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Now do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons who attended the last coroner's inquest at the Sol's Arms reappear in the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly fetched by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute perquisitions through the court, and dive into the Sol's parlour, and write with ravenous little pens on tissue-paper. Now do they note down, in the watches of the night, how the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a state of the most intense agitation and excitement by the following alarming and horrible discovery. Now do they set forth how it will doubtless be remembered that some time back a painful sensation was created in the public mind by a case of mysterious death from opium occurring in the first floor of the house occupied as a rag, bottle, and general marine store shop, by an eccentric individual of intemperate habits, far advanced in life, named Krook; and how, by a remarkable coincidence, Krook was examined at the inquest, which it may be recollected was held on that occasion at the Sol's Arms, a well-conducted tavern immediately adjoining the premises in question on the west side and licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr. James George Bogsby. Now do they show (in as many words as possible) how during some hours of yesterday evening a very peculiar smell was observed by the inhabitants of the court, in which the tragical occurrence which forms the subject of that present account transpired; and which odour was at one time so powerful that Mr. Swills, a comic vocalist professionally engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby, has himself stated to our reporter that he mentioned to Miss M. Melvilleson, a lady of some pretensions to musical ability, likewise engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby to sing at a series of concerts called Harmonic Assemblies, or Meetings, which it would appear are held at the Sol's Arms under Mr. Bogsby's direction pursuant to the Act of George the Second, that he (Mr. Swills) found his voice seriously affected by the impure state of the atmosphere, his jocose expression at the time being that he was like an empty post-office, for he hadn't a single note in him. How this account of Mr. Swills is entirely corroborated by two intelligent married females residing in the same court and known respectively by the names of Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, both of whom observed the foetid effluvia and regarded them as being emitted from the premises in the occupation of Krook, the unfortunate deceased. All this and a great deal more the two gentlemen who have formed an amicable partnership in the melancholy catastrophe write down on the spot; and the boy population of the court (out of bed in a moment) swarm up the shutters of the Sol's Arms parlour, to behold the tops of their heads while they are about it.
The whole court, adult as well as boy, is sleepless for that night, and can do nothing but wrap up its many heads, and talk of the ill-fated house, and look at it. Miss Flite has been bravely rescued from her chamber, as if it were in flames, and accommodated with a bed at the Sol's Arms. The Sol neither turns off its gas nor shuts its door all night, for any kind of public excitement makes good for the Sol and causes the court to stand in need of comfort. The house has not done so much in the stomachic article of cloves or in brandy-and-water warm since the inquest. The moment the pot-boy heard what had happened, he rolled up his shirt-sleeves tight to his shoulders and said, "There'll be a run upon us!" In the first outcry, young Piper dashed off for the fire-engines and returned in triumph at a jolting gallop perched up aloft on the Phoenix and holding on to that fabulous creature with all his might in the midst of helmets and torches. One helmet remains behind after careful investigation of all chinks and crannies and slowly paces up and down before the house in company with one of the two policemen who have likewise been left in charge thereof. To this trio everybody in the court possessed of sixpence has an insatiate desire to exhibit hospitality in a liquid form.
Mr. Weevle and his friend Mr. Guppy are within the bar at the Sol and are worth anything to the Sol that the bar contains if they will only stay there. "This is not a time," says Mr. Bogsby, "to haggle about money," though he looks something sharply after it, over the counter; "give your orders, you two gentlemen, and you're welcome to whatever you put a name to."
Thus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr. Weevle especially) put names to so many things that in course of time they find it difficult to put a name to anything quite distinctly, though they still relate to all new-comers some version of the night they have had of it, and of what they said, and what they thought, and what they saw. Meanwhile, one or other of the policemen often flits about the door, and pushing it open a little way at the full length of his arm, looks in from outer gloom. Not that he has any suspicions, but that he may as well know what they are up to in there.
Thus night pursues its leaden course, finding the court still out of bed through the unwonted hours, still treating and being treated, still conducting itself similarly to a court that has had a little money left it unexpectedly. Thus night at length with slow-retreating steps departs, and the lamp-lighter going his rounds, like an executioner to a despotic king, strikes off the little heads of fire that have aspired to lessen the darkness. Thus the day cometh, whether or no.
And the day may discern, even with its dim London eye, that the court has been up all night. Over and above the faces that have fallen drowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard floors instead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court itself looks worn and jaded. And now the neighbourhood, waking up and beginning to hear of what has happened, comes streaming in, half dressed, to ask questions; and the two policemen and the helmet (who are far less impressible externally than the court) have enough to do to keep the door.
"Good gracious, gentlemen!" says Mr. Snagsby, coming up. "What's this I hear!"
"Why, it's true," returns one of the policemen. "That's what it is. Now move on here, come!"
"Why, good gracious, gentlemen," says Mr. Snagsby, somewhat promptly backed away, "I was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven o'clock in conversation with the young man who lodges here."
"Indeed?" returns the policeman. "You will find the young man next door then. Now move on here, some of you."
"Not hurt, I hope?" says Mr. Snagsby.
"Hurt? No. What's to hurt him!"
Mr. Snagsby, wholly unable to answer this or any question in his troubled mind, repairs to the Sol's Arms and finds Mr. Weevle languishing over tea and toast with a considerable expression on him of exhausted excitement and exhausted tobacco-smoke.
"And Mr. Guppy likewise!" quoth Mr. Snagsby. "Dear, dear, dear! What a fate there seems in all this! And my lit--"
Mr. Snagsby's power of speech deserts him in the formation of the words "my little woman." For to see that injured female walk into the Sol's Arms at that hour of the morning and stand before the beer-engine, with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit, strikes him dumb.
"My dear," says Mr. Snagsby when his tongue is loosened, "will you take anything? A little--not to put too fine a point upon it--drop of shrub?"
"No," says Mrs. Snagsby.
"My love, you know these two gentlemen?"
"Yes!" says Mrs. Snagsby, and in a rigid manner acknowledges their presence, still fixing Mr. Snagsby with her eye.
The devoted Mr. Snagsby cannot bear this treatment. He takes Mrs. Snagsby by the hand and leads her aside to an adjacent cask.
"My little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don't do it."
"I can't help my looks," says Mrs. Snagsby, "and if I could I wouldn't."
Mr. Snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoins, "Wouldn't you really, my dear?" and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble and says, "This is a dreadful mystery, my love!" still fearfully disconcerted by Mrs. Snagsby's eye.
"It IS," returns Mrs. Snagsby, shaking her head, "a dreadful mystery."
"My little woman," urges Mr. Snagsby in a piteous manner, "don't for goodness' sake speak to me with that bitter expression and look at me in that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do it. Good Lord, you don't suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any person, my dear?"
"I can't say," returns Mrs. Snagsby.
On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr. Snagsby "can't say" either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may have had something to do with it. He has had something--he don't know what--to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious that it is possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the present transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead with his handkerchief and gasps.
"My life," says the unhappy stationer, "would you have any objections to mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your conduct, you come into a wine-vaults before breakfast?"
"Why do YOU come here?" inquires Mrs. Snagsby.
"My dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has happened to the venerable party who has been--combusted." Mr. Snagsby has made a pause to suppress a groan. "I should then have related them to you, my love, over your French roll."
"I dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr. Snagsby."
"Every--my lit--"
"I should be glad," says Mrs. Snagsby after contemplating his increased confusion with a severe and sinister smile, "if you would come home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr. Snagsby, than anywhere else."
"My love, I don't know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to go."
Mr. Snagsby casts his eye forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs. Weevle and Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction with which he sees them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs. Snagsby from the Sol's Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs. Snagsby's pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His mental sufferings are so great that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself up to justice and requiring to be cleared if innocent and punished with the utmost rigour of the law if guilty.
Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into Lincoln's Inn to take a little walk about the square and clear as many of the dark cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may.
"There can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony," says Mr. Guppy after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the square, "for a word or two between us upon a point on which we must, with very little delay, come to an understanding."
"Now, I tell you what, William G.!" returns the other, eyeing his companion with a bloodshot eye. "If it's a point of conspiracy, you needn't take the trouble to mention it. I have had enough of that, and I ain't going to have any more. We shall have YOU taking fire next or blowing up with a bang."
This supposititious phenomenon is so very disagreeable to Mr. Guppy that his voice quakes as he says in a moral way, "Tony, I should have thought that what we went through last night would have been a lesson to you never to be personal any more as long as you lived." To which Mr. Weevle returns, "William, I should have thought it would have been a lesson to YOU never to conspire any more as long as you lived." To which Mr. Guppy says, "Who's conspiring?" To which Mr. Jobling replies, "Why, YOU are!" To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "No, I am not." To which Mr. Jobling retorts again, "Yes, you are!" To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "Who says so?" To which Mr. Jobling retorts, "I say so!" To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "Oh, indeed?" To which Mr. Jobling retorts, "Yes, indeed!" And both being now in a heated state, they walk on silently for a while to cool down again.
"Tony," says Mr. Guppy then, "if you heard your friend out instead of flying at him, you wouldn't fall into mistakes. But your temper is hasty and you are not considerate. Possessing in yourself, Tony, all that is calculated to charm the eye--"
"Oh! Blow the eye!" cries Mr. Weevle, cutting him short. "Say what you have got to say!"
Finding his friend in this morose and material condition, Mr. Guppy only expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of injury in which he recommences, "Tony, when I say there is a point on which we must come to an understanding pretty soon, I say so quite apart from any kind of conspiring, however innocent. You know it is professionally arranged beforehand in all cases that are tried what facts the witnesses are to prove. Is it or is it not desirable that we should know what facts we are to prove on the inquiry into the death of this unfortunate old mo--gentleman?" (Mr. Guppy was going to say "mogul," but thinks "gentleman" better suited to the circumstances.)
"What facts? THE facts."
"The facts bearing on that inquiry. Those are"--Mr. Guppy tells them off on his fingers--"what we knew of his habits, when you saw him last, what his condition was then, the discovery that we made, and how we made it."
"Yes," says Mr. Weevle. "Those are about the facts."
"We made the discovery in consequence of his having, in his eccentric way, an appointment with you at twelve o'clock at night, when you were to explain some writing to him as you had often done before on account of his not being able to read. I, spending the evening with you, was called down--and so forth. The inquiry being only into the circumstances touching the death of the deceased, it's not necessary to go beyond these facts, I suppose you'll agree?"
"No!" returns Mr. Weevle. "I suppose not."
"And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?" says the injured Guppy.
"No," returns his friend; "if it's nothing worse than this, I withdraw the observation."
"Now, Tony," says Mr. Guppy, taking his arm again and walking him slowly on, "I should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live at that place?"
"What do you mean?" says Tony, stopping.
"Whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live at that place?" repeats Mr. Guppy, walking him on again.
"At what place? THAT place?" pointing in the direction of the rag and bottle shop.
Mr. Guppy nods.
"Why, I wouldn't pass another night there for any consideration that you could offer me," says Mr. Weevle, haggardly staring.
"Do you mean it though, Tony?"
"Mean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I feel as if I do; I know that," says Mr. Weevle with a very genuine shudder.
"Then the possibility or probability--for such it must be considered--of your never being disturbed in possession of those effects lately belonging to a lone old man who seemed to have no relation in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find out what he really had got stored up there, don't weigh with you at all against last night, Tony, if I understand you?" says Mr. Guppy, biting his thumb with the appetite of vexation.
"Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow's living there?" cries Mr. Weevle indignantly. "Go and live there yourself."
"Oh! I, Tony!" says Mr. Guppy, soothing him. "I have never lived there and couldn't get a lodging there now, whereas you have got one."
"You are welcome to it," rejoins his friend, "and--ugh!--you may make yourself at home in it."
"Then you really and truly at this point," says Mr. Guppy, "give up the whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?"
"You never," returns Tony with a most convincing steadfastness, "said a truer word in all your life. I do!"
While they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the square, on the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself manifest to the public. Inside the coach, and consequently not so manifest to the multitude, though sufficiently so to the two friends, for the coach stops almost at their feet, are the venerable Mr. Smallweed and Mrs. Smallweed, accompanied by their granddaughter Judy.
An air of haste and excitement pervades the party, and as the tall hat (surmounting Mr. Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr. Smallweed the elder pokes his head out of window and bawls to Mr. Guppy, "How de do, sir! How de do!"
"What do Chick and his family want here at this time of the morning, I wonder!" says Mr. Guppy, nodding to his familiar.
"My dear sir," cries Grandfather Smallweed, "would you do me a favour? Would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry me into the public-house in the court, while Bart and his sister bring their grandmother along? Would you do an old man that good turn, sir?"
Mr. Guppy looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, "The public-house in the court?" And they prepare to bear the venerable burden to the Sol's Arms.
"There's your fare!" says the patriarch to the coachman with a fierce grin and shaking his incapable fist at him. "Ask me for a penny more, and I'll have my lawful revenge upon you. My dear young men, be easy with me, if you please. Allow me to catch you round the neck. I won't squeeze you tighter than I can help. Oh, Lord! Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones!"
It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr. Weevle presents an apoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished. With no worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the utterance of divers croaking sounds expressive of obstructed respiration, he fulfils his share of the porterage and the benevolent old gentleman is deposited by his own desire in the parlour of the Sol's Arms.
"Oh, Lord!" gasps Mr. Smallweed, looking about him, breathless, from an arm-chair. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones and back! Oh, my aches and pains! Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling poll-parrot! Sit down!"
This little apostrophe to Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds herself on her feet to amble about and "set" to inanimate objects, accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance. A nervous affection has probably as much to do with these demonstrations as any imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but on the present occasion they are so particularly lively in connexion with the Windsor arm-chair, fellow to that in which Mr. Smallweed is seated, that she only quite desists when her grandchildren have held her down in it, her lord in the meanwhile bestowing upon her, with great volubility, the endearing epithet of "a pig-headed jackdaw," repeated a surprising number of times.
"My dear sir," Grandfather Smallweed then proceeds, addressing Mr. Guppy, "there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it, either of you?"
"Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it."
"You discovered it. You two discovered it! Bart, THEY discovered it!"
The two discoverers stare at the Smallweeds, who return the compliment.
"My dear friends," whines Grandfather Smallweed, putting out both his hands, "I owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the melancholy office of discovering the ashes of Mrs. Smallweed's brother."
"Eh?" says Mr. Guppy.
"Mrs. Smallweed's brother, my dear friend--her only relation. We were not on terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never WOULD be on terms. He was not fond of us. He was eccentric--he was very eccentric. Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely) I shall take out letters of administration. I have come down to look after the property; it must be sealed up, it must be protected. I have come down," repeats Grandfather Smallweed, hooking the air towards him with all his ten fingers at once, "to look after the property."
"I think, Small," says the disconsolate Mr. Guppy, "you might have mentioned that the old man was your uncle."
"You two were so close about him that I thought you would like me to be the same," returns that old bird with a secretly glistening eye. "Besides, I wasn't proud of him."
"Besides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or not," says Judy. Also with a secretly glistening eye.
"He never saw me in his life to know me," observed Small; "I don't know why I should introduce HIM, I am sure!"
"No, he never communicated with us, which is to be deplored," the old gentleman strikes in, "but I have come to look after the property--to look over the papers, and to look after the property. We shall make good our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor. Mr. Tulkinghorn, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, over the way there, is so good as to act as my solicitor; and grass don't grow under HIS feet, I can tell ye. Krook was Mrs. Smallweed's only brother; she had no relation but Krook, and Krook had no relation but Mrs. Smallweed. I am speaking of your brother, you brimstone black-beetle, that was seventy-six years of age."
Mrs. Smallweed instantly begins to shake her head and pipe up, "Seventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! Seventy-six thousand bags of money! Seventy-six hundred thousand million of parcels of bank-notes!"
"Will somebody give me a quart pot?" exclaims her exasperated husband, looking helplessly about him and finding no missile within his reach. "Will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will somebody hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? You hag, you cat, you dog, you brimstone barker!" Here Mr. Smallweed, wrought up to the highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually throws Judy at her grandmother in default of anything else, by butting that young virgin at the old lady with such force as he can muster and then dropping into his chair in a heap.
"Shake me up, somebody, if you'll be so good," says the voice from within the faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed. "I have come to look after the property. Shake me up, and call in the police on duty at the next house to be explained to about the property. My solicitor will be here presently to protect the property. Transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall touch the property!" As his dutiful grandchildren set him up, panting, and putting him through the usual restorative process of shaking and punching, he still repeats like an echo, "The--the property! The property! Property!"
Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy look at each other, the former as having relinquished the whole affair, the latter with a discomfited countenance as having entertained some lingering expectations yet. But there is nothing to be done in opposition to the Smallweed interest. Mr. Tulkinghorn's clerk comes down from his official pew in the chambers to mention to the police that Mr. Tulkinghorn is answerable for its being all correct about the next of kin and that the papers and effects will be formally taken possession of in due time and course. Mr. Smallweed is at once permitted so far to assert his supremacy as to be carried on a visit of sentiment into the next house and upstairs into Miss Flite's deserted room, where he looks like a hideous bird of prey newly added to her aviary.
The arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court still makes good for the Sol and keeps the court upon its mettle. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins think it hard upon the young man if there really is no will, and consider that a handsome present ought to be made him out of the estate. Young Piper and young Perkins, as members of that restless juvenile circle which is the terror of the foot-passengers in Chancery Lane, crumble into ashes behind the pump and under the archway all day long, where wild yells and hootings take place over their remains. Little Swills and Miss M. Melvilleson enter into affable conversation with their patrons, feeling that these unusual occurrences level the barriers between professionals and non-professionals. Mr. Bogsby puts up "The popular song of King Death, with chorus by the whole strength of the company," as the great Harmonic feature of the week and announces in the bill that "J. G. B. is induced to do so at a considerable extra expense in consequence of a wish which has been very generally expressed at the bar by a large body of respectable individuals and in homage to a late melancholy event which has aroused so much sensation." There is one point connected with the deceased upon which the court is particularly anxious, namely, that the fiction of a full-sized coffin should be preserved, though there is so little to put in it. Upon the undertaker's stating in the Sol's bar in the course of the day that he has received orders to construct "a six-footer," the general solicitude is much relieved, and it is considered that Mr. Smallweed's conduct does him great honour.
