The Mystery of Edwin Drood (45 page)

 

  “Really? A very remarkable way, Mr.
Sapsea, of acquiring a knowledge of men and things.”

 

  “I mention it, sir,” Mr. Sapsea rejoins,
with unspeakable complacency, “because, as I say, it don't do to boast of what
you are; but show how you came to be it, and then you prove it.”

 

  “Most interesting. We were to speak of
the late Mrs. Sapsea.”

 

  “We were, sir.” Mr. Sapsea fills both
glasses, and takes the decanter into safe keeping again. “Before I consult your
opinion as a man of taste on this little trifle”—holding it up—“which is BUT a
trifle, and still has required some thought, sir, some little fever of the
brow, I ought perhaps to describe the character of the late Mrs. Sapsea, now
dead three quarters of a year.”

 

  Mr. Jasper, in the act of yawning behind
his wineglass, puts down that screen and calls up a look of interest. It is a
little impaired in its expressiveness by his having a shut-up gape still to
dispose of, with watering eyes.

 

  “Half a dozen years ago, or so,” Mr.
Sapsea proceeds, “when I had enlarged my mind up to—I will not say to what it
now is, for that might seem to aim at too much, but up to the pitch of wanting
another mind to be absorbed in it—I cast my eye about me for a nuptial partner.
Because, as I say, it is not good for man to be alone.”

 

  Mr. Jasper appears to commit this
original idea to memory.

 

  “Miss Brobity at that time kept, I will
not call it the rival establishment to the establishment at the Nuns' House
opposite, but I will call it the other parallel establishment down town. The
world did have it that she showed a passion for attending my sales, when they
took place on half holidays, or in vacation time. The world did put it about,
that she admired my style. The world did notice that as time flowed by, my
style became traceable in the dictation-exercises of Miss Brobity's pupils.
Young man, a whisper even sprang up in obscure malignity, that one ignorant and
besotted Churl (a parent) so committed himself as to object to it by name. But
I do not believe this. For is it likely that any human creature in his right
senses would so lay himself open to be pointed at, by what I call the finger of
scorn?”

 

  Mr. Jasper shakes his head. Not in the
least likely. Mr. Sapsea, in a grandiloquent state of absence of mind, seems to
refill his visitor's glass, which is full already; and does really refill his
own, which is empty.

 

  “Miss Brobity's Being, young man, was
deeply imbued with homage to Mind. She revered Mind, when launched, or, as I
say, precipitated, on an extensive knowledge of the world. When I made my
proposal, she did me the honour to be so overshadowed with a species of Awe, as
to be able to articulate only the two words, “O Thou!” meaning myself. Her
limpid blue eyes were fixed upon me, her semitransparent hands were clasped together,
pallor overspread her aquiline features, and, though encouraged to proceed, she
never did proceed a word further. I disposed of the parallel establishment by
private contract, and we became as nearly one as could be expected under the
circumstances. But she never could, and she never did, find a phrase
satisfactory to her perhaps-too-favourable estimate of my intellect. To the
very last (feeble action of liver), she addressed me in the same unfinished
terms.”

 

  Mr. Jasper has closed his eyes as the
auctioneer has deepened his voice. He now abruptly opens them, and says, in
unison with the deepened voice “Ah!”—rather as if stopping himself on the
extreme verge of adding—“men!”

 

  “I have been since,” says Mr. Sapsea,
with his legs stretched out, and solemnly enjoying himself with the wine and
the fire, “what you behold me; I have been since a solitary mourner; I have
been since, as I say, wasting my evening conversation on the desert air. I will
not say that I have reproached myself; but there have been times when I have
asked myself the question: What if her husband had been nearer on a level with
her? If she had not had to look up quite so high, what might the stimulating
action have been upon the liver?”

 

  Mr. Jasper says, with an appearance of
having fallen into dreadfully low spirits, that he “supposes it was to be.”

 

  “We can only suppose so, sir,” Mr.
Sapsea coincides. “As I say, Man proposes, Heaven disposes. It may or may not
be putting the same thought in another form; but that is the way I put it.”

 

  Mr. Jasper murmurs assent.

 

  “And now, Mr. Jasper,” resumes the
auctioneer, producing his scrap of manuscript, “Mrs. Sapsea's monument having
had full time to settle and dry, let me take your opinion, as a man of taste,
on the inscription I have (as I before remarked, not without some little fever
of the brow) drawn out for it. Take it in your own hand. The setting out of the
lines requires to be followed with the eye, as well as the contents with the
mind.”

