The Mystery of Edwin Drood (53 page)

 

  “Just so.”

 

  “For the lasting good of both of us, and
the lasting happiness of both of us?”

 

  “Just so.”

 

  “That we might be to one another even
much more than they had been to one another?”

 

  “Just so.”

 

  “It was not bound upon Eddy, and it was
not bound upon me, by any forfeit, in case—”

 

  “Don't be agitated, my dear. In the case
that it brings tears into your affectionate eyes even to picture to yourself—in
the case of your not marrying one another—no, no forfeiture on either side. You
would then have been my ward until you were of age. No worse would have befallen
you. Bad enough perhaps!”

 

  “And Eddy?”

 

  “He would have come into his partnership
derived from his father, and into its arrears to his credit (if any), on
attaining his majority, just as now.”

 

  Rosa, with her perplexed face and
knitted brow, bit the corner of her attested copy, as she sat with her head on
one side, looking abstractedly on the floor, and smoothing it with her foot.

 

  “In short,” said Mr. Grewgious, “this
betrothal is a wish, a sentiment, a friendly project, tenderly expressed on
both sides. That it was strongly felt, and that there was a lively hope that it
would prosper, there can be no doubt. When you were both children, you began to
be accustomed to it, and it HAS prospered. But circumstances alter cases; and I
made this visit to-day, partly, indeed principally, to discharge myself of the
duty of telling you, my dear, that two young people can only be betrothed in
marriage (except as a matter of convenience, and therefore mockery and misery)
of their own free will, their own attachment, and their own assurance (it may
or it may not prove a mistaken one, but we must take our chance of that), that
they are suited to each other, and will make each other happy. Is it to be
supposed, for example, that if either of your fathers were living now, and had
any mistrust on that subject, his mind would not be changed by the change of
circumstances involved in the change of your years? Untenable, unreasonable,
inconclusive, and preposterous!”

 

  Mr. Grewgious said all this, as if he
were reading it aloud; or, still more, as if he were repeating a lesson. So
expressionless of any approach to spontaneity were his face and manner.

 

  “I have now, my dear,” he added,
blurring out “Will” with his pencil, “discharged myself of what is doubtless a
formal duty in this case, but still a duty in such a case. Memorandum,
“Wishes.” My dear, is there any wish of yours that I can further?”

 

  Rosa shook her head, with an almost
plaintive air of hesitation in want of help.

 

  “Is there any instruction that I can
take from you with reference to your affairs?”

 

  “I—I should like to settle them with
Eddy first, if you please,” said Rosa, plaiting the crease in her dress.

 

  “Surely, surely,” returned Mr.
Grewgious. “You two should be of one mind in all things. Is the young gentleman
expected shortly?”

 

  “He has gone away only this morning. He
will be back at Christmas.”

 

  “Nothing could happen better. You will,
on his return at Christmas, arrange all matters of detail with him; you will
then communicate with me; and I will discharge myself (as a mere business
acquaintance) of my business responsibilities towards the accomplished lady in
the corner window. They will accrue at that season.” Blurring pencil once
again. “Memorandum, “Leave.” Yes. I will now, my dear, take my leave.”

 

  “Could I,” said Rosa, rising, as he
jerked out of his chair in his ungainly way: “could I ask you, most kindly to
come to me at Christmas, if I had anything particular to say to you?”

 

  “Why, certainly, certainly,” he
rejoined; apparently—if such a word can be used of one who had no apparent
lights or shadows about him—complimented by the question. “As a particularly
Angular man, I do not fit smoothly into the social circle, and consequently I
have no other engagement at Christmas-time than to partake, on the
twenty-fifth, of a boiled turkey and celery sauce with a—with a particularly
Angular clerk I have the good fortune to possess, whose father, being a Norfolk
farmer, sends him up (the turkey up), as a present to me, from the
neighbourhood of Norwich. I should be quite proud of your wishing to see me, my
dear. As a professional Receiver of rents, so very few people DO wish to see
me, that the novelty would be bracing.”

 

  For his ready acquiescence, the grateful
Rosa put her hands upon his shoulders, stood on tiptoe, and instantly kissed
him.

