The Mystery of Edwin Drood (76 page)

 

  Mr. Grewgious looked much disgraced by
being prefigured in this pickle.

 

  “Have you any other apartments, ma'am?”
he asked.

 

  “Mr. Grewgious,” returned Mrs.
Billickin, with much solemnity, “I have. You ask me have I, and my open and my
honest answer air, I have. The first and second floors is wacant, and sweet
rooms.”

 

  “Come, come! There's nothing against
THEM,” said Mr. Grewgious, comforting himself.

 

  “Mr. Grewgious,” replied Mrs. Billickin,
“pardon me, there is the stairs. Unless your mind is prepared for the stairs,
it will lead to inevitable disappointment. You cannot, Miss,” said Mrs.
Billickin, addressing Rosa reproachfully, “place a first floor, and far less a
second, on the level footing “of a parlour. No, you cannot do it, Miss, it is
beyond your power, and wherefore try?”

 

  Mrs. Billickin put it very feelingly, as
if Rosa had shown a headstrong determination to hold the untenable position.

 

  “Can we see these rooms, ma'am?”
inquired her guardian.

 

  “Mr. Grewgious,” returned Mrs.
Billickin, “you can. I will not disguise it from you, sir; you can.”

 

  Mrs. Billickin then sent into her back
parlour for her shawl (it being a state fiction, dating from immemorial
antiquity, that she could never go anywhere without being wrapped up), and
having been enrolled by her attendant, led the way. She made various genteel
pauses on the stairs for breath, and clutched at her heart in the drawing-room
as if it had very nearly got loose, and she had caught it in the act of taking
wing.

 

  “And the second floor?” said Mr.
Grewgious, on finding the first satisfactory.

 

  “Mr. Grewgious,” replied Mrs. Billickin,
turning upon him with ceremony, as if the time had now come when a distinct
understanding on a difficult point must be arrived at, and a solemn confidence
established, “the second floor is over this.”

 

  “Can we see that too, ma'am?”

 

  “Yes, sir,” returned Mrs. Billickin, “it
is open as the day.”

 

  That also proving satisfactory, Mr.
Grewgious retired into a window with Rosa for a few words of consultation, and
then asking for pen and ink, sketched out a line or two of agreement. In the
meantime Mrs. Billickin took a seat, and delivered a kind of Index to, or
Abstract of, the general question.

 

  “Five-and-forty shillings per week by
the month certain at the time of year,” said Mrs. Billickin, “is only
reasonable to both parties. It is not Bond Street nor yet St. James's Palace;
but it is not pretended that it is. Neither is it attempted to be denied—for
why should it?—that the Arching leads to a mews. Mewses must exist. Respecting
attendance; two is kep”, at liberal wages. Words HAS arisen as to tradesmen,
but dirty shoes on fresh hearthstoning was attributable, and no wish for a
commission on your orders. Coals is either BY the fire, or PER the scuttle.”
She emphasised the prepositions as marking a subtle but immense difference.
“Dogs is not viewed with favour. Besides litter, they gets stole, and sharing
suspicions is apt to creep in, and unpleasantness takes place.”

 

  By this time Mr. Grewgious had his
agreement-lines, and his earnest-money, ready. “I have signed it for the
ladies, ma'am,” he said, “and you'll have the goodness to sign it for yourself,
Christian and Surname, there, if you please.”

 

  “Mr. Grewgious,” said Mrs. Billickin in
a new burst of candour, “no, sir! You must excuse the Christian name.”

 

  Mr. Grewgious stared at her.

 

  “The door-plate is used as a
protection,” said Mrs. Billickin, “and acts as such, and go from it I will
not.”

 

  Mr. Grewgious stared at Rosa.

 

  “No, Mr. Grewgious, you must excuse me.
So long as this “ouse is known indefinite as Billickin's, and so long as it is
a doubt with the riff-raff where Billickin may be hidin”, near the street-door
or down the airy, and what his weight and size, so long I feel safe. But commit
myself to a solitary female statement, no, Miss! Nor would you for a moment
wish,” said Mrs. Billickin, with a strong sense of injury, “to take that
advantage of your sex, if you were not brought to it by inconsiderate example.”

 

  Rosa reddening as if she had made some
most disgraceful attempt to overreach the good lady, besought Mr. Grewgious to
rest content with any signature. And accordingly, in a baronial way, the
signmanual BILLICKIN got appended to the document.

 

  Details were then settled for taking
possession on the next day but one, when Miss Twinkleton might be reasonably expected;
and Rosa went back to Furnival's Inn on her guardian's arm.

 

  Behold Mr. Tartar walking up and down
Furnival's Inn, checking himself when he saw them coming, and advancing towards
them!

 

  “It occurred to me,” hinted Mr. Tartar,
“that we might go up the river, the weather being so delicious and the tide
serving. I have a boat of my own at the Temple Stairs.”

 

  “I have not been up the river for this
many a day,” said Mr. Grewgious, tempted.

 

  “I was never up the river,” added Rosa.

 

  Within half an hour they were setting
this matter right by going up the river. The tide was running with them, the
afternoon was charming. Mr. Tartar's boat was perfect. Mr. Tartar and Lobley
(Mr. Tartar's man) pulled a pair of oars. Mr. Tartar had a yacht, it seemed,
lying somewhere down by Greenhithe; and Mr. Tartar's man had charge of this
yacht, and was detached upon his present service. He was a jolly-favoured man,
with tawny hair and whiskers, and a big red face. He was the dead image of the
sun in old woodcuts, his hair and whiskers answering for rays all around him.
Resplendent in the bow of the boat, he was a shining sight, with a man-of-war's
man's shirt on—or off, according to opinion—and his arms and breast tattooed
all sorts of patterns. Lobley seemed to take it easily, and so did Mr. Tartar;
yet their oars bent as they pulled, and the boat bounded under them. Mr. Tartar
talked as if he were doing nothing, to Rosa who was really doing nothing, and
to Mr. Grewgious who was doing this much that he steered all wrong; but what
did that matter, when a turn of Mr. Tartar's skilful wrist, or a mere grin of
Mr. Lobley's over the bow, put all to rights! The tide bore them on in the
gayest and most sparkling manner, until they stopped to dine in some
everlastingly-green garden, needing no matter-of-fact identification here; and
then the tide obligingly turned—being devoted to that party alone for that day;
and as they floated idly among some osier-beds, Rosa tried what she could do in
the rowing way, and came off splendidly, being much assisted; and Mr. Grewgious
tried what he could do, and came off on his back, doubled up with an oar under
his chin, being not assisted at all. Then there was an interval of rest under
boughs (such rest!) what time Mr. Lobley mopped, and, arranging cushions,
stretchers, and the like, danced the tight-rope the whole length of the boat
like a man to whom shoes were a superstition and stockings slavery; and then
came the sweet return among delicious odours of limes in bloom, and musical
ripplings; and, all too soon, the great black city cast its shadow on the
waters, and its dark bridges spanned them as death spans life, and the
everlastingly-green garden seemed to be left for everlasting, unregainable and
far away.

 

  “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.”