The Mystery of Edwin Drood
“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,