The Mystery of Edwin Drood (40 page)

 

  Which, it may be observed in passing, it
would be immensely difficult for the State, however statistical, to do.

 

  “Asides which,” adds the boy, “there
ain't no family of Winkses.”

 

  “I think there must be.”

 

  “Yer lie, there ain't. The travellers
give me the name on account of my getting no settled sleep and being knocked up
all night; whereby I gets one eye roused open afore I've shut the other. That's
what Winks means. Deputy's the nighest name to indict me by: but yer wouldn't
catch me pleading to that, neither.”

 

  “Deputy be it always, then. We two are
good friends; eh, Deputy?”

 

  “Jolly good.”

 

  “I forgave you the debt you owed me when
we first became acquainted, and many of my sixpences have come your way since;
eh, Deputy?”

 

  “Ah! And what's more, yer ain't no
friend o” Jarsper's. What did he go a-histing me off my legs for?”

 

  “What indeed! But never mind him now. A
shilling of mine is going your way to-night, Deputy. You have just taken in a
lodger I have been speaking to; an infirm woman with a cough.”

 

  “Puffer,” assents Deputy, with a shrewd
leer of recognition, and smoking an imaginary pipe, with his head very much on
one side and his eyes very much out of their places: “Hopeum Puffer.”

 

  “What is her name?”

 

  “'Er Royal Highness the Princess
Puffer.”

 

  “She has some other name than that;
where does she live?”

 

  “Up in London. Among the Jacks.”

 

  “The sailors?”

 

  “I said so; Jacks; and Chayner men: and
hother Knifers.”

 

  “I should like to know, through you,
exactly where she lives.”

 

  “All right. Give us “old.”

 

  A shilling passes; and, in that spirit
of confidence which should pervade all business transactions between principals
of honour, this piece of business is considered done.

 

  “But here's a lark!” cries Deputy.
“Where did yer think “Er Royal Highness is a-goin” to to-morrow morning? Blest
if she ain't agoin” to the KIN-FREE-DER-EL!” He greatly prolongs the word in
his ecstasy, and smites his leg, and doubles himself up in a fit of shrill
laughter.

 

  “How do you know that, Deputy?”

 

  “Cos she told me so just now. She said
she must be hup and hout o” purpose. She ses, “Deputy, I must “ave a early
wash, and make myself as swell as I can, for I'm a-goin” to take a turn at the
KIN-FREE-DER-EL!"” He separates the syllables with his former zest, and,
not finding his sense of the ludicrous sufficiently relieved by stamping about
on the pavement, breaks into a slow and stately dance, perhaps supposed to be
performed by the Dean.

 

  Mr. Datchery receives the communication
with a well-satisfied though pondering face, and breaks up the conference.
Returning to his quaint lodging, and sitting long over the supper of
bread-andcheese and salad and ale which Mrs. Tope has left prepared for him, he
still sits when his supper is finished. At length he rises, throws open the
door of a corner cupboard, and refers to a few uncouth chalked strokes on its
inner side.

 

  “I like,” says Mr. Datchery, “the old
tavern way of keeping scores. Illegible except to the scorer. The scorer not
committed, the scored debited with what is against him. Hum; ha! A very small score
this; a very poor score!”

 

  He sighs over the contemplation of its
poverty, takes a bit of chalk from one of the cupboard shelves, and pauses with
it in his hand, uncertain what addition to make to the account.

 

  “I think a moderate stroke,” he
concludes, “is all I am justified in scoring up;” so, suits the action to the
word, closes the cupboard, and goes to bed.

 

  A brilliant morning shines on the old
city. Its antiquities and ruins are surpassingly beautiful, with a lusty ivy
gleaming in the sun, and the rich trees waving in the balmy air. Changes of
glorious light from moving boughs, songs of birds, scents from gardens, woods,
and fields—or, rather, from the one great garden of the whole cultivated island
in its yielding time—penetrate into the Cathedral, subdue its earthy odour, and
preach the Resurrection and the Life. The cold stone tombs of centuries ago
grow warm; and flecks of brightness dart into the sternest marble corners of
the building, fluttering there like wings.

