Night, spotted with stars, like a black leopard, crouched once more upon
Bumsteadville, and her one eye to be seen in profile, the moon, glared
upon the helpless place with something of a cat's nocturnal stare of
glassy vision for a stupefied mouse. Midnight had come with its twelve
tinkling drops more of opiate, to deepen the stupor of all things almost
unto death, and still the light shone luridly through the
window-curtains of Mr. BUMSTEAD'S room, and still the lonely musician
sat stiffly at a dinner-table spread for three, whereof only a goblet, a
curious antique black bottle, a bowl of sugar, a saucer of lemon-slices,
a decanter of water, and a saucer of cloves appeared to have been used
by the solitary diner.
Unconscious that, through the door ajar at his back, a pair of vigilant
human orbs were upon him, the ritualistic organist, who was in very low
spirits, drew an emaciated and rather unsteady hand repeatedly across
his perspiring brow, and talked in deep bass to himself.
"He came in, af'r' bein' brisgly walked up'n-down the turnpike by
PENDRAGON, and slammed himself down-'n-that-chair," ran the soliloquy,
with a ghostly nod towards an opposite chair, drawn back from the table.
"'Inebrious boy!' says I, sternly, 'how-are-y'-now?' He said
'Poorawell;' 'n' wen' down on-er-floor fas'hleep! I w's
scan'l'ized.--Whowoonbe?--I took m' umbrella 'n' thrashed 'm with it,
remarking 'F'shame! waygup! mis'able boy! 's poorysight-f'r-'nuncle-t'
see-'s-nephew-'n-this-p'litical-c'ndit'n.'--H'slep on; 'n' 't last I
picked up him, 'n' umbrella, 'n' took 'm out t' some cool place
t'shleep't off. _Where'd'_ I take him? Thashwazmarrer--_where'd'_ I
leave'm?"
Repeating this question to himself, with an almost frenzied intensity,
the gloomy victim of a treacherous memory threw an unearthly stare of
bloodshot questioning all over the room, and, after a swaying motion or
two of the upper half of his body, pitched forward, with his forehead
crashing upon the table. Instantly recovering himself, and starting to
rub his head, he as suddenly checked that palliative process by a wild
run to his feet and a hideous bellow.
"_I r'memb'r, now!_" he ejaculated, walking excitedly at a series of
obtuse angles all over the apartment.
"Got-'t-knockedinto-m'-head-'t-last. Pauper bur'l ground--J.
M'GLAUGHLIN. Down'n cellar--cool placefa' man's tight--lef' m' umbrella
there by m'stake--go'n' get't thishmin't--"
Managing, after several inaccurate aims at the doorway, to plunge into
the adjacent bedroom, he presently reappeared from thence, veering
hard-aport, with a lighted lantern in his right hand. Then, circuitously
approaching the neglected dining-table, he grasped with his disengaged
digits at the antique black bottle, missed it, went all the way around
the board before he could stop himself, clutched and missed again, went
clear around once more, and finally effected the capture. "Th 'peared t'
be two," he muttered, placing the prize in one of his pockets; and, with
a triumphant stride, made for the half-open hall-door through which the
eyes had been watching him.
The owner of those eyes, and of a surprising head of florid hair, had
barely time to draw back into the shadow of the corridor and notice an
approaching face like that of one walking in his sleep, when the
clove-eater swung disjointedly by him, with jingling lantern, and went
fiercely bumping down the stairway. Closely, without sound, followed the
watcher, and the two, like man and shadow, went out from the house into
the quarry of the moon-eyed black leopard.
Fully bound now in the sinister spell of the spice of the Molucca
islands, Mr. BUMSTEAD had regained that condition of his duplex
existence to which belonged the disposition he had made of his lethargic
nephew and alpaca umbrella on that confused Christmas night; and with
such realization of a distinct duality came back to him at least a
partial recollection of where he had put the cherished two. Finding Mr.
