cathedral door, and turns down past it to
+the gatehouse. He sings, in a low voice and with delicate expression, as
+he walks along. It still seems as if a false note were not within his
+power to-night, and as if nothing could hurry or retard him. Arriving
+thus under the arched entrance of his dwelling, he pauses for an instant
+in the shelter to pull off that great black scarf, and bang it in a loop
+upon his arm. For that brief time, his face is knitted and stern. But
+it immediately clears, as he resumes his singing, and his way.
+
+And so _he_ goes up the postern stair.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The red light burns steadily all the evening in the lighthouse on the
+margin of the tide of busy life. Softened sounds and hum of traffic pass
+it and flow on irregularly into the lonely Precincts; but very little
+else goes by, save violent rushes of wind. It comes on to blow a
+boisterous gale.
+
+The Precincts are never particularly well lighted; but the strong blasts
+of wind blowing out many of the lamps (in some instances shattering the
+frames too, and bringing the glass rattling to the ground), they are
+unusually dark to-night. The darkness is augmented and confused, by
+flying dust from the earth, dry twigs from the trees, and great ragged
+fragments from the rooks’ nests up in the tower. The trees themselves so
+toss and creak, as this tangible part of the darkness madly whirls about,
+that they seem in peril of being torn out of the earth: while ever and
+again a crack, and a rushing fall, denote that some large branch has
+yielded to the storm.
+
+Not such power of wind has blown for many a winter night. Chimneys
+topple in the streets, and people hold to posts and corners, and to one
+another, to keep themselves upon their feet. The violent rushes abate
+not, but increase in frequency and fury until at midnight, when the
+streets are empty, the storm goes thundering along them, rattling at all
+the latches, and tearing at all the shutters, as if warning the people to
+get up and fly with it, rather than have the roofs brought down upon
+their brains.
+
+Still, the red light burns steadily. Nothing is steady but the red
+light.
+
+All through the night the wind blows, and abates not. But early in the
+morning, when there is barely enough light in the east to dim the stars,
+it begins to lull. From that time, with occasional wild charges, like a
+wounded monster dying, it drops and sinks; and at full daylight it is
+dead.
+
+It is then seen that the hands of the Cathedral clock are torn off; that
+lead from the roof has been stripped away, rolled up, and blown into the
+Close; and that some stones have been displaced upon the summit of the
+great tower. Christmas morning though it be, it is necessary to send up
+workmen, to ascertain the extent of the damage done. These, led by
+Durdles, go aloft; while Mr. Tope and a crowd of early idlers gather down
+in Minor Canon Corner, shading their eyes and watching for their
+appearance up there.
+
+This cluster is suddenly broken and put aside by the hands of Mr. Jasper;
+all the gazing eyes are brought down to the earth by his loudly inquiring
+of Mr. Crisparkle, at an open window:
+
+‘Where is my nephew?’
+
+‘He has not been here. Is he not with you?’
+
+‘No. He went down to the river last night, with Mr. Neville, to look at
+the storm, and has not been back. Call Mr. Neville!’
+
+‘He left this morning, early.’
+
+‘Left this morning early? Let me in! let me in!’
+
+There is no more looking up at the tower, now. All the assembled eyes
+are turned on Mr. Jasper, white, half-dressed, panting, and clinging to
+the rail before the Minor Canon’s house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV—IMPEACHED
+
+
+Neville Landless had started so early and walked at so good a pace, that
+when the church-bells began to ring in Cloisterham for morning service,
+he was eight miles away. As he wanted his breakfast by that time, having
+set forth on a crust of bread, he stopped at the next roadside tavern to
+refresh.
+
+Visitors in want of breakfast—unless they were horses or cattle, for
+which class of guests there was preparation enough in the way of
+water-trough and hay—were so unusual at the sign of The Tilted Wagon,
+that it took a long time to get the wagon into the track of tea and toast
+and bacon. Neville in the interval, sitting in a sanded parlour,
+wondering in how long a time after he had gone, the sneezy fire of damp
+fagots would begin to make somebody else warm.
+
+Indeed, The Tilted Wagon, as a cool establishment on the top of a hill,
+where the ground before the door was puddled with damp hoofs and trodden
+straw; where a scolding landlady slapped a moist baby (with one red sock
+on and one wanting), in the bar; where the cheese was cast aground upon a
+shelf, in company with a mouldy tablecloth and a green-handled knife, in
+a sort of cast-iron canoe; where the pale-faced bread shed tears of crumb
+over its shipwreck in another canoe; where the family linen, half washed
+and half dried, led a public life of lying about; where everything to
+drink was drunk out of mugs, and everything else was suggestive of a
+rhyme to mugs; The Tilted Wagon, all these things considered, hardly kept
+its painted promise of providing good entertainment for Man and Beast.
+However, Man, in the present case, was not critical, but took what
+entertainment he could get, and went on again after a longer rest than he
+needed.
+
+He stopped at some quarter of a mile from the house, hesitating whether
+to pursue the road, or to follow a cart track between two high hedgerows,
+which led across the slope of a breezy heath, and evidently struck into
+the road again by-and-by. He decided in favour of this latter track, and
+pursued it with some toil; the rise being steep, and the way worn into
+deep ruts.
+
+He was labouring along, when he became aware of some other pedestrians
+behind him. As they were coming up at a faster pace than his, he stood
+aside, against one of the high banks, to let them pass. But their manner
+was very curious. Only four of them passed. Other four slackened speed,
+and loitered as intending to follow him when he should go on. The
+remainder of the party (half-a-dozen perhaps) turned, and went back at a
+great rate.
+
+He looked at the four behind him, and he looked at the four before him.
+They all returned his look. He resumed his way. The four in advance
+went on, constantly looking back; the four in the rear came closing up.
+
+When they all ranged out from the narrow track upon the open slope of the
+heath, and this order was maintained, let him diverge as he would to
+either side, there was no longer room to doubt that he was beset by these
+fellows. He stopped, as a last test; and they all stopped.
+
+‘Why do you attend upon me in this way?’ he asked the whole body. ‘Are
+you a pack of thieves?’
+
+‘Don’t answer him,’ said one of the number; he did not see which.
+‘Better be quiet.’
+
+‘Better be quiet?’ repeated Neville. ‘Who said so?’
+
+Nobody replied.
+
+‘It’s good advice, whichever of you skulkers gave it,’ he went on
+angrily. ‘I will not submit to be penned in between four men there, and
+four men there. I wish to pass, and I mean to pass, those four in
+front.’
+
+They were all standing still; himself included.
+
+‘If eight men, or four men, or two men, set upon one,’ he proceeded,
+growing more enraged, ‘the one has no chance but to set his mark upon
+some of them. And, by the Lord, I’ll do it, if I am interrupted any
+farther!’
+
+Shouldering his heavy stick, and quickening his pace, he shot on to pass
+the four ahead. The largest and strongest man of the number changed
+swiftly to the side on which he came up, and dexterously closed with him
+and went down with him; but not before the heavy stick had descended
+smartly.
+
+‘Let him be!’ said this man in a suppressed voice, as they struggled
+together on the grass. ‘Fair play! His is the build of a girl to mine,
+and he’s got a weight strapped to his back besides. Let him alone. I’ll
+manage him.’
+
+After a little rolling about, in a close scuffle which caused the faces
+of both to be besmeared with blood, the man took his knee from Neville’s
+chest, and rose, saying: ‘There! Now take him arm-in-arm, any two of
+you!’
+
+It was immediately done.
+
+‘As to our being a pack of thieves, Mr. Landless,’ said the man, as he
+spat out some blood, and wiped more from his face; ‘you know better than
+that at midday. We wouldn’t have touched you if you hadn’t forced us.
+We’re going to take you round to the high road, anyhow, and you’ll find
+help enough against thieves there, if you want it.—Wipe his face,
+somebody; see how it’s a-trickling down him!’
+
+When his face was cleansed, Neville recognised in the speaker, Joe,
+driver of the Cloisterham omnibus, whom he had seen but once, and that on
+the day of his arrival.
+
+‘And what I recommend you for the present, is, don’t talk, Mr. Landless.
+You’ll find a friend waiting for you, at the high road—gone ahead by the
+other way when we split into two parties—and you had much better say
+nothing till you come up with him. Bring that stick along, somebody
+else, and let’s be moving!’
+
+Utterly bewildered, Neville stared around him and said not a word.
+Walking between his two conductors, who held his arms in theirs, he went
+on, as in a dream, until they came again into the high road, and into the
+midst of a little group of people. The men who had turned back were
+among the group; and its central figures were Mr. Jasper and Mr.
+Crisparkle. Neville’s conductors took him up to the Minor Canon, and
+there released him, as an act of deference to that gentleman.
+
+‘What is all this, sir? What is the matter? I feel as if I had lost my
+senses!’ cried Neville, the group closing in around him.
+
+‘Where is my nephew?’ asked Mr. Jasper, wildly.
+
+‘Where is your nephew?’ repeated Neville, ‘Why do you ask me?’
+
+‘I ask you,’ retorted Jasper, ‘because you were the last person in his
+company, and he is not to be found.’
+
+‘Not to be found!’ cried Neville, aghast.
+
+‘Stay, stay,’ said Mr. Crisparkle. ‘Permit me, Jasper. Mr. Neville, you
+are confounded; collect your thoughts; it is of great importance that you
+should collect your thoughts; attend to me.’
+
+‘I will try, sir, but I seem mad.’
+
+‘You left Mr. Jasper last night with Edwin Drood?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘At what hour?’
+
+‘Was it at twelve o’clock?’ asked Neville, with his hand to his confused
+head, and appealing to Jasper.
+
+‘Quite right,’ said Mr. Crisparkle; ‘the hour Mr. Jasper has already
+named to me. You went down to the river together?’
+
+‘Undoubtedly. To see the action of the wind there.’
+
+‘What followed? How long did you stay there?’
+
+‘About ten minutes; I should say not more. We then walked together to
+your house, and he took leave of me at the door.’
+
+‘Did he say that he was going down to the river again?’
+
+‘No. He said that he was going straight back.’
+
+The bystanders looked at one another, and at Mr. Crisparkle. To whom Mr.
+Jasper, who had been intensely watching Neville, said, in a low,
+distinct, suspicious voice: ‘What are those stains upon his dress?’
+
+All eyes were turned towards the blood upon his clothes.
+
+‘And here are the same stains upon this stick!’ said Jasper, taking it
+from the hand of the man who held it. ‘I know the stick to be his, and
+he carried it last night. What does this mean?’
+
+‘In the name of God, say what it means, Neville!’ urged Mr. Crisparkle.
+
+‘That man and I,’ said Neville, pointing out his late adversary, ‘had a
+struggle for the stick just now, and you may see the same marks on him,
+sir. What was I to suppose, when I found myself molested by eight
+people? Could I dream of the true reason when they would give me none at
+all?’
+
+They admitted that they had thought it discreet to be silent, and that
+the struggle had taken place. And yet the very men who had seen it
+looked darkly at the smears which the bright cold air had already dried.
+
+‘We must return, Neville,’ said Mr. Crisparkle; ‘of course you will be
+glad to come back to clear yourself?’
+
+‘Of course, sir.’
+
+‘Mr. Landless will walk at my side,’ the Minor Canon continued, looking
+around him. ‘Come, Neville!’
+
+They set forth on the walk back; and the others, with one exception,
+straggled after them at various distances. Jasper walked on the other
+side of Neville, and never quitted that position. He was silent, while
+Mr. Crisparkle more than once repeated his former questions, and while
+Neville repeated his former answers; also, while they both hazarded some
+explanatory conjectures. He was obstinately silent, because Mr.
+Crisparkle’s manner directly appealed to him to take some part in the
+discussion, and no appeal would move his fixed face. When they drew near
+to the city, and it was suggested by the Minor Canon that they might do
+well in calling on the Mayor at once, he assented with a stern nod; but
+he spake no word until they stood in Mr. Sapsea’s parlour.
+
+Mr. Sapsea being informed by Mr. Crisparkle of the circumstances under
+which they desired to make a voluntary statement before him, Mr. Jasper
+broke silence by declaring that he placed his whole reliance, humanly
+speaking, on Mr. Sapsea’s penetration. There was no conceivable reason
+why his nephew should have suddenly absconded, unless Mr. Sapsea could
+suggest one, and then he would defer. There was no intelligible
+likelihood of his having returned to the river, and been accidentally
+drowned in the dark, unless it should appear likely to Mr. Sapsea, and
+then again he would defer. He washed his hands as clean as he could of
+all horrible suspicions, unless it should appear to Mr. Sapsea that some
+such were inseparable from his last companion before his disappearance
+(not on good terms with previously), and then, once more, he would defer.
+His own state of mind, he being distracted with doubts, and labouring
+under dismal apprehensions, was not to be safely trusted; but Mr.
+Sapsea’s was.
+
+Mr. Sapsea expressed his opinion that the case had a dark look; in short
+(and here his eyes rested full on Neville’s countenance), an Un-English
+complexion. Having made this grand point, he wandered into a denser haze
+and maze of nonsense than even a mayor might have been expected to
+disport himself in, and came out of it with the brilliant discovery that
+to take the life of a fellow-creature was to take something that didn’t
+belong to you. He wavered whether or no he should at once issue his
+warrant for the committal of Neville Landless to jail, under
+circumstances of grave suspicion; and he might have gone so far as to do
+it but for the indignant protest of the Minor Canon: who undertook for
+the young man’s remaining in his own house, and being produced by his own
+hands, whenever demanded. Mr. Jasper then understood Mr. Sapsea to
+suggest that the river should be dragged, that its banks should be
+rigidly examined, that particulars of the disappearance should be sent to
+all outlying places and to London, and that placards and advertisements
+should be widely circulated imploring Edwin Drood, if for any unknown
+reason he had withdrawn himself from his uncle’s home and society, to
+take pity on that loving kinsman’s sore bereavement and distress, and
+somehow inform him that he was yet alive. Mr. Sapsea was perfectly
+understood, for this was exactly his meaning (though he had said nothing
+about it); and measures were taken towards all these ends immediately.
+
+It would be difficult to determine which was the more oppressed with
+horror and amazement: Neville Landless, or John Jasper. But that
+Jasper’s position forced him to be active, while Neville’s forced him to
+be passive, there would have been nothing to choose between them. Each
+was bowed down and broken.
+
+With the earliest light of the next morning, men were at work upon the
+river, and other men—most of whom volunteered for the service—were
+examining the banks. All the livelong day the search went on; upon the
+river, with barge and pole, and drag and net; upon the muddy and rushy
+shore, with jack-boots, hatchet, spade, rope, dogs, and all imaginable
+appliances. Even at night, the river was specked with lanterns, and
+lurid with fires; far-off creeks, into which the tide washed as it
+changed, had their knots of watchers, listening to the lapping of the
+stream, and looking out for any burden it might bear; remote shingly
+causeways near the sea, and lonely points off which there was a race of
+water, had their unwonted flaring cressets and rough-coated figures when
+the next day dawned; but no trace of Edwin Drood revisited the light of
+the sun.
+
+All that day, again, the search went on. Now, in barge and boat; and now
+ashore among the osiers, or tramping amidst mud and stakes and jagged
+stones in low-lying places, where solitary watermarks and signals of
+strange shapes showed like spectres, John Jasper worked and toiled. But
+to no purpose; for still no trace of Edwin Drood revisited the light of
+the sun.
+
+Setting his watches for that night again, so that vigilant eyes should be
+kept on every change of tide, he went home exhausted. Unkempt and
+disordered, bedaubed with mud that had dried upon him, and with much of
+his clothing torn to rags, he had but just dropped into his easy-chair,
+when Mr. Grewgious stood before him.
+
+‘This is strange news,’ said Mr. Grewgious.
+
+‘Strange and fearful news.’
+
+Jasper had merely lifted up his heavy eyes to say it, and now dropped
+them again as he drooped, worn out, over one side of his easy-chair.
+
+Mr. Grewgious smoothed his head and face, and stood looking at the fire.
+
+‘How is your ward?’ asked Jasper, after a time, in a faint, fatigued
+voice.
+
+‘Poor little thing! You may imagine her condition.’
+
+‘Have you seen his sister?’ inquired Jasper, as before.
+
+‘Whose?’
+
+The curtness of the counter-question, and the cool, slow manner in which,
+as he put it, Mr. Grewgious moved his eyes from the fire to his
+companion’s face, might at any other time have been exasperating. In his
+depression and exhaustion, Jasper merely opened his eyes to say: ‘The
+suspected young man’s.’
+
+‘Do you suspect him?’ asked Mr. Grewgious.
+
+‘I don’t know what to think. I cannot make up my mind.’
+
+‘Nor I,’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘But as you spoke of him as the suspected
+young man, I thought you _had_ made up your mind.—I have just left Miss
+Landless.’
+
+ [Picture: Mr. Grewgious has his suspicions]
+
+‘What is her state?’
+
+‘Defiance of all suspicion, and unbounded faith in her brother.’
+
+‘Poor thing!’
+
+‘However,’ pursued Mr. Grewgious, ‘it is not of her that I came to speak.
+It is of my ward. I have a communication to make that will surprise you.
+At least, it has surprised me.’
+
+Jasper, with a groaning sigh, turned wearily in his chair.
+
+‘Shall I put it off till to-morrow?’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘Mind, I warn
+you, that I think it will surprise you!’
+
+More attention and concentration came into John Jasper’s eyes as they
+caught sight of Mr. Grewgious smoothing his head again, and again looking
+at the fire; but now, with a compressed and determined mouth.
+
+‘What is it?’ demanded Jasper, becoming upright in his chair.
+
+‘To be sure,’ said Mr. Grewgious, provokingly slowly and internally, as
+he kept his eyes on the fire: ‘I might have known it sooner; she gave me
+the opening; but I am such an exceedingly Angular man, that it never
+occurred to me; I took all for granted.’
+
+‘What is it?’ demanded Jasper once more.
+
+Mr. Grewgious, alternately opening and shutting the palms of his hands as
+he warmed them at the fire, and looking fixedly at him sideways, and
+never changing either his action or his look in all that followed, went
+on to reply.
+
+‘This young couple, the lost youth and Miss Rosa, my ward, though so long
+betrothed, and so long recognising their betrothal, and so near being
+married—’
+
+Mr. Grewgious saw a staring white face, and two quivering white lips, in
+the easy-chair, and saw two muddy hands gripping its sides. But for the
+hands, he might have thought he had never seen the face.
+
+‘—This young couple came gradually to the discovery (made on both sides
+pretty equally, I think), that they would be happier and better, both in
+their present and their future lives, as affectionate friends, or say
+rather as brother and sister, than as husband and wife.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious saw a lead-coloured face in the easy-chair, and on its
+surface dreadful starting drops or bubbles, as if of steel.
+
+‘This young couple formed at length the healthy resolution of
+interchanging their discoveries, openly, sensibly, and tenderly. They
+met for that purpose. After some innocent and generous talk, they agreed
+to dissolve their existing, and their intended, relations, for ever and
+ever.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious saw a ghastly figure rise, open-mouthed, from the
+easy-chair, and lift its outspread hands towards its head.
+
+‘One of this young couple, and that one your nephew, fearful, however,
+that in the tenderness of your affection for him you would be bitterly
+disappointed by so wide a departure from his projected life, forbore to
+tell you the secret, for a few days, and left it to be disclosed by me,
+when I should come down to speak to you, and he would be gone. I speak
+to you, and he is gone.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious saw the ghastly figure throw back its head, clutch its hair
+with its hands, and turn with a writhing action from him.
+
+‘I have now said all I have to say: except that this young couple parted,
+firmly, though not without tears and sorrow, on the evening when you last
+saw them together.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious heard a terrible shriek, and saw no ghastly figure, sitting
+or standing; saw nothing but a heap of torn and miry clothes upon the
+floor.
+
+Not changing his action even then, he opened and shut the palms of his
+hands as he warmed them, and looked down at it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI—DEVOTED
+
+
+When John Jasper recovered from his fit or swoon, he found himself being
+tended by Mr. and Mrs. Tope, whom his visitor had summoned for the
+purpose. His visitor, wooden of aspect, sat stiffly in a chair, with his
+hands upon his knees, watching his recovery.
+
+‘There! You’ve come to nicely now, sir,’ said the tearful Mrs. Tope;
+‘you were thoroughly worn out, and no wonder!’
+
+‘A man,’ said Mr. Grewgious, with his usual air of repeating a lesson,
+‘cannot have his rest broken, and his mind cruelly tormented, and his
+body overtaxed by fatigue, without being thoroughly worn out.’
+
+‘I fear I have alarmed you?’ Jasper apologised faintly, when he was
+helped into his easy-chair.
+
+‘Not at all, I thank you,’ answered Mr. Grewgious.
+
+‘You are too considerate.’
+
+‘Not at all, I thank you,’ answered Mr. Grewgious again.
+
+‘You must take some wine, sir,’ said Mrs. Tope, ‘and the jelly that I had
+ready for you, and that you wouldn’t put your lips to at noon, though I
+warned you what would come of it, you know, and you not breakfasted; and
+you must have a wing of the roast fowl that has been put back twenty
+times if it’s been put back once. It shall all be on table in five
+minutes, and this good gentleman belike will stop and see you take it.’
+
+This good gentleman replied with a snort, which might mean yes, or no, or
+anything or nothing, and which Mrs. Tope would have found highly
+mystifying, but that her attention was divided by the service of the
+table.
+
+‘You will take something with me?’ said Jasper, as the cloth was laid.
+
+‘I couldn’t get a morsel down my throat, I thank you,’ answered Mr.
+Grewgious.
+
+Jasper both ate and drank almost voraciously. Combined with the hurry in
+his mode of doing it, was an evident indifference to the taste of what he
+took, suggesting that he ate and drank to fortify himself against any
+other failure of the spirits, far more than to gratify his palate. Mr.
+Grewgious in the meantime sat upright, with no expression in his face,
+and a hard kind of imperturbably polite protest all over him: as though
+he would have said, in reply to some invitation to discourse; ‘I couldn’t
+originate the faintest approach to an observation on any subject
+whatever, I thank you.’
+
+‘Do you know,’ said Jasper, when he had pushed away his plate and glass,
+and had sat meditating for a few minutes: ‘do you know that I find some
+crumbs of comfort in the communication with which you have so much amazed
+me?’
+
+‘_Do_ you?’ returned Mr. Grewgious, pretty plainly adding the unspoken
+clause: ‘I don’t, I thank you!’
+
+‘After recovering from the shock of a piece of news of my dear boy, so
+entirely unexpected, and so destructive of all the castles I had built
+for him; and after having had time to think of it; yes.’
+
+‘I shall be glad to pick up your crumbs,’ said Mr. Grewgious, dryly.
+
+‘Is there not, or is there—if I deceive myself, tell me so, and shorten
+my pain—is there not, or is there, hope that, finding himself in this new
+position, and becoming sensitively alive to the awkward burden of
+explanation, in this quarter, and that, and the other, with which it
+would load him, he avoided the awkwardness, and took to flight?’
+
+‘Such a thing might be,’ said Mr. Grewgious, pondering.
+
+‘Such a thing has been. I have read of cases in which people, rather
+than face a seven days’ wonder, and have to account for themselves to the
+idle and impertinent, have taken themselves away, and been long unheard
+of.’
+
+‘I believe such things have happened,’ said Mr. Grewgious, pondering
+still.
+
+‘When I had, and could have, no suspicion,’ pursued Jasper, eagerly
+following the new track, ‘that the dear lost boy had withheld anything
+from me—most of all, such a leading matter as this—what gleam of light
+was there for me in the whole black sky? When I supposed that his
+intended wife was here, and his marriage close at hand, how could I
+entertain the possibility of his voluntarily leaving this place, in a
+manner that would be so unaccountable, capricious, and cruel? But now
+that I know what you have told me, is there no little chink through which
+day pierces? Supposing him to have disappeared of his own act, is not
+his disappearance more accountable and less cruel? The fact of his
+having just parted from your ward, is in itself a sort of reason for his
+going away. It does not make his mysterious departure the less cruel to
+me, it is true; but it relieves it of cruelty to her.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious could not but assent to this.
+
+‘And even as to me,’ continued Jasper, still pursuing the new track, with
+ardour, and, as he did so, brightening with hope: ‘he knew that you were
+coming to me; he knew that you were intrusted to tell me what you have
+told me; if your doing so has awakened a new train of thought in my
+perplexed mind, it reasonably follows that, from the same premises, he
+might have foreseen the inferences that I should draw. Grant that he did
+foresee them; and even the cruelty to me—and who am I!—John Jasper, Music
+Master, vanishes!’—
+
+Once more, Mr. Grewgious could not but assent to this.
