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PS 2433 C M 3 n 3J6 Un i V 8W y L ' brary 
 J ° h |R ill ?lfiffi?iiiii?iriH bbM* :beir SI a narrative 
 
 3 1924 022™66 , 983 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022066983 
 
JOHN JASPER'S SECRET 
 
 BEING 
 
 A NARRATIVE OF CERTAIN EVENTS 
 FOLLOWING AND EXPLAINING 
 
 "THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DKOOD." 
 
 WITH TWENTY ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PUBLISHING OFFICES: No. 342, STEAND. 
 
 f. ( 
 
 MDCCCLXXII., ■ if j. ^ . | '{ Y 
 
LOHJ)ON : 
 
 WVftMN AM) SONS, GHEAT QUEEN STREET, 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. W.C, 
 
JOHN JASPER'S SECRET: 
 
 BEING A NARRATIVE OP CERTAIN EVENTS 
 FOLLOWING AND EXPLAINING 
 
 "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." 
 
 PBOSPECTUS. 
 
 A few words of explanation may be necessary, in connection with 
 the publication of this work, presumably unexpected by the Beading 
 World, These few words, however, will not take the shape of an 
 apology, although a certain proportion of readers may suppose such a 
 disarmament of judgment to be politic ; while a certain segment 
 of the critical circle may be disposed to quote the conventional axiom : 
 " Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." 
 
 When the lamented death of Mr. Charles Dickens occurred, in 
 June, 1870, it is well known that a special pang was added to the 
 general sorrow felt for his loss, in the knowledge that he-left unfinished 
 a work which had commanded the widest attention for its opening 
 numbers, and which promised to be one of his most effective and popu- 
 lar books. Very soon thereafter the inquiry came to be made whether 
 the work would not be completed, from materials understood to be in 
 existence, by some capable hand ; but that question was almost as 
 quickly answered, by the statement that no such continuation could 
 be made, because there existed no remaining materials whatever. 
 
 The truth meanwhile, as usual, lay between the two suggestions. 
 "Materials" there were few, reckoning only written records or data 
 as coming under that name. But the author doing what he considered 
 to be his life-work, had not been entirely reticent as to the scope of 
 that work; and hints had been supplied by him, unwittingly, for a 
 much closer estimate of the bearings of those portions remaining 
 unwritten than probably he would have believed while living. 
 
 All these, with many more particulars, laboriously but lovingly 
 procured, have fallen into the hands of the writers of this concluding 
 
story, who trust that they are conveying a benefit as well as a pleasure 
 to the world in setting partially at rest the multitudinous speculations 
 to which the non-explanation of the Mystery has given rise. They 
 have written in the fullest love and admiration of the unfinished 
 original work, as well as of the great novelist who, to the grief of 
 all civilized lands, so suddenly laid down his wonderful pen; they 
 have carried out, however feebly, what they have fully traced and iden- 
 tified as the intention of the writer, every intrinsic and extrinsic fact 
 and hint being carefully considered. Thus they make no apology, 
 because they feel themselves to have been really offering homage to 
 a great name in faithfully gathering up materials, and completing, it 
 may be unskilfully, what its projector left merely a brilliant fragment. 
 That they have failed to sustain the delicate shades of character of the 
 actors in the orginal story, only to be imparted by the one, or to deck 
 the conversation of those characters with that irresistible oddity of 
 blended wit and pathos for which that ONE was unequalled in the age 
 or the language — these defects nobody can know more profoundly than 
 the writers themselves. 
 
 No close imitation of the style of Mr. Dickens has been attempted, 
 as it would have been, had there been any intention of foisting a pre- 
 tence upon the public. If something distantly approaching his manner 
 has been frequently assumed, a sufficient explanation will be found in 
 the atmosphere which necessarily surrounded those who have devoted 
 months to the studies indispensable to their task, and in the anxiety 
 naturally felt to make the contrast between the two works as little as 
 possible apparent to the non-critical reader. 
 
 After a considerable portion of this story had been written, a new 
 motive for its completion was supplied {had one been wanting') in two 
 or three dramatic " continuations " and " conclusions " of the original 
 story, made or commenced by writers in America, where Mb. Dickens 
 is well known to have had a host of readers and admirers. So far as 
 knowledge of these productions has reached the writers of the story now 
 announced, it may fairly be said that the American entrepreneurs have 
 shown the absence of their alleged national characteristic of keenness 
 by falling into those delicate traps of pretence in plot and action so 
 skilfully set in the earlier portions of Edwin Dbood, by the hand 
 which mystified the whole body of readers through a long portion of 
 the career of the Golden Dustman, in " Our Mutual Iriend." 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 1. — Wringing a Secret from Death Frontis2)iece. 
 
 2. — Mayor Sapsea's Vision of Knighthood to/ace page 1 
 
 3. — Mr. Honeythunder as an Avenger 20 
 
 4. — Mr. Jasper's Tartar Experience 26 
 
 5. — Mrs. Billikins' Sweet Rooms wanted immediate ' 34 
 
 6. — Mr. Jasper's Unexpected Pleasure 48 
 
 7. — Black Tomboy and his One-handed Master 65 
 
 8. — Dog, Apparition, or Ban Dog? 72 
 
 9. — The Daughter of her Father's House 80 
 
 10. — The China Shepherdess makes an Accusation 88 
 
 11. — Carried Away 102 
 
 12. DuRDLES ADDRESSING THE HEAD HaVEN GENERALLY . . 121 
 
 13. — Rope and Rafter 129 
 
 14. — Supper and Music for Four 145 
 
 15. — Mr. Tartar up aloft 152 
 
 16. — The Babbling of a Secret 157 
 
 17. — The Rough Side of Black Tomboy : 187 
 
 18. — Durdles' live Old 'Un 198 
 
 19. — The Ghost of Edwin Drood 206 
 
 20. — Betrothal without Words 248 
 
a 
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JOHN JASPER'S SECRET: 
 
 BEING A NARRATIVE OP CERTAIN EVENTS 
 FOLLOWING AND EXPLAINING 
 
 "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MAYOR SAPSEA GIVES AUDIENCE. 
 
 The "Worshipful the Mayor of Cloisterhani sits in high state in his 
 Mansion House. Perhaps not in these very words, but certainly in 
 the same spirit would he p\it it, to the ear of confidence, in describing 
 the state really held by the head of the ancient and honourable 
 borough, at any period during the present term of official incumbency, 
 when men have returned once more to the allegiance so often departed 
 from, and when, in at least one of the high places of England, talent 
 and originality hold power. 
 
 His Mansion House, and he the Lord Mayor, instead of being 
 merely the "Worshipful. "Why not 1 His stereotype imitation of the 
 Dean, once his ideal, has faded and changed, more than a little think- 
 ing of this — into a shadowy copy of some magnate of the bench, once 
 seen, or some puissant statesman temporarily flashing across the line 
 of vision. Why not the Lord Mayor instead of merely the Wor- 
 shipful 1 — the indignant question may be asked once more. 
 
 The blending of private residence and auctioneer's premises, on the 
 High Street, over the door of which the newly-incarnated figure of 
 Time, taking the place of the old, and substituting the hammer for 
 the scythe, daily and hourly cries, " Going ! going ! gone ! " to the 
 hours, and knocks down any lagging minutes straggling along after 
 the main body — that might possibly need certain ameliorations, 
 within and without, before venturing to claim place beside the civic 
 palace of the world's metropolis ; but beyond this, what more 1 That 
 imposing room, but one pair from the street and overlooking it, 
 alternately devoted to valuatory conferences and vendatory conflicts 
 innumerable, might well be the recognized seat of power, police- 
 guarded and urchin-dreaded, if Cloisterham really had its rights and 
 
 B 
 
A JOHN JASPER S SECRET. 
 
 privileges instead of continuing the victim of cruel precedents. Why 
 not a Mansion House, indeed, with the desk of the civic dignitary, at 
 certain hours of the morning, holding behind it a stately person, fur- 
 mantled and gold-chained, and at least announced on entrance as 
 " The "Worshipful the Mayor ! " even if that higher flight should not 
 be reached, and the proclamation fail to be " The Right Honourable 
 the Lord Mayor ! " Why not here, instead of in that less-impressive 
 place, the Town Hall, with its bench of magistrates dividing honour 
 and labour? Yes, why not here? ruminates Sir Thomas Sapsea, Knt., 
 so created — 
 
 But of this latter, anon. Merit does not always receive complete 
 recognition in the first instance, even when there is some approach 
 towards justice ; and, the course of amelioration begun, its completion 
 can always be more patiently waited for than can be endured the first 
 tedium of absolute neglect — just as two hours of time following the 
 dawn, and yet preceding the sunrise, seem far less tedious to the 
 watcher than appears one half-hour of that thick darkness before 
 the first grey in the East. It may or may not be that some historical 
 event will chance, like that connected with the return of a banished 
 sovereign and the gathering around him of the chief notables of the 
 honoured city, such as the brown old gabled Nuns' House opposite 
 once saw in those days when the right divine was less questioned 
 than now, if not better defined — titles and honours flowing from the 
 momentary contact with royalty in a specially generous mood, and 
 the chief magistrate of the city necessarily first remembered. And, 
 failing this, who can say at what day it may be necessary for Cloister- 
 ham, loyal as well as tenacious of privilege, to send up that Address 
 before briefly referred to, of which the before-mentioned chief magis- 
 trate, active or retired, must be the appropriate bearer, being on that 
 occasion " put to the sword " in that pleasant manner so well known 
 in local history, and so grateful to the sufferer 1 And then, if at no 
 other time, and in no other way — then Sir Thomas 
 
 The reverie of Mayor Sapsea, in which that type-donkey has been 
 indulging to quite the length of the lady with the basket of eggs, at 
 this stage changes its character, and the rude present resumes the 
 place of the possibly golden future. The dignitary has been indulging 
 in it, seated alone in his chair of imaginary state and chamber of 
 fancied power ; and his chair and desk stand in such a position that, 
 looking directly before him, he sees the quaint overhanging gables 
 and latticed windows of the Nuns' House. 
 
 From the house his active thought — that active thought which 
 travels around the world by atmospheres, so to speak, sees China in 
 a tea-caddy, and the Arctic regions in a fur tippet — naturally recurs 
 to the young ladies who, during the school season, make the old 
 house and gardens musical, and thence to that one of the late number 
 who was said to have borne a close personal connection with the 
 great event of his administration. 
 
 An unfortunate event, so far, he cannot but think. He does not 
 ignore the fact that in the history of Cloisterham, yet to be written, 
 more than a little of importance will be imparted by the knowledge 
 
MAYOR SAPSEA GIVES AUDIENCE. 6 
 
 that during the Sapsea Mayoralty occurred the mysterious disappear- 
 ance and alleged murder of one Edwin Drood ; but is it not just pos- 
 sible that the surpassing lustre of that period may be dimmed by the 
 additional record of the mystery remaining unravelled, in spite of the 
 (naturally supposed) bending of the chief magistrate's gigantic mind 
 to its elucidation 1 
 
 More than once, of late weeks, this has occurred to him, until there 
 is danger of this new mortification taking rank beside the one already 
 sapping his vitals — that the late Mrs. Sapsea, albeit possibly a victim 
 to the effort of looking up too high, had not been spared to look up 
 yet higher, to Mind incorporated with Mayor, before crawling, in her 
 abasement, into her chaste monument, and giving occasion for that 
 brow-contracting Epitaph. 
 
 He has said to Mr. Datchery, some weeks before — a most meri- 
 torious person, this Datchery, showing credible deference to both 
 Intellect and Position, — that his friend, Mr. John Jasper, man of iron 
 ■will, swaying the long and strong arm of the law, will undoubtedly 
 succeed in tracing home the gilt to the suspected perpetrator. But 
 additional time has elapsed ; Mr. Jasper seems to have made slow 
 progress, if any ; what if 
 
 .At this juncture there is a knock at the door, and a servant con- 
 veys the request of the respectful and approved Mr. Datchery, that 
 he may be allowed to intrude for a few moments on the valuable 
 time of the Worshipful the Mayor. He is permitted to enter, more 
 truly from the grand wave of the magisterial hand than the word of 
 permission ; and the man of the white hair and the dark eyebrows 
 is immediately in the presence. He has worn his hat to the door ; 
 Mr. Sapsea observes how quickly he removes it as he crosses the 
 threshold, and the incident strengthens the toleration with which 
 this highly respectful visitor to Cloisterham, temporarily become a 
 resident, is regarded by its first magistrate. 
 
 " Thanks for the permission. I may hope that the Worshipful the 
 Mayor is in good health," courteously suggests the new comer ; adding, 
 however, in a moment, " Now that I look a second time, may I take 
 the liberty of remarking that His Honour the Mayor is scarcely 
 looking at his best ? shows signs of — what may I be allowed to call 
 it ? — possibly mental fatigue 1 " 
 
 Mr. Sapsea passes his hand over his brow, then runs it upward 
 across the front hair, and ends by sweeping away a little of the 
 hirsute encumbrance from the temples, after the manner of one sud- 
 denly made aware of the weariness of long mental effort. He is 
 evidently gratified — as this man seems to have the faculty of grati- 
 fying him on all occasions, simply by supplying rnone adulatory oats 
 to the pompous donkey nature than the average of those thrown in 
 contact with him. It almost seems that he might be covertly a rela- 
 tive of the defunct and much-respected, from the facility with which 
 he subjects his mental vertebrse to the straining curve of the glance 
 directed above its level. 
 
 The Mayor, as already said, experiences intense gratification at 
 finding that mental efforts are beginning to tell upon his face, and is 
 
 B 2 
 
■i JOHN JASPEES SECRET. 
 
 thereupon amiable to a degree which might have gone far towards 
 conciliating even the impracticable Durdles. 
 
 " Highly pleased to see Mr. Datchery," he says. " I trust that you 
 find your residence in Cloisterham as agreeable as 3 r ou expected on 
 first taking lodgings. As to mental efforts and fatigue," — another 
 stroke of the fat hand over face and hair, and another pretence of 
 sweeping away some annoying anxiety, — "as to that, you will recog- 
 nize, Mr. Datchery, that we who are charged with the public interests, 
 in responsible positions, do not sleep upon beds of roses — that is how 
 / put it — not upon beds of roses : and if sometimes the eye and 
 manner evince fatigue, those cares which none understand except 
 such as bear them, must plead the excuse ; as connected with the 
 legal profession by occupancy of the bench, I say again that these 
 must plead the excuse." 
 
 " Good heavens ! " says Mr. Datchery, as if struck to the heart by 
 the manner of the great man's last remark, " Do I hear aright 1 Do I 
 hear the Worshipful the Mayor speaking of ' excuses ' for that which 
 really covers him with respect ? May I beg that His Honour will 
 give me his hand, in evidence that I have not been so painfully mis- 
 understood 1 " 
 
 Mr. Datchery, without taking his eyes off the Mayor's face, com- 
 mences fumbling for the coveted hand, upon which demonstration the 
 official, his broad meaningless face informed with all the gratifying 
 vanity of Justice Shallow, superadded to the asinine profundity of 
 Dogberry, holds out the member with impressment, and warmly 
 returns the shake instantly given it. 
 
 " No, Mr. Datchery," he says, with profound appreciation of that 
 duty of putting his visitor at ease, devolving on him as both host and 
 superior. " No, — I am pleased to say that I do not misunderstand 
 your remark, which I take to be intended as complimentary, how- 
 ever liable to possible misconstruction if not analyzed by Mind. We 
 are at times fatigued ; such a possibility does exist ; and the strongest 
 back — 1 used that phrase on the bench only a day or two since — the 
 strongest back, as / put it, can only bear one load at a time." 
 
 " So pleased that His Honour the Mayor does not misunderstand 
 me," Mr. Datchery replies, with effusion. " And I am the more 
 anxious that such a misunderstanding should not arise at the present 
 moment, as I am about to take what may be held an unwarrantable 
 liberty." 
 
 It is not too strong a term to say that Mr. Sapsea is alarmed, and 
 that he shows the alarm, unconsciously to himself, and yet as plainly 
 as he has lately shown his swelling self-complacency. About to take 
 a liberty ; the phrase is seldom or never a welcome one. What may it 
 not mean 1 Possibly borrowing of money ? Ah, then, how likely the 
 mental hands are to go down to the pockets and button them, even 
 if the physical are restrained by very shame ! Tendering of unpalat- 
 able advice t What hardening of the heart and sharpening of the 
 will, in advance, to meet that most violent of all assaults upon the 
 liberty of the individual ! KevealiDg of unpleasant facts and letting 
 out of skeletons from dark closets ! Then what homicidal wishes, 
 
MAYOR SAPSEA GIVES AUDIENCE. 5 
 
 half covered with hollow thanks, and what regrets that in the days 
 of Job some process had not been discovered and put in operation by 
 the patriarch, for the benefit of all his descendants, filling the office 
 of exterminating all "comforters" and bearers of untoward news, at 
 the instant when they break silence ! 
 
 It is not to be supposed that Mr. Sapsea feels or philosophises all 
 this, in the brief space following the threatening words of Datchery ; 
 he would be less a pompous fool, and so less fitted for the straw 
 mayoralty of Cloisterham, had he that capacity. But he recognizes 
 an uncomfortable feeling creeping through the numb skull and the 
 thick cuticle ; and the lips are pursed a little and the full cheeks 
 puffed additionally, immediately thereafter. 
 
 "A liberty? — Mr. Datchery — I do not quite understand " 
 
 He flounders and pauses. Datchery comes in at once with great 
 vigour and readiness. 
 
 " The liberty I was about to take with the "Worshipful the Mayor," 
 he explains, " is merely to venture upon consulting with him, if he 
 will permit such a term of apparent equality, with reference to one 
 of those very cares of his office, of which mention has just been made." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 This interjectory reply of Mr. Sapsea may mean anything or no- 
 thing, like the Italian " altro," which sounds all the gamut from 
 satisfaction to despair. It may be relief from a worse fear ; it may 
 be surprise at the audacity, not yet declared enough for violent re- 
 pression ; it may be a mild form of tacit permission to the other to 
 go on. Judging from the self-satisfied smirk accompanying, the latter 
 may be presumed, and the man of liberties presumes accordingly. 
 
 " His Honour the Mayor did me the great courtesy, at my first 
 coming to Cloisterham, to speak of a case of great local interest, not 
 long before occurred." 
 
 " Referring," says Mr. Sapsea, with a wave of the hand at once 
 explanatory and magisterial, '' to the disappearance and understood 
 murder of the young man Drood. Yes, I remember speaking of the 
 affair to you, in the presence, as I think, of Mr. Jasper. Humph ! 
 you are about to ask, I have no doubt, whether anything additional 
 has been discovered; and I am obliged to reply that — as I may have 
 before remarked — mills turn slowly that grind exceedingly fine. That 
 is how / put it — slowly, sir, for fine work. Nothing as yet, because 
 the time has not yet arrived ; though there is reason to believe that 
 the investigation has not been conducted without Intellect and a 
 certain amount of Energy." 
 
 " Ha ! the Worshipful the Mayor puts it with his usual force and 
 felicity," suggests the visitor. " Only personal presence prevents my 
 pointing out that place in the combination in which Intellect reigns : 
 may I be pardoned for adding that I presume at least a part of the 
 Energy incarnated in Mr. Jasper, of whom the "Worshipful the Mayor 
 also spoke — the man who, if it is possible for a single buffer of care- 
 less habits to remember correctly, was mentioned as a man of strong 
 will, and as having the reason of relationship for seeking out the 
 murderer ? " 
 
b JOHN JASPERS SECRET. 
 
 Mr. Sapsea bows. The sentence is a slightly long one, and neces- 
 sarily a little confusing ; but it has the requisite flavour of adulation, 
 and the waves of anxiety on the erewhile thought-ruffled forehead 
 are placidly smoothed as the dignitary replies, — 
 
 " Not only very well guessed, Mr. Datchery, but I may say very 
 well turned. Mr. Jasper has Energy : it is not for me to deny, any 
 more than to accept, your remark suggesting the presence of Intel- 
 lect." 
 
 Mr. Sapsea has bowed, Mr. Datchery followed him in that genu- 
 flexion, and the entente cordiale may be said to have arrived at that 
 position which it often holds in the intercourse of nations — being 
 very warm in spite of being blind and meaningless : possibly because 
 of those characteristics. 
 
 But something definite approaches, likely to be as disturbing as 
 definite understandings between the powers so calmly at peace in 
 their ignorance. 
 
 Mr. Datchery, with the air of a single buffer, who is not only idle 
 and careless, as he has before proclaimed himself, but also exceed- 
 ingly indolent, thrusts his hand into his pocket empty, and withdraws 
 it holding a dark brown object of some four inches by two and a 
 half, and possibly an inch in thickness, leathery and damp-looking, 
 with suspicion of spots, and suggestions of dirt. 
 
 It is a pocket-book, of which he loosens the strap and throws back 
 the folds, holding it out to the Mayor. 
 
 " The worshipful the Mayor supposed, very naturally, that I was 
 about to ask some question as to the progress of the Drood mystery. 
 On the contrary, it is my high privilege, as I hold it my duty, to 
 assist His Honour, even in the humblest way, and the most un- 
 important of particulars, with a single link that may be of eventual 
 use in — may I borrow from His Honour's epigrammatic habit ? in 
 forming the fetters of the criminal." 
 
 The fat magisterial hand is extended to take the object offered ; 
 while the magisterial face assumes an aspect of innate stupidity and 
 want of comprehension, struggling with a pretence of that wisdom 
 understanding all things and impossible to nonplus by the announce- 
 ment of any new discovery in thought or physics — which would be 
 irresistibly ludicrous if a certain element of the pitiful did not enter 
 into it. 
 
 The magisterial eyes, glass-assisted, take in the object handed by 
 Datchery ; and at last they take in one peculiarity, at first ignored. 
 Then the lips of wisdom speak again sententiously. 
 
 " Pocket-book, dark brown leather, wet, name of E. Drood under 
 the flap. Likely to have been on the body of the unfortunate young 
 man, when murdered by — by one whom we will not name. I see in 
 this, Mr. Datchery, if you can fortunately prove before the court 
 that you came into possession of it without taking part in the crime 
 — I see in this, sir, possible means of tracking out the criminal, and 
 of convicting him ; that is how / put it, nothing less than tracking 
 out the criminal, and convicting him." 
 
 So much in words, Mayor Sapsea. But what mode of expression, 
 
MAYOR SAPSEA GIVES AUDIENCE. 7 
 
 appreciable by the mere reader, shall convey the additional and un- 
 spoken words involved in air and gesture 1 As thus, in corrugation 
 of the labouring brow, wave of the fat hand, and throwing back of 
 the shoulders to a distance delightful to His Honour's tailor : — " You 
 have brought to Mind and to Power something ; but you have no 
 more idea what, than the slave in one of the Brazilian mines, who 
 picks up an ounce diamond in the rough, and carries it in his pouch 
 as a mere pebble, while he seeks for something a thousandth part the 
 worth that happens to glitter. Here is the crucible in which the 
 true worth of objects must be determined ; here Intellect will deal 
 with that which has thus far been only the sport of Accident." 
 
 But far is it from the idle, careless, and indolent buffer, who pos- 
 sibly sees all this in the demeanour of his interlocutor, to show any 
 knowledge beyond that conveyed in words. He merely responds 
 with a wondrous sustaining of his old air of humility, not to say 
 subserviency. 
 
 " So pleased that the Worshipful the Mayor recognizes at least 
 some worth in the slight link that I have been enabled to supply. 
 Possibly, however, His Honour will be more gratified as well as 
 instructed, when I inform him how this wallet, which undoubtedly 
 was the property of the missing Edwin Drood, and probably on his 
 person at the time when he met with his sad end, came into my 
 possession." 
 
 " Humph,'' responds the Mayor. " It is very well, Mr. Datchery, 
 that you see the necessity. How, sir — that is how I put it, as I 
 must do — when — if called upon to act upon the case, on the Bench — 
 how does it happen that I discover in your hands this article, which 
 I believe — yes, which I may say I am confident, from my past 
 experience, to have been in the possession of the murdered man at 
 the time of the commission of the crime 1" 
 
 Mr. Datchery is not staggered, as well he might be, at this some- 
 what forcible adoption of his own words against himself. Possibly 
 he has been quite prepared for this, as for nearly anything else that 
 could occur in that peculiar presence. At all events, he is quite as 
 bland and good-humoured as ever, as he accepts the permission, and 
 in his own rambling way gives the story of the wallet. 
 
 " I have already had the privilege of telling His Honour the 
 Mayor the fact of my being a single buffer, and an idle one ; but I 
 may also tell him that I am an odd one as well, and that I habitually 
 do what others are not much in the habit of doing. Suspicious, in 
 the eyes of the Worshipful ? ' Let me hope not, or at least let me 
 try to remove the impression. My arrangements are simply a little 
 odd, nothing more. For instance, I often employ the fisherman's 
 boats and go fishing up the river, though I am free to say that I do 
 not remember having caught a single fish as yet, since I came to this 
 pleasant town. I do not deny that I have had nibbles, though I 
 may be encroaching on the valuable time of the Worshipful the 
 Mayor, by presuming to mention such a trifle. However, it is- to be 
 supposed that the supreme authority desires all the information at 
 my command — not simply a part of it V 
 
JOHN JASPERS SECEET. 
 
 "All, Mr. Datchery — all; that is how I put it in examinations 
 from the Bench — all or nothing. Be good enough to go on, sir !" 
 replies the Mayor, with one of those commanding and benevolent 
 waves of the hand -which show him entirely unsuspicious of the 
 narrator's good faith. 
 
 " Thanks for the permission " — continuing. " I was about to say, 
 then, that there is an old fisherman, occupying a cabin not far from 
 the Weir, named Crawshe, whom I have several times employed to 
 row me up the river, and help me in indulging my odd humour. He 
 has a poor boy, bis son, whom they call Little Crawshe — helpless 
 from some accident — the falling of a stick of timber, I think, which 
 has broken away some of the cords of the back of the neck, com- 
 pelling him always to hold one hand under the chin, to keep the 
 head from falling forward on the breast. May I hope that His 
 Honour the Mayor knows anything of Crawshe and his boy 1 No — 
 of course not : they are not likely to approach such Position. "Well, 
 the poor fisherman often asks the privilege of his employers of taking 
 the crippled boy with him in the boat, as a means of amusing him 
 in his inability to share in the rough play of the other boys. Yester- 
 day I went up the river, rowed by Crawshe, and little Crawshe 
 accompanying. I gave the boy some pence when about to leave the 
 boat, and he took this wallet from his pocket to put them into it. 
 Watching him a little closely, to see how he managed with one 
 hand, I caught the name under the flap, and at once pretended a 
 certain interest in the looks of the article, and bought it from him 
 for a shilling. Inquiring on that point, though I had no doubt on 
 the subject, I learned that neither Little Crawshe nor his father 
 could read a word, so that neither could have had any knowledge of 
 the name on the inside. Inquiring further, in my idle way, I learned 
 that the boy had picked up the wallet on the river bank, very near 
 the Weir, only a day or two before, in such a spot that it would 
 seem impossible that it could long have lain there without attracting 
 attention. I need not ask if His Honour follows me, and if he 
 arrives at the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the latter fact 1 " 
 
 Datchery pauses, as he may well do after so long a story without 
 interruption. At once the Mayor brings to the subject the force of 
 Intellect. 
 
 " Conclusion obvious," he observes, sententiously. " Wallet not 
 long found, criminal been lately along river bank, and dropped it 
 accidentally, after having robbed it of contents. You are quite 
 excusable, Mr. Datchery, as a man without legal training, for not 
 having arrived at such a conclusion, which demands Mind and Expe- 
 rience. But that is how / put it, sir — late dropping of stolen article, 
 late presence of criminal, possibly remaining even now in the neigh- 
 bourhood." 
 
 " Reasoned with the well-known acuteness of the Worshipful the 
 Mayor ! " exclaims the other, with glee. " May I take the liberty of 
 shaking hands again, in felicitation ? Thanks, many. And now 
 may I beg to offer one more suggestion 1 " 
 
 His Honour the Mayor nods loftily but suavely. 
 
MAYOR SAPSEA GIVES AUDIENCE. 9 
 
 " More than once, as the Worshipful the Mayor will remember, 
 the name of Mr. John Jasper has been alluded to, as the person most 
 interested in tracing out the crime. Might I suggest that this wallet 
 should be at once placed in his hands, for his information and en- 
 couragement ? " 
 
 The Mayor seeing no objection, and briefly expressing himself to 
 that effect, Mr. Datchery adds, — 
 
 " And should I be contravening the wishes of His Honour the 
 Mayor, in reqiiesting the privilege of being present at the exhibition 
 or delivery to Mr. Jasper (whichever His Honour may think proper 
 under the circumstances) of this — this article, as His Honour has 
 well called it, which suddenly assumes a certain interest and value in 
 this case ? " 
 
 Mr. Sapsea at once retires within himself again to a certain 
 extent ; and the pomposity is much more marked as he inquires, — ■ 
 
 " Humph ! I do not understand, Mr. Datchery. Desire to be 
 present at Mr. Jasper's receiving this — this article ? I am not to 
 presume that any connection exists, in this affair, between Mr. Jasper 
 and yourself 1 " 
 
 " Certainly not, as the Worshipful the Mayor should be assured 
 at once," replies the man, who has again fallen under tacit suspicion ; 
 and replies somewhat hurriedly. " Let me implore His Honour not 
 to place me under impressions which I should deprecate, in spite of 
 my high respect for the energetic Mr. Jasper. No ; my motive is easily 
 told, and, I may hope, not a discreditable one, as appealing to the 
 cultivated Intellect which I address. I have the honour to be a 
 student of humanity, though an idle buffer ; and I find a singular 
 pleasure, sometimes, in observing the first moments of sensations in 
 minds bent to special objects." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 This interjectory comment of the Mayor again conveys relief, if 
 not satisfaction, and the other proceeds, — 
 
 "Now, venturing to make use of the information kindly imparted 
 by the Worshipful the Mayor, in this permitted interview and 
 others, and assuming all Mr. Jasper's, great energies to be worthily 
 bent upon pursuing this concealed though suspected murder, may I 
 not name, as some slight compensation for the benefit which I have 
 been accidentally enabled to bestow upon the search, the privilege of 
 watching Mr. Jasper's triumphal sensations when this new link of 
 evidence is put into his hands? I take the liberty of asking His 
 Honour the Mayor if this may not be allowed, without derogation 
 to the dignity of his position, and without compromising my own, so 
 much more humble." 
 
 Mayor Sapsea is finally conquered, as it would seem. What mere 
 mortal would not be, under corresponding circumstances, however 
 the gods of old might require the rising of additional incense to the 
 divine nostrils? Certainly the idle buffer has smoked the very- 
 wooden god sufficiently, and it is time that some answering blessing 
 should be reached. It comes, in one of Mr. Sapsea's most benevolent 
 and condescending waves of the hand, and in the full accordance of 
 
10 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 the required permission, which the donor no doubt considers com- 
 pensation enough for a lifetime of service. 
 
 "You may be present at the delivery to Mr. Jasper of the — the 
 article, Mr. Datchery. It may be contrary to legal precedent, sir — 
 and that, when on the Bench and off it, I consider the palladium of 
 English liberty — that is how I put it, in occasional consultation 
 with my learned brothers — the palladium of English liberty. But 
 this shall be waived, Mr. Datchery — this shall be waived," waving 
 the fat hand meanwhile, as if unconsciously punning on the word. 
 " We will call upon Mr. Jasper, and I will show him the article, and 
 possibly deliver it to him, you being present." 
 
 The conference is ended with these words, as conferences must end 
 between the highest of earthly dignitaries and those who are tem- 
 porarily permitted to approach them on terms of conversational 
 equality. Mr. Sapsea rises from that chair which has for the pre- 
 ceding half-hour been more or less a throne ; assumes that hat so 
 marvellously French in the bell of the crown and the curl of the 
 brim, and with which Cloisterham is no*v quite as well acquainted 
 and almost as loftily, as with the Cathedral tower itself; and the 
 two make their way, the Mayor the least trifle in advance, and 
 Mr. Datchery only putting on his hat at the latest possible moment, 
 — to that interview with Mr. Jasper which is to fortify him with a 
 new prospect of revenge on the murderer of his dear boy. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 DURDLES, SCULPTOR ; AND HONEYTHUNDER, AVENGER. 
 
 Durdles at work. Impossibilities become possibilities, and false- 
 hoods absolute facts — just as while all the Old philosophers were 
 demonstrating, with a laborious persistency and an equally laborious 
 folly, that no vessel propelled by the steam of a kettle could ever 
 cross the great ocean, and that no needle could ever be induced to 
 carry a thread regularly through any fabric, by blind mechanical 
 power — the New philosophers were quietly perfecting the ocean- 
 steamer and inventing the sewing-machine. 
 
 An anomaly, certainly, and yet no less a' truth. Durdles, known 
 never to be at work, actually at work — and at work with a will, 
 whatever there might have been, or failed to be, of that judgment 
 which should control the will, and without which it is somewhat 
 more dangerous than indecision. 
 
 And Durdles sober. At least so nearly freed from the habitual 
 sottishness of his ordinary life, that if it hung around him like a 
 
DUEDLES. SCULPTOB; AND IIONEYTHUNDEK, AVENGER. 11 
 
 murky atmosphere, it did not envelop Mm in its close embrace like 
 an impenetrable fog. Grim, stolid, heavy-looking and stone-dusty 
 as ever, there was yet something about the man, just then, ele- 
 vating him above the wholly-debased and sordid, if it could not 
 lift him into the realm where dwells romantic interest. Perhaps it 
 lifted him even there, in spite of dirt, squalor, ignorance, ill-temper, 
 drunkenness. We are not very expert at measuring personal posi- 
 tions or calculating moral distances — most of us ; and Stony Durdles 
 niay at some moment be found quite as severe a strain upon the 
 mathematical faculties, as the new planet discovered last month, 
 or the comet that is to flaunt its luminons tail in our view next 
 year. 
 
 It has already been said of the Stony One, that Fame called him a 
 wonderful workman, while actual observation only saw him doing 
 nothing, with much accompaniment of two-foot rule, dinner-bundle, 
 accepted outlawry, and self-satisfied comments upon himself in the 
 third person. Who knows, meanwhile, but Fame — who must pos- 
 sess wonderful (if never mentioned) ears, to gather up all the intel- 
 ligence spread abroad in the world through the medium of her 
 trumpeting mouth — may have been wiser than the speakers who 
 saw and heard at a lower level, may even have caught the occasional 
 clink of a hammer and chisel, the use of which brought the dusty 
 old stonemason within the scope of her duties 1 
 
 Then, too, Fame may have had an assistant or two, the post of ob- 
 servation being the ordinary level. Who knows but Mr. Tope, the 
 verger, so likely to be acquainted with all the minor details of the 
 lives of those with whom he was much thrown in contact — and Mr. 
 Crisparkle, so careful of the grammatical accuracy of Durdles's lan- 
 guage when addressing his Reverence the Dean — may have been the 
 means through whom there crept to the outer world of Cloisterham 
 certain indefinite rumours of an ability belied by every appearance 
 and surrounding ? 
 
 Durdles's den or cave in the city was deeper than most people knew 
 — even as possibly so was the solitary tenant, if a modern and not- 
 too-classical secondary use of the word may be permitted. Few per- 
 sons stumbled over the broken stone and chips of the yard, to enter 
 the precincts at all ; still fewer knew that the miserable apartment, 
 which only they saw, had any other outlet than the broken door ; and 
 yet fewer dreamed, that within that inner apartment was carefully 
 hidden one of the most notable oddities of the century — the " studio " 
 of Durdles the Sculptor ! 
 
 " Stony Durdles," and in how different a sense from that in which 
 the ordinary little world of Cloisterham understood it ! Durdles the 
 Sculptor. If labouring for immortality, doing so with scarcely more 
 than a clientele of two or three ; if for some other end, it may not 
 be easy to number the invisible beings coming into the calculation. 
 
 That Mr. Tope knew of the " studio," and yet carefully concealed 
 its existence, who could better tell than himself, remembering the 
 thousand gruff importunities first and last addressed him by the odd 
 human compound, to assist in procuring privately some bit of stone 
 
12 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 that promised to serve the one great purpose ? And that Mr. 
 Crisparkle, the bright, fresh, clear-headed, but excessively-human 
 Minor Canon, possessed equal intelligence — what better proof was 
 necessary than his presence at the very moment when the clink of 
 mallet and chisel was being heard in the unsuspected recess 1 
 
 Durdles the Sculptor — once more. Think twice, careful student, 
 of the calculus of probabilities, before adding to the mistakes of 
 human arrogance by declaring such a thing impossible, except in 
 some sense involving the broadly ridiculous. For if we live a dual 
 life in sleeping and in waking hours, so different each from each that 
 scarcely one can recognize the other of those twin-components when 
 meeting on the border of shadow-land — so surely, too, our power and 
 our capacities are dual, making the rule of life more strong by 
 forming the exception, and banishing the blemish showing to the eye 
 upon a surface otherwise so brilliant, by some small spark at least to 
 light what otherwise would seem too base and common for the 
 Forming Hand. 
 
 There is an old German story, having to do with the life of Albert 
 Diirer, which has been told once and again by those who love the 
 great art of which he was declared the " evangelist," but which may 
 be briefly told once more, with the title indicated, if not expressed — 
 " The Unexpected." 
 
 Samuel Duhobart was colour-grinder to the great painter — a poor 
 little humpbacked fellow, who seemed especially made for the 
 drudgery of the studio, and for the Xantippe words, and often blows, 
 of Madam Diirer. To escape the last, he built him a little hovel of 
 retreat under the bank of the Pegnitz ; and there he ground the colours 
 which, under the master's hand, were to form hues of immortality. 
 But the poor fellow was not without leisure and not beneath ennui. 
 In a mere spirit of imitation of what he saw every day, he used a 
 few scraps of the colours, and daubed. Pictures he had none to copy, 
 even had he possessed the capacity : so he did the only thing pos- 
 sible — he tried in his own feeble way to reproduce the scene spread 
 before him at the door of his hovel — a reach of the silver-winding 
 river, a few trees, an old castle crowning a distant height, and the 
 blue Franconian mountains bounding the prospect. This was what 
 he — daubed ; what else than daubing could be the work of the poor 
 colour-grinder % 
 
 But there came a day when he was expelled from his master's 
 service, during that master's absence, by his proud and violent mis- 
 tress. He was penniless and without resources. Stay — there was 
 his picture ; that might buy him enough of bread for at least a day 
 or two, if he could but sell it. As fortune ordered, there was to be 
 a sale of pictures the very next day, at a seat about to be dismantled 
 in the neighbourhood. The auctioneer knew him, and might favour 
 him in his distress, by offering the picture as the humblest portion of 
 the refuse of the collection. The auctioneer took pity on him, as he 
 had hoped, after a certain amount of objection. The unpretending 
 effort was brought to view, fortunately before the representatives of 
 rank and wealth, as well as cultivated taste ; and the poor hunch- 
 
DURDLES, sculptor; and honeythunder, avenger. 13 
 
 back, shivering iu Ms corner, saw it sold — admittedly the equal of 
 the best effort of Claude Lorraine — to an agent of the Emperor, at 
 the price of the original for the picture I eventually to confer on the 
 colour-grinder the Barony of Duhobart, and to become one of the 
 leading attractions of the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. 
 
 But what of this ? Was it not simply an instance of the bringing 
 to light of genius before unknown ? Not so, the bow was never 
 drawn again ; there were no more arrows in the quiver. If Duho- 
 bart ever painted again, to meet the demands of his own awakened 
 self-love, and the expectations of the world of art, he only daubed. 
 He had done his life-work at a single stroke. His story has place 
 here, because there was a similar life-work flashing out a single spark 
 from amid the dust, squalor, and stupidity of Durdles. 
 
 " How are you getting on, Durdles ? The morning was so bright 
 and cheery, that I said to myself, Durdles will be at work, to take 
 advantage of the excellent light ; and I will drop around and flog my 
 own indolence and self-indulgence by observing his industry." 
 
 It was the voice of Mr. Crisparkle, cheery as he had described the 
 morning ; and the whole man indefinably informed and irradiated by 
 the atmosphere of sunrise, bird-songs, and the flash of falling water. 
 
 He stood just within the low inner door, to pass under the stony 
 lintel of which he had been obliged to bend himself at least two feet 
 from the perpendicular, without reckoning the height of his hat ; and 
 he saw the miserable walls of broken stone, rather thrown together 
 than built, with a bed of little else than rags in one corner ; and in 
 the other — beneath a broad ray of morning light, which came in 
 from what would have been called a loophole in the days of mediaeval 
 attack and defence, a short bench of heavy wooden planks, bearing a 
 block of stone, drab-coloured and slightly friable, like that of Caen, 
 with which the French have managed so to brighten up the archi- 
 tectural tone of their cities. 
 
 This block, some three feet in height, and a foot square, stood on 
 end, the bottom portion as yet all un worked, but the upper beginning 
 to assume some rough resemblauce to the head and face of a woman. 
 A rough resemblance, only bearing the same comparison to any pos- 
 sible completed bust that the first crude idea of a project bears to its 
 succeeding self when elaborated into a full plan of action. There 
 was the recognizable shape of a head, life-sized and really well 
 moulded ; there was a hint of hair, evidently designed to be flying 
 loose and wavy ; there was a suspicion of nose and chin, of which 
 the shape could not yet be determined ; and at that point the thick 
 cloud of uncertainty settled down, and obliged conjecture to supply 
 all the remainder. 
 
 Before this Stony Durdles was standing, mallet and chisel in hand, 
 alternately chipping away at the figure, with that caressing careful- 
 ness known only to the master-sculptor, and never achieved by his 
 students or helpers until they themselves become masters, engaged 
 on works of their own,— and falling back a pace to note the effect 
 produced by a touch or two of the chisel, as no doubt did Phidias 
 two thousand years ago, and as certainly did Thorwaldsen yesterday. 
 
14 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 This, before the shadow of the Minor Canon darkened the dim 
 cross-light of the entrance, and even after he had spoken. The 
 sculptor must not be broken in upon too rudely, whether his material 
 be stone or marble, or the intruder must take the risk of a certain 
 brusquerie in reception ; for what if a premature turn of the head, 
 leaving the hands to complete a stroke thus far only designed, should 
 be the means of causing a slip of the chisel, the chipping off of the 
 whole end of a nose, or the ploughing of such a furrow in a cheek 
 intended to be plump and fair, that even the plough of Time (which 
 he uses quite as often as his scythe, though all attention seems to be 
 concentrated upon the other agricultural implement) could scarcely 
 be held capable of such a devastation ? 
 
 Clink, clink ! and chip, chip ! Then, before the gruff and stony 
 one desisted for a moment, he said a good morning so unamiably 
 that it would have driven away any one knowing him less thoroughly 
 than his visitor. Then he turned back to the bust, improved his 
 variety of view by throwing his head to one side, as if the object, 
 when finished, was to be principally inspected by persons in bed : 
 then laid down hammer and chisel, thrust both his hands and wrists 
 to their full depth into the pockets of his horn-buttoned jacket ; then 
 drew out from the right one a villanously soiled handkerchief, which 
 might have done previous duty for at least a year as an envelope for 
 the dinner-bundle (indeed Mr. Crisparkle thought that he remembered 
 having seen it fulfilling such an engagement), wiped with it the 
 dusty brow on which some drops of perspiration may have stood 
 from other reasons than those affecting the corresponding portion of 
 Mr. Sapsea's physiognomy ; then opened his mouth, and spoke, in his 
 own peculiar growl. 
 
 " Ye ask Durdles, Mr. Crisparkle, how is he getting on 1 Durdles 
 
 puts it back to yon, and asks you how he's getting on ? 'Cause " 
 
 and here Durdles, no doubt gnawed by a half-hour's hunger, which 
 he had up to that moment managed to control if not to suppress, 
 made a sudden clumsy lunge towards the other end of the bench, 
 where the dinner-bundle doing present duty had lain unperceived by 
 the clergyman, extracted therefrom half a square foot of bread, and 
 an only smaller modicum of cold bacon, and commenced improving 
 the time to be otherwise wasted in conversation, by munching, with 
 at least the effect of toning down his gruff voice, if not making all his 
 words more intelligible — " Cause, though Durdles knows his work, 
 specially when dealing with the monuments and the Old 'Uns, he 
 may like to know how things like this, that may be called his fine 
 work, looks to eyes that has more larnin' than his own." 
 
 Thus appealed to, the Minor Canon took a little closer survey of 
 the work of art, Durdles for the moment withdrawing all attention 
 from the work to look upon him and stolidly read the verdict in his 
 face. The survey seemed to be satisfactory, for the bright face 
 expressed something like pleasure, as he said, — 
 
 " Getting on very well, very well indeed, Durdles. This, I think, 
 is better than either of the others. More of life and vigour about it. 
 though of course very far from being finished. By the way, perhaps 
 
DURDLES, SCULPTOR; AND HONEYTHUNDER, AVENGER. 15 
 
 you will allow me to look at them again for a moment, as a means of 
 comparison." 
 
 " The Old 'Uns that I have stuck away, 'cause they was dead, 
 never comin' to have any life in 'em, is all up there, Mr. Orisparkle," 
 replied the mason-sculptor, the words seemingly forming part of a 
 sandwich of bread and bacon. "You can look at 'em, if ye like to 
 see vaults above ground ; Durdles don't mind, with you." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle took the permission, and acted upon certain know- 
 ledge which he had no doubt before possessed. 
 
 He moved a little to the left, over the bed, and there, drawing 
 aside a curtain of faded and dingy chintz, so nearly the colour of the 
 stone of the wall as easily to have escaped observation, revealed yet 
 one more of the surprises of the " studio." 
 
 There was a niche coarsely built into the wall, by a hand showing 
 at once the skill and the roughness of the stonemason, with a cer- 
 tainty that the constructor had been in the habit of observing the 
 niched altar-tombs of the old cathedrals. For, though rough in 
 materials, and careless as to shape, this recess was almost ludicrously 
 like some of those in which, during the last century, the remains and 
 effigies of sainted old abbots have been found built into the walls of 
 religious houses, their entombing seeming to have been made under 
 the dim prophetic knowledge of some coming transition period during 
 which they would need to be temporarily covered altogether from 
 view, to avoid the hammer of the iconoclast, shattering noses and 
 dismembering toes and fingers, if even avoiding the extreme violence 
 of utter destruction. 
 
 And the resemblance did not quite cease with the receptacle. 
 There is another detail of many of the altar-tombs, within and without 
 those niches, familiar to all who have paid even the most hasty of 
 visits to those cathedrals, where Power lies entombed as well as Piety. 
 This is a row of figures, from two or three to half a dozen in number, 
 generally kneeling and invariably ruffed, arranged woodenly one in 
 front of the other, often minus those very tender noses (which seem 
 to be the weak point of persecuted statuary), and supposed to repre- 
 sent certain members of the family of the recumbent principal 
 occupant. In this, too, the receptacle of Durdles's domestic Old 'Uns 
 was of the cathedral, cathedrally. Por there stood no less than six 
 shadowy busts, ranging from eighteen inches to three feet in height, 
 all in various stages of incompleteness and abandonment, and of 
 materials as diverse as their appearance in other regards. One was 
 of marble not far progressed with, and creating a suspicion that it 
 had been abandoned in sheer despair of making due impression upon 
 it with any tools at command ; another seemed of granite or basalt, 
 thrown aside from motives apparently similar, after labour pro- 
 gressing a little further in grim and profitless determination. A 
 third, the largest of all, was of soft red sandstone, and this would 
 seem to have been a success up to a certain point, for the hair had 
 begun to be more than indicated, and the features of the face had 
 assumed a certain prominence. But ah ! the remark just previously 
 made had been illustrated in advance : the material so easy to 
 
1G JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 manage had been equally easy to mar — the nose was gone, to the 
 very root, through either accident, sudden dissatisfaction, or malice. 
 There were others, minor and possibly older — the dynasty of the 
 stonemason having extended over some years, and those successive 
 filings-away in the niche having been resorted to by the bereaved 
 head of the dynasty, who neither knew nor cared for enough of 
 Scripture precedent to "bury his dead out of his sight," though he 
 paid some attention to the proprieties by curtaining them. 
 
 Attempted representations, all these, of one object. The bust of a 
 woman always attempted, with the same peculiarity of wildly flowing 
 hair, though beyond that point the successive failures had left no 
 opportunity for judgment. The bust of a woman. Of what ? of 
 whom ? of one who had been 1 of one who was 1 of one expected 1 
 of one who was not, had not been, and could not be 1 — such as float 
 through the visions of the imagination, or are born in the atmosphere 
 of those twin rosy clouds, love and wine 1 Little likely, at least, one 
 of the latter, in the case of Stony Durdles : it seemed necessary for 
 Mr. Crisparkle, who held a portion of this curiosity, to fall back upon 
 the hypothesis that some woman of the past was thus being blindly 
 aimed at and never hit. 
 
 " Looking at the ' Old ' [Ins,' " said the clergyman, after making a 
 careful survey of the rejected, and then dropping back the curtain, " I 
 am inclined to think that you are getting on very well — very well 
 indeed, and that you will make something out of this." 
 
 The compliment, albeit a qualified one, should have been pleasant 
 to the sculptor — should have produced at least a slight effect in the 
 way of adding to the amiability of a face not notable in that direc- 
 tion. But evidently the proper chord was not touched — as it is not 
 in the case of a vainglorious author, who, warily fishing for com- 
 plimentary mention of his works, is rendered rabid by finding all 
 approbation bestowed upon some trifle of earlier years, long con- 
 signed to oblivion, if not to shame, by himself. 
 
 "What's them to judge by?" he growled, laying clown his 
 partially-emptied bundle, and wiping his mouth on the back of his 
 hand, the soiled handkerchief being no doubt held too sacred for 
 such a mere menial use. " There's only one of 'em as could have 
 'mounted to much at the best ; for Durdles, even if he knows his 
 work, hasn't the tools and other things of the high-flyers. That one 
 had the nose knocked off, along of them young imps a frightenin' of 
 me at an unfortnit moment. And 'something' — what do you mean 
 by ' something,' Mr. Crisparkle 1 What's ' something,' if I can't 
 make it look like Her 1 " 
 
 He had commenced with a growl ; he ended in a tone of voice not 
 far removed from a melancholy plaint, and in which the Minor 
 Canon again found some approach to that answer which had never 
 yet come from the lips of Durdles. " Her," in that tone : who could 
 doubt, even if no one knew, that the romance of a life, perhaps its 
 tragedy, lay in those feeble and stupid attempts at art, by one 
 who had no such vocation, unless the heart supplied the call 'I 
 Some unknown impulse moved the clergyman then to make that 
 
durdles, sculptor; and honeythunder, avenger. 17 
 
 reply which had more than once before trembled on his lips, but 
 withheld. 
 
 " How can I tell you, Durdles, whether there is any probability of 
 your being able to make it look like Her, when I do not know what 
 she is to you, or what she has been 1 Some day, when you tell me 
 so much, if you ever do " 
 
 " Stop ! " and' the voice of the stonemason now blended the growl 
 with the broken pathos — the latter not entirely taken away, even if 
 marred, by his extracting from his pocket a stumpy and dirty black 
 pipe, likewise extracting a roll of shag and a match, and clumsily 
 proceeding to light it. " Stop, Mr. Crisparkle, you are right, and 
 Durdles is wrong. Ye won't mind the pipe, I'm thinking, "for ye're 
 not one of them new lights as begrudge the poor man his pipe and his 
 beer. Who is ' Her ' 1 The gal Durdles loved and expected to make 
 his wife, many a year ago, when he was younger than he is now, and 
 when the imps didn't worrit the life out of him ! " 
 
 Commonplace and unattractive-looking as was the person speaking, 
 there was almost a romantic interest in him as he spoke, revealing 
 that " one touch of nature " that " makes the whole world kin." The 
 Minor Canon felt the influence, blended with a corroboration of what 
 had before been his suspicion ; and there was true feeling in his voice, 
 as he said, — 
 
 "Ay, I understand, as I thought before that I did. The girl you 
 loved and were about to marry, many years ago, and whom you lost." 
 
 "Lost — yes, that is the word; you men of larnin' always knows 
 the right word, wherever you gets 'em. Yes — lost — that's the word 
 for lier." 
 
 " Died 1 " Mr. Crisparkle asked the momentous question in that 
 single syllable, and yet with some influence weighing upon him, 
 which made that single word difficult. He did not see, nor did he 
 need to see, the face of the other, its natural homeliness and habitual 
 neglect, contorted by a strange blending of rage and grief, as he 
 replied,— 
 
 " There some of you lamed folks isn't much wiser than the poor 
 fools — Durdles and the rest of 'em. No, she didn't die — not as I 
 knows on. She'd better, no doubt, you parsons 'ud say. Died ! No, 
 she ran away, jest a month afore we wus to been married, with a 
 big, wordy, psalm-singin' chap, who swore he would marry her (so 
 they said), and then didn't, so that she and her baby was kicked out 
 into the world. Maybe she died, then, Durdles don't know. Never 
 seed her since, whether alive or dead- — never expect to. Seed her 
 child, though, too many times ; wish I hadn't never ! You would 
 make me tell it, which I've not done it afore to no one. And what 
 of it 1 Durdles has some secrets as he can keep, and will keep, 
 because they belong to others : but he has a right to do what he 
 likes with his own, hasn't he 1 " 
 
 " Poor old fellow ! " said Mr. Crisparkle, sympathetically ; '•' you 
 did indeed ' lose ' her. But why do you wish to remember her, 
 in a likeness, if she treated you so ill ? " 
 
 " There you larned folks is fools— nothing less. What do I want 
 
 c 
 
18 john jasper's secret. 
 
 of her likeness as she was after she went away and broke my heart 1 " 
 It was notable that he had almost entirely dropped the habitual 
 third person now, and spoke in the ordinary first. "I want her as 
 she was afore that psalm-singin' scoundrel come to her — when she 
 was mine. I tried to get a picter made of her, but how could I, 
 with no one as had seen her, and me not good at describin', as she 
 wasn't a yard of stone wall. And I've been a-tryin, for this ever so 
 many years, afore you ever knowed anything about Durdles, to make 
 her out of stone. That's all ; and I ax pardin for there bein[ so 
 much of.it. But maybe as you can tell me, now, if I keep soberish, 
 whether I can ever cut her all out of here 1 " 
 
 He touched his dusty forehead as he spoke, as indicating that there 
 must be the origin of the possible likeness ; and there was that in 
 the story and its circumstances, so pitiful, that the Minor Canon may 
 be excused for possibly having raised hopes that had small chance of 
 fulfilment, in the reply which followed : — 
 
 " Make a likeness of her ? Certainly you can, with your use of 
 tools, and such a recollection of her as you seem to retain — that is, if 
 you keep, not ' soberish,' but sober. You will not be the first who 
 has done it, Durdles, even under circumstances less favourable than 
 your own. Listen, and light your pipe again if you wish, while I 
 tell you what a woman did, within my own knowledge — a poor 
 ignorant woman, living down at Deal. She was the wife of a sailor, 
 who went away before their child was born. It was born, and then 
 only a few months afterwards it died, while he was still away — on 
 the other side of the world. She had no means to procure a picture 
 of the poor dead child, and yet how could she allow it to be buried 
 without some recollection being preserved — not only that she might 
 avoid forgetting its appearance, but that the father, who had never 
 seen his child, might be able, when he came back, to form some idea 
 how it had looked ? What did she do — this poor woman, who had 
 neither friends, money, nor education 1 She laid out her poor baby 
 stiffening on the boards, went down to the pits, and brought home 
 some clay ; and then in the clay she modelled its little face, head, 
 and neck, so correctly, that no one who had seen the child failed to 
 recognize the likeness. So the father, when he came back, saw the 
 image of his child, if not the child itself ; and what the poor sailor's 
 wife could do, without instruction, Durdles can do after all these 
 years' practice with tools, and in stone-work, if I am not mistaken 
 in him." ■ 
 
 Durdles had a second time extracted the soiled handkerchief, and 
 seemed to be wiping his eyes, when the Minor Canon concluded. 
 Possibly the grief of the sailor's wife, like his own, but so much 
 more painful, had done what his own duller sorrows failed to do — 
 brought sufficient moisture to the eyes to lay the habitual dust on 
 the uncomely and stupid face. At all events Stony Durdles was 
 belying his name by being more or less melted, when a sound caught 
 his ear, changing the expression of that face much more rapidly 
 than any observer of its ordinary stolidity could have believed 
 possible. 
 
DURDLES, SCULPTOR ; AND HONEYTHUNDER, AVENGER. 19 
 
 What he heard, the Minor Canon had reason to suppose that he 
 also heard — two voices, of very different key and volume, though 
 both loud and angry, coming in from the direction of the front of the 
 hut. Durdles, who had made a mechanical lunge for his dinner- 
 bundle, concluded temporarily to forego it, and rolled through the 
 small door, towards the outer one, with more agility in his move- 
 ments, and an expression of more intense hatred on his face, than 
 the other had ever observed under any provocation. A little sur- 
 prised, and interested, in spite of himself, the clergyman followed, 
 coming upon Durdles just as he reached the door looking out upon 
 the yard, and sharing with him in the instructive spectacle then and 
 there presented. 
 
 The Reverend Luke Honey thunder, even more bulky in person, 
 more overwhelming in tone, and more aggressively philanthropic in 
 manner, than the Minor Canon had before known him, his large 
 eyes and his fat cheeks alike distended with anger, which seemed 
 even to permeate his breadth of ultra-clerical garb and his wisp of 
 white neckcloth — not to mention his hat, escaped from his head, 
 and cooling from late perspiration in the midst of a heap of stone- 
 chips. 
 
 Drawn in a bent position across the left knee of the Philanthropist, 
 with his head and shoulders held under the left arm of that person, 
 a peculiarly sensitive part of his anatomy defenceless against attack, 
 and his otherwise useless legs flying up in the air, bannered with 
 rags and shoestrings, in vigorous efforts to get himself loose or 
 severely kick his enemy, hung the before uncaught and unconquered 
 Deputy, at last come to great grief. 
 
 Great grief, indeed ; for few hands were broader or heavier than 
 that right member which usually managed to handle the funds at the 
 Head Haven of the United British and Foreign Universal Philan- 
 thropists, and of which it was sometimes said that a hand so large 
 would naturally cover those funds, and keep them for a certain time 
 out of the public sight — not to mention the probability that the very 
 long digits appertaining must reach farther down into the common 
 purse and touch cash lying nearer the bottom, than any of less 
 extended proportions. A very large hand and a very heavy hand, 
 set in motion by a temper not strictly apostolic, even if highly 
 philanthropic; and Deputy — long escaped but caught at last, as 
 the irreverent sometimes say of other fugitives, especially those 
 from matrimony — Deputy was becoming fully aware of the weight 
 of that large hand, and the strength of the muscular system con- 
 trolling it. 
 
 Whack ! whack ! whack ! 
 
 " There, you infernal little scoundrel ! " 
 
 Whack ! whack ! 
 '' Man of God cannot pass along the street, cannot he, without being 
 assaulted by " 
 
 Whack ! whack ! 
 " such wretched little vermin and miscreants as you, who " 
 
 Whack ! whack ! whack ! 
 
 c 2 
 
20 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 " ought to be sent to prison, or to the asylum for young reprobates, 
 at once, and " 
 
 Whack ! whack ! whack ! 
 " would be if I had time to attend to you ! " 
 
 Whack ! whack ! whack ! 
 
 " You will be a better boy after this, you infernal young rascal 
 or if not, I will come down " 
 
 Whack ! whack ! 
 " to this miserable hole again, and flog the balance of the life out of 
 you!" 
 
 This has been given as a solo, for the sake of preserving the unity — 
 not the unities. It was really nothing of the sort, meanwhile ; those 
 mild expostulations being continually blended with equally mild 
 promises of reform and expressions of personal good will, on the part 
 of Deputy, of which a few of the plums must be thrown in together 
 at this late moment, affording a pleasant amusement to the philo- 
 sophical reader, to pick them out from the mass and stick them in 
 where they belong. 
 
 " Strike me again, if you dare — big thief ! " — " Boo ! hoo ! hoo ! — 
 goin' and a-ketchiu' of a little feller like me, and a-slappin' of him ! " 
 — " I'll kill you, you big lubber, when I get away, bellows me if I 
 won't " — " Boo ! hoo ! hoo ! — let a feller go, I say ! " — " Give you 
 the next stone down yer throat — hope I may die if I don't !" — "Boo! 
 hoo ! hoo ! — I hain't been a doin' nothin' — let me go, I tell yer ! " — 
 " Smash yer eye, next time I ketch yer — see if I don't !" etc. etc. etc., 
 with the appropriate oaths (horribly appropriate, for England's 
 children at that age !) duly understood and likewise properly dis- 
 tributed. 
 
 Causes have, unfortunately, not been given for half the great 
 conflicts of the world, even when known. The facts would seem 
 to have been, in the case at present under notice, that the Philan- 
 thropist, once more seeking the Beverend Septimus Crisparkle for 
 reasons which may hereafter develop themselves, and directed towards 
 him as having been observed going that way about half an hour 
 before — had walked, in his striding and appropriative way, which 
 required some rods of width for safety, literally over and upon the 
 top of Deputy aforementioned, the latter being at that moment 
 absorbed in the use of a peculiarly well-sized heap of stone-chips, 
 and engaged in stoning the whole world of Cloisterham, human, 
 animal, and architectural, in one grand feu d'enfer, in honour of the 
 discovery ; that Deputy, aggrieved and resenting, met that affront 
 by running headforemost into the Philanthropist, after the legendary 
 manner of the battering-ram, being thereupon overthrown by a 
 vigorous thrust of the heavier combatant ; that Deputy thereupon 
 skirmished more distantly, with war-cries compounded from the 
 vai'ious savage nations of history, in the meantime discharging con- 
 tinuous missiles against the bulk of his antagonist, with the end of 
 eventually knocking off the philanthropic hat, at the same time 
 rendering it less waterproof in certain portions ; and that, finally, the 
 Philanthropist, chafed beyond endurance, not to say bruised corre- 
 
DURDLES, SCl/LPTOIt; AND HONEYTHUNDER, AVENGER. 21 
 
 spondingly, opposed length of stride to agility of motion, pursued, 
 with his heavier squadrons, the light cavalry of "Deputy, over stone- 
 heaps and around unfinished monuments, with the result of capture 
 and signal punishment heretofore so feebly portrayed. 
 
 Facts ascertained ; immediate results given ; after-consequences of 
 the encounter unknown. 
 
 And still not all even of the immediate results as yet indicated. 
 
 Mr. Orisparkle, as before shown, followed Durdles to the door, and 
 gazed with him upon the instructive spectacle. Had he failed to do 
 so, or had the conversation of the past half-hour not taken place in 
 the " studio," possibly the Minor Canon might have missed the word., 
 which followed his first glance, from the lips of the sculptor with one 
 idea. 
 
 " It is very long since Durdles has seen him, but he knows him all 
 the same. D n him ! Durdles don't forget ! " 
 
 "Whom do you mean, Durdles? The large man, who is only 
 giving your pupil what he ought to have had long ago ] " 
 
 " Yes, that is him. What's his name nowadays'! Durdles never 
 seed him in Cloisterham afore. Do you know him 1 " 
 
 "Know him? Yes, and do not admire him much more warmly 
 than yourself, though I should scarcely like to use the same words 
 in expressing my opinion of him. That is Mr. Honeythunder, the 
 great philanthropist, of the Head Haven, London." 
 
 " Head which 1 Philanthe — what ever is it 1 Durdles' head is a 
 little thick to-day, along of the dust, and that story he has been 
 a-tellihg ; but he knows enough to know that yonder's the big, wordy, 
 psalm-singing chap who ran away with my poor gal, and broke her 
 heart and mine — if he has shaved his face since, and got more'n a 
 a trifle older. D n him ! — Durdles says once more." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle, astonished beyond measure, looked around, more 
 interested now in the man at his side than the scene before him. 
 But Durdles had gone back into the hut without another word. 
 And the next moment Mr. Honeythunder, possibly recognizing the 
 presence of the Minor Canon at the door, had released his well-flogged 
 victim, and stridden forward, picking up his damaged hat, and 
 wiping the perspiration of philanthropic justice from his brow, to 
 say — 
 
 " Mr. Crisparkle, as a matter of choice, perhaps I am not more 
 anxious for your company than you are for mine ; but there are 
 reasons, affecting both and others, why I must see you at once. Be 
 good enough to say where I can do so." 
 
 He did not extend that large hand, now red with the increased 
 circulation of violent use, as he spoke. Neither did Mr. Crisparkle, 
 as he answered, viewing the other with a new interest which the 
 latter little suspected, — 
 
 " At my house, of course, if Mr. Honeythunder will honour me 
 so far." 
 
22 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 KNOCK AND KING. 
 
 Helena Landless, the bright fresh air of the morning tinting her 
 dusky cheek with a healthy bloom, and making her the very incarna- 
 tion of that " beautiful girl of the tropics," of whom we hear so much 
 and see so little- — is enjoying that morning in the aerial garden of 
 which Staple, and P. J. T., have unconsciously become proprietors, 
 with Lieut. Tartar, lessee ; and Neville Landless, Esq., possibly one 
 day to be a bencher of the Inner Temple, sub-lessee. 
 
 In other words, the young girl is enjoying the morning air in that 
 portion of the garden which has been arranged by Mr. Tartar in front 
 of her brother's windows. The poor young fellow, with some inde- 
 finable idea of being less lonely in less confined space, is reading in 
 Helena's room adjoining ; and the sister finds a double pleasure in 
 catching the perfume of flowers, breathing that clear air from which 
 the smoke of five hundred thousand chimneys has unaccountably 
 absented itself on that special morning, and listening to the twittering 
 of those sparrows which even outdo Mr. Tartar in their disregard of 
 the heights at which they perch — all this without disturbing the 
 studies of her other self, who must, at the same time, be pleasantly 
 conscious of her near companionship. 
 
 To her, or into her immediate neighbourhood, Mr. Tartar himself, 
 his curling head, brown face, and blue eyes just showing above the 
 leaves, crowning that portion of the party-wall dividing the two tene- 
 ments, and the remaining portion of him presumptively hidden behind 
 that wall, and immediately against it. 
 
 " Good morning, Miss Landless. "Will you kindly give me a few 
 words here, by coming up closer to the wall 1 Or may I step 
 over V 
 
 The young girl gives a momentary start, as the apparition comes 
 to her eye, and the voice to her ear, almost at the same instant. 
 What is there in the voice, that seems unlike the usual frank, careless 
 tone of the sailor — always with something breezy about it, as if unused 
 to be uttered in confined spaces, and as if bearing some remembrance 
 of broad oceans over which it has been echoed 1 It has a trembling 
 earnestness now, or at least she fancies that it has ; the mind is not 
 quite at ease, from the action of which the voice emanates — of so 
 much she is sure in a moment. And the blue eyes — why are they a 
 shade less clear, bright and jolly ? More as if a sudden earnest 
 should have come into and shadowed them. 
 
 Almost incredible that she should see and hear so much in that 
 single instant — especially as there lies between the two persons from 
 so far away, nothing of that mysterious sympathy informing lover 
 and sweetheart, and giving reason as well as convenience for the 
 
KNOCK AND RING. 23 
 
 closest observation. But more than one allusion has already been 
 made to that keenest-eyed and most fatally observing of all the 
 animals of the East ; and something of one of their characteristics 
 comes into play, here, as others may be shown at no distant period. 
 At all events, this she sees, hears, and marks, with so slight a shiver 
 of wonder and apprehension (the hunted as well as the huntress, 
 again), that it almost passes away before she answers his salutation. 
 
 " Good morning. Perhaps you startled me a little, from my seeing 
 you so suddenly. May you step over 1 Certainly, if you will be 
 very, very careful. Something to say to me 1 Is it of consequence ? 
 Has anything happened 1 " 
 
 Mr. Tartar may not hear all the words, for the permission is no 
 sooner given than accepted ; and with a great deal more of exposure 
 of himself than is at all necessary, in the way of standing for a 
 moment on tiptoe at the apex of the wall, with some apparent 
 impression that the point is a main truck open to the view of a 
 whole admiring fleet, he springs, swings, drops, and slides over to the 
 side of Helena, wonderfully relieved of any previous embarrassment 
 by the normal manner of his coming, and no doubt as much happier 
 than he could have been if forced to use the land-lubber abominations 
 of door and stairway, as he had been in the old days when permitted 
 to descend from the tops headforemost by one of the stays, instead of 
 clumsily coming down the ratlines. 
 
 " Ugh ! I thought you were going to fall." 
 
 " I ? No, thanks. There has been no danger whatever, or I 
 should not have tempted it in a lady's presence. Your brother : is he 
 within hearing ?" 
 
 " No, he is reading in my room. If you wish to speak to him, I 
 can call him in a moment." 
 
 i " Please do not, then. I asked if I might come over, and you 
 kindly said yes. Now I have something more to ask. Would you 
 mind fancying that you had seen enough of the friend in me — or say 
 of the good fellow, if the other expression is too strong — to allow me 
 to say a word in confidence, away from your brother, and not for his 
 ear?" 
 
 " Neville and myself are twins, Mr. Tartar, as I believe that you 
 know ; and we have not been in the habit of having confidences 
 apart from each other." 
 
 There is just a shade of fright, in the tone of the young girl, and 
 her manner may convey a distrust of the sailor which she certainly 
 does not feel. What she does feel, for the instant, however, she 
 would die before putting into words : she has half a suspicion, for 
 that instant, that she has been deceived in certain previous impres- 
 sions, and. that the skilful climber is about attempting to scale a 
 precipice where he must certainly fall — in other words, she is 
 momentarily afraid that he is about to spoil a valuable friendship 
 by blending with it an impossible element of love 1 This thought, 
 not for long, fortunately; for the very next words of the other 
 dispel it, to make room for a widely different fear. 
 
 " Pray, do not think me capable, Miss Landless, of asking you to 
 
24- JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 hold back from your brother anything that could give him pleasure ; 
 but could you not, under some circumstances, conceal from him, for 
 a time, -what could only give him pain, without forwarding his 
 interests,? " 
 
 " Could I not, Mr. Tartar 1 I should be unworthy the name of 
 sister, if I could not. Pray pardon any seeming distrust, which I 
 assure you that I have not felt ; and if it is anything affecting poor 
 persecuted Neville " 
 
 " You have hit upon what I mean, at once, Miss Landless," he 
 interrupts. " It is of your brother's affairs, and yet of things which 
 I do not think prudent to mention to Mm, that I wish to speak. 
 Now, may I continue, with the hope that you will not repeat to him 
 what I say, unless permitted to do so by Mr. Grewgious or my- 
 self r 
 
 " You wish me to make that promise before trusting me 1 "Well, 
 I trust you, Mr. Tartar, and I promise." 
 
 " Thanks for the confidence. Do not be alarmed, then, at what I 
 am about to say. "What seems threatening may only be, and I trust 
 will be, the commencement of better things. Your brother is hunted, 
 however, even more closely than any of us knew, and more wickedly 
 and dangerously." 
 
 " Ah ! " It is a cry, coming from the heart of Helena Landless — 
 such a cry as the brave girl rarely utters ; but such a cry as comes 
 very naturally to the lips of even the most heroic, at the first moment 
 of sudden fright or agony. 
 
 " Last night," the sailor proceeds, " both your brother and yourself 
 left the house for half an hour or more, as you will remember." 
 
 " Yes, it was about ten o'clock, and I had persuaded Neville, who 
 still shrinks, as you know, from venturing much abroad in the day- 
 light, to accompany me on the briefest of walks through one or two 
 of the side streets. Well — we were gone about half an hour. What 
 coiild have happened within that time 1 " 
 
 " Much, Miss Landless, could have happened in half an hour. I 
 once saw a noble ship cut literally to pieces within that space of time, 
 and two-thirds of her company left dead or dying. However, what- 
 ever occurred in this instance was not of that character, though 
 possibly quite as murderous. But I must not waste words, as your 
 brother may come to look for you, and make the conclusion of my 
 story less easy." 
 
 " I happened to be coming through the quadrangle, though I sup- 
 pose that neither of you saw me, as you left the door. By the way, 
 did you lock that leading from your apartments into the hall % " 
 
 " No — for so short a stay, and with' — what is it that they call 
 her 1 oh, ' the scout,' — with the scout around, we did not consider it 
 necessary." 
 
 " Let me advise you, then, Miss Landless, always hereafter to lock 
 your door when you go out, so that if any crime is to be committed, 
 burglary may be added as a neat thing to take hold of." 
 
 " Thanks, we will look after that in future. But pray tell 
 me 
 
KNOCK AND RING. 25 
 
 " What was lost by leaving the door unlocked this time 1 Probably 
 nothing : indeed, as I said before, much may have been gained. To 
 continue what would be my * yarn,' if I was telling it on a different 
 deck. I went up to my room, after you went away, found the air a 
 little hot and sultry there, and retreated to the garden, that part of 
 it just beyond the wall. Then I seemed to have an idea, for which 
 roving fellows, like myself, do not try to account quite so closely as 
 the philosophers, that I should not find so much breeze anywhere 
 else, as sitting astride the wall, and fancying that I had climbed on 
 the bulwarks in a late watch in the horse-latitudes. I imagine, now, 
 that I may have been sent there, who knows 1 
 
 "At all events, I found some reason for being there, before I had 
 occupied the bulwarks for many minutes. I sat where I could see 
 the window of your brother's room, and I noticed that the light had 
 been turned down when you went away. 
 
 " Suddenly I saw the light brighten ; and if I committed a breach 
 of propriety in looking into the window, that, too, may have been 
 ordered by what we sailors sometimes call ' the sweet little cherub 
 that sits up aloft, keeping watch for the life of poor Jack.' 
 
 " The light went up, as I have said ; and 1 expected to see that 
 your brother had given up his walk and returned. It was a very 
 different face that I saw — that of the man who is hunting your 
 brother." 
 
 " Heavens ! John Jasper ! Are you sure that yon were not mis- 
 taken, Mr. Tartar ! " Helena cannot avoid exclaiming, in the first 
 moment of surprise. 
 
 " No, I am not mistaken,'' answers the sailor. " It was that man ; 
 and when I knew so much, you may be sure that I watched more 
 closely, and nearer. His face had a devilish expression of triumph 
 (I am afraid that I saw that with my face very near the window !) as 
 if something long waited for had come at last ; and yet no less than 
 twice during the five minutes that I saw him there, that same face 
 was crossed by spasms of pain, one of which seemed as if it might 
 kill him on the spot." 
 
 " That was he — yes, that was John Jasper ! " the young girl 
 rather murmurs to herself, than reassures the other. 
 
 " Of course it was he ! We who float about around the wide 
 world are sometimes obliged to recognize a light or a headland very 
 quickly, and after not many views of it ; so that we recognize 
 people, once seen, with nearly the same instinct. I have told you 
 that I saw the pain on his face more than once. I did not know 
 what produced the effect, then : I know now." 
 
 Helena Landless, her brave heart nearly standing still with a 
 terrible interest, can only say so much in a word, and Mr. Tartar 
 goes on : — 
 
 " Here I am at fault, or rather I was at fault last night. What 
 he was doing I did not know, nor do I know at this moment. I saw 
 him stooping over the table, and fumbling with things lying upon it, 
 then pulling out one or two of the drawers. What I believed that 
 he was doing, at the instant, I will tell you. Something against 
 
26 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 your brother's liberty, and perhaps his life, in one of two directions. 
 Looking for something of your brother's, that he could place where 
 it would seem to have been dropped during the commission of the 
 murder ; or arranging to place something apparently in the possession 
 of your brother, that may once have been known to be in that of 
 the poor young fellow. But what ails you, pray, Miss Landless? 
 You have lost colour — you seem faint. I am sorry if I have pained 
 you." 
 
 " No, it is nothing — pray proceed," answers Helena, with a strong 
 effort. She is pale and faint-looking ; and something in the story has 
 affected her. Ah, can it be ? "Was that sudden fancy mutual, pro- 
 ducing on the one side, months ago, that boyish boast of how he would 
 paint the sister of Neville, on tke part of Edwin Drood — and on the 
 other, so far, neither mark nor sign ? Is this bright, fresh, young 
 girl, who has no excuse or privilege to wear mourning for the frank- 
 hearted boy gone so suddenly and mysteriously to his death, really 
 concealing, for his sake, the heart of a widow in her bosom ? And 
 have the words so suggestive of his " taking off," come too closely and 
 roughly home to her consciousness, overcoming that womanly calmness 
 ordinarily so marked, and leaving her weak as the most untried 1 
 Questions asked, as are so many in this world of catechisms, without 
 any expectation of their being immediately answered, and propounded 
 as may be a larger proportion of the same class, than we ordinarily 
 admit, more for* the sake of awakening thought on a certain subject 
 than of shaping that thought into assured convictions. 
 
 But Mr. Tartar proceeds, as requested, though after a little longer 
 pause than seems to be demanded by the circumstances of the case. 
 
 " I am glad to see that you are better, Miss Landless ; though, 
 perhaps, that does not assist me. For I have a most painful con- 
 fession to make, involving at least two crimes, and possibly three or 
 four. Two that I am certain of : burglary, and assault and battery ; 
 and larceny, as seems probable." 
 
 "Whatever can you mean, Mr. Tartar?" inquires the young girl, 
 for a moment doubtful whether the height of the aerial garden, or 
 some other uncalculated influence, has not, after all, caused the 
 narrator to " lose his head." 
 
 " Pray pardon my wild way of putting it," he rejoins. "What I 
 mean is simply that at that moment I must have lost control of 
 myself. For I certainly sprang into the room, through the window, 
 oblivious of all rights of property ; and I am afraid I assaulted the 
 other intruder (though what right I had to do so, you must say) to 
 the extent of knocking him down. I think that I tried to arrest 
 him, with the idea of giving him in charge as a burglar. But the 
 attempt was by no means an easy one ; and in the struggle, when we 
 were both on the floor, he managed to twist away from me and escape 
 through the open door. I followed him down one flight, then returned 
 to the room to ascertain if any damage had been done to the furniture, 
 and at first with a view to await your return. But a second thought 
 made me determine not to tell your brother at once, if you would 
 consent to keep the affair temporarily from him ; so I quitted the 
 
KNOCK AND RING. 27 
 
 apartment in the same way that I had entered it, only carrying away 
 this, which I found on the floor from its glitter, and which I feared 
 might be overlooked if I did not take personal care of it. May I 
 ask whether it belongs to you or your brother, or whether, as I half 
 suspect, it may have dropped off the hand of our pleasant friend in 
 my little struggle with him ?" 
 
 Miss Landless receives, without any other emotion than must 
 necessarily be associated with anything obtained in so romantic a 
 manner, the object which the other hands her, and of which she 
 knows nothing — as how should she, it never having been placed 
 before her eyes, or mentioned in her hearing ? It is a ring of blended 
 diamonds and rubies, the conceit a rose, and the workmanship 
 exquisite as the stones are pure and delicate. She takes it from the 
 hand of Mr. Tartar, her eyes flashing a little with that admiration 
 which the diamond seems to have the faculty of exciting in those 
 human orbs of the softer sex, from which its flash is legendarily said 
 to have been originally borrowed by the genii. She slips it upon 
 one of her fingers, as many of those fair beings have a habit of doing 
 with gems of price whenever a moment in their hands in that 
 convenient form. Then she draws it off again, hands it back to 
 Mr. Tartar, and says : — 
 
 " No ; you must be correct in your surmise. It does not belong 
 either to my brother or myself, and must have been dropped, I think, 
 by the — by your antagonist. But it is sweetly pretty — is it not?" 
 
 She says nothing more on that point — knows nothing more. Bright 
 as are the eyes of the young girl, trained in that far-east of the beast 
 of prey and the deadly serpent, they have no power to follow the 
 diamond and ruby flash of that ring for a single hour of its past 
 history : how much less to read its future, which may be the whole 
 future of two lives ! 
 
 " Yes, it is very pretty ; but what am I to do with it 1 " is the 
 very natural suggestion of the man who has thus suddenly become 
 possessed of property for which he has neither use nor title." 
 
 Helena Landless is thinking of something else now, and she 
 
 " "What a strange story you tell me, Mr. Tartar ! and what a 
 singular mystery it all is ! My poor brother ! Yes, thanks to your 
 goodness and courage, I believe that we do see new danger to him, 
 before it strikes ; and you will help us — I know that you will — to 
 save him from it, without even allowing him to know what is 
 threatened." 
 
 Mr. Tartar's brown face is all aglow with the pleasant excitement 
 of the compliment thus bestowed and the help thus sweetly re- 
 quested j and his blue eyes have all their old expression of frank 
 daring in the prospect of adventure, as he utters the first words of 
 the promise demanded. But there is an interruption, and when the 
 promise eventually comes, it comes in quite another shape. 
 
 Mr. Grewgious is standing in the open window — so Angular, in 
 the clear morning air, that his face and figure seem to have assumed 
 all the gables of the old houses thrusting themselves out on the 
 
^6 JOHN JASPERS SECRET. 
 
 narrow street behind doomed Holborn Bars. He has come up to see 
 Neville Landless. He does not find him in his room. He observes 
 Tartar and Helena standing and in conversation, in the aerial garden. 
 And he calls as pleasantly to them as a much better rounded man 
 could be expected to do. 
 
 "Strictly between ourselves, young people," he says, "the hour is 
 slightly early for a flirtation, and still earlier for one that involves 
 extensive promenades in covered walks. May I hope that you are 
 both well, and inquire whether Mr. Tartar has come down from the 
 mast-head or up from the cabin 1 " 
 
 " Come from aloft, Mr. Grewgious," laughs the young man. "May 
 I pick a geranium for your buttonhole 1 or perhaps Miss Landless 
 will make it doubly valuable by doing so." 
 
 " A geranium 1 Certainly, if you will be so good. "Why should 
 not an Angular old fool enjoy all the privileges of his position ? And 
 where is your brother, Miss Landless? " 
 
 Helena obeys the hint by stooping to pick a flowering sprig of the 
 favourite named ; and Neville Landless, at last attracted by hearing 
 voices in his room, and the calling of his name in that of Mr. Grew- 
 gious, comes out from the other apartment and behind Mr. Grewgious 
 at the window, at the moment when Mr. Tartar, puzzled with his 
 superfluous ring, and just remembering that there is now some one 
 else to consult in reference to its disposal, steps to the window, holds 
 it up on the end of his finger to the old lawyer, and says : — 
 
 " See what a treasure-trove- — isn't that what you men of the law 
 call it ? — came into my hands last night. There is a flower now, 
 worth wearing, 'on the hand if not in the button-hole." 
 
 He sees Mr. Grewgious start back, then dart suddenly forward, as 
 his eye catches sight of the bauble ; he feels that the Angular man, 
 anything but angular now, grasps it away from him with a cry which 
 eventually shapes itself into twenty startling words ; he hears Neville 
 Landless, behind the lawyer, echo that cry, with variations of an 
 equally surprising character ; he becomes dimly aware that Helena, 
 near the verge, is also startled by the cry, and in danger of making 
 one last plunge from the roof — his quick eye and hand saving her ; 
 and it is only then that his sense takes in what his outward ear has 
 heard at once — those pregnant words of Mr. Grewgious : — 
 
 " Good God ! Mr. Tartar ! have you any idea what it is that you 
 are handing me 1 This is Edwin Drood's ring, which I put into his 
 possession not two days before — before he disappeared, and which 
 was undoubtedly on him when that event took place ! I have known 
 it for nearly twenty years. Whence did it come 1 How did you 
 come by it, young man 1 Quick — no trifling — who can tell me any- 
 thing of this 1 " 
 
TARTARS OF TWO SEXES. 29 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TARTARS OP TWO SEXES. 
 
 There is an impression, current in the world — so current that it 
 has shaped itself into an axiom — that " when things reach their 
 worst, they must mend ; " for if, when it had reached its culminating 
 point of fury, a certain storm had not abated, the world would un- 
 doubtedly have been blown to atoms, and nothing would now be 
 remaining, if anything whatever did remain, except a few fragments 
 of what was once the globe, and its wonders of nature and art, 
 floating about through space, each particle blindly seeking to find 
 and rejoin the others, as the members of a separated family might do, 
 deprived of all those senses which guide search or indicate proximity. 
 And if there had not been a point at which the edge of the appetite 
 for violence began to be dulled, when two or more great nations 
 were hottest in their work of devastating and destroying each other 
 — then, long before this time, the last tendril of vegetable life would 
 would have accompanied the last man to extinction, and the earth 
 returned to be once more chaos. 
 
 The great difficulty in receiving this comforting assurance of affairs 
 growing better from the worst, lies in the impossibility of knowing 
 when the worst has been reached, so that the amelioration may be 
 expected, — as also in the question, of some little consequence, whether 
 the sufferer may not perish under the infliction, before the " coming " 
 of the promised "good time." And it is just possible that Rosa and 
 Miss Twinkleton may have considered that point with some appre- 
 hension, suffering, the one in person, and the other vicariously, under 
 the wrath of the Billickin. The occupation of the premises in 
 Bloomsbury would end, necessarily, at no distant day, through the 
 necessity of Miss Twinkleton resuming her chaste and most proper 
 duties at the Nuns' House, at the close of the vacation ; but until 
 then? For the fact cannot be disguised (Mrs. Billickin's extreme 
 candour being duly adopted), that a state of affairs which had seemed 
 to be at its worst within a few days after the occupation of the 
 lodgings, had continued to increase in unpleasantness with a rapidity 
 shaming the boasted results of geometrical progression, until calling 
 the premises untenable would have been a very mild way of putting 
 it, and only the mingled hope of early deliverance, and desire not to 
 pain the unconscious Mr. Grewgious by opening his eyes to the 
 existing status, induced an attempted continuance on the part of the 
 two ladies. 
 
 Not that the Billickin had contracted, during those succeeding 
 weeks, any personal objection to dear little Rosebud, who belonged 
 to that peculiar class of little people, much more popular with the 
 grim and staid (from an unrecognized lacking of those very qualities, 
 
30 JOHN jaspek's secret. 
 
 making collision unlikely) than better-regulated persons of a more 
 pronounced individuality ; but that the hostilities existing between 
 the two combatants continued to grow in fierceness if they declined 
 in frequency ; and that no so-called non-combatant can hope to escape 
 all the blows aimed at the fighting force which he or she accompanies 
 in an amicable relation. 
 
 Needless to say that of the two combatants Miss Twinkleton 
 suffered most, as the less vulgar and consequently the more sensitive. 
 Also as, all other things being equal, the aggressor will generally 
 receive less damage than the party attacked : the hammer will show 
 fewer dints than the anvil against which it is pitted in a succession 
 of violent strokes. Did the eggs, ordered soft-boiled, but intended to 
 be cooked in some mild sense of that word, come up, in the morning, 
 so guiltless of near approach to the fire that they might be believed 
 to have just been laid, and only affected by the animal warmth of the 
 pullet? Then certainly the junior participant, even if less declared 
 than the other in her observations as to the cuisine, might be held 
 quite equally a sufferer. 
 
 Did the chop, ordered well-done, emerge from the lower regions in 
 such a condition of blackness and cinder, that it might be supposed 
 to have been hung up in the chimney for at least the previous week ? 
 then might the same revulsion be expected in the younger stomach, 
 which moved the elder to digestive hysteria. And so of the blacks in 
 the pudding ; the deal-board consistence of the tart, from which the 
 fruit seemed to have been omitted without particular request ; the 
 unsettled condition of the occasional morning coffee (a weakness of 
 Rose's, indulged by Miss Twinkleton in lodgings, as it would not 
 have been at the Nuns' House), in which the pulverized berry seemed 
 always to be floating about in a state of unrest, and violent self- 
 assertion as to its genuineness ; and the tea, which sometimes 
 exhibited symptoms of feebleness, possibly consequent on its long and 
 wearying journey from China or Japan, leading to a feeling of cruelty 
 in taking advantage of and swallowing it. In all these, and a 
 hundred other pleasant details, for which there did not seem to be 
 quite the proper excuse — we may be sure that the little lady in that 
 unseasonable black, which sat upon her like a dark winter day 
 shutting down over a soft spring landscape, suffered quite her pro- 
 portion of discomfort, without thereby affording any relief to her 
 elder sister in affliction. 
 
 Whether any of the other lodgers at Billickin's, or all of them, 
 meanwhile, experienced corresponding sensations, it was of course 
 impossible for the Cloisterham twain to form an idea. It seemed 
 highly improbable that any proportion of them could have remained 
 long under that roof of the integrity of which in rainy weather the 
 Billickin candour expressed such doubts, without in some mode 
 trampling upon the weakness of that lady, and thus arousing a 
 certain amount of residuary antagonism ; and yet, as the changes 
 were not constant, it was impossible to say that the disturbance 
 affecting the two was other than local — that Mrs. Billickin was 
 doing anything more than saving the young lady from serious con- 
 
TARTARS OF TWO SEXES. 31 
 
 sequences by keeping her at the proper alimentary moderation, 
 while she returned to the lips of the elder that chalice from which 
 she had herself drank so deeply, by reducing her blood to the under- 
 stood boarding-school-pupil thinness and poorness. 
 
