The Mystery of Edwin Drood (65 page)

 

  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unknown reason he had withdrawn himself from his uncle's home and society, to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 mystifying, but that her attention was divided by the
service of the table.

 

  “You will take something with me?” said
Jasper, as the cloth was laid.

 

  “I couldn't get a morsel down my throat,
I thank you,” answered Mr. Grewgious.

 

  Jasper both ate and drank almost
voraciously. Combined with the hurry in his mode of doing it, was an evident
indifference to the taste of what he took, suggesting that he ate and drank to
fortify himself against any other failure of the spirits, far more than to gratify
his palate. Mr. Grewgious in the meantime sat upright, with no expression in
his face, and a hard kind of imperturbably polite protest all over him: as
though he would have said, in reply to some invitation to discourse; “I
couldn't originate the faintest approach to an observation on any subject
whatever, I thank you.”

 

  “Do you know,” said Jasper, when he had
pushed away his plate and glass, and had sat meditating for a few minutes: “do
you know that I find some crumbs of comfort in the communication with which you
have so much amazed me?”

 

  “DO you?” returned Mr. Grewgious, pretty
plainly adding the unspoken clause: “I don't, I thank you!”

 

  “After recovering from the shock of a
piece of news of my dear boy, so entirely unexpected, and so destructive of all
the castles I had built for him; and after having had time to think of it;
yes.”

 

  “I shall be glad to pick up your
crumbs,” said Mr. Grewgious, dryly.

 

  “Is there not, or is there—if I deceive
myself, tell me so, and shorten my pain—is there not, or is there, hope that,
finding himself in this new position, and becoming sensitively alive to the
awkward burden of explanation, in this quarter, and that, and the other, with
which it would load him, he avoided the awkwardness, and took to flight?”

 

  “Such a thing might be,” said Mr.
Grewgious, pondering.

 

  “Such a thing has been. I have read of
cases in which people, rather than face a seven days” wonder, and have to
account for themselves to the idle and impertinent, have taken themselves away,
and been long unheard of.”

 

  “I believe such things have happened,”
said Mr. Grewgious, pondering still.

 

  “When I had, and could have, no
suspicion,” pursued Jasper, eagerly following the new track, “that the dear
lost boy had withheld anything from me—most of all, such a leading matter as
this—what gleam of light was there for me in the whole black sky? When I
supposed that his intended wife was here, and his marriage close at hand, how
could I entertain the possibility of his voluntarily leaving this place, in a
manner that would be so unaccountable, capricious, and cruel? But now that I
know what you have told me, is there no little chink through which day pierces?
Supposing him to have disappeared of his own act, is not his disappearance more
accountable and less cruel? The fact of his having just parted from your ward,
is in itself a sort of reason for his going away. It does not make his
mysterious departure the less cruel to me, it is true; but it relieves it of
cruelty to her.”