The Mystery of Edwin Drood (75 page)

 

  “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?”

 

  With a mournful shake of the head, as if
that would be quite a superfluous entreaty, Helena lovingly kissed her two
hands to her friend, and her friend's two hands were kissed to her; and then
she saw a third hand (a brown one) appear among the flowers and leaves, and
help her friend out of sight.

 

  The refection that Mr. Tartar produced
in the Admiral's Cabin by merely touching the spring knob of a locker and the
handle of a drawer, was a dazzling enchanted repast. Wonderful macaroons,
glittering liqueurs, magically-preserved tropical spices, and jellies of
celestial tropical fruits, displayed themselves profusely at an instant's
notice. But Mr. Tartar could not make time stand still; and time, with his
hard-hearted fleetness, strode on so fast, that Rosa was obliged to come down
from the bean-stalk country to earth and her guardian's chambers.

 

  “And now, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious,
“what is to be done next? To put the same thought in another form; what is to
be done with you?”

 

  Rosa could only look apologetically
sensible of being very much in her own way and in everybody else's. Some
passing idea of living, fireproof, up a good many stairs in Furnival's Inn for
the rest of her life, was the only thing in the nature of a plan that occurred
to her.

 

  “It has come into my thoughts,” said Mr.
Grewgious, “that as the respected lady, Miss Twinkleton, occasionally repairs
to London in the recess, with the view of extending her connection, and being
available for interviews with metropolitan parents, if any—whether, until we
have time in which to turn ourselves round, we might invite Miss Twinkleton to
come and stay with you for a month?”

 

  “Stay where, sir?”

 

  “Whether,” explained Mr. Grewgious, “we
might take a furnished lodging in town for a month, and invite Miss Twinkleton
to assume the charge of you in it for that period?”

 

  “And afterwards?” hinted Rosa.

 

  “And afterwards,” said Mr. Grewgious,
“we should be no worse off than we are now.”

 

  “I think that might smooth the way,”
assented Rosa.

 

  “Then let us,” said Mr. Grewgious,
rising, “go and look for a furnished lodging. Nothing could be more acceptable
to me than the sweet presence of last evening, for all the remaining evenings
of my existence; but these are not fit surroundings for a young lady. Let us
set out in quest of adventures, and look for a furnished lodging. In the
meantime, Mr. Crisparkle here, about to return home immediately, will no doubt
kindly see Miss Twinkleton, and invite that lady to co-operate in our plan.”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle, willingly accepting the
commission, took his departure; Mr. Grewgious and his ward set forth on their
expedition.

 

  As Mr. Grewgious's idea of looking at a
furnished lodging was to get on the opposite side of the street to a house with
a suitable bill in the window, and stare at it; and then work his way
tortuously to the back of the house, and stare at that; and then not go in, but
make similar trials of another house, with the same result; their progress was
but slow. At length he bethought himself of a widowed cousin, divers times
removed, of Mr. Bazzard's, who had once solicited his influence in the lodger
world, and who lived in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury Square. This lady's
name, stated in uncompromising capitals of considerable size on a brass
door-plate, and yet not lucidly as to sex or condition, was BILLICKIN.

 

  Personal faintness, and an overpowering
personal candour, were the distinguishing features of Mrs. Billickin's
organisation. She came languishing out of her own exclusive back parlour, with
the air of having been expressly brought-to for the purpose, from an
accumulation of several swoons.

 

  “I hope I see you well, sir,” said Mrs.
Billickin, recognising her visitor with a bend.

 

  “Thank you, quite well. And you, ma'am?”
returned Mr. Grewgious.

 

  “I am as well,” said Mrs. Billickin,
becoming aspirational with excess of faintness, “as I hever ham.”

 

  “My ward and an elderly lady,” said Mr.
Grewgious, “wish to find a genteel lodging for a month or so. Have you any
apartments available, ma'am?”

 

  “Mr. Grewgious,” returned Mrs.
Billickin, “I will not deceive you; far from it. I HAVE apartments available.”

 

  This with the air of adding: “Convey me
to the stake, if you will; but while I live, I will be candid.”

 

  “And now, what apartments, ma'am?” asked
Mr. Grewgious, cosily. To tame a certain severity apparent on the part of Mrs.
Billickin.

 

  “There is this sitting-room—which, call it
what you will, it is the front parlour, Miss,” said Mrs. Billickin, impressing
Rosa into the conversation: “the back parlour being what I cling to and never
part with; and there is two bedrooms at the top of the “ouse with gas laid on.
I do not tell you that your bedroom floors is firm, for firm they are not. The
gas-fitter himself allowed, that to make a firm job, he must go right under
your jistes, and it were not worth the outlay as a yearly tenant so to do. The
piping is carried above your jistes, and it is best that it should be made
known to you.”

 

  Mr. Grewgious and Rosa exchanged looks
of some dismay, though they had not the least idea what latent horrors this
carriage of the piping might involve. Mrs. Billickin put her hand to her heart,
as having eased it of a load.

 

  “Well! The roof is all right, no doubt,”
said Mr. Grewgious, plucking up a little.

 

  “Mr. Grewgious,” returned Mrs.
Billickin, “if I was to tell you, sir, that to have nothink above you is to
have a floor above you, I should put a deception upon you which I will not do.
No, sir. Your slates WILL rattle loose at that elewation in windy weather, do
your utmost, best or worst! I defy you, sir, be you what you may, to keep your
slates tight, try how you can.” Here Mrs. Billickin, having been warm with Mr.
Grewgious, cooled a little, not to abuse the moral power she held over him.
“Consequent,” proceeded Mrs. Billickin, more mildly, but still firmly in her
incorruptible candour: “consequent it would be worse than of no use for me to
trapse and travel up to the top of the “ouse with you, and for you to say,
“Mrs. Billickin, what stain do I notice in the ceiling, for a stain I do consider
it?” and for me to answer, “I do not understand you, sir.” No, sir, I will not
be so underhand. I DO understand you before you pint it out. It is the wet,
sir. It do come in, and it do not come in. You may lay dry there half your
lifetime; but the time will come, and it is best that you should know it, when
a dripping sop would be no name for you.”