CHAPTER XX.

A FLIGHT

Rosa no sooner came to herself than the whole of the late interview was

before her. It even seemed as if it had pursued her into her

insensibility, and she had not had a moment’s unconsciousness of it.

What to do, she was at a frightened loss to know: the only one clear

thought in her mind was, that she must fly from this terrible man.

But where could she take refuge, and how could she go? She had never

breathed her dread of him to any one but Helena. If she went to Helena,

and told her what had passed, that very act might bring down the

irreparable mischief that he threatened he had the power, and that she

knew he had the will, to do. The more fearful he appeared to her

excited memory and imagination, the more alarming her responsibility

appeared; seeing that a slight mistake on her part, either in action or

delay, might let his malevolence loose on Helena’s brother.

Rosa’s mind throughout the last six months had been stormily confused.

A half-formed, wholly unexpressed suspicion tossed in it, now heaving

itself up, and now sinking into the deep; now gaining palpability, and

now losing it. Jasper’s self-absorption in his nephew when he was

alive, and his unceasing pursuit of the inquiry how he came by his

death, if he were dead, were themes so rife in the place, that no one

appeared able to suspect the possibility of foul play at his hands. She

had asked herself the question, “Am I so wicked in my thoughts as to

conceive a wickedness that others cannot imagine?” Then she had

considered, Did the suspicion come of her previous recoiling from him

before the fact? And if so, was not that a proof of its baselessness?

Then she had reflected, “What motive could he have, according to my

accusation?” She was ashamed to answer in her mind, “The motive of

gaining _me_!” And covered her face, as if the lightest shadow of the

idea of founding murder on such an idle vanity were a crime almost as

great.

She ran over in her mind again, all that he had said by the sun-dial in

the garden. He had persisted in treating the disappearance as murder,

consistently with his whole public course since the finding of the

watch and shirt-pin. If he were afraid of the crime being traced out,

would he not rather encourage the idea of a voluntary disappearance? He

had even declared that if the ties between him and his nephew had been

less strong, he might have swept “even him” away from her side. Was

that like his having really done so? He had spoken of laying his six

months’ labours in the cause of a just vengeance at her feet. Would he

have done that, with that violence of passion, if they were a pretence?

Would he have ranged them with his desolate heart and soul, his wasted

life, his peace and his despair? The very first sacrifice that he

represented himself as making for her, was his fidelity to his dear boy

after death. Surely these facts were strong against a fancy that

scarcely dared to hint itself. And yet he was so terrible a man! In

short, the poor girl (for what could she know of the criminal

intellect, which its own professed students perpetually misread,

because they persist in trying to reconcile it with the average

intellect of average men, instead of identifying it as a horrible

wonder apart) could get by no road to any other conclusion than that he

_was_ a terrible man, and must be fled from.

She had been Helena’s stay and comfort during the whole time. She had

constantly assured her of her full belief in her brother’s innocence,

and of her sympathy with him in his misery. But she had never seen him

since the disappearance, nor had Helena ever spoken one word of his

avowal to Mr. Crisparkle in regard of Rosa, though as a part of the

interest of the case it was well known far and wide. He was Helena’s

unfortunate brother, to her, and nothing more. The assurance she had

given her odious suitor was strictly true, though it would have been

better (she considered now) if she could have restrained herself from

so giving it. Afraid of him as the bright and delicate little creature

was, her spirit swelled at the thought of his knowing it from her own

lips.

But where was she to go? Anywhere beyond his reach, was no reply to the

question. Somewhere must be thought of. She determined to go to her

guardian, and to go immediately. The feeling she had imparted to Helena

on the night of their first confidence, was so strong upon her—the

feeling of not being safe from him, and of the solid walls of the old

convent being powerless to keep out his ghostly following of her—that

no reasoning of her own could calm her terrors. The fascination of

repulsion had been upon her so long, and now culminated so darkly, that

she felt as if he had power to bind her by a spell. Glancing out at

window, even now, as she rose to dress, the sight of the sun-dial on

which he had leaned when he declared himself, turned her cold, and made

her shrink from it, as though he had invested it with some awful

quality from his own nature.