 

  Mr. Jasper complying, sees and reads as
follows:

 

   

 

  ETHELINDA, Reverential Wife of MR.
THOMAS SAPSEA, AUCTIONEER, VALUER, ESTATE AGENT, &c., OF THIS CITY. Whose
Knowledge of the World, Though somewhat extensive, Never brought him acquainted
with A SPIRIT More capable of LOOKING UP TO HIM. STRANGER, PAUSE And ask
thyself the Question, CANST THOU DO LIKEWISE? If Not, WITH A BLUSH RETIRE.

 

   

 

  Mr. Sapsea having risen and stationed
himself with his back to the fire, for the purpose of observing the effect of
these lines on the countenance of a man of taste, consequently has his face
towards the door, when his serving-maid, again appearing, announces, “Durdles
is come, sir!” He promptly draws forth and fills the third wineglass, as being
now claimed, and replies, “Show Durdles in.”

 

  “Admirable!” quoth Mr. Jasper, handing
back the paper.

 

  “You approve, sir?”

 

  “Impossible not to approve. Striking,
characteristic, and complete.”

 

  The auctioneer inclines his head, as one
accepting his due and giving a receipt; and invites the entering Durdles to
take off that glass of wine (handing the same), for it will warm him.

 

  Durdles is a stonemason; chiefly in the
gravestone, tomb, and monument way, and wholly of their colour from head to
foot. No man is better known in Cloisterham. He is the chartered libertine of
the place. Fame trumpets him a wonderful workman—which, for aught that anybody
knows, he may be (as he never works); and a wonderful sot—which everybody knows
he is. With the Cathedral crypt he is better acquainted than any living
authority; it may even be than any dead one. It is said that the intimacy of
this acquaintance began in his habitually resorting to that secret place, to
lock-out the Cloisterham boy-populace, and sleep off fumes of liquor: he having
ready access to the Cathedral, as contractor for rough repairs. Be this as it
may, he does know much about it, and, in the demolition of impedimental
fragments of wall, buttress, and pavement, has seen strange sights. He often
speaks of himself in the third person; perhaps, being a little misty as to his
own identity, when he narrates; perhaps impartially adopting the Cloisterham
nomenclature in reference to a character of acknowledged distinction. Thus he
will say, touching his strange sights: “Durdles come upon the old chap,” in
reference to a buried magnate of ancient time and high degree, “by striking
right into the coffin with his pick. The old chap gave Durdles a look with his
open eyes, as much as to say, “Is your name Durdles? Why, my man, I've been
waiting for you a devil of a time!” And then he turned to powder.” With a two-foot
rule always in his pocket, and a mason's hammer all but always in his hand,
Durdles goes continually sounding and tapping all about and about the
Cathedral; and whenever he says to Tope: “Tope, here's another old “un in
here!” Tope announces it to the Dean as an established discovery.

 

  In a suit of coarse flannel with horn
buttons, a yellow neckerchief with draggled ends, an old hat more
russet-coloured than black, and laced boots of the hue of his stony calling,
Durdles leads a hazy, gipsy sort of life, carrying his dinner about with him in
a small bundle, and sitting on all manner of tombstones to dine. This dinner of
Durdles's has become quite a Cloisterham institution: not only because of his
never appearing in public without it, but because of its having been, on
certain renowned occasions, taken into custody along with Durdles (as drunk and
incapable), and exhibited before the Bench of justices at the townhall. These
occasions, however, have been few and far apart: Durdles being as seldom drunk
as sober. For the rest, he is an old bachelor, and he lives in a little
antiquated hole of a house that was never finished: supposed to be built, so
far, of stones stolen from the city wall. To this abode there is an approach,
ankle-deep in stone chips, resembling a petrified grove of tombstones, urns,
draperies, and broken columns, in all stages of sculpture. Herein two
journeymen incessantly chip, while other two journeymen, who face each other,
incessantly saw stone; dipping as regularly in and out of their sheltering
sentry-boxes, as if they were mechanical figures emblematical of Time and
Death.

 

  To Durdles, when he had consumed his
glass of port, Mr. Sapsea intrusts that precious effort of his Muse. Durdles
unfeelingly takes out his two-foot rule, and measures the lines calmly,
alloying them with stone-grit.

 

  “This is for the monument, is it, Mr.
Sapsea?”

 

  “The Inscription. Yes.” Mr. Sapsea waits
for its effect on a common mind.

 

  “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.