Чарльз Диккенс
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
‘I have.’
‘And what have they made you sensible of?’
Mr. Jasper’s play of eyes between the two holds good throughout the dialogue, to the end.
‘I have told you once before to-night.’
‘You have done nothing of the sort.’
‘I tell you I have. That you take a great deal too much upon yourself.’
‘You added something else to that, if I remember?’
‘Yes, I did say something else.’
‘Say it again.’
‘I said that in the part of the world I come from, you would be called to account for it.’
‘Only there?’ cries Edwin Drood, with a contemptuous laugh. ‘A long way off, I believe? Yes; I see! That part of the world is at a safe distance.’
‘Say here, then,’ rejoins the other, rising in a fury. ‘Say anywhere! Your vanity is intolerable, your conceit is beyond endurance; you talk as if you were some rare and precious prize, instead of a common boaster. You are a common fellow, and a common boaster.’
‘Pooh, pooh,’ says Edwin Drood, equally furious, but more collected; ‘how should you know? You may know a black common fellow, or a black common boaster, when you see him (and no doubt you have a large acquaintance that way); but you are no judge of white men.’
This insulting allusion to his dark skin infuriates Neville to that violent degree, that he flings the dregs of his wine at Edwin Drood, and is in the act of flinging the goblet after it, when his arm is caught in the nick of time by Jasper.
‘Ned, my dear fellow!’ he cries in a loud voice; ‘I entreat you, I command you, to be still!’ There has been a rush of all the three, and a clattering of glasses and overturning of chairs. ‘Mr. Neville, for shame! Give this glass to me. Open your hand, sir. I will have it!’
But Neville throws him off, and pauses for an instant, in a raging passion, with the goblet yet in his uplifted hand. Then, he dashes it down under the grate, with such force that the broken splinters fly out again in a shower; and he leaves the house.
When he first emerges into the night air, nothing around him is still or steady; nothing around him shows like what it is; he only knows that he stands with a bare head in the midst of a blood-red whirl, waiting to be struggled with, and to struggle to the death.
But, nothing happening, and the moon looking down upon him as if he were dead after a fit of wrath, he holds his steam-hammer beating head and heart, and staggers away. Then, he becomes half-conscious of having heard himself bolted and barred out, like a dangerous animal; and thinks what shall he do?
Some wildly passionate ideas of the river dissolve under the spell of the moonlight on the Cathedral and the graves, and the remembrance of his sister, and the thought of what he owes to the good man who has but that very day won his confidence and given him his pledge. He repairs to Minor Canon Corner, and knocks softly at the door.
It is Mr. Crisparkle’s custom to sit up last of the early household, very softly touching his piano and practising his favourite parts in concerted vocal music. The south wind that goes where it lists, by way of Minor Canon Corner on a still night, is not more subdued than Mr. Crisparkle at such times, regardful of the slumbers of the china shepherdess.
His knock is immediately answered by Mr. Crisparkle himself. When he opens the door, candle in hand, his cheerful face falls, and disappointed amazement is in it.
‘Mr. Neville! In this disorder! Where have you been?’
‘I have been to Mr. Jasper’s, sir. With his nephew.’
‘Come in.’
The Minor Canon props him by the elbow with a strong hand (in a strictly scientific manner, worthy of his morning trainings), and turns him into his own little book-room, and shuts the door.’
‘I have begun ill, sir. I have begun dreadfully ill.’
‘Too true. You are not sober, Mr. Neville.’
‘I am afraid I am not, sir, though I can satisfy you at another time that I have had a very little indeed to drink, and that it overcame me in the strangest and most sudden manner.’
‘Mr. Neville, Mr. Neville,’ says the Minor Canon, shaking his head with a sorrowful smile; ‘I have heard that said before.’
‘I think – my mind is much confused, but I think – it is equally true of Mr. Jasper’s nephew, sir.’
‘Very likely,’ is the dry rejoinder.
