The Mystery of Edwin Drood (30 page)

 

  Whimsically as this was said, there was
a touch of merry earnestness in it that made it doubly whimsical.

 

  “However,” said the Lieutenant, “I have
talked quite enough about myself. It is not my way, I hope; it has merely been
to present myself to you naturally. If you will allow me to take the liberty I
have described, it will be a charity, for it will give me something more to do.
And you are not to suppose that it will entail any interruption or intrusion on
you, for that is far from my intention.”

 

  Neville replied that he was greatly
obliged, and that he thankfully accepted the kind proposal.

 

  “I am very glad to take your windows in
tow,” said the Lieutenant. “From what I have seen of you when I have been
gardening at mine, and you have been looking on, I have thought you (excuse me)
rather too studious and delicate. May I ask, is your health at all affected?”

 

  “I have undergone some mental distress,”
said Neville, confused, “which has stood me in the stead of illness.”

 

  “Pardon me,” said Mr. Tartar.

 

  With the greatest delicacy he shifted
his ground to the windows again, and asked if he could look at one of them. On
Neville's opening it, he immediately sprang out, as if he were going aloft with
a whole watch in an emergency, and were setting a bright example.

 

  “For Heaven's sake,” cried Neville,
“don't do that! Where are you going Mr. Tartar? You'll be dashed to pieces!”

 

  “All well!” said the Lieutenant, coolly
looking about him on the housetop. “All taut and trim here. Those lines and
stays shall be rigged before you turn out in the morning. May I take this short
cut home, and say good-night?”

 

  “Mr. Tartar!” urged Neville. “Pray! It
makes me giddy to see you!”

 

  But Mr. Tartar, with a wave of his hand
and the deftness of a cat, had already dipped through his scuttle of scarlet
runners without breaking a leaf, and “gone below.”

 

  Mr. Grewgious, his bedroom window-blind
held aside with his hand, happened at the moment to have Neville's chambers
under his eye for the last time that night. Fortunately his eye was on the
front of the house and not the back, or this remarkable appearance and disappearance
might have broken his rest as a phenomenon. But Mr. Grewgious seeing nothing
there, not even a light in the windows, his gaze wandered from the windows to
the stars, as if he would have read in them something that was hidden from him.
Many of us would, if we could; but none of us so much as know our letters in
the stars yet—or seem likely to do it, in this state of existence—and few
languages can be read until their alphabets are mastered.

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER XVIII—A SETTLER IN CLOISTERHAM

 

   

 

  AT about this time a stranger appeared
in Cloisterham; a whitehaired personage, with black eyebrows. Being buttoned up
in a tightish blue surtout, with a buff waistcoat and gray trousers, he had
something of a military air, but he announced himself at the Crozier (the orthodox
hotel, where he put up with a portmanteau) as an idle dog who lived upon his
means; and he farther announced that he had a mind to take a lodging in the
picturesque old city for a month or two, with a view of settling down there
altogether. Both announcements were made in the coffee-room of the Crozier, to
all whom it might or might not concern, by the stranger as he stood with his
back to the empty fireplace, waiting for his fried sole, veal cutlet, and pint
of sherry. And the waiter (business being chronically slack at the Crozier)
represented all whom it might or might not concern, and absorbed the whole of
the information.

 

  This gentleman's white head was
unusually large, and his shock of white hair was unusually thick and ample. “I
suppose, waiter,” he said, shaking his shock of hair, as a Newfoundland dog
might shake his before sitting down to dinner, “that a fair lodging for a
single buffer might be found in these parts, eh?”

 

  The waiter had no doubt of it.

 

  “Something old,” said the gentleman.
“Take my hat down for a moment from that peg, will you? No, I don't want it;
look into it. What do you see written there?”

 

  The waiter read: “Datchery.”

 

  “Now you know my name,” said the
gentleman; “Dick Datchery. Hang it up again. I was saying something old is what
I should prefer, something odd and out of the way; something venerable,
architectural, and inconvenient.”

 

  “We have a good choice of inconvenient
lodgings in the town, sir, I think,” replied the waiter, with modest confidence
in its resources that way; “indeed, I have no doubt that we could suit you that
far, however particular you might be. But a architectural lodging!” That seemed
to trouble the waiter's head, and he shook it.

