The mystery of Edwin Drood
oeaxT'--! l*^'<Aw^riftnMTMa*iifiw)a*»*fc*«*»si^ ■-<fir-f^V^'-'-^^'-''-' ''fltK'A\> ./ i,^ .■!. ,^■7^7^^^! Ill; - ■ - I ^ I ,/ / / / / y^ .^ 0^ 'K^dJL IT mi. KOTSTTiS iRY O F B T (SMz^aililS ©2CSEEM L 0 N D 0 N : CHAPMAN & H ALL, 193 , PI CCADI LLY. THE MYSTEEY OP EDWIN DEOOD. BY CHAELES DICKENS. WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS BY S. L. FILDES, AND A PORTRAIT. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY. 1870. [ The right of Translation is reserved.'^ LONDOS: TRIKTED UY WILMAM Cl.OWia AKD SOXS, STAJirOHD STREET A^P UHAIUNG CKOSS. All that was left in mamiscript of Edwin Drood is contained in the Number now puhlislied — the sixth. Its last entire page Imd not been written two hours when tJie event occurred which one very touching passage in it (grave and sad but also cheerful and reassuring) might seem almost to have anticipated. The only notes in reference to the story that have since been found concern that portion of it exclusively, which is treated in the earlier Numbers. Beyond the clues therein afforded to its conduct or catastrophe, nothing whatever remains; and it is believed that what the author would himself have most desired is done, in placing before the reader without further note or suggestion the fragment of The Mystery OF Edwin Drood. 12th August, 1870. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. The Dawn , . i CHAPTER II. A Dean, and a Chapter also .......,, 3 CHAPTER m. The Nuns' House 12 CHAPTER IV. Mr. Sapsea 21 CHAPTER V, Mr. Durdles and Friend 28 CHAPTER YI. Philanthropy in Minor Canon Corner 33 CHAPTER VII. More Confidences than one 40 CHAPTER VEIL Daggers drawn 47 VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. PAGE Birds in the Bush 54 CHAPTER X. Smoothing the Way 65 CHAPTER XI. A Picture and a Ring ,75 CHAPTER XII. A Night with Duedles , . . 86 CHAPTER XIII. Both at theie Best 97 CHAPTER XIV. When shall these three meet again? . . , . « . .104 CHAPTER XV. Impeached * . 114 CHAPTER XVI. Devoted 121 CHAPTER XVII. Philanthropy, Professional and Unprofessional 129 CHAPTER XVIII. A Settler in Cloisterham 140 CHAPTER XIX. Shadow on the Sun-dial 147 CONTENTS. yil CHAPTER XX. PACK A Flight «... 153 » CHAPTER XXJ. A Recogxition 161 CHAPTER XXII. A Gritty state of things comes on ...,,., , iGo CHAPTER XXin. The Dawn again , , 178 ILLUSTRATIONS, Portrait. Vignette Title Page. PAGE In the Court To fac3 1 Under the Trees 20 At the Pla.no 44 On Dangerous Ground 50 Mr. Crisparkle is Overpaid , . 72 DuRDLEs Cautions Mr. Sapsea against Boasting 88 " Good-bye, Rosebud, darling !" . . » 98 Mr. Grewgious has his Suspicions 120 Jasper s Sacrifices 149 Mr. Grewgious experiences a New Sensation. . ^ . . . .157 Up the Eiver .....'•• ... 173 Sleeping it Off 183 H O u w K H THE MYSTEEY OF EDWIN DEOOD. CHAPTEE I. THE DAWN. An ancient English Cathedral Tower ? How can the ancient English Cathedral tower be here ! The well-known massive grey square tower of its old Cathedral ? How can that be here I 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 Sultan's 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 j^alace in long jn-o- cession. Ten thousand scimitars flash in the sunlight, and thrico ten thousand dancing-girls strew flowers. Then, follow white elephants caparisoned in countless gorgeous colors, 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 fantasticall}^ 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 sj)ark of light, it serves in the dim morning as a lamp to show him what he sees of her. B 2 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. " Another ?" says tliis woman, in a quemlons, rattling whisper. '* Have another ?" He looks about him, with his hand to his forehead. " Ye've smoked as many as five since ye come in at midnight," the woman goes on, as she chronically complains. " Poor 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! Here's another ready for ye, deary. Ye'll remember like a good soul, won't ye, that the market price is dreffle high just now ? More nor three shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful ! And ye'll remember that nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t'other side the court; but he can't do it as well as me) has the true secret of mixing it ? Ye'll pay up according, deary, won't ye ?" She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, occasionally bubbling at it, inhales much of its contents. "0 me, 0 me, my lungs is weak, my lungs is bad! It's 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, ' I'll have another ready for him, and he'll bear in mind the market price of opium, and pay according.' 