The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, Matthew Pearl Page A

Then—E—don't—go—then—I—shy—Widdy
Widdy Wake-cock warning!”
     
   
     
  —with a comprehensive sweep on the last
word, and one more delivery at Durdles.
     
  This would seem to be a poetical note of
preparation, agreed upon, as a caution to Durdles to stand clear if he can, or
to betake himself homeward.
     
  John Jasper invites the boy with a beck
of his head to follow him (feeling it hopeless to drag him, or coax him), and
crosses to the iron railing where the Stony (and stoned) One is profoundly
meditating.
     
  “Do you know this thing, this child?”
asks Jasper, at a loss for a word that will define this thing.
     
  “Deputy,” says Durdles, with a nod.
     
  “Is that its—his—name?”
     
  “Deputy,” assents Durdles.
     
  “I'm man-servant up at the Travellers”
Twopenny in Gas Works Garding,” this thing explains. “All us man-servants at
Travellers” Lodgings is named Deputy. When we're chock full and the Travellers
is all a-bed I come out for my “elth.” Then withdrawing into the road, and
taking aim, he resumes:—
     
   
     
  “Widdy widdy wen!
I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—”
     
   
     
  “Hold your hand,” cries Jasper, “and
don't throw while I stand so near him, or I'll kill you! Come, Durdles; let me
walk home with you to-night. Shall I carry your bundle?”
     
  “Not on any account,” replies Durdles,
adjusting it. “Durdles was making his reflections here when you come up, sir,
surrounded by his works, like a poplar Author. —Your own brother-in-law;”
introducing a sarcophagus within the railing, white and cold in the moonlight.
“Mrs. Sapsea;” introducing the monument of that devoted wife. “Late Incumbent;”
introducing the Reverend Gentleman's broken column. “Departed Assessed Taxes;”
introducing a vase and towel, standing on what might represent the cake of
soap. “Former pastrycook and Muffin-maker, much respected;” introducing
gravestone. “All safe and sound here, sir, and all Durdles's work. Of the
common folk, that is merely bundled up in turf and brambles, the less said the
better. A poor lot, soon forgot.”
     
  “This creature, Deputy, is behind us,”
says Jasper, looking back. “Is he to follow us?”
     
  The relations between Durdles and Deputy
are of a capricious kind; for, on Durdles's turning himself about with the slow
gravity of beery suddenness, Deputy makes a pretty wide circuit into the road
and stands on the defensive.
     
  “You never cried Widdy Warning before
you begun to-night,” says Durdles, unexpectedly reminded of, or imagining, an
injury.
     
  “Yer lie, I did,” says Deputy, in his
only form of polite contradiction.
     
  “Own brother, sir,” observes Durdles,
turning himself about again, and as unexpectedly forgetting his offence as he
had recalled or conceived it; “own brother to Peter the Wild Boy! But I gave
him an object in life.”
     
  “At which he takes aim?” Mr. Jasper
suggests.
     
  “That's it, sir,” returns Durdles, quite
satisfied; “at which he takes aim. I took him in hand and gave him an object.
What was he before? A destroyer. What work did he do? Nothing but destruction.
What did he earn by it? Short terms in Cloisterham jail. Not a person, not a
piece of property, not a winder, not a horse, nor a dog, nor a cat, nor a bird,
nor a fowl, nor a pig, but what he stoned, for want of an enlightened object. I
put that enlightened object before him, and now he can turn his honest
halfpenny by the three penn'orth a week.”
     
  “I wonder he has no competitors.”
     
  “He has plenty, Mr. Jasper, but he
stones “em all away. Now, I don't know what this scheme of mine comes to,”
pursues Durdles, considering about it with the same sodden gravity; “I don't
know what you may precisely call it. It ain't a sort of a—scheme of a—National
Education?”
     
  “I should say not,” replies