CHAPTER XII.

A NIGHT WITH DURDLES

When Mr. Sapsea has nothing better to do, towards evening, and finds

the contemplation of his own profundity becoming a little monotonous in

spite of the vastness of the subject, he often takes an airing in the

Cathedral Close and thereabout. He likes to pass the churchyard with a

swelling air of proprietorship, and to encourage in his breast a sort

of benignant-landlord feeling, in that he has been bountiful towards

that meritorious tenant, Mrs. Sapsea, and has publicly given her a

prize. He likes to see a stray face or two looking in through the

railings, and perhaps reading his inscription. Should he meet a

stranger coming from the churchyard with a quick step, he is morally

convinced that the stranger is “with a blush retiring,” as monumentally

directed.

Mr. Sapsea’s importance has received enhancement, for he has become

Mayor of Cloisterham. Without mayors, and many of them, it cannot be

disputed that the whole framework of society—Mr. Sapsea is confident

that he invented that forcible figure—would fall to pieces. Mayors have

been knighted for “going up” with addresses: explosive machines

intrepidly discharging shot and shell into the English Grammar. Mr.

Sapsea may “go up” with an address. Rise, Sir Thomas Sapsea! Of such is

the salt of the earth.

Mr. Sapsea has improved the acquaintance of Mr. Jasper, since their

first meeting to partake of port, epitaph, backgammon, beef, and salad.

Mr. Sapsea has been received at the gatehouse with kindred hospitality;

and on that occasion Mr. Jasper seated himself at the piano, and sang

to him, tickling his ears—figuratively—long enough to present a

considerable area for tickling. What Mr. Sapsea likes in that young man

is, that he is always ready to profit by the wisdom of his elders, and

that he is sound, sir, at the core. In proof of which, he sang to Mr.

Sapsea that evening, no kickshaw ditties, favourites with national

enemies, but gave him the genuine George the Third home-brewed;

exhorting him (as “my brave boys”) to reduce to a smashed condition all

other islands but this island, and all continents, peninsulas,

isthmuses, promontories, and other geographical forms of land soever,

besides sweeping the seas in all directions. In short, he rendered it

pretty clear that Providence made a distinct mistake in originating so

small a nation of hearts of oak, and so many other verminous peoples.

Mr. Sapsea, walking slowly this moist evening near the churchyard with

his hands behind him, on the look-out for a blushing and retiring

stranger, turns a corner, and comes instead into the goodly presence of

the Dean, conversing with the Verger and Mr. Jasper. Mr. Sapsea makes

his obeisance, and is instantly stricken far more ecclesiastical than

any Archbishop of York or Canterbury.

“You are evidently going to write a book about us, Mr. Jasper,” quoth

the Dean; “to write a book about us. Well! We are very ancient, and we

ought to make a good book. We are not so richly endowed in possessions

as in age; but perhaps you will put _that_ in your book, among other

things, and call attention to our wrongs.”

Mr. Tope, as in duty bound, is greatly entertained by this.

“I really have no intention at all, sir,” replies Jasper, “of turning

author or archæologist. It is but a whim of mine. And even for my whim,

Mr. Sapsea here is more accountable than I am.”

“How so, Mr. Mayor?” says the Dean, with a nod of good-natured

recognition of his Fetch. “How is that, Mr. Mayor?”

“I am not aware,” Mr. Sapsea remarks, looking about him for

information, “to what the Very Reverend the Dean does me the honour of

referring.” And then falls to studying his original in minute points of

detail.

“Durdles,” Mr. Tope hints.

“Ay!” the Dean echoes; “Durdles, Durdles!”

“The truth is, sir,” explains Jasper, “that my curiosity in the man was

first really stimulated by Mr. Sapsea. Mr. Sapsea’s knowledge of

mankind and power of drawing out whatever is recluse or odd around him,

first led to my bestowing a second thought upon the man: though of

course I had met him constantly about. You would not be surprised by

this, Mr. Dean, if you had seen Mr. Sapsea deal with him in his own

parlour, as I did.”

“O!” cries Sapsea, picking up the ball thrown to him with ineffable

complacency and pomposity; “yes, yes. The Very Reverend the Dean refers

to that? Yes. I happened to bring Durdles and Mr. Jasper together. I

regard Durdles as a Character.”

“A character, Mr. Sapsea, that with a few skilful touches you turn

inside out,” says Jasper.

“Nay, not quite that,” returns the lumbering auctioneer. “I may have a

little influence over him, perhaps; and a little insight into his

character, perhaps. The Very Reverend the Dean will please to bear in

mind that I have seen the world.” Here Mr. Sapsea gets a little behind

the Dean, to inspect his coat-buttons.

“Well!” says the Dean, looking about him to see what has become of his

copyist: “I hope, Mr. Mayor, you will use your study and knowledge of

Durdles to the good purpose of exhorting him not to break our worthy

and respected Choir-Master’s neck; we cannot afford it; his head and

voice are much too valuable to us.”

Mr. Tope is again highly entertained, and, having fallen into

respectful convulsions of laughter, subsides into a deferential murmur,

importing that surely any gentleman would deem it a pleasure and an

honour to have his neck broken, in return for such a compliment from

such a source.

“I will take it upon myself, sir,” observes Sapsea loftily, “to answer

for Mr. Jasper’s neck. I will tell Durdles to be careful of it. He will

mind what _I_ say. How is it at present endangered?” he inquires,

looking about him with magnificent patronage.

