The Mystery of Edwin Drood (58 page)

 

  “Mr. Edwin, this rose of diamonds and
rubies delicately set in gold, was a ring belonging to Miss Rosa's mother. It
was removed from her dead hand, in my presence, with such distracted grief as I
hope it may never be my lot to contemplate again. Hard man as I am, I am not
hard enough for that. See how bright these stones shine!” opening the case.
“And yet the eyes that were so much brighter, and that so often looked upon
them with a light and a proud heart, have been ashes among ashes, and dust
among dust, some years! If I had any imagination (which it is needless to say I
have not), I might imagine that the lasting beauty of these stones was almost
cruel.”

 

  He closed the case again as he spoke.

 

  “This ring was given to the young lady
who was drowned so early in her beautiful and happy career, by her husband,
when they first plighted their faith to one another. It was he who removed it
from her unconscious hand, and it was he who, when his death drew very near,
placed it in mine. The trust in which I received it, was, that, you and Miss
Rosa growing to manhood and womanhood, and your betrothal prospering and coming
to maturity, I should give it to you to place upon her finger. Failing those
desired results, it was to remain in my possession.”

 

  Some trouble was in the young man's
face, and some indecision was in the action of his hand, as Mr. Grewgious,
looking steadfastly at him, gave him the ring.

 

  “Your placing it on her finger,” said
Mr. Grewgious, “will be the solemn seal upon your strict fidelity to the living
and the dead. You are going to her, to make the last irrevocable preparations
for your marriage. Take it with you.”

 

  The young man took the little case, and
placed it in his breast.

 

  “If anything should be amiss, if
anything should be even slightly wrong, between you; if you should have any
secret consciousness that you are committing yourself to this step for no
higher reason than because you have long been accustomed to look forward to it;
then,” said Mr. Grewgious, “I charge you once more, by the living and by the
dead, to bring that ring back to me!”

 

  Here Bazzard awoke himself by his own
snoring; and, as is usual in such cases, sat apoplectically staring at vacancy,
as defying vacancy to accuse him of having been asleep.

 

  “Bazzard!” said Mr. Grewgious, harder
than ever.

 

  “I follow you, sir,” said Bazzard, “and
I have been following you.”

 

  “In discharge of a trust, I have handed
Mr. Edwin Drood a ring of diamonds and rubies. You see?”

 

  Edwin reproduced the little case, and
opened it; and Bazzard looked into it.

 

  “I follow you both, sir,” returned
Bazzard, “and I witness the transaction.”

 

  Evidently anxious to get away and be
alone, Edwin Drood now resumed his outer clothing, muttering something about
time and appointments. The fog was reported no clearer (by the flying waiter,
who alighted from a speculative flight in the coffee interest), but he went out
into it; and Bazzard, after his manner, “followed” him.

 

  Mr. Grewgious, left alone, walked softly
and slowly to and fro, for an hour and more. He was restless to-night, and
seemed dispirited.

 

  “I hope I have done right,” he said.
“The appeal to him seemed necessary. It was hard to lose the ring, and yet it
must have gone from me very soon.”

 

  He closed the empty little drawer with a
sigh, and shut and locked the escritoire, and came back to the solitary
fireside.

 

  “Her ring,” he went on. “Will it come
back to me? My mind hangs about her ring very uneasily to-night. But that is
explainable. I have had it so long, and I have prized it so much! I wonder—”

 

  He was in a wondering mood as well as a
restless; for, though he checked himself at that point, and took another walk,
he resumed his wondering when he sat down again.

 

  “I wonder (for the ten-thousandth time,
and what a weak fool I, for what can it signify now!) whether he confided the
charge of their orphan child to me, because he knew—Good God, how like her
mother she has become!”

 

  “I wonder whether he ever so much as
suspected that some one doted on her, at a hopeless, speechless distance, when
he struck in and won her. I wonder whether it ever crept into his mind who that
unfortunate some one was!”

 

  “I wonder whether I shall sleep
to-night! At all events, I will shut out the world with the bedclothes, and
try.”

 

  Mr. Grewgious crossed the staircase to
his raw and foggy bedroom, and was soon ready for bed. Dimly catching sight of
his face in the misty looking-glass, he held his candle to it for a moment.

 

  “A likely some one, YOU, to come into
anybody's thoughts in such an aspect!” he exclaimed. “There! there! there! Get
to bed, poor man, and cease to jabber!”

