The Mystery of Edwin Drood (52 page)

 

   

 

  “who drew The celebrated Jew,”

 

   

 

  as painted full of tongues. Rumour in
Cloisterham (Miss Ferdinand will honour me with her attention) was no exception
to the great limner's portrait of Rumour elsewhere. A slight FRACAS between two
young gentlemen occurring last night within a hundred miles of these peaceful
walls (Miss Ferdinand, being apparently incorrigible, will have the kindness to
write out this evening, in the original language, the first four fables of our
vivacious neighbour, Monsieur La Fontaine) had been very grossly exaggerated by
Rumour's voice. In the first alarm and anxiety arising from our sympathy with a
sweet young friend, not wholly to be dissociated from one of the gladiators in
the bloodless arena in question (the impropriety of Miss Reynolds's appearing
to stab herself in the hand with a pin, is far too obvious, and too glaringly
unladylike, to be pointed out), we descended from our maiden elevation to
discuss this uncongenial and this unfit theme. Responsible inquiries having
assured us that it was but one of those “airy nothings” pointed at by the Poet
(whose name and date of birth Miss Giggles will supply within half an hour), we
would now discard the subject, and concentrate our minds upon the grateful
labours of the day.

 

  But the subject so survived all day,
nevertheless, that Miss Ferdinand got into new trouble by surreptitiously
clapping on a paper moustache at dinner-time, and going through the motions of
aiming a water-bottle at Miss Giggles, who drew a table-spoon in defence.

 

  Now, Rosa thought of this unlucky
quarrel a great deal, and thought of it with an uncomfortable feeling that she
was involved in it, as cause, or consequence, or what not, through being in a
false position altogether as to her marriage engagement. Never free from such
uneasiness when she was with her affianced husband, it was not likely that she would
be free from it when they were apart. Today, too, she was cast in upon herself,
and deprived of the relief of talking freely with her new friend, because the
quarrel had been with Helena's brother, and Helena undisguisedly avoided the
subject as a delicate and difficult one to herself. At this critical time, of
all times, Rosa's guardian was announced as having come to see her.

 

  Mr. Grewgious had been well selected for
his trust, as a man of incorruptible integrity, but certainly for no other
appropriate quality discernible on the surface. He was an arid, sandy man, who,
if he had been put into a grinding-mill, looked as if he would have ground
immediately into high-dried snuff. He had a scanty flat crop of hair, in colour
and consistency like some very mangy yellow fur tippet; it was so unlike hair,
that it must have been a wig, but for the stupendous improbability of anybody's
voluntarily sporting such a head. The little play of feature that his face
presented, was cut deep into it, in a few hard curves that made it more like
work; and he had certain notches in his forehead, which looked as though Nature
had been about to touch them into sensibility or refinement, when she had
impatiently thrown away the chisel, and said: “I really cannot be worried to finish
off this man; let him go as he is.”

 

  With too great length of throat at his
upper end, and too much ankle-bone and heel at his lower; with an awkward and
hesitating manner; with a shambling walk; and with what is called a near
sight—which perhaps prevented his observing how much white cotton stocking he
displayed to the public eye, in contrast with his black suit—Mr. Grewgious
still had some strange capacity in him of making on the whole an agreeable
impression.

 

  Mr. Grewgious was discovered by his
ward, much discomfited by being in Miss Twinkleton's company in Miss
Twinkleton's own sacred room. Dim forebodings of being examined in something,
and not coming well out of it, seemed to oppress the poor gentleman when found
in these circumstances.

 

  “My dear, how do you do? I am glad to
see you. My dear, how much improved you are. Permit me to hand you a chair, my
dear.”

 

  Miss Twinkleton rose at her little
writing-table, saying, with general sweetness, as to the polite Universe: “Will
you permit me to retire?”

 

  “By no means, madam, on my account. I
beg that you will not move.”

 

  “I must entreat permission to MOVE,”
returned Miss Twinkleton, repeating the word with a charming grace; “but I will
not withdraw, since you are so obliging. If I wheel my desk to this corner
window, shall I be in the way?”

 

  “Madam! In the way!”

 

  “You are very kind. —Rosa, my dear, you
will be under no restraint, I am sure.”

