The Mystery of Edwin Drood
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 unanimously-carried 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.
The dinner was a most doleful breakdown. The philanthropist deranged
the symmetry of the table, sat himself in the way of the waiting,
blocked up the thoroughfare, and drove Mr. Tope (who assisted the
parlour-maid) to the verge of distraction by passing plates and dishes
on, over his own head. Nobody could talk to anybody, because he held
forth to everybody at once, as if the company had no individual
existence, but were a Meeting. He impounded the Reverend Mr. Septimus,
as an official personage to be addressed, or kind of human peg to hang
his oratorical hat on, and fell into the exasperating habit, common
among such orators, of impersonating him as a wicked and weak opponent.
Thus, he would ask: “And will you, sir, now stultify yourself by
telling me”—and so forth, when the innocent man had not opened his
lips, nor meant to open them. Or he would say: “Now see, sir, to what a
position you are reduced. I will leave you no escape. After exhausting
all the resources of fraud and falsehood, during years upon years;
after exhibiting a combination of dastardly meanness with ensanguined
daring, such as the world has not often witnessed; you have now the
hypocrisy to bend the knee before the most degraded of mankind, and to
sue and whine and howl for mercy!” Whereat the unfortunate Minor Canon
would look, in part indignant and in part perplexed; while his worthy
mother sat bridling, with tears in her eyes, and the remainder of the
party lapsed into a sort of gelatinous state, in which there was no
flavour or solidity, and very little resistance.
But the gush of philanthropy that burst forth when the departure of Mr.
Honeythunder began to impend, must have been highly gratifying to the
feelings of that distinguished man. His coffee was produced, by the
special activity of Mr. Tope, a full hour before he wanted it. Mr.
Crisparkle sat with his watch in his hand for about the same period,
lest he should overstay his time. The four young people were unanimous
in believing that the Cathedral clock struck three-quarters, when it
actually struck but one. Miss Twinkleton estimated the distance to the
omnibus at five-and-twenty minutes’ walk, when it was really five. The
affectionate kindness of the whole circle hustled him into his
greatcoat, and shoved him out into the moonlight, as if he were a
fugitive traitor with whom they sympathised, and a troop of horse were
at the back door. Mr. Crisparkle and his new charge, who took him to
the omnibus, were so fervent in their apprehensions of his catching
cold, that they shut him up in it instantly and left him, with still
half-an-hour to spare.
CHAPTER VII.
MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE
“I know very little of that gentleman, sir,” said Neville to the Minor
Canon as they turned back.
“You know very little of your guardian?” the Minor Canon repeated.
“Almost nothing!”
“How came he—”
“To _be_ my guardian? I’ll tell you, sir. I suppose you know that we
come (my sister and I) from Ceylon?”
“Indeed, no.”
“I wonder at that. We lived with a stepfather there. Our mother died
there, when we were little children. We have had a wretched existence.
She made him our guardian, and he was a miserly wretch who grudged us
food to eat, and clothes to wear. At his death, he passed us over to
this man; for no better reason that I know of, than his being a friend
or connexion of his, whose name was always in print and catching his
attention.”
“That was lately, I suppose?”
“Quite lately, sir. This stepfather of ours was a cruel brute as well
as a grinding one. It is well he died when he did, or I might have
killed him.”
Mr. Crisparkle stopped short in the moonlight and looked at his hopeful
pupil in consternation.
“I surprise you, sir?” he said, with a quick change to a submissive
manner.
“You shock me; unspeakably shock me.”
The pupil hung his head for a little while, as they walked on, and then
said: “You never saw him beat your sister. I have seen him beat mine,
more than once or twice, and I never forgot it.”
“Nothing,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “not even a beloved and beautiful
sister’s tears under dastardly ill-usage;” he became less severe, in
spite of himself, as his indignation rose; “could justify those
horrible expressions that you used.”
“I am sorry I used them, and especially to you, sir. I beg to recall
them. But permit me to set you right on one point. You spoke of my
sister’s tears. My sister would have let him tear her to pieces, before
she would have let him believe that he could make her shed a tear.”
Mr. Crisparkle reviewed those mental notes of his, and was neither at
all surprised to hear it, nor at all disposed to question it.
“Perhaps you will think it strange, sir,”—this was said in a hesitating
voice—“that I should so soon ask you to allow me to confide in you, and
to have the kindness to hear a word or two from me in my defence?”