Out of the court, and a long way out of it, there is considerable excitement too, for men of science and philosophy come to look, and carriages set down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same intent, and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and phosphuretted hydrogen than the court has ever imagined. Some of these authorities (of course the wisest) hold with indignation that the deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner; and being reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the evidence for such deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the Philosophical Transactions; and also of a book not quite unknown on English medical jurisprudence; and likewise of the Italian case of the Countess Cornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one Bianchini, prebendary of Verona, who wrote a scholarly work or so and was occasionally heard of in his time as having gleams of reason in him; and also of the testimony of Messrs. Fodere and Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen who WOULD investigate the subject; and further, of the corroborative testimony of Monsieur Le Cat, a rather celebrated French surgeon once upon a time, who had the unpoliteness to live in a house where such a case occurred and even to write an account of it--still they regard the late Mr. Krook's obstinacy in going out of the world by any such by-way as wholly unjustifiable and personally offensive. The less the court understands of all this, the more the court likes it, and the greater enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the Sol's Arms. Then there comes the artist of a picture newspaper, with a foreground and figures ready drawn for anything from a wreck on the Cornish coast to a review in Hyde Park or a meeting in Manchester, and in Mrs. Perkins' own room, memorable evermore, he then and there throws in upon the block Mr. Krook's house, as large as life; in fact, considerably larger, making a very temple of it. Similarly, being permitted to look in at the door of the fatal chamber, he depicts that apartment as three-quarters of a mile long by fifty yards high, at which the court is particularly charmed. All this time the two gentlemen before mentioned pop in and out of every house and assist at the philosophical disputations--go everywhere and listen to everybody--and yet are always diving into the Sol's parlour and writing with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper.
At last come the coroner and his inquiry, like as before, except that the coroner cherishes this case as being out of the common way and tells the gentlemen of the jury, in his private capacity, that "that would seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a destined house; but so we sometimes find it, and these are mysteries we can't account for!" After which the six-footer comes into action and is much admired.
In all these proceedings Mr. Guppy has so slight a part, except when he gives his evidence, that he is moved on like a private individual and can only haunt the secret house on the outside, where he has the mortification of seeing Mr. Smallweed padlocking the door, and of bitterly knowing himself to be shut out. But before these proceedings draw to a close, that is to say, on the night next after the catastrophe, Mr. Guppy has a thing to say that must be said to Lady Dedlock.
For which reason, with a sinking heart and with that hang-dog sense of guilt upon him which dread and watching enfolded in the Sol's Arms have produced, the young man of the name of Guppy presents himself at the town mansion at about seven o'clock in the evening and requests to see her ladyship. Mercury replies that she is going out to dinner; don't he see the carriage at the door? Yes, he does see the carriage at the door; but he wants to see my Lady too.
Mercury is disposed, as he will presently declare to a fellow-gentleman in waiting, "to pitch into the young man"; but his instructions are positive. Therefore he sulkily supposes that the young man must come up into the library. There he leaves the young man in a large room, not over-light, while he makes report of him.
Mr. Guppy looks into the shade in all directions, discovering everywhere a certain charred and whitened little heap of coal or wood. Presently he hears a rustling. Is it--? No, it's no ghost, but fair flesh and blood, most brilliantly dressed.
"I have to beg your ladyship's pardon," Mr. Guppy stammers, very downcast. "This is an inconvenient time--"
"I told you, you could come at any time." She takes a chair, looking straight at him as on the last occasion.
"Thank your ladyship. Your ladyship is very affable."
"You can sit down." There is not much affability in her tone.
"I don't know, your ladyship, that it's worth while my sitting down and detaining you, for I--I have not got the letters that I mentioned when I had the honour of waiting on your ladyship."
"Have you come merely to say so?"
"Merely to say so, your ladyship." Mr. Guppy besides being depressed, disappointed, and uneasy, is put at a further disadvantage by the splendour and beauty of her appearance.
She knows its influence perfectly, has studied it too well to miss a grain of its effect on any one. As she looks at him so steadily and coldly, he not only feels conscious that he has no guide in the least perception of what is really the complexion of her thoughts, but also that he is being every moment, as it were, removed further and further from her.
She will not speak, it is plain. So he must.
"In short, your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy like a meanly penitent thief, "the person I was to have had the letters of, has come to a sudden end, and--" He stops. Lady Dedlock calmly finishes the sentence.
"And the letters are destroyed with the person?"
Mr. Guppy would say no if he could--as he is unable to hide.
"I believe so, your ladyship."
If he could see the least sparkle of relief in her face now? No, he could see no such thing, even if that brave outside did not utterly put him away, and he were not looking beyond it and about it.
He falters an awkward excuse or two for his failure.
"Is this all you have to say?" inquires Lady Dedlock, having heard him out--or as nearly out as he can stumble.
Mr. Guppy thinks that's all.
"You had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me, this being the last time you will have the opportunity."
Mr. Guppy is quite sure. And indeed he has no such wish at present, by any means.
"That is enough. I will dispense with excuses. Good evening to you!" And she rings for Mercury to show the young man of the name of Guppy out.
But in that house, in that same moment, there happens to be an old man of the name of Tulkinghorn. And that old man, coming with his quiet footstep to the library, has his hand at that moment on the handle of the door--comes in--and comes face to face with the young man as he is leaving the room.
One glance between the old man and the lady, and for an instant the blind that is always down flies up. Suspicion, eager and sharp, looks out. Another instant, close again.
"I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. I beg your pardon a thousand times. It is so very unusual to find you here at this hour. I supposed the room was empty. I beg your pardon!"
"Stay!" She negligently calls him back. "Remain here, I beg. I am going out to dinner. I have nothing more to say to this young man!"
The disconcerted young man bows, as he goes out, and cringingly hopes that Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields is well.
"Aye, aye?" says the lawyer, looking at him from under his bent brows, though he has no need to look again--not he. "From Kenge and Carboy's, surely?"
"Kenge and Carboy's, Mr. Tulkinghorn. Name of Guppy, sir."
"To be sure. Why, thank you, Mr. Guppy, I am very well!"
"Happy to hear it, sir. You can't be too well, sir, for the credit of the profession."
"Thank you, Mr. Guppy!"
Mr. Guppy sneaks away. Mr. Tulkinghorn, such a foil in his old-fashioned rusty black to Lady Dedlock's brightness, hands her down the staircase to her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and rubs it a good deal in the course of the evening. | Those two gentlemen who attended the last coroner's inquest at the Sol's Arms reappear in the area with surprising swiftness, make enquiries through the court, and write notes. They note down how the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a state of the most intense excitement by an alarming and horrible discovery. They write (in as many words as possible) how a very peculiar smell was observed by the inhabitants of the court, as confirmed by two married females known as Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, who regarded the foul effluvia as being emitted from the premises of Krook. All this and a great deal more the two gentlemen write down on the spot.
The whole court is sleepless that night, and talk of nothing but the ill-fated house. Miss Flite has been bravely rescued from her chamber, as if it were in flames, and given a bed at the Sol's Arms. The Sol stays open to offer the court comfort. It has not sold so much brandy-and-water since the inquest.
Mr. Weevle and his friend Mr. Guppy are at the bar in the Sol and are worth anything to the Sol if they will only stay there.
"This is not a time," says the landlord, "to haggle about money; give your orders, gentlemen, and you're welcome to whatever you put a name to."
Thus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr. Weevle especially) put names to so many things that in course of time they find it difficult to put a name to anything distinctly, though they still relate to all new-comers some version of the night they have had. Meanwhile, one or other of the policemen flits about the door.
Thus night pursues its leaden course, until at length with slow-retreating steps it departs. And now the neighbourhood, waking up and beginning to hear of what has happened, comes streaming in, half dressed, to ask questions.
"Good gracious, gentlemen!" says Mr. Snagsby, coming up to the policemen. "What's this I hear! Why, I was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven o'clock talking to the young man who lodges here."
"Indeed?" returns a policeman. "You will find him next door. Now move on."
Mr. Snagsby repairs to the Sol's Arms and finds Mr. Weevle languishing over tea and toast with an expression of exhausted excitement.
"And Mr. Guppy likewise!" says Mr. Snagsby. "Dear, dear! What a fate there seems in all this! And my lit-"
Mr. Snagsby's power of speech deserts him in the formation of the words "my little woman." For that injured female walks into the Sol's Arms with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit, striking him dumb.
"My dear," says Mr. Snagsby when his tongue is loosened, "will you take anything?"
"No," says Mrs. Snagsby.
"My love, you know these two gentlemen?"
"Yes!" says Mrs. Snagsby, still fixing him with her eye.
The devoted Mr. Snagsby cannot bear this treatment. He leads Mrs. Snagsby aside.
"My little woman, why do you look at me in that way?"
"I can't help my looks," says Mrs. Snagsby, "and if I could I wouldn't."
Mr. Snagsby, with a meek cough, rejoins, "Really, my dear? This is a dreadful mystery, my love!" still fearfully disconcerted by Mrs. Snagsby's eye.
"It is," returns Mrs. Snagsby, shaking her head, "a dreadful mystery."
"My little woman," urges Mr. Snagsby piteously, "don't for goodness' sake speak to me with that bitter expression! Good Lord, you don't suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any person, my dear?"
"I can't say," returns Mrs. Snagsby.
On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr. Snagsby "can't say" either. He has had something - he doesn't know what - to do in connection with this mystery, and it is possible he may be implicated, without knowing it. He faintly wipes his forehead with his handkerchief.
"My life," says he, "why have you come into a wine-vaults before breakfast?"
"Why do you come here?" inquires Mrs. Snagsby.
"My dear, merely to know the facts of the fatal accident. I should then have related them to you, my love."
"I dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr. Snagsby."
"Every - my lit-"
"I should be glad," says Mrs. Snagsby, contemplating his confusion with a severe and sinister smile, "if you would come home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr. Snagsby, than anywhere else."
"My love, I am ready to go."
Mr. Snagsby accompanies his wife from the Sol's Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs. Snagsby's fixed gaze. He even has wandering ideas of delivering himself up to justice.
Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into Lincoln's Inn to walk about the square.
"There can be no better time than the present, Tony," says Mr. Guppy, "for a word or two between us upon a point on which we must agree."
"Now, I tell you what, William G.!" returns the other, eyeing his companion with a bloodshot gaze. "If it's a point of conspiracy, you needn't take the trouble to mention it. I have had enough of that, and I ain't going to have any more. We shall have you catching fire next or blowing up with a bang. I should have thought it would have been a lesson to you never to conspire any more as long as you lived."
Mr. Guppy says, "Who's conspiring?"
"Why, you are!"
"No, I am not."
"Yes, you are!"
"Who says so?"
"I say so!"
"Oh, indeed?"
"Yes, indeed!" retorts Mr Jobling. And both being now in a heated state, they walk on silently for a while to cool down again.
"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, "hear your friend out instead of flying at him. Your temper is hasty and you are not considerate. Although you possess all that is calculated to charm the eye-"
"Oh! Blow the eye!" cries Mr. Weevle. "Say what you have got to say!"
"Tony, I say this quite apart from any kind of conspiring. You know it is professionally arranged beforehand in all legal inquiries what facts the witnesses are to prove. Is it not desirable that we should know what facts we are to prove on the inquiry into the death of this unfortunate old gentleman?"
"What facts?"
"What we knew of his habits, when you saw him last, what his condition was then, the discovery that we made, and how we made it."
"Yes," says Mr. Weevle. "Those are the facts."
"We made the discovery because he had, in his eccentric way, an appointment with you at twelve o'clock at night, when you were to explain some writing to him as you had often done before on account of his not being able to read. I, spending the evening with you, was called down - and so forth. It's not necessary to go beyond these facts, I suppose you'll agree?"
"I suppose not."
"And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?" says the injured Guppy.
"No," returns his friend; "if it's nothing worse than this, I withdraw the observation."
"Now, Tony," says Mr. Guppy, taking his arm and walking him slowly on, "I should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you have yet thought over the advantages of your continuing to live at that place?"
"What do you mean?" says Tony, stopping. "Why, I wouldn't pass another night there for anything."
"Not for the possibility of your never being disturbed in possession of the effects of a lone old man who seemed to have no relation in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find out what he really had got stored up there?" says Mr. Guppy, biting his thumb with vexation.
"Certainly not," cries Mr. Weevle indignantly. "Go and live there yourself!"
While they are talking, a hackney-coach drives into the square, on the box of which sits a very tall hat. Inside the coach - which stops almost at the feet of the two friends - are the venerable Mr. Smallweed and Mrs. Smallweed, accompanied by their granddaughter Judy.
As the tall hat (surmounting Mr. Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr. Smallweed the elder pokes his head out of the window and bawls to Mr. Guppy, "How de do, sir!"
"What do Chick and his family want here, I wonder!" says Mr. Guppy.
"My dear sir," cries Grandfather Smallweed, "would you do me a favour? Would you and your friend carry me into the public-house, while Bart and his sister bring their grandmother along?"
Mr. Guppy and his friend do so. It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr. Weevle has an apoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished. But at last the benevolent old gentleman is deposited in the parlour of the Sol's Arms.
"Oh, Lord!" gasps Mr. Smallweed, breathless, in an arm-chair. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones and back! Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling poll-parrot! Sit down!"
This is addressed to Mrs. Smallweed, who has a tendency to amble about whenever she finds herself on her feet. Her grandchildren hold her down in the Windsor chair, her lord in the meanwhile calling her "a pig-headed jackdaw."
"My dear sir," Grandfather Smallweed proceeds, addressing Mr. Guppy, "there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it?"
"Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it."
"Then, my dear friends," whines Grandfather Smallweed, putting out both his hands, "I owe you a thousand thanks for discovering the ashes of Mrs. Smallweed's brother."
"Eh?" says Mr. Guppy.
"Mrs. Smallweed's brother, my dear friend - her only relation. He was not on speaking terms with us. He was eccentric. Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely) I shall take out letters of administration. I have come down to look after the property; it must be sealed up and protected."
"I think, Small," says the disconsolate Mr. Guppy, "you might have mentioned that the old man was your uncle."
"I wasn't proud of him," says young Smallweed.
"Besides, it was nothing to you, you know," says Judy.
"He never saw me in his life," observed Small.
"No, he never communicated with us," the old gentleman strikes in, "but I have come to look after the property. We shall make good our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn; and grass don't grow under his feet, I can tell ye. Krook was Mrs. Smallweed's only brother; he had no other relation. I am speaking of your brother, you brimstone black-beetle, that was seventy-six years of age."
Mrs. Smallweed instantly begins to pipe up, "Seventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! Seventy-six thousand bags of money!"
"Will somebody give me a pot to throw at her?" exclaims her exasperated husband, looking about him and finding no missile within his reach. "You hag, you cat, you dog, you brimstone barker!" Here Mr. Smallweed actually throws Judy at her grandmother in default of anything else, pushing her at the old lady with such force as he can muster and then dropping into his chair in a heap.
"Shake me up, somebody, if you'll be so good," says the voice from within the faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed. "I have come to look after the property. The gallows for anybody who shall touch the property!" As his dutiful grandchildren shake him up, he repeats like an echo, "The property! Property!"
Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy look at each other. But there is nothing to be done. Mr. Tulkinghorn's clerk comes down from the chambers to mention to the police that Mr. Tulkinghorn agrees it is all correct about the next of kin, and that the papers and effects will be formally taken possession of. Mr. Smallweed is permitted to visit the house and is taken upstairs into Miss Flite's deserted room, where he looks like a hideous bird of prey newly added to her aviary.
This news is good for the Sol and keeps the court upon its mettle. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins think it hard on Mr. Weevle if there really is no will. There is one point upon which the court is particularly anxious, namely, that the fiction of a full-sized coffin should be preserved, though there is so little to put in it. Upon the undertaker's stating in the Sol's bar that he has received orders to construct "a six-footer," there is much relief.
Out of the court, there is considerable excitement too; for men of science and doctors come to look, and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and phosphuretted hydrogen than the court has ever imagined. Some of these authorities hold with indignation that the deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner; and are reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the evidence for such deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the Philosophical Transactions. Still they regard the late Mr. Krook's going out of the world in such a way as wholly unjustifiable and personally offensive.
The less the court understands of all this, the more the court likes it. There comes a newspaper artist, with a foreground and figures ready drawn for anything from a wreck on the Cornish coast to a meeting in Manchester, and in Mrs. Perkins' own room, he then and there adds in Mr. Krook's house, as large as life; in fact, considerably larger, making it look three-quarters of a mile long by fifty yards high, at which the court is particularly charmed.
At last come the coroner and his inquiry, as before, except that the coroner tells the gentlemen of the jury that "it would seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a fateful house; but these are mysteries we can't account for!" After which the six-footer comes into action and is much admired.
Meanwhile Mr. Guppy has the mortification of seeing Mr. Smallweed padlocking the door, and of bitterly knowing himself to be shut out. But before these proceedings draw to a close, Mr. Guppy has something that he must say to Lady Dedlock.
So, with a sinking heart, Mr. Guppy presents himself at the town mansion at about seven o'clock in the evening and requests to see her ladyship. The footman sulkily supposes that the young man must come up into the library.
Mr. Guppy looks into the shade in all directions, discovering everywhere a certain charred little heap of coal or wood. Presently he hears a rustling. Is it-? No, it's no ghost, but fair flesh and blood.
"I beg your ladyship's pardon," Mr. Guppy stammers, very downcast. "This is an inconvenient time-"
"I told you, you could come at any time." She takes a chair, looking straight at him.
"Thank your ladyship. I - I have not got the letters that I mentioned previously."
"Have you come merely to say so?"