 

  Here Mr. Grewgious, left by the fire
with Rosa, said again: “My dear, how do you do? I am glad to see you, my dear.”
And having waited for her to sit down, sat down himself.

 

  “My visits,” said Mr. Grewgious, “are,
like those of the angels—not that I compare myself to an angel.”

 

  “No, sir,” said Rosa.

 

  “Not by any means,” assented Mr.
Grewgious. “I merely refer to my visits, which are few and far between. The
angels are, we know very well, up-stairs.”

 

  Miss Twinkleton looked round with a kind
of stiff stare.

 

  “I refer, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious,
laying his hand on Rosa's, as the possibility thrilled through his frame of his
otherwise seeming to take the awful liberty of calling Miss Twinkleton my dear;
“I refer to the other young ladies.”

 

  Miss Twinkleton resumed her writing.

 

  Mr. Grewgious, with a sense of not
having managed his opening point quite as neatly as he might have desired,
smoothed his head from back to front as if he had just dived, and were pressing
the water out—this smoothing action, however superfluous, was habitual with
him—and took a pocket-book from his coat-pocket, and a stump of black-lead
pencil from his waistcoat-pocket.

 

  “I made,” he said, turning the leaves:
“I made a guiding memorandum or so—as I usually do, for I have no
conversational powers whatever—to which I will, with your permission, my dear,
refer. “Well and happy.” Truly. You are well and happy, my dear? You look so.”

 

  “Yes, indeed, sir,” answered Rosa.

 

  “For which,” said Mr. Grewgious, with a
bend of his head towards the corner window, “our warmest acknowledgments are
due, and I am sure are rendered, to the maternal kindness and the constant care
and consideration of the lady whom I have now the honour to see before me.”

 

  This point, again, made but a lame
departure from Mr. Grewgious, and never got to its destination; for, Miss
Twinkleton, feeling that the courtesies required her to be by this time quite
outside the conversation, was biting the end of her pen, and looking upward, as
waiting for the descent of an idea from any member of the Celestial Nine who
might have one to spare.

 

  Mr. Grewgious smoothed his smooth head
again, and then made another reference to his pocket-book; lining out “well and
happy,” as disposed of.

 

  “Pounds, shillings, and pence,” is my
next note. A dry subject for a young lady, but an important subject too. Life
is pounds, shillings, and pence. Death is—” A sudden recollection of the death
of her two parents seemed to stop him, and he said in a softer tone, and
evidently inserting the negative as an afterthought: “Death is NOT pounds,
shillings, and pence.”

 

  His voice was as hard and dry as
himself, and Fancy might have ground it straight, like himself, into high-dried
snuff. And yet, through the very limited means of expression that he possessed,
he seemed to express kindness. If Nature had but finished him off, kindness
might have been recognisable in his face at this moment. But if the notches in
his forehead wouldn't fuse together, and if his face would work and couldn't
play, what could he do, poor man!

 

  “Pounds, shillings, and pence.” You find
your allowance always sufficient for your wants, my dear?”

 

  Rosa wanted for nothing, and therefore
it was ample.

 

  “And you are not in debt?”

 

  Rosa laughed at the idea of being in
debt. It seemed, to her inexperience, a comical vagary of the imagination. Mr.
Grewgious stretched his near sight to be sure that this was her view of the
case. “Ah!” he said, as comment, with a furtive glance towards Miss Twinkleton,
and lining out pounds, shillings, and pence: “I spoke of having got among the
angels! So I did!”

 

  Rosa felt what his next memorandum would
prove to be, and was blushing and folding a crease in her dress with one
embarrassed hand, long before he found it.

 

  “Marriage.” Hem!” Mr. Grewgious carried
his smoothing hand down over his eyes and nose, and even chin, before drawing
his chair a little nearer, and speaking a little more confidentially: “I now
touch, my dear, upon the point that is the direct cause of my troubling you
with the present visit. Othenwise, being a particularly Angular man, I should
not have intruded here. I am the last man to intrude into a sphere for which I
am so entirely unfitted. I feel, on these premises, as if I was a bear—with the
cramp—in a youthful Cotillon.”

