The Mystery of Edwin Drood
the icy water, and swam for the spot. Climbing the timbers, he took
from them, caught among their interstices by its chain, a gold watch,
bearing engraved upon its back E. D.
He brought the watch to the bank, swam to the Weir again, climbed it,
and dived off. He knew every hole and corner of all the depths, and
dived and dived and dived, until he could bear the cold no more. His
notion was, that he would find the body; he only found a shirt-pin
sticking in some mud and ooze.
With these discoveries he returned to Cloisterham, and, taking Neville
Landless with him, went straight to the Mayor. Mr. Jasper was sent for,
the watch and shirt-pin were identified, Neville was detained, and the
wildest frenzy and fatuity of evil report rose against him. He was of
that vindictive and violent nature, that but for his poor sister, who
alone had influence over him, and out of whose sight he was never to be
trusted, he would be in the daily commission of murder. Before coming
to England he had caused to be whipped to death sundry
“Natives”—nomadic persons, encamping now in Asia, now in Africa, now in
the West Indies, and now at the North Pole—vaguely supposed in
Cloisterham to be always black, always of great virtue, always calling
themselves Me, and everybody else Massa or Missie (according to sex),
and always reading tracts of the obscurest meaning, in broken English,
but always accurately understanding them in the purest mother tongue.
He had nearly brought Mrs. Crisparkle’s grey hairs with sorrow to the
grave. (Those original expressions were Mr. Sapsea’s.) He had
repeatedly said he would have Mr. Crisparkle’s life. He had repeatedly
said he would have everybody’s life, and become in effect the last man.
He had been brought down to Cloisterham, from London, by an eminent
Philanthropist, and why? Because that Philanthropist had expressly
declared: “I owe it to my fellow-creatures that he should be, in the
words of BENTHAM, where he is the cause of the greatest danger to the
smallest number.”
These dropping shots from the blunderbusses of blunderheadedness might
not have hit him in a vital place. But he had to stand against a
trained and well-directed fire of arms of precision too. He had
notoriously threatened the lost young man, and had, according to the
showing of his own faithful friend and tutor who strove so hard for
him, a cause of bitter animosity (created by himself, and stated by
himself), against that ill-starred fellow. He had armed himself with an
offensive weapon for the fatal night, and he had gone off early in the
morning, after making preparations for departure. He had been found
with traces of blood on him; truly, they might have been wholly caused
as he represented, but they might not, also. On a search-warrant being
issued for the examination of his room, clothes, and so forth, it was
discovered that he had destroyed all his papers, and rearranged all his
possessions, on the very afternoon of the disappearance. The watch
found at the Weir was challenged by the jeweller as one he had wound
and set for Edwin Drood, at twenty minutes past two on that same
afternoon; and it had run down, before being cast into the water; and
it was the jeweller’s positive opinion that it had never been re-wound.
This would justify the hypothesis that the watch was taken from him not
long after he left Mr. Jasper’s house at midnight, in company with the
last person seen with him, and that it had been thrown away after being
retained some hours. Why thrown away? If he had been murdered, and so
artfully disfigured, or concealed, or both, as that the murderer hoped
identification to be impossible, except from something that he wore,
assuredly the murderer would seek to remove from the body the most
lasting, the best known, and the most easily recognisable, things upon
it. Those things would be the watch and shirt-pin. As to his
opportunities of casting them into the river; if he were the object of
these suspicions, they were easy. For, he had been seen by many
persons, wandering about on that side of the city—indeed on all sides
of it—in a miserable and seemingly half-distracted manner. As to the
choice of the spot, obviously such criminating evidence had better take
its chance of being found anywhere, rather than upon himself, or in his
possession. Concerning the reconciliatory nature of the appointed
meeting between the two young men, very little could be made of that in
young Landless’s favour; for it distinctly appeared that the meeting
originated, not with him, but with Mr. Crisparkle, and that it had been
urged on by Mr. Crisparkle; and who could say how unwillingly, or in
what ill-conditioned mood, his enforced pupil had gone to it? The more
his case was looked into, the weaker it became in every point. Even the
broad suggestion that the lost young man had absconded, was rendered
additionally improbable on the showing of the young lady from whom he
had so lately parted; for; what did she say, with great earnestness and
sorrow, when interrogated? That he had, expressly and enthusiastically,
planned with her, that he would await the arrival of her guardian, Mr.
Grewgious. And yet, be it observed, he disappeared before that
gentleman appeared.
On the suspicions thus urged and supported, Neville was detained, and
re-detained, and the search was pressed on every hand, and Jasper
laboured night and day. But nothing more was found. No discovery being
made, which proved the lost man to be dead, it at length became
necessary to release the person suspected of having made away with him.
Neville was set at large. Then, a consequence ensued which Mr.
Crisparkle had too well foreseen. Neville must leave the place, for the
place shunned him and cast him out. Even had it not been so, the dear
old china shepherdess would have worried herself to death with fears
for her son, and with general trepidation occasioned by their having
such an inmate. Even had that not been so, the authority to which the
Minor Canon deferred officially, would have settled the point.
