The Mystery of Edwin Drood (35 page)

 

  “I am very much afraid I shall be—”

 

  “Be what, my dear?” asked Mr. Grewgious,
as she hesitated. “Not frightened?”

 

  “No, not that,” said Rosa, shyly; “in
Mr. Tartar's way. We seem to be appropriating Mr. Tartar's residence so very
coolly.”

 

  “I protest to you,” returned that
gentleman, “that I shall think the better of it for evermore, if your voice
sounds in it only once.”

 

  Rosa, not quite knowing what to say
about that, cast down her eyes, and turning to Mr. Grewgious, dutifully asked
if she should put her hat on? Mr. Grewgious being of opinion that she could not
do better, she withdrew for the purpose. Mr. Crisparkle took the opportunity of
giving Mr. Tartar a summary of the distresses of Neville and his sister; the
opportunity was quite long enough, as the hat happened to require a little
extra fitting on.

 

  Mr. Tartar gave his arm to Rosa, and Mr.
Crisparkle walked, detached, in front.

 

  “Poor, poor Eddy!” thought Rosa, as they
went along.

 

  Mr. Tartar waved his right hand as he
bent his head down over Rosa, talking in an animated way.

 

  “It was not so powerful or so
sun-browned when it saved Mr. Crisparkle,” thought Rosa, glancing at it; “but
it must have been very steady and determined even then.”

 

  Mr. Tartar told her he had been a
sailor, roving everywhere for years and years.

 

  “When are you going to sea again?” asked
Rosa.

 

  “Never!”

 

  Rosa wondered what the girls would say
if they could see her crossing the wide street on the sailor's arm. And she
fancied that the passers-by must think her very little and very helpless,
contrasted with the strong figure that could have caught her up and carried her
out of any danger, miles and miles without resting.

 

  She was thinking further, that his
far-seeing blue eyes looked as if they had been used to watch danger afar off,
and to watch it without flinching, drawing nearer and nearer: when, happening
to raise her own eyes, she found that he seemed to be thinking something about
THEM.

 

  This a little confused Rosebud, and may
account for her never afterwards quite knowing how she ascended (with his help)
to his garden in the air, and seemed to get into a marvellous country that came
into sudden bloom like the country on the summit of the magic bean-stalk. May
it flourish for ever!

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER XXII—A GRITTY STATE OF THINGS COMES ON

 

   

 

  MR. TARTAR'S chambers were the neatest,
the cleanest, and the bestordered chambers ever seen under the sun, moon, and
stars. The floors were scrubbed to that extent, that you might have supposed
the London blacks emancipated for ever, and gone out of the land for good.
Every inch of brass-work in Mr. Tartar's possession was polished and burnished,
till it shone like a brazen mirror. No speck, nor spot, nor spatter soiled the
purity of any of Mr. Tartar's household gods, large, small, or middle-sized.
His sitting-room was like the admiral's cabin, his bath-room was like a dairy,
his sleeping-chamber, fitted all about with lockers and drawers, was like a
seedsman's shop; and his nicely-balanced cot just stirred in the midst, as if
it breathed. Everything belonging to Mr. Tartar had quarters of its own
assigned to it: his maps and charts had their quarters; his books had theirs;
his brushes had theirs; his boots had theirs; his clothes had theirs; his
casebottles had theirs; his telescopes and other instruments had theirs.
Everything was readily accessible. Shelf, bracket, locker, hook, and drawer
were equally within reach, and were equally contrived with a view to avoiding
waste of room, and providing some snug inches of stowage for something that
would have exactly fitted nowhere else. His gleaming little service of plate
was so arranged upon his sideboard as that a slack salt-spoon would have
instantly betrayed itself; his toilet implements were so arranged upon his
dressing-table as that a toothpick of slovenly deportment could have been
reported at a glance. So with the curiosities he had brought home from various
voyages. Stuffed, dried, repolished, or otherwise preserved, according to their
kind; birds, fishes, reptiles, arms, articles of dress, shells, seaweeds,
grasses, or memorials of coral reef; each was displayed in its especial place,
and each could have been displayed in no better place. Paint and varnish seemed
to be kept somewhere out of sight, in constant readiness to obliterate stray
finger-marks wherever any might become perceptible in Mr. Tartar's chambers. No
man-of-war was ever kept more spick and span from careless touch. On this
bright summer day, a neat awning was rigged over Mr. Tartar's flower-garden as
only a sailor can rig it, and there was a seagoing air upon the whole effect,
so delightfully complete, that the flower-garden might have appertained to
stern-windows afloat, and the whole concern might have bowled away gallantly
with all on board, if Mr. Tartar had only clapped to his lips the
speakingtrumpet that was slung in a corner, and given hoarse orders to heave
the anchor up, look alive there, men, and get all sail upon her!

