The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens [fox in socks read aloud txt] 📗

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. Otherwise, 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.

As he held it incumbent upon him to call on Mr. Jasper before leaving Cloisterham, Mr. Grewgious went to the gatehouse, and climbed its postern stair. But Mr. Jasper’s door being closed, and presenting on a slip of paper the word “Cathedral,” the fact of its being service-time was borne into the mind of Mr. Grewgious. So he descended the stair again, and, crossing the Close, paused at the great western folding-door of the Cathedral, which stood open on the fine and bright, though short-lived, afternoon, for the airing of the place.

“Dear me,” said Mr. Grewgious, peeping in, “it’s like looking down the throat of Old Time.”

Old Time heaved a mouldy sigh from tomb