Just as I was shoved out through the door, I caught sight of Mr Nolloth, who was sitting in a corner alone. He looked up and I saw from his red and swollen eyes that he had been weeping. Worse than this, he directed towards me a gaze of such sadness that I shuddered as if at an ill premonition.
I had turned my head and dragged my feet to watch him for as long as I could, but Skilliter, with an oath, hit me on the side of the head and I had to turn away from the last sight I ever had of the brave old gentleman.
We passed along a draughty passage into a cold, damp outbuilding that might long ago have been a dairy, and came to a locked door. While Skilliter fumbled to find the right key from those on his chain, I stood on the cracked flag-stones shivering in my night-shirt that the Porteouses had given me and trying to blot out the memory of a valiant soul reduced to tears, which both chilled me and disappointed me.
Skilliter swore and muttered: “My fingers are so damn’ froze I can hardly hold the keys.”
Dr Alabaster laughed drily and said: “There’s no call to hurry, Skilliter. He won’t go away.”
Skilliter snorted in a toadyish manner to indicate his appreciation of this piece of drollery, and as he finally managed to unlock the door Dr Alabaster said to me with a sneer: “We thought you would probably care to see your dear papa again.”
My emotion at the prospect of another interview with the pitiable being was tinged with surprise at the venue for our meeting. When the door swung open and I was pushed in, my bewilderment increased for since it was a small, well-lit chamber I could see immediately that it had only one occupant. This was a large woman dressed as a laundress who had her back to us at the far end of the room. She was bent over something on a table or sideboard at about the height of her waist, but straightened up and turned her head as we came in.
“Thank you, my good woman,” Dr Alabaster said. “You may stand aside now.”
“It’s ‘Mrs Silverleaf’, if it’s all one to you, Doctor,” she answered.
As she moved aside I was able to see what the object on the table was, and before I saw the face I knew who it had been. I halted where I was, not wanting to see more, but Skilliter gripped me from behind and shoved me forward until I was standing over the dreadful thing, and at the moment that I saw the features — looking even more than before like the youthful countenance I bore in my memory — I saw that the throat was jaggedly slashed. The wound had been washed and crudely stitched, but that only made the ugly red tear in the pale skin the more horribly apparent.
I heard the voice of Skilliter from the other side of the room: “He don’t seem too keen to pay his respecks.”
At that moment a dark mist clouded my vision and my legs ceased to bear my weight. However, my slide to the ground was halted by a strong hand beneath my shoulder and I felt myself being assisted into a chair that stood against the wall. As the dark circles of black mist cleared away I found the face of the woman looking at me with an extraordinarily intense expression of interest and concern.
“Respects, Skilliter!” came the doctor’s jeering response. “To such a father?”
“What!” exclaimed Mrs Silverleaf. “You mean this boy is the poor creatur’s son? That’s beyond everything.”
She muttered something to herself but I could not catch it.
Dr Alabaster said: “Did you say something, my good woman?”
“You didn’t ought to have broke it to him so sudden,” she said.
“Finish the work for which you have been paid and be on your way,” he replied.
She sniffed and went back to the table. I saw that she was holding a linen cloth and that a bason of water stood on the table with a folded length of cotton whose shape and purpose I recognised from my memory of Mrs Lillystone.
Then turning to me, Dr Alabaster said: “I regret to have to inform you that your esteemed parent destroyed himself last night. I assume it was in grief at the news you conveyed to him of the death of your mother.”
“You really didn’t ought to have let him know,” said Skilliter sarcastically.
“Indeed, I fear that you are to blame for your father’s death,” Dr Alabaster said. “It seems to be a family tradition. Be that as it may, the coroner sat on the body this morning and his jury returned a verdict of self-murder.”
“I never heerd on sich a cruel thing as the way you’re treating this boy,” said Mrs Silverleaf.
I, however, had no strength to be angry at their taunts. All my thoughts were for the lonely, wasted life that had just come to so premature an end.
“That’s enough from you,” Skilliter said to her.
“Why,” she went on, “to break it like that! I never did!”
I looked at Mrs Silverleaf’s broad red face and it came to me that I knew her from somewhere.
“That’s almost as cruel,” she continued as if unstoppably impelled by the force of her indignation, “as to lock him in here alone with the poor thing all night.”
“Why, listen to the good soul,” said Dr Alabaster with a kind of malign delight. “I believe she may have hit upon something you and I have neglected to think of, Skilliter. For do you not consider that it would be only right and proper for the young gentleman to keep vigil by his father’s body?”
Skilliter laughed sycophantically but the layer-out appeared not to have heard this remark, for she was now engaged upon unfolding the shroud and shaking it out.
“Lock him in here for the night,” said Dr Alabaster to his deputy. “After all, he has known his father so briefly that it would be a pity not to spend with him what little time remains. Be sure to tell Yallop before you go off.”
Skilliter nodded and Dr Alabaster left the room directing towards me a last gleeful smile.
