 Chapter 17 of The Mystery of Edwin Drude The Mystery of Edwin Drude The Unfinished Novel by Charles Dickens Chapter 17 Philanthropy, Professional and Unprofessional Full half a year had come and gone, and Mr. Chris Barkle sat in a waiting room in the London Chief Offices of the Haven of Philanthropy, until he could have audience of Mr. Honey Thunder. In his college days of athletic exercises Mr. Chris Barkle had known professors of the noble art of fisticuffs, and had attended two or three of their gloved gatherings. He had now an opportunity of observing that, as to the phrenological formation of the backs of their heads, the professing philanthropists were uncommonly like the pugilists. In the development of all those organs which constitute, or attend, a propensity to pitch into your fellow-creatures, the philanthropists were remarkably favoured. There were several professors passing in and out, with exactly the aggressive air upon them, of being ready for a turn-up, with any novice who might happen to be on hand, that Mr. Chris Barkle well remembered in the circles of the fancy. Professors were in progress for a moral little mill somewhere on the rural circuit, and other professors were backing this or that heavyweight, as good for such or such speakmaking hits, so very much after the manner of the sporting publicans that the intended resolutions might have been rounds. In an official manager of these displays, much celebrated for his platform tactics Mr. Chris Barkle recognized, in a suit of black, the counterpart of a deceased benefactor of his species, an eminent public character once known to fame as Frosty-Faced Fogo, who in days of yore superintended the formation of the magic circle with the ropes and stakes. There were only three conditions of resemblance wanting between these professors and those. Firstly, the philanthropists were in very bad training, much too fleshy and presenting both in face and figure a superabundance of what is known to pugilistic experts as sweet pudding. Secondly, the philanthropists had not the good temper of the pugilists, and used worst language. Thirdly, their fighting code stood in great need of revision, as empowering them not only to bore their man to the ropes, but to bore him to the confines of distraction, also to hit him when he was down, hit him anywhere and anyhow, kick him, stamp upon him, gouge him, and maul him behind his back, without mercy. In these last particulars the professors of the noble art were much nobler than the professors of philanthropy. Mr. Chris Sparkle was so completely lost in musing on these similarities and dissimilarities, at the same time watching the crowd which came and went by, always as it seemed, on errands of antagonistically snatching something from somebody, and never giving anything to anybody, that his name was called before he heard it. On his, at length responding, he was shown by a miserably shabby and underpaid stipendary philanthropist, who could hardly have done worse if he had taken service with a declared enemy of the human race, to Mr. Honey Thunder's room. Sir," said Mr. Honey Thunder, in his tremendous voice, like a schoolmaster issuing orders to a boy of whom he had a bad opinion, sit down. Mr. Chris Sparkle seated himself. Mr. Honey Thunder having signed the remaining few score of a few thousand circulars, calling upon corresponding numbers of families without means to come forward, stump up instantly, and be philanthropists, or go to the devil. Another shabby stipendary philanthropist, highly disinterested, if in earnest, gathered these into a basket and walked off with them. Now, Mr. Chris Sparkle," said Mr. Honey Thunder, turning his chair half round to warts him when they were alone, and squaring his arms with his hands on his knees and his brows knitted as if he added, I am going to make short work of you. Now, Mr. Chris Sparkle, we entertain different views, you and I, sir, of the sanctity of human life. Do we? returned the minor canon. We do, sir. Might I ask you, said the minor canon, what are your views on that subject? That human life is a thing to be held sacred, sir. Might I ask you, pursued the minor canon as before, what are you supposed to be my views on that subject? By George, sir! returned the philanthropist, squaring his arms still more, as he frowned on Mr. Chris Sparkle, they are best known to yourself. Readily admitted, but you began by saying that we took different views, you know. Therefore, or you could not say so, you must have set up some views as mine. Pray, what views have you set up as mine? Here is a man, and a young man, said Mr. Honey Thunder, as if that made the matter infinitely worse, and he could have easily borne the loss of an old one, swept off the face of the earth by a deed of violence. What do you call that? Murder, said the minor canon. And what do you call the doer of that deed, sir? A murderer, said the minor canon. I am glad to hear you admit so, sir. Retorted Mr. Honey Thunder in his most offensive manner, and I candidly tell you that I didn't expect it. Here he lowered heavily at Mr. Chris Sparkle again. Be so good as to explain what you mean by those very unjustifiable expressions. I don't sit here, sir. Returned the philanthropist raising his voice to a roar. To be browbeaten! As the only other person present, no one can possibly know that better than I do. Returned the minor canon very quietly. But I interrupt your explanation. Murder! Proceeded Mr. Honey Thunder in a kind of boisterous reverie, with his platform folding of his arms and his platform nod of abhorrent reflection after each short sentiment of a word. Bloodshed! Abel? Cain? I hold no terms with Cain. I repudiate with a shudder the red hand when it is offered me. Instead of instantly leaping into his chair and cheering himself horse, as the brotherhood in public meeting assembled would infallibly have done on this cue, Mr. Chris Sparkle merely reversed the quiet crossing of his legs and said mildly, Don't let me interrupt your explanation when you begin it. The commandment say, No murder! No murder, sir! Proceeded Mr. Honey Thunder, platformally pausing as if he took Mr. Chris Sparkle to task for having distinctly asserted that they said, You may do a little murder, and then leave off. And they also say you shall bear no false witness, observed Mr. Chris Sparkle. Enough! Bellowed Mr. Honey Thunder with a solemnity and severity that would have brought the house down at a meeting. Enough! My late wards being now of age, and I being released from a trust which I cannot contemplate without a thrill of horror, there are the accounts which you have undertaken to accept on their behalf, and there is a statement of the balance which you have undertaken to receive, and which you cannot receive too soon. And let me tell you, sir, I wish that as a man, and a minor cannon, you were better employed, with a nod, better employed, with another nod, better employed, with another, and the three nods added up. Mr. Chris Sparkle rose, a little heated in the face, but with perfect command of himself. Mr. Honey Thunder, he said, taking up the papers referred to, my being better or worse employed than I am at present is a matter of taste and opinion. You might think me better employed in enrolling myself as a member of your society. I indeed, sir, retorted Mr. Honey Thunder shaking his head in a threatening manner. It would have been better for you if you had done that long ago. I think otherwise. Or, said Mr. Honey Thunder shaking his head again, I might think one of your profession better employed in devoting himself to the discovery and punishment of guilt than in leaving that duty to be undertaken by a layman. I may regard my profession from a point of view which teaches me that its first duty is towards those who are in necessity and tribulation, who are desolate and oppressed, said Mr. Chris Sparkle. However, as I have quite clearly satisfied myself, that it is no part of my profession to make professions, I say no more of that. But I owe it to Mr. Neville and to Mr. Neville's sister, and in a much lower degree to myself, to say to you that I know I was in the full possession and understanding of Mr. Neville's mind and heart at the time of this occurrence, and that, without in the least coloring or concealing what was to be deplored in him and required to be corrected, I feel certain that his tale is true. Feeling that certainty, I befriend him, as long as that certainty shall last I will befriend him, and if any consideration could shake me in this resolve, I should be so ashamed of myself for my meanness that no man's good opinion, no nor no woman's, so gained, could compensate me for the loss of my own. Good fellow, manly fellow, and he was so modest too. There was no more self-assertion in the minor canon than in the schoolboy who had stood in the breezy playing fields keeping a wicket. He was simply and staunchly true to his duty alike in the large case and in the small. So all true souls ever are, so every true soul ever was, ever is, and ever shall be. There is nothing little to the truly great in spirit. Then who do you make out did the deed? asked Mr. Honey Thunder, turning on him abruptly. Heaven forbid, said Mr. Chris Sparkle, that in my desire to clear one man, I should lightly discriminate another. I accuse no one. Ejaculated Mr. Honey Thunder with great disgust, for this was by no means the principle on which the philanthropic brotherhood usually proceeded. And, sir, you are not a disinterested witness, we must bear in mind. How am I an interested one? inquired Mr. Chris Sparkle, smiling innocently at a loss to imagine. There was a certain stypenser paid to you for your pupil, which may have warped your judgment a bit, said Mr. Honey Thunder coarsely. Perhaps I expect to retain it still. Mr. Chris Sparkle returned, enlightened. Do you mean that, too? Well, sir, returned the professional philanthropist, getting up and thrusting his hands down into his trouser pockets. I don't go about measuring people for caps. If people find I have any about me that fit them, they can put them on and wear them if they like. That's their look-out, not mine. Mr. Chris Sparkle eyed him with a just indignation, and took him to task thus. Mr. Honey Thunder, I hoped when I came in here that I might be under no necessity of commenting on the introduction of platform manners or platform maneuvers among the decent forbearances of private life, but you have given me such a specimen of both that I should be a fit subject for both if I remain silently respecting them. They are detestable. They don't suit you, I