 CHAPTER XI A PICTURE AND A RING Behind the most ancient part of Hoban, London, where certain gabled houses some centuries of age still stand looking on the public way, as if disconsolently looking for the old-born that has long run dry, is a little nook composed of two irregular quadrangles called Staple Inn. It is one of those nooks, the turning into which out of the clashing street, in parts to the relieved pedestrian, the sensation of having put cotton in his ears and velvet soles on his boots. It is one of those nooks where a few smoky sparrows twitter in smoky streets, as though they called to one another, let us play at country, and where a few feet of garden mould and a few yards of gravel enable them to do that refreshing violence to their tiny understandings. Moreover it is one of those nooks which are legal nooks, and it contains a little hall with a little lantern in its roof, to what obstructive purpose is devoted, and at whose expense this history knoweth not. In the days when Cloisterham took offence at the existence of a railroad afar off, as menacing that sensitive constitution the property of us Britons, the odd fortune of which sacred institution it is to be in exactly equal degrees croaked about, trembled for, and boasted of, whatever happens to anything, anywhere in the world, in those days no neighbouring architecture of lofty proportions had arisen to overshadow Staple Inn. The westering sun bestowed bright glances on it, and the southwest wind blew into it, unimpeded. Neither wind nor sun, however, favoured Staple Inn one December afternoon toward six o'clock, when it was filled with fog, and candles shed murky and blurred rays through the windows of all its then occupied sets of chambers, notably from a set of chambers in a corner-house in the little inner quadrangle, presenting in black and white over its ugly portal the mysterious inscription P. J. T. 1747, in which set of chambers, never having troubled his head about the inscription, unless to be think himself at odd times of glancing up at it, that happily it might mean perhaps John Thomas, or perhaps Joe Tyler, sat Mr. Grugius writing by his fire. Who could have told by looking at Mr. Grugius whether he had ever known ambition or disappointment? He had been bred to the bar, and had laid himself out for chamber practice to draw deeds, convey the wise it call, as Pistol says. But conveyancing and he had made such a very indifferent marriage of it that they had separated by consent, if there can be said to be separation, where there has never been coming together. No, coy conveyancing would not come to Mr. Grugius. She was wooed, not one, and they went there several ways. But an arbitration being blown towards him by some unaccountable wind, and he, gaining great credit in it as one indefatigable in seeking outright, and doing right, a pretty fat receivership was next blown into his pocket by a wind more traceable to its source. So, by chance, he had found his niche. Receiver and agent now to two rich estates, and deputing their legal business in an amount worth having, to affirm of solicitors on the floor below, he had snuffed out his ambition, supposing him to have ever lighted it, and had settled down with his snuffers for the rest of his life under the dry vine and fig tree of P. J. T., who planted in 1747. Many accounts and account books, many filers of correspondence, and several strong boxes, garnished Mr. Grugius' room. They can scarcely be represented as having lumbered it, so conscientious and precise was their orderly arrangement. The apprehension of dying suddenly, and leaving one fact or one figure with any incompleteness or obscurity attaching to it, would have stretched Mr. Grugius' stone-dead any day. The largest fidelity to a trust was the life-blood of the man. There are sorts of life-blood that course more quickly, more gaily, more attractively, but there is no better sort in circulation. There was no luxury in his room. Even its comforts were limited to its being dry and warm, and having a snug though faded fireside. What may be called its private life was confined to the hearth, an old easy chair, and an old-fashioned occasional round-table that was brought out upon the rug after business hours, from a corner where it, else-wise, remained, turned up like a shining mahogany shield. Behind it, when standing thus on the defensive, was a closet, usually containing something good to drink. An outer room was the clerk's room. Mr. Grugius' sleeping room was across the common stair, and he held some not-empty cellarage at the bottom of the common stair. Three hundred days in the year at least, he crossed over to the hotel in Furnibles Inn for his dinner, and after dinner crossed back again to make the most of these simplicities until it should become Broad Business Day once more, with P. J. T. date 1747. As Mr. Grugius sat and wrote by his fire that afternoon, so did the clerk of Mr. Grugius sit and write by his fire. A pale, puffy-faced, dark-haired person of thirty, with big, dark eyes that wholly wanted lustre, and a dissatisfied doughy complexion that seemed to ask to be sent to the bakers, this attendant was a mysterious being, possessed of some strange power over Mr. Grugius. As though he had been called into existence, like a fabulous familiar by a magic spell which had failed when required to dismiss him, he stuck tight to Mr. Grugius' stool, although Mr. Grugius' comfort and convenience were manifestly have been advanced by dispossessing him. A gloomy person, with tangled locks, and a general air of having been reared under the shadow of that baleful tree of Java, which has given shelter to more lies than the whole botanical kingdom, Mr. Grugius nevertheless treated him with unaccountable consideration. Now, bazaar'd, said Mr. Grugius, on the entrance of his clerk, looking up from his papers as he arranged him for the night. What is in the wind besides fog? Mr. Druid, said bazaar'd. What of him? Has called, said bazaar'd. You might have shown him in. I am doing it, said bazaar'd. The visitor came in accordingly. Dear me, said Mr. Grugius, looking round his pair of office candles, I thought you had called and merely left your name and gone. How do you do, Mr. Edwin? Dear me, you're choking! It's this fog, returned Edwin, and it makes my eyes smart, like cayenne pepper. Is it really so bad as that? Pray, undo your wrappers. It's fortunate I have so good a fire. But Mr. bazaar'd has taken care of me. No, I haven't, said Mr. bazaar'd at the door. Then it follows that I must have taken care of myself without observing it, said Mr. Grugius. Pray be seated in my chair. No, no, I beg, coming out of such an atmosphere, in my chair. Edwin took the easy chair in the corner, and the fog he had brought in with him, and the fog he took off with his great coat and neck shawl was speedily licked up by the eager fire. I look, said Edwin, smiling, as if I had come to stop. By the by, cried Mr. Grugius, excuse my interrupting you. Do stop. The fog may clear in an hour or so. We can have dinner in from just across Hoban. You had better take your cayenne pepper here than outside. Pray, stop and dine. You are very kind, said Edwin, glancing about him as though attracted by the notion of a new and relishing sort of gypsy party. Not at all, said Mr. Grugius. You are very kind to join issue with a bachelor in chambers, and take pot-luck. And I'll ask, said Mr. Grugius, dropping his voice and speaking with a twinkling eye, as if inspired by a bright thought. I'll ask Bazard. He mightn't like it else. Bazard? Bazard appeared. Dine presently, with Mr. Drude and me. If I am ordered to dine, of course I will, sir, was the gloomy answer. Save the man, cried Mr. Grugius. You're not ordered. You're invited. Thank you, sir, said Bazard. In that case, I don't care if I do. That's arranged. And perhaps you wouldn't mind, said Mr. Grugius, stepping over to the hotel at Vernables, and asking them to send in materials for laying the cloth. For dinner we'll have a terrine of the hottest and strongest soup available, and we'll have the best-made dish that can be recommended, and we'll have a joint, such as a haunch of mutton, and we'll have a goose or a turkey, or any little stuffed thing of that sort that may happen to be in the Bill of Fair. In short, we'll have whatever there is on hand. These liberal directions Mr. Grugius issued with his usual air of reading an inventory, or repeating a lesson, or doing anything else by rote. Bazard, after drawing out the round table, withdrew to execute them. It was a little delicate, you see, said Mr. Grugius in a lower tone after his Clark's departure, about employing him in the foraging or commissariat department, because he mightn't like it. He seems to have his own way, sir, remarked Edwin. His own way? returned Mr. Grugius. Oh, dear, no, poor fellow, you quite mistake him. If he had his own way, he wouldn't be here. I wonder where he would be, Edwin thought. But he only thought it because Mr. Grugius came and stood beside him with his back to the other corner of the fire, and his shoulder blades against the chimney-piece, and collected his skirts for easy conversation. I take it that, without having the gift of prophecy, that you have done me the favour of looking in to mention that you are going down yonder, where I can tell you you are expected, and to offer to execute any little commission from me to my charming ward, and perhaps to sharper me up a bit in any proceedings, eh, Mr. Edwin? I called, before going down, as an act of attention. Of attention, said Mr. Grugius. Ah, of course, not of impatience. Impatience, sir? Mr. Grugius had meant to be arch, not that he in the remotest degree expressed that meaning, and had brought himself in to scarcely supportable proximity with the fire as if to burn the fullest effect of his arch-ness into himself, as other subtle impressions are burnt into hard metals. But his arch-ness suddenly flying before the composed face and manner of his visitor, and