‘We quarrelled, sir. He insulted me most grossly. He had heated that tigerish blood I told you of to-day, before then.’
‘Mr. Neville,’ rejoins the Minor Canon, mildly, but firmly: ‘I request you not to speak to me with that clenched right hand. Unclench it, if you please.’
‘He goaded me, sir,’ pursues the young man, instantly obeying, ‘beyond my power of endurance. I cannot say whether or no he meant it at first, but he did it. He certainly meant it at last. In short, sir,’ with an irrepressible outburst, ‘in the passion into which he lashed me, I would have cut him down if I could, and I tried to do it.’
‘You have clenched that hand again,’ is Mr. Crisparkle’s quiet commentary.
‘I beg your pardon, sir.’
‘You know your room, for I showed it you before dinner; but I will accompany you to it once more. Your arm, if you please. Softly, for the house is all a-bed.’
Scooping his hand into the same scientific elbow-rest as before, and backing it up with the inert strength of his arm, as skilfully as a Police Expert, and with an apparent repose quite unattainable by novices, Mr. Crisparkle conducts his pupil to the pleasant and orderly old room prepared for him. Arrived there, the young man throws himself into a chair, and, flinging his arms upon his reading-table, rests his head upon them with an air of wretched self-reproach.
The gentle Minor Canon has had it in his thoughts to leave the room, without a word. But looking round at the door, and seeing this dejected figure, he turns back to it, touches it with a mild hand, says ‘Good night!’ A sob is his only acknowledgment. He might have had many a worse; perhaps, could have had few better.
Another soft knock at the outer door attracts his attention as he goes down-stairs. He opens it to Mr. Jasper, holding in his hand the pupil’s hat.
‘We have had an awful scene with him,’ says Jasper, in a low voice.
‘Has it been so bad as that?’
‘Murderous!’
Mr. Crisparkle remonstrates: ‘No, no, no. Do not use such strong words.’
‘He might have laid my dear boy dead at my feet. It is no fault of his, that he did not. But that I was, through the mercy of God, swift and strong with him, he would have cut him down on my hearth.’
The phrase smites home. ‘Ah!’ thinks Mr. Crisparkle, ‘his own words!’
‘Seeing what I have seen to-night, and hearing what I have heard,’ adds Jasper, with great earnestness, ‘I shall never know peace of mind when there is danger of those two coming together, with no one else to interfere. It was horrible. There is something of the tiger in his dark blood.’
‘Ah!’ thinks Mr. Crisparkle, ‘so he said!’
‘You, my dear sir,’ pursues Jasper, taking his hand, ‘even you, have accepted a dangerous charge.’
‘You need have no fear for me, Jasper,’ returns Mr. Crisparkle, with a quiet smile. ‘I have none for myself.’
‘I have none for myself,’ returns Jasper, with an emphasis on the last pronoun, ‘because I am not, nor am I in the way of being, the object of his hostility. But you may be, and my dear boy has been. Good night!’
Mr. Crisparkle goes in, with the hat that has so easily, so almost imperceptibly, acquired the right to be hung up in his hall; hangs it up; and goes thoughtfully to bed.
CHAPTER IX – BIRDS IN THE BUSH
Rosa, having no relation that she knew of in the world, had, from the seventh year of her age, known no home but the Nuns’ House, and no mother but Miss Twinkleton. Her remembrance of her own mother was of a pretty little creature like herself (not much older than herself it seemed to her), who had been brought home in her father’s arms, drowned. The fatal accident had happened at a party of pleasure. Every fold and colour in the pretty summer dress, and even the long wet hair, with scattered petals of ruined flowers still clinging to it, as the dead young figure, in its sad, sad beauty lay upon the bed, were fixed indelibly in Rosa’s recollection. So were the wild despair and the subsequent bowed-down grief of her poor young father, who died broken-hearted on the first anniversary of that hard day.