daresay, sir. They are, repeated Mr. Chris Sparkle without noticing the interruption, detestable. They violate equally the justice that should belong to Christians, and the restraints that should belong to gentlemen. You assume a great crime to have been committed by one whom I, acquainted with the attendance circumstances, and having numerous reasons on my side, devoutly believe to be innocent of it. Because I differ from you on that vital point, what is your platform resource? Instantly to turn upon me, charging that I have no sense of the enormity of the crime itself, but am its aider and a better. So another time, taking me as representing your opponent in other cases, you set up a platform credulity, a moved and seconded and carried unanimously professional faith in some ridiculous delusion or mischievous imposition. I declined to believe it, and you fall back upon your platform resource of proclaiming that I believe nothing, that because I will not bow down to a false God of your making, I didn't hide the true God. Another time you make the platform discovery that war is a calamity, and you propose to abolish it by a string of twisted resolutions tossed into the air, like the tail of a kite. I do not admit the discovery to be yours in the least, and I have not a grain of faith in your remedy. Again your platform resource of representing me as reveling in the horrors of a battlefield like a fiend incarnate. Another time, in another of your undiscriminating platform rushes, you would punish the sober for the drunken. I claim consideration for the comfort, convenience and refreshment of the sober, and you presently make platform proclamation that I have a depraved desire to turn heaven's creatures into swine and wild beasts. In all such cases your movers, and your seconders, and your supporters, your regular professors of all degrees, run amuck like so many mad malaise, habitually attributing the lowest and basest motives with the utmost recklessness. Let me call your attention to a recent instance in yourself for which you should blush, and quoting figures which you know to be as willfully one-sided as a statement of any complicated account that should be all creditor's side and no debtor, or all debtor's side and no creditor. Therefore it is, Mr. Honey Thunder, that I consider the platform a sufficiently bad example, and a sufficiently bad school, even in public life, but hold that, carried into private life, it becomes an unendurable nuisance. These are strong words, sir, exclaimed the philanthropist. I hope so, said Mr. Chris Sparkle. Good morning. He walked out of the haven at a great rate, but soon fell into his regular brisk pace, and soon had a smile upon his face as he went along, wondering what the China shepherdess would have said if she had seen him pounding Mr. Honey Thunder in the late Little Lively Affair. For Mr. Chris Sparkle had just enough of harmless vanity to hope that he had hit hard, and to glow with the belief that he had trimmed the philanthropic jacket pretty handsomely. He took himself to staple in, but not to PJT and Mr. Grugius. Full many a creaking stair he climbed before he reached some attic rooms in a corner, turned the latch of their unbolted door, and stood beside the table of neverlandless. An air of retreat and solitude hung about the rooms and about their inhabitant. He was much worn, and so were they. Their sloping ceilings, cumbrous rusty locks and grates, and heavy wooden bins and beams, slowly mouldering with all, had a prisoners look, and he had the haggard face of a prisoner. Yet the sunshine stole in at the ugly garret window, which had a penthouse to itself thrust out among the tiles, and in the cracked and smoke-blackened parapet beyond, some of the deluded sparrows of the place, rheumatically hopped, like little feathered cripples who had left their crutches in their nests, and there was a play of living leaves at hand that changed the air, and made an imperfect sort of music in it that would have been melody in the country. The rooms were sparsely furnished, but with good store of books. Everything expressed the abode of a poor student. That Mr. Chris Sparkle had been either chooser, lender, or donor of the books, or that he combined the three characters, might have been easily seen in the friendly beam of his eyes upon them as he entered. How goes it, Neville? I am in good heart, Mr. Chris Sparkle, and working away. I wish your eyes were not quite so large, and not quite so bright, said the minor canon, slowly releasing the hand he had taken in his. They brighten at the sight of you, returned Neville. If you were to fall away from me, they would soon be dull enough. Rally, rally, urged the other in a stimulating tone. Fight for it, Neville! If I were dying, I feel as if a word from you would rally me. If my pulse had stopped, I feel as if your touch would make it beat again, said Neville, but I have rallied, and am doing famously. Mr. Chris Sparkle turned him, with his face a little more towards the light. I want to see a radier touch here, Neville, he said, indicating his own healthy cheek by way of pattern. I want more sun to shine upon you. Neville drooped suddenly, as he replied in a lowered voice. I am not hardy enough for that yet. I may become so, but I cannot bear it yet. If you had gone through those cloistering streets as I did, if you had seen as I did those averted eyes, and the better sort of people silently giving me too much room to pass, that I might not touch them, or come near them, you wouldn't think it quite unreasonable that I cannot go about in the daylight. My poor fellow, said the minor cannon, in a tone so purely sympathetic that the young man caught his hand. I never said it was unreasonable, never thought so, but I should like you to do it. And that would give me the strongest motive to do it. But I cannot yet. I cannot persuade myself that the eyes of even the stream of strangers I pass in this vast city look at me without suspicion. I feel marked and tainted even when I go out, as I do only at night. But the darkness covers me then, and I take courage from it. Mr. Chris Sparkle laid a hand upon his shoulder, and stood looking down at him. If I could have changed my name, said Neville, I would have done so. But as you wisely pointed out to me, I can't do that, for it would look like guilt. If I could have gone to some distant place, I might have found relief in that. But the thing is not to be thought of for the same reason. Hiding and escaping would be the construction in either case. It seems a little hard to be so tied to a stake and innocent, but I don't complain. And you must expect no miracle to help you, Neville, said Mr. Chris Sparkle compassionately. No, sir, I know that the ordinary fullness of time and circumstances is all I have to trust to. It will write you at last, Neville. So I believe, and I hope I may live to know it. But perceiving that the despondent mood into which he was falling cast a shadow on the minor canon, and it may be feeling that the broad hand upon his shoulder was not then quite as steady as its own natural strength that rendered it when it first touched him just now, he brightened and said, Excellent circumstances for study, anyhow. And you know, Mr. Chris Sparkle, what need I have of study in all ways, not to mention that you have advised me to study for the difficult profession of the law, especially—and that, of course, I am guiding myself by the advice of such a friend and helper, such a good friend and helper. He took the fortifying hand from his shoulder and kissed it. Mr. Chris Sparkle beamed at the books, but not so brightly as when he had entered. I gather from your silence on the subject that my late guardian is adverse, Mr. Chris Sparkle. The minor canon answered, Your late guardian is a most unreasonable person, and it signifies nothing to any reasonable person whether he is adverse, perverse, or the reverse. Well, for me, that I have enough with economy to live upon, side Neville half-wearily and half-chirily, while I wait to be learned and wait to be righted, else I might have proved the proverb that, while the grass grows, the steed starves. He opened some books, as he said it, and was soon immersed in their interleaved and annotated passages, while Mr. Chris Sparkle sat beside him, expounding, correcting, and advising. The minor canon's cathedral duties made these visits of his difficult to accomplish, and only to be compassed at intervals of many weeks, but they were as serviceable as they were precious to Neville landless. When they had got through such studies as they had in hand, they stood leaning on the windowsill and looking down upon the patch of garden. Next week, said Mr. Chris Sparkle, you will cease to be alone, and will have a devoted companion. And yet, returned Neville, this seems an uncongenial place to bring my sister to. I don't think so, said the minor canon. There is duty to be done here, and there are womanly feelings, sense, and courage wanted here. I'm meant, explained Neville, that the surroundings are so dull and unwomanly, and that Helena can have no suitable friend or society here. You have only to remember, said Mr. Chris Sparkle, that you are here yourself, and that she has to draw you into the sunlight. They were silent for a little while, and then Mr. Chris Sparkle began anew. When we first spoke, Neville, you told me that your sister had risen out of the disadvantages of your past lives, as superior to you as the Tower of Cloisterham Cathedral, is higher than the chimneys of minor canon corner. Do you remember that? Right well. I was inclined to think it at the time an enthusiastic flight. No matter what I think it now, what I would emphasise is that under the head of pride your sister is a great and opportune example to you. Under all heads that are included in the composition of a fine character she is. Say so, but take this one. Your sister has learnt how to govern what is proud in her nature. She can dominate it even when it is wounded through her sympathy with you. No doubt she has suffered deeply in those same streets where you suffered deeply. No doubt her life is darkened by the cloud that darkens yours, but bending her pride into a grand composure that is not haughty or aggressive, but is a sustained confidence in you and in the truth she has won. She has won her way through those streets, until she passes along them as high in the general respect as anyone who treads them. Every day and hour of her life, since Edwin Drude's disappearance, she has faced malignity and folly for you, as only a brave nature well-directed can. So it will be