only the fire remaining. He started and rubbed himself down. I have lately been down yonder, said Mr. Grugius, rearranging his skirts. And that was what I referred to when I said I could tell you you are expected. Indeed, sir. Yes, I knew that Pussy was looking out for me. Do you keep a cat down there? asked Mr. Grugius. Edwin coloured a little as he explained. I call Rosa Pussy. Oh, really! said Mr. Grugius, smoothing down his head. That's very affable. Edwin glanced at his face. Uncertain whether or no he seriously objected to the appellation. But Edwin might as well have glanced at the face of a clock. A pet name, sir, he explained again. Hmm! said Mr. Grugius with a nod. But with such an extraordinary compromise between an unqualified ascent and a qualified dissent, that his visitor was much disconcerted. Did Rosa—Edwin began by way of recovering himself— Rosa, repeated Mr. Grugius, I was going to say Pussy and change my mind. Did she tell you anything about the landlises? No, said Mr. Grugius. What is the landlises? An estate, a villa, a farm, a brother and sister. The sister is at the nun's house, and has become a great friend of her— Perosa? Mr. Grugius stuck in with a fixed face. She is a strikingly handsome girl, sir, and I thought she might have been described to you or presented to you, perhaps. Neither, said Mr. Grugius. But here is Bazar. Bazar returned, accompanied by two waiters—an immovable waiter and a flying waiter. And the three brought in with them as much fog, and gave a new roar to the fire. The flying waiter, who had brought everything on his shoulders, laid the cloth with amazing rapidity and dexterity, while the immovable waiter, who had brought nothing, found fault with him. The flying waiter then highly polished all the glasses he had brought, and the immovable waiter looked through them. The flying waiter then flew across Hoban for the soup, and flew back again, and then took another flight for the maid-dish, and flew back again, and then took another flight for the joint and paltry, and flew back again. And between wiles took supplementary flights for a great variety of articles, as it was discovered from time to time that the immovable waiter had forgotten them all. But, let the flying waiter cleave the air as he might, he was always reproached on his return by the immovable waiter for bringing fog with him, and being out of breath. At the conclusion of the repast, by which time the flying waiter was severely blown, the immovable waiter gathered up the tablecloth under his arm with a grand air, and having sternly, not to say with indignation, looked on at the flying waiter while he set the clean glasses round, directed a valedictory glance towards Mr. Grugeous, conveying, Let it be clearly understood between us that the reward is mine, and that nil is the claim of this slave, and pushed the flying waiter before him out of the room. It was like a highly finished miniature painting representing my lords of the Circumlocution Department, commandership in chief of any sort government. It was quite an edifying little picture to be hung on the line in the National Gallery. As the fog had been the proximate cause of this sumptuous repast, so the fog served for its general source, to hear the outdoor clerks sneezing, wheezing, and beating their feet on the gravel, was a zest far surpassing Dr. Kitchener's. To bid, with a shiver, the unfortunate flying waiter shut the door, before he had opened it, was a condiment of a profounder flavour than Harvey's. And here let it be noticed, parenthetically, that the leg of this young man, in its application to the door, evinced the finest sense of touch, always preceding himself and Trey, with something of an angling air about it, by some seconds, and always lingering after he and the Trey had disappeared, like Macbeth's leg, when accompanying him off the stage with reluctance to the assassination of Duncan. The host had gone below to the cellar, and had brought up bottles of ruby straw-coloured and golden drinks, which had ripened long ago in lands where no fogs are, and had since lain slumbering in the shade. Sparkling and tingling after so long a nap, they pushed at their corks to help the corkscrew, like prisoners helping rioters to force their gates, and danced out gaily. If PJT in 1747, or any other year of his period, drank such wines, then for a certainty PJT was pretty jolly too. Externally Mr. Grugius showed no signs of being mellowed by these glowing vintages. Instead of his drinking them, they might have been poured over him in his highly dried snuff form and run to waste, for any lights and shades they caused to flicker over his face. Neither was his manner influenced. But in his wooden way he had observant eyes for Edwin, and when at the end of the dinner he motioned Edwin back to his own easy chair in the fireside corner, and Edwin sank luck duriously into it after very brief remonstrance. Mr. Grugius, as he turned his head round towards the fire too, and smoothed his head and face, might have been seen looking at his visitor between his smoothing fingers. Bazzard, said Mr. Grugius, suddenly turning to him. I follow you, sir, returned Bazzard, who had done his work of consuming meat and drink in a work-manlike manner, though mostly in speechlessness. I drink to you, Bazzard. Mr. Edwin, success to Mr. Bazzard. Success to Mr. Bazzard! echoed Edwin, with a totally unfounded appearance of enthusiasm, and with the unspoken addition. What in, I wonder? And may, pursued Mr. Grugius, I am not at liberty to be definite. May, my conversational pals are so very limited that I know I shall not come well out of this. May, it ought to be put imaginatively, but I have no imagination. May, the thorn of anxiety is as nearly the markers I am likely to get. May it come out at last. Mr. Bazzard, with a frowning smile at the fire, put a hand into his tangled locks, as if the thorn of anxiety were there, then into his waistcoat, as if it were there, then into his pockets, as if it were there. In all these movements he was closely followed by the eyes of Edwin, as if that young gentleman expected to see the thorn in action. It was not produced, however, and Mr. Bazzard merely said, I follow you, sir, and I thank you. I am going, said Mr. Grugius, jingling his glass on the table with one hand, and bending aside under cover of the other to whisper to Edwin, to drink to my ward. But I put Bazzard first. He might not like it else. This was said with a mysterious wink, or what would have been a wink if, in Mr. Grugius's hands, it could have been quick enough. So Edwin winked responsively, without the least idea what he meant by doing so. And now, said Mr. Grugius, I devote a bumper to the fair and fascinating, Miss Rosa Bazzard, the fair and fascinating Miss Rosa. I follow you, sir, said Bazzard, and I pledge you. And so do I, said Edwin. Lord bless me! cried Mr. Grugius, breaking the blank silence, which of course ensued. Though why these pauses should come upon us, when we have performed any small social right, not directly induce of self-examination or mental despondency, who can tell? I am a particularly angular man, and I fancy, if I may use the word, not having a morsel of fancy, that I could draw the picture of a true lover's state of mind, to-night. Let us follow you, sir, said Bazzard, and have the picture. Mr. Edwin will correct it where it's wrong, resumed Mr. Grugius, and will throw in a few touches from the life. I daresay it is wrong in many particulars, and wants many touches from the life. For I was born a chip, and have neither soft sympathies nor soft experiences. Well, I hazard the guess that the true lover's mind is completely permeated by the beloved object of his affections. I hazard the guess that her dear name is precious to him, cannot be heard or repeated without emotion, and is preserved sacred. If he has any distinguishing appellation of fondness for her, it is reserved for her, and is not for common ears. A name that would be a privilege to call her by, being alone with her own bright self, it would be a liberty, a coldness, an insensibility, almost a breach of good faith, to flaunt elsewhere. It was wonderful to see Mr. Grugius sitting bold upright, with his hands on his knees, continuously chopping this discourse out of himself, much as a charity boy with a very good memory might get his catechism said, and evincing no correspondent emotion whatever. Unless in a certain occasional little tingling perceptible at the end of his nose. My picture, Mr. Grugius proceeded, goes on to represent, under correction from you, Mr. Edwin, the true lover as ever impatient to be in the presence or vicinity of the beloved object of his affections, as caring very little for his case in any other society, and as constantly seeking that. If I was to say seeking that as a bird seeks its nest, I should make an ass of myself, because that would trench upon what I understand to be poetry, and I am so far from trenching upon poetry at any time, that I never to my knowledge got within ten thousand miles of it, and I am besides totally unacquainted with the habits of birds, except the birds of staple inn who seek their nests on ledges, and in gutter pipes, and chimney pots not constructed for them by the beneficent hand of nature, I beg therefore to be understood as foregoing the bird's nest. But my picture does represent the true lover as having no existence separate from that of the beloved object of his affections, and as living at once a doubled life and a halved life. And if I do not clearly express what I mean by that, it is either for the reason that having no conversational powers I cannot express what I mean, or that having no meaning I do not mean what I fail to express, which to the best of my belief is not the case. Edwin had turned red and turned white as certain points of this picture came into the light. He now sat looking at the fire and bit his lip. The speculations of an angular man, resumed Mr. Grugia still sitting and