Tales from Dickens Part 45

He was the more certain of this when Jasper came to him, bringing Neville's hat, and told him his own story of the meeting. Jasper told him falsely that Neville had made a murderous attack on Drood, and but for him would have laid his nephew dead at his feet. He warned the minister that Neville had a tigerish nature and would yet be guilty of terrible crime. Mr. Crisparkle liked Neville, and all this saddened him, for he had not the least suspicion that Jasper was lying for a cruel purpose of his own.

The affair was an unhappy one for Neville. Jasper took care that the story spread abroad, and as it went it grew, so that almost everybody in Cloisterham came to consider Helena's brother a sullen fellow of a furious temper. And they believed it the more because Neville made no secret of the fact that he had fallen in love, too, with Rosebud, and in this they thought they saw a reason for his hating Edwin Drood.

Mr. Crisparkle was a faithful friend. He concluded soon that the fault was not all on Neville's side. But he was anxious to have the two young men friends, and he begged his pupil for his own part to lay aside the ill feeling. He went to the choir master also on the same errand, and Jasper a.s.sured him that his nephew would do the same. He even promised, hypocritically, that to bring this about he would invite both Edwin Drood and Neville to dine with him on Christmas Eve, in his own rooms, where they might meet and shake hands.

Both young men promised to come to the dinner, and Mr. Crisparkle was highly pleased, little dreaming what the outcome would be.

III

THE CHOIR MASTER'S DINNER

There was a quaint character in Cloisterham named Durdles. He was a stone-mason whose specialty was the chiseling of tombstones. He was an old bachelor and was both a very skilful workman and a very great sot.

He had keys to all the cathedral vaults and was fond of prowling about the old pile and its dismal crypt, for ever tap-tapping, with a little hammer he carried, on its stones and walls, hunting for forgotten cavities, in which, perhaps, centuries before, persons had been buried.

He wore a coa.r.s.e flannel suit with horn b.u.t.tons and a yellow handkerchief with draggled ends, and it was a daily sight to see him perched on a tombstone eating his dinner out of a bundle. When he was not feeling well he used to say he had a touch of "tomb-atism," instead of rheumatism.

Durdles was drunk so much that he was never certain about getting home at night, so he had hired, at a penny a day, a hideous small boy, known as "The Deputy" to throw stones at him whenever he found him out of doors after ten o'clock, and drive him home to his little hole of an unfurnished stone house.

The Deputy used to watch for Durdles after this hour, and when he saw him he would dance up and sing:

"Widdy, widdy, wen!

I ketches--him--out--arter ten!

Widdy, widdy wy!

When he--don't--go--then--I shy!

Widdy, widdy, Wake-c.o.c.k-Warning!"

It was a part of the bargain that he must give this warning before he began to throw the stones, and when Durdles heard this yell he knew what was coming.

Before the Christmas Eve dinner Jasper picked a friends.h.i.+p with Durdles, and, pretending he wanted to make a trip by moonlight with him among the vaults, he persuaded him one night to be his guide. While they were in the crypt of the cathedral Jasper plied him with liquor which he had brought, to such purpose that Durdles went fast asleep and the key of the crypt fell from his hand. He had a dim idea that Jasper picked up the key and went away with it, and was a long time gone, but when he awoke he could not tell whether this had really happened or not. And this, when The Deputy stoned him home that night, was all he could remember of the expedition.

But what Jasper had really done while Durdles was asleep--whether he had taken away the key to make a copy of it so as to make one like it for some evil purpose of his own, or whether he wanted to be able to unlock that dark underground place and hide something in it sometime when no one would be with him--this only Jasper himself knew!

The Christmas season arrived, and Edwin Drood, according to his promise, came to Cloisterham to his uncle's dinner, at which he was to meet Neville.

Before leaving, however, he called upon Mr. Grewgious, Rosebud's guardian, who had sent for him with a particular purpose. This purpose was to give into his hands a ring set with diamonds and rubies that had belonged to Rosebud's mother. It had been left in trust to Mr.