with her to the end. Another and weaker kind of pride might sink broken-hearted, but never such a pride as hers, which knows no shrinking, and can get no mastery over her. The pale cheek beside him flushed under the comparison, and the hint implied in it. I will do all I can to imitate her, said Neville. Do so, and be a truly brave man, as she is a truly brave woman, answered Mr. Chris Sparkle stoutly. It is growing dark. Will you go my way with me when it is quite dark? Mind, it is not I who wait for darkness. Neville replied that he would accompany him directly, but Mr. Chris Sparkle said he had a moment's call to make on Mr. Grugius as an act of courtesy, and would run across to that gentleman's chambers, and rejoin Neville on his own doorstep, if he would come down there to meet him. Mr. Grugius, bolt upright as usual, sat taking his wine in the dusk at his open window. His wine-glass and decanter on the round table at his elbow, himself and his legs on the window-seat, only one hinge in his whole body, like a boot-jack. How do you do, Reverend Sir? said Mr. Grugius, with abundant offers of hospitality, which were as cordially declined as made. And how is your charge getting on over the way in the set that I had the pleasure of recommending to you as vacant and eligible? Mr. Chris Sparkle replied suitably. I am glad you approve of them, said Mr. Grugius, because I entertain a sort of fancy for having him under my eye. As Mr. Grugius had to turn his eye up considerably before he could see the chambers, the phrase was to be taken figuratively and not literally. And how did you leave Mr. Jasper, Reverend Sir? said Mr. Grugius. Mr. Chris Sparkle had left him pretty well. And where did you leave Mr. Jasper, Reverend Sir? Mr. Chris Sparkle had left him at Cloisterham. And when did you leave Mr. Jasper, Reverend Sir? That morning. Hmm! said Mr. Grugius. He didn't say he was coming, perhaps. Coming where? Anywhere, for instance, said Mr. Grugius. No. Because here he is, said Mr. Grugius, who had asked all these questions with his preoccupied glance directed out at window. And he don't look agreeable, does he? Mr. Chris Sparkle was craning towards the window where Mr. Grugius added, If you would kindly step round here behind me in the gloom of the room, and will cast your eye at the second floor landing window in Yonder House, I think you will hardly fail to see a slinking individual in whom I recognize our local friend. You are right! cried Mr. Chris Sparkle. Hmm! said Mr. Grugius. Then he added, turning his face so abruptly that his head nearly came into collision with Mr. Chris Sparkle's. What should you say that our local friend was up to? The last passage he had been shown in the diary returned on Mr. Chris Sparkle's mind with a force of a strong recoil, and he asked Mr. Grugius if he thought it possible that Neville was to be harassed by the keeping of a watch upon him. A watch? repeated Mr. Grugius musingly. Aye! Which would not only of itself haunt and torture his life, said Mr. Chris Sparkle warmly, but would expose him to the torment of a perpetually reviving suspicion whatever he might do or wherever he might go? Aye! said Mr. Grugius musingly still. Do I see him waiting for you? No doubt you do. Then would you have the goodness to excuse my getting up to see you out, and to go out to join him, and to go the way that you were going, and to take no notice of our local friend? said Mr. Grugius. I entertain a sort of fancy for having him under my eye to-night, do you know? Mr. Chris Sparkle with a significant nod complied, and rejoining Neville went away with him. They dined together and parted at the yet unfinished and undeveloped railway station. Mr. Chris Sparkle to get home, Neville to walk the streets, cross the bridges, make a wide round of the city in the friendly darkness, and tire himself out. It was midnight when he returned from his solitary expedition and climbed his staircase. The night was hot, and the windows of the staircase were all wide open. Coming to the top it gave him a passing chill of surprise, there being no rooms but his up there, to find a stranger sitting on the window-sill more after the manner of a venturesome glazier than an amateur ordinarily careful of his neck. In fact, so much more outside the window than inside, as to suggest the thought that he must have come up by the water-spout instead of the stairs. The stranger said nothing until Neville put his key in his door, then, seeming to make sure of his identity from the action, he spoke. I beg your pardon, he said, coming from the window with a frank and smiling air, and a pre-possessing address, the beans. Neville was quite at a loss. Runners, said the visitor, scarlet, next door at the back. Oh! returned Neville. And the minnet and wall-flower. The same, said the visitor. Pray walk in. Thank you. Neville lighted his candles, and the visitor sat down. A handsome gentleman with a young face, but with an older figure in its robustness, and its breadth of shoulder, say a man of eight and twenty, or at the utmost thirty, so extremely sunburnt that the contrast between his brown visage, and the white forehead shaded out of doors by his hat, and the glimpses of white throat below the neckerchief, would have been almost ludicrous but for his broad temples, bright blue eyes, clustering brown hair, and laughing teeth. I have noticed, said he, my name is Tata, Neville inclined his head, I have noticed, excuse me, that you shut yourself up a good deal, and that you seem to like my gardener loft here. If you would like a little more of it, I could throw out a few lines and stays between my window and yours, which the runners would take too directly. And I have some boxes, both of Minionette and Woolflower, that I could shove along the gutter, with a boat hook I have by me, to your windows, and draw back again when they needed watering or gardening, and shove on again when they were ship shape, so that they would cause you no trouble. I couldn't take this liberty without asking your permission, so I ventured to ask it. Tata corresponding set, next door. You are very kind. Not at all. I ought to apologise for looking in so late, but having noticed, excuse me, that you generally walk out at night, I thought I should inconvenience you least by awaiting your return. I am always afraid of inconveniencing busy men, being an idle man. I should not have thought so from your appearance. No, I take it as a compliment. In fact, I was bred in the Royal Navy, and was first left tenant when I quitted it. But an uncle disappointed in the service leaving me his property on condition that I left the Navy. I accepted the fortune, and resigned my commission. Lately, I presume. Well, I had some twelve or fifteen years of knocking about first. I came here some nine months before you. I had had one crop before you came. I chose this place because, having served last in a little corvette, I knew I should feel more at home where I had a constant opportunity of knocking my head against the ceiling. Besides, it would never do for a man who had been aboard ship from his boyhood to turn luxurious all at once. Besides, again, having been accustomed to a very short allowance of land all my life, I thought I'd feel my way to the command of a landed estate by beginning in boxes. Whimsically, as this was said, there was a touch of merry earnestness in it that made it doubly whimsical. However, said the left tenant, I have taught quite enough about myself. It is not my way, I hope. It has merely been to present myself to you naturally. If you will allow me to take the liberty I have described, it will be a charity, for it will give me something more to do, and you are not to suppose that it will entail any interruption or intrusion on you that is far from my intention. Neville replied that he was greatly obliged, and that he thankfully accepted the kind proposal. I am very glad to take your windows in tow, said the left tenant. From what I have seen of you when I have been gardening at mine, and you have been looking on, I have thought you, excuse me, rather to studious and delicate? May I ask, is your health at all affected? I have undergone some mental distress, said Neville confused, which has stood me in the stead of illness. Pardon me, said Mr. Tata. With the greatest delicacy he shifted his ground to the windows again, and asked if he could look at one of them. On Neville's opening it he immediately sprang out, as if he were going aloft with a whole watch in an emergency, and was setting a bright example. For heaven's sake, cried Neville, don't do that. Where are you going, Mr. Tata? You'll be dashed to pieces. All well, said the left tenant, coolly looking about him on the housetop, all taut and trim here. Those lines and stays shall be rigged before you turn out in the morning. May I take this short cut home and say good night. Mr. Tata, urged Neville, pray, it makes me giddy to see you. But Mr. Tata, with a wave of his hand and the deafness of a cat, had already dipped through his scuttle of scarlet runners without breaking a leaf and gone below. Mr. Grugius, his bedroom window-blind held aside with his hand, happened at the moment to have Neville's chambers under his eye for the last time that night. Fortunately his eye was on the front of the house and not the back, or this remarkable appearance and disappearance might have broken his rest as a phenomenon. But Mr. Grugius seeing nothing there, not even a light in the windows, his gaze wandered from the windows to the stars, as if he would have read in them something that was hidden from him. Many of us would if we could, but none of us so much as know our letters in the stars yet, or seem likely to do it in this state of existence. And few languages can be read until their alphabets are mastered. End of Chapter 17 Read by Alan Chant of Tumbridge, in Kent, England, during the summer of 2008. Chapter 18 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 18 A Settler in Cloisterham At about this time a stranger appeared in Cloisterham, a white-haired personage with black eyebrows, being buttoned up in a tightish blue setu with a buff waistcoat and grey trousers. He had something of a military air. But he announced himself at the Crozier, the orthodox hotel where he put up with a portmanteau, as an idle dog who lived upon his means. And he further announced that he had a mind to take a lodging in the picturesque old city for a month or two, with a view to settling down there altogether. Both announcements were made in the coffee-room of the Crozier, to all whom it might or might not concern, by the