+
+‘I have had my distrusts, and terrible distrusts they have been,’ said
+Jasper; ‘but your disclosure, overpowering as it was at first—showing me
+that my own dear boy had had a great disappointing reservation from me,
+who so fondly loved him, kindles hope within me. You do not extinguish
+it when I state it, but admit it to be a reasonable hope. I begin to
+believe it possible:’ here he clasped his hands: ‘that he may have
+disappeared from among us of his own accord, and that he may yet be alive
+and well.’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle came in at the moment. To whom Mr. Jasper repeated:
+
+‘I begin to believe it possible that he may have disappeared of his own
+accord, and may yet be alive and well.’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle taking a seat, and inquiring: ‘Why so?’ Mr. Jasper
+repeated the arguments he had just set forth. If they had been less
+plausible than they were, the good Minor Canon’s mind would have been in
+a state of preparation to receive them, as exculpatory of his unfortunate
+pupil. But he, too, did really attach great importance to the lost young
+man’s having been, so immediately before his disappearance, placed in a
+new and embarrassing relation towards every one acquainted with his
+projects and affairs; and the fact seemed to him to present the question
+in a new light.
+
+‘I stated to Mr. Sapsea, when we waited on him,’ said Jasper: as he
+really had done: ‘that there was no quarrel or difference between the two
+young men at their last meeting. We all know that their first meeting
+was unfortunately very far from amicable; but all went smoothly and
+quietly when they were last together at my house. My dear boy was not in
+his usual spirits; he was depressed—I noticed that—and I am bound
+henceforth to dwell upon the circumstance the more, now that I know there
+was a special reason for his being depressed: a reason, moreover, which
+may possibly have induced him to absent himself.’
+
+‘I pray to Heaven it may turn out so!’ exclaimed Mr. Crisparkle.
+
+‘_I_ pray to Heaven it may turn out so!’ repeated Jasper. ‘You know—and
+Mr. Grewgious should now know likewise—that I took a great prepossession
+against Mr. Neville Landless, arising out of his furious conduct on that
+first occasion. You know that I came to you, extremely apprehensive, on
+my dear boy’s behalf, of his mad violence. You know that I even entered
+in my Diary, and showed the entry to you, that I had dark forebodings
+against him. Mr. Grewgious ought to be possessed of the whole case. He
+shall not, through any suppression of mine, be informed of a part of it,
+and kept in ignorance of another part of it. I wish him to be good
+enough to understand that the communication he has made to me has
+hopefully influenced my mind, in spite of its having been, before this
+mysterious occurrence took place, profoundly impressed against young
+Landless.’
+
+This fairness troubled the Minor Canon much. He felt that he was not as
+open in his own dealing. He charged against himself reproachfully that
+he had suppressed, so far, the two points of a second strong outbreak of
+temper against Edwin Drood on the part of Neville, and of the passion of
+jealousy having, to his own certain knowledge, flamed up in Neville’s
+breast against him. He was convinced of Neville’s innocence of any part
+in the ugly disappearance; and yet so many little circumstances combined
+so wofully against him, that he dreaded to add two more to their
+cumulative weight. He was among the truest of men; but he had been
+balancing in his mind, much to its distress, whether his volunteering to
+tell these two fragments of truth, at this time, would not be tantamount
+to a piecing together of falsehood in the place of truth.
+
+However, here was a model before him. He hesitated no longer.
+Addressing Mr. Grewgious, as one placed in authority by the revelation he
+had brought to bear on the mystery (and surpassingly Angular Mr.
+Grewgious became when he found himself in that unexpected position), Mr.
+Crisparkle bore his testimony to Mr. Jasper’s strict sense of justice,
+and, expressing his absolute confidence in the complete clearance of his
+pupil from the least taint of suspicion, sooner or later, avowed that his
+confidence in that young gentleman had been formed, in spite of his
+confidential knowledge that his temper was of the hottest and fiercest,
+and that it was directly incensed against Mr. Jasper’s nephew, by the
+circumstance of his romantically supposing himself to be enamoured of the
+same young lady. The sanguine reaction manifest in Mr. Jasper was proof
+even against this unlooked-for declaration. It turned him paler; but he
+repeated that he would cling to the hope he had derived from Mr.
+Grewgious; and that if no trace of his dear boy were found, leading to
+the dreadful inference that he had been made away with, he would cherish
+unto the last stretch of possibility the idea, that he might have
+absconded of his own wild will.
+
+Now, it fell out that Mr. Crisparkle, going away from this conference
+still very uneasy in his mind, and very much troubled on behalf of the
+young man whom he held as a kind of prisoner in his own house, took a
+memorable night walk.
+
+He walked to Cloisterham Weir.
+
+He often did so, and consequently there was nothing remarkable in his
+footsteps tending that way. But the preoccupation of his mind so
+hindered him from planning any walk, or taking heed of the objects he
+passed, that his first consciousness of being near the Weir, was derived
+from the sound of the falling water close at hand.
+
+‘How did I come here!’ was his first thought, as he stopped.
+
+‘Why did I come here!’ was his second.
+
+Then, he stood intently listening to the water. A familiar passage in
+his reading, about airy tongues that syllable men’s names, rose so
+unbidden to his ear, that he put it from him with his hand, as if it were
+tangible.
+
+It was starlight. The Weir was full two miles above the spot to which
+the young men had repaired to watch the storm. No search had been made
+up here, for the tide had been running strongly down, at that time of the
+night of Christmas Eve, and the likeliest places for the discovery of a
+body, if a fatal accident had happened under such circumstances, all
+lay—both when the tide ebbed, and when it flowed again—between that spot
+and the sea. The water came over the Weir, with its usual sound on a
+cold starlight night, and little could be seen of it; yet Mr. Crisparkle
+had a strange idea that something unusual hung about the place.
+
+He reasoned with himself: What was it? Where was it? Put it to the
+proof. Which sense did it address?
+
+No sense reported anything unusual there. He listened again, and his
+sense of hearing again checked the water coming over the Weir, with its
+usual sound on a cold starlight night.
+
+Knowing very well that the mystery with which his mind was occupied,
+might of itself give the place this haunted air, he strained those hawk’s
+eyes of his for the correction of his sight. He got closer to the Weir,
+and peered at its well-known posts and timbers. Nothing in the least
+unusual was remotely shadowed forth. But he resolved that he would come
+back early in the morning.
+
+The Weir ran through his broken sleep, all night, and he was back again
+at sunrise. It was a bright frosty morning. The whole composition
+before him, when he stood where he had stood last night, was clearly
+discernible in its minutest details. He had surveyed it closely for some
+minutes, and was about to withdraw his eyes, when they were attracted
+keenly to one spot.
+
+He turned his back upon the Weir, and looked far away at the sky, and at
+the earth, and then looked again at that one spot. It caught his sight
+again immediately, and he concentrated his vision upon it. He could not
+lose it now, though it was but such a speck in the landscape. It
+fascinated his sight. His hands began plucking off his coat. For it
+struck him that at that spot—a corner of the Weir—something glistened,
+which did not move and come over with the glistening water-drops, but
+remained stationary.
+
+He assured himself of this, he threw off his clothes, he plunged into the
+icy water, and swam for the spot. Climbing the timbers, he took from
+them, caught among their interstices by its chain, a gold watch, bearing
+engraved upon its back E. D.
+
+He brought the watch to the bank, swam to the Weir again, climbed it, and
+dived off. He knew every hole and corner of all the depths, and dived
+and dived and dived, until he could bear the cold no more. His notion
+was, that he would find the body; he only found a shirt-pin sticking in
+some mud and ooze.
+
+With these discoveries he returned to Cloisterham, and, taking Neville
+Landless with him, went straight to the Mayor. Mr. Jasper was sent for,
+the watch and shirt-pin were identified, Neville was detained, and the
+wildest frenzy and fatuity of evil report rose against him. He was of
+that vindictive and violent nature, that but for his poor sister, who
+alone had influence over him, and out of whose sight he was never to be
+trusted, he would be in the daily commission of murder. Before coming to
+England he had caused to be whipped to death sundry ‘Natives’—nomadic
+persons, encamping now in Asia, now in Africa, now in the West Indies,
+and now at the North Pole—vaguely supposed in Cloisterham to be always
+black, always of great virtue, always calling themselves Me, and
+everybody else Massa or Missie (according to sex), and always reading
+tracts of the obscurest meaning, in broken English, but always accurately
+understanding them in the purest mother tongue. He had nearly brought
+Mrs. Crisparkle’s grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. (Those original
+expressions were Mr. Sapsea’s.) He had repeatedly said he would have Mr.
+Crisparkle’s life. He had repeatedly said he would have everybody’s
+life, and become in effect the last man. He had been brought down to
+Cloisterham, from London, by an eminent Philanthropist, and why? Because
+that Philanthropist had expressly declared: ‘I owe it to my
+fellow-creatures that he should be, in the words of BENTHAM, where he is
+the cause of the greatest danger to the smallest number.’
+
+These dropping shots from the blunderbusses of blunderheadedness might
+not have hit him in a vital place. But he had to stand against a trained
+and well-directed fire of arms of precision too. He had notoriously
+threatened the lost young man, and had, according to the showing of his
+own faithful friend and tutor who strove so hard for him, a cause of
+bitter animosity (created by himself, and stated by himself), against
+that ill-starred fellow. He had armed himself with an offensive weapon
+for the fatal night, and he had gone off early in the morning, after
+making preparations for departure. He had been found with traces of
+blood on him; truly, they might have been wholly caused as he
+represented, but they might not, also. On a search-warrant being issued
+for the examination of his room, clothes, and so forth, it was discovered
+that he had destroyed all his papers, and rearranged all his possessions,
+on the very afternoon of the disappearance. The watch found at the Weir
+was challenged by the jeweller as one he had wound and set for Edwin
+Drood, at twenty minutes past two on that same afternoon; and it had run
+down, before being cast into the water; and it was the jeweller’s
+positive opinion that it had never been re-wound. This would justify the
+hypothesis that the watch was taken from him not long after he left Mr.
+Jasper’s house at midnight, in company with the last person seen with
+him, and that it had been thrown away after being retained some hours.
+Why thrown away? If he had been murdered, and so artfully disfigured, or
+concealed, or both, as that the murderer hoped identification to be
+impossible, except from something that he wore, assuredly the murderer
+would seek to remove from the body the most lasting, the best known, and
+the most easily recognisable, things upon it. Those things would be the
+watch and shirt-pin. As to his opportunities of casting them into the
+river; if he were the object of these suspicions, they were easy. For,
+he had been seen by many persons, wandering about on that side of the
+city—indeed on all sides of it—in a miserable and seemingly
+half-distracted manner. As to the choice of the spot, obviously such
+criminating evidence had better take its chance of being found anywhere,
+rather than upon himself, or in his possession. Concerning the
+reconciliatory nature of the appointed meeting between the two young men,
+very little could be made of that in young Landless’s favour; for it
+distinctly appeared that the meeting originated, not with him, but with
+Mr. Crisparkle, and that it had been urged on by Mr. Crisparkle; and who
+could say how unwillingly, or in what ill-conditioned mood, his enforced
+pupil had gone to it? The more his case was looked into, the weaker it
+became in every point. Even the broad suggestion that the lost young man
+had absconded, was rendered additionally improbable on the showing of the
+young lady from whom he had so lately parted; for; what did she say, with
+great earnestness and sorrow, when interrogated? That he had, expressly
+and enthusiastically, planned with her, that he would await the arrival
+of her guardian, Mr. Grewgious. And yet, be it observed, he disappeared
+before that gentleman appeared.
+
+On the suspicions thus urged and supported, Neville was detained, and
+re-detained, and the search was pressed on every hand, and Jasper
+laboured night and day. But nothing more was found. No discovery being
+made, which proved the lost man to be dead, it at length became necessary
+to release the person suspected of having made away with him. Neville
+was set at large. Then, a consequence ensued which Mr. Crisparkle had
+too well foreseen. Neville must leave the place, for the place shunned
+him and cast him out. Even had it not been so, the dear old china
+shepherdess would have worried herself to death with fears for her son,
+and with general trepidation occasioned by their having such an inmate.
+Even had that not been so, the authority to which the Minor Canon
+deferred officially, would have settled the point.
+
+‘Mr. Crisparkle,’ quoth the Dean, ‘human justice may err, but it must act
+according to its lights. The days of taking sanctuary are past. This
+young man must not take sanctuary with us.’
+
+‘You mean that he must leave my house, sir?’
+
+‘Mr. Crisparkle,’ returned the prudent Dean, ‘I claim no authority in
+your house. I merely confer with you, on the painful necessity you find
+yourself under, of depriving this young man of the great advantages of
+your counsel and instruction.’
+
+‘It is very lamentable, sir,’ Mr. Crisparkle represented.
+
+‘Very much so,’ the Dean assented.
+
+‘And if it be a necessity—’ Mr. Crisparkle faltered.
+
+‘As you unfortunately find it to be,’ returned the Dean.
+
+Mr. Crisparkle bowed submissively: ‘It is hard to prejudge his case, sir,
+but I am sensible that—’
+
+‘Just so. Perfectly. As you say, Mr. Crisparkle,’ interposed the Dean,
+nodding his head smoothly, ‘there is nothing else to be done. No doubt,
+no doubt. There is no alternative, as your good sense has discovered.’
+
+‘I am entirely satisfied of his perfect innocence, sir, nevertheless.’
+
+‘We-e-ell!’ said the Dean, in a more confidential tone, and slightly
+glancing around him, ‘I would not say so, generally. Not generally.
+Enough of suspicion attaches to him to—no, I think I would not say so,
+generally.’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle bowed again.
+
+‘It does not become us, perhaps,’ pursued the Dean, ‘to be partisans.
+Not partisans. We clergy keep our hearts warm and our heads cool, and we
+hold a judicious middle course.’
+
+‘I hope you do not object, sir, to my having stated in public,
+emphatically, that he will reappear here, whenever any new suspicion may
+be awakened, or any new circumstance may come to light in this
+extraordinary matter?’
+
+‘Not at all,’ returned the Dean. ‘And yet, do you know, I don’t think,’
+with a very nice and neat emphasis on those two words: ‘I _don’t think_ I
+would state it emphatically. State it? Ye-e-es! But emphatically?
+No-o-o. I _think_ not. In point of fact, Mr. Crisparkle, keeping our
+hearts warm and our heads cool, we clergy need do nothing emphatically.’
+
+So Minor Canon Row knew Neville Landless no more; and he went
+whithersoever he would, or could, with a blight upon his name and fame.
+
+It was not until then that John Jasper silently resumed his place in the
+choir. Haggard and red-eyed, his hopes plainly had deserted him, his
+sanguine mood was gone, and all his worst misgivings had come back. A
+day or two afterwards, while unrobing, he took his Diary from a pocket of
+his coat, turned the leaves, and with an impressive look, and without one
+spoken word, handed this entry to Mr. Crisparkle to read:
+
+‘My dear boy is murdered. The discovery of the watch and shirt-pin
+convinces me that he was murdered that night, and that his jewellery was
+taken from him to prevent identification by its means. All the delusive
+hopes I had founded on his separation from his betrothed wife, I give to
+the winds. They perish before this fatal discovery. I now swear, and
+record the oath on this page, That I nevermore will discuss this mystery
+with any human creature until I hold the clue to it in my hand. That I
+never will relax in my secrecy or in my search. That I will fasten the
+crime of the murder of my dear dead boy upon the murderer. And, That I
+devote myself to his destruction.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII—PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL AND UNPROFESSIONAL
+
+
+Full half a year had come and gone, and Mr. Crisparkle sat in a
+waiting-room in the London chief offices of the Haven of Philanthropy,
+until he could have audience of Mr. Honeythunder.
+
+In his college days of athletic exercises, Mr. Crisparkle had known
+professors of the Noble Art of fisticuffs, and had attended two or three
+of their gloved gatherings. He had now an opportunity of observing that
+as to the phrenological formation of the backs of their heads, the
+Professing Philanthropists were uncommonly like the Pugilists. In the
+development of all those organs which constitute, or attend, a propensity
+to ‘pitch into’ your fellow-creatures, the Philanthropists were
+remarkably favoured. There were several Professors passing in and out,
+with exactly the aggressive air upon them of being ready for a turn-up
+with any Novice who might happen to be on hand, that Mr. Crisparkle well
+remembered in the circles of the Fancy. Preparations were in progress
+for a moral little Mill somewhere on the rural circuit, and other
+Professors were backing this or that Heavy-Weight as good for such or
+such speech-making hits, so very much after the manner of the sporting
+publicans, that the intended Resolutions might have been Rounds. In an
+official manager of these displays much celebrated for his platform
+tactics, Mr. Crisparkle recognised (in a suit of black) the counterpart
+of a deceased benefactor of his species, an eminent public character,
+once known to fame as Frosty-faced Fogo, who in days of yore
+superintended the formation of the magic circle with the ropes and
+stakes. There were only three conditions of resemblance wanting between
+these Professors and those. Firstly, the Philanthropists were in very
+bad training: much too fleshy, and presenting, both in face and figure, a
+superabundance of what is known to Pugilistic Experts as Suet Pudding.
+Secondly, the Philanthropists had not the good temper of the Pugilists,
+and used worse language. Thirdly, their fighting code stood in great
+need of revision, as empowering them not only to bore their man to the
+ropes, but to bore him to the confines of distraction; also to hit him
+when he was down, hit him anywhere and anyhow, kick him, stamp upon him,
+gouge him, and maul him behind his back without mercy. In these last
+particulars the Professors of the Noble Art were much nobler than the
+Professors of Philanthropy.
+
+Mr. Crisparkle was so completely lost in musing on these similarities and
+dissimilarities, at the same time watching the crowd which came and went
+by, always, as it seemed, on errands of antagonistically snatching
+something from somebody, and never giving anything to anybody, that his
+name was called before he heard it. On his at length responding, he was
+shown by a miserably shabby and underpaid stipendiary Philanthropist (who
+could hardly have done worse if he had taken service with a declared
+enemy of the human race) to Mr. Honeythunder’s room.
+
+‘Sir,’ said Mr. Honeythunder, in his tremendous voice, like a
+schoolmaster issuing orders to a boy of whom he had a bad opinion, ‘sit
+down.’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle seated himself.
+
+Mr. Honeythunder having signed the remaining few score of a few thousand
+circulars, calling upon a corresponding number of families without means
+to come forward, stump up instantly, and be Philanthropists, or go to the
+Devil, another shabby stipendiary Philanthropist (highly disinterested,
+if in earnest) gathered these into a basket and walked off with them.
+
+‘Now, Mr. Crisparkle,’ said Mr. Honeythunder, turning his chair half
+round towards him when they were alone, and squaring his arms with his
+hands on his knees, and his brows knitted, as if he added, I am going to
+make short work of _you_: ‘Now, Mr. Crisparkle, we entertain different
+views, you and I, sir, of the sanctity of human life.’
+
+‘Do we?’ returned the Minor Canon.
+
+‘We do, sir?’
+
+‘Might I ask you,’ said the Minor Canon: ‘what are your views on that
+subject?’
+
+‘That human life is a thing to be held sacred, sir.’
+
+‘Might I ask you,’ pursued the Minor Canon as before: ‘what you suppose
+to be my views on that subject?’
+
+‘By George, sir!’ returned the Philanthropist, squaring his arms still
+more, as he frowned on Mr. Crisparkle: ‘they are best known to yourself.’
+
+‘Readily admitted. But you began by saying that we took different views,
+you know. Therefore (or you could not say so) you must have set up some
+views as mine. Pray, what views _have_ you set up as mine?’
+
+‘Here is a man—and a young man,’ said Mr. Honeythunder, as if that made
+the matter infinitely worse, and he could have easily borne the loss of
+an old one, ‘swept off the face of the earth by a deed of violence. What
+do you call that?’
+
+‘Murder,’ said the Minor Canon.
+
+‘What do you call the doer of that deed, sir?
+
+‘A murderer,’ said the Minor Canon.
+
+‘I am glad to hear you admit so much, sir,’ retorted Mr. Honeythunder, in
+his most offensive manner; ‘and I candidly tell you that I didn’t expect
+it.’ Here he lowered heavily at Mr. Crisparkle again.
+
+‘Be so good as to explain what you mean by those very unjustifiable
+expressions.’
+
+‘I don’t sit here, sir,’ returned the Philanthropist, raising his voice
+to a roar, ‘to be browbeaten.’
+
+‘As the only other person present, no one can possibly know that better
+than I do,’ returned the Minor Canon very quietly. ‘But I interrupt your
+explanation.’
+
+‘Murder!’ proceeded Mr. Honeythunder, in a kind of boisterous reverie,
+with his platform folding of his arms, and his platform nod of abhorrent
+reflection after each short sentiment of a word. ‘Bloodshed! Abel!
+Cain! I hold no terms with Cain. I repudiate with a shudder the red
+hand when it is offered me.’
+
+Instead of instantly leaping into his chair and cheering himself hoarse,
+as the Brotherhood in public meeting assembled would infallibly have done
+on this cue, Mr. Crisparkle merely reversed the quiet crossing of his
+legs, and said mildly: ‘Don’t let me interrupt your explanation—when you
+begin it.’
+
+‘The Commandments say, no murder. NO murder, sir!’ proceeded Mr.
+Honeythunder, platformally pausing as if he took Mr. Crisparkle to task
+for having distinctly asserted that they said: You may do a little
+murder, and then leave off.
+
+‘And they also say, you shall bear no false witness,’ observed Mr.
+Crisparkle.
+
+‘Enough!’ bellowed Mr. Honeythunder, with a solemnity and severity that
+would have brought the house down at a meeting, ‘E-e-nough! My late
+wards being now of age, and I being released from a trust which I cannot
+contemplate without a thrill of horror, there are the accounts which you
+have undertaken to accept on their behalf, and there is a statement of
+the balance which you have undertaken to receive, and which you cannot
+receive too soon. And let me tell you, sir, I wish that, as a man and a
+Minor Canon, you were better employed,’ with a nod. ‘Better employed,’
+with another nod. ‘Bet-ter em-ployed!’ with another and the three nods
+added up.
+
+Mr. Crisparkle rose; a little heated in the face, but with perfect
+command of himself.
+
+‘Mr. Honeythunder,’ he said, taking up the papers referred to: ‘my being
+better or worse employed than I am at present is a matter of taste and
+opinion. You might think me better employed in enrolling myself a member
+of your Society.’
+
+‘Ay, indeed, sir!’ retorted Mr. Honeythunder, shaking his head in a
+threatening manner. ‘It would have been better for you if you had done
+that long ago!’
+
+‘I think otherwise.’
+
+‘Or,’ said Mr. Honeythunder, shaking his head again, ‘I might think one
+of your profession better employed in devoting himself to the discovery
+and punishment of guilt than in leaving that duty to be undertaken by a
+layman.’
+
+‘I may regard my profession from a point of view which teaches me that
+its first duty is towards those who are in necessity and tribulation, who
+are desolate and oppressed,’ said Mr. Crisparkle. ‘However, as I have
+quite clearly satisfied myself that it is no part of my profession to
+make professions, I say no more of that. But I owe it to Mr. Neville,
+and to Mr. Neville’s sister (and in a much lower degree to myself), to
+say to you that I _know_ I was in the full possession and understanding
+of Mr. Neville’s mind and heart at the time of this occurrence; and that,
+without in the least colouring or concealing what was to be deplored in
+him and required to be corrected, I feel certain that his tale is true.
+Feeling that certainty, I befriend him. As long as that certainty shall
+last, I will befriend him. And if any consideration could shake me in
+this resolve, I should be so ashamed of myself for my meanness, that no
+man’s good opinion—no, nor no woman’s—so gained, could compensate me for
+the loss of my own.’
+
+Good fellow! manly fellow! And he was so modest, too. There was no more
+self-assertion in the Minor Canon than in the schoolboy who had stood in
+the breezy playing-fields keeping a wicket. He was simply and staunchly
+true to his duty alike in the large case and in the small. So all true
+souls ever are. So every true soul ever was, ever is, and ever will be.
+There is nothing little to the really great in spirit.
+
+‘Then who do you make out did the deed?’ asked Mr. Honeythunder, turning
+on him abruptly.
+
+‘Heaven forbid,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘that in my desire to clear one man
+I should lightly criminate another! I accuse no one.’
+
+‘Tcha!’ ejaculated Mr. Honeythunder with great disgust; for this was by
+no means the principle on which the Philanthropic Brotherhood usually
+proceeded. ‘And, sir, you are not a disinterested witness, we must bear
+in mind.’
+
+‘How am I an interested one?’ inquired Mr. Crisparkle, smiling
+innocently, at a loss to imagine.
+
+‘There was a certain stipend, sir, paid to you for your pupil, which may
+have warped your judgment a bit,’ said Mr. Honeythunder, coarsely.
+
+‘Perhaps I expect to retain it still?’ Mr. Crisparkle returned,
+enlightened; ‘do you mean that too?’
+
+‘Well, sir,’ returned the professional Philanthropist, getting up and
+thrusting his hands down into his trousers-pockets, ‘I don’t go about
+measuring people for caps. If people find I have any about me that fit
+’em, they can put ’em on and wear ’em, if they like. That’s their look
+out: not mine.’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle eyed him with a just indignation, and took him to task
+thus:
+
+‘Mr. Honeythunder, I hoped when I came in here that I might be under no
+necessity of commenting on the introduction of platform manners or
+platform manœuvres among the decent forbearances of private life. But
+you have given me such a specimen of both, that I should be a fit subject
+for both if I remained silent respecting them. They are detestable.’