 But there were other and darker clouds in the horizon. Inde- 
 finable unkindness may for a long period -take place without ultra 
 results, between the two unfriendly powers before brought into the 
 comparison ; but there comes a time when definable acts are done, 
 and when accurately-worded complaints are the first consequence, 
 with protocols and ultimatums following, and behind them — 
 open war. 
 
 It was one of those hot and sweltering mornings on which P. J. T., 
 had he experienced the like in seventeen hundred and forty-seven, 
 would have wiped from his brow the Perspiration Juicily Trickling, 
 and announced a Positively July Temperature, when Miss Twinkleton 
 and Rosa, sitting at their after-breakfast sewing, and conversing over 
 the feasibility of an afternoon ' stroll through the parks, became 
 aware of the presence of the Perpetually Jostling Tartaress. She 
 was not of those who " folded their tents, like the Arabs, and silently 
 stole away ; " on the contrary, her disappearances were apt to be 
 more or less noisy ; and it was in her entering a room that the 
 occupants became aware of her belief that the door was Pushed Just 
 To, and that every room of a lodging-house was Permitted Joint 
 Territory, to be entered upon and enjoyed, at any moment, by those 
 who Pleased Just Themselves. 
 
 The Billickin seemed pale and attenuated enough to have hurried 
 in during one of the intervals of a succession of swoons which would 
 be fatal at the next recurrence ; and her indispensable shawl, thin in 
 texture, as became the temperature, suggested, as it fell away from 
 her shoulders, that it uncovered something which might otherwise 
 have been concealed, and completed the living statue of Candour. 
 She was perhaps a shade more rigid than on former visits, owing 
 to the lingering of some portion of one of the late spasms ; but the 
 least observant mind could not doubt her capability of stating, then, 
 as at any moment, the whole of a demanded proposition. 
 
 "Miss," she said, with the visible effort of so much suffering, 
 " business is business, and one doesn't always have the privilege of 
 pickin' hout the time when it is to be done — leastwise / don't, as I 
 should probably pick both my time and my company if permitted." 
 
 Pausing to take breath, she left an opening for Rosa, who said, — 
 
 " I beg pardon, I am sure : was it anything about dinner 1 — and 
 is it not a little early ? " 
 
 " No, Miss," returned the Billickin, for one moment sweeping 
 around her eye and fixing it upon Miss Twinkleton with the air of 
 one who saw at a great distance some dim and doubtful object of no 
 special significance — then bringing it back to her interlocutor. " No, 
 Miss, it isn't dinner — it's servants." 
 
 " Servants 1 has anything happened 1 " 
 
 " That much, Miss, as things can't go on at this rate — no, and you 
 cannot make them, try however you will." 
 
6'1 JOHN JASPERS SECRET. 
 
 "Rosa, dear," said Miss Twinkleton, showing the little conse- 
 quence which she conceived the whole matter to hold, by threading 
 a needle with the utmost skill and nonchalance, "the person of the 
 house is what I should call ambiguous, if I had reason to suppose 
 her capable of understanding such a word. Will you be kind enough 
 to ask her, in any words suited to her habits, what she may happen 
 to mean ? — so that this unannounced call may be made as short as 
 possible." 
 
 This shot might have been a serious one, had it reached its mark ; 
 for Miss Twinkleton, for certain reasons which may presently 
 appear, was more than ever before disposed to make an end of her 
 tormenter, and made less than the usual pretence at masking her 
 artillery. The Billickin was equal to the occasion, however : she did 
 not hear one of the offensive words — at least it is to be presumed 
 that she did not, as she made no allusion to them in the remarks 
 immediately following. 
 
 " No, Miss, it's not dinners," she said, severely, yet with calm 
 superiority to all trials of her equability ; " it's not dinners, it's servants, 
 Miss ; you can't keep the respect of servants, Miss, and I defy you to 
 try, if parties who are old enough to know better, not to mention 
 that they have been all their lives in positions as ought to have taught 
 them what servants are and what they want, seeing that they've not 
 been that much above 'em — if such parties, whom we won't name, 
 Miss, because it would be a wasting of time and a trying of tempers 
 that has enough to bear — if such parties will break all rules belong- 
 ing to respectable 'ouses, which they may know or may not, by 
 talking to the servants of things that they have no more to do with 
 — no, Miss, I will not keep the truth from you, not for one minute, 
 though you kill me for speaking it — no more than the child un- 
 born." 
 
 Eosa, who found herself thus once more in the current shuttlecock 
 condition, and who had enjoyed quite enough of it, though she had 
 no idea of killing Mrs. Billickin as a relief — Rosa looked up, a little 
 in surprise, unable to fancy what serious wrong had been done to the 
 servants by her unfortunate preceptress ; and while she was en- 
 deavouring to frame a few words of reply, Miss Twinkleton, who was 
 by no means extinguished, though temporarily overpowered, cut in, 
 so to speak, and saved her the trouble. 
 
 " Rosa, my dear," said that dignified lady, " I shall really be very 
 much obliged if you will ask the person of the house — I may say the 
 remarkable person of this house, who seems to be the victim of most 
 objectionable manners, as well as that very poor blood for which we 
 give her full credit — to state what she wants, and why she intrudes 
 where her company is not desired, in the most offensive manner." 
 
 This, spoken a little more loudly than her wont, and very direct, 
 was something that the Billickin did not find it quite convenient to 
 ignore. The pale face grew not a little flushed, consequently, and 
 there seemed some promise of another spasm in the immediate 
 presence of the ladies. Great is the discipline of self-control, how- 
 ever, in minds possessing a certain combative power ; and the lodging- 
 
TARTARS OP TWO SEXES. 33 
 
 » 
 
 house keeper of Southampton-street, Bloomsbury, proved as yet quite 
 equal to the emergency. 
 
 " Yes, the servants is meddled with, Miss," she continued, after 
 only a moment to rally. " There has been remarks made to 'em 
 about water spilt at the tap, in front of one of your doors, Miss, 
 which some parties who have little enough if the things they take 
 from others comes to be picked out, thinks that they own. Not that 
 the water is not sometimes spilled, Miss, along of its spirting, and 
 the tap not bein' entirely tight — I will not deceive you on that point, 
 Miss; but what would you expect? Does those parties think as 
 they have taken the 'ole 'ouse, that no one else than themselves is to 
 have water ? And whose is the servants, Miss, 'ired with hexcellent 
 characters, and paid good wages that regular that there is never a 
 word of complaint — no, they wouldn't dare to make it ! — who orders 
 them, I ask, Miss ? Not to mention, on no account, Miss, that them 
 as makes the complaint is always a drawin' and a splashin' of the 
 water, makin' the slop themselves, raising the rates and using so 
 much water that one would think who did not know any better that 
 they must be uncommon dirty to need so much scrubbin' to make 'em 
 clean." 
 
 Miss Twinkleton's eyes flashed (she was again threading her needle, 
 and looking up at the light, her expression of countenance could be 
 easily discerned), but she answered suavely, and with no apparent 
 disturbance, in that tone so well known at the Nuns' House, — 
 
 " If you should ever have occasion, Rosa, dear, be good enough to 
 say to this extraordinary person, that you have known some people 
 who used so little water as to create the suspicion that they never 
 washed themselves at all, and that such people generally have a 
 horror of the free use of water by others — a kind of hydrophobia, as 
 I believe, though the fits sometimes have another name." 
 
 The eyes of the Billickin were lurid in her pale face at this 
 juncture. Evidently she was one of those demanding to be fought 
 with plain words, and quite as capable of taking a mortal hurt as 
 giving one, the bolt being well directed. But she did not yet find 
 another opportunity for a counter-thrust ; for Miss Twinkleton, her 
 blade freshly-blooded, and feeling the excitement more than ordinarily, 
 made another lunge with very creditable effect. 
 
 " And while you are speaking with that person, Rosa, dear," she 
 said, " it will be quite as well to intimate that the practice of coming 
 into private rooms without knocking, is one never tolerated in re- 
 spectable society; and that, if the practice should be continued, 
 during the short time that we remain in this house, we shall suppose 
 that our rooms are intended to be entered surreptitiously, in the hope 
 of finding us absent, and for purposes which I need not name — so that 
 we shall be under the necessity of keeping the doors always locked." 
 
 The eyes of the Billickin, lurid before, were aflame now. Still 
 she fought to the last, not manfully, as naturally comes the temptation 
 to say, but womanfully. 
 
 "Which I have always observed, Miss," she remarked, that parties as 
 was very averse to having rooms entered without knocking, was in 
 
 D 
 
34 JOHN jasper's seceet. 
 
 the habit of carrying on practices that didn't bear looking into very 
 closely. Not that I suspect any one whose name we will not mention, 
 Miss, of having any gentleman coming to visit her. No, Miss, I will 
 not disguise it from you that there is too much of age, and too little 
 of that as is called good looks ; and something else is to be sus- 
 pected." 
 
 "You will say to the person of the house, Rosa, dear,'' Miss 
 Twinkleton rejoined, calmly as ever, " that it is not the mere fact of 
 any one coming in without knocking, to which we object, though 
 that may be offensive enough ; but that in her case, and that of her 
 servants, we shall be obliged to make the rule positive, for 'personal 
 reasons. And then you may add, Rosa, dear, a request that the 
 person will leave the room immediately, and not return to it in 
 future, sending any requests or inquiries by some one whose blood is 
 not so poor, and who is less offensive in manner." 
 
 This was the final blow — the death-wound. Mrs. Billickin felt the 
 dismal fact, though she might momentarily conceal it, as truly as 
 ever knight of old felt the gliding in of the insidious steel between 
 the joints of Ms armour, drinking bis life-blood, and making it only 
 a question of the moments that must elapse before he should topple 
 headlong. She drew the shawl close around her shoulders, as if that 
 might be some protection from the verbal weapon of scorn that was 
 lacerating her ; and the face was as pale as if there had been no blood 
 at all behind it, instead of that self-proclaimed so thin and poor. 
 
 In point of feet, the discomfited fled the field at once, thereafter, 
 merely throwing out this Parthian shot as she went, — a weak one, 
 under all circumstances. 
 
 " I understand the 'int, Miss, and I shall take it for the last time, 
 havin' been enough insulted. It is out of your power, Miss, to make 
 silk purses out of any number of sows'-ears, and wherefore try ? And 
 you may tell Mr. Grewgious, Miss, that the rooms is wanted imme- 
 diate, when the time is up, as, thank goodness, it is before long, and 
 no renewal at any price — not if you should offer me guineas for 
 shillings ; and your order for dinner, if you do not wish to go 
 hungry, Miss, you can bring to my room, where I can receive it 
 decent." 
 
 Miss Twinkleton, victress without quite knowing why she should 
 be so, sat silent after the departure of the enemy — more defeated than 
 victorious, after all, because she could not but remember what a 
 pattern she had been setting for one of the pupils of the Young Ladies' 
 College, in that encounter which had been more one of tempers than 
 wits. 
 
 And Rosa 1 "We have all heard of " bullets from rosebuds ; " and 
 perhaps there may be something of the kind, in some state of exist- 
 ence not yet fully understood. But there was no bullet in this dear 
 little rosebud : there had never been any missile more powerful or 
 more dangerous, in her composition, than the little pellets of charming 
 girlish pettishness which she had fired off so readily, in those days 
 already grown so very, very old, at him whom she now tenderly 
 called " poor Eddy ! " And she was unquestionably a little frightened 
 
TARTARS OF TWO SEXES. 35 
 
 at the repulse of Mrs. Billickin, slightly as she had shared in the 
 conflict preceding it. 
 
 "You heard what Mrs. Billickin said, dear Miss Twinkleton ? " 
 she asked when the discomfited lady had departed with much more 
 noise in closing the door than she habitually made in opening one. 
 " She will not come here any more, I suppose ; and — we shall be 
 obliged to remove," 
 
 " Are you sorry, Rosa? Do you think that I could say any less- 
 tlian I did say, in the face of such impertinence and bad manners, 
 including us both ? If so, I am sure that I am sorry for anything of 
 the kind having occurred. But I cannot apologize to this person, 
 Rosa, dear, whatever may be the cost of my refusal." 
 
 So Miss Twinkleton, with a momentary idea that she had in some 
 indefinable way seriously marred the fortunes of her companion by 
 the severity of her speech. To whom Bosebud, transcending any 
 ordinary relations of friendship between the two, kind as they were 
 (teacher and pupil understood), throwing her arm around the neck of 
 the careful spinster, and kissing her : 
 
 " Apologize, dear Miss Twinkleton % ' consequences of your re- 
 fusal ? ' What can you be thinking of 1 Why, you only did what 
 you had a perfect right to do, and what she deserved to have done, 
 long ago. Yet it was all very odd and very droll, was it not 1 " and 
 the wee thing laughed almost too merry a peal for an accompaniment 
 to the black dress, which seemed to sadden without touching her to 
 the depth of melancholy. But that peal blent with another, almost 
 as silvery, in the ringing of the bell ; and that was followed, the 
 moment after, by the entrance of Helena Landless, the very quick 
 disappearance, thereafter, of Miss Twinkleton, and the two young 
 girls, so different in nearly every marked peculiarity, finding them- 
 selves once more alone together, sitting on the sofa drawn to the 
 window, and with arms about each other's waists. 
 
 Sitting as they had sat months before at the Nuns' House, when 
 Rosa seemed first undefinably to put herself under the protection of 
 her stronger and more experienced companion, and when Helena 
 seemed to make the same surrender to one who should teach her 
 something as yet unknown of the graces of life and literature. Sitting 
 as they had done at that time, and with nothing gone out from their 
 tender regard for each other, and yet with such a change lately 
 wrought in each that the half-instructed eyes of the other could not 
 fail to see and remark it. 
 
 What was that change, as it affected each 1 It would have been 
 very difficult for either to put in words what she saw, or, more strictly 
 speaking, what she felt ; and it may be equally difficult, here, to 
 convey an impression sufficiently forcible and not erroneous. 
 
 Helena's dusky cheek and tawny eye seemed brighter than they 
 had ever before appeared, since the day of her first coming to 
 Cloisterham. They were not filled, informed, and softened, as often 
 become those indexes of the human countenance immediately on the 
 awakening of a love which shall change the whole order of being. To 
 tell the whole truth, thev were less amiable and possibly less lovely 
 
 d 2 
 
36 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 than in those earlier days ; and it was almost certain that she would 
 not have been as likely, then as before, to awake the loving regards 
 of some heart-whole new-comer into her atmosphere. 
 
 There was more of power in the face — more of will, less (at 
 least temporarily) of that sweetly-poised maidenhood to which Mr. 
 Crisparkle had bowed with such unmingled respect on that windy 
 evening, beside the river at Oloisterham — more of what possibly 
 might have existed in those still earlier days of which Neville told, 
 when wrong commanded hatred and the wild will took refuge in the 
 subtlety of escape. In a word, she seemed (temporarily again) less 
 to be loved and more to be feared ; the claw of the tiger was sensibly 
 more protruded from within the velvet sheath of the beautiful paw. 
 
 And Rosa, again ? Nearly all that which had not occurred to 
 Helena, seemed to have fallen upon her. Gentle she had always 
 been, in her schooL'girlish and half-childish way ; but she seemed 
 gentler, now, than ever ; and the gentleness did not appear to be 
 entirely that of grief. There shone a softer and warmer light in the 
 eyes ; the sweet lips, though they retained their bewitching pout, 
 curved into new lines of more natural beauty ; there was more of 
 feeling and moi'e of womanhood in the whole face. Without quite 
 being able to explain where lay the difference, the close observer 
 would have said that she was three years older than she had been 
 six months before ; and the chances are at least even that he would 
 have added the suggestion that she was much more lovely in that 
 sense which constitutes the inviting and involves covetousness. 
 
 So much of what was in each, and a part of which each saw in the 
 other. It possibly remained for a few words of conversation to reveal 
 to each the truth of what might have been suspected, as well as 
 to suggest other ideas by no means taken into the calculation of 
 either. 
 
 Rosebud had been laying her head on Helena's breast, for the 
 moment, and looking up into the eyes bent above her in what seemed 
 their old habit of protection ; and then and in that way it was that 
 she saw what caused her to start up with something like fear blended 
 with her wonder. 
 
 " Why, dear," she said, holding off the other at arm's length, as if 
 to examine her to better advantage, " what is it that ails you ? What 
 makes you in some way different from what you were two days ago *? 
 Has anything happened to you 1 Have you something to tell me 1" 
 
 "Indeed, I have much to tell you, darling," answered Helena, 
 after the pause of a moment. " Does my face show that something 
 affects me! I am glad that you see it, for that makes my task the 
 easier ; and yet I am sorry, because it proves that I am not a very 
 good actress, just at the moment when I need to be the best in the 
 world." 
 
 " Something has happened, and it is not pleasant ! Is it to you, 
 or Neville, or — Mr. Tartar % " 
 
 Why did the eyes of the other scan the young girl so closely as 
 she uttered the last word 1 And was there indeed, as Helena thought, 
 a little momentary flush on the sweet face, and the least in the world 
 
TARTARS OP TWO SEXES. 37 
 
 of tremor in the voice, as she spoke it 1 At all events, the impres- 
 sion was acted upon before any reply was vouchsafed. 
 
 " To me or to Neville, — that is all very well, darling ; but what 
 has the name of Mr. Tartar — whom you began to know so very 
 lately — to do with your anxieties, eh 1 Let us understand about 
 that I " 
 
 If there had been the moment before any doubt about the colour 
 or the tone of voice, that doubt was immediately removed. The 
 sweet pink cheek grew crimson, the fair young brow mantled with an 
 answering flush, and the whole manner was that of the school-girl 
 (as indeed she was, in the truest sense) detected in some peccadillo 
 which must cause shame, while yet the very farthest removed from 
 wrong. 
 
 " "What do you mean, Helena, dear 1 " 
 
 This was a subterfuge — at least a means of gaining leisure for 
 thought, as nine times out of ten the same innocent question even- 
 tually proves to be. Helena Landless accepted it at its true worth. 
 Her question had been answered, unexpectedly soon and well ; and 
 she held up her finger in playful warning, as she replied, — 
 
 " What do I mean, darling 1 Oh, you understand ! Look at 
 that tell-tale face. This sailor-man is becoming dangerous to my 
 pet. He must be sent away to sea, on a very long voyage — say for 
 five years or so." 
 
 " What do you mean, Helena, dear ? " 
 
 The same words used before, but with a change in the intonation, 
 showing that an explanation, however unnecessary, was positively 
 desired. 
 
 " ' What do I mean,' again ? Why, simply, that we have found 
 our heart — found it only to lose it to a mere stranger. That is all." 
 
 " Oh, Helena, dear ! " Without another word, for that moment, 
 Rosebud flung herself into the arms of her friend, hiding the blushing 
 face on her bosom ; and when she did speak, uttering words which 
 proved her to be the veriest child who ever suddenly found the 
 heart of a woman beating in her own. 
 
 " Don't laugh at me very much, dear, if you can help it, and don't 
 scold me at all, please ! Oh, it is so wrong — I know that it is ; and 
 yet how can I help it ? Only think of my making such a little fool 
 of myself, when he has not said a word, and I do not know whether 
 he cares for me any more than he does for a kitten ! " 
 
 Helena Landless's handsome brown hand, with its long, nervous 
 fingers, went caressingly over the brow of her friend, as she uttered 
 the best re-assurance that could possibly have fallen from human lips. 
 
 " Cares for you 1 — yes, you baby-beauty ! No fear but he cares for 
 you, quite enough. Everybody cares for you, I think ; and well they 
 may, such a dear little bird as you are. Poor Neville ! only think 
 how happy I should be, if you but loved him as you do this 
 stranger." 
 
 " Poor Neville ! — yes, and poor Eddy ! see what a torment I am, 
 dear, to myself and everybody. But what ails you, now 1 Have I 
 said anything to pain or offend you ? " 
 
38 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 For Helena had sprung up, when the speech was little more than 
 begun, with a gesture like that of shaking away the arms clinging 
 to her. She had walked to the opposite window, turning her back 
 to Rosa ; and there, as the latter followed her, she found her with 
 those long nervous fingers over her face, weeping in what seemed 
 a fit of uncontrollable emotion. 
 
 " Dear Helena, what have I said or done, to make you, who are so 
 strong, cry like my own childish self t Tell me what my careless 
 tongue has said — that's a dear." 
 
 " Nothing, Rosa, pet, nothing ! " replied the other, making a 
 violent effort to master her convulsion of feeling. " But I must tell 
 you, or I think that my heart will break." She put her arm again 
 around Rosa's waist, though they remained standing, and so went on, 
 with broken words, that told so much of the violence of that emotion 
 producing such an effect upon her usually well-governed nature. 
 
 " See, I have forced away your secret, darling, and at the same 
 moment cannot protect my own ! Don't you understand what is 
 eating out my heart 1 It is not anxiety for my brother, though that 
 is keen enough to make me sometimes almost forget my sex ; it is 
 something so much sadder and worse. Don't be frightened at me, or 
 think that I have been mean or treacherous, for indeed — indeed, I 
 have not ; and I would not tell you the truth, now, if they trampled 
 me to death with elephants for refusing — only that now it is too late 
 for the confession to do any harm." 
 
 She paused for an instant, and Rosebud looked up in her face 
 with an unshapen pity blending with her alarm and wonder. But 
 she said nothing — only drew closer her arm in sympathy around the 
 slight waist it spanned, as Helena went on, — 
 
 " Don't you know yet what is coming, darling 1 How can I tell 
 you ? — and yet I wish to do so and must I My heart is buried some- 
 where, though I do not know where ; and yet it lives and aches. I 
 laved Edwin Drood 1 " 
 
 " Oh, Helena— dear Helena ! " 
 
 "Yes — you must not think I have willingly done you wrong. 
 Had he lived, and had there been no break between you, this would 
 have gone with me to my grave. But I loved him, I think, from 
 the first moment that I saw him : I could no more help doing so 
 than I could avoid breathing." 
 
 " Poor Eddy ! Yes, and he loved you : I have no doubt of it, 
 now ! He could not love me, as I could not love him, with an affec- 
 tion beyond that of brother and sister ; we were too much like two 
 children together, I suppose, with no experience in either to guide 
 the other. But you — I have no doubt now that he loved you, and 
 that was why he gave me up so easily, when — when I asked him to 
 do so." 
 
 " Do you think so, darling 1 Oh, if I could only believe that — 
 only know that, I think I should be happy, even knowing that I had 
 lost my dear boy from this world for ever." 
 
 Her hands were clasped at the moment ; and in her dusky eyes 
 there shone that expression of hungry and unsatisfied affection, only 
 
XmPER'S UNEXPECTED PLEASURE. 39 
 
 less (Mffietrft to look upon than to ray out, -from a heart experience. 
 Thin she commanded herself, by a powerful effort, as one -who felt 
 that she had been temporarily indulging a weakness unworthy or out 
 of time j and she seemed scarcely the same person, but a few moments 
 after, when, still standing at the window, and her face almost terribly 
 earnest and determined, she herself changed the subject with nervous 
 suddenness, and related what had occurred at Staple Inn on the 
 previous night and that very morning. 
 
 Rosa listened, with an interest rapidly culminating in a still- 
 lingering fright at the knowledge that John Jasper was continually 
 coming so near her and with so deadly a purpose. "Was it possible 
 that she could be quite safe from him even now, with all the protec- 
 tion afforded by Mr. G-rewgious and (her heart whispered this, as if 
 a little ashamed and doubtful of the propriety of such, an element in 
 the calculation) Mr. Tartar 1 
 
 But the face of Helena Landless had grown calmly stern and self- 
 reliant now ; and there seemed, as Rosa gazed into it, protection in 
 that, if in nothing else. And though her words of promise were few, 
 bearing upon some hurried expression of the young girl's fears for 
 herself and for Neville, those words should have been quite sufficient 
 for more than one who knew her blood, and the reason she might be 
 likely to recognize for fighting, life for life, against the suspected 
 murderer of the man she had loved, the persecutor of the friend she 
 valued so dearly, and the unscrupulous pursuer of the brother who 
 formed her other self ! 
 
 " No, darling — do not fear that man, terrible as -he is ! " she said. 
 " He has never seen an East-Indian jungle, I think ; I have, young 
 as I am. And he may learn, by-and-by, that the hunter is not 
 always safer than "the game he thinks his own, when once he ventures 
 into that wilderness which has no path and no end." 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 JOHN JASPER'S UNEXPECTED PLEASURE. 
 
 Mr. Sapsea leaves his Mansion House on the High Street, in 
 company with the complacent Mr. Datchery — on that errand which 
 is to confer so much revengeful pleasure on Mr. Jasper — in one of 
 those complacent and wholly self-satisfied moods which may bear the 
 same relation to the ordinary mental frames of humanity, that is 
 borne by a day of unclouded spring sunshine, with Nature at her 
 best in every detail of light, verdure, flowers, and bird-music, to the 
 average day in which cold fogs, bleak winds, and dismal happenings 
 
40 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 combine to prevent any mistake as to the terrestrial character of our 
 footstool. 
 
 Complacent Mr. Sapsea is always, and under all circumstances. 
 He -wooed Miss Brobity complacently, complacently received that 
 awe-struck up-looking which eventually produced so serious an effect 
 on the liver, buried her complacently, and complacently so epitaphed 
 her that it seems doubtful whether any pain in the marital loss is not 
 quite compensated by the pleasure of the monumental opportunity. 
 He has been complacent in all his valuations and knockings-down ; he 
 is the most complacent of mayors, because no man so little feels the 
 cares and obligations of office as the thorough donkey who can under- 
 stand nothing whatever of them ; and if there is a special point of 
 his pompous and shallow existence, in which the sense of complacent 
 self-satisfaction reaches its acme, that point is to be found at the 
 moment when he is duly soothed by such senseless subserviency (to 
 call it by no worse name) as that of Mr. Datchery, and when he is 
 permitted, so to speak, to diffuse himself over the whole sphere of his 
 honours and duties, in a gush of pompous patronage. 
 
 Mr. Sapsea is not only gushing with patronage in this particular 
 instance, but he is literally overflowing the civic community with that 
 benefit. He is about, unasked, to confer the most important of 
 benefits upon Mr. John Jasper — his friend, Mr. John Jasper — 
 entitling him to the life-long gratitude (to be duly shown in added 
 subserviency) of that person ; he is conferring an obligation upon 
 Mr. Datchery, with the natural result of keeping that person at his 
 present humble and appreciative status, and possibly bringing him a 
 shade lower in comparison with himself ; he is exercising the highest 
 functions of the chief magistrate of Cloisterham, in outdoing all pre- 
 decessors in the extent and graciousness of his condescension ; and he 
 is adding another to the multitudinous influences which shall ensure 
 him a proud niche in the local temple of fame, by arranging for the 
 effective employment of that link in the chain of evidence against 
 the suspected murderer, which — that is how he puts it, and will some 
 day put it on the bench — which he has discovered by patient research 
 and constant exercise of Mind. 
 
 To say that Mr. Sapsea, thus at peace with himself and the world, 
 assumes the outward demeanour proper to such inner beatification, 
 would he to do that eminent person gross injustice. He " assumes " 
 nothing ; from the inner consciousness, always candid, radiates that 
 which makes him the most noteworthy of men. "Were not matter 
 lamentably dull and stupid, with no capacity to adapt itself to changes 
 of circumstance, then possibly we might see an additional fraction of 
 roll in the brim of the hat, and there might be a nearer approach to 
 perfection in the proud sweep with which the trouser, tapering away 
 from the graceful protrusion of the abdomen, finishes the Hogarthian 
 line of beauty at the shoe. As things go, so much cannot be expected, 
 and there will always be some slight outer imperfection in the 
 belongings of the great, unwarranted by the completeness inwardly 
 attained. 
 
 The Mayor is half a yard in advance, as they emerge from the door 
 
JOHN JASPER'S UNEXPECTED PLEASURE. 41 
 
 of his house, and take their way towards their near destination. 
 Whether he, of himself, assumes that slight precedence, just enough 
 to indicate position, and yet too little to be offensive to the humble 
 companion, or whether that humble companion, Datchery to wit, falls 
 back the trifle necessary to throw the other into that prominence, as 
 the only available expression of that unbounded respect which would 
 keep the head uncovered, if the spectacle might not create too much 
 remark in the street of Cloisterham — this important question cannot 
 be easily settled : only the fact can be given. Dignity, combined 
 with Intellect, has its place ; Idle Inconsequence walks half a step 
 behind ; what more could be desired ? 
 
 They have measured, perhaps, a hundred yards from their point of 
 departure, and are not far from the Lumps-of-delight shop, on the left 
 as they walk, once momentarily holding so prominent a place in the 
 history of Rosa and Edwin — when Mr. Datchery is thrown still more 
 to the rear, by encountering a person coming out from the near 
 tobacco-shop, a cigar between his lips, and the amount of smoke 
 thrown out from that fragrant and most filthy combustible quite 
 enough to prevent any immediate view of his features. Mr. Datchery 
 would seem to recognize him in spite of the enshrouding veil ; for the 
 Mayor — not a little chafed at seeing any person walking with him- 
 self hindered by any other person or persons unknown — observes, as 
 he half turns his head, that they accost each other, and that (this is 
 a salve to the wounded dignity) Mr. Datchery does not seem over 
 well pleased with the encounter. 
 
 He hears the man with the cigar say, ignorant of the impossibility, 
 under the circumstances, — 
 
 " Ha, Dick ! have a weed 1 " 
 
 And he hears the other answer, — 
 
 " Why, Philpits, is it possible that you are here ? No ; no cigar 
 for me : I am going to an appointment with his Honour the Mayor." 
 
 Then he, making a temporary pause, and in point of fact waiving 
 the rights of position, waiting for Mr. Datchery in recognition of the 
 propriety of the latter's demeanour, loses the next words that pass 
 between the two, and only knows that they are coming towards him. 
 
 This man, addressed as Philpits, is slight, and not too well dressed 
 — his hat, particularly, being of that class designated, not euphoni- 
 ously, the billycock — and his clothes, with an air about them that 
 may be salty, and may be that of constant use, carrying another air 
 less ambiguous — that of having been made for a larger man, or 
 stretched in wearing if the owner has not shrunken. His complexion 
 is dark, almost very dark, though this detail is somewhat confused by 
 the slouching brim of the billycock ; and his age must be set down as 
 uncertain, there being somewhat too much of dark beard, well 
 matching the dark-brown hair, for that number of years conveyed by 
 the complexion. He shows, as he moves, a bit of roll that (again) 
 may be of the sea, salty, and that may be merely a slight species of 
 swagger. 
 
 Other men than Mayor Sapsea, looking at this person, might set 
 him down as an anomaly ; and a man from Scotland Yard, suddenly 
 
42 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 meeting him, might be tempted to look after him at greater length 
 than the turning of the next corner. The Mayor merely sees one of 
 whom he makes the mental note : — 
 
 " Disreputable — that is how i" put it — disreputable, and no advan- 
 tage to that well-behaved person, Mr. Datchery, to be known by 
 him." 
 
 But by the time this observation is made, the two have measured 
 the few feet intervening, and they approach the Mayor, who is not 
 flattered by what seems to be a pending introduction. 
 
 That introduction follows, but in so unobjectionable a shape that 
 the great man is partially disarmed. 
 
 " Will the "Worshipful the Mayor,'' says Mr. Datchery, adding to 
 the intermediary bow accompanying by taking off his hat, and the 
 other catching the spirit of the presence and doing the same — " will 
 the "Worshipful the Mayor pardon this momentary hindrance, which 
 I beg him to believe was quite unexpected, and allow me to intro- 
 duce an old college-mate, Mr. Robert Philpits i Mr. Philpits, Mr. 
 Mayor Sapsea, of Cloisterham." 
 
 " Honoured," says Mr. Philpits, notably saying nothing more, as 
 possibly from confusion, but bowing with an empressement which 
 throws his face almost entirely out of view of the Mayor, and which 
 shows, by the profundity of the action, that he fully recognizes the 
 privilege conferred upon him. 
 
 "As Mr. Datchery's friend," remarks the Mayor, with an air of 
 adding that only as Mr. Datchery's friend this person can be tolerated 
 at all by the official, and with a patronising wave of the hand which 
 puts any thought of shaking that member out of the question — as 
 Mr. Datchery's friend, I am glad to know Mr. — Mr. " 
 
 " Mr. Philpits," suggests the introducer. 
 
 "Ah, Mr. Philpits." 
 
 " Old chum, as I have just had the honour of informing the "Wor- 
 shipful the Mayor," Mr. Datchery goes on to explain, the two hats 
 being by this time recovered, in a military sense. " "We have not met 
 in a long time, as His Honour should also be made aware." 
 
 Mr. Sapsea, glancing again at the sartorial adornments of Mr. 
 Philpits, has no difficulty in understanding why this apology is made, 
 as illustrating the self-evident fact, that had Mr. Datchery been in 
 the habit of meeting Mr. Philpits frequently, he [Mr. Datchery] 
 would have instructed him [Mr. Philpits] to array himself in more 
 becoming costume before presenting himself in his [Mr. Sapsea' s] irre- 
 proachably-costumed presence. 
 
 " My chum, his Honour the Mayor should also be advised," Mr. 
 Datchery goes on, " has been for a long time so far away as the 
 Danube, doiDg a little of engineering, something in which an idle 
 and unemployed buffer like myself almost envies him, though the 
 employment really has not improved his personal appearance. Eh, 
 Philpits, my boy V 
 
 " Precisely," answers the stranger, with no more waste of words 
 than he has before displayed. 
 
 "Humph! my Time, Mr. Datchery!" somewhat severely com- 
 
JOHN JASPER'S UNEXPECTED PLEASURE. 43 
 
 merits Mayor Sapsea, at this juncture. " Procrastination, sir, is the 
 thief of time — that is how / am in the habit of stating the fact ; 
 and we are loitering, if I am not very much mistaken." 
 
 " A thousand pardons ! " replies Mr. Datchery, much affected by 
 the mild reproof as well as by the felicitous original illustration. 
 " His Honour the Mayor will be kind enough not to suppose the 
 hindrance intentional, and therefore disrespectful — only an accident, 
 which Mr. Philpits, at any risk to his own self-love, must permit me 
 to call a misfortune. I accompany the "Worshipful Mayor at once, 
 and with real regret for the delay." 
 
 Then moving on a step or two : — 
 
 " By the way, Philpits, old fellow, what will you do with yourself 
 during the little time necessary to fulfil my appointment with his 
 Honour 1 You have never been in Cloisterham before, I think ? " 
 
 " Never." Thus sententiously again the new comer, who is 
 moving on with the others, permittedly, but rather aimlessly, and 
 altogether uselessly in the matter of convoy, as a mean little tug 
 may sometimes be seen keeping company with a magnificent depart- 
 ing steamer for a certain distance down harbour. 
 
 " Never, no, of course not ; only a forgetful buffer like myself 
 would make the blunder of asking. Then, of course, you know 
 nothing of the town — a most respectable old place, and quite an 
 odd one, as you will see when you take a glance at it. You can 
 know nothing whatever without me, and may be lost." 
 
 " Likely," says the sententious Philpits. 
 
 " Humph ! " comments the Mayor, without further explanation, 
 but possibly meaning to imply, in his concise way, that the world — 
 that is how he would put it— the world would have little difficulty 
 in surviving the loss of so insignificant and ill-clothed a person as the 
 man Philpits. 
 
 " Now that I think of it, perhaps you had better keep with us, if 
 his Honour the Mayor will allow me the liberty of extending the 
 invitation. Only a few minutes at the rooms of a friend here, and 
 then I shall be at your service. May I hope that the "Worshipful 
 the Mayor approves the suggestion, thus giving my friend the addi- 
 tional privilege of being introduced, if opportunity should allow, to 
 a man who has been characterized by his Honour, with his usual 
 felicitous use of words, as energetic, and therefore a Man of Mark 1" 
 
 It is doubtful whether Mayor Sapsea would consent to the com- 
 pany of this unknown, ill-dressed, and supposedly disreputable 
 person, for any longer time than necessary to traverse the little 
 remaining distance to the Gate House, but for the employment of 
 this last skilfully-devised bit of extra fumigation. But, with that 
 new inhalation of pleasant incense, he yields once more to the in- 
 sidious machinations of the unscrupulous Datchery, waves that fat 
 official hand with a dignity as impossible to convey in words as it 
 would have been to transmit to a second generation through the 
 medium of Mrs. Brobity-Sapsea, and says, — 
 
 " The request is a somewhat unusual one, Mr. Datchery ; still, as 
 I do not suppose that my friend, Mr. Jasper, could have any unwil- 
 
44 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 lingness to form the acquaintance of this — this person whom you 
 know, there will be no objection to his accompanying." 
 
 " Thanks for the courtesy of his Honour the Mayor — which is, 
 however, nothing more than his habit led me to expect," says Mr. 
 Datchery, again bowing his acknowledgments, with a side glance at 
 Philpits, which adds : " "Why do you not humiliate yourself to the 
 dust, miserable mortal, in view of such condescension 1 " 
 
 " Thanks — many ! " to this and the other, responds the obliged 
 Philpits, of whom, from his extreme reticence of words, the impres- 
 sion might be not unnaturally formed that he has been for a long 
 time in such a branch of employment, connected with his engineering, 
 as to induce serious daily expenditure of voice, thus coming home 
 with very little rema inin g in his chest, and being obliged to econo- 
 mise, as another man might do with a small remaining amount of 
 money, after long reckless expenditure of capital. 
 
 So it is that they go on to the Gate House, meeting no adventure 
 of additional consequence by the way ; though Mr. Datchery once 
 catches a glimpse of Durdles emerging from a low doorway, and there 
 passes between them a quick motion of understanding that might be 
 suspicious, if some other eye could observe and comment upon it — as 
 that other eye does not. And so it is that they go up the postern stair 
 at the Gate House, Mr. Sapsea, again becomingly in advance, as chief 
 of the Embassy ; Mr. Datchery next, a subordinate, but possessing a 
 certain importance ; and Mr. Philpits bringing up the rear — slouch- 
 ing a little in his gait, and with his billycock accidentally falling so 
 low over his eyes as to make observation of those features impossible 
 — no doubt in the due abasement of a position rather permitted than 
 acknowledged. 
 
 They pause at the door of Mr. Jasper's room, at the head of the 
 stairway, however, simultaneously with a motion of Mr. Sapsea's 
 authoritative hand, which says, quite as plainly as words could 
 convey the same injunction, — 
 
 " Pause. Listen. Piano and voice. An exquisitely beautiful 
 combination and harmony of sounds — that is how / put it — exqui- 
 sitely beautiful combination and harmony. I know, without seeing 
 him, thanks to the exercise of Mind, that Mr. Jasper is playing and 
 singing. More than that — that he is playing and singing a fine old 
 religious song. Italian or German — that is what / say — Italian or 
 German : Bologna, Naples, "Weimar, Prague. Pause and listen." 
 
 They pause and listen, perhaps not altogether from the motion of 
 Mr. Sapsea : possibly because other ears than his (however shorter, 
 and so at disadvantage) can catch the subtle harmonic blendings of 
 the grand old Gregorian chant with which the choir-master is filling 
 a leisure hour, and educating his aspirations after the Infinite and 
 the All-Glorious. They hear and appreciate the delicate manipula- 
 tion of the keys of the instrument, by a hand evidently the worthy 
 master of the rich brown ivory keys it touches at once caressingly 
 and compellingly — evoking, in succession, light and fairy tinkles of 
 sound, that might be the musical pattering of rain in a fountain, in 
 the midst of a delicious summer-shower; bursts of rich harmony, 
 
JOHN JASPER S UNEXPECTED PLEASURE. 45 
 
 that fill the veiy sense of satisfaction -with their fulness and perfec- 
 tion ; and deep-rolling thunders that seem to have the faculty of 
 becoming 'waves of hoarse melody and sweeping away the soul to 
 some imagined empyrean where they have at once origin and end. 
 This with the instrument ; and combined with this a rich manly 
 voice, forming the cross between tenor and baritone, and perfect in 
 every musical phrase and modulation, while bounding with a sense of 
 exultant power which seems to make it something more than a voice 
 and elevate it to the height of a faculty. 
 
 They stand, as they may well do, spell-bound. , When the good 
 man sings hymns of praise, he is exercising a very high privilege ; 
 when he sings and plays them divinely, he is doing something which 
 distantly (though not always pleasantly) suggests the employment of 
 celestial beings through all ages. And even lowlier men than Mr. 
 Sapsea may hold a weakness for considering themselves likely, at 
 some unguessed period in those ages, to become celestial beings, more 
 or less fully developed in the details of robe and pinion. 
 
 They do not interrupt the effective player and singer, for many 
 minutes, during which the only perceptible motion among the three 
 is one of a certain patronizing impatience on the part of the Mayor — 
 the employer and owner of that invaluable Time of which he makes 
 no infrequent mention as filled to repletion with important deeds 
 and events. Then there is a pause, which does not come, as such 
 pauses may be usually expected to come, at the close of a movement 
 and with sounding and measured chords, but arrives with couriers in 
 the shape of trembling in the voice, uncertain touches upon the keys, 
 and all the symptoms of suddenly-diminished physical capacity. Then 
 the last broken and unsteady note is struck, the voice already fallen 
 silent ; and the three as they stand unnoticed at the open door, see 
 the musician rather stagger than rise from" his seat, and confront 
 them as he turns to leave the recess. 
 
 They mark — some of them, perhaps all — that the face is contorted 
 as that of one might be under an agony not yet unendurable ; and 
 they see that the eyes have something glassy and unnatural about 
 them, as might be those of a child suddenly awakened from sleep, at 
 an unusually early hour — or as might be those of a man of full age, 
 who had really been wandering away in mind, into those far-off 
 regions suggested by the dead music, and who found some difficulty 
 in making instant return to the lower world. 
 
 But this expression changes — compelled back, as it might be, by 
 the exercise of a strong will, as he recognizes the presence of visitors. 
 And there is a certain amount of graceful dignity in his reception of 
 them, when the eyes kindle to natural life and at last take them in. 
 He has a word of respectful welcome to the Mayor, as to one who 
 honours his room by coming into it ; one of corresponding character 
 to Mr. Datchery, though less respectful, as to one who is only an 
 equal ; and a distant recognition — quite warm enough under all the 
 circumstances, for the entirely supernumerary and slightly de trop 
 Mr. Philpits, whose presence is at once explained and apologized for 
 in the brief word of introduction, and who proves that he has no 
 
46 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 intention whatever of being in the way, by subsiding into the corner 
 of the room, merely saying, " Delighted, Mr. Clasper, mum — muni — 
 mum — " in such a tone of mumble that his previous paucity of voice 
 seems to have culminated in one last expiring breath, and who retires 
 into the most absolute and ineffective nothingnesss by engaging in 
 close distant study of the backs of a row of opposite music-books, 
 which he cannot understand, and a ridiculous daub of a picture of a 
 young girl, sidelong to his view, over the mantel, of which he can 
 know even less than of the sealed books. 
 
 Mr. Sapsea, Plenipotentiary in the very mixed Embassy of which 
 Datchery may be rated as Secretary, and Philpits as the most useless 
 of attaches — Mr. Sapsea has no idea of wasting any more of that 
 valuable Time to which time- wasting reference has already been so 
 often made by himself and others, and interrupts Mr. Datchery's 
 attempted compliment to Mr. Jasper upon his looking well (for 
 which there is the worst possible ground), by entering at once upon 
 the Important Business. 
 
 " Mr. Jasper," he says, with his best wave of the fat magisterial 
 hand, and with his shoulders thrown back to the full capacity allowed 
 by the straight, high-backed, uncomfortable chair of the time of the 
 royal heroine of Tilbury Fort — " Mr. Jasper, my call of this morning 
 — I may say our call of this morning, as Mr. Datchery is more or 
 less concerned in it — may be considered one of business ; but if I am 
 not mistaken, sir, it will be found, as I say — that is how I put it, 
 and the expression may or may not be capable of improvement — it 
 will be found to combine business and pleasure." 
 
 " Ah," remarks Mr. Jasper, who learns nothing whatever from the 
 rigmarole, and who may be accordingly excused for replying thus 
 briefly and non-committedly. But Mr. Datchery, who has not 
 enjoyed any opportunity for venting his boundless subserviency for 
 at least five minutes, interjects, to the relief of Mr. Jasper and the 
 delight of the Mayor, — 
 
 " Ah, yes, his Honour the Mayor certainly uses a most felicitous 
 expression : ' combining business with pleasure ' — what could be 
 better 1 A thousand pardons for the interruption." 
 
 Mr. Philpits is craning forward his neck, in the stupid effort to- 
 read the unreadable title on the back of a music-book, by reducing 
 the distance to say six inches less than it would be if he sat upright 
 in his chair. 
 
 " Mr. Datchery," continues the Mayor, " was not a resident of My 
 Mayoralty at the time of certain occurrences, of which we are only 
 too well aware — that is how / put it, Mr. Jasper — only too well 
 aware. I allude, of course, to the circumstances connected with 
 the lamented disappearance, and almost certain murder, of youi- 
 nephew." 
 
 For the instant, a spasm passes across the face of the choir-master, 
 even more declared than that which was suppressed and strangled as 
 he rose from the piano. 
 
 For that instant, too, his hands grip the sides of the chair with a 
 tenacity threatening to the integrity of that article of furniture. But- 
 
JOHN JASPER'S UNEXPECTED PLEASURE. 47 
 
 these demonstrations are wondrously brief, and they must be unno- 
 ticed, for who has motive to observe them 1 
 
 Mr. Sapsea is absorbed in the importance of his Embassy, and the 
 contemplation of the influence of Mind on Mediocrity; Mr. Datchery 
 is gratifying his pet subserviency by staring at the Mayor, under his 
 white hair and dark eyebrows, with a fond intensity suggestive of 
 early worship, in the event of the laws of Britain being so remodelled 
 as to allow that exercise ; and Mr. Philpits, having made the dis- 
 covery, through the six inches gained by craning, that the mysterious 
 appearance of the words on the back of the music-book is caused by 
 the book having been accidentally placed upside down in the stand, 
 is endeavouring to ascertain, at some peril to the already elongated 
 neck, how it would read in the event of his being able (and permitted) 
 to stand on his head. 
 
 " The "Worshipful the Mayor is quite correct, as usual," says Mr. 
 Datchery, immediately following Mr. Sapsea's introduction. " My 
 only acquaintance with what I may be permitted to call the un- 
 fortunate and melancholy case, was derived from information kindly 
 furnished by his Honour, in this very room, on my first coming to 
 Cloisterham, as Mr. Jasper may remember." 
 
 " I do remember, Mr. Datchery," answers Mr. Jasper, speaking 
 for the first time on the theme ; " though pardon me if I fail to see 
 the importance of your knowledge. And as for the remark just 
 made by you, Mayor Sapsea — allow me to inquire why you vise the 
 expression ' almost certainly murdered V To me he is certainly mur- 
 dered : what reason have you, allow me to ask, for qualifying the 
 suspicion ? Has anything been discovered, and am I to connect 
 your visit at this time with the fact, throwing doubt upon the 
 crime 1 " 
 
 " Nothing whatever, Mr. Jasper ; on the contrary " 
 
 " Ah ! " This expression comes a second time from Mr. Jasper, 
 but much more pronouncedly and much more meaningly than before. 
 It betokens satisfaction now : presumptively the satisfaction of a 
 man who discovers that his pet theory is not to be assaulted ; and 
 that satisfaction is so great that he does what Mr. Datchery could 
 not be induced to do under any provocation — interrupts his Honour 
 the Mayor. 
 
 " No, Mr. Jasper," the oificial resumes ; " on the contrary, there 
 have been certain discoveries made giving renewed force and colour 
 — that is how / put it — renewed force and colour to your opinion, 
 and leading to the hope that, as I say, the murderer may be un- 
 earthed, and brought to justice." 
 
 Mayor Sapsea has come to the Gate House with the errand (if an 
 Embassy can perform so low a thing as an errand) of giving his friend 
 ,Mr. Jasper a great pleasure. At this moment it seems that his 
 purpose will be fully accomplished ; for it is pleasure that glows 
 darkly on the choir-master's face at the announcement of " certain 
 discoveries." Has that transitory flush of pleasure anything to do 
 with the action of a late night at Staples Inn ? — with the action wit- 
 nessed by Tartar through a high window? — with a " treasure-trove " 
 
48 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 picked up by that forcible person on the floor of Neville Landless's 
 room ? Was there something to be discovered and EXPECTED to 
 be discovered ? 
 
 The pleasant flush dies out, and who shall know of its momentary 
 existence ? For (the others as before) Mr. Philpits has unobtrusively 
 gone over to the music-stand, taken out the misused book, opened 
 it, and is attentively scanning the bars of one of Mendelssohn's most 
 intricate compositions, with that air of stupid delight and half- 
 intelligence which a Feejee islander might be expected to display in 
 examining the involved figures of a work on geometry. 
 
 " Mayor Sapsea," says Sir. Jasper at this juncture, " I am glad to 
 hear you say that you have not changed your opinion ; for be sure 
 that I have not changed mine. On the contrary, so additionally 
 impressed have I been, within the last twenty-four hours, not only 
 with the fact of my dear boy's murder, but the certainty of the near 
 detection of his murderer, that I have resumed a habit for awhile 
 laid down, at the suggestion of Mr. Crisparkle, as mentally unhealthy, 
 and written out my impressions — briefly this time, and not in the 
 leaves of the diary that I now regret. Permit me, before you pro- 
 ceed, to read you those few words which have as yet gone no further 
 than my pocket." 
 
 Permitted by the wave of the magisterial hand, and the evident 
 interest of Mr. Datchery, he draws from his vest-pocket a folded 
 paper, opens it, and reads : — 
 
 " I am-now so firmly impressed with the fact that the time for the 
 " final arrest and punishment of my dear boy's murderer has nearly 
 " or quite come, that I cannot resist going back to an old habit, 
 " which I am sorry that I relinquished, and setting down my 
 " impressions for my own satisfaction, if not for future reference. 
 " How this detection is (;o come — whether from the finding of some 
 " recognizable portion of the body, once and always so dear to me, 
 " in the waters of that river, where he was so certainly and ruth- 
 " lessly thrown by the man whom he trusted — or whether the inur- 
 " derer himself, becoming careless in his security, is to work out his 
 " destruction by imprudent words, or the bringing to public know- 
 " ledge of some article hitherto concealed — this I cannot pretend to 
 " fathom in advance. But of the fact I am sure. The quest to 
 " which I devoted my life seven months ago is not to continue for 
 " any long period now. The end is near. I feel this and know it, 
 " with a certainty defying reason as it defies contradiction. My 
 " dear boy is to be avenged, and then my life-work will be done." 
 
 Mr. Datchery listens to the reading with that interest which a 
 single buffer of uncertain habits may be expected to exhibit in the pre- 
 sence of any event or communication unexpectedly sensational ; Mayor 
 Sapsea listens with that complacency natural to one who hears his 
 own opinions echoed, and his own labours — that is how he puts it — 
 his own labours in some great cause humbly assisted ; and there is 
 every reason to suppose that the nonentity, Philpits, does not hear it 
 at all, that objectionable person having returned to his chair, with 
 the music-book, and being at the moment engaged in beating time 
 
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 W 
 ,-1 
 
 P 
 
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 Ph 
 
 w 
 is 
 
 w 
 
 Ph 
 
johk jasper's unexpected pleasure. 49 
 
 •with his hand, and bobbing his head over it, as if it conveyed a 
 certain dumb suggestion of some audible music once heard by his 
 untutored ears, possibly half barbarian and ear-splitting, during hils 
 engineering on the Danube. 
 
 " And now that you have, in this paper, Mr. Jasper, quite echoed 
 the opinions — echoed is what I say — the opinions already formed by 
 myself, from the researches which the invisible hand of justice — that 
 is how i" put it, the invisible hand of justice— as well as the long 
 and strong hand — has been steadily making from the night when 
 the crime was committed," says Mayor Sapsea, elevating his head 
 still more, and throwing back his shoulders additionally, in ex- 
 tracting from his pocket an object thus far deposited there — " now 
 Mr. Jasper, you will be gratified, I know, by my exhibiting to you 
 an — an article, discovered by — by one of the persons engaged with 
 myself in the investigation of the details of this crime, only yester- 
 day, and so near to — to My Mayoralty, that the late presence of the 
 murderer cannot be doubted." 
 
 His hand has by this time extricated the wallet from his pocket, 
 but the hand is by no means small, and the object is quite concealed 
 in it, until the other hand has thrown back the flap, and the first 
 hand holds wallet and name full before the eyes of John Jasper at 
 the same instant. 
 
 Then follows what Mayor Sapsea, who has come to confer a delight 
 upon his friend Jasper, could scarcely have expected at the moment 
 of leaving his Mansion House ; what Mr. Datchery, though a buffer 
 of very easy antecedents, must be equally pained and surprised to 
 see, the benevolence of his intentions in coming to Mr. Jasper being 
 likewise kept in view ; what Mr. Philpits cannot be supposed to 
 see, much less to understand, he being at the moment engaged in 
 intently surveying the picture of Pussy, from a sidelong point of view, 
 through a tube formed of a loose roll of music, under some apparent 
 impression that the obliquities of character may be thus looked into, 
 as they cannot under the deception of the full face. 
 
 What is it that the two see, the third thus ignored 1 
 
 They see John Jasper stiffen from his chair, into an erect position 
 — not rise, or spring, but stiffen, as if the truth of the old fable of 
 the Gorgon's head had outlived the belief in it, and the commence- 
 ment of a transformation to stone may yet be seen by the curious, at 
 intervals and under favourable circumstances. They see one hand go 
 up to his head, as if the hidden pain came there at first ; they see the 
 eyes sink away into the sockets, with such suddenness that they seem 
 extinguished, until a look of fixed horror, raying out from them, 
 belies the fear ; they see the face contort again into shapes of agony 
 before undreamed of, and thick drops start on the forehead, dampening 
 the hair that falls over it ; they see the hand, momentarily uplifted 
 to the head, fall away from that to the throat, and seem to clutch at 
 the neck-cloth ; they hear a gurgling attempt at utterance, with no 
 words reaching the outer air ; and then they see the stone change to 
 boneless and nerveless flesh with the same suddenness as that of its 
 first transformation, and the figure collapse back into its chair, its 
 
50 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 whole upper length, not more than two feet from the seat, and the 
 suspicion, a strong one, that a dead man has flopped down there, with 
 the stony eyes wide open. 
 
 To say that Mayor Sapsea is surprised at the reception of his bene- 
 faction by his friend, Mr. Jasper, would be sheer waste of words. He 
 rises, but stands in such an attitude of helpless horror and bewilder- 
 ment, that some of the stories traditionally told about the great always 
 exhibiting extraordinary presence of mind, may well come under 
 fresh examination in the light of this circumstance. 
 
 Mr. Datchery mutters something about " great joy affecting per- 
 sons nearly as much as great sorrow, and that the Worshipful the 
 Mayor, no doubt, sees Mr. Jasper thus affected, under the influence 
 of this memorial of his dear boy, and this new hope of avenging 
 him ; " but how much of this the Mayor hears or understands must 
 remain problematical. For the very moment after the catastrophe, 
 the disreputable-looking Philpits, who should never have been in the 
 place at all, discovers the fact, drops his music-roll telescope, and 
 literally rushes from the room and down the stairs, without farewell, 
 and in such undignified haste, that he may well be suspected of rank 
 cowardice in the presence of death and suffering ; and the next 
 moment Mr. Datchery, unable to recall him by the shout of " Phil- 
 pits ! Bob ! come back, I say ! " springs out of the door and down 
 the staii's after him, leaving only the Mayor and his friend together. 
 
 Mr. Jasper may be breathing again now — probably he is so, for 
 the eyes, that were fixed, seem to roll. And when Mr. Sapsea, at 
 last remembering the inner door, and hoping for some help for his 
 helplessness behind it, rashes to that door, forgets his ofiicial dignity, 
 and hammers and shouts, then the matronly figure of Mrs. Tope 
 replies by coming into the room, and the matronly voice says, — 
 
 " Whatever is the matter 1 Mr. Jasper took bad again 1 Dear 
 heart ! what will be the end of it all, if he do go on 1 " 
 
 But Mr. Jasper is better now — so much better that he has a wan 
 smile and a word for his friends, and they know that the worst is 
 over — for the time. Yes- — the impression of the two is correct, and 
 he will live. Great unexpected pleasure does not kill, always. 
 
 Mr. Datchery overtakes the renegade, Mr. Philpits, not far beyond 
 the foot of the stairs — still under the shadow of the Gate House 
 archway. He finds this man, who pretends to have been an engineer, 
 and who thus may be presumed to have seen adventure, and known 
 hardship — finds him leaning against the archway, shivering a little, 
 and in such a mood of disturbance that he, too, might have enjoyed 
 an unexpected pleasure. He lays his hand on the shoulder of the 
 recusant, and says, — 
 
 " Well, old fellow, why did you run away ?" 
 
 " Dick, I could not bear it !" answers the other, almost piteously. 
 " Remember what has been, Dick, then recollect what is, and think 
 whether I could stay. No — you may call me a coward, if you like, 
 but no!" 
 
 " I am glad that you came, at all events," replies the man of the 
 white hair. " I think that what you have seen may do you good 
 by-and-by, if not at this moment." 
 
DR. CHIPPERCOYNE'S BRACE OF VISITORS. 51 
 
 " But, Dick, shall I have strength to go on ? " 
 
 " You must have strength, old fellow." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose that I must. And so I will. Do not fear me, 
 Dick ; I shall be all right in an hour, and I must be getting away at 
 once." 
 
 " Yes, that will be best, on all accounts. Good-bye until — let me 
 think — yes, Thursday." 
 
 " Good-bye till Thursday." 
 
 The disreputable-looking Philpits lounges and rolls away, through 
 the arch, down the High Street, towards the river, and some possible 
 residence beyond it ; while Mr. Datchery, looking after him for a 
 moment, and indulging certain comments, which he does not put 
 into words, thereafter returns to his room, and makes such a mark 
 in his score, that, finding deficiency of space for it on the door alone, 
 he continues it at either end for appreciable distances on the floor 
 and ceiling. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DR. CHIPPERCOYNE'S BRACE OP VISITORS. 
 
 Rat-tat-tat ! — by the heavy lion's-head knocker of a correspondingly 
 heavy door, of a quite equally heavy-looking house in Gerrard-street, 
 Soho, — that ambiguous quarter, forming a sort of doubtful centre of 
 the triangle of which Oxford-street, Regent street, and Great George- 
 street, Westminster, each with its different and well-ascertained cha- 
 racteristics, form the sides. The house, very old, and yet severely 
 respectable, spite of certain surroundings, worse than doubtful. Some 
 suspicion that the last shower might have done its duty better, in 
 washing away the blacks and grime from the dingy brick front, and 
 its yellow window and door-copings ; but none whatever of the 
 efficiency of the domestic who had last performed hers of polishing 
 the creamy stone of the door-steps : none of the cleanness of that 
 knocker, or the brightness of the four-by-six brass plate on the door, 
 on which was displayed a certain legend blending a name and a very 
 learned profession. 
 
 The door of a surgery, in point of fact. The surgery that of Dr. 
 Preeth Chippercoyne, M.R.C.S., if any dependence could be placed 
 upon the brass plate before-mentioned — its well-kept appearance 
 being at once its guarantee of respectability and candour. 
 
 Two persons alighting from a four-wheeler, and that four-wheeler 
 remaining in waiting while the vigorous application to the knocker 
 was made, as well as during other and subsequent operations about 
 to be chronicled. One of those two persons, Mr. Grewgious, looking 
 less Angular than usual, owing to a certain droop of the shoulders 
 and unerect carriage of the head, as also to a corresponding softening 
 
 e 2 
 
52 
 
 JOHN JASPERS SECRET. 
 
 and want of assertion of the muscles of the face, suggesting that the 
 worthy legal gentleman was being forced bodily into some movement 
 of the propriety of which he was more than doubtful, and of the end 
 of which his impressions were decidedly unfavourable ; the second 
 person, Helena Landless, seeming the antipodes of her companion, 
 not only in those details of age and sex, in which she could not be 
 expected to assimilate him very closely — but in another and not less 
 important detail, the spirit and will manifested in step and carriage. 
 Never had the bright, dark face seemed more alive and alert, winning 
 and commanding ; never had the trim little figure seemed more erect, 
 springy, and suggestive of the animal and meteorological surroundings 
 of the land that gave her birth. If Mr. Grewgious was, so to speak, 
 for the moment under a cloud, it was beyond a doubt that the young 
 East Indian girl was moving in the clear, bright, tropical sunshine 
 of a firm purpose — and that she was as much happier and more at 
 ease, in pursuing that purpose, than she could have been in any 
 imaginable repose — as the stream always is brighter, noisier, and 
 more enjoyant, as well as more enjoyable, when rippling and laughing 
 its active way towards the main, than when it lies dormant, under 
 however pleasant a sky, and seems to have lost force as well as 
 direction. 
 
 Possibly the domestic had over-fatigued herself in the polishing of 
 that unimpeachable door-plate, and was not, on that account, so active 
 as usual ; for quite a moment elapsed between that decided knock, 
 which must have been heard from attic to cellar, and the opening of 
 the door thus vigorously assailed. And that brief space seemed to 
 give opportunity for a few " last words " on the part of each, which 
 may have been as important, in the connection, as those which dear 
 lovers come back once and again to say as they part — or as those 
 which the condemned utters as he takes his last look at the living 
 and active nature of which he is no longer to form an atom. 
 
 " Are you quite sure, my dear young lady, that what you are 
 doing is for the best 1 — that something may not result from it, lead- 
 ing to lasting regret on the part of both 1 " Mr. Grewgious asked, 
 very anxiously, in that pause. " If you have any doubt, it is not yet 
 too late." 
 
 " It is for me to ask whether you have any doubt of the propriety 
 of assisting me," the young girl replied. " If so, it is for me to say 
 to you that it is not yet too late to draw back, and that I must look 
 for assistance in some other direction." 
 
 " No — no, Miss Landless ! " the lawyer rejoined, with the face that 
 had been angular a little flushed. " You know that I did not mean 
 that 1 It was of yourself that I spoke, though I suppose that I 
 managed in some way to drag my insignificant self into the calcula- 
 tion. If you ai-e to go on ." 
 
 " And I am to go on, dear sir, be sure of it, in whatever direction 
 I find assistance." 
 
 " Then / go on, you may be equally sure of that. You are a little 
 young, either for drying up in prison, or having that pretty neck (I 
 hope that you do not mind my calling it pretty, under the circum- 
 
DR. CHIPPEECOYNE'S BRACE OF VISITORS. 53 
 
 stances ?) — stretched by a rope in the hands of Jack Ketch : that was 
 all that I thought of, my dear young lady." 
 
 Helena Landless laughed outright. There are temperaments to 
 which, in the pursuance of a line of duty or impulse, the presentation 
 of the black shadow of the scaffold, in sober earnest instead of half- 
 jest, would prove no more hindrance than the threat of toothache or 
 a lost supper ; and hers, there is reason to believe, may have been 
 one of them. She might possibly have given words to her amusement 
 at the lawyer's lugubrious suggestion, but that at that moment the 
 latter said, — 
 
 " Ah, there is some one coming to the door at last. You have 
 decided : now to go on." 
 
 The belated domestic opened the heavy door, with a mumbled 
 apology. 
 
 "Dr. Chippercoyne : is he in? Yes. Then be good enough to 
 give him my card. We will wait here in the surgery. I have been 
 here before ; and you need not be afraid, my good girl, of our de- 
 vouring the contents of the bottles : I know too well how disgusting 
 they are. Ugh ! — for an Angular man, who should possess no 
 delicacy of perception, Miss Landless, I have a most unreasonable 
 nose ; and all the foul smells of a doctor's shop seem to come out at 
 me through the sides of the bottles, as if they were determined to 
 physic me, whether or no." 
 
 The servant had gone to call the Doctor from some retreat in the 
 upper portion of the building, where he, too, may have been lying in 
 wait, like his medicines, to spring out upon unwary visitors, and 
 enforce the taking of the proper quantity of offensive mixtures, 
 without which human life might be too easily endurable, and the 
 chances of our seeking for a better world correspondingly diminished. 
 
 They were in the surgery, where two heavy chairs proclaimed, in 
 so many words, " Never more than two visitors at a time, under any 
 circumstances." Around them stared down rows of labelled bottles 
 and jars, all more or less unhealthy in complexion, as if some sort of 
 jaundice from their contents had eaten into their very glass ; and the 
 abbreviated Latin of their labels highly suggestive, to an imaginative 
 mind, of the sudden chopping off of and putting periods to lives with 
 which they came in contact. Then there was a row of drawers 
 similarly labelled, where might be supposed confined the less dangerous 
 occupants of the room — those not capable, like their companions 
 above, of gnawing away wood, and thus breaking out, like so many 
 ferocious animals in a menagerie, to the immediate destruction of the 
 unlucky visitor. Mr. Grewgious, in their moment of secondary 
 waiting, took occasion to remark so much, and to add that he should 
 not like to guarantee the correspondingly harmless effect on the 
 human system of the gentlest of them. Then there was a small table, 
 bearing a pair of minute scales, of which Helena, more cheerful as 
 to the pharmacopoeia, remarked that he, as a lawyer, should be pleased 
 with tliem at least, as the traditional appurtenances of Justice. But 
 the lawyer destroyed this hopeful view by reminding her that they 
 were really employed, like only the severer and more unpleasant 
 
54 , JOHN jasper's seceet. 
 
 branch of that Justice, in ■weighing out human lives ; as, so many 
 drachms of this, the patient may live one week ; five grains of that, 
 the mortal career may be expected to close within two days ; half an 
 ounce of the other, death to ensue in half an hour, and in great 
 agony ; &c. &c. 
 
 Dr. Freeth Chippercoyne presently ended all this, and possibly re- 
 lieved poor Helena from never being able to take another physician's 
 prescription while she lived, by making his appearance and a bow at 
 the same instant. A short old man, with a good face, and white hair 
 and whiskers, who took snuff and grimaced like a Frenchman, but 
 in whose presence, without one's quite knowing why, the dangerous 
 animals in the bottles and boxes seemed to recognize their keeper and to 
 be infinitely less formidable. He possessed a hearty, expansive manner, 
 much oftener found than expected (oddly enough) among those who 
 alternately dispense health and illness to their suffering or hypochon- 
 driac fellow-mortals — with a tendency to fall off from this, at un- 
 expected and apparently unreasonable times, into fits of total silence, 
 as notable, if not so celebrated as those " eloquent flashes " starring 
 the conversation of the Great Talker. 
 
 "Ah ! " he said, recognizing an old friend in Mr. Grewgious, "very 
 happy to see you after so long a time — that is, provided you are not 
 ill, as I do not think you are. Proud and happy to know Miss 
 Candless — ah, Miss Landless ! " in response to the introduction, " but 
 sorry that she is to be the patient you decline to be. Patient ! why, 
 God bless me ! now that I look at the young lady, she is no more ill 
 than you are, and I do not know where to look for my — yes, call it 
 victim." 
 
 " No, Doctor, neither Miss Landless nor myself is unwell," 
 answered Mr. Grewgious, on the verge of laughing at what he held 
 to be the peculiarly felicitous word chosen by the other. " But the 
 fact is, that I have brought Miss Landless here, at her earnest solici- 
 tation, to consult you on a matter of some importance, with reference 
 to the health of others, and that I must refer you to Iter for any 
 explanation of what I may professionally call the particulars of the 
 case." 
 
 " Ah ! the young lady, then, is what you would call ' my client,' 
 and what I cannot call ' my patient.' Well, mademoiselle, — quite at 
 your service, I am sure." 
 
 "Thanks for your courtesy; but I shall be obliged to speak with 
 you alone — that is, I believe that Mr. Grewgious does not wish " 
 
 "Eh, what?" 
 
 " Certainly not — not in the least degree. I never have anything 
 to do with medicine, when I can avoid it ; possibly because I am an 
 Angular man, and pills, pestles, plasters, potion-bottles, and nearly 
 everything that medical men handle, are round ; not to mention that 
 you, doctor, are a little round, yourself. The truth is, that Miss 
 Landless, if I understand it (and she will allow me, so to speak, to 
 appear in the case, as her spokesman), wishes to consult you with 
 reference to certain preparations about which I know nothing, and 
 wish to know nothing, but which she believes to involve very im- 
 
dr. chippercoyne's brace of visitors. 55 
 
 portent interests. She needed a physician familiar with the plants 
 and practices of the East Indies ; and I " 
 
 " With the East Indies, eh 1 " the Doctor asked the question in a 
 tone of voice best characterized as startled ; and he stole a glance at 
 the handsome dark-faced girl -with the splendid, dangerous eyes, and 
 then at the old lawyer, whom he had known so long and as so respect- 
 able ; thinking — what 1 For one moment there is no doubt that 
 there swept over his mind a few of the thousand stories of the 
 ascendancy gained by beautiful and designing women over weak and 
 loving men, with the result of fearful crime, degradation, and punish- 
 ment. Could this be one of the instances ? Was this young and 
 beautiful girl a budding Brinvilliers 1 Had his old friend Grewgious, 
 so long proof against all temptation, fallen at last into the toils i 
 Was the requirement an East Indian poison, to remove some person 
 having the misfortune to be in the way 1 Good heaven ! if so, to 
 what was the world coming 1 
 
 All these reflections occupied only a moment ; and the glance 
 accompanying into the handsome face of Helena Landless, and then 
 round at the unhandsome but reliable one of Mr. Grewgious, told 
 him that he had become anxious without cause. Crime 1 no ! — 
 mystery*? very probably. But what of that 1 and what class of men, 
 of all the earth, had more to do with mystery, of right, than those 
 who professionally dealt with the hidden and doubtful in the human 
 body — not to mention the more closely hidden, and much more 
 doubtful, in the human mind ? -So, the Doctor was quite prepared, 
 when the lawyer went on with the reply to his half-startled question, 
 to listen with due equanimity. 
 
 " Yes, I happened to mention your name, Doctor, as that of one 
 whom I had known for many years, and who had passed a consider- 
 able portion of your middle life on the Coromandel coast, and after- 
 wards in Ceylon ; and Miss Landless requested me to bring her and 
 introduce her to you ; that is all." 
 
 " And I am pleased and flattered by the introduction, I am sure," 
 said the Doctor, making a supplementary bow that included both. 
 " Ah, did I understand you to say that mademoiselle wished to confer 
 with me alone 1 
 
 " Yes, Doctor, that was my wish ; and my good friend Mr. Grew- 
 gious, quite understands why I wish to do so," suggested Helena. 
 » " Quite so," assented the Angular man. " In point of fact, Doctor, 
 I am as anxious not to muddle my moderate amount of brains, which 
 are exclusively legal, with anything that the young lady may need to 
 confer with you about, as she can be to waive my company. And I 
 may as well say that I came with her and introduced her, principally 
 because I believed that you had some reason to know my character 
 and reputation, and that my endorsement might be worth something 
 in the event of her making any suggestions to you, which you might 
 otherwise consider a shade dangerous." 
 
 " Eh ? Yes — oh, quite ! " answered the Doctor, a little absently, 
 taking an illuminatory pinch of snuff, in that one instant of the 
 return of his suspicion. 
 
56 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 " I have only to say further,'' Mr. Grewgious continued, " that I 
 fully vouch for the character and standing of Miss Landless, and for 
 the rectitude of the intentions with which she seeks your aid ; though 
 I am by no means prepared to express any opinion on the wisdom of 
 something about which, as I before said, I know nothing and wish 
 to know nothing. I remember that you have a consultation-room 
 yonder ; perhaps you will be kind enough to confer with the young 
 lady there, while I wait here. You will probably not be very long ; 
 and I will endeavour to master my terror of all those dreadful things 
 on your shelves, enough to remain alone with them without screaming, 
 unless some one of them should actually come out from the bottle 
 and attack me." 
 
 " Ah, very good," answered Dr. Chippercoyne, laughing a little at 
 the oddity of the lawyer's conception, and the corresponding fact 
 that he had known some ludicrous horror of the same character to 
 beset simple-minded persons suddenly left for the first time alone 
 before the formidable array of books in a lawyer's office. " If you 
 can make yourself temporarily comfortable, then, without attempting 
 to compound any abstruse prescription while I am gone — and if 
 mademoiselle will do me the honour to accompany me." 
 
 He led the way, taking what he believed to be a surreptitious 
 pinch of snuff as he did so, through the door leading into the con- 
 sultation-room, leaving Mr. Grewgious staring composedly at the 
 dangerous bottles, and gradually falling into an odd fancy for har- 
 monizing the medical Latin of their labels with the law jargon of his 
 own profession — with a result, it need not be said, pointing to head- 
 ache, if not to mild insanity. 
 
 Helena Landless found herself, the moment after, alone with the 
 Doctor, in a room of smaller proportions than that just quitted, 
 whereof the principal belongings were two or three chairs, and a sofa 
 of heavy dark wood, doubly dark with age ; a large bookcase, in 
 which the books looked ponderous and formidable, if not so dangerous 
 as the bottles and boxes without ; and a table, on which lay scattered 
 a few magazines, which seemed to have done duty under the fumbling 
 fingers of preoccupied visitors for at least half a dozen years. 
 
 " Now, mademoiselle," said the Doctor, waving to a seat with the 
 grace of an accomplished courtier, and only taking one himself when 
 the young lady was duly installed, " be kind enough to explain what, 
 I own, seems a little mysterious from the manner of your friend — 
 and to tell me in what way I can serve you." 
 
 " Thanks for the permission," replied the young girl, hesitating, 
 however, a moment in what followed. " I want a certain amount of 
 canahis indica, which I could, no doubt, procure elsewhere in London, 
 but scarcely in so pure a state as you would be likely to have it, 
 after residence in India, and above all in Ceylon ; and I want a 
 certain proportion each of the extract of three other herbs, not very 
 likely to be asked for in London, and probably not in the possession 
 of any other person than yourself in the city — possibly in England." 
 
 Dr. Chippercoyne looked very closely at the speaking dark face of 
 the girl before he answered, as he did, slowly. 
 
DR. CHIPPERCOYNE'S BRACE OF VISITORS. 57 
 
 " Humph ! I fancy that I could name the other three herbs 
 without much trouble. But I doubt whether I should be justified 
 in doing so, or in supplying them to you if in my possession. 
 Do you know, mademoiselle, what would be the name of the 
 preparation compounded of the drug you have named, and the three 
 unnamed % " 
 
 Helena Landless laughed a little maliciously. 
 
 " How shall I give it to you, Doctor 1 In the English or in the 
 Pali?" 
 
 " What, mademoiselle ! You know the Pali t " 
 
 " I should know it well, though I have been for some time out 
 of the habit of speaking it, even occasionally. Perhaps it will be 
 enough if I mention the single word ' bangue,' and say that that is 
 not what I wish to compound, but the same preparation with the dif- 
 ference of one herb, rendering it fit for smoking, and like opium to 
 the taste, instead of in that shape in which its proper administration 
 would be by swallowing." 
 
 Doctor Chippercoyne's face, as she began speaking, expressed 
 extreme surprise ; but before she finished he had been reading some- 
 thing in her countenance and contour, before unnoticed or not duly 
 weighed ; and when she paused, he said, more in statement than 
 inquiry,— 
 
 " You are Ceylonese, mademoiselle 1 " 
 
 " Yes, I am Ceylonese by birth, though of English parentage. I 
 was born and orphaned not many miles in the hills back of Trin- 
 comalee, where my father was engaged in business. I was nursed by 
 a Singhali woman, and lived in communication with the race during 
 all my childhood." 
 
 " Humph ! I know Trincomalee and the country around it very 
 well, though when in Ceylon I practised principally at Colombo. I 
 should probably have remained there, and been by this time a 
 wealthier man than I am, but that I had the misfortune to offer an 
 unintentional insult to the mighty Buddha one day, and so fell under 
 the ban of the rich natives, who were my best paying patients. Dear 
 old Ceylon ! I remember its bright skies and pleasant breezes with 
 delight even yet, and I think that I would like to see a native 
 elephant once more, instead of the miserable apologies for that king 
 of animals that they lead around, and insult, and torture in the 
 menageries." 
 
 " 7 have no pleasant memories of Ceylon," the young girl replied. 
 " My life there was misery ; but I would be happy sometimes to see 
 an elephant once more, or a buffalo, or a tiger ; and I sometimes 
 dream, even yet, of eating bread-fruit and pines, and sleeping under 
 the palm trees." 
 
 " But this is all away from business — not so much what you have 
 been saying, mademoiselle, as my suggestion that led to it," the 
 Doctor recalled himself and his visitor by remarking, " Now to a 
 closer point of that business, which, I may tell you, by the way, I 
 would not pursue a step further except that you have come to me 
 under introduction from my good friend Mr. Grewgious, and which 
 
58 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 I must tell you that I will not pursue a step further now, except 
 under satisfactory answers to two or three questions." 
 
 "The requirement is quite reasonable. Leaving aside names, 
 which I will not give, I am quite ready to satisfy you on any point 
 that you may consider doubtful." 
 
 " First, then, mademoiselle, do you know how deadly a poison is 
 the preparation you require 1 As a Ceylonese you should do so, if 
 you know anything whatever of it ; but have you that knowledge, in 
 point of fact ? " 
 
 " I have. I know the nature of the Indian bangue thoroughly — in 
 both the forms of preparation, as you might have guessed from some 
 words already spoken." 
 
 " Humph ! Yes, those words would convey such an idea, always 
 supposing that you had not been reading up or taking instructions to 
 meet the emergency. From whom did you acquire that knowledge 1 
 — not very proper for a young lady, if you will permit me the liberty 
 of saying so." 
 
 " I recognize the impropriety, Doctor, from any ordinary point of 
 view ; and I answer the question. From my nurse, a woman skilled 
 in native medical preparations, and I sometimes fear in something 
 worse." 
 
 " You mean poisoning, mademoiselle.'' 
 
 " I do." 
 
 " Satisfactory, in a most unsatisfactory way, so far. Second, then : 
 have you knowledge sufficient to take the risk of administering it to 
 some one whose life you value 1 — confident that you know the exact 
 length to which the stupefaction may be allowed to go, without 
 paralyzing the nerves of the brain to such an extent that they fail to 
 set in operation the relieving muscles of the throat, and thus allow 
 strangulation 1 " 
 
 " I have that knowledge." 
 
 " From personal experiments, mademoiselle 1 " 
 
 " No ; from close observation under experiments made by others." 
 
 " "Would you stake your life upon possessing that knowledge and 
 being able to put it to practical use 1 " 
 
 " I would. I have no fear and no hesitation." 
 
 Doctor Chippercoyne, taking another pinch of snuff, not at all 
 surreptitious, glanced again closely at his visitor, and his confirmed 
 impression, deduced from that glance, was, that the young lady could 
 at least be trusted in the detail of nerve — that she would, as she 
 stated, neither fear nor hesitate ! Perhaps some other apprehensions, 
 however, grew out of the very assurance. 
 
 " Humph ! Am I to understand you, then, mademoiselle, as being 
 quite ready to stake the life of the patient upon knowing the exact 
 moment at which to cease the administration ? " 
 
 His glance now was a gaze — a gaze under the brows of half-shut 
 eyes. 
 
 "By no means, Doctor,'' was the reply, ignoring the gaze. 
 " Perhaps I need only say three words, without any connection, to 
 show that my knowledge does not stop at that dangerous point." 
 
dr. chippercoyne's. brack of visitors. 59 , 
 
 " Three words ? Ah, let me hear them, please." 
 
 " Water — syringe — crown." 
 
 Dr. Chippercoyne indulged in one of his most notable " flashes of 
 silence " before answering, though (between two pinches of snuff, one 
 hidden and the other ostentatiously open) he heaved a sort of sigh, 
 that may have been one of relief quite a moment before he said, — 
 
 " You certainly show yourself an adept, mademoiselle. You might 
 almost be trusted, I think, with the preparation, if I had the in- 
 gredients for making ii— so far as the Physical question goes. 
 Suppose that we fall back upon the Moral. Why and for what do 
 you want anything of the sort 1 You wish to make talkee, if you 
 will pardon my using the Indian-English formula ; so much I can 
 easily understand. But why, and to what end 1 " 
 
 " I have promised to answer your questions, Doctor, except in so 
 far as they may involve names ; and I will do so. A great crime 
 has been committed — murder — nothing more nor less — upon — upon 
 a dear friend." Her voice was a little broken here, and the Doctor 
 recognized the fact, but made no comment ; and after a moment she 
 mastered the emotion and went on. " I know his murderer, who is 
 at large and almost unsuspected. He is endeavouring to throw the 
 crime on another." 
 
 " Good God ! " — this was rather an aside than an interruption of 
 the Doctor, who thereupon solaced himself with the largest and 
 most-openly-displayed pinch of the whole interview. 
 
 " That ' other ' is a near relative of my own. The whole affair is 
 wrapped in a mystery that nothing seems able to dispel : the mode 
 of murder, place, disposition of the body " — voice broken again, and 
 tears in the dusky eyes, if the Doctor could only have seen far enough 
 to note them — "everything except the fact, and that only clear to 
 myself and one or two others, including Mr. Grewgious. For the 
 protection of my — my relative, and the punishment of a human tiger 
 — no, I will not insult the noble beast by the comparison ! — a human 
 serpent, whose ways are dark and his bite deadly — I mean to know 
 all, and know it from his own bad lips." 
 
 She paused. The Doctor, much impressed, and a shade frightened, 
 indulged again in one of his intervals of silence before answering. 
 At length he asked : 
 
 " But how — allow me to ask, mademoiselle — how are you to reach 
 this man — this murderer 1 How are you to subject him to the test, 
 all the rest being admitted ? " 
 
 " He smokes opium — is gradually destroying himself with it. I 
 have had him tracked to his lair — no, his nest, and I have the means 
 to control those who supply him with the drug. There — have I not 
 told you enough ? It seems to me that nothing more remains to be 
 said. Can you, and will you, supply me with the means of bringing 
 this man to justice, by his own mouth 1 " 
 
 " On your oath, mademoiselle— no, on something more sacred than 
 any oath — on your word of honour as a lady, are the statements of 
 these circumstances strictly true 1 — and would you use the prepara- 
 tion, if you possessed it, for this purpose and no other 1 " 
 
60 JOHN JASPER'S SECRET. 
 
 For just one instant the expression in the tawny eyes was even 
 more dangerous than themselves. There may be too many questions 
 asked for re-assurance, especially with such natures as that of Helena 
 Landless. But the angry flash passed away, suddenly as it had 
 come, leaving only a slight colour on the brown cheek, as she 
 replied : — 
 
 " On my word of honour as a lady, Doctor, since you think proper 
 to require this repetition — I have told you the whole truth, except 
 the names involved ; and I have the motive I have named to you, 
 and no other." 
 
 One moment more of silence on the part of Doctor Chippercoyne, 
 punctuated by a pinch of snuff of extraordinary size, and only a 
 partial attempt at concealment. Then he said, speaking rapidly and 
 nervously : — 
 
 "Upon my word, Miss Landless, you are an extraordinary person, 
 and I use the expression in a complimentary sense. You are a brave 
 girl, and a determined one. I can trust you, I believe, as I could few 
 persons in England ; and I will. I have the ingredients you desire, 
 though I little thought that I should ever find occasion to use them. I 
 know the whole secret of making the compound you wish : it is at 
 your service. And pray pardon me if I seem to have asked you too 
 many questions : I have really not asked you one more than my pro- 
 fessional duty demands." 
 
 " Oh, thanks ! — a thousand thanks ! — and never mind the questions 
 asked, if I have been so fortunate as to command your confidence at 
 last," answered the young girl, rising, her face all one flush of satis- 
 faction, and the expectation growing out of it. " When may I hope 
 that you will put me in possession of what I need 1 " 
 
 " Not to-morrow, mademoiselle— no, that would not give sufficient 
 time for the drying after amalgamation. Say the day after : if you 
 will honour me with another call then, it shall be at your service, as 
 well as any additional hints that I can give you. And now for our 
 good friend Mr. Grewgious," he added, helping himself to a con- 
 cluding pinch, and really laughing all over at the idea. " Sad, would 
 it not be, if we should find that he had been dabbling in the fear- 
 some drugs after all, and either poisoned himself or some one else ? " 
 
 That apprehension, it is pleasant to say, was not fully realized, on 
 their re-emergence into the surgery. They only found the lawyer, 
 with an expression of pained disgust upon his face, which made the 
 Angularity a trifle in comparison, holding the cage of one of the 
 apparently least dangerous animals in his hand, attentively studying 
 its character and movements, through the glass, in the harmless- 
 looking nuts of a jar of nux vomica ! 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF THE RIVER-BANK. 61 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE DISCOVERY OF THE RIVER-BANK. 
 
 There is a fisherman's hut, of small size and the most unpromising 
 appearance, not far back from the edge of the river, on the grassy 
 bank, at a point a few hundred yards below that at which the small 
 tributary stream empties into it, forming, shortly before it debouches, 
 that timber-impeded and stone-regulated fall known as Cloisterham 
 "Weir. Before it, beyond the grassy bank sloping down to the 
 shelving sandy beach, the broad river runs by, at times pleasant, 
 bright, and sunny, as if it flowed down from some mountain-land 
 where the contaminations of trade had never yet affected the purity 
 of its head-springs or defiled its quiet source ; at others dark, turbid, 
 speckled, and unattractive-looking, as if it bore away on its bosom 
 the foulnesses of some great city sewered into it, with no small pro- 
 portion of the unnameable nuisances inseparable from such localities ; 
 and at still others wild, rough, and threatening, as if it felt in advance 
 certain stirrings of that demoniac nature which would become part 
 of its very life when incorporated with the great sea, — and as if it 
 would willingly prove its line of descent, so to speak, in advance, by 
 foundering vessels, and drowning those on board them, — after the 
 manner of the young savage of legendary lore, who signalizes the 
 approach of manhood, without waiting for its actual coming, and 
 wins the plaudits of the mighty warriors of his tribe, by practising 
 cruelties upon helpless prisoners, women, and others falling into his 
 power, hopefully indicative of the full fiendishness which may be 
 looked for when he takes his destined place in age and rank. Up 
 and down this broad river, from the door of the hut, low as it stands, 
 can be seen passing the dun sails of the boats carrying on commercial 
 pursuits upon it, and at irregular intervals the smoke of the one 
 small steamer, insignificant as to size and wheezy as to the cha- 
 racter of her motive-power, which has been spared to Cloisterham by 
 the setting of traffic into other channels. Half a mile away, east- 
 ward, the gazer from the window of the hut on that side (if there 
 was such a window, capable of allowing the protrusion of his head) 
 could see the roofs and chimneys of Cloisterham, clustering about 
 the river at that point, with the square tower of the Cathedral car- 
 rying the otherwise insignificant view to a certain culmination of 
 grandeur in height, as, no doubt, the Cathedral and the things 
 belonging to it were originally intended to form a corresponding 
 nucleus for the commonness of every-day life and traffic, by which a 
 certain spiritual elevation should be eventually attained. Lower, 
 and yet higher than the roofs of the houses of Cloisterham, might 
 also be seen the rugged line of the ruined monastery, standing between 
 the point of view and the Cathedral, though much nearer to the 
 
62 
 
 JOHN JASPERS SECRET. 
 
 latter. And on the other side (the same privilege of window being 
 assumed) would be viewed the slight promontory formed by the 
 debouching of the tributary, with the white flashing of the waters 
 below the ever-restless weir behind it and riverward. 
 
 This fisherman's hut, holding, as will be remarked, a position that 
 might be envied by many a structure of greater pretensions, is not of 
 such a height as to suggest heart-disease for the occupants, from 
 frequent and long ascents of stairways ; and it lacks that compre- 
 hensive sweep of outer walls, implying that the builder owned all the 
 country round, and wished to enclose as much of it as possible. 
 There is a certain lavishness, however, not to say positive waste- 
 fulness, in its architecture ; for the thickness of its rough walls is 
 such as to create the suspicion that some other building has once 
 fallen in the neighbourhood, the debris thereafter costing nothing 
 more than the labour of removal ; and Mr. Sapsea, if he should 
 apply to it his fine sense of derivation, and his habit of travelling by 
 atmospheres, would unquestionably say, picking up a fragment of 
 the reddish stone : " Old monastery — ruins — carried away — used to 
 build this : that is how / put it." Similarly the roof has a certain 
 lavishness, in workmanship if not in material ; for it seems to lie in 
 sections, overlapping each other, and fastened down by an amalgama- 
 tion of the vegetable and mineral in the shapes of ropes and spikes ; 
 and some of the sections bear odd shapes and curves, reminding one 
 of the roofs of sea-going deck-cabooses, and leading to at least a 
 suspicion that vessels may have been either wrecked or dismantled 
 in the neighbourhood. A chimney there is, of breadth shaming the 
 height, the thick sides making it a miniature hut on the top of the 
 other, wherefrom smoke arises, heavily perfumed with fish-oil, at 
 irregular periods ; and windows and a door there are, though the 
 former are small, and so very dirty, at all times, as to make seeing 
 into them impossible, and seeing out of them unlikely, — and though 
 the latter, refractory as to the trivial use to which it has been put, 
 in comparison with the staid and respectable occupation of other and 
 immovable materials, has a habit of refusing to do duty, and always 
 hanging open by one leathern hinge. 
 