 

  Mr. Tartar doing the honours of this
gallant craft was of a piece with the rest. When a man rides an amiable hobby
that shies at nothing and kicks nobody, it is only agreeable to find him riding
it with a humorous sense of the droll side of the creature. When the man is a
cordial and an earnest man by nature, and withal is perfectly fresh and
genuine, it may be doubted whether he is ever seen to greater advantage than at
such a time. So Rosa would have naturally thought (even if she hadn't been
conducted over the ship with all the homage due to the First Lady of the
Admiralty, or First Fairy of the Sea), that it was charming to see and hear Mr.
Tartar half laughing at, and half rejoicing in, his various contrivances. So
Rosa would have naturally thought, anyhow, that the sunburnt sailor showed to
great advantage when, the inspection finished, he delicately withdrew out of
his admiral's cabin, beseeching her to consider herself its Queen, and waving
her free of his flower-garden with the hand that had had Mr. Crisparkle's life
in it.

 

  “Helena! Helena Landless! Are you
there?”

 

  “Who speaks to me? Not Rosa?” Then a
second handsome face appearing.

 

  “Yes, my darling!”

 

  “Why, how did you come here, dearest?”

 

  “I—I don't quite know,” said Rosa with a
blush; “unless I am dreaming!”

 

  Why with a blush? For their two faces
were alone with the other flowers. Are blushes among the fruits of the country
of the magic bean-stalk?

 

  “I am not dreaming,” said Helena, smiling.
“I should take more for granted if I were. How do we come together—or so near
together—so very unexpectedly?”

 

  Unexpectedly indeed, among the dingy
gables and chimney-pots of P. J. T. “s connection, and the flowers that had
sprung from the salt sea. But Rosa, waking, told in a hurry how they came to be
together, and all the why and wherefore of that matter.

 

  “And Mr. Crisparkle is here,” said Rosa,
in rapid conclusion; “and, could you believe it? long ago he saved his life!”

 

  “I could believe any such thing of Mr.
Crisparkle,” returned Helena, with a mantling face.

 

  (More blushes in the bean-stalk
country!)

 

  “Yes, but it wasn't Crisparkle,” said
Rosa, quickly putting in the correction.

 

  “I don't understand, love.”

 

  “It was very nice of Mr. Crisparkle to
be saved,” said Rosa, “and he couldn't have shown his high opinion of Mr.
Tartar more expressively. But it was Mr. Tartar who saved him.”

 

  Helena's dark eyes looked very earnestly
at the bright face among the leaves, and she asked, in a slower and more
thoughtful tone:

 

  “Is Mr. Tartar with you now, dear?”

 

  “No; because he has given up his rooms
to me—to us, I mean. It is such a beautiful place!”

 

  “Is it?”

 

  “It is like the inside of the most
exquisite ship that ever sailed. It is like—it is like—”

 

  “Like a dream?” suggested Helena.

 

  Rosa answered with a little nod, and
smelled the flowers.

 

  Helena resumed, after a short pause of
silence, during which she seemed (or it was Rosa's fancy) to compassionate
somebody: “My poor Neville is reading in his own room, the sun being so very
bright on this side just now. I think he had better not know that you are so
near.”

 

  “O, I think so too!” cried Rosa very
readily.

 

  “I suppose,” pursued Helena, doubtfully,
“that he must know by-andby all you have told me; but I am not sure. Ask Mr. Crisparkle's
advice, my darling. Ask him whether I may tell Neville as much or as little of
what you have told me as I think best.”

 

  Rosa subsided into her state-cabin, and
propounded the question. The Minor Canon was for the free exercise of Helena's
judgment.