“Mr. Crisparkle,” quoth the Dean, “human justice may err, but it must
act according to its lights. The days of taking sanctuary are past.
This young man must not take sanctuary with us.”
“You mean that he must leave my house, sir?”
“Mr. Crisparkle,” returned the prudent Dean, “I claim no authority in
your house. I merely confer with you, on the painful necessity you find
yourself under, of depriving this young man of the great advantages of
your counsel and instruction.”
“It is very lamentable, sir,” Mr. Crisparkle represented.
“Very much so,” the Dean assented.
“And if it be a necessity—” Mr. Crisparkle faltered.
“As you unfortunately find it to be,” returned the Dean.
Mr. Crisparkle bowed submissively: “It is hard to prejudge his case,
sir, but I am sensible that—”
“Just so. Perfectly. As you say, Mr. Crisparkle,” interposed the Dean,
nodding his head smoothly, “there is nothing else to be done. No doubt,
no doubt. There is no alternative, as your good sense has discovered.”
“I am entirely satisfied of his perfect innocence, sir, nevertheless.”
“We-e-ell!” said the Dean, in a more confidential tone, and slightly
glancing around him, “I would not say so, generally. Not generally.
Enough of suspicion attaches to him to—no, I think I would not say so,
generally.”
Mr. Crisparkle bowed again.
“It does not become us, perhaps,” pursued the Dean, “to be partisans.
Not partisans. We clergy keep our hearts warm and our heads cool, and
we hold a judicious middle course.”
“I hope you do not object, sir, to my having stated in public,
emphatically, that he will reappear here, whenever any new suspicion
may be awakened, or any new circumstance may come to light in this
extraordinary matter?”
“Not at all,” returned the Dean. “And yet, do you know, I don’t think,”
with a very nice and neat emphasis on those two words: “I _don’t think_
I would state it emphatically. State it? Ye-e-es! But emphatically?
No-o-o. I _think_ not. In point of fact, Mr. Crisparkle, keeping our
hearts warm and our heads cool, we clergy need do nothing
emphatically.”
So Minor Canon Row knew Neville Landless no more; and he went
whithersoever he would, or could, with a blight upon his name and fame.
It was not until then that John Jasper silently resumed his place in
the choir. Haggard and red-eyed, his hopes plainly had deserted him,
his sanguine mood was gone, and all his worst misgivings had come back.
A day or two afterwards, while unrobing, he took his Diary from a
pocket of his coat, turned the leaves, and with an impressive look, and
without one spoken word, handed this entry to Mr. Crisparkle to read:
“My dear boy is murdered. The discovery of the watch and shirt-pin
convinces me that he was murdered that night, and that his jewellery
was taken from him to prevent identification by its means. All the
delusive hopes I had founded on his separation from his betrothed wife,
I give to the winds. They perish before this fatal discovery. I now
swear, and record the oath on this page, That I nevermore will discuss
this mystery with any human creature until I hold the clue to it in my
hand. That I never will relax in my secrecy or in my search. That I
will fasten the crime of the murder of my dear dead boy upon the
murderer. And, That I devote myself to his destruction.”
CHAPTER XVII.
PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL AND UNPROFESSIONAL
Full half a year had come and gone, and Mr. Crisparkle sat in a
waiting-room in the London chief offices of the Haven of Philanthropy,
until he could have audience of Mr. Honeythunder.
In his college days of athletic exercises, Mr. Crisparkle had known
professors of the Noble Art of fisticuffs, and had attended two or
three of their gloved gatherings. He had now an opportunity of
observing that as to the phrenological formation of the backs of their
heads, the Professing Philanthropists were uncommonly like the
Pugilists. In the development of all those organs which constitute, or
attend, a propensity to “pitch into” your fellow-creatures, the
Philanthropists were remarkably favoured. There were several Professors
passing in and out, with exactly the aggressive air upon them of being
ready for a turn-up with any Novice who might happen to be on hand,
that Mr. Crisparkle well remembered in the circles of the Fancy.
Preparations were in progress for a moral little Mill somewhere on the
rural circuit, and other Professors were backing this or that
Heavy-Weight as good for such or such speech-making hits, so very much
after the manner of the sporting publicans, that the intended
Resolutions might have been Rounds. In an official manager of these
displays much celebrated for his platform tactics, Mr. Crisparkle
recognised (in a suit of black) the counterpart of a deceased
benefactor of his species, an eminent public character, once known to
fame as Frosty-faced Fogo, who in days of yore superintended the
formation of the magic circle with the ropes and stakes. There were
only three conditions of resemblance wanting between these Professors
and those. Firstly, the Philanthropists were in very bad training: much
too fleshy, and presenting, both in face and figure, a superabundance
of what is known to Pugilistic Experts as Suet Pudding. Secondly, the
Philanthropists had not the good temper of the Pugilists, and used
worse language. Thirdly, their fighting code stood in great need of
revision, as empowering them not only to bore their man to the ropes,
but to bore him to the confines of distraction; also to hit him when he
was down, hit him anywhere and anyhow, kick him, stamp upon him, gouge
him, and maul him behind his back without mercy. In these last
particulars the Professors of the Noble Art were much nobler than the