 Out of this hut emerges, also irregularly but usually of a morning 
 when the weather will allow such visits to be paid to the outer air, 
 Crawshe the fisherman, bullet-headed, red -bearded, round -hatted, 
 heavy-booted, tarry-trousered, pea-jacketed, ofttimes sou'westered, and 
 always bearing with him the atmosphere of a mud-bank with fish 
 trimmings. He is the proprietor of a boat on the river below, and of 
 some nets, which seem to divide their time equally and miserably 
 between being soakingly wetted in the river and cracklingly dried on 
 a diminutive net-reel near the hut. The boat, which is often to be 
 discovered lying bottom upward on the bank and receiving tarry 
 lubrication at the hands (also tarry) of the owner, from a kettle 
 steaming with hot pitch and a fire burning thereunder, as if in some 
 odd way it was an animal requiring frequent food and always taking 
 it in by cuticular absorption, — this boat is sometimes accessory to the 
 due immersion and dragging out of the nets of which it constitutes 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF THE RIVER-BANK. 63 
 
 the natural enemy ; to the abduction from the waters of fish so small 
 that the baby-act might be pleaded against their employment in any 
 branch of industry ; and to the purpose of taking out on the river as 
 fares, and rowing aimlessly about, of persons who suppose that they 
 are thus humouring one portion of the sporting British mind by 
 fishing. At which and at all times when permitted by the pro- 
 prietors, or in spite of them, Crawshe, a man of many humble cares 
 and but few enjoyments, but with a heart as brave and a spirit as in- 
 domitable as they may exist in bosoms much better clothed (even 
 decorated), whistles away those cares and doubles those enjoyments, 
 with a constancy which would make his music highly artistic and 
 valuable if a part of that quality could be transmuted into time and 
 tune. 
 
 There is another Crawshe, the female, who makes many of those 
 cares of the male, and yet is by far the worse sufferer of the two. 
 She does not emerge from the hut, if emerging consists in passing 
 entirely beyond it — except at such rare intervals that her last previous 
 time of leaving may at any moment be dated from as an era. She 
 may be seen, however, very often, when the day is pleasant and 
 sunny, standing in the doorway, leaning against one of the posts, and 
 looking out on the world, of which she forms no part — possibly even 
 wishing (sad pass to reach !) that she could change sex, give up all 
 the comparative freedom from toil of her situation, and assume the 
 hardest labour of her husband or others, only to be out once more in 
 that world, no longer house-ridden. For she is a helpless invalid, with- 
 out having suffered any physical injury to bring her to that state : the 
 incapacitating development being constitutional headache, from which 
 she is never exempt, as is her brow never freed from the yellow 
 handkerchief binding it and forming her flag of quarantine. Tears 
 ago the continual recurrence destroyed her modicum of brain, and 
 left her only so much as suffices to fulfil the most ordinary offices of 
 daily life — not enough to allow her unassisted egress from that always 
 open door. 
 
 They have a daughter — the fisherman and she, who emerges from 
 the door only less seldom than her mother, her chain being a double one 
 — toil and shame. She has been pretty, not so many years ago ; has 
 been at service, in a family not far from Cloisterham, in a stately 
 house, of which the tall grey turrets may be seen from the bridge, 
 down the river. She has been wronged, dishonoured, cast out, to 
 come home to the hut and show what even wretched humanity may 
 be worth in the way of a drudge. She is " dreeing her weird," as 
 the hard old Scot would say ; working out her penance, as another 
 school of disciples of the Unmerciful might suggest ; bearing a hard 
 lot, at all events, in the endless and hopeless labour which has already 
 hardened her once fair hands to horn, and the hopeless confinement 
 which has already withered her young beauty like a frosted leaf. Let 
 us hope that, if it is a penance, Exty Crawshe will work it out in 
 this life, and have an equal chance with her sisters for the sunlight in 
 the life beyond ! 
 
 And there is yet another, known to more than the idle and careless 
 
64 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 buffer Datchery, and pitied by them in that non-helpful way in which 
 most brotherly pity falls upon broken humanity. It is the hand of 
 Wrong that has stricken the girl ; it is that of Accident (so-called) 
 which has fallen upon him whom the visitors to the river-side and 
 the rough fishermen along the banks know as Little Crawshe, with- 
 out any regard to his having or lacking another name. Three years 
 ago, when the boy was approaching twelve, they were busy repairing 
 Cloisterham Weir, a spring-flood having swept away a part of the 
 timbers, and disarranged the stonework of the bed. The labour 
 lasted for many days ; and naturally among that large body of spec- 
 tators, which seems necessary to accompany any job in civilized lands, 
 the fisherman's children played no unimportant part on that occasion. 
 They sprang and crawled over and through the heavy timbers, equally 
 when being removed as when lying untouched. A cross-beam 
 slipped from the men's hold during one of those removals ; Little 
 Crawshe's head was half under it as it fell ; the blow on the back ot 
 the head was just sufficient, sparing the skull, which it would other- 
 wise have crushed like an egg-shell, to break away some of the 
 muscles of the back of the neck j the head fell forward helplessly, 
 and has never since been raised, except by the hand of the wearer or 
 some other. Crippled for life, and in the most hopeless manner, 
 unless supplied by some unexpected dispensation with a few of the 
 extra hands of Briareus — for two hands are necessary for profit- 
 able labour in this exigeant world ; and one of the ordinary two 
 must not be employed in holding up the head that would otherwise 
 bow like a broken bulrush. Prom that day Little Crawshe, once ex- 
 pected to be a help to the poor fisherman, has been a burthen — a 
 patient, uncomplaining one, it is true, and the recipient of many a 
 small favour from pseudo-fishermen of the Datchery type ; but still 
 helpless, a burthen and an anxiety to the poor fisherman, who might 
 before have been supposed to possess quite enough of either. 
 
 And still one other member of the household inhabiting the little 
 hut on the river-bank — of the household, if not of the family ; and 
 quite possibly of the latter if words are to be allowed their true 
 meaning. Black Tomboy, so-called in defiance of the large splash of 
 white commencing at the nose, and making the left side a mottle, 
 thence to the middle of the body. Of the Newfoundland breed, in the 
 main, though with a cross in his blood, which has shortened his hair, 
 and added a slight ferocity to his aspect, while failing to deprive him 
 of the heavy-bushed tail, or to diminish his propensity for water- 
 practice. The only member of the Crawshe household, it may be 
 said, who literally causes no anxiety to the fisherman, as he possesses 
 enough of thrift (some malicious persons would spell it differently 
 and call it theft) to provide substantially for his own subsistence 
 without seriously burthening the narrow larder of his keepers {Mem. : 
 He is not fond of fish !) ; and as he always acts as a guard of honour 
 to the poor crippled boy, when permitted, expressing amiability and 
 the reverse at two opposite ends, by the wag of his bushy tail and 
 the drawing back of the red lips from his formidable teeth ; but 
 habitually saying, as he accompanies his helpless charge along the 
 
At rm 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF THE RIVER-BANK. 65 
 
 river-bank or up to the "Weir, in silent language that boasted human 
 knowledge ought to be ashamed not to understand : 
 
 " I say ! — for some cause or other, not mentioned in canine 
 books of surgery, this young master of mine has only one hand that 
 is of any practical use. The other is always busy under his chin. 
 But don't let any one presume upon that ! Let any one insult or 
 impose upon him, when I am in his company — or let him only fall 
 into the river, in which latter case I have observed that people gene- 
 rally want the use of two hands, and have quite enough to do with 
 both to keep their stupid heads from going under water — then you 
 shall see what Black Tomboy is worth, as you may not do for many 
 a long day if you do not give him an opportunity." 
 
 There is a small bench, made of a bit of wreck-plank with four 
 sprawling legs driven into the bottom side of it in auger-holes, stand- 
 ing at one side of the always-open door of the hut — sometimes occu- 
 pied by one of Exty"s to-be-cleaned cooking pots, and quite as often 
 (without scrubbing between) by little Orawshe, in those hours of 
 weary idleness, when no one has allowed him to go in the boat and 
 his feeble limbs have grown weary of aimless walking along the river- 
 bank. He occupies, on such occasions, nearly the whole of the 
 bench ; and Black Tomboy exactly fills the space between the four 
 legs under the bench, thus completing a group of singularly picturesque 
 character, except when the dog chances to stand up, and thus causes 
 some confusion as to the two quatrains of legs, leading the possible 
 observer to look for another quadruped to fill up the space below 
 him, and so on at discretion. There is another fact which the possible 
 observer does not realize quite so readily — that then, even more than 
 at other times, though always to a remarkable degree, the noble 
 brute is in such a state of understanding (no pun intended, on the 
 part of the dog) with the crippled boy, that a mere motion will com- 
 municate an order commonly requiring many words. 
 
 The three — boy, dog, and bench — chance to be grouped in that 
 wise at a certain hour of a certain evening nearly coincident with the 
 visit of Helena Landless to the surgery of Dr. Chippercoyne. The 
 bench may be supposed in good health, as it stands firmly on its legs 
 and maintains its heart-of-oak in usual vigour. So of the dog, who is 
 in fine spirits, as shown by certain forcible waggings and beatings of 
 the bushy tail, indicating a desire for a debarred promenade, but 
 reasonable satisfaction with anything else that may be offered. So 
 with the boy, who, if a cripple, has learned to carry a burthen which 
 might have made Atlas sink at the moment when he had shown his 
 capacity to upbear the globe — the burthen of helplessness and de- 
 formity in early years. He has learned, let us hope — poor little 
 fellow ! to thank God in his childish way, that he has a hand to sup- 
 port the incapable head — nay, even that he has not been so injured 
 by his accident as to be broken-backed and too weak to crawl out 
 into the sunshine, or blind, and thus unable to see those beautiful 
 things in nature, fortunately visible to the eyes of the poor and 
 suffering as to those of the proudest and happiest. 
 
 Mr. Datchery comes up the river-bank from the direction of the 
 
 p 
 
66 JOHN jasper's seceet. 
 
 town. For an idle buffer, living on his means, and so supposably 
 ■with no errand whatever in the world, he is walking somewhat 
 rapidly ; and his white hair floats a trifle away from his uncovered 
 head in the evening breeze coming down the river. Little Crawshe 
 observes him, as he sits with his head on his hand, fortunately looking 
 in the right direction ; and his sad, patient little face lights up with a 
 joy which speaks of past sympathy and kindness from the man who 
 is approaching, and (so the sense of gratitude is compounded, there 
 is reason to believe, in others than Little Crawshe} of past shillings 
 and half-crowns. Black Tomboy, too, has a recognition of the 
 coming man of this period ; for a pat on the head, and a " fine dog ! 
 good Tomboy ! " may have been to him that currency passing for the 
 full worth of silver coinage ; and a short bark of satisfaction and 
 some pretence of rushing out and tearing him hilariously to pieces, 
 make up the signs of that favourable recognition. 
 
 Mr. Datchery comes up to the bench, looking into the open doorway 
 as he passes, to observe whether the sick woman of the yellow hand- 
 kerchief, or even poor drudge Exty, may chance to be within hearing. 
 Little Crawshe slides down from his bench, with his head still in his 
 hand — still in his hand, as he seems likely to be obliged always to 
 hold it, whenever erect, until they lay him out at length between 
 stanch boards affording unyielding support till the day of Cured 
 Deformities and Healed Diseases ; and Black Tomboy, with another 
 satisfied grunt, comes out from under his bench, swings his heavy 
 tail against Mr. Datchery's legs with force enough to topple a man 
 of weak knees, and observes, in his own peculiar vernacular, com- 
 pounded of the clown and the public porter : " Here we are again, 
 sir ! — what can we do for you 1 " 
 
 " How are you, this evening, Crawshey ? " (Mr. Datchery's own 
 affectionate diminutive, and copyright.) "Well enough to do a 
 little job for me, and earn a bright new shilling? Eh? And how 
 are you, old Tomboy Bigfellow ? " the latter greeting with a pat on 
 the head accompanying. 
 
 " Very well, master, thank you. Oh, yes, my knees do not 
 tremble so badly to-day, and I can do anything you wish, for you," 
 is the grateful reply of the boy ; while Black Tomboy answers, in 
 his own pleasedly-growling language : " 1 1 Oh, my health is beau- 
 tiful, and I have on hand a large amount of unexpended energy. 
 Just let some one annoy my young master, here, who continues to 
 have one hand grown fast to his head— or let somebody tumble into 
 the water — then you shall see what you shall see ! " 
 
 Mr. Datchery looks back along the river-bank pathwav by which 
 he has come, and seems to extend his long gaze to the very town 
 beyond, at the point where that pathway begins. Then he asks, — 
 
 " He has not been up the river this evening ? " No name used : 
 there would seem to be only one person of the male sex in the 
 neighbourhood, to these two ; for the boy appears to understand the 
 personality, and answers at once, — 
 
 " No, master. I have not been out of sight of the door for a 
 moment these two hours, and he has not gone by." 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF THE KIVEH-BANK. 67 
 
 " Is it not a little late ? " 
 
 " A little late, master ; but he sometimes comes later. He seldom 
 misses this fine weather, except when he has gone away — up to 
 London, they say." 
 
 " He is not away to-day ; so much I know, for I saw him only an 
 hour since, when he did not see me. He will come, no doubt, and at 
 all events we will be ready for him. Now, Crawshey, there U some- 
 thing to do, very special, and about which there must not be any 
 blunder. Not that I am afraid of you : the wallet business was 
 capitally done, and you can do so well when you try. But, Tomboy : 
 can we always depend upon Tomboy, do you think 1 " 
 
 Black Tomboy, who undoubtedly understands the language of this 
 unreasonable suspicion, answers it with a low growl of not the best 
 temper ; and that utterance reassures Mr. Datchery quite as much as 
 the reply of the boy. 
 
 " Oh, yes, master ; we can trust Black Tomboy always. He is 
 listening to you, as well as I, don't you see ? Go on, please ; for he 
 may be coming." 
 
 " Quite so. ' You are right, Crawshey. "Well, then,"— and Mr. 
 Datchery extracts from an inner pocket, where it has lain bulkily, 
 a dark mass, of which the shape and texture cannot be at first dis- 
 covered, though it eventually resolves into a black scarf. He looks 
 back along the path again, and then forces it, with some difficulty, 
 into the pocket of Little Crawshe's jacket, where the late bulky 
 appearance in his own garment is immediately so duplicated, that if 
 the poor boy should happen at the moment under the eye of the 
 police, he would be incontinently searched as a suspected thief of 
 loose-hanging articles in doorways. 
 
 " Now, then — ah, did that shilling get into your hand, or has 
 Tomboy got it away and swallowed it 1 In your hand ? All right, 
 then. Now, then, you are to keep snug until he goes up towards 
 the Weir this evening, or the next time he comes; then, when he is 
 well up in that direction, and you are sure that his back is still 
 towards you, request Tomboy to run up the path to the point I 
 named before, and leave it there, so that he will be sure to happen 
 upon it as he comes back. Do you quite understand 1" 
 
 " Yes, master ; and so does Tomboy, I think. Please to look at 
 his eyes, and see whether he does not know what you say." 
 
 " Humph ! Well, perhaps he does ; but, Crawshey, I depend 
 most upon you. Don't have any blunder made ; for you understand 
 that he is a great friend of mine, and that I am very anxious to make 
 him a present in this odd way, and very privately. So that if he 
 should happen to stop and make any inquiries about it — though I do 
 not think that he will — you are to know nothing, and Tomboy is to 
 hold his tongue." 
 
 " I understand, master ; and Tomboy and I will do what you wish. 
 Thankee for the shilling. You are very kind to a poor boy always." 
 
 At this moment Mr. Datchery, who may be an impressible buffer, 
 as well as an idle and an odd one, wipes something from his eyes ; 
 and the next moment, with only the single additional word, accom- 
 
 f 2 
 
68 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 panied by a warning shake of the forefinger, " Mind ! " he passes on 
 up the river-path for a short distance, then turns suddenly to the 
 left and immediately disappears, the waving of his white hair being 
 the last object visible, behind a rise leading to a near range of chalk- 
 pits ; to which, indeed, he may be making his way, in order to 
 provide himself with additional material for the Rune Marks on his 
 closet-door. 
 
 Little Crawshe, thus left alone with his dumb companion, applies 
 himself with assiduity to what the English pickets did on the night 
 before "Waterloo, and the Guards for a time on the day of that 
 memorable battle — watching and waiting. 
 
 Black Tomboy waits, too, again retired under his bench, where he 
 pants heavily as if with much exertion, and whether or not possessing 
 any knowledge of the personality waited for, it will need some one 
 more learned than Buffon or Ouvier to decide. 
 
 Not long before another figure comes up the river-side path from 
 the direction of the town. The two at the bench see him, as they 
 saw the other. The face of Little Crawshe takes on a painful 
 mingling of fear and dislike ; and Tomboy, his attention drawn in 
 the same direction, indulges in a single low growl that would not be 
 pleasant to listen to in the event of man and dog being confronted. 
 Then the boy slides down from the bench, and makes a motion and 
 says, " Come ! " to the dog, who thereupon follows with certain 
 symptoms that he would prefer maintaining his position ; and the 
 two disappear, not into the hut, but behind it — into the covert of a 
 miserable little cooking-shed, with abundant loopholes at the rear. 
 
 The figure approaches nearer, and it then becomes evident that 
 the personality alluded to by Mr. Datchery and Little Crawshe under 
 the single word " he," must have been that of Mr. John Jasper. For 
 he it is, easily recognizable at a considerable distance, in spite of a 
 certain haggardness of face and a certain hollowness of eye, not visible 
 in either seven months before, though even then that evil tree was 
 planted, now bearing the fruit of Sodom. There are to be discovered, 
 too, by a close observer, a little stoop in the shoulder, and a certain 
 dropping forward of the head, as if the man is not able to walk quite 
 so erect before his fellow-men ; but only the close observer could see 
 so much, and to most whom he chances to meet he seems ordinarily 
 hearty and vigorous. 
 
 He comes still nearer, walking at easy gait and with the air of 
 one used to the pathway and susceptible to the pleasant influences of 
 the summer evening ; though occasionally he glances round him a 
 little uneasily as one might do who had siispicions of being followed 
 or too closely observed. This until he passes the line of the hut, 
 when the head seems to rise more erect, the step to become firmer, 
 and the gait to be noticeably faster, while the nervous glances around 
 cease altogether. And so he passes on beyond the hut, only the 
 black-clothed back exposed to view, and begins to disappear behind 
 the foot of the same rise which has so lately hidden Mr. Datchery, 
 bending up to the left, between the "Weir and the chalkpits. 
 
 Then occurs something marking another phase in the relations 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF THE K1VER-BANK. 69 
 
 between Little Crawshe and the man with the white hair, but quite 
 as forcibly illustrating that debatable line in intelligence separating 
 the human and the animal. The fisherman's boy, the dog at his 
 side, peeps from the covert of the shed to see that " he " is dis- 
 appearing behind the rise. Only " his " head is visible : " he " is 
 out of sight altogether. He speaks : " Tomboy, pay attention ! " 
 and the white spotted black statue starts into vigorous life, wagging 
 his heavy tail, and throwing up his nose in expectation. Little 
 Crawshe takes from his pocket, with his single hand, the scarf placed 
 there by Mr. Datchery, and holds it for a moment, with " See this, 
 and smell it ! " The dog lays his nose against the pendant woven 
 silk, and utters a growl of rage as he does so, at the same time 
 looking up into his master's eyes with an expression needing at least 
 two natural histories to define. " Take this up the path, there, 
 t' other side the reel, leave it, and come back to me ! " The dog 
 turns aside his head, and opens his jaws to receive the parcel, as a 
 carrier, into that peculiar dog-pocket with no visible bottom, con- 
 structed by freaksome nature — but shivers all over, as if with a 
 sudden chill ; sniffs it, growls angrily, and seems to refuse the com- 
 mission. " Naughty dog ! Bad Tomboy ! Tomboy must be whipped, 
 and have no supper ! " The dog, with another shiver and a whimper, 
 again turns aside his head, and opens his mouth, takes into it the 
 scarf in the four folds arranged by the hand of the boy, and moves 
 away in the direction for which he has received orders. 
 
 But he is no longer, for the present, as Little Crawshe stands at 
 the corner of the shed and watches him — no longer, for the time, 
 Black Tomboy, of the generous breed and the noble instincts. Some- 
 thing in that which he carries in his mouth, unguessed by the less 
 intelligent human brutes who touch it, influences him and his whole 
 dog-being. He does not walk erect, with the long swinging stride of 
 his race ; he rather crawls, with every leg at tension, and the body 
 bent low to the ground. But he goes on, very swiftly in spite of his 
 altered gait, to the spot indicated some two hundred yards beyond 
 the hut. He drops his burthen there, with a growl which the boy 
 rather imagines than hears at that distance; and becomes Black 
 Tomboy again instantly, in his fullest development. If there are 
 avenging furies in dog-mythology, and if they have the unpleasant 
 habit of pursuing members of the canine race at quadruple the 
 speed of the Limited Mail, their chances of overtaking Tomboy 
 before he reaches the shelter of his young master's presence would be 
 slight indeed. His legs seem to be four wings, and his tail has 
 become a rudder for a flying-machine. He leaps, bounds, literally 
 flies; and only an instant elapses before he is back with Little Crawshe 
 behind the hut, growling his late .terror, shivering a little again, and 
 only half compensated for what has evidently been the most unpleasant 
 duty of his whole dog-life, by the smile of his master, the approving 
 pat of his one unoccupied hand, and the pleasant reversal of the late 
 conditional sentence, which may have been held as a virtual " sus- 
 pension of judgment," pending after-behaviour. " Good dog ! Pine 
 old Tomboy ! He sJudl have supper." 
 
70 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 It would seem that among the arrangements made between Mr. 
 Datchery and Little Crawshe, preceding the brief meeting at the door 
 of the hut, there must have been some order incorporated, to watch 
 the fate of the scarf after its deposit on the path ; and possibly the 
 spot at which it was to be deposited may have had some reference to 
 keeping it in view ; for the fisherman's boy does not leave his post of 
 observation with the return of the dog, but watches — watches — 
 watches, this time the up-river way of the path, by which " he " 
 has disappeared, and by which he may be expected to return. 
 
 His watch is broken by an unheeded call from drudge Exty, 
 from the interior of the hut, to come in to supper — and again by 
 a momentary disappearance into the hut, to possess himself of 
 an old sea-glass, long ago given to fisherman Crawshe by a captain 
 whom he had served, and who had been presented with a better. It 
 seems doubtful whether, with his single hand, he can either arrange 
 this cumbrous aid to vision, or hold it in position at the moment 
 when its aid may be needed ; but that point can be better decided 
 after witnessing the experiment. 
 
 And his watch certainly lasts longer than might have been 
 expected. Possibly, Mr. John Jasper may have been feeding his love 
 of nature with the music of falling waters at the "Weir, or making 
 that spot, where the watch and breast-pin of his dear boy were dis- 
 covered, a perpetual new point of departure in his quest after the 
 murderer. At all events, he does not come back too soon for pur- 
 poses of close observation ; for the first faint shadows of dusk, even 
 in the long summer twilight, are falling, when Little Crawshe sees 
 him emerge from behind the foot of the rise, and walk rapidly on 
 towards the town. - 
 
 Black Tomboy, perhaps fatigued by the mental and physical strain 
 of his late exertions, or dreamily musing on the inferiority of men 
 to dogs as a race, lies with his big head between his great paws, his 
 eyes closed, and supposably unaware of his returning presence. 
 
 Suddenly the boy-watcher, who has managed to bring the old sea- 
 glass into focus and range, with the one hand displaying almost 
 the dexterity of two — sees John Jasper pause, as one might do 
 who saw either a serpent or a jewel in his path — stopped by either 
 danger or temptation. Then he sees him, after a moment, make a 
 dash forward and hurriedly pick up the scarf, running it immediately 
 thereafter through his fingers, and bringing one of the ends close to his 
 eyes, as if in search of some mark capable of identifying it. Then he 
 sees him half drop it from his hands and stagger back, as one who has 
 received a sudden blow in the face. Then he observes that he 
 staggers against the net-reel, which stands not far from the path, and 
 appears to be suffering from some convulsion which shakes him like 
 an ague. Then he seems to recover from the worst phase of his 
 spasm, by a violent effort, which brings his hands to his throat — the 
 scarf falling to the ground meanwhile. Then he picks it up ; looks 
 at it with apparent hesitation • at last crams it into one of the 
 pockets of his coat, with an energy like that of anger ; then removes 
 his hat, and draws his hand across his brow, with the motion of one 
 
THE DISCO VEET OP THE RIVER-BANK. 71 
 
 wiping away heavy perspiration in that uncleanly manner ; then 
 staggers away from the net-reel, and resumes the path towards the 
 town, with his head bent much lower than when he came, and certain 
 stumblings, which denote that the eyes are not looking at the way 
 he is traversing; — rather gazing into space, the future, the terrible, and 
 the unknown. 
 
 And well they may do so — those eyes. For who can measure that 
 undescribed horror, the rising of the buried? What torture had 
 Macbeth, in a mentality which we must believe to be keen and 
 sensitive, like that of the unbidden sitting of Banquo at his table % 
 And what, for John Jasper — what have these mute witnesses of a 
 deed more carefully and calculatingly committed than any other in 
 all the long annals of crime, to do with the outer world from which 
 they were once so effectually buried ? Two days since, the wallet 
 with the very name of the " dear boy !" to-day the scarf, damnably 
 the same, as the initials give only too certain evidence ! If these are 
 loos* in the world, what else may not be 1 What a farce is closest 
 concealment, what a mockery the very name of security ! And 
 whence and how all this ? Has nature — dreadful thought ! — in some 
 convulsion, broken through all laws that held the hidden and the 
 secret close, so that to-morrow — or, why not to-night ? — the folly of 
 past ages may become the awful wisdom of the present day, and 
 spectres haunt all places where the hand of crime has done its 
 undiscovered work ? Or is human malice — thought no less dreadful — 
 playing even more cunningly than the hand of crime itself? Is sus- 
 picion abroad, with material proof in its hand ? Is justice aroused ? 
 Which way to turn, in a labyrinth become too thick for sight or 
 judgment? How to know the truth — be it that miserable best 
 which yet remains, or that unnamed worst which every new develop- 
 ment renders more profitable ? Ah, there remains one refuge still — 
 the drug. Opium — its blackest dreams are paradise to that accursed 
 world of real life, which always opens at some foredoomed hour to 
 guilt ! 
 
 Certainly Mr. Datchery, if, instead of being a single buffer of easy 
 disposition and idle habits, living on his means, and merely seeking 
 Cloisterham for its antique picturesqueness and inconvenience, he 
 was the most acute, the most persistent, and the most unscrupulous 
 of revengeful foes — could scarcely invent a more exquisite torture 
 of punishment for his victim, than that tipon which he appears to be 
 stumbling in the mere development of his indolent but somewhat 
 meddlesome good-nature ! 
 
 But what is this which John Jasper sees, through the gatheringdusk, 
 when he is well down the river, opposite the ruined monastery, and 
 entering the town? He seems to feel it, as he rather totteringly reels 
 and plunges forward than walks with his usual step. It seems black, 
 and it bears, through the obscurity, something like the shape of a 
 dog. It keeps a certain distance behind him, on the path and after- 
 wards in the street — a certain distance : no more, no less. He 
 pauses : it stops. He goes on : it follows. Once he musters courage 
 to pick up a stone against which he has touched his foot, and to 
 
72 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 throw it at the shape of fear : it utters no sound, gives no token of 
 molestation — only stops -when he pauses, and follows when he goes 
 on. He sees it— or thinks that he sees it — following him, at the 
 same certain distance, to the very archway of the Gate House. He 
 is doubtful, as he goes up the postern stair, enters and shuts the 
 door, whether he shall find that he has left it behind him ; but he 
 seems to have done so, for it is not in the room. No — it is not — it 
 cannot be ; for, looking from the window, towards the Close, as he 
 draws the curtain that now shuts away so little, he sees it dimly 
 through the thickening dusk, apparently at the same distance from 
 him as before, sitting erect and looking at that window. 
 
 What is it 1 he asks himself, as he strikes a light and falls half- 
 fainting into his chair. What is it 1 — a dog of actual life, thus 
 following him ? — a mere phantom of the imagination, conjured by 
 that fearful something equally black in his pocket 1 — or a ban-dog of 
 hell, hunting him silently to his doom ? 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ALL THE DAUGHTERS OP HER FATHER'S HOUSE. 
 
 Among the ills the most difficult to bear, of the long catalogue to 
 which the holding of affection subjects us, most surely may be 
 counted that which sees a loved one pained in body or in mind, and 
 yet lacks power to counteract disheartening influences, except as 
 physical disease, beyond the doctor's skill, may be alleviated hour by 
 hour. To many a man — and all the more because the heart was 
 tender to the faintest touch of sympathy — the task of sitting by some 
 loved one's bed, witnessing pain there was no power to soothe, has 
 been a sorer trial of the courage than marching up to any battery, or 
 daring elements in wildest strife. And if, as is certain, this is true 
 of bodily disease, a thousand times more painful must it always be to 
 sit beside the sick-bed of the soul, and have no power to still its 
 murmurings. For doing this so better far than man has power to do 
 — for being ever and again that ministering angel who has courage 
 not to flee away when only fiercest ravings or most weak complaints 
 repay the efforts of unwearied care — for these, if nothing more stood 
 to her credit in the great account, would woman be far superior to 
 man, and worthy of the crown of Love as matched against his diadem 
 of Strength. 
 
 Helena Landless, though she may scarcely have thrown into so 
 many words the reflections connected with her situation at this 
 period, cannot well have avoided becoming aware how circumstances 
 had placed her in one of the most difficult of positions, little suited to 
 
o 
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 a 
 
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 B 
 
 (1 
 O 
 
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 o 
 
 
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ALL THE DAUGHTERS OP HER FATHER'S HOUSE. 73 
 
 her young life and inexperience, — and how most difficult of all must be 
 the task of winning back her brother to the hope and strength which 
 seemed to have gone out of him like a lost quality. 
 
 It might have seemed to be enough, surely, that the young girl, so 
 lately without a care beyond those connected with the unfortunate 
 circumstances of her early life, should have come, in so brief a space, 
 to carrying in her bosom the heart of a widow, who had not only 
 never been wedded, but had not even been wooed ; enough, yet more 
 surely, that with this should have been combined that fearful duty to 
 which in the exercise of her highest conscientiousness she had set 
 herself — at once to avenge the man she had loved and protect the 
 one remaining dearest to her ; it seemed more than enough that at 
 this period she should be called upon to meet and combat, in its 
 worst form, the mental disease of that remaining dearest one whom she 
 was changing sexes to protect. 
 
 For Neville Landless was, at this time, utterly and thoroughly 
 broken down, in spite of the efforts made to prevent that issue of 
 his wrongs, by both Mr. Grewgious and Mr. Crisparkle, and in 
 spite of the untiring devotion of his sister, which seemed to 
 subordinate all other thoughts and wishes to his will. That consti- 
 tutional irascibility, of which the clenched hand had given Mr. 
 Crisparkle even better evidence than his words, had been rather 
 supplemented than replaced by the melancholy and discoiu - agement 
 succeeding his arrest and disgrace. He followed, with almost painful 
 assiduity, the course of reading marked out for him by the clergyman 
 and superintended by the lawyer ; but he did so more than half 
 mechanically, and with the very slightest influence produced upon his 
 mentality. He held the same invincible objection as at first to 
 appearing in the light of day, even when there could be no probability 
 of his meeting any person who had previously known him — so that 
 only occasionally at night, and then under the urgent persuasion of 
 his sister, he quitted at all his place under the roof, where he may be 
 said to have nested like a wounded bird of the eaves. 
 
 He was subject to long fits of moody abstraction, during which 
 not a word could be won from him, for hours, by the most tender 
 solicitude ; and these were varied not seldom by other fits bearing 
 something of the character of paroxysms, and marked by restless 
 stridings of Ms little room, his face dark, troubled, and threatening, 
 his hands often beating together in what seemed impotent rage, and 
 his whole action that of a caged animal blending unconquerable 
 impatience at its confinement with fear of anything lying beyond it. 
 
 What had become, now, of that silent sympathy between the twin 
 brother and sister, spoken of, as a harmless boast, in those first days 
 at Cloisterham, and of which only the truth has been told in stating 
 that through its means each divined the thought of the other, nearly 
 always, without the utterance of a word? Alas! — another truth 
 must be told of this tenderest of all the relations of life — that there 
 are certain conditions under which only the twin-beings can retain their 
 full intimacy of communion — and that the first of those conditions, 
 in their instance, had been broken. No other and dearer tie, how- 
 
74 JOHN jaspee's secret. 
 
 ever different, must come between the two persons of this pre-natal 
 compact, or both are changed thenceforth. And such an inter- 
 position had come to each ; both Helena Landless and her brother 
 
 Loved, how unfortunately, what words can say 1 It bad been the 
 fate of the sister to conceive a passion for a man already betrothed, 
 that betrothal only broken the very hour before his murder. It had 
 been the fate of the brother to conceive a similar passion for a 
 ■woman standing in the same relation, and from whom, when released 
 by that murder, he neither dared to look on nor ask for one answering 
 throb. His shame had come in the accusation of his committing 
 that very murder in jealous rage for her ; and if love between them 
 could thenceforth be possible, would he not seem to be trampling 
 upon the dead in breathing a word of that love, at whatever distance 
 of time 1 Truly, it did not seem easy to conceive of two who had 
 more signally wrecked themselves in a few weeks and a first venture, 
 than the occupants of the two rooms under the roof at Staple Inn ! . 
 
 What words had she, self-appointed the comforter, with which to 
 comfort him, the discouraged and the disconsolate % Fewer even than 
 she might have found at the day of his first coming. Was there not 
 a possibility, then, that some day in the far future would arrive, in 
 which she would have at least the privilege of showing to him in 
 darker and worst-discouraged hours, Rosa, recovered at last from the 
 shock of Edwin Drood's death, freed from her lingering apprehension 
 of John Jasper, and remembering the unfortunate engagement as 
 only one of the episodes of a school-girl's life, learning to love her 
 brother, and come to be so much better a companion and consoler 
 than herself 1 And had she not really hoped to be able to use that 
 argument for patience — that proof of so much yet remaining^and being 
 worth striving for 1 But of this, what was left now 1 That had 
 happened, complained of so often in another shape, by fathers and 
 mothers who have surrounded darling daughters with the utmost 
 wealth of parental love, to find each of them swept away, almost 
 beyond their knowledge and quite beyond their control, in some 
 fateful hour, by the coming of a mere stranger. The anxious sister 
 had suspected — she knew only too well, now : Tartar had come, 
 brown as some tropical fruit of which the outside gave only the 
 least promise of the luscious feast within ; fresh and reviving in 
 character and conversation, as she remembered some of the breezes of 
 the very tropics of which he would speak. Tartar had come ; the 
 empty heart was empty no longer ; Neville Landless's chances of 
 winning her, if any he had ever possessed, were beyond recall ; and 
 on that one possible ray of light in the future, darkness had closed 
 down for ever. Really there seemed little left with which to cheer 
 and comfort the discouraged ; and it needed no less than one of the 
 Florence Nightingales of the hospitals of daily life, to remain by that 
 figurative bedside of a wounded spirit. 
 
 So stood affairs between the young man, his sister, and his narrow 
 world, when they returned late one evening from a walk into which 
 she had succeeded in persuading him — that walk taking, oddly 
 
ALL THE DAUGHTERS OF HER lTATIIEE's HOUSE. 75 
 
 enough, not the Oxford and Regent Street directions, into which she 
 ■was in the habit of drawing him whenever possible, but leading him 
 through the doubtful neighbourhoods of Soho and the Seven Dials. 
 Perhaps the poor young fellow felt that he faltered less, moving 
 among scenes of poverty and misery, than where more of luxury 
 and enjoyment met his view : perhaps he was being led by paths 
 which he did not understand, towards that eventually to form his 
 life-work, and lift him above all, which then seemed so cruel in the 
 providence of God. 
 
 He had been unusually silent, even for him, during their absence 
 from the house ; and when they returned to their own room, and 
 Helena bent herself to amuse and interest him there, the same ten- 
 dency continued until chased away by something quite as alarming. 
 For many moments he sat in the most hopeless of postures, his 
 head upon his hand, and apparently heedless altogether of the pitying 
 face so near his own ; then a quick shudder ran over his frame, he 
 dashed away the ^.air that had fallen over his eyes, sprang to his 
 feet with something half uttered, that Helena trembled to believe a 
 curse — and commenced striding, rather than walking, the floor of his 
 apartment, with that right hand clenched, as Mr. Crisparkle had seen 
 and reprobated it months before, and with all the more dangerous 
 elements of his character evident in set lip and lowering brow. 
 
 " Neville ! — brother ! what excites you so fearfully, and why will 
 you not speak to me 1" at length asked the sister, after this angry 
 stride of the room had continued for many moments. 
 
 " Because I am not fit to speak to you, or to any one," was the 
 answer, coming apparently through clenched teeth. " Because there 
 is murder in my heart, and I think I only need opportunity to prove 
 that the worst they have said of me is true." 
 
 "Neville! — brother!" the sister repeated, in a tone that now 
 blended alarm with her anxiety. " What do you- — what can you 
 mean 1 Are you tired of me, and is it me whom you wish to kill by 
 becoming so unlike yourself?" 
 
 " To kill you ? No !" he answered, for that one moment softened 
 by that word. " No, you know that I would give my life for yours, 
 if there was the least occasion for the sacrifice. But how do you 
 know " — and he still kept on with clenching hand, and striding foot 
 — " how do you know that I am ' becoming so unlike myself,' as you 
 call it 1 What if I should be merely becoming myself ? — throwing 
 off all the shams and pretensions in which I have been wrapped, 
 even from you, and merely showing you the combination of weak 
 fool and incarnate devil that. I really am 1 They have accused me of 
 being a murderer — if they have not put the brand of Cain on my 
 brow, they have at least made me feel something like it burning 
 there ; and I look in the glass, sometimes when you do not see me, 
 and wonder whether there is not a stain that will by-and-by become 
 visible to all eyes !" 
 
 " Oh, Neville ! Neville !— my brother !" 
 
 But still he did not heed her, and went on, unceasing alike in his 
 walk and in the torrent of mad words accompanying. 
 
7G 
 
 JOHN JASPERS SECRET. 
 
 " Hush ! do not interrupt me, for I know what I am saying better 
 than you. What if they were right after all J" 
 
 "Neville!" 
 
 The word did not come, as the preceding ones had done, as expres- 
 sible of mere alarm and anxiety : it came out hardly, and with a 
 fearful effort, through lips that seemed to be frozen with horror. 
 She repeated it, with an addition which at last arrested the foot of 
 the reckless promenader. 
 
 " Neville ! — my God ! — what do you mean ? " 
 
 He saw, as he turned, the wild expression of her eyes : that com- 
 pounding of ferocity and dread which might so easily amalgamate to 
 Hate. He saw her clutch at the back of the chair by which she was 
 standing ; she, who never before, in all his life with her, had faltered 
 in nerve, or given sign of being moved quite beyond herself. Great 
 fires, they say, extinguish little ones : the agony on that face recalled 
 the half-mad man to himself in a moment ; and, as he caught her in 
 his arms, he said, — 
 
 " Helena ! Sister ! What is it ? What have I said or done, to 
 move you so 1 " 
 
 " What if tltey were right, after all ! " She repeated the words 
 that he had used only the moment before, and with the same in- 
 definable hardness in the intonation, as if the lips that uttered them 
 were really stiffened by some overwhelming revulsion that could only 
 be horror. And she did not come into his embrace, as he attempted 
 to draw her — for the first time since they had been old enough to 
 know the endearing names of brother and sister. 
 
 " Helena ! Sister ! what is it 1 " 
 
 She did not reply again : she leaned back against the wall near 
 which they were standing, closed her eyes, and tried to think, while 
 the reckless and half-unconscious cause of that agony watched her 
 with a horrified fear only second to her own. 
 
 What was it 1 Simply this — nothing more nor less. For that 
 one moment, the brother of Helena Landless, uttering words for 
 which he had neither necessity nor warrant — dangerous and irre- 
 sponsible as any madman — had stricken her to the heart with a fear 
 that he had indeed been the murderer of Edwin Drood ! 
 
 Impossible ! — let no man say. There are no impossibilities in the 
 career of madness, or in that of its kin, reckless imprudence. Nor 
 from this hour until the Day of Doom, let any dream of characters so 
 pure — of places in the world's esteem so high — of love so perfect in 
 the dearest hearts as should inspire implicit confidence, that the 
 holder may not weaken or destroy the one or the other by his own 
 word or deed. If the worst foes of a man are those of his own 
 household, so his worst and most dangerous manifestations may be 
 those of his own lips — lips for which the command : " Thou shalt 
 not bear false witness ! " has an application as important, if not as 
 general, to false witness against one's self as against a fellow-man. 
 The world is old enough to have done with the hideous masks with 
 which cruel boys start out from doorways and frighten their sisters 
 or some group of younger children ; and it may be old enough to 
 
ALL THE DAUGHTERS OF HER FATHER'S HOUSE. 77 
 
 learn another and not-less-needed lesson of that property in manhood 
 which no one has a right to profit, even temporarily, either in 
 braggadocio, passion, recklessness, or mock-humility. 
 
 Incredible that the sister could even for one moment have doubted 1 
 Perhaps not — all things considered. What guarantee had she, more 
 than others, of his innocence 1 The knowledge of what she believed 
 to be his disposition — and his own words of horror and loathing of 
 the crime ? Ah ! here were the very words of his own mouth — why 
 not as possible to believe as the others 1 — proclaiming the fact that 
 he had no horror or loathing of the cyime — that he had, as he himself 
 phrased it, " murder in his heart ; " that his real self was not his 
 better self, but that ungovernable and savage animal impulse ; that 
 those " might have been right, after all," who laid the weight of 
 blood upon his head ! 
 
 This not for long : it could not be for long, without something 
 occurring to one or both, for which no time could ever yield a com- 
 pensation. Helena Landless, still standing and still half out of that 
 offered embrace, opened the eyes that had been closed in that interval 
 of miserable thought, and looked into the face of her brother. Then 
 she came nearer, while he stood silent and surprised — put both her 
 hands on his two shoulders, and looked deep into the eyes that had 
 been a study to her own faithful orbs since childhood. And as she 
 looked, the great horror rolled away. No — the brother of her love 
 might be mad, but he could not be — was not, a murderer even with 
 his own fearful words as his accusers ! No — she had wronged him 
 beyond forgiveness, even in that momentary thought ! Had she 
 before been devoted to him ? — she must be doubly devoted now, after 
 having done him a wrong, of which she almost thought — uncal- 
 culating and generous soul h — that instead of merely entertaining it 
 for one lightning instant in her own mind, she had thrown it out 
 into the world and done him injury beyond recall ! 
 
 So it was that the handsome tawny eyes changed back from their 
 expression of doubt and terror, to one of affection unutterable. And 
 so it was that she went into the embrace before half-refused, kissed 
 him fondly, and said with more than all her past tenderness, — 
 
 " Poor old boy ! how weak and nervous you have grown ! and 
 how you almost frighten me sometimes, when you fall into these 
 dreadful moods ! " 
 
 And he ? What was the effect upon him, of this culmination of 
 morbid passion, and its result 1 Diseases of the mind, more than 
 any others afflicting humanity, often require violent remedies — as 
 maniacs have been found restored to reason under shocks that might 
 have been sufficient to dement the sane. And such a shock had 
 Neville Landless experienced, whether he had or had not read the 
 whole awful truth for one moment revealed by his sister's eyes. He 
 had terribly shocked and pained her — that was quite enough to 
 know. He had seemed for one instant on the verge of losing her 
 love — of becoming to her a thing of fear and distrust : that was 
 more than enough to probe him to the very bottom of his being, and to 
 throw into shape and form resolutions of endurance before only too 
 crude and general. 
 
78 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 " Forgive me, sister, as you have forgiven me so often ! and I will 
 try never again to pain you so much by my wild words and my mad 
 actions." This he said, and this was all that he could say, as his 
 arms closed around the lithe waist in that answering embrace ; and 
 then, as the young girl disengaged herself, after a few words more of 
 fondness and reassurance, he walked away to the window and looked 
 out upon the summer night, leaving her to busy herself with some 
 detail of his apartment that needed setting in order before leaving 
 it for her own. He looked around after a few moments, and she 
 was gone — strangely enough, without having said good night. So 
 he resumed his watch from the window, over the dusky roofs and the 
 scattered lights of the great city — portions and details of a labyrinth 
 which fitly seemed to typify his own life, that had neither object nor 
 prospect — but realizing more closely than he had ever before done, 
 the besotted folly of that man who, lost in such a labyrinth, should 
 merely moan and make no effort at finding his way, or failing to 
 make use of those lights, blind and confused at first, but the most 
 intelligible of guiding stars to the careful and the initiated. Then 
 he heard what he supposed her returning step, after a few additional 
 minutes, looked around again, and found an unbidden and unan- 
 nounced stranger, who had taken that opportunity of intruding him- 
 self, in spite of the locked doors leading to the hall-way ! 
 
 He was of spare figure and middle height, with handsome dark 
 face and intelligent expression ; and he wore dark clothes bespeaking 
 him that cross between the gentleman and the young man employed 
 in some description of trade, the most difficult of all classes to 
 " place " beyond doubt. He had not shown the courtesy, on entering 
 the room, of removing his round-crowned hat, which showed the 
 peculiarity of sitting a little high on his head ; while the hair hanging 
 beneath it seemed a little thick, and, so to speak, bunchy. Take him 
 all in all, he was one of those handsome young fellows of whom one 
 may meet with a hundred during a day's walk, about the better 
 portions of London, and whom one would be likely to pass without 
 a second glance^ unless enough at leisure and unoccupied to bestow a 
 moment of reflection on the fact that fine eyes and a certain feminine 
 tidiness of manner are not monopolized by the female sex of England. 
 
 Of course, Neville Landless did not need more than a second glance 
 to recognize his sister, though a stranger would certainly have been 
 driven to at least a third, and even then hesitated before speaking ; 
 and as a consequence the masquerading young lady lost that special 
 triumph which would have been found in momentarily confusing and 
 forcing the wrong word from one who knew her best. It was not 
 the first time, by any means, that the brother had seen her in a 
 corresponding disguise, though a long time had then elapsed since 
 the last instance. Seas as well as years rolled between the latest 
 previous masquerade of that character, and the present ; and he had 
 never before seen her half so well disguised, whether for his own 
 eyes or those of indifferent spectators. For, as he noticed at his 
 second glance, the vest had been so skilfully " made up," by some 
 expert tailor or practical costumier, that the woman's shape was 
 
ALL THE DAUGHTERS OK HER FATHER'S HOUSE. 79 
 
 entirely concealed, and only the too-diminutive size of the hands and 
 feet remained to make betrayal likely. 
 
 His first words showed the recollection of previous disguises, with 
 which he associated the present ; those next following gave evidence 
 that he had no idea of any necessity for this change of personality. 
 
 "Ah, my handsome boy, again ! " he said, in a lighter mood than 
 that of any portion of the late conversation. " What name was it that 
 you figured under, dear, the last time that we tried it, and when we 
 made the run to Colombo, and thought that we had succeeded — ' Joe 
 Gilfert,' was it not 1 " 
 
 " Yes, ' Joe Gilfert,' and you were ' Tom Gilfert,' and we had just 
 heard that our father was very ill in England, and were anxious to 
 get home at once — don't you remember ? But, tell me, in spite of 
 your cruelty in knowing me at once — how well am I ' got up ? ' Isn't 
 that what they call it ? "Would any one else recognize me readily 1 " 
 
 " Upon my honour, no ! " he answered. " I do not believe that 
 any other person living than myself, without a closer examination, 
 could suspect you. How very well the figure is concealed ! But 
 tell me two things. When did you come into possession of these 
 clothes, as I have never seen them before ? and if they are new, as I 
 think, why have you gone to the expense of procuring them 1 I hope 
 not merely to amuse me ? " 
 
 " No, brother, not merely to amuse you, though that might be 
 objeot enough, dull and lonely as you are. I have a use for them; I 
 have something to do in them. You see that I am answering your 
 last question first. I need to go where I cannot go in my own sex 
 or dress, and where I can sejpd no one to act for me ; that is why 
 your ' handsome boy, Joe Gilfert,' has come back." 
 
 " Helena, dear ! " The brother had been examining her face, as 
 she spoke, and saw that under the playful air she had assumed, there 
 was an expression of determination, almost threatening in its earnest- 
 ness. Yery different to the wild, startled gaze that had met him half 
 an hour before — the glance of her eyes, now deepening to something 
 very like fierceness, told the intimate associate of her life that no 
 holiday frolic was involved in this temporary unsexing of herself; 
 that there was work of fearful earnest to be done, and that she would 
 ■do it, bar her way what might. 
 
 " Helena, dear ! " he repeated, "you are wiser than I am, as well 
 as braver. No — do not stop me : I know what I am saying now, if I 
 did not when I was speaking, only a little while ago. I shudder to 
 see you wear that dress, wherever you may have procured it. You 
 are going into danger more for me than for yourself. Can you think 
 to what a position that reduces me ?" 
 
 " Danger 1 No, brother, I do not believe that I am going into any 
 danger whatever ! " and the face of the young girl, high, hopeful, and 
 determined, showed that she was only speaking what she believed to 
 be the truth. 
 
 " You are going into something that may lead to meeting and 
 collision with him : I know so much, quite as well as if you told me : 
 is there no danger in that 1 " 
 
80 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 " Danger, brother 1 No ! You are right, however, in one thing. 
 I am going into conflict with Mm, but it will not be one to involve 
 danger worth the name — only a visit or two to an unpleasant neigh- 
 bourhood, and a little repulsive company, so far as I have any reason 
 to believe." 
 
 " But — I say it again — do you realize in what a position this 
 places me ? Suppose that it may have been so throughout childhood, 
 and that I endured it — what then? Is it to be so always ? Our 
 father left two children, a boy and a girl : is the sister always to play 
 the part of the man, to defend the brother 1 and is the brother always 
 to allow the sacrifice to be made for him 1 I tell you no, Helena. I 
 may not understand so well what needs to be done, but you can 
 certainly instruct me, and I have yet to learn that I am deficient in 
 animal courage, whatever may be my mental infirmities. You were 
 endeavouring to incite my true manhood, half an hour since : will 
 you do it by usurping the place and credit of what manhood belongs 
 to our family 1 You are ' all the daughters of our father's house ' : 
 do you wish to be ' all the sons too,' for my sake, while I am living 
 and with quite the average of health and nerve 1 No, thank you ; 
 this must not and shall not be ! " 
 
 Helena Landless looked proudly on the speaker, as he concluded : 
 even if there was a shade of pettishness and dissatisfaction in his 
 words, they were nevertheless healthy and hopeful. Still there was 
 nothing to which she could bow, as her reply soon told him, with the 
 addition of a startling item of knowledge which almost induced him 
 to look upon her again in a certain doubt as to the personality. 
 
 " Stop, Neville, dear ! " she said. " Before you say another word,. 
 / have something to tell you which may change the position of affairs 
 in your mind, and show you that you do not stand half so dependent 
 upon me as you would persuade yourself. Answer me one question, 
 please. Do you believe that in dealing with you I speak the truth 
 entirely and always ? " 
 
 " Always and unconditionally — yes." 
 
 " That I make no reservations, mental or other 1 " 
 
 " I have always believed so, sister, as I know that I have always 
 so dealt with you. But why ask the question 1 " 
 
 " Because T have something to say at this moment, which may sur- 
 prise you, and almost lead you to believe me guilty of a subterfuge. 
 Stay, have we not been standing long enough ? and can you not 
 oblige Joe Gilfert, whose trousers you have now studied to full ad- 
 vantage, with one chair, and yourself with another % Thanks. You 
 believe, Neville, seeing me in this disguise, that I am engaged in 
 some enterprise threatening to him. I acknowledge that so much is 
 true. You believe, next, that I am proceeding to extreme measures 
 against him, principally because he is threatening you more closely, — 
 that I am acting chiefly and in the first instance for your protection. 
 You need not answer : I know that you think so. Upon my word 
 of honour, such is not the truth : I have another and a personal 
 motive, stronger even than my desire to keep you safe from his 
 hands." 
 

 i Wr^i 
 
 W&mmfMMmM, 
 
ALL THE DAUGHTERS OP HER FATHER'S HOUSE. 81 
 
 " Another and a personal motive, sister ! " The tone in which, he 
 emphasized the fourth word showed that the young girl had been wise 
 in recalling to his mind the habitual candour of their intercourse. 
 
 " Yes — another and a personal motive, with which you can have 
 nothing to do, and for which you cannot be in any manner held 
 accountable." 
 
 " What — what has he done to you 1 " There seemed a whole 
 world of possibilities in that broad, eager questioning. 
 
 " He has killed the one i loved ; and I am going to rid, not 
 only you, but all the world of him." 
 
 " Helena, you thought me mad, awhile ago : are you mad now t " 
 
 " Mad ? no — why should I be, for saying so much 1 I.have no 
 reason to conceal the truth now, and from you. I loved Edward 
 Drood — loved him at the moment when you and he were in deadly 
 quarrel. He did not know it — perhaps he knows it now — farther 
 away than Ceylon ! T am going to convict his murderer, from his 
 own lips, before I have done with him. That is all, but it is enough 
 to show you, I think, that I am not moved entirely by anxiety for 
 you, and that there are portions of my duty which I could not dele- 
 gate even to the brother I love and trust." 
 
 " You loved Edwin Drood, Helena, and I hated him ! " Neville 
 said, after a moment, and more as if musingly than addressing his 
 sister. Then he sat silent for a brief space ; and then he added, 
 " But what matter now ? He is gone, and the only result is that your 
 heart is broken as well as mine. But I cannot allow you to go into 
 danger, as you probably will do, without at least demanding to share 
 that danger. Let it be as you will, in other regards ; but wherever 
 you go, and whatever you do, let me go with you." 
 
 " No ! " Helena spoke strongly and decisively ; then pausing a 
 moment before she went on. " No, wherever I go I am not going 
 alone. Let that satisfy and reassure you, brother." 
 
 " I have at least a right to ask, then, who will accompany you — 
 have I not 1 You will tell me so much 1 " 
 
 " I will tell you everything, Neville — so far as I have the right to 
 do so. Where I am going, I have no right to tell even you, as yet. 
 As to who accompanies me — it is Mr. Tartar." 
 
 " Mr. Tartar ! Ah ! I understand. You have answered more 
 questions than one in that name. Mr. Tartar it is, who has procured 
 you these clothes — I am sure of it." 
 
 "Well read, brother mine. It is indeed Mr. Tartar who has played 
 furnishing- clothier to Her Majesty, and who will be delighted to 
 know that His Eoyal Highness approves the excellent selections." 
 
 Again Neville Landless sat silent for a moment, moving one foot 
 nervously the while, as if the limb was expressing something that the 
 tongue yet restrained. Then he said : — 
 
 " Yes, I like Mr. Tartar, as I do not every man on first acquaint- 
 ance. I believe him to be a thoroughly good fellow, and that 1 can 
 trust even you with him. Perhaps I like him the better because the 
 same tropical sun has shone on the cheeks and warmed the blood of 
 both of us. But, Helena — one word more. You have just told mc 
 
 G 
 
82 john jasper's secret. 
 
 of a heart buried in the grave of — one whom we need not again 
 name. You are very lovely : who does not know it that comes near 
 you 1 Pray take care, if you have no love to bestow upon this new 
 friend, that you do not allow him to misconstrue your dependence 
 upon him. A word, a glance, may do the deed : and then " 
 
 " There is no danger, brother ; Mr. Tartar's heart is already filled, 
 and by one much more attractive than your brown-cheeked sister ! " 
 Helena hurriedly exclaimed, anxious to reassure him, and saying 
 words that the moment after she would have given anything within 
 her power to be able to recall. 
 
 " Ah ! He has an attachment ? You know the lady then, sister 1 " 
 
 Why did he ask the question so close upon the heels of his excla- 
 mation 1 "Why were Ms tones so intense and earnest, as if the welfare 
 of a life was involved in the words t "Why were his eyes troubled 
 and startled, again, as Helena had so often seen them since their 
 first coming to Cloisterham 1 Why, but that Nature, wiser than 
 her boasting interpreters, may have some means of conveying in- 
 stantaneous warning signals, in advance of any great impending 
 calamity — shaming the telegraph and outrunning even the beams of 
 light : to be understood or misapprehended by the subject of the 
 coming visitation, as he is or fails to be in that state of mind render- 
 ing such quick recognition possible ? If such warnings exist, as most 
 believe, surely here was a marked instance of the lightning convey- 
 ance of one. 
 
 The sister's voice, unknown to herself, contained it : the brother's 
 quick sense caught it without being for the instant able to analyze it. 
 
 " You know the lady then, sister ? " 
 
 "II No. What did I say 1 Oh, what an unfortunate tongue I 
 have, to utter just what I should avoid, and give pain to those I love 
 best ! What are Mr. Tartar and his heart affairs to me ? " 
 
 " That only answers one part of my question, Helena. You do 
 know the lady. Who is it ? " 
 
 The tender sister hesitated. How could she give that finishing 
 blow to all still remaining of distant hope ? — how destroy that one 
 charmed spot on which to build the deficient fortitude ? Very low 
 and broken was her voice, as at last she said, after causing innumer- 
 able agonies by the useless delay : — 
 
 "It is Miss Bud— Rosa." 
 
 "Ah!" This was a veritable groan, coming from the heart of 
 Neville Landless. He sank back in his chair, covering his face with 
 both hands, as if to shut away the world and all that it contained. 
 And the voice was hoarse, not now with passion, but misery, in 
 which, after moments that seemed centuries to the sympathizing 
 sister, he continued : — 
 
 " Tell me all, sister. I think that I can hear it now. All 1 Why 
 should I ask, when I know already 1 He loves her. You are his 
 confidante, and hers, no doubt. Does she love him i " 
 
 " Heaven pity and keep us both, Neville ! No matter how I 
 know so much — I do know it. She who never before knew the 
 meaning of the word, loves at last ; and Mr. Tartar, the stranger 
 
ALL THE DAUGHTERS OP HER FATHER'S HOUSE. 83 
 
 whom she knew but yesterday — he has what cost Edwin Drood his 
 life, and what I would almost have given my life to see in your 
 possession. She loves him dearly, and will love him all her 
 life." 
 
 The sister had approached the chair of her brother as she spoke, 
 and the two were in each other's arms as she concluded — an appro- 
 priate but deceptive group, that seemed to be formed of two twin 
 brothers ; and the groan that burst from Neville's overcharged heart, 
 with no attempt at restraining or concealing its character, was 
 breathed upon the bosom that no other love had power to wean 
 from him. 
 
 Then followed a second act in that strange drama of curative 
 shocks, of which the first took place immediately after the culmi- 
 nating moment of Neville's madness. The Known Worst is nothing 
 to the Dreaded Unknown. " I cannot bear it," utters many a man, 
 when the lash is descending, and before it has touched the quivering 
 flesh — many a man who, when the moment of actual agony comes, 
 proves that he can bear nearly any torture devised by malevolent 
 fate. David seemed to be moaning helplessly, while the life of the 
 child that had cost him and the nation so much, hung trembling in 
 the balance : it might have been expected that he would sink entirely 
 in despair, forgetting all the blessings that still remained, when the 
 servant came to him with the last formal announcement. But he 
 rose up, then girded himself, washed his face from the ashes that had 
 fallen over it from the bowed head, and was a man again, with hopes, 
 fears, duties, and a recognition of all. 
 
 So Neville Landless — far away in time as in position from the 
 King of Israel, but heir like him to a nature that could better bear 
 the "Worst than the Dreaded — after a moment of his pitying sister's 
 embrace, went out of it, so to speak — put her arms gently from 
 about him, rose from his chair, straightened the bowed shoulders 
 with a gesture like that of throwing off a weight too long borne, and 
 said, with a voice much firmer than had marked his utterance for 
 many a preceding day, — 
 
 " Thank God that it is over ! She never could have been mine, 
 after what has already occurred ; and yet I was weak enough to 
 hope against hope. Now let her love and marry a good man, as she 
 will ; and I shall live to prove to her, and to you, sister, that a man 
 who has the true meaning of the word in him may lose Love, and 
 suffer Wrong, and almost reach Despair, and yet rise above all and 
 do his Life- Work bravely. Do not think that I mean to boast, 
 dear ; there will be dark hours, and many of them ; and you must 
 forget your own sorrows, to help me through them. But I will try 
 to burthen you as little as possible ; and who knows but the day 
 may come when I may even sustain you I " 
 
 " My brave, noble brother, now ! " exclaimed Helena, with some- 
 thing like a cry of joy. " Sustain me 1 Why, you are worth fifty 
 of poor me, already — the moment that you will. Not my brother 
 only, now : my hero t Kiss me good night, and promise to believe 
 in me, and allow me to have my own way for a little while longer, 
 
 G 2 
 
84 JOHN jasper's seceet. 
 
 before you show me how strong you really are by becoming a tyrant. 
 For ' Joe Gilfert ' must run away, now, to change himself again into 
 your brown berry of a sister, and then to put that berry into its basket 
 that they call a 'bed,' though I wish it was a hammock, and swinging 
 under a palm-tree out yonder in the quadrangle ! " 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 me. tope's tribulation. 
 
 Mr. Tope, verger of Cloisterham Cathedral, is in trouble. Perhaps, 
 in justice to his connection with an ecclesiastical edifice of remote 
 antiquity, the severer form should be adopted, in speaking of his 
 abnormal frame of mind — designated as a tribulation. Troubles, as 
 no one could be more likely to understand than Mr. Tope himself, 
 are vulgar — of the world, worldly. They may be suffered by the 
 most ordinary of mortals, even down to the level of smock-frocks and 
 hobnails. Tribulations have something clerically refined in their 
 designation — something characterizing afflictions within the pale 
 ecclesiastical, and even requiring a certain dignity within that pale, 
 before they can be borne with propriety. Mr. Tope is severely 
 within that pale ; Mr. Tope has a certain dignity, not likely to be 
 overlooked by those who fall into his hands ; therefore Mr. Tope s 
 discomforts shall not be troubles, but tribulations. 
 
 As there are many more negatives than affirmatives in this 
 unfortunate world, which many of us believe to have either sprung 
 into existence wrong-end foremost, or been upheaved and misplaced 
 by some rascally Archimedes who did find his lever — Mr. Tope's 
 mental state may be more readily indicated by first mentioning what 
 has not happened to disquiet him, than what has really tended to 
 produce that effect. 
 
 Nothing has occurred during the summer to disturb Mr. Tope's 
 proprietorship of the Cathedral — that proprietorship, unclaimed but 
 well understood, in which all the other officials, from the Dean, 
 downwards, are mere subordinates, whatever high-sounding names 
 they may assume — after the manner of London's famed historical 
 Abbey, whereof only the uninitiated believe the tombs of the great 
 to be the property of the nation, with the Dean and Chapter as 
 virtual trustees ; while the instructed thoroughly understand that 
 the whole grey old pile, with all it contains, is the personal 
 possession of the grave-faced and somewhat monotonous men with 
 the black gowns and the sticks, especially of those with the sticks 
 that are gilt-headed. After the manner, too, if one may descend so 
 far into the domestic relation underlying the ecclesiastical and the 
 historic, of certain private mansions of great elegance, and fitted with 
 "all the modern improvements," whereof the governing powers are 
 believed to be, by many thousands of ignorant outsiders (including 
 
ME. TOPES TRIBULATION. 85 
 
 the poor wretches who starvingly sing Christmas Carols under 
 the windows, and look up to those windows for slow-descending 
 pence), the grand persons who are at intervals seen riding out from 
 those mansions, with much state of James and John, and who are 
 not always seen paying the bills connected with that state — instead 
 of the real masters being James and John aforesaid, with Thomas at 
 the door of the butler's pantry, and various and sundry "Williams, 
 Josephs, Bettys, Susans, and Marys, in those more-eclectic lower 
 regions hidden from the eyes of permitted visitors. 
 
 Mr. Tope, to repeat the remark, has not been in any way dis- 
 possessed of his proprietorship in the Cathedral, and, reflectedly, in 
 the visitors who temporarily become his property, while meditatively 
 strolling through the same, to be warned from this, directed to that, 
 impressed with the other, and stunnedly brought to a moral and 
 physical standstill in the presence of yet another. He has enjoyed 
 unlimited privilege of instructing, patronizing, correcting, historically 
 informing, covertly sneering at, and occasionally badgering in a 
 skilful way, not to mention depleting of foreign purses and adding 
 correspondingly to his own modest store ; for the season thus far has 
 been a favourable one at the Cathedral (as might have been said of 
 the same period at some watering-place). It has enjoyed actual 
 plethora of visitors compared with other years — whether because 
 more men have been growing old, and thus freshly anxious to visit 
 and inspect something yet older than themselves, — or because certain 
 rumours and half-particulars getting about of the tragedy enacted 
 there or in the neighbourhood last Christmas-eve, there has been a 
 little scent of blood, so to speak, touching the human nostril at a 
 distance, and attracting to the place. As an institution, Cloisterham 
 Cathedral has never stood so enviably before the public eye as at this 
 moment ; and correspondingly Mr. Tope has never before enjoyed so 
 wide as well as undisputed and absolute monarchy. 
 
 Nor has there been any failure in the succession of those " dis- 
 coveries," without which any old religious house must eventually 
 become more or less fade, and lacking brilliancy of attraction. 
 Thanks to the pick and hammer of Durdles, never more recklessly 
 employed, and never before so intelligently (for reasons which may 
 at some future period develop themselves), the number of Old 'Uns 
 Unearthed, or more properly unlimed and unmortared, has been 
 unusually large and interesting. Not only have there been dis- 
 coveries of three — two mitred abbots and a knight of the shire — less 
 deficient than usual in the details of nose and fingers, in those closed 
 niches of the choir and chancel where the careful seem to have 
 hidden everything valuable, before the coming of the ubiquitous 
 Cromwell and his hard-fisted Ironsides, — but older and more 
 remarkable discoveries, not liable to the sneers of the Didymuses 
 of n on- ecclesiastical life, that they have been " put there, so that 
 they could be dug out again, and make a new stir : " older and more 
 remarkable discoveries have been made, of those whose warlike fame 
 may have dated back to the Crusades (judging from the mould and 
 dilapidation of their effigies), in that narrow space between the 
 
86 JOHN JASPERS SECRET. 
 
 outer and inner walls of the Cathedral, in the supplementary con- 
 struction of which latter— a sort of ceiling — the worshippers of 
 something less than a hundred years ago seem to have anticipated 
 the modern professors of ventilation, and sacrificed space to sanitary 
 considerations, in the way of guarding against the inevitable damp- 
 ness of single walls. Oddly enough, the knowledge of such a sup- 
 plementary construction is nearly a new thing in Cloisterham j and 
 the merit of the discovery, made a few months before, would seem to 
 be nearly equally divided between the Verger and Durdles — the 
 latter of whom made the first inroad with his hammer, after sus- 
 picious soundings and long speculations, — and the former of whom 
 very soon after discovered an entry in the expense-book of the 
 Cathedral, kept in the vestry, pointing to a time, late in the 
 eighteenth century, when large amounts were paid out for that 
 purpose, to stone-masons and labourers, in connection with other 
 sums to carpenters for the supplying and laying of heavy timbers as 
 the foundation for the then reconstructed roof. So- that Cloisterham 
 Cathedral has a slight new celebrity in that regard; though even 
 the instructed visitor can do little else than stare at the supplemen- 
 tary wall, with, the knowledge that compressed air, much darkness, 
 and many rats, may exist behind it, repairs to the invaded wall 
 having been as many and immediate as the openings. 
 
 Nor is Mr. Tope rendered unutterably wretched by the temporary 
 absence of the Dean. His Reverence, born near the sea-coast, and 
 naturally anxious for his native air at enervating periods — the 
 latter end of summer, to wit — has betaken himself, his comely 
 gaiters, his mild manner of repetition, Mrs. Dean, his personal foot- 
 bath, and other appurtenances and belongings, easily movable, to one 
 of the quiet seaside resorts of the east coast, where he has already 
 preached twice in the chapel-of-ease, smoothed down the tone of 
 society, and become a welcome feature. Mr. Crisparkle, his seaside 
 resort lying no farther away than the river, and his health an assured 
 thing while he maintains his present habits of regular exercise and 
 equable temper — has as little thought as opportunity for removing 
 the China Shepherdess from the pleasant air of Cloisterham, during 
 the absence of the Dean — even if the two difficulties did not exist, 
 of packing china so as to be removed with safety, and of carrying 
 along to any chosen resort, two closets and their contents, held 
 equally indispensable. So the dignity of the Minor Canon is by no 
 means diminished by the temporary removal of the greater light ; 
 nor is that of Mr. Tope, who, perhaps, loses certain opportunities of 
 conciliatory and deprecatory action (laughter at very mild witticisms 
 included), but who certainly gains in the new necessity of so care- 
 fully arranging words that may be good enough for any lower 
 member of the church polity, but will scarcely do without revisal, 
 before the Dean. So that the absence of His Reverence can scarcely 
 be the grievance entitling the worthy Verger to quarter the painful 
 arms of Tribulation. 
 
 Nor has Mr. Tope met with domestic or pecuniary affliction 
 calculated to disturb his- equanimity. Mrs. Tope is buxom and active 
 
MR. tope's tribulation. 87 
 
 as of old, managing her somewhat extended household (divided, 
 though not in the -worst sense) with the skill of thrift and experience ; 
 Mr. Jasper (over whose failing health she worries in her mild way) 
 necessarily still retains her services as purveyor and attendant ; and 
 Mr. Datchery seems so attached to the picturesque inconvenience of 
 Cloisterham, that he has retained the lodgings so long window-billed 
 and unlet, paying his weekly liabilities with that regularity indica- 
 tive of a buffer whose means are certain, if not liberal. Once more 
 the Mordecai sitting in Mr. Tope's gate fails to be discovered, and 
 another effort is necessary to decipher that personality. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, the oppressed Verger may be the proper person 
 to whom to appeal for information ; and he may be allowed to detail 
 that grievance, growing to the solemnity of a tribulation, in a con- 
 versation with Mr. Crisparkle, occurring at that period when the 
 Unpleasant has simply become the Unendurable. 
 
 The Minor Canon is in conversation with his mother over an egg 
 and a muffin, at that hour in the summer morning when the most 
 golden of all lights touches the roofs and chimneys visible across 
 the Close from Minor Canon Corner ; and when the birds, not yet 
 done with the duties of the season, though a little sobered from their 
 exuberant voice and action of spring, are trying to decide in their 
 own favour the vexed question whether flower-incense or bird-music 
 best typifies the blest celestial influences of which they seem to form 
 a part. It is early ; not so early, however, but that Mr. Crisparkle 
 has enjoyed his header in the bright water in the vicinity of the 
 Weir, and his brisk walk homeward afterwards ; so that all the 
 cheery and hopeful tendencies of his nature are in full play as ho 
 chips the shell of his egg, inhales the fragrance of his Hyson (one of 
 his few unhealthy weaknesses — the green being always coppery, and 
 poisonous, and inferior to the black on the score of hygiene — as any 
 old woman can demonstrate), and looks at the browned muffin with 
 some doubt whether it does not intend to exhale before he can come 
 to it, in an aroma of wheat-fields and the dairy. 
 
 The China Shepherdess is not quite so cheery : as how could she 
 be, seeing that a single adoption of the morning practices, which 
 have so invigorated her darling Sept, would unquestionably put her 
 beyond the remedial powers of the closet on the upper stair 1 And 
 she is disposed, in her own quiet way, to tone down the spirits, to say 
 the least, of that beloved son, who may be quite as dear to her, for 
 all we know to the contrary, as an object on which to exercise her 
 waning parental authority and mild captiousness, as for any and all 
 other reasons together. 
 
 " Must you positively go to town to-day?" she asks, after a slight 
 pause, which has only been broken by the delicate metallic sound 
 of the chipping of the egg. 
 
 " Scarcely must, in the absolute sense, ma, dear," the Minor Canon 
 replies, taking a spoonful of the egg with much evident enjoyment. 
 " Only that I think I had better go to-day, as I do not know of any- 
 thing to prevent. Is there any reason why you wish me to remain 1 
 Anything I can do for you, if I defer going until to-morrow 1 " 
 
88 ' JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 " No, Sept," she answers, sipping her tea ; " if you are really going, 
 either day, I do not know any difference." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle pauses a moment, with a second spoonful of egg 
 half-way to his mouth, before he asks, with a shade of surprise in 
 his tone, — 
 
 " Ma, dear, do you know that there is something in your manner 
 of speaking, though possibly you may not be aware of it — leading to 
 the idea that you would rather I should not go to town at all — at 
 present 1 " 
 
 " Is there, Sept, dear ? " the shepherdess replies, her dear old eyes 
 all meekness and innocent cunning. " Why, how odd ! as if I could 
 have any objection to my son, the Canon, going where he pleased ! " 
 
 The Reverend Septimus Crisparkle feels that this is uncandidness, 
 not to say a subterfuge, on the part of his parent ; and he is one of 
 those straightforward men in whom the emotional has never con- 
 quered the rational — going at once to an end which he sees before 
 him. So he sets down the egg-cup, lays down the spoon, wipes his 
 well-formed lips very carefully on the napkin at the edge of his plate, 
 then rises, goes round the table behind the lady of the celestial cog- 
 nomen (who of course sees nothing of all this preparation), catches 
 her head between both hands, and draws it back, so that he can kiss 
 her, in a sort of boyish and upside-down fashion, without any serious 
 disarrangement of the becoming head-gear. 
 
 " There ! and there ! and there ! " he says, between the affectionate 
 salutations. " I thought that there was something I had forgotten this 
 morning, and now I have it. I had only kissed you once, and do not 
 remember that you kissed me back at all. Stop, please — do not 
 attempt pulling away, for you know that would be of no use. I do 
 not intend to release my naughty child until she behaves better, and 
 tells me what is the real reason for her not wishing me to go to town, 
 either to day or to-morrow." 
 
 " Sept, dear, you are very rude, — very rude indeed ! My cap will 
 look a fright — I know it ! " replies the assaulted mother, very proud 
 and happy in her son, in spite of that indefensible violence. " There ! " 
 with two or three return kisses, soft, gentle, and apparently from 
 lips as unwithered as when they were laid, dewy rose-leaves, on the 
 brow of her boy, when a boy indeed — " there ! Now go back to your 
 chair, and your breakfast, like a good Sept, and I will tell you what 
 I mean, if you must know." 
 
 " I must know, ma, dear, for the Dean is gone, and I am the 
 highest ecclesiastical authority in Cloisterham, at the present moment," 
 replies the clergyman, pleasantly obeying the maternal injunction, 
 and extending it by attacking the muffin, which has taken the oppor- 
 tunity to cool from its late overheating. 
 
 " Every time that you go to town, Sept, my dear, you call upon 
 that unfortunate young man, whom you will persist in designating 
 as your ' pupil,' though he is nothing of the kind. T think I am 
 right : I do not recollect your coming back, without making some 
 remark with reference to him or his studies." 
 
 " Well, ma ! is there anything extraordinary in that 1 " queries the 
 
MR. tope's tkibulatioh. 89 
 
 Minor Canon, as she pauses. " I know that you had very serious 
 objections to the young man, last winter, at the time when- the — the 
 unfortunate circumstance of poor young Drood occurred ; but I had 
 no idea that you held the same objection to him now that he is out 
 of your sight, and at such a distance. Do you believe that he can 
 corrupt or contaminate me in any way, even if the worst of the sus- 
 picions against him should be true, as I am quite confident as ever 
 that they are not 1 " 
 
 There is a little additional flush of red on that portion of divine 
 pottery forming the cheek of the China Shepherdess, as its owner 
 replied, after a moment, lying back in her chair with a grace shaming 
 that of the young, and making no pretence at emulating her son, and 
 continuing the breakfast with the conversation : — 
 
 " I do not like the young man, Sept, my dear, as you know. I do 
 not see how I have had any cause to change my unfavourable opinion. 
 He had a terrible temper : that even you must admit ; indeed, I 
 have heard you speak of it quite freely, and with reprobation." 
 
 " Yes, ma, he had a most violent temper ; but I hope and believe 
 that we have seen the worst of that," interpolated Mr. Crisparkle, 
 with his utterance not at the moment clear enough for the sacred 
 desk, owing to the presence of the muflin. 
 
 " I am sure that I hope so, Sept — -very sure that I hope so," the 
 old lady goes on. " We should not only work for, but hope for, every 
 reformation in the characters of those who — -who give us any cause 
 to fear for the future, either on their own behalf for that of others. 
 Still, I am not likely to be highly pleased with the young man, I 
 think ; and I must tell you candidly, my dear son, that I am not 
 likely to be better pleased with his sister." 
 
 The Reverend Septimus Crisparkle is a man in whom all the 
 faculties are held under good control, — those of the body as well 
 as the mind ; but the slight flush on the face of his mother is 
 nothing to the blazing red which at the moment invades his whole 
 countenance, coming up with the suddenness of the Aurora flaming 
 over the northern sky, and only reaching its zenith beneath the roots 
 of his hair. No school-boy, detected in one of the high crimes or 
 misdemeanours of juvenility, could more ingenuously supply evidence 
 against himself at the moment of accusation. 
 
 He is aware of the inglorious fact — as no man can very well be igno- 
 rant where a stream of hot blood plays up and down his face with the 
 force of a torrent ! And the China Shepherdess is aware of the 
 triumphant fact, even though her eyes may not be so young or so keen 
 as they were five-and-forty years ago. She is almost sorry that she 
 has spoken, seeing the effect produced, and possibly misapprehending 
 its meaning, to the extent common with the keenest-eyed mothers 
 
 (not to mention the fathers) of any age ; and lie But he is, as he 
 
 lately remarked, the highest ecclesiastical authority in Cloisterham, 
 in the absence of the Dean ; and he may well be allowed to answer 
 for his own sensations. 
 
 " I understand you, ma, dear," he says, after a moment, when the 
 hot blood has flowed back a little towards the heart, temporarily 
 
90 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 deserted, and when his utterance, for the time embarrassed, has again 
 become clear. " I understand you, from your emphasis, without 
 your saying another word ! You believe that in my visits to Neville 
 Landless I am in the habit of meeting his sister 1 " 
 
 " Yes, Sept, dear, I do believe so." 
 
 " You go farther, .ma — you believe that I seek such meetings quite 
 as eagerly and anxiously as those with her brother ? " 
 
 " I do, Sept, dear ; I do." 
 
 " You believe, ma — for you see that I must put your suspicions in 
 plain words — that I am in love with Helena Landless 1 " 
 
 The mother pauses a moment, looking, as close as age will permit, 
 into the eyes of her son. Then she answers, almost as concisely as 
 she has before answered the other questions : — 
 
 " Yes, Sept, dear ; I am sorry to believe so, but I do." 
 
 The Minor Canon has ended his breakfast, now; though there 
 stands a neglected egg in the second egg-cujj, and he has only finished 
 a single dish of tea. There are such things as chokings in the throat, 
 during the reign of which there is not much more chance of swallow- 
 ing than of enjoying after deglutition ; and the clergyman has come 
 to one of those periods — happily for health and digestion, very rare 
 with him. He leans back in his chair, as his mother is still doing, 
 and addresses her with much calmness and gravity, and without any 
 suspicion in the face of the late flush : — 
 
 " Ma, dear," he says, " you have just placed me in a strange position 
 for a grown man of my years ; and in so doing you have made it 
 necessary for me to say a few words that might never have been said 
 under other circumstances. Do not interrupt me, please, while I 
 say them ; and do not think that you know all, at any moment, 
 until I have quite done." 
 
 " Sept, dear, have I given you pain 1 If so, forgive me ; for what 
 I said, I said for the besn, and I will never again refer to the subject, 
 if you do not wish." 
 
 The mother's face is very tender and anxious, now. It may be 
 very set, in its own ways and fancies, sometimes, but it is a dear old 
 face, full of a true mother's love, after all ! And for that something 
 may be forgiven, as well as much for Mary ! 
 
 "No, ma, dear," the Minor Canon replies. "Do not make any 
 apologies, whatever you may have driven me to say. It is best that 
 it should be so. I have never had a secret from you before, and this 
 shall be one no longer. You are equally right and wrong. I seldom, 
 almost never, meet Miss Landless when I call upon her brother ; so 
 that she has nothing whatever to do with my visits to town. So 
 much for that. Now for the next. I love Helena Landless, with 
 all the heart that I can allow myself to hold for any earthly object ; 
 or, rather, I should say, perhaps, that I did love her with that 
 intensity — for the passion, please God, is under my feet, after a long 
 struggle, and it will never rise to trouble me again, unless I grow 
 weaker than I believe. You saw the red flush on my face : it was 
 not that of shame — only one of sudden agitation and surprise." 
 
 "You must let me interrupt you so much, Sept, dear," the mother 
 
MR. tone's tribulation. 91 
 
 says, " I know it was surprise, not shame, on the face of my dear 
 son."i 
 
 " Thank you, ma, dear ; though I might have known so much. I 
 have only to tell you, further, that I more love and admire Miss 
 Landless, both in person and character, than I have words to express 
 — more than any other person whom I have ever seen. And then I 
 have to add, what my words may already have conveyed — that she 
 does not know of what I may call my past regard for her, and will 
 never know ; that we will never be more to each other than we are 
 to-day ; and that I only ask one favour of you, with reference to her, 
 never to speak of her, or if you do so at all, only in terms of that 
 respect which is the due of a noble woman." 
 
 The Minor Canon ceases ; the mother, almost stricken dumb by 
 tins avowal, and by the feeling that it is for lier her son has made 
 "Eh. a renunciation, reverses the action of a few moments before, 
 rises from her chair, comes round behind him, throws the dear old 
 arms about his neck, and kisses him repeatedly, while her words are 
 a loving murmur of admiration and (yes, let the practical truth be 
 added ^gratification — such as the possessor of the costly new bracelet 
 does feel in the ownership of that desired ornament, in addition to 
 any unselfish love for the donor. 
 
 " My dear Sept ! my good, thoughtful son ! can you ever forgive 
 your poor old mother for the pain she has caused you 1 and can she 
 ever repay you for the sacrifices you have made for her ? " 
 
 Mr. Orisparkle is very nearly himself again, already — very nearly 
 his own bright, cheery self, oblivious of personal discomfort and on 
 the alert for any duty or any employment promising a new and 
 harmless sensation. He kisses his mother again, with almost the 
 same effusion she herself exhibits, then clears himself from the 
 entangling arms by a little gentle force, setting the China Shepherdess 
 safely in the middle of the floor by the act, and asks, pulling out his 
 watch with habitual vivacity, — 
 
 " May I go to London now, ma, dear 1 Yes 1 Then I shall not 
 have much more than time enough to catch the half-past ten train. 
 Here is my coat — reach me my hat, there, like a good old darling, as 
 you are, and so away we go. Good-bye, until I return." 
 
 He assumes the hat with a haste which seems unclerical, but 
 which never has the effect of making him untidy, throws on the coat 
 with corresponding speed, grasps his umbrella, gives the parting kiss 
 to his mother, and is out of the door and into the temporarily bright 
 sunlight of the Minor Canon Corner, all within the space of less than 
 a minute. 
 
 Where he is confronted by Mr. Tope, whose customary black, no 
 darker than his own, would not be likely to affect the general 
 appearance of the whole Cathedral vicinage, but whose face, heavy, 
 downcast, and discouraged-looking, with a soupgon of that expression 
 graphically designated as "injured innocence," certainly does produce 
 a darkening effect on the whole cluster of surroundings. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Crisparkle. Proud to see you looking so 
 well, sir." 
 
92 JOHN jaspek's secket. 
 
 (Mr. Tope does not look as if " proud " of anything ; but his word 
 must be taken — at least -with the " not-at-homes " and " pleased-to- 
 see-yous " of polite society.) 
 
 " Ah, Tope — good morning. But you are scarcely looking your 
 best — are you, Tope?" (Mr. Crisparkle had just emerged from a 
 severe exercise of candour, and is still quite under the influence of 
 the action.) " 111 in any way ? — I hope not. The weather is 
 certainly oppressive — at least I hear some, who feel it more than 
 myself , saying so. Anything from the Dean, Tope?" 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle says all this briskly and a little hurriedly, as one 
 who has not many minutes left in which to catch the 10'30 train; 
 and his motion is towards the High Street, where he will be obliged 
 to make a long leg, now, or forfeit an omnibus sixpence. 
 
 " No — nothing from His Reverence, sir, since the day before 
 yesterday," answered Mr. Tope. " He was very well, then, as you 
 know. As for myself — you were good enough to inquire about me — 
 T am not sick, thank you ; but I am that worried, Mr. Crisparkle." 
 
 "Worried? I am sorry, Tope. But you must excuse me, if I 
 hurry away. I am going to catch the train." 
 
 " The train 1 Oh, certainly, sir. Excuse my stopping you ; and 
 what I have to say to you " 
 
 " Oh, you have something to say to me 1 What say, then, to 
 walking with me to the station ? Not far, and splendid exercise. 
 Come, the walk will do you good ; and you can say what you wish as 
 we go easily along." 
 
 Mr. Tope is " in for it," and quite aware of the fact. The steady 
 and unlabouring stride of the Minor Canon is a proverb about 
 Cloisterham, where few men take their constitutionals with the same 
 regularity, and where possibly there are few of the same vigorous 
 natural constitution, unimpared by the least mental or bodily excess. 
 The Verger's tendencies, though he is by no means a plethoric man, 
 are towards moderate motion, with many pauses, as becomes one in 
 the habit of making very slow tours about the Cathedral, putting in 
 a perambulatory comma at short intervals, and a semicolon, or even 
 a colon, at no considerable distances apart. He is, however, as already 
 said, in for accompanying the rapid walker, at whatever peril to his 
 breathing apparatus ; and he submits with what grace he may. The 
 brief conversation following, as the two measure their way down the 
 High Street towards and over the bridge, at a rate indicating that 
 they are scandalizing the Cathedral town by walking for a wager, is 
 consequently somewhat interjectory in its character ; and that part 
 of it contributed by the Verger may be said to lack full breath at 
 intervals — of course, without the least suspicion on the part of the 
 Minor Canon that he is proceeding at a rate to distress a mere 
 invalid. 
 
 " Now then, Tope, what is the subject of your worry? Out with 
 it, man, or we shall be at the station before you have concluded, if 
 the matter is at all important. Anything wrong about the Cathedral, 
 Tope?" 
 
 " Not about the Cathedral, Mr. Crisparkle ; and yet I am not sure 
 
MR. tope's tribulation. 93 
 
 but it has some connection with it. Have you noticed, sir, that 
 Durdles is drunk less of the time than usual of late 1" 
 
 " Humph ! Why certainly, Tope, you do not consider tliat a 
 matter to worry about, do you ? I could bear it, I think, if he 
 should remain sober all the time ; and so should you do, if you have 
 not grown to consider him a part of the Cathedral, to be exhibited 
 slyly to visitors, and the more tipsy the better. Perhaps Durdles 
 may be following a little more closely than before that ' work of art ' 
 about which you and I know so well. Why not?" 
 
 " It is not Durdles being soberer than he used to be as makes me 
 think that there is something wrong, sir," puffs the Verger, already 
 beginning to labour in wind at the rate of climbing a long stair ; 
 " but his having more money than he seems to earn — gold, some- 
 times, as has been seen at the Queen's Head ; and being in the em- 
 ployment, evidently, of persons that nobody in Cloisterham knows 
 nothing about." 
 
 " Knows anything about, you probably mean, Tope," corrects the 
 clergyman, momentarily forgetting the absence of the Dean, for whose 
 delicate ears the lingual roughness of the Verger are principally 
 smoothed. " But who gives Durdles money that he does not earn ? 
 and what stranger employs him in a way to make you uncom- 
 fortable?" 
 
 "You know my lodger, Mr. Datchery, sir," Mr. Tope rather 
 asserts than asks. 
 
 " Mr. Datchery — yes, I have seen him several times," Mr. Crisparkle 
 assents. " A pleasant, odd sort of person, so far as I have observed — 
 quite a regular attendant at service, and with a droll practice — has 
 he not ? — of going into the street without his hat, as if he had once 
 been in the habit of living in bare-headed Ireland !" 
 
 " The same, sir," puffs Mr. Tope, " though you may not have 
 observed quite so much of him as others. There is nobody in 
 Cloisterham as knows anything about him ; and he strikes me all of 
 a heap, sometimes, acting that suspicious " 
 
 "Pays for his room, and his other bills — does he not, Tope? If 
 not, why keep him V interrupts the Minor Canon, talking as he is 
 walking, quite at his ease. 
 
