The Mystery of Edwin Drood
breath. At the conclusion of the repast, by which time the flying
waiter was severely blown, the immovable waiter gathered up the
tablecloth under his arm with a grand air, and having sternly (not to
say with indignation) looked on at the flying waiter while he set the
clean glasses round, directed a valedictory glance towards Mr.
Grewgious, conveying: “Let it be clearly understood between us that the
reward is mine, and that Nil is the claim of this slave,” and pushed
the flying waiter before him out of the room.
It was like a highly-finished miniature painting representing My Lords
of the Circumlocution Department, Commandership-in-Chief of any sort,
Government. It was quite an edifying little picture to be hung on the
line in the National Gallery.
As the fog had been the proximate cause of this sumptuous repast, so
the fog served for its general sauce. To hear the out-door clerks
sneezing, wheezing, and beating their feet on the gravel was a zest far
surpassing Doctor Kitchener’s. To bid, with a shiver, the unfortunate
flying waiter shut the door before he had opened it, was a condiment of
a profounder flavour than Harvey. And here let it be noticed,
parenthetically, that the leg of this young man, in its application to
the door, evinced the finest sense of touch: always preceding himself
and tray (with something of an angling air about it), by some seconds:
and always lingering after he and the tray had disappeared, like
Macbeth’s leg when accompanying him off the stage with reluctance to
the assassination of Duncan.
The host had gone below to the cellar, and had brought up bottles of
ruby, straw-coloured, and golden drinks, which had ripened long ago in
lands where no fogs are, and had since lain slumbering in the shade.
Sparkling and tingling after so long a nap, they pushed at their corks
to help the corkscrew (like prisoners helping rioters to force their
gates), and danced out gaily. If P. J. T. in seventeen-forty-seven, or
in any other year of his period, drank such wines—then, for a
certainty, P. J. T. was Pretty Jolly Too.
Externally, Mr. Grewgious showed no signs of being mellowed by these
glowing vintages. Instead of his drinking them, they might have been
poured over him in his high-dried snuff form, and run to waste, for any
lights and shades they caused to flicker over his face. Neither was his
manner influenced. But, in his wooden way, he had observant eyes for
Edwin; and when at the end of dinner, he motioned Edwin back to his own
easy-chair in the fireside corner, and Edwin sank luxuriously into it
after very brief remonstrance, Mr. Grewgious, as he turned his seat
round towards the fire too, and smoothed his head and face, might have
been seen looking at his visitor between his smoothing fingers.
“Bazzard!” said Mr. Grewgious, suddenly turning to him.
“I follow you, sir,” returned Bazzard; who had done his work of
consuming meat and drink in a workmanlike manner, though mostly in
speechlessness.
“I drink to you, Bazzard; Mr. Edwin, success to Mr. Bazzard!”
“Success to Mr. Bazzard!” echoed Edwin, with a totally unfounded
appearance of enthusiasm, and with the unspoken addition: “What in, I
wonder!”
“And May!” pursued Mr. Grewgious—“I am not at liberty to be
definite—May!—my conversational powers are so very limited that I know
I shall not come well out of this—May!—it ought to be put
imaginatively, but I have no imagination—May!—the thorn of anxiety is
as nearly the mark as I am likely to get—May it come out at last!”
Mr. Bazzard, with a frowning smile at the fire, put a hand into his
tangled locks, as if the thorn of anxiety were there; then into his
waistcoat, as if it were there; then into his pockets, as if it were
there. In all these movements he was closely followed by the eyes of
Edwin, as if that young gentleman expected to see the thorn in action.
It was not produced, however, and Mr. Bazzard merely said: “I follow
you, sir, and I thank you.”
“I am going,” said Mr. Grewgious, jingling his glass on the table with
one hand, and bending aside under cover of the other, to whisper to
Edwin, “to drink to my ward. But I put Bazzard first. He mightn’t like
it else.”
This was said with a mysterious wink; or what would have been a wink,
if, in Mr. Grewgious’s hands, it could have been quick enough. So Edwin
winked responsively, without the least idea what he meant by doing so.
“And now,” said Mr. Grewgious, “I devote a bumper to the fair and
fascinating Miss Rosa. Bazzard, the fair and fascinating Miss Rosa!”
“I follow you, sir,” said Bazzard, “and I pledge you!”
“And so do I!” said Edwin.
“Lord bless me,” cried Mr. Grewgious, breaking the blank silence which
of course ensued: though why these pauses _should_ come upon us when we
have performed any small social rite, not directly inducive of
self-examination or mental despondency, who can tell? “I am a
particularly Angular man, and yet I fancy (if I may use the word, not
having a morsel of fancy), that I could draw a picture of a true
lover’s state of mind, to-night.”
“Let us follow you, sir,” said Bazzard, “and have the picture.”
“Mr. Edwin will correct it where it’s wrong,” resumed Mr. Grewgious,
“and will throw in a few touches from the life. I dare say it is wrong
in many particulars, and wants many touches from the life, for I was
born a Chip, and have neither soft sympathies nor soft experiences.
Well! I hazard the guess that the true lover’s mind is completely
permeated by the beloved object of his affections. I hazard the guess
that her dear name is precious to him, cannot be heard or repeated
without emotion, and is preserved sacred. If he has any distinguishing
appellation of fondness for her, it is reserved for her, and is not for
common ears. A name that it would be a privilege to call her by, being
alone with her own bright self, it would be a liberty, a coldness, an
insensibility, almost a breach of good faith, to flaunt elsewhere.”
