Чарльз Диккенс
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
He turned his back upon the Weir, and looked far away at the sky, and at the earth, and then looked again at that one spot. It caught his sight again immediately, and he concentrated his vision upon it. He could not lose it now, though it was but such a speck in the landscape. It fascinated his sight. His hands began plucking off his coat. For it struck him that at that spot – a corner of the Weir – something glistened, which did not move and come over with the glistening water-drops, but remained stationary.
He assured himself of this, he threw off his clothes, he plunged into the icy water, and swam for the spot. Climbing the timbers, he took from them, caught among their interstices by its chain, a gold watch, bearing engraved upon its back E. D.
He brought the watch to the bank, swam to the Weir again, climbed it, and dived off. He knew every hole and corner of all the depths, and dived and dived and dived, until he could bear the cold no more. His notion was, that he would find the body; he only found a shirt-pin sticking in some mud and ooze.
With these discoveries he returned to Cloisterham, and, taking Neville Landless with him, went straight to the Mayor. Mr. Jasper was sent for, the watch and shirt-pin were identified, Neville was detained, and the wildest frenzy and fatuity of evil report rose against him. He was of that vindictive and violent nature, that but for his poor sister, who alone had influence over him, and out of whose sight he was never to be trusted, he would be in the daily commission of murder. Before coming to England he had caused to be whipped to death sundry ‘Natives’ – nomadic persons, encamping now in Asia, now in Africa, now in the West Indies, and now at the North Pole – vaguely supposed in Cloisterham to be always black, always of great virtue, always calling themselves Me, and everybody else Massa or Missie (according to sex), and always reading tracts of the obscurest meaning, in broken English, but always accurately understanding them in the purest mother tongue. He had nearly brought Mrs. Crisparkle’s grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. (Those original expressions were Mr. Sapsea’s.) He had repeatedly said he would have Mr. Crisparkle’s life. He had repeatedly said he would have everybody’s life, and become in effect the last man. He had been brought down to Cloisterham, from London, by an eminent Philanthropist, and why? Because that Philanthropist had expressly declared: ‘I owe it to my fellow-creatures that he should be, in the words of Bentham, where he is the cause of the greatest danger to the smallest number.’
These dropping shots from the blunderbusses of blunderheadedness might not have hit him in a vital place. But he had to stand against a trained and well-directed fire of arms of precision too. He had notoriously threatened the lost young man, and had, according to the showing of his own faithful friend and tutor who strove so hard for him, a cause of bitter animosity (created by himself, and stated by himself), against that ill-starred fellow. He had armed himself with an offensive weapon for the fatal night, and he had gone off early in the morning, after making preparations for departure. He had been found with traces of blood on him; truly, they might have been wholly caused as he represented, but they might not, also. On a search-warrant being issued for the examination of his room, clothes, and so forth, it was discovered that he had destroyed all his papers, and rearranged all his possessions, on the very afternoon of the disappearance. The watch found at the Weir was challenged by the jeweller as one he had wound and set for Edwin Drood, at twenty minutes past two on that same afternoon; and it had run down, before being cast into the water; and it was the jeweller’s positive opinion that it had never been re-wound. This would justify the hypothesis that the watch was taken from him not long after he left Mr. Jasper’s house at midnight, in company with the last person seen with him, and that it had been thrown away after being retained some hours. Why thrown away? If he had been murdered, and so artfully disfigured, or concealed, or both, as that the murderer hoped identification to be impossible, except from something that he wore, assuredly the murderer would seek to remove from the body the most lasting, the best known, and the most easily recognisable, things upon it. Those things would be the watch and shirt-pin. As to his opportunities of casting them into the river; if he were the object of these suspicions, they were easy. For, he had been seen by many persons, wandering about on that side of the city – indeed on all sides of it – in a miserable and seemingly half-distracted manner. As to the choice of the spot, obviously such criminating evidence had better take its chance of being found anywhere, rather than upon himself, or in his possession. Concerning the reconciliatory nature of the appointed meeting between the two young men, very little could be made of that in young Landless’s favour; for it distinctly appeared that the meeting originated, not with him, but with Mr. Crisparkle, and that it had been urged on by Mr. Crisparkle; and who could say how unwillingly, or in what ill-conditioned mood, his enforced pupil had gone to it? The more his case was looked into, the weaker it became in every point. Even the broad suggestion that the lost young man had absconded, was rendered additionally improbable on the showing of the young lady from whom he had so lately parted; for; what did she say, with great earnestness and sorrow, when interrogated? That he had, expressly and enthusiastically, planned with her, that he would await the arrival of her guardian, Mr. Grewgious. And yet, be it observed, he disappeared before that gentleman appeared.
