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very near to the
Cathedral windows, and at this moment the organ and the choir sound out
sublimely. As they sit listening to the solemn swell, the confidence of last
night rises in young Edwin Drood's mind, and he thinks how unlike this music is
to that discordance.
     
  “I fancy I can distinguish Jack's
voice,” is his remark in a low tone in connection with the train of thought.
     
  “Take me back at once, please,” urges
his Affianced, quickly laying her light hand upon his wrist. “They will all be
coming out directly; let us get away. O, what a resounding chord! But don't let
us stop to listen to it; let us get away!”
     
  Her hurry is over as soon as they have
passed out of the Close. They go arm-in-arm now, gravely and deliberately
enough, along the old High-street, to the Nuns' House. At the gate, the street
being within sight empty, Edwin bends down his face to Rosebud's.
     
  She remonstrates, laughing, and is a
childish schoolgirl again.
     
  “Eddy, no! I'm too sticky to be kissed.
But give me your hand, and I'll blow a kiss into that.”
     
  He does so. She breathes a light breath
into it and asks, retaining it and looking into it:—
     
  “Now say, what do you see?”
     
  “See, Rosa?”
     
  “Why, I thought you Egyptian boys could
look into a hand and see all sorts of phantoms. Can't you see a happy Future?”
     
  For certain, neither of them sees a
happy Present, as the gate opens and closes, and one goes in, and the other
goes away.
     
   
     
   
     
  CHAPTER IV—MR. SAPSEA
     
   
     
  ACCEPTING the Jackass as the type of
self-sufficient stupidity and conceit—a custom, perhaps, like some few other customs,
more conventional than fair—then the purest jackass in Cloisterham is Mr.
Thomas Sapsea, Auctioneer.
     
  Mr. Sapsea “dresses at” the Dean; has
been bowed to for the Dean, in mistake; has even been spoken to in the street
as My Lord, under the impression that he was the Bishop come down unexpectedly,
without his chaplain. Mr. Sapsea is very proud of this, and of his voice, and
of his style. He has even (in selling landed property) tried the experiment of
slightly intoning in his pulpit, to make himself more like what he takes to be
the genuine ecclesiastical article. So, in ending a Sale by Public Auction, Mr.
Sapsea finishes off with an air of bestowing a benediction on the assembled
brokers, which leaves the real Dean—a modest and worthy gentleman—far behind.
     
  Mr. Sapsea has many admirers; indeed,
the proposition is carried by a large local majority, even including
non-believers in his wisdom, that he is a credit to Cloisterham. He possesses
the great qualities of being portentous and dull, and of having a roll in his
speech, and another roll in his gait; not to mention a certain gravely flowing
action with his hands, as if he were presently going to Confirm the individual
with whom he holds discourse. Much nearer sixty years of age than fifty, with a
flowing outline of stomach, and horizontal creases in his waistcoat; reputed to
be rich; voting at elections in the strictly respectable interest; morally
satisfied that nothing but he himself has grown since he was a baby; how can
dunder-headed Mr. Sapsea be otherwise than a credit to Cloisterham, and
society?
     
  Mr. Sapsea's premises are in the
High-street, over against the Nuns' House. They are of about the period of the
Nuns' House, irregularly modernised here and there, as steadily deteriorating
generations found, more and more, that they preferred air and light to Fever
and the Plague. Over the doorway is a wooden effigy, about half life-size, representing
Mr. Sapsea's father, in a curly wig and toga, in the act of selling. The
chastity of the idea, and the natural appearance of the little finger, hammer,
and pulpit, have been much admired.
     
  Mr. Sapsea sits in his dull ground-floor
sitting-room, giving first on his paved back yard; and then on his