 " Oh, yes, excellent pay, sir ; but that isn't what is so suspicious. 
 You must know, sir, that as the lodgings are mine — that is Mrs. 
 Tope's, and immediately below where we live ourselves " 
 
 " You enjoy excellent opportunities for knowing what he does : 
 in fact, keep a little delicate observation over him — what some 
 persons would call ' peeping ' in a moderate degree !" 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle is kind enough to complete the sentence, which 
 seems to lack breath of itself. 
 
 " Not ' peeping,' exactly, sir," answers the Verger, his breath 
 recovered by the relief, but evidently not nattered by the mode in 
 which it has been supplied — " only observing of things as cannot 
 very well have the go-by." 
 
 " Umph ! Well?" assents Mr. Crisparkle. 
 
 " Now, what I put that and that together, and make out that 
 
94 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 something is going on in Cloisterham, as the Dean and Chapter 
 ought to know, and don't — is that Durdles and this Mr. Datchery 
 is thick as two thieves." 
 
 " A rather coarse simile, and not a Tery charitable one. I would 
 not use it, Tope — at least I would not at any time when the Dean 
 happened to be present." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle again corrects, having breath to spare, and falling 
 again into the old habit. 
 
 "Well, sir, under correction," Mr. Tope tries to assume the 
 dignified — not to say the injured — but with moderate success, from 
 the lack of force to throw out the words with the proper readiness, 
 "it stands to reason that a man living on his means, like Mr. 
 Datchery, as must have means to live on 'em, wouldn't take up, for 
 company, with such riff-raff as Durdles-: " 
 
 " Riff-raff — an elegant phrase always, Tope, besides being a col- 
 lective noun, when used, and so implying more than one — I would 
 not use it for Durdles alone, who is only one, unless you include his 
 bundle," again pleasantly corrects Mr. Crisparkle. 
 
 " That he wouldn't take up with such as Durdles, and have him 
 with him for hours on hours, whether drinking or not, or doing 
 worse, nobody can say — not to mention giving him money that free 
 — if there wasn't something between 'em as is dangerous." 
 
 Mr. Tope, ignoring the last interruption, manages this long sen- 
 tence with much dexterity — really seems to be getting what the 
 athletes call his " second wind." 
 
 " And does he do so, Tope 1 I mean, does he do so to your own 
 personal knowledge, or do you only speak from a certain suspicion, 
 founded on knowledge of Durdles and dislike of Mi\ Datchery 1 " 
 asks the Minor Canon, with more show of absolute interest than he 
 has before displayed since the commencement. 
 
 " They are together that frequent, Mr. Crisparkle, and that sly, 
 that the Dean and Chapter ought to know it, before the worst comes 
 to the worst," Mr. Tope asserts, strongly and conclusively. " And 
 at nights — I wouldn't believe it, sir, if I hadn't heard it with my 
 own ears — but Durdles has been in Mr. Datchery's room, up to past 
 midnight, a matter of three hours at a time, and they a-talking, 
 talking, talking, talking all the time, as if there was a plot to burn 
 down the town, or do something to " 
 
 " The Cathedral." Mr. Crisparkle kindly concludes this sentence, 
 which is again a little labouring for breath. 
 
 " Yes, sir, the Cathedral, which cannot be too much thought of, in 
 my opinion," supplements Mr. Tope, with real dignity, and again 
 recruited wind. 
 
 " Of course not, Mr. Tope ; the Cathedral cannot be too much 
 thought of. And there may be a mystery here, as you say. I am 
 glad that you have told me, though I do not think that there is any 
 great cause for anxiety. If I were you, Tope, I would not say any- 
 thing of this to any one else, — except Mrs. Tope — of course except 
 Mrs. Tope. I will speak of it to the Dean, when I see him ; and I 
 scarcely believe that they can do any serious damage to the town 
 
MB. tope's tribulation. 95 
 
 before His Reverence returns. Thank you very much for your con- 
 fidence, Tope. By the way, how is Mr. Jasper ? For the last twenty- 
 four hours I have not seen him ; and I am sure that he has not been 
 looking well of late." 
 
 " Mr. Jasper was quite well, sir, last night ; and he went out early 
 this morning. Possibly he may have gone to town already." 
 
 " Ah ! Happy to hear that he is so well. But here we are, Tope, 
 and I must bid you good morning. So much pleased to have had 
 your company, and hope that the little walk has done you good." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle : who has caught something vindictive in the hiss 
 of the steam from the engine-pipe — as if that harnessed motive-power 
 had borne the restraint nearly as long as it intends to do, and is 
 about to go off independently, if no one is ready to accompany : Mr. 
 Crisparkle, not frequently enough a traveller to require a season- 
 ticket, takes a header into the booking-office only less pronounced 
 than his late one into the river, and emerges thence, in an incon- 
 ceivably short space of time for a man who has forced out a ticket 
 through the small hole in the interim. He comes out ; not too soon, 
 however — just in time to spring into a carriage commencing to move, 
 without subjecting himself to the penalties of the forty-shillings rule, 
 which the Boxing Compass Railway Company, naturally jealous of 
 the forms of carrying out any homicidal rights in it inherent, rigidly 
 enforces against all offenders who presume to peril their lives out of 
 due course. 
 
 Mr. Tope, remembering that he is away from the Cathedral, and 
 therefore at liberty to unbend, is leaning against a post of the station, 
 without the least pretence at dignity, recovering his full breath after 
 his late exhausting performance on the field of Captain Barclay, and 
 feeling less oppressed with his tribulation, now that he has made the 
 Dean and Chapter prospective sharers in it. 
 
 The Minor Canon, recovering no breath whatever, and only in the 
 pleasant glow of a man who has taken the briefest of morning walks 
 at a brisk pace — indeed momentarily humming a bit of refrain, as if 
 to show how little breathed he is — leans back in his seat as the train 
 rolls away, and muses for a moment on the oddity of the white- 
 headed man, oblivious of his hat, and the folly of Tope's story, which 
 is likely to have no better foundation than some one of the freaks of 
 that oddity. But this reflection fades away : the late conversation 
 over the breakfast-table is not one to be forgotten in half an hour. 
 And somehow there grows and assumes shape, on the seat opposite 
 to him, the pliant and graceful figure of a woman — young, tawny, 
 Oriental — with dusky brown eyes that seem capable of infinite love, 
 as well as infinite fierceness, and sweet firm lips that have once been 
 laid on a hand which has never forgotten the pressure, or lost the 
 pleasant warmth of one favoured spot. And across the whole figure 
 — blurred in indistinct lines of soft light, like a phosphorescence — he 
 reads one single fateful word (and bows his head thereto with a thought 
 of silent prayer for that strength not to be found on the path or in 
 the river): "LOST!" 
 
9G JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CARRIED AWAY. 
 
 Rosa has occasion, one afternoon, for some of those small indis- 
 pensables of the female work-table, more intricate and foreign to the 
 coarse male mind than ever were the famed Eleusinian mysteries to 
 those outside the pale of that especial worship. Something — who 
 may guess what 1 — has gone astray with the spools, the skeins, the 
 dainty bits with which the still daintier little fingers busy themselves, 
 during so many hours that cannot be devoted to intellectual occu- 
 pations even of the lightest form. Something is missing, without 
 which life -would become temporarily a burthen, and the sending for 
 which, by a domestic, would almost inevitably result in the bringing 
 home of articles bearing the same relation to the actual things 
 needed that the ceremonious delivery of, say a prize turkey, or six 
 brace of partridges, would bear to the reception of the pet canary 
 carefully ordered. Result, Rosa has no choice but to exhibit the 
 pretty school-girlish form and habit in the streets, by going out per- 
 sonally on the all-important errand. 
 
 It is approaching evening ; but the summer twilight is still long, 
 though the extreme after-glow of June is some weeks gone by. Rosa 
 (once away from Cloisterham and a certain fear connected with that 
 place of mystery) has still remaining a little of the school-girl fancy 
 for freedom and unaccompanied wandering ; and she does not ask 
 Miss Twinkleton, as she might so properly do, to lay aside the 
 crochet out of which some wonderful monster in coarse worsteds is 
 arising to torture an unfortunate chair, and accompany her on her 
 quest that will only occupy half an hour. 
 
 So Rosebud goes out alone, very little before the evening lamps 
 are lighted — down the little distance into Holborn, and thence east- 
 ward towards the shop of that fortunate draper who has succeeded 
 in securing the Appointment to supply small wares to this peculiar 
 Small Majesty. Oddly enough, as she trips, she pays little attention 
 to her actual surroundings, and does not even speculate at length on 
 the purchases which it may be proper to make when arrived at 
 Bolding's — being engaged, mentally, on one of those longer and more 
 important tours which "South and Love sometimes go out to make, 
 together, assuming the length of a voyage, and altogether inde- 
 pendent of bad carriages and cabins, mixed connections, railway 
 accidents, storms and wrecks at sea, and all the other thousand-and- 
 one disagreeables which beset travellers by the usual humdrum 
 
 earthly modes. She has — dear little atom of incarnate girlhood ! 
 
 just now a companion whose bodily presence is not visible to the 
 passers on the streets : indeed, she is only dreamily conscious, 
 herself, of his accompanying her ; but she floats, and sails, and skims 
 many millions of miles with him, over the sea and the mountains of 
 
CARRIED AWAY. 97 
 
 Fancy-Land, and only comes down to the lower earth when a baker's 
 small boy, with a belated board of steaming and fragrant edibles, 
 nearly knocks off her mite of bonnet, and clumsily apologizes for 
 the accident which her own abstraction has principally occasioned. 
 
 Thereafter she is a shade more cognizant of the earth, the bipeds 
 crawling upon it, and the clumsy erections with which builders have 
 disfigured while they fancied that they were ornamenting it. She 
 goes on quite steadily, — now manages to cross the street, between 
 four cabs going in four different directions, with an impunity which a 
 bulkier person than the little beam of light might fail in finding, — 
 and soon thereafter is dispensing delight and trouble throughout the 
 whole domain of small-waredom. Three shopmen wait upon her, 
 under helpless but happy protest, to the neglect of other and more 
 important customers (amounts of purchase considered) ; spools roll 
 towards her, on the counter, with an apparent desire of forcing them- 
 selves into her infinitesimal . reticule, to the. no small danger of her 
 being arrested, on going out, for a very cheap species of shop-lifting ; 
 light goods get into hopeless tangles and snarls of unrolled condition, 
 for the same or similar causes ; and when at last she trips out of the 
 draper's with a few ounces added to the weight of her reticule, and 
 a shilling or two correspondingly abstracted from the avoirdupois 
 of a purse which might have been made by the skilled artificers of 
 Lilliput — then the draper and all his assistants draw long sighs of 
 mingled regret and relief, and the business of the establishment once 
 more resumes its natural conditions. 
 
 It is nearly dusk when the purchaser, thus heavily burthened, 
 recrosses the street, and returns up the north side of Holborn, past 
 Furnival's and Holborn Bars. Nearly dusk, but the lamps are now 
 alight, j and for all practical purposes it is broad day. She must 
 hurry home, however, for her promised half-hour is already over- 
 stayed, and there may be worry on account of her. Hurry home, 
 of course — but, ah, how beautiful are those pictures in the shop- 
 front, — and is there any charm remaining to us from childhood, so 
 potent as that of looking in at the pictorial windows ! — possessing, for 
 the time, all the graces and wonders in form and scenery there dis- 
 played, without the cost of purchase, or the difficulty of knowing 
 what to do with the coveted gems if in actual ownership ! 
 
 A few moments more go in this way ; the falling dusk comes 
 closer ; and now she must really hurry, indeed. A little tremor of 
 terror, at being in the street alone, later than even before, creeps 
 over her, accompanied by a half-wish that she had started earlier, or 
 that she had asked Miss Twinkleton to accompany her. She trips, 
 i-apidly, very rapidly now : the baker's boy, if he should chance to 
 be returning with his empty board, would be in danger of meeting 
 a different momentum from the same small body, in the event of a 
 second collision. 
 
 She is just opposite the archway of Gray's Inn, when a sudden 
 shadow seems to fall upon her path: not the night, for that is 
 shutting down but slowly ; not any extraordinary giving out of that 
 illuminating vapour by which the good people of London are habitually 
 
98 JOHN jaspek's seceet. 
 
 allowed to see that it has become dark, for such a change would be 
 physically impossible. They are the face and figure of a man, 
 throwing the sudden shadow -which alike affects eyes and brain ; and 
 the man is John Jasper. 
 
 He stands at the western side of the archway, with his face in the 
 direction from which Rosa is proceeding ; and the young girl, looking 
 up at the sudden Presence, recognizes him at once, as it is only too 
 certain that he recognizes her — only too probable that he has been 
 keeping a watch on her movements, and meeting her thus of set 
 purpose. 
 
 It is she who first speaks — incapable of seeming not to recognize 
 him : by no means strong enough for the sudden movement that 
 might carry her past him in that frightened rush which comes into 
 her mind, but does not communicate itself to the limbs. She utters, 
 in her fear, only the one exclamation — his name : 
 
 "Mr. Jasper!" 
 
 " Miss Bud ! Rosa ! " he answers, his voice hoarse, and broken 
 enough to be himself under the influence of a fear corresponding to 
 hers, or some other emotion quite as powerful. 
 
 " Excuse me, pray ! — and good night. It is late, and I must be 
 at home." 
 
 The brain has communicated its will to the limbs now, and she 
 attempts to walk past him. Without allowing her to come into 
 collision with him, he yet steps before and bars her away. 
 
 " Excuse me, Rosa ! — you do not think to leave me with only a 
 word, do you 1 " he exclaims, in the same hoarse and broken voice. 
 "No — I have something to say to you before we part — something 
 that must be said." 
 
 " Mr. Jasper, if you are a gentleman, you will allow me to pass 
 on ; for it is late, and I must not be away from my lodgings any 
 longer," she musters strength and courage to say, though she is aware 
 that strength and courage are both oozing away from her in some 
 unaccountable manner, in that Presence which seems to compel her 
 like a tyranny. 
 
 " No — you must not, shall not go, until I have said what I have 
 to say," is his reply, still standing in her way. 
 
 " Please let me go on ! " she implores. Then a frightened threat, 
 with no awe in it. "If you do not, I will call for help — for the 
 police ! " 
 
 " No, you will do nothing of the sort," he answers, with that 
 assurance in his voice which shows how well he understands her last 
 words. " No — you have escaped me — run away from me ; and you 
 have been fool enough — pardon my plain words ! — to suppose that 
 you had escaped me altogether. Do not imagine it. I am a man 
 not easily balked, where I have set my mind ; and what when I 
 have set my heart ? " 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Jasper " again she attempts to implore, but more 
 
 feebly than before. He cuts her short, and the sentence is never 
 finished. 
 
 " Stop ! What you are about to say will be of no use — worse 
 
CARRIED AWAY. 99 
 
 than of no use. Listen ; do you remember the last time that I spoke 
 to you, by the sun-dial, in the garden of the Nun's House 1 " 
 
 She does not answer. He does not intend or desire that she should 
 do so ; he only wishes that she should remember ; and oh, how keenly 
 and shudderingly she does that ! 
 
 " You tried to get away from me, then, and you could not do so. 
 You cannot now. I have waited for this hour, ever since you ran 
 away ; it is mine, and I am not to be disappointed." 
 
 The poor young girl feels that the fearful magnetism of his will is 
 conquering her — has conquered her. She is literally powerless, firmly 
 as the heart may rebel against the tyranny. She is as much alone 
 with this man, here on the pavement of one of the most frequented 
 of London streets, as she could be in a desert. For though persons 
 are passing and repassing, some of them almost touching her skirt 
 as they go by, she has no more power to call for aid than if she 
 possessed no physical tongue. 
 
 " Turn into this archway with me for a few moments," he says. 
 " There is a square beyond, where we can converse without attracting 
 too much attention." 
 
 "No, I cannot — I will not !" she speaks mechanically. 
 
 " You both can and will, Rosa !" he replies. " Come — I go on; 
 you follow." 
 
 She endeavours, with what power she has, not to obey him. She 
 recognizes every reason why she should not, and none why she 
 should ; and yet she feels that her limbs are turning in the direction 
 he points — that she is going through the dusky archway into that 
 square of which she knows nothing ! She summons strength to pro- 
 pound one condition, and he accedes to it, mercifully. 
 
 " If I go in there with you, will you promise not to touch me ? 
 Will you swear 1 " 
 
 "You slurald go in, without any promise from me whatever ; but I 
 will humour one of your whims. How many of your whims would 
 I not humour, Rosa, to have you take me, even though you hated 
 me, trampled and even spat upon me, at the same time ! Yes, I 
 swear that you shall go into the square, and come out again, without 
 my touching you. Is that enough ]" 
 
 It is enough. It must be. She has no strength to make the 
 condition otherwise than sufficient. He moves within the archway, 
 and she follows, walking mechanically, and more as one might do, 
 with short, jerky steps, in a somnambulic dream, than with the 
 ordinary motion of waking life. He does not touch her, though 
 walking very near ; and yet she has no more power to go away from 
 him, at the instant when her whole soul is moved by the extremity of 
 mingled fear and abhorrence, than if he held her by chain or cord. 
 
 A few yards, and they are in the South Square of Gray's Inn, 
 where the lights throw a sickly glare on the dull bricks of the 
 Hall and Chambers, and where, even at that hour, the very spirit of 
 dismal loneliness and sequestration from the world seems to reign. 
 
 Here he stops, she within two or three feet of him, and resumes 
 what he has been saying in the street. The words seem indefinably 
 
100 JOHN jaspek's secret. 
 
 very near her ears ; and yet, on the other hand, she appears to be 
 hearing them across miles of distance. They are near enough to 
 excite helpless terror ; they are far enough away to suggest that 
 any help or deliverance is as remote as they are beyond hope or 
 expectation. 
 
 " Eosa," he says, his voice hoarse but steady now, as if he had 
 conquered any tremor in it ; " Rosa, look at me." 
 
 Mechanically she obeys, as she has been doing all else mechanically. 
 For the first time, under the full light of the lamp near which they 
 have stopped, she sees his face with the opportunity of observing it ; 
 and she feels that it would be pitiful, if she was not so cruelly in his 
 power, to mark the inroads which even a few weeks have made in 
 face and figure. The figure seems shrunken and a little bowed, as it 
 was not in those other days so near in reality though seeming so very 
 far in the past ; the clothes, though scarcely shabby, are arranged 
 with less than the old care, and have that indescribable air of 
 belonging to one who no longer pays the full regard of his natural 
 disposition to external appearance. But the worst change is in the 
 face, and that she observes most closely, as in the best light. That 
 face, too, seems shrunken, like the figure ; even under the lamp- 
 light it is yellow and hard, like parchment ; the lips are drawn 
 sharply over the teeth, and have lost fulness ; and the eyes are 
 burning — burning — two coals that may contain the spark of fever or 
 of madness. 
 
 " You have looked at me," he says, after a moment. " I feel your 
 eyes, as I feel every pulse and faculty of you, and as you — cruel girl ! 
 — do not feel me, except as I compel you. You see how I am 
 changed 1 You do — I know that you do." 
 
 He appears to wait for an answer. She answers mechanically, 
 after the manner of everything else that she has done. 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Jasper, you are changed." 
 
 "I am changed, I know it ! " he resumes, almost fiercely. "And 
 what has changed me 1 You ! You have bewitched me. I know 
 what the witchcraft of olden time is, now. You pretend that you 
 have not done it — that you have not intended to do it : bah ! I 
 know what such language means, in the mouths of beautiful little 
 fiends like yourself." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Jasper ! why, why will you say such awful things ! " 
 she begins to exclaim, a little relieved, by very fear — and horror, 
 from her stupor. But he cuts her short again. 
 
 " I knew how it would be — you would deny everything. But it 
 is of no use, and it is too late. You cannot escape me, as you see ; 
 and how much longer is this farce to be kept up ? Your new lover, 
 Neville Landless, has the rope around his neck already, that / have 
 placed there ; and I have brought you here to-night to ask you once 
 more, and for the last time, whether you have duly weighed what I 
 said to you in the garden of the Nun's House, and whether you 
 intend to make me any repayment for the ruin of body and soul that 
 you have caused 1 " 
 
 For the first time, since the meeting in front of the archway, poor 
 
CARRIED AWAY. 101 
 
 little Rosa breathes freely — almost shakes off the spell which has so 
 far held her. A wonderful relief has come — yet how horrible ! This 
 man, of whom her terror had been so extreme from a widely different 
 cause, has changed to her in a moment : he is simply triad- — nothing 
 more nor less ; and she has far slighter fear of the mere madman 
 than of the same evil man with his magnetic tyranny. She has 
 even (so subtle is the principle of vanity in the human breast, for- 
 giving what is done for love of us /) a certain pity for the man who 
 seems to have been more than half-crazed for her sake, however 
 evil and dreadful he may be in other regards. 
 
 But the difficulty of the situation is by no means removed, whether 
 her suspicions be true or false — as she is soon to remember. For the 
 hard-drawn lips, for one moment silent, take up the fearful refrain 
 almost immediately. 
 
 " I repeat my inquiry, Rosa, darling, and I repeat it for the last 
 time. I told you, before, that you might do what you would — that 
 you might cast me off (that included running away), but that you 
 would never be rid of me. That no one should come between us, 
 or I would crush him as I crush this lump of gravel under my heel. 
 That I would pursue you to the death." 
 
 The terror returns, in intensity if not altogether in kind, as he 
 repeats the language of their last interview. How terrible is her 
 situation ! and how can she escape him, as escape him she must, and 
 at once, at any hazard ! 
 
 " Mr. Jasper," she says, in the calmest voice at command, " I 
 hoped that you would not keep me here so long. It is so very, very 
 wrong ; and what will they say of me at my lodgings 1 Indeed, 
 indeed, you must allow me to go now ! " 
 
 " What, Rosa ! — without my answer ? No — never think it ! You 
 hoped something else, no doubt, — that you might never see me 
 again ! Do not hope that, either ! You do not leave this spot until 
 you have answered my question — asked for the last time. Will you 
 throw away your new lover, as you threw away the old, and be 
 mine 1 " 
 
 It is almost a scream that bursts from the young girl's lips in 
 reply — the utterer scarcely aware of the utterance, but moved thereto 
 by much in the past and much more in the present — that shadowy 
 but most real image accompanying her when she first set out on her 
 unfortunate errand. 
 
 " Oh, no ! no ! no ! How can you ask me again, when I have 
 already told you that I cannot % Oh ! why will you torture me so ? " 
 
 He is silent for a moment ; then his voice is hoarse as the very 
 roaring of a torrent, as he says : 
 
 " I understand you, then, Rosa, to refuse me, unconditionally and 
 always 1 Let there be no mistake between us, that both of us might 
 regret, some day. You refuse to be mine, ever ?" 
 
 " Yes ! why, why will you make me say again what I do not like 
 to repeat 1 — and why do you keep me so 1 " 
 
 " I will keep you no longer, Rosa — Miss Bud," he answers, very 
 calmly, to all appearance. " Come — what we had to say here is 
 
102 JOHN jaspek's secret. 
 
 said : you wish to go. Let the consequences be on your head, if you 
 are afterwards sorry for the conclusion of this interview." 
 
 He does not touch her, as he has sworn that he would not. He 
 turns towards the archway by which they have entered — his face, 
 whatever it expresses, hidden from her view by his turning away 
 from the light. She follows, only a little behind and at his left — 
 little less than astounded at the comparative calmness with which 
 he has received her hopeless refusal, even though there is a terrible 
 threat in that calm utterance. Only let her get out of his power, 
 now, she thinks, and the future may take care of itself, especially as 
 she will take that portion of the " care " involving her never again 
 being in the street alone, under any circumstances, while he lives 1 
 Only let her get home now, before Miss Twinkleton and the rest 
 have grown too much alarmed about her ! 
 
 Mr. Jasper maintains his wonderful calmness, and no other word 
 passes between them. They repass the archway, as they entered, 
 and are once more in the street. The danger, whatever it may have 
 been, is over. 
 
 Just then occurs something, the explanation of which may be as 
 difficult, to Rosa, twenty years hence, as at the moment. She has, 
 if her brain is capable of taking in the philosophy of facts in an 
 instant, another illustration of the folly of supposing that we know 
 when absolute danger begins or ends, the term being a relative one. 
 
 There must be a cab standing at the curb — a four-wheeler, with 
 the door open. There must be, though she does not see it, and 1 
 though she may never know how it comes to be in that place at that 
 juncture, and whether the fare so suddenly supplied is that for which 
 the cabman has previously agreed under " Act of Parlyment." For 
 her first knowledge is, that she is being lifted off the ground, and 
 thrust into the cab, with such instantaneous action that she has 
 neither the power to resist nor the thought to scream ; her second, 
 that her companion rather hurls a command to the driver than gives 
 him a direction ; her third, that he is inside the cab, beside her, and 
 with his hand upon her mouth, almost at the same instant when she 
 has arrived at the two previous conclusions ; and her fourth, that 
 the cab is whirling rapidly away towards Oxford Street and the 
 Circus. 
 
 There are circumstances under which the brain of an inexperienced 
 school-girl can manage to combine incidents with tolerable rapidity 
 and clearness ; and poor little Rosebud, in the moment or two follow- 
 ing, springs quickly to certain most reasonable additional conclusions. 
 She understands it all, now — why she has been taken into the square : 
 that she might be driven to a final answer ; why she has been kept 
 so long there : that the dusk might be deeper on coming out ; beyond 
 this, that she is being carried off by the man — mad or worse — whom 
 she a few moments ago pitied, and for some horrible design or purpose, 
 beyond guess as to its atrocity. Here her frightened thought stops, 
 very naturally ; more experienced persons than she might find diffi- 
 culty in going further. 
 
 She struggles, of course, and attempts to cry out. The effort is. 
 
< 
 < 
 
 Q 
 
 w 
 
 I— I 
 
 < 
 
CARRIED AWAY. 103 
 
 vain ; for one arm of her abductor is around her slight form, holding 
 her without difficulty, and the other hand is over her mouth, using 
 just so much force as silences her, and no more. And how, even in 
 the worst of her terror, she shudders under the pressure of hand and 
 arm ! He would not touch her in the Square ! No, he could easily 
 swear to so much ; but how cruelly he can touch now ! 
 
 But the hand over the mouth, though one of the most effectual of 
 gags, is not one of the best, from the fact that the experimenter may 
 find other use for the member, and that then sudden removal may be 
 awkward. John Jasper (expert in certain details of drapery — scarfs, 
 to wit !) may be impressed with this idea; for he very soon makes 
 the attempt to substitute the hand by binding a handherchief over 
 the sweet little mouth ; and that attempt is— so to speak — fatal. 
 
 By some inadvertence, in this operation, the Choir-Master makes 
 the mistake of allowing one of his fingers to slip between the two 
 rows of pearly teeth that he has so often and so much admired. 
 Recognizing the fact and their duty simultaneously, the teeth close 
 upon it, as if it constituted part of the most dainty morsel ever 
 crunched — one of the true Lumps of Delight, of which the others 
 are only faint types and shadows. The sharp pearls set into it like 
 a vice ; no jerk, short of one tearing off the finger, seeming to be 
 capable of removing it. The abductor needs both hands in the 
 effort, groaning, in spite of himself, under the agony. And the 
 partial release of the body enables the young girl to swing herself 
 nearer to the side of the cab, and to make her hitherto deferred 
 assault on the glass of the closed window. 
 
 An assault, not with the infantile hands, which could be of no 
 possible use, but with the small reticule (heavier for the purchases at 
 Bolding's) which has a steel frame — and at the third blow goes 
 crashing through the glass. " Jingle ! " — out goes that brittle 
 barrier ! " Whoa ! " speaks the driver, from his box, at once pulling 
 up to ascertain why, what, and how much the damage. " Help ! 
 help ! " yells (there is no other truly descriptive word for the cry) 
 the captive, through the opening thus made, releasing the tortured 
 hand as a compromise for being allowed to open her mouth. " Dam- 
 nation ! " grinds out John Jasper, between his set teeth, recognizing 
 in an instant (mad or no) that the chance is lost, opening the oppo- 
 site door and springing out and away, while the cabman is on the 
 other side of the vehicle. And " Miss Bud's voice calling for help 1 
 What is all this, cabby 1 " naturally inquires Mr. Grewgious, coming 
 up from the pavement, where, going home to his chambers, he has 
 been made a surprised spectator of the concluding scene. 
 
 " Mr. Grewgious ! oh, Mr. Grewgious ! why, why did I ever 
 come out alone, and so late 1 " is what the rescued young lady first 
 finds breath to say ; the sentence being, it will be observed, a direct 
 personal question addressed to the lawyer, which he may be par- 
 doned, under all the circumstances, not being immediately ready to 
 answer. 
 
 "Miss Bud! my dear young lady! what does all this mean?" 
 says the lawyer, not strictly in reply, as he accepts the invitation of 
 
104 
 
 JOHN JASPERS SECRLT. 
 
 the extended arms, and helps Rosa out of the cab, landing her, with 
 awkward dexterity, in the middle of the street. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Grewgious ! oh, how fortunate it was that you chanced 
 to be here ! and oh, why, why did this ever happen ? And I can't 
 tell you, here — do please take me home !" Such are the rather 
 confusing than explanatory exclamations following, from the lips 
 again so happily opened. 
 
 " Certainly, my dear young lady, certainly. Not hurt then, what- 
 ever has happened 1 Good — tick that off. And cannot be frightened 
 dangerously, or you could not talk. Good again ! — tick that off also. 
 And now, as you suggest, I will take you home — without the cab, 
 the distance not being a formidable one, even for you." 
 
 But here the cabman interferes, just as the two are leaving his 
 physically injured vehicle, and his mentally and pecuniarily injured 
 self, standing in the middle of the street. 
 
 " Hi ! I say ! ain't nobody going to pay me my fare, and the 
 breakage of this 'ere winder?" 
 
 " Good gracious, my dear," cries Mr. Grewgious, with the lawyer's 
 abstract sense of justice (which is, or ought to be, full of Eight 
 Angles), and turning round at once. " What is to be done about 
 the cab 1 Did you engage it, my dear ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! no ! " earnestly replies Rosa. " I was thrust into it by 
 force, as I am going to tell you " 
 
 " Well, then, cabby, I do not see that you have any claim on the 
 young lady, and I am sure that you have none upon we. Where is 
 the person who engaged you 1 " 
 
 "'E 'as run away, since this 'ere glass was broke — leastwise it 
 looks so, seein' that he's nowhere about," replies the cabman, dole- 
 fully. " But, Miss," and his voice is temporarily more cheerful — 
 " no offence, I 'opes, wasn't it you as broke the glass ? " 
 
 " Eh, my dear young lady 1 " helpingly queries the lawyer. 
 
 "II oh, yes, / broke the glass to get out — to get away from him." 
 
 " There, I told you so — it was 'er as did it, and I wants my 
 money for that, any way ! " triumphantly replies the cabman. 
 
 " Oh, what shall I do, Mr. Grewgious 1 I haven't enough money 
 to pay for it ! " dolefully exclaims poor Rosa, thus suddenly brought 
 to a second grief at the moment of apparent deliverance. 
 
 " Card ! " suggests the elated proprietor of the vehicle, who almost 
 feels the money in his palms. 
 
 " Stop ! " says Mr. Grewgious. " Allow me, if you please, to 
 apply the law to the whole case, before deciding upon any part of it. 
 You did not hire the cab, Miss Bud, nor was it hired at your request 
 or consent t " 
 
 " No— oh, no." 
 
 " Yon were forced into it, by some one who apparently had hired 
 it, and whose name is not at present essential to the case 1 " 
 
 " Yes, oh, Mr. Grewgious ! " 
 
 " Pardon my interrupting you and going on, Miss Bud. You 
 broke the glass, if I understand correctly, as one of, and possibly the 
 only means of attracting attention and thus escaping 1 " 
 
CARRIED AWAY. 105 
 
 ; Yes, but I am very sorry- 
 
 " Eegrets, like the man's name, my dear young lady, are not at 
 present in the case. So far as I can at this juncture determine the 
 law, the cabman may be given in charge as particeps crvminis in an 
 attempt at forcible abduction and outrage on the person of a minor, 
 for which the punishment, if convicted, would be heavy,— or you 
 may decline to appear against him." 
 
 " Give me in charge ! " indignantly says the cabman. " Blessed if 
 I wouldn't like to see you do it ! " 
 
 " Avoicl swearing in the presence of ladies, my good man," con- 
 tinues Mr. Grewgious. "As for the damages to the cab, they are 
 clearly due from the hirer, if he can be found ; and you owe him 
 nothing, my dear young lady, unless you do choose to have him 
 arrested. Now if you will accept of an Angular man's arm, which 
 may not be fitted on in the most convenient shape for a lady's use, — 
 we will proceed." 
 
 " "Well, cheek me if that isn't cool ! - And blessed 'ard it is on a 
 poor man, to go and 'ave his winder broke out like this 'ere, and no 
 fare ! Wouldn't I like to catch 'im, though ! wouldn't I ! " 
 
 With which poor consolation, the cabman grumblingly remounts 
 his box, a little chaffed by a small group of idle bystanders, who do 
 not chance to have suffered corresponding pecuniary damage, and 
 drives away to the stable and repairing-shop ; while the lawyer and 
 his ward, so opportunely met, pursue their brief way to the lodgings 
 of the latter at Billickins, not yet vacated, though under notice to 
 that effect, the original term of contract having still a certain brief 
 period to run. 
 
 During this walk, however, brief as it is, Rosa manages to' impart 
 to Mr. Grewgious not only the name of the foiled abductor, but all 
 the circumstances of importance connected with the first interview. 
 To which she adds a request, of which the reason may be readily 
 found in the unwillingness of the young girl to have the unfortunate 
 adventure canvassed even among her friends — that her guardian will 
 consent to keep it for the time a secret between themselves, until 
 there may be better occasion for revealing it. The lawyer, who has 
 listened with more absorbed interest to the naive aud childlike rela- 
 tion, than his replies give evidence, or than Rosa will ever know 
 during her life upon the earth — consents to the temporary suppres- 
 sion with a readiness born of the secrecy of his calling. And so, a 
 few minutes later, he hands her to the door at Billickins, declining 
 to go in on that occasion, but waiting within view until he sees the 
 door opened for her, after which he plods on, in his Angular way, to 
 his lonely chambers under the broad segis of P. J. T. 
 
 These letters assume, to him, an hour later, as he sits over the 
 concluding morsels of his lonely (even Bazzard-deserted) supper, the 
 aspect of Passion Judicially Tried, with more evenness in the 
 holding of the scales than may characterize the examination, into 
 litigated cases, of many of the learned judges who make the ermine 
 at once feared and respected. For it is himself and his own im- 
 pulses that he is trying again, as we have seen him doing months 
 
106 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 before, — but with what he would himself call new evidence come 
 into court, materially changing the aspects involved. And the 
 lonely old man sighs as he reviews the last items of that evidence — 
 sighs so deeply that for the moment he ceases to be Angular and 
 ungainly, and comes close to the hearts of all those who have loved 
 and suffered, but borne both the loving and suffering like men ! 
 
 " Ah, well," he muses, " there is no fool like an old fool," — 
 so says the proverb, and so' say / / Her ring — I wondered 
 whether it would ever come back to me. It has come : so strangely 
 that its coming outruns the other wonder. And she has come back : 
 does she know it, in that far land to which she went so many years 
 ago 1 come back in her daughter. And I, old, ungainly, unattrac- 
 tive, who have no more chance to win the love of even an ordinary 
 woman of middle age, than the man who carries in my coals, I 
 must see so much of her mother in her, that I can scarcely avoid 
 betraying myself in her presence. Good God ! how much she 
 looked like her mother to-night, in her half-alarm ! — and what it 
 cost me not to disgrace myself for ever, by saying what would have 
 sent her away from me in a worse fright and disgust than that she 
 feels for the other villain ! 
 
 " Ah, well ! " after a pause pointed by another sigh quite as 
 profound as that preceding his rumination. " Hiram Grewgious, 
 you may be a fool, but there is no obligation to become a coward. 
 Labour for strength, and even pray for it, old nondescript, if you 
 have grace enough — that you may be able to remember that nobody 
 that you have always been, and the past generation to which you 
 belong — that you may see her wooed and wedded, as you saw her 
 mother, and claim neither love nor pity, as you deserve none." 
 
 This while, what of Rosa, the subject of a suppressed passion of 
 which she as little dreams as she could do anything else than 
 childishly weep over it, if she knew of its existence ? 
 
 Ah, if the old lawyer's glance were but keen enough to 
 pierce through distance and obstacle, between Staple Inn and 
 Bloomsbury Square, the sight might be deeper, even if no more 
 hopeless, because the dreaded end would show nearer. For the 
 drama of Othello and Desdemona is being acted over again, in its 
 earlier and more innocent portions, with no other audience than 
 Miss Twinkleton, who may be accepted in her usual rdle of Pro- 
 priety, but who may be simply a Chorus not yet come to voice. 
 
 Rosa, coming in from her adventure, somewhat anxiously looked 
 for, but all inquiries and explanations avoided by her making her 
 appearance under the safe convoy of Mr. Grewgious, — has found 
 Mr. Tartar just on the point of leaving, after calling to pay his 
 respects ; and for some cause, then, the intention of immediately 
 returning to the Admiral's Cabin and calling all hands to holystone 
 decks and tidy her up a bit, would seem to have been abandoned. 
 The handsome, breezy, and brown-faced man of the wide experience 
 has dropped into a chair, with endurance if not satisfaction in that 
 article of furniture, though it might better answer its purpose, cer- 
 tainly, if a capstan or a corner of the binnacle ; and Rosa just 
 
CARBIKD AWAY. 107 
 
 enough reminiscent of her late terror to be more keenly alive to the 
 fact that in this company she has no terror "whatever. Rosa has 
 rather floated than dropped into another, too near for a naval 
 engagement at long range — too close even for the Benbow and 
 Anson theory of yardarm and yardarm — almost near enough for 
 boarders ahoy ! and grapplius ready ! And he is telling her, not 
 boastfully, for that would destroy more than half the charm, but 
 with that quiet, half-technical commonplace of expression which 
 seems to fit every interesting subject as with a garment especially 
 belonging to it, and with an air of personal indifference to the 
 marvels related, which claims no share and so receives the larger — 
 telling her some of those stories of adventure by sea and land, in 
 storm and calm, through danger and ludicrous mishap, which have 
 no more power to grow old or lose interest than the very scenes 
 among which they are laid. And the young girl listens so atten- 
 tively that the narrator may well be satisfied without any additional 
 audience than herself at the front and quiet-crocheting Miss Twin- 
 kleton (who has not yet finished the woollen monster) in the back- 
 ground. 
 
 He tells of elephant-hunting or boar-spearing in Ceylon, or of 
 tiger-shooting when on long leave in Bengal ; and his listener follows 
 him with lips as well as eyes, seeming to think that he may be even 
 yet possibly in danger — merely throwing in a not-too-brilliant word 
 at long intervals, to remember that Ceylon is Helena Landless's 
 native island, or to say : " Oh, why, why, why did you act so 
 rashly ? " He paints her the typhoon of the China Seas, with the 
 heavens a pall and the sea a black yawning tomb ; and she seems to- 
 be buried with his stout ship there, until the peril passes and the 
 merry life on shipboard begins once more. He grapples with 
 pirates on junk or proa, and she seems to feel that knife or creese is 
 yet at his throat, and to try to shield him with her poor little hands, 
 till that danger, too, passes, and she helps him (a little vindictively, 
 it is to be feared, though severely frightened) to blow the piratical 
 craft out of water, or hang 'em to the yardarm with a long rope and 
 a short shrift. 
 
 Ah, Rosa — dear little Bosa of that bewitching, dangerous girlhood 
 which seems to have sent Edwin Drood to his murdered doom ; 
 which John Jasper arraigns as driving him mad and making his life 
 an unendurable burthen ; which Hiram Grewgious does not arraign 
 but worships as that which makes him, a grey-headed idiot, deserving 
 of the school-boy's rod — ah, Bosa, this, as even your untutored 
 young heart feels and confesses — this is the end of all. You have 
 learned to understand and appreciate an experience and a power 
 beyond your own ; and so the chain is woven that must either grace 
 or gall. The merest girl yourself, the hoy was not for you ; the man 
 is here, and you are his. Othello comes, Desdemona listens : and 
 the drama of her life, whether for good or ill, is thenceforth written, 
 beyond the skill of the veriest playwright to change scene or 
 sentence. 
 
108 JOHN jaspee's secret. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 joe gilfert's first journey. 
 
 Night is falling on the dank and dismal streets of a portion of the 
 City lying not far from the Tower, 'with a tendency towards the 
 London Docks and Wapping. Streets that show the claim of anti- 
 quity to respect, and very little else capable of securing that appre- 
 ciation — as may be said of some tottering sot or wrinkled harridan, 
 thoroughly disreputable, but with years enough to write the prefix 
 " old." Streets that may have been laid out by those nearly omni- 
 present people the Romans for anj'thing that modern convenience or 
 modern cleanliness can indicate to the contrary. Streets that might 
 have belonged to one of the Cities of the Plain, lying under water for 
 the comfortable period elapsing since the destruction of Sodom, and 
 only lately and slimily dried out to view through the use of improved 
 drainage — such a deposit of mud, damp, and all the elements of watery 
 discomfort, may be seen, like a dull leprosy, on mouldy house-front, 
 and more fully developed on slippery uneven pavement. Streets into 
 which the daylight seems to come unwillingly and of cruel compul- 
 sion, even in those often-quoted and rarely-appearing " brightest days 
 of summer " — as knowing the forcible opposing influences with which 
 it must contend, and the general rough treatment which it is sure to 
 encounter before getting away again in a state of feeble half-extin- 
 guishment. Streets in which the most frequent wheeled vehicle 
 is the costermonger's barrow with fruit or vegetables arrived at the 
 due state of ripe -rottenness for that peculiar consumption ; varied by 
 an occasional cab, only presuming to enter the precincts when become 
 sufficiently shabby in general appearance of trap, horse, and harness, 
 not to affront the inhabitants by any mocking display of splendour. 
 Streets where the few females appearing are always slipshod as to 
 feet, frowsy as to hair, and fugitive as to the dropping away of clothes 
 — nearly always carrying home pennyworths, stopping to talk to 
 equally unclean and dowdy cronies, or screaming after barefoot 
 children of such uniform dirt in face and semi-covering, that there 
 must be difficulty in distinguishment by the fondest maternal eye. 
 Streets where the open market-shops show flabby fish, damaged meats, 
 and abhorrent vegetables, with small heaps of coals in foul recesses, 
 indicating purchase by the ha'porth ; and where those with closed 
 doors seem to display the same unappetizing wares in the unwashed 
 windows that they have shown to the past half-century of deficient 
 means, and will show to the next half-century of means still more 
 incapable for purchase. Streets intersected by narrow alleys and 
 narrower courts, in which all possible of the previously-named 
 conditions are intensified, — and pierced by the openings of yet 
 dingier and more gloomy archings, over any one of which Dante might 
 have written his famous farewell to Hope, without risking entrance 
 into the dismal and dangerous gloom within. 
 
joe gilfert's first journey. 109 
 
 Night is falling, in a mode entirely consonant with the character of 
 the streets it is visiting ; for it comes down with a hot and steaming 
 sultriness, choking the breath, and making the clothing adhere to the 
 person with a tenacity suggesting that the last ablution has been per- 
 formed in glue-water. It renders well-aired rooms half-untenable, and 
 close dens Black Holes of Calcutta in miniature ; and it sends the 
 tenants of attics, broiled all day under the misted sun, out into miserable 
 alleys, courts, and doorways with something of the feeble joy that 
 might be predicated of a doomed joint temporarily escaped from the 
 oven or the spit. 
 
 It is on such a night — so early that the hour may yet be called 
 evening — that two persons pass down one of the mouldiest, closest, 
 and most forbidding of those streets, going on from bad to worse with 
 a steadiness indicating that they do not intend to falter at any ordi- 
 nary development of the disreputable. If the evidence of clothing 
 can be depended upon, they are both of that stronger sex to whom it 
 is understood that the rougher labours of life are to be intrusted ; 
 and an additional guarantee to the same effect will be found in the 
 names they bear — one styling himself, when he takes that unusual 
 trouble with his own personality, Robert Tartar, or sometimes Bob 
 Tartar, late lieutenant in Her Majesty's service ; and the other bearing 
 the easily-spoken cognomen of Joe Gilfert. 
 
 Tartar has rummaged from some one of the sea-chests or lockers of 
 the Admiral's cabin, wherein is stowed dunnage of a highly-miscel- 
 laneous character, and an amount making the place a small rival of 
 Portsmouth, a rig of toggery, reducing him, in its comparative shab- 
 biness and evidences of long use, below Luff or Powder-monkey, and 
 leaving him scarcely respectable enough for a foretopman ; though 
 not even dress can change the brown comely jollity of eye and face, 
 the neat waving curls of his thick hair, or the general expression of 
 being the hearty, active, companionable fellow combined with the 
 gentleman. 
 
 Something different from this must be said of " Joe Gilfert," for 
 whom no other name is at present necessary. He looks the strip- 
 ling, but a very slight, young and handsome one — brown in cheek, 
 keen in eye, and lithe in every movement ; while if his feet and hands 
 are a trifle too small for what Mr. Tartar would require in an able 
 seaman, no undue notice need be taken of them in the night-time. 
 Better dressed than Tartar, he appears, as we may have seen him on 
 another occasion, a shopkeeper's lad of more than the usual good looks 
 and ease of manner ; and he appears nothing more under any ordi- 
 nary observation. Nothing that he wears sits upon him as if it 
 belonged to some one else ; no ttneasy movement indicates that he has 
 ever borne another name, or been at home in different habiliments. 
 
 " Oh, no, you need fear nothing for me" he says, evidently in 
 response to some suggestion with reference to the sultry heat of the 
 evening. "It is a dreadful old place, I have no doubt. Such 
 people could not carry on their business in more respectable places, 
 you know, even if they could afford them. But you must remember . 
 that I, as well as yourself, have been used to heat, making the worst 
 
110 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 of London weather very temperate indeed. And it is only for a 
 while, now : by-and-by we shall have something, taking much longer 
 time, if we are not both mistaken." 
 
 " What a brave g " 
 
 " Take care, sir ! " Joe interrupted him suddenly. " Kemember 
 where we are, and what an awkwardness we might be plunging 
 into by some one overhearing." 
 
 " I beg pardon, and I quite understand, and will be more careful," 
 Mr. Tartar replies. " Sailing under orders, of course I obey them 
 •without question, and never mutiny, except the Old Man is too 
 sharp. TJmph ! — I was only going to remark what a brave little 
 fellow you were (how do you like that ?), and how much I should 
 like to have you with me, some time, in a nice little job of cutting- 
 out ! " 
 
 "Cutting-out? What's that? — anything to do with the ship's 
 tailor ? " laughs Joe, maliciously. " However, you can explain 
 another time, if you please. Do not let us talk of other things 
 until we pass the place, and find ourselves down at the river. Are 
 you sure that you remember ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, quite sure. And, by the bye, here we are. It is not 
 nice, I know, plunging into this hole; but how can we help it ? Bat 
 before we go a step farther, are you quite sure ? Not of your 
 courage — I do not doubt that, but of your knowing how to manage ? " 
 
 " Yes, quite sure, thanks. Under heaven's favour, I do not 
 expect either to be frightened or make a blunder." 
 
 " As for the former," the ex-Lieutenant replies, " if that should 
 happen, as I do not believe that it will, remember that I shall be 
 very near you. I have beaten up the quarters pretty thoroughly ; 
 and I may be looking in at yon, through the window, any moment. 
 Well, last^ orders given and received. Boarders away ! Here we go ! " 
 
 They turn down the narrow alley, miserably lighted, without 
 further word. A turn, a winding, and they are at the wretched door 
 of the house, where John Jasper has so often enjoyed temporary 
 transport to elysium, with longer-during return to the infernal 
 regions. 
 
 They have no occasion to knock, even if the door is in the habit 
 of demanding that extreme courtesy of civilized life ; for a coarse- 
 faced man, his bleared eyes just visible in the dim light of the court, 
 is coming out, and regards them with the suspicious stare of not 
 believing them to be either thieves or cut-throats. But he passes on, 
 looking back in continued suspicion ; and they are free to enter. 
 
 Only one does so, however — Joe Gilfert. Mr. Tartar says, in a 
 low voice : 
 
 " Kemember what I told you — three-pair-back. When you come 
 down, I shall be here, for I shall know when you leave the old 
 caboose. Take care of yourself, like a good boy,"and don't be long, 
 please ! " 
 
 Then, as Joe enters the door, he disappears from before the 
 doorway — where, his late companion has no more idea than of the 
 intricate topography of the many-roomed old rookery that he is 
 
joe gilfeet's first journey. Ill 
 
 himself entering. "We, of later days, may be better informed, in the 
 statement that he immediately relapses into his element, by applying 
 some of the knowledge of locations obtained in previous reconnais- 
 ances, scaling two rear-walls, climbing a spout in the most approved 
 Reefer style, and perching himself where, with his foot on a pro- 
 jecting ledge, and his left arm rove through a convenient gutter- 
 sling of iron, he can secure an unbroken view into a certain half- 
 opened window, just now of peculiar interest, as well as attain 
 something of that supreme felicity found in standing in the foot- 
 ropes, and holding on by the yardarm, in a stiff gale and a beam sea. 
 Joe Gilfert has an interval of climbing too, of very different cha- 
 racter — less difficult, but scarcely less dangerous, in the absence of 
 light and the probability of some serious collision. Fortunately, 
 there is a ray of light from a room emitting villanous smells and 
 more villanous words, at the second landing ; and again, fortunately, 
 the current of travel does not seem to be setting downward, for he 
 accomplishes the three, by aid of that peculiar sense of feeling be- 
 longing to the foot, and of the broken banister, without meeting any 
 one descending. 
 
 At the third landing he feels and fumbles for a door — finds one 
 that opens with the touch of his attempted knock, and follows that 
 door, as it swings, into the room. There is no sound except a slight 
 crackling, and the apartment is almost entirely dark — so dark that 
 only three objects can be distinguished. One is the window, half 
 open, through which the faintest of reflected rays comes in from the 
 court ; and the two others are both lights of a different sort. The 
 more important proceeds from a small mass of coals burning in what 
 appears to be a furnace or brazier, in the grate ; and the smaller is 
 only a spark, higher up, fading and brightening as if with the 
 drawing of human breath. 
 
 "Holloa!" 
 
 This salutation of Joe Gilfert's may not be strictly polite, on 
 entering, uninvited, the residence of a person of distinction ; but 
 really there are occasions when only this, or its equivalent of " Look 
 here ! " or " I say ! " can be found at command of the intruder. In 
 the present instance it produces the desired effect ; for there comes 
 a reply, in a hoarse, cracked rattling voice, which indefinably seems 
 to express the possession of all the miseries of humanity, and more 
 than half the vices and crimes : 
 
 " "Who are you, deary 1 and what do you want 1 " 
 
 " Oh, there you are, aunty ! " exclaims the visitor, cheerily, and 
 striking, at a venture, into a mode of address fitted to one whose 
 name he does not know but whose age he understands. 
 
 " Yes, but who are ye ? I can't see ye till I light a match, and my 
 lungs is so bad and my breath is so short — how am I to find it, 
 deary?" 
 
 But Joe Gilfert seems to have come provided for just such an 
 emergency ; unless we assume the other hypothesis, that the handsome 
 stripling is in the habit of indulging in dainty cigarettes and carries 
 lucifers to that end ! He strikes a match on his boot-sole (it does 
 
112 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 not betray, as it might do, how small is that sole), and it flares up 
 into light enough to show his face and figure, the ensemble of the 
 miserable apartment — broken bed, tottering arm-chair, small table 
 with a short bit of unlighted candle standing upon it, grate with 
 the charcoal brazier, and the old woman smoking, shaking, and occa- 
 sionally coughing, as she attempts to convey, among other suggestions, 
 her impression of the visitor. 
 
 " Why, bless ye, deary ! — did I ever see ye afore ? Ye're a boy, 
 and how handsome ! Here's the candle — light it like a good, hand- 
 some young gentleman as ye are. me, my lungs is weak and my 
 head is bad. Whatever 's to become of us all 1 Yes, light the candle, 
 deary ! " 
 
 Joe Gilfert has not been waiting for the exordium to make that 
 additional and more satisfactory light. Before the old woman has 
 repeated it the candle is lighted, and he replaces it on the table ; 
 while the owner, trembling, coughing, and very decrepit, is attempt- 
 ing to rise from her rickety chair. 
 
 " Now then, aunty, here we are, and we can look at one another to 
 a little better advantage ! " he exclaims pleasantly, as he deposits the 
 candle and assists the miserable figure from the chair. 
 
 " Why ye're handsomer yet than I thought ye was, deary ! " the 
 decrepit crone goes on, some spark of what should have been long 
 defunct in the woman's nature apparently flaring into light more lurid 
 than that of the match had been, at sight of that exquisite beauty of 
 the opposite sex, possibly long denied to her besotted eyes. " But 
 why do ye come here % — though I'm glad enough to see ye. What's 
 yer name, deary, and where do ye belong 1 O me, my lungs is 
 dreffle bad," coughing, " and my head is so weak. Ye won't mind 
 tellin' the old woman what's yer name and where ye live, will ye, 
 deary 1 " 
 
 " Mind ? — no, aunty, not iu the least. Name is Joe Gilfert, with 
 people who care anything for me ; Joseph, with some who don't mind 
 wasting breath. Places where I live — two of them— here in London, 
 Tottenham Court Boad, and in the East Indies. 
 
 " In the East Injees ! Bless ye, deary — that's where the stuff for 
 the mixter grows, isn't it 1 And maybe ye know something about it. 
 though ye're so young and so handsome. Is that what you come for, 
 deary — a little smoke 1 Have they been bad to ye, so young, and do 
 ye have the all-overs 1 If ye have, this is the place to cure 'em, and 
 ye did right to come to the old woman. Jack Chinaman, over the 
 way- — he makes believe, and don't do no good when ye're sufferin', 
 'cause he doesn't know how to mix it ! Do ye want a little smoke, 
 deary % — and have ye nioney for the poor old soul 1 — for the market 
 price is dreffle high, and ye must pay according ! " 
 
 It seems incredible how many words the old woman manages to 
 utter, in a given space of time, between the rattling coughs that seem 
 shaking her miserable frame to pieces ; and the mingled glare of 
 curiosity, admiration, and cupidity in her bleared and sodden eyes is 
 one of the most instructive and melancholy of spectacles, to at least 
 one observer. 
 
JOE gilfert's first journey. 113 
 
 " No, I do not wish, for any ' little smoke/ aunty — not just now, 
 at any rate," says the visitor, when she had ceased, from pure ex- 
 haustion and coughing. " Sit down again, it is easier for you, and 
 let me sit on the side of the bed, here," half-pushing the uncomely 
 hostess down into her chair, and suiting the other action to the word, 
 with a shudder of disgust that there is no fear of the other recog- 
 nizing. " No — I have some other business with you, aunty, that'll 
 do you much more good." 
 
 "There isn't no good for the poor old soul with the bad lungs, and 
 rent so dreffle high up here, but money, deary ! " she whines, picking 
 iip the pipe that has ■ been temporarily laid down, and fumblingly 
 lighting it from the brazier within reach, to the filling of the room 
 with a pungent, sickly odour. 
 
 " But listen to me, aunty. I have money, and you are to get it if 
 ■ you do as I wish," says Joe Gilfert from the side of the bed. 
 
 " Oh, bless ye, deary, for sayin' so ; for trade is so dull, and the 
 market price is so high ! " comes the whine, mingled with coughing 
 and attempts at the pipe. 
 
 " Money 1 Yes. See here — and all for you, for a very little 
 trouble." And with the words, the handsome boy thrusts one of the 
 small hands into his pocket, and withdraws it with a sovereign glit- 
 tering in the palm. In an instant the old face of the woman is 
 demoniac with greed, and she makes a clutch at the coin as marked 
 and forcible as if she had thirty years less of wasting vice resting on 
 her head. 
 
 " Ah ! no — don't try that, aunty ! " exclaims the handsome boy, 
 dropping the coin back into his pocket, and in the very next instant 
 showing the short hilt and glittering blade of a poniard, which he 
 half-draws from its concealment within his vest. " See, I do not mean 
 this for you especially, but for any one who lays hands on me or what 
 I carry." 
 
 " O me, to think ye could believe that of the poor old soul, and 
 she admirin' of ye so, deary ; and she with her lungs so bad, and her 
 head so weak ! " comes the rattling whine of the crone, dropping help- 
 lessly back into her chair. 
 
 "See — let us quite understand each other, aunty," resumes the 
 visitor, who evidently carries at least two of the metals. " I show 
 you the piece of gold, and tell you that it is for you, if you do what 
 I wish ; then I show you this other thing, which is of steel, and very 
 sharp, to inform you that I am not to be robbed. Do you quite take 
 my meaning — think 1 " 
 
 "What is it ye want, deary ? Ye that's so handsome and yet so 
 hard with the old woman ! I never seed ye afore, and yet I'd do 
 anything in life for ye ! Don't keep me waitin'; it makes my lungs 
 worse and worse, and nothin' but rags and strainers." 
 
 " There is a man named John Jasper — maybe you know him by 
 that name, or maybe some other — a well-looking dark man, with fine 
 hair and whiskers — who comes here, sometimes, for a ' little smoke,' 
 as you call it ] " 
 
 Instantly the thought flashes across the suspicious mind of the old 
 :' i 
 
114 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 woman. — " Crime — a man after him — punishment — dragging up for 
 participation or knowledge ! " and the conjunction shows in the wild 
 terror of the eyes, that age has by no means robbed of all expression, 
 — as she coughs hurriedly : 
 
 " No, deary, no ; ye're in the wrong place. It must be Jack China- 
 man's, over the way, that he goes to. Not here, deary ! " 
 
 " Oh, then of course I must take my money to Jack Chinaman, 
 over the way. Sorry ! " This remark of Joe Gilfert's is made in 
 the most matter-of-fact manner imaginable. Indeed he could not be 
 more at his ease, if he were a detective of the keenest scent, worming 
 out by nonchalance some secret destined to cost a life. 
 
 " Oh, no, deary — oh, no, ye wouldn't do that with the poor old 
 soul, and her lungs so weak and she so dreffle low ! " whines and 
 rattles the crone, with a pitiful rubbing of the hands, that is half- 
 wringing them. " The money for me, deary, for tellin' ye where to 
 find him. John Chinaman — he is rich, along of mixin' so much of 
 it, and so bad ; and he don't need it, like the poor old soul." 
 
 " Stop, aunty ! " says the handsome boy, very sternly. " We have 
 had enough of this, and we will not have any more. I know that 
 John Jasper comes here : I have had him tracked to this door ! " 
 
 " O me, my lungs is ribbons and strings ! " she coughs, as the only 
 comment on this threatening announcement, which corroborates her 
 worst fears and yet leaves her defenceless. 
 
 " Yes, no falsehoods, for they will do no good," Joe Gilfert pro- 
 ceeds. " You have no reason to suppose that I wish to hurt him ; 
 and I give you my word that I do not wish to hurt you. But he 
 has a secret ; and I want it, from his own lips. Only help me to get 
 that, and you have the money ! " 
 
 Joy, surprise, and a certain terror, all seem to commingle in the 
 wretched face, as the old woman manages to straighten herself from 
 the chair with sudden vigour. 
 
 " A secret, deary 1 and you want to make him talk, when he has 
 the ' smoke' on him ! Only that, deary 1 But ye can't do it ! Oh, 
 if ye only could ! The old woman has tried it, more'n twice or 
 three times, and he won't say a word that does any good. No, deary, 
 ye're very handsome, but ye can't make him talk ! " 
 
 " Do not be too sure," the handsome boy replies, as the old woman 
 settles back into her chair and coughs with renewed rattle. " You 
 do not have the right mixture. I do ! " 
 
 " Ye, deary 1 — and ye are so young and handsome 1 No — there's 
 nobody has the true secret of mixin' it like the old woman. Ye 
 can't do it, deary ! Oh, if ye only could ! " 
 
 " Did I not tell you that I lived a part of the time in the East 
 Indies, aunty 1 " Joe Gilfert rejoins, bringing up his reserves. " You 
 do not think that you know, here, all that we know, do you 1 What 
 I want of you, to earn the money,- is that you will inform me when 
 this man comes next, and allow me to give him his ' little smoke' — 
 that is all." 
 
 The calculation is not misplaced. The mention again of the " East 
 Indies" brings up in the mind of the naturally superstitious associate 
 
joe gilfert's first journey. 115 
 
 of criminals and outcasts, a little of that awe with which the Orient 
 is always associated in the thoughts of the vulgar ; and thenceforth 
 her visitor has her at advantage. She only puts in, now, her stereo- 
 type parenthesis of recalling the melancholy condition of her lungs 
 and head ; the face, meanwhile, strangely blending the expressions of 
 admiration, fear, and compelled respect, which have successively grown 
 out of the looks, words, and actions of the other. 
 
 " Now listen, for my time is nearly up, and you may have other 
 visitors. If you wish this gold, and possibly twice as much " 
 
 " Oh, bless ye, deary ! " 
 
 " Then remember what I tell you, and obey me. Mr. Jasper, as 
 I know, always comes here in the daytime of late, to arrange for the 
 night — so that he may not have too many companions." 
 
 " O, my lungs is so bad ! How do ye know, my handsome one 2 " 
 
 " Never mind how I know that, or many other things : only obey 
 my directions, or not a penny in your purse. The very next time 
 that he comes — no matter what day — the moment that he has gone, 
 to come again, send this card, by any boy that you can pick up in the 
 court, to Mr. Tartar — you can read the name on it 1 Yes 1 "Well — 
 to Mr. Tartar, at Staple Inn. Tell him to hurry, and there will be 
 half-a-crown for him. Mark as many strokes on the back of the 
 card as will tell at what hour he is to come in the evening. Say 
 nothing to make him understand that his 'little smoke' will be 
 different to what you have given him before. Half an hour before 
 the time named on the card, I will be here." 
 
 " And then, deary 1 What then 1 " 
 
 " Then, while we are waiting, I will prepare his pipe. Leave all 
 to me. But time enough for all that, then. Do you understand me 1 " 
 
 " Yes ! me, my lungs is so dreffle bad ! But are ye sure, dear}', 
 that yer not goin' to pison him and leave his dead body to hang the 
 poor old soul ? Think of that deary ! — ye're not goin' to pison him, 
 are ye 1 " , 
 
 " No — on my honour. But perhaps you will not believe in that. 
 I swear to yon, then, that what T do shall not affect his life. Besides, 
 if I wished to kill him, why could I not do it somewhere else* as 
 well as here ? " 
 
 " So ye could, deary, — so ye could. And ye'll give me the money, 
 sure, then 1 — the whole piece that ye had in yer handsome hand ? 
 Swear to that, too, deary." 
 
 " I will do nothing of the sort ! " replies Joe Gilfert, with an 
 indignant gesture, making the old woman sink back into her chair 
 and resume coughing to the verge of strangling. " I promise you— 
 that is enough. Stop — I will give you something on account, now ; 
 and the sovereign shall all come to you, besides, when you have 
 done what I require." 
 
 " O, bless ye, deary ! — how handsome ye are, and how good ye 
 are to the poor old soul ! " coughs and sputters the crone, as the 
 visitor hands her two half-crowns, that make a pleasant jingle to her 
 greedy ears when they fall into her clutching palm. " And ye are 
 sure, deary, that ye can make him talk ? Oh, if ye only can ! " 
 
 I 2 
 
116 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 Joe Gilfert, as may be imagined, has enjoyed nearly enough of the 
 atmosphere of the miserable apartment, in which the dead fumes of 
 opium combine with the rankness of foul clothes, to revolt the senses. 
 And, the arrangement as definitely made as he has power to make it 
 with such a personality on the other side of the contract, he merely 
 repeats instructions on two or three of the more important points, 
 says a good night, which meets with the coughing whine : " Bless 
 ye, deary ! — and ye so handsome ! " leaves the old woman in her 
 chair, with the short candle burning low in its socket, and gropes 
 his way again down the dangerous stairways, to find at the door Mr. 
 Tartar, who has tumbled overboard from the yardarm, or descended 
 the backstay head foremost, at precisely the right moment. 
 
 " I said that I wouldn't miss ye, deary ! " the old woman cough- 
 ingly and rattlingly apostrophizes some unseen being, rubbing her 
 withered hands, and chuckling hoarsely, when she is alone. " Ye 
 said ' unintelligible,' and so ye was, like the rest of 'em, them. But 
 he is from the Injees, deary, and he will make ye talk ! Maybe 
 ye'll say something for the poor old soul that'll be larnin' a new art 
 o' mixin' it at the same time ; and not all for him ! And then 
 the old woman'll know whether ye've always been John Jasper, or 
 somebody else that she's a bigger account to settle with than ye 
 think, deary ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE MISSION OF THE STONE-MASON. 
 
 Cloisterham, or so much of it as cared to do so, saw, one morning, 
 not many days after the long conference held by Mr. Crisparkle and 
 Durdles over the unfinished and never-to-be-finished bust, a spectacle 
 capable of astonishing that respectable old city, if the faculty of 
 astonishment had not literally gone out of it under the influences of 
 time and change. This was nothing more nor less than the appeai-ance 
 of Stony Durdles in the High Street, proceeding on a journey, and 
 bearing all those marks of unaccustomed care and preparation which 
 always do so much towards making the subjects uncomfortable. 
 
 To say that Mr. Durdles, bent on an important mission, had 
 arrayed himself in holiday attire, in the sense of putting on other 
 outer raiment than that usually worn, would be to take even worse 
 liberties with the language than those in which the stone-mason was 
 himself in the habit of playfully indulging. For there is no reason 
 to believe that he kept in useless idleness a part of the material 
 wealth of England, by possessing garments which he could not wear 
 — id est, more than a single suit : all that he could conveniently 
 assume at once, except in Arctic weather. And long use had so 
 accustomed that suit to the dusty grey and grime of the stone-yard, 
 
THE MISSION OF THE STONE-MASON. 117 
 
 that it would have consented to turn into rags before parting with, 
 the colour at any bidding of the severest of brushes. 
 
 But there had been certain ameliorations, internal and cuticular. 
 More nearly than at any previous time in popular memory, Durdles had 
 washed himself; and there was a preponderance of limp dirty-white 
 shirt-collar dominating the whole of the garment of which it formed 
 the outward and visible sign, and suggesting that some great occasion' 
 had arisen, long waited for by that special shirt, in a state of aristo - 
 cratic exemption. Of the untidy shoes, naturally nothing could be 
 said, they having long before passed into that state in which Day & 
 Martin would have bankrupted their stock in filling an order to 
 supply them with blacking to the extent of polish ; and the hat is 
 equally beyond reach, all the figures of geometry being already repre- 
 sented in its curves and angles, so that the force of ornamentation 
 could literally go no further. The big horn buttons of the coat may 
 have been rubbed clear of lime, and even polished on the cuff thereof : 
 such things have been, and even Durdles (as witness the shirt) was 
 not entirely proof against the blandishments of that siren Vanity. 
 
 "What need to say that he bore his bundle 1 Does the elephant 
 peripatate without his trunk, except under the most extraordinary 
 circumstances of the loss of that convenience at the hands (presum- 
 ably) of his railway porters 1 Does the peacock flaunt without his 
 rainbow of tail, except under deprivation by human peacocks, who 
 believe in the old adage that " fine feathers make fine birds " 1 No 
 — on the contrary, Durdles, bent upon a tour of marked extent (to 
 London, and return), had evidently laboured under the impression 
 that the metropolis was in a state of starvation, rendering sustenance 
 there unattainable, or that divers and sundry accidents and deten- 
 tions were likely to be met with on the road, rendering extensive 
 provisioning as necessary as for a cruise on the African station. So 
 that his bundle, in point of fact, presented even a more notable appear- 
 ance of extraordinary preparation than himself; and it might have 
 been not difficult to believe that he was accompanying it instead of 
 its accompanying him. 
 
 Durdles. embarking, after the long preliminary journey of the 
 Cloisterham people in those days, was a shade difficult, too, with 
 reference to the carriage which he patronized ; avoiding two in which 
 the compartments had been (accidentally) cushioned, — with some appa- 
 rent objection to sitting upon anything less solid and substantial 
 than stone, or its next substitute, wood ; or else impressed with the 
 belief that in any of more effeminate construction he might be lulled 
 into slumber, lose his personal luggage, or incapacitate himself for 
 the stern realities of his errand to the metropolis. 
 
 His errand — aye, let it not be supposed that the stone-mason was 
 going Londonward without an errand, — indeed, that he was going 
 without some errand of enough importance to be called a mission. 
 What was the errand no one knew, when he left Cloisterham, 
 except himself — not even Mr. Crisparkle, whom he had admitted, 
 under circumstances easily recalled, to knowledge hidden from all 
 the world besides. That it was not an amiable one, calculated to 
 
118 JOHN jasper's sechet. 
 
 make the object of his visit materially happier, might be judged from 
 the sullen, set of the heavy jaw and the lowering expression of the 
 coarse, beetling brows. It might be benevolent, like most of the 
 pursuits of the Kev. Luke Honeythunder ; but if so, it seemed likely 
 to go even beyond the requirements of that forcible person, and to 
 assume not merely the characteristics of the Aggressive but the 
 Violent in Philanthropy. 
 
 And it seemed likely — suggestive enough the fact — that Mr. 
 Honeythunder would enjoy the opportunity of comparing notes on 
 the great systems of the Angry in Benevolence ; for the course of 
 the Cloisterham stone-mason, on arrival, was threateningly in the 
 direction of that Haven which could not always be certified as one 
 of peace. Dropping overboard, so to speak, from the train which 
 had borne him so far, into the great Sea of London, whereof the 
 ripples were human beings, and the larger waves cabs, drays, vans, 
 and 'busses, he rather floundered than swam his way in the direction 
 of the head-office of the United British and Foreign Universal Phi- 
 lanthropists, appropriately situated in a certain quarter within 
 stone's-throw of Leicester Square, where as much philanthropy 
 seemed to be needed as in any other spot of the broad earth, and 
 where the original location had no doubt been made from prudential 
 considerations, looking to the managers being able to show contribut- 
 ing visitors Legitimate Objects from the windows, upon the same 
 wise principle which induces thrifty Life Assurance Companies to 
 choose buildings that give view upon churchyards. 
 
 Not a very long journey, or a very difficult search, fortunately ; 
 for there was neither much patience nor much skill in the man who 
 was pursuing both. Whelmed and lost a few times in the great 
 sea, then fished up by a less than usually gruff passer-by, or a more 
 than ordinarily useful policeman, he floundered and drifted in the 
 right direction ; the scowl on the grey brows growing darker, the 
 mouth more set and sullen, and the latent combativeness in the 
 sluggish heart more and more dangerous. And then he stood, at 
 last, at the portal of the Head Haven, which might be considered a 
 mouldy old huge stone pier, thrusting itself out into the sea he had 
 been buffeting, and promising that it would either shelter or crush all 
 craft closely approaching it, as the case might be. 
 
 Fresh difficulties began to beset Mr. Durdles, even at the moment 
 when he had floundered alongside this dusky and mouldy stone break- 
 water, stretching out into the great dangerous Sea of London. If it 
 were a pier, it may have partaken something of the character of those 
 London and Liverpool docks which excite the admiration of the 
 world, not less by their difficulty of admission than their costliness 
 and solidity. They have gates, and they can only be entered at a 
 certain height of tide. Wealth being the tide at the Head Haven, 
 undoubtedly a rated amount was necessary to float into it ; and it may 
 be said, confidently, that in the Durdles calendar water was invari- 
 ably low. 
 
 To drop the figure, he was not well enough habited, in spite of the 
 distinguished shirt-collar, to indicate to the powers, however sub- 
 
THE MISSION OP THE STONE-MASON. 119 
 
 ordinate, giving and barring admission to the Haven, that the 
 U.B.F.U.P. would be benefitted by his entrance. Most commer- 
 cial men know, and others than commercial men may form shrewd 
 guesses of, the different eyes with which an evidently intending 
 purchaser may be viewed at the door of the shop, and one who gives 
 corresponding evidence that he is only prepared to sell, in the 
 small way of a pedlar, or to beg ! That Mr. Durdles did not come to 
 the Haven to announce a munificent bequest, or to bring a heavy 
 donation, was quite evident even to the bleared eyes of the Under- 
 paid at the door : much more likely that he came on one of those 
 Illegitimate and Inadmissible demands (those involving the paying 
 out of money in a practical and unostentatious way) which supplied 
 one of the chief sources of torment to the society of many initials. 
 
 So when Durdles, unwisely removing his hat, even when without 
 the half-opened door, and worse crumpling that head-covering than 
 before, in the effort to make it do duty for fumbling purposes, instead 
 of the horn buttons, — momentarily brought back the swimming 
 simile by making a plunge into the very midst of his demands, a la 
 Crisparkle, with : — 
 
 " Durdles wants to see your big man, Mr. Honeythunder ! " 
 
 Then the Underpaid, though he may well have recognized the pro- 
 priety of the description as applying to the physical size of the 
 person inquired after, may also have been excusable in the super- 
 ciliousness of the glance with which he first stared at the abrupt 
 applicant, and then looked around for " Durdles," who, spoken of in 
 the third person, might be supposed to be in hiding somewhere 
 behind the heavy door-post. Besides, the Underpaid, habitually 
 bullied within, doubtless understood the necessity, as a sort of mental 
 pabulum correspondent with his daily bread, of bullying all those 
 who looked humble enough for that exercise, without ; and so he 
 merely performed a part of his duty (to himself) in the return gruff- 
 ness of his reply : — 
 
 " Durdles J Who's Durdles, and where 's Durdles 1 " 
 
 To which the stone-mason, giving the hat another crush and 
 indenting into it at once Embarrassment and Ill-Usage : — 
 
 " Who's Durdles, and where's Durdles, stupid ! Durdles is here, 
 and isn't ashamed of his name ! — leastwise he doesn't know it, if 
 he is ! " 
 
 Then thus the Underpaid, naturally irritated by the objectionable 
 epithet, but not quite free, as a subaltern, to give his indignation full 
 indulgence : — 
 
 " Oh, then you are Durdles ! Didn't know but it was My Lord 
 Durdles, or Archbishop Durdles, or " 
 
 "In which case," interrupted Durdles, severely, "you would ha' 
 let him in at once, 'stead o' keeping him at the door ! I want to see 
 Mr. Honeythunder." 
 
 " Oh, you do, do you 1 Then all I can say is, that you cannot see 
 him. Just go away, my man, and allow me to shut the door.' 
 
 " Oh, then, that is what you're up to, in this here place with the 
 ■big name : keepin' people out as has business of importance ! " 
 
120 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 gruffly replied Durdles, making a forcible shove past the doorkeeper, 
 the ponderous bundle doing good service as a forward protrusion, not 
 to call it a battering-ram, and the impetus being such as to carry the 
 stone-mason quite past the Underpaid (who may also have been the 
 Underfed) and to set that person spinning like a teetotum as he 
 "whirled against the door and closed it. 
 
 By this time Durdles, energetically pursuing his momentary 
 advantage, after the manner of skilful tacticians in offensive warfare, 
 had crossed a gloomy vestibule, penetrated beneath a line of 
 obstructing and otherwise useless columns, and was in the presence 
 of the chief clerical force of the establishment, — still scribbling, 
 folding, and directing unlimited thousands of circulars, beneath hazy 
 gas-lights, and with a faithful rapidity which indicated the belief that 
 the true mission of Philanthropy was to distribute written and printed 
 papers, and that they were rapidly advancing the Millennium by 
 hastening the day when no human being should be without an Appeal. 
 
 To this vantage-ground he was at once pursued by the Underpaid, 
 but too late for any practical result. It is not only the " first step which 
 costs," often, but which gains. Durdles, thus far arrived, and at 
 once flushed with indignation at the attempted exclusion, and with a 
 sense of victory over it — Durdles, observing that all the clerical force 
 looked up from their work at his advent, lost no time in throwing him- 
 self into oratorical position, with the bundle now doing duty as a wand 
 or paper-roll to mark emphatically, and commenced the delivery of a 
 gruff address to all and singular the clerical force thus aforesaid, in 
 which his loud demand for Mr. Honeythunder to be forthcoming 
 was blended with an amount of denunciation of the door-keeper, and, 
 indeed, the whole establishment and all concerned, entitling him to 
 immediate engagement as one of the higher stipendiaries, had 
 sufficient intellect presided over the scene. 
 
 Yet he might have waited until doomsday, there is reason to 
 helieve, no one being specially addressed, and no one ever taking to 
 himself a speech addressed in the general (notably when extra 
 exertion is to be involved) — had not the loud tone of his voice 
 created a certain sensation in other apartments adjoining, and sug- 
 gested a temporary lack of that silent subordination requisite in 
 the U.B.F.U.P. Penetrated, peculiarly, to the private room of the 
 Manager, then engaged in jubilant and hilarious reading of a long 
 statement of starvations, trade depressions, and doleful prospects, in a 
 philanthropic journal of his patronizing — to which enjoyment he 
 naturally wished to devote undivided attention, as more forcible 
 Appeals and more thundering Denunciations would necessarily grow 
 out of this pleasant painfulness of general situation — with this 
 effect — this inopportune breaking in — of drawing the Manager to the 
 door, armed with a frown of much intensity, and a voice fitted for 
 early manufacture into speaking-trumpets. 
 
 " Gentlemen ! " he began, thunderously, " what is the meaning of 
 this unseemly noise in a place which should be devoted to quiet and 
 conscientious labour in The Cause? If I hear any more of it, there 
 will be a general reckoning of the severest character " 
 
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THE MISSION OF THE STONE-MASON. 121 
 
 The effect of this exordium, uttered and about to be uttered, was 
 materially marred by an interruption at this solemn and breathless 
 moment. Durdles, feeling the necessity of remarking, very gruffly, 
 and yet with a certain air of loud satisfaction at the smoothing away 
 of threatening difficulties : — 
 
 " There he is, now ! That's him ! Durdles knows him ! " 
 
 The sensation caused by this outburst can only be computed under 
 a full knowledge of the horror with which all the subordinates 
 regarded the idea of interrupting the Manager. They may be said 
 to have glared at each other, in the presence of such an enormity — 
 except one or two who surreptitiously tittered, but would have 
 expected death in being discovered. The Manager himself did not 
 glare, in the vulgar sense of the word ; he rather gloomed loftily, as 
 he thundered, after one instant of surprised silence : — 
 
 " Who is that man 1 and what does he want % " 
 
 At which, before Durdles could himself reply, one of the clerks 
 nearest the Manager took the liberty of explaining, in a very low 
 and conciliatory voice, that " none of them knew who the man was, 
 but it was he who had made the noise which they all regretted, mut- 
 tering something about wishing to see Mr. Honeythunder and would 
 not take No for an answer." 
 
 " Ah ! what 1 wishes ' to see me, this person V replied the 
 Manager, sonorously, with the air of one who should add : " Has 
 Philanthropy come to this pass, that such wretches dare intrude upon 
 the sacred time of the Manager of the United British and Foreign 
 Universal Philanthropists, in his very Head Haven 1 " 
 
 " Yes, Durdles wants to see you, Mr. Honeythunder ; and what's 
 more, to speak with you, and the sooner the better ! " was the reply 
 of the stone-mason, ostensibly made to the uttered words of the 
 Manager, but really to the others as well. 
 
 It is probable that only the first part of this was heard by the 
 person addressed ; as it is scarcely credible that if he had heard the 
 •whole he would not have resented it by an immediate order of 
 expulsion. His action was really an unbending, of the most notable 
 character, for him. He did nothing less than to step forward from 
 the door, with what he intended as amiability. 
 
 " Well, my good man, if you wish to speak to me, what is it 1 " 
 
 Durdles waved around his bundle at the force of assistants, as if 
 it had been an index-finger, and said : 
 
 " Not here, afore all t/tem. Durdles must speak with you alone. 
 Go back into the room as you come out of if it's a private one ; 
 and Durdles '11 follow." 
 
 "No, my good man," replied Mr. Honeythunder, with an oppres- 
 sive loftiness, in his most overwhelming of fair-weather voices (in- 
 tended for the ears of all the clerical force), and waving his large 
 hand with a round sweep, which expressed proprietorship of the 
 whole Haven and all it contained ; " No — I have no secrets from 
 my assistants. If you have anything to say, go on with it." 
 
 "No secrets, eh % Don't you be too sure of that ! Confidence is 
 a bad habit, and it may grow on you ! " replied Durdles, in his 
 
122 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 gruffest voice. " Better do as I ask you, Mr. Honeythunder, afore I 
 take you at your word." 
 
 This was insolent — there was no denying the fact. And Mr. 
 Honeythunder, the man who professionally impressed people as well 
 as oppressed them, was not much in the habit of allowing himself 
 to be either directed or impressed. Yet something in the manner 
 and words of the rough stone-mason, while it offended him, had the 
 wonderful effect of inducing him to change his original intention 
 and submit to what was literally an order. He turned towards the 
 door of his private room with : — 
 
 " Well, you may come in, for a moment — only a moment : my 
 time is valuable !" and Durdles shambled after him, banging the 
 door as he passed, with his impracticable bundle. 
 
 " Now, we are alone. What is it you want of so much conse- 
 quence 1 " 
 
 The Manager spoke roundly now. Durdles took a brief survey of 
 the luxuriously fitted but dusky room, with its Manager's private 
 table, its large cushioned chairs, and the Map of the World hanging 
 on a side wall, heavily dotted in red for the stations and boundaries 
 of Universal Philanthropy, — before he answered the imperative 
 demand. 
 
 "Yes, I wanted to see you alone, for you mightn't like all them 
 to know your business." 
 
 "My business? What do you mean, fellow]" (not "my good 
 man," now !) 
 
 " Yes, your business, Mr. Honeythunder — the Reverend Mr. 
 Honeythunder, I've heard say. You're in a hurry, are you 1 
 Werry well ! Then Durdles won't keep you long, and you can 
 think about what he tells you arterwards. I want you to come 
 down to Cloisterham — you know where it is, for I seed you there 
 not long ago, — and take charge of your son. That's all, and it 
 don't take long a-tellin', doe3 it 1 " 
 
 " My son ? — you disreputable old wretch, who ought to be put 
 in the stocks or the pillory, if they had had sense enough to keeo 
 such things ! My son ? Are you crazy 1 or what swindle are you 
 attempting 1 " 
 
 " Softly, don't speak so loud, or they may hear you, which would 
 not be a good thing for you ! " calmly replied the una wed stone : 
 mason. " Your son : Durdles said it, and he means what he says. 
 Your son, and Sary Lewt's." 
 
 " Ha ! what do you know ? " — the surprised Manager began, 
 though in a much lower voice ; but he stopped, as if uncertain what 
 to say, and Durdles filled up the space. 
 
 •" Durdles knows a great deal, Mr. Honeythunder — Reverend Mr. 
 Honeythunder, — that wouldn't read nicely in the papers, if so be it 
 should get there ; and you'd better be still while he tells you the 
 rest. I know the boy ; I knowed his mother ; she was Sary Lewt, 
 and she lived at Newcastle. A psalm-singin' chap disgraced her — 
 may be you know his name : / do ! She bore that boy and died." 
 
 He paused a moment, wiping either his brow or his eyes (who 
 
THE MISSION OF THE STONE-MASON. 123 
 
 shall say ■which V) with his cuff. And in that moment Mr. Honey- 
 thunder rather hoarsely hissed than roared in his usual tone, — 
 
 " It is a lie, you old impostor ! I will have you kicked out.'' 
 
 " No you won't ; and it isn't a lie, and you know it. You'll come 
 down and attend to him now that you know where he is. He's a 
 credit to his father. Durdles seed you a-whoppin' him, pounding 
 your own flesh and blood, as it deserved, t'other day, when you was 
 down at Cloisterham." 
 
 " Will you go, before I have you kicked out, lying old scoundrel? " 
 the Manager rather hoarsely whispered, again, than roared, though 
 at the last words his broad bulk had dropped into one of the wide 
 arm-chairs. 
 
 "He's a perfect young devil, but may be you wouldn't like to be the 
 father of a gallows-bird, as you will be, if you do not take care of 
 him," the stone-mason went on, without the least sign of having 
 heard the enraged words of the other. " Name is ' Deputy ' — 
 leastwise that's what they call him, for want of any name from his 
 father ; and you can find him, when you want him, at the ' Travel- 
 lers' Twopenny,' in Gasworks Garding. Better write 'em down 
 afore you forget 'em ; and better fake care of the young willain 
 afore long, or the story may get into them papers, and not do you 
 any good." 
 
 His mission accomplished, in his own peculiar way — shambling 
 out, as he had shambled in, and this time unopposed by the Under- 
 paid, — Stony Durdles left the Haven, and drifted and floundered 
 back through the great sea, on his return to Cloisterham, — stopping 
 covertly, in a convenient arching, to lighten his dinner-bundle, which 
 was thereafter of a little less formidable proportions : and leaving 
 the Rev. Mr. Honeythunder the wiser for his visit, and no doubt all 
 the better prepared for anything Aggressive and Denunciatory which 
 might present itself in the world of Philanthropy — if not absolutely 
 better content with himself and the world. 
 
 It was dusk when Durdles reached Cloisterham ; but not too 
 dusky, as he shambled along towards his Hole in the Wall, for him 
 to observe Deputy vigorously cannonading an unfortunate cat, that 
 he had succeeded in driving to the shelter of one of the tree-tops 
 near the old monastery, after disposing of her family by various 
 pleasant and ingenious modes of extinguishment. 
 
 " Ha ! you young devil ! — what is it, up that tree 1 " Mr. Durdles 
 accosted the commander of the investing force, in the pause between 
 two volleys. 
 
 '* Old Boxley's tortoise-shell ! Hi ! Wasn't it sport with her 
 kittens, yesterday ? See — that's the time that I nearly fetched her ! 
 There goes a piece of her tail ! Hi ! " 
 
 " Deputy ! " said Durdles, solemnly, " what will you say, if I tell 
 you that I have been out to-day, looking for a place for you — better 
 than the ' Travellers' Twopenny ? ' " 
 
 " Yer lie— ye've been drunk, and dreamed it ! Give me the three 
 ha'pence you owe me, or I'll smash you next, after I finish this cat!" 
 was the amiable response of this type of a rising (gallows-high) 
 
124 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 generation, as he turned again from the less-exoiting diversions of 
 the ribald tongue to the nobler sports of the cruel hand, and hunted 
 the last of the poor tortoise-shell's nine lives with a vigour promising 
 certain and early capture. 
 
 Durdles ventured no more, but shambled away to his hut. As he 
 did so, he shook his head so widely, that the expansive shirt-collar 
 gave way beneath the pressure, — with a gesture that may have 
 indicated a certain amount of sorrow, and that may have been merely 
 expressive of discouragement with a problem past solution, by the 
 aid of either measuring-rule or hammer — a Young 'Un throwing all 
 the Old 'Uns into complete insignificance. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 REVISITING THE GLIMPSES. 
 
 More visitors have come to John Jasper in the brief space of time 
 elapsing since the two discoveries, apparently accidents, placing in 
 his hands the pocket- wallet and the black scarf, than have ever before 
 visited the choir-master during a corresponding period. Not that he 
 has become more popular, as a man or a professional : on the contrary, 
 the practices to which he has surrendered himself, and something 
 deeper in his life and brain, neither known nor suspected by the 
 body of those meeting him, have begun to tell upon face and manner, 
 so that his company is less sought than of old, from the very natural 
 reason that we do not willingly force ourselves into companionship 
 inflicting pain or awaking sorrow, when the alternative is open to us 
 of only visiting or entertaining the pleasant and enjoy ant. Haggard 
 face ; sunken eye, with occasional gleams that seem to blend fear 
 and ferocity; hands shaking to an extent that would be pitiable 
 even in age ; and the frequent recurrence of those spasms which, for 
 the time, threaten life, and indicate the early extinguishment of 
 reason — these are not elements of increased or even continued popu- 
 larity in Cloisterham, any more than elsewhere ; and the choir- 
 master may be aware of the unpleasant fact. 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle calls seldomer than was his wont at the Gate 
 House, to refresh his musical sympathies or ask after the health of 
 the man who is much oftener than of old absent from the Cathedral 
 service. Mr. Tope, so very near a neighbour, does not fail him ; but 
 it cannot always be said that the company of Mr. Tope is exhilarating, 
 and it might almost be averred that it is at times depressing — espe- 
 cially since the coming of his tribulation, which he has not, however, 
 confided to Mr. Jasper, or to any one else than the Minor Canon 
 and his Reverence the Dean. Mayor Sapsea pays occasional visits, 
 of course, exclusive of the meetings which take place between the 
 two at the Mansion House and elsewhere — the pompous old donkey 
 
, REVISITING THE GLIMPSES. 125 
 
 finding few others, failing the obsequious Datchery, to pay him such 
 adulatory court as the Energetic Man whom he believes that he has 
 so characterized. Besides these, Mr. Jasper has certain regular 
 visitors connected with the Cathedral service and his profession as a 
 music-teacher, not to mention some remains of social life ; but all 
 those have certainly not increased in number or frequency of call, 
 and they may even be said to have declined in both, since the day 
 when his dear boy came home to him, and then went away so 
 suddenly and mysteriously, last Christmas-eve. 
 
