The Mystery Of Edwin Drood / Dickens, Charles

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The Mystery of Edwin Drood

by Charles Dickens

June, 1996  [Etext #564]

**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Mystery of Edwin Drood***
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The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
Scanned and proofed by David Price
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

CHAPTER I - THE DAWN

AN ancient English Cathedral Tower?  How can the ancient English 
Cathedral tower be here!  The well-known massive gray square tower 
of its old Cathedral?  How can that be here!  There is no spike of 
rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of 
the real prospect.  What is the spike that intervenes, and who has 
set it up?  Maybe it is set up by the Sultan's orders for the 
impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers, one by one.  It is so, for 
cymbals clash, and the Sultan goes by to his palace in long 
procession.  Ten thousand scimitars flash in the sunlight, and 
thrice ten thousand dancing-girls strew flowers.  Then, follow 
white elephants caparisoned in countless gorgeous colours, and 
infinite in number and attendants.  Still the Cathedral Tower rises 
in the background, where it cannot be, and still no writhing figure 
is on the grim spike.  Stay!  Is the spike so low a thing as the 
rusty spike on the top of a post of an old bedstead that has 
tumbled all awry?  Some vague period of drowsy laughter must be 
devoted to the consideration of this possibility.

Shaking from head to foot, the man whose scattered consciousness 
has thus fantastically pieced itself together, at length rises, 
supports his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around.  He 
is in the meanest and closest of small rooms.  Through the ragged 
window-curtain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable 
court.  He lies, dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a 
bedstead that has indeed given way under the weight upon it. Lying, 
also dressed and also across the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, 
a Lascar, and a haggard woman.  The two first are in a sleep or 
stupor; the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to kindle it.  And 
as she blows, and shading it with her lean hand, concentrates its 
red spark of light, it serves in the dim morning as a lamp to show 
him what he sees of her.

'Another?' says this woman, in a querulous, rattling whisper.  
'Have another?'

He looks about him, with his hand to his forehead.

'Ye've smoked as many as five since ye come in at midnight,' the 
woman goes on, as she chronically complains.  'Poor me, poor me, my 
head is so bad.  Them two come in after ye.  Ah, poor me, the 
business is slack, is slack!  Few Chinamen about the Docks, and 
fewer Lascars, and no ships coming in, these say!  Here's another 
ready for ye, deary.  Ye'll remember like a good soul, won't ye, 
that the market price is dreffle high just now?  More nor three 
shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful!  And ye'll remember that 
nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t'other side the court; but he 
can't do it as well as me) has the true secret of mixing it?  Ye'll 
pay up accordingly, deary, won't ye?'

She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, occasionally bubbling at 
it, inhales much of its contents.

'O me, O me, my lungs is weak, my lungs is bad!  It's nearly ready 
for ye, deary.  Ah, poor me, poor me, my poor hand shakes like to 
drop off!  I see ye coming-to, and I ses to my poor self, "I'll 
have another ready for him, and he'll bear in mind the market price 
of opium, and pay according."  O my poor head!  I makes my pipes of 
old penny ink-bottles, ye see, deary - this is one - and I fits-in 
a mouthpiece, this way, and I takes my mixter out of this thimble 
with this little horn spoon; and so I fills, deary.  Ah, my poor 
nerves!  I got Heavens-hard drunk for sixteen year afore I took to 
this; but this don't hurt me, not to speak of.  And it takes away 
the hunger as well as wittles, deary.'

She hands him the nearly-emptied pipe, and sinks back, turning over 
on her face.

He rises unsteadily from the bed, lays the pipe upon the hearth-
stone, draws back the ragged curtain, and looks with repugnance at 
his three companions.  He notices that the woman has opium-smoked 
herself into a strange likeness of the Chinaman.  His form of 
cheek, eye, and temple, and his colour, are repeated in her.  Said 
Chinaman convulsively wrestles with one of his many Gods or Devils, 
perhaps, and snarls horribly.  The Lascar laughs and dribbles at 
the mouth.  The hostess is still.

'What visions can SHE have?' the waking man muses, as he turns her 
face towards him, and stands looking down at it.  'Visions of many 
butchers' shops, and public-houses, and much credit?  Of an 
increase of hideous customers, and this horrible bedstead set 
upright again, and this horrible court swept clean?  What can she 
rise to, under any quantity of opium, higher than that! - Eh?'

He bends down his ear, to listen to her mutterings.

'Unintelligible!'

As he watches the spasmodic shoots and darts that break out of her 
face and limbs, like fitful lightning out of a dark sky, some 
contagion in them seizes upon him:  insomuch that he has to 
withdraw himself to a lean arm-chair by the hearth - placed there, 
perhaps, for such emergencies - and to sit in it, holding tight, 
until he has got the better of this unclean spirit of imitation.

Then he comes back, pounces on the Chinaman, and seizing him with 
both hands by the throat, turns him violently on the bed.  The 
Chinaman clutches the aggressive hands, resists, gasps, and 
protests.

'What do you say?'

A watchful pause.

'Unintelligible!'

Slowly loosening his grasp as he listens to the incoherent jargon 
with an attentive frown, he turns to the Lascar and fairly drags 
him forth upon the floor.  As he falls, the Lascar starts into a 
half-risen attitude, glares with his eyes, lashes about him 
fiercely with his arms, and draws a phantom knife.  It then becomes 
apparent that the woman has taken possession of this knife, for 
safety's sake; for, she too starting up, and restraining and 
expostulating with him, the knife is visible in her dress, not in 
his, when they drowsily drop back, side by side.

There has been chattering and clattering enough between them, but 
to no purpose.  When any distinct word has been flung into the air, 
it has had no sense or sequence.  Wherefore 'unintelligible!' is 
again the comment of the watcher, made with some reassured nodding 
of his head, and a gloomy smile.  He then lays certain silver money 
on the table, finds his hat, gropes his way down the broken stairs, 
gives a good morning to some rat-ridden doorkeeper, in bed in a 
black hutch beneath the stairs, and passes out.

That same afternoon, the massive gray square tower of an old 
Cathedral rises before the sight of a jaded traveller.  The bells 
are going for daily vesper service, and he must needs attend it, 
one would say, from his haste to reach the open Cathedral door.  
The choir are getting on their sullied white robes, in a hurry, 
when he arrives among them, gets on his own robe, and falls into 
the procession filing in to service.  Then, the Sacristan locks the 
iron-barred gates that divide the sanctuary from the chancel, and 
all of the procession having scuttled into their places, hide their 
faces; and then the intoned words, 'WHEN THE WICKED MAN - ' rise 
among groins of arches and beams of roof, awakening muttered 
thunder.

CHAPTER II - A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO

WHOSOEVER has observed that sedate and clerical bird, the rook, may 
perhaps have noticed that when he wings his way homeward towards 
nightfall, in a sedate and clerical company, two rooks will 
suddenly detach themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight 
for some distance, and will there poise and linger; conveying to 
mere men the fancy that it is of some occult importance to the body 
politic, that this artful couple should pretend to have renounced 
connection with it.

Similarly, service being over in the old Cathedral with the square 
tower, and the choir scuffling out again, and divers venerable 
persons of rook-like aspect dispersing, two of these latter retrace 
their steps, and walk together in the echoing Close.

Not only is the day waning, but the year.  The low sun is fiery and 
yet cold behind the monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the 
Cathedral wall has showered half its deep-red leaves down on the 
pavement.  There has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder 
goes among the little pools on the cracked, uneven flag-stones, and 
through the giant elm-trees as they shed a gust of tears.  Their 
fallen leaves lie strewn thickly about.  Some of these leaves, in a 
timid rush, seek sanctuary within the low arched Cathedral door; 
but two men coming out resist them, and cast them forth again with 
their feet; this done, one of the two locks the door with a goodly 
key, and the other flits away with a folio music-book.

'Mr. Jasper was that, Tope?'

'Yes, Mr. Dean.'

'He has stayed late.'

'Yes, Mr. Dean.  I have stayed for him, your Reverence.  He has 
been took a little poorly.'

'Say "taken," Tope - to the Dean,' the younger rook interposes in a 
low tone with this touch of correction, as who should say:  'You 
may offer bad grammar to the laity, or the humbler clergy, not to 
the Dean.'

Mr. Tope, Chief Verger and Showman, and accustomed to be high with 
excursion parties, declines with a silent loftiness to perceive 
that any suggestion has been tendered to him.

'And when and how has Mr. Jasper been taken - for, as Mr. 
Crisparkle has remarked, it is better to say taken - taken - ' 
repeats the Dean; 'when and how has Mr. Jasper been Taken - '

'Taken, sir,' Tope deferentially murmurs.

' - Poorly, Tope?'

'Why, sir, Mr. Jasper was that breathed - '

'I wouldn't say "That breathed," Tope,' Mr. Crisparkle interposes 
with the same touch as before.  'Not English - to the Dean.'

'Breathed to that extent,' the Dean (not unflattered by this 
indirect homage) condescendingly remarks, 'would be preferable.'

'Mr. Jasper's breathing was so remarkably short' - thus discreetly 
does Mr. Tope work his way round the sunken rock - 'when he came 
in, that it distressed him mightily to get his notes out:  which 
was perhaps the cause of his having a kind of fit on him after a 
little.  His memory grew DAZED.'  Mr. Tope, with his eyes on the 
Reverend Mr. Crisparkle, shoots this word out, as defying him to 
improve upon it:  'and a dimness and giddiness crept over him as 
strange as ever I saw:  though he didn't seem to mind it 
particularly, himself.  However, a little time and a little water 
brought him out of his DAZE.'  Mr. Tope repeats the word and its 
emphasis, with the air of saying:  'As I HAVE made a success, I'll 
make it again.'

'And Mr. Jasper has gone home quite himself, has he?' asked the 
Dean.

'Your Reverence, he has gone home quite himself.  And I'm glad to 
see he's having his fire kindled up, for it's chilly after the wet, 
and the Cathedral had both a damp feel and a damp touch this 
afternoon, and he was very shivery.'

They all three look towards an old stone gatehouse crossing the 
Close, with an arched thoroughfare passing beneath it.  Through its 
latticed window, a fire shines out upon the fast-darkening scene, 
involving in shadow the pendent masses of ivy and creeper covering 
the building's front.  As the deep Cathedral-bell strikes the hour, 
a ripple of wind goes through these at their distance, like a 
ripple of the solemn sound that hums through tomb and tower, broken 
niche and defaced statue, in the pile close at hand.

'Is Mr. Jasper's nephew with him?' the Dean asks.

'No, sir,' replied the Verger, 'but expected.  There's his own 
solitary shadow betwixt his two windows - the one looking this way, 
and the one looking down into the High Street - drawing his own 
curtains now.'

'Well, well,' says the Dean, with a sprightly air of breaking up 
the little conference, 'I hope Mr. Jasper's heart may not be too 
much set upon his nephew.  Our affections, however laudable, in 
this transitory world, should never master us; we should guide 
them, guide them.  I find I am not disagreeably reminded of my 
dinner, by hearing my dinner-bell.  Perhaps, Mr. Crisparkle, you 
will, before going home, look in on Jasper?'

