The Mystery of Edwin Drood
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
half-protesting 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 eye-glass 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