THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD.
AN ADAPTATION.
BY ORPHEUS C. KERR.
CHAPTER V.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN AND FRIEND.
JOHN BUMSTEAD, on his way home along the unsteady turnpike—upon which he is sure there will be a dreadful accident some day, for want of railings—is suddenly brought to an unsettled pause in his career by the spectacle of Old Mortarity leaning against the low fence of the pauper burial-ground, with a shapeless boy throwing stones at him in the moonlight. The stones seem never to hit the venerable JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, and at each miss the spry monkey of the moonlight sings "Sold again," and casts another missile still further from the mark. One of these goes violently to the nose of Mr. BUMSTEAD, who, after a momentary enjoyment of the evening fireworks thus lighted off, makes a wrathful rush at the playful child, and lifts him from the ground by his ragged collar, like a diminished suit of Mr. GREELEY'S customary habiliments.
"Miserable snipe," demands BUMSTEAD, eyeing his trophy gloomily, and giving him a turn or two as though he were a mackerel under inspection, "what are you doing to that gooroleman?"
"Oh, come now!" says the lad, sparring at him in the air, "you just lemme be, or I'll fetch you a wipe in the jaw. I ain't doing nothink; and he's werry good to me, he is."
Mr. BUMSTEAD drops the presumptuous viper, but immediately seizes him by an ear and leads him to MCLAUGHLIN, whom he asks: "Do you know this insect?"
"SMALLEY," says MCLAUGHLIN, with a nod.
"Is that the name of the sardine?"
"Blagyerboots," adds MCLAUGHLIN.
"Shine 'em up, red hot," explains the boy. "I'm one of them fellers." Here he breaks away and hops out again into the road, singing:
"Áina, maina, mona, Mike,
Bassalona, bona, strike!
Hay, way, crown, rack,
Hallico, ballico, we—wo—wack!"
—which he evidently intends as a kind of Hitalian; for, simultaneously, he aims a stone at JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, grazes Mr. BUMSTEAD'S whiskers instead, and in another instant a sound of breaking glass is heard in the distance.
"Peace, young scorpion!" says Mr. BUMSTEAD, with a commanding gesture. "JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, let me see you home. The road is too unsteady to-night for an old man like you. Let me see you home, far as my house, at least."
"Thank you, sir, I'd make better time alone. When you came up, sir, Old Mortarity was meditating on this bone-farm," says Mr. MCLAUGHLIN, pointing with a trowel, which he had drawn from his pocket, into the pauper burial-ground. "He was thinking of the many laid here when the Alms-House over yonder used to be open as a Alms-House. I've patched up all these graves, as well as them in the Ritual churchyard, and know 'em all, sir. Over there, Editor of Country Journal; next, Stockholder in Erie; next, Gentleman who Undertook to be Guided in His Agriculture by Mr. GREELEY'S 'What I Know about Farming;' next, Original Projector of American Punch; next, Proprietor of Rural Newspaper; next, another Projector of American Punch—indeed, all the rest of that row is American Punches; next, Conductor of Rustic Daily; next, Manager of Italian Opera; next, Stockholder in Morris and Essex; next, American Novelist; next, Husband of Literary Woman; next, Pastor of Southern Church; next, Conductor of Provincial Press.—I know 'em ALL sir," says Old Mortarity, with exquisite pathos, "and if a flower could spring up for every tear a friendless old man has dropped upon their neglected graves, you couldn't see the wooden head-boards for the roses."
"Tharsverytrue," says Mr. BUMSTEAD, much affected—"Not see 'em for your noses—beaut'ful idea! You're a gooroleman, sir. Here comes SMALLEY again."
"I ain't doing nothink, and you're all the time wanting me to move on, and he's werry good to me, he is," whimpers SMALLEY, throwing a stone at Mr. BUMSTEAD and hitting Old Mortarity.
"Didn't I tell you to always aim at me?" cries the latter, angrily rubbing the place. "Don't I give you a penny a night to aim right at me?"