The betrothal of Rosa grew out of the soothing of his year of mental distress by his fast friend and old college companion, Drood: who likewise had been left a widower in his youth. But he, too, went the silent road into which all earthly pilgrimages merge, some sooner, and some later; and thus the young couple had come to be as they were.
The atmosphere of pity surrounding the little orphan girl when she first came to Cloisterham, had never cleared away. It had taken brighter hues as she grew older, happier, prettier; now it had been golden, now roseate, and now azure; but it had always adorned her with some soft light of its own. The general desire to console and caress her, had caused her to be treated in the beginning as a child much younger than her years; the same desire had caused her to be still petted when she was a child no longer. Who should be her favourite, who should anticipate this or that small present, or do her this or that small service; who should take her home for the holidays; who should write to her the oftenest when they were separated, and whom she would most rejoice to see again when they were reunited; even these gentle rivalries were not without their slight dashes of bitterness in the Nuns’ House. Well for the poor Nuns in their day, if they hid no harder strife under their veils and rosaries!
Thus Rosa had grown to be an amiable, giddy, wilful, winning little creature; spoilt, in the sense of counting upon kindness from all around her; but not in the sense of repaying it with indifference. Possessing an exhaustless well of affection in her nature, its sparkling waters had freshened and brightened the Nuns’ House for years, and yet its depths had never yet been moved: what might betide when that came to pass; what developing changes might fall upon the heedless head, and light heart, then; remained to be seen.
By what means the news that there had been a quarrel between the two young men overnight, involving even some kind of onslaught by Mr. Neville upon Edwin Drood, got into Miss Twinkleton’s establishment before breakfast, it is impossible to say. Whether it was brought in by the birds of the air, or came blowing in with the very air itself, when the casement windows were set open; whether the baker brought it kneaded into the bread, or the milkman delivered it as part of the adulteration of his milk; or the housemaids, beating the dust out of their mats against the gateposts, received it in exchange deposited on the mats by the town atmosphere; certain it is that the news permeated every gable of the old building before Miss Twinkleton was down, and that Miss Twinkleton herself received it through Mrs. Tisher, while yet in the act of dressing; or (as she might have expressed the phrase to a parent or guardian of a mythological turn) of sacrificing to the Graces.
Miss Landless’s brother had thrown a bottle at Mr. Edwin Drood.
Miss Landless’s brother had thrown a knife at Mr. Edwin Drood.
A knife became suggestive of a fork; and Miss Landless’s brother had thrown a fork at Mr. Edwin Drood.
As in the governing precedence of Peter Piper, alleged to have picked the peck of pickled pepper, it was held physically desirable to have evidence of the existence of the peck of pickled pepper which Peter Piper was alleged to have picked; so, in this case, it was held psychologically important to know why Miss Landless’s brother threw a bottle, knife, or fork-or bottle, knife, and fork – for the cook had been given to understand it was all three – at Mr. Edwin Drood?
Well, then. Miss Landless’s brother had said he admired Miss Bud. Mr. Edwin Drood had said to Miss Landless’s brother that he had no business to admire Miss Bud. Miss Landless’s brother had then ‘up’d’ (this was the cook’s exact information) with the bottle, knife, fork, and decanter (the decanter now coolly flying at everybody’s head, without the least introduction), and thrown them all at Mr. Edwin Drood.
Poor little Rosa put a forefinger into each of her ears when these rumours began to circulate, and retired into a corner, beseeching not to be told any more; but Miss Landless, begging permission of Miss Twinkleton to go and speak with her brother, and pretty plainly showing that she would take it if it were not given, struck out the more definite course of going to Mr. Crisparkle’s for accurate intelligence.
When she came back (being first closeted with Miss Twinkleton, in order that anything objectionable in her tidings might be retained by that discreet filter), she imparted to Rosa only, what had taken place; dwelling with a flushed cheek on the provocation her brother had received, but almost limiting it to that last gross affront as crowning ‘some other words between them,’ and, out of consideration for her new friend, passing lightly over the fact that the other words had originated in her lover’s taking things in general so very easily. To Rosa direct, she brought a petition from her brother that she would forgive him; and, having delivered it with sisterly earnestness, made an end of the subject.