speaking exactly as before, are probably erroneous on so globular a topic, but I figure to myself, subject as before to Mr. Edwin's correction, that there can be no coolness, no lassitude, no doubt, no indifference, no half fire and half smoke state of mind in a real lover. Pray, am I at all near the mark in my picture? As abrupt in his conclusion, as in his commencement and progress, he jerked this inquiry at Edwin, and stopped where one might have supposed him to be in the middle of his aeration. I should say, sir, stammered Edwin, as you refer the question to me, yes, said Mr. Grugius, I refer it to you as an authority. I should say then, sir, Edwin went on embarrassed, that the picture you have drawn is generally correct, but I submit that perhaps you may be rather hard upon the unlucky lover. Likely so, assented Mr. Grugius, likely so, I am a hard man in the grain. He may not show, said Edwin, all he feels, or he may not. There he stopped so long to find the rest of his sentence that Mr. Grugius rendered his difficulty a thousand times the greater by unexpectedly striking in with, no to be sure, he may not. After that they all sat silent, the silence of Mr. Bazar being occasioned by slumber. His responsibility is very great, though, said Mr. Grugius at length with his eyes on the fire. Edwin nodded ascent with his eyes on the fire, and let him be sure that he trifles with no one, said Mr. Grugius, neither with himself nor with any other. Edwin bit his lip again, and still sat looking at the fire. He must not make a plaything of a treasure, woe betide him if he does. Let him take that well to heart, said Mr. Grugius. Though he said these things in short sentences, much as the suppositious charity-boy just now referred to might have repeated a verse or two from the Book of Proverbs, there was something dreamy for so literal a man, in the way in which he now shook his right forefinger at the live coals in the great, and again fell silent. But not for long. As he sat upright and stiff in his chair he suddenly wrapped his knees like the carved image of some queer joss or other coming out of its reverie, and said, We must finish this bottle, Mr. Edwin. Let me help you. I'll help Bazar too, though he is asleep. He mightn't like it else. He helped them both, and helped himself, and drained his glass, and stood it bottom-upward on the table, as though he had just caught a blue-bottle in it. And now, Mr. Edwin, he proceeded, wiping his mouth and hands upon his handkerchief, to a little piece of business. You received from me the other day a certified copy of Miss Rosa's father's will. You knew its contents before, but you received it from me as a matter of business. I should have sent it to Mr. Jasper, but for Miss Rosa's wishing it to come straight to you in preference. You received it? Quite safely, sir. You should have acknowledged its receipt, said Mr. Grugius, business being business all the world over. However, you did not. I meant to have acknowledged it when I first came in this evening. Not a business-like acknowledgement, returned Mr. Grugius. However, let that pass. Now, in that document you have observed a few words of kindly allusion to its being left to me to discharge a little trust confided to me in conversation, at such time as I, in my discretion, may think best. Yes, sir. Mr. Edwin, it came into my mind just now when I was looking at the fire, that I could, in my discretion, acquit myself of that trust at no better time than the present. Favour me with your attention, half a minute. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, singled out by the candle-light the key he wanted, and then with a candle in his hand went to a bureau or esquitor, unlocked it, touched the spring of a little secret drawer, and took from it an ordinary ring-case made for a single ring. With this in his hand he returned to his chair. As he held it up for the young man to see, his hand trembled. Mr. Edwin, this rose of diamonds and rubies delicately set in gold, was a ring belonging to Miss Rosa's mother. It was removed from her dead hand, in my presence, with such distracted grief as I hope it may never be my lot to contemplate again. Hard man as I am, I am not hard enough for that. See how bright these stones shine, opening the case. And yet the eyes that were so much brighter, and that so often looked upon them with a light and a proud heart, have been ashes among ashes, and dust among dust some years. If I had any imagination, which it is needless to say I have not, I might imagine that the lasting beauty of these stones was almost cruel. He closed the case again as he spoke. The ring was given to the young lady, who was drowned so early in her beautiful and happy career by her husband, when they first plighted their faith to one another. It was he who removed it from her unconscious hand, and it was he who, when his death drew very near, placed it in mine. The trust in which I received it was that you and Miss Rosa growing to manhood and womanhood, and your betrothal prospering and coming to maturity, I should give it to you, to place upon her finger. Failing those desired results, it was to remain in my possession. Some trouble was in the young man's face, and some indecision was in the action of his hand, as Mr. Grugius looking steadfastly at him gave him the ring. You're placing it on her finger, said Mr. Grugius, will be the solemn seal upon your strict fidelity to the living and the dead. You are going to her to make the last irrevocable preparations for your marriage. Take it with you. The young man took the little case and placed it in his breast. If anything should be amiss, if anything should be even slightly wrong between you, if you should have any secret consciousness, that you are committing yourself to this step for no higher reason than because you have long been accustomed to look forward to it, then, said Mr. Grugius, I charge you once more by the living and by the dead, to bring that ring back to me. Here Bazar awoke himself by his own snoring, and as is usual in such cases, sat apoplectically staring at vacancy, as defying vacancy to accuse him of having been asleep. Bazar, said Mr. Grugius, harder than ever. I follow you, sir, said Bazar, and I have been following you. In discharge of a trust I have handed Mr. Edwin Drude a ring of diamonds and rubies, you see. Edwin reproduced the little case and opened it, and Bazar looked into it. I follow you both, sir, returned Bazar, and I witness the transaction. Evidently anxious to get away and be alone, Edwin Drude now resumed his outer clothing, muttering something about time and appointments. The fog was reported no clearer by the flying waiter who alighted from a speculative flight in the coffee-interest, but he went out into it, and Bazar, after his manner, followed him. Mr. Grugius left alone walked softly and slowly to and fro for an hour or more. He was restless to-night, and seemed dispirited. I hope I have done right, he said. The appeal to him seemed necessary. It was hard to lose the ring, and yet it must have gone from me very soon. He closed the empty little drawer with a sigh, and shut and locked the escritor, and came back to the solitary fireside. Her ring, he went on. Will it come back to me? My mind hangs about her ring very uneasily to-night, but that is explainable. I have had it so long, and I have prized it so much. I wonder. He was in a wondering mood as well as a restless. For though he checked himself at that point and took another walk, he resumed his wondering where he sat down again. I wonder, for the ten-thousandth time, and what a weak fool I for what can it signify now. Whether he confided the charge of their orphan child to me, because he knew, good God, how like her mother she has become. I wonder whether he ever so much as suspected that someone doted on her at a hopeless, speechless distance when he struck in and won her. I wonder whether it ever crept into his mind who that unfortunate someone was. I wonder whether I shall sleep to-night. At all events, I will shut out the world with the bed-clothes and try. Mr. Grugius crossed the staircase to his raw and foggy bedroom, and was soon ready for bed. Dimly catching sight of his face in the misty-looking glass, he held his candle to it for a moment. A likely someone, you, to come into anybody's thoughts in such an aspect, he exclaimed. There, there, there, get to bed, poor man, and cease to jabber. With that he extinguished his light, pulled up the bed-clothes around him, and with another size shut out the world. And yet there are such unexplored romantic nooks in the unlikeliest men that even old tinderous and touch-woody P.J.T. possibly jabbered thus at some odd times in or about 1747. Chapter 12 of The Mystery of Edwin Drude This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Alan Chant. The Mystery of Edwin Drude, The Unfinished Novel by Charles Dickens Chapter 12 A Night With Dirtles When Mr. Sapsy has nothing better to do, towards evening, and finds the contemplation of his own profundity becoming a little monotonous in spite of the vastness of the subject, he often takes an airing in the cathedral-clothes and thereabout. He likes to pass the churchyard with a swelling air of proprietorship, and to encourage in his breast a sort of benignant landlord feeling, in that he has been bountiful towards that meritorious tenant Mrs. Sapsy, and has publicly given her a prize. He likes to see a stray face or two looking in through the railings, and perhaps reading his inscription. Should he meet a stranger coming from the churchyard with a quick step, he is morally convinced that the stranger is, with a blush, retiring, as monumentally directed. Mr. Sapsy's importance has received enhancement, for he has become mayor of Cloisterham. Without mayors and many of them it cannot be disputed that the whole framework of society, Mr. Sapsy is confident that he invented that forcible figure, would fall to pieces. Mayors have been knighted for going up with