readenglishbook.com » Fiction » The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens [fox in socks read aloud txt] 📗

Book online «The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens [fox in socks read aloud txt] 📗». Author Charles Dickens



1 ... 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 ... 44
Go to page:
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.”

[Illustration]

Mr. Grewgious has his suspicions

“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.”

Mr. Grewgious could not but assent to this.

“And even as to me,” continued Jasper, still pursuing the new track, with ardour, and, as he did so, brightening with hope: “he knew that you were coming to me; he knew that you were intrusted to tell me what you have told me; if your doing so has awakened a new train of thought in my perplexed mind, it reasonably follows that, from the same premises, he might have foreseen the inferences that I should draw. Grant that he did foresee them; and even the cruelty to me—and who am I!—John Jasper, Music Master, vanishes!”—

Once more, Mr. Grewgious could not but assent to this.

“I have had my distrusts, and terrible distrusts they have been,” said Jasper; “but your disclosure, overpowering as it was at first—showing me that my own dear boy had had a great disappointing reservation from me, who so fondly loved him, kindles hope within me. You do not extinguish it when I state it, but admit it to be a reasonable hope. I begin to believe it possible:” here he clasped his hands: “that he may have disappeared from among us of his own accord, and that he may yet be alive and well.”

Mr. Crisparkle came in at the moment. To whom Mr. Jasper repeated:

“I begin to believe it possible that he may have disappeared of his own accord, and may yet be alive and well.”

Mr. Crisparkle taking a seat, and inquiring: “Why so?” Mr. Jasper repeated the arguments he had just set forth. If they had been less plausible than they were, the good Minor Canon’s mind would have been in a state of preparation to receive them, as exculpatory of his unfortunate pupil. But he, too, did really attach great importance to the lost young man’s having been, so immediately before his disappearance, placed in a new and embarrassing relation towards every one acquainted with his projects and affairs; and the fact seemed to him to present the question in a new light.

“I stated to Mr. Sapsea, when we waited on him,” said Jasper: as he really had done: “that there was no quarrel or difference between the two young men at their last meeting. We all know that their first meeting was unfortunately very far from amicable; but all went smoothly and quietly when they were last together at my house. My dear boy was not in his usual spirits; he was depressed—I noticed that—and I am bound henceforth to dwell upon the circumstance the more, now that I know there was a special reason for his being depressed: a reason, moreover, which may possibly have induced him to absent himself.”

“I pray to Heaven it may turn out so!” exclaimed Mr. Crisparkle.

I pray to Heaven it may turn out so!” repeated Jasper. “You know—and Mr. Grewgious should now know likewise—that I took a great prepossession against Mr. Neville Landless, arising out of his furious conduct on that first occasion. You know that I came to you, extremely apprehensive, on my dear boy’s behalf, of his mad violence. You know that I even entered in my Diary, and showed the entry to you, that I had dark forebodings against him. Mr. Grewgious ought to be possessed of the whole case. He shall not, through any suppression of mine, be informed of a part of it, and kept in ignorance of another part of it. I wish him to be good enough to understand that the communication he has made to me has hopefully influenced my mind, in spite of its having been, before this mysterious occurrence took place, profoundly impressed against young Landless.”

This fairness troubled the Minor Canon much. He felt that he was not as open in his own dealing. He charged against himself reproachfully that he had suppressed, so far, the two points of a second strong outbreak of temper against Edwin Drood on the part of Neville, and of the passion of jealousy having, to his own certain knowledge, flamed up in Neville’s breast against him. He was convinced of Neville’s innocence of any part in

1 ... 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 ... 44
Go to page:

Free e-book «The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens [fox in socks read aloud txt] 📗» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment