20

THE MYSTERY OF

and not teazing 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—?"

"Oh 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 connexion 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. Oh, 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 stickey 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, re-
taining 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.

BIRDS IN THE BUSH.

Miss Twinkleton here achieved a curtsey, suggestive of marvels happening to her respected legs, and which she came out of nobly, three yards behind her starting-point.

As he held it incumbent upon him to call on Mr. Jasper before leaving Cloisterham, Mr. Grewgious went to the Gate House, and climbed its postern stair. But Mr. Jasper's door being closed, and presenting on a slip of paper the word "Cathedral," the fact of its being service-time was borne into the mind of Mr. Grewgious. So he descended the stair again, and, crossing the Close, paused at the great western folding-door of the Cathedral, which stood open on the fine and bright, though short-lived, afternoon, for the airing of the place.

"Dear me," said Mr. Grewgious, peeping in, "it's like looking down the throat of Old Time."

Old Time heaved a mouldy sigh from tomb and arch and vault; and gloomy shadows began to deepen in corners; and damps began to rise from green patches of stone; and jewels, cast upon the pavement of the nave from stained glass by the declining sun, began to perish. Within the grill-gate of the chancel, up the steps surmounted loomingly by the fast darkening organ, white robes could be dimly seen, and one feeble voice, rising and falling in a cracked monotonous mutter, could at intervals be faintly heard. In the free outer air, the river, the green pastures, and the brown arable lands, the teeming hills and dales, were reddened by the sunset: while the distant little windows in windmills and farm homesteads shone, patches of bright beaten gold. In the Cathedral all became grey, murky, and sepulchral, and the cracked monotonous mutter went on like a dying voice, until the organ and the choir burst forth, and drowned it in a sea of music. Then the sea fell, and the dying voice made another feeble effort, and then the sea rose high, and beat its life out, and lashed the roof, and surged among the arches, and pierced the heights of the great tower; and then the sea was dry, and all was still.

Mr. Grewgious had by that time walked to the chancel-steps, where he met the living waters coming out.

"Nothing is the matter?" Thus Jasper accosted him, rather quickly. "You have not been sent for?"

"Not at all, not at all. I came down of my own accord. I have been to my pretty ward's, and am now homeward bound again."

"You found her thriving?"

"Blooming indeed. Most blooming. I merely came to tell her, seriously, what a betrothal by deceased parents is."

"And what is it—according to your judgment?"

Mr. Grewgious noticed the whiteness of the lips that asked the question, and put it down to the chilling account of the Cathedral.

"I merely came to tell her that it could not be considered binding, against any such reason for its dissolution as a want of affection, or disposition to carry it into effect, on the side of either party."

"May I ask, had you any especial reason for telling her that?"

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.

## CHAPTER XVII.

### PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL AND UNPROFESSIONAL.

FULL half a year had come and gone, and Mr. Crisparkle sat in a waiting-room in the London chief offices of the Haven of Philanthropy, until he could have audience of Mr. Honeythunder.

In his college-days of athletic exercises, Mr. Crisparkle had known professors of the Noble Art of fisticuffs, and had attended two or three of their gloved gatherings. He had now an opportunity of observing that as to the phrenological formation of the backs of their heads, the Professing Philanthropists were uncommonly like the Pugilists. In the development of all those organs which constitute, or attend, a propensity to "pitch into" your fellow-creatures, the Philanthropists were remarkably favored. There were several Professors passing in and out, with exactly the aggressive air upon them of being ready for a turn-up with any Novice who might happen to be on hand, that Mr. Crisparkle well remembered in the circles of the Fancy. Preparations were in progress for a moral little Mill somewhere in the rural circuit, and other Professors were backing this or that Heavy-Weight as good for such or such speech-making hits, so very much after the manner of the sporting publicans that the intended Resolutions might have been Rounds. In an official manager of these displays much celebrated for his platform tactics, Mr. Crisparkle recognised (in a suit of black) the counterpart of a deceased benefactor of his species, an eminent public character, once known to fame as Frosty faced Fogo, who in days of yore superintended the formation of the magic circle with the ropes and stakes. There were only three conditions of resemblance wanting between these Professors and these. Firstly, the Philanthropists were in very bad training: much too fleshy, and presenting, both in face and figure, a superabundance of what is known to Pugilistic Experts as Suet Pudding. Secondly, the Philanthropists had not the good tempers of the Pugilists, and used worse language. Thirdly, their fighting code stood in great need of revision, as empowering them not only to bore their man to the ropes, but to bore him to the confines of distraction; also to hit him when he was down, hit him anywhere and anyhow, kick him, stamp upon him, gouge him, and maul him behind his back without mercy. In this last particular the Professors of the Noble Art were much nobler than the Professors of Philanthropy.

Mr. Crisparkle was so completely lost in musing on these similarities and dissimilarities, at the same time watching the crowd which came and went by always as it seemed, on errands of antagonistically snatching something from somebody, and never giving anything to anybody, that his name was called before he heard it. On his at length responding, he was shown by a miserable and shabby and underpaid stipendiary Philanthropist (who would have done better, perhaps, if he had taken service

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THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD.

with an enemy of the human race) to Mr. Honeythunder's room.

