エドウィン・ドルードの謎 — Charles Dickens
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : The Mystery of Edwin Drood Author : Charles Dickens Release date : June 1, 1996 [eBook #564] Most recently updated: March 25, 2024 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/564 *** START OF 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 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. The Lascar laughs and dribbles at the mouth. The hostess is still. In the Court “What visions can she have?” the waking man muses, as he turns her face towards him, and stands looking down at it. “Visions of many butchers’ shops, and public-houses, and much credit? Of an increase of hideous customers, and this horrible bedstead set upright again, and this horrible court swept clean? What can she rise to, under any quantity of opium, higher than that!—Eh?” He bends down his ear, to listen to her mutterings. “Unintelligible!” As he watches the spasmodic shoots and darts that break out of her face and limbs, like fitful lightning out of a dark sky, some contagion in