stranger as he stood with his back to the empty fireplace, waiting for his fried soul, veal-cutlet, and pint of sherry. And the waiter, business being chronically slack at the Crozier, represented all whom it might or might not concern, and absorbed the whole of the information. This gentleman's white hair was unusually large, and his shock of white hair was unusually thick and ample. I suppose, waiter, he said, shaking his shock of hair, as a newfoundland dog might shake his before sitting down to dinner. That a fair lodging for a single buffer might be found in these parts, eh? The waiter had no doubt of it. Something old, said the gentleman, take my hat down for a moment from that peg, will you? No, no, I don't want it. Look into it. What do you see written there? The waiter read, Datchery. Now you know my name, said the gentleman, Dick Datchery. Hang it up again. I was saying something old is what I should prefer, something odd, and out of the way, something venerable, architectural, and inconvenient. We have a good choice of inconvenient lodgings in the town, sir. I think, replied the waiter, with modest confidence in its resources that way. Indeed, I have no doubt that we could shoot you that far, however particular you may be, but an architectural lodging? That seemed to trouble the waiter's head, and he shook it. Anything cathedrally now, Mr. Datchet suggested. Mr. Tope, said the waiter, brightening as he rubbed his chin with his hand, would be the likeliest party to inform in that line. Who is Mr. Tope? inquired Dick Datchery. The waiter explained that he was the verger, and that Mrs. Tope had indeed once upon a time let lodgings herself or offered to let them, but that as nobody had ever taken them, Mrs. Tope's window-bill, long a cloistering institution, had disappeared, probably had tumbled down one day and never been put up again. I'll call on Mrs. Tope, said Mr. Datchery, after dinner. So when he had done his dinner, he was duly directed to the spot and salad out for it. But the crozier being an hotel of a most retiring disposition, and the waiter's directions being fatally precise, he soon became bewildered, and went boggling about and about the cathedral-tower, whenever he could catch a glimpse of it, with a general impression on his mind that Mrs. Tope's was somewhere very near it, and that, like the children in the game of hot-boiled beans and very good butter, he was warm in his search when he saw the tower, and cold when he didn't see it. He was getting very cold indeed when he came upon a fragment of burial-ground in which an unhappy sheep was grazing, unhappy because a hideous small boy was stoning it through the railings, and had already lamed it in one leg, and was much excited by the benevolent sportsman-like purpose of breaking its other three legs and bringing it down. It him again, cried the boy as the poor creature leaped, and made a dent in his wool. Let him be, said Mr. Datchery. Don't you see you've lamed him? You lie! returned the sportsman. He went and lamed himself. I see him do it, and I give him as shy as a video warning to him, not to go abusing his master's matten any more. Come here. I won't. I'll come when you can catch me. Stay there, then, and show me which is Mr. Tope's. I can only stay here and show you which is Tope's is. When Tope's is his tether-side of the confeder-rule, and over the crossings, and round ever-so-many-cormers. Stupid! Yaha! Show me where it is, then, and I'll give you something. Come on, then. This brisk dialogue concluded. The boy led the way, and by and by stopped at some distance from an arched passage pointing. Looky under! You see that vendor and door? That's Tope's? You lie! It ain't. That's Jasper's. Indeed, said Mr. Dattery, with a second look of some interest. Yes, and I ain't a-going no nearer him, I tell you. Why not? Cos I ain't a-going to be lifted off my legs and have me brace his bust and be choked, not if I knows it, and not by him. Wait till I set a jolly good flint a-flying at the back of his jolly old head someday. Now look, tether-side the arch, not the side where Jasper's door is. Tether-side! I see. A little way, you know, that side. There's a low door down two steps. That's Tope's is, with his name on a hovel plate. Good. See here, said Mr. Dattery, producing a shilling. You owe me half of this. You lie! I don't owe you nothing. I never seen you. I tell you, you owe me half of this, because I have no sixpence in my pocket. So the next time you meet me, you shall do something else for me to pay me. All right, give us old. What is your name, and where do you live? Depeaty. Traveller's tutney crossed the green. The boy instantly darted off with the shilling lest Mr. Dattery should repent, but stopped at a safe distance, on the happy chance of his being uneasy in his mind about it, to goad him with a demon-dance expressive of its irrevocability. Mr. Dattery, taking off his hat to give that shock of white hair of his another shake, seemed quite resigned. And betook himself wither he had been directed. Mr. Tope's official dwelling, communicating by an upper stair with Mr. Jasper's, hence Mrs. Tope's attendance on that gentleman, was of very modest proportions, and partook of the character of a cool dungeon. Its ancient walls were massive, and its rooms rather seemed to have been dug out of them, than to have been designed beforehand with any reference to them. The main door opened at once on a chamber of no describable shape, with a groin roof which, in its turn, opened on to another chamber of no describable shape, with another groin roof, their windows small, and in the thickness of the walls. These two chambers, close as to their atmosphere and swarthy as to their illumination by natural light, were the apartments which Mrs. Tope had so long offered to an unappreciative city. Mr. Dattery, however, was more appreciative. He found that if he sat with the main door open, he would enjoy the passing society of all comers to and fro by the gateway, and would have light enough. He found that if Mr. and Mrs. Tope living overhead, used for their own egress and ingress a little side stare that came plump into the precincts by a door opening outward to the surprise and inconvenience of a limited public of pedestrians in a narrow way, he would be alone, as in a separate residence. He found the rent moderate, and everything as quaintly inconvenient as he could desire. He agreed, therefore, to take the lodging then and there and money down, possession to be had next evening, on condition that reference was permitted him to Mr. Jasper, as occupying the gate-house, of which, on the other side of the gateway, the verger's hole in the wall was an a-panage or a subsidiary part. The poor dear gentleman was very solitary and very sad, Mrs. Tope said, but she had no doubt he would speak for her. Perhaps Mr. Dattery had heard something of what had occurred there last winter. Mr. Dattery had as confused a knowledge of the event in question on trying to recall it, as he well could have. He begged Mrs. Tope's pardon when she found it incumbent on her to correct him in every detail of his summary of the facts, but pleaded that he was merely a single buffer getting through life upon his means, as idly as he could, and that so many people were so constantly making away with so many other people as to render it difficult for a buffer of an easy temper to preserve the circumstances of the several cases unmixed in his mind. Mr. Jasper, proving willing to speak for Mrs. Tope, Mr. Dattery, who had sent up his card, was invited to ascend the post and staircase. The mayor was there, Mr. Tope said, but he was not to be regarded in the light of company, as he and Mr. Jasper were great friends. I beg pardon, said Mr. Dattery, making a leg with his hat under his arm, as he addressed himself equally to both gentlemen. A selfish precaution on my part, and not personally interesting to anybody but myself, but as a buffer living on his means and having an idea of doing it in this lovely place in peace and quiet for remaining span of life, I beg to ask if the Tope family are quite respectable. Mr. Jasper could answer for that without the slightest hesitation. That is enough, sir, said Mr. Dattery. My friend the mayor, added Mr. Jasper, presenting Mr. Dattery with a courtly motion of his hand towards that potentate, whose recommendation is actually much more important to a stranger than that of an obscure person like myself, will testify in their behalf, I am sure. The worshipful the mayor, said Mr. Dattery with a low bow, places me under an infinite obligation. Very good people, sir, Mr. and Mrs. Tope, said Mr. Sapsy with condescension, very good opinions, very well behaved, very respectful, much approved by the dean and chapter. The worshipful the mayor gives them a character, said Mr. Dattery, of which they may indeed be proud. I would ask his honour, if I might be permitted, whether there are not many objects of great interest in the city which is under his beneficent sway. We are, sir, returned Mr. Sapsy, an ancient city and an ecclesiastical city. We are a constitutional city, as it becomes such a city to be, and we uphold and maintain our glorious privileges. His honour, said Mr. Dattery bowing, inspires me with a desire to know more of the city, and confirms me in my inclination to end my days in the city. Retired from the army, sir, suggested Mr. Sapsy. His honour, the mayor, does me too much credit, returned Mr. Dattery. Navy, sir, suggested Mr. Sapsy. Again, repeated Mr. Dattery, his honour, the mayor, does me too much credit. Diplomacy is a fine profession, said Mr. Sapsy, as a general remark. There, I confess, his honour, the mayor, is too many for me, said Mr. Dattery, with an ingenious smile and bow. Even a diplomatic bird must fall to such a gun. Now, this was very soothing. Here was a gentleman of a great, not to say a grand address, accustomed to rank and dignity, really setting a fine example how to behave to a mayor. There was something in that third-person style of being spoken to, that Mr. Sapsy found particularly recognisant of his merits and position. But I crave pardon, said Mr. Dattery, his honour, the mayor, will bear with me, if for a moment I have been deluded into occupying his time, and have forgotten the humble claims upon my own of my hotel, the Crozier. Not at all, sir, said Mr. Sapsy. I am returning home, and if you would like to take the exterior of our cathedral in your way, I shall be glad to point it out. His honour, the mayor, said Mr. Dattery, is more than kind and gracious. As Mr. Dattery, when he had made his acknowledgments