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

profound philosophical

prescription—the be-all and the end-all of your strange existence

upon earth. Move on! You are by no means to move off, Jo, for the

great lights can’t at all agree about that. Move on!

 

Mr. Snagsby says nothing to this effect, says nothing at all

indeed, but coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no

thoroughfare in any direction. By this time Mr. and Mrs. Chadband

and Mrs. Snagsby, hearing the altercation, have appeared upon the

stairs. Guster having never left the end of the passage, the whole

household are assembled.

 

“The simple question is, sir,” says the constable, “whether you

know this boy. He says you do.”

 

Mrs. Snagsby, from her elevation, instantly cries out, “No he

don’t!”

 

“My lit-tle woman!” says Mr. Snagsby, looking up the staircase.

“My love, permit me! Pray have a moment’s patience, my dear. I do

know something of this lad, and in what I know of him, I can’t say

that there’s any harm; perhaps on the contrary, constable.” To

whom the lawstationer relates his Joful and woeful experience,

suppressing the half-crown fact.

 

“Well!” says the constable, “so far, it seems, he had grounds for

what he said. When I took him into custody up in Holborn, he said

you knew him. Upon that, a young man who was in the crowd said he

was acquainted with you, and you were a respectable housekeeper,

and if I’d call and make the inquiry, he’d appear. The young man

don’t seem inclined to keep his word, but—Oh! Here IS the young

man!”

 

Enter Mr. Guppy, who nods to Mr. Snagsby and touches his hat with

the chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs.

 

“I was strolling away from the office just now when I found this

row going on,” says Mr. Guppy to the lawstationer, “and as your

name was mentioned, I thought it was right the thing should be

looked into.”

 

“It was very good-natured of you, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, “and I am

obliged to you.” And Mr. Snagsby again relates his experience,

again suppressing the half-crown fact.

 

“Now, I know where you live,” says the constable, then, to Jo.

“You live down in Tom-all-Alone’s. That’s a nice innocent place to

live in, ain’t it?”

 

“I can’t go and live in no nicer place, sir,” replies Jo. “They

wouldn’t have nothink to say to me if I wos to go to a nice

innocent place fur to live. Who ud go and let a nice innocent

lodging to such a reg’lar one as me!”

 

“You are very poor, ain’t you?” says the constable.

 

“Yes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin’ral,” replies Jo. “I

leave you to judge now! I shook these two half-crowns out of him,”

says the constable, producing them to the company, “in only putting

my hand upon him!”

 

“They’re wot’s left, Mr. Snagsby,” says Jo, “out of a sov-ring as

wos give me by a lady in a wale as sed she wos a servant and as

come to my crossin one night and asked to be showd this ‘ere ouse

and the ouse wot him as you giv the writin to died at, and the

berrin-ground wot he’s berrid in. She ses to me she ses ‘are you

the boy at the inkwhich?’ she ses. I ses ‘yes’ I ses. She ses to

me she ses ‘can you show me all them places?’ I ses ‘yes I can’ I

ses. And she ses to me ‘do it’ and I dun it and she giv me a

sov’ring and hooked it. And I an’t had much of the sov’ring

neither,” says Jo, with dirty tears, “fur I had to pay five bob,

down in Tom-all-Alone’s, afore they’d square it fur to give me

change, and then a young man he thieved another five while I was

asleep and another boy he thieved ninepence and the landlord he

stood drains round with a lot more on it.”

 

“You don’t expect anybody to believe this, about the lady and the

sovereign, do you?” says the constable, eyeing him aside with

ineffable disdain.

 

“I don’t know as I do, sir,” replies Jo. “I don’t expect nothink

at all, sir, much, but that’s the true hist’ry on it.”

 

“You see what he is!” the constable observes to the audience.

“Well, Mr. Snagsby, if I don’t lock him up this time, will you

engage for his moving on?”

 

“No!” cries Mrs. Snagsby from the stairs.

 

“My little woman!” pleads her husband. “Constable, I have no doubt

he’ll move on. You know you really must do it,” says Mr. Snagsby.

 

“I’m everyways agreeable, sir,” says the hapless Jo.

 

“Do it, then,” observes the constable. “You know what you have got

to do. Do it! And recollect you won’t get off so easy next time.

Catch hold of your money. Now, the sooner you’re five mile off,

the better for all parties.”

 

With this farewell hint and pointing generally to the setting sun

as a likely place to move on to, the constable bids his auditors

good afternoon and makes the echoes of Cook’s Court perform slow

music for him as he walks away on the shady side, carrying his

iron-bound hat in his hand for a little ventilation.

 

Now, Jo’s improbable story concerning the lady and the sovereign

has awakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. Mr.

