The Mystery of Edwin Drood
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
toll-taker of the gateway: though the way is free.
“Halloa!” he cries in a low voice, seeing her brought to a stand-still:
“who are you looking for?”
“There was a gentleman passed in here this minute, sir.”
“Of course there was. What do you want with him?”
“Where do he live, deary?”
“Live? Up that staircase.”
“Bless ye! Whisper. What’s his name, deary?”
“Surname Jasper, Christian name John. Mr. John Jasper.”
“Has he a calling, good gentleman?”
“Calling? Yes. Sings in the choir.”
“In the spire?”
“Choir.”
“What’s that?”
Mr. Datchery rises from his papers, and comes to his doorstep. “Do you
know what a cathedral is?” he asks, jocosely.
The woman nods.
“What is it?”
She looks puzzled, casting about in her mind to find a definition, when
it occurs to her that it is easier to point out the substantial object
itself, massive against the dark-blue sky and the early stars.
“That’s the answer. Go in there at seven to-morrow morning, and you may
see Mr. John Jasper, and hear him too.”
“Thank ye! Thank ye!”
The burst of triumph in which she thanks him does not escape the notice
of the single buffer of an easy temper living idly on his means. He
glances at her; clasps his hands behind him, as the wont of such
buffers is; and lounges along the echoing Precincts at her side.
“Or,” he suggests, with a backward hitch of his head, “you can go up at
once to Mr. Jasper’s rooms there.”
The woman eyes him with a cunning smile, and shakes her head.
“O! you don’t want to speak to him?”
She repeats her dumb reply, and forms with her lips a soundless “No.”
“You can admire him at a distance three times a day, whenever you like.
It’s a long way to come for that, though.”
The woman looks up quickly. If Mr. Datchery thinks she is to be so
induced to declare where she comes from, he is of a much easier temper
than she is. But she acquits him of such an artful thought, as he
lounges along, like the chartered bore of the city, with his uncovered
gray hair blowing about, and his purposeless hands rattling the loose
money in the pockets of his trousers.
The chink of the money has an attraction for her greedy ears. “Wouldn’t
you help me to pay for my traveller’s lodging, dear gentleman, and to
pay my way along? I am a poor soul, I am indeed, and troubled with a
grievous cough.”
“You know the travellers’ lodging, I perceive, and are making directly
for it,” is Mr. Datchery’s bland comment, still rattling his loose
money. “Been here often, my good woman?”
“Once in all my life.”
“Ay, ay?”
They have arrived at the entrance to the Monks’ Vineyard. An
appropriate remembrance, presenting an exemplary model for imitation,
is revived in the woman’s mind by the sight of the place. She stops at
the gate, and says energetically:
“By this token, though you mayn’t believe it, That a young gentleman
gave me three-and-sixpence as I was coughing my breath away on this
very grass. I asked him for three-and-sixpence, and he gave it me.”
“Wasn’t it a little cool to name your sum?” hints Mr. Datchery, still
rattling. “Isn’t it customary to leave the amount open? Mightn’t it
have had the appearance, to the young gentleman—only the
appearance—that he was rather dictated to?”
“Look’ee here, deary,” she replies, in a confidential and persuasive
tone, “I wanted the money to lay it out on a medicine as does me good,
and as I deal in. I told the young gentleman so, and he gave it me, and
I laid it out honest to the last brass farden. I want to lay out the
same sum in the same way now; and if you’ll give it me, I’ll lay it out
honest to the last brass farden again, upon my soul!”
“What’s the medicine?”
“I’ll be honest with you beforehand, as well as after. It’s opium.”
Mr. Datchery, with a sudden change of countenance, gives her a sudden
look.
“It’s opium, deary. Neither more nor less. And it’s like a human
creetur so far, that you always hear what can be said against it, but
seldom what can be said in its praise.”
Mr. Datchery begins very slowly to count out the sum demanded of him.
Greedily watching his hands, she continues to hold forth on the great
example set him.
“It was last Christmas Eve, just arter dark, the once that I was here
afore, when the young gentleman gave me the three-and-six.” Mr.
Datchery stops in his counting, finds he has counted wrong, shakes his
money together, and begins again.
“And the young gentleman’s name,” she adds, “was Edwin.”
Mr. Datchery drops some money, stoops to pick it up, and reddens with
the exertion as he asks:
“How do you know the young gentleman’s name?”
“I asked him for it, and he told it me. I only asked him the two
questions, what was his Chris’en name, and whether he’d a sweetheart?
And he answered, Edwin, and he hadn’t.”
Mr. Datchery pauses with the selected coins in his hand, rather as if
he were falling into a brown study of their value, and couldn’t bear to
part with them. The woman looks at him distrustfully, and with her
anger brewing for the event of his thinking better of the gift; but he
bestows it on her as if he were abstracting his mind from the
sacrifice, and with many servile thanks she goes her way.
John Jasper’s lamp is kindled, and his lighthouse is shining when Mr.
Datchery returns alone towards it. As mariners on a dangerous voyage,
approaching an iron-bound coast, may look along the beams of the
warning light to the haven lying beyond it that may never be reached,
so Mr. Datchery’s wistful gaze is directed to this beacon, and beyond.
His object in now revisiting his lodging is merely to put on the hat
which seems so superfluous an article in his wardrobe. It is half-past
ten by the Cathedral clock when he walks out into the Precincts again;
he lingers and looks about him, as though, the enchanted hour when Mr.
Durdles may be stoned home having struck, he had some expectation of
seeing the Imp who is appointed to the mission of stoning him.
In effect, that Power of Evil is abroad. Having nothing living to stone
at the moment, he is discovered by Mr. Datchery in the unholy office of
stoning the dead, through the railings of the churchyard. The Imp finds
this a relishing and piquing pursuit; firstly, because their
resting-place is announced to be sacred; and secondly, because the tall
headstones are sufficiently like themselves, on their beat in the dark,
to justify the delicious fancy that they are hurt when hit.
Mr. Datchery hails with him: “Halloa, Winks!”
He acknowledges the hail with: “Halloa, Dick!” Their acquaintance
seemingly having been established on a familiar footing.
“But, I say,” he remonstrates, “don’t yer go a-making my name public. I
never means to plead to no name, mind yer. When they says to me in the
Lock-up, a-going to put me down in the book, ‘What’s your name?’ I says
to them, ‘Find out.’ Likewise when they says, ‘What’s your religion?’ I
says, ‘Find out.’”
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 a-goin’ 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-and-cheese 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.