E. DROOD rather overcome by the more festive features of the
meal,--notwithstanding his walk at midnight with Mr. PENDRAGON,--he had
allowed his avuncular displeasure thereat to betray itself in a
threshing administered with the umbrella. Observing that the young man
still slept beside the chair from which he fell, he had ultimately, and
with the umbrella still under his arm raised the dishevelled nephew
head-downward in his arms, and impatiently conveyed him from the heated
room and house to the coolest retreat he could think of. There
depositing him, and, in his hurry, the umbrella also, to sleep off,
under reviving atmospheric influences, the unseemly effect of the
evening's banquet, he had gone back on both sides of the road to his
boarding-house, and, with his boots upon the pillow, sunk into an
instantaneous sleep of unfathomable depth. Dreaming, towards morning,
that he was engaging a large boa-constrictor in single combat, and
struggling energetically to restrain the ferocious reptile from getting
into his boots, he had suddenly awakened, with a crash, upon the
floor--to miss his umbrella and nephew, to forget where he had put them,
and to fly to Gospeler's Gulch with incoherent charges of larceny and
manslaughter. All this he could now vaguely recall, his present
psychological condition, or trance-state, being the same as then; and
was going entrancedly back to the hiding-place where, with the best of
motives, he had forgetfully left the two objects dearest to him in life.
On, then, proceeded the Ritualistic organist in the tawny light of the
black leopard's eye: his stealthy follower trailing closely after in the
shade of the roadside trees where the star-spotted leopard's black paws
were plunged deepest. On he went, in zig-zag profusion of steps and
occasional high skips over incidental shadows of branches which he for
snakes, until the Pauper Burial Ground was reached, and MCLAUGHLIN'S
hidden subterranean retreat therein attained. It was the same weird spot
to which he had been brought by Old MORTARITY on the wintry night of
their unholy exploring party; and, without appearing to be surprised
that the entrance to the excavation was open, he eagerly descended by
the rickety step-ladder, and held himself steady by the latter while
throwing the light of his lantern around the mouldy walls.
His immediate hiccup, provoked by the dampness of the situation, was
answered by a groan, which, instead of being solid, was very hollow;
and, as he peered vivaciously forward behind his extended lantern, there
advanced from a far corner--O, woeful man! O, thrice unhappy uncle!--the
spectral figure of the missing EDWIN DROOD!
After a moment's inspection of the apparition, which paused terribly
before him with hand hidden in breast, Mr. BUMSTEAD placed his lantern
upon a step of the ladder, drew and profoundly labiated his antique
black bottle, thoughtfully crunched a couple of cloves from another
pocket--staring stonily all the while--and then addressed the youthful
shade:--
"Where's th' umbrella?"
"Monster of forgetfulness! murderer of memory!" spoke the spirit,
sternly. "In this, the last rough resting place of the impecunious dead,
do you dare to discuss commonplace topics with one of the departed? Look
at me, uncle, clove-befogged, and shrink appalled from the dread sight,
and pray for mercy."
"Ishthis prop'r language t' address-t'-y'r-relative?" inquired Mr.
BUMSTEAD, in a severely reproachful manner.
"Relative!" repeated the apparition, sepulchrally. "What sort of
relative is he, who, when his sister's orphaned son is sleeping at his
feet, conveys the unconscious orphan, head downward, through a midnight
tempest, to a place like this, and leaves him here, and then forgets
where he has put him?"
"I give't up," said the organist, after a moment's consideration.
"The answer is: he's a dead-beat." continued the young ghost, losing his
temper. "And what, JOHN BUMSTEAD, did you do with my oroide watch and
other jewels?"
"Musht've spilt'm on the road here," returned the musing uncle, faintly
remembering that they had been found upon the turnpike, shortly after
Christmas, by Gospeler SIMPSON. "Are you dead, EDWIN?"
"Did you not bury me here alive, and close the opening to my tomb, and
go away and charge everybody with my murder?" asked the spectre,
bitterly. "O, uncle, hard of head and paralyzed in recollection! is it
any good excuse for sacrificing my poor life, that, in your cloven
state, you put me down a cellar, like a pan of milk, and then could not
remember where you'd put me? And was it noble, then, to go to her whom
you supposed had been my chosen bride, and offer wedlock to her on your
own account?"
