“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 tomorrow?” 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, forever 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.
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