“Only by my making a moonlight expedition with Durdles among the tombs,

vaults, towers, and ruins,” returns Jasper. “You remember suggesting,

when you brought us together, that, as a lover of the picturesque, it

might be worth my while?”

“I remember!” replies the auctioneer. And the solemn idiot really

believes that he does remember.

“Profiting by your hint,” pursues Jasper, “I have had some day-rambles

with the extraordinary old fellow, and we are to make a moonlight

hole-and-corner exploration to-night.”

“And here he is,” says the Dean.

Durdles with his dinner-bundle in his hand, is indeed beheld slouching

towards them. Slouching nearer, and perceiving the Dean, he pulls off

his hat, and is slouching away with it under his arm, when Mr. Sapsea

stops him.

“Mind you take care of my friend,” is the injunction Mr. Sapsea lays

upon him.

“What friend o’ yourn is dead?” asks Durdles. “No orders has come in

for any friend o’ yourn.”

“I mean my live friend there.”

“O! him?” says Durdles. “He can take care of himself, can Mister

Jarsper.”

“But do you take care of him too,” says Sapsea.

Whom Durdles (there being command in his tone) surlily surveys from

head to foot.

“With submission to his Reverence the Dean, if you’ll mind what

concerns you, Mr. Sapsea, Durdles he’ll mind what concerns him.”

“You’re out of temper,” says Mr. Sapsea, winking to the company to

observe how smoothly he will manage him. “My friend concerns me, and

Mr. Jasper is my friend. And you are my friend.”

“Don’t you get into a bad habit of boasting,” retorts Durdles, with a

grave cautionary nod. “It’ll grow upon you.”

[Illustration: Durdles cautions Mr. Sapsea against boasting]

“You are out of temper,” says Sapsea again; reddening, but again

sinking to the company.

“I own to it,” returns Durdles; “I don’t like liberties.”

Mr. Sapsea winks a third wink to the company, as who should say: “I

think you will agree with me that I have settled _his_ business;” and

stalks out of the controversy.

Durdles then gives the Dean a good evening, and adding, as he puts his

hat on, “You’ll find me at home, Mister Jarsper, as agreed, when you

want me; I’m a-going home to clean myself,” soon slouches out of sight.

This going home to clean himself is one of the man’s incomprehensible

compromises with inexorable facts; he, and his hat, and his boots, and

his clothes, never showing any trace of cleaning, but being uniformly

in one condition of dust and grit.

The lamplighter now dotting the quiet Close with specks of light, and

running at a great rate up and down his little ladder with that

object—his little ladder under the sacred shadow of whose inconvenience

generations had grown up, and which all Cloisterham would have stood

aghast at the idea of abolishing—the Dean withdraws to his dinner, Mr.

Tope to his tea, and Mr. Jasper to his piano. There, with no light but

that of the fire, he sits chanting choir-music in a low and beautiful

voice, for two or three hours; in short, until it has been for some

time dark, and the moon is about to rise.

Then he closes his piano softly, softly changes his coat for a

pea-jacket, with a goodly wicker-cased bottle in its largest pocket,

and putting on a low-crowned, flap-brimmed hat, goes softly out. Why

does he move so softly to-night? No outward reason is apparent for it.

Can there be any sympathetic reason crouching darkly within him?

Repairing to Durdles’s unfinished house, or hole in the city wall, and

seeing a light within it, he softly picks his course among the

gravestones, monuments, and stony lumber of the yard, already touched

here and there, sidewise, by the rising moon. The two journeymen have

left their two great saws sticking in their blocks of stone; and two

skeleton journeymen out of the Dance of Death might be grinning in the

shadow of their sheltering sentry-boxes, about to slash away at cutting

out the gravestones of the next two people destined to die in

Cloisterham. Likely enough, the two think little of that now, being

alive, and perhaps merry. Curious, to make a guess at the two;—or say

one of the two!

“Ho! Durdles!”

The light moves, and he appears with it at the door. He would seem to

have been “cleaning himself” with the aid of a bottle, jug, and

tumbler; for no other cleansing instruments are visible in the bare

brick room with rafters overhead and no plastered ceiling, into which

he shows his visitor.

“Are you ready?”

“I am ready, Mister Jarsper. Let the old ’uns come out if they dare,

when we go among their tombs. My spirit is ready for ’em.”

“Do you mean animal spirits, or ardent?”

“The one’s the t’other,” answers Durdles, “and I mean ’em both.”

He takes a lantern from a hook, puts a match or two in his pocket

wherewith to light it, should there be need; and they go out together,

dinner-bundle and all.

Surely an unaccountable sort of expedition! That Durdles himself, who

is always prowling among old graves, and ruins, like a Ghoul—that he

should be stealing forth to climb, and dive, and wander without an

object, is nothing extraordinary; but that the Choir-Master or any one

else should hold it worth his while to be with him, and to study

moonlight effects in such company is another affair. Surely an

unaccountable sort of expedition, therefore!

“’Ware that there mound by the yard-gate, Mister Jarsper.”

“I see it. What is it?”

“Lime.”

Mr. Jasper stops, and waits for him to come up, for he lags behind.

“What you call quick-lime?”

“Ay!” says Durdles; “quick enough to eat your boots. With a little

handy stirring, quick enough to eat your bones.”

They go on, presently passing the red windows of the Travellers’

Twopenny, and emerging into the clear moonlight of the Monks’ Vineyard.

This crossed, they come to Minor Canon Corner: of which the greater