The Mystery of Edwin Drood (17 page)

 

  “Now, Bazzard,” said Mr. Grewgious, on
the entrance of his clerk: looking up from his papers as he arranged them for
the night: “what is in the wind besides fog?”

 

  “Mr. Drood,” said Bazzard.

 

  “What of him?”

 

  “Has called,” said Bazzard.

 

  “You might have shown him in.”

 

  “I am doing it,” said Bazzard.

 

  The visitor came in accordingly.

 

  “Dear me!” said Mr. Grewgious, looking
round his pair of office candles. “I thought you had called and merely left
your name and gone. How do you do, Mr. Edwin? Dear me, you're choking!”

 

  “It's this fog,” returned Edwin; “and it
makes my eyes smart, like Cayenne pepper.”

 

  “Is it really so bad as that? Pray undo
your wrappers. It's fortunate I have so good a fire; but Mr. Bazzard has taken
care of me.”

 

  “No I haven't,” said Mr. Bazzard at the
door.

 

  “Ah! then it follows that I must have
taken care of myself without observing it,” said Mr. Grewgious. “Pray be seated
in my chair. No. I beg! Coming out of such an atmosphere, in MY chair.”

 

  Edwin took the easy-chair in the corner;
and the fog he had brought in with him, and the fog he took off with his
greatcoat and neckshawl, was speedily licked up by the eager fire.

 

  “I look,” said Edwin, smiling, “as if I
had come to stop.”

 

  “—By the by,” cried Mr. Grewgious;
“excuse my interrupting you; do stop. The fog may clear in an hour or two. We
can have dinner in from just across Holborn. You had better take your Cayenne
pepper here than outside; pray stop and dine.”

 

  “You are very kind,” said Edwin,
glancing about him as though attracted by the notion of a new and relishing
sort of gipsy-party.

 

  “Not at all,” said Mr. Grewgious; “YOU
are very kind to join issue with a bachelor in chambers, and take pot-luck. And
I'll ask,” said Mr. Grewgious, dropping his voice, and speaking with a
twinkling eye, as if inspired with a bright thought: “I'll ask Bazzard. He
mightn't like it else. —Bazzard!”

 

  Bazzard reappeared.

 

   

 

  “Dine presently with Mr. Drood and me.”

 

  “If I am ordered to dine, of course I
will, sir,” was the gloomy answer.

 

  “Save the man!” cried Mr. Grewgious.
“You're not ordered; you're invited.”

 

  “Thank you, sir,” said Bazzard; “in that
case I don't care if I do.”

 

  “That's arranged. And perhaps you
wouldn't mind,” said Mr. Grewgious, “stepping over to the hotel in Furnival's,
and asking them to send in materials for laying the cloth. For dinner we'll
have a tureen of the hottest and strongest soup available, and we'll have the
best made-dish that can be recommended, and we'll have a joint (such as a
haunch of mutton), and we'll have a goose, or a turkey, or any little stuffed
thing of that sort that may happen to be in the bill of fare—in short, we'll
have whatever there is on hand.”

 

  These liberal directions Mr. Grewgious
issued with his usual air of reading an inventory, or repeating a lesson, or
doing anything else by rote. Bazzard, after drawing out the round table,
withdrew to execute them.

 

  “I was a little delicate, you see,” said
Mr. Grewgious, in a lower tone, after his clerk's departure, “about employing
him in the foraging or commissariat department. Because he mightn't like it.”

 

  “He seems to have his own way, sir,”
remarked Edwin.

 

  “His own way?” returned Mr. Grewgious.
“O dear no! Poor fellow, you quite mistake him. If he had his own way, he
wouldn't be here.”

 

  “I wonder where he would be!” Edwin
thought. But he only thought it, because Mr. Grewgious came and stood himself
with his back to the other corner of the fire, and his shoulder-blades against
the chimneypiece, and collected his skirts for easy conversation.

 

  “I take it, without having the gift of
prophecy, that you have done me the favour of looking in to mention that you
are going down yonder—where I can tell you, you are expected—and to offer to
execute any little commission from me to my charming ward, and perhaps to
sharpen me up a bit in any proceedings? Eh, Mr. Edwin?”

 

  “I called, sir, before going down, as an
act of attention.”

 

  “Of attention!” said Mr. Grewgious. “Ah!
of course, not of impatience?”

 

  “Impatience, sir?”