0 my poor head ! I makes my pipes of old penny ink-bottles, ye see, deary — this is one — and 1 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, don't hurt me, not to speak of. And it takes away the hunger as well as wittles, deary." 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 color, 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. " What visions can she have ?" the waking man muses, as he turns her face towards him, and stands looking down at it. " Visions of many butchers' shops, and public-houses, and much credit ? Of an increase of hideous customers, and this horrible bed- stead set upright again, and this horrible court swept clean ? What can she rise to, under any quantity of opium, higher than that ! — Eh?" He bends down his ear, to listen to her mutterings. " Unintelligible !" 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 hearth — placed there, perhaps, for such emergencies — and to sit in it, holding tight, until he has got the better of this unclean spirit of imitation. THE DAWN. 3 Tlien lie comes back, pounces on the Chinaman, and, seizing liim with both hands by the throat, turns him violently on the bed. The Chinaman clutches the aggressive hands, resists, gasps, and .protests. " What do you say ?" A watchful pause. "Unintelligible!" 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 his knife, for safety's «ake ; for, she too starting up, and restraining and expostulating with him, the knife is visible in her dress, not in his, when they drowsil}^ 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 " unintel- ligible !" is again the comment of the Avatcher, 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 grey 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 proces- sion having scuttled into their places, hide their faces ; and then the intoned words, "When the Wicked Man " rise among .groins of arches and beams of roof, awakening muttered thunder. CHAPTEE IL 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 home- ward 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 im- portance to the body politic, that this artful couple should pretend to have renounced connection with it. B 2 4 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DEOOD. , 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 halfits 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. " Mr. Jasper was that, Tope?" " Yes, Mr. Dean." " He has stayed late." " Yes, Mr. Dean. I have stayed for him, your Keverence. He- has been took a little poorly." " Say ' taken,' Tojoe — to the Dean," The younger rook inter- poses in a low tone with this touch of correction, as who should say : " You may offer bad grammar to the laity, or the humbler clergy not to the Dean." 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. " And when and how has Mr. Jasper been taken — for, as Mr. Cri sparkle has remarked, it is better to say taken — taken — " repeats the Dean ; " when and how has Mr. Jasper been Taken " " Taken, sir," Tope deferentially murmurs. " Poorly, Tope?" " Why, sir, Mr. Jasper was that breathed " " I wouldn't say ' That breathed,' Tope," Mr. Crisparkle inter- poses, with the same touch as before. "Not English — to the Dean." "Breathed to that extent," the Dean (not unflattered by this indirect homage), condescendingly remarks, " would be preferable." " Mr. Jasper's breathing was so remarkably short ;" thus discreetly does Mr. Tope work his way round the sunken rock, " when 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." Mr. Tope, with his eyes on the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle, shoots this word out, as. defying him to improve upon it : " and a dimness and giddiness crept over him as strange as ever I saw : though he didn't seem to mind it particularly, himself. However, a little time and a little v/ater brought him out of his Daze." Mr. Tope repeats the word and its emphasis, with the air of saying : " As I have made a success, I'll make it again." " And Mr. Jasper has gone home quite himself, has he ?" asked: the Dean. A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO. (( Yonr Eeverence, he lias gone home quite himself. And I'm ^lad to see he's Jiaving his lire kindled up, for it's chilly after the wet, and the Cathedral had both a damp feel and a damp touch this afternoon, and he was very shivery." 