She wrote a hurried note to Miss Twinkleton, saying that she had sudden

reason for wishing to see her guardian promptly, and had gone to him;

also, entreating the good lady not to be uneasy, for all was well with

her. She hurried a few quite useless articles into a very little bag,

left the note in a conspicuous place, and went out, softly closing the

gate after her.

It was the first time she had ever been even in Cloisterham High Street

alone. But knowing all its ways and windings very well, she hurried

straight to the corner from which the omnibus departed. It was, at that

very moment, going off.

“Stop and take me, if you please, Joe. I am obliged to go to London.”

In less than another minute she was on her road to the railway, under

Joe’s protection. Joe waited on her when she got there, put her safely

into the railway carriage, and handed in the very little bag after her,

as though it were some enormous trunk, hundredweights heavy, which she

must on no account endeavour to lift.

“Can you go round when you get back, and tell Miss Twinkleton that you

saw me safely off, Joe?”

“It shall be done, Miss.”

“With my love, please, Joe.”

“Yes, Miss—and I wouldn’t mind having it myself!” But Joe did not

articulate the last clause; only thought it.

Now that she was whirling away for London in real earnest, Rosa was at

leisure to resume the thoughts which her personal hurry had checked.

The indignant thought that his declaration of love soiled her; that she

could only be cleansed from the stain of its impurity by appealing to

the honest and true; supported her for a time against her fears, and

confirmed her in her hasty resolution. But as the evening grew darker

and darker, and the great city impended nearer and nearer, the doubts

usual in such cases began to arise. Whether this was not a wild

proceeding, after all; how Mr. Grewgious might regard it; whether she

should find him at the journey’s end; how she would act if he were

absent; what might become of her, alone, in a place so strange and

crowded; how if she had but waited and taken counsel first; whether, if

she could now go back, she would not do it thankfully; a multitude of

such uneasy speculations disturbed her, more and more as they

accumulated. At length the train came into London over the housetops;

and down below lay the gritty streets with their yet un-needed lamps

a-glow, on a hot, light, summer night.

“Hiram Grewgious, Esquire, Staple Inn, London.” This was all Rosa knew

of her destination; but it was enough to send her rattling away again

in a cab, through deserts of gritty streets, where many people crowded

at the corner of courts and byways to get some air, and where many

other people walked with a miserably monotonous noise of shuffling of

feet on hot paving-stones, and where all the people and all their

surroundings were so gritty and so shabby!

There was music playing here and there, but it did not enliven the

case. No barrel-organ mended the matter, and no big drum beat dull care

away. Like the chapel bells that were also going here and there, they

only seemed to evoke echoes from brick surfaces, and dust from

everything. As to the flat wind-instruments, they seemed to have

cracked their hearts and souls in pining for the country.

Her jingling conveyance stopped at last at a fast-closed gateway, which

appeared to belong to somebody who had gone to bed very early, and was

much afraid of housebreakers; Rosa, discharging her conveyance, timidly

knocked at this gateway, and was let in, very little bag and all, by a

watchman.

“Does Mr. Grewgious live here?”

“Mr. Grewgious lives there, Miss,” said the watchman, pointing further

in.

So Rosa went further in, and, when the clocks were striking ten, stood

on P. J. T.’s doorsteps, wondering what P. J. T. had done with his

street-door.

Guided by the painted name of Mr. Grewgious, she went up-stairs and

softly tapped and tapped several times. But no one answering, and Mr.

Grewgious’s door-handle yielding to her touch, she went in, and saw her

guardian sitting on a window-seat at an open window, with a shaded lamp

placed far from him on a table in a corner.

Rosa drew nearer to him in the twilight of the room. He saw her, and he

said, in an undertone: “Good Heaven!”