"Yes, your ladyship." Mr. Guppy, besides being depressed and uneasy, is put at a further disadvantage by the splendour and beauty of her appearance.
She knows its influence perfectly, has studied it too well to miss a grain of its effect on any one. As she looks at him so steadily and coldly, he feels that he has no idea of her thoughts, and also that he is being every moment, as it were, removed further and further from her.
She will not speak. So he must.
"The person I was to have had the letters from, has come to a sudden end, and-" He stops. Lady Dedlock calmly finishes the sentence.
"And the letters are destroyed with the person?"
"I believe so, your ladyship." He does not see the least sparkle of relief in her face.
"Is this all you have to say? You had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me, this being the last time you will have the opportunity."
Mr. Guppy is quite sure.
"That is enough. Good evening to you!" And she rings for the footman to show Mr. Guppy out.
But in that house, in that same moment, there happens to be an old man of the name of Tulkinghorn. And he comes into the library just as the young man is leaving the room.
One glance between the old man and the lady, and for an instant suspicion, eager and sharp, looks out.
"I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. I supposed the room was empty."
"Stay!" She negligently calls him back. "Stay here, I beg. I am going out to dinner. I have nothing more to say to this young man!"
The disconcerted young man bows, as he goes out, and cringingly hopes that Mr. Tulkinghorn is well.
"Aye, aye?" says the lawyer, looking at him from under his bent brows. "From Kenge and Carboy's, surely?"
"Yes, Mr. Tulkinghorn. Name of Guppy, sir."
"To be sure. Why, thank you, Mr. Guppy, I am very well!"
"Happy to hear it, sir." Mr. Guppy sneaks away.
Mr. Tulkinghorn hands Lady Dedlock down the staircase to her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and rubs it a good deal in the course of the evening. | Bleak House | Chapter 33: Interlopers |
It is night in Lincoln's Inn--perplexed and troublous valley of the shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day--and fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine o'clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land. Over which bee-like industry these benefactors of their species linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they may give, for every day, some good account at last.
In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and supper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours and scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of passengers--Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged congratulations on the children being abed, and they still linger on a door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Krook and his lodger, and the fact of Mr. Krook's being "continually in liquor," and the testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the Harmonic Meeting at the Sol's Arms, where the sound of the piano through the partly opened windows jingles out into the court, and where Little Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar like a very Yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a concerted piece and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to "Listen, listen, listen, tew the wa-ter fall!" Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of professional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings and who has a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window, Mrs. Perkins possessing information that she has been married a year and a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren, and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol's Arms every night to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments. "Sooner than which, myself," says Mrs. Perkins, "I would get my living by selling lucifers." Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the same opinion, holding that a private station is better than public applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs. Perkins') respectability. By this time the pot-boy of the Sol's Arms appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs. Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to bed. Now there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too, the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis that every one is either robbing or being robbed.
It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and there is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the registrar of deaths some extra business. It may be something in the air--there is plenty in it--or it may be something in himself that is in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He comes and goes between his own room and the open street door twenty times an hour. He has been doing so ever since it fell dark. Since the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early to-night, Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all proportion), oftener than before.
It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too, for he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery of which he is a partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby haunts what seems to be its fountain-head--the rag and bottle shop in the court. It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by the Sol's Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out at the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated after-supper stroll of ten minutes' long from his own door and back again, Mr. Snagsby approaches.
"What, Mr. Weevle?" says the stationer, stopping to speak. "Are YOU there?"
"Aye!" says Weevle, "Here I am, Mr. Snagsby."
"Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?" the stationer inquires.
"Why, there's not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not very freshening," Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.
"Very true, sir. Don't you observe," says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to sniff and taste the air a little, "don't you observe, Mr. Weevle, that you're--not to put too fine a point upon it--that you're rather greasy here, sir?"
"Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in the place to-night," Mr. Weevle rejoins. "I suppose it's chops at the Sol's Arms."
"Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?" Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again. "Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning 'em, sir! And I don't think"--Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again and then spits and wipes his mouth--"I don't think--not to put too fine a point upon it--that they were quite fresh when they were shown the gridiron."
"That's very likely. It's a tainting sort of weather."
"It IS a tainting sort of weather," says Mr. Snagsby, "and I find it sinking to the spirits."
"By George! I find it gives me the horrors," returns Mr. Weevle.
"Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room, with a black circumstance hanging over it," says Mr. Snagsby, looking in past the other's shoulder along the dark passage and then falling back a step to look up at the house. "I couldn't live in that room alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door and stand here sooner than sit there. But then it's very true that you didn't see, in your room, what I saw there. That makes a difference."
"I know quite enough about it," returns Tony.
"It's not agreeable, is it?" pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his cough of mild persuasion behind his hand. "Mr. Krook ought to consider it in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure."
"I hope he does," says Tony. "But I doubt it."
"You find the rent too high, do you, sir?" returns the stationer. "Rents ARE high about here. I don't know how it is exactly, but the law seems to put things up in price. Not," adds Mr. Snagsby with his apologetic cough, "that I mean to say a word against the profession I get my living by."
Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at the stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his way out of this conversation.
"It's a curious fact, sir," he observes, slowly rubbing his hands, "that he should have been--"
"Who's he?" interrupts Mr. Weevle.
"The deceased, you know," says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and right eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on the button.
"Ah, to be sure!" returns the other as if he were not over-fond of the subject. "I thought we had done with him."
"I was only going to say it's a curious fact, sir, that he should have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation," says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle, "because I have known writers that have gone into brewers' houses and done really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir," adds Mr. Snagsby with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter.
"It's a curious coincidence, as you say," answers Weevle, once more glancing up and down the court.
"Seems a fate in it, don't there?" suggests the stationer.
"There does."
"Just so," observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough. "Quite a fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid you good night"--Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go, though he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since he stopped to speak--"my little woman will be looking for me else. Good night, sir!"
If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol's Arms all this time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over her head, honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching glance as she goes past.
"You'll know me again, ma'am, at all events," says Mr. Weevle to himself; "and I can't compliment you on your appearance, whoever you are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow NEVER coming!"
This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up his finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door. Then they go upstairs, Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy (for it is he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they speak low.
"I thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming here," says Tony.
"Why, I said about ten."
"You said about ten," Tony repeats. "Yes, so you did say about ten. But according to my count, it's ten times ten--it's a hundred o'clock. I never had such a night in my life!"
"What has been the matter?"
"That's it!" says Tony. "Nothing has been the matter. But here have I been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE'S a blessed-looking candle!" says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.
"That's easily improved," Mr. Guppy observes as he takes the snuffers in hand.
"IS it?" returns his friend. "Not so easily as you think. It has been smouldering like that ever since it was lighted."
"Why, what's the matter with you, Tony?" inquires Mr. Guppy, looking at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the table.
"William Guppy," replies the other, "I am in the downs. It's this unbearably dull, suicidal room--and old Boguey downstairs, I suppose." Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender, and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his head and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy attitude.
"Wasn't that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?"
"Yes, and he--yes, it was Snagsby," said Mr. Weevle, altering the construction of his sentence.
"On business?"
"No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to prose."
"I thought it was Snagsby," says Mr. Guppy, "and thought it as well that he shouldn't see me, so I waited till he was gone."
"There we go again, William G.!" cried Tony, looking up for an instant. "So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to commit a murder, we couldn't have more mystery about it!"
Mr. Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his survey with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm.
"That's very like Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Guppy. "It's a speaking likeness."
"I wish it was," growls Tony, without changing his position. "I should have some fashionable conversation, here, then."
Finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack and remonstrates with him.
"Tony," says he, "I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart. But there are bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don't think your manner on the present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly."
"This is strong language, William Guppy," returns Mr. Weevle.
"Sir, it may be," retorts Mr. William Guppy, "but I feel strongly when I use it."
Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. William Guppy to think no more about it. Mr. William Guppy, however, having got the advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured remonstrance.
"No! Dash it, Tony," says that gentleman, "you really ought to be careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart and who is NOT altogether happy in those chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and allure the taste. It is not--happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I could say the same--it is not your character to hover around one flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am sure, to wound even your feelings without a cause!"
Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying emphatically, "William Guppy, drop it!" Mr. Guppy acquiesces, with the reply, "I never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord."
"And now," says Tony, stirring the fire, "touching this same bundle of letters. Isn't it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have appointed twelve o'clock to-night to hand 'em over to me?"
"Very. What did he do it for?"
"What does he do anything for? HE don't know. Said to-day was his birthday and he'd hand 'em over to-night at twelve o'clock. He'll have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day."
"He hasn't forgotten the appointment, I hope?"
"Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him to-night, about eight--helped him to shut up his shop--and he had got the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and showed 'em me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I heard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming like the wind, the only song he knows--about Bibo, and old Charon, and Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole."
"And you are to go down at twelve?"
"At twelve. And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a hundred."
"Tony," says Mr. Guppy after considering a little with his legs crossed, "he can't read yet, can he?"
"Read! He'll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on that much, under me; but he can't put them together. He's too old to acquire the knack of it now--and too drunk."
"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, "how do you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?"
"He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye alone. He imitated it, evidently from the direction of a letter, and asked me what it meant."
"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again, "should you say that the original was a man's writing or a woman's?"
"A woman's. Fifty to one a lady's--slopes a good deal, and the end of the letter 'n,' long and hasty."
Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue, generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. As he is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast.
"Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? Is there a chimney on fire?"
"Chimney on fire!"
"Ah!" returns Mr. Guppy. "See how the soot's falling. See here, on my arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won't blow off--smears like black fat!"
They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back and says it's all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made to Mr. Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol's Arms.
"And it was then," resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with remarkable aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads very near together, "that he told you of his having taken the bundle of letters from his lodger's portmanteau?"
"That was the time, sir," answers Tony, faintly adjusting his whiskers. "Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night and advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots."
The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed by Mr. Weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he abandons that and his whiskers together, and after looking over his shoulder, appears to yield himself up a prey to the horrors again.
"You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That's the arrangement, isn't it, Tony?" asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting his thumb-nail.
"You can't speak too low. Yes. That's what he and I agreed."
"I tell you what, Tony--"
"You can't speak too low," says Tony once more. Mr. Guppy nods his sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.
"I tell you what. The first thing to be done is to make another packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one while it's in my possession, you can show him the dummy."
"And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely than not," suggests Tony.
"Then we'll face it out. They don't belong to him, and they never did. You found that, and you placed them in my hands--a legal friend of yours--for security. If he forces us to it, they'll be producible, won't they?"
"Ye-es," is Mr. Weevle's reluctant admission.
"Why, Tony," remonstrates his friend, "how you look! You don't doubt William Guppy? You don't suspect any harm?"
"I don't suspect anything more than I know, William," returns the other gravely.
"And what do you know?" urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a little; but on his friend's once more warning him, "I tell you, you can't speak too low," he repeats his question without any sound at all, forming with his lips only the words, "What do you know?"
"I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in secrecy, a pair of conspirators."
"Well!" says Mr. Guppy. "And we had better be that than a pair of noodles, which we should be if we were doing anything else, for it's the only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?"
"Secondly, it's not made out to me how it's likely to be profitable, after all."
Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf and replies, "Tony, you are asked to leave that to the honour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that friend in those chords of the human mind which--which need not be called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion--your friend is no fool. What's that?"
"It's eleven o'clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul's. Listen and you'll hear all the bells in the city jangling."
Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant, resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various than their situations. When these at length cease, all seems more mysterious and quiet than before. One disagreeable result of whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of sound--strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter snow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be that the air is full of these phantoms, and the two look over their shoulders by one consent to see that the door is shut.
"Yes, Tony?" says Mr. Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire and biting his unsteady thumb-nail. "You were going to say, thirdly?"
"It's far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it."
"But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony."
"May be not, still I don't like it. Live here by yourself and see how YOU like it."
"As to dead men, Tony," proceeds Mr. Guppy, evading this proposal, "there have been dead men in most rooms."
"I know there have, but in most rooms you let them alone, and--and they let you alone," Tony answers.
The two look at each other again. Mr. Guppy makes a hurried remark to the effect that they may be doing the deceased a service, that he hopes so. There is an oppressive blank until Mr. Weevle, by stirring the fire suddenly, makes Mr. Guppy start as if his heart had been stirred instead.
"Fah! Here's more of this hateful soot hanging about," says he. "Let us open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air. It's too close."
He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in and half out of the room. The neighbouring houses are too near to admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and looking up, but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of distant carriages, and the new expression that there is of the stir of men, they find to be comfortable. Mr. Guppy, noiselessly tapping on the window-sill, resumes his whispering in quite a light-comedy tone.
"By the by, Tony, don't forget old Smallweed," meaning the younger of that name. "I have not let him into this, you know. That grandfather of his is too keen by half. It runs in the family."
"I remember," says Tony. "I am up to all that."
"And as to Krook," resumes Mr. Guppy. "Now, do you suppose he really has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to you, since you have been such allies?"
Tony shakes his head. "I don't know. Can't Imagine. If we get through this business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be better informed, no doubt. How can I know without seeing them, when he don't know himself? He is always spelling out words from them, and chalking them over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is and what that is; but his whole stock from beginning to end may easily be the waste-paper he bought it as, for anything I can say. It's a monomania with him to think he is possessed of documents. He has been going to learn to read them this last quarter of a century, I should judge, from what he tells me."
"How did he first come by that idea, though? That's the question," Mr. Guppy suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic meditation. "He may have found papers in something he bought, where papers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his shrewd head from the manner and place of their concealment that they are worth something."
"Or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. Or he may have been muddled altogether by long staring at whatever he HAS got, and by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor's Court and hearing of documents for ever," returns Mr. Weevle.
Mr. Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and balancing all these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfully to tap it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily draws his hand away.
"What, in the devil's name," he says, "is this! Look at my fingers!"
A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder.
"What have you been doing here? What have you been pouring out of window?"
"I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have been here!" cries the lodger.
And yet look here--and look here! When he brings the candle here, from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away down the bricks, here lies in a little thick nauseous pool.
"This is a horrible house," says Mr. Guppy, shutting down the window. "Give me some water or I shall cut my hand off."
He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy and stood silently before the fire when Saint Paul's bell strikes twelve and all those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various heights in the dark air, and in their many tones. When all is quiet again, the lodger says, "It's the appointed time at last. Shall I go?"
Mr. Guppy nods and gives him a "lucky touch" on the back, but not with the washed hand, though it is his right hand.
He goes downstairs, and Mr. Guppy tries to compose himself before the fire for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or two the stairs creak and Tony comes swiftly back.
"Have you got them?"
"Got them! No. The old man's not there."
He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval that his terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks loudly, "What's the matter?"
"I couldn't make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked in. And the burning smell is there--and the soot is there, and the oil is there--and he is not there!" Tony ends this with a groan.
Mr. Guppy takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat has retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at something on the ground before the fire. There is a very little fire left in the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and table, and the bottle so rarely absent from the table, all stand as usual. On one chair-back hang the old man's hairy cap and coat.
"Look!" whispers the lodger, pointing his friend's attention to these objects with a trembling finger. "I told you so. When I saw him last, he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung his cap on the back of the chair--his coat was there already, for he had pulled that off before he went to put the shutters up--and I left him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that crumbled black thing is upon the floor."
Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.
"See!" whispers Tony. "At the foot of the same chair there lies a dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me, before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it fall."
"What's the matter with the cat?" says Mr. Guppy. "Look at her!"
"Mad, I think. And no wonder in this evil place."
They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the light.
Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to be steeped in something; and here is--is it the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it coal? Oh, horror, he IS here! And this from which we run away, striking out the light and overturning one another into the street, is all that represents him.
Help, help, help! Come into this house for heaven's sake! Plenty will come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that court, true to his title in his last act, has died the death of all lord chancellors in all courts and of all authorities in all places under all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice is done. Call the death by any name your Highness will, attribute it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you will, it is the same death eternally--inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only--spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died. | It is night in Lincoln's Inn - perplexed and troublous valley of the shadow of the law - and fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have dispersed. The gates are shut; and the night-porter keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows clogged lamps dimly blink at the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little patches of candlelight reveal where some draughtsman and conveyancer still toils.
In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and bottle shop dwells, it is time for beer and supper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins linger on a door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Krook and his lodger, and the fact of Mr. Krook's being "continually in liquor," are, as usual, the staple of their conversation.
Now they retire; there is a sound of putting up of shutters in the court. Now the policeman begins to push at doors; to be suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis that everyone is either robbing or being robbed.
It is a close night, with a laggard mist in the air; a fine steaming night to give the registrar of deaths some extra business. It may be something in the air, or it may be something in himself that is in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He comes and goes between his own room and the open street door twenty times an hour. He has been doing so ever since the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early tonight.
It is no surprise that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too, for he always is so, under the oppressive influence of his secret. Impelled by the mystery, Mr. Snagsby haunts what seems to be its fountain-head - the rag and bottle shop. It has an irresistible attraction for him. Coming there now, he sees Mr. Weevle.
"What, Mr. Weevle?" says the stationer. "Are you there?"
"Aye!" says Weevle.
"Airing yourself, as I am, before you go to bed?"
"Why, the air here is not very freshening," Weevle answers.
"Very true, sir. Don't you observe," says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to sniff the air, "not to put too fine a point upon it - that you're rather greasy here, sir?"
"Why, I have noticed there is a queer flavour in the place tonight," Mr. Weevle rejoins. "I suppose it's chops at the Sol's Arms."
"Chops, eh?" Mr. Snagsby sniffs again. "Well, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook has been burning 'em, sir! And I don't think" - Mr. Snagsby wipes his mouth - "I don't think that they were quite fresh."
"That's very likely. It's a tainting sort of weather."
"It is," says Mr. Snagsby. "I find it sinking to the spirits."
"By George! It gives me the horrors," returns Mr. Weevle.
"You live in a lonesome room, with a black past," says Mr. Snagsby. "I couldn't live in that room, sir. But then you didn't see, in your room, what I saw. That makes a difference."