 

  Mr. Grewgious had meant to be arch—not
that he in the remotest degree expressed that meaning—and had brought himself
into scarcely supportable proximity with the fire, as if to burn the fullest
effect of his archness into himself, as other subtle impressions are burnt into
hard metals. But his archness suddenly flying before the composed face and
manner of his visitor, and only the fire remaining, he started and rubbed
himself.

 

  “I have lately been down yonder,” said
Mr. Grewgious, rearranging his skirts; “and that was what I referred to, when I
said I could tell you you are expected.”

 

  “Indeed, sir! Yes; I knew that Pussy was
looking out for me.”

 

  “Do you keep a cat down there?” asked
Mr. Grewgious.

 

  Edwin coloured a little as he explained:
“I call Rosa Pussy.”

 

  “O, really,” said Mr. Grewgious,
smoothing down his head; “that's very affable.”

 

  Edwin glanced at his face, uncertain
whether or no he seriously objected to the appellation. But Edwin might as well
have glanced at the face of a clock.

 

  “A pet name, sir,” he explained again.

 

  “Umps,” said Mr. Grewgious, with a nod.
But with such an extraordinary compromise between an unqualified assent and a
qualified dissent, that his visitor was much disconcerted.

 

  “Did PRosa—” Edwin began by way of
recovering himself.

 

  “PRosa?” repeated Mr. Grewgious.

 

  “I was going to say Pussy, and changed
my mind;—did she tell you anything about the Landlesses?”

 

  “No,” said Mr. Grewgious. “What is the
Landlesses? An estate? A villa? A farm?”

 

  “A brother and sister. The sister is at
the Nuns' House, and has become a great friend of P—”

 

  “PRosa's,” Mr. Grewgious struck in, with
a fixed face.

 

  “She is a strikingly handsome girl, sir,
and I thought she might have been described to you, or presented to you
perhaps?”

 

  “Neither,” said Mr. Grewgious. “But here
is Bazzard.”

 

  Bazzard returned, accompanied by two
waiters—an immovable waiter, and a flying waiter; and the three brought in with
them as much fog as gave a new roar to the fire. The flying waiter, who had
brought everything on his shoulders, laid the cloth with amazing rapidity and
dexterity; while the immovable waiter, who had brought nothing, found fault
with him. The flying waiter then highly polished all the glasses he had
brought, and the immovable waiter looked through them. The flying waiter then
flew across Holborn for the soup, and flew back again, and then took another
flight for the made-dish, and flew back again, and then took another flight for
the joint and poultry, and flew back again, and between whiles took supplementary
flights for a great variety of articles, as it was discovered from time to time
that the immovable waiter had forgotten them all. But let the flying waiter
cleave the air as he might, he was always reproached on his return by the
immovable waiter for bringing fog with him, and being out of breath. At the conclusion
of the repast, by which time the flying waiter was severely blown, the
immovable waiter gathered up the tablecloth under his arm with a grand air, and
having sternly (not to say with indignation) looked on at the flying waiter
while he set the clean glasses round, directed a valedictory glance towards Mr.
Grewgious, conveying: “Let it be clearly understood between us that the reward
is mine, and that Nil is the claim of this slave,” and pushed the flying waiter
before him out of the room.

 

  It was like a highly-finished miniature
painting representing My Lords of the Circumlocution Department,
Commandership-in-Chief of any sort, Government. It was quite an edifying little
picture to be hung on the line in the National Gallery.

 

  As the fog had been the proximate cause
of this sumptuous repast, so the fog served for its general sauce. To hear the
out-door clerks sneezing, wheezing, and beating their feet on the gravel was a
zest far surpassing Doctor Kitchener's. To bid, with a shiver, the unfortunate
flying waiter shut the door before he had opened it, was a condiment of a
profounder flavour than Harvey. And here let it be noticed, parenthetically,
that the leg of this young man, in its application to the door, evinced the
finest sense of touch: always preceding himself and tray (with something of an
angling air about it), by some seconds: and always lingering after he and the
tray had disappeared, like Macbeth's leg when accompanying him off the stage
with reluctance to the assassination of Duncan.