 

  Comes Mr. Tope with his large keys, and
yawningly unlocks and sets open. Come Mrs. Tope and attendant sweeping sprites.
Come, in due time, organist and bellows-boy, peeping down from the red curtains
in the loft, fearlessly flapping dust from books up at that remote elevation,
and whisking it from stops and pedals. Come sundry rooks, from various quarters
of the sky, back to the great tower; who may be presumed to enjoy vibration,
and to know that bell and organ are going to give it them. Come a very small
and straggling congregation indeed: chiefly from Minor Canon Corner and the
Precincts. Come Mr. Crisparkle, fresh and bright; and his ministering brethren,
not quite so fresh and bright. Come the Choir in a hurry (always in a hurry,
and struggling into their nightgowns at the last moment, like children shirking
bed), and comes John Jasper leading their line. Last of all comes Mr. Datchery
into a stall, one of a choice empty collection very much at his service, and
glancing about him for Her Royal Highness the Princess Puffer.

 

  The service is pretty well advanced
before Mr. Datchery can discern Her Royal Highness. But by that time he has
made her out, in the shade. She is behind a pillar, carefully withdrawn from
the Choirmaster's view, but regards him with the closest attention. All unconscious
of her presence, he chants and sings. She grins when he is most musically
fervid, and—yes, Mr. Datchery sees her do it!—shakes her fist at him behind the
pillar's friendly shelter.

 

  Mr. Datchery looks again, to convince
himself. Yes, again! As ugly and withered as one of the fantastic carvings on
the under brackets of the stall seats, as malignant as the Evil One, as hard as
the big brass eagle holding the sacred books upon his wings (and, according to
the sculptor's representation of his ferocious attributes, not at all converted
by them), she hugs herself in her lean arms, and then shakes both fists at the
leader of the Choir.

 

  And at that moment, outside the grated
door of the Choir, having eluded the vigilance of Mr. Tope by shifty resources
in which he is an adept, Deputy peeps, sharp-eyed, through the bars, and stares
astounded from the threatener to the threatened.

 

  The service comes to an end, and the
servitors disperse to breakfast. Mr. Datchery accosts his last new acquaintance
outside, when the Choir (as much in a hurry to get their bedgowns off, as they
were but now to get them on) have scuffled away.

 

  “Well, mistress. Good morning. You have
seen him?”

 

  “I'VE seen him, deary; I'VE seen him!”

 

  “And you know him?”

 

  “Know him! Better far than all the Reverend
Parsons put together know him.”

 

  Mrs. Tope's care has spread a very neat,
clean breakfast ready for her lodger. Before sitting down to it, he opens his
cornercupboard door; takes his bit of chalk from its shelf; adds one thick line
to the score, extending from the top of the cupboard door to the bottom; and
then falls to with an appetite.

 

   

 

  […]

 

  
The Mystery of Edwin Drood

 

  Charles
Dickens

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER I—THE DAWN

 

   

 

  AN ancient English Cathedral Tower? How
can the ancient English Cathedral tower be here! The well-known massive gray
square tower of its old Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of
rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real
prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe it is
set up by the Sultan's orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers,
one by one. It is so, for cymbals clash, and the Sultan goes by to his palace
in long procession. Ten thousand scimitars flash in the sunlight, and thrice
ten thousand dancing-girls strew flowers. Then, follow white elephants
caparisoned in countless gorgeous colours, and infinite in number and
attendants. Still the Cathedral Tower rises in the background, where it cannot
be, and still no writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay! Is the spike so
low a thing as the rusty spike on the top of a post of an old bedstead that has
tumbled all awry? Some vague period of drowsy laughter must be devoted to the
consideration of this possibility.

 

  Shaking from head to foot, the man whose
scattered consciousness has thus fantastically pieced itself together, at
length rises, supports his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He
is in the meanest and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged
window-curtain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable court. He
lies, dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed
given way under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and also across the
bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman. The two first
are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to kindle it.
And as she blows, and shading it with her lean hand, concentrates its red spark
of light, it serves in the dim morning as a lamp to show him what he sees of
her.

