The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens [fox in socks read aloud txt] 📗

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 Choir-master, 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 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. “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