 

   

 

  “Lord bless me!” cried Mr. Grewgious.
“Thank you, my dear! The honour is almost equal to the pleasure. Miss
Twinkleton, madam, I have had a most satisfactory conversation with my ward,
and I will now release you from the incumbrance of my presence.”

 

  “Nay, sir,” rejoined Miss Twinkleton,
rising with a gracious condescension: “say not incumbrance. Not so, by any
means. I cannot permit you to say so.”

 

  “Thank you, madam. I have read in the
newspapers,” said Mr. Grewgious, stammering a little, “that when a
distinguished visitor (not that I am one: far from it) goes to a school (not
that this is one: far from it), he asks for a holiday, or some sort of grace.
It being now the afternoon in the—College—of which you are the eminent head,
the young ladies might gain nothing, except in name, by having the rest of the
day allowed them. But if there is any young lady at all under a cloud, might I
solicit—”

 

  “Ah, Mr. Grewgious, Mr. Grewgious!”
cried Miss Twinkleton, with a chastely-rallying forefinger. “O you gentlemen,
you gentlemen! Fie for shame, that you are so hard upon us poor maligned
disciplinarians of our sex, for your sakes! But as Miss Ferdinand is at present
weighed down by an incubus”—Miss Twinkleton might have said a pen-and-ink-ubus
of writing out Monsieur La Fontaine—“go to her, Rosa my dear, and tell her the
penalty is remitted, in deference to the intercession of your guardian, Mr.
Grewgious.”

 

  Miss Twinkleton here achieved a curtsey,
suggestive of marvels happening to her respected legs, and which she came out
of nobly, three yards behind her starting-point.

 

  As he held it incumbent upon him to call
on Mr. Jasper before leaving Cloisterham, Mr. Grewgious went to the gatehouse,
and climbed its postern stair. But Mr. Jasper's door being closed, and presenting
on a slip of paper the word “Cathedral,” the fact of its being service-time was
borne into the mind of Mr. Grewgious. So he descended the stair again, and,
crossing the Close, paused at the great western folding-door of the Cathedral,
which stood open on the fine and bright, though short-lived, afternoon, for the
airing of the place.

 

  “Dear me,” said Mr. Grewgious, peeping
in, “it's like looking down the throat of Old Time.”

 

  Old Time heaved a mouldy sigh from tomb
and arch and vault; and gloomy shadows began to deepen in corners; and damps
began to rise from green patches of stone; and jewels, cast upon the pavement
of the nave from stained glass by the declining sun, began to perish. Within
the grill-gate of the chancel, up the steps surmounted loomingly by the
fast-darkening organ, white robes could be dimly seen, and one feeble voice,
rising and falling in a cracked, monotonous mutter, could at intervals be
faintly heard. In the free outer air, the river, the green pastures, and the
brown arable lands, the teeming hills and dales, were reddened by the sunset:
while the distant little windows in windmills and farm homesteads, shone,
patches of bright beaten gold. In the Cathedral, all became gray, murky, and
sepulchral, and the cracked monotonous mutter went on like a dying voice, until
the organ and the choir burst forth, and drowned it in a sea of music. Then,
the sea fell, and the dying voice made another feeble effort, and then the sea
rose high, and beat its life out, and lashed the roof, and surged among the
arches, and pierced the heights of the great tower; and then the sea was dry,
and all was still.

 

  Mr. Grewgious had by that time walked to
the chancel-steps, where he met the living waters coming out.

 

  “Nothing is the matter?” Thus Jasper
accosted him, rather quickly. “You have not been sent for?”

 

  “Not at all, not at all. I came down of
my own accord. I have been to my pretty ward's, and am now homeward bound
again.”

 

  “You found her thriving?”

 

  “Blooming indeed. Most blooming. I
merely came to tell her, seriously, what a betrothal by deceased parents is.”

 

  “And what is it—according to your
judgment?”

 

  Mr. Grewgious noticed the whiteness of
the lips that asked the question, and put it down to the chilling account of
the Cathedral.

 

  “I merely came to tell her that it could
not be considered binding, against any such reason for its dissolution as a
want of affection, or want of disposition to carry it into effect, on the side
of either party.”

