The Mystery of Edwin Drood
by Charles Dickens
Contents
CHAPTER I. THE DAWN CHAPTER II. A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO CHAPTER III. THE NUNS’ HOUSE CHAPTER IV. MR. SAPSEA CHAPTER V. MR. DURDLES AND FRIEND CHAPTER VI. PHILANTHROPY IN MINOR CANON CORNER CHAPTER VII. MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE CHAPTER VIII. DAGGERS DRAWN CHAPTER IX. BIRDS IN THE BUSH CHAPTER X. SMOOTHING THE WAY CHAPTER XI. A PICTURE AND A RING CHAPTER XII. A NIGHT WITH DURDLES CHAPTER XIII. BOTH AT THEIR BEST CHAPTER XIV. WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN? CHAPTER XV. IMPEACHED CHAPTER XVI. DEVOTED CHAPTER XVII. PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL AND UNPROFESSIONAL CHAPTER XVIII. A SETTLER IN CLOISTERHAM CHAPTER XIX. SHADOW ON THE SUN-DIAL CHAPTER XX. A FLIGHT CHAPTER XXI. A RECOGNITION CHAPTER XXII. A GRITTY STATE OF THINGS COMES ON CHAPTER XXIII. THE DAWN AGAIN
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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 eye-glass 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.
[Illustration: 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 figure, 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.”
“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 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.
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. Otherwise, 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.
[Illustration: 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 an 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.”
[Illustration: 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 moonlit 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.
[Illustration: “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.”
[Illustration: 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 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 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 way 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 doorsteps, 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.”
[Illustration: 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!”
[Illustration: 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 chimneypots 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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 whose 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—’
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.
[Illustration: 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.
CAPITOLO I.
ALBA
Una antica torre della cattedrale inglese? Come può esistere una tale torre qui! Quella famosa torre grigia, massiccia e quadrata della vecchia cattedrale. Come può trovarsi in questo luogo? Non c’è alcun filo di ferro arrugginito visibile nell’aria, da nessuna angolazione possibile. Quale è allora la causa di questa illusione? Forse è stata eretta per ordine del Sultano, per impalare uno dopo l’altro una banda di predoni turchi. Si sentono i suoni dei cimbali mentre il Sultano si avvia verso il suo palazzo in lunga processione: diecimila scimitarre lampeggiano al sole, e trentamila danzatrici spargono fiori lungo il percorso. Poi seguono elefanti bianchi bardati in mille colori splendenti, insieme a un numero infinito di servitori. Eppure la torre della cattedrale continua ad ergersi sullo sfondo. Non può esistere davvero lì. E nessuna figura contorta si trova su quel filo di ferro arrugginito. Fermatevi! Forse quel filo è così basso da essere solo un pezzo di ferraglia arrugginita in cima a un vecchio letto rovesciato? Bisogna dedicare almeno un momento di riflessione a questa possibilità.
Tremando dalla testa ai piedi, l’uomo il cui cervello, frammentato e disordinato, si è finalmente ricomposto in modo strano e fantastico, si alza lentamente, appoggia il proprio corpo tremante sulle braccia e guarda intorno. Si trova in una stanza piccola, squallida e angusta. Attraverso la tenda logora della finestra, la luce dell’alba filtra da un cortile miserabile. È sdraiato, ancora vestito, su un grande letto disordinato, il cui telaio ha ormai ceduto sotto il suo peso. Accanto a lui, anch’essi vestiti e sdraiati sul letto, ma non lungo il suo stesso lato, ci sono un cinese, un lascar e una donna emaciata. I primi due sono addormentati o in uno stato di stordimento; la donna soffia su un qualche tipo di pipa per accenderla. Mentre soffia, nascondendo con la sua mano magra la fiamma rossastra della pipa, essa funge da lampada nella penombra del mattino, permettendogli di vedere ciò che c’è intorno a lui.
“Un altro?”, dice questa donna con un sussurro querulo e tremolante. “Devo averne un altro?”
Si guarda intorno, tenendosi la fronte con la mano.
“Hai fumato ben cinque sigarette da quando sei arrivato a mezzanotte,” continua la donna, lamentandosi in modo cronico. “Povera me. Mi fa così male la testa. Quei due sono arrivati dopo di te. Ah, povera me. Il business va male, davvero male! Ci sono pochi cinesi nei porti, ancora meno indiani, e nessuna nave che arrivi. Ecco un’altra sigaretta pronta per te. Te ne ricorderai, vero? Il prezzo di mercato è davvero esorbitante in questo momento: nemmeno tre scellini e sei pence per una sigaretta! E ricorderai anche che solo io (e Jack il cinese dall’altra parte della strada; ma lui non sa farlo altrettanto bene di me) conosco la vera ricetta per prepararla. Pagherai quindi il giusto prezzo, vero?”
Mentre parla soffia dentro il tubo; di tanto in tanto, facendo schiuma, ne inala una grande quantità del contenuto.
“O mio Dio, o mio Dio, i miei polmoni sono deboli, molto malati! È quasi pronto per te, caro. Ah, povera me, la mia mano trema così tanto che sembra voler cadere. Ti vedo arrivare e penso: ‘Devo prepararne un altro per lui; deve ricordarsi del prezzo di mercato dell’oppio e pagare correttamente, ’ Oh, povera mia testa. Costruisco le mie pipe usando vecchi flaconi d’inchiostro da dieci penny. Ecco una di queste. Metto il bocchino in questo modo, prendo il miscelatore da questo ditale con questa piccola cucchiaia a forma di corno. E così preparo la miscela. Ah, poveri i miei nervi. Prima di dedicarmi a questo lavoro, sono stato ubriaco per sedici anni. Ma questo non mi fa male affatto. E elimina la fame, proprio come se mangiassi del cibo vero, ”
Gli porge la pipa ormai quasi vuota, poi si sdraia di nuovo, girandosi sulla schiena.
Si alza faticosamente dal letto, posa la pipa sul camino, tira indietro la tenda strappata e guarda con disgusto i suoi tre compagni. Nota che la donna si è fumata l’oppio fino a assumere un aspetto strano, simile a quello del cinese. Le sue guance, i suoi occhi, le sue tempie, nonché il suo colore di pelle, sono esattamente gli stessi di quelli dell’uomo. Il suddetto cinese, in preda alle convulsioni, lotta con uno dei suoi numerosi dèi o demoni, e ringhia terribilmente. Il Lascar ride e bava dalla bocca; la padrona di casa, invece, rimane immobile.
[Illustrazione: Nella Corte
“Quali visioni può avere lei?” riflette l’uomo sveglio, mentre le gira il viso verso di sé e lo guarda attentamente. “Visioni di molte macellerie, di osterie. E molto denaro? Di un aumento di clienti orribili. E di questo orrendo letto rimesso in piedi. E di questo terribile cortile ripulito? Con quanta quantità di oppio possa assumere, cosa potrebbe mai raggiungere al di sopra di tutto ciò?! Eh?”
Si china in avanti per ascoltare i suoi mormorii.
“Incomprensibile!”
Mentre osserva quei movimenti spasmodici e improvvisi che emergono dal suo viso e dalle sue membra, come fulmini intermittenti da un cielo buio, una sorta di “contagio” sembra prendere possesso di lui: al punto che è costretto a ritirarsi in una poltrona accanto al camino – forse proprio posta lì per situazioni del genere – e sedersi lì, tenendosi forte, fino a quando non riesce a dominare questo spirito impuro dell’imitazione.
Poi torna indietro, si lancia sul cinese e, afferrandolo con entrambe le mani per la gola, lo gira violentemente sul letto. Il cinese si aggrappa a quelle mani aggressive, resiste, ansima e protesta.
“Che ne dici?”
Un attimo di silenzio, pieno di attenzione.
“Incomprensibile!”
Lentamente allentando la presa mentre ascoltava quel gergo incoerente con un’espressione preoccupata, si girò verso il Lascar e lo trascinò via sul pavimento. Mentre cadeva, il Lascar assunse una posizione semieretta, fissandolo con occhi minacciosi e agitando furiosamente le braccia; estrasse poi un pugnale fantasma. A quel punto divenne evidente che la donna aveva preso in custodia quell’arma, per motivi di sicurezza: anche lei si alzò e iniziò a trattenerlo e rimproverarlo; il pugnale era visibile nella sua gonna, non nella sua. Alla fine, entrambi si sdraiarono nuovamente, uno accanto all’altro.
C’è stato abbastanza chiacchiericcio e rumore tra di loro, ma senza alcun risultato concreto. Ogni volta che veniva pronunciata una parola chiara, essa non aveva alcun senso né logica. Pertanto, “incomprensibile!” è ancora il commento dell’osservatore, accompagnato da un cenno di assenso rassicurante e da un sorriso cupo. Poi mette del denaro d’argento sul tavolo, prende il cappello, si dirige verso le scale rotte, saluta con un “buongiorno” il portiere che dorme in una cuccia nera sotto le scale, e se ne va.
Quel pomeriggio stesso, l’enorme torre quadrata grigia di un’antica Cattedrale si erge davanti agli occhi di un viaggiatore stanco e annoiato. Le campane suonano per la funzione vespertina quotidiana, e lui, a giudicare dalla sua fretta nel raggiungere l’aperta porta della Cattedrale, sembra proprio intenzionato ad assistervi. Il coro si sta infilando frettolosamente nelle sue vesti bianche, quando lui arriva tra loro, indossa a sua volta la propria veste e si unisce alla processione che si avvia verso la funzione. Poi il sacrista chiude le porte sbarrate di ferro che separano l’altare dal resto della cattedrale, e tutti i partecipanti alla processione si nascondono il viso; in quel momento, le parole del canto “Quando l’uomo malvagio, ” risuonano tra gli archi e le travi del soffitto, suscitando un cupo rimbombo.
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.
capitolo II
UN DECANO. E ANCHE UN CAPITOLO
Chiunque abbia osservato quel volatile tranquillo e “clerico”, il corvo, forse avrà notato che, quando si dirige verso casa al tramonto, in compagnia di altri corvi, due di loro si staccano improvvisamente dal gruppo, tornano indietro per un tratto e poi si fermano a volare in cerchio; questo comportamento potrebbe far pensare che abbia una qualche importanza nascosta per la “città-stato”, tanto da spingere questi due corvi a fingere di aver rinunciato a ogni legame con essa.
Allo stesso modo, dopo la fine della cerimonia nella vecchia Cattedrale con la sua torre quadrata, il coro si disperse di nuovo, e diverse persone venerabili, dall’aspetto imponente, si allontanarono. Due di queste ultime tornarono indietro e camminarono insieme nel vicolo silenzioso.
Non solo la giornata sta volgendo al termine, ma anche l’anno. Il sole basso sul cielo appare rovente eppure freddo dietro le rovine del monastero; la vite rampicante sulla parete della Cattedrale ha fatto cadere metà delle sue foglie di un rosso scuro sui gradini. Questa pomeriggia è piovuto, e un brivido invernale percorre le pozzanghere formatesi sulle pietre crepate e irregolari; gli enormi olmi perdono foglie a pioggia, che si accumulano in mucchi spessi intorno a loro. Alcune di queste foglie, con un movimento timido, cercano rifugio all’interno dell’arco basso del portone della Cattedrale; ma due uomini che ne escono le scacciano via con i piedi; dopo averlo fatto, uno dei due chiude la porta con una bella chiave, mentre l’altro se ne va portando con sé un libro di musica.
“Mr. Jasper, era davvero lui, Tope?”
“Sì, signor Dean.”
è rimasto fino a tardi.
“Sì, signor Dean. Sono rimasta con lui, Vostra Reverenza. Sta un po’ male.”
“Dì ‘preso’, Tope, al Decano,” intervenne il giovane pedone con voce bassa, aggiungendo quel tocco di correzione, come per dire: “Puoi permetterti errori grammaticali con i laici o con il clero meno importante, ma non con il Decano.”
Il signor Tope, capo custode e organizzatore di escursioni, abituato ad essere trattato con grande rispetto dalle squadre partecipanti alle gite, rifiuta in modo silenzioso e sprezzante l’idea che qualcuno possa avergli fatto qualche proposta.
“E quando e come è stato portato via il signor Jasper, perché, come ha osservato il signor Crisparkle, è meglio dire ‘portato via’, ” ripete il Decano; “quando e come è stato portato via il signor Jasper, ”
“Prenduto, signore,” mormora rispettosamente Tope.
“—Poveramente, Tope?”
“Ma signore, il signor Jasper è stato proprio così, ”
“Non direi che ‘quello ha respirato’, Toppe”, intervenne il signor Crisparkle con lo stesso tono di prima. “Non è un’espressione inglese, per il Decano, almeno.”
“Respirare fino a quel punto”, osserva il Decano in tono condiscendente (non lusingato da questo omaggio indiretto), “sarebbe preferibile”.
“Il respiro del signor Jasper era davvero molto affannoso, ” Così, in modo discreto, il signor Tope descrive quanto accadde, “Quando entrò, gli risultò estremamente difficile estrarre le sue note; forse questo fu il motivo per cui poco dopo ebbe un piccolo collasso. La sua memoria iniziava a vacillare, ” Il signor Tope, fissando il reverendo signor Crisparkle, pronuncia queste parole come se sfidasse chiunque a migliorarle, “E una sorta di stordimento e vertigini lo invasero, cose mai viste prima. Anche se lui stesso non sembrava darci troppo peso. Comunque, dopo un po’ e con un po’ d’acqua, riuscì a riprendersi.” Il signor Tope ripete quelle parole, sottolineandone l’enfasi, come per dire: “Poiché ho già avuto successo, ci riuscirò di nuovo.”
“E il signor Jasper è tornato a casa da solo, vero?” chiese il Decano.
“Vostra Reverenza, è tornato a casa da solo. Sono felice di vedere che abbia riacceso il suo focolare, perché fa freddo dopo la pioggia. Quest pomeriggio la Cattedrale aveva un’atmosfera umida e fredda, e lui tremava molto.”
Tutti e tre guardano verso un vecchio portone di pietra che attraversa il cortile, con un passaggio ad arco che vi passa sotto. Attraverso la sua finestra a griglia, una fiamma illumina la scena ormai avvolta nell’oscurità, proiettando ombre sulle piante di edera e rampicanti che coprono la facciata dell’edificio. Mentre il profondo suono della campana della Cattedrale annuncia l’ora, una brezza leggera attraversa quei luoghi, come un eco di quel suono solenne che risuona tra tombe e torri, nicchie rovinate e statue danneggiate.
“Il nipote del signor Jasper è con lui?” chiede il Decano.
“No, signore,” rispose il custode, “ma era prevedibile. C’è la sua ombra solitaria tra le due finestre: quella che guarda da questa parte e quella che si affaccia sulla strada principale. Ora sta tirando giù le sue tende.”
“Beh, beh,” disse il Decano, con un tono vivace che sembrava voler interrompere quella breve conversazione, “spero che il signor Jasper non abbia troppa attaccamento per suo nipote. I nostri affetti, per quanto lodevoli, in questo mondo effimero, non dovrebbero mai dominarci; dobbiamo essere noi a guidarli. Il suono della campanella che annuncia la cena mi ricorda piacevolmente che è ora di mangiare. Forse, signor Crisparkle, prima di andare a casa, potreste dare un’occhiata a Jasper, ”
“Certamente, signor Dean. E dicagli che ho avuto la gentilezza di desiderare sapere come stesse.”
“Ah sì; fallo pure, certo. Volevo sapere come stesse. Certo che sì. Volevo davvero sapere come stesse.”
Con un piacevole tono di condiscendenza, il Decano si sistema il suo stravagante cappello nel modo in cui un Decano di buon umore potrebbe farlo, e dirige i suoi eleganti stivali verso la accogliente sala da pranzo della vecchia casa in mattoni rossi dove al momento “risiede” insieme a sua moglie e a sua figlia.
Il signor Crisparkle, canonico minore, bello e sorridente, sempre pronto a tuffarsi nelle profonde acque dei fiumi della zona circostante; il signor Crisparkle, canonico minore, mattiniero, appassionato di musica classica, allegro, gentile, di buon carattere, socievole, soddisfatto e pieno di vitalità; il signor Crisparkle, canonico minore e bravo uomo, che recentemente ricopriva la carica di “istruttore” lungo le principali strade pagane della regione, ma che poi, grazie al sostegno di un mecenate grato per un figlio ben educato, è stato promosso alla sua attuale posizione cristiana; si dirige ora verso il cancello di casa, sulla via del suo tè mattutino.
“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.”
“Mi dispiace molto sentire da Tope che non ti senti bene, Jasper.”
“Ah, niente, davvero niente!”
“Sembri un po’ stanco, ”
“Davvero? O, non credo proprio. Inoltre, non mi sento così. Sospetto che Tope abbia esagerato un po’. Dopo tutto, è il suo lavoro cercare di sfruttare al massimo tutto ciò che riguarda la Cattedrale, capisci?”
“Posso dire al Decano. Chiamo appositamente dal Decano, che siete tutti di nuovo a posto, vero?”
La risposta, accompagnata da un leggero sorriso, è: “Certamente; con i miei saluti e ringraziamenti al Decano.”
“Sono felice di sentire che aspettate il giovane Drood.”
“Aspetto quel caro ragazzo da un momento all’altro.”
“Ah! Lui ti farà più bene di un medico, Jasper.”
“Meglio di una dozzina di medici. Perché lo amo molto, e non amo i medici, né le cose che hanno a che fare con loro.”
Il signor Jasper è un uomo scuro, di circa ventisei anni, con capelli neri folti e lucidi, e baffi ben curati. Sembra più vecchio di quanto non sia, come spesso succede agli uomini scuri. La sua voce è profonda e piacevole; il suo viso e la sua figura sono attraenti, ma il suo modo di comportarsi è un po’ cupo. Anche la sua stanza è piuttosto buia, e probabilmente questo ambiente ha influenzato il suo carattere. La stanza è quasi sempre immersa nell’ombra; anche quando il sole splende intensamente, raramente raggiunge il grande pianoforte nascosto in un angolo, i libri di musica sullo scaffale, gli scaffali pieni di libri o il dipinto incompiuto di una ragazza in fiore appeso sopra la caminiera: lei ha i capelli castani lunghi legati da un nastro blu, e la sua bellezza risalta per quell’aria di scontento birichino, quasi infantile, che sembra esserne consapevole, (Questo dipinto non possiede alcun valore artistico; è soltanto un abbozzo approssimativo. Ma è evidente che l’autore lo abbia realizzato in modo umoristico, si potrebbe quasi dire, con una sorta di vendetta, proprio come l’originale.)
“Ci mancherai, Jasper, alle ‘Mercoledì Musicali Alternativi’ di questa sera. Ma non c’è dubbio che tu sia meglio a casa tua. Buona notte. Che Dio ti benedica! ‘Ditemi, pastori. L’avete vista passare da queste parti?’” Così si esprime il reverendo Septimus Crisparkle, con voce melodiosa e in ritmo musicale, mentre ritira il suo volto amichevole dalla soglia e scende le scale.
Voci di riconoscimento e saluti si scambiano tra il reverendo Septimus e qualcun altro, ai piedi della scala. Il signor Jasper ascolta, si alza dalla sedia e abbraccia un giovane, esclamando:
“Mio caro Edwin!”
“Mio caro Jack! Che gioia rivederti!”
“Togliiti il cappotto, bravo ragazzo, e siediti qui nel tuo angolino. I tuoi piedi non sono bagnati? Togliti gli stivali. Per favore, togliti gli stivali.”
“Mio caro Jack, sono completamente secco. Non essere troppo premuroso con me; sono una persona forte. Preferisco di gran lunga non essere trattato con eccessiva delicatezza.”
Con la consapevolezza di essere stato fermato in modo spietato durante un momento di entusiasmo sincero, il signor Jasper rimane fermo e osserva attentamente il giovane che si toglie cappotto, cappello, guanti e tutto il resto. Ogni volta che il suo sguardo viene rivolto in quella direzione, sul suo volto appare un’espressione di intensità, di affetto appassionato e attento, una espressione che rimarrà sempre così, in quel momento e per sempre dopo. E ogni volta che viene rivolto verso di lui, quel sguardo non è mai diviso o distratto; è sempre concentrato interamente su di lui.
“Ora ho ragione, e ora mi ritirerò nel mio angolo, Jack. Vuoi mangiare qualcosa, Jack?”
Il signor Jasper apre una porta all’estremità superiore della stanza e rivela un piccolo ambiente interno piacevolmente illuminato e preparato; in quel luogo, una bella donna sta sistemando i piatti sul tavolo.
“Che bel vecchio Jack!” esclama il giovane, battendo le mani. “Guarda qui, Jack; dimmi: di chi è oggi l’anniversario?”
“Non è tuo, lo so,” risponde il signor Jasper, fermandosi per riflettere.
“Non è mio, capisci? No, non è mio; lo so io stesso! È di Pussy!”
Considerando l’espressione del volto di quel giovane quando lo incontra, c’è ancora in essa una sorta di strana capacità di far sì che il disegno sopra la mensola del camino venga immediatamente coinvolto nella scena.
“Di Pussy, Jack! Dobbiamo brindare a lei con un ‘Many happy returns’. Vieni, zio; porta tuo nipote, diligente e attento, a cena con noi.”
Quando il ragazzo – poiché non è molto più grande di un bambino – pone una mano sulla spalla di Jasper, Jasper, con affetto e allegria, pone a sua volta una mano sulla sua spalla; e così, come nella canzone della Marseillaise, vanno a cena insieme.
“E, Signore, ecco la signora Tope!” esclama il ragazzo. “Più bella che mai!”
“Lasciate fare a me, padrone Edwin”, ribatte la moglie del custode; “so badare a me stessa”.
“Non puoi. Sei troppo bello. Dammi un bacio, perché oggi è il compleanno di Pussy.”
“Ti prenderei in giro, giovane uomo, se fossi quella che tu chiami ‘Pussy’,” risponde arrossendo la signora Tope dopo essere stata salutata. “Tuo zio si preoccupa troppo per te. Ti dà troppa importanza, e penso che tu creda davvero di poter chiamare quelle ragazze ‘Pussy’ a dozzine soltanto per farle venire da te.”
“Dimenticate, signora Tope,” interviene il signor Jasper, sedendosi al tavolo con un sorriso cordiale, “e anche voi, Ned: ‘Zio’ e ‘nipote’ sono termini proibiti qui, per consenso comune e accordo esplicito. Poiché ciò che stiamo per ricevere merita davvero lodi!”
“Fatto esattamente come il Decano! Testimone, Edwin Drood! Per favore, incide tu, Jack, io non ne sono capace.”
Questa breve pausa introduce il momento del pasto. Durante la preparazione, non viene detto nulla di rilevante, né per lo scopo attuale né per qualsiasi altro motivo. Alla fine, la tovaglia viene stesa e sul tavolo vengono posizionati un piatto di noci e una caraffa di sherry dal colore intenso.
“Dico sul serio! Dimmi, Jack,” proseguì il giovane: “Pensi davvero che menzionare la nostra relazione possa dividerci in qualche modo? Io no.”
“Di solito, Ned, gli zii sono molto più anziani dei loro nipoti,” è la risposta, “perciò ho questa sensazione istintivamente.”
“Di solito sì! Ah, forse. Ma quale differenza c’è nell’età tra sei o sette anni? E in alcune famiglie numerose, alcuni zii sono persino più giovani dei loro nipoti. Per Giove, vorrei che fosse lo stesso anche per noi!”
“Perché?”
“Perché se fosse così, prenderei l’iniziativa insieme a te, Jack, e sarei altrettanto saggio quanto quel ‘Vattene, noiosa Preoccupazione’ che fece diventare grigio un giovane uomo, e vattene, noiosa Preoccupazione! che trasformò un anziano in polvere. Ehi, Jack! Non bere.”
“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?”
“Perché no?”
“Chiede perché non farlo il giorno del compleanno di Pussy. E nessuno ha proposto auguri di ‘Felice ritorno’! Pussy, Jack, e molti altri. Voglio dire, auguri di ‘Felice ritorno’, insomma.”
Posando una carezza affettuosa e sorridendo sulla mano tesa del ragazzo, come se fosse allo stesso tempo la sua testa che girava e il suo cuore leggero, il signor Jasper beve il brindisi in silenzio.
“Hip, hip, hip, e nove per nove. E poi uno per concludere. Capito tutto? Evviva, evviva! Ora, Jack, parliamo un po’ di Pussy. Due paia di mollette? Dammi una, e prendi l’altra, ” Crack. “Come va con Pussy, Jack?”
“Con la sua musica? Certo che sì.”
“Che persona terribilmente coscienziosa sei, Jack! Ma io so. Che il Signore ti benedica! È davvero inattenta, non trovi?”
“Può imparare qualsiasi cosa, se lo desidera.”
“Se lei vorrà. Accidenti, è proprio questo il problema. Ma se non vorrà?”
Crack! — da parte del signor Jasper.
“Com’è fatta, Jack?”
Il volto concentrato del signor Jasper include di nuovo il ritratto mentre risponde: “È davvero molto simile al tuo schizzo, sì.”
“Sono un po’ orgoglioso di questo,” dice il giovane, alzando lo sguardo con compiacimento verso il schizzo e poi chiudendo un occhio per osservarlo meglio attraverso una sorta di “ponte” fatto di noccioline disposte in fila nell’aria: “Non è affatto male rispetto alla mia memoria. Ma avrei dovuto catturare quell’espressione in modo ancora più preciso. L’ho vista abbastanza spesso, infatti.”
Crack! — da parte di Edwin Drood.
Crack! — da parte del signor Jasper.
“Infatti,” riprende l’ex, dopo aver frugato in silenzio tra i suoi frammenti di noce con aria offesa, “lo noto ogni volta che vado da Pussy. Se non lo trovo sul suo viso, lo lascio lì. Lo sapete bene, signorina Presuntuosa e Disprezzante. Buuh!” E con un movimento dei suoi attrezzi per spezzare le noci, indica il ritratto.
Crack! Crack! Crack. Lentamente, da parte del signor Jasper.
Crack. Con decisione, da parte di Edwin Drood.
Silenzio da entrambe le parti.
“Hai perso la lingua, Jack?”
“L’hai trovato, Ned?”
“No, ma davvero, non è forse così, in fondo?”
Il signor Jasper alza le sue sopracciglia scure con aria interrogativa.
“Non è forse insoddisfacente essere privati della possibilità di scegliere in una questione del genere? Ecco, Jack! Te lo dico io: se potessi scegliere, sceglierei Pussy tra tutte le ragazze belle del mondo.”
“Ma non devi necessariamente scegliere.”
“Ecco di cosa mi lamento. Mio padre è morto, e anche il padre di Pussy è morto; quindi devono necessariamente sposarci entrambi in anticipo. Perché, accidenti, volevo dire, se fosse stato rispettoso nei loro ricordi, non avrebbero potuto lasciarci in pace?”
“Tut, tut, caro ragazzo, ”, rimprovera il signor Jasper con un tono gentile e affettuoso.
“Tut, tut? Sì, Jack, tutto va molto bene per te. Puoi affrontarlo facilmente. La tua vita non è disegnata su una mappa, con linee e punti che indicano il percorso da seguire; nessuno ha il sospetto spiacevole che tu sia stato costretto ad accettare qualcosa, né che tu sia stato imposto a qualcun altro. Puoi scegliere da solo. Per te, la vita è come una prugna con il suo fiore naturale ancora attaccato; non è stata pulita eccessivamente per te, ”
Continua, caro amico. Non fermarti.
“Posso davvero aver ferito i tuoi sentimenti, Jack?”
“Come puoi aver ferito i miei sentimenti?”
Mio Dio, Jack, sembri terribilmente malato. Hai qualcosa di strano sugli occhi.
Il signor Jasper, con un sorriso forzato, tende la sua mano destra, come se volesse allo stesso tempo dissipare le preoccupazioni altrui e guadagnare tempo per riprendersi. Dopo un po’ dice, in tono debolissimo:
“Prendo l’oppio per un )dolore, un’agonia che a volte mi sopraffà. Gli effetti del farmaco mi avvolgono come una malattia o una nuvola, e poi passano. Li potete vedere mentre svaniscono; scompariranno immediatamente. Distoglietevi da me, così spariranno ancora più in fretta.”
Con un’espressione spaventata, l’uomo più giovane obbedisce, abbassando lo sguardo sulle ceneri nel focolare. Senza distogliere il proprio sguardo dal fuoco, anzi rafforzandolo con una presa decisa sulla propria poltrona, l’uomo più anziano rimane immobile per alcuni momenti; poi, con gocce di sudore che gli si formano sulla fronte e un respiro affannoso, torna alla sua normale condizione. Non appena si è ripreso completamente, suo nipote lo assiste con cura e premura fino a quando non è del tutto guarito. Quando Jasper è di nuovo in grado di muoversi, posa una mano dolce sulla spalla del nipote e, con un tono di voce meno preoccupato di quanto possano significare le sue parole – anzi, con un certo spirito scherzoso o giocoso – gli dice:
Si dice che in ogni >casa ci sia uno >scheletro nascosto; ma tu pensavi che nel mio non ce ne fosse, caro Ned.
“Per la mia vita, Jack, pensavo proprio così. Tuttavia, quando ci penso bene, anche nella casa di Pussy – se ne avesse una – e nella mia, se ne avessi una, ”
“Stavi per dire, (ma ti ho interrotto lo stesso) quanto sia tranquilla la mia vita. Nessun trambusto intorno a me, nessuna attività commerciale o calcolo che possa distrarmi, nessun rischio, nessun cambiamento di luogo; io stessa mi dedico all’arte che perseguo, e il mio lavoro è anche il mio piacere.”
“Volevo davvero dire qualcosa del genere, Jack; ma vedi, quando parli di te stesso, quasi inevitabilmente ometti molte cose che avrei dovuto menzionare. Ad esempio: avrei dovuto sottolineare il fatto che tu sia così rispettato come Cappellano della Cattedrale, o Segretario Cattolico, o comunque si chiami questa posizione; che goda della reputazione di aver compiuto miracoli con il coro; che abbia scelto di frequentare certe compagnie e occupi una posizione così indipendente in questo strano vecchio posto; il tuo talento nell’insegnamento (anche Pussy, che non ama essere istruita, dice che non c’è mai stato un maestro come te!), e le tue relazioni, ”
“Sì; ho visto cosa stavi cercando di fare. Lo odio.”
“Lo odi, Jack?” (Molto perplesso.)
“Lo odio. La monotonia soffocante della mia esistenza mi logora poco a poco. Come vi sembra il nostro lavoro?”
“Bello! Davvero celestiale!”
“Spesso mi sembra davvero qualcosa di diabolico. Ne sono così stanco. Gli echi della mia voce tra quelle archi sembrano deridermi per il mio quotidiano lavoro noioso. Nessun povero monaco che abbia trascorso la sua vita in quel luogo cupo potrebbe essere più stanco di me. Lui, almeno, trovava sollievo (e lo trovava davvero) nel scolpire demoni sugli stalli, sui sedili e sulle scrivanie. Cosa dovrei fare io? Devo forse iniziare a “scolpire” demoni anche dal mio cuore?”
“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.
“Pensavo che avessi finalmente trovato la tua nicchia nella vita, Jack,” disse Edwin Drood, sorpreso, chinandosi in avanti sulla sedia per posare una mano comprensiva sul ginocchio di Jasper, guardandolo con un’espressione preoccupata.
“So che lo pensavi anche tu. Tutti lo pensano.”
“Beh, suppongo di sì,” dice Edwin, riflettendo ad alta voce. “Anche Pussy la pensa così.”
”Quando te l’ha detto?”
“L’ultima volta che sono stato qui. Te lo ricordi? Tre mesi fa.”
come l’ha espressa?
“Oh, ha detto solo che era diventata tua allieva, e che tu eri nato per quella vocazione.”
L’uomo più giovane getta un’occhiata al ritratto; l’uomo più anziano lo vede riflesso in lui.
“Comunque, caro Ned,” continua Jasper, scuotendo la testa con una seria allegria, “devo sottomettermi alla mia vocazione: in apparenza è più o meno lo stesso. Ora è troppo tardi per cercarne un’altra. Questa è una confidenza tra noi.”
“Dovrà essere conservato con sacro rispetto, Jack.”
“L’ho affidato a te, perché, ”
“Lo sento, te lo assicuro. Perché siamo amici molto intimi, e perché tu mi ami e mi fidi, così come io amo e ti fido. Entrambe le mani, Jack.”
Mentre ognuno di loro si guarda negli occhi dell’altro, e mentre lo zio tiene le mani del nipote, lo zio dice così:
Ora lo sai, vero? Anche un povero cantore monotono e un semplice suonatore di musica, nel suo angolino, può essere tormentato da qualche sorta di ambizione, aspirazione, inquietudine, insoddisfazione, come possiamo chiamarla?
“Sì, caro Jack.”
“E te ne ricorderai?”
“Mio caro Jack, ti chiedo solo una cosa: è possibile che io dimentichi ciò che hai detto con tanta emozione?”
“Consideralo allora un avvertimento.”
Nel momento in cui le sue mani vengono liberate e fa un passo indietro, Edwin si ferma per un istante per riflettere sul significato di queste ultime parole. Una volta terminata questa riflessione, dice qualcosa di molto appropriato.
“Temo di essere soltanto una persona superficiale, Jack, e che il mio modo di comportarmi non sia certo dei migliori. Ma non devo nascondere che sono giovane; forse con l’età non peggiorerò. In ogni caso, >spero di avere dentro di me qualcosa che possa essere commosso. Qualcosa che percepisca davvero la generosità e la sincerità del tuo modo di mettere a nudo le tue emozioni più profonde, come un monito per me.”
La compostezza del volto e della figura di Mr. Jasper diventa così straordinaria che sembra che il suo respiro si sia fermato.
“Non potevo non notare, Jack, che ti è costato un grande sforzo e che eri davvero molto commosso, molto diverso dal solito. Certo, sapevo che mi volevi molto bene, ma sinceramente non ero preparata a questo tuo, come dire, sacrificio per me.”
Il signor Jasper, tornando a respirare senza il minimo passaggio tra i due stati estremi, alza le spalle, ride e agita il braccio destro.
“No; non mettere da parte quei sentimenti, Jack; per favore non farlo; perché parlo sul serio. Non ho alcun >dubbio che quello stato d’animo negativo che hai descritto con tanta forza comporti davvero qualche sofferenza reale e sia difficile da sopportare. Ma lascia che ti rassicuri riguardo alle possibilità di superarlo: non credo che io rappresenti un ostacolo in questo percorso. Tra pochi mesi, meno di un anno, porterò Pussy fuori dalla scuola come signora Edwin Drood. Poi andrò a studiare ingegneria nell’Est, portando con me anche lei. E anche se ora abbiamo qualche piccolo disaccordo, dovuto alla mancanza di novità nel nostro rapporto amoroso – visto che tutto è già deciso in anticipo – non ho alcun >dubbio che andremo d’accordo molto bene quando tutto sarà finito e non ci sarà più nulla da cambiare. In breve, Jack, per tornare alla vecchia canzone che citavo a cena (e chi conosce meglio le vecchie canzoni di te?), mia moglie danzerà e io canterò; trascorreremo i giorni in modo molto felice. Che Pussy sia bella, non c’è alcun >dubbio. E se tu sarai anche gentile, piccola signorina Sfrontatezza, ” aggiunse ancora, rivolgendosi al ritratto, “brucerò quella tua buffa rappresentazione e ne dipingerò un’altra del tuo maestro di musica.”
Il signor Jasper, con la mano appoggiata al mento e un’espressione di benevola meditazione sul viso, ha osservato attentamente ogni gesto e movimento che accompagnava l’effetto di queste parole. Rimane in quella posizione anche dopo che sono state pronunciate, come se fosse affascinato dallo spirito giovane che ama così tanto. Poi dice, con un sorriso tranquillo:
“Quindi non riceverete alcun avvertimento, ”
“No, Jack.”
“Non si può proprio avvertire, allora?”
“No, Jack, non per colpa tua. Inoltre, non credo davvero di essere in pericolo; non mi piace che tu ti metta in una situazione del genere.”
Andiamo a fare una passeggiata nel cimitero?
“Certo che no. Non vi dispiacerà se per un attimo esco e vado alla Casa delle Suore, lasciando lì un pacco, vero? Sono solo guanti per Pussy. Quanti paia di guanti quante anni ha oggi. Abbastanza poetico, no, Jack?”
“Niente al mondo è più dolce di questo, Ned”, mormora il signor Jasper, mantenendo la stessa posizione.
“Ecco il pacco nella tasca del mio cappotto. Deve essere consegnato entro la notte, altrimenti la poesia sparirà. È contro le regole per me venire qui di notte, ma non è vietato lasciare un pacchetto. Sono pronto, Jack!”
Il signor Jasper cambia atteggiamento e uscono insieme.
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.
CAPITOLO III.
LA CASA DELLE MONACHE
Per motivi sufficienti, che questa narrazione stesso chiarirà man mano che procede, è necessario attribuire un nome fittizio alla vecchia città della Cattedrale. In queste pagine sarà chiamata Cloisterham. Un tempo, forse, era conosciuta dai Druidi con un altro nome, certamente dai Romani con un altro ancora, dai Sassoni con un altro, e dai Normanni con un altro; e un nome, nel corso di molti secoli, può ben poco significare per le sue storie polverose.
Un antico >città, Cloisterham, una dimora adatta a nessuno che aneli al mondo rumoroso. Una città monotona e silenziosa, il cui carattere “terreno” deriva interamente dalle cripte della sua >Cattedrale; piena di resti di tombe monastiche, tanto che i bambini di Cloisterham crescono tra la >polvere di abati e abbadesse, facendo “palle di fango” con le ossa di suore e frati. Mentre ogni contadino nei suoi campi circostanti rende omaggio a quei potenti Lord Tesoriere, Arcivescovi, Vescovi e simili, proprio come l’Ogre dei racconti voleva rendere omaggio al suo visitatore indesiderato, macinando le loro ossa per preparare il proprio pane.
In una sonnolenta >città, Cloisterham, i cui abitanti sembrano credere, con un’incoerenza più strana che rara, che tutti i suoi cambiamenti avvengano al di là dei suoi confini e che non ne possano esserci altri in futuro. Una strana morale da trarre dall’antichità, ma ancora più antica di qualsiasi traccia storica rintracciabile. Le strade di Cloisterham sono così silenziose (sebbene siano propense a risuonare al minimo stimolo) che, in una giornata estiva, le tende delle vetrine dei negozi osano appena muoversi al vento del sud; mentre i viandanti, abbronzati dal sole e intenti a guardarsi intorno, accelerano un po’ il passo per uscire al più presto dai confini di quella opprimente rispettabilità che caratterizza la città. Un compito non difficile da realizzare, visto che le strade di Cloisterham non sono altro che una stretta via attraverso cui si entra e si esce dalla città: il resto è per lo più costituito da cortili desolati, con pompe d’acqua al loro interno e nessuna via d’uscita, ad eccezione dell’area vicino alla Cattedrale e di un insediamento dei Quaker, la cui disposizione e il colore ricordano molto il cappello di una donna quaker, situato in un angolo ombreggiato.
In breve, una >città di un’epoca passata è Cloisterham: con la sua roca >cattedrale, le sue gru rauche che volteggiano intorno alla torre della cattedrale, e altre gru ancora più rauche e indistinte nei sotterranei. Frammenti di vecchi muri, cappelle dei santi, edifici monastici sono stati inglobati in molte delle sue case e giardini, proprio come concetti confusi e disparati si sono intrecciati nella mente dei suoi abitanti. Tutto ciò che vi trova è appartenente al passato: persino il suo unico usuraio non accetta pegni, e da molto tempo offre invano in vendita merci di scarso valore – vecchi orologi opachi e sbiaditi, forchette da zucchero con gambe inutili, volumi di libri cupi e desolati. Gli unici segni della vita che prosegue a Cloisterham sono quelli legati alla vita vegetale nei giardini; persino il suo piccolo teatro, malandato e triste, possiede una misera aiuola in cui, durante certe stagioni dell’anno, vengono collocate piante come fagioli rossi o conchiglie d’ostrica, simboli del male che si ritira dalle scene teatrali per immergersi nelle regioni infernali.
Al centro di Cloisterham sorge la Casa delle Suore: un venerabile edificio in mattoni il cui nome attuale deriva senza dubbio dalla leggenda riguardante le sue funzioni conventuali. Sulla porta ben curata che circonda il suo vecchio cortile è appesa una splendente targa di bronzo che recita: “Seminario per giovani signorine. Miss Twinkleton”. La facciata dell’edificio è così antica e logora, e la targa di bronzo è così lucida e evidente, che l’insieme ricorda a chi vi passa davanti un vecchio gentiluomo malandato con un enorme occhiale da vista moderno fissato nell’occhio cieco.
Se le suore di un tempo, essendo di una generazione più sottomessa che testarda, abitualmente chinavano la testa durante le loro meditazioni per evitare di urtare gli archi dei bassi soffitti delle molte stanze del loro Monastero; se sedevano alle sue lunghe finestre basse per recitare le preghiere della penitenza, invece di utilizzare quegli stessi fili per crearsi collane da indossare; se venivano mai rinchiuse vive in angoli strani o sotto spioventi del edificio, soltanto perché in loro sopravviveva ancora un barlume di quella “lievito” della natura madre che ha mantenuto il mondo in movimento fin dai tempi antichi. Queste cose potrebbero interessare i suoi fantasmi (se ne esistono davvero), ma non fanno parte dei resoconti semestrali di Miss Twinkleton. Non rientrano né tra i membri regolari del suo gruppo, né tra gli “extra”. La signora che si occupa della sezione poetica di questa istituzione, per una remunerazione così alta (o così bassa), non ha alcun brano nel suo elenco di recital che riguardi questioni così poco proficue.
Come in alcuni casi di ubriachezza e in altri di magnetismo animale, esistono due stati di coscienza che mai si scontrano, ma ciascuno segue il proprio percorso indipendente, come se fosse continuo anziché interrotto (così, ad esempio, se nascondo l’orologio quando sono ubriaco, devo essere di nuovo ubriaco prima di ricordare dove l’ho messo); allo stesso modo, la signorina Twinkleton attraversa due fasi distinte e separate della sua esistenza. Ogni notte, non appena le giovani signore si ritirano a riposare, la signorina Twinkleton si sistema i capelli, si illumina lo sguardo e diventa una versione più vivace di sé stessa di quanto le giovani signore l’abbiano mai vista. Ogni notte, alla stessa ora, riprende gli argomenti della notte precedente: parla con tenerezza dello scandalo di Cloisterham, di cui non ha la minima idea di giorno, e fa riferimento a una certa stagione a Tunbridge Wells (che in questo stato chiamava allegramente “Le Wells”); in particolare, menziona quella stagione in cui un certo gentiluomo (chiamato con compassione “Il sciocco signor Porters”) le dimostrò il proprio affetto, di cui la signorina Twinkleton, nella sua vita quotidiana, è completamente all’oscuro. La compagna della signorina Twinkleton in entrambi questi stati è la signora Tisher: una vedova rispettabile, con la schiena debole, un sospiro cronico e una voce sommessa; si occupa degli abiti delle giovani signore e fa loro credere di aver vissuto tempi migliori. Forse è proprio per questo che tra i domestici circola una tradizione orale: la defunta signora Tisher era in realtà una parrucchiera.
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.”
La pupilla preferita del Convento delle suore è senz’altro la signorina Rosa Bud, chiamata naturalmente Rosebud; meravigliosamente bella, meravigliosamente infantile, meravigliosamente capricciosa. Nelle menti delle giovani signore sorge un interesse un po’ imbarazzante (imbarazzante perché di natura romantica) nei confronti della signorina Bud: loro sanno infatti che per lei è stato scelto un marito tramite testamento, e che il suo tutore è obbligato a darla in sposa a quell’uomo non appena raggiungerà l’età legale. La signorina Twinkleton, nella sua condizione di “seminariale”, ha cercato di contrastare questo aspetto romantico del destino della ragazza, fingendo di scuotere la testa davanti alle sue spalle increspate e riflettendo sulla sfortunata sorte di quella giovane vittima. Ma senza alcun risultato concreto. Forse qualche commento sciocco da parte del signor Porter ha addirittura compromesso i suoi sforzi. Il risultato è stato che le giovani signore hanno esclamato all’unanimità: “Oh, quanto è falsa e ipocrita la signorina Twinkleton, cara mia!”
La casa delle suore non è mai così in subbuglio come quando questo marito designato viene a trovare la piccola Rosebud. (Tutte le giovani signorine concordano sul fatto che lui abbia legalmente diritto a questo privilegio, e che se Miss Twinkleton lo contestasse, verrebbe immediatamente portata via.) Quando si aspetta il suono del suo campanello alla porta, o quando esso risuona davvero, ogni giovane signorina che può, con qualsiasi pretesto, guardare fuori dalla finestra, lo fa; mentre quelle che sono “a lezione” studiano con ancora più impegno. E la classe di francese diventa talmente demoralizzata che gli appuntamenti avvengono con la stessa frequenza del passaparola in una festa dell’ultimo secolo.
Nel pomeriggio del giorno successivo alla cena a due persone presso la caserma di guardia, la campana viene suonata, con gli soliti risultati disordinati.
“Il signor Edwin Drood desidera vedere la signorina Rosa.”
Questo è l’annuncio fatta dalla cameriera capo. La signorina Twinkleton, con un’espressione esemplare di melanconia sul viso, si rivolge alla “vittima” e dice: “Puoi andare giù, cara.” La signorina Bud scende, seguita dagli sguardi di tutti.
Il signor Edwin Drood sta aspettando nella stanza privata della signorina Twinkleton: una camera delicata, nella quale non vi è nulla di strettamente legato allo studio, se non un globo terrestre e uno celeste. Questi oggetti simbolici suggeriscono (ai genitori e ai tutori) che anche quando la signorina Twinkleton si ritira nella privacy della sua stanza, il dovere potrebbe costringerla in qualsiasi momento a diventare una sorta di “giudia errante”, che viaggi per il mondo e voli nei cieli alla ricerca della conoscenza per i suoi studenti.
L’ultima nuova cameriera, che non ha mai visto il giovane signore per cui Miss Rosa è stata scelta e che sta appena iniziando a conoscerlo, inciampa imbarazzata giù per le scale della cucina. Come una graziosa piccola apparizione, con il viso nascosto da un grembiule di seta gettato sulla testa, si insinua silenziosamente nel salotto.
“Oh, è davvero ridicolo!” dice l’apparizione, fermandosi e riducendosi di dimensioni. “Non farlo, Eddy!”
“Non fare cosa, Rosa?”
Non avvicinarti più, per favore. È davvero assurdo.
“Cosa è assurdo, Rosa?”
“Tutta questa situazione è davvero assurda. È assurdo essere una orfana fidanzata, ed è altrettanto assurdo che le ragazze e le domestiche corran intorno a me come topi in giro per la casa; inoltre, è anche assurdo che mi venga chiesto di partecipare a tutto questo!”
Quell’apparizione sembra avere un pollice nell’angolo della bocca mentre formula questa lamentela.
“Devo dire che mi hai accolto con grande affetto, Pussy, ”
“Beh, lo farò tra un minuto, Eddy, ma non posso ancora adesso. Come stai?”
(Molto brevemente.)
“Non posso rispondere che vedere te sia molto meglio per me, Pussy, perché in realtà non ti vedo affatto.”
Questo secondo rimprovero fa apparire un occhio scuro, luminoso e imbronciato da un angolo della gonna; ma scompare rapidamente di nuovo, mentre l’apparizione esclama: “Oh mio Dio! Vi hanno tagliato metà dei capelli!”
“Avrei dovuto comportarmi meglio se mi avessero tagliato la testa, penso,” dice Edwin, arruffando i propri capelli con un’occhiata furiosa allo specchio e dando un calcio impaziente a terra. “Devo andare ora?”
“No; non c’è bisogno che tu vada subito, Eddy. Le ragazze chiederebbero tutte perché te ne sei andato.”
“Una volta per tutte, Rosa, vuoi finalmente alzare quella tua ridicola testolina e darmi il benvenuto?”
L grembiule viene tolto dalla testa del bambino, che risponde:
“Grazie mille, Eddy. Ecco, sono sicuro che ti piaccia. Diamo la mano.
No, non posso baciarti, perché ho una goccia acida in bocca.”
“Sei davvero felice di vedermi, Pussy?”
“Ah sì, sono davvero molto felice. Vai a sederti, per favore. Signorina Twinkleton.”
È consuetudine di quella eccellente signora, quando avvengono queste visite, comparire ogni tre minuti, sia in persona che sotto le sembianze della signora Tisher, e offrire un “omaggio” al tempio della Decenza fingendo di cercare qualche oggetto desiderato. In questa occasione, la signorina Twinkleton, entrando ed uscendo con grazia, dice passando: “Come sta, signor Drood? Sono davvero molto felice di questo incontro. Scusi. Forbici. Grazie!”
“Ho preso i guanti ieri sera, Eddy, e mi piacciono molto. Sono davvero belli.”
“Beh, questa sì che è una cosa, ” risponde la fidanzata, con un mezzo brontolio. “Finalmente un po’ di incoraggiamento. E com’è andata la tua festa di compleanno, Pussy?”
“Meravigliosamente! Tutti mi hanno regalato un dono. E abbiamo fatto una festa. E poi c’è stata una serata danzante di notte.”
“Una festa e un ballo, eh? Sembra che queste occasioni vadano abbastanza bene anche senza di me, Pussy.”
“Con gioia immensa!”, esclama Rosa, in modo del tutto spontaneo, senza la minima traccia di riserbo.
“Hah! E di cosa consisteva quel banchetto?”
“Torte, arance, gelatine e gamberi.”
“Ci sono partner al ballo?”
“Certo che abbiamo ballato insieme, signore. Ma alcune ragazze hanno finto di essere i loro fratelli. È stato davvero divertente!”
“Qualcuno ha voluto davvero mettersi alla prova, ”
“Essere te? Oh sì, certo!” esclama Rosa, ridendo felicemente.
“Quella è stata la prima cosa che abbiamo fatto.”
“Spero che l’abbia fatto abbastanza bene,” dice Edwin, con una certa incertezza.
“Oh, è stato eccellente! — Sai, non ballerei mai con te, ”
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.”
Edwin sembra quasi non rendersi conto della forza di queste parole; chiede se possa prendersi la libertà di sapere il motivo.
“Perché ne avevo abbastanza di te,” risponde Rosa. Ma aggiunge subito dopo, con tono supplichevole, vedendo l’infelicità sul suo viso: “Caro Eddy, anche tu ne avevi abbastanza di me, lo sai.”
“Non l’avevo detto? Vedi?”
“Dillo pure! Lo dici mai davvero? No, lo mostri solo. Oh, l’ha fatto così bene!” esclama Rosa, in un improvviso attacco di entusiasmo verso il suo finto fidanzato.
“Mi sembra che lei debba essere una ragazza impudente e malvagia,” dice Edwin Drood. “E così, Pussy, hai trascorso il tuo ultimo compleanno in questa vecchia >casa.”
“Ah, sì!” Rosa si mette le mani davanti al viso, guarda giù con un sospiro e scuote la testa.
“Sembri dispiaciuta, Rosa, ”
“Mi dispiace per quel povero vecchio posto. In qualche modo, ho la sensazione che mi mancherà, quando me ne andrò così lontano, così giovane, ”
“Forse sarebbe meglio che ci fermassimo qui, Rosa, ”
Lo guarda in su con uno sguardo rapido e luminoso; un attimo dopo scuote la testa, sospira e abbassa di nuovo lo sguardo.
“Voglio dire, è davvero così, Pussy? Che entrambi abbiamo accettato la situazione senza più reagire?”
Annuisce di nuovo, e dopo un breve silenzio, esclama in modo caratteristico: “Sai che dobbiamo sposarci, e subito, Eddy. Altrimenti quelle povere ragazze rimarranno terribilmente deluse!”
Per il momento, sul volto del marito promesso di lei c’è più compassione, sia per lei che per sé stesso, che amore vero. Lui osserva quel suo sguardo e chiede: “Devo portarti a fare una passeggiata, cara Rosa?”
Rosa cara non sembra affatto chiara su questo punto, fino a quando il suo viso, che fino ad ora ha mostrato un’espressione comica e riflessiva, non si illumina. “Oh sì, Eddy; andiamo a fare una passeggiata! E ti dico cosa faremo: tu farai finta di essere fidanzato con qualcun altro, e io farò finta di non essere fidanzata con nessuno, così non ci scontreremo più.”
“Pensi davvero che questo possa impedirci di litigare, Rosa?”
“So che succederà. Zitta! Fai finta di guardare fuori dalla finestra. La signora Tisher!”
Attraverso una serie di coincidenze fortuite, la matrona Tisher appare all’improvviso, muovendosi nella stanza con un fruscio, come il leggendario fantasma di una dama anziana in gonne di seta: “Spero che il signor Drood stia bene. Anche se non avrei dovuto chiederlo, a giudicare dal suo aspetto. Spero di non aver disturbato nessuno; ma c’era un coltello da carta. Oh, grazie, ne sono sicura!” e scompare con il suo “trofeo”.
“C’è un’altra cosa che devi fare, Eddy, per accontentarmi,” dice Rosebud. “Non appena usciremo in strada, devi lasciarmi fuori e tenerti tu vicino alla casa, strofinati contro di essa.”
“Certo che sì, Rosa, se lo desideri. Posso chiederti il motivo?”
“Ah, perché non voglio che le ragazze ti vedano.”
“È una bella giornata. Ma vuoi che porti un ombrello con me?”
“Non sia sciocco, signore. Non indossa mica stivali di pelle lucida,” disse, facendo il broncio e alzando una spalla.
“Forse così le ragazze non se ne accorgeranno, anche se mi vedessero,” osserva Edwin, guardando i propri stivali con un improvviso disgusto per loro.
“Niente sfugge alla loro attenzione, signore. E allora so cosa accadrebbe: alcuni di loro inizierebbero a riflettere su di me, dicendo (poiché loro sono liberi) che non si impegneranno mai con degli innamorati senza stivali di pelle lucida. Ascoltate. Signorina Twinkleton, chiederò permesso.”
Quella signora discreta, mentre avanzava, veniva effettivamente ascoltata senza che nessuno le facesse domande, con un tono di conversazione gentile: “Eh? Davvero! Siete sicuri di aver visto il mio portabottoni in madreperla sul tavolo da lavoro nella mia stanza?” Subito dopo chiedeva il permesso di andarsene e veniva gentilmente accontentata. Poco dopo, la giovane coppia uscì dalla Casa delle suore, prendendo tutte le precauzioni possibili per evitare che venissero scoperte le scarpe così gravemente difettose del signor Edwin Drood. Precauzioni, si spera, efficaci per garantire la tranquillità della signora Edwin Drood.
“Quale strada dovremmo prendere, Rosa?”
Rosa risponde: “Voglio andare nel negozio dei ‘Bocconi di Delizia’.”
“Per il—?”
“Un dolce turco, signore. Mio caro, non capite proprio nulla? Vi definite ingegnere e non lo sapete nemmeno?”
“Ma come potrei saperlo, Rosa?”
“Perché mi piacciono molto. Ma oh, ho dimenticato quale dovrebbe essere la nostra finzione. No, non c’è bisogno che tu sappia nulla di loro; lascia perdere.”
So che viene trascinato via, con aria cupa, verso il negozio dei “Bocconi di Delizia”, dove Rosa fa la sua spesa. Dopo avergli offerto alcuni di quei bocconi (che lui rifiuta con notevole indignazione), lei inizia a gustarli con grande entusiasmo: prima toglie e arrotola un paio di piccoli guanti rosa, simili a foglie di rosa, e di tanto in tanto si porta le sue dita rosa alle labbra, per pulirle dal “polvere della Delizia” che si deposita su quei bocconi.
“Ora, sii un bravo Eddy e fai finta. Quindi sei fidanzato?”
“E così sono fidanzato.”
“È gentile?”
“Incantevole.”
“Altro che alto, ”
“Enormemente alto!” dato che Rosa era bassa.
“Deve essere goffo, penso,” è il commento silenzioso di Rosa.
“Mi scusi; affatto no,” pensò, sentendo nascere in sé il desiderio di contraddire.
“Quella che viene definita una donna nobile e splendida, ”
“Naso grosso, nessun >dubbio”, è di nuovo quel commento silenzioso.
“Di certo, non una piccola, ” è la risposta pronta, (visto che Rosa è proprio una “piccola”).
“Naso lungo e pallido, con una protuberanza rossa al centro. Conosco bene quel tipo di naso,” dice Rosa, annuendo soddisfatta, godendosi tranquillamente quelle protuberanze.
“Non sai proprio di che tipo sia quel naso, Rosa,” disse con un certo calore; “perché non è affatto di quel genere.”
“Non hai il naso pallido, Eddy?”
“No.” Deciso a non acconsentire.
“Un naso rosso? Oh. Non mi piacciono i nasi rossi. Comunque, sicuramente può sempre cospargerlo di polvere.”
“Lei disdegnerebbe anche solo polverizzarla,” dice Edwin, infervorendosi.
“Davvero lo farebbe? Che stupida deve essere. È davvero stupida in tutto?”
“No; in nulla.”
Dopo una pausa, durante la quale quel volto malizioso e capriccioso non lo aveva perso di vista, Rosa disse:
“E questa creatura così sensata apprezza l’idea di essere portata via in >Egitto; vero, Eddy?”
“Sì. Lei mostra un interesse sincero per i successi della tecnologia ingegneristica, soprattutto quando questi possono cambiare completamente la situazione di un paese sottosviluppato.”
“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.
[Illustration: 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
“Lor!” disse Rosa, scrollando le spalle e con una leggera risata di stupore.
“Obietti qualcosa?” chiede Edwin, abbassando lo sguardo con maestosità sulla figura fatata: “Obietti tu, Rosa, al fatto che lei provi quel sentimento?”
“Obiezione? Mio caro Eddy. Ma davvero, non odia forse i caldaie e simili cose?”
“Posso garantire che non è così stupida da odiare i Boiler,” risponde con enfasi arrabbiata; “ma non posso certo garantire le sue opinioni su ‘Le Cose’. Davvero, non capisce affatto a cosa servano.”
“Ma non odia forse gli arabi, i turchi, i fellah e tutte le altre persone?”
“Assolutamente no.” Con molta fermezza.
“Almeno dovrebbe odiare le Piramidi, no? Andiamo, Eddy, ”
“Perché dovrebbe essere così, insomma, altezzosa da odiare le Piramidi, Rosa?”
“Ah! Dovreste sentire la signorina Twinkleton,” diceva spesso annuendo con la testa e godendosi molto quelle storie, “parlare di loro. Allora non chiedereste nemmeno. Quei noiosi cimiteri antichi! Iside, Ibis, Cheope, i faraoni. A chi importa di loro? E poi c’è stato Belzoni, o qualcun altro, trascinato via per le gambe, mezzo soffocato da pipistrelli e polvere. Tutte le ragazze dicono: ‘Gli è andata bene. Sperano che gli abbia fatto male. Vorrebbero che fosse morto soffocato’.”
Le due giovani figure, una accanto all’altra, ma ora non più con le braccia intrecciate, vagano scontente per quel vecchio cortile; e ogni tanto si fermano e lasciano lentamente un segno più profondo sulle foglie cadute.
“Beh!”, dice Edwin dopo un lungo silenzio. “Secondo le usanze. Non possiamo salire, Rosa.”
Rosa scuote la testa e dice che non vuole salire.
“È davvero un sentimento bello, Rosa, devo dire.”
“#Considerando cosa?”
“Se ti dico cosa fare, sbaglierai di nuovo.”
“Commetterai degli errori, intendi, Eddy. Non essere avaro.”
“Ingeneroso! Mi piace!”
“Allora a me non piace affatto, quindi te lo dico chiaramente,” borbotta Rosa con il labbro inferiore sporgente.
“Ora, Rosa, te lo chiedo: chi ha diffamato la mia professione, il mio destino, ”
“Non verrai sepolto nelle Piramidi, spero, ”, interrompe lei, inarcando le sue delicate sopracciglia. “Non hai mai detto niente del genere. Se è vero, perché non me l’hai mai raccontato? Non posso scoprire i tuoi piani per intuizione.”
“Ora, Rosa, tu sai molto bene cosa intendo, cara mia.”
“Allora, perché hai iniziato con quelle orribili gigantesse dal naso rosso? E lei, lei, lei, lei, LEI doveva assolutamente metterci la polvere!”, esclama Rosa, in un piccolo scatto di comica contraddizione.
“In qualche modo, non riesco mai a partecipare correttamente a queste discussioni,” dice Edwin, sospirando e rassegnandosi.
“Come è possibile, signore, che lei riesca sempre a raggiungere la verità quando invece sbaglia costantemente? E per quanto riguarda Belzoni, suppongo sia morto. Spero davvero che lo sia. E come potrebbero le sue gambe o i suoi problemi respiratori interessarla?”
“È quasi arrivato il momento del tuo ritorno, Rosa. Non è stata una passeggiata molto piacevole, vero?”
“Una passeggiata felice? No, una passeggiata terribilmente infelice, signore. Se vado di sopra non appena arrivo e piango fino a quando non posso più andare alla lezione di danza, ne siete voi responsabile, capito?”
“Siamo amici, Rosa.”
“Ah!” esclama Rosa, scuotendo la testa e scoppiando in vere e proprie lacrime. “Vorrei tanto che potessimo essere amiche. È proprio perché non possiamo esserlo che ci comportiamo così l’una con l’altra. Sono solo una ragazzina, Eddy. Ma a volte provo davvero dolore nel cuore. Non arrabbiarti: so che anche tu ne hai spesso bisogno. Entrambi avremmo potuto comportarci meglio, se ciò che era destinato ad accadere fosse rimasto semplicemente possibile. Ora sono un po’ seria. Non sto più scherzando. Questa volta, per il nostro bene e anche per quello dell’altra, dovremmo entrambi trattenerci.”
Disarmato da questo fugace ritratto della >natura femminile in quel bambino viziato, sebbene per un istante fosse propenso a risentirsi di ciò che sembrava rappresentare l’imposizione della sua presenza su di lei, Edwin Drood continuò a osservarla mentre piangeva e singhiozzava in modo infantile, tenendosi il fazzoletto sugli occhi. Poi, quando si calmò un po’ e iniziò persino a ridere di se stessa per essere stata così commossa, la invitò a sedersi vicino, sotto gli olmi.
Illustrazione: Sotto gli alberi
“Una sola parola chiara, cara Pussy. Non sono particolarmente intelligente in questo campo; anzi, a pensarci bene, non so nemmeno se lo sia davvero. Ma voglio fare la cosa giusta. Non so esattamente come dirlo, ma devo farlo prima che, ”
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!’”
CAPITOLO IV.
IL SIGNOR SAPSEA
Riconoscendo il comportamento del “Jackass” come un esempio di stupidità e presunzione auto-sufficienti, una consuetudine forse simile ad altre, più convenzionale che giusta, allora il vero “jackass” più puro di Cloisterham è il signor Thomas Sapsea, l’astaio.
Il signor Sapsea “si veste” come il decano; è stato salutato con rispetto in sua presenza, per errore; addirittura, per strada, gli è stato rivolto il titolo di “Mio Signore”, pensando che fosse il vescovo arrivato inaspettatamente, senza il suo cappellano. Il signor Sapsea ne è molto orgoglioso, così come della sua voce e del suo modo di parlare. Ha persino provato (quando vendeva proprietà terriere) a modulare leggermente il tono delle sue parole dal pulpito, per sembrare più in linea con ciò che considera l’aspetto autentico di un ecclesiastico. Così, alla fine di un’asta pubblica, il signor Sapsea conclude la vendita con un tono che sembra una benedizione rivolta ai broker presenti, lasciando molto indietro il vero decano: un gentiluomo modesto e degno.
Il signor Sapsea ha molti ammiratori; infatti, l’opinione che lui rappresenti un onore per Cloisterham è condivisa da una larga maggioranza della popolazione locale, anche da coloro che non credono nella sua saggezza. Possiede le qualità essenziali di essere “profetico” e noioso allo stesso tempo; il suo modo di parlare e il suo passo hanno un carattere particolare; per non menzionare i suoi gesti delle mani, così solenni da far pensare che stia per confermare la fede a chi gli parla. Avendo superato di molto i cinquant’anni, con una pancetta prominente e pieghe orizzontali sul gilet, si dice sia ricco; vota alle elezioni nel rispetto assoluto delle convenzioni sociali; è moralmente convinto che da quando era bambino nulla sia cambiato in lui. Come potrebbe il sciocco signor Sapsea non rappresentare un onore per Cloisterham e per la società?
Gli uffici di Mr. Sapsea si trovano in High-street, di fronte alla Casa delle suore. Risalgono più o meno allo stesso periodo della costruzione di quella casa; sono stati modernizzati qua e là, man mano che le generazioni che vi abitavano, sempre più in cattive condizioni, preferivano l’aria fresca e la luce alla febbre e alla peste. Sopra la porta d’ingresso c’è un’effigie in legno, alta circa la metà della dimensione naturale, raffigurante il padre di Mr. Sapsea: indossa una parrucca riccia e una toga, e sembra essere intento a vendere qualcosa. La semplicità dell’idea rappresentata e l’aspetto naturale del mignolo, del martello e del pulpito hanno ricevuto grandi apprezzamenti.
Il signor Sapsea siede nel suo noioso salotto al piano terra, guardando prima il proprio cortile lastricato e poi il giardino recintato. Sul tavolo, davanti al camino – un lusso che si diffuse presto, ma piacevole nelle fresche serate autunnali – c’è una bottiglia di vino porto. Come è tipico per lui, nella stanza ci sono anche il suo ritratto, l’orologio a otto giorni e il barometro. Elementi che, secondo lui, dovrebbero proteggerlo dall’umanità, dal tempo e, dal tempo stesso.
Accanto a Mr. Sapsea sul tavolo ci sono una scrivania e materiali da scrittura. Dopo aver dato un’occhiata a un foglio di manoscritto, Mr. Sapsea lo legge ad alta voce con aria solenne, poi, camminando lentamente avanti e indietro nella stanza con i pollici infilati nelle tasche del gilet, lo ripete dalla memoria: in modo così sommesso, ma con grande dignità, che la parola “Ethelinda” risuona l’unica udibile.
Ci sono tre bicchieri da vino puliti su un vassoio sul tavolo. Quando entra la sua cameriera e annuncia: “Il signor Jasper è arrivato, signore”, il signor Sapsea fa segno di farlo entrare e prende due bicchieri dal vassoio, poiché sembrano essere stati richiesti.
“È un piacere vedervi, signore. Mi compiaccio di avere l’onore di ricevervi qui per la prima volta.” Il signor Sapsea onora così la sua casa.
“Sei molto bravo. L’‘onore è mio, e anche la soddisfazione personale è mia.”
“È un piacere per me dirlo, signore. Ma vi assicuro che ricevervi nella mia umile >casa è davvero una grande soddisfazione per me. E questo non lo direi a tutti.” Nelle parole del signor Sapsea c’è un’incomparabile aria di superiorità, che lascia intendere: “Non crederete facilmente che la compagnia di persone come voi possa rappresentare una vera gioia per uno come me. Eppure, è così.”
“Da un po’ di tempo desideravo conoscervi, signor Sapsea.”
“E io, signore, da tempo conosco la vostra reputazione di uomo dal buon gusto. Lasciate che vi riempia il bicchiere. Vi offrirò qualcosa, signore,” disse il signor Sapsea, riempiendo prima il proprio bicchiere.
“Quando i francesi arriveranno, possiamo incontrarli a Dover!”
Questo fu un brindisi patriottico ai tempi dell’infanzia del signor Sapsea; per questo motivo è completamente convinto che sia appropriato anche per qualsiasi epoca successiva.
“È difficile che lei sia ignorante, signor Sapsea”, osserva Jasper, guardando con un sorriso l’astaio mentre questi allunga le gambe davanti al fuoco, “visto che conosce bene il mondo”.
“Beh, signore,” rispose ridendo, “credo di sapere qualcosa al riguardo; qualcosa, insomma.”
“La tua reputazione per quella conoscenza mi ha sempre interessato e sorpreso, e mi ha fatto desiderare di conoscerti. Perché Cloisterham è un posto piccolo. Rinchiuso lì dentro, non so nulla al di fuori di esso, e lo considero davvero un luogo molto limitato.”
“Se non sono mai stato all’estero, giovane signore,” inizia il signor Sapsea, per poi fermarsi: “Lei mi scuserà se la chiamo giovane signore, vero, signor Jasper? Lei è molto più giovane di me.”
“Certo che sì.”
“Se non sono mai andato nei paesi stranieri, giovane uomo, è stato il mondo estero ad arrivare da me. È arrivato attraverso gli affari, e così ho avuto maggiori opportunità. Immaginiamo che faccia un inventario, o che crei un catalogo: vedo un orologio francese. Non l’avevo mai visto in vita mia, ma immediatamente so dire ‘Parigi!’ Vedo alcune tazze e piattini di produzione cinese. Anche questi mi sono sconosciuti personalmente, ma li indico subito e dico ‘Pechino, Nanchino, Canton’. Lo stesso vale per il Giappone, l’Egitto, nonché il bambù e il sandalo provenienti dalle Indie Orientali. Ho persino indicato il Polo Nord, dicendo: ‘Realizzato dagli Eschimesi, per mezzo litro di sherry chiaro!’”
“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.
“Davvero? Un modo davvero notevole, signor Sapsea, per acquisire conoscenza delle persone e delle cose.”
“Lo menziono, signore,” riprende il signor Sapsea con un compiacimento indescrivibile, “perché, come dico, non è giusto vantarsi di ciò che si è; ma bisogna mostrare come si è arrivati a esserlo, e solo allora si può dimostrare davvero di esserlo.”
“Molto interessante. Dovevamo parlare della defunta signora Sapsea.”
“Lo eravamo, signore,” rispose il signor Sapsea. Riempì entrambi i bicchieri e ripose nuovamente la caraffa in un posto sicuro. “Prima di chiedervi il vostro parere, come uomo di gusto, su questa piccola questione, che è solo una questione di poco conto, ma che comunque richiede qualche riflessione, forse dovrei prima descrivervi il carattere della defunta signora Sapsea, morta ormai da tre quarti d’anno.”
Il signor Jasper, mentre sbadiglia dietro al suo bicchiere di vino, abbassa quella maschera e assume un’espressione interessata. Tuttavia, la sua capacità espressiva ne risente leggermente, poiché continua a tenere la bocca spalancata e gli occhi umidi.
“Circa sei anni fa,” prosegue il signor Sapsea, “quando avevo ampliato le mie capacità mentali, non dirò fino a che livello, perché ciò potrebbe sembrare un obiettivo troppo ambizioso, ma almeno fino al punto di desiderare che un’altra mente si fondesse con la mia, ho iniziato a cercare una compagna per il matrimonio. Perché, come dico, non è bene che l’uomo sia solo.”
Sembra che il signor Jasper conservi quest’idea originale nella sua memoria.
“A quell’epoca, Miss Brobity rappresentava, per così dire, un’altra realtà parallela rispetto a quella esistente presso l’istituto delle suore di fronte. La gente diceva che lei mostrasse grande interesse ad assistere alle mie vendite, soprattutto durante le festività o in periodo vacanziero; inoltre, ammirava il mio stile. Col passare del tempo, si notò anche che il mio stile veniva riprodotto nelle esercitazioni di dettato dei suoi alunni. Beh, persino voci maliziose circolarono riguardo a un certo genitore ignorante e ossessionato che si oppose apertamente a questo fenomeno. Ma io non ci credo. È davvero possibile che una persona sana di mente si esponga così facilmente al disprezzo altrui?”
Il signor Jasper scuote la testa: assolutamente improbabile. Il signor Sapsea, in uno stato di distrazione estrema, sembra riempire il bicchiere del suo visitatore, che già è pieno; e infatti lo fa davvero, anche se il proprio bicchiere è vuoto.
“La natura di Miss Brobity era profondamente permeata di rispetto per la Mente. Ammirava la Mente, quando questa veniva espressa attraverso una vasta conoscenza del mondo. Quando le feci la mia proposta, mi concesse l’onore di essere avvolto da un sentimento di ammirazione tale da rendermi incapace di pronunciare altro che quelle due parole: ‘O Tu!’, che si riferivano a me stesso. I suoi occhi azzurri e limpidi erano fissi su di me; le sue mani semitrasparenti erano giunte una sull’altra; il pallore aveva invaso i suoi tratti aquilini. E, sebbene incoraggiata a proseguire, non disse mai più una parola. Concludemmo l’accordo tramite un contratto privato e diventammo quasi come una coppia, considerando le circostanze. Ma lei non riuscì mai, e non lo fece mai, a trovare una frase che soddisfacesse la sua valutazione forse troppo lusinghiera del mio intelletto. Fino all’ultimo momento, mi rivolgeva sempre con quelle stesse frasi incompiute.”
Il signor Jasper ha chiuso gli occhi mentre l’astaio aveva alzato la voce. Improvvisamente li apre e dice, all’unisono con quella voce più profonda: “Ah!”, come se si fosse trattenuto all’ultimo momento dal aggiungere “uomini!”.
“Da allora,” dice il signor Sapsea, con le gambe distese e godendosi seriamente del vino e del fuoco, “sono diventato quel che vedete ora; sono diventato un solitario che piange la sua perdita; ho trascorso le mie serate a parlare nel vuoto, nel silenzio del deserto. Non dirò di essermi rimproverato, ma ci sono stati momenti in cui mi sono chiesto: E se suo marito fosse stato alla sua stessa altezza? Se non avesse dovuto alzare lo sguardo così in alto, quale effetto positivo avrebbe avuto tutto questo sul suo spirito?”
Il signor Jasper, con l’aspetto di essere caduto in uno stato d’animo terribilmente cupo, dice che “suppone che fosse così”.
“Possiamo solo supporlo, signore,” concorda il signor Sapsea. “Come dico sempre, l’uomo propone, il cielo dispone. Potrebbe trattarsi della stessa idea espressa in un’altra forma, ma è così che la vedo io.”
Il signor Jasper mormora in segno di assenso.
“E ora, signor Jasper,” prosegue l’astaio, estraendo il frammento di manoscritto, “poiché il monumento della signora Sapsea ha avuto tutto il tempo necessario per asciugarsi completamente, lasciate che vi chieda la vostra opinione, come uomo di gusto, sull’iscrizione che ho redatto (come ho già detto, non senza un certo impegno). Prendetela in mano: la disposizione delle righe richiede di essere osservata con attenzione, così come il contenuto deve essere analizzato con mente critica.”
