The Mystery of Edwin Drood
“That man and I,” said Neville, pointing out his late adversary, “had a
struggle for the stick just now, and you may see the same marks on him,
sir. What was I to suppose, when I found myself molested by eight
people? Could I dream of the true reason when they would give me none
at all?”
They admitted that they had thought it discreet to be silent, and that
the struggle had taken place. And yet the very men who had seen it
looked darkly at the smears which the bright cold air had already
dried.
“We must return, Neville,” said Mr. Crisparkle; “of course you will be
glad to come back to clear yourself?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Mr. Landless will walk at my side,” the Minor Canon continued, looking
around him. “Come, Neville!”
They set forth on the walk back; and the others, with one exception,
straggled after them at various distances. Jasper walked on the other
side of Neville, and never quitted that position. He was silent, while
Mr. Crisparkle more than once repeated his former questions, and while
Neville repeated his former answers; also, while they both hazarded
some explanatory conjectures. He was obstinately silent, because Mr.
Crisparkle’s manner directly appealed to him to take some part in the
discussion, and no appeal would move his fixed face. When they drew
near to the city, and it was suggested by the Minor Canon that they
might do well in calling on the Mayor at once, he assented with a stern
nod; but he spake no word until they stood in Mr. Sapsea’s parlour.
Mr. Sapsea being informed by Mr. Crisparkle of the circumstances under
which they desired to make a voluntary statement before him, Mr. Jasper
broke silence by declaring that he placed his whole reliance, humanly
speaking, on Mr. Sapsea’s penetration. There was no conceivable reason
why his nephew should have suddenly absconded, unless Mr. Sapsea could
suggest one, and then he would defer. There was no intelligible
likelihood of his having returned to the river, and been accidentally
drowned in the dark, unless it should appear likely to Mr. Sapsea, and
then again he would defer. He washed his hands as clean as he could of
all horrible suspicions, unless it should appear to Mr. Sapsea that
some such were inseparable from his last companion before his
disappearance (not on good terms with previously), and then, once more,
he would defer. His own state of mind, he being distracted with doubts,
and labouring under dismal apprehensions, was not to be safely trusted;
but Mr. Sapsea’s was.
Mr. Sapsea expressed his opinion that the case had a dark look; in
short (and here his eyes rested full on Neville’s countenance), an
Un-English complexion. Having made this grand point, he wandered into a
denser haze and maze of nonsense than even a mayor might have been
expected to disport himself in, and came out of it with the brilliant
discovery that to take the life of a fellow-creature was to take
something that didn’t belong to you. He wavered whether or no he should
at once issue his warrant for the committal of Neville Landless to
jail, under circumstances of grave suspicion; and he might have gone so
far as to do it but for the indignant protest of the Minor Canon: who
undertook for the young man’s remaining in his own house, and being
produced by his own hands, whenever demanded. Mr. Jasper then
understood Mr. Sapsea to suggest that the river should be dragged, that
its banks should be rigidly examined, that particulars of the
disappearance should be sent to all outlying places and to London, and
that placards and advertisements should be widely circulated imploring
Edwin Drood, if for any unknown reason he had withdrawn himself from
his uncle’s home and society, to take pity on that loving kinsman’s
sore bereavement and distress, and somehow inform him that he was yet
alive. Mr. Sapsea was perfectly understood, for this was exactly his
meaning (though he had said nothing about it); and measures were taken
towards all these ends immediately.
It would be difficult to determine which was the more oppressed with
horror and amazement: Neville Landless, or John Jasper. But that
Jasper’s position forced him to be active, while Neville’s forced him
to be passive, there would have been nothing to choose between them.
Each was bowed down and broken.
With the earliest light of the next morning, men were at work upon the
river, and other men—most of whom volunteered for the service—were
examining the banks. All the livelong day the search went on; upon the
river, with barge and pole, and drag and net; upon the muddy and rushy
shore, with jack-boots, hatchet, spade, rope, dogs, and all imaginable
appliances. Even at night, the river was specked with lanterns, and
lurid with fires; far-off creeks, into which the tide washed as it
changed, had their knots of watchers, listening to the lapping of the
stream, and looking out for any burden it might bear; remote shingly
causeways near the sea, and lonely points off which there was a race of
water, had their unwonted flaring cressets and rough-coated figures
when the next day dawned; but no trace of Edwin Drood revisited the
light of the sun.
All that day, again, the search went on. Now, in barge and boat; and
now ashore among the osiers, or tramping amidst mud and stakes and
jagged stones in low-lying places, where solitary watermarks and
signals of strange shapes showed like spectres, John Jasper worked and
toiled. But to no purpose; for still no trace of Edwin Drood revisited
the light of the sun.
Setting his watches for that night again, so that vigilant eyes should
be kept on every change of tide, he went home exhausted. Unkempt and
disordered, bedaubed with mud that had dried upon him, and with much of
his clothing torn to rags, he had but just dropped into his easy-chair,
when Mr. Grewgious stood before him.
“This is strange news,” said Mr. Grewgious.
“Strange and fearful news.”
Jasper had merely lifted up his heavy eyes to say it, and now dropped
them again as he drooped, worn out, over one side of his easy-chair.