Grewgious to give to the man who married her, that he might himself put it on her finger. And in accordance with the trust, the lawyer charged Drood if anything should be amiss or if anything happened between him and Rosebud, to bring back the ring.

Mr. Grewgious gave him this keepsake with such wise and friendly advice on the seriousness of marriage that all the way to Cloisterham with the ring in his pocket, Edwin Drood was very thoughtful. He asked himself whether he really loved Rosebud as a man should love his wife, whether he had not drifted into this betrothal rather as a result of their parents' wish and wills than from any deeper feeling. And he began to wonder if by marrying her thus he would not be doing her a vast injustice. He decided, therefore, to tell her all that was in his mind and be guided by her judgment.

Rosebud, meanwhile, in the silence of the Christmas vacation, with only Helena for her companion, had been thinking of the same matter, and her wise little head had reached almost the same conclusion. When Drood came they walked out together under the trees by the cathedral. Their talk was not so difficult after all as each had feared it would be, and both felt relieved when they decided they could be far happier to remain as brother and sister, and not become husband and wife. So they agreed without pain on either side.

Drood's only anxiety was for his uncle. He thought Jasper had looked forward to his marriage to Rosebud so long that he would be pained and disappointed to learn it was not to be. So he concluded he would not tell him as yet. Poor Rosebud! She was greatly agitated. She felt the falseness of Jasper, and knew that he loved her himself, but she realized the impossibility of telling this to the nephew who believed in him. So she was silent. Drood, for his part, since the betrothal was ended, said nothing to her of the ring Grewgious had given to him, intending to return it to the lawyer.

They kissed each other when they parted. The wicked choir master, who happened to be walking near, saw the embrace and thought it the kiss of lovers soon to be wed. Drood left Rosebud then, to pa.s.s the time till the hour of the dinner in Jasper's rooms.

Neville that day had determined, the dinner over, to start at dawn next morning on a walking tour, to be absent a fortnight. He bought a knapsack and a heavy steel-shod stick in preparation for this expedition, and bade his sister Helena and Mr. Crisparkle good-by before he went to the appointed meeting at the choir master's.

Jasper himself, it was noticed, had never seemed in better spirits than on that day, nor had he ever sung more sweetly than in the afternoon service before the dinner which he gave to the two young men. If he was contemplating a terrible crime, no one would have guessed it from his serene face and his agreeable manner.

Edwin Drood had one warning just before he went up the postern stair that led to his Uncle Jasper's. The old hag who mixed the opium in the London garret where the choir master smoked the drug, had more than once tried to find out who her strange, gentlemanly visitor was. She had listened to his mutterings in his drunken slumber, and at length that day had followed him from London to Cloisterham, only to lose track of him there. As Drood strolled, waiting for the dinner hour to strike from the cathedral chimes, he pa.s.sed her and she begged money from him.

He gave it to her and she asked him his name and whether he had a sweetheart. He answered Edwin, and that he had none. "Be thankful your name's not Ned," she said, "for it's a bad name and a threatened name!"

"Ned" was the name Jasper always called him by, but Drood did not think seriously of the old woman's words. He could not have guessed that the threats she spoke of against the Ned who had a sweetheart had been murmured in his drugged slumber by his own uncle against himself. And yet something at just that moment made him shudder.

So the chimes struck, and Edwin Drood went on to Jasper's rooms to meet his uncle and Neville Landless--went to his doom! For from that time no one who loved him ever saw him again in this world!

IV

JASPER SHOWS HIS TEETH

That night a fearful tempest howled over Cloisterham. In the morning early, as the storm was breaking, Jasper, the choir master, came pale, panting and half-dressed, to Mr. Crisparkle's, asking for Edwin Drood.

He said his nephew had left his rooms the evening before with Neville Landless to go to the river to look at the storm, and had not returned.

Strange rumors sprang up at once. Neville had left for his walking tour and an ugly suspicion flew from house to house. He had got only a few miles from the town when he was overtaken by a party of men, who surrounded him. Thinking at first that they were thieves, he fought them, but was soon rendered helpless and bleeding, and in the midst of them was taken back toward Cloisterham. Mr. Crisparkle and Jasper met them on the way, and from the former Neville first learned of what he was suspected.

