The Mystery of Edwin Drood (37 page)

 

  “Cannot people get through life without
gritty stages, I wonder?” Rosa thought next day, when the town was very gritty
again, and everything had a strange and an uncomfortable appearance of seeming
to wait for something that wouldn't come. NO. She began to think, that, now the
Cloisterham school-days had glided past and gone, the gritty stages would begin
to set in at intervals and make themselves wearily known!

 

  Yet what did Rosa expect? Did she expect
Miss Twinkleton? Miss Twinkleton duly came. Forth from her back parlour issued
the Billickin to receive Miss Twinkleton, and War was in the Billickin's eye
from that fell moment.

 

  Miss Twinkleton brought a quantity of
luggage with her, having all Rosa's as well as her own. The Billickin took it
ill that Miss Twinkleton's mind, being sorely disturbed by this luggage, failed
to take in her personal identity with that clearness of perception which was
due to its demands. Stateliness mounted her gloomy throne upon the Billickin's
brow in consequence. And when Miss Twinkleton, in agitation taking stock of her
trunks and packages, of which she had seventeen, particularly counted in the
Billickin herself as number eleven, the B. found it necessary to repudiate.

 

  “Things cannot too soon be put upon the
footing,” said she, with a candour so demonstrative as to be almost obtrusive,
“that the person of the “ouse is not a box nor yet a bundle, nor a carpetbag.
No, I am “ily obleeged to you, Miss Twinkleton, nor yet a beggar.”

 

  This last disclaimer had reference to
Miss Twinkleton's distractedly pressing two-and-sixpence on her, instead of the
cabman.

 

  Thus cast off, Miss Twinkleton wildly
inquired, “which gentleman” was to be paid? There being two gentlemen in that
position (Miss Twinkleton having arrived with two cabs), each gentleman on
being paid held forth his two-and-sixpence on the flat of his open hand, and,
with a speechless stare and a dropped jaw, displayed his wrong to heaven and
earth. Terrified by this alarming spectacle, Miss Twinkleton placed another
shilling in each hand; at the same time appealing to the law in flurried
accents, and recounting her luggage this time with the two gentlemen in, who
caused the total to come out complicated. Meanwhile the two gentlemen, each
looking very hard at the last shilling grumblingly, as if it might become
eighteen-pence if he kept his eyes on it, descended the doorsteps, ascended
their carriages, and drove away, leaving Miss Twinkleton on a bonnet-box in
tears.

 

  The Billickin beheld this manifestation
of weakness without sympathy, and gave directions for “a young man to be got
in” to wrestle with the luggage. When that gladiator had disappeared from the
arena, peace ensued, and the new lodgers dined.

 

  But the Billickin had somehow come to
the knowledge that Miss Twinkleton kept a school. The leap from that knowledge
to the inference that Miss Twinkleton set herself to teach HER something, was
easy. “But you don't do it,” soliloquised the Billickin; “I am not your pupil,
whatever she,” meaning Rosa, “may be, poor thing!”

 

  Miss Twinkleton, on the other hand,
having changed her dress and recovered her spirits, was animated by a bland
desire to improve the occasion in all ways, and to be as serene a model as
possible. In a happy compromise between her two states of existence, she had
already become, with her workbasket before her, the equably vivacious companion
with a slight judicious flavouring of information, when the Billickin announced
herself.

 

  “I will not hide from you, ladies,” said
the B., enveloped in the shawl of state, “for it is not my character to hide
neither my motives nor my actions, that I take the liberty to look in upon you
to express a “ope that your dinner was to your liking. Though not Professed but
Plain, still her wages should be a sufficient object to her to stimilate to
soar above mere roast and biled.”

 

  “We dined very well indeed,” said Rosa,
“thank you.”

 

  “Accustomed,” said Miss Twinkleton with
a gracious air, which to the jealous ears of the Billickin seemed to add “my
good woman”—“accustomed to a liberal and nutritious, yet plain and salutary
diet, we have found no reason to bemoan our absence from the ancient city, and
the methodical household, in which the quiet routine of our lot has been
hitherto cast.”