Mr. Grewgious smoothed his head and face, and stood looking at the
fire.
“How is your ward?” asked Jasper, after a time, in a faint, fatigued
voice.
“Poor little thing! You may imagine her condition.”
“Have you seen his sister?” inquired Jasper, as before.
“Whose?”
The curtness of the counter-question, and the cool, slow manner in
which, as he put it, Mr. Grewgious moved his eyes from the fire to his
companion’s face, might at any other time have been exasperating. In
his depression and exhaustion, Jasper merely opened his eyes to say:
“The suspected young man’s.”
“Do you suspect him?” asked Mr. Grewgious.
“I don’t know what to think. I cannot make up my mind.”
“Nor I,” said Mr. Grewgious. “But as you spoke of him as the suspected
young man, I thought you _had_ made up your mind.—I have just left Miss
Landless.”
“What is her state?”
“Defiance of all suspicion, and unbounded faith in her brother.”
“Poor thing!”
“However,” pursued Mr. Grewgious, “it is not of her that I came to
speak. It is of my ward. I have a communication to make that will
surprise you. At least, it has surprised me.”
Jasper, with a groaning sigh, turned wearily in his chair.
“Shall I put it off till to-morrow?” said Mr. Grewgious. “Mind, I warn
you, that I think it will surprise you!”
More attention and concentration came into John Jasper’s eyes as they
caught sight of Mr. Grewgious smoothing his head again, and again
looking at the fire; but now, with a compressed and determined mouth.
“What is it?” demanded Jasper, becoming upright in his chair.
“To be sure,” said Mr. Grewgious, provokingly slowly and internally, as
he kept his eyes on the fire: “I might have known it sooner; she gave
me the opening; but I am such an exceedingly Angular man, that it never
occurred to me; I took all for granted.”
“What is it?” demanded Jasper once more.
Mr. Grewgious, alternately opening and shutting the palms of his hands
as he warmed them at the fire, and looking fixedly at him sideways, and
never changing either his action or his look in all that followed, went
on to reply.
“This young couple, the lost youth and Miss Rosa, my ward, though so
long betrothed, and so long recognising their betrothal, and so near
being married—”
Mr. Grewgious saw a staring white face, and two quivering white lips,
in the easy-chair, and saw two muddy hands gripping its sides. But for
the hands, he might have thought he had never seen the face.
“—This young couple came gradually to the discovery (made on both sides
pretty equally, I think), that they would be happier and better, both
in their present and their future lives, as affectionate friends, or
say rather as brother and sister, than as husband and wife.”
Mr. Grewgious saw a lead-coloured face in the easy-chair, and on its
surface dreadful starting drops or bubbles, as if of steel.
“This young couple formed at length the healthy resolution of
interchanging their discoveries, openly, sensibly, and tenderly. They
met for that purpose. After some innocent and generous talk, they
agreed to dissolve their existing, and their intended, relations, for
ever and ever.”
Mr. Grewgious saw a ghastly figure rise, open-mouthed, from the
easy-chair, and lift its outspread hands towards its head.
“One of this young couple, and that one your nephew, fearful, however,
that in the tenderness of your affection for him you would be bitterly
disappointed by so wide a departure from his projected life, forbore to
tell you the secret, for a few days, and left it to be disclosed by me,
when I should come down to speak to you, and he would be gone. I speak
to you, and he is gone.”
Mr. Grewgious saw the ghastly figure throw back its head, clutch its
hair with its hands, and turn with a writhing action from him.
“I have now said all I have to say: except that this young couple
parted, firmly, though not without tears and sorrow, on the evening
when you last saw them together.”
Mr. Grewgious heard a terrible shriek, and saw no ghastly figure,
sitting or standing; saw nothing but a heap of torn and miry clothes
upon the floor.
Not changing his action even then, he opened and shut the palms of his
hands as he warmed them, and looked down at it.
CHAPTER XVI.
DEVOTED
When John Jasper recovered from his fit or swoon, he found himself
being tended by Mr. and Mrs. Tope, whom his visitor had summoned for
the purpose. His visitor, wooden of aspect, sat stiffly in a chair,
with his hands upon his knees, watching his recovery.
“There! You’ve come to nicely now, sir,” said the tearful Mrs. Tope;
“you were thoroughly worn out, and no wonder!”
“A man,” said Mr. Grewgious, with his usual air of repeating a lesson,
“cannot have his rest broken, and his mind cruelly tormented, and his
body overtaxed by fatigue, without being thoroughly worn out.”
“I fear I have alarmed you?” Jasper apologised faintly, when he was
helped into his easy-chair.
“Not at all, I thank you,” answered Mr. Grewgious.
“You are too considerate.”
“Not at all, I thank you,” answered Mr. Grewgious again.
“You must take some wine, sir,” said Mrs. Tope, “and the jelly that I
had ready for you, and that you wouldn’t put your lips to at noon,
though I warned you what would come of it, you know, and you not
breakfasted; and you must have a wing of the roast fowl that has been
put back twenty times if it’s been put back once. It shall all be on
table in five minutes, and this good gentleman belike will stop and see
you take it.”
This good gentleman replied with a snort, which might mean yes, or no,
or anything or nothing, and which Mrs. Tope would have found highly