The Mystery of Edwin Drood
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. “Bet—ter 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 manœuvres 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,