CHAPTER XV.
IMPEACHED.
Neville Landless had started so early and walked at so good a pace, that when the church bells began to ring in Cloisterham for morning service, he was eight miles away. As he wanted his breakfast by that time, having set forth on a crust of bread, he stopped at the next roadside tavern to refresh.
Visitors in want of breakfast—unless they were horses or cattle,
for which class of guests there was preparation enough in the way
of water-trough and hay—were so unusual at the sign of The
Tilted Wagon, that it took a long time to get the wagon into the
track of tea and toast and bacon. Neville, in the interval, sitting
in a sanded parlor, wondering in how long a time after he had
gone, the sneezy fire of damp fagots would begin to make somebody else warm.
Indeed, The Tilted Wagon, as a cool establishment on the top of
a hill, where the ground before the door was puddled with damp
hoofs and trodden straw; where a scolding landlady slapped a
moist baby (with one red sock on and one wanting), in the bar;
where the cheese was cast aground upon a shelf, in company with
a mouldy tablecloth and a green-handled knife, in a sort of cast-iron canoe; where the pale-faced bread shed tears of crumb over
its shipwreck in another canoe; where the family linen, half
washed and half dried, led a public life of lying about; where
everything to drink was drunk out of mugs, and everything else
was suggestive of a rhyme to mugs; The Tilted Wagon, all these
things considered, hardly kept its painted promise of providing
good entertainment for Man and Beast. However, Man, in the
present case, was not critical, but took what entertainment he
could get, and went on again after a longer rest than he needed.
He stopped at some quarter of a mile from the house, hesitating
whether to pursue the road, or to follow a cart-track between two
high hedgerows, which led across the slope of a breezy heath, and
evidently struck into the road again by-and-bye. He decided
in favor of this latter track, and pursued it with some toil; the rise
being steep, and the way worn into deep ruts.
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
(half a 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 further!”
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
arm-in-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 recognized 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’s 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 parlor.
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 safety 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-boot, 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?” enquired 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 recognizing 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.
MR. GREWGIOUS HAS HIS SUSPICIONS.
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.
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