The Mystery of Edwin Drood (27 page)

 

  “Why did I come here!” was his second.

 

  Then, he stood intently listening to the
water. A familiar passage in his reading, about airy tongues that syllable
men's names, rose so unbidden to his ear, that he put it from him with his
hand, as if it were tangible.

 

  It was starlight. The Weir was full two
miles above the spot to which the young men had repaired to watch the storm. No
search had been made up here, for the tide had been running strongly down, at
that time of the night of Christmas Eve, and the likeliest places for the
discovery of a body, if a fatal accident had happened under such circumstances,
all lay—both when the tide ebbed, and when it flowed again—between that spot
and the sea. The water came over the Weir, with its usual sound on a cold
starlight night, and little could be seen of it; yet Mr. Crisparkle had a
strange idea that something unusual hung about the place.

 

  He reasoned with himself: What was it?
Where was it? Put it to the proof. Which sense did it address?

 

  No sense reported anything unusual
there. He listened again, and his sense of hearing again checked the water
coming over the Weir, with its usual sound on a cold starlight night.

 

  Knowing very well that the mystery with
which his mind was occupied, might of itself give the place this haunted air,
he strained those hawk's eyes of his for the correction of his sight. He got
closer to the Weir, and peered at its well-known posts and timbers. Nothing in
the least unusual was remotely shadowed forth. But he resolved that he would
come back early in the morning.

 

  The Weir ran through his broken sleep,
all night, and he was back again at sunrise. It was a bright frosty morning.
The whole composition before him, when he stood where he had stood last night,
was clearly discernible in its minutest details. He had surveyed it closely for
some minutes, and was about to withdraw his eyes, when they were attracted
keenly to one spot.

 

  He turned his back upon the Weir, and
looked far away at the sky, and at the earth, and then looked again at that one
spot. It caught his sight again immediately, and he concentrated his vision
upon it. He could not lose it now, though it was but such a speck in the
landscape. It fascinated his sight. His hands began plucking off his coat. For
it struck him that at that spot—a corner of the Weir—something glistened, which
did not move and come over with the glistening water-drops, but remained
stationary.

 

  He assured himself of this, he threw off
his clothes, he plunged into the icy water, and swam for the spot. Climbing the
timbers, he took from them, caught among their interstices by its chain, a gold
watch, bearing engraved upon its back E. D.

 

  He brought the watch to the bank, swam
to the Weir again, climbed it, and dived off. He knew every hole and corner of
all the depths, and dived and dived and dived, until he could bear the cold no
more. His notion was, that he would find the body; he only found a shirt-pin
sticking in some mud and ooze.

 

  With these discoveries he returned to
Cloisterham, and, taking Neville Landless with him, went straight to the Mayor.
Mr. Jasper was sent for, the watch and shirt-pin were identified, Neville was
detained, and the wildest frenzy and fatuity of evil report rose against him.
He was of that vindictive and violent nature, that but for his poor sister, who
alone had influence over him, and out of whose sight he was never to be trusted,
he would be in the daily commission of murder. Before coming to England he had
caused to be whipped to death sundry “Natives”—nomadic persons, encamping now
in Asia, now in Africa, now in the West Indies, and now at the North
Pole—vaguely supposed in Cloisterham to be always black, always of great
virtue, always calling themselves Me, and everybody else Massa or Missie
(according to sex), and always reading tracts of the obscurest meaning, in
broken English, but always accurately understanding them in the purest mother
tongue. He had nearly brought Mrs. Crisparkle's grey hairs with sorrow to the
grave. (Those original expressions were Mr. Sapsea's.) He had repeatedly said
he would have Mr. Crisparkle's life. He had repeatedly said he would have
everybody's life, and become in effect the last man. He had been brought down
to Cloisterham, from London, by an eminent Philanthropist, and why? Because
that Philanthropist had expressly declared: “I owe it to my fellow-creatures
that he should be, in the words of BENTHAM, where he is the cause of the
greatest danger to the smallest number.”