 

  With that, he extinguished his light,
pulled up the bedclothes around him, and with another sigh shut out the world.
And yet there are such unexplored romantic nooks in the unlikeliest men, that
even old tinderous and touchwoody P. J. T. Possibly Jabbered Thus, at some odd
times, in or about seventeen-forty-seven.

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER XII—A NIGHT WITH DURDLES

 

   

 

  WHEN Mr. Sapsea has nothing better to
do, towards evening, and finds the contemplation of his own profundity becoming
a little monotonous in spite of the vastness of the subject, he often takes an
airing in the Cathedral Close and thereabout. He likes to pass the churchyard
with a swelling air of proprietorship, and to encourage in his breast a sort of
benignant-landlord feeling, in that he has been bountiful towards that
meritorious tenant, Mrs. Sapsea, and has publicly given her a prize. He likes
to see a stray face or two looking in through the railings, and perhaps reading
his inscription. Should he meet a stranger coming from the churchyard with a
quick step, he is morally convinced that the stranger is “with a blush
retiring,” as monumentally directed.

 

  Mr. Sapsea's importance has received
enhancement, for he has become Mayor of Cloisterham. Without mayors, and many
of them, it cannot be disputed that the whole framework of society—Mr. Sapsea
is confident that he invented that forcible figure—would fall to pieces. Mayors
have been knighted for “going up” with addresses: explosive machines intrepidly
discharging shot and shell into the English Grammar. Mr. Sapsea may “go up”
with an address. Rise, Sir Thomas Sapsea! Of such is the salt of the earth.

 

  Mr. Sapsea has improved the acquaintance
of Mr. Jasper, since their first meeting to partake of port, epitaph,
backgammon, beef, and salad. Mr. Sapsea has been received at the gatehouse with
kindred hospitality; and on that occasion Mr. Jasper seated himself at the piano,
and sang to him, tickling his ears—figuratively—long enough to present a considerable
area for tickling. What Mr. Sapsea likes in that young man is, that he is
always ready to profit by the wisdom of his elders, and that he is sound, sir,
at the core. In proof of which, he sang to Mr. Sapsea that evening, no kickshaw
ditties, favourites with national enemies, but gave him the genuine George the
Third home-brewed; exhorting him (as “my brave boys') to reduce to a smashed
condition all other islands but this island, and all continents, peninsulas,
isthmuses, promontories, and other geographical forms of land soever, besides
sweeping the seas in all directions. In short, he rendered it pretty clear that
Providence made a distinct mistake in originating so small a nation of hearts
of oak, and so many other verminous peoples.

 

  Mr. Sapsea, walking slowly this moist
evening near the churchyard with his hands behind him, on the look-out for a
blushing and retiring stranger, turns a corner, and comes instead into the
goodly presence of the Dean, conversing with the Verger and Mr. Jasper. Mr.
Sapsea makes his obeisance, and is instantly stricken far more ecclesiastical
than any Archbishop of York or Canterbury.

 

  “You are evidently going to write a book
about us, Mr. Jasper,” quoth the Dean; “to write a book about us. Well! We are
very ancient, and we ought to make a good book. We are not so richly endowed in
possessions as in age; but perhaps you will put THAT in your book, among other
things, and call attention to our wrongs.”

 

  Mr. Tope, as in duty bound, is greatly
entertained by this.

 

  “I really have no intention at all,
sir,” replies Jasper, “of turning author or archaeologist. It is but a whim of
mine. And even for my whim, Mr. Sapsea here is more accountable than I am.”

 

  “How so, Mr. Mayor?” says the Dean, with
a nod of good-natured recognition of his Fetch. “How is that, Mr. Mayor?”

 

  “I am not aware,” Mr. Sapsea remarks,
looking about him for information, “to what the Very Reverend the Dean does me
the honour of referring.” And then falls to studying his original in minute
points of detail.

 

  “Durdles,” Mr. Tope hints.

 

  “Ay!” the Dean echoes; “Durdles,
Durdles!”

 

  “The truth is, sir,” explains Jasper,
“that my curiosity in the man was first really stimulated by Mr. Sapsea. Mr.
Sapsea's knowledge of mankind and power of drawing out whatever is recluse or
odd around him, first led to my bestowing a second thought upon the man: though
of course I had met him constantly about. You would not be surprised by this,
Mr. Dean, if you had seen Mr. Sapsea deal with him in his own parlour, as I
did.”