It was reserved for Miss Twinkleton to tone down the public mind of the Nuns’ House. That lady, therefore, entering in a stately manner what plebeians might have called the school-room, but what, in the patrician language of the head of the Nuns’ House, was euphuistically, not to say round-aboutedly, denominated ‘the apartment allotted to study,’ and saying with a forensic air, ‘Ladies!’ all rose. Mrs. Tisher at the same time grouped herself behind her chief, as representing Queen Elizabeth’s first historical female friend at Tilbury fort. Miss Twinkleton then proceeded to remark that Rumour, Ladies, had been represented by the bard of Avon – needless were it to mention the immortal Shakespeare, also called the Swan of his native river, not improbably with some reference to the ancient superstition that that bird of graceful plumage (Miss Jennings will please stand upright) sang sweetly on the approach of death, for which we have no ornithological authority, – Rumour, Ladies, had been represented by that bard – hem! —
‘who drew
The celebrated Jew,’
as painted full of tongues. Rumour in Cloisterham (Miss Ferdinand will honour me with her attention) was no exception to the great limner’s portrait of Rumour elsewhere. A slight fracas between two young gentlemen occurring last night within a hundred miles of these peaceful walls (Miss Ferdinand, being apparently incorrigible, will have the kindness to write out this evening, in the original language, the first four fables of our vivacious neighbour, Monsieur La Fontaine) had been very grossly exaggerated by Rumour’s voice. In the first alarm and anxiety arising from our sympathy with a sweet young friend, not wholly to be dissociated from one of the gladiators in the bloodless arena in question (the impropriety of Miss Reynolds’s appearing to stab herself in the hand with a pin, is far too obvious, and too glaringly unladylike, to be pointed out), we descended from our maiden elevation to discuss this uncongenial and this unfit theme. Responsible inquiries having assured us that it was but one of those ‘airy nothings’ pointed at by the Poet (whose name and date of birth Miss Giggles will supply within half an hour), we would now discard the subject, and concentrate our minds upon the grateful labours of the day.
But the subject so survived all day, nevertheless, that Miss Ferdinand got into new trouble by surreptitiously clapping on a paper moustache at dinner-time, and going through the motions of aiming a water-bottle at Miss Giggles, who drew a table-spoon in defence.
Now, Rosa thought of this unlucky quarrel a great deal, and thought of it with an uncomfortable feeling that she was involved in it, as cause, or consequence, or what not, through being in a false position altogether as to her marriage engagement. Never free from such uneasiness when she was with her affianced husband, it was not likely that she would be free from it when they were apart. To-day, too, she was cast in upon herself, and deprived of the relief of talking freely with her new friend, because the quarrel had been with Helena’s brother, and Helena undisguisedly avoided the subject as a delicate and difficult one to herself. At this critical time, of all times, Rosa’s guardian was announced as having come to see her.
Mr. Grewgious had been well selected for his trust, as a man of incorruptible integrity, but certainly for no other appropriate quality discernible on the surface. He was an arid, sandy man, who, if he had been put into a grinding-mill, looked as if he would have ground immediately into high-dried snuff. He had a scanty flat crop of hair, in colour and consistency like some very mangy yellow fur tippet; it was so unlike hair, that it must have been a wig, but for the stupendous improbability of anybody’s voluntarily sporting such a head. The little play of feature that his face presented, was cut deep into it, in a few hard curves that made it more like work; and he had certain notches in his forehead, which looked as though Nature had been about to touch them into sensibility or refinement, when she had impatiently thrown away the chisel, and said: ‘I really cannot be worried to finish off this man; let him go as he is.’
