The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens (digital ebook reader txt) đ
- Author: Charles Dickens
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âOwn brother, sir,â observes Durdles, turning himself about again, and as unexpectedly forgetting his offence as he had recalled or conceived it; âown brother to Peter the Wild Boy! But I gave him an object in life.â
âAt which he takes aim?â Mr. Jasper suggests.
âThatâs it, sir,â returns Durdles, quite satisfied; âat which he takes aim. I took him in hand and gave him an object. What was he before? A destroyer. What work did he do? Nothing but destruction. What did he earn by it? Short terms in Cloisterham jail. Not a person, not a piece of property, not a winder, not a horse, nor a dog, nor a cat, nor a bird, nor a fowl, nor a pig, but what he stoned, for want of an enlightened object. I put that enlightened object before him, and now he can turn his honest halfpenny by the three pennâorth a week.â
âI wonder he has no competitors.â
âHe has plenty, Mr. Jasper, but he stones âem all away. Now, I donât know what this scheme of mine comes to,â pursues Durdles, considering about it with the same sodden gravity; âI donât know what you may precisely call it. It ainât a sort of aâscheme of a- -National Education?â
âI should say not,â replies Jasper.
âI should say not,â assents Durdles; âthen we wonât try to give it a name.â
âHe still keeps behind us,â repeats Jasper, looking over his shoulder; âis he to follow us?â
âWe canât help going round by the Travellersâ Twopenny, if we go the short way, which is the back way,â Durdles answers, âand weâll drop him there.â
So they go on; Deputy, as a rear rank one, taking open order, and invading the silence of the hour and place by stoning every wall, post, pillar, and other inanimate object, by the deserted way.
âIs there anything new down in the crypt, Durdles?â asks John Jasper.
âAnything old, I think you mean,â growls Durdles. âIt ainât a spot for novelty.â
âAny new discovery on your part, I meant.â
âThereâs a old âun under the seventh pillar on the left as you go down the broken steps of the little underground chapel as formerly was; I make him out (so fur as Iâve made him out yet) to be one of them old âuns with a crook. To judge from the size of the passages in the walls, and of the steps and doors, by which they come and went, them crooks must have been a good deal in the way of the old âuns! Two on âem meeting promiscuous must have hitched one another by the mitre pretty often, I should say.â
Without any endeavour to correct the literality of this opinion, Jasper surveys his companionâcovered from head to foot with old mortar, lime, and stone gritâas though he, Jasper, were getting imbued with a romantic interest in his weird life.
âYours is a curious existence.â
Without furnishing the least clue to the question, whether he receives this as a compliment or as quite the reverse, Durdles gruffly answers: âYours is another.â
âWell! inasmuch as my lot is cast in the same old earthy, chilly, never-changing place, Yes. But there is much more mystery and interest in your connection with the Cathedral than in mine. Indeed, I am beginning to have some idea of asking you to take me on as a sort of student, or free âprentice, under you, and to let me go about with you sometimes, and see some of these odd nooks in which you pass your days.â
The Stony One replies, in a general way, âAll right. Everybody knows where to find Durdles, when heâs wanted.â Which, if not strictly true, is approximately so, if taken to express that Durdles may always be found in a state of vagabondage somewhere.
âWhat I dwell upon most,â says Jasper, pursuing his subject of romantic interest, âis the remarkable accuracy with which you would seem to find out where people are buried.âWhat is the matter? That bundle is in your way; let me hold it.â
Durdles has stopped and backed a little (Deputy, attentive to all his movements, immediately skirmishing into the road), and was looking about for some ledge or corner to place his bundle on, when thus relieved of it.
âJust you give me my hammer out of that,â says Durdles, âand Iâll show you.â
Clink, clink. And his hammer is handed him.
âNow, lookee here. You pitch your note, donât you, Mr. Jasper?â
âYes.â
âSo I sound for mine. I take my hammer, and I tap.â (Here he strikes the pavement, and the attentive Deputy skirmishes at a rather wider range, as supposing that his head may be in requisition.) âI tap, tap, tap. Solid! I go on tapping. Solid still! Tap again. Holloa! Hollow! Tap again, persevering. Solid in hollow! Tap, tap, tap, to try it better. Solid in hollow; and inside solid, hollow again! There you are! Old âun crumbled away in stone coffin, in vault!â
âAstonishing!â
âI have even done this,â says Durdles, drawing out his two-foot rule (Deputy meanwhile skirmishing nearer, as suspecting that Treasure may be about to be discovered, which may somehow lead to his own enrichment, and the delicious treat of the discoverers being hanged by the neck, on his evidence, until they are dead). âSay that hammer of mineâs a wallâmy work. Two; four; and two is six,â measuring on the pavement. âSix foot inside that wall is Mrs. Sapsea.â
âNot really Mrs. Sapsea?â
âSay Mrs. Sapsea. Her wallâs thicker, but say Mrs. Sapsea. Durdles taps, that wall represented by that hammer, and says, after good sounding: âSomething betwixt us!â Sure enough, some rubbish has been left in that same six-foot space by Durdlesâs men!â
Jasper opines that such accuracy âis a gift.â
âI wouldnât have it at a gift,â returns Durdles, by no means receiving the observation in good part. âI worked it out for myself. Durdles comes by HIS knowledge through grubbing deep for it, and having it up by the roots when it donât want to come.â Holloa you Deputy!â
âWiddy!â is Deputyâs shrill response, standing off again.
