The debilitated old house in the city, wrapped in its mantle of soot,

and leaning heavily on the crutches that had partaken of its decay and

worn out with it, never knew a healthy or a cheerful interval, let what

would betide. If the sun ever touched it, it was but with a ray, and

that was gone in half an hour; if the moonlight ever fell upon it, it

was only to put a few patches on its doleful cloak, and make it look

more wretched.

The stars, to be sure, coldly watched it when the nights

and the smoke were clear enough; and all bad weather stood by it with

a rare fidelity. You should alike find rain, hail, frost, and thaw

lingering in that dismal enclosure when they had vanished from other

places; and as to snow, you should see it there for weeks, long after

it had changed from yellow to black, slowly weeping away its grimy life.

The place had no other adherents. As to street noises, the rumbling of

wheels in the lane merely rushed in at the gateway in going past, and

rushed out again: making the listening Mistress Affery feel as if she

were deaf, and recovered the sense of hearing by instantaneous flashes.

So with whistling, singing, talking, laughing, and all pleasant human

sounds. They leaped the gap in a moment, and went upon their way. The

varying light of fire and candle in Mrs Clennam's room made the greatest

change that ever broke the dead monotony of the spot. In her two long

narrow windows, the fire shone sullenly all day, and sullenly all night.

On rare occasions it flashed up passionately, as she did; but for the

most part it was suppressed, like her, and preyed upon itself evenly and

slowly.

During many hours of the short winter days, however, when it was

dusk there early in the afternoon, changing distortions of herself

in her wheeled chair, of Mr Flintwinch with his wry neck, of Mistress

Affery coming and going, would be thrown upon the house wall that was

over the gateway, and would hover there like shadows from a great magic

lantern. As the room-ridden invalid settled for the night, these would

gradually disappear: Mistress Affery's magnified shadow always flitting

about, last, until it finally glided away into the air, as though she

were off upon a witch excursion. Then the solitary light would burn

unchangingly, until it burned pale before the dawn, and at last died

under the breath of Mrs Affery, as her shadow descended on it from the

witch-region of sleep.

Strange, if the little sick-room fire were in effect a beacon fire,

summoning some one, and that the most unlikely some one in the world,

to the spot that MUST be come to. Strange, if the little sick-room light

were in effect a watch-light, burning in that place every night until

an appointed event should be watched out! Which of the vast multitude

of travellers, under the sun and the stars, climbing the dusty hills

and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by

sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one

another; which of the host may, with no suspicion of the journey's end,

be travelling surely hither? Time shall show us.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024