 

  The host had gone below to the cellar,
and had brought up bottles of ruby, straw-coloured, and golden drinks, which
had ripened long ago in lands where no fogs are, and had since lain slumbering
in the shade. Sparkling and tingling after so long a nap, they pushed at their
corks to help the corkscrew (like prisoners helping rioters to force their
gates), and danced out gaily. If P. J. T. in seventeen-forty-seven, or in any
other year of his period, drank such wines—then, for a certainty, P. J. T. was
Pretty Jolly Too.

 

  Externally, Mr. Grewgious showed no
signs of being mellowed by these glowing vintages. Instead of his drinking
them, they might have been poured over him in his high-dried snuff form, and
run to waste, for any lights and shades they caused to flicker over his face.
Neither was his manner influenced. But, in his wooden way, he had observant
eyes for Edwin; and when at the end of dinner, he motioned Edwin back to his
own easy-chair in the fireside corner, and Edwin sank luxuriously into it after
very brief remonstrance, Mr. Grewgious, as he turned his seat round towards the
fire too, and smoothed his head and face, might have been seen looking at his
visitor between his smoothing fingers.

 

  “Bazzard!” said Mr. Grewgious, suddenly
turning to him.

 

  “I follow you, sir,” returned Bazzard;
who had done his work of consuming meat and drink in a workmanlike manner,
though mostly in speechlessness.

 

  “I drink to you, Bazzard; Mr. Edwin,
success to Mr. Bazzard!”

 

  “Success to Mr. Bazzard!” echoed Edwin,
with a totally unfounded appearance of enthusiasm, and with the unspoken
addition: “What in, I wonder!”

 

  “And May!” pursued Mr. Grewgious—“I am
not at liberty to be definite—May!—my conversational powers are so very limited
that I know I shall not come well out of this—May!—it ought to be put
imaginatively, but I have no imagination—May!—the thorn of anxiety is as nearly
the mark as I am likely to get—May it come out at last!”

 

  Mr. Bazzard, with a frowning smile at
the fire, put a hand into his tangled locks, as if the thorn of anxiety were
there; then into his waistcoat, as if it were there; then into his pockets, as
if it were there. In all these movements he was closely followed by the eyes of
Edwin, as if that young gentleman expected to see the thorn in action. It was
not produced, however, and Mr. Bazzard merely said: “I follow you, sir, and I
thank you.”

 

  “I am going,” said Mr. Grewgious,
jingling his glass on the table with one hand, and bending aside under cover of
the other, to whisper to Edwin, “to drink to my ward. But I put Bazzard first.
He mightn't like it else.”

 

  This was said with a mysterious wink; or
what would have been a wink, if, in Mr. Grewgious's hands, it could have been
quick enough. So Edwin winked responsively, without the least idea what he
meant by doing so.

 

  “And now,” said Mr. Grewgious, “I devote
a bumper to the fair and fascinating Miss Rosa. Bazzard, the fair and
fascinating Miss Rosa!”

 

  “I follow you, sir,” said Bazzard, “and
I pledge you!”

 

  “And so do I!” said Edwin.

 

  “Lord bless me,” cried Mr. Grewgious,
breaking the blank silence which of course ensued: though why these pauses
SHOULD come upon us when we have performed any small social rite, not directly
inducive of self-examination or mental despondency, who can tell? “I am a
particularly Angular man, and yet I fancy (if I may use the word, not having a
morsel of fancy), that I could draw a picture of a true lover's state of mind,
to-night.”

 

  “Let us follow you, sir,” said Bazzard,
“and have the picture.”

 

  “Mr. Edwin will correct it where it's
wrong,” resumed Mr. Grewgious, “and will throw in a few touches from the life.
I dare say it is wrong in many particulars, and wants many touches from the
life, for I was born a Chip, and have neither soft sympathies nor soft
experiences. Well! I hazard the guess that the true lover's mind is completely
permeated by the beloved object of his affections. I hazard the guess that her
dear name is precious to him, cannot be heard or repeated without emotion, and
is preserved sacred. If he has any distinguishing appellation of fondness for
her, it is reserved for her, and is not for common ears. A name that it would
be a privilege to call her by, being alone with her own bright self, it would
be a liberty, a coldness, an insensibility, almost a breach of good faith, to
flaunt elsewhere.”

 

  It was wonderful to see Mr. Grewgious
sitting bolt upright, with his hands on his knees, continuously chopping this
discourse out of himself: much as a charity boy with a very good memory might
get his catechism said: and evincing no correspondent emotion whatever, unless
in a certain occasional little tingling perceptible at the end of his nose.