The Mystery of Edwin Drood

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

by Charles Dickens


Contents

 CHAPTER I. THE DAWN
 CHAPTER II. A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO
 CHAPTER III. THE NUNS’ HOUSE
 CHAPTER IV. MR. SAPSEA
 CHAPTER V. MR. DURDLES AND FRIEND
 CHAPTER VI. PHILANTHROPY IN MINOR CANON CORNER
 CHAPTER VII. MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE
 CHAPTER VIII. DAGGERS DRAWN
 CHAPTER IX. BIRDS IN THE BUSH
 CHAPTER X. SMOOTHING THE WAY
 CHAPTER XI. A PICTURE AND A RING
 CHAPTER XII. A NIGHT WITH DURDLES
 CHAPTER XIII. BOTH AT THEIR BEST
 CHAPTER XIV. WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN?
 CHAPTER XV. IMPEACHED
 CHAPTER XVI. DEVOTED
 CHAPTER XVII. PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL AND UNPROFESSIONAL
 CHAPTER XVIII. A SETTLER IN CLOISTERHAM
 CHAPTER XIX. SHADOW ON THE SUN-DIAL
 CHAPTER XX. A FLIGHT
 CHAPTER XXI. A RECOGNITION
 CHAPTER XXII. A GRITTY STATE OF THINGS COMES ON
 CHAPTER XXIII. THE DAWN AGAIN




THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

[Illustration: Rochester castle]




CHAPTER I.
THE DAWN


An ancient English Cathedral Tower? How can the ancient English
Cathedral tower be here! The well-known massive gray square tower of
its old Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty
iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real
prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up?
Maybe it is set up by the Sultan’s orders for the impaling of a horde
of Turkish robbers, one by one. It is so, for cymbals clash, and the
Sultan goes by to his palace in long procession. Ten thousand scimitars
flash in the sunlight, and thrice ten thousand dancing-girls strew
flowers. Then, follow white elephants caparisoned in countless gorgeous
colours, and infinite in number and attendants. Still the Cathedral
Tower rises in the background, where it cannot be, and still no
writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay! Is the spike so low a thing
as the rusty spike on the top of a post of an old bedstead that has
tumbled all awry? Some vague period of drowsy laughter must be devoted
to the consideration of this possibility.

Shaking from head to foot, the man whose scattered consciousness has
thus fantastically pieced itself together, at length rises, supports
his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He is in the
meanest and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged window-curtain,
the light of early day steals in from a miserable court. He lies,
dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed
given way under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and also across
the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman.
The two first are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at a kind
of pipe, to kindle it. And as she blows, and shading it with her lean
hand, concentrates its red spark of light, it serves in the dim morning
as a lamp to show him what he sees of her.

“Another?” says this woman, in a querulous, rattling whisper. “Have
another?”

He looks about him, with his hand to his forehead.

“Ye’ve smoked as many as five since ye come in at midnight,” the woman
goes on, as she chronically complains. “Poor me, poor me, my head is so
bad. Them two come in after ye. Ah, poor me, the business is slack, is
slack! Few Chinamen about the Docks, and fewer Lascars, and no ships
coming in, these say! Here’s another ready for ye, deary. Ye’ll
remember like a good soul, won’t ye, that the market price is dreffle
high just now? More nor three shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful!
And ye’ll remember that nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t’other side
the court; but he can’t do it as well as me) has the true secret of
mixing it? Ye’ll pay up accordingly, deary, won’t ye?”

She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, occasionally bubbling at it,
inhales much of its contents.

“O me, O me, my lungs is weak, my lungs is bad! It’s nearly ready for
ye, deary. Ah, poor me, poor me, my poor hand shakes like to drop off!
I see ye coming-to, and I ses to my poor self, ‘I’ll have another ready
for him, and he’ll bear in mind the market price of opium, and pay
according.’ O my poor head! I makes my pipes of old penny ink-bottles,
ye see, deary—this is one—and I fits-in a mouthpiece, this way, and I
takes my mixter out of this thimble with this little horn spoon; and so
I fills, deary. Ah, my poor nerves! I got Heavens-hard drunk for
sixteen year afore I took to this; but this don’t hurt me, not to speak
of. And it takes away the hunger as well as wittles, deary.”

She hands him the nearly-emptied pipe, and sinks back, turning over on
her face.

He rises unsteadily from the bed, lays the pipe upon the hearth-stone,
draws back the ragged curtain, and looks with repugnance at his three
companions. He notices that the woman has opium-smoked herself into a
strange likeness of the Chinaman. His form of cheek, eye, and temple,
and his colour, are repeated in her. Said Chinaman convulsively
wrestles with one of his many Gods or Devils, perhaps, and snarls
horribly.