addresses, explosive machines intrepidly discharging shot and shell into the English grammar. Mr. Sapsy may go up with an address. Rise, Sir Thomas Sapsy. Of such is the salt of the earth. Mr. Sapsy has improved the acquaintance of Mr. Jasper since their first meeting to partake of port, epitaph, backgammon, beef, and salad. Mr. Sapsy has been received at the gatehouse with kindred hospitality, and on that occasion Mr. Jasper seated himself at the piano and sang to him, tickling his ears, figuratively, long enough to present a considerable area for tickling. What Mr. Sapsy likes in that young man is, that he is always ready to profit by the wisdom of his elders, and that he is sound, Sir, at the core, in proof of which he sang to Mr. Sapsy that evening, no kick-sure ditties favourites with national enemies, but gave him the genuine George III home-brood, exhorting him as, my brave boys, to reduce to a smashed condition all other islands but this island, and all continents, peninsulas, isthmuses, promontories, and other geographical forms of land, so ever, besides sweeping the seas in all directions. In short, he rendered it pretty clear that Providence made a distinct mistake in originating so small a nation of hearts of oak, and so many other verminous peoples. Mr. Sapsy walking slowly this moist evening near the churchyard, with his hands behind him, on the lookout for a blushing and retiring stranger, turns a corner, and comes instead into the goodly presence of the dean, conversing with the verger and Mr. Jasper. Mr. Sapsy makes his obeisance, and is instantly stricken far more ecclesiastical than any archbishop of York or Canterbury. You are evidently going to write a book about us, Mr. Jasper. Quote the dean, to write a book about us. Well, we are very ancient, and we ought to make a good book. We are not so richly endowed in possessions as in age, but perhaps you will put that in your book, amongst other things, and call attention to our wrongs. Mr. Tope, as in duty bound, is greatly entertained by this. I really have no intention at all, sir, replies Jasper, of turning author or archaeologist. It is but a whim of mine, and even for my whim Mr. Sapsy here is more accountable than I am. How so, Mr. Mayor? says the dean, with a nod of good-natured recognition of his fetch. How is that, Mr. Mayor? I am not aware, Mr. Sapsy remarks, looking about him for information, to what the very reverent the dean does me the honour of referring, and then falls to studying his original in minute points of detail. Dirtles, Mr. Tope hints, are the dean echoes, Dirtles, Dirtles. The truth is, sir, explains Jasper, that my curiosity in the man was first really stimulated by Mr. Sapsy. Mr. Sapsy's knowledge of mankind, and power of drawing out whatever his recluse or odd around him, first led to my bestowing a second thought upon the man. Though, of course, I had met him constantly about. You would not be surprised by this, Mr. Dean, if you had seen Mr. Sapsy deal with him in his own parlour, as I did. Oh, Christ, Sapsy, picking up the ball thrown to him with ineffable complacency and pomposity. Yes, yes, the very reverent the dean refers to that. Yes, I happened to bring Dirtles and Mr. Jasper together. I regard Dirtles as a character. A character, Mr. Sapsy, that with a few skillful touches you turn inside out, says Jasper. No, not quite that, returns the lumbering auctioneer. I may have a little influence over him, perhaps, and a little insight into his character, perhaps. The very reverent the dean will please to bear in mind that I have seen the world. Here, Mr. Sapsy gets a little behind the dean to inspect his coat-buttons. Well, says the dean, looking about him, to see what has become of his copyist, I hope, Mr. Mayor, you will use your study and knowledge of Dirtles to the good purpose of exhorting him, not to break our worthy and respected choir-master's neck, who we cannot afford it. His head and voice are much too valuable to us. Mr. Tope is again highly entertained, and, having fallen into respectful convulsions of laughter, subsides into a differential murmur, importing that surely any gentleman would deem it a pleasure and an honour to have his neck broken, in return for such a compliment from such a source. I will take it upon myself, sir, observes Sapsy loftily, to answer for Mr. Jasper's neck. I will tell Dirtles to be careful of it. He will mind what I say. How is it at present endangered, he inquires, looking about him with magnanimity, present endangered, he inquires, looking about him with magnificent patronage. Only by my making a moonlight expedition with Dirtles among the tombs, vaults, towers, and ruins, returns Jasper. You remember suggesting, when you brought us together, that, as a lover of the picturesque, it might be worth my while. I remember, replies the auctioneer, and the solemn idiot really believes that he does remember. Profiting by your hint, pursues Jasper, I have had some day rambles with the extraordinary old fellow, and we are to make a moonlight whole and corner exploration to-night. And here he is, says the dean. Dirtles, with his dinner bundle in his hand, is indeed beheld slouching towards them, slouching nearer, and perceiving the dean, he pulls off his hat, and is slouching away with it under his arm when Mr. Sapsy stops him. Mind, you take care of my friend, is the injunction Mr. Sapsy lays upon him. What friend of Yorn is dead? asks Dirtles. No orders has come in for any friend of Yorn. I mean my live friend there. Oh, him, says Dirtles. You can take care of himself, Mr. Jasper. But do you take care of him too, says Sapsy, whom Dirtles, there being command in his tone, surly surveys from head to foot. With submission to his reverence the dean, if your mind what concerns you, Mr. Sapsy, Dirtles, you'll mind what concerns him. Your out-of-temper, says Mr. Sapsy, winking to the company to observe how smoothly he will manage him. My friend concerns me, and Mr. Jasper is my friend, and you are my friend. Don't you get into a bad habit of boasting, retorts Dirtles, with a grave cautionary nod? It'll grow upon you. You are out-of-temper, says Sapsy again, reddening, but again winking to the company. I own to it, returns Dirtles. I don't like liberties. Mr. Sapsy winks a third wink to the company, as who should say? I think you will agree with me that I have settled his business, and stalks out of the controversy. Dirtles then gives the dean a good evening and adding, as he puts his hat on, You'll find me at home, Mr. Jasper, as agreed, when you want me. I'm going home to clean myself. Soon slouches out of sight. This going home to clean himself is one of the man's incomprehensible compromises with inexorable facts. He and his hat, and his boots, and his clothes, never showing any trace of cleaning, but being uniformly in one condition of dust and grit. The lamp-lighter now dotting the quiet clothes with specks of light, and running at a great rate up and down his little ladder with that object, his little ladder under the sacred shadow of whose inconvenience generations have grown up, and which all cloister him would have stood aghast at the idea of abolishing. The dean withdraws to his dinner, Mr. Tope to his tea, and Mr. Jasper to his piano. There with no light but that of the fire, he sits chanting choir music in a low and beautiful voice for two or three hours, in short, until it has been for some time dark, and the moon is about to rise. Then he closes his piano softly, softly changes his coat for a p-jacket with a goodly wicker-cased bottle in its largest pocket, and putting on a low crown, flap-brimmed hat goes softly out. Why does he move so softly to-night? No outward reason is apparent for it? Can there be any sympathetic reason crouching darkly within him? Repairing to Dirtle's unfinished house or hole in the city wall, and seeing a light within it, he softly picks his course among the gravestones, monuments, and stony lumber of the yard, already touched here and there sidewise by the rising moon. The two journeymen have left their two great sores sticking in their blocks of stone, and two skeleton journeymen out of the dance of death might be grinning in the shadow of their sheltering sentry-boxes about to slash away at cutting out the gravestones of the next two people destined to die in Cloisterham. Likely enough the two think little of that now being alive and perhaps merry, curious to make a guess at the two, or say one of the two. Ho! Dirtle's! The light moves, and he appears with it at the door. He would seem to have been cleaning himself with the aid of a bottle, jug, and tumbler, for no other cleansing instruments are visible in the bare brick room with rafters overhead and no plastered ceiling, into which he shows his visitor. Are you ready? I am ready, Mr. Jasper. Let the holdens come out if they dare when we go among their tombs. My spirit is ready for them. Do you mean animal spirits or ardent? The one's the tether, answers Dirtle's, and I mean them both. He takes a lantern from a hook, puts a match or two in his pocket wherewith to light it should there be need, and they go out together, dinner-bundle and all. Surely an unaccountable sort of expedition. That Dirtle's himself, who is always prowling among old graves and ruins, like a ghoul, that he should be stealing forth to climb and dive and wander without an object is nothing extraordinary. But that the choir-master, or anyone else, should hold it worth his while to be with him, and to study moonlight effects in such company is another affair. Surely an unaccountable sort of expedition, therefore. Wear that there, ma'am, by the yard gate, Mr. Jasper. I see it. What is it? Lime. Mr. Jasper stops, and waits for him to come out, for he lags behind. What do you call quick, Lime? I, says Dirtle's, quick enough to eat your boots, with a little Andy stirring, quick enough to eat your bones. They go on, presently passing the red windows of the traveller's company, and emerging into the clear moonlight