The Mystery of Edwin Drood
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.
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