"Sir," said Mr. Honeythunder, in his tremendous voice, like a schoolmaster issuing orders to a boy of whom he had a bad opinion, "sit down."

Mr. Crisparkle seated himself.

Mr. Honeythunder, having signed the remaining few score of a few thousand circulars, calling upon a corresponding number of families without means to come forward, stump up instantly, and be Philanthropists, or go to the Devil, another shabby stipendiary Philanthropist (highly disinterested, if in earnest) gathered these into a basket and walked off with them.

"Now, Mr. Crisparkle," said Mr. Honeythunder, turning his chair half round towards him when they were alone, and squaring his arms with his hands on his knees, and his brows knitted, as if he added, I am going to make short work of you: "Now, Mr. Crisparkle, we entertain different views, you and I, sir, of the sanctity of human life."

"Do we?" returned the Minor Canon, calmly.

"We do, sir."

"Might I ask you," said the Minor Canon: "what are your views on that subject?"

"That human life is a thing to be held sacred, sir."

"Might I ask you," pursued the Minor Canon as before: "what you suppose to be my views on that subject?"

"By George, sir!" returned the Philanthropist, squaring his arms still more, as he frowned on Mr. Crisparkle: "they are best known to yourself."

"Readily admitted. But you began by saying that we took different views, you know. Therefore (or you could not say so) you must have set up some views as mine. Pray, what views have you set up as mine?"

"Here is a man—and a young man—" said Mr. Honeythunder, as if that made the matter infinitely worse, and he could have easily borne the loss of an old one—"swept off the face of the earth by a deed of violence. What do you call that?"

"Murder," said the Minor Canon.

"What do you call the doer of that deed, sir?"

"A murderer," said the Minor Canon.

"I am glad to hear you admit so much, sir," retorted Mr. Honeythunder, in his most offensive manner; "and I candidly tell you that I didn't expect it." Here he lowered heavily at Mr. Crisparkle again.

"Be so good as to explain what you mean by those very unjustifiable expressions."

"I don't sit here, sir," returned the Philanthropist, raising his voice to a roar, "to be browbeaten."

"As the only other person present, no one can possibly know that better than I do," returned the Minor Canon very quietly. "But I interrupt your explanation."

"Murder!" proceeded Mr. Honeythunder, in a kind of boisterous reverie, with his platform folding of his arms, and his platform

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nod of abhorrent reflection after each short sentiment of a word.
"Bloodshed! Abel! Cain! I hold no terms with Cain. I repudiate
with a shudder the red hand when it is offered me."

Instead of instantly leaping into his chair and cheering himself
hoarse, as the Brotherhood in public meeting assembled would
infallibly have done on this cue, Mr. Crisparkle merely reversed
the quiet crossing of his legs, and said mildly: "Don't let me
interrupt your explanation—when you begin it."

"The Commandments say no murder. NO murder, sir!" proceeded Mr. Honeythunder, platformically pausing as if he took Mr. Crisparkle to task for having distinctly asserted that they, said, You may do a little murder and then leave off.

"And they also say, you shall bear no false witness," observed Mr. Crisparkle.

"Enough!" bellowed Mr. Honeythunder, with a solemnity and
severity that would have brought the house down at a meeting,
"E—e—nough! my late wards being now of age, and I being
released from a trust which I cannot contemplate without a thrill
of horror, there are the accounts which you have undertaken to
accept on their behalf, and there is a statement of the balance
which you have undertaken to receive, and which you cannot
receive too soon. And let me tell you, sir, that I wish, that as a
man and a Minor Canon, you were better employed," with a nod.
"Better employed," with another nod. "Bet—ter em—ployed!"
with another and the three nods added up.

Mr. Crisparkle rose; a little heated in the face, but with perfect command of himself.

"Mr. Honeythunder," he said, taking up the papers referred to: "my being better or worse employed than I am at present is a matter of taste and opinion. You might think me better employed in enrolling myself a member of your Society."

"Ay, indeed, sir!" retorted Mr. Honeythunder, shaking his
head in a threatening manner. "It would have been better for you
if you had done that long ago!"

"I think otherwise."

"Or," said Mr. Honeythunder, shaking his head again, "I
might think one of your profession better employed in devoting
himself to the discovery and punishment of guilt than in leaving
that duty to be undertaken by a layman."

"I may regard my profession from a point of view which teaches me that its first duty is towards those who are in necessity and tribulation, who are desolate and oppressed," said Mr. Crisparkle. "However, as I have quite clearly satisfied myself that it is no part of my profession to make professions, I say no more of that. But I owe it to Mr. Neville, and to Mr. Neville's sister (and in a much lower degree to yourself), to say to you that I know I was in the full possession and understanding of Mr. Neville's mind and heart at the time of this occurrence; and that, without in the least coloring or concealing what was to be deplored in him and required to be corrected, I feel certain that his tale is true. Feeling that certainty, I befriend him. As long as that certainty shall last I will befriend him. And if any consideration could

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