It was wonderful to see Mr. Grewgious sitting bolt upright, with his
hands on his knees, continuously chopping this discourse out of
himself: much as a charity boy with a very good memory might get his
catechism said: and evincing no correspondent emotion whatever, unless
in a certain occasional little tingling perceptible at the end of his
nose.
“My picture,” Mr. Grewgious proceeded, “goes on to represent (under
correction from you, Mr. Edwin), the true lover as ever impatient to be
in the presence or vicinity of the beloved object of his affections; as
caring very little for his case in any other society; and as constantly
seeking that. If I was to say seeking that, as a bird seeks its nest, I
should make an ass of myself, because that would trench upon what I
understand to be poetry; and I am so far from trenching upon poetry at
any time, that I never, to my knowledge, got within ten thousand miles
of it. And I am besides totally unacquainted with the habits of birds,
except the birds of Staple Inn, who seek their nests on ledges, and in
gutter-pipes and chimneypots, not constructed for them by the
beneficent hand of Nature. I beg, therefore, to be understood as
foregoing the bird’s-nest. But my picture does represent the true lover
as having no existence separable from that of the beloved object of his
affections, and as living at once a doubled life and a halved life. And
if I do not clearly express what I mean by that, it is either for the
reason that having no conversational powers, I cannot express what I
mean, or that having no meaning, I do not mean what I fail to express.
Which, to the best of my belief, is not the case.”
Edwin had turned red and turned white, as certain points of this
picture came into the light. He now sat looking at the fire, and bit
his lip.
“The speculations of an Angular man,” resumed Mr. Grewgious, still
sitting and speaking exactly as before, “are probably erroneous on so
globular a topic. But I figure to myself (subject, as before, to Mr.
Edwin’s correction), that there can be no coolness, no lassitude, no
doubt, no indifference, no half fire and half smoke state of mind, in a
real lover. Pray am I at all near the mark in my picture?”
As abrupt in his conclusion as in his commencement and progress, he
jerked this inquiry at Edwin, and stopped when one might have supposed
him in the middle of his oration.
“I should say, sir,” stammered Edwin, “as you refer the question to
me—”
“Yes,” said Mr. Grewgious, “I refer it to you, as an authority.”
“I should say, then, sir,” Edwin went on, embarrassed, “that the
picture you have drawn is generally correct; but I submit that perhaps
you may be rather hard upon the unlucky lover.”
“Likely so,” assented Mr. Grewgious, “likely so. I am a hard man in the
grain.”
“He may not show,” said Edwin, “all he feels; or he may not—”
There he stopped so long, to find the rest of his sentence, that Mr.
Grewgious rendered his difficulty a thousand times the greater by
unexpectedly striking in with:
“No to be sure; he _may_ not!”
After that, they all sat silent; the silence of Mr. Bazzard being
occasioned by slumber.
“His responsibility is very great, though,” said Mr. Grewgious at
length, with his eyes on the fire.
Edwin nodded assent, with _his_ eyes on the fire.
“And let him be sure that he trifles with no one,” said Mr. Grewgious;
“neither with himself, nor with any other.”
Edwin bit his lip again, and still sat looking at the fire.
“He must not make a plaything of a treasure. Woe betide him if he does!
Let him take that well to heart,” said Mr. Grewgious.
Though he said these things in short sentences, much as the
supposititious charity boy just now referred to might have repeated a
verse or two from the Book of Proverbs, there was something dreamy (for
so literal a man) in the way in which he now shook his right forefinger
at the live coals in the grate, and again fell silent.
But not for long. As he sat upright and stiff in his chair, he suddenly
rapped his knees, like the carved image of some queer Joss or other
coming out of its reverie, and said: “We must finish this bottle, Mr.
Edwin. Let me help you. I’ll help Bazzard too, though he _is_ asleep.
He mightn’t like it else.”
He helped them both, and helped himself, and drained his glass, and
stood it bottom upward on the table, as though he had just caught a
bluebottle in it.
“And now, Mr. Edwin,” he proceeded, wiping his mouth and hands upon his
handkerchief: “to a little piece of business. You received from me, the
other day, a certified copy of Miss Rosa’s father’s will. You knew its
contents before, but you received it from me as a matter of business. I
should have sent it to Mr. Jasper, but for Miss Rosa’s wishing it to
come straight to you, in preference. You received it?”
“Quite safely, sir.”
“You should have acknowledged its receipt,” said Mr. Grewgious;
“business being business all the world over. However, you did not.”
“I meant to have acknowledged it when I first came in this evening,
sir.”
“Not a business-like acknowledgment,” returned Mr. Grewgious; “however,
let that pass. Now, in that document you have observed a few words of
kindly allusion to its being left to me to discharge a little trust,
confided to me in conversation, at such time as I in my discretion may
think best.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Edwin, it came into my mind just now, when I was looking at the
fire, that I could, in my discretion, acquit myself of that trust at no
better time than the present. Favour me with your attention, half a
minute.”
He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, singled out by the
candle-light the key he wanted, and then, with a candle in his hand,
went to a bureau or escritoire, unlocked it, touched the spring of a