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 parlour,

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-by. He decided in favour 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

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 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 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.”

[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.