 

  “May I ask, had you any especial reason
for telling her that?”

 

  Mr. Grewgious answered somewhat sharply:
“The especial reason of doing my duty, sir. Simply that.” Then he added: “Come,
Mr. Jasper; I know your affection for your nephew, and that you are quick to
feel on his behalf. I assure you that this implies not the least doubt of, or
disrespect to, your nephew.”

 

  “You could not,” returned Jasper, with a
friendly pressure of his arm, as they walked on side by side, “speak more
handsomely.”

 

  Mr. Grewgious pulled off his hat to
smooth his head, and, having smoothed it, nodded it contentedly, and put his
hat on again.

 

  “I will wager,” said Jasper, smiling—his
lips were still so white that he was conscious of it, and bit and moistened
them while speaking: “I will wager that she hinted no wish to be released from
Ned.”

 

  “And you will win your wager, if you
do,” retorted Mr. Grewgious. “We should allow some margin for little maidenly
delicacies in a young motherless creature, under such circumstances, I suppose;
it is not in my line; what do you think?”

 

  “There can be no doubt of it.”

 

  “I am glad you say so. Because,”
proceeded Mr. Grewgious, who had all this time very knowingly felt his way
round to action on his remembrance of what she had said of Jasper himself:
“because she seems to have some little delicate instinct that all preliminary
arrangements had best be made between Mr. Edwin Drood and herself, don't you
see? She don't want us, don't you know?”

 

  Jasper touched himself on the breast,
and said, somewhat indistinctly: “You mean me.”

 

  Mr. Grewgious touched himself on the breast,
and said: “I mean us. Therefore, let them have their little discussions and
councils together, when Mr. Edwin Drood comes back here at Christmas; and then
you and I will step in, and put the final touches to the business.”

 

  “So, you settled with her that you would
come back at Christmas?” observed Jasper. “I see! Mr. Grewgious, as you quite
fairly said just now, there is such an exceptional attachment between my nephew
and me, that I am more sensitive for the dear, fortunate, happy, happy fellow
than for myself. But it is only right that the young lady should be considered,
as you have pointed out, and that I should accept my cue from you. I accept it.
I understand that at Christmas they will complete their preparations for May,
and that their marriage will be put in final train by themselves, and that
nothing will remain for us but to put ourselves in train also, and have
everything ready for our formal release from our trusts, on Edwin's birthday.”

 

  “That is my understanding,” assented Mr.
Grewgious, as they shook hands to part. “God bless them both!”

 

  “God save them both!” cried Jasper.

 

  “I said, bless them,” remarked the
former, looking back over his shoulder.

 

  “I said, save them,” returned the
latter. “Is there any difference?”

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER X—SMOOTHING THE WAY

 

   

 

  IT has been often enough remarked that
women have a curious power of divining the characters of men, which would seem
to be innate and instinctive; seeing that it is arrived at through no patient
process of reasoning, that it can give no satisfactory or sufficient account of
itself, and that it pronounces in the most confident manner even against
accumulated observation on the part of the other sex. But it has not been quite
so often remarked that this power (fallible, like every other human attribute)
is for the most part absolutely incapable of self-revision; and that when it
has delivered an adverse opinion which by all human lights is subsequently
proved to have failed, it is undistinguishable from prejudice, in respect of
its determination not to be corrected. Nay, the very possibility of
contradiction or disproof, however remote, communicates to this feminine judgment
from the first, in nine cases out of ten, the weakness attendant on the
testimony of an interested witness; so personally and strongly does the fair
diviner connect herself with her divination.

 

  “Now, don't you think, Ma dear,” said
the Minor Canon to his mother one day as she sat at her knitting in his little
book-room, “that you are rather hard on Mr. Neville?”

 

  “No, I do NOT, Sept,” returned the old
lady.

 

  “Let us discuss it, Ma.”

 

  “I have no objection to discuss it,
Sept. I trust, my dear, I am always open to discussion.” There was a vibration
in the old lady's cap, as though she internally added: “and I should like to
see the discussion that would change MY mind!”