to Mr. Jasper, could not be induced to go out of the room before the worshipful, the worshipful led the way downstairs. Mr. Dattery following, with his hat under his arm, and his shock of white hair streaming in the evening breeze. Might I ask his honour, said Mr. Dattery, whether that gentleman we have just left is the gentleman of whom I have heard in the neighbourhood, as being much afflicted by the loss of a nephew, and concentrating his life on avenging the loss? That is the gentleman, John Jasper, sir. Would his honour allow me to inquire whether there are strong suspicions of any one? More than suspicions, sir, returned Mr. Sapsy. All but certain is. Only think now, cried Mr. Dattery. But proof, sir, proof must be built up stone by stone, said the Mayor. As I say, the end crowns the work. It is not enough that justice should be morally certain. She must be immorally certain, legally, that is. His honour, said Mr. Dattery, reminds me of the nature of the law. E-moral, how true! As I say, sir, pompously went on the Mayor, the arm of the law is a strong arm and a long arm. That is the way I put it. A strong arm and a long arm. How forcible, and yet again, how true, murmured Mr. Dattery. And without betraying what I call the secrets of the prison-house, said Mr. Sapsy. The secrets of the prison-house is the term I use on the bench. And what other term than his honours would express it, said Mr. Dattery. Without I say betraying them, I predict to you, knowing the iron will of the gentleman we have just left, I take the bold step of calling it iron on account of its strength. That in this case the long arm will reach, and the strong arm will strike. This is our cathedral, sir. The best judges are pleased to admire it, and the best among our townsmen own to being a little vein of it. All this time Mr. Dattery had walked with his hat under his arm and his white hair streaming. He had an odd momentary appearance upon him of having forgotten his hat, when Mr. Sapsy now touched it, and he clapped his hand up to his head, as if with some vague expectation of finding another hat upon it. Pray be covered, sir, entreated Mr. Sapsy, magnificently plying. I shall not mind it, I assure you. His honour is very good. But I do it for coolness, said Mr. Dattery. Then Mr. Dattery admired the cathedral, and Mr. Sapsy pointed it out, as if he himself had invented and built it. There were a few details, indeed, of which he did not approve, but those he glossed over, as if the workmen had made mistakes in his absence. The cathedral disposed of, he led the way by the churchyard, and stopped to extol the beauty of the evening by chance in the immediate vicinity of Mrs. Sapsy's epitaph. And by the by, said Mr. Sapsy, appearing to descend from an elevation to remember it all of a sudden, like Apollo shooting down from Olympus to pick up his forgotten lyre. That is one of our small lions. The partiality of our people has made it so, and strangers have been seen taking a copy of it now and then. I am not a judge of it myself, for it is a little work of my own. But it was troublesome to turn, sir, I may say difficult to turn with elegance. Mr. Dattery became so ecstatic over Mr. Sapsy's composition that, in spite of his intention to end his days in Cloisterham, and therefore his probability having him reserve many opportunities of copying it, he would have transcribed it into his pocketbook on the spot, but for the slouching towards them of its material producer and perpetuator, Dirdles, who Mr. Sapsy hailed. Not sorry to show him a bright example of behavior to superiors. Ah, Dirdles, this is the Mason, sir, one of our Cloisterham worthies. Everybody here knows Dirdles. Mr. Dattery, Dirdles, a gentleman who is going to settle here. I wouldn't do it if I was him, growled Dirdles. We're a heavy lot. You surely don't speak for yourself, Mr. Dirdles, returned Mr. Dattery, any more than for his honour. Whose is honour? demanded Dirdles. His honour the mayor. I never was brought up for him, said Dirdles, with anything but the look of a loyal subject of the mayoralty, and it will be time enough for me to honour him when I am. Until which, and when, and where, Mr. Sapsy uses his name. England is his nation, Cloisterham's his dwelling place. Auctioneering is occupation. Here, deputy, preceded by a flying oyster shell, appeared upon the scene, and requested to have the summer thruppants instantly chucked to him by Mr. Dirdles, whom he had been vainly seeking up and down as lawful wages overdue. While that gentleman, with his bundle under his arm, slowly found and counted out the money, Mr. Sapsy informed the new settler of Dirdles' habits, pursuits, abode, and reputation. I suppose a curious stranger might come to see you and your works, Mr. Dirdles, at any odd time, said Mr. Dattery upon that. Any gentleman is welcome to come and see me any evening, if he brings liquor for two with him, returned Dirdles with a penny between his teeth and certain half-pence in his hands. Or if he liked to make it twice two, he'll be doubly welcome. I shall come, Master Deputy, what do you owe me? A job! Mind you pay me honestly with the job of showing me Mr. Dirdles' house when I want to go there. Deputy, with a piercing broad side of whistle through the whole gap in his mouth, as a receipt, him full for all arrears, vanished. The worshipful and the worshipper then passed on together until they parted with many ceremonies at the worshipful's door. Even then the worshipper carried his hat under his arm and gave his streaming white hair to the breeze. Said Mr. Dattery to himself that night, as he looked at his white hair in the gas-lighted looking-glass over the coffee-room chimney-piece at the Crozier, and shook it out. For a single buffer of an easy temper living idly upon his means. I have had rather a busy afternoon. The Mystery of Edwin Drude The Unfinished Novel by Charles Dickens Chapter 19 Shadow on the Sundial Again Miss Twinkleton has delivered her valedictory address with the accompaniments of white wine and pound-cake, and again the young ladies have departed to their several homes. Helena Landlis has left the nun's house to attend her brother's fortumes and Pretty Rosa is alone. Cloisterham is so bright and sunny in these summer days that the cathedral and the monastery ruin show as if their strong walls were transparent. A soft glow seems to shine from within them rather than upon them from without, such is their mellowness as they look forth on the hot cornfields and the smoking roads that distantly wind among them. The Cloisterham Gardens blush with ripening fruit. Time was when travel-stained pilgrims rode in clattering parties through the city's welcome shades. Time is when wayfarers, leading a gypsy life between hay-making time and harvest, and looking as if they were just made of the dust of the earth, so very dusty are they. Lounge about on cool door-steps, trying to mend their unmendable shoes, or giving them to the city kennels as a hopeless job, and seeking others in the bundles that they carry along with their yet unused sickles swathed in bands of straw. At all the more public pumps, there is much cooling of bare feet, together with much bubbling and gurgling of drinking, with hand to spout, on the part of these Bedouins. The Cloisterham police, meanwhile, looking a scant from their beets with suspicion and manifest impatience that the intruders should depart from within the civic bounds, and once more fry themselves on the simmering high-roads. On the afternoon of such a day, when the last cathedral service is done, and when that side of the high street on which the nun's house stands is in grateful shade, save where its quaint old garden opens to the west between the boughs of trees. A servant informs Rosa to her terror that Mr. Jasper desires to see her. If he had chosen his time for finding her at a disadvantage, he could have done no better. Perhaps he has chosen it. Helena Landless is gone. Mrs. Tisha is absent on leave. Miss Twinkleton, in her amateur state of existence, has contributed herself and a veal-pie to a picnic. Oh, why, why, why, did you say I was at home? cried Rosa helplessly. The maid replies that Mr. Jasper never asked the question. That he said he knew she was at home, and begged she might be told that he asked to see her. What shall I do? What shall I do? thinks Rosa, clasping her hands. Possessed by a kind of desperation, she adds in the next breath that she will come to Mr. Jasper in the garden. She shudders at the thought of being shut up with him in the house, but many of its windows command the garden, and she can be seen as well as heard there and can shriek in the free air and run away. Such is the wild idea that flutters through her mind. She has never seen him since the fatal night. Except when she was questioned before the Mayor, and then he was present in gloomy watchfulness, as representing his lost nephew and burning to avenge him. She hangs her garden hat on her arm and goes out. The moment she sees him from the porch, leaning on the sundial, the old horrible feeling of being compelled by him asserts its hold upon her. She feels that she would even then go back, but that he draws her feet towards him. She cannot resist, and sits down with her head bent on the garden seat beside the sundial. She cannot look up at him for abhorrence, but she has perceived that he is dressed in deep mourning. So is she. It was not so at first, but the loss has long been given up and mourned for as dead. He would begin by touching her hand. She feels the intention and draws her hand back. His eyes are then fixed upon her, she knows, though her own see nothing but the grass. I have been waiting, he begins, for some time to be summoned back to my duty near you. After several times forming her lips, which she knows he is closely watching, into the shape of some other hesitating reply, and then into none, she answers, Duty, sir? The duty of teaching you, serving you as your faithful music master. I have left off that study. I have not left off, I think. Discontinued. I was told by your guardian that you discontinued it under the shock that we have all felt so acutely. When will you resume? Never, sir. Never. You could have done no more if you had loved my dear boy. I did love him, cried Rosa, with a flash of anger. Yes, but not quite, not quite in the right way, shall I say, not in the intended and expected way. Much as my dear boy was unhappily too self-conscious and self-satisfied, I draw no parallel between him and you in that respect. To love as he should have loved, or as any one in his place would have