The Mystery of Edwin Drood
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