Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 by Various
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Various >> Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870
Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Sandra Brown
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[Illustration Vol. I. No. 16.]
SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1870.
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THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD.
AN ADAPTATION.
BY ORPHEUS C. KERR.
CHAPTER X.--(_Continued_.)
The Pond at Bumsteadville is sufficiently near the turnpike to be
readily reached from the latter, and, if mentioned in the advertisement
of a summer boarding-house, would be called Lake Duckingham, on account
of the fashionable ducks resorting thither for bathing and flirtation in
the season. When July's sun turns its tranquil mirror to hues of amber
and gold, the slender mosquito sings Hum, sweet Hum, along its margin;
and when Autumn hangs his livery of motley on the trees, the glassy
surface breathes out a mist wherefrom arises a spectre, with one hand of
ice and the other of flame, to scatter Chills and Fever. Strolling
beside this picturesque watering-place in the dusk, the Gospeler
suddenly caught the clatter of a female voice, and, in a moment, came
face to face with MONTGOMERY and MAGNOLIA PENDRAGON.
"A cold and frog-like place, this, for a lady's walk, Miss PENDRAGON,"
he said, hastily swallowing a bronchial troche to neutralize the damp
air admitted in speaking. "I hope you have on your overshoes."
"My sister brings me here," explained the brother, "so that her constant
talking to me, may not cause other people's heads to pain them."
"I believe," continued the Reverend OCTAVIUS, walking slowly on with
them, "I believe, Mr. PENDRAGON, your sister finds out from you
everything that you learn, or say, or do?"
"Everything," assented the young man, who seemed greatly exhausted. "She
averages one question a minute."
"Consequently," went on Mr. SIMPSON, "she knows that I have advised you
to make some kind of apology to EDWIN DROOD, for the editorial remarks
passing between you on a certain important occasion?" He looked at the
sister as he spoke, and took that opportunity to quickly swallow a
quinine powder as a protection from the chills.
"My brother, sir," said MAGNOLIA, "because, like the Lesbian Alcaeus,
fighting for the liberty of his native Mitylene, he has sympathized with
his native South, finds himself treated by Mr. DROOD with a lack of
magnanimity of which even the renegade PITTACUS would have been
ashamed."
"But even at that," returned the Gospeler, much educated by her remark,
"would it not be better for us all, to have this hapless
misunderstanding manfully explained away, and a reconciliation
achieved?"
"Did AESCHYLUS explain to the Areopagus, after he had been unjustly
abused?" asked the young female student, eagerly. "Or did he, rather,
nobly prefer to remain silent, even until AMEINIAS reminded his
prejudiced Yankee judges that he had fought at Salamis?"
"Dear me," ejaculated the Gospeler, gasping, "I only meant--"
"I defend my brother," continued MAGNOLIA, passionately, "as in the
Antigone of SOPHOCLES, ELECTRA defends ORESTES; and even if he has no
PYLADES, he shall still be not without a friend in the habitation of the
Pylopidae."
"Upon my soul!" murmured the Reverend Mr. SIMPSON, "this is a dreadful
state of things."
"I may as well confess to you, sir," said MONTGOMERY, temporarily
removing his fingers from his ears, "that I admire Miss POTTS as much as
I'm down on DROOD."
"He admires her," struck in his sister, "as ALCMAN, of Sardis, admired
MEGALOSTRATA; and, in her betrothal to a Yankee, sees another SAPPHO
matrimonially sacrificed to another CERCOLAS of Andros."
"Mr. PENDRAGON," panted the Gospeler, "you must give up this
infatuation. The Flowerpot is engaged to another, and you have no
business to express such sentiments for another's bride until after she
is married. Eloquently as your sister--"
"I pretend to be no MYRTIS, in genius," continued MAGNOLIA, humbly. "I
am not an ERINNA, an AMYTE, a PRAXILLA, or a NOSSIS; but all that is
intellectually repugnant within me is stirred by this treatment of my
brother, who is no PHILODEMUS to find in Mr. DROOD his PISO; and
sometimes I feel as though, like another SIMONIDES, I could fly with him
from this inhospitable Northern house of SCOPAS, to the refuge of some
more generous DIOSCURI. In the present macrocosm, to which we have come
from our former home's microcosm, my brother is persistently maligned,
even by Mr. BUMSTEAD, who may yet, if I am any judge, meet the fate of
ANACREON, as recorded by SINDAS; though, in his case, the choking will
not be accomplished by a grape-stone, but by a clove."
"Well, well," said the Reverend OCTAVIUS, in a faint voice, "I shall
expect you to at least meet EDWIN DROOD half-way in a reconciliation,
Mr. PENDRAGON, for your own sake. I will see that he makes the first
advance."
"Generous and dear tutor!" exclaimed MONTGOMERY, "I will do anything,
with you for my guide."
"Follow your guide penitently, brother," cried his sister, pathetically,
"and you will find in him a relenting--POLYNICUS. Whatever we may feel
towards others," she added, catching and kissing the overpowered
Gospeler's hand, as they parted company, "you shall ever be our chosen,
trusted and only PSYCHOPOMPOS[A]."
