[Literature] Charles Dickens: A Great Mystery Solved by Gillan Vase #6/131

I know you found out at last, and it don’t matter to you why I want to know.”

“She got so tottery on her pins,” pursued Winks, with immovable gravity, “that at last she broke down on a stone by the road, and began to cough and to spit quite dreadful; then she closed her eyes and fell to mumblin’. Creepin’ up to her, I says, soft like, ‘where am I to come to, mother dear, when I wants a pipe? You’ve clean forgot to tell me that, and without it, you know, I shall have to go to Jack Chinaman.’ I’d heer’d her mumblin’ some’at about Jack Chinaman, and so I said it at a wenture. Lor! she were quite lively in a moment. ‘Don’t go to Jack Chinaman, deary,’ she says, ‘ cause he’s much dearer than I am, and he don’t know neither the right mixin’ of it as I do; come to me, deary; to Mother Coombs in Purgatory Court, No. 162, down by the river.’ She kept on a mumblin’ and a coughin’, but I didn’t wait to hear no more, and there’s your answer, Dick, and now fork out my arf-a-crown.” —

“There it is, and now be off with you,” said Mr. Datchery. “I’ve something to do before night, and I must have time to do it in. Stay,” he added suddenly, “you may still help me. Watch that man there till I come back, and if he leaves the house, you follow him, and find out where he goes. You may earn another shilling to-night, Winks, if you are sharp, and more shillings in the future; you understand?”

Deputy gave a significant and quick sign of comprehension and assent, and shook one dirty fist again in the direction of the shadow. In the other was closely clenched his half-a-crown; yet, between his defiant growls for Mr. Jasper, and his congratulatory chuckles for himself, he did not fail to observe that Mr. Datchery, behind him, was copying his actions with even increased vehemence. Indeed, this latter gentleman seemed, for some unaccountable reason, to be stepping completely out of his role of easy-going buffer, and to take a keen and curious interest in the actions of the shadow, who, in bodily form, called himself John Jasper, choirmaster.

And John Jasper, the threatened; John Jasper, the regretted; John Jasper, the indispensable — late professor of music in the ancient city of Cloisterham, and leader of the Cathedral choir — what of him? If the devil had not been dancing before his house that evening, he had most surely been present in its interior, standing in almost palpable form beside its wretched inmate, and pointing, with a shadowy hand, to the reckoning that would not balance. Had he not been trying to add it up all that evening, and many a weary evening and day before, and yet, when it seemed nearly finished, only one figure or so more, something had turned it all wrong, and he must begin again at the beginning How weary he was! How heavy his head! How heavy his heart! Ha! was that the devil who laughed? He had a heart; how it throbbed and beat passionately for love of her — or hatred, which was it? Once he had loved her, how well he remembered that. How, all the week, he had but one thought, one longing, for the hour when he could sit by her side, touch her hand, sometimes even her little foot. How often it came upon the wrong pedal, and then, was it not his duty to put it right? Such a careless little thing, and he such a careful master!

He could praise her, correct her, scold her; anything, everything, to make her lift her bright eyes, whether in anger or content. How long he had cherished the hope that she returned his love, when the saucy naughtiness with which she treated her music-master — Eddy’s uncle — had changed into a steady, childish gravity, not unmixed with fear. How often he had seen her meet his eyes with a look of recognition in them — recognition of what? — of his love, or of her acknowledgment of it? How, at this time, when he touched her hand by accident, or in performance of his duty as her music-master, instead of the pretty, naughty pettishness she had formerly shown, she would draw it away with a shudder, as if in fear, and the bright colour would flush her face, even to the roots of her waving hair. Was not that the working of the troubled conscience that reproached her for treachery to her betrothed? Was not that almost a proof that she returned his love?