The Mystery of Edwin Drood (13 page)

 

  “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?”

 

  “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.