+
+‘They don’t suit _you_, I dare say, sir.’
+
+‘They are,’ repeated Mr. Crisparkle, without noticing the interruption,
+‘detestable. They violate equally the justice that should belong to
+Christians, and the restraints that should belong to gentlemen. You
+assume a great crime to have been committed by one whom I, acquainted
+with the attendant circumstances, and having numerous reasons on my side,
+devoutly believe to be innocent of it. Because I differ from you on that
+vital point, what is your platform resource? Instantly to turn upon me,
+charging that I have no sense of the enormity of the crime itself, but am
+its aider and abettor! So, another time—taking me as representing your
+opponent in other cases—you set up a platform credulity; a moved and
+seconded and carried-unanimously profession of faith in some ridiculous
+delusion or mischievous imposition. I decline to believe it, and you
+fall back upon your platform resource of proclaiming that I believe
+nothing; that because I will not bow down to a false God of your making,
+I deny the true God! Another time you make the platform discovery that
+War is a calamity, and you propose to abolish it by a string of twisted
+resolutions tossed into the air like the tail of a kite. I do not admit
+the discovery to be yours in the least, and I have not a grain of faith
+in your remedy. Again, your platform resource of representing me as
+revelling in the horrors of a battle-field like a fiend incarnate!
+Another time, in another of your undiscriminating platform rushes, you
+would punish the sober for the drunken. I claim consideration for the
+comfort, convenience, and refreshment of the sober; and you presently
+make platform proclamation that I have a depraved desire to turn Heaven’s
+creatures into swine and wild beasts! In all such cases your movers, and
+your seconders, and your supporters—your regular Professors of all
+degrees, run amuck like so many mad Malays; habitually attributing the
+lowest and basest motives with the utmost recklessness (let me call your
+attention to a recent instance in yourself for which you should blush),
+and quoting figures which you know to be as wilfully onesided as a
+statement of any complicated account that should be all Creditor side and
+no Debtor, or all Debtor side and no Creditor. Therefore it is, Mr.
+Honeythunder, that I consider the platform a sufficiently bad example and
+a sufficiently bad school, even in public life; but hold that, carried
+into private life, it becomes an unendurable nuisance.’
+
+‘These are strong words, sir!’ exclaimed the Philanthropist.
+
+‘I hope so,’ said Mr. Crisparkle. ‘Good morning.’
+
+He walked out of the Haven at a great rate, but soon fell into his
+regular brisk pace, and soon had a smile upon his face as he went along,
+wondering what the china shepherdess would have said if she had seen him
+pounding Mr. Honeythunder in the late little lively affair. For Mr.
+Crisparkle had just enough of harmless vanity to hope that he had hit
+hard, and to glow with the belief that he had trimmed the Philanthropic
+Jacket pretty handsomely.
+
+He took himself to Staple Inn, but not to P. J. T. and Mr. Grewgious.
+Full many a creaking stair he climbed before he reached some attic rooms
+in a corner, turned the latch of their unbolted door, and stood beside
+the table of Neville Landless.
+
+An air of retreat and solitude hung about the rooms and about their
+inhabitant. He was much worn, and so were they. Their sloping ceilings,
+cumbrous rusty locks and grates, and heavy wooden bins and beams, slowly
+mouldering withal, had a prisonous look, and he had the haggard face of a
+prisoner. Yet the sunlight shone in at the ugly garret-window, which had
+a penthouse to itself thrust out among the tiles; and on the cracked and
+smoke-blackened parapet beyond, some of the deluded sparrows of the place
+rheumatically hopped, like little feathered cripples who had left their
+crutches in their nests; and there was a play of living leaves at hand
+that changed the air, and made an imperfect sort of music in it that
+would have been melody in the country.
+
+The rooms were sparely furnished, but with good store of books.
+Everything expressed the abode of a poor student. That Mr. Crisparkle
+had been either chooser, lender, or donor of the books, or that he
+combined the three characters, might have been easily seen in the
+friendly beam of his eyes upon them as he entered.
+
+‘How goes it, Neville?’
+
+‘I am in good heart, Mr. Crisparkle, and working away.’
+
+‘I wish your eyes were not quite so large and not quite so bright,’ said
+the Minor Canon, slowly releasing the hand he had taken in his.
+
+‘They brighten at the sight of you,’ returned Neville. ‘If you were to
+fall away from me, they would soon be dull enough.’
+
+‘Rally, rally!’ urged the other, in a stimulating tone. ‘Fight for it,
+Neville!’
+
+‘If I were dying, I feel as if a word from you would rally me; if my
+pulse had stopped, I feel as if your touch would make it beat again,’
+said Neville. ‘But I _have_ rallied, and am doing famously.’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle turned him with his face a little more towards the light.
+
+‘I want to see a ruddier touch here, Neville,’ he said, indicating his
+own healthy cheek by way of pattern. ‘I want more sun to shine upon
+you.’
+
+Neville drooped suddenly, as he replied in a lowered voice: ‘I am not
+hardy enough for that, yet. I may become so, but I cannot bear it yet.
+If you had gone through those Cloisterham streets as I did; if you had
+seen, as I did, those averted eyes, and the better sort of people
+silently giving me too much room to pass, that I might not touch them or
+come near them, you wouldn’t think it quite unreasonable that I cannot go
+about in the daylight.’
+
+‘My poor fellow!’ said the Minor Canon, in a tone so purely sympathetic
+that the young man caught his hand, ‘I never said it was unreasonable;
+never thought so. But I should like you to do it.’
+
+‘And that would give me the strongest motive to do it. But I cannot yet.
+I cannot persuade myself that the eyes of even the stream of strangers I
+pass in this vast city look at me without suspicion. I feel marked and
+tainted, even when I go out—as I do only—at night. But the darkness
+covers me then, and I take courage from it.’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle laid a hand upon his shoulder, and stood looking down at
+him.
+
+‘If I could have changed my name,’ said Neville, ‘I would have done so.
+But as you wisely pointed out to me, I can’t do that, for it would look
+like guilt. If I could have gone to some distant place, I might have
+found relief in that, but the thing is not to be thought of, for the same
+reason. Hiding and escaping would be the construction in either case.
+It seems a little hard to be so tied to a stake, and innocent; but I
+don’t complain.’
+
+‘And you must expect no miracle to help you, Neville,’ said Mr.
+Crisparkle, compassionately.
+
+‘No, sir, I know that. The ordinary fulness of time and circumstances is
+all I have to trust to.’
+
+‘It will right you at last, Neville.’
+
+‘So I believe, and I hope I may live to know it.’
+
+But perceiving that the despondent mood into which he was falling cast a
+shadow on the Minor Canon, and (it may be) feeling that the broad hand
+upon his shoulder was not then quite as steady as its own natural
+strength had rendered it when it first touched him just now, he
+brightened and said:
+
+‘Excellent circumstances for study, anyhow! and you know, Mr. Crisparkle,
+what need I have of study in all ways. Not to mention that you have
+advised me to study for the difficult profession of the law, specially,
+and that of course I am guiding myself by the advice of such a friend and
+helper. Such a good friend and helper!’
+
+He took the fortifying hand from his shoulder, and kissed it. Mr.
+Crisparkle beamed at the books, but not so brightly as when he had
+entered.
+
+‘I gather from your silence on the subject that my late guardian is
+adverse, Mr. Crisparkle?’
+
+The Minor Canon answered: ‘Your late guardian is a—a most unreasonable
+person, and it signifies nothing to any reasonable person whether he is
+_ad_verse, _per_verse, or the _re_verse.’
+
+‘Well for me that I have enough with economy to live upon,’ sighed
+Neville, half wearily and half cheerily, ‘while I wait to be learned, and
+wait to be righted! Else I might have proved the proverb, that while the
+grass grows, the steed starves!’
+
+He opened some books as he said it, and was soon immersed in their
+interleaved and annotated passages; while Mr. Crisparkle sat beside him,
+expounding, correcting, and advising. The Minor Canon’s Cathedral duties
+made these visits of his difficult to accomplish, and only to be
+compassed at intervals of many weeks. But they were as serviceable as
+they were precious to Neville Landless.
+
+When they had got through such studies as they had in hand, they stood
+leaning on the window-sill, and looking down upon the patch of garden.
+‘Next week,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘you will cease to be alone, and will
+have a devoted companion.’
+
+‘And yet,’ returned Neville, ‘this seems an uncongenial place to bring my
+sister to.’
+
+‘I don’t think so,’ said the Minor Canon. ‘There is duty to be done
+here; and there are womanly feeling, sense, and courage wanted here.’
+
+‘I meant,’ explained Neville, ‘that the surroundings are so dull and
+unwomanly, and that Helena can have no suitable friend or society here.’
+
+‘You have only to remember,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘that you are here
+yourself, and that she has to draw you into the sunlight.’
+
+They were silent for a little while, and then Mr. Crisparkle began anew.
+
+‘When we first spoke together, Neville, you told me that your sister had
+risen out of the disadvantages of your past lives as superior to you as
+the tower of Cloisterham Cathedral is higher than the chimneys of Minor
+Canon Corner. Do you remember that?’
+
+‘Right well!’
+
+‘I was inclined to think it at the time an enthusiastic flight. No
+matter what I think it now. What I would emphasise is, that under the
+head of Pride your sister is a great and opportune example to you.’
+
+‘Under _all_ heads that are included in the composition of a fine
+character, she is.’
+
+‘Say so; but take this one. Your sister has learnt how to govern what is
+proud in her nature. She can dominate it even when it is wounded through
+her sympathy with you. No doubt she has suffered deeply in those same
+streets where you suffered deeply. No doubt her life is darkened by the
+cloud that darkens yours. But bending her pride into a grand composure
+that is not haughty or aggressive, but is a sustained confidence in you
+and in the truth, she has won her way through those streets until she
+passes along them as high in the general respect as any one who treads
+them. Every day and hour of her life since Edwin Drood’s disappearance,
+she has faced malignity and folly—for you—as only a brave nature well
+directed can. So it will be with her to the end. Another and weaker
+kind of pride might sink broken-hearted, but never such a pride as hers:
+which knows no shrinking, and can get no mastery over her.’
+
+The pale cheek beside him flushed under the comparison, and the hint
+implied in it.
+
+‘I will do all I can to imitate her,’ said Neville.
+
+‘Do so, and be a truly brave man, as she is a truly brave woman,’
+answered Mr. Crisparkle stoutly. ‘It is growing dark. Will you go my
+way with me, when it is quite dark? Mind! it is not I who wait for
+darkness.’
+
+Neville replied, that he would accompany him directly. But Mr.
+Crisparkle said he had a moment’s call to make on Mr. Grewgious as an act
+of courtesy, and would run across to that gentleman’s chambers, and
+rejoin Neville on his own doorstep, if he would come down there to meet
+him.
+
+Mr. Grewgious, bolt upright as usual, sat taking his wine in the dusk at
+his open window; his wineglass and decanter on the round table at his
+elbow; himself and his legs on the window-seat; only one hinge in his
+whole body, like a bootjack.
+
+‘How do you do, reverend sir?’ said Mr. Grewgious, with abundant offers
+of hospitality, which were as cordially declined as made. ‘And how is
+your charge getting on over the way in the set that I had the pleasure of
+recommending to you as vacant and eligible?’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle replied suitably.
+
+‘I am glad you approve of them,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘because I entertain
+a sort of fancy for having him under my eye.’
+
+As Mr. Grewgious had to turn his eye up considerably before he could see
+the chambers, the phrase was to be taken figuratively and not literally.
+
+‘And how did you leave Mr. Jasper, reverend sir?’ said Mr. Grewgious.
+
+Mr. Crisparkle had left him pretty well.
+
+‘And where did you leave Mr. Jasper, reverend sir?’ Mr. Crisparkle had
+left him at Cloisterham.
+
+‘And when did you leave Mr. Jasper, reverend sir?’ That morning.
+
+‘Umps!’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘He didn’t say he was coming, perhaps?’
+
+‘Coming where?’
+
+‘Anywhere, for instance?’ said Mr. Grewgious.
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Because here he is,’ said Mr. Grewgious, who had asked all these
+questions, with his preoccupied glance directed out at window. ‘And he
+don’t look agreeable, does he?’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle was craning towards the window, when Mr. Grewgious added:
+
+‘If you will kindly step round here behind me, in the gloom of the room,
+and will cast your eye at the second-floor landing window in yonder
+house, I think you will hardly fail to see a slinking individual in whom
+I recognise our local friend.’
+
+‘You are right!’ cried Mr. Crisparkle.
+
+‘Umps!’ said Mr. Grewgious. Then he added, turning his face so abruptly
+that his head nearly came into collision with Mr. Crisparkle’s: ‘what
+should you say that our local friend was up to?’
+
+The last passage he had been shown in the Diary returned on Mr.
+Crisparkle’s mind with the force of a strong recoil, and he asked Mr.
+Grewgious if he thought it possible that Neville was to be harassed by
+the keeping of a watch upon him?
+
+‘A watch?’ repeated Mr. Grewgious musingly. ‘Ay!’
+
+‘Which would not only of itself haunt and torture his life,’ said Mr.
+Crisparkle warmly, ‘but would expose him to the torment of a perpetually
+reviving suspicion, whatever he might do, or wherever he might go.’
+
+‘Ay!’ said Mr. Grewgious musingly still. ‘Do I see him waiting for you?’
+
+‘No doubt you do.’
+
+‘Then _would_ you have the goodness to excuse my getting up to see you
+out, and to go out to join him, and to go the way that you were going,
+and to take no notice of our local friend?’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘I
+entertain a sort of fancy for having _him_ under my eye to-night, do you
+know?’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle, with a significant need complied; and rejoining Neville,
+went away with him. They dined together, and parted at the yet
+unfinished and undeveloped railway station: Mr. Crisparkle to get home;
+Neville to walk the streets, cross the bridges, make a wide round of the
+city in the friendly darkness, and tire himself out.
+
+It was midnight when he returned from his solitary expedition and climbed
+his staircase. The night was hot, and the windows of the staircase were
+all wide open. Coming to the top, it gave him a passing chill of
+surprise (there being no rooms but his up there) to find a stranger
+sitting on the window-sill, more after the manner of a venturesome
+glazier than an amateur ordinarily careful of his neck; in fact, so much
+more outside the window than inside, as to suggest the thought that he
+must have come up by the water-spout instead of the stairs.
+
+The stranger said nothing until Neville put his key in his door; then,
+seeming to make sure of his identity from the action, he spoke:
+
+‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, coming from the window with a frank and
+smiling air, and a prepossessing address; ‘the beans.’
+
+Neville was quite at a loss.
+
+‘Runners,’ said the visitor. ‘Scarlet. Next door at the back.’
+
+‘O,’ returned Neville. ‘And the mignonette and wall-flower?’
+
+‘The same,’ said the visitor.
+
+‘Pray walk in.’
+
+‘Thank you.’
+
+Neville lighted his candles, and the visitor sat down. A handsome
+gentleman, with a young face, but with an older figure in its robustness
+and its breadth of shoulder; say a man of eight-and-twenty, or at the
+utmost thirty; so extremely sunburnt that the contrast between his brown
+visage and the white forehead shaded out of doors by his hat, and the
+glimpses of white throat below the neckerchief, would have been almost
+ludicrous but for his broad temples, bright blue eyes, clustering brown
+hair, and laughing teeth.
+
+‘I have noticed,’ said he; ‘—my name is Tartar.’
+
+Neville inclined his head.
+
+‘I have noticed (excuse me) that you shut yourself up a good deal, and
+that you seem to like my garden aloft here. If you would like a little
+more of it, I could throw out a few lines and stays between my windows
+and yours, which the runners would take to directly. And I have some
+boxes, both of mignonette and wall-flower, that I could shove on along
+the gutter (with a boathook I have by me) to your windows, and draw back
+again when they wanted watering or gardening, and shove on again when
+they were ship-shape; so that they would cause you no trouble. I
+couldn’t take this liberty without asking your permission, so I venture
+to ask it. Tartar, corresponding set, next door.’
+
+‘You are very kind.’
+
+‘Not at all. I ought to apologise for looking in so late. But having
+noticed (excuse me) that you generally walk out at night, I thought I
+should inconvenience you least by awaiting your return. I am always
+afraid of inconveniencing busy men, being an idle man.’
+
+‘I should not have thought so, from your appearance.’
+
+‘No? I take it as a compliment. In fact, I was bred in the Royal Navy,
+and was First Lieutenant when I quitted it. But, an uncle disappointed
+in the service leaving me his property on condition that I left the Navy,
+I accepted the fortune, and resigned my commission.’
+
+‘Lately, I presume?’
+
+‘Well, I had had twelve or fifteen years of knocking about first. I came
+here some nine months before you; I had had one crop before you came. I
+chose this place, because, having served last in a little corvette, I
+knew I should feel more at home where I had a constant opportunity of
+knocking my head against the ceiling. Besides, it would never do for a
+man who had been aboard ship from his boyhood to turn luxurious all at
+once. Besides, again; having been accustomed to a very short allowance
+of land all my life, I thought I’d feel my way to the command of a landed
+estate, by beginning in boxes.’
+
+Whimsically as this was said, there was a touch of merry earnestness in
+it that made it doubly whimsical.
+
+‘However,’ said the Lieutenant, ‘I have talked quite enough about myself.
+It is not my way, I hope; it has merely been to present myself to you
+naturally. If you will allow me to take the liberty I have described, it
+will be a charity, for it will give me something more to do. And you are
+not to suppose that it will entail any interruption or intrusion on you,
+for that is far from my intention.’
+
+Neville replied that he was greatly obliged, and that he thankfully
+accepted the kind proposal.
+
+‘I am very glad to take your windows in tow,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘From
+what I have seen of you when I have been gardening at mine, and you have
+been looking on, I have thought you (excuse me) rather too studious and
+delicate. May I ask, is your health at all affected?’
+
+‘I have undergone some mental distress,’ said Neville, confused, ‘which
+has stood me in the stead of illness.’
+
+‘Pardon me,’ said Mr. Tartar.
+
+With the greatest delicacy he shifted his ground to the windows again,
+and asked if he could look at one of them. On Neville’s opening it, he
+immediately sprang out, as if he were going aloft with a whole watch in
+an emergency, and were setting a bright example.
+
+‘For Heaven’s sake,’ cried Neville, ‘don’t do that! Where are you going
+Mr. Tartar? You’ll be dashed to pieces!’
+
+‘All well!’ said the Lieutenant, coolly looking about him on the
+housetop. ‘All taut and trim here. Those lines and stays shall be
+rigged before you turn out in the morning. May I take this short cut
+home, and say good-night?’
+
+‘Mr. Tartar!’ urged Neville. ‘Pray! It makes me giddy to see you!’
+
+But Mr. Tartar, with a wave of his hand and the deftness of a cat, had
+already dipped through his scuttle of scarlet runners without breaking a
+leaf, and ‘gone below.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious, his bedroom window-blind held aside with his hand,
+happened at the moment to have Neville’s chambers under his eye for the
+last time that night. Fortunately his eye was on the front of the house
+and not the back, or this remarkable appearance and disappearance might
+have broken his rest as a phenomenon. But Mr. Grewgious seeing nothing
+there, not even a light in the windows, his gaze wandered from the
+windows to the stars, as if he would have read in them something that was
+hidden from him. Many of us would, if we could; but none of us so much
+as know our letters in the stars yet—or seem likely to do it, in this
+state of existence—and few languages can be read until their alphabets
+are mastered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII—A SETTLER IN CLOISTERHAM
+
+
+At about this time a stranger appeared in Cloisterham; a white-haired
+personage, with black eyebrows. Being buttoned up in a tightish blue
+surtout, with a buff waistcoat and gray trousers, he had something of a
+military air, but he announced himself at the Crozier (the orthodox
+hotel, where he put up with a portmanteau) as an idle dog who lived upon
+his means; and he farther announced that he had a mind to take a lodging
+in the picturesque old city for a month or two, with a view of settling
+down there altogether. Both announcements were made in the coffee-room
+of the Crozier, to all whom it might or might not concern, by the
+stranger as he stood with his back to the empty fireplace, waiting for
+his fried sole, veal cutlet, and pint of sherry. And the waiter
+(business being chronically slack at the Crozier) represented all whom it
+might or might not concern, and absorbed the whole of the information.
+
+This gentleman’s white head was unusually large, and his shock of white
+hair was unusually thick and ample. ‘I suppose, waiter,’ he said,
+shaking his shock of hair, as a Newfoundland dog might shake his before
+sitting down to dinner, ‘that a fair lodging for a single buffer might be
+found in these parts, eh?’
+
+The waiter had no doubt of it.
+
+‘Something old,’ said the gentleman. ‘Take my hat down for a moment from
+that peg, will you? No, I don’t want it; look into it. What do you see
+written there?’
+
+The waiter read: ‘Datchery.’
+
+‘Now you know my name,’ said the gentleman; ‘Dick Datchery. Hang it up
+again. I was saying something old is what I should prefer, something odd
+and out of the way; something venerable, architectural, and
+inconvenient.’
+
+‘We have a good choice of inconvenient lodgings in the town, sir, I
+think,’ replied the waiter, with modest confidence in its resources that
+way; ‘indeed, I have no doubt that we could suit you that far, however
+particular you might be. But a architectural lodging!’ That seemed to
+trouble the waiter’s head, and he shook it.
+
+‘Anything Cathedraly, now,’ Mr. Datchery suggested.
+
+‘Mr. Tope,’ said the waiter, brightening, as he rubbed his chin with his
+hand, ‘would be the likeliest party to inform in that line.’
+
+‘Who is Mr. Tope?’ inquired Dick Datchery.
+
+The waiter explained that he was the Verger, and that Mrs. Tope had
+indeed once upon a time let lodgings herself or offered to let them; but
+that as nobody had ever taken them, Mrs. Tope’s window-bill, long a
+Cloisterham Institution, had disappeared; probably had tumbled down one
+day, and never been put up again.
+
+‘I’ll call on Mrs. Tope,’ said Mr. Datchery, ‘after dinner.’
+
+So when he had done his dinner, he was duly directed to the spot, and
+sallied out for it. But the Crozier being an hotel of a most retiring
+disposition, and the waiter’s directions being fatally precise, he soon
+became bewildered, and went boggling about and about the Cathedral Tower,
+whenever he could catch a glimpse of it, with a general impression on his
+mind that Mrs. Tope’s was somewhere very near it, and that, like the
+children in the game of hot boiled beans and very good butter, he was
+warm in his search when he saw the Tower, and cold when he didn’t see it.
+
+He was getting very cold indeed when he came upon a fragment of
+burial-ground in which an unhappy sheep was grazing. Unhappy, because a
+hideous small boy was stoning it through the railings, and had already
+lamed it in one leg, and was much excited by the benevolent sportsmanlike
+purpose of breaking its other three legs, and bringing it down.
+
+‘’It ’im agin!’ cried the boy, as the poor creature leaped; ‘and made a
+dint in his wool.’
+
+‘Let him be!’ said Mr. Datchery. ‘Don’t you see you have lamed him?’
+
+‘Yer lie,’ returned the sportsman. ‘’E went and lamed isself. I see ’im
+do it, and I giv’ ’im a shy as a Widdy-warning to ’im not to go
+a-bruisin’ ’is master’s mutton any more.’
+
+‘Come here.’
+
+‘I won’t; I’ll come when yer can ketch me.’
+
+‘Stay there then, and show me which is Mr. Tope’s.’
+
+‘Ow can I stay here and show you which is Topeseses, when Topeseses is
+t’other side the Kinfreederal, and over the crossings, and round ever so
+many comers? Stoo-pid! Ya-a-ah!’
+
+‘Show me where it is, and I’ll give you something.’
+
+‘Come on, then.’
+
+This brisk dialogue concluded, the boy led the way, and by-and-by stopped
+at some distance from an arched passage, pointing.
+
+‘Lookie yonder. You see that there winder and door?’
+
+‘That’s Tope’s?’
+
+‘Yer lie; it ain’t. That’s Jarsper’s.’
+
+‘Indeed?’ said Mr. Datchery, with a second look of some interest.
+
+‘Yes, and I ain’t a-goin’ no nearer ’IM, I tell yer.’
+
+‘Why not?’
+
+‘’Cos I ain’t a-goin’ to be lifted off my legs and ’ave my braces bust
+and be choked; not if I knows it, and not by ‘Im. Wait till I set a
+jolly good flint a-flyin’ at the back o’ ’is jolly old ’ed some day! Now
+look t’other side the harch; not the side where Jarsper’s door is;
+t’other side.’
+
+‘I see.’
+
+‘A little way in, o’ that side, there’s a low door, down two steps.
+That’s Topeseses with ’is name on a hoval plate.’