Il signor Jasper, attuando quanto richiesto, legge quanto segue:
ETHELINDA,
rispettabile moglie di
Signor Thomas Sapsea,
astaio, valutatore, agente immobiliare, ecc.,
di questa città.
La cui conoscenza del mondo,
sebbene piuttosto vasta,
non l’ha mai portato a incontrare
una persona
più degna di stima e rispetto.
Straniero, fermati un attimo
e poniti questa domanda:
riusciresti tu allo stesso modo?
Se no, allontanati con imbarazzo.
Il signor Sapsea si era alzato e si era messo di spalle alla fiamma, con l’intento di osservare l’effetto di quelle parole sul volto di un uomo dal buon gusto; quindi aveva il viso rivolto verso la porta. Quando la sua serva ricomparve, annunciò: “Durdles è arrivato, signore!” Lui immediatamente prese una terza coppa di vino e la riempì, poiché era stata richiesta, e rispose: “Fai entrare Durdles.”
“Ammirevole!”, disse il signor Jasper, restituendo il foglio.
“Vi sembra appropriato, signore?”
impossibile non approvare. Straordinario, caratteristico e completo.
L’astaio annuisce, come chi accetta ciò che gli spetta e consegna una ricevuta; poi invita il partecipante Durdles a bere quel bicchiere di vino (porgendoglielo), poiché lo riscalderà.
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.
Durdles è un muratore; si occupa principalmente di lapidi, tombe e monumenti, e tutti i suoi lavori sono caratterizzati da uno stesso colore, dalla testa ai piedi. Nessuno a Cloisterham lo conosce meglio di lui: è considerato il libertino per eccellenza di quel luogo. La fama lo proclama un artigiano straordinario, anche se, a quanto si sa, in realtà non lavora mai; allo stesso tempo, tutti sanno che è un vero ubriacone. Conosce la cripta della Cattedrale meglio di qualsiasi altro vivente, forse persino meglio di qualche defunto. Si dice che questa sua profonda conoscenza derivi dal fatto che spesso si recava in quel luogo segreto per isolarsi dal resto della gente di Cloisterham e dormire dopo aver bevuto, essendo lui stesso il responsabile dei lavori di riparazione della Cattedrale. Comunque sia, sa davvero molte cose su di essa; durante le demolizioni di muri, contrafforti e pavimenti, ha visto molte cose strane. Spesso parla di sé al plurale, forse perché non è del tutto sicuro della propria identità quando racconta; oppure forse adotta semplicemente il modo di parlare tipico di Cloisterham per riferirsi a se stesso, considerandosi una figura di rilievo in quel luogo. Così dice, parlando delle sue strane esperienze: “Durdles ha scoperto quell’antico nobile, ” riferendosi a un personaggio sepolto in tempi antichi e di alto rango, “facendo semplicemente cadere la sua pala nel sarcofago. Quell’uomo lo ha guardato con gli occhi aperti, come per dire: ‘Il tuo nome è Durdles? Ma guarda un po’, aspettavo te da un sacco di tempo!’ E poi, è diventato polvere.” Con un righello lungo due piedi sempre in tasca e un martello da muratore quasi sempre in mano, Durdles continua a esaminare ogni angolo della Cattedrale; e ogni volta che dice a Tope: “Tope, c’è un altro vecchio qui dentro!”, Tope ne informa subito il Decano come di una scoperta importante.
In un abito di flanella grezza con bottoni a corno, con una sciarpa gialla le cui estremità penzolavano, un vecchio cappello più rossastro che nero e stivali dello stesso colore delle pietre del suo mestiere, Durdles conduceva una vita vagabonda e incerta. Portava sempre con sé il proprio pasto in un piccolo fagottino e si sedeva su ogni sorta di lapide per mangiare. Il pasto di Durdles era ormai diventato quasi una tradizione a Cloisterham: non solo perché lui non compariva mai in pubblico senza di esso, ma anche perché, in alcune occasioni particolari, veniva sequestrato insieme a lui (quando era ubriaco e incapace di badare a sé stesso) e mostrato davanti al tribunale della città. Tuttavia, queste occasioni erano rare: Durdles raramente beveva fino all’ubriachezza. Per il resto, era un vecchio scapolo che viveva in una piccola casa semidipinta, costruita probabilmente con pietre rubate dal muro della città. L’ingresso di quella dimora era pieno di schegge di pietra; l’interno assomigliava a un groviglio di lapidi, urne, tendaggi e colonne spezzate, tutte in vari stadi di lavorazione scultorea. Lì, due operai continuavano instancabilmente a levigare le pietre, mentre altri due, uno di fronte all’altro, le tagliavano; entravano e uscivano regolarmente dalle loro “casupole protettive”, come se fossero figure meccaniche che simboleggiavano Il Tempo e La Morte.
A Durdles, dopo aver bevuto il suo bicchiere di porto, il signor Sapsea gli affida quel prezioso lavoro creativo della sua Musa. Durdles, senza alcuna emozione, tira fuori la sua riga da due piedi e misura attentamente le linee, unendole poi con sabbia di ghiaia.
“È per il monumento, vero, signor Sapsea?”
“La Iscrizione. Sì.” Il signor Sapsea aspetta di vedere quale effetto avrà su una mente comune.
“Arriverà fino a un ottavo di pollice”, dice Durdles. “Il vostro servitore, signor Jasper. Spero di vedervi in buona salute.”
“Come stai, Durdles?”
“Ho un po’ di quella ‘Tombatismo’ in me, signor Jasper, ma è qualcosa che dovevo aspettarmi.”
“Intendi il Reumatismo”, dice Sapsea con tono acuto. (È infastidito dal fatto che la sua composizione sia stata accettata in modo così meccanico.)
“No, non lo so. Voglio dire, signor Sapsea, il Tombatismo è un’altra cosa rispetto al Reumatismo. Il signor Jasper sa cosa significa Durdles. Se ti mescoli tra loro prima che faccia giorno una mattina d’inverno, e continui, come dice il Catechismo, a seguire quelle regole tutti i giorni della tua vita, allora capirai cosa significa Durdles.”
“È un posto terribilmente freddo,” concorda il signor Jasper, rabbrividendo con disprezzo.
“E se per voi fa un freddo terribile, lassù nella cappella, con tanto respiro caldo che vi circonda, quale sia invece quella ‘amarezza’ per Durdles, laggiù nella cripta, tra umidità e il respiro morto degli antichi, ” risponde quell’uomo. “Durdles lascia che siate voi a giudicare. Dovremmo darvelo subito, signor Sapsea?”
Il signor Sapsea, con l’ansia tipica di un autore che desidera pubblicare il proprio lavoro al più presto, risponde che non può uscire troppo presto.
“Allora è meglio che mi lasci prendere la chiave,” dice Durdles.
“Ma no, non deve essere messo all’interno del monumento!”
“Durdles sa esattamente dove deve essere messo, signor Sapsea; nessuno lo sa meglio di lui. Chiedetelo a chiunque viva a Cloisterham: Durdles conosce sicuramente il proprio lavoro.”
Il signor Sapsea si alza, prende una chiave da un cassetto, apre una cassaforte di ferro incassata nel muro e ne estrae un’altra chiave.
“Quando Durdles dà il tocco finale al suo lavoro, non importa dove – dentro o fuori – gli piace osservarlo da tutti i lati per assicurarsi che risulti davvero all’altezza delle sue aspettative,” spiega Durdles con determinazione.
La chiave che gli porse il vedovo in lutto era piuttosto grande; lui infilò la sua riga da due piedi in una tasca laterale dei suoi pantaloni di flanella fatta apposta per questo scopo, poi aprì deliberatamente il suo cappotto di flanella e la bocca di una grande tasca interna prima di riporre la chiave in quel luogo.
“Ma che cosa, Durdles!”, esclama Jasper, guardandolo con divertimento, “sei completamente rovinato dalle tasche, ”
“E anch’io ho un certo peso tra di loro, signor Jasper. Sentite questi!” e così dicendo estrasse altre due chiavi grandi.
“Dammi anche quello del signor Sapsea. Sicuramente è il più pesante dei tre.”
“Probabilmente le troverai molto interessanti,” dice Durdles. “Tutte fanno parte di monumenti. Tutte contribuiscono a completare l’opera di Durdles. Durdles tiene per lo più le chiavi delle sue opere. Anche se non vengono spesso utilizzate.”
“Ciao,” pensa di dire Jasper mentre esamina distrattamente le chiavi, “volevo chiedertelo da molti giorni, ma poi me ne dimenticavo sempre. Sai che a volte ti chiamano ‘Stony Durdles’, vero?”
“A Cloisterham mi conosce come Durdles, signor Jasper.”
“Certo che ne sono consapevole. Ma a volte quei ragazzi, ”
“Ohi! Se solo vi occupaste di quei piccoli monelli, ” interrompe bruscamente Durdles.
“Non mi danno fastidio più di quanto lo facciano a te. Ma l’altro giorno c’è stata una discussione nel Coro riguardo al fatto che ‘Stony’ potesse significare ‘Tony’, ” facendo tintinnare una chiave contro un’altra.
“#Prenda cura dei pazienti, signor Jasper.”
“O forse ‘Stony’ stava per Stephen, ” con un cambio di accordi.
#“Non si possono fare flauti da quelle materie, signor Jasper.”
O forse il nome deriva dal tuo mestiere. Qual è la verità?
Il signor Jasper pesa le tre chiavi che ha in mano, alza la testa dal suo atteggiamento di curvarsi inutilmente sopra il focolare e consegna le chiavi a Durdles con un’espressione sincera e amichevole.
Ma anche quello di pietra è un individuo burbero e scortese; il suo stato confuso e incerto lo rende estremamente consapevole della propria dignità e lo porta facilmente a offendersi. Rimette le due chiavi nella tasca una per una e le abbottona; prende il pacchetto del proprio pasto dallo schienale della sedia su cui l’aveva appeso all’arrivo; distribuisce equamente il peso che porta, legando la terza chiave al pacchetto, come se fosse un struzzo e gli piacesse mangiare ferro freddo. Poi esce dalla stanza, senza degnarsi di rispondere a una parola.
A quel punto, il signor Sapsea propose di giocare a dama, e questa attività, arricchita dalle sue conversazioni sempre più interessanti e accompagnata da una cena a base di manzo arrosto freddo e insalata, trascorse piacevolmente fino a tarda notte. La saggezza del signor Sapsea, quando viene espressa ai mortali, segue più spesso un ordine discorsivo che epigrammatico; tuttavia, il suo ospite fece intendere che sarebbe tornato in futuro per approfittare ulteriormente di questa “preziosa risorsa”, e il signor Sapsea lo congedò, lasciandolo riflettere su ciò che aveva appreso quella volta.
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.
CAPITOLO V.
IL SIGNOR DURDLES E IL SUO AMICO
John Jasper, mentre tornava a casa attraverso il vicolo, si fermò di colpo davanti alla scena che gli si presentò: Stony Durdles, con il suo cibo per la cena ancora in mano, appoggiato alla ringhiera di ferro del cimitero che lo separava dalle vecchie arcate del convento; un orribile bambino in stracci gli lanciava pietre sotto la luce della luna. A volte le pietre lo colpivano, altre volte lo mancavano, ma Durdles sembrava indifferente a entrambi i risultati. Il bambino, invece, ogni volta che riusciva a colpirlo, emetteva un fischio trionfale attraverso una fessura irregolare nella sua bocca, dove mancavano metà dei denti; quando falliva, esclamava “Ancora una volta!” e cercava di compensare il fallimento prendendo di mira con maggiore precisione.
“Cosa stai facendo a quell’uomo?”, chiede Jasper, uscendo dall’ombra e avvicinandosi alla luce della luna.
“Lo sto rendendo timido come un coniglio,” risponde il brutto bambino piccolo.
#“Dammi quelle pietre che hai in mano.”
“Sì, vi farò ingoiare tutto se cercate di afferrarmi,” dice il bambino, liberandosi e indietreggiando. “Vi romperò un occhio se non fate attenzione!”
“Piccolo diavolo che sei. Cosa ti ha fatto quell’uomo?”
“Non tornerà a casa.”
“Che significato ha tutto ciò per te?”
“Mi dà un penny se lo riporto a casa troppo tardi,” dice il ragazzo. Poi canta, come un piccolo selvaggio, inciampando e danzando tra i brandelli di stoffa e le stringhe delle sue scarpe logore.
“Widdy widdy wen!
Io, posso, uscire ancora,
Widdy widdy wy!
Allora, non andartene, mi vergogno.
Widdy Widdy Wake-cock, un avvertimento!”
—con un’ampia rassegna fino all’ultima parola, e un’altra esibizione a Durdles.
Sembra trattarsi di una nota poetica che funge da avvertimento per Durdles, invitandolo a tenersi alla larga, se possibile, o a tornare a casa.
John Jasper invita il ragazzo con un cenno della testa ad seguirlo; sentendo che sia inutile trascinarlo o persuaderlo, attraversa la ringhiera di ferro dove colui di pietra (e coperto di pietre) è immerso in profonda meditazione.
“Conosci questa cosa, questo bambino?” chiede Jasper, senza riuscire a trovare una parola che possa descriverlo correttamente.
“Deputato,” disse Durdles, annuendo.
“È davvero quel nome?”
“Vice-sceriffo,” acconsente Durdles.
“Sono un servitore presso il ‘Travellers’ Twopenny’ in Gas Works Garding,” spiega. “Tutti noi servitori delle locande ‘Travellers’ Lodgings abbiamo il nome di ‘Deputy’. Quando le stanze sono piene e tutti gli ospiti sono a letto, io esco per fare una passeggiata.” Poi, ritirandosi sul viale, prende la mira e continua:.
“Widdy widdy wen!
Io, cerco, di uscire, ”
“Tienimi la mano,” grida Jasper, “e non gettarla mentre sono così vicino a lui, altrimenti ti ucciderò! Vieni, Durdles; lascia che ti accompagni a casa con te fino a notte. Devo portare anche il tuo fagotto?”
“Assolutamente no,” risponde Durdles, sistemando le cose al loro posto. “Durdles stava riflettendo qui quando siete arrivato, signore, circondato dalle sue opere. Come un autore solitario e silenzioso. Vostro stesso cognato,” aggiunge, indicando un sarcofago all’interno della recinzione, bianco e freddo sotto la luce della luna. “La signora Sapsea, ” continua, presentando il monumento a quella devota moglie. “Il precedente parroco, ” prosegue, mostrando la colonna spezzata del reverendo gentiluomo. “I contribuenti deceduti, ” aggiunge, indicando un vaso e una salvietta posizionati su ciò che potrebbe rappresentare il sapone, “Ex pasticcere e produttore di muffin, molto rispettato, ” conclude, presentando la lapide. “Tutto qui è al sicuro e in ordine, signore. E tutto opera di Durdles. Per quanto riguarda la gente comune, beh, quella è semplicemente avvolta nella torba e nelle erbacce. Meglio non dire nulla. Una povera gente, presto dimenticata, ”
“Quella creatura, è dietro di noi”, dice Jasper, guardando indietro. “Ci seguirà?”
Le relazioni tra Durdles e il Vice-Segretario sono di natura capricciosa; infatti, quando Durdles si muove con quella lentezza improvvisa tipica dei bevitori di birra, il Vice-Segretario compie un ampio giro lungo la strada e assume una posizione difensiva.
“Prima di iniziare quella notte, non hai mai pianto, Widdy Warning,” disse Durdles, ricordandosi improvvisamente – o forse immaginando – un qualche infortunio.
“È vero, l’ho fatto,” dice il vice, nella sua unica forma di cortese contraddizione.
“Proprio tuo fratello, signore,” osserva Durdles, girandosi di nuovo, e come se avesse dimenticato improvvisamente il proprio errore, così come l’aveva ricordato o immaginato; “proprio tuo fratello di Peter il Ragazzo Selvaggio! Ma gli ho dato uno scopo nella vita.”
“E a quale bersaglio punta?” chiede il signor Jasper.
“Ecco fatto, signore,” risponde Durdles con grande soddisfazione; “ora ha un obiettivo verso cui mirare. Gli ho dato qualcosa in cui impegnarsi. Cosa era prima? Un distruttore. Che cosa faceva? Solo distruzione. E cosa ne ricavava? Periodi brevi in prigione a Cloisterham. Né persona, né proprietà, né animale, nulla. Tranne ciò che distruggeva, per mancanza di un obiettivo più nobile. Gli ho dato quell’obiettivo nobile, e ora può guadagnare onestamente tre penny a settimana con i suoi mezzo penny.”
“Lo stupore che dimostra non ha eguali.”
“Ne ha in abbondanza, signor Jasper, ma le butta via tutte. Ora, non so proprio a cosa serva questo mio piano,” continua Durdles, riflettendoci con la stessa solenne gravità; “Non so esattamente come si possa chiamare. Non è forse una sorta di, piano per un’educazione nazionale?”
“Dovrei dire di no,” risponde Jasper.
“Direi di no,” concorda Durdles; “allora non proveremo nemmeno a dargli un nome.”
“È ancora alle nostre spalle,” ripete Jasper, guardando indietro;
“Ci seguirà?”
“Non possiamo fare a meno di passare davanti al ‘Travellers’ Twopenny’ se prendiamo la strada più breve, cioè quella di dietro,” risponde Durdles, “e lo lasceremo lì.”
Continuano così: il vice, essendo un ufficiale di rango inferiore, agisce secondo ordini ricevuti e infrange il silenzio di quell’ora e luogo, lanciando pietre contro ogni muro, palo, colonna e altro oggetto inanimato lungo quel sentiero deserto.
“C’è qualcosa di nuovo nella cripta, Durdles?” chiede 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.
“Qualsiasi cosa vecchia, immagino tu intenda,” ringhia Durdles. “Non è certo il posto adatto per le novità.”
“Qualsiasi nuova scoperta da parte tua, intendevo dire.”
“C’è un vecchio sotto il settimo pilastro a sinistra, lungo i gradini spezzati della piccola cappella sotterranea. Da quanto ho potuto capire finora, sembra essere uno di quei vecchi con le bacchette. A giudicare dalle dimensioni dei passaggi nelle pareti, dei gradini e delle porte attraverso cui entravano ed uscivano, quelle bacchette devono aver rappresentato un vero ostacolo per loro. Direi che due di quei vecchi, incontrandosi casualmente, si fossero spesso agganciati a vicenda con le loro bacchette.”
Senza alcun tentativo di correggere la letteralità di questo punto di vista, Jasper osserva il suo compagno: coperto dalla testa ai piedi di malta vecchia, calce e sabbia di pietra, come se anche lui, Jasper, stesse iniziando a provare un interesse romantico per quella sua vita strana.
“La tua esistenza è davvero curiosa.”
Senza fornire la minima indicazione riguardo alla domanda, se la consideri un complimento o il contrario, Durdles risponde bruscamente: “Il tuo è un altro caso.”
“Beh! Poiché il mio destino è legato allo stesso vecchio posto freddo e immutabile della terra. Sì. Ma c’è molto più mistero e interesse nella tua relazione con la Cattedrale rispetto alla mia. Anzi, sto iniziando a pensare di chiederti di accettarmi come una sorta di studente o apprendista gratuito sotto di te. Per poter venire con te qualche volta e scoprire quei luoghi strani in cui trascorri i tuoi giorni.”
Il “Stonato” risponde in modo generico: “Va bene. Tutti sanno dove trovare Durdles quando c’è bisogno di lui.” Il che, anche se non del tutto vero, è più o meno corretto, nel senso che si può dire che Durdles sia sempre da qualche parte, in uno stato di vagabondaggio.
“Quello su cui rifletto di più,” dice Jasper, continuando il suo discorso sugli argomenti che lo interessano dal punto di vista romantico, “è l’eccezionale precisione con cui sembri riuscire a scoprire dove sono sepolti le persone. Cosa c’è? Quel fagotto ti ostacola il passaggio; lascia che te lo tenga io.”
Durdles si è fermato e si è spostato indietro di poco (il vice, attento a ogni suo movimento, si è immediatamente precipitato sulla strada), cercando intorno qualche sporgenza o angolo su cui posizionare il proprio fardello, così da liberarsene.
“Basta che mi dai il mio martello da lì,” dice Durdles, “e ti mostrerò come fare.”
Clink, clink. E gli viene consegnato il martello.
“Ora, guardate qui. Voi emettete la vostra nota, vero, signor Jasper?”
“Sì, davvero.”
“Allora, prendo il mio martello e comincio a battere.” (Qui batte sul marciapiede; l’attento vice-sceriffo si allontana di qualche passo, pensando che possa essere necessario colpire più forte.) “Batto, batto. Sodo! Continuo a battere. Ancora sodo! Batto ancora. Ehi! Cavo! Batto ancora. Insisto. Sodo dentro il cavo. Batto, batto, per essere sicuro. Sodo dentro il cavo. E all’interno, di nuovo cavo! Ecco fatto! Quell’antico oggetto si è frantumato in mille pezzi, dentro una bara di pietra, in una cripta, ”
“Straordinario!”
“Ho persino fatto questo,” dice Durdles, tirando fuori la sua riga lunga due piedi. Nel frattempo, il vice-sceriffo si avvicina lentamente, sospettando che il “tesoro” possa essere scoperto da un momento all’altro, il che potrebbe significare per lui una grande fortuna, oltre al piacere di vedere i ricercatori impiccati grazie alle sue prove. “Dite pure che quel martello è parte di quel muro, opera mia. Due piedi più quattro piedi fanno sei piedi. Sei piedi all’interno di quel muro c’è la signora Sapsea.”
“Non proprio, signora Sapsea, ”
“Dite ‘Signora Sapsea’. Il suo muro è più spesso, ma dite ‘Signora Sapsea’. Durdles bussa su quel muro rappresentato da quel martello, e dopo aver ascoltato attentamente, dice: ‘C’è qualcosa tra noi!’ E infatti, gli uomini di Durdles hanno lasciato lì dentro del materiale inutile nello stesso spazio di sei piedi, ”
Jasper ritiene che tale precisione “sia un dono”.
“Non lo accetterei nemmeno come regalo,” risponde Durdles, senza affatto considerare quel commento positivo. “Me l’ho guadagnato da solo. Durdles ottiene la sua conoscenza scavando a fondo, estraendola dalle sue radici quando essa non vuole essere rivelata. Ehi, tu, vice sceriffo!”
“Widdy!” è la risposta stridula del vice sceriffo, che si allontana di nuovo.
“Prendi quel penny. E non farti più vedere da me, per tutta la notte, dopo che saremo arrivati al ‘Travellers’ Twopenny”.
“Avvertenza!”, risponde l’agente, dopo aver preso la moneta da mezzo penny, e con questa parola misteriosa sembra esprimere il suo accordo con l’accordo stabilito.
Basta loro attraversare ciò che un tempo era il vigneto, appartenente a quello che un tempo era il Monastero, per entrare nel vicolo stretto in cui si trova quella strana casa di legno a due piani, attualmente conosciuta come “Travellers’ Twopenny”: una casa tutta storta e deformata, proprio come le moralità dei viaggiatori che vi abitano. Con pochi resti di un portico in rete sopra la porta, e anche di una recinzione rustica davanti al giardino ormai distrutto. Poiché questi viaggiatori sono così legati a quel luogo per un sentimento tenero (o perché amano tanto avere un fuoco accanto alla strada durante il giorno), non è possibile convincerli o minacciarli affinché se ne vadano. A meno di impossessarsi con la forza di qualche rametto di “forget-me-not” e portarselo via.
A questo misero posto si cerca di dare l’aspetto di una locanda utilizzando frammenti di tende rosse convenzionali alle finestre; quei stracci, però, diventano appena visibili nella notte a causa della debole luce delle lampade fatte di paglia o cotone che bruciano fiocamente nell’aria stagnante all’interno. Quando Durdles e Jasper si avvicinano, vengono accolti da una lanterna di carta con scritto sopra l’indirizzo della locanda; inoltre, alcuni altri ragazzi orribili – che siano ospiti paganti, seguaci o semplicemente individui che approfittano della situazione, chi lo sa! – si avvicinano loro come se fossero attratti da un qualche “odore di carogna” nell’aria, e immediatamente iniziano a lanciare pietre contro di lui e gli uni contro gli altri.
“Fermatevi, voi giovani bruti!”, grida Jasper arrabbiato, “lasciateci passare!”
Questo rimprovero fu accolto con urla e pietre lanciate; secondo una consuetudine ormai radicata negli ultimi anni nelle normative di polizia delle nostre comunità inglesi, dove i cristiani vengono lapidati da tutte le parti, come se fossero tornati i tempi di San Stefano, Durdles osservò con qualche ragionevolezza che “quei giovani selvaggi non hanno davvero un obiettivo preciso”, e così proseguì per la sua strada.
All’angolo del vicolo, Jasper, furioso, controlla il suo compagno e guarda indietro. Tutto è silenzio. Poi una pietra colpisce il suo cappello, seguita da un lontano grido di “Wake-Cock! Attenzione!”, e dal verso di un corvo, come se provenisse da qualche demoniaco Chanticleer, che gli indica sotto quale “vittorioso fuoco” si trova. Allora lui gira l’angolo e si rifugia in salvo, portando Durdles a casa. Durdles, intanto, barcolla tra i detriti del cortile, come se stesse per finire dentro una delle tombe in costruzione.
John Jasper ritorna al suo cancello da un’altra strada e, entrando silenziosamente con la sua chiave, trova il fuoco ancora acceso. Prende da uno scaffale chiuso a chiave una pipa dal aspetto particolare, la riempie – ma non di tabacco – e, dopo aver regolato attentamente il contenuto della coppetta, utilizzando un piccolo strumento, sale una scala interna composta da pochi gradini che conduce a due stanze. Una di queste è la sua camera da letto; l’altra appartiene a suo nipote. In entrambe c’è luce accesa.
Suo nipote dorme tranquillamente, sereno e senza preoccupazioni. John Jasper sta in piedi a guardarlo, con la sua pipa spenta in mano; per qualche momento, osserva lui con attenzione profonda e concentrata. Poi, facendo silenzio con i propri passi, si dirige nella propria stanza, accende la pipa e si abbandona ai “Spettri” che essa evoca a mezzanotte.
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.
Capitolo VI: Filantropia nell’angolo di Canon Minor
Il Reverendo Septimus Crisparkle (chiamato Septimus perché sei suoi fratelli minori erano morti uno dopo l’altro alla nascita, come sei deboli lumini che si spegnevano non appena accesi) aveva rotto lo sottile ghiaccio mattutino vicino al Cloisterham Weir con la sua testa, il che aveva notevolmente rinvigorito il suo corpo. Ora, per migliorare ancora la circolazione del sangue, colpiva uno specchio con grande abilità e maestria. Lo specchio rifletteva l’immagine di un Septimus sano e vigoroso: fintava e schivava con estrema astuzia, sferrando i pugni con precisione assoluta. I suoi tratti radiosi esprimevano innocenza, mentre una profonda benevolenza traspariva dai suoi guanti da pugilato.
Non era ancora nemmeno l’ora di colazione: la signora Crisparkle – madre, non moglie del reverendo Septimus – era appena scesa e aspettava l’urna. Infatti, in quel preciso momento il reverendo Septimus si fermò per posare il viso gentile della vecchia signora tra i suoi guanti da pugilato e baciarlo. Dopo averlo fatto con tenerezza, il reverendo Septimus riprese a combattere, usando la mano sinistra e poi la destra, in modo davvero spettacolare.
“Dico ogni mattina della mia vita che alla fine lo farai, Sept,” osservò la vecchia signora guardandolo; “e infatti lo farai.”
“Cosa dovrei fare, mamma cara?”
“Rompi lo specchio magico, o farà esplodere un vaso sanguigno.”
“Né una cosa né l’altra, per favore, Dio mio. Ma cara, guarda questa, ” In un ultimo round di grande severità, il Reverendo Septimus inflisse ogni sorta di punizione, ma alla fine riuscì a far finire il cappello della vecchia signora in Chancery. Questo è il termine tecnico utilizzato nei circoli scientifici dagli esperti dell’Arte Nobile. Con una delicatezza tale da non disturbare nemmeno la più sottile traccia di lavanda o nastro di ciliegio presente sul cappello, il Reverendo Septimus liberò magnanimamente il “sconfitto”, proprio nel momento giusto per infilarsi i guanti in un cassetto e fingere di guardare fuori dalla finestra con aria meditativa. Quando entrò un servitore, il Reverendo Septimus lasciò il posto all’urna e alle altre preparazioni per la colazione. Una volta tutto pronto, e i due rimasti soli di nuovo, fu piacevole vedere (o sarebbe stato piacevole, se ci fosse stata qualcuno a osservare, il che non accadde mai) la vecchia signora alzarsi per recitare ad alta voce la Preghiera del Signore, mentre suo figlio, pur essendo ancora a cinque anni da quaranta, stava in piedi con la testa bassa ad ascoltarla. Proprio come aveva fatto cinque mesi prima, quando quelle stesse parole erano uscite dalle stesse labbra.
Cosa c’è di più bello di una signora anziana – a parte una giovane donna – quando i suoi occhi sono luminosi, quando la sua figura è snella e compatta, quando il suo viso è sereno e gioioso, quando il suo abito è come quello di una pastorella di porcellana: così delicato nei colori, così adatto a lei in ogni dettaglio, così ben confezionato sul suo corpo? Niente c’è di più bello, pensava spesso il buon canonico minore quando si sedeva a tavola di fronte alla sua madre vedova da molto tempo. In quei momenti, i suoi pensieri potevano essere riassunti nelle due parole che più frequentemente apparivano nelle sue conversazioni: “Mia Sept!”
Erano una bella coppia: seduti insieme a colazione in Minor Canon Corner, a Cloisterham. Perché Minor Canon Corner era un luogo tranquillo, nell’ombra della Cattedrale; il gracchiare dei corvi, i passi echeggianti di rari viandanti, il suono delle campane della Cattedrale o il rombo dell’organo della Cattedrale sembravano rendere quel luogo ancora più silenzioso del vero e proprio silenzio. Guerrieri truculenti avevano trascorso secoli a fare razzia in quella zona; servi sfruttati avevano lavorato duramente e morito lì; potenti monaci avevano avuto il loro ruolo, a volte positivo, a volte negativo. Ma ormai tutti se n’erano andati da Minor Canon Corner. E forse questo era addirittura meglio. Forse uno dei più grandi scopi della loro presenza lì era stato proprio quello di lasciare indietro quell’atmosfera di tranquillità, quel sereno e romantico stato d’animo che nasce da storie tristi raccontate o da drammi commoventi rappresentati.
Muri di mattoni rossi, il cui colore era stato armoniosamente attenuato dal tempo, edera radicata saldamente, finestre a griglia, stanze divise da pannelli, grandi travi di quercia in spazi ristretti, e giardini recintati da mura di pietra dove frutti annuali maturavano ancora sugli alberi. Questi erano i principali elementi che circondavano la graziosa signora Crisparkle e il reverendo Septimus mentre sedevano a colazione.
“E allora, cara mamma,” chiese il canonico minore, dimostrando di avere un appetito sano e robusto, “cosa dice la lettera?”
La bella signora anziana, dopo averlo letto, lo posò semplicemente sul canovaccio da colazione. Poi lo passò a suo figlio.
Ora, la vecchia signora era estremamente orgogliosa dei suoi occhi così chiari da permetterle di leggere senza occhiali. Anche suo figlio ne era molto fiero e si impegnava con grande diligenza affinché lei traggesse il massimo piacere possibile da questa situazione; per questo aveva inventato la scusa che anche lui stesso non riuscisse a leggere senza occhiali. Pertanto, ora indossava un paio di occhiali di dimensioni davvero enormi, che non solo causavano notevoli disagi al suo naso e ostacolavano la sua colazione, ma rendevano anche molto difficile la lettura delle lettere. Infatti, i suoi occhi, quando non erano aiutati dagli occhiali, avevano una visione simile a quella di un microscopio e di un telescopio messi insieme.
“È sicuramente del signor Honeythunder,” disse la vecchia signora, incrociando le braccia.
“Certo,” convenne suo figlio. Poi continuò a leggere in modo poco convinto:
“‘Refugio della Filantropia, Sedi principali, Londra, mercoledì.”
”#‘Cara signora,’”
“‘Scrivo nel, ’ Nel cosa esattamente? In cosa scrive?”
“Seduta in quella sedia,” disse la vecchia signora.
Il reverendo Septimus si tolse gli occhiali per poter vedere il suo viso, mentre esclamava:
“Ma cosa dovrebbe scrivere dentro?”
“Beneditemi, beneditemi, Sept,” rispose la vecchia signora, “non capite il contesto! Restituitemelo, caro mio.”
Felice di potersi togliere gli occhiali (poiché facevano sempre venire le lacrime ai suoi occhi), suo figlio obbedì, mormorando che la sua vista per leggere i manoscritti peggiorava giorno dopo giorno.
“‘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.”
“‘Scrivo,’” proseguì sua madre, leggendo in modo molto chiaro e preciso, “‘dalla sedia a cui probabilmente sarò costretta a rimanere per alcune ore.’”
Septimus guardò la fila di sedie appoggiate al muro, con un’espressione che era metà di protesta e metà di supplica.
“‘Abbiamo,’” continuò la vecchia signora con un po’ più di enfasi, “‘una riunione del nostro Comitato Congiunto dei Principali Filantropi Centrali e Distrettuali, nella nostra sede principale come indicato sopra; ed è loro unanimemente concordato che io presieda.’”
“Septimus respirò più liberamente e mormorò: ‘Oh, se dovesse arrivare a quel punto, lasciatelo fare.’”
“Per non perdere nemmeno un giorno di pubblicazioni, approfitto del fatto che un lungo rapporto viene letto per denunciare un individuo malvagio, ”
“È davvero una cosa straordinaria,” intervenne il gentile Canon Minore, mettendo da parte forchetta e coltello e strofinandosi l’orecchio con aria perplessa, “che questi filantropi siano sempre intenti a denunciare qualcuno. E è altrettanto straordinario che siano sempre così indignati nei confronti dei malviventi!”
“‘Denunciare un malvagio pubblico, ’”——continuò la vecchia signora—“‘per potermi liberare di questa piccola questione spiacevole. Ho parlato con i miei due pupilli, Neville e Helena Landless, riguardo al loro carente educazione, e hanno accettato il piano proposto; in ogni caso, avrei fatto in modo che lo accettassero, che gli piacesse o no.’”
“E c’è un’altra cosa ancora straordinaria,” osservò il Canon Minore con lo stesso tono di prima, “il fatto che questi filantropi siano così propensi a trascinare i loro simili per il collo e, per così dire, a spingerli sul sentiero della pace. Scusate se vi interrompo, mia cara.”
“Pertanto, cara Signora, si prega di preparare vostro figlio, il Reverendo Septimus, ad accogliere Neville come ospite che seguirà i suoi studi con lui lunedì prossimo. Lo stesso giorno, Helena lo accompagnerà a Cloisterham, dove si stabilirà presso l’Casa delle Suore, l’istituto consigliato da voi e vostro figlio. Si prega inoltre di preparare il suo arrivo e le sue necessità quotidiane. I termini previsti in entrambi i casi sono esattamente quelli che mi avete comunicato per iscritto quando ho iniziato a corrispondere con voi sull’argomento, dopo essere stato presentato a voi presso la casa di vostra sorella in città. Con i miei saluti al Reverendo Septimus, sono, cara Signora, vostro affezionato fratello (nella filantropia), LUKE HONEYTHUNDER.”
“Beh,” disse Septimus, dopo aver continuato ad strofinarsi l’orecchio, “dobbiamo provarci. Non c’è dubbio che abbiamo spazio per un ospite, e che io abbia il tempo e la voglia di prendermene cura. Devo ammettere che sono quasi contento che non sia proprio il signor Honeythunder in persona. Anche se questo sembra un po’ pregiudizioso, vero? Non l’ho mai visto infatti. È un uomo alto, mamma?”
“Dovrei chiamarlo un uomo grande, caro mio,” rispose la vecchia signora dopo qualche esitazione, “ma la sua voce è davvero ancora più, ‘grande’.”
“Più di se stesso?”
“Più di chiunque altro.”
“Ahah!” disse Septimus. E finì la colazione come se il sapore del tè Superior Family Souchong, così come quello della carne di maiale, del pane tostato e delle uova, stesse lentamente svanendo.
La sorella di Mrs. Crisparkle, un’altra pezza di porcellana di Dresda, abbinata a lei così perfettamente da poter costituire una deliziosa coppia di ornamenti per i due estremi di qualsiasi vecchio camino tradizionale, non avrebbe mai dovuto essere vista separata. Era la moglie senza figli di un clérigo che ricopriva una carica ufficiale nella City di Londra. Il signor Honeythunder, nel suo ruolo pubblico di Professore di Filantropia, aveva conosciuto Mrs. Crisparkle durante l’ultima occasione in cui questi ornamenti di porcellana vennero rimessi in ordine (in altre parole, durante la sua ultima visita annuale a sua sorella), dopo un evento pubblico di natura filantropica: in quell’occasione, alcuni orfani piccoli furono regalati panini al prugno. Questi erano tutti gli antefatti conosciuti riguardo ai futuri studenti del “Minor Canon Corner”.
“Sono sicuro che sarete d’accordo con me, mamma,” disse il signor Crisparkle dopo averci pensato bene, “il primo passo da compiere è far sentire questi giovani il più a loro agio possibile. Non c’è nulla di disinteressato in questo: non possiamo noi stessi sentirci a nostro agio con loro se loro non si sentono a loro agio con noi. Ora, il nipote di Jasper è qui sotto; e come i simili si attraggono. Lui è un giovane simpatico, quindi lo inviteremo a cena insieme al fratello e alla sorella. Siamo già in tre. Non possiamo chiederglielo senza chiederlo anche a Jasper. Quattro. Aggiungiamo la signorina Twinkleton e quella ‘fata sposa’ che verrà. Sei. E poi ci siamo noi due. Otto. Otto persone a una cena amichevole. Vi dispiacerebbe davvero, mamma?”
“Nove, sì, Sept,” rispose la vecchia signora, visibilmente nervosa.
“Mia cara mamma, ne elenco otto in particolare.”
“L’esatta dimensione del tavolo e della stanza, mia cara, ”
Fu deciso così: e quando il signor Crisparkle, insieme a sua madre, andò da miss Twinkleton per organizzare l’arrivo di miss Helena Landless alla Nuns’ House, anche le altre due inviti relative a quell’istituto furono fatte e accettate. Miss Twinkleton diede infatti un’occhiata ai globi, rammaricandosi che non fossero adatti per essere portati in società; ma si rassegnò all’idea di lasciarli lì. Successivamente vennero inviate istruzioni al filantropo affinché il signor Neville e miss Helena partissero e arrivassero in tempo per la cena; e nell’aria di Minor Canon Corner il profumo del brodo iniziò a diffondersi.
In quei tempi non esisteva alcuna ferrovia che portasse a Cloisterham, e il signor Sapsea diceva che mai ne sarebbe esistita una. Il signor Sapsea aggiungeva anche che non avrebbe mai dovuto essercene una. Eppure, cosa meravigliosa da considerare, oggi i treni espresso non si fermano nemmeno a Cloisterham; sfrecciano via senza degnarla di uno sguardo, sollevando nuvole di polvere con le loro ruote come se volessero dimostrare la sua insignificanza. C’era un piccolo tratto della linea principale che passava da lì. Un tratto che, se fosse fallito, avrebbe distrutto il mercato finanziario; se invece fosse riuscito, avrebbe causato gravi problemi alla Chiesa e allo Stato. E, naturalmente, anche alla Costituzione. Ma anche quel piccolo tratto aveva già sconvolto la vita economica di Cloisterham: il traffico, abbandonando le strade principali, iniziò a dirigersi verso quella località da parti remote del paese, attraverso sentieri secondari. Sentieri che, per molti anni, erano segnalati all’angolo con la scritta: “Attenzione al cane”.
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 eye-glass 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.
Su questa ignominiosa strada per arrivare a destinazione, il signor Crisparkle aspettava l’arrivo di un omnibus basso e tozzo, con una quantità sproporzionata di bagagli sul tetto: sembrava quasi un piccolo elefante con un “castello” decisamente troppo grande. Quell’omnibus rappresentava all’epoca il mezzo di trasporto quotidiano tra Cloisterham e il resto del mondo. Mentre quel veicolo si avvicinava, il signor Crisparkle riusciva a vedere a malapena altro che un passeggero seduto sul tetto, con i gomiti appoggiati alle ginocchia e le mani poggiate sui fianchi; quell’uomo comprimeva il conducente in uno spazio estremamente ristretto e lo fissava con uno sguardo minaccioso, il suo viso era molto marcato.
“Questo è il Cloisterham?” chiese il passeggero con una voce tonante.
“Sì,” rispose il conducente, strofinandosi come se avesse mal di qualcosa, dopo aver passato le redini al palafreniere. “E non sono mai stato così felice di vederlo.”
“Allora dite al vostro padrone di rendere più largo il suo posto a sedile elevato,” rispose il passeggero. “Il vostro padrone è moralmente obbligato – e dovrebbe esserlo anche legalmente, con punizioni severe in caso contrario – a garantire il comfort dei suoi simili.”
Il conducente esaminò superficialmente lo stato del proprio >scheletro con le palme delle mani; questo sembrava renderlo ansioso.
“Mi sono seduto sopra di te?” chiese il passeggero.
“Ce l’hai,” disse il conducente, come se non gli piacesse affatto.
“Prendi quella carta, amico mio.”
“Credo che non ti priverò di questo,” rispose il conducente, guardandolo con scarso interesse, senza però prenderlo. “A cosa mi servirebbe?”
“Diventa membro di quella società,” disse il passeggero.
“Cosa ne ricaverò?” chiese il conducente.
“Fratellanza”, rispose il passeggero con voce feroce.
“Grazie,” disse il conducente, molto lentamente, mentre scendeva dall’auto; “mia madre era soddisfatta di me, e lo sono anch’io. Non voglio fratelli.”
“Ma devi averli,” rispose il passeggero, scendendo anche lui, “che ti piaccia o no. Sono tuo fratello.”
“Dico io!” esclamò il conducente, diventando sempre più irritato, “non essere troppo insistente! Il verme finirà per, ”
Ma in quel momento, il signor Crisparkle intervenne, rimproverandolo dolcemente con voce amichevole: “Joe, Joe, Joe! Non perdere la testa, Joe, mio buon amico!” E poi, quando Joe si inchinò educatamente, il signor Crisparkle si rivolse al passeggero dicendo: “Signor Honeythunder?”
“Quello è il mio nome, signore.”
“Mi chiamo Crisparkle.”
“Reverendo signor Septimus? Piacere di vedervi, signore. Neville e Helena sono dentro. Ultimamente ho sofferto un po’ a causa della pressione del mio lavoro pubblico, così ho pensato di prendere un po’ d’aria fresca, di raggiungerli e poi tornare di notte. Quindi voi siete il Reverendo signor Septimus, giusto?” Lo osservò con delusione, torcendo una delle sue lenti da vista con la cordicella, come se stesse torturandola, ma in realtà non la usava affatto. “Ah! Mi aspettavo che foste più anziano, signore.”
“Spero che lo facciate,” fu la risposta cordiale.
“Eh?”, chiese il signor Honeythunder.
Solo una stupida barzelletta. Non vale la pena ripeterla.
“Scherzo? Ah. Non capisco mai gli scherzi,” ribatté il signor Honeythunder con un cipiglio.
“Gli scherzi sono sprecati con me, signore. Dov’è Helena? E Neville. Venite qui! Il signor Crisparkle è sceso per incontrarvi.”
Un giovane insolitamente attraente e agile, e una ragazza altrettanto attraente e agile; molto simili tra loro; entrambi di pelle molto scura e dal colorito intenso; lei aveva quasi l’aspetto tipico di una zingara; c’era qualcosa di indomabile in entrambi; un certo atteggiamento che li faceva sembrare più le prede che i cacciatori. snelli, agili, con movimenti rapidi degli occhi e delle membra; a metà timidi, a metà sfidanti; con uno sguardo feroce; un’inspiegabile esitazione nel loro modo di comportarsi, sia nel viso che nel corpo, che poteva essere paragonata all’esitazione prima di accovacciarsi o di scattare in movimento. Le appunti mentali sommari fatti da Mr. Crisparkle nei primi cinque minuti avrebbero potuto essere letti esattamente così, parola per parola.
Invitò il signor Honeythunder a cena, con la mente turbata (poiché il disastro causato dalla povera vecchia pastorella di porcellana lo opprimeva profondamente), e prese sottobraccio Helena Landless. Sia lei che suo fratello, camminando insieme per le antiche strade, si divertirono molto a ciò che lui indicava loro dalla >Cattedrale e dalle rovine del monastero; anzi, come si leggeva nelle sue note, sembravano davvero bellissimi prigionieri barbari portati da qualche selvaggio dominio tropicale. Il signor Honeythunder camminava in mezzo alla strada, spingendo via i nativi dal suo percorso, e parlava ad alta voce di un piano che aveva ideato: attaccare tutti i disoccupati del Regno Unito, rinchiuderli in prigione e costringerli, a costo della loro stessa vita, a diventare filantropi.
La signora Crisparkle aveva bisogno anche lei di mostrare un po’ di filantropia quando vide quel grosso e rumoroso “tumore” nel piccolo gruppo di persone riunite. Sempre qualcosa di simile a una “vescica” sulla faccia della società. Il signor Honeythunder, in particolare, si era trasformato in un “foruncolo infiammatorio” nel quartiere di Minor Canon Corner. Anche se non era vero, come gli accusavano scherzosamente i suoi detrattori, che gridasse alle altre persone: “Maledite le vostre anime e i vostri corpi. Venite qui e siate benedetti!”, la sua filantropia aveva comunque quel carattere esplosivo che rendeva difficile distinguere tra essa e l’animosità. Volevano abolire la forza militare, ma prima di tutto processavano tutti gli ufficiali che avevano adempiuto ai loro doveri con procedimenti militari e li fucilavano. Volevano eliminare la guerra, ma per farlo la combattevano contro coloro che la sostenevano, definendola “la cosa più preziosa del mondo”. Volevano abolire la pena di morte, ma prima di tutto eliminavano tutti i legislatori, giuristi e giudici che erano contrari a questa idea. Volevano la concordia universale, ma per raggiungerla eliminavano tutte le persone che non erano disposte o semplicemente incapaci di essere in armonia con gli altri. Volevano “amare” i propri simili come se fossero sé stessi, ma prima dovevano insultarli e chiamarli con ogni sorta di nomi offensivi. E soprattutto: non dovevano fare nulla in privato, o per conto proprio. Dovevano recarsi negli uffici della “Casa della Filantropia”, iscriversi come membri e dichiarare apertamente la propria adesione a questa causa. Poi pagavano la quota di iscrizione, ricevevano la tessera di membro, il nastro e la medaglia. E da quel momento in poi vivevano sempre su un palco, ripetendo ciò che diceva il signor Honeythunder, il tesoriere, i vice-tesoriere, i membri del comitato, dei sottocomitati, il segretario e il vice-segretario. E tutto questo veniva solitamente espresso in risoluzioni approvate all’unanimità, che recitavano più o meno così: “Questo assemblea di membri della ‘Casa della Filantropia’ considera con indignazione e disprezzo, uniti a un profondo disgusto e orrore, ”, in breve, la bassezza di tutte quelle persone che non appartengono a questa comunità. E si impegnavano a fare il maggior numero possibile di dichiarazioni offensive su di loro, senza preoccuparsi minimamente dei fatti.
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.
La cena si trasformò in un vero e proprio disastro. Il filantropo disturbò completamente l’ordine della tavola, si sedette nel modo che ostacolava il servizio dei camerieri, bloccando ogni via di passaggio, e fece impazzire il signor Tope (che aiutava la cameriera) passandogli piatti e stoviglie sopra la testa. Nessuno riusciva a parlare con nessun altro, perché lui si rivolgeva contemporaneamente a tutti, come se il gruppo non avesse alcuna individualità, ma fosse soltanto un insieme di persone. Prese in ostaggio il reverendo signor Septimus, trattandolo come una figura ufficiale a cui rivolgersi o come un “punto di appoggio” per i suoi discorsi, e sviluppò l’abitudine esasperante tipica di tali oratori: fingere che fosse un avversario malvagio e debole. Così, gli chiedeva: “E ora, signore, si deciderà forse a rovinarsi completamente dicendomi, ” quando in realtà quell’uomo innocente non aveva nemmeno aperto bocca. Oppure aggiungeva: “Vedete bene in quale situazione vi trovate. Non vi lascerò scampo. Dopo aver esaurito tutte le risorse della frode e della menzogna, per anni interi; dopo aver dimostrato una combinazione di bassezza e audacia spietata, come il mondo raramente ha visto. Ora avete la faccia tosta di inchinarvi davanti alla persona più disonesta dell’umanità, chiedendo pietà!” Il povero canonico sembrava sia indignato che confuso; sua madre, con le lacrime agli occhi, sedeva in silenzio; gli altri presenti erano completamente sopraffatti, privi di qualsiasi reazione o capacità di resistenza.
Ma quell’ondata di filantropia che scaturì quando la partenza del signor Honeythunder divenne imminente deve essere stata davvero molto gratificante per i sentimenti di quell’uomo distinto. Il suo caffè veniva preparato, grazie alle particolari attenzioni del signor Tope, un’ora prima che ne avesse bisogno. Il signor Crisparkle stava seduto con l’orologio in mano per circa lo stesso periodo, per non ritardare troppo. I quattro giovani erano tutti d’accordo nel ritenere che l’orologio della Cattedrale segnasse le tre quarti quando in realtà indicava soltanto un quarto. La signorina Twinkleton stimò che la distanza fino all’omnibus fosse di venticinque minuti a piedi, mentre in realtà erano soltanto cinque. L’affettuosa gentilezza di tutti quanti lo aiutarono a indossare il cappotto e lo spinsero fuori nella luce della luna, come se fosse un traditore che suscitava la loro compassione. E una squadra di >cavalli era già pronta alla porta posteriore. Il signor Crisparkle e il suo nuovo protetto, che lo accompagnarono all’omnibus, erano così preoccupati che potesse prendersi un raffreddore che lo chiusero subito dentro l’omnibus, lasciandolo con ancora mezz’ora di tempo in più.
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.
[Illustration: 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 figure, 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.”
“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.
“Di questo, signor Neville, può esserne certo,” rispose il canonico minore. “Non predico mai più di quanto sia necessario, e non intendo ripagare la sua fiducia con un sermone. Ma le chiedo di ricordare, molto seriamente e costantemente, che se devo essere d’aiuto a lei, questo può avvenire soltanto con il suo stesso impegno; e che tale impegno può essere efficace solo cercando l’aiuto del Cielo.”
“Cercherò di fare la mia parte, signore.”
“Ebbene, signor Neville, farò del mio meglio. Ecco la mia mano: possa Dio benedire i nostri sforzi!”
Ora si trovavano davanti alla porta della sua >casa, e dall’interno provenivano suoni allegri di voci e risate.
“Farò un altro giro prima di entrare,” disse il signor Crisparkle, “perché voglio farvi una domanda. Quando avete detto di aver cambiato idea su di me, parlavate non solo per voi stessi, ma anche per vostra sorella, vero?”
“Senza dubbio sì, signore.”
“Scusi, signor Neville, ma penso che non abbia avuto l’opportunità di comunicare con sua sorella da quando ci siamo incontrati. Il signor Honeythunder è stato molto eloquente; ma forse posso osare dire, senza cattive intenzioni, che ha quasi monopolizzato l’attenzione durante quell’incontro. Non avrebbe potuto rispondere al posto di sua sorella senza una motivazione sufficiente?”
Neville scosse la testa con un sorriso orgoglioso.
“Non lo sa ancora, signore, quanto possa essere profonda la comprensione che esiste tra mia sorella e me, anche se non ci siamo scambiati nemmeno una parola. Forse, addirittura, solo uno sguardo. Lei non solo prova ciò che ho descritto, ma sa molto bene che sto approfittando di questa occasione per parlare con lei, e anche per me stesso.”
Il signor Crisparkle lo guardò in faccia con un certo incredulità; ma l’espressione sul suo volto rivelava una convinzione assoluta e ferma riguardo alla veridicità di ciò che aveva detto, tanto che il signor Crisparkle fissò il marciapiede, immerso nei suoi pensieri, fino a quando non arrivarono di nuovo davanti alla sua porta.
“Chiederò un altro turno, signore, questa volta,” disse il giovane, con il viso che si arrossiva leggermente. “Ma per l’eloquenza del signor Honeythunder, credo che l’abbiate definita così, signore, ” (con un certo sottile astuzia.)
“Sì, l’ho definita eloquenza,” disse il signor Crisparkle.
“Se non fosse per l’eloquenza del signor Honeythunder, forse non avrei avuto bisogno di chiedervi ciò che sto per chiedervi. Questo signor Edwin Drood, giusto? Penso che sia questo il nome, ”
“Assolutamente corretto,” disse il signor Crisparkle. “D-r->doppio o-d.”
“Leggeva con voi, signore, o legge ancora con voi?”
“Mai, signor Neville. Lui viene qui a visitare un suo parente, il signor Jasper.”
“Anche la signorina Bud è sua parente, signore?”
(“Ora, perché dovrebbe chiederlo in quel modo, con quella improvvisa aria di superiorità?” pensò il signor Crisparkle.) Poi spiegò ad alta voce ciò che sapeva riguardo a quella piccola storia del loro fidanzamento.
“Ah, ecco dunque il segreto”, disse il giovane. “Ora capisco quel suo atteggiamento da proprietario, ”
Queste parole furono dette così chiaramente, sia a se stesso che a qualcun altro, piuttosto che al signor Crisparkle, che quest’ultimo sentì istintivamente che notarle sarebbe stato quasi equivalente a notare un passaggio in una lettera che aveva letto per caso, guardando oltre la spalla dell’autore. Un attimo dopo rientrarono nella casa.
Il signor Jasper era seduto al pianoforte quando entrarono nel suo salotto; accompagnava la signorina Rosebud mentre lei cantava. A causa del fatto che lui suonava senza consultare le note e della natura distratta della ragazza, che tendeva spesso a sbagliare, seguiva con estrema attenzione i suoi movimenti labiali, utilizzando sia gli occhi che le mani per indicare correttamente le note; intanto, Helena, con un braccio posato intorno a lei, fissava il signor Jasper con maggiore interesse che la sua esibizione canora. Tra lei e suo fratello passò un’occhiata complice: il signor Crisparkle credette di scorgere nel loro sguardo l’intesa di cui si era parlato in precedenza. Il signor Neville si sistemò accanto al pianoforte, appoggiandosi allo strumento; il signor Crisparkle si sedette vicino alla statuina della pastorella di porcellana; Edwin Drood si occupava con gentilezza del ventaglio della signorina Twinkleton; e quella signora, in modo passivo, sembrava rivendicare un certo diritto su quell’esibizione, proprio come il signor Tope, il sacrestano, faceva ogni giorno durante le funzioni nella Cattedrale.
Illustrazione: Al pianoforte
La -canzone continuava. Era una melodia triste di addio, e quella giovane voce fresca suonava molto malinconica e tenera. Mentre Jasper osservava quelle belle labbra che ripetevano continuamente quella stessa nota, come se fosse un sussurro sommesso proveniente da lui stesso, la voce iniziò a tremare; all’improvviso, la cantante scoppiò in lacrime e gridò, coprendosi gli occhi con le mani: “Non ce la faccio più! Ho paura. Portami via!”
Con un rapido movimento della sua snella figura, Elena adagiò la piccola >bellezza su un divano, come se non l’avesse mai afferrata. Poi, inginocchiandosi accanto a lei e posando una mano sulla sua bocca rossa, mentre con l’altra chiamava in aiuto tutti gli altri, Elena disse loro: “Non è niente; è tutto finito; non parlatele per un minuto, e starà bene!”
Nello stesso istante, le mani di Jasper si staccarono dalle tastiere e rimasero sospese sopra di esse, come se aspettassero di riprendere a suonare. In quella posizione, però, rimase immobile: non guardò nemmeno intorno, mentre tutti gli altri avevano già cambiato posto e si stavano rassicurando a vicenda.
“Pussy non è abituata ad avere un pubblico; è semplicemente la realtà,” disse Edwin Drood. “Si è innervosita e non è riuscita a resistere. Inoltre, Jack, sei un maestro così esigente che credo la spaventi davvero. Niente di strano.”
“Nessun stupore”, ripeté Elena.
“Ecco, Jack, lo senti! Anche tu avresti paura di lui, in circostanze simili, vero, signorina Landless?”
“Nessuna circostanza al mondo,” rispose Elena.
Jasper abbassò le mani, guardò oltre la spalla e pregò di poter ringraziare Miss Landless per aver difeso il suo onore. Poi iniziò a suonare senza nemmeno toccare le note correttamente, mentre la sua piccola allieva veniva portata vicino a una finestra aperta per prendere aria e riceveva altre attenzioni gentili. Quando fu riportata indietro, il suo posto era vuoto. “Jack se n’è andato,” le disse Edwin. “Temo proprio che non gli sia piaciuto essere accusato di essere il mostro che ti ha spaventata, ” Ma lei non rispose nemmeno una parola e tremò, come se fosse stata lasciata fuori al freddo per troppo tempo.
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!
Miss Twinkleton affermò che effettivamente erano ore tarde; Mrs. Crisparkle, trovandosi all’esterno delle mura della Casa delle Suore, osservò che loro, coloro che si occupavano di formare le future mogli e madri d’Inghilterra (ultime parole pronunciate a voce più bassa, come se dovessero essere rivelate in confidenza), erano davvero tenute a dare un esempio migliore piuttosto che ad abituarsi a comportamenti frivoli. Furono quindi distribuiti dei fogli di carta per avvolgere i regali, e i due giovani cavalieri si offrirono volontariamente di accompagnare le signore a casa. Tutto fu fatto in breve tempo, e il cancello della Casa delle Suore si chiuse alle loro spalle.
Gli studenti residenti si erano ritirati, e solo la signora Tisher, in solitaria veglia, attendeva il nuovo studente. Poiché la sua camera da letto era vicina a quella di Rosa, non fu necessario alcun lungo presentamento o spiegazione prima che lei assumesse la responsabilità della sua nuova amica e si ritirasse per la notte.
“Che sollievo meraviglioso, caro mio,” disse Elena. “Per tutto il giorno ho temuto che mi trovasse in questa situazione proprio adesso.”
“Non siamo molte,” rispose Rosa, “e siamo ragazze di buon carattere; almeno le altre lo sono; posso garantirlo per loro.”
“Posso rispondere al posto tuo,” rise Elena, scrutando quel bellissimo visino con i suoi occhi scuri e ardenti, accarezzando dolcemente quella piccola figura. “Diventerai mia amica, vero?”
“Spero proprio di sì. Ma l’idea che io possa essere tuo amico mi sembra troppo assurda, comunque, ”
“Perché?”
“Oh, io sono davvero così insignificante, mentre tu sei così femminile e attraente. Sembri avere la forza e la determinazione necessarie per schiacciarmi completamente; al tuo confronto, mi sento come nulla.”
“Sono una creatura trascurata, mio caro; ignoro ogni tipo di conoscenza, sono consapevole di dover imparare ancora molto e provo profondo imbarazzo per la mia ignoranza.”
“Eppure mi riconosci tutto!” disse Rosa.
“Mia bella, cosa posso fare? C’è qualcosa di affascinante in te, ”
“O, ma esiste davvero?” fece Rosa, metà scherzando e metà seriamente.
“Che peccato che il Maestro Eddy non lo percepisca di più, ”
Certo, le sue relazioni con quel giovane gentiluomo erano già state menzionate in “Minor Canon Corner”.
“Perché, sicuramente lui deve amarti con tutto il cuore!” esclamò Elena con tale sincerità che sembrava pronta a trasformarsi in furia se lui non lo avesse fatto.
“Eh? O, beh, suppongo di sì,” disse Rosa, imbronciandosi di nuovo; “Sono sicura di non avere il diritto di dire che non lo è. Forse è colpa mia. Forse non sono abbastanza gentile con lui come dovrei essere. Non credo di esserlo. Ma è davvero così ridicolo!”
Gli occhi di Elena chiedevano spiegazioni su ciò che stava accadendo.
“Sì, lo siamo,” disse Rosa, rispondendo come se avesse parlato ad alta voce. “Siamo una coppia così ridicola. E ci litighiamo sempre.”
“Perché?”
“Perché entrambi sappiamo di essere ridicoli, mio caro!” Rosa rispose come se quella fosse la risposta più convincente al mondo.
Lo sguardo maestoso di Helena rimase fisso sul suo volto per alcuni momenti; poi, impulsivamente, allungò entrambe le mani e disse:
“Diventerai mio amico e mi aiuterai?”
“Certo, caro mio, lo farò,” rispose Rosa, con un tono di affettuosa e infantile sincerità che rifletteva appieno i suoi sentimenti; “sarò una buona amica, per quanto possa esserlo una persona così piccola come me per una creatura nobile come te. E per favore, sii anche tu mio amico. Non mi capisco bene io stessa, e ho davvero bisogno di qualcuno che possa comprendermi.”
Helena Landless la baciò e, tenendole entrambe le mani, disse:
Chi è il signor Jasper?
“È lo zio di Eddy e anche il mio maestro di musica”, rispose Rosa girando la testa da un lato.
“Non lo ami?”
“Uff!” Alzò le mani sul viso, tremando per paura o orrore.
“Lo sai che ti ama?”
“O no, no, per favore!” gridò Rosa, cadendo in ginocchio e aggrappandosi disperatamente alla sua nuova “risorsa”. “Non ditemelo! Mi spaventa. Non smette di tormentarmi i pensieri, come un terribile fantasma. Ho paura che non sia mai al sicuro da lui. Sembra che possa apparire anche solo quando ne parliamo.” In realtà guardava intorno, come se temesse di vederlo comparire nell’ombra alle sue spalle.
“Cerca di raccontarmi di più in merito, caro.”
“Sì, lo farò, lo farò. Perché tu sei così forte. Ma tienimi stretto per un po’, e resta con me anche dopo.”
“Mio >bambino. Parli come se lui ti avesse minacciato in qualche modo oscuro.”
“Non mi ha mai parlato di quella cosa. Mai.”
Cosa ha fatto?
“Con il suo aspetto, mi ha reso sua schiava. Mi ha costretto a comprenderlo senza che dica una parola; e mi ha costretto a mantenere il silenzio senza che emetta alcuna minaccia. Quando suono, i suoi occhi non si staccano mai dalle mie mani; quando canto, non si staccano mai dalle mie labbra. Quando mi corregge, indicandomi una nota, un accordo o un passaggio da suonare, lui stesso è parte di quei suoni. Sembra che mi insegua come un amante e mi ordina di mantenere il suo segreto. Evito i suoi occhi, ma lui mi costringe a guardarli. Anche quando assumono uno sguardo distante (cosa che talvolta accade), sembra immergersi in un terribile sogno nel quale minaccia con violenza; eppure mi obbliga a rendersene conto. E a capire che è seduto proprio accanto a me, più terribile che mai.”
“Che minaccia immaginaria è questa, bella mia? Di cosa si tratta?”
“Non lo so. Non ho mai nemmeno osato pensare o chiedermi di cosa si tratti.”
“E tutto qui, per quella notte?”
“Tutto qui; tranne che quella notte, quando mi osservava così attentamente mentre cantavo. Oltre ad avere paura, mi sono sentita anche in imbarazzo e profondamente ferita. Era come se mi avesse baciata. Non ce la facevo più e ho gridato. Non devi mai raccontare nulla a nessuno. Eddy è molto devoto a lui. Ma tu hai detto quella notte che non avresti avuto paura di lui, in nessuna circostanza. Questo mi dà il coraggio di raccontartelo solo a te. Tienimi stretta! Resta con me. Ho troppa paura di rimanere da sola.”
Il viso lucente e gitano pendeva sopra le braccia e il seno delicati; i capelli neri selvaggi ricadevano protettivamente su quel corpo infantile. Negli occhi scuri e intensi brillava un barlume di fiamma, anche se in quel momento erano pieni di compassione e ammirazione. Che chi ne fosse più interessato lo osservasse attentamente!
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.
capitolo VIII.
LE PUGNALE SONTO SFODERATE
I due giovani, dopo aver visto le ragazze, le loro protette, entrare nel cortile della Casa delle suore, e trovandosi fissati con freddezza dalla vecchia insegna di bronzo, come se quel vecchio malandato con il vetro nell’occhio fosse insolente, si guardano l’un l’altro, poi osservano la strada illuminata dalla luna e lentamente se ne vanno insieme.
“Rimarrà qui a lungo, signor Drood?”, chiede Neville.
“Non questa volta,” è la risposta negligente. “Parto di nuovo per Londra domani. Ma tornerò qui di tanto in tanto fino alla prossima festa di Mezza Estate; poi lascerò Cloisterham, e anche l’Inghilterra, probabilmente per molto tempo.”
“Stai andando all’estero?”
“Farò svegliare un po’ l’>Egitto”, è la risposta piena di disprezzo.
Stai leggendo?
“Leggere?” ripete Edwin Drood con un tono di disprezzo. “No. Lavorare, impegnarmi nel mio lavoro, occuparmi di ingegneria. La mia piccola eredità è stata lasciata come parte del capitale dell’azienda in cui lavoro da mio padre, che ne era stato socio; e fino a quando non raggiungerò l’età adulta, sono sotto la responsabilità dell’azienda. Dopodiché riceverò la mia modesta quota di partecipazione. Jack – lo hai incontrato a cena – sarà il mio tutore e fiduciario fino ad allora.”
Ho sentito dal signor Crisparkle della tua altra buona fortuna.
“Cosa intendi per la mia ‘altra buona fortuna’?”
Neville ha fatto quella osservazione in modo cauto e timido, ma allo stesso tempo deciso, esprimendo perfettamente quell’atteggiamento particolare che già era stato notato: essere contemporaneamente cacciatore e preda. Edwin ha replicato in modo brusco e del tutto scortese. Si fermano e si scambiano uno sguardo piuttosto acceso.
“Spero,” disse Neville, “che non ci sia offesa, signor Drood, nel fatto che io menzioni innocentemente il vostro fidanzamento, ”
“Per George!” esclama Edwin, riprendendo il cammino a un passo leggermente più veloce; “tutti in questo vecchio e chiacchierone Cloisterham ne parlano. Mi chiedo perché non sia stata aperta nessuna locanda pubblica, con il mio ritratto come insegna di ‘The Betrothed’s Head’. O magari quello di Pussy. Uno dei due, insomma.”
“Non sono responsabile del fatto che il signor Crisparkle abbia menzionato l’argomento con me, in modo piuttosto aperto,” inizia Neville.
“No; è vero; non lo sei,” conferma Edwin Drood.
“Ma,” continua Neville, “sono io responsabile per avervi menzionato questa cosa. E l’ho fatto sulla presunzione che non poteste fare a meno di esserne molto orgogliosi.”
Ora, ci sono questi due curiosi aspetti della natura umana che influenzano in modo segreto lo svolgimento di questo dialogo. Neville Landless è già abbastanza colpito da Little Rosebud da sentirsi offeso dal fatto che Edwin Drood (molto inferiore a lei) possa trattarla con tanta leggerezza. Edwin Drood, invece, è già abbastanza affascinato da Helena da sentirsi offeso dal fatto che il fratello di lei (molto inferiore a lui) possa disporre di lui con tanta indifferenza e allontanarlo completamente dalla sua vita.
Tuttavia, è necessario rispondere all’ultima osservazione fatta. E così Edwin dice:
“Non lo so, signor Neville” (adottando quel modo di rivolgersi come faceva il signor Crisparkle), “che ciò di cui le persone sono più orgogliose sia proprio di ciò di cui parlano di più; nemmeno io lo so. Che ciò di cui sono più orgogliosi sia proprio ciò di cui vorrebbero che gli altri parlassero di più. Ma vivo una vita molto impegnata, e parlo sotto la correzione di voi lettori, che dovreste sapere tutto. E probabilmente è davvero così.”
A quell’ora, entrambi erano ormai diventati selvaggi; il signor Neville all’aperto; Edwin Drood sotto la “copertura” trasparente di una canzone popolare, interrompendosi di tanto in tanto per fingere di ammirare gli effetti pittoreschi creati dalla luce della luna davanti a sé.
“Non mi sembra molto cortese da parte tua,” osserva Neville alla fine, “pensare a uno sconosciuto che viene qui senza aver avuto le tue stesse opportunità, e cercare di recuperare il tempo perso. Ma, a dire il vero, non sono stato educato in un ambiente caratterizzato da una vita frenetica; le mie idee sulla cortesia si sono formate tra gli ‘pagani’, ”
“Forse, la migliore forma di cortesia, indipendentemente dal tipo di persone tra cui si cresce,” ribatte Edwin Drood, “è occuparsi delle proprie faccende. Se voi mi darete questo esempio, prometto di seguirlo.”
“Non sai che ti assumi troppe responsabilità?” fu la risposta arrabbiata. “E nel posto da dove vengo io, verresti certo chiamato a rendere conto di questo.”
“Ad esempio, da chi?” chiese Edwin Drood fermandosi e guardando l’altro con disprezzo.
Ma all’improvviso una mano forte si posa sulla spalla di Edwin, e Jasper si ferma tra loro. Sembra infatti che anche lui sia passato vicino alla Casa delle suore, avvicinandosi da dietro, lungo il lato ombreggiato della strada.
“Ned, Ned, Ned!” dice lui; “non dobbiamo più permetterlo. Non mi piace. Ho sentito parole dure tra voi due. Ricorda, mio caro ragazzo: ora sei quasi nella posizione di ospite. Appartieni, in un certo senso, a questo posto e lo rappresenti verso gli estranei. Il signor Neville è uno straniero, e dovresti rispettare le obbligazioni dell’ospitalità. E, signor Neville, ” posando la mano sinistra sulla spalla di quel giovane gentiluomo e camminando tra loro, mano a mano su entrambi i lati: “Mi perdonerà. Ma le chiedo di controllare anche il proprio temperamento. Ora, cosa c’è che non va? Ma perché chiedere. Che non ci sia nulla che non vada, e la domanda diventa superflua. Noi tre andiamo d’accordo, vero?”
Dopo una silenziosa battaglia tra i due giovani uomini, fu Edwin Drood ad intervenire dicendo: “Per quanto mi riguarda, Jack, non provo alcuna rabbia.”
“Nemmeno in me,” dice Neville Landless, anche se non del tutto liberamente; o forse con troppa leggerezza. “Ma se il signor Drood sapesse tutto ciò che c’è dietro di me, lontano da qui, forse capirebbe meglio perché parole taglienti possano ferirmi così profondamente.”
“Forse,” disse Jasper con tono rassicurante, “dovremmo evitare di definire il nostro buon rapporto in termini specifici. Dovremmo astenerci dal dire qualsiasi cosa che possa sembrare un rimprovero o una condizione; potrebbe non apparire generoso. Onestamente e liberamente, vedete, non c’è rabbia in Ned. E onestamente e liberamente, nemmeno in voi, signor Neville.”
“Assolutamente no, signor Jasper.” Tuttavia, non del tutto in modo così franco o disinvolto; o, per dirlo ancora una volta, forse non del tutto con tale leggerezza.
“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.”
“Bene, allora! Ora, la mia casa vicino al cancello è a pochi metri da qui: il riscaldatore è acceso sul forno, il vino e i bicchieri sono sul tavolo. E non dista nemmeno un tiro di pietra da Minor Canon Corner. Ned, domani partirai subito. Porteremo con noi anche il signor Neville, per bere insieme una coppa.”
Con tutto il mio cuore, Jack.
“E con tutto il mio cuore, signor Jasper.” Neville sente che non potrebbe dire di meno, ma preferirebbe non andare. Ha l’impressione di aver perso il controllo dei propri sentimenti; la freddezza di Edwin Drood, invece di contagiarlo, lo fa infuriare ancora di più.
Il signor Jasper, ancora camminando al centro, con le mani appoggiate sulle spalle di entrambi i compagni, canta bellamente il ritornello di una canzone da bere; poi tutti vanno nelle sue stanze. Lì, il primo oggetto visibile, quando accende la lampada in aggiunta al fuoco, è il ritratto sopra la mensola del camino. Non si tratta certo di un oggetto destinato a migliorare la comprensione tra i due giovani, ma piuttosto di qualcosa che riporta in superficie, in modo un po’ goffo, l’argomento della loro divergenza. Di conseguenza, entrambi lo guardano consapevolmente, ma non dicono nulla. Jasper, invece (che, a giudicare dal suo comportamento, sembra aver ottenuto solo una comprensione parziale della causa delle loro recenti discussioni accese), attira direttamente l’attenzione su di esso.
“Riconosce quella foto, signor Neville?” disse, regolando l’intensità della luce per farla apparire più chiaramente.
“Lo riconosco, ma è lontano dall’essere un omaggio all’originale.”
“Oh, siete davvero duri con lui. È stato Ned a farlo, e mi l’ha regalato.”
“Mi dispiace molto, signor Drood,” si scusa Neville, con sincera intenzione di chiedere scusa; “se avessi saputo di essere nella presenza dell’artista, ”
“Oh, è solo uno scherzo, signore, davvero solo uno scherzo,” interrompe Edwin, sbadigliando in modo provocatorio. “Solo un po’ di umorismo riguardo ai punti di vista di Pussy. Un giorno la dipingerò seriamente, se si comporta bene.”
Quel tono di distaccato disinteresse con cui viene detto tutto ciò, mentre il parlante si appoggia allo schienale della sedia e incrocia le mani dietro la testa per riposarle, è davvero esasperante per Neville, che è così irrequieto e eccitabile. Jasper osserva attentamente l’uno e l’altro, sorride leggermente, poi si allontana per preparare una brocca di vino al calore del focolare. Sembra che ci voglia molto tempo per mescolare e prepararlo correttamente.
“Immagino, signor Neville,” dice Edwin, pronto a risentirsi di quella protesta indignata contro di lui davanti al giovane Landless, che è altrettanto evidente quanto il ritratto, o il fuoco, o la lampada: “Immagino che se dipingeste il ritratto della vostra signora amata, ”
“Non so dipingere”, è l’interruzione affrettata.
