Bleak House - Charles Dickens (read this if txt) 📗

Bucket was already looking in over the

servant’s shoulder. “Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson,” said he,

rather out of breath, “with all apologies for intruding, WILL you

allow me to order up a person that’s on the stairs and that objects

to being left there in case of becoming the subject of observations

in his absence? Thank you. Be so good as chair that there member

in this direction, will you?” said Mr. Bucket, beckoning over the

banisters.

 

This singular request produced an old man in a black skull-cap,

unable to walk, who was carried up by a couple of bearers and

deposited in the room near the door. Mr. Bucket immediately got

rid of the bearers, mysteriously shut the door, and bolted it.

 

“Now you see, Mr. Jarndyce,” he then began, putting down his hat

and opening his subject with a flourish of his well-remembered

finger, “you know me, and Miss Summerson knows me. This gentleman

likewise knows me, and his name is Smallweed. The discounting line

is his line principally, and he’s what you may call a dealer in

bills. That’s about what YOU are, you know, ain’t you?” said Mr.

Bucket, stopping a little to address the gentleman in question, who

was exceedingly suspicious of him.

 

He seemed about to dispute this designation of himself when he was

seized with a violent fit of coughing.

 

“Now, moral, you know!” said Mr. Bucket, improving the accident.

“Don’t you contradict when there ain’t no occasion, and you won’t

be took in that way. Now, Mr. Jarndyce, I address myself to you.

I’ve been negotiating with this gentleman on behalf of Sir

Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and one way and another I’ve been in

and out and about his premises a deal. His premises are the

premises formerly occupied by Krook, marine store dealer—a

relation of this gentleman’s that you saw in his lifetime if I

don’t mistake?”

 

My guardian replied, “Yes.”

 

“Well! You are to understand,” said Mr. Bucket, “that this

gentleman he come into Krook’s property, and a good deal of magpie

property there was. Vast lots of waste-paper among the rest. Lord

bless you, of no use to nobody!”

 

The cunning of Mr. Bucket’s eye and the masterly manner in which he

contrived, without a look or a word against which his watchful

auditor could protest, to let us know that he stated the case

according to previous agreement and could say much more of Mr.

Smallweed if he thought it advisable, deprived us of any merit in

quite understanding him. His difficulty was increased by Mr.

Smallweed’s being deaf as well as suspicious and watching his face

with the closest attention.

 

“Among them odd heaps of old papers, this gentleman, when he comes

into the property, naturally begins to rummage, don’t you see?”

said Mr. Bucket.

 

“To which? Say that again,” cried Mr. Smallweed in a shrill, sharp

voice.

 

“To rummage,” repeated Mr. Bucket. “Being a prudent man and

accustomed to take care of your own affairs, you begin to rummage

among the papers as you have come into; don’t you?”

 

“Of course I do,” cried Mr. Smallweed.

 

“Of course you do,” said Mr. Bucket conversationally, “and much to

blame you would be if you didn’t. And so you chance to find, you

know,” Mr. Bucket went on, stooping over him with an air of

cheerful raillery which Mr. Smallweed by no means reciprocated,

“and so you chance to find, you know, a paper with the signature of

Jarndyce to it. Don’t you?”

 

Mr. Smallweed glanced with a troubled eye at us and grudgingly

nodded assent.

 

“And coming to look at that paper at your full leisure and

convenience—all in good time, for you’re not curious to read it,

and why should you be?—what do you find it to be but a will, you

see. That’s the drollery of it,” said Mr. Bucket with the same

lively air of recalling a joke for the enjoyment of Mr. Smallweed,

who still had the same crest-fallen appearance of not enjoying it

at all; “what do you find it to be but a will?”

 

“I don’t know that it’s good as a will or as anything else,”

snarled Mr. Smallweed.

 

Mr. Bucket eyed the old man for a moment—he had slipped and shrunk

down in his chair into a mere bundle—as if he were much disposed

to pounce upon him; nevertheless, he continued to bend over him

with the same agreeable air, keeping the corner of one of his eyes

upon us.

 

“Notwithstanding which,” said Mr. Bucket, “you get a little

doubtful and uncomfortable in your mind about it, having a very

tender mind of your own.”

 

“Eh? What do you say I have got of my own?” asked Mr. Smallweed

with his hand to his ear.

 

“A very tender mind.”

 

“Ho! Well, go on,” said Mr. Smallweed.

 

“And as you’ve heard a good deal mentioned regarding a celebrated

Chancery will case of the same name, and as you know what a card

Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter, and

books, and papers, and what not, and never liking to part with ‘em,

and always a-going to teach himself to read, you begin to think—

and you never was more correct in your born days—‘Ecod, if I don’t

look about me, I may get into trouble regarding this will.’”

 

“Now, mind how you put it, Bucket,” cried the old man anxiously

with his hand at his ear. “Speak up; none of your brimstone

tricks. Pick me up; I want to hear better. Oh, Lord, I am shaken

to bits!”

