The Mystery of Edwin Drood
“It’ll come in to a eighth of a inch,” says Durdles. “Your servant, Mr.
Jasper. Hope I see you well.”
“How are you Durdles?”
“I’ve got a touch of the Tombatism on me, Mr. Jasper, but that I must
expect.”
“You mean the Rheumatism,” says Sapsea, in a sharp tone. (He is nettled
by having his composition so mechanically received.)
“No, I don’t. I mean, Mr. Sapsea, the Tombatism. It’s another sort from
Rheumatism. Mr. Jasper knows what Durdles means. You get among them
Tombs afore it’s well light on a winter morning, and keep on, as the
Catechism says, a-walking in the same all the days of your life, and
_you’ll_ know what Durdles means.”
“It is a bitter cold place,” Mr. Jasper assents, with an antipathetic
shiver.
“And if it’s bitter cold for you, up in the chancel, with a lot of live
breath smoking out about you, what the bitterness is to Durdles, down
in the crypt among the earthy damps there, and the dead breath of the
old ’uns,” returns that individual, “Durdles leaves you to judge.—Is
this to be put in hand at once, Mr. Sapsea?”
Mr. Sapsea, with an Author’s anxiety to rush into publication, replies
that it cannot be out of hand too soon.
“You had better let me have the key then,” says Durdles.
“Why, man, it is not to be put inside the monument!”
“Durdles knows where it’s to be put, Mr. Sapsea; no man better. Ask
’ere a man in Cloisterham whether Durdles knows his work.”
Mr. Sapsea rises, takes a key from a drawer, unlocks an iron safe let
into the wall, and takes from it another key.
“When Durdles puts a touch or a finish upon his work, no matter where,
inside or outside, Durdles likes to look at his work all round, and see
that his work is a-doing him credit,” Durdles explains, doggedly.
The key proffered him by the bereaved widower being a large one, he
slips his two-foot rule into a side-pocket of his flannel trousers made
for it, and deliberately opens his flannel coat, and opens the mouth of
a large breast-pocket within it before taking the key to place it in
that repository.
“Why, Durdles!” exclaims Jasper, looking on amused, “you are undermined
with pockets!”
“And I carries weight in ’em too, Mr. Jasper. Feel those!” producing
two other large keys.
“Hand me Mr. Sapsea’s likewise. Surely this is the heaviest of the
three.”
“You’ll find ’em much of a muchness, I expect,” says Durdles. “They all
belong to monuments. They all open Durdles’s work. Durdles keeps the
keys of his work mostly. Not that they’re much used.”
“By the bye,” it comes into Jasper’s mind to say, as he idly examines
the keys, “I have been going to ask you, many a day, and have always
forgotten. You know they sometimes call you Stony Durdles, don’t you?”
“Cloisterham knows me as Durdles, Mr. Jasper.”
“I am aware of that, of course. But the boys sometimes—”
“O! if you mind them young imps of boys—” Durdles gruffly interrupts.
“I don’t mind them any more than you do. But there was a discussion the
other day among the Choir, whether Stony stood for Tony;” clinking one
key against another.
(“Take care of the wards, Mr. Jasper.”)
“Or whether Stony stood for Stephen;” clinking with a change of keys.
(“You can’t make a pitch pipe of ’em, Mr. Jasper.”)
“Or whether the name comes from your trade. How stands the fact?”
Mr. Jasper weighs the three keys in his hand, lifts his head from his
idly stooping attitude over the fire, and delivers the keys to Durdles
with an ingenuous and friendly face.
But the stony one is a gruff one likewise, and that hazy state of his
is always an uncertain state, highly conscious of its dignity, and
prone to take offence. He drops his two keys back into his pocket one
by one, and buttons them up; he takes his dinner-bundle from the
chair-back on which he hung it when he came in; he distributes the
weight he carries, by tying the third key up in it, as though he were
an Ostrich, and liked to dine off cold iron; and he gets out of the
room, deigning no word of answer.
Mr. Sapsea then proposes a hit at backgammon, which, seasoned with his
own improving conversation, and terminating in a supper of cold roast
beef and salad, beguiles the golden evening until pretty late. Mr.
Sapsea’s wisdom being, in its delivery to mortals, rather of the
diffuse than the epigrammatic order, is by no means expended even then;
but his visitor intimates that he will come back for more of the
precious commodity on future occasions, and Mr. Sapsea lets him off for
the present, to ponder on the instalment he carries away.
CHAPTER V.
MR. DURDLES AND FRIEND
John Jasper, on his way home through the Close, is brought to a
stand-still by the spectacle of Stony Durdles, dinner-bundle and all,
leaning his back against the iron railing of the burial-ground
enclosing it from the old cloister-arches; and a hideous small boy in
rags flinging stones at him as a well-defined mark in the moonlight.
Sometimes the stones hit him, and sometimes they miss him, but Durdles
seems indifferent to either fortune. The hideous small boy, on the
contrary, whenever he hits Durdles, blows a whistle of triumph through
a jagged gap, convenient for the purpose, in the front of his mouth,
where half his teeth are wanting; and whenever he misses him, yelps out
“Mulled agin!” and tries to atone for the failure by taking a more
correct and vicious aim.
“What are you doing to the man?” demands Jasper, stepping out into the
moonlight from the shade.
“Making a cock-shy of him,” replies the hideous small boy.
“Give me those stones in your hand.”
“Yes, I’ll give ’em you down your throat, if you come a-ketching hold
of me,” says the small boy, shaking himself loose, and backing. “I’ll
smash your eye, if you don’t look out!”
“Baby-Devil that you are, what has the man done to you?”
“He won’t go home.”