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 Bcene, involving in shadow the pendent masses of ivy and creeper •covering the building's 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. " Is Mr. Jasper's nephew with him ?" the Dean asks. " No, sir," replies the Yerger, " but expected. There's his own solitary shadow betwixt his two windows — the one looking this way, and the one looking down into the High Street — drawing his own curtains now." " Well, well," says the Dean, with a sprightly air of breaking wp the little conference, " I hope Mr. Jasper's heart may not be too much set upon his nephew. Our affections, however laudable, in this transitory world, should never master us ; we should guide them, guide them. I find I am not disagreeably reminded of my (dinner, by hearing my dinner-bell. Perhaps Mr. Crisparkle you will, before going home, look in on Jasper ?" " Certainly, Mr. Dean. And tell him that jou had the kindness to desire to know how he was ?" " Ay ; do so, do so. Certainly. Wished to know how he was. By all means. Wished to know how he was." With a pleasant air of patronage, the Dean as nearly cocks his -quaint hat as a Dean in good spirits may, and directs his comely gaiters towards the ruddy dining-room of the snug old red-brick house where he is at present " in residence " with Mrs. Dean and Miss Dean. Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, fair and rosy, and perpetually pitching himself head-foremost into all the deep running water in the surrounding country ; Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, earl}' riser, musical, classical, cheerful, kind, good-natured, social, con- tented, and boy-like ; Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon and good man, lately " Coach " upon the chief Pagan high roads, but since pro- moted by a patron (grateful for a well-taught son) to his present Christian beat ; betakes himself to the gate house, on his way home to his earl}^ tea. " Sorry to hear from Tope that you have not been well, Jasper." " Oh, it was nothing, nothing !" " You look a little worn," " Do I ? Oh, I don't think so. What is better, I don't feel so. Tope has made too much of it I suspect. It's his trade to make the most of everything apjDertaining to the Cathedral, you know." " I may tell the Dean — I call expressly from the Dean — that you tire all right again ?" The reply, with a slight smile, is : " Certainly ; with my respects and thanks to the Dean." 6 THE MYSTERY OP EDWIN DEOOD. " I'm glad to hear that yon expect young Drood.'* " I expect the dear fellow every moment." " Ah ! He will do you more good than a doctor, Jasper." " More good than a dozen doctors. For I love him dearly, and I don't love doctors, or doctors' stuff." Mr. Jasper is a dark man of some six-and-twenty, with thick, lustrous, well-arranged black hair and whisker. He looks older than he is, as dark men often do. His voice is deep and good, his face and figure are good, his manner is a little sombre. His room is a little sombre, and may have had its influence in forming his manner. It is mostly in shadow. Even when the sun shines brilliantly, it seldom touches the grand piano in the recess, or the folio music-books on the stand, or the bookshelves on the wall, or the unfinished picture of a blooming schoolgirl hanging over the chimneypiece ; her flowing brown hair tied with a blue riband, and her beauty remarkable for a quite childish, almost babyish, touch of saucy discontent, comically conscious of itself. (There is not the least artistic merit in this picture, which is a mere daub ; but it is clear that the painter has made it humorously — one might almost say, revengefully — like the original.) " We shall miss you, Jasper, at the ' Alternate Musical Wednes- days ' to-night ; but no doubt you are best at home. Good-night. God bless you ! ' Tell me, shep-herds te-e-ell me ; tell me-e-e, have you seen (have you seen, have }'ou seen, have you seen) my-y-y Elo-o-ora-a pass this way !' " Melodiously good Minor Canon the Eeverend Septimus Crisparkle thus delivers himself, in musical rhythm, as he withdraws his amiable face from the doorway and conveys it down stairs. Sounds of recognition and greeting pass between the Eeverend Septimus and somebody else, at the stair-foot. Mr. Jasper listens, starts from his chair, and catches a young fellow in his arms, exclaiming : " My dear Edwin !" " My dear Jack ! So glad to see jou !" " Get off your greatcoat, bright boy, and sit down here in your own corner. Your feet are not wet? Pull your boots off. Do pull your boots off." " My dear Jack, I am as dry as a bone. Don't moddley-coddley, there's a good fellow. I like anything better than being moddley- coddleyed." With the check U2:)on him of being unsympathetically restrained in a genial outburst of enthusiasm, Mr. Jasj)er stands still, and looks on intently at the young fellow, divesting himself of his outer coat, hat, gloves, and so forth. Once for all, a look of intentness and in- tensity— a look of hungry, exacting, watchful, and yet devoted affection — is always, now and ever afterwards, on the Jasjier