 

  “Anything Cathedraly, now,” Mr. Datchery
suggested.

 

  “Mr. Tope,” said the waiter,
brightening, as he rubbed his chin with his hand, “would be the likeliest party
to inform in that line.”

 

  “Who is Mr. Tope?” inquired Dick
Datchery.

 

  The waiter explained that he was the
Verger, and that Mrs. Tope had indeed once upon a time let lodgings herself or
offered to let them; but that as nobody had ever taken them, Mrs. Tope's
windowbill, long a Cloisterham Institution, had disappeared; probably had
tumbled down one day, and never been put up again.

 

  “I'll call on Mrs. Tope,” said Mr.
Datchery, “after dinner.”

 

  So when he had done his dinner, he was
duly directed to the spot, and sallied out for it. But the Crozier being an
hotel of a most retiring disposition, and the waiter's directions being fatally
precise, he soon became bewildered, and went boggling about and about the
Cathedral Tower, whenever he could catch a glimpse of it, with a general
impression on his mind that Mrs. Tope's was somewhere very near it, and that,
like the children in the game of hot boiled beans and very good butter, he was
warm in his search when he saw the Tower, and cold when he didn't see it.

 

  He was getting very cold indeed when he
came upon a fragment of burial-ground in which an unhappy sheep was grazing.
Unhappy, because a hideous small boy was stoning it through the railings, and
had already lamed it in one leg, and was much excited by the benevolent
sportsmanlike purpose of breaking its other three legs, and bringing it down.

 

  “'It “im agin!” cried the boy, as the
poor creature leaped; “and made a dint in his wool.”

 

  “Let him be!” said Mr. Datchery. “Don't
you see you have lamed him?”

 

  “Yer lie,” returned the sportsman. “'E
went and lamed isself. I see “im do it, and I giv” “im a shy as a Widdy-warning
to “im not to go a-bruisin” “is master's mutton any more.”

 

  “Come here.”

 

  “I won't; I'll come when yer can ketch
me.”

 

  “Stay there then, and show me which is
Mr. Tope's.”

 

  “Ow can I stay here and show you which
is Topeseses, when Topeseses is t'other side the Kinfreederal, and over the
crossings, and round ever so many comers? Stoo-pid! Ya-a-ah!”

 

  “Show me where it is, and I'll give you
something.”

 

  “Come on, then.”

 

  This brisk dialogue concluded, the boy
led the way, and by-and-by stopped at some distance from an arched passage,
pointing.

 

  “Lookie yonder. You see that there
winder and door?”

 

  “That's Tope's?”

 

  “Yer lie; it ain't. That's Jarsper's.”

 

  “Indeed?” said Mr. Datchery, with a
second look of some interest.

 

  “Yes, and I ain't a-goin” no nearer “IM,
I tell yer.”

 

  “Why not?”

 

  “'Cos I ain't a-goin” to be lifted off
my legs and “ave my braces bust and be choked; not if I knows it, and not by
“Im. Wait till I set a jolly good flint a-flyin” at the back o” “is jolly old
“ed some day! Now look t'other side the harch; not the side where Jarsper's
door is; t'other side.”

 

  “I see.”

 

  “A little way in, o” that side, there's
a low door, down two steps. That's Topeseses with “is name on a hoval plate.”

 

  “Good. See here,” said Mr. Datchery,
producing a shilling. “You owe me half of this.”

 

  “Yer lie I don't owe yer nothing; I
never seen yer.”

 

  “I tell you you owe me half of this,
because I have no sixpence in my pocket. So the next time you meet me you shall
do something else for me, to pay me.”

 

  “All right, give us “old.”

 

  “What is your name, and where do you
live?”

 

  “Deputy. Travellers” Twopenny, “cross the
green.”

 

  The boy instantly darted off with the
shilling, lest Mr. Datchery should repent, but stopped at a safe distance, on
the happy chance of his being uneasy in his mind about it, to goad him with a
demon dance expressive of its irrevocability.

 

  Mr. Datchery, taking off his hat to give
that shock of white hair of his another shake, seemed quite resigned, and
betook himself whither he had been directed.