“Quella è la tua sfortuna, non colpa tua. Lo faresti se potessi. Ma se potessi, immagino che la trasformeresti (indipendentemente da ciò che sia realmente) in Juno, Minerva, Diana e Venus tutte insieme. Eh?”
“Non ho nessuna signora che amo, e non posso dirlo.”
“Se provassi davvero,” dice Edwin, con un’aria di vanità infantile che gli sale dentro, “a dipingere il ritratto della signorina Landless, seriamente, capite? Davvero seriamente, vedreste cosa sarei in grado di fare!”
“Suppongo che il consenso di mia sorella per partecipare sia stato ottenuto inizialmente. Ma poiché non verrà mai più ottenuto, temo di non riuscire mai a vedere cosa sei capace di fare. Devo accettare questa perdita.”
Jasper si gira lontano dal fuoco, riempie un grande calice per Neville, un altro grande calice per Edwin, e ne dà uno a ciascuno di loro; poi si riempie il proprio calice, dicendo:
“Come, signor Neville, dobbiamo brindare a mio nipote, Ned. Poiché è lui che, metaforicamente parlando, ha il piede nel staffile, il nostro bicchiere di brindisi deve essere dedicato a lui. Ned, mio carissimo amico, la mia amore!”
Jasper dà l’esempio bevendo quasi tutta la sua coppa, e Neville lo imita. Edwin Drood dice: “Grazie mille a entrambi”, e segue anch’egli quell’esempio.
“Guardatelo,” esclama Jasper, tendendo la mano con ammirazione e tenerezza, ma anche con incoraggiamento. “Vedete come si muove con tanta disinvoltura. Signor Neville! Il mondo intero gli si apre davanti per scegliere: una vita piena di lavoro stimolante e interessi vari, una vita di cambiamenti e emozioni intense, una vita di comodità domestica e amore! Guardatelo!”
Il viso di Edwin Drood si era rapidamente e notevolmente arrossito a causa del vino; lo stesso era accaduto al viso di Neville Landless. Edwin continuava a sedersi all’indietro sulla sedia, tenendo le mani giunte sopra la testa.
“Vedete quanto poco ci dia importanza di tutto questo!” continua Jasper in tono scherzoso.
“Non vale davvero la pena che si prenda quel frutto d’oro che giace maturo sull’albero. Eppure, considerate il contrasto: voi e io non abbiamo alcuna possibilità di suscitare interesse o cambiamento, né di godere di comodità domestica e amore. Non abbiamo alcuna prospettiva, a meno che non siate più fortunati di me, il che è del tutto possibile, ”
“Per la mia ‘anima, Jack,” disse Edwin in tono compiaciuto, “mi dispiace davvero molto di aver avuto tutto così facile come tu descrivi. Ma tu conosci ciò che so io, Jack. E forse non è poi così semplice come sembra, dopotutto. Non è vero, Pussy?” Disse, facendo schioccare il pollice e l’indice verso il ritratto. “Dobbiamo ancora andare d’accordo, no? Capisci cosa intendo, Jack, ”
Illustrazione: Su terreno pericoloso
Il suo discorso è diventato lento e incomprensibile. Jasper, tranquillo e padrone di sé, guarda verso Neville, come aspettandosi una sua risposta o un commento. Quando Neville parla, anche il suo discorso è altrettanto lento e incomprensibile.
“Forse sarebbe stato meglio per il signor Drood aver conosciuto alcune difficoltà,” dice lui, in tono sfidante.
“Prega,” ribatte Edwin, girando solo lo sguardo in quella direzione, “prega, perché mai sarebbe stato meglio per il signor Drood conoscere alcune difficoltà?”
“Ah sì,” dice Jasper con interesse; “dicci pure il motivo.”
“Perché avrebbero potuto renderlo più ragionevole,” dice Neville, “una buona fortuna che non è affatto necessariamente il risultato dei suoi meriti personali.”
Il signor Jasper guarda rapidamente suo nipote in attesa della sua risposta.
“Avete mai conosciuto le difficoltà, posso chiedervelo?”, dice Edwin Drood, seduto dritto.
Il signor Jasper guarda rapidamente l’altro in attesa della sua replica.
“L’ho fatto.”
“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.
“E di cosa vi hanno fatto rendere consapevoli?”
Lo scambio di sguardi tra il signor Jasper e i due interlocutori continua per tutta la durata del dialogo, fino alla fine.
“Te l’ho già detto una volta, di notte.”
“Non hai mai fatto nulla del genere.”
“Te lo dico io, ne prendi troppa responsabilità sulle tue spalle.”
“Hai aggiunto qualcos’altro, se ricordo bene, ”
“Sì, ho detto anche qualcos’altro.”
“Dillo di nuovo.”
“Ho detto che nel luogo da dove vengo, vi verrebbe chiesto conto di questo.”
“Solo lì?” esclama Edwin Drood con una risata sprezzante. “Molto lontano, credo. Sì, capisco: quella parte del mondo si trova a distanza di sicurezza.”
“Allora parla qui,” ribatte l’altro, alzandosi in preda alla furia. “Parla pure ovunque tu voglia! La tua vanità è intollerabile, la tua presunzione va oltre ogni limite; parli come se fossi qualche prezioso tesoro raro, invece di essere solo un comune vanesio. Sei soltanto un uomo comune, e un comune vanesio.”
“Pff, pff,” disse Edwin Drood, altrettanto furioso, ma più controllato;
“Come potresti saperlo? Forse riconosci un uomo di colore comune, o uno che si vanta di essere tale, quando lo vedi (e non c’è dubbio che tu abbia molte conoscenze in quel campo); ma tu non sei certo un giudice per quanto riguarda gli uomini bianchi.”
Questo insulso riferimento alla sua pelle scura infuria Neville a tal punto che lancia i resti del suo vino contro Edwin Drood; mentre sta per lanciare anche il bicchiere, il suo braccio viene afferrato all’ultimo momento da >Jasper.
“Ned, mio caro amico!” grida ad alta voce; “Ti prego, ti ordino di stare fermo!” Tutti e tre si precipitano verso di lui, con il rumore di bicchieri che si rovesciano e sedie che cadono. “Signor Neville, per l’amor del cielo! Dammi questo bicchiere. Apri la mano, per favore. DEVO averlo!”
Ma Neville lo colpisce, fa una pausa per un istante, con una passione furiosa, mentre il calice è ancora nella sua mano sollevata. Poi lo scaglia giù sotto la griglia con tale forza che i frammenti rotti volano di nuovo in tutte le direzioni; e poi lascia la casa.
Quando emerge per la prima volta nell’aria notturna, nulla intorno a lui è fermo o stabile; nulla sembra essere ciò che appare; sa soltanto di trovarsi con la testa scoperta in mezzo a un vortice rosso sangue, in attesa di essere affrontato e di lottare fino alla morte.
Ma nulla accadeva, e la luna lo guardava dall’alto come se fosse morto dopo un attacco di rabbia. Lui continuava a colpire la propria testa e il proprio cuore con il martello a vapore, barcollando via. Poi iniziò a rendersi conto che qualcuno lo aveva chiuso fuori, come se fosse un animale pericoloso. E allora pensò: “Cosa dovrei fare ora?”
Alcune idee follemente appassionate riguardo al fiume si dissolvono sotto l’incantesimo della luce lunare che illumina la >Cattedrale e le tombe; ritorna anche il ricordo di sua sorella, nonché il pensiero di ciò che deve a quell’uomo buono che proprio quel giorno ha conquistato la sua fiducia e gli ha dato la sua promessa. Si reca quindi all’angolo del Canon Minore e bussa delicatamente alla porta.
È abitudine del signor Crisparkle rimanere seduto per ultimo tra i membri della famiglia al mattino presto; tocca molto delicatamente il suo pianoforte e si esercita nelle parti che preferisce delle opere vocali. Il vento del sud, che soffia dove vuole, attraverso l’angolo di Minor Canon in una notte tranquilla, non è certo meno rumoroso del signor Crisparkle in quei momenti, soprattutto per rispettare il sonno della “pastorella di porcellana”.
Il suo bussare viene immediatamente risposto dal signor Crisparkle stesso. Quando apre la porta, con una candela in mano, il suo viso sorridente si rabbuia, e sul suo volto si legge un’espressione di delusione e sorpresa.
“Signor Neville! In questo disordine. Dove siete stato?”
“Sono stato da Mr. Jasper, signore. Insieme al suo nipote.”
“Entra pure.”
Il “Minor Canon” lo afferra per il gomito con una mano forte (in modo strettamente scientifico, degno delle sue sessioni di allenamento mattutine) e lo trasforma nella sua piccola biblioteca personale, poi chiude la porta.
“Sto iniziando ad ammalarmi, signore. Sto molto male.”
“Troppo vero. Non siete sobrio, signor Neville.”
“Temo di no, signore, anche se posso assicurarvi in un altro momento che ho bevuto davvero molto poco, e che questo mi ha colpito in modo strano e improvviso.”
“Signor Neville, signor Neville,” dice il canonico minore, scuotendo la testa con un sorriso triste; “L’ho già sentito dire prima.”
“Credo, la mia mente è molto confusa, ma credo che valga allo stesso modo anche per il nipote del signor Jasper, signore.”
“Molto probabile,” è la risposta secca.
“Ci siamo scontrati, signore. Mi ha insultato in modo molto grave. Prima di allora, aveva già fatto scatenare quel sangue furioso e violento di cui vi ho parlato oggi.”
“Signor Neville,” ribatte il canonico minore in tono gentile ma deciso: “Le chiedo di non parlarmi con quella mano destra stretta a pugno. Per favore, apra la mano.”
“Mi ha provocato, signore,” continua il giovane, obbedendo immediatamente, “oltre i limiti della mia resistenza. Non so se lo intendesse davvero all’inizio, ma poi sì. Di certo lo intendeva alla fine. In breve, signore,” con un impeto incontenibile, “nella furia con cui mi ha aggredito, avrei ucciso lui se ne avessi avuto la possibilità. E ho cercato di farlo.”
“Hai stretto di nuovo quella mano,” è il commento silenzioso del signor Crisparkle.
“Mi scusi, signore.”
“Conosci la tua stanza, te l’ho mostrata prima di cena; ma ti accompagnerò ancora una volta. Prendimi il braccio, per favore. Con delicatezza, perché tutta la casa è già a letto.”
Infilando la mano nello stesso sostegno scientifico di prima e appoggiandosi con la forza inerente del suo braccio, con l’abilità tipica di un esperto della polizia e con una tranquillità apparentemente impossibile da raggiungere per i principianti, il signor Crisparkle conduce il suo allievo nella piacevole e ordinata vecchia stanza preparata per lui. Arrivati lì, il giovane si getta su una sedia, appoggia le braccia sul tavolo da lettura e vi posa la testa, con un’espressione di profondo autorimprovero.
Il gentile ragazzo aveva pensato di lasciare la stanza in silenzio, senza dire una parola. Ma guardando intorno alla porta e vedendo quella figura depressa, tornò indietro, le toccò dolcemente la mano e disse: “Buona notte!”. Un singhiozzo fu l’unica sua risposta. Avrebbe potuto avere molte cose peggiori; forse, anche alcune migliori.
Un altro leggero bussare alla porta esterna attira la sua attenzione mentre scende le scale. Apre la porta e vede il signor Jasper, che tiene in mano il cappello dello studente.
“Abbiamo avuto una scena terribile con lui,” dice Jasper, a bassa voce.
“È davvero così grave?”
“Feroce!”
Mr. Crisparkle si lamenta: “No, no, no. Non usare parole così forti.”
“Avrebbe potuto uccidere mio caro figlio ai miei piedi. Non è colpa sua se non l’ha fatto. Ma grazie alla miglia di Dio, sono stata rapida e forte al suo fianco; altrimenti lui lo avrebbe ucciso proprio sul mio focolare.”
La frase colpisce dritto nel cuore. “Ah!”, pensa il signor Crisparkle, “sono proprio le sue stesse parole, ”
“Visto ciò che ho visto stasera, e sentito ciò che ho udito,” aggiunge Jasper con grande sincerità, “non troverò mai pace nella mia mente finché esisterà il pericolo che quei due si incontrino di nuovo, senza che nessuno intervenga. È stato orribile. C’è qualcosa del tigre nel suo sangue oscuro.”
“Ah!”, pensa il signor Crisparkle, “quindi è stato lui a dirlo!”
“Tu, mio caro signore,” continua Jasper, prendendogli la mano, “anche tu hai accettato una responsabilità pericolosa.”
“Non devi avere alcuna >paura per me, Jasper,” risponde il signor Crisparkle con un sorriso tranquillo. “Anch’io non ne ho alcuna per me stesso.”
“Non ne ho nessuna per me,” risponde Jasper, mettendo l’accento sull’ultimo pronome, “perché non sono, e non sono nemmeno sul punto di diventare, l’oggetto della sua ostilità. Ma tu potresti esserlo. E mio caro ragazzo lo è stato. Buona notte!”
Il signor Crisparkle entra, con quel cappello che, in modo così facile e quasi impercettibile, ha acquisito il diritto di essere appeso nel suo corridoio; lo appende e poi va a letto, pensieroso.
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.
CAPITOLO IX.
UCCELLI NELLA BOSCHAGlia
Rosa, non avendo alcuna parentela conosciuta al mondo, fin dal settimo anno d’età non aveva conosciuto altro “casa” se non quella delle suore, e nessun’altra madre se non la signorina Twinkleton. Il suo ricordo della propria madre era quello di una creaturina carina, simile a lei (le sembrava persino più giovane), che era stata portata a casa tra le braccia del padre, e poi annegata. L’incidente fatale era avvenuto durante una festa. Ogni piega e ogni colore dell’elegante abito estivo, così come i lunghi capelli bagnati, ancora adornati di petali di fiori appassiti, e la figura della giovane morta, distesa sul letto con la sua triste bellezza, rimasero indelebili nella memoria di Rosa. Così come il terrore disperato del suo povero padre, che morì spezzato il cuore nel primo anniversario di quel giorno tragico.
Il fidanzamento di Rosa nacque dal conforto che il suo caro amico e vecchio compagno di università, Drood – anch’egli diventato vedovo in giovane età – gli fornì durante quell’anno di difficoltà mentali. Ma anche lui intraprese quella silenziosa strada verso la quale tutti i pellegrinaggi terreni concludono il loro percorso, alcuni prima, altri dopo; ed è così che la giovane coppia è arrivata a essere ciò che è oggi.
L’atmosfera di compassione che circondava la piccola orfana quando arrivò per la prima volta a Cloisterham non si era mai dissipata. Con l’avanzare dell’età, diventando più felice e più bella, quell’atmosfera assunse tonalità sempre più luminose: a volte dorate, altre volte rosa, altre ancora azzurre; ma continuava comunque ad avvolgerla con una sorta di tenue luce propria. Il desiderio generale di consolarla e coccolarla aveva fatto sì che all’inizio venisse trattata come una bambina molto più giovane dei suoi anni; lo stesso desiderio la fece continuare ad essere viziata anche quando ormai non era più una bambina. Chi doveva essere il suo preferito, chi doveva anticiparle questo o quel piccolo regalo, o compiere per lei questo o quell’atto di gentilezza; chi doveva portarla a casa durante le vacanze; chi doveva scrivere le lettere più frequentemente quando erano separate. E chi avrebbe provato la maggiore gioia nel rivederla quando si riunivano? Anche queste dolci rivalità non erano prive di piccoli momenti di amarezza all’interno del monastero delle suore. Beh, per le povere suore di quel tempo, se anche sotto i loro veli e i loro rosari nascondevano lotte più aspre!
Così Rosa era diventata una creaturina amabile, vivace, capricciosa e affascinante; viziata, nel senso di poter contare sull’affetto di tutti intorno a lei; ma non nel senso di ricambiarlo con indifferenza. Possedendo in sé una fonte inesauribile di affetto, le sue emozioni avevano per anni rinfrescato e illuminato la >Casa delle suore; tuttavia le sue profondità non erano mai state toccate. Cosa sarebbe accaduto quando ciò fosse successo? Quali cambiamenti avrebbero potuto verificarsi in quella testa spensierata e in quel cuore leggero? Restava da vedere.
Con quali mezzi la notizia che fosse scoppiata una lite tra i due giovani durante la notte, e che addirittura il signor Neville avesse aggredito Edwin Drood, sia arrivata presso l’istituto di Miss Twinkleton prima della colazione, è impossibile dirlo. Forse è stata portata da qualche “uccello del cielo”, oppure è arrivata insieme all’aria stessa quando le finestre erano aperte; forse il panettiere l’ha messa nel pane che vendeva, o il lattivendolo l’ha introdotta insieme al latte. O forse le domestiche, battendo via la polvere dai tappeti contro i pilastri d’ingresso, l’hanno ricevuta come “offerta” lasciata dall’atmosfera della città sui loro tappeti. Di certo, prima ancora che Miss Twinkleton si alzasse, la notizia era già penetrata in ogni angolo di quell’antico edificio. E lei stessa l’ha appresa tramite la signora Tisher, mentre si stava ancora vestendo. O (come avrebbe potuto esprimersi davanti a un genitore o a un tutore, ) mentre “offriva sacrifici alle Grazie”.
Il fratello di Miss Landless aveva lanciato una bottiglia contro il signor Edwin Drood.
Il fratello di Miss Landless aveva lanciato un coltello contro il signor Edwin Drood.
Un coltello assunse l’aspetto di una forchetta; e il fratello di Miss Landless aveva lanciato una forchetta contro il signor Edwin Drood.
Proprio come nel caso della precedenza attribuita a Peter Piper, che si diceva avesse raccolto quel pezzo di pepe in salamoia, si riteneva fisicamente desiderabile disporre di prove dell’esistenza di tale pepe; quindi, in questo caso, si ritenne psicologicamente importante capire perché il fratello di Miss Landless avesse gettato una bottiglia, un coltello o una forchetta, o meglio, una bottiglia, un coltello e una forchetta, visto che al cuoco era stato fatto intendere che si trattasse dei tre oggetti insieme. Perché?
Beh, allora. Il fratello di Miss Landless aveva detto di ammirare Miss Bud. Il signor Edwin Drood aveva invece detto al fratello di Miss Landless che non aveva alcun diritto di ammirarla. A quel punto il fratello di Miss Landless, secondo quanto riferito esattamente dalla cuoca, aveva preso la bottiglia, il coltello, la forchetta e il decanter, e li aveva lanciati tutti contro il signor Edwin Drood.
Povera piccola Rosa: quando queste voci iniziarono a circolare, infilò un dito indice in ciascun orecchio e si ritirò in un angolo, pregando di non essere più informata; ma la signorina Landless, chiedendo il permesso alla signorina Twinkleton di andare a parlare con suo fratello, e dimostrando chiaramente che avrebbe agito comunque anche senza autorizzazione, decise di recarsi direttamente dal signor Crisparkle per ottenere informazioni precise.
Quando tornò (dopo essere stata prima informata da Miss Twinkleton, affinché eventuali dettagli inappropriati delle notizie potessero essere filtrati da quella persona discreta), raccontò a Rosa soltanto ciò che era accaduto; si soffermò sulle provocazioni subite dal fratello, ma limitò il discorso quasi esclusivamente a quell’ultima offesa grave, presentandola come la conseguenza di “altre parole scambiate tra loro”. Per rispetto verso la sua nuova amica, tralasciò anche il fatto che quelle altre parole fossero nate dal modo in cui il suo innamorato interpretava facilmente le cose. Direttamente a Rosa, consegnò una petizione del fratello nel quale le chiedeva di perdonarlo; dopo averla espressa con sincera sincerità, chiuse definitivamente l’argomento.
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.
Spettava a Miss Twinkleton il compito di moderare l’opinione pubblica riguardo alla Casa delle Suore. Quella signora, pertanto, entrò in modo maestoso in ciò che i plebei avrebbero potuto chiamare aula scolastica, ma che, nel linguaggio aristocratico della direttrice della Casa delle Suore, veniva eufemisticamente – se non addirittura perifrasticamente – definito “l’ambiente destinato allo studio”. Con tono solenne esclamò: “Signore!” Tutte arrossirono. Nel frattempo, la signora Tisher si posizionò alle spalle della sua superiore, come a rappresentare la prima amica femminile storica della regina Elisabetta al forte di Tilbury. Miss Twinkleton proseguì quindi dicendo che “la Voce Pubblica”, signore, era stata rappresentata dal poeta di Avon. Non occorre certo menzionare l’immortale SHAKESPEARE, chiamato anche il Cigno del suo fiume natale. Forse con riferimento alla antica superstizione secondo cui quel uccello dalle piume eleganti cantasse dolcemente all’avvicinarsi della morte. Anche se non abbiamo alcuna autorità ornitologica a sostegno di questa credenza. La Voce Pubblica, signore, era stata rappresentata da quel poeta, ”
“Chi ha disegnato il celebre Ebreo”
Raffigurato come pieno di lingue. La voce del Pettegolezzo a Cloisterham (la signorina Ferdinand mi onorerà della sua attenzione) non faceva eccezione al ritratto che il grande pittore aveva realizzato altrove del Pettegolezzo. Una piccola scaramuccia tra due giovani gentiluomini avvenuta la scorsa notte a meno di cento miglia da queste tranquille mura, (la signorina Ferdinand, essendo palesemente irremediabile, avrà la gentilezza di scrivere stasera, nella lingua originale, le prime quattro favole del nostro vivace vicino, Monsieur La Fontaine, ) era stata molto grossolanamente esagerata dalla voce del Pettegolezzo. Nella prima reazione di allarme e preoccupazione derivante dalla nostra simpatia per una dolce giovane amica, che non è affatto estranea a uno dei “gladiatori” di quell’arena senza sangue, (l’inappropriato gesto della signorina Reynolds, che sembra pungersi la mano con un ago, è troppo evidente e palesemente inadeguato per essere menzionato, ), siamo scesi dal nostro “piano elevato” per discutere di questo argomento sgradevole e inappropriato. Dopo aver verificato che si trattava soltanto di uno di quei “nulla di cui parlare” menzionati dal Poeta (il cui nome e data di nascita la signorina Giggles ci fornirà entro mezz’ora), ora abbandoneremo questo argomento e concentreremo la nostra attenzione sulle gratificanti attività della giornata.
Ma il soggetto sopravvisse tutto il giorno, e comunque la signorina Ferdinand si trovò nei guai quando, a cena, applicò di nascosto un baffo di carta e fece finta di puntare una bottiglia d’acqua contro la signorina Giggles, che per difendersi utilizzò un cucchiaio da tavola.
Ora, Rosa pensava molto a questa sfortunata lite, e lo faceva con un senso di disagio, convinta di essere coinvolta in essa, in qualità di causa, conseguenza o altro, a causa della sua posizione assolutamente imbarazzante riguardo al suo fidanzamento. Non essendo mai libera da tale disagio quando era con il suo futuro marito, non era probabile che ne fosse liberata anche quando erano separati. Anche oggi si trovava sola, priva della possibilità di parlare liberamente con la sua nuova amica, poiché la lite riguardava il fratello di Helena, e Helena evitava apertamente l’argomento, ritenendolo delicato e difficile da affrontare. In questo momento critico, proprio quando ne aveva più bisogno, fu annunciato l’arrivo del tutore di Rosa per vederla.
Il signor Grewgious era stato davvero una scelta eccellente per ricoprire quella carica, in quanto uomo di integrità incorruttibile; ma certamente non per alcuna altra qualità particolare che si potesse notare superficialmente. Era un uomo magro e secco, dal viso privo di espressione; se fosse stato messo in una macina, sembrava che sarebbe subito stato ridotto in polvere. Aveva pochi capelli, di colore e consistenza simili a quella di un peluche giallo e logoro; erano così poco simili ai capelli normali da far pensare che fossero una parrucca, se non fosse stata l’assurdità stessa dell’idea che qualcuno potesse voler indossare una cosa del genere. Le poche linee del suo viso erano incise profondamente nella sua carne, formando curve dure e rigide; aveva anche alcune incisioni sulla fronte, come se la >Natura si fosse proposta di dar loro un aspetto più sensibile o raffinato, ma poi avesse gettato via lo scalpello con impazienza, dicendo: “Non riesco proprio a completare questo lavoro; lasciatelo com’è.”
Con la gola troppo lunga nella parte superiore del corpo, e con le caviglie e i talloni eccessivamente sviluppati nella parte inferiore; con un modo di muoversi goffo e incerto; con un passo zoppicante; e con quella che si potrebbe definire una vista poco acuta – forse proprio a causa di questo non si accorgeva di quanto cotone bianco mostrasse ai occhi del pubblico, in contrasto con il suo abito nero – il signor Grewgious possedeva comunque la strana capacità di suscitare, nel complesso, un’impressione piacevole.
Il signor Grewgious fu scoperto dalla sua pupilla; si trovava in una situazione molto imbarazzante, poiché era nella compagnia di Miss Twinkleton, proprio nella sua stanza sacra. Oscuri presentimenti riguardo a un possibile esame e al fatto che ne potesse risultare male lo opprimevano profondamente quando fu trovato in quelle circostanze.
“Mia cara, come stai? È un piacere rivederti. Mia cara, quanto sei migliorata. Lasciami offrirti una sedia, mia cara.”
La signorina Twinkleton, davanti al suo piccolo tavolo da scrivere, disse con dolcezza, rivolta all’intero universo cortese: “Mi permetterete di ritirarmi?”
“Assolutamente no, signora, per colpa mia. La prego, non si muova.”
“Devo chiedervi il permesso di spostarmi,” rispose Miss Twinkleton, ripetendo la parola con una grazia incantevole; “ma non me ne andrò, visto che siete così gentili. Se sposto la mia scrivania in questo angolo vicino alla finestra, disturberò qualcuno?”
#“Signora! Si faccia da parte!”
“Sei davvero molto gentile. Rosa, mia cara, non sarai affatto limitata, ne sono sicura.”
Ecco il signor Grewgious, lasciato dal fuoco insieme a Rosa; disse di nuovo: “Mia cara, come stai? Sono felice di vederti, mia cara.” E dopo aver aspettato che lei si sedesse, si sedette anche lui.
“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. Otherwise, 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.”
“Le mie visite,” disse il signor Grewgious, “sono come quelle degli angeli, anche se non mi paragono certo a un angelo.”
“No, signore,” disse Rosa.
“Assolutamente no,” convenne il signor Grewgious. “Mi riferisco soltanto alle mie visite, che sono poche e distanziate nel tempo. Gli angeli, come sappiamo molto bene, si trovano al piano di sopra.”
Miss Twinkleton guardò intorno con uno sguardo un po’ rigido.
“Mi riferisco, cara mia,” disse il signor Grewgious, posando la sua mano su quella di Rosa, mentre l’idea che stava per pronunciare gli attraversava tutto il corpo; sembrava quasi prendersi la terribile libertà di chiamare la signorina Twinkleton “cara mia”; “mi riferisco alle altre giovani signore.”
La signorina Twinkleton riprese a scrivere.
Il signor Grewgious, sentendo di non aver affrontato il proprio punto iniziale con la precisione desiderata, si lisciò i capelli dalla parte posteriore a quella anteriore, come se avesse appena fatto un tuffo e stesse cercando di scacciare l’acqua. Questo gesto, per quanto superfluo, era diventato una sua abitudine. Poi prese una borsa da tasca dal suo cappotto e un mozzicone di matita nera dalla tasca del gilet.
“L’ho fatto io,” disse, girando le pagine: “Ho preparato un promemoria guida, o qualcosa del genere, come faccio di solito, visto che non ho affatto capacità di conversazione. Al quale mi rivolgerò, con il tuo permesso, cara mia. ‘Benissimo e felice.’ Davvero. Sei davvero benissima e felice, cara? Sembri proprio così.”
“Sì, certamente, signore,” rispose Rosa.
“Per questo,” disse il signor Grewgious, inclinando la testa verso l’angolo della finestra, “dobbiamo esprimere i nostri più calorosi ringraziamenti, e sono certo che vengano effettivamente resi, alla gentilezza materna e alle continue attenzioni e premure di quella signora che ora ho l’onore di vedere davanti a me.”
Ancora una volta, questo argomento rappresentava un debole tentativo di allontanarsi dal tema principale trattato da Mr. Grewgious, e non riuscì mai a raggiungere il suo obiettivo; infatti, Miss Twinkleton, sentendo che le convenzioni sociali richiedevano che lei si allontanasse dalla conversazione entro quella ora, mordeva la punta della sua penna e guardava verso l’alto, in attesa che qualche membro dei “Nove Celesti” avesse qualcosa da aggiungere, anche se probabilmente non ne avevano affatto.
Il signor Grewgious si lisciò di nuovo la testa liscia e poi fece un’altra allusione al suo portafoglio, scrivendo con cura le parole “>bene e felice”, come aveva deciso di fare.
“‘Poundi, scellini e penny’, è il mio prossimo argomento. Un argomento poco interessante per una giovane signorina, ma comunque importante. La vita è fatta di poundi, scellini e penny. L’‘morte’ invece, ” All’improvviso gli tornò in mente la morte dei suoi genitori, e si interruppe; poi continuò con tono più dolce, aggiungendo evidentemente il negativo come riflessione successiva: “L’‘morte’ non è fatta di poundi, scellini e penny.”
La sua voce era altrettanto dura e secca quanto lui stesso; forse Fancy avrebbe potuto ridurla in polvere, proprio come lui, trasformandola in tabacco da fiuto essiccato. Eppure, attraverso quei limitati mezzi espressivi di cui disponeva, sembrava riuscire a trasmettere gentilezza. Se solo Natura lo avesse completato. Forse in quel momento la gentilezza sarebbe stata visibile sul suo volto. Ma se le rughe sulla sua fronte non si fossero fuse insieme, e se il suo viso non fosse stato in grado di esprimere emozioni. Cosa avrebbe potuto fare, pover’uomo?
“‘Poundi, scellini e penny, ’ Trovi sempre che la tua paghetta sia sufficiente alle tue esigenze, cara?”
La rosa non desiderava nulla, ed è per questo che era abbondante.
“E non sei indebitato?”
Rosa rise all’idea di dover qualcosa in debito. Per la sua inesperienza, le sembrava una sciocca fantasia dell’immaginazione. Il signor Grewgious si avvicinò per essere sicuro che fosse davvero questo il suo punto di vista sulla situazione. “Ah!” disse, lanciando un’occhiata furtiva verso la signorina Twinkleton e contando i penny, i scellini e le sterline: “Ho detto di essere tra gli angeli. E infatti è vero!”
Rosa intuiva già ciò che il suo prossimo memorandum avrebbe dimostrato; arrossiva e, con una mano imbarazzata, sistemava una piega nel suo vestito, molto prima che lui lo trovasse.
“‘Matrimonio.’ Ehm, ” Il signor Grewgious si portò la mano sulla fronte, sul naso e persino sul mento, poi avvicinò un po’ la sedia e parlò in tono più confidenziale: “Ora arrivo al punto che è la causa diretta per cui vi ho disturbato con questa visita. Altrimenti, essendo una persona particolarmente rigida e convenzionale, non mi sarei mai intromesso in una sfera che non mi appartiene affatto. Mi sento, in queste circostanze, come un orso con i crampi, in mezzo a danzatori giovani e agili.”
La sua goffaggine gli conferiva proprio quell’aspetto tipico dei suoi simili, che fece ridere a crepapelle Rosa.
“Vi colpisce sotto la stessa luce,” disse il signor Grewgious con perfetta calma. “Esattamente. Tornando al mio memorandum. Il signor Edwin è stato avanti e indietro qui, come era stato concordato. Ne avete parlato nelle vostre lettere trimestrali a me. E vi piace, e lui vi piace.”
“Mi piace molto, signore,” rispose Rosa.
“Quindi ho detto, mio caro,” rispose il suo tutore, per il quale quella timida enfasi era decisamente troppo sottile da percepire. “Bene. E vi scrivete anche.”
“Ci scriviamo a vicenda,” disse Rosa, facendo il broncio, mentre ricordava le loro divergenze epistolari.
“Ecco il significato che attribuisco alla parola ‘corrispondere’ in questo contesto, mio caro,” disse il signor Grewgious. “Bene. Tutto procede benissimo, il tempo lavora a nostro favore, e la prossima Christmas sarà il momento giusto per comunicare, per pura formalità, alla gentile signora che si trova in quella finestra, a cui dobbiamo molto, della tua partenza entro i prossimi sei mesi. Le tue relazioni con lei sono certamente qualcosa di più di semplici rapporti d’affari, non c’è dubbio al riguardo; tuttavia rimane ancora un aspetto legato agli affari. E gli affari, dopotutto, sono sempre affari. Sono una persona particolarmente riservata,” proseguì il signor Grewgious, come se solo in quel momento gli fosse venuto in mente di menzionarlo, “e non sono abituato a rivelare nulla. Se, per questi due motivi, qualche intermediario competente dovesse ‘rivelare’ qualcosa su di te, lo considererei un gesto molto scortese da parte sua.”
Rosa, con lo sguardo abbassato, lasciò intendere che, se necessario, si potesse trovare una sostituta.
“Certo, certo,” disse il signor Grewgious. “Ad esempio, quel gentiluomo che insegna la danza qui. Lui saprebbe come farlo con grazia e decoro. Si muoverebbe avanti e indietro in modo tale da soddisfare i sentimenti del prete che officia la cerimonia, di voi, dello sposo e di tutte le parti coinvolte. Io, beh, io sono una persona particolarmente rigida,” disse il signor Grewgious, come se avesse finalmente deciso di chiarire la questione una volta per tutte: “E probabilmente commetterei solo degli errori.”
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.”
Rosa rimase immobile e in silenzio. Forse la sua mente non aveva ancora raggiunto del tutto quel livello di consapevolezza legato alla cerimonia, ma stava cercando di farlo.
“Memorandum, ‘Testamento.’ Ora, mio caro,” disse il signor Grewgious, riferendosi alle sue note, cancellando “Matrimonio” con la penna e prendendo un foglio di carta dalla tasca; “sebbene vi abbia già informato sui contenuti del testamento di vostro padre, ritengo opportuno, in questo momento, lasciarvi una copia certificata tra le mani. E anche se il signor Edwin conosce i suoi contenuti, penso sia giusto, allo stesso modo, fornire una copia certificata anche al signor Jasper, ”
“Non può essere lui ad occuparsene personalmente?”, chiese Rosa alzando lo sguardo rapidamente. “Non potrebbe essere Eddy stesso a gestirlo?”
“Sì, certo, mia cara, se proprio lo desideri; ma io parlavo di Mr. Jasper come del suo fiduciario.”
“Lo desidero davvero molto, se vi è possibile,” disse Rosa, in fretta e con sincerità; “Non voglio che il signor Jasper si intrometta tra di noi, in alcun modo.”
“È naturale, suppongo,” disse il signor Grewgious, “che vostro giovane marito debba avere la precedenza su tutto. Sì. Notate che dico ‘suppongo’. In realtà, io sono una persona particolarmente innaturale, e non lo so con certezza.”
Rosa lo guardò con un certo stupore.
“Voglio dire,” spiegò, “che quel modo di comportarsi tipico dei giovani non è mai stato il mio. Ero l’unico figlio di genitori molto anziani, e quasi credo di essere nato anch’io già ‘avanzato’ nella vita. Nessuna personalità si sviluppa in base al nome che presto cambierai; anzi, sembra che io sia nato già come una sorta di ‘chip’, un elemento predefinito. Quando per la prima volta mi resi conto di me stesso, ero davvero molto ‘secco’. Rispettando l’altra copia ufficiale dei tuoi documenti, il tuo desiderio verrà esaudito. Per quanto riguarda la tua eredità, penso che tu sappia già tutto: si tratta di un rendiconto annuo di duecentocinquanta sterline. I risparmi accumulati su tale rendiconto, insieme ad altri elementi a tuo favore, una volta verificati e registrati con i relativi documenti, ti permetteranno di disporre di una somma complessiva che supera di molto le Settecento Cinquanta Sterline. Sono autorizzato a finanziare le tue spese per i preparativi del tuo matrimonio utilizzando proprio quel fondo. Ecco tutto.”
“Per favore, mi dica,” disse Rosa, prendendo il foglio con la fronte leggermente corrugata, ma senza aprirlo: “se ho ragione in ciò che sto per dire. Riesco a capire molto meglio ciò che mi dice lei rispetto a quanto leggo nei documenti legali. Mio povero papà e il padre di Eddy hanno stretto questo accordo insieme, come amici molto cari e fedeli, affinché anche noi potessimo diventare amici molto cari e fedeli dopo di loro, ”
“Giusto così.”
“Per il bene duraturo di entrambi, e la felicità duratura di entrambi, ”
“Giusto così.”
“Per poter essere l’uno per l’altro molto di più di quanto loro lo siano stati tra loro, ”
“Giusto così.”
“Non era vincolato né a Eddy né a me da alcuna clausola che prevedesse conseguenze nel caso, ”
“Non essere agitata, mia cara. Anche nel caso in cui immaginare solo la possibilità che ciò accada vi portasse alle lacrime, anche nel caso in cui non vi sposaste, no, nessuna perdita per nessuno dei due. In quel caso, saresti stata sotto la mia tutela fino a raggiungere l’età adulta. Non vi sarebbe successo nulla di peggio. Anzi, forse è già abbastanza grave!”
“E Eddy?”
“Avrebbe ereditato la partecipazione nell’impresa derivante da suo padre, nonché eventuali debiti rimanenti a suo carico, al raggiungimento della maggiore età, esattamente come avviene ora.”
Rosa, con il suo viso perplesso e la fronte corrugata, mordeva l’angolo della sua copia autenticata; seduta di lato, fissava distrattamente il pavimento e lo lisciava con il piede.
“In breve,” disse il signor Grewgious, “questo fidanzamento è un desiderio, un sentimento, un progetto amichevole, espresso con tenerezza da entrambe le parti. Che tale desiderio sia profondo e che ci sia una viva >speranza che possa realizzarsi, non può esserci alcun >dubbio. Quando eravate ancora bambini, avete iniziato ad abituarvi all’idea di questo fidanzamento, e in effetti esso è andato avanti. Ma le circostanze cambiano; e io sono venuto qui oggi, in parte, anzi soprattutto, per adempiere al dovere di dirvi che due giovani possono essere fidanzati soltanto con il loro libero consenso, sulla base dell’affetto reciproco e della certezza che siano adatti l’uno all’altro e possano rendersi felici insieme. Si può forse pensare, ad esempio, che se uno dei vostri padri fosse ancora vivo oggi e avesse qualche dubbio al riguardo, il cambiamento delle circostanze legato all’avanzare dell’età potrebbe farlo cambiare idea? Assurdo, irragionevole, inconcludente, e assolutamente ridicolo!”
Il signor Grewgious disse tutto questo come se lo stesse leggendo ad alta voce; o, ancora di più, come se stesse ripetendo una lezione. Il suo volto e il suo modo di comportarsi erano del tutto privi di qualsiasi traccia di spontaneità.
“Ora ho adempiuto, mio caro,” aggiunse, cancellando con la matita la parola “Will”,
“a ciò che senza dubbio rappresenta un dovere formale in questo caso, ma comunque un dovere. Appunto: ‘Desideri’. Mio caro, c’è qualche desiderio tuo che possa realizzare per te?”
Rosa scosse la testa, con un tono quasi lamentoso, esitante nel chiedere aiuto.
“Esiste qualche consiglio che potete darmi riguardo alle vostre faccende?”
“Vorrei sistemare prima le cose con Eddy, se per voi va bene,” disse Rosa, sistemando la piega del suo vestito.
“Certo, certo,” rispose il signor Grewgious. “Voi due dovreste essere d’accordo su tutto. Il giovane gentiluomo arriverà presto?”
“È partito solo stamattina. Tornerà a Natale.”
“Non potrebbe andare meglio. Quando tornerà a Natale, tu sistemerai con lui tutti i dettagli; poi mi contatterai e io, in qualità di semplice conoscente d’affari, mi libererò delle mie responsabilità verso quella signora seduta nell’angolo della finestra. Tali responsabilità verranno riscosse in quel periodo.” Di nuovo, usa la matita sfocata, “Memorandum: ‘Andarmene.’ Sì. Ora, cara mia, devo andare.”
“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?”
“Potrei chiedervelo, per favore?”, disse Rosa alzandosi, mentre lui si alzava goffamente dalla sedia: “Potreste venire da me a Natale, se avessi qualcosa di particolare da dirvi?”
“Certamente, certamente,” rispose lui; evidentemente – se si può usare una parola del genere per descrivere qualcuno che non presentava alcun tratto distintivo evidente in sé – era lusingato da quella domanda. “Essendo una persona piuttosto, ‘angolare’, non mi adatto facilmente ai circoli sociali; pertanto, durante il Natale, non ho altri impegni se non quello di partecipare, il ventiquattresimo, a un pasto composto da tacchino bollito e salsa di sedano, con un impiegato particolarmente ‘angolare’ che ho la fortuna di avere; il padre di questo ragazzo, essendo un contadino del Norfolk, mi manda il tacchino in regalo dalla zona di Norwich. Sarei davvero orgoglioso se volessi vedermi, cara mia. Essendo un professionista incaricato della riscossione degli affitti, pochissime persone desiderano effettivamente incontrarmi; quindi questa tua richiesta rappresenterebbe davvero una novità piacevole.”
Per la sua pronta disponibilità, la grata Rosa posò le mani sulle sue spalle, si alzò in punta di piedi e lo baciò all’istante.
“Signore, beneditemi!” esclamò il signor Grewgious. “Grazie, mia cara! L’onore che ho ricevuto è quasi paragonabile al piacere che ne ho tratto. Signorina Twinkleton, madama, ho avuto una conversazione molto soddisfacente con la mia pupilla, e ora vi libererò dall’onere della mia presenza.”
“No, signore,” ribatté la signorina Twinkleton alzandosi con un atteggiamento gentile e condiscendente: “Non dica che si tratta di un onere. Assolutamente no. Non posso permetterle di dirlo.”
“Grazie, signora. Ho letto sui giornali,” disse il signor Grewgious, balbettando un po’, “che quando un visitatore illustre (non che io lo sia: per niente) va in una scuola (non che questa sia una scuola: per niente), chiede di poter prendere una giornata di riposo o qualche favore. Poiché ora è pomeriggio nel. Collegio, del quale lei è la direttrice eminente, le giovani signorine probabilmente non guadagnerebbero nulla, se non in nome, se gli venisse concesso il resto della giornata libero. Ma se ci fosse qualche giovane signorina che si trovi in difficoltà, potrei chiedere, ”
“Ah, signor Grewgious, signor Grewgious!” gridò Miss Twinkleton, puntando verso di lui un dito indice pieno di virtuosa indignazione. “Oh, signori, signori. Che vergogna che siate così crudeli con noi povere donne, costrette a seguire regole così severe per il vostro bene! Ma poiché la signorina Ferdinand è attualmente oppressa da un ‘incubo’, ” – Miss Twinkleton avrebbe potuto anche dire che fosse oppressa da una quantità enorme di compiti scritti da Monsieur La Fontaine – “vai da lei, cara Rosa, e digli che la punizione è revocata, in segno di rispetto per l’intervento del suo tutore, il signor Grewgious.”
La signorina Twinkleton eseguì un inchino che sembrava suggerire meraviglie che accadevano alle sue rispettabili gambe; uscì dalla posizione iniziale con grazia, distaccandosi di tre metri dal punto di partenza.
Poiché riteneva suo dovere salutare il signor Jasper prima di lasciare Cloisterham, il signor Grewgious si recò alla guardiola e salì la scala posteriore. Tuttavia, poiché la porta del signor Jasper era chiusa, e vedendo su un biglietto scritto “Cattedrale”, capì che fosse l’ora delle funzioni religiose. Così scese di nuovo le scale, attraversò il cortile e si fermò davanti alla grande porta a battenti della Cattedrale, che era aperta in quella bella e luminosa, sebbene breve, giornata pomeridiana, per far entrare aria nel luogo.
“Mio Dio,” disse il signor Grewgious, spiando all’interno, “è come guardare giù nella gola dell’antico Tempo.”
Nell’antico tempo, un sospiro umido e muffito usciva dalle tombe, dagli archi e dalle volte; ombre cupe iniziavano ad addensarsi negli angoli, mentre umidità si levava dalle aree di pietra verda. I gioielli, proiettati sul pavimento della navata dai vetri colorati al tramonto del sole, iniziavano a deteriorarsi. All’interno della grata dell’altare, lungo i gradini sovrastati dall’organo il cui suono si faceva sempre più cupo, si potevano intravedere vesti bianche; di tanto in tanto, una voce debole e monotona risuonava. All’esterno, il fiume, i prati verdi e le terre coltivate, le colline e i valli rigogliosi erano illuminati dal tramonto; mentre le piccole finestre delle mulini a vento e delle case contadine brillavano come pezzi di oro luminoso. Nella cattedrale, tutto diventava grigio, cupo e tenebroso; quel suono monotono e rotto continuava, simile alla voce morente di qualcuno. Finché l’organo e il coro non eruppero in un mare di musica che soffocò quel suono. Poi, quel “mare” di suoni si placò; la voce debole tentò ancora una volta di risuonare. Ma poi scomparve del tutto.
A quel momento, il signor Grewgious si era già recato ai gradini dell’altare, dove incontrò le acque che sgorgavano.
“Niente di grave, vero?” Gli chiese Jasper, avvicinandosi piuttosto rapidamente. “Non ti hanno mandato a chiamare per qualche motivo?”
“Assolutamente no, sono sceso di mia volontà. Sono stato da mia nipote e ora sto tornando a casa.”
“L’hai vista prosperare?”
“Davvero fiorente. Molto fiorente. Sono venuto soltanto per dirle, seriamente, quanto sia strano un fidanzamento concordato dai genitori defunti.”
“E allora, secondo te, qual è?”
Il signor Grewgious notò il pallore delle labbra che avevano posto quella domanda, e lo attribuì al racconto spaventoso della [Cattedrale.
“Sono venuto soltanto per dirle che tale accordo non può essere considerato vincolante, in caso di motivi validi per la sua risoluzione, come l’assenza di affetto o la mancanza di volontà da parte di una delle parti di attuarlo.”
”Posso chiedere, avevi qualche motivo particolare per dirle quelle cose?”
Il signor Grewgious rispose in modo piuttosto brusco: “Il motivo specifico per cui svolgo il mio dovere, signore. Proprio questo.” Poi aggiunse: “Dai, signor Jasper; so quanto tu tenga a tuo nipote e che sei sempre pronto a difenderlo. Ti assicuro che questo non implica la minima >dubbio o mancanza di rispetto nei suoi confronti.”
“Non avresti potuto farlo,” rispose Jasper, stringendogli amichevolmente il braccio mentre camminavano fianco a fianco, “parlare in modo più gentile.”
Il signor Grewgious si tolse il cappello per lisciarsi i capelli; dopo averli lisciati, annuì soddisfatto e se lo rimise in testa.
“Scommetto,” disse Jasper sorridendo; le sue labbra erano ancora così pallide che se ne rendeva conto, e le morse e le umidificò mentre parlava: “Scommetto che non ha mai espresso il desiderio di essere liberata da Ned.”
“E vincerete la vostra scommessa, se ci riuscite,” ribatté il signor Grewgious. “Dovremmo concedere qualche margine per le delicatezze tipiche di una giovane ragazza senza madre, in circostanze del genere. Non è certo compito mio; che ne pensate?”
“Non può esserci alcun >dubbio al riguardo.”
“Sono felice che tu dica così. Perché,” proseguì il signor Grewgious, che per tutto quel tempo aveva molto attentamente valutato le possibili azioni da intraprendere, basandosi sul ricordo di ciò che lei aveva detto su Jasper stesso: “perché sembra avere un’intuizione delicata secondo cui sia meglio che tutti gli accordi preliminari vengano presi direttamente tra il signor Edwin Drood e lei, capisci? Non vuole la nostra interferenza, non è vero?”
“Jasper si toccò il petto e disse, in modo piuttosto indistinto: ‘Intendi me.’”
Il signor Grewgious si toccò il petto e disse: “Intendo noi. Quindi, lasciamo che facciano le loro piccole discussioni e riunioni insieme, quando il signor Edwin Drood tornerà qui a Natale; poi tu ed io interverremo per dare gli ultimi tocchi alla questione.”
“Quindi, hai deciso con lei di tornare a Natale?” osservò Jasper. “Capisco! Signor Grewgious, come avete detto giustamente poco fa, esiste un legame davvero eccezionale tra mio nipote e me; per questo sono più sensibile alle sue esigenze che alle mie. Ma è giusto, come avete sottolineato, prendere in considerazione anche i desideri della giovane signorina. Accetto il vostro suggerimento. So che a Natale completeranno tutti i preparativi per il matrimonio, e che saranno loro stessi ad occuparsi di ogni dettaglio. A noi non resterà altro che prepararci anche noi, in modo che tutto sia pronto per la nostra ufficiale liberazione dai nostri incarichi, nel giorno del compleanno di Edwin.”
“È proprio così che la interpreto,” concordò il signor Grewgious mentre si stringevano la mano per salutarsi. “Che Dio benedica entrambi!”
“Dio li salvi entrambi!”, gridò Jasper.
“Ho detto: ‘Benedeteli’”, osservò l’ex, guardando indietro con la coda dell’occhio.
“Ho detto: ‘Salvateli’”, rispose l’altro. “C’è qualche differenza?”
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.
Ogni volta che il Reverendo Septimus si perdeva nei suoi pensieri, sua madre, considerandolo un segno infallibile del fatto che “avesse bisogno di sostegno”, si affrettava subito verso l’armadio in sala da pranzo per prendere quel sostegno sotto forma di un bicchiere di vino Constantia e di alcuni biscotti fatti in casa. Quell’armadio era davvero meraviglioso, degno del Cloisterham e del Minor Canon Corner. Sopra di esso, un ritratto di Handel con una parrucca fluente guardava verso il basso, con l’aria di conoscere perfettamente il contenuto dell’armadio e con un’aria musicale, come se intendesse combinare tutte le sue “armonie” in una deliziosa fuga. Non era certo un armadio comune, con una porta ordinaria che si apriva all’improvviso, rivelando tutto in una volta. Questo straordinario armadio aveva invece una serratura situata a metà altezza: due slitte perpendicolari si incontravano lì; una scendeva e l’altra saliva. Tirando giù la slitta superiore (lasciando così la parte inferiore ancora più misteriosa), si rivelavano ripiani pieni di barattoli di sottaceti, vasetti di marmellata, lattine di conserve, scatole di spezie, e anche strani contenitori blu e bianchi, dove erano conservati tamarindi e zenzero. Ogni “abitante benevolo” di quell’angolo nascosto aveva il proprio nome inciso sul dorso. I sottaceti, vestiti con abiti marroni scuro e continuazioni gialle o scure, annunciavano la loro forma rotonda, stampati in caratteri grandi: Noci, Cipolle Ripiene, Cavoli, Cavolfiori, Misto. Le marmellate, essendo di temperamento meno “maschile” e avendo decorazioni a volantini, si presentavano con una grafia “femminile”, come se sussurrassero: Lamponi Rossi, More, Albicocche, Prugne, Damaschi, Mele, Pesche. Alla fine di questa scena incantevole, sollevando la slitta inferiore, si rivelavano delle arance, accompagnate da una grande scatola di zucchero giapponese, per attenuarne l’acidità se ancora acerbe. I biscotti fatti in casa aspettavano lì, insieme a un bel pezzo di torta di prugne e a diverse “dita sottili” di dolce, da intingere nel vino dolce e baciare. In fondo all’armadio, una piccola cassaforte di piombo custodiva il vino dolce e vari liquori: da lì provenivano sussurri di Arancia di Siviglia, Limone, Mandorla, Semi di Cumino. Quell’armadio aveva davvero un’aria speciale. Sembrava che da secoli fosse stato “cantato” dalle campane e dall’organo della cattedrale; quelle venerabili “api” avevano trasformato in miele tutto ciò che vi era conservato. Si notava sempre che ogni cucchiaio che veniva preso dagli scaffali (profondi, come già accennato, e capaci di contenere testa, spalle e gomiti, ) riemergeva poi con un aspetto più “mellato”, come se avesse subito una trasformazione dolce.
Il Reverendo Septimus si arrese volontariamente come vittima di quel disgustoso armadio pieno di erbe medicinali, anch’esso sotto la supervisione della “pastorella di porcellana”, proprio come si era arreso a questo meraviglioso armadietto. A quali straordinarie infusioni di gentiana, menta, cavolfiore, salvia, prezzemolo, timo, ruta, rosmarino e tarassaco dovette sottomettersi il suo coraggioso stomaco! In quali meravigliosi involucri, fatti di strati di foglie secche, avrebbe avvolto il proprio viso rosso e soddisfatto, se sua madre avesse sospettato che gli dolesse i denti! Su quale parte del viso o della fronte avrebbe volentieri applicato quelle “macchie botaniche”, se la cara vecchia signora lo avesse accusato di avere un brufolo impercettibile. In quella prigione erbacea, situata al piano superiore delle scale: una cella bassa e stretta, imbiancata a calce, dove mazzi di foglie secche pendevano da ganci arrugginiti sul soffitto e erano disposti sugli scaffali insieme a bottiglie minacciose. Il Reverendo Septimus vi sarebbe stato condotto docilmente, proprio come quel molto amato agnello che da tempo viene portato al macello senza resistenza. Lì, a differenza di quell’agnello, non avrebbe avuto nessuno con sé, tranne se stesso. Anche senza fare tutto questo, solo per tenere occupata e contenta la vecchia signora, avrebbe ingoiato in silenzio ciò che gli veniva dato, immergendo semplicemente le mani e il viso nella grande ciotola di foglie secche di rosa e lavanda. Poi sarebbe uscito, fiducioso nelle proprietà lenitive di Cloisterham Weir e di una mente sana. Proprio come Lady Macbeth era senza speranza riguardo alle proprietà lenitive di tutti i mari che si muovono.
In questo caso, il bravo Minore Canon prese il suo bicchiere di Constantia con grande eleganza e, così sostenuto dalla soddisfazione di sua madre, si dedicò alle restanti attività della giornata. Queste attività, svolte in modo ordinato e puntuale, portarono alla conclusione dei riti serali e al calare del crepuscolo. Poiché la cattedrale era molto fredda, dopo i riti si mise a correre velocemente; quella corsa terminò con un’impetuosa corsa verso il suo frammento di rovine preferito, che avrebbe dovuto essere portato via dalla tempesta, senza mai fermarsi nemmeno per riprendere fiato.
Lo portava con maestria; nemmeno allora respirò, rimanendo fermo a guardare il fiume. Il fiume di Cloisterham è abbastanza vicino al mare da rigettare spesso grandi quantità di alghe. Con l’ultima marea ne era arrivata una quantità insolita; questo, insieme all’agitazione dell’acqua, al movimento incessante delle gabbiani e a quella luce minacciosa che si vedeva in lontananza oltre le barche a vela marrone che diventavano sempre più scure, presagiva una notte tempestosa. Nel suo pensiero, contrapponeva il mare selvaggio e rumoroso al tranquillo porto di Minor Canon Corner. Quando Helena e Neville Landless passarono sotto di lui, li aveva già avuti entrambi in mente tutto il giorno; così scese subito per parlare con loro. Il terreno era accidentato e difficile da percorrere, tranne che per un buon scalatore. Ma il Minor Canon era un ottimo scalatore: arrivò accanto a loro molto prima che molti altri avessero potuto completare la discesa.
“Una serata selvaggia, signorina Landless! Non ritiene che la sua solita passeggiata con suo fratello sia troppo esposta e fredda per questa stagione? O, comunque, quando il sole è già tramontato e il tempo diventa più freddo a causa del vento proveniente dal mare?”
Helena non la pensava così. Era il loro passeggiato preferito, un posto molto tranquillo e isolato.
“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!”
“È un posto molto tranquillo,” convenne il signor Crisparkle, cogliendo immediatamente l’occasione per proseguire con loro. “È proprio in un luogo del genere che si può parlare senza interruzioni, come desidero fare io. Signor Neville, credo che lei racconti a sua sorella tutto ciò che accade tra di noi, vero?”
“Tutto, signore.”
“Pertanto,” disse il signor Crisparkle, “vostra sorella sa che ho più volte insistito affinché vi scusaste per quell’incidente sfortunato accaduto la notte del vostro arrivo qui.” Mentre lo diceva, guardava lei e non lui; quindi fu lei, e non lui, a rispondere:
“Sì, davvero.”
“Lo considero una sfortuna, signorina Helena”, continuò il signor Crisparkle, “poiché di certo questo ha generato pregiudizi contro Neville. C’è l’idea che sia un uomo pericolosamente appassionato, dal temperamento incontrollabile e furioso: infatti, viene effettivamente evitato proprio per questo.”
“Non ho alcun >dubbio che lo sia, povero ragazzo,” disse Elena, con uno sguardo di orgogliosa compassione verso suo fratello, esprimendo un profondo senso del fatto che venisse trattato ingiustamente. “Dovrei esserne certa, visto come lo dici tu; ma ciò che mi racconti viene confermato da indizi e allusioni che incontro ogni giorno.”
“Ora,” riprese il signor Crisparkle con un tono dolce ma deciso, “non dovremmo forse rimpiangere questa situazione e cercare di correggerla? Sono solo i primi giorni in cui Neville si trova a Cloisterham, e non temo affatto che possa superare questo pregiudizio e dimostrare di essere stato frainteso. Ma non sarebbe molto più saggio agire subito, invece di affidarsi a un tempo incerto? Inoltre, oltre ad essere la cosa giusta da fare, è anche opportuno dal punto di vista politico. Non c’è dubbio che Neville abbia sbagliato.”
“È stato provocato,” dichiarò Elena.
“Era lui l’assalitore,” dichiarò il signor Crisparkle.
Camminarono in silenzio, fino a quando Helena alzò lo sguardo sul viso del Minor Canon e disse, quasi con rimprovero: “Oh, signor Crisparkle, vorreste davvero che Neville si gettasse ai piedi di quel giovane Drood, o di quel signor Jasper che lo diffama ogni giorno? Nel vostro cuore non potete davvero volerlo. Nel vostro cuore non lo fareste mai, se la sua situazione fosse la vostra.”
“Ho spiegato a Mr. Crisparkle, Helena,” disse Neville, con un tono di rispetto verso il proprio tutore, “che se potessi farlo davvero con tutto il cuore, lo farei. Ma non posso, e mi ribello a questa finzione. Tuttavia, dimenticate che presentare la situazione a Mr. Crisparkle come se fosse stata mia è equivalente ad assumere di aver fatto io stesso ciò che ho fatto.”
“Chiedo il suo perdono,” disse Elena.
“Vedete,” osservò il signor Crisparkle, cogliendo di nuovo l’occasione, sebbene con un tono moderato e delicato, “entrambi riconoscete istintivamente che Neville ha fatto male. Allora perché fermarvi a questo punto, senza ammetterlo apertamente?”
“Non esiste alcuna differenza,” chiese Elena con un leggero tremore nella voce; “tra sottomettersi a uno spirito nobile e sottomettersi a uno spregevole o meschino?”
Prima che il degno Minore Canon potesse completare del tutto la sua argomentazione riguardo a questa distinzione così interessante, Neville intervenne:
“Aiutami a chiarire la situazione con il signor Crisparkle, Helena. Aiutami a convincerlo che non posso essere io il primo ad fare concessioni senza subire derisioni e menzogne. La mia >natura deve cambiare prima che io possa farlo, ma non è cambiata. Sento profondamente offesa, e anche un deliberato aggravamento di questa offesa. E sono arrabbiata. La semplice verità è che sono ancora altrettanto arrabbiata quando ricordo quella notte come lo ero quella notte.”
“Neville,” suggerì il Minore Canon con un’espressione seria, “hai ripetuto quell’azione che non mi piace affatto.”
“Mi dispiace molto, signore, ma è stato involontario. Ho ammesso di essere ancora arrabbiato.”
“E devo ammettere,” disse il signor Crisparkle, “che speravo in cose migliori.”
“Mi dispiace molto deluderla, signore, ma sarebbe ancora peggio ingannarla. E lo farei gravemente se fingessi che lei abbia avuto un ascendente positivo su di me in questo senso. Potrebbe arrivare il momento in cui la sua potente influenza riesca a farlo anche con quel difficile allievo le cui origini lei conosce; ma non è ancora arrivato. È vero, Helena. Nonostante i miei sforzi per resistere?”
Lei, i cui occhi scuri osservavano l’effetto delle sue parole sul viso del signor Crisparkle, rispose, al signor Crisparkle, non a lui: “È proprio così.”
Dopo una breve pausa, rispose anche al più lieve cenno di domanda che il fratello potesse fare con un leggero movimento affermativo della testa; e lui continuò.
“Non ho mai avuto il coraggio di dirvi, signore, ciò che avrei dovuto dire apertamente fin dal momento in cui abbiamo iniziato a parlare di questo argomento. Non è facile confessarlo, e sono stato trattenuto da una >paura che sembrasse ridicola. Una paura molto forte, che mi ostacola ancora anche in questo istante; se non fosse per mia sorella, probabilmente non vi avrei parlato con totale sincerità nemmeno ora. Ammiro davvero molto la signorina Bud, signore. Non potrei sopportare che venisse trattata con presunzione o indifferenza. E anche se non provassi personalmente rancore verso il giovane Drood, sentirei comunque di doverlo difendere a causa di lei.”
Il signor Crisparkle, completamente sbalordito, guardò Helena in cerca di conferma; nel suo volto espressivo trovò non solo conferma, ma anche un appello per un consiglio.
“La giovane signora di cui parlate, come sapete, signor Neville, sarà presto sposata,” disse seriamente il signor Crisparkle; “pertanto, il vostro interesse, se di quella natura particolare che sembrate intendere, è assolutamente fuori luogo. Inoltre, è mostruoso che vi assumiate il ruolo di difensore della giovane signora contro il marito scelto da lei. Del resto, li avete visti soltanto una volta. La giovane signora è diventata amica di vostra sorella; e mi chiedo come mai vostra sorella, anche a suo favore, non vi abbia fermato in questa fantasia irrazionale e colpevole.”
“Ha provato, signore, ma invano. Che abbia marito o no, quell’uomo è incapace di provare ciò che io provo per quella bella giovane creatura che tratta come una bambola. Dico che è altrettanto incapace quanto indegno di lei. Dico che viene sacrificata sposandolo. Dico che io la amo, e lo disprezzo e lo odio!” Disse questo con il viso così arrossato e i gesti così violenti, che sua sorella si avvicinò e gli afferrò il braccio, esortandolo: “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.
[Illustration: 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?”
Ricordandoselo all’improvviso, si rese subito conto di aver perso il controllo che aveva su quella sua tendenza passionale; coprì il viso con la mano, come un uomo pentito e sventurato.
Il signor Crisparkle, osservandolo attentamente e allo stesso tempo riflettendo su come procedere, camminò per qualche passo in silenzio. Poi parlò.
“Signor Neville, signor Neville. Mi addolora profondamente vedere in voi tracce di un carattere così cupo, irascibile e selvaggio, proprio come questa notte che sta per calare. Questi tratti sono troppo seri perché io possa ignorarli o trattare l’infatuazione che avete manifestato come qualcosa di insignificante. La prendo molto sul serio, e parlo con voi di conseguenza. Questo conflitto tra voi e il giovane Drood non può continuare. Non posso permetterlo, soprattutto ora che so ciò che so su di voi, e dato che vivete sotto il mio tetto. Qualunque pregiudizio o interpretazione errata derivi dalla vostra rabbia cieca ed invidia riguardo al suo carattere, lui è una persona onesta e gentile. Ne sono certa. Ora, per favore ascoltate ciò che sto per dire: dopo aver riflettuto e considerato anche il parere di vostra sorella, sono disposta ad ammettere che, nel fare la pace con il giovane Drood, abbiate diritto a ricevere un certo rispetto da parte sua. Vi prometto che vi sarà dato; anzi, sarà proprio lui ad essere il primo a compiere un passo avanti. Una volta soddisfatta questa condizione, mi darete l’onore di un gentiluomo cristiano, giurando che questo litigio sia per sempre concluso da parte vostra. Ciò che provate nel dargli la mano, solo Colui che conosce i cuori umani può saperlo; ma se ci fosse tradimento in voi, le conseguenze sarebbero terribili. Per quanto riguarda l’infatuazione di cui ho parlato, so che ne avete fatto parola soltanto a me, e che nessun altro ne è a conoscenza, tranne vostra sorella e voi stesso. Ho capito bene?”
Elena rispose a bassa voce: “Lo sanno solo noi tre che siamo qui insieme.”
“La giovane signora, tua amica, non ne ha la minima idea, vero?”
“Per la mia ‘anima, no!”
“Quindi vi chiedo, signor Neville, di darmi la vostra stessa solenne promessa: che questo segreto rimanga tale e che non intraprenderete alcuna altra azione al riguardo, se non quella di cercare (e con grande impegno) di cancellarlo dalla vostra mente. Non vi dirò che passerà presto; non vi dirò che si tratta solo di un capriccio momentaneo; non vi dirò che simili impulsi sono comuni tra i giovani e appassionati in ogni momento. Vi lascio nella convinzione che questo segreto abbia pochi, se nessun, paralleli, che rimarrà con voi per molto tempo e che sarà molto difficile sconfiggerlo. Per questo motivo attribuirò ancora maggiore importanza alla promessa che vi chiedo.”
Il giovane tentò due o tre volte di parlare, ma fallì.
“Lascio che rimani con tua sorella; è giunto il momento di portarla a casa,” disse il signor Crisparkle. “Tra poco mi troverete da solo nella mia stanza.”
“Per favore, non lasciarci ancora,” lo implorò Elena. “Solo un minuto in più.”
“Non avrei dovuto,” disse Neville, premendosi la mano sul viso, “aver bisogno di un altro minuto. Se solo voi foste stati meno pazienti con me, signor Crisparkle, se solo mi aveste considerato di meno e foste stati meno ipocritamente buoni e sinceri. Oh, se solo nella mia infanzia avessi conosciuto un tale guida, ”
“Segui ora il tuo guida, Neville,” mormorò Helena, “e seguilo fino al Cielo!”
C’era qualcosa nel suo tono che spezzava la voce gentile di quel giovane canonico; altrimenti, quella sua esaltazione per lui sarebbe stata respinta. Così come stava le cose, lui si mise un dito sulle labbra e guardò verso suo fratello.
“Dire che pongo entrambe le promesse con tutto il profondo del mio cuore, signor Crisparkle, e dire che non c’è alcuna slealtà in questo, significa semplicemente non dire nulla!” Così Neville, profondamente commosso. “Vi chiedo perdono per questa mia misera debolezza, dovuta a un impeto di passione.”
“Non è mio, Neville, non è mio. Tu sai con chi si trovi la perdono, come il più alto attributo che si possa immaginare. Signorina Helena, tu e tuo fratello siete figli gemelli. Siete nati in questo mondo con le stesse inclinazioni, e avete trascorso i vostri primi anni insieme, circondati dalle stesse circostanze difficili. Quello che avete superato in voi stessi, non potreste forse superarlo anche in lui? Vedi quella roccia che si trova sul suo cammino. Chi, se non tu, potrebbe aiutarlo a evitarla?”
“Chi altro se non voi, signore?” rispose Elena. “Qual è il mio potere, o la mia debole saggezza, rispetto al vostro!”
“Hai la saggezza dell’Amore”, rispose il Minore Canonico, “e questa è stata senza dubbio la saggezza più alta mai conosciuta su questa terra. Per quanto riguarda la mia, beh, meno si parla di quella comune ‘merce’, meglio è. Buona notte!”
Prese la mano che le porgeva e, con gratitudine e quasi con riverenza, la portò alle labbra.
“Tut!” disse il canonico minore a bassa voce, “Mi pagano decisamente troppo!” e si allontanò.
Illustrazione: Il signor Crisparkle è pagato troppo
Tornando sui suoi passi verso il Cattedrale Close, cercò, camminando nel buio, di trovare il modo migliore per realizzare ciò che aveva promesso di fare e che doveva assolutamente essere fatto. “Probabilmente mi chiederanno di sposarle,” rifletté, “e sarebbe meglio se fossero già sposate e lontane. Ma questo è la cosa più urgente.”
Si chiedeva principalmente se dovesse scrivere al giovane Drood o parlare con Jasper. Il fatto di essere popolare presso l’intera dirigenza della Cattedrale lo spingeva verso la seconda opzione, e l’occasione propizia di vedere il cancello illuminato lo convinse a decidere per questa strada. “Colpirò mentre il ferro è ancora caldo”, pensò, “e parlerò con lui ora stesso”.
Jasper dormiva su un divano davanti al focolare, quando, dopo essere salito la scala posteriore e non aver ricevuto risposta ai suoi colpi alla porta, il signor Crisparkle girò delicatamente la maniglia ed entrò. Molto tempo dopo ebbe motivo di ricordare come Jasper si fosse alzato di scatto dal divano in uno stato delirante, tra sonno e veglia, gridando: “Che cosa è successo? Chi l’ha fatto?”
“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.
“Sono solo io, Jasper. Mi dispiace di averti disturbato.”
Lo sguardo intenso dei suoi occhi si trasformò in uno di riconoscimento; poi spostò una o due sedie per avvicinarsi al fuoco.
“Stavo sognando molto intensamente. E sono felice che qualcosa mi abbia interrotto da quel sonno indigestivo dopo cena. Per non parlare del fatto che sei sempre il benvenuto.”
“Grazie. Non ne sono molto sicuro,” rispose il signor Crisparkle, sedendosi nella poltrona che gli era stata preparata, “che la mia proposta sia subito accettata con lo stesso entusiasmo con cui è stata accettata da me; ma io sono un ministro della pace e perseguo i miei scopi nell’interesse della pace. In breve, Jasper, voglio stabilire la pace tra questi due giovani.”
Un’espressione molto perplessa apparve sul volto del signor Jasper; un’espressione davvero enigmatica, poiché il signor Crisparkle non riusciva affatto a comprenderne il significato.
“Come?” fu la domanda di Jasper, pronunciata con voce bassa e lenta, dopo un lungo silenzio.
“Per quanto riguarda il ‘modo’ in cui vi sto rivolgendo. Vorrei chiedervi di fare questo grande favore e di intervenire presso vostro nipote (ho già contattato il signor Neville), affinché vi scriva una breve nota, nel suo modo vivace, dicendo che è disposto a stringervi la mano. So quanto sia una brava persona e quale influenza abbiate su di lui. E senza difendere minimamente il signor Neville, dobbiamo ammettere tutti che è stato profondamente ferito.”
Jasper girò quel viso perplesso verso il fuoco. Il signor Crisparkle, continuando a osservarlo, lo trovò ancora più enigmatico di prima, poiché sembrava indicare (il che era improbabile) qualche calcolo interno molto attento.
“So che non sei particolarmente favorevole al signor Neville,” continuò il Minor Canon, quando Jasper lo interruppe:
“Hai tutte le ragioni per dirlo. Ma io, invece, no.”
“Senza dubbio; ammetto anche la sua deplorevole irascibilità, ma >spero che io e lui riusciremo a superare questo problema. Gli ho però chiesto una promessa molto solenne riguardo al suo futuro comportamento verso vostro nipote, se voi vi interverrete gentilmente; sono sicura che la manterrà.”
“È sempre responsabile e affidabile, il signor Crisparkle. È davvero sicuro di poter rispondere delle sue azioni con tanta fiducia?”
“I do.”
Quell’espressione confusa e enigmatica scomparve.
“Allora mi liberi da un grande timore e da un peso opprimente,” disse Jasper; “lo farò.”
Il signor Crisparkle, deliziato dalla rapidità e dalla completezza del proprio successo, lo riconobbe con le parole più lusinghiere.
“Lo farò,” ripeté Jasper, “per il conforto di avere la tua garanzia contro le mie paure vaghe e infondate. Riderai, ma tieni un Diario?”
“Una riga al giorno, e basta.”
“Una pagina al giorno sarebbe sicuramente sufficiente per la mia vita monotona. Chissà,” disse Jasper prendendo un libro da uno scaffale, “ma in realtà il mio Diario racconta anche la vita di Ned. Riderete di questa annotazione. E indovinerete facilmente quando è stata fatta, ”
“‘Dopo mezzanotte. Dopo ciò che ho appena visto, provo un terrore morboso all’idea di qualche orribile conseguenza che possa colpire mio caro ragazzo; un timore contro cui non riesco a razionare né a lottare in alcun modo. Tutti i miei sforzi sono vani. La passione demoniaca di questo Neville Landless, la sua forza nella furia, la sua selvaggia sete di distruggere ciò che rappresenta per lui un obiettivo, tutto questo mi spaventa a morte. L’impressione è così profonda che sono entrato due volte nella stanza di mio figlio per assicurarmi che stesse dormendo tranquillamente, e non giacesse morto nel suo sangue, ”
“Ecco un altro appunto il giorno dopo, ”
“‘Via, lontano da tutto. Spensierato e insospettoso come sempre. Rise quando glielo dissi e affermò di essere un uomo altrettanto onesto quanto Neville Landless. Gli risposi che forse lo era, ma non certo altrettanto cattivo. Continuò a prendere la cosa alla leggera, ma lo accompagnai per tutto il tragitto possibile, lasciandolo solo con grande riluttanza. Non riesco a scacciare queste oscure e indescrivibili premonizioni di male. Se si possono definire così i sentimenti basati su fatti concreti.’”
“Ancora e ancora,” disse Jasper alla fine, girando tra le pagine del libro prima di metterlo da parte, “sono ricaduto in questi stati d’animo, come dimostrano anche altre annotazioni. Ma ora ho la tua promessa al mio fianco; la scriverò nel mio libro e ne farò un antidoto ai miei cattivi umori.”
“Un antidoto del genere, spero,” rispose il signor Crisparkle, “che vi induca presto a gettare via quei ‘umori neri’ nelle fiamme. Non dovrei essere l’ultimo ad avere rimproveri per voi stasera, visto che avete così liberamente soddisfatto i miei desideri; ma devo dire, Jasper, che la vostra dedizione al vostro nipote vi ha portato a esagerare in questo caso.”
“Sei la mia testimone,” disse Jasper, alzando le spalle, “di quale fosse sinceramente il mio stato d’animo quella notte, prima di sedermi a scrivere, e con quali parole l’ho espresso. Ricordi che hai obiettato a una parola che ho usato, dicendo che era troppo forte? Era una parola più intensa di qualsiasi altra nel mio Diario.”