+
+‘Good. See here,’ said Mr. Datchery, producing a shilling. ‘You owe me
+half of this.’
+
+‘Yer lie! I don’t owe yer nothing; I never seen yer.’
+
+‘I tell you you owe me half of this, because I have no sixpence in my
+pocket. So the next time you meet me you shall do something else for me,
+to pay me.’
+
+‘All right, give us ’old.’
+
+‘What is your name, and where do you live?’
+
+‘Deputy. Travellers’ Twopenny, ’cross the green.’
+
+The boy instantly darted off with the shilling, lest Mr. Datchery should
+repent, but stopped at a safe distance, on the happy chance of his being
+uneasy in his mind about it, to goad him with a demon dance expressive of
+its irrevocability.
+
+Mr. Datchery, taking off his hat to give that shock of white hair of his
+another shake, seemed quite resigned, and betook himself whither he had
+been directed.
+
+Mr. Tope’s official dwelling, communicating by an upper stair with Mr.
+Jasper’s (hence Mrs. Tope’s attendance on that gentleman), was of very
+modest proportions, and partook of the character of a cool dungeon. Its
+ancient walls were massive, and its rooms rather seemed to have been dug
+out of them, than to have been designed beforehand with any reference to
+them. The main door opened at once on a chamber of no describable shape,
+with a groined roof, which in its turn opened on another chamber of no
+describable shape, with another groined roof: their windows small, and in
+the thickness of the walls. These two chambers, close as to their
+atmosphere, and swarthy as to their illumination by natural light, were
+the apartments which Mrs. Tope had so long offered to an unappreciative
+city. Mr. Datchery, however, was more appreciative. He found that if he
+sat with the main door open he would enjoy the passing society of all
+comers to and fro by the gateway, and would have light enough. He found
+that if Mr. and Mrs. Tope, living overhead, used for their own egress and
+ingress a little side stair that came plump into the Precincts by a door
+opening outward, to the surprise and inconvenience of a limited public of
+pedestrians in a narrow way, he would be alone, as in a separate
+residence. He found the rent moderate, and everything as quaintly
+inconvenient as he could desire. He agreed, therefore, to take the
+lodging then and there, and money down, possession to be had next
+evening, on condition that reference was permitted him to Mr. Jasper as
+occupying the gatehouse, of which on the other side of the gateway, the
+Verger’s hole-in-the-wall was an appanage or subsidiary part.
+
+The poor dear gentleman was very solitary and very sad, Mrs. Tope said,
+but she had no doubt he would ‘speak for her.’ Perhaps Mr. Datchery had
+heard something of what had occurred there last winter?
+
+Mr. Datchery had as confused a knowledge of the event in question, on
+trying to recall it, as he well could have. He begged Mrs. Tope’s pardon
+when she found it incumbent on her to correct him in every detail of his
+summary of the facts, but pleaded that he was merely a single buffer
+getting through life upon his means as idly as he could, and that so many
+people were so constantly making away with so many other people, as to
+render it difficult for a buffer of an easy temper to preserve the
+circumstances of the several cases unmixed in his mind.
+
+Mr. Jasper proving willing to speak for Mrs. Tope, Mr. Datchery, who had
+sent up his card, was invited to ascend the postern staircase. The Mayor
+was there, Mr. Tope said; but he was not to be regarded in the light of
+company, as he and Mr. Jasper were great friends.
+
+‘I beg pardon,’ said Mr. Datchery, making a leg with his hat under his
+arm, as he addressed himself equally to both gentlemen; ‘a selfish
+precaution on my part, and not personally interesting to anybody but
+myself. But as a buffer living on his means, and having an idea of doing
+it in this lovely place in peace and quiet, for remaining span of life, I
+beg to ask if the Tope family are quite respectable?’
+
+Mr. Jasper could answer for that without the slightest hesitation.
+
+‘That is enough, sir,’ said Mr. Datchery.
+
+‘My friend the Mayor,’ added Mr. Jasper, presenting Mr. Datchery with a
+courtly motion of his hand towards that potentate; ‘whose recommendation
+is actually much more important to a stranger than that of an obscure
+person like myself, will testify in their behalf, I am sure.’
+
+‘The Worshipful the Mayor,’ said Mr. Datchery, with a low bow, ‘places me
+under an infinite obligation.’
+
+‘Very good people, sir, Mr. and Mrs. Tope,’ said Mr. Sapsea, with
+condescension. ‘Very good opinions. Very well behaved. Very
+respectful. Much approved by the Dean and Chapter.’
+
+‘The Worshipful the Mayor gives them a character,’ said Mr. Datchery, ‘of
+which they may indeed be proud. I would ask His Honour (if I might be
+permitted) whether there are not many objects of great interest in the
+city which is under his beneficent sway?’
+
+‘We are, sir,’ returned Mr. Sapsea, ‘an ancient city, and an
+ecclesiastical city. We are a constitutional city, as it becomes such a
+city to be, and we uphold and maintain our glorious privileges.’
+
+‘His Honour,’ said Mr. Datchery, bowing, ‘inspires me with a desire to
+know more of the city, and confirms me in my inclination to end my days
+in the city.’
+
+‘Retired from the Army, sir?’ suggested Mr. Sapsea.
+
+‘His Honour the Mayor does me too much credit,’ returned Mr. Datchery.
+
+‘Navy, sir?’ suggested Mr. Sapsea.
+
+‘Again,’ repeated Mr. Datchery, ‘His Honour the Mayor does me too much
+credit.’
+
+‘Diplomacy is a fine profession,’ said Mr. Sapsea, as a general remark.
+
+‘There, I confess, His Honour the Mayor is too many for me,’ said Mr.
+Datchery, with an ingenious smile and bow; ‘even a diplomatic bird must
+fall to such a gun.’
+
+Now this was very soothing. Here was a gentleman of a great, not to say
+a grand, address, accustomed to rank and dignity, really setting a fine
+example how to behave to a Mayor. There was something in that
+third-person style of being spoken to, that Mr. Sapsea found particularly
+recognisant of his merits and position.
+
+‘But I crave pardon,’ said Mr. Datchery. ‘His Honour the Mayor will bear
+with me, if for a moment I have been deluded into occupying his time, and
+have forgotten the humble claims upon my own, of my hotel, the Crozier.’
+
+‘Not at all, sir,’ said Mr. Sapsea. ‘I am returning home, and if you
+would like to take the exterior of our Cathedral in your way, I shall be
+glad to point it out.’
+
+‘His Honour the Mayor,’ said Mr. Datchery, ‘is more than kind and
+gracious.’
+
+As Mr. Datchery, when he had made his acknowledgments to Mr. Jasper,
+could not be induced to go out of the room before the Worshipful, the
+Worshipful led the way down-stairs; Mr. Datchery following with his hat
+under his arm, and his shock of white hair streaming in the evening
+breeze.
+
+‘Might I ask His Honour,’ said Mr. Datchery, ‘whether that gentleman we
+have just left is the gentleman of whom I have heard in the neighbourhood
+as being much afflicted by the loss of a nephew, and concentrating his
+life on avenging the loss?’
+
+‘That is the gentleman. John Jasper, sir.’
+
+‘Would His Honour allow me to inquire whether there are strong suspicions
+of any one?’
+
+‘More than suspicions, sir,’ returned Mr. Sapsea; ‘all but certainties.’
+
+‘Only think now!’ cried Mr. Datchery.
+
+‘But proof, sir, proof must be built up stone by stone,’ said the Mayor.
+‘As I say, the end crowns the work. It is not enough that justice should
+be morally certain; she must be immorally certain—legally, that is.’
+
+‘His Honour,’ said Mr. Datchery, ‘reminds me of the nature of the law.
+Immoral. How true!’
+
+‘As I say, sir,’ pompously went on the Mayor, ‘the arm of the law is a
+strong arm, and a long arm. That is the may I put it. A strong arm and
+a long arm.’
+
+‘How forcible!—And yet, again, how true!’ murmured Mr. Datchery.
+
+‘And without betraying, what I call the secrets of the prison-house,’
+said Mr. Sapsea; ‘the secrets of the prison-house is the term I used on
+the bench.’
+
+‘And what other term than His Honour’s would express it?’ said Mr.
+Datchery.
+
+‘Without, I say, betraying them, I predict to you, knowing the iron will
+of the gentleman we have just left (I take the bold step of calling it
+iron, on account of its strength), that in this case the long arm will
+reach, and the strong arm will strike.—This is our Cathedral, sir. The
+best judges are pleased to admire it, and the best among our townsmen own
+to being a little vain of it.’
+
+All this time Mr. Datchery had walked with his hat under his arm, and his
+white hair streaming. He had an odd momentary appearance upon him of
+having forgotten his hat, when Mr. Sapsea now touched it; and he clapped
+his hand up to his head as if with some vague expectation of finding
+another hat upon it.
+
+‘Pray be covered, sir,’ entreated Mr. Sapsea; magnificently plying: ‘I
+shall not mind it, I assure you.’
+
+‘His Honour is very good, but I do it for coolness,’ said Mr. Datchery.
+
+Then Mr. Datchery admired the Cathedral, and Mr. Sapsea pointed it out as
+if he himself had invented and built it: there were a few details indeed
+of which he did not approve, but those he glossed over, as if the workmen
+had made mistakes in his absence. The Cathedral disposed of, he led the
+way by the churchyard, and stopped to extol the beauty of the evening—by
+chance—in the immediate vicinity of Mrs. Sapsea’s epitaph.
+
+‘And by the by,’ said Mr. Sapsea, appearing to descend from an elevation
+to remember it all of a sudden; like Apollo shooting down from Olympus to
+pick up his forgotten lyre; ‘_that_ is one of our small lions. The
+partiality of our people has made it so, and strangers have been seen
+taking a copy of it now and then. I am not a judge of it myself, for it
+is a little work of my own. But it was troublesome to turn, sir; I may
+say, difficult to turn with elegance.’
+
+Mr. Datchery became so ecstatic over Mr. Sapsea’s composition, that, in
+spite of his intention to end his days in Cloisterham, and therefore his
+probably having in reserve many opportunities of copying it, he would
+have transcribed it into his pocket-book on the spot, but for the
+slouching towards them of its material producer and perpetuator, Durdles,
+whom Mr. Sapsea hailed, not sorry to show him a bright example of
+behaviour to superiors.
+
+‘Ah, Durdles! This is the mason, sir; one of our Cloisterham worthies;
+everybody here knows Durdles. Mr. Datchery, Durdles a gentleman who is
+going to settle here.’
+
+‘I wouldn’t do it if I was him,’ growled Durdles. ‘We’re a heavy lot.’
+
+‘You surely don’t speak for yourself, Mr. Durdles,’ returned Mr.
+Datchery, ‘any more than for His Honour.’
+
+‘Who’s His Honour?’ demanded Durdles.
+
+‘His Honour the Mayor.’
+
+‘I never was brought afore him,’ said Durdles, with anything but the look
+of a loyal subject of the mayoralty, ‘and it’ll be time enough for me to
+Honour him when I am. Until which, and when, and where,
+
+ “Mister Sapsea is his name,
+ England is his nation,
+ Cloisterham’s his dwelling-place,
+ Aukshneer’s his occupation.”’
+
+Here, Deputy (preceded by a flying oyster-shell) appeared upon the scene,
+and requested to have the sum of threepence instantly ‘chucked’ to him by
+Mr. Durdles, whom he had been vainly seeking up and down, as lawful wages
+overdue. While that gentleman, with his bundle under his arm, slowly
+found and counted out the money, Mr. Sapsea informed the new settler of
+Durdles’s habits, pursuits, abode, and reputation. ‘I suppose a curious
+stranger might come to see you, and your works, Mr. Durdles, at any odd
+time?’ said Mr. Datchery upon that.
+
+‘Any gentleman is welcome to come and see me any evening if he brings
+liquor for two with him,’ returned Durdles, with a penny between his
+teeth and certain halfpence in his hands; ‘or if he likes to make it
+twice two, he’ll be doubly welcome.’
+
+‘I shall come. Master Deputy, what do you owe me?’
+
+‘A job.’
+
+‘Mind you pay me honestly with the job of showing me Mr. Durdles’s house
+when I want to go there.’
+
+Deputy, with a piercing broadside of whistle through the whole gap in his
+mouth, as a receipt in full for all arrears, vanished.
+
+The Worshipful and the Worshipper then passed on together until they
+parted, with many ceremonies, at the Worshipful’s door; even then the
+Worshipper carried his hat under his arm, and gave his streaming white
+hair to the breeze.
+
+Said Mr. Datchery to himself that night, as he looked at his white hair
+in the gas-lighted looking-glass over the coffee-room chimneypiece at the
+Crozier, and shook it out: ‘For a single buffer, of an easy temper,
+living idly on his means, I have had a rather busy afternoon!’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX—SHADOW ON THE SUN-DIAL
+
+
+Again Miss Twinkleton has delivered her valedictory address, with the
+accompaniments of white-wine and pound-cake, and again the young ladies
+have departed to their several homes. Helena Landless has left the Nuns’
+House to attend her brother’s fortunes, and pretty Rosa is alone.
+
+Cloisterham is so bright and sunny in these summer days, that the
+Cathedral and the monastery-ruin show as if their strong walls were
+transparent. A soft glow seems to shine from within them, rather than
+upon them from without, such is their mellowness as they look forth on
+the hot corn-fields and the smoking roads that distantly wind among them.
+The Cloisterham gardens blush with ripening fruit. Time was when
+travel-stained pilgrims rode in clattering parties through the city’s
+welcome shades; time is when wayfarers, leading a gipsy life between
+haymaking time and harvest, and looking as if they were just made of the
+dust of the earth, so very dusty are they, lounge about on cool
+door-steps, trying to mend their unmendable shoes, or giving them to the
+city kennels as a hopeless job, and seeking others in the bundles that
+they carry, along with their yet unused sickles swathed in bands of
+straw. At all the more public pumps there is much cooling of bare feet,
+together with much bubbling and gurgling of drinking with hand to spout
+on the part of these Bedouins; the Cloisterham police meanwhile looking
+askant from their beats with suspicion, and manifest impatience that the
+intruders should depart from within the civic bounds, and once more fry
+themselves on the simmering high-roads.
+
+On the afternoon of such a day, when the last Cathedral service is done,
+and when that side of the High Street on which the Nuns’ House stands is
+in grateful shade, save where its quaint old garden opens to the west
+between the boughs of trees, a servant informs Rosa, to her terror, that
+Mr. Jasper desires to see her.
+
+If he had chosen his time for finding her at a disadvantage, he could
+have done no better. Perhaps he has chosen it. Helena Landless is gone,
+Mrs. Tisher is absent on leave, Miss Twinkleton (in her amateur state of
+existence) has contributed herself and a veal pie to a picnic.
+
+‘O why, why, why, did you say I was at home!’ cried Rosa, helplessly.
+
+The maid replies, that Mr. Jasper never asked the question.
+
+That he said he knew she was at home, and begged she might be told that
+he asked to see her.
+
+‘What shall I do! what shall I do!’ thinks Rosa, clasping her hands.
+
+Possessed by a kind of desperation, she adds in the next breath, that she
+will come to Mr. Jasper in the garden. She shudders at the thought of
+being shut up with him in the house; but many of its windows command the
+garden, and she can be seen as well as heard there, and can shriek in the
+free air and run away. Such is the wild idea that flutters through her
+mind.
+
+She has never seen him since the fatal night, except when she was
+questioned before the Mayor, and then he was present in gloomy
+watchfulness, as representing his lost nephew and burning to avenge him.
+She hangs her garden-hat on her arm, and goes out. The moment she sees
+him from the porch, leaning on the sun-dial, the old horrible feeling of
+being compelled by him, asserts its hold upon her. She feels that she
+would even then go back, but that he draws her feet towards him. She
+cannot resist, and sits down, with her head bent, on the garden-seat
+beside the sun-dial. She cannot look up at him for abhorrence, but she
+has perceived that he is dressed in deep mourning. So is she. It was
+not so at first; but the lost has long been given up, and mourned for, as
+dead.
+
+He would begin by touching her hand. She feels the intention, and draws
+her hand back. His eyes are then fixed upon her, she knows, though her
+own see nothing but the grass.
+
+‘I have been waiting,’ he begins, ‘for some time, to be summoned back to
+my duty near you.’
+
+After several times forming her lips, which she knows he is closely
+watching, into the shape of some other hesitating reply, and then into
+none, she answers: ‘Duty, sir?’
+
+‘The duty of teaching you, serving you as your faithful music-master.’
+
+‘I have left off that study.’
+
+‘Not left off, I think. Discontinued. I was told by your guardian that
+you discontinued it under the shock that we have all felt so acutely.
+When will you resume?’
+
+‘Never, sir.’
+
+‘Never? You could have done no more if you had loved my dear boy.’
+
+‘I did love him!’ cried Rosa, with a flash of anger.
+
+‘Yes; but not quite—not quite in the right way, shall I say? Not in the
+intended and expected way. Much as my dear boy was, unhappily, too
+self-conscious and self-satisfied (I’ll draw no parallel between him and
+you in that respect) to love as he should have loved, or as any one in
+his place would have loved—must have loved!’
+
+She sits in the same still attitude, but shrinking a little more.
+
+‘Then, to be told that you discontinued your study with me, was to be
+politely told that you abandoned it altogether?’ he suggested.
+
+‘Yes,’ says Rosa, with sudden spirit, ‘The politeness was my guardian’s,
+not mine. I told him that I was resolved to leave off, and that I was
+determined to stand by my resolution.’
+
+‘And you still are?’
+
+‘I still am, sir. And I beg not to be questioned any more about it. At
+all events, I will not answer any more; I have that in my power.’
+
+She is so conscious of his looking at her with a gloating admiration of
+the touch of anger on her, and the fire and animation it brings with it,
+that even as her spirit rises, it falls again, and she struggles with a
+sense of shame, affront, and fear, much as she did that night at the
+piano.
+
+‘I will not question you any more, since you object to it so much; I will
+confess—’
+
+‘I do not wish to hear you, sir,’ cries Rosa, rising.
+
+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 comes 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.’
+
+ [Picture: Jasper’s sacrifices]
+
+‘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 sun-dial 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.
+
+But where was she to go? Anywhere beyond his reach, was no reply to the
+question. Somewhere must be thought of. She determined to go to her
+guardian, and to go immediately. The feeling she had imparted to Helena
+on the night of their first confidence, was so strong upon her—the
+feeling of not being safe from him, and of the solid walls of the old
+convent being powerless to keep out his ghostly following of her—that no
+reasoning of her own could calm her terrors. The fascination of
+repulsion had been upon her so long, and now culminated so darkly, that
+she felt as if he had power to bind her by a spell. Glancing out at
+window, even now, as she rose to dress, the sight of the sun-dial on
+which he had leaned when he declared himself, turned her cold, and made
+her shrink from it, as though he had invested it with some awful quality
+from his own nature.
+
+She wrote a hurried note to Miss Twinkleton, saying that she had sudden
+reason for wishing to see her guardian promptly, and had gone to him;
+also, entreating the good lady not to be uneasy, for all was well with
+her. She hurried a few quite useless articles into a very little bag,
+left the note in a conspicuous place, and went out, softly closing the
+gate after her.
+
+It was the first time she had ever been even in Cloisterham High Street
+alone. But knowing all its ways and windings very well, she hurried
+straight to the corner from which the omnibus departed. It was, at that
+very moment, going off.
+
+‘Stop and take me, if you please, Joe. I am obliged to go to London.’
+
+In less than another minute she was on her road to the railway, under
+Joe’s protection. Joe waited on her when she got there, put her safely
+into the railway carriage, and handed in the very little bag after her,
+as though it were some enormous trunk, hundredweights heavy, which she
+must on no account endeavour to lift.
+
+‘Can you go round when you get back, and tell Miss Twinkleton that you
+saw me safely off, Joe?’
+
+‘It shall be done, Miss.’
+
+‘With my love, please, Joe.’
+
+‘Yes, Miss—and I wouldn’t mind having it myself!’ But Joe did not
+articulate the last clause; only thought it.
+
+Now that she was whirling away for London in real earnest, Rosa was at
+leisure to resume the thoughts which her personal hurry had checked. The
+indignant thought that his declaration of love soiled her; that she could
+only be cleansed from the stain of its impurity by appealing to the
+honest and true; supported her for a time against her fears, and
+confirmed her in her hasty resolution. But as the evening grew darker
+and darker, and the great city impended nearer and nearer, the doubts
+usual in such cases began to arise. Whether this was not a wild
+proceeding, after all; how Mr. Grewgious might regard it; whether she
+should find him at the journey’s end; how she would act if he were
+absent; what might become of her, alone, in a place so strange and
+crowded; how if she had but waited and taken counsel first; whether, if
+she could now go back, she would not do it thankfully; a multitude of
+such uneasy speculations disturbed her, more and more as they
+accumulated. At length the train came into London over the housetops;
+and down below lay the gritty streets with their yet un-needed lamps
+a-glow, on a hot, light, summer night.
+
+‘Hiram Grewgious, Esquire, Staple Inn, London.’ This was all Rosa knew
+of her destination; but it was enough to send her rattling away again in
+a cab, through deserts of gritty streets, where many people crowded at
+the corner of courts and byways to get some air, and where many other
+people walked with a miserably monotonous noise of shuffling of feet on
+hot paving-stones, and where all the people and all their surroundings
+were so gritty and so shabby!
+
+There was music playing here and there, but it did not enliven the case.
+No barrel-organ mended the matter, and no big drum beat dull care away.
+Like the chapel bells that were also going here and there, they only
+seemed to evoke echoes from brick surfaces, and dust from everything. As
+to the flat wind-instruments, they seemed to have cracked their hearts
+and souls in pining for the country.
+
+Her jingling conveyance stopped at last at a fast-closed gateway, which
+appeared to belong to somebody who had gone to bed very early, and was
+much afraid of housebreakers; Rosa, discharging her conveyance, timidly
+knocked at this gateway, and was let in, very little bag and all, by a
+watchman.
+
+‘Does Mr. Grewgious live here?’
+
+‘Mr. Grewgious lives there, Miss,’ said the watchman, pointing further
+in.
+
+So Rosa went further in, and, when the clocks were striking ten, stood on
+P. J. T.’s doorsteps, wondering what P. J. T. had done with his
+street-door.
+
+Guided by the painted name of Mr. Grewgious, she went up-stairs and
+softly tapped and tapped several times. But no one answering, and Mr.
+Grewgious’s door-handle yielding to her touch, she went in, and saw her
+guardian sitting on a window-seat at an open window, with a shaded lamp
+placed far from him on a table in a corner.
+
+Rosa drew nearer to him in the twilight of the room. He saw her, and he
+said, in an undertone: ‘Good Heaven!’
+
+Rosa fell upon his neck, with tears, and then he said, returning her
+embrace:
+
+‘My child, my child! I thought you were your mother!—But what, what,
+what,’ he added, soothingly, ‘has happened? My dear, what has brought
+you here? Who has brought you here?’
+
+‘No one. I came alone.’
+
+‘Lord bless me!’ ejaculated Mr. Grewgious. ‘Came alone! Why didn’t you
+write to me to come and fetch you?’
+
+‘I had no time. I took a sudden resolution. Poor, poor Eddy!’
+
+‘Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow!’
+
+‘His uncle has made love to me. I cannot bear it,’ said Rosa, at once
+with a burst of tears, and a stamp of her little foot; ‘I shudder with
+horror of him, and I have come to you to protect me and all of us from
+him, if you will?’
+
+‘I will,’ cried Mr. Grewgious, with a sudden rush of amazing energy.
+‘Damn him!
+
+ “Confound his politics!
+ Frustrate his knavish tricks!
+ On Thee his hopes to fix?
+ Damn him again!”’
+
+After this most extraordinary outburst, Mr. Grewgious, quite beside
+himself, plunged about the room, to all appearance undecided whether he
+was in a fit of loyal enthusiasm, or combative denunciation.
+
+He stopped and said, wiping his face: ‘I beg your pardon, my dear, but
+you will be glad to know I feel better. Tell me no more just now, or I
+might do it again. You must be refreshed and cheered. What did you take
+last? Was it breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, or supper? And what will
+you take next? Shall it be breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, or supper?’
+
+The respectful tenderness with which, on one knee before her, he helped
+her to remove her hat, and disentangle her pretty hair from it, was quite
+a chivalrous sight. Yet who, knowing him only on the surface, would have
+expected chivalry—and of the true sort, too; not the spurious—from Mr.
+Grewgious?
+
+‘Your rest too must be provided for,’ he went on; ‘and you shall have the
+prettiest chamber in Furnival’s. Your toilet must be provided for, and
+you shall have everything that an unlimited head chambermaid—by which
+expression I mean a head chambermaid not limited as to outlay—can
+procure. Is that a bag?’ he looked hard at it; sooth to say, it required
+hard looking at to be seen at all in a dimly lighted room: ‘and is it
+your property, my dear?’
