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.
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