"I only chucked once at him," says the youth, penitently.
"You see, Mr. BUMSTEAD," explains JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, "I give him an Object in life. I am that Object, and it pays me. If you've ever noticed these boys, sir, they never hit what they aim at. If they throw at a pigeon or a tree, the stone goes through a garret window. If they throw at a dog, it hits some passer-by on the leg. If they throw at each other, it takes you in the back as you're turnin' a corner. I used to be getting hit all over every night from SMALLEY'S aiming at dogs, and pigeons, and boys like himself; but now I hire him to aim at me, exclusively, and I'm all safe.—There he goes, now, misses me, and breaks another winder."
"Here, SMALLEY," says Mr. BUMSTEAD, as another stone, aimed at MCLAUGHLIN, strikes himself, "take this other penny, and aim at both of us."
Thus perfectly protected from painful contusion, although the air continues full of stones, Mr. BUMSTEAD takes JOHN MCLAUGHLIN'S arm, as they move onward, to protect the old man from harm, and is so careful to pick out the choice parts of the road for him that their progress is digressive in the extreme.
"I have heard," says Mr. BUMSTEAD, "that at one end of the pauper burial-ground there still remains the cellar of a former chapel to the Alms-House, and that you have broken through into it, and got a stepladder to go down. Isthashso?"
"Yes; and there's coffins down there."
"Yours is a hic-stremely strange life, JOHN MCLAUGHLIN."
"It's certainly a very damp one," says MCLAUGHLIN, silently urging his strange companion to support a little more of his own weight in walking. "But it has its science. Over in the Ritualistic burial-yard, I tap the wall of a vault with my trowel-handle, and if the sound is hollow I say to myself: 'Not full yet.' Say it's the First of May, and I tap a coffin, and don't hear anything more in it, I say: 'Either you're not a woman in there, or, if you are, you never kept house.'—Because, you see, if it was a woman that ever kept house, it would take but the least thing in the world to make her insist upon 'moving' on the First of May."
"Won'rful!" says Mr. BUMSTEAD. "Sometime when you're sober, JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, I'll do a grave or two with you."
On their way they reach a bar-room, into which Mr. BUMSTEAD is anxious to take Old Mortarity, for the purpose of getting something to make the latter stronger for his remaining walk. Failing in his ardent entreaties to this end—even after desperately offering to eat a few cloves himself for the sake of company—he coldly bids the stone-cutter good-night, and starts haughtily in a series of spirals for his own home. Suddenly catching sight of SMALLEY in the distance, he furiously grasps a stone to throw at him; but, allowing his arm to describe too much of a circle before parting with the stone, the latter strikes the back of his own head, and he goes on, much confused.
Arriving in his own room, and arising from the all-fours attitude in which, from eccentricity, he has ascended the stairs, Mr. BUMSTEAD takes from a cupboard a curious, antique flask, and nearly fills a tumbler from its amber-hued contents. He drinks the potion with something like frenzy; then softly steals to the door of a room opening into his own, and looks in upon EDWIN DROOD. Calm and untroubled lies his nephew there, in pleasant dreams. "They are both asleep," whispers Mr. BUMSTEAD to himself. He goes back to his own bed, accompanied unconsciously by a chair caught in his coat-tail; puts on his hat, opens an umbrella over his head, and lies down to dread serpentine visions.
CHAPTER VI.
INSURANCE IN GOSPELER's GULCH.
The Reverend OCTAVIUS SIMPSON (OCTAVIUS, because there had been seven other little SIMPSONS, who all took after their father when he died of mumps, like seven kittens after the parental tail,) having thrown himself all over the room with a pair of dumb-bells much too strong for him, and taken a seidlitz powder to oblige his dyspepsia, was now parting his back hair before a looking-glass. An unimpeachably consumptive style of clerical beauty did the mirror reflect; the countenance contracting to an expression of almost malevolent piety when the comb went over a bump, and relaxing to an open-mouthed charity for all mankind, amounting nearly to imbecility, when the more complex requirements of the parting process compelled twists of the head scarcely compatible with even so much as a squint at the glass.