+
+‘Yes, sir. I brought it with me.’
+
+‘It is not an extensive bag,’ said Mr. Grewgious, candidly, ‘though
+admirably calculated to contain a day’s provision for a canary-bird.
+Perhaps you brought a canary-bird?’
+
+Rosa smiled and shook her head.
+
+‘If you had, he should have been made welcome,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘and
+I think he would have been pleased to be hung upon a nail outside and pit
+himself against our Staple sparrows; whose execution must be admitted to
+be not quite equal to their intention. Which is the case with so many of
+us! You didn’t say what meal, my dear. Have a nice jumble of all
+meals.’
+
+Rosa thanked him, but said she could only take a cup of tea. Mr.
+Grewgious, after several times running out, and in again, to mention such
+supplementary items as marmalade, eggs, watercresses, salted fish, and
+frizzled ham, ran across to Furnival’s without his hat, to give his
+various directions. And soon afterwards they were realised in practice,
+and the board was spread.
+
+‘Lord bless my soul,’ cried Mr. Grewgious, putting the lamp upon it, and
+taking his seat opposite Rosa; ‘what a new sensation for a poor old
+Angular bachelor, to be sure!’
+
+ [Picture: Mr. Grewgious experiences a new sensation]
+
+Rosa’s expressive little eyebrows asked him what he meant?
+
+‘The sensation of having a sweet young presence in the place, that
+whitewashes it, paints it, papers it, decorates it with gilding, and
+makes it Glorious!’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘Ah me! Ah me!’
+
+As there was something mournful in his sigh, Rosa, in touching him with
+her tea-cup, ventured to touch him with her small hand too.
+
+‘Thank you, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘Ahem! Let’s talk!’
+
+‘Do you always live here, sir?’ asked Rosa.
+
+‘Yes, my dear.’
+
+‘And always alone?’
+
+‘Always alone; except that I have daily company in a gentleman by the
+name of Bazzard, my clerk.’
+
+‘_He_ doesn’t live here?’
+
+‘No, he goes his way, after office hours. In fact, he is off duty here,
+altogether, just at present; and a firm down-stairs, with which I have
+business relations, lend me a substitute. But it would be extremely
+difficult to replace Mr. Bazzard.’
+
+‘He must be very fond of you,’ said Rosa.
+
+‘He bears up against it with commendable fortitude if he is,’ returned
+Mr. Grewgious, after considering the matter. ‘But I doubt if he is. Not
+particularly so. You see, he is discontented, poor fellow.’
+
+‘Why isn’t he contented?’ was the natural inquiry.
+
+‘Misplaced,’ said Mr. Grewgious, with great mystery.
+
+Rosa’s eyebrows resumed their inquisitive and perplexed expression.
+
+‘So misplaced,’ Mr. Grewgious went on, ‘that I feel constantly apologetic
+towards him. And he feels (though he doesn’t mention it) that I have
+reason to be.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious had by this time grown so very mysterious, that Rosa did
+not know how to go on. While she was thinking about it Mr. Grewgious
+suddenly jerked out of himself for the second time:
+
+‘Let’s talk. We were speaking of Mr. Bazzard. It’s a secret, and
+moreover it is Mr. Bazzard’s secret; but the sweet presence at my table
+makes me so unusually expansive, that I feel I must impart it in
+inviolable confidence. What do you think Mr. Bazzard has done?’
+
+‘O dear!’ cried Rosa, drawing her chair a little nearer, and her mind
+reverting to Jasper, ‘nothing dreadful, I hope?’
+
+‘He has written a play,’ said Mr. Grewgious, in a solemn whisper. ‘A
+tragedy.’
+
+Rosa seemed much relieved.
+
+‘And nobody,’ pursued Mr. Grewgious in the same tone, ‘will hear, on any
+account whatever, of bringing it out.’
+
+Rosa looked reflective, and nodded her head slowly; as who should say,
+‘Such things are, and why are they!’
+
+‘Now, you know,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘_I_ couldn’t write a play.’
+
+‘Not a bad one, sir?’ said Rosa, innocently, with her eyebrows again in
+action.
+
+‘No. If I was under sentence of decapitation, and was about to be
+instantly decapitated, and an express arrived with a pardon for the
+condemned convict Grewgious if he wrote a play, I should be under the
+necessity of resuming the block, and begging the executioner to proceed
+to extremities,—meaning,’ said Mr. Grewgious, passing his hand under his
+chin, ‘the singular number, and this extremity.’
+
+Rosa appeared to consider what she would do if the awkward supposititious
+case were hers.
+
+‘Consequently,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘Mr. Bazzard would have a sense of my
+inferiority to himself under any circumstances; but when I am his master,
+you know, the case is greatly aggravated.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious shook his head seriously, as if he felt the offence to be a
+little too much, though of his own committing.
+
+‘How came you to be his master, sir?’ asked Rosa.
+
+‘A question that naturally follows,’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘Let’s talk.
+Mr. Bazzard’s father, being a Norfolk farmer, would have furiously laid
+about him with a flail, a pitch-fork, and every agricultural implement
+available for assaulting purposes, on the slightest hint of his son’s
+having written a play. So the son, bringing to me the father’s rent
+(which I receive), imparted his secret, and pointed out that he was
+determined to pursue his genius, and that it would put him in peril of
+starvation, and that he was not formed for it.’
+
+‘For pursuing his genius, sir?’
+
+‘No, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘for starvation. It was impossible to
+deny the position, that Mr. Bazzard was not formed to be starved, and Mr.
+Bazzard then pointed out that it was desirable that I should stand
+between him and a fate so perfectly unsuited to his formation. In that
+way Mr. Bazzard became my clerk, and he feels it very much.’
+
+‘I am glad he is grateful,’ said Rosa.
+
+‘I didn’t quite mean that, my dear. I mean, that he feels the
+degradation. There are some other geniuses that Mr. Bazzard has become
+acquainted with, who have also written tragedies, which likewise nobody
+will on any account whatever hear of bringing out, and these choice
+spirits dedicate their plays to one another in a highly panegyrical
+manner. Mr. Bazzard has been the subject of one of these dedications.
+Now, you know, I never had a play dedicated to _me_!’
+
+Rosa looked at him as if she would have liked him to be the recipient of
+a thousand dedications.
+
+‘Which again, naturally, rubs against the grain of Mr. Bazzard,’ said Mr.
+Grewgious. ‘He is very short with me sometimes, and then I feel that he
+is meditating, “This blockhead is my master! A fellow who couldn’t write
+a tragedy on pain of death, and who will never have one dedicated to him
+with the most complimentary congratulations on the high position he has
+taken in the eyes of posterity!” Very trying, very trying. However, in
+giving him directions, I reflect beforehand: “Perhaps he may not like
+this,” or “He might take it ill if I asked that;” and so we get on very
+well. Indeed, better than I could have expected.’
+
+‘Is the tragedy named, sir?’ asked Rosa.
+
+‘Strictly between ourselves,’ answered Mr. Grewgious, ‘it has a
+dreadfully appropriate name. It is called The Thorn of Anxiety. But Mr.
+Bazzard hopes—and I hope—that it will come out at last.’
+
+It was not hard to divine that Mr. Grewgious had related the Bazzard
+history thus fully, at least quite as much for the recreation of his
+ward’s mind from the subject that had driven her there, as for the
+gratification of his own tendency to be social and communicative.
+
+‘And now, my dear,’ he said at this point, ‘if you are not too tired to
+tell me more of what passed to-day—but only if you feel quite able—I
+should be glad to hear it. I may digest it the better, if I sleep on it
+to-night.’
+
+Rosa, composed now, gave him a faithful account of the interview. Mr.
+Grewgious often smoothed his head while it was in progress, and begged to
+be told a second time those parts which bore on Helena and Neville. When
+Rosa had finished, he sat grave, silent, and meditative for a while.
+
+‘Clearly narrated,’ was his only remark at last, ‘and, I hope, clearly
+put away here,’ smoothing his head again. ‘See, my dear,’ taking her to
+the open window, ‘where they live! The dark windows over yonder.’
+
+‘I may go to Helena to-morrow?’ asked Rosa.
+
+‘I should like to sleep on that question to-night,’ he answered
+doubtfully. ‘But let me take you to your own rest, for you must need
+it.’
+
+With that Mr. Grewgious helped her to get her hat on again, and hung upon
+his arm the very little bag that was of no earthly use, and led her by
+the hand (with a certain stately awkwardness, as if he were going to walk
+a minuet) across Holborn, and into Furnival’s Inn. At the hotel door, he
+confided her to the Unlimited head chambermaid, and said that while she
+went up to see her room, he would remain below, in case she should wish
+it exchanged for another, or should find that there was anything she
+wanted.
+
+Rosa’s room was airy, clean, comfortable, almost gay. The Unlimited had
+laid in everything omitted from the very little bag (that is to say,
+everything she could possibly need), and Rosa tripped down the great many
+stairs again, to thank her guardian for his thoughtful and affectionate
+care of her.
+
+‘Not at all, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious, infinitely gratified; ‘it is I
+who thank you for your charming confidence and for your charming company.
+Your breakfast will be provided for you in a neat, compact, and graceful
+little sitting-room (appropriate to your figure), and I will come to you
+at ten o’clock in the morning. I hope you don’t feel very strange
+indeed, in this strange place.’
+
+‘O no, I feel so safe!’
+
+‘Yes, you may be sure that the stairs are fire-proof,’ said Mr.
+Grewgious, ‘and that any outbreak of the devouring element would be
+perceived and suppressed by the watchmen.’
+
+‘I did not mean that,’ Rosa replied. ‘I mean, I feel so safe from him.’
+
+‘There is a stout gate of iron bars to keep him out,’ said Mr. Grewgious,
+smiling; ‘and Furnival’s is fire-proof, and specially watched and
+lighted, and _I_ live over the way!’ In the stoutness of his
+knight-errantry, he seemed to think the last-named protection all
+sufficient. In the same spirit he said to the gate-porter as he went
+out, ‘If some one staying in the hotel should wish to send across the
+road to me in the night, a crown will be ready for the messenger.’ In
+the same spirit, he walked up and down outside the iron gate for the best
+part of an hour, with some solicitude; occasionally looking in between
+the bars, as if he had laid a dove in a high roost in a cage of lions,
+and had it on his mind that she might tumble out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI—A RECOGNITION
+
+
+Nothing occurred in the night to flutter the tired dove; and the dove
+arose refreshed. With Mr. Grewgious, when the clock struck ten in the
+morning, came Mr. Crisparkle, who had come at one plunge out of the river
+at Cloisterham.
+
+‘Miss Twinkleton was so uneasy, Miss Rosa,’ he explained to her, ‘and
+came round to Ma and me with your note, in such a state of wonder, that,
+to quiet her, I volunteered on this service by the very first train to be
+caught in the morning. I wished at the time that you had come to me; but
+now I think it best that you did _as_ you did, and came to your
+guardian.’
+
+‘I did think of you,’ Rosa told him; ‘but Minor Canon Corner was so near
+him—’
+
+‘I understand. It was quite natural.’
+
+‘I have told Mr. Crisparkle,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘all that you told me
+last night, my dear. Of course I should have written it to him
+immediately; but his coming was most opportune. And it was particularly
+kind of him to come, for he had but just gone.’
+
+‘Have you settled,’ asked Rosa, appealing to them both, ‘what is to be
+done for Helena and her brother?’
+
+‘Why really,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘I am in great perplexity. If even
+Mr. Grewgious, whose head is much longer than mine, and who is a whole
+night’s cogitation in advance of me, is undecided, what must I be!’
+
+The Unlimited here put her head in at the door—after having rapped, and
+been authorised to present herself—announcing that a gentleman wished for
+a word with another gentleman named Crisparkle, if any such gentleman
+were there. If no such gentleman were there, he begged pardon for being
+mistaken.
+
+‘Such a gentleman is here,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘but is engaged just
+now.’
+
+‘Is it a dark gentleman?’ interposed Rosa, retreating on her guardian.
+
+‘No, Miss, more of a brown gentleman.’
+
+‘You are sure not with black hair?’ asked Rosa, taking courage.
+
+‘Quite sure of that, Miss. Brown hair and blue eyes.’
+
+‘Perhaps,’ hinted Mr. Grewgious, with habitual caution, ‘it might be well
+to see him, reverend sir, if you don’t object. When one is in a
+difficulty or at a loss, one never knows in what direction a way out may
+chance to open. It is a business principle of mine, in such a case, not
+to close up any direction, but to keep an eye on every direction that may
+present itself. I could relate an anecdote in point, but that it would
+be premature.’
+
+‘If Miss Rosa will allow me, then? Let the gentleman come in,’ said Mr.
+Crisparkle.
+
+The gentleman came in; apologised, with a frank but modest grace, for not
+finding Mr. Crisparkle alone; turned to Mr. Crisparkle, and smilingly
+asked the unexpected question: ‘Who am I?’
+
+‘You are the gentleman I saw smoking under the trees in Staple Inn, a few
+minutes ago.’
+
+‘True. There I saw you. Who else am I?’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle concentrated his attention on a handsome face, much
+sunburnt; and the ghost of some departed boy seemed to rise, gradually
+and dimly, in the room.
+
+The gentleman saw a struggling recollection lighten up the Minor Canon’s
+features, and smiling again, said: ‘What will you have for breakfast this
+morning? You are out of jam.’
+
+‘Wait a moment!’ cried Mr. Crisparkle, raising his right hand. ‘Give me
+another instant! Tartar!’
+
+The two shook hands with the greatest heartiness, and then went the
+wonderful length—for Englishmen—of laying their hands each on the other’s
+shoulders, and looking joyfully each into the other’s face.
+
+‘My old fag!’ said Mr. Crisparkle.
+
+‘My old master!’ said Mr. Tartar.
+
+‘You saved me from drowning!’ said Mr. Crisparkle.
+
+‘After which you took to swimming, you know!’ said Mr. Tartar.
+
+‘God bless my soul!’ said Mr. Crisparkle.
+
+‘Amen!’ said Mr. Tartar.
+
+And then they fell to shaking hands most heartily again.
+
+‘Imagine,’ exclaimed Mr. Crisparkle, with glistening eyes: ‘Miss Rosa Bud
+and Mr. Grewgious, imagine Mr. Tartar, when he was the smallest of
+juniors, diving for me, catching me, a big heavy senior, by the hair of
+the head, and striking out for the shore with me like a water-giant!’
+
+‘Imagine my not letting him sink, as I was his fag!’ said Mr. Tartar.
+‘But the truth being that he was my best protector and friend, and did me
+more good than all the masters put together, an irrational impulse seized
+me to pick him up, or go down with him.’
+
+‘Hem! Permit me, sir, to have the honour,’ said Mr. Grewgious, advancing
+with extended hand, ‘for an honour I truly esteem it. I am proud to make
+your acquaintance. I hope you didn’t take cold. I hope you were not
+inconvenienced by swallowing too much water. How have you been since?’
+
+It was by no means apparent that Mr. Grewgious knew what he said, though
+it was very apparent that he meant to say something highly friendly and
+appreciative.
+
+If Heaven, Rosa thought, had but sent such courage and skill to her poor
+mother’s aid! And he to have been so slight and young then!
+
+‘I don’t wish to be complimented upon it, I thank you; but I think I have
+an idea,’ Mr. Grewgious announced, after taking a jog-trot or two across
+the room, so unexpected and unaccountable that they all stared at him,
+doubtful whether he was choking or had the cramp—‘I _think_ I have an
+idea. I believe I have had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Tartar’s name as
+tenant of the top set in the house next the top set in the corner?’
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mr. Tartar. ‘You are right so far.’
+
+‘I am right so far,’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘Tick that off;’ which he did,
+with his right thumb on his left. ‘Might you happen to know the name of
+your neighbour in the top set on the other side of the party-wall?’
+coming very close to Mr. Tartar, to lose nothing of his face, in his
+shortness of sight.
+
+‘Landless.’
+
+‘Tick that off,’ said Mr. Grewgious, taking another trot, and then coming
+back. ‘No personal knowledge, I suppose, sir?’
+
+‘Slight, but some.’
+
+‘Tick that off,’ said Mr. Grewgious, taking another trot, and again
+coming back. ‘Nature of knowledge, Mr. Tartar?’
+
+‘I thought he seemed to be a young fellow in a poor way, and I asked his
+leave—only within a day or so—to share my flowers up there with him; that
+is to say, to extend my flower-garden to his windows.’
+
+‘Would you have the kindness to take seats?’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘I
+_have_ an idea!’
+
+They complied; Mr. Tartar none the less readily, for being all abroad;
+and Mr. Grewgious, seated in the centre, with his hands upon his knees,
+thus stated his idea, with his usual manner of having got the statement
+by heart.
+
+‘I cannot as yet make up my mind whether it is prudent to hold open
+communication under present circumstances, and on the part of the fair
+member of the present company, with Mr. Neville or Miss Helena. I have
+reason to know that a local friend of ours (on whom I beg to bestow a
+passing but a hearty malediction, with the kind permission of my reverend
+friend) sneaks to and fro, and dodges up and down. When not doing so
+himself, he may have some informant skulking about, in the person of a
+watchman, porter, or such-like hanger-on of Staple. On the other hand,
+Miss Rosa very naturally wishes to see her friend Miss Helena, and it
+would seem important that at least Miss Helena (if not her brother too,
+through her) should privately know from Miss Rosa’s lips what has
+occurred, and what has been threatened. Am I agreed with generally in
+the views I take?’
+
+‘I entirely coincide with them,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, who had been very
+attentive.
+
+‘As I have no doubt I should,’ added Mr. Tartar, smiling, ‘if I
+understood them.’
+
+‘Fair and softly, sir,’ said Mr. Grewgious; ‘we shall fully confide in
+you directly, if you will favour us with your permission. Now, if our
+local friend should have any informant on the spot, it is tolerably clear
+that such informant can only be set to watch the chambers in the
+occupation of Mr. Neville. He reporting, to our local friend, who comes
+and goes there, our local friend would supply for himself, from his own
+previous knowledge, the identity of the parties. Nobody can be set to
+watch all Staple, or to concern himself with comers and goers to other
+sets of chambers: unless, indeed, mine.’
+
+‘I begin to understand to what you tend,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘and
+highly approve of your caution.’
+
+‘I needn’t repeat that I know nothing yet of the why and wherefore,’ said
+Mr. Tartar; ‘but I also understand to what you tend, so let me say at
+once that my chambers are freely at your disposal.’
+
+‘There!’ cried Mr. Grewgious, smoothing his head triumphantly, ‘now we
+have all got the idea. You have it, my dear?’
+
+‘I think I have,’ said Rosa, blushing a little as Mr. Tartar looked
+quickly towards her.
+
+‘You see, you go over to Staple with Mr. Crisparkle and Mr. Tartar,’ said
+Mr. Grewgious; ‘I going in and out, and out and in alone, in my usual
+way; you go up with those gentlemen to Mr. Tartar’s rooms; you look into
+Mr. Tartar’s flower-garden; you wait for Miss Helena’s appearance there,
+or you signify to Miss Helena that you are close by; and you communicate
+with her freely, and no spy can be the wiser.’
+
+‘I am very much afraid I shall be—’
+
+‘Be what, my dear?’ asked Mr. Grewgious, as she hesitated. ‘Not
+frightened?’
+
+‘No, not that,’ said Rosa, shyly; ‘in Mr. Tartar’s way. We seem to be
+appropriating Mr. Tartar’s residence so very coolly.’
+
+‘I protest to you,’ returned that gentleman, ‘that I shall think the
+better of it for evermore, if your voice sounds in it only once.’
+
+Rosa, not quite knowing what to say about that, cast down her eyes, and
+turning to Mr. Grewgious, dutifully asked if she should put her hat on?
+Mr. Grewgious being of opinion that she could not do better, she withdrew
+for the purpose. Mr. Crisparkle took the opportunity of giving Mr.
+Tartar a summary of the distresses of Neville and his sister; the
+opportunity was quite long enough, as the hat happened to require a
+little extra fitting on.
+
+Mr. Tartar gave his arm to Rosa, and Mr. Crisparkle walked, detached, in
+front.
+
+‘Poor, poor Eddy!’ thought Rosa, as they went along.
+
+Mr. Tartar waved his right hand as he bent his head down over Rosa,
+talking in an animated way.
+
+‘It was not so powerful or so sun-browned when it saved Mr. Crisparkle,’
+thought Rosa, glancing at it; ‘but it must have been very steady and
+determined even then.’
+
+Mr. Tartar told her he had been a sailor, roving everywhere for years and
+years.
+
+‘When are you going to sea again?’ asked Rosa.
+
+‘Never!’
+
+Rosa wondered what the girls would say if they could see her crossing the
+wide street on the sailor’s arm. And she fancied that the passers-by
+must think her very little and very helpless, contrasted with the strong
+figure that could have caught her up and carried her out of any danger,
+miles and miles without resting.
+
+She was thinking further, that his far-seeing blue eyes looked as if they
+had been used to watch danger afar off, and to watch it without
+flinching, drawing nearer and nearer: when, happening to raise her own
+eyes, she found that he seemed to be thinking something about _them_.
+
+This a little confused Rosebud, and may account for her never afterwards
+quite knowing how she ascended (with his help) to his garden in the air,
+and seemed to get into a marvellous country that came into sudden bloom
+like the country on the summit of the magic bean-stalk. May it flourish
+for ever!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII—A GRITTY STATE OF THINGS COMES ON
+
+
+Mr. Tartar’s chambers were the neatest, the cleanest, and the
+best-ordered chambers ever seen under the sun, moon, and stars. The
+floors were scrubbed to that extent, that you might have supposed the
+London blacks emancipated for ever, and gone out of the land for good.
+Every inch of brass-work in Mr. Tartar’s possession was polished and
+burnished, till it shone like a brazen mirror. No speck, nor spot, nor
+spatter soiled the purity of any of Mr. Tartar’s household gods, large,
+small, or middle-sized. His sitting-room was like the admiral’s cabin,
+his bath-room was like a dairy, his sleeping-chamber, fitted all about
+with lockers and drawers, was like a seedsman’s shop; and his
+nicely-balanced cot just stirred in the midst, as if it breathed.
+Everything belonging to Mr. Tartar had quarters of its own assigned to
+it: his maps and charts had their quarters; his books had theirs; his
+brushes had theirs; his boots had theirs; his clothes had theirs; his
+case-bottles had theirs; his telescopes and other instruments had theirs.
+Everything was readily accessible. Shelf, bracket, locker, hook, and
+drawer were equally within reach, and were equally contrived with a view
+to avoiding waste of room, and providing some snug inches of stowage for
+something that would have exactly fitted nowhere else. His gleaming
+little service of plate was so arranged upon his sideboard as that a
+slack salt-spoon would have instantly betrayed itself; his toilet
+implements were so arranged upon his dressing-table as that a toothpick
+of slovenly deportment could have been reported at a glance. So with the
+curiosities he had brought home from various voyages. Stuffed, dried,
+repolished, or otherwise preserved, according to their kind; birds,
+fishes, reptiles, arms, articles of dress, shells, seaweeds, grasses, or
+memorials of coral reef; each was displayed in its especial place, and
+each could have been displayed in no better place. Paint and varnish
+seemed to be kept somewhere out of sight, in constant readiness to
+obliterate stray finger-marks wherever any might become perceptible in
+Mr. Tartar’s chambers. No man-of-war was ever kept more spick and span
+from careless touch. On this bright summer day, a neat awning was rigged
+over Mr. Tartar’s flower-garden as only a sailor can rig it, and there
+was a sea-going air upon the whole effect, so delightfully complete, that
+the flower-garden might have appertained to stern-windows afloat, and the
+whole concern might have bowled away gallantly with all on board, if Mr.
+Tartar had only clapped to his lips the speaking-trumpet that was slung
+in a corner, and given hoarse orders to heave the anchor up, look alive
+there, men, and get all sail upon her!
+
+Mr. Tartar doing the honours of this gallant craft was of a piece with
+the rest. When a man rides an amiable hobby that shies at nothing and
+kicks nobody, it is only agreeable to find him riding it with a humorous
+sense of the droll side of the creature. When the man is a cordial and
+an earnest man by nature, and withal is perfectly fresh and genuine, it
+may be doubted whether he is ever seen to greater advantage than at such
+a time. So Rosa would have naturally thought (even if she hadn’t been
+conducted over the ship with all the homage due to the First Lady of the
+Admiralty, or First Fairy of the Sea), that it was charming to see and
+hear Mr. Tartar half laughing at, and half rejoicing in, his various
+contrivances. So Rosa would have naturally thought, anyhow, that the
+sunburnt sailor showed to great advantage when, the inspection finished,
+he delicately withdrew out of his admiral’s cabin, beseeching her to
+consider herself its Queen, and waving her free of his flower-garden with
+the hand that had had Mr. Crisparkle’s life in it.
+
+‘Helena! Helena Landless! Are you there?’
+
+‘Who speaks to me? Not Rosa?’ Then a second handsome face appearing.