'Certainly, Mr. Dean.  And tell him that you had the kindness to 
desire to know how he was?'

'Ay; do so, do so.  Certainly.  Wished to know how he was.  By all 
means.  Wished to know how he was.'

With a pleasant air of patronage, the Dean as nearly cocks his 
quaint hat as a Dean in good spirits may, and directs his comely 
gaiters towards the ruddy dining-room of the snug old red-brick 
house where he is at present, 'in residence' with Mrs. Dean and 
Miss Dean.

Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, fair and rosy, and perpetually 
pitching himself head-foremost into all the deep running water in 
the surrounding country; Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, early riser, 
musical, classical, cheerful, kind, good-natured, social, 
contented, and boy-like; Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon and good man, 
lately 'Coach' upon the chief Pagan high roads, but since promoted 
by a patron (grateful for a well-taught son) to his present 
Christian beat; betakes himself to the gatehouse, on his way home 
to his early tea.

'Sorry to hear from Tope that you have not been well, Jasper.'

'O, it was nothing, nothing!'

'You look a little worn.'

'Do I?  O, I don't think so.  What is better, I don't feel so.  
Tope has made too much of it, I suspect.  It's his trade to make 
the most of everything appertaining to the Cathedral, you know.'

'I may tell the Dean - I call expressly from the Dean - that you 
are all right again?'

The reply, with a slight smile, is:  'Certainly; with my respects 
and thanks to the Dean.'

'I'm glad to hear that you expect young Drood.'

'I expect the dear fellow every moment.'

'Ah!  He will do you more good than a doctor, Jasper.'

'More good than a dozen doctors.  For I love him dearly, and I 
don't love doctors, or doctors' stuff.'

Mr. Jasper is a dark man of some six-and-twenty, with thick, 
lustrous, well-arranged black hair and whiskers.  He looks older 
than he is, as dark men often do.  His voice is deep and good, his 
face and figure are good, his manner is a little sombre.  His room 
is a little sombre, and may have had its influence in forming his 
manner.  It is mostly in shadow.  Even when the sun shines 
brilliantly, it seldom touches the grand piano in the recess, or 
the folio music-books on the stand, or the book-shelves on the 
wall, or the unfinished picture of a blooming schoolgirl hanging 
over the chimneypiece; her flowing brown hair tied with a blue 
riband, and her beauty remarkable for a quite childish, almost 
babyish, touch of saucy discontent, comically conscious of itself.  
(There is not the least artistic merit in this picture, which is a 
mere daub; but it is clear that the painter has made it humorously 
- one might almost say, revengefully - like the original.)

'We shall miss you, Jasper, at the "Alternate Musical Wednesdays" 
to-night; but no doubt you are best at home.  Good-night.  God 
bless you!  "Tell me, shep-herds, te-e-ell me; tell me-e-e, have 
you seen (have you seen, have you seen, have you seen) my-y-y Flo-
o-ora-a pass this way!"'  Melodiously good Minor Canon the Reverend 
Septimus Crisparkle thus delivers himself, in musical rhythm, as he 
withdraws his amiable face from the doorway and conveys it down-
stairs.

Sounds of recognition and greeting pass between the Reverend 
Septimus and somebody else, at the stair-foot.  Mr. Jasper listens, 
starts from his chair, and catches a young fellow in his arms, 
exclaiming:

'My dear Edwin!'

'My dear Jack!  So glad to see you!'

'Get off your greatcoat, bright boy, and sit down here in your own 
corner.  Your feet are not wet?  Pull your boots off.  Do pull your 
boots off.'

'My dear Jack, I am as dry as a bone.  Don't moddley-coddley, 
there's a good fellow.  I like anything better than being moddley-
coddleyed.'

With the check upon him of being unsympathetically restrained in a 
genial outburst of enthusiasm, Mr. Jasper stands still, and looks 
on intently at the young fellow, divesting himself of his outward 
coat, hat, gloves, and so forth.  Once for all, a look of 
intentness and intensity - a look of hungry, exacting, watchful, 
and yet devoted affection - is always, now and ever afterwards, on 
the Jasper face whenever the Jasper face is addressed in this 
direction.  And whenever it is so addressed, it is never, on this 
occasion or on any other, dividedly addressed; it is always 
concentrated.

'Now I am right, and now I'll take my corner, Jack.  Any dinner, 
Jack?'

Mr. Jasper opens a door at the upper end of the room, and discloses 
a small inner room pleasantly lighted and prepared, wherein a 
comely dame is in the act of setting dishes on table.

'What a jolly old Jack it is!' cries the young fellow, with a clap 
of his hands.  'Look here, Jack; tell me; whose birthday is it?'

'Not yours, I know,' Mr. Jasper answers, pausing to consider.

'Not mine, you know?  No; not mine, I know!  Pussy's!'

Fixed as the look the young fellow meets, is, there is yet in it 
some strange power of suddenly including the sketch over the 
chimneypiece.

'Pussy's, Jack!  We must drink Many happy returns to her.  Come, 
uncle; take your dutiful and sharp-set nephew in to dinner.'

As the boy (for he is little more) lays a hand on Jasper's 
shoulder, Jasper cordially and gaily lays a hand on HIS shoulder, 
and so Marseillaise-wise they go in to dinner.

'And, Lord! here's Mrs. Tope!' cries the boy.  'Lovelier than 
ever!'

'Never you mind me, Master Edwin,' retorts the Verger's wife; 'I 
can take care of myself.'

'You can't.  You're much too handsome.  Give me a kiss because it's 
Pussy's birthday.'

'I'd Pussy you, young man, if I was Pussy, as you call her,' Mrs. 
Tope blushingly retorts, after being saluted.  'Your uncle's too 
much wrapt up in you, that's where it is.  He makes so much of you, 
that it's my opinion you think you've only to call your Pussys by 
the dozen, to make 'em come.'

'You forget, Mrs. Tope,' Mr. Jasper interposes, taking his place at 
the table with a genial smile, 'and so do you, Ned, that Uncle and 
Nephew are words prohibited here by common consent and express 
agreement.  For what we are going to receive His holy name be 
praised!'

'Done like the Dean!  Witness, Edwin Drood!  Please to carve, Jack, 
for I can't.'

This sally ushers in the dinner.  Little to the present purpose, or 
to any purpose, is said, while it is in course of being disposed 
of.  At length the cloth is drawn, and a dish of walnuts and a 
decanter of rich-coloured sherry are placed upon the table.

'I say!  Tell me, Jack,' the young fellow then flows on:  'do you 
really and truly feel as if the mention of our relationship divided 
us at all?  I don't.'

'Uncles as a rule, Ned, are so much older than their nephews,' is 
the reply, 'that I have that feeling instinctively.'

'As a rule!  Ah, may-be!  But what is a difference in age of half-
a-dozen years or so? And some uncles, in large families, are even 
younger than their nephews.  By George, I wish it was the case with 
us!'

'Why?'

'Because if it was, I'd take the lead with you, Jack, and be as 
wise as Begone, dull Care! that turned a young man gray, and 
Begone, dull Care! that turned an old man to clay. - Halloa, Jack!  
Don't drink.'

'Why not?'

'Asks why not, on Pussy's birthday, and no Happy returns proposed!  
Pussy, Jack, and many of 'em!  Happy returns, I mean.'

Laying an affectionate and laughing touch on the boy's extended 
hand, as if it were at once his giddy head and his light heart, Mr. 
Jasper drinks the toast in silence.

'Hip, hip, hip, and nine times nine, and one to finish with, and 
all that, understood.  Hooray, hooray, hooray! - And now, Jack, 
let's have a little talk about Pussy.  Two pairs of nut-crackers?  
Pass me one, and take the other.'  Crack.  'How's Pussy getting on 
Jack?'

'With her music?  Fairly.'

'What a dreadfully conscientious fellow you are, Jack!  But I know, 
Lord bless you!  Inattentive, isn't she?'

'She can learn anything, if she will.'

'IF she will!  Egad, that's it.  But if she won't?'

Crack! - on Mr. Jasper's part.

'How's she looking, Jack?'

Mr. Jasper's concentrated face again includes the portrait as he 
returns:  'Very like your sketch indeed.'

'I AM a little proud of it,' says the young fellow, glancing up at 
the sketch with complacency, and then shutting one eye, and taking 
a corrected prospect of it over a level bridge of nut-crackers in 
the air:  'Not badly hit off from memory.  But I ought to have 
caught that expression pretty well, for I have seen it often 
enough.'

Crack! - on Edwin Drood's part.

Crack! - on Mr. Jasper's part.

'In point of fact,' the former resumes, after some silent dipping 
among his fragments of walnut with an air of pique, 'I see it 
whenever I go to see Pussy.  If I don't find it on her face, I 
leave it there. - You know I do, Miss Scornful Pert.  Booh!'  With 
a twirl of the nut-crackers at the portrait.

Crack! crack! crack.  Slowly, on Mr. Jasper's part.

Crack.  Sharply on the part of Edwin Drood.

Silence on both sides.

'Have you lost your tongue, Jack?'

'Have you found yours, Ned?'

'No, but really; - isn't it, you know, after all - '

Mr. Jasper lifts his dark eyebrows inquiringly.

'Isn't it unsatisfactory to be cut off from choice in such a 
matter?  There, Jack!  I tell you!  If I could choose, I would 
choose Pussy from all the pretty girls in the world.'

'But you have not got to choose.'

'That's what I complain of.  My dead and gone father and Pussy's 
dead and gone father must needs marry us together by anticipation.  
Why the - Devil, I was going to say, if it had been respectful to 
their memory - couldn't they leave us alone?'

'Tut, tut, dear boy,' Mr. Jasper remonstrates, in a tone of gentle 
deprecation.

'Tut, tut?  Yes, Jack, it's all very well for YOU.  YOU can take it 
easily.  YOUR life is not laid down to scale, and lined and dotted 
out for you, like a surveyor's plan.  YOU have no uncomfortable 
suspicion that you are forced upon anybody, nor has anybody an 
uncomfortable suspicion that she is forced upon you, or that you 
are forced upon her.  YOU can choose for yourself.  Life, for YOU, 
is a plum with the natural bloom on; it hasn't been over-carefully 
wiped off for YOU - '

'Don't stop, dear fellow.  Go on.'

'Can I anyhow have hurt your feelings, Jack?'

'How can you have hurt my feelings?'

'Good Heaven, Jack, you look frightfully ill!  There's a strange 
film come over your eyes.'

Mr. Jasper, with a forced smile, stretches out his right hand, as 
if at once to disarm apprehension and gain time to get better.  
After a while he says faintly:

'I have been taking opium for a pain - an agony - that sometimes 
overcomes me.  The effects of the medicine steal over me like a 
blight or a cloud, and pass.  You see them in the act of passing; 
they will be gone directly.  Look away from me.  They will go all 
the sooner.'

