The Mystery of Edwin Drood (41 page)

 

   

 

  That same afternoon, the massive gray
square tower of an old Cathedral rises before the sight of a jaded traveller.
The bells are going for daily vesper service, and he must needs attend it, one
would say, from his haste to reach the open Cathedral door. The choir are
getting on their sullied white robes, in a hurry, when he arrives among them,
gets on his own robe, and falls into the procession filing in to service. Then,
the Sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divide the sanctuary from the
chancel, and all of the procession having scuttled into their places, hide
their faces; and then the intoned words, “WHEN THE WICKED MAN—” rise among
groins of arches and beams of roof, awakening muttered thunder.

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER II—A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO

 

   

 

  WHOSOEVER has observed that sedate and
clerical bird, the rook, may perhaps have noticed that when he wings his way
homeward towards nightfall, in a sedate and clerical company, two rooks will
suddenly detach themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight for some
distance, and will there poise and linger; conveying to mere men the fancy that
it is of some occult importance to the body politic, that this artful couple
should pretend to have renounced connection with it.

 

  Similarly, service being over in the old
Cathedral with the square tower, and the choir scuffling out again, and divers
venerable persons of rook-like aspect dispersing, two of these latter retrace
their steps, and walk together in the echoing Close.

 

  Not only is the day waning, but the
year. The low sun is fiery and yet cold behind the monastery ruin, and the
Virginia creeper on the Cathedral wall has showered half its deep-red leaves
down on the pavement. There has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder
goes among the little pools on the cracked, uneven flag-stones, and through the
giant elm-trees as they shed a gust of tears. Their fallen leaves lie strewn
thickly about. Some of these leaves, in a timid rush, seek sanctuary within the
low arched Cathedral door; but two men coming out resist them, and cast them
forth again with their feet; this done, one of the two locks the door with a
goodly key, and the other flits away with a folio music-book.

 

  “Mr. Jasper was that, Tope?”

 

  “Yes, Mr. Dean.”

 

  “He has stayed late.”

 

  “Yes, Mr. Dean. I have stayed for him,
your Reverence. He has been took a little poorly.”

 

  “Say “taken,” Tope—to the Dean,” the
younger rook interposes in a low tone with this touch of correction, as who
should say: “You may offer bad grammar to the laity, or the humbler clergy, not
to the Dean.”

 

  Mr. Tope, Chief Verger and Showman, and
accustomed to be high with excursion parties, declines with a silent loftiness
to perceive that any suggestion has been tendered to him.

 

  “And when and how has Mr. Jasper been
taken—for, as Mr. Crisparkle has remarked, it is better to say taken—taken—”
repeats the Dean; “when and how has Mr. Jasper been Taken—”

 

  “Taken, sir,” Tope deferentially
murmurs.

 

  “—Poorly, Tope?”

 

  “Why, sir, Mr. Jasper was that
breathed—”

 

  “I wouldn't say “That breathed,” Tope,”
Mr. Crisparkle interposes with the same touch as before. “Not English—to the
Dean.”

 

  “Breathed to that extent,” the Dean (not
unflattered by this indirect homage) condescendingly remarks, “would be
preferable.”

 

  “Mr. Jasper's breathing was so
remarkably short”—thus discreetly does Mr. Tope work his way round the sunken
rock—“when he came in, that it distressed him mightily to get his notes out:
which was perhaps the cause of his having a kind of fit on him after a little.
His memory grew DAZED.” Mr. Tope, with his eyes on the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle,
shoots this word out, as defying him to improve upon it: “and a dimness and
giddiness crept over him as strange as ever I saw: though he didn't seem to
mind it particularly, himself. However, a little time and a little water
brought him out of his DAZE.” Mr. Tope repeats the word and its emphasis, with
the air of saying: “As I HAVE made a success, I'll make it again.”

 

  “And Mr. Jasper has gone home quite
himself, has he?” asked the Dean.

 

  “Your Reverence, he has gone home quite
himself. And I'm glad to see he's having his fire kindled up, for it's chilly
after the wet, and the Cathedral had both a damp feel and a damp touch this
afternoon, and he was very shivery.”

 

  They all three look towards an old stone
gatehouse crossing the Close, with an arched thoroughfare passing beneath it.
Through its latticed window, a fire shines out upon the fast-darkening scene,
involving in shadow the pendent masses of ivy and creeper covering the
building's front. As the deep Cathedral-bell strikes the hour, a ripple of wind
goes through these at their distance, like a ripple of the solemn sound that
hums through tomb and tower, broken niche and defaced statue, in the pile close
at hand.

