The Mystery of Edwin Drood
railroad afar off, as menacing that sensitive constitution, the
property of us Britons: the odd fortune of which sacred institution it
is to be in exactly equal degrees croaked about, trembled for, and
boasted of, whatever happens to anything, anywhere in the world: in
those days no neighbouring architecture of lofty proportions had arisen
to overshadow Staple Inn. The westering sun bestowed bright glances on
it, and the south-west wind blew into it unimpeded.
Neither wind nor sun, however, favoured Staple Inn one December
afternoon towards six o’clock, when it was filled with fog, and candles
shed murky and blurred rays through the windows of all its
then-occupied sets of chambers; notably from a set of chambers in a
corner house in the little inner quadrangle, presenting in black and
white over its ugly portal the mysterious inscription:
P
J
T
1747
In which set of chambers, never having troubled his head about the
inscription, unless to bethink himself at odd times on glancing up at
it, that haply it might mean Perhaps John Thomas, or Perhaps Joe Tyler,
sat Mr. Grewgious writing by his fire.
Who could have told, by looking at Mr. Grewgious, whether he had ever
known ambition or disappointment? He had been bred to the Bar, and had
laid himself out for chamber practice; to draw deeds; “convey the wise
it call,” as Pistol says. But Conveyancing and he had made such a very
indifferent marriage of it that they had separated by consent—if there
can be said to be separation where there has never been coming
together.
No. Coy Conveyancing would not come to Mr. Grewgious. She was wooed,
not won, and they went their several ways. But an Arbitration being
blown towards him by some unaccountable wind, and he gaining great
credit in it as one indefatigable in seeking out right and doing right,
a pretty fat Receivership was next blown into his pocket by a wind more
traceable to its source. So, by chance, he had found his niche.
Receiver and Agent now, to two rich estates, and deputing their legal
business, in an amount worth having, to a firm of solicitors on the
floor below, he had snuffed out his ambition (supposing him to have
ever lighted it), and had settled down with his snuffers for the rest
of his life under the dry vine and fig-tree of P. J. T., who planted in
seventeen-forty-seven.
Many accounts and account-books, many files of correspondence, and
several strong boxes, garnished Mr. Grewgious’s room. They can scarcely
be represented as having lumbered it, so conscientious and precise was
their orderly arrangement. The apprehension of dying suddenly, and
leaving one fact or one figure with any incompleteness or obscurity
attaching to it, would have stretched Mr. Grewgious stone-dead any day.
The largest fidelity to a trust was the life-blood of the man. There
are sorts of life-blood that course more quickly, more gaily, more
attractively; but there is no better sort in circulation.
There was no luxury in his room. Even its comforts were limited to its
being dry and warm, and having a snug though faded fireside. What may
be called its private life was confined to the hearth, and an
easy-chair, and an old-fashioned occasional round table that was
brought out upon the rug after business hours, from a corner where it
elsewise remained turned up like a shining mahogany shield. Behind it,
when standing thus on the defensive, was a closet, usually containing
something good to drink. An outer room was the clerk’s room; Mr.
Grewgious’s sleeping-room was across the common stair; and he held some
not empty cellarage at the bottom of the common stair. Three hundred
days in the year, at least, he crossed over to the hotel in Furnival’s
Inn for his dinner, and after dinner crossed back again, to make the
most of these simplicities until it should become broad business day
once more, with P. J. T., date seventeen-forty-seven.
As Mr. Grewgious sat and wrote by his fire that afternoon, so did the
clerk of Mr. Grewgious sit and write by _his_ fire. A pale,
puffy-faced, dark-haired person of thirty, with big dark eyes that
wholly wanted lustre, and a dissatisfied doughy complexion, that seemed
to ask to be sent to the baker’s, this attendant was a mysterious
being, possessed of some strange power over Mr. Grewgious. As though he
had been called into existence, like a fabulous Familiar, by a magic
spell which had failed when required to dismiss him, he stuck tight to
Mr. Grewgious’s stool, although Mr. Grewgious’s comfort and convenience
would manifestly have been advanced by dispossessing him. A gloomy
person with tangled locks, and a general air of having been reared
under the shadow of that baleful tree of Java which has given shelter
to more lies than the whole botanical kingdom, Mr. Grewgious,
nevertheless, treated him with unaccountable consideration.
“Now, Bazzard,” said Mr. Grewgious, on the entrance of his clerk:
looking up from his papers as he arranged them for the night: “what is
in the wind besides fog?”
“Mr. Drood,” said Bazzard.
“What of him?”
“Has called,” said Bazzard.
“You might have shown him in.”
“I am doing it,” said Bazzard.
The visitor came in accordingly.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Grewgious, looking round his pair of office
candles. “I thought you had called and merely left your name and gone.
How do you do, Mr. Edwin? Dear me, you’re choking!”
“It’s this fog,” returned Edwin; “and it makes my eyes smart, like
Cayenne pepper.”
“Is it really so bad as that? Pray undo your wrappers. It’s fortunate I
have so good a fire; but Mr. Bazzard has taken care of me.”
“No I haven’t,” said Mr. Bazzard at the door.
“Ah! then it follows that I must have taken care of myself without
observing it,” said Mr. Grewgious. “Pray be seated in my chair. No. I
beg! Coming out of such an atmosphere, in _my_ chair.”
Edwin took the easy-chair in the corner; and the fog he had brought in
with him, and the fog he took off with his greatcoat and neck-shawl,
was speedily licked up by the eager fire.
