The Mystery of Edwin Drood (28 page)

 

  Mr. Crisparkle was so completely lost in
musing on these similarities and dissimilarities, at the same time watching the
crowd which came and went by, always, as it seemed, on errands of
antagonistically snatching something from somebody, and never giving anything
to anybody, that his name was called before he heard it. On his at length
responding, he was shown by a miserably shabby and underpaid stipendiary
Philanthropist (who could hardly have done worse if he had taken service with a
declared enemy of the human race) to Mr. Honeythunder's room.

 

  “Sir,” said Mr. Honeythunder, in his
tremendous voice, like a schoolmaster issuing orders to a boy of whom he had a
bad opinion, “sit down.”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle seated himself.

 

  Mr. Honeythunder having signed the
remaining few score of a few thousand circulars, calling upon a corresponding
number of families without means to come forward, stump up instantly, and be
Philanthropists, or go to the Devil, another shabby stipendiary Philanthropist
(highly disinterested, if in earnest) gathered these into a basket and walked
off with them.

 

  “Now, Mr. Crisparkle,” said Mr.
Honeythunder, turning his chair half round towards him when they were alone,
and squaring his arms with his hands on his knees, and his brows knitted, as if
he added, I am going to make short work of YOU: “Now, Mr. Crisparkle, we
entertain different views, you and I, sir, of the sanctity of human life.”

 

  “Do we?” returned the Minor Canon.

 

  “We do, sir?”

 

  “Might I ask you,” said the Minor Canon:
“what are your views on that subject?”

 

  “That human life is a thing to be held
sacred, sir.”

 

  “Might I ask you,” pursued the Minor
Canon as before: “what you suppose to be my views on that subject?”

 

  “By George, sir!” returned the
Philanthropist, squaring his arms still more, as he frowned on Mr. Crisparkle:
“they are best known to yourself.”

 

  “Readily admitted. But you began by
saying that we took different views, you know. Therefore (or you could not say
so) you must have set up some views as mine. Pray, what views HAVE you set up
as mine?”

 

  “Here is a man—and a young man,” said
Mr. Honeythunder, as if that made the matter infinitely worse, and he could
have easily borne the loss of an old one, “swept off the face of the earth by a
deed of violence. What do you call that?”

 

  “Murder,” said the Minor Canon.

 

  “What do you call the doer of that deed,
sir?

 

  “A murderer,” said the Minor Canon.

 

  “I am glad to hear you admit so much, sir,”
retorted Mr. Honeythunder, in his most offensive manner; “and I candidly tell
you that I didn't expect it.” Here he lowered heavily at Mr. Crisparkle again.

 

  “Be so good as to explain what you mean
by those very unjustifiable expressions.”

 

  “I don't sit here, sir,” returned the
Philanthropist, raising his voice to a roar, “to be browbeaten.”

 

  “As the only other person present, no
one can possibly know that better than I do,” returned the Minor Canon very
quietly. “But I interrupt your explanation.”

 

  “Murder!” proceeded Mr. Honeythunder, in
a kind of boisterous reverie, with his platform folding of his arms, and his
platform nod of abhorrent reflection after each short sentiment of a word.
“Bloodshed! Abel! Cain! I hold no terms with Cain. I repudiate with a shudder
the red hand when it is offered me.”

 

  Instead of instantly leaping into his
chair and cheering himself hoarse, as the Brotherhood in public meeting
assembled would infallibly have done on this cue, Mr. Crisparkle merely
reversed the quiet crossing of his legs, and said mildly: “Don't let me
interrupt your explanation—when you begin it.”

 

  “The Commandments say, no murder. NO
murder, sir!” proceeded Mr. Honeythunder, platformally pausing as if he took
Mr. Crisparkle to task for having distinctly asserted that they said: You may
do a little murder, and then leave off.

 

  “And they also say, you shall bear no
false witness,” observed Mr. Crisparkle.

