The Mystery of Edwin Drood (8 page)

 

  “And what, Ma dear,” inquired the Minor
Canon, giving proof of a wholesome and vigorous appetite, “does the letter
say?”

 

  The pretty old lady, after reading it,
had just laid it down upon the breakfast-cloth. She handed it over to her son.

 

  Now, the old lady was exceedingly proud
of her bright eyes being so clear that she could read writing without
spectacles. Her son was also so proud of the circumstance, and so dutifully
bent on her deriving the utmost possible gratification from it, that he had
invented the pretence that he himself could NOT read writing without
spectacles. Therefore he now assumed a pair, of grave and prodigious
proportions, which not only seriously inconvenienced his nose and his
breakfast, but seriously impeded his perusal of the letter. For, he had the
eyes of a microscope and a telescope combined, when they were unassisted.

 

  “It's from Mr. Honeythunder, of course,”
said the old lady, folding her arms.

 

  “Of course,” assented her son. He then
lamely read on:

 

  “Haven of Philanthropy, Chief Offices,
London, Wednesday.

 

  “DEAR MADAM,

 

  “I write in the—;” In the what's this?
What does he write in?”

 

  “In the chair,” said the old lady.

 

  The Reverend Septimus took off his
spectacles, that he might see her face, as he exclaimed:

 

  “Why, what should he write in?”

 

  “Bless me, bless me, Sept,” returned the
old lady, “you don't see the context! Give it back to me, my dear.”

 

  Glad to get his spectacles off (for they
always made his eyes water), her son obeyed: murmuring that his sight for
reading manuscript got worse and worse daily.

 

  “I write,"” his mother went on,
reading very perspicuously and precisely, “from the chair, to which I shall
probably be confined for some hours.”

 

  Septimus looked at the row of chairs
against the wall, with a halfprotesting and half-appealing countenance.

 

  “We have,"” the old lady read on
with a little extra emphasis, “a meeting of our Convened Chief Composite
Committee of Central and District Philanthropists, at our Head Haven as above;
and it is their unanimous pleasure that I take the chair.”

 

  Septimus breathed more freely, and
muttered: “O! if he comes to THAT, let him,”

 

  “Not to lose a day's post, I take the
opportunity of a long report being read, denouncing a public miscreant—””

 

  “It is a most extraordinary thing,”
interposed the gentle Minor Canon, laying down his knife and fork to rub his
ear in a vexed manner, “that these Philanthropists are always denouncing
somebody. And it is another most extraordinary thing that they are always so
violently flush of miscreants!”

 

  “Denouncing a public miscreant—””—the
old lady resumed, “to get our little affair of business off my mind. I have
spoken with my two wards, Neville and Helena Landless, on the subject of their
defective education, and they give in to the plan proposed; as I should have
taken good care they did, whether they liked it or not.”

 

  “And it is another most extraordinary
thing,” remarked the Minor Canon in the same tone as before, “that these
philanthropists are so given to seizing their fellow-creatures by the scruff of
the neck, and (as one may say) bumping them into the paths of peace. —I beg
your pardon, Ma dear, for interrupting.”

 

  “Therefore, dear Madam, you will please
prepare your son, the Rev. Mr. Septimus, to expect Neville as an inmate to be
read with, on Monday next. On the same day Helena will accompany him to
Cloisterham, to take up her quarters at the Nuns' House, the establishment
recommended by yourself and son jointly. Please likewise to prepare for her
reception and tuition there. The terms in both cases are understood to be
exactly as stated to me in writing by yourself, when I opened a correspondence
with you on this subject, after the honour of being introduced to you at your
sister's house in town here. With compliments to the Rev. Mr. Septimus, I am,
Dear Madam, Your affectionate brother (In Philanthropy), LUKE HONEYTHUNDER.”

 

  “Well, Ma,” said Septimus, after a
little more rubbing of his ear, “we must try it. There can be no doubt that we
have room for an inmate, and that I have time to bestow upon him, and
inclination too. I must confess to feeling rather glad that he is not Mr.
Honeythunder himself. Though that seems wretchedly prejudiced—does it not?—for
I never saw him. Is he a large man, Ma?”

 

  “I should call him a large man, my
dear,” the old lady replied after some hesitation, “but that his voice is so
much larger.”

 

  “Than himself?”

 

  “Than anybody.”

 

  “Hah!” said Septimus. And finished his
breakfast as if the flavour of the Superior Family Souchong, and also of the
ham and toast and eggs, were a little on the wane.