+
+‘Yes, my darling!’
+
+‘Why, how did you come here, dearest?’
+
+‘I—I don’t quite know,’ said Rosa with a blush; ‘unless I am dreaming!’
+
+Why with a blush? For their two faces were alone with the other flowers.
+Are blushes among the fruits of the country of the magic bean-stalk?
+
+‘_I_ am not dreaming,’ said Helena, smiling. ‘I should take more for
+granted if I were. How do we come together—or so near together—so very
+unexpectedly?’
+
+Unexpectedly indeed, among the dingy gables and chimney-pots of P. J.
+T.’s connection, and the flowers that had sprung from the salt sea. But
+Rosa, waking, told in a hurry how they came to be together, and all the
+why and wherefore of that matter.
+
+‘And Mr. Crisparkle is here,’ said Rosa, in rapid conclusion; ‘and, could
+you believe it? long ago he saved his life!’
+
+‘I could believe any such thing of Mr. Crisparkle,’ returned Helena, with
+a mantling face.
+
+(More blushes in the bean-stalk country!)
+
+‘Yes, but it wasn’t Crisparkle,’ said Rosa, quickly putting in the
+correction.
+
+‘I don’t understand, love.’
+
+‘It was very nice of Mr. Crisparkle to be saved,’ said Rosa, ‘and he
+couldn’t have shown his high opinion of Mr. Tartar more expressively.
+But it was Mr. Tartar who saved him.’
+
+Helena’s dark eyes looked very earnestly at the bright face among the
+leaves, and she asked, in a slower and more thoughtful tone:
+
+‘Is Mr. Tartar with you now, dear?’
+
+‘No; because he has given up his rooms to me—to us, I mean. It is such a
+beautiful place!’
+
+‘Is it?’
+
+‘It is like the inside of the most exquisite ship that ever sailed. It
+is like—it is like—’
+
+‘Like a dream?’ suggested Helena.
+
+Rosa answered with a little nod, and smelled the flowers.
+
+Helena resumed, after a short pause of silence, during which she seemed
+(or it was Rosa’s fancy) to compassionate somebody: ‘My poor Neville is
+reading in his own room, the sun being so very bright on this side just
+now. I think he had better not know that you are so near.’
+
+‘O, I think so too!’ cried Rosa very readily.
+
+‘I suppose,’ pursued Helena, doubtfully, ‘that he must know by-and-by all
+you have told me; but I am not sure. Ask Mr. Crisparkle’s advice, my
+darling. Ask him whether I may tell Neville as much or as little of what
+you have told me as I think best.’
+
+Rosa subsided into her state-cabin, and propounded the question. The
+Minor Canon was for the free exercise of Helena’s judgment.
+
+‘I thank him very much,’ said Helena, when Rosa emerged again with her
+report. ‘Ask him whether it would be best to wait until any more
+maligning and pursuing of Neville on the part of this wretch shall
+disclose itself, or to try to anticipate it: I mean, so far as to find
+out whether any such goes on darkly about us?’
+
+The Minor Canon found this point so difficult to give a confident opinion
+on, that, after two or three attempts and failures, he suggested a
+reference to Mr. Grewgious. Helena acquiescing, he betook himself (with
+a most unsuccessful assumption of lounging indifference) across the
+quadrangle to P. J. T.’s, and stated it. Mr. Grewgious held decidedly to
+the general principle, that if you could steal a march upon a brigand or
+a wild beast, you had better do it; and he also held decidedly to the
+special case, that John Jasper was a brigand and a wild beast in
+combination.
+
+Thus advised, Mr. Crisparkle came back again and reported to Rosa, who in
+her turn reported to Helena. She now steadily pursuing her train of
+thought at her window, considered thereupon.
+
+‘We may count on Mr. Tartar’s readiness to help us, Rosa?’ she inquired.
+
+O yes! Rosa shyly thought so. O yes, Rosa shyly believed she could
+almost answer for it. But should she ask Mr. Crisparkle? ‘I think your
+authority on the point as good as his, my dear,’ said Helena, sedately,
+‘and you needn’t disappear again for that.’ Odd of Helena!
+
+‘You see, Neville,’ Helena pursued after more reflection, ‘knows no one
+else here: he has not so much as exchanged a word with any one else here.
+If Mr. Tartar would call to see him openly and often; if he would spare a
+minute for the purpose, frequently; if he would even do so, almost daily;
+something might come of it.’
+
+‘Something might come of it, dear?’ repeated Rosa, surveying her friend’s
+beauty with a highly perplexed face. ‘Something might?’
+
+‘If Neville’s movements are really watched, and if the purpose really is
+to isolate him from all friends and acquaintance and wear his daily life
+out grain by grain (which would seem to be the threat to you), does it
+not appear likely,’ said Helena, ‘that his enemy would in some way
+communicate with Mr. Tartar to warn him off from Neville? In which case,
+we might not only know the fact, but might know from Mr. Tartar what the
+terms of the communication were.’
+
+‘I see!’ cried Rosa. And immediately darted into her state-cabin again.
+
+Presently her pretty face reappeared, with a greatly heightened colour,
+and she said that she had told Mr. Crisparkle, and that Mr. Crisparkle
+had fetched in Mr. Tartar, and that Mr. Tartar—‘who is waiting now, in
+case you want him,’ added Rosa, with a half look back, and in not a
+little confusion between the inside of the state-cabin and out—had
+declared his readiness to act as she had suggested, and to enter on his
+task that very day.
+
+‘I thank him from my heart,’ said Helena. ‘Pray tell him so.’
+
+Again not a little confused between the Flower-garden and the Cabin, Rosa
+dipped in with her message, and dipped out again with more assurances
+from Mr. Tartar, and stood wavering in a divided state between Helena and
+him, which proved that confusion is not always necessarily awkward, but
+may sometimes present a very pleasant appearance.
+
+‘And now, darling,’ said Helena, ‘we will be mindful of the caution that
+has restricted us to this interview for the present, and will part. I
+hear Neville moving too. Are you going back?’
+
+‘To Miss Twinkleton’s?’ asked Rosa.
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘O, I could never go there any more. I couldn’t indeed, after that
+dreadful interview!’ said Rosa.
+
+‘Then where _are_ you going, pretty one?’
+
+‘Now I come to think of it, I don’t know,’ said Rosa. ‘I have settled
+nothing at all yet, but my guardian will take care of me. Don’t be
+uneasy, dear. I shall be sure to be somewhere.’
+
+(It did seem likely.)
+
+‘And I shall hear of my Rosebud from Mr. Tartar?’ inquired Helena.
+
+‘Yes, I suppose so; from—’ Rosa looked back again in a flutter, instead
+of supplying the name. ‘But tell me one thing before we part, dearest
+Helena. Tell me—that you are sure, sure, sure, I couldn’t help it.’
+
+‘Help it, love?’
+
+‘Help making him malicious and revengeful. I couldn’t hold any terms
+with him, could I?’
+
+‘You know how I love you, darling,’ answered Helena, with indignation;
+‘but I would sooner see you dead at his wicked feet.’
+
+‘That’s a great comfort to me! And you will tell your poor brother so,
+won’t you? And you will give him my remembrance and my sympathy? And
+you will ask him not to hate me?’
+
+With a mournful shake of the head, as if that would be quite a
+superfluous entreaty, Helena lovingly kissed her two hands to her friend,
+and her friend’s two hands were kissed to her; and then she saw a third
+hand (a brown one) appear among the flowers and leaves, and help her
+friend out of sight.
+
+The refection that Mr. Tartar produced in the Admiral’s Cabin by merely
+touching the spring knob of a locker and the handle of a drawer, was a
+dazzling enchanted repast. Wonderful macaroons, glittering liqueurs,
+magically-preserved tropical spices, and jellies of celestial tropical
+fruits, displayed themselves profusely at an instant’s notice. But Mr.
+Tartar could not make time stand still; and time, with his hard-hearted
+fleetness, strode on so fast, that Rosa was obliged to come down from the
+bean-stalk country to earth and her guardian’s chambers.
+
+‘And now, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘what is to be done next? To put
+the same thought in another form; what is to be done with you?’
+
+Rosa could only look apologetically sensible of being very much in her
+own way and in everybody else’s. Some passing idea of living, fireproof,
+up a good many stairs in Furnival’s Inn for the rest of her life, was the
+only thing in the nature of a plan that occurred to her.
+
+‘It has come into my thoughts,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘that as the
+respected lady, Miss Twinkleton, occasionally repairs to London in the
+recess, with the view of extending her connection, and being available
+for interviews with metropolitan parents, if any—whether, until we have
+time in which to turn ourselves round, we might invite Miss Twinkleton to
+come and stay with you for a month?’
+
+‘Stay where, sir?’
+
+‘Whether,’ explained Mr. Grewgious, ‘we might take a furnished lodging in
+town for a month, and invite Miss Twinkleton to assume the charge of you
+in it for that period?’
+
+‘And afterwards?’ hinted Rosa.
+
+‘And afterwards,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘we should be no worse off than we
+are now.’
+
+‘I think that might smooth the way,’ assented Rosa.
+
+‘Then let us,’ said Mr. Grewgious, rising, ‘go and look for a furnished
+lodging. Nothing could be more acceptable to me than the sweet presence
+of last evening, for all the remaining evenings of my existence; but
+these are not fit surroundings for a young lady. Let us set out in quest
+of adventures, and look for a furnished lodging. In the meantime, Mr.
+Crisparkle here, about to return home immediately, will no doubt kindly
+see Miss Twinkleton, and invite that lady to co-operate in our plan.’
+
+Mr. Crisparkle, willingly accepting the commission, took his departure;
+Mr. Grewgious and his ward set forth on their expedition.
+
+As Mr. Grewgious’s idea of looking at a furnished lodging was to get on
+the opposite side of the street to a house with a suitable bill in the
+window, and stare at it; and then work his way tortuously to the back of
+the house, and stare at that; and then not go in, but make similar trials
+of another house, with the same result; their progress was but slow. At
+length he bethought himself of a widowed cousin, divers times removed, of
+Mr. Bazzard’s, who had once solicited his influence in the lodger world,
+and who lived in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury Square. This lady’s
+name, stated in uncompromising capitals of considerable size on a brass
+door-plate, and yet not lucidly as to sex or condition, was BILLICKIN.
+
+Personal faintness, and an overpowering personal candour, were the
+distinguishing features of Mrs. Billickin’s organisation. She came
+languishing out of her own exclusive back parlour, with the air of having
+been expressly brought-to for the purpose, from an accumulation of
+several swoons.
+
+‘I hope I see you well, sir,’ said Mrs. Billickin, recognising her
+visitor with a bend.
+
+‘Thank you, quite well. And you, ma’am?’ returned Mr. Grewgious.
+
+‘I am as well,’ said Mrs. Billickin, becoming aspirational with excess of
+faintness, ‘as I hever ham.’
+
+‘My ward and an elderly lady,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘wish to find a
+genteel lodging for a month or so. Have you any apartments available,
+ma’am?’
+
+‘Mr. Grewgious,’ returned Mrs. Billickin, ‘I will not deceive you; far
+from it. I _have_ apartments available.’
+
+This with the air of adding: ‘Convey me to the stake, if you will; but
+while I live, I will be candid.’
+
+‘And now, what apartments, ma’am?’ asked Mr. Grewgious, cosily. To tame
+a certain severity apparent on the part of Mrs. Billickin.
+
+‘There is this sitting-room—which, call it what you will, it is the front
+parlour, Miss,’ said Mrs. Billickin, impressing Rosa into the
+conversation: ‘the back parlour being what I cling to and never part
+with; and there is two bedrooms at the top of the ’ouse with gas laid on.
+I do not tell you that your bedroom floors is firm, for firm they are
+not. The gas-fitter himself allowed, that to make a firm job, he must go
+right under your jistes, and it were not worth the outlay as a yearly
+tenant so to do. The piping is carried above your jistes, and it is best
+that it should be made known to you.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious and Rosa exchanged looks of some dismay, though they had
+not the least idea what latent horrors this carriage of the piping might
+involve. Mrs. Billickin put her hand to her heart, as having eased it of
+a load.
+
+‘Well! The roof is all right, no doubt,’ said Mr. Grewgious, plucking up
+a little.
+
+‘Mr. Grewgious,’ returned Mrs. Billickin, ‘if I was to tell you, sir,
+that to have nothink above you is to have a floor above you, I should put
+a deception upon you which I will not do. No, sir. Your slates WILL
+rattle loose at that elewation in windy weather, do your utmost, best or
+worst! I defy you, sir, be you what you may, to keep your slates tight,
+try how you can.’ Here Mrs. Billickin, having been warm with Mr.
+Grewgious, cooled a little, not to abuse the moral power she held over
+him. ‘Consequent,’ proceeded Mrs. Billickin, more mildly, but still
+firmly in her incorruptible candour: ‘consequent it would be worse than
+of no use for me to trapse and travel up to the top of the ’ouse with
+you, and for you to say, “Mrs. Billickin, what stain do I notice in the
+ceiling, for a stain I do consider it?” and for me to answer, “I do not
+understand you, sir.” No, sir, I will not be so underhand. I _do_
+understand you before you pint it out. It is the wet, sir. It do come
+in, and it do not come in. You may lay dry there half your lifetime; but
+the time will come, and it is best that you should know it, when a
+dripping sop would be no name for you.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious looked much disgraced by being prefigured in this pickle.
+
+‘Have you any other apartments, ma’am?’ he asked.
+
+‘Mr. Grewgious,’ returned Mrs. Billickin, with much solemnity, ‘I have.
+You ask me have I, and my open and my honest answer air, I have. The
+first and second floors is wacant, and sweet rooms.’
+
+‘Come, come! There’s nothing against _them_,’ said Mr. Grewgious,
+comforting himself.
+
+‘Mr. Grewgious,’ replied Mrs. Billickin, ‘pardon me, there is the stairs.
+Unless your mind is prepared for the stairs, it will lead to inevitable
+disappointment. You cannot, Miss,’ said Mrs. Billickin, addressing Rosa
+reproachfully, ‘place a first floor, and far less a second, on the level
+footing ‘of a parlour. No, you cannot do it, Miss, it is beyond your
+power, and wherefore try?’
+
+Mrs. Billickin put it very feelingly, as if Rosa had shown a headstrong
+determination to hold the untenable position.
+
+‘Can we see these rooms, ma’am?’ inquired her guardian.
+
+‘Mr. Grewgious,’ returned Mrs. Billickin, ‘you can. I will not disguise
+it from you, sir; you can.’
+
+Mrs. Billickin then sent into her back parlour for her shawl (it being a
+state fiction, dating from immemorial antiquity, that she could never go
+anywhere without being wrapped up), and having been enrolled by her
+attendant, led the way. She made various genteel pauses on the stairs
+for breath, and clutched at her heart in the drawing-room as if it had
+very nearly got loose, and she had caught it in the act of taking wing.
+
+‘And the second floor?’ said Mr. Grewgious, on finding the first
+satisfactory.
+
+‘Mr. Grewgious,’ replied Mrs. Billickin, turning upon him with ceremony,
+as if the time had now come when a distinct understanding on a difficult
+point must be arrived at, and a solemn confidence established, ‘the
+second floor is over this.’
+
+‘Can we see that too, ma’am?’
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mrs. Billickin, ‘it is open as the day.’
+
+That also proving satisfactory, Mr. Grewgious retired into a window with
+Rosa for a few words of consultation, and then asking for pen and ink,
+sketched out a line or two of agreement. In the meantime Mrs. Billickin
+took a seat, and delivered a kind of Index to, or Abstract of, the
+general question.
+
+‘Five-and-forty shillings per week by the month certain at the time of
+year,’ said Mrs. Billickin, ‘is only reasonable to both parties. It is
+not Bond Street nor yet St. James’s Palace; but it is not pretended that
+it is. Neither is it attempted to be denied—for why should it?—that the
+Arching leads to a mews. Mewses must exist. Respecting attendance; two
+is kep’, at liberal wages. Words _has_ arisen as to tradesmen, but dirty
+shoes on fresh hearth-stoning was attributable, and no wish for a
+commission on your orders. Coals is either _by_ the fire, or _per_ the
+scuttle.’ She emphasised the prepositions as marking a subtle but
+immense difference. ‘Dogs is not viewed with favour. Besides litter,
+they gets stole, and sharing suspicions is apt to creep in, and
+unpleasantness takes place.’
+
+By this time Mr. Grewgious had his agreement-lines, and his
+earnest-money, ready. ‘I have signed it for the ladies, ma’am,’ he said,
+‘and you’ll have the goodness to sign it for yourself, Christian and
+Surname, there, if you please.’
+
+‘Mr. Grewgious,’ said Mrs. Billickin in a new burst of candour, ‘no, sir!
+You must excuse the Christian name.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious stared at her.
+
+‘The door-plate is used as a protection,’ said Mrs. Billickin, ‘and acts
+as such, and go from it I will not.’
+
+Mr. Grewgious stared at Rosa.
+
+‘No, Mr. Grewgious, you must excuse me. So long as this ’ouse is known
+indefinite as Billickin’s, and so long as it is a doubt with the
+riff-raff where Billickin may be hidin’, near the street-door or down the
+airy, and what his weight and size, so long I feel safe. But commit
+myself to a solitary female statement, no, Miss! Nor would you for a
+moment wish,’ said Mrs. Billickin, with a strong sense of injury, ‘to
+take that advantage of your sex, if you were not brought to it by
+inconsiderate example.’
+
+Rosa reddening as if she had made some most disgraceful attempt to
+overreach the good lady, besought Mr. Grewgious to rest content with any
+signature. And accordingly, in a baronial way, the sign-manual BILLICKIN
+got appended to the document.
+
+Details were then settled for taking possession on the next day but one,
+when Miss Twinkleton might be reasonably expected; and Rosa went back to
+Furnival’s Inn on her guardian’s arm.
+
+Behold Mr. Tartar walking up and down Furnival’s Inn, checking himself
+when he saw them coming, and advancing towards them!
+
+‘It occurred to me,’ hinted Mr. Tartar, ‘that we might go up the river,
+the weather being so delicious and the tide serving. I have a boat of my
+own at the Temple Stairs.’
+
+‘I have not been up the river for this many a day,’ said Mr. Grewgious,
+tempted.
+
+‘I was never up the river,’ added Rosa.
+
+Within half an hour they were setting this matter right by going up the
+river. The tide was running with them, the afternoon was charming. Mr.
+Tartar’s boat was perfect. Mr. Tartar and Lobley (Mr. Tartar’s man)
+pulled a pair of oars. Mr. Tartar had a yacht, it seemed, lying
+somewhere down by Greenhithe; and Mr. Tartar’s man had charge of this
+yacht, and was detached upon his present service. He was a
+jolly-favoured man, with tawny hair and whiskers, and a big red face. He
+was the dead image of the sun in old woodcuts, his hair and whiskers
+answering for rays all around him. Resplendent in the bow of the boat,
+he was a shining sight, with a man-of-war’s man’s shirt on—or off,
+according to opinion—and his arms and breast tattooed all sorts of
+patterns. Lobley seemed to take it easily, and so did Mr. Tartar; yet
+their oars bent as they pulled, and the boat bounded under them. Mr.
+Tartar talked as if he were doing nothing, to Rosa who was really doing
+nothing, and to Mr. Grewgious who was doing this much that he steered all
+wrong; but what did that matter, when a turn of Mr. Tartar’s skilful
+wrist, or a mere grin of Mr. Lobley’s over the bow, put all to rights!
+The tide bore them on in the gayest and most sparkling manner, until they
+stopped to dine in some ever-lastingly-green garden, needing no
+matter-of-fact identification here; and then the tide obligingly
+turned—being devoted to that party alone for that day; and as they
+floated idly among some osier-beds, Rosa tried what she could do in the
+rowing way, and came off splendidly, being much assisted; and Mr.
+Grewgious tried what he could do, and came off on his back, doubled up
+with an oar under his chin, being not assisted at all. Then there was an
+interval of rest under boughs (such rest!) what time Mr. Lobley mopped,
+and, arranging cushions, stretchers, and the like, danced the tight-rope
+the whole length of the boat like a man to whom shoes were a superstition
+and stockings slavery; and then came the sweet return among delicious
+odours of limes in bloom, and musical ripplings; and, all too soon, the
+great black city cast its shadow on the waters, and its dark bridges
+spanned them as death spans life, and the everlastingly-green garden
+seemed to be left for everlasting, unregainable and far away.
+
+ [Picture: Up the river]
+
+‘Cannot people get through life without gritty stages, I wonder?’ Rosa
+thought next day, when the town was very gritty again, and everything had
+a strange and an uncomfortable appearance of seeming to wait for
+something that wouldn’t come. NO. She began to think, that, now the
+Cloisterham school-days had glided past and gone, the gritty stages would
+begin to set in at intervals and make themselves wearily known!
+
+Yet what did Rosa expect? Did she expect Miss Twinkleton? Miss
+Twinkleton duly came. Forth from her back parlour issued the Billickin
+to receive Miss Twinkleton, and War was in the Billickin’s eye from that
+fell moment.
+
+Miss Twinkleton brought a quantity of luggage with her, having all Rosa’s
+as well as her own. The Billickin took it ill that Miss Twinkleton’s
+mind, being sorely disturbed by this luggage, failed to take in her
+personal identity with that clearness of perception which was due to its
+demands. Stateliness mounted her gloomy throne upon the Billickin’s brow
+in consequence. And when Miss Twinkleton, in agitation taking stock of
+her trunks and packages, of which she had seventeen, particularly counted
+in the Billickin herself as number eleven, the B. found it necessary to
+repudiate.
+
+‘Things cannot too soon be put upon the footing,’ said she, with a
+candour so demonstrative as to be almost obtrusive, ‘that the person of
+the ’ouse is not a box nor yet a bundle, nor a carpet-bag. No, I am ’ily
+obleeged to you, Miss Twinkleton, nor yet a beggar.’
+
+This last disclaimer had reference to Miss Twinkleton’s distractedly
+pressing two-and-sixpence on her, instead of the cabman.
+
+Thus cast off, Miss Twinkleton wildly inquired, ‘which gentleman’ was to
+be paid? There being two gentlemen in that position (Miss Twinkleton
+having arrived with two cabs), each gentleman on being paid held forth
+his two-and-sixpence on the flat of his open hand, and, with a speechless
+stare and a dropped jaw, displayed his wrong to heaven and earth.
+Terrified by this alarming spectacle, Miss Twinkleton placed another
+shilling in each hand; at the same time appealing to the law in flurried
+accents, and recounting her luggage this time with the two gentlemen in,
+who caused the total to come out complicated. Meanwhile the two
+gentlemen, each looking very hard at the last shilling grumblingly, as if
+it might become eighteen-pence if he kept his eyes on it, descended the
+doorsteps, ascended their carriages, and drove away, leaving Miss
+Twinkleton on a bonnet-box in tears.
+
+The Billickin beheld this manifestation of weakness without sympathy, and
+gave directions for ‘a young man to be got in’ to wrestle with the
+luggage. When that gladiator had disappeared from the arena, peace
+ensued, and the new lodgers dined.
+
+But the Billickin had somehow come to the knowledge that Miss Twinkleton
+kept a school. The leap from that knowledge to the inference that Miss
+Twinkleton set herself to teach _her_ something, was easy. ‘But you
+don’t do it,’ soliloquised the Billickin; ‘I am not your pupil, whatever
+she,’ meaning Rosa, ‘may be, poor thing!’
+
+Miss Twinkleton, on the other hand, having changed her dress and
+recovered her spirits, was animated by a bland desire to improve the
+occasion in all ways, and to be as serene a model as possible. In a
+happy compromise between her two states of existence, she had already
+become, with her workbasket before her, the equably vivacious companion
+with a slight judicious flavouring of information, when the Billickin
+announced herself.
+
+‘I will not hide from you, ladies,’ said the B., enveloped in the shawl
+of state, ‘for it is not my character to hide neither my motives nor my
+actions, that I take the liberty to look in upon you to express a ’ope
+that your dinner was to your liking. Though not Professed but Plain,
+still her wages should be a sufficient object to her to stimilate to soar
+above mere roast and biled.’
+
+‘We dined very well indeed,’ said Rosa, ‘thank you.’
+
+‘Accustomed,’ said Miss Twinkleton with a gracious air, which to the
+jealous ears of the Billickin seemed to add ‘my good woman’—‘accustomed
+to a liberal and nutritious, yet plain and salutary diet, we have found
+no reason to bemoan our absence from the ancient city, and the methodical
+household, in which the quiet routine of our lot has been hitherto cast.’
+
+‘I did think it well to mention to my cook,’ observed the Billickin with
+a gush of candour, ‘which I ’ope you will agree with, Miss Twinkleton,
+was a right precaution, that the young lady being used to what we should
+consider here but poor diet, had better be brought forward by degrees.
+For, a rush from scanty feeding to generous feeding, and from what you
+may call messing to what you may call method, do require a power of
+constitution which is not often found in youth, particular when
+undermined by boarding-school!’
