The Mystery of Edwin Drood
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