"I know quite enough about it," returns Tony.
"It's not agreeable, is it?" pursues Mr. Snagsby. "Mr. Krook ought to consider it in the rent."
"I doubt if he does."
"You find the rent high, do you, sir?" returns the stationer. "It's a curious fact, sir, that the deceased should have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too."
"It's a curious coincidence, as you say," answers Weevle, glancing up and down the court.
"Well, Mr. Weevle, I must bid you good night. My little woman will be looking for me else."
If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His little woman has had her eye upon him all this time and now glides after him with a handkerchief wrapped over her head, giving Mr. Weevle a searching glance as she goes past.
"You'll know me again, ma'am, at all events," says Mr. Weevle to himself; "though I can't compliment you on your appearance, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow never coming!"
This fellow approaches as he speaks. It is Mr. Guppy. They go quietly upstairs, and when they are shut into the back room, they speak low.
"I never had such a night in my life!" says Tony.
"What has been the matter?"
"That's it!" says Tony. "Nothing has been the matter. But I have had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail. That there blessed candle!" He points to the taper on his table. "It has been smouldering like that ever since it was lighted."
"Why, what's the matter with you, Tony?" inquires Mr. Guppy.
"William Guppy," replies the other, "I am in the downs. It's this unbearably dull, suicidal room - and old Bogey downstairs, I suppose." Mr. Weevle leans his head on his hand. Mr. Guppy sits down in an easy attitude.
"Wasn't that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?"
"Yes. He was only sauntering by."
"I thought it as well that he shouldn't see me, so I waited till he was gone."
"There we go again, William G.!" cried Tony. "So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to commit a murder, we couldn't have more mystery about it!"
Mr. Guppy pretends to smile, and in order to change the conversation, looks round the room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, ending his survey with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf. She is shown on a terrace, with a pedestal, a vase, and a prodigious piece of fur.
"That's very like Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Guppy. "It's a speaking likeness."
"I wish it was," growls Tony. "I should have some fashionable conversation, then."
Mr. Guppy remonstrates. "Tony," says he, "I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for no man knows them better than I do, with an unrequited image imprinted on my 'eart. But I don't think your manner is hospitable or quite gentlemanly."
Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. Guppy to think no more about it. Mr. Guppy, however, having got the advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured remonstrance.
"No! Dash it, Tony," says that gentleman, "you really ought to be careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart. It is not your character to hover around one flower. The whole garden is open to you."
"William Guppy, drop it!" entreats Tony. "And now, about this bundle of letters. Isn't it extraordinary of Krook to have appointed midnight to hand 'em over to me?"
"Very. What did he do it for?"
"Said today was his birthday and he'd hand 'em over tonight at twelve o'clock. He'll have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day."
"He hasn't forgotten the appointment, I hope?"
"He never forgets anything. I helped him to shut up his shop today and he had got the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and showed me. I heard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming like the wind. He has been as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole."
"Tony," says Mr. Guppy after considering a little, "he can't read yet, can he?"
"Read! He'll never read. He knows most of the letters separately, but he can't put them together. He's too old to acquire the knack now - and too drunk."
"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, "how do you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?"
"He never spelt it out. He just copied it, from the address of a letter, and asked me what it meant."
"Tony, should you say that the original was a man's writing or a woman's?"
"Fifty to one a lady's."
Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue. As he does so, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. He stares at it, aghast.
"Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house tonight? Is there a chimney on fire? See how the soot's falling. See here, on my arm! And on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won't blow off - smears like black fat!"
They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a little way downstairs. Comes back and says it's all quiet.
"And it was then," resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with remarkable aversion at the coat-sleeve, "that he told you he had taken the bundle of letters from his lodger's portmanteau?"
"That's it," answers Tony, adjusting his whiskers. "Whereupon I wrote to you, my dear boy."
Despite assuming a light vivacious tone, Mr. Weevle looks over his shoulder, a prey to the horrors again.
"You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, so that you can tell him all about them. That's the arrangement, isn't it, Tony?" asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting his thumb-nail.
"Yes."
"I tell you what, Tony. The first thing to be done is to make another packet like the real one, so that if he should ask to see it while it's in my possession, you can show him the dummy."
"And suppose he detects the dummy, which is about five hundred times more likely than not," suggests Tony.
"Then we'll face it out. They don't belong to him, and they never did. You placed them in my hands - a legal friend of yours - for security. If he forces us to it, they'll be producible, won't they?"
"Ye-es," is Mr. Weevle's reluctant admission.
"Why, Tony," remonstrates his friend, "you don't doubt me, do you? You don't suspect any harm?"
"I don't suspect anything more than I know, William," returns the other gravely.
"And what do you know?" urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a little.
"I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in secrecy. Secondly, I don't see how it's likely to be profitable, after all."
Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock and replies, "Tony, leave that to your friend, who is no fool. What's that?"
"It's eleven o'clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul's. Listen and you'll hear all the bells in the city jangling."
Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant. When these at length cease, all seems more mysterious and quiet than before. The silence seems haunted by the ghosts of sound - strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance and the tread of dreadful feet that would leave no mark. The air is full of these phantoms, and the two friends look over their shoulders to see that the door is shut.
"Yes, Tony?" says Mr. Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire. "You were going to say, thirdly?"
"It's not pleasant to be plotting about a dead man in the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it."
"But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony."
"Maybe not. Still, I don't like it."
Mr. Guppy remarks that they may be doing the deceased a service. There is an oppressive blank until Mr. Weevle stirs the fire suddenly, making Mr. Guppy start.
"Fah! Here's more of this hateful soot hanging about," says he. "Let us open the window and get a mouthful of air."
He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in and half out of the room. The neighbouring houses are too near to allow them to see any sky without craning their necks, but lights in windows here and there, and the rolling of distant carriages, are comforting. Mr. Guppy resumes his whispering.
"By the by, Tony, I have not let Smallweed into this, you know. That grandfather of his is too keen by half. As to Krook - do you suppose he really has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to you?"
Tony shakes his head. "I don't know. He don't know himself. He is always spelling out words from his papers, and chalking them on the wall, and asking what they are; but his whole stock may easily be the waste-paper he bought it as. It's a monomania with him to think he has important documents."
"How did he first come by that idea, though?" Mr. Guppy meditates. "He may have found papers hidden in something he bought, and may have got it into his shrewd head that they are worth something."
"Or he may have been taken in. Or he may have been muddled by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor's Court and hearing of documents for ever," returns Mr. Weevle.
Mr. Guppy sitting on the window-sill, taps it thoughtfully, until he hastily draws his hand away.
"What in the devil's name is this! Look at my fingers!"
A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, offensive to the touch and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil that makes them both shudder.
"What have you been pouring out of the window?"
"Nothing, I swear!" cries Weevle.
And yet look here! It slowly drips and creeps away down the bricks, and lies in a little thick nauseous pool.
"This is a horrible house," says Mr. Guppy, shutting down the window. "Give me some water or I shall cut my hand off."
He washes and rubs and scrubs, and has just restored himself with a glass of brandy when Saint Paul's bell strikes twelve and all those other bells strike twelve from their towers. The lodger says, "It's the appointed time. Shall I go?"
Mr. Guppy nods.
He goes downstairs, and Mr. Guppy tries to compose himself before the fire. But in a minute or two the stairs creak and Tony comes swiftly back.
"Have you got them?"
"No. The old man's not there."
Weevle is so horribly frightened that his terror seizes the other, who asks loudly, "What's the matter?"
"I couldn't make him hear, and I opened the door and looked in. And the burning smell is there - and the soot is there, and the oil is there - and he is not there!" Tony ends this with a groan.
Mr. Guppy takes the light. They go down, and holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat stands snarling, not at them, but at something on the ground. There is a very little fire left in the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and table, and the bottle on the table, all stand as usual. On a chair-back hang the old man's hairy cap and coat.
"Look!" whispers the lodger, pointing at these objects with a trembling finger. "I told you so. When I saw him last, he took his cap off, took out the bundle of old letters, hung his cap on the back of the chair with his coat - and I left him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that crumbled black thing is upon the floor."
Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.
"See!" whispers Tony. "At the foot of the chair there lies a dirty bit of thin red cord. That went round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering at me, before he threw it there. I saw it fall."
"What's the matter with the cat?" says Mr. Guppy. "Look at her!"
"Mad, I think. And no wonder, in this evil place."
They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat is still snarling at the something on the ground before the fire. What is it? Hold up the light.
Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a little bundle of burnt paper; and here is - is it the cinder of a charred and broken log of wood, or is it coal? Oh, horror, he IS here! And this from which we run away, striking out the light and overturning one another into the street, is all that is left of him.
Help, help, help! Come and help for heaven's sake!
Plenty will come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that court has died the death of all lord chancellors in all courts where false pretences are made, and where injustice is done. Call the death by any name you will, it is the same death eternally - inborn, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only - it is spontaneous combustion. | Bleak House | Chapter 32: The Appointed Time |
Wintry morning, looking with dull eyes and sallow face upon the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to get out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the brightest of times, being birds of night who roost when the sun is high and are wide awake and keen for prey when the stars shine out. Behind dingy blind and curtain, in upper story and garret, skulking more or less under false names, false hair, false titles, false jewellery, and false histories, a colony of brigands lie in their first sleep. Gentlemen of the green-baize road who could discourse from personal experience of foreign galleys and home treadmills; spies of strong governments that eternally quake with weakness and miserable fear, broken traitors, cowards, bullies, gamesters, shufflers, swindlers, and false witnesses; some not unmarked by the branding-iron beneath their dirty braid; all with more cruelty in them than was in Nero, and more crime than is in Newgate. For howsoever bad the devil can be in fustian or smock-frock (and he can be very bad in both), he is a more designing, callous, and intolerable devil when he sticks a pin in his shirt-front, calls himself a gentleman, backs a card or colour, plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a little about bills and promissory notes than in any other form he wears. And in such form Mr. Bucket shall find him, when he will, still pervading the tributary channels of Leicester Square.
But the wintry morning wants him not and wakes him not. It wakes Mr. George of the shooting gallery and his familiar. They arise, roll up and stow away their mattresses. Mr. George, having shaved himself before a looking-glass of minute proportions, then marches out, bare-headed and bare-chested, to the pump in the little yard and anon comes back shining with yellow soap, friction, drifting rain, and exceedingly cold water. As he rubs himself upon a large jack-towel, blowing like a military sort of diver just come up, his hair curling tighter and tighter on his sunburnt temples the more he rubs it so that it looks as if it never could be loosened by any less coercive instrument than an iron rake or a curry-comb--as he rubs, and puffs, and polishes, and blows, turning his head from side to side the more conveniently to excoriate his throat, and standing with his body well bent forward to keep the wet from his martial legs, Phil, on his knees lighting a fire, looks round as if it were enough washing for him to see all that done, and sufficient renovation for one day to take in the superfluous health his master throws off.
When Mr. George is dry, he goes to work to brush his head with two hard brushes at once, to that unmerciful degree that Phil, shouldering his way round the gallery in the act of sweeping it, winks with sympathy. This chafing over, the ornamental part of Mr. George's toilet is soon performed. He fills his pipe, lights it, and marches up and down smoking, as his custom is, while Phil, raising a powerful odour of hot rolls and coffee, prepares breakfast. He smokes gravely and marches in slow time. Perhaps this morning's pipe is devoted to the memory of Gridley in his grave.
"And so, Phil," says George of the shooting gallery after several turns in silence, "you were dreaming of the country last night?"
Phil, by the by, said as much in a tone of surprise as he scrambled out of bed.
"Yes, guv'ner."
"What was it like?"
"I hardly know what it was like, guv'ner," said Phil, considering.
"How did you know it was the country?"
"On account of the grass, I think. And the swans upon it," says Phil after further consideration.
"What were the swans doing on the grass?"
"They was a-eating of it, I expect," says Phil.
The master resumes his march, and the man resumes his preparation of breakfast. It is not necessarily a lengthened preparation, being limited to the setting forth of very simple breakfast requisites for two and the broiling of a rasher of bacon at the fire in the rusty grate; but as Phil has to sidle round a considerable part of the gallery for every object he wants, and never brings two objects at once, it takes time under the circumstances. At length the breakfast is ready. Phil announcing it, Mr. George knocks the ashes out of his pipe on the hob, stands his pipe itself in the chimney corner, and sits down to the meal. When he has helped himself, Phil follows suit, sitting at the extreme end of the little oblong table and taking his plate on his knees. Either in humility, or to hide his blackened hands, or because it is his natural manner of eating.
"The country," says Mr. George, plying his knife and fork; "why, I suppose you never clapped your eyes on the country, Phil?"
"I see the marshes once," says Phil, contentedly eating his breakfast.
"What marshes?"
"THE marshes, commander," returns Phil.
"Where are they?"
"I don't know where they are," says Phil; "but I see 'em, guv'ner. They was flat. And miste."
Governor and commander are interchangeable terms with Phil, expressive of the same respect and deference and applicable to nobody but Mr. George.
"I was born in the country, Phil."
"Was you indeed, commander?"
"Yes. And bred there."
Phil elevates his one eyebrow, and after respectfully staring at his master to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee, still staring at him.
"There's not a bird's note that I don't know," says Mr. George. "Not many an English leaf or berry that I couldn't name. Not many a tree that I couldn't climb yet if I was put to it. I was a real country boy, once. My good mother lived in the country."
"She must have been a fine old lady, guv'ner," Phil observes.
"Aye! And not so old either, five and thirty years ago," says Mr. George. "But I'll wager that at ninety she would be near as upright as me, and near as broad across the shoulders."
"Did she die at ninety, guv'ner?" inquires Phil.
"No. Bosh! Let her rest in peace, God bless her!" says the trooper. "What set me on about country boys, and runaways, and good-for-nothings? You, to be sure! So you never clapped your eyes upon the country--marshes and dreams excepted. Eh?"
Phil shakes his head.
"Do you want to see it?"
"N-no, I don't know as I do, particular," says Phil.
"The town's enough for you, eh?"
"Why, you see, commander," says Phil, "I ain't acquainted with anythink else, and I doubt if I ain't a-getting too old to take to novelties."
"How old ARE you, Phil?" asks the trooper, pausing as he conveys his smoking saucer to his lips.
"I'm something with a eight in it," says Phil. "It can't be eighty. Nor yet eighteen. It's betwixt 'em, somewheres."
Mr. George, slowly putting down his saucer without tasting its contents, is laughingly beginning, "Why, what the deuce, Phil--" when he stops, seeing that Phil is counting on his dirty fingers.
"I was just eight," says Phil, "agreeable to the parish calculation, when I went with the tinker. I was sent on a errand, and I see him a-sittin under a old buildin with a fire all to himself wery comfortable, and he says, 'Would you like to come along a me, my man?' I says 'Yes,' and him and me and the fire goes home to Clerkenwell together. That was April Fool Day. I was able to count up to ten; and when April Fool Day come round again, I says to myself, 'Now, old chap, you're one and a eight in it.' April Fool Day after that, I says, 'Now, old chap, you're two and a eight in it.' In course of time, I come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a eight in it. When it got so high, it got the upper hand of me, but this is how I always know there's a eight in it."
"Ah!" says Mr. George, resuming his breakfast. "And where's the tinker?"
"Drink put him in the hospital, guv'ner, and the hospital put him--in a glass-case, I HAVE heerd," Phil replies mysteriously.
"By that means you got promotion? Took the business, Phil?"
"Yes, commander, I took the business. Such as it was. It wasn't much of a beat--round Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, Clerkenwell, Smiffeld, and there--poor neighbourhood, where they uses up the kettles till they're past mending. Most of the tramping tinkers used to come and lodge at our place; that was the best part of my master's earnings. But they didn't come to me. I warn't like him. He could sing 'em a good song. I couldn't! He could play 'em a tune on any sort of pot you please, so as it was iron or block tin. I never could do nothing with a pot but mend it or bile it--never had a note of music in me. Besides, I was too ill-looking, and their wives complained of me."
"They were mighty particular. You would pass muster in a crowd, Phil!" says the trooper with a pleasant smile.
"No, guv'ner," returns Phil, shaking his head. "No, I shouldn't. I was passable enough when I went with the tinker, though nothing to boast of then; but what with blowing the fire with my mouth when I was young, and spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair off, and swallering the smoke, and what with being nat'rally unfort'nate in the way of running against hot metal and marking myself by sich means, and what with having turn-ups with the tinker as I got older, almost whenever he was too far gone in drink--which was almost always--my beauty was queer, wery queer, even at that time. As to since, what with a dozen years in a dark forge where the men was given to larking, and what with being scorched in a accident at a gas-works, and what with being blowed out of winder case-filling at the firework business, I am ugly enough to be made a show on!"
Resigning himself to which condition with a perfectly satisfied manner, Phil begs the favour of another cup of coffee. While drinking it, he says, "It was after the case-filling blow-up when I first see you, commander. You remember?"
"I remember, Phil. You were walking along in the sun."
"Crawling, guv'ner, again a wall--"
"True, Phil--shouldering your way on--"
"In a night-cap!" exclaims Phil, excited.
"In a night-cap--"
"And hobbling with a couple of sticks!" cries Phil, still more excited.
"With a couple of sticks. When--"
"When you stops, you know," cries Phil, putting down his cup and saucer and hastily removing his plate from his knees, "and says to me, 'What, comrade! You have been in the wars!' I didn't say much to you, commander, then, for I was took by surprise that a person so strong and healthy and bold as you was should stop to speak to such a limping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, says you, delivering it out of your chest as hearty as possible, so that it was like a glass of something hot, 'What accident have you met with? You have been badly hurt. What's amiss, old boy? Cheer up, and tell us about it!' Cheer up! I was cheered already! I says as much to you, you says more to me, I says more to you, you says more to me, and here I am, commander! Here I am, commander!" cries Phil, who has started from his chair and unaccountably begun to sidle away. "If a mark's wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers take aim at me. They can't spoil MY beauty. I'M all right. Come on! If they want a man to box at, let 'em box at me. Let 'em knock me well about the head. I don't mind. If they want a light-weight to be throwed for practice, Cornwall, Devonshire, or Lancashire, let 'em throw me. They won't hurt ME. I have been throwed, all sorts of styles, all my life!"
