The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens (red scrolls of magic .txt) 📕

Sleeping it off

“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!”

An observation addressed to the air, and yet it might be addressed to the passenger, so compliantly does he go on along the High Street until he comes to an arched gateway, at which he unexpectedly vanishes. The poor soul quickens her pace; is swift, and close upon him entering under the gateway; but only sees a postern staircase on one side of it, and on the other side an ancient vaulted room, in which a large-headed, gray-haired gentleman is writing, under the odd circumstances of sitting open to the thoroughfare and eyeing all who pass, as if he were toll-taker of the gateway: though the way is free.

“Halloa!” he cries in a low voice, seeing her brought to a stand-still: “who are you looking for?”

“There was a gentleman passed in here this minute, sir.”

“Of course there was. What do you want with him?”

“Where do he live, deary?”

“Live? Up that staircase.”

“Bless ye! Whisper. What’s his name, deary?”

“Surname Jasper, Christian name John. Mr. John Jasper.”

“Has he a calling, good gentleman?”

“Calling? Yes. Sings in the choir.”

“In the spire?”

“Choir.”

“What’s that?”

Mr. Datchery rises from his papers, and comes to his doorstep. “Do you know what a cathedral is?” he asks, jocosely.

The woman nods.

“What is it?”

She looks puzzled, casting about in her mind to find a definition, when it occurs to her that it is easier to point out the substantial object itself, massive against the dark-blue sky and the early stars.

“That’s the answer. Go in there at seven to-morrow morning, and you may see Mr. John Jasper, and hear him too.”

“Thank ye! Thank ye!”

The burst of triumph in which she thanks him does not escape the notice of the single buffer of an easy temper living idly on his means. He glances at her; clasps his hands behind him, as the wont of such buffers is; and lounges along the echoing Precincts at her side.

“Or,” he suggests, with a backward hitch of his head, “you can go up at once to Mr. Jasper’s rooms there.”

The woman eyes him with a cunning smile, and shakes her head.

“O! you don’t want to speak to him?”

She repeats her dumb reply, and forms with her lips a soundless “No.”

“You can admire him at a distance three times a day, whenever you like. It’s a long way to come for that, though.”

The woman looks up quickly. If Mr. Datchery thinks she is to be so induced to declare where she comes from, he is of a much easier temper than she is. But she acquits him of such an artful thought, as he lounges along, like the chartered bore of the city, with his uncovered gray hair blowing about, and his purposeless hands rattling the loose money in the pockets of his trousers.

The chink of the money has an attraction for her greedy ears. “Wouldn’t you help me to pay for my traveller’s lodging, dear gentleman, and to pay my way along? I am a poor soul, I am indeed, and troubled with a grievous cough.”

“You know the travellers’ lodging, I perceive, and are making directly for it,” is Mr. Datchery’s bland comment, still rattling his loose money. “Been here often, my good woman?”

“Once in all my life.”

“Ay, ay?”

They have arrived at the entrance to the Monks’ Vineyard. An appropriate remembrance, presenting an exemplary model for imitation, is revived in the woman’s mind by the sight of the place. She stops at the gate, and says energetically:

“By this token, though you mayn’t believe it, That a young gentleman gave me three-and-sixpence as I was coughing my breath away on this very grass. I asked him for three-and-sixpence, and he gave it me.”

“Wasn’t it a little cool to name your sum?” hints Mr. Datchery, still rattling. “Isn’t it customary to leave the amount open? Mightn’t it have had the appearance, to the young gentleman—only the appearance—that he was rather dictated to?”

“Look’ee here, deary,” she replies, in a confidential and persuasive tone, “I wanted the money to lay it out on a medicine as does me good, and as I deal in. I told the young gentleman so, and he gave it me, and I laid it out honest to the last brass farden. I want to lay out the same sum in the same way now; and if you’ll