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- Author: Charles Dickens
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The Mystery of Edwin Drood
by Charles Dickens
Contents
CHAPTER I. THE DAWN
CHAPTER II. A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO
CHAPTER III. THE NUNSâ HOUSE
CHAPTER IV. MR. SAPSEA
CHAPTER V. MR. DURDLES AND FRIEND
CHAPTER VI. PHILANTHROPY IN MINOR CANON CORNER
CHAPTER VII. MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE
CHAPTER VIII. DAGGERS DRAWN
CHAPTER IX. BIRDS IN THE BUSH
CHAPTER X. SMOOTHING THE WAY
CHAPTER XI. A PICTURE AND A RING
CHAPTER XII. A NIGHT WITH DURDLES
CHAPTER XIII. BOTH AT THEIR BEST
CHAPTER XIV. WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN?
CHAPTER XV. IMPEACHED
CHAPTER XVI. DEVOTED
CHAPTER XVII. PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL AND UNPROFESSIONAL
CHAPTER XVIII. A SETTLER IN CLOISTERHAM
CHAPTER XIX. SHADOW ON THE SUN-DIAL
CHAPTER XX. A FLIGHT
CHAPTER XXI. A RECOGNITION
CHAPTER XXII. A GRITTY STATE OF THINGS COMES ON
CHAPTER XXIII. THE DAWN AGAIN
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD
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Rochester castle
THE DAWN
An ancient English Cathedral Tower? How can the ancient English Cathedral tower be here! The well-known massive gray square tower of its old Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe it is set up by the Sultanâs orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers, one by one. It is so, for cymbals clash, and the Sultan goes by to his palace in long procession. Ten thousand scimitars flash in the sunlight, and thrice ten thousand dancing-girls strew flowers. Then, follow white elephants caparisoned in countless gorgeous colours, and infinite in number and attendants. Still the Cathedral Tower rises in the background, where it cannot be, and still no writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay! Is the spike so low a thing as the rusty spike on the top of a post of an old bedstead that has tumbled all awry? Some vague period of drowsy laughter must be devoted to the consideration of this possibility.
Shaking from head to foot, the man whose scattered consciousness has thus fantastically pieced itself together, at length rises, supports his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He is in the meanest and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged window-curtain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable court. He lies, dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed given way under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and also across the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman. The two first are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to kindle it. And as she blows, and shading it with her lean hand, concentrates its red spark of light, it serves in the dim morning as a lamp to show him what he sees of her.
âAnother?â says this woman, in a querulous, rattling whisper. âHave another?â
He looks about him, with his hand to his forehead.
âYeâve smoked as many as five since ye come in at midnight,â the woman goes on, as she chronically complains. âPoor me, poor me, my head is so bad. Them two come in after ye. Ah, poor me, the business is slack, is slack! Few Chinamen about the Docks, and fewer Lascars, and no ships coming in, these say! Hereâs another ready for ye, deary. Yeâll remember like a good soul, wonât ye, that the market price is dreffle high just now? More nor three shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful! And yeâll remember that nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman tâother side the court; but he canât do it as well as me) has the true secret of mixing it? Yeâll pay up accordingly, deary, wonât ye?â
She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, occasionally bubbling at it, inhales much of its contents.
âO me, O me, my lungs is weak, my lungs is bad! Itâs nearly ready for ye, deary. Ah, poor me, poor me, my poor hand shakes like to drop off! I see ye coming-to, and I ses to my poor self, âIâll have another ready for him, and heâll bear in mind the market price of opium, and pay according.â O my poor head! I makes my pipes of old penny ink-bottles, ye see, dearyâthis is oneâand I fits-in a mouthpiece, this way, and I takes my mixter out of this thimble with this little horn spoon; and so I fills, deary. Ah, my poor nerves! I got Heavens-hard drunk for sixteen year afore I took to this; but this donât hurt me, not to speak of. And it takes away the hunger as well as wittles, deary.â
She hands him the nearly-emptied pipe, and sinks back, turning over on her face.
He rises unsteadily from the bed, lays the pipe upon the hearth-stone, draws back the ragged curtain, and looks with repugnance at his three companions. He notices that the woman has opium-smoked herself into a strange likeness of the Chinaman. His form of cheek, eye, and temple, and his colour, are repeated in her. Said Chinaman convulsively wrestles with one of his many Gods or Devils, perhaps, and snarls horribly. The Lascar laughs and dribbles at the mouth. The hostess is still.
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In the Court
âWhat visions can she have?â the waking man muses, as he turns her face towards him, and stands looking down at it. âVisions of many butchersâ shops, and public-houses, and much credit? Of an increase of hideous customers, and this horrible bedstead set upright again, and this horrible court swept clean? What can she rise to, under any quantity of opium, higher than that!âEh?â
He bends down his ear, to listen to her mutterings.
âUnintelligible!â
As he watches the spasmodic shoots and darts that break out of her face and limbs, like fitful lightning out of a dark sky, some contagion in them seizes upon him: insomuch that he has to withdraw himself to a lean arm-chair by the hearthâplaced there, perhaps, for such emergenciesâand to sit in it, holding tight, until he has got the better of this unclean spirit of imitation.
Then he comes back, pounces on the Chinaman, and seizing him with both hands by the throat, turns him violently on the bed. The Chinaman clutches the aggressive hands, resists, gasps, and protests.
