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Authors: Charles Dickens,Matthew Pearl

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  Disarmed by this glimpse of a woman's
nature in the spoilt child, though for an instant disposed to resent it as seeming
to involve the enforced infliction of himself upon her, Edwin Drood stands
watching her as she childishly cries and sobs, with both hands to the
handkerchief at her eyes, and then—she becoming more composed, and indeed beginning
in her young inconstancy to laugh at herself for having been so moved—leads her
to a seat hard by, under the elm-trees.

 

  “One clear word of understanding, Pussy
dear. I am not clever out of my own line—now I come to think of it, I don't
know that I am particularly clever in it—but I want to do right. There is
not—there may be—I really don't see my way to what I want to say, but I must
say it before we part—there is not any other young—”

 

  “O no, Eddy! It's generous of you to ask
me; but no, no, no!”

 

  They have come very near to the
Cathedral windows, and at this moment the organ and the choir sound out
sublimely. As they sit listening to the solemn swell, the confidence of last
night rises in young Edwin Drood's mind, and he thinks how unlike this music is
to that discordance.

 

  “I fancy I can distinguish Jack's
voice,” is his remark in a low tone in connection with the train of thought.

 

  “Take me back at once, please,” urges
his Affianced, quickly laying her light hand upon his wrist. “They will all be
coming out directly; let us get away. O, what a resounding chord! But don't let
us stop to listen to it; let us get away!”

 

  Her hurry is over as soon as they have
passed out of the Close. They go arm-in-arm now, gravely and deliberately
enough, along the old High-street, to the Nuns' House. At the gate, the street
being within sight empty, Edwin bends down his face to Rosebud's.

 

  She remonstrates, laughing, and is a
childish schoolgirl again.

 

  “Eddy, no! I'm too sticky to be kissed.
But give me your hand, and I'll blow a kiss into that.”

 

  He does so. She breathes a light breath
into it and asks, retaining it and looking into it:—

 

  “Now say, what do you see?”

 

  “See, Rosa?”

 

  “Why, I thought you Egyptian boys could
look into a hand and see all sorts of phantoms. Can't you see a happy Future?”

 

  For certain, neither of them sees a
happy Present, as the gate opens and closes, and one goes in, and the other
goes away.

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER IV—MR. SAPSEA

 

   

 

  ACCEPTING the Jackass as the type of
self-sufficient stupidity and conceit—a custom, perhaps, like some few other customs,
more conventional than fair—then the purest jackass in Cloisterham is Mr.
Thomas Sapsea, Auctioneer.

 

  Mr. Sapsea “dresses at” the Dean; has
been bowed to for the Dean, in mistake; has even been spoken to in the street
as My Lord, under the impression that he was the Bishop come down unexpectedly,
without his chaplain. Mr. Sapsea is very proud of this, and of his voice, and
of his style. He has even (in selling landed property) tried the experiment of
slightly intoning in his pulpit, to make himself more like what he takes to be
the genuine ecclesiastical article. So, in ending a Sale by Public Auction, Mr.
Sapsea finishes off with an air of bestowing a benediction on the assembled
brokers, which leaves the real Dean—a modest and worthy gentleman—far behind.

 

  Mr. Sapsea has many admirers; indeed,
the proposition is carried by a large local majority, even including
non-believers in his wisdom, that he is a credit to Cloisterham. He possesses
the great qualities of being portentous and dull, and of having a roll in his
speech, and another roll in his gait; not to mention a certain gravely flowing
action with his hands, as if he were presently going to Confirm the individual
with whom he holds discourse. Much nearer sixty years of age than fifty, with a
flowing outline of stomach, and horizontal creases in his waistcoat; reputed to
be rich; voting at elections in the strictly respectable interest; morally
satisfied that nothing but he himself has grown since he was a baby; how can
dunder-headed Mr. Sapsea be otherwise than a credit to Cloisterham, and
society?

