The Mystery of Edwin Drood
pausing on the remark, as if the idea of ghosts had not previously
presented itself to him in a merely inconvenient light, domestically or
chronologically. “But do you think there may be Ghosts of other things,
though not of men and women?”
“What things? Flower-beds and watering-pots? Horses and harness?”
“No. Sounds.”
“What sounds?”
“Cries.”
“What cries do you mean? Chairs to mend?”
“No. I mean screeches. Now I’ll tell you, Mr. Jarsper. Wait a bit till
I put the bottle right.” Here the cork is evidently taken out again,
and replaced again. “There! _Now_ it’s right! This time last year, only
a few days later, I happened to have been doing what was correct by the
season, in the way of giving it the welcome it had a right to expect,
when them town-boys set on me at their worst. At length I gave ’em the
slip, and turned in here. And here I fell asleep. And what woke me? The
ghost of a cry. The ghost of one terrific shriek, which shriek was
followed by the ghost of the howl of a dog: a long, dismal, woeful
howl, such as a dog gives when a person’s dead. That was _my_ last
Christmas Eve.”
“What do you mean?” is the very abrupt, and, one might say, fierce
retort.
“I mean that I made inquiries everywhere about, and, that no living
ears but mine heard either that cry or that howl. So I say they was
both ghosts; though why they came to me, I’ve never made out.”
“I thought you were another kind of man,” says Jasper, scornfully.
“So I thought myself,” answers Durdles with his usual composure; “and
yet I was picked out for it.”
Jasper had risen suddenly, when he asked him what he meant, and he now
says, “Come; we shall freeze here; lead the way.”
Durdles complies, not over-steadily; opens the door at the top of the
steps with the key he has already used; and so emerges on the Cathedral
level, in a passage at the side of the chancel. Here, the moonlight is
so very bright again that the colours of the nearest stained-glass
window are thrown upon their faces. The appearance of the unconscious
Durdles, holding the door open for his companion to follow, as if from
the grave, is ghastly enough, with a purple hand across his face, and a
yellow splash upon his brow; but he bears the close scrutiny of his
companion in an insensible way, although it is prolonged while the
latter fumbles among his pockets for a key confided to him that will
open an iron gate, so to enable them to pass to the staircase of the
great tower.
“That and the bottle are enough for you to carry,” he says, giving it
to Durdles; “hand your bundle to me; I am younger and longer-winded
than you.” Durdles hesitates for a moment between bundle and bottle;
but gives the preference to the bottle as being by far the better
company, and consigns the dry weight to his fellow-explorer.
Then they go up the winding staircase of the great tower, toilsomely,
turning and turning, and lowering their heads to avoid the stairs
above, or the rough stone pivot around which they twist. Durdles has
lighted his lantern, by drawing from the cold, hard wall a spark of
that mysterious fire which lurks in everything, and, guided by this
speck, they clamber up among the cobwebs and the dust. Their way lies
through strange places. Twice or thrice they emerge into level,
low-arched galleries, whence they can look down into the moonlit nave;
and where Durdles, waving his lantern, waves the dim angels’ heads upon
the corbels of the roof, seeming to watch their progress. Anon they
turn into narrower and steeper staircases, and the night-air begins to
blow upon them, and the chirp of some startled jackdaw or frightened
rook precedes the heavy beating of wings in a confined space, and the
beating down of dust and straws upon their heads. At last, leaving
their light behind a stair—for it blows fresh up here—they look down on
Cloisterham, fair to see in the moonlight: its ruined habitations and
sanctuaries of the dead, at the tower’s base: its moss-softened
red-tiled roofs and red-brick houses of the living, clustered beyond:
its river winding down from the mist on the horizon, as though that
were its source, and already heaving with a restless knowledge of its
approach towards the sea.
Once again, an unaccountable expedition this! Jasper (always moving
softly with no visible reason) contemplates the scene, and especially
that stillest part of it which the Cathedral overshadows. But he
contemplates Durdles quite as curiously, and Durdles is by times
conscious of his watchful eyes.
Only by times, because Durdles is growing drowsy. As aëronauts lighten
the load they carry, when they wish to rise, similarly Durdles has
lightened the wicker bottle in coming up. Snatches of sleep surprise
him on his legs, and stop him in his talk. A mild fit of calenture
seizes him, in which he deems that the ground so far below, is on a
level with the tower, and would as lief walk off the tower into the air
as not. Such is his state when they begin to come down. And as
aëronauts make themselves heavier when they wish to descend, similarly
Durdles charges himself with more liquid from the wicker bottle, that
he may come down the better.
The iron gate attained and locked—but not before Durdles has tumbled
twice, and cut an eyebrow open once—they descend into the crypt again,
with the intent of issuing forth as they entered. But, while returning
among those lanes of light, Durdles becomes so very uncertain, both of
foot and speech, that he half drops, half throws himself down, by one
of the heavy pillars, scarcely less heavy than itself, and indistinctly
appeals to his companion for forty winks of a second each.
“If you will have it so, or must have it so,” replies Jasper, “I’ll not
leave you here. Take them, while I walk to and fro.”
Durdles is asleep at once; and in his sleep he dreams a dream.