 

Mr. Bucket had certainly picked him up at a dart. However, as soon

as he could be heard through Mr. Smallweed’s coughing and his

vicious ejaculations of “Oh, my bones! Oh, dear! I’ve no breath

in my body! I’m worse than the chattering, clattering, brimstone

pig at home!” Mr. Bucket proceeded in the same convivial manner as

before.

 

“So, as I happen to be in the habit of coming about your premises,

you take me into your confidence, don’t you?”

 

I think it would be impossible to make an admission with more ill

will and a worse grace than Mr. Smallweed displayed when he

admitted this, rendering it perfectly evident that Mr. Bucket was

the very last person he would have thought of taking into his

confidence if he could by any possibility have kept him out of it.

 

“And I go into the business with you—very pleasant we are over it;

and I confirm you in your well-founded fears that you will get

yourself into a most precious line if you don’t come out with that

there will,” said Mr. Bucket emphatically; “and accordingly you

arrange with me that it shall be delivered up to this present Mr.

Jarndyce, on no conditions. If it should prove to be valuable, you

trusting yourself to him for your reward; that’s about where it is,

ain’t it?”

 

“That’s what was agreed,” Mr. Smallweed assented with the same bad

grace.

 

“In consequence of which,” said Mr. Bucket, dismissing his

agreeable manner all at once and becoming strictly business-like,

“you’ve got that will upon your person at the present time, and the

only thing that remains for you to do is just to out with it!”

 

Having given us one glance out of the watching corner of his eye,

and having given his nose one triumphant rub with his forefinger,

Mr. Bucket stood with his eyes fastened on his confidential friend

and his hand stretched forth ready to take the paper and present it

to my guardian. It was not produced without much reluctance and

many declarations on the part of Mr. Smallweed that he was a poor

industrious man and that he left it to Mr. Jarndyce’s honour not to

let him lose by his honesty. Little by little he very slowly took

from a breast-pocket a stained, discoloured paper which was much

singed upon the outside and a little burnt at the edges, as if it

had long ago been thrown upon a fire and hastily snatched off

again. Mr. Bucket lost no time in transferring this paper, with

the dexterity of a conjuror, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr. Jarndyce.

As he gave it to my guardian, he whispered behind his fingers,

“Hadn’t settled how to make their market of it. Quarrelled and

hinted about it. I laid out twenty pound upon it. First the

avaricious grandchildren split upon him on account of their

objections to his living so unreasonably long, and then they split

on one another. Lord! There ain’t one of the family that wouldn’t

sell the other for a pound or two, except the old lady—and she’s

only out of it because she’s too weak in her mind to drive a

bargain.”

 

“Mr Bucket,” said my guardian aloud, “whatever the worth of this

paper may be to any one, my obligations are great to you; and if it

be of any worth, I hold myself bound to see Mr. Smallweed

remunerated accordingly.”

 

“Not according to your merits, you know,” said Mr. Bucket in

friendly explanation to Mr. Smallweed. “Don’t you be afraid of

that. According to its value.”

 

“That is what I mean,” said my guardian. “You may observe, Mr.

Bucket, that I abstain from examining this paper myself. The plain

truth is, I have forsworn and abjured the whole business these many

years, and my soul is sick of it. But Miss Summerson and I will

immediately place the paper in the hands of my solicitor in the

cause, and its existence shall be made known without delay to all

other parties interested.”

 

“Mr. Jarndyce can’t say fairer than that, you understand,” observed

Mr. Bucket to his fellow-visitor. “And it being now made clear to

you that nobody’s a-going to be wronged—which must be a great

relief to YOUR mind—we may proceed with the ceremony of chairing

you home again.”

 

He unbolted the door, called in the bearers, wished us good

morning, and with a look full of meaning and a crook of his finger

at parting went his way.

 

We went our way too, which was to Lincoln’s Inn, as quickly as

possible. Mr. Kenge was disengaged, and we found him at his table

in his dusty room with the inexpressive-looking books and the piles

of papers. Chairs having been placed for us by Mr. Guppy, Mr.

Kenge expressed the surprise and gratification he felt at the

unusual sight of Mr. Jarndyce in his office. He turned over his

double eye-glass as he spoke and was more Conversation Kenge than

ever.

 

“I hope,” said Mr. Kenge, “that the genial influence of Miss

Summerson,” he bowed to me, “may have induced Mr. Jarndyce,” he

bowed to him, “to forego some little of his animosity towards a

cause and towards a court which are—shall I say, which take their

place in the stately vista of the pillars of our profession?”

 

“I am inclined to think,” returned my guardian, “that Miss

Summerson has seen too much of the effects of the court and the

cause to exert any influence in their favour. Nevertheless, they

are a part of the occasion of my being here. Mr. Kenge, before I

lay this paper on your desk and have done with it, let me tell you

how it has come into my hands.”

 

He did so shortly and distinctly.

 

“It could not, sir,” said Mr. Kenge, “have been stated more plainly

and to the purpose if it had been a case at law.”

 

“Did you ever know English law, or equity either, plain and to the

purpose?” said my guardian.

 

“Oh, fie!” said Mr. Kenge.

 

At first he had not seemed to attach much importance to the