âWhat do you say?â
A watchful pause.
âUnintelligible!â
Slowly loosening his grasp as he listens to the incoherent jargon with an attentive frown, he turns to the Lascar and fairly drags him forth upon the floor. As he falls, the Lascar starts into a half-risen attitude, glares with his eyes, lashes about him fiercely with his arms, and draws a phantom knife. It then becomes apparent that the woman has taken possession of this knife, for safetyâs sake; for, she too starting up, and restraining and expostulating with him, the knife is visible in her dress, not in his, when they drowsily drop back, side by side.
There has been chattering and clattering enough between them, but to no purpose. When any distinct word has been flung into the air, it has had no sense or sequence. Wherefore âunintelligible!â is again the comment of the watcher, made with some reassured nodding of his head, and a gloomy smile. He then lays certain silver money on the table, finds his hat, gropes his way down the broken stairs, gives a good morning to some rat-ridden doorkeeper, in bed in a black hutch beneath the stairs, and passes out.
That same afternoon, the massive gray square tower of an old Cathedral rises before the sight of a jaded traveller. The bells are going for daily vesper service, and he must needs attend it, one would say, from his haste to reach the open Cathedral door. The choir are getting on their sullied white robes, in a hurry, when he arrives among them, gets on his own robe, and falls into the procession filing in to service. Then, the Sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divide the sanctuary from the chancel, and all of the procession having scuttled into their places, hide their faces; and then the intoned words, âWHEN THE WICKED MANââ rise among groins of arches and beams of roof, awakening muttered thunder.
A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO
Whosoever has observed that sedate and clerical bird, the rook, may perhaps have noticed that when he wings his way homeward towards nightfall, in a sedate and clerical company, two rooks will suddenly detach themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight for some distance, and will there poise and linger; conveying to mere men the fancy that it is of some occult importance to the body politic, that this artful couple should pretend to have renounced connection with it.
Similarly, service being over in the old Cathedral with the square tower, and the choir scuffling out again, and divers venerable persons of rook-like aspect dispersing, two of these latter retrace their steps, and walk together in the echoing Close.
Not only is the day waning, but the year. The low sun is fiery and yet cold behind the monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the Cathedral wall has showered half its deep-red leaves down on the pavement. There has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes among the little pools on the cracked, uneven flag-stones, and through the giant elm-trees as they shed a gust of tears. Their fallen leaves lie strewn thickly about. Some of these leaves, in a timid rush, seek sanctuary within the low arched Cathedral door; but two men coming out resist them, and cast them forth again with their feet; this done, one of the two locks the door with a goodly key, and the other flits away with a folio music-book.
âMr. Jasper was that, Tope?â
âYes, Mr. Dean.â
âHe has stayed late.â
âYes, Mr. Dean. I have stayed for him, your Reverence. He has been took a little poorly.â
âSay âtaken,â Topeâto the Dean,â the younger rook interposes in a low tone with this touch of correction, as who should say: âYou may offer bad grammar to the laity, or the humbler clergy, not to the Dean.â
Mr. Tope, Chief Verger and Showman, and accustomed to be high with excursion parties, declines with a silent loftiness to perceive that any suggestion has been tendered to him.
âAnd when and how has Mr. Jasper been takenâfor, as Mr. Crisparkle has remarked, it is better to say takenâtakenââ repeats the Dean; âwhen and how has Mr. Jasper been Takenââ
âTaken, sir,â Tope deferentially murmurs.
ââPoorly, Tope?â
âWhy, sir, Mr. Jasper was that breathedââ
âI wouldnât say âThat breathed,â Tope,â Mr. Crisparkle interposes with the same touch as before. âNot Englishâto the Dean.â
âBreathed to that extent,â the Dean (not unflattered by this indirect homage) condescendingly remarks, âwould be preferable.â
âMr. Jasperâs breathing was so remarkably shortââthus discreetly does Mr. Tope work his way round the sunken rockââwhen he came in, that it distressed him mightily to get his notes out: which was perhaps the cause of his having a kind of fit on him after a little. His memory grew DAZED.â Mr. Tope, with his eyes on the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle, shoots this word out, as defying him to improve upon it: âand a dimness and giddiness crept over him as strange as ever I saw: though he didnât seem to mind it particularly, himself. However, a little time and a little water brought him out of his DAZE.â Mr. Tope repeats the word and its emphasis, with the air of saying: âAs I have made a success, Iâll make it again.â
âAnd Mr. Jasper has gone home quite himself, has he?â asked the Dean.
âYour Reverence, he has gone home quite himself. And Iâm glad to see heâs having his fire kindled up, for itâs chilly after the wet, and the Cathedral had both a damp feel and a damp touch this afternoon, and he was very shivery.â
They all three look towards an old stone gatehouse crossing the Close, with an arched thoroughfare passing beneath it. Through its latticed window, a fire shines out upon the fast-darkening scene, involving in shadow the pendent masses of ivy and creeper covering the buildingâs front. As the deep Cathedral-bell strikes the hour, a ripple of wind goes through these at their distance, like a ripple of the solemn sound that hums through tomb and tower, broken niche and defaced statue, in the pile close at hand.
âIs Mr. Jasperâs nephew with him?â the Dean asks.
âNo, sir,â replied the
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