The Mystery of Edwin Drood (60 page)

 

  Once again, an unaccountable expedition
this! Jasper (always moving softly with no visible reason) contemplates the
scene, and especially that stillest part of it which the Cathedral overshadows.
But he contemplates Durdles quite as curiously, and Durdles is by times
conscious of his watchful eyes.

 

  Only by times, because Durdles is
growing drowsy. As aeronauts lighten the load they carry, when they wish to
rise, similarly Durdles has lightened the wicker bottle in coming up. Snatches
of sleep surprise him on his legs, and stop him in his talk. A mild fit of calenture
seizes him, in which he deems that the ground so far below, is on a level with
the tower, and would as lief walk off the tower into the air as not. Such is
his state when they begin to come down. And as aeronauts make themselves
heavier when they wish to descend, similarly Durdles charges himself with more
liquid from the wicker bottle, that he may come down the better.

 

  The iron gate attained and locked—but
not before Durdles has tumbled twice, and cut an eyebrow open once—they descend
into the crypt again, with the intent of issuing forth as they entered. But,
while returning among those lanes of light, Durdles becomes so very uncertain,
both of foot and speech, that he half drops, half throws himself down, by one
of the heavy pillars, scarcely less heavy than itself, and indistinctly appeals
to his companion for forty winks of a second each.

 

  “If you will have it so, or must have it
so,” replies Jasper, “I'll not leave you here. Take them, while I walk to and
fro.”

 

  Durdles is asleep at once; and in his
sleep he dreams a dream.

 

  It is not much of a dream, considering
the vast extent of the domains of dreamland, and their wonderful productions;
it is only remarkable for being unusually restless and unusually real. He
dreams of lying there, asleep, and yet counting his companion's footsteps as he
walks to and fro. He dreams that the footsteps die away into distance of time
and of space, and that something touches him, and that something falls from his
hand. Then something clinks and gropes about, and he dreams that he is alone
for so long a time, that the lanes of light take new directions as the moon
advances in her course. From succeeding unconsciousness he passes into a dream
of slow uneasiness from cold; and painfully awakes to a perception of the lanes
of light—really changed, much as he had dreamed—and Jasper walking among them,
beating his hands and feet.

 

  “Holloa!” Durdles cries out, unmeaningly
alarmed.

 

  “Awake at last?” says Jasper, coming up
to him. “Do you know that your forties have stretched into thousands?”

 

  “No.”

 

  “They have though.”

 

  “What's the time?”

 

  “Hark! The bells are going in the
Tower!”

 

  They strike four quarters, and then the
great bell strikes.

 

  “Two!” cries Durdles, scrambling up;
“why didn't you try to wake me, Mister Jarsper?”

 

  “I did. I might as well have tried to
wake the dead—your own family of dead, up in the corner there.”

 

  “Did you touch me?”

 

  “Touch you! Yes. Shook you.”

 

  As Durdles recalls that touching
something in his dream, he looks down on the pavement, and sees the key of the
crypt door lying close to where he himself lay.

 

  “I dropped you, did I?” he says, picking
it up, and recalling that part of his dream. As he gathers himself up again
into an upright position, or into a position as nearly upright as he ever
maintains, he is again conscious of being watched by his companion.

 

  “Well?” says Jasper, smiling, “are you
quite ready? Pray don't hurry.”

 

  “Let me get my bundle right, Mister
Jarsper, and I'm with you.” As he ties it afresh, he is once more conscious
that he is very narrowly observed.

 

  “What do you suspect me of, Mister
Jarsper?” he asks, with drunken displeasure. “Let them as has any suspicions of
Durdles name “em.”

 

  “I've no suspicions of you, my good Mr.
Durdles; but I have suspicions that my bottle was filled with something stiffer
than either of us supposed. And I also have suspicions,” Jasper adds, taking it
from the pavement and turning it bottom upwards, “that it's empty.”

 

  Durdles condescends to laugh at this.
Continuing to chuckle when his laugh is over, as though remonstrant with
himself on his drinking powers, he rolls to the door and unlocks it. They both
pass out, and Durdles relocks it, and pockets his key.

 

  “A thousand thanks for a curious and
interesting night,” says Jasper, giving him his hand; “you can make your own
way home?”