With this unexpected speech, energetically delivered and accompanied by action illustrative of the various exercises referred to, Phil Squod shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery, and abruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his head, intended to express devotion to his service. He then begins to clear away the breakfast.
Mr. George, after laughing cheerfully and clapping him on the shoulder, assists in these arrangements and helps to get the gallery into business order. That done, he takes a turn at the dumb-bells, and afterwards weighing himself and opining that he is getting "too fleshy," engages with great gravity in solitary broadsword practice. Meanwhile Phil has fallen to work at his usual table, where he screws and unscrews, and cleans, and files, and whistles into small apertures, and blackens himself more and more, and seems to do and undo everything that can be done and undone about a gun.
Master and man are at length disturbed by footsteps in the passage, where they make an unusual sound, denoting the arrival of unusual company. These steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery, bring into it a group at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any day in the year but the fifth of November.
It consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two bearers and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched mask, who might be expected immediately to recite the popular verses commemorative of the time when they did contrive to blow Old England up alive but for her keeping her lips tightly and defiantly closed as the chair is put down. At which point the figure in it gasping, "O Lord! Oh, dear me! I am shaken!" adds, "How de do, my dear friend, how de do?" Mr. George then descries, in the procession, the venerable Mr. Smallweed out for an airing, attended by his granddaughter Judy as body-guard.
"Mr. George, my dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed, removing his right arm from the neck of one of his bearers, whom he has nearly throttled coming along, "how de do? You're surprised to see me, my dear friend."
"I should hardly have been more surprised to have seen your friend in the city," returns Mr. George.
"I am very seldom out," pants Mr. Smallweed. "I haven't been out for many months. It's inconvenient--and it comes expensive. But I longed so much to see you, my dear Mr. George. How de do, sir?"
"I am well enough," says Mr. George. "I hope you are the same."
"You can't be too well, my dear friend." Mr. Smallweed takes him by both hands. "I have brought my granddaughter Judy. I couldn't keep her away. She longed so much to see you."
"Hum! She bears it calmly!" mutters Mr. George.
"So we got a hackney-cab, and put a chair in it, and just round the corner they lifted me out of the cab and into the chair, and carried me here that I might see my dear friend in his own establishment! This," says Grandfather Smallweed, alluding to the bearer, who has been in danger of strangulation and who withdraws adjusting his windpipe, "is the driver of the cab. He has nothing extra. It is by agreement included in his fare. This person," the other bearer, "we engaged in the street outside for a pint of beer. Which is twopence. Judy, give the person twopence. I was not sure you had a workman of your own here, my dear friend, or we needn't have employed this person."
Grandfather Smallweed refers to Phil with a glance of considerable terror and a half-subdued "O Lord! Oh, dear me!" Nor in his apprehension, on the surface of things, without some reason, for Phil, who has never beheld the apparition in the black-velvet cap before, has stopped short with a gun in his hand with much of the air of a dead shot intent on picking Mr. Smallweed off as an ugly old bird of the crow species.
"Judy, my child," says Grandfather Smallweed, "give the person his twopence. It's a great deal for what he has done."
The person, who is one of those extraordinary specimens of human fungus that spring up spontaneously in the western streets of London, ready dressed in an old red jacket, with a "mission" for holding horses and calling coaches, received his twopence with anything but transport, tosses the money into the air, catches it over-handed, and retires.
"My dear Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed, "would you be so kind as help to carry me to the fire? I am accustomed to a fire, and I am an old man, and I soon chill. Oh, dear me!"
His closing exclamation is jerked out of the venerable gentleman by the suddenness with which Mr. Squod, like a genie, catches him up, chair and all, and deposits him on the hearth-stone.
"O Lord!" says Mr. Smallweed, panting. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my stars! My dear friend, your workman is very strong--and very prompt. O Lord, he is very prompt! Judy, draw me back a little. I'm being scorched in the legs," which indeed is testified to the noses of all present by the smell of his worsted stockings.
The gentle Judy, having backed her grandfather a little way from the fire, and having shaken him up as usual, and having released his overshadowed eye from its black-velvet extinguisher, Mr. Smallweed again says, "Oh, dear me! O Lord!" and looking about and meeting Mr. George's glance, again stretches out both hands.
"My dear friend! So happy in this meeting! And this is your establishment? It's a delightful place. It's a picture! You never find that anything goes off here accidentally, do you, my dear friend?" adds Grandfather Smallweed, very ill at ease.
"No, no. No fear of that."
"And your workman. He--Oh, dear me!--he never lets anything off without meaning it, does he, my dear friend?"
"He has never hurt anybody but himself," says Mr. George, smiling.
"But he might, you know. He seems to have hurt himself a good deal, and he might hurt somebody else," the old gentleman returns. "He mightn't mean it--or he even might. Mr. George, will you order him to leave his infernal fire-arms alone and go away?"
Obedient to a nod from the trooper, Phil retires, empty-handed, to the other end of the gallery. Mr. Smallweed, reassured, falls to rubbing his legs.
"And you're doing well, Mr. George?" he says to the trooper, squarely standing faced about towards him with his broadsword in his hand. "You are prospering, please the Powers?"
Mr. George answers with a cool nod, adding, "Go on. You have not come to say that, I know."
"You are so sprightly, Mr. George," returns the venerable grandfather. "You are such good company."
"Ha ha! Go on!" says Mr. George.
"My dear friend! But that sword looks awful gleaming and sharp. It might cut somebody, by accident. It makes me shiver, Mr. George. Curse him!" says the excellent old gentleman apart to Judy as the trooper takes a step or two away to lay it aside. "He owes me money, and might think of paying off old scores in this murdering place. I wish your brimstone grandmother was here, and he'd shave her head off."
Mr. George, returning, folds his arms, and looking down at the old man, sliding every moment lower and lower in his chair, says quietly, "Now for it!"
"Ho!" cries Mr. Smallweed, rubbing his hands with an artful chuckle. "Yes. Now for it. Now for what, my dear friend?"
"For a pipe," says Mr. George, who with great composure sets his chair in the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from the grate, fills it and lights it, and falls to smoking peacefully.
This tends to the discomfiture of Mr. Smallweed, who finds it so difficult to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he becomes exasperated and secretly claws the air with an impotent vindictiveness expressive of an intense desire to tear and rend the visage of Mr. George. As the excellent old gentleman's nails are long and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and his eyes green and watery; and, over and above this, as he continues, while he claws, to slide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless bundle, he becomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustomed eyes of Judy, that that young virgin pounces at him with something more than the ardour of affection and so shakes him up and pats and pokes him in divers parts of his body, but particularly in that part which the science of self-defence would call his wind, that in his grievous distress he utters enforced sounds like a paviour's rammer.
When Judy has by these means set him up again in his chair, with a white face and a frosty nose (but still clawing), she stretches out her weazen forefinger and gives Mr. George one poke in the back. The trooper raising his head, she makes another poke at her esteemed grandfather, and having thus brought them together, stares rigidly at the fire.
"Aye, aye! Ho, ho! U--u--u--ugh!" chatters Grandfather Smallweed, swallowing his rage. "My dear friend!" (still clawing).
"I tell you what," says Mr. George. "If you want to converse with me, you must speak out. I am one of the roughs, and I can't go about and about. I haven't the art to do it. I am not clever enough. It don't suit me. When you go winding round and round me," says the trooper, putting his pipe between his lips again, "damme, if I don't feel as if I was being smothered!"
And he inflates his broad chest to its utmost extent as if to assure himself that he is not smothered yet.
"If you have come to give me a friendly call," continues Mr. George, "I am obliged to you; how are you? If you have come to see whether there's any property on the premises, look about you; you are welcome. If you want to out with something, out with it!"
The blooming Judy, without removing her gaze from the fire, gives her grandfather one ghostly poke.
"You see! It's her opinion too. And why the devil that young woman won't sit down like a Christian," says Mr. George with his eyes musingly fixed on Judy, "I can't comprehend."
"She keeps at my side to attend to me, sir," says Grandfather Smallweed. "I am an old man, my dear Mr. George, and I need some attention. I can carry my years; I am not a brimstone poll-parrot" (snarling and looking unconsciously for the cushion), "but I need attention, my dear friend."
"Well!" returns the trooper, wheeling his chair to face the old man. "Now then?"
"My friend in the city, Mr. George, has done a little business with a pupil of yours."
"Has he?" says Mr. George. "I am sorry to hear it."
"Yes, sir." Grandfather Smallweed rubs his legs. "He is a fine young soldier now, Mr. George, by the name of Carstone. Friends came forward and paid it all up, honourable."
"Did they?" returns Mr. George. "Do you think your friend in the city would like a piece of advice?"
"I think he would, my dear friend. From you."
"I advise him, then, to do no more business in that quarter. There's no more to be got by it. The young gentleman, to my knowledge, is brought to a dead halt."
"No, no, my dear friend. No, no, Mr. George. No, no, no, sir," remonstrates Grandfather Smallweed, cunningly rubbing his spare legs. "Not quite a dead halt, I think. He has good friends, and he is good for his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his commission, and he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is good for his chance in a wife, and--oh, do you know, Mr. George, I think my friend would consider the young gentleman good for something yet?" says Grandfather Smallweed, turning up his velvet cap and scratching his ear like a monkey.
Mr. George, who has put aside his pipe and sits with an arm on his chair-back, beats a tattoo on the ground with his right foot as if he were not particularly pleased with the turn the conversation has taken.
"But to pass from one subject to another," resumes Mr. Smallweed. "'To promote the conversation,' as a joker might say. To pass, Mr. George, from the ensign to the captain."
"What are you up to, now?" asks Mr. George, pausing with a frown in stroking the recollection of his moustache. "What captain?"
"Our captain. The captain we know of. Captain Hawdon."
"Oh! That's it, is it?" says Mr. George with a low whistle as he sees both grandfather and granddaughter looking hard at him. "You are there! Well? What about it? Come, I won't be smothered any more. Speak!"
"My dear friend," returns the old man, "I was applied--Judy, shake me up a little!--I was applied to yesterday about the captain, and my opinion still is that the captain is not dead."
"Bosh!" observes Mr. George.
"What was your remark, my dear friend?" inquires the old man with his hand to his ear.
"Bosh!"
"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Mr. George, of my opinion you can judge for yourself according to the questions asked of me and the reasons given for asking 'em. Now, what do you think the lawyer making the inquiries wants?"
"A job," says Mr. George.
"Nothing of the kind!"
"Can't be a lawyer, then," says Mr. George, folding his arms with an air of confirmed resolution.
"My dear friend, he is a lawyer, and a famous one. He wants to see some fragment in Captain Hawdon's writing. He don't want to keep it. He only wants to see it and compare it with a writing in his possession."
"Well?"
"Well, Mr. George. Happening to remember the advertisement concerning Captain Hawdon and any information that could be given respecting him, he looked it up and came to me--just as you did, my dear friend. WILL you shake hands? So glad you came that day! I should have missed forming such a friendship if you hadn't come!"
"Well, Mr. Smallweed?" says Mr. George again after going through the ceremony with some stiffness.
"I had no such thing. I have nothing but his signature. Plague pestilence and famine, battle murder and sudden death upon him," says the old man, making a curse out of one of his few remembrances of a prayer and squeezing up his velvet cap between his angry hands, "I have half a million of his signatures, I think! But you," breathlessly recovering his mildness of speech as Judy re-adjusts the cap on his skittle-ball of a head, "you, my dear Mr. George, are likely to have some letter or paper that would suit the purpose. Anything would suit the purpose, written in the hand."
"Some writing in that hand," says the trooper, pondering; "may be, I have."
"My dearest friend!"
"May be, I have not."
"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed, crest-fallen.
"But if I had bushels of it, I would not show as much as would make a cartridge without knowing why."
"Sir, I have told you why. My dear Mr. George, I have told you why."
"Not enough," says the trooper, shaking his head. "I must know more, and approve it."
"Then, will you come to the lawyer? My dear friend, will you come and see the gentleman?" urges Grandfather Smallweed, pulling out a lean old silver watch with hands like the leg of a skeleton. "I told him it was probable I might call upon him between ten and eleven this forenoon, and it's now half after ten. Will you come and see the gentleman, Mr. George?"
"Hum!" says he gravely. "I don't mind that. Though why this should concern you so much, I don't know."
"Everything concerns me that has a chance in it of bringing anything to light about him. Didn't he take us all in? Didn't he owe us immense sums, all round? Concern me? Who can anything about him concern more than me? Not, my dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed, lowering his tone, "that I want YOU to betray anything. Far from it. Are you ready to come, my dear friend?"
"Aye! I'll come in a moment. I promise nothing, you know."
"No, my dear Mr. George; no."
"And you mean to say you're going to give me a lift to this place, wherever it is, without charging for it?" Mr. George inquires, getting his hat and thick wash-leather gloves.
This pleasantry so tickles Mr. Smallweed that he laughs, long and low, before the fire. But ever while he laughs, he glances over his paralytic shoulder at Mr. George and eagerly watches him as he unlocks the padlock of a homely cupboard at the distant end of the gallery, looks here and there upon the higher shelves, and ultimately takes something out with a rustling of paper, folds it, and puts it in his breast. Then Judy pokes Mr. Smallweed once, and Mr. Smallweed pokes Judy once.
"I am ready," says the trooper, coming back. "Phil, you can carry this old gentleman to his coach, and make nothing of him."
"Oh, dear me! O Lord! Stop a moment!" says Mr. Smallweed. "He's so very prompt! Are you sure you can do it carefully, my worthy man?"
Phil makes no reply, but seizing the chair and its load, sidles away, tightly hugged by the now speechless Mr. Smallweed, and bolts along the passage as if he had an acceptable commission to carry the old gentleman to the nearest volcano. His shorter trust, however, terminating at the cab, he deposits him there; and the fair Judy takes her place beside him, and the chair embellishes the roof, and Mr. George takes the vacant place upon the box.
Mr. George is quite confounded by the spectacle he beholds from time to time as he peeps into the cab through the window behind him, where the grim Judy is always motionless, and the old gentleman with his cap over one eye is always sliding off the seat into the straw and looking upward at him out of his other eye with a helpless expression of being jolted in the back. | Wintry morning, looking with dull eyes upon the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to get out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the brightest of times, being birds of night. Behind dingy blind and curtain, skulking under false names, false hair, false jewellery, and false histories, a colony of brigands lie asleep. Broken traitors, cowards, bullies, gamesters and swindlers; all with more cruelty in them than Nero, and more crime than in Newgate. For however bad the devil can be in a worker's smock, he is a more designing and callous devil when he calls himself a gentleman, and knows a little about promissory notes. And in such form Mr. Bucket shall find him, pervading the surrounding streets of Leicester Square.
But the wintry morning wakes him not. It wakes Mr. George of the shooting gallery and his familiar. They arise, and stow away their mattresses. Mr. George, having shaved himself before a minute looking-glass, marches out, bare-chested, to the pump in the little yard and comes back shining with yellow soap and exceedingly cold water. As he towels himself, he blows like a military diver just come up, his hair curling tighter and tighter the more he rubs it.
When Mr. George is dry, he goes to work on his head with two hard brushes, so unmercifully that Phil, shouldering his way round the gallery while sweeping it, winks with sympathy. Then Mr. George lights his pipe and marches up and down smoking, while Phil, raising a powerful odour of hot rolls and coffee, prepares breakfast.
"And so, Phil," says George after several turns in silence, "you said that you were dreaming of the country last night?"
"Yes, guv'ner."
"What was it like?"
"I hardly know, guv'ner," said Phil.
"How did you know it was the country?"
"On account of the grass, I think. And the swans upon it," says Phil after consideration.
"What were the swans doing on the grass?"
"Eating it, I expect," says Phil.
The master resumes his march, and the man resumes his preparation of breakfast. It involves little more than the broiling of a rasher of bacon at the fire in the rusty grate; but as Phil has to sidle round the gallery for every object he wants, and never brings two objects at once, it takes time.
At length the breakfast is ready. Mr. George knocks the ashes out of his pipe, and sits down to the meal. Phil sits at the extreme end of the little oblong table, taking his plate on his knees.
"Why," says Mr. George, "I suppose you never clapped your eyes on the country, Phil?"
"I see the marshes once," says Phil.
"Where are they?"
"I don't know," says Phil; "but I see 'em, guv'ner. They was flat. And misty."
"I was born and bred in the country, Phil. There's not a bird's note that I don't know," says Mr. George. "Not many a leaf or berry that I couldn't name. I was a real country boy, once. My good mother lived in the country."
"She must have been a fine old lady, guv'ner," Phil observes.
"Aye! I'll wager that at ninety she would be near as upright as me, and near as broad across the shoulders."
"Did she die at ninety, guv'ner?" inquires Phil.
"No. Bosh! Let her rest in peace, God bless her!" says the trooper. "What set me on about country boys? You, to be sure! So you never clapped your eyes upon the country, eh?"
Phil shakes his head.
"Do you want to see it?"
"N-no, I don't know as I do, particular," says Phil.
"The town's enough for you, eh?"
"Why, you see, commander," says Phil, "I ain't acquainted with anythink else, and I'm a-getting too old to take to novelties."
"How old are you, Phil?" asks the trooper.
"I'm something with a eight in it," says Phil. "It can't be eighty. Nor yet eighteen. It's betwixt 'em, somewheres." He begins counting on his dirty fingers.
"I was just eight," says he, "according to the parish calculation, when I went with the tinker. I was sent on a errand, and I see him a-sittin under a old buildin with a fire wery comfortable, and he says, 'Would you like to come along a me, my man?' I says 'Yes.'. That was April Fool Day. I was able to count up to ten; and when April Fool Day come round again, I says to myself, 'Now, old chap, you're one and a eight in it.' April Fool Day after that, I says, 'Now, old chap, you're two and a eight in it.' In course of time, I come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a eight in it. That's how I always know there's a eight in it."