“Beh, provate l’antidoto,” riprese il signor Crisparkle; “e che vi aiuti a comprendere meglio la situazione! Non ne parleremo più adesso. Devo ringraziarvi sinceramente, per me stesso.”
“Scoprirai,” disse Jasper mentre si stringevano la mano, “che non farò quella cosa che vuoi che faccia a metà. Farò in modo che Ned, se dovesse cedere, lo faccia completamente.”
Al terzo giorno dopo questa conversazione, andò a trovare il signor Crisparkle con la seguente lettera:
“Mio caro Jack,
Sono commosso dal tuo resoconto dell’incontro con il signor Crisparkle, che rispetto e stimo molto. Devo dire apertamente che in quell’occasione ho perso la testa tanto quanto il signor Landless; vorrei che tutto ciò fosse ormai dimenticato e che le cose tornassero alla normalità.
Ascolta: invita il signor Landless a cena la vigilia di Natale (più è presto, meglio è), e che siamo solo noi tre. Stringiamoci la mano tutti insieme in quel momento e lasciamo che tutto questo rimanga nel passato.”
“Mio caro Jack,
“Sempre con tutto il mio affetto,
“EDWIN DROOD.”
“P.S. Un messaggio d’amore per la signorina Pussy alla prossima lezione di musica.”
“Allora, vi aspettate il signor Neville?” disse il signor Crisparkle.
“Conto sul suo arrivo”, disse il signor 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 an 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.
CAPITOLO XI.
UNA RIFLETTAGINE E UN ANELLO
Dietro la parte più antica di Holborn, a Londra, dove alcune case a timpano vecchie di secoli si ergono ancora lungo la strada pubblica, come se cercassero disperatamente il vecchio fiume Bourne ormai prosciugato da tempo, c’è un piccolo angolo formato da due quadrati irregolari chiamato Staple Inn. È uno di quegli angoli in cui, uscendo da una strada caotica, il viandante si sente come se avesse messo del cotone nelle orecchie e suole di velluto ai propri stivali. In quel luogo, alcuni passeri fumosi cinguettano tra gli alberi, come se si chiamassero a vicenda: “Andiamo a giocare in campagna, ”. Qualche metro di terra coltivata e qualche metro di ghiaia permettono loro di esprimere quella vitalità così caratteristica della loro piccola esistenza. Inoltre, è uno di quegli angoli “legali”: contiene una piccola sala, con una lanterna sul soffitto. A quali scopi utilizzata, e a spese di chi, la storia non lo sa.
Nei tempi in cui Cloisterham si offendeva all’idea dell’esistenza di una ferrovia lontana, considerata una minaccia per quella sua sensibile natura, proprietà dei britannici che aveva la strana fortuna di essere oggetto di commenti alterni: temuti, lodati o criticati, indipendentemente da ciò che accadeva ovunque nel mondo, in quei tempi non era ancora sorta alcuna architettura vicina di grandi dimensioni in grado di oscurare Staple Inn. Il sole al tramonto gli riversava luci brillanti addosso, e il vento sud-occidentale soffiava su di esso senza ostacoli.
Né il >vento né il sole furono favorevoli al Staple Inn quel pomeriggio di dicembre, verso le sei in ora, quando l’edificio era avvolto nella nebbia e le candele proiettavano raggi torbidi e sfocati attraverso le finestre di tutte le stanze allora occupate; in particolare da un gruppo di stanze situato in un angolo di una casa nel piccolo cortile interno, dove, su un portale brutto e squallido, era visibile una misteriosa iscrizione in bianco e nero.
P J T 1747
In quale stanza si trovava? Mai si era preoccupato di quella iscrizione, se non di tanto in tanto, quando la guardava per caso, chiedendosi se forse significasse “Forse John Thomas” o “Forse Joe Tyler”. Era lì che il signor Grewgious sedeva, scrivendo accanto al suo focolare.
Chi avrebbe potuto dirlo, guardando il signor Grewgious, se avesse mai conosciuto l’ambizione o la delusione? Era stato educato per diventare avvocato e si era dedicato alla pratica legale; redigeva atti notarili, “per compiere ciò che il mestiere richiede”, come dice Pistol. Ma la sua attività legale era diventata per lui qualcosa di del tutto indifferente; aveva intrapreso questo percorso con tale distacco che alla fine si erano separati di comune accordo, se si può davvero parlare di separazione quando non c’è mai stata vera unione.
No. Coy Conveyancing non si avvicinò mai al signor Grewgious. Fu corteggiata, ma non conquistata, e ognuno andò per la propria strada. Tuttavia, un’arbitrazione fu portata verso di lui da qualche “vento inspiegabile”, e grazie alla sua instancabile ricerca della giustizia e al suo impegno nel farla rispettare, ottenne grande credito in questo ambito. Poi, grazie a un altro “vento” la cui origine era più facilmente rintracciabile, gli capitò tra le mani una discreta somma di denaro legata a un incarico di amministratore fallimentare. Così, per caso, trovò il proprio posto nel mondo. Ora, essendo diventato amministratore e rappresentante legale di due ricche proprietà, affidava gli affari legali relative a queste a uno studio di avvocati situato al piano di sotto. E così, aveva spento ogni sua ambizione (ammesso che mai ne fosse realmente stata posseduta) e si era sistemato per il resto della vita sotto l’ombra del signor P. J. T., che aveva piantato i suoi ulivi nel 1747.
Molti documenti, libri contabili, fascicoli di corrispondenza e diverse scatole robuste riempivano la stanza del signor Grewgious. Era difficile anche solo immaginare che potessero renderla sovraffollata, data l’ordine meticoloso e preciso con cui erano disposti. L’idea di morire improvvisamente, lasciando qualche dettaglio incompleto o poco chiaro, avrebbe probabilmente spaventato a morte il signor Grewgious in qualsiasi momento. La massima fedeltà nei confronti dei propri doveri rappresentava, per lui, la vera essenza della vita stessa. Esistono modi di vivere più veloci, più gioiosi o più attraenti; ma nessuno è migliore di quello che si basa sulla lealtà assoluta verso gli altri.
Nella sua stanza non c’era alcun lusso; persino le comodità erano limitate al fatto che fosse asciutta e calda, e che ci fosse un angolo accogliente vicino al camino, anche se un po’ logoro. Quello che si potrebbe definire il suo “spazio privato” era ristretto al caminetto, a una poltrona comoda e a un vecchio tavolino rotondo che veniva tirato fuori sul tappeto dopo l’orario di lavoro; altrimenti rimaneva nascosto in un angolo, come uno scudo lucido di mogano. Dietro di esso c’era un armadio, solitamente pieno di bevande deliziose. Una stanza esterna fungeva da ufficio del impiegato; la camera da letto di Mr. Grewgious si trovava dall’altra parte dello stesso scalone comune; inoltre possedeva anche un seminterrato, piuttosto ampio. Per almeno trecento giorni all’anno, andava a cena all’hotel Furnival’s Inn e poi tornava indietro per godersi quelle semplici cose quotidiane, fino a quando non arrivava di nuovo il giorno in cui iniziavano le normali attività lavorative, con la data 17 aprile 1747.
Quel pomeriggio, mentre il signor Grewgious sedeva e scriveva accanto al suo focolare, lo stesso faceva anche il segretario del signor Grewgious, seduto anch’egli accanto al proprio focolare. Un uomo pallido, con il viso gonfio e i capelli scuri, di trent’anni, con grandi occhi scuri che sembravano privi di lucentezza, e una pelle flaccida e insoddisfatta che pareva chiedere di essere inviata dal panettiere. Questo assistente era un essere misterioso, dotato di qualche strana influenza su il signor Grewgious. Come se fosse stato creato da una qualche magia e poi, quando era arrivato il momento di “disfarsene”, la magia non avesse funzionato. Quell’uomo rimaneva sempre accanto al signor Grewgious, anche se la sua presenza avrebbe chiaramente migliorato la comodità e l’agio del signor stesso. Un individuo cupo, con i capelli arruffati, che sembrava essere stato cresciuto all’ombra di quel “pericoloso albero” della Giava, un albero che aveva dato rifugio a più bugie di quante ne esistano in tutto il regno botanico. Eppure il signor Grewgious lo trattava con una considerazione inspiegabile.
“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.
“Ora, Bazzard,” disse il signor Grewgious non appena il suo impiegato entrò, alzando lo sguardo dai documenti che stava sistemando per la notte: “di cosa si tratta, oltre alla nebbia?”
“Signor Drood,” disse Bazzard.
“E lui?”
“Ha chiamato,” disse Bazzard.
“Avresti potuto farglielo vedere, ”
“Lo sto facendo,” disse Bazzard.
Il visitatore entrò quindi.
“Mio Dio!”, disse il signor Grewgious, guardandosi intorno nella stanza illuminata dalle sue due candele da ufficio. “Pensavo che aveste chiamato e poi semplicemente lasciato il vostro nome e ve ne foste andati. Come state, signor Edwin? Mio Dio, state soffocando!”
“È questa nebbia,” rispose Edwin; “e mi fa bruciare gli occhi, come il pepe di Cayenna.”
“È davvero così grave? Per favore, toglietevi quegli involucri. Sono fortunato ad avere un fuoco così potente; ma il signor Bazzard si è preso cura di me.”
“No, non l’ho fatto,” disse il signor Bazzard alla porta.
“Ah! Allora significa che devo essermi preso cura di me stesso senza nemmeno accorgermene,” disse il signor Grewgious. “Per favore, si sieda sulla mia sedia. No, la prego! Dopo essere uscito da un ambiente del genere, deve sedersi sulla mia sedia.”
Edwin si sedette nella poltrona vicino all’angolo; la nebbia che aveva portato con sé, e quella che se n’andò insieme al suo cappotto e al colletto foderato, fu rapidamente assorbita dal fervente fuoco.
“Sembro,” disse Edwin sorridendo, “come se fossi venuto apposta per fermarmi.”
“—A proposito,” gridò il signor Grewgious; “scusate se vi interrompo; per favore, fermatevi. La nebbia potrebbe dissiparsi tra un’ora o due. Possiamo mangiare qualcosa proprio dall’altra parte di Holborn. È meglio che portiate con voi il pepe di Cayenna qui dentro, invece che fuori; vi prego, fermatevi e mangiate.”
“Sei molto gentile,” disse Edwin, guardandosi intorno come se fosse attratto dall’idea di una nuova e divertente festa gitana.
“Assolutamente no,” disse il signor Grewgious; “siete davvero molto gentili ad unirvi a un single e a condividere la cena con lui. E chiederò, ” disse il signor Grewgious, abbassando la voce e parlando con uno sguardo scintillante, come se gli fosse venuta in mente un’idea brillante: “Chiederò a Bazzard. Forse a lui non piacerebbe. Bazzard!”
Bazzard ricomparve.
“#Cena presto con il signor Drood e me.”
“Se mi viene ordinato di pranzare, naturalmente lo farò, signore,” fu la risposta cupa.
“Salvate quell’uomo!”, gridò il signor Grewgious. “Non siete stati ordinati a farlo, siete stati invitati”.
“Grazie, signore,” disse Bazzard; “in quel caso non mi importa se lo faccio o no.”
“È tutto sistemato. E forse non vi dispiacerebbe,” disse il signor Grewgious, “andare all’hotel di Furnival’s e chiedere loro di mandare i materiali necessari per stendere la stoffa. Per cena mangeremo una zuppa calda e sostanziosa, il miglior piatto preparato che si possa trovare, un pezzo di carne come una coscia d’agnello, o un’anatra, o un tacchino, insomma, tutto ciò che è disponibile.”
Queste direttive liberali, emesse dal signor Grewgious con il suo solito tono, come se stesse leggendo un elenco, ripetendo una lezione o facendo qualcos’altro meccanicamente. Bazzard, dopo aver preparato la tavola rotonda, si ritirò per metterle in atto.
“Ero un po’ riluttante, capite,” disse il signor Grewgious, con voce più bassa, dopo che il suo impiegato se n’era andato, “all’idea di assumerlo nel reparto incaricato delle provviste o delle commesse. Perché forse non gli sarebbe piaciuto.”
“Sembra che faccia sempre a modo suo, signore,” osservò Edwin.
“A modo suo?” rispose il signor Grewgious. “Oh no, assolutamente no! Povero ragazzo, lo state fraintendendo completamente. Se potesse fare sempre a modo suo, non sarebbe qui.”
“Mi chiedo dove possa essere!” pensò Edwin. Ma lo pensò solo, perché il signor Grewgious arrivò e si mise in piedi con la schiena rivolta verso l’altra estremità del focolare, le scapole appoggiate al camino, sistemando le sue gonne per poter parlare più comodamente.
“Credo che, senza possedere il dono della profezia, mi abbiate fatto la gentilezza di menzionare che state andando laggiù, dove, come so, vi aspettano, e che siete disposti ad eseguire qualsiasi piccola commissione da parte mia per la mia adorabile protetta. E forse anche a darmi qualche consiglio su come procedere, vero, signor Edwin?”
“Ho bussato, signore, prima di scendere, come segno di rispetto.”
“Attenzione!” disse il signor Grewgious. “Ah, naturalmente, non per impazienza, vero?”
“Impazienza, signore?”
Il signor Grewgious aveva intenzione di mostrare un atteggiamento sarcastico, ma non certo nel senso letterale del termine; anzi, si era avvicinato così tanto al fuoco che sembrava volesse “bruciarsi” dentro quella sua ironia, proprio come altre impressioni sottili vengono incise su metalli duri. Ma quando quel suo atteggiamento sarcastico apparve improvvisamente sul suo viso composto e nel suo comportamento, e non rimase altro che il fuoco, lui sobbalzò e iniziò a strofinarsi.
“Di recente sono stato laggiù,” disse il signor Grewgious, sistemando di nuovo le sue gonne; “ed è a questo che mi riferivo quando ho detto che potevo dirvi che qualcuno vi aspetta.”
“Certo, signore! Sì, sapevo che Pussy si prendeva cura di me.”
“Tenete un gatto laggiù sotto?” chiese il signor Grewgious.
“Chiamo Rosa ‘Gattina’”, spiegò Edwin arrossendo leggermente.
“Oh, davvero,” disse il signor Grewgious, lisciandosi i capelli; “è molto affabile da parte sua.”
Edwin guardò il suo viso, incerto se si opponesse seriamente a quell’appellativo. Ma in realtà, per Edwin, sarebbe stato lo stesso come guardare il viso di un orologio.
“Un soprannome, signore,” spiegò di nuovo.
“Umps,” disse il signor Grewgious, annuendo. Ma con un compromesso così straordinario tra un assenso incondizionato e un dissenso condizionato, il suo visitatore rimase molto perplesso.
“Ha fatto PRosa, ”, iniziò Edwin per riprendersi.
“Rosa?”, ripeté il signor Grewgious.
“Stavo per dire ‘Pussy’, ma poi ho cambiato idea. Ti ha detto qualcosa riguardo ai Landlesses?”
“No”, disse il signor Grewgious. “Che cos’è la famiglia Landless? Una tenuta? Una villa? Una fattoria?”
“Un fratello e una sorella. La sorella si trova nell’Casa delle Suore ed è diventata un’amica molto stretta di P—”
“Di Rosa,” intervenne il signor Grewgious, con un’espressione immobile sul viso.
“È una ragazza straordinariamente bella, signore. Pensavo che forse le fossero state fatte delle descrizioni su di lei, o che potesse essere stata presentata a voi, ”
“Né l’uno né l’altro”, disse il signor Grewgious. “Ma ecco qui Bazzard.”
Bazzard tornò indietro, accompagnato da due camerieri: uno immobile e l’altro che volava; i tre portarono con sé così tanto fumo da far ruggire ancora di più il fuoco. Il cameriere che volava, avendo portato tutto sulle spalle, stese la tovaglia con incredibile rapidità e destrezza; mentre il cameriere immobile, non avendo portato nulla, iniziò a rimproverarlo. Poi il cameriere che volava lucidò accuratamente tutti i bicchieri che aveva portato, e il cameriere immobile li esaminò uno per uno. Successivamente il cameriere che volava andò a prendere la zuppa a Holborn, tornò indietro, poi prese di nuovo il cibo preparato, tornò ancora una volta, e infine fece altri viaggi per portare vari altri piatti; nel frattempo si scoprì che il cameriere immobile aveva dimenticato tutto. Ma per quanto il cameriere che volava potesse volare velocemente, al suo ritorno veniva sempre rimproverato dal cameriere immobile per aver portato con sé del fumo e per essere senza fiato. Alla fine del pasto, quando il cameriere che volava era ormai stremato, il cameriere immobile raccolse la tovaglia sotto il braccio con aria maestosa, guardò con severità (per non dire con indignazione) il cameriere che volava mentre sistemava i bicchieri puliti, lanciò un’ultima occhiata al signor Grewgious e disse: “Che sia chiaro tra noi: la ricompensa spetta a me, e questo ‘schiavo’ non ha diritto a nulla”, poi spinse il cameriere che volava fuori dalla stanza.
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.”
Era come un piccolo dipinto in miniatura di altissima qualità che raffigurava i miei Signori del Dipartimento delle Circonlocuzioni, i Comandanti in Capo di qualsiasi tipo, l’Governo. Era davvero un quadretto molto istruttivo da appendere alle pareti della National Gallery.
Poiché la nebbia era stata la causa immediata di questo sontuoso banchetto, essa servì anche da “salsa” generale per tutto il pasto. Sentire i camerieri all’aperto starnutire, ansimare e battere i piedi sul ghiaietto era un piacere molto superiore a quello offerto dal Dottor Kitchener. E chiedere, con un brivido, al sfortunato cameriere di chiudere la porta prima ancora che l’avesse aperta rappresentava un “condimento” di gusto ancora più profondo di quello fornito da Harvey. E qui va notato, a margine, che la gamba di questo giovane, nell’utilizzarla per chiudere la porta, dimostrava davvero un ottimo senso del tatto: arrivava sempre qualche secondo prima di lui e del vassoio, e rimaneva sempre lì dopo che lui e il vassoio se n’erano andati, proprio come la gamba di Macbeth quando lo accompagnava fuori dal palco, riluttante ad abbandonarlo dopo l’assassinio di Duncan.
Il padrone di casa era sceso in cantina e aveva portato su delle bottiglie di vini rossi, color paglia e dorati; vini che erano maturati molto tempo fa in terre dove non c’è nebbia, e da allora riposavano nell’ombra. Dopo un lungo “sonnellino”, questi vini sprigionarono scintille e una sensazione di freschezza; i loro tappi furono aperti con forza, come se prigionieri aiutassero dei rivoltosi a sfondare le porte. E poi i vini iniziarono a “ballare” gioiosamente all’interno delle bottiglie. Se P. J. T., nel 1747 o in qualsiasi altro anno del suo periodo, avesse bevuto vini del genere, allora, senza dubbio, anche lui era davvero molto felice.
Esteriormente, il signor Grewgious non mostrava alcun segno di essersi addolcito a causa di queste “vite” invecchiate e profumate. Invece di berle, avrebbero potuto essere versate su di lui sotto forma di tabacco da fiuto essiccato, per poi andare sprecate, poiché gli effetti che producevano sul suo viso erano appena percettibili. Nemmeno il suo comportamento ne risentiva. Tuttavia, con quel suo modo rigido e monotono, aveva occhi attenti per Edwin; e quando, alla fine del pasto, fece segno a Edwin di tornare nella sua poltrona vicino al camino, Edwin vi si adagiò con piacere, dopo solo brevi proteste. Il signor Grewgious, intanto, girando la propria sedia verso il fuoco e lisciandosi i capelli e il viso, sembrava osservare il proprio ospite attraverso le dita che lo accarezzavano.
“Imbecille!” disse improvvisamente il signor Grewgious, rivolgendosi a lui.
“Vi seguo, signore,” rispose Bazzard; che aveva consumato carne e bevande con metodo, sebbene per lo più in silenzio.
“Bevo a tuo onore, Bazzard; signor Edwin, che il successo accompagni il signor Bazzard!”
“Successo per il signor Bazzard!” esclamò Edwin, con un entusiasmo del tutto infondato, e aggiunse mentalmente: “Che cosa incredibile, ”
“E May!” continuò il signor Grewgious. “Non ho il diritto di essere preciso. May! Le mie capacità conversazionali sono così limitate che so di non riuscire a esprimermi bene in questo modo. May! Dovrei cercare di farlo in modo più figurato, ma io non ho immaginazione. May! L’angoscia è quasi l’unica cosa che riesco a provare. Che tutto possa finalmente risolversi positivamente!”
Il signor Bazzard, con un sorriso corrucciato davanti al fuoco, infilò una mano tra i suoi capelli arruffati, come se l’ago dell’ansia fosse lì; poi nella sua giacca, come se fosse lì; infine nelle tasche, come se fosse lì. In tutti questi movimenti, gli occhi di Edwin lo seguivano attentamente, come se quel giovane gentiluomo si aspettasse di vedere quell’“ago dell’ansia” agire davvero. Tuttavia, esso non comparve mai, e il signor Bazzard si limitò a dire: “Vi seguo, signore, e vi ringrazio.”
“Vado,” disse il signor Grewgious, facendo tintinnare il suo bicchiere sul tavolo con una mano, e piegandosi di lato con l’altra per sussurrare a Edwin: “Vado a brindare al mio protetto. Ma metto Bazzard prima. Altrimenti potrebbe non piacergli.”
Queste parole furono dette con un battito di ciglia misterioso; o meglio, ciò che avrebbe potuto essere un battito di ciglia, se nelle mani del signor Grewgious fosse stato possibile farlo abbastanza velocemente. Così Edwin batté le palpebre a sua volta, senza la minima idea di cosa intendesse fare così.
“E ora,” disse il signor Grewgious, “dedico un intero paragrafo alla bella e affascinante signorina Rosa. Bazzard, la bella e affascinante signorina Rosa!”
“Vi seguo, signore,” disse Bazzard, “e vi giuro fedeltà!”
“Anch’io lo stesso!” disse Edwin.
“Signore, beneditemi,” esclamò il signor Grewgious, rompendo il silenzio che naturalmente seguì: anche se chi può sapere perché queste pause debbano verificarsi ogni volta che compiamo un piccolo rito sociale che non induce affatto a un’autoesame o a sentimenti di scoraggiamento? “Sono una persona particolarmente rigida e formale, eppure credo (se posso usare questa parola, non avendo affatto fantasia), di essere in grado di descrivere con precisione lo stato d’animo di un vero amante, ”
“Seguiamo lei, signore”, disse Bazzard, “e prendiamo quell’immagine”.
“Il signor Edwin lo correggerà nei punti in cui è sbagliato,” continuò il signor Grewgious, “e aggiungerà anche alcune dettagli tratti dalla vita reale. Oserei dire che sia errato in molti aspetti e abbia bisogno di molte correzioni basate sulla realtà. Io stesso sono nato nella famiglia Chip, e quindi non possiedo né sentimenti delicati né esperienze profonde. Beh, oserei ipotizzare che la mente di un vero amante sia completamente permeata dall’oggetto del suo affetto; che il nome della sua amata sia per lui qualcosa di prezioso, che non possa essere pronunciato o ricordato senza emozione, e che venga considerato qualcosa di sacro. Se ha qualche nomignolo affettuoso per lei, lo riserva esclusivamente a lei, e non lo usa davanti ad altre persone. Un nome con cui chiamarla, un privilegio che dovrebbe essere riservato soltanto quando si è soli con la sua splendida personalità, diventerebbe una mancanza di rispetto, quasi una violazione della buona fede se usato in altri contesti.”
Era meraviglioso vedere il signor Grewgious seduto dritto, con le mani sulle ginocchia, che continuava a recitare quel discorso come se lo stesse imparando a memoria: proprio come un ragazzo impegnato in attività di carità e dotato di una buona memoria potrebbe ripetere il suo catechismo; senza mostrare alcuna emozione evidente, tranne forse un leggero formicolio occasionale alla fine del naso.
“La mia rappresentazione,” proseguì il signor Grewgious, “mostra (dopo le correzioni da voi apportate, signor Edwin) il vero amante come colui che è sempre impaziente di trovarsi nella presenza o nelle vicinanze dell’oggetto del suo affetto; come colui a cui importa molto poco la sua posizione in qualsiasi altro ambiente sociale; e come colui che cerca costantemente questo oggetto. Se dicessi che lo cerca come un uccello cerca il proprio nido, farei la figura dello sciocco, perché ciò andrebbe contro quanto io intendo per poesia. E io sono così lontano dal violare i principi della poesia in qualsiasi momento, che, per quel che ne so, non mi sono mai avvicinato nemmeno di diecimila miglia a essa. Inoltre, non conosco affatto le abitudini degli uccelli, tranne quelle dei pennuti del Staple Inn, che costruiscono i loro nidi su cornicioni, in grondaie e camini, non creati certo dalla benevola mano dell’>Natura. Pertanto, vi prego di capire che intendo riferirmi a qualcos’altro. Ma la mia rappresentazione mostra effettivamente il vero amante come colui il cui essere è indissolubilmente legato a quello dell’oggetto del suo affetto, e come colui che conduce una vita duplice. E se non riesco a esprimere chiaramente ciò che intendo, è perché o non ho le capacità necessarie per farlo, oppure perché in realtà non ho nulla da dire. Ma, per quel che ne so, questo non è affatto vero.”
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.”
Edwin era diventato rosso e poi bianco, man mano che alcuni dettagli di questa situazione venivano alla luce. Ora sedeva davanti al fuoco, mordendosi il labbro.
“Le speculazioni di un uomo rigido e freddo,” proseguì il signor Grewgious, ancora seduto e parlando esattamente come prima, “sono probabilmente errate su un argomento così delicato. Ma io ritengo (sottoposto, come sempre, alla correzione del signor Edwin) che in un vero amante non possa esserci freddezza, indifferenza, dubbi, né uno stato d’animo misto di passione e distacco. Vi prego, sono forse vicino alla verità nel mio ragionamento?”
Altrettanto brusco nella sua conclusione quanto all’inizio e nel suo sviluppo, pose questa domanda a Edwin e si fermò proprio nel momento in cui ci si sarebbe aspettati che continuasse il suo discorso.
“Devo dire, signore, ”, balbettò Edwin, “poiché mi avete rivolto questa domanda, ”
“Sì”, disse il signor Grewgious, “ve lo affido a voi, in quanto autorità competente”.
“Dovrei quindi dire, signore,” continuò Edwin, imbarazzato, “che l’immagine che avete delineato è in generale corretta; ma ritengo che forse siate un po’ troppo severi con quel sfortunato innamorato.”
“Probabilmente sì,” concordò il signor Grewgious. “Sono una persona molto rigida quando si tratta di questioni fondamentali.”
“Forse non mostra tutto ciò che prova”, disse Edwin, “o forse semplicemente, non lo fa”.
Si fermò così a lungo alla ricerca del resto della sua frase, che il signor Grewgious raddoppiò mille volte la sua difficoltà intervenendo inaspettatamente dicendo:
“No, non è certo; potrebbe anche non essere così!”
Dopo quel momento, tutti rimasero in silenzio; il silenzio del signor Bazzard era dovuto al sonno.
“Tuttavia, la sua responsabilità è molto grande,” disse finalmente il signor Grewgious, con lo sguardo fisso sul fuoco.
Edwin annuì in segno di accordo, con gli occhi fissi sul fuoco.
“E che sia ben chiaro che non sta scherzando con nessuno,” disse il signor Grewgious;
“né con se stesso, né con altri.”
Edwin morse di nuovo il labbro e continuò a sedere fissando il fuoco.
“Non deve trasformare un tesoro in un giocattolo. Sarebbe la sua rovina se lo facesse! Che tenga a cuore quel pozzo,” disse il signor Grewgious.
Anche se diceva queste cose in frasi brevi, proprio come quel presunto bambino di carità che poco fa aveva recitato un paio di versetti dal Libro dei Proverbi, c’era qualcosa di sognante (per uno così letterale) nel modo in cui ora scuoteva il dito indice destro verso i carboni ardenti nel camino, per poi tornare nuovamente in silenzio.
Ma non per molto. Mentre sedeva dritto e rigido sulla sedia, all’improvviso incrociò le gambe, come se l’immagine scolpita di qualche strano idolo fosse uscita dal suo torpore, e disse: “Dobbiamo finire questa bottiglia, signor Edwin. Lasciate che vi aiuti. Aiuterò anche Bazzard, anche se sta dormendo. Altrimenti potrebbe non piacergli.”
Li aiutò entrambi, si aiutò anche lui stesso, bevve tutto il contenuto del suo bicchiere e lo posizionò sul tavolo con il fondo rivolto verso l’alto, come se avesse appena catturato una mosca blu al suo interno.
“E ora, signor Edwin,” proseguì, asciugandosi la bocca e le mani con il fazzoletto, “parliamo di una piccola questione d’affari. Qualche giorno fa mi ha ricevuto una copia autenticata del testamento del padre di Miss Rosa. Conosceva già i suoi contenuti, ma l’ha ricevuta da me per motivi legati a un affare. Avrei dovuto inviarla a signor Jasper, ma Miss Rosa desiderava che arrivasse direttamente a lei. L’ha ricevuta?”
“Assolutamente sicuro, signore.”
“Avresti dovuto confermare di averla ricevuta,” disse il signor Grewgious;
“Dopotutto, gli affari sono uguali in tutto il mondo. Ma tu non l’hai fatto.”
“Avrei dovuto ringraziarvi non appena sono entrato stasera, signore.”
“Non si tratta di un ringraziamento formale e professionale,” rispose il signor Grewgious; “tuttavia, lasciamo perdere. Ora, in quel documento avete notato alcune parole che alludono gentilmente al fatto che mi è stato affidato un compito, una fiducia che mi è stata confidata durante una conversazione, e che potrò svolgere nel momento che riterrò più opportuno.”
“Sì, signore.”
“Signor Edwin, mi è venuto in mente proprio ora, mentre guardavo il fuoco, che potrei, a mio piacimento, liberarmi di quella responsabilità in nessun momento migliore del presente. Per favore, dedicatemi un minuto del vostro tempo.”
Prese un mazzo di chiavi dalla tasca; alla luce della candela individuò quella che cercava, poi, tenendo la candela in mano, andò verso un comodino o uno scrittoio, lo aprì, toccò la molla di un piccolo cassetto segreto e ne tirò fuori una semplice custodia per anelli, fatta apposta per un solo anello. Con essa in mano tornò alla sua sedia. Mentre la mostrava al giovane, la sua mano tremava.
“Signor Edwin, questo anello di diamanti e rubini incastonati con delicatezza nell’oro apparteneva alla madre di Miss Rosa. Fu rimosso dalla sua mano morta, davanti ai miei occhi, in un dolore così profondo che spero non dovrò mai più assistervi. Per duro che io sia, non sono abbastanza indurito per sopportarlo. Guardate quanto brillino queste pietre!” disse aprendo la scatola. “Eppure quegli occhi, un tempo così luminosi e pieni di orgoglio quando guardavano queste gemme, ora sono diventati cenere. Cenere tra la polvere, da alcuni anni ormai! Se avessi anche solo un po’ di immaginazione (cosa che, ovviamente, non ho), potrei pensare che la bellezza eterna di queste pietre sia quasi crudele, ”
Mentre parlava, chiuse nuovamente la scatola.
“Questo anello fu dato alla giovane donna che annegò così prematuramente nella sua bella e felice vita dal suo marito, quando si scambiarono per la prima volta la loro >fede reciproca. Fu lui a toglierlo dalla sua mano priva di sensi, ed è stato lui, quando la sua >morte stava per arrivare, a metterlo nella mia. La fiducia con cui l’ho ricevuto era questa: che, quando voi e Miss Rosa sareste cresciuti fino a diventare uomo e donna, e il vostro fidanzamento si fosse sviluppato e portato a termine, io lo avrei dato a voi per farlo indossare da lei. Nel caso in cui tali risultati non si realizzassero, esso sarebbe rimasto in mio possesso.”
Sul volto del giovane si leggeva un certo imbarazzo, e nei movimenti della sua mano c’era evidente incertezza; mentre il signor Grewgious lo fissava attentamente, gli porse l’anello.
“Metterlo sul suo dito,” disse il signor Grewgious, “sarà il segno solenne della tua assoluta fedeltà verso i vivi e i morti. Stai andando da lei per fare gli ultimi preparativi irrevocabili per il tuo matrimonio. Portalo con te.”
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.
Il giovane prese la piccola scatola e la posizionò sul petto.
“Se dovesse accadere qualcosa di sbagliato, se anche solo per un attimo ci fossero problemi tra di voi; se aveste la minima sensazione di stare compiendo questo passo soltanto perché vi siete abituati da tempo ad aspettarlo, allora,” disse il signor Grewgious, “vi ordino ancora una volta, per l’amore dei vivi e dei morti, di riportarmi quell’anello!”
Qui, Bazzard si svegliò da solo a causa del proprio russare; e, come è solito in questi casi, rimase seduto, sbalordito, fissando il vuoto, come se volesse sfidarlo a accusarlo di aver dormito.
“Imbecille!” disse il signor Grewgious, con più durezza che mai.
“Vi seguo, signore,” disse Bazzard, “e vi ho seguito fin da allora.”
“Nell’esercizio di una fiducia, ho consegnato al signor Edwin Drood un anello di diamanti e rubini. Vedete?”
Edwin riprodusse la piccola scatola e la aprì; Bazzard guardò all’interno.
“Vi seguo entrambi, signore”, rispose Bazzard, “e assisto alla transazione”.
Evidentemente ansioso di andarsene e stare da solo, Edwin Drood riprese a indossare i suoi vestiti, mormorando qualcosa riguardo al tempo e agli appuntamenti. Si diceva che la nebbia non si fosse schiarita (secondo il cameriere volante, che aveva effettuato un “volo speculativo” nell’interesse del caffè), ma lui ci entrò lo stesso; e Bazzard, come al solito, “lo seguì”.
Il signor Grewgious, rimasto solo, camminava avanti e indietro in modo silenzioso e lento, per più di un’ora. Era irrequieto durante la notte e sembrava depresso.
“Spero di aver fatto la cosa giusta,” disse. “Quell’appello sembrava necessario. Era difficile perdere quell’anello, eppure doveva essermi sfuggito molto presto.”
Chiuse con un sospiro quel piccolo cassetto vuoto, richiuse e serrò l’armadietto da scrivere, poi tornò accanto al fuoco, solo.
“Il suo anello,” continuò. “Tornerà da me? Non riesco a smettere di pensare al suo anello, soprattutto di notte. Ma è comprensibile. L’ho avuto per così tanto tempo e l’ho sempre considerato molto prezioso! Mi chiedo, ”
Era in uno stato di perplessità, e allo stesso tempo irrequieto; perché, anche se si controllò in quel momento e fece un altro giro, riprese a riflettere non appena si sedette di nuovo.
“Mi chiedo (per la decima millesima volta, e che debole stupido sono io, ) se abbia affidato a me la responsabilità di loro figlio orfano, perché sapeva. Oddio, quanto assomiglia ora a sua madre!”
“Mi chiedo se abbia mai sospettato che qualcuno provasse per lei un affetto profondo, da una distanza irrimediabile e silenziosa, quando poi intervenne e la conquistò. Mi chiedo anche se gli sia mai passato per la mente chi fosse quella persona sfortunata, ”
“Mi chiedo se riuscirò a dormire fino a notte. Comunque, chiuderò fuori il mondo con le coperte e proverò.”
Il signor Grewgious attraversò la scala per raggiungere la sua stanza da letto, fredda e avvolta nella nebbia, e presto fu pronto per andare a letto. Intravedendo vagamente il proprio volto nello specchio appannato, tenne la candela vicino allo specchio per un momento.
“Probabilmente qualcuno come te, che possa venire in mente a qualcuno in questo modo!” esclamò. “Dai, vai a letto, povero uomo, e smettila di blaterare!”
Con questo, spense la luce, si avvolse nelle coperte e, con un altro sospiro, chiuse fuori il mondo. Eppure, negli uomini più inaspettati esistono angoli romantici ancora inesplorati. Forse anche P.J.T., quel vecchio eccentrico e sensibile, a volte parlava così, in momenti strani. Verso il 1747, probabilmente.
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?”
CAPITOLO XII.
Una notte con Durdles
Quando il signor Sapsea non ha nulla di meglio da fare, verso sera, e si rende conto che la contemplazione della propria profondità diventa un po’ monotona, nonostante l’immensità dell’argomento, spesso va a fare una passeggiata nel vicolo della Cattedrale e nelle zone circostanti. Gli piace attraversare il cimitero con un’aria di proprietario, e nutrire nel proprio cuore un sentimento simile a quello di un benevolo padrone di casa: dopo tutto, è stato generoso con quella “inquilina meritevole”, la signora Sapsea, e le ha persino assegnato pubblicamente un premio. Gli piace vedere qualche volto curioso che sbircia attraverso le sbarre del cancello, forse leggendo la sua iscrizione. Se incontra uno sconosciuto che esce dal cimitero a passi veloci, è moralmente convinto che quell’uomo si stia “allontanando con il viso arrossato”, come se fosse stato chiaramente indirizzato a farlo.
L’importanza di Mr. Sapsea è aumentata, poiché è diventato sindaco di Cloisterham. Senza sindaci – e ce ne sono molti – non si può negare che l’intero sistema sociale, di cui Mr. Sapsea è convinto di aver inventato le strutture fondamentali, andrebbe in pezzi. I sindaci sono stati insigniti di titoli nobiliari per i loro discorsi: macchine esplosive che sparano coraggiosamente proiettili e granate contro la “Grammatica inglese”. Anche Mr. Sapsea potrebbe “salire in alto” con un suo discorso. Alzatevi, Sir Thomas Sapsea! Ecco a cosa serve il sale della terra.
Il signor Sapsea ha approfondito la conoscenza con il signor Jasper, sin dal loro primo incontro; insieme hanno condiviso porto, epitaffi, scacchi, manzo e insalata. Il signor Sapsea è stato accolto alla porta d’ingresso con grande ospitalità; in quell’occasione il signor Jasper si sedette al pianoforte e cantò per lui, deliziandolo, letteralmente. Quello che il signor Sapsea apprezza in quel giovane è che sia sempre disposto ad approfittare della saggezza degli anziani, e soprattutto che sia una persona onesta e integra. A dimostrazione di ciò, quella sera cantò al signor Sapsea non canzoni frivole o popolari tra i nemici del paese, ma brani autentici composti da re Giorgio III; inoltre lo esortò a distruggere tutte le altre isole, continenti, penisole e forme geografiche esistenti, insomma, a “spazzare via” ogni cosa tranne questa terra. In breve, fece capire chiaramente che la Provvidenza aveva commesso un grave errore creando una nazione così piccola ma composta da persone coraggiose e oneste, mentre esistevano tante altre popolazioni meschine e pericolose.
Il signor Sapsea, camminando lentamente in questa umida serata vicino al cimitero, con le mani dietro la schiena, alla ricerca di qualche estraneo imbarazzato e timido, gira l’angolo, e invece si trova di fronte al decano, che sta conversando con il custode del cimitero e il signor Jasper. Il signor Sapsea fa un inchino, e immediatamente si sente pervadere da un senso di reverenza molto più profondo di quello che proverebbe di fronte a qualsiasi arcivescovo di York o Canterbury.
“Ovviamente intenderà scrivere un libro su di noi, signor Jasper,” disse il Decano; “scrivere un libro su di noi. Beh! Siamo molto antichi, e dovremmo davvero fare un buon libro. Non siamo così ricchi in possedimenti quanto lo siamo in anni; ma forse includerà anche questo nel suo libro, insieme ad altre cose, per attirare l’attenzione sui nostri torti.”
Il signor Tope, per dovere, trova molto divertente questa situazione.
“Onestamente, signore, non ho affatto l’intenzione di diventare autore o archeologo,” risponde Jasper. “È solo un capriccio mio. E anche per questo capriccio, il signor Sapsea è più responsabile di me.”
“Come mai, signor Sindaco?” chiese il Decano, annuendo con un atteggiamento cordiale e riconoscitore nei confronti del suo interlocutore. “Che cosa intende dire, signor Sindaco?”
“Non ne sono a conoscenza”, osserva il signor Sapsea, guardandosi intorno alla ricerca di informazioni, “di quale onore il molto reverendo decano mi stia facendo menzionando”. Poi si dedica allo studio del suo documento originale, analizzandone ogni dettaglio con attenzione.
“Durdles,” suggerisce il signor Tope.
“Ahì!” echeggia il Decano; “Durdles, Durdles!”
“La verità è, signore,” spiega Jasper, “che la mia curiosità verso quell’uomo fu davvero stimolata per la prima volta dal signor Sapsea. La conoscenza del signor Sapsea sull’umanità e la sua capacità di far emergere ciò che è nascosto o strano nelle persone intorno a lui, furono le cause principali per cui iniziai a prestargli maggiore attenzione: anche se, naturalmente, lo incontravo spesso. Non sareste sorpreso, signor Dean, se aveste visto il signor Sapsea interagire con lui nel suo stesso salotto, proprio come ho fatto io.”
“O!” esclama Sapsea, raccogliendo la palla che gli è stata lanciata con un’ineffabile compiacenza e pompa; “sì, sì. Il Very Reverend Dean si riferisce proprio a questo? Esatto. Per caso ho fatto incontrare Durdles e il signor Jasper. Considero Durdles una vera personalità.”
“Un personaggio, il signor Sapsea, che con pochi tocchi abili si può capovolgere completamente,” dice Jasper.
“Nay, non proprio,” risponde l’uomo corpulento che gestisce l’asta. “Forse ho un po’ d’influenza su di lui; e forse conosco un po’ meglio il suo carattere. Il Very Reverend Dean dovrebbe tenere presente che io ho visto molto del mondo.” A questo punto, il signor Sapsea si allontana leggermente dal Dean per esaminare i suoi bottoni della giacca.
“Beh!”, dice il Decano, guardandosi intorno per vedere cosa ne è stato del suo copista: “Spero, signor Sindaco, che utilizzerete la vostra erudizione e conoscenza su Durdles al fine di esortarlo a non rompere il collo del nostro stimato e rispettato Maestro del Coro; non possiamo permettercelo: la sua testa e la sua voce sono troppo preziose per noi.”
Il signor Tope è di nuovo molto divertito; dopo essersi lasciato travolgere da risate riverenti, si calma in un mormorio deferente, sottolineando che sicuramente qualsiasi gentiluomo considererebbe un piacere e un onore farsi rompere il collo in cambio di un complimento proveniente da una persona del genere.
“Me ne occuperò io stesso, signore,” dichiara Sapsea con aria sprezzante, “per garantire la sicurezza del collo di Mr. Jasper. Dirò a Durdles di fare attenzione. Lui ascolterà ciò che io dico. In che modo è attualmente in pericolo?” chiede, guardandosi intorno con aria di magnanimo protettore.
“Solo intraprendendo un’escursione notturna con Durdles tra tombe, caverne, torri e rovine,” risponde Jasper. “Ricordi che quando ci hai presentati, hai suggerito che, essendo io un appassionato di luoghi pittoreschi, potesse valerne la pena?”
“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.”
[Illustration: 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.
“Me lo ricordo!” risponde l’astaio. E quel ridicolo serio crede davvero di ricordarselo.
“Avvalendomi del tuo suggerimento,” prosegue Jasper, “ho avuto alcune conversazioni con quel straordinario vecchio signore, e stasera andremo insieme a fare un’escursione notturna in giro per i dintorni.”
“Eccolo qui,” dice il Decano.
Durdles, con il suo pacchetto di cibo in mano, si avvicina a loro con passo strascicato. Avanzando ancora, quando vede il Decano, si toglie il cappello e se lo mette sotto il braccio per andarsene, ma il signor Sapsea lo ferma.
“Assicurati di prenderti cura del mio amico”, è l’ordine che il signor Sapsea gli dà.
“Qual è il tuo amico che è morto?” chiede Durdles. “Non sono arrivati ordini riguardanti alcun tuo amico.”
“Intendo quel mio caro amico lì.”
“Ohimè?”, dice Durdles. “Lui sa badare a se stesso, no, signor Jarsper?”
“Ma tu te ne prendi anche cura lui, vero?” dice Sapsea.
Chi viene squadrato con aria sprezzante da Durdles dalla testa ai piedi, con un tono autoritario nel suo modo di parlare.
“Con la sottomissione al Vostro Onore il Decano, se vi occuperete di ciò che vi riguarda, signor Sapsea, anche Durdles si occuperà di ciò che lo riguarda.”
“Sei di cattivo umore,” dice il signor Sapsea, facendo l’occhiolino al gruppo per mostrare quanto abilmente riuscirà a gestirlo. “Mi preoccupo per mio amico, e il signor Jasper è mio amico. E tu sei anche tuo amico.”
“Non iniziare a prendere cattive abitudini di vantarti,” ribatte Durdles, facendo un serio cenno di avvertimento. “Ti farà male.”
[Illustrazione: Durdles avverte il signor Sapsea di non vantarsi.]
“Sei di cattivo umore,” dice di nuovo Sapsea; arrossisce, ma poi si unisce di nuovo al gruppo.
“Lo ammetto,” risponde Durdles; “Non mi piacciono le libertà eccessive.”
Il signor Sapsea fa un terzo cenno d’intesa alla compagnia, come per dire: “Credo che concorderete con me sul fatto che abbia risolto il suo problema”; poi se ne va, lasciando la controversia alle spalle.
Durdles saluta quindi il preside con un buonasera e, mettendosi il cappello, aggiunge: “Mi troverà a casa, signor Jarsper, come concordato; vado a casa a pulirmi”, per poi allontanarsi rapidamente dalla vista. Questo andare a casa per pulirsi rappresenta uno di quei compromessi incomprensibili di quell’uomo con i fatti ineluttabili: lui, il suo cappello, le sue scarpe e i suoi vestiti non mostrano mai traccia di pulizia, rimanendo sempre nella stessa condizione di polvere e sporcizia.
Il lampionaio, ora, illumina la tranquilla stradina con piccoli raggi di luce; sale e scende rapidamente lungo la sua piccola scala. Quella scala, sotto l’“sacra ombra” di qualcosa di cui le generazioni precedenti avevano fatto a meno senza problemi. Un intero quartiere come Cloisterham si sarebbe spaventato all’idea di abolirla. Il decano si ritira per cena, il signor Tope per il tè, e il signor Jasper al pianoforte. Lì, illuminato soltanto dal fuoco, lui siede e canta musica corale con una voce bassa e bellissima, per due o tre ore. Fino a quando non cala la notte e la luna inizia ad alzarsi.
Poi chiude dolcemente il pianoforte, indossa un cappotto leggero al posto del suo abito normale; nella tasca più grande ha una bella bottiglia avvolta in paglia. Si mette anche un cappello a tesa bassa e usce silenziosamente. Perché si muove così in silenzio di notte? Non sembra esserci alcuna ragione evidente. Forse c’è qualche motivo nascosto, segreto, dentro di lui?
Riparando la casa incompleta di Durdles o il buco nel muro della città, e vedendo una luce all’interno, lui sceglie con cautela il percorso tra le lapidi, i monumenti e i blocchi di pietra del cortile, già sfiorati qua e là dal crescente luna. I due lavoratori hanno lasciato le loro grandi seghe conficcate nei blocchi di pietra; e forse due “spettri” tra i lavoratori appartenenti alla “Danza della Morte” potrebbero sorridere nell’ombra delle loro capanne, pronti a iniziare il lavoro per tagliare le lapidi delle prossime due persone destinate a morire a Cloisterham. Probabilmente ora quei due non ci pensano più, essendo ancora vivi e forse anche felici. Curioso, proviamo a indovinare chi siano, o meglio, uno dei due!
“Ho vinto! Durdles!”
La luce si muove, e lui appare insieme ad essa alla porta. Sembra che si sia “pulito” utilizzando una bottiglia, un giuggiole e un bicchiere; infatti non ci sono altri strumenti per la pulizia visibili nella stanza di mattoni nudi, con travi sul soffitto e senza soffitto intonacato, dove mostra il suo visitatore.
sei pronto?
“Sono pronto, signor Jarsper. Lasciate che quegli vecchi vengano fuori se osano. Quando andremo tra le loro tombe, il mio spirito è pronto per affrontarli.”
“Intendi gli spiriti animali, o quelli appassionati?”
“Uno è l’altro,” risponde Durdles, “e intendo entrambi.”
Prende una lanterna da un gancio e mette uno o due fiammiferi in tasca, per accenderla se necessario; poi escono insieme, con il pacchetto del cibo e tutto il resto.
Certamente una spedizione del tutto insensata! Quel Durdles, che se ne va sempre in giro tra vecchie tombe e rovine, come un fantasma. Che si metta a scalare, tuffarsi e vagabondare senza alcun scopo preciso non è certo nulla di straordinario; ma che il direttore del coro o chiunque altro ritenga opportuno seguirlo e studiare gli effetti creati dalla luce della luna in sua compagnia, beh, quella sì che è una cosa davvero inspiegabile.
“Attenzione a quel tumulo vicino al cancello del cortile, signor Jarsper.”
“Lo vedo. Cos’è?”
“Lime.”
Il signor Jasper si ferma e aspetta che lo raggiunga, perché lui è indietro.
“Quello che tu chiami calce viva, ”
“Ahia!” dice Durdles; “abbastanza veloce da mangiarsi le proprie scarpe. Con un po’ di aiuto, addirittura abbastanza veloce da mangiarsi anche le ossa.”
Proseguirono, superando presto le finestre rosse del “Travellers’ Twopenny” e uscendo nella chiara luce lunare del “Monks’ Vineyard”. Dopo aver attraversato questo luogo, arrivarono alla “Minor Canon Corner”: la maggior parte di essa rimaneva nell’ombra fino a quando la luna non si fosse alzata più in alto nel cielo.
Il suono di una porta che si chiude raggiunge le loro orecchie, e due uomini escono. Sono il signor Crisparkle e Neville. Jasper, con un sorriso strano e improvviso sul viso, appoggia la palma della mano sul petto di Durdles, fermandolo dove si trova.
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.
In quel punto della rientranza del Minor Canon Corner, l’ombra è molto densa, data la situazione attuale della luce; anche lì c’è un pezzo di vecchia muraglia bassa, alta all’altezza del petto, l’unica traccia rimasta di ciò che un tempo era un giardino, ma che ora funge da passaggio. Jasper e Durdles avrebbero potuto demolire quella muraglia in un attimo; invece si sono fermati lì, fermandosi dietro di essa.
“Quei due stanno solo passeggiando,” sussurra Jasper; “tra poco usciranno nella luce della luna. Diamo il silenzio qui dentro, altrimenti ci tratterranno, o vorranno unirsi a noi, o chissà cosa.”
Durdles annuisce in segno di assenso e si mette a masticare alcuni frammenti del suo pacchetto. Jasper incrocia le braccia sul bordo del muro e, appoggiandovi il mento, osserva la scena senza prestare alcuna attenzione al “Minor Canon”, ma fissando Neville come se avesse il dito sul grilletto di un fucile carico e stesse per sparare. Sul suo viso si legge una tale intensità di potere distruttivo che persino Durdles smette di masticare e lo guarda, con qualcosa ancora non digerito in bocca.
Nel frattempo, il signor Crisparkle e Neville camminano avanti e indietro, parlando sottovoce tra loro. Non si riesce a sentire ciò che dicono in modo continuo; tuttavia, il signor Jasper ha già menzionato il proprio nome più di una volta.
“Questo è il primo giorno della settimana,” si può sentire chiaramente il signor Crisparkle osservare mentre tornano indietro; “e l’ultimo giorno della settimana è la vigilia di Natale.”
“Può contare su di me, signore.”
Gli echi in quei punti erano favorevoli, ma man mano che i due si avvicinavano, il suono delle loro voci diventava di nuovo confuso. La parola “fiducia”, frammentata dagli echi ma ancora possibile da ricomporre, fu pronunciata dal signor Crisparkle. Mentre si avvicinavano ulteriormente, si udì questo frammento di risposta: “Non ancora meritato, ma lo sarà, signore.” Quando si allontanarono di nuovo, Jasper sentì nuovamente il proprio nome menzionato da Crisparkle: “Ricordate che ho detto di rispondere per voi con fiducia.” Poi il suono delle loro voci si confuse ancora; si fermarono per un momento, e successivamente Neville intervenne con azioni decise. Quando ripresero a muoversi, videro il signor Crisparkle alzare lo sguardo verso il cielo e indicare qualcosa davanti a sé. Poi scomparvero lentamente, dissolvendosi nella luce della luna all’altra estremità dell’angolo.
Solo quando se ne sono andati, il signor Jasper si muove. Poi si gira verso Durdles e scoppia a ridere. Durdles, che ha ancora quella cosa sospesa sulla guancia e non vede nulla di divertente, lo fissa fino a quando il signor Jasper non appoggia il viso sulle braccia per poter ridere liberamente. A quel punto, Durdles chiude quella cosa, come se si arrendesse disperatamente all’indigestione.
In quei luoghi isolati, dopo il calare della notte non c’è quasi alcun movimento o attività. Anche durante le ore di massimo traffico diurno non succede molto, ma di notte è praticamente nulla. Inoltre, la vivace High Street corre quasi parallela a quella zona (con l’antica Cattedrale che si erge tra le due), e rappresenta il principale percorso attraverso cui si svolge la vita quotidiana di Cloisterham. Tuttavia, dopo il buio, un silenzio inquietante avvolge quei luoghi antichi, i chiostri e il cimitero. Poche persone desiderano trovarsi lì. Se chiedeste a cento cittadini di Cloisterham, incontrati casualmente per strada a mezzogiorno, se credono negli fantasmi, vi risponderebbero di no; ma se li metteste di fronte alla scelta tra quei luoghi inquietanti e le vie affollate dai negozi, novantanove su cento preferirebbero il percorso più frequentato. La ragione di questo comportamento non deriva da alcuna superstizione locale. Anche se diverse persone hanno visto una donna misteriosa, con un bambino in braccio e una corda che le pendeva dal collo, muoversi in quei dintorni. La vera spiegazione sta nel timore innato che proviamo di fronte a luoghi oscuri e solitari. E anche nella diffusa, ma quasi mai riconosciuta, convinzione che “se i morti diventassero visibili ai viventi, questi ambienti sarebbero perfetti per tale scopo, quindi io, come vivo, preferirei evitarli il più possibile”. Quindi, quando Mr. Jasper e Durdles si fermano per guardarsi intorno prima di scendere nella cripta attraverso una piccola porta laterale che Durdles possiede la chiave di accesso, l’intera area illuminata dalla luna appare completamente deserta. Si potrebbe quasi pensare che il flusso della vita venga bloccato proprio da quella porta. Il mormorio delle onde si sente al di là, ma nessuna onda supera quell’arco, sopra cui la lampada di Mr. Jasper brilla di luce rossa dietro la tenda, come se quel luogo fosse una sorta di faro.
Entrano, si chiudono a chiave dentro, scendono i ripidi gradini e si trovano nella Cripta. La lanterna non è necessaria, perché la luce della luna filtra attraverso le finestre prive di vetri; i telai rotti proiettano ombre sul pavimento. I pesanti pilastri che sostengono il soffitto creano zone d’oscurità, ma tra di essi ci sono strisce di luce. Su e giù per queste strisce camminano; Durdles parla degli “antichi morti” su cui conta ancora di riuscire a scoprire la verità, e batte le mani contro i muri, come se quelle famiglie fossero sue amiche intime. La taciturnità di Durdles viene, per il momento, superata dalla bottiglia di vino di Mr. Jasper, che circola liberamente tra loro. Intendo dire: i suoi contenuti finiscono nel corpo di Mr. Durdles, mentre lui si sciacqua la bocca una sola volta e butta via l’acqua.
Devono salire la grande Torre. Sulle scale che li portano verso la Cattedrale, Durdles si ferma per riprendere fiato. Le scale sono molto buie, ma nell’oscurità riescono a vedere le strisce di luce che hanno già attraversato. Durdles si siede su una scala; il signor Jasper si siede su un’altra. L’odore proveniente dalla bottiglia di vimini (che chissà come è finita nelle mani di Durdles) fa capire che il tappo è stato rimosso. Ma questo non può essere verificato con la vista, poiché nessuno dei due riesce a vedere l’altro. Eppure, mentre parlano, si rivolgono l’uno all’altro, come se i loro volti potessero comunicare tra loro.
“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 moonlit 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.
“Roba davvero di qualità, signor Jarsper!”
“È davvero materiale di ottima qualità, spero. L’ho comprato apposta.”
“Non le mostrano, capisce? Gli anziani non le mostrano, signor Jarsper!”
“Se potessero farlo, il mondo sarebbe ancora più confuso di quanto non lo sia già.”
“Beh, sì, porterebbe sicuramente a un mescolarsi di cose,” convenne Durdles, soffermandosi su quella riflessione, come se l’idea degli fantasmi non gli fosse mai venuta in mente prima, almeno non in termini così, “Ma pensi che possano esistere ‘fantasmi’ di altre cose, anche se non di uomini e donne?”
“Cosa, per esempio? Vasi da fiori e annaffiatoi? Cavalli e attrezzature da sella?”
“No. Sounds.”
“Che suona?”
“Grida.”
“Quali grida intendi? Sedie da riparare?”
“No. Intendo dire urla. Ora vi spiego, signor Jarsper. Aspettate un attimo che sistemi bene la bottiglia.” A questo punto il tappo viene chiaramente rimosso e poi rimesso a posto. “Ecco! Ora è tutto a posto! L’anno scorso, solo pochi giorni dopo, stavo facendo ciò che era giusto per quella stagione. Stavo dando alla bottiglia l’accoglienza che meritava. Quando quei ragazzi del paese mi assalirono nel loro peggior stato. Alla fine riuscii a sfuggirgli e mi rifugiai qui. E qui mi addormentai. E cosa mi svegliò? Un urlo spaventoso. Un grido terribile, seguito dal latrato di un cane. Un ululato lungo, cupo, disperato. Il tipo di suono che un cane emette quando una persona è morta. Quella fu la mia ultima vigilia di Natale.”
“Cosa intendi dire?” è la risposta molto brusca, e si potrebbe dire anche aggressiva.
“Voglio dire che ho fatto ricerche ovunque, e che nessun altro, se non io, ha sentito quel grido o quel ululato. Quindi dico che erano entrambi fantasmi; anche se non so mai perché siano venuti da me.”
“Pensavo che fossi un altro tipo di uomo,” dice Jasper con disprezzo.
“Così ho pensato,” risponde Durdles con la sua solita calma; “eppure sono stato scelto proprio per questo compito.”
Jasper si era alzato all’improvviso; quando gli chiesi cosa intendesse, ora disse: “Andiamo, qui moriremo congelati; guidaci tu.”
Durdles obbedisce, sebbene non con grande agilità; apre la porta in cima alle scale con la chiave che ha già usato, e così emerge al livello della Cattedrale, in un passaggio sul lato dell’altare. Qui, la luce lunare è così intensa che i colori delle vetrate più vicine si riflettono sui suoi volti. L’aspetto di Durdles, privo di sensi e con una mano viola che gli copre il viso e una macchia gialla sulla fronte, mentre tiene la porta aperta affinché il suo compagno possa seguirlo, è davvero spaventoso. Tuttavia, sopporta senza reagire lo sguardo attento del suo compagno, mentre quest’ultimo fruga nelle sue tasche alla ricerca della chiave necessaria per aprire un cancello di ferro e permetter loro di raggiungere la scala della grande torre.
“Quello e la bottiglia sono abbastanza perché tu possa portarli,” dice, dando il tutto a Durdles; “dammi il tuo fardello; sono più giovane e ho più fiato di te.” Durdles esita per un momento tra il fardello e la bottiglia; ma dà la preferenza alla bottiglia, ritenendola di gran lunga una compagnia migliore, e lascia che il peso del fardello sia portato dal suo compagno di esplorazione.
Poi salgono la tortuosa scala della grande torre, con fatica, girando e girando, abbassando la testa per evitare i gradini sovrastanti o il ruvido pilastro di pietra attorno al quale devono inerpicarsi. Durdles ha acceso la sua lanterna, attirando una scintilla da quel misterioso fuoco che si nasconde in tutto; guidati da questa luce, proseguono tra ragnatele e polvere. Il loro cammino li conduce attraverso luoghi strani. Due o tre volte emergono in gallerie piatte e a bassa volta, da dove possono guardare giù nella navata illuminata dalla luna; e là, Durdles, agitando la sua lanterna, sembra far muovere le “teste” degli angeli sui travi del soffitto, come se li stesse osservando mentre avanzano. Poi entrano in scale ancora più strette e ripide; l’aria notturna inizia a soffiare su di loro, e il canto spaventato di qualche corvo precede il battito pesante delle ali in uno spazio ristretto. Infine, lasciando la loro lanterna indietro, guardano giù verso Cloisterham: un luogo incantevole alla luce della luna: le sue abitazioni in rovina e i santuari dei morti ai piedi della torre; i tetti di tegole rosse e le case di mattoni rossi dei vivi, raggruppate più in là; il fiume che serpeggia giù dalla nebbia all’orizzonte, come se fosse la sua sorgente. E già si percepisce, in quel fiume, una sorta di “conoscenza” inquieta del suo cammino verso il mare.
Ancora una volta, un’impresa senza alcuna responsabilità. Jasper (che si muove sempre silenziosamente e senza motivo apparente) osserva la scena, soprattutto quella parte più tranquilla che è oscurata dalla Cattedrale. Ma osserva anche Durdles con lo stesso interesse, e a volte Durdles si rende conto dei suoi occhi attenti.
Solo di tanto in tanto, perché Durdles inizia a sentire sonnolenza. Proprio come gli aeronauti riducono il carico che portano quando desiderano salire, allo stesso modo Durdles aumenta la quantità di liquido presente nella bottiglia di vimini per poter scendere più facilmente. Brevi sonnellini lo colgono all’improvviso, facendogli interrompere il suo discorso. A volte gli viene anche una leggera febbre; in quei momenti pensa che il terreno, così lontano sotto di lui, sia allo stesso livello della torre, e preferirebbe addirittura lasciare la torre per volare nel vuoto. Ecco in quale stato si trova quando iniziano a scendere. Proprio come gli aeronauti aumentano il proprio peso quando vogliono atterrare, anche Durdles si riempie di liquido dalla bottiglia di vimini per poter scendere più agevolmente.
Il cancello di ferro fu raggiunto e chiuso a chiave, ma non prima che Durdles cadesse due volte e si tagliasse un sopracciglio una volta; poi scesero nuovamente nella cripta, con l’intenzione di uscire esattamente come erano entrati. Tuttavia, mentre tornavano tra quelle strisce di luce, Durdles divenne così incerto nei movimenti e nel parlare che per poco non cadde; si appoggiò a uno dei pesanti pilastri, quasi altrettanto massicci di lui stesso, e chiamò il suo compagno in modo confuso, chiedendogli di aiutarlo, per soli quaranta secondi ciascuno.
“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.
“Se vuoi che sia così, o se devi che sia così,” risponde Jasper, “non ti lascerò qui. Prendile tu, mentre io vado avanti e indietro.”
Durdles si addormenta all’istante; e nel suo )sogno fa >sogni strani.
Non è certo un >sogno ordinario, considerando l’immensità dei regni del mondo onirico e le meravigliose cose che vi avvengono; è soltanto straordinario per la sua insolita inquietudine e la sua incredibile realtà. >Sogna di essere sdraiato lì, addormentato, eppure di sentire i passi del suo compagno che va avanti e indietro. >Sogna che quei passi si perdano nella distanza dello tempo e dello spazio, che qualcosa lo tocchi, che qualcosa gli cada di mano. Poi sente rumori confusi intorno a sé, e >sogna di essere completamente solo per un periodo così lungo che le strisce di luce prendono nuove direzioni mentre la luna prosegue nel suo corso. Dalla successiva incoscienza passa in un >sogno di freddo e disagio. E si sveglia dolorosamente, rendendosi conto che le strisce di luce sono davvero cambiate, proprio come aveva sognato. E che Jasper è lì, tra di esse, battendo le mani e i piedi.
“Ehi!” esclama Durdles, apparentemente allarmato senza motivo reale.
“Finalmente sveglio?” dice Jasper avvicinandosi a lui. “Sai che i tuoi quarant’anni si sono trasformati in migliaia di anni?”
“No.”
“Lo pensano davvero.”
“Che ore sono?”
“Ascoltate! Le campane suonano nella Torre!”
Suonano quattro rintocchi, e poi suona la grande campana.
“Due!” gridò Durdles mentre si arrampicava; “Perché non hai provato a svegliarmi, signor Jarsper?”
“L’ho fatto. Avrei potuto anche provare a svegliare i morti, la tua stessa famiglia di morti, lì in un angolo.”
”Mi hai toccato?”
#“Ti ho toccato. Sì, ti ho fatto tremare.”
Come ricorda Durdles, mentre nel sogno toccava qualcosa, guardò giù sul marciapiede e vide la chiave della porta della cripta proprio vicino al punto in cui lui stesso si trovava.
“Ti ho lasciato cadere, vero?”, dice, raccogliendola e ricordando quella parte del suo sogno. Mentre si rialza in posizione eretta, o almeno il più eretto possibile, si rende conto di nuovo che il suo compagno lo sta osservando.
“Beh?” disse Jasper sorridendo, “sei davvero pronto? Per favore, non affrettarti.”
“Lasciate che mi sistemi il mio bagaglio correttamente, signor Jarsper, e poi vi seguirò.” Mentre lo rilega, si rende nuovamente conto di essere sotto osservazione attenta.
“Di cosa mi sospettate, signor Jarsper?”, chiese lui con un tono di disprezzo dovuto all’alcol. “Se hanno qualche sospetto su Durdles, che lo dicano pure apertamente.”
“Non ho alcun sospetto su di voi, mio buon signor Durdles; ma sospetto che la mia bottiglia sia stata riempita con qualcosa di molto più solido di quanto entrambi pensassimo. E ho anche un altro sospetto,” aggiunge Jasper, prendendola dal marciapiede e girandola con il fondo rivolto verso l’alto, “che sia vuota.”
Durdles si degrada a ridere di questa situazione. Continua a sorridere anche dopo aver smesso di ridere, come se stesse rimproverando se stesso per la sua capacità di bere. Poi si avvicina alla porta e la apre. Entrambi perdono i sensi; Durdles la richiude a chiave e si infila la chiave in tasca.
“Mille grazie per una serata curiosa e interessante,” disse Jasper, porgendogli la mano; “puoi tornare a casa da solo?”
“Certo che sì!”, risponde Durdles. “Se gli offriste l’umiliazione di dover farsi mostrare la strada per tornare a casa, lui non ci andrebbe mai.”
Durdles non tornava a casa fino al mattino;
E anche allora, Durdles non tornava comunque a casa.
“Durdles non lo farebbe mai,” disse con estrema sfida.
“Allora, buona notte.”
“Buona notte, signor Jarsper.”
Ognuno va per la propria strada, quando un fischio acuto rompe il silenzio,
e si sente gridare quel gergo caratteristico.
Widdy widdy wen!
Io, posso, uscire, adesso.
Widdy widdy wy!
Allora, non andartene, altrimenti, mi vergognerò.
Widdy Widdy Wake-cock, un avvertimento!
Subito dopo, una rapida pioggia di pietre colpisce le mura della Cattedrale, e si vede quel terribile bambino danzare sotto la luce della luna.
“Che cosa! Quel piccolo diavolo è lì di guardia!” grida Jasper furioso; così rapidamente svegliato e con tale violenza, sembra lui stesso un demone più anziano. “Farò scorrere il sangue di quel maledetto! So che lo farò!” Noncurante del fuoco, che lo colpisce più volte, si lancia contro Deputy, lo afferra per il collo e cerca di trascinarlo dall’altra parte. Ma Deputy non è così facile da sconfiggere: con una intuizione demoniaca riguardo al punto più debole del suo avversario, appena afferrato per la gola, si contorce, costringendo il suo assalitore a “impiccarlo” di fatto, e inizia a soffocare, torcendosi e contorcendosi come se già stesse provando le prime agonie dell’asfissia. Non resta che lasciarlo andare. Lui si riprende immediatamente, si allontana da Durdles e grida verso il suo aggressore, digrignando i denti per la rabbia e la malvagità.
“Vi accecherò, per l’amor del cielo! Vi strapperò gli occhi, per l’amor del cielo! Se non avrò più la vista, picchiatemi pure!” Nel frattempo, si nascondeva dietro Durdles, ringhiando contro Jasper ora da questo lato, ora dall’altro: pronto, in caso venisse attaccato, a scappare in tutte le direzioni possibili; e se proprio fosse stato inseguito fino alla fine, si sarebbe prostrato nella polvere gridando: “Ora, colpitemi mentre sono a terra! Fatelo!”
“Non fate del male al ragazzo, signor Jarsper,” lo esorta Durdles proteggendolo.
“Riacquistate la calma.”
“Ci ha seguito fino a–notte, quando siamo arrivati qui per la prima volta!”
“Non è vero, non l’ho fatto!”, risponde il vice sceriffo, con la sua unica forma di cortese contraddizione.
“Da allora, si aggira continuamente nei dintorni di noi, ”
“Non è vero, non l’ho fatto,” risponde il vice sceriffo. “Sono uscito solo per prendere un po’ d’aria quando vi ho visti uscire dal Kin-freederel, ”
“Non mi lasciate mai più!”
(Con il solito ritmo e la danza, anche se schivando dietro a Durdles), “non è certo colpa di nessuno, vero?”
“Allora portatelo a casa,” ribatte Jasper con ferocia, sebbene si tratti di un grande sforzo da parte sua, “e lasciate che i miei occhi smettano di vedervi!”
Il vice, con un altro fischio acuto che esprimeva immediatamente il suo sollievo, iniziò a lanciare pietre contro il rispettabile signor Durdles con maggiore moderazione, come se si trattasse di un bue riluttante. Il signor Jasper tornò alla sua casa, immerso nei suoi pensieri. E così, quando tutto giunse al termine, anche quell’impresa insensata ebbe fine, per il momento, almeno.
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.
capitolo XIII
AMBI NEI LORO MIGLIORI ASPITI
L’istituto di Miss Twinkleton stava per immergersi in un tranquillo silenzio. Le vacanze natalizie erano imminenti. Quello che un tempo, nemmeno da parte della stessa erudita Miss Twinkleton, veniva chiamato “la metà”, ma che ora, considerato più elegante e più adatto a un ambiente scolastico, veniva definito “il termine”, sarebbe terminato il giorno dopo. Da alcuni giorni, una notevole allentamento della disciplina regnava nell’casa delle suore: i pasti venivano consumati nelle camere da letto; si tagliavano cibi con le forbici e li si passavano a vicenda con le pinze; pezzi di marmellata venivano distribuiti su piatti fatti di carta decorata; e si beveva vino di margherite da piccoli bicchieri, proprio quelli in cui la fragile Little Rickitts prendeva ogni giorno le sue gocce di medicina. Le cameriere erano state corrotte con pezzi di nastro e paia di scarpe più o meno consumate, affinché non menzionassero mai i briciole nei letti; in queste occasioni festive si indossavano gli abiti più eleganti. E la audace Miss Ferdinand aveva persino sorpreso tutti con un vivace assolo su carta decorata, fino a quando non venne soffocata dal proprio cuscino da parte di due “giustizieri” dai capelli lunghi.
Non erano questi gli unici segni di preparativi per la partenza. Iniziarono ad apparire scatole nelle camere da letto (dove normalmente non venivano utilizzate), e si verificò una quantità sorprendente di operazioni di imballaggio, decisamente sproporzionata rispetto al vero contenuto da trasportare. Regali, sotto forma di creme fredde, pomati e anche forcine, vennero distribuiti liberamente tra i presenti. Sotto il vincolo del segreto inviolabile, si scambiarono confidenze riguardo al giovane “dorato” d’Inghilterra che, si sperava, avrebbe fatto visita “a casa”, non appena ne avesse avuto l’occasione. La signorina Giggles (carente di sentimenti) affermò davvero di rispondere a tale omaggio facendo smorfie al giovane in questione; tuttavia, questa ragazza fu surclassata da una stragrande maggioranza di voto.
L’ultima notte prima di una pausa, si faceva sempre attenzione a che nessuno andasse a >dormire, e si cercava in tutti i modi possibili di incoraggiare l’apparizione degli fantasmi. Tuttavia, questo accordo veniva inevitabilmente infranto: tutte le giovani signorine andavano a )dormire molto presto e si alzavano molto all’alba.
La cerimonia di chiusura si tenne alle dodici in punto del giorno della partenza; quando Miss Twinkleton, sostenuta da Mrs. Tisher, organizzò una riunione nel suo appartamento (le sfere celesti erano già coperte con drappi marroni), dove sul tavolo furono trovati bicchieri di vino bianco e piatti di torta tagliata a fette sottili. Miss Twinkleton disse allora: “Signore, un altro anno è trascorso, portandoci nuovamente in questo periodo festivo in cui i primi sentimenti della nostra natura iniziano a manifestarsi, ” Ogni anno Miss Twinkleton avrebbe voluto aggiungere “nel nostro petto”, ma ogni volta si fermava sulla soglia di quell’espressione, sostituendola con “nel nostro cuore”. Cuori, i nostri cuori. Ebbene, un altro anno è trascorso, signore; permetteteci di sperare che i nostri studi, ormai molto avanzati, possano portarci a nuove conquiste. E, come il marinaio sulla sua nave, il guerriero nella sua tenda, il prigioniero nella sua prigione e il viaggiatore nei suoi mezzi di trasporto, anche noi aneliamo al nostro “casa”. Non è forse questo ciò che diciamo, in occasioni del genere, ricordando le prime parole della commovente tragedia di Mr. Addison?
“L’‘alba è nuvolosa, la mattina si avvicina; Le nuvole dense accompagnano l’inizio della giornata, La grande giornata, l’importante giornata, ”
Non proprio. Dall’orizzonte al zenit tutto era di un colore rosa; tutto profumava delle nostre relazioni e dei nostri amici. Chissà se noi li troveremo prosperare come ci aspettavamo; chissà se loro ci troveranno prosperare come si aspettavano! Signore, ora, con il nostro amore reciproco, vorremmo augurarci addio e buona fortuna fino al nostro prossimo incontro. E quando arriverà il momento di riprendere quelle attività, (in quel momento un senso generale di malinconia si diffuse tra tutti, ) beh, allora ricordiamo sempre ciò che disse quel generale spartano: parole troppo banali per essere ripetute, e a cui sarebbe superfluo fare riferimento in questo contesto.
