Ellah was about again, but pitifully changed. Folk turned to watch him as he passed—it was not known how he had come by his accident, save that he had fallen down the Scout—and they said that even yet he would be better at home than limping about Horwick, let alone the expense, for he stayed now at the “Fullers’ Arms.” His left hand dangled helplessly before his breast, an idiot gesture, and his right shook and wavered as he supported himself with a stick. His former dread of open spaces was now become so exaggerated that he would not venture into the market-place nor scarce cross even a narrow street; and he hobbled along close to walls, going thrice the distance rather than venture beyond the gutter. He said he felt easier so. On one foot he wore a felt slipper; and folk said that he was lucky to have got off with his wits only a little worse muddled than before.
Since Matthew Moon’s menace, Cope also had made the “Fullers’” his calling-place. The house had a humbler following than Jim Northrop’s inn, and the landlord made ends meet by weaving in a room upstairs. If here again Cope was not made over-welcome, he now seemed to enjoy that rather than otherwise. They had so entirely ceased to despise him that there was silence at a snap of his finger; he led the conversation when he would; and he did this sometimes in a manner that left them little appetite for their ale. They were not squeamish in the “Fullers’,” but Cope dealt in inhuman things, not simply wounds, maimings, and the like, but other and unspeakable things, and with a glee such as a devil might have displayed. The landlord knew that Cope’s custom cost him a good deal more than it was worth, but he dared not for his life have spoken.
One night Cope fairly emptied the room. Ellah, who had not heard his words, alone remained. The landlord had come in, and was ruefully gathering up the half-emptied, abandoned mugs, and he was passing out with his hands full of these when Cope called him sharply.
“Yes, sir?” he said, almost whimpering—for he, too, had heard.
“So you’re another of ’em, eh? Hn! hn! hn! hn!... Now I wonder if you can tell me something I’ll ask you?”
“No, sir,” the landlord almost sobbed, as if he were already asked it.
“Quiet, you fool! It is this: Their chests go purple, exactly as I described (don’t sob, landlord), and a man with a fat and puffy neck (which is what I was describing when our friend the clogger was struck all of a heap) ... well, well, it is so; and when it isn’t asphyxia it’s apoplexy, and may be both. With the windpipe partly ossified—(by the way, I haven’t seen our other friend for some time)—with the windpipe partly ossified, which I could determine by an examination with my fingers, thus——” He shot out his hand as if to clutch the landlord’s throat.
“For the love o’ God, don’t, sir!” the landlord screamed, falling back; and Cope sniggered.
“Hn! hn! hn! hn! hn!... Very well; and now to my question.” His voice changed almost to a snarl. “Why,” he demanded, “when the thing itself is at their doors, will the rascals blench at the name of it? I think their necks are stouter than their stomachs! My God, what fools!—Curse ’em in London; they told me there was work for a man here, and what do I find? Monjoy with his porridge-brains at the head of it, and the others.... I had hopes of your merchant at first; but, bah! a passionate child! Not a man worth my while among ’em; I might have begun as you see me now.... Off with you, you slavering rascal; shog off, knock-knees! Off!——”
Perhaps his obscene triumph of earlier in the evening had emboldened him, or more likely he spoke now also of design. He finished his glass, sent it rolling across the table, nibbed his hands together under Ellah’s nose, and cried, “Come, good Ellah, come, my new bosom comrade! Keep to the wall—that’s it—now a rub against the door-jamb and creep into your own shadow—excellent! Curse it, your gait’s after my own heart, dodging round corners and nosing along the kennels—hn! hn! hn! Take my arm....”