The Mystery of Edwin Drood Read online

  CHAPTER V--MR. DURDLES AND FRIEND

  John Jasper, on his way home through the Close, is brought to astand-still by the spectacle of Stony Durdles, dinner-bundle and all,leaning his back against the iron railing of the burial-ground enclosingit from the old cloister-arches; and a hideous small boy in rags flingingstones at him as a well-defined mark in the moonlight. Sometimes thestones hit him, and sometimes they miss him, but Durdles seemsindifferent to either fortune. The hideous small boy, on the contrary,whenever he hits Durdles, blows a whistle of triumph through a jaggedgap, convenient for the purpose, in the front of his mouth, where halfhis teeth are wanting; and whenever he misses him, yelps out 'Mulledagin!' and tries to atone for the failure by taking a more correct andvicious aim.

  'What are you doing to the man?' demands Jasper, stepping out into themoonlight from the shade.

  'Making a cock-shy of him,' replies the hideous small boy.

  'Give me those stones in your hand.'

  'Yes, I'll give 'em you down your throat, if you come a-ketching hold ofme,' says the small boy, shaking himself loose, and backing. 'I'll smashyour eye, if you don't look out!'

  'Baby-Devil that you are, what has the man done to you?'

  'He won't go home.'

  'What is that to you?'

  'He gives me a 'apenny to pelt him home if I ketches him out too late,'says the boy. And then chants, like a little savage, half stumbling andhalf dancing among the rags and laces of his dilapidated boots:--

  '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!'

  --with a comprehensive sweep on the last word, and one more delivery atDurdles.

  This would seem to be a poetical note of preparation, agreed upon, as acaution to Durdles to stand clear if he can, or to betake himselfhomeward.

  John Jasper invites the boy with a beck of his head to follow him(feeling it hopeless to drag him, or coax him), and crosses to the ironrailing where the Stony (and stoned) One is profoundly meditating.

  'Do you know this thing, this child?' asks Jasper, at a loss for a wordthat will define this thing.

  'Deputy,' says Durdles, with a nod.

  'Is that its--his--name?'

  'Deputy,' assents Durdles.

  'I'm man-servant up at the Travellers' Twopenny in Gas Works Garding,'this thing explains. 'All us man-servants at Travellers' Lodgings isnamed Deputy. When we're chock full and the Travellers is all a-bed Icome out for my 'elth.' Then withdrawing into the road, and taking aim,he resumes:--

  'Widdy widdy wen! I--ket--ches--Im--out--ar--ter--'

  'Hold your hand,' cries Jasper, 'and don't throw while I stand so nearhim, or I'll kill you! Come, Durdles; let me walk home with youto-night. Shall I carry your bundle?'

  'Not on any account,' replies Durdles, adjusting it. 'Durdles was makinghis reflections here when you come up, sir, surrounded by his works, likea poplar Author.--Your own brother-in-law;' introducing a sarcophaguswithin the railing, white and cold in the moonlight. 'Mrs. Sapsea;'introducing the monument of that devoted wife. 'Late Incumbent;'introducing the Reverend Gentleman's broken column. 'Departed AssessedTaxes;' introducing a vase and towel, standing on what might representthe cake of soap. 'Former pastrycook and Muffin-maker, much respected;'introducing gravestone. 'All safe and sound here, sir, and all Durdles'swork. Of the common folk, that is merely bundled up in turf andbrambles, the less said the better. A poor lot, soon forgot.'

  'This creature, Deputy, is behind us,' says Jasper, looking back. 'Is heto follow us?'

  The relations between Durdles and Deputy are of a capricious kind; for,on Durdles's turning himself about with the slow gravity of beerysuddenness, Deputy makes a pretty wide circuit into the road and standson the defensive.

  'You never cried Widdy Warning before you begun to-night,' says Durdles,unexpectedly reminded of, or imagining, an injury.

  'Yer lie, I did,' says Deputy, in his only form of polite contradiction.

  'Own brother, sir,' observes Durdles, turning himself about again, and asunexpectedly forgetting his offence as he had recalled or conceived it;'own brother to Peter the Wild Boy! But I gave him an object in life.'