“Defence?” Mr. Crisparkle repeated. “You are not on your defence, Mr.
Neville.”
“I think I am, sir. At least I know I should be, if you were better
acquainted with my character.”
“Well, Mr. Neville,” was the rejoinder. “What if you leave me to find
it out?”
“Since it is your pleasure, sir,” answered the young man, with a quick
change in his manner to sullen disappointment: “since it is your
pleasure to check me in my impulse, I must submit.”
There was that in the tone of this short speech which made the
conscientious man to whom it was addressed uneasy. It hinted to him
that he might, without meaning it, turn aside a trustfulness beneficial
to a mis-shapen young mind and perhaps to his own power of directing
and improving it. They were within sight of the lights in his windows,
and he stopped.
“Let us turn back and take a turn or two up and down, Mr. Neville, or
you may not have time to finish what you wish to say to me. You are
hasty in thinking that I mean to check you. Quite the contrary. I
invite your confidence.”
“You have invited it, sir, without knowing it, ever since I came here.
I say ‘ever since,’ as if I had been here a week. The truth is, we came
here (my sister and I) to quarrel with you, and affront you, and break
away again.”
“Really?” said Mr. Crisparkle, at a dead loss for anything else to say.
“You see, we could not know what you were beforehand, sir; could we?”
“Clearly not,” said Mr. Crisparkle.
“And having liked no one else with whom we have ever been brought into
contact, we had made up our minds not to like you.”
“Really?” said Mr. Crisparkle again.
“But we do like you, sir, and we see an unmistakable difference between
your house and your reception of us, and anything else we have ever
known. This—and my happening to be alone with you—and everything around
us seeming so quiet and peaceful after Mr. Honeythunder’s departure—and
Cloisterham being so old and grave and beautiful, with the moon shining
on it—these things inclined me to open my heart.”
“I quite understand, Mr. Neville. And it is salutary to listen to such
influences.”
“In describing my own imperfections, sir, I must ask you not to suppose
that I am describing my sister’s. She has come out of the disadvantages
of our miserable life, as much better than I am, as that Cathedral
tower is higher than those chimneys.”
Mr. Crisparkle in his own breast was not so sure of this.
“I have had, sir, from my earliest remembrance, to suppress a deadly
and bitter hatred. This has made me secret and revengeful. I have been
always tyrannically held down by the strong hand. This has driven me,
in my weakness, to the resource of being false and mean. I have been
stinted of education, liberty, money, dress, the very necessaries of
life, the commonest pleasures of childhood, the commonest possessions
of youth. This has caused me to be utterly wanting in I don’t know what
emotions, or remembrances, or good instincts—I have not even a name for
the thing, you see!—that you have had to work upon in other young men
to whom you have been accustomed.”
“This is evidently true. But this is not encouraging,” thought Mr.
Crisparkle as they turned again.
“And to finish with, sir: I have been brought up among abject and
servile dependents, of an inferior race, and I may easily have
contracted some affinity with them. Sometimes, I don’t know but that it
may be a drop of what is tigerish in their blood.”
“As in the case of that remark just now,” thought Mr. Crisparkle.
“In a last word of reference to my sister, sir (we are twin children),
you ought to know, to her honour, that nothing in our misery ever
subdued her, though it often cowed me. When we ran away from it (we ran
away four times in six years, to be soon brought back and cruelly
punished), the flight was always of her planning and leading. Each time
she dressed as a boy, and showed the daring of a man. I take it we were
seven years old when we first decamped; but I remember, when I lost the
pocket-knife with which she was to have cut her hair short, how
desperately she tried to tear it out, or bite it off. I have nothing
further to say, sir, except that I hope you will bear with me and make
allowance for me.”
“Of that, Mr. Neville, you may be sure,” returned the Minor Canon. “I
don’t preach more than I can help, and I will not repay your confidence
with a sermon. But I entreat you to bear in mind, very seriously and
steadily, that if I am to do you any good, it can only be with your own
assistance; and that you can only render that, efficiently, by seeking
aid from Heaven.”
“I will try to do my part, sir.”
“And, Mr. Neville, I will try to do mine. Here is my hand on it. May
God bless our endeavours!”
They were now standing at his house-door, and a cheerful sound of
voices and laughter was heard within.
“We will take one more turn before going in,” said Mr. Crisparkle, “for