Holding his throbbing head with both his hands, as he walked feebly
homeward, the worn-out Gospeler noticed a light streaming from Mr.
BUMSTEAD'S window; and, inspired by a sudden impulse, entered the
boarding-house and ascended straightway to the Ritualistic organist's
rooms. BUMSTEAD was asleep upon the rug before the fire, with his
faithful umbrella under his arm, when Mr. SIMPSON, after vainly
knocking, opened the door; and never could the Gospeler forget how, upon
being addressed, the sleeper started wildly up, made a futile pass at
him with the umbrella, took a prolonged and staring drink from a pitcher
of water on the table, and hurriedly ate a number of cloves from a
saucer near an empty lemon-tea goblet over the mantel.
"Why, it's only I," explained the Reverend OCTAVIUS, rather alarmed by
the glare with which he was regarded.
"Sit down, my friends," said MR. BUMSTEAD, huskily; himself taking a
seat upon a coal-scuttle near at hand, with considerable violence. "I'm
glad you aroused me from a dreadful dream of reptiles. I sh'pose you
want me to seeyouhome, sir?"
"Not at all," was the Gospeler's answer. "In fact, Mr. BUMSTEAD, I am
anxious to bring about a reconciliation, between these two young men.
Let us have peace."
"If you want to let's have peash," observed the other, rather vaguely,
"why don't you go fishing whenever there's any fighting talk, shir! Such
a course is not, you'll Grant, unpresidented."
"I believe," said Mr. SIMPSON, waiving the suggestion, "that you
entertain no favorable opinion of young PENDRAGON!"
Reaching to a book on the table, and, after various airy failures,
laying hold upon it, Mr. BUMSTEAD answered: "This is my Diary,
gentlemen; to be presented to Mrs. STOWE, when I'm no more, for a
memoir. You, being two clergymen, wouldn't care to read it. Here's my
entry on the night of the caucus in this room. Lish'n now: 'Half-pash
Ten.--Considering the Democratic sentiments of the MONTGOMERIES
PENDRAGONS, and their evident disinclination to vote the Republican
Ticket, I b'lieve them capable of any crime. If they should kill my two
nephews, it would be no hic-straordinary sh'prise. Have just been in to
look at my nephews asleep, to make sure that the PENDRAGONS have put no
snakes in their bed.' Thash is _one_ entry," continued Mr. BUMSTEAD,
momentarily pausing to make a blow with the fire-shovel at some
imaginary creature crawling across the rug. "Here's another, written
next morning after cloves: 'My nephews have gone to New York together
this A.M. They laughed when I cautioned them against the MONTGOMERIES,
and said they didn't see it. I am still very uneasy, however, and have
hurriedly pulled off my boots to kill the reptiles in them. How's this
for high?" Mr. BUMSTEAD fell into a doze for an instant, and then added:
"I see the name 'J. BUMSTEAD' signed to this. Who'sh _he_?--Oh! i'mushbe
myself."
"Well, well," commented the slightly astonished Gospeler, "whatever my
be your private opinions, I ask you, as a matter of evident public
propriety, and for the good of everybody, to soften Mr. DROOD toward Mr.
PENDRAGON, as I have already softened Mr. PENDRAGON toward Mr. DROOD.
You and I must put an end to this foolish quarrel."
"Thashis so." said Mr. BUMSTEAD, with sudden assent, laboriously gaining
his feet to bid his guest good-bye, and rather absent-mindedly opening
the umbrella over his head as he fumbled for the knob of the door. "You
and I musht reconcile these four young men. Gooright, shir. Take a
little soda-water in the morning and you'll be auright, shir."
On the third day after this interview, Mr. BUMSTEAD waited upon Mr.
SIMPSON with the following note, which, after searching agitatedly for
it in his hat and all his pockets, he finally found up one of his
sleeves: "_My dear_ JACK:--I am much pleased to hear of your
conversation about me with that good man whom you call 'the Reverends
Messieurs SIMPSON,' and shall gladly comply with his wish for a make-up
between PENDRAGON and myself. Invite PENDRAGON to dinner on Christmas
Eve, when only we three shall be together, and we'll shake hands. Ever,
dear clove-y JACK, yours truly, EDWIN DROOD."
"You think Mr. PENDRAGON will accept, then?" said the Gospeler.
Mr. BUMSTEAD nodded darkly, shook hands, bowed to a large armchair for
Mrs. SIMPSON, and retired with much stateliness.
[Footnote A: The Adapter refers confidently to any Southern female novel
of the period for proof, that sentimental Magnolian school-girls always
talk, or write, everything educational, except good English, when
conferring with their deafened masculine friends.]
CHAPTER XI.
A PICTURE AND A PARCEL.
