Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0055/00558.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 15KB | 321 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00558}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Mystery Of Edwin Drood, The
Chapter XII - Part I}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{sapsea
durdles
jasper
dean
little
says
friend
sir
upon
crisparkle
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{}
$Log{See Durdles And Mr. Sapsea*0055801.scf
}
Title:       Mystery Of Edwin Drood, The
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter XII - Part I

A Night With Durdles

     When Mr. Sapsea has nothing better to do, towards evening, and finds
the contemplation of his own profundity becoming a little monotonous in
spite of the vastness of the subject, he often takes an airing in the
Cathedral Close and thereabout.  He likes to pass the churchyard with a
swelling air of proprietorship, and to encourage in his breast a sort of
benignant-landlord feeling, in that he has been bountiful towards that
meritorious tenant, Mrs. Sapsea, and has publicly given her a prize.  He
likes to see a stray face or two looking in through the railings and
perhaps reading his inscription.  Should he meet a stranger coming from
the churchyard with a quick step, he is morally convinced that the
stranger is 'with a blush retiring,' as monumentally directed.  Mr.
Sapsea's importance has received enhancement, for he has become Mayor of
Cloisterham.  Without mayors, and many of them, it cannot be disputed that
the whole framework of society - Mr. Sapsea is confident that he invented
that forcible figure - would fall to pieces.  Mayors have beent knighted
for 'going up' with addresses: explosive machines intrepidly discharging
shot and shell into the English Grammar.  Mr. Sapsea may 'go up' with an
address.  Rise, Sir Thomas Sapsea!  Of such is the salt of the earth.

     Mr. Sapsea has improved the acquaintance of Mr. Jasper, since their
first meeting to partake of port, epitaph, backgammon, beef, and salad.
Mr. Sapsea has been received at the gatehouse with kindred hospitality;
and on that occasion Mr. Jasper seated himself at the piano, and sang to
him, tickling his ears - figuratively - long enough to present a
considerable area for tickling.  What Mr. Sapsea likes in that young man
is, that he is always ready to profit by the wisdom of his elders, and
that he is sound, sir, at the core.  In proof of which, he sang to Mr.
Sapsea that evening, no kickshaw ditties, favourites with national
enemies, but gave him the genuine George the Third home-brewed; exhorting
him (as 'my brave boys') to reduce to a smashed condition all other
islands but this island, and all continents, peninsulas, isthmuses,
promontories, and other geographical forms of land soever, besides
sweeping the seas in all directions.  In short, he rendered it pretty
clear that Providence made a distinct mistake in originating so small a
nation of hearts of oak, and so many other verminous peoples.

     Mr. Sapsea, walking slowly this moist evening near the church-yard
with his hands behind him, on the lookout for a blushing and retiring
stranger, turns a corner, and comes instead into the goodly presence of
the Dean, conversing with the Verger and Mr. Jasper.  Mr. Sapsea makes his
obeisance, and is instantly stricken far more ecclesiastical than any
Archbishop of York or Canterbury.

     'You are evidently going to write a book about us, Mr. Jasper,' quoth
the Dean; 'to write a book about us.  Well!  We are very ancient, and we
ought to make a good book.  We are not so richly endowed in possessions as
in age; but perhaps you will put that in your book, among other things,
and call attention to our wrongs.'

     Mr. Tope, as in duty bound, is greatly entertained by this.

     'I really have no intention at all, sir,' replies Jasper, 'of turning
author or archaeologist.  It is but a whim of mine.  And even for my whim,
Mr. Sapsea here is more accountable than I am.'

     'How so, Mr. Mayor?' says the Dean, with a nod of good-natured
recognition of his Fetch.  'How is that, Mr. Mayor?'

     'I am not aware,' Mr. Sapsea remarks, looking about him for
information, 'to what the Very Reverend the Dean does me the honour of
referring.' And then falls to studying his original in minute points of
detail.

     'Durdles,' Mr. Tope hints.

     'Ay!' the Dean echoes; 'Durdles, Durdles!'

     'The truth is, sir,' explains Jasper, 'that my curiosity in the man
was first really stimulated by Mr. Sapsea.  Mr. Sapsea's knowledge of
mankind and power of drawing out whatever is recluse or odd around him,
first led to my bestowing a second thought upon the man; though of course
I had met him constantly about.  You would not be surprised by this, Mr.
Dean, if you had seen Mr. Sapsea deal with him in his own parlour, as I
did.'

     'O!' cries Sapsea, picking up the ball thrown to him with ineffable
complacency and pomposity; 'yes, yes.  The Very Reverend the Dean refers
to that?  Yes.  I happened to bring Durdles and Mr. Jasper together.  I
regard Durdles as a Character.'

