Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0057/00571.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 20KB | 465 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00571}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Mystery Of Edwin Drood, The
Chapter XXIII - Part I}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{deary
ye
upon
time
now
hand
way
yes
journey
look}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Mystery Of Edwin Drood, The
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter XXIII - Part I

The Dawn Again

     Although Mr. Crisparkle and John Jasper met daily under the Cathedral
roof, nothing at any time passed between them having reference to Edwin
Drood, after the time, more than half a year gone by, when Jasper mutely
showed the Minor Canon the conclusion and the resolution entered in his
Diary.  It is not likely that they ever met, though so often, without the
thoughts of each reverting to the subject.  It is not likely that they
ever met, though so often, without a sensation on the part of each that
the other was a perplexing secret to him.  Jasper as the denouncer and
pursuer of Neville Landless, and Mr. Crisparkle as his consistent advocate
and protector, must at least have stood sufficiently in opposition to have
speculated with keen interest on the steadiness and next direction of the
other's designs.  But neither ever broached the theme.

     False pretence not being in the Minor Canon's nature, he doubtless
displayed openly that he would at any time have revived the subject, and
even desired to discuss it.  The determined reticence of Jasper, however,
was not to be so approached.  Impassive, moody, solitary, resolute, so
concentrated on one idea, and on its attendant fixed purpose, that he
would share it with no fellow-creature, he lived apart from human life.
Constantly exercising an Art which brought him into mechanical harmony
with others, and which could not have been pursued unless he and they had
been in the nicest mechanical relations and unison, it is curious to
consider that the spirit of the man was in moral accordance or interchange
with nothing around him.  This indeed he had confided to his lost nephew,
before the occasion for his present inflexibility arose.

     That he must know of Rosa's abrupt departure, and that he must divine
its cause, was not to be doubted.  Did he suppose that he had terrified
her into silence?  or did he suppose that she had imparted to any one - to
Mr. Crisparkle himself, for instance - the particulars of his last
interview with her?  Mr. Crisparkle could not determine this in his mind.
He could not but admit, however, as a just man, that it was not, of
itself, a crime to fall in love with Rosa, any more than it was a crime to
offer to set love above revenge.

     The dreadful suspicion of Jasper, which Rosa was so shocked to have
received into her imagination, appeared to have no harbour in Mr.
Crisparkle's.  If it ever haunted Helena's thoughts or Neville's, neither
gave it one spoken word of utterance.  Mr. Grewgious took no pains to
conceal his implacable dislike of Jasper, yet he never referred it,
however distantly, to such a source.  But he was a reticent as well as an
eccentric man; and he made no mention of a certain evening when he warmed
his hands at the gatehouse fire, and looked steadily down upon a certain
heap of torn and miry clothes upon the floor.

     Drowsy Cloisterham, whenever it awoke to a passing reconsideration of
a story above six months old and dismissed by the bench of magistrates,
was pretty equally divided in opinion whether John Jasper's beloved nephew
had been killed by his treacherously passionate rival, or in an open
struggle; or had, for his own purposes, spirited himself away.  It then
lifted up its head, to notice that the bereaved Jasper was still ever
devoted to discovery and revenge; and then dozed off again.  This was the
condition of matters, all round, at the period to which the present
history has now attained.

     The Cathedral doors have closed for the night; and the Choirmaster,
on a short leave of absence for two or three services, sets his face
towards London.  He travels thither by the means by which Rosa travelled,
and arrives, as Rosa arrived, on a hot, dusty evening.

     His travelling baggage is easily carried in his hand, and he repairs
with it on foot, to a hybrid hotel in a little square behind Aldersgate
Street, near the General Post Office.  It is hotel, boarding-house, or
lodging-house, at its visitor's option.  It announces itself, in the new
Railway Advertisers, as a novel enterprise, timidly beginning to spring
up.  It bashfully, almost apologetically, gives the traveller to
understand that it does not expect him, on the good old constitutional
hotel plan, to order a pint of sweet blacking for his drinking, and throw
it away; but insinuates that he may have his boots blacked instead of his
stomach, and maybe also have bed, breakfast, attendance, and a porter up
all night, for a certain fixed charge.  From these and similar premises,
many true Britons in the lowest spirits deduce that the times are
levelling times, except in the article of high roads, of which there will
shortly be not one in England.

     He eats without appetite, and soon goes forth again.  Eastward and
still eastward through the stale streets he takes his way, until he
reaches his destination: a miserable court, especially miserable among
many such.

