The Mystery of Edwin Drood (39 page)

 

  “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 be ye 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!”

 

  Accordingly, that same evening the poor
soul stands in Cloisterham High Street, looking at the many quaint gables of
the Nuns' House, and getting through the time as she best can until nine
o'clock; at which hour she has reason to suppose that the arriving omnibus
passengers may have some interest for her. The friendly darkness, at that hour,
renders it easy for her to ascertain whether this be so or not; and it is so,
for the passenger not to be missed twice arrives among the rest.

 

  “Now let me see what becomes of you. Go
on!”

 

  An observation addressed to the air, and
yet it might be addressed to the passenger, so compliantly does he go on along
the High Street until he comes to an arched gateway, at which he unexpectedly
vanishes. The poor soul quickens her pace; is swift, and close upon him
entering under the gateway; but only sees a postern staircase on one side of
it, and on the other side an ancient vaulted room, in which a large-headed,
gray-haired gentleman is writing, under the odd circumstances of sitting open
to the thoroughfare and eyeing all who pass, as if he were tolltaker of the
gateway: though the way is free.

 

  “Halloa!” he cries in a low voice,
seeing her brought to a standstill: “who are you looking for?”

 

  “There was a gentleman passed in here
this minute, sir.”

 

  “Of course there was. What do you want
with him?”

 

  “Where do he live, deary?”

 

  “Live? Up that staircase.”

 

  “Bless ye! Whisper. What's his name,
deary?”

 

  “Surname Jasper, Christian name John.
Mr. John Jasper.”

 

  “Has he a calling, good gentleman?”

 

  “Calling? Yes. Sings in the choir.”

 

  “In the spire?”

 

  “Choir.”

 

  “What's that?”

 

  Mr. Datchery rises from his papers, and
comes to his doorstep. “Do you know what a cathedral is?” he asks, jocosely.

 

  The woman nods.

 

  “What is it?”

 

  She looks puzzled, casting about in her
mind to find a definition, when it occurs to her that it is easier to point out
the substantial object itself, massive against the dark-blue sky and the early
stars.

 

  “That's the answer. Go in there at seven
to-morrow morning, and you may see Mr. John Jasper, and hear him too.”

 

  “Thank ye! Thank ye!”

 

  The burst of triumph in which she thanks
him does not escape the notice of the single buffer of an easy temper living
idly on his means. He glances at her; clasps his hands behind him, as the wont
of such buffers is; and lounges along the echoing Precincts at her side.

 

  “Or,” he suggests, with a backward hitch
of his head, “you can go up at once to Mr. Jasper's rooms there.”

 

  The woman eyes him with a cunning smile,
and shakes her head.

 

  “O! you don't want to speak to him?”

 

  She repeats her dumb reply, and forms
with her lips a soundless “No.”

 

  “You can admire him at a distance three
times a day, whenever you like. It's a long way to come for that, though.”

 

  The woman looks up quickly. If Mr.
Datchery thinks she is to be so induced to declare where she comes from, he is
of a much easier temper than she is. But she acquits him of such an artful
thought, as he lounges along, like the chartered bore of the city, with his uncovered
gray hair blowing about, and his purposeless hands rattling the loose money in
the pockets of his trousers.

 

  The chink of the money has an attraction
for her greedy ears. “Wouldn't you help me to pay for my traveller's lodging,
dear gentleman, and to pay my way along? I am a poor soul, I am indeed, and
troubled with a grievous cough.”

 

  “You know the travellers” lodging, I
perceive, and are making directly for it,” is Mr. Datchery's bland comment,
still rattling his loose money. “Been here often, my good woman?”

 

  “Once in all my life.”

 

  “Ay, ay?”

 

  They have arrived at the entrance to the
Monks” Vineyard. An appropriate remembrance, presenting an exemplary model for
imitation, is revived in the woman's mind by the sight of the place. She stops
at the gate, and says energetically:

 

  “By this token, though you mayn't
believe it, That a young gentleman gave me three-and-sixpence as I was coughing
my breath away on this very grass. I asked him for three-and-sixpence, and he
gave it me.”