 

  These dropping shots from the
blunderbusses of blunderheadedness might not have hit him in a vital place. But
he had to stand against a trained and well-directed fire of arms of precision
too. He had notoriously threatened the lost young man, and had, according to
the showing of his own faithful friend and tutor who strove so hard for him, a
cause of bitter animosity (created by himself, and stated by himself), against
that ill-starred fellow. He had armed himself with an offensive weapon for the
fatal night, and he had gone off early in the morning, after making
preparations for departure. He had been found with traces of blood on him;
truly, they might have been wholly caused as he represented, but they might
not, also. On a search-warrant being issued for the examination of his room,
clothes, and so forth, it was discovered that he had destroyed all his papers,
and rearranged all his possessions, on the very afternoon of the disappearance.
The watch found at the Weir was challenged by the jeweller as one he had wound
and set for Edwin Drood, at twenty minutes past two on that same afternoon; and
it had run down, before being cast into the water; and it was the jeweller's
positive opinion that it had never been re-wound. This would justify the
hypothesis that the watch was taken from him not long after he left Mr.
Jasper's house at midnight, in company with the last person seen with him, and
that it had been thrown away after being retained some hours. Why thrown away?
If he had been murdered, and so artfully disfigured, or concealed, or both, as
that the murderer hoped identification to be impossible, except from something
that he wore, assuredly the murderer would seek to remove from the body the
most lasting, the best known, and the most easily recognisable, things upon it.
Those things would be the watch and shirt-pin. As to his opportunities of
casting them into the river; if he were the object of these suspicions, they
were easy. For, he had been seen by many persons, wandering about on that side
of the city—indeed on all sides of it—in a miserable and seemingly
half-distracted manner. As to the choice of the spot, obviously such criminating
evidence had better take its chance of being found anywhere, rather than upon
himself, or in his possession. Concerning the reconciliatory nature of the
appointed meeting between the two young men, very little could be made of that
in young Landless's favour; for it distinctly appeared that the meeting
originated, not with him, but with Mr. Crisparkle, and that it had been urged
on by Mr. Crisparkle; and who could say how unwillingly, or in what
illconditioned mood, his enforced pupil had gone to it? The more his case was
looked into, the weaker it became in every point. Even the broad suggestion
that the lost young man had absconded, was rendered additionally improbable on
the showing of the young lady from whom he had so lately parted; for; what did
she say, with great earnestness and sorrow, when interrogated? That he had,
expressly and enthusiastically, planned with her, that he would await the
arrival of her guardian, Mr. Grewgious. And yet, be it observed, he disappeared
before that gentleman appeared.

 

  On the suspicions thus urged and supported,
Neville was detained, and re-detained, and the search was pressed on every
hand, and Jasper laboured night and day. But nothing more was found. No
discovery being made, which proved the lost man to be dead, it at length became
necessary to release the person suspected of having made away with him. Neville
was set at large. Then, a consequence ensued which Mr. Crisparkle had too well
foreseen. Neville must leave the place, for the place shunned him and cast him
out. Even had it not been so, the dear old china shepherdess would have worried
herself to death with fears for her son, and with general trepidation
occasioned by their having such an inmate. Even had that not been so, the
authority to which the Minor Canon deferred officially, would have settled the
point.

 

  “Mr. Crisparkle,” quoth the Dean, “human
justice may err, but it must act according to its lights. The days of taking
sanctuary are past. This young man must not take sanctuary with us.”

 

  “You mean that he must leave my house,
sir?”

 

  “Mr. Crisparkle,” returned the prudent
Dean, “I claim no authority in your house. I merely confer with you, on the
painful necessity you find yourself under, of depriving this young man of the
great advantages of your counsel and instruction.”

 

  “It is very lamentable, sir,” Mr.
Crisparkle represented.

 

  “Very much so,” the Dean assented.

 

  “And if it be a necessity—” Mr.
Crisparkle faltered.

 

  “As you unfortunately find it to be,”
returned the Dean.

 

  Mr. Crisparkle bowed submissively: “It
is hard to prejudge his case, sir, but I am sensible that—”

 

  “Just so. Perfectly. As you say, Mr.
Crisparkle,” interposed the Dean, nodding his head smoothly, “there is nothing
else to be done. No doubt, no doubt. There is no alternative, as your good
sense has discovered.”

 

  “I am entirely satisfied of his perfect
innocence, sir, nevertheless.”