Behind the most sample-roomey, fire-insuranceish, and express-wagonized
part of Broadway, New York, yawns a venerable street called Nassau;
wherein architecture is a monster of such hideous mien that to be hated
needs but to be rented, and more full-grown men stare into shoe-stores
and shirt-emporiums without buying anything than in any other part of
the world. Near the lower end of this quaint avenue rises the
Post-Office, sending aloft a wooden steeple which is the coffin of a
dead clock, and looking, altogether, like some good, old-fashioned
country church, which, having come to town many years ago to see its
city cousins, and been discouraged by their brown-stone airs, retired,
much demoralized, into a shady by-way, and there fell from grace into a
kind of dissipated cross between Poor-House and railroad depot. To reach
this amazing edifice, with too much haste for more than a momentary
glimpse of its harrowing exterior, and to get away from it, with a speed
as little complimentary to the charms of its shadow, are, apparently,
the two great and exclusive objects of the thousands swarming down and
up the narrow street all through a day. Some twenty odd boot-shops, all
next-door-but-one to each other, startlingly alike in their despondent
outer appearances, and uniformly conducted by embittered elderly men of
savage aspect--seem to sue in vain from year to year for at least one
customer; and as many other melancholy dens for the sale of exactly the
things no one but a madman would want to buy while on his way to a
Post-Office, or from it, appear to wait as hopelessly for the first
purchaser. There are, too, no end of open-air dealers in such curious
postal incidentals as ghastly apples, insulting neck-ties, and
impracticable pocket-combs; to whom, possibly, an unwholesome errand boy
may be seen applying for a bargain about once in the lifetime of an
ordinary _habitue_ of the street, but whose general wares were never
seen selling to the extent of four shillings by any living observer.
Still, with an affront to human credulity of which only newspapers are
capable, it has been declared, in print, that there are bootmakers and
apple-women of Nassau who continually buy choice up-town corner-lots
with their profits; and, if it may be therefrom inferred that the other
trades of the street do as incredibly well, it were wise, perhaps, to be
further convinced that people have a well-established habit of
stealthily laying in their new raiment, fruit, and toilet articles while
going for their business-mails, and at once relinquish all earthly
confidence in the senses obstinately refuting the theory.
About half-way between end and end of Nassau street stands a row of what
were modest dwelling-houses in the remote days when the city was under
the rule of the Americans, but are now only so many floors of law
offices. Who owns them is not known; for proprietors of real-estate in
this extraordinary highway of antiquity are never mentioned in public
like owners in any other street; but they are shabby, dreary,
hopeless-looking old piles, suggestive of having, perhaps, been hurried
and tumbled through musty law-suits scores of times, and occupied at
last by the robber Law itself for costs. On a certain dark, foggy
afternoon in December, one of the seediest of the fallen brick
brotherhood presented a particularly dingy appearance, as the gas-lights
necessitated by the premature gloom of the hour gleamed dimly through a
blearing window-pane here and there. The house still retained the narrow
street-door, hall-way, and abrupt immediate stairway of its earlier
days; and had, too, the old-style goodly single brown stone for a
"stoop," along the front fall of which, in faded white block letters, as
though originally done with a stencil-plate, appeared the strange
device:
S--T--1860--X.
Whether this curious legend referred to the sweets or bitters of the
tenement's various experiences; whether it meant Subjected To 1860
'Xecutions, or Sacrificed to 1860 'Xecutors, or Sentenced to Wait e'en
Sixty 'Xigencies, did not bother the head of Mr. DIBBLE, who came in
from Gowanus every morning to occupy his law-office up-stairs, and was
sitting thoughtfully therein, before a grate fire, on the dull, wintry
afternoon in question.
Severely unostentatious was that office, with its two ink-stained desks,
shelves of lettered deed-boxes, glass case of law-books in sheep, and
vellum-covered reading-table in the centre of the room. Its prompt
lesson for the visitor was: You are now in the Office of an old-school
Constitutional Lawyer, Sir; and if you want an Absolute Divorce,
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Mr. DIBBLE'S usual companion in this office was his clerk, BLADAMS, who
generally wrote at the second desk, and, consequently, was a person of
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Mr. WILLIAM ADAMS--this clerk had aspired to office in New York, and
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WILLIAM ADAMS had come from Ireland some years before, on purpose to
found the family of which the later candidate of the same name claimed
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last of his money, he was "counted out" in favor of a rather hod
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political genius of a Republic, which, as gloriously contrasted with any
effete monarchy ruled by a Peerage, looks for its own governing class to
the Steerage, Mr. WILLIAM ADAMS subsided impecuniously into plain BILL
ADAMS and a book-keepership in dry goods; and was ultimately blurred
into BLADAMS and employment as a copyist by Mr. DIBBLE, to whom his
experience of spending every cent he had in the world, and getting
nothing in the world for it but wrinkles, seemed felicitously legal and
almost supernaturally qualifying for law-writing. BLADAMS was about
forty years old, though appearing much older: with a slight cast in his
left eye, a pimply pink countenance, and a circular piece of unimproved
property on top of his head.