With a scared face the younger man complies by casting his eyes 
downward at the ashes on the hearth.  Not relaxing his own gaze on 
the fire, but rather strengthening it with a fierce, firm grip upon 
his elbow-chair, the elder sits for a few moments rigid, and then, 
with thick drops standing on his forehead, and a sharp catch of his 
breath, becomes as he was before.  On his so subsiding in his 
chair, his nephew gently and assiduously tends him while he quite 
recovers.  When Jasper is restored, he lays a tender hand upon his 
nephew's shoulder, and, in a tone of voice less troubled than the 
purport of his words - indeed with something of raillery or banter 
in  it - thus addresses him:

'There is said to be a hidden skeleton in every house; but you 
thought there was none in mine, dear Ned.'

'Upon my life, Jack, I did think so.  However, when I come to 
consider that even in Pussy's house - if she had one - and in mine 
- if I had one - '

'You were going to say (but that I interrupted you in spite of 
myself) what a quiet life mine is.  No whirl and uproar around me, 
no distracting commerce or calculation, no risk, no change of 
place, myself devoted to the art I pursue, my business my 
pleasure.'

'I really was going to say something of the kind, Jack; but you 
see, you, speaking of yourself, almost necessarily leave out much 
that I should have put in.  For instance:  I should have put in the 
foreground your being so much respected as Lay Precentor, or Lay 
Clerk, or whatever you call it, of this Cathedral; your enjoying 
the reputation of having done such wonders with the choir; your 
choosing your society, and holding such an independent position in 
this queer old place; your gift of teaching (why, even Pussy, who 
don't like being taught, says there never was such a Master as you 
are!), and your connexion.'

'Yes; I saw what you were tending to.  I hate it.'

'Hate it, Jack?'  (Much bewildered.)

'I hate it.  The cramped monotony of my existence grinds me away by 
the grain.  How does our service sound to you?'

'Beautiful!  Quite celestial!'

'It often sounds to me quite devilish.  I am so weary of it.  The 
echoes of my own voice among the arches seem to mock me with my 
daily drudging round.  No wretched monk who droned his life away in 
that gloomy place, before me, can have been more tired of it than I 
am.  He could take for relief (and did take) to carving demons out 
of the stalls and seats and desks.  What shall I do?  Must I take 
to carving them out of my heart?'

'I thought you had so exactly found your niche in life, Jack,' 
Edwin Drood returns, astonished, bending forward in his chair to 
lay a sympathetic hand on Jasper's knee, and looking at him with an 
anxious face.

'I know you thought so.  They all think so.'

'Well, I suppose they do,' says Edwin, meditating aloud.  'Pussy 
thinks so.'

'When did she tell you that?'

'The last time I was here.  You remember when.  Three months ago.'

'How did she phrase it?'

'O, she only said that she had become your pupil, and that you were 
made for your vocation.'

The younger man glances at the portrait.  The elder sees it in him.

'Anyhow, my dear Ned,' Jasper resumes, as he shakes his head with a 
grave cheerfulness, 'I must subdue myself to my vocation:  which is 
much the same thing outwardly.  It's too late to find another now.  
This is a confidence between us.'

'It shall be sacredly preserved, Jack.'

'I have reposed it in you, because - '

'I feel it, I assure you.  Because we are fast friends, and because 
you love and trust me, as I love and trust you.  Both hands, Jack.'

As each stands looking into the other's eyes, and as the uncle 
holds the nephew's hands, the uncle thus proceeds:

'You know now, don't you, that even a poor monotonous chorister and 
grinder of music - in his niche - may be troubled with some stray 
sort of ambition, aspiration, restlessness, dissatisfaction, what 
shall we call it?'

'Yes, dear Jack.'

'And you will remember?'

'My dear Jack, I only ask you, am I likely to forget what you have 
said with so much feeling?'

'Take it as a warning, then.'

In the act of having his hands released, and of moving a step back, 
Edwin pauses for an instant to consider the application of these 
last words.  The instant over, he says, sensibly touched:

'I am afraid I am but a shallow, surface kind of fellow, Jack, and 
that my headpiece is none of the best.  But I needn't say I am 
young; and perhaps I shall not grow worse as I grow older.  At all 
events, I hope I have something impressible within me, which feels 
- deeply feels - the disinterestedness of your painfully laying 
your inner self bare, as a warning to me.'

Mr. Jasper's steadiness of face and figure becomes so marvellous 
that his breathing seems to have stopped.

'I couldn't fail to notice, Jack, that it cost you a great effort, 
and that you were very much moved, and very unlike your usual self.  
Of course I knew that you were extremely fond of me, but I really 
was not prepared for your, as I may say, sacrificing yourself to me 
in that way.'

Mr. Jasper, becoming a breathing man again without the smallest 
stage of transition between the two extreme states, lifts his 
shoulders, laughs, and waves his right arm.

'No; don't put the sentiment away, Jack; please don't; for I am 
very much in earnest.  I have no doubt that that unhealthy state of 
mind which you have so powerfully described is attended with some 
real suffering, and is hard to bear.  But let me reassure you, 
Jack, as to the chances of its overcoming me.  I don't think I am 
in the way of it.  In some few months less than another year, you 
know, I shall carry Pussy off from school as Mrs. Edwin Drood.  I 
shall then go engineering into the East, and Pussy with me.  And 
although we have our little tiffs now, arising out of a certain 
unavoidable flatness that attends our love-making, owing to its end 
being all settled beforehand, still I have no doubt of our getting 
on capitally then, when it's done and can't be helped.  In short, 
Jack, to go back to the old song I was freely quoting at dinner 
(and who knows old songs better than you?), my wife shall dance, 
and I will sing, so merrily pass the day.  Of Pussy's being 
beautiful there cannot be a doubt; - and when you are good besides, 
Little Miss Impudence,' once more apostrophising the portrait, 
'I'll burn your comic likeness, and paint your music-master 
another.'

Mr. Jasper, with his hand to his chin, and with an expression of 
musing benevolence on his face, has attentively watched every 
animated look and gesture attending the delivery of these words.  
He remains in that attitude after they, are spoken, as if in a kind 
of fascination attendant on his strong interest in the youthful 
spirit that he loves so well.  Then he says with a quiet smile:

'You won't be warned, then?'

'No, Jack.'

'You can't be warned, then?'

'No, Jack, not by you.  Besides that I don't really consider myself 
in danger, I don't like your putting yourself in that position.'

'Shall we go and walk in the churchyard?'

'By all means.  You won't mind my slipping out of it for half a 
moment to the Nuns' House, and leaving a parcel there?  Only gloves 
for Pussy; as many pairs of gloves as she is years old to-day.  
Rather poetical, Jack?'

Mr. Jasper, still in the same attitude, murmurs:  '"Nothing half so 
sweet in life," Ned!'

'Here's the parcel in my greatcoat-pocket.  They must be presented 
to-night, or the poetry is gone.  It's against regulations for me 
to call at night, but not to leave a packet.  I am ready, Jack!'

Mr. Jasper dissolves his attitude, and they go out together.

CHAPTER III - THE NUNS' HOUSE

FOR sufficient reasons, which this narrative will itself unfold as 
it advances, a fictitious name must be bestowed upon the old 
Cathedral town.  Let it stand in these pages as Cloisterham.  It 
was once possibly known to the Druids by another name, and 
certainly to the Romans by another, and to the Saxons by another, 
and to the Normans by another; and a name more or less in the 
course of many centuries can be of little moment to its dusty 
chronicles.

An ancient city, Cloisterham, and no meet dwelling-place for any 
one with hankerings after the noisy world.  A monotonous, silent 
city, deriving an earthy flavour throughout from its Cathedral 
crypt, and so abounding in vestiges of monastic graves, that the 
Cloisterham children grow small salad in the dust of abbots and 
abbesses, and make dirt-pies of nuns and friars; while every 
ploughman in its outlying fields renders to once puissant Lord 
Treasurers, Archbishops, Bishops, and such-like, the attention 
which the Ogre in the story-book desired to render to his unbidden 
visitor, and grinds their bones to make his bread.

A drowsy city, Cloisterham, whose inhabitants seem to suppose, with 
an inconsistency more strange than rare, that all its changes lie 
behind it, and that there are no more to come.  A queer moral to 
derive from antiquity, yet older than any traceable antiquity.  So 
silent are the streets of Cloisterham (though prone to echo on the 
smallest provocation), that of a summer-day the sunblinds of its 
shops scarce dare to flap in the south wind; while the sun-browned 
tramps, who pass along and stare, quicken their limp a little, that 
they may the sooner get beyond the confines of its oppressive 
respectability.  This is a feat not difficult of achievement, 
seeing that the streets of Cloisterham city are little more than 
one narrow street by which you get into it and get out of it:  the 
rest being mostly disappointing yards with pumps in them and no 
thoroughfare - exception made of the Cathedral-close, and a paved 
Quaker settlement, in colour and general confirmation very like a 
Quakeress's bonnet, up in a shady corner.

In a word, a city of another and a bygone time is Cloisterham, with 
its hoarse Cathedral-bell, its hoarse rooks hovering about the 
Cathedral tower, its hoarser and less distinct rooks in the stalls 
far beneath.  Fragments of old wall, saint's chapel, chapter-house, 
convent and monastery, have got incongruously or obstructively 
built into many of its houses and gardens, much as kindred jumbled 
notions have become incorporated into many of its citizens' minds.  
All things in it are of the past.  Even its single pawnbroker takes 
in no pledges, nor has he for a long time, but offers vainly an 
unredeemed stock for sale, of which the costlier articles are dim 
and pale old watches apparently in a slow perspiration, tarnished 
sugar-tongs with ineffectual legs, and odd volumes of dismal books.  
The most abundant and the most agreeable evidences of progressing 
life in Cloisterham are the evidences of vegetable life in many 
gardens; even its drooping and despondent little theatre has its 
poor strip of garden, receiving the foul fiend, when he ducks from 
its stage into the infernal regions, among scarlet-beans or oyster-
shells, according to the season of the year.

In the midst of Cloisterham stands the Nuns' House:  a venerable 
brick edifice, whose present appellation is doubtless derived from 
the legend of its conventual uses.  On the trim gate enclosing its 
old courtyard is a resplendent brass plate flashing forth the 
legend:  'Seminary for Young Ladies.  Miss Twinkleton.'  The house-
front is so old and worn, and the brass plate is so shining and 
staring, that the general result has reminded imaginative strangers 
of a battered old beau with a large modern eye-glass stuck in his 
blind eye.

Whether the nuns of yore, being of a submissive rather than a 
stiff-necked generation, habitually bent their contemplative heads 
to avoid collision with the beams in the low ceilings of the many 
chambers of their House; whether they sat in its long low windows 
telling their beads for their mortification, instead of making 
necklaces of them for their adornment; whether they were ever 
walled up alive in odd angles and jutting gables of the building 
for having some ineradicable leaven of busy mother Nature in them 
which has kept the fermenting world alive ever since; these may be 
matters of interest to its haunting ghosts (if any), but constitute 
no item in Miss Twinkleton's half-yearly accounts.  They are 
neither of Miss Twinkleton's inclusive regulars, nor of her extras.  
The lady who undertakes the poetical department of the 
establishment at so much (or so little) a quarter has no pieces in 
her list of recitals bearing on such unprofitable questions.