 

  “Enough!” bellowed Mr. Honeythunder,
with a solemnity and severity that would have brought the house down at a meeting,
“E-e-nough! My late wards being now of age, and I being released from a trust
which I cannot contemplate without a thrill of horror, there are the accounts
which you have undertaken to accept on their behalf, and there is a statement
of the balance which you have undertaken to receive, and which you cannot
receive too soon. And let me tell you, sir, I wish that, as a man and a Minor
Canon, you were better employed,” with a nod. “Better employed,” with another
nod. “Better em-ployed!” with another and the three nods added up.

 

  Mr. Crisparkle rose; a little heated in
the face, but with perfect command of himself.

 

  “Mr. Honeythunder,” he said, taking up
the papers referred to: “my being better or worse employed than I am at present
is a matter of taste and opinion. You might think me better employed in
enrolling myself a member of your Society.”

 

  “Ay, indeed, sir!” retorted Mr.
Honeythunder, shaking his head in a threatening manner. “It would have been
better for you if you had done that long ago!”

 

  “I think otherwise.”

 

  “Or,” said Mr. Honeythunder, shaking his
head again, “I might think one of your profession better employed in devoting
himself to the discovery and punishment of guilt than in leaving that duty to
be undertaken by a layman.”

 

  “I may regard my profession from a point
of view which teaches me that its first duty is towards those who are in
necessity and tribulation, who are desolate and oppressed,” said Mr.
Crisparkle. “However, as I have quite clearly satisfied myself that it is no
part of my profession to make professions, I say no more of that. But I owe it
to Mr. Neville, and to Mr. Neville's sister (and in a much lower degree to
myself), to say to you that I KNOW I was in the full possession and
understanding of Mr. Neville's mind and heart at the time of this occurrence;
and that, without in the least colouring or concealing what was to be deplored
in him and required to be corrected, I feel certain that his tale is true.
Feeling that certainty, I befriend him. As long as that certainty shall last, I
will befriend him. And if any consideration could shake me in this resolve, I
should be so ashamed of myself for my meanness, that no man's good opinion—no,
nor no woman's—so gained, could compensate me for the loss of my own.”

 

   

 

  Good fellow! manly fellow! And he was so
modest, too. There was no more self-assertion in the Minor Canon than in the
schoolboy who had stood in the breezy playing-fields keeping a wicket. He was
simply and staunchly true to his duty alike in the large case and in the small.
So all true souls ever are. So every true soul ever was, ever is, and ever will
be. There is nothing little to the really great in spirit.

 

  “Then who do you make out did the deed?”
asked Mr. Honeythunder, turning on him abruptly.

 

  “Heaven forbid,” said Mr. Crisparkle,
“that in my desire to clear one man I should lightly criminate another! I
accuse no one,”

 

  “Tcha!” ejaculated Mr. Honeythunder with
great disgust; for this was by no means the principle on which the
Philanthropic Brotherhood usually proceeded. “And, sir, you are not a
disinterested witness, we must bear in mind.”

 

  “How am I an interested one?” inquired
Mr. Crisparkle, smiling innocently, at a loss to imagine.

 

  “There was a certain stipend, sir, paid
to you for your pupil, which may have warped your judgment a bit,” said Mr.
Honeythunder, coarsely.

 

  “Perhaps I expect to retain it still?”
Mr. Crisparkle returned, enlightened; “do you mean that too?”

 

  “Well, sir,” returned the professional
Philanthropist, getting up and thrusting his hands down into his
trousers-pockets, “I don't go about measuring people for caps. If people find I
have any about me that fit “em, they can put “em on and wear “em, if they like.
That's their look out: not mine.”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle eyed him with a just
indignation, and took him to task thus:

 

  “Mr. Honeythunder, I hoped when I came
in here that I might be under no necessity of commenting on the introduction of
platform manners or platform manoeuvres among the decent forbearances of
private life. But you have given me such a specimen of both, that I should be a
fit subject for both if I remained silent respecting them. They are detestable.”

 

  “They don't suit YOU, I dare say, sir.”