On the suspicions thus urged and supported, Neville was detained, and re-detained, and the search was pressed on every hand, and Jasper laboured night and day. But nothing more was found. No discovery being made, which proved the lost man to be dead, it at length became necessary to release the person suspected of having made away with him. Neville was set at large. Then, a consequence ensued which Mr. Crisparkle had too well foreseen. Neville must leave the place, for the place shunned him and cast him out. Even had it not been so, the dear old china shepherdess would have worried herself to death with fears for her son, and with general trepidation occasioned by their having such an inmate. Even had that not been so, the authority to which the Minor Canon deferred officially, would have settled the point.
‘Mr. Crisparkle,’ quoth the Dean, ‘human justice may err, but it must act according to its lights. The days of taking sanctuary are past. This young man must not take sanctuary with us.’
‘You mean that he must leave my house, sir?’
‘Mr. Crisparkle,’ returned the prudent Dean, ‘I claim no authority in your house. I merely confer with you, on the painful necessity you find yourself under, of depriving this young man of the great advantages of your counsel and instruction.’
‘It is very lamentable, sir,’ Mr. Crisparkle represented.
‘Very much so,’ the Dean assented.
‘And if it be a necessity – ’ Mr. Crisparkle faltered.
‘As you unfortunately find it to be,’ returned the Dean.
Mr. Crisparkle bowed submissively: ‘It is hard to prejudge his case, sir, but I am sensible that – ’
‘Just so. Perfectly. As you say, Mr. Crisparkle,’ interposed the Dean, nodding his head smoothly, ‘there is nothing else to be done. No doubt, no doubt. There is no alternative, as your good sense has discovered.’
‘I am entirely satisfied of his perfect innocence, sir, nevertheless.’
‘We-e-ell!’ said the Dean, in a more confidential tone, and slightly glancing around him, ‘I would not say so, generally. Not generally. Enough of suspicion attaches to him to – no, I think I would not say so, generally.’
Mr. Crisparkle bowed again.
‘It does not become us, perhaps,’ pursued the Dean, ‘to be partisans. Not partisans. We clergy keep our hearts warm and our heads cool, and we hold a judicious middle course.’
‘I hope you do not object, sir, to my having stated in public, emphatically, that he will reappear here, whenever any new suspicion may be awakened, or any new circumstance may come to light in this extraordinary matter?’
‘Not at all,’ returned the Dean. ‘And yet, do you know, I don’t think,’ with a very nice and neat emphasis on those two words: ‘I don’t think I would state it emphatically. State it? Ye-e-es! But emphatically? No-o-o. I think not. In point of fact, Mr. Crisparkle, keeping our hearts warm and our heads cool, we clergy need do nothing emphatically.’
So Minor Canon Row knew Neville Landless no more; and he went whithersoever he would, or could, with a blight upon his name and fame.
It was not until then that John Jasper silently resumed his place in the choir. Haggard and red-eyed, his hopes plainly had deserted him, his sanguine mood was gone, and all his worst misgivings had come back. A day or two afterwards, while unrobing, he took his Diary from a pocket of his coat, turned the leaves, and with an impressive look, and without one spoken word, handed this entry to Mr. Crisparkle to read:
‘My dear boy is murdered. The discovery of the watch and shirt-pin convinces me that he was murdered that night, and that his jewellery was taken from him to prevent identification by its means. All the delusive hopes I had founded on his separation from his betrothed wife, I give to the winds. They perish before this fatal discovery. I now swear, and record the oath on this page, That I nevermore will discuss this mystery with any human creature until I hold the clue to it in my hand. That I never will relax in my secrecy or in my search. That I will fasten the crime of the murder of my dear dead boy upon the murderer. And, That I devote myself to his destruction.’