  'At which he takes aim?' Mr. Jasper suggests.

  'That's it, sir,' returns Durdles, quite satisfied; 'at which he takesaim. I took him in hand and gave him an object. What was he before? Adestroyer. What work did he do? Nothing but destruction. What did heearn by it? Short terms in Cloisterham jail. Not a person, not a pieceof 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 enlightenedobject. I put that enlightened object before him, and now he can turnhis honest halfpenny by the three penn'orth a week.'

  'I wonder he has no competitors.'

  'He has plenty, Mr. Jasper, but he stones 'em all away. Now, I don'tknow what this scheme of mine comes to,' pursues Durdles, consideringabout it with the same sodden gravity; 'I don't know what you mayprecisely call it. It ain't a sort of a--scheme of a--NationalEducation?'

  'I should say not,' replies Jasper.

  'I should say not,' assents Durdles; 'then we won't try to give it aname.'

  'He still keeps behind us,' repeats Jasper, looking over his shoulder;'is he to follow us?'

  'We can't help going round by the Travellers' Twopenny, if we go theshort way, which is the back way,' Durdles answers, 'and we'll drop himthere.'

  So they go on; Deputy, as a rear rank one, taking open order, andinvading the silence of the hour and place by stoning every wall, post,pillar, and other inanimate object, by the deserted way.

  'Is there anything new down in the crypt, Durdles?' asks John Jasper.

  'Anything old, I think you mean,' growls Durdles. 'It ain't a spot fornovelty.'

  'Any new discovery on your part, I meant.'

  'There's a old 'un under the seventh pillar on the left as you go downthe broken steps of the little underground chapel as formerly was; I makehim out (so fur as I've made him out yet) to be one of them old 'uns witha crook. To judge from the size of the passages in the walls, and of thesteps and doors, by which they come and went, them crooks must have beena good deal in the way of the old 'uns! Two on 'em meeting promiscuousmust have hitched one another by the mitre pretty often, I should say.'

  Without any endeavour to correct the literality of this opinion, Jaspersurveys his companion--covered from head to foot with old mortar, lime,and stone grit--as though he, Jasper, were getting imbued with a romanticinterest in his weird life.

  'Yours is a curious existence.'

  Without furnishing the least clue to the question, whether he receivesthis as a compliment or as quite the reverse, Durdles gruffly answers:'Yours is another.'

  'Well! inasmuch as my lot is cast in the same old earthy, chilly,never-changing place, Yes. But there is much more mystery and interestin your connection with the Cathedral than in mine. Indeed, I ambeginning to have some idea of asking you to take me on as a sort ofstudent, or free 'prentice, under you, and to let me go about with yousometimes, and see some of these odd nooks in which you pass your days.'

  The Stony One replies, in a general way, 'All right. Everybody knowswhere to find Durdles, when he's wanted.' Which, if not strictly true,is approximately so, if taken to express that Durdles may always be foundin a state of vagabondage somewhere.

  'What I dwell upon most,' says Jasper, pursuing his subject of romanticinterest, 'is the remarkable accuracy with which you would seem to findout where people are buried.--What is the matter? That bundle is in yourway; let me hold it.'

  Durdles has stopped and backed a little (Deputy, attentive to all hismovements, immediately skirmishing into the road), and was looking aboutfor some ledge or corner to place his bundle on, when thus relieved ofit.

  'Just you give me my hammer out of that,' says Durdles, 'and I'll showyou.'

  Clink, clink. And his ham
mer is handed him.

  'Now, lookee here. You pitch your note, don't you, Mr. Jasper?'

  'Yes.'

  'So I sound for mine. I take my hammer, and I tap.' (Here he strikesthe pavement, and the attentive Deputy skirmishes at a rather widerrange, as supposing that his head may be in requisition.) 'I tap, tap,tap. Solid! I go on tapping. Solid still! Tap again. Holloa!Hollow! Tap again, persevering. Solid in hollow! Tap, tap, tap, to tryit better. Solid in hollow; and inside solid, hollow again! There youare! Old 'un crumbled away in stone coffin, in vault!'

  'Astonishing!'

