CHAPTER I.

THE DAWN

An ancient English Cathedral Tower? How can the ancient English

Cathedral tower be here! The well-known massive gray square tower of

its old Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty

iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real

prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up?

Maybe it is set up by the Sultan’s orders for the impaling of a horde

of Turkish robbers, one by one. It is so, for cymbals clash, and the

Sultan goes by to his palace in long procession. Ten thousand scimitars

flash in the sunlight, and thrice ten thousand dancing-girls strew

flowers. Then, follow white elephants caparisoned in countless gorgeous

colours, and infinite in number and attendants. Still the Cathedral

Tower rises in the background, where it cannot be, and still no

writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay! Is the spike so low a thing

as the rusty spike on the top of a post of an old bedstead that has

tumbled all awry? Some vague period of drowsy laughter must be devoted

to the consideration of this possibility.

Shaking from head to foot, the man whose scattered consciousness has

thus fantastically pieced itself together, at length rises, supports

his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He is in the

meanest and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged window-curtain,

the light of early day steals in from a miserable court. He lies,

dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed

given way under the weight upon it. Lying, also dressed and also across

the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman.

The two first are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at a kind

of pipe, to kindle it. And as she blows, and shading it with her lean

hand, concentrates its red spark of light, it serves in the dim morning

as a lamp to show him what he sees of her.

“Another?” says this woman, in a querulous, rattling whisper. “Have

another?”

He looks about him, with his hand to his forehead.

“Ye’ve smoked as many as five since ye come in at midnight,” the woman

goes on, as she chronically complains. “Poor me, poor me, my head is so

bad. Them two come in after ye. Ah, poor me, the business is slack, is

slack! Few Chinamen about the Docks, and fewer Lascars, and no ships

coming in, these say! Here’s another ready for ye, deary. Ye’ll

remember like a good soul, won’t ye, that the market price is dreffle

high just now? More nor three shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful!

And ye’ll remember that nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t’other side

the court; but he can’t do it as well as me) has the true secret of

mixing it? Ye’ll pay up accordingly, deary, won’t ye?”

She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, occasionally bubbling at it,

inhales much of its contents.

“O me, O me, my lungs is weak, my lungs is bad! It’s nearly ready for

ye, deary. Ah, poor me, poor me, my poor hand shakes like to drop off!

I see ye coming-to, and I ses to my poor self, ‘I’ll have another ready

for him, and he’ll bear in mind the market price of opium, and pay

according.’ O my poor head! I makes my pipes of old penny ink-bottles,

ye see, deary—this is one—and I fits-in a mouthpiece, this way, and I

takes my mixter out of this thimble with this little horn spoon; and so

I fills, deary. Ah, my poor nerves! I got Heavens-hard drunk for

sixteen year afore I took to this; but this don’t hurt me, not to speak

of. And it takes away the hunger as well as wittles, deary.”

She hands him the nearly-emptied pipe, and sinks back, turning over on

her face.

He rises unsteadily from the bed, lays the pipe upon the hearth-stone,

draws back the ragged curtain, and looks with repugnance at his three

companions. He notices that the woman has opium-smoked herself into a

strange likeness of the Chinaman. His form of cheek, eye, and temple,

and his colour, are repeated in her. Said Chinaman convulsively

wrestles with one of his many Gods or Devils, perhaps, and snarls

horribly. The Lascar laughs and dribbles at the mouth. The hostess is

still.

[Illustration: In the Court]

“What visions can _she_ have?” the waking man muses, as he turns her

face towards him, and stands looking down at it. “Visions of many

butchers’ shops, and public-houses, and much credit? Of an increase of

hideous customers, and this horrible bedstead set upright again, and

this horrible court swept clean? What can she rise to, under any

quantity of opium, higher than that!—Eh?”

He bends down his ear, to listen to her mutterings.

“Unintelligible!”

As he watches the spasmodic shoots and darts that break out of her face

and limbs, like fitful lightning out of a dark sky, some contagion in

them seizes upon him: insomuch that he has to withdraw himself to a

lean arm-chair by the hearth—placed there, perhaps, for such

emergencies—and to sit in it, holding tight, until he has got the

better of this unclean spirit of imitation.

Then he comes back, pounces on the Chinaman, and seizing him with both

hands by the throat, turns him violently on the bed. The Chinaman

clutches the aggressive hands, resists, gasps, and protests.

“What do you say?”

A watchful pause.

“Unintelligible!”

Slowly loosening his grasp as he listens to the incoherent jargon with

an attentive frown, he turns to the Lascar and fairly drags him forth

upon the floor. As he falls, the Lascar starts into a half-risen

attitude, glares with his eyes, lashes about him fiercely with his

arms, and draws a phantom knife. It then becomes apparent that the

woman has taken possession of this knife, for safety’s sake; for, she

too starting up, and restraining and expostulating with him, the knife

is visible in her dress, not in his, when they drowsily drop back, side

by side.

There has been chattering and clattering enough between them, but to no

purpose. When any distinct word has been flung into the air, it has had

no sense or sequence. Wherefore “unintelligible!” is again the comment

of the watcher, made with some reassured nodding of his head, and a

gloomy smile. He then lays certain silver money on the table, finds his

hat, gropes his way down the broken stairs, gives a good morning to

some rat-ridden doorkeeper, in bed in a black hutch beneath the stairs,

and passes out.

That same afternoon, the massive gray square tower of an old Cathedral

rises before the sight of a jaded traveller. The bells are going for

daily vesper service, and he must needs attend it, one would say, from

his haste to reach the open Cathedral door. The choir are getting on

their sullied white robes, in a hurry, when he arrives among them, gets

on his own robe, and falls into the procession filing in to service.

Then, the Sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divide the

sanctuary from the chancel, and all of the procession having scuttled

into their places, hide their faces; and then the intoned words, “WHEN

THE WICKED MAN—” rise among groins of arches and beams of roof,

awakening muttered thunder.