+
+It will be seen that the Billickin now openly pitted herself against Miss
+Twinkleton, as one whom she had fully ascertained to be her natural
+enemy.
+
+‘Your remarks,’ returned Miss Twinkleton, from a remote moral eminence,
+‘are well meant, I have no doubt; but you will permit me to observe that
+they develop a mistaken view of the subject, which can only be imputed to
+your extreme want of accurate information.’
+
+‘My informiation,’ retorted the Billickin, throwing in an extra syllable
+for the sake of emphasis at once polite and powerful—‘my informiation,
+Miss Twinkleton, were my own experience, which I believe is usually
+considered to be good guidance. But whether so or not, I was put in
+youth to a very genteel boarding-school, the mistress being no less a
+lady than yourself, of about your own age or it may be some years
+younger, and a poorness of blood flowed from the table which has run
+through my life.’
+
+‘Very likely,’ said Miss Twinkleton, still from her distant eminence;
+‘and very much to be deplored.—Rosa, my dear, how are you getting on with
+your work?’
+
+‘Miss Twinkleton,’ resumed the Billickin, in a courtly manner, ‘before
+retiring on the ’int, as a lady should, I wish to ask of yourself, as a
+lady, whether I am to consider that my words is doubted?’
+
+‘I am not aware on what ground you cherish such a supposition,’ began
+Miss Twinkleton, when the Billickin neatly stopped her.
+
+‘Do not, if you please, put suppositions betwixt my lips where none such
+have been imparted by myself. Your flow of words is great, Miss
+Twinkleton, and no doubt is expected from you by your pupils, and no
+doubt is considered worth the money. _No_ doubt, I am sure. But not
+paying for flows of words, and not asking to be favoured with them here,
+I wish to repeat my question.’
+
+‘If you refer to the poverty of your circulation,’ began Miss Twinkleton,
+when again the Billickin neatly stopped her.
+
+‘I have used no such expressions.’
+
+‘If you refer, then, to the poorness of your blood—’
+
+‘Brought upon me,’ stipulated the Billickin, expressly, ‘at a
+boarding-school—’
+
+‘Then,’ resumed Miss Twinkleton, ‘all I can say is, that I am bound to
+believe, on your asseveration, that it is very poor indeed. I cannot
+forbear adding, that if that unfortunate circumstance influences your
+conversation, it is much to be lamented, and it is eminently desirable
+that your blood were richer.—Rosa, my dear, how are you getting on with
+your work?’
+
+‘Hem! Before retiring, Miss,’ proclaimed the Billickin to Rosa, loftily
+cancelling Miss Twinkleton, ‘I should wish it to be understood between
+yourself and me that my transactions in future is with you alone. I know
+no elderly lady here, Miss, none older than yourself.’
+
+‘A highly desirable arrangement, Rosa my dear,’ observed Miss Twinkleton.
+
+‘It is not, Miss,’ said the Billickin, with a sarcastic smile, ‘that I
+possess the Mill I have heard of, in which old single ladies could be
+ground up young (what a gift it would be to some of us), but that I limit
+myself to you totally.’
+
+‘When I have any desire to communicate a request to the person of the
+house, Rosa my dear,’ observed Miss Twinkleton with majestic
+cheerfulness, ‘I will make it known to you, and you will kindly
+undertake, I am sure, that it is conveyed to the proper quarter.’
+
+‘Good-evening, Miss,’ said the Billickin, at once affectionately and
+distantly. ‘Being alone in my eyes, I wish you good-evening with best
+wishes, and do not find myself drove, I am truly ’appy to say, into
+expressing my contempt for an indiwidual, unfortunately for yourself,
+belonging to you.’
+
+The Billickin gracefully withdrew with this parting speech, and from that
+time Rosa occupied the restless position of shuttlecock between these two
+battledores. Nothing could be done without a smart match being played
+out. Thus, on the daily-arising question of dinner, Miss Twinkleton
+would say, the three being present together:
+
+‘Perhaps, my love, you will consult with the person of the house, whether
+she can procure us a lamb’s fry; or, failing that, a roast fowl.’
+
+On which the Billickin would retort (Rosa not having spoken a word), ‘If
+you was better accustomed to butcher’s meat, Miss, you would not
+entertain the idea of a lamb’s fry. Firstly, because lambs has long been
+sheep, and secondly, because there is such things as killing-days, and
+there is not. As to roast fowls, Miss, why you must be quite surfeited
+with roast fowls, letting alone your buying, when you market for
+yourself, the agedest of poultry with the scaliest of legs, quite as if
+you was accustomed to picking ’em out for cheapness. Try a little
+inwention, Miss. Use yourself to ’ousekeeping a bit. Come now, think of
+somethink else.’
+
+To this encouragement, offered with the indulgent toleration of a wise
+and liberal expert, Miss Twinkleton would rejoin, reddening:
+
+‘Or, my dear, you might propose to the person of the house a duck.’
+
+‘Well, Miss!’ the Billickin would exclaim (still no word being spoken by
+Rosa), ‘you do surprise me when you speak of ducks! Not to mention that
+they’re getting out of season and very dear, it really strikes to my
+heart to see you have a duck; for the breast, which is the only delicate
+cuts in a duck, always goes in a direction which I cannot imagine where,
+and your own plate comes down so miserably skin-and-bony! Try again,
+Miss. Think more of yourself, and less of others. A dish of sweetbreads
+now, or a bit of mutton. Something at which you can get your equal
+chance.’
+
+Occasionally the game would wax very brisk indeed, and would be kept up
+with a smartness rendering such an encounter as this quite tame. But the
+Billickin almost invariably made by far the higher score; and would come
+in with side hits of the most unexpected and extraordinary description,
+when she seemed without a chance.
+
+All this did not improve the gritty state of things in London, or the air
+that London had acquired in Rosa’s eyes of waiting for something that
+never came. Tired of working, and conversing with Miss Twinkleton, she
+suggested working and reading: to which Miss Twinkleton readily assented,
+as an admirable reader, of tried powers. But Rosa soon made the
+discovery that Miss Twinkleton didn’t read fairly. She cut the
+love-scenes, interpolated passages in praise of female celibacy, and was
+guilty of other glaring pious frauds. As an instance in point, take the
+glowing passage: ‘Ever dearest and best adored,—said Edward, clasping the
+dear head to his breast, and drawing the silken hair through his
+caressing fingers, from which he suffered it to fall like golden
+rain,—ever dearest and best adored, let us fly from the unsympathetic
+world and the sterile coldness of the stony-hearted, to the rich warm
+Paradise of Trust and Love.’ Miss Twinkleton’s fraudulent version tamely
+ran thus: ‘Ever engaged to me with the consent of our parents on both
+sides, and the approbation of the silver-haired rector of the
+district,—said Edward, respectfully raising to his lips the taper fingers
+so skilful in embroidery, tambour, crochet, and other truly feminine
+arts,—let me call on thy papa ere to-morrow’s dawn has sunk into the
+west, and propose a suburban establishment, lowly it may be, but within
+our means, where he will be always welcome as an evening guest, and where
+every arrangement shall invest economy, and constant interchange of
+scholastic acquirements with the attributes of the ministering angel to
+domestic bliss.’
+
+As the days crept on and nothing happened, the neighbours began to say
+that the pretty girl at Billickin’s, who looked so wistfully and so much
+out of the gritty windows of the drawing-room, seemed to be losing her
+spirits. The pretty girl might have lost them but for the accident of
+lighting on some books of voyages and sea-adventure. As a compensation
+against their romance, Miss Twinkleton, reading aloud, made the most of
+all the latitudes and longitudes, bearings, winds, currents, offsets, and
+other statistics (which she felt to be none the less improving because
+they expressed nothing whatever to her); while Rosa, listening intently,
+made the most of what was nearest to her heart. So they both did better
+than before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII—THE DAWN AGAIN
+
+
+Although Mr. Crisparkle and John Jasper met daily under the Cathedral
+roof, nothing at any time passed between them having reference to Edwin
+Drood, after the time, more than half a year gone by, when Jasper mutely
+showed the Minor Canon the conclusion and the resolution entered in his
+Diary. It is not likely that they ever met, though so often, without the
+thoughts of each reverting to the subject. It is not likely that they
+ever met, though so often, without a sensation on the part of each that
+the other was a perplexing secret to him. Jasper as the denouncer and
+pursuer of Neville Landless, and Mr. Crisparkle as his consistent
+advocate and protector, must at least have stood sufficiently in
+opposition to have speculated with keen interest on the steadiness and
+next direction of the other’s designs. But neither ever broached the
+theme.
+
+False pretence not being in the Minor Canon’s nature, he doubtless
+displayed openly that he would at any time have revived the subject, and
+even desired to discuss it. The determined reticence of Jasper, however,
+was not to be so approached. Impassive, moody, solitary, resolute, so
+concentrated on one idea, and on its attendant fixed purpose, that he
+would share it with no fellow-creature, he lived apart from human life.
+Constantly exercising an Art which brought him into mechanical harmony
+with others, and which could not have been pursued unless he and they had
+been in the nicest mechanical relations and unison, it is curious to
+consider that the spirit of the man was in moral accordance or
+interchange with nothing around him. This indeed he had confided to his
+lost nephew, before the occasion for his present inflexibility arose.
+
+That he must know of Rosa’s abrupt departure, and that he must divine its
+cause, was not to be doubted. Did he suppose that he had terrified her
+into silence? or did he suppose that she had imparted to any one—to Mr.
+Crisparkle himself, for instance—the particulars of his last interview
+with her? Mr. Crisparkle could not determine this in his mind. He could
+not but admit, however, as a just man, that it was not, of itself, a
+crime to fall in love with Rosa, any more than it was a crime to offer to
+set love above revenge.
+
+The dreadful suspicion of Jasper, which Rosa was so shocked to have
+received into her imagination, appeared to have no harbour in Mr.
+Crisparkle’s. If it ever haunted Helena’s thoughts or Neville’s, neither
+gave it one spoken word of utterance. Mr. Grewgious took no pains to
+conceal his implacable dislike of Jasper, yet he never referred it,
+however distantly, to such a source. But he was a reticent as well as an
+eccentric man; and he made no mention of a certain evening when he warmed
+his hands at the gatehouse fire, and looked steadily down upon a certain
+heap of torn and miry clothes upon the floor.
+
+Drowsy Cloisterham, whenever it awoke to a passing reconsideration of a
+story above six months old and dismissed by the bench of magistrates, was
+pretty equally divided in opinion whether John Jasper’s beloved nephew
+had been killed by his treacherously passionate rival, or in an open
+struggle; or had, for his own purposes, spirited himself away. It then
+lifted up its head, to notice that the bereaved Jasper was still ever
+devoted to discovery and revenge; and then dozed off again. This was the
+condition of matters, all round, at the period to which the present
+history has now attained.
+
+The Cathedral doors have closed for the night; and the Choir-master, on a
+short leave of absence for two or three services, sets his face towards
+London. He travels thither by the means by which Rosa travelled, and
+arrives, as Rosa arrived, on a hot, dusty evening.
+
+His travelling baggage is easily carried in his hand, and he repairs with
+it on foot, to a hybrid hotel in a little square behind Aldersgate
+Street, near the General Post Office. It is hotel, boarding-house, or
+lodging-house, at its visitor’s option. It announces itself, in the new
+Railway Advertisers, as a novel enterprise, timidly beginning to spring
+up. It bashfully, almost apologetically, gives the traveller to
+understand that it does not expect him, on the good old constitutional
+hotel plan, to order a pint of sweet blacking for his drinking, and throw
+it away; but insinuates that he may have his boots blacked instead of his
+stomach, and maybe also have bed, breakfast, attendance, and a porter up
+all night, for a certain fixed charge. From these and similar premises,
+many true Britons in the lowest spirits deduce that the times are
+levelling times, except in the article of high roads, of which there will
+shortly be not one in England.
+
+He eats without appetite, and soon goes forth again. Eastward and still
+eastward through the stale streets he takes his way, until he reaches his
+destination: a miserable court, specially miserable among many such.
+
+He ascends a broken staircase, opens a door, looks into a dark stifling
+room, and says: ‘Are you alone here?’
+
+‘Alone, deary; worse luck for me, and better for you,’ replies a croaking
+voice. ‘Come in, come in, whoever you be: I can’t see you till I light a
+match, yet I seem to know the sound of your speaking. I’m acquainted
+with you, ain’t I?’
+
+‘Light your match, and try.’
+
+‘So I will, deary, so I will; but my hand that shakes, as I can’t lay it
+on a match all in a moment. And I cough so, that, put my matches where I
+may, I never find ’em there. They jump and start, as I cough and cough,
+like live things. Are you off a voyage, deary?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Not seafaring?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Well, there’s land customers, and there’s water customers. I’m a mother
+to both. Different from Jack Chinaman t’other side the court. He ain’t
+a father to neither. It ain’t in him. And he ain’t got the true secret
+of mixing, though he charges as much as me that has, and more if he can
+get it. Here’s a match, and now where’s the candle? If my cough takes
+me, I shall cough out twenty matches afore I gets a light.’
+
+But she finds the candle, and lights it, before the cough comes on. It
+seizes her in the moment of success, and she sits down rocking herself to
+and fro, and gasping at intervals: ‘O, my lungs is awful bad! my lungs is
+wore away to cabbage-nets!’ until the fit is over. During its
+continuance she has had no power of sight, or any other power not
+absorbed in the struggle; but as it leaves her, she begins to strain her
+eyes, and as soon as she is able to articulate, she cries, staring:
+
+‘Why, it’s you!’
+
+‘Are you so surprised to see me?’
+
+‘I thought I never should have seen you again, deary. I thought you was
+dead, and gone to Heaven.’
+
+‘Why?’
+
+‘I didn’t suppose you could have kept away, alive, so long, from the poor
+old soul with the real receipt for mixing it. And you are in mourning
+too! Why didn’t you come and have a pipe or two of comfort? Did they
+leave you money, perhaps, and so you didn’t want comfort?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Who was they as died, deary?’
+
+‘A relative.’
+
+‘Died of what, lovey?’
+
+‘Probably, Death.’
+
+‘We are short to-night!’ cries the woman, with a propitiatory laugh.
+‘Short and snappish we are! But we’re out of sorts for want of a smoke.
+We’ve got the all-overs, haven’t us, deary? But this is the place to
+cure ’em in; this is the place where the all-overs is smoked off.’
+
+‘You may make ready, then,’ replies the visitor, ‘as soon as you like.’
+
+He divests himself of his shoes, loosens his cravat, and lies across the
+foot of the squalid bed, with his head resting on his left hand.
+
+‘Now you begin to look like yourself,’ says the woman approvingly. ‘Now
+I begin to know my old customer indeed! Been trying to mix for yourself
+this long time, poppet?’
+
+‘I have been taking it now and then in my own way.’
+
+‘Never take it your own way. It ain’t good for trade, and it ain’t good
+for you. Where’s my ink-bottle, and where’s my thimble, and where’s my
+little spoon? He’s going to take it in a artful form now, my deary
+dear!’
+
+Entering on her process, and beginning to bubble and blow at the faint
+spark enclosed in the hollow of her hands, she speaks from time to time,
+in a tone of snuffling satisfaction, without leaving off. When he
+speaks, he does so without looking at her, and as if his thoughts were
+already roaming away by anticipation.
+
+‘I’ve got a pretty many smokes ready for you, first and last, haven’t I,
+chuckey?’
+
+‘A good many.’
+
+‘When you first come, you was quite new to it; warn’t ye?’
+
+‘Yes, I was easily disposed of, then.’
+
+‘But you got on in the world, and was able by-and-by to take your pipe
+with the best of ’em, warn’t ye?’
+
+‘Ah; and the worst.’
+
+‘It’s just ready for you. What a sweet singer you was when you first
+come! Used to drop your head, and sing yourself off like a bird! It’s
+ready for you now, deary.’
+
+He takes it from her with great care, and puts the mouthpiece to his
+lips. She seats herself beside him, ready to refill the pipe.
+
+After inhaling a few whiffs in silence, he doubtingly accosts her with:
+
+‘Is it as potent as it used to be?’
+
+‘What do you speak of, deary?’
+
+‘What should I speak of, but what I have in my mouth?’
+
+‘It’s just the same. Always the identical same.’
+
+‘It doesn’t taste so. And it’s slower.’
+
+‘You’ve got more used to it, you see.’
+
+‘That may be the cause, certainly. Look here.’ He stops, becomes
+dreamy, and seems to forget that he has invited her attention. She bends
+over him, and speaks in his ear.
+
+‘I’m attending to you. Says you just now, Look here. Says I now, I’m
+attending to ye. We was talking just before of your being used to it.’
+
+‘I know all that. I was only thinking. Look here. Suppose you had
+something in your mind; something you were going to do.’
+
+‘Yes, deary; something I was going to do?’
+
+‘But had not quite determined to do.’
+
+‘Yes, deary.’
+
+‘Might or might not do, you understand.’
+
+‘Yes.’ With the point of a needle she stirs the contents of the bowl.
+
+‘Should you do it in your fancy, when you were lying here doing this?’
+
+She nods her head. ‘Over and over again.’
+
+‘Just like me! I did it over and over again. I have done it hundreds of
+thousands of times in this room.’
+
+‘It’s to be hoped it was pleasant to do, deary.’
+
+‘It _was_ pleasant to do!’
+
+He says this with a savage air, and a spring or start at her. Quite
+unmoved she retouches and replenishes the contents of the bowl with her
+little spatula. Seeing her intent upon the occupation, he sinks into his
+former attitude.
+
+‘It was a journey, a difficult and dangerous journey. That was the
+subject in my mind. A hazardous and perilous journey, over abysses where
+a slip would be destruction. Look down, look down! You see what lies at
+the bottom there?’
+
+He has darted forward to say it, and to point at the ground, as though at
+some imaginary object far beneath. The woman looks at him, as his
+spasmodic face approaches close to hers, and not at his pointing. She
+seems to know what the influence of her perfect quietude would be; if so,
+she has not miscalculated it, for he subsides again.
+
+‘Well; I have told you I did it here hundreds of thousands of times.
+What do I say? I did it millions and billions of times. I did it so
+often, and through such vast expanses of time, that when it was really
+done, it seemed not worth the doing, it was done so soon.’
+
+‘That’s the journey you have been away upon,’ she quietly remarks.
+
+He glares at her as he smokes; and then, his eyes becoming filmy,
+answers: ‘That’s the journey.’
+
+Silence ensues. His eyes are sometimes closed and sometimes open. The
+woman sits beside him, very attentive to the pipe, which is all the while
+at his lips.
+
+‘I’ll warrant,’ she observes, when he has been looking fixedly at her for
+some consecutive moments, with a singular appearance in his eyes of
+seeming to see her a long way off, instead of so near him: ‘I’ll warrant
+you made the journey in a many ways, when you made it so often?’
+
+‘No, always in one way.’
+
+‘Always in the same way?’
+
+‘Ay.’
+
+‘In the way in which it was really made at last?’
+
+‘Ay.’
+
+‘And always took the same pleasure in harping on it?’
+
+‘Ay.’
+
+For the time he appears unequal to any other reply than this lazy
+monosyllabic assent. Probably to assure herself that it is not the
+assent of a mere automaton, she reverses the form of her next sentence.
+
+‘Did you never get tired of it, deary, and try to call up something else
+for a change?’
+
+He struggles into a sitting posture, and retorts upon her: ‘What do you
+mean? What did I want? What did I come for?’
+
+She gently lays him back again, and before returning him the instrument
+he has dropped, revives the fire in it with her own breath; then says to
+him, coaxingly:
+
+‘Sure, sure, sure! Yes, yes, yes! Now I go along with you. You was too
+quick for me. I see now. You come o’ purpose to take the journey. Why,
+I might have known it, through its standing by you so.’
+
+He answers first with a laugh, and then with a passionate setting of his
+teeth: ‘Yes, I came on purpose. When I could not bear my life, I came to
+get the relief, and I got it. It WAS one! It WAS one!’ This repetition
+with extraordinary vehemence, and the snarl of a wolf.
+
+She observes him very cautiously, as though mentally feeling her way to
+her next remark. It is: ‘There was a fellow-traveller, deary.’
+
+‘Ha, ha, ha!’ He breaks into a ringing laugh, or rather yell.
+
+‘To think,’ he cries, ‘how often fellow-traveller, and yet not know it!
+To think how many times he went the journey, and never saw the road!’
+
+The woman kneels upon the floor, with her arms crossed on the coverlet of
+the bed, close by him, and her chin upon them. In this crouching
+attitude she watches him. The pipe is falling from his mouth. She puts
+it back, and laying her hand upon his chest, moves him slightly from side
+to side. Upon that he speaks, as if she had spoken.
+
+‘Yes! I always made the journey first, before the changes of colours and
+the great landscapes and glittering processions began. They couldn’t
+begin till it was off my mind. I had no room till then for anything
+else.’
+
+Once more he lapses into silence. Once more she lays her hand upon his
+chest, and moves him slightly to and fro, as a cat might stimulate a
+half-slain mouse. Once more he speaks, as if she had spoken.
+
+ [Picture: Sleeping it off]
+
+‘What? I told you so. When it comes to be real at last, it is so short
+that it seems unreal for the first time. Hark!’
+
+‘Yes, deary. I’m listening.’
+
+‘Time and place are both at hand.’
+
+He is on his feet, speaking in a whisper, and as if in the dark.
+
+‘Time, place, and fellow-traveller,’ she suggests, adopting his tone, and
+holding him softly by the arm.
+
+‘How could the time be at hand unless the fellow-traveller was? Hush!
+The journey’s made. It’s over.’
+
+‘So soon?’
+
+‘That’s what I said to you. So soon. Wait a little. This is a vision.
+I shall sleep it off. It has been too short and easy. I must have a
+better vision than this; this is the poorest of all. No struggle, no
+consciousness of peril, no entreaty—and yet I never saw _that_ before.’
+With a start.
+
+‘Saw what, deary?’
+
+‘Look at it! Look what a poor, mean, miserable thing it is! _That_ must
+be real. It’s over.’
+
+He has accompanied this incoherence with some wild unmeaning gestures;
+but they trail off into the progressive inaction of stupor, and he lies a
+log upon the bed.
+
+The woman, however, is still inquisitive. With a repetition of her
+cat-like action she slightly stirs his body again, and listens; stirs
+again, and listens; whispers to it, and listens. Finding it past all
+rousing for the time, she slowly gets upon her feet, with an air of
+disappointment, and flicks the face with the back of her hand in turning
+from it.
+
+But she goes no further away from it than the chair upon the hearth. She
+sits in it, with an elbow on one of its arms, and her chin upon her hand,
+intent upon him. ‘I heard ye say once,’ she croaks under her breath, ‘I
+heard ye say once, when I was lying where you’re lying, and you were
+making your speculations upon me, “Unintelligible!” I heard you say so,
+of two more than me. But don’t ye be too sure always; don’t be ye too
+sure, beauty!’
+
+Unwinking, cat-like, and intent, she presently adds: ‘Not so potent as it
+once was? Ah! Perhaps not at first. You may be more right there.
+Practice makes perfect. I may have learned the secret how to make ye
+talk, deary.’
+
+He talks no more, whether or no. Twitching in an ugly way from time to
+time, both as to his face and limbs, he lies heavy and silent. The
+wretched candle burns down; the woman takes its expiring end between her
+fingers, lights another at it, crams the guttering frying morsel deep
+into the candlestick, and rams it home with the new candle, as if she
+were loading some ill-savoured and unseemly weapon of witchcraft; the new
+candle in its turn burns down; and still he lies insensible. At length
+what remains of the last candle is blown out, and daylight looks into the
+room.
+
+It has not looked very long, when he sits up, chilled and shaking, slowly
+recovers consciousness of where he is, and makes himself ready to depart.
+The woman receives what he pays her with a grateful, ‘Bless ye, bless ye,
+deary!’ and seems, tired out, to begin making herself ready for sleep as
+he leaves the room.
+
+But seeming may be false or true. It is false in this case; for, the
+moment the stairs have ceased to creak under his tread, she glides after
+him, muttering emphatically: ‘I’ll not miss ye twice!’
+
+There is no egress from the court but by its entrance. With a weird peep
+from the doorway, she watches for his looking back. He does not look
+back before disappearing, with a wavering step. She follows him, peeps
+from the court, sees him still faltering on without looking back, and
+holds him in view.
+
+He repairs to the back of Aldersgate Street, where a door immediately
+opens to his knocking. She crouches in another doorway, watching that
+one, and easily comprehending that he puts up temporarily at that house.
+Her patience is unexhausted by hours. For sustenance she can, and does,
+buy bread within a hundred yards, and milk as it is carried past her.
+
+He comes forth again at noon, having changed his dress, but carrying
+nothing in his hand, and having nothing carried for him. He is not going
+back into the country, therefore, just yet. She follows him a little
+way, hesitates, instantaneously turns confidently, and goes straight into
+the house he has quitted.