     He ascends a broken staircase, opens a door, looks into a dark
strifling room, and says: 'Are you alone here?'

     'Alone, deary; worse luck for me, and better for you,' replies a
croaking voice.  'Come in, come in, whoever you be: I can't see you till I
light a match, yet I seem to know the sound of your speaking.  I'm
acquainted with you, ain't I?'

     'Light your match, and try.'

     'So I will, deary, so I will; but my hand that shakes, as I can't lay
it on a match all in a moment.  And I cough so, that, put my matches where
I may, I never find 'em there.  They jump and start, as I cough and cough,
like live things.  Are you off a voyage, deary?'

     'No.'

     'Not seafaring?'

     'No.'

     'Well, there's land customers, and there's water customers.  I'm a
mother to both.  Different from Jack Chinaman t' other side the court.  He
ain't a father to neither.  It ain't in him.  An he ain't got the true
secret of mixing, though he charges as much as me that has, and more if he
can get it.  Here's a match, and now where's the candle?  If my cough
takes me, I shall cough out twenty matches afore I gets a light.'

     But she finds the candle, and lights it, before the cough comes on.
It seizes her in the moment of success, and she sits down rocking herself
to and fro, and gasping at intervals: 'O, my lungs is awful bad!  my lungs
is wore away to cabbage-nets!' until the fit is over.  During its
continuance she has had no power of sight, or any other power not absorbed
in the struggle; but as it leaves her, she begins to strain her eyes, and
as soon as she is able to articulate, she cries, staring:

     'Why, it's you!'

     'Are you so surprised to see me?'

     'I thought I never should have seen you again, deary.  I thought you
was dead, and gone to Heaven.'

     'Why?'

     'I didn't suppose you could have kept away, alive, so long, from the
poor old soul with the real receipt for mixing it.  And you are in
mourning too!  Why didn't you come and have a pipe or two of comfort?  Did
they leave you money, perhaps, and so you didn't want comfort?'

     'No.'

     'Who was they as died, deary?'

     'A relative.'

     'Died of what, lovey?'

     'Probably, Death.'

     'We are short to-night!' cries the woman, with a propitiatory laugh.
'Short and snappish we are!  But we're out of sorts for want of a smoke.
We've got the all-overs, haven't us, deary?  But this is the place to cure
'em in; this is the place where the all-overs is smoked off.'

     'You may make ready, then,' replies the visitor, 'as soon as you
like.'

     He divests himself of his shoes, loosens his cravat, and lies across
the foot of the squalid bed, with his head resting on his left hand.

     'Now you begin to look like yourself,' says the woman approvingly.
'No I begin to know my old customer indeed!  Been trying to mix for
yourself this long time, poppet?'

     'I have been taking it now and then in my own way.'

     'Never take it your own way.  It ain't good for trade, and it ain't
good for you.  Where's my inkbottle, and where's my thimble, and where's
my little spoon?  He's going to take it in a artful form now, my deary
dear!'

     Entering on her process, and beginning to bubble and blow at the
faint spark enclosed in the hollow of her hands, she speaks from time to
time, in a tone of snuffling satisfaction, without leaving off.  When he
speaks, he does so without looking at her, and as if his thoughts were
already roaming away by anticipation.

     'I've got a pretty many smokes ready for you, first and last, haven't
I, chuckey?'

     'A good many.'

     'When you first come, you was quite new to it; warn't ye?'

     'Yes, I was easily disposed of, then.'

     'But you got on in the world, and was able by and by to take your
pipe with the best of 'em, warn't ye?'

     'Ah; and the worst.'

     'It's just ready for you.  What a sweet singer you was when you first
come!  Used to drop your head, and sing yourself off like a bird!  It's
ready for you now, deary.'

     He takes it from her with great care, and puts the mouthpiece to his
lips.  She seats herself beside him, ready to refill the pipe.  After
inhaling a few whiffs in silence, he doubtingly accosts her with:

     'Is it as potent as it used to be?'

     'What do you speak of, deary?'

     'What should I speak of, but what I have in my mouth?'

     'It's just the same.  Always the identical same.'

     'It doesn't taste so.  And it's slower.'

     'You've got more used to it, you see.'

     'That may be the cause, certainly.  Look here.' He stops, becomes
dreamy, and seems to forget that he has invited her attention.  She bends
over him, and speaks in his ear.