As, in some cases of drunkenness, and in others of animal 
magnetism, there are two states of consciousness which never clash, 
but each of which pursues its separate course as though it were 
continuous instead of broken (thus, if I hide my watch when I am 
drunk, I must be drunk again before I can remember where), so Miss 
Twinkleton has two distinct and separate phases of being.  Every 
night, the moment the young ladies have retired to rest, does Miss 
Twinkleton smarten up her curls a little, brighten up her eyes a 
little, and become a sprightlier Miss Twinkleton than the young 
ladies have ever seen.  Every night, at the same hour, does Miss 
Twinkleton resume the topics of the previous night, comprehending 
the tenderer scandal of Cloisterham, of which she has no knowledge 
whatever by day, and references to a certain season at Tunbridge 
Wells (airily called by Miss Twinkleton in this state of her 
existence 'The Wells'), notably the season wherein a certain 
finished gentleman (compassionately called by Miss Twinkleton, in 
this stage of her existence, 'Foolish Mr. Porters') revealed a 
homage of the heart, whereof Miss Twinkleton, in her scholastic 
state of existence, is as ignorant as a granite pillar.  Miss 
Twinkleton's companion in both states of existence, and equally 
adaptable to either, is one Mrs. Tisher:  a deferential widow with 
a weak back, a chronic sigh, and a suppressed voice, who looks 
after the young ladies' wardrobes, and leads them to infer that she 
has seen better days.  Perhaps this is the reason why it is an 
article of faith with the servants, handed down from race to race, 
that the departed Tisher was a hairdresser.

The pet pupil of the Nuns' House is Miss Rosa Bud, of course called 
Rosebud; wonderfully pretty, wonderfully childish, wonderfully 
whimsical.  An awkward interest (awkward because romantic) attaches 
to Miss Bud in the minds of the young ladies, on account of its 
being known to them that a husband has been chosen for her by will 
and bequest, and that her guardian is bound down to bestow her on 
that husband when he comes of age.  Miss Twinkleton, in her 
seminarial state of existence, has combated the romantic aspect of 
this destiny by affecting to shake her head over it behind Miss 
Bud's dimpled shoulders, and to brood on the unhappy lot of that 
doomed little victim.  But with no better effect - possibly some 
unfelt touch of foolish Mr. Porters has undermined the endeavour - 
than to evoke from the young ladies an unanimous bedchamber cry of 
'O, what a pretending old thing Miss Twinkleton is, my dear!'

The Nuns' House is never in such a state of flutter as when this 
allotted husband calls to see little Rosebud.  (It is unanimously 
understood by the young ladies that he is lawfully entitled to this 
privilege, and that if Miss Twinkleton disputed it, she would be 
instantly taken up and transported.)  When his ring at the gate-
bell is expected, or takes place, every young lady who can, under 
any pretence, look out of window, looks out of window; while every 
young lady who is 'practising,' practises out of time; and the 
French class becomes so demoralised that the mark goes round as 
briskly as the bottle at a convivial party in the last century.

On the afternoon of the day next after the dinner of two at the 
gatehouse, the bell is rung with the usual fluttering results.

'Mr. Edwin Drood to see Miss Rosa.'

This is the announcement of the parlour-maid in chief.  Miss 
Twinkleton, with an exemplary air of melancholy on her, turns to 
the sacrifice, and says, 'You may go down, my dear.'  Miss Bud goes 
down, followed by all eyes.

Mr. Edwin Drood is waiting in Miss Twinkleton's own parlour:  a 
dainty room, with nothing more directly scholastic in it than a 
terrestrial and a celestial globe.  These expressive machines imply 
(to parents and guardians) that even when Miss Twinkleton retires 
into the bosom of privacy, duty may at any moment compel her to 
become a sort of Wandering Jewess, scouring the earth and soaring 
through the skies in search of knowledge for her pupils.

The last new maid, who has never seen the young gentleman Miss Rosa 
is engaged to, and who is making his acquaintance between the 
hinges of the open door, left open for the purpose, stumbles 
guiltily down the kitchen stairs, as a charming little apparition, 
with its face concealed by a little silk apron thrown over its 
head, glides into the parlour.

'O! IT IS so ridiculous!' says the apparition, stopping and 
shrinking.  'Don't, Eddy!'

'Don't what, Rosa?'

'Don't come any nearer, please.  It IS so absurd.'

'What is absurd, Rosa?'

'The whole thing is.  It IS so absurd to be an engaged orphan and 
it IS so absurd to have the girls and the servants scuttling about 
after one, like mice in the wainscot; and it IS so absurd to be 
called upon!'

The apparition appears to have a thumb in the corner of its mouth 
while making this complaint.

'You give me an affectionate reception, Pussy, I must say.'

'Well, I will in a minute, Eddy, but I can't just yet.  How are 
you?' (very shortly.)

'I am unable to reply that I am much the better for seeing you, 
Pussy, inasmuch as I see nothing of you.'

This second remonstrance brings a dark, bright, pouting eye out 
from a corner of the apron; but it swiftly becomes invisible again, 
as the apparition exclaims:  'O good gracious! you have had half 
your hair cut off!'

'I should have done better to have had my head cut off, I think,' 
says Edwin, rumpling the hair in question, with a fierce glance at 
the looking-glass, and giving an impatient stamp.  'Shall I go?'

'No; you needn't go just yet, Eddy.  The girls would all be asking 
questions why you went.'

'Once for all, Rosa, will you uncover that ridiculous little head 
of yours and give me a welcome?'

The apron is pulled off the childish head, as its wearer replies:  
'You're very welcome, Eddy.  There! I'm sure that's nice.  Shake 
hands.  No, I can't kiss you, because I've got an acidulated drop 
in my mouth.'

'Are you at all glad to see me, Pussy?'

'O, yes, I'm dreadfully glad. - Go and sit down. - Miss 
Twinkleton.'

It is the custom of that excellent lady when these visits occur, to 
appear every three minutes, either in her own person or in that of 
Mrs. Tisher, and lay an offering on the shrine of Propriety by 
affecting to look for some desiderated article.  On the present 
occasion Miss Twinkleton, gracefully gliding in and out, says in 
passing:  'How do you do, Mr. Drood?  Very glad indeed to have the 
pleasure.  Pray excuse me.  Tweezers.  Thank you!'

'I got the gloves last evening, Eddy, and I like them very much.  
They are beauties.'

'Well, that's something,' the affianced replies, half grumbling.  
'The smallest encouragement thankfully received.  And how did you 
pass your birthday, Pussy?'

'Delightfully!  Everybody gave me a present.  And we had a feast.  
And we had a ball at night.'

'A feast and a ball, eh?  These occasions seem to go off tolerably 
well without me, Pussy.'

'De-lightfully!' cries Rosa, in a quite spontaneous manner, and 
without the least pretence of reserve.

'Hah!  And what was the feast?'

'Tarts, oranges, jellies, and shrimps.'

'Any partners at the ball?'

'We danced with one another, of course, sir.  But some of the girls 
made game to be their brothers.  It WAS so droll!'

'Did anybody make game to be - '

'To be you?  O dear yes!' cries Rosa, laughing with great 
enjoyment.  'That was the first thing done.'

'I hope she did it pretty well,' says Edwin rather doubtfully.

'O, it was excellent! - I wouldn't dance with you, you know.'

Edwin scarcely seems to see the force of this; begs to know if he 
may take the liberty to ask why?

'Because I was so tired of you,' returns Rosa.  But she quickly 
adds, and pleadingly too, seeing displeasure in his face:  'Dear 
Eddy, you were just as tired of me, you know.'

'Did I say so, Rosa?'

'Say so!  Do you ever say so?  No, you only showed it.  O, she did 
it so well!' cries Rosa, in a sudden ecstasy with her counterfeit 
betrothed.

'It strikes me that she must be a devilish impudent girl,' says 
Edwin Drood.  'And so, Pussy, you have passed your last birthday in 
this old house.'

'Ah, yes!' Rosa clasps her hands, looks down with a sigh, and 
shakes her head.

'You seem to be sorry, Rosa.'

'I am sorry for the poor old place.  Somehow, I feel as if it would 
miss me, when I am gone so far away, so young.'

'Perhaps we had better stop short, Rosa?'

She looks up at him with a swift bright look; next moment shakes 
her head, sighs, and looks down again.

'That is to say, is it, Pussy, that we are both resigned?'

She nods her head again, and after a short silence, quaintly bursts 
out with:  'You know we must be married, and married from here, 
Eddy, or the poor girls will be so dreadfully disappointed!'

For the moment there is more of compassion, both for her and for 
himself, in her affianced husband's face, than there is of love.  
He checks the look, and asks:  'Shall I take you out for a walk, 
Rosa dear?'

Rosa dear does not seem at all clear on this point, until her face, 
which has been comically reflective, brightens.  'O, yes, Eddy; let 
us go for a walk!  And I tell you what we'll do.  You shall pretend 
that you are engaged to somebody else, and I'll pretend that I am 
not engaged to anybody, and then we shan't quarrel.'

'Do you think that will prevent our falling out, Rosa?'

'I know it will.  Hush!  Pretend to look out of window - Mrs. 
Tisher!'

Through a fortuitous concourse of accidents, the matronly Tisher 
heaves in sight, says, in rustling through the room like the 
legendary ghost of a dowager in silken skirts:  'I hope I see Mr. 
Drood well; though I needn't ask, if I may judge from his 
complexion.  I trust I disturb no one; but there WAS a paper-knife 
- O, thank you, I am sure!' and disappears with her prize.

'One other thing you must do, Eddy, to oblige me,' says Rosebud.  
'The moment we get into the street, you must put me outside, and 
keep close to the house yourself - squeeze and graze yourself 
against it.'

'By all means, Rosa, if you wish it.  Might I ask why?'

'O! because I don't want the girls to see you.'

'It's a fine day; but would you like me to carry an umbrella up?'

'Don't be foolish, sir.  You haven't got polished leather boots 
on,' pouting, with one shoulder raised.

'Perhaps that might escape the notice of the girls, even if they 
did see me,' remarks Edwin, looking down at his boots with a sudden 
distaste for them.

'Nothing escapes their notice, sir.  And then I know what would 
happen.  Some of them would begin reflecting on me by saying (for 
THEY are free) that they never will on any account engage 
themselves to lovers without polished leather boots.  Hark!  Miss 
Twinkleton.  I'll ask for leave.'

That discreet lady being indeed heard without, inquiring of nobody 
in a blandly conversational tone as she advances:  'Eh?  Indeed!  
Are you quite sure you saw my mother-of-pearl button-holder on the 
work-table in my room?' is at once solicited for walking leave, and 
graciously accords it.  And soon the young couple go out of the 
Nuns' House, taking all precautions against the discovery of the so 
vitally defective boots of Mr. Edwin Drood:  precautions, let us 
hope, effective for the peace of Mrs. Edwin Drood that is to be.