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 favoured. 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 on 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 those. 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 temper 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 these last particulars 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 miserably shabby and underpaid stipendiary Philanthropist (who could hardly have done worse if he had taken service with a declared enemy of the human race) to Mr. Honeythunder’s room.
‘Sir,’ said Mr. Honeythunder, in his tremendous voice, like a schoolmaster issuing orders to a boy of whom he had a bad opinion, ‘sit down.’
Mr. Crisparkle seated himself.
Mr. Honeythunder having signed the remaining few score of a few thousand circulars, calling upon a corresponding number of families without means to come forward, stump up instantly, and be Philanthropists, or go to the Devil, another shabby stipendiary Philanthropist (highly disinterested, if in earnest) gathered these into a basket and walked off with them.
‘Now, Mr. Crisparkle,’ said Mr. Honeythunder, turning his chair half round towards him when they were alone, and squaring his arms with his hands on his knees, and his brows knitted, as if he added, I am going to make short work of you: ‘Now, Mr. Crisparkle, we entertain different views, you and I, sir, of the sanctity of human life.’
‘Do we?’ returned the Minor Canon.
‘We do, sir?’
‘Might I ask you,’ said the Minor Canon: ‘what are your views on that subject?’
‘That human life is a thing to be held sacred, sir.’
‘Might I ask you,’ pursued the Minor Canon as before: ‘what you suppose to be my views on that subject?’
‘By George, sir!’ returned the Philanthropist, squaring his arms still more, as he frowned on Mr. Crisparkle: ‘they are best known to yourself.’
‘Readily admitted. But you began by saying that we took different views, you know. Therefore (or you could not say so) you must have set up some views as mine. Pray, what views have you set up as mine?’
‘Here is a man – and a young man,’ said Mr. Honeythunder, as if that made the matter infinitely worse, and he could have easily borne the loss of an old one, ‘swept off the face of the earth by a deed of violence. What do you call that?’
‘Murder,’ said the Minor Canon.
‘What do you call the doer of that deed, sir?
‘A murderer,’ said the Minor Canon.
‘I am glad to hear you admit so much, sir,’ retorted Mr. Honeythunder, in his most offensive manner; ‘and I candidly tell you that I didn’t expect it.’ Here he lowered heavily at Mr. Crisparkle again.
‘Be so good as to explain what you mean by those very unjustifiable expressions.’
‘I don’t sit here, sir,’ returned the Philanthropist, raising his voice to a roar, ‘to be browbeaten.’
‘As the only other person present, no one can possibly know that better than I do,’ returned the Minor Canon very quietly. ‘But I interrupt your explanation.’
‘Murder!’ proceeded Mr. Honeythunder, in a kind of boisterous reverie, with his platform folding of his arms, and his platform nod of abhorrent reflection after each short sentiment of a word. ‘Bloodshed! Abel! Cain! I hold no terms with Cain. I repudiate with a shudder the red hand when it is offered me.’
Instead of instantly leaping into his chair and cheering himself hoarse, as the Brotherhood in public meeting assembled would infallibly have done on this cue, Mr. Crisparkle merely reversed the quiet crossing of his legs, and said mildly: ‘Don’t let me interrupt your explanation – when you begin it.’
‘The Commandments say, no murder. NO murder, sir!’ proceeded Mr. Honeythunder, platformally pausing as if he took Mr. Crisparkle to task for having distinctly asserted that they said: You may do a little murder, and then leave off.
‘And they also say, you shall bear no false witness,’ observed Mr. Crisparkle.