 

  “Wasn't it a little cool to name your
sum?” hints Mr. Datchery, still rattling. “Isn't it customary to leave the
amount open? Mightn't it have had the appearance, to the young gentleman—only
the appearance—that he was rather dictated to?”

 

  “Look'ee here, deary,” she replies, in a
confidential and persuasive tone, “I wanted the money to lay it out on a
medicine as does me good, and as I deal in. I told the young gentleman so, and
he gave it me, and I laid it out honest to the last brass farden. I want to lay
out the same sum in the same way now; and if you'll give it me, I'll lay it out
honest to the last brass farden again, upon my soul!”

 

  “What's the medicine?”

 

  “I'll be honest with you beforehand, as
well as after. It's opium.”

 

  Mr. Datchery, with a sudden change of
countenance, gives her a sudden look.

 

  “It's opium, deary. Neither more nor
less. And it's like a human creetur so far, that you always hear what can be
said against it, but seldom what can be said in its praise.”

 

  Mr. Datchery begins very slowly to count
out the sum demanded of him. Greedily watching his hands, she continues to hold
forth on the great example set him.

 

  “It was last Christmas Eve, just arter
dark, the once that I was here afore, when the young gentleman gave me the
three-and-six.” Mr. Datchery stops in his counting, finds he has counted wrong,
shakes his money together, and begins again.

 

  “And the young gentleman's name,” she
adds, “was Edwin.”

 

  Mr. Datchery drops some money, stoops to
pick it up, and reddens with the exertion as he asks:

 

  “How do you know the young gentleman's
name?”

 

  “I asked him for it, and he told it me.
I only asked him the two questions, what was his Chris'en name, and whether
he'd a sweetheart? And he answered, Edwin, and he hadn't.”

 

  Mr. Datchery pauses with the selected
coins in his hand, rather as if he were falling into a brown study of their
value, and couldn't bear to part with them. The woman looks at him
distrustfully, and with her anger brewing for the event of his thinking better
of the gift; but he bestows it on her as if he were abstracting his mind from
the sacrifice, and with many servile thanks she goes her way.

 

  John Jasper's lamp is kindled, and his
lighthouse is shining when Mr. Datchery returns alone towards it. As mariners
on a dangerous voyage, approaching an iron-bound coast, may look along the
beams of the warning light to the haven lying beyond it that may never be
reached, so Mr. Datchery's wistful gaze is directed to this beacon, and beyond.

 

  His object in now revisiting his lodging
is merely to put on the hat which seems so superfluous an article in his
wardrobe. It is half-past ten by the Cathedral clock when he walks out into the
Precincts again; he lingers and looks about him, as though, the enchanted hour
when Mr. Durdles may be stoned home having struck, he had some expectation of
seeing the Imp who is appointed to the mission of stoning him.

 

  In effect, that Power of Evil is abroad.
Having nothing living to stone at the moment, he is discovered by Mr. Datchery
in the unholy office of stoning the dead, through the railings of the
churchyard. The Imp finds this a relishing and piquing pursuit; firstly, because
their resting-place is announced to be sacred; and secondly, because the tall
headstones are sufficiently like themselves, on their beat in the dark, to
justify the delicious fancy that they are hurt when hit.

 

  Mr. Datchery hails with him: “Halloa,
Winks!”

 

  He acknowledges the hail with: “Halloa,
Dick!” Their acquaintance seemingly having been established on a familiar
footing.

 

  “But, I say,” he remonstrates, “don't
yer go a-making my name public. I never means to plead to no name, mind yer.
When they says to me in the Lock-up, a-going to put me down in the book,
“What's your name?” I says to them, “Find out.” Likewise when they says,
“What's your religion?” I says, “Find out.”