'Which way shall we take, Rosa?'

Rosa replies:  'I want to go to the Lumps-of-Delight shop.'

'To the - ?'

'A Turkish sweetmeat, sir.  My gracious me, don't you understand 
anything?  Call yourself an Engineer, and not know THAT?'

'Why, how should I know it, Rosa?'

'Because I am very fond of them.  But O! I forgot what we are to 
pretend.  No, you needn't know anything about them; never mind.'

So he is gloomily borne off to the Lumps-of-Delight shop, where 
Rosa makes her purchase, and, after offering some to him (which he 
rather indignantly declines), begins to partake of it with great 
zest:  previously taking off and rolling up a pair of little pink 
gloves, like rose-leaves, and occasionally putting her little pink 
fingers to her rosy lips, to cleanse them from the Dust of Delight 
that comes off the Lumps.

'Now, be a good-tempered Eddy, and pretend.  And so you are 
engaged?'

'And so I am engaged.'

'Is she nice?'

'Charming.'

'Tall?'

'Immensely tall!'  Rosa being short.

'Must be gawky, I should think,' is Rosa's quiet commentary.

'I beg your pardon; not at all,' contradiction rising in him.

'What is termed a fine woman; a splendid woman.'

'Big nose, no doubt,' is the quiet commentary again.

'Not a little one, certainly,' is the quick reply, (Rosa's being a 
little one.)

'Long pale nose, with a red knob in the middle.  I know the sort of 
nose,' says Rosa, with a satisfied nod, and tranquilly enjoying the 
Lumps.

'You DON'T know the sort of nose, Rosa,' with some warmth; 'because 
it's nothing of the kind.'

'Not a pale nose, Eddy?'

'No.'  Determined not to assent.

'A red nose?  O! I don't like red noses.  However; to be sure she 
can always powder it.'

'She would scorn to powder it,' says Edwin, becoming heated.

'Would she?  What a stupid thing she must be!  Is she stupid in 
everything?'

'No; in nothing.'

After a pause, in which the whimsically wicked face has not been 
unobservant of him, Rosa says:

'And this most sensible of creatures likes the idea of being 
carried off to Egypt; does she, Eddy?'

'Yes.  She takes a sensible interest in triumphs of engineering 
skill:  especially when they are to change the whole condition of 
an undeveloped country.'

'Lor!' says Rosa, shrugging her shoulders, with a little laugh of 
wonder.

'Do you object,' Edwin inquires, with a majestic turn of his eyes 
downward upon the fairy figure:  'do you object, Rosa, to her 
feeling that interest?'

'Object? my dear Eddy!  But really, doesn't she hate boilers and 
things?'

'I can answer for her not being so idiotic as to hate Boilers,' he 
returns with angry emphasis; 'though I cannot answer for her views 
about Things; really not understanding what Things are meant.'

'But don't she hate Arabs, and Turks, and Fellahs, and people?'

'Certainly not.'  Very firmly.

'At least she MUST hate the Pyramids?  Come, Eddy?'

'Why should she be such a little - tall, I mean - goose, as to hate 
the Pyramids, Rosa?'

'Ah! you should hear Miss Twinkleton,' often nodding her head, and 
much enjoying the Lumps, 'bore about them, and then you wouldn't 
ask.  Tiresome old burying-grounds!  Isises, and Ibises, and 
Cheopses, and Pharaohses; who cares about them?  And then there was 
Belzoni, or somebody, dragged out by the legs, half-choked with 
bats and dust.  All the girls say:  Serve him right, and hope it 
hurt him, and wish he had been quite choked.'

The two youthful figures, side by side, but not now arm-in-arm, 
wander discontentedly about the old Close; and each sometimes stops 
and slowly imprints a deeper footstep in the fallen leaves.

'Well!' says Edwin, after a lengthy silence.  'According to custom.  
We can't get on, Rosa.'

Rosa tosses her head, and says she don't want to get on.

'That's a pretty sentiment, Rosa, considering.'

'Considering what?'

'If I say what, you'll go wrong again.'

'YOU'LL go wrong, you mean, Eddy.  Don't be ungenerous.'

'Ungenerous!  I like that!'

'Then I DON'T like that, and so I tell you plainly,' Rosa pouts.

'Now, Rosa, I put it to you.  Who disparaged my profession, my 
destination - '

'You are not going to be buried in the Pyramids, I hope?' she 
interrupts, arching her delicate eyebrows.  'You never said you 
were.  If you are, why haven't you mentioned it to me?  I can't 
find out your plans by instinct.'

'Now, Rosa, you know very well what I mean, my dear.'

'Well then, why did you begin with your detestable red-nosed 
giantesses?  And she would, she would, she would, she would, she 
WOULD powder it!' cries Rosa, in a little burst of comical 
contradictory spleen.

'Somehow or other, I never can come right in these discussions,' 
says Edwin, sighing and becoming resigned.

'How is it possible, sir, that you ever can come right when you're 
always wrong?  And as to Belzoni, I suppose he's dead; - I'm sure I 
hope he is - and how can his legs or his chokes concern you?'

'It is nearly time for your return, Rosa.  We have not had a very 
happy walk, have we?'

'A happy walk?  A detestably unhappy walk, sir.  If I go up-stairs 
the moment I get in and cry till I can't take my dancing lesson, 
you are responsible, mind!'

'Let us be friends, Rosa.'

'Ah!' cries Rosa, shaking her head and bursting into real tears, 'I 
wish we COULD be friends!  It's because we can't be friends, that 
we try one another so.  I am a young little thing, Eddy, to have an 
old heartache; but I really, really have, sometimes.  Don't be 
angry.  I know you have one yourself too often.  We should both of 
us have done better, if What is to be had been left What might have 
been.  I am quite a little serious thing now, and not teasing you.  
Let each of us forbear, this one time, on our own account, and on 
the other's!'

Disarmed by this glimpse of a woman's nature in the spoilt child, 
though for an instant disposed to resent it as seeming to involve 
the enforced infliction of himself upon her, Edwin Drood stands 
watching her as she childishly cries and sobs, with both hands to 
the handkerchief at her eyes, and then - she becoming more 
composed, and indeed beginning in her young inconstancy to laugh at 
herself for having been so moved - leads her to a seat hard by, 
under the elm-trees.

'One clear word of understanding, Pussy dear.  I am not clever out 
of my own line - now I come to think of it, I don't know that I am 
particularly clever in it - but I want to do right.  There is not - 
there may be - I really don't see my way to what I want to say, but 
I must say it before we part - there is not any other young - '

'O no, Eddy!  It's generous of you to ask me; but no, no, no!'

They have come very near to the Cathedral windows, and at this 
moment the organ and the choir sound out sublimely.  As they sit 
listening to the solemn swell, the confidence of last night rises 
in young Edwin Drood's mind, and he thinks how unlike this music is 
to that discordance.

'I fancy I can distinguish Jack's voice,' is his remark in a low 
tone in connection with the train of thought.

'Take me back at once, please,' urges his Affianced, quickly laying 
her light hand upon his wrist.  'They will all be coming out 
directly; let us get away.  O, what a resounding chord!  But don't 
let us stop to listen to it; let us get away!'

Her hurry is over as soon as they have passed out of the Close.  
They go arm-in-arm now, gravely and deliberately enough, along the 
old High-street, to the Nuns' House.  At the gate, the street being 
within sight empty, Edwin bends down his face to Rosebud's.

She remonstrates, laughing, and is a childish schoolgirl again.

'Eddy, no!  I'm too sticky to be kissed.  But give me your hand, 
and I'll blow a kiss into that.'

He does so.  She breathes a light breath into it and asks, 
retaining it and looking into it:-

'Now say, what do you see?'

'See, Rosa?'

'Why, I thought you Egyptian boys could look into a hand and see 
all sorts of phantoms.  Can't you see a happy Future?'

For certain, neither of them sees a happy Present, as the gate 
opens and closes, and one goes in, and the other goes away.

CHAPTER IV - MR. SAPSEA

ACCEPTING the Jackass as the type of self-sufficient stupidity and 
conceit - a custom, perhaps, like some few other customs, more 
conventional than fair - then the purest jackass in Cloisterham is 
Mr. Thomas Sapsea, Auctioneer.

Mr. Sapsea 'dresses at' the Dean; has been bowed to for the Dean, 
in mistake; has even been spoken to in the street as My Lord, under 
the impression that he was the Bishop come down unexpectedly, 
without his chaplain.  Mr. Sapsea is very proud of this, and of his 
voice, and of his style.  He has even (in selling landed property) 
tried the experiment of slightly intoning in his pulpit, to make 
himself more like what he takes to be the genuine ecclesiastical 
article.  So, in ending a Sale by Public Auction, Mr. Sapsea 
finishes off with an air of bestowing a benediction on the 
assembled brokers, which leaves the real Dean - a modest and worthy 
gentleman - far behind.

Mr. Sapsea has many admirers; indeed, the proposition is carried by 
a large local majority, even including non-believers in his wisdom, 
that he is a credit to Cloisterham.  He possesses the great 
qualities of being portentous and dull, and of having a roll in his 
speech, and another roll in his gait; not to mention a certain 
gravely flowing action with his hands, as if he were presently 
going to Confirm the individual with whom he holds discourse.  Much 
nearer sixty years of age than fifty, with a flowing outline of 
stomach, and horizontal creases in his waistcoat; reputed to be 
rich; voting at elections in the strictly respectable interest; 
morally satisfied that nothing but he himself has grown since he 
was a baby; how can dunder-headed Mr. Sapsea be otherwise than a 
credit to Cloisterham, and society?

Mr. Sapsea's premises are in the High-street, over against the 
Nuns' House.  They are of about the period of the Nuns' House, 
irregularly modernised here and there, as steadily deteriorating 
generations found, more and more, that they preferred air and light 
to Fever and the Plague.  Over the doorway is a wooden effigy, 
about half life-size, representing Mr. Sapsea's father, in a curly 
wig and toga, in the act of selling.  The chastity of the idea, and 
the natural appearance of the little finger, hammer, and pulpit, 
have been much admired.

Mr. Sapsea sits in his dull ground-floor sitting-room, giving first 
on his paved back yard; and then on his railed-off garden.  Mr. 
Sapsea has a bottle of port wine on a table before the fire - the 
fire is an early luxury, but pleasant on the cool, chilly autumn 
evening - and is characteristically attended by his portrait, his 
eight-day clock, and his weather-glass.  Characteristically, 
because he would uphold himself against mankind, his weather-glass 
against weather, and his clock against time.

By Mr. Sapsea's side on the table are a writing-desk and writing 
materials.  Glancing at a scrap of manuscript, Mr. Sapsea reads it 
to himself with a lofty air, and then, slowly pacing the room with 
his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, repeats it from 
memory:  so internally, though with much dignity, that the word 
'Ethelinda' is alone audible.

