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

class="calibre1">a page of the book, “Jewby—Packer—Jarndyce.”

 

“Jarndyce! Here we are, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby. “To be sure! I

might have remembered it. This was given out, sir, to a writer who

lodges just over on the opposite side of the lane.”

 

Mr. Tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it before the lawstationer, read it while the forefinger was coming down the hill.

 

“WHAT do you call him? Nemo?” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “Nemo, sir.

Here it is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the Wednesday night at

eight o’clock, brought in on the Thursday morning at half after

nine.”

 

“Nemo!” repeats Mr. Tulkinghorn. “Nemo is Latin for no one.”

 

“It must be English for some one, sir, I think,” Mr. Snagsby submits

with his deferential cough. “It is a person’s name. Here it is,

you see, sir! Forty-two folio. Given out Wednesday night, eight

o’clock; brought in Thursday morning, half after nine.”

 

The tail of Mr. Snagsby’s eye becomes conscious of the head of Mrs.

Snagsby looking in at the shop-door to know what he means by

deserting his tea. Mr. Snagsby addresses an explanatory cough to

Mrs. Snagsby, as who should say, “My dear, a customer!”

 

“Half after nine, sir,” repeats Mr. Snagsby. “Our law-writers, who

live by job-work, are a queer lot; and this may not be his name, but

it’s the name he goes by. I remember now, sir, that he gives it in

a written advertisement he sticks up down at the Rule Office, and

the King’s Bench Office, and the Judges’ Chambers, and so forth.

You know the kind of document, sir—wanting employ?”

 

Mr. Tulkinghorn glances through the little window at the back of

Coavinses’, the sheriff’s officer’s, where lights shine in

Coavinses’ windows. Coavinses’ coffee-room is at the back, and the

shadows of several gentlemen under a cloud loom cloudily upon the

blinds. Mr. Snagsby takes the opportunity of slightly turning his

head to glance over his shoulder at his little woman and to make

apologetic motions with his mouth to this effect: “Tulking-horn—

rich—in-flu-en-tial!”

 

“Have you given this man work before?” asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.

 

“Oh, dear, yes, sir! Work of yours.”

 

“Thinking of more important matters, I forget where you said he

lived?”

 

“Across the lane, sir. In fact, he lodges at a—” Mr. Snagsby makes

another bolt, as if the bit of bread and buffer were insurmountable

“—at a rag and bottle shop.”

 

“Can you show me the place as I go back?”

 

“With the greatest pleasure, sir!”

 

Mr. Snagsby pulls off his sleeves and his grey coat, pulls on his

black coat, takes his hat from its peg. “Oh! Here is my little

woman!” he says aloud. “My dear, will you be so kind as to tell one

of the lads to look after the shop while I step across the lane with

Mr. Tulkinghorn? Mrs. Snagsby, sir—I shan’t be two minutes, my

love!”

 

Mrs. Snagsby bends to the lawyer, retires behind the counter, peeps

at them through the window-blind, goes softly into the back office,

refers to the entries in the book still lying open. Is evidently

curious.

 

“You will find that the place is rough, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby,

walking deferentially in the road and leaving the narrow pavement to

the lawyer; “and the party is very rough. But they’re a wild lot in

general, sir. The advantage of this particular man is that he never

wants sleep. He’ll go at it right on end if you want him to, as

long as ever you like.”

 

It is quite dark now, and the gas-lamps have acquired their full

effect. Jostling against clerks going to post the day’s letters,

and against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against

plaintiffs and defendants and suitors of all sorts, and against the

general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has

interposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the

commonest business of life; diving through law and equity, and

through that kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of

nobody knows what and collects about us nobody knows whence or how—

we only knowing in general that when there is too much of it we find

it necessary to shovel it away—the lawyer and the lawstationer

come to a rag and bottle shop and general emporium of much

disregarded merchandise, lying and being in the shadow of the wall

of Lincoln’s Inn, and kept, as is announced in paint, to all whom it

may concern, by one Krook.

 

“This is where he lives, sir,” says the lawstationer.

 

“This is where he lives, is it?” says the lawyer unconcernedly.

“Thank you.”

 

“Are you not going in, sir?”

 

“No, thank you, no; I am going on to the Fields at present. Good

evening. Thank you!” Mr. Snagsby lifts his hat and returns to his

little woman and his tea.

 

But Mr. Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present. He

goes a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Krook,

and enters it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle

or so in the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back

part by a fire. The old man rises and comes forward, with another

blot-headed candle in his hand.

 

“Pray is your lodger within?”

 

“Male or female, sir?” says Mr. Krook.

 

“Male. The person who does copying.”

 

Mr. Krook has eyed his man narrowly. Knows him by sight. Has an

indistinct impression of his aristocratic repute.

 

“Did you wish to see him, sir?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“It’s what I seldom do myself,” says Mr. Krook with a grin. “Shall

I call him down? But it’s a weak chance if he’d come, sir!”

 

“I’ll go up to him, then,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn.

 

“Second floor, sir. Take the candle. Up there!” Mr. Krook, with

his cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking

after Mr. Tulkinghorn. “Hi-hi!” he says when Mr. Tulkinghorn has

nearly disappeared. The lawyer looks down over the handrail. The

cat expands her wicked mouth and snarls at him.

 

“Order, Lady Jane! Behave yourself to visitors, my lady! You know

what they say of my lodger?” whispers Krook, going up a step or two.

 

“What do they say of him?”

 

“They say he has sold himself to the enemy, but you and I know

better—he don’t buy. I’ll tell you what, though; my lodger is so

black-humoured and gloomy that I believe he’d as soon make that

bargain as any other. Don’t put him out, sir. That’s my advice!”

 

Mr. Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He comes to the dark

door on the second floor. He knocks, receives no answer, opens it,

and accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so.

 

The air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it if

he had not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease,

and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle

as if poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the

corner by the chimney stand a deal table and a broken desk, a

wilderness marked with a rain of ink. In another corner a ragged

old portmanteau on one of the two chairs serves for cabinet or

wardrobe; no larger one is needed, for it collapses like the cheeks

of a starved man. The floor is bare, except that one old mat,

trodden to shreds of rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No

curtain veils the darkness of the night, but the discoloured

shutters are drawn together, and through the two gaunt holes pierced

in them, famine might be staring in—the banshee of the man upon the

bed.

 

For, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patchwork,

lean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just

within the doorway, sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt and

trousers, with bare feet. He has a yellow look in the spectral

darkness of a candle that has guttered down until the whole length

of its wick (still burning) has doubled over and left a tower of

winding-sheet above it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his

whiskers and his beard—the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the

scum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room

is, foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what

fumes those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the

general sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco,

there comes into the lawyer’s mouth the bitter, vapid taste of

opium.

 

“Hallo, my friend!” he cries, and strikes his iron candlestick

against the door.

 

He thinks he has awakened his friend. He lies a little turned away,

but his eyes are surely open.

 

“Hallo, my friend!” he cries again. “Hallo! Hallo!”

 

As he rattles on the door, the candle which has drooped so long goes

out and leaves him in the dark, with the gaunt eyes in the shutters

staring down upon the bed.