The Mystery of Edwin Drood (20 page)

 

  They enter, locking themselves in,
descend the rugged steps, and are down in the Crypt. The lantern is not wanted,
for the moonlight strikes in at the groined windows, bare of glass, the broken
frames for which cast patterns on the ground. The heavy pillars which support
the roof engender masses of black shade, but between them there are lanes of
light. Up and down these lanes they walk, Durdles discoursing of the “old uns”
he yet counts on disinterring, and slapping a wall, in which he considers “a
whole family on “em” to be stoned and earthed up, just as if he were a familiar
friend of the family. The taciturnity of Durdles is for the time overcome by
Mr. Jasper's wicker bottle, which circulates freely;—in the sense, that is to
say, that its contents enter freely into Mr. Durdles's circulation, while Mr.
Jasper only rinses his mouth once, and casts forth the rinsing.

 

  They are to ascend the great Tower. On
the steps by which they rise to the Cathedral, Durdles pauses for new store of
breath. The steps are very dark, but out of the darkness they can see the lanes
of light they have traversed. Durdles seats himself upon a step. Mr. Jasper seats
himself upon another. The odour from the wicker bottle (which has somehow
passed into Durdles's keeping) soon intimates that the cork has been taken out;
but this is not ascertainable through the sense of sight, since neither can
descry the other. And yet, in talking, they turn to one another, as though
their faces could commune together.

 

  “This is good stuff, Mister Jarsper!”

 

  “It is very good stuff, I hope. —I
bought it on purpose.”

 

  “They don't show, you see, the old uns
don't, Mister Jarsper!”

 

  “It would be a more confused world than
it is, if they could.”

 

  “Well, it WOULD lead towards a mixing of
things,” Durdles acquiesces: 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 longerwinded 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 fellowexplorer.

 

  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 moon-lit 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 mosssoftened 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 aeronauts 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 aeronauts 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!”