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

Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) inquires if he has

been dead any time.

 

“Any time, sir?” says the medical gentleman. “It’s probable he wull

have been dead aboot three hours.”

 

“About that time, I should say,” observes a dark young man on the

other side of the bed.

 

“Air you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir?” inquires the

first.

 

The dark young man says yes.

 

“Then I’ll just tak’ my depairture,” replies the other, “for I’m nae

gude here!” With which remark he finishes his brief attendance and

returns to finish his dinner.

 

The dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face

and carefully examines the law-writer, who has established his

pretensions to his name by becoming indeed No one.

 

“I knew this person by sight very well,” says he. “He has purchased

opium of me for the last year and a half. Was anybody present

related to him?” glancing round upon the three bystanders.

 

“I was his landlord,” grimly answers Krook, taking the candle from

the surgeon’s outstretched hand. “He told me once I was the nearest

relation he had.”

 

“He has died,” says the surgeon, “of an over-dose of opium, there is

no doubt. The room is strongly flavoured with it. There is enough

here now,” taking an old tea-pot from Mr. Krook, “to kill a dozen

people.”

 

“Do you think he did it on purpose?” asks Krook.

 

“Took the over-dose?”

 

“Yes!” Krook almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible

interest.

 

“I can’t say. I should think it unlikely, as he has been in the

habit of taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very poor, I

suppose?”

 

“I suppose he was. His room—don’t look rich,” says Krook, who

might have changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance

around. “But I have never been in it since he had it, and he was

too close to name his circumstances to me.”

 

“Did he owe you any rent?”

 

“Six weeks.”

 

“He will never pay it!” says the young man, resuming his

examination. “It is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as

Pharaoh; and to judge from his appearance and condition, I should

think it a happy release. Yet he must have been a good figure when

a youth, and I dare say, good-looking.” He says this, not

unfeelingly, while sitting on the bedstead’s edge with his face

towards that other face and his hand upon the region of the heart.

“I recollect once thinking there was something in his manner,

uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall in life. Was that so?” he

continues, looking round.

 

Krook replies, “You might as well ask me to describe the ladies

whose heads of hair I have got in sacks downstairs. Than that he

was my lodger for a year and a half and lived—or didn’t live—by

law-writing, I know no more of him.”

 

During this dialogue Mr. Tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old

portmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all

appearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the

bed—from the young surgeon’s professional interest in death,

noticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the deceased as

an individual; from the old man’s unction; and the little crazy

woman’s awe. His imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as

his rusty clothes. One could not even say he has been thinking all

this while. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor

attention nor abstraction. He has shown nothing but his shell. As

easily might the tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred

from its case, as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his case.

 

He now interposes, addressing the young surgeon in his unmoved,

professional way.

 

“I looked in here,” he observes, “just before you, with the

intention of giving this deceased man, whom I never saw alive, some

employment at his trade of copying. I had heard of him from my

stationer—Snagsby of Cook’s Court. Since no one here knows

anything about him, it might be as well to send for Snagsby. Ah!”

to the little crazy woman, who has often seen him in court, and

whom he has often seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-show,

to go for the lawstationer. “Suppose you do!”

 

While she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation

and covers its subject with the patchwork counterpane. Mr. Krook

and he interchange a word or two. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing,

but stands, ever, near the old portmanteau.

 

Mr. Snagsby arrives hastily in his grey coat and his black sleeves.

“Dear me, dear me,” he says; “and it has come to this, has it!

Bless my soul!”

 

“Can you give the person of the house any information about this

unfortunate creature, Snagsby?” inquires Mr. Tulkinghorn. “He was

in arrears with his rent, it seems. And he must be buried, you

know.”

 

“Well, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, coughing his apologetic cough behind

his hand, “I really don’t know what advice I could offer, except

sending for the beadle.”

 

“I don’t speak of advice,” returns Mr. Tulkinghorn. “I could

advise—”

 

“No one better, sir, I am sure,” says Mr. Snagsby, with his

deferential cough.

 

“I speak of affording some clue to his connexions, or to where he

came from, or to anything concerning him.”

 

“I assure you, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby after prefacing his reply

with his cough of general propitiation, “that I no more know where

he came from than I know—”

 

“Where he has gone to, perhaps,” suggests the surgeon to help him

out.

 

A pause. Mr. Tulkinghorn looking at the lawstationer. Mr. Krook,

with his mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next.

