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

chimneypiece. 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.”

[Illustration: 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.