     'I'm attending to you.  Says you just now, Look here.  Says I now,
I'm attending to ye.  We was talking just before of your being used to
it.'
     'I know all that.  I was only thinking.  Look here.  Suppose you had
something in your mind; something you were going to do.'

     'Yes, deary; something I was going to do?'

     'But had not quite determined to do.'

     'Yes, deary.'

     'Might or might not do, you understand.'

     'Yes.' With the point of a needle she stirs the contents of the bowl.

     'Should you do it in your fancy, when you were lying here doing
this?'

     She nods her head.  'Over and over again.'

     'Just like me!  I did it over and over again.  I have done it
hundreds of thousands of times in this room.'

     'It's to be hoped it was pleasant to do, deary.'

     'It was pleasant to do!'

     He says this with a savage air, and a spring or start at her.  Quite
unmoved she retouches and replenishes the contents of the bowl with her
little spatula.  Seeing her intent upon the occupation, he sinks into his
former attitude.

     'It was a journey, a difficult and dangerous journey.  That was the
subject in my mind.  A hazardous and perilous journey, over abysses where
a slip would be destruction.  Look down, look down!  You see what lies at
the bottom there?'

     He has darted forward to say it, and to point at the ground, as
though at some imaginary object far beneath.  The woman looks at him, as
his spasmodic face approaches close to hers, and not at his pointing.  She
seems to know what the influence of her perfect quietude would be; if so,
she has not miscalculated it, for he subsides again.

     'Well; I have told you I did it here hundreds of thousands of times.
What do I say?  I did it millions and billions of times.  I did it so
often, and through such vast expanses of time, that when it was really
done, it seemed not worth the doing, it was done so soon.'

     'That's the journey you have been away upon,' she quietly remarks.

     He glares at her as he smokes; and then, his eyes becoming filmy,
answers: 'That's the journey.'

     Silence ensues.  His eyes are sometimes closed and sometimes open.
The woman sits beside him, very attentive to the pipe, which is all the
while at his lips.

     'I'll warrant,' she observes, when he has been looking fixedly at her
for some consecutive moments, with a singular appearance in his eyes of
seeming to see her a long way off, instead of so near him: 'I'll warrant
you made the journey in a many ways, when you made it so often?'

     'No, always in one way.'

     'Always in the same way?'

     'Ay.'

     'In the way in which it was really made at last?'

     'Ay.'

     'And always took the same pleasure in harping on it?'

     'Ay.'

     'For the time he appears unequal to any other reply than this lazy
monosyllabic assent.  Probably to assure herself that it is not the assent
of a mere automation, she reverses the form of her next sentence.

     'Did you never get tired of it, deary, and try to call up something
else for a change?'

     He struggles into a sitting posture, and retorts upon her: 'What do
you mean?  What did I want?  What did I come for?'

     She gently lays him back again, and before returning him the
instrument he has dropped, revives the fire in it with her own breath;
then says to him, coaxingly:

     'Sure, sure, sure!  Yes, yes, yes!  Now I go along with you.  You was
too quick for me.  I see now.  You come o' purpose to take the journey.
Why, I might have known it, through its standing by you so.'

     He answers first with a laugh, and then with a passionate setting of
his teeth: 'Yes, I came on purpose.  When I could not bear my life, I came
to get the relief, and I got it.  It was one!  It was one!' This
repetition with extraordinary vehemence, and the snarl of a wolf.

     She observes him very cautiously, as though mentally feeling her way
to her next remark.  It is: 'There was a fellow-traveller, deary.'

     'Ha, ha, ha!' He breaks into a ringing laugh, or rather yell.

     'To think,' he cries, 'how often fellow-traveller, and yet not know
it!  To think how many times he went the journey, and never saw the road!'

     The woman kneels upon the floor, with her arms crossed on the
coverlet of the bed, close by him, and her chin upon them.  In this
crouching attitude she watches him.  The pipe is falling from his mouth.
She puts it back, and laying her hand upon his chest, moves him slightly
from side to side.  Upon that he speaks, as if she had spoken.

     'Yes!  I always made the journey first, before the changes of colours
and the great landscapes and glittering processions began.  They couldn't
begin till it was off my mind.  I had no room till then for anything
else.'

     Once more he lapses into silence.  Once more she lays her hand upon
his chest, and moves him slightly to and fro, as a cat might stimulate a
half-slain mouse.  Once more he speaks, as if she had spoken.