"I was acting as y'r-executor, EDWIN," explained the uncle. "I did
ev'thing forth' besht."
"And does the sight of me fill you with no terror, no remorse, unfeeling
man?" groaned the ghost.
"Yeshir," answered Mr. BUMSTEAD, with sudden energy. "Yeshir. I'm
r'morseful on 'count of th' umbrella. Who-d'-y'-lend-'t-to?"
It is an intellectual characteristic of the more advanced degrees of the
clove-trance, that, while the tranced individual can perceive objects,
even to occasional duplexity, and hear remarks more or less distinctly,
neither objects nor remarks are positively associated by him with any
perspicuous idea. Thus, while the Ritualistic organist had a blurred
perception of his nephew's conversational remains, and was dimly
conscious that the tone of the supernatural remarks addressed to himself
was not wholly congratulatory, he still presented a physical and moral
aspect of dense insensibility.
Momentarily nonplussed by such unheard-of calmness under a ghostly
visitation, the apparition, without changing position, allowed itself to
roll one inquiring eye towards the opening above the step-ladder, where
the moonlight revealed an attentive head of red hair. Catching the
glance, the head allowed a hand belonging to it to appear at the opening
and motion downward.
"Look there, then," said the intelligent ghost to its uncle, pointing to
the ground near its feet.
Mr. BUMSTEAD, rousing from a brief doze, glanced indifferently towards
the spot indicated; but, in another instant, was on his knees beside the
undefined object he there beheld. A keen, breathless scrutiny, a
frenzied clutch with both hands, and then he was upon his feet again,
holding close to the lantern the thing he had found.
The barred light shone on a musty skeleton, to which still clung a few
mouldy shreds left by the rats; and only the celebrated bone handle
identified it as what had once been the maddened finder's idolized
Alpaca Umbrella.
"Aha!" twitted the apparition, "then you have some heart left, JOHN
BUMSTEAD?"
"Heart!" moaned the distracted organist, fairly kissing the dear
remains, and restored to perfect speech and comprehension by the awful
shock. "I had one, but it is broken now!--Allie, my long-lost Allie!" he
continued, tenderly apostrophizing the skeleton, "do we meet thus at
last again?--
'What thought is folded in thy leaves!
What tender thought, what speechless pain!
I hold thy faded lips to mine,
Thou darling of the April rain!'
Where is thine old familiar alpaca dress, my Allie? Where is the canopy
that has so often sheltered thy poor master's head from the storm? Gone!
gone! and through my own forgetfulness!"
"And have you no thought for your nephew?" asked the persevering
apparition, hoarsely.
"Not under the present circumstances," retorted the mourner; he and the
ghost both coughing with the colds which they had taken from standing
still so long in such a damp place--"not under the present
circumstances," he repeated, wildly, making a fierce pass at the spectre
with the skeleton, and then dropping the latter to the ground in
nerveless despair. "To a single man, his umbrella is wife, mother,
sister, venerable maiden aunt from the country--all in one. In losing
mine, I've lost my whole family, and want to hear no more about
relatives. Good night, sir."
"Here! hold on! Can't you leave the lantern for a moment?" cried the
ghost. But the heart-stricken Ritualist had swarmed up the ladder and
was gone.
Then, going up too, the spectre appeared also unto two other men, who
crawled from behind pauper headstones at his summons; the face of the
one being that of J. MCLAUGHLIN, that of the other Mr. TRACY CLEWS. And
the spectre walked between these two, carrying Mr. BUMSTEAD'S skeleton
in its hand.[1]
[Footnote 1: The _cut_ accompanying the above chapter is from the
illustrated title-page of the English monthly numbers of "The Mystery of
Edwin Drood;"--in which it is the last of a series of border-vignettes;
--and plainly shows that it was the author's intention to bring back
his hero a living man before the conclusion of the story.]
* * * * *
[Illustration]