‘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:
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