 

  “I should think so!” answers Durdles.
“If you was to offer Durdles the affront to show him his way home, he wouldn't
go home.

 

   

 

  Durdles wouldn't go home till morning;
And THEN Durdles wouldn't go home,

 

   

 

  Durdles wouldn't.” This with the utmost
defiance.

 

  “Good-night, then.”

 

  “Good-night, Mister Jarsper.”

 

  Each is turning his own way, when a
sharp whistle rends the silence, and the jargon is yelped out:

 

   

 

  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!”

 

   

 

  Instantly afterwards, a rapid fire of
stones rattles at the Cathedral wall, and the hideous small boy is beheld
opposite, dancing in the moonlight.

 

  “What! Is that baby-devil on the watch
there!” cries Jasper in a fury: so quickly roused, and so violent, that he
seems an older devil himself. “I shall shed the blood of that impish wretch! I
know I shall do it!” Regardless of the fire, though it hits him more than once,
he rushes at Deputy, collars him, and tries to bring him across. But Deputy is
not to be so easily brought across. With a diabolical insight into the
strongest part of his position, he is no sooner taken by the throat than he
curls up his legs, forces his assailant to hang him, as it were, and gurgles in
his throat, and screws his body, and twists, as already undergoing the first
agonies of strangulation. There is nothing for it but to drop him. He instantly
gets himself together, backs over to Durdles, and cries to his assailant, gnashing
the great gap in front of his mouth with rage and malice:

 

  “I'll blind yer, s'elp me! I'll stone
yer eyes out, s'elp me! If I don't have yer eyesight, bellows me!” At the same
time dodging behind Durdles, and snarling at Jasper, now from this side of him,
and now from that: prepared, if pounced upon, to dart away in all manner of
curvilinear directions, and, if run down after all, to grovel in the dust, and
cry: “Now, hit me when I'm down! Do it!”

 

  “Don't hurt the boy, Mister Jarsper,”
urges Durdles, shielding him. “Recollect yourself.”

 

  “He followed us to-night, when we first
came here!”

 

  “Yer lie, I didn't!” replies Deputy, in
his one form of polite contradiction.

 

  “He has been prowling near us ever
since!”

 

  “Yer lie, I haven't,” returns Deputy.
“I'd only jist come out for my “elth when I see you two a-coming out of the
Kin-freederel. If

 

   

 

  I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—ten!”

 

   

 

  (with the usual rhythm and dance, though
dodging behind Durdles), “it ain't ANY fault, is it?”

 

  “Take him home, then,” retorts Jasper,
ferociously, though with a strong check upon himself, “and let my eyes be rid
of the sight of you!”

 

  Deputy, with another sharp whistle, at
once expressing his relief, and his commencement of a milder stoning of Mr.
Durdles, begins stoning that respectable gentleman home, as if he were a
reluctant ox. Mr. Jasper goes to his gatehouse, brooding. And thus, as
everything comes to an end, the unaccountable expedition comes to an end—for
the time.

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER XIII—BOTH AT THEIR BEST

 

   

 

  MISS TWINKLETON'S establishment was
about to undergo a serene hush. The Christmas recess was at hand. What had
once, and at no remote period, been called, even by the erudite Miss Twinkleton
herself, “the half;” but what was now called, as being more elegant, and more
strictly collegiate, “the term,” would expire to-morrow. A noticeable
relaxation of discipline had for some few days pervaded the Nuns' House. Club
suppers had occurred in the bedrooms, and a dressed tongue had been carved with
a pair of scissors, and handed round with the curling tongs. Portions of
marmalade had likewise been distributed on a service of plates constructed of
curlpaper; and cowslip wine had been quaffed from the small squat measuring
glass in which little Rickitts (a junior of weakly constitution) took her steel
drops daily. The housemaids had been bribed with various fragments of riband,
and sundry pairs of shoes more or less down at heel, to make no mention of
crumbs in the beds; the airiest costumes had been worn on these festive occasions;
and the daring Miss Ferdinand had even surprised the company with a sprightly
solo on the comb-and-curlpaper, until suffocated in her own pillow by two
flowing-haired executioners.

