The Mystery of Edwin Drood (73 page)

 

  The respectful tenderness with which, on
one knee before her, he helped her to remove her hat, and disentangle her
pretty hair from it, was quite a chivalrous sight. Yet who, knowing him only on
the surface, would have expected chivalry—and of the true sort, too; not the
spurious—from Mr. Grewgious?

 

  “Your rest too must be provided for,” he
went on; “and you shall have the prettiest chamber in Furnival's. Your toilet
must be provided for, and you shall have everything that an unlimited head
chambermaid—by which expression I mean a head chambermaid not limited as to
outlay—can procure. Is that a bag?” he looked hard at it; sooth to say, it
required hard looking at to be seen at all in a dimly lighted room: “and is it
your property, my dear?”

 

  “Yes, sir. I brought it with me.”

 

  “It is not an extensive bag,” said Mr.
Grewgious, candidly, “though admirably calculated to contain a day's provision
for a canarybird. Perhaps you brought a canary-bird?”

 

  Rosa smiled and shook her head.

 

  “If you had, he should have been made
welcome,” said Mr. Grewgious, “and I think he would have been pleased to be
hung upon a nail outside and pit himself against our Staple sparrows; whose
execution must be admitted to be not quite equal to their intention. Which is
the case with so many of us! You didn't say what meal, my dear. Have a nice
jumble of all meals.”

 

  Rosa thanked him, but said she could
only take a cup of tea. Mr. Grewgious, after several times running out, and in
again, to mention such supplementary items as marmalade, eggs, watercresses,
salted fish, and frizzled ham, ran across to Furnival's without his hat, to
give his various directions. And soon afterwards they were realised in
practice, and the board was spread.

 

  “Lord bless my soul,” cried Mr.
Grewgious, putting the lamp upon it, and taking his seat opposite Rosa; “what a
new sensation for a poor old Angular bachelor, to be sure!”

 

  Rosa's expressive little eyebrows asked
him what he meant?

 

  “The sensation of having a sweet young
presence in the place, that whitewashes it, paints it, papers it, decorates it
with gilding, and makes it Glorious!” said Mr. Grewgious. “Ah me! Ah me!”

 

  As there was something mournful in his
sigh, Rosa, in touching him with her tea-cup, ventured to touch him with her
small hand too.

 

  “Thank you, my dear,” said Mr.
Grewgious. “Ahem! Let's talk!”

 

  “Do you always live here, sir?” asked
Rosa.

 

  “Yes, my dear.”

 

  “And always alone?”

 

  “Always alone; except that I have daily
company in a gentleman by the name of Bazzard, my clerk.”

 

  “HE doesn't live here?”

 

  “No, he goes his way, after office
hours. In fact, he is off duty here, altogether, just at present; and a firm
down-stairs, with which I have business relations, lend me a substitute. But it
would be extremely difficult to replace Mr. Bazzard.”

 

  “He must be very fond of you,” said
Rosa.

 

  “He bears up against it with commendable
fortitude if he is,” returned Mr. Grewgious, after considering the matter. “But
I doubt if he is. Not particularly so. You see, he is discontented, poor
fellow.”

 

  “Why isn't he contented?” was the
natural inquiry.

 

  “Misplaced,” said Mr. Grewgious, with great
mystery.

 

  Rosa's eyebrows resumed their
inquisitive and perplexed expression.

 

  “So misplaced,” Mr. Grewgious went on,
“that I feel constantly apologetic towards him. And he feels (though he doesn't
mention it) that I have reason to be.”

 

  Mr. Grewgious had by this time grown so
very mysterious, that Rosa did not know how to go on. While she was thinking
about it Mr. Grewgious suddenly jerked out of himself for the second time:

 

  “Let's talk. We were speaking of Mr.
Bazzard. It's a secret, and moreover it is Mr. Bazzard's secret; but the sweet
presence at my table makes me so unusually expansive, that I feel I must impart
it in inviolable confidence. What do you think Mr. Bazzard has done?”

 

  “O dear!” cried Rosa, drawing her chair
a little nearer, and her mind reverting to Jasper, “nothing dreadful, I hope?”

 

  “He has written a play,” said Mr.
Grewgious, in a solemn whisper. “A tragedy.”

 

  Rosa seemed much relieved.