loved, must have loved. She sits in the same still attitude, but shrinking a little more. Then, to be told that you discontinued your study with me, was to be politely told that you abandoned it altogether, he suggested. Yes, says Rosa, with sudden spirit, the politeness was my guardian's, not mine. I told him that I was resolved to leave off, and that I was determined to stand by my resolution. And you still are. I still am, sir, and I beg not to be questioned any more about it. At all events I will not answer any more. I have that in my power. She is so conscious of his looking at her with a gloating admiration of the touch of anger on her, and the fire and animation it brings with it, that even as her spirit rises, it falls again, and she struggles with a sense of shame, a front, and fear, much as she did that night at the piano. I will not question you any more, since you object to it so much. I will confess I do not wish to hear you, sir, cries Rosa, rising. This time he does touch her with his outstretched hand, in shrinking from it she shrinks into her seat again. We must sometimes act in opposition to our wishes. He tells her in a low voice, you must do so now, or do more harm to others than you can ever set right. What harm? Presently, presently. You question me, you see, and surely that's not fair when you forbid me to question you. Nevertheless, I will answer the question presently. Dearest Rosa, charming Rosa. She starts up again. This time he does not touch her, but his face looks so wicked and menacing as he stands leaning against the sundial, setting as it were his black mark upon the very face of day, that her flight is arrested by horror as she looks at him. I do not forget how many windows command a view of us, he says glancing towards them. I will not touch you again. I will come no nearer to you than I am. Sit down, and there will be no mighty wonder in your music-masters leaning idly against a pedestal and speaking with you, remembering all that has happened and our shares in it. Sit down, my beloved. She would have gone once more, was all but gone, and once more his face, darkly threatening what would follow if she went, has stopped her. Looking at him with the expression of the instant frozen on her face, she sits down on the seat again. Rosa, even when my dear boy was affianced to you, I loved you madly. Even when I thought his happiness in having you for his wife was certain, I loved you madly. Even when I strove to make him more ardently devoted to you, I loved you madly. Even when he gave me the picture of your lovely face, so carelessly traduced by him, which I feigned to hang always in my sight for his sake, but worshipped in torment for years, I loved you madly. In the distasteful work of the day, in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid realities or wandering through paradises and hells of visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my arms, I loved you madly. If anything could make his words more hideous to her than they are in themselves, it would be the contrast between the violence of his look and delivery and the composure of his assumed attitude. I endured it all in silence, so long as you were his, or so long as I supposed you to be his. I hid my secret loyally, did I not? This lie is so gross, while the mere words in which it is told are so true is more than Rosa can endure. She answers with kindling indignation. You were as false throughout, sir, as you are now. You were false to him, daily and hourly. You know that you made my life unhappy by your pursuit of me. You know that you made me afraid to open his generous eyes, and that you forced me for his own trusting good-good sake to keep the truth from him, that you were a bad, bad man. His preservation of his easy attitude, rendering his working features and his convulsive hands absolutely diabolical, he returns with a fierce extreme of admiration. How beautiful you are! You are more beautiful in anger than in repose. I don't ask you for your love. Give me your self and your hatred. Give me your self and that pretty rage. Give me your self and that inch. Your self and that enchanting scorn. It will be enough for me. Impatient tears rise to the eyes of the trembling little beauty, and her face flames. But as she again rises to leave him in indignation and seek protection within the house, he stretches out his hand towards the porch, as though he invited her to enter it. I told you, you rare charmer, you sweet witch, that you must stay and hear me, or do more harm than can ever be undone. You asked me, what harm? Stay, and I will tell you, go, and I will do it. Again Rosa quails before his threatening face, though innocent of its meaning, and she remains. Her panting breathing comes and goes as if it would choke her, but with a repressive hand upon her bosom, she remains. I have made my confession, that my love is mad, it is so mad, that had the ties between me and my dear lost boy been one silken thread less strong, I might have swept him even from your side when you favoured him. A film comes over the eyes she raises for an instant, as though he had turned her faint. Even him, he repeats, yes, even him. Rosa, you see me, and you hear me, judge for yourself whether any other admirer shall love you and live, whose life is in my hand. What do you mean, sir? I mean to show you how mad my love is. It was hawked through the late inquiries by Mr. Chris Sparkle, that young landlis had confessed to him that he was a rival of my lost boy. That is an inexpeable offence in my eyes. The same Mr. Chris Sparkle knows under my hand that I have devoted myself to the murderer's discovery and destruction, be he whom he might, and that I determine to discuss the mystery with no one, until I should hold the clue in which to entangle the murderer as in a net. I have slowly worked patiently to wind and wind it round him, and it is slowly winding as I speak. Your belief, if you believe in the criminality of Mr. Landlis, is not Mr. Chris Sparkle's belief, and he is a good man, Rosa retorts. My belief is my own, and I reserve it, worshiped of my soul. Circumstances may accumulate so strongly, even against an innocent man, that directed, sharpened, and pointed, they may slay him. One wanting link, discovered by perseverance against a guilty man, proves his guilt, however slight its evidence before, and he dies. Young Landlis stands in deadly peril either way. If you really suppose, Rosa pleads with him, turning paler, that I favour Mr. Landlis, or that Mr. Landlis has ever in any way addressed himself to me, you are wrong. He puts that from him with a slighting action of his hand, and a curled lip. I was going to show you how madly I love you, more madly now than ever, for I am willing to renounce the second object that has arisen in my life, to divide it with you, and henceforth to have no object in existence but you only. Miss Landlis has become your bosom friend. You care for her peace of mind? I love her dearly. You care for her good name? I have said, sir, I love her dearly. I am unconsciously. He observes with a smile as he folds his hands upon the sundial, and leans his chin upon them, so that his talk would seem from the windows, faces occasionally come and go there, to be of the airiest and playfulest. I am unconsciously giving offence by questioning again. I will simply make statements, therefore, and not put questions. You do care for your bosom friend's good name, and you do care for her peace of mind. Then remove the shadow of the gallows from her, dear one. You dare propose to me to— Darling, I dare propose to you. Stop there. If it be bad to idolise you, I am the worst of men. If it be good, I am the best. My love for you is above all other love, and my truth to you is above all other truth. Let me have hope and favour, for I am a foresworn man, for your sake. Rosa puts her hands to her temples, and pushing back her hair looks wildly and aborantly at him, as though she were trying to piece together what it is his deep purpose to present to her only in fragments. Reckon up nothing at this moment, Angel, but the sacrifices that I lay at those dear feet, which I could fall down among the vilest ashes and kiss, and put upon my head as a poor savage might. There is my fidelity to my dear boy after death. Tread upon it, with an action of his hands, as though he cast down something precious. There is the inexpeable offence against my adoration of you. Spurn it with a similar action. There are my labours in the cause of a just vengeance for six toiling months. Crush them with another repetition of the action. There is my past and my present wasted life. There is the desolation of my heart and my soul. There is my peace, there is my despair. Stamp them into the dust, so that you take me, were it even mortally hating me. The frightful vehemence of the man, now reaching its full height, so additionally terrifies her as to break the spell that has held her to the spot. She swiftly moves towards the porch, but in an instant he is at her side and speaking in her ear. Rosa, I am self-repressed again. I am walking calmly beside you to the house. I shall wait for some encouragement and hope. I shall not strike too soon. Give me a sign that you attend to me. She slightly and constrainedly moves her hand. Not a word of this to any one, or it will bring down the blow as certainly as night follows day, another sign that you attend to me. She moves her hand once more. I love you, love you, love you. If you were to cast me off now, but you will not, you would never be rid of me. No one should come between us. I would pursue you to the death. The handmaid coming out to open the gate for him, he quietly pulls off his hat as a parting salute, and goes away with no greater show of agitation than is visible in the effigy of Mr. Saps's father opposite. Rosa faints in going upstairs, and is carefully carried to her room and laid down on her bed. A thunder storm is coming on, the maids say, and the hot and stifling air has overset the pretty deer. No wonder. They have felt their own knees all of a tremble, all day long. End of Chapter 19. Read by Alan Chant of Tumbridge in Kent, England, during the summer of 2008. Chapter 20 Of The Mystery Of Edwin Druid 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 Druid The Unfinished Novel by Charles Dickens Chapter 20 A Flight Rosa no sooner came to herself than the whole of the late interview was before her. It even seemed as if it had pursued her into her insensibility, and she had not a moment's unconsciousness of it. What to do? She was at a fright and lost to know. The only