face whenever the Jasper face is addressed in this direction. And whenever it is so addressed, it is never, on this occasion or on any other, dividedly addressed ; it is always concentrated. " Now I am right, and now I'll take my corner, Jack. Any dinner, Jack?" Mr. Jasper opens a door at the upper end of the room, and A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO. 7 discloses a small inner room pleasantly lighted and prepared, wherein a comely dame is in the act of setting dishes on table. " What a jolly old Jack it is !" cries the young fellow, with a clap of his hands. " Look here, Jack ; tell me ; whose birthday is it ?" *' Not yours, I know," Mr. Jasper answers, pausing to con- sider. " Not mine, you know ? No ; not mine, I know ! Pussy's !" Fixed as the look the 3"0ung fellow meets, is, there is yet in it som,e strange power of suddenly including the sketch over the chimneypiece. " Pussy's, Jack ! AYe must drink Many happy returns to her. Come, uncle ; take your dutiful and sharp-set nephew in to dinner." As the boy (for he is little more) lays a hand on Jasper's shoulder, JasjDer cordially and gaily lays a hand on his shoulder, and so Marseillaise-wise they go in to dinner. " And Lord ! Here's Mrs. Tope !" cries the boy. " Lovelier than ever!" " Never you mind me, Master Edwin," retorts the Verger's wife ; *' I can take care of myself." "You can't. You're much too handsome. Give me a kiss, because it's Pussy's birthday." " I'd Pussy you, young man, if I was Pussy, as you call her," Mrs. To]3e blushingly retorts, after being saluted. " Your uncle's too much wrapt up in you, that's where it is. He makes so much of you, that it's my opinion you think you've only to call your Pussys by the dozen, to make 'em come." " You forget, Mrs. Tope," Mr. Jasper interposes, taking his place at table with a genial smile, " and so do you, Ned, that Uncle and Nephew are words prohibited here by common consent and express agreement. For what we are going to receive His holy name be praised !" " Done like the Dean ! Witness, Edwin Drood ! Please to carve. Jack, for I can't," This sally ushers in the dinner. Little to the present purj)ose, or to any purpose, is said, while it is in course of being disposed of. At length the cloth is drawn, and a dish of walnuts and a decanter of rich-coloured sherry are placed upon the table. " I say ! Tell me, Jack," the young fellow then flows on : " do you really and truly feel as if the mention of our relationship divided us at all ? I don't." " Uncles as a rule, Ned, are so much older than their nephews," is the reply, " that I have that feeling instinctively." " As a rule ? Ah, may -be 1 But what is a difference in age of half a dozen years or so ? And some uncles, in large families, are even younger ih-^.n their nephews. By George, I wish it was the case with us !" " Whv ?" " Because if it was, I'd take the lead Avith you. Jack, and be as wise as Begone dull care that turned a young man grey, and be- gone dull care that turned an old man to clay. — Halloa, Jack .' Don't drink." 8 THE MYSTERY OP EDWIN DROOD. "Why not?" " Asks why not, on Pussy's birthday, and no Happy Eeturns proposed! Pussy, Jack, and many of 'em! Happy returns, I mean." Laying an affectionate and laughing touch an the boy's extended hand, as if it were at once his giddy head and his light heart, Mr. Jasper drinks the toast in silence. " Hip, hip, hip, and nine times nine, and one to finish with, and all that, understood. Hooray, hooray, hooray ! And now. Jack, let's have a little talk about Pussy. Two pairs of nut-crackers ? Pass me one, and take the other." Crack. " How's Pussy getting on. Jack?" " With her music? Fairly." " What a dreadfully conscientious fellow you are, Jack. But I know, Lord bless you ! Liattentive, isn't she ?" " She can learn anything, if she will." " If she will ? Egad that's it. But if she won't ?" Crack. On Mr. Jasper's part. " How's she looking. Jack ?" Mr. Jasper's concentrated face again includes the portrait as he returns : " Very like your sketch indeed." " I am a little proud of it," says the young fellow, glancing up at the sketch with complacency, and then shutting one eye, and taking a corrected prospect of it over a level bridge of nut-cracker in the air : " Not badly hit off from memory. But I ought to have caught that expression pretty well, for 1 have seen it often enough." Crack. On Edwin Drood's ^^art. Crack. On Mr. Jasper's part. " In point of fact," the former resumes, after some silent dipping among his fragments of walnut with an air of pique, " I see it whenever I go to see Pussy. If I don't find it on her face, I leave it there. — You know I do. Miss Scornful Pert. Booh!" With a twirl