We do not know, but conjectures have been hazarded. Mr. Cuming Walters thinks that the opium woman’s hatred of Jasper may be due to the fact that Jasper has wronged a child of the woman’s. He also conjectures that Jasper may be the son of the opium woman. Dr. Jackson conjectures that Jasper seduces a young girl who had treated the old woman kindly, that he neglected this girl for Rosa, that the girl committed suicide, and that the old woman devoted herself to the pursuit of the betrayer. All this is mere speculation. We have really no means of judging whether the speculation is true or not. It does seem that the woman’s peculiar hatred of Jasper must have an origin and a grave cause. Miss Stoddart suggests that the opium woman was not wholly degraded, and that she is horrified by Jasper’s continually repeated threatenings while under the influence of opium; that her sympathies have been wakened for that hapless Ned who bears a threatened name, and she resolves to do her best to serve him. With an honest purpose she makes her way before Christmas to Cloisterham. She loses sight of Jasper, but actually meets Edwin Drood. The kind act of that young stranger causes her to unload her conscience, and she bids him be thankful that his name is not Ned. At her second visit in the summer she knows from Jasper’s confessions under her own roof that the long premeditated crime has actually taken place, and her object in visiting Cloisterham is to gather evidence that may serve the ends of justice. This sunken creature has a task assigned to her, and she fulfils it.
I am not sure that Dickens means to throw any redeeming light on the character of the opium woman. She has been wronged; she is seeking vengeance, and at last, she finds it. How this comes to pass Dickens meant to tell us, but he meant, no doubt, to surprise us in the telling.
My own belief is that Dickens intended to surprise his readers by telling them of some unsuspected blood relationship between his characters. Surprises of this kind are given in his novels. No reader of Oliver Twist could have guessed from the first part Oliver’s relationship to Monks and the Maylies. Who would have supposed from the first half of Nicholas Nickleby that Smike was the son of Ralph?
‘That, boy,’ repeated Ralph, looking vacantly at him.
‘Whom I saw stretched dead and cold upon his bed, and who is now in his grave—’
‘Who is now in his grave,’ echoed Ralph, like one who talks in his sleep.
The man raised his eyes, and clasped his hands solemnly together:
‘—Was your only son, so help me God in heaven!’
In the midst of a dead silence Ralph sat down, pressing his two hands upon his temples. He removed them after a minute, and never was there seen, part of a living man undisfigured by any wound, such a ghastly face as he then disclosed.
Again, who would have supposed from the early part of Great Expectations that Estella was the daughter of Abel Magwitch? [196]
In Barnaby Rudge, Maypole Hugh turns out to be an illegitimate son of Sir John Chester. In The Old Curiosity Shop, ‘The Stranger’ is found to be the brother of the Grandfather. In Bleak House, Esther Summerson is revealed as a daughter of Lady Dedlock. In Our Mutual Friend, John Rokesmith turns out to be John Harmon.
That the action of opium had a part to play in the revelation can hardly be doubted. The whole book is drenched in opium. In The Moonstone the problem is who stole the jewels. It is solved by opium. The jewels are stolen by a man under the influence of opium surreptitiously administered. He is quite unconscious of what he has done, and remains unconscious. Afterwards he is discovered by a fresh administration of opium. When the opium has completely done its work the man repeats his deed, and the experiment is conclusive.
I do not think that any one reading right on would name the perpetrator of the theft, and yet when we take a backward glance we find an account of a dinner-party about the seventieth page which gives the clue. I doubt whether any one on first reading it would see in it anything that mattered, and yet it contains everything that matters. The height of art in work like this is to conceal art. You may be able at an early stage to introduce facts which contain the ultimate solution of your problem, and yet appear important enough to be stated for their own sake. The solution of the problem, or rather the materials of the solution, should be given, and yet the reader should be unable to detect the full significance of the preliminary statement till the complete clearing arrives. At the same time the book will not be satisfactory if details are superfluous, if they do nothing to carry one on to the dissipation of the mystery.
It is not to be denied that this fitting of everything into its place is at times a little wearisome. ‘The construction is most minute and most wonderful,’ wrote Anthony Trollope of Wilkie Collins. ‘I can never lose the taste of the construction. The author seems always warning me to remember that something happened at exactly half-past two on Tuesday morning, or that a woman disappeared from the road just fifteen yards beyond the fourth milestone.’ There is truth in this, but if Anthony Trollope had written a novel of mystery, which perhaps he could never have done, he would have had to take the same path.
Another doctor in The Moonstone tells us that the ignorant distrust of opium in England spreads through all classes, so much so, that every doctor in large practice finds himself every now and then obliged to deceive his patients by giving them opium under a disguise. He himself claims that opium saved his life. He suffered from an incurable internal complaint, but he was determined to live in order to provide for a person very dear to him. ‘To that all-potent and all-merciful drug I am indebted for a respite of many years from my sentence of death.’