The Mystery of Edwin Drood
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.