 

  “I thank him very much,” said Helena,
when Rosa emerged again with her report. “Ask him whether it would be best to
wait until any more maligning and pursuing of Neville on the part of this
wretch shall disclose itself, or to try to anticipate it: I mean, so far as to
find out whether any such goes on darkly about us?”

 

  The Minor Canon found this point so
difficult to give a confident opinion on, that, after two or three attempts and
failures, he suggested a reference to Mr. Grewgious. Helena acquiescing, he
betook himself (with a most unsuccessful assumption of lounging indifference)
across the quadrangle to P. J. T. “s, and stated it. Mr. Grewgious held
decidedly to the general principle, that if you could steal a march upon a
brigand or a wild beast, you had better do it; and he also held decidedly to
the special case, that John Jasper was a brigand and a wild beast in
combination.

 

  Thus advised, Mr. Crisparkle came back
again and reported to Rosa, who in her turn reported to Helena. She now
steadily pursuing her train of thought at her window, considered thereupon.

 

  “We may count on Mr. Tartar's readiness
to help us, Rosa?” she inquired.

 

  O yes! Rosa shyly thought so. O yes,
Rosa shyly believed she could almost answer for it. But should she ask Mr.
Crisparkle? “I think your authority on the point as good as his, my dear,” said
Helena, sedately, “and you needn't disappear again for that.” Odd of Helena!

 

  “You see, Neville,” Helena pursued after
more reflection, “knows no one else here: he has not so much as exchanged a
word with any one else here. If Mr. Tartar would call to see him openly and
often; if he would spare a minute for the purpose, frequently; if he would even
do so, almost daily; something might come of it.”

 

  “Something might come of it, dear?” repeated
Rosa, surveying her friend's beauty with a highly perplexed face. “Something
might?”

 

  “If Neville's movements are really
watched, and if the purpose really is to isolate him from all friends and
acquaintance and wear his daily life out grain by grain (which would seem to be
the threat to you), does it not appear likely,” said Helena, “that his enemy
would in some way communicate with Mr. Tartar to warn him off from Neville? In
which case, we might not only know the fact, but might know from Mr. Tartar what
the terms of the communication were.”

 

  “I see!” cried Rosa. And immediately
darted into her state-cabin again.

 

  Presently her pretty face reappeared,
with a greatly heightened colour, and she said that she had told Mr.
Crisparkle, and that Mr. Crisparkle had fetched in Mr. Tartar, and that Mr.
Tartar—“who is waiting now, in case you want him,” added Rosa, with a half look
back, and in not a little confusion between the inside of the state-cabin and
out—had declared his readiness to act as she had suggested, and to enter on his
task that very day.

 

  “I thank him from my heart,” said
Helena. “Pray tell him so.”

 

  Again not a little confused between the
Flower-garden and the Cabin, Rosa dipped in with her message, and dipped out
again with more assurances from Mr. Tartar, and stood wavering in a divided
state between Helena and him, which proved that confusion is not always
necessarily awkward, but may sometimes present a very pleasant appearance.

 

  “And now, darling,” said Helena, “we
will be mindful of the caution that has restricted us to this interview for the
present, and will part. I hear Neville moving too. Are you going back?”

 

  “To Miss Twinkleton's?” asked Rosa.

 

  “Yes.”

 

  “O, I could never go there any more. I
couldn't indeed, after that dreadful interview!” said Rosa.

 

  “Then where ARE you going, pretty one?”

 

  “Now I come to think of it, I don't
know,” said Rosa. “I have settled nothing at all yet, but my guardian will take
care of me. Don't be uneasy, dear. I shall be sure to be somewhere.”

 

  (It did seem likely.)

 

  “And I shall hear of my Rosebud from Mr.
Tartar?” inquired Helena.

 

  “Yes, I suppose so; from—” Rosa looked
back again in a flutter, instead of supplying the name. “But tell me one thing
before we part, dearest Helena. Tell me—that you are sure, sure, sure, I
couldn't help it.”

 

  “Help it, love?”

 

  “Help making him malicious and
revengeful. I couldn't hold any terms with him, could I?”

 

  “You know how I love you, darling,”
answered Helena, with indignation; “but I would sooner see you dead at his
wicked feet.”

 

  “That's a great comfort to me! And you
will tell your poor brother so, won't you? And you will give him my remembrance
and my sympathy? And you will ask him not to hate me?”