The Mystery of Edwin Drood (25 page)

 

  He was labouring along, when he became
aware of some other pedestrians behind him. As they were coming up at a faster
pace than his, he stood aside, against one of the high banks, to let them pass.
But their manner was very curious. Only four of them passed. Other four
slackened speed, and loitered as intending to follow him when he should go on.
The remainder of the party (halfa-dozen perhaps) turned, and went back at a
great rate.

 

  He looked at the four behind him, and he
looked at the four before him. They all returned his look. He resumed his way.
The four in advance went on, constantly looking back; the four in the rear came
closing up.

 

  When they all ranged out from the narrow
track upon the open slope of the heath, and this order was maintained, let him
diverge as he would to either side, there was no longer room to doubt that he
was beset by these fellows. He stopped, as a last test; and they all stopped.

 

  “Why do you attend upon me in this way?”
he asked the whole body. “Are you a pack of thieves?”

 

  “Don't answer him,” said one of the
number; he did not see which. “Better be quiet.”

 

  “Better be quiet?” repeated Neville.
“Who said so?”

 

  Nobody replied.

 

  “It's good advice, whichever of you
skulkers gave it,” he went on angrily. “I will not submit to be penned in
between four men there, and four men there. I wish to pass, and I mean to pass,
those four in front.”

 

  They were all standing still; himself
included.

 

  “If eight men, or four men, or two men,
set upon one,” he proceeded, growing more enraged, “the one has no chance but
to set his mark upon some of them. And, by the Lord, I'll do it, if I am
interrupted any farther!”

 

  Shouldering his heavy stick, and
quickening his pace, he shot on to pass the four ahead. The largest and
strongest man of the number changed swiftly to the side on which he came up,
and dexterously closed with him and went down with him; but not before the
heavy stick had descended smartly.

 

  “Let him be!” said this man in a
suppressed voice, as they struggled together on the grass. “Fair play! His is
the build of a girl to mine, and he's got a weight strapped to his back
besides. Let him alone. I'll manage him.”

 

  After a little rolling about, in a close
scuffle which caused the faces of both to be besmeared with blood, the man took
his knee from Neville's chest, and rose, saying: “There! Now take him
armin-arm, any two of you!”

 

  It was immediately done.

 

  “As to our being a pack of thieves, Mr.
Landless,” said the man, as he spat out some blood, and wiped more from his
face; “you know better than that at midday. We wouldn't have touched you if you
hadn't forced us. We're going to take you round to the high road, anyhow, and
you'll find help enough against thieves there, if you want it. —Wipe his face,
somebody; see how it's a-trickling down him!”

 

  When his face was cleansed, Neville
recognised in the speaker, Joe, driver of the Cloisterham omnibus, whom he had
seen but once, and that on the day of his arrival.

 

  “And what I recommend you for the
present, is, don't talk, Mr. Landless. You'll find a friend waiting for you, at
the high road—gone ahead by the other way when we split into two parties—and
you had much better say nothing till you come up with him. Bring that stick
along, somebody else, and let's be moving!”

 

  Utterly bewildered, Neville stared
around him and said not a word. Walking between his two conductors, who held
his arms in theirs, he went on, as in a dream, until they came again into the
high road, and into the midst of a little group of people. The men who had
turned back were among the group; and its central figures were Mr. Jasper and
Mr. Crisparkle. Neville's conductors took him up to the Minor Canon, and there
released him, as an act of deference to that gentleman.

 

  “What is all this, sir? What is the
matter? I feel as if I had lost my senses!” cried Neville, the group closing in
around him.

 

  “Where is my nephew?” asked Mr. Jasper,
wildly.

 

  “Where is your nephew?” repeated
Neville, “Why do you ask me?”

 

  “I ask you,” retorted Jasper, “because
you were the last person in his company, and he is not to be found.”

 

  “Not to be found!” cried Neville,
aghast.

 

  “Stay, stay,” said Mr. Crisparkle.
“Permit me, Jasper. Mr. Neville, you are confounded; collect your thoughts; it
is of great importance that you should collect your thoughts; attend to me.”

 

  “I will try, sir, but I seem mad.”

 

  “You left Mr. Jasper last night with
Edwin Drood?”

 

  “Yes.”

 

  “At what hour?”

 

  “Was it at twelve o'clock?” asked
Neville, with his hand to his confused head, and appealing to Jasper.

 

  “Quite right,” said Mr. Crisparkle; “the
hour Mr. Jasper has already named to me. You went down to the river together?”

 

  “Undoubtedly. To see the action of the
wind there.”

 

  “What followed? How long did you stay
there?”

 

  “About ten minutes; I should say not
more. We then walked together to your house, and he took leave of me at the
door.”

 

  “Did he say that he was going down to
the river again?”

 

  “No. He said that he was going straight
back.”

 

  The bystanders looked at one another,
and at Mr. Crisparkle. To whom Mr. Jasper, who had been intensely watching
Neville, said, in a low, distinct, suspicious voice: “What are those stains
upon his dress?”

 

  All eyes were turned towards the blood
upon his clothes.

 

  “And here are the same stains upon this
stick!” said Jasper, taking it from the hand of the man who held it. “I know
the stick to be his, and he carried it last night. What does this mean?”

 

  “In the name of God, say what it means,
Neville!” urged Mr. Crisparkle.

 

  “That man and I,” said Neville, pointing
out his late adversary, “had a struggle for the stick just now, and you may see
the same marks on him, sir. What was I to suppose, when I found myself molested
by eight people? Could I dream of the true reason when they would give me none
at all?”

 

  They admitted that they had thought it
discreet to be silent, and that the struggle had taken place. And yet the very
men who had seen it looked darkly at the smears which the bright cold air had
already dried.

 

  “We must return, Neville,” said Mr.
Crisparkle; “of course you will be glad to come back to clear yourself?”

 

  “Of course, sir.”

 

  “Mr. Landless will walk at my side,” the
Minor Canon continued, looking around him. “Come, Neville!”

 

  They set forth on the walk back; and the
others, with one exception, straggled after them at various distances. Jasper
walked on the other side of Neville, and never quitted that position. He was
silent, while Mr. Crisparkle more than once repeated his former questions, and
while Neville repeated his former answers; also, while they both hazarded some
explanatory conjectures. He was obstinately silent, because Mr. Crisparkle's manner
directly appealed to him to take some part in the discussion, and no appeal
would move his fixed face. When they drew near to the city, and it was
suggested by the Minor Canon that they might do well in calling on the Mayor at
once, he assented with a stern nod; but he spake no word until they stood in
Mr. Sapsea's parlour.

 

  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.