It being breakfast time, Mrs. SIMPSON—mother of OCTAVIUS—was just down for the meal, and surveyed the operation with a look of undisguised anxiety.
"You'll break one of them yet, some morning, OCTAVE," said the old lady.
"Do what, OLDY?" asked the writhing Gospeler, apparently speaking out of his right ear.
"You'll break either the comb, or your neck, some morning."
Rendered momentarily irritable by this aggravating remark, the Reverend OCTAVIUS made a jab with the comb at the old lady's false-front, pulling it down quite askew over her left eye; but, upon the sudden entrance of a servant with the tea-pot, he made precipitate pretence that his hand was upon his mother's head to give her a morning blessing.
They were a striking pair to sit at breakfast together in Gospeler's Gulch, Bumsteadville: she with her superb old nut-cracker countenance, and he with the dyspepsia of more than thirty summers causing him to deal gently with the fish-balls. They sat within sound of the bell of the Ritualistic Church, the ringing of which was forever deluding the peasantry of the surrounding country into the idea that they could certainly hear their missing cows at last (hence the name of the church—Saint Cow's); while the sonorous hee-hawing of an occasional Nature's Congressman in some distant field reminded them of the outer political world.
"Here is Mr. SCHENCK'S letter," said Mrs. SIMPSON, handing an open epistle across the table, as she spoke to her son, "and you might read it aloud, my OCTAVE."
Taking the tea-cup off his face, the Reverend OCTAVIUS accepted the missive, which was written from "A Perfect Stranger's Parlor, New York," and began reading thus: "Dear Ma-a-dam—
I wri-i-te in the-e Chai-ai-ai-air-"
—"Dear me, OCTAVE," interrupted the old lady, "can't you read even a letter without Intoning—and to the tone of 'Old Hundredth,' too?"
"I'm afraid not, dear OLDY," responded the Gospeler. "I'm so much in the habit of it. You're not so ritualistic yourself, and may be able to do better."
"Give it back to me, my sing-sing-sonny," said the old lady; who at once read as follows: "DEAR MADAM, I write from the chair which I have now occupied for six hours, in the house of a man whom I never saw before in my life, but who comes next in the Directory to the obstinate but finally conquered being under whose roof I resolutely passed the greater part of yesterday. He sits near me in another chair, so much weakened that he can just reply to me in whispers, and I believe that a few hours more of my talk will leave him no choice between dying of exhaustion at my feet and taking a Policy in the Boreal Life Insurance Company, of which I am Agent. I have spoken to my wards, MONTGOMERY and MAGNOLIA PENDRAGON, concerning MAGNOLIA'S being placed at school in the Macassar, and MONTGOMERY'S acceptance of your son, OCTAVIUS, as his tutor, and shall take them with me to Bumsteadville to-morrow, for such disposition. Hoping, Madam, that neither you nor your son will much longer fly into the face of Providence by declining to insure your lives, through me, in the Boreal, I have the honor to be Yours, for two Premiums, MELANCTHON SCHENCK."
"Well, OLDY," said OCTAVIUS, with dismal countenance, "do you think we'll have to do it?"
"Do what?" asked the old lady.
"Let him Insure us."
"I'm afraid it will come to that yet, OCTAVE. I've known persons to die under him."
"Well, well, Heaven's will be done," muttered the patient Gospeler. "And now, mother, we must do something to make the first coming of these young strangers seem cheerful to them. We must give a little dinner-party here, and invite Miss CAROWTHERS, and BUMSTEAD and his nephew, and the Flowerpot. Don't you think the codfish will go round?"
"Yes, dear: that is, if you and I take the spine," replied the old lady.
So the party of reception was arranged, and the invitations hurried out.