one clear thought in her mind was that she must fly from this terrible man. But where could she take refuge, and how could she go? She had never breathed her dread of him to any one but Helena. If she went to Helena and told her what had passed, that very act might bring down the irreparable mischief that he threatened he had the power, and that she knew he had the will to do. The more fearful he appeared to her excited memory and imagination, the more alarming her responsibility appeared, seeing that a slight mistake on her part might let his malevolence loose on Helena's brother. Rosa's mind throughout the last six months had been stormily confused. A half-formed, wholly unexpressed suspicion tossed in it, now heaving itself up and now sinking into the deep, now gaining palpability and now losing it. Jasper's self-absorption in his nephew when he was alive, and his unceasing pursuit of the inquiry how he came by his death, if he were dead, were themed so rife in the place that no one appeared able to suspect the possibility of foul play at his hands. She had asked herself the question, Have I so wicked in my thoughts as to conceive a wickedness that others cannot imagine? Then she had considered, did the suspicion come of her previous recoiling from him before the fact? And if so, was not that a proof of its baselessness? Then she had reflected, What motive could he have according to my accusation? She was ashamed to answer in her mind, The motive of gaining me, and covered her face as if the lightest shadow of the idea of founding murder on such an idle vanity were a crime almost as great. She ran over in her mind again all that he had said by the sundial in the garden. He had persisted in treating the disappearance as murder, consistently with his whole public course since the finding of the watch and shirtpin. If he were afraid of the crime being traced out, would he not rather encourage the idea of a voluntary disappearance? He had even declared that if the ties between him and his nephew had been less strong, he might have swept even him away from her side. Was that like his having really done so? He had spoken of laying his six months labours in the cause of a just vengeance at her feet. Would he have done that, with that violence of passion if they were a pretense? Would he have ranged them with his desolate heart and soul, his wasted life, his peace and his despair? The very first sacrifice that he represented himself as making for her was his fidelity to his dear boy after death. Surely these facts were strong against a fancy that scarcely dared to hint itself? And yet he was so terrible a man. In short, the poor girl for what could she know of the criminal intellect, which its own professed students perpetually misread, because they persist in trying to reconcile it with the average intelligence of average men, instead of identifying it as a horrible wonder apart, could get by no road to any other conclusion than that he was a terrible man. And must be fled from. She had been Helena's stay and comfort during the whole time. She had constantly assured her of her full belief in her brother's innocence, and of her sympathy with him in his misery. But she had never seen him since the disappearance, nor had Helena ever spoken one word of his avowal to Mr. Chris Sparkle in regard of Rosa, though as a part of the interest of the case it was well known far and wide. He was Helena's unfortunate brother to her, and nothing more. The assurance she had given her odious suitor was strictly true, though it would have been better, she considered now, if she could have restrained herself from so giving it. Afraid of him as the bright and delicate little creature was, her spirit swelled at the thought of his knowing it from her own lips. But where was she to go? Anywhere beyond his reach was no reply to the question. Somewhere must be thought of. She determined to go to her guardian, and to go immediately. The feeling she had imparted to Helena on the night of their first confidence was so strong upon her, the feeling of not being safe from him, and of the solid walls of the old convent being powerless to keep out his ghostly following of her, that no reasoning of her own could calm her terrors. The fascination of repulsion had been upon her so long, and now culminated so darkly, that she felt as if he had power to bind her by a spell. Glancing out at window even now as she rose to dress, the sight of the sundial on which he had leaned when he declared himself turned her cold and made her shrink from it, as though he had invested it with some awful quality from his own nature. She wrote a hurried note to Miss Twinkleton, saying that she had sudden reason for wishing to see her guardian promptly, and had gone to him. Also in treating the good lady not to be uneasy, for all was well with her. She hurried a few quite useless articles into a very little bag, left the note in a conspicuous place, and went out, softly closing the gate after her. It was the first time she had ever been, even in Cloisterham High Street, alone. But knowing all its ways and windings very well, she hurried straight to the corner from which the omnibus departed. It was at that very moment going off. Stop and take me, if you please, Joe. I'm obliged to go to London. In less than another minute she was on her road to the railway, under Joe's protection. Joe waited on her when she got there, put her safely into the railway carriage, and handed in the very little bag after her, as though it were some enormous trunk, hundred weights heavy, which she must on no account endeavour to lift. Can you go round when you get back, and tell Miss Twinkleton that you saw me safely off, Joe? It shall be done, Miss. With my love, please, Joe. Yes, Miss, and I wouldn't mind having it myself. But Joe did not articulate the last clause, only thought it. Now that she was whirling away from London in real earnest, Rosa was at leisure to resume the thoughts which her personal hurry had checked. The indignant thought that his declaration of love soiled her, that she could only be cleansed from the stain of its impurity by appealing to the honest and true, supported her for a time against her fears, and confirmed her in her hasty resolution. But as the evening grew darker and darker, and the great city impended nearer and nearer, the doubts usual in such cases began to arise. Whether this was not a wild proceeding after all, how Mr. Grugius would regard it, whether she should find him at the journey's end, how she would act if he were absent, what might become of her alone in a place so strange and crowded, how if she had but waited and taken counsel first, whether, if she could now go back, she would not do it thankfully. A multitude of such uneasy speculations disturbed her more and more as they accumulated. At length the train came into London over the housetops, and down below lay the gritty streets with their yet unneeded lamps aglow on a hot, light summer's night. Hiram Grugius' square staple in London. This was all Rosa knew of her destination, but it was enough to send her rattling away again in a cab, through deserts of gritty streets where many people crowded at the corner of courts and byways to get some air, and where many other people walked with the miserable monotonous noise of shuffling of feet on hot paving stones, and where all the people and all their surroundings were so gritty and so shabby. There was music playing here and there, but it did not enliven the case. No barrel organ mended the matter, and no big drum beat dull care away. Like the chapel bells that were also going here and there, they only seemed to evoke echoes from brick surfaces and dust from everything. As to the flat wind instruments, they seemed to have cracked their hearts and souls in pining for the country. Her jingling conveyance stopped at last at a fast-closed gateway, which appeared to belong to somebody who had gone to bed very early, and was much afraid of housebreakers. Rosa, discharging her conveyance, timidly knocked at this gateway, and was let in, very little bag and all, by a watchman. "'Does Mr. Grujius live here?' "'Mr. Grujius lives there, Miss,' said the watchman, pointing further in. So Rosa went further in, and when the clocks were striking ten, stood on PJT's door-steps, wondering what PJT had done with his street door. Guided by the painted name of Mr. Grujius, she went upstairs and softly tapped, and tapped several times. But no one answering, and Mr. Grujius's door-handle yielding to her touch. She went in, and saw her guardian sitting on a window-seat at an open window, with a shaded lamp placed far from him on a table in the corner. Rosa drew nearer to him in the twilight of the room. He saw her, and he said in an undertone, "'Good Heaven!' Rosa fell upon his neck with tears, and then he said, returning her embrace, "'My child! My child! I thought you were your mother. But what—what—what!' he added soothingly, "'Has happened! My dear! What has brought you here? Who has brought you here?' "'No one! I came alone!' "'Lord, bless me!' ejaculated Mr. Grujius. "'Came alone? Why didn't you write to me to come and fetch you?' "'I had no time. I took a sudden resolution. Poor, poor Eddie!' "'Ah, poor fellow! Poor fellow!' "'His uncle has made love to me. I cannot bear it!' said Rosa, at once with a burst of tears and a stamp of her little foot. I shudder with horror of him, and I have come to you to protect me and all of us from him. If you will!' "'I will!' cried Mr. Grujius, with a sudden rush of amazing energy. "'Damn him! Confound his politics! Frustrate his navish tricks! On thee his hopes to fix! Damn him again!' After this most extraordinary outburst, Mr. Grujius quite decide himself, plunged about the room, to all appearance undecided whether he was in a fit of loyal enthusiasm or combative denunciation. He stopped and said, wiping his face, "'I beg your pardon, my dear, but you will be glad to know I feel better. Tell me no more just now, or I might do it again. You must be refreshed and cheered. What did you take last? Was it breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, or supper? And what will you take next? Shall it be breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, or supper?' The respectful tenderness with which, on one knee before her, he helped her to remove her hat and disentangle her pretty hair from it, was quite a chivalrous sight. Yet who, knowing him only on the surface, would have expected chivalry, and of the true sort too, not the spurious, from Mr. Grujius? "'Your rest, too, must be provided for,' he