‘Enough!’ bellowed Mr. Honeythunder, with a solemnity and severity that would have brought the house down at a meeting, ‘E-e-nough! My late wards being now of age, and I being released from a trust which I cannot contemplate without a thrill of horror, there are the accounts which you have undertaken to accept on their behalf, and there is a statement of the balance which you have undertaken to receive, and which you cannot receive too soon. And let me tell you, sir, I wish that, as a man and a Minor Canon, you were better employed,’ with a nod. ‘Better employed,’ with another nod. ‘Bet-ter em-ployed!’ with another and the three nods added up.
Mr. Crisparkle rose; a little heated in the face, but with perfect command of himself.
‘Mr. Honeythunder,’ he said, taking up the papers referred to: ‘my being better or worse employed than I am at present is a matter of taste and opinion. You might think me better employed in enrolling myself a member of your Society.’
‘Ay, indeed, sir!’ retorted Mr. Honeythunder, shaking his head in a threatening manner. ‘It would have been better for you if you had done that long ago!’
‘I think otherwise.’
‘Or,’ said Mr. Honeythunder, shaking his head again, ‘I might think one of your profession better employed in devoting himself to the discovery and punishment of guilt than in leaving that duty to be undertaken by a layman.’
‘I may regard my profession from a point of view which teaches me that its first duty is towards those who are in necessity and tribulation, who are desolate and oppressed,’ said Mr. Crisparkle. ‘However, as I have quite clearly satisfied myself that it is no part of my profession to make professions, I say no more of that. But I owe it to Mr. Neville, and to Mr. Neville’s sister (and in a much lower degree to myself), to say to you that I know I was in the full possession and understanding of Mr. Neville’s mind and heart at the time of this occurrence; and that, without in the least colouring or concealing what was to be deplored in him and required to be corrected, I feel certain that his tale is true. Feeling that certainty, I befriend him. As long as that certainty shall last, I will befriend him. And if any consideration could shake me in this resolve, I should be so ashamed of myself for my meanness, that no man’s good opinion – no, nor no woman’s – so gained, could compensate me for the loss of my own.’
Good fellow! manly fellow! And he was so modest, too. There was no more self-assertion in the Minor Canon than in the schoolboy who had stood in the breezy playing-fields keeping a wicket. He was simply and staunchly true to his duty alike in the large case and in the small. So all true souls ever are. So every true soul ever was, ever is, and ever will be. There is nothing little to the really great in spirit.
‘Then who do you make out did the deed?’ asked Mr. Honeythunder, turning on him abruptly.
‘Heaven forbid,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘that in my desire to clear one man I should lightly criminate another! I accuse no one.’
‘Tcha!’ ejaculated Mr. Honeythunder with great disgust; for this was by no means the principle on which the Philanthropic Brotherhood usually proceeded. ‘And, sir, you are not a disinterested witness, we must bear in mind.’
‘How am I an interested one?’ inquired Mr. Crisparkle, smiling innocently, at a loss to imagine.
‘There was a certain stipend, sir, paid to you for your pupil, which may have warped your judgment a bit,’ said Mr. Honeythunder, coarsely.
‘Perhaps I expect to retain it still?’ Mr. Crisparkle returned, enlightened; ‘do you mean that too?’
‘Well, sir,’ returned the professional Philanthropist, getting up and thrusting his hands down into his trousers-pockets, ‘I don’t go about measuring people for caps. If people find I have any about me that fit ’em, they can put ’em on and wear ’em, if they like. That’s their look out: not mine.’
Mr. Crisparkle eyed him with a just indignation, and took him to task thus:
‘Mr. Honeythunder, I hoped when I came in here that I might be under no necessity of commenting on the introduction of platform manners or platform manœuvres among the decent forbearances of private life. But you have given me such a specimen of both, that I should be a fit subject for both if I remained silent respecting them. They are detestable.’
‘They don’t suit you, I dare say, sir.’