At about half an hour before dinner there was a sound in the air of Bumsteadville as of a powerful stump-speaker addressing a mass-meeting in the distance; rapidly intensifying to stentorian phrases, such as—"provide for your miserable surviving offspring"—"lower rates than any other company"—"full amount cheerfully paid upon hearing of your death"—until a hack appeared coming down the crossroad descending into Gospeler's Gulch, and stopped at the Gospeler's door. As the faint driver, trembling with nervous debility from great excess of deathly admonition addressed to him, through the front window of his hack, all the way from the ferry, checked his horses in one feeble gasp of remaining strength, the Reverend OCTAVIUS stepped forth from the doorway to greet Mr. SCHENCK and the dark-complexioned, sharp-eyed young brother and sister who came with him.
"Now remember, fellow," said Mr. SCHENCK to the driver, after he had come out of the vehicle, shaking his cane menacingly at him as he spoke, "I've warned you, in time, to prepare for death, and given you a Schedule of our rates to read to your family. If you should die of apoplexy in a week, as you probably will, your wife must pick rags, and your children play a harp and fiddle. Dream of it, think of it, dissolute man, and take a Policy in the Boreal."
As the worn-out hackman, too despondent at thought of his impending decease and family-bankruptcy to make any other answer than a groan, drove wretchedly away, the genial Mr. SCHENCK hoarsely introduced the young PENDRAGONS to the Gospeler, and went with them after the latter into the house.
The Reverend OCTAVIUS SIMPSON, with dire forebodings of the discomfiture of his dear old nut-cracker of a mother, did the honors of a general introduction with a perfect failure of a smile; and, thenceforth, until dinner was over, Mr. SCHENCK was the Egyptian festal skeleton that continually reminded the banqueters of their latter ends.
"Great Heavens! what signs of the seeds of the tomb do I not see all around me here," observed Mr. SCHENCK, in a deep base voice, as he helped himself to more codfish. "Here is my friend, Mr. SIMPSON, withering under our very eyes with Dyspepsia. In Mr. BUMSTEAD'S manly eye you can perceive Congestion of the Brain. General Debility marked the venerable Mrs. SIMPSON for its own. Miss POTTS and MAGNOLIA can bloom and eat caramels now; but what will be their anguish when malignant Small Pox rages, as it surely must, next month! Mr. DROOD and MONTGOMERY are rejoicing in the health and thin legs of youth; but how many lobster salads are there between them and fatal Cholera Morbus? As for Miss ELIZABETH CADY CAROWTHERS, there, her Skeleton is already coming through at the shoulders."—"Oh, my friends!" exclaimed the ghastly Mr. SCHENCK, with beautiful enthusiasm, "Insure while yet, there is time; that the kindred, or friends, whom you will all leave behind, probably within the next three months, may have something to keep them from the Poor-House, or, its dread alternative—Crime!" He considerately paused until the shuddering was over, and then added, with melting softness—"I'll leave a few of our Schedules with you."
When, at last, this boon-companion said that he must go, it was surprising to see with what passionate cordiality everybody helped him off. Mr. BUMSTEAD frenziedly crammed his hat upon his beaming head, and, with one eager blow on the top, drove it far down over his ears; FLORA POTTS and MAGNOLIA thrust each a buckskin glove far up either sleeve; Miss CAROWTHERS frantically stuck one of his overshoes under each arm; Mr. DROOD wildly dragged his coat over his form, without troubling him at all about the sleeves, and breathlessly buttoned it to the neck; and the Reverend OCTAVIUS and MONTGOMERY hurried him forth by the shoulders, as though the house were on fire and he the very last to be snatched from the falling beams.
These latter two then almost ran with him to the livery stable where he was to obtain a hack for the ferry; leaving him in charge of the livery man—who, by the way, he at once frightened into a Boreal Policy, by a few felicitous remarks (while the hack was preparing) upon the curious recent fatality of Heart-Disease amongst middle-aged podgy men with bulbous noses.
(To be Continued.)