The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Edition opening
Contents and reading sections
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
by Charles Dickens
Contents
CHAPTER I. THE DAWN
CHAPTER II. A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO
CHAPTER III. THE NUNS’ HOUSE
CHAPTER IV. MR. SAPSEA
CHAPTER V. MR. DURDLES AND FRIEND
CHAPTER VI. PHILANTHROPY IN MINOR CANON CORNER
CHAPTER VII. MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE
CHAPTER VIII. DAGGERS DRAWN
CHAPTER IX. BIRDS IN THE BUSH
CHAPTER X. SMOOTHING THE WAY
CHAPTER XI. A PICTURE AND A RING
CHAPTER XII. A NIGHT WITH DURDLES
CHAPTER XIII. BOTH AT THEIR BEST
CHAPTER XIV. WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN?
CHAPTER XV. IMPEACHED
CHAPTER XVI. DEVOTED
CHAPTER XVII. PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL AND UNPROFESSIONAL
CHAPTER XVIII. A SETTLER IN CLOISTERHAM
CHAPTER XIX. SHADOW ON THE SUN-DIAL
CHAPTER XX. A FLIGHT
CHAPTER XXI. A RECOGNITION
CHAPTER XXII. A GRITTY STATE OF THINGS COMES ON
CHAPTER XXIII. THE DAWN AGAIN
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD
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 hearth-stone,
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.
That same afternoon, the massive gray square tower of an old Cathedral
rises before the sight of a jaded traveller. The bells are going for
daily vesper service, and he must needs attend it, one would say, from
his haste to reach the open Cathedral door. The choir are getting on
their sullied white robes, in a hurry, when he arrives among them, gets
on his own robe, and falls into the procession filing in to service.
Then, the Sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divide the
sanctuary from the chancel, and all of the procession having scuttled
into their places, hide their faces; and then the intoned words, “WHEN
THE WICKED MAN—” rise among groins of arches and beams of roof,
awakening muttered thunder.
CHAPTER II.
A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO
Whosoever has observed that sedate and clerical bird, the rook, may
perhaps have noticed that when he wings his way homeward towards
nightfall, in a sedate and clerical company, two rooks will suddenly
detach themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight for some
distance, and will there poise and linger; conveying to mere men the
fancy that it is of some occult importance to the body politic, that
this artful couple should pretend to have renounced connection with it.
Similarly, service being over in the old Cathedral with the square
tower, and the choir scuffling out again, and divers venerable persons
of rook-like aspect dispersing, two of these latter retrace their
steps, and walk together in the echoing Close.
Not only is the day waning, but the year. The low sun is fiery and yet
cold behind the monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the
Cathedral wall has showered half its deep-red leaves down on the
pavement. There has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes
among the little pools on the cracked, uneven flag-stones, and through
the giant elm-trees as they shed a gust of tears. Their fallen leaves
lie strewn thickly about. Some of these leaves, in a timid rush, seek
sanctuary within the low arched Cathedral door; but two men coming out
resist them, and cast them forth again with their feet; this done, one
of the two locks the door with a goodly key, and the other flits away
with a folio music-book.
“Mr. Jasper was that, Tope?”
“Yes, Mr. Dean.”
“He has stayed late.”
“Yes, Mr. Dean. I have stayed for him, your Reverence. He has been took
a little poorly.”
“Say ‘taken,’ Tope—to the Dean,” the younger rook interposes in a low
tone with this touch of correction, as who should say: “You may offer
bad grammar to the laity, or the humbler clergy, not to the Dean.”
Mr. Tope, Chief Verger and Showman, and accustomed to be high with
excursion parties, declines with a silent loftiness to perceive that
any suggestion has been tendered to him.
“And when and how has Mr. Jasper been taken—for, as Mr. Crisparkle has
remarked, it is better to say taken—taken—” repeats the Dean; “when and
how has Mr. Jasper been Taken—”
“Taken, sir,” Tope deferentially murmurs.
“—Poorly, Tope?”
“Why, sir, Mr. Jasper was that breathed—”
“I wouldn’t say ‘That breathed,’ Tope,” Mr. Crisparkle interposes with
the same touch as before. “Not English—to the Dean.”
“Breathed to that extent,” the Dean (not unflattered by this indirect
homage) condescendingly remarks, “would be preferable.”
“Mr. Jasper’s breathing was so remarkably short”—thus discreetly does
Mr. Tope work his way round the sunken rock—“when he came in, that it
distressed him mightily to get his notes out: which was perhaps the
cause of his having a kind of fit on him after a little. His memory
grew DAZED.” Mr. Tope, with his eyes on the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle,
shoots this word out, as defying him to improve upon it: “and a dimness
and giddiness crept over him as strange as ever I saw: though he didn’t
seem to mind it particularly, himself. However, a little time and a
little water brought him out of his DAZE.” Mr. Tope repeats the word
and its emphasis, with the air of saying: “As I _have_ made a success,
I’ll make it again.”
“And Mr. Jasper has gone home quite himself, has he?” asked the Dean.
“Your Reverence, he has gone home quite himself. And I’m glad to see
he’s having his fire kindled up, for it’s chilly after the wet, and the
Cathedral had both a damp feel and a damp touch this afternoon, and he
was very shivery.”
They all three look towards an old stone gatehouse crossing the Close,
with an arched thoroughfare passing beneath it. Through its latticed