The Mystery of Edwin Drood
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 nod 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