Le ancelle dell’establishment, con i loro cappelli più eleganti, portarono via i vassoi; le giovani signore sorseggiarono e masticarono delicatamente, mentre le carrozze ordinate iniziarono a intasare la strada. Poco dopo arrivò il momento degli addii: Miss Twinkleton, salutando ogni giovane signora sulla guancia, le consegnò una lettera estremamente ben scritta, indirizzata alla sua prossima amica legale, con i “più cordiali auguri di Miss Twinkleton” nell’angolo. Consegnò questa missiva con un’aria come se non avesse alcuna connessione con il conto da pagare, ma fosse piuttosto qualcosa di delicato e gioioso, una sorpresa, insomma.
Rosa aveva già visto molte volte scene del genere, e sapeva così poco di qualsiasi altro luogo simile che si accontentava di rimanere lì dove era, anzi, era ancora più felice che mai, ora che aveva la sua ultima amica al suo fianco. Eppure, nella loro nuova amicizia c’era qualcosa di mancante, di cui Rosa non poteva fare a meno di rendersi conto. Helena Landless, essendo stata a conoscenza della rivelazione fatta dal fratello su Rosa e avendo stretto quel patto di silenzio con il signor Crisparkle, evitava qualsiasi allusione al nome di Edwin Drood. Il motivo per cui lo faceva restava un mistero per Rosa, ma lei ne era perfettamente consapevole. Se solo avesse potuto confidarsi con Helena, forse avrebbe potuto alleviare le proprie incertezze e dubbi. Invece, non aveva alcun modo per farlo; poteva soltanto riflettere sulle sue difficoltà e chiedersi ancora di più perché quell’evitamento del nome di Edwin continuasse, ora che sapeva – grazie a quanto le aveva detto Helena – che i due giovani avrebbero potuto ristabilire un buon rapporto non appena Edwin fosse tornato.
Sarebbe stata una scena davvero bella: tante ragazze bellissime che baciavano Rosa nel freddo portico della Casa delle suore, e quella piccola creatura solare che spuntava fuori da lì (ignara dei volti maliziosi incisi sullo stipite e sulla grondaia che la osservavano), salutando con la mano le carrozze che si allontanavano, come se rappresentasse lo spirito della giovinezza radiosa che rimaneva in quel luogo per mantenerlo luminoso e caldo anche quando era abbandonato. La solita High Street diventava musicale con i gridi, in voci argentine: “Addio, cara Rosa!” E l’effigie del padre di Mr. Sapsea, dall’altra parte della porta, sembrava dire all’umanità: “Signori, rivolgiate la vostra attenzione a questa adorabile creatura rimasta indietro, e salutatela con un gesto degno dell’occasione!” Poi, quella strada solitamente cupa e desolata, per pochi momenti scintillava di vita, di giovinezza e di freschezza, ma poi tutto tornava alla normalità. E Cloisterham riprendeva il suo aspetto abituale.
[Illustration: “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?
Illustrazione: “Addio, caro bocciolo di rosa”
Se Rosebud, nella sua grotta, aspettava l’arrivo di Edwin Drood con un cuore pieno d’inquietudine, anche Edwin era inquieto. Nel suo caso, però, la determinazione non derivava da una forza di volontà altrettanto forte quanto quella della giovane e ingenua bellezza, incoronata dalla fata che acclamava le “regine” dell’istituto di Miss Twinkleton. Lui aveva una coscienza, e il signor Grewgious l’aveva messa in discussione. Le ferme convinzioni di quel gentiluomo riguardo a ciò che era giusto e ciò che era sbagliato in una situazione del genere non potevano essere ignorate né derise. Non avrebbero mai cambiato idea. Se non fosse stato per la cena a Staple Inn, e per l’anello che portava nella tasca del suo cappotto, sarebbe probabilmente andato al loro matrimonio senza riflettere davvero, fidandosi ciecamente che tutto sarebbe andato bene, lasciando che le cose seguissero il loro corso. Ma quella seria riflessione su ciò che era giusto e ciò che era sbagliato lo aveva costretto a prendere una decisione. Doveva either dare l’anello a Rosa, o riprenderlo. Una volta intrapreso quel percorso, stranamente iniziò a considerare le richieste di Rosa con maggiore imparzialità di quanto avesse mai fatto prima. E si rese conto di non essere più così sicuro di sé come nei giorni precedenti.
“Mi guiderò da ciò che dirà e dal modo in cui andremo d’accordo,” fu la sua decisione, mentre camminava dalla guardiola verso la Casa delle Suore. “Qualunque cosa accada, terrò a mente le sue parole e cercherò di essere fedele sia ai vivi che ai morti.”
Rosa era vestita per una passeggiata; lo aspettava. Era una giornata luminosa e gelida, e la signorina Twinkleton aveva già concesso gentilmente il permesso di stare all’aperto. Così uscirono insieme, prima che fosse necessario né alla signorina Twinkleton né alla vice-sacerdotessa, la signora Tisher, offrire anche solo uno di quei soliti sacrifici al “santuario della Decenza”.
“Mio caro Eddy,” disse Rosa quando uscirono dalla High Street e si trovarono tra i tranquilli sentieri nei dintorni della Cattedrale e del >fiume: “Devo dirti qualcosa di molto serio. Ci ho pensato per un lungo, lunghissimo tempo.”
“Voglio essere serio anche io con te, cara Rosa. Intendo davvero essere serio e sincero.”
“Grazie, Eddy. Non penserai che io sia scortese se inizio ora, vero? Non penserai che parli solo a nome mio, perché parlo per primo. Non sarebbe generoso da parte mia, giusto? E so che tu sei una persona generosa!”
Disse: “Spero di non essere ingiusto con te, Rosa”. Non la chiamò più “Pussy”. Mai più.
“E non c’è alcuna >paura,” continuò Rosa, “del nostro litigio, vero? Perché, Eddy,” disse stringendogli il braccio, “abbiamo tante ragioni per essere molto tolleranti l’uno verso l’altro!”
“Lo saremo, Rosa.”
“Che bravo ragazzo! Eddy, diamo il via al cambiamento. Da oggi in poi saremo fratello e sorella.”
Mai diventare marito e moglie?
“Mai!”
Nessuno dei due parlò più per un po’. Ma dopo quel silenzio, disse, con qualche sforzo:
“Certo che so che entrambi lo abbiamo pensato, Rosa, e naturalmente sono nel dovere della onestà di ammettere apertamente che l’idea non è nata da te.”
“No, nemmeno con te, caro,” rispose lei, con un’onestà patetica.
“È qualcosa che è nato tra di noi. Tu non sei davvero felice in questo fidanzamento;
neanch’io lo sono. Oh, mi dispiace così tanto, ” E poi scoppiò in lacrime.
“Mi dispiace davvero molto, Rosa. Mi dispiace profondamente per te.”
“E io per te, povero ragazzo. E io per te!”
Questo sentimento puro e giovane, questa gentilezza e tolleranza reciproca, portarono con sé una ricompensa: una luce dolce che sembrava illuminare la loro relazione. In quella luce, i loro rapporti non apparivano più volutti, capricciosi o falliti; diventavano qualcosa di più altruistico, onorevole, affettuoso e sincero.
“Se solo lo avessimo saputo ieri,” disse Rosa asciugandosi gli occhi, “se davvero lo avessimo saputo ieri, e in molti altri giorni prima di ieri, che in quelle relazioni che non erano scelte da noi stessi ci trovavamo lontani dalla verità. Cosa potremmo fare oggi di meglio se non cercare di cambiarle? È naturale che proviamo rimorso, e vedete quanto ne proviamo entrambi; ma è molto meglio pentirsi ora che allora!”
“Quando, Rosa?”
“Quando sarà troppo tardi. E in quel momento saremo anche arrabbiati.”
Un altro silenzio calò su di loro.
“E sai,” disse Rosa in modo innocente, “allora non potevi certo volermi bene; ma ora puoi sempre farlo, perché non sarò un peso per te, né una preoccupazione. Ora posso sempre amarti, e tua sorella non ti prenderà in giro o ti darà fastidio. Spesso lo facevo quando non ero tua sorella. E ti chiedo scusa per questo.”
“Non lasciare che arriviamo a quel punto, Rosa. Altrimenti avrò bisogno di un perdono che non mi piace nemmeno pensare.”
“No, davvero, Eddy; sei troppo duro con te stesso, mio generoso ragazzo. Siediamoci qui, fratello, su queste rovine, e lascia che ti racconti com’è andata per noi. Penso di saperlo, perché ci ho pensato molto da quando sei stato qui l’ultima volta. Ti piacevo, vero? Pensavi che fossi una persona carina, no?”
“Tutti la pensano così, Rosa.”
“Davvero lo fanno?” Increspò la fronte per un momento in pensiero, poi esclamò improvvisamente: “Beh, ma supponiamo che lo facciano. Di certo non è stato sufficiente che tu mi considerassi solo come fanno gli altri, vero?”
Il punto non era semplicemente superarlo; non era sufficiente.
“Ed è proprio questo che intendo; è proprio così che sono andate le cose per noi,” disse Rosa. “Mi volevi molto bene, eri abituato a me, e ti eri anche abituato all’idea che ci saremmo sposati. Hai accettato questa situazione come qualcosa di inevitabile, vero? Pensavi che fosse così, e quindi perché discuterne o contestarla?”
Era qualcosa di nuovo e strano per lui rendersi conto così chiaramente di sé stesso, riflesso in quel bicchiere che lei teneva in mano. Aveva sempre trattato lei con superiorità, convinto della propria superiorità rispetto alla sua capacità intellettuale femminile. Ma non era forse questo un altro esempio di qualcosa di profondamente sbagliato nei termini su cui avevano iniziato a costruire una relazione destinata a durare per tutta la vita?
“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.
“Tutto ciò che dico di te vale anche per me, Eddy. Se non fosse così, forse non avrei il coraggio di dirlo. La differenza tra noi è solo che, poco a poco, nella mia mente è nata l’abitudine di pensarci, invece di ignorarlo. La mia vita non è così impegnativa come la tua; non ho molte cose di cui preoccuparmi. Così ci ho pensato molto, e anche pianto molto (anche se non era colpa tua, povero ragazzo). Poi, all’improvviso, il mio tutore è venuto a prepararsi per la mia partenza dall’Casa delle suore. Ho cercato di fargli capire che non avevo ancora preso una decisione definitiva, ma ho esitato e non ci sono riuscita; lui non mi ha compresa. Ma è un uomo buono. Mi ha spiegato con grande gentilezza, ma anche con fermezza, quanto sia importante prendere in considerazione questa questione nelle nostre circostanze. Così ho deciso di parlartene non appena saremmo stati soli e seri. E se ora sembro aver affrontato l’argomento con facilità, è perché l’ho fatto all’improvviso. Ma non credere che sia stato davvero facile, Eddy. Perché, oh, è stato molto, molto difficile. E mi dispiace tantissimo!”
Il suo cuore si spezzò di nuovo in lacrime. Lui le mise un braccio intorno alla vita e insieme camminarono lungo la riva del >fiume.
“Anche il tuo custode mi ha parlato, cara Rosa. L’ho visto prima di lasciare Londra.” La sua mano destra era posata sul petto, alla ricerca dell’anello; ma poi si fermò, pensando: “Se dovrò riprenderlo indietro, perché dovrei dirglielo?”
“E questo ti ha fatto prendere la cosa più seriamente, vero, Eddy? E se non ti avessi parlato come ho fatto, tu mi avresti parlato lo stesso? Spero che tu possa dirmelo. Non mi piace che tutto dipenda da me, anche se in realtà è molto meglio per noi.”
“Sì, avrei dovuto parlare; avrei dovuto raccontarti tutto; sono venuta con l’intenzione di farlo. Ma non sarei mai riuscita a parlarti come hai fatto tu con me, Rosa.”
“Per favore, Eddy, non dire che lo fai in modo così freddo o scortese, se puoi evitarlo.”
“Dico queste cose in modo così sensato e delicato, così saggio e affettuoso, ”
“È mio caro fratello!” Gli baciò la mano con un po’ di estasi. “Le povere ragazze saranno terribilmente deluse,” aggiunse Rosa ridendo, con le gocce di rugiada che brillavano nei suoi occhi luminosi. “Se l’aspettavano così tanto, poverine!”
“Ah, ma temo che sia una delusione ancora più grande per Jack,” disse Edwin Drood, sobbalzando. “Non ci avevo mai pensato a Jack, ”
Il suo sguardo rapido e intenso mentre lui pronunciava quelle parole non poteva essere ricordato, proprio come un lampo di fulmine non può essere ricordato. Tuttavia sembrava che lei avrebbe potuto ricordarlo all’istante, se solo ne fosse stata in grado; infatti abbassò lo sguardo, confusa, e respirava affannosamente.
“Non metti in dubbio che sia un duro colpo per Jack, vero, Rosa?”
Lei rispose semplicemente, in modo evasivo e affrettato: “Perché dovrebbe farlo?” Non ci aveva pensato affatto. A suo parere, lui non aveva nulla a che fare con la questione.
“Mio caro >bambino! Puoi davvero pensare che qualcuno che sia così completamente assorbito da un’altra persona – per usare le parole della signora Tope, non le mie – come Jack lo è da me, possa non rimanere profondamente colpito da un cambiamento così improvviso e totale nella mia vita? Dico improvviso, perché per lui sarà davvero improvviso, capisci?”
Annuì due o tre volte; le sue labbra si aprirono come se stesse per dare il suo consenso. Ma non pronunciò una parola, e nemmeno il suo respiro rallentò.
“Come posso dirlo a Jack?” si chiese Edwin, pensieroso. Se non fosse stato così preso da quel pensiero, avrebbe sicuramente notato la sua strana reazione. “Non avevo mai pensato a Jack. Devo dirglielo prima che lo venga a sapere chiunque. Domani e dopodomani ceniamo insieme. Vigilia di Natale e Natale stesso. Ma non potrei assolutamente rovinargli questi giorni felici. Si preoccupa sempre per me, anche per le cose più insignificanti. Questa notizia lo sconvolgerebbe sicuramente. Come posso dirglielo?”
“Deve essere informato, immagino, ” disse Rosa.
“Mia cara Rosa! Chi altro, se non Jack, dovrebbe essere al corrente delle nostre confidenze?”
“Mio custode ha promesso di scendere, se glielo avessi chiesto per iscritto. Lo farò ora. Vuoi che gli lascio la cosa in mano?”
“Un’idea geniale!” esclamò Edwin. “L’altro fiduciario. Niente di più naturale. Lui scenderà, andrà da Jack, gli racconterà ciò su cui abbiamo concordato e esporrà la nostra situazione meglio di quanto potremmo fare noi stessi. Gli ha già parlato con sincerità, sia con te che con me. E lo farà anche con Jack. È così! Non sono un codardo, Rosa. Ma a dirti la verità, ho un po’ paura di Jack.”
“No, no! Non hai paura di lui!” gridò Rosa, impallidendo e stringendosi le mani.
“Perché, sorella Rosa, cosa vedi dalla torre?”, le chiese Edwin, cercando di consolarla. “Mia cara ragazza, ”
“Mi hai spaventato.”
“Senza alcuna intenzione, ma mi dispiace tantissimo come se l’avessi fatto apposta. Potreste anche solo per un momento pensare, a causa di qualche mia frase casuale, che io abbia davvero paura di quel caro ragazzo? Intendo dire che lui soffre di certi attacchi improvvisi. L’ho visto una volta in uno di questi stati. E forse proprio una sorpresa così grande, proveniente da me, che per lui rappresento tanto, potrebbe scatenarli. Questo, ed è il segreto che volevo condividere con voi, è un altro motivo per cui il vostro tutore ha deciso di comunicarvi questa informazione. Lui è così affidabile, preciso e meticoloso che riesce sempre a far chiarezza sui pensieri di Jack in modo immediato; mentre io, invece, sono spesso impulsiva e affrettata. E, posso dire, quasi troppo femminile.”
Rosa sembrava convinta. Forse, dal suo punto di vista molto diverso su “Jack”, si sentiva confortata e protetta dall’intervento del signor Grewgious tra lei e lui.
E ora, la destra di Edwin Drood si chiuse nuovamente sul anello nella sua piccola custodia, ma ancora una volta fu trattenuta dal pensiero: “Ora è certo che dovrò restituirglielo; allora perché dovrei parlarne a lei?” Quella bella e compassionevole >natura che poteva provare tanta compassione per lui, di fronte alla rovina delle loro infantili speranze di felicità insieme, e che poi, con tranquillità, si ritrovava da sola in un nuovo mondo dove poteva creare nuovi “girlandi” fatti di quelle >fioriture che quel nuovo mondo avesse da offrire, poiché le fioriture del vecchio mondo erano ormai appassite, quella natura sarebbe stata addolorata da quei gioielli pieni di tristezza; e a quale scopo? Perché dovrebbe farlo? Quei gioielli non erano altro che simboli di gioie infrante e progetti vani; nella loro stessa >bellezza, rappresentavano (come avevano detto anche le persone più improbabili) quasi una crudele >satira delle passioni, delle speranze e dei piani dell’umanità, passioni, speranze e piani che non sono in grado di prevedere nulla, e che sono così fragili e effimeri. Lasciamo che siano. Li restituirà alla loro custode quando tornerà; a sua volta, li rimetterà nel cassetto da cui li aveva presi senza volerlo; e lì, come vecchie lettere, vecchi voti o altri ricordi di antiche aspirazioni ormai svanite, verranno ignorati, fino a quando, diventando di nuovo preziosi, non verranno nuovamente messi in vendita, per ripetere il loro stesso ciclo.
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.
Lasciali stare. Lasciate che rimangano inespressi nel suo cuore. Che sia chiaro o confuso nei suoi pensieri, giunse alla conclusione: lasciali stare. Tra l’immensa quantità di meravigliose “catene” che vengono forgiate per sempre, giorno e notte, nelle vaste officine del tempo e delle circostanze, c’è una catena che fu forgiata proprio in quell’istante; è fissata alle fondamenta del cielo e della terra e possiede una forza invincibile per tenere tutto insieme.
Camminarono lungo il fiume. Iniziarono a parlare dei loro piani separati: lui avrebbe accelerato la sua partenza dall’Inghilterra, mentre lei sarebbe rimasta lì, almeno finché Helena fosse rimasta. A quelle povere ragazze bisognava comunicare con delicatezza la loro delusione; come primo passo preliminare, Rosa avrebbe dovuto confidarsi in Miss Twinkleton, anche prima del ritorno di Mr. Grewgious. Bisognava far capire a tutti che lei ed Edwin erano i migliori amici. Non c’era mai stata un’intesa così serena tra loro da quando erano stati promessi l’un l’altro. Eppure, da entrambe le parti esistevano delle riserve: da parte sua, il desiderio di interrompere immediatamente le lezioni con il suo maestro di musica; da parte sua, l’esistenza di vaghe speculazioni su eventuali futuri incontri con Miss Landless.
La giornata luminosa e gelida si avviava verso la fine mentre camminavano e parlavano insieme. Il sole si tuffò nel fiume lontano dietro di loro; l’antica città appariva rossa davanti a loro, mentre il loro viaggio stava per concludersi. L’acqua mormorante gettava ombre scure sulle loro gambe quando si voltarono per lasciare le sue rive; i corvi volteggiavano sopra di loro con i loro richiami rauchi, disegnando macchie più scure nell’aria che si oscurava.
“Preparerò Jack per la mia partenza imminente,” disse Edwin a bassa voce, “e aspetterò soltanto che arrivi il tuo tutore; poi me ne andrò prima che parlino insieme. Sarà meglio così, senza la mia presenza. Non pensi anche tu?”
“Sì, davvero.”
“Sappiamo di aver fatto la cosa giusta, vero, Rosa?”
“Sì, davvero.”
“Sappiamo di essere migliori, anche ora?”
“E col tempo andrà molto, molto meglio.”
Ancora c’era quella tenerezza persistente nei loro cuori verso le vecchie posizioni che stavano abbandonando; per questo prolungarono il loro addio. Quando arrivarono tra gli olmi vicino alla Cattedrale, dove avevano seduto insieme l’ultima volta, si fermarono come se fosse stato un accordo tacito. Rosa alzò il viso verso di lui, come non aveva mai fatto in passato, perché ormai erano anziani.
Addio e buona fortuna!
Addio e buona fortuna!
Si baciarono con passione.
“Ora, per favore, portami a casa, Eddy, e lasciami da sola.”
“Non guardarti intorno, Rosa,” le disse, prendendola per il braccio e guidandola via. “Non l’hai visto, Jack?”
“No! Dove?”
“Sotto gli alberi. Ci ha visti mentre ci salutavamo a vicenda. Povero ragazzo. Non immagina affatto che ci siamo separati. Temo davvero che questo sia un colpo terribile per lui.”
Proseguì di fretta, senza mai riposare, fino a quando non ebbero superato il cancello ed entrato in strada; una volta lì, chiese:
“Ci sta seguendo? Puoi guardare senza che se ne accorga. È dietro di noi?”
“No. Sì, è proprio lui! È appena svenuto sotto l’arco d’ingresso. Quel caro, premuroso vecchio signore vuole sempre tenerci d’occhio. Temo che rimarrà terribilmente deluso.”
Strinse con fretta la maniglia di quella vecchia campana rauca, e il cancello si aprì subito. Prima di entrare, gli lanciò un’ultima occhiata lunga e piena di perplessità, come se volesse chiedergli con insistenza: “Oh! Non capisci davvero?” E in quell’occhiata, lui scomparve dalla sua vista.
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.”
CAPITOLO XIV.
Quando questi tre si rivedranno?
La vigilia di Natale a Cloisterham. Qualche volto strano per le strade; altri volti, metà strani e metà familiari: un tempo erano i volti dei bambini di Cloisterham, ora sono i volti di uomini e donne che tornano dal mondo esterno a lunghi intervalli, trovando la città incredibilmente ridotta di dimensioni, come se non fosse stata pulita a dovere in tutto questo tempo. Per loro, il suono dell’orologio della Cattedrale e il gracchiare dei corvi dalla torre della Cattedrale sembrano voci del loro passato infantile. A certuni di loro, nelle loro ultime ore lontane da casa, è capitato di immaginare che il pavimento della loro stanza fosse coperto dalle foglie autunnali cadute dagli olmi del cortile. Così i suoni fruscianti e gli odori freschi dei loro ricordi d’infanzia si risvegliano quando il percorso della loro vita è quasi giunto al termine, e l’inizio e la fine sembrano avvicinarsi sempre di più.
I simboli tipici della stagione sono ovunque: bacche rosse brillano qua e là tra le strutture in legno del “Minor Canon Corner”; il signor e la signora Tope inseriscono con cura rametti di vischio nelle sculture e negli angoli delle bancarelle della Cattedrale, come se li stessero infilando nei fori dei bottoni del cappotto del decano e del capitolo. Nei negozi c’è un’abbondanza di prodotti: uvetta, raisinetti, spezie, scorza candita e zucchero umido. Un’atmosfera insolita di galanteria e frivolezza pervade l’aria; si nota, ad esempio, un enorme mazzo di vischio appeso all’ingresso del negozio dell’ortolano, e anche una povera piccola “Tredicesima Torta”, decorata con la figura di un Arlecchino. Una torta così misera che si potrebbe quasi chiamarla una “Venticinquesima” o una “Quarantottesima Torta”; viene messa all’asta dal pasticcere, al prezzo di uno scellino a persona. Non mancano nemmeno le attrazioni pubbliche: l’opera in cera che aveva lasciato un profondo impatto sull’imperatore della Cina può essere ammirata, su richiesta speciale, solo durante la settimana di Natale, presso il negozio del proprietario fallito di una scuderia; inoltre, al teatro verrà rappresentata una nuova e grandiosa pantomima natalizia. Quest’ultima è annunciata dal ritratto del clown Signor Jacksonini, che reca la scritta “Come state domani?”, dipinto a dimensioni naturali, e quasi altrettanto malinconico. In breve, Cloisterham è in piena attività, anche se, da questa descrizione, si escludono ovviamente la scuola superiore e Miss Twinkleton. Gli studenti della prima sono tornati a casa, ognuno di loro innamorato di una delle giovani signore di Miss Twinkleton (che però non ne sa nulla, ); mentre le ancelle di quest’ultima appaiono occasionalmente alle finestre del suo palazzo. Si nota, tra l’altro, che queste ragazze diventano, entro i limiti della decenza, un po’ più vivaci quando vengono incaricate di rappresentare concretamente il proprio sesso, rispetto a quando condividono questa responsabilità con le altre giovani signore di Miss Twinkleton.
Tre persone devono incontrarsi alla guardiola di notte. Come fa ognuno di loro a superare la giornata fino a quel momento?
Neville Landless, sebbene per il momento fosse stato assolto dai suoi doveri scolastici dal signor Crisparkle – la cui natura fresca e vivace non era affatto insensibile ai piaceri delle vacanze – leggeva e scriveva nella sua stanza tranquilla, con grande concentrazione, fino alle due in punto del pomeriggio. Poi si dedicava a sistemare la scrivania, mettere in ordine i libri e distruggere tutti i fogli sparsi. Eliminava ogni traccia di disordine, sistemava tutte le cassetti e non lasciava indietro alcuna nota o pezzo di carta, tranne quelli direttamente legati ai suoi studi. Una volta fatto ciò, si rivolgeva al suo armadio, sceglieva alcuni capi d’abbigliamento semplici – tra cui un cambio di scarpe e calze robuste per le escursioni – e li metteva in uno zaino nuovo, acquistato il giorno prima nella High Street. Nello stesso momento aveva comprato anche un bastone da passeggio pesante, con un manico robusto e tacchi di ferro. Lo provava, lo regolava per ottenere un equilibrio ottimale e lo posizionava insieme allo zaino su una sedia accanto alla finestra. A quel punto, tutti i suoi preparativi erano completati.
Si è vestito per uscire e sta proprio per partire: ha infatti lasciato la sua stanza ed è incappato nel “Minor Canon” sulle scale, che stava uscendo dalla propria camera al piano di sopra. Quando torna indietro per prendere il suo bastone da passeggio, pensando di portarlo con sé questa volta, il signor Crisparkle, che si è fermato sulle scale, lo vede in mano a lui quando ricompare immediatamente. Glielo toglie e gli chiede sorridendo come abbia scelto proprio quel bastone.
“Onestamente, non so se capisca davvero l’argomento,” risponde. “L’ho scelto per il suo valore intrinseco.”
“Troppo pesante, Neville, davvero troppo pesante.”
“Per riposarsi durante una lunga passeggiata, signore?”
“Riposarsi su di esso?”, ripete il signor Crisparkle, assumendo la posizione di un pedone. “Non ti riposi su di esso; semplicemente rimani in equilibrio con esso.”
“Con la pratica imparerò meglio, signore. Vede, non ho mai vissuto in una regione dove si cammina molto, sapete, ”
“Vero,” dice il signor Crisparkle. “Fai un po’ di allenamento e poi correremo insieme per alcune decine di miglia. Non potrei lasciarti da nessuna parte in questo momento. Tornerai prima di cena?”
“No, penso di no, mangiamo presto infatti.”
Il signor Crisparkle gli fa un cenno di assenso deciso e lo saluta con allegria, esprimendo (non senza intenzione) totale fiducia e tranquillità.
Neville ripara la >Casa delle suore e chiede che Miss Landless venga informata che suo fratello si trova lì, su appuntamento. Aspetta alla porta, senza nemmeno varcare la soglia; poiché è sotto parola di non intralciare Rosa.
Sua sorella è almeno altrettanto consapevole dell’obbligo che hanno assunto da soli quanto lo sia lui, e non perde un attimo nel raggiungerlo. Si incontrano con affetto, evitano di trattenersi lì a lungo e proseguono verso le zone interne più alte del paese.
“Non intendo calpestare terreni proibiti, Helena,” dice Neville, dopo aver camminato per un po’ e mentre stanno voltando; “capirai tra poco che non posso fare a meno di parlare, come dovrei dire?, del mio amore non corrisposto.”
“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.
“Non sarebbe meglio che tu lo evitassi, Neville? Sai che non riesco a sentire nulla.”
“Puoi sentire, mia cara, ciò che il signor Crisparkle ha ascoltato, e l’ha fatto con approvazione.”
“Sì, riesco a sentire così tanto.”
“Beh, è proprio così. Non solo io stesso sono turbato e infelice, ma sono anche consapevole di disturbare e interferire con le vite altrui. Come posso sapere che, se non fosse per la mia sfortunata presenza, tu e gli altri partecipanti a quella serata, tranne quel nostro gentile ospite, potreste stare tranquillamente a pranzo domani al Minor Canon Corner? Probabilmente è proprio così. Vedo anche molto chiaramente che non sono molto apprezzato da quella signora, e è facile capire quanto possa essere un ostacolo per le sue attività organizzative, soprattutto in questa stagione dell’anno, quando devo essere tenuto lontano da quella persona, e c’è una ragione precisa per cui non dovrei entrare in contatto con lei. Inoltre, ho già sollevato queste questioni molto delicatamente con il signor Crisparkle, conoscendo i suoi modi di auto-sacrificio. Ma le ho comunque sollevate. Quello su cui ho posto particolare enfasi è che sto attraversando una terribile lotta interiore, e che forse un piccolo cambiamento o una breve assenza potrebbero aiutarmi a superarla. Quindi, dato che il tempo è bello e freddo, domani mattina andrò a fare una passeggiata, e spero di evitare di intralciare chiunque, compreso me stesso.”
quando tornare?
“Tra quindici giorni.”
“E andare completamente da solo?”
“Sto molto meglio senza compagnia; anche se ci fosse qualcun altro oltre a te ad accompagnarmi, mia cara Elena, ”
“Mr. Crisparkle è completamente d’accordo, dite?”
“Del tutto. Non ne sono sicura, ma all’inizio lui era propenso a considerarlo un piano piuttosto capriccioso, uno che potesse nuocere a una mente turbata. Ma lunedì scorso di notte abbiamo fatto una passeggiata al chiaro di luna per parlarne con calma, e gli ho spiegato la situazione così com’è realmente. Gli ho mostrato che voglio davvero superare queste difficoltà, e che, dopo quanto è successo stasera, è sicuramente meglio che io me ne vada ora piuttosto che restare qui. Sarebbe stato difficile evitare di incontrare alcune persone mentre camminavo per le strade, il che non avrebbe portato a nulla e certamente non sarebbe stato un modo efficace per dimenticare tutto. Tra quindici giorni, quella situazione probabilmente sarà finita; e quando si ripresenterà per l’ultima volta, potrò andarmene di nuovo. Inoltre, sono davvero ottimista riguardo all’esercizio fisico regolare e alla fatica benefica. Sai che il signor Crisparkle attribuisce grande importanza a queste cose per mantenere la propria salute mentale e fisica, e che il suo giusto modo di pensare non gli permetterebbe mai di applicare regole diverse a se stesso e a me. Si è convinto della serietà delle mie intenzioni e, con il suo pieno consenso, partirò domani mattina. Partirò abbastanza presto da poter lasciare sia le strade che l’udire i campanelli quando la gente va in chiesa.”
Helena ci pensa su e la trova una buona idea. Se il signor Crisparkle la facesse, lei lo farebbe anch’essa; ma in realtà, per conto suo, la ritiene davvero una buona iniziativa: un segno di sincera determinazione e di un attivo sforzo per migliorarsi. Le dispiace che quell’poveretto se ne vada da solo durante le grandi feste natalizie; tuttavia, ritiene che incoraggiarlo sia molto più utile. E infatti lo incoraggia.
Le scriverà?
Le scriverà ogni due giorni, raccontandole tutte le sue avventure.
Gli manda i vestiti prima che arrivi lui?
“Mia cara Elena, no. Viaggia come una pellegrina, con portafoglio e bastone da viaggio. Il mio portafoglio, o meglio, il mio zaino, è già pronto; ecco qui anche il mio bastone!”
Gliela porge; lei fa lo stesso commento del signor Crisparkle, che è molto pesante, e gliela restituisce chiedendogli di quale legno sia fatta. È legno di ferro.
Fino a questo punto è stato estremamente allegro. Forse il dover portare con sé la sua “borsa” insieme a lei, e quindi presentarla nel suo aspetto più luminoso, gli ha sollevato lo spirito. Forse, dopo averlo fatto con successo, ora prova un senso di riluttanza. Man mano che il giorno volge al termine e le luci della >città iniziano ad accendersi davanti a loro, diventa sempre più depresso.
“Vorrei non dover andare a questa cena, Helena.”
“Caro Neville, vale davvero la pena preoccuparsene così tanto? Pensa a quanto presto tutto sarà finito, ”
“Quanto tempo mancherà ancora, ”, ripete con tristezza. “Sì. Ma non mi piace.”
Potrebbe esserci un momento di imbarazzo, ma lei glielo spiega con entusiasmo, dicendogli che durerà solo per un attimo. Lui è molto sicuro di sé.
“Vorrei essere altrettanto sicuro di tutto il resto quanto lo sono di me stesso,” le risponde.
“Parli in modo così strano, caro. Cosa intendi dire?”
“Helena, non lo so. So solo che non mi piace. Che strana sensazione di oppressione nell’aria, ”
Gli indica quelle nuvole color rame oltre il >fiume e dice che il >vento sta aumentando di intensità. Lui quasi non parla più, fino a quando non si congeda da lei, alla porta della >Casa delle suore. Dopo essersi separati, lei non entra subito, ma rimane a guardarlo mentre si allontana lungo la strada. Due volte lui passa davanti al portone, riluttante ad entrare. Alla fine, quando l’>Cattedrale suona le dodici e un quarto, si affretta a entrare.
E così lui sale la scala posteriore.
Edwin Drood trascorre una giornata solitaria. Qualcosa di molto più importante di quanto avesse pensato è scomparso dalla sua vita; e nella silenzio della sua stanza, l’ultima notte ha pianto per questo. Sebbene l’immagine di Miss Landless continui a fluttuare nel fondo della sua mente – quella bella ragazza affettuosa, molto più forte e saggia di quanto avesse immaginato – è ancora lei ad occupare un posto preponderante nei suoi pensieri. Pensandoci, prova un certo rimorso per la propria inadeguatezza, si chiede cosa avrebbero potuto diventare l’uno per l’altro se solo in passato fosse stato più sincero, se le avesse attribuito maggiore importanza, se invece di accettare il proprio destino come qualcosa di scontato, avesse cercato il modo giusto per apprezzarlo e migliorarlo. Eppure, nonostante tutto ciò, nonostante il dolore profondo che provi, la vanità e i capricci della gioventù continuano a far sì che l’immagine di Miss Landless rimanga sempre presente nella sua mente.
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.”
Quello sguardo di Rosa quando si separarono al cancello fu davvero curioso. Significava forse che riusciva a vedere oltre la superficie dei suoi pensieri, fino nelle loro profondità più oscure? Probabilmente no: era piuttosto uno sguardo pieno di sorpresa e di attenta curiosità. Decise che non riusciva a comprenderlo, anche se era davvero molto espressivo.
Poiché ora aspetta soltanto il signor Grewgious e partirà immediatamente dopo averlo visto, si congeda lentamente dall’antica >città e dai suoi dintorni. Ricorda i tempi in cui lui e Rosa camminavano qui e lì, semplici bambini, ma già pieni della dignità di essere fidanzati. Poveri bambini! pensa, con un dolore compassionevole.
Notando che il suo orologio si era fermato, entrò nella gioielleria per farlo caricare e sistemare. Il gioielliere conosceva bene un certo tipo di braccialetto e, in modo vago e senza uno scopo preciso, chiese il permesso di mostrarlo. Secondo lui, quel braccialetto sarebbe stato perfetto per una giovane sposa, soprattutto se di stile piuttosto delicato e grazioso. Tuttavia, dopo aver ricevuto un’occhiata fredda, il gioielliere attirò l’attenzione su un vassoio contenente anelli da uomo. Indicò uno specifico modello, definendolo “un sigillo molto casto”, che gli uomini amavano molto acquistare quando cambiavano condizione sociale. Un anello dall’aspetto molto serio e rispettabile, su cui era inciso anche la data del loro matrimonio; molti uomini lo preferivano a qualsiasi altro tipo di ricordo.
Gli anelli vengono considerati con lo stesso distacco del braccialetto. Edwin dice al tentatore che non indossa alcun gioiello, se non l’orologio e la catena di suo padre, oltre alla spilla per la camicia.
“Per quel che ne so io,” risponde il gioielliere, “poiché il signor Jasper è venuto l’altro giorno a prendere un vetro da orologio; anzi, gli ho mostrato questi oggetti, osservando che, se mai desiderasse fare un regalo a un gentiluomo suo parente in un’occasione particolare. Ma lui ha riso dicendo di avere in mente l’elenco di tutti i gioielli che quel suo parente aveva mai indossato: cioè il suo orologio e la sua catena, nonché il fermaglio per la cravatta.” Comunque (riflette il gioielliere), questo potrebbe non valere sempre, anche se al momento attuale sembra applicabile. “Alle due e venti minuti, ho regolato il vostro orologio, signor Drood. Vi consiglio di non lasciarlo scadere, per favore.”
Edwin prende il suo orologio, se lo mette e esce, pensando: “Caro vecchio Jack. Se facessi un’altra piega nel mio fazzoletto da collo, lui penserebbe che sia degno di nota!”
Vaga avanti e indietro, per passare il tempo fino all’ora di cena. Oggi, in qualche modo, Cloisterham sembra rimproverarlo; sembra trovare qualcosa da biasimare in lui, come se non l’avesse utilizzato bene; ma è molto più pensieroso che arrabbiato con lui. La sua solita disattenzione viene sostituita da uno sguardo malinconico e da una continua riflessione su tutti quei vecchi luoghi familiari. Presto sarà lontano, e forse non li rivedrà mai più, pensa. Povero giovane. Povero giovane!
Con l’avvicinarsi del crepuscolo, cammina avanti e indietro nel vigneto dei Monaci. Ha percorso avanti e indietro per ben mezz’ora, mentre le campane della Cattedrale suonavano; ormai è calata la notte, quando finalmente si accorge di una donna accovacciata a terra vicino a un cancello in un angolo. Il cancello conduce a un sentiero secondario che attraversa il crocicchio, poco usato al buio; quella figura doveva essere lì tutto il tempo, anche se lui se n’era reso conto solo gradualmente, negli ultimi momenti.
Intraprende quel percorso e si avvicina al wicket. Alla luce di una lampada vicina, vede che la donna ha un aspetto emaciato; il suo mento incavato poggia sulle mani, e i suoi occhi fissano qualcosa davanti a lei con uno sguardo immobile, cieco, determinato.
Sempre gentile, ma quella sera ancora più particolarmente premuroso, e dopo aver rivolto parole di incoraggiamento alla maggior parte dei bambini e delle persone anziane che aveva incontrato, si china immediatamente e parla con questa donna.
“Sei malato?”
“No, caro,” risponde lei, senza guardarlo, mantenendo quel suo strano sguardo vuoto e fisso.
“Sei cieco?”
“No, caro.”
“Sei perso, senza fissa dimora, stai male? Che cosa ti è successo, perché resti qui nel freddo per così tanto tempo, senza muoverti?”
Con sforzi lenti e goffi, sembra riuscire a concentrare la sua vista su di lui; poi un velo strano le passa sul viso e inizia a tremare.
Si raddrizza, fa un passo indietro e la guarda con orrore e meraviglia; sembra infatti conoscerla.
“Mio Dio!”, pensò subito dopo. “Proprio come Jack quella notte, ”
Mentre lui la guarda giù, lei alza lo sguardo su di lui e singhiozza: “I miei polmoni sono deboli, sono davvero molto malati. Povera me, povera me, il mio rantolo è terribile!” E poi tossisce, per confermare quanto dice.
“Dove vieni?”
“Di Londra, caro.” (Il suo colpo di tosse continuava a tormentarla.)
“Dove stai andando?”
“Torna a Londra, caro mio. Sono venuto qui cercando un ago in un pagliaio, ma non l’ho trovato. Ascolta, dammi tre penny e sei centesimi, e non preoccuparti per me. Tornerò a Londra e non darò fastidio a nessuno. Ho un lavoro. Ah, povero me! I tempi sono duri, molto duri, ma riesco comunque a tirare avanti.”
Mangi l’oppio?
“Fumala,” risponde con difficoltà, ancora tormentata dal suo accesso di tosse.
“Dammi tre scellini e mezzo, e te la preparerò bene e tornerò subito. Se non mi dai tre scellini e mezzo, allora nemmeno un soldo. Ma se me li dai, tesoro, ti dirò qualcosa.”
Conta i soldi che ha in tasca e li mette nella sua mano. Lei li afferra immediatamente con forza e si alza in piedi, emettendo una risata rauca di soddisfazione.
“Benedetti siate! Ascoltate, caro signore. Qual è il vostro nome di battesimo?”
“Edwin.”
“Edwin, Edwin, Edwin,” ripete lei, con una voce sempre più somnolenta; poi chiede all’improvviso: “Il nome abbreviato di quel nome è Eddy?”
“A volte viene chiamato così,” risponde lui, mentre il colore inizia a comparire sul suo viso.
“Non è così che voi ragazzi lo chiamate?”, chiede lei, riflettendoci.
“Come potrei saperlo?”
“Non hai forse un amore nel tuo Cuore?”
“Nessuno.”
Sta per andarsene, e mentre dice un altro “Che Dio vi benedica e vi ringrazi, cari!” lui aggiunge: “Avresti dovuto dirmi qualcosa. Puoi farlo anche ora.”
“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.”
“Ero proprio così. Beh, allora. Sussurra. Dovresti essere grato che il tuo nome non sia Ned.”
La guarda fissamente e le chiede: “Perché?”
“Perché in questo momento è un nome davvero brutto da avere.”
“Che cattiva reputazione, ”
Un nome minacciato. Un nome pericoloso.
“Il proverbio dice che gli uomini minacciati vivono a lungo,” le dice, con noncuranza.
“Allora Ned, così minacciato com’è, ovunque si trovi in questo momento mentre parlo con te, caro, dovrebbe vivere per tutta l’eternità!” risponde la donna.
Si è chinata in avanti per dirglielo all’orecchio; il suo dito indice tremava davanti ai suoi occhi. Ora si rannicchia e, dopo un altro “Beneditevi e ringraziate”, se ne va nella direzione della Casa degli Ostelli dei Viaggiatori.
Non è certo un modo ispiratore per concludere una giornata noiosa. Da solo, in un luogo isolato, circondato dai resti di un’antica epoca e del degrado, queste circostanze tendono piuttosto a suscitare un brivido. Si dirige verso le strade più illuminate e, mentre cammina, decide di non parlare di tutto questo alla notte, ma di menzionarlo domani a Jack (che lui, da solo, chiama Ned), come una semplice coincidenza. Ovviamente, soltanto come coincidenza, e non come qualcosa di davvero degno di essere ricordato.
Tuttavia, quelle parole rimangono con lui, proprio come molte altre cose che meriterebbero davvero di essere ricordate non lo sono mai state. Gli resta ancora un po’ di tempo prima dell’ora di cena; e quando attraversa il ponte e passa accanto al fiume, le parole di quella donna risuonano nel vento che si alza, nel cielo cupo, nelle acque turbolente, nelle luci tremolanti. C’è persino un eco solenne di esse nelle campane della Cattedrale, che lo colpiscono con una sorpresa improvvisa quando entra sotto l’arco del portone.
E così lui sale la scala posteriore.
John Jasper trascorre una giornata più piacevole e allegra di entrambi i suoi ospiti. Non avendo lezioni di musica durante la stagione festiva, il suo tempo è completamente a sua disposizione, fatta eccezione per le funzioni in cattedrale. Si reca presto tra i negozianti, ordinando piccoli lussi da tavola che a suo nipote piacciono. Dice ai suoi fornitori che suo nipote non resterà con lui a lungo, quindi deve essere viziato e coccolato. Mentre si occupa delle sue preparazioni ospitalieri, va a fare un saluto al signor Sapsea e gli racconta che quel caro Ned, insieme a quel giovane impulsivo del signor Crisparkle, verranno a pranzo oggi alla porta di ingresso per chiarire le loro divergenze. Il signor Sapsea, invece, non nutre alcuna simpatia per quel giovane impulsivo; afferma che il suo aspetto sia “antinglese”. E una volta che il signor Sapsea dichiara qualcosa di “antinglese”, ritiene che quella cosa sia per sempre perduta nel baratro dell’ignoranza.
John Jasper è davvero dispiaciuto di sentire il signor Sapsea parlare in questo modo, perché sa molto bene che il signor Sapsea non parla mai senza un motivo preciso, e che ha l’abilità sottile di avere sempre ragione. Stranamente, anche il signor Sapsea la pensa esattamente allo stesso modo.
Il signor Jasper ha una voce davvero meravigliosa oggi. Nella sua patetica supplica affinché il suo cuore si inclini a rispettare questa legge, stupisce tutti i suoi compagni con la potenza melodiosa della sua voce. Non ha mai cantato musica difficile con tale abilità e armonia come nell’inno di oggi. Il suo temperamento nervoso, però, a volte lo spinge ad affrontare queste composizioni un po’ troppo rapidamente; oggi, però, il suo tempo è perfetto.
Questi risultati probabilmente vengono ottenuti grazie a una grande calma interiore. Il semplice meccanismo della sua gola è un po’ delicato, perché indossa sia durante le prove vocali che nel vestire quotidiano un grande fazzoletto nero di seta densamente tessuta, leggermente annodato intorno al collo. Ma la sua calma è così evidente che il signor Crisparkle ne parla ogni volta che escono dalle prove del coro.
“Devo ringraziarti, Jasper, per il piacere che ho provato ascoltandoti oggi. Meraviglioso! Delizioso! Non avresti potuto superarti di più, spero, a meno che non fossi straordinariamente in forma.”
“Sto meravigliosamente bene.”
“Niente di impari,” dice il Minore Canone, con un movimento fluido della mano: “niente di incerto, niente di forzato, niente che venga evitato; tutto eseguito in modo magistrale, con una perfetta autocontrollo.”
“Grazie. Lo >spero, se non è troppo chiedere.”
“Si potrebbe pensare, Jasper, che tu stessi provando un nuovo farmaco per quella tua occasionale indisposizione, ”
“Davvero? È un’osservazione davvero intelligente; infatti, anch’io la penso così.”
“Allora continua così, caro amico,” disse il signor Crisparkle, dandogli una pacca sulla spalla con un incoraggiamento cordiale, “continua così.”
“Lo farò.”
“Vi congratulo,” continua il signor Crisparkle mentre escono dalla [Cattedrale, “per tutto quanto.”
“Grazie ancora. Se non vi dispiace, vi accompagnerò fino all’angolo; ho molto tempo prima che arrivi la mia compagnia, e voglio dirvi qualcosa che penso non vi dispiacerà ascoltare.”
“Che cosa è?”
“Beh. L’altra sera stavamo parlando dei miei umori neri.”
Il viso del signor Crisparkle si rabbuia, e scuote la testa con disapprovazione.
“Ho detto che avrei dovuto creare un antidoto a quei umori negativi; e tu hai risposto sperando che li mandassi alle fiamme.”
“E io continuo a sperarlo, Jasper.”
“Con la migliore ragione del mondo. Intendo bruciare il diario di quest’anno alla fine dell’anno.”
“Perché tu,?” Il signor Crisparkle si illumina molto mentre inizia a dire così.
“Mi precedi nei pensieri. Perché ho la sensazione di non stare bene: sono cupo, irritabile, come se qualcosa mi opprimesse nella mente. Hai detto che ero esagerato. E allora, forse lo sono davvero.”
Il viso sorridente del signor Crisparkle si illumina ancora di più.
“Allora non riuscivo a vederlo chiaramente, perché non mi sentivo bene; ma ora sto meglio e lo ammetto con vera gioia. Ho ottenuto molto da poco. Questo è il fatto.”
“Mi fa bene”, esclama il signor Crisparkle, “sentirti dire queste parole!”
“Un uomo che conduce una vita monotona,” prosegue Jasper, “e il cui sistema nervoso o il cui stomaco vanno in tilt, si sofferma su un’idea fino a quando questa perde le sue proporzioni. È stato proprio questo il mio caso riguardo all’idea in questione. Quindi, quando il libro sarà completo, brucerò tutte le prove relative a questa idea e inizierò il volume successivo con una visione più chiara.”
“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.
“È molto meglio di quanto potessi sperare,” dice il signor Crisparkle, fermandosi ai gradini della sua porta per stringere la mano.
“Perché, naturalmente,” risponde Jasper. “Avevi ben poche ragioni per >sperare che io diventassi più simile a te. Tu ti addestri sempre a essere, sia nello spirito che nel -corpo, chiaro e limpido come il cristallo; sei sempre così, e non cambierai mai; mentre io sono solo una pianta sporca, solitaria e malinconica. Comunque, ho superato questa malinconia. Devo aspettare mentre tu chiedi se il signor Neville sia già andato al mio posto? Se no, potremmo passeggiare insieme.”
“Penso,” disse il signor Crisparkle, aprendo la porta d’ingresso con la sua chiave, “che se ne sia andato da un po’ di tempo; almeno so che se n’è andato, e credo che non sia tornato. Ma controllerò. Non vuole entrare?”
“La mia compagnia aspetta,” disse Jasper, sorridendo.
Il “Minor Canon” scompare, per poi riapparire dopo pochi momenti. Come pensava, il signor Neville non era ancora tornato; anzi, ora che se ne ricordava, il signor Neville aveva detto che probabilmente sarebbe andato direttamente alla guardiola d’ingresso.
“Cattive maniere da parte di un ospite!” dice Jasper. “La mia compagnia arriverà prima di me! Scommettete quanto che non troverò la mia compagnia abbracciata a qualcun altro?”
“Scommetterei – anzi, lo farei senz’altro se decidessi di scommettere – che stasera la vostra compagnia avrà un intrattenitore divertente,” risponde il signor Crisparkle.
Jasper annuisce e ride felicemente di notte.
Ripercorre i suoi passi fino alla porta della Cattedrale e prosegue oltre, verso il cancello d’ingresso. Cammina cantando, a bassa voce e con espressione delicata; sembra davvero che nessun errore nel canto sia in suo potere commettere. Di notte, nulla può né accelerare né ritardare il suo passo. Arrivato così sotto l’arco d’ingresso della sua dimora, si ferma un attimo per togliersi quel grande sciarpo nero e avvolgerlo a mo’ di braccialetto intorno al braccio. Per quel breve momento, il suo volto appare serio e grave. Ma subito dopo riprende a cantare, e prosegue per la sua strada.
E così lui sale la scala posteriore.
La luce rossa brilla costantemente per tutta la sera nel faro, situato ai margini di quella vita frenetica. Suoni dolci e il rumore del traffico lo attraversano, diffondendosi in modo irregolare nelle zone solitarie circostanti; ma poco altro vi passa, se non violenti raffiche di vento che soffiano con forza.
I quartieri non sono mai particolarmente ben illuminati; ma i forti colpi di >vento che spengono molte delle lampade (in alcuni casi rompendo anche gli armadietti e facendo cadere il vetro a terra) rendono l’oscurità ancora più intensa di notte. Questa oscurità viene ulteriormente aumentata e resa confusa dal polvere che si alza dalla terra, dai rami secchi degli alberi e dai grandi frammenti provenienti dai nidi dei corvi sulle torri. Gli stessi alberi, scossi violentemente da questo vortice di oscurità, sembrano essere in pericolo di essere strappati dalla terra; di tanto in tanto, un crepaccio o il rumore di un ramo che si spezza indicano che qualche grosso ramo ha ceduto sotto la forza della tempesta.
Non c’era stata una tale forza del vento da molti inverni, nelle molte notti. I comignoli crollavano per le strade, e la gente si aggrappava a colonne, angoli e l’uno all’altro per non cadere. Le raffiche violente non diminuivano, anzi aumentavano di frequenza e intensità fino a mezzanotte, quando le strade rimanevano deserte. La tempesta si scatenava con tuoni e fulmini, strappando via tutte le serrature e gli scuri, come se volesse esortare la gente ad alzarsi e seguirla, piuttosto che lasciare che i tetti crollassero loro addosso.
Tuttavia, il semaforo rosso continua a lampeggiare regolarmente. Niente è stabile, tranne il semaforo rosso.
Per tutta la notte il >vento soffia senza sosta. Ma all’alba, quando a est c’è appena abbastanza luce per offuscare le stelle, inizia a calmarsi. Da quel momento, con qualche ultima raffica violenta, come un mostro ferito che muore, il vento diminuisce gradualmente fino a cessare del tutto; al pieno giorno è completamente fermo.
Si vede allora che le lancette dell’orologio della Cattedrale sono state strappate via; il cavo che partiva dal tetto è stato rimosso, arrotolato e portato dentro l’area chiusa attorno alla cattedrale; inoltre, alcune pietre presenti sulla sommità della grande torre si sono spostate. Nonostante sia mattina di Natale, è necessario inviare dei lavoratori per verificare l’entità dei danni causati. Questi, guidati da Durdles, salgono in alto; intanto, il signor Tope e un gruppo di persone oziose si radunano nel vicolo denominato Minor Canon Corner, proteggendosi gli occhi con le mani e osservando la loro azione dall’alto.
Questo gruppo si disperde improvvisamente, messo da parte dalle mani del signor Jasper; tutti gli sguardi sono rivolti verso il basso quando lui, ad alta voce, interroga il signor Crisparkle, davanti a una finestra aperta.
“Dove è mio nipote?”
“Non è mai stato qui. Non è con te?”
“No. È andato giù al >fiume la scorsa notte, con il signor Neville, per osservare la >tempesta, e non è ancora tornato. Chiamate il signor Neville!”
“Se n’è andato questa mattina, presto.”
“Se ne è andato presto stamattina? Lasciami entrare! Lasciami entrare!”
Ora non c’è più bisogno di guardare verso la torre; tutti gli sguardi sono rivolti a Mr. Jasper: pallido, semi-nudo, ansimante, che si aggrappa alla ringhiera davanti alla casa del Minor Canon.
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.
capitolo XV.
IMPUTATO DI REATO
Neville Landless aveva iniziato così presto e camminava a un passo così veloce che, quando le campane della chiesa di Cloisterham cominciarono a suonare per la funzione mattutina, lui si trovava già a otto miglia di distanza. Poiché voleva fare colazione entro quell’orario, e avendo partito con solo un pezzo di pane, si fermò alla prima taverna che incontrò lungo la strada per riposarsi e rifocillarsi.
I visitatori che desideravano colazione – a meno che non fossero cavalli o mucche, per i quali c’era già abbastanza preparato in termini di mangimi e acqua – erano davvero molto rari presso il “The Tilted Wagon”, tanto che ci volle molto tempo prima che il carro potesse servire tè, toast e bacon. Nel frattempo, Neville, seduto in una sala rivestita di sabbia, si chiedeva quanto tempo sarebbe passato prima che il fuoco, alimentato da legna umida, iniziasse a riscaldare qualcun altro dopo la sua partenza.
Infatti, The Tilted Wagon, essendo un locale piuttosto originale situato sulla cima di una collina, presentava molte caratteristiche particolari: il terreno davanti all’ingresso era coperto di pozzanghere lasciate dalle zampe umide e dall’erba calpestata; nella bar, la padrona di casa rimproverava un bambino con una calza rossa e l’altra ancora indossata; il formaggio veniva riposto su uno scaffale insieme a tovaglie muffite e coltelli dal manico verde, in un ambiente che ricordava una canoa di ferro; i pani, dall’aspetto pallido, lasciavano cadere briciole sul pavimento; la biancheria da letto, metà lavata e metà asciutta, sembrava “vivere” in modo pubblico, sparsa ovunque. Tutto ciò rendeva The Tilted Wagon ben lontano dall’adempire alla promessa di offrire intrattenimento di qualità sia agli uomini che agli animali. Tuttavia, in questo caso, gli uomini non erano troppo critici: accettavano qualsiasi tipo di divertimento fosse disponibile e poi se ne andavano, dopo aver riposato più a lungo del necessario.
Si fermò a circa un quarto di miglio dalla >casa, esitando se seguire la strada o una strada sterrata tra due alte siepi, che attraversava il pendio di una brughiera soffiata dal vento; evidentemente, dopo un po’ quella strada sterrata si immetteva nuovamente nella strada principale. Decise di seguire quest’ultima e proseguì con qualche difficoltà: il pendio era ripido e il sentiero era pieno di solchi profondi.
Proseguiva il suo cammino quando si rese conto che c’erano altri pedoni dietro di lui. Poiché si avvicinavano più velocemente di lui, si fermò accanto a uno dei bordi alti del sentiero per lasciarli passare. Tuttavia il loro comportamento era molto strano: solo quattro di loro lo superarono; gli altri quattro rallentarono e sembravano intenzionati a seguirlo non appena avesse ripreso il cammino. Gli altri membri del gruppo (forse una mezza dozzina) invece si girarono e tornarono indietro a grande velocità.
Guardò i quattro dietro di sé, poi guardò i quattro davanti a sé. Tutti gli restituirono lo sguardo. Riprese il suo cammino: i quattro davanti continuavano ad avanzare, guardandosi indietro di tanto in tanto; i quattro dietro iniziavano a avvicinarsi.
Quando tutti si dispersero lungo il sentiero stretto sul pendio aperto della brughiera, e questa formazione fu mantenuta, non c’era più alcun dubbio che fosse circondato da quei individui. Si fermò, come ultimo controllo; e loro si fermarono tutti.
“Perché vi prendete cura di me in questo modo?”, chiese a tutto il suo corpo. “Siete forse una banda di ladri?”
“Non rispondetegli,” disse uno di loro; non si ricordava chi fosse.
“È meglio stare in silenzio.”
“Meglio stare zitti, vero?”, ripeté Neville. “Chi l’ha detto?”
Nessuno rispose.
“È un buon consiglio, qualunque di voi lo abbia dato,” continuò arrabbiato. “Non intendo sottomettermi a essere intrappolato tra quei quattro uomini lì. Voglio superarli, e intendo davvero farlo.”
Erano tutti immobili; anche lui compreso.
“Se otto uomini, o quattro uomini, o due uomini attaccano uno solo,” proseguì, diventando sempre più furioso, “quello non ha altra scelta se non quella di colpire qualcuno di loro. E, per il Signore, lo farò, anche se mi interrompono ancora una volta!”
Portando sulle spalle il suo pesante bastone e accelerando il passo, si affrettò a superare i quattro che lo precedevano. L’uomo più grande e forte del gruppo cambiò rapidamente direzione e, con agilità, gli si avvicinò per combattere; ma non prima che il pesante bastone colpisse con forza.
“Lasciatelo stare!” disse quest’uomo con voce soffocata, mentre lottavano insieme sull’erba. “Onesto combattimento! Lui ha la corporatura di una ragazza rispetto alla mia, e inoltre porta un peso sulle spalle. Lasciatelo da solo. Me ne occuperò io.”
Dopo un po’ di lotta corpo a corpo, durante la quale i volti di entrambi si imbrattarono di sangue, l’uomo allontanò il ginocchio dal petto di Neville e disse: “Ecco! Ora prendetelo per le braccia, voi due!”
Fu fatto immediatamente.
“Per quanto riguarda il fatto che siamo un branco di ladri, signor Landless,” disse l’uomo, sputando del sangue e pulendosi il viso; “lo sapete benissimo. Non vi avremmo mai toccato se non ci aveste costretti. Comunque, vi porteremo sulla strada principale: là troverete abbastanza aiuto contro i ladri, se lo desiderate. Qualcuno, pulisca il suo viso; vedete come il sangue gli sta scorrendo giù!”
Quando il suo viso fu pulito, Neville riconobbe nella persona che gli parlava Joe, l’autista dell’omnibus di Cloisterham, che aveva visto solo una volta, e cioè il giorno del suo arrivo.
“E quello che vi consiglio per il momento è: non parlate, signor Landless. Troverete un amico ad aspettarvi sulla strada principale, si è allontanato nella direzione opposta quando ci siamo divisi in due gruppi. È molto meglio che non diciate nulla fino a quando non lo incontrerete. Portate con voi quel bastone. Andiamo!”
Completamente confuso, Neville guardò intorno a sé senza dire una parola. Camminando tra i due uomini che lo tenevano per le braccia, proseguì come in un >sogno, fino a quando non rientrarono sulla strada principale e si trovarono in mezzo a un piccolo gruppo di persone. Gli uomini che si erano girati indietro facevano parte di quel gruppo; le figure centrali erano il signor Jasper e il signor Crisparkle. I due uomini che lo accompagnavano lo portarono fino al “Minor Canon” e lì lo lasciarono andare, come segno di rispetto verso quel gentiluomo.
“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.
“Che cosa sta succedendo, signore? Che problema c’è? Mi sembra di aver perso i sensi!”, gridò Neville mentre il gruppo si riuniva intorno a lui.
“Dove è mio nipote?” chiese il signor Jasper, in preda al panico.
“Dove è tuo nipote?”, ripeté Neville. “Perché mi chiedi questo?”
“Vi chiedo questo,” ribatté Jasper, “perché siete stata l’ultima persona ad essere con lui, e lui non si trova da nessuna parte.”
“Non si trova!” esclamò Neville, inorridito.
“Resta, resta,” disse il signor Crisparkle. “Lasciami fare, Jasper. Signor Neville, sei confuso; riprenditi; è di grande importanza che tu ti ricomponga; ascoltami attentamente.”
Cercherò di farlo, signore, ma sembro pazzo.
“Sei andato via con il signor Jasper la scorsa notte insieme a Edwin Drood?”
“Sì, davvero.”
“Alle quali ore?”
“Era alle dodici in punto?” chiese Neville, portandosi una mano alla testa confusa e guardando verso Jasper per cercare aiuto.
“Esattamente,” disse il signor Crisparkle; “l’ora che il signor Jasper mi ha già indicato. Siete andati insieme al >fiume?”
“Senza dubbio. Per vedere l’effetto del >vento laggiù.”
“Cosa è successo dopo? Quanto tempo sei rimasto lì?”
“Circa dieci minuti; non di più. Poi siamo andati insieme a casa tua, e lui si è congedato da me alla porta.”
“Ha detto che sarebbe tornato di nuovo al fiume?”
“No. Ha detto che sarebbe tornato subito indietro.”
Gli spettatori si guardarono l’un l’altro, e poi guardarono il signor Crisparkle. A lui il signor Jasper, che aveva osservato attentamente Neville, disse con voce bassa, chiara e sospetta: “Che cos’sono quelle macchie sul suo abito?”
Tutti gli sguardi si rivolsero verso il sangue sui suoi vestiti.
“Ecco le stesse macchie su questo bastone!” disse Jasper, prendendolo dalla mano dell’uomo che lo teneva. “So che è suo; l’ha portato la scorsa notte. Cosa significa tutto ciò?”
“Nel nome di Dio, dimmi cosa significa, Neville!” insistette il signor Crisparkle.
“Quell’uomo e io,” disse Neville, indicando il suo defunto avversario, “abbiamo appena avuto una colluttazione per quel bastone; potete vedere le stesse ferite anche su di lui, signore. Cosa dovevo pensare quando mi sono trovato assalito da otto persone? Come avrei potuto immaginare la vera ragione, se nessuno me la spiegava?”
Ammisero che avevano ritenuto discreto rimanere in silenzio e che la lotta fosse effettivamente avvenuta. Eppure proprio quegli uomini che l’avevano vista guardavano con preoccupazione quelle macchie che l’aria fredda e gelida aveva già asciugato.
“Dobbiamo tornare, Neville,” disse il signor Crisparkle; “certamente sarai felice di poter tornare per difenderti, vero?”
“Certo, signore.”
“Il signor Landless camminerà al mio fianco”, continuò il Minore Canon, guardandosi intorno. “Vieni, Neville!”
Partirono per il ritorno a piedi; gli altri, ad eccezione di uno, li seguirono a distanze diverse. Jasper camminava dall’altra parte di Neville e non lasciò mai quella posizione. Rimase in silenzio mentre il signor Crisparkle ripeteva più volte le sue domande precedenti, e mentre Neville rispondeva ancora una volta; inoltre, mentre entrambi avanzavano alcune congetture esplicative, lui rimase ostinatamente muto. Il modo di fare del signor Crisparkle lo spingeva direttamente a partecipare alla discussione, ma nessun tentativo riuscì a far muovere il suo volto immobile. Quando si avvicinarono alla città e il Minor Canon suggerì che potesse essere opportuno recarsi subito dal Sindaco, lui annuì con decisione; ma non pronunciò una parola fino a quando non entrarono nel salotto del signor Sapsea.
Il signor Sapsea, venuto a conoscenza dal signor Crisparkle delle circostanze in base alle quali desideravano rilasciare una dichiarazione volontaria davanti a lui, romse il silenzio dichiarando di affidarsi completamente, in termini umani, alla perspicacia del signor Sapsea. Non esisteva alcuna ragione plausibile per cui suo nipote avesse potuto improvvisamente fuggire, a meno che il signor Sapsea non ne fornisse una; in tal caso, lui stesso avrebbe atteso ulteriori spiegazioni. Non c’era alcuna probabilità che il ragazzo fosse tornato al fiume e vi fosse annegato per caso nell’oscurità, a meno che il signor Sapsea non ritenesse possibile tale ipotesi; anche in quel caso, avrebbe comunque atteso. Si dichiarava completamente innocente di ogni sospetto orribile, a meno che il signor Sapsea non considerasse tali sospetti inevitabili, data la natura delle ultime relazioni del ragazzo con il suo compagno prima della scomparsa (relazioni non molto cordiali), e anche in quel caso avrebbe atteso ulteriori chiarimenti. Il proprio stato mentale, turbato da dubbi e preoccupazioni angosciose, non era certo affidabile; ma quello del signor Sapsea sì.
Il signor Sapsea espresse il suo parere secondo cui la situazione sembrava molto grave; in breve (e in quel momento i suoi occhi si posarono con attenzione sul volto di Neville), si trattava di una questione assolutamente “antinglese”. Dopo aver espresso questo concetto, si immerse in un labirinto ancora più complesso e privo di senso di sciocchezze, del tutto degno di un sindaco. E ne emerse con la “geniale” conclusione che uccidere un essere umano significava togliere qualcosa che non ci appartiene. Esitò persino se dovesse immediatamente emettere l’ordine di arrestare Neville Landless, sotto circostanze di sospetto “grave”; avrebbe potuto farlo, se non fosse stato per le indignate proteste del canonico minore, il quale si offrì di garantire che il giovane rimanesse nella propria casa e fosse sempre a disposizione su richiesta. A quel punto, il signor Sapsea intendeva chiaramente suggerire che il fiume dovesse essere dragato, che le sue rive dovessero essere ispezionate attentamente, che i dettagli sulla scomparsa del ragazzo venissero inviati in tutte le località circostanti e a Londra, e che venissero distribuiti manifesti e annunci per chiedere a Edwin Drood, qualora si fosse allontanato dalla casa e dalla compagnia di suo zio per qualche motivo sconosciuto, di avere pietà della profonda sofferenza di quel caro parente e di fargli sapere che era ancora vivo. Il significato delle parole del signor Sapsea fu compreso perfettamente; immediatamente furono intraprese le necessarie misure in tutti questi sensi.
Sarebbe difficile stabilire chi dei due fosse più oppresso dal terrore e dalla meraviglia: Neville Landless o John Jasper. Tuttavia, la posizione di Jasper lo costringeva ad agire, mentre quella di Neville lo obbligava a rimanere passivo; in realtà, non c’era nulla su cui scegliere tra loro. Entrambi erano schiacciati e distrutti.
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.”
[Illustration: 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.
Con la prima luce dell’alba seguente, gli uomini iniziarono i lavori sul >fiume, mentre altri – per lo più volontari – esaminavano le rive. La ricerca proseguì per tutta la giornata: sul >fiume si utilizzarono barche, pali, reti; sulla riva fangosa e piena di canne, scarponi da lavoro, accette, pale, corde, >cani e ogni altro mezzo possibile. Anche di notte, il >fiume era illuminato dalle lanterne e dai fuochi; in piccoli corsi d’acqua lontani, dove la marea cambiava direzione, c’erano gruppi di osservatori che ascoltavano il rumore dell’acqua e cercavano eventuali tracce del Edwin Drood; anche in remote zone costiere rocciose o in punti isolati dove l’acqua scorreva velocemente, al sorgere del giorno si vedevano luci e figure vestite in modo semplice. Ma di Edwin Drood non si trovò alcuna traccia.
Per tutto quel giorno, la ricerca continuò. Ora su barca e barchetta; ora a terra, tra i salici, o camminando nella fanghiola, tra pali, stecche e pietre taglienti in quelle zone basse dove soltanto impronte d’acqua e segnali di forme strane apparivano come spettri, John Jasper lavorò sodo. Ma invano: ancora nessuna traccia di Edwin Drood che tornasse alla luce del sole.
Ammettendo di nuovo le sue sveglie per quella notte, affinché occhi attenti potessero osservare ogni cambiamento della marea, tornò a casa estenuato. In disordine, coperto di fango ormai asciutto e con gran parte dei suoi vestiti ridotti a stracci, appena si lasciò cadere nella poltrona, il signor Grewgious gli apparve davanti.
“Queste sono notizie strane,” disse il signor Grewgious.
“Notizie strane e inquietanti.”
Jasper aveva semplicemente alzato i suoi pesanti occhi per dirlo, e ora li abbassò di nuovo mentre si abbandonava, stanco, su un lato della sua poltrona.
Il signor Grewgious si sistemò i capelli e il viso, poi rimase in piedi a guardare il fuoco.
“Come sta il tuo paziente?” chiese Jasper, dopo un po’, con una voce debole e stanca.
povera piccola. Si può solo immaginare in che condizioni si trovi.
“Hai visto sua sorella?” chiese Jasper, come prima.
“Di chi?”
La brevità della domanda retorica, e il modo freddo e lento con cui, secondo le sue parole, il signor Grewgious spostava lo sguardo dalla fiamma sul viso del suo compagno, in qualsiasi altro momento avrebbero potuto risultare esasperanti. Nella sua depressione ed estenuazione, Jasper aprì semplicemente gli occhi e disse: “Quelli del giovane sospettato.”
“Lo sospettate?” chiese il signor Grewgious.
Non so cosa pensare. Non riesco a prendere una decisione.
“Nemmeno io,” disse il signor Grewgious. “Ma poiché lo avete definito il giovane sospettato, ho pensato che aveste già preso una decisione. Ho appena lasciato la signorina Landless.”
Illustrazione: Il signor Grewgious ha i suoi sospetti
“#Qual è la sua condizione?”
“Una totale assenza di sospetti, e una fiducia illimitata nel proprio fratello.”
“Povera creatura!”
“Tuttavia,” proseguì il signor Grewgious, “non sono venuto per parlare di lei. Sono qui per parlare della mia pupilla. Ho qualcosa da dirvi che vi sorprenderà. Almeno, mi ha sorpreso.”
Jasper, con un sospiro stanco, si girò pigramente sulla sedia.
“Devo rimandarlo a domani?” disse il signor Grewgious. “State attento: vi avverto che penso che vi sorprenderà!”
Nel vedere il signor Grewgious accarezzarsi di nuovo la testa e fissare ripetutamente il fuoco, gli occhi di John Jasper mostrarono maggiore attenzione e concentrazione; ora, però, con un’espressione decisa e determinata.
“Che cos’è?” chiese Jasper, alzandosi dritto sulla sedia.
“Certo,” disse il signor Grewgious, con un tono provocatoriamente lento e pensieroso, mentre fissava il fuoco: “Avrei potuto capirlo prima; lei mi aveva dato l’occasione. Ma sono davvero una persona troppo rigida e convenzionale; non me ne è mai venuta in mente l’idea; ho preso tutto per scontato.”
“Che cos’è?” chiese nuovamente Jasper.
Il signor Grewgious, aprendo e chiudendo alternativamente le palme delle mani per riscaldarle davanti al fuoco, lo fissava di sbieco senza mai cambiare né il proprio comportamento né lo sguardo, e continuò a rispondere.
“Questo giovane coppia, il giovane che ha perso la strada e Miss Rosa, mia protetta. Nonostante siano da tempo fidanzati, nonostante riconoscano da tempo tale legame, e nonostante siano così vicini al matrimonio, ”
Il signor Grewgious vide un volto bianco che lo fissava, due labbra bianche che tremavano, e due mani sporche che stringevano i bracci della poltrona; se non fosse stato per quelle mani, avrebbe potuto pensare di non aver mai visto quel volto prima.
“—Questo giovane coppia arrivò gradualmente alla conclusione (raggiunta, credo, in modo piuttosto equilibrato da entrambi i lati) che sarebbero stati più felici e avrebbero vissuto una vita migliore, sia nel presente che nel futuro, se fossero rimasti amici affettuosi, o meglio ancora, fratello e sorella.”
Il signor Grewgious vide un viso di colore piombo nella poltrona, e sulla sua superficie apparivano terribili gocce o bolle, come se fosse fatto di acciaio.
“Questo giovane coppia giunse infine alla sana decisione di condividere le proprie scoperte in modo aperto, sensato e tenero. Si incontravano appositamente per questo scopo. Dopo alcune conversazioni innocenti e generose, concordarono nel porre fine, per sempre, alle loro relazioni attuali e future.”
Il signor Grewgious vide una figura orribile alzarsi dalla poltrona, con la bocca spalancata, e sollevare le mani aperte verso la testa.
“Uno di questa giovane coppia, e cioè vostro nipote, temendo tuttavia che la vostra affettuosa attenzione verso di lui potesse essere amaramente delusa da una deviazione così marcata rispetto alla vita che aveva previsto per sé, si è trattenuto dal rivelarvi il segreto per alcuni giorni, lasciando che fossi io a farlo quando sarei venuto a parlarvi, e lui ormai se n’era andato.”
Il signor Grewgious vide quella figura orribile alzare la testa, afferrarsi i capelli con le mani e allontanarsi da lui contorcendosi.
“Ora ho detto tutto ciò che volevo dire: tranne che questa giovane coppia si è separata, con determinazione, sebbene non senza lacrime e dolore, nella sera in cui li avete visti insieme per l’ultima volta.”