 And yet John Jasper has many visitors — may be said to be 
 actually burthened with them. The pounds avoirdupois of many of 
 them might be expressed in the most minute of fractions or even by 
 the arithmetical 0, while their weight upon the spirits could scarcely 
 be set down in any aggregation of tons. They have colours enough 
 to delight a painter searching after the lost tints of Titian, — shapes 
 enough to give a new impression of forms to Euclid, — and powers of 
 motion rendering the mysteries of Abracadabra things of everyday 
 belief. They are frequent as duns, importunate as beggars, incon- 
 stant as lovers, unexpected as blessings, unwelcome as deserved mis- 
 fortunes, mysterious as the realm from which we come and the land 
 to which we go. 
 
 Some of them, Oriental in their character, may have accompanied 
 him home, unobserved, from bis opium-dreams in the miserable court 
 in the London by-street — lain perdu until the proper time for 
 torture, to glide out and present themselves before his eyes at a mo- 
 ment when he has no spell with which to exorcise them. Some of them 
 — milder and more sorrowful — may have their derivations in certain 
 bars of music, or in the recollections of childhood, lost loves, and 
 perished friendships. Some of them — who can say? — may be 
 shadows from past crimes and endured punishments, with evil faces 
 and suffering forms bearing the manacle, wasting toil without a hope, 
 hunger, and the lash. And some of them — dark, fearful, frequent, 
 and horrent — may be remembrances of that blackest of shadow- 
 lands, whereof the earth is dismal quicksands and fatal pitfalls and 
 the waters are gurgling flows of black blood — lying, geographically, 
 halfway between the realms of Evil Passion and Madness. 
 
 They had been few in number, and comparatively innocuous in cha- 
 racter, before the day of the delivery of the pocket-wallet by Mayor 
 Sapsea ; more frequent and worse thereafter ; but increasing a thou- 
 sand-fold since the picking up of the black scarf on the river-bank. 
 Before these things they had been merely the phantom shapes of 
 Bemorse, surrounding a shadowy figure with pitiful face and up- 
 stretched pleading arms, like that of his dear boy in death extremity ; 
 since then, they have not only increased in number, but varied and 
 darkened in form, bearing the mingled features oftbat same Bemorse 
 combined with Horrible Fear. 
 
 Not at all impalpable or of ghostly shape, these visitors, either ; 
 though many of them have at once that double and that lesser alarm. 
 There are some bearing human form, not to be mistaken in their 
 humanity, or their profession. There is one, a dog, of late coming, 
 
126 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 that can scarcely be called a visitor, as it has never come nearer to- 
 the Gate House than a certain distance from the window, where he- 
 has seen it, once and again, sitting erect and black, unmistakably 
 gazing towards that window — silent, grim, terrible, and always 
 leaving the same doubt, as he has removed and replaced the curtain, 
 whether it is a veritable beast, with claws and teeth to tear and 
 throttle ; a phantom form of some fierce dog that has been, such as- 
 might follow the Wild Huntsman in that Demon Chase through the 
 Black Forest ; or a shape from the Lower "World, sent to haunt him 
 till the appointed day, and then drag him downwards with the awful 
 metamorphosis of the Faust. 
 
 Perhaps the visitors bearing the human impress are the most ter- 
 rible of all — coming nearest, as they do, to representing that awful 
 Possibility hanging over him from the hour of the delivery of the 
 pocket-wallet ; representing, as they do, not Remoi'se, but Discovery, 
 Detection, Arrest, Imprisonment, Trial, Conviction, Sentence, The 
 Gallows ! For among them are so evidently the shapes of those whom 
 he has seen when they were bearing corresponding relations to others — 
 officers of the law in pursuit, armed, and sometimes with gyves showing 
 in their hands or clanking horribly in the pockets, where they lie 
 concealed for human wrists; criers commanding attention for the 
 most solemn of duties, in the midst of crowds whose upturned faces 
 have an interest sickening to the beholder ; stern judges, black-robed 
 and severe-faced, opening close-set mouths to deal out vengeance only 
 less severe than that denounced against red-handed Cain. And one 
 figure there is, accompanied by a double voice, which belongs to- 
 another invisible, which returns so often, that he has come to know 
 the features of the one and to recognize the sound of the other — 
 though all besides seems hidden in a whelming, dark, smoky mist, 
 beneath which there may be, for all that he can tell, that same awful 
 sea of upturned faces. How much of this is from past recollection of 
 scenes where men have been on trial for their lives, or how much of 
 it may be an omen of some dreadful future soon to be — how can the 
 bewildered, opium-soddened, guilt-appalled brain be capable of mea- 
 suring 1 He only knows that he has seen that black-capped, grim 
 judge's face so often during the last unendurable days, that he has 
 even learned by rote the words of the Clerk of Arraigns, and of the 
 Crier announcing that the verdict has been given, and that only the 
 one dread formality remains for the Court that commissions the 
 Hangman. Strange blending of the past and present realities of a life ! 
 — ever as this recurs, as recur it does, now, at such brief intervals as to 
 indicate that by-and-by it will be only one long procession of dreadful 
 sight and sound — ever as this recurs, the passion and habit of his pro- 
 fession come up with it, and the voice of the doomster becomes blended 
 with the sound of a chorus of thousands of voices sweeping and rolling 
 through the arches of a cathedral so many scores of times larger and 
 greyer than his own that it seems to span the whole round globe ; 
 ancl these are the words that so over and over again he hears, half- 
 said, half-sung, until there is nothing else in earth or heaven, nay v 
 nothing else in hell, than that one awful formula : — 
 
BEYISITING THE GLIMPSES. 127 
 
 " Prisoner at the bar ! After a prolonged investigation, conducted 
 with a patience and care which leave nothing to be desired on the part 
 of a jury of your countrymen, you~are pronounced guilty of murder — ■ 
 a verdict in wMch I entirely concur. If anything has been said or 
 omitted which can be explained in your favour, the law gives you one 
 more chance. What have you to say that sentence of death should not 
 be passed upon you ? " 
 
 There comes a pause, broken only by the muttering thunder of 
 the long echo under the arches ; and in that pause (sometimes this is 
 in sleep) he feels himself struggling to giye utterance to Words of 
 denial — to protestations of love for his dear boy, too tender to allow 
 his laying hands upon him — of accusations of another, on whom 
 will be found some of the property of the murdered. But he cannot 
 succeed, be it night or day, in giving utterance ; and after a moment 
 he hears another key of the double voice go on, in tones only less 
 rolling and sonorous, and yet more awful to the quailing sense : — 
 
 " Oh yes ! Oh yes ! Oh yes 1 My lords the Queen's justices do 
 strictly charge and command all persons to preserve silence while 
 sentence of death is passed upon the prisoner at the bar, upon pain of 
 imprisonment. God save the Queen ! " 
 
 And then he listens, still, although the thunder-tone has ceased. 
 and that grave face is fading from his sight — listens and looks as- 
 well, to see the set lips move and hear them speak, in yet another 
 voice, those solemnest of all mere human words which give a living 
 man to dust and worms, yet calling on the God whose privilege of 
 life and death is thus perforce usurped to hold the hand of violence 
 from scattering murder broadcast through the land — calling on Him 
 to show that mercy to the perilled soul which mortal justice is not 
 strong enough to hazard all the future by declaring to the forfeit. 
 life. He listens so, but never seems to hear. The grave face fades 
 away, entirely, now ; the echoes heralding the words of doom grow 
 still ; all changes to the nothing that it was ; to be again recalled at- 
 any hour, and shake with awful tremors soul and body, as if for one 
 at least has come the Judgment Day so looked for and so dreaded by 
 the Ages. 
 
 So much has been, and is. But how much more may come, at any 
 hour — whether in imagination or reality ! "What, if in the first, the 
 fancy should change to that one yet more horrible, and the face of" 
 the hangman take the place of that of the judge ! What, if he shall 
 begin to see, in advance of any possible actual rehearsal of the same 
 scene, the coming of the dread official into his prison cell, ascend the- 
 scaffold, see that sea of faces without any smoky mist to hide them, 
 hear the howls of execration bursting from ten thousand throats, feel 
 the rope around his neck, the drop falling away beneath his feet — 
 feel — oh, God ! — Death while yet a living man ! "What, if among 
 that crowd he should see her face — that face for which he has given 
 up time and eternity, and for which, yet, if he could only call it his t 
 he would give up as many of each as could be crowded into imagi- 
 nation ! Could the brain bear this ? and would he not end all, at 
 some moment more mad than others, by leaping into that Presence 
 
< 
 
 
KEVISITISG THE GLIMPSES. 129 
 
 a phantom hand, and returning to durance after a nightly promenade 
 in the free air. 
 
 Once within the crypt and the door locked on the inside, the con- 
 tents of one of the loaded pockets became apparent. He takes 
 ■therefrom a bull's-eye dark-lantern, from another pocket a box of 
 matches ; and very soon thereafter the glare of light from the bull's- 
 eye flashes among the damp and mouldy columns of the half under- 
 ground and now disused vault, in which perchance religious cere- 
 monies of peculiar solemnity may have been held in the days when 
 Rome, addicted to subterranean splendours, held control over the 
 old religious house. It shows; in bright relief at the focus of. its 
 radiance, mouldering tombs with; dim inscriptions at the circum- 
 ference of the crypt, and throws others out of this focus, into, that 
 half-lighted gloom which suggests so much more of impressiven.ess 
 than broad glare ; and it makes the mouldy old arches. seem sinking 
 lower and coming down upon the head — what time the bearer of the 
 lantern, apparently with the least distasteful portion of his task 
 accomplished, leans against one of the columns, drops his head 
 forward on his breast, and trembles and shivers as if the sudden 
 chill of the vault had struck into his frame and rendered him half 
 helpless. 
 
 This only for a moment or two, however. He shakes off the 
 weakness, after a time, crosses the' crypt, approaches the door leading 
 up to the main floor, takes from his pocket another key, with, so 
 little fumbling or hesitation as to indicate frequency of, use — unlocks, 
 ascends; the ; narrow stair to the iron gate at the top; unbolts it 
 (though, from the inner side), and is in the body of the Cathedral. 
 
 Here, unaccountably . enough, he seems more • affected. by ; ,the 
 surrounding influences, than in the deeper gloom below ; for he looks 
 around him. with evidences of absolute terror inhis face, and seems 
 chained to the spo.t where he ; stands, as if -all the' strengthof body 
 and mind had suddenly deserted him. On one side , the moonlight 
 streams in through the stained: glass of ; the transept windows, most 
 weirdly and dismally ; and this, blen,ding with the cross-lights of his 
 lantern, may affect him by the combination of ghastly, hues which 
 it imparts to some of the . old . prelate . and warrior figures lying on 
 their altar-tombs in the line of light, with palmed hands pointing 
 upward,helplessly, and seeming. to ask to, be forgiven the pride and 
 glory,,;wnich gave them place. Crime is always more or less super- 
 stitious : ; this man might be shuddering at the thought — no farther 
 from reason than many of .his vaticinations — that something of the 
 life so represented yet lives in . those grey and often-mutilated 
 figures, and, that at any hour, recognizing the presence of one against 
 whose hidden practices they must have sworn when binding knightly 
 spur , on heel or setting mitre on priestly brow, they may start up 
 from their stony sleep, seize sword or. crozier as it lies beside 
 them, and brain the guilty midnight intruder where he stands ! He 
 may even go further and believe, bent upon the unholy errand on 
 which he goes, that before it is ended there will ring shriek after 
 shriek through the eld Cathedral, compelled from those stony 
 
130 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 throats, by an enormity greater than the worst perjured knight or 
 forsworn priest among them ever committed, and that before and 
 around him will stand, if he lives to descend, a serried line of 
 mortal foes, more terrible than flesh and ghastly as his conjured 
 phantoms. 
 
 This may be in his thought, unnerving him for many minutes ; 
 or something nearer to the present time may affect him only. 
 Whatever the influence, it sets him to trembling again, brings 
 wild terror to the eyes, and beaded drops to the brow ; but 
 whatever it is, on the other hand, he shakes it off, eventually, 
 as it is to be believed that he has before shaken off many a fear 
 more reasonable, — and staggers across the choir to the low door 
 leading up, first to the organ-loft and then to the tower. 
 
 For this door, too, the last locked one in his course, he finds a key 
 in his pocket, with the same facility which has so quickly found the 
 others ; and opening this, he avoids the curve of the narrow stone 
 stairway turning away to the organ-loft on the left, and keeping the 
 main staircase, black with age, and foul with the dampness of many 
 fogs that have crept in thither and never been expelled, comes at 
 last to the end of that stairway and the level of the roof, beyond 
 which into the tower itself, another leads, of wood, and of much less 
 antiquity in construction. 
 
 His errand does not seem to be in the tower or farther towards it ; 
 for, pausing here, he extracts yet another key from his pocket, with the 
 same ready facility, and inserts it into a low black wooden door at 
 the level of the stair-head. But he does not open it with the same 
 readiness shown in finding the key. Another of those fearful shud- 
 derings seizes him — so strong and powerful, that it becomes a verit- 
 able spasm, sending the beaded drops from his brow, almost like rain, 
 causing him to set down the lantern in very great fear of extinguish- 
 ing it, and wringing from him absolute groans of agony. Behind 
 that door ! — what can there be behind that door thus concentrating 
 all the pained capacities of his nature, and threatening to send him 
 headlong to the floor still as a corpse, or dashing out his brains as a 
 maniac 1 It ? Who knows, save God and himself? 
 
 But this spasm, too, passed ; for John Jasper, even yet, is a strong 
 man, in that sense involving the recovery of self-command. He 
 sweeps away the beaded drops from his forehead, with a gesture of 
 such shame as if some one had beheld him in unmanly weakness ; 
 takes up the lantern from the floor, and dashes his hand upon the 
 key in the door, with what can only be described as trembling fierce- 
 ness. This door, too, opens, and he passes into that floored space, 
 between the beams of the ceiling below and the rafters of the roof 
 above, for which the architects have neglected to supply any technical 
 name to the lay-world, but the outer or gabled end of which, in the 
 Greek orders, would be called the tympan of the pediment. A place 
 seldom visited, as may be supposed — nothing less than a conflagra- 
 tion or the bursting in of the roof by water, being likely to send any 
 one thither in the space of a dozen years. 
 
 John Jasper is staggering a little, now, spite of his remains of fine 
 
REVISITING THE GLIMPSES. 131 
 
 bodily strength, and his undeniable nerve ; and his face, in its 
 blended fierce determination, horror, and terror, is something awful 
 to behold. But he sets down the lantern, with another groan of 
 agony not easy to designate in character — and applies to the other 
 pocket of the large coat, from which he takes several yards of a stout 
 soft rope, knotted at distances of about a foot each. Then he throws 
 off the coat, and follows that movement by throwing off his remain- 
 ing or body- coat, standing in his shirt-sleeves, as if something is 
 about to be done, demanding freedom of arm, and involving severe 
 labour. What can that something be 1 Has it anything to do with 
 It? 
 
 The heavy rafters, with the stout planks resting upon them and 
 supporting the outer roof, are dark and discoloured with age and 
 leakage. So is the planked floor; but it is notable that in one 
 direction from the door, leading away to where the rafters lower to 
 the eaves, there are little spots and flecks of white, as if mould or 
 fungus of that colour may have grown in the long years of dampness. 
 He moves the lantern, so that its rays fall in that direction, shudder- 
 ing and shivering all the while, as if with a more moderate recurrence 
 of the spasm, which has lately so nearly prostrated him. He sees 
 the small white spots, goes to his coat, lying in a heap on the floor, 
 takes a handkerchief from the pocket, and rubs out the brightest of 
 them with that handkerchief dampened with moisture from his 
 mouth ! How careful ! How neat — far past the verge of clean- 
 liness ! And for what ? 
 
 Then he takes up the rope, and passes down under the rafters 
 nearly to the side-wall, and close to the point of intersection at the 
 joint of the cross. Shivering, now, even worse than before, and the 
 great drops standing thickly on his forehead, while his eyes are 
 fearful in the agony of mind they express — but going on bravely 
 with whatever he has to do. He stoops, and then puts down his 
 hand with an obvious effort, and a momentary turning away of his 
 head as from something that cannot be borne. The hand lifts a trap- 
 door, some three feet square, that under closer examination would 
 show sufficient roughness in shaping to prove that it has never known 
 the carpenter's hand ; while the .same inspection would show that 
 space for it has been made by cutting away the planks of the flooring 
 with a chisel, in hands correspondingly unused to the craft of the 
 wood-worker. There are hinges to the trap, but they are merely 
 pieces of stout harness-leather, nailed on, to complete a job as un- 
 workmanlike as ingenious and persistent. "What next ? Is it here 
 that It is to be looked for, by eyes only too well instructed % 
 
 Some answer to these and other questions seems probable, now ; for 
 the next moment makes it almost certain that the suffering hero of 
 crime is about to descend into that dark and noisome hole of black- 
 ness to which the trap gives access ! Descend ! — and for what ? and 
 to what unimagined horror of place and occupancy ? Is It there t — 
 and has the need at last grown imperative, that the hidden shall be 
 explored and the marvellous explained, at once and for all ? 
 
 He is about to descend : so much is plain, — shivering as under an 
 
 K 2 
 
132 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 ague fit, as he may bo, and evidently suffering tortures to wliich the 
 rack of old time would be ordinary pain ; for he stands with set 
 lips, at the edge of the black hole, and ties the knotted rope, with 
 hand careful and strong, even if snaking, to the rafter immediately 
 over it. It would be easy to believe, looking at rope and rafter, and 
 ignoring the black aperture below, that he was about to close all 
 questions, and life with it, in the quick leap of the suicide ; but very 
 different is to be his exit from an existence grown quite miserable 
 enough to warrant the worst. He steps back towards the spot where 
 the lantern is still standing ; takes from the pocket of the top coat, 
 still lying near, another and shorter bit of rope; takes up the lantern 
 and commences fastening it to his waist with the rope, after the 
 manner of a miner about to go down his shaft. A few moments 
 more will see some solution of the mystery of all those strange pre- 
 parations. Will they give the key to the place where It may have 
 been lying for more than half a year, undiscovered, because concealed 
 with such demoniac ingenuity and carefulness 1 
 
 Crash ! Jingle ! and a Yell ! There must be something in this 
 man's life and fate, connected with the breaking of glass and the 
 scream of the human voice. For a broken pane and a woman's cry 
 of terror have blended, not many days before, in bringing about the 
 rescue of Rosebud from his hands ; and now, at the very moment 
 when the lantern is loosely held for tying to his body, a stone comes 
 crashing through the round window in the pediment, accompanied 
 by a shrill yell, of which he can plainly hear the sound, and recog- 
 nize a human voice, without being able to distinguish any word at 
 that distance. 
 
 How much he does distinguish or understand, none may know. 
 Does he recognize it as being mortal, and so understand that the 
 light has been seen, and dread human discovery ? — or does some 
 momentary horror of the supernatural overcome him, acting like the 
 sudden and unaccountable panic which, sends a brave and veteran 
 army flying like a herd of frightened deer ? 
 
 For the lantern drops from the busy, shaking hand, extinguished 
 in the fall ; and with a cry of mortal terror he feels for his clothes, 
 grasps them, feels for the door, opens and flees. Down the stair, in 
 the darkness, except as the struggling moon-rays through the small 
 windows give him a trifle of light. Breathing hard, like a hunted 
 stag that has been chased nearly to the verge of endurance and must 
 soon succumb. Trembling in every limb ; sweating cold sweat at 
 every pore; staggering, stumbling, nearly falling, once and again. 
 He pauses to close and lock the doors behind him, and this seems to 
 exhaust at once thought and nerve. Through the body of the 
 Cathedral, where the light is better, but where he does not see the 
 recumbent statues now, or think of them rising to judgment — with 
 that great terror behind. Down into the crypt again ; out into the 
 open air on the shadowy side of the Cathedral ; and the flight not 
 stayed even then — not until he is in his own apartment in the Gate 
 House, sinking in the last stage of mental and bodily exhaustion, and 
 older by half-a-score of years, if the grey hair of to-morrow can give 
 
RASH MR. GREWGIOTJS. 133 
 
 any true evidence, than he was when he left the same apartment, 
 less than an hour ago ! 
 
 John Jasper has heard nothing more than the crash of the window, 
 and the yell too distant to distinguish words. One at that moment 
 nearer, would be aware that a limited bombardment of the Cathedral, 
 to fierce martial music, has been in progress, consequent upon the 
 discovery of the light in the pediment window by the wandering 
 Deputy, on his way homeward (or elsewhere) from some Bedouin 
 excursion, — and that the practices of the most warlike nations of the 
 barbaric world have been duly carried out, in the fitting of the words 
 of the national hymn to a special occasion, with high poetic power 
 and fervour — the Yell, so important in its results, being nothing 
 more than one of the louder bars of, — 
 
 i 
 
 " Widdy widdy wen, 
 I sees — a — light — arter — ten ; 
 Widdy widdy way, 
 
 I — takes — the — old — windy — in — the — eye! 
 Widdy widdy wakecock warning." 
 
 CHAPTER XIY. 
 
 RASH MR. GREWGIOTJS. 
 
 The remark may not be strictly new, that the heroisms of non-com- 
 batants often throw into the shade those of the recognized fighting 
 fraternity ; but at the worst it may be repeated without danger of 
 working serious demoralization among those who are to be depended 
 upon for resisting that long-coming Invasion. If trite, it is true j 
 and perhaps none more fully comprehend the fact than those who 
 have oftenest dared bodily peril by land and sea, and thus discovered 
 that there are so many things to be more dreaded. Certainly that 
 distinguished Field- Marshal, the dare-devil admiration of two armies, 
 who could never meet his Xantippe little wife without something 
 approaching to serious bodily fear — he, if yet alive, may endorse the 
 statement ; even if that other and scarcely-less noted commander, 
 who came home covered with glory from the fiercest battles of the 
 Flemish campaign, to mount a chair in mortal terror of the scamper- 
 ing of a mouse around his feet, — has ceased to be humanly available 
 as a witness. 
 
 This is not intended to be especially a» record of heroisms ; and yet 
 something of the kind may have crept into it, without reckoning the 
 uncalculating devotion of Helena Landless. Something of the 
 chivalric may have made its unexpected appearance among baser 
 and more ordinary elements ; it being a consoling fact that nature 
 has the same habit of dashing unhoped-for lights into many a dark 
 
134 JOHN jasper's secket. 
 
 picture, which she often balances by blurring and blotting those that 
 might otherwise be too satisfactorily brilliant. 
 
 Fortunately, perhaps, the Bar and the Pulpit only, of the three 
 leading professions, have been represented in the present instance ; 
 unless Mr. Tartar, lately come, may be held to have introduced the 
 combative element in the direction of the Naval arm. But it happens 
 that Mr. Tartar is precisely the person who has had no sacrifices 
 whatever to make — rather that he has seemed to be the Lucky 
 Prince arriving late, after the surmounting of most of the dangers 
 by others, and at once becoming the prospective possessor, for scarcely 
 the asking, of that divine Princess for whose sake all the blood has 
 been fruitlessly shed by the earlier combatants. So he must stand, 
 at last, out of the calculation ; and between the Bar and the Pulpit 
 must be adjudged the palm of heroic sacrifice. 
 
 It was certainly no ordinary development of the emotion of gene- 
 rosity (the true foundation of the heroic), which could induce Mr. 
 Crisparkle, profoundly loving Helena Landless, and believing that in 
 her possession would be found the best good of a life — to forego any 
 pursuit of her, without a word to indicate his passion, with no belief 
 that she had formed any conflicting attachment, and only moved by 
 the two thoughts, that he owned a mother who must fill to him all 
 dear relations combined, and that possibly his usefulness in the 
 service of his Master might be impaired by the distraction of marriage. 
 But Mr. Crisparkle, as we have seen, was warily wise in carrying out 
 his difficult renunciation. He had no absolute duty which could 
 lead him often into the presence of the woman whom he loved almost 
 to the verge of adoration ; and his discipline of mind (nearly perfect, 
 like that of his body) was too good, not to make him aware how 
 much he would avoid suffering by making her already little more 
 than a memory. True wisdom, this, beyond a doubt : as it will 
 always be for any one who utters with a personal application the 
 prayer : " Lead us not into temptation !" to avoid leading himself 'in 
 that direction oftener than is inevitable ! 
 
 This of the Pulpit. Very different was the action of the Bar in 
 the person of Hiram Grewgious, Esq., of Staple Inn, whose status, as 
 another of the hopelessly loving, has been already established to 
 melancholy satisfaction ; and it is with reference to his action that 
 the question of comparative heroism arises, however that of wisdom 
 may determine itself, once and for all. 
 
 " Hiram Grewgious, you may be a fool, but there is no obligation to 
 become a coward ! Labour for strength, and even pray for it * * * 
 that you may see her wooed and wedded, as you saw her mother, 
 and claim neither love nor pity, as you deserve none !" So the old 
 lawyer had said, sitting in his lonely chambers, on that evening 
 following the rescue from the attempted abduction ; and upon that 
 faith and that resolution he had acted during the little time elapsing 
 between that night and another following it very closely, in which 
 his imprudence seemed to culminate — in which possibly his heroism 
 also culminated temporarily, only to reach a still higher point at one 
 not distant day already foreshadowed. 
 
EASH MR. GREWQIOUS. 135 
 
 Rosa had never seemed to find so much necessity for him, or so 
 many errands with him, since that eventful visit to Cloisterham 
 which immediately preceded the tragedy, as during that brief period. 
 Perhaps an added feeling of gratitude for the rescue towards the one 
 guardian who remained so faithful to her, may in some degree have 
 conduced to this : perhaps the increasingly gritty state of the domestic 
 affairs at Billickin's, in which speaking hostility had been succeeded 
 by silent ill-treatment, gave her more necessity than might otherwise 
 have existed for seeking the counsel of the man who had unwittingly 
 placed Miss Twinkleton and herself in that mild purgatory. At all 
 events, her visits to the quiet gloom of the chambers, which she 
 always seemed to brighten like a stray beam of dancing sunlight, 
 were even more frequent, at about this time, than would have been 
 demanded by her occasional calls upon Helena Landless in such near 
 proximity ; and the tiny notes, in the intervals of the visits, which 
 called Mr. Grewgious to Southampton Street, were correspondingly 
 and unusually numerous. 
 
 And how bravely — ay, how heroically — he bore it all, when the 
 self-defence of avoiding her would have seemed a simple duty which 
 he owed his own peace of mind, and when every step of the light 
 foot and every tone of the girlish voice must have fallen like a blow 
 upon the brave old heart, with a pain which the inflictor could no 
 more understand than avoid giving ! How calmly he schooled 
 himself to meet the frequent touch of her atom of hand, which he 
 felt to be given to him with no more tender tremor than would have 
 characterized it when laid on the head of a faithful old dog that she 
 might be patting, — and which had yet the power to move every pulse 
 of his being with an intensity generally credited only to the young, 
 while the young ordinarily know no more of it than of grey hairs or 
 sciatica ! And how he said over and over again, in action, what even 
 the brave and self-denying Minor Canon would have lacked courage 
 to say, under corresponding circumstances : 
 
 " Every time that I see her I love her more and more dearly, with 
 that love which has come back to me from her drowned mother, 
 especially to be expended again upon her. Every time that I meet 
 her, I know only the more surely how hopeless is the distance be- 
 tween us — how I, the Angular old man, could not win, if I would, 
 this darling child who might have been my daughter — and would 
 not, if I could. It might be some men's privilege to run away : it 
 is not mine. My folly has been criminal, and it is only just that I 
 should bear this as my punishment." 
 
 The present culmination to all this came in the manner now to be 
 indicated. 
 
 We have, when young (perhaps we have the same when old — 
 only lack that delicacy of perception which instructs us after wrong- 
 doing), an enviable faculty of performing acts of positive cruelty, 
 with the very kindest intentions, and- not the least thought in 
 the world that we are doing anything else than making people 
 cherubically or seraphically happy — as the sex may be. Rosa carried 
 out this trait, by taking into her charming little rattle-pate an. idea 
 
136 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 ■which could not be otherwise disposed of than indulged. And one 
 evening, a very few days after the cab-adventure, she assailed the 
 Angular man with a suggestion growing out of it. 
 
 " Do you know what I look back upon — not very long, of course, 
 but long enough to look back — as the happiest hour of my trifling 
 little life ? " 
 
 The question so naively asked, surprised Mr. Grewgious in so great 
 a degree that it actually set him blushing a little, and quite put him 
 out of any power of considering it rationally which he might naturally 
 have possessed. He pluDged into the sea of necessary speculation, 
 however, manfully if awkwardly. 
 
 " The happiest hour, my dear 1 The question is a trifle embar- 
 rassing, because I have reason to suppose that nearly all your hours 
 have been happy — not of course, every moment — such as those in — 
 yes, say in cabs in which you did not wish to ride, for instance. I 
 think if you gave me a wider field, and asked me what I believed to 
 have been the happiest time for all concerned, connected with 
 yourself, I might be disposed to answer — the hour when you were 
 born." 
 
 " Oh, please do not say that !" she exclaimed, with more than 
 ordinary feeling manifest in face and voice. " I am sure that I am 
 such a worthless little thing, and make so much trouble for every one, 
 that the very opposite might be said, with more truth." 
 
 " Trouble, my dear ! " he echoed, with the air of one whom some 
 astounding proposition, not before reckoned as even a remote possi- 
 bility, had -suddenly been thrust forward. 
 
 " Yes, trouble, and worse ! Think how much I cost poor Eddy, 
 who did not love me at all, and think what I should cost any one who 
 did love me." 
 
 The Angular man ''id not groan, as he had more than a temptation 
 to do. Perhaps it was the very Age that he regretted which saved 
 him that exhibition of weakness. For the thrust so little intended, 
 was sharp, and it went home. What should she not cost, indeed, to 
 one who loved her ! — what was she not costing, day by day, to one 
 who had been unwise enough to assume the two antagonists, Love 
 and Hopelessness, at the same moment ! 
 
 But what a hero of heroes was this unromantic and very common- 
 place man, who would not only force himself to endure the agonizing 
 presence of the woman he loved without one thought of hope, but 
 who would not even avoid saying or receiving those words naturally 
 calculated to try him to the utmost ! What besotted folly was it to 
 reply, following her self-depreciation : 
 
 " Umps ! I am an Angular man, as I have before told you, I 
 think ; and a bachelor, beginning to wear the prefix ' old ' before that 
 name, — so I cannot be expected to judge the passion very intelli- 
 gently. Indeed, my dear, I do not remember ever having seen any 
 one worth loving, in what I suppose to be the true sense of the word, 
 except — your mother. But I should say " 
 
 " My mother ! my poor mother ! and she was drowned ! Oh, 
 why, why, why did they allow her to drown ! " exclaimed Rosebud, 
 
HASH MI!. CREWGIOTJS. 137 
 
 breaking in a little inconaequently, and thus making what might be 
 called a temporary change in the channel of the conversation. 
 
 "I cannot say, I am sure, not having been present at the moment 
 when the accident occurred ; but I was assured that everything was 
 done " 
 
 Another interruption, not quite so inconsequent as the preceding. 
 
 " Oh, why, why was not Mr. Tartar there, to save my poor 
 mother !" 
 
 •*' Mr. Tartar, my dear!" Mr. Grewgious accepted the change of 
 channel, enough to say, " Of course I am ignorant, too, why he 
 should not have happened to be on the spot ; but you must realize 
 the impossibility of any one person being present at the same mo- 
 ment at all the places in the world, where other persons might be 
 liable to fall into the water. Still " 
 
 " He would have saved her, 1 know ! He saved Mr. Crisparkle, 
 you remember, and I believe he is strong enough to save any one, 
 anywhere !" came the third interruption, followed by a sudden 
 silence, and a blush which might have caught the attention of eyes 
 younger than those of Mr. Grewgious. Then the course of the 
 channel of conversation seemed to be turned back in its original 
 direction, with a suddenness indicating that the preceding had grown 
 either dangerous or distasteful. 
 
 " But why do you make me think of so many things, when I am 
 trying to say something else ? Next I shall forget all about it 
 myself ! You have not told me yet when you believe that I was 
 happiest in all my life." 
 
 "Certainly I have not, my dear," he replied, "for the very good 
 reason — though I believe that no lady is bound to consider it con- 
 clusive — that I do not know." 
 
 " You might, then ! " pouted Rosebud. "You certainly ought, as 
 it is all about yov.. Do, do, do think twice, and tell me ! " 
 
 Mr. Grewgious could not have told her, at that moment, had he 
 known,' and had life depended on the exercise of his enunciatory 
 faculties. For the unfortunate combination of the young girl's words 
 — blending her greatest pleasure, and Aim— may be easily under- 
 stood, as well as partially the effect produced. For one instant a 
 mad, delicious thought ran through him, making every pulse tingle, 
 sending the blood like a torrent to cheek and brow, and lifting the 
 
 sad, patient old heart so high as to choke utterance. What if . 
 
 The other words of the mental sentence were never supplied, for 
 before they could be shaped, came the one crushing word, forming a 
 sentence in itself: Impossible! and behind it rang out two others, 
 used so many times before, and forming another pregnant sentence : 
 Old Fool ! Then the rebellious heart sank back to its proper place, 
 the momentary madness passed from face and frame, the throat ceased 
 choking, and the voice returned. 
 
 " Really, my dear young lady, he said, when the voice was clear 
 enough for that exercise, "I am stupid enough not to know what 
 time you refer to, unless it may possibly be the visit that I had the 
 honour to pay you at the Nun's House, to make arrangements for 
 
138 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 terminating my guardianship. That prospect, and certain other 
 things connected may have had the effect " 
 
 Fourth interruption, with the pout very decided, though even 
 under such circumstances the little face was the reverse of formidable. 
 
 " Why, what a dear stupid old guardy you are, to be sure ! " — 
 stopping to emphasize with an impatient pat of one small foot hidden 
 somewhere near the floor. " What other time could I mean, than 
 the evening when I first came to your dear dismal old rooms in the 
 Inn, yonder, and when you gave me — oh, such a very, very, very 
 nice supper ! " 
 
 " TJmps ! ah, yes, my dear — I understand, now,'' said the lawyer 
 very quickly — quite reduced, we may be sure, from his mental inflam- 
 mation of a few minutes earlier. " I remember, of course, that / 
 enjoyed that first visit very much ; and I think I may have remarked, 
 on that occasion, that your coming saved very heavy expense in the 
 way of painting, paper, gilding, and otherwise beautifying the room, 
 which certainly needed renovating. But Lord bless me ! I had no 
 idea that you could have been so pleased with the supper." 
 
 " With the supper ? oh, why, why, why will you misunderstand 
 me so, or tease me so, if you do not mistake what I mean ! Just as 
 if I cared for a supper ! — and just as if I didn't mean that it was so 
 nice and jolly to feel safe and to be where I suppose that young ladies 
 are not in the habit of taking their suppers, and to sit on the opposite 
 side of the table to you." 
 
 Another suggestion of the Impossible, that without the preparation 
 of the previous crisis might have produced scarcely less effect on the 
 hearer. For no dearer thought fills the mind of the expectant lover 
 than that some day the form so dear will sit opposite to him at his 
 household table, giving him a feast of the heart from her loving eyes 
 and pleasant lips, at the same moment when he pampers the body 
 with more substantial viands ; and there are fewer pictures drawn by 
 pen or pencil, more sweetly appearing to all that is domestic in the 
 love-nature, than those which exhibit the opposite companionships of 
 the Table and the Ingle-Side. Bat this unfortunate suggestion, too, 
 was neutralized after one more exertion of the patient will, and he 
 was enabled to answer with the same outward calmness of simplicity : 
 
 " Ah, I see, as I should have done at first : there were other things 
 than those brought by the person from Furnival's contributing to the 
 pleasant result ; and I need not say that you make me proud and 
 happy by referring to the occasion." 
 
 " Do 1 1 Thank?, then, for you make it easy to say what I wish 
 to say so very, very much ! Did I paint the old bookcases, and paper 
 the walls, and make the whole place look so jolly, just by laughing 
 like the poor little chit that I am 1 Take care, sir— don't tell stories, 
 mind ! " and she held up a terrible warning forefinger of less than 
 two inches in length — "for you have no idea what will happen to 
 you if you do. If one girl's face made the old place so jolly, you will 
 have it all ablaze some evening ; for I am going to ask you to give 
 me another supper, just like that, and allow me to bring some one 
 else with me who is worthy of being called a visitor.'' 
 
RASH MB. GREWGIOUS; 139 
 
 " Lord bless me, my dear young lady ! " the surprised lawyer ex- 
 claimed, his brain all in a whirl at the suggestion, and yet a wild, 
 imprudent joy overmastering surprise. " Another supper 1 Certainly. 
 Tick that off, as already arranged. When shall it be 1 Say to-morrow 
 evening 1 You approve. — excellent. Tick that off, as the time. And 
 for how many — remembering that the place is small as well as mean, 
 and that there would scarcely be room for more than a dozen ? " 
 
 " A dozen ! why, good gracious, you dear old willing guardy ! 
 What can you be thinking about ? It is only Helena, who has heard 
 me speak so often about our wonderful supper, which seems to me 
 to have been the nicest that ever, ever was laid, — and who has 
 promised that if you will permit her to come with me and make all 
 the dry old law-books angry by eating among them, she will thank 
 you so much ! " 
 
 " Helena ? — Miss Landless? Certainly, with the greatest pleasure ! " 
 exclaimed the old lawyer, literally wild with delight at the prospect, 
 forgetting any danger or pain that might be involved, and springing 
 up with an alacrity marvellous in so Angular a man, — under some 
 sort of idea that he must rush round to Staple's at once, inform 
 P. J. T. of the double honour about to be done him, in the presence 
 of the Precious Jewel Two, and of the Peculiar Junketing Triumph 
 certain to be achieved under liis auspices, — besides employing a small 
 army of persons to make war upon accumulated dust, re-arrange 
 everything in the dingy old rooms, and generally reduce them to a 
 condition of splendid propriety, such as might be considered necessary 
 in one of the great feudal mansions when under expectation of the 
 Sovereign's arrival in the course of a Eoyal Progress. 
 
 He checked himself, however, before actually rushing out to the 
 street to put the royal preparations in progress, and added a suggestion 
 which bore immediate fruit. 
 
 "Now that I think of it, my dear, why be selfish, even if I should 
 be quite as glad to have the company of Miss Landless and yourself 
 as all St. Giles's and St. George's 1 There is room for more than 
 three, even at my small table ; and the hotel at Furnival's is running 
 over with good things that are very jealous at not. being consumed 
 more rapidly. What say you to one or two more — Miss Helena's 
 brother, for instance? He is very lonely, and goes out so seldom; 
 and perhaps you could induce him, even if I failed." 
 
 " Oh, yes, if you would be so very, very good \" was the pleased 
 assent, with clapping hands as the accompaniment, leading Miss 
 Twinkleton, who entered at the moment, to believe that the Billickin 
 had intruded and been ignominiously routed, and that this was a 
 demonstration of joy at her discomfiture. 
 
 " And now that I think of it again," the Angular man went on, 
 "there is another. Why not have four ?— making five with myself (Mr. 
 Bazzard has not returned, so that he will not need to be consulted)." 
 
 " Oh, who 1 who t " inquired the young lady, who may or may not 
 have been entirely in the dark with reference to the next suggestion, 
 taking into account the sparkling eyes and the slightly-flushed cheeks 
 accompanying the inquiry. 
 
140 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 " Well, the truth is, my dear,'' replied Mr. Grewgious, feeling that 
 possibly a little apology might be necessary in this instance, for— so 
 to speak — intruding the other person of the party — " the young man 
 of Naval antecedents, who swims so well and is so strong, as you did 
 him the honour to remember a little while ago." 
 
 " Oh ! " interjected Eosebud, though whether in mere surprise or 
 gratification, the lawyer might have been puzzled to decide, as he 
 certainly did not. 
 
 " Mr. Tartar," he went on, " is scarcely so confined or lonely in his 
 habits as his young neighbour, as you are no doubt aware, as I think 
 he sometimes calls upon you " 
 
 " Yes, sometimes." 
 
 (Oh, Eosa !) 
 
 -" But possibly he might consider the little attention a pleasant 
 one, without being at all in the way ; and then in the event of any 
 music being considered proper, T believe that these marine people 
 always sing, and he might be able to accompany you, as I think that 
 our young friends, the Landlesses, are not melodious." 
 
 Yes, Eosa thought, taking it all in all, that there 'could be no 
 objection to adding Neville Landless to the original three, and no 
 insuperable difficulty as to Mr. Tartar, though she did not speak very 
 enthusiastically (little half-unconscious hypocrite !) of the prospect of 
 the latter's presence. And Mr. Grewgious, feeling that a privilege 
 had really been conferred upon him, in permitting him to make those 
 additions to the company first-named, manifested (grey-headed and 
 Angular old noodle !) something of that pronounced delight in the 
 prospect of the soiree of limited proportions, likely to be exhibited by 
 a schoolboy in whose favour a child's party has been kindly arranged 
 by his parents or guardians. It was to give Eosa pleasure — dear little 
 Eosebud, the daughter of her mother : no consideration of peace to 
 himself, or prudence for the future, could have weighed for one 
 moment against her expressed wish, in the mind of the ultra-heroic 
 and most unwise and Utopian old lawyer of Staple Inn. 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 SUPPER AND MUSIC FOR FOUR. 
 
 It need scarcely be said that the single day intervening between 
 the evening of making the arrangement, and the Appointed Festa 
 Night, was all too short for the needs and requirements of that day 
 — and that Staple Inn, jealous of the honours of the Middle Temple, 
 which boasts a tradition of Oliver Goldsmith having kept up a singing 
 revel in his chambers there, until complained of by the tenants of the 
 apartments below, — notes this event in its humdrum history with 
 
SUPPER AND MUSIC FOR FOUR. 141 
 
 that mingling of pride and indignation very often bred of the 
 Unaccustomed. The substitute for Bazzard, under orders from his 
 employers below to supply the place of that gentleman in light at- 
 tendance upon Mr, Grewgious, found his situation anything else than 
 a sinecure during that special day, so many removals and re-arrange- 
 ments needed to be made in what was before quite sufficiently in 
 order ; and the entire culinary force of the hotel in Purnival's may 
 have believed that Staple was about to undergo a siege, and heavily 
 provisioning to that end, from the amount and variety of food ordered 
 to be ready at a certain hour of the evening. 
 
 Staple himself may have been astounded, and no doubt P. J. T., 
 date 1747, was so, at the coming in, in the hands of two porters, of 
 a sofa of very peculiar and incongruous construction, long viewed by 
 Mr. Grewgious with interest, on account of its rare oddity, at a shop 
 in Oxford street, but never achieving the triumph of purchase until 
 this day ; and language must fail in the attempt to convey the 
 scandalization of both Staple and P. J. T., when a light van set 
 down an upright piano, and the men managed to convey it up the 
 stairs with such skill in navigation, on their own behalf, that they 
 should at once have been enrolled as pilots for difficult navigation— - 
 and the piano itself, from the extent of its wanderings and the impro- 
 ■bability of its ever reaching the place actually achieved, deserved 
 place among the Eminent Travellers of the Geographical Society. 
 
 The chandler, too, was placed under severe requisition during the 
 afternoon, for various and sundry pounds and packages of candles — 
 fortunately of wax, as had they been of tallow, and seen to enter any 
 one doorway, the impression would undoubtedly have got abroad on 
 Holborn, and supplied a legend for all future time, that a _ party of 
 Russians at that period held a grand banquet at Staple, consuming 
 unlimited fried candles as the crowning delicacy of their feast. Por 
 these, the ironmonger was obliged to supply candlesticks and sconces, 
 to the extent of depleting his shelves devoted to those articles, and 
 putting him in immediate correspondence with Birmingham for a 
 fresh supply, and also of suggesting a doubt, they being intended to 
 hold the all-prevailing candles, what place in the limited space at 
 command was to hold them. 
 
 It will always remain a question whether Mr. Grewgious, in this 
 extraordinary provision of lights, was merely following the tradition 
 of the old royal gatherings at the palaces now gone to decay, that the 
 radiance of wax-tapers was the only one fit to be allowed to show on 
 the cheek of beauty, but could not, being perfect in kind, be excessive 
 in quantity, to reveal the softened beauties of the fairest of the fair, 
 or whether he was merely expressing the general joy of Staples, in 
 the way of an illumination in honour of the coming of distinguished 
 guests j but really the moot point is no serious one, the patent fact 
 being established that in one way or the other he "was performing 
 what he believed to be the highest duty of loyalty and chivalry. 
 
 Not the only one of those highest duties, however. Personally, 
 his sacrifices at the same shrine were less than tremendous. 
 
 There are secrets of the male toilet only less impenetrable than 
 
142 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 those of the female, so that it may be difficult to throw any clear 
 light (like that of the multitudinous wax candles) upon this point. 
 
 But certain it is that Rosebud, could she have seen her guardian, 
 under observant and unembarrassed circumstances, as arrayed en 
 grande tenue, an hour before her coming, and had she applied to him 
 her peculiar formula of girlish wondering inquiry, would have said : 
 
 " Oh ! where, where, where, Mr. Grewgious, did you get that coat 
 with the collar sawing off your ears, and the skirts narrow enough 
 for a pair of pen-wipers — like some of the prints that I have seen, of 
 beaux who flourished immediately after the naughty, dear, dreadful 
 Prince Regent ? How, how is it, that the vest has been laid away 
 so long that it is yellow ? — or was it originally yellow and has it 
 faded ] And why, oh why, did they not make your trowsers the 
 least tiny bit in the world longer, so that you would show a little 
 less of your dear old stockings, and make us fancy that your precious 
 old varnished shoes were the least trifle smaller ? " 
 
 But Rosa, as may be imagined, was not present at the proper 
 moment for any such good-natured animadversions ; and the good old 
 lawyer, whatever trouble he had taken with his personal adornment 
 — even to the procurement of fragrant Macassar for the straight hair, 
 making it even less manageable than ordinary — was not likely to 
 observe either the perfections or imperfections at which he had 
 arrived ; merely congratulating himself, probably, that the unwonted 
 refinements of dress had made him a trifle less Angular and so less 
 obnoxious to the eyes of the Pretty Jilts Twain about to pass under 
 the escutcheon of P. J. T. 
 
 Angular as was Mr. Grewgious, there were some of the details of 
 good living by no means unknown to him — as his own private store 
 of wines, darkly imprisoned below by a legal power which they had 
 no means of calling in question, and only released at the last moment 
 of existence — may already have given evidence to the careful observer. 
 And there were certain maxims which he must have imbibed, other 
 than legal, and going beyond that cardinal one which sends the con- 
 sumer to his cellar for wine, and to that of the dealer for vinegar. 
 Among these was one pointing to the folly of receiving festal visitors 
 at any moment before the meal should be ready for service ; and the 
 wisdom of preventing, for himself and them, that dreariest of half- 
 hours preceding the taking of places at table. As a consequence, in 
 this instance, the supper came over from Furnival's almost at the 
 very moment when the guests were arriving, — brought by the Flying 
 "Waiter who had served him on the occasion of poor Edwin Drood's 
 unexpected supper, assisted by two others, subordinate and only less 
 active than himself, and not tyrannized over by the Immovable of 
 that occasion, who was understood to have been driven out of his 
 immobility and " moved on " by the inexorable policeman of the 
 Hadeian district, immediately after a dinner rendered indigestible 
 from gradual stagnation of all the vital powers. The wines, retaining 
 yet the flash of the ruby, the glow of pale gold, and the glint of 
 yellow harvest straw, in spite of that long imprisonment which 
 might have proved quite sufficient to bleach the complexions of their 
 
SUPPER AND MUSIC FOE FOUR. 143 
 
 human imbibers — had already found their way to perilous light and 
 fatal freedom under the care of the Substitute, who seemed to be 
 marvellously well pleased with his task, and who may have divided 
 cargo, after the manner of stevedores loading ships, putting part on 
 decks and the remainder below, to much additional convenience. 
 Mr. Grewgious had overlooked all, with much rubbiog of the long 
 hands, and much screwing of the Angular face into expressions of 
 peculiar anxiety, gradually smoothing a way to satisfaction ; he had 
 opened and closed the piano at least half a score of times, dusting 
 the keys repeatedly with his handkerchief, and studying them in 
 their stupid silence, as if something of their musical capacities might 
 be caught by the eye as well as the ear, with sufficient patient 
 attention. All was ready, and even the numerous company per- 
 taining to the household of the host, standing ready and silent for 
 the reception of youth and beauty. 
 
 There may be some who would not have recognized the presence 
 of these waiting retainers, from their very silence. Far be it from us, 
 however, to ignore them, especially as they had been dusted and even 
 rearranged for the great occasion. Did not stout Henricus de Bracton 
 stand calmly in a conspicuous place, in his quarto coat of yellowy- 
 white parchment, holding out to uninstructed to-day De Legibus et 
 Consuetudimibus Anglice Libri of the time of the Third Henry and 
 showing that our forefathers of six hundred years ago were equally 
 blessed with Latin and Law, and all the Lore leading to Litigation ? 
 And was not Bellewe near him, in antique calf, quarto, but tawdry 
 in heavy gilding, opposing to the experience of Lincoln's Inn the 
 Cases, preserved by a Bencher of that legal temple, of Les Ans du 
 Roy Richard le Second? And near him, again, was not stout old 
 Sir John Fortescue, literally bulging with the round Latin of de 
 Lwudibus Legum Anglice, defying translation, and looking scornfully 
 down on an attempt thereat lying at his feet 1 And was not here 
 even richer and prouder legal antiquity, in eclectic Cumin, classically 
 fragrant with the Twelve Tables of Justinian and the fragments of 
 TJlpian ? And here did there not loom the mighty bulk of Domes- 
 day Book, most interesting of British records, and invaluable to-day 
 as it was when it first told the story of how many broad acres had 
 passed into the possession of the followers of Duke William ? — and 
 the slighter form of indispensable Kelham, bridging that else broad 
 gulf between the compatriots of the same Duke William, and those 
 whom he came to conquer 1 — and the thin, attenuated but attractive 
 presence of that brave and Learned Lawyer, Judge Jenkins, Prisoner 
 in Newgate, upon Divers Statutes concerning the Liberty and Free- 
 dom of the Subject — about which it would seem natural enough that 
 the grave and learned judge should there and then have been con- 
 cerned ! — and a goodly row and array of others, the companions and 
 followers of those men weighty in the law, forming the peculiar 
 treasures of the scholarly old man who could no more be thoroughly 
 modern in his library than the fashion of his coat for special occasions? 
 
 Dry company, these ! — and especially as assisting at the reception 
 of three or four young persons who could be expected to know no 
 
144 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 more of their scope or value than of so many Hebrew tables or 
 Egyptian obelisks similarly placed ! But they had been, many of 
 them since the day when there were fewer grey hairs on his head 
 and fewer Angular cranks in his body, the peculiar treasures of 
 Hiram Grewgious, Esq., of Staple Inn ; and who can wonder at 
 the pride with which he ranked them even above, the unequalled 
 sofa and the wonderful piano, in imparting a certain dignity to the 
 dull old place that had now become a reception chamber. 
 
 An extensive and elaborate framing, perhaps, for a picture of only 
 moderate consequence ; for really, as the guests arrived, at that 
 lucky moment which rendered waiting on the part of the viands 
 or the consumers equally unnecessary — they seemed scarcely notable 
 enough for all this preparation. Only three of them, when they 
 came, in one charming group of incongruity — the difference in sex, 
 between Mr. Tartar, navally reminiscent in costume, in honour of 
 the occasion, and his two companions, scarcely more marked than 
 that in appearance and temperament, showing in the splendid dark 
 beauty of Helena and the radiant girlish English loveliness of the 
 Rosebud. 
 
 They were received by Mr. Grewgious, at the moment of reaching 
 his landing, with that alacrity which showed that he must have 
 been in waiting expectancy — and with that empressement, of an old- 
 fashioned and ceremonious sort, which conveyed a high sense of the 
 honour conferred. There was a disappointment, of course, to be 
 commented upon and apologized for, in. the non-appearance of 
 Neville, whose health and spirits, as Helena informed the host, were 
 not such, that day, as to allow of his accepting the invitation for 
 which he was none the less grateful. Mr. Grewgious, who knew no 
 reason (how should he ?) why the young man should be indisposed 
 on that particular occasion, was thereupon about to disarrange the 
 whole order of proceedings by going up to his apartment, accom- 
 panied by the Substitute, and gently forcing him down, after the 
 manner of an officer bringing a refractory witness into court, but 
 was restrained by Helena, who barred the movement by the bappy 
 statement that her brother, suffering from headache, was at that 
 moment in bed ! 
 
 " Save the man ! — can that be possible ! " the host exclaimed, 
 under that extraordinary information. " Umps ! then it would not 
 be convenient to bring him down, would it ? and all that we can do 
 is to send him up such portions of the supper — say a fowl and a 
 bottle of wine — as will not interfere with the headache, and try to 
 make the fifth at table out of regrets for his absence." 
 
 It needs no messenger from the upper portions of the dusky old 
 tenements of Staple Inn to tell us that Helena Landless was, 
 in that instance — doing whatever may most mildly express, in 
 deference to a lady, deliberate falsification of fact ! Neville Land- 
 less was not in bed. Headache he may have suffered, but his 
 faithful and careful sister knew only too well that the worst ache 
 was in the hea/rt — that he sat at that moment, in an unlighted room, 
 staring into blank darkness or looking out on the night, with no 
 
SUPPER AND MUSIC FOll FOUli. Ii5 
 
 more of power to wean his thoughts entirely away from the little 
 gathering below, than he possessed of courage to join it, and thus 
 enjoy an hour of paradise at the expense of an after-week of 
 purgatory. No — the young man, at once warned and strengthened 
 by the late conversation with his sister, was fighting the battle of 
 renunciation more manfully than could have been believed from 
 former weakness ; but in that fight he needed, and knew that he 
 needed all the aids to fortitude — absence from temptation not the 
 least among them. Rosa was lost to him, he knew it now, and was 
 conning that most difficult of lessons — learning to submit. But he 
 could not do this and meet her often. He could not allow himself 
 to come into her presence, except perhaps accidentally and unavoid- 
 ably. To sit at table with her, for a whole evening would be little 
 less than mental suicide : to sit with her thus, and glance from her 
 to the man who had now icon her, that would be madness. 
 
 There had been a conversation between the brother and sister on 
 the subject, of course ; and Helena had faintly urged him to meet 
 his incarnated fate and be strong. But she had known, even while 
 speaking, that he was right — that good could scarcely result and 
 evil might follow ; and she had left him with a tender kiss, thanking 
 heaven, silently, that whatever of grief lay in any love-relation with 
 herself, had been given her to bear — that there was no man sighing 
 away his life for her, or wearily struggling for that negative good 
 found in indifference or forgetfulness. Thinking this — saying this — 
 in the generosity of her brave spirit, and little dreaming that at 
 that very hour, perhaps, only a few score of miles away, by the 
 shaded lamp of his study in Minor Canon Corner, or baring his 
 brow to the celestial influences, under the stars looking down on the 
 old Cathedral — one of the noblest and truest of men was passing 
 through the same fiery ordeal for her sake ! 
 
 But the supper ! — which did not wait for these reflections, happily 
 for the appetite and digestion of all concerned — the supper, at which 
 no Gurney, scribe of the closet, took surreptitious notes, even had 
 the good things, solid and imaginative, been equal to those of each 
 of the Noctes Ambrosianse — so that the spirit of the one is neces- 
 sarily lost with the aroma of the other, — the supper, at which Mr. 
 Grewgious presided with suave dignity, the very reverse of Angular, 
 and at some of the more appetising details of which pretty Rosebud 
 clapped her hands, repaying him a thousand times over for all outlay 
 and anxiety with her exuberant admiration : 
 
 " Oh, where, where, where, you dear old guardy ! did you find any- 
 thing to please us all so much 1 " 
 
 Perhaps the highest of compliments is paid to the courteous 
 skill of the host on that occasion, in saying that he refrained, under 
 innumerable temptations, from sending to Bosa, who sat at his right 
 hand, one and another of the various tit-bits by which he might have 
 marked her as the favourite among his guests, at the same time 
 carrying out his private belief; that she should close her dainty lips 
 over nothing coarser than celestial ambrosia. So that Helena was 
 not neglected, as she might so easily have been — and that Mr. Tartar 
 
 L 
 
146 jo;i2f jaspek's secret. 
 
 was not dufiuu loJ of his opportunity to pay in-sensible court to his 
 divinity through the medium of the pampered appetite. 
 
 But the hour came — all too soon yet inevitably — when nature sank 
 under the burthen laid upon her, and when even the marvellous 
 supper from Furnival's arrived at the incapable stage of toujours 
 perdrix. When Helena, marking the last labouring efforts of the 
 host to stimulate his guests by his own activity, roguishly doubted 
 whether he had not laid himself liable to a closer acquaintance than 
 that of the day of their visit with the dangerous chemicals in the jars 
 of Dr. Chippercoyne ; and Eosa said : 
 
 " Oh, don't, don't, don't ask me to eat any more, unless you wish 
 to kill me at once ! " — which no one did, to that cruel extent ; and 
 Mr. Tartar breezily suggested "that four such members among a ship's 
 company would put all hands on allowance before the cruise was half 
 ended, if they did not finish by eating the cabin-boy on the first 
 banyan day. 
 
 At which astounding possibility, knives and forks were dropped 
 by mutual consent, and the memorable supper was a thing of the 
 past, so far as solids were concerned. But not so with those -vinous 
 prisoners from below, who became free and victims at the same 
 moment, with the result of smoothing out almost the last Angular 
 wrinkle from the face of Mr. Grewgious; and causing Mr. Tartar to 
 go off with a free wind, steering large, on a cruise of adventurous 
 narration, in which, however, he seemed never to grade higher than 
 Second Luff, and was often no more than a Powder-Monkey ; and 
 making even the bright eyes sparkle more brightly than their wont 
 — not to mention the possible bringing out to view of certain charac- 
 teristics ordinarily a little more closely hidden. 
 
 It was then that, for the first time, the old lawyer caught a dim 
 perception of the reason why, in the inscrutable orderings of Provi- 
 dence, he had been led to gather the young people together in the 
 dim old room of Staple' Inn. It was then that the scene from 
 " Othello " became re-enacted, less at length than on the evening of 
 the abduction, at Billickin's, but still sufficient to have warned the 
 grave old Senator of Venice, had he kept his eyes about him, and to 
 instruct other eyes but his, once accustomed to the close reading of faces 
 in the criminal-dock and the witness-box. It was with a sharp pang, 
 which almost made him groan aloud, and which quite made him spill 
 his wine in the effort at a quick gulp — that Mr. Grewgious saw and 
 recognized what a less simple-minded man might have read an hour 
 before — the absorbing attention with which the young girl devoured 
 with her eyes the narrator, ever and anon evincing by a quick shudder 
 or some girlish exclamation the terror, even in things of the past, so 
 easy to feel for Mm — the unconscious air with which, frank, innocent, 
 and knowing no reason why she should do otherwise, she seemed to 
 gaze up to him as to the one prevailing master and lord, set apart from 
 all other men, and to be received unquestioningly and completely. 
 
 The Angular man did not groan : so much has been said already. 
 He did not even spill his wine, a second time, but sipped, with a 
 hand as steady as the staunch heart deserved to second it. And yet, in 
 
SUPPER AND MUSIC FOR FOUR. 147 
 
 that moment, he better knew than he had believed that he could ever 
 do, the difference between the feelings of the condemned criminal, 
 day by day when the inevitable is as yet unreached, — and on one fatal 
 morning, when the jailer enters his cell with more than the usual 
 pitying respect, knocks off his heavier irons, and introduces the priest 
 who is to aid him, within an hour, in setting out on his last journey. 
 
 He had thought of her as to be wooed, won and -wedded — some day, 
 and by some one. That had been the Indefinite. He saw, now, the 
 man ; and he could almost mark the hour. This was the Certain. 
 A week — a month — six months — what matter how long since it was 
 to be he ? — and she would disappear, as her mother had done, and he 
 would be again alone — alone — alone ! as only wifeless, childless, 
 broken old men can be? 
 
 Which of his three guests saw what must have been written on 
 the old lawyer's face, in characters however indistinct, if he was not 
 more than mortal ? Not one — to read and understand it as of any 
 strong significance. Perhaps the keener eyes of Helena Landless saw 
 something that seemed a shadow of pain, and that that was the reason 
 why she rallied him cheerfully, the moment after, on the dangerous 
 old fellows in the bookcases, worse than the wild animals in the 
 doctor's bottles, who might at any moment stalk out and overwhelm 
 them with a pitiless assault of- Law, leaving each doubtful (civilly) 
 whether they possessed everything or nothing, and (criminally) 
 whether they had committed all the crimes in the calendar or only 
 suffered them. But even if she saw enough to excite one moment 
 of suspicion, that suspicion never grew to a certainty, and her tongue 
 would have been the last to utter what would benefit none, and must 
 cause regret to some whom she loved so dearly. As for the others — 
 what could they see ? What could they be expected to see, except 
 each other? 
 
 Nor was there more of pained intelligence on any of those faces, 
 let us believe, when, half an hour later, they were in the midst of a 
 rubber at whist, in which Helena could not avoid feeling that she 
 was but feebly supported by Mr. Grewgious as her partner — he 
 seeming to play with something more of attention to the interests of 
 at least one of their opponents. Nor when he exhibited the won- 
 derful new sofa, upholstered at the two ends in different materials, 
 cloth and leather, so as to allow what he called " first and second 
 class " among his visitors — absolutely placing the little Queen of the 
 occasion in the very post of honour at the first-class cushion. 
 
 Nor when the upright piano found its mission, and school-girl 
 Rosa dashed and rattled away a dozen of beautiful nothings, which 
 must have startled the old worthies in the book-cases from their little 
 remaining propriety, by the introduction not only of music but light- 
 hearted frivolity, into the staid domain of Law. Nor when Helena, 
 modestly doubtful of her few and late accomplishments, but gifted 
 with a clear voice and an excellent natural method, yielded to gentle 
 pressing and sang, to Rosa's accompaniment, the " Last Rose of 
 Summer," sweetly enough to bring tears into the eyes of at least two 
 of her hearers — so full was it of the very feeling of winter snows 
 
 l 2 
 
148 JOHN JASPER'S BECUET. 
 
 coming down on sunny lands, of true hearts broken by neglect, and 
 happy lives left lonely. 
 
 Then there came a weird little chant of the Ceylonese, monotonous, 
 and scarcely more than an incantation in the musical Pali, to which 
 the bass keys of the instrument so well supplied the tap of the 
 calabash-drum in the performances of the worshippers of Buddha. 
 It made the blood chill, slightly, in the veins of sensitive Rosa, to 
 whom new worlds opened so readily ; the sailor listened, and went 
 back in the sound to his far-away wanderings among coral rocks and 
 orange groves; and Mr. Grewgious, listening, remembered the visit 
 to the doctor in Gerrard Street, thought of the errand which had 
 carried the young girl thither, and mused over the strange combi- 
 nation, bodily and mental, which could make this splendid young 
 creature at once a thing to be loved to the death and feared with 
 equal intensity. 
 
 Then, after a time, Mr. Tartar rather drifted than dropped into 
 the chair which Helena had vacated, and his rich, unrestrained, and 
 half-cultured baritone voice rang out — fresh, breezy, and conveying 
 the irresistible impression of brown ripeness, like himself. But it 
 made no allusion, oddly enough, to the Wooden "Walls of England, 
 which might have been expected to rise on the ear at any moment, 
 nor repeated the .consolatory truism that "Britons Never Will Be 
 Slaves," nor even dealt with the Black Eyes of Susan, and the 
 troubles brought upon affectionate William by a certain traditional 
 disrespect to his superior officer, nor the nautical accomplishments of 
 Thomas Bowline, captain of the foretop on board His Majesty's Ship 
 the Thunderer. Instead of these he sang sea-song after sea-song, 
 pleasantly new to his hearers, as they undoubtedly would have been 
 to those who ordinarily provide for the marine fancies of the musical 
 ear, sang them, roundly and feelingly, to his own simple accompani- 
 ment, which seemed rather the inspiration of the moment than any 
 written score. Such songs, with salt air and sea foam in their every 
 word, as had no doubt beguiled many an hour on deck in the night- 
 watches, or in the mess-room, on those far-away seas and lonely 
 coasts of which he had been telling so graphically — the summer 
 breezes of the tropics sighing through them, alternated with the 
 roaring of fierce tempests, the wails of the perilled and perishing, 
 and the thunder crash of great guns fighting England's battles on 
 the deep. 
 
 His skill was simple, but wondrously effective ; and his auditors 
 bowed to it as they had little expected to do when he began. Helena 
 Landless's tawny eyes grew alternately sad and fierce, as something 
 was to be borne, or something to be done. Little Rosa clasped hands 
 and devoured this new master of her destiny even more ravenously 
 than she had lately been doing at table. And the old lawyer, sitting 
 " second class " and bending forward, first craned his neck as if to 
 come nearer to what pleased him so well, then sank back upon his 
 seat, and leaned his head upon a hand that gradually covered more 
 and more of his face. 
 
 Then there came a change — inspired by what, who can tell ? The 
 
SUPPER AND MUSIC FOR FOUR. 149 
 
 rich baritone voice broke out in the words and air of that plaintive 
 old melody which our mothers must have monopolized, as their 
 daughters know nothing of it — " Alice Gray." Mr. Grewgious's 
 long hand was completely over his face now, though none noticed 
 the fact. The singer went on, with the first two stanzas, and there 
 seemed no breath in the room except his own — older and younger 
 alike rapt with the spell. Then came the conclusion, so blending 
 hopeless love and declining life : 
 
 " I've sunk beneath the summer sun, 
 
 I've trembled, in the blast : 
 My pilgrimage is nearly done — 
 
 My life-sands nearly past. 
 And when the green sod wraps my grave, 
 
 May pity kindly say : 
 'Ah, his heart — his heart was broken 
 
 For the love of Alice Gray ! ' " 
 
 What blind force was it, driving on the singer from one step to 
 another of the sadly pathetic, and each with a pang that he could 
 not know, to at least one listener 1 He knew as little as the others, 
 we may be sure. It is enough to know that he went on, taking up 
 a refrain much more modern but equally sad and wonderfully appro- 
 priate to his appearance and past calling. Neither of the young girls 
 saw their host, so absorbed were they with the singer and his words. 
 And still the lawyer sat, as they could not know — one hand over his 
 eyes, as before, and the other pressed close upon the brave old heart 
 that was suffering an agony never to be duplicated on this side of the 
 Dark Valley. 
 
 "The first lines of the last song rang out, in the full, rich baritone 
 that seemed literally to revel in its power : 
 
 " Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt ? 
 Sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown ? 
 Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile, 
 
 And trembled with fear at your frown ? 
 In the old churchyard in the valley, Ben Bolt, 
 In a corner, obscure and alone " 
 
 " Lord bless me ! Please stop, Mr. Tartar, if you don't mind ! 
 Lord bless me ! — what is this 1 " 
 
 The hand had come down from the lawyer's face, now : both hands 
 were pressed close upon the heart so near to bursting. He tried to 
 utter the words, but they came so low and faint that only Helena 
 caught a sound of them, and neither Rosa nor Mr. Tartar distin- 
 guished them at all. So that the concluding lines were heard, in 
 their full burst of sad melody : 
 
 " They have fitted a slab of the granite so grey, 
 And Alice lies under the stone." 
 
 Helena had started forward as she saw the gesture of suffering and 
 half-caught the words of alarm. But it was only when the last note 
 
150 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 had ceased, that the two young girls, seeing, the sufferer drop 
 yet farther forward, sprang to his assistance, followed by the 
 startled singer, who turned as he saw the hurried movements of the 
 others. 
 
 Mr. Grewgious was not fainting — rather choking with that rising 
 of the heart to which over-agitation may subject even the most 
 Angular. Leaning upon Mr. Tartar's arm, he rose to his feet, after 
 only a moment, apologizing, in a low voice, for the alarm he had 
 caused, and anxious to dissipate it. He had an excuse ready, too- 
 brave old un decorated chevalier ! — not the less worthy because it 
 contained only half the truth: credited all to "Ben Bolt" and 
 nothing to " Alice Gray." 
 
 " Dear me ! " he said, his voice very low but tolerably distinct— 
 "Dear me ! — this is very extraordinary. I assure you, if you will 
 kindly believe me, that this has never happened to me before, and 
 that I will take care it shall never happen again. The room is rather 
 warm, is it not? And that last song, my dear," to Rosa — "I am 
 afraid that it may have affected me a little, reminding me so much of 
 Your Mother." 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE BABBLING OF A SECRET. 
 
 The Hour has come, and the Man. 
 
 Not many days have elapsed — bringing the Hour — since the visit 
 paid by Joe Gilfert to the noisome and dangerous abode of the dis- 
 reputable woman in the East. No doubt the phantoms have been 
 pressing numerously and closely around the harassed man, and 
 especially since that defeated attempt at the Cathedral — rendering 
 every hour some new variety of torture, suggesting that any dis- 
 traction from their presence must be again untold, and making the 
 Man ready for that event already foredoomed 
 
 There have been two days of constant rain, not foretold by Zadkiel 
 in his most comprehensive speculations ; but possibly brought about 
 by something done or omitted to be done by that damp apostle, St. 
 Swithin, on his appropriate day of midsummer. To say that London 
 streets have been flooded, during the two miserable days, would by 
 no means do justice to a rainfall reaching the verge of a phenomenon : 
 perhaps a better idea may be conveyed by saying that the oiled capes 
 of the cabmen, after enduringly resisting the downpour, have at last 
 become flaccid and flabby, slinking around their figures like so many 
 mantles of soaked muslin, and depressing their spirits to such a degree 
 as even to make them incapable of vigorous lying over distances 
 (to strangers), or whiningly squabbling for an additional sixpence 
 
THE BABBLING OF A SECRET. 151 
 
 (with all and sundry their sopped and steaming fares). The morning 
 journals of the day, temporarily deficient in topics of thrilling 
 interest, from a dearth of Appalling Accidents, Extensive Robberies, 
 and Great National Grievances, have found refuge in suggesting the 
 organization of an Umbrella Lending Company (Limited), with 
 principal stations at the Bank, Charing Cross, Regent Circus, &c., 
 and sub-stations at every corner of prominence, thus rendering the 
 ■world of transit less tributary to the cabmen at such periods, besides 
 guarding against sudden and irremediable accidents to new hats and 
 unimpeachable coats beyond the reach of the most effective cab- 
 remedy. 
 
 But this drippy condition of affairs generally, alternating with the 
 gritty one of previous weeks, and substituting damp for dust in the 
 town-residences of Her Majesty's lieges, has not prevented, at an hour 
 approaching dusk on this special day, the progress, from a well-known 
 district, E.C., to a correspondingly well-known one W.C., of a small 
 boy, villanously grimy-faced and perpetually dodging from expected 
 cuffe ; less than three feet in height, and clothed in the turned-up 
 and cut-off habiliments of six feet, additionally falling into the ragged 
 strings of their warp ; known to an extensive, if not a highly respect- 
 able clientele, in his own special precinct, as Nuts — possibly from 
 some precedent possession of certain delicacies of that name, surrep- 
 titiously obtained, or from an expressed inclination in that direction 
 as yet lacking fruition. 
 
 The pluvial condition of the atmosphere, and the correspondingly 
 watery one of the streets, as already stated, has not prevented the 
 progress of this energetic person, on a certain Mission, with creden- 
 tials in the shape of a card, pulpy by long holding in a wet hand, 
 but still decipherable as to its legend — the vigorous pushing forward 
 of the small bundle of rags and street-vice, through puddles assuming 
 the depth of rivers to his short legs, and among a multitude of 
 spattering cabs calculated to grind him up between them like the 
 toothed cylinders of a rag-mill, being stimulated by the promise, 
 which it must be owned that up to the moment of reception he has 
 only half-credited, of a bright silver half-crown, capable of depleting 
 the stalls of his bailiwick, of shelled delicacies more numerous than 
 the sands of the sea-shore. But the half-confidence has not been 
 misplaced. 
 
 Nuts has reached Staple Inn ; he has exhibited his card, after the 
 manner of polite society ; he has been pointed gruffly to a stairway, 
 and ascended it, with horrible suspicions of being there, then and 
 thus entrapped into life-long imprisonment for some crime of which 
 he may be better aware than others ; he has delivered his credentials 
 to a brown man who laughed instead of arresting him at the com- 
 panion-way of the Admiral's Cabin ; he has received his guerdon, 
 tried it with his teeth before believing in the possibility of its being 
 genuine, at last succumbed to the delirious certainty of possessing 
 untold wealth, capable of making him thenceforth an envied wonder 
 to Pups, and Ginger, and Creamy Joe, and other feudal barons, his 
 peers ; and then he has fled away eastward, the wondrous coin tightly 
 
152 JOHN JASPRU'S SECRET. 
 
 gripped in the hand lately holding the card, — from the double motive 
 of increased security and the possession of no pocket capable of re- 
 taining smaller objects than a paving-stone or a cigar-box. 
 
 There have been eleven strokes of a stubby pencil, very unsteadily 
 made but recognizable, on the back of the card. The hour indicated 
 is to be very late, no doubt for additional security against the presence 
 of others, difficult to eject and dangerous to retain, in the possibility 
 of the word " unintelligible " losing a syllable. At eleven. At ten, 
 Joe Gilfert has made his appearance in the Admiral's Cabin, water- 
 proofed in addition to previous costume. He has been immediately 
 joined by the Ex-Lieutenant, also waterproofed, but not to such an 
 extent as to impair his necessary agility. Within ten minutes there- 
 after they have left Staple Inn nodding and P. J. T. quite unconscious 
 that there is any occasion to Protect Jasper's Tongue against im- 
 prudent revelations which may tend to Punish Jasper Terribly ; and 
 they have astounded a four-wheeler autocrat by promising him six- 
 pence extra for speed and full time-rate for waiting their return at a 
 certain locality where he knows of the existence of Meux and Co.'s 
 Entire, suspects pipes, and can therefore pass his waiting not un- 
 pleasantly. They have reached, again, the dark and dismal streets 
 of their previous visit — now the drowned-out and the sloppy, with 
 apologetic feeble gas-lights flaring in the wind and winking in the 
 drip of leaky lamps. They have left the cab ; they have taken then- 
 way, again, into the miserable court ; they have again exchanged 
 last inquiries and instructions ; they have again separated at the 
 door. Mr. Tartar has once more gone aloft, taking in topsails in 
 thick and blowy weather, off Cape Finisterre, or is in the tops, keeping 
 a sharp look-out for land to leeward, in equally thick weather and 
 half a gale going Round the Horn. And Joe Gilfert has once more 
 put his handsome stripling face and figure, no doubt his limited 
 amount of gold, and almost certainly his poniard, into the repulsive, 
 presence of the woman whose lungs have passed through such stages 
 of deterioration that there are left no more adverbs and adverbial 
 adjectives with which to describe them. 
 
 Needless to say that he has been received with whining admiration, 
 deeply touched with greed and not free from suspicion. That in the 
 half-hour intervening since his arrival, the handsome boy has heard 
 the epithet " deary," and the plural noun-substantive (in that case 
 alleged unsubstantial) "lungs," so often, in addition to previous repe- 
 titions, that he would be very willing to have them blotted out from 
 the language during the remainder of his natural life. That there 
 have been renewed inquiries after the promised money, only satisfied 
 by its exhibition, — and greedy clutches, then and thereupon, making 
 it necessary to re-exhibit another metal, in a different form. That 
 threats as well as directions, have needed to be employed, in making 
 the alterations in the arrangement of the miserable apartment, 
 necessary to secure a place of temporary concealment. That the 
 greedy old eyes have gloated, and the withered old hands worked 
 convulsively, while the new-comer has laid out, also in concealment, 
 a small glass syringe, and a small porcelain box containing the pre- 
 
H 
 b 
 O 
 
 < 
 
 P-, 
 p 
 
 « 
 
 <: 
 
 H 
 Pi 
 
 < 
 
THE BABBLING OF A SECRET. 153 
 
 pavation which is to do so much, in other hauds and may be made to 
 do even more in hers. That the same greedy old eyes have watched, 
 as if life and death hung on the issue (perhaps they do — who can 
 say ?) the process of cleaning the pipe from all previous defilements 
 and showing precisely the proper blended quantities of the prepa- 
 ration so skilfully made by Dr. Chippercoyne. That the whole 
 atmosphere of the place has seemed to Joe Gilfert during that half- 
 hour of preliminaries and waiting — weird, devilish, unfit for the stay 
 of any Christian man or woman, except under the compelling of 
 some high purpose — nearer to certain fearful things remembered 
 among the poisoning followers of Buddha, in a far-away island of 
 the sea, than anything that he had ever again expected to meet 
 during mortal life. 
 
 But the Hour and the Man. The Hour is here, and the Man is 
 coming ; for John Jasper, whatever his faults, vices, crimes, lacks 
 that one besetting sin giving birth to all others — Unpunctuality. 
 He would keep an appointment, at the named hour, there is reason 
 to believe with the Prince of Darkness, once committed to a 
 rendezwus with that person of the unenviable name. Eleven strikes 
 from some one of the dingy old church-towers of the precinct ; and 
 the sound comes faintly in through the wind and falling rain. 
 Almost at the same moment there is a step on the stair, and the 
 old woman says, in her hoarse whisper, too low to be heard outside 
 the door : 
 
 " That's his step, deary ! I knows it, hearing it so many times 
 afore. Get away, deary, get away, if you don't want to kill the 
 poor old soul with fear for ye." 
 
 Joe Gilfert hears, and though his share in the fear may be a 
 moderate one, he disappears, without a word, into the place of 
 concealment in the far corner of the room, arranged behind the 
 .bed-head and in the additional shelter of a line of ragged dirty 
 white clothing that may or may not be estimated as washed, 
 stretched on a cord leading from the window to that portion of the 
 room. He may be a cool youngster ; and possibly reason has been 
 given to believe that he is so ; but he must be something more than 
 even this would indicate, if he can hear that advancing step at the 
 top of the stair, stumbling up as his own has come so lately — without 
 remembering the warning of the Doctor, his own early education, 
 and the important interests involved — and feeling some tremor at 
 the approach of the moment of trial. 
 
 The step comes nearer — the door opens, without a knock or any 
 other notice (as warranted by the previous arrangement of the 
 hour) ; and John Jasper enters. Joe Gilfert sees him, in the dim 
 candle-light, through the loophole contrived for that purpose be- 
 tween the hanging clothes : sees him well enough, even though the 
 light is dim, to note certain particulars inducing astonishment and 
 almost pity. His hat and garments are heavily dashed with rain, 
 as if he has been coming on foot through at least some portion of 
 his journey from Aldersgate Street ; and as he removes his hat 
 with a swing throwing the clinging drops from it, the evidence 
 
154 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 of what he is comes up to confront, the memory of what he was 
 only so little while ago. 
 
 The face is haggard in its lines and leathern in the colour and 
 texture of the skin. The eyes seem bloodshot, and there is a 
 supernatural fire in the pupils, giving the impression of hot coals 
 from the brazier on the hob — of combining fever nnd madness. The 
 whole contour of the face seems changed — thinned, sharpened, and 
 lacking all grace and roundness. But there is yet another change 
 more important than either of the others named, and all the more 
 marked because in this regard the subject of it has been notable for 
 the attractiveness of his appearance. His hair, so abundant, dark, 
 glossy and well-kept, in those better days which seem so long ago 
 and are really but yesterday, when Helena Landless first came with 
 her brother to Cloisterham and first saw John Jasper there at the 
 house of Mr. Crisparkle — his hair, so dark and glossy, if neither so 
 abundant nor so well-kept, only a few days since — is heavily greyed^ 
 and in sections literally wealed with thick stripes of white, as if five- 
 and-twenty years had suddenly fallen on the dark head and left its 
 impress in that remarkable manner. Such a change, in this one 
 particular — Joe Gilfert recognizes the fact, with something like a 
 shudder, but with no faltering of determination — such a change could 
 scarcely have occurred to him in a dozen years of sickness or im- 
 prisonment. What must the terror or agony have been to produce 
 that extreme symptom of premature age thus suddenly ! And what 
 must it be, indeed, to endure the rack of Fear and the thumb-screw 
 of Remorse, at one and the same moment, in a refinement on all the 
 cruelty of the best-appointed old torture-chambers ! 
 
 " Ye have come at yer time, deary ; and the old woman is very 
 glad to see ye again," the crone coughs hoarsely, rising with an effort 
 from her chair and making a feeble motion to assist him to lay aside 
 his wet outer clothes. " Why, how soaked ye are ! and where's yer 
 umbereller : But never mind, the poor old soul — O me, my lungs 
 is so bad, and this cough shakes me into fragments — the poor old 
 souh as thought ye had deserted her and gone over to Jack China- 
 man's there, — or gone to taking it yer own way, as is dangerous, 
 werry — she has the art of mixen' it as it ought to be, and ye'll soon 
 get clear of them shakes as punishes ye. But mercy, deary, however 
 did yer hair get so white in this little while, like as if ye was old 1 
 But ye didn't answer me, when I told ye so to-day, did ye, deary 1 
 O me, where's my ink-bottle, and where's my spoon ? " 
 
 " Never you mind about the colour of my hair, which may have 
 been dyed when you first knew me, and the dye simply gone off it 
 now ! " is the gruff reply, as Mr. Jasper throws off his waterproof, 
 and then divests himself of his body coat, as if, all preliminaries 
 having been .arrayed in advance, he is not disposed to waste further 
 time in the world of reality where that of dreams is so easily 
 attainable. 
 
 " Oy we are short and snappish again to-night,, all because we want 
 a little smoke so badly ! O me, my lungs is dreffte bad, and my 
 poor old head is going to split. But here's the pipe, deary, and here 
 
THE BABBLING OF A SECRET. 155 
 
 is the spoon, and the mixter's all ready for ye ! " So she coughs and 
 splutters, while hobbling to the little table, under the window, 
 where stands the "mixter" in its new shape — as prepared by 
 Dr. Chippercoyne and brought by Joe Gilfert. 
 
 " Listen," he says, as she is preparing it. " I have an idea, lately, 
 that you are using mere trash instead of opium. It does me no 
 good, or next to none. No more of this — no foisting of miserable 
 stuff on me, instead of the true article for which I pay you, — or you 
 have seen the last of my money ! I shall go back to taking it in my 
 own way, which you don't seem to like. Do you hear me?" He 
 has dropped into a chair, with all the symptoms of intense weariness 
 and weakness, though he speaks with his usual determination. 
 
 " Oh, no ! — never take it your own way, deary — it isn't good for 
 trade, and it isn't good for you I" she mumbles and coughs, repeating 
 an old formula found very effective in former interviews. "And 
 don't ye be hard on the old woman,, deary, that's got the true art of 
 mixing it to cure the all-overs ! Eind fault, do ye, because it doesn't 
 seem so strong to ye now as it did when ye was a babby to it ! 0, 
 me ! that's because ye are so strong now, and it takes so much to 
 send ye off." 
 
 " Well, all I can say is, that if you lose your power, I go else- 
 where, or serve myself ! " is the querulous reply, with the addition, 
 " How much longer am T to wait ? Is* it not almost ready 1 " 
 
 " O me, my lungs is dreffle bad, and my head's like to split L Yes, 
 deary, it's a'most ready, and better than ye ever had it 'afore, 
 because I've been a makin' of it a little stronger, so that ye would 
 be sure to go off easily," is the reply, coughed and rattled like the* 
 preceding, but with the crone still at the table. 
 
 Mr. Jasper may have cause to be a shade impatient at the delay 
 of his infernal happiness, or his celestial misery — whichever phrase 
 may be held best to describe opium intoxication ! For the old 
 woman, fumbling with her shaking hands, is doing more than either 
 John Jasper is likely to know, looking at her from behind, or Joe 
 Gilfert, in his place of hiding, and with his attention principally 
 concentrated upon the other visitor. She is ostensibly filling the 
 pipe and arranging it so that just the proper quantity of air for 
 steady combustion will be drawn through the drug. She is really 
 taking out something more, than twice the proper quantity for the 
 pipe, from the box of Dr. Chippercoyne's preparation, and concealing 
 all not needed for that one " little smoke," in a scrap of paper, and in 
 the bosom of her gown ! Is she not learning the art of administering 
 this, which is to make the subject " talk " as nothing of hers can. do % 
 — and, the business of this evening over, will she not be fully com- 
 petent to do a little on her own account, if she can only secure a 
 sufficient quantity of the new " mixter," as she has no hope of being 
 able to do through any communication or benevolence of the hand- 
 some but imperious boy ? So she accomplishes her theft, with the 
 remaining dexterity of fingers that have no doubt slipped cards, or 
 even picked pockets, before they became so old and shaking ; and 
 neither of the others, keen, observers though they may be, have the 
 
156 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 least idea of what is occurring. How surely, in the event of a closer 
 knowledge of that instant and the future, the hand of John Jasper 
 would be at her throat, even if the poniard of Joe Gilfert did not 
 point itself at a portion of her old anatomy only a little lower ! But 
 is not to be ; enough that we know what is. 
 
 " There — it's just ready for you, deary ; and sweeter and stronger 
 than ever afore — just a little stronger, so that ye'll be sure to go off 
 easy." 
 
 She brings it to him, nearly dropping it on the way, in one of her 
 accessions of rattling cough. It is lighted, and the faintest aromatic 
 perfume creeps into the room. He catches the aroma, and rises 
 from his chair, the fiery eyes alight with a new pleasure. 
 
 " Ah," he says, as he seats himself on the side of the bed and 
 takes the pipe from her hands. " Yes, I catch the odour, already. 
 It is better and stronger than you have made it for me, in a long 
 time — more as it was when I first began ; and you have been 
 swindling me of late. Don't do it again, now that you see I am 
 in earnest. Let me have this whenever I come, or no more of my 
 money." 
 
 He has inhaled a few whiffs, and becomes deliciously overpowered 
 within a space of time equally short as compared with his own 
 calculations or those of the old woman. For he merely says : " It is 
 very fine — charming. I see flowers of all colours, and hear music 
 from dozens of instruments at once. Ah — delicious — heaven — ah ! 
 — ah ! " Already he sinks down upon the bed, with the pipe-stick 
 between his teeth, his eyes closed, but the inhalation continued and 
 steady with the breath coming in through his set teeth. Not another 
 word — not another motion ; he might be an infant in its first dream- 
 less slumber ; or, save for the light breath that seemed to heave his 
 breast and heard softly to sigh from his lips, he might be sleeping 
 that still calmer sleep which needs no watching by any below the 
 heavens. 
 
 The old woman is frightened — as well she may be — at something 
 so beyond her knowledge. No occasion, now, to sit beside the 
 sleeper, stir the contents of his pipe with her needle, and prepare for 
 refilling it at any moment when the signs of complete stupefaction 
 cease. A few whiffs, a few words, and this man is literally senseless. 
 And think of his " talking ! " Make him talk, while under this 
 influence ? As well make the attempt with the rickety chair, or the 
 askew bed-post ! No, ye can't do it, deaiy ! 
 
 Now the handsome boy, who may be presumed to have seen, 
 heard, and noted all the proceedings of the past few minutes — comes 
 from his concealment, behind the bed, with a single warning sound 
 " Hist !" to attract the woman's attention and prevent any dangerous 
 movement of surprise. He leans over the bed and the sleeper, 
 studying the face and the respiration for a few seconds : then he 
 says, in a whisper, close to her ear : " It will do, now." Say not a 
 word. If he moves uneasily, stir the mixture in the pipe for a 
 moment — nothing more." Then the old woman, as much racked 
 with painful curiosity and a certain sort of feai-, as if she was a 
 
■ « 
 
THK BABBLIXG OP A SECRET. 157 
 
 young girl paying her first visit of horrified delight to the seventh 
 daughter of a seventh daughter — sees the handsome boy reach down 
 and lay the palm, of one hand close upon the palm of one of the 
 sleeper's, lying unnerved and open, — -applying the palm of the other 
 hand, pressed close, the next moment, to that slight depression in 
 the exact top of the head believed to have nearest access to the 
 brain. What he has accomplished now, it might be difficult for any 
 one, lacking his peculiar Oriental experience, to guess : possibly sub- 
 jugation of the bodily powers, through the influence of the drug, 
 and enforced communication ■with and command over the mentality, 
 through this bodily contact at peculiar nervous centres, bearing the 
 character of simple natural magnetism. Something even of the 
 formality may be more a remembrance than a belief — mild charlatanry 
 blended with earnest action oftener than many of us would be pleased 
 to admit, or are even capable of recognizing at the moment when 
 practising it. 
 