 

  “Another?” says this woman, in a
querulous, rattling whisper. “Have another?”

 

  He looks about him, with his hand to his
forehead.

 

  “Ye've smoked as many as five since ye
come in at midnight,” the woman goes on, as she chronically complains. “Poor
me, poor me, my head is so bad. Them two come in after ye. Ah, poor me, the
business is slack, is slack! Few Chinamen about the Docks, and fewer Lascars,
and no ships coming in, these say! Here's another ready for ye, deary. Ye'll
remember like a good soul, won't ye, that the market price is dreffle high just
now? More nor three shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful! And ye'll remember
that nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t'other side the court; but he can't do
it as well as me) has the true secret of mixing it? Ye'll pay up accordingly,
deary, won't ye?”

 

  She blows at the pipe as she speaks,
and, occasionally bubbling at it, inhales much of its contents.

 

  “O me, O me, my lungs is weak, my lungs
is bad! It's nearly ready for ye, deary. Ah, poor me, poor me, my poor hand
shakes like to drop off! I see ye coming-to, and I ses to my poor self, “I'll
have another ready for him, and he'll bear in mind the market price of opium,
and pay according.” O my poor head! I makes my pipes of old penny ink-bottles,
ye see, deary—this is one—and I fits-in a mouthpiece, this way, and I takes my
mixter out of this thimble with this little horn spoon; and so I fills, deary.
Ah, my poor nerves! I got Heavens-hard drunk for sixteen year afore I took to
this; but this don't hurt me, not to speak of. And it takes away the hunger as
well as wittles, deary.”

 

  She hands him the nearly-emptied pipe,
and sinks back, turning over on her face.

 

  He rises unsteadily from the bed, lays
the pipe upon the hearthstone, draws back the ragged curtain, and looks with
repugnance at his three companions. He notices that the woman has opium-smoked
herself into a strange likeness of the Chinaman. His form of cheek, eye, and
temple, and his colour, are repeated in her. Said Chinaman convulsively
wrestles with one of his many Gods or Devils, perhaps, and snarls horribly. The
Lascar laughs and dribbles at the mouth. The hostess is still.

 

  “What visions can SHE have?” the waking
man muses, as he turns her face towards him, and stands looking down at it.
“Visions of many butchers” shops, and public-houses, and much credit? Of an
increase of hideous customers, and this horrible bedstead set upright again,
and this horrible court swept clean? What can she rise to, under any quantity
of opium, higher than that!—Eh?”

 

  He bends down his ear, to listen to her
mutterings.

 

  “Unintelligible!”

 

  As he watches the spasmodic shoots and
darts that break out of her face and limbs, like fitful lightning out of a dark
sky, some contagion in them seizes upon him: insomuch that he has to withdraw
himself to a lean arm-chair by the hearth—placed there, perhaps, for such
emergencies—and to sit in it, holding tight, until he has got the better of
this unclean spirit of imitation.

 

  Then he comes back, pounces on the
Chinaman, and seizing him with both hands by the throat, turns him violently on
the bed. The Chinaman clutches the aggressive hands, resists, gasps, and
protests.

 

  “What do you say?”

 

  A watchful pause.

 

  “Unintelligible!”

 

  Slowly loosening his grasp as he listens
to the incoherent jargon with an attentive frown, he turns to the Lascar and
fairly drags him forth upon the floor. As he falls, the Lascar starts into a
half-risen attitude, glares with his eyes, lashes about him fiercely with his
arms, and draws a phantom knife. It then becomes apparent that the woman has
taken possession of this knife, for safety's sake; for, she too starting up,
and restraining and expostulating with him, the knife is visible in her dress,
not in his, when they drowsily drop back, side by side.

 

  There has been chattering and clattering
enough between them, but to no purpose. When any distinct word has been flung
into the air, it has had no sense or sequence. Wherefore “unintelligible!” is
again the comment of the watcher, made with some reassured nodding of his head,
and a gloomy smile. He then lays certain silver money on the table, finds his
hat, gropes his way down the broken stairs, gives a good morning to some
rat-ridden doorkeeper, in bed in a black hutch beneath the stairs, and passes
out.