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.
'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.