“Will you help me with this, Mr Skilliter,” said Mrs Silverleaf, who appeared to have heard none of this for she had made no comment upon it. While I tried not to watch, she and Skilliter worked together to pull the shroud over the body and when they had succeeded, she tied it securely at the top.
At that moment the door was suddenly kicked open and Rookyard and the strange man I had seen the previous night outside my cell staggered into the room carrying a coffin, panting and swearing at the effort. They placed it on the table beside the body.
“The boy stays in here tonight, Yallop,” Skilliter said to the stranger. “The doctor’s instructions.”
The three men grinned at each other and when the newcomers had regained their breath they set to work again and with Skilliter’s assistance the body was lifted over the sides and dropped into the coffin. Meanwhile Mrs Silverleaf was collecting her possessions and packing them away into a large bundle ready to depart.
Then Rookyard, who was carrying a hammer, picked up one end of the lid and told the others to help him lift it onto the base.
“Shouldn’t that wait for the undertaker’s men?” asked Mrs Silverleaf looking up at that moment. “They usually like to do it theirselves.”
“Why, what do you know about it?” Rookyard sneered.
“A great deal,” she replied spiritedly. “I’ve laid out many a better-looking gentleman than any what I see before me now.”
Rookyard reddened with anger but Yallop laughed and said: “Yes, she’s right. Leave it for ’em.”
“No, that ain’t right,” Rookyard persisted, and an argument broke out between the three men.
The layer-out reached across me to pick up a piece of sponge and as her face came close to mine she whispered: “Hide in the coffing.”
I was stunned by these words and thought I had misheard them. I stared at her in amazement, but she was now packing her bundle with an expression as unconcerned as if she had not spoken.
Meanwhile the argument ended with the decision that the coffin should be left unsecured and, with ironical good wishes to myself for a pleasant night, the two turn-keys departed, leaving the night-porter behind.
As Mrs Silverleaf was securing her bundle she enquired conversationally of Yallo
p who was waiting with unconcealed impatience for her departure: “Who’s doing the burying?”
“If it’s any of your consarn, Winterflood and Cronk buries for us.”
“Is that so?” she said. “I wondered if it might be Digweed and Son.”
The room seemed to heave as if I were on board a ship in a squall and I leant back against the chair for support. That Christmas of long ago rose before me and I knew the woman now.
“Never heerd on ’em,” said Yallop disparagingly. He picked up the blanket on which the body had been lying and folded it over his arm.
“When will they come?” she asked.
“Before first light tomorrer. We like our bodies to be out of here at night. It looks bad by day.”
“It’ll be a bitter cold night for this lad if he’s to stay here until dawn,” she said. “Spare him that blanket at least.”
“I wasn’t told nothing about no blanket,” Yallop said doubtfully.
Mrs Digweed turned towards me and stared at me hard as she uttered the next words: “I think you’d best, Mr Yallop, or Winterflood and Cronk’s men won’t hardly know which on ’em is to be took when they come tomorrer.”
I understood her and to my relief Yallop reluctantly relinquished the blanket into my hands. With a last glance of deep meaning towards me Mrs Digweed passed out of the room.
“Shall I leave him this light?” Yallop mused aloud, picking up his lanthorn and looking at the stub of candle left by the coffin. “Or would it be worse to be altogether in the dark?” He reflected for a moment: “I reckon it would be worse to have the bit o’ candle left and see the shadders moving on the walls and know that in an hour or two it was going to burn out.”
He left it where it was and went out, locking the door behind him.
I understood what I had to do, though my conscience and my stomach alike revolted against it. Perhaps it was fortunate that I had little time to reflect — beyond the conviction that if I failed to seize this chance, I would die — because I needed to act while the candle still burned. And so I began with excessive haste to try to raise the body and lift it over the side of the coffin. After some minutes of struggling I realized that my panic-stricken actions were achieving nothing except further to exhaust me. I forced myself to pause until my thumping heart had quietened and I had considered my next step rationally. It became clear to me that, weakened as I was by hunger, it would be a long and laborious task even if I could find the right way of going about it. But my approach was clearly the wrong one.
Suddenly I remembered the hideous song that I had heard from Isbister’s company, and now I connected it with what I had seen them doing that night in Southwark. I realized that what I should do — despite my horror — was to kneel straddling the legs and embrace the shoulders in order to pull it so that it sat up.
This proved effective though I made only slow progress, and all the time as I struggled my hearing was alert to detect the approach of the night-porter. Eventually I managed to manoeuvre it out onto the table and from there to roll it to the edge. In order to lower it gently to the floor — for I could not bring myself to push it over the rim and let it fall — I had to position myself beneath it and pull it down onto me, going down on my knees as my legs buckled under the weight. I managed this successfully and once it was on the ground untied the shroud and after a long struggle pulled it off.
Now I rolled the body into the furthest corner of the room and arranged it to look like a sleeping figure, laying over it the blanket which I was sure Mrs Digweed had intended that I should use for this purpose. As I was doing this the guttering candle burned out, but I did not need its light for my last action which was to climb back onto the table, pull the shroud over myself, and then clamber into the coffin concealing the untied end beneath my head. I found that I could breathe through the cheap cloth, though with some difficulty.