went on, "'and you shall have the prettiest chamber in furnivals. Your toilet must be provided for, and you shall have everything that an unlimited head chambermaid, by which expression I mean a head chambermaid not limited as to outlay, can procure. Is that a bag?' He looked hard at it, soothed to say it required hard looking at to be seen at all in a dimly lighted room. "'And is it your property, my dear?' "'Yes, sir, I brought it with me.' "'It is not an extensive bag,' said Mr. Grujius candidly, though admirably calculated to contain a day's provision for a canary bird. "'Perhaps you brought a canary bird?' Rosa smiled and shook her head. "'If you had, he should have been made welcome,' said Mr. Grujius, and I think he would have been pleased to be hung upon a nail outside, and pit himself against our staple sparrows, whose execution must be admitted to be not quite equal to their intention, which is the case with so many of us.' "'You didn't say what meal, my dear? Have a nice jumble of all meals.' Rosa thanked him, but said she could only take a cup of tea. Mr. Grujius, after several times running out and in again to mention such supplementary items as marmalade, eggs, water-cresses, salted fish, and frizzled ham, ran across to furnivals without his hat to give his various directions. And soon afterward they were realised in practice, and the board was spread. "'Lord bless my soul!' cried Mr. Grujius, putting a lamp upon it, and taking his seat opposite Rosa. What a new sensation for a poor old angular bachelor, to be sure! Rosa's expressive little eyebrows asked him what he meant. The sensation of having a sweet young presence in the place, that white washes it, paints it, papers it, decorates it with gilding, and makes it glorious, said Mr. Grujius. Oh, me, ah, me!' As there was something mournful in his sigh, Rosa, in touching him with her teacup, ventured to touch him with her small hand, too. "'Thank you, my dear,' said Mr. Grujius. Ah, let's talk.' "'Do you always live here, sir?' asked Rosa. "'Yes, my dear. And always alone?' "'Always alone, except that I have daily company and a gentleman by the name of Bazar, my clerk.' "'He doesn't live here? No, he goes his way after office hours. In fact, he is off duty here altogether just at present, and a firm downstairs with which I have business relations lent me a substitute. But it would be extremely difficult to replace Mr. Bazar.' "'He must be very fond of you,' said Rosa. "'He bears up against it with commendable fortitude if he is,' returned Mr. Grujius after considering the matter. "'But I doubt if he is. Not particularly so. You see, he is discontented, poor fellow.' "'Why isn't he contented?' was the natural inquiry. "'Misplaced,' said Mr. Grujius, with great mystery. Rosa's eyebrows resumed their inquisitive and perplexed expression. "'So, misplaced,' Mr. Grujius went on. "'That I feel constantly apologetic towards him, and he feels, though he doesn't mention it, that I have reason to be.' "'Mr. Grujius had by this time grown so very mysterious that Rosa did not know how to go on. While she was thinking about it, Mr. Grujius suddenly jerked out of himself for the second time. "'Let's talk. We were speaking of Mr. Bazar. It's a secret, and moreover it is Mr. Bazar's secret. But the sweet presence at my table makes me so unusually expansive that I feel I must impart it in enviable confidence. What do you think Mr. Bazar has done?' "'Oh, dear!' cried Rosa, drawing her chair a little nearer, and her mind reverting to Jasper. "'Nothing dreadful, I hope!' "'He has written a play,' said Mr. Grujius in a solemn whisper. "'A tragedy!' Rosa seemed much relieved. "'And nobody, pursued Mr. Grujius in the same tone, will hear on any account whatever of bringing it out.' Rosa looked reflective, and nodded her head slowly, as, who should say? Such things are, and why are they?' "'Now, you know,' said Mr. Grujius, I couldn't write a play. "'Not a bad one, sir,' said Rosa innocently with her eyebrows again in action. "'No, if I was under sentence of decapitation, and was about to be instantly decapitated, and an express arrived, with a pardon for the condemned convict Grujius, if he wrote a play, I should be under the necessity of resuming the block, and begging the executioner to proceed to extremities.' "'Meaning,' said Mr. Grujius, passing his hand under his chin, the singular number, and this extremity.' Rosa appeared to consider what she would do if the awkward, suppositious case were hers. "'Consequently,' said Mr. Grujius, Mr. Bazzard would have a sense of my inferiority to himself under any circumstances. But when I am his master, you know, the case is greatly aggravated.' Mr. Grujius shook his head seriously, as if he felt the offence to be a little too much, though of his own committing. "'How came you to be his master, sir?' asked Rosa.' "'A question that naturally follows,' said Mr. Grujius. "'Let's talk. Mr. Bazzard's father, being a Norfolk farmer, would have furiously laid about him with a flail, a pitchfork, and every agricultural implement available for assaulting purposes, on the slightest hint of his son's having written a play. So the son, bringing to me the father's rent, which I receive, imparted his secret, and pointed out that he was determined to pursue his genius, and that it would put him in peril of starvation, and that he was not formed for it. "'For pursuing his genius, sir?' "'No, my dear,' said Mr. Grujius, for starvation. It was impossible to deny the position that Mr. Bazzard was not formed to be starved, and Mr. Bazzard then pointed out that it was desirable that I should stand between him and a fate so perfectly unsuited to his formation. In that way Mr. Bazzard became my clerk, and he feels it very much. "'I am glad he is grateful,' said Rosa. "'I didn't quite mean that, my dear. I mean that he feels the degradation. There are some other geniuses that Mr. Bazzard has become acquainted with, who have also written tragedies which, likewise, nobody will on any account whatever hear of bringing out, and these choice-spirits dedicate their plays to one another in a highly panhegerical manner. Mr. Bazzard has been the subject of one of these dedications. "'Now, you know, I never had a play dedicated to me.' Rosa looked at him, as if she would have liked him, to be the recipient of a thousand dedications, which again naturally rubs against the grain of Mr. Bazzard, said Mr. Grugius. He is very short with me sometimes, and then I feel that he is meditating. "'This blockhead is my master, a fellow who couldn't write a tragedy on pain of death, and who will never have one dedicated to him with the most complementary congratulations on the high position he has taken in the eyes of posterity.' "'Very trying, very trying. However, in giving him directions, I reflect beforehand. Perhaps he may not like this, or he might take it ill if I asked that, and so we get on very well. Indeed, better than I could have expected.' "'Is the tragedy named, sir?' asked Rosa. "'Strictly between ourselves.' "'Answered Mr. Grugius, it has a dreadfully appropriate name. It is called the Thorn of Anxiety, but Mr. Bazzard hopes and I hope that it will come out at last.' It was not hard to divine that Mr. Grugius had related the Bazzard history thus fully, at least quite as much for the recreation of his ward's mind from the subject that had driven her there, as for the gratification of his own tendency to be social and communicative. "'And now, my dear,' he said at this point, "'if you are not too tired to tell me more of what passed a day, but only if you feel quite able, I should be glad to hear it. I may digest it the better if I sleep on it to-night.' Rosa, composed now, gave him a faithful account of the interview. Mr. Grugius often smoothed his head while it was in progress, and begged to be told a second time those parts which bore on Helena and Neville. When Rosa had finished, he sat grave, silent and meditative for a while. Clearly narrated was his only remark at last, and I hope clearly put away here, smoothing his head again. See, my dear, taking her to the open window where they live, the dark windows over yonder. "'May I go to Helena to-morrow?' asked Rosa. "'I should like to sleep on that question to-night,' he answered doubtfully. "'But let me take you to your own rest, for you must need it.' With that Mr. Grugius helped her to get her hat on again, and hung upon his arm the very little bag that was of no earthly use, and led her by the hand with a certain stately awkwardness, as if he were going to walk a minuet across Holburn and into Furnivell's Inn. At the hotel-door he confided her to the unlimited-head chambermaid, and said that while she went up to see her room he would remain below in case she should wish it exchanged for another, or should find that there was anything she wanted. Rosa's room was airy, clean, comfortable, almost gay. The unlimited had laid in everything omitted from the very little bag, that is to say, everything she could possibly need. And Rosa tripped down the great many stairs again to thank her guardian for his thoughtful and affectionate care of her. "'Not at all, my dear,' said Mr. Grugius, infinitely gratified. "'It is I who thank you for your charming confidence, and for your charming company. Your breakfast will be provided for you in a neat, compact, and graceful little sitting-room appropriate to your figure, and I will come to you at ten o'clock in the morning. I hope you don't feel very strange, indeed, in this strange place. "'Oh, no, I feel so safe!' "'Yes, you may be sure that the stairs are fireproof,' said Mr. Grugius, and that any outbreak of the devouring element would be perceived and suppressed by the watchman. "'I did not mean that,' Rosa replied. "'I mean, I feel so safe from him!' "'There is a stout gate of iron bars to keep him out,' said Mr. Grugius, smiling, and fernivals is fireproof, and specially watched and lighted, and I live over the way.' In the stoutness of his night-errantry he seemed to think the last named protection all sufficient. In the same spirit he said to the gate-porter as he went out, "'If someone staying in the hotel should wish to send across the road to me in the night, a crown will be ready for the messenger.' In the same spirit he walked up and down outside the iron gate, for the best part of an hour with some sonisitude, occasionally looking in between the bars, as if he had laid a dove in a high roost in a cage of lions, and had it on his mind that she might tumble out. End of chapter 20, read by Alan Chant of Tumbridge in Kent, England during the summer of