Read Online The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, Matthew Pearl - Free Book Online Page B

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, strongrooted 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 halfprotesting 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,