"Ah!" says Mr. George, resuming his breakfast. "And where's the tinker?"
"Drink put him in the hospital, guv'ner," Phil replies.
"And you took over the business, Phil?"
"Such as it was. It wasn't much of a beat - a poor neighbourhood, where they uses the kettles till they're past mending. And I couldn't sing or play a tune like my master. All I could do was mend a pot. Besides, I was too ill-looking, and the wives complained of me. What with blowing the fire when I was young, and singeing my hair off, and having turn-ups with the tinker as I got older, whenever he was too far gone in drink - which was almost always - my beauty was wery queer, even at that time. As to since, what with a dozen years in a forge, and being scorched in a accident at a gas-works, and being blowed out of a winder at the firework business, I am ugly enough for a show!"
With a perfectly satisfied manner, Phil pours another cup of coffee. "It was after the firework blow-up when I first see you, commander. You remember?"
"I remember, Phil. You were walking along in the sun."
"Crawling, guv'ner, again a wall-"
"True, Phil - shouldering your way on-"
"In a night-cap!" exclaims Phil, excited. "And hobbling with a couple of sticks! When you stops, and says to me, 'What, comrade! You have been in the wars!' I was took by surprise that a person so strong and healthy as you should stop to speak to such a limping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, hearty, 'What accident have you met with? You have been badly hurt. Cheer up, and tell us about it!' Cheer up! I was cheered already! I says as much to you, you says more to me, and here I am, commander! Here I am!" cries Phil. "Let the customers take aim at me. They can't spoil my beauty. If they want a man to box at, let 'em box at me. If they want to throw a wrestler, let 'em throw me. They won't hurt me. I have been throwed all my life!"
With this unexpected speech, Phil Squod shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery, and tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his head, intended to express devotion to his service. He then begins to clear away the breakfast.
Mr. George, after laughing and clapping him on the shoulder, helps to get the gallery into business order. He takes a turn at the dumb-bells, and deciding that he is getting "too fleshy," engages in solitary broadsword practice. Meanwhile Phil has begun to work at his table, where he screws and unscrews, and cleans, and files, and seems to do and undo everything that can be done and undone about a gun.
They are disturbed by footsteps in the passage. There arrives a group at first sight looking like a display from the fifth of November.
A limp and ugly figure is carried in a chair by two bearers and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched mask. As the chair is put down, the figure in it gasps,
"O Lord! Oh, dear me! I am shaken!" adding, "How de do, my dear friend, how de do?" It is Mr. Smallweed out for an airing, attended by his granddaughter Judy as body-guard.
"Mr. George, my dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed, "how de do? You're surprised to see me, my dear friend. I haven't been out for many months. It's inconvenient - and it comes expensive. But I longed so much to see you, my dear Mr. George. How de do, sir?"
"I am well enough," says Mr. George. "I hope you are the same."
"You can't be too well, my dear friend." Mr. Smallweed takes him by both hands. "I have brought my granddaughter Judy. She longed so much to see you."
"Hum!"
"So we got a hackney-cab, and put a chair in it, and they lifted me out of the cab and carried me here to see my dear friend! This," says Grandfather Smallweed of one bearer, "is the driver of the cab. It is included in his fare. This person," the other bearer, "we engaged in the street outside for twopence. Judy, give the person twopence. I was not sure you had a workman of your own here, my dear friend."
Grandfather Smallweed looks at Phil with considerable terror; for Phil, who has never seen him before, has stopped short with a gun in his hand, with the air of a dead shot intent on picking Mr. Smallweed off like an ugly old crow.
"My dear Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed, "would you be so kind as to carry me to the fire? I am an old man, and I soon chill. Oh, dear me!"
This exclamation is jerked out of him by the suddenness with which Mr. Squod catches him up, chair and all, and deposits him on the hearth-stone.
"O Lord!" says Mr. Smallweed, panting. "Oh, dear me! My dear friend, your workman is very strong - and very prompt! Oh, dear me!" He again stretches out both hands to Mr. George.
"My dear friend! And this is your establishment? It's a delightful place. You never find that anything goes off accidentally, do you, my dear friend?" he adds uneasily.
"No, no."
"And your workman. He - Oh, dear me! - he never lets anything off without meaning to, does he, my dear friend?"
"He has never hurt anybody but himself," says Mr. George, smiling.
"But he might, you know. He seems to have hurt himself a good deal," the old gentleman returns. "Mr. George, will you order him to leave his infernal fire-arms alone and go away?"
Obedient to a nod from the trooper, Phil retires to the other end of the gallery. Mr. Smallweed begins rubbing his legs.
"And you're doing well, Mr. George?" he says to the trooper, squarely standing with his broadsword in his hand. "You are prospering?"
Mr. George answers with a cool nod, adding, "Go on. You have not come to say that, I know."
"My dear friend! But that sword looks awful gleaming and sharp. It might cut somebody, by accident. It makes me shiver, Mr. George."
As the trooper steps away to lay it aside, the old gentleman says to Judy, "Curse him! He owes me money, and might think of paying off old scores in this murdering place. I wish your brimstone grandmother was here, and he'd shave her head off."
Mr. George, returning, folds his arms, and looking down at the old man, says quietly, "Now for it!"
"Ho!" cries Mr. Smallweed, rubbing his hands with an artful chuckle. "Yes. Now for what, my dear friend?"
"For a pipe," says Mr. George, who with great composure sets his chair in the chimney-corner, fills his pipe and lights it, and starts to smoke peacefully.
Mr. Smallweed, exasperated, secretly claws the air with impotent vindictiveness. As the excellent old gentleman's nails are long, and his hands lean and veinous, and his eyes green and watery; and as he continues to slide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless bundle, he becomes such a ghastly spectacle that Judy pounces at him with extreme and not entirely affectionate vigour as she sets him up again.
"If you want to converse with me," says Mr. George, "you must speak out. If you have come to see whether there's any property on the premises, look around; you are welcome. If you want to say something, out with it!"
"My friend in the city, Mr. George, has done a little business with a pupil of yours."
"Has he?" says Mr. George. "I am sorry to hear it."
"Yes, sir." Grandfather Smallweed rubs his legs. "A fine young soldier, Mr. George, by the name of Carstone. Friends came forward and paid it all up, honourable."
"Did they?" returns Mr. George. "Do you think your friend in the city would like a piece of advice? I advise him to do no more business in that quarter. There's no more to be got by it. The young gentleman, to my knowledge, is brought to a dead halt."
"No, no, my dear sir," remonstrates Grandfather Smallweed. "Not quite a dead halt. He has good friends, and he is good for his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his commission, and he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is good for his chance in a wife, and - do you know, Mr. George, I think my friend would consider the young gentleman good for something yet?" says Grandfather Smallweed, scratching his ear like a monkey.
Mr. George drums his foot on the ground as if he were not pleased with the turn the conversation has taken.
"But to pass from one subject to another," resumes Mr. Smallweed. "'To pass, Mr. George, from the ensign to the captain."
"What are you up to now?" asks Mr. George with a frown. "What captain?"
"Our captain. Captain Hawdon."
"Oh! That's it, is it?" says Mr. George with a low whistle. "Well? What about it?"
"My dear friend," returns the old man, "I was applied - Judy, shake me up a little! - I was applied to yesterday about the captain, and my opinion still is that the captain is not dead."
"Bosh!"
"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Now, what do you think the lawyer making the inquiries wants?"
"A job," says Mr. George.
"Nothing of the kind!"
"Can't be a lawyer, then," says Mr. George, folding his arms.
"My dear friend, he is a lawyer, and a famous one. He wants to see some of Captain Hawdon's handwriting. He don't want to keep it. He only wants to compare it with a writing in his possession."
"Well?"
"Well, Mr. George. Happening to remember the advertisement concerning Captain Hawdon and any information that could be given about him, he came to me - just as you did, my dear friend. So glad you came that day! Well, I have nothing but Hawdon's signature. Plague, pestilence and famine upon him," says the old man angrily, "I have half a million of his signatures! But you, my dear Mr. George, are likely to have some letter. Anything would suit the purpose, written in his hand."
"Some writing in that hand," says the trooper, pondering; "I may have. Or I may not. But I would not show it without knowing why."
"My dear Mr. George, I have told you why."
"Not enough," says the trooper, shaking his head. "I must know more."
"Then, will you come to the lawyer?" urges Grandfather Smallweed, pulling out a lean old silver watch. "I told him I might call upon him this morning. Will you come and see him, Mr. George?"
"Hum!" says he gravely. "I don't mind that. Though why this should concern you so much, I don't know."
"Didn't the Captain take us all in? Didn't he owe us immense sums, all round? Are you ready to come, my dear friend?"
"Aye! I'll come in a moment. I promise nothing, you know. You mean to say you're going to give me a lift to this place, wherever it is, without charging for it?" Mr. George inquires, getting his hat and gloves.
This pleasantry so tickles Mr. Smallweed that he laughs long. But while he laughs, he glances over his shoulder at Mr. George and eagerly watches him as he unlocks a cupboard at the distant end of the gallery, takes something from the higher shelves with a rustling of paper, folds it, and puts it in his breast pocket. Then Judy pokes Mr. Smallweed, and Mr. Smallweed pokes Judy.
"I am ready," says the trooper, coming back. "Phil, you can carry this old gentleman to his coach."
"Oh, dear me! O Lord! Stop a moment!" says Mr. Smallweed. "He's so very prompt! Do it carefully, my worthy man!"
Phil makes no reply, but seizing the chair and its load, bolts along the passage as if he were carrying the old gentleman to the nearest volcano. He deposits him in the cab; the fair Judy takes her place beside him, and Mr. George sits upon the box.
From time to time he peeps into the cab through the window behind him. The grim Judy is always motionless, and the old gentleman with his cap over one eye is always sliding off the seat into the straw and looking upward at him with a helpless expression. | Bleak House | Chapter 26: Sharpshooters |
It was three o'clock in the morning when the houses outside London did at last begin to exclude the country and to close us in with streets. We had made our way along roads in a far worse condition than when we had traversed them by daylight, both the fall and the thaw having lasted ever since; but the energy of my companion never slackened. It had only been, as I thought, of less assistance than the horses in getting us on, and it had often aided them. They had stopped exhausted half-way up hills, they had been driven through streams of turbulent water, they had slipped down and become entangled with the harness; but he and his little lantern had been always ready, and when the mishap was set right, I had never heard any variation in his cool, "Get on, my lads!"
The steadiness and confidence with which he had directed our journey back I could not account for. Never wavering, he never even stopped to make an inquiry until we were within a few miles of London. A very few words, here and there, were then enough for him; and thus we came, at between three and four o'clock in the morning, into Islington.
I will not dwell on the suspense and anxiety with which I reflected all this time that we were leaving my mother farther and farther behind every minute. I think I had some strong hope that he must be right and could not fail to have a satisfactory object in following this woman, but I tormented myself with questioning it and discussing it during the whole journey. What was to ensue when we found her and what could compensate us for this loss of time were questions also that I could not possibly dismiss; my mind was quite tortured by long dwelling on such reflections when we stopped.
We stopped in a high-street where there was a coach-stand. My companion paid our two drivers, who were as completely covered with splashes as if they had been dragged along the roads like the carriage itself, and giving them some brief direction where to take it, lifted me out of it and into a hackney-coach he had chosen from the rest.
"Why, my dear!" he said as he did this. "How wet you are!"
I had not been conscious of it. But the melted snow had found its way into the carriage, and I had got out two or three times when a fallen horse was plunging and had to be got up, and the wet had penetrated my dress. I assured him it was no matter, but the driver, who knew him, would not be dissuaded by me from running down the street to his stable, whence he brought an armful of clean dry straw. They shook it out and strewed it well about me, and I found it warm and comfortable.
"Now, my dear," said Mr. Bucket, with his head in at the window after I was shut up. "We're a-going to mark this person down. It may take a little time, but you don't mind that. You're pretty sure that I've got a motive. Ain't you?"
I little thought what it was, little thought in how short a time I should understand it better, but I assured him that I had confidence in him.
"So you may have, my dear," he returned. "And I tell you what! If you only repose half as much confidence in me as I repose in you after what I've experienced of you, that'll do. Lord! You're no trouble at all. I never see a young woman in any station of society--and I've seen many elevated ones too--conduct herself like you have conducted yourself since you was called out of your bed. You're a pattern, you know, that's what you are," said Mr. Bucket warmly; "you're a pattern."
I told him I was very glad, as indeed I was, to have been no hindrance to him, and that I hoped I should be none now.
"My dear," he returned, "when a young lady is as mild as she's game, and as game as she's mild, that's all I ask, and more than I expect. She then becomes a queen, and that's about what you are yourself."
With these encouraging words--they really were encouraging to me under those lonely and anxious circumstances--he got upon the box, and we once more drove away. Where we drove I neither knew then nor have ever known since, but we appeared to seek out the narrowest and worst streets in London. Whenever I saw him directing the driver, I was prepared for our descending into a deeper complication of such streets, and we never failed to do so.
Sometimes we emerged upon a wider thoroughfare or came to a larger building than the generality, well lighted. Then we stopped at offices like those we had visited when we began our journey, and I saw him in consultation with others. Sometimes he would get down by an archway or at a street corner and mysteriously show the light of his little lantern. This would attract similar lights from various dark quarters, like so many insects, and a fresh consultation would be held. By degrees we appeared to contract our search within narrower and easier limits. Single police-officers on duty could now tell Mr. Bucket what he wanted to know and point to him where to go. At last we stopped for a rather long conversation between him and one of these men, which I supposed to be satisfactory from his manner of nodding from time to time. When it was finished he came to me looking very busy and very attentive.
"Now, Miss Summerson," he said to me, "you won't be alarmed whatever comes off, I know. It's not necessary for me to give you any further caution than to tell you that we have marked this person down and that you may be of use to me before I know it myself. I don't like to ask such a thing, my dear, but would you walk a little way?"
Of course I got out directly and took his arm.
"It ain't so easy to keep your feet," said Mr. Bucket, "but take time."
Although I looked about me confusedly and hurriedly as we crossed the street, I thought I knew the place. "Are we in Holborn?" I asked him.
"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "Do you know this turning?"
"It looks like Chancery Lane."
"And was christened so, my dear," said Mr. Bucket.
We turned down it, and as we went shuffling through the sleet, I heard the clocks strike half-past five. We passed on in silence and as quickly as we could with such a foot-hold, when some one coming towards us on the narrow pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and stood aside to give me room. In the same moment I heard an exclamation of wonder and my own name from Mr. Woodcourt. I knew his voice very well.
It was so unexpected and so--I don't know what to call it, whether pleasant or painful--to come upon it after my feverish wandering journey, and in the midst of the night, that I could not keep back the tears from my eyes. It was like hearing his voice in a strange country.
"My dear Miss Summerson, that you should be out at this hour, and in such weather!"
He had heard from my guardian of my having been called away on some uncommon business and said so to dispense with any explanation. I told him that we had but just left a coach and were going--but then I was obliged to look at my companion.
"Why, you see, Mr. Woodcourt"--he had caught the name from me--"we are a-going at present into the next street. Inspector Bucket."
Mr. Woodcourt, disregarding my remonstrances, had hurriedly taken off his cloak and was putting it about me. "That's a good move, too," said Mr. Bucket, assisting, "a very good move."
"May I go with you?" said Mr. Woodcourt. I don't know whether to me or to my companion.
"Why, Lord!" exclaimed Mr. Bucket, taking the answer on himself. "Of course you may."
It was all said in a moment, and they took me between them, wrapped in the cloak.
"I have just left Richard," said Mr. Woodcourt. "I have been sitting with him since ten o'clock last night."
"Oh, dear me, he is ill!"
"No, no, believe me; not ill, but not quite well. He was depressed and faint--you know he gets so worried and so worn sometimes--and Ada sent to me of course; and when I came home I found her note and came straight here. Well! Richard revived so much after a little while, and Ada was so happy and so convinced of its being my doing, though God knows I had little enough to do with it, that I remained with him until he had been fast asleep some hours. As fast asleep as she is now, I hope!"
His friendly and familiar way of speaking of them, his unaffected devotion to them, the grateful confidence with which I knew he had inspired my darling, and the comfort he was to her; could I separate all this from his promise to me? How thankless I must have been if it had not recalled the words he said to me when he was so moved by the change in my appearance: "I will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!"
We now turned into another narrow street. "Mr. Woodcourt," said Mr. Bucket, who had eyed him closely as we came along, "our business takes us to a law-stationer's here, a certain Mr. Snagsby's. What, you know him, do you?" He was so quick that he saw it in an instant.
"Yes, I know a little of him and have called upon him at this place."
"Indeed, sir?" said Mr. Bucket. "Then you will be so good as to let me leave Miss Summerson with you for a moment while I go and have half a word with him?"
The last police-officer with whom he had conferred was standing silently behind us. I was not aware of it until he struck in on my saying I heard some one crying.
"Don't be alarmed, miss," he returned. "It's Snagsby's servant."
"Why, you see," said Mr. Bucket, "the girl's subject to fits, and has 'em bad upon her to-night. A most contrary circumstance it is, for I want certain information out of that girl, and she must be brought to reason somehow."
"At all events, they wouldn't be up yet if it wasn't for her, Mr. Bucket," said the other man. "She's been at it pretty well all night, sir."
"Well, that's true," he returned. "My light's burnt out. Show yours a moment."
All this passed in a whisper a door or two from the house in which I could faintly hear crying and moaning. In the little round of light produced for the purpose, Mr. Bucket went up to the door and knocked. The door was opened after he had knocked twice, and he went in, leaving us standing in the street.
"Miss Summerson," said Mr. Woodcourt, "if without obtruding myself on your confidence I may remain near you, pray let me do so."
"You are truly kind," I answered. "I need wish to keep no secret of my own from you; if I keep any, it is another's."