It is not much of a dream, considering the vast extent of the domains
of dreamland, and their wonderful productions; it is only remarkable
for being unusually restless and unusually real. He dreams of lying
there, asleep, and yet counting his companion’s footsteps as he walks
to and fro. He dreams that the footsteps die away into distance of time
and of space, and that something touches him, and that something falls
from his hand. Then something clinks and gropes about, and he dreams
that he is alone for so long a time, that the lanes of light take new
directions as the moon advances in her course. From succeeding
unconsciousness he passes into a dream of slow uneasiness from cold;
and painfully awakes to a perception of the lanes of light—really
changed, much as he had dreamed—and Jasper walking among them, beating
his hands and feet.
“Holloa!” Durdles cries out, unmeaningly alarmed.
“Awake at last?” says Jasper, coming up to him. “Do you know that your
forties have stretched into thousands?”
“No.”
“They have though.”
“What’s the time?”
“Hark! The bells are going in the Tower!”
They strike four quarters, and then the great bell strikes.
“Two!” cries Durdles, scrambling up; “why didn’t you try to wake me,
Mister Jarsper?”
“I did. I might as well have tried to wake the dead—your own family of
dead, up in the corner there.”
“Did you touch me?”
“Touch you! Yes. Shook you.”
As Durdles recalls that touching something in his dream, he looks down
on the pavement, and sees the key of the crypt door lying close to
where he himself lay.
“I dropped you, did I?” he says, picking it up, and recalling that part
of his dream. As he gathers himself up again into an upright position,
or into a position as nearly upright as he ever maintains, he is again
conscious of being watched by his companion.
“Well?” says Jasper, smiling, “are you quite ready? Pray don’t hurry.”
“Let me get my bundle right, Mister Jarsper, and I’m with you.” As he
ties it afresh, he is once more conscious that he is very narrowly
observed.
“What do you suspect me of, Mister Jarsper?” he asks, with drunken
displeasure. “Let them as has any suspicions of Durdles name ’em.”
“I’ve no suspicions of you, my good Mr. Durdles; but I have suspicions
that my bottle was filled with something stiffer than either of us
supposed. And I also have suspicions,” Jasper adds, taking it from the
pavement and turning it bottom upwards, “that it’s empty.”
Durdles condescends to laugh at this. Continuing to chuckle when his
laugh is over, as though remonstrant with himself on his drinking
powers, he rolls to the door and unlocks it. They both pass out, and
Durdles relocks it, and pockets his key.
“A thousand thanks for a curious and interesting night,” says Jasper,
giving him his hand; “you can make your own way home?”
“I should think so!” answers Durdles. “If you was to offer Durdles the
affront to show him his way home, he wouldn’t go home.
Durdles wouldn’t go home till morning;
And _then_ Durdles wouldn’t go home,
Durdles wouldn’t.” This with the utmost defiance.
“Good-night, then.”
“Good-night, Mister Jarsper.”
Each is turning his own way, when a sharp whistle rends the silence,
and the jargon is yelped out:
Widdy widdy wen!
I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—ten.
Widdy widdy wy!
Then—E—don’t—go—then—I—shy—
Widdy Widdy Wake-cock warning!”
Instantly afterwards, a rapid fire of stones rattles at the Cathedral
wall, and the hideous small boy is beheld opposite, dancing in the
moonlight.
“What! Is that baby-devil on the watch there!” cries Jasper in a fury:
so quickly roused, and so violent, that he seems an older devil
himself. “I shall shed the blood of that impish wretch! I know I shall
do it!” Regardless of the fire, though it hits him more than once, he
rushes at Deputy, collars him, and tries to bring him across. But
Deputy is not to be so easily brought across. With a diabolical insight
into the strongest part of his position, he is no sooner taken by the
throat than he curls up his legs, forces his assailant to hang him, as
it were, and gurgles in his throat, and screws his body, and twists, as
already undergoing the first agonies of strangulation. There is nothing
for it but to drop him. He instantly gets himself together, backs over
to Durdles, and cries to his assailant, gnashing the great gap in front
of his mouth with rage and malice:
“I’ll blind yer, s’elp me! I’ll stone yer eyes out, s’elp me! If I
don’t have yer eyesight, bellows me!” At the same time dodging behind
Durdles, and snarling at Jasper, now from this side of him, and now
from that: prepared, if pounced upon, to dart away in all manner of
curvilinear directions, and, if run down after all, to grovel in the
dust, and cry: “Now, hit me when I’m down! Do it!”
“Don’t hurt the boy, Mister Jarsper,” urges Durdles, shielding him.
“Recollect yourself.”
“He followed us to-night, when we first came here!”
“Yer lie, I didn’t!” replies Deputy, in his one form of polite
contradiction.
“He has been prowling near us ever since!”
“Yer lie, I haven’t,” returns Deputy. “I’d only jist come out for my
’elth when I see you two a-coming out of the Kin-freederel. If
I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—ten!”
(with the usual rhythm and dance, though dodging behind Durdles), “it
ain’t _any_ fault, is it?”
“Take him home, then,” retorts Jasper, ferociously, though with a
strong check upon himself, “and let my eyes be rid of the sight of
you!”
Deputy, with another sharp whistle, at once expressing his relief, and
his commencement of a milder stoning of Mr. Durdles, begins stoning
that respectable gentleman home, as if he were a reluctant ox. Mr.
Jasper goes to his gatehouse, brooding. And thus, as everything comes
to an end, the unaccountable expedition comes to an end—for the time.
CHAPTER XIII.
BOTH AT THEIR BEST
Miss Twinkleton’s establishment was about to undergo a serene hush. The