 A few minutes of this, with perfect silence, except that the old 
 woman strangles a short rattling cough, which excites no attention, 
 and the low breathing of the sleeper is heard in the pause. Then, 
 at a signal, the crone stirs the contents of the pipe with her needle, 
 and another brief interval of silence succeeds. Then Joe Gilfert 
 speaks, in a low but distinct and musical voice close to the ear of the 
 sleeper, while the little remaining blood in the system of the one 
 waking hearer chills with a supernatural fear, not entirely inexcusable 
 under all the circumstances. 
 
 " Do you feel me 1" 
 
 Apparently a spasmodic effort on the part of the subject to loosen 
 the benumbed organs of speech, the mouth working with the ex- 
 ertion, and the mouth-piece of the pipe dropping away from the lips 
 as the teeth open. The old woman is about to replace it, but the 
 other motions with his head for her to take it away as no longer 
 wanted, and she holds it in her trembling hand. Another moment, 
 and the power of articulation is regained ; though it is notable, then 
 and after, that every word coming, comes as under constraint and 
 with a short choppy snap, as if the teeth might be cutting it off in 
 attempting to prevent the passage. After this first reply, however, 
 the experimenter, keeping what may be supposed the circle unbroken, 
 by retaining his two palms on the one palm and head of the other, 
 there is not much delay in the replies, even if something of the same 
 struggle accompanies many of them. The first brief answer comes : 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Do you know me ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " It is not necessary that you should. Enough that I am your 
 Master, and that you must obey me. Do you understand so 
 much?" 
 
 "I do." 
 
 " And hate me 1" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " How do you feel me ? " 
 
158 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 " All around me — holding me— oppressing me. I would kill you 
 to escape, if I could." 
 
 " That is well. But you cannot kill me, and you cannot escape. 
 You have but one thing to do — to obey me. The more promptly 
 the sooner you will be free. Do you understand ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Answer every one of my questions then, and at once." 
 
 " I do not wish to. I would rather kill you. But I must." 
 
 •"Where is the body?" 
 
 A terrible struggle is for the moment evident in the sleeping 
 figure ; but it passes, and there are no signs of wakefulness. He 
 subsides to quiet — he answers, after a much longer interval, 
 
 " Between the two walls of the Cathedral." 
 
 A spasm of pain and suffering passes over the face of Joe Gilfert, 
 sharper than that lately convulsing John Jasper ; but the bleared 
 old eyes of the dumb and frightened woman cannot see it ; and he 
 commands himself so well that there is not one instant of with- 
 drawal of either hand from palm or head. Then he continues his 
 questions : 
 
 " Who placed it there ? Yourself ? " 
 
 A slighter struggle than before, and then the answer : 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Was he alive or dead then ? " 
 
 "Dead." 
 
 " What had you done to him before that 1 " 
 
 Another fearful struggle in the sleeping man, but the stupor as 
 yet too deep for freedom from the hated thrall compelling him to 
 speak. 
 
 " I had strangled him." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " On the top of the Cathedral tower." 
 
 "With what?" 
 
 " With my scarf." 
 
 " How did you place him between the walls ? " 
 
 " Through a trap-door in the floor above." 
 
 " Who knows of that trap-door besides yourself ? " 
 
 "No one — I made it." 
 
 " What else did you do, after throwing down the body ? Any- 
 thing to destroy it ? " 
 
 " Yes — I threw down lime, from the Mason's-yard." 
 
 " When did you place his watch and pin in the Weir ? " 
 
 " Next day. I forgot it that night." 
 
 " Did Neville Landless know anything of your intention fo kill 
 him ? Did he assist you ? " 
 
 " No— no ! " 
 
 " Why did you accuse him, and have him arrested 1 " 
 
 " I hated him. Wished to get him out of the way." 
 
 " He has a sister : do you hate her ? " 
 
 " Yes. Hate and fear her." 
 
 " Why did you kill him V 
 
THE BABBLING OF A SECBET. 159 
 
 " Because he was in my way, with her." 
 
 The sleeping man stirs a little now, and speaks with a shade less 
 of constraint. If Joe Gilfert had known years of experience in that 
 ■which he is conducting, he would be aware that the drug is beginning 
 to lose its power, and that the pipe should be re-applied to the mouth. 
 But he is too busy with other thoughts and interests, to be quite 
 careful of this detail. He goes on : 
 
 " Are you not sorry, now, that you killed him 1 " 
 
 " Yes. Since I know that they would never have been married." 
 
 Less and less constrained the delivery now : nearer and more 
 imminent the time of waking, unless fresh fumes are supplied to the 
 struggling brain. 
 
 " You feel Remorse, then, do you not 1 " 
 
 " Perhaps. I do not know. I suffer terribly. Cannot give my 
 suffering a name. It is infernal." 
 
 " Do you feel Fear — fear of detection i " 
 
 " Yes — lately It haunts me, night and day." 
 
 " Ah ! you say ' lately.' Since when 1 What has happened to 
 disturb you ] " 
 
 " Since two articles have been placed in my hands that I left on 
 him when I dropped him between the walls. Some one must have 
 seen the body. Some one must have removed those things from him. 
 Or else " 
 
 " Ah ! Heavens, what is this ! " 
 
 The cry comes from Joe Gilfert, and it is not addressed to the 
 sleeping man. Suddenly moved by what new and strange hope, 
 drawn from the sleeping man's words, there is no present occasion to 
 speculate — he utters the cry, and in doing so puts one hand to his 
 heart, thus withdrawing it from the head of Jasper. In an instant 
 there is a threatening movement in the recumbent figure ; and in 
 the next, before the old woman, newly alarmed, can replace the pipe 
 at his lips, he opens his eyes. But even that instant has sufficed the 
 handsome boy to retreat to his place of concealment, and when John 
 Jasper, sitting up the next moment and opening his eyes entirely, 
 though they are filmed and glassy — looks around with something of 
 a puzzled air, no one is to be seen in the room but 'the woman of the 
 bad lungs and himself. 
 
 The poor old soul, sorely frightened, must speak, however, and 
 does so at a venture : 
 
 " Ye've had a nice sleep haven't ye, deary ? " 
 
 " I do not know," he drowsily mutters, in reply. " I must have 
 been asleep, I suppose, but I remember nothing, except seeming, 
 just now, to hear other voices than yours. There has been no one 
 here?" 
 
 " O, me ! How could there be any one here, but me and you 1 
 No — ye must have been dreaming. And see ye slept so long and so 
 well, that I let your pipe go out. Have another, deary 1 There is 
 more of the mixture, and the poor old soul '11 have it ready in a 
 moment." 
 
 " No," he replies, putting his hand to his head. " No — enough 
 
160 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 for to-night. Yon must have made it very strong, for I seem to 
 have had entire forgetfulness, for the first time in many months. 
 Did I say anything at all 1" 
 
 "Not a word, deary, after you fell away. I was almost frightene'd 
 when ye laiii still so long, and even my cough, that is so bad and my 
 lungs 'so 'dreffle, did not trouble ye;" • 
 
 "Ah, well," he says, yet a little stupidly, and without anything 
 of his ordinary imperious manner. '■ "Help' me* with .my coat, 
 for -I : think that I am' weaker' than I was when I came. But 
 I feel refreshed — so much refreshed, after all!' It is so good; some- 
 times, to forget everything, and have all earth,' heaven, and hell a 
 blank!" 
 
 He lays down some silver money on the table, says that he will 
 come again — perhaps in a week, if she will be sure to mix. for him in 
 the same manner, and so passes out of that door of which his suc- 
 ceeding number of entrances is already set, and goes down the dark 
 staircase into the night and the continuing rain. 
 
 When" he is' gone, Joe Gilfert comes out. from his hiding-place — 
 trembling, however, and so much agitated that the old woman would 
 scarcely recognize him as the same with the light-hearted youngster 
 of an- hour before. She attempts to cough herself into renewed con- 
 versation with him; but he 'checks the attempt at once, advises her 
 that if she is wise she will say nothing of what she has done, seen 
 done, or heard, until she is allowed to do so by him, unless "she 
 wishes to get into serious trouble with the police — as she does not ! 
 Then he' carefully takes the remainder of Dr. Chippercoyne's pre- 
 paration, wraps it and puts it into his pocket, with the unused 
 syringe; lays the promised sovereign in the 'withered old palm so 
 greedily waiting for it ; .says and receives a brief good night ; and so 
 follows his late subject down the dark stairway and into the night 
 and the rain. > • '■"■ 
 
 To be rejoined, at once, at the door, by Mr. Tartar, who in this 
 special tumble-overboard from the yard -arm seems to have fallen 
 into deep water and come up' one incarnated 'drip— so vigorously 
 have riot" only the ordinary spirits "of the 'storm but those especial 
 water-demons" presiding over his chosen gutter, been pouring the 
 thin, cool fluid down upon him, for the past hour, in all the modes 
 taught by world-sprinkling Aquarius. 
 
 Arid,' to go back to the waiting cab, and to Staple Inn, with head 
 and heart both in such a whirl 'that temporary insanity seems drily 
 one degree removed— burthened 'with the fearful success "of the late 
 experiment," and the definite knowledge of .personal loss; a brother's 
 innocence, and the guilt of. the Choir-Master, thus obtained ; but 
 burthened also with a new thought which cannot be entertained for 
 its"ye'ryg'oy — which would not -be dismissed for a crown— arid which 
 cannot be analyzed by any process of mental exertion. 
 
 The while" the poor old soul takes "from 'the bosom of her unclean 
 garfiqent^a-veiy- small packet, unrolls 'it,' rolls it up again, hugs it like 
 an infinitesimal baby or a revenge, and coughingly mutters : 
 
 " Ye'r coming again, are ye, deary 1 So ye will, sooner than ye 
 
BADGERING THE BILLICKIN. 161 
 
 think ; and now that the old woman knows how to mix it and to 
 deal with it, and has it — here — here ! — ye'll tell her what she wants 
 to know, as well as the handsome young devil — won't ye, deary ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 BADGERING THE BILLICKIN. 
 
 The term for which Miss Twinkleton and Eosa had been installed as 
 lodgers in the house of Mrs. Billickin, through the mistaken kind- 
 ness of Mr. Grewgious, was rapidly drawing to a close, without the 
 Angular man having been made aware that other than the most 
 cerulean sky ever overhung the domestic firmament in that portion 
 of Southampton Street, Bloomsbury Square. 
 
 It is always graceful, when the assiduous eagerness of a friend, 
 urging us to a cross-cut by way of abridging long and wearisome 
 distance, has plunged us into a thorn thicket, to the laceration of 
 flesh and raiment, or into a slough, to the discomfort of the one and 
 defilement of the other, — to avoid showing the well-intentioned, but 
 mistaken, adviser what have been the fruits of his counsel ; and there 
 is a certain wisdom in doing so, unless one is quite prepared to accept 
 a secondary misery in the shape of too many humble apologies, regrets, 
 and self-upbraidings. Mr. Grewgious, as both the ladies knew, would 
 have overwhelmed himself with reproaches for having been the means 
 of leading them into any discomfort, the moment he became aware of 
 the fact, and the more surely so, because the lodging-house keeper 
 chanced to be a distant relation of his own, in whose favour he might 
 be ungenerously suspected to have strained a point at the expense of 
 others. So nothing had been said to him on the subject of the armed 
 neutrality relations, not even after the open rupture already recorded, 
 between the two contending powers, who might be said to have then 
 withdrawn within their own lines of fortification, after a series of 
 light actions, causing great discomfort to the neutral power really 
 owning the territory over which they skirmished. The time of the 
 infliction could not be long, from the double fact that the term of 
 agreement would soon expire, with liberty to make what changes 
 they might choose at its termination — and that the close of Miss 
 Twinkleton's vacation must soon send her back to her charge and 
 Mrs. Fisher at the Nun's House. 
 
 Send her back — her only : Rosa, as already known, stood too much 
 in fear of John Jasper, even before the attempted abduction, to dare 
 resume residence within a stone's throw of his daily presence ; and 
 after that event it may be supposed that her resolutions on that point 
 were even more confirmed. She would remain in London — in what 
 portion of it she had no idea, but somewhere that might be selected 
 by her " dear old guardy," as she delighted to designate him ; and 
 
162 JOHN jasper's skchet. 
 
 from the day of their parting at the close of their present connection,, 
 the lives of teacher and pupil were likely to have little in common. 
 They were likely to have less, indeed, than either knew ; but the 
 foreshadowed separation was quite sufficient to place them on a 
 different footing to that which they had ever previously occupied. 
 
 We do not usually form unconquerable antagonisms to the butcher 
 or the baker who purveys food for our mortal bodies, unless they 
 may chance to be peculiarly atrocious in the bad quality of their 
 provender, or the inexorable extent of their overcharges. Nay, we 
 even consent to entertain a certain amiability of feelings toward the 
 draper and the glover, and (femininely) towards the marchande des 
 modes, except under correspondingly unpleasant circumstances to 
 those just named. Why is it, then, that the instructor is regarded 
 as the natural enemy, to a fiercer or a milder extent, from the 
 moment when the relation commences to that when — it is about to 
 end? 
 
 Leaving aside the illustrations that might be drawn from the boy- 
 world, commencing with tutorship in the home or grammar-school, 
 taking in Harrow and Rugby (in spite of Dr. Arnold and Thomas 
 Hughes, M. P.), and only ending with the last battle between the 
 undergraduate and the don of Oxford and Cambridge — setting aside 
 all this, and dealing only with the similar propensities of the gentler 
 sex, the wonder will still remain, and still the same necessity for 
 explanation. 
 
 The pupils are by no means alone in the feeling, though they may 
 be far more affected by it than the teachers, and manifest it in a more 
 objectionable manner. And why, why, why, as Rosa might ask — 
 why should it be so ? Why should Miss Twinkleton, in those old 
 days at the Nun's House, have kept a comparatively stiff and starch 
 visage during all hours devoted to the young ladies under her charge,, 
 taking far more than the necessary unfavourable notice of the inat- 
 tention of Miss Ferdinand, the antics of Miss Reynolds, and the 
 laughter of Miss Giggle, — and only showing that underlying genial 
 self, reminiscent of The Wells and half-regretful of Foolish Mr. 
 Porters, in the comparative solitude of Mrs. Fisher's company, when 
 none of the fresh young hearts could be gladdened by the knowledge- 
 that she held loves, regrets, and weaknesses 1 And why should Miss 
 Ferdinand, Miss Reynolds, and Miss Giggles, respectively, have taken 
 corresponding trouble to show themselves at their worst, during the 
 same hours of tuition, and only manifested the qualities endearing 
 them to their circles in both school and home when beyond the eye 
 of the preceptress? Alas ! — why should even Rosa herself, already 
 the pet and favourite of the self-restrained spinster, have objected 
 privately to her well-intentioned Pyramids, and called her dear old 
 lectures Bores 1 
 
 These questions are not asked to be answered — as may before this 
 time have become apparent. Rosa could not solve them, nor could 
 Miss Twinkleton 1 — any more than they could foresee the events and 
 changes, of startling importance, destined to take place before the ex- 
 piration of their brief term at Mrs. Billickin's. All that either could 
 
BADGERING THE BILLICKIN. 163 
 
 do was possibly to make some faint recognition of that change in their 
 relations, involving their propounding in this place. 
 
 They were about to separate; and preceptress and pupil had 
 changed their relation — half-insensibly to both, to something like 
 that, say, between niece and maiden-aunt of a certain age — enough 
 of the regulating habit of age remaining on the one side, to be sure, 
 to prevent the connection becoming quite sisterly, even with the dif- 
 ference of years understood ; and enough of the charming, wheedling 
 sauciness of youth on the other, to make the charge of the elder no 
 sinecure while it should continue. 
 
 Miss Twinkleton, even with the past experience of Tunbridge 
 "Wells and that Mr. Porters whose prefix indicated the reverse of 
 wisdom — neither was nor believed herself an expert in detecting 
 manifestations of the tender passion. And yet she was not blind 
 enough to ignore, after a few visits of the brown-faced and breezy 
 Ex-Lieutenant, the fact that her pupil was in danger from another 
 than John Jasper. She saw peril in the Tartar at an early day, and 
 commenced certain warnings on the subject, destined to be nearly as 
 tardy in cqmpletion as the worsted monster growing slowly under her 
 hands. For Rosa was a young lady by no means easy to " lecture " 
 upon any theme which did not commend itself to the small imperial 
 judgment ; and when Miss Twinkleton, at the termination of one of 
 the more pronounced Desdemonaian demonstrations, after Mr. Tartar 
 had bowled away, a little belated in sailing, but with a free wind, 
 for his port in the Admiral's Cabin — said : 
 
 " Rosa, my dear : is it not possible that Mr. Tartar is paying more 
 frequent visits to this house than propriety would allow 1 " 
 
 Then Rosa merely pouted, in the most charming of infantile ways, 
 and uttered that one word which had been found so effectual in pre- 
 venting the too close approaches of " poor Eddy." 
 
 "Absurd!" 
 
 And when Miss Twinkleton, on a subsequent occasion, after another 
 of those pretty exhibitions, hemmed twice (not with her crochet- 
 needle) and recommenced the deferred warning, with : 
 
 " Rosa, my dear, is not Mr. Tartar the least in the world tiresome, 
 with his long stories of such outlandish adventures ? I think that I 
 would scarcely encourage him, by listening with attention that must 
 seem like being really pleased with — with those dreadful things that 
 a youDg lady should scarcely care to know — though of course it is very 
 good of you to flatter him in that manner ! " 
 
 Then Miss Rosa's eyes flashed a little, gentle and kind as they were 
 at ordinary times ; and she concluded the conversation with the same 
 suddenness that had marked the fate of the former, bridling (drolly, 
 of course) instead of pouting, and only increasing the one word to five : 
 
 " Tndeed i Thank you, very much ! " 
 
 And when Miss Twinkleton, on a third occasion, beginning to 
 believe that if any mischief had been imminent, it was now done 
 beyond recal, commenced her remark in a different tone, with : 
 
 " Rosa, my dear, I am really afraid that sailor-man means to carry 
 you off, some day ! " 
 
 i£ 2 
 
164: JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 Then Eosa grew so lovely a rose-pink that she would temporarily 
 have commanded a high price at the perfumer's, to be used in the 
 manufacture of rich carnations, and neither pouted nor bridled, but 
 looked bewitchingly agitated and girlishly happy, as she said : 
 
 " Oh, dear Miss Twinkleton, why, why will you tease me so about 
 him ? — and don't you think he is very, very, very nice % " 
 
 After which, there was really very little more to be said, in the 
 way of warnings ; and the time, so far as the good spinster knew, had 
 not yet come for felicitations ; so that the conversation on that point 
 was not resumed, and the worsted monster progressed towards shape 
 with a rapidity at last threatening to the foredoomed chair. 
 
 It was at that precise period that a new sensation came to South- 
 ampton Street, and that Mrs. Billickin was ushered into a charming 
 prospect of immediately re-letting the apartments so soon to be vacated. 
 Circumstances, easily understood, made the two ladies aware of most 
 of the features of the occurrence, which may or may not have contri- 
 buted a crowning felicity to the existence of The Billickin. 
 
 It came — the Sensation — in the shape of a most irreproachable 
 equipage — perfectly-appointed carriage, with a crest on the panel, 
 well-groomed pair, and coachman and footman so absolute in their 
 unimpeachability as to be literally overwhelming. It drew up at 
 the door, at such an hour of the afternoon as would have indicated 
 that after making a Call it intended to Drive, attracting general 
 attention from neighbouring windows and areas, and materially add- 
 ing, at an instant's notice, to the standing of the entire street, 
 whereof the lodging-houses, for some reason suggesting ill-will or 
 indifference, was too much defrauded of its due share of visitors in 
 carriages with crests and lacking crowns. 
 
 The knock of the powdered footman, who loftily descended from 
 his elevation for that service, was only three times repeated, but loud 
 enough to advise the whole street of the event — three solemn, de- 
 liberate raps, ponderous, heavy, well-measured, awful — reminiscent of 
 some fateful summons of the Vehmgericht or other secret tribunal 
 of the Middle Ages. After the delivery of which summons, the 
 impressive footman, without waiting for the opening (which might 
 be assumed, after that), went back to the carriage, opened the door, 
 and held up his arm to be used as a hand-rail for the descent of a 
 lady who at once became the Second Sensation, and threw her pre- 
 decessor into comparative insignificance. 
 
 She might have been fifty-five or sixty, as Miss Twinkleton and 
 Eosa (indefensibly peepiDg from window at so much magnificence) 
 saw her descend to the pavement and advance to the door. Tall, 
 with hair slightly grey, rich dark dress of old fashion, and all 
 other appointments equally combining the privilege of age and the 
 assurance of position. She moved with a step as slow and stately 
 as had been the knocks at the door, and held her arms crossed with 
 an appearance of rigid devotion that was beautiful to contemplate as 
 well as slightly depressing to the observer. In her presence the 
 street-door took on an appearance of humbly apologizing for an 
 existence deficient in the highest respectability with an additional 
 
BADGERING THE EILLICK1N. 165 
 
 flavour of piety ; and the house-front broke out into a sort of apolo- 
 getic perspiration for the vulgarity of its plebeian bricks and mortar. 
 It was notable, too, that she was served by persons of correspondingly 
 grave respectability; as neither the coachman on his box nor the 
 footman who had returned to it in waiting, could be induced to turn 
 their heads or relax their impressive countenances at any capped 
 blandishments from the neighbouring areas. She ascended the steps, 
 and was at a dignified distance from the humbled street-door when 
 it retired before her into the hall. 
 
 That door was opened by a servant, as became the respectability 
 of the establishment : but arrivals in crested carriages have a habit 
 of being telegraphed with extraordinary rapidity in mansions of the 
 Billickin order ; and, however advised, the proprietress was herself 
 in the hall at the moment when the stately lady entered, — shawl- 
 draped and shivery, in compliment to the hall, but with a Candour 
 on her face which should at once have disarmed all questions, and 
 meeting the overwhelming honour with a sweeping bow and an 
 appendix of curtsey. 
 
 The stately lady spoke. In awful gravity, she might have been 
 Siddons in the gloomier passages of the r61e of Lady Macbeth ; in 
 the measured monotone of her voice, and the longdrawn " Ah — 
 h — h ! " with which she began every sentence, and the expiring 
 " Urn — m — m ! " with which she generally concluded, she might 
 have been Johanna Southcote in her most interminable whine. 
 
 " Ah — h — h ! I wish to see the person of the house. Um — m 
 — m ! " 
 
 To which the Billickin, with extreme candour : 
 
 " I will not deceive you, Madam — or perhaps I should say my 
 lady. Far from it. I am the person of the house." 
 
 " Ah — h — h ! You let apartments 1 Um — m — m ! " 
 
 " Madam, or my lady " 
 
 " Ah — h — h ! I am not my lady. Say Madam. Life is short 
 and words should not be wasted. Be good enough to go on. Um — 
 m— m!" 
 
 Thus adjured, Mrs. Billickin, shiveringly, and drawing her shawl 
 around her with a clutch. 
 
 " To be candid with you, Madam, which I do " 
 
 " Ah — h — h ! Any rooms vacant now, Mrs. What is your 
 
 name 1 Um — m — m ! " 
 
 The Billickin, with stately dignity, not unmingled with hurt 
 feeling : 
 
 " As it is on the door-plate, Madam, which I am not ashamed to 
 have any one read it as can — Billickin." 
 
 " Ah— h— h ! Billickin. Married 1 Um-m-m." 
 
 The Billickin, with mute protest against being thus figuratively 
 driven to the wall, but overpowered by the recollection of the 
 carriage and footman : 
 
 " Which it is a question, Madam, that I never hanswer, seeing as 
 there is difficulties in the way of a lone woman " 
 
 « Oh— h— h ! " 
 
166 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 " — Keepin' of her name on the door, that certain against 
 trouble, as is one who has a husband not dead and gone this many- 
 years " 
 
 " Ah — h — h ! That will do. I understand. Widow. Urn — m 
 — m!" 
 
 The Billickin, half-choking with the oppression practised on a 
 lone woman and an invalid : 
 
 " Not to deceive you, as I wouldn't for worlds, Madam — yes." 
 
 " Ah — h — h ! Now what rooms have you ? on what floor 1 Um 
 — m — m ! " 
 
 " Which I am not free to say that I have any, to-day, Madam, 
 but the first and second to go out in a few days, under notice give on 
 account of improper language on the part of one as would have 
 stayed for a twelvemonth if better tenants was not desirable for the 
 best rooms in the 'ouse." 
 
 After which the invalid naturally paused for breath, and one 
 better accustomed to her would have understood that she was 
 narrowly escaping a series of swoons. The grave woman saw 
 nothing of the kind, but proceeded, characteristically : 
 
 " Oh— h — h ! In a few days. Um — m — m ! Perhaps that 
 may serve, if the apartments suit me. That is indispensable, as 
 well as the position. Terms are comparatively of no consequence. 
 Um— m— m ! " 
 
 There was no affectation, not even one of candour, in Mrs. 
 Billickin's making one of her heart-clutches, at that moment. 
 " Terms comparatively of no consequence ! " — and those words from 
 a lady who came in her carriage and therefore could be no doubtful 
 patron ! When had such blessed words ever before been spoken, in 
 the ear of lodging-house keeper, by any person not an acknowledged 
 maniac? Ah, the position! — that as the wonderful woman had 
 just declared — that was indispensable, and hence the explanation of 
 the' otherwise mysterious liberality. And would not she, Billickin 
 (perhaps the lady did not put the thought into precisely those 
 phrases but " words to that effect "), convert her into an absolute 
 gold-mine, and make her pay out to an extent hitherto unknown in 
 the annals of Bloomsbury Square, besides possibly running her 
 through the quartz-crusher, in the way of extras, and thus making 
 the extract entirely satisfactory ! Five-and-forty shillings the week 
 — the contemptible sum for which her relative had cajoled her into 
 letting the rooms to that arrogant person whose name she would 
 not mention even mentally — what was that to the magnificent five 
 pounds, or even guineas, so easily to be drawn from a purse that 
 must be plethoric, with a fool for its holder ! 
 
 The astounded and delighted Billickin rallied from her mental 
 spasm, however, before the lady with the crossed hands had quite 
 lost her patience, — and said, with another bow which was more than 
 half curtsey, and a manner which denoted that she was thenceforth 
 the slave of the impending liberality : 
 
 " I will not conceal from you, Madam, far from it — that the 
 rooms as I mentioned are quite at your service to see whenever you 
 
BADGERING THE BILLICKIN. 167 
 
 likes, and not caring the value of one ha'penny whether the persons 
 now in the 'ouse is pleased with it or not, as how could you expect 
 
 that "■ she come very near to mentioning the sum which Rosa 
 
 ?paid weekly, and thus marring her future golden expectations — but 
 'luckily checked herself in time, under cover of a slight paroxysm 
 which failed to elicit any notice from the other — " that them as is 
 going away and mercy knows deservin' of the notice to go out could 
 shut doors that is not their own and prevent any other persons from 
 coming in — I say again, how could you expect it 1" 
 
 " Oh — h — h ! " The grave lady wisely avoiding any attempt to 
 answer the last question. "Then I will look at the apartments, at 
 once. Urn — m — m ! " 
 
 " Certainly, Madam, you may do so, free as the air and nothin' to 
 conceal except it belongs to them as is in the way, and what do I 
 care for that ? " 
 
 Whereupon Mrs. Billickin led the way up the stair to the first- 
 floor landing, taking opportunity to remark breathlessly on the way, 
 that steps as was much used would wear and how could you help it? 
 — she defied you to try if you was stone yourself as goodness knows 
 some people was and better that than flesh.and-blood with no feeling 
 and no breeding as no doubt Madam knowed to her cost. 
 
 To which the appreciative answer was very brief, a colophon 
 being for that occasion inserted in place of the head-piece : 
 
 " Urn— m— m ! " 
 
 The long utterance of this single word in its disjointed state, was 
 sufficient to bring both to the door of the drawing-room, whereat 
 Mrs. Billickin knocked, loudly and boldly, with perhaps more of a 
 sensation of absolute joy than had visited her widowed bosom since 
 the more or less lamented departure of B. Debarred from enter- 
 ing any apartment ■occupied by Miss Twinkleton, since the day of 
 the explicit understanding between them — she was now about to 
 resume her privilege, in a manner best calculated to annoy that 
 lady, at the same time that immemorial custom gave her the right 
 to do so without question, as exhibitor of rooms soon to be vacated. 
 The style of knock, based upon this understanding of her rights 
 and privileges, instead of saying, with timid respect : " May I 
 intrude upon you for a moment? — and will you kindly overlook 
 any inconvenience that my coming may cause you 1 " roared, with 
 the force of a brazen trumpet or a Bull of Bashan : " Open, you, at 
 once ! I have a right to come in, and woe to any one who attempts 
 to hinder me ! The more annoyance the better ! " 
 
 Miss Twinkleton opened the assaulted door with quite as much 
 alacrity as could be expected. Rosa was still at the window. 
 Mrs. Billickin favoured the elder lady with a scowl that would have 
 become a fainting swoon upon any proper occasion, and introduced 
 Ijer business with as little ceremony as she had bestowed upon her 
 summons for admission. 
 
 " A lady to look at the apartments, Miss," she said, ignoring 
 Miss Twinkleton after the old fashion, which had been found so 
 -convenient; "and I 'opes there will not be any objection to my 
 
168 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 'avin' my rights in my own 'ouse, on the part of hany one in 
 this room." 
 
 " Um — m — m," threw in the grave lady, as a sort of appendix to 
 Mrs. Billickin's remark, which might have been inadvertently omitted. 
 
 " Certainly, Mrs. Billickin — come in, if you wish. I am sure 
 that dear Miss Twinkleton will have no objection," said Rosa, very 
 pleasantly. 
 
 " Oh — h — h ! " interpolated the grave lady. 
 
 " Tf the person of the house wishes to enter these rooms, Rosa, 
 dear, for any business purposes, we can have no objection, certainly," 
 replied Miss Twinkleton, with frigid politeness towards Mrs. 
 Billickin expressing itself at every point of face and figure. 
 
 " Ah — h — h ! " punctuated the grave lady. 
 
 "Very good, Miss, which I will not conceal from you that it 
 saves trouble," acknowledged the Billickin, thereupon turning to 
 the lady in quest of apartments, who might have been blind, so far 
 as any proof was given that she had noticed either of the occupants. 
 " This is the drawing-room, Madam, and a sweet room, though I 
 am obliged to say it before persons as have very little respect for 
 any hopinions but their hown. The view across the street, too, 
 Madam, is that pleasing as many people would think themselves 
 very 'appy to get, and no impertinent minxes of nursemaids and 
 other servants lookin' in every time that the windows is opened." 
 
 " Ah — h — h ! " lucidly remarked the grave lady, refusing the chair 
 to which she had been motioned by hospitable Miss Twinkleton, who 
 said at that moment : 
 
 "Rosa, my dear, was I mistaken, then — you should know best, 
 with your young eyes — in thinking that two of the servants across 
 the street have been in the habit of troubling us very much ? — staring 
 over, so that we scarcely dared open the windows at all ? " 
 
 ■ " Oh — h — h ! " absently commented the grave lady, while the face 
 of Mrs. Billickin would have seemed enraged if in the possession of a 
 more robust woman. 
 
 " No, dear Miss Twinkleton," Rosa rejoined, in her manner of most 
 charming innocence. " You were not mistaken. They have troubled 
 us very, very, very much, nearly every day, and sometimes a dreadful 
 man with them, with an opera-glass." 
 
 " Um— m— m ! " 
 
 Mrs. Billickin felt the necessity of fortifying her position, thereupon, 
 and did it with promptness and great candour. 
 
 " If I was to tell you, Madam, that there was no persons in this 
 'ouse as would say malicious things about the werry best rooms in it, 
 I should be deceiving you, as I will not. Consequent, as you have 
 seen the room, and there is no stoppin' of tongues as ought to be 
 ashamed if there was any shame in the world and will be some day, 
 we will look at the others. And eligible apartments they are and 
 ought to command six pounds a week or perhaps guineas if wished 
 though if persons whose breeding is no higher than boarding-schools 
 and them only second-rate will be wenomous as tabby cats what can 
 you expect, try how you may ! " 
 
BADGERING THE BILLICKIN. 169 
 
 " Rosa, my dear," calmly observed Miss Twinkleton, -without the 
 least appearance of having heard a word of the late resume, — " how 
 much was it that they asked for those very pleasant rooms higher up 
 the street and larger than these 1 Was it two-and-thirty shillings, or 
 did the person mention one pound ten 1 " 
 
 The reply of Rosa, to this, was inaudible, so that the exact figures 
 of the proposed transaction cannot be given. Nor is there data for 
 deciding whether the grave and respectable lady caught the remarks, 
 though the belief may be hazarded that Mrs. Billickin heard, " marked 
 and inwardly digested." 
 
 " Ah — h — h ! " said the lady of the crossed hands, at this juncture 
 for the first time abandoning that disposition of those members, to 
 take a carpenter's two-foot rule from her pocket and open it out — as 
 also for the first time using her vocal organs to any extent, since 
 entering the drawing-room. "Ah — h — h ! No, we will not yet 
 leave the apartments of these — -.these persons. Urn — m — m ! — Mrs. 
 ah — Billickin. The room seems well enough, but small. As I need 
 to bring my grand piano, my sofa, a large chest of drawers, an HagSre, 
 a book-case for devotional books (I read no others — Um — m — m !) a 
 table and several other articles requiring space, it will be necessary to 
 know its exact dimensions. Um— m — m ! " 
 
 The next ten minutes, during which Mrs. Billickin looked on with 
 deferential surprise, and both Miss Twinkleton and Rosa with what 
 seemed quiet amusement — were devoted by the lady to measuring the 
 size of the room on every side, as well as the space between the walls 
 and chimney, with occasional variations of stopping to examine a spot 
 of the size of a coffee-bean or a pin-head, on the wall-paper. Each of 
 these measurements, and especially each of the discoveries, was accom- 
 panied by comments with the "Ah — h — h ! " " Oh — h — h ! " and 
 " Um — m — m ! " predominant on the question whether her piano 
 would consent to fit into this place, her sofa into that, her pet 
 chest of drawers into the other (it would seem that she had 
 three, each larger than its predecessor, but only one intended for 
 the drawing-room), her religiously inclined bookcase into a fourth and 
 fifth, <fec. 
 
 As anxious, now, to evacuate the fortress of her enemy as she had 
 lately been to enter it, the Billickin bore this delay and particularity 
 with the grace of that lost exhaustion precedent to swooning ; but she 
 was naturally too much impressed by the lady who not only came in 
 her carriage but was the owner of all those valuables, to dream of 
 opposing her measurements and comments. 
 
 Her patience (as well as that of Miss Twinkleton and Rosa) was at 
 last rewarded by the curious person having apparently measured and 
 commented upon the height and breadth of walls, doors, windows, 
 chimney-pieces, recesses, grate, and indeed everything capable of the 
 application of tongue and two-foot rule. But that she had not yet 
 finished with the apartment was evident. For she sat, now, without 
 an invitatory motion from Miss Twinkleton, and commenced upon 
 another branch of what she evidently considered indispensable in the 
 hiring of rooms. 
 
170 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 Ah — h — h ! She had observed that there were certain spots on 
 the wall-paper. The room might and would probably need re-paper- 
 ing. Would there be any objection'? Uni — m — m! 
 
 Reflection on the part of Mrs. Billickin, showing in her face, with 
 reference to the gold-mine and the means of working it. Answer : 
 No, if the rooms should be let, to her, this would be re-papered, if 
 absolutely required, though before supposed in excellent condition. 
 
 Ah — h — h ! She had noticed that the locks on the doors (discovery 
 made while measuring) were not in good order. As she had many 
 valuable articles, safety was of the first consequence. Would there 
 be any objection, &c. &c. <fec, to replacing them 1 Um — m — m ! 
 
 Additional reflection on the part of Mrs. Billickin, embracing not 
 only the.gold-mine aforesaid, but the security of payment and probable 
 length of occupancy on the part of one who owned so many valuable 
 articles and must have so much objection to removing them. Yes, 
 the locks would be replaced, if also absolutely required, though no 
 deficiency had been previously noticed. 
 
 (Affair growing rather amusing than otherwise, to the present 
 occupants of the rooms, if one could judge by the content with which 
 Miss Twinkleton continued the shaping of a red paw of the worsted 
 monster, on a yellow ground, under a blue tree, — and the transparent 
 pretence with which Rosa pursued her reading in what seemed — sug- 
 gestively enough — some book of Oriental travel and adventure. 
 Affair everything else than amusing, at this stage, to Mrs. Billickin, 
 who remained standing, fidgeted with her shawl-of- resource, and would 
 undoubtedly have swooned had she not been in such objectionable 
 presence.) 
 
 Ah — h — h ! She had also observed that the cracks under the 
 •doors were very wide. It would soon be autumn, with cold winds. 
 Life was but a bubble to those who looked beyond, as all should do ; 
 but there was a certain duty incumbent upon all, to avoid virtual 
 suicide. Draughts must be prevented. There would be no objection, 
 of course, to having wood placed on the bottoms of the doors, to 
 prevent them 1 Um — m — m ! 
 
 Same reflection as before, on the part of Mrs. Billickin, with the 
 addition that this would cost very little. Answer as before, with 
 same reservation. 
 
 Ah — h — h ! That seemed nearly all. Stay — there were no brass 
 rods around the cornice, with hooks to hang valuable paintings safely. 
 She had valuable paintings, and must hang them. Would there be, 
 ■&c. &c. &c. 1 — Um — m — m ! 
 
 Same reflection, in part, as appended to the last. Not alone. This 
 would be costly — quite as costly as re-papering the room. However, 
 ■iSic. &c, and answer 'as before. 
 
 Ah — h — h ! One thing more, and this was positively the last. 
 The grate was old-fashioned, which did not make it objectionable ; 
 but it seemed too small, which did. Autumn — cold, &c. Would 
 there be, &c. &c. ? Um — m — m ! 
 
 Reflection, that there must be an end to this, or even the gold- 
 mine would scarcely repay the outlay. But as this was to be the last, 
 
BADGERING THE BILLICKIN. 171 
 
 and at five pounds the week, &c. &c. Answer favourable, with, 
 movement of impatience that could no longer be dissembled. 
 
 The grave lady arose and announced her willingness, now, to ex- 
 amine the other rooms. Her two-foot rule being again in pocket, for 
 subsequent use, she crossed her hands and was ready. Mrs. Billickin, 
 scarcely feeling that beating up the quarters of her enemy had been a 
 thorough success, manifested much alacrity in conducting her to the 
 remaining apartments. 
 
 They disappeared ; and it is to be feared that a certain merriment 
 thereupon broke out and reigned in the place they had just quitted, 
 evidencing everything else rather than sympathy with the victim of 
 the numerous requirements, 
 
 There is a shadow of mystery over the proceedings immediately 
 succeeding, owing to the easily imderstood difficulty of following the 
 gold-mine and the adventurous miner into apartments where they 
 conversed without witnesses. From all data at command, it seems 
 probable that the two-foot rule was used with liberality, and that 
 the little requests — having the force of commands — for certain trifling 
 repairs and alterations, as a condition of removing the gold-mine and 
 other valuables into the 'ouse, must have been employed with only 
 less liberality .than that displayed in the Ah — h — hs ! Oh — h — hs ! 
 and XJm — m — ms ! 
 
 Fortunately, the temporarily lost chain can be recovered, at the 
 moment when they returned to the drawing-room, under the alle- 
 gation of the grave lady that she had omitted to ascertain the exact 
 depth of the chimney ; and the Billickin performing the knock, in 
 this instance, with what seemed the merest ghost of her robust 
 former summons. 
 
 There had been no change, during those few minutes, in the 
 positions or occupations of Miss Twinkleton and Rosa ; and it is 
 only justice to them to say, that they scarcely manifested the extent 
 of annoyance which might have been expected, at the second in- 
 trusion, — and that (perhaps prepared by the late occurrences for 
 anything) they failed to manifest any surprise whatever. 
 
 Mrs. Billickin, clutching at her escaping heart, stood silent while 
 the two-foot rule again came out from the pocket, to measure the 
 depth of the chimney ; and it is possible that something like despair 
 seized her when she saw its bearer drop into a chair — after requesting 
 and being accorded permission, — with the air of intending to close 
 the business then and there. 
 
 " Which it would be more convenient, it seems to me, Madam, to 
 come to my sitting-room, as is the back-parlour which I cling to and 
 never part with, for I will not deceive you, it would be better there 
 than to trouble persons who are that set in their own ways, and that 
 shifty." 
 
 The grave lady cut her short with an alarming suavity which she 
 lacked strength to combat, from the presence of that very character- 
 istic. 
 
 " Ah — h — h ! If these persons do not mind, we will say the 
 few additional words that may be necessary, here, as the outlook is 
 
172 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 on the street and I have an aversion to rooms at the rear. Urn — m 
 — m!" 
 
 " "We have no objection to your remaining, Madam. Have we, 
 Rosa, my dear 1 " very cordially said Miss Twinkleton, whose willing- 
 ness to entertain, there is reason to fear, may have had its origin 
 in the evident disinclination of Mrs. Billickin, if in no worse 
 motive. 
 
 " Certainly not, dear Miss Twinkleton. On the contrary, we 
 shall be so very, very glad." 
 
 After this there was nothing remaining but to submit to the 
 inevitable — which the lodging-housekeeper did by rather flopping 
 than dropping into a chair, wishing herself meanwhile anywhere 
 else on earth than in that especial spot, and only consoled by distant 
 views of the auriferous deposit. 
 
 " Ah — h — h ! " rather moaned than spoke the grave lady. " With 
 the few repairs and alterations made, I may say that I like the 
 rooms very well — and that I shall take them, if the answers to a 
 few questions are satisfactory, as I have reason to hope — and the 
 terms can be agreed upon, as I have no doubt. IJm- — m — m I 
 What is your religion, Mrs. — ah — Billickin? — Protestant or Catholic 
 Um — m — m ! " 
 
 " Which I will not deceive you, Madam, though the question is 
 not one as is often asked of the person of an 'ouse, but that 
 Protestant I am to the backbone, 'oping it may be satisfactory," 
 responded the Billickin, not seriously troubled by this opening 
 ordeal. 
 
 " Oh — h — h ! Good, very good, indeed. And of course you go 
 to church on Sundays ? Ah — h — h ! " 
 
 (This chronicle is not responsible for the indefensible action of 
 Miss Twinkleton, from whom better things might have been ex- 
 pected, or Rosebud, from whom almost anything might have been 
 looked for, — during some portions of the catechism immediately 
 following. If Miss Twinkleton frequently chuckled, with a certain 
 grimness born of her mature years, and yet not so loudly or visibly 
 that notice could be taken of the act — and if Rosa found matter for 
 mirth in her book, without reading a word of it, and laughed 
 oftener than a young lady should laugh, except in merry conver- 
 sation : let it be understood, again, that this chronicle is by no 
 means responsible for the actions, in this and other instances, which 
 it is obliged to record.) 
 
 In response to the church-going question, Mrs. Billickin, slightly 
 embarrassed and very shivery, with spasmodic indications, was 
 understood to say that she was as open as the day to state anything 
 as affected her moral or religious character, but she put it to you 
 whether you could always go to church of a Sunday morning with 
 the cares of an 'ouse so heavy on your shoulders and you not strong, 
 and wherefore try ? 
 
 Um — m — m ! This involution on the part of the grave lady was 
 understood to indicate that the last reply had been scarcely satis- 
 factory, but must be considered allowable under the circumstances. 
 
BADGERING THE BILLICKIN. 173 
 
 Ah — h — h ! Were there any babies in the house 1 — or would there 
 be any t TJm — m — m ! 
 
 (Something very nearly approaching to an explosion, on the other 
 side of the room, the particulars of which cannot be entered into, 
 for obvious reasons.) 
 
 Mrs. Billickin was understood to reply, with heightened colour 
 and some agitation, that she did not wish to deceive but which she 
 never 'eard the like before in all her born days and she a lady — 
 but No ! 
 
 Oh — h — h ! Any pianos, with young ladies practising upon them, 
 in the house 1 Urn — m — m ! 
 
 Mrs. Billickin, partially recovering, answered that question also in 
 the favourable negative. 
 
 Ah — h — h ! Any noisy boys of, say from six to twelve or fourteen, 
 always on the stairs, and with very thick shoes, generally muddy 
 and invariably loud 1 Um — m — m ! 
 
 Response comparatively calm and equable — No ! 
 
 Ah — h — h ! At what hour was the house always closed and 
 secured at night 1 The reason for requiring an answer to this being 
 the expected presence of the before-mentioned valuables, the safety 
 of which must be secured. TJm — m — m ! 
 
 Response, with evident returning cheerfulness, tinder reminder of 
 the valuables — that lodgers was that difficult to manage as no one 
 could depend on 'em and latch-keys stipulated but she would be 
 candid twelve o'clock and sometimes much earlier but never later 
 the 'ouse was closed and she defied you to get inside after that hour 
 do what you might even the Lord Mayor. 
 
 Ah— h — h ! Only one more question then. Could the attendance 
 in the house always be depended upon as genteel and respectful, so 
 that any of her visitors, most of whom would be persons of quality, 
 might receive that quick and courteous attention which they had 
 reason to expect 1 TJm — m — m ! 
 
 To which Mrs. Billickin, much revived under the prospect of soon 
 concluding the negotiation, now, and becoming the proprietor of the 
 gold-mine, with reversion of the other valuables, — replied with 
 characteristic candour, with the assurance of always two and often- 
 times three 'ighly respectful and dealt with that liberal as never 
 give reason for neglect or fault-finding and she 'oped that now 
 enough had been said and that Madam was quite satisfied. 
 
 Ah — h- — h ! TJm — m — m ! The grave lady had one more ques- 
 tion to ask — possibly two — no more. Oh — h — h ! TJm — m — m ! 
 Could Mrs. — ah — Billickin put her in communication with the 
 person receiving the rents, so that she might confer with him and 
 satisfy herself that those rents were paid with regularity 1 as she 
 had much valuable property that might be seized upon, being found 
 in the rooms belonging to her — ah — Mrs. — ah Billickin, in the event of 
 any default being made in that payment ; besides which it was always 
 unpleasant and discreditable to have officers in the house. TJm — 
 m — m ! 
 
 (At this juncture, for what cause there is no data to explain, both 
 
174 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 Miss Twinkleton and Rosa rose hurriedly and left the room ; so- 
 that the brief remainder of the conversation, if heard by them at 
 all, must have been heard in that discreditable manner to which 
 reference has already been made on more than one occasion. 
 
 Mrs. Billickin rose also with the lately-banished colour coming 
 back into her face, and indications of a belief that even gold-mines 
 might be too costly in their working. There were recurrent symp- 
 toms of a swoon, too, that might have taken the place of the indignant 
 protest which she had never been so insulted in her life before and 
 defied even persons whom she would not name but wenomous as 
 serpents though thank goodness they had no power to sting, to say 
 that she had ever been behind with her rent for one day and the 
 landlord that sharp 
 
 When the grave lady obviated the necessity of her concluding 
 the somewhat-long sentence, by accepting all mooted points as dis- 
 posed of in a satisfactory manner, and bringing the negotiation down 
 to those financial terms of the liberality of which she had already 
 given earnest. 
 
 Ah — h — h ! "Waiving all further inquiries, as she was by no 
 means a difficult person, she would consider everything as meeting 
 her wishes, and agree to take the rooms that day two weeks — 
 her figures, which could not be otherwise than liberal, as she 
 always avoided bargaining and never made second prices — being 
 agreed to. 
 
 " Which you mean to make 'em, Madam, five pounds a week, in 
 course, with all the improvements and dirt cheap at that by th& 
 month and lights and coals extra as is a rule I have never departed 
 from and never mean to if you should ask me till doomsday and 
 wherefore try 1" said Mrs. Billickin, making a single stroke, with 
 the verbal pick, into the gold-mine, though she felt that she had 
 been, so to speak, exhausted in the preliminaries and was more or 
 less feeble at the moment when she should have been strongest. 
 
 " Oh — h — h ! as I was saying, Mrs. — ah — Billickin, I will take 
 the rooms, this day two weeks, all the other conditions being kept, 
 at — -well, I will strain a point, as life is short, and we all owe duties 
 to each other — at, we will say jive-and-thirty shillings a week, 
 without coals and candles. Urn — m — m ! " 
 
 The grave lady, whose hands were still piously crossed, looked 
 the very incarnation of benevolence as she made the proposal ; and 
 it could not be that she felt herself other than the Lady Bountiful 
 of her time. As for the Billickin — her gold-mine thus suddenly 
 changed into the veriest dust-heap, her time worse than wasted, and 
 herself humiliated before one whom she so disliked to the very verge 
 of abhorrence, as Miss Twinkleton, — there are scarcely words to 
 describe the threatening blaze of her face, where apoplexy seemed 
 for the moment much more probable than swoons, — and the scream 
 of veritable rage with which she hurled back the words at the calm 
 utterer. 
 
 " Five-and-thirty shillings a week ! What do you take me for, 
 Ma'am, and who are you, I should like to know, to keep me 
 
BADGERING THE BILLICKIN. 175 
 
 trapesin' and travellin' up and down stairs for half a day to make 
 me an offer which I was never so insulted in all my born days 
 besides talking of persons of quality and of valuables that is more 
 likely to be deal-tables and pewter spoons than anything else if any- 
 thing you have and goodness knows ! " 
 
 " Oh — h — h ! So, Mrs. — ah — Billickin, you do not think proper 
 to accept my offer, to-day f No matter ; life is short, but it is long 
 enough for reconsiderations. I will call to-morrow or the next day, 
 and make one or two of my little measurements over again ; and 
 perhaps by that time you will be prepared to think better of my 
 liberal offer — more than the rooms are strictly worth, Mrs. — ah — 
 Billickin. Um — m — m ! " 
 
 With the same slow and stately step so notable when she 
 ascended the stair, the grave and pious lady, undisturbed by the 
 rage so visible in the other, moved again to the landing, and passed 
 down to the hall, towards her waiting carriage-of-state, which must 
 have been detained somewhat more than an hour from the intended 
 Drive. 
 
 She may have heard, and she may not have heard, the actual scream 
 assailing her as she descended the stair and passed along the hall — the 
 voice pitched in the Billickin's shrillest key, and the manner the least 
 in the world like that of any woman contemplating an early separa- 
 tion from her heart. 
 
 " Come" again, to-morrow or next day, will you, with your fine 
 carriage as is hired from a livery on credit, you old owdacious ! 
 Which you daren't do for your eyes, and you know it ! Such im- 
 perence ! and to me as has kept this house all these years, and knows 
 the worth of them rooms to a ha'-penny ! . Five-and-thirty shillings ! 
 — Jane ! Jane ! where are you, Jane % If I call you again, out of 
 the 'ouse you go without warning, mind that ! Five-and-thirty 
 shillings ! " 
 
 Most of the concluding portions of this was addressed to the now- 
 appearing attendant, who might be called the shawl-bearer, in emula- 
 tion of the East — the Billickin being at that moment at the landing, 
 on her way down to her own private back-parlour, where the long- 
 deferred swoon was to be indulged — and needing assistance, in her 
 prostrate condition, even to become insensible with due attention to 
 details. 
 
 But we have much more endurance — many of us, than could be 
 supposed before the moment of trial. Mrs. Billickin might clutch at 
 the escaping heart, but there were still a few beats in that indispens- 
 able portion of her anatomy — as shown in the instant following, when 
 now-silent rage may be believed to have culminated at the crowning 
 insult of the grave lady's visit. 
 
 For the servant-maid, opening the street-door for her egress, when 
 The Billickin had not yet left the landing, attracted the pious atten- 
 tion, and gave opportunity for sowing a few of those remaining seeds 
 of good for which the world cannot be too grateful. 
 
 " Ah — h — h ! You are one of the servants here 1 Um — m — m ! " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am," with a bobbing curtsey that may have expected 
 
176 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 threepence — if so, how marked an illustration of the vanity of all 
 human calculations ! 
 
 " Ah — h — h ! Do you always keep your caps clean 1 Are your 
 morals strictly looked after 1 Do you keep the policemen out of the 
 area ? Um — m — m ! " 
 
 " Clean caps, mum ? Morals, mum ? Pleeseman, mum ! " The 
 girl's assaulted cap shook with indignation, but she found no oppor- 
 tunity to express it in words, for the grave lady continued at once : 
 
 "Ah — h — h! Does Mrs. — ah — Billickin allow you to go to 
 Church on Sundays ? — every Sunday 1 Oh — h — h ! " 
 
 " Which I wouldn't hev time, mum, with the knives and the 
 boots, and us only keepin' two," explained the girl, a little mollified. 
 " But I 'as my outs in the arternoon, in course, when Mary Hann 
 and me, over the way " 
 
 "Oh — h — h! Vanity, child, vanity ! " interrupting. "Go out? 
 "Where should you ' go out,' if not to Church 1 Life is short, oh — h 
 — h ! — and remember that you have a soul ! You rrmst go to Church 
 every Sunday — twice, if possible. Tell Mrs. — ah — Billickin that I 
 say so. Um — m — m ! " 
 
 The door was open, and the grave lady swept away to her carriage, 
 possibly without hearing all the half-indignant and altogether puzzled 
 reply of the maid — that " she might have a soul, but she didn't believe 
 they would be 'ard on a poor girl as worked day and night, and did 
 the best she could, even if she didn't go to Church twicet of a Sunday, 
 and sometimes went somewhere else for a mouthful of fresh hair." 
 The impressive footman descended from his perch, the lady took her 
 place in the carriage, and Southampton Street, Bloomsbury Square, 
 was relieved of that overshadowing respectability with a tinge of piety 
 superadded. 
 
 Miss Twinkleton and Bosa came back into the drawing-room, at 
 about the period when the enraged Mrs. Billickin finally reached her 
 recumbency in the back-parlour. They were laughing, to an extent 
 scarcely warranted by anything which had occurred ; and dear 
 little Bosa was actually holding her mite of waist together with her 
 two mites of hands, as if there was danger of her falling into the 
 traditional explosion of fat men. And she was saying — what time 
 Miss Twinkleton, only less amused than herself, though much less 
 riotous in the demonstration, laboiired to restore her to comparative 
 equanimity : 
 
 " Oh, wasn't it all too, too absurd 1 And how, how, how could he 
 punish her in that manner ? And how could she do it, ugly and cross 
 old thing as Mrs. Billickin has been, to you ? " 
 
 Of which last words no authoritative explanation can be given ; 
 though something may be hazarded, possibly not farther away from 
 the truth than explanations are generally found to be. As that, the 
 grave lady never coming back to discover whether Mrs. Billickin had 
 thought better of her proposition, the question remained an open one 
 with, at least, some of the parties cognizant of the leading facts — 
 whether the visitor had been a bond fide one, type of a class of apart- 
 ment seekers not yet entirely extinct in London or elsewhere, who 
 
MR. HONEYTHUNDER PURSUES A SPECIAL OBJECT. 177 
 
 ask everything and offer nothing — and so the most proper of persons 
 to have chanced upon the cantankerous Billickin and revenged all her 
 victims upon her at once ; or whether she may not have been a person 
 employed for the occasion — possibly an actress — her appointments 
 procured, and the salient points of her rdle set down, in the combined 
 interests of Rosa, Justice, and Mischief, by the brown, breezy, prank- 
 some, and dangerously -unemployed incumbent of the Admiral's 
 Cabin! 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 MR. HONEYTHUNDER PURSUES A SPECIAL OBJECT. 
 
 Mr. Honeythunder is uncomfortable. The statement may seem rash 
 in itself, and derogatory to one who should stand so high above the 
 reach of mundane discomforts ; but such things have been — and why 
 should the respected manager of the United British and Foreign 
 Universal Philanthropists, high in power at the Head Haven, and 
 mighty in influence, not to say in terror, at the innumerable Tributary 
 Havens with which the benevolent coasts of the British Islands are 
 indented — why should not even he find a crumpled rose-leaf in his 
 couch of sublime content 1 
 
 Not that anything has gone wrong with the Gigantic System which 
 certain irreverent persons have been found capable of designating a 
 Gigantic Fraud, making more evils than it ever cured, and using 
 ninety per centum of all moneys passing through its hands in salaries, 
 fees, and perquisites to the Honeythunders, the Cringeloughs, and the 
 Bleademfreleighs of the organization, to ten per centum used in re- 
 cognised objects — besides obstructing the course of true benevolence 
 by disgusting the whole body of liberal givers. 
 
 Not that there has been any decrease in its ramifications, any 
 falling off in the number of its compelled contributors, or any failure 
 in that crop of tangible miseries out of which the wordy capital is 
 drawn for new appeals and more forcible denunciations of all opposers 
 and recreants. No — the world — Mr. Honey thunder's world, at least 
 — is hopefully improvident ; gratifyingly mean, narrow, obtuse, and 
 arrogant ; ravishingly prone to do those things which invite abusive 
 circulars, declamatory addresses, stormy personal interviews, and ex- 
 planatory (generally defamatory) " cards " in the public journals. No 
 one has acted, so far as current report can be trusted, precisely as he 
 or she should have acted ; no one, if rumour can be credited, has 
 thrown oil on the waters of dissension, or lost opportunity for re- 
 kindling the half-extinguished fires of sectarian or sectional difference ; 
 "Wrong is all-prevalent, Right powerless ; and the whole universe, 
 outside of the United British and Foreign, is going to Moral "Wreck 
 and Spiritual Ruin in a manner most exhilarating to forcible tempera- 
 
 N 
 
ITS jobs jasper's secret. 
 
 ments. So tliat now, if ever, those who wield the forces therein in- 
 carnated, should be in that jubilant state ascribed to the critic at the 
 moment when a hecatomb of enemies' books is lying around him 
 ready for slaughter. 
 
 And vet Mr. Honeythunder is uncomfortable. Infinitely above 
 Mr. Tope in status, he would not dream of admitting that his discom- 
 fort is a Tribulation — he would be much more certain to think of it 
 (he is not likely to speak of it, with that overwhelming voioe whose 
 least whisper is a roar) as a Thorn in the Flesh, sent for the especial 
 purpose of reminding him of his mortality. And he would no more 
 be likely to feel, under the severest self-examination (supposing that 
 he ever Honeythundered himself instead of others) that he had any 
 part or lot in the growth of that Thorn, than the most inveterate 
 lover of old port and heavy dinners could imagine that his gout at 
 fifty did not come from some distant and unjust world of ill-natured 
 dispensations, instead of from bottle and tureen. Why should this 
 thing be 1 — he roars, mentally. Am I not at once a man of mark and 
 usefulness ? Am I not necessary, and indeed indispensable, in carry- 
 ing out ends and objects in which the Divine Powers may be supposed 
 interested ? — and is not the whole force and energy of my nature ne- 
 cessary to carry out those ends and objects ? — and if I am troubled 
 and vexed, how can I carry out those ends and objects with full 
 vigour ? — and if I do not carry out those ends and objects in full 
 vigour, will not the Divine Powers be more or less the losers 1 Then 
 why do the Divine Powers permit me to be troubled and vexed ? 
 Why this Thorn in the Flesh ] — from which it is consolatory to know, 
 however, that the saintly Paul was not free. 
 
 Perhaps, meanwhile, if any man has ever devoted his arboricultural 
 energies to the growing of a Thorn with more assiduity than another, 
 that man will be found in Mr. Honeythunder, now of so ultra- 
 benevolent and notable a character. Planted it many years ago — ah. 
 true : we hold, many of us, whatever of excuse may lie in the fact 
 that we planted long ago, and have not been pursuing the same course 
 at a very late period. But it unfortunately happens that time does 
 not inevitably wear away Wrong or its consequences — that it is quite 
 as likely to widen and deepen those consequences, and only ameliorate 
 the original act by a sort of ostrich-hiding of the head in the sand — 
 that trees grow larger and stronger as they increase in years, instead 
 of considerately shrivelling away at the moment when we choose to 
 wish that they might cease to exist 
 
 A certain number of years ago, when the Philanthropist was only 
 budding, and then resident at one of the Xorthern towns of the Em- 
 pire — there fell into his way a young woman. Name, Sarah Lewt 
 Family, the reverse of respectable, not to say low — working-people, in 
 point of fact Education of the girl, so limited as to have no effect 
 in moulding her character. Disposition, slightly vain and frivolous, 
 with a tendency to harmless flirtation of a certain girlish sort, not 
 intended to reach serious action. Appearance, somewhat attractive — 
 indeed, enough so to make her an object of contention among young 
 male persons of her own rank in life. 
 
MB. HONEYTHUNDER PURSUES A SPECIAL OBJECT. 17 9 
 
 It would be difficult to characterize (in the words of Mr. Honey- 
 "thunder at this later period) what chanced between the young woman 
 ■and himself at that earlier time, in the North. It was understood 
 that she had been under engagement of marriage (such an " engage- 
 ment " as people of that condition are capable of forming) with a 
 young man of her own condition, or a shade removed for the better, 
 whose name, if the budding Philanthropist ever knew it, he had not 
 •closely remembered through those after years in which so many names 
 sounded in his ears, and his own sounded — loudly enough — in the 
 ears of so many. For some cause that engagement became broken 
 •off, and the; young man grew indignant, sore-hearted, and went away 
 — where, the budding Philanthropist, again, had no idea. For this 
 rupture of the engagement, a certain impression in the mind of the 
 silly girl, that he intended to marry her, may or may not have been 
 responsible. If such an impression existed, he remembered no words 
 that could have given rise to them — therefore, as a practical fact, 
 there could have been no such words. 
 
 Some things following were even more difficult to characterize. 
 ' They involved unpleasantnesses : they might almost be said to involve 
 guilt, only that such a thing in such a connection was simply incre- 
 dible. That he, Mr. Honey thunder, training for a life of energetic 
 and active Evangelical Benevolence, could have been guilty of the 
 seduction of a working man's daughter — that was simply one of those 
 things not to be mentioned, because out of the range of possibility. 
 That he might have allowed himself to drift, through fault more than 
 half that of the woman, into a certain intimacy involving unpleasant 
 -consequences — that might be possible : he might even know that 
 something of the sort had occurred. He might go so far as to credit 
 the fact (not known to him from any personal presence of the mother) 
 that a child had been born, alleged to be the fruit of that intimacy ; 
 and dimly might be admitted the possibility (again outside of his per- 
 sonal knowledge) of the mother having died, even more thoroughly 
 broken-hearted than her cast-off lover, and the child having been 
 thrown out on the world, uncared-for, liable to starve, to rob, or 
 murder, as the consequence of want and ignorance, to go to ruin in 
 any way that might be found most convenient. So much might be 
 admitted as having been within the bounds of possibility, in the early 
 career of the Manager of the United British and Foreign Universal ; 
 and certain reflections and memories, bearing shapes analogous to 
 these, may possibly have visited his waking dreams, not to say his 
 nightly visions, in those days when the voice of an applauding public 
 had not quite drowned the last echoes of the " still small voice " 
 within. 
 
 But it has been said, aforetime, that " of all things in this world 
 success is the most successful ; " and the Rev. Luke Honeythunder, 
 M.U.B.F.U.P., had every reason to realize the truth of the axiom. 
 He had the public voice, at an early day ; and eke his own, all the 
 while. "When the public voice failed to carry him sufficiently high 
 on the wave of applauding sound, he could always rely on his own, 
 •equally loud physically and morally, and entirely relieved from that 
 
 n 2 
 
180 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 embarrassing modesty which has been the life-long hindrance and 
 eventual ruin of so many. The world, fortunately for him, was a 
 combative world ; there were plenty of opponents at whom to hurl 
 fierce invectives and opprobrious epithets; his auditory was large, 
 not only at the Head Haven and elsewhere, where he carried on the 
 operations of Aggressive and Subjugatory Philanthropy, but at the 
 Conventicle in which on Sunday mornings he vented what amount of 
 unexpended sound had accumulated during the secular days ; and it 
 was no difficult task, we may believe, to forget the mere penny- 
 whistle squeak of conscience (perhaps a very little and modest con- 
 science, for so large a physique), amid the blare of oratorical trumpets, 
 the crash of philanthropic kettledrums, and the hoarse roar of the sea 
 represented by thousands of voices engaged in the most ardent of all 
 worships, if the blindest. 
 
 It may be doubtful whether, twice in a somewhat long public life, 
 Mr. Honeythunder found an antagonist who galled him so much as 
 Mr. Crisparkle, in that little affair of Neville Landless, whose guardian- 
 ship he was nearly as glad to relinquish as was the poor young man 
 to feel himself fairly out of the power of that rude manner and blustei - - 
 ing voice. There was that in the demeanour of the clergyman, at the last 
 interview held at the Head Haven, more annoying to the coarsely 
 impervious Philanthropist than would have been almost any other 
 form of assault — it being simply evident that the Minor Canon of 
 Cloisterham thoroughly despised him ; — and it being correspondingly 
 difficult for pei-sons of a certain temperament to avoid despising them- 
 selves a little, under angry protest, when made aware how very low 
 they stand in the estimation of others whom they are compelled to 
 respect. And no doubt the bitterest pill of humiliation ever swal- 
 lowed by the Manager, was gulped on the day already noted, when he 
 went down to Cloisterham, to put himself again into communication 
 with the Minor Canon and rectify an error in the Landless accounts, 
 which certainly seemed to need explanation as well as the more sub- 
 stantial justice. 
 
 That visit, as we have seen, bore fruit not originally expected, in 
 the glimpse of the broad philanthropic personality accidentally 
 afforded to Durdles ; and the secondary effect of that visit, as also 
 already shown, was to induce a return visit on the part of the stone- 
 mason, the reverse of gratifying to the recipient, to use the mildest 
 phrase capable of conveying the fact. 
 
 And here we reach, by two circuitous roads meeting at the same 
 point, the secret of Mr. Honey thunder's disquiet, not less pronounced 
 than that of Mr. Tope, and by no means so easy to remove by any 
 simple process. The little wretch at Cloisterham, with whom he had 
 begun his acquaintance by receiving a stoning verging towards the 
 painful honour of martyrdom, and continued it by administering a 
 flogging equally undignified and deserved — the worse-than-untrained 
 whelp, with every evil propensity! apparently full-developed, any 
 better possibilities lying as dormant as seeds in frozen earth — the 
 infant Arab whom he had threatened with arrest and confinement in 
 a Reformatory (which even lie knew to be the severest of punish- 
 
MR. HONEYTHUNDER PURSUES A SPECIAL OBJECT. 181 
 
 ments), as the only probable means of saving him from the gallows 
 or the state-prison, — this to be his son ! His, the Rev. Luke Honey- 
 thunder ! A leading light in the Evangelical world, burdened with a 
 child whom he dared not acknowledge, with the possibility that at any 
 hour he might be made to do worse than acknowledge it, by having 
 it thrust upon him in a public accusation, through the threatened 
 hostility of Durdles (whose information and dislike he knew), and the 
 co-operation of the Minor Canon (whose dislike he also knew, and 
 whose intelligence he feared) ! The leading light in the philanthropic 
 ■world father of a certain small mass of filth, rags, and vice, his 
 neglect of which might be at any moment exposed, through the same 
 instrumentalities, and the hollowness of all his loud-mouthed adjura- 
 tions to others thus made apparent to the most obtuse of intellects ! 
 It is really not strange, all things considered, that this Thorn in the 
 Flesh, commencing its definite pain with the visit of Durdles, should 
 have increased in discomfort instead of diminishing, as days went by 
 and became weeks. That the Haven of Philanthropy should have 
 ceased to be a complete refuge, such as it had been in days not long 
 gone by. That there should have ceased to be the same unalloyed 
 satisfaction in showing himself in crowds or on the rostrum, and hear- 
 ing the smothered exclamations of admiring applause : " There ! that's 
 him ! " " That's Mr. Honeythunder, the great philanthropist ! " 
 " Makes everybody give to everybody else, whether they will or no ! " 
 " Oh, such a good man ! " " Wonderful man ! — what would the 
 benevolent world do without him?" <fec, &c, ad infinitum, though 
 never (to one special stomach) ad nauseam. That he should even 
 have found himself, on one miserable day, declining to preside at one 
 of those great occasions which was to see ten thousand persons ver- 
 bally belaboured primarily, and millions belaboured secondarily ; and 
 a general field-day indulged in against all ranks, classes, and conditions 
 of men, not content to put a particular prison-stripe on the objects of 
 their benevolence ; and much current coin of the realm (bank-notes 
 not excluded) added to the conveniences for further gatherings and 
 belabourings : and necessarily the presiding genius for the time little 
 less than a demi-god. Whether the chief cause of this renunciation of 
 honours was to be found in some faint suspicion that he might not be 
 quite worthy of them (first step towards regaining any lost quality), or 
 whether the idea of his outcast and reprobate son had grown upon 
 him, until he half-expected him, on some one of those grand occasions, 
 to start up from the outer circle of the crowd, break out into a 
 demoniac chorus : — 
 
 " Widely widdy wen ! 
 I — sees — my — old — dad — again ; 
 Widdy — widdy wy ! 
 
 If — B — don't — acknowledge — me — I — let — fly. 
 Widdy widdy wake, cock warning ! " 
 
 — salute him with a shower of flints, and manifest his joy at the 
 opportunity by a war-dance of unusual vigour and atrocity, — which 
 of these considerations may most have moved the Manager in his 
 
182 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 singular self-abegnation, must remain a mystery with no chance for- 
 solution whatever, except as we practise the mercy recommended by 
 His Lordship to the gentleman of the criminal panel, and give the- 
 accused the benefit of any doubt. 
 
 Let the doubt be a little influenced in his favour, too, by a know- 
 ledge of the resolution at which the Manager arrives, after an in- 
 definite number of days of this growing discomfort, and upon which ■ 
 he acts with that vigour which cannot be denied him, whatever the 
 measure of his other claims to respect. 
 
 He will go down to Cloisterham, while he would rather go any- 
 where else on the round earth. He will find this juvenile demon of 
 his past raising. He will discover, at least, what opportunity there- 
 may be, without serious peril of compromise, to " do something for 
 him." (Indefinite phrase, which may mean, to kill, to succour, to 
 pension off, to put out of the way. With Mr. Honeythunder it 
 simply means " something — according to circumstances.") 
 
 So the underpaid, overworked, and overbadgered clerical force of 
 the Head Haven, and the less-worked and better-paid assistants in 
 the higher ramifications, are duly advised, on the day of the reso- 
 lution, that the Manager will be absent on the following day, and 
 perhaps that succeeding, being called a short distance into the rural 
 districts by an Object of Benevolence which demands his immediate- 
 attention. And let us hope that the candour of this statement, and 
 the purity of his intentions towards that special Object, are not 
 detracted from by a little occurrence which takes place within the- 
 half-hour following this announcement, and when the sycophantic- 
 undertones of compliment to the zeal and energy of their superior 
 in The Cause (intended to be overheard) have not yet died on the- 
 subordinate lips. 
 
 The occurrence comes in the shape of an application from a gentle- 
 man of limited means but many active and unobtrusive charities, 
 who has heard very favourably of the British and Foreign Universal, 
 as carrying on a great work of systematic beneficence, and who asks 
 the aid of that society towards a small fund for the immediate relief 
 of the widows and children of two-score poor fellows just killed by a 
 fire-damp explosion in a coal-mine. For the moment, in the re- 
 ception of this request, Mr. Honeythunder, however oppressed by 
 other cares, is his best self again ; and the round, convincing phrases 
 with which he rebuffs application, explaining that the rules of the 
 association, and the heavy pressure upon it for means to meet Special 
 and Legitimate Objects, render such a contribution entirely out of 
 the question and on the verge of being preposterous. These should 
 have been sufficient to win him overwhelming applause, even at the 
 gathering of declined honour, besides covering the applicant for aid 
 to an Object, thus demonstrated to be General and Illegitimate, with 
 the due amount of regret, disappointment, and chagrin at having, 
 ventured to make the suggestion. 
 
 Then follows an interval of nightly rest (its snores undoubtedly 
 pitched upon the same sonorous key as the daily voice), sandwiched 
 between the Good Action already done, in sending away the coal- 
 
MR. HONEYTHUNDER PURSUES A SPECIAL OBJECT. 183 
 
 mine advocate empty, and the remaining good action which is to be 
 done — much more, as he persists in feeling, in the interests of 
 others than in his own. 
 
 And then he goes down to Cloisterham on the following day, a 
 little hazy as to what he is to do when, arrived there, but with the 
 name of " Durdles " in recollection, and with some dreadful thought 
 that he may be driven, in finding his Object, to present himself in 
 that disreputable and unevangelical place, the " Travellers' Two- 
 penny," of the name of which he also retains a recollection through 
 the unwelcome instructions of the stone-mason. There is one thing 
 clear in his mind, however : he may intend to do something for the 
 young wretch, but it will go hard with himself if he does do so 
 without leaving an impression about the old town, dishonoured by 
 the young wretch's abode, that the Rev. Luke Honeythunder is 
 extending to him the bounty of the United British and Foreign 
 Universal from no other motive than his duty as a Philanthropist, 
 obliged to turn his attention, when called upon, to the most ob- 
 jectionable cases. 
 
 He reaches Cloisterham, without taxing the patience of Joe, 
 driver of the Cloisterham omnibus, from the distant station to the 
 town. Somewhat contrary to his usual wont, he strides over the 
 bridge, as if taking a constitutional a la Crisparkle, and emerges 
 upon the town, having attracted little attention, and seeming to wish 
 to attract no more (so unusual, for him !) than may suffice to .lead 
 him to the object of his unwilling search. 
 
 He makes a few inquiries, full-voiced as usual, and even a little 
 additionally pompous, as one who should say, in the very act : " Good 
 people, recognize in me, Incarnate Benevolence, seeking out an 
 Object of Pity, and do not mistake me for any other person, with 
 any other motive ! " He asks for the boy under the name of 
 " Deputy," again remembered from Durdles j and once he appends 
 the information that he has heard of him as at some low place of 
 resort called the " Travellers' Twopenny." But the amount of in- 
 formation received is by no means extensive : only one, of those 
 from whom he inquires, has ever heard of such an objectionable 
 personality; and he suggests that looking for him would be worse 
 than fox-hunting on foot, as he is here, there, everywhere and no- 
 where, nearly at the same time, and always in some villany or other. 
 Adds this person, that if he will go to Cathedral Yard, not far from 
 the city wall, there he may find the mason, Durdles, somewhere 
 among the stone-work, and he will be more likely to discover the 
 interesting young person for him than any one else whom he knows. 
 
 Mr. Honeythunder would rather not meet Durdles, remembering 
 him (only) as the messenger bearing that intelligence which has 
 grown to be the Thorn in the Flesh. But there seems no avoidance 
 of his doing so, if he does not intend to spend the whole day 
 wandering around the dull old town, which is doubly distasteful just 
 now on account of some of its inhabitants. 
 
 Another inquiry or two brings him to the spot, among the monu- 
 ments and stone-chips, where he remembers the humiliation of being 
 
184 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 set upon by a juvenile fiend (then unknown), and the triumph of 
 beating a part of that juvenile fiend (physical) very nearly to a pulp. 
 Then he sees before him the tumble-down stone hut which he saw on 
 that occasion when accosting Mr. Orisparkle, — and enters. He sees 
 a low middle-door, to pass beneath which he will be obliged to stoop 
 his high head ; and he hears beyond the door, the chip ! chip ! chip ! 
 of what he has no doubt is the work of the stone-mason whom he is 
 seeking under protest. He stoops his high head, with a smothered 
 malediction (of an Evangelical pattern) on all persons who construct 
 such miserably low doorways, who ought at once to be arrested and 
 forced to build higher, under high pains and penalties ; and then he 
 is within, in the presence of the man who not long ago visited him so 
 unwelcomely at the Head Haven. 
 
 Durdles is chipping away at his life-work, coat removed, sweat on 
 the stolid brow, and making so much noise, naturally, that he does 
 not hear the entrance of the other, or know of his coming in, until 
 turning to walk back and catch a better view of his progress, after 
 the manner of sculptors. Then, when he sees the visitor, and recog- 
 nizes him, the heavy face becomes darker and worse-tempered than 
 any one who only ordinarily saw the slouching, half-drunken man, 
 could believe possible ; and he backs up, so to speak, covering the 
 unfinished bust, as if the intruding eyes could not be allowed to look 
 upon that, at any hazard, — pasting a look, meanwhile, towards the 
 curtained niche, which would tell Mr. Orisparkle, if present, that the 
 movement is part of the current anxiety for concealing everything in 
 connection with the work on the block. 
 
 " Oh, it is you, is it 1 " he says, very gruffly, after a moment, and 
 when he evidently judges that he has quite covered the bust with his 
 broad, ungainly person. 
 
 " Yes — you are the man who called upon me at the Head Haven, 
 in town, some weeks ago, with information about a boy. You re- 
 cognize me, I believe — if not, my name is Honeythunder — Rev. Luke 
 Honey thunder." 
 
 The Manager of the United British and Foreign Universal scarcely 
 speaks with that overwhelming force which xirdinarily makes the 
 renegades of the philanthropic cause (all who differ with him in idea 
 or mode) quake in their high-lows, proclaiming that a veritable Son 
 of Jove is banging away at their ear-drums. For some cause, here 
 and now, he is a mere mortal — nothing more ; and for some cause, at 
 the same time, the ungainly man with the mallet and chisel seems 
 unaccountably the more commanding of the two in position. 
 
 " Oh, yes, Durdles knows you ! " he replies. " You said you 
 wouldn't come down, and Durdles said you would ! You said Durdles 
 lied — there, among your scribbling dummies that you handles like 
 tools — same as Durdles does this chisel, but may be not so well. You 
 knowed it wasn't a lie, then; but you stayed away as long as you 
 dared, for fear of Durdles splittin' on you, and then you come ! A 
 nice ' Reverend,' you are ! " 
 
 Mr. Honeythunder has not often been addressed with such force, 
 and certainly not often with what a Quaker would call the same 
 
MR. HONEYTHUNDER PURSUES A SPECIAL OBJECT. 185 
 
 " plain language,'' from the day when he overwhelmed a certain local 
 world with his colossal size and powerful lungs, at birth. And he is 
 not disposed to accept the new status too calmly — the denouncer to 
 allow denunciation of himself ; the verbal engineer holding the same 
 objection ordinarily ascribed to the mechanical, against being " hoist 
 with his own petard." 
 
 " How dare you, low fellow ! " he thunders, recovering the lost 
 voice. " If there was any law in this miserable place, I would have 
 you set in the stocks for filthy language to a person of condition, or 
 sent to some reformatory prison, where you might learn better 
 manners." 
 
 " Oh, you would, would you ! " answers Durdles, with something 
 very like a sneer — something that would be quite a sneer if we did 
 not know that only people of a certain standing can employ that 
 weapon of polished offence. " You would like to frighten Durdles, 
 wouldn't you, with your big voice and bluster ? Don't try it, master, 
 for it wouldn't do ; and the habit might grow on you ! " 
 
 " Insolent scoundrel ! " again begins Mr. Honeythunder ; but he is 
 silenced, instantly, as no assembly has ever had power to silence him. 
 
 " Better save your reverend breath to cool your reverend porridge !" 
 palpably sneers the stone-mason ; but with the words his voice 
 deepens, and his face — that face ordinarily so dull, stolid, uninterest- 
 ing — becomes something not pleasant to look at, from other charac- 
 teristics — dark, fierce, dangerous. " See here ! " he says, in intense 
 passion, which for the time gives him a position above himself — 
 " don't go too far, if it's all the same to you ! Durdles don't want to 
 brain you with this mallet ; so be keerful ! You come down here to 
 look arter that young devil. "Wery well. You shall have a peep at 
 your crib ; but Durdles wants to tell you something first, that may- 
 be you'd like to remember. Please to turn them eyes that's looked on 
 so many great folks, on to a poor feller that's got no money for you to 
 wheedle out of him — and say, if you know me 1 " 
 
 " Know you, fellow ? " Mr. Honeythunder echoes, with aDgry 
 contempt. "No, and I do not wish to ; for you seem to be below even 
 the efforts of Philanthropy. You seem to suppose that my errand at 
 Oloisterham is to look after that boy : if so, show me where he is, 
 take the money that I shall pay you for the service, and then never 
 let me see your bad face, or hear your vile tongue again." 
 
 " Don't know me — don't you ! Don't know Durdles ! Why, 
 that's bad o' you, as ought to know everybody that's'poor and miser- 
 able ! P'raps you might remember, then, one Samuel Dustin, as was 
 a-goin' to marry Sary Lewt, when you took her away from me, like a 
 psalm-singin' willain as you was, left her with that brat, broke her 
 heart, and mine ! " 
 
 There is terrible impressiveness, if not pathos, in the words of 
 the ungainly stone-mason, as he thus reveals the buried secret of 
 years in the very face of the wronger. And the words have force 
 to the ears that hear, for they literally end the conflict. The 
 Manager of the U.B.F.U.P. bows his head, with a gesture 
 nearer to manly humility and submission than any living man 
 
186 
 
 JOHN JASPERS SECRET. 
 
 could remember of him, and does not speak for a moment after the 
 other has ceased. The Thorn in the Flesh has a new rankle, evi- 
 dently ; but it is not beyond the mercy of God that it may rankle 
 beneficially now, and assist in the eventual remoulding of that which 
 so needs to change form as well as substance ! 
 
 " Samuel Dustin ! You 1 " is all that he utters, after that moment 
 of silence. And this is followed by another moment's restraint, 
 and then by a groan, much more earnest in character, there is 
 reason to believe, than many that he may have vented over 
 Legitimate Objects, at one period or another of his successful 
 philanthropic career. 
 
 " Yes, Samuel Dustin as was; drunken old Stony Durdles as is ; 
 and all along o' you, psalm-singin' Luke Honeythunder ! That's 
 what Durdles means, and he hopes you likes it, and '11 tell about it 
 your next preachin' ! " 
 
 "I am sorry — Dustin — Durdles — whatever yoii choose to call 
 yourself now. I wish that I had never done what was so wrong 
 to her and so sad to you. I did know that you were telling the 
 truth the other day ; though I did not know you then. And I have 
 come down to do what I can for — for — my poor little wretch of a 
 son. There : what can I do more? And will not this satisfy you, 
 without saying more rough words to me or of met " 
 
 Undoubtedly, Luke Honeythunder has not spoken so candidly or 
 feelingly half a score of times during all his career of philanthropic 
 charlatanry. The candour and true feeling even affect Durdles, who 
 dashes his rough left hand across his eyes, throws down the mallet 
 still remaining in his right, draws on the clumsy coat with its big 
 horn buttons, and assumes his dinner-bundle, all without one word 
 of reply. Then he throws an old potato-sack over the unnoticed 
 bust, and says, with all the sneer gone out of his harsh voice, though 
 the gruffness can no more be extracted than the squeak from saw- 
 filing : — 
 
 " Yes, that'll do for Durdles, and it'll do for him : leastwise it 
 will do better nor nothing. I haven't seen the young brat for the 
 last two hours, but I seed him then, going up towards the Weir, and 
 I think that we can find him. Come along, if you mean what you say." 
 
 " Stop — Dustin — Durdles ! one word ! You will not destroy my 
 usefulness by telling others " 
 
 " What are you afeard on, Luke Honeythunder?" the stone- 
 mason interrupts. " Of Durdles telling on you 1 No !— not if you 
 take keer of her boy. But don't you talk no more about that, for I 
 don't like it ; and it isn't no use, is it 1 Come alonw \ " 
 
 Durdles acting as guide, they leave the hut, pass up a narrow and 
 miserable alley near that " Travellers' Twopenny" with which the 
 Manager has now no business whatever, and are soon emerging on 
 the river-bank, on some portion of which, in some ramification of 
 villany or trouble in connection with the fishermen or their boats 
 he expects to find the by-no-means desired though wanted Deputy ' 
 
 The two have not so great a distance to proceed, however as 
 Durdles imagined. For they have scarcely opened the view upon 
 
188 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 call him off — until the cries of the two brought his father and two 
 others of the fishermen, and the dog was torn by main force from 
 his prey. He attempts to add, but thinks better of it, and resolves 
 to tell only Mr. Datchery — that the scarf around Deputy's neck is 
 the same, he thinks, which came into the hands of Mr. Jasper only a 
 few days before — at a time of which only themselves and Black 
 Tomboy know. When he does so, the man of the white hair will 
 probably speculate a little, — whether Jasper, haunted by the re-pos- 
 session, gave it away to Deputy, as a means of ridding himself of it 
 most effectually ; or whether Deputy had simply stolen it, as a pro- 
 fessional duty ; and whether its presence around the neck of the 
 injured boy was not the principal cause of the fearful laceration, 
 from the hatred which the dog had already shown towards the scarf 
 and its wearer. 
 
 Mr. Honeythunder returns to London the same afternoon, in a 
 fly from the town to the inconvenient station, and thence by rail, — 
 bringing back with him in a close carriage in which there are also a 
 bed and a surgeon — an Object. He has discovered it, something too 
 late, perhaps, but, while it still contains life ; and one of the metro- 
 politan hospitals and a world of difficult experiences may aid him in 
 making it, in time, something else than a mangled mass — possibly 
 something else than a hopeless cripple or a boy-fiend — even possibly 
 a Man ; just as some day there may pass out of his own mind, 
 through actual benefits conferred upon humanity by unostentatious 
 practical benevolence, or under the renewed benumbing influences 
 of a sounding sham-philanthropy, the most humiliating of the recol- 
 lections connected with his Thorn in the Flesh. 
 
 And Durdles, in a sort of stupid grief which is half-joy, lounges 
 and shambles back to his Hole in the Wall. He will be stoned home 
 o' nights no more, and will never again hear that Flibbertigibbet 
 chorus ; and so feels, stupidly, that there has been a loss. But he 
 will not be likely again to see her child in rags, in crime, and travel- 
 ling towards the doors of a prison ; and who shall say that this is 
 not, again and always in his shambling and stupid way, sufficient 
 compensation to the Stony One 1 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE DATCHERY-DURDLES STATEMENT. 
 
 Statement of Samuel Durdles, stone-mason and architectural monu- 
 ment worker, residing and carrying on the business of his calling, at 
 Cloisterham, Chalkshire ; — made in the presence of, and taken down 
 by, Richard Datchery, Esquire, barrister-at-law (in expectancy), of 
 Barnaby's Inn, in the city of LondoD, in the county of Middlesex — 
 
THE DATCHEEY-DUEDLES STATEMENT. 189 
 
 at the lodgings of the said Datchery, at Cloisterham, on the day 
 
 of 18—. 
 
 With reference to the disappearance of the young man or person 
 known as and called by the name of Edwin Drood, and the sus- 
 picions existing as to the supposed murder of the said Edwin Drood, 
 at or about Cloisterham, aforesaid, on the night of December twenty- 
 fourth, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and 
 
 Statement procured by Mr. Datchery, with reference tp possible 
 future use in furthering the interests of justice, by detecting the real 
 perpetrator of the alleged crime (be the same more or less), and 
 removing from certain person or persons improperly charged with 
 the same, a suspicion against them which may otherwise work 
 seriously to their disadvantage. Any concealments, of names or 
 otherwise, made herein by Mr. Datchery, to be duly and in full 
 explained by him, with explicit declaration of all motives which may 
 seem ambiguous in this proceeding or others connected with the 
 affair — whenever he may be called upon by properly constituted 
 authority, or have the opportunity afforded him (the affair having 
 then progressed so far as to make such explanations proper) of enter- 
 ing into such statement on his own account and behalf. 
 
 Statement of Mr. Durdles not made under oath, for want of 
 opportunity on the part of the examiner to procure the adminis- 
 tration of such oath, without placing knowledge of circumstances 
 necessary to be kept as yet entirely secret in the possession of 
 officials liable to display want of reticence, from ignorance of the 
 important interests involved. 
 
 Original intention on the part of Mr. Datchery to procure the 
 drawing up of statement under Mr. Durdles' own hand and in the 
 original language of that person j but serious difficulties rendering 
 that course impossible ; and this explanation made, in order, in the 
 event of the death of Mr. Durdles or Mr. Datchery, or both, before 
 the production and use of the statement, to make the two reasons 
 fully apparent for failing to secure, in the manner suggested, the best 
 written evidence. 
 
 Difficulty first : Strange perversions of language on the part of 
 Mr. Durdles in conversation — doubtless owing to many years of ob- 
 jectionable association, a certain degree of intemperance, and original 
 deficiency in education — rendering any statement embodying ail his 
 own words comparatively unintelligible and in many respects im- 
 proper for public use. Difficulty second : Almost total loss by Mr. 
 Durdles, through intemperance before-mentioned, careless exposures 
 of the body, benumbing influences of his coarse labour, and long 
 disuse of the faculty except in the mere act of signing his name at 
 intervals of years, — of the amount of chirographic skill which he 
 may once have possessed, rendering any attempted document of that 
 character certainly illegible. 
 