"I quite understand. Trust me, I will remain near you only so long as I can fully respect it."
"I trust implicitly to you," I said. "I know and deeply feel how sacredly you keep your promise."
After a short time the little round of light shone out again, and Mr. Bucket advanced towards us in it with his earnest face. "Please to come in, Miss Summerson," he said, "and sit down by the fire. Mr. Woodcourt, from information I have received I understand you are a medical man. Would you look to this girl and see if anything can be done to bring her round. She has a letter somewhere that I particularly want. It's not in her box, and I think it must be about her; but she is so twisted and clenched up that she is difficult to handle without hurting."
We all three went into the house together; although it was cold and raw, it smelt close too from being up all night. In the passage behind the door stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in a grey coat who seemed to have a naturally polite manner and spoke meekly.
"Downstairs, if you please, Mr. Bucket," said he. "The lady will excuse the front kitchen; we use it as our workaday sitting-room. The back is Guster's bedroom, and in it she's a-carrying on, poor thing, to a frightful extent!"
We went downstairs, followed by Mr. Snagsby, as I soon found the little man to be. In the front kitchen, sitting by the fire, was Mrs. Snagsby, with very red eyes and a very severe expression of face.
"My little woman," said Mr. Snagsby, entering behind us, "to wave--not to put too fine a point upon it, my dear--hostilities for one single moment in the course of this prolonged night, here is Inspector Bucket, Mr. Woodcourt, and a lady."
She looked very much astonished, as she had reason for doing, and looked particularly hard at me.
"My little woman," said Mr. Snagsby, sitting down in the remotest corner by the door, as if he were taking a liberty, "it is not unlikely that you may inquire of me why Inspector Bucket, Mr. Woodcourt, and a lady call upon us in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, at the present hour. I don't know. I have not the least idea. If I was to be informed, I should despair of understanding, and I'd rather not be told."
He appeared so miserable, sitting with his head upon his hand, and I appeared so unwelcome, that I was going to offer an apology when Mr. Bucket took the matter on himself.
"Now, Mr. Snagsby," said he, "the best thing you can do is to go along with Mr. Woodcourt to look after your Guster--"
"My Guster, Mr. Bucket!" cried Mr. Snagsby. "Go on, sir, go on. I shall be charged with that next."
"And to hold the candle," pursued Mr. Bucket without correcting himself, "or hold her, or make yourself useful in any way you're asked. Which there's not a man alive more ready to do, for you're a man of urbanity and suavity, you know, and you've got the sort of heart that can feel for another. Mr. Woodcourt, would you be so good as see to her, and if you can get that letter from her, to let me have it as soon as ever you can?"
As they went out, Mr. Bucket made me sit down in a corner by the fire and take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon the fender, talking all the time.
"Don't you be at all put out, miss, by the want of a hospitable look from Mrs. Snagsby there, because she's under a mistake altogether. She'll find that out sooner than will be agreeable to a lady of her generally correct manner of forming her thoughts, because I'm a-going to explain it to her." Here, standing on the hearth with his wet hat and shawls in his hand, himself a pile of wet, he turned to Mrs. Snagsby. "Now, the first thing that I say to you, as a married woman possessing what you may call charms, you know--'Believe Me, if All Those Endearing,' and cetrer--you're well acquainted with the song, because it's in vain for you to tell me that you and good society are strangers--charms--attractions, mind you, that ought to give you confidence in yourself--is, that you've done it."
Mrs. Snagsby looked rather alarmed, relented a little and faltered, what did Mr. Bucket mean.
"What does Mr. Bucket mean?" he repeated, and I saw by his face that all the time he talked he was listening for the discovery of the letter, to my own great agitation, for I knew then how important it must be; "I'll tell you what he means, ma'am. Go and see Othello acted. That's the tragedy for you."
Mrs. Snagsby consciously asked why.
"Why?" said Mr. Bucket. "Because you'll come to that if you don't look out. Why, at the very moment while I speak, I know what your mind's not wholly free from respecting this young lady. But shall I tell you who this young lady is? Now, come, you're what I call an intellectual woman--with your soul too large for your body, if you come to that, and chafing it--and you know me, and you recollect where you saw me last, and what was talked of in that circle. Don't you? Yes! Very well. This young lady is that young lady."
Mrs. Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did at the time.
"And Toughey--him as you call Jo--was mixed up in the same business, and no other; and the law-writer that you know of was mixed up in the same business, and no other; and your husband, with no more knowledge of it than your great grandfather, was mixed up (by Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, his best customer) in the same business, and no other; and the whole bileing of people was mixed up in the same business, and no other. And yet a married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts her eyes (and sparklers too), and goes and runs her delicate-formed head against a wall. Why, I am ashamed of you! (I expected Mr. Woodcourt might have got it by this time.)"
Mrs. Snagsby shook her head and put her handkerchief to her eyes.
"Is that all?" said Mr. Bucket excitedly. "No. See what happens. Another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a wretched state, comes here to-night and is seen a-speaking to your maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What do you do? You hide and you watch 'em, and you pounce upon that maid-servant--knowing what she's subject to and what a little thing will bring 'em on--in that surprising manner and with that severity that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a life may be hanging upon that girl's words!"
He so thoroughly meant what he said now that I involuntarily clasped my hands and felt the room turning away from me. But it stopped. Mr. Woodcourt came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away again.
"Now, Mrs. Snagsby, the only amends you can make," said Mr. Bucket, rapidly glancing at it, "is to let me speak a word to this young lady in private here. And if you know of any help that you can give to that gentleman in the next kitchen there or can think of any one thing that's likelier than another to bring the girl round, do your swiftest and best!" In an instant she was gone, and he had shut the door. "Now my dear, you're steady and quite sure of yourself?"
"Quite," said I.
"Whose writing is that?"
It was my mother's. A pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece of paper, blotted with wet. Folded roughly like a letter, and directed to me at my guardian's.
"You know the hand," he said, "and if you are firm enough to read it to me, do! But be particular to a word."
It had been written in portions, at different times. I read what follows:
I came to the cottage with two objects. First, to see the dear one, if I could, once more--but only to see her--not to speak to her or let her know that I was near. The other object, to elude pursuit and to be lost. Do not blame the mother for her share. The assistance that she rendered me, she rendered on my strongest assurance that it was for the dear one's good. You remember her dead child. The men's consent I bought, but her help was freely given.
"'I came.' That was written," said my companion, "when she rested there. It bears out what I made of it. I was right."
The next was written at another time:
I have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and I know that I must soon die. These streets! I have no purpose but to die. When I left, I had a worse, but I am saved from adding that guilt to the rest. Cold, wet, and fatigue are sufficient causes for my being found dead, but I shall die of others, though I suffer from these. It was right that all that had sustained me should give way at once and that I should die of terror and my conscience.
"Take courage," said Mr. Bucket. "There's only a few words more."
Those, too, were written at another time. To all appearance, almost in the dark:
I have done all I could do to be lost. I shall be soon forgotten so, and shall disgrace him least. I have nothing about me by which I can be recognized. This paper I part with now. The place where I shall lie down, if I can get so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive.
Mr. Bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered me gently into my chair. "Cheer up! Don't think me hard with you, my dear, but as soon as ever you feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready."
I did as he required, but I was left there a long time, praying for my unhappy mother. They were all occupied with the poor girl, and I heard Mr. Woodcourt directing them and speaking to her often. At length he came in with Mr. Bucket and said that as it was important to address her gently, he thought it best that I should ask her for whatever information we desired to obtain. There was no doubt that she could now reply to questions if she were soothed and not alarmed. The questions, Mr. Bucket said, were how she came by the letter, what passed between her and the person who gave her the letter, and where the person went. Holding my mind as steadily as I could to these points, I went into the next room with them. Mr. Woodcourt would have remained outside, but at my solicitation went in with us.
The poor girl was sitting on the floor where they had laid her down. They stood around her, though at a little distance, that she might have air. She was not pretty and looked weak and poor, but she had a plaintive and a good face, though it was still a little wild. I kneeled on the ground beside her and put her poor head upon my shoulder, whereupon she drew her arm round my neck and burst into tears.
"My poor girl," said I, laying my face against her forehead, for indeed I was crying too, and trembling, "it seems cruel to trouble you now, but more depends on our knowing something about this letter than I could tell you in an hour."
She began piteously declaring that she didn't mean any harm, she didn't mean any harm, Mrs. Snagsby!
"We are all sure of that," said I. "But pray tell me how you got it."
"Yes, dear lady, I will, and tell you true. I'll tell true, indeed, Mrs. Snagsby."
"I am sure of that," said I. "And how was it?"
"I had been out on an errand, dear lady--long after it was dark--quite late; and when I came home, I found a common-looking person, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house. When she saw me coming in at the door, she called me back and said did I live here. And I said yes, and she said she knew only one or two places about here, but had lost her way and couldn't find them. Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! They won't believe me! She didn't say any harm to me, and I didn't say any harm to her, indeed, Mrs. Snagsby!"
It was necessary for her mistress to comfort her--which she did, I must say, with a good deal of contrition--before she could be got beyond this.
"She could not find those places," said I.
"No!" cried the girl, shaking her head. "No! Couldn't find them. And she was so faint, and lame, and miserable, Oh so wretched, that if you had seen her, Mr. Snagsby, you'd have given her half a crown, I know!"
"Well, Guster, my girl," said he, at first not knowing what to say. "I hope I should."
"And yet she was so well spoken," said the girl, looking at me with wide open eyes, "that it made a person's heart bleed. And so she said to me, did I know the way to the burying ground? And I asked her which burying ground. And she said, the poor burying ground. And so I told her I had been a poor child myself, and it was according to parishes. But she said she meant a poor burying ground not very far from here, where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate."
As I watched her face and soothed her to go on, I saw that Mr. Bucket received this with a look which I could not separate from one of alarm.
"Oh, dear, dear!" cried the girl, pressing her hair back with her hands. "What shall I do, what shall I do! She meant the burying ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping-stuff--that you came home and told us of, Mr. Snagsby--that frightened me so, Mrs. Snagsby. Oh, I am frightened again. Hold me!"
"You are so much better now," sald I. "Pray, pray tell me more."
"Yes I will, yes I will! But don't be angry with me, that's a dear lady, because I have been so ill."
Angry with her, poor soul!
"There! Now I will, now I will. So she said, could I tell her how to find it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she looked at me with eyes like almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving back. And so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said if she was to put that in the post-office, it would be rubbed out and not minded and never sent; and would I take it from her, and send it, and the messenger would be paid at the house. And so I said yes, if it was no harm, and she said no--no harm. And so I took it from her, and she said she had nothing to give me, and I said I was poor myself and consequently wanted nothing. And so she said God bless you, and went."
"And did she go--"
"Yes," cried the girl, anticipating the inquiry. "Yes! She went the way I had shown her. Then I came in, and Mrs. Snagsby came behind me from somewhere and laid hold of me, and I was frightened."
Mr. Woodcourt took her kindly from me. Mr. Bucket wrapped me up, and immediately we were in the street. Mr. Woodcourt hesitated, but I said, "Don't leave me now!" and Mr. Bucket added, "You'll be better with us, we may want you; don't lose time!"
I have the most confused impressions of that walk. I recollect that it was neither night nor day, that morning was dawning but the street-lamps were not yet put out, that the sleet was still falling and that all the ways were deep with it. I recollect a few chilled people passing in the streets. I recollect the wet house-tops, the clogged and bursting gutters and water-spouts, the mounds of blackened ice and snow over which we passed, the narrowness of the courts by which we went. At the same time I remember that the poor girl seemed to be yet telling her story audibly and plainly in my hearing, that I could feel her resting on my arm, that the stained house-fronts put on human shapes and looked at me, that great water-gates seemed to be opening and closing in my head or in the air, and that the unreal things were more substantial than the real.
At last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one lamp was burning over an iron gate and where the morning faintly struggled in. The gate was closed. Beyond it was a burial ground--a dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. On the step at the gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a woman lying--Jenny, the mother of the dead child.
I ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr. Woodcourt entreated me with the greatest earnestness, even with tears, before I went up to the figure to listen for an instant to what Mr. Bucket said. I did so, as I thought. I did so, as I am sure.
"Miss Summerson, you'll understand me, if you think a moment. They changed clothes at the cottage."
They changed clothes at the cottage. I could repeat the words in my mind, and I knew what they meant of themselves, but I attached no meaning to them in any other connexion.
"And one returned," said Mr. Bucket, "and one went on. And the one that went on only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive and then turned across country and went home. Think a moment!"
I could repeat this in my mind too, but I had not the least idea what it meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead child. She lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron gate and seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so lately spoken to my mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered, senseless creature. She who had brought my mother's letter, who could give me the only clue to where my mother was; she, who was to guide us to rescue and save her whom we had sought so far, who had come to this condition by some means connected with my mother that I could not follow, and might be passing beyond our reach and help at that moment; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw but did not comprehend the solemn and compassionate look in Mr. Woodcourt's face. I saw but did not comprehend his touching the other on the breast to keep him back. I saw him stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a reverence for something. But my understanding for all this was gone.
I even heard it said between them, "Shall she go?"
"She had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. They have a higher right than ours."
I passed on to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head, put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my mother, cold and dead. | It was three o'clock in the morning when London at last began to close us in with streets. We had made our way along roads in a far worse condition than on the previous day; but my companion's energy never slackened. Whenever the horses had stopped exhausted half-way up hills, or had slipped and become entangled with the harness, he and his little lantern had been always ready, and when the mishap was set right, he said the same cool, "Get on, my lads!"
I could not account for his confidence on our journey back. He never even stopped to make an inquiry until we were within a few miles of London. Thus we came, between three and four o'clock in the morning, into Islington.
I will not dwell on the anxiety with which I reflected that we were leaving my mother farther and farther behind every minute. I hoped that he must be right in following this woman, but I tormented myself with questioning it during the whole journey. I wondered what was to compensate us for this loss of time; my mind was quite tortured by dwelling on such reflections.
We stopped in a high-street by a coach-stand. My companion paid our two drivers, and giving them some brief directions about the carriage, lifted me out of it and into a hackney-coach.
"Why, my dear!" he said. "How wet you are!"
I had not been conscious of it. But the melted snow had found its way into the carriage, and I had got out two or three times when a fallen horse was plunging and had to be got up, and the wet had penetrated my dress. I assured him it was no matter, but the driver ran down the street to his stable to fetch an armful of clean dry straw. They strewed it well about me, and I found it warm and comfortable.
"Now, my dear," said Mr. Bucket, with his head in at the window, "We're a-going to mark this person down. It may take a little time, but you don't mind that. You're pretty sure that I've got a reason. Ain't you?"
I assured him that I had confidence in him.
"So you may have, my dear," he returned. "Lord! You're no trouble at all. I never see a young woman conduct herself like you have. You're a pattern, you know, that's what you are," said Mr. Bucket warmly.
I told him I was very glad to have been no hindrance to him.
"My dear," he returned, "when a young lady is as mild as she's game, and as game as she's mild, that's all I ask, and more than I expect. She then becomes a queen, and that's about what you are yourself."
With these encouraging words he got upon the box, and we once more drove away. Where we drove I did not know, but we appeared to seek out the narrowest and worst streets in London.
Sometimes we emerged upon a wider thoroughfare or came to a larger, well-lit building. Then we stopped at police offices, and I saw him in consultation with others. Sometimes he would get down by an archway or at a street corner and mysteriously show the light of his little lantern. This would attract similar lights from various dark quarters, like so many insects, and a fresh consultation would be held. By degrees we appeared to contract our search within narrower limits. At last we stopped for a rather long conversation with a single police officer, which I supposed to be satisfactory from Mr. Bucket's manner of nodding. When it was finished he came to me looking very busy.
"Now, Miss Summerson," he said to me, "you won't be alarmed whatever happens, I know. We have marked this person down, and you may be of use to me. Would you walk a little way?"
Of course I got out directly and took his arm.
"It ain't so easy to keep your feet," said Mr. Bucket, "but take time."
"Are we in Holborn?" I asked him, as we crossed the street.
"Yes. Do you know this turning?"
"It looks like Chancery Lane."
"So it is, my dear," said Mr. Bucket.
We turned down it, and as we went shuffling through the sleet, I heard the clocks strike half-past five. We passed on as quickly as we could, when someone coming towards us on the narrow pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and stood aside to give me room. I heard an exclamation of wonder and my own name; it was Mr. Woodcourt.
It was so unexpected and so - I don't know what to call it, whether pleasant or painful - after my feverish wandering journey, and in the midst of the night, that I could not keep back the tears from my eyes. It was like hearing his voice in a strange country.
"My dear Miss Summerson, that you should be out at this hour, and in such weather!"
He had heard from my guardian of my having been called away on some uncommon business. I told him that we had just left a coach and were going - I looked at my companion.
"Why, you see, Mr. Woodcourt" - he had caught the name from me - "we are a-going into the next street. Inspector Bucket."
Mr. Woodcourt had hurriedly taken off his cloak and was putting it about me.
"That's a good move," said Mr. Bucket, assisting him.
"May I go with you?" said Mr. Woodcourt, I don't know whether to me or to my companion.
"Why, Lord!" exclaimed Mr. Bucket. "Of course you may."
They took me between them, wrapped in the cloak.
"I have just left Richard," said Mr. Woodcourt. "I have been sitting with him since ten o'clock last night."
"Oh, dear me, he is ill!"
"No, no; not ill, but not quite well. He was depressed and faint - you know he gets so worried and so worn sometimes - and Ada sent word to me. Well! Richard revived so much after a little while, and Ada was so happy and so convinced of its being my doing, though God knows I had little enough to do with it, that I remained with him until he had been fast asleep some hours. As fast asleep as she is now, I hope!"
His friendly and familiar way of speaking of them, his unaffected devotion to them, and the comfort he was to my darling; could I separate all this from his promise to me? I recalled the words he said to me when he was so moved by the change in my appearance: "I will accept him as a sacred trust!"