 

  “We-e-ell!” said the Dean, in a more
confidential tone, and slightly glancing around him, “I would not say so,
generally. Not generally. Enough of suspicion attaches to him to—no, I think I
would not say so, generally.”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle bowed again.

 

  “It does not become us, perhaps,”
pursued the Dean, “to be partisans. Not partisans. We clergy keep our hearts
warm and our heads cool, and we hold a judicious middle course.”

 

  “I hope you do not object, sir, to my
having stated in public, emphatically, that he will reappear here, whenever any
new suspicion may be awakened, or any new circumstance may come to light in
this extraordinary matter?”

 

  “Not at all,” returned the Dean. “And
yet, do you know, I don't think,” with a very nice and neat emphasis on those
two words: “I DON'T THINK I would state it emphatically. State it? Ye-e-es! But
emphatically? No-o-o. I THINK not. In point of fact, Mr. Crisparkle, keeping
our hearts warm and our heads cool, we clergy need do nothing emphatically.”

 

  So Minor Canon Row knew Neville Landless
no more; and he went whithersoever he would, or could, with a blight upon his
name and fame.

 

  It was not until then that John Jasper
silently resumed his place in the choir. Haggard and red-eyed, his hopes
plainly had deserted him, his sanguine mood was gone, and all his worst
misgivings had come back. A day or two afterwards, while unrobing, he took his
Diary from a pocket of his coat, turned the leaves, and with an impressive
look, and without one spoken word, handed this entry to Mr. Crisparkle to read:

 

  “My dear boy is murdered. The discovery
of the watch and shirt-pin convinces me that he was murdered that night, and
that his jewellery was taken from him to prevent identification by its means.
All the delusive hopes I had founded on his separation from his betrothed wife,
I give to the winds. They perish before this fatal discovery. I now swear, and
record the oath on this page, That I nevermore will discuss this mystery with
any human creature until I hold the clue to it in my hand. That I never will
relax in my secrecy or in my search. That I will fasten the crime of the murder
of my dear dead boy upon the murderer. And, That I devote myself to his
destruction.”

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER XVII—PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL AND
UNPROFESSIONAL

 

   

 

  FULL half a year had come and gone, and
Mr. Crisparkle sat in a waiting-room in the London chief offices of the Haven
of Philanthropy, until he could have audience of Mr. Honeythunder.

 

  In his college days of athletic exercises,
Mr. Crisparkle had known professors of the Noble Art of fisticuffs, and had
attended two or three of their gloved gatherings. He had now an opportunity of
observing that as to the phrenological formation of the backs of their heads,
the Professing Philanthropists were uncommonly like the Pugilists. In the development
of all those organs which constitute, or attend, a propensity to “pitch into”
your fellowcreatures, the Philanthropists were remarkably favoured. There were
several Professors passing in and out, with exactly the aggressive air upon
them of being ready for a turn-up with any Novice who might happen to be on
hand, that Mr. Crisparkle well remembered in the circles of the Fancy.
Preparations were in progress for a moral little Mill somewhere on the rural
circuit, and other Professors were backing this or that Heavy-Weight as good
for such or such speech-making hits, so very much after the manner of the
sporting publicans, that the intended Resolutions might have been Rounds. In an
official manager of these displays much celebrated for his platform tactics,
Mr. Crisparkle recognised (in a suit of black) the counterpart of a deceased
benefactor of his species, an eminent public character, once known to fame as
Frostyfaced Fogo, who in days of yore superintended the formation of the magic
circle with the ropes and stakes. There were only three conditions of
resemblance wanting between these Professors and those. Firstly, the
Philanthropists were in very bad training: much too fleshy, and presenting,
both in face and figure, a superabundance of what is known to Pugilistic
Experts as Suet Pudding. Secondly, the Philanthropists had not the good temper
of the Pugilists, and used worse language. Thirdly, their fighting code stood
in great need of revision, as empowering them not only to bore their man to the
ropes, but to bore him to the confines of distraction; also to hit him when he
was down, hit him anywhere and anyhow, kick him, stamp upon him, gouge him, and
maul him behind his back without mercy. In these last particulars the
Professors of the Noble Art were much nobler than the Professors of
Philanthropy.