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

CHAPTER XXII.
A GRITTY STATE OF THINGS COMES ON

Mr. Tartar’s chambers were the neatest, the cleanest, and the best-ordered chambers ever seen under the sun, moon, and stars. The floors were scrubbed to that extent, that you might have supposed the London blacks emancipated for ever, and gone out of the land for good. Every inch of brass-work in Mr. Tartar’s possession was polished and burnished, till it shone like a brazen mirror. No speck, nor spot, nor spatter soiled the purity of any of Mr. Tartar’s household gods, large, small, or middle-sized. His sitting-room was like the admiral’s cabin, his bath-room was like a dairy, his sleeping-chamber, fitted all about with lockers and drawers, was like a seedsman’s shop; and his nicely-balanced cot just stirred in the midst, as if it breathed. Everything belonging to Mr. Tartar had quarters of its own assigned to it: his maps and charts had their quarters; his books had theirs; his brushes had theirs; his boots had theirs; his clothes had theirs; his case-bottles had theirs; his telescopes and other instruments had theirs. Everything was readily accessible. Shelf, bracket, locker, hook, and drawer were equally within reach, and were equally contrived with a view to avoiding waste of room, and providing some snug inches of stowage for something that would have exactly fitted nowhere else. His gleaming little service of plate was so arranged upon his sideboard as that a slack salt-spoon would have instantly betrayed itself; his toilet implements were so arranged upon his dressing-table as that a toothpick of slovenly deportment could have been reported at a glance. So with the curiosities he had brought home from various voyages. Stuffed, dried, repolished, or otherwise preserved, according to their kind; birds, fishes, reptiles, arms, articles of dress, shells, seaweeds, grasses, or memorials of coral reef; each was displayed in its especial place, and each could have been displayed in no better place. Paint and varnish seemed to be kept somewhere out of sight, in constant readiness to obliterate stray finger-marks wherever any might become perceptible in Mr. Tartar’s chambers. No man-of-war was ever kept more spick and span from careless touch. On this bright summer day, a neat awning was rigged over Mr. Tartar’s flower-garden as only a sailor can rig it, and there was a sea-going air upon the whole effect, so delightfully complete, that the flower-garden might have appertained to stern-windows afloat, and the whole concern might have bowled away gallantly with all on board, if Mr. Tartar had only clapped to his lips the speaking-trumpet that was slung in a corner, and given hoarse orders to heave the anchor up, look alive there, men, and get all sail upon her!

Mr. Tartar doing the honours of this gallant craft was of a piece with the rest. When a man rides an amiable hobby that shies at nothing and kicks nobody, it is only agreeable to find him riding it with a humorous sense of the droll side of the creature. When the man is a cordial and an earnest man by nature, and withal is perfectly fresh and genuine, it may be doubted whether he is ever seen to greater advantage than at such a time. So Rosa would have naturally thought (even if she hadn’t been conducted over the ship with all the homage due to the First Lady of the Admiralty, or First Fairy of the Sea), that it was charming to see and hear Mr. Tartar half laughing at, and half rejoicing in, his various contrivances. So Rosa would have naturally thought, anyhow, that the sunburnt sailor showed to great advantage when, the inspection finished, he delicately withdrew out of his admiral’s cabin, beseeching her to consider herself its Queen, and waving her free of his flower-garden with the hand that had had Mr. Crisparkle’s life in it.

“Helena! Helena Landless! Are you there?”

“Who speaks to me? Not Rosa?” Then a second handsome face appearing.

“Yes, my darling!”

“Why, how did you come here, dearest?”

“I—I don’t quite know,” said Rosa with a blush; “unless I am dreaming!”

Why with a blush? For their two faces were alone with the other flowers. Are blushes among the fruits of the country of the magic bean-stalk?

“I am not dreaming,” said Helena, smiling. “I should take more for granted if I were. How do we come together—or so near together—so very unexpectedly?”

Unexpectedly indeed, among the dingy gables and chimney-pots of P. J. T.”s connection, and the flowers that had sprung from the salt sea. But Rosa, waking, told in a hurry how they came to be together, and all the why and wherefore of that matter.

“And Mr. Crisparkle is here,” said Rosa, in rapid conclusion; “and, could you believe it? long ago he saved his life!”

“I could believe any such thing of Mr. Crisparkle,” returned Helena, with a mantling face.

(More blushes in the bean-stalk country!)

“Yes, but it wasn’t Crisparkle,” said Rosa, quickly putting in the correction.

“I don’t understand, love.”

“It was very nice of Mr. Crisparkle to be saved,” said Rosa, “and he couldn’t have shown his high opinion of Mr. Tartar more expressively. But it was Mr. Tartar who saved him.”

Helena’s dark eyes looked very earnestly at the bright face among the leaves, and she asked, in a slower and more thoughtful tone:

“Is Mr. Tartar with you now, dear?”

“No; because he has given up his rooms to me—to us, I mean. It is such a beautiful place!”

“Is it?”

“It is like the inside of the most exquisite ship that ever sailed. It is like—it is like—”

“Like a dream?” suggested Helena.

Rosa answered with a little nod, and smelled the flowers.

Helena resumed, after a short pause of silence, during which she seemed (or it was Rosa’s fancy) to compassionate somebody: “My poor Neville is reading in his own room, the sun being so very bright on this side just now. I think he had better not know that you are so near.”

