The Mystery of Edwin Drood (38 page)

 

  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 fellowcreature, 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, specially miserable
among many such.

 

  He ascends a broken staircase, opens a
door, looks into a dark stifling 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. And 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 allovers 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. “Now 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 ink-bottle, 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 automaton, 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.