There are three clean wineglasses in a tray on the table.  His 
serving-maid entering, and announcing 'Mr. Jasper is come, sir,' 
Mr. Sapsea waves 'Admit him,' and draws two wineglasses from the 
rank, as being claimed.

'Glad to see you, sir.  I congratulate myself on having the honour 
of receiving you here for the first time.'  Mr. Sapsea does the 
honours of his house in this wise.

'You are very good.  The honour is mine and the self-congratulation 
is mine.'

'You are pleased to say so, sir.  But I do assure you that it is a 
satisfaction to me to receive you in my humble home.  And that is 
what I would not say to everybody.'  Ineffable loftiness on Mr. 
Sapsea's part accompanies these words, as leaving the sentence to 
be understood:  'You will not easily believe that your society can 
be a satisfaction to a man like myself; nevertheless, it is.'

'I have for some time desired to know you, Mr. Sapsea.'

'And I, sir, have long known you by reputation as a man of taste.  
Let me fill your glass.  I will give you, sir,' says Mr. Sapsea, 
filling his own:

'When the French come over,
May we meet them at Dover!'

This was a patriotic toast in Mr. Sapsea's infancy, and he is 
therefore fully convinced of its being appropriate to any 
subsequent era.

'You can scarcely be ignorant, Mr. Sapsea,' observes Jasper, 
watching the auctioneer with a smile as the latter stretches out 
his legs before the fire, 'that you know the world.'

'Well, sir,' is the chuckling reply, 'I think I know something of 
it; something of it.'

'Your reputation for that knowledge has always interested and 
surprised me, and made me wish to know you.  For Cloisterham is a 
little place.  Cooped up in it myself, I know nothing beyond it, 
and feel it to be a very little place.'

'If I have not gone to foreign countries, young man,' Mr. Sapsea 
begins, and then stops:- 'You will excuse me calling you young man, 
Mr. Jasper?  You are much my junior.'

'By all means.'

'If I have not gone to foreign countries, young man, foreign 
countries have come to me.  They have come to me in the way of 
business, and I have improved upon my opportunities.  Put it that I 
take an inventory, or make a catalogue.  I see a French clock.  I 
never saw him before, in my life, but I instantly lay my finger on 
him and say "Paris!"  I see some cups and saucers of Chinese make, 
equally strangers to me personally:  I put my finger on them, then 
and there, and I say "Pekin, Nankin, and Canton."  It is the same 
with Japan, with Egypt, and with bamboo and sandalwood from the 
East Indies; I put my finger on them all.  I have put my finger on 
the North Pole before now, and said "Spear of Esquimaux make, for 
half a pint of pale sherry!"'

'Really?  A very remarkable way, Mr. Sapsea, of acquiring a 
knowledge of men and things.'

'I mention it, sir,' Mr. Sapsea rejoins, with unspeakable 
complacency, 'because, as I say, it don't do to boast of what you 
are; but show how you came to be it, and then you prove it.'

'Most interesting.  We were to speak of the late Mrs. Sapsea.'

'We were, sir.'  Mr. Sapsea fills both glasses, and takes the 
decanter into safe keeping again.  'Before I consult your opinion 
as a man of taste on this little trifle' - holding it up - 'which 
is BUT a trifle, and still has required some thought, sir, some 
little fever of the brow, I ought perhaps to describe the character 
of the late Mrs. Sapsea, now dead three quarters of a year.'

Mr. Jasper, in the act of yawning behind his wineglass, puts down 
that screen and calls up a look of interest.  It is a little 
impaired in its expressiveness by his having a shut-up gape still 
to dispose of, with watering eyes.

'Half a dozen years ago, or so,' Mr. Sapsea proceeds, 'when I had 
enlarged my mind up to - I will not say to what it now is, for that 
might seem to aim at too much, but up to the pitch of wanting 
another mind to be absorbed in it - I cast my eye about me for a 
nuptial partner.  Because, as I say, it is not good for man to be 
alone.'

Mr. Jasper appears to commit this original idea to memory.

'Miss Brobity at that time kept, I will not call it the rival 
establishment to the establishment at the Nuns' House opposite, but 
I will call it the other parallel establishment down town.  The 
world did have it that she showed a passion for attending my sales, 
when they took place on half holidays, or in vacation time.  The 
world did put it about, that she admired my style.  The world did 
notice that as time flowed by, my style became traceable in the 
dictation-exercises of Miss Brobity's pupils.  Young man, a whisper 
even sprang up in obscure malignity, that one ignorant and besotted 
Churl (a parent) so committed himself as to object to it by name.  
But I do not believe this.  For is it likely that any human 
creature in his right senses would so lay himself open to be 
pointed at, by what I call the finger of scorn?'

Mr. Jasper shakes his head.  Not in the least likely.  Mr. Sapsea, 
in a grandiloquent state of absence of mind, seems to refill his 
visitor's glass, which is full already; and does really refill his 
own, which is empty.

'Miss Brobity's Being, young man, was deeply imbued with homage to 
Mind.  She revered Mind, when launched, or, as I say, precipitated, 
on an extensive knowledge of the world.  When I made my proposal, 
she did me the honour to be so overshadowed with a species of Awe, 
as to be able to articulate only the two words, "O Thou!" meaning 
myself.  Her limpid blue eyes were fixed upon me, her semi-
transparent hands were clasped together, pallor overspread her 
aquiline features, and, though encouraged to proceed, she never did 
proceed a word further.  I disposed of the parallel establishment 
by private contract, and we became as nearly one as could be 
expected under the circumstances.  But she never could, and she 
never did, find a phrase satisfactory to her perhaps-too-favourable 
estimate of my intellect.  To the very last (feeble action of 
liver), she addressed me in the same unfinished terms.'

Mr. Jasper has closed his eyes as the auctioneer has deepened his 
voice.  He now abruptly opens them, and says, in unison with the 
deepened voice 'Ah!' - rather as if stopping himself on the extreme 
verge of adding - 'men!'

'I have been since,' says Mr. Sapsea, with his legs stretched out, 
and solemnly enjoying himself with the wine and the fire, 'what you 
behold me; I have been since a solitary mourner; I have been since, 
as I say, wasting my evening conversation on the desert air.  I 
will not say that I have reproached myself; but there have been 
times when I have asked myself the question:  What if her husband 
had been nearer on a level with her?  If she had not had to look up 
quite so high, what might the stimulating action have been upon the 
liver?'

Mr. Jasper says, with an appearance of having fallen into 
dreadfully low spirits, that he 'supposes it was to be.'

'We can only suppose so, sir,' Mr. Sapsea coincides.  'As I say, 
Man proposes, Heaven disposes.  It may or may not be putting the 
same thought in another form; but that is the way I put it.'

Mr. Jasper murmurs assent.

'And now, Mr. Jasper,' resumes the auctioneer, producing his scrap 
of manuscript, 'Mrs. Sapsea's monument having had full time to 
settle and dry, let me take your opinion, as a man of taste, on the 
inscription I have (as I before remarked, not without some little 
fever of the brow) drawn out for it.  Take it in your own hand.  
The setting out of the lines requires to be followed with the eye, 
as well as the contents with the mind.'

Mr. Jasper complying, sees and reads as follows:

ETHELINDA,
Reverential Wife of
MR. THOMAS SAPSEA,
AUCTIONEER, VALUER, ESTATE AGENT, &c.,
OF THIS CITY.
Whose Knowledge of the World,
Though somewhat extensive,
Never brought him acquainted with
A SPIRIT
More capable of
LOOKING UP TO HIM.
STRANGER, PAUSE
And ask thyself the Question,
CANST THOU DO LIKEWISE?
If Not,
WITH A BLUSH RETIRE.

Mr. Sapsea having risen and stationed himself with his back to the 
fire, for the purpose of observing the effect of these lines on the 
countenance of a man of taste, consequently has his face towards 
the door, when his serving-maid, again appearing, announces, 
'Durdles is come, sir!'  He promptly draws forth and fills the 
third wineglass, as being now claimed, and replies, 'Show Durdles 
in.'

'Admirable!' quoth Mr. Jasper, handing back the paper.

'You approve, sir?'

'Impossible not to approve.  Striking, characteristic, and 
complete.'

The auctioneer inclines his head, as one accepting his due and 
giving a receipt; and invites the entering Durdles to take off that 
glass of wine (handing the same), for it will warm him.

Durdles is a stonemason; chiefly in the gravestone, tomb, and 
monument way, and wholly of their colour from head to foot.  No man 
is better known in Cloisterham.  He is the chartered libertine of 
the place.  Fame trumpets him a wonderful workman - which, for 
aught that anybody knows, he may be (as he never works); and a 
wonderful sot - which everybody knows he is.  With the Cathedral 
crypt he is better acquainted than any living authority; it may 
even be than any dead one.  It is said that the intimacy of this 
acquaintance began in his habitually resorting to that secret 
place, to lock-out the Cloisterham boy-populace, and sleep off 
fumes of liquor:  he having ready access to the Cathedral, as 
contractor for rough repairs.  Be this as it may, he does know much 
about it, and, in the demolition of impedimental fragments of wall, 
buttress, and pavement, has seen strange sights.  He often speaks 
of himself in the third person; perhaps, being a little misty as to 
his own identity, when he narrates; perhaps impartially adopting 
the Cloisterham nomenclature in reference to a character of 
acknowledged distinction.  Thus he will say, touching his strange 
sights:  'Durdles come upon the old chap,' in reference to a buried 
magnate of ancient time and high degree, 'by striking right into 
the coffin with his pick.  The old chap gave Durdles a look with 
his open eyes, as much as to say, "Is your name Durdles?  Why, my 
man, I've been waiting for you a devil of a time!"  And then he 
turned to powder.'  With a two-foot rule always in his pocket, and 
a mason's hammer all but always in his hand, Durdles goes 
continually sounding and tapping all about and about the Cathedral; 
and whenever he says to Tope:  'Tope, here's another old 'un in 
here!'  Tope announces it to the Dean as an established discovery.

In a suit of coarse flannel with horn buttons, a yellow neckerchief 
with draggled ends, an old hat more russet-coloured than black, and 
laced boots of the hue of his stony calling, Durdles leads a hazy, 
gipsy sort of life, carrying his dinner about with him in a small 
bundle, and sitting on all manner of tombstones to dine.  This 
dinner of Durdles's has become quite a Cloisterham institution:  
not only because of his never appearing in public without it, but 
because of its having been, on certain renowned occasions, taken 
into custody along with Durdles (as drunk and incapable), and 
exhibited before the Bench of justices at the townhall.  These 
occasions, however, have been few and far apart:  Durdles being as 
seldom drunk as sober.  For the rest, he is an old bachelor, and he 
lives in a little antiquated hole of a house that was never 
finished:  supposed to be built, so far, of stones stolen from the 
city wall.  To this abode there is an approach, ankle-deep in stone 
chips, resembling a petrified grove of tombstones, urns, draperies, 
and broken columns, in all stages of sculpture.  Herein two 
journeymen incessantly chip, while other two journeymen, who face 
each other, incessantly saw stone; dipping as regularly in and out 
of their sheltering sentry-boxes, as if they were mechanical 
figures emblematical of Time and Death.

