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.’
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,
