The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Charles Dickens (crime books to read txt) 📗

daily company in a gentleman by the name of Bazzard, my clerk.’

‘HE doesn’t live here?’

‘No, he goes his way, after office hours. In fact, he is off duty here, altogether, just at present; and a firm down-stairs, with which I have business relations, lend me a substitute. But it would be extremely difficult to replace Mr. Bazzard.’

‘He must be very fond of you,’ said Rosa.

‘He bears up against it with commendable fortitude if he is,’ returned Mr. Grewgious, after considering the matter. ‘But I doubt if he is. Not particularly so. You see, he is discontented, poor fellow.’

‘Why isn’t he contented?’ was the natural inquiry.

‘Misplaced,’ said Mr. Grewgious, with great mystery.

Rosa’s eyebrows resumed their inquisitive and perplexed expression.

‘So misplaced,’ Mr. Grewgious went on, ‘that I feel constantly apologetic towards him. And he feels (though he doesn’t mention it) that I have reason to be.’

Mr. Grewgious had by this time grown so very mysterious, that Rosa did not know how to go on. While she was thinking about it Mr. Grewgious suddenly jerked out of himself for the second time:

‘Let’s talk. We were speaking of Mr. Bazzard. It’s a secret, and moreover it is Mr. Bazzard’s secret; but the sweet presence at my table makes me so unusually expansive, that I feel I must impart it in inviolable confidence. What do you think Mr. Bazzard has done?’

‘O dear!’ cried Rosa, drawing her chair a little nearer, and her mind reverting to Jasper, ‘nothing dreadful, I hope?’

‘He has written a play,’ said Mr. Grewgious, in a solemn whisper. ‘A tragedy.’

Rosa seemed much relieved.

‘And nobody,’ pursued Mr. Grewgious in the same tone, ‘will hear, on any account whatever, of bringing it out.’

Rosa looked reflective, and nodded her head slowly; as who should say, ‘Such things are, and why are they!’

‘Now, you know,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘I couldn’t write a play.’

‘Not a bad one, sir?’ said Rosa, innocently, with her eyebrows again in action.

‘No. If I was under sentence of decapitation, and was about to be instantly decapitated, and an express arrived with a pardon for the condemned convict Grewgious if he wrote a play, I should be under the necessity of resuming the block, and begging the executioner to proceed to extremities,—meaning,’ said Mr. Grewgious, passing his hand under his chin, ‘the singular number, and this extremity.’

Rosa appeared to consider what she would do if the awkward supposititious case were hers.

‘Consequently,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘Mr. Bazzard would have a sense of my inferiority to himself under any circumstances; but when I am his master, you know, the case is greatly aggravated.’

Mr. Grewgious shook his head seriously, as if he felt the offence to be a little too much, though of his own committing.

‘How came you to be his master, sir?’ asked Rosa.

‘A question that naturally follows,’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘Let’s talk. Mr. Bazzard’s father, being a Norfolk farmer, would have furiously laid about him with a flail, a pitch-fork, and every agricultural implement available for assaulting purposes, on the slightest hint of his son’s having written a play. So the son, bringing to me the father’s rent (which I receive), imparted his secret, and pointed out that he was determined to pursue his genius, and that it would put him in peril of starvation, and that he was not formed for it.’

‘For pursuing his genius, sir?’

‘No, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘for starvation. It was impossible to deny the position, that Mr. Bazzard was not formed to be starved, and Mr. Bazzard then pointed out that it was desirable that I should stand between him and a fate so perfectly unsuited to his formation. In that way Mr. Bazzard became my clerk, and he feels it very much.’

‘I am glad he is grateful,’ said Rosa.

‘I didn’t quite mean that, my dear. I mean, that he feels the degradation. There are some other geniuses that Mr. Bazzard has become acquainted with, who have also written tragedies, which likewise nobody will on any account whatever hear of bringing out, and these choice spirits dedicate their plays to one another in a highly panegyrical manner. Mr. Bazzard has been the subject of one of these dedications. Now, you know, I never had a play dedicated to ME!’

