The Mystery of Edwin Drood (67 page)

 

  On the suspicions thus urged and supported,
Neville was detained, and re-detained, and the search was pressed on every
hand, and Jasper laboured night and day. But nothing more was found. No
discovery being made, which proved the lost man to be dead, it at length became
necessary to release the person suspected of having made away with him. Neville
was set at large. Then, a consequence ensued which Mr. Crisparkle had too well
foreseen. Neville must leave the place, for the place shunned him and cast him
out. Even had it not been so, the dear old china shepherdess would have worried
herself to death with fears for her son, and with general trepidation
occasioned by their having such an inmate. Even had that not been so, the
authority to which the Minor Canon deferred officially, would have settled the
point.

 

  “Mr. Crisparkle,” quoth the Dean, “human
justice may err, but it must act according to its lights. The days of taking
sanctuary are past. This young man must not take sanctuary with us.”

 

  “You mean that he must leave my house,
sir?”

 

  “Mr. Crisparkle,” returned the prudent
Dean, “I claim no authority in your house. I merely confer with you, on the
painful necessity you find yourself under, of depriving this young man of the
great advantages of your counsel and instruction.”

 

  “It is very lamentable, sir,” Mr.
Crisparkle represented.

 

  “Very much so,” the Dean assented.

 

  “And if it be a necessity—” Mr.
Crisparkle faltered.

 

  “As you unfortunately find it to be,”
returned the Dean.

 

  Mr. Crisparkle bowed submissively: “It
is hard to prejudge his case, sir, but I am sensible that—”

 

  “Just so. Perfectly. As you say, Mr.
Crisparkle,” interposed the Dean, nodding his head smoothly, “there is nothing
else to be done. No doubt, no doubt. There is no alternative, as your good
sense has discovered.”

 

  “I am entirely satisfied of his perfect
innocence, sir, nevertheless.”

 

  “We-e-ell!” said the Dean, in a more
confidential tone, and slightly glancing around him, “I would not say so,
generally. Not generally. Enough of suspicion attaches to him to—no, I think I
would not say so, generally.”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle bowed again.

 

  “It does not become us, perhaps,”
pursued the Dean, “to be partisans. Not partisans. We clergy keep our hearts
warm and our heads cool, and we hold a judicious middle course.”

 

  “I hope you do not object, sir, to my
having stated in public, emphatically, that he will reappear here, whenever any
new suspicion may be awakened, or any new circumstance may come to light in
this extraordinary matter?”

 

  “Not at all,” returned the Dean. “And
yet, do you know, I don't think,” with a very nice and neat emphasis on those
two words: “I DON'T THINK I would state it emphatically. State it? Ye-e-es! But
emphatically? No-o-o. I THINK not. In point of fact, Mr. Crisparkle, keeping
our hearts warm and our heads cool, we clergy need do nothing emphatically.”

 

  So Minor Canon Row knew Neville Landless
no more; and he went whithersoever he would, or could, with a blight upon his
name and fame.

 

  It was not until then that John Jasper
silently resumed his place in the choir. Haggard and red-eyed, his hopes
plainly had deserted him, his sanguine mood was gone, and all his worst
misgivings had come back. A day or two afterwards, while unrobing, he took his
Diary from a pocket of his coat, turned the leaves, and with an impressive
look, and without one spoken word, handed this entry to Mr. Crisparkle to read:

 

  “My dear boy is murdered. The discovery
of the watch and shirt-pin convinces me that he was murdered that night, and
that his jewellery was taken from him to prevent identification by its means.
All the delusive hopes I had founded on his separation from his betrothed wife,
I give to the winds. They perish before this fatal discovery. I now swear, and
record the oath on this page, That I nevermore will discuss this mystery with
any human creature until I hold the clue to it in my hand. That I never will
relax in my secrecy or in my search. That I will fasten the crime of the murder
of my dear dead boy upon the murderer. And, That I devote myself to his
destruction.”

 

   

 

   

 

  CHAPTER XVII—PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL AND
UNPROFESSIONAL

 

   

 

  FULL half a year had come and gone, and
Mr. Crisparkle sat in a waiting-room in the London chief offices of the Haven
of Philanthropy, until he could have audience of Mr. Honeythunder.

 

  In his college days of athletic exercises,
Mr. Crisparkle had known professors of the Noble Art of fisticuffs, and had
attended two or three of their gloved gatherings. He had now an opportunity of
observing that as to the phrenological formation of the backs of their heads,
the Professing Philanthropists were uncommonly like the Pugilists. In the development
of all those organs which constitute, or attend, a propensity to “pitch into”
your fellowcreatures, the Philanthropists were remarkably favoured. There were
several Professors passing in and out, with exactly the aggressive air upon
them of being ready for a turn-up with any Novice who might happen to be on
hand, that Mr. Crisparkle well remembered in the circles of the Fancy.
Preparations were in progress for a moral little Mill somewhere on the rural
circuit, and other Professors were backing this or that Heavy-Weight as good
for such or such speech-making hits, so very much after the manner of the
sporting publicans, that the intended Resolutions might have been Rounds. In an
official manager of these displays much celebrated for his platform tactics,
Mr. Crisparkle recognised (in a suit of black) the counterpart of a deceased
benefactor of his species, an eminent public character, once known to fame as
Frostyfaced Fogo, who in days of yore superintended the formation of the magic
circle with the ropes and stakes. There were only three conditions of
resemblance wanting between these Professors and those. Firstly, the
Philanthropists were in very bad training: much too fleshy, and presenting,
both in face and figure, a superabundance of what is known to Pugilistic
Experts as Suet Pudding. Secondly, the Philanthropists had not the good temper
of the Pugilists, and used worse language. Thirdly, their fighting code stood
in great need of revision, as empowering them not only to bore their man to the
ropes, but to bore him to the confines of distraction; also to hit him when he
was down, hit him anywhere and anyhow, kick him, stamp upon him, gouge him, and
maul him behind his back without mercy. In these last particulars the
Professors of the Noble Art were much nobler than the Professors of
Philanthropy.

 

  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.