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.