     'A character, Mr. Sapsea, that with a few skilful touches you turn
inside out,' says Jasper.

     'Nay, not quite that,' returns the lumbering auctioneer.  'I may have
a little influence over him, perhaps; and a little insight into his
character, perhaps.  The Very Reverend the Dean will please to bear in
mind that I have seen the world.' Here Mr. Sapsea gets a little behind the
Dean, to inspect his coat-buttons.

     'Well!' says the Dean, looking about him to see what has become of
his copyist: 'I hope, Mr. Mayor, you will use your study and knowledge of
Durdles to the good purpose of exhorting him not to break our worthy and
respected Choir-Master's neck; we cannot afford it; his head and voice are
much too valuable to us.'

     Mr. Tope is again highly entertained, and, having fallen into respectful
convulsions of laughter, subsides into a deferential murmur, importing that
surely any gentleman would deem it a pleasure and an honour to have his neck
broken, in return for such a compliment from such a source.

     'I will take it upon myself, sir,' observes Sapsea loftily, 'to answer
for Mr. Jasper's neck.  I will tell Durdles to be careful of it. He will mind
what I say.  How is it at present endangered?' he inquires, looking about him
with magnificent patronage.

     'Only by my making a moonlight expedition with Durdles among the tombs,
vaults, towers, and ruins, returns Jasper.  'You remember suggesting, when you
brought us together, that, as a lover of the picturesque, it might be worth my
while?'

     'I remember!' replies the auctioneer.  And the solemn idiot really
believes that he does remember.

     'Profiting by your hint,' pursues Jasper, 'I have had some day- rambles
with the extraordinary old fellow, and we are to make a moonlight
hole-and-corner exploration to-night.'

     'And here he is,' says the Dean.

     Durdles, with his dinner-bundle in his hand, is indeed beheld slouching
towards them.  Slouching nearer, and perceiving the Dean, he pulls off his
hat, and is slouching away with it under his arm, when Mr. Sapsea stops him.

     'Mind you take care of my friend,' is the injunction Mr. Sapsea lays upon
him.

     'What friend o' yourn is dead?  asks Durdles.  'No orders has come in for
any friend o' yourn.'

     'I mean my live friend there.'

     'O!  him?' says Durdles.  'He can take care of himself, can Mister
Jarsper.'

     'But do you take care of him too,' says Sapsea.

     Whom Durdles (there being command in his tone) surlily surveys from
head to foot.

     'With submission to his Reverence the Dean, if you'll mind what
concerns you, Mr. Sapsea, Durdles he'll mind what concerns him.'

     'You're out of temper,' says Mr. Sapsea, winking to the company to
observe how smoothly he will manage him.  'My friend concerns me, and Mr.
Jasper is my friend.  And you are my friend.'

     'Don't you get into a bad habit of boasting,' retorts Durdles, with a
grave cautionary nod.  'It'll grow upon you.'

[See Durdles And Mr. Sapsea: Durdles cautions Mr. Sapsea]


     'You are out of temper,' says Sapsea again; reddening, but again
winking to the company.

     'I own to it,' returns Durdles; 'I don't like liberties.'

     Mr. Sapsea winks a third wink to the company, as who should say: 'I
think you will agree with me that I have settled his business'; and stalks
out of the controversy.

     Durdles then gives the Dean a good evening, and adding, as he puts
his hat on, 'You'll find me at home, Mister Jarsper, as agreed, when you
want me; I'm a-going home to clean myself,' soon slouches out of sight.
This going home to clean himself is one of the man's incomprehensible
compromises with inexorable facts; he, and his hat, and his boots, and his
clothes, never showing any trace of cleaning, but being uniformly in one
condition of dust and grit.

     The lamplighter now dotting the quiet Close with specks of light, and
running at a great rate up and down his little ladder with that object -
his little ladder under the sacred shadow of whose inconvenience
generations had grown up, and which all Cloisterham would have stood
aghast at the idea of abolishing - the Dean withdraws to his dinner, Mr.
Tope to his tea, and Mr. Jasper to his piano.  There, with no light but
that of the fire, he sits chanting choir-music in a low and beautiful
voice, for two or three hours; in short, until it has been for some time
dark, and the moon is about to rise.

     Then he closes his piano softly, softly changes his coat for a pea-
jacket, with a goodly wicker-cased bottle in its largest pocket, and
putting on a low-crowned, flap-brimmed hat, goes softly out.  Why does he
move so softly to-night?  No outward reason is apparent for it.  Can there
be any sympathetic reason crouching darkly within him?

