6. At last he begins to count out the sum demanded of him by the opium woman. ‘Greedily watching his hands, she continues to hold forth on the great example set him.’ Of course, she may merely be watching for the money in his hands, but there may be something more in it than this. Let it be noted that Dickens originally wrote, ‘Greedily watching him,’ and inserted ‘his hands’ later.
7. Immediately after ‘Mr. Datchery drops some money, stoops to pick it up.’ In all the scene with the opium woman he keeps his hands out of sight as much as possible, and when he does show them they strike the old woman.
I may add, though much has been said about the possibility of detecting by means of the voice, this does not appear by any means to be impossible, or even very difficult. Only one meeting between Jasper and Helena is recorded. Her voice is described as low and rich. Even if he had talked with Datchery, it is more than doubtful whether he would have known the voice again, music-master though he was. Datchery, if our supposition is right, was an expert in disguise, and could have carried it off. I find in the pleasant Recollections and Impressions of Mrs. Sellar that she had no difficulty in deceiving her nearest friends. She tells us how one day, when Sir David and Lady Brewster were dining with the Sellars at St. Andrews, after dinner Lady Brewster begged her to dress up and take in Sir David:
‘“But what will account for my absence?”
‘“Oh, you have been obliged to go to bed with one of your headaches; and I’ll introduce the stranger.”
‘So I went upstairs, put on a false front, and was announced as Miss Craig. On the gentlemen coming in I was specially introduced to Sir David, but not being at all attractive-looking, he soon left me for younger and fairer friends! Determined he should take some notice of me, I said I would not play the piano unless Sir David asked me; and on this being told him he muttered: “God bless the woman! what does she mean! I don’t know her.”’ [163]
Mr. Lang says: ‘A young lady of my acquaintance successfully passed herself off on her betrothed as her own cousin—also a young lady—and Dickens had not to imagine anything so unlikely as that.’
To this I may add that Scott tells a story of Garrick and his wife. Mrs. Garrick was an accomplished actress, but once she witnessed an entertainment in which was introduced a farmer giving his neighbours an account of the wonders seen on a visit to London. The character was received with such peals of applause that Mrs. Garrick began to think it rivalled those which had been so lately lavished on Richard the Third. At last she observed her little spaniel dog was making efforts to get towards the balcony which separated him from the facetious farmer. Then she became aware of the truth. ‘How strange,’ she said, ‘that a dog should know his master, and a woman, in the same circumstances, should not recognise her husband!’ [164a]
THE ORIGIN OF DICKENS’S IDEA
So strong is the evidence for Helena Landless being Datchery that even the chief advocates of the Proctor theory have fully admitted its force. Dr. M. R. James says: ‘I will go as far as this: if Edwin is dead, then Datchery is Helena.’ [164b] Mr. Andrew Lang over and over again admitted that Datchery might be Helena. But he contended that, if so, the idea of Dickens is improbable with the worst sort of improbability, is terribly far-fetched, and fails to interest. ‘It is the idea of a bad sixpenny novel. We are asked to credit Dickens with the highest scientific skill, and this egregious invention is the result of his science. The idea would have been rejected by Mr. Guy Boothby. But it does not follow that Mr. Walters has not hit on Dickens’s idea. If he has, Edwin Drood is far below Count Robert of Paris in its first uncorrected state, as the public will never know it.’