Rosa fell upon his neck, with tears, and then he said, returning her

embrace:

“My child, my child! I thought you were your mother!—But what, what,

what,” he added, soothingly, “has happened? My dear, what has brought

you here? Who has brought you here?”

“No one. I came alone.”

“Lord bless me!” ejaculated Mr. Grewgious. “Came alone! Why didn’t you

write to me to come and fetch you?”

“I had no time. I took a sudden resolution. Poor, poor Eddy!”

“Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow!”

“His uncle has made love to me. I cannot bear it,” said Rosa, at once

with a burst of tears, and a stamp of her little foot; “I shudder with

horror of him, and I have come to you to protect me and all of us from

him, if you will?”

“I will,” cried Mr. Grewgious, with a sudden rush of amazing energy.

“Damn him!

‘Confound his politics!

Frustrate his knavish tricks!

On Thee his hopes to fix?

Damn him again!’”

After this most extraordinary outburst, Mr. Grewgious, quite beside

himself, plunged about the room, to all appearance undecided whether he

was in a fit of loyal enthusiasm, or combative denunciation.

He stopped and said, wiping his face: “I beg your pardon, my dear, but

you will be glad to know I feel better. Tell me no more just now, or I

might do it again. You must be refreshed and cheered. What did you take

last? Was it breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, or supper? And what will

you take next? Shall it be breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, or supper?”

The respectful tenderness with which, on one knee before her, he helped

her to remove her hat, and disentangle her pretty hair from it, was

quite a chivalrous sight. Yet who, knowing him only on the surface,

would have expected chivalry—and of the true sort, too; not the

spurious—from Mr. Grewgious?

“Your rest too must be provided for,” he went on; “and you shall have

the prettiest chamber in Furnival’s. Your toilet must be provided for,

and you shall have everything that an unlimited head chambermaid—by

which expression I mean a head chambermaid not limited as to outlay—can

procure. Is that a bag?” he looked hard at it; sooth to say, it

required hard looking at to be seen at all in a dimly lighted room:

“and is it your property, my dear?”

“Yes, sir. I brought it with me.”

“It is not an extensive bag,” said Mr. Grewgious, candidly, “though

admirably calculated to contain a day’s provision for a canary-bird.

Perhaps you brought a canary-bird?”

Rosa smiled and shook her head.

“If you had, he should have been made welcome,” said Mr. Grewgious,

“and I think he would have been pleased to be hung upon a nail outside

and pit himself against our Staple sparrows; whose execution must be

admitted to be not quite equal to their intention. Which is the case

with so many of us! You didn’t say what meal, my dear. Have a nice

jumble of all meals.”

Rosa thanked him, but said she could only take a cup of tea. Mr.

Grewgious, after several times running out, and in again, to mention

such supplementary items as marmalade, eggs, watercresses, salted fish,

and frizzled ham, ran across to Furnival’s without his hat, to give his

various directions. And soon afterwards they were realised in practice,

and the board was spread.

“Lord bless my soul,” cried Mr. Grewgious, putting the lamp upon it,

and taking his seat opposite Rosa; “what a new sensation for a poor old

Angular bachelor, to be sure!”

[Illustration: Mr. Grewgious experiences a new sensation]

Rosa’s expressive little eyebrows asked him what he meant?

“The sensation of having a sweet young presence in the place, that

whitewashes it, paints it, papers it, decorates it with gilding, and

makes it Glorious!” said Mr. Grewgious. “Ah me! Ah me!”

As there was something mournful in his sigh, Rosa, in touching him with

her tea-cup, ventured to touch him with her small hand too.

“Thank you, my dear,” said Mr. Grewgious. “Ahem! Let’s talk!”

“Do you always live here, sir?” asked Rosa.

“Yes, my dear.”

“And always alone?”

“Always alone; except that I have 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 fire-proof,” 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 fire-proof, 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.