 

  Mr. Sapsea's premises are in the
High-street, over against the Nuns' House. They are of about the period of the
Nuns' House, irregularly modernised here and there, as steadily deteriorating
generations found, more and more, that they preferred air and light to Fever
and the Plague. Over the doorway is a wooden effigy, about half life-size, representing
Mr. Sapsea's father, in a curly wig and toga, in the act of selling. The
chastity of the idea, and the natural appearance of the little finger, hammer,
and pulpit, have been much admired.

 

  Mr. Sapsea sits in his dull ground-floor
sitting-room, giving first on his paved back yard; and then on his railed-off
garden. Mr. Sapsea has a bottle of port wine on a table before the fire—the
fire is an early luxury, but pleasant on the cool, chilly autumn evening—and is
characteristically attended by his portrait, his eight-day clock, and his
weather-glass. Characteristically, because he would uphold himself against mankind,
his weather-glass against weather, and his clock against time.

 

  By Mr. Sapsea's side on the table are a
writing-desk and writing materials. Glancing at a scrap of manuscript, Mr.
Sapsea reads it to himself with a lofty air, and then, slowly pacing the room
with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, repeats it from memory: so
internally, though with much dignity, that the word “Ethelinda” is alone
audible.

 

  There are three clean wineglasses in a
tray on the table. His serving-maid entering, and announcing “Mr. Jasper is
come, sir,” Mr. Sapsea waves “Admit him,” and draws two wineglasses from the
rank, as being claimed.

 

  “Glad to see you, sir. I congratulate
myself on having the honour of receiving you here for the first time.” Mr.
Sapsea does the honours of his house in this wise.

 

  “You are very good. The honour is mine
and the self-congratulation is mine.”

 

  “You are pleased to say so, sir. But I
do assure you that it is a satisfaction to me to receive you in my humble home.
And that is what I would not say to everybody.” Ineffable loftiness on Mr.
Sapsea's part accompanies these words, as leaving the sentence to be
understood: “You will not easily believe that your society can be a
satisfaction to a man like myself; nevertheless, it is.”

 

  “I have for some time desired to know
you, Mr. Sapsea.”

 

  “And I, sir, have long known you by
reputation as a man of taste. Let me fill your glass. I will give you, sir,”
says Mr. Sapsea, filling his own:

 

   

 

  “When the French come over, May we meet
them at Dover!”

 

   

 

  This was a patriotic toast in Mr.
Sapsea's infancy, and he is therefore fully convinced of its being appropriate
to any subsequent era.

 

  “You can scarcely be ignorant, Mr.
Sapsea,” observes Jasper, watching the auctioneer with a smile as the latter
stretches out his legs before the fire, “that you know the world.”

 

  “Well, sir,” is the chuckling reply, “I
think I know something of it; something of it.”

 

  “Your reputation for that knowledge has
always interested and surprised me, and made me wish to know you. For Cloisterham
is a little place. Cooped up in it myself, I know nothing beyond it, and feel
it to be a very little place.”

 

  “If I have not gone to foreign
countries, young man,” Mr. Sapsea begins, and then stops:'You will excuse me
calling you young man, Mr. Jasper? You are much my junior.”

 

  “By all means.”

 

  “If I have not gone to foreign
countries, young man, foreign countries have come to me. They have come to me
in the way of business, and I have improved upon my opportunities. Put it that
I take an inventory, or make a catalogue. I see a French clock. I never saw him
before, in my life, but I instantly lay my finger on him and say “Paris!” I see
some cups and saucers of Chinese make, equally strangers to me personally: I
put my finger on them, then and there, and I say “Pekin, Nankin, and Canton.”
It is the same with Japan, with Egypt, and with bamboo and sandalwood from the
East Indies; I put my finger on them all. I have put my finger on the North
Pole before now, and said “Spear of Esquimaux make, for half a pint of pale
sherry!"”

 

  “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.
BOOK: The Mystery of Edwin Drood
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