 

  “And nobody,” pursued Mr. Grewgious in
the same tone, “will hear, on any account whatever, of bringing it out.”

 

  Rosa looked reflective, and nodded her
head slowly; as who should say, “Such things are, and why are they!”

 

  “Now, you know,” said Mr. Grewgious, “I
couldn't write a play.”

 

  “Not a bad one, sir?” said Rosa,
innocently, with her eyebrows again in action.

 

  “No. If I was under sentence of
decapitation, and was about to be instantly decapitated, and an express arrived
with a pardon for the condemned convict Grewgious if he wrote a play, I should
be under the necessity of resuming the block, and begging the executioner to
proceed to extremities,—meaning,” said Mr. Grewgious, passing his hand under
his chin, “the singular number, and this extremity.”

 

  Rosa appeared to consider what she would
do if the awkward supposititious case were hers.

 

  “Consequently,” said Mr. Grewgious, “Mr.
Bazzard would have a sense of my inferiority to himself under any
circumstances; but when I am his master, you know, the case is greatly
aggravated.”

 

  Mr. Grewgious shook his head seriously,
as if he felt the offence to be a little too much, though of his own
committing.

 

  “How came you to be his master, sir?”
asked Rosa.

 

  “A question that naturally follows,”
said Mr. Grewgious. “Let's talk. Mr. Bazzard's father, being a Norfolk farmer,
would have furiously laid about him with a flail, a pitch-fork, and every
agricultural implement available for assaulting purposes, on the slightest hint
of his son's having written a play. So the son, bringing to me the father's
rent (which I receive), imparted his secret, and pointed out that he was determined
to pursue his genius, and that it would put him in peril of starvation, and
that he was not formed for it.”

 

  “For pursuing his genius, sir?”

 

  “No, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious, “for
starvation. It was impossible to deny the position, that Mr. Bazzard was not
formed to be starved, and Mr. Bazzard then pointed out that it was desirable
that I should stand between him and a fate so perfectly unsuited to his
formation. In that way Mr. Bazzard became my clerk, and he feels it very much.”

 

  “I am glad he is grateful,” said Rosa.

 

  “I didn't quite mean that, my dear. I
mean, that he feels the degradation. There are some other geniuses that Mr.
Bazzard has become acquainted with, who have also written tragedies, which
likewise nobody will on any account whatever hear of bringing out, and these
choice spirits dedicate their plays to one another in a highly panegyrical manner.
Mr. Bazzard has been the subject of one of these dedications. Now, you know, I
never had a play dedicated to ME!”

 

  Rosa looked at him as if she would have
liked him to be the recipient of a thousand dedications.

 

  “Which again, naturally, rubs against
the grain of Mr. Bazzard,” said Mr. Grewgious. “He is very short with me
sometimes, and then I feel that he is meditating, “This blockhead is my master!
A fellow who couldn't write a tragedy on pain of death, and who will never have
one dedicated to him with the most complimentary congratulations on the high position
he has taken in the eyes of posterity!” Very trying, very trying. However, in
giving him directions, I reflect beforehand: “Perhaps he may not like this,” or
“He might take it ill if I asked that;” and so we get on very well. Indeed,
better than I could have expected.”

 

  “Is the tragedy named, sir?” asked Rosa.

 

  “Strictly between ourselves,” answered
Mr. Grewgious, “it has a dreadfully appropriate name. It is called The Thorn of
Anxiety. But Mr. Bazzard hopes—and I hope—that it will come out at last.”

 

  It was not hard to divine that Mr.
Grewgious had related the Bazzard history thus fully, at least quite as much
for the recreation of his ward's mind from the subject that had driven her
there, as for the gratification of his own tendency to be social and communicative.

 

  “And now, my dear,” he said at this
point, “if you are not too tired to tell me more of what passed to-day—but only
if you feel quite able—I should be glad to hear it. I may digest it the better,
if I sleep on it to-night.”

 

  Rosa, composed now, gave him a faithful
account of the interview. Mr. Grewgious often smoothed his head while it was in
progress, and begged to be told a second time those parts which bore on Helena
and Neville. When Rosa had finished, he sat grave, silent, and meditative for a
while.