“O, I think so too!” cried Rosa very readily.

“I suppose,” pursued Helena, doubtfully, “that he must know by-and-by all you have told me; but I am not sure. Ask Mr. Crisparkle’s advice, my darling. Ask him whether I may tell Neville as much or as little of what you have told me as I think best.”

Rosa subsided into her state-cabin, and propounded the question. The Minor Canon was for the free exercise of Helena’s judgment.

“I thank him very much,” said Helena, when Rosa emerged again with her report. “Ask him whether it would be best to wait until any more maligning and pursuing of Neville on the part of this wretch shall disclose itself, or to try to anticipate it: I mean, so far as to find out whether any such goes on darkly about us?”

The Minor Canon found this point so difficult to give a confident opinion on, that, after two or three attempts and failures, he suggested a reference to Mr. Grewgious. Helena acquiescing, he betook himself (with a most unsuccessful assumption of lounging indifference) across the quadrangle to P. J. T.”s, and stated it. Mr. Grewgious held decidedly to the general principle, that if you could steal a march upon a brigand or a wild beast, you had better do it; and he also held decidedly to the special case, that John Jasper was a brigand and a wild beast in combination.

Thus advised, Mr. Crisparkle came back again and reported to Rosa, who in her turn reported to Helena. She now steadily pursuing her train of thought at her window, considered thereupon.

“We may count on Mr. Tartar’s readiness to help us, Rosa?” she inquired.

O yes! Rosa shyly thought so. O yes, Rosa shyly believed she could almost answer for it. But should she ask Mr. Crisparkle? “I think your authority on the point as good as his, my dear,” said Helena, sedately, “and you needn’t disappear again for that.” Odd of Helena!

“You see, Neville,” Helena pursued after more reflection, “knows no one else here: he has not so much as exchanged a word with any one else here. If Mr. Tartar would call to see him openly and often; if he would spare a minute for the purpose, frequently; if he would even do so, almost daily; something might come of it.”

“Something might come of it, dear?” repeated Rosa, surveying her friend’s beauty with a highly perplexed face. “Something might?”

“If Neville’s movements are really watched, and if the purpose really is to isolate him from all friends and acquaintance and wear his daily life out grain by grain (which would seem to be the threat to you), does it not appear likely,” said Helena, “that his enemy would in some way communicate with Mr. Tartar to warn him off from Neville? In which case, we might not only know the fact, but might know from Mr. Tartar what the terms of the communication were.”

“I see!” cried Rosa. And immediately darted into her state-cabin again.

Presently her pretty face reappeared, with a greatly heightened colour, and she said that she had told Mr. Crisparkle, and that Mr. Crisparkle had fetched in Mr. Tartar, and that Mr. Tartar—“who is waiting now, in case you want him,” added Rosa, with a half look back, and in not a little confusion between the inside of the state-cabin and out—had declared his readiness to act as she had suggested, and to enter on his task that very day.

“I thank him from my heart,” said Helena. “Pray tell him so.”

Again not a little confused between the Flower-garden and the Cabin, Rosa dipped in with her message, and dipped out again with more assurances from Mr. Tartar, and stood wavering in a divided state between Helena and him, which proved that confusion is not always necessarily awkward, but may sometimes present a very pleasant appearance.

“And now, darling,” said Helena, “we will be mindful of the caution that has restricted us to this interview for the present, and will part. I hear Neville moving too. Are you going back?”

“To Miss Twinkleton’s?” asked Rosa.

“Yes.”

“O, I could never go there any more. I couldn’t indeed, after that dreadful interview!” said Rosa.

“Then where are you going, pretty one?”

“Now I come to think of it, I don’t know,” said Rosa. “I have settled nothing at all yet, but my guardian will take care of me. Don’t be uneasy, dear. I shall be sure to be somewhere.”

(It did seem likely.)

“And I shall hear of my Rosebud from Mr. Tartar?” inquired Helena.

“Yes, I suppose so; from—” Rosa looked back again in a flutter, instead of supplying the name. “But tell me one thing before we part, dearest Helena. Tell me—that you are sure, sure, sure, I couldn’t help it.”

“Help it, love?”

“Help making him malicious and revengeful. I couldn’t hold any terms with him, could I?”

“You know how I love you, darling,” answered Helena, with indignation; “but I would sooner see you dead at his wicked feet.”

“That’s a great comfort to me! And you will tell your poor brother so, won’t you? And you will give him my remembrance and my sympathy? And you will ask him not to hate me?”

With a mournful shake of the head, as if that would be quite a superfluous entreaty, Helena lovingly kissed her two hands to her friend, and her friend’s two hands were kissed to her; and then she saw a third hand (a brown one) appear among the flowers and leaves, and help her friend out of sight.

The refection that Mr. Tartar produced in the Admiral’s Cabin by merely touching the spring knob of a locker and the handle of a drawer, was a dazzling enchanted repast. Wonderful macaroons, glittering liqueurs, magically-preserved tropical spices, and jellies of celestial tropical fruits, displayed themselves profusely at an instant’s notice. But Mr. Tartar could not make time stand still; and time, with his hard-hearted fleetness, strode on so fast, that Rosa was obliged to come