 

“As to his connexions, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, “if a person was to

say to me, ‘Snagsby, here’s twenty thousand pound down, ready for

you in the Bank of England if you’ll only name one of ‘em,’ I

couldn’t do it, sir! About a year and a half ago—to the best of my

belief, at the time when he first came to lodge at the present rag

and bottle shop—”

 

“That was the time!” says Krook with a nod.

 

“About a year and a half ago,” says Mr. Snagsby, strengthened, “he

came into our place one morning after breakfast, and finding my

little woman (which I name Mrs. Snagsby when I use that appellation)

in our shop, produced a specimen of his handwriting and gave her to

understand that he was in want of copying work to do and was, not to

put too fine a point upon it,” a favourite apology for plain

speaking with Mr. Snagsby, which he always offers with a sort of

argumentative frankness, “hard up! My little woman is not in

general partial to strangers, particular—not to put too fine a

point upon it—when they want anything. But she was rather took by

something about this person, whether by his being unshaved, or by

his hair being in want of attention, or by what other ladies’

reasons, I leave you to judge; and she accepted of the specimen, and

likewise of the address. My little woman hasn’t a good ear for

names,” proceeds Mr. Snagsby after consulting his cough of

consideration behind his hand, “and she considered Nemo equally the

same as Nimrod. In consequence of which, she got into a habit of

saying to me at meals, ‘Mr. Snagsby, you haven’t found Nimrod any

work yet!’ or ‘Mr. Snagsby, why didn’t you give that eight and

thirty Chancery folio in Jarndyce to Nimrod?’ or such like. And

that is the way he gradually fell into job-work at our place; and

that is the most I know of him except that he was a quick hand, and

a hand not sparing of night-work, and that if you gave him out, say,

five and forty folio on the Wednesday night, you would have it

brought in on the Thursday morning. All of which—” Mr. Snagsby

concludes by politely motioning with his hat towards the bed, as

much as to add, “I have no doubt my honourable friend would confirm

if he were in a condition to do it.”

 

“Hadn’t you better see,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn to Krook, “whether he

had any papers that may enlighten you? There will be an inquest,

and you will be asked the question. You can read?”

 

“No, I can’t,” returns the old man with a sudden grin.

 

“Snagsby,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “look over the room for him. He

will get into some trouble or difficulty otherwise. Being here,

I’ll wait if you make haste, and then I can testify on his behalf,

if it should ever be necessary, that all was fair and right. If you

will hold the candle for Mr. Snagsby, my friend, he’ll soon see

whether there is anything to help you.”

 

“In the first place, here’s an old portmanteau, sir,” says Snagsby.

 

Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr. Tulkinghorn does not appear to

have seen it before, though he is standing so close to it, and

though there is very little else, heaven knows.

 

The marine-store merchant holds the light, and the lawstationer

conducts the search. The surgeon leans against the corner of the

chimney-piece; Miss Flite peeps and trembles just within the door.

The apt old scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches

tied with ribbons at the knees, his large black waistcoat, his long-sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief tied in

the bow the peerage knows so well, stands in exactly the same place

and attitude.

 

There are some worthless articles of clothing in the old

portmanteau; there is a bundle of pawnbrokers’ duplicates, those

turnpike tickets on the road of poverty; there is a crumpled paper,

smelling of opium, on which are scrawled rough memoranda—as, took,

such a day, so many grains; took, such another day, so many more—

begun some time ago, as if with the intention of being regularly

continued, but soon left off. There are a few dirty scraps of

newspapers, all referring to coroners’ inquests; there is nothing

else. They search the cupboard and the drawer of the ink-splashed

table. There is not a morsel of an old letter or of any other

writing in either. The young surgeon examines the dress on the law-writer. A knife and some odd halfpence are all he finds. Mr.

Snagsby’s suggestion is the practical suggestion after all, and the

beadle must be called in.

 

So the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle, and the rest come

out of the room. “Don’t leave the cat there!” says the surgeon;

“that won’t do!” Mr. Krook therefore drives her out before him, and

she goes furtively downstairs, winding her lithe tail and licking

her lips.

 

“Good night!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, and goes home to Allegory and

meditation.

 

By this time the news has got into the court. Groups of its

inhabitants assemble to discuss the thing, and the outposts of the

army of observation (principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr.

Krook’s window, which they closely invest. A policeman has already

walked up to the room, and walked down again to the door, where he

stands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at his base

occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall

back. Mrs. Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking

terms with Mrs. Piper in consequence for an unpleasantness

originating in young Perkins’ having “fetched” young Piper “a

crack,” renews her friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion.

The potboy at the corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing

official knowledge of life and having to deal