Jasper now tells Sapsea, and the Dean, that he is to make “a moonlight
expedition with Durdles among the tombs, vaults, towers, and ruins
to-night.” The impossible Durdles has the keys necessary for this,
“surely an unaccountable expedition,” Dickens keeps remarking. The moon
seems to rise on this night at about 7.30 p.m. Jasper takes a big
case-bottle of liquor—drugged, of course and goes to the den of Durdles.
In the yard of this inspector of monuments he is bidden to beware of a
mound of quicklime near the yard gate. “With a little handy stirring,
quick enough to eat your bones,” says Durdles. There is some
considerable distance between this “mound” of quicklime and the crypt, of
which Durdles has the key, but the intervening space is quite empty of
human presence, as the citizens are unwilling to meet ghosts.
In the crypt Durdles drinks a good deal of the drugged liquor. “They are
to ascend the great Tower,”—and why they do that is part of the Mystery,
though not an insoluble part. Before they climb, Durdles tells Jasper
that he was drunk and asleep in the crypt, last Christmas Eve, and was
wakened by “the ghost of one terrific shriek, followed by the ghost of
the howl of a dog, a long dismal, woeful howl, such as a dog gives when a
person’s dead.” Durdles has made inquiries and, as no one else heard the
shriek and the howl, he calls these sounds “ghosts.”
They are obviously meant to be understood as supranormal premonitory
sounds; of the nature of second sight, or rather of second hearing.
Forster gives examples of Dickens’s tendency to believe in such
premonitions: Dickens had himself a curious premonitory dream. He
considerably overdid the premonitory business in his otherwise excellent
story, _The Signalman_, or so it seems to a student of these things. The
shriek and howl heard by Durdles are to be repeated, we see, in real
life, later, on a Christmas Eve. The question is—when? More probably
_not_ on the Christmas Eve just imminent, when Edwin is to vanish, but,
on the Christmas Eve following, when Jasper is to be unmasked.
All this while, and later, Jasper examines Durdles very closely, studying
the effects on him of the drugged drink. When they reach the top of the
tower, Jasper closely contemplates “that stillest part of it” (the
landscape) “which the Cathedral overshadows; but he contemplates Durdles
quite as curiously.”
There is a motive for the scrutiny in either case. Jasper examines the
part of the precincts in the shadow of the Cathedral, because he wishes
to assure himself that it is lonely enough for his later undescribed but
easily guessed proceedings in this night of mystery. He will have much
to do that could not brook witnesses, after the drugged Durdles has
fallen sound asleep. We have already been assured that the whole area
over which Jasper is to operate is “utterly deserted,” even when it lies
in full moonlight, about 8.30 p.m. “One might fancy that the tide of
life was stemmed by Mr. Jasper’s own gate-house.” The people of
Cloisterham, we hear, would deny that they believe in ghosts; but they
give this part of the precinct a wide berth (Chapter XII.). If the
region is “utterly deserted” at nine o’clock in the evening, when it lies
in the ivory moonlight, much more will it be free from human presence
when it lies in shadow, between one and two o’clock after midnight.
Jasper, however, from the tower top closely scrutinizes the area of his
future operations. It is, probably, for this very purpose of discovering
whether the coast be clear or not, that Jasper climbs the tower.
He watches Durdles for the purpose of finding how the drug which he has
administered works, with a view to future operations on Edwin. Durdles
is now in such a state that “he deems the ground so far below on a level
with the tower, and would as lief walk off the tower into the air as
not.”
All this is apparently meant to suggest that Jasper, on Christmas Eve,
will repeat his expedition, _with Edwin_, whom he will have drugged, and
that he will allow Edwin to “walk off the tower into the air.” There are
later suggestions to the same effect, as we shall see, but they are
deliberately misleading. There are also strong suggestions to the very
opposite effect: it is broadly indicated that Jasper is to strangle Edwin
with a thick black-silk scarf, which he has just taken to wearing for the
good of his throat.
The pair return to the crypt, Durdles falls asleep, dreams that Jasper
leaves him, “and that something touches him and something falls from his
hand. Then something clinks and gropes about,” and the lines of
moonlight shift their direction, as Durdles finds that they have really
done when he wakens, with Jasper beside him, while the Cathedral clock
strikes two. They have had many hours, not less than five, for their
expedition. The key of the crypt lies beside Durdles on the ground.
They go out, and as Deputy begins stone-throwing, Jasper half strangles
him.