Il signor Grewgious sentì un terribile strillo, ma non vide alcuna figura spaventosa, né seduta né in piedi; non vide nulla se non un mucchio di vestiti lacerati e bagnati sul pavimento.
Anche in quel momento non cambiò la sua azione: aprì e chiuse le palme delle mani per riscaldarle, poi guardò ciò che vi era dentro.
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.
capitolo XVI.
DEDICATO
Quando John Jasper si riprese dal suo attacco o svenimento, si trovò assistito da Mr. e Mrs. Tope, che il suo visitatore aveva chiamato apposta per questo scopo. Il visitatore, dall’aspetto rigido e impettoso, sedeva immobile su una sedia, con le mani sulle ginocchia, osservando la sua guarigione.
“Ecco! Ora siete davvero in ottima forma, signore,” disse la signora Tope con le lacrime agli occhi;
“eravate completamente esausto, e non c’è da meravigliarsi!”
“Un uomo,” disse il signor Grewgious, con quel suo solito tono da chi ripete una lezione a memoria, “non può permettersi che il proprio riposo venga interrotto, la propria mente venga crudelmente tormentata e il proprio corpo esaurito dalla fatica, senza rischiare di consumarsi completamente.”
“La mia >paura vi ha spaventati?” si scusò debolmente Jasper mentre lo aiutavano a sedersi nella sua poltrona comoda.
“Assolutamente no, grazie,” rispose il signor Grewgious.
“Sei troppo premuroso.”
“Assolutamente no, grazie,” rispose di nuovo il signor Grewgious.
“Dovete assolutamente bere un po’ di vino, signore,” disse la signora Tope, “e anche la marmellata che avevo preparato per voi. Non avete voluto nemmeno provarla a mezzogiorno, nonostante vi avessi avvertito delle conseguenze. E non avete nemmeno fatto colazione. Dovete assolutamente mangiare anche una ala di pollo arrosto. Anche se è stato riscaldato venti volte, significa che è stato riscaldato almeno una volta. Tutto sarà pronto in cinque minuti. E questo gentile signore probabilmente verrà a vedere se lo mangiate.”
Questo gentiluomo rispose con un grugnito: poteva significare sì, o no, o qualsiasi cosa, o niente del tutto. La signora Tope avrebbe trovato questa risposta estremamente enigmatica, ma la sua attenzione era distratta dal servizio da tavola in corso.
“Prenderai qualcosa con me?” chiese Jasper mentre il panno veniva steso.
“Non riuscivo nemmeno a mandare giù un boccone, grazie,” rispose il signor Grewgious.
Jasper mangiava e beveva quasi con voracità. Unito alla fretta con cui lo faceva, c’era un’evidente indifferenza verso il sapore di ciò che consumava; questo suggeriva che mangiasse e bevesse più per rafforzarsi in caso di ulteriori difficoltà, piuttosto che per soddisfare i propri desideri. Nel frattempo, il signor Grewgious sedeva dritto, con un’espressione impassibile sul viso, e mostrava una sorta di cortesia rigida e imperturbabile; come se, in risposta a qualche invito a parlare, avesse detto: “Non potrei mai formulare nemmeno la più banale osservazione su qualsiasi argomento. Grazie.”
“Lo sai,” disse Jasper, dopo aver spinto via il piatto e il bicchiere e essersi seduto a riflettere per qualche minuto: “lo sai che trovo un po’ di conforto nella comunicazione con cui mi hai così sorpreso?”
“Davvero?” rispose il signor Grewgious, aggiungendo praticamente in modo esplicito quella frase non detta: “Io no, grazie!”
“Dopo essermi ripresa dallo shock causato da una notizia riguardante mio caro figlio, così completamente inaspettata e così distruttiva per tutti i ‘castelli’ che avevo costruito per lui. E dopo aver avuto il tempo di rifletterci sopra. Sì.”
“Mi farà piacere raccogliere i vostri resti,” disse il signor Grewgious in tono asciutto.
“Non esiste forse, o esiste davvero, se mi sto ingannando, ditemelo pure, per poter alleviare il mio dolore. Non esiste forse, o esiste davvero, una >speranza che, trovandosi in questa nuova situazione e diventando consapevole del peso imbarazzante delle spiegazioni necessarie, riesca a evitare tali difficoltà e a trovare una via d’uscita?”
“Qualcosa del genere potrebbe essere possibile,” disse il signor Grewgious, riflettendo.
“Una cosa del genere è già successa. Ho letto di casi in cui persone, invece di affrontare sette giorni di stupore e dover rispondere delle proprie azioni davanti a persone oziose e impertinenti, hanno semplicemente deciso di andarsene e da allora non si sono più sentite.”
“Credo che cose del genere siano già accadute,” disse il signor Grewgious, continuando a riflettere.
“Quando non avevo, e non potevo avere, alcun sospetto,” proseguì Jasper, seguendo con avidità questa nuova pista, “che quel caro ragazzo scomparso mi avesse nascosto qualcosa, soprattutto una cosa così importante come questa, quale luce poteva esserci in tutto questo buio? Quando pensavo che la sua futura moglie fosse qui e che il suo matrimonio fosse ormai imminente, come avrei potuto anche solo considerare la possibilità che lasciasse volontariamente questo posto in un modo così inspiegabile, capriccioso e crudele? Ma ora che so ciò che mi avete detto, non esiste forse qualche piccola speranza? Se ha sparito di sua spontanea volontà, la sua scomparsa non è forse più comprensibile e meno crudele? Il fatto che sia appena partito dalla vostra custodia rappresenta in sé una sorta di motivo per la sua decisione. Certo, questo non rende meno crudele la sua misteriosa sparizione per me; ma almeno la riduce un po’ della crudeltà verso di lei.”
Il signor Grewgious non poté fare a meno di accordarsi con questo.
“E anche per quanto riguarda me,” continuò Jasper, seguendo ancora con fervore quella nuova strada, “lui sapeva che saresti venuto da me; sapeva che ti era stato affidato il compito di dirmi ciò che mi hai detto; se il tuo intervento ha suscitato in me nuove riflessioni nel mio cervello confuso, è logico che, partendo dalle stesse premesse, avrebbe potuto prevedere le conclusioni a cui sarei giunto. Ammettiamo pure che le abbia previste. E anche quella crudeltà verso di me – e chi sono io, dopotutto! John Jasper, maestro di musica, svanisce!”
Ancora una volta, il signor Grewgious non poté fare a meno di concordare.
“Ho avuto le mie diffidenze, terribili diffidenze,” disse Jasper; “ma la tua rivelazione, per quanto sorprendente all’inizio, mi ha dimostrato che il mio stesso caro ragazzo aveva dei dubbi nei miei confronti, io che lo amavo così tanto. Questo riaccende in me una >speranza. Non la spegni quando la esprimo, anzi ammetti che sia una speranza ragionevole. Comincio a credere che possa essere vero: forse è scomparso di sua volontà tra di noi, e forse è ancora vivo e in salute.”
“In quel momento entrò il signor Crisparkle. A cui il signor Jasper ripeté, ”
“Comincio a credere che sia possibile che sia scomparso di sua volontà e che forse sia ancora vivo e in buona salute.”
Il signor Crisparkle si sedette e chiese: “Perché mai?” Il signor Jasper ripeté gli argomenti che aveva appena esposto. Se questi fossero stati meno plausibili di quanto in realtà erano, la mente del buon Minor Canon sarebbe stata già pronta ad accettarli come scuse per l’infortunato suo allievo. Ma anche lui attribuiva grande importanza al fatto che il giovane scomparso, poco prima della sua sparizione, fosse finito in una situazione nuova e imbarazzante rispetto a tutte le persone a conoscenza dei suoi piani e delle sue faccende; e questo aspetto gli sembrava presentare la questione sotto una luce diversa.
“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.
“Ho detto al signor Sapsea, quando lo abbiamo ricevuto,” disse Jasper, poiché effettivamente l’aveva fatto: “che non c’era alcun litigio o dissidio tra i due giovani durante l’ultima loro riunione. Sappiamo tutti che il loro primo incontro è stato sfortunatamente molto poco amichevole; ma la volta successiva, quando si sono incontrati a casa mia, tutto è andato tranquillamente e senza problemi. Mio caro ragazzo non era nel suo solito umore; sembrava depresso, me ne sono accorto. E ora, dato che so che c’era una ragione particolare per la sua depressione, dovrò sicuramente rifletterci ancora di più.”
“Prego il Cielo che tutto vada così!” esclamò il signor Crisparkle.
“Prego il Cielo che le cose vadano così!” ripeté Jasper. “Voi sapete – e anche il signor Grewgious dovrebbe saperlo ormai – che ho sviluppato un profondo avversione per il signor Neville Landless a causa del suo comportamento furioso in quella prima occasione. Voi sapete che sono venuto da voi, estremamente preoccupato per mio figlio, temendo che potesse commettere atti di violenza. Ho persino annotato tutto nel mio Diario e vi ho mostrato quelle pagine, perché avevo oscure premonizioni riguardo a lui. Il signor Grewgious dovrebbe conoscere tutta la verità. Non deve essere informato solo di una parte dei fatti, mentre dell’altra viene tenuto all’oscuro. Spero che sia abbastanza gentile da comprendere che le informazioni che mi ha fornito hanno influenzato in qualche modo la mia opinione, nonostante prima di questo strano evento io avessi già un’opinione molto negativa su quel giovane.”
Questa equità turbava molto il Minor Canon. Sentiva di non essere altrettanto aperto e onesto nelle proprie azioni. Si rimproverava amaramente per aver fino ad allora soppresso due episodi di violenta ira da parte di Neville verso Edwin Drood, nonché l’esplosione di gelosia che, ne era certo, si era scatenata nel cuore di Neville nei suoi confronti. Era convinto dell’innocenza di Neville riguardo a quella brutta scomparsa; eppure così tante piccole circostanze sembravano incriminarlo, che temeva che aggiungere altre due prove al loro insieme potesse rivelarsi fatale. Era tra le persone più oneste del mondo; ma nel suo cuore si dibatteva con angoscia se il fatto di decidere ora di rivelare questi due frammenti di verità non equivalesse, in realtà, a costruire una menzogna al posto della verità.
Tuttavia, davanti a lui c’era un esempio da seguire; non esitò più. Rivolgendosi a Mr. Grewgious – che, grazie alle informazioni che aveva fornito sul mistero, sembrava ora una figura autorevole (e Mr. Grewgious, di solito così rigido e severo, apparve ancora più imponente in quella situazione inaspettata) – Mr. Crisparkle testimoniò del rigoroso senso della giustizia di Mr. Jasper, esprimendo la propria totale fiducia nel fatto che il proprio allievo sarebbe stato completamente scagionato da qualsiasi sospetto. Ammise inoltre che la sua stima per quel giovane signore era nata nonostante sapesse che il suo temperamento era estremamente irascibile e che nutriva un profondo rancore verso il nipote di Mr. Jasper, proprio perché romanticamente si immaginava che quest’ultimo fosse innamorato della stessa giovane donna. La reazione violenta di Mr. Jasper dimostrò ancora una volta quanto quelle parole fossero inaspettate e scioccanti: impallidì, ma ribadì che avrebbe continuato a credere nella speranza offertagli da Mr. Grewgious; e che, se non si trovava traccia del suo caro ragazzo, il che avrebbe potuto significare che fosse stato rapito, avrebbe conservato fino all’ultimo istante l’idea che potesse essersi allontanato di sua spontanea volontà.
Ora risultò che il signor Crisparkle, lasciando questa conferenza ancora molto preoccupato e profondamente angosciato per il giovane che considerava quasi un prigioniero nella sua stessa >casa, fece una memorabile passeggiata di notte.
Camminò fino a Cloisterham Weir.
Lo faceva spesso, quindi non c’era nulla di insolito nei suoi passi che lo portassero in quella direzione. Ma la sua mente era così assorbita da impedirgli di pianificare qualsiasi passeggiata o di prestare attenzione agli oggetti che gli capitavano davanti; perciò, il suo primo segnale che si trovava vicino al dighe fu il suono dell’acqua che cadeva proprio lì vicino.
“Come sono arrivato qui?” fu il suo primo pensiero quando si fermò.
“Perché sono venuto qui?” fu la sua seconda domanda.
Poi si fermò ad ascoltare attentamente il suono dell’acqua. Gli tornò in mente un passaggio che aveva letto, riguardante voci leggere che pronunciavano i nomi delle persone. Quel suono gli giunse all’orecchio così improvvisamente e inaspettatamente che lo scacciò via con la mano, come se fosse qualcosa di tangibile.
Era la luce delle stelle. Il dighe era situato a due miglia di distanza dal punto in cui i giovani si erano recati per osservare la tempesta. Nessuna ricerca era stata effettuata in quella zona, poiché a quell’ora della notte di vigilia di Natale la marea scorreva con forza verso il basso; i luoghi più probabili per trovare un corpo, in caso fosse accaduto un incidente fatale in tali circostanze, si trovavano tutti – sia quando la marea si ritirava che quando tornava ad affluire – tra quel punto e il mare. L’acqua superava il dighe con il suo solito rumore, in una fredda notte illuminata dalle stelle; tuttavia, il signor Crisparkle aveva la strana sensazione che ci fosse qualcosa di insolito in quel luogo.
Si chiese: Che cos’è? Dove si trova? Mettiamolo alla prova. A quale senso si riferisce?
Non rilevò nulla di insolito. Ascoltò di nuovo, e il suo udito confermò che l’acqua scorreva sopra la diga, con quel suono tipico di una fredda notte sotto la luce delle stelle.
Sapendo molto bene che il mistero che assillava la sua mente poteva di per sé conferire a quel luogo quell’atmosfera inquietante, strinse i suoi occhi acuti nel tentativo di vedere più chiaramente. Si avvicinò al cancello e osservò attentamente le sue colonne e i suoi tronchi ben noti. Non c’era nulla di insolito o sospetto. Ma decise che sarebbe tornato presto la mattina seguente.
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.
Il Weir attraversava il suo sonno interrotto, per tutta la notte, e al sorgere del sole lui era di nuovo lì. Era una mattina fredda e luminosa. L’intera scena davanti a lui, nel punto in cui si era trovato la notte precedente, era chiaramente visibile nei suoi minimi dettagli. L’aveva osservata attentamente per alcuni minuti, quando improvvisamente i suoi occhi furono attratti da un particolare punto.
Si girò le spalle al Weir e guardò lontano, verso il cielo e la terra; poi riportò lo sguardo su quel punto preciso. Subito lo riconobbe di nuovo e fissò intensamente quell’immagine. Non poteva perderlo di vista ora, anche se era solo un puntino nel paesaggio. Lo affascinava profondamente. Iniziò a togliersi il cappotto: gli sembrava che in quel punto, in un angolo del Weir, qualcosa brillasse. Qualcosa che non si muoveva, che non veniva portato via dalle gocce d’acqua scintillanti, ma rimaneva fermo lì.
Si assicurò che fosse proprio così, si tolse i vestiti e si tuffò nell’acqua ghiacciata, nuotando verso quel punto. Arrampicandosi sui tronchi, trovò un orologio d’oro intrappolato tra le loro fessure, con la scritta “E. D.” incisa sul dorso.
Portò l’orologio in banca, nuotò di nuovo verso il Weir, lo scalò e poi si tuffò. Conosceva ogni anfratto e ogni angolo di quelle profondità; continuò a tuffarsi, fino a quando non riuscì più a sopportare il freddo. Il suo obiettivo era trovare il corpo. Ma trovò soltanto un fermaglio da camicia impigliato nel fango e nella melma.
Con queste scoperte tornò a Cloisterham e, portando con sé Neville Landless, andò direttamente dal Sindaco. Chiamarono il signor Jasper; l’orologio da tasca e il fermaglio furono identificati, Neville fu trattenuto in custodia, e iniziarono a diffondersi le voci più assurde e malvagie su di lui. Era di quella natura vendicativa e violenta; se non fosse stato per sua sorella minore, l’unica che aveva un ascendente su di lui e di cui non si poteva mai fidare quando non era sotto i suoi occhi, probabilmente avrebbe commesso omicidi ogni giorno. Prima di arrivare in Inghilterra aveva fatto frustare a morte diversi “Nativi”: persone nomadi che ora si trovavano in Asia, ora in Africa, ora nelle Indie Occidentali, ora al Polo Nord. A Cloisterham si pensava che fossero sempre neri, sempre di grande virtù, che si chiamassero sempre “Me” e tutti gli altri “Massa” o “Missie” (a seconda del sesso), e che leggessero opuscoli di significato oscuro in inglese stentato, ma in realtà li capivano perfettamente nella loro lingua madre. Aveva quasi fatto impazzire di dolore la signora Crisparkle, (Queste espressioni erano state usate dal signor Sapsea.) Aveva ripetutamente minacciato di uccidere il signor Crisparkle, e in realtà aveva minacciato di uccidere tutti, diventando di fatto l’ultimo uomo malvagio che esistesse. Era stato portato a Cloisterham da un eminente filantropo, ma perché? Perché quel filantropo aveva dichiarato apertamente: “Devo ai miei simili che quest’uomo venga, con le parole di Bentham, collocato dove rappresenta il maggiore pericolo per il numero più piccolo di persone.”
Quei colpi sparati con le armi da fuoco di precisione potrebbero non averlo colpito in un punto vitale. Ma doveva affrontare anche il fuoco coordinato e ben diretto di armi da fuoco altrettanto precise. Era noto che aveva minacciato quel giovane sfortunato, e, secondo quanto affermava il suo fedele amico e tutore che si era impegnato molto per lui, esisteva un motivo profondo di ostilità nei suoi confronti. Un motivo creato da lui stesso. Si era armato di un’arma offensiva per quella notte fatale, e la mattina seguente, dopo aver fatto i preparativi per partire, era uscito presto. Fu trovato con tracce di sangue addosso; forse quelle tracce erano davvero dovute alle cause che lui stesso aveva descritto, ma non necessariamente. Quando fu emesso un mandato di perquisizione della sua stanza, dei suoi vestiti e di tutto ciò che possedeva, si scoprì che aveva distrutto tutti i suoi documenti e riorganizzato tutte le sue cose proprio nel pomeriggio del suo scomparire. L’orologio trovato presso il ponte fu identificato dal gioielliere come quello che lui stesso aveva caricato per Edwin Drood alle due e venti di quel pomeriggio; l’orologio si era fermato prima di essere gettato nell’fiume, e il gioielliere era certo che non fosse mai stato ricaricato. Questo avrebbe potuto confermare l’ipotesi che l’orologio gli fosse stato rubato poco dopo che aveva lasciato la casa di Mr. Jasper a mezzanotte, insieme all’ultima persona che lo aveva visto. E che poi fosse stato gettato via dopo essere stato trattenuto per alcune ore. Perché gettarlo via? Se era stato assassinato e il suo corpo era stato così abilmente alterato o nascosto, sicuramente l’assassino avrebbe cercato di eliminare dall’corpo gli oggetti più duraturi, più noti e più facilmente riconoscibili. Quell’orologio e quel fermaglio da camicia, appunto. Per quanto riguarda le possibilità che avesse avuto di gettarli nel fiume, se era davvero il sospettato, queste possibilità erano molte. Era stato visto da molte persone mentre vagava in quella zona della città, anzi, in tutte le zone della città, in modo disperato e apparentemente confuso. Per quanto riguarda la scelta del luogo dove gettare gli oggetti incriminanti, ovviamente era meglio che venissero trovati da chiunque, piuttosto che rimanere con lui o essere in suo possesso. Quanto all’incontro conciliatorio tra i due giovani, poco si poteva dire a favore di young Landless. L’incontro, infatti, era stato proposto non da lui, ma da Mr. Crisparkle, e questi lo aveva anche incoraggiato. Chi poteva sapere con quanta riluttanza, o in quale stato d’animo, il suo “pupillo costretto” vi fosse andato? Più si indagava sul suo caso, più diventava debole sotto ogni aspetto. Anche l’ipotesi che il giovane scomparso fosse fuggito sembrava improbabile, considerando le parole della ragazza con cui aveva appena parlato. Cosa aveva detto, con grande sincerità e tristezza, quando era stata interrogata? Che lui aveva pianificato con lei di aspettare l’arrivo del suo tutore, Mr. Grewgious. Eppure, era scomparso prima che quel gentiluomo arrivasse.
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.”
Sulla base di queste sospetti, Neville fu trattenuto e successivamente rilasciato; le ricerche continuarono in ogni direzione, e Jasper lavorò giorno e notte senza ottenere alcun risultato. Poiché non venne trovata alcuna prova che confermasse la morte dell’uomo scomparso, divenne inevitabile liberare la persona sospettata di esserne responsabile. Neville fu quindi rilasciato. Tuttavia, ne derivò una conseguenza che il signor Crisparkle aveva previsto con troppa chiarezza: Neville dovette lasciare quel luogo, poiché tutti lo evitavano e lo scacciavano. Anche se non fosse stato così, la cara vecchia pastorella di porcellana si sarebbe angosciata a morte per suo figlio, e l’intera comunità avrebbe vissuto nel terrore all’idea di avere un simile “inquilino”. In ogni caso, l’autorità a cui il Minor Canon si era rivolto ufficialmente avrebbe risolto la questione.
“Signor Crisparkle,” disse il Decano, “la giustizia umana può sbagliare, ma deve agire secondo le sue conoscenze. I tempi in cui era possibile cercare rifugio sono finiti. Questo giovane non può più trovar rifugio presso di noi.”
“Volete dire che deve lasciare la mia >casa, signore?”
“Signor Crisparkle,” rispose il prudente Decano, “non rivendico alcuna autorità nella sua >casa. Mi limito a discutere con lei della dolorosa necessità alla quale si trova di privare questo giovane delle grandi opportunità offerte dai suoi consigli e dalla sua guida.”
“È molto deplorevole, signore,” si espresse il signor Crisparkle.
“Assolutamente sì,” concordò il Decano.
“E se fosse necessario, ” Il signor Crisparkle esitò.
“Come purtroppo tu ritieni,” rispose il Decano.
Il signor Crisparkle si inchinò in segno di sottomissione: “È difficile giudicare in anticipo la sua situazione, signore, ma sono consapevole che, ”
“Esattamente. Perfettamente. Come dite voi, signor Crisparkle,” intervenne il Decano, annuendo dolcemente, “non c’è nulla altro da fare. Nessun >dubbio, nessun >dubbio. Non esiste altra alternativa, come ha già capito il vostro buon senso.”
“Sono completamente soddisfatto della sua perfetta innocenza, signore, tuttavia, ”
“N-no-no!” disse il Decano, con un tono più confidenziale, guardandosi intorno leggermente, “Di solito non lo direi. Non generalmente. Ci sono troppe sospetti che lo riguardano. No, penso che comunque non lo direi, in generale.”
Il signor Crisparkle si inchinò di nuovo.
“Forse non è nel nostro stile essere dei partigiani,” continuò il Decano, “non dei partigiani. Noi cleri manteniamo il cuore caldo e la mente fredda, e seguiamo una via di mezzo saggiamente.”
“Spero che non vi opporrete, signore, se dichiaro pubblicamente e con fermezza che egli tornerà qui non appena possano sorgere nuove sospetti o venire alla luce nuovi elementi in questa questione straordinaria.”
“Assolutamente no,” rispose il Decano. “Eppure, sa, non credo che lo farei,” disse, mettendo un’enfasi molto netta su quelle due parole: “Non credo che lo dichiarerei in modo deciso. Dirlo? Sì, ma in modo deciso? No. Non credo proprio. A dire il vero, signor Crisparkle, per mantenere i nostri cuori caldi e la nostra mente fredda, noi preti non dobbiamo fare nulla in modo deciso.”
Sapevo che Minor Canon Row non conosceva più Neville Landless; e lui andava dove voleva, o poteva, con una macchia sul suo nome e sulla sua reputazione.
Fu solo allora che John Jasper riprese in silenzio il suo posto nel coro. Pallido e con gli occhi rossi, era evidente che le sue speranze lo avevano abbandonato; il suo umore cupo era tornato, e tutti i suoi peggiori timori si erano riacquistati. Un giorno o due dopo, mentre si toglieva i vestiti, prese il proprio Diario da una tasca del cappotto, sfogliò le pagine e, con uno sguardo significativo e senza pronunciare una parola, consegnò quella pagina al signor Crisparkle perché la leggesse.
“Mio caro ragazzo è stato assassinato. La scoperta dell’orologio e del fermaglio da cravatta mi convincono che sia stato ucciso quella notte, e che i suoi gioielli siano stati presi per impedire che potessero essere utilizzati per identificarlo. Tutte le speranze ingannevoli che avevo fondato sulla sua separazione dalla sua futura moglie vanno ora spazzate via. Periscono di fronte a questa scoperta fatale. Ora giuro, e registro questo giuramento su questa pagina: non discuterò mai più di questo mistero con alcuna persona, finché non avrò in mano la vera soluzione. Non allenterò mai le mie ricerche né il mio riserbo. Farò sì che l’assassino del mio caro ragazzo morto venga punito. E mi dedicherò personalmente alla sua distruzione.”
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.”
capitolo XVII.
Filantropia, professionale e non professionale
Mezzo anno era passato, e il signor Crisparkle sedeva in una sala d’attesa presso gli uffici principali di “Haven of Philanthropy” a Londra, in attesa di essere ricevuto dal signor Honeythunder.
Nei suoi giorni universitari, durante gli allenamenti sportivi, il signor Crisparkle aveva conosciuto professori dell’Arte Nobile del Pugilato e aveva partecipato a due o tre delle loro riunioni. Ora aveva l’opportunità di osservare che, per quanto riguardava la conformazione cranica tipica dei pugili, questi “professori della filantropia” assomigliavano in modo insolito ai veri pugili. Nello sviluppo di tutti quegli organi che contribuiscono a una propensione a “assalire” i propri simili, questi “filantropi” erano particolarmente favoriti. C’erano diversi professori che andavano avanti e indietro, con quell’aria aggressiva tipica di chi fosse pronto a sfidare qualsiasi principiante si trovasse nei paraggi. Il signor Crisparkle ricordava bene questo comportamento dai tempi in cui frequentava quei circoli sportivi. Si stavano preparando eventi morali in alcune zone rurali, e altri professori sostenevano questo o quell’“atleta pesante”, presentandoli come ideali per determinati tipi di discorsi. Proprio come fanno i promotori sportivi. Le risoluzioni che si intendevano approvare sembravano davvero “round”. Tra questi organizzatori, il signor Crisparkle riconobbe (in un abito nero) l’equivalente di un defunto benefattore della sua specie: una figura pubblica eminente, un tempo conosciuto come “Frosty-faced Fogo”, che un tempo si occupava di allestire quei cerchi magici con corde e pali. C’erano però tre differenze fondamentali tra questi professori e quelli di un tempo: innanzitutto, i “filantropi” erano in cattiva forma fisica; avevano un aspetto troppo carnoso, e il loro viso e la loro figura riflettevano una quantità eccessiva di quella sostanza grassa tipica dei pugili. In secondo luogo, i “filantropi” non possedevano l’ottimo temperamento dei pugili e utilizzavano un linguaggio molto più volgare. Terzo, il loro codice di combattimento aveva bisogno di molte correzioni: permetteva loro non solo di portare avanti il proprio avversario fino alle corde, ma anche di farlo arrivare al limite della sopportazione; inoltre, consentiva loro di colpire l’avversario anche quando era a terra, ovunque e con qualsiasi mezzo. Di calciarlo, di schiacciarlo, di ferirlo. E persino di attaccarlo alle spalle senza alcuna pietà. In questi ultimi aspetti, i professori dell’Arte Nobile erano davvero molto più “nobili” dei professori della filantropia.
Il signor Crisparkle era così completamente immerso nella riflessione su queste somiglianze e differenze, allo stesso tempo osservando la folla che andava avanti e indietro, sempre impegnata in attività ostili volte a strappare qualcosa a qualcuno senza mai dare nulla in cambio, che il suo nome fu chiamato prima ancora che lui se ne accorgesse. Quando finalmente rispose, un filantropo mal pagato e in condizioni di estrema povertà lo accompagnò nella stanza del signor Honeythunder.
“Signore,” disse il signor Honeythunder con la sua voce tonante, come un insegnante che dà ordini a un ragazzo di cui non ha una buona opinione, “si sieda.”
Il signor Crisparkle si sedette.
Dopo aver firmato le ultime poche centinaia di migliaia di circolari, nei quali si chiedeva a un numero corrispondente di famiglie prive di mezzi economici di contribuire immediatamente e dimostrare di essere veri filantropi, oppure di andare all’inferno, un altro meschino filantropo stipendiato (molto presunto “imparziale”, se davvero lo era) raccolse tutti questi documenti in un cesto e se ne andò.
“Ora, signor Crisparkle,” disse il signor Honeythunder, girando la sedia di mezzo verso di lui quando furono soli, incrociando le braccia con le mani sulle ginocchia e aggrottando la fronte, come se volesse aggiungere: “Ora, signor Crisparkle, lei e io abbiamo opinioni diverse riguardo alla sacralità della vita umana.”
“Davvero lo dobbiamo fare?” rispose il Minore Canonico.
“Sì, signore.”
“Posso chiederle, ”, disse il Minore Canonico, “quali sono le sue opinioni su quell’argomento?”
“La vita umana è qualcosa che deve essere considerato sacro, signore.”
“Posso chiedervelo?” continuò il canonico minore come prima: “che cosa pensate che siano le mie opinioni su quell’argomento?”
“Per Giove, signore!” rispose il Filantropo, incrociando ancora di più le braccia mentre fissava con sguardo severo il signor Crisparkle: “Sono persone che lei stesso conosce molto bene.”
“Ammetto volentieri. Ma hai iniziato dicendo che avevamo punti di vista diversi, sai. Quindi, o forse non potevi dirlo apertamente, devi aver considerato alcuni dei miei punti di vista come tuoi stessi. Per favore, quali sono esattamente questi punti di vista che hai attribuito a te stesso?”
“Ecco un uomo, e un giovane uomo,” disse il signor Honeythunder, come se questo rendesse la situazione ancora peggiore; avrebbe potuto facilmente sopportare la perdita di uno anziano, “spazzato via dalla faccia della terra a causa di un atto di violenza. Che ne dite?”
“Omicidio”, disse il canonico minore.
“Come chiamate colui che ha compiuto quell’atto, signore?”
“Un assassino,” disse il canonico minore.
“Sono felice di sentirla ammettere così tanto, signore,” ribatté il signor Honeythunder nel modo più offensivo possibile; “e le dico francamente che non me l’aspettavo.” Poi abbassò di nuovo lo sguardo verso il signor Crisparkle.
“Per favore, spiegate cosa intendete con quelle espressioni del tutto ingiustificate.”
“Non sto qui seduto, signore,” rispose il Filantropo, alzando la voce fino a farla diventare un ruggito, “per essere maltrattato.”
“Essendo l’unica altra persona presente, nessuno può saperlo meglio di me,” rispose il Minore Canon molto tranquillamente. “Ma interrompo la tua spiegazione.”
“Omicidio!” proseguì il signor Honeythunder, in una sorta di fervente riflessione, incrociando le braccia e scuotendo la testa con orrore dopo ogni breve frase che pronunciava. “Sangue versato. Abel! Cain! Non ho alcun rapporto con Cain. Con orrore rifiuto quella mano insanguinata quando mi viene offerta.”
Invece di saltare immediatamente sulla sua sedia e esultare a squarciagola, come avrebbe sicuramente fatto la Fratellanza durante una riunione pubblica in questa situazione, il signor Crisparkle si limitò a cambiare posizione sulle gambe e disse con calma: “Non lasci che interrompa la sua spiegazione, quando finalmente inizierà.”
“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.”
“Il Decalogo dice: ‘Non uccidere’. NO uccidere, signore!” continuò il signor Honeythunder, facendo una pausa come se stesse rimproverando il signor Crisparkle per aver affermato chiaramente che i comandamenti permettessero di commettere un piccolo omicidio e poi smettere.
“E dicono anche che non si debba dare falsa testimonianza,” osservò il signor Crisparkle.
“Basta!” gridò il signor Honeythunder con una solennità e severità tali da poter far crollare l’intera casa durante una riunione, “Basta! Poiché i miei defunti figli hanno ormai raggiunto l’età legale, e io sono stato liberato da un incarico che mi provoca orrore ogni volta che ci penso, ci sono quelle contabilità che avete promesso di gestire per loro, nonché una dichiarazione sul saldo che dovete ricevere. E vi dico una cosa: vorrei davvero che, come uomo e come Minor Canon, foste impegnato in qualcosa di più utile,” aggiunse con un altro cenno del capo. “Di qualcosa di molto più utile, ” ripeté ancora. “Davvero, molto più utile!” concluse per la terza volta, facendo così tre cenni consecutivi con la testa.
Il signor Crisparkle sorrise; il suo viso era leggermente arrossito, ma manteneva un perfetto autocontrollo.
“Signor Honeythunder,” disse, prendendo in mano i documenti menzionati, “il fatto che io sia meglio o peggio impiegato di quanto lo sia attualmente dipende da gusti e opinioni personali. Forse pensereste che fossi meglio impiegato se mi iscrivessi come membro della vostra Società.”
“Ah sì, davvero, signore!” ribatté il signor Honeythunder scuotendo la testa in modo minaccioso. “Sarebbe stato meglio per voi se l’aveste fatto molto tempo fa!”
“Penso il contrario.”
“O forse,” disse il signor Honeythunder scuotendo di nuovo la testa, “si potrebbe pensare che una persona della vostra professione sia meglio adatta a dedicarsi alla scoperta e al castigo della colpa piuttosto che lasciare tale compito a un laico.”
“Posso considerare la mia professione da un punto di vista che mi insegna che il suo primo dovere è nei confronti di coloro che si trovano in difficoltà e sofferenza, che sono soli e oppressi,” disse il signor Crisparkle. “Tuttavia, poiché ho chiarito a me stesso che non fa parte delle mie mansioni fare dichiarazioni pubbliche al riguardo, non dirò altro su questo argomento. Ma devo dire al signor Neville, e alla sorella del signor Neville (e, in misura molto minore, anche a me stesso), che so con certezza di aver pienamente compreso i pensieri e le intenzioni del signor Neville al momento di questo evento; e che, senza minimamente nascondere ciò che in lui c’era da deplorare o che doveva essere corretto, sono certo che la sua versione dei fatti sia vera. Avendo questa certezza, lo sostengo. Finché essa durerà, continuerò a sostenerlo. E se qualcosa potesse far vacillare questa mia decisione, mi vergognerei così profondamente della mia meschinità che nessuna stima altrui – né di un uomo, né di una donna – potrebbe mai compensarmi per la perdita della mia dignità.”
Bravo ragazzo! Un vero uomo. E poi era anche così umile. Non c’era alcuna traccia di egoismo in lui, né nel suo comportamento quotidiano né nelle sue azioni più importanti. Era semplicemente e fedelmente devoto al proprio dovere, sia nelle piccole che nelle grandi cose. Così sono tutte le anime vere. Così è stata, è e sarà sempre ogni vera anima. Nella persona davvero grande, non c’è nulla di “piccolo” o insignificante.
“Allora, secondo te, chi è stato a farlo?” chiese improvvisamente il signor Honeythunder, girandosi verso di lui.
“Dio non voglia,” disse il signor Crisparkle, “che nel mio desiderio di scagionare una persona io possa involontariamente incolpare un’altra! Non accuso nessuno.”
“Tcha!” esclamò il signor Honeythunder con grande disgusto; perché questo certamente non era il principio su cui la Fratellanza Filantropica solitamente agiva. “E, signore, lei non è certo un testimone imparziale. Dobbiamo tenerlo a mente.”
“Come potrei essere interessato?”, chiese il signor Crisparkle, sorridendo innocentemente, senza riuscire a capirlo.
“C’era una certa somma di denaro che le veniva pagata per il suo allievo, signore. Forse questo ha un po’ influenzato la sua giudizio,” disse Mr. Honeythunder in tono brusco.
“Forse mi aspetto ancora di poterla conservare?” rispose il signor Crisparkle, illuminato; “intendi anche tu dire questo?”
“Beh, signore,” rispose il filantropo professionista alzandosi e infilando le mani nelle tasche dei pantaloni, “non mi occupo di misurare la gente per farle prendere cappelli. Se qualcuno trova che ho dei cappelli che gli vadano bene, può metterseli se vuole. È compito loro, non mio.”
il signor Crisparkle lo guardò con profonda indignazione e lo rimproverò così:
“Signor Honeythunder, speravo che entrando qui non avrei dovuto commentare l’introduzione di comportamenti o manovre inappropriati nelle norme della vita privata. Ma lei mi ha fornito un esempio così evidente di entrambi, che se rimanessi in silenzio su questi argomenti, sarei davvero degno di essere preso a modello. Sono davvero detestabili.”
“Non vi stanno bene, oserei dire, signore.”
“Sì,” ripeté il signor Crisparkle, senza accorgersi dell’interruzione, “sono detestabili. Violano allo stesso modo sia la giustizia che dovrebbe caratterizzare i cristiani, sia le regole di decenza che dovrebbero essere rispettate da un gentiluomo. Voi attribuite un crimine grave a qualcuno che io, conoscendo le circostanze e avendo numerosi motivi per crederci, ritengo assolutamente innocente. Solo perché la mia opinione su questo punto fondamentale è diversa dalla vostra, voi vi rivolgete immediatamente contro di me, accusandomi di non comprendere l’enormità del crimine stesso, ma di esserne invece complice e promotore! Ancora una volta, considerandomi rappresentante dell’avversario in altre questioni, voi costruite su basi di credulità un’affermazione di fede in qualche illusione ridicola o inganno malizioso. Io rifiuto di crederci, e voi vi rifugiate nell’accusa che io non creda affatto in nulla; che perché non mi inchino davanti a un falso dio creato da voi, neghi il vero Dio! Ancora una volta, dichiarate che la guerra è una calamità e proponete di abolirla con una serie di risoluzioni assurde. Io non riconosco affatto che tali idee siano vostre, e non ho la minima fiducia nella vostra soluzione. Ancora, mi presentate come qualcuno che si compiace nei orrori di un campo di battaglia, come un demone incarnato! In tutte queste occasioni, i vostri sostenitori attribuiscono a me i motivi più bassi e spregevoli, con estrema leggerezza. E citano dati che sanno essere completamente distorti. Pertanto, signor Honeythunder, ritengo che tali posizioni rappresentino un esempio pessimo, una scuola dannosa, sia nella vita pubblica che in quella privata; e che, se portate avanti nel contesto personale, diventino un vero fastidio insopportabile.”
“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.
“Sono parole forti, signore!” esclamò il Filantropo.
“Spero proprio di sì,” disse il signor Crisparkle. “Buongiorno.”
Uscì dal rifugio a passo svelto, ma presto riprese il suo solito ritmo regolare; sul suo viso comparve un sorriso mentre camminava, chiedendosi cosa avrebbe detto la pastorella di porcellana se lo avesse visto colpire con forza il signor Honeythunder in quella piccola e vivace situazione. Il signor Crisparkle, infatti, possedeva abbastanza innocua vanità da sperare di aver colpito davvero forte, e da essere convinto di aver inflitto un duro colpo a quel “Giubbotto Filantropico”.
Si recò al Staple Inn, ma non da P. J. T. e il signor Grewgious. Salì molte scale scricchiolanti prima di raggiungere alcune stanze in soffitta, in un angolo; aprì la porta che non era chiusa a chiave e si trovò accanto al tavolo di Neville Landless.
Un’atmosfera di ritiro e solitudine pervadeva le stanze e il loro abitante. Era molto stanco, così come loro. I soffitti inclinati, le chiavi e le sbarre arrugginite e ingombranti, nonché i pesanti mobili in legno che lentamente marcivano, davano alle stanze un aspetto prigioniero; anche il suo volto aveva l’aspetto emaciato di uno prigioniero. Tuttavia, la luce del sole filtrava attraverso la brutta finestra del sottotetto, che si affacciava su un piccolo spazio separato tra le tegole; sul parapetto crepato e annerito dal fumo, alcuni passeri saltellavano goffamente, come piccoli esseri zoppicanti che avevano lasciato le loro “stampelle” nei nidi. E lì, intorno a loro, c’erano foglie verdi che cambiavano costantemente l’atmosfera, creando una sorta di musica imperfetta, ma che in campagna sarebbe stata sicuramente considerata melodia.
Le stanze erano arredate in modo semplice, ma contenevano una buona collezione di libri. Tutto indicava che si trattasse dell’abitazione di uno studente povero. Che il signor Crisparkle fosse stato colui che aveva selezionato, prestato o donato quei libri, oppure che avesse svolto tutte e tre queste funzioni, era facile intuire dallo sguardo affettuoso con cui li osservava non appena entrava.
“Come va, Neville?”
“Sono di buon umore, signor Crisparkle, e sto lavorando sodo.”
“Vorrei che i tuoi occhi non fossero così grandi e così luminosi,” disse il canonico minore, liberando lentamente la mano che aveva tenuta nella sua.
“Si illuminano solo alla tua vista,” rispose Neville. “Se tu dovessi allontanarti da me, presto diventerebbero davvero tristi, ”
“Rallia, rallia!”, esortò l’altro con tono incoraggiante. “Lotta per questo, Neville!”
“Se stessi morendo, sentirei che una tua parola potrebbe rianimarmi; se il mio battito cardiaco si fosse fermato, sentirei che il tuo tocco potrebbe farlo riprendere”, disse Neville. “Ma io sono già riuscito a riprendermi, e sto andando molto bene.”
Il signor Crisparkle lo girò, facendogli voltare il viso un po’ di più verso la luce.
“Vorrei che tu avessi un aspetto più rossastro, Neville,” disse, indicando con il proprio viso sano l’aspetto che desiderava per lui. “Voglio che il sole splenda di più su di te.”
Neville si abbassò improvvisamente e rispose a voce bassa: “Non sono ancora abbastanza forte per farlo. Forse un giorno lo sarò, ma al momento non ce la faccio. Se aveste percorso quelle strade di Cloisterham come ho fatto io; se aveste visto, come ho visto io, quegli sguardi evitanti e le persone perbene che mi lasciavano spazio per passare senza che dovessi toccarle o avvicinarmi a loro, non pensereste che sia del tutto irragionevole il fatto che non possa muovermi alla luce del giorno.”
“Povero ragazzo mio!”, disse il canonico minore con un tono così sinceramente compassionevole che il giovane gli prese la mano, “Non ho mai detto che fosse irragionevole; non l’ho mai pensato. Ma vorrei davvero che lo facessi.”
“E questo mi darebbe il movente più forte per farlo. Ma non posso ancora. Non riesco a convincermi che gli sguardi di tutte quelle persone che incontro in questa vasta >città non siano pieni di sospetto nei miei confronti. Mi sento marchiato, contaminato. Anche quando esco, e lo faccio soltanto di notte. Ma allora l’oscurità mi avvolge, e è proprio da essa che trovo il coraggio necessario.”
Il signor Crisparkle gli mise una mano sulla spalla e rimase lì a guardarlo in basso.
“Se avessi potuto cambiare il mio nome,” disse Neville, “l’avrei fatto. Ma come hai saggiamente sottolineato tu, non posso farlo, perché sembrerebbe un segno di colpa. Se avessi potuto andare in qualche luogo lontano, forse avrei trovato sollievo, ma per lo stesso motivo è impossibile. Nascondersi o fuggire significherebbe comunque ammettere la propria colpevolezza. Sembra davvero difficile essere così legati a qualcosa, eppure sono innocente; ma non mi lamento.”
“E non dovresti aspettarti alcun miracolo che ti aiuti, Neville,” disse il signor Crisparkle con compassione.
“No, signore, lo so bene. L’unica cosa su cui posso contare è la normalità del tempo e delle circostanze attuali.”
“Finalmente ti renderà giustizia, Neville.”
“Quindi credo, e >spero di vivere abbastanza a lungo per scoprirlo.”
Ma rendendosi conto che quell’umore cupo in cui stava cadendo gettava un’ombra» sul Minor Canon, e forse sentendo che la mano che gli poggiava sulla spalla non era più così ferma come lo sarebbe stata se fosse stata guidata soltanto dalla sua forza naturale, si rianimò e disse:
“Comunque, circostanze eccellenti per lo studio! E sa, signor Crisparkle, quale sia veramente il bisogno che ho di studiare. Per non parlare del fatto che lei stesso mi ha consigliato di dedicarmi alla difficile professione legale; naturalmente seguo i suoi suggerimenti, quelli di un amico e aiutante così prezioso.”
Si tolse la mano che lo sosteneva sulle spalle e la baciò. Il signor Crisparkle fissava i libri con un sorriso, ma non così radioso come quando era entrato.
“Dalla vostra silenzio su questo argomento, deduco che il mio defunto tutore sia contrario, signor Crisparkle, ”
Il Minore Canone rispose: “Il vostro defunto tutore è una persona davvero irragionevole; per chiunque abbia un minimo di buon senso, non ha alcuna importanza che sia contrario, perverso, o il contrario di tutto ciò.”
“Beh, per me va bene così: ho abbastanza denaro per vivere,” sospirò Neville, metà stanco e metà felice. “Intanto aspetto di ricevere l’istruzione che mi spetta e di vedere giustizia fatta. Altrimenti avrei potuto dimostrare quel proverbio secondo cui, mentre l’erba cresce, il cavallo muore di fame!”
Mentre lo diceva, aprì alcuni libri e presto si immerse nei loro passaggi intrecciati e annotati; intanto il signor Crisparkle sedeva accanto a lui, spiegando, correggendo e dando consigli. I doveri del Minor Canon nella cattedrale rendevano queste visite difficili da realizzare, e avvenivano soltanto a intervalli di molte settimane. Tuttavia, per Neville Landless erano tanto utili quanto preziose.
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?”
Dopo aver completato gli studi che avevano in programma, si misero in piedi appoggiati al davanzale delle finestre, guardando giù verso quel pezzo di >jardino.
“La prossima settimana,” disse il signor Crisparkle, “smetterete di essere soli e avrete un compagno devoto.”
“Eppure,” rispose Neville, “sembra davvero un posto inadatto per portarci mia sorella.”
“Non credo proprio”, disse il Minore Canonico. “Qui c’è un dovere da compiere; e ci sono bisogno di sentimenti femminili, di sensibilità e di coraggio”.
“Volevo dire,” spiegò Neville, “che l’ambiente circostante è così noioso e poco adatto a una donna, che Helena non potrebbe trovare qui nessuna amica o compagnia adeguata.”
“Basta che ricordiate,” disse il signor Crisparkle, “che siete voi stesso qui, e che è lei ad aver bisogno di portarvi verso la luce del sole.”
Rimasero in silenzio per un po’, poi il signor Crisparkle ricominciò a parlare.
“Quando abbiamo parlato per la prima volta, Neville, mi hai detto che tua sorella, nonostante le difficoltà delle tue vite passate, era superiore a te, proprio come la cattedrale di Cloisterham è più alta delle ciminiere di Minor Canon Corner. Te lo ricordi?”
“Esatto, proprio così!”
“All’epoca ero incline a considerarlo un gesto di entusiasmo. Ma ormai non importa più ciò che penso. Quello che voglio sottolineare è che, sotto l’influenza del Orgoglio, tua sorella rappresenta per te un esempio straordinario e opportuno da seguire.”
“Tra tutte le qualità che compongono un carattere nobile, lei ne possiede senz’altro alcune.”
“Dillo pure; ma prendi questa. Tua sorella ha imparato a dominare ciò che è orgoglioso nella sua >natura. Riesce a controllarlo anche quando è ferito, grazie alla sua simpatia per te. Non c’è >dubbio che abbia sofferto profondamente nelle stesse strade in cui hai sofferto tu. Non c’è >dubbio che la sua vita sia oscurata dalla stessa nuvola che offusca la tua. Ma piegando il suo orgoglio in una grande compostezza, che non è né arrogante né aggressiva, ma rappresenta una fiducia costante in te e nella verità, è riuscita a superare tutte quelle difficoltà, fino a diventare oggetto di rispetto tanto quanto chiunque altro vi cammini. Ogni giorno, ogni ora della sua vita, da quando Edwin Drood è scomparso, ha affrontato malvagità e follia, per te, come solo una natura coraggiosa e ben guidata può fare. E così sarà fino alla fine. Un altro tipo di orgoglio, più debole, potrebbe spezzarsi nel dolore; ma mai un orgoglio come il suo: un orgoglio che non conosce timore e che non può essere domato.”
La pallida guancia accanto a lui arrossì di fronte a quel confronto, e al suggerimento che esso implicava.
“Farò tutto il possibile per imitarla”, disse Neville.
“Fallo, e sii davvero un uomo coraggioso, così come lei è davvero una donna coraggiosa,” rispose con fermezza il signor Crisparkle. “Sta facendo buio. Verrai con me quando sarà completamente notte? Attenzione: non sono io ad aspettare che cali il buio.”
Neville rispose che lo avrebbe accompagnato subito. Ma il signor Crisparkle disse di dover fare un saluto al signor Grewgious per cortesia, e che sarebbe andato nelle stanze di quel gentiluomo per poi raggiungere Neville davanti alla sua porta, se Neville fosse sceso ad aspettarlo lì.
Il signor Grewgious, seduto dritto come al solito, beveva il suo vino al crepuscolo davanti alla sua finestra aperta; il bicchiere e la caraffa erano posizionati sul tavolino rotondo accanto a lui; lui stesso e le sue gambe occupavano lo “sedile” della finestra. Nel suo intero corpo c’era soltanto un’unica articolazione, proprio come in una suola di stivale.
“Come state, reverendo signore?” disse il signor Grewgious, offrendo con generosità ospitalità, ma venendo cortesemente rifiutato. “E come procede la formazione del vostro allievo, quel ragazzo che ho avuto il piacere di raccomandarvi come idoneo e disponibile?”
Il signor Crisparkle rispose in modo appropriato.
“Sono felice che tu li approvi,” disse il signor Grewgious, “perché ho l’idea di tenerlo sotto la mia sorveglianza.”
Poiché il signor Grewgious dovette alzare lo sguardo molto in alto per riuscire a vedere le stanze, questa espressione andava intesa in senso figurato e non letterale.
“E come avete lasciato il signor Jasper, reverendo signore?” chiese il signor Grewgious.
Il signor Crisparkle lo aveva lasciato in condizioni piuttosto buone.
“E dove ha lasciato il signor Jasper, reverendo signore?” Il signor Crisparkle lo aveva lasciato a Cloisterham.
“E quando ha lasciato il signor Jasper, reverendo signore?” Quella mattina.
“Umps!”, disse il signor Grewgious. “Forse non ha detto che sarebbe venuto, vero?”
“Arrivando dove?”
“Qualsiasi posto, per esempio?” disse il signor Grewgious.
“No.”
“Perché eccolo qui,” disse il signor Grewgious, che aveva posto tutte queste domande, con lo sguardo assorto rivolto verso la finestra. “E non sembra affatto di buon umore, vero?”
Il signor Crisparkle si sporgeva verso la finestra quando il signor Grewgious aggiunse:
“Se voleste gentilmente spostarvi qui dietro di me, nell’oscurità della stanza, e guardare dalla finestra del secondo piano in quella casa laggiù, credo che non avrete difficoltà a notare una figura che si muove furtivamente. Una persona che riconoscerei come il nostro amico del posto.”
“Hai ragione!”, esclamò il signor Crisparkle.
“Umps!”, disse il signor Grewgious. Poi aggiunse, girando la testa così bruscamente che quasi si scontrò con quella del signor Crisparkle: “Cosa direste di ciò che ha fatto il nostro amico locale?”
L’ultimo passaggio che gli era stato mostrato nel Diario tornò nella mente di Mr. Crisparkle con la forza di uno scoppio improvviso; chiese quindi a Mr. Grewgious se pensasse fosse possibile che Neville venisse disturbato dal fatto che qualcuno lo tenesse sotto osservazione.
“Un orologio?”, ripeté il signor Grewgious, pensieroso. “Ah sì!”
“Ciò non solo lo perseguiterebbe e lo tormenterebbe per tutta la vita,” disse con calore il signor Crisparkle, “ma lo esporrebbe anche al tormento di un sospetto che continuava a riemergere, indipendentemente da ciò che facesse o dove andasse.”
“Ah, ” disse il signor Grewgious, ancora assorto nei suoi pensieri. “Lo vedo, aspettarti, vero?”
“Non ho alcun >dubbio che tu lo faccia.”
“Allora avreste la gentilezza di scusarmi se mi alzo per accompagnarvi fuori, per unirmi a lui e seguire la stessa strada che state percorrendo, senza prestare attenzione al nostro amico del posto?” disse il signor Grewgious. “Vede, ho una sorta di desiderio, di tenerlo sotto i miei occhi, di notte, capite?”
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 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.
capitolo XVIII.
UN COLONO A CLOSTERHAM
Intorno a questa ora, un estraneo apparve a Cloisterham: una persona dai capelli bianchi e dalle sopracciglia nere. Indossava un abito blu stretto, con giacchetta giallastra e pantaloni grigi; aveva un aspetto piuttosto militare, ma si presentò all’hotel Crozier come un uomo senza impegni che viveva delle proprie risorse. Inoltre annunciò di voler prendere in affitto una stanza nella pittoresca vecchia città per un mese o due, con l’intenzione di stabilirsi lì definitivamente. Entrambe le dichiarazioni furono fatte nel salotto da caffè dell’hotel Crozier, davanti a chiunque potesse essere interessato o meno. L’estraneo, con le spalle rivolte al camino vuoto, aspettava il suo pesce fritto, la cotoletta di vitello e una pinta di sherry. Il cameriere (poiché gli affari all’hotel Crozier andavano sempre male) rappresentò tutti coloro che potessero essere interessati, e assorbì l’intera informazione.
La testa bianca di questo signore era insolitamente grande, e la sua chioma bianca era particolarmente folta e abbondante. “Suppongo,” disse, scuotendo quella chioma bianca, proprio come un cane di Terranova potrebbe farlo prima di sedersi a cena, “che in queste zone si possa trovare un alloggio decente per un uomo solo, eh?”
Il cameriere non ne aveva alcun >dubbio.
“Qualcosa di vecchio, ”, disse il gentiluomo. “Per favore, toglimi il cappello da quel gancio per un momento. No, non lo voglio più; guarda dentro. Cosa leggi scritto lì?”
Il cameriere lesse: “Datchery”.
“Ora conosci il mio nome,” disse il gentiluomo; “Dick Datchery. Riappendi il telefono, per favore. Stavo dicendo che preferirei qualcosa di vecchio, qualcosa di strano e insolito. Qualcosa di venerabile, di caratteristico dell’architettura, anche se forse un po’ scomodo da utilizzare.”
“Credo che nella città ci siano diverse sistemazioni poco comode ma adatte alle nostre esigenze, signore,” rispose il cameriere, con una moderata fiducia nelle risorse a disposizione; “infatti, non ho alcun >dubbio che riusciremmo a trovare qualcosa che le soddisfi, per quanto particolari possano essere le sue esigenze. Ma una sistemazione ‘architettonica’, ” Quella frase sembrò mettere in difficoltà il cameriere, che scosse la testa.
“Ora qualcosa di davvero grandioso, tipo una cattedrale,” suggerì il signor Datchery.
“Signor Tope,” disse il cameriere, illuminandosi in volto mentre si strofinava il mento con la mano, “è probabilmente la persona più adatta per fornire informazioni in quel senso.”
“Chi è il signor Tope?” chiese Dick Datchery.
Il cameriere spiegò che era il custode del luogo e che la signora Tope aveva davvero, in un certo momento, offerto di affittare le stanze o di permettere a qualcuno di farlo; ma poiché nessuno le aveva mai prese in affitto, l’insegna della signora Tope, che da tempo faceva parte dell’istituto Cloisterham, era scomparsa. Probabilmente era caduta un giorno e non era mai stata ripristinata.
“Farò visita alla signora Tope dopo cena”, disse il signor Datchery.
Quando ebbe finito di cenare, fu debitamente indirizzato verso il luogo indicato e si avviò verso di esso. Tuttavia, poiché l’hotel “Crozier” aveva una disposizione molto riservata e le istruzioni del cameriere erano estremamente precise, presto si trovò confuso e iniziò a girovagare intorno alla Cattedrale, ogni volta che riusciva a intravederla. Aveva l’impressione generale che la casa della signora Tope fosse da qualche parte molto vicina, e che, proprio come nei giochi in cui i bambini cercano fagioli bolliti caldi o burro fresco, si sentisse “caldo” nella sua ricerca ogni volta che vedeva la Cattedrale, e “freddo” quando non la vedeva.
Stava davvero congelando quando trovò un frammento di cimitero dove una pecora sfortunata pascolava. Sfortunata perché un orribile ragazzino la stava lapidando attraverso le recinzioni; aveva già spezzato una delle sue zampe e, animato da un sadico spirito sportivo, era intenzionato a romperne altre tre per farla cadere.
“Lo ha fatto di nuovo!”, gridò il ragazzo mentre quella povera creatura saltava, e lasciava un segno nel suo vello.
“Lasciatelo in pace!”, disse il signor Datchery. “Non vedete che lo avete rovinato?”
“Stai mentendo,” rispose lo sportivo. “È andato da solo e si è fatto male. Lo vedo farlo, quindi gli do un avvertimento per che non vada più a picchiare la pecora di suo padrone.”
Vieni qui.
“Non lo farò; verrò quando riuscirete a catturarmi.”
“Resta lì allora, e dimmi quale è quella di Mr. Tope.”
“Oh, posso restare qui e farti vedere quale è Topeseses, quando Topeseses si trova dall’altra parte del Kinfreederal, oltre tutti quei passaggi, e attorno a così tante strade? Idioti! Ahhh!”
#“Mostrami dove si trova, e ti darò qualcosa.”
“Allora, avanti.”
Dopo questo rapido scambio di parole, il ragazzo prese la guida e, dopo un po’, si fermò a una certa distanza da un passaggio ad arco, indicandolo con il dito.
“Guarda laggiù. Vedi quella porta e quella finestra?”
“È di Toppe?”
“Non è vero; appartiene a Jarsper.”
“Davvero?” disse il signor Datchery, guardandola di nuovo con un certo interesse.
“Sì, e non ho intenzione di avvicinarmi di un altro centimetro, ve lo dico chiaro.”
“Perché no?”
“Non ho intenzione di farmi togliere le gambe, rompere i denti fissi e essere soffocato. Non lo permetterò mai, né da parte sua. Aspetta solo che un giorno riesca a far volare una bella pietra focaia dritta nella schiena di quel vecchio bastardo! Ora guarda dall’altra parte del recinto. Non quella dove c’è la porta di Jarsper, ma l’altra.”
“Capisco.”
“Un po’ più avanti, da quel lato, c’è una porta bassa; bisogna scendere due gradini. Lì abita Topeseses, il cui nome è scritto su una targa di metallo rotonda.”
“Bene, guardate qui,” disse il signor Datchery, tirando fuori una sterlina. “Mi dovete metà di questa somma.”
“Mentite! Non vi devo nulla; non vi ho mai visto.”
“Ti dico che mi devi metà di questa somma, perché non ho nemmeno sei pence in tasca. Quindi la prossima volta che ci incontriamo dovrai fare qualcos’altro per me, così da ripagarmi.”
“Va bene, datemi quello vecchio.”
Che nome hai e dove vivi?
“Agente. Travellers’ Twopenny, attraversi il semaforo verde.”
Il ragazzo si allontanò immediatamente con lo scellino, per evitare che il signor Datchery cambiasse idea, ma si fermò a una distanza di sicurezza, nella speranza che lui potesse iniziare a sentirsi a disagio al riguardo, e così lo provocò con una danza demoniaca che esprimeva l’irrevocabilità della sua azione.
Il signor Datchery, togliendosi il cappello per scuotere ancora una volta quella ciocca di capelli bianchi, sembrava del tutto rassegnato e si diresse verso la destinazione che gli era stata indicata.
La residenza ufficiale del signor Tope, collegata da una scala interna con quella del signor Jasper (e quindi frequentata anche dalla signora Tope), era di dimensioni molto modeste e aveva l’aspetto di un freddo e umido sotterraneo. Le sue antiche mura erano massicce, e le stanze sembravano essere state scavate direttamente nella roccia, piuttosto che progettate con cura in precedenza. La porta principale dava accesso a una stanza di forma indescrivibile, con soffitto a crociera; da questa si entrava in un’altra stanza altrettanto irregolare. Le finestre erano piccole e situate nelle parti più spesse delle mura. Queste due stanze, caratterizzate da un’atmosfera cupa e da scarsa illuminazione naturale, erano quelle che la signora Tope aveva offerto per tanto tempo a un ospite poco apprezzativo. Il signor Datchery, invece, le trovò molto adatte alle sue esigenze. Se teneva la porta principale aperta, poteva godere della compagnia delle persone che passavano davanti all’ingresso e aveva abbastanza luce; inoltre, se il signor e la signora Tope utilizzavano una piccola scala laterale per entrare ed uscire, lui rimaneva praticamente solo, come se si trovasse in una residenza separata. Il canone di affitto gli sembrava moderato, e tutto era così caratteristico e “scomodo” proprio come desiderava. Così accettò subito l’offerta, pagando un acconto e prendendo possesso dell’appartamento la sera seguente, a condizione che potesse fare riferimento al signor Jasper, che abitava nella casa di guardia situata dall’altra parte dell’ingresso. La stanzetta del custode, annessa a quella residenza, ne rappresentava in qualche modo una parte integrante.
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 way 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.”
Quel povero gentiluomo era molto solo e molto triste, disse la signora Tope, ma non aveva alcun >dubbio che avrebbe “parlato per lei”. Forse il signor Datchery aveva sentito qualcosa di ciò che era accaduto lì l’ultima inverno?
Il signor Datchery aveva una conoscenza estremamente confusa dell’evento in questione; nel tentativo di ricordarlo, non riusciva affatto a farlo chiaramente. Quando la signora Tope si sentì in dovere di correggerlo su ogni dettaglio della sua descrizione dei fatti, lui le chiese scusa, sostenendo di essere soltanto un uomo che cercava di cavarsela nella vita nel modo più tranquillo possibile. Aggiunse inoltre che molte persone continuavano a ingannare altre, rendendo difficile per qualcuno con un carattere mite mantenere chiara nella propria mente la sequenza degli eventi.
Il signor Jasper si dimostrò disposto a parlare a nome della signora Tope; il signor Datchery, che aveva inviato la sua carta di presentazione, fu invitato ad salire la scala posteriore. C’era anche il sindaco, disse la signora Tope; ma non doveva essere considerato come un ospite ufficiale, poiché lui e il signor Jasper erano grandi amici.
“Perdonatemi,” disse il signor Datchery, sistemando il cappello sotto il braccio mentre si rivolgeva a entrambi i gentiluomini; “si tratta di una precauzione egoistica da parte mia, che non interessa personalmente nessuno se non me stesso. Ma essendo una persona che vive delle proprie risorse e desiderando godermi questi bei luoghi in pace e tranquillità per il resto della mia vita, vorrei chiedere se la famiglia Tope sia davvero rispettabile.”
Il signor Jasper avrebbe potuto rispondere a quella domanda senza il minimo esitazione.
“Basta così, signore,” disse il signor Datchery.
“Mio caro amico il Sindaco,” aggiunse il signor Jasper, presentando il signor Datchery con un gesto cortese della mano verso quel potente; “la cui raccomandazione è, in realtà, molto più importante per uno straniero rispetto a quella di una persona insignificante come me. Sarà sicuramente dalla loro parte, ne sono certo.”
“Il rispettabile Sindaco,” disse il signor Datchery inchinandosi profondamente, “mi impegna in un debito infinito.”
“Persone molto perbene, signore: il signor e la signora Tope,” disse il signor Sapsea con condiscendenza. “Opinioni molto positive. Molto ben comportati. Molto rispettosi. Ampiamente approvati dal decano e dal capitolo.”
“Il rispettabile Sindaco conferisce loro un certo prestigio,” disse il signor Datchery, “di cui possono davvero andare fieri. Vorrei chiedere a Sua Onore (se mi è permesso) se non esistano molti oggetti di grande interesse nella città che si trova sotto la sua benevola guida.”
“Sì, signore,” rispose il signor Sapsea, “siamo una antica >città, e anche una città ecclesiastica. Siamo una >città costituzionale, poiché tale è la natura di una simile istituzione, e difendiamo e manteniamo i nostri gloriosi privilegi.”
“La sua Onore”, disse il signor Datchery inchinandosi, “mi ispira il desiderio di conoscere meglio questa città e rafforza la mia intenzione di trascorrervi gli ultimi anni della mia vita.”
“Si è congedato dall’esercito, signore?”, suggerì il signor Sapsea.
“La sua onore nei confronti del sindaco mi dà troppo credito,” rispose il signor Datchery.
“La Marina, signore?”, suggerì il signor Sapsea.
“Di nuovo,” ripeté il signor Datchery, “il suo Onore, il sindaco mi attribuisce troppi meriti.”
“La diplomazia è una bella professione,” disse il signor Sapsea, come osservazione generale.
“Ebbene, devo ammetterlo: l’onore del Sindaco è davvero troppo grande per me,” disse il signor Datchery con un sorriso astuto e un inchino; “anche un uccello diplomatico dovrebbe cadere sotto il tiro di una tale arma.”
Questo era davvero molto rassicurante. Si trattava di un gentiluomo dal modo di parlare molto dignitoso, abituato al rango e alla dignità; rappresentava davvero un ottimo esempio di come comportarsi con un sindaco. C’era qualcosa nel modo di rivolgersi a lui in terza persona che, secondo il signor Sapsea, rispecchiava particolarmente i suoi meriti e la sua posizione sociale.
“Ma desidero ardentemente il perdono,” disse il signor Datchery. “La sua Onorevolezza, il sindaco, mi perdonerà se, per un momento, sono stato indotto ad occupare il suo tempo, dimenticando le mie umili esigenze legate al mio hotel, il ‘Crozier’.”
“Assolutamente no, signore,” disse il signor Sapsea. “Sto tornando a >casa, e se desiderate vedere l’esterno della nostra >Cattedrale lungo la strada, sarò felice di indicarvela.”
“La sua Onorevolezza verso il Sindaco,” disse il signor Datchery, “è davvero più che gentile e magnanima.”
Come il signor Datchery, che, dopo aver ringraziato il signor Jasper, non volle assolutamente lasciare la stanza finché il magistrato non se ne fu andato; così il magistrato prese l’iniziativa di scendere le scale; il signor Datchery lo seguì, con il cappello sotto il braccio e i suoi capelli bianchi che sventolavano nella brezza serale.
“Posso chiedere al suo Onore,” disse il signor Datchery, “se quel gentiluomo che abbiamo appena lasciato sia lo stesso di cui ho sentito parlare nel quartiere, colpito dal dolore per la perdita di un nipote e dedicato interamente alla ricerca della vendetta?”
“Ecco il gentiluomo: John Jasper, signore.”
“La sua Onorabilità mi permetterebbe di chiedere se ci siano forti sospetti riguardo a qualcuno in particolare?”
“Più che semplici sospetti, signore”, rispose il signor Sapsea; “quasi certezze”.
“Pensate solo ora!” gridò il signor Datchery.
“Ma le prove, signore, devono essere accumulate pietra dopo pietra,” disse il Sindaco. “Come dico sempre, la fine è ciò che dà significato al lavoro svolto. Non basta che la giustizia sia moralmente certa; deve anche esserlo legalmente.”
“La sua Onore”, disse il signor Datchery, “mi ricorda la vera natura della legge. Immorale. Che verità!”
“Come dico sempre, signore,” proseguì pomposamente il sindaco, “il braccio della legge è un braccio forte, e lungo. È proprio così che lo definisco: un braccio forte e lungo.”
“Che efficacia. Eppure, ancora una volta, che veridicità!” mormorò il signor Datchery.
“E senza tradire, ciò che io chiamo i ‘segreti’ di questa prigione,” disse il signor Sapsea; “i segreti di questa casa-prigione, è così che li ho definiti in tribunale.”
“E quale altro termine, se non quello della Sua Onore, potrebbe esprimerlo?” disse il signor Datchery.
“Senza tradirli, vi predico che, conoscendo la ferrea volontà di quel gentiluomo che abbiamo appena lasciato (oso definirla ‘ferrea’ per la sua forza), in questo caso il braccio lungo raggiungerà e il braccio forte colpirà. Questa è la nostra Cattedrale, signore: anche i migliori giudici sono felici di ammirarla, e i migliori tra i nostri cittadini ne sono un po’ orgogliosi.”
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!”
In tutto questo tempo, il signor Datchery camminava con il cappello sotto il braccio, i suoi capelli bianchi che gli sventolavano sulle spalle. Per un attimo sembrò aver dimenticato di avere il cappello, quando il signor Sapsea glielo toccò; allora si portò la mano sulla testa, come se si aspettasse di trovarvi un altro cappello.
“Per favore, si copra, signore,” pregò il signor Sapsea, utilizzando un tono molto persuasivo: “Le assicuro che non mi dispiacerà affatto.”
“La sua Onore è davvero grande, ma lo faccio solo per divertimento,” disse il signor Datchery.
Allora il signor Datchery ammirò la Cattedrale, e il signor Sapsea la indicò come se fosse stato lui stesso a inventarla e costruirla: c’erano infatti alcuni dettagli che non gli piacevano, ma li ignorò, come se i lavoratori avessero commesso errori in sua assenza. La Cattedrale si estendeva. Lo guidò attraverso il cimitero e si fermò per esaltare la bellezza della sera. Proprio nel luogo vicino all’epitaffio della signora Sapsea.
“E a proposito,” disse il signor Sapsea, come se solo in quel momento se ne fosse ricordato all’improvviso; proprio come Apollo che scende dall’Olimpo per riprendere la sua lira dimenticata; “quello è uno dei nostri piccoli ‘leoni’. È stata la preferenza del nostro popolo a renderlo così, e di tanto in tanto si sono visti estranei prendere copie di esso. Io stesso non ne sono un esperto, poiché si tratta di un mio piccolo lavoro. Ma è stato davvero complicato realizzarlo, posso dire persino difficile farlo con eleganza.”
Il signor Datchery fu così estasiato dalla composizione del signor Sapsea che, nonostante avesse intenzione di trascorrere il resto dei suoi giorni a Cloisterham e quindi avesse probabilmente molte opportunità per copiarla, avrebbe voluto trascriverla immediatamente nel suo taccuino, se non fosse stato per l’arrivo del suo autore e “perpetuatore” materiale: il signor Durdles, che il signor Sapsea accolse con piacere, felice di potergli mostrare un esempio eccellente di comportamento verso i superiori.
“Ah, Durdles! Questo è il muratore, signore; uno dei nostri personaggi importanti di Cloisterham; tutti qui conoscono Durdles. Signor Datchery, Durdles è un gentiluomo che si stabilirà qui.”
“Non lo farei se fossi al suo posto,” ringhiò Durdles. “Siamo persone piuttosto pesanti, ”
“Certamente non parlate a nome vostro, signor Durdles,” ribatté il signor Datchery, “né tantomeno a nome di Sua Onore.”
“Chi è la sua onore?” chiese Durdles.
“Il suo Onore appartiene al Sindaco.”
“Non sono mai stato portato davanti a lui,” disse Durdles, con un’espressione tutt’altro che quella di un fedele sottoposto del sindaco, “e ci sarà tutto il tempo necessario per onorarlo quando lo sarò. Fino ad allora, ”
“Il suo nome è Mister Sapsea,
la sua nazione è l’Inghilterra;
il suo luogo di residenza è Cloisterham,
e la sua occupazione, beh, quella è Aukshneer.”
Ecco che il vice-sceriffo (preceduto da una conchiglia volante) apparve sulla scena e chiese che la somma di tre penny gli venisse immediatamente data dal signor Durdles, che aveva inutilmente cercato dappertutto, ritenendola un salario legittimo non ancora pagato. Mentre quel gentiluomo, con il suo fagotto sotto il braccio, contava lentamente i soldi, il signor Sapsea informò il nuovo arrivato sui costumi, sulle abitudini, sull’abitazione e sulla reputazione di Durdles. “Suppongo che qualche curioso straniero possa venire a vedervi, voi e le vostre opere, signor Durdles, in qualsiasi momento imprevisto, ” disse il signor Datchery.
“Qualsiasi gentiluomo è il benvenuto a venire da me ogni sera, purché porti con sé del liquore per due persone,” rispose Durdles, con un penny tra i denti e alcune monete di mezzo penny in mano; “o, se preferisce, può portarne anche di più. In quel caso sarà ancora più il benvenuto.”
“Arriverò. Vice Capo, quanto mi dovete?”
Un lavoro.
“Assicurati di pagarmi onestamente per il lavoro di accompagnarmi a visitare la casa del signor Durdles quando vorrò andarci.”
Il vice, con un fischio acuto che uscì dalla larga apertura della sua bocca, come segno di pagamento completo di tutti i debiti, scomparve.
Il Venerabile e il Devoto continuarono insieme fino a quando si separarono, con molte cerimonie, alla porta del Venerabile; anche allora il Devoto tenne il cappello sotto il braccio e lasciò che i suoi lunghi capelli bianchi venissero sollevati dalla brezza.
Il signor Datchery pensò tra sé che quella notte, mentre si guardava i capelli bianchi nello specchio illuminato dal gas sopra la caminiera della sala da caffè al Crozier, e li scuoteva: “Per un solo individuo indolente, di carattere mite, che vive alle spalle dei propri genitori senza lavorare. Che pomeriggio impegnativo ho avuto!”
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 doorsteps, 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—”
CAPITOLO XIX.
>Ombra sul quadrante solare
Ancora una volta, la signorina Twinkleton ha tenuto il suo discorso di addio, accompagnata da vino bianco e torta di farina d’avena; ancora una volta, le giovani signore se ne sono andate ognuna per la propria strada. Helena Landless ha lasciato il Convento delle suore per seguire le sorti di suo fratello, e la bella Rosa è rimasta da sola.