 

  “Clearly narrated,” was his only remark
at last, “and, I hope, clearly put away here,” smoothing his head again. “See,
my dear,” taking her to the open window, “where they live! The dark windows
over yonder.”

 

  “I may go to Helena to-morrow?” asked
Rosa.

 

  “I should like to sleep on that question
to-night,” he answered doubtfully. “But let me take you to your own rest, for
you must need it.”

 

  With that Mr. Grewgious helped her to
get her hat on again, and hung upon his arm the very little bag that was of no
earthly use, and led her by the hand (with a certain stately awkwardness, as if
he were going to walk a minuet) across Holborn, and into Furnival's Inn. At the
hotel door, he confided her to the Unlimited head chambermaid, and said that
while she went up to see her room, he would remain below, in case she should
wish it exchanged for another, or should find that there was anything she
wanted.

 

  Rosa's room was airy, clean,
comfortable, almost gay. The Unlimited had laid in everything omitted from the
very little bag (that is to say, everything she could possibly need), and Rosa
tripped down the great many stairs again, to thank her guardian for his
thoughtful and affectionate care of her.

 

  “Not at all, my dear,” said Mr.
Grewgious, infinitely gratified; “it is I who thank you for your charming
confidence and for your charming company. Your breakfast will be provided for
you in a neat, compact, and graceful little sitting-room (appropriate to your
figure), and I will come to you at ten o'clock in the morning. I hope you don't
feel very strange indeed, in this strange place.”

 

  “O no, I feel so safe!”

 

  “Yes, you may be sure that the stairs
are fire-proof,” said Mr. Grewgious, “and that any outbreak of the devouring
element would be perceived and suppressed by the watchmen.”

 

  “I did not mean that,” Rosa replied. “I
mean, I feel so safe from him.”

 

  “There is a stout gate of iron bars to
keep him out,” said Mr. Grewgious, smiling; “and Furnival's is fire-proof, and
specially watched and lighted, and I live over the way!” In the stoutness of
his knight-errantry, he seemed to think the last-named protection all sufficient.
In the same spirit he said to the gate-porter as he went out, “If some one
staying in the hotel should wish to send across the road to me in the night, a
crown will be ready for the messenger.” In the same spirit, he walked up and
down outside the iron gate for the best part of an hour, with some solicitude;
occasionally looking in between the bars, as if he had laid a dove in a high
roost in a cage of lions, and had it on his mind that she might tumble out.

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER XXI—A RECOGNITION

 

   

 

  NOTHING occurred in the night to flutter
the tired dove; and the dove arose refreshed. With Mr. Grewgious, when the
clock struck ten in the morning, came Mr. Crisparkle, who had come at one
plunge out of the river at Cloisterham.

 

  “Miss Twinkleton was so uneasy, Miss
Rosa,” he explained to her, “and came round to Ma and me with your note, in
such a state of wonder, that, to quiet her, I volunteered on this service by
the very first train to be caught in the morning. I wished at the time that you
had come to me; but now I think it best that you did AS you did, and came to
your guardian.”

 

  “I did think of you,” Rosa told him;
“but Minor Canon Corner was so near him—”

 

  “I understand. It was quite natural.”

 

  “I have told Mr. Crisparkle,” said Mr.
Grewgious, “all that you told me last night, my dear. Of course I should have
written it to him immediately; but his coming was most opportune. And it was
particularly kind of him to come, for he had but just gone.”

 

  “Have you settled,” asked Rosa,
appealing to them both, “what is to be done for Helena and her brother?”

 

  “Why really,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “I am
in great perplexity. If even Mr. Grewgious, whose head is much longer than
mine, and who is a whole night's cogitation in advance of me, is undecided,
what must I be!”

 

  The Unlimited here put her head in at
the door—after having rapped, and been authorised to present herself—announcing
that a gentleman wished for a word with another gentleman named Crisparkle, if
any such gentleman were there. If no such gentleman were there, he begged
pardon for being mistaken.

 

  “Such a gentleman is here,” said Mr.
Crisparkle, “but is engaged just now.”

 

  “Is it a dark gentleman?” interposed
Rosa, retreating on her guardian.

 

  “No, Miss, more of a brown gentleman.”

 

  “You are sure not with black hair?”
asked Rosa, taking courage.

 

  “Quite sure of that, Miss. Brown hair
and blue eyes.”