 

  Mr. Tope's official dwelling,
communicating by an upper stair with Mr. Jasper's (hence Mrs. Tope's attendance
on that gentleman), was of very modest proportions, and partook of the
character of a cool dungeon. Its ancient walls were massive, and its rooms
rather seemed to have been dug out of them, than to have been designed
beforehand with any reference to them. The main door opened at once on a
chamber of no describable shape, with a groined roof, which in its turn opened
on another chamber of no describable shape, with another groined roof: their
windows small, and in the thickness of the walls. These two chambers, close as
to their atmosphere, and swarthy as to their illumination by natural light,
were the apartments which Mrs. Tope had so long offered to an unappreciative
city. Mr. Datchery, however, was more appreciative. He found that if he sat
with the main door open he would enjoy the passing society of all comers to and
fro by the gateway, and would have light enough. He found that if Mr. and Mrs.
Tope, living overhead, used for their own egress and ingress a little side
stair that came plump into the Precincts by a door opening outward, to the
surprise and inconvenience of a limited public of pedestrians in a narrow way,
he would be alone, as in a separate residence. He found the rent moderate, and
everything as quaintly inconvenient as he could desire. He agreed, therefore,
to take the lodging then and there, and money down, possession to be had next
evening, on condition that reference was permitted him to Mr. Jasper as occupying
the gatehouse, of which on the other side of the gateway, the Verger's
hole-in-the-wall was an appanage or subsidiary part.

 

  The poor dear gentleman was very
solitary and very sad, Mrs. Tope said, but she had no doubt he would “speak for
her.” Perhaps Mr. Datchery had heard something of what had occurred there last
winter?

 

  Mr. Datchery had as confused a knowledge
of the event in question, on trying to recall it, as he well could have. He
begged Mrs. Tope's pardon when she found it incumbent on her to correct him in
every detail of his summary of the facts, but pleaded that he was merely a
single buffer getting through life upon his means as idly as he could, and that
so many people were so constantly making away with so many other people, as to
render it difficult for a buffer of an easy temper to preserve the
circumstances of the several cases unmixed in his mind.

 

  Mr. Jasper proving willing to speak for
Mrs. Tope, Mr. Datchery, who had sent up his card, was invited to ascend the
postern staircase. The Mayor was there, Mr. Tope said; but he was not to be
regarded in the light of company, as he and Mr. Jasper were great friends.

 

  “I beg pardon,” said Mr. Datchery,
making a leg with his hat under his arm, as he addressed himself equally to
both gentlemen; “a selfish precaution on my part, and not personally
interesting to anybody but myself. But as a buffer living on his means, and having
an idea of doing it in this lovely place in peace and quiet, for remaining span
of life, I beg to ask if the Tope family are quite respectable?”

 

  Mr. Jasper could answer for that without
the slightest hesitation.

 

  “That is enough, sir,” said Mr.
Datchery.

 

  “My friend the Mayor,” added Mr. Jasper,
presenting Mr. Datchery with a courtly motion of his hand towards that
potentate; “whose recommendation is actually much more important to a stranger
than that of an obscure person like myself, will testify in their behalf, I am
sure.”

 

  “The Worshipful the Mayor,” said Mr.
Datchery, with a low bow, “places me under an infinite obligation.”

 

  “Very good people, sir, Mr. and Mrs.
Tope,” said Mr. Sapsea, with condescension. “Very good opinions. Very well
behaved. Very respectful. Much approved by the Dean and Chapter.”

 

  “The Worshipful the Mayor gives them a
character,” said Mr. Datchery, “of which they may indeed be proud. I would ask
His Honour (if I might be permitted) whether there are not many objects of
great interest in the city which is under his beneficent sway?”

 

  “We are, sir,” returned Mr. Sapsea, “an
ancient city, and an ecclesiastical city. We are a constitutional city, as it
becomes such a city to be, and we uphold and maintain our glorious privileges.”

 

  “His Honour,” said Mr. Datchery, bowing,
“inspires me with a desire to know more of the city, and confirms me in my
inclination to end my days in the city.”

 

  “Retired from the Army, sir?” suggested
Mr. Sapsea.

 

  “His Honour the Mayor does me too much
credit,” returned Mr. Datchery.

 

  “Navy, sir?” suggested Mr. Sapsea.