The Mystery of Edwin Drood (24 page)

 

  “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 atalking 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 “UnEnglish.” And when Mr. Sapsea
has once declared anything to be UnEnglish, 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 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.