of the nut-crackers at the portrait. Crack. Crack. Crack. Slowly, on Mr. Jasj^er's part. Crack. Sharply, on the part of Edwin Drood. Silence on both sides. " Have you lost your tongue. Jack?" " Have you found yours, Ned ?" " No, but really ; — isn't it, you know, after all ?" Mr. Jasper lifts his dark eyebrows inquiringly. " Isn't it unsatisfactory to be cut off from choice in such a matter ? There, Jack ! I tell you ! If I could choose, I would choose Pussy from all the pretty girls in the world." " But you have not got to choose." " That's what I complain of. My dead and gone father and Pussy's dead and gone father must needs marry us together by anticijiation. Why the — Devil, I was going to say, if it had been respectful to their memory — couldn't they leave us alone ?" " Tut, tut, dear boy," Mr. Ja-sper remonstrates, in a tone of gentle deprecation. " Tut, tut? Yes, Jack, it's all very well for yori. Tou can take A DEAN, AND A CH.YPTER ALSO. 9 / it easily. Tour life is not laid dow]i to scale, and lined and dotted out for yoTi, like a surveyor's plan. Tou have no uncomfortable suspicion that you are forced upon anj'hody, nor has anybody an uncomfortable suspicion that she is forced upon you, or that you ure forced upon her. You can choose for yourself. Life, for you, is a, plum with the natural bloom on ; it hasn't been over-carefuUy wiped off for 7jou " " Don't stop, dear fellow. Go on." " Can I anyhow have hurt your feelings. Jack ?" " How can you have hurt my feelings ?" " Good Heaven, Jack, you look frightfully ill ! There's a strange film come over your eyes." Mr. Jasper, with a forced smile, stretches out his right hand, as if at once to disarm apprehension and gain time to get better. After a while he says faintly : " I have been taking opium for a pain — an agony — that some- times overcomes me. The effects of the medicine steal over me like a blight or a cloud, and pass. You see them in the act of passing ; they will be gone directl}". Look away from me. They will go all the sooner." With a scared face, the younger man complies, by casting his eyes downward at the ashes on the hearth. Not relaxing his own gaze at the fire, but rather strengthening it with a fierce, firm grip upon his elbow-chair, the elder sits for a few moments ritrid, and then, with thick drops standing on his forehead, and a sharp catch of his breath, becomes as he was before. On his so subsiding in his chair, his nephew gently and assiduously tends him while he quite recovers. When Jasper is restored, he lays a tender hand upon his nephew's shoulder, and, in a tone of voice less troubled than the purport of his words — indeed with some- thing of raillery or banter in it — thus addresses him : " There is said to be a hidden skeleton in every house ; but you thought there was none in mine, dear Ked." " Upon m}^ life. Jack, I did think so. However, when I come to consider that even in Pussy's house — if she had one — and in mine — if I had one " " You were going to say (but that I interru]3ted you in spite of myself) what a quiet life mine is. No whirl and uproar around me, no distracting commerce or calculation, no risk, no change of place, mj'self devoted to the art I pursue, my business my pleasure." "I really was going to say something of the kind. Jack; but you see, you, speaking of yourself, almost necessarily leave out m.uch that I should have put in. *' Hate it, Jack?" (Mucli bewildered.) " I liate it. The cramped monotony of my existence grinds me away by the grain. How does our service sound to you ?" " Beautiful ! Quite celestial." " It often sounds to me quite devilish. I am so weary of it The echoes of my own voice among the arches seem to mock me with my daily drudging round. No wretched monk who droned his life away in that gloomy place, before me, can have been more tired of it than I am. He could take for relief (and did take) to carving demons out of the stalls and seats and desks. What shall I do ? Must I take to carving them out of my heart ?" " I thought you had so exactly found your niche in life, Jack," Edwin Drood returns, astonished, bending forward in his chair to lay a sympathetic hand on Jasper's knee, and looking at him with an anxious face. " I know you thought so. They all think so." " Well ; I suppose they do," says Edwin, meditating aloud. *' Pussy thinks so." " When did she tell you that?" " The last time I was here. You remember when. Three months ago." " How did she phrase it?' " Oh ! She only said that she had become your pupil, and that you were made for your vocation.'' The younger man glances at the portrait. The elder sees it in him. " Anyhow, my dear Ned," Jasper resumes, as he shakes his head with a grave