In questi giorni d’estate, Cloisterham è così luminosa e soleggiata che la cattedrale e le rovine del monastero sembrano avere mura trasparenti; una luce tenue pare emanare dall’interno di esse, piuttosto che provenire dall’esterno. I giardini di Cloisterham sono pieni di frutti maturi. Un tempo, pellegrini stanchi dal viaggio attraversavano le ombre accoglienti della città; oggi, viaggiatori che conducono una vita nomade, tra il periodo del raccolto del fieno e quello del raccolto stesso, sembrano fatti interamente di polvere. Si sdraiano sui gradini freschi, cercando di riparare le loro scarpe irreparabili, o le lasciano alle officine della città come lavoro senza speranza. Tra i loro bagagli, insieme a falci ancora inutilizzate avvolte in strisce di paglia, si trovano anche oggetti utilizzati per bere. Alle fontane pubbliche, molti si rinfrescano i piedi nudi, mentre questi “beduini” bevono rumorosamente dall’imboccatura delle fontanelle. Nel frattempo, la polizia di Cloisterham li osserva con sospetto, impaziente che questi intrusi lascino i confini della città e tornino sulle strade ardenti.
Nel pomeriggio di un giorno del genere, quando l’ultima cerimonia nella Cattedrale è terminata e il lato della High Street dove si trova la Casa delle suore è immerso nell’ombra fresca degli alberi, tranne nel punto in cui il loro antico e caratteristico giardino si apre verso ovest tra i rami degli alberi, un servitore informa Rosa, con suo grande terrore, che il signor Jasper desidera vederla.
Se avesse scelto il momento più opportuno per trovarla in una situazione svantaggiosa, non avrebbe potuto fare di meglio. Forse proprio così l’ha voluto. Helena Landless se n’è andata, la signora Tisher è assente in congedo, e Miss Twinkleton (nella sua condizione “amatoriale”) ha contribuito con sé stessa e una torta di vitello a un picnic.
“Perché, perché, perché hai detto che ero a >casa?” gridò Rosa, disperata.
La cameriera risponde che il signor Jasper non ha mai posto quella domanda.
Disse di sapere che lei era a >casa e pregò che gli venisse detto che voleva vederla.
“Cosa devo fare! Cosa devo fare!” pensava Rosa, stringendo le mani.
Possedda da una sorta di disperazione, aggiunge subito dopo che andrà dal signor Jasper nel >jardino. Rabbrividisce all’idea di trovarsi chiusa con lui nella >casa; ma molte delle sue finestre danno sul >jardino, quindi può essere vista e sentita facilmente, e può urlare liberamente e scappare. È questa l’idea folle che le passa per la mente.
Da quella fatale notte, non l’ha mai più visto, tranne quando è stata interrogata davanti al Sindaco: lui era presente, con un’espressione cupa e attenta, rappresentando il suo nipote scomparso e desideroso di vendicarlo. Si mette il cappello da giardino sul braccio e esce. Non appena lo vede dal portico, appoggiato all’orologio solare, quella vecchia sensazione orribile di essere costretta ad agire per suo volere si impadronisce di lei. Sente che in quel momento potrebbe ancora tornare indietro, ma lui sembra trascinarla verso di sé. Non riesce a resistere e si siede, con la testa china, sulla panchina del giardino accanto all’orologio solare. Non osa alzare lo sguardo su di lui per l’orrore, ma nota che è vestito a lutto. Anche lei lo è. All’inizio non era così; ma il nipote scomparso era da tempo considerato morto e pianto come tale.
Iniziava toccandole la mano. Lei percepiva l’intenzione dietro quel gesto e ritraeva immediatamente la sua. I suoi occhi erano fissi su di lei; lo sapeva, anche se i suoi non vedevano altro che l’erba intorno.
“Ho aspettato,” inizia a dire, “da un po’ di tempo, che mi venisse chiesto di tornare al mio dovere al tuo fianco.”
Dopo aver più volte formato le labbra – sa che lui la sta osservando attentamente – nella forma di altre risposte esitanti, e poi aver smesso del tutto, lei risponde: “Dovere, signore?”
“Il dovere di insegnarvi, di servirvi come vostro fedele maestro di musica.”
Ho abbandonato quell’ studio.
“Non è stato abbandonato, credo. È stato semplicemente interrotto. Il tuo tutore mi ha detto che hai deciso di smettere a causa dello shock che abbiamo tutti provato in modo così intenso. Quando riprenderai?”
“Mai, signore.”
“Mai? Non avresti potuto fare di più, se avessi amato mio caro ragazzo, ”
“Lo amavo davvero!” gridò Rosa, con un lampo di rabbia.
“Sì; ma non del tutto. Non esattamente nel modo giusto, per così dire. Non nel modo previsto e desiderato. Per quanto mio caro ragazzo fosse, purtroppo, troppo ego-consapevole e troppo soddisfatto di sé (non vorrei fare paragoni tra lui e te in questo senso), non è riuscito ad amare come avrebbe dovuto, o come chiunque al suo posto avrebbe amato. Avrebbe sicuramente dovuto amare!”
Rimane seduta nella stessa posizione immobile, ma ora si ritrae ancora di più.
“Allora, essere informati che hai interrotto i tuoi studi con me significa, in modo gentile, che li hai completamente abbandonati?” suggerì lui.
“Sì,” disse Rosa, con improvviso vigore, “Quella gentilezza apparteneva al mio tutore, non a me. Gli ho detto che ero decisa a smettere e che intendevo attenermi fermamente alla mia decisione.”
“E ancora lo sei?”
“Lo sono ancora, signore. E prego di non essere più interrogato al riguardo. In ogni caso, non risponderò più; ho il potere di farlo.”
È così consapevole del modo in cui lui la guarda, con un’ammirazione maliziosa, e di quel tocco di rabbia che c’è nei suoi occhi, nonché della passione e dell’energia che tutto ciò le suscita, che anche quando il suo spirito sembra sollevarsi, finisce per abbassarsi di nuovo. Lotta contro un senso di vergogna, umiliazione e paura, proprio come quella volta, quella notte, davanti al pianoforte.
“Non vi interrogherò più, visto che vi dispiace così tanto; confesserò, ”
“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.”
[Illustration: 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.
“Non desidero ascoltarvi, signore”, grida Rosa alzandosi in piedi.
Questa volta lui la tocca davvero con la sua mano tesa. Mentre lei si allontana da lui, si rintanica di nuovo nel suo posto.
“A volte dobbiamo agire contro i nostri desideri”, le dice sottovoce. “Adesso devi farlo, altrimenti causerai agli altri più danni di quanti possa mai rimediare”.
“Che danno può fare?”
“Subito, subito. Tu mi stai ponendo una domanda, capisci. E sicuramente non è giusto che tu mi vieti di farti delle domande a mia volta. Comunque, risponderò alla tua domanda tra un attimo. Cara Rosa! Incantevole Rosa!”
Si avvia di nuovo.
Questa volta non la tocca. Ma il suo viso ha un’espressione così malvagia e minacciosa. Mentre sta appoggiato a quell’orologio solare, quella sua macchia nera sembra quasi far parte del giorno stesso. Il terrore la paralizza non appena lo guarda.
“Non dimentico quante finestre ci osservano,” dice, guardandole. “Non ti toccherò più; non mi avvicinerò a te di più di quanto non lo faccia già. Siediti. Non c’è nulla di straordinario nel fatto che il tuo maestro di musica si appoggi pigramente a un piedistallo e parli con te, ricordando tutto ciò che è accaduto e il nostro ruolo in esso. Siediti, mio caro.”
Avrebbe voluto andare ancora una volta. Era quasi pronta a farlo. Ma di nuovo il suo viso, con un’espressione minacciosa, le ha impedito di procedere. Guardandolo con quell’immagine bloccata nel suo sguardo, si è seduta di nuovo sul posto.
“Rosa, anche quando mio caro figlio fu promesso a te, ti amai follemente; anche quando pensavo che la sua felicità nell’averti come moglie fosse certa, ti amai follemente; anche quando cercavo di farlo diventare ancora più devoto a te, ti amai follemente; anche quando mi diede quel ritratto del tuo bellissimo viso, così malamente alterato da lui stesso, che fingevo di tenere sempre davanti ai miei occhi per il suo bene, ma che in realtà veneravo con dolore per anni interi, ti amai follemente. Nel lavoro noioso della giornata, nella sofferenza insonne della notte, circondata da realtà squallide, o vagando attraverso paradisi e inferni creati dalla mia immaginazione, tenendo sempre il tuo volto tra le braccia, ti amai follemente.”
Se c’era qualcosa che poteva rendere le sue parole ancora più orribili per lei di quanto già non fossero, era il contrasto tra la violenza del suo sguardo e del modo in cui le pronunciava, e la compostezza dell’atteggiamento che ostentava.
“L’ho sopportato tutto in silenzio. Finché eri sua, o almeno finché pensavo che fossi sua, ho nascosto fedelmente il mio segreto. Non è vero?”
Questa menzogna, così orribile, eppure le parole con cui viene detta sono così vere. È qualcosa che Rosa non riesce proprio a sopportare. Risponde con indignazione: “Siete stato falso in tutto, signore, proprio come lo siete adesso. Siete stato falso con lui, giorno dopo giorno, ora dopo ora. Sapete bene che la vostra insistenza nei miei confronti ha reso la mia vita infelice. Sapete che mi avete costretta, per il suo bene, per la sua fiducia e la sua bontà, a nascondergli la verità. Siete davvero un uomo malvagio!”
Il fatto che mantenga quell’atteggiamento rilassato rende i suoi movimenti lavorativi e le sue mani, che sembrano subire convulsioni, davvero “demoniacali”; eppure tutti lo ammirano profondamente per questo.
“Quanto sei bella! Sei ancora più bella quando sei arrabbiata che quando sei tranquilla. Non ti chiedo il tuo amore; dammi te stessa, insieme al tuo odio, a quella bellissima rabbia, a quel disprezzo affascinante. Sarà sufficiente per me.”
Impazienti lacrime salirono agli occhi della tremante e piccola >bellezza; il suo viso ardeva di rabbia. Ma mentre lei si alzava di nuovo, indignata, per cercare rifugio all’interno della casa, lui tese la mano verso il portico, come se l’invitasse ad entrare.
“Te l’avevo detto, tu raro incantatore, tu dolce _strega, devi restare e ascoltarmi, altrimenti causerai più danni di quanti possano mai essere rimediati. Mi hai chiesto quali danni. Resta, e te lo dirò. Vai via, e li causerò io!”
Di nuovo, Rosa trema di fronte al suo volto minaccioso, anche se non comprende il significato delle sue parole, e rimane lì. Il suo respiro affannoso va e viene, come se potesse soffocarla; ma con una mano che le preme il petto, lei rimane comunque.
“Ho confessato che il mio amore è pazzo. È così pazzo, che se i legami tra me e mio caro ragazzo perduto fossero stati anche solo un po’ meno forti, avrei potuto portarlo via da te, quando lo hai favorito.”
Un film le passa davanti agli occhi per un istante, come se l’avesse fatta svenire.
“Anche lui,” ripete. “Sì, anche lui! Rosa, tu mi vedi e mi senti. Giudica tu stessa se esista qualche altro ammiratore che possa amarti e vivere, il cui destino è nelle mie mani.”
“Cosa intende dire, signore?”
“Voglio mostrarvi quanto sia furiosa la mia amore. Grazie alle indagini approfondite del signor Crisparkle, è venuto fuori che quel giovane Landless gli ha confessato di essere un rivale di mio figlio scomparso. A mie occhi, questo è un crimine imperdonabile. Lo stesso signor Crisparkle sa che mi sono dedicata alla scoperta e all’eliminazione dell’assassino, qualunque esso sia, e che ho deciso di non discutere il mistero con nessuno finché non avrò trovato la prova decisiva per incastrarlo. Da allora ho lavorato pazientemente per intrecciare questa prova intorno a lui. E in questo momento, mentre parlo, quel filo si sta lentamente avvolgendo intorno a lui.”
illustrazioni: Le sacrifici di Jasper
“La tua convinzione, se credi nella colpevolezza del signor Landless, non è la stessa di quel signor Crisparkle, che è una brava persona,” ribatte Rosa.
“La mia fede appartiene solo a me; la riservo per il culto della mia ‘anima! Le circostanze possono accumularsi con tale forza anche contro un uomo innocente, che, se dirette, affilate e puntate verso di lui, possono ucciderlo. Un solo indizio scoperto con perseveranza contro un colpevole basta a provare la sua colpevolezza, per quanto deboli possano essere inizialmente le prove, e allora quell’uomo muore. Il giovane Landless si trova comunque in grave pericolo in entrambi i casi.”
“Se davvero pensi,” lo supplica Rosa, impallidendo, “che io abbia una preferenza per il signor Landless, o che il signor Landless si sia mai rivolto a me in qualche modo, ti sbagli.”
Lo esprime con un gesto sprezzante della mano e un labbro arricciato.
“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.
“Volevo farti vedere quanto ti amo follemente. Ora ancora di più che mai, perché sono disposto a rinunciare al secondo amore che è entrato nella mia vita, per condividerlo soltanto con te; da questo momento in poi, non esisterà altro nell’universo se non tu. La signorina Landless è diventata tua amica intima. Ti preoccupi della sua serenità?”
“La amo profondamente.”
“Ti interessa la sua reputazione?”
“Ho detto, signore, che la amo molto.”
“Senza rendermene conto,” osserva sorridendo, mentre incrocia le mani sul quadrante solare e appoggia il mento su di esse, in modo che ciò che dice, visto dalle finestre (dove di tanto in tanto qualcuno passa), possa sembrare il più leggero e giocoso possibile, “Senza rendermene conto, sto offendendo di nuovo. Quindi dirò semplicemente delle cose, senza porre domande. Vi interessa davvero la buona reputazione della vostra cara amica, non è vero? E vi interessa anche la sua serenità d’animo. Allora eliminate da lei l’ombra della forca, carissima!”
“Osi propormi di, ”
“Amore mio, oso farti questa proposta. Ma basta così. Se idolatrarti fosse un errore, sarei il peggiore degli uomini; se invece fosse giusto, sarei il migliore. Il mio amore per te è superiore a qualsiasi altro amore, e la mia verità verso di te è più importante di qualsiasi altra verità. Dammi speranza e il tuo favore. Per te, sarei disposto a rinunciare a tutto.”
Rosa si porta le mani alle tempie, si scosta i capelli e lo guarda con uno sguardo selvaggio e disgustoso, come se stesse cercando di comprendere quale sia il vero scopo nascosto che lui ha nel mostrarle solo frammenti della verità.
“Non pensare a nulla in questo momento, angelo. Solo ai sacrifici che offro ai suoi cari piedi; sarei disposto a cadere tra le ceneri più vili pur di baciarli e metterli sulla mia testa, come potrebbe fare un povero selvaggio. Questa è la mia fedeltà verso il mio caro ragazzo anche dopo la morte. Calpesta questa fedeltà!”
Con un gesto delle sue mani, come se stesse gettando via qualcosa di prezioso.
“Esiste un crimine imperdonabile contro il mio amore per te. Rifiutalo!”
Con un’azione simile.
“Ecco i risultati dei miei sforzi per ottenere una giusta vendetta dopo sei mesi di duro lavoro, distruggeteli!”
Con un’altra ripetizione dell’azione.
“Ecco il mio passato, ecco la mia vita sprecata nel presente. Ecco la desolazione del mio cuore e della mia ‘anima. Ecco la mia pace, ed ecco anche la mia -disperazione. Imprimiteli nella polvere; così che tu possa prendermi, anche se mi odiasse mortalmente!”
L’orribile violenza di quell’uomo, ora al suo apice massimo, la spaventa a tal punto da spezzare l’incantesimo che la teneva fissa sul posto. Si muove rapidamente verso il portico; ma in un istante lui è al suo fianco e le sussurra all’orecchio.
“Rosa, sono di nuovo in preda alla repressione di me stesso. Cammino tranquillamente al tuo fianco verso la casa. Aspetterò un po’ di incoraggiamento e speranza. Non agirò troppo presto. Dammi un segno che tu mi stai prendendo in considerazione.”
Muove la mano in modo leggero e controllato.
“Nessuna parola di tutto questo con nessuno, altrimenti l’attacco avverrà, proprio come la notte segue il giorno. Un altro segno che mi stai ascoltando.”
Muove la mano ancora una volta.
“Ti amo, ti amo, ti amo! Anche se ora mi rifiutassi, ma non lo farai, non potresti mai liberarti di me. Nessuno dovrebbe mettersi tra noi. Ti seguirei fino alla morte.”
La serva uscì ad aprire il cancello per lui; lui si tolse silenziosamente il cappello in segno di saluto e se ne andò, senza mostrare alcuna agitazione maggiore di quella visibile nell’effigie del padre del signor Sapsea, situata di fronte. Rosa svenne mentre saliva le scale; fu delicatamente portata nella sua stanza e adagiata sul letto. Stava per scoppiare un temporale; le cameriere dissero che l’aria calda e soffocante aveva colpito la povera ragazza. Non c’era da meravigliarsi: anche loro avevano sentito le ginocchia tremare tutto il giorno.
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.
CAPITOLO XX.
UN VOLO
Non appena Rosa riprese i sensi, l’intera conversazione avvenuta poco prima le tornò alla mente. Sembrava quasi che quella conversazione l’avesse seguita anche durante il suo stato di incoscienza, e lei non aveva mai trascorso un istante senza ricordarla. Non sapeva cosa fare; l’unica idea chiara che le venne in mente fu che doveva fuggire da quell’uomo terribile.
Ma dove poteva cercare rifugio e come poteva andarci? Non aveva mai confidato a nessuno, se non a Elena, la propria paura per lui. Se fosse andata da Elena e le avesse raccontato ciò che era accaduto, quel semplice atto avrebbe potuto evitare il danno irreparabile che lui minacciava di causare, e lei sapeva che ne aveva la capacità e la volontà. Più lui le sembrava pericoloso, più i suoi ricordi e la sua immaginazione si scatenavano; più diventava angosciante la responsabilità che portava con sé, perché un piccolo errore da parte sua, sia nell’agire che nel ritardare, avrebbe potuto far scatenare la sua malvagità contro il fratello di Elena.
Nel corso degli ultimi sei mesi, la mente di Rosa era stata in preda a un caos totale. Un sospetto vago e mai espresso continuava ad agitarsi dentro di lei: a volte emergeva chiaramente, altre volte scompariva nel nulla. L’assoluta dedizione di Jasper al suo nipote quando questi era ancora vivo, nonché la sua incessante ricerca delle cause della sua morte – qualora fosse davvero deceduto – rendevano così evidenti le sue azioni che nessuno sembrava considerare possibile che avesse commesso un crimine. Lei stessa si era posta questa domanda: “Sono forse così malvagia nei miei pensieri da concepire qualcosa di così orribile che gli altri non riescono nemmeno a immaginare?” Poi aveva riflettuto: “Forse questo sospetto deriva dal mio rifiuto precedente nei suoi confronti. Ma se è così, non dimostra forse la sua infondatezza?” Infine si era chiesta: “Qual potrebbe essere il suo movente, secondo le mie accuse?” Le venne vergogna di ammettere nella sua mente che quel movente poteva essere soltanto quello di conquistare lei. E così si coprì il viso, come se anche solo l’idea di basare un omicidio su una vanità così futile fosse un crimine altrettanto grave.
Tutti quei discorsi che aveva fatto vicino all’orologio solare nel giardino le tornarono in mente ancora una volta. Aveva insistito nel considerare quella scomparsa come un omicidio, in linea con tutto il suo comportamento pubblico da quando erano stati trovati l’orologio e la spilla per camicia. Se avesse temuto che il crimine venisse scoperto, non avrebbe forse preferito incoraggiare l’idea di una scomparsa volontaria? Aveva persino dichiarato che, se i legami tra lui e suo nipote fossero stati meno stretti, avrebbe potuto “portarlo via” anche lui da lei. Ma significava davvero che lo aveva fatto? Aveva detto di voler offrire i sei mesi di lavoro dedicati a una vendetta giusta ai suoi piedi. Avrebbe davvero agito con tale passione se tutto fosse stato solo una finzione? Avrebbe messo in gioco il proprio cuore desolato, la propria anima spezzata, la propria vita distrutta, la propria pace e la propria disperazione per un simile scopo? Il primo sacrificio che aveva menzionato come fatto per lei era stata la sua fedeltà al suo caro ragazzo dopo la morte. Di certo questi fatti erano più che sufficienti per confutare qualsiasi ipotesi osasse anche solo prendere in considerazione. Eppure, che uomo terribile era! In breve, quella povera ragazza (che cosa avrebbe potuto sapere dell’intelligenza criminale, spesso fraintesa dai suoi stessi studiosi, che cercano sempre di farla coincidere con l’intelligenza media delle persone comuni, invece di riconoscerla come una mostruosità unica e distinta?) non poteva giungere a nessun’altra conclusione se non che quell’uomo era davvero terribile, e doveva essere evitato a tutti i costi.
Durante tutto quel tempo, lei era stata la compagnia e il conforto per Helena. Le aveva sempre assicurato di credere fermamente nell’innocenza di suo fratello, e di condividere la sua sofferenza. Tuttavia non lo aveva mai più visto dopo la scomparsa, né Helena aveva mai menzionato una parola riguardo alla confessione che lui aveva fatto a Mr. Crisparkle riguardo a Rosa, sebbene questa informazione fosse ben nota in tutto il circondario, essendo parte fondamentale della vicenda. Per lei, lui non era altro che il fratello sfortunato di Helena. La promessa fatta al suo odioso corteggiatore era assolutamente vera, anche se ora lei avrebbe preferito trattenersi dal farla. Spaventata da lui, com’era quella fragile e delicata creatura, il pensiero che lui potesse saperlo direttamente dalle sue stesse labbra la riempiva di orgoglio.
Ma dove poteva andare? Ovunque fosse al di là della sua portata, non esisteva risposta a quella domanda. Doveva pur esserci un posto. Decise di recarsi dal suo tutore, e subito. Il sentimento che aveva provato verso Helena nella notte in cui avevano condiviso per la prima volta i loro segreti era ancora così forte in lei: il timore di non essere al sicuro da lui, e l’idea che nemmeno le solide mura dell’antico convento potessero impedire alla sua ombra di seguirla. Nessun ragionamento riusciva a placare la sua paura. Quella sorta di fascino misto a repulsione aveva dominato la sua vita per troppo tempo, e ora raggiungeva il suo apice più oscuro. Le sembrava quasi che lui avesse il potere di legarla con un incantesimo. Guardando fuori dalla finestra, anche in quel momento, mentre si alzava per vestirsi, la vista dell’orologio solare su cui si era appoggiato quando le aveva rivelato i suoi segreti la faceva rabbrividire. Come se quell’oggetto avesse assorbito una sorta di qualità terribile, trasmessa direttamente dalla sua stessa natura.
Scrisse in fretta una nota alla signorina Twinkleton, dicendo di avere un motivo improvviso per voler vedere il proprio tutore al più presto e che era andata da lui; inoltre, le chiedeva di non preoccuparsi, perché stava bene. Raccolse rapidamente alcuni oggetti del tutto inutili in una piccola borsa, lasciò la nota in un posto visibile e uscì, chiudendo silenziosamente la porta dietro di sé.
Era la prima volta che si trovava da sola in Cloisterham High Street. Ma essendo molto familiare con i suoi vicoli e le sue strade tortuose, si affrettò direttamente verso l’angolo da cui partiva l’omnibus. Proprio in quel momento, stava per partire.
“Fermati e portami con te, per favore, Joe. Devo assolutamente andare a Londra.”
In meno di un minuto era già sulla sua strada verso la stazione ferroviaria, sotto la protezione di Joe. Quando arrivò, Joe l’aspettò, la aiutò a salire con sicurezza nel vagone ferroviario e le consegnò anche quella piccolissima borsa, come se fosse un enorme baule pesantissimo che lei non dovesse assolutamente provare a sollevare.
“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.”
“Puoi passare da lei quando torni e dirle che mi hai visto partire sano e salvo, Joe?”
“Si farà, signorina.”
“Con il mio amore, per favore, Joe.”
“Sì, signorina. E a me non dispiacerebbe tenerla per me stesso!” Ma Joe non pronunciò l’ultima frase ad alta voce; la pensò soltanto dentro di sé.
Ora che stava davvero partendo per Londra, Rosa aveva il tempo di riprendere in considerazione i pensieri che la sua fretta precedente le aveva impedito di esaminare. Il pensiero indignato che la sua dichiarazione d’amore l’avesse contaminata; che potesse essere purificata da quella macchia d’impurità solo rivolgendosi a persone oneste e sincere; le diede forza per un po’ contro i suoi timori e rafforzò la sua decisione affrettata. Ma man mano che la sera si faceva più scura e la grande città sembrava avvicinarsi sempre di più, iniziarono ad emergere i soliti dubbi: se non fosse stato un comportamento troppo avventato; come il signor Grewgious avrebbe potuto considerarlo; se lo avrebbe trovato alla fine del viaggio; cosa avrebbe fatto se lui non ci fosse stato; cosa le sarebbe accaduto, da sola, in un posto così strano e affollato; se solo avesse aspettato e consultato qualcuno prima. Una miriade di queste preoccupazioni inquietanti iniziarono a tormentarla, man mano che si accumulavano. Alla fine, il treno arrivò a Londra, sopra i tetti delle case; e laggiù, sotto di lei, si estendevano le strade polverose, con le loro luci ancora accese, in una calda, chiara sera d’estate.
“Hiram Grewgious, Esquire, Staple Inn, Londra.” Questo era tutto ciò che Rosa sapeva riguardo alla sua destinazione; ma era sufficiente per farla partire di nuovo in una cabina, attraverso deserti di strade polverose, dove molte persone si affollavano agli angoli delle corti e dei vicoli per respirare un po’ d’aria fresca, mentre altre camminavano producendo un suono monotono e sgradevole causato dallo sfregamento dei piedi sui ciottoli caldi; in un ambiente così squallido e deprimente.
C’era musica che suonava qua e là, ma non riusciva a rendere l’atmosfera più vivace. Nessun organo a canne riusciva a migliorare la situazione, né il suono di un grande tamburo a dissipare quella tristezza opprimente. Proprio come le campane della cappella che risuonavano anch’esse in modo disordinato, sembravano soltanto suscitare echi sulle superfici di mattoni e sollevare nuvole di polvere su tutto intorno. Quanto agli strumenti a fiato, sembrava che avessero spezzato il cuore e l’anima nel loro desiderio di tornare in campagna.
Il suo veicolo tintinnante si fermò finalmente davanti a un cancello ben chiuso, che sembrava appartenere a qualcuno che si era addormentato molto presto e temeva molto i ladri; Rosa, dopo aver sceso dal veicolo, bussò timidamente al cancello ed fu fatta entrare da un custode, insieme alla sua piccola borsa.
“Il signor Grewgious vive qui?”
“Il signor Grewgious vive lì, signorina,” disse il custode, indicando più avanti.
So Rosa proseguì oltre, e quando le campane batterono le dieci, si fermò davanti alla porta di P. J. T., chiedendosi cosa avesse fatto P. J. T. con la sua porta d’ingresso.
Guidata dal nome dipinto di Mr. Grewgious, salì le scale e bussò delicatamente più volte. Ma nessuno rispose; quindi, poiché la maniglia della porta di Mr. Grewgious si aprì al suo tocco, entrò e vide il proprio tutore seduto su una poltrona accanto a una finestra aperta, con una lampada schermata posizionata lontano da lui su un tavolo nell’angolo della stanza.
Rosa si avvicinò a lui nella penombra della stanza. La vide e disse, a bassa voce: “Mio Dio!”
Rosa le cadde sul collo, tra le lacrime, e poi lui, ricambiando il suo abbraccio, disse.
“Mio >bambino, mio >bambino. Pensavo fossi con tua madre! Ma cosa, cosa è successo? Caro, cosa ti ha portato qui? Chi ti ha portato qui?” aggiunse, cercando di calmarlo.
“Nessuno. Sono venuto da solo.”
“Signore, beneditemi!” esclamò il signor Grewgious. “È arrivato da solo! Perché non mi avete scritto per chiedermi di venire a prendervi?”
“Non avevo tempo. Presi una decisione improvvisa. Povero, povero Eddy!”
“Ah, povero ragazzo, povero ragazzo!”
“Mio zio ha provato per me sentimenti d’amore. Non riesco a sopportarlo,” disse Rosa, scoppiando in lacrime e battendo il piedino; “Mi sento terrorizzata da lui. Sono venuta da te per chiederti di proteggermi e di proteggere tutti noi da lui, se vuoi.”
“Lo farò,” gridò il signor Grewgious, con un improvviso slancio di energia incredibile.
“Maledetto lui!”
“Confonda la sua politica!
Fallisca nei suoi trucchi malvagi!
Sulle Tue spera si affida.
Maledettelo ancora!”
Dopo questo straordinario scoppio d’emozioni, il signor Grewgious, completamente fuori di sé, iniziò a girovagare per la stanza, apparentemente incerto se si trovasse in preda a un sincero entusiasmo o a una furiosa denuncia.
Si fermò e disse, asciugandosi il viso: “Mi scusi, cara, ma sarà contenta di sapere che mi sento meglio. Non dirmi nient’altro per ora, altrimenti potrei farlo di nuovo. Devi riposarti e rilassarti. Cosa hai mangiato l’ultima volta? Colazione, pranzo, cena, tè o cena? E cosa mangerai adesso? Di nuovo colazione, pranzo, cena, tè o cena?”
La delicata e rispettosa premura con cui, in ginocchio davanti a lei, le aiutò a togliersi il cappello e a districcare i suoi bei capelli da esso era davvero un esempio di cavalleria. Eppure, chi lo conoscesse solo superficialmente avrebbe mai potuto aspettarsi una tale comportamento da parte del signor Grewgious? E per di più, un tipo di cavalleria autentica, non quella simulata.
“Anche il tuo riposo deve essere garantito,” continuò; “avrai la stanza più bella di tutto Furnival’s. Deve essere provveduto anche al tuo necessario quotidiano, e avrai tutto ciò che una cameriera personale senza limiti finanziari – con questa espressione intendo proprio una cameriera il cui budget non è vincolato da alcuna restrizione – possa procurarti. È questa una borsa?” la guardò attentamente; a dire il vero, in una stanza scarsamente illuminata era quasi impossibile notarla: “E appartiene davvero a te, cara mia?”
“Sì, signore. L’ho portato con me.”
“Non è una borsa molto capiente,” disse onestamente il signor Grewgious, “anche se è davvero ben progettata per contenere le provviste necessarie a un canarino per un intero giorno. Forse avete portato con voi un canarino?”
Rosa sorrise e scosse la testa.
“Se l’aveste fatto, avrebbe dovuto essere accolto con piacere,” disse il signor Grewgious. “E penso che gli sarebbe piaciuto essere appeso a un chiodo fuori dalla porta e sfidare i nostri passeri comuni. La loro esecuzione, devo ammetterlo, non è stata proprio all’altezza delle loro intenzioni. Ed è lo stesso per molti di noi! Non avete detto quale pasto desiderate. Godetevi una miscela di tutti i pasti possibili.”
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!”
[Illustration: 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.”
Rosa gli ringraziò, ma disse che poteva accettare solo una tazza di tè. Il signor Grewgious, dopo essere corso più volte avanti e indietro per menzionare oggetti aggiuntivi come marmellata, uova, crescione, pesce salato e prosciutto croccante, si precipitò da Furnival senza cappello per dare le sue varie istruzioni. Poco dopo, tutto ciò venne messo in pratica e la tavola fu imbandita.
“Che il Signore benedica la mia ‘anima”, esclamò il signor Grewgious, posando la lampada accanto a sé e sedendosi di fronte a Rosa; “Che nuova emozione per un povero vecchio scapolo rigido e solitario, davvero!”
illustrazione: Il signor Grewgious sperimenta una nuova sensazione
Le espressive sopracciglia di Rosa gli chiedevano cosa intendesse.
“La sensazione di avere una giovane presenza dolce in quel luogo, che lo rende più bello, lo dipinge, lo decora con ornamenti dorati e lo rende davvero splendido!” disse il signor Grewgious. “Ahimè, ”
Poiché nel suo sospiro c’era qualcosa di malinconico, Rosa, toccandolo con la sua tazza di tè, osò anche lei toccarlo con la sua piccola mano.
“Grazie mille, mia cara,” disse il signor Grewgious. “Ahem! Parliamo ora.”
“Vive sempre qui, signore?”, chiese Rosa.
“Sì, mio caro.”
“E sempre da solo?”
“Sempre solo; tranne che ogni giorno ho la compagnia di un gentiluomo di nome Bazzard, il mio segretario.”
“Lui non vive qui?”
“No, lui va per la sua strada, dopo orario di lavoro. In realtà, in questo momento non è di servizio qui; e un’azienda al piano di sotto, con cui ho rapporti commerciali, mi presta qualcuno che possa sostituirlo. Ma sarebbe estremamente difficile trovare qualcuno all’altezza del signor Bazzard.”
“Deve tenerti molto a cuore,” disse Rosa.
“Se lo è davvero, affronta la situazione con una fortitudine lodevole,” rispose il signor Grewgious dopo averci pensato su. “Ma io >dubito che lo sia. Non particolarmente, almeno. Vede, è insoddisfatto, povero ragazzo.”
“Perché non è soddisfatto?” era la domanda naturale.
“Messo nel posto sbagliato,” disse il signor Grewgious, con grande mistero.
Le sopracciglia di Rosa ripresero quell’espressione curiosa e perplessa.
“Sono così fuori posto, ”, continuò il signor Grewgious, “che mi sento costantemente in colpa nei suoi confronti. E lui pensa – anche se non lo dice esplicitamente – che io abbia davvero motivi per esserlo.”
A quel punto, il signor Grewgious era diventato così misterioso che Rosa non sapeva più come comportarsi. Mentre ci pensava, il signor Grewgious improvvisamente tornò in sé per la seconda volta.
“Parliamo. Stavamo parlando del signor Bazzard. È un segreto, e inoltre è il segreto del signor Bazzard stesso; ma la sua dolce presenza al mio tavolo mi rende così particolarmente loquace, che sento di doverlo condividere in assoluta confidenza. Cosa pensi che abbia fatto il signor Bazzard?”
“Oh mio Dio!” esclamò Rosa, avvicinando un po’ la sedia e ripensando a Jasper, “niente di terribile, spero, ”
“Ha scritto un’opera teatrale,” disse il signor Grewgious, sussurrando solennemente. “Una tragedia.”
Sembrava che Rosa fosse molto sollevata.
“E nessuno,” continuò il signor Grewgious nello stesso tono, “deve assolutamente sapere nulla riguardo al fatto che verrà pubblicato.”
Rosa sembrava pensierosa e annuì lentamente, come se volesse dire:
“Queste cose esistono. E perché esistono?”
“Ora, sapete,” disse il signor Grewgious, “io non sarei mai in grado di scrivere un’opera teatrale.”
“Niente male, vero signore?”, disse Rosa, innocentemente, con le sopracciglia che si muovevano di nuovo.
“No. Se fossi condannato alla decapitazione e stessi per essere giustiziato all’istante, e arrivasse un decreto di grazia per il condannato Grewgious purché scrivesse una commedia, sarei costretto a riprendere il lavoro al blocco da macellaio e a chiedere all’esecutore di procedere con l’esecuzione, cioè,” disse il signor Grewgious passandosi la mano sotto il mento, “di eseguire la pena.”
Rosa sembrava riflettere su ciò che avrebbe fatto se quella situazione imbarazzante e ipotetica fosse capitata a lei.
“Di conseguenza,” disse il signor Grewgious, “il signor Bazzard avrebbe sempre la sensazione della mia inferiorità rispetto a lui in qualsiasi circostanza; ma quando io sono il suo padrone, beh, la situazione diventa ancora più grave.”
Il signor Grewgious scosse la testa seriamente, come se ritenesse che l’offesa fosse un po’ troppo grave, anche se era stata lui stesso a commetterla.
“Come mai siete diventato il suo maestro, signore?” chiese Rosa.
“Una domanda che sorge naturalmente,” disse il signor Grewgious. “Parliamo pure. Il padre del signor Bazzard, essendo un contadino del Norfolk, avrebbe aggredito furiosamente suo figlio con una mazza, una forchetta da giardinaggio e ogni altro strumento agricolo disponibile, al minimo sospetto che avesse scritto una commedia. Così il figlio, portandomi l’affitto che ricevevo dal padre, mi rivelò il suo segreto e spiegò che era determinato a perseguire il proprio talento, anche se questo lo avrebbe messo in pericolo di morire di fame, e che, dopotutto, non era fatto per quel genere di vita.”
“Per aver perseguito il proprio genio, signore?”
“No, mio caro,” disse il signor Grewgious, “perché di fame. Era impossibile negare che il signor Bazzard non fosse fatto per morire di fame. Allora il signor Bazzard sottolineò che sarebbe stato desiderabile se io fossi intervenuto tra lui e una sorte così del tutto inadatta alle sue caratteristiche. In questo modo, il signor Bazzard divenne mio impiegato. E ne è molto grato.”
“Sono felice che sia grato,” disse Rosa.
“Non intendevo davvero dire quello, caro mio. Intendo dire che lui percepisce questa degradazione. Ci sono altri geni con cui il signor Bazzard ha avuto contatti, anch’essi autori di tragedie, le quali, allo stesso modo, nessuno avrebbe mai l’idea di far pubblicare. E questi talenti eccezionali dedicano le loro opere gli uni agli altri in modi estremamente lusinghieri. Il signor Bazzard è stato oggetto di una di queste dediche. Ora, sai bene. Nessuno ha mai dedicato un’opera a me!”
Rosa lo guardò come se desiderasse che fosse lui il destinatario di mille dediche.
“Il che, naturalmente, va contro i desideri del signor Bazzard,” disse il signor Grewgious. “A volte si comporta molto scortesamente con me, e allora penso che stia pensando: ‘Questo idiota è il mio padrone! Un uomo che non sarebbe in grado di scrivere nemmeno una tragedia sulla dolore della >morte, e che mai riceverà una tragedia dedicata a lui, con i più lusinghieri complimenti per la posizione elevata che ha conquistato agli occhi delle generazioni future!’ È davvero molto frustrante. Tuttavia, prima di dargli istruzioni, rifletto sempre: ‘Forse non gli piacerà’, o ‘Potrebbe offendersi se glielo chiedessi’; e così andiamo molto bene. Anzi, meglio di quanto mi aspettassi.”
“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.
“Il nome della tragedia è già stato deciso, signore?” chiese Rosa.
“Strettamente tra noi,” rispose il signor Grewgious, “ha un nome terribilmente appropriato: si chiama ‘Il Prunello dell’Ansia’. Ma il signor Bazzard spera – e anch’io >spero – che alla fine venga pubblicato.”
Non era difficile intuire che il signor Grewgious avesse raccontato tutta quella storia del Bazzard, almeno per lo stesso motivo per cui voleva distrarre la mente della sua protetta da quell’argomento che l’aveva portata a quel punto, così come per soddisfare la propria tendenza a essere socievole e comunicativo.
“E ora, mia cara,” disse a questo punto, “se non sei troppo stanca per raccontarmi di più su ciò che è accaduto oggi, ma solo se ti senti davvero in grado, mi farebbe molto piacere ascoltarti. Forse riuscirò a comprendere meglio tutto se ci dormo sopra, fino a notte.”
Rosa, una volta che ebbe finito di raccontare, gli fornì un resoconto fedele dell’incontro. Durante il racconto, il signor Grewgious si accarezzava spesso la testa e chiedeva di ascoltare nuovamente quelle parti del racconto che riguardavano Helena e Neville. Quando Rosa ebbe terminato, lui rimase seduto, serio, in silenzio, immerso nei suoi pensieri per un po’.
“Raccontato in modo chiaro,” fu la sua unica osservazione alla fine, “e, spero, anche ben archiviato qui,” aggiunse accarezzandosi di nuovo i capelli. “Vedi, mia cara,” disse portandola davanti alla finestra aperta, “lì dove vivono, quelle finestre scure laggiù.”
“Posso andare da Helena domani?” chiese Rosa.
“Vorrei riflettere su quella questione fino a notte,” rispose lui con esitazione. “Ma lasciate che vi accompagni al vostro riposo, perché ne avete sicuramente bisogno.”
Con questo, il signor Grewgious l’aiutò a rimettersi il cappello e le fece prendere il suo piccolissimo borsellino, del tutto inutile, poi la prese per mano (con una certa goffaggine ma dignitosa, come se stesse per ballare un minuetto) e la guidò attraverso Holborn fino all’albergo Furnival’s Inn. Alla porta dell’hotel, le affidò la responsabilità della cameriera caposervizio e le disse che mentre lei andava a vedere la sua stanza, lui sarebbe rimasto al piano di sotto, nel caso desiderasse cambiarla o se le fosse servito qualcosa.
La stanza di Rosa era ariosa, pulita, confortevole, quasi allegra. L’Unlimited aveva fornito tutto ciò che mancava nella piccolissima borsa che lei aveva con sé (in altre parole, tutto ciò di cui potesse aver bisogno), e così Rosa scese di nuovo le numerose scale per ringraziare il suo tutore per la sua attenzione premurosa e affettuosa.
“Assolutamente no, mia cara,” disse il signor Grewgious, estremamente compiaciuto; “sono io a ringraziarvi per la vostra deliziosa fiducia e per la vostra compagnia così piacevole. Il vostro colazione vi sarà servita in una piccola sala da pranzo ordinata, accogliente e graziosa (adatta alla vostra figura), e verrò da voi alle dieci di questa mattina. Spero che non vi sentiate davvero troppo strane in questo luogo così insolito.”
“No, mi sento così al sicuro, ”
“Sì, potete essere certi che le scale sono resistenti al fuoco,” disse il signor Grewgious, “e che qualsiasi focolaio di questo elemento distruttivo verrebbe immediatamente rilevato e spento dai guardiani.”
“Non volevo dire quello,” rispose Rosa. “Voglio dire, mi sento così al sicuro con lui.”
“C’è una solida porta di sbarre di ferro per tenerlo fuori,” disse il signor Grewgious sorridendo; “e la casa di Furnival è resistente al fuoco, inoltre è costantemente sorvegliata e illuminata. E io abito proprio di fronte!” Nella sua ingenua fiducia, sembrava ritenere che tale protezione fosse più che sufficiente. Con lo stesso spirito, disse al portiere uscendo: “Se qualcuno che soggiorna in hotel desiderasse mandarmi un messaggio di notte, una corona sarà pronta per il messaggero.” Con lo stesso atteggiamento, camminò avanti e indietro davanti alla porta di ferro per quasi un’ora, con evidente preoccupazione; di tanto in tanto guardava attraverso le sbarre, come se avesse lasciato una colomba in cattività tra dei leoni, temendo che potesse cadere fuori.
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!
capitolo XXI.
UN RICONOSCIMENTO
Nella notte non accadde nulla che potesse turbare la tranquilla colomba; e la colomba si alzò riposata. Con il signor Grewgious, quando l’orologio suonò le dieci del mattino, arrivò anche il signor Crisparkle, che era emerso all’improvviso dal fiume a Cloisterham.
“Miss Twinkleton era così agitata, Miss Rosa,” le spiegò, “e è venuta da noi con la sua lettera, in uno stato di stupore tale che, per calmarla, mi sono offerto volontario per questo compito, prendendo il primo treno disponibile la mattina seguente. Avrei voluto che veniste da me all’momento giusto; ma ora penso che sia stato meglio che abbiate fatto ciò che avete fatto, cioè rivolgervi al vostro tutore.”
“Ci ho pensato davvero a te”, gli disse Rosa; “ma Minor Canon Corner era così vicino a lui, ”
“Capisco. Era del tutto naturale.”
“Gli ho raccontato tutto ciò che mi hai detto la scorsa notte, caro mio,” disse il signor Grewgious. “Certo avrei dovuto scrivergli subito; ma il suo arrivo è stato davvero tempestivo. E è stato particolarmente gentile da parte sua venire, visto che era appena partito.”
“Avete già deciso,” chiese Rosa, rivolgendosi a entrambi, “cosa fare per Elena e suo fratello?”
“Davvero,” disse il signor Crisparkle, “sono nel più grande imbarazzo. Se persino il signor Grewgious, la cui testa è molto più lunga della mia e che riflette per intere notti prima di me, non riesce a prendere una decisione, cosa dovrei fare io!”
La donna chiamata “Unlimited” bussò alla porta; dopo essere stata autorizzata ad entrare, annunciò che un gentiluomo desiderava parlare con un altro gentiluomo di nome Crisparkle, nel caso ce ne fosse uno. Se non ci fosse stato alcun signor Crisparkle, chiese scusa per l’errore.
“Un gentiluomo del genere è qui,” disse il signor Crisparkle, “ma al momento è impegnato.”
“È un gentiluomo scuro?” intervenne Rosa, ritirandosi accanto al suo tutore.
“No, signorina, più un gentiluomo di colore.”
“Sei sicura che non abbia i capelli neri?”, chiese Rosa, prendendo coraggio.
“Ne sono assolutamente certa, signorina. Capelli biondi e occhi blu.”
“Forse,” suggerì il signor Grewgious con la sua solita cautela, “sarebbe utile incontrarlo, reverendo signore, se non avete obiezioni. Quando si trova in difficoltà o si è persi, non si sa mai in quale direzione possa aprirsi una via d’uscita. Nel mio modo di procedere, in casi del genere, non mi limito a escludere alcuna possibilità, ma tengo d’occhio ogni direzione che possa presentarsi. Potrei raccontarvi un aneddoto a questo proposito, ma sarebbe prematuro.”
“Se la signorina Rosa me lo permetterà. Allora lasciate che il gentiluomo entri,” disse il signor Crisparkle.
Il gentiluomo entrò, si scusò con franchezza ma modestia per non aver trovato il signor Crisparkle da solo; poi si rivolse al signor Crisparkle e, sorridendo, pose quella domanda inaspettata: “Chi sono io?”
“Sei il gentiluomo che ho visto fumare sotto gli alberi di Staple Inn, poco fa, ”
“Vero. Lì ti ho visto. Chi altro potrei essere?”
Il signor Crisparkle concentrò la sua attenzione su un volto attraente, molto abbronzato dal sole; e l’fantasma di qualche ragazzo scomparso sembrò risorgere, gradualmente e in modo vago, nella stanza.
Il gentiluomo vide un ricordo lontano illuminare i tratti del giovane canonico; sorridendo di nuovo, disse: “Cosa vorrai per colazione stamattina? Non abbiamo più marmellata, ”
“Aspettate un attimo!” gridò il signor Crisparkle, alzando la mano destra. “Datemi ancora un momento. Tartar!”
I due si strinsero la mano con grande cordialità, e poi fecero quella cosa meravigliosa che gli inglesi sono soliti fare: posarono entrambi le mani sulle spalle dell’altro e si guardarono felicemente negli occhi.
“Mio vecchio braccio destro!” disse il signor Crisparkle.
“Mio vecchio padrone!” disse il signor Tartar.
“Mi hai salvato dal annegare!” disse il signor Crisparkle.
“Dopo di che hai iniziato a nuotare, vero!” disse il signor Tartar.
“Dio benedica la mia ‘anima!” disse il signor Crisparkle.
“Amén!”, disse il signor Tartar.
E poi si strinsero la mano ancora una volta, con grande affetto.
“Immaginate,” esclamò il signor Crisparkle con gli occhi che brillavano: “La signorina Rosa Bud e il signor Grewgious. Immaginate il signor Tartar, quando era ancora uno dei più giovani studenti, che si tuffa per prendermi in braccio, me, un grande e pesante studente anziano, per i capelli, e poi mi trascina verso la riva come un vero gigante dell’acqua!”
“Immaginate se non lo avessi salvato, visto che ero il suo ‘compagno di sventure’!” disse il signor Tartar.
“Ma la verità è che lui era il mio miglior protettore e amico; mi ha fatto più bene di tutti gli altri insegnanti messi insieme. Un impulso irrazionale mi spinse a salvarlo, o, forse, ad affondare con lui.”
“Ehm! Permettetemi, signore, di avere l’onore, ” disse il signor Grewgious, avvicinandosi con la mano tesa, “poiché si tratta di un onore che apprezzo davvero molto. Sono orgoglioso di conoscervi. Spero non vi siate raffreddati. E spero anche che non abbiate avuto problemi a causa dell’ingestione eccessiva d’acqua. Come state da allora?”
Non era affatto evidente che il signor Grewgious sapesse ciò che stava dicendo, anche se era molto chiaro che volesse esprimere qualcosa di estremamente cordiale e apprezzativo.
Se solo il Cielo avesse inviato a sua povera madre tanta coraggio e abilità, pensò Rosa. E se lui fosse stato così leggero e giovane all’epoca.
“Non desidero essere lodato per questo, vi ringrazio; ma penso di avere un’idea,” annunciò il signor Grewgious, dopo essersi mosso avanti e indietro nella stanza in modo così improvviso e inspiegabile che tutti lo fissarono, chiedendosi se stesse soffocando o avesse avuto un crampo, “Penso di avere un’idea. Credo di aver avuto il piacere di vedere il nome del signor Tartar indicato come inquilino dell’appartamento più alto nella casa accanto a quello situato nell’angolo, giusto?”
“Sì, signore”, rispose il signor Tartar. “Per ora ha ragione”.
“Finora ho ragione,” disse il signor Grewgious. “Segna questo punto;” e lo fece, usando il pollice destro per indicare il lato sinistro. “Potresti per caso conoscere il nome del tuo vicino che abita nell’appartamento sopra, dall’altra parte della parete divisoria?” Si avvicinò molto al signor Tartar, per non perdere nulla di ciò che vedeva a causa della sua miopia.
“Senza terra.”
“Segna quella voce,” disse il signor Grewgious, riprendendo a camminare velocemente per poi tornare indietro. “Nessuna conoscenza personale, immagino, signore, ”
“Appena percettibile, ma c’è.”
“Segna quella voce,” disse il signor Grewgious, ripartendo di corsa e tornando subito dopo. “Qual è la ‘natura’ della conoscenza, signor Tartar?”
“Pensavo che fosse un giovane in difficoltà, quindi gli chiesi il permesso – solo per un giorno o due – di condividere le mie >fioriture lassù con lui; in altre parole, di estendere il mio giardino fiorito fino alle sue finestre.”
“Le dispiacerebbe prendere posto, per favore?”, disse il signor Grewgious. “Ho un’idea!”
Obbedirono; il signor Tartar, tuttavia, senza alcuna esitazione, poiché si trovava all’estero; e il signor Grewgious, seduto al centro con le mani sulle ginocchia, espresse la sua idea nel solito modo, cioè dopo averla imparata a memoria.
“Non riesco ancora a decidere se sia prudente mantenere un contatto aperto, nelle circostanze attuali, da parte del rispettabile membro di questa compagnia, con il signor Neville o la signorina Helena. Ho motivo di sapere che un nostro amico locale (a cui invio, con l’amichevole permesso del mio reverendo amico, una maledizione veloce ma sentita) si muove furtivamente avanti e indietro. Se non lo fa personalmente, probabilmente ha qualche informatore che gli fa da scagnozzo, sotto le sembianze di un custode, di un portiere o di qualcun altro legato a Staple. D’altra parte, la signorina Rosa desidera naturalmente rivedere la sua amica, la signorina Helena, e sembrerebbe importante che almeno lei (se non anche suo fratello, attraverso di lei) sappia in privato, dalle parole della stessa signorina Rosa, ciò che è accaduto e quali minacce sono state fatte. Sono d’accordo con le opinioni generalmente condivise?”
“Concordo completamente con loro”, disse il signor Crisparkle, che aveva prestato molta attenzione.
“Poiché non ho alcun >dubbio che dovrei farlo,” aggiunse il signor Tartar sorridendo, “se solo riuscissi a comprenderli.”
“Con gentilezza e discrezione, signore,” disse il signor Grewgious; “vi confideremo completamente tutto, se ci concedete il vostro permesso. Ora, se il nostro amico locale avesse qualche informatore sul posto, è abbastanza evidente che tale informatore possa soltanto sorvegliare le stanze occupate dal signor Neville. Se quest’ultimo dovesse fare rapporto al nostro amico locale, che va e viene lì, il nostro amico potrebbe, grazie alle sue precedenti informazioni, identificare le persone coinvolte. Nessuno potrebbe sorvegliare tutte le stanze di Staple, né occuparsi degli andirivieni nelle altre stanze, a meno che non si tratti delle mie.”
“Comincio a capire verso cosa ti stai dirigendo,” disse il signor Crisparkle, “e approvo molto la tua prudenza.”
“Non c’è bisogno che ripeta che per ora non so nulla riguardo al ‘perché’ e al ‘dove’,” disse il signor Tartar; “ma capisco anche a cosa mirate, quindi vi dico subito che le mie stanze sono a vostra disposizione.”
“Ecco!” esclamò il signor Grewgious, lisciandosi la testa con aria trionfale, “adesso tutti abbiamo capito. L’hai capito anche tu, caro mio?”
“Credo di sì,” disse Rosa, arrossendo leggermente quando il signor Tartar le lanciò uno sguardo rapido.
“Vedi,” disse il signor Grewgious, “tu vai da Staple insieme al signor Crisparkle e al signor Tartar; io entrerò e uscirò da solo, come al solito; tu sali con quei signori nelle stanze del signor Tartar, dà un’occhiata al suo giardino dei fiori, aspetti l’arrivo della signorina Helena o le fai sapere che sei nelle vicinanze; e poi parla liberamente con lei. Nessun spia potrà scoprirlo.”
“Temo davvero di dover essere, ”
“Che cosa dovrei essere, mia cara?”, chiese il signor Grewgious mentre lei esitava. “Non hai paura?”
“No, non quello,” disse Rosa, imbarazzata; “intendo nel modo in cui il signor Tartar si comporta. Sembra che stiamo prendendoci molto tranquillamente la sua residenza.”
“Vi protesto,” rispose quel gentiluomo, “che considererò questa cosa sempre la migliore, anche solo se la vostra voce vi risuona una volta sola.”
Rosa, non sapendo bene cosa dire al riguardo, abbassò lo sguardo e, rivolgendosi a Mr. Grewgious, chiese con diligenza se dovesse mettersi il cappello. Poiché Mr. Grewgious riteneva che non potesse fare di meglio, lei si allontanò per farlo. Mr. Crisparkle approfittò dell’occasione per riassumere a Mr. Tartar le difficoltà di Neville e sua sorella; l’occasione fu più che sufficiente, poiché il cappello richiedeva infatti qualche aggiustamento.
Il signor Tartar offrì il proprio braccio a Rosa, mentre il signor Crisparkle camminava da solo, davanti a loro.
“Povero, povero Eddy!” pensò Rosa mentre camminavano.
Il signor Tartar agitò la sua mano destra mentre chinava la testa verso Rosa, parlando in modo animato.
“Non era così potente né così abbronzata dal sole quando salvò il signor Crisparkle,” pensò Rosa, guardandola; “ma deve essere stata comunque molto ferma e decisa anche allora.”
Il signor Tartar le disse di essere stato un marinaio, che aveva viaggiato in giro per anni e anni.
“Quando ripartirai per il mare?” chiese Rosa.
“Mai!”
Rosa si chiese cosa avrebbero detto le ragazze se l’avessero vista attraversare quella larga strada sostenuta dal braccio di un marinaio. Immaginava che i passanti la considerassero insignificante e completamente indifesa, a confronto con quella figura forte che avrebbe potuto prenderla in braccio e portarla in salvo, per chilometri e chilometri senza mai fermarsi.
Pensava ancora che i suoi occhi azzurri e perspicaci sembravano abituati a osservare il pericolo da lontano, a vederlo avvicinarsi senza mai tremare. Quando alzò lo sguardo anch’ella, si rese conto che lui sembrava stesse pensando proprio a lei.
Questa situazione lasciò Rosebud un po’ confusa, e forse spiega perché in seguito non riuscì mai a ricordare esattamente come fosse salita (con il suo aiuto) nel suo giardino sospeso tra le nuvole, e come fosse entrata in quel meraviglioso regno che sembrava fiorire all’improvviso, proprio come il paesaggio sulla cima del gambo di fagiolo magico. Che possa prosperare per sempre!
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 chimneypots 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
Capitolo XXII: Si apre una fase difficile
Le stanze di Mr. Tartar erano le più ordinate, pulite e ben sistemate che si potessero mai vedere sotto il sole, la luna e le stelle. I pavimenti erano lavati così accuratamente che si sarebbe potuto pensare che tutti i domestici di Londra fossero stati liberati per sempre e se ne fossero andati via dalla città. Ogni pezzo di bronzo posseduto da Mr. Tartar era lucidato fino a brillare come uno specchio di bronzo. Nessuna macchia, né traccia di sporco rovinava la pulizia dei suoi oggetti domestici, grandi, piccoli o di medie dimensioni. Il suo salotto assomigliava alla cabina di un ammiraglio; il bagno a una latteria; la sua camera da letto, piena di armadietti e cassetti, a un negozio di semi; e il suo lettino, ben bilanciato, sembrava muoversi dolcemente al centro della stanza, come se respirasse. Ogni oggetto appartenente a Mr. Tartar aveva il proprio posto preciso: le sue mappe e i suoi grafici avevano il loro spazio; i suoi libri, le sue penne, i suoi stivali, i suoi vestiti, le sue bottiglie, tutto era sistemato in modo ordinato. Tutto era facilmente accessibile: mensole, scaffali, armadietti, erano tutti disposti in modo da non sprecare spazio e offrire un posto sicuro per ogni oggetto che altrimenti non avrebbe trovato posto. I suoi piatti lucidi erano disposti sul tavolo in modo tale che anche il minimo errore nella loro disposizione sarebbe stato immediatamente notato; gli oggetti da toeletta, sul comodino, erano così sistemati che qualsiasi trascuratezza sarebbe stata subito evidente. Lo stesso valeva per le curiosità che aveva portato a casa dopo varie spedizioni: uccelli, pesci, rettili, armi, abiti, conchiglie, alghe, ognuno era esposto nel suo posto giusto, e non avrebbe potuto essere messo in nessun altro luogo migliore. Sembrava che vernice e lacca venissero sempre tenute nascoste, pronte a cancellare qualsiasi traccia di sporco potesse apparire nelle stanze di Mr. Tartar. Nessuna nave da guerra sarebbe mai stata mantenuta in condizioni più ordinate rispetto a quelle della sua casa. In quel luminoso giorno d’estate, sopra il suo giardino fiorito era stato montato un tendone, sistemato esattamente come avrebbe potuto farlo solo un marinaio; l’insieme aveva un aspetto davvero delizioso e completo. Il giardino fiorito sembrava appartenere a una nave in viaggio. Se solo Mr. Tartar avesse suonato il corno che teneva in un angolo, dando l’ordine di alzare l’ancora e salpare immediatamente.
Il signor Tartar, che si occupava di questa nobile impresa, era proprio come gli altri. Quando un uomo coltiva un hobby piacevole, che non esita davanti a nulla e non offende nessuno, è davvero gradevole vederlo praticarlo con un senso umoristico della comicità delle cose. E quando quest’uomo è per natura cordiale e sincero, e inoltre del tutto genuino e autentico, si può dubitare che esista momento migliore di questo per apprezzarlo appieno. Così Rosa avrebbe pensato naturalmente (anche se non fosse stata accompagnata a bordo della nave con tutti gli onori dovuti alla “Prima Signora dell’Ammiragliato” o alla “Prima Fata del Mare”), che era davvero incantevole vedere e ascoltare il signor Tartar ridere e gioire delle sue varie invenzioni. Comunque sia, Rosa avrebbe pensato naturalmente che quel marinaio abbronzato si mostrasse al meglio quando, terminata l’ispezione, uscì con delicatezza dalla cabina dell’ammiraglio, chiedendole di considerarsi la sua “Regina” e salutandola con la mano che aveva salvato la vita del signor Crisparkle.
“Elena! Elena Senza Terra! Sei lì?”
“Chi parla con me? Non è Rosa?” Poi apparve un secondo volto attraente.
“Sì, mio caro!”
“Ma come sei arrivata qui, cara?”
“Non lo so proprio, ”, disse Rosa arrossendo, “a meno che non stia sognando, ”
Perché arrossire? Poiché i loro due volti erano gli unici ad essere circondati dalle altre >fioriture. Gli arrossimenti fanno forse parte dei frutti del regno della magia?
“Non sto sognando,” disse Elena sorridendo. “Se lo fossi, dovrei considerare tutto più normale. Come è possibile che ci incontriamo, o che ci avviciniamo così tanto, in modo così inaspettato?”
Inaspettatamente, tra i tettoie e i comignoli scuri della casa di P. J. T., e le >fiori che erano spuntate dal mare salato. Ma Rosa, svegliandosi, raccontò in fretta come fossero finiti insieme, e tutti i motivi e le ragioni di quella situazione.
“E il signor Crisparkle è qui,” disse Rosa, concludendo rapidamente; “e, potreste crederci?, molto tempo fa lui gli salvò la vita!”
“Potrei credere qualsiasi cosa su Mr. Crisparkle,” rispose Helena, con il viso nascosto dietro un velo.
(Ancora più rossori nel paese dei gambi di fagiolo, )
“Sì, ma non era Crisparkle,” disse Rosa, correggendo rapidamente.
“Non capisco, amore.”
“È stato molto gentile da parte del signor Crisparkle essere salvato,” disse Rosa, “e non avrebbe potuto esprimere più chiaramente la sua alta stima per il signor Tartar. Ma è stato proprio il signor Tartar a salvarlo.”
Gli occhi scuri di Elena fissarono con grande serietà il viso luminoso tra le foglie, e chiese, con un tono più lento e pensieroso:
“Il signor Tartar è con te adesso, carina?”
“No; perché ci ha ceduto le sue stanze. Voglio dire, a noi. È un posto davvero meraviglioso!”
“Is it?”
“È come l’interno della più raffinata nave che sia mai salpata. È proprio come, ”
“Come in un >sogno?” suggerì Elena.
Rosa rispose con un piccolo cenno del capo e annusò i >fiori.
Helena riprese, dopo una breve pausa di silenzio, durante la quale sembrava (o forse era solo un’idea di Rosa) che provasse compassione per qualcuno: “Povero Neville, sta leggendo nella sua stanza; il sole è proprio molto forte da questa parte in questo momento. Penso sia meglio che non sappia che sei così vicina.”
“Oh, anch’io lo penso!” esclamò Rosa senza esitazione.
“Suppongo,” proseguì Helena con esitazione, “che prima o poi debba venire a sapere tutto ciò che mi hai raccontato; ma non ne sono sicura. Chiedi consiglio al signor Crisparkle, carina mia. Chiedigli se posso dire a Neville tanto o quanto meno di quello che mi hai detto, secondo quanto ritengo meglio.”
Rosa tornò nella sua cabina ufficiale e pose la domanda: il Canone Minore sosteneva l’esercizio libero del giudizio di Elena.
“Gli sono molto grata,” disse Helena quando Rosa ricomparve con il suo rapporto. “Chiedigli se sia meglio aspettare che quest’infame continui a diffamare e perseguitare Neville, oppure cercare di prevenire tutto ciò: intendo dire, scoprire se qualcosa del genere stia accadendo in segreto intorno a noi.”
Il Minor Canon trovò questo argomento così difficile da analizzare con certezza, che, dopo due o tre tentativi falliti, suggerì di consultare il signor Grewgious. Helena acconsentì, e lui si recò (con un’aria di indifferenza del tutto simulata) nel cortile adiacente per parlare con P.J.T. Il signor Grewgious era fermamente convinto del principio generale secondo cui, se si poteva anticipare un brigante o una bestia selvaggia, era meglio farlo; e credeva anche con certezza che John Jasper rappresentasse esattamente questo tipo di individuo pericoloso.
Avendo ricevuto questo consiglio, il signor Crisparkle tornò e riferì a Rosa, la quale a sua volta ne informò Helena. Ora, continuando con determinazione nel seguire il filo dei suoi pensieri davanti alla sua finestra, lei rifletté su ciò.
“Possiamo contare sulla disponibilità del signor Tartar ad aiutarci, Rosa?” chiese lei.
O sì! Rosa lo pensava timidamente. O sì, Rosa credeva timidamente di poter rispondere al posto giusto. Ma doveva chiederlo a Mr. Crisparkle? “Penso che la tua autorità in questa materia sia altrettanta della sua, cara,” disse Helena con calma, “e non c’è bisogno che tu scompaia di nuovo per questo.” Che strana persona Helena.
“Vedi, Neville,” continuò Helena dopo ulteriori riflessioni, “qui non conosce nessun altro: non ha nemmeno scambiato una parola con nessuno. Se il signor Tartar lo chiamasse spesso e apertamente; se dedicasse anche solo un minuto per farlo, di frequente; anzi, quasi ogni giorno, forse potrebbe succedere qualcosa.”
“Forse potrebbe funzionare, cara, ” ripeté Rosa, osservando la bellezza della sua amica con un’espressione molto perplessa. “Forse potrebbe davvero funzionare?”
“Se i movimenti di Neville sono davvero sotto osservazione, e se lo scopo è davvero quello di isolarlo da tutti gli amici e conoscenti, logorando gradualmente la sua vita quotidiana (cosa che sembrerebbe rappresentare una vera minaccia per lui), non vi pare probabile,” disse Helena, “che il suo nemico possa in qualche modo mettersi in contatto con il signor Tartar per avvertirlo di stare lontano da Neville? In tal caso, potremmo non solo conoscere questo fatto, ma anche sapere dal signor Tartar quali siano stati i termini di quel contatto.”
“Capisco!” esclamò Rosa. E immediatamente tornò nella sua cabina di comando.
In quel momento il suo bel viso riapparve, con un colore molto più intenso; lei disse di aver informato il signor Crisparkle, che a sua volta aveva fatto venire il signor Tartar. Il signor Tartar – “che adesso sta aspettando, nel caso tu lo voglia”, aggiunse Rosa, guardandosi indietro con un certo imbarazzo, non essendo del tutto sicura della situazione all’interno della cabina di stato – aveva dichiarato di essere pronto a agire secondo i suoi suggerimenti e di iniziare il proprio compito quel stesso giorno.
“Gli sono davvero grata dal profondo del cuore,” disse Elena. “Per favore, diglielo.”
Ancora una volta, c’era un po’ di confusione tra il giardino fiorito e la capanna. Rosa vi immerse il messaggio, ne uscì poi con altre promesse da parte del signor Tartar, e rimase indecisa tra Helena e lui. Il che dimostra che la confusione non è sempre sgradevole, ma a volte può presentare un aspetto davvero piacevole.
“E ora, caro,” disse Elena, “rispetteremo le cautele che ci hanno costretti a limitare questo incontro per il momento, e, ”
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.”
“Parte. Ho sentito Neville muoversi anche lui. Stai tornando indietro?”
“Per la signorina Twinkleton?” chiese Rosa.
“Sì, davvero.”
“Oh, non potrei mai più andarci. Davvero non potrei, dopo quell’orribile colloquio!” disse Rosa.
“Allora, dove stai andando, bella mia?”
“Ora che ci penso, non lo so proprio,” disse Rosa. “Non ho ancora deciso nulla, ma il mio tutore si occuperà di me. Non preoccuparti, caro. Sicuramente finirò da qualche parte.”
(Sembra davvero probabile.)
“E allora sentirò parlare della mia ‘Rosebud’ dal signor Tartar?”, chiese Elena.
“Sì, suppongo di sì. Da, ” Rosa guardò indietro ancora una volta, esitante, senza però pronunciare il nome. “Ma dimmi una cosa prima che ci separiamo, cara Elena. Dimmi che sei sicura, davvero sicura.”
“Aiutalo, amore, ”
“Aiutami a renderlo malvagio e vendicativo. Non riuscivo proprio a mantenere rapporti con lui, vero?”
“Tu sai quanto ti amo, caro,” rispose Elena con indignazione;
“ma preferirei vederti morto ai suoi piedi malvagi.”
“Questo è un grande conforto per me! E tu dirai così a tuo povero fratello, vero? Gli porterai i miei saluti e la mia solidarietà. E gli chiederai di non odiarmi, giusto?”
Con un movimento di testa pieno di tristezza, come se quel gesto fosse del tutto superfluo, Elena baciò con affetto le mani della sua amica; a sua volta, anche le mani dell’amica furono baciate. Poi vide apparire una terza mano (di colore marrone) tra i >fiori e le > foglie, che aiutò la sua amica a scomparire dalla vista.
La cena che il signor Tartar preparò nella cabina dell’ammiraglio semplicemente toccando la maniglia di una cassettiera e l’impugnatura di un cassetto, fu un banchetto incantato e straordinario. Meravigliosi macaroon, liquori scintillanti, spezie tropicali conservate magicamente, e gelatine di frutti tropicali celestiali apparvero in abbondanza in un istante. Ma il signor Tartar non riusciva a far fermare il tempo; e questo, con la sua implacabile rapidità, proseguiva così velocemente che Rosa fu costretta a scendere dal “paese delle steli di fagiolo” per tornare sulla terra, nelle stanze del suo custode.
“E ora, mio caro,” disse il signor Grewgious, “cosa dobbiamo fare adesso? Per esprimere lo stesso concetto in un altro modo, cosa dobbiamo fare con te?”
Rosa poteva solo guardare con un’espressione di scusa, rendendosi conto di essere molto diversa sia da se stessa che dagli altri. L’unica idea che le venne in mente come possibile piano per il resto della sua vita era quella di vivere, in modo sicuro e stabile, al secondo piano dell’Furnival’s Inn.
“Mi è venuto in mente,” disse il signor Grewgious, “che poiché la rispettabile signorina Twinkleton occasionalmente si reca a Londra durante le vacanze, al fine di ampliare i suoi contatti e essere disponibile per eventuali colloqui con genitori della capitale, forse potremmo invitare la signorina Twinkleton a trascorrere un mese da voi, finché non avremo il tempo di organizzarci.”
“Resti lì, signore?”
“Che sia possibile,” spiegò il signor Grewgious, “prendere in affitto un appartamento arredato in città per un mese e invitare la signorina Twinkleton a prendersi cura di voi durante quel periodo?”
“E poi?” chiese insinuante Rosa.
“E dopo”, disse il signor Grewgious, “non saremmo in una situazione peggiore di quella attuale”.
“Penso che questo possa facilitare le cose,” concordò Rosa.
“Allora andiamo,” disse il signor Grewgious alzandosi, “a cercare un alloggio ammobiliato. Niente potrebbe essere più gradito per me della dolce compagnia di ieri sera, per tutte le sere che mi restano da vivere; ma questi non sono ambienti adatti a una giovane signorina. Partiamo dunque in questa avventura e cerchiamo un alloggio ammobiliato. Nel frattempo, il signor Crisparkle, che sta per tornare a casa immediatamente, vedrà sicuramente la signorina Twinkleton e le chiederà di collaborare con noi nel nostro piano.”
Il signor Crisparkle, accettando volentieri l’incarico, se ne andò; il signor Grewgious e la sua protetta partirono per la loro spedizione.
Per il signor Grewgious, osservare una casa affittuata significava recarsi dall’altra parte della strada di fronte a un edificio la cui finestra mostrasse un annuncio adatto, poi aggirarne lentamente l’angolo posteriore per osservarlo anch’esso; senza mai entrare, proseguiva con lo stesso procedimento in altre case, ottenendo sempre lo stesso risultato. Il suo progresso era davvero lento. Alla fine gli venne in mente una cugina vedova, di lontana discendenza, appartenente alla famiglia Bazzard; questa donna aveva un tempo cercato il suo aiuto nel settore degli affitti immobiliari e viveva in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury Square. Il nome di questa signora, scritto in caratteri dorati di notevoli dimensioni su una targhetta di bronzo, non forniva però informazioni chiare riguardo al suo sesso o alla sua condizione sociale. Il suo nome era BILLICKIN.
La debolezza fisica e una schiettezza estrema erano le caratteristiche distintive dell’organizzazione di Mrs. Billickin. Usciva dalla sua stanza privata con l’aria di essere stata portata lì apposta, dopo aver subito diverse svenute.
“Spero di vedervi in buona salute, signore,” disse la signora Billickin, riconoscendo il suo visitatore con un inchino.
“Grazie, molto bene. E lei, signora?” rispose il signor Grewgious.
“Sono nella stessa buona salute,” disse la signora Billickin, con un tono di ambizione eccessiva che nascondeva una certa debolezza, “come quando ero giovane.”
“La mia protetta e una signora anziana”, disse il signor Grewgious, “desiderano trovare un alloggio elegante per circa un mese. Avete qualche appartamento disponibile, signora?”
“Signor Grewgious,” rispose la signora Billickin, “non vi ingannerò affatto; anzi, ho effettivamente degli appartamenti disponibili.”
Questo, con l’aria di aggiungere: “Portatemi alla fiamma del rogo, se volete; ma finché sarò in vita, rimarrò sincero.”
“E ora, quali appartamenti, signora?” chiese gentilmente il signor Grewgious, nel tentativo di mitigare la certa severità che si percepiva nella signora Billickin.
“C’è questa sala da pranzo, chiamatela come volete, ma è comunque la stanza principale, signorina,” disse la signora Billickin, coinvolgendo Rosa nella conversazione: “la stanza posteriore, invece, è quella a cui tengo molto e di cui non mi separerei mai; in cima alla casa ci sono due camere da letto dotate di impianto a gas. Non vi dico che i pavimenti delle vostre camere siano solidi, infatti non lo sono. Lo stesso tecnico del gas ha ammesso che, per rendere il lavoro efficace, avrebbe dovuto lavorare proprio sotto le vostre assi del pavimento, ma non ne varrebbe la pena, considerando che si tratterebbe di un inquilino annuale. I tubi passano sopra le vostre assi, quindi è meglio che lo sappiate.”
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.
Il signor Grewgious e Rosa si scambiarono sguardi di preoccupazione, anche se non avevano la minima idea di quali orrori nascosti potesse comportare quel carro pieno di tubi. La signora Billickin si portò una mano al cuore, come se vi avesse appena sollevato un peso.
“Benissimo! Il tetto è a posto, senza alcun dubbio,” disse il signor Grewgious, sollevandolo leggermente.
“Signor Grewgious,” rispose la signora Billickin, “se vi dicessi che non avere nulla al di sopra di sé significa avere un pavimento sopra la testa, vi ingannerei, e questo non lo farò. No, signore. Le vostre tegole si staccheranno sicuramente in quella posizione, soprattutto quando soffia il vento, che ci proviate pure quanto volete! Vi sfido, signore, a mantenere le vostre tegole ben fissate, per quanto vi sia difficile.” Dopo aver parlato con fervore, la signora Billickin si calmò un po’, per non abusare del potere morale che aveva su di lui. “Di conseguenza,” proseguì in tono più mite ma ancora deciso, nella sua onestà incallita, “sarebbe peggio che nulla se io vi accompagnassi fino in cima alla casa e voi diceste: ‘Signora Billickin, noto una macchia sul soffitto, ’ e io rispondessi: ‘Non capisco cosa intendiate, signore.’ No, signore. Non sarò così subdola. Io capisco già cosa intendete, prima ancora che lo esprimiate a parole. È l’umidità, signore. Entra dentro, e poi sembra non entrare. Potreste lasciare tutto asciugare lì per metà della vostra vita. Ma arriverà il momento in cui nemmeno una goccia d’acqua potrà esservi di alcun aiuto.”
