The Mystery of Edwin Drood eBook

Mr. Grewgious, his bedroom window-blind held aside with his hand, happened at the moment to have Neville’s chambers under his eye for the last time that night.  Fortunately his eye was on the front of the house and not the back, or this remarkable appearance and disappearance might have broken his rest as a phenomenon.  But Mr. Grewgious seeing nothing there, not even a light in the windows, his gaze wandered from the windows to the stars, as if he would have read in them something that was hidden from him.  Many of us would, if we could; but none of us so much as know our letters in the stars yet—­or seem likely to do it, in this state of existence--and few languages can be read until their alphabets are mastered.

CHAPTER XVIII—­A SETTLER IN CLOISTERHAM

At about this time a stranger appeared in Cloisterham; a white-haired personage, with black eyebrows.  Being buttoned up in a tightish blue surtout, with a buff waistcoat and gray trousers, he had something of a military air, but he announced himself at the Crozier (the orthodox hotel, where he put up with a portmanteau) as an idle dog who lived upon his means; and he farther announced that he had a mind to take a lodging in the picturesque old city for a month or two, with a view of settling down there altogether.  Both announcements were made in the coffee-room of the Crozier, to all whom it might or might not concern, by the stranger as he stood with his back to the empty fireplace, waiting for his fried sole, veal cutlet, and pint of sherry.  And the waiter (business being chronically slack at the Crozier) represented all whom it might or might not concern, and absorbed the whole of the information.

This gentleman’s white head was unusually large, and his shock of white hair was unusually thick and ample.  ‘I suppose, waiter,’ he said, shaking his shock of hair, as a Newfoundland dog might shake his before sitting down to dinner, ’that a fair lodging for a single buffer might be found in these parts, eh?’

The waiter had no doubt of it.

‘Something old,’ said the gentleman.  ’Take my hat down for a moment from that peg, will you?  No, I don’t want it; look into it.  What do you see written there?’

The waiter read:  ‘Datchery.’

‘Now you know my name,’ said the gentleman; ’Dick Datchery.  Hang it up again.  I was saying something old is what I should prefer, something odd and out of the way; something venerable, architectural, and inconvenient.’

’We have a good choice of inconvenient lodgings in the town, sir, I think,’ replied the waiter, with modest confidence in its resources that way; ’indeed, I have no doubt that we could suit you that far, however particular you might be.  But a architectural lodging!’ That seemed to trouble the waiter’s head, and he shook it.

‘Anything Cathedraly, now,’ Mr. Datchery suggested.

‘Mr. Tope,’ said the waiter, brightening, as he rubbed his chin with his hand, ’would be the likeliest party to inform in that line.’