The Mystery of Edwin Drood (6 page)

 

   

 

  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.

 

  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.”