To Durdles, when he had consumed his glass of port, Mr. Sapsea 
intrusts that precious effort of his Muse.  Durdles unfeelingly 
takes out his two-foot rule, and measures the lines calmly, 
alloying them with stone-grit.

'This is for the monument, is it, Mr. Sapsea?'

'The Inscription.  Yes.'  Mr. Sapsea waits for its effect on a 
common mind.

'It'll come in to a eighth of a inch,' says Durdles.  'Your 
servant, Mr. Jasper.  Hope I see you well.'

'How are you Durdles?'

'I've got a touch of the Tombatism on me, Mr. Jasper, but that I 
must expect.'

'You mean the Rheumatism,' says Sapsea, in a sharp tone.  (He is 
nettled by having his composition so mechanically received.)

'No, I don't.  I mean, Mr. Sapsea, the Tombatism.  It's another 
sort from Rheumatism.  Mr. Jasper knows what Durdles means.  You 
get among them Tombs afore it's well light on a winter morning, and 
keep on, as the Catechism says, a-walking in the same all the days 
of your life, and YOU'LL know what Durdles means.'

'It is a bitter cold place,' Mr. Jasper assents, with an 
antipathetic shiver.

'And if it's bitter cold for you, up in the chancel, with a lot of 
live breath smoking out about you, what the bitterness is to 
Durdles, down in the crypt among the earthy damps there, and the 
dead breath of the old 'uns,' returns that individual, 'Durdles 
leaves you to judge. - Is this to be put in hand at once, Mr. 
Sapsea?'

Mr. Sapsea, with an Author's anxiety to rush into publication, 
replies that it cannot be out of hand too soon.

'You had better let me have the key then,' says Durdles.

'Why, man, it is not to be put inside the monument!'

'Durdles knows where it's to be put, Mr. Sapsea; no man better.  
Ask 'ere a man in Cloisterham whether Durdles knows his work.'

Mr. Sapsea rises, takes a key from a drawer, unlocks an iron safe 
let into the wall, and takes from it another key.

'When Durdles puts a touch or a finish upon his work, no matter 
where, inside or outside, Durdles likes to look at his work all 
round, and see that his work is a-doing him credit,' Durdles 
explains, doggedly.

The key proffered him by the bereaved widower being a large one, he 
slips his two-foot rule into a side-pocket of his flannel trousers 
made for it, and deliberately opens his flannel coat, and opens the 
mouth of a large breast-pocket within it before taking the key to 
place it in that repository.

'Why, Durdles!' exclaims Jasper, looking on amused, 'you are 
undermined with pockets!'

'And I carries weight in 'em too, Mr. Jasper.  Feel those!' 
producing two other large keys.

'Hand me Mr. Sapsea's likewise.  Surely this is the heaviest of the 
three.'

'You'll find 'em much of a muchness, I expect,' says Durdles.  
'They all belong to monuments.  They all open Durdles's work.  
Durdles keeps the keys of his work mostly.  Not that they're much 
used.'

'By the bye,' it comes into Jasper's mind to say, as he idly 
examines the keys, 'I have been going to ask you, many a day, and 
have always forgotten.  You know they sometimes call you Stony 
Durdles, don't you?'

'Cloisterham knows me as Durdles, Mr. Jasper.'

'I am aware of that, of course.  But the boys sometimes - '

'O! if you mind them young imps of boys - ' Durdles gruffly 
interrupts.

'I don't mind them any more than you do.  But there was a 
discussion the other day among the Choir, whether Stony stood for 
Tony;' clinking one key against another.

('Take care of the wards, Mr. Jasper.')

'Or whether Stony stood for Stephen;' clinking with a change of 
keys.

('You can't make a pitch pipe of 'em, Mr. Jasper.')

'Or whether the name comes from your trade.  How stands the fact?'

Mr. Jasper weighs the three keys in his hand, lifts his head from 
his idly stooping attitude over the fire, and delivers the keys to 
Durdles with an ingenuous and friendly face.

But the stony one is a gruff one likewise, and that hazy state of 
his is always an uncertain state, highly conscious of its dignity, 
and prone to take offence.  He drops his two keys back into his 
pocket one by one, and buttons them up; he takes his dinner-bundle 
from the chair-back on which he hung it when he came in; he 
distributes the weight he carries, by tying the third key up in it, 
as though he were an Ostrich, and liked to dine off cold iron; and 
he gets out of the room, deigning no word of answer.

Mr. Sapsea then proposes a hit at backgammon, which, seasoned with 
his own improving conversation, and terminating in a supper of cold 
roast beef and salad, beguiles the golden evening until pretty 
late.  Mr. Sapsea's wisdom being, in its delivery to mortals, 
rather of the diffuse than the epigrammatic order, is by no means 
expended even then; but his visitor intimates that he will come 
back for more of the precious commodity on future occasions, and 
Mr. Sapsea lets him off for the present, to ponder on the 
instalment he carries away.

CHAPTER V - MR. DURDLES AND FRIEND

JOHN JASPER, on his way home through the Close, is brought to a 
stand-still by the spectacle of Stony Durdles, dinner-bundle and 
all, leaning his back against the iron railing of the burial-ground 
enclosing it from the old cloister-arches; and a hideous small boy 
in rags flinging stones at him as a well-defined mark in the 
moonlight.  Sometimes the stones hit him, and sometimes they miss 
him, but Durdles seems indifferent to either fortune.  The hideous 
small boy, on the contrary, whenever he hits Durdles, blows a 
whistle of triumph through a jagged gap, convenient for the 
purpose, in the front of his mouth, where half his teeth are 
wanting; and whenever he misses him, yelps out 'Mulled agin!' and 
tries to atone for the failure by taking a more correct and vicious 
aim.

'What are you doing to the man?' demands Jasper, stepping out into 
the moonlight from the shade.

'Making a cock-shy of him,' replies the hideous small boy.

'Give me those stones in your hand.'

'Yes, I'll give 'em you down your throat, if you come a-ketching 
hold of me,' says the small boy, shaking himself loose, and 
backing.  'I'll smash your eye, if you don't look out!'

'Baby-Devil that you are, what has the man done to you?'

'He won't go home.'

'What is that to you?'

'He gives me a 'apenny to pelt him home if I ketches him out too 
late,' says the boy.  And then chants, like a little savage, half 
stumbling and half dancing among the rags and laces of his 
dilapidated boots:-

'Widdy widdy wen!
I - ket - ches - Im - out - ar - ter - ten,
Widdy widdy wy!
Then - E - don't - go - then - I - shy -
Widdy Widdy Wake-cock warning!'

- with a comprehensive sweep on the last word, and one more 
delivery at Durdles.

This would seem to be a poetical note of preparation, agreed upon, 
as a caution to Durdles to stand clear if he can, or to betake 
himself homeward.

John Jasper invites the boy with a beck of his head to follow him 
(feeling it hopeless to drag him, or coax him), and crosses to the 
iron railing where the Stony (and stoned) One is profoundly 
meditating.

'Do you know this thing, this child?' asks Jasper, at a loss for a 
word that will define this thing.

'Deputy,' says Durdles, with a nod.

'Is that its - his - name?'

'Deputy,' assents Durdles.

'I'm man-servant up at the Travellers' Twopenny in Gas Works 
Garding,' this thing explains.  'All us man-servants at Travellers' 
Lodgings is named Deputy.  When we're chock full and the Travellers 
is all a-bed I come out for my 'elth.'  Then withdrawing into the 
road, and taking aim, he resumes:-

'Widdy widdy wen!
I - ket - ches - Im - out - ar - ter - '

'Hold your hand,' cries Jasper, 'and don't throw while I stand so 
near him, or I'll kill you!  Come, Durdles; let me walk home with 
you to-night.  Shall I carry your bundle?'

'Not on any account,' replies Durdles, adjusting it.  'Durdles was 
making his reflections here when you come up, sir, surrounded by 
his works, like a poplar Author. - Your own brother-in-law;' 
introducing a sarcophagus within the railing, white and cold in the 
moonlight.  'Mrs. Sapsea;' introducing the monument of that devoted 
wife.  'Late Incumbent;' introducing the Reverend Gentleman's 
broken column.  'Departed Assessed Taxes;' introducing a vase and 
towel, standing on what might represent the cake of soap.  'Former 
pastrycook and Muffin-maker, much respected;' introducing 
gravestone.  'All safe and sound here, sir, and all Durdles's work.  
Of the common folk, that is merely bundled up in turf and brambles, 
the less said the better.  A poor lot, soon forgot.'

'This creature, Deputy, is behind us,' says Jasper, looking back.  
'Is he to follow us?'

The relations between Durdles and Deputy are of a capricious kind; 
for, on Durdles's turning himself about with the slow gravity of 
beery suddenness, Deputy makes a pretty wide circuit into the road 
and stands on the defensive.

'You never cried Widdy Warning before you begun to-night,' says 
Durdles, unexpectedly reminded of, or imagining, an injury.

'Yer lie, I did,' says Deputy, in his only form of polite 
contradiction.

'Own brother, sir,' observes Durdles, turning himself about again, 
and as unexpectedly forgetting his offence as he had recalled or 
conceived it; 'own brother to Peter the Wild Boy!  But I gave him 
an object in life.'

'At which he takes aim?' Mr. Jasper suggests.

'That's it, sir,' returns Durdles, quite satisfied; 'at which he 
takes aim.  I took him in hand and gave him an object.  What was he 
before?  A destroyer.  What work did he do?  Nothing but 
destruction.  What did he earn by it?  Short terms in Cloisterham 
jail.  Not a person, not a piece of property, not a winder, not a 
horse, nor a dog, nor a cat, nor a bird, nor a fowl, nor a pig, but 
what he stoned, for want of an enlightened object.  I put that 
enlightened object before him, and now he can turn his honest 
halfpenny by the three penn'orth a week.'

'I wonder he has no competitors.'

'He has plenty, Mr. Jasper, but he stones 'em all away.  Now, I 
don't know what this scheme of mine comes to,' pursues Durdles, 
considering about it with the same sodden gravity; 'I don't know 
what you may precisely call it.  It ain't a sort of a - scheme of a 
- National Education?'

'I should say not,' replies Jasper.

'I should say not,' assents Durdles; 'then we won't try to give it 
a name.'

'He still keeps behind us,' repeats Jasper, looking over his 
shoulder; 'is he to follow us?'

'We can't help going round by the Travellers' Twopenny, if we go 
the short way, which is the back way,' Durdles answers, 'and we'll 
drop him there.'

So they go on; Deputy, as a rear rank one, taking open order, and 
invading the silence of the hour and place by stoning every wall, 
post, pillar, and other inanimate object, by the deserted way.

'Is there anything new down in the crypt, Durdles?' asks John 
Jasper.

'Anything old, I think you mean,' growls Durdles.  'It ain't a spot 
for novelty.'