of the monk's vineyard. This cross they come to minor cannon-corner, of which the greater part lies in shadow, until the moon shall rise higher in the sky. The sound of a closing house-door strikes their ears, and two men come out. These are Mr. Chris Sparkle and Neville. Jasper, with a strange and sudden smile upon his face, lays the palm of his hand upon the breast of Dirtle's, stopping him where he stands. At that end of minor cannon-corner, the shadow is profound in the existing state of the light. At that end, too, there is a piece of old dwarf wall, rest high, the only remaining boundary of what was once a garden, but is now the thoroughfare. Jasper and Dirtle's would have turned this wall in another instant, but stopping so short stand behind it. These two are only sauntering, Jasper whispers. They will go out into the moonlight soon. Let us keep quiet here, or they will detain us, or want to join us, or what not. Dirtle nods ascent, and falls to munching some fragments from his bundle. Jasper folds his arms upon the top of the wall, and with his chin resting on them, watches. He takes no note whatever of the minor cannon, but watches Neville, as though his eyes were at the trigger of a loaded rifle, and he had covered him, and were going to fire. A sense of destructive power is so expressed in his face that even Dirtle's pauses in his munching, and looks at him with an unmunched something in his cheek. Meanwhile Mr. Chris Barkle and Neville walk to and fro, quietly talking together. What they say cannot be heard consecutively, but Mr. Jasper has already distinguished his own name more than once. This is the first day of the week. Mr. Chris Barkle can be distinctly heard to observe as they turn back. And the last day of this week is Christmas Eve, who may be certain of me, sir. The echoes were favourable at those points, but as the two approach, the sound of their talking becomes confused again. The word confidence shattered by the echoes, but still capable of being pieced together, is uttered by Mr. Chris Barkle. As they draw still nearer, this fragment of a reply is heard. Not deserved yet, but shall be so. As they turn away again, Jasper again hears his own name in connection with the words from Mr. Chris Barkle. Remember that I said I answered for you confidently. Then the sound of their talk becomes confused again. They halting for a little while and some earnest action on the part of Neville succeeding. When they move once more, Mr. Chris Barkle is seen to look up at the sky and to point before him. They then slowly disappear, passing out into the moonlight at the opposite end of the corner. It is not until they are gone that Mr. Jasper moves. But then he turns to Dirdle's and bursts into a fit of laughter. Dirdle's who still has that suspended something in his cheek, and who sees nothing to laugh at, stares at him until Mr. Jasper lays his face down on his arms to have his laugh out. Then Dirdle's bolts the something, as if desperately resigning himself to indigestion. Among those secluded nooks there is very little stir of movement after dark. There is little enough in the high tide of the day, but there is next to none at night. Besides that, the cheerfully frequented high street lies nearly parallel to the spot, the old cathedral rising between the two, and is the natural channel in which the cloister-room traffic flows. A certain awful hush pervades the ancient pile, the cloisters and the churchyard after dark, which not many people care to encounter. Ask the first hundred citizens of Cloister-room, met at random in the streets at noon, if they believed in ghosts, they would tell you no, but put them to choose at night, between these eerie precincts and the thoroughfare of shops, and you would find that ninety-nine declared for the longer round and the more frequented way. The cause of this is not to be found in any local superstition that attaches to the precincts, albeit a mysterious lady with a child in her arms, and a rope dangling from her neck, has been seen flitting about there by sundry witnesses as intangible as herself, but it is to be sought in the innate shrinking of dust with the breath of life in it, from dust out of which the breath of life has passed. Also, in the widely diffused and almost as widely unacknowledged reflection, if the dead do, under any circumstances, become visible to the living, these are such likely surroundings for the purpose that I, the living, will get out of them as soon as I can. Hence, when Mr. Jasper and Dirtles paused to glance around them before descending into the crypt by a small side-door of which the latter has a key, the whole expanse of moonlight in their view is utterly deserted. One might fancy that the tide of life was stemmed by Mr. Jasper's own gate-house, the murmur of the tide is heard beyond, but no wave passes the archway over which his lamp burns red behind his curtain, as if the building were a lighthouse. They enter, locking themselves in, descend the rugged steps and are down in the crypt. The lantern is not wanted, for the moonlight strikes in at the groined windows bare of glass, the broken frames for which cast patterns on the ground. The heavy pillars which support the roof engender masses of black shade, but between them there are lanes of light. Up and down these lanes they walk, Dirtles discoursing on the olden's, he yet counts on disintering, and slapping a wall in which he considers a whole family on them to be stoned and earthed up, just as if he were a familiar friend of the family. The taciturnity of Dirtles is, for the time, overcome by Mr. Jasper's wicker bottle, which circulates freely, in the sense, that is to say, that its contents enter freely into Mr. Dirtles' circulation, while Mr. Jasper only rinses his mouth once, and casts forth the rinsing. They are to ascend the great tower. On the steps by which they rise to the cathedral, Dirtles pauses for new store of breath. The steps are very dark, but out of the darkness they can see the lanes of light they have traversed. Dirtles seats himself upon a step. Mr. Jasper seats himself upon another. The odour from the wicker bottle which has somehow passed into Dirtles' keeping soon intimates that the cork has been taken out, but this is not ascertainable through the sense of sight, since neither can describe the other, and yet in talking they turn to one another, as though their faces could commune together. This is good stuff, Mr. Jasper. It is very good stuff, I hope. I bought it on purpose. They don't show you see the oldens don't, Mr. Jasper. It would be a more confused world than it is, if they could. Well, it would lead towards a mixing of things, Dirtles acquiesces pausing on the remark, as if the idea of ghosts had not previously presented itself to him in a merely inconvenient light, domestically or chronologically. But do you think there may be ghosts of other things, though not of men and women? What things? Flower beds and watering pots? Horses and harness? No. Sounds. What sounds? Cries. What cries do you mean? Chairs to mend? No, I mean screeches. Now I'll tell you, Mr. Jasper, wait a bit until I put the bottle right. Here the cork is evidently taken out again and replaced again. There, now it's right. This time last year, only a few days later, I happened to have been doing what was correct by the season, in a way of giving it the welcome it had a right to expect. When them town boys set on me at their worst, at length I gave them the slip and turned in here, and here I fell asleep. And what woke me? The ghost of a cry. The ghost of one terrific shriek, which shriek was followed by the ghost of the howl of a dog, a long, dismal, woeful howl, such as a dog gives when a person's dead. That was my last Christmas Eve. What do you mean? It's the very abrupt and, one might say, fierce retort. I mean I am made inquiries everywhere about, and that no living is, but mine heard either that cry or that howl. So I say they was both ghosts, though why they came to me I've never made out. I thought you were another kind of man, says Jasper scornfully. So I thought myself, answers Dirdles with his usual composure, and yet I was picked out for it. Jasper had risen suddenly when he asked him what he meant, and he now says, come, we shall freeze here, leave the way. Dirdles complies, not over steadily, opens the door at the top of the steps with the key he has already used, and so emerges on the cathedral level in a passage at the side of the chancel. Here the moonlight is so very bright again that the colours of the nearest stained glass window are thrown upon their faces. The appearance of the unconscious Dirdles, holding the door open for his companion to follow, as if from the grave is ghastly enough, with a purple hand across his face, and a yellow splash upon his brow. But he bears the close scrutiny of his companion in an insensible way, although it is prolonged while the latter fumbles among his pockets, for a key confided to him that will open an iron gate, so to enable them to pass to the staircase of the great tower. That and the bottle are enough for you to carry, he says, giving it to Dirdles, hand your bundle to me. I am younger and longer-winded than you. Dirdles hesitates for a moment between bundle and bottle, but gives the preference to the bottle as being by far the better company, and consigns the dry weight to his fellow explorer. Then they go up the winding staircase of the great tower, toilsomely turning and turning, and lowering their heads to avoid the stairs above or the rough stone pivot around which they twist. Dirdles has lighted his lantern by drawing from the cold hard wall a spark of that mysterious fire which lurks in everything, and guided by this speck they clamber up among the cobwebs and the dust. Their way lies through strange places. Twice or thrice they emerge into level, low-arched galleries whence they can look down into the moonlit nave, and where Dirdles waving his lantern waves the dim angel's heads upon the