 

  “I did think it well to mention to my
cook,” observed the Billickin with a gush of candour, “which I “ope you will
agree with, Miss Twinkleton, was a right precaution, that the young lady being
used to what we should consider here but poor diet, had better be brought
forward by degrees. For, a rush from scanty feeding to generous feeding, and
from what you may call messing to what you may call method, do require a power
of constitution which is not often found in youth, particular when undermined
by boardingschool!”

 

  It will be seen that the Billickin now
openly pitted herself against Miss Twinkleton, as one whom she had fully
ascertained to be her natural enemy.

 

  “Your remarks,” returned Miss
Twinkleton, from a remote moral eminence, “are well meant, I have no doubt; but
you will permit me to observe that they develop a mistaken view of the subject,
which can only be imputed to your extreme want of accurate information.”

 

  “My informiation,” retorted the
Billickin, throwing in an extra syllable for the sake of emphasis at once
polite and powerful—“my informiation, Miss Twinkleton, were my own experience,
which I believe is usually considered to be good guidance. But whether so or
not, I was put in youth to a very genteel boarding-school, the mistress being
no less a lady than yourself, of about your own age or it may be some years
younger, and a poorness of blood flowed from the table which has run through my
life.”

 

  “Very likely,” said Miss Twinkleton,
still from her distant eminence; “and very much to be deplored. —Rosa, my dear,
how are you getting on with your work?”

 

  “Miss Twinkleton,” resumed the
Billickin, in a courtly manner, “before retiring on the “int, as a lady should,
I wish to ask of yourself, as a lady, whether I am to consider that my words is
doubted?”

 

  “I am not aware on what ground you
cherish such a supposition,” began Miss Twinkleton, when the Billickin neatly
stopped her.

 

  “Do not, if you please, put suppositions
betwixt my lips where none such have been imparted by myself. Your flow of
words is great, Miss Twinkleton, and no doubt is expected from you by your
pupils, and no doubt is considered worth the money. NO doubt, I am sure. But
not paying for flows of words, and not asking to be favoured with them here, I
wish to repeat my question.”

 

  “If you refer to the poverty of your
circulation,” began Miss Twinkleton, when again the Billickin neatly stopped
her.

 

  “I have used no such expressions.”

 

  “If you refer, then, to the poorness of
your blood—”

 

  “Brought upon me,” stipulated the
Billickin, expressly, “at a boarding-school—”

 

  “Then,” resumed Miss Twinkleton, “all I
can say is, that I am bound to believe, on your asseveration, that it is very
poor indeed. I cannot forbear adding, that if that unfortunate circumstance
influences your conversation, it is much to be lamented, and it is eminently
desirable that your blood were richer. —Rosa, my dear, how are you getting on
with your work?”

 

  “Hem! Before retiring, Miss,” proclaimed
the Billickin to Rosa, loftily cancelling Miss Twinkleton, “I should wish it to
be understood between yourself and me that my transactions in future is with
you alone. I know no elderly lady here, Miss, none older than yourself.”

 

  “A highly desirable arrangement, Rosa my
dear,” observed Miss Twinkleton.

 

  “It is not, Miss,” said the Billickin,
with a sarcastic smile, “that I possess the Mill I have heard of, in which old
single ladies could be ground up young (what a gift it would be to some of us),
but that I limit myself to you totally.”

 

  “When I have any desire to communicate a
request to the person of the house, Rosa my dear,” observed Miss Twinkleton
with majestic cheerfulness, “I will make it known to you, and you will kindly
undertake, I am sure, that it is conveyed to the proper quarter.”

 

  “Good-evening, Miss,” said the
Billickin, at once affectionately and distantly. “Being alone in my eyes, I
wish you good-evening with best wishes, and do not find myself drove, I am
truly “appy to say, into expressing my contempt for an indiwidual, unfortunately
for yourself, belonging to you.”

 

  The Billickin gracefully withdrew with
this parting speech, and from that time Rosa occupied the restless position of
shuttlecock between these two battledores. Nothing could be done without a
smart match being played out. Thus, on the daily-arising question of dinner,
Miss Twinkleton would say, the three being present together:

 

  “Perhaps, my love, you will consult with
the person of the house, whether she can procure us a lamb's fry; or, failing
that, a roast fowl.”