Il signor Grewgious sembrava molto imbarazzato dal fatto di essere stato rappresentato in questa situazione spiacevole.
“Ha altri appartamenti, signora?”, chiese lui.
“Signor Grewgious,” rispose la signora Billickin con grande solennità, “sì, l’ho fatto. Mi chiedete se l’abbia fatto. E la mia risposta onesta e sincera è sì: il primo e il secondo piano sono vuoti, e le stanze sono molto belle.”
“Ma no, ma no! Non c’è nulla contro di loro,” disse il signor Grewgious, consolandosi da solo.
“Signor Grewgious,” rispose la signora Billickin, “mi perdoni, ma ci sono le scale. A meno che non siate preparati ad affrontarle, ciò porterà inevitabilmente a delusioni. Non potete, signorina,” disse la signora Billickin, rivolgendosi a Rosa con rimprovero, “collocare il primo piano, figuriamoci il secondo, allo stesso livello di un salotto. No, non è possibile; va al di là delle vostre possibilità. Perché allora provare?”
La signora Billickin lo espresse con grande emozione, come se Rosa avesse dimostrato una testarda determinazione a mantenere una posizione insostenibile.
“Possiamo vedere queste stanze, signora?” chiese il suo tutore.
“Signor Grewgious,” rispose la signora Billickin, “può farlo. Non glielo nasconderò, signore; può farlo.”
La signora Billickin allora andò nel suo salotto posteriore a prendere il suo scialle (poiché si trattava di una convenzione letteraria che risaliva a tempi immemorabili, secondo cui lei non poteva mai andare da nessuna parte senza essere avvolta in qualcosa), e dopo essere stata accompagnata dalla sua cameriera, prese la strada. Salì le scale facendo varie pause per riprendere fiato, e in salotto si afferrò il cuore come se fosse quasi sfuggito via.
“E il secondo piano?” chiese il signor Grewgious, dopo aver trovato il primo soddisfacente.
“Signor Grewgious,” rispose la signora Billickin, voltandosi verso di lui con solennità, come se fosse giunto il momento in cui fosse necessario raggiungere un chiarimento su una questione difficile e stabilire una fiducia reciproca, “il secondo piano si trova proprio qui.”
“Possiamo vederlo anche noi, signora?”
“Sì, signore,” rispose la signora Billickin, “è completamente aperto, proprio come al sole.”
Essendo anche questo risultato soddisfacente, il signor Grewgious si ritirò accanto alla finestra con Rosa per scambiare alcune parole di consultazione; successivamente, chiese penna e inchiostro e tracciò una o due righe che rappresentavano l’accordo raggiunto. Nel frattempo, la signora Billickin si sedette e fornì una sorta di indice o riassunto della questione generale in discussione.
“Cinquantaquattro scellini a settimana, pagati regolarmente ogni mese, alla data stabilita dell’anno,” disse la signora Billickin, “è un accordo equo per entrambe le parti. Non si tratta certo di Bond Street né del Palazzo di San Giacomo, ma non si cerca nemmeno di far credere il contrario. E non si tenta affatto di negare che quel vicolo conduce a dei cortili privati: i cortili privati devono pur esistere. Per quanto riguarda la presenza delle persone, ne sono state assunte due, con salari generosi. Sono sorti alcuni commenti riguardo ai commercianti che vi lavorano lì, ma si può attribuire tutto questo semplicemente al fatto che indossano scarpe sporche mentre puliscono i pavimenti di pietra, e non c’è alcun desiderio da parte nostra di ricevere una commissione sulle vostre ordinazioni. Il carbone viene consegnato sia vicino alla fiamma del camino, che attraverso la finestra.” Sottolineò con forza le preposizioni, evidenziando così una differenza sottile ma fondamentale. “Gli cani, invece, non sono molto apprezzati. Oltre a sporcare dappertutto, vengono anche rubati, e nascono facilmente sospetti reciproci, con conseguenti problemi.”
A quell’ora, il signor Grewgious aveva già preparato le clausole dell’accordo e l’importo della cauzione richiesta. “L’ho firmato per le signore, signora,” disse, “e ora lei potrebbe gentilmente firmarlo anche per sé, indicando nome e cognome.”
“Signor Grewgious,” disse la signora Billickin con un nuovo slancio di sincerità, “no, signore! Deve scusarmi per questo nome cristiano, ”
Il signor Grewgious la fissò.
“La targa della porta serve da protezione,” disse la signora Billickin, “e funziona proprio come tale; non intendo assolutamente cambiarla.”
Il signor Grewgious fissava Rosa.
“No, signor Grewgious, deve scusarmi. Finché questa casa è conosciuta come quella di Billickin, e finché rimane un luogo sospetto dove Billickin potrebbe nascondersi, vicino alla porta d’ingresso o giù per quel corridoio, finché tutto questo esiste, mi sento al sicuro. Ma affidarmi alle dichiarazioni di una donna sola, no, signorina! Nemmeno voi vorreste, per un momento, approfittare del vostro sesso in questa situazione, se non foste state influenzate da esempi imprudenti,” disse la signora Billickin, con profondo senso di offesa.
La rosa si arrossì, come se avesse tentato qualcosa di estremamente vergognoso per superare la buona signora; allora pregò il signor Grewgious di accontentarsi di qualsiasi firma. E così, in modo nobile e dignitoso, il nome BILLICKIN fu aggiunto al documento.
I dettagli riguardanti la presa in possesso furono definiti il giorno seguente, ma, quando si poteva ragionevolmente aspettare l’arrivo di Miss Twinkleton, Rosa tornò all’Furnival’s Inn sostenuta dal braccio del suo tutore.
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.
[Illustration: 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!”
Ecco il signor Tartar che cammina avanti e indietro presso la locanda di Furnival’s Inn; non appena li vede arrivare, si ferma per controllarsi e poi si avvicina a loro!
“Mi è venuto in mente,” suggerì il signor Tartar, “che potremmo salire lungo l’>fiume, dato che il tempo è così piacevole e la marea è favorevole. Ho una barca tutta mia alle Temple Stairs.”
“Non sono salito sul >fiume da molti giorni,” disse il signor Grewgious, tentato.
“Non sono mai stata sul fiume,” aggiunse Rosa.
In mezz’ora riuscirono a risolvere la questione navigando lungo il fiume. La marea li aiutava, e la giornata pomeridiana era incantevole. La barca di Mr. Tartar era perfetta: lui e Lobley (il suo assistente) remavano insieme. Sembrava che Mr. Tartar possedesse una yacht da qualche parte vicino a Greenhithe, e Lobley ne aveva la responsabilità in quel momento. Era un uomo dall’aspetto allegro, con i capelli e le basette di colore castano e un viso rosso; assomigliava perfettamente al sole nelle vecchie incisioni su legno: i suoi capelli e le sue basette sembravano raggi solari intorno a lui. Seduto a prua della barca, era davvero uno spettacolo piacevole, indossava una camicia da marinaio, o forse no, a seconda di come si guardava. Le sue braccia e il suo petto erano coperti di tatuaggi. Sia Lobley che Mr. Tartar sembravano prendersela con calma; tuttavia, i remi si piegavano sotto il loro impulso, e la barca avanzava velocemente. Mr. Tartar chiacchierava come se nulla stesse succedendo, mentre Rosa, in realtà, non faceva assolutamente nulla. E poi c’era Mr. Grewgious, che cercava disperatamente di guidare la barca, ma senza successo. Che importanza aveva? Bastava un movimento abile del polso di Mr. Tartar o un sorriso di Lobley a sistemare tutto! La marea li portava avanti in modo incantevole, fino a quando non si fermarono per pranzare in un giardino sempreverde. Lì non avevano bisogno di alcuna identificazione. Poi la marea cambiò direzione, fedele soltanto a loro quel giorno. Mentre galleggiavano tranquillamente tra i cespugli di salice, Rosa provò a remare, e riuscì molto bene, con l’aiuto degli altri. Mr. Grewgious invece cercò di remare anche lui, ma finì per cadere all’indietro, con un remo sotto il mento, senza alcun aiuto. Poi ci fu un momento di riposo all’ombra degli alberi. In quel lasso di tempo Lobley pulì la barca e sistemò cuscini e sdraio, poi danzò lungo tutto il bordo della barca, come se le scarpe fossero una superstizione per lui. E infine tornarono indietro, tra profumi di lime in fiore e suoni melodiosi prodotti dalle onde. Ma troppo presto, la grande città nera gettò la sua ombra sull’acqua, i suoi ponti scuri si estendevano sopra di essa, come se la morte dominasse la vita. E il giardino sempreverde sembrava destinato a rimanere per sempre, irraggiungibile e lontano.
[Illustrazione: Lungo il >fiume)
“Non possono forse le persone vivere la vita senza queste fasi difficili e dure? Me lo chiedo”, pensò Rosa il giorno dopo, quando la città era di nuovo immersa nella sua atmosfera cupa e ostile, e tutto aveva un aspetto strano e sgradevole, come se stesse aspettando qualcosa che non sarebbe mai arrivato. NO. Iniziò a convincersi che, ora che i giorni trascorsi alla scuola di Cloisterham erano ormai passati, quelle fasi difficili avrebbero iniziato a presentarsi di nuovo, con regolarità, rendendo la vita ancora più ardua.
Ma cosa si aspettava Rosa? Si aspettava la signorina Twinkleton? E infatti la signorina Twinkleton arrivò puntualmente. Dalla sua stanza sul retro uscì il signor Billickin per accoglierla, e negli occhi del signor Billickin scese la guerra da quel momento stesso.
Miss Twinkleton portò con sé una grande quantità di bagagli; aveva tutti i bagagli di Rosa, così come i propri. Il signor Billickin si arrabbiò molto perché, a causa di tutta quella roba, la mente di Miss Twinkleton era troppo distratta per riconoscere chiaramente la propria identità. Di conseguenza, sul suo volto apparve un’espressione ancora più cupa. E quando Miss Twinkleton, in preda all’agitazione, iniziò a contare i suoi bauli e pacchi – ne aveva diciassette – e ne contò uno in particolare come il numero undici, il signor Billickin ritenne necessario negarlo.
“È necessario che le cose vengano sistemate il prima possibile,” disse lei, con una schiettezza così evidente da sembrare quasi invadente, “affinché la persona che vive in questa casa non venga considerata una scatola, né un mucchio di roba, né ancora un borsone. No. Non sono affatto in debito con voi, signorina Twinkleton, anzi, non sono nemmeno una mendicante.”
Quest’ultima dichiarazione di esclusione si riferiva al fatto che la signorina Twinkleton, distratta, aveva dato due scellini al tassista invece che a quello giusto.
Essendo stata così rifiutata, la signorina Twinkleton chiese disperatamente: “Quale gentiluomo” doveva essere pagato? Poiché c’erano due gentiluomini in quella situazione (la signorina Twinkleton era arrivata con due taxi), ognuno di loro, dopo essere stato pagato, mostrò i suoi due scellini apertamente nella mano; con uno sguardo attonito e la bocca spalancata, rivelò così il proprio errore davanti al cielo e alla terra. Spaventata da questa scena allarmante, la signorina Twinkleton mise un altro scellino in ciascuna mano; nel frattempo, con toni agitati, chiamava in aiuto la legge e descriveva di nuovo il proprio bagaglio, ma questa volta con i due gentiluomini presenti, il che rendeva il conto ancora più complicato. Nel frattempo, i due gentiluomini, ognuno fissando con scontento l’ultimo scellino come se potesse trasformarsi in diciotto se continuavano a guardarlo, scesero i gradini, salirono sui loro carri e se ne andarono, lasciando la signorina Twinkleton su una cassetta da lettere, in lacrime.
Il signor Billickin osservò questa manifestazione di debolezza senza provare alcuna simpatia, e diede l’ordine di “far entrare un giovane” per che si battesse con i bagagli. Quando quel “gladiatore” scomparve dall’arena, tornò la pace, e i nuovi inquilini cenarono.
Ma il Billickin aveva in qualche modo scoperto che la signorina Twinkleton teneva una scuola. Fu facile passare da questa informazione alla conclusione che la signorina Twinkleton si dedicasse ad insegnare a lui qualcosa, “Ma tu non lo fai,” mormorò il Billickin tra sé; “Io non sono tuo allievo, per quanto lei, ” intendendo Rosa, “possa essere, povera creatura!”
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.”
D’altra parte, la signorina Twinkleton, dopo essersi cambiata d’abito e ripresa il proprio spirito, era animata dal desiderio di rendere l’occasione il più piacevole possibile e di essere un esempio di serenità. In un felice compromesso tra i due stati in cui si trovava, con il suo cestino da lavoro davanti a sé, era ormai diventata una compagna vivace e piacevole da conversare, arricchita appena appena da qualche informazione interessante, quando arrivò la signorina Billickin.
“Non mi nasconderò da voi, signore,” disse la B., avvolta nel mantello ufficiale, “poiché non è nel mio carattere nascondere né i miei motivi né le mie azioni. Mi permetto quindi di venire da voi per esprimervi il desiderio che la vostra cena sia stata di vostro gradimento. Anche se semplice e senza fronzoli, comunque il suo compenso dovrebbe essere sufficiente a spingerla a cercare qualcosa di meglio di semplici piatti arrostiti o bolliti.”
“Abbiamo davvero mangiato molto bene,” disse Rosa, “grazie.”
“Abituata,” disse Miss Twinkleton con un tono gentile, che alle orecchie gelose dei Billickin sembrava aggiungere “mia cara signora”, “Abituata a una dieta abbondante e nutriente, ma semplice e salutare, non abbiamo trovato motivo di lamentarci della nostra assenza dall’antica città e dalla vita regolare e ordinata che vi conducevamo fino ad ora.”
“Ho davvero ritenuto fosse una buona idea parlarne con la mia cuoca,” osservò il Billickin con sincera onestà, “e spero che lei sia d’accordo, signorina Twinkleton. È stata una precauzione necessaria: dato che la giovane signora era abituata a ciò che qui considereremmo una dieta povera, è stato meglio avviare gradualmente un cambiamento nel suo regime alimentare. Infatti, passare da una nutrizione scarsa a una abbondante, e da uno stile di vita disordinato a uno più regolare, richiede una costituzione particolarmente robusta, qualcosa che spesso non si trova nei giovani, soprattutto quando la loro salute è già compromessa dagli anni trascorsi in collegio!”
Si vedrà che ora Billickin si schiera apertamente contro Miss Twinkleton, riconoscendola chiaramente come la sua nemica naturale.
“Il vostro commento,” rispose Miss Twinkleton, da una posizione morale distaccata e superiore,
“è certamente ben intenzionato, non ne ho alcun >dubbio; ma permettetemi di osservare che esso sviluppa un’errata concezione sull’argomento, il che può essere attribuito soltanto alla vostra estrema mancanza di informazioni accurate.”
“Le mie informazioni,” ribatté il Billickin, aggiungendo un’ulteriore sillaba per sottolineare l’enfasi in modo al contempo educato e deciso, “le mie informazioni, signorina Twinkleton, derivano dalla mia esperienza personale, che di solito si ritiene possa costituire una valida guida. Ma sia come sia, da giovane sono stato mandato in un istituto molto rispettabile; la direttrice era una signora tanto nobile quanto voi, più o meno della vostra età, o forse qualche anno più giovane. E da quella famiglia proveniva il sangue che ha attraversato tutta la mia vita.”
“Molto probabilmente,” disse la signorina Twinkleton, sempre dalla sua posizione elevata e distante;
“e è davvero molto da deplorare. Rosa, cara, come procedi con il tuo lavoro?”
“Signorina Twinkleton,” riprese il Billickin con modi cortesi, “prima di ritirarmi, come è appropriato per una signora, vorrei chiedervi, in qualità di signora, se devo considerare che le mie parole siano state messe in dubbio.”
“Non so su quale base facciate una tale supposizione,” iniziò Miss Twinkleton, quando il signor Billickin la interruppe gentilmente.
“Per favore, non inserite supposizioni nelle mie parole se io stesso non le ho espresse. Il vostro eloquio è notevole, signorina Twinkleton, e i vostri alunni non si aspettano certo che voi esprimiate dubbi. E nessun dubbio, in realtà, merita davvero il denaro che vi viene pagato. Nessun dubbio, ne sono sicuro. Ma poiché non pago per ascoltare discorsi prolissi, né desidero riceverli qui, vorrei ripetere la mia domanda.”
“Se vi riferite alla ‘povertà’ della vostra circolazione, ” iniziò la signorina Twinkleton, ma di nuovo il signor Billickin la interruppe con garbo.
“Non ho mai usato espressioni del genere.”
“Se allora ti riferisci alla povertà del tuo sangue, ”
“Mi è accaduto durante il periodo trascorso in una scuola preparatoria“, precisò esplicitamente il Billickin.
“Allora,” proseguì la signorina Twinkleton, “tutto ciò che posso dire è che sono costretta a credere, sulla base delle tue affermazioni, che si tratti davvero di una situazione molto difficile. Non posso fare a meno di aggiungere che, se questa sfortunata circostanza influisce sul tuo modo di parlare, è davvero deplorevole; inoltre, sarebbe assolutamente auspicabile che il tuo sangue fosse più “ricco”. Rosa, mia cara, come procede il tuo lavoro?”
“Ehm! Prima di ritirarmi, signorina,” dichiarò Billickin con aria solenne, ignorando completamente Miss Twinkleton, “vorrei che fosse chiaro tra noi che in futuro le mie transazioni avverranno esclusivamente con voi. Non conosco alcuna signora anziana qui, signorina, nessuna più vecchia di voi.”
“Un accordo davvero desiderabile, cara Rosa,” osservò la signorina Twinkleton.
“Non è proprio così, signorina,” disse Billickin con un sorriso sarcastico, “non è che io possieda quella fabbrica di cui ho sentito parlare, nella quale le vecchie signore single potrebbero, macinare i giovani (che dono sarebbe per alcuni di noi!), ma semplicemente mi limito a voi completamente.”
“Quando avrò qualche desiderio di comunicare una richiesta alla persona che vive in quella casa, cara Rosa,” osservò la signorina Twinkleton con un’aria maestosa e allegra, “te lo farò sapere, e sono sicura che tu ti occuperai gentilmente di farla arrivare dove deve.”
“Buonasera, signorina,” disse Billickin, con un tono al tempo stesso affettuoso e distaccato. “Essendo solo ai miei occhi, le auguro buonasera con i migliori desideri. E devo dire che non mi sento costretto a esprimere il mio disprezzo per una persona che, purtroppo per lei, appartiene a lei.”
Il signor Billickin si congedò con eleganza pronunciando queste parole d’addio; da quel momento in poi, Rosa assunse il ruolo di “pallina da tennis” tra questi due avversari. Non si poteva fare nulla senza che venisse disputata una battaglia intelligente e astuta. Così, ogni volta che sorgeva la questione del pasto serale, la signorina Twinkleton, quando i tre erano presenti insieme, diceva.
“Forse, mio amore, potresti parlare con la persona che vive in quella casa, per vedere se può procurarci delle costolette di agnello; o, in caso contrario, un pollo arrosto.”
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.
A cui il Billickin ribatteva (poiché Rosa non aveva detto una parola):
“Se foste più abituata alla carne di maiale, signorina, non vi verrebbe mai in mente l’idea di preparare delle costolette di agnello. Primo perché gli agnellini sono semplicemente pecore. E secondo, perché ci sono giorni dedicati al macellamento, e altri no. Per quanto riguarda le galline arrosto, signorina, dovete esserne sicuramente sazia; lasciate che siano gli altri a comprare per voi quelle galline più vecchie e con le zampe più ruvide, come se foste abituata a scegliere solo quelle più economiche. Provate ad essere un po’ più creativa, signorina. Imparate a occuparvi della casa. Pensateci bene: provate a inventare qualcos’altro.”
Di fronte a questo incoraggiamento, offerto con la tolleranza indulgente di un esperto saggio e liberale, Miss Twinkleton rispondeva arrossendo:
“O, mio caro, potresti proporre alla persona che vive in quella >casa un’anatra, ”
“Beh, signorina!” esclamava sempre il Billickin (mentre Rosa non pronunciava ancora una parola), “mi sorprende davvero quando parlate di anatre! Per non parlare del fatto che ormai non è la stagione giusta e che sono molto costose. Mi dispiace davvero vedere che mangiate solo anatra; il petto, che è l’unica parte delicata dell’anatra, finisce sempre in un posto che non riesco nemmeno a immaginare. E poi il vostro piatto arriva sempre pieno solo di pelle e ossa! Provate ancora, signorina. Pensate di più a voi stessa, e meno agli altri. Ora potreste mangiare dei fegatini dolci, o un po’ di carne d’agnello. Qualcosa che abbiate maggiori possibilità di gustare bene.”
A volte la partita diventava davvero molto intensa e veniva giocata con tale abilità da rendere incontri del genere quasi banali. Ma Billickin otteneva quasi sempre il punteggio più alto; riusciva anche a colpire in modi del tutto inaspettati e straordinari, quando sembrava non avere alcuna possibilità.
Tutto ciò non migliorò affatto la difficile situazione di Londra, né l’immagine negativa che Londra aveva agli occhi di Rosa, che rappresentava una città in attesa di qualcosa che mai sarebbe arrivato. Stufa di lavorare e di conversare con la signorina Twinkleton, Rosa suggerì di dedicarsi sia al lavoro che alla lettura; la signorina Twinkleton acconsentì volentieri, essendo una lettrice apprezzata e dotata di notevoli capacità. Tuttavia, Rosa presto scoprì che la signorina Twinkleton non leggeva con sincerità: ometteva le scene d’amore, inseriva passaggi in lode del celibato femminile e commetteva altre evidenti frodi religiose. Per esempio, il seguente passaggio, descritto con grande entusiasmo, veniva manipolato dalla signorina Twinkleton in questo modo: “Sempre più cara e amata, ”, diceva Edward, stringendo la testa della sua amata al petto e accarezzandone i capelli setosi. La versione fraudolenta fornita dalla signorina Twinkleton, invece, suonava così: “Essendo entrambi legati da un impegno conosciuto dai nostri genitori e approvato dal reverendo preside della zona, ”, diceva Edward, sollevando rispettosamente le dita sottili e abili nelle arti femminili.
Man mano che i giorni passavano e nulla accadeva, i vicini iniziarono a dire che la bella ragazza di Billickin’s, che sembrava così malinconica e spesso si affacciava dai vetri sporchi del salotto, pareva perdere le forze. Forse avrebbe perso davvero il morale se non fosse stato per l’incidente fortuito di scoprire alcuni libri sui viaggi e sulle avventure marine. Come compensazione per quella sorta di “romanzo” che non avevano modo di vivere, la signorina Twinkleton, leggendo ad alta voce, approfittava al massimo di tutte quelle informazioni su latitudini, longitudini, direzioni dei venti, correnti marine e altre statistiche (che lei riteneva comunque molto istruttive, anche se in realtà non le dicevano assolutamente nulla); mentre Rosa, ascoltando attentamente, si immergeva nel contenuto di ciò che riguardava più da vicino il suo cuore. Così entrambe se la cavavano meglio di prima.
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.”
CAPITOLO XXIII.
Di nuovo l’_alba.
Sebbene il signor Crisparkle e John Jasper si incontrassero ogni giorno sotto il tetto della Cattedrale, in nessun momento ebbero mai conversazioni riguardanti Edwin Drood, dopo quel periodo di oltre sei mesi in cui Jasper mostrò al canonico minore le conclusioni e le decisioni che aveva annotato nel suo diario. È improbabile che si incontrassero spesso senza che entrambi pensassero a quell’argomento; è altrettanto improbabile che non provassero sempre la sensazione che l’uno rappresentasse per l’altro un mistero enigmatico e incomprensibile. Jasper, in quanto denunciante e inseguitore di Neville Landless, e il signor Crisparkle, come suo costante sostenitore e protettore, dovevano necessariamente trovarsi in posizioni opposte, quindi avrebbero dovuto prestare grande attenzione alle intenzioni e ai progetti dell’altro. Tuttavia, nessuno dei due mai affrontò quell’argomento.
Le false pretese non facevano parte della >natura del Canone Minore; senza dubbio, egli mostrava apertamente che avrebbe ripreso in qualsiasi momento l’argomento e addirittura desiderava discuterne. Tuttavia, la risolutezza di Jasper non poteva essere superata con simili approcci. Impassibile, malinconico, solitario, deciso, completamente concentrato su un’unica idea e sullo scopo fisso ad essa legato, egli rifiutava di condividerla con qualsiasi altra creatura; viveva quindi separato dalla vita umana. Esercitando costantemente un’arte che lo metteva in armonia meccanica con gli altri – un’arte che non avrebbe potuto essere praticata se lui e loro non fossero stati in rapporti perfetti di sincronizzazione – è curioso considerare come lo spirito di quell’uomo non rispecchiasse affatto nulla di ciò che lo circondava. Infatti, queste cose le aveva confidate al proprio nipote perduto, prima che sorgesse l’occasione che lo portò alla sua attuale intransigenza.
Era indubbiabile che dovesse essere a conoscenza della partenza improvvisa di Rosa e che dovesse intuire la sua causa. Forse pensava di averla spaventata al punto da farla tacere, oppure riteneva che lei avesse rivelato a qualcuno – ad esempio, allo stesso signor Crisparkle – i dettagli dell’ultima loro conversazione? Il signor Crisparkle non riusciva a stabilirlo con certezza. Tuttavia, doveva ammettere, come uomo giusto, che innamorarsi di Rosa di per sé non costituiva un crimine, proprio come non lo era proporre di mettere l’amore al di sopra della vendetta.
Il terribile sospetto riguardo a Jasper, che Rosa aveva ricevuto con tale shock nella sua immaginazione, sembrava non trovare alcun fondamento nelle idee del signor Crisparkle. Anche se quel sospetto potesse aver turbato i pensieri di Helena o di Neville, nessuno dei due ne fece mai parola. Il signor Grewgious non si curava affatto di nascondere il suo profondo disprezzo per Jasper, ma non lo collegò mai, nemmeno in modo indiretto, a quella fonte. Tuttavia, era un uomo riservato ed eccentrico; non menzionò mai una certa sera in cui si scaldò le mani davanti al fuoco della guardiola e fissò attentamente un mucchio di vestiti strappati e bagnati sul pavimento.
Il sonnolento Cloisterham, ogni volta che si risvegliava e ripensava a quella storia vecchia di oltre sei mesi e ormai archiviata dai magistrati, era del tutto diviso nelle sue opinioni: se il caro nipote di John Jasper fosse stato ucciso dal suo rivale traditore e appassionato, o in uno scontro diretto; oppure se fosse fuggito per motivi personali. Poi sollevava la testa, per notare che il dolente Jasper era ancora determinato a scoprire la verità e a vendicarsi, e poi si riaddormentava. Questa era dunque la situazione generale al momento in cui questa storia arriva ora a concludersi.
Le porte della Cattedrale sono chiuse per la notte; il maestro del coro, con un breve permesso di assenza per due o tre servizi, si dirige verso Londra. Viaggia con gli stessi mezzi utilizzati da Rosa e arriva, proprio come lei, in una calda e polverosa serata.
Il suo bagaglio da viaggio può essere facilmente trasportato a mano; con esso si sposta a piedi fino a un hotel ibrido situato in una piccola piazza dietro Aldersgate Street, vicino all’Ufficio Postale Generale. Si tratta di un hotel, di una pensione o semplicemente di una sistemazione provvisoria, a scelta del cliente. Nei nuovi annunci pubblicitari ferroviari, viene presentato come un’impresa nuova e timida, che sta appena iniziando a prendere piede. In modo quasi imbarazzato e scusandosi, si suggerisce al viaggiatore che non ci si aspetta che ordini una pinta di lucido da scarpe per berla e poi buttarla via, ma si insinua che possa invece farsi lucidare le scarpe, e magari anche avere vitto, colazione, servizio personale e un portiere disponibile per tutta la notte, a un certo prezzo fisso. Da queste e altre indicazioni, molti veri britannici, nel loro stato d’animo più cupo, deducono che i tempi siano tempi di uguaglianza, tranne per quanto riguarda le strade, delle quali presto in Inghilterra non ne rimarrà nemmeno una.
Mangia senza appetito e poi se ne va subito. Verso est, sempre verso est, percorre quelle strade desolate fino a raggiungere la sua destinazione: un misero palazzo, tra i più miserabili di tutti.
Salisce una scala rotta, apre una porta, guarda dentro una stanza buia e soffocante, e dice: “Sei sicuro di essere qui da solo?”
“Da solo, caro. Sfortuna per me, fortuna per te,” risponde una voce rauca. “Entra pure, chiunque tu sia: non riesco a vederti finché non accendo un fiammifero, ma sembra che riconosca la tua voce. Ti conosco, vero?”
“Accendi la tua candela e provaci.”
“Sì, caro mio, lo farò; ma la mia mano trema così tanto che non riesco nemmeno ad accendere una candela subito. E tossisco così forte che, per quanto metta le candele dove posso, non riesco mai a trovarle lì. Sembrano muoversi da sole, come se fossero esseri viventi. Sei partito per un viaggio, caro mio?”
“No.”
“Nessuna esperienza in mare?”
“No.”
“Beh, ci sono clienti che acquistano terra e clienti che acquistano acqua. Io sono la madre di entrambi. A differenza di Jack Chinaman, dall’altra parte della >corte: lui non è il padre di nessuno. Non ne ha la capacità, e non conosce nemmeno il vero segreto per mescolare bene le sostanze. Anche se chiede lo stesso prezzo di me, che invece lo conosco. E anche di più, se riesce a ottenerlo. Ecco una candela. Ma dove è la fiammella? Se il mio attacco di tosse dovesse peggiorare, finirò per consumare venti candele prima di riuscire ad accenderne una, ”
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?”
Ma trova la candela e la accende, prima che iniziata la tosse. Questa la colpisce nel momento del successo; si siede quindi dondolando avanti e indietro, ansimando di tanto in tanto: “Oh, i miei polmoni sono terribilmente malati. I miei polmoni sono ridotti a brandelli!” Fino a quando l’attacco non finisce. Durante tutto questo tempo non è stata in grado di vedere nulla, né di utilizzare alcuna altra funzione del corpo che non fosse impegnata nella lotta contro la tosse; ma non appena questa si placa, inizia a strizzare gli occhi. E non appena riesce a parlare, grida, fissando davanti a sé con lo sguardo vuoto.
“Ma sei tu!”
“Sei davvero sorpreso di vedermi?”
“Pensavo che non avrei mai dovuto rivederti di nuovo, caro. Pensavo che fossi morto e andato in Paradiso.”
“Perché?”
“Non avrei mai pensato che tu potessi essere riuscito a tenerti lontano, vivo, per tutto questo tempo, da quella povera vecchia ‘anima che possedeva la vera ricetta per prepararlo. E inoltre stai anche piangendo! Perché non sei venuto a fumare una o due pipe per consolarti? Forse ti hanno lasciato del denaro, e quindi non volevi conforto?”
“No.”
“Chi erano quando morirono, caro?”
“Un parente.”
“Morto per cosa, tesoro?”
“Probabilmente, la Morte.”
“Siamo a corto di, ” grida la donna, con una risata supplichevole.
“A corto e irritabili. Ma siamo fuori fase per mancanza di una sigaretta.
Abbiamo tutti questi problemi, vero? Ma questo è il posto giusto per risolverli. Questo è il luogo dove possiamo fumare fino a far sparire tutti i mali.”
“Allora potete prepararvi quando volete,” risponde il visitatore.
Si toglie le scarpe, allenta la cravatta e si sdraia ai piedi di quel letto squallido, con la testa appoggiata sulla mano sinistra.
“Ora inizi davvero a sembrare te stessa,” dice la donna con approvazione. “Ora riconosco davvero la mia vecchia cliente. Cerchi di preparare queste cose da sola da così tanto tempo, vero?”
“Lo prendo di tanto in tanto, a mio modo.”
“Mai prendere le cose come vuoi tu. Non è buono per gli affari, e non è nemmeno buono per te. Dov’è la mia bottiglia d’inchiostro, dov’è il mio polpastrello protettivo, e dove è quella piccola cucchiaiata? Ora lo prenderà in una forma, artistica, cara mia!”
Iniziando il suo rituale, cominciò a soffiare e a creare piccole bolle sulla debole scintilla racchiusa nel palmo delle sue mani; parlava da tempo a tempo, con un tono di soddisfazione, senza mai smettere. Quando lui parlava, non la guardava nemmeno, come se i suoi pensieri fossero già lontani, anticipati dal desiderio.
“Ho preparato un bel po’ di sigarette per te, non è vero, amico mio?”
“Molti.”
“Quando sei arrivato per la prima volta, eri davvero alle prime armi, vero?”
“Sì, allora sono stato facilmente eliminato.”
“Ma tu sei riuscito a farti strada nel mondo e, col tempo, hai potuto usare la tua pipa insieme ai migliori di loro, vero?”
“Ah, e il peggio di tutto.”
“È proprio pronto per te. Che bella cantante eri quando sei arrivata per la prima volta. Mettevi sempre la testa giù e cantavi come un uccellino! Ora è davvero pronto per te, tesoro.”
La prende con grande cura e posiziona la bocca della pipa sulle sue labbra. Lei si siede accanto a lui, pronta a riempirla di nuovo.
Dopo aver inspirato alcune boccate di silenzio, le si avvicinò con esitazione e disse:
“È ancora efficace come una volta?”
“Di cosa stai parlando, caro?”
Di cosa dovrei parlare, se non di ciò che ho in bocca?
“È sempre la stessa cosa. Sempre esattamente uguale.”
“Non ha quel sapore. E procede più lentamente.”
“Ormai ci sei abituato, vedi.”
“Quella potrebbe essere la causa, sicuramente. Guarda qui.” Si ferma, diventa sognante e sembra dimenticare di aver attirato la sua attenzione. Lei si china su di lui e gli parla all’orecchio.
“Sto prendendomi cura di te. Hai detto proprio ora: ‘Guarda qui’. Ora dici che sto prendendomi cura di te. Poco fa stavamo parlando proprio di questo, del fatto che tu debba abituartici.”
“Lo so tutto. Stavo solo pensando. Guarda qui: supponiamo che tu avessi qualcosa in mente, qualcosa che avevi intenzione di fare.”
“Sì, caro, qualcosa che avevo intenzione di fare, giusto?”
“Ma non avevo ancora deciso di farlo.”
“Sì, caro.”
“Potrei farlo o potrei anche non farlo, capisci?”
“Sì.” Con la punta di un ago mescola il contenuto della ciotola.
“Dovresti davvero farlo mentre sei sdraiato qui a fare queste cose?”
“Continuamente,” dice lei annuendo.
“Esattamente come me! L’ho fatto ancora e ancora. L’ho fatto centinaia di migliaia di volte in questa stanza.”
“Si spera che sia stato piacevole farlo, caro.”
“È stato davvero piacevole farlo!”
Lo dice con un tono selvaggio e, all’improvviso, si avvicina a lei con un movimento rapido. Lei, completamente indifferente, continua a sistemare e rifornire il contenuto della ciotola con la sua piccola spatola. Vedendola concentrata nel suo compito, lui riprende la sua solita posizione distaccata.
“È stata una viaggio, un viaggio difficile e pericoloso. Questo era l’argomento che avevo in mente: un viaggio rischioso e pericoloso, attraverso abissi dove anche il minimo errore avrebbe significato distruzione. Guardate giù. Vedete cosa c’è in fondo?”
Si è precipitato avanti per dirlo, indicando il terreno come se ci fosse qualche oggetto immaginario lì sotto. La donna lo guarda mentre il suo viso spasmodico si avvicina al suo; non guarda verso dove lui sta indicando. Sembra sapere quale effetto avrebbe la sua perfetta tranquillità. E, se è così, non ha sbagliato i calcoli, perché lui si calma di nuovo.
“Beh. Vi ho detto che l’ho fatto centinaia di migliaia di volte. Cosa posso dire? L’ho fatto milioni e miliardi di volte. L’ho fatto così spesso, e nel corso di tali lunghi periodi di tempo, che quando finalmente è successo davvero, sembrava persino non valerne la pena. È stato fatto così in fretta.”
“Quella è la viaggio che hai intrapreso”, osserva lei in silenzio.
La fissa mentre fuma; poi, con lo sguardo velato, risponde: “Quella è la viaggio.”
Silenzio cala intorno a lui. A volte chiude gli occhi, altre volte li apre. La donna seduta accanto a lui è molto attenta alla pipa, che rimane costantemente alle sue labbra.
“Ne sono certa,” osserva lei quando lui la fissa intensamente da alcuni momenti consecutivi, con uno sguardo che sembra vederla lontana, invece di così vicina a lui: “Sono certa che tu abbia intrapreso quel viaggio in molti modi diversi, visto che lo hai fatto così spesso, ”
“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.
[Illustration: 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.
“No, sempre in un modo.”
Sempre nello stesso modo?
“Ay.”
“Nel modo in cui è stato davvero realizzato alla fine?”
“Ay.”
“E provavi sempre lo stesso piacere nel ripetere continuamente quella stessa cosa?”
“Ay.”
Per la prima volta, sembra incapace di fornire una risposta diversa da questo pigro e monosillabico assenso. Probabilmente, per assicurarsi che non si tratti dell’assenso di un semplice automato, cambia la struttura della sua frase successiva.
“Non ti sei mai stancata di questo, carina. Non hai mai provato a cercare qualcos’altro, per cambiare un po’?”
Si sforza di assumere una posizione seduta e le risponde: “Cosa intendi? Cosa volevo? Perché sono venuto?”
Lo adagia dolcemente a terra e, prima di restituirgli lo strumento che aveva fatto cadere, ravviva la fiamma al suo interno con il proprio respiro; poi gli dice, in tono affettuoso:
“Certo, certo, certo! Sì, sì, sì! Ora vengo con te. Eri troppo veloce per me. Ora capisco: hai un motivo preciso per intraprendere questo viaggio. Beh, avrei dovuto indovinarlo, visto che ti teneva così vicino, ”
Risponde prima ridendo, poi digrignando i denti con passione: “Sì, sono venuto apposta. Quando non riuscivo più a sopportare la mia vita, sono venuto a cercare sollievo. E l’ho trovato. È stato davvero un momento speciale! Davvero!” Questa ripetizione, pronunciata con una veemenza straordinaria, assomiglia al ringhio di un lupo.
Lo osserva con molta cautela, come se stesse valutando attentamente cosa dire dopo. E infatti dice: “C’era un altro viaggiatore con noi, caro.”
“Ahahah!” Scoppia in una risata sonora, o meglio, in un urlo.
“Pensarci, ”, esclama, “quante volte è stato un compagno di viaggio eppure non se ne è reso conto! Quante volte ha percorso lo stesso viaggio senza mai vedere la vera strada, ”
La donna si inginocchia sul pavimento, con le braccia incrociate sulla coperta del letto, vicino a lui, e il mento appoggiato su di esse. In questa posizione accovacciata lo osserva. Il cannello gli è caduto dalla bocca; lei lo rimette a posto e, posando una mano sul suo petto, lo sposta leggermente da un lato all’altro. Allora lui parla, come se fosse stata lei a parlare.
“Sì! Sempre facevo prima quel Viaggio, prima che iniziassero i cambiamenti di colore, i grandi paesaggi e le splendide processioni. Non potevano cominciare finché non lo avessi dimenticato. Fino ad allora, non avevo spazio per nulla altro.”
Ancora una volta cade nel silenzio. Ancora una volta lei posa la sua mano sul suo petto e lo muove leggermente avanti e indietro, come un gatto che stimola un topo半死不活. Ancora una volta lui parla, come se fosse stata lei a parlare.
Illustrazione: Dormire fino a guarire
“Cosa? Te l’avevo detto. Quando finalmente diventa reale, è così breve che la prima volta sembra persino irreale. Ascolta!”
“Sì, caro. Sto ascoltando.”
“Il tempo e il luogo sono entrambi a disposizione.”
È in piedi, parla sottovoce, come se fosse al buio.
“Tempo, luogo e compagni di viaggio”, suggerisce lei, imitando il suo tono, e tenendolo dolcemente per il braccio.
“Come potrebbe essere già arrivato il tempo se colui che viaggia con me non è ancora qui? Zitta! Il Viaggio è finito. È concluso.”
“Così presto?”
“Ecco quello che ti avevo detto. Così in fretta. Aspetta un attimo. Questa è solo una visione. Devo dormirci sopra. È stata troppo breve e troppo facile. Deve esserci una visione migliore di questa; questa è davvero la più banale di tutte. Nessuna lotta, nessuna consapevolezza del pericolo, nessun appello. Eppure non l’avevo mai vista prima.” Con un sussulto.
“Hai visto cosa, tesoro?”
“Guardate! Guardate che cosa povera, cattiva, misera sia. Quello deve essere reale. È finita.”
Ha accompagnato questa incoerenza con alcuni gesti selvaggi e privi di senso; ma questi gesti si trasformano gradualmente in un’inerzia totale, simile allo stordimento, e lui giace immobile sul letto come un tronco.
Tuttavia, la donna è ancora curiosa. Ripetendo il suo movimento aggraziato come quello di un gatto, solleva leggermente il suo -corpo e ascolta; lo solleva di nuovo e ascolta; gli sussurra qualcosa e ascolta ancora. Ritenendolo ormai del tutto inerte per quella ora, si alza lentamente, con un’aria di delusione, e si scosta da lui dando una pacca sul viso con il dorso della mano.
Ma non si allontana mai di più da essa di quanto faccia quella sedia accanto al camino. Si siede lì, appoggiando un gomito allo schienale e il mento sulla mano, fissandolo attentamente. “Ho sentito te dire una volta, ”, mormora a bassa voce, “quando ero sdraiata nel posto in cui sei tu ora, mentre facevi le tue congetture su di me, ‘Incomprensibile!’ Ho sentito che l’hai detto anche di altre due persone, oltre a me. Ma non essere sempre troppo sicura. Non esserlo, bellezza, ”
Senza battere ciglio, con movimenti agili e decisi, aggiunse: “Non più potente come una volta? Ah. Forse all’inizio no. Potresti avere ragione tu. La pratica rende perfetti. Forse ho imparato il segreto per farvi parlare, caro.”
Non parla più, che sia sì o no. Tremola in modo orribile da un momento all’altro, sia il viso che le membra; giace immobile e silenzioso. La misera candela si spegne; la donna prende il suo mozzicone tra le dita, ne accende un’altra al suo posto, infila nel candelabro quel pezzo di stoppino ormai consumato, e lo spinge a fondo con la nuova candela, come se stesse caricando un’arma magica disgustosa e indecente. Anche la nuova candela si spegne; e lui continua a giacere privo di sensi. Alla fine, anche l’ultima candela si estingue, e la luce del giorno entra nella stanza.
Non è trascorso molto tempo quando si alza in piedi, freddo e tremante; lentamente recupera la coscienza di dove si trova e si prepara ad andarsene. La donna accetta i soldi che le dà con un ringraziamento: “Benedetto tu, caro!” e, sembrando stanca, inizia a prepararsi per dormire mentre lui lascia la stanza.
Ma ciò che sembra potrebbe essere falso o vero. In questo caso è falso; perché non appena le scale smettono di scricchiolare sotto i suoi passi, lei lo segue silenziosamente, mormorando con decisione: “Non ti perderò più!”
Non esiste alcuna uscita dal courtyard se non dall’ingresso stesso. Con uno sguardo furtivo attraverso la porta, lei osserva se lui si girerà indietro. Lui però non lo fa prima di scomparire, con passi incerti. Lei lo segue, spia dal courtyard e lo vede ancora barcollare senza voltarsi indietro; così riesce a tenerlo sempre sotto vista.
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!”
Si reca nella parte posteriore di Aldersgate Street; non appena bussa, una porta si apre immediatamente. Lei si accovaccia in un’altra porta, osservando quella scena e capendo facilmente che lui si ferma temporaneamente in quella casa. La sua pazienza non si esaurisce nemmeno dopo ore di attesa; per nutrirsi, può – e infatti lo fa – comprare del pane a meno di cento metri di distanza, e il latte quando viene portato davanti a lei.
Riemerge di nuovo alle mezzogiorni, dopo essersi cambiato d’abito; non porta nulla in mano e nessuno lo accompagna. Quindi, per il momento, non intende tornare in campagna. Lei lo segue per un po’, esita, poi si gira con decisione e entra direttamente nella casa che lui ha appena lasciato.
“Il signore di Cloisterham è dentro casa?”
“Appena uscito.”
“Sfortunato. Quando tornerà il signore a Cloisterham?”
“Alle sei di questa sera.”
“Beneditevi e ringraziate il Signore. Possa il Signore rendere prospero quell’affare in cui una domanda civile, anche proveniente da un povero ‘anima, viene risposta con tanta cortesia!”
“Non vi perderò più una seconda volta!” ripete quella povera ‘anima per strada, e non in modo molto gentile, “Vi ho perso l’ultima volta, quando quell’omnibus su cui siete saliti, verso la fine del vostro viaggio, si muoveva avanti e indietro tra la stazione e quel luogo. Non ero nemmeno sicuro che foste davvero arrivati a destinazione. Ora so che ci siete riusciti. Mio signore di Cloisterham, sarò lì prima di voi ad aspettarvi. Ho giurato che non vi perderò più una seconda volta!”
Pertanto, quella stessa sera, la povera ‘anima si trova in Cloisterham High Street, a guardare le numerose guglie caratteristiche della >Casa delle Suore, e passa il tempo nel modo migliore che può fino alle nove di ora; in quel momento ha motivo di pensare che i passeggeri dell’omnibus in arrivo possano essere interessati a lei. L’oscurità, a quell’ora, le permette facilmente di capirlo; e infatti è così: il passeggero, che non viene perso due volte, arriva tra gli altri.
#“Ora vediamo cosa ne sarà di te. Vai avanti!”
Un’osservazione rivolta all’aria, eppure potrebbe essere rivolta anche al passeggero; tanto docilmente egli prosegue lungo la High Street, fino a quando non arriva davanti a un arco di ingresso, dove improvvisamente scompare. La povera ‘anima accelera il passo; è veloce e lo raggiunge proprio mentre entra sotto l’arco. Ma vede soltanto una scala posteriore su un lato, e dall’altro lato una vecchia stanza a volta, nella quale un signore dai capelli grigi e dalla testa grande sta scrivendo. In circostanze davvero strane: seduto in modo che tutti possano vederlo mentre passano, come se fosse il custode di quell’ingresso, anche se il cammino è libero.
“Halloa!” esclama a voce bassa, vedendola immobilizzarsi:
“Chi stai cercando?”
“Un gentiluomo è appena passato di qui, signore.”
“Certo che c’era. Cosa vuoi da lui?”
“Dove vive, tesoro?”
“#Vivi? Sali quella scala.”
“Beneditevi! Sussurra. Come si chiama, carina?”
Cognome Jasper, nome di battesimo John. Il signor John Jasper.
“Ha davvero una vocazione, caro signore?”
“#Canta nel coro.”
“Nella guglia?”
“Coro.”
“Che cos’è?”
Il signor Datchery si alza dai suoi documenti e si avvicina alla porta di casa. “Sai cos’è una >cattedrale?”, chiede in tono scherzoso.
La donna annuisce.
“Che cosa è?”
Sembra perplessa, cercando nella sua mente una definizione, quando le viene in mente che è più semplice indicare l’oggetto stesso in questione: massiccio contro il cielo blu scuro e le prime stelle della notte.
“Ecco la risposta: vai lì domani mattina alle sette, e potrai vedere il signor John Jasper e anche ascoltarlo.”
“Grazie! Grazie!”
L’esplosione di trionfo con cui lei lo ringrazia non sfugge all’attenzione di quel single dal temperamento mite che vive alle spalle dei suoi genitori. Lui la guarda, incrocia le mani dietro la schiena, come è consuetudine per persone del genere, e si aggira pigramente al suo fianco lungo i viali silenziosi.
“O,” suggerisce lui, inclinando leggermente la testa all’indietro, “potete andare subito nelle stanze del signor Jasper là sopra.”
La donna lo guarda con un sorriso astuto e scuote la testa.
“O, non vuoi parlare con lui?”
“Ripete sempre la stessa risposta stupida, e con le labbra forma un silenzioso ‘No’.”
“Puoi ammirarlo da lontano tre volte al giorno, ogni volta che vuoi. Tuttavia, per farlo è servita una lunga strada da percorrere.”
La donna alza lo sguardo rapidamente. Se il signor Datchery pensa davvero di poterla indurre a rivelare da dove viene, allora ha un carattere molto più mite del suo. Ma lei scarta immediatamente l’idea che possa avere un simile intento; lui, intanto, se ne sta lì in piedi, come il tipico noioso abitante di quella città, con i capelli grigi scompigliati al vento e le mani che frusciano senza scopo tra i soldi nelle tasche dei suoi pantaloni.
Il suono dei soldi esercita un’attrazione particolare sulle sue orecchie avide. “Non mi aiuterebbe, caro signore, a pagare la mia stanza d’albergo e il mio viaggio? Sono una povera ‘anima, davvero, e inoltre soffro di un terribile attacco di tosse.”
“Immagino che conosca bene quella locanda per viaggiatori, e stia dirigendosi direttamente lì,” osserva gentilmente il signor Datchery, continuando a far tintinnare le monete che aveva in tasca. “È stata qui spesso, mia cara?”
“Una volta nella mia vita, ”
“Ay, ay?”
Sono arrivati all’ingresso della vigna dei Monaci. Un ricordo appropriato, che rappresenta un modello esemplare da imitare, riaffiora nella mente della donna alla vista di quel luogo. Si ferma al cancello e dice con energia:
“Con questo pegno, anche se non ci credete, un giovane gentiluomo mi ha dato tre penny e sei centesimi proprio mentre stavo tossendo disperatamente su questa stessa erba. Gliel’ho chiesti e me li ha dati.”
“Non è stato un po’ troppo audace dare un nome preciso a quella somma?” insinua il signor Datchery, ancora nervoso. “Non è forse consuetudine lasciare l’importo inespresso? Non potrebbe essere sembrato al giovane gentiluomo, solo sembrato, che qualcuno gli avesse imposto quella cifra?”
“Guarda qui, caro,” risponde lei con un tono confidenziale e persuasivo, “volevo quel denaro per comprarne una medicina che mi fa bene, proprio quella di cui mi occupo io. Gliel’ho detto, e lui me l’ha dato; l’ho usato onestamente, fino all’ultimo centesimo. Ora voglio utilizzare la stessa somma nello stesso modo. E se me la darai, la spenderò di nuovo onestamente, giuro sulla mia ‘anima!”
“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.
Qual è la medicina?
“Onestamente, ve lo dico sia prima che dopo: si tratta di oppio.”
Il signor Datchery, con un improvviso cambiamento di espressione, la guarda all’improvviso.
“È oppio, caro. Né di più né di meno. E, per certi versi, è simile agli esseri umani: si sentono sempre le cose negative che si possono dire su di esso, ma raramente quelle positive.”
Il signor Datchery inizia molto lentamente a contare la somma che gli viene richiesta. Lei, osservando con avidità le sue mani, continua a sottolineare l’esempio straordinario che lui stesso ha dato.
“Fu la vigilia di Natale scorsa, appena dopo il tramonto. Quella volta che ero già stato qui prima, quando quel giovane signore mi diede quei tre scellini e sei pence.” Il signor Datchery si ferma nel suo conteggio, si rende conto di aver sbagliato, mescola di nuovo le monete e ricomincia.
“E il nome del giovane gentiluomo,” aggiunge, “era Edwin.”
Il signor Datchery lascia cadere del denaro, si china per raccoglierlo e, arrossendo per lo sforzo, chiede:
“Come fai a sapere il nome di quel giovane signore?”
Gliel’ho chiesto e mi l’ha detto. Gli ho fatto solo due domande: qual era il suo vero nome e se aveva una fidanzata. Lui ha risposto “Edwin” e no, non ne aveva.
Il signor Datchery si ferma, con le monete scelte in mano, come se stesse riflettendo profondamente sul loro valore e non riuscisse a separarsene. La donna lo guarda con sospetto, il suo risentimento cresce nel caso decidesse di cambiare idea riguardo al regalo; ma lui glielo consegna come se stesse distaccando la propria mente da quel gesto di sacrificio. Lei accetta con molte ringraziamenti servili e se ne va.
La lampada di John Jasper è accesa, e il suo faro splende quando il signor Datchery ritorna da solo verso di esso. Proprio come i marinai in un viaggio pericoloso, che si avvicinano a una costa rocciosa e insidiosa, possono guardare lungo i raggi della luce di segnalazione verso il rifugio che si trova al di là, anche se forse non lo raggiungeranno mai, così pure lo sguardo malinconico del signor Datchery è rivolto verso questo faro, e oltre.
Lo scopo della sua visita nuovamente al suo alloggio è semplicemente quello di indossare quel cappello che sembra un oggetto del tutto superfluo nel suo armadio. Sono le dieci e mezza, secondo l’orologio della Cattedrale, quando esce nuovamente nei dintorni; si sofferma e guarda intorno a sé, come se, all’arrivo dell’ora magica in cui il signor Durdles verrà lapidato fino alla morte, avesse qualche speranza di vedere quell’Essere Maligno incaricato della missione di ucciderlo.
In effetti, quel Potere del Male è in giro. Non avendo nulla di vivo da lapidare al momento, viene scoperto dal signor Datchery nell’ufficio sacrilego dedicato alla lapidazione dei morti, attraverso le recinzioni del cimitero. Il Demone trova questa attività particolarmente divertente e stimolante: innanzitutto, perché il luogo di riposo delle vittime è considerato sacro; in secondo luogo, perché le alte lapidi assomigliano abbastanza a lui stesso, tanto da fargli credere, mentre le colpisce al buio, che esse provino davvero dolore.
Mr. Datchery lo chiama: “Ehi, Winks!”
Risponde al saluto con: “Salve, Dick!” Il loro rapporto sembra essere basato su una familiarità reciproca.
“Ma, dico io,” protesta, “non fatemi diventare pubblico il mio nome. Non ho mai intenzione di rivelarlo, capite? Quando nella prigione mi chiedono ‘Qual è il tuo nome?’ rispondo: ‘Scopritelo voi.’ E allo stesso modo, quando mi chiedono ‘Qual è la tua religione?’ rispondo: ‘Scopritela voi.’”
Si può osservare, a margine, che sarebbe estremamente difficile per lo Stato, per quanto possa essere dotato di strumenti statistici, compiere tale compito.
“Oltre a questo,” aggiunge il ragazzo, “non esiste nessuna famiglia chiamata Winks.”
“Credo che debba esserci.”
“Non c’è nessuna verità in quello che dici. Gli viaggiatori mi chiamano così perché non riesco a dormire tranquillamente e resto sveglio per tutta la notte; a causa di questo, uno dei miei occhi si apre prima ancora che l’altro si chiuda. Ecco cosa significa ‘Winks’. ‘Deputy’ è un altro nome che potrebbero usare per accusarmi. Ma non mi vedreste mai ammetterlo.”
“Sempre vicepresidente, allora. Siamo buoni amici, vero, vicepresidente?”
“Molto bene.”
“Ti ho perdonato il debito che mi dovevi quando ci siamo conosciuti per la prima volta, e da allora molti dei miei soldi sono finiti nelle tue mani. Eh, Vice?”
“Ah! E poi, non sei nemmeno un amico di Jarsper. Perché mai si è preso la briga di aiutarmi?”
“Davvero! Ma ora lasciamolo perdere. Questa notte, un scellino mio andrà a tuo favore, ispettore. Hai appena accolto una pensionante di cui parlavo: una donna malata che soffre di tosse.”
“Puffer,” concorda l’assistente, con un astuto sorriso di riconoscimento, mentre fuma una pipa immaginaria, inclinando molto la testa da un lato e con gli occhi che sembrano uscire dalle orbite: “Hopeum Puffer.”
Che nome ha?
“Sua Altezza Reale la Principessa Puffo”.
qual è il suo vero nome? Dove vive?
“A Londra. Tra i Jacks.”
“I marinai?”
“Lo dicevo io. Gli uomini di Jacks e di Chayner. E anche gli altri.”
“Vorrei sapere, attraverso di te, esattamente dove vive.”
“Va bene, datemi quello vecchio.”
Un scellino viene pagato; e con quell’atteggiamento di fiducia che dovrebbe caratterizzare tutte le transazioni commerciali tra persone d’onore, questa operazione viene considerata conclusa.
“Ma guardate un po’ questa!”, esclama il vice sceriffo. “Dove pensavate che Sua Altezza Reale sarebbe andata domani mattina? Non c’è dubbio che stia andando al KIN-FREE-DER-EL!” Prolunga enormemente quella parola per l’eccitazione, si dà una pacca sulla gamba e scoppia in una risata stridula.
“Come fai a saperlo, vice ispettore?”
“Proprio così mi ha detto poco fa. Ha detto che deve prepararsi con cura. Ha detto: ‘Vice-sceriffo, devo lavarmi presto e mettermi il più in ordine possibile, perché devo partecipare al KIN-FREE-DER-EL!’” Pronuncia le sillabe con lo stesso entusiasmo di prima, e, non riuscendo a liberarsi abbastanza dell’impressione ridicola che tutto ciò gli suscitava, inizia a ballare un movimento lento e solenne, forse immaginando che fosse il modo in cui il Decano avrebbe dovuto esibirsi.
Il signor Datchery riceve la comunicazione con un’espressione di evidente soddisfazione, ma dopo averla riflettuta per un po’ interrompe la riunione. Tornato nella sua modesta dimora, si siede a tavola per la cena: pane, formaggio, insalata e birra, che la signora Tope gli aveva preparato in anticipo. Anche dopo aver finito di mangiare, rimane seduto. Alla fine si alza, apre con forza lo sportello di un armadio angolare e guarda alcuni rozzi segni tracciati con la gesso sul suo lato interno.
“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.
[Illustration: 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.
“A me piace,” dice il signor Datchery, “quel vecchio sistema di tenere i conti delle taverne: illeggibile, tranne che per chi li tiene. Se chi li tiene non commette errori, allora la persona contro cui vengono registrati debiti viene effettivamente addebitata di quella somma. Hmm. Un conto molto semplice, davvero povero!”
Sospira di fronte alla vista della sua povertà, prende un po’ di >Gesso da uno degli scaffali dell’armadio e si ferma, tenendolo in mano, incerto su quale aggiunta fare al conto.
“Credo che un ictus lieve sia tutto ciò che ho il diritto di attribuirmi,” conclude; quindi, facendo corrispondere le azioni alle parole, chiude l’armadio e va a letto.
Una splendida mattina illumina l’antica >città. Le sue antichità e rovine sono di una bellezza straordinaria: il rampicante vieto brilla al sole, mentre gli alberi rigogliosi ondeggiano nell’aria fresca. I cambiamenti di luce prodotti dalle fronde in movimento, i >canti degli uccelli, i profumi dei giardini, dei boschi e dei campi – o meglio, di quel grande “giardino” che rappresenta l’intera isola coltivata nel suo periodo più rigoglioso – penetrano nella >Cattedrale, sovrapponendosi al suo odore terroso e proclamando la >Risurrezione e la Vita. Le fredde tombe di secoli fa sembrano riscaldarsi; scintille di luce si insinuano anche negli angoli più cupi del edificio, tremolando come ali.
Arriva il signor Tope con le sue grandi chiavi; apre la porta con un grande sbadiglio e la lascia spalancata. Arrivano anche la signora Tope e gli assistenti, che spazzano via la polvere. In due momenti distinti arrivano l’organista e il ragazzo incaricato di soffiare nei mantici dell’organo; sbirciano giù dalle tende rosse del soppalco, spazzando senza paura la polvere dai libri situati in quella remota posizione, e togliendola anche dagli stoppini e dai pedali dell’organo. Arrivano inoltre diverse gazze, provenienti da varie parti del cielo, che ritornano verso la grande torre; si può presumere che godano di queste vibrazioni e sappiano che l’organo e la campana le stanno producendo. Arriva poi una piccolissima e sparuta congregazione, principalmente proveniente da zone limitrofe. Arriva il signor Crisparkle, fresco e vivace; e i suoi colleghi, meno freschi e vivaci di lui. Arriva anche il coro, sempre di fretta, cercando disperatamente di infilarsi nei loro pigiami all’ultimo momento, come bambini che evitano di andare a letto. E arriva John Jasper a guidare la fila del coro. Infine arriva il signor Datchery in una cabina riservata, tra quelle disponibili e vuote; si guarda intorno alla ricerca della Sua Altezza Reale, la Principessa Puffer.
Il servizio è già abbastanza avanzato quando il signor Datchery riesce a riconoscere Sua Altezza Reale. Ma ormai l’ha individuata: si trova dietro una colonna, ben nascosta alla vista del direttore del coro, ma lo osserva con estrema attenzione. Lui, ignaro della sua presenza, continua a cantare e intonare le melodie. Lei sorride quando lui è più appassionato nella sua esibizione. E sì, il signor Datchery la vede farlo! Gli fa anche il gesto di minaccia dietro l’ombra protettiva della colonna.
Il signor Datchery guarda di nuovo, per convincersi. Sì, ancora una volta! Altrettanto brutto e appassito quanto uno di quegli strani scolpiti presenti sui braccioli dei sedili delle bancarelle, altrettanto malvagio come il Male Assoluto, altrettanto duro come l’immensa aquila di bronzo che tiene i libri sacri sulle ali (e, a giudicare dalla rappresentazione scultorea dei suoi attributi feroci, affatto non convertita da tutto ciò, ), lei si abbraccia con le sue magre braccia e poi scuote entrambi i pugni verso il capo del coro.
E in quel momento, fuori dalla porta a grate del Coro, essendo riuscito a eludere la vigilanza del signor Tope grazie a stratagemmi che lui stesso conosceva bene, i vice-guardiani, occhiuti com’erano, spiavano attraverso le sbarre, fissando con stupore sia il minacciatore che la vittima della minaccia.
Il servizio termina e i domestici si dispersero per andare a colazione. Il signor Datchery si avvicinò alla sua ultima nuova conoscenza fuori; intanto il coro, altrettanto ansioso di togliersi le camicie da notte quanto lo era stato poco prima di indossarle, se n’era già andato in fretta.
“Beh, signora. Buongiorno. L’avete visto?”
“L’ho visto, caro; l’ho davvero visto!”
“E tu lo conosci?”
Conoscerlo. Meglio di quanto possano conoscerlo tutti i reverendi Parsons messi insieme.
Le cure di Mrs. Tope avevano preparato una colazione molto ordinata e pulita per il suo inquilino. Prima di sedersi a mangiare, aprì la porta del suo armadietto angolare; prese il suo pezzo di gesso dallo scaffale; tracciò una linea spessa sulla lista, che andava dall’alto della porta dell’armadietto fino alla base; poi si mise a mangiare con grande appetito.
Appendice: frammento di “Il mistero di Edwin Drood”
Quando Forster stava appena terminando la sua biografia di Dickens, trovò, tra le pagine di uno degli altri manoscritti del romanziere, alcuni foglietti separati nei quali erano scritte alcune idee per un nuovo capitolo di Edwin Drood. In quei foglietti, il personaggio dell’astaio Sapsea emergeva come figura principale, circondato da altri personaggi nuovi per la storia. Poiché quel capitolo rientrava tra gli ultimi scritti di Dickens, sembrava contenere così tanti elementi interessanti che sarebbe stato senz’altro opportuno riprodurlo qui.—ED.
Come il signor Sapsea smise di essere membro dell’Otto Club
Raccontato da lui stesso
Desiderando prendere un po’ d’aria, seguii una strada tortuosa per raggiungere il Club: era la nostra serata settimanale di riunione. Notai che eravamo tutti presenti. Eravamo denominati “L’Otto Club”: eravamo in otto; ci incontravamo alle otto in punto, per otto mesi all’anno; giocavamo otto partite di cribbage a quattro persone, a otto pence a partita; la nostra cena frugale consisteva in otto rotoli di pane, otto costine di manzo, otto salsicce di maiale, otto patate arrosto, otto ossa di midollo, accompagnate da otto brindisi e otto bottiglie di birra. Forse c’era, o forse no, una certa armonia di colori nell’idea principale che guidava questa riunione. Per usare le parole dei nostri vivaci vicini. Era un’idea mia, in realtà.
[Illustrazione: Facsimile di una pagina del manoscritto de “Il mistero di Edwin Drood”.]
Un membro abbastanza popolare dell’Eight Club; il suo nome era Kimber. Per professione, insegnante di danza. Un uomo comune, pieno di speranze, ma completamente privo di dignità e conoscenza del mondo.
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 whose 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—’
Non appena entrai nella sala del club, Kimber stava dicendo: “E lui continua a credere, anche solo in parte, che sia una persona di alto rango nella Chiesa.”
Mentre appoggiavo il mio cappello all’ottava gruccia vicino alla porta, incrociai lo sguardo di Kimber. Lui abbassò il suo e fece un commento riguardo al prossimo cambiamento della luna. In quel momento non ci prestai molta attenzione, perché spesso il mondo tendeva a evitare argomenti ecclesiastici in mia presenza. Sentivo infatti di essere stato scelto – anche se forse solo per coincidenza – per rappresentare, in un certo senso, quella che chiamo la nostra “gloriosa costituzione” tra Chiesa e Stato. Alcuni potrebbero obiettare a questa espressione; ma io la considero mia. L’ho usata in una discussione qualche tempo fa, dicendo: “NOstra GLORIOSA COSTITUZIONE tra CHIESA e STATO”.
Un altro membro dell’Eight Club era Peartree; anch’egli faceva parte del Royal College of Surgeons. Il signor Peartree non è tenuto a rendere conto delle sue opinioni a me, e non dirò di più su di esse se non che assiste gratuitamente i poveri ogni volta che ne hanno bisogno, e non è il medico parrocchiale. Il signor Peartree potrà giustificare questa sua azione secondo la logica del suo modo di pensare, nel tentativo di contribuire al disprezzo verso un funzionario nominato. Ma a me, tale comportamento non sembra mai giustificabile.
Tra Peartree e Kimber esisteva un’alleanza di tipo debolmente patologico. Mi resi particolarmente conto di essa quando vendetti Kimber all’asta, (Beni sequestrati in esecuzione.) Lui era un vedovo che indossava una camicia bianca sotto la giacca, scarpe sottili con lacci a fiocco, e aveva due figlie non del tutto sgradevoli a vedersi. Anzi, il contrario. Entrambe le figlie insegnavano danza in istituti per giovani signorine: avevano insegnato presso la signora Sapsea, e persino presso Twinkleton. E entrambe, durante le lezioni, presentavano lo spettacolo indecoroso di tenere piccole violini sotto il mento. Nonostante ciò, se ho capito bene, posso dire di saperlo con certezza, la più giovane avrebbe potuto uscire da questa condizione degradante, ma aveva quel tipo di mentalità tipico della gente comune. E mancava completamente di rispetto per gli altri, al punto di risultare ridicola.
Quando vendetti Kimber senza riserve, Peartree – povero com’era – ricevette in mano diversi terreni residenziali di ottima qualità. Non devo essere cieco: era ovvio cosa avesse intenzione di farne; dopotutto era un individuo rozzo e grossolano, un tipo di rivoluzionario che aveva prestato servizio in India con gli soldati. E, per il bene della società, avrebbe dovuto essere impiccato. Poco dopo vidi quei terreni nell’appartamento di Kimber, attraverso la finestra; capii subito che si trattava soltanto di una scusa per prenderli in prestito fino a tempi migliori. Una persona meno informata di me avrebbe potuto sospettare che Kimber avesse trattenuto del denaro dai suoi creditori e acquistato quei beni in modo fraudolento. Ma io sapevo con certezza che non aveva soldi; inoltre, capivo che una simile azione richiedeva una sorta di premeditazione che non poteva essere compatibile con la leggerezza e l’irresponsabilità di un individuo che viveva di furti e truffe.
Poiché era la prima volta che vedevo entrambi da quando avevano venduto le loro proprietà, mi astenni dal fare commenti. Quando li avevo aiutati a vendere, avevo fatto alcune osservazioni – potrei dire anche una piccola omelia? – riguardo a Kimber, che il mondo considerava davvero degne di attenzione. Si diceva che fossi salito sul mio “pulpito” in modo insolitamente solenne. E prima ancora di iniziare a parlare, si era levato un mormorio di riconoscimento riguardo al suo nome (non lo dirò). Avevo poi detto che tutti presenti avrebbero trovato, sulla prima pagina del catalogo davanti a loro, nell’ultimo paragrafo prima della prima merce in vendita, le seguenti parole: “Venduta in esecuzione di un ordine di esecuzione emesso da un creditore”. Avevo quindi ricordato ai miei amici che, per quanto frivola o addirittura spregevole potesse essere l’attività attraverso la quale una persona raccoglieva le proprie merci, queste merci erano comunque preziose per lei e, se vendute senza riserve, anche vantaggiose per la società, come se le sue attività avessero un valore davvero significativo. Avevo poi diviso il mio discorso in tre parti: innanzitutto, “Venduta”; in secondo luogo, “In esecuzione di un ordine di esecuzione”; in terzo luogo, “Emesso da un creditore”. A ciascuna parte avevo aggiunto alcune riflessioni morali, e avevo concluso dicendo: “Ora passiamo alla prima merce in vendita, ”, il che fu accolto con apprezzamento quando mi misi tra il pubblico dopo il discorso.
Sapendo di non essere certo riguardo ai termini con cui io e Kimber ci trovavamo in quella situazione, ero molto preoccupato, mi sentivo a disagio. Tuttavia, quando Kimber si avvicinò a me, anch’io mi avvicinai a lei. (Io ero il creditore che aveva emesso l’ingiunzione. Ma non ha importanza.)
“Stavo alludendo, signor Sapsea,” disse Kimber, “a uno sconosciuto che aveva iniziato a parlarmi per strada mentre mi recavo al Club. Sembrava che avesse appena parlato con voi vicino al cimitero; e anche se gli avevate detto chi eravate, fui quasi incapace di convincerlo del contrario, ”
“Idiota?”, disse Peartree.
“Accidenti!” disse Kimber.
“Idiota e stupido!” dissero gli altri cinque membri.
“Idiota e imbecille, signori,” obiettai, guardandomi intorno, “sono espressioni troppo dure da usare per un giovane di bell’aspetto e buone maniere.” La mia generosità venne messa alla prova. Lo ammetto.
“Dovrai ammettere che deve essere un idiota”, disse Peartree.
“Non si può negare che debba essere un idiota,” disse Kimber.
Il loro tono di disgusto era quasi offensivo. Perché quel giovane doveva essere diffamato in quel modo? Cosa aveva fatto? Aveva commesso soltanto un errore innocente e naturale. Controllai la mia indignazione e lo dissi apertamente.
“Naturale?”, ripeté Kimber. “Lui è davvero un talento naturale!”
I sei membri rimanenti del Club degli Otto risero all’unanimità. Quel riso mi ferì profondamente. Era un riso pieno di disprezzo. La mia rabbia si scatenò a difesa di uno sconosciuto lontano, senza amici. Mi alzai in piedi (poiché ero seduto).
‘Signori,’ dissi con dignità, ‘non intendo rimanere membro di questo Club, permettendo che una persona innocente venga diffamata in sua assenza. Non violerò mai ciò che considero i sacri riti dell’ospitalità. Signori, finché non imparerete a comportarvi meglio, vi lascio. Fino ad allora, mi ritiro da questo luogo di riunione, indipendentemente dalle qualità personali che possa aver portato con me. Signori, fino ad allora, smettetela di essere l’“Otto Club” e fate del vostro meglio per diventare il “Sette Club”.’
Misi il cappello e me ne andai. Mentre scendevo le scale, sentii chiaramente che avevano emesso un grido soffocato di gioia. Ecco il potere dell’atteggiamento e della conoscenza umana. Io stesso li avevo costretti a reagire in quel modo.
II
Chi avrei dovuto incontrare in strada, a pochi metri dalla porta dell’osteria dove si teneva il Club, se non lo stesso giovane per il cui caso avevo ritenuto mio dovere intervenire con tanto calore, e aggiungo, con totale imparzialità.
“È il signor Sapsea, ”, disse dubbiosamente, “o forse è, ”
“È il signor Sapsea,” risposi.
“Scusi, signor Sapsea, sembra che lei abbia caldo, signore.”
“Sono stato molto gentile,” dissi, “e tutto per te.” Dopo aver descritto in dettaglio le circostanze (la mia generosità sembrava quasi sopraffarlo), gli chiesi il nome.
“Signor Sapsea,” rispose lui, guardando verso il basso, “la sua perspicacia è così acuta, la sua capacità di scrutare nell’anima degli altri così profonda, che anche se fossi appena sufficiente a negare di chiamarmi Poker, a cosa mi servirebbe?”
Non so se fossi riuscito a capire con esattezza che il suo nome era Poker, ma credo di essere stato abbastanza vicino a scoprirlo.
“Beh, beh, ”, dissi, cercando di rassicurarlo annuendo dolcemente. “Il tuo nome è Poker, e non c’è nulla di male nel chiamarsi Poker.”
“Oh, signor Sapsea!” esclamò il giovane, con un modo molto corretto.
“Grazie per queste parole!” rispose lui, come se si vergognasse di aver lasciato trapelare i propri sentimenti, e poi abbassò di nuovo lo sguardo.
“Come il Poker,” dissi, “raccontami di più su di te. Dimmi: dove stai andando, Poker? E da dove vieni?”
“Ah, signor Sapsea!” esclamò il giovane. “È impossibile nascondere la verità con voi. Voi sapete già che vengo da qualche parte e sto andando verso un’altra destinazione. Se lo negassi, a cosa mi servirebbe?”
“Allora non negarlo,” fu la mia osservazione.
“O,” continuò Poker, con una sorta di rassegnata esaltazione, “o se negassi di essere venuto in questa città per vedervi e ascoltarvi, signore, a che mi servirebbe? O se negassi, ”