The Mystery of Edwin Drood - 30

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 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, 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!’