Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

Mrs Flintwinch has another Dream

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