The Mystery of Edwin Drood (68 page)

 

  “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.

 

  “I want to see a ruddier touch here,
Neville,” he said, indicating his own healthy cheek by way of pattern. “I want
more sun to shine upon you.”

 

  Neville drooped suddenly, as he replied in
a lowered voice: “I am not hardy enough for that, yet. I may become so, but I
cannot bear it yet. If you had gone through those Cloisterham streets as I did;
if you had seen, as I did, those averted eyes, and the better sort of people
silently giving me too much room to pass, that I might not touch them or come
near them, you wouldn't think it quite unreasonable that I cannot go about in
the daylight.”

 

  “My poor fellow!” said the Minor Canon,
in a tone so purely sympathetic that the young man caught his hand, “I never
said it was unreasonable; never thought so. But I should like you to do it.”

 

  “And that would give me the strongest
motive to do it. But I cannot yet. I cannot persuade myself that the eyes of
even the stream of strangers I pass in this vast city look at me without
suspicion. I feel marked and tainted, even when I go out—as I do only—at night.
But the darkness covers me then, and I take courage from it.”

 

  Mr. Crisparkle laid a hand upon his
shoulder, and stood looking down at him.

 

  “If I could have changed my name,” said
Neville, “I would have done so. But as you wisely pointed out to me, I can't do
that, for it would look like guilt. If I could have gone to some distant place,
I might have found relief in that, but the thing is not to be thought of, for
the same reason. Hiding and escaping would be the construction in either case.
It seems a little hard to be so tied to a stake, and innocent; but I don't
complain.”

 

  “And you must expect no miracle to help
you, Neville,” said Mr. Crisparkle, compassionately.

 

  “No, sir, I know that. The ordinary
fulness of time and circumstances is all I have to trust to.”

 

  “It will right you at last, Neville.”

 

  “So I believe, and I hope I may live to
know it.”

 

  But perceiving that the despondent mood
into which he was falling cast a shadow on the Minor Canon, and (it may be)
feeling that the broad hand upon his shoulder was not then quite as steady as
its own natural strength had rendered it when it first touched him just now, he
brightened and said:

 

  “Excellent circumstances for study,
anyhow! and you know, Mr. Crisparkle, what need I have of study in all ways.
Not to mention that you have advised me to study for the difficult profession
of the law, specially, and that of course I am guiding myself by the advice of
such a friend and helper. Such a good friend and helper!”

 

  He took the fortifying hand from his
shoulder, and kissed it. Mr. Crisparkle beamed at the books, but not so
brightly as when he had entered.

 

  “I gather from your silence on the
subject that my late guardian is adverse, Mr. Crisparkle?”

 

  The Minor Canon answered: “Your late
guardian is a—a most unreasonable person, and it signifies nothing to any
reasonable person whether he is ADverse, PERverse, or the REverse.”

 

  “Well for me that I have enough with
economy to live upon,” sighed Neville, half wearily and half cheerily, “while I
wait to be learned, and wait to be righted! Else I might have proved the
proverb, that while the grass grows, the steed starves!”

 

  He opened some books as he said it, and
was soon immersed in their interleaved and annotated passages; while Mr.
Crisparkle sat beside him, expounding, correcting, and advising. The Minor
Canon's Cathedral duties made these visits of his difficult to accomplish, and
only to be compassed at intervals of many weeks. But they were as serviceable
as they were precious to Neville Landless.

 

  When they had got through such studies
as they had in hand, they stood leaning on the window-sill, and looking down
upon the patch of garden. “Next week,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “you will cease to
be alone, and will have a devoted companion.”

 

  “And yet,” returned Neville, “this seems
an uncongenial place to bring my sister to.”

 

  “I don't think so,” said the Minor
Canon. “There is duty to be done here; and there are womanly feeling, sense,
and courage wanted here.”

 

  “I meant,” explained Neville, “that the
surroundings are so dull and unwomanly, and that Helena can have no suitable
friend or society here.”

 

  “You have only to remember,” said Mr.
Crisparkle, “that you are here yourself, and that she has to draw you into the
sunlight.”

 

  They were silent for a little while, and
then Mr. Crisparkle began anew.

 

  “When we first spoke together, Neville,
you told me that your sister had risen out of the disadvantages of your past
lives as superior to you as the tower of Cloisterham Cathedral is higher than
the chimneys of Minor Canon Corner. Do you remember that?”

 

  “Right well!”

 

  “I was inclined to think it at the time
an enthusiastic flight. No matter what I think it now. What I would emphasise
is, that under the head of Pride your sister is a great and opportune example
to you.”

 

  “Under ALL heads that are included in
the composition of a fine character, she is.”

 

  “Say so; but take this one. Your sister
has learnt how to govern what is proud in her nature. She can dominate it even
when it is wounded through her sympathy with you. No doubt she has suffered
deeply in those same streets where you suffered deeply. No doubt her life is
darkened by the cloud that darkens yours. But bending her pride into a grand composure
that is not haughty or aggressive, but is a sustained confidence in you and in
the truth, she has won her way through those streets until she passes along
them as high in the general respect as any one who treads them. Every day and
hour of her life since Edwin Drood's disappearance, she has faced malignity and
folly—for you—as only a brave nature well directed can. So it will be with her
to the end. Another and weaker kind of pride might sink broken-hearted, but
never such a pride as hers: which knows no shrinking, and can get no mastery
over her.”

 

  The pale cheek beside him flushed under
the comparison, and the hint implied in it.

 

  “I will do all I can to imitate her,”
said Neville.

 

  “Do so, and be a truly brave man, as she
is a truly brave woman,” answered Mr. Crisparkle stoutly. “It is growing dark.
Will you go my way with me, when it is quite dark? Mind! it is not I who wait
for darkness.”

 

  Neville replied, that he would accompany
him directly. But Mr. Crisparkle said he had a moment's call to make on Mr.
Grewgious as an act of courtesy, and would run across to that gentleman's
chambers, and rejoin Neville on his own doorstep, if he would come down there
to meet him.

 

  Mr. Grewgious, bolt upright as usual,
sat taking his wine in the dusk at his open window; his wineglass and decanter
on the round table at his elbow; himself and his legs on the window-seat; only
one hinge in his whole body, like a bootjack.