     Repairing to Durdles's unfinished house, or hole in the city wall,
and seeing a light within it, he softly picks his course among the
gravestones, monuments, and stony lumber of the yard, already touched here
and there, sidewise, by the rising moon.  The two journeymen have left
their two great saws sticking in their blocks of stone; and two skeleton
journeymen out of the Dance of Death might be grinning in the shadow of
their sheltering sentry-boxes, about to slash away at cutting out the
gravestones of the next two people destined to die in Cloisterham.  Likely
enough, the two think little of that now, being alive, and perhaps merry.
Curious, to make a guess at the two; - or say one of the two!

     'Ho!  Durdles!'

     The light moves, and he appears with it at the door.  He would seem
to have been 'cleaning himself' with the aid of a bottle, jug, and
tumbler; for no other cleansing instruments are visible in the bare brick
room with rafters overhead and no plastered ceiling, into which he shows
his visitor.

     'Are you ready?'

     'I am ready, Mister Jarsper.  Let the old uns come out if they dare,
when we go among their tombs.  My spirit is ready for 'em.'

     'Do you mean animal spirits, or ardent?'

     'The one's the t'other,' answers Durdles, and I mean 'em both.'

     He takes a lantern from a hook, puts a match or two in his pocket
wherewith to light it, should there be need; and they go out together,
dinner-bundle and all.

     Surely an unaccountable sort of expedition!  That Durdles himself,
who is always prowling among old graves, and ruins, like a Ghoul - that he
should be stealing forth to climb, and dive, and wander without an object,
is nothing extraordinary; but that the Choir-Master or any one else should
hold it worth his while to be with him, and to study moonlight effects in
such company is another affair.  Surely an unaccountable sort of
expedition, therefore!

     ''Ware that there mound by the yard-gate, Mister Jarsper.'

     'I see it.  What is it?'

     'Lime.'

     Mr. Jasper stops, and waits for him to come up, for he lags behind.
'What you call quick-lime?'

     'Ay!' says Durdles; 'quick enough to eat your boots.  With a little
handy stirring, quick enough to eat your bones.'

     They go on, presently passing the red windows of the Travellers'
Twopenny, and emerging into the clear moonlight of the Monks' Vineyard.
This crossed, they come to Minor Canon Corner: of which the greater part
lies in shadow until the moon shall rise higher in the sky.

     The sound of a closing house-door strikes their ears, and two men
come out.  These are Mr. Crisparkle and Neville.  Jasper, with a strange
and sudden smile upon his face, lays the palm of his hand upon the breast
of Durdles, stopping him where he stands.

     At that end of Minor Canon Corner the shadow is profound in the
existing state of the light: at that end, too, there is a piece of old
dwarf wall, breast high, the only remaining boundary of what was once a
garden, but is now the thoroughfare.  Jasper and Durdles would have turned
this wall in another instant; but stopping so short, stand behind it.

     'Those two are only sauntering,' Jasper whispers; 'they will go out
into the moonlight soon.  Let us keep quiet here, or they will detain us,
or want to join us, or what not.'

     Durdles nods assent and falls to munching some fragments from his
bundle.  Jasper folds his arms upon the top of the wall, and, with his
chin resting on them, watches.  He takes no note whatever of the Minor
Canon, but watches Neville, as though his eye were at the trigger of a
loaded rifle, and he had covered him, and were going to fire.  A sense of
destructive power is so expressed in his face, that even Durdles pauses in
his munching, and looks at him, with an unmunched something in his cheek.

     Meanwhile Mr. Crisparkle and Neville walk to and fro, quietly talking
together.  What they say, cannot be heard consecutively; but Mr. Jasper
has already distinguished his own name more than once.

     'This is the first day of the week,' Mr. Crisparkle can be distinctly
heard to observe, as they turn back; 'and the last day of the week is
Christmas Eve.'

     'You may be certain of me, sir.'

     The echoes were favourable at those points, but as the two approach,
the sound of their talking becomes confused again.  The word 'confidence,'
shattered by the echoes, but still capable of being pieced together, is
uttered by Mr. Crisparkle.  As they draw still nearer, this fragment of a
reply is heard: 'Not deserved yet, but shall be, sir.' As they turn away
again, Jasper again hears his own name, in connection with the words from
Mr. Crisparkle; 'Remember that I said I answered for you confidently.'
Then the sound of their talk becomes confused again; they halting for a
little while, and some earnest action on the part of Neville succeeding.
When they move once more, Mr. Crisparkle is seen to look up at the sky,
and to point before him.  They then slowly disappear; passing out into the
moonlight at the opposite end of the Corner.