 

  “They are,” repeated Mr. Crisparkle,
without noticing the interruption, “detestable. They violate equally the
justice that should belong to Christians, and the restraints that should belong
to gentlemen. You assume a great crime to have been committed by one whom I,
acquainted with the attendant circumstances, and having numerous reasons on my
side, devoutly believe to be innocent of it. Because I differ from you on that
vital point, what is your platform resource? Instantly to turn upon me,
charging that I have no sense of the enormity of the crime itself, but am its
aider and abettor! So, another time—taking me as representing your opponent in
other cases—you set up a platform credulity; a moved and seconded and
carried-unanimously profession of faith in some ridiculous delusion or mischievous
imposition. I decline to believe it, and you fall back upon your platform
resource of proclaiming that I believe nothing; that because I will not bow
down to a false God of your making, I deny the true God! Another time you make
the platform discovery that War is a calamity, and you propose to abolish it by
a string of twisted resolutions tossed into the air like the tail of a kite. I
do not admit the discovery to be yours in the least, and I have not a grain of
faith in your remedy. Again, your platform resource of representing me as
revelling in the horrors of a battle-field like a fiend incarnate! Another
time, in another of your undiscriminating platform rushes, you would punish the
sober for the drunken. I claim consideration for the comfort, convenience, and
refreshment of the sober; and you presently make platform proclamation that I
have a depraved desire to turn Heaven's creatures into swine and wild beasts!
In all such cases your movers, and your seconders, and your supporters—your
regular Professors of all degrees, run amuck like so many mad Malays;
habitually attributing the lowest and basest motives with the utmost
recklessness (let me call your attention to a recent instance in yourself for
which you should blush), and quoting figures which you know to be as wilfully
onesided as a statement of any complicated account that should be all Creditor
side and no Debtor, or all Debtor side and no Creditor. Therefore it is, Mr.
Honeythunder, that I consider the platform a sufficiently bad example and a
sufficiently bad school, even in public life; but hold that, carried into
private life, it becomes an unendurable nuisance.”

 

  “These are strong words, sir!” exclaimed
the Philanthropist.

 

  “I hope so,” said Mr. Crisparkle. “Good
morning.”

 

  He walked out of the Haven at a great
rate, but soon fell into his regular brisk pace, and soon had a smile upon his
face as he went along, wondering what the china shepherdess would have said if
she had seen him pounding Mr. Honeythunder in the late little lively affair.
For Mr. Crisparkle had just enough of harmless vanity to hope that he had hit
hard, and to glow with the belief that he had trimmed the Philanthropic Jacket
pretty handsomely.

 

  He took himself to Staple Inn, but not
to P. J. T. and Mr. Grewgious. Full many a creaking stair he climbed before he
reached some attic rooms in a corner, turned the latch of their unbolted door,
and stood beside the table of Neville Landless.

 

  An air of retreat and solitude hung
about the rooms and about their inhabitant. He was much worn, and so were they.
Their sloping ceilings, cumbrous rusty locks and grates, and heavy wooden bins
and beams, slowly mouldering withal, had a prisonous look, and he had the
haggard face of a prisoner. Yet the sunlight shone in at the ugly
garret-window, which had a penthouse to itself thrust out among the tiles; and
on the cracked and smoke-blackened parapet beyond, some of the deluded sparrows
of the place rheumatically hopped, like little feathered cripples who had left
their crutches in their nests; and there was a play of living leaves at hand
that changed the air, and made an imperfect sort of music in it that would have
been melody in the country.

 

  The rooms were sparely furnished, but
with good store of books. Everything expressed the abode of a poor student.
That Mr. Crisparkle had been either chooser, lender, or donor of the books, or
that he combined the three characters, might have been easily seen in the
friendly beam of his eyes upon them as he entered.

 

  “How goes it, Neville?”

 

  “I am in good heart, Mr. Crisparkle, and
working away.”

 

  “I wish your eyes were not quite so
large and not quite so bright,” said the Minor Canon, slowly releasing the hand
he had taken in his.

 

  “They brighten at the sight of you,”
returned Neville. “If you were to fall away from me, they would soon be dull
enough.”

 

  “Rally, rally!” urged the other, in a
stimulating tone. “Fight for it, Neville!”

 

  “If I were dying, I feel as if a word
from you would rally me; if my pulse had stopped, I feel as if your touch would
make it beat again,” said Neville. “But I HAVE rallied, and am doing famously.”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle turned him with his face
a little more towards the light.