cobbles of the roof, seeming to watch their progress. Anon they turn into narrower and steeper staircases, and the night air begins to blow upon them, and the chirp of some startled jack-door or frightened rook precedes the heavy beating of wings in a confined space, and the beating down of dust and straws upon their heads. At last leaving their light behind a stair, for it blows fresh up here, they look down on Cloisterham, fair to see in the moonlight, its ruined habitations and sanctuaries of the dead at the tower's base, its moss softened red-tiled roofs and redbrick houses of the living clustered beyond, its river winding down from the mist on the horizon, as though that were its source, and already heaving with a restless knowledge of its approach towards the sea. Once again an unaccountable expedition this. Jasper always moving softly with no visible reason, contemplates the scene, and especially that stillest part of it which the cathedral overshadows. But he contemplates Durdles quite as curiously, and Durdles is by times conscious of his watchful eyes. Only by times, because Durdles is growing drowsy. As Aeronauts lighten the load they carry when they wish to rise, similarly Durdles has lightened the wicker bottle in coming up, snatches of sleep, surprise him on his legs, and stop him in his talk. A mild fit of calenture seizes him, in which he deems that the ground so far below is on a level with the tower, and word as leaf walk off the tower into the air as not. Such is his state when they begin to come down, and as Aeronauts make themselves heavier when they wish to descend. Similarly Durdles charges himself with more liquid from the wicker bottle, that he may come down the better. The iron gate attained and locked, but not before Durdles has tumbled twice, and cut an eyebrow open once. They descend into the crypt again, with the intent of issuing forth as they entered. But while returning among those lanes of light Durdles becomes so very uncertain, both of foot and speech, that he half drops, half throws himself down by one of the heavy pillars, scarcely less heavy than itself, and indistinctly appeals to his companion for forty winches of a second age. If you will have it so, or must have it so, replies Jasper, I'll not leave you here. Take them while I walk to and fro. Durdles is asleep at once, and in his sleep he dreams a dream. It is not much of a dream, considering the vast extent of the domains of Dreamland and their wonderful productions. It is only remarkable for being unusually restless, and unusually real. He dreams of lying there asleep, and yet counting his companion's footsteps as he walks to and fro. He dreams that the footsteps die away into distance of time and of space, and that something touches him, and that something falls from his hand. Then something chinks and gropes about. And he dreams that he is alone for so long a time that the lanes of light take new directions as the moon advances in her course. From succeeding unconsciousness he pauses into a dream of slow uneasiness from cold, and painfully awakes to a perception of the lanes of light really changed, much as he had dreamed, and Jasper walking among them, beating his hands and feet. Hello! Durdles cries out, unmeaningly alarmed. Awake at last, says Jasper, coming up to him. Do you know that your forties have stretched into thousands? No. They have, though. What is the time? Hark! The bells are going in the tower. They strike four quarters, and then the great bell strikes. Two! cries Durdles, scrambling up. Why didn't you try to wake me, Mr Jasper? I did. I might as well have tried to wake the dead, your own family of dead up in the corner there. Did you touch me? Touch you? Yes, shook you. As Durdles recalls that touching something in his dream he looks down on the pavement and sees the key of the crypt door lying close to where he himself lay. I dropped you, did I? he says, picking it up, and recalling that part of his dream. As he gathers himself up again into an upright position, or into a position as nearly upright as he ever maintains, he is again conscious of being watched by his companion. Well, says Jasper, smiling, are you quite ready? Pray don't hurry. Rep me get my bundle right, Mr Jasper, and I'm with you. As he ties it afresh, he is once more conscious that he is very narrowly observed. What do you suspect me of, Mr Jasper? he asks, with drunken displeasure. Let them as any suspicions of Durdles' name. I have no suspicions of you, my good Mr Durdles, but I have suspicions that my bottle was filled with something stiffer than either of us supposed. And I also have suspicions, Jasper adds, taking it from the pavement and turning it bottom upwards. That it's empty. Durdles condescends to laugh at this, continuing to chuckle when his life is over, as though remonstrant with himself on his drinking powers. He rolls to the door and unlocks it. They both pass out, and Durdles relocks it and pockets his key. A thousand thanks for a curious and interesting night, says Jasper, giving him his hand. You can make your own way home? I should think so, answers Durdles. If you were to offer Durdles the affront to show him his way home, he wouldn't go home. Durdles wouldn't go home till morning. And then Durdles wouldn't go home. Durdles wouldn't. This with the utmost defiance. Good night, then. Good night, Mr. Jasper. Each is turning his own way, when a sharp whistle rends the silence, and the jargon is yelped out. Fiddy, fiddy, then. I catch him out of ten. Fiddy, fiddy, by. Then he don't go. Then I shy. Fiddy, fiddy, vape, cock, warning. Instantly afterwards a rapid shower of stones rattles at the cathedral wall, and the hideous small boys beheld opposite, dancing in the moonlight. What? Is that baby devil on the watch there? cries Jasper in a fury, so quickly roused and so violent that he seems an older devil himself. I shall shed the blood of that impish wretch. I know I shall do it. Regardless of the fire, though it hits him more than once, he rushes at deputy, collars him, and tries to bring him across. But deputy is not to be so easily brought across. With a diabolical insight into the strongest part of his position, he is no sooner taken by the throat than he curls up his legs, forces his assailant to hang him as it were, and gurgles in his throat and screws his body and twists as already undergoing the first agonies of strangulation. There is nothing for it but to drop him. He instantly gets himself together, backs over to Dirtles, and cries to his assailant, gnashing the great gap in front of his mouth with rage and malice. I'll blame you, Saltme. I'll stone your eyes out, Saltme. If I don't have your eyesight, bellows me. At the same time dodging behind Dirtles and snarling at Jasper now from this side of him and now from that, prepared if pounced upon to dart away in all manner of curvilinear directions, and, if run down after all, to grovel in the dust and cry, BOW IT ME WHEN I'M DOWN TO IT! Don't hurt the boy, Mr. Jasper, hurt his Dirtles, shielding him. RECOLLECT YOURSELF. He followed us to-night when we first came here. You lie! I didn't! replies Deputy, in his one form of polite contradiction. He has been prowling near us ever since. You lie! I haven't! returns Deputy. I only just come out from the Elf when I see you two are coming out of the Confederal. If I catch him out of ten, with the usual rhythm and dance, though dodging behind Dirtles, it ain't any fault, is it? Take him home, then, retorts Jasper ferociously, though with a strong check upon himself, and let my eyes be rid of the sight of you. Deputy with another sharp whistle, at once expressing his relief and his commencement of a milder stoning of Mr. Dirtles, begins stoning that respectable gentleman home, as if he were a reluctant ox. Mr. Jasper goes to his gate-house brooding, and thus, as everything comes to an end, the unaccountable expedition comes to an end, for this time. CHAPTER XIII. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Alan Chant. The Mystery of Edwin Drude. The Unfinished Novel by Charles Dickens. CHAPTER XIII. Both at their best. Miss Twinkleton's establishment was about to undergo a serene hush. The Christmas recess was at hand. What had once, and at no remote period been called, even by the erudite Miss Twinkleton herself, the half, but what was now called as being more elegant, and more strictly collegiate, the term, would expire to-morrow. A noticeable relaxation of discipline had, for some days, pervaded the nun's house. Club suppers had occurred in the bedrooms, and a dressed tongue had been carved with a pair of scissors, and handed round with the curling tongs. Portions of marmalade had likewise been distributed on a service of plates constructed of curl-paper, and cowslip wine had been quaffed from the small squat measuring-glass, on which Little Ricketts, a junior of weekly constitution, took her steel-drops daily. The housemaids had been bribed with various fragments of ribbon, and sundry pairs of shoes more or less down at heel, to make no mention of crumbs in the beds. The airiest costumes had been worn on these festive occasions, and the daring Miss Ferdinand had even surprised the company with a sprightly solo on the comb and curl-paper, until suffocated in her own pillow by two flowing-haired executioners. Nor were these the only tokens of dispersal. Boxes appeared in the bedrooms, where they were capital at other times, and a surprising amount of packing took place out of all proportion to the amount packed. Largesse, in the form of odds and ends of cold cream and pomatum, and also of hairpins, was freely distributed among the attendants. On charges of inviolable secrecy, confidences were interchanged respecting golden youth of England expected to call at home on the first opportunity. Miss Giggles, deficient in sentiment, did indeed profess that she for her part acknowledged such homage by making faces at the golden youth. But this young lady was outvoted by an immense majority. On