 

  His ungainliness gave him enough of the
air of his simile to set Rosa off laughing heartily.

 

  “It strikes you in the same light,” said
Mr. Grewgious, with perfect calmness. “Just so. To return to my memorandum. Mr.
Edwin has been to and fro here, as was arranged. You have mentioned that, in
your quarterly letters to me. And you like him, and he likes you.”

 

  “I LIKE him very much, sir,” rejoined
Rosa.

 

  “So I said, my dear,” returned her
guardian, for whose ear the timid emphasis was much too fine. “Good. And you
correspond.”

 

  “We write to one another,” said Rosa,
pouting, as she recalled their epistolary differences.

 

  “Such is the meaning that I attach to
the word “correspond” in this application, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious. “Good.
All goes well, time works on, and at this next Christmas-time it will become
necessary, as a matter of form, to give the exemplary lady in the corner
window, to whom we are so much indebted, business notice of your departure in
the ensuing half-year. Your relations with her are far more than business
relations, no doubt; but a residue of business remains in them, and business is
business ever. I am a particularly Angular man,” proceeded Mr. Grewgious, as if
it suddenly occurred to him to mention it, “and I am not used to give anything
away. If, for these two reasons, some competent Proxy would give YOU away, I
should take it very kindly.”

 

  Rosa intimated, with her eyes on the
ground, that she thought a substitute might be found, if required.

 

  “Surely, surely,” said Mr. Grewgious.
“For instance, the gentleman who teaches Dancing here—he would know how to do
it with graceful propriety. He would advance and retire in a manner
satisfactory to the feelings of the officiating clergyman, and of yourself, and
the bridegroom, and all parties concerned. I am—I am a particularly Angular
man,” said Mr. Grewgious, as if he had made up his mind to screw it out at
last: “and should only blunder.”

 

  Rosa sat still and silent. Perhaps her
mind had not got quite so far as the ceremony yet, but was lagging on the way
there.

 

  “Memorandum, “Will.” Now, my dear,” said
Mr. Grewgious, referring to his notes, disposing of “Marriage” with his pencil,
and taking a paper from his pocket; “although. I have before possessed you with
the contents of your father's will, I think it right at this time to leave a
certified copy of it in your hands. And although Mr. Edwin is also aware of its
contents, I think it right at this time likewise to place a certified copy of
it in Mr. Jasper's hand—”

 

  “Not in his own!” asked Rosa, looking up
quickly. “Cannot the copy go to Eddy himself?”

 

  “Why, yes, my dear, if you particularly
wish it; but I spoke of Mr. Jasper as being his trustee.”

 

  “I do particularly wish it, if you
please,” said Rosa, hurriedly and earnestly; “I don't like Mr. Jasper to come
between us, in any way.”

 

  “It is natural, I suppose,” said Mr.
Grewgious, “that your young husband should be all in all. Yes. You observe that
I say, I suppose. The fact is, I am a particularly Unnatural man, and I don't
know from my own knowledge.”

 

  Rosa looked at him with some wonder.

 

  “I mean,” he explained, “that young ways
were never my ways. I was the only offspring of parents far advanced in life,
and I half believe I was born advanced in life myself. No personality is
intended towards the name you will so soon change, when I remark that while the
general growth of people seem to have come into existence, buds, I seem to have
come into existence a chip. I was a chip—and a very dry one—when I first became
aware of myself. Respecting the other certified copy, your wish shall be
complied with. Respecting your inheritance, I think you know all. It is an
annuity of two hundred and fifty pounds. The savings upon that annuity, and
some other items to your credit, all duly carried to account, with vouchers,
will place you in possession of a lump-sum of money, rather exceeding Seventeen
Hundred Pounds. I am empowered to advance the cost of your preparations for
your marriage out of that fund. All is told.”

 

  “Will you please tell me,” said Rosa,
taking the paper with a prettily knitted brow, but not opening it: “whether I
am right in what I am going to say? I can understand what you tell me, so very
much better than what I read in law-writings. My poor papa and Eddy's father
made their agreement together, as very dear and firm and fast friends, in order
that we, too, might be very dear and firm and fast friends after them?”