'Any new discovery on your part, I meant.'

'There's a old 'un under the seventh pillar on the left as you go 
down the broken steps of the little underground chapel as formerly 
was; I make him out (so fur as I've made him out yet) to be one of 
them old 'uns with a crook.  To judge from the size of the passages 
in the walls, and of the steps and doors, by which they come and 
went, them crooks must have been a good deal in the way of the old 
'uns!  Two on 'em meeting promiscuous must have hitched one another 
by the mitre pretty often, I should say.'

Without any endeavour to correct the literality of this opinion, 
Jasper surveys his companion - covered from head to foot with old 
mortar, lime, and stone grit - as though he, Jasper, were getting 
imbued with a romantic interest in his weird life.

'Yours is a curious existence.'

Without furnishing the least clue to the question, whether he 
receives this as a compliment or as quite the reverse, Durdles 
gruffly answers:  'Yours is another.'

'Well! inasmuch as my lot is cast in the same old earthy, chilly, 
never-changing place, Yes.  But there is much more mystery and 
interest in your connection with the Cathedral than in mine.  
Indeed, I am beginning to have some idea of asking you to take me 
on as a sort of student, or free 'prentice, under you, and to let 
me go about with you sometimes, and see some of these odd nooks in 
which you pass your days.'

The Stony One replies, in a general way, 'All right.  Everybody 
knows where to find Durdles, when he's wanted.'  Which, if not 
strictly true, is approximately so, if taken to express that 
Durdles may always be found in a state of vagabondage somewhere.

'What I dwell upon most,' says Jasper, pursuing his subject of 
romantic interest, 'is the remarkable accuracy with which you would 
seem to find out where people are buried. - What is the matter?  
That bundle is in your way; let me hold it.'

Durdles has stopped and backed a little (Deputy, attentive to all 
his movements, immediately skirmishing into the road), and was 
looking about for some ledge or corner to place his bundle on, when 
thus relieved of it.

'Just you give me my hammer out of that,' says Durdles, 'and I'll 
show you.'

Clink, clink.  And his hammer is handed him.

'Now, lookee here.  You pitch your note, don't you, Mr. Jasper?'

'Yes.'

'So I sound for mine.  I take my hammer, and I tap.'  (Here he 
strikes the pavement, and the attentive Deputy skirmishes at a 
rather wider range, as supposing that his head may be in 
requisition.)  'I tap, tap, tap.  Solid!  I go on tapping.  Solid 
still!  Tap again.  Holloa!  Hollow!  Tap again, persevering.  
Solid in hollow!  Tap, tap, tap, to try it better.  Solid in 
hollow; and inside solid, hollow again!  There you are!  Old 'un 
crumbled away in stone coffin, in vault!'

'Astonishing!'

'I have even done this,' says Durdles, drawing out his two-foot 
rule (Deputy meanwhile skirmishing nearer, as suspecting that 
Treasure may be about to be discovered, which may somehow lead to 
his own enrichment, and the delicious treat of the discoverers 
being hanged by the neck, on his evidence, until they are dead).  
'Say that hammer of mine's a wall - my work.  Two; four; and two is 
six,' measuring on the pavement.  'Six foot inside that wall is 
Mrs. Sapsea.'

'Not really Mrs. Sapsea?'

'Say Mrs. Sapsea.  Her wall's thicker, but say Mrs. Sapsea.  
Durdles taps, that wall represented by that hammer, and says, after 
good sounding:  "Something betwixt us!"  Sure enough, some rubbish 
has been left in that same six-foot space by Durdles's men!'

Jasper opines that such accuracy 'is a gift.'

'I wouldn't have it at a gift,' returns Durdles, by no means 
receiving the observation in good part.  'I worked it out for 
myself.  Durdles comes by HIS knowledge through grubbing deep for 
it, and having it up by the roots when it don't want to come. - 
Holloa you Deputy!'

'Widdy!' is Deputy's shrill response, standing off again.

'Catch that ha'penny.  And don't let me see any more of you to-
night, after we come to the Travellers' Twopenny.'

'Warning!' returns Deputy, having caught the halfpenny, and 
appearing by this mystic word to express his assent to the 
arrangement.

They have but to cross what was once the vineyard, belonging to 
what was once the Monastery, to come into the narrow back lane 
wherein stands the crazy wooden house of two low stories currently 
known as the Travellers' Twopenny:- a house all warped and 
distorted, like the morals of the travellers, with scant remains of 
a lattice-work porch over the door, and also of a rustic fence 
before its stamped-out garden; by reason of the travellers being so 
bound to the premises by a tender sentiment (or so fond of having a 
fire by the roadside in the course of the day), that they can never 
be persuaded or threatened into departure, without violently 
possessing themselves of some wooden forget-me-not, and bearing it 
off.

The semblance of an inn is attempted to be given to this wretched 
place by fragments of conventional red curtaining in the windows, 
which rags are made muddily transparent in the night-season by 
feeble lights of rush or cotton dip burning dully in the close air 
of the inside.  As Durdles and Jasper come near, they are addressed 
by an inscribed paper lantern over the door, setting forth the 
purport of the house.  They are also addressed by some half-dozen 
other hideous small boys - whether twopenny lodgers or followers or 
hangers-on of such, who knows! - who, as if attracted by some 
carrion-scent of Deputy in the air, start into the moonlight, as 
vultures might gather in the desert, and instantly fall to stoning 
him and one another.

'Stop, you young brutes,' cries Jasper angrily, 'and let us go by!'

This remonstrance being received with yells and flying stones, 
according to a custom of late years comfortably established among 
the police regulations of our English communities, where Christians 
are stoned on all sides, as if the days of Saint Stephen were 
revived, Durdles remarks of the young savages, with some point, 
that 'they haven't got an object,' and leads the way down the lane.

At the corner of the lane, Jasper, hotly enraged, checks his 
companion and looks back.  All is silent.  Next moment, a stone 
coming rattling at his hat, and a distant yell of 'Wake-Cock!  
Warning!' followed by a crow, as from some infernally-hatched 
Chanticleer, apprising him under whose victorious fire he stands, 
he turns the corner into safety, and takes Durdles home:  Durdles 
stumbling among the litter of his stony yard as if he were going to 
turn head foremost into one of the unfinished tombs.

John Jasper returns by another way to his gatehouse, and entering 
softly with his key, finds his fire still burning.  He takes from a 
locked press a peculiar-looking pipe, which he fills - but not with 
tobacco - and, having adjusted the contents of the bowl, very 
carefully, with a little instrument, ascends an inner staircase of 
only a few steps, leading to two rooms.  One of these is his own 
sleeping chamber:  the other is his nephew's.  There is a light in 
each.

His nephew lies asleep, calm and untroubled.  John Jasper stands 
looking down upon him, his unlighted pipe in his hand, for some 
time, with a fixed and deep attention.  Then, hushing his 
footsteps, he passes to his own room, lights his pipe, and delivers 
himself to the Spectres it invokes at midnight.

CHAPTER VI - PHILANTHROPY IN MINOR CANON CORNER

THE Reverend Septimus Crisparkle (Septimus, because six little 
brother Crisparkles before him went out, one by one, as they were 
born, like six weak little rushlights, as they were lighted), 
having broken the thin morning ice near Cloisterham Weir with his 
amiable head, much to the invigoration of his frame, was now 
assisting his circulation by boxing at a looking-glass with great 
science and prowess.  A fresh and healthy portrait the looking-
glass presented of the Reverend Septimus, feinting and dodging with 
the utmost artfulness, and hitting out from the shoulder with the 
utmost straightness, while his radiant features teemed with 
innocence, and soft-hearted benevolence beamed from his boxing-
gloves.

It was scarcely breakfast-time yet, for Mrs. Crisparkle - mother, 
not wife of the Reverend Septimus - was only just down, and waiting 
for the urn.  Indeed, the Reverend Septimus left off at this very 
moment to take the pretty old lady's entering face between his 
boxing-gloves and kiss it.  Having done so with tenderness, the 
Reverend Septimus turned to again, countering with his left, and 
putting in his right, in a tremendous manner.

'I say, every morning of my life, that you'll do it at last, Sept,' 
remarked the old lady, looking on; 'and so you will.'

'Do what, Ma dear?'

'Break the pier-glass, or burst a blood-vessel.'

'Neither, please God, Ma dear.  Here's wind, Ma.  Look at this!'  
In a concluding round of great severity, the Reverend Septimus 
administered and escaped all sorts of punishment, and wound up by 
getting the old lady's cap into Chancery - such is the technical 
term used in scientific circles by the learned in the Noble Art - 
with a lightness of touch that hardly stirred the lightest lavender 
or cherry riband on it.  Magnanimously releasing the defeated, just 
in time to get his gloves into a drawer and feign to be looking out 
of window in a contemplative state of mind when a servant entered, 
the Reverend Septimus then gave place to the urn and other 
preparations for breakfast.  These completed, and the two alone 
again, it was pleasant to see (or would have been, if there had 
been any one to see it, which there never was), the old lady 
standing to say the Lord's Prayer aloud, and her son, Minor Canon 
nevertheless, standing with bent head to hear it, he being within 
five years of forty:  much as he had stood to hear the same words 
from the same lips when he was within five months of four.

What is prettier than an old lady - except a young lady - when her 
eyes are bright, when her figure is trim and compact, when her face 
is cheerful and calm, when her dress is as the dress of a china 
shepherdess:  so dainty in its colours, so individually assorted to 
herself, so neatly moulded on her?  Nothing is prettier, thought 
the good Minor Canon frequently, when taking his seat at table 
opposite his long-widowed mother.  Her thought at such times may be 
condensed into the two words that oftenest did duty together in all 
her conversations:  'My Sept!'

They were a good pair to sit breakfasting together in Minor Canon 
Corner, Cloisterham.  For Minor Canon Corner was a quiet place in 
the shadow of the Cathedral, which the cawing of the rooks, the 
echoing footsteps of rare passers, the sound of the Cathedral bell, 
or the roll of the Cathedral organ, seemed to render more quiet 
than absolute silence.  Swaggering fighting men had had their 
centuries of ramping and raving about Minor Canon Corner, and 
beaten serfs had had their centuries of drudging and dying there, 
and powerful monks had had their centuries of being sometimes 
useful and sometimes harmful there, and behold they were all gone 
out of Minor Canon Corner, and so much the better.  Perhaps one of 
the highest uses of their ever having been there, was, that there 
might be left behind, that blessed air of tranquillity which 
pervaded Minor Canon Corner, and that serenely romantic state of 
the mind - productive for the most part of pity and forbearance - 
which is engendered by a sorrowful story that is all told, or a 
pathetic play that is played out.

Red-brick walls harmoniously toned down in colour by time, strong-
rooted ivy, latticed windows, panelled rooms, big oaken beams in 
little places, and stone-walled gardens where annual fruit yet 
ripened upon monkish trees, were the principal surroundings of 
pretty old Mrs. Crisparkle and the Reverend Septimus as they sat at 
breakfast.

'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 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 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 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 wan