36 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[December 1, 1887. 



Jasper asks, Neville's name not having yet been mentioned. 

 " ]V7iose t " asks Grewgious, curtl}' and turning his eyes with 

 exasperating coolness on Jasper's face. " The suspected 

 young man's," Jasper replies. " Do you suspect him t " 

 Grewgious asks. 



But even this is little. Grewgious has come to tell Jasper 

 that which, if Jasper were innocent, would only interest 

 him, and would certainly not be particularly distressing in 

 the midst of the intense anguish and suspense Jasper is 

 supposed to be enduring — viz. that Edwin Drood and Rosa 

 were no louger betrothed when Drood disappeared. Only if 

 Jasper had murdered, or supposed he had murdered, Drood, 

 because of a furious hatred of his nephew as betrothed to 

 Rosa, would the information have any special siguificance at 

 all. But if that were so, it would indeed be a terrible blow 

 to Jasper. It would not only show him that he had plotted, 

 and so far as he knew carried out his murderous scheme, 

 against a man of whom he had no reason to be jealous, but 

 that actually his murder had helped to remove an obstacle 

 from the path of a more dangerous rival. 



Now, if we merely note that Jasper receives Mr. 

 Grewgious's news with horror, we find nothing particularly 

 significant in this scene. But there is much more in it. 

 Grewgious kiioios that his news will be received with 

 horror. He warns Jasper of this, and even offers to put 

 off the communication till the morrow, possibly because he 

 feels a pity for the weary wretch before him, vUlain though 

 he knows Jasper to be. But as Jasper concentrates his 

 attention to listen, Grewgious resumes his determination, 

 " with compressed and determined mouth, now," he looks at 

 the fire, as with provoking slowness and " internalness " he 

 opens the statement. As he reaches the part w-hich will 

 move Jasper, Grewgious " looks fixedly at him sideways." 

 Jasper's face grows ghastly before him ; but he has no com- 

 punction. Sentence by sentence he strikes the wretch, till 

 at last he " 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." If Grewgious did not know him for the murderous 

 wretch he was, his treatment of Jasper here, and after- 

 wards, is sheer brutality ; yet Grewgious is a kindly man 

 and a gentle. It is absolutely certain, then, from this scene 

 alone, that Grewgious knows what Crisparkle, Neville, and 

 the rest do not know, or even suspect, that Jasper himself 

 has striven to murder, and in intent has murdered, Di'Ood. 



From whence can Grewgious have learned this? He 

 might have learned some few facts from Rosa which would 

 suggest suspicion — as that Jasper was jealous of Drood, that 

 she herself had an indefinable and inexplicable dread of her 

 music teacher, nay, that she had striven to warn Drood 

 against Jasper. But even if we were not clearly told in 

 Chapter XX., six months after the disappearance, that 

 Ro.sa was ashamed of her own suspicions (mistakenly 

 judging of Jasper's conduct by such rules as might apply 

 to average men, but not to " a horrible wonder apart," 

 like him), we should be sure that nothing which so delicate 

 and sensitive a mind as hers could have communicated to 

 Grewgious would have sufficed to convince him that Jasper 

 was Drood's murderer. The knowledge of which Grewgious 

 made such terrible use might, of course, have come from 

 Rosa; it would, indeed, have very naturally been imparted 

 to him by her : but his knowledge that it would torture 

 Jasper, his certainty that Jasper deserved to be so tortured, 

 his manifest conviction that Jasp?r was a murderous villain 

 deserving no mercy, these could not possibly have been de- 

 rived from anything Rosa had said to him. We might 

 interpret part of Grewgious's conduct, indeed, by supposing 

 that while he had learned from Rosa about the breaking off 

 of the engagement, he had also discovered that Drood had 



been murdered, and murdered by Jasper. This, of course, 

 might easily have happened. Durdles, with that curious 

 gift of his, by which he could tell when there was anything 

 inside a tomb (a gift enabling him, in one specified case [see 

 Chapter V.], to find how one of his workmen had left some 

 rubbish in a six-foot space inside a tomb), might well be 

 supposed to have discovered Drood's body, and the quick- 

 lime cast over it by Jasper, on the very night of the murder 

 (assumed, on this view, to have been accomplished), and he 

 might have brought to Grewgious convincing evidence that 

 Drood was killed, and that Jasper had done the deed. This 

 would account for everything we have thus far men- 

 tioned. But this explanation must, for another reason, bo 

 absolutely rejected : it will not hold water for an instant. 

 If Grewgious (to say nothing of Durdles) knew that Drood 

 was dead, even without knowing further that Jasper had 

 killed him, he would assuredly not have let the matter rest 

 here. He is a man singularly obedient to the dictates of 

 duty ; and he would know that duty imperatively required 

 him, in the case supposed, to make known such facts as 

 this explanation assumes him to have learned. It would 

 have been utterly inexcusable, nay, it would have made him 

 an accessory after the fact, and have been justly punishable 

 as a crime if he had not brought his knowledge at once 

 to light, while the evidence which had satisfied him still 

 remained available for the purposes of justice. We may 

 set the idea utterly on one side that Grewgious knew Drood 

 to have been actually murdered by Jasper. 



Since it is certain that Grewgious, during this remarkable 

 interview, knows Jasper to be a murderous villain, while it 

 is equally certain that he knows Jasper is not actually a 

 murderer, nothing remains but that we should conclude 

 that Grewgious knows Drood to be alive while he also 

 knows him to have been murderously assaulted by Jasper, 

 nay, flung into the tomb, after the jewellery so well known 

 to Jasper had been removed. Grewgious would know also 

 that Jasper supposed he had heaped quicklime over Drood's 

 dead body, so that all trace of that body and of its clothing 

 might in a few hours be destroyed. For we know this to 

 have been part of Jasper's plot ; and manifestly Grewgious 

 knows everything Jasper had plotted. 



While thus, and thus onl;/, can Grewgious's conduct be 

 explained — his torturing Jasper without compunction, on 

 the one hand, and his not striving to bring him to justice 

 on the other — we find here the explanation of a little detail 

 which no one seems to have specially noticed, though it is 

 singularly significant — in fact, absolutely decisive. 



Just before Drood vanished, Grewgious had entrusted to 

 him a ring which was the sole memento Grewgious had of 

 Ro.sa's mother. He had loved her, and loves Rosa because 

 she reminds him of her so strongly. He could hardly bear 

 to part with the ring, even to Rosa. " It was hard," he 

 says, " to lose the ring, and yet it must have gone from me 

 very soon." For it was to be given to Rosa on her 

 betrothal. But he charges Edwin solemnly, " by the 

 living and by the dead," to restore the ring to him if 

 Edwin's engagement to Rosa is cancelled. " Will it come 

 back to me 1 " he asks lumself .sadly, when Edwin has 

 taken it away. " My mind hangs about her ring very 

 uneasily. But that is explainable. / hare had it so long, 

 and I have prized it so much/" (All this means, for all 

 who understand Dickens, that the ring is presently to be in 

 danger of disappearing.) 



That ring was not given to Rosa. " Let the sorrowful 

 jewels be," Drood said to himself. He would i-estore them to 

 Rosa's guardian " when he came down ; he in his turn would 

 restore them to the cabinet from which he had unwillingly 

 taken them." " Let them be ; let them lie unspoken of in 

 his breast. . . . Among the niighti/ store of wo7ider/ul chains 

 that are for ever forging, day and night, in the vast iron- 