+
+‘Is the gentleman from Cloisterham indoors?
+
+‘Just gone out.’
+
+‘Unlucky. When does the gentleman return to Cloisterham?’
+
+‘At six this evening.’
+
+‘Bless ye and thank ye. May the Lord prosper a business where a civil
+question, even from a poor soul, is so civilly answered!’
+
+‘I’ll not miss ye twice!’ repeats the poor soul in the street, and not so
+civilly. ‘I lost ye last, where that omnibus you got into nigh your
+journey’s end plied betwixt the station and the place. I wasn’t so much
+as certain that you even went right on to the place. Now I know ye did.
+My gentleman from Cloisterham, I’ll be there before ye, and bide your
+coming. I’ve swore my oath that I’ll not miss ye twice!’
+
+Accordingly, that same evening the poor soul stands in Cloisterham High
+Street, looking at the many quaint gables of the Nuns’ House, and getting
+through the time as she best can until nine o’clock; at which hour she
+has reason to suppose that the arriving omnibus passengers may have some
+interest for her. The friendly darkness, at that hour, renders it easy
+for her to ascertain whether this be so or not; and it is so, for the
+passenger not to be missed twice arrives among the rest.
+
+‘Now let me see what becomes of you. Go on!’
+
+An observation addressed to the air, and yet it might be addressed to the
+passenger, so compliantly does he go on along the High Street until he
+comes to an arched gateway, at which he unexpectedly vanishes. The poor
+soul quickens her pace; is swift, and close upon him entering under the
+gateway; but only sees a postern staircase on one side of it, and on the
+other side an ancient vaulted room, in which a large-headed, gray-haired
+gentleman is writing, under the odd circumstances of sitting open to the
+thoroughfare and eyeing all who pass, as if he were toll-taker of the
+gateway: though the way is free.
+
+‘Halloa!’ he cries in a low voice, seeing her brought to a stand-still:
+‘who are you looking for?’
+
+‘There was a gentleman passed in here this minute, sir.’
+
+‘Of course there was. What do you want with him?’
+
+‘Where do he live, deary?’
+
+‘Live? Up that staircase.’
+
+‘Bless ye! Whisper. What’s his name, deary?’
+
+‘Surname Jasper, Christian name John. Mr. John Jasper.’
+
+‘Has he a calling, good gentleman?’
+
+‘Calling? Yes. Sings in the choir.’
+
+‘In the spire?’
+
+‘Choir.’
+
+‘What’s that?’
+
+Mr. Datchery rises from his papers, and comes to his doorstep. ‘Do you
+know what a cathedral is?’ he asks, jocosely.
+
+The woman nods.
+
+‘What is it?’
+
+She looks puzzled, casting about in her mind to find a definition, when
+it occurs to her that it is easier to point out the substantial object
+itself, massive against the dark-blue sky and the early stars.
+
+‘That’s the answer. Go in there at seven to-morrow morning, and you may
+see Mr. John Jasper, and hear him too.’
+
+‘Thank ye! Thank ye!’
+
+The burst of triumph in which she thanks him does not escape the notice
+of the single buffer of an easy temper living idly on his means. He
+glances at her; clasps his hands behind him, as the wont of such buffers
+is; and lounges along the echoing Precincts at her side.
+
+‘Or,’ he suggests, with a backward hitch of his head, ‘you can go up at
+once to Mr. Jasper’s rooms there.’
+
+The woman eyes him with a cunning smile, and shakes her head.
+
+‘O! you don’t want to speak to him?’
+
+She repeats her dumb reply, and forms with her lips a soundless ‘No.’
+
+‘You can admire him at a distance three times a day, whenever you like.
+It’s a long way to come for that, though.’
+
+The woman looks up quickly. If Mr. Datchery thinks she is to be so
+induced to declare where she comes from, he is of a much easier temper
+than she is. But she acquits him of such an artful thought, as he
+lounges along, like the chartered bore of the city, with his uncovered
+gray hair blowing about, and his purposeless hands rattling the loose
+money in the pockets of his trousers.
+
+The chink of the money has an attraction for her greedy ears. ‘Wouldn’t
+you help me to pay for my traveller’s lodging, dear gentleman, and to pay
+my way along? I am a poor soul, I am indeed, and troubled with a
+grievous cough.’
+
+‘You know the travellers’ lodging, I perceive, and are making directly
+for it,’ is Mr. Datchery’s bland comment, still rattling his loose money.
+‘Been here often, my good woman?’
+
+‘Once in all my life.’
+
+‘Ay, ay?’
+
+They have arrived at the entrance to the Monks’ Vineyard. An appropriate
+remembrance, presenting an exemplary model for imitation, is revived in
+the woman’s mind by the sight of the place. She stops at the gate, and
+says energetically:
+
+‘By this token, though you mayn’t believe it, That a young gentleman gave
+me three-and-sixpence as I was coughing my breath away on this very
+grass. I asked him for three-and-sixpence, and he gave it me.’
+
+‘Wasn’t it a little cool to name your sum?’ hints Mr. Datchery, still
+rattling. ‘Isn’t it customary to leave the amount open? Mightn’t it
+have had the appearance, to the young gentleman—only the appearance—that
+he was rather dictated to?’
+
+‘Look’ee here, deary,’ she replies, in a confidential and persuasive
+tone, ‘I wanted the money to lay it out on a medicine as does me good,
+and as I deal in. I told the young gentleman so, and he gave it me, and
+I laid it out honest to the last brass farden. I want to lay out the
+same sum in the same way now; and if you’ll give it me, I’ll lay it out
+honest to the last brass farden again, upon my soul!’
+
+‘What’s the medicine?’
+
+‘I’ll be honest with you beforehand, as well as after. It’s opium.’
+
+Mr. Datchery, with a sudden change of countenance, gives her a sudden
+look.
+
+‘It’s opium, deary. Neither more nor less. And it’s like a human
+creetur so far, that you always hear what can be said against it, but
+seldom what can be said in its praise.’
+
+Mr. Datchery begins very slowly to count out the sum demanded of him.
+Greedily watching his hands, she continues to hold forth on the great
+example set him.
+
+‘It was last Christmas Eve, just arter dark, the once that I was here
+afore, when the young gentleman gave me the three-and-six.’ Mr. Datchery
+stops in his counting, finds he has counted wrong, shakes his money
+together, and begins again.
+
+‘And the young gentleman’s name,’ she adds, ‘was Edwin.’
+
+Mr. Datchery drops some money, stoops to pick it up, and reddens with the
+exertion as he asks:
+
+‘How do you know the young gentleman’s name?’
+
+‘I asked him for it, and he told it me. I only asked him the two
+questions, what was his Chris’en name, and whether he’d a sweetheart?
+And he answered, Edwin, and he hadn’t.’
+
+Mr. Datchery pauses with the selected coins in his hand, rather as if he
+were falling into a brown study of their value, and couldn’t bear to part
+with them. The woman looks at him distrustfully, and with her anger
+brewing for the event of his thinking better of the gift; but he bestows
+it on her as if he were abstracting his mind from the sacrifice, and with
+many servile thanks she goes her way.
+
+John Jasper’s lamp is kindled, and his lighthouse is shining when Mr.
+Datchery returns alone towards it. As mariners on a dangerous voyage,
+approaching an iron-bound coast, may look along the beams of the warning
+light to the haven lying beyond it that may never be reached, so Mr.
+Datchery’s wistful gaze is directed to this beacon, and beyond.
+
+His object in now revisiting his lodging is merely to put on the hat
+which seems so superfluous an article in his wardrobe. It is half-past
+ten by the Cathedral clock when he walks out into the Precincts again; he
+lingers and looks about him, as though, the enchanted hour when Mr.
+Durdles may be stoned home having struck, he had some expectation of
+seeing the Imp who is appointed to the mission of stoning him.
+
+In effect, that Power of Evil is abroad. Having nothing living to stone
+at the moment, he is discovered by Mr. Datchery in the unholy office of
+stoning the dead, through the railings of the churchyard. The Imp finds
+this a relishing and piquing pursuit; firstly, because their
+resting-place is announced to be sacred; and secondly, because the tall
+headstones are sufficiently like themselves, on their beat in the dark,
+to justify the delicious fancy that they are hurt when hit.
+
+Mr. Datchery hails with him: ‘Halloa, Winks!’
+
+He acknowledges the hail with: ‘Halloa, Dick!’ Their acquaintance
+seemingly having been established on a familiar footing.
+
+‘But, I say,’ he remonstrates, ‘don’t yer go a-making my name public. I
+never means to plead to no name, mind yer. When they says to me in the
+Lock-up, a-going to put me down in the book, “What’s your name?” I says
+to them, “Find out.” Likewise when they says, “What’s your religion?” I
+says, “Find out.”’
+
+Which, it may be observed in passing, it would be immensely difficult for
+the State, however statistical, to do.
+
+‘Asides which,’ adds the boy, ‘there ain’t no family of Winkses.’
+
+‘I think there must be.’
+
+‘Yer lie, there ain’t. The travellers give me the name on account of my
+getting no settled sleep and being knocked up all night; whereby I gets
+one eye roused open afore I’ve shut the other. That’s what Winks means.
+Deputy’s the nighest name to indict me by: but yer wouldn’t catch me
+pleading to that, neither.’
+
+‘Deputy be it always, then. We two are good friends; eh, Deputy?’
+
+‘Jolly good.’
+
+‘I forgave you the debt you owed me when we first became acquainted, and
+many of my sixpences have come your way since; eh, Deputy?’
+
+‘Ah! And what’s more, yer ain’t no friend o’ Jarsper’s. What did he go
+a-histing me off my legs for?’
+
+‘What indeed! But never mind him now. A shilling of mine is going your
+way to-night, Deputy. You have just taken in a lodger I have been
+speaking to; an infirm woman with a cough.’
+
+‘Puffer,’ assents Deputy, with a shrewd leer of recognition, and smoking
+an imaginary pipe, with his head very much on one side and his eyes very
+much out of their places: ‘Hopeum Puffer.’
+
+‘What is her name?’
+
+‘’Er Royal Highness the Princess Puffer.’
+
+‘She has some other name than that; where does she live?’
+
+‘Up in London. Among the Jacks.’
+
+‘The sailors?’
+
+‘I said so; Jacks; and Chayner men: and hother Knifers.’
+
+‘I should like to know, through you, exactly where she lives.’
+
+‘All right. Give us ’old.’
+
+A shilling passes; and, in that spirit of confidence which should pervade
+all business transactions between principals of honour, this piece of
+business is considered done.
+
+‘But here’s a lark!’ cries Deputy. ‘Where did yer think ‘Er Royal
+Highness is a-goin’ to to-morrow morning? Blest if she ain’t a-goin’ to
+the KIN-FREE-DER-EL!’ He greatly prolongs the word in his ecstasy, and
+smites his leg, and doubles himself up in a fit of shrill laughter.
+
+‘How do you know that, Deputy?’
+
+‘Cos she told me so just now. She said she must be hup and hout o’
+purpose. She ses, “Deputy, I must ’ave a early wash, and make myself as
+swell as I can, for I’m a-goin’ to take a turn at the KIN-FREE-DER-EL!”’
+He separates the syllables with his former zest, and, not finding his
+sense of the ludicrous sufficiently relieved by stamping about on the
+pavement, breaks into a slow and stately dance, perhaps supposed to be
+performed by the Dean.
+
+Mr. Datchery receives the communication with a well-satisfied though
+pondering face, and breaks up the conference. Returning to his quaint
+lodging, and sitting long over the supper of bread-and-cheese and salad
+and ale which Mrs. Tope has left prepared for him, he still sits when his
+supper is finished. At length he rises, throws open the door of a corner
+cupboard, and refers to a few uncouth chalked strokes on its inner side.
+
+‘I like,’ says Mr. Datchery, ‘the old tavern way of keeping scores.
+Illegible except to the scorer. The scorer not committed, the scored
+debited with what is against him. Hum; ha! A very small score this; a
+very poor score!’
+
+He sighs over the contemplation of its poverty, takes a bit of chalk from
+one of the cupboard shelves, and pauses with it in his hand, uncertain
+what addition to make to the account.
+
+‘I think a moderate stroke,’ he concludes, ‘is all I am justified in
+scoring up;’ so, suits the action to the word, closes the cupboard, and
+goes to bed.
+
+A brilliant morning shines on the old city. Its antiquities and ruins
+are surpassingly beautiful, with a lusty ivy gleaming in the sun, and the
+rich trees waving in the balmy air. Changes of glorious light from
+moving boughs, songs of birds, scents from gardens, woods, and fields—or,
+rather, from the one great garden of the whole cultivated island in its
+yielding time—penetrate into the Cathedral, subdue its earthy odour, and
+preach the Resurrection and the Life. The cold stone tombs of centuries
+ago grow warm; and flecks of brightness dart into the sternest marble
+corners of the building, fluttering there like wings.
+
+Comes Mr. Tope with his large keys, and yawningly unlocks and sets open.
+Come Mrs. Tope and attendant sweeping sprites. Come, in due time,
+organist and bellows-boy, peeping down from the red curtains in the loft,
+fearlessly flapping dust from books up at that remote elevation, and
+whisking it from stops and pedals. Come sundry rooks, from various
+quarters of the sky, back to the great tower; who may be presumed to
+enjoy vibration, and to know that bell and organ are going to give it
+them. Come a very small and straggling congregation indeed: chiefly from
+Minor Canon Corner and the Precincts. Come Mr. Crisparkle, fresh and
+bright; and his ministering brethren, not quite so fresh and bright.
+Come the Choir in a hurry (always in a hurry, and struggling into their
+nightgowns at the last moment, like children shirking bed), and comes
+John Jasper leading their line. Last of all comes Mr. Datchery into a
+stall, one of a choice empty collection very much at his service, and
+glancing about him for Her Royal Highness the Princess Puffer.
+
+The service is pretty well advanced before Mr. Datchery can discern Her
+Royal Highness. But by that time he has made her out, in the shade. She
+is behind a pillar, carefully withdrawn from the Choir-master’s view, but
+regards him with the closest attention. All unconscious of her presence,
+he chants and sings. She grins when he is most musically fervid,
+and—yes, Mr. Datchery sees her do it!—shakes her fist at him behind the
+pillar’s friendly shelter.
+
+Mr. Datchery looks again, to convince himself. Yes, again! As ugly and
+withered as one of the fantastic carvings on the under brackets of the
+stall seats, as malignant as the Evil One, as hard as the big brass eagle
+holding the sacred books upon his wings (and, according to the sculptor’s
+representation of his ferocious attributes, not at all converted by
+them), she hugs herself in her lean arms, and then shakes both fists at
+the leader of the Choir.
+
+And at that moment, outside the grated door of the Choir, having eluded
+the vigilance of Mr. Tope by shifty resources in which he is an adept,
+Deputy peeps, sharp-eyed, through the bars, and stares astounded from the
+threatener to the threatened.
+
+The service comes to an end, and the servitors disperse to breakfast.
+Mr. Datchery accosts his last new acquaintance outside, when the Choir
+(as much in a hurry to get their bedgowns off, as they were but now to
+get them on) have scuffled away.
+
+‘Well, mistress. Good morning. You have seen him?’
+
+‘_I’ve_ seen him, deary; _I’ve_ seen him!’
+
+‘And you know him?’
+
+‘Know him! Better far than all the Reverend Parsons put together know
+him.’
+
+Mrs. Tope’s care has spread a very neat, clean breakfast ready for her
+lodger. Before sitting down to it, he opens his corner-cupboard door;
+takes his bit of chalk from its shelf; adds one thick line to the score,
+extending from the top of the cupboard door to the bottom; and then falls
+to with an appetite.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX: FRAGMENT OF “THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD”
+
+
+When Forster was just finishing his biography of Dickens, he found among
+the leaves of one of the novelist’s other manuscripts certain loose slips
+in his writing, “on paper only half the size of that used for the tale,
+so cramped, interlined, and blotted as to be nearly illegible.” These
+proved, upon examination, to contain a suggested chapter for _Edwin
+Drood_, in which Sapsea, the auctioneer, appears as the principal figure,
+surrounded by a group of characters new to the story. That chapter,
+being among the last things Dickens wrote, seems to contain so much of
+interest that it may be well to reprint it here.—ED.
+
+
+
+HOW MR. SAPSEA CEASED TO BE A MEMBER OF THE EIGHT CLUB
+TOLD BY HIMSELF
+
+
+Wishing to take the air, I proceeded by a circuitous route to the Club,
+it being our weekly night of meeting. I found that we mustered our full
+strength. We were enrolled under the denomination of the Eight Club. We
+were eight in number; we met at eight o’clock during eight months of the
+year; we played eight games of four-handed cribbage, at eightpence the
+game; our frugal supper was composed of eight rolls, eight mutton chops,
+eight pork sausages, eight baked potatoes, eight marrow-bones, with eight
+toasts, and eight bottles of ale. There may, or may not, be a certain
+harmony of colour in the ruling idea of this (to adopt a phrase of our
+lively neighbours) reunion. It was a little idea of mine.
+
+ [Picture: Facsimile of a page of the manuscript of “The Mystery of Edwin
+ Drood”]
+
+A somewhat popular member of the Eight Club, was a member by the name of
+Kimber. By profession, a dancing-master. A commonplace, hopeful sort of
+man, wholly destitute of dignity or knowledge of the world.
+
+As I entered the Club-room, Kimber was making the remark: “And he still
+half-believes him to be very high in the Church.”
+
+In the act of hanging up my hat on the eighth peg by the door, I caught
+Kimber’s visual ray. He lowered it, and passed a remark on the next
+change of the moon. I did not take particular notice of this at the
+moment, because the world was often pleased to be a little shy of
+ecclesiastical topics in my presence. For I felt that I was picked out
+(though perhaps only through a coincidence) to a certain extent to
+represent what I call our glorious constitution in Church and State. The
+phrase may be objected to by cautious minds; but I own to it as mine. I
+threw it off in argument some little time back. I said: “OUR GLORIOUS
+CONSTITUTION in CHURCH and STATE.”
+
+Another member of the Eight Club was Peartree; also member of the Royal
+College of Surgeons. Mr. Peartree is not accountable to me for his
+opinions, and I say no more of them here than that he attends the poor
+gratis whenever they want him, and is not the parish doctor. Mr.
+Peartree may justify it to the grasp of _his_ mind thus to do his
+republican utmost to bring an appointed officer into contempt. Suffice
+it that Mr. Peartree can never justify it to the grasp of _mine_.
+
+Between Peartree and Kimber there was a sickly sort of feeble-minded
+alliance. It came under my particular notice when I sold off Kimber by
+auction. (Goods taken in execution.) He was a widower in a white
+under-waistcoat, and slight shoes with bows, and had two daughters not
+ill-looking. Indeed the reverse. Both daughters taught dancing in
+scholastic establishments for Young Ladies—had done so at Mrs. Sapsea’s;
+nay, Twinkleton’s—and both, in giving lessons, presented the unwomanly
+spectacle of having little fiddles tucked under their chins. In spite of
+which, the younger one might, if I am correctly informed—I will raise the
+veil so far as to say I KNOW she might—have soared for life from this
+degrading taint, but for having the class of mind allotted to what I call
+the common herd, and being so incredibly devoid of veneration as to
+become painfully ludicrous.
+
+When I sold off Kimber without reserve, Peartree (as poor as he can hold
+together) had several prime household lots knocked down to him. I am not
+to be blinded; and of course it was as plain to me what he was going to
+do with them, as it was that he was a brown hulking sort of revolutionary
+subject who had been in India with the soldiers, and ought (for the sake
+of society) to have his neck broke. I saw the lots shortly afterwards in
+Kimber’s lodgings—through the window—and I easily made out that there had
+been a sneaking pretence of lending them till better times. A man with a
+smaller knowledge of the world than myself might have been led to suspect
+that Kimber had held back money from his creditors, and fraudulently
+bought the goods. But, besides that I knew for certain he had no money,
+I knew that this would involve a species of forethought not to be made
+compatible with the frivolity of a caperer, inoculating other people with
+capering, for his bread.
+
+As it was the first time I had seen either of those two since the sale, I
+kept myself in what I call Abeyance. When selling him up, I had
+delivered a few remarks—shall I say a little homily?—concerning Kimber,
+which the world did regard as more than usually worth notice. I had come
+up into my pulpit, it was said, uncommonly like—and a murmur of
+recognition had repeated his (I will not name whose) title, before I
+spoke. I had then gone on to say that all present would find, in the
+first page of the catalogue that was lying before them, in the last
+paragraph before the first lot, the following words: “Sold in pursuance
+of a writ of execution issued by a creditor.” I had then proceeded to
+remind my friends, that however frivolous, not to say contemptible, the
+business by which a man got his goods together, still his goods were as
+dear to him, and as cheap to society (if sold without reserve), as though
+his pursuits had been of a character that would bear serious
+contemplation. I had then divided my text (if I may be allowed so to
+call it) into three heads: firstly, Sold; secondly, In pursuance of a
+writ of execution; thirdly, Issued by a creditor; with a few moral
+reflections on each, and winding up with, “Now to the first lot” in a
+manner that was complimented when I afterwards mingled with my hearers.
+
+So, not being certain on what terms I and Kimber stood, I was grave, I
+was chilling. Kimber, however, moving to me, I moved to Kimber. (I was
+the creditor who had issued the writ. Not that it matters.)
+
+“I was alluding, Mr. Sapsea,” said Kimber, “to a stranger who entered
+into conversation with me in the street as I came to the Club. He had
+been speaking to you just before, it seemed, by the churchyard; and
+though you had told him who you were, I could hardly persuade him that
+you were not high in the Church.”
+
+“Idiot?” said Peartree.
+
+“Ass!” said Kimber.
+
+“Idiot and Ass!” said the other five members.
+
+“Idiot and Ass, gentlemen,” I remonstrated, looking around me, “are
+strong expressions to apply to a young man of good appearance and
+address.” My generosity was roused; I own it.
+
+“You’ll admit that he must be a Fool,” said Peartree.
+
+“You can’t deny that he must be a Blockhead,” said Kimber.
+
+Their tone of disgust amounted to being offensive. Why should the young
+man be so calumniated? What had he done? He had only made an innocent
+and natural mistake. I controlled my generous indignation, and said so.
+
+“Natural?” repeated Kimber. “_He’s_ a Natural!”
+
+The remaining six members of the Eight Club laughed unanimously. It
+stung me. It was a scornful laugh. My anger was roused in behalf of an
+absent, friendless stranger. I rose (for I had been sitting down).
+
+“Gentlemen,” I said with dignity, “I will not remain one of this Club
+allowing opprobrium to be cast on an unoffending person in his absence.
+I will not so violate what I call the sacred rites of hospitality.
+Gentlemen, until you know how to behave yourselves better, I leave you.
+Gentlemen, until then I withdraw, from this place of meeting, whatever
+personal qualifications I may have brought into it. Gentlemen, until
+then you cease to be the Eight Club, and must make the best you can of
+becoming the Seven.”
+
+I put on my hat and retired. As I went down stairs I distinctly heard
+them give a suppressed cheer. Such is the power of demeanour and
+knowledge of mankind. I had forced it out of them.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Whom should I meet in the street, within a few yards of the door of the
+inn where the Club was held, but the self-same young man whoso cause I
+had felt it my duty so warmly—and I will add so disinterestedly—to take
+up.
+
+“Is it Mr. Sapsea,” he said doubtfully, “or is it—”
+
+“It is Mr. Sapsea,” I replied.
+
+“Pardon me, Mr. Sapsea; you appear warm, sir.”
+
+“I have been warm,” I said, “and on your account.” Having stated the
+circumstances at some length (my generosity almost overpowered him), I
+asked him his name.
+
+“Mr. Sapsea,” he answered, looking down, “your penetration is so acute,
+your glance into the souls of your fellow men is so penetrating, that if
+I was hardly enough to deny that my name is Poker, what would it avail
+me?”
+
+I don’t know that I had quite exactly made out to a fraction that his
+name _was_ Poker, but I daresay I had been pretty near doing it.
+
+“Well, well,” said I, trying to put him at his ease by nodding my head in
+a soothing way. “Your name is Poker, and there is no harm in being named
+Poker.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Sapsea!” cried the young man, in a very well-behaved manner.
+“Bless you for those words!” He then, as if ashamed of having given way
+to his feelings, looked down again.
+
+“Come Poker,” said I, “let me hear more about you. Tell me. Where are
+you going to, Poker? and where do you come from?”
+
+“Ah Mr. Sapsea!” exclaimed the young man. “Disguise from you is
+impossible. You know already that I come from somewhere, and am going
+somewhere else. If I was to deny it, what would it avail me?”
+
+“Then don’t deny it,” was my remark.
+
+“Or,” pursued Poker, in a kind of despondent rapture, “or if I was to
+deny that I came to this town to see and hear you, sir, what would it
+avail me? Or if I was to deny—”
projects / gender-roles-text-analysis.git / blobdiff