 

  On which the Billickin would retort
(Rosa not having spoken a word), “If you was better accustomed to butcher's
meat, Miss, you would not entertain the idea of a lamb's fry. Firstly, because
lambs has long been sheep, and secondly, because there is such things as
killing-days, and there is not. As to roast fowls, Miss, why you must be quite
surfeited with roast fowls, letting alone your buying, when you market for
yourself, the agedest of poultry with the scaliest of legs, quite as if you was
accustomed to picking “em out for cheapness. Try a little inwention, Miss. Use
yourself to “ousekeeping a bit. Come now, think of somethink else.”

 

  To this encouragement, offered with the
indulgent toleration of a wise and liberal expert, Miss Twinkleton would
rejoin, reddening:

 

  “Or, my dear, you might propose to the
person of the house a duck.”

 

  “Well, Miss!” the Billickin would
exclaim (still no word being spoken by Rosa), “you do surprise me when you
speak of ducks! Not to mention that they're getting out of season and very
dear, it really strikes to my heart to see you have a duck; for the breast,
which is the only delicate cuts in a duck, always goes in a direction which I
cannot imagine where, and your own plate comes down so miserably skin-and-bony!
Try again, Miss. Think more of yourself, and less of others. A dish of
sweetbreads now, or a bit of mutton. Something at which you can get your equal
chance.”

 

  Occasionally the game would wax very
brisk indeed, and would be kept up with a smartness rendering such an encounter
as this quite tame. But the Billickin almost invariably made by far the higher
score; and would come in with side hits of the most unexpected and
extraordinary description, when she seemed without a chance.

 

  All this did not improve the gritty
state of things in London, or the air that London had acquired in Rosa's eyes
of waiting for something that never came. Tired of working, and conversing with
Miss Twinkleton, she suggested working and reading: to which Miss Twinkleton
readily assented, as an admirable reader, of tried powers. But Rosa soon made
the discovery that Miss Twinkleton didn't read fairly. She cut the love-scenes,
interpolated passages in praise of female celibacy, and was guilty of other
glaring pious frauds. As an instance in point, take the glowing passage: “Ever
dearest and best adored,—said Edward, clasping the dear head to his breast, and
drawing the silken hair through his caressing fingers, from which he suffered
it to fall like golden rain,—ever dearest and best adored, let us fly from the
unsympathetic world and the sterile coldness of the stony-hearted, to the rich
warm Paradise of Trust and Love.” Miss Twinkleton's fraudulent version tamely
ran thus: “Ever engaged to me with the consent of our parents on both sides,
and the approbation of the silver-haired rector of the district,—said Edward,
respectfully raising to his lips the taper fingers so skilful in embroidery,
tambour, crochet, and other truly feminine arts,—let me call on thy papa ere
tomorrow's dawn has sunk into the west, and propose a suburban establishment,
lowly it may be, but within our means, where he will be always welcome as an
evening guest, and where every arrangement shall invest economy, and constant
interchange of scholastic acquirements with the attributes of the ministering
angel to domestic bliss.”

 

  As the days crept on and nothing
happened, the neighbours began to say that the pretty girl at Billickin's, who
looked so wistfully and so much out of the gritty windows of the drawing-room,
seemed to be losing her spirits. The pretty girl might have lost them but for
the accident of lighting on some books of voyages and seaadventure. As a compensation
against their romance, Miss Twinkleton, reading aloud, made the most of all the
latitudes and longitudes, bearings, winds, currents, offsets, and other
statistics (which she felt to be none the less improving because they expressed
nothing whatever to her); while Rosa, listening intently, made the most of what
was nearest to her heart. So they both did better than before.

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER XXIII—THE DAWN AGAIN

 

   

 

  ALTHOUGH Mr. Crisparkle and John Jasper
met daily under the Cathedral roof, nothing at any time passed between them
having reference to Edwin Drood, after the time, more than half a year gone by,
when Jasper mutely showed the Minor Canon the conclusion and the resolution
entered in his Diary. It is not likely that they ever met, though so often,
without the thoughts of each reverting to the subject. It is not likely that
they ever met, though so often, without a sensation on the part of each that
the other was a perplexing secret to him. Jasper as the denouncer and pursuer
of Neville Landless, and Mr. Crisparkle as his consistent advocate and
protector, must at least have stood sufficiently in opposition to have
speculated with keen interest on the steadiness and next direction of the
other's designs. But neither ever broached the theme.