cheerfulness : "I must subdue myself to my vocation : which is much tho same thing outwardly. It's too late to find another now. This is a confidence between us." " It shall be sacredly preserved, Jack." " I have reposed it in you, because " " I feel it, I assure you. Because we are fast friends, and because you love and trust me, as I love and trust you. Both hands. Jack." As each stands looking into the other's eyes, and as the uncle holds the nephew's hands, the uncle thus proceeds : " You know now, don't you, that even a poor monotonous chorister and grinder of music — in his niche — may be troubled with some stray sort of ambition, aspiration, restlessness, dissatis- faction, what shall we call it ?" " Yes, dear Jack." " And you will remember ?" *' My dear Jack, I only ask you, am I likely to forget what you have said with so much feeling ?" " Take it as a warning, then." In the act of having his hands released, and of moving a step back, Edwin pauses for an instant to consider the application of these last words. The instant over, he says, sensibly touched : " I am afraid I am but a shallow, surface kind of fellow. Jack, and that my headpiece is none of the best. But I needn't say I am young ; and perhaps I shall not grow worse as 1 grow older. A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO. 11 At all events, I hope I have sometliiiig impressible within me, which feels — deeply feels — the disinterestedness of your painfully laying your inner self bare, as a warning to me." Mr. Jasper's steadiness of face and figure becomes so marvellous that his breathing seems to have stopped. " I couldn't fail to notice. Jack, that it cost you a great effort, and that you were very much moved, and very unlike your usual self. Of course I knew that you were extremely fond of me, but I really was not prepared for your, as I may say, sacrificing yourself to me, in that way." Mr. Jasper, becoming a breathing man again without the smallest stage of transition between tlie two extreme states, lifts his shoulders, laughs, and waves his right arm. " No ; don't put the sentiment away. Jack ; please don't ; for I am very much in earnest. I have no doubt that that unhealthy state of mind which you have so powerfully described is attended with some real suffering, and is hard to bear. But let me reassure you. Jack, as to the chances of its overcoming Me. I don't think I am in the way of it. In some few months less than another year, you know, I shall carry Pussy off from school as Mrs. Edwin Drood. I shall then go engineering into the East, and Pussy with me. And although we have our little tifis now, arising out of a certain unavoidable flatness that attends our love-making, owing to its end being all settled beforehand, still I have no doubt of our getting on capitally then, when it's done and can't be helped. In tjhort, Jack, to go back to the old song I was freely quoting at dinner (and who knows old songs better than you !), my wife shall dance and I will sing, so merrily pass the day. Of Pussy's being beautiful there cannot be a doubt; — and when you are good besides. Little Miss Impudence," once more apostro]3hising the portrait, " 111 burn your comic likeness and paint your music- master another." Mr. Jasper, with his hand to his chin, and with an expression of musing benevolence on his face, has attentively watched every animated look and gesture attending the delivery of these words. He remains in that attitude after they are spoken, as if in a kind of fascination attendant on his strong interest in the youthful sj^irit that he loves so well. Then, he says with a quiet smile : " You won't be warned, then ?" *' No, Jack." " You can't be warned, then ?" "No, Jack, not by you. Besides that I don't reallj' consider myself in danger, I don't like your putting yourself in that position." " Shall we go and walk in the churchyard ?" "By all means. You won't mind my slipping out of it for half a moment to the Nuns' House, and lewving a parcel there ? Only gloves for Pussy ; as many pairs of gloves as she is years old to- day. Pather poetical. Jack ?" Mr. Jasper, still in the same attitude, murmurs : " ' Nothing half so sweet in life,' Ned !" " Here's the parcel in my greatcoat pocket. They must be pre- UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNiA UBRAKY 12 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. rented to-niglit, or the poetry is gone. It's against regulations for me to call at night, but not to leave a packet. I am ready, Jack !" Mr. Jasper dissolves his attitude, and they go out together. CHAPTEE III. THE nuns' house. For sufficient reasons v^^hich this narrative will itself unfold as it advances, a fictitious name must