âCatch that haâpenny. And donât let me see any more of you to-night, after we come to the Travellersâ Twopenny.â
âWarning!â returns Deputy, having caught the halfpenny, and appearing by this mystic word to express his assent to the arrangement.
They have but to cross what was once the vineyard, belonging to what was once the Monastery, to come into the narrow back lane wherein stands the crazy wooden house of two low stories currently known as the Travellersâ Twopenny:- a house all warped and distorted, like the morals of the travellers, with scant remains of a lattice-work porch over the door, and also of a rustic fence before its stamped-out garden; by reason of the travellers being so bound to the premises by a tender sentiment (or so fond of having a fire by the roadside in the course of the day), that they can never be persuaded or threatened into departure, without violently possessing themselves of some wooden forget-me-not, and bearing it off.
The semblance of an inn is attempted to be given to this wretched place by fragments of conventional red curtaining in the windows, which rags are made muddily transparent in the night-season by feeble lights of rush or cotton dip burning dully in the close air of the inside. As Durdles and Jasper come near, they are addressed by an inscribed paper lantern over the door, setting forth the purport of the house. They are also addressed by some half-dozen other hideous small boysâwhether twopenny lodgers or followers or hangers-on of such, who knows!âwho, as if attracted by some carrion-scent of Deputy in the air, start into the moonlight, as vultures might gather in the desert, and instantly fall to stoning him and one another.
âStop, you young brutes,â cries Jasper angrily, âand let us go by!â
This remonstrance being received with yells and flying stones, according to a custom of late years comfortably established among the police regulations of our English communities, where Christians are stoned on all sides, as if the days of Saint Stephen were revived, Durdles remarks of the young savages, with some point, that âthey havenât got an object,â and leads the way down the lane.
At the corner of the lane, Jasper, hotly enraged, checks his companion and looks back. All is silent. Next moment, a stone coming rattling at his hat, and a distant yell of âWake-Cock! Warning!â followed by a crow, as from some infernally-hatched Chanticleer, apprising him under whose victorious fire he stands, he turns the corner into safety, and takes Durdles home: Durdles stumbling among the litter of his stony yard as if he were going to turn head foremost into one of the unfinished tombs.
John Jasper returns by another way to his gatehouse, and entering softly with his key, finds his fire still burning. He takes from a locked press a peculiar-looking pipe, which he fillsâbut not with tobaccoâand, having adjusted the contents of the bowl, very carefully, with a little instrument, ascends an inner staircase of only a few steps, leading to two rooms. One of these is his own sleeping chamber: the other is his nephewâs. There is a light in each.
His nephew lies asleep, calm and untroubled. John Jasper stands looking down upon him, his unlighted pipe in his hand, for some time, with a fixed and deep attention. Then, hushing his footsteps, he passes to his own room, lights his pipe, and delivers himself to the Spectres it invokes at midnight.
The Reverend Septimus Crisparkle (Septimus, because six little brother Crisparkles before him went out, one by one, as they were born, like six weak little rushlights, as they were lighted), having broken the thin morning ice near Cloisterham Weir with his amiable head, much to the invigoration of his frame, was now assisting his circulation by boxing at a looking-glass with great science and prowess. A fresh and healthy portrait the looking-glass presented of the Reverend Septimus, feinting and dodging with the utmost artfulness, and hitting out from the shoulder with the utmost straightness, while his radiant features teemed with innocence, and soft-hearted benevolence beamed from his boxing-gloves.
It was scarcely breakfast-time yet, for Mrs. Crisparkleâmother, not wife of the Reverend Septimusâwas only just down, and waiting for the urn. Indeed, the Reverend Septimus left off at this very moment to take the pretty old ladyâs entering face between his boxing-gloves and kiss it. Having done so with tenderness, the Reverend Septimus turned to again, countering with his left, and putting in his right, in a tremendous manner.
âI say, every morning of my life, that youâll do it at last, Sept,â remarked the old lady, looking on; âand so you will.â
âDo what, Ma dear?â
âBreak the pier-glass, or burst a blood-vessel.â
âNeither, please God, Ma dear. Hereâs wind, Ma. Look at this!â In a concluding round of great severity, the Reverend Septimus administered and escaped all sorts of punishment, and wound up by getting the old ladyâs cap into Chanceryâsuch is the technical term used in scientific circles by the learned in the Noble Artâ with a lightness of touch that hardly stirred the lightest lavender or cherry riband on it. Magnanimously releasing the defeated, just in time to get his gloves into a drawer and feign to be looking out of window in a contemplative state of mind when a servant entered, the Reverend Septimus then gave place to the urn and other preparations for breakfast. These completed, and the two alone again, it was pleasant to see (or would have been, if there had been any one to see it, which there never was), the old lady standing to say the Lordâs Prayer aloud,
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