  'I have even done this,' says Durdles, drawing out his two-foot rule(Deputy meanwhile skirmishing nearer, as suspecting that Treasure may beabout to be discovered, which may somehow lead to his own enrichment, andthe delicious treat of the discoverers being hanged by the neck, on hisevidence, until they are dead). 'Say that hammer of mine's a wall--mywork. Two; four; and two is six,' measuring on the pavement. 'Six footinside that wall is Mrs. Sapsea.'

  'Not really Mrs. Sapsea?'

  'Say Mrs. Sapsea. Her wall's thicker, but say Mrs. Sapsea. Durdlestaps, that wall represented by that hammer, and says, after goodsounding: "Something betwixt us!" Sure enough, some rubbish has beenleft in that same six-foot space by Durdles's men!'

  Jasper opines that such accuracy 'is a gift.'

  'I wouldn't have it at a gift,' returns Durdles, by no means receivingthe observation in good part. 'I worked it out for myself. Durdlescomes by _his_ knowledge through grubbing deep for it, and having it upby the roots when it don't want to come.--Holloa you Deputy!'

  'Widdy!' is Deputy's shrill response, standing off again.

  'Catch that ha'penny. And don't let me see any more of you to-night,after we come to the Travellers' Twopenny.'

  'Warning!' returns Deputy, having caught the halfpenny, and appearing bythis mystic word to express his assent to the arrangement.

  They have but to cross what was once the vineyard, belonging to what wasonce the Monastery, to come into the narrow back lane wherein stands thecrazy wooden house of two low stories currently known as the Travellers'Twopenny:--a house all warped and distorted, like the morals of thetravellers, with scant remains of a lattice-work porch over the door, andalso of a rustic fence before its stamped-out garden; by reason of thetravellers being so bound to the premises by a tender sentiment (or sofond of having a fire by the roadside in the course of the day), thatthey can never be persuaded or threatened into departure, withoutviolently possessing themselves of some wooden forget-me-not, and bearingit off.

  The semblance of an inn is attempted to be given to this wretched placeby fragments of conventional red curtaining in the windows, which ragsare made muddily transparent in the night-season by feeble lights of rushor cotton dip burning dully in the close air of the inside. As Durdlesand Jasper come near, they are addressed by an inscribed paper lanternover the door, setting forth the purport of the house. They are alsoaddressed by some half-dozen other hideous small boys--whether twopennylodgers or followers or hangers-on of such, who knows!--who, as ifattracted by some carrion-scent of Deputy in the air, start into themoonlight, as vultures might gather in the desert, and instantly fall tostoning him and one another.

  'Stop, you young brutes,' cries Jasper angrily, 'and let us go by!'

  This remonstrance being received with yells and flying stones, accordingto a custom of late years comfortably established among the policeregulations of our English communities, where Christians are stoned onall sides, as if the days of Saint Stephen were revived, Durdles remarksof the young savages, with some point, that 'they haven't got an object,'and leads the way down the lane.

  At the corner of the lane, Jasper, hotly enraged, checks his companionand looks back. All is silent. Next moment, a stone coming rattling athis hat, and a distant yell of 'Wake-Cock! Warning!' followed by a crow,as from some infernally-hatched Chanticleer, apprising him under whosevictorious fire he stands, he turns the corner into safety, and takesDurdles home: Durdles stumbling among the litter of his stony yard as ifhe were going to turn head foremost into one of the unfinished tombs.

  John Jasper returns by another way to his gatehouse, and entering softlywith his key, finds his fire still burning. He takes from a locked pressa peculiar-looking pipe, which he fills--but not with tobacco--and,having adjusted the contents of the bowl, very carefully, with a littleinstrument, ascends an inner staircase of only a few steps, leading totwo rooms. One of these is his own sleeping chamber: the other is hisnephew's. There is a light in each.

  His nephew lies asleep, calm and untroubled. John Jasper stands lookingdown upon him, his unlighted pipe in his hand, for some time, with afixed and deep attention. Then, hushing his footsteps, he passes to hisown room, lights his pipe, and delivers himself to the Spectres itinvokes at midnight.