Free The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, Matthew Pearl Page A

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