The Mystery of Edwin Drood

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, by
Charles Dickens (#2 in our series by Charles Dickens)
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Title: The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Author: Charles Dickens

Release Date: June, 1996 [EBook #564] [This file was first posted on
April 15, 1996] [Most recently updated: September 2, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE
MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD ***

Transcribed from the Chapman and Hall, 1914 edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD




CHAPTER I
--THE DAWN

An ancient English Cathedral Tower? How can the ancient English
Cathedral tower be here! The well-known massive gray square tower of
its old Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty iron
in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect.
What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe it is set
up by the Sultan's orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers,
one by one. It is so, for cymbals clash, and the Sultan goes by to his
palace in long procession. Ten thousand scimitars flash in the sunlight,
and thrice ten thousand dancing-girls strew flowers. Then, follow white
elephants caparisoned in countless gorgeous colours, and infinite in

number and attendants. Still the Cathedral Tower rises in the
background, where it cannot be, and still no writhing figure is on the
grim spike. Stay! Is the spike so low a thing as the rusty spike on the
top of a post of an old bedstead that has tumbled all awry? Some vague
period of drowsy laughter must be devoted to the consideration of this
possibility.
Shaking from head to foot, the man whose scattered consciousness has
thus fantastically pieced itself together, at length rises, supports his
trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He is in the meanest
and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged window-curtain, the
light of early day steals in from a miserable court. He lies, dressed,
across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed given way
under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and also across the bed,
not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman. The
two first are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to
kindle it. And as she blows, and shading it with her lean hand,
concentrates its red spark of light, it serves in the dim morning as a
lamp to show him what he sees of her.
'Another?' says this woman, in a querulous, rattling whisper. 'Have
another?'
He looks about him, with his hand to his forehead.
'Ye've smoked as many as five since ye come in at midnight,' the
woman goes on, as she chronically complains. 'Poor me, poor me, my
head is so bad. Them two come in after ye. Ah, poor me, the business is
slack, is slack! Few Chinamen about the Docks, and fewer Lascars, and
no ships coming in, these say! Here's another ready for ye, deary. Ye'll
remember like a good soul, won't ye, that the market price is dreffle
high just now? More nor three shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful!
And ye'll remember that nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t'other
side the court; but he can't do it as well as me) has the true secret of
mixing it? Ye'll pay up accordingly, deary, won't ye?'
She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, occasionally bubbling at it,
inhales much of its contents.
'O me, O me, my lungs is weak, my lungs is bad! It's nearly ready for
ye, deary. Ah, poor me, poor me, my poor hand shakes like to drop off!
I see ye coming-to, and I ses to my poor self, "I'll