All this did not improve the gritty state of things
in London, or the air that London had acquired in
Rosa’s eyes of waiting for something that never
came. Tired of working, and conversing with
Miss Twinkleton, she suggested working and reading:
to which Miss Twinkleton readily assented, as an
admirable reader, of tried powers. But Rosa
soon made the discovery that Miss Twinkleton didn’t
read fairly. She cut the love-scenes, interpolated
passages in praise of female celibacy, and was guilty
of other glaring pious frauds. As an instance
in point, take the glowing passage: ’Ever
dearest and best adored,—said Edward, clasping
the dear head to his breast, and drawing the silken
hair through his caressing fingers, from which he
suffered it to fall like golden rain,—ever
dearest and best adored, let us fly from the unsympathetic
world and the sterile coldness of the stony-hearted,
to the rich warm Paradise of Trust and Love.’
Miss Twinkleton’s fraudulent version tamely
ran thus: ’Ever engaged to me with the
consent of our parents on both sides, and the approbation
of the silver-haired rector of the district,—said
Edward, respectfully raising to his lips the taper
fingers so skilful in embroidery, tambour, crochet,
and other truly feminine arts,—let me call
on thy papa ere to-morrow’s dawn has sunk into
the west, and propose a suburban establishment, lowly
it may be, but within our means, where he will be
always welcome as an evening guest, and where every
arrangement shall invest economy, and constant interchange
of scholastic acquirements with the attributes of
the ministering angel to domestic bliss.’
As the days crept on and nothing happened, the neighbours
began to say that the pretty girl at Billickin’s,
who looked so wistfully and so much out of the gritty
windows of the drawing-room, seemed to be losing her
spirits. The pretty girl might have lost them
but for the accident of lighting on some books of
voyages and sea-adventure. As a compensation
against their romance, Miss Twinkleton, reading aloud,
made the most of all the latitudes and longitudes,
bearings, winds, currents, offsets, and other statistics
(which she felt to be none the less improving because
they expressed nothing whatever to her); while Rosa,
listening intently, made the most of what was nearest
to her heart. So they both did better than before.
CHAPTER XXIII—THE DAWN AGAIN
Although Mr. Crisparkle and John Jasper met daily
under the Cathedral roof, nothing at any time passed
between them having reference to Edwin Drood, after
the time, more than half a year gone by, when Jasper
mutely showed the Minor Canon the conclusion and the
resolution entered in his Diary. It is not likely
that they ever met, though so often, without the thoughts
of each reverting to the subject. It is not
likely that they ever met, though so often, without
a sensation on the part of each that the other was
a perplexing secret to him. Jasper as the denouncer
and pursuer of Neville Landless, and Mr. Crisparkle
as his consistent advocate and protector, must at
least have stood sufficiently in opposition to have
speculated with keen interest on the steadiness and
next direction of the other’s designs.
But neither ever broached the theme.
Copyrights
The Mystery of Edwin Drood from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