Guppy, who has an inquiring mind in matters of evidence and who has

been suffering severely from the lassitude of the long vacation,

takes that interest in the case that he enters on a regular cross-examination of the witness, which is found so interesting by the

ladies that Mrs. Snagsby politely invites him to step upstairs and

drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the disarranged state of the

tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions. Mr. Guppy

yielding his assent to this proposal, Jo is requested to follow

into the drawing-room doorway, where Mr. Guppy takes him in hand as

a witness, patting him into this shape, that shape, and the other

shape like a butterman dealing with so much butter, and worrying

him according to the best models. Nor is the examination unlike

many such model displays, both in respect of its eliciting nothing

and of its being lengthy, for Mr. Guppy is sensible of his talent,

and Mrs. Snagsby feels not only that it gratifies her inquisitive

disposition, but that it lifts her husband’s establishment higher

up in the law. During the progress of this keen encounter, the

vessel Chadband, being merely engaged in the oil trade, gets

aground and waits to be floated off.

 

“Well!” says Mr. Guppy. “Either this boy sticks to it like

cobbler’s-wax or there is something out of the common here that

beats anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and Carboy’s.”

 

Mrs. Chadband whispers Mrs. Snagsby, who exclaims, “You don’t say

so!”

 

“For years!” replied Mrs. Chadband.

 

“Has known Kenge and Carboy’s office for years,” Mrs. Snagsby

triumphantly explains to Mr. Guppy. “Mrs. Chadband—this

gentleman’s wife—Reverend Mr. Chadband.”

 

“Oh, indeed!” says Mr. Guppy.

 

“Before I married my present husband,” says Mrs. Chadband.

 

“Was you a party in anything, ma’am?” says Mr. Guppy, transferring

his cross-examination.

 

“No.”

 

“NOT a party in anything, ma’am?” says Mr. Guppy.

 

Mrs. Chadband shakes her head.

 

“Perhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in

something, ma’am?” says Mr. Guppy, who likes nothing better than to

model his conversation on forensic principles.

 

“Not exactly that, either,” replies Mrs. Chadband, humouring the

joke with a hard-favoured smile.

 

“Not exactly that, either!” repeats Mr. Guppy. “Very good. Pray,

ma’am, was it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions

(we will not at present say what transactions) with Kenge and

Carboy’s office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance? Take

time, ma’am. We shall come to it presently. Man or woman, ma’am?”

 

“Neither,” says Mrs. Chadband as before.

 

“Oh! A child!” says Mr. Guppy, throwing on the admiring Mrs.

Snagsby the regular acute professional eye which is thrown on

British jurymen. “Now, ma’am, perhaps you’ll have the kindness to

tell us WHAT child.”

 

“You have got it at last, sir,” says Mrs. Chadband with another

hard-favoured smile. “Well, sir, it was before your time, most

likely, judging from your appearance. I was left in charge of a

child named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs.

Kenge and Carboy.”

 

“Miss Summerson, ma’am!” cries Mr. Guppy, excited.

 

“I call her Esther Summerson,” says Mrs. Chadband with austerity.

“There was no Missing of the girl in my time. It was Esther.

‘Esther, do this! Esther, do that!’ and she was made to do it.”

 

“My dear ma’am,” returns Mr. Guppy, moving across the small

apartment, “the humble individual who now addresses you received

that young lady in London when she first came here from the

establishment to which you have alluded. Allow me to have the

pleasure of taking you by the hand.”

 

Mr. Chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, makes his accustomed

signal and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his

pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Snagsby whispers “Hush!”

 

“My friends,” says Chadband, “we have partaken in moderation”

(which was certainly not the case so far as he was concerned) “of

the comforts which have been provided for us. May this house live

upon the fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful

therein; may it grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it

advance, may it proceed, may it press forward! But, my friends,

have we partaken of anything else? We have. My friends, of what

else have we partaken? Of spiritual profit? Yes. From whence

have we derived that spiritual profit? My young friend, stand

forth!”

 

Jo, thus apostrophized, gives a slouch backward, and another slouch

forward, and another slouch to each side, and confronts the

eloquent Chadband with evident doubts of his intentions.

 

“My young friend,” says Chadband, “you are to us a pearl, you are

to us a diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to us a jewel. And

why, my young friend?”

 

“I don’t know,” replies Jo. “I don’t know nothink.”

 

“My young friend,” says Chadband, “it is because you know nothing

that you are to us a gem and jewel. For what are you, my young

friend? Are you a beast of the field? No. A bird of the air?

No. A fish of the sea or river? No. You are a human boy, my

young friend. A human boy. O glorious to be a human boy! And why

glorious, my young friend? Because you are capable of receiving

the lessons of wisdom, because you are capable of profiting by this

discourse which I now deliver for your good, because you are not a

stick, or a staff, or a stock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar.

 

“O running stream of sparkling joy

To be a soaring human boy!

 

“And do you cool yourself in that stream now, my young friend? No.

Why do you not cool yourself in that stream now? Because you are

in a state of darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity,

because you are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a

state of bondage. My young friend, what is bondage? Let us, in a

spirit of love, inquire.”

 

At this threatening stage of the discourse, Jo, who seems to have

been gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm over his

face and gives a terrible yawn. Mrs. Snagsby indignantly expresses

her belief that he is a limb of the arch-fiend.

 

“My friends,”