 Much care used, however (Mr. Datchery makes this supplemental 
 explanation, at once in justice to himself, and that the document may 
 be held to possess all possible weight and authenticity), first, to 
 impress upon Mr. Durdles the solemn obligation under which every 
 
190 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 man lies, in any civilized community, to tell "the truth, the whole 
 truth, and nothing but the truth," when bearing testimony which 
 may affect others — without the solemnity of an oath, as well as under 
 that inducement ; and second, to obtain from Mr. Durdles, thus 
 warned and with the understood additional inducement of good feel- 
 ing and a certain amount of gratitude — precisely the meaning intended 
 to be conveyed by him, even when many repetitions of phrases and 
 involutions of questions have been found necessary. 
 
 Certain matters contained in the statement, in the opinion of the 
 examiner more or less irrelevant to the issue, but retained and set 
 down by him under doubt how far he would be justified in withhold- 
 ing from the future legal authority taking cognizance of the case any 
 fact, however apparently insignificant, which can possibly have the 
 least bearing upon its detail. Some explanation applying to frequent 
 retention of Mr. Durdles' own phrases, and to repetitions, rendered 
 inevitable by the habit of mind of Mr. Durdles, and possibly occurring 
 more frequently than they would do under more favourable circum- 
 stances. As also, to certain explanatory notes, interpolated by Mr. 
 Datchery. 
 
 Questioned as to his name, age, place of birth, residence, and occu- 
 pation. 
 
 Replies — to the first, that he does not see what that has to do with 
 it. Name is Durdles. Everybody about Cloisterham knows Durdles. 
 Most of them do not know him by any other name. Some of the 
 boys [Note : With whom he seems to be more or less at feud during 
 most of his residence in Cloisterham] call him " Stony " Durdles, he 
 supposes from his trade and the dust on his clothes ; but he does not 
 thank the young varmints, and he does not care. That is not his 
 name: his real name is Samuel Durdles — Sam Durdles, if any one 
 likes it better. To the second — that his age is his own business, and 
 he does not mean to tell it to any one. He may be forty and he may 
 be sixty — old enough, any way, not to make so great a fool of himself 
 as he has been in the habit of doing, and not to be so poor as he is. 
 To the third — that he was born in the North, not far from Scotland — 
 that is enough — he does not choose to put any person on the track of 
 where he was or what he did before he came to Cloisterham. There 
 'are one or two who know already, enough, if not too much. [Note : 
 From certain internal evidence in his conversation, there is reason to 
 believe that he was born in. Northumberland : may possibly have 
 been Cumberland, however.] To the fourth — that he does not see the 
 use of that, either : every fool in Cloisterham knows where he lives 
 — in a dog-hole close by the city wall. To the fifth — that here again 
 time is being wasted, as every one knows that too. But if he must 
 tell what everybody knows, he must. His business is getting out and 
 settirig up monuments and grave-stones, taking care of the stone-work 
 of the Cathedral, and digging out the Old 'Tins that have been so long 
 stowed away that no one remembers anything about 'em — in the 
 walls, under the pavement, and everywhere ; the old shop [Note : 
 His phrase referring to the Cathedral preserved on account of oddity 
 — not to say originality] beiDg about rotten with 'em. 
 
THE DATCHERY-DUKDLES STATEMENT. 191 
 
 Questioned as to his being married, a bachelor, or a widower. 
 
 Replies — that it seems nothing can be left alone, in the life of a 
 poor fellow ! Who wants to know that about Durdles, and why 1 
 What is it to them 1 But there is one at Cloisterham as knows it 
 already : the best and the worst of it. That one is Mr. Crisparkle. 
 [Note : Mr. Crisparkle is a very estimable gentleman and clergyman ; 
 one of the Canons of Cloisterham Cathedral, and highly respected in 
 all the relations of life. Was also active in the investigations follow- 
 ing the disappearance of the young man Drood.] He is not married ; 
 never was ; never intends to be. He has been engaged, once, and had 
 enough of that 1 That was many years ago. A psalm-singin' chap 
 ran off with his girl and broke her heart. Is not that enough ? 
 What more does anybody want to know t 
 
 Questioned as to his acquaintance with the young man Drood, 
 disappeared. 
 
 Replies — that he had no acquaintance with him before the 24th 
 December, 18 — , except that he occasionally saw him coming to 
 Cloisterham during the previous year, on visits to Mr. John Jasper, 
 at the Gate House ; and sometimes saw him walking out from what 
 they called the " Nun's House," sort of female school, in the High 
 Street, where they always kept a lot of girls — confound 'em — nigh as 
 bad as them brats of boys, guying any one as was old, or poor, or did 
 not please their dainty eyes. Where was he ? Oh ! He had seen 
 Master Drood walking out from the Nun's House, with a very pretty 
 little thing, that seemed a mere child, and giggled a great deal, but 
 didn't guy anybody. Name was Miss Rosa Bud, as he understood ; 
 and also understood that they were somehow engaged to be married. 
 Some nonsense of their fathers', he believes. Married ! They were 
 about as fit to be married as two small kittens to keep a public. 
 [Note : Mr. Durdles disposed to wander somewhat seriously here, 
 but recalled.] 
 
 Questioned a? to his knowledge of Mr. John Jasper, and the length 
 of time during which that knowledge has continued. 
 
 Replies — to the first, that he may have known Mr. Jasper [Note : 
 He pronounces the name as if spelled " Jarsper " — which may or may 
 not be of consequence in some possible future question of identifica- 
 tion] a matter of five or six years, since Mr. Jasper first come to 
 Cloisterham and went to singing in the Cathedral. 
 
 Questioned as to any knowledge of Mr. Jasper's life, habits, and 
 practices. v 
 
 Positively declines to answer. [Note : With signs of ill-temper 
 at the question, and possibly of some fear with reference to the 
 person inquired of.] What does he know about Mr. Jasper, his 
 life, or his habits 1 Mr. Jasper sings in the Cathedral ; he does not 
 — he digs. What is the use of getting a poor fellow into scrapes 
 by asking him questions that would do no good to answer ? Why 
 not ask Mr. Jasper himself about anything they want to know 1 
 There are some things, he supposes, that he must tell, and he will 
 tell them, and not a word more, if he dies for it. Suppose that 
 Durdles may have a secret or so ; isn't it his own, just as much 
 
192 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 as if it belonged to the Dean ? and hasn't he a right to keep his 
 own? 
 
 Questioned as to alleged relationship between the disappeared 
 person, Edwin Drood, and Mr. Jasper. As to the latter being the 
 uncle of the former, as alleged. 
 
 Replies — how should he know 1 Has beard it said so ; and it may- 
 be true or may not be. He wasn't present when young Drood 
 came into the world — was he ? and if not, how should he know 
 whether Mr. Jasper's sister was his mother 1 Will anybody answer 
 him that t If not, Durdles will be as dumb as an oyster, till the time 
 comes. [Note : This said with an air of mystery, indicative of con- 
 cealed information of some unknown description.] 
 
 Questioned as to knowledge of the construction of Cloisterham 
 Cathedral. 
 
 Eeplies — that if Durdles doesn't know that old shop, he would 
 like to know who does. Has been in and around it, busy most of 
 the time, a matter of ten or a dozen years — is not certain about the 
 exact time, and doesn't know as he is bound to make hisself a 
 almanac for anybody. Has put up more monuments, and dug out 
 Old ' Uns as had been stowed away until their werry names was 
 forgot, than any other person, man or boy, who has ever been in 
 Cloisterham. Knows pretty well nearly every stone in it that is 
 worth knowing ; and, if he lives long enough, means to know them 
 all. Can find his way about it, dark or light, from the crypt to the 
 bell-tower, mostly as well as he can around his own house — which is 
 not so big as to trouble him, even with his eyes shut. 
 
 Questioned as to whether the side-walls of the Cathedral are single 
 or double — that is, with or without a ceiling of stone-work, leaving 
 a space between the two walls. Knowledge to be his own, and not 
 from hearsay. 
 
 Replies — [Note : "With a certain sullenness, and evident disincli- 
 nation to enter into the subject] that he does know of his own 
 knowledge, though he does not see that he is under any call to tell, 
 only that people, like the brats of boys, will not let him alone. The 
 walls are double. He has took Old 'Uns out of 'em. Isn't that 
 enough 1 
 
 Questioned as to whether he ever took out any Old 'Uns, as he 
 calls them, from between those walls [Note : Referring to coffins, 
 with very old remains, and in some instances effigies, discovered in 
 and about many portions of the Cathedral] previous to the time 
 before mentioned — the 24th December. 
 
 Replies — [Note : Not in the best temper. ] No. He never did ; 
 but what then 1 
 
 Questioned as to his ever having taken Mr. John Jasper through 
 the Cathedral, from the crypt to the tower, at night, and at the request 
 of Mr. Jasper. And if so, when. 
 
 Replies — [Note : Very sullenly.] Has done so. Once. He 
 disremembers exactly, but it may have been in the latter part of 
 December — a few days, as he thinks, before the blamed row that got 
 'em all into trouble and no thanks to 'em for it ! 
 
THE DATCHERY-DURDLES STATEMENT. 193 
 
 Questioned as to whether, on that occasion, he, Durdles, was 
 entirely sober. If not, whence his liquor was procured. 
 
 Replies — [Note. Half-angrily.] What business is it of anybody 
 but himself, whether Durdles was drunk or sober, that night ? Well, 
 if he must tell, drunk, likely. Remembers that he drank very little 
 though, and must have felt the liquor more than ordinary. But he 
 had a right to get as drunk as an owl, hadn't he 1 Liquor 1 — got 
 it out of Mr. Jasper's bottle. Where else 1 Does anybody think 
 Durdles fool enough to take people about, as a guide, finding 'em 
 tipple at the same time 1 Not often ! 
 
 Questioned as to whether, at any time, and if so, how long, during 
 that night's visit to the Cathedral, he lost sight of Mr. Jasper. 
 
 Replies — [Note. Reluctantly.] Yes. Went to sleep on the 
 steps, for a while — as who had a better right, he should like to 
 know? And when he was asleep, couldn't see John Jasper very 
 well, or any one else, could he 1 How long 1 — may be an hour. 
 
 Questioned as to where were the Cathedral keys at that time — to 
 wit, when he was asleep. 
 
 Replies — that he had them on him and in his bundle, so far as he 
 remembers. Found one of" them on the pavement, in front of him, 
 when he woke : supposes that he had dropped it. Well, what then 1 
 Nothing would hurt the key, would there 1 
 
 Questioned as to whether any person temporarily in possession of 
 the keys carried by him that night, could have gained access, by 
 their means, to the vestry, where the books of expense and other 
 registry are kept. 
 
 Replies — [Note. Wrfch symptoms of surprise, at some new 
 thought or idea.] Yes, he supposes that they could have done so, if 
 they had wanted to. But what has that to do with it ? Who would 
 want to go into the vestry at that time of night ? What are they all 
 driving at, he would like to know ? 
 
 Questioned [Note. After being duly informed, with a certain 
 necessary severity, that he is present to answer questions, not to ask 
 them ; and that not only he may be legally forced to answer what he 
 at present refuses, but also forfeit any compensation intended to be 
 given him for the time occupied] as to any knowledge he may 
 possess of the personality of a certain boy, age unknown, resident at 
 Cloisterham, and known by the name of " Deputy/' as to knowledge 
 of his real name, that of " Deputy " being evidently a sobriquet or 
 nickname. As to any employment of the boy " Deputy," by himself 
 or others. 
 
 [Note. Since this examination, a serious accident to the boy about 
 whom this inquiry is made, placing him out of the question in any 
 further proceedings, has made the answers immediately following 
 almost or quite useless. It has been thought a matter of duty, how- 
 ever, to preserve them, as possessing a certain interest to the 
 curious.] 
 
 Replies — that he does not know any other name for the brat who 
 calls himself " Deputy." He may know another name that he 
 ought to be cal'el by, but nobody dares do it, and most of 'em don't 
 
 o 
 
194 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 know it, he supposes ; and he is not going to tell what that name is, 
 at any price : leastwise, not till the time comes. [Note. Repetition, 
 as will be noticed, of previous mysterious phrases, before applied to 
 the, disappeared person Drood.] Employed the young varmint? Yes, 
 he has employed him, to stone him (Durdles) home o' nights, if any- 
 body would call that employment ! Engagement to that effect about 
 closing, owing to the young ruffian beginning to use bigger stones, 
 that hurt when they hit, and to some other openings for him, that 
 may keep him busy without stoning anybody ; and to his (Durdles') 
 intention not to be drunk so often — though he supposes [Note. Gruffly, 
 and as if with a certain sense of shame] that that is none of any- 
 body's business but Durdles'. As to other occupations of " Deputy," 
 knows that he has vittles — some kind, not much of 'em, but enough 
 to keep him alive, and clothes that is mostly rags — for services at the 
 " Travellers' Twopenny," in Gas Works Garding. [Note. Place of 
 location intended to be conveyed, the Garden adjoining the Cloister- 
 ham Gas "Works ; and the character of the house, as conveyed to the 
 initiated by its name, that of only charging twopence for a night's 
 lodging — the beds being laid upon ropes suspended to pulleys, which 
 ropes are violently dropped in the event of the lodger sleeping more 
 than his twopence worth and so late in the morning as to cause incon- 
 venience to the proprietor- — the lodger being thus thrown out on the 
 floor and so effectually awoke as well as informed of the time. This 
 information secured with some difficulty and a slight personal ex- 
 posure, without reference to Durdles, and preserved more as a 
 curiosity than with any certainty of its being in the case under 
 notice.] 
 
 Questioned (after being impressively informed that all the preceding 
 questions have been merely preliminary, though important, and that 
 upon the explicit answer to the one about to follow, depends all the 
 value of his information) as to any and all knowledge which he may 
 possess, of events occuring at or in the neighbourhood of Cloisterham 
 Cathedral, on the night of December 24th, and the succeeding day 
 (known as and called Christmas Day), in any way connected with 
 the presence or disappearance of the young man Edwin Drood, or 
 which he believes to have any possible connection with the crime 
 alleged to have been committed against that person. 
 
 Replies — [Note. After some moments of silence, and much 
 fumbling with the large buttons of the coat] that he has thought it 
 all over, and he won't ! Nobody can make him, as he believes, and 
 he is going to try it ! Durdles may have some secrets that he has 
 the right to keep — same as other property — and this may be one of 
 'em ! How would you like to be pumped — pumped — pumped — as if 
 you was a blessed old well and a spout into you 1 Not a word do 
 they get out of Durdles, about that, till he hears from him ! 
 
 [Note. Evidence satisfactory, at this stage of the examination, 
 that the habitual caution, not to call it sullenness, of the man 
 Durdles' nature, is combining with a certain rude sense of what he 
 considers honour, to prevent his speaking further or entering at all 
 upon the important point. Necessity consequently arising to employ, 
 
THE DATCHERY-DURDLES STATE5IENT. 195 
 
 at this time, means that Mr. Datchery would have much preferred to 
 hold in reserve, to create confidence in the mind of Durdles and 
 induce him to proceed. Exhibit consequently made to him, of 
 certain articles from a locked drawer (numbered 1 and 2 in, the 
 schedule accompanying) with information of their character, — and 
 also of a letter (Exhibit A of written papers in the case, as showing 
 authority), with reading aloud of the letter, its place of date and 
 signature — Durdles being nearly as incapable, under present physical 
 circumstances, of reading written hand as of making it. Following 
 this, manifestations of great surprise on the part of Durdles, not 
 unmingled with a certain gratification. Comparative willingness, 
 thenceforward, to relate all that he knows on this special point ; and 
 peculiarity as well as redundancy of expression quite as marked as 
 before.] 
 
 Questioned, in repetition, on the points to which reference has 
 before last been made : 
 
 Eeplies — [Note. Not sullenly, as before, but evidencing a certain 
 sense of his being defrauded, after all, in the taking away of his sole 
 proprietorship in an important secret.] That, now that he has split, 
 he doesn't see any use in anybody's keeping it. May be it is all right 
 to tell it now ; may be it isn't. As for himself, Durdles would have 
 kept it as close as one of the Old 'Uns, and there wasn't much danger 
 of them telling tales, even though they had lips ! [Note. Chuckling 
 a little grimly, and with the air of one who considers the Old 'Uns to 
 be held at a certain gratifying disadvantage.] Howsever— no help 
 for it now ! out with it, like a bad tooth ! 
 
 Had been satisfied, for a long time, that there was an inside wall 
 to the Cathedral. Found it out by measurements, and by making 
 up his mind that there wouldn't have been stone enough wasted — 
 leastwise by anybody but fools and them as had their own quarries 
 and labour to hand for nothing — to make the old shop so wide out- 
 side and so narrow inside. Thinks that old Tope [Note. The verger 
 thus disrespectfully alluded to, though not an old man, and quite 
 respectable] knowed it, too — only didn't want any one else to know 
 it, for fear of having litter and rubbish about, if Durdles was set to 
 looking into it a bit. 
 
 Well, there was a jolly old to- do about the Cathedral that Christmas 
 morning. Young Drood — so they said — had run away or been 
 murdered, and everybody was looking for him and worriting and 
 bothering that poor young fellow, Landless — he believes that was 
 the name. Besides the wind had been so high the night before, as 
 to blow off part of the roofing and let the rain into the tower ; so 
 that everybody as wasn't looking for Drood, was attending to that. 
 Service in the Cathedral was very short in the morning — everybody 
 scared, he supposes ; and there was none in the afternoon, all along 
 of the murder and the leak. • So the shop was shut up close and 
 tight. 
 
 Cannot state, explicitly, why he w^nt into the Cathedral after dark ■ 
 on Christmas evening, but did so. May have been one reason, and 
 may have been another — where's the consequence what sent him., so 
 
 o 2 
 
196 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 that he went 1 May be because he thought that the rain-leak from 
 the tower might have come down to the ceiling of the choir ; and 
 may be simply because he was in the habit of spookin' about. [Note. 
 Latter phrase not well understood by the examiner, but supposed to 
 refer to visiting lonely places at late 'hours, and to be used in the 
 sense of " haunting."] 
 
 Had his lantern with him, at that time, and his bundle. He 
 doesn't know that it is anybody's business what was in the bundle, 
 or why he had it there. Suppose that there was » bit of bread and 
 cheese and a sausage, with a drop of summat warm ; — and that he 
 may have intended to pick a bit and wet his throat there, where he 
 was disturbing nobody and nobody could disturb toi^any harm in 
 that ? If there was, he should like to know it. Had his lantern, 
 because you wouldn't like to go into such a dismal old hole, in the 
 dark, and break your shins over everything — would you ? 
 
 Well — he may as well make a clean breast of it, as he has heard 
 the gentlefolks say, he supposes. [Note. Much water, and some 
 soap, would be necessary to produce that effect on Mr. Durdles, in a 
 strictly literal sense.] He was sitting near the side-wall of the nave, 
 picking his bit, when he heard a cry that he could have sworn was 
 behind the wall. It frightened him — they might lie all they liked, 
 and say that such things don't frighten people ; but they do I Durdles 
 has been in a dark church, at midnight, about as often as any of 'em, 
 and he isn't a chicken, and knows 1 Had heard the same sound afore 
 — last Christmas, only that was Eve and this was Night. Had been 
 frightened then, and was frightened now. Don't care who knows it. 
 If anybody has any objections, let 'em come to Durdles ! 
 
 Believed at the time that there was spirits behind the wall, and 
 that they was keeping some kind of devil's holiday, because it was 
 Christmas- — though he had no idea why spirits should choose that time, 
 and hasn't any now. Nor does he pretend to explain how spirits can 
 make a noise — that is none of his business, any more than spme 
 other things are other people's. 
 
 Started to run away at first, and upset his lantern, but luckily (for 
 one anyhow) the candle didn't go out. Just then heard the cry 
 again, in the same place, and somehow more like the voice of a man 
 and less like a spirit. "Wasn't so frightened then, but that he had 
 brains enough to go up close to the wall and listen. Heard a man's 
 voice, faintly saying " Help ! help ! " and some other words that he 
 couldn't understand. Durdles isn't a fool [Note. Witness's remark] 
 always, though some of the bigwigs think so ! He can put that and 
 that together, Durdles can, nigh as well as that old bag o' wind, 
 Sapsea ! [Note. Disrespectful reference, recorded with regret, to 
 the worthy Mayor of Cloisterham, at whose hands Mr. Durdles may 
 have suffered some past indignity.] He ! he ! Had heard old 
 Sapsea do that, more than once, and thought that he'd do it. Man 
 missing— nobody can find him — man here that nobody knows any- 
 thing about — why not the same 1 That's how I put it ! He ! 
 he ! [Note. Laughter grim, dissonant, and by no means pleasant.] 
 Well, Durdles sot down his bundle, took his lantern, went below, 
 
THE DATCHERY-DURDLES STATEMENT. 197 
 
 to what they call the Punishment Cell, on the crypt-floor, and was 
 back with a crow and pick. [Note. Understood to be short for 
 " pickaxe " and " crowbar," and to have no reference to the bird of 
 that name, or to what would be properly called plucking it], before 
 many of the young chaps would have got to the door. 
 
 Listened, and thought that he heard the cry once more. Then 
 all was still, and he was worse frightened than he had been at 
 first. But made up his mind to go through that wall, and know 
 what there was behind it, if he worked a month and dug down the 
 old rookery [Note. Another disrespectful name for the Cathedral, 
 used by Durdles, possibly on account of the black coats of the clergy, 
 though some other and unknown cause may exist] altogether". Flung 
 off coat and went to work. 
 
 Has no present idea how long he worked — what's the consequence 
 how long 1 The stones was big, the mortar was hard, and the wall 
 seemed that thick as it had been built to use up all the material in 
 a hundred mile. Got a hole through, after ever so long, and the 
 sweat a pouria' so that there didn't need any leak from the tower. 
 When he felt the cold air on his sweaty face, had a new scare [Note. 
 " Skeer," as pronounced], but called out in a minute. Heard no 
 cry, but directly a groan. Thought, then, that it might be a spirit 
 dying, and that that might be something 'orrid ; and started to run 
 away again. Durdles isn't ashamed to tell when he is scared : 
 may be some of 'em as is would be scared oftener ! Did not run 
 very far — not he ! Come back, went to work again, and soon rolled 
 out two big stones that let him through. "Went in, with the lantern, 
 a-shiverin' and a-shakin'. [Note. His peculiar expression, and pre- 
 served, as seeming graphic, even if commonplace.] And found 
 
 What's the use o' going on any further after that letter 1 Isn't all 
 the rest, now, clearer than the light was in that there hole 1 Yet if 
 he must, he must ; but any one that says Durdles does it to bounce 
 about anything he has done — lies, that's all ! 
 
 Well, he was there. Bruised, bloody, and half-dead — knowin' no 
 more how he got there than, than a babby. Durdles didn't know 
 him at first, spite of thinking of him afore. Must have used up his 
 last strength a-cryin' and a-groanin', for he could only moan then. 
 Durdles had a little left in his bottle : what would lie have done, if 
 Durdles had been one of them dry-bones old 'stainers [Note. Sup- 
 posed meaning, " abstainers "], with nothing but water in his bottle, 
 to chill him worse, and he half-dead? Not that Durdles doesn't 
 know what an injury to him, and to everybody, he supposes, too 
 much is ; and he thinks that if so many of the people at Cloisterham 
 hadn't looked at him out of the corners of their eyes, and disrespected 
 him so much, may be things might have been different. But, then, 
 who knows 1 — and who cares ? 
 
 Yes ; he not only managed to let a little summat down hint, after 
 dragging him through the hole, but by-and-by a few mouthfuls of 
 food, and then he could sit up and talk — very faint and low, like a 
 child, but so that Durdles could understand him. No matter what he 
 said — Durdles is not going to tell that, any way. Yes ; Durdles did 
 
198 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 help him out, by-and-by when he could walk ; and keep him where 
 nobody seed him that night ; and help him away. Doesn't know 
 where, and doesn't know why, except that it seemed to be carrying 
 out one of his cranks. If it had been him, Durdles, he'd have made 
 stir enough about Cloisterham, 'stead of going away — wouldn't he ! 
 
 Inquiry repeated — What's the use of sayin' any more 1 Durdles 
 kept his secret, like a man, he thinks, till now they come and worm 
 it out of him ! Doesn't see why he should have told all this, even 
 with that letter and them things, as must make other people know 
 more than himself. And now he supposes that it '11 be all over, and 
 he'll be drug up somewhere, for goin' and doin' what he needn't. 
 [Note. Assured, at this stage, that he need have no present fear on 
 that point.] Werry well, then — Durdles don't want to be drug up, 
 nor to say any more, if it's all the samejto the big-wigs ; and so he 
 will shut trap and be as dumb as a blessed old oyster. 
 
 (Signed) 
 
 [Note. No reason to believe, on the part of the examiner, that Mr. 
 Durdles makes the above somewhat peculiar signature (the first 
 letter seeming at once like an S, an F and a f) — with any forgetful 
 fancy that his name is Frederick or Francis, or any desire to adopt 
 the well-known Romish episcopal form (as " f John ") ; but rather, 
 want of habit of signing, with possibly some faint recollections of 
 periods of peculiar incapacity at which he may have been obliged to 
 sign with a mere mark or X]- 
 
 Attest, as witness to both relation and signature, 
 
 Richard Datchery. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 BOWS AMONG THE DEAD MEN. 
 
 What induces Stony Durdles to invite Mr. John Jasper to a second 
 night-visit to the Cathedral, something after the manner of that paid 
 
 so many months ago, and yet very different hi many particulars 
 
 may be set down as one of those problems needing more than a 
 single effort for solution. And the remark will almost equally apply 
 to the inducement which may present itself to Mr. Jasper, leading 
 him to accept the invitation gruffly and yet forcibly tendered by the 
 stone-mason. One might suppose, with a knowledge of all circum- 
 
00 
 
 W 
 
 Q 
 ft! 
 
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN. 199 
 
 stances, that Durdles, whose absolute fear of Mr. Jasper has already 
 been shown in the unwillingness with which he opens his mouth to 
 canvass a single action of the Choir-Master, and with his inevitable 
 belief that on a previous visit the Choir-Master drugged him and 
 temporarily took possession of his keys for some purpose of doubt- 
 ful legality — possibly nothing less than the moulding of them for 
 duplication, — might be at least slow to put himself into complete 
 isolation with the man he fears, late at night, in the old Cathedral, 
 where he has heard ghosts of screams, and screams that were not 
 those of ghosts. And one would correspondingly doubt the proba- 
 bility of Mr. Jasper, who might be supposed to have enjoyed quite 
 enough of the Cathedral, at night, placing himself again within those 
 walls, at the ghostly hour, to please the whim of any man — much 
 less at the wish of a man holding no more commanding position than 
 Stony Durdles. 
 
 Yet so it is. Durdles, shambling up to the Choir-Master, dinner- 
 bundle in hand and the lime and dust more tban ordinarily thick on 
 his habiliments — on a certain afternoon not long following Mr. 
 Jasper's baulked attempt at exploration, — has informed the latter of 
 the result of long and patient investigation in one hitherto partially 
 unexplored segment of the cryptic circle, where his hammer has told 
 him of solid in hollow and hollow in solid still within, leading to the 
 certainty that upon opening, which labour he intends to enter upon 
 that very night, when he is sure of immunity from disturbance by 
 them brats of boys — he will come upon one or more of Old 'Uns in 
 such a state of remote antiquity, that there will probably be nothing 
 remaining but the emptiest of empty stone boxes, with the very in- 
 scriptions crumbled away in damp and mould. Additionally, he has 
 invited the Choir-Master to be present at this solemn ceremony of 
 exhumation — remarking that some of the others would give their 
 eyes to see the Old 'Uns come tumblin' out in that condition, only 
 Durdles won't let 'em, at no price, — and generally treating the oppor- 
 tunity as 'one which he could not be induced to offer to any other 
 than this highly favoured person, whom he seems to consider, from 
 past confidences on such subjects, as an expert in the difficult line of 
 Looking-On and a consulting authority of great weight in estimating 
 the present value of the Missing. 
 
 To this, Mr. Jasper has at first replied with that languor natural 
 to a man whose enfeebled condition and fast-greying hair have now 
 become matter of much pitying comment in Cloisterham — doubting 
 whether the dampness of the crypt may not be more or less dan- 
 gerous, as likely to affect organs of the throat; and whether the 
 services of the following morning, in the Cathedral, may not demand 
 all the strength of his system, without subtracting from it by late 
 hours. But something in the downcast face of Durdles, at this 
 declination, may have moved him to reconsider ; and there may have 
 been other reasons, rendering him feverishly anxious as to any ex- 
 plorations under the perpendicular line of a certain part of the 
 Cathedral, and leading him to prefer being present and actually 
 witnessing the result. At all events, after a single refusal, he has 
 
200 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 accepted the invitation, for ten o'clock of that night, when Mr. 
 Durdles has considered all unfriendly influences as surest to be tem- 
 porarily at rest, and the Old 'Uns, however constitutionally averse to 
 being disturbed in their rest of centuries, as likely to offer less than 
 their average of dodging, hiding, and other passive resistance. 
 
 The night is a close and sultry one, calculated to make the prospect 
 of an hour or two in a cool vault less objectionable than at other 
 periods, — when, at the appointed hour, Durdles stumbles up the 
 postern-stair of the Gate-House and makes known to the occupant 
 that he is in readiness. Mr. Jasper is in waiting, and joins him at 
 once — after taking the precaution against throat-affection, to throw 
 around his neck a scarf hanging on the back of a chair, and button- 
 ing around him his surtout a little more closely than any man would 
 be likely to do who was not prevented feeling the heat by absolute 
 exhaustion of the vital forces. He seems in better spirits than of 
 late, however, as he comes down the stair and pauses for a moment 
 under the archway, while Durdles makes some exchange in the modes 
 of carrying his dinner-bundle (refuge against possibly long imprison- 
 ment and approaching starvation in the vaults, and heavy now with 
 keys and hammers), and his unlighted lantern (unlighted until the 
 time for use, because he naturally does not wish to attract the atten- 
 tion of them brats of boys, and either surround the Cathedral with a 
 hooting and stone-hurling crowd or afford the Old 'Tins much 
 unbidden and unwelcome company). 
 
 They reach the Cathedral without the misadventure of meeting 
 any one — dreaded by both, from very different causes. Durdles un- 
 locks the door leading into the crypt, and they enter. Is it some- 
 thing of the chill of the subterranean apartment, spite of his 
 buttoned coat and scarf, that strikes into the frame of Mr. Jasper 
 and makes him shiver, as with an ague, the moment they are within 1 
 — or is there remaining a frightened recollection of another and a 
 late night when he. opened the same door, unaccompanied by Durdles, 
 and with a different key — flying away from a Horror that had no 
 name, and with a Fear to which he has never since been able to give 
 definite shape 1 Possibly the latter may have more to do with the 
 long shudder creeping over him than the former. But he masters it 
 very fairly, all things considered ; for he is not alone in the crypt 
 now, and the terror is more or less a thing of the past. He knows 
 that, whatever it was affecting him, no such second weakness can 
 assail him : he knows that never again, within the walls of that 
 Cathedral — come what may — will he be found so unnerved and driven 
 out of himself as on that occasion. And it is exceedingly well to be 
 sure of this always, in places where the peculiarly painful has hap- 
 pened to us : recurrences bearing something of the character of 
 relapses in disease, and being often more fatal than the original 
 affliction. It is well to know that fears have so died within us, and 
 assurances so strengthened, and our surrounding world so changed for 
 the better, than the once-deadly fears and consuming remorses can 
 never come back to us in their past strength — never ! never ! 
 
 Durdles necessarily pays little attention to all this, being occupied 
 
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN. 201 
 
 with the lighting of his lantern, and the various transfers of por- 
 terage, settings-down, and takings-up of the dinner-bundle rendered 
 necessary in that operation. The lantern is in full glow, however, 
 quite before John Jasper has shaken off the last lingering remains of 
 his unpleasant chill ; and the mouldy columns, the damp vaulted 
 roof, and the dusky monuments at the circumference of the crypt, 
 are all thrown once more into that dismal prominence remembered 
 so shudderingly. 
 
 " Now then, Mr. Jarsper," says Durdles, when the illuminatory 
 arrangements are thoroughly complete. " Now then, come along over 
 here, where Durdles has been a-findin' of 'em. The Old 'Uns has 
 been waitin' for Durdles this long time, to be let out and aired, 
 though they make a row, sometimes, when he does come to 'em. 
 Durdles has heard 'em, more times than he's fingers and toes, 
 grumbling out through the walls, after I'd been a-poundin' and 
 a-hammerin' for a matter of an hour or two pretty near 'em : 
 ' Durdles ! — why the devil don't you hurry along 1 '■ and : ' Have you 
 any idea, Durdles, old man, how long we've been a-lyin' here, waitin' 
 for you 1 ' But they don't always play fair — the Old 'Uns don't ; for 
 sometimes, just as I come to 'em, they move, here, or there, or yonder, 
 and give Durdles another job of diggin' afore he gets to 'em." 
 
 Enlivened by this slightly imaginative sally, — much more to be 
 expected from unknown Durdles the Sculptor, than from known and 
 lime-dusted sottish old Durdles the Stone-Mason, — Mr. Jasper 
 naturally recovers his spirits, shakes off his besetting chill with less 
 difficulty than might otherwise have been experienced, and ac- 
 companies the explorer to the scene of his congenial labours. 
 
 " There, you see how it is — just as I told you afore ! " comments 
 Durdles, recalling some of the technical information communicated 
 so long ago, that it may possibly have been forgotten, and meanwhile 
 repeating a few of those scientific taps with the hammer, already 
 believed to have made discovery certain. " You hear that, Mr. 
 Jarsper ! The wall's solid there, and nothing else than solid- — stone, 
 three or four foot deep, may be more. And here it's solid again. But 
 here — just you listen to that, though you mayn't have Durdles' ears 
 for them little twists o' sound that tells him so much ! Don't you 
 hear something hollow and thumpy like, with a bit of jingle 1 
 Durdles knows that as if it was a organ, and he a-touchin' of the 
 keys. Just you hold the lantern, so, and give Durdles a chance, and 
 he'll show one of them blessedest Old 'Uns as ever was, afore many 
 minutes ! " 
 
 Thereupon, Mr. Jasper consenting to be light-holder for the nonce, 
 and thus a sort of apprentice to the great artificer — the Stony One 
 throws off the coat with the big horn buttons ; removes the dinner- 
 bundle, lightened by the weight of his hammer, to a safer distance, 
 scanned and measured with a critical eye, as if a matter of half- 
 inches ; and sets to work with the hammer, and with a crowbar and 
 pick, no doubt left conveniently on the spot in waiting, at the time 
 of his last preliminary visit. 
 
 He makes excellent and very rapid progress, in this instance. If 
 
202 john jasper's secret. 
 
 Mr. Jasper was really more of an expert and less of an apprentice 
 in the disentombment of Old 'Tins, he might be aware with what 
 singular ease the mortar seems to fall away from between the great 
 stones, and with what remarkable facility the stones themselves are 
 removed. He might even doubt, in that non-supposable case, whether 
 the sanctuary that Durdles is invading has not before been invaded, 
 and the once-removed stone-work replaced : Whether it can be 
 possible that five, or six, or seven hundred years have done no more 
 to cement the mass of stone and mortar into something almost im- 
 possible to separate. But then, even if he should fall under such an 
 idea, the very natural reflection might follow, that possibly time 
 disintegrates quite as often as it cements — that time and stone-work 
 may grow weaker, instead of stronger, with age, after a certain lapse 
 — and that the Cathedral itself may tumble down, at no remote 
 period, from the same natural decay that sends an old man to his grave. 
 At all events, he gives no sign of being dissatisfied with the style of 
 disinterment practised in his presence, but holds the lantern patiently, 
 even if without much interest ; and Durdles works on, with abundant 
 energy and determination, aided by occasional recurrence to something 
 mysteriously liquid and not proffered for distribution, in the dinner- 
 bundle. 
 
 Which energy and determination are after a time rewarded — as 
 they always must be, if we are to credit the assertions of goody-goody 
 books and copy-heads. Durdles, when no very long time has elapsed, 
 rolls out two or three stones of large size, but singularly easy to 
 extract from their bed, and then, muttering triumphantly: "Here 
 they are, Mr. Jarsper ! Durdles knows his business ! Here's an Old 
 'Un as is an Old 'Un ! " lunges forward with his whole body, as if 
 having found an excellent opportunity to entomb himself in a dis- 
 tinguished manner, and being anxious to embrace it. 
 
 Mr. Jasper, looking in through what remains of the large hole 
 after the rear-dimensions of Durdles have filled up a part of it, — and 
 then squeezing himself in, with an unpleasant fascination which he 
 can no more resist than endure, — at first sees literally nothing, under 
 the dim light of the lantern, at that period held in the unscientific 
 manner to be expected from a novice in the art of midnight torch- 
 bearing. 
 
 Durdles, his own view no doubt obstructed by the same awkward- 
 ness, at once addresses his assistant and guest as thus : 
 
 " Hold the light down a little nearer, Mr. Jarsper — and with a 
 slope — so. Who could see in that way, Durdles would like to know ! 
 There — that is better. And now let's obsarve whether the Old 'Un 
 is jolly at being wisited at this time o' night by two persons o' 
 quality ! " 
 
 Mr. Jasper, with a feeling compounded of nearly as many ingre- 
 dients as those composing the hell-brotb of Hecate, and not much 
 more appetizing in their character — fulfils the request as to the light, 
 and accompanies the service with the unwilling use of his eyes. He 
 expects, no doubt, to see, by that dim light, a heap of dust, a few 
 bones, or a bundle of discoloured rags, and possibly a tress of hair — 
 
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN. 203 
 
 all that the most magnificent of us are likely to present to the prying 
 gaze after a few hundreds or even a few score of years, entomb us 
 with what pomp and show they will, and wrap us with what robes 
 and insignia of power they may ! But he sees something appreciably 
 different ; and so does Durdles, if his stupid faculties are not too 
 slow for taking in the impressive at a glance, or too entirely stunned 
 and overcome by the natural surprise of the revelation. 
 
 It is then that the Choir-Master sees and recognizes what has 
 occurred at the removal of the last large stone by Durdles, and what 
 are the actual surroundings of the discovery. He sees that the recess 
 thus disclosed is one of considerable size, with a roof of very rough 
 stone, but carefully enough arched to indicate that it has once been 
 open to the crypt, as a known recess in the thick wall, or only closed 
 by a door, as a vault. Very old, unquestionably, and dating back 
 to the very earliest monkish times — with a shudder in the mere 
 thought of what may have taken place within and around it, in 
 those days when one religion made foxes of the people of another, 
 driving them to refuge in the caves of the earth, and metamorphosing 
 them into wolves in the very act. But this is the least ; for, looking 
 down at the bottom of the recess, he sees that the removal of the 
 last stone, at the moment of Durdles' triumphant cry, has allowed 
 the side of a worm-eaten coffin of dark wood to fall away outwards, 
 leaving exposed what again recalls the monkish period with most 
 ghastly force and prominence. Durdles, benevolently anxious that 
 his guest and neophyte shall lose nothing of a spectacle so instructive, 
 himself assists in guiding the rays of light in the proper direction ; 
 so that no detail escapes the unwilling and horrified gazer. 
 
 Scarcely the withered old Count of Nassau-Saalberg and his child- 
 daughter lying in their tarnished lace and jewels, with death making 
 horrible mockery of life in faces and figures, under the glass of grey 
 St. Thomas's in p6or old battered Strasbourg, could embody more of 
 the terrible than that which here meets the eye. For the skeleton 
 remains of a monk are here, some remnant of his black robe yet 
 showing in the faded and discoloured rags, and his profession made 
 plain by the rosary and crucifix yet hanging from what has once 
 been the waist. Some bones protrude from the mass, at the height 
 of the breast, as if the ribs have not all given way ; and at the place 
 of the head lies a skull, grinning more horribly than Yorick's. And 
 yet this is not all or the most notable : Murder is plain as Death. 
 For on the rags of the breast lies a discoloured parchment, once 
 charged with what dreadful message of hate, vengeance or tyranny, 
 who shall guess ? — and through that paper, and through what has 
 been the body, between the ribs, and possibly at the very spot where 
 once beat the heart — a long stiletto, with a red stone still reflecting 
 lurid rays at the end of the hilt, has been driven through, so far that 
 the point remains in the bottom of the coffin and holds it upright. 
 
 It would not be easy to describe the effect of this discovery on the 
 two persons present. Durdles certainly cannot be in the eyery-day 
 habit of exhuming Old 'Uns of this special pattern ; so that his 
 surprise (the stupid measure of it being understood, and it being 
 
204 john jasper's secret. 
 
 taken for granted that he has not seen it before, and used it under 
 instruction) — is a thing of course. And .it is equally certain that 
 Mr. Jasper, only in his novitiate in the line of disentombing, is by 
 no means prepared for this somewhat startling proof of how, and 
 above all, why, they buried people so profoundly at some unknown 
 period in the past. Does he shudder, so that the lantern shakes in 
 his grasp ? Does he turn so sick, in heart and head, that he might 
 be on the deck of a plunging ship in a gale at sea ? Does he see 
 fifty murdered monks, with the faded revelation of their doom on 
 their breasts, lying there with poniards through their hearts, and 
 bearing silent witness to long-past crimes of such atrocity, that the 
 very stones of the Cathedral have been unable to hide them beyond 
 their due period 1 
 
 Does the hiding away of the evidences of guilty, within the sacred 
 precincts of the religious-house, assume a new shape at this dread 
 moment, to him who has so often intoned the solemn prayer, that 
 the hearts of men may be inclined to Keep His Law 1 Do the feeble 
 knees knock and the overstrained sinews nearly give way, in the 
 presence of Mystery, Murder, and Sacrilege, so awfully combined ? 
 And even if all these, what is John Jasper more or less than mortal, 
 that such should be the result of an ordeal passing the peine fort et 
 dure in hard and cruel severity % 
 
 But Durdles speaks. 
 
 " "Well," he says, surveying the rusted dagger with stupid, though 
 very natural wonder, after removing it by a forcible pull from its 
 adherence to the bottom of the coffin — "well, that beats Durdles, 
 Mr. Jarsper ! If they haven't gone and murdered one of them Old 
 'Uns as was a Monk, and then hid him away here ! Would you 
 have believed that, Mr. Jarsper — that any of 'em, as was the biggest 
 willains on this earth, would have hid away the Monk as they had 
 killed here ? Durdles has seen some strange things, as he's been 
 a-tellin' you, hereaways and thereaways ; but that beats him ! " 
 
 Mr. Jasper, stone cold as if he might be the Monk lying at the 
 bottom of the worm-eaten coffin, with a weapon through his heart — 
 yet manages to reply : 
 
 " You may have been mistaken, Durdles. The dagger may merely 
 have been stuck down beside him, not through him ; and so there 
 may have been no crime — only an odd fancy. Don't you see 1 " 
 
 But this relief to the situation, which Mr. Jasper tries to impart, 
 from some dim idea that the place is rendered less terrible thereby, 
 and the thought of an overwhelming judgment for all men thus 
 carried farther away — this touches Durdles in a tender point, that of 
 his knowledge of exact locations ; and he gives vent to a scoff of 
 such gruff and severe character as might unpleasantly affect a man 
 of stronger nerves than his companion. 
 
 " Hoot ! Just as if Durdles was the old fool they call him, and 
 didn't know whether he picked up a stick or pulled it out from a 
 matter of two foot in the ground ! No — besides that parchment bit, 
 as means something if there was any one as could read it — don't you 
 go to teachin' Durdles his business, if it's all the same to you I 
 
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN. 205 
 
 Durdles knows, just as well as if he seen it a-doin', that that Old 
 'Un, as was a Monk, had that dagger druv through . him, and was 
 hid away here by some willain of a murderer who didn't care whether 
 he muggered up his wictims in a church or a hayrick. That's Durdles' 
 opinion, Mr. Jarsper ; and it's Durdles' opinion, and he don't care 
 who knows it — that the devil's give him a double roastin' afore this, 
 for mixin' up things in that way as wasn't respectable ! " 
 
 Mr. Jasper makes a praiseworthy effort to command himself and 
 to answer ; but that effort is a failure. There are some things that 
 no ordinary man, with ordinary nerves and sinews, can be expected 
 to bear ; and this may be one of them. "What influence is it possess- 
 ing old stupid, blundering Durdles, to exhibit sights and run on 
 with words calculated worst to shake the equanimity of the unde 
 tected criminal ? How could he come nearer to pursuing the 
 straightforward course towards that end, if he had been employed 
 by some scheming Datchery to act over again the discovery of some 
 already exhumed remains of peculiar horror, for the very purpose of 
 bringing the victim to the proper state of mind (if mind it can still 
 be called !) for something more terrible yet to follow 1 
 
 Mr. Jasper is tired of this very soon. He expresses as much in 
 words not to be mistaken. 
 
 " Durdles, I have had enough of this ! " he says, rallying by a strong 
 effort. " Take your lantern, and show me the way out of this hole, 
 and out of the crypt ; and be good enough not to trouble me again 
 with the digging out of what you call your ' Old 'TJns.' " 
 
 " "What, Mr. Jarsper ! not tired a'ready ! " exclaims the other, in 
 natural surprise. " Want to go, and leave Durdles all alone with 
 such interestin' old fellers as this, and all the waluables he's a-pickin 
 up 1 Why, see this knife — it's worth seven-and-six, if it's worth a 
 ha'penny, and Durdles is the heir of unfortunit Holy Father deceased, 
 name and circumstances of the cruel event unknown." 
 
 " Come, I say, show me out, and then you may come back and 
 dig for a dozen more. I have told you that / have had enough of 
 it 1 " repeats Mr. Jasper, sternly, even if the voice shakes a little. 
 
 Durdles, seeing that the other is thoroughly in earnest, not only 
 falls into his views, but adopts them with singular facility (as is not 
 unfrequently the manner of men). 
 
 " Well, if you will go, so will Durdles," he says, taking up his 
 pick and crow. " One of 'em, of that sort, is enough for one night, 
 isn't it, Mr. Jarsper 1 Wouldn't do to find all the waluables at once, 
 would it?" 
 
 Mr. Jasper thinks that it would not, and himself again taking the 
 lantern, steps out from the dusky vault into the crypt. Durdles 
 follows, shouldering the two heavier tools as if for a tramp of miles, 
 and necessarily knocking them against everything around and above 
 him. 
 
 " Seeing that he's not a-going to work any more to-night, Durdles '11 
 put these away in the little empty cell yonder, by the door, as we 
 go," he suggests, in explanation of the shouldering ; which might 
 otherwise be unpleasant to his companion, under recent reminders 
 
206 john jasper's secret. 
 
 and the idea that he was taking a promenade with a person quite 
 prepared to bury as well as brain him at any moment. 
 
 It is to be supposed that Mr. Jasper accepts this explanation, and 
 that he proceeds towards the door of the crypt with a certain sort of 
 pleasure — confident that, whatever has been, the worst of it is over. 
 Again it may be said — such confidence is very pleasant : it is so good 
 to know that misfortunes and trials are ended and disturbing influences 
 permanently at rest ! 
 
 The door of the little cell to which Durdles has referred stands at 
 only eight to twelve feet from the bottom of the stone steps leading 
 up to the outer door of the crypt. How it may have acquired the 
 name of the Punishment Cell, no one knows with any certainty ; 
 though the explanation is probably accepted that at some old time 
 when formal asceticism reigned more severely than at present, specially 
 devout brothers may have used it as a spot for administering their 
 self-discipline, or others employed it to discipline therm by means of 
 confinement and a little starvation. Be this as it may, the Punishment 
 Cell it is called ; and it is neither visited at all, except by Mr. Tope 
 and some of his temporary queues of explorers, nor used for any 
 purpose more important than the deposit of some small trifle of dis- 
 carded material or light lumber. 
 
 It is in this cell that Durdles, no doubt in the habit of appro- 
 priating at will all the unappropriated, has declared his intention of 
 leaving his crow and pick ; and it is at the door of this cell that the 
 stone-mason pauses with those tools, and the Choir-Master witlj his 
 lantern, on the way to the crypt entrance. There is no lock upon 
 the heavy planks studded with rusty iron nail-heads ; and Durdles — 
 the while Mr. Jasper stands very near and kindly lifts the lantern to 
 allow him the better to step within and drop his encumbrances — 
 Durdles lays hand on the heavy iron fastenings and swings back the 
 door on its creaking hinges. Thrown full in at the door, the light 
 of the lantern falls broad on the face and figure of a man standing 
 immediately within — silent, immovable, the eyes seeming to have no 
 more motion than the lips, and the left hand thrust into the breast 
 of the coat. If ever spectre really came back to earth, from the 
 confines of that dim and distant realm of which we speak most and 
 understand least, of all the territory known to human thought — then 
 John Jasper sees, at this moment, Edwin Drood, in face, figure, 
 dress, and every appliance, precisely as he saw him last in life, except 
 in that fearful closing-hour ! 
 
 It has come at last — that dread Thing expected with a horrible 
 expectation, feared with a sickening fear. No longer as one of many 
 indistinct phantoms, distant even if marked in shape and individuality. 
 It has come to him now in the awful prominence of Banquo to Mac- 
 beth, though he has been prevented going to It. He sees the blood- 
 less cheek, marks the hollow and sunken eye, notes the dread 
 etheriality of face, figure, and clothing, through which the light seems 
 to shine instead of merely shining upon them. His brain, already 
 overwrought by the spectacle of the vault, and so ready for any new 
 development of the terrible, sucks in the awful truth with instan- 
 
Q 
 O 
 O 
 
 a 
 
 w 
 
 fe 
 o 
 
 H 
 
 o 
 
 a 
 o 
 
 w 
 
 H 
 
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN. 207 
 
 taneous readiness. He realizes, as lie has never before found occasion 
 to do, the infinite distance, in awe, between the most ghastly detail 
 of the charnel-house, however connected with crime, and the near 
 presence of one who must come from the other world and hold 
 immunity from all those natural laws defending us against beings of 
 flesh. One who can enter through bolted doors and disappear through 
 barred windows — who can mock the closed blind and disregard the 
 drawn bed-curtain — who can assail without danger, and terrify to 
 madness without the knowledge of fear ! 
 
 It has come ! When will It leave him again now, except for 
 those intervals that must always be filled with looking for its re- 
 appearance t Never, until the hour of death — so much seems 
 certain ; and after that 
 
 He has an impulse to speak — to express to his companion the 
 horror of the phantom, as well as to ask if other eyes than his own 
 can see it. But a single glance at the stolid face of the stone-mason, 
 who so evidently, looking in the same direction, sees nothing beyond 
 the common, — and the sound of his gruff voice, asking in surprise : 
 
 " Whatever's wrong with you, Mr. Jarsper 1 " , these tend instantly 
 to destroy the last hope of the spectre being other than a personal 
 visitant to himself, at the same time that they recall one portion of 
 his self-command. He may die, but he will not place himself at the 
 mercy of others by speaking ! — of so much of his fate, at least, he 
 will be master i 
 
 Then he tries to remove hia gaze, but he cannot — any more than 
 the charmed bird can escape the eye of the basilisk. A moment of 
 this, which seems centuries, and to be occurring in some theatre large 
 as the Cathedral of his ordinary spectre-haunting, — and then comes 
 the relief. All the blood in his racked body flies to the head, as if 
 in rescue of the overwrought brain. Instantly the spectre assumes 
 colossal dimensions, with all its details exaggerated even beyond that 
 increase; then Durdles, beside him and seen with his side-sight, 
 becomes a grim monster only less large and terrible ; then a red mist 
 surrounds both, and him, changing to a sea of blood that whelms and 
 drowns him. He clasps hands to his throat — strangles — totters — ■ 
 falls forward. 
 
 Stony Durdles has another task than seeking for Old 'Tins, for the 
 succeeding half-hour ; and the dinner-bundle may be obliged to yield 
 something to other lips than his own, before the next detail of his 
 task is quite accomplished. What he has to do, however, he per- 
 forms with that stupid persistence partially justifying the boast that 
 " Durdles knows his work : " and there is a living man supported 
 away from the crypt-door of the Cathedral, at the end of that half- 
 hour, — instead of a dead one lying, as there might so easily be, un- 
 coffined, but otherwise ready for the solemn service to roll through 
 the grey arches above, in the morning. 
 
208 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 NEVILLE LANDLESS's VOCATION. 
 
 " You are looking better — I may say, almost well ; and you cannot 
 think how happy it makes me to see you looking the bright, brave 
 young man, again, that you were on the day when I first saw you ! " 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle was speaking, in his cheery and pleasant voice, the 
 moment after entering Neville Landless's apartment at Staple Inn, on 
 one of those calls not long before so objectionable to the China Shep- 
 herdess, — but now, it is to be presumed, after the full explanation 
 between her son and herself, no more regarded either with the same 
 fear or the same dislike. Some days had passed, however, since the 
 last visit of the Minor Canon, making the event of something beyond 
 the ordinary importance, from the understood anxiety of both. 
 
 Neville, who had sprung up to meet his friend and mentor, with a 
 marked exhibition of the old alacrity, had his hand in his, at the 
 moment ; and it is possible that something in the feeling of that 
 hand — its entire freedom from fever or nervous trembling — may 
 have induced Mr. Crisparkle to speak more hopefully than he might 
 otherwise have done. 
 
 " Ah, do you think so, sir ? " the young fellow responded, showing 
 at once gratification with the remark and the manner of its making. 
 " Mentally or bodily — which do you mean, sir ? — or may I hope that 
 you think me improved in both 1 " 
 
 "In both, decidedly, Neville," was the reply of Mr. Crisparkle, 
 taking the chair that had been offered so cordially through that best 
 of invitations, an earnest motion of head and hand, — and replying by 
 making a corresponding signal that his host should resume his own 
 seat. " In both, certainly ; though in point of fact, with you, to say 
 the one is to say the other. You have not been ill, in body, at all, 
 except as the mental distress to which you have been subjected, has 
 naturally produced a certain effect on the physical nerves, that are 
 really, as you know, servants of the mental organization." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so," replied the young man, with something like 
 one of his old sighs, eliciting from the Minor Canon a good-natured 
 warning. 
 
 " Tut ! tut ! none of that, my dear young fellow — none of that ! 
 or I may be obliged to retract my favourable opinion ! " 
 
 "No, sir, I think there will be no occasion for recalling the very 
 kind expression. I assure you the sigh was much more a matter of 
 habit than one of feeling. I was merely indulging a momentary 
 shame over my own weakness, and on the point of apologizing for it 
 — nothing more." 
 
 " You need not even do that, I fancy," pursued the Minor Canon, 
 pleasantly, as he had before spoken. " What you meant to say, I 
 
NEVILLE LANDLESS'S VOCATION. 209 
 
 suppose, if I had not interrupted you, was that you were ashamed of 
 having allowed the mental to produce such an effect on the physical ? 
 Am I right? Yes? — As a pendant to that, then, you would 
 probably have gone on to say that man, as a man, ought to be able 
 to control the mental, as he cannot always the physical — and that 
 consequently there was more of disgrace attached to anyone allow- 
 ing the mental to be overcome, than to one in whom the physical 
 only succumbed. Have I stated your idea correctly ? " 
 
 " Quite correctly, sir. You are kind enough to say that you think 
 me very materially recovered from whatever may have been affecting 
 me. I am happy to believe that, you do not misjudge — that I am 
 nearer what I should be, in every regard, than I was one month since, 
 and very much nearer than three months ago. But you must allow 
 me to be more ashamed of having been off my balance at all, through 
 some influence temporarily debilitating the mind, than if I had been 
 merely suffering, during the same period, with a broken leg or a 
 fever — must you not, sir t " 
 
 " Humph ! " replied Mr. Crisparkle. " You are undoubtedly much 
 better, Neville. Nothing proves that fact more conclusively than 
 the very clear disposition to use your reasoning powers — not to say 
 your argumentative ones. No — pray do not object to my word, or 
 make any disclaimer. But allow me to show you that even your 
 argument is not without a flaw.. You are inclined, I see, still, to 
 confound the fact with the cause. Now the cause may be something 
 to induce shame — the fact one involving no shame whatever. Why 
 more shame in a mental affection than in a bodily ? Because the mental 
 presupposes the existence of some error or mistake leading to it? 
 But may not the bodily ailment also reflect on the conduct that has 
 produced it ? You have named a broken leg : if the leg became 
 broken by some one throwing a slate off the roof, and hitting your 
 leg, or by your falling into a hole left carelessly open by some other 
 . person, or by any other accident of the class not involving your own 
 personal folly or wrong-doing, then there would be no shame to 
 yourself in either the cause or the fact. But suppose you had broken 
 your leg in climbing where you had neither occasion nor absolute 
 right to climb, or in a struggle which you had provoked or might 
 have avoided ? Or suppose that even your fever, just cited, had been 
 produced by an excess reflecting no credit on your temperance, or by 
 an exposure from which a moderate amount of ordinary judgment, 
 must have kept you — would there not in either of those cases, be as 
 much shame attached to the physical disorder as to a corresponding 
 amount of mental?" 
 
 " Undoubtedly there would, sir," was the admission. " And un- 
 doubtedly I have needed just the lesson you have been reading to 
 me, or a sharper one. I think that I am nearly or quite recovered ; 
 you are kind enough to think the same ; and in five minutes of con- 
 versation I manage to demonstrate that though I may be improving, 
 I am by no means well. A little of the morbid feeling is here yet, 
 sir, I fear." 
 
 "And I fear very little on that account," returned the Minor 
 
 p 
 
210 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 Canon, hopefully. " No — the crisis is past — I have no doubt of the 
 fact : the patient, with Heaven's help, will complete his recovery. 
 He has been imprudent, as I think that I may have told him at the 
 moment when he was contracting the disease ; but there lies a world 
 of purification in the fact that he has suffered." 
 
 " Suffered ? Yes — I have suffered, sir, I think," replied the young 
 man, with some evidence on his face that the past tense did not quite 
 cover the case. " Not half my desert, I have no doubt : but more 
 than I would once have believed that I could consent to suffer, and 
 live I" 
 
 There was deep feeling in his words and manner, and the Minor 
 Canon recognized' it, though without that hopeless pain which had at 
 one time moved him in hearing the despairing cry of the same voice, 
 through the darkness of his great disappointment and sorrow. He 
 looked upon him, as he paused, with a loving interest which the 
 object of it little understood ; and he did not break the pause until 
 Neville resumed : 
 
 " I hope that you will not misjudge me, sir, if I say a few words 
 more, that perhaps I ought to say, in justice to myself. No : that 
 is not the phrase — injustice to your opinion of me, sir, which I value 
 so highly. So far as I know myself, the weakness is over, and the 
 worst of the suffering with it. I know my fate, and I hope and 
 believe that I am prepared to meet it like a man." 
 
 "With the help of One stronger than, yourself, Neville ! — with 
 His help, remember ! " 
 
 " Thanks for the reminder, sir, though I may be able to show you 
 that I did not leave that first of elements out of the calculation. I 
 was about to say that probably I have been playing the hypocrite, 
 much of the time since — since my misfortune ; though perhaps hypo- 
 crisy is not the proper word for a deception practised more than half 
 on myself, and at least a portion of it unconscious." 
 
 " Candidly, my dear Neville," said the minor Canon, " your com- 
 mencement is a little misty, whatever may come after it ! " 
 
 " Pardon me, sir — so it is — I know it ! " confessed the young fellow, 
 with a healthier colour on his cheek, in the slight blush of embarrass- 
 ment thus arising — than his friend had seen there for many a day. 
 " The fact is, I fancy, that I am merely trifling with words, and that 
 I must abandon the habit, which does not sit well on me. Once 
 more — then. You have believed, I have no doubt, and I have half- 
 believed myself, that my melancholy was principally induced by 
 shame at the false accusation made against me. In reality, it had a 
 
 different origin. I was sick with love for one whom we need 
 
 not name ; and half-crazed by the circumstances making it impossible 
 that I could ever say so much to — to the woman I adored, much less 
 hope to win her. The other feeling— I know it now — was entirely 
 secondary, if not half a pretext. Had the other only existed, I should 
 have flung it off, with scorn if not with anger : as it was, I was over- 
 weighted before that came, and the little additional weight was 
 therefore sufficient to prostrate me." 
 
 " So I more than half-believed, Neville — with a little experience 
 
NEVILLE LANDLESs's VOCATION. 211 
 
 in our natural tendencies towards deceiving ourselves on some point 
 where our self-love has been touched : but pray pardon my inter- 
 rupting you !'" mildly spoke Mr. Crisparkle ; and the other continued : 
 
 " Do you quite understand me, now, sir ? Do you quite see how 
 heavy the burthen is I have been bearing ? I do not expect you to 
 feel it : Heaven spare your good and kind heart, Mr. Crisparkle, 
 from ever knowing what it is to have set all the earthly affections in 
 a place where they can have no hold ! — from ever turning the eyes 
 of your heart in a direction in which they have no right to look, or 
 in which they can only see suffering and disappointment ! I do not 
 wish you, sir, at that cost, to know what it is, to go astray, there ! " 
 
 Again the Minor Canon was silent, marking the deep earnestness in 
 the tone of the other, and perhaps stilled — who can say 1 — by some- 
 thing very different to any contemplation of him or his fortunes ! 
 When he replied, as he did after a moment, his voice was very low 
 and sweet, as if, insensibly, it flowed with the blood from somewhere 
 near the true, rich, warm heart, and was softened and mellowed 
 thereby. Yet when he spoke, he played the hypocrite quite as pro- 
 nouncedly as Neville Landless had just accused himself of doing : 
 let the question of the guilt involved be settled how it may, between 
 his own conscience, the good Bishop of the Diocese, and those Powers 
 equitably holding the destinies of both ! 
 
 " No — Neville ! " he said. " No — my dear young friend. I quite 
 join you in hoping that it may never be my fate to know, any more 
 than I know at this day, what may be the pangs of hopeless and 
 disappointed love ! But I trust that I have enough of human sym- 
 pathy as well as true friendship, quite to understand and feel for — 
 did I not hear you say — I believe that I did not misunderstand you ? 
 — your past suffering and melancholy ? " 
 
 "Yes, I certainly did use that expression, sir, and I did not use it 
 unmeaningly," answered the young man, drawing himself up > with 
 a certain pride. " Suffer I may, and must, I suppose, more or less — 
 always ; but I thank God that the day has come when the worst is 
 over — when I can speak of myself as being — yes, there is no other 
 than the common and physical word to express it in — cured 1 " 
 
 " And with the cure of your mind, the cure of your body has come 
 — as I hoped, and as I thought. That is well — how well, you scarcely 
 know, as yet, I think ; but I can fervently join you in thanking the 
 Almighty for this, not among the least of His deliverances. Do I 
 trespass too far, in asking : have your studies done so much to change 
 the direction of your mind, and improve you so remarkably, within 
 the few days since I last saw you 1 " 
 
 " You do not trespass at all, sir, and perhaps I am rather glad 
 than otherwise to have a necessity for answering you ! " replied 
 Neville, bravely, though it was evident that now, at least, he did not 
 speak without emotion. " No — my studies have not done all, sir, 
 nor nearly all. Do not condemn me until you know what I mean, 
 when I say that I owe much to that passion which we are always so 
 warned against — Pride ! " 
 
 " Pride ? Indeed 1 " echoed the Minor Canon. 
 
 p 2 
 
212 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 " Yes — Pride. Reawakened, perhaps ; and perhaps new-born. At 
 all events, that feeling which would not allow me to continue loving 
 the woman who loved and was about to marry another." 
 
 " Loving 1 — Miss Bud 1 — pardon my mentioning the name, as I did 
 not intend to do ! — she, loving and about to marry ! Neville, I am 
 by no means a plethoric or short-breathed man, but you are making 
 me breathe a little less easily than usual ! " Undoubtedly the man 
 of long constitutionals and fine physical training was catching his 
 breath, as a header into the river in November would scarcely have 
 forced him to do. 
 
 " Yes, sir, I have no right to betray the secrets of others, unless I 
 am obliged to do so in self-defence or unavoidable explanation ; but 
 perhaps one of the two excuses may have been afforded me. I need 
 but mention one name, and you will know as much as myself — 
 possibly more. Mr. Tartar." 
 
 " Mr. Tartar ! And you know this, beyond a doubt 1 " 
 
 Neville Landless was about to respond, in corroboration of the 
 words just uttered, when that occurred which delayed the reply, and 
 before it found opportunity for utterance so changed its character as 
 to render it unrecognizable. 
 
 There came a light tap at the door — a woman's, by the clear deli- 
 cacy of the touch. Neville sprang from his chair, went to the door, 
 and opened, and Helena Landless came into the room. Possibly she 
 had not heard the voices of the two : it was sure that she did not 
 know of Mr. Crisparkle's presence. She was dressed for walking ; 
 and the gauzy material of her bonnet harmonized wonderfully well 
 with the rich brown of her cheek and the splendid brightness of her 
 tawny eyes, while her close-fitting costume showed her lithe waist 
 and the tall erectness of her figure to equal advantage. Indefinably, 
 the eyes were both softer and nearer to smiling than their wont : she 
 would have seemed to a close observer, less than usual, at that moment 
 of the keen, self-possessed, dangerously lovely girl of the tropics — 
 more of the perfecting woman, with a thousand needs and capacities 
 for happiness, only to be supplied by one, and he the happiest of all 
 mankind to be so permitted. There was a change, since Mr. Cri- 
 sparkle had last before looked upon her ; and what had caused it ? 
 Could it be, that all before remaining of the tiger-blood — only a drop, 
 in comparison with the full tide of her woman's heart, however 
 powerful in moving her to fierce energetic action — could it be that 
 this had gone out from her, exhausted in the single hunting down of 
 one criminal and forcing a fatal secret from his lips 1 Could it be 
 that Joe Gilfert — representative and reminder of bygone days of 
 wrong and suffering — had laid off his garments of dangerous disguise 
 at once and for ever ? 
 
 Did the Minor Canon see and mark this indescribable change, 
 which certainly rendered the young girl so much more attractively 
 handsome, and therefore so much more dangerous in a new direction ? 
 Perhaps so ; or the late conversation may have made him peculiarly 
 susceptible to certain influences, and less than usual under that strict 
 command which he made it so stern a part of his duty to hold over 
 
NEVILLE LANDLESS'S VOCATION. 213 
 
 himself. Certain it is that for the moment he was unarmoured — and 
 that the China Shepherdess, could she have seen him at that crisis, 
 would have found all her fears renewed and considered his case as 
 •one beyond the curative capacities of the upper closet. 
 
 For as the young girl, recognizing her brother's visitor, whom she 
 had not met for many weeks (accidentally on her part, through 
 prudent care on his), came forward with both hands extended and 
 those words of the very warmest affection and respect which she 
 could never more willingly breathe to anyone on earth than to the 
 good Minor Canon, he reddened, paled, trembled, almost stammered 
 his greeting — lost his equanimity so completely that, while Helena 
 only saw her friend and preceptor as a little less at ease in the unex- 
 pected , breaking in of a lady upon a conversation that might have 
 been important and its interruption embarrassing, her brother must 
 have been blinder than his wont, not to observe the omen, note it, 
 understand it ! 
 
 " It is a great pleasure to see you in good health and spirits, Miss 
 Landless," at length the clergyman commanded himself enough to 
 say. " Only second — if you will excuse the ungallant nature of the 
 remark — to finding your brother so wonderfully improved in every 
 regard." 
 
 " He is improved marvellously, is he not 1 — thanks to the kindness 
 of many friends, and yourself always first among them, dear Mr. 
 Crisparkle," she responded, little aware how much there might be in 
 so simple an expression of pleasure to that peculiar hearer. " But, 
 by the bye, though Neville has lately several times spoken of your 
 calling upon him, I have been so unfortunate as to miss you. Pray 
 do not allow him, when you call, to be so selfish as to appropriate 
 you entirely ; for remember that his friendship is of no older date 
 than mine, and that when it comes to a question of precedence, I 
 may even show myself woman enough to be jealous of my twin- 
 brother." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle (hypocrite again, with the same opportunity of de- 
 manding lenient judgment) spoke something of his professional duties 
 (which by no means explained his avoidance of her, when he did call !) 
 and closed with a regret (candid, if the former expression was not !) 
 that any occupation or accident should prevent his often enjoying the 
 great pleasure of meeting her. 
 
 A few more words, not farther removed than these from the every- 
 day and commonplace — words having in themselves no element of 
 remembrance, except as the lips shaping them have 'the power to 
 transmute the most trifling utterance to something of untold value ; 
 and then, with a good-bye to the clergyman, as heart-warm as had 
 been her greeting, and the kiss of an hour or two of farewell to her 
 brother — Helena Landless passed away from the sight of the two 
 upon whom she had come so suddenly. Passed away, yet leaving 
 them as differently circumstanced towards each other, as if in her 
 brief presence a complete metamorphosis had fallen upon the relative 
 thoughts and feelings of each. 
 
 For quite a moment, after the young girl's disappearance, there 
 
214 JOHN jasper's seceet. 
 
 was silence in the room. Both were standing, then — the Minor 
 Canon, as he had risen to make his farewells ; and Neville, as he had 
 accompanied his sister to the door, for some little last word. Both 
 were embarrassed beyond question by the belief entertained by each 
 (no uncommon occurrence, by the way, in other life than that of the 
 stage !) that he knew what the other could not possibly suspect, and 
 that awkwardness might grow out of the misunderstanding. But 
 the pause was broken by Neville, whose frank straightforwardness 
 went far to prove that though in his past misery he might have been 
 labouring to deceive himself, he could scarcely have formed the same 
 intention towards others. He came up to Mr. Crisparkle, and 
 grasped his hand warmly, at the same time uttering words that the 
 other was not likely to forget, to his dying day. Words, too, which 
 the clergyman would not have had recalled, after once spoken, at any 
 price within his reach, though he would have been equally incapable 
 of giving occasion for them by any premeditated utterance of his 
 own. 
 
 " Forgive me, sir," he said, " and forgive Iter. We have neither 
 of us been aware what we were doing." 
 
 Least willing of all men was the Reverend Septimus Crisparkle to 
 use a subterfuge, when it could be avoided ; but we have more than 
 once seen him doing so for what he believed a meritorious object ; 
 and it was not in human nature, however disciplined by mental and 
 moral headers, to avoid the slight uncandour involved in the question : 
 
 " Forgive you, and her ? What can you possibly mean, Neville 1" 
 
 " Pray, sir, do not make it more difficult for me to say what I feel 
 it my duty to say, by making me additionally feel that I am intruding 
 where you do not wish to have me come ! " returned the young man, 
 with the deepest feeling in his tone. " But again I must say — pray 
 forgive me, and her f" 
 
 The Minor Canon's face has been pale and red by turns, in those 
 unfortunate moments of betrayal ; but there was only the one colour, 
 now — the deep flush, brother of the one suffusing it at the time of 
 the accusation by his mother. He might have been seventeen, then, 
 again, instead of at that ripe middle-age supposed to bring calmness 
 of blood and equability of tempei*ament. He tried to speak, but 
 either could not succeed or judged it best to avoid the hazard ; and 
 Neville Landless resumed. 
 
 " I may be offending you unpardonably, sir ; but I cannot help 
 what I am saying, as you have been so frank with me, as well as so 
 kind. Once more — forgive me for bringing my sister into the way 
 of your useful and happy life, and forgive her for not being other 
 than she is." 
 
 " You suspect, Neville, my dear young friend " 
 
 " Pardon my interrupting you, sir.; but I suspect nothing. For 
 the last ten minutes I have known, with a pride and shame beyond 
 the power of any words to express, that you love my sister! " 
 
 The face of the Minor Canon was troubled, then, as perhaps it had 
 never before been in the view of any man ; but he did not speak, and 
 the other continued : 
 
NEVILLE LANDLESS's VOCATION. 215 
 
 " One month ago, sir, I should have quite forgotten my own un- 
 happiness, I think, in the knowledge that she had awakened such an 
 attachment in the breast of the man of all men whom I should have 
 been proudest to call brother. To-day I am made unhappy, because 
 I know that only unhappiness can be the result. I know that I am 
 offending you quite past forgiveness, but my duty must be done, as I 
 have not always done it : my sister has another attachment, and 
 could never be your wife, if you even knew how dear, good, and true 
 she is, and thought her worthy of that honour." 
 
 " Honour ! " the Minor Canon literally gasped as he uttered the 
 word with something nearly akin to anger at the person, even though 
 a brother, who dared use it in such a connection. " Honour ! Who 
 could honour her by asking her to share his life, even if he offered a 
 crown as an inducement 1 " 
 
 The flood-gates were open, now, as they would probably never be 
 again ; and he poured out the words which succeeded, with the very 
 opposite of his late hesitation and embarrassment. 
 
 " No — Neville Landless, there could be no ' honour ' done to your 
 noble sister, even in laying down life at her feet ! You have dis- 
 covered my secret — how I cannot guess ; and I acknowledge — not 
 my weakness, as some might call it — but my pride. She has an 
 attachment, you say ? Thank God for that, as it cannot be other 
 than a worthy one ! She will fulfil her destiny as a woman, and be 
 happy : Heaven bless and keep her, always, and make her perfect as 
 she deserves to be, here and hereafter ! " 
 
 "Oh, sir, if I could tell you all !" exclaimed the brother, perhaps 
 with some doubt whether his privilege did or did not extend to dis- 
 abusing the mind of the clergyman, of his fatally mistaken ideas as 
 to his sister's " happiness ; " but he was not allowed to continue. 
 The Minor Canon extended his hand, and said : 
 
 " Give me your hand again, my dear young friend, not only as that 
 friend, but as the brother of the noblest woman whom I have ever 
 met — the woman whom I should have been proudest to call ' wife,' 
 had such a thing been possible. But it cannot be — it could not from 
 the first. I have betrayed my secret ; and I am sorry, because the 
 knowledge may add to your unhappiness. It must not add to hers, 
 or detract from any happiness within her reach. Promise me, if you 
 believe that I am and have been a friend, — that not a word of this 
 shall ever pass your lips to your sister ! You will make that promise, 
 Neville, I know that you will, for her sake ! " 
 
 " I do make it, most solemnly, sir, and wjth a sorrow that I cannot 
 express, for the necessity," answered the brother, with the extended 
 hand still warmly grasped in his. " And as I do so, and make this 
 new acknowledgment how good and true and noble you are in all 
 your dealings with my unfortunate race — I must add one word more, 
 to say how silly I now know myself to have been, only half an hour 
 ago, in boasting of my own knowledge of a suffering that you had 
 not experienced ! Pray forget that too, sir, with so much more that 
 you may kindly attribute to the arrogance and presumption of youth." 
 
 " I will forget, Neville, just what you wish me to forget, and 
 
216 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 remember just what you wish me to. remember ! " said the Minor 
 Canon, Ms voice nearly restored to its usual cheery tone, and his 
 manner again composed, as that of one who either lays down difficult 
 burthens at once, or carries them well, with the strongest of all 
 assistance. " And now, T must leave you in a few moments. Too 
 much of myself, and too little of you. How are you progressing 
 with those studies which have done you so much good mentally and 
 are eventually to win you a place in the great world ? Nearly ready 
 to attempt that meritorious but difficult task, of proving to My 
 Lords or the intelligent jury that four and one make six, or that Mr. 
 Thompson, writing this, plainly intended to say that, and nothing 
 else?" 
 
 Neville Landless did not reply for a moment — hesitating as the 
 Minor Canon had done just before. And there was something strange 
 — cheerfully solemn, if the phrase may he allowed — on his handsome 
 dark young face as, after a moment, he set upon their edges, so that 
 the backs could be plainly read, the half-dozen books lying on the 
 table. When last in the room, a few days earlier, Mr. Crisparkle 
 had seen lying there, and found him poring over, Chitty, and Black- 
 stone, and Coke-upon-Littleton, and several others of those elemental 
 works by which the foundations of that " perfection of human reason," 
 known as Law, are believed to be best laid in the mind of the student. 
 What did he see now? Pious old George Herbert ; the Holy Living 
 and Dying, and a volume of the Sermons, of Jeremy Taylor, some- 
 time Bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore ; Paley, Butler, and 
 Hooker ! Certainly a very different collection of weapons, and for a 
 widely different purpose ! — and the half-stare of wonder on the face 
 of the clergyman, as he saw, may not have been extraordinary. But 
 the Bev. Septimus Crisparkle was not habitually slow of observation ; 
 and he was by no means deficient in a certain esprit du corps belong- 
 ing to every profession — not to credit him with any higher feeling. 
 And so the expression of satisfaction blending with the stirprise, and 
 eventually supplanting it, may have been quite natural, as he said, 
 in a voice very low and earnest : 
 
 " Neville, my dear young friend ! — what does this mean ? " 
 
 " Simply this, sir," was the reply. " These hours of comparative 
 loneliness — yes, of misery — have driven me to more communion with 
 my own heart than I might otherwise ever have found. I have 
 become more and more satisfied, that a Hand, mightier than my own, 
 and so much wiser, has been directing me in the way He would have 
 me go. I have heard words uttered by my dear sister, so long ago 
 that she has no doubt forgotten them, ringing in to me on the sounds 
 of the street, and even coming in my sleeping hours : ' Follow your 
 guide, Neville, and follow him to heaven ! ' I am going to try it, 
 sir. My life is broken, so that the sacrifice I offer is even poorer 
 than it might have been ; but such as I have, I offer it. I will 
 ' follow,' sir, as I have been bidden ; and perhaps the day may come, 
 when I may be so favoured of Him as to ' lead ' some other poor and 
 broken man in the Way, with the Truth, and towards the Life." 
 
 For a moment, again, the Minor Canon was silent, — as to the 
 
THUNDERS OP DOOM. 217 
 
 sound reaching any earthly- ears, at least. And when he spoke, 
 without either quite knowing how the change of posture had occurred, 
 Neville Landless was on his knees, with the dark bright face up- 
 turned, and both the hands of his friend were laid upon the brown 
 young head. 
 
 " His name be praised, and His peace and His blessing be upon 
 you, my dear friend and brother indeed ! " 
 
 There was another tap at the door, even as the young man rose ; 
 and when he went to it, hastily dashing from his eyes the tears of an 
 agitation which might have shaken many a stronger man under the 
 same circumstances — Mr. Grewgious it was who entered, rounding 
 his Angular face in the unexpected pleasure of meeting the Minor 
 Canon, and speaking with no Angularity whatever : 
 
 "Reverend sir, I am delighted at the chance of meeting you. Mr. 
 Landless, pardon my intrusion, but I have the miserable excuse of 
 business that requires your attention — at some time this morning — 
 no haste whatever. Reverend sir, I hope that you have had a 
 pleasant journey from Cloisterham, and that the excellent lady, your 
 mother, is in good health and spirits." 
 
 And so, for the moment, the trio of the disappointed was complete. 
 Something more : the trio of the brave, patient and determined under 
 that disappointment most difficult to bear of all laid upon humanity. 
 There was a very pretty legend, current years ago, of a chain of cir- 
 cumstances through which three uncrowned kings met and passed the 
 night together, at some humble place of refuge in the German moun- 
 tains — each for a time ignorant of any other rank than his own ; was 
 that scene more picturesque or more instructive than the meeting of 
 these three, with a fourth similarly circumstanced just gone out from 
 their midst, — each so calmly wearing, that at ordinary times its 
 existence was quite unsuspected, and on a brow so different to that 
 of each of the others, the withered chaplet-crown of a Dead 
 Hope 1 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THUNDEES OP DOOM. 
 
 The night has been close and sultry, over Cloisterham and all its 
 neighbourhood ; and the morning, without changing the condition of 
 the atmosphere as to temperature, has sent the smoke of the Cloister- 
 ham chimneys downward towards street and river, with a suddenness 
 denoting much organic weakness on the part of that dusky volume, 
 or much rarefication of the air ordinarily destined to float it to the 
 nostrils of others than the makers. Thick mephitic vapours have 
 been lying on the river, reducing the dun-sailed boats to even a more 
 
218 JOHN jasper's seceet. 
 
 helpless condition than that of ordinary calm, as the nerves of those 
 who might be rowers are unstrung, and the very thought of the least 
 unavoidable labour is an abhorrence. As the morning progresses, 
 dense clouds rise, drift away on a wind unfelt by the lower world — 
 to be succeeded by others that drift away and disappear as mys- 
 teriously, and those by others that succeed with corresponding 
 persistence. 
 
 Persons of quasi-marine temperament or vocation, who quarter 
 the barometer as their arms, in compliment to their nearness to the 
 coast, or from some connection with the boating interest — are led to 
 notice, this' morning, that the needle has been suddenly taken with 
 an attack of St. Yitus's dance, flying hither and thither with a celerity 
 giving suspicion that it has lost its metallic senses and fails to know 
 what weather to foretell. 
 
 Presumably, at the same time, grizzled and tarry old fellows, on the 
 coast, where playing at sailors is less ornamental — these, carrying 
 huge sea-glasses under their arm and walking wide as if with that 
 doubt about nice steering which requires much sea-room to avoid 
 fouling, — observe the unsteady but dropping glass, cook up oblique 
 eyes at the heavens, hitch up the fugitive trousers, transfer the quid 
 to the other side of the mouth, and remark, sententiously, that if 
 they haven't been man and boy on that coast for two-and-forty years 
 all for nothing, it '11 give 'em more 'n a capful o' wind afore they're 
 many hours older — blow great guns, more likely than keep Blue 
 Peter hanging down his head. 
 
 His Reverence the Dean — connected with one of those great 
 old families entailing other blessings, sometimes, than property — 
 becomes aware of peculiarities in the atmosphere, through the 
 medium of his right great-toe, at the very moment when he is 
 putting on the comely gaiters to proceed to the Cathedral, for a 
 service of more than ordinary (earthly) importance, seeing that the 
 sermon of the morning is to be preached by his clerical brother of 
 eminence, the Hon. and Very Rev. the Dean of Baxetter, temporarily 
 at Cloisterham on his way home from the Continent. 
 
 Mr. Tope — traversing the limited distance between his house and 
 the Cathedral, to look after its being duly opened for that important 
 morning service, and to take due order that nothing therein or thereto 
 appertaining shall be out of keeping to the nice sense of His Rever- 
 ence the Dean or the yet nicer sense of the Hon. and Very Rev. 
 the Dean's visiting brother — marks the omens of the sky, silently 
 prognosticates rain, if not wind, and scarcely opens the Cathedral to 
 the extent necessary for due ventilation, in the apprehension that rain 
 may burst in at any opened window before the close of the service, 
 and occasion a little of that confusion always regarded with such 
 pained feeling by His Reverence the Dean. 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle, whose header of the early morning, taken in the 
 neighbourhood of the Weir, seems to have been made into mingled 
 oil and water, so far has the element been from refreshing him to the 
 usual extent, with its flash and motion — Mr. Crisparkle notes the 
 atmospheric influences, as he steps out from the door at Minor Canon 
 
THUNDERS OF DOOM. 219 
 
 Corner and measures the infinitesimal distance to the Cathedral door- 
 way — breathing, the while, less freely and buoyantly than is his wont, 
 and wondering, as he enters the Cathedral, whether it would not 
 have been better, after all, to have brought over his umbrella, even 
 for that trifle of space, sufficient, in a certain contingency, to give 
 him a header with the water and not himself as the moving body. 
 
 And Mr. Jasper, coming out from his three days of illness and 
 supposed quiet at the Gate House, following upon his midnight visit 
 to the Crypt — induced to make that exertion by the imploring message 
 of Mr. Crisparkle, who has stated that without him the service will 
 certainly disappoint the Very Rev. the Dean of Baxetter, and inflict 
 intense mortification upon his friend and patron the Dean — Mr. 
 Jasper, proceeding Cathedralward at that late hour, only allowing of 
 his hurriedly robing in time for the very commencement of his duties 
 — he too looks up at the lowering sky, feels the oppression of the 
 atmosphere, and attributes to it something of that intense weakness 
 which seems to affect limbs and body, and that numb pain pressing 
 down on the top of his head like a leaden weight. But there is a 
 difference in the view upwards, between the Choir-Master and the 
 others. They think, and some of them say : " With this heavy and 
 sultry atmosphere there will be thunder and lightning, and they will 
 clear the air ! " he thinks, too, of the possibility of the thunder and the 
 lightning, but dreads them, and hopes against them, as if they might 
 bear again in sight and sound the strict commands and fearful warn- 
 ings of Sinai. 
 
 The gathering in Cloisterham Cathedral, this morning, is more 
 than ordinarily numerous for any occasion less important than one 
 of the great church festivals. For the coming of the Dean of Baxetter 
 is known, by some inscrutable means defying type and telegraph, 
 throughout the sleepy old town that has not too many sensations ; 
 and his admitted eloquence may have an equal share in attracting 
 hearers to his expected sermon (nay, let us be charitable, and hope 
 that it has more !) with the fact that he is the Honourable as well as 
 the "Very Reverend, with a Baron for his father, and an Earl as his 
 uncle. So, although the morning threatens, the seats fill at an early 
 hour, as if the occasion were a holiday one. In like manner, the 
 choir musters in full force — few pleasant rivalries being more declared 
 than that which forbids that one of the great Cathedrals of the king- 
 dom should be found deficient in thundering out melodious sound to 
 the ears of the representative of another ; and the choral strength of 
 Cloisterham coming out in prompt season and excellent array, to 
 delight and possibly astonish the Very Reverend of Baxetter. 
 
 It has already grown dusky in the Cathedral when the last notes 
 of the organ, playing the voluntary, roll through the old vaulted pile, 
 making it no difficult' matter to believe that the conflict of the ele- 
 ments has already begun, and that the faint reverberation of distant 
 thunder is muttering near. It grows even darker, seeming to shadow 
 over the pile and the congregation with a great raven wing pausing 
 as it sweeps by — when the first words of the impressive service are 
 intoned, praying for fit humility to approach into that Presence, so 
 
220 john jasper's secret. 
 
 much, more awful than any omen of the physical world — and asking 
 that the One sitting so high above all clouds and storms may not 
 enter into judgment with those who have neither strength nor will 
 for the great combat. It darkens still, and the candles are lighted 
 in a brief compulsory pause, — before the commencement of that 
 sublime Confession to which the breasts of all men, since the very 
 foundation of the world, have had cause to echo, with more or less 
 of fear and self-abasement. And there it hangs — that pall of semi- 
 darkness, while the Prayer of Our Lord is repeated, and the Venite 
 exultemus Domino rings out from choir and organ, with a signifi- 
 cance only known to those who sit in grief, or guilt, or the deep 
 shadow of some great peril by land or sea. It seems to lighten, 
 though still the dusk is deeper than that of twilight, as the clear, 
 soft voice of Mr. Crisparkle, its bright cheeriness mellowed in that 
 atmosphere and that employment, reads the First and Second Lessons 
 of the Day, with the Te Deum laudamus intervening, and carrying 
 up the reverent soul to the very height of trembling adoration of the 
 Divine Being. And then it settles and darkens again, with some- 
 thing of awful import in this veritable overshadowing, making cheeks 
 whiter than usual, and far more than usual in the holiest places, 
 blotting away the trifling things of the outer world, as worthy to be 
 no more remembered in the face of the greater. 
 
 Then there comes a change, breaking in on the Benedicts, and 
 making every one within the Cathedral start and shiver in an unac- 
 knowledged combination of physical and supernatural fear. The 
 black wing moves, though still retaining its shadow ; and the winds 
 and the rains of heaven come with an accompaniment of rolling 
 thunder, making the peal of the organ a faint and puerile imitation. 
 Above the sound of that organ and the voices of the singers, the 
 sweeping dash of the rain can be heard, as it lashes the great windows, 
 and the fierce wind as it bursts, howls and shrieks around the staunch 
 old edifice. Many cheeks pale, now, as they have not paled in many 
 a long day — as if the God of the Storm, as well as the God of Love 
 and Peace whom they ordinarily worship, was in their very midst, 
 compelling a new knowledge of his attributes. More than once, Mr. 
 Crisparkle, even his bright and cheerful spirit impressed by the 
 omens, looks up in awed wonder not unmixed with a certain solemn 
 artistic pleasure. More than once the Dean — man in whom the 
 artistic sensibilities are much less fully developed than the sense of 
 propriety, and the desire that " all things should be done decently 
 and in order" — and who knows no reason whatever for thinking 
 more profoundly of the thunder and the wind, this morning, than on 
 a hundred other mornings of his life, — regrets that the visit of his 
 Very Reverend brother of Baxetter should have been made under 
 such inauspicious circumstances, and at a time when his sermon, if 
 this state of things continues, will scarcely be listened to with that 
 attention which it will be certain to deserve. 
 
 Possibly the Dean of Baxetter may be impressed with something 
 of the same feeling, and a wish that, if this is the current sacerdotal 
 weather at Cloisterham, he had concluded to pass on from the coast 
 
THUNDERS OF DOOM. 221 
 
 without visiting it. Sure it is that Mr. Tope, the while, has an attack 
 of Tribulation, in a mild form and a diiferent shape to that which it 
 assumed in his communication to Mr. Crisparkle — nothing less than 
 a fear that his Cathedral may be damaged, to the extent of unknown 
 pounds sterling, by one or the other of these extraordinary actions 
 of the climate : the result being that he profits little by the service, 
 looking upwards and around so anxiously as to excite apprehensions 
 that he believes the roof to be coming down, in the breasts of those 
 worshippers sitting near his favourite gate. 
 