‘They are,’ repeated Mr. Crisparkle, without noticing the interruption, ‘detestable. They violate equally the justice that should belong to Christians, and the restraints that should belong to gentlemen. You assume a great crime to have been committed by one whom I, acquainted with the attendant circumstances, and having numerous reasons on my side, devoutly believe to be innocent of it. Because I differ from you on that vital point, what is your platform resource? Instantly to turn upon me, charging that I have no sense of the enormity of the crime itself, but am its aider and abettor! So, another time – taking me as representing your opponent in other cases – you set up a platform credulity; a moved and seconded and carried-unanimously profession of faith in some ridiculous delusion or mischievous imposition. I decline to believe it, and you fall back upon your platform resource of proclaiming that I believe nothing; that because I will not bow down to a false God of your making, I deny the true God! Another time you make the platform discovery that War is a calamity, and you propose to abolish it by a string of twisted resolutions tossed into the air like the tail of a kite. I do not admit the discovery to be yours in the least, and I have not a grain of faith in your remedy. Again, your platform resource of representing me as revelling in the horrors of a battle-field like a fiend incarnate! Another time, in another of your undiscriminating platform rushes, you would punish the sober for the drunken. I claim consideration for the comfort, convenience, and refreshment of the sober; and you presently make platform proclamation that I have a depraved desire to turn Heaven’s creatures into swine and wild beasts! In all such cases your movers, and your seconders, and your supporters – your regular Professors of all degrees, run amuck like so many mad Malays; habitually attributing the lowest and basest motives with the utmost recklessness (let me call your attention to a recent instance in yourself for which you should blush), and quoting figures which you know to be as wilfully onesided as a statement of any complicated account that should be all Creditor side and no Debtor, or all Debtor side and no Creditor. Therefore it is, Mr. Honeythunder, that I consider the platform a sufficiently bad example and a sufficiently bad school, even in public life; but hold that, carried into private life, it becomes an unendurable nuisance.’
‘These are strong words, sir!’ exclaimed the Philanthropist.
‘I hope so,’ said Mr. Crisparkle. ‘Good morning.’
He walked out of the Haven at a great rate, but soon fell into his regular brisk pace, and soon had a smile upon his face as he went along, wondering what the china shepherdess would have said if she had seen him pounding Mr. Honeythunder in the late little lively affair. For Mr. Crisparkle had just enough of harmless vanity to hope that he had hit hard, and to glow with the belief that he had trimmed the Philanthropic Jacket pretty handsomely.
He took himself to Staple Inn, but not to P. J. T. and Mr. Grewgious. Full many a creaking stair he climbed before he reached some attic rooms in a corner, turned the latch of their unbolted door, and stood beside the table of Neville Landless.
An air of retreat and solitude hung about the rooms and about their inhabitant. He was much worn, and so were they. Their sloping ceilings, cumbrous rusty locks and grates, and heavy wooden bins and beams, slowly mouldering withal, had a prisonous look, and he had the haggard face of a prisoner. Yet the sunlight shone in at the ugly garret-window, which had a penthouse to itself thrust out among the tiles; and on the cracked and smoke-blackened parapet beyond, some of the deluded sparrows of the place rheumatically hopped, like little feathered cripples who had left their crutches in their nests; and there was a play of living leaves at hand that changed the air, and made an imperfect sort of music in it that would have been melody in the country.
The rooms were sparely furnished, but with good store of books. Everything expressed the abode of a poor student. That Mr. Crisparkle had been either chooser, lender, or donor of the books, or that he combined the three characters, might have been easily seen in the friendly beam of his eyes upon them as he entered.
‘How goes it, Neville?’
‘I am in good heart, Mr. Crisparkle, and working away.’
‘I wish your eyes were not quite so large and not quite so bright,’ said the Minor Canon, slowly releasing the hand he had taken in his.
‘They brighten at the sight of you,’ returned Neville. ‘If you were to fall away from me, they would soon be dull enough.’
‘Rally, rally!’ urged the other, in a stimulating tone. ‘Fight for it, Neville!’