 

  “Is Mr. Jasper's nephew with him?” the
Dean asks.

 

  “No, sir,” replied the Verger, “but
expected. There's his own solitary shadow betwixt his two windows—the one
looking this way, and the one looking down into the High Street—drawing his own
curtains now.”

 

  “Well, well,” says the Dean, with a
sprightly air of breaking up the little conference, “I hope Mr. Jasper's heart
may not be too much set upon his nephew. Our affections, however laudable, in
this transitory world, should never master us; we should guide them, guide
them. I find I am not disagreeably reminded of my dinner, by hearing my
dinner-bell. Perhaps, Mr. Crisparkle, you will, before going home, look in on
Jasper?”

 

  “Certainly, Mr. Dean. And tell him that
you had the kindness to desire to know how he was?”

 

  “Ay; do so, do so. Certainly. Wished to
know how he was. By all means. Wished to know how he was.”

 

  With a pleasant air of patronage, the
Dean as nearly cocks his quaint hat as a Dean in good spirits may, and directs
his comely gaiters towards the ruddy dining-room of the snug old red-brick
house where he is at present, “in residence” with Mrs. Dean and Miss Dean.

 

  Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, fair and
rosy, and perpetually pitching himself head-foremost into all the deep running
water in the surrounding country; Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, early riser,
musical, classical, cheerful, kind, good-natured, social, contented, and
boy-like; Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon and good man, lately “Coach” upon the
chief Pagan high roads, but since promoted by a patron (grateful for a
well-taught son) to his present Christian beat; betakes himself to the
gatehouse, on his way home to his early tea.

 

  “Sorry to hear from Tope that you have
not been well, Jasper.”

 

  “O, it was nothing, nothing!”

 

  “You look a little worn.”

 

  “Do I? O, I don't think so. What is
better, I don't feel so. Tope has made too much of it, I suspect. It's his
trade to make the most of everything appertaining to the Cathedral, you know.”

 

  “I may tell the Dean—I call expressly
from the Dean—that you are all right again?”

 

  The reply, with a slight smile, is:
“Certainly; with my respects and thanks to the Dean.”

 

  “I'm glad to hear that you expect young
Drood.”

 

  “I expect the dear fellow every moment.”

 

  “Ah! He will do you more good than a
doctor, Jasper.”

 

  “More good than a dozen doctors. For I
love him dearly, and I don't love doctors, or doctors” stuff.”

 

  Mr. Jasper is a dark man of some
six-and-twenty, with thick, lustrous, well-arranged black hair and whiskers. He
looks older than he is, as dark men often do. His voice is deep and good, his
face and figure are good, his manner is a little sombre. His room is a little
sombre, and may have had its influence in forming his manner. It is mostly in
shadow. Even when the sun shines brilliantly, it seldom touches the grand piano
in the recess, or the folio music-books on the stand, or the book-shelves on
the wall, or the unfinished picture of a blooming schoolgirl hanging over the
chimneypiece; her flowing brown hair tied with a blue riband, and her beauty
remarkable for a quite childish, almost babyish, touch of saucy discontent,
comically conscious of itself. (There is not the least artistic merit in this
picture, which is a mere daub; but it is clear that the painter has made it
humorously—one might almost say, revengefully—like the original.)

 

  “We shall miss you, Jasper, at the
“Alternate Musical Wednesdays” to-night; but no doubt you are best at home.
Good-night. God bless you! “Tell me, shep-herds, te-e-ell me; tell me-e-e, have
you seen (have you seen, have you seen, have you seen) my-y-y Floo-ora-a pass
this way!"” Melodiously good Minor Canon the Reverend Septimus Crisparkle
thus delivers himself, in musical rhythm, as he withdraws his amiable face from
the doorway and conveys it downstairs.

 

  Sounds of recognition and greeting pass
between the Reverend Septimus and somebody else, at the stair-foot. Mr. Jasper
listens, starts from his chair, and catches a young fellow in his arms,
exclaiming:

 

  “My dear Edwin!”

 

  “My dear Jack! So glad to see you!”

 

  “Get off your greatcoat, bright boy, and
sit down here in your own corner. Your feet are not wet? Pull your boots off.
Do pull your boots off.”