     'What?  I told you so.  When it comes to be real at last, it is so
short that it seems unreal for the first time.  Hark!'

     'Yes, deary.  I'm listening.'

     'Time and place are both at hand.'

     He is on his feet, speaking in a whisper, and as if in the dark.

     'Time, place, and fellow-traveller,' she suggests, adopting his tone,
and holding him softly by the arm.

     'How could the time be at hand unless the fellow-traveller was?
Hush!  The journey's made.  It's over.'

     'So soon?'

     'That's what I said to you.  So soon.  Wait a little.  This is a
vision.  I shall sleep it off.  It has been too short and easy.  I must
have a better vision than this; this is the poorest of all.  No struggle,
no consciousness of peril, no entreaty - and yet I never saw that before.'
With a start.

     'Saw what, deary?'

     'Look at it!  Look what a poor, mean, miserable thing it is!  That
must be real.  It's over.'

     He has accompanied this incoherence with some wild unmeaning
gestures; but they trail off into the progressive inaction of stupor, and
he lies a log upon the bed.

     The woman, however, is still inquisitive.  With a repetition of her
cat-like action she slightly stirs his body again, and listens; stirs
again, and listens; whispers to it, and listens.  Finding it past all
rousing for the time, she slowly gets upon her feet, with an air of
disappointment, and flicks the face with the back of her hand in turning
from it.

     But she goes no further away from it than the chair upon the hearth.
She sits in it, with an elbow on one of its arms, and her chin upon her
hand, intent upon him.  'I heard ye say once,' she croaks under her
breath, 'I heard ye say once, when I was lying where you're lying, and you
were making your speculations upon me, "Unintelligible!" I heard you say
so, of two more than me.  But don't ye be too sure always; don't ye be too
sure, beauty!'

     Unwinking, cat-like, and intent, she presently adds: 'Not so potent
as it once was?  Ah!  Perhaps not at first.  You may be more right there.
Practice makes perfect.  I may have learned the secret how to make ye
talk, deary.'

     He talks no more, whether or no.  Twitching in an ugly way from time
to time, both as to his face and limbs, he lies heavy and silent.  The
wretched candle burns down; the woman takes its expiring end between her
fingers, lights another at it, crams the guttering frying morsel deep into
the candlestick, and rams it home with the new candle, as if she were
loading some ill-savoured and unseemly weapon of witchcraft; the new
candle in its turn burns down; and still he lies insensible.  At length
what remains of the last candle is blown out, and daylight looks into the
room.

     It has not looked very long, when he sits up, chilled and shaking,
slowly recovers consciousness of where he is, and makes himself ready to
depart.  The woman receives what he pays her with a grateful, 'Bless ye,
bless ye, deary!' and seems, tired out, to begin making herself ready for
sleep as he leaves the room.

     But seeming may be false or true.  It is false in this case; for, the
moment the stairs have ceased to creak under his tread, she glides after
him, muttering emphatically: 'I'll not miss ye twice!'

     There is no egress from the court but by its entrance.  With a weird
peep from the doorway, she watches for his looking back.  He does not look
back before disappearing, with a wavering step.  She follows him, peeps
from the court
, sees him still faltering on without looking back, and
holds him in view.

     He repairs to the back of Aldersgate Street, where a door immediately
opens to his knocking.  She crouches in another doorway, watching that
one, and easily comprehending that he puts up temporarily at that house.
Her patience is unexhausted by hours.  For sustenance she can, and does,
buy bread within a hundred yards, and milk as it is carried past her.

     He comes forth again at noon, having changed his dress, but carrying
nothing in his hand, and having nothing carried for him.  He is not going
back into the country, therefore, just yet.  She follows him a little way,
hesitates, instantaneously turns confidently, and goes straight into the
house he has quitted.

     'Is the gentleman from Cloisterham indoors?'

     'Just gone out.'

     'Unlucky.  When does the gentleman return to Cloisterham?'

     'At six this evening.'

     'Bless ye and thank ye.  May the Lord prosper a business where a
civil question, even from a poor soul, is so civilly answered!'

     'I'll not miss ye twice!' repeats the poor soul in the street, and
not so civilly.  'I lost ye last, where that omnibus you got into nigh
your journey's end plied betwixt the station and the place.  I wasn't so
much as certain that you even went right on to the place.  Now I know ye
did.  My gentleman from Cloisterham, I'll be there before ye, and bide
your coming.  I've swore my oath that I'll not miss ye twice!'