The blood from his encounter with his captors was on his clothes and stick. Jasper pointed it out, and even those who had seen it fall there looked darkly at the stains. He was taken back to the town and to Mr.

Crisparkle's house, who promised that he should remain in his own custody.

Neville's story was simple. He said they had gone to the river, as Jasper had said, and returned together, he to Mr. Crisparkle's, Edwin Drood to his uncle's. He had not seen the other since that time.

The river was dragged and its banks searched, but to no purpose, till Mr. Crisparkle himself found Drood's watch caught among some timbers in a weir.

But as the body could not be found, it could not be definitely proven that Drood was dead, or that any murder had been committed, so at last Neville was released. The whole neighborhood, however, believed him guilty of the murder. No one spoke to him and he was obliged to quit the place.

Beside his sister Helena and Rosebud, who, of course, believed in his innocence, he had but one friend there--Mr. Crisparkle. The latter stoutly refused to believe him guilty. When Neville left for London, through Mr. Grewgious, Rosebud's guardian, the minister found him a cheap lodging and made frequent trips to the city to help and advise him in his studies.

Mr. Grewgious had his own opinion of the affair. One day he went to Cloisterham to see Jasper, and there told him a thing the other did not yet know--that before that last night Edwin Drood and Rosebud had agreed not to marry. When he heard this the choir master's face turned the color of lead. He shrieked and fell senseless at the lawyer's feet.

Mr. Grewgious went back to the city more thoughtful than ever, and it was not long before a detective came from London to Cloisterham and began to interest himself in all the doings of John Jasper.

The detective, to be sure, was not known as such. He called himself "d.i.c.k Datchery" and gave it out that he was an idle dog who lived on his money and had nothing to do. He was a curious-looking man, with a great shock of white hair, black eyebrows and a military air. He rented lodgings next door to the choir master, and before long had made friends with Durdles, the tombstone maker, and even with The Deputy of the "wake-c.o.c.k warning."

Meanwhile Jasper, haggard and red-eyed, took again his place in the cathedral choir, while Neville Landless worked sadly and alone in his London garret. The latter made but one friend in this time--a lodger whose window adjoined his own. This lodger was Lieutenant Tartar, a retired young naval officer. Tartar might have lived in fine apartments, for he was rich, but he had been so long on s.h.i.+pboard that he felt more at home where the walls were low enough for him to knock his head on the ceiling. He used to climb across to Neville's room by the window ledges, and they became friendly--the warmer friends when Mr. Crisparkle discovered in the lieutenant a schoolmate who had once saved his life.

Later, too, Helena left Miss Twinkleton's Seminary and came to be with her brother. And so a year went by.

Vacation arrived, and one day when Rosebud was alone at Nun's House, Jasper, for the first time since Edwin Drood's disappearance, came to see her.

He found her in the garden, and she felt again the repulsion and fear she had always felt at sight of him. This time the choir master threw away all concealment. He told her that he had always loved her hopelessly and madly, though while she was betrothed to his nephew he had hidden the fact. She answered indignantly that, by look if not by word, he had always been false to Edwin Drood; that he had made her life unhappy by his pursuit of her, and that, though she had shrunk from opening his nephew's eyes, she had always known he was a wicked man.

Then, maddened by her dislike, Jasper swore that no one else should ever marry her--that he would pursue her to the death, and that if she repulsed him he would bring dreadful ruin upon Neville Landless. He said this, no doubt, knowing that Neville loved Rosebud, and thinking, perhaps, that she loved him in return.

When Jasper left her, Rosebud was faint from fear of his wicked eyes.

She made up her mind to go at once for protection to Mr. Grewgious in London, and, leaving a note for Miss Twinkleton, she left by the next omnibus.

She told her guardian her story, he told it to Mr. Crisparkle, who came to London next morning, and between them they told Lieutenant Tartar.

While Rosebud visited with Helena the three men took counsel together, agreeing that Jasper was a villain and planning how best to deal with him.