 

  “My dear Jack, I am as dry as a bone.
Don't moddley-coddley, there's a good fellow. I like anything better than being
moddleycoddleyed.”

 

  With the check upon him of being
unsympathetically restrained in a genial outburst of enthusiasm, Mr. Jasper
stands still, and looks on intently at the young fellow, divesting himself of
his outward coat, hat, gloves, and so forth. Once for all, a look of intentness
and intensity—a look of hungry, exacting, watchful, and yet devoted
affection—is always, now and ever afterwards, on the Jasper face whenever the
Jasper face is addressed in this direction. And whenever it is so addressed, it
is never, on this occasion or on any other, dividedly addressed; it is always
concentrated.

 

  “Now I am right, and now I'll take my
corner, Jack. Any dinner, Jack?”

 

  Mr. Jasper opens a door at the upper end
of the room, and discloses a small inner room pleasantly lighted and prepared,
wherein a comely dame is in the act of setting dishes on table.

 

  “What a jolly old Jack it is!” cries the
young fellow, with a clap of his hands. “Look here, Jack; tell me; whose
birthday is it?”

 

  “Not yours, I know,” Mr. Jasper answers,
pausing to consider.

 

  “Not mine, you know? No; not mine, I
know! Pussy's!”

 

  Fixed as the look the young fellow
meets, is, there is yet in it some strange power of suddenly including the
sketch over the chimneypiece.

 

  “Pussy's, Jack! We must drink Many happy
returns to her. Come, uncle; take your dutiful and sharp-set nephew in to
dinner.”

 

  As the boy (for he is little more) lays
a hand on Jasper's shoulder, Jasper cordially and gaily lays a hand on HIS
shoulder, and so Marseillaise-wise they go in to dinner.

 

  “And, Lord! here's Mrs. Tope!” cries the
boy. “Lovelier than ever!”

 

  “Never you mind me, Master Edwin,”
retorts the Verger's wife; “I can take care of myself.”

 

  “You can't. You're much too handsome. Give
me a kiss because it's Pussy's birthday.”

 

  “I'd Pussy you, young man, if I was
Pussy, as you call her,” Mrs. Tope blushingly retorts, after being saluted.
“Your uncle's too much wrapt up in you, that's where it is. He makes so much of
you, that it's my opinion you think you've only to call your Pussys by the
dozen, to make “em come.”

 

  “You forget, Mrs. Tope,” Mr. Jasper
interposes, taking his place at the table with a genial smile, “and so do you,
Ned, that Uncle and Nephew are words prohibited here by common consent and
express agreement. For what we are going to receive His holy name be praised!”

 

  “Done like the Dean! Witness, Edwin
Drood! Please to carve, Jack, for I can't.”

 

  This sally ushers in the dinner. Little
to the present purpose, or to any purpose, is said, while it is in course of
being disposed of. At length the cloth is drawn, and a dish of walnuts and a
decanter of rich-coloured sherry are placed upon the table.

 

  “I say! Tell me, Jack,” the young fellow
then flows on: “do you really and truly feel as if the mention of our
relationship divided us at all? I don't.”

 

  “Uncles as a rule, Ned, are so much
older than their nephews,” is the reply, “that I have that feeling
instinctively.”

 

  “As a rule! Ah, may-be! But what is a
difference in age of halfa-dozen years or so? And some uncles, in large
families, are even younger than their nephews. By George, I wish it was the
case with us!”

 

  “Why?”

 

  “Because if it was, I'd take the lead
with you, Jack, and be as wise as Begone, dull Care! that turned a young man
gray, and Begone, dull Care! that turned an old man to clay. —Halloa, Jack!
Don't drink.”

 

  “Why not?”

 

  “Asks why not, on Pussy's birthday, and
no Happy returns proposed! Pussy, Jack, and many of “em! Happy returns, I
mean.”

 

  Laying an affectionate and laughing
touch on the boy's extended hand, as if it were at once his giddy head and his
light heart, Mr. Jasper drinks the toast in silence.

 

  “Hip, hip, hip, and nine times nine, and
one to finish with, and all that, understood. Hooray, hooray, hooray!—And now,
Jack, let's have a little talk about Pussy. Two pairs of nut-crackers? Pass me
one, and take the other.” Crack. “How's Pussy getting on Jack?”