 And John Jasper ? 
 
 He has come out from a sick-room, if not from a sick-bed, at the 
 solicitations of Mr. Crisparkle, and in the knowledge of the occasion 
 being really an important one. He has nerved himself manfully, all 
 things considered, to do his duty in the Cathedral, before the eyes 
 (and eke the ears) of those who have known him so long, and of his 
 Reverence the Dean of Baxetter. The knees may have been weak, 
 the eyes may have been dim and filmy, the head may have been 
 filled with a dull pain rendering him capable of little more than the 
 mere mechanical exercises of his office — but what then 1 He has 
 duties to do, and they must be done — done to the end ! Perhaps 
 there has been, now and again, a quaver not called for by the music, 
 in the rich tenor inclining to the baritone, with which he has so often 
 honoured the Church, pleased Cloisterham, and delighted the music- 
 loving Minor Canon ; but if so, no one seems to have detected the 
 fact. He has held his choir, so to speak, well in hand ; and despite 
 all the omens of the storm, rarely have the musical portions of the 
 service been more correctly and effectively conducted than on this 
 occasion. If the Choir-Master's hair is greyer than its wont, and his 
 face more haggard than anyone has ever before seen it — those 
 characteristics are not likely to be observed in the semi-darkness of 
 the Cathedral, as he sits, prominent among the other white-robed of 
 the earthly service — far-off types of those who know neither defile- 
 ment, sin, nor sorrow. 
 
 The Jubilate Deo, following, not supplementing, the Benedictus — 
 possibly in honour of the Very Reverend visit — has just died upon 
 the ear ; when suddenly, as if all the preliminary darkness has been 
 nothing more than a mere premonition, a new pall falls upon the 
 Cathedral and all the worshippers within. There is neither rain nor 
 wind, for the moment — as some, calmer or better circumstanced than 
 the others for observation, take note, and afterwards repeat it to the 
 less-informed. The blackness seems almost palpable. The very 
 candles become mere sparks in the heavy and murky atmosphere, and 
 give scarcely the pitiful illumination of rushlights. The congregation 
 feel, individually and collectively, that sinking of the heart and that 
 suppression of the breath inevitable on the face of the Stupendously 
 Awful and Untried. If the candles could give more than their in- 
 sufficient light, absolute terror would be read on more faces than 
 often express that painful feeling when removed from the presence of 
 the direst physical danger. 
 
 It is at this most solemn and impressive of moments that Mr. 
 
222 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 Crisparkle, still officiating in honour of his guest, — after only a 
 moment of awed pause, in which the closing peal of the organ still 
 rolls its minor thunders through the grey arches, — commences, with 
 the voices of more than half the congregation fervently following, 
 the Apostles' Creed : 
 
 "/ believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and 
 Earth " 
 
 Above his voice and the voices of all the others following, comes 
 again the rushing of the mighty wing that has been for a brief space 
 comparatively still ; even above this, and the voices, and all else that 
 can be thought or imagined, comes the crashing of the thunder, 
 breaking and booming over the old pile with such awful nearness 
 that the very pillars shake with the reverberation, and the frightened 
 congregation grip their seats as if the power of the earthquake was 
 unloosed. But still the Minor Canon reads on, and the frightened 
 voices make some feeble attempts to follow, until those crowning 
 words, at once of Hope and Fear, are reached : 
 
 " From thence He shall come to judge the Quick and the 
 Dead." 
 
 For that instant, even to the dullest sense, it may almost seem that 
 with the sublime and awful formula the more sublime and awful 
 reality has been reached. Has not The End come, indeed 1 When 
 has the like of this been 1 and how long, beneath such terrible blows 
 and pressure, can the solid earth or any structure built upon it, 
 continue to exist ? Another thunder-crash, closer, deeper, and more 
 jarring and rending in its character, accompanied by a lightning flash 
 of such intensity of glare that all eyes fall shut before it, in the very 
 fear of blindness, only a few catching even one glimpse of the Cathe- 
 dral interior, every detail lit up as no noonday sun has ever had 
 power to illumine it. And even at this instant, another burst of 
 wind, if possible a hundred times more fierce than that just died 
 away — literally shaking the pile of massive stone as if it might be a 
 mere structure of cardboard, and creating the natural fear that in a 
 moment more, roof and arches and columns may all be lying a heap 
 of ruins, upon and in the midst of hundreds of crushed and struggling 
 human beings. 
 
 One instant more, and then the feared demolition seems to have 
 begun. There is an awful crash, rather accompanying than following 
 the culminating burst of the wind's fury — a sound that is only after- 
 wards recognized as that of breaking, splintering, and falling glass, 
 half-drowned in the terrified cry of hundreds of voices, — as the great 
 stained-glass window of the Chancel, the preceding instant so illumi- 
 nated by the lightning that every sainted figure has little else than 
 burned itself on the eye-balls, gives way under the pressure and 
 falls crashing inwards. There is an instant redoubling of the cries 
 of terror j^a hurried rising from seats and pressing backwards, in the 
 fear that the whole Chancel is falling forward into the choir ; then an 
 earnest word frqm Mr. Crisparkle, to calm the terror and reassure 
 the congregation. And then something else, as little expected as all 
 preceding, ancP'possibly lingering quite as long in the minds of the 
 
THUNDEHS OF DOOM. 223 
 
 dwellers in Cloisterliam, on that occasion present, as even the terror 
 of the storm, and the serious damage to the Cathedral. 
 
 John Jasper, necessarily unobserved, like all others, at the moment 
 of the catastrophe, and of whose action at that special instant, conse- 
 quently, no account can be given — is missed from his seat when the 
 first terror has passed, and the attempt is made to resume the inter- 
 rupted services. And it is only by a comparison of notes among the 
 frightened and therefore not too intelligible choristers, and others in 
 the immediate neighbourhood — that the fact becomes patent of a 
 white figure flitting away and disappearing, just when the physical 
 winds and thunders broke deadliest over the Cathedral, with their 
 accompaniment of crashing glass and terrified voices, at the same 
 moment when the far awfuller thunders of the coming judgment, in 
 those warning words of the Creed, from the mild lips of the Minor 
 Canon. 
 
 He is known to have been very ill : he has been suddenly taken 
 with a relapse, and hurried away for medical assistance, with the 
 least possible disturbance to the congregation. This is the explana- 
 tion naturally occurring to Mr. Tope, whose dignity has been more 
 or less assailed by this infraction of rules in his Cathedral ; and to 
 Mr. Crisparkle, who has a certain regret for the persistence with 
 which he has called out a sick man, possibly too ill properly to leave 
 his room ; and to the Very Rev. the Dean, who regrets the occurrence 
 mildly, as is his habit — and the more mildly as being unusually 
 absorbed, to-day; from the misbehaviour of his right great-toe ; and 
 to the other Very Rev. the Dean of Baxetter, who preaches his 
 sermon, in the brightening Cathedral and the clearing weather, to 
 less attention than he might have absorbed^ in the event of the 
 Chancel window not being broken to the extent of needing costly 
 and difficult repairs — and who listens to a less perfect musical service, 
 during the brief remainder, than he might be privileged to hear if 
 the Choir-Master were not suddenly absent. 
 
 Absent ! ay, that is the word, conveying so much in so little space. 
 Absent ! — how sent or forced away, through what combination of the 
 ominous and the terrible in past recollections and future forebodings, 
 driven in upon heart and brain by those feeble reminders of the 
 Thunders of Doom, bursting over Cloisterham Cathedral — 4here may 
 be other imaginings than those of the good, literal people of the old 
 city, who know no more of John Jasper, except the little conveyed 
 by his scarcely remarkable exterior, than they know of some resident 
 of the Antipodes. But absent, for the last time and for ever, from 
 the seat he has occupied and the station he has filled ; unless restless 
 spirits do indeed walk the earth, as believed in the fancies of bygone 
 ages, and especially affect and haunt those places in which they have 
 wrought, loved, enjoyed, sinned, and suffered. 
 
224 
 
 JOHN JASPERS SECRET. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE THORN OF ANXIETY. 
 
 Mr. Bazzard was back at the Staple Inn. Mr. Grewgious was no 
 longer alone, in the sense of having no one with whom to consult 
 and no one to whom to defer — though the same mystery necessarily 
 remained after his return, that had existed before his departure — 
 what Staple wanted with him, or he with Staple ; what good was to 
 be derived from his being there, or anywhere, as what harm could 
 possibly have resulted from his being absent from that place or any 
 other ? 
 
 His return was as mysterious as his departure — which is saying 
 much ; the causes of both the departure and the return being (as 
 already indicated) wrapped in corresponding obscurity. In point of 
 fact, he came in the night, with a carpet-bag of threatening propor- 
 tions—much more with the air, general equipment, and indefinable 
 impression of one who was running away with the surreptitiously 
 acquired contents of the carpet-bag before-mentioned, and prudently 
 choosing the night for that removal, than of one who had good'right 
 to bestow it and its contents where he would. At which period 
 P. J. T. — observer of entrances there since seventeen forty-seven, and 
 Perpetually Jotting Traits of his visitors, though Perhaps Justifiably 
 Tired of doing so as a Purely Judicial Trouble — looked down on 
 him, as he passed through the Portal Jaundice-Tainted into the 
 Premises Jointly Tenanted, and remarked to himself, in his grim 
 silent way, that Positively Just Then the extraordinary person who 
 had already proved the Poor Janitor's Torment, was Proceeding 
 Jerkily Through, after a Prolonged Journey Tenebrous, with his 
 Personalities Jealously Treasured (not to say, his Plunder Jammed 
 Tightly), his Port Jauntily Tense, and no doubt again his Purpose- 
 less Jabber Threatening any who Tabernacled Joylessly There. 
 
 "Whence he came, there was nothing in his appearance by which 
 P. J. T. or any other could have decided positively, though any one 
 of several hypotheses might be held as suggested. Thus — he looked 
 pale and puffy-faced enough, and seemed to ,have enough damp 
 flabbiness in his complexion to have possibly spent most or all the 
 warm period of his absence with the fish and oysters at the bottom 
 of any imaginable river ; his hair was cut so much shorter, though 
 still retaining the tangled quarrelsomeness of each particular hair 
 with all the other members of its family, to indicate that he might 
 possibly have been passing away the hot weeks in the cool shade of a 
 prison ; and his lack-lustre and expressionless eyes seemed so pecu- 
 liarly vacant, as to suggest that for a time he might have been entirely 
 blotted out from the world in a sleep of several weeks duration, on 
 awakening from which so fishy and glassy an expression would be 
 only natural. 
 
THE THORN OP ANXIETY. 225 
 
 He was evidently on good terms with himself, however — being 
 more than before given to periods of chuckling, without palpable 
 cause appearing at such moments for the same, and giving good 
 reason for prefixing to the laughter the epithet vacant. He met Mr. 
 Grewgious, on (in a legal phrase) putting in an- appearance, with a 
 species of sublime condescension which might have been very crush- 
 ing in its effect on a man less Angular and consequently weaker in 
 construction ; and it became evident, at the first moment, that if 
 there had been anything of inversion in the two positions of princi- 
 pal and clerk, that inversion was now to be intensified rather than 
 changed. On the merest suggestion pointing thitherward, at their 
 first meeting, the morning after his return — he first went into an air 
 of Injury suggesting to the observer that there might be such a thing 
 as Asking Too Much ; then gradually changed into one of Conferring 
 Benefits of such extent, magnificence, and self-denial, that the devo- 
 tion of a lifetime on the part of the favoured recipient could only 
 go a short distance towards repaying them ; then blandly con- 
 tinued the employment of the Substitute (substitute for himself), 
 by ordering that temporary official down to the cellar for the bottles 
 of Mr. Grewgious' choicest wine. On its obediently coming up for 
 due destruction, he continued the Favour by dealing that destruction 
 to one bottle and three-fourths, without much apparent suffering, 
 while the owner was with difficulty imbibing the remaining quarter- 
 bottle. In brief, Staple, if for a short time bereaved of any one capable 
 of representing proprietorship of all the lands, tenements, messuages 
 and hereditaments thereunto belonging and appertaining — could not 
 be said to labour under any such bereavement for a single hour after 
 the reappearance on the scene of Mr. Bazzard, who " mightn't like 
 it else." 
 
 The first after night his return saw him a Compelled and Favoured 
 guest at Mr. Grewgious's table, with a neat little supper from Furni- 
 val's, at disposal, and no company, other than what each supplied the 
 other, to check the flow of conversation that might have been the 
 most confidential. And confidential that conversation may really 
 have been, even if uttered so loudly as to be heard in Holborn ; for 
 to the uninstructed ear it must have been little else than Choctaw, 
 in possible honour of Mr. Bazzard's late wanderings and sequester- 
 ings ; and it may even be so to the ear nattering itself with being, 
 like Mr. Sapsea's, far from uninstructed. 
 
 " Bazzard ! " said Mr. Grewgious, at a certain turn in the conver- 
 sation, which had been interrupted by occasional other uses of the 
 lips than articulation. " Bazzard ! — on this pleasant occasion, which, 
 if I were a less Angular man, or there were more of us, I should be 
 disposed to call a re-union,— fallow me to give over again a toast 
 which I have before taken the liberty of proposing at this table." 
 
 " Ah ! " replied Mr. Bazzard, at once reflectively and patronizingly. 
 " I follow you, sir, though I have not the slightest idea what you 
 may happen to mean." 
 
 " TJmps ! " replied Mr. Grewgious, " If you don't mind my saying 
 so, Bazzard, you ought to know to what I allude. Something very 
 
 Q 
 
226 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 near to the hearts of both of us, from different causes. To yours, 
 from proprietorship. To mine, because you might not be satisfied 
 else — likewise on the ground of friendship. I give you " 
 
 " Why, you don't mean, sir," — commenced Mr. Bazzard, inter- 
 rupting in a manner which might have been impertinent in any other 
 than a proprietor. 
 
 " Umps ! Yes, I do ! That is precisely what I mean ! " said Mr. 
 Grewgious, interrupting in his turn, without due regard to the pro- 
 prietorship in which he, as well as Staple and P. J. T. all happened 
 to be held. "Yes, I say it again, as an Angular man, who from that 
 fact cannot possibly go round anything and must approach it squarely. 
 Not to mention other names, which you possibly mightn't like, I give 
 you the Thorn of Anxiety ; and I say again, with three times three 
 understood — May it Come Out, and the sooner the better ! " 
 
 "Why, what a blessed old bookworm and antiquity you are, sir," 
 exclaimed Mr. Bazzard, commiseratingly— " not to know that it is 
 already Out." 
 
 " Out 1 TJmps ! Bazzard — do you positively mean to make the 
 statement, that it is Out, and that I have never been informed of the 
 fact 1 Bazzard, if I were not a man of peculiarly hard tendencies, 
 without the power to become affected by ill-usage, I should feel the 
 necessity of considering this glass a Flowing Bowl, and drowning in 
 it a certain amount of Sorrow." 
 
 " Don't, if you please, sir ! " chuckled Mr. Bazzard, with the 
 fatuous tendency very strongly marked, and hair, eyes, and com- 
 plexion all playing their part in making him appear so, with great 
 con-cert and vigour. " There is no occasion. You would not have 
 enjoyed the Coming Out, had you been present ; as indeed I was not, 
 and only became informed of the circumstances through the medium 
 of a friend." 
 
 " Bazzard ! " said Mr. Grewgious, staring blankly, " if I did not 
 fear that you might not like it — might object, in point of fact, which 
 would be unpleasant for both — I should be inclined to remark that 
 this Burgundy is a trifle heady, and that it has a bad habit of con- 
 fusing the 1 distinction between subjects talked about — say, jumbling 
 them up together. Candidly, now, is not that the case ? Are you 
 not referring, without being aware of the fact, to something else than 
 the T. of A." 
 
 " Not at all, sir ! " again chuckled Mr. Bazzard, with an access of 
 vacancy, if such a thing could be possible, in eyes, hair, com- 
 plexion, and general manner. " Certainly not, sir ! It is of the 
 T. of A. that I am speaking ; and I tell you that it is Out." 
 
 " Umps I Of course, Bazzard, if you assert that it is Out, I 
 must accept the statement; as no one should know better than 
 yourself. But would it be asking too much, to request a trifle 
 of information How it Came Out?" mildly and deferentially sug- 
 gested Mr. Grewgious. 
 
 " On the contrary, sir, it becomes my duty to explain briefly 
 all the circumstances connected with its Coming Out," patroniz- 
 ingly replied Mr. Bazzard, taking a sip of the wine, and loftily 
 
THK THOEN OF ANXIETY. 227 
 
 waving his flabby hand ; whereat Mr. Grewgious, more or less en- 
 couraged, also took a sip of wine, but did not wave his Angular hand. 
 
 " If you will kindly permit me, sir, to tell the story in my own 
 way, and not ask too many irrelevant questions, I think that we 
 shall finish all the sooner, and all the better," remarked Mr. 
 Bazzard, with the strongly injured air of one who had always 
 been broken in upon, put out of the course of his narrations, 
 badgered, trampled down in all immaterial senses, and generally 
 rendered an object of pity, by the arrogant and overbearing tyrant 
 at the other side of the table. 
 
 " Quite right, Bazzard, I am sure," echoed the arrogant and 
 overbearing tyrant, in his mildest and least Angular manner. " Be 
 kind enough to tell the story in your own way — you mightn't like it, 
 else, you know." 
 
 " Well, then, sir," proceeded the victim, with his injured air rapidly 
 changing back to flabby inconsequence, " I will tell you how the T. 
 of A. Came Out. You will understand, of course, that I am not 
 telling you of anything that I have been doing — only relating in a 
 very brief way, the adventures of a friend of mine." 
 
 " God bless me ! — no, Bazzard, of course I understand that you are 
 not speaking of yourself — only of a friend of yours. TJmps ! what 
 did you say was his name ? " Mr. Grewgious, thus responding, and 
 thus inquiring, was at the moment perusing the smoky ceiling with ' 
 great assiduity, as if he expected to find the name inscribed there in 
 large capitals, but had somehow overlooked it. 
 
 " Name of Datchery," proceeded Mr. Bazzard, so impressively as 
 to bring. down the eyes to their proper level. "Place of birth, im- 
 material ; age, ditto ; family, ditto ; profession, legal. You quite 
 understand, sir ? " 
 
 " Bazzard, I follow you, as you have obliged me by doing, once 
 and again," replied Mr. Grewgious. " I follow you, and I fancy that 
 I understand you. From motives of prudence, and in fear that any 
 of the rats in the wainscot may have been retained by the other side, 
 we will assume the professional and merely say alter ego." 
 
 " My friend Datchery," pursued Mr. Bazzard, " came into the case, 
 or in deference to the dramatic character of the affair, we will say 
 came upon the stage, precisely at the time when I took the liberty of 
 arranging a short summer vacation and went down to Norfolk." 
 
 "Tick that off— yes, Bazzard, you went down into Norfolk," 
 assented Mr. Grewgious, at the moment making a telescope of the 
 bottom of his glass, as if endeavouring to survey 'that distant county 
 of the North Folk. " And Scratchery — did I follow you correctly, 
 and understand his name to be Scratchery t " 
 
 "No, sir — 'Datchery' — 'Datchery' — repeatedly 'Datchery,'" cor- 
 rected Mr. Bazzard, severely ; adding, in a yet severer tone of voice , 
 " Am I to understand, sir, that these interruptions are to cease, or 
 that they are not 1 " 
 
 " Save the man ! I was not aware that I was interrupting. Pray 
 proceed ! " apologized Mr. Grewgious, putting something red into his 
 glass, to make the bottom clearer for the next distant survey. 
 
 Q2 
 
228 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 " Crime had been committed, at a place called Cloisterham, in. 
 Chalkshire, of which you may have heard, sir." 
 
 "Am I to answer, Bazzard? — or would that be interrupting?" 
 humbly inquired Mr. Grewgious. 
 
 " Answer ? of course, sir ! How could you follow me, else ? " at 
 once explained and inquired Mr. Bazzard. 
 
 " Yes, Bazzard, I have heard, then, of Cloisterham — possibly seen 
 it, at some remote period." 
 
 " Crime, as I said, or ought to have said, had been more or less com- 
 mitted. Intended victim had, in point of fact, escaped through some- 
 thing little less than a miracle. Intended victim, immediately after 
 escaping, was placed in a difficulty — indeed, in what might have been 
 called a quandary. Attempted murderer, and real murderer, as he 
 believed, was relative of supposed victim. Supposed victim, closer 
 acquaintance of my friend Datchery than most people dreamed, having 
 
 seen a little London life in his company, in a quiet way . Do 
 
 you follow me, sir 1 " 
 
 " I follow you, Bazzard, and I drink to the success of your friend 
 Datchery." 
 
 "Supposed victim," Mr. Bazzard continuing, "put himself into 
 communication with Datchery, probably as the most consummate ass 
 that he knew." 
 
 " I follow you, Bazzard, and I quite agree with you," assented Mr. 
 Grewgious, with gratuitous willingness and energy. Whereupon 
 Mr. Bazzard frowned with a double ferocity of fatuity; but con- 
 tinued : 
 
 " In serious doubt, supposed victim, how he could manage to punish 
 attempting murderer, whom he could not avoid sparing, for blood- 
 sake, and whom he must necessarily regard with horror after such 
 attempt. Consulted my friend Datchery, who like a blessed inspired 
 idiot " 
 
 "Save the man! — what admirable choice of terms!" explained 
 Mr. Grewgious, as an " aside," which of course could not be noticed 
 as in the general conversation. 
 
 "Advised continued concealment of supposed victim, temporary 
 absence from the country (rendered easy by previous arrangement for 
 employment abroad), and the putting into his (my friend Datchery's) 
 hands, of certain data and materials for working upon the fears and 
 possibly affecting the conscience of supposed murderer. Do you 
 follow me, sir, here 1 " 
 
 " I follow you, friend Datchery — Bazzard, there ; and I quite 
 appreciate his inspired idiocy." 
 
 " My friend Datchery, to whom had been entrusted the T. of A., 
 having a desire to bring it out through certain experiments on the 
 mentality of the guilty, and taking care not to mention that fact to 
 escaped victim, who might otherwise have objected, on the ground 
 that supposed murderer might better be arrested and dealt with at 
 once " 
 
 " Than tortured, and murdered by inches, in that way," Mr. Grew- 
 gious obliged him by concluding the unfinished sentence. " Yes, 
 
THE THORN OF ANXIETY. 229 
 
 Bazzard, I follow you, and quite agree with what would have been 
 the sentiments of the escaped victim, had he known the whole case." 
 
 " Result," continued Mr. Bazzard, apparently growing tired either 
 of the narration or the interruptions, " may be stated in a few words. 
 Supposed victim went away. My friend Datchery experimented, 
 assisted by an old official donkey, named Sapsea, whom he cajoled 
 and flattered out of his few wits ; a nondescript dunderhead named 
 Durdles, with several grains of native sense, whom he hired ; and a 
 poor little cripple named Little Crawshe, whom he pitied and paid — 
 liberally, for Datchery." 
 
 " Bazzard, I drink to the health of your friend Datchery again, 
 without any reservation on the score of idiocy or otherwise ! " ex- 
 claimed Mr. Grewgious, suiting the action to the word. 
 
 " Thanks, sir, on his behalf! " replied Mr. Bazzard, his flabby face 
 for the moment lightened by something more notable than romantic 
 vacancy. "When I communicate with my friend Datchery, Mr. 
 Grewgious, if I ever do, I shall take pleasure in conveying to him 
 your very kind sentiments. But to proceed, and very briefly. At a 
 certain time, not long since, my friend Datchery was surprised by 
 the coming home of supposed victim, who had imbibed a specially 
 idiotic idea that his relative was punished sufficiently, and must by 
 that time be repentant. Besides, as appeared on cross-examination, 
 there was a young woman in the case, and he was awfully spooney 
 to see her. My friend Datchery tabooed the young woman, peremp- 
 torily; enjoined continued concealment of person, and no communi- 
 cation with any one but himself, on penalty of throwing up the case ; 
 and then allowed the young numskull to see how ' repentant ' his 
 precious relative was ! " 
 
 " Umps ! " said Mr. Grewgious, " I not only follow you, here, but 
 I have heard of the incident. Does my recollection fail me, or was 
 the party named Philpitts ? " 
 
 " Recollection quite correct, sir, but unnecessary to be brought in 
 at this stage of the case, in my opinion ! " answered Mr. Bazzard, 
 severely, but still continuing. 
 
 " Effect of that exposition of his relative's ' repentance,' quite 
 satisfactory to supposed victim, who thereupon put himself even more 
 completely than before in my — I mean to say in the hands of my 
 friend Datchery. General results magnificent, though possibly there 
 might be difference of opinion, in the mind of "any party favourably 
 disposed towards the criminaly who became cognizant of all the 
 circumstances. Only one other interruption, and that- occurring very 
 lately." 
 
 Mr. Bazzard paused, with a certain air of expecting to be interro- 
 gated ; and Mr. Grewgious, thus permitted, again interrupted. 
 
 " As what, Bazzard — may I ask 1 " 
 
 " The presence, sir, at Cloisterham, of a young person of the male 
 sex, named Gilfert. For whom, sir, I am pained to say that I believe 
 I — that is my friend Datchery, — must hold you largely responsible. 
 Be good enough to answer the question — are you, or are you not 
 retained, say in Gilfert v. Jasper?" 
 
230 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 " Umps ! Answering with more than the ordinary professional 
 candour, then, Bazzard — I am." 
 
 " So my friend Datchery thought, sir, and he — that is, he blessed 
 you accordingly. For a more difficult person to put off a scent, or 
 keep from meddling with things beyond his capacity, I — that is, my 
 friend Datchery, never had the unhappiness of knowing. He is not 
 even certain how much the youngster discovered, and would probably 
 be a shade more comfortable if he knew. So young and so fine- 
 looking, too, though in a sort of feminine way^so at least my friend 
 Datchery says — it seems really a pity that he should exhibit such 
 Juvenile Depravity." 
 
 " Umps ! " said Mr. Grewgious, setting down his glass for the more 
 convenient rubbing of his hands, and then taking it up again as if 
 with a new relish of it and its contents. "Bazzard, if you don't 
 specially object, I will interpolate by giving you the health of Gilfert 
 — Joseph Gilfert, Esq., of any place you choose to name. Eh, 
 Bazzard ! save the man !■ — he doesn't mean to refuse my toast ? " 
 
 " No, sir," said Bazzard, taking up his glass and drinking with so 
 wry a face, that its doughy surface was temporarily changed, even if 
 scarcely for the better. " I meet your wishes, sir, and I drink to 
 Gilfert, under protest, and with a wish that he may be — not to mince 
 matters — Smothered ! " 
 
 Mr. Grewgious, oddly enough, chuckled a little at this unamiable 
 wish ; then asked a question of importance to the general issue. 
 
 " You were about giving me the result, Bazzard, — which I suppose 
 that I am also to understand as the Bringing Out of the T. of A. ? 
 Yes ? "Well, then — what is the exact result, as at present illustrated 
 in the condition of the supposed murderer ? Your friend Datchery 
 as authority — remember ! " 
 
 " Supposed murderer, sir," returned Mr. Bazzard, loftily, " is, so 
 far as my friend Datchery has informed me — at the present moment 
 a remarkable proof of the power of Genius as applied to the Un- 
 hinging of a man, or so to speak, Disjointing him. He is hovering 
 undecidedly, I — that is, my friend Datchery thinks, between the 
 Madhouse and the Tomb, with odds in favour of the latter, because 
 there will probably not be time left him to reach the former. He is 
 likewise a notable illustration — so my friend Datchery also gives me 
 as his opinion, — that Crime, considered as a Fine Art, seldom pays, 
 with Amateurs, whatever it may do in the hands of Professionals." 
 
 "And your friend Datchery, Bazzard? May I be allowed to 
 inquire what has happened to hipi ? " suggested Mr. Grewgious, with 
 his Angular eyes screwed into a queer contemplation through the 
 two sides of his empty glass, which produced the pleasant effect so 
 congenial to the human mind, of distorting everything within view. 
 
 " My friend Datchery, sir, having Brought Out the T. of A. upon 
 this broad stage of eyery-day life and action, instead of confining 
 that great drama to the mere walls of a theatre, may be said to have 
 Had Enough Of It. As I am at present informed, yesterday or the 
 day preceding, with nothing more to do, and in point of fact with 
 affairs outrunning any effort of his — that inspired idiot rubbed out 
 
THE THORN OF ANXIETY. 231 
 
 with a damp towel the Rune-marks, in chalk, on the door of the 
 closet at his lodgings, with which he had in a sort of droll way- 
 recorded his progress in discovery as well as displayed his knowledge 
 of the Norse system of writing down historical records — paid his last 
 weekly bill, and — Disappeared." 
 
 " Poor Datchery ! " exclaimed Mr. Grewgious, solemnly, pouring 
 out into his glass and that of the other, at the moment, the wine 
 remaining in the third bottle. " Poor Datchery ! if he is really 
 Gone, if you don't mind, Bazzard, we will both drink to His 
 Memory." 
 
 " I follow you now, and I join you, sir, if you will permit me a 
 slight addition to the sentiment, " said Mr. Bazzard, with correspond- 
 ing gravity. " I drink, sir, to his Memory and his Bequest ! " 
 
 " Lord save us ! " cried Mr .Grewgious, in affright. " You don't 
 mean to tell me that he has left anything ! Anything in the shape 
 of another Duty, or Search, or Quest, or Mission, that would seriously 
 mar the future legal prospects of any one accepting it ! " 
 
 " No — nothing of the sort, sir, I am happy to say," returned Mr. 
 Bazzard. " The only Bequest, that I am aware of, was made to 
 myself, in the shape of poor Little Crawshe, the crippled fisherman's 
 boy, . for whom I stand pledged under that Bequest, to try whether 
 the best surgical skill in the city cannot invent an apparatus for 
 holding up his head without the constant and painful use of his hand 
 — thus'rendering the poor little faithful fellow less a cripple." 
 
 " Bazzard ! " , said Mr. Grewgious, warmly, reaching across the 
 table to shake hands in accordance with the expression. " Bazzard, 
 allow me to shake hands with you, as substitute for your friend 
 Datchery, who has Disappeared ! Permit me to express my appre- 
 ciation of him, as a benevolent idiot, as well as an inspired one. It 
 seems to have been a somewhat hair-brained work that he set himself 
 to do ; and the amount of good really achieved, balanced against the 
 harm, may be problematical, if you will excuse a plain Angular man 
 using so long and round a word. But I fancy that he has performed 
 his task very creditably, under all the circumstances ; and his Bequest 
 is certainly a thoughtful and a proper one. "We will cherish, so far 
 as other matters will allow, his Memory. And to-morrow, Bazzard 
 — if you don't mind — certain hindrances and obstructions being now 
 out of the way, to both of us — to-morrow we will devote to gathering 
 up some of the lost ends of Business." 
 
 " I understand you, sir, I follow you, I quite agree with you, and 
 I thank you ! " said Mr. Bazzard, draining the last drop in his glass 
 and the last that it will be our privilege to drain, even in imagination, 
 in his company. 
 
232 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIV. 
 
 GOING ELSEWHERE. 
 
 Again John Jasper crosses the threshold of the disreputable house in 
 the East — seeking what a thousand thousand of worse and better 
 men have sought, in one or another of the ages of the -world, at the 
 same time that they dreaded the possibility of finding it with a dread 
 unspeakable. He is seeking, again, Temporary Oblivion : how little 
 he, or any other — the guiltiest quite as little as the most innocent — 
 would carry out the words often rashly and impiously uttered, and 
 seek the naked phrase Oblivion without a qualifying precedent ! 
 Perhaps the question may arise, in connection, whether it is not 
 always more or less dangerous to seek, in any other mode than that 
 by Heaven appointed, Sleep, that, temporarily, which must be shud- 
 dered at as coming eternally — whether any Brain or any Lip is safe, 
 when its owner rushes too madly upon Present Ease at the possible 
 price of Future Misery, — let wine, the drug, or some modern 
 anaesthetic refuge of shuddering and pain-dreading humanity supply 
 the temptation. 
 
 But this man, if any thought he has in the matter, holds a widely 
 different one. The time has come to him, when of all the blessings 
 of that life which is an aggregated distortion, the richest is to be 
 found in a single draught of the waters of Lethe. To be — small 
 matter how — for even a short period, no longer himself, no longer any 
 one, no longer anything ; to have, for that certain period, neither 
 part nor lot in the world of thought, feeling, sensation, hope, fear, 
 dread, love, hate, revenge, deceit, calculation — to be, indeed, for that 
 period, one of the very weeds that lie noisome and rotting on the 
 bank of the River of Forgetfulness — -this has come to be the chief 
 good. And here he has found it, once and again, and in different 
 measures, according as the changes in his own system and the de- 
 velopments supplied by the dark wisdom of others, have made 
 succeeding stages possible. How magnificently he found that for 
 which he was looking, almost in despair — last time ! How splendidly 
 he sank, almost in a moment, like a stone dropped into the very 
 centre of the dark pool, — only making a few pleasant ripples, as he 
 went down, shaping themselves into rosy clouds and fairy forms, to 
 an accompaniment of the most delicious music ; and how he came up 
 again, after a time, with no more effort — weakened a little, certainly, 
 in body, but oh, so refreshed in mind, and so ready to grasp, in a 
 moment, what he needed to grasp for the difficult duties of his waking 
 hours ! None of that painful striving to get away from himself, on 
 that occasion ; none of that fearful wrestling with shapes seeming 
 like demons of Sensation fighting those of Unconsciousness, which 
 had so often troubled him since the habituating of body and brain to 
 
GOING ELSEWHERE. 233 
 
 bear stronger inhalations of the narcotic. It had been, that once, as 
 in his first attempt, when every nerve was fresh and sensitive : he 
 had regained what he believed to be lost Power — the power of 
 Totally Quitting Himself — leaving his body a mere tenement-shell, to 
 be re-entered at will ; he had regained a lost Enjoyment, beyond 
 question — the Enjoyment of Death in Life. And why, thus remem- 
 bering and thus tempted, should he not try it Once More t Why 
 not, indeed 1 Why should any of us, at any time, who have eaten 
 stolen fruit, or trodden upon forbidden ground, or broken some canon 
 native to the conscience, and as yet suffered no fatal damage thereby 
 — why should we not try it Once More ] What if there is a hand, 
 unknown as to the body to which it belongs, but awfully distinct as 
 to its shape and office, writing on the walls of consciousness, now 
 and again, three warning words that always read the same and so 
 grow rather wearisome than impressive—" Once Too Late ? " What 
 if even this should be ? Must that which has been, always exist 1 
 Some prophecies have been fulfilled — but have all 1 Other hands 
 have written upon other walls and with other words than those in- 
 scribed above the feast in Belshazzar's palace ; but have the Medes 
 and Persians always followed the inscription ? Humanity trows not, 
 and can cite any number of instances of non-fulfilment. Again, why 
 not Once More ? 
 
 He has much occasion for Oblivion, now — the deepest and the most 
 enduring. Since the last time, he has seen the spectre in the Crypt 
 and heard the warning thunders break over the Cathedral. The un- 
 known and formless shapes have been drawing closer and more 
 numerously around him since then. He has kept his room since the 
 last misadventure, allowing the services of the Cathedral to go on 
 without him, and refusing the visits of condolence in favour of the 
 mere messages. But he has shut out nothing so ; for only last night 
 he went to the window, attracted by the same infernal power which 
 has more than once lured him to additional pain and terror — and 
 there, as he drew aside the curtain and looked out, believing that he 
 should see it, — there he saw the pursuing shape — dog-like and yet so 
 much more terrible than any dog of flesh and bone — erect, black, 
 grim, immovable, inscrutable as to the three possibilities of its 
 derivation. And this very morning — God of Heaven ! — the very 
 recollection is enough for madness ! — this morning he saw snakes 
 gliding across the floor 'of his room, hither and thither, under the 
 chairs, over the keys of his piano, and one of them — acme of all that 
 is shuddering and most horrible ! — one of them he distinctly saw 
 crawling into one of his shoes, and attempting to coil itself away 
 there, though he failed to secure it or any of the others, that must 
 have come out from the dank old walls and escaped back into 
 them ! 
 
 So he has come again, deserting sick-room and almost sick-bed 
 for the Once More. He has been so feeble, most of the day, as only 
 to be able to leave Cloisterham late and reach the city long after 
 dark. He has no appointment this time, and really needs none, 
 having escaped one of the chief terrors of his pursuit, and become 
 
234 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 confident that under the new. and better shape of the drug his 
 lips are sealed beyond any danger of a betraying word. He has 
 had an attack of extraordinary feebleness, too, at his hotel, since 
 his attempt at supper — alarming the servants and for a time himself, 
 besides making his visit even later than intended. So it is past mid- 
 night when his foot presses the mouldy and half-rotten step of his 
 true Lust in Rust. 
 
 But he is strangely nervous as he commences to ascend the dark, 
 creaky stairways that he has ascended so often. Does something of 
 the morning remain? Possibly. For certainly, by no means an 
 imaginative man by nature, he has abundance of the faculty now. 
 He knows, in his inner consciousness, that there is no truth in the 
 imagination, the tumble-down old tenement being chiefly occupied 
 by other ramifications of vice and crime ; but in his outer fancy he 
 cannot divest himself of the idea that in certain closets of the landing 
 along which he stumbles, there lie grinning and gibbering Lascars, 
 Chinamen, and sailors debauched by trading in the China seas, fight- 
 ing with the fumes of the Accursed Sleep (the world's thought — not 
 his — he knows better ! ) and gripping ugly knives to stab and slash 
 any who approach. Once or twice he almost believes that he hears 
 their stertorous breathing and catches their muttered words — 
 words that may be, after all, nothing but the scrambling of the rats 
 up and down their favourite highway. 
 
 He passes on, however, with more of those nervous tremors than 
 he can ever remember assailing him within the same space of time 
 and in the same place, since the night of his first visit. He reaches 
 the well-known door — now, standing half-open in the full darkness 
 without and the worse than semi-darkness within, a mere dusky 
 formless space — entering within which he sees, relieved against the 
 miserable window by the dim light coming in from the more miser- 
 able court, the two awry posts forming the foot of the bed and cutting 
 the window itself vertically into uneven stripes. He sees this, as he 
 has so often seen it before, but for some cause seems to note it more 
 carefully, in particulars, than on any previous visit. He sees, too, 
 as he has so often seen before, in a distant point of the room a single 
 glowing spark, that indefinably awakens the idea in his mind of a 
 tiger's eye glaring out from a black jungle ; and near it a dark shape- 
 less mass that he knows to be the bed ; and between that and the 
 brazier of the spark, a black form rocking to and fro and moaning 
 and babbling out words, half cough and strangle, that may be un- 
 meaning and may only be worse ! 
 
 It is after he is fairly within the room and has accustomed his eyes 
 to the partial darkness, that he becomes aware of one effect of his 
 failing to arrange for his visit, in the shape of a limp motionless 
 figure lying against the black heap of the bed and clasping it like 
 some huge vampire bat. How acute this man's senses are to-night — 
 for what reason none may know. Many a time and oft he has lain 
 on that bed and presented a figure only less repulsive than the besotted 
 brute now occupying it — perhaps more repulsive, considering all the 
 laws governing ascent and descent in the moral scale ; and many a 
 
GOING ELSEWHERE. 235 
 
 time and oft he has seen others there ; and yet in neither case has he 
 been so overcome, for a single moment, by an unconquerable disgust 
 and horror towards the old woman, the place, all who frequent it (in- 
 cluding himself ), and every detail and surrounding in the remotest 
 degree connected with it ! For one instant, he is almost on the 
 point of doing' what he has never done before in any resolution of 
 life directed by his own sole power — turning about and going away, 
 before recognized by the crone, at whose lips he sees the golden 
 worms chasing each other around the fiery bowl of his pipe, proving 
 that she is at once recommending her prescription to others, and 
 medicining her troublesome cough, by being herself a free and liberal 
 customer. But the unaccustomed impulse passes away as it came : 
 what has happened, or what can happen, to make it proper for him, 
 John Jasper, to forfeit the relief for which he has come so far and 
 under so many difficulties ? 
 
 He steps forward ; the sound of his foot breaks even through the 
 half-insensibility of the old woman. He can see that she lays down 
 her pipe and forces herself to her feet, managing to find a match 
 even in the midst of one of her paroxysms of coughing, and to set it 
 and the can die alight, with more speed than she might have mustered 
 when less under the influence of the drug. And as she lights she 
 coughs and mumbles : 
 
 " Who are ye, deary, comin' on the poor old soul in the dark 1 
 Wait a minute, and I'll have the candle, though my cough is so 
 dreffle bad and my hand shakes so that it's like to drop off! ,Who 
 are ye? Oh!" 
 
 The candle is now alight and she sees his face ; bringing out in 
 that word so much that the hearer cannot understand, and into the 
 wrinkled, discoloured, flabby and usually-expressionless old coun- 
 tenance, so much that it might be well for him to read, for his soul's 
 sake. He hears nothing but- the simple word of surprised recogni- 
 tion — sees nothing in the face, of that fierce satisfaction only known 
 in the human visage when a great ambition, a great love, or a great 
 revenge is about to be satisfied. 
 
 " Yes," he says, " you see who it is, do you not ? " 
 
 " Yes, deary, I see who it is," she mumbled in reply, setting down 
 the candle, so that it will not shine quite so revealingly on the dis- 
 gusting figure on the bed, and then dropping back into her chair in 
 an access of coughing which threatens to send her flying over the 
 room it fit pieces for cat's-meat. " But ye come on the poor old soul 
 so sudden, deary ! Why didn't ye let her know, so that she could 
 get ready ? " 
 
 " Never mind that ! " he answers, brusquely. " I suppose that you 
 are ready enough, at any time when / don't object to having some- 
 body in my way — unless you have had so much business, to-night, 
 that you need no more. If so, I can find what I need elsewhere." 
 
 " Oh, no, no, deary ! " she coughs and strangles. " Oh, no, no, 
 business is dreffle bad, and my poor lungs is tied down with ropes 
 and strings, so that they cut me with the cough. O me, poor me ! 
 Here's all I've had to-night — this thief of a Chinaman, and he's gone 
 
236 john jasper's secket. 
 
 off with only half his pipes. Oh my poor head — it's splittin' to bits 
 and splinters." 
 
 " Stop," he says, severely. " Not so many words, and more to the 
 purpose. I told you that I might come again in a few days, and I 
 have d6ne so."- 
 
 " Yes, deary, I understand ye," she interrupts, between two 
 dreadful coughing rattles which sandwich her words into a most 
 pitiable compound. " Ye want more of the new mixter that sent ye 
 off so easy and didn't make ye speak so much as a single word — 
 don't ye, deary 1 " 
 
 " That is what I want, if you have it. Can you mix precisely as 
 yoii did the other night 1 Mind — no more of your swindling me 
 with trash, or you have seen me for the last time." 
 
 " Don't ye be alarmed, deary ! " she replies. " O me, my lungs is 
 dish-rags. The price of the new mixter, that is so strong and sends 
 ye off easy, has gone up dreffle, deary, and ye must pay accordin' ; 
 but the poor old soul has some of it, waitin' for ye, and can get it- 
 ready in a minute, if ye won't be so hard with her when her cough 
 is shakin' her to bits." 
 
 " Ah, well," he says, with gratification. " You may get it ready, 
 then ; and give me enough of it to make me sleep longer than the 
 last time — mind that ! Stop ! this carrion must be moved. Do you 
 think that I will lie on that bed, alongside of him ? " 
 
 " Oh, we are squeamish and perticler, deary, to-night, all along of 
 our being so fortinet in our business, maybe ! O me — but it 'pears 
 that my dreffle cough did tear out a bit of my poor lungs, then. But 
 never mind, deary — ye shall have it your own way. Kick him — 
 maybe he'll wake ; for he hasn't the new mixter as the poor old soul 
 saves for them as needs it, and can pay accordin' for it. and don't even 
 take it herself." 
 
 " Wake him ! " he replies, with a scoff. " You might as well try 
 to wake the bed-post ; and if you could, you may want his knife 
 between your ribs — I don't ! " 
 
 " O me, my head is splittin' ? But he hasn't no knife, deary — the 
 poor old soul takes care o' that before they begins, with the Lascars 
 and the Chinamen and sometimes with the sailors as is very old and 
 hard-lookin'. He hasn't no knife, deaiy ; but " 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 " If ye don't like him here, where there's no one as has a better 
 right than you, deary, we can carry him out." 
 
 " Where V 
 
 " Out there in the hall- way, deary, where there's many of 'em has 
 slept it off, when there wasn't room here." 
 
 Within three minutes thereafter, with more strength than one 
 hour ago he believed himself to possess, but not with more energy 
 and determination than he has always known himself to possess — 
 John Jasper has dragged that miserable and supine Chinaman off the 
 bed, through the door, and into the hall-way — no more sign of 
 awaking from his opium-sleep, meanwhile, than in the quoted bed- 
 post, that may indeed have imbibed something from the repeated 
 
GOING ELSEWHERE. 237 
 
 fumefactions of the atmosphere, and thus fallen into its helpless and 
 staggering condition. This special Monarch of the Realm of Sleep 
 is dethroned, with the same suddenness and something of the same 
 violence often shown in the abolition of dynasties in his own Flowery- 
 Land ; and he, who looked like a bundle of very dark foul-clothes, 
 lying on the bed — lies in the corner of the hall-way, without, like 
 the same foul-clothes waiting for the untidy washerwoman — possibly 
 supplying to any rat that may pass, en, promenade, text for a lecture 
 at the next meeting of the Society for Promoting the Avoidance of 
 Poisoned Cheese, on the stupidity as well as the helplessness of that 
 dreaded larger animal, Man. 
 
 This diversion of the attention of her customer gives the old woman, 
 an opportunity to prepare the " mixter " for him — as she does by 
 staggering to the rickety little table at the window, taking from the 
 bosom of her gown what has been so carefully preserved there, as 
 against accident, for him, and charging the pipe with an amount of it 
 which would probably drive Dr. Chippercoyne into paroxysms of self- 
 upbraiding, and set Joe Gilfert to looking about for the syringe and 
 a pint of cold water. Her theft was one covering a liberal amount 
 of the drug ; she has seen that a small quantity only induced sleep, 
 however profound, for a certain brief period ; she is confident that 
 twice the quantity will be necessary, with a head so seasoned as that 
 of her customer, to induce that longer stupor possibly needed for her ■ 
 purposes — that full and explicit opening of the sealed lips, without 
 which she must die miserable ; and she " mixes" in accordance with 
 those general and special principles. 
 
 It is almost ready when John Jasper returns from his little excur- 
 sion without the door, and after closing it ; it is quite ready, the 
 moment after, and the withered and evil old face brought back to its 
 ordinary expression, from whatever unusual aspect may have tempo- 
 rarily dwelt upon it. In spite of this, when she says, holding out 
 the pipe, that nearly falls down from her trembling hand in another 
 of the coughing and strangling paroxysms : 
 
 '• It's all ready for ye, deary — good and strong, and will send ye 
 off quicker than ye ever went in yer life. O me, my lungs and my 
 poor head ! " 
 
 Then, moved by something for which he cannot account, he pauses 
 and looks fixedly at her, at the moment of throwing off his coat, — 
 with a shade of suspicion in his face that freezes her small remaining 
 quantity of blood and nearly sends her quaking to the floor, — uttering, 
 in a hard, grating voice, quite as threatening as the words : 
 
 ." Old woman ! no tricks, to-night ! If this is not what you pretend 
 — if it is not the same that I had the last time — look out for yourself, 
 for I shall remember, and I shall settle with you by something worse 
 than merely paying you no more money. Take care — I say ! " 
 
 " Whatever do you mean, deary ? and me so drefne bad with the 
 cough and my head splitting like a billet of wood ! " she whines, in 
 reply. " If ye want the poor old soul to swear, deary, she'll do it — 
 that the mixter is just what ye had the other night, nothing else 
 — s'helpher!" 
 
238 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 " Very well, then. Give me the pipe.'' 
 
 If there was any doubt — if there was really anything in the crone's 
 manner, awakening suspicion — the one has passed and the other been 
 accounted for. His coat has dropped. He sits down on the side of 
 the bed, so lately occupied by the repulsive Chinaman and possibly 
 yet warm with his unclean pressure. She hands him the pipe, and 
 he places the mouth-piece between his lips and inhales a few fumes. 
 Ah ! — how the dull eyes brighten momentarily, and the whole manner 
 becomes that of a thirsty man just drinking that for which he has 
 waited so long ! 
 
 " It is the same : it operates like the other : do not mind what I 
 said," he mutters, in a very different voice, the mental softening with 
 the physical. " Ah ! they are coming again — the sweet sounds, the 
 beautiful shapes, the brilliant colours. Heaven ! how bright and 
 glorious it all is ! See that no one disturbs me, no matter how long 
 I sleep, or I shall — go elsewhere." 
 
 He has sunk down upon the bed now, with the pipe falling into 
 such a rest that the mouth-piece remains as well between the lips as 
 it would do if held in the hand. He breathes long and steadily, 
 inhaling the fumes with every breath, and the room becoming more 
 full of the aromatic air than could be known, except by an outsider 
 coming suddenly into it. And the poor old soul, sitting down close 
 beside him, where she can watch him most closely until the moment 
 when he seems sufficiently stupefied for her experiment, inhales more 
 of the odour than she can possibly suppose. 
 
 How pleasant it becomes to her, after a few moments ! How the 
 pain of her racking cough has ceased ! How every nerve and faculty 
 seems to be at ease and peace ! She, too, though her eyes are open 
 and looking at the sleeper, waiting for the moment when she can 
 " make you talk, deary ! " — she, too, hears pleasant sounds ; and the 
 next moment she sees bright colours, too, for the eyes have closed 
 without her being aware of the fact or having strength to fight the 
 influence even if she knew. And then — a moment more — she is as 
 fast asleep as the slumberer on the bed, though far from so sound in 
 the nature of the slumber : sitting doubled up and half-fallen forward 
 in her chair, like a tumbled cushion of large size and very uncleanly 
 character'. 
 
 How long this may last, she has no idea. Half an hour — an hour 
 —may have passed, when she wakes with a start of recollection where 
 she is and what there is to do — that valuable time is passing, and 
 without care she may miss the great object after all. 
 
 She rises, with an effort and the inevitable Strangling and rattling 
 cough of any exertion. She sees John Jasper lying there, as she 
 left him — the head thrown farther back and the right hand clenched, 
 but with the pipe-stick still between his teeth. All is not over, then, 
 even if she has slept ; for his slumber is still unbroken, and there is 
 yet time. 
 
 No time that must be lost, however. What is to be done, must 
 be done at once. Her head is a little stupid ; but she tries t<* re- 
 member exactly the action of Joe Gilfert under similar circumstances, 
 
GOING ELSEWHERE. 239 
 
 and succeeds passably well. He is so sound in sleep that she does 
 not need to go behind the bed — only to approach it in front, lean 
 over, and put her palms to the two points before pressed by the 
 handsome boy. She lays one of the skinny and shaking hands on 
 the top of the head, then applies the other to the palm of the left 
 hand, which fortunately lies open. At the instant of doing so, she 
 utters a scream rendered doubly horrible by the rattling cough blend- 
 ing with it, — half starting up from the bed and then throwing herself 
 literally upon it and its burthen. 
 
 What is it that she has discovered 1 What ! 
 She puts her old face and ear close to the mouth of the sleeper, 
 then screams again and feels with the fingers of one shaking hand for 
 the pulse at the wrist. Then, with yet another scream, blending 
 rage and fright, she hobbles to the little table, takes part of a glass 
 of water standing there, and dashes it full in the face of the slum- 
 bering man. Then, with one longer and fiercer scream, in its hoarse 
 horror not unlike that of a horse dying in torture in flames or on 
 the battle-field — she throws herself back on the bed, grasps at the 
 neck-cloth of the sleeping man, tears it off, throws open the neck 
 and bosom of his shirt, and forces one of her hands down the breast 
 to the region of the heart. No motion, all this time, — none even 
 when his person is touched and that sanctuary of the person invaded ! 
 He must be sleeping soundly — must he not 1 — even for a slumber 
 under the skilled preparation of Dr. Chippercoyne ! 
 
 But the bleared old eyes see something on the shoulder that has 
 been so far uncovered. With a cry blended of rage and despair, and 
 still the hoarse cough making a third in the elements of jarring 
 sound, she pounces down again, so to speak, on that shoulder, tears 
 down the linen still further, and follows that motion with a veritable 
 howl accompanied by another motion most unaccountable and possibly 
 most cruel. With all the power remaining in her enfeebled body, 
 she raises her right hand and brings it down heavily on that some- 
 thing on the shoulder, which may be a broad scar or may be a birth- 
 mark. No wincing even at this, on the part of the sleeper who sleeps 
 so soundly ; but the flesh is more sensitive. A moment, while the 
 bleared eyes continue looking with a hungry keenness, and coughing, 
 moaning and cries are still : and then from the centre of the some- 
 thing on the shoulder there rise two letters, livid white on a ground 
 of purple red : " T. F." 
 
 She starts up, then, chuckling hoarsely and rubbing her hands, 
 even in the midst of her evident alarm. The fierce Evil Joy of 
 revenge seems to predominate even over Fear, as she points one of 
 her skinny and shaking fingers at the motionless form on the bed, 
 and apostrophizes it with a broken coughing and rattling vindictive- 
 ness more horrible than any other of the surroundings. 
 
 " The poor old soul has done it, deary, after all ! Ye didn't keep 
 yer secret from her, even though ye died to' do it! Ye haven't 
 always been John Jasper, deary ! — not when yer double tongue 
 named ye Jean Jourmeaux, when ye were sowing what I suppose 
 ye called yer wild oats, away over beyond the water, there — first 
 
240 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 singin' away and then stealin' away the only child I had in the world 
 —even if she was nothing but a ballet-girl ! I've knowed ye, deary, 
 all along, though I couldn't get words to prove it ! If I could, the 
 poor old soul would ha' sent ye back, long ago, to the galleys at 
 Toulon, where they put ye for killin' the only one as stood up for her 
 — where they give you that pretty mark, deary, and where ye'd have 
 been to-day, but for knowin' how to make yourself somebody else,' 
 and gettin' away ! " 
 
 She has dropped into the rickety chair, with thorough exhaustion, 
 coughing and strangling as if that last hour so soon to come has come 
 indeed ; and it is from that chair, too weak to rise, that after a 
 moment she again stretches out her skinny finger and concludes her 
 awful apostrophe. 
 
 " Ye've gone to a worse place, deary, to get quit of the poor old 
 soul ; and slie sent ye there — she sent ye there ! Ye did talk, deary, 
 as I said ye would — with yer skin if not with yer lips. And the old 
 woman — O me, my lungs is rags and my head is splittin' — yer fine 
 family '11 never know anything of it, or how it come about ; but the 
 old woman is even with ye at last, deary ! " 
 
 " See that no one disturbs me, no matter how long I sleep, or I 
 shall — go elsewhere." Such were John Jasper's last words, lying 
 down to the Accursed Sleep. Without the outrage being committed, 
 lie has fulfilled the threat ! Nothing has disturbed him — nothing 
 shall or can disturb him, till the sounding of that Trumpet of Doom 
 of which he half believed, the other day, that he heard the thunders 
 breaking over old Cloisterham Cathedral ; and yet he has Gone Else- 
 where ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 WHY ? WHY ? OH, WHY 1 
 
 Mrs. Billickin was at once in her Glory and her Misery. The 
 statement may seem a contradiction in terms ; and yet such a compli- 
 cation of affairs is entirely possible — as any young lady can bear 
 witness, who on the same day has received an offer of marriage from 
 the most eligible of men, to whom she has long been tenderly attached, 
 — and lost a valuable bracelet, impossible of duplication, or fallen 
 into an attack of the tic douloureux. Deliberately is the incongruity 
 repeated : Glory and Misery. On the afternoon of that day, Miss 
 Twinkleton and Rosa were to leave the lodgings in Southampton- 
 street, Bloomsbury-square — the former to return to her duties at the 
 Nun's House, at Cloisterham ; the latter, for some cause no longer 
 fearing Mr. Jasper or his neighbourhood, to accompany her, not as a 
 
WHY? WHY? OH, WHY. 241 
 
 boarder but a visitor, during a certain number of weeks, at the end 
 of which a return to town might probably take place, with other 
 appendiary events not necessary to enlarge upon at this juncture. 
 
 This constituted the current Glory of the lodging-house keeper. 
 To be rid of the calm and equable sharp-tongued woman, over whom 
 she had certainly now no victory if she had not suffered repeated 
 defeat — to be no longer in terror of her well-bred scorn, only able to 
 oppose those coarser and less trenchant weapons of lower breeding — 
 to be freed from a tyranny which debarred her from entering some 
 of the most eligible rooms in the house, thus reducing the respectful 
 awe due to her from her own servants, — this was pleasure and pride 
 enough to ensure the marking of that day with a white stone in 
 memory. 
 
 But alas ! — the other side — the Misery ! Financially and in that 
 detail of abundant patronage which allows choice and makes the 
 peculiar pride of the lodging-house keeper, the late campaign could 
 not be regarded as a success. For the apartments, sweet rooms 
 though they were and the best in the 'ouse, were not as yet re-let. 
 "Whether the coming of the grave lady had laid the whole house 
 under a spell — or whether (as the proprietress sometimes almost sus- 
 pected) the dissatisfied lodger had in some mysterious mode circulated 
 reports throughout the entire community, indicating the apartments 
 as ineligible and the landlady as objectionable — certain it is that the 
 bill at the door had only attracted a few applicants of inferior con- 
 dition, and that seventeen-and-sixpence, expended in announcements 
 in the morning journals, had not been more effectual. So far as 
 leaving the rooms empty could be considered, there was every proba- 
 bility of her enemy going out with banners waving and all the honours 
 of the conflict ; and this, apart from the financial question, was enough 
 to constitute quite an appreciable amount of misery to the lady of 
 the fugitive heart and the swooning tendency. 
 
 Mrs. Billickin, however, it must be said, came up to the closing 
 conflict, at this crisis, with great energy and no small amount of 
 strategic skill. Defeated she might be, but discouraged never and 
 wherefore try ! Sportsmen, unsuccessful in bag or creel, have been 
 understood to call at the poulterer's or the fishmonger's, on their way 
 home, and purchase the necessary quantity of game or fish to turn 
 aside the venomed shaft of ridicule as aimed by the objects of their 
 affection or others ; able generals, depleted in force and unable to 
 resist an impending attack, have been known to march in, with loud 
 music and much display of flags, certain corps sent surreptitiously 
 away for that purpose, thus striking terror into the enemy with the 
 idea of a heavy reinforcement : bankers, suffering under that want of 
 confidence in the public mind, illustrated by a " run on the bank," 
 are at least currently reported to have procured the bringing in at 
 the front door and throwing down very pronouncedly on the counter, 
 of large amounts of bullion, supposed to have been just sent forward 
 by confiding depositors, but really taken out of the back door, half 
 an hour previously, for that special exercise of ingenuity. 
 
 So the Billickin, who may have studied in the sportsman's, the 
 
242 JOHN jasper's secbet. 
 
 military, or the financial school, or all of them, and who had probably 
 extracted a portion of her wisdom from each. 
 
 Most of the luggage of the two ladies was packed, ready for re- 
 moval ; and half a score of trunks and boxes, comprising a large 
 proportion of it, had been placed outside the doors of the apartments, 
 ready for the coming of the hour and the two cabs necessary for re- 
 moval. But these did not by any means supply all that the hallway 
 contained, on that special morning ; for from immediately after the 
 breakfast-hour, Mrs. Billickin had herself been in the hall, shawl- 
 wrapped, making occasional clutches at her heart (as if that, too, was 
 about to leave its lodgings vacant, with no applicants), and suggesting 
 that swooning, to the number of say half a dozen repetitions, would 
 be the most desirable of diversions. But quite equal to the duties of 
 her position, for all this, and displaying vigour that might have 
 excited the envy of the robust. 
 
 She was subjecting the stone hallways, especially those immediately 
 outside the rooms of Miss Twinkleton and Rosa, to an amount of 
 scrubbing, scouring and washing down, involving the use of water 
 enough to have extinguished a conflagration extending not beyond 
 a single house, and indicating that she believed herself to be the 
 officer of the deck of a steamer just freed from the cattle-trade, 
 cleaning up for the commencement of light passenger traffic. This 
 had continued and increased to such an extent, that Mr. Tartar, 
 coming in by arrangement to assist the ladies to their vehicles and 
 possibly to the station, when the hour should arrive (and for other 
 purposes, also not necessary here to specify), found himself unex- 
 pectedly in very congenial atmosphere, water, mopping, scouring and 
 scrubbing being quite sufficient, and only the holystone and squegee 
 wanting, to carry him completely back to his abandoned quarters on 
 shipboard. Indeed on arrival he narrowly escaped hailing the boat- 
 swain, in a severe voice, with'orders to free the scuppers and not 
 have everything afloat 'tween-decks, like a land-lubber as he was ! 
 
 There was something else, which he did not escape — the dear 
 little imploring voice in which Bosa saluted him on arrival, with a 
 request that he would get their trunks inside again and prevent every- 
 thing contained in them being ruined by the splashing water. And 
 it was while he was performing that service, in which he wished that 
 every package of hers was ten and ten times as heavy, that he might 
 have the longer fancy of being in the act of altering stowage of sea- 
 chests and all heavy dunnage, to clear for a tidy little brush with the 
 yellow niggers or get her on an even keel for a sharp chase — it was 
 during this performance, with its open doors, that the verbal but 
 still more important tactics of the Billickin became best apparent. 
 
 These consisted in a series of candid statements made very loudly 
 to the servants, of the filthy condition in which certain persons as 
 she needn't name though she wouldn't disguise>the fact that they pro- 
 bably didn't know any better never 'avin lived in an 'ouse with any 
 pretence to cleanliness or gentility, managed to disfigure and put 
 everything out of order, and it was a blessing that they was goin' as 
 if they stayed much longer the best rooms wouldn't be fit to show a 
 
WHY? WHY? on, WHY? 243 
 
 shop-girl much less a lady and what else could you expect ? As also 
 reminders to the servants aforesaid, in even a louder voice than that 
 conveying the preceding, that Mrs. Welstood and her daughters, who 
 had took the rooms, at prices as was prices and yet not too high for 
 such sweet apartments and no thanks to them as had wanted to un- 
 dervalue them but couldn't try how they would,— couldn't stay any 
 longer than to-morrow morning in the rooms as they had occupied in 
 Upper Baker Street, Regent's Park, and they must have the floor dry 
 and the other rooms in order if the persons as was goin' away and 
 the quicker the better she wouldn't deceive them not for her life, 
 ever managed to get off as they had been warned sufficient and time 
 hup. 
 
 Miss Twinkleton, half-angry, half-amused, at the extraordinary 
 length to which Mrs. Billickin's wrath had reached, was still 
 wishing that the lunch-hour had passed and that they were well 
 on their way towards a place of residence more congenial. Bosa, 
 altogether amused and entirely unconcerned, now that there was 
 no danger of the drowning out of their personal adornments, was 
 clapping hands at the whole affair, combined with certain sugges- 
 tions and anecdotes of Mr. Tartar's, which illustrated it so 
 capitally — and asking : " Oh, why, why did they ever make such 
 a cross old thing, to make everybody uncomfortable — only that 
 it is all so droll and absurd ! " And Mr. Tartar, in addition to other 
 suggestions and anecdotes, was compelling a smile even on the face 
 of the elder lady, with one of the former, — expressing a forcible 
 desire which he seemed to entertain, of having Mrs. Billickin at sea 
 with him during one cruise in the tropics, where the water would be 
 warm enough to allow of keel-hauling her once a day, which he 
 believed would have the quadruple effect of curing her swoons, 
 fastening down her heart in the proper place, softening her temper, 
 and shutting her mouth. 
 
 It was then, and into such an atmosphere as this, that Helena 
 Landless came, managing to reach the door of the drawing-room dry- 
 shod, though after receiving certain venomous splashes, supposed to 
 be accidental, which might have produced an unpleasant effect upon 
 a temper less equable or a mind less preoccupied. 
 
 The face of the young girl was very grave, as she met her three 
 friends, embracing Bosa with that elder-sister tenderness which she 
 seemed never tired of expending upon her " baby -beauty," and 
 greeting Miss Twinkleton and the Ex-Lieutenant, with that warmth 
 belonging to her confidential position towards both. 
 
 Notably grave, the face, as of one who was for the moment too 
 earnest for any of the trifling things of the world — and yet with 
 something in it of high, sustained content, that might even be hap- 
 piness, though not easily or at once that happiness bubbling in 
 laughter. 
 
 All marked the expression of the face ; but it was Bosa who first 
 commented upon it, as their chairs so naturally drew close beside 
 each other. 
 
 " Helena, dear ! — how grave you are ! — we have been laughing, oh 
 
 e2 
 
244 JOHN jasper's secret. 
 
 so very, very heartily, over Mrs. Billickin and her arrangements for 
 annoying us. But for Mr. Tartar, who adores swimming, and likes 
 to do it even in houses, — do you not, Rob — Mr. Tartar 1—1 suppose 
 that our trunks would all have been floated away, leaving plenty of 
 room for — what is the name of the imaginary woman, dear Miss 
 Twinkleton, who is to succeed to our comforts 1 " 
 
 " Mrs. "Welstood, Rosa dear, I think, is the name of the imaginary 
 person who is to piek up the comforts, which must be lying very 
 plentifully about the house, seeing that we have not found or used 
 many of them ! " replied the staid elder lady, demurely. 
 
 " Did she come in a carriage, with footman and a crest, to look at 
 the rooms, I wonder 1 " inquired Mr. Tartar, in the soberest but 
 breeziest way ; whereupon Miss Twinkleton smiling quietly, Rosa, 
 without any good reason being apparent, laughed so heartily, that 
 Mrs. Billickin must have been annoyed by the sound, even above the 
 rush and swish of her water-dashing without. But Helena Landless 
 did not join in the merriment; and after a moment more of silence 
 that began to tell upon the spirits of the others, she said : 
 
 "Rosa, darling — you thought that I looked grave. Perhaps I 
 have cause. Do you read the City reports in the newspapers, here, 
 very often." 
 
 " No — scarcely," replied Rosa ; and then, suddenly alarmed by the 
 suggestion of her friend's gravity and a newspaper report holding some 
 connection, she began to inquire, breathlessly : 
 
 " Oh, Helena, dear ! what, what has occurred 1 " 
 
 " Nothing to alarm you, darling ; but something to cause surprise 
 and a certain grief to us all. Look here ! " 
 
 Rosa took the morning journal that she handed, with a mark, at a 
 certain spot, and read aloud, breathlessly and terribly frightened, — 
 those^twenty or thirty lines in the City intelligence, reciting the dis- 
 covery of a body, the day before, at a disreputable opium-smoking 
 house in a certain dangerous street not far from the Tower — which 
 body proved, on examination of papers found on it, to be that of a 
 person named John Jasper, lately resident and in some musical avoca- 
 tion at Cloisterham, in Chalkshire. All indications, the report went 
 on to say, pointed to long-developing decay and debility caused by 
 excessive use of the deleterious drug; and, there was no doubt that 
 he had died in a debauch of that character — though time had not yet 
 elapsed for investigation at Cloisterham ; and nothing could be dis- 
 covered from the occupants of the house, the tenant of that special 
 room having disappeared after providing for irresponsible notice to 
 the authorities, and none of the others admitting any knowledge of 
 the unfortunate deceased or his antecedents. 
 
 The face of the poor little trembler, suddenly grave as that of her 
 friend, was nearly white as the painted wall before she concluded, and 
 the last words of her reading were scarcely intelligible. There eveu 
 crept up from the warm little loving and forgiving heart, a few tears 
 that fell in sorrow over the dreadful fate of the man whom she had 
 lately known so well, and the man (let the whole truth be told !) who 
 had loved her so deeply, even if so dangerously ! For it is not in us 
 
why] why? oh, why? 245 
 
 to lay the same severe rule to conduct inspired by warm affection for 
 us, that we should be sure to apply to it, when dictated by any other 
 motive ; and the wildest of passions has that security for recognition 
 even in the least responsive natures. 
 
 " Poor Mr. Jasper," she said, as she concluded. " How very, very 
 sorry I am, to know that he has ended so ! He did love me, did he 
 not ? — though it was in his own dreadful way, and though he made 
 me so afraid of him ! " 
 
 " Yes — poor Mr. Jasper, Rosa, dear," said Miss Twinkleton, in her 
 own undemonstrative manner. " Let us hope, now that he is gone, 
 that he may have been a better man than we feared, and that he may 
 have gone to an easier account than some of us, blind mortals, could 
 arrange for him." 
 
 " From the little acquaintance that I have had with your departed 
 friend, I should scarcely select him as a messmate for a long cruise," 
 said Mr. Tartar, with that fresh voice and manner showing him 
 equally incapable of fostering narrowness of view or retaining long 
 animosity ; " and yet, why should he not hold a better place on the 
 roll than any of us would be likely to give him 1 I have known a 
 general court-martial, with any number of epaulets and any quantity 
 of grey hairs above them, condemn and hang a poor fellow, on cir- 
 cumstantial evidence, who was afterwards found to be only unfor- 
 tunate and misled instead of guilty ; and it is a good thing for all of 
 us, I fancy, that the Presiding Officer of the courts up aloft, can see 
 further and better with the naked eye than we with the best sea- 
 glass." 
 
 Helena Landless said nothing, for a time — as one of whom the 
 intelligence had been already communicated. If she had spoken, 
 and spoken her thought, she would probably have expressed her deep 
 thankfulness that she had been mercifully spared from a great re- 
 morse, which might have haunted her during the rest of her life, in 
 the event of this death occurring, under similar circumstances, only 
 a few days before — when a certain handsome boy, Joe G-ilfert to wit, 
 was trying an experiment so dangerous and so easily fatal ! Well for 
 the repose of her conscientious nature, that she could never know to 
 the contrary — never dream that any portion of Dr. Chippercoyne's 
 subtle preparation remained behind her to work this death in unskil- 
 ful hands — that she could attribute it, as did others, to opium, the 
 pangs of guilt and fear, and the wearing away of the very powers of 
 life! 
 
 A ring at the door, scarcely noticed by either of the four in the 
 conversation occurring over the death of John Jasper ; and then, after 
 a considerable interval, during which their notice was attracted by a 
 certain amount of altercation and stumbling over obstructions in the 
 hallway — a tap, two or three times repeated, at the door of the 
 drawing-room. Rosa, partially expecting Mr. Grewgious, to make 
 his farewells and " see them off," and a little wondering that even he 
 should have received such a reception for their sakes, in the house of 
 his relative — went to the door and opened. 
 
 The next thing of which the four within the room were aware, was 
 
246 john jasper's secret. 
 
 a scream of terror, followed by a cry of joy ; and then they saw the 
 young girl make a rush forward, counterbalancing the late recoil, 
 throwing her arms around the neck of a young fellow who shared in 
 the enthusiastic demonstration if he did not supply quite the half of 
 it, and covering his face with kisses of which he was only able to 
 repay a moiety, while she laughed and sobbed and gurgled out a 
 variety of exclamations and inquiries, of which the most intelligible 
 that could be caught were : 
 
 •' Oh Eddy ! You are sure, sure, sure that you are yourself and 
 not a ghost ! Where, where have you been, all this time 1 and 
 why, why, why did you come so suddenly and frighten us all to 
 death?" 
 
 Edwin Drood ! 
 
 At least, Edwin Drood, if anything could be judged from the sin- 
 gularly life-like appearance, the least in the world like that of a 
 ghost — the eye bright ; the figure a shade more manly than it had 
 been, eight or nine months before ; and the cheek much browner and 
 therefore healthier-looking, as if the sun of a warmer climate than 
 that of England had temporarily shone upon it. And possibly there 
 was something corroborative of physical existence, in the voice, with 
 much of its former manner, though scarcely so merry as of old — as 
 how could it be, with its last previous utterance, half an hour before, 
 in a certain chamber of Staple Inn : " Poor old Jack ! — poor old pas- 
 sionate, guilty Jack ! How I loved and trusted him, once ! — and 
 how he loved me, before he went mad, after her !" 
 
 " Did I frighten you, Pussy 1 "Why, what a brute I am ! Myself] 
 of course I am myself ; and I have altogether too much appetite 
 for a ghost. Where have I been 1 — Everywhere in general, and 
 around your bothering old Pyramids, in Egypt, in particular ! All 
 about that, and a hundred other things, by-and-by. And what a dear 
 little handsome Pussy you are, after all ! " 
 
 Naturally all this, consuming so much time in the relation, had 
 occupied far less in reality. And the brief interval had not been en- 
 tirely filled by the two principal actors. There had been other 
 cries and exclamations of surprise, and all present were on their feet, 
 manifesting emotions quite in keeping with their several characters. 
 Miss Twinkleton was simply frightened and speechless. Mr. Tartar, 
 for the instant, possibly forgetting the past and only remembering 
 that a pair of plump little white arms, believed allotted to himself 
 in the distribution of prizes after the fight, were around the neck of 
 another and younger man — looked like seizing a cutlass, heading a 
 gang of boarders, and coming to close quarters of very violent charac- 
 ter, — until the native good sense of the man reasserted itself and 
 the frown passed away in a smile of pleasure at the unexpected 
 return. 
 
 And Helena Landless ? 
 
 That she was less surprised than either of the others, at the return 
 of the dead to life, was very possible, — for she gave no start to 
 indicate the totally-unexpected. And yet there was evidence that 
 she was more moved than any of the others — far more than the im- 
 
WHY? WHY? OH, WHY? 247 
 
 pulsive child who rained kisses and fond words on the new-comer. 
 Her brown cheek was totally colourless ; and her eyes were full of a 
 strange expression blending an intense joy and a fright almost driving 
 her to rush from the room, — as for that moment or two she stood ap- 
 parently unnoticed. Few women, perhaps, in all the long catalogue 
 of the loving, the suffering, the temporarily or finally bereaved, the 
 suddenly reassured, have ever been placed in preoisely such anomalous 
 circumstances as those at that moment surrounding the Ceylonese 
 girl. What she had hoped — what she almost knew — had already 
 proved itself. The man she loved so dearly, and had mourned like 
 his faithful widow, was alive. But what was she to him ? Every- 
 thing ? Nothing 1 
 
 Possibly Edwin Drood had not seen her, at the first moment of 
 his coming, in the virtual possession taken of him by Rosa. But, 
 scarcely disengaged, his eye caught her face and form ; and then, had 
 the young girl being better skilled in reading the eye of love, or 
 dared quite to look upon it, she might have read all that she wished. 
 He stepped towards her, as she stood erect, pale and motionless — 
 holding out his hand with an unmistakable fervour of gladness. 
 
 " Miss Landless ' Helena ! Will you not welcome the returned 
 runaway, too ? " 
 
 "Would she not welcome him ! Ah ! 
 
 She could only speak one work then, as she held out the taper 
 fingers, nearly as brown as her cheek, but so perfectly shaped and 
 handsomer for their very warmth of colour. 
 
 " Edwin ! " not " Mr. Drood," as lie had begun : only " Edwin ! " 
 
 Perhaps the tone told something ; for the young man did not seem 
 satisfied with the prospect of the one hand — wished for both. Both 
 were given him ; and then he raised the two to his lips, with a shame- 
 less disregard of all the other personalities present, and covered them 
 with kisses. There is some hope that neither this nor what followed, 
 however, was observed by the others ; for at that juncture Miss 
 Twinkleton, wonderfully weaned from the Proprieties, found sudden 
 occasion to bring something from an opposite table ; and Rosa, her 
 ebullition over, smuggled up alongside of Mr. Tartar, as if she might 
 be a fairy pinnace belonging to that staunch though scarcely grim 
 man-of-war, with an inquiry whether he did not think that it had 
 been too, too absurd — her behaviour to Eddy ? — but how could she 
 help it ? for she was so glad to see him, and didn't he know that they 
 had come very near to being man and wife, once ? — and then what, 
 what, what would become of him — jealous fellow ! And Mr. Tartar 
 himself, his momentary jealousy blown away, was receiving this 
 model confession of penitence, and at the same moment looking very 
 hard out of the top of the window, to discover from the opposite 
 chimney-pots whether there would be a head wind or a seven knot 
 breeze abaft, on the way to the station. 
 
 What all these, or any of them, would have seen, had they paid 
 full attention to matters not concerning them — may be summed up 
 iu a few words. They would have seen Edwin Drood, after a moment 
 of devouring the hands of his mistress with kisses, drop both, as if 
 
248 JOHN JASPEll's SECRET. 
 
 moved by an. impulse beyond control, and hold out his arms, without 
 a word, but with a compelling earnestness far more effective than any 
 language. 
 
 They would have seen Helena Landless pale until the brown cheek 
 might rival tbat of any of her blonde sisters ; then redden suddenly, 
 till all the brownness and all the paleness both faded in the very 
 flush of the morning sky ; then force herself back, with a frightened 
 movement, as if she could not, dare not, must not submit, then and 
 there ; then yield, as we all must yield, struggle how we may, at the 
 hour of our Written Fate, and meet the outstretched arms with a cry 
 and a tired, weary, joyful nestling of the head against the breast to 
 which it was gathered, needing no words to mark the heart-full Be- 
 trothal. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 TYING THE THREADS. 
 
 Times change — upon the old Cathedral town, as over every other spo* 
 of trodden earth. And as they change, a statelier procession moves 
 aloDg, in the succession of the rolling years, than opium-dreamer ever 
 saw in lurid visions of the Accursed Sleep. For if the cymbals clash, 
 as clash they do at times, it may be but the hands of single men that, 
 beating them together, send out their brassy sound upon the air, — 
 and yet it may be 'that a nation's angry might combines to strike 
 melodious terror to the hearts of listening men. If bright swords 
 flash and dancing girls strew flowers, there may be something more, 
 in all, than the mere idle pageant of an Orient show ; for half the 
 blades may be those keenest ones of trenchant thought ; and in the 
 wreathing arms and supple limbs, circling and turning in the mazy 
 dance, there may be nations mad with wealth and luxury, preparing 
 in those hours of wanton ease for fearful judgments in the days to 
 come, when pampered nerves no longer have the power to hold the 
 steel demanded for a native land's defence, and when the conquerors' 
 foot unchecked shall tread above the monuments of Art and Pride, 
 with steps more blighting still than Attila's. Nay, more — the bed of 
 sleep that is no sleep, where hands are clutching madly as at phantom 
 throats, and murderous knives upraised to stab and slay whoever 
 comes in reach — this bed may be as broad as earth, and on it nations 
 clutching, stabbing at each other's lives, as if we travelled back in 
 history, and were approaching, not receding, from the day of brother- 
 slaying, most red-handed Cain. But something else, thank God ! — ■ 
 may be, as well, in all those rolling years. Inventions, making 
 stronger Labour's weary hand ; Discoveries, bringing nations nearer 
 each to each ; Benevolences, softening even the asperities of War and 
 
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TYING THE THREADS. 249 
 
 making more endurable the bitter lot of Poverty ; Emancipations, 
 freeing human minds and bodies; Illuminations from that brighter 
 sphere where man is privileged to walk in thought while yet his body 
 feels the clinging clog of clay — these, and a thousand more of blessed 
 things may be, more evident in each of all those rolling years, and 
 proving to the heart so prone to sink in hopeless pity for its kind, 
 that all the course of time has due direction, point and purpose, in 
 the Guiding Mind, and that the Onward, all confessed, is stronger 
 than the Retrograde. 
 
 And in the greater lies the less — even that infinitesimal less in- 
 volving the fates of those, some portions of whose history lies in this 
 brief chronicle. Limned more as the hand of the Great Designer 
 scatters hues and shapes on some evening cloud, than as the painter 
 draws and colours on the material canvas — we may see, as following 
 the events already recorded, the little that still claims notice in the 
 destinies of each, and fancy the hours and days in the great total 
 bringing each its time. 
 
 When Miss Twinkleton is once more in her place at the Nun's 
 House, with a new bevy of budding girls supplying the place of those 
 gone away to return no more — thinking most of all of dear little 
 Rosebud, at once her delight and her torment, and meeting a fate so 
 blended of the gay and the grave, the sorrowful and the happy ; 
 remembering Foolish Mr. Porters occasionally, as she must continue 
 to do until memory fades under the greying hair ; but for some cause 
 showing to her pupils less of her school-room aspect, now, and more 
 of that genial bestself which was once reserved for the private hour 
 and Mrs. Pisher, than before she went through a certain experience 
 which will always, when she recalls it, make her hold her breath with 
 wonder and a trifle of agitation. 
 
 When Mrs. Billickin, stretched and martyred on her own rack of 
 meanness and malevolence, and no longer able, through receding and 
 constantly less and less respectable patronage, to keep sweet rooms 
 in any 'ouse, is supplying disreputable lodgings to and broiling 
 herrings for half-a-dozen ambiguous lodgers, at prices in accordance 
 with the accommodation — in a foul street off the Seven Dials, keeping 
 but one servant herself, and that one not pafd that liberal as never 
 to complain ; and though candid as ever, in her lowered way, dis- 
 pensing with shawls as encumbrances ; seldom clutching at the 
 escaping heart, from a want of care whether it escapes or not ; and 
 never swooning, from deficiency of time or attendance necessary for 
 that diversion. 
 
 When little Crawshe possesses that wonderful invention of steel, 
 leather and whalebone, designed by Datchery, carried out by Bazzard, 
 and made by Chevalier — which holds up the poor dropping head, 
 makes him far less a cripple, and enables him to earn as well as enjoy 
 something of the humble living of his position. When Black Tom- 
 boy is older, more quiet, a little afflicted with wonder at seeing that 
 young master of his the possessor of two hands, but quite as ready 
 and willing as ever, on due provocation, to rescue or throttle. 
 
 When Stony Durdles, still gruff, lime-dusty and impracticable as 
 
250 john jasper's secret. 
 
 ever, and still tenacious of Old 'Uns, but a shade less intemperate 
 and so more than a shade additionally industrious and comfortable, — 
 has progressed so far with the statue of his lost girl, that Mr. Cri- 
 sparkle compliments him warmly upon his success, and it may reach, 
 before he is entirely grey and altogether helpless, to something near 
 enough to the proportions of humanity, quite to fill the poor old 
 fellow's heart. 
 
 "When Mr. Honeythunder has a wickedly bright young fellow, with 
 a crippled left hand and arm and a tendency to whistle in the hall- 
 ways, sometimes calling on him, by permission, at the Head Haven 
 — presumably from school or light occupation, — with whom he is 
 always alone for some minutes, whom he always dismisses with a 
 kindness indicating that he must be a relative or favoured protege — 
 and from whose company he always comes out, on such occasions, 
 with a voice less overpowering and a manner less combative to others, 
 than generally mark the utterance and demeanour of the Aggressive 
 Philanthropis t. 
 
 When Mayor Sapsea has swollen, in his pompous donkeyism, to 
 such proportions that he is quite beyond recognition by most of the 
 people of Cloisterham — his Mayoralty looked back upon by himself 
 as rather a degradation of Intellect, than any honour ; the wondrous 
 Epitaph seldom alluded to, by one who could now excel it so far, if 
 he would ; and a probability existing that the dignity of Knighthood, 
 if ever offered, will be declined ; nothing less than Baron Sapsea, of 
 Pompspfusseigh, in the county of Chalk, being worthy of his later 
 dignified consideration. 
 
 "When the miserable old woman of the East has coughed and 
 strangled herself finally into bits — being found one morning not long 
 after the finale of John Jasper, in the same condition, with a differ- 
 rence, to which she aided in reducing the Choir-Master, — and buried 
 in a manner eliciting no regard as to its dreffle character or the 
 market-price of the operation, the expenses being (always narrowly) 
 defrayed by the public funds. 
 
 When there is a new legal firm at the Staple Inn, that of Messrs. 
 Grewgious and Bazzard, Solicitors and Conveyancers, with a speciality 
 of Collecting Rents, — of which the senior partner grows less Angular, 
 more suave, more garrulous, and more drolly afraid of doctors'-bottles 
 and medical preparations, as he grows older, and sometimes falls into 
 fits of long abstraction, in which, from the solemnity of his counte- 
 nance and an occasional use of the handkerchief afterwards, he may 
 be thinking of a strange blending of Her and Her Mother — the 
 probability being rendered stronger by the retention of a certain odd 
 sofa, on which there is a seat " first-class," from which, when he can 
 do so, he always excludes all sitters, as if he saw some form sitting 
 there, too sacred to be disturbed. Of the junior, meanwhile, it being 
 notable that he seldom visits the theatre, and only on tragedy-nights; 
 that he has an odd penchant for the abstruse and difficult, not to say 
 the tricky, in the line of professional duty ; that he exacts a large 
 amount of deference from his senior, and sways full command of the 
 wine-cellar below, under the probable idea that he " mightn't like it, 
 
TYING THE THREADS. 521 
 
 else ; " that he looks a shade less fatuous, inconsequent and doughy- 
 faced, as he grows older and pays more attention to business — to the 
 stony eyes of P. J. T., date seventeen forty-seven, who Probably 
 Judges Truly, from long experience ; and that he has always an un- 
 accountable tendency to forget his hat, after the manner of his 
 departed friend Datchery. 
 
 When Mr. Crisparkle, a trifle older, and more mellowed, but still 
 cheery and lovable, has conquered the keenest pangs of that sorrow 
 once so poignant though always so manfully borne— his labours shared 
 and perhaps some of his burthens lightened, by the Reverend Neville 
 Landless, for years in holy orders, and of his own choice attached 
 to the service of Cloisterham Cathedral— a cheerful, conscientious, 
 earnest young man, doing with his might what he finds to do, and 
 evidently expending in his vocation an almost fierce energy that 
 might have been very differently employed but for certain rulings of 
 Providence. The Minor Canon still taking his headers into the river 
 below Cloisterham Weir, and his constitutionals, with all due regu- 
 larity — preserving his physical and mental health, and leading the 
 China Shepherdess, who seems perennial (by means of or in spite of 
 the upper closet) to look forward to the proud possibility that she 
 may live to see her dear Sept a full Canon and even his Reverence 
 the Dean. 
 
 When Helena Landless, the name of Drood added by a different 
 Act to that of Parliament, has lived much abroad, accompanying 
 her brave, always boyish, but rising and capable husband, on some 
 of those engineering expeditions in the East which have materially 
 aided, later, in making Egypt once more the highway of nations ; her 
 portrait painted, without objection on the part of the brother who 
 could once found an insult on the very idea of her face being limned 
 by that special hand — painted so often and in so many of the gayer 
 and graver moods of the husband-artist, that the collection forms 
 little less than a gallery of beautiful whimsicalities ; brother and 
 husband long ceased to be belligerents in deed or word, in the absence 
 of John Jasper's drugged wine or a cause of rivalry ; her lot in life 
 as truly rounded and completed as that of her oddly chosen love- 
 mate ; and the tiger's drop all gone out of her heart now, with the 
 dangerous gleam from her handsome tawny eyes, in the affection, 
 duty and happiness of the true and noble woman. 
 
 When Rosebud, long since the possessor of the diamond-and-ruby 
 ring of Her Mother, as well as the invaluable libellous portrait of 
 school-girl Pussy, and sailed on a land-cruise of much duration and 
 few opportunities for quitting the ship, under command of Ex-Lieu- 
 tenant Tartar of the Royal Navy, — sometimes looks up in childish 
 terror at his chosen ascents, descents and promenades over the roof 
 and balconies of their pretty little abode on the Dorset coast, opposite 
 the Isle of Wight, and says, without the least belief that he will fall, 
 or injure himself more than a cat if he does : 
 
 " Oh Robert, why, why will you frighten me so 1 " — and " Do come 
 down and be like other people ! — that's a dear ! " while she would 
 not have him like other people for all the wealth within her reach; 
 
252 johk jasper's secret. 
 
 as also giving vent to a more serious fear, in the inquiry : " Oh, 
 Robert ! — how did baby manage to get such a little tiny button of a 
 nose — just like mine ? — and will it ever, ever, ever grow like yours, 
 so much larger and handsomer, do you think % Isn't it too absurd ! " 
 When the memory of John Jasper's Crime and John Jasper's 
 Secret, Provoking Jove's Thunders over his guilty head, and even- 
 tually Producing Judgment Terrible, — never fading away entirely 
 from sleepy old Cloisterham, has still become shadowed and softened 
 there by time and the presence of the world's hurrying events, until 
 pityingly spoken of as Poor Jasper's Troubles ; and when Mr. Tope, 
 still taking his queues of visitors round the Cathedral, though more 
 slowly and carefully than of old, would probably find his recollection 
 misty enough to deny that there had ever been a double wall to the 
 grand old structure, if he did not even attempt to invalidate the 
 truth of the whole relation as connected with it ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 VmiAX AXD SONS, PRINTERS, CHEAT QUEEN STREET, LONDON, V.C.