the last night before a recess, it was always expressly made a point of honour that nobody should go to sleep, and that ghosts should be encouraged by all possible means. This compact invariably broke down, and all the young ladies went to sleep very soon, and got up very early. The concluding ceremony came off at twelve o'clock on the day of departure, when Miss Twinkleton, supported by Mrs. Tisha, held a drawing-room in her own apartment, the globes already covered with brown holland, where glasses of white wine and plates of cut pound cake were discovered on the table. Miss Twinkleton then said, Ladies, another revolving year has brought us round to that festive period, at which the first feelings of our nature bounded in our— Miss Twinkleton was annually going to say, bosoms, but annually stopped on the brink of that expression and substituted— Hearts, our hearts, again a revolving year, ladies, has brought us to a pause in our studies, let us hope our greatly advanced studies, and, like the mariner in his bark, the warrior in his tent, the captive in his dungeon, and the traveller in his various conveyances, we yearned for home. Did we say, on such an occasion, in the opening words of Mr. Addison's impressive tragedy, the dawn is overcast, the morning lours, and heavily in clouds brings on the day, the great, the important day? Not so. From horizon to zenith, all was color de rosé, for all was rendolent of our relations and friends. May we find them prospering as we expected? Might they find us prospering as they expected? Ladies, we would now with our love to one another wish one another good-bye and happiness until we meet again, and when the time should come for our resumption of those pursuits which, here a general depression set in all round, pursuits which, pursuits which, then let us ever remember what was said by the Spartan general, in words to trite for repetition, at the battle it were superfluous to specify. The handmaidens of the establishment, in their best caps, then handed the trays, and the young ladies sipped and crumbled, and the bespoken coaches began to choke the street. Then, leave-taking was not long about, and Miss Twinkleton, in saluting each young lady's cheek, confided to her an exceedingly neat letter addressed to her next friend-at-law with Miss Twinkleton's best compliments in the corner. The missive she handed, with an air as if it had not the least connection with the bill, but were something in the nature of a delicate and joyful surprise. So many times had Rosa seen such dispersals, and so very little did she know of any other home, that she was content to remain where she was, and was even better contented than ever before having her latest friend with her. And yet her latest friendship had a blank place in it, of which she could not fail to be sensible. Helena Landlis, having been a party to her brother's revelation about Rosa, and having entered into that compact of silence with Mr. Chris Sparkle, shrank from any allusion to Edwin Drude's name. Why she so avoided it was mysterious to Rosa, but she perfectly perceived the fact. But for the fact she might have relieved her own little perplexed heart of some of its doubts, and hesitations by taking Helena into her confidence. As it was, she had no such vent. She could only ponder on her own difficulties, and wonder more and more why this avoidance of Edwin's name should last, now that she knew, for so much Helena had told her, that a good understanding was to be re-established between the two young men when Edwin came down. It would have made a pretty picture, so many pretty girls kissing Rosa in the cold porch of the nun's house, and that sunny little creature peeping out of it, unconscious of sly faces carved on spout and gable peeping at her, and waving farewells to the departing coaches, as if she represented the spirit of rosy youth abiding in the place to keep it bright and warm in its desertion. The horse high-street became musical with the cry in various silvery voices. Good-bye, Rosebud, darling! And the effigy of Mr. Saps's father over the opposite doorway seemed to say to mankind, gentlemen, favour me with your attention to this charming little last lot left behind, and bid with the spirit worthy of the occasion. Then the staid street, so unwontonly sparkling youthful and fresh for a few rippling moments, ran dry, and cloistering was itself again. If Rosebud in her bower now waited Edwin Druid's coming with an uneasy heart, Edwin, for his part, was uneasy, too, with far less force of purpose in his composition than the childish beauty crowned by acclamation fairy queen of Miss Twinkleton's establishment, he had a conscience, and Mr. Grugius had pricked it. That gentleman's steady convictions of what was right and what was wrong in such a case as his were neither to be frowned aside nor laughed aside, they would not be moved. But for the dinner in staple inn, and but for the ring he carried in the breastcoat of his pocket, he would have drifted into their wedding-day without another pause for real thought, loosely trusting that all would go well left alone. But that serious, putting him on his truth to the living and the dead, had brought him to a check. He must either give the ring to Rosa, or he must take it back. Once put into this narrowed way of action, it was curious that he began to consider Rosa's claims upon him more unselfishly than he had ever considered them before, and began to be less sure of himself than he had ever been in his easy-going days. I will be guided by what she says, and by how we get on, was his decision, walking from the gate-house to the nun's house. Whatever comes of it, I will bear his words in mind, and try to be true to the living and the dead. Rosa was dressed for walking. She expected him. It was a bright frosty day, and Miss Twinkleton had already graciously sanctioned fresh air. Thus they got out together before it became necessary for either Miss Twinkleton or the Deputy High Priest, Mrs. Tisha, to lay even so much as one of those usual offerings on the Shrine of Propriety. My dear Eddie, said Rosa, when they had turned out of the High Street, and had got among the quiet walks in the neighbourhood of the Cathedral and the River, I want to say something very serious to you. I have been thinking about it for a long, long time. I want to be serious with you, too, Rosa dear. I mean to be serious and earnest. Thank you, Eddie, and you will not think me unkind because I begin, will you? You will not think I speak for myself only because I speak first? That would not be generous, would it? And I know you are generous. He said, I hope I am not ungenerous to you, Rosa. He called her pussy no more. Never again. And there is no fear, pursued Rosa, of our quarrelling, is there? Because, Eddie, clasping her hand on his arm, we have so much reason to be very lenient to each other. We will be, Rosa. That's a dear good boy, Eddie. Let us be courageous. Let us change to brother and sister from this day forth. Never be husband and wife? Never. Neither spoke again for a little while. But after that pause he said with some effort. Of course I know that this has been in both our minds, Rosa, and of course I am in honour bound to confess freely that it does not originate with you. No, nor with you, dear. She returned with pathetic earnestness. That sprung up between us. You are not truly happy in our engagement. And I am not truly happy in it. Oh, I am so sorry. So sorry. And there she broke into tears. I am deeply sorry too, Rosa. Deeply sorry for you. And I for you, poor boy. And I for you. This pure young feeling, this gentle and forbearing feeling of each toward the other, brought with it its reward in a softening light that seemed to shine on their position. The relations between them did not look willful or capricious or a failure in such a light. They became elevated into something more self-denying, honourable, affectionate, and true. If we knew yesterday, said Rosa as she dried her eyes, and we did know yesterday, and on many, many yesterdays, that we were far from right together in those relations, which were not of our own choosing, what better could we do today than change them? It is natural that we should be sorry, and you see how sorry we both are. But how much better to be sorry now than then? When, Rosa? When it would be too late. And then we should be angry besides. Another silence fell upon them. And you know, said Rosa innocently, you couldn't like me then, and you can always like me now, for I shall not be a drag upon you, or a worry to you. And I can always like you now, and your sister will not tease or trifle with you. I often did it when I was not your sister, and I beg your pardon for it. Don't let us come to that, Rosa, or I shall want more pardoning than I like to think of. No indeed, Eddie, you are too hard, my generous boy, upon yourself. Let us sit down, brother, on these ruins, and let me tell you how it was with us. I think I know, for I have considered about it very much since you were here last time. You liked me, didn't you? You thought I was a nice little thing? Everybody thinks that, Rosa. Do they? She knitted her brow musingly for a moment, and then flashed out with the bright little induction. Well, but say they do. Surely it was not enough that you should think of me only as other people did now, was it? The point was not to be got over. It was not enough. And that is just what I meant. This is just how it was with us, said Rosa. You liked me very well, and you had grown used to me, and had grown used to the idea of our being married. You accepted the situation as an inevitable kind of thing, didn't you? It was to be, you thought, and why discuss, or dispute it. It was new and strange to him to have himself presented to himself so clearly, in a glass of her holding up. He had always patronised her, in his superiority to her share of woman's wit. Was that but another instance of something radically amiss, in the terms on which they had been