We now turned into another narrow street. "Mr. Woodcourt," said Mr. Bucket, who had eyed him closely as we came along, "our business takes us to a law-stationer's here, a certain Mr. Snagsby's. What, you know him, do you?" He was so quick that he saw it in an instant.
"Yes, I know a little of him and have called upon him here."
"Indeed, sir?" said Mr. Bucket. "Then may I leave Miss Summerson with you for a moment while I go and have a word with him?"
The last police-officer with whom he had conferred was standing silently behind us. I was not aware of it until he struck in, on my saying I heard some one crying.
"Don't be alarmed, miss," he returned. "It's Snagsby's servant."
"Why, you see," said Mr. Bucket, "the girl's subject to fits, and has 'em bad tonight. A most contrary circumstance it is, for I want certain information out of that girl."
"At all events, they wouldn't be up if it wasn't for her, Mr. Bucket. She's been at it pretty well all night, sir," said the other man.
I could faintly hear crying and moaning from the house. Mr. Bucket went up to the door with his lantern and knocked twice. The door was opened and he went in, leaving us standing in the street.
"Miss Summerson," said Mr. Woodcourt, "if I may remain near you without obtruding on your confidence, pray let me do so."
"You are truly kind," I answered. "I wish to keep no secret of my own from you; if I keep any, it is another's."
"I quite understand."
After a short time the door opened again, and Mr. Bucket advanced towards us.
"Please to come in, Miss Summerson," he said, "and sit down by the fire. Mr. Woodcourt, I understand you are a medical man. Would you look to this girl and see if anything can be done to bring her round? She has a letter somewhere that I particularly want. It's not in her box, and I think it must be about her; but she is so twisted and clenched up that she is difficult to handle without hurting."
We all three went into the house together. Behind the door stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in a grey coat who spoke meekly and politely.
"Downstairs, if you please, Mr. Bucket," said he. "The lady will excuse the front kitchen; we use it as our workaday sitting-room. The back is Guster's bedroom, and in it she's a-carrying on, poor thing, to a frightful extent!"
We went downstairs with Mr. Snagsby. In the front kitchen, sitting by the fire, was Mrs. Snagsby, with very red eyes and a very severe expression.
"My little woman," said Mr. Snagsby, entering behind us, "here is Inspector Bucket, Mr. Woodcourt, and a lady."
She looked very much astonished, and looked particularly hard at me.
"My little woman," said Mr. Snagsby, sitting down by the door, "you may ask why Inspector Bucket, Mr. Woodcourt, and a lady call upon us at the present hour. I don't know. I have not the least idea. In fact, I'd rather not be told."
He appeared so miserable, sitting with his head upon his hand, and I appeared so unwelcome, that I was going to offer an apology when Mr. Bucket spoke.
"Now, Mr. Snagsby," said he, "you go along with Mr. Woodcourt to look after your Guster-"
"My Guster, Mr. Bucket!" cried Mr. Snagsby. "Go on, sir. I shall be charged with that next."
"And hold the candle," pursued Mr. Bucket, "or make yourself useful in any way you're asked. You're a humane man, you know, and you've got the sort of heart that can feel for another. Mr. Woodcourt, would you kindly see to her, and if you can get that letter from her, let me have it as soon as you can?"
As they went out, Mr. Bucket made me sit down by the fire and take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon the fender, talking all the time.
"Don't you be put out, miss, by the lack of a hospitable look from Mrs. Snagsby there, because she's under a mistake altogether. She'll find that out sooner than will be agreeable to a lady of her generally correct thinking, because I'm a-going to explain it to her." Here, standing on the hearth with his wet hat and shawls in his hand, he turned to Mrs. Snagsby.
"Now, the first thing that I say to you, as a married woman possessing what you may call charms, you know - 'Believe Me, if All Those Endearing,' and cetra - charms that ought to give you confidence in yourself - is, that you've done it."
Mrs. Snagsby looked rather alarmed, and faltered, what did Mr. Bucket mean?
"What does Mr. Bucket mean?" he repeated, and I saw by his face that all the time he talked he was listening for the discovery of the letter. "I'll tell you what he means, ma'am. Go and see Othello acted. That's the tragedy for you."
Mrs. Snagsby asked why.
"Why?" said Mr. Bucket. "Because you'll come to that if you don't look out. Why, at this very moment, I know what your mind's not wholly free from respecting this young lady. But shall I tell you who this young lady is? Now, come, you're what I call an intellectual woman. You know me, and you recollect where you saw me last, and what was talked of in that circle. Don't you? Yes! Very well. This young lady is that young lady."
Mrs. Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did.
"And the boy Jo was mixed up in the same business, and no other; and the law-writer that you know of was mixed up in the same business, and no other; and your husband, with no more knowledge of it than your great grandfather, was mixed up (by Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased) in the same business, and no other; and the whole throng of people was mixed up in the same business, and no other. And yet a married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts her eyes and goes and runs her delicate-formed head against a wall. Why, I am ashamed of you! (I expected Mr. Woodcourt might have got it by this time.)"
Mrs. Snagsby shook her head and put her handkerchief to her eyes.
"Is that all?" said Mr. Bucket excitedly. "No. See what happens. Another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a wretched state, comes here tonight and is seen a-speaking to your maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What do you do? You hide and you watch 'em, and you pounce upon that maid-servant - knowing what a little thing will bring on her fits - with that severity that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a life may be hanging upon that girl's words!"
He so thoroughly meant what he said that I involuntarily clasped my hands and felt the room turning away from me. But then Mr. Woodcourt came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away again.
"Now, Mrs. Snagsby, the only amends you can make," said Mr. Bucket, rapidly glancing at it, "is to let me speak a word to this young lady in private here. And if you know of any help that you can give to that gentleman in the next room or can think of anything that's likely to bring the girl round, do your best!" In an instant she was gone, and he had shut the door. "Now, my dear, you're steady and quite sure of yourself?"
"Quite," said I.
"Whose writing is that?"
It was my mother's. Pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece of paper, blotted with wet. Folded, and addressed to me at my guardian's.
"If you are firm enough to read it to me, do!" he said.
It had been written in portions, at different times. I read what follows:
I came to the cottage with two objects. First, to see the dear one, if I could, once more - but only to see her - not to speak to her or let her know that I was near. The other object, to elude pursuit and to be lost. Do not blame the mother for her share. She helped me on my strongest assurance that it was for the dear one's good. You remember her dead child. The men's consent I bought, but her help was freely given.
"'I came.' That was written when she rested there," said my companion. "I was right."
The next was written at another time:
I have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and I know that I must soon die. These streets! I have no purpose but to die. When I left, I had a worse, but I am saved from adding that guilt to the rest. Cold, wet, and fatigue are sufficient causes for my being found dead, but I shall die of others, though I suffer from these. It was right that I should die of terror and my conscience.
"Take courage," said Mr. Bucket. "There's only a few words more."
Those, too, were written at another time. To all appearance, almost in the dark:
I have done all I could do to be lost. I shall be soon forgotten thus, and shall disgrace him least. I have nothing about me by which I can be recognized. This paper I part with now. The place where I shall lie down, if I can get so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive.
Mr. Bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered me gently into my chair. "Cheer up! Don't think me hard with you, my dear, but as soon as you feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready."
I did as he required, but I was left there a long time, praying for my unhappy mother. They were all occupied with the poor girl, and I heard Mr. Woodcourt speaking to her. At length he came in with Mr. Bucket and said that as it was important to address her gently, he thought it best that I should ask her for whatever information we desired. She could now reply to questions if she were soothed and not alarmed.
The questions, Mr. Bucket said, were how she came by the letter, what passed between her and the person who gave her the letter, and where the person went. I went into the next room with them.
The poor girl was sitting on the floor. She looked weak, but she had a plaintive and a good face, though it was still a little wild. I kneeled on the ground beside her and put her poor head upon my shoulder, whereupon she drew her arm round my neck and burst into tears.
"My poor girl," said I, laying my face against her forehead, for indeed I was crying too, and trembling, "it seems cruel to trouble you now, but more depends on our knowing something about this letter than I could tell you in an hour."
She began piteously declaring that she didn't mean any harm, she didn't mean any harm, Mrs. Snagsby!
"We are all sure of that," said I. "But pray tell me how you got it."
"Yes, dear lady. I'll tell true, indeed."
"I am sure of that," said I. "How was it?"
"I had been out on an errand, quite late; and when I came home, I found a common-looking person, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house. When she saw me coming in, she said did I live here. And I said yes, and she said she knew only one or two places about here, but had lost her way and couldn't find them. Oh, what shall I do! They won't believe me! She didn't say any harm to me, and I didn't say any harm to her, indeed, Mrs. Snagsby!"
It was necessary for her mistress to comfort her - which she did, I must say, with a good deal of contrition.
"She was so faint," cried the girl, "and lame, and miserable, oh so wretched, that if you had seen her, Mr. Snagsby, you'd have given her half a crown, I know!"
"Well, Guster, my girl," said he, not knowing what to say. "I hope I should."
"And yet she was well spoken," said the girl, looking at me with wide open eyes. "And she said to me, did I know the way to the burying ground? And I asked her which burying ground. And she said, the poor burying ground not very far from here, where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate."
As I soothed her to go on, I saw that Mr. Bucket received this with a look of alarm.
"Oh, dear, dear!" cried the girl. "What shall I do, what shall I do! She meant the burying ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping-stuff - that you told us of, Mr. Snagsby. Oh, I am frightened again. Hold me!"
"You are so much better now," said I. "Pray, pray tell me more."
"Yes, I will! But don't be angry with me, that's a dear lady."
Angry with her, poor soul!
"So she said, could I tell her how to find it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she looked at me almost as if she was blind. And so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said would I take it from her, and send it. And I said yes, if it was no harm, and she said no - no harm. And so I took it from her, and she said she had nothing to give me, and I said I was poor myself and wanted nothing. And so she said God bless you, and went."
"And did she go-"
"Yes!" cried the girl. "She went the way I had shown her. Then I came in, and Mrs. Snagsby came behind me from somewhere and laid hold of me, and I was frightened."
Mr. Woodcourt took her kindly from me. Mr. Bucket wrapped me up, and immediately we were in the street. Mr. Woodcourt hesitated, but I said, "Don't leave me now!" and Mr. Bucket added, "You'll be better with us, we may want you; don't lose time!"
I have the most confused impressions of that walk. I recollect that it was neither night nor day, that morning was dawning but the street-lamps were not yet put out, and that the sleet was still falling. I recollect the clogged and bursting gutters and water-spouts, the mounds of blackened ice and snow over which we passed, the narrowness of the streets. I remember the stained house-fronts put on human shapes and looked at me, that great water-gates seemed to be opening and closing in my head or in the air, and that the unreal things were more substantial than the real.
At last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one lamp was burning over an iron gate. The gate was closed. Beyond it was a burial ground, where I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows. On the step at the gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a woman lying - Jenny, the mother of the dead child.
I ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr. Woodcourt entreated me with the greatest earnestness, even with tears, to listen for an instant to what Mr. Bucket said. I did so.
"Miss Summerson, you'll understand me, if you think a moment. They changed clothes at the cottage."
They changed clothes at the cottage. I could repeat the words in my mind, and I knew what they meant of themselves, but I attached no meaning to them in any other connexion.
"And one returned," said Mr. Bucket, "and one went on. And the one that went on only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive and then turned across country and went home. Think a moment!"
I could repeat this in my mind too, but I had not the least idea what it meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead child, who had so lately spoken to my mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered, senseless creature. She who had brought my mother's letter, who could give me the only clue to where my mother was; she, who was to guide us to rescue my mother; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw but did not comprehend the solemn and compassionate look in Mr. Woodcourt's face. I saw but did not comprehend his touching the inspector to keep him back.
I heard it said between them, "Shall she go?"
"She had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. They have a higher right than ours."
I passed on to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head, put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my mother, cold and dead. | Bleak House | Chapter 59: Esther's Narrative |
"When Mr. Woodcourt arrived in London, he went, that very same day, to Mr. Vholes's in Symond's Inn.(...TRUNCATED) | "When Mr. Woodcourt arrived in London, he went the same day to Mr. Vholes's in Symond's Inn. For aft(...TRUNCATED) | Bleak House | Chapter 51: Enlightened |
"There is a hush upon Chesney Wold in these altered days, as there is upon a portion of the family h(...TRUNCATED) | "There is a hush upon Chesney Wold in these altered days. The handsome Lady Dedlock lies in the maus(...TRUNCATED) | Bleak House | Chapter 66: Down in Lincolnshire |
"The long vacation saunters on towards term-time like an idle river very leisurely strolling down a (...TRUNCATED) | "The long vacation saunters on like an idle river leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea(...TRUNCATED) | Bleak House | Chapter 20: A New Lodger |
"I had not been at home again many days when one evening I went upstairs into my own room to take a (...TRUNCATED) | "I had not been at home many days when one evening I went upstairs to my own room to see how Charley(...TRUNCATED) | Bleak House | Chapter 31: Nurse and Patient |
"We came home from Mr. Boythorn's after six pleasant weeks. We were often in the park and in the woo(...TRUNCATED) | "We came home from Mr. Boythorn's after six pleasant weeks. We were often in the park and woods, and(...TRUNCATED) | Bleak House | Chapter 23: Esther's Narrative |
"When our time came for returning to Bleak House again, we were punctual to the day and were receive(...TRUNCATED) | "When we returned to Bleak House, we were received with an overpowering welcome. I was perfectly res(...TRUNCATED) | Bleak House | Chapter 38: A Struggle |
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Dataset Card for AbLit
Dataset Summary
The AbLit dataset contains abridged versions of 10 classic English literature books, aligned with their original versions on various passage levels. The abridgements were written and made publically available by Emma Laybourn here. This is the first known dataset for NLP research that focuses on the abridgement task.
See the paper for a detailed description of the dataset, as well as the results of several modeling experiments. The GitHub repo also provides more extensive ways to interact with the data beyond what is provided here.
Languages
English
Dataset Structure
Each passage in the original version of a book chapter is aligned with its corresponding passage in the abridged version. These aligned pairs are available for various passage sizes: sentences, paragraphs, and multi-paragraph "chunks". The passage size is specified when loading the dataset. There are train/dev/test splits for items of each size.
| Passage Size | Description | # Train | # Dev | # Test |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| chapters | Each passage is a single chapter | 808 | 10 | 50 |
| sentences | Each passage is a sentence delimited by the NLTK sentence tokenizer | 122,219 | 1,143 | 10,431 |
| paragraphs | Each passage is a paragraph delimited by a line break | 37,227 | 313 | 3,125 |
| chunks-10-sentences | Each passage consists of up to X=10 number of sentences, which may span more than one paragraph. To derive chunks with other lengths X, see GitHub repo above | 14,857 | 141 | 1,264 |
Example Usage
To load aligned paragraphs:
from datasets import load_dataset
data = load_dataset("roemmele/ablit", "paragraphs")
Data Fields
- original: passage text in the original version
- abridged: passage text in the abridged version
- book: title of book containing passage
- chapter: title of chapter containing passage
Dataset Creation
Curation Rationale
Abridgement is the task of making a text easier to understand while preserving its linguistic qualities. Abridgements are different from typical summaries: whereas summaries abstractively describe the original text, abridgements simplify the original primarily through a process of extraction. We present this dataset to promote further research on modeling the abridgement process.
Source Data
The author Emma Laybourn wrote abridged versions of classic English literature books available through Project Gutenberg. She has also provided her abridgements for free on her website. This is how she describes her work: “This is a collection of famous novels which have been shortened and slightly simplified for the general reader. These are not summaries; each is half to two-thirds of the original length. I’ve selected works that people often find daunting because of their density or complexity: the aim is to make them easier to read, while keeping the style intact.”
Initial Data Collection and Normalization
We obtained the original and abridged versions of the books from the respective websites.
Who are the source language producers?
Emma Laybourn
Annotations
Annotation process
We designed a procedure for automatically aligning passages between the original and abridged version of each chapter. We conducted a human evaluation to verify these alignments had high accuracy. The training split of the dataset has ~99% accuracy. The dev and test splits of the dataset were fully human-validated to ensure 100% accuracy. See the paper for further explanation.
Who are the annotators?
The alignment accuracy evaluation was conducted by the authors of the paper, who have expertise in linguistics and NLP.
Personal and Sensitive Information
None
Considerations for Using the Data
Social Impact of Dataset
We hope this dataset will promote more research on the authoring process for producing abridgements, including models for automatically generating abridgements. Because it is a labor-intensive writing task, there are relatively few abridged versions of books. Systems that automatically produce abridgements could vastly expand the number of abridged versions of books and thus increase their readership.
Discussion of Biases
We present this dataset to introduce abridgement as an NLP task, but these abridgements are scoped to one small set of texts associated with a specific domain and author. There are significant practical reasons for this limited scope. In particular, in constrast to the books in AbLit, most recently published books are not included in publicly accessible datasets due to copyright restrictions, and the same restrictions typically apply to any abridgements of these books. For this reason, AbLit consists of British English literature from the 18th and 19th centuries. Some of the linguistic properties of these original books do not generalize to other types of English texts that would be beneficial to abridge. Moreover, the narrow cultural perspective reflected in these books is certainly not representative of the diverse modern population. Readers may find some content offensive.
Dataset Curators
The curators are the authors of the paper.
Licensing Information
cc-by-sa-4.0
Citation Information
Roemmele, Melissa, Kyle Shaffer, Katrina Olsen, Yiyi Wang, and Steve DeNeefe. "AbLit: A Resource for Analyzing and Generating Abridged Versions of English Literature." Proceedings of the 17th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Main Volume (2023).
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Homepage:
github.com
Repository:
github.com
Paper:
arxiv.org
Point of Contact:
melissa@roemmele.io
Size of downloaded dataset files:
143 MB
Size of the auto-converted Parquet files:
71.7 MB
Number of rows:
317,587
Models trained or fine-tuned on roemmele/ablit