Rosa looked at him as if she would have liked him to be the recipient of a thousand dedications.

‘Which again, naturally, rubs against the grain of Mr. Bazzard,’ said Mr. Grewgious. ‘He is very short with me sometimes, and then I feel that he is meditating, “This blockhead is my master! A fellow who couldn’t write a tragedy on pain of death, and who will never have one dedicated to him with the most complimentary congratulations on the high position he has taken in the eyes of posterity!” Very trying, very trying. However, in giving him directions, I reflect beforehand: “Perhaps he may not like this,” or “He might take it ill if I asked that;” and so we get on very well. Indeed, better than I could have expected.’

‘Is the tragedy named, sir?’ asked Rosa.

‘Strictly between ourselves,’ answered Mr. Grewgious, ‘it has a dreadfully appropriate name. It is called The Thorn of Anxiety. But Mr. Bazzard hopes—and I hope—that it will come out at last.’

It was not hard to divine that Mr. Grewgious had related the Bazzard history thus fully, at least quite as much for the recreation of his ward’s mind from the subject that had driven her there, as for the gratification of his own tendency to be social and communicative.

‘And now, my dear,’ he said at this point, ‘if you are not too tired to tell me more of what passed to-day—but only if you feel quite able—I should be glad to hear it. I may digest it the better, if I sleep on it to-night.’

Rosa, composed now, gave him a faithful account of the interview. Mr. Grewgious often smoothed his head while it was in progress, and begged to be told a second time those parts which bore on Helena and Neville. When Rosa had finished, he sat grave, silent, and meditative for a while.

‘Clearly narrated,’ was his only remark at last, ‘and, I hope, clearly put away here,’ smoothing his head again. ‘See, my dear,’ taking her to the open window, ‘where they live! The dark windows over yonder.’

‘I may go to Helena to-morrow?’ asked Rosa.

‘I should like to sleep on that question to-night,’ he answered doubtfully. ‘But let me take you to your own rest, for you must need it.’

With that Mr. Grewgious helped her to get her hat on again, and hung upon his arm the very little bag that was of no earthly use, and led her by the hand (with a certain stately awkwardness, as if he were going to walk a minuet) across Holborn, and into Furnival’s Inn. At the hotel door, he confided her to the Unlimited head chambermaid, and said that while she went up to see her room, he would remain below, in case she should wish it exchanged for another, or should find that there was anything she wanted.

Rosa’s room was airy, clean, comfortable, almost gay. The Unlimited had laid in everything omitted from the very little bag (that is to say, everything she could possibly need), and Rosa tripped down the great many stairs again, to thank her guardian for his thoughtful and affectionate care of her.

‘Not at all, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious, infinitely gratified; ‘it is I who thank you for your charming confidence and for your charming company. Your breakfast will be provided for you in a neat, compact, and graceful little sitting-room (appropriate to your figure), and I will come to you at ten o’clock in the morning. I hope you don’t feel very strange indeed, in this strange place.’

‘O no, I feel so safe!’

‘Yes, you may be sure that the stairs are fireproof,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘and that any outbreak of the devouring element would be perceived and suppressed by the watchmen.’

‘I did not mean that,’ Rosa replied. ‘I mean, I feel so safe from him.’

‘There is a stout gate of iron bars to keep him out,’ said Mr. Grewgious, smiling; ‘and Furnival’s is fireproof, and specially watched and lighted, and I live over the way!’ In the stoutness of his knight-errantry, he seemed to think the last-named protection all sufficient. In the same spirit he said to the gate-porter as he went out, ‘If some one staying in the hotel should wish to send across the road to me in the night, a crown will be ready for the messenger.’ In the same spirit, he walked up and down outside the iron gate for the best part of an hour, with some solicitude; occasionally looking in between the bars, as if he had laid a dove in a high roost in a cage of lions, and had it on his mind that she might tumble out.