With too great length of throat at his upper end, and too much ankle-bone and heel at his lower; with an awkward and hesitating manner; with a shambling walk; and with what is called a near sight – which perhaps prevented his observing how much white cotton stocking he displayed to the public eye, in contrast with his black suit – Mr. Grewgious still had some strange capacity in him of making on the whole an agreeable impression.
Mr. Grewgious was discovered by his ward, much discomfited by being in Miss Twinkleton’s company in Miss Twinkleton’s own sacred room. Dim forebodings of being examined in something, and not coming well out of it, seemed to oppress the poor gentleman when found in these circumstances.
‘My dear, how do you do? I am glad to see you. My dear, how much improved you are. Permit me to hand you a chair, my dear.’
Miss Twinkleton rose at her little writing-table, saying, with general sweetness, as to the polite Universe: ‘Will you permit me to retire?’
‘By no means, madam, on my account. I beg that you will not move.’
‘I must entreat permission to move,’ returned Miss Twinkleton, repeating the word with a charming grace; ‘but I will not withdraw, since you are so obliging. If I wheel my desk to this corner window, shall I be in the way?’
‘Madam! In the way!’
‘You are very kind. – Rosa, my dear, you will be under no restraint, I am sure.’
Here Mr. Grewgious, left by the fire with Rosa, said again: ‘My dear, how do you do? I am glad to see you, my dear.’ And having waited for her to sit down, sat down himself.
‘My visits,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘are, like those of the angels – not that I compare myself to an angel.’
‘No, sir,’ said Rosa.
‘Not by any means,’ assented Mr. Grewgious. ‘I merely refer to my visits, which are few and far between. The angels are, we know very well, up-stairs.’
Miss Twinkleton looked round with a kind of stiff stare.
‘I refer, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious, laying his hand on Rosa’s, as the possibility thrilled through his frame of his otherwise seeming to take the awful liberty of calling Miss Twinkleton my dear; ‘I refer to the other young ladies.’
Miss Twinkleton resumed her writing.
Mr. Grewgious, with a sense of not having managed his opening point quite as neatly as he might have desired, smoothed his head from back to front as if he had just dived, and were pressing the water out – this smoothing action, however superfluous, was habitual with him – and took a pocket-book from his coat-pocket, and a stump of black-lead pencil from his waistcoat-pocket.
‘I made,’ he said, turning the leaves: ‘I made a guiding memorandum or so – as I usually do, for I have no conversational powers whatever – to which I will, with your permission, my dear, refer. “Well and happy.” Truly. You are well and happy, my dear? You look so.’
‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ answered Rosa.
‘For which,’ said Mr. Grewgious, with a bend of his head towards the corner window, ‘our warmest acknowledgments are due, and I am sure are rendered, to the maternal kindness and the constant care and consideration of the lady whom I have now the honour to see before me.’
This point, again, made but a lame departure from Mr. Grewgious, and never got to its destination; for, Miss Twinkleton, feeling that the courtesies required her to be by this time quite outside the conversation, was biting the end of her pen, and looking upward, as waiting for the descent of an idea from any member of the Celestial Nine who might have one to spare.
Mr. Grewgious smoothed his smooth head again, and then made another reference to his pocket-book; lining out ‘well and happy,’ as disposed of.
‘“Pounds, shillings, and pence,” is my next note. A dry subject for a young lady, but an important subject too. Life is pounds, shillings, and pence. Death is – ’ A sudden recollection of the death of her two parents seemed to stop him, and he said in a softer tone, and evidently inserting the negative as an after-thought: ‘Death is not pounds, shillings, and pence.’
His voice was as hard and dry as himself, and Fancy might have ground it straight, like himself, into high-dried snuff. And yet, through the very limited means of expression that he possessed, he seemed to express kindness. If Nature had but finished him off, kindness might have been recognisable in his face at this moment. But if the notches in his forehead wouldn’t fuse together, and if his face would work and couldn’t play, what could he do, poor man!
‘“Pounds, shillings, 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. Othenwise, 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?’