 

  Mrs. Crisparkle's sister, another piece
of Dresden china, and matching her so neatly that they would have made a
delightful pair of ornaments for the two ends of any capacious old-fashioned
chimneypiece, and by right should never have been seen apart, was the childless
wife of a clergyman holding Corporation preferment in London City. Mr.
Honeythunder in his public character of Professor of Philanthropy had come to
know Mrs. Crisparkle during the last re-matching of the china ornaments (in
other words during her last annual visit to her sister), after a public
occasion of a philanthropic nature, when certain devoted orphans of tender
years had been glutted with plum buns, and plump bumptiousness. These were all
the antecedents known in Minor Canon Corner of the coming pupils.

 

  “I am sure you will agree with me, Ma,”
said Mr. Crisparkle, after thinking the matter over, “that the first thing to
be done, is, to put these young people as much at their ease as possible. There
is nothing disinterested in the notion, because we cannot be at our ease with
them unless they are at their ease with us. Now, Jasper's nephew is down here
at present; and like takes to like, and youth takes to youth. He is a cordial
young fellow, and we will have him to meet the brother and sister at dinner.
That's three. We can't think of asking him, without asking Jasper. That's four.
Add Miss Twinkleton and the fairy bride that is to be, and that's six. Add our
two selves, and that's eight. Would eight at a friendly dinner at all put you
out, Ma?”

 

  “Nine would, Sept,” returned the old
lady, visibly nervous.

 

  “My dear Ma, I particularise eight.”

 

  “The exact size of the table and the
room, my dear.”

 

  So it was settled that way: and when Mr.
Crisparkle called with his mother upon Miss Twinkleton, to arrange for the
reception of Miss Helena Landless at the Nuns' House, the two other invitations
having reference to that establishment were proffered and accepted. Miss
Twinkleton did, indeed, glance at the globes, as regretting that they were not
formed to be taken out into society; but became reconciled to leaving them
behind. Instructions were then despatched to the Philanthropist for the
departure and arrival, in good time for dinner, of Mr. Neville and Miss Helena;
and stock for soup became fragrant in the air of Minor Canon Corner.

 

  In those days there was no railway to
Cloisterham, and Mr. Sapsea said there never would be. Mr. Sapsea said more; he
said there never should be. And yet, marvellous to consider, it has come to
pass, in these days, that Express Trains don't think Cloisterham worth stopping
at, but yell and whirl through it on their larger errands, casting the dust off
their wheels as a testimony against its insignificance. Some remote fragment of
Main Line to somewhere else, there was, which was going to ruin the Money
Market if it failed, and Church and State if it succeeded, and (of course), the
Constitution, whether or no; but even that had already so unsettled Cloisterham
traffic, that the traffic, deserting the high road, came sneaking in from an
unprecedented part of the country by a back stable-way, for many years labelled
at the corner: “Beware of the Dog.”

 

  To this ignominious avenue of approach,
Mr. Crisparkle repaired, awaiting the arrival of a short, squat omnibus, with a
disproportionate heap of luggage on the roof—like a little Elephant with
infinitely too much Castle—which was then the daily service between Cloisterham
and external mankind. As this vehicle lumbered up, Mr. Crisparkle could hardly
see anything else of it for a large outside passenger seated on the box, with
his elbows squared, and his hands on his knees, compressing the driver into a
most uncomfortably small compass, and glowering about him with a
strongly-marked face.

 

  “Is this Cloisterham?” demanded the
passenger, in a tremendous voice.

 

  “It is,” replied the driver, rubbing
himself as if he ached, after throwing the reins to the ostler. “And I never
was so glad to see it.”

 

  “Tell your master to make his box-seat
wider, then,” returned the passenger. “Your master is morally bound—and ought
to be legally, under ruinous penalties—to provide for the comfort of his
fellow-man.”

 

  The driver instituted, with the palms of
his hands, a superficial perquisition into the state of his skeleton; which
seemed to make him anxious.

 

  “Have I sat upon you?” asked the
passenger.

 

  “You have,” said the driver, as if he
didn't like it at all.

 

  “Take that card, my friend.”

 

  “I think I won't deprive you on it,”
returned the driver, casting his eyes over it with no great favour, without
taking it. “What's the good of it to me?”

 

  “Be a Member of that Society,” said the
passenger.

 

  “What shall I get by it?” asked the
driver.

 

  “Brotherhood,” returned the passenger,
in a ferocious voice.

 

  “Thankee,” said the driver, very
deliberately, as he got down; “my mother was contented with myself, and so am
I. I don't want no brothers.”

 

  “But you must have them,” replied the
passenger, also descending, “whether you like it or not. I am your brother.”