“I look,” said Edwin, smiling, “as if I had come to stop.”
“—By the by,” cried Mr. Grewgious; “excuse my interrupting you; do
stop. The fog may clear in an hour or two. We can have dinner in from
just across Holborn. You had better take your Cayenne pepper here than
outside; pray stop and dine.”
“You are very kind,” said Edwin, glancing about him as though attracted
by the notion of a new and relishing sort of gipsy-party.
“Not at all,” said Mr. Grewgious; “_you_ are very kind to join issue
with a bachelor in chambers, and take pot-luck. And I’ll ask,” said Mr.
Grewgious, dropping his voice, and speaking with a twinkling eye, as if
inspired with a bright thought: “I’ll ask Bazzard. He mightn’t like it
else.—Bazzard!”
Bazzard reappeared.
“Dine presently with Mr. Drood and me.”
“If I am ordered to dine, of course I will, sir,” was the gloomy
answer.
“Save the man!” cried Mr. Grewgious. “You’re not ordered; you’re
invited.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Bazzard; “in that case I don’t care if I do.”
“That’s arranged. And perhaps you wouldn’t mind,” said Mr. Grewgious,
“stepping over to the hotel in Furnival’s, and asking them to send in
materials for laying the cloth. For dinner we’ll have a tureen of the
hottest and strongest soup available, and we’ll have the best made-dish
that can be recommended, and we’ll have a joint (such as a haunch of
mutton), and we’ll have a goose, or a turkey, or any little stuffed
thing of that sort that may happen to be in the bill of fare—in short,
we’ll have whatever there is on hand.”
These liberal directions Mr. Grewgious issued with his usual air of
reading an inventory, or repeating a lesson, or doing anything else by
rote. Bazzard, after drawing out the round table, withdrew to execute
them.
“I was a little delicate, you see,” said Mr. Grewgious, in a lower
tone, after his clerk’s departure, “about employing him in the foraging
or commissariat department. Because he mightn’t like it.”
“He seems to have his own way, sir,” remarked Edwin.
“His own way?” returned Mr. Grewgious. “O dear no! Poor fellow, you
quite mistake him. If he had his own way, he wouldn’t be here.”
“I wonder where he would be!” Edwin thought. But he only thought it,
because Mr. Grewgious came and stood himself with his back to the other
corner of the fire, and his shoulder-blades against the chimneypiece,
and collected his skirts for easy conversation.
“I take it, without having the gift of prophecy, that you have done me
the favour of looking in to mention that you are going down
yonder—where I can tell you, you are expected—and to offer to execute
any little commission from me to my charming ward, and perhaps to
sharpen me up a bit in any proceedings? Eh, Mr. Edwin?”
“I called, sir, before going down, as an act of attention.”
“Of attention!” said Mr. Grewgious. “Ah! of course, not of impatience?”
“Impatience, sir?”
Mr. Grewgious had meant to be arch—not that he in the remotest degree
expressed that meaning—and had brought himself into scarcely
supportable proximity with the fire, as if to burn the fullest effect
of his archness into himself, as other subtle impressions are burnt
into hard metals. But his archness suddenly flying before the composed
face and manner of his visitor, and only the fire remaining, he started
and rubbed himself.
“I have lately been down yonder,” said Mr. Grewgious, rearranging his
skirts; “and that was what I referred to, when I said I could tell you
you are expected.”
“Indeed, sir! Yes; I knew that Pussy was looking out for me.”
“Do you keep a cat down there?” asked Mr. Grewgious.
Edwin coloured a little as he explained: “I call Rosa Pussy.”
“O, really,” said Mr. Grewgious, smoothing down his head; “that’s very
affable.”
Edwin glanced at his face, uncertain whether or no he seriously
objected to the appellation. But Edwin might as well have glanced at
the face of a clock.
“A pet name, sir,” he explained again.
“Umps,” said Mr. Grewgious, with a nod. But with such an extraordinary
compromise between an unqualified assent and a qualified dissent, that
his visitor was much disconcerted.
“Did PRosa—” Edwin began by way of recovering himself.
“PRosa?” repeated Mr. Grewgious.
“I was going to say Pussy, and changed my mind;—did she tell you
anything about the Landlesses?”
“No,” said Mr. Grewgious. “What is the Landlesses? An estate? A villa?
A farm?”
“A brother and sister. The sister is at the Nuns’ House, and has become
a great friend of P—”
“PRosa’s,” Mr. Grewgious struck in, with a fixed face.
“She is a strikingly handsome girl, sir, and I thought she might have
been described to you, or presented to you perhaps?”
“Neither,” said Mr. Grewgious. “But here is Bazzard.”
Bazzard returned, accompanied by two waiters—an immovable waiter, and a
flying waiter; and the three brought in with them as much fog as gave a
new roar to the fire. The flying waiter, who had brought everything on
his shoulders, laid the cloth with amazing rapidity and dexterity;
while the immovable waiter, who had brought nothing, found fault with
him. The flying waiter then highly polished all the glasses he had
brought, and the immovable waiter looked through them. The flying
waiter then flew across Holborn for the soup, and flew back again, and
then took another flight for the made-dish, and flew back again, and
then took another flight for the joint and poultry, and flew back
again, and between whiles took supplementary flights for a great
variety of articles, as it was discovered from time to time that the
immovable waiter had forgotten them all. But let the flying waiter
cleave the air as he might, he was always reproached on his return by
the immovable waiter for bringing fog with him, and being out of