“What is that to you?”
“He gives me a ’apenny to pelt him home if I ketches him out too late,”
says the boy. And then chants, like a little savage, half stumbling and
half dancing among the rags and laces of his dilapidated boots:—
“Widdy widdy wen!
I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—ten,
Widdy widdy wy!
Then—E—don’t—go—then—I—shy—
Widdy Widdy Wake-cock warning!”
—with a comprehensive sweep on the last word, and one more delivery at
Durdles.
This would seem to be a poetical note of preparation, agreed upon, as a
caution to Durdles to stand clear if he can, or to betake himself
homeward.
John Jasper invites the boy with a beck of his head to follow him
(feeling it hopeless to drag him, or coax him), and crosses to the iron
railing where the Stony (and stoned) One is profoundly meditating.
“Do you know this thing, this child?” asks Jasper, at a loss for a word
that will define this thing.
“Deputy,” says Durdles, with a nod.
“Is that its—his—name?”
“Deputy,” assents Durdles.
“I’m man-servant up at the Travellers’ Twopenny in Gas Works Garding,”
this thing explains. “All us man-servants at Travellers’ Lodgings is
named Deputy. When we’re chock full and the Travellers is all a-bed I
come out for my ’elth.” Then withdrawing into the road, and taking aim,
he resumes:—
“Widdy widdy wen!
I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—”
“Hold your hand,” cries Jasper, “and don’t throw while I stand so near
him, or I’ll kill you! Come, Durdles; let me walk home with you
to-night. Shall I carry your bundle?”
“Not on any account,” replies Durdles, adjusting it. “Durdles was
making his reflections here when you come up, sir, surrounded by his
works, like a poplar Author.—Your own brother-in-law;” introducing a
sarcophagus within the railing, white and cold in the moonlight. “Mrs.
Sapsea;” introducing the monument of that devoted wife. “Late
Incumbent;” introducing the Reverend Gentleman’s broken column.
“Departed Assessed Taxes;” introducing a vase and towel, standing on
what might represent the cake of soap. “Former pastrycook and
Muffin-maker, much respected;” introducing gravestone. “All safe and
sound here, sir, and all Durdles’s work. Of the common folk, that is
merely bundled up in turf and brambles, the less said the better. A
poor lot, soon forgot.”
“This creature, Deputy, is behind us,” says Jasper, looking back. “Is
he to follow us?”
The relations between Durdles and Deputy are of a capricious kind; for,
on Durdles’s turning himself about with the slow gravity of beery
suddenness, Deputy makes a pretty wide circuit into the road and stands
on the defensive.
“You never cried Widdy Warning before you begun to-night,” says
Durdles, unexpectedly reminded of, or imagining, an injury.
“Yer lie, I did,” says Deputy, in his only form of polite
contradiction.
“Own brother, sir,” observes Durdles, turning himself about again, and
as unexpectedly forgetting his offence as he had recalled or conceived
it; “own brother to Peter the Wild Boy! But I gave him an object in
life.”
“At which he takes aim?” Mr. Jasper suggests.
“That’s it, sir,” returns Durdles, quite satisfied; “at which he takes
aim. I took him in hand and gave him an object. What was he before? A
destroyer. What work did he do? Nothing but destruction. What did he
earn by it? Short terms in Cloisterham jail. Not a person, not a piece
of property, not a winder, not a horse, nor a dog, nor a cat, nor a
bird, nor a fowl, nor a pig, but what he stoned, for want of an
enlightened object. I put that enlightened object before him, and now
he can turn his honest halfpenny by the three penn’orth a week.”
“I wonder he has no competitors.”
“He has plenty, Mr. Jasper, but he stones ’em all away. Now, I don’t
know what this scheme of mine comes to,” pursues Durdles, considering
about it with the same sodden gravity; “I don’t know what you may
precisely call it. It ain’t a sort of a—scheme of a—National
Education?”
“I should say not,” replies Jasper.
“I should say not,” assents Durdles; “then we won’t try to give it a
name.”
“He still keeps behind us,” repeats Jasper, looking over his shoulder;
“is he to follow us?”
“We can’t help going round by the Travellers’ Twopenny, if we go the
short way, which is the back way,” Durdles answers, “and we’ll drop him
there.”
So they go on; Deputy, as a rear rank one, taking open order, and
invading the silence of the hour and place by stoning every wall, post,
pillar, and other inanimate object, by the deserted way.
“Is there anything new down in the crypt, Durdles?” asks John Jasper.
“Anything old, I think you mean,” growls Durdles. “It ain’t a spot for
novelty.”
“Any new discovery on your part, I meant.”
“There’s a old ’un under the seventh pillar on the left as you go down
the broken steps of the little underground chapel as formerly was; I
make him out (so fur as I’ve made him out yet) to be one of them old
’uns with a crook. To judge from the size of the passages in the walls,
and of the steps and doors, by which they come and went, them crooks
must have been a good deal in the way of the old ’uns! Two on ’em
meeting promiscuous must have hitched one another by the mitre pretty
often, I should say.”
Without any endeavour to correct the literality of this opinion, Jasper
surveys his companion—covered from head to foot with old mortar, lime,
and stone grit—as though he, Jasper, were getting imbued with a
romantic interest in his weird life.
“Yours is a curious existence.”
Without furnishing the least clue to the question, whether he receives
this as a compliment or as quite the reverse, Durdles gruffly answers:
“Yours is another.”
“Well! inasmuch as my lot is cast in the same old earthy, chilly,
never-changing place, Yes. But there is much more mystery and interest
in your connection with the Cathedral than in mine. Indeed, I am
beginning to have some idea of asking you to take me on as a sort of