gliding towards a lifelong bondage. And this, that I say of you, is true of me as well, Eddie. Unless it was I might not be bold enough to say it. Only the difference between us was that, by little and little, they crept into my mind a habit of thinking about it instead of dismissing it. My life is not so busy as yours, you see, and I have not so many things to think of. So I thought about it very much, and I cried about it very much too, though that was not your fault, poor boy, when all at once my guardian came down to prepare for my leaving the nun's house. I tried to hint to him that I was not quite settled in my mind, but I hesitated and failed, and he didn't understand me. But he is a good, good man, and he put before me so kindly and yet so strongly how seriously we ought to consider, in our circumstances, that I resolve to speak to you the next moment we were alone and grave. And if I seem to come to it easily just now, because I came to it all at once, don't think it was so really, Eddie, for, oh, it was very, very hard, and oh, I am very, very sorry. Her full heart broke into tears again. He put his arm around her waist, and they walked by the riverside together. Your guardian has spoken to me too, Rosa dear. I saw him before I left London. His right hand was in his breast, seeking the ring, but he checked it as he thought. If I am to take it back, why should I tell her of it? And that made you more serious about it, didn't it, Eddie? And if I had not spoken to you, as I have, you would have spoken to me? I hope you can tell me so. I don't like it to be all my doing, though it is so much better for us. Yes, I should have spoken. I should have put everything before you. I came intending to do it, but I never could have spoken to you, as you have spoken to me, Rosa. Don't say you meant so coldly or unkindly, Eddie, please, if you can help it. I mean so sensibly and delicately, so wisely and affectionately. That's my dear brother. She kissed his hand in a little rapture. The dear girls will be dreadfully disappointed, added Rosa, laughing, with the dewdrops glistening in her bright eyes. They have looked forward to it so. Poor pets. Ah, but I fear it will be a worse disappointment to Jack, said Edwin Drude with the start. I never thought of Jack. Her swift and intent look at him, as he said the words, could no more be recalled than a flash of lightning can. But it appeared as though she would have instantly recalled it if she could, for she looked down, confused, and breathed quickly. You don't doubt it being a blow to Jack, Rosa? She merely replied, and that evasively and hurriedly. Why should she? She had not thought about it. He seemed to her to have so little to do with it. My dear child, can you suppose that any one so wrapped up in another, Mrs. Tope's expression not mine, as Jack is in me, could fail to be struck all of a heap by such a sudden and complete change in my life? I say sudden, because it will be sudden to him, you know. She nodded twice, authorised, and her lips parted as if she would have assented. But she uttered no sound, and her breathing was no slower. How shall I tell Jack? said Edwin, ruminating. If he had been less occupied with the thought, he might have seen her singular emotion. I never thought of Jack. It must be broken to him before the town crier knows it. I dine with the dear fellow tomorrow and next day, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but it would never do to spoil his feast days. He always worries about me, and modly coddles in the mirrors' trifles. The news is sure to overset him. How on earth shall this be broken to Jack? He must be told, I suppose, said Rosa. My dear Rosa, who ought to be in our confidence, if not Jack! My guardian promised to come down. If I should write and ask him, I am going to do so. Would you like to leave it to him? A bright idea, cried Edwin, the other trustee, nothing more natural. He comes down, he goes to Jack, he relates what we have agreed upon, and he states our case better than we could. He has already spoken feelingly to me, and he'll put the whole thing feelingly to Jack. That's it. I am not a coward, Rosa, but to tell you a secret, I am a little afraid of Jack. No, no, you are not afraid of him, cried Rosa, turning white, and clasping her hands. Why, sister Rosa, sister Rosa, what do you see from the turret? said Edward, rallying her. My dear girl! You frightened me, most unintentionally, but I am a sorry as if I had meant to do it. Could you possibly suppose for a moment, from any loose way of speaking of mine, that I was literally afraid of the dear fond fellow, what I mean is, that he is subject to a kind of paroxysm or fit. I saw him in it once, and I don't know but that so great a surprise coming upon him direct from me, whom he is so wrapped up in, might bring it on perhaps, which, and this is the secret I was going to tell you, is another reason for your guardians making the communication. He is so steady, precise, and exact, and he will talk Jack's thoughts into shape in no time, whereas with me Jack is always impulsive and hurried, and I may say almost womanish. Rosa seemed convinced, perhaps from her own very different point of view of Jack. She felt comforted and protected by the interposition of Mr. Grugius between herself and him. And now Edwin Drude's right hand closed again upon the ring in its little case, and again was checked by the consideration. It is certain now that I am to give it back to him, then, why should I tell her of it? That pretty sympathetic nature which could be so sorry for him in the blight of their childish hopes of happiness together, and could so quietly find itself alone in a new world to weave fresh wreaths of such flowers as it might prove to bear. The old world's flowers being withered would be grieved by these sorrowful jewels. And to what purpose? Why should it be? They were but a sign of broken joys and baseless projects in their very beauty they were, as the unlikeliest of men had said, almost a true satire on the love's hopes-plans of humanity, which are able to forecast nothing and are so little brittle dust. Let them be. He would restore them to her guardian when he came down. He in his turn would restore them to the cabinet from which he had unwillingly taken them, and there like old letters or old vows or other records of old aspirations come to nothing they would be disregarded, until, being valuable, they were sold into circulation again to repeat their form around. Let them be. Let them lie unspoken of in his breast. However distinctly or indistinctly he entertained these thoughts he arrived at the conclusion. Let them be. Among the mighty store of wonderful chains that are forever forging day and night in the vast ironworks of time and circumstance, there was one chain forged in the moment of that small conclusion riveted to the foundations of heaven and earth and gifted with invincible force to hold and drag. He walked on by the river. They began to speak of their separate plans. He would quicken his departure from England, and she would remain where she was, at least as long as Helena remained. The poor dear girls should have their disappointment broken to them gently, and as the first preliminary Miss Twinkleton should be confided in by Rosa, even in advance of the reappearance of Mr. Grugius. It should be made clear in all quarters that she and Edwin were the best of friends. There had never been so serene an understanding between them since they were first defiant, and yet there was one reservation on each side, on hers that she intended through her guardian to withdraw herself immediately from the tuition of her music-master, on his that he did already entertain some wandering speculations whether it might ever come to pass, that he would know more of Miss Landless. The bright frosty day declined as they walked and spoke together. The sun dipped in the river far behind them, and the old city lay red before them as their walk drew to a close. The moaning water cast its sea weed duskily at their feet when they turned to leave its margin, and the rooks hovered above them with hoarse cries, darker splashes in the evening air. I will prepare Jack for my flitting soon, said Edward in a low voice, and I will but see your guardian when he comes, and then go before they speak together. It will be better done without my being by. Don't you think so? Yes. We know we have done right, Rosa. Yes. We know we are better so even now, and shall be far, far better so by and by. Still there was that lingering tenderness in their hearts towards the old positions they were relinquishing, that they prolonged their parting. When they came among the elm trees by the cathedral where they had last sat together, they stopped as by consent, and Rosa raised her face to his as she had never raised it in the old days, for they were old already. God bless you, dear. Goodbye. God bless you, dear. Goodbye. They kissed each other fervently. Now please take me home, Eddie, and let me be by myself. Don't look round, Rosa, he cautioned her, as he drew her arm through his and let her away. Didn't you see Jack? No. Where? Under the trees. He saw us as we took leave of each other. Poor fellow. He little thinks we have parted. This will be a blow to him, I am much afraid. She hurried on without resting, and hurried on until they had passed under the gatehouse into the street. Once there, she asked, Has he followed us? You can look without seeming to. Is he behind? No. Yes, he is. He has just passed out under the gateway. The dear sympathetic old fellow likes to keep us in sight. I am afraid he will be bitterly disappointed. She pulled hurriedly at the handle of the horse-old bell, and the gate soon opened. Before going in, she gave him one last wide, wandering look. As if she would have asked him with imploring emphasis. Oh, don't you understand? And out of that look he vanished from her view. End of chapter 13, read by Alan Chant of Tumbridge, in Kent, England, at Easter 2008