CHAPTER 83
There was so much that I wanted to avoid thinking about as the long cold hours dragged by. I seized gratefully on the extraordinary nature of my encounter with Mrs Digweed. How was it that she had reappeared in my life in this of all places? Was it by means of a series of meaningless coincidences or by a chain of carefully-linked connexions? Either possibility seemed implausible. Whichever it was, how strange a part she and her family seemed to have played in my life — assuming, of course, that Barney and Sally were members of her family. And there was Joey, too. And now that I thought of him it occurred to me that I was blindly trusting the mother, when it was the son who had led me into this very trap.
I found myself, despite the extreme cold, breaking into a perspiration at these reflections. Was I delivering myself voluntarily to some kind of horrible death? If so, then never had victim more laboriously prepared himself for it. But if my worst fears were well-founded, then what could I do? If I passed up this chance now, then surely only a longer-delayed death awaited me? Was I, then, trusting Mrs Digweed only because I had no alternative? Surely not. There had been true kindness in her manner, and I could not bear to believe that she had acted a part in order to lure me to a cruel death. And yet Emma had taken me in! And even if I had done right in trusting Mrs Digweed, what was to be gained by my concealing myself in this way? Surely I would be discovered by the undertaker’s men?
I grew colder and colder under the thin shroud as the night deepened, and many strange thoughts came to me: that I was at least appropriately attired and positioned should the cold overcome me, and that after all it was not so terrible a thing to die. I wondered who would be affected by my passing from the world. Perhaps Mr Nolloth would be the sole mourner, and now that I thought of him it came to me that it had not been for himself that he was grieving but for his friend, and, I supposed, for me. Miss Quilliam would be sorry for me if she ever heard of my death — and Henry Bellringer, too. Then I wondered if Henrietta would ever learn of it and, if by some chance she did, whether she would grieve for me. The one thing I tried not to think of was the silent presence in the corner of the room whose place I had sacrilegiously usurped.
At last I heard the door being unlocked and the sound of footsteps as if several people were entering. I began to breathe as infrequently and as shallowly as I could. Through the thin cotton I could even see the faint illumination of lanthorns.
Then Yallop’s voice, disconcertingly close, said angrily: “I’m damned if I know why you’ve come so early. It’s a good three hours to first light.”
A man’s voice that was strange to me said: “Them was the orders what I had of Mr Winterflood.”
“You nivver had ’em of Winterflood,” said Yallop. “He’s been dead these twenty year.”
“Then it must have been the other genel’man, for I ain’t but jist started and don’t know the names yet.”
“Well, Cronk ain’t nivver sent no-one so early a-fore. And it’s most irregular not to have brung a proper growed man. I nivver heerd on sich a thing. Especially as, beggin’ your parding, you’re sitiwated as you are. I suppose you’ll expeck me to help carry the box?”
“Why, the guv’nor give me a shillin’ for that wery purpose.”
“Oh did he?” said the night-porter’s voice, slightly mollified. “Well, there it is. But where’s that damned boy? They told me to watch out for him in case he tried to hook it. Why there he is fast asleep in the corner over yonder! And sleeping like the dead hisself.”
To my dismay I heard him move towards the far corner saying brutally: “See how much respeck he shows for his own dad! I’ll soon give him somethin’ to dream about.”
Quickly the other voice said: “Help me with this lid will you, Mr Yallop?”
“You’re arstin’ a lot for that shillin’,” said Yallop irritably, but I heard his footsteps moving back towards me.
There was a brief silence which was broken by the grunts of the two men, then the lid was banged down only an inch or two from my face so that I had to force myself not to flinch.
“Hold that there nail steady, will
you, Mr Yallop,” said the stranger’s voice.
“Can’t your boy do it?” protested Yallop.
“He can’t reach while it’s on the table,” said the strange voice.
A moment later I was nearly deafened by the crash of the hammer. And then as I listened to one nail after another being driven in my heart began to pound as I wondered how long I would be able to breathe in that confined space and tried not to imagine a horrible possibility.
“Why bless me,” said Yallop, “if that boy ain’t still asleep, though this noise would wake the wery dead. I’ll try what a kick from my boot kin do.”
Almost with relief, I resigned myself to the inevitable.
However, I instantly felt myself being tipped up and the strange man cried: “Bear a hand there, will you, Mr Yallop. I can’t hold both ends by meself.”
“What the divil did you do that for?” said Yallop indignantly. “You should have waited until I was ready.”
As he spoke I felt the coffin being raised to the accompaniment of alarming groans and then lowered slightly, I presumed onto the shoulders of the two men. We advanced a few unsteady steps and I judged that we were out in the passage.
Suddenly Yallop said angrily: “Put it down, for Gawd’s sake.”
I was in a state of terror, fearing that he had realized the deception being practised for now I desperately wanted the attempt to succeed.
“I have to lock the door agin that blessed boy.”
The door clanged shut and the key rasped in the lock.