‘If I were dying, I feel as if a word from you would rally me; if my pulse had stopped, I feel as if your touch would make it beat again,’ said Neville. ‘But I have rallied, and am doing famously.’
Mr. Crisparkle turned him with his face a little more towards the light.
‘I want to see a ruddier touch here, Neville,’ he said, indicating his own healthy cheek by way of pattern. ‘I want more sun to shine upon you.’
Neville drooped suddenly, as he replied in a lowered voice: ‘I am not hardy enough for that, yet. I may become so, but I cannot bear it yet. If you had gone through those Cloisterham streets as I did; if you had seen, as I did, those averted eyes, and the better sort of people silently giving me too much room to pass, that I might not touch them or come near them, you wouldn’t think it quite unreasonable that I cannot go about in the daylight.’
‘My poor fellow!’ said the Minor Canon, in a tone so purely sympathetic that the young man caught his hand, ‘I never said it was unreasonable; never thought so. But I should like you to do it.’
‘And that would give me the strongest motive to do it. But I cannot yet. I cannot persuade myself that the eyes of even the stream of strangers I pass in this vast city look at me without suspicion. I feel marked and tainted, even when I go out – as I do only – at night. But the darkness covers me then, and I take courage from it.’
Mr. Crisparkle laid a hand upon his shoulder, and stood looking down at him.
‘If I could have changed my name,’ said Neville, ‘I would have done so. But as you wisely pointed out to me, I can’t do that, for it would look like guilt. If I could have gone to some distant place, I might have found relief in that, but the thing is not to be thought of, for the same reason. Hiding and escaping would be the construction in either case. It seems a little hard to be so tied to a stake, and innocent; but I don’t complain.’
‘And you must expect no miracle to help you, Neville,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, compassionately.
‘No, sir, I know that. The ordinary fulness of time and circumstances is all I have to trust to.’
‘It will right you at last, Neville.’
‘So I believe, and I hope I may live to know it.’
But perceiving that the despondent mood into which he was falling cast a shadow on the Minor Canon, and (it may be) feeling that the broad hand upon his shoulder was not then quite as steady as its own natural strength had rendered it when it first touched him just now, he brightened and said:
‘Excellent circumstances for study, anyhow! and you know, Mr. Crisparkle, what need I have of study in all ways. Not to mention that you have advised me to study for the difficult profession of the law, specially, and that of course I am guiding myself by the advice of such a friend and helper. Such a good friend and helper!’
He took the fortifying hand from his shoulder, and kissed it. Mr. Crisparkle beamed at the books, but not so brightly as when he had entered.
‘I gather from your silence on the subject that my late guardian is adverse, Mr. Crisparkle?’
The Minor Canon answered: ‘Your late guardian is a – a most unreasonable person, and it signifies nothing to any reasonable person whether he is adverse, perverse, or the reverse.’
‘Well for me that I have enough with economy to live upon,’ sighed Neville, half wearily and half cheerily, ‘while I wait to be learned, and wait to be righted! Else I might have proved the proverb, that while the grass grows, the steed starves!’
He opened some books as he said it, and was soon immersed in their interleaved and annotated passages; while Mr. Crisparkle sat beside him, expounding, correcting, and advising. The Minor Canon’s Cathedral duties made these visits of his difficult to accomplish, and only to be compassed at intervals of many weeks. But they were as serviceable as they were precious to Neville Landless.
When they had got through such studies as they had in hand, they stood leaning on the window-sill, and looking down upon the patch of garden. ‘Next week,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘you will cease to be alone, and will have a devoted companion.’
‘And yet,’ returned Neville, ‘this seems an uncongenial place to bring my sister to.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said the Minor Canon. ‘There is duty to be done here; and there are womanly feeling, sense, and courage wanted here.’
‘I meant,’ explained Neville, ‘that the surroundings are so dull and unwomanly, and that Helena can have no suitable friend or society here.’
‘You have only to remember,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘that you are here yourself, and that she has to draw you into the sunlight.’
They were silent for a little while, and then Mr. Crisparkle began anew.