 

  “ I say!” expostulated the driver,
becoming more chafed in temper, “not too fur! The worm WILL, when—”

 

  But here, Mr. Crisparkle interposed,
remonstrating aside, in a friendly voice: “Joe, Joe, Joe! don't forget
yourself, Joe, my good fellow!” and then, when Joe peaceably touched his hat,
accosting the passenger with: “Mr. Honeythunder?”

 

  “That is my name, sir.”

 

  “My name is Crisparkle.”

 

  “Reverend Mr. Septimus? Glad to see you,
sir. Neville and Helena are inside. Having a little succumbed of late, under
the pressure of my public labours, I thought I would take a mouthful of fresh
air, and come down with them, and return at night. So you are the Reverend Mr.
Septimus, are you?” surveying him on the whole with disappointment, and
twisting a double eyeglass by its ribbon, as if he were roasting it, but not
otherwise using it. “Hah! I expected to see you older, sir.”

 

  “I hope you will,” was the good-humoured
reply.

 

  “Eh?” demanded Mr. Honeythunder.

 

  “Only a poor little joke. Not worth
repeating.”

 

  “Joke? Ay; I never see a joke,” Mr.
Honeythunder frowningly retorted. “A joke is wasted upon me, sir. Where are
they? Helena and Neville, come here! Mr. Crisparkle has come down to meet you.”

 

  An unusually handsome lithe young
fellow, and an unusually handsome lithe girl; much alike; both very dark, and
very rich in colour; she of almost the gipsy type; something untamed about them
both; a certain air upon them of hunter and huntress; yet withal a certain air
of being the objects of the chase, rather than the followers. Slender, supple,
quick of eye and limb; half shy, half defiant; fierce of look; an indefinable
kind of pause coming and going on their whole expression, both of face and
form, which might be equally likened to the pause before a crouch or a bound.
The rough mental notes made in the first five minutes by Mr. Crisparkle would
have read thus, VERBATIM.

 

  He invited Mr. Honeythunder to dinner,
with a troubled mind (for the discomfiture of the dear old china shepherdess
lay heavy on it), and gave his arm to Helena Landless. Both she and her
brother, as they walked all together through the ancient streets, took great delight
in what he pointed out of the Cathedral and the Monastery ruin, and wondered—so
his notes ran on—much as if they were beautiful barbaric captives brought from
some wild tropical dominion. Mr. Honeythunder walked in the middle of the road,
shouldering the natives out of his way, and loudly developing a scheme he had,
for making a raid on all the unemployed persons in the United Kingdom, laying
them every one by the heels in jail, and forcing them, on pain of prompt
extermination, to become philanthropists.

 

  Mrs. Crisparkle had need of her own
share of philanthropy when she beheld this very large and very loud excrescence
on the little party. Always something in the nature of a Boil upon the face of
society, Mr. Honeythunder expanded into an inflammatory Wen in Minor Canon
Corner. Though it was not literally true, as was facetiously charged against
him by public unbelievers, that he called aloud to his fellow-creatures: “Curse
your souls and bodies, come here and be blessed!” still his philanthropy was of
that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to
determine. You were to abolish military force, but you were first to bring all
commanding officers who had done their duty, to trial by court-martial for that
offence, and shoot them. You were to abolish war, but were to make converts by
making war upon them, and charging them with loving war as the apple of their
eye. You were to have no capital punishment, but were first to sweep off the
face of the earth all legislators, jurists, and judges, who were of the contrary
opinion. You were to have universal concord, and were to get it by eliminating
all the people who wouldn't, or conscientiously couldn't, be concordant. You
were to love your brother as yourself, but after an indefinite interval of
maligning him (very much as if you hated him), and calling him all manner of
names. Above all things, you were to do nothing in private, or on your own
account. You were to go to the offices of the Haven of Philanthropy, and put
your name down as a Member and a Professing Philanthropist. Then, you were to
pay up your subscription, get your card of membership and your riband and
medal, and were evermore to live upon a platform, and evermore to say what Mr.
Honeythunder said, and what the Treasurer said, and what the sub-Treasurer
said, and what the Committee said, and what the sub-Committee said, and what
the Secretary said, and what the Vice-Secretary said. And this was usually said
in the unanimouslycarried resolution under hand and seal, to the effect: “That
this assembled Body of Professing Philanthropists views, with indignant scorn
and contempt, not unmixed with utter detestation and loathing abhorrence”—in
short, the baseness of all those who do not belong to it, and pledges itself to
make as many obnoxious statements as possible about them, without being at all
particular as to facts.