 

  “O!” cries Sapsea, picking up the ball
thrown to him with ineffable complacency and pomposity; “yes, yes. The Very
Reverend the Dean refers to that? Yes. I happened to bring Durdles and Mr. Jasper
together. I regard Durdles as a Character.”

 

  “A character, Mr. Sapsea, that with a
few skilful touches you turn inside out,” says Jasper.

 

  “Nay, not quite that,” returns the
lumbering auctioneer. “I may have a little influence over him, perhaps; and a little
insight into his character, perhaps. The Very Reverend the Dean will please to
bear in mind that I have seen the world.” Here Mr. Sapsea gets a little behind
the Dean, to inspect his coat-buttons.

 

  “Well!” says the Dean, looking about him
to see what has become of his copyist: “I hope, Mr. Mayor, you will use your
study and knowledge of Durdles to the good purpose of exhorting him not to
break our worthy and respected Choir-Master's neck; we cannot afford it; his
head and voice are much too valuable to us.”

 

  Mr. Tope is again highly entertained,
and, having fallen into respectful convulsions of laughter, subsides into a
deferential murmur, importing that surely any gentleman would deem it a
pleasure and an honour to have his neck broken, in return for such a compliment
from such a source.

 

  “I will take it upon myself, sir,”
observes Sapsea loftily, “to answer for Mr. Jasper's neck. I will tell Durdles
to be careful of it. He will mind what I say. How is it at present endangered?”
he inquires, looking about him with magnificent patronage.

 

  “Only by my making a moonlight
expedition with Durdles among the tombs, vaults, towers, and ruins,” returns
Jasper. “You remember suggesting, when you brought us together, that, as a
lover of the picturesque, it might be worth my while?”

 

  “I remember!” replies the auctioneer.
And the solemn idiot really believes that he does remember.

 

  “Profiting by your hint,” pursues
Jasper, “I have had some dayrambles with the extraordinary old fellow, and we
are to make a moonlight hole-and-corner exploration to-night.”

 

  “And here he is,” says the Dean.

 

  Durdles with his dinner-bundle in his
hand, is indeed beheld slouching towards them. Slouching nearer, and perceiving
the Dean, he pulls off his hat, and is slouching away with it under his arm,
when Mr. Sapsea stops him.

 

  “Mind you take care of my friend,” is
the injunction Mr. Sapsea lays upon him.

 

  “What friend o” yourn is dead?” asks
Durdles. “No orders has come in for any friend o” yourn.”

 

  “I mean my live friend there.”

 

  “O! him?” says Durdles. “He can take
care of himself, can Mister Jarsper.”

 

  “But do you take care of him too,” says
Sapsea.

 

  Whom Durdles (there being command in his
tone) surlily surveys from head to foot.

 

  “With submission to his Reverence the
Dean, if you'll mind what concerns you, Mr. Sapsea, Durdles he'll mind what
concerns him.”

 

  “You're out of temper,” says Mr. Sapsea,
winking to the company to observe how smoothly he will manage him. “My friend
concerns me, and Mr. Jasper is my friend. And you are my friend.”

 

  “Don't you get into a bad habit of
boasting,” retorts Durdles, with a grave cautionary nod. “It'll grow upon you.”

 

  “You are out of temper,” says Sapsea
again; reddening, but again sinking to the company.

 

  “I own to it,” returns Durdles; “I don't
like liberties.”

 

  Mr. Sapsea winks a third wink to the
company, as who should say: “I think you will agree with me that I have settled
HIS business;” and stalks out of the controversy.

 

  Durdles then gives the Dean a good
evening, and adding, as he puts his hat on, “You'll find me at home, Mister
Jarsper, as agreed, when you want me; I'm a-going home to clean myself,” soon
slouches out of sight. This going home to clean himself is one of the man's
incomprehensible compromises with inexorable facts; he, and his hat, and his
boots, and his clothes, never showing any trace of cleaning, but being
uniformly in one condition of dust and grit.

 

  The lamplighter now dotting the quiet
Close with specks of light, and running at a great rate up and down his little
ladder with that object—his little ladder under the sacred shadow of whose
inconvenience generations had grown up, and which all Cloisterham would have
stood aghast at the idea of abolishing—the Dean withdraws to his dinner, Mr.
Tope to his tea, and Mr. Jasper to his piano. There, with no light but that of
the fire, he sits chanting choir-music in a low and beautiful voice, for two or
three hours; in short, until it has been for some time dark, and the moon is
about to rise.