be bestowed upon the old Cathedral town. Let it stand in these pages as Cloisterham. It was once possibly known to the Druids by another name, and €ertainly to the Eomans by another, and to the Saxons by another, and to the Normans by another ; and a name more or less in the course of many centuries can be of little moment to its dusty chronicles. An ancient city, Cloisterham, and no meet dwelling-place for any one with hankerings after the noisy world. A monotonous, silent city, deriving an earthy flavor throughout, from its cathe- dral crypt, and so abounding in vestiges of monastic graves, that the Cloisterham children grow small salad in the dust of abbots and abbesses, and make di-rt-pies of nuns and friars ; while every ploughman in its outlying fields renders to once puissant Lord Treasurers, Archbishops, Bishops, and such-like, the attention which the Ogre in the story-book desired to render to his un- bidden visitor, and grinds their bones to make his bread. A drowsy city, Cloisterham, whose inhabitants seem to suj)pose, with an inconsistency more strange than rare, that all its changes lie behind it, and that there are no more to come. A queer moral to derive from antiquity, yet older than any traceable antiquity. So silent are the streets of Cloisterham (though prone to echo on the smallest provocation), that of a summer-day the sunblinds of its shops scarce dare to flap in the south wdnd ; while the sun- browned tramps wdio pass along and stare, quicken their limp a little, that they may the sooner get beyond the confines of its oppressive respectabilit}^ This is a feat not difficult of achieve- ment, seeing that the streets of Cloisterham city are little more than one narrow street by which you get into it and ge*t out of it : the rest being mostly disappointing yards with pumps in them and no thoroughfare — exception made of the Cathedral-close, and a paved Quaker settlement, in color and general conformation very like a Quakeress's bonnet, ud in a shady corner. In a word, a city of anotner and a bj^gone time is Cloisternam ■with its hoarse cathedral bell, its hoarse rooks hovering about the Cathedral tower, its hoarser and less distinct rooks in the stalls far beneath. Fragments of old wall, saint's chapel, chapter-house, convent, aiid monastery, have got incongruously or obstructively built into many of its houses and gardens, much as kindred jumbled notions have become inc^f'Dorated into man}" of its citizen's minds. THE nuns' house. 15 All things in it are of the past. Even its single pawnbroker takes in no pledges, nor has he for a long time, but offers vainly an nnredeemed stock for sale, of which the costlier articles are dim and pale old watches apparently in a slow perspiration, tarnished sugar-tongs with ineffectual legs, and odd volumes of dismal books. The most abundant and the most agreeable- evidences of progressing life in Cloisterham, are the evidences- of vegetable life in its many gardens; even its drooping and despondent little theatre has its poor strip of garden, receiving the foul fiend, when he ducks from its stage into the infernal regions, among scarlet beans or oyster-shells, according to the season of the year. In the midst of Cloisterham stands the Nuns' House; a vene- rable brick edifice whose present appellation is doubtless derived. from the legend of its conventual uses. On the trim gate enclos- ing its old courtyard, is a resplendent brass plate flashing forth the legend : " Seminary for Young Ladies. Miss Twinkleton." The house-front is so old and worn, and the brass plate is so shining and staring, that the general result has reminded imagi- native strangers of a battered old beau with a large modern eye- glass stuck in his blind eye. Whether the nuns of yore, being of a submissive rather than a stiff-necked generation, habitually bent their contemplative heads to avoid collision with the beams in the low ceilings of the many chambers of their House; whether they sat in its long low windows, telling their beads for their mortification instead of making necklaces of them for their adornment ; whether the}^ were ever walled up alive in odd angles and jutting gables of the building for having some ineradicable leaven of busy mother Nature in them which has kept the fermenting world alive ever since ; these may be matters of interest to its haunting ghosts ('if any), but constitute no item in Miss Twinkleton's half-yearly •accounts. They are neither of Miss Twinkleton's inclusive regulars, nor of her extras. The lady who undertakes the poetical department of the establishment at so much (or so little) a quarter^ has no pieces in her list of recitals bearing on such unprofitablo questions. 