The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens (red scrolls of magic .txt) 📕

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.