 

  Nor were these the only tokens of
dispersal. Boxes appeared in the bedrooms (where they were capital at other
times), and a surprising amount of packing took place, out of all proportion to
the amount packed. Largess, in the form of odds and ends of cold cream and
pomatum, and also of hairpins, was freely distributed among the attendants. On
charges of inviolable secrecy, confidences were interchanged respecting golden
youth of England expected to call, “at home,” on the first opportunity. Miss
Giggles (deficient in sentiment) did indeed profess that she, for her part,
acknowledged such homage by making faces at the golden youth; but this young
lady was outvoted by an immense majority.

 

  On the last night before a recess, it
was always expressly made a point of honour that nobody should go to sleep, and
that Ghosts should be encouraged by all possible means. This compact invariably
broke down, and all the young ladies went to sleep very soon, and got up very
early.

 

  The concluding ceremony came off at
twelve o'clock on the day of departure; when Miss Twinkleton, supported by Mrs.
Tisher, held a drawing-room in her own apartment (the globes already covered
with brown Holland), where glasses of white-wine and plates of cut pound-cake
were discovered on the table. Miss Twinkleton then said: Ladies, another
revolving year had brought us round to that festive period at which the first
feelings of our nature bounded in our—Miss Twinkleton was annually going to add
“bosoms,” but annually stopped on the brink of that expression, and substituted
“hearts.” Hearts; our hearts. Hem! Again a revolving year, ladies, had brought
us to a pause in our studies—let us hope our greatly advanced studies—and, like
the mariner in his bark, the warrior in his tent, the captive in his dungeon,
and the traveller in his various conveyances, we yearned for home. Did we say,
on such an occasion, in the opening words of Mr. Addison's impressive tragedy:

 

   

 

  “The dawn is overcast, the morning
lowers, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, th” important
day—?”

 

   

 

  Not so. From horizon to zenith all was
COULEUR DE ROSE, for all was redolent of our relations and friends. Might WE
find THEM prospering as WE expected; might THEY find US prospering as THEY
expected! Ladies, we would now, with our love to one another, wish one another
good-bye, and happiness, until we met again. And when the time should come for
our resumption of those pursuits which (here a general depression set in all
round), pursuits which, pursuits which;—then let us ever remember what was said
by the Spartan General, in words too trite for repetition, at the battle it
were superfluous to specify.

 

  The handmaidens of the establishment, in
their best caps, then handed the trays, and the young ladies sipped and
crumbled, and the bespoken coaches began to choke the street. Then leave-taking
was not long about; and Miss Twinkleton, in saluting each young lady's cheek,
confided to her an exceedingly neat letter, addressed to her next friend at
law, “with Miss Twinkleton's best compliments” in the corner. This missive she
handed with an air as if it had not the least connexion with the bill, but were
something in the nature of a delicate and joyful surprise.

 

  So many times had Rosa seen such
dispersals, and so very little did she know of any other Home, that she was
contented to remain where she was, and was even better contented than ever
before, having her latest friend with her. And yet her latest friendship had a
blank place in it of which she could not fail to be sensible. Helena Landless,
having been a party to her brother's revelation about Rosa, and having entered
into that compact of silence with Mr. Crisparkle, shrank from any allusion to
Edwin Drood's name. Why she so avoided it, was mysterious to Rosa, but she
perfectly perceived the fact. But for the fact, she might have relieved her own
little perplexed heart of some of its doubts and hesitations, by taking Helena
into her confidence. As it was, she had no such vent: she could only ponder on
her own difficulties, and wonder more and more why this avoidance of Edwin's
name should last, now that she knew—for so much Helena had told her—that a good
understanding was to be reestablished between the two young men, when Edwin
came down.

 

  It would have made a pretty picture, so
many pretty girls kissing Rosa in the cold porch of the Nuns' House, and that
sunny little creature peeping out of it (unconscious of sly faces carved on
spout and gable peeping at her), and waving farewells to the departing coaches,
as if she represented the spirit of rosy youth abiding in the place to keep it
bright and warm in its desertion. The hoarse High Street became musical with
the cry, in various silvery voices, “Good-bye, Rosebud darling!” and the effigy
of Mr. Sapsea's father over the opposite doorway seemed to say to mankind:
“Gentlemen, favour me with your attention to this charming little last lot left
behind, and bid with a spirit worthy of the occasion!” Then the staid street,
so unwontedly sparkling, youthful, and fresh for a few rippling moments, ran
dry, and Cloisterham was itself again.