The Mystery of Edwin Drood (78 page)

 

  “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.

 

  “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.