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

Smallweed, approving of

what is set before him, conveys intelligent benignity into his

ancient eye and winks upon her. Then, amid a constant coming in,

and going out, and running about, and a clatter of crockery, and a

rumbling up and down of the machine which brings the nice cuts from

the kitchen, and a shrill crying for more nice cuts down the

speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost of nice cuts that

have been disposed of, and a general flush and steam of hot joints,

cut and uncut, and a considerably heated atmosphere in which the

soiled knives and tablecloths seem to break out spontaneously into

eruptions of grease and blotches of beer, the legal triumvirate

appease their appetites.

 

Mr. Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere adornment might

require. His hat presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a

glistening nature, as if it had been a favourite snail-promenade.

The same phenomenon is visible on some parts of his coat, and

particularly at the seams. He has the faded appearance of a

gentleman in embarrassed circumstances; even his light whiskers

droop with something of a shabby air.

 

His appetite is so vigorous that it suggests spare living for some

little time back. He makes such a speedy end of his plate of veal

and ham, bringing it to a close while his companions are yet midway

in theirs, that Mr. Guppy proposes another. “Thank you, Guppy,”

says Mr. Jobling, “I really don’t know but what I WILL take

another.”

 

Another being brought, he falls to with great goodwill.

 

Mr. Guppy takes silent notice of him at intervals until he is half

way through this second plate and stops to take an enjoying pull at

his pint pot of half-and-half (also renewed) and stretches out his

legs and rubs his hands. Beholding him in which glow of

contentment, Mr. Guppy says, “You are a man again, Tony!”

 

“Well, not quite yet,” says Mr. Jobling. “Say, just born.”

 

“Will you take any other vegetables? Grass? Peas? Summer

cabbage?”

 

“Thank you, Guppy,” says Mr. Jobling. “I really don’t know but

what I WILL take summer cabbage.”

 

Order given; with the sarcastic addition (from Mr. Smallweed) of

“Without slugs, Polly!” And cabbage produced.

 

“I am growing up, Guppy,” says Mr. Jobling, plying his knife and

fork with a relishing steadiness.

 

“Glad to hear it.”

 

“In fact, I have just turned into my teens,” says Mr. Jobling.

 

He says no more until he has performed his task, which he achieves

as Messrs. Guppy and Smallweed finish theirs, thus getting over the

ground in excellent style and beating those two gentlemen easily by

a veal and ham and a cabbage.

 

“Now, Small,” says Mr. Guppy, “what would you recommend about

pastry?”

 

“Marrow puddings,” says Mr. Smallweed instantly.

 

“Aye, aye!” cries Mr. Jobling with an arch look. “You’re there,

are you? Thank you, Mr. Guppy, I don’t know but what I WILL take a

marrow pudding.”

 

Three marrow puddings being produced, Mr. Jobling adds in a

pleasant humour that he is coming of age fast. To these succeed,

by command of Mr. Smallweed, “three Cheshires,” and to those “three

small rums.” This apex of the entertainment happily reached, Mr.

Jobling puts up his legs on the carpeted seat (having his own side

of the box to himself), leans against the wall, and says, “I am

grown up now, Guppy. I have arrived at maturity.”

 

“What do you think, now,” says Mr. Guppy, “about—you don’t mind

Smallweed?”

 

“Not the least in the worid. I have the pleasure of drinking his

good health.”

 

“Sir, to you!” says Mr. Smallweed.

 

“I was saying, what do you think NOW,” pursues Mr. Guppy, “of

enlisting?”

 

“Why, what I may think after dinner,” returns Mr. Jobling, “is one

thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another

thing. Still, even after dinner, I ask myself the question, What

am I to do? How am I to live? Ill fo manger, you know,” says Mr.

Jobling, pronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary fixture

in an English stable. “Ill fo manger. That’s the French saying,

and mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a Frenchman. Or

more so.”

 

Mr. Smallweed is decidedly of opinion “much more so.”

 

“If any man had told me,” pursues Jobling, “even so lately as when

you and I had the frisk down in Lincolnshire, Guppy, and drove over

to see that house at Castle Wold—”

 

Mr. Smallweed corrects him—Chesney Wold.

 

“Chesney Wold. (I thank my honourable friend for that cheer.) If

any man had told me then that I should be as hard up at the present

time as I literally find myself, I should have—well, I should have

pitched into him,” says Mr. Jobling, taking a little rum-and-water

with an air of desperate resignation; “I should have let fly at his

head.”

 

“Still, Tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then,”

remonstrates Mr. Guppy. “You were talking about nothing else in

the gig.”

 

“Guppy,” says Mr. Jobling, “I will not deny it. I was on the wrong

side of the post. But I trusted to things coming round.”

 

That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their

being beaten round, or worked round, but in their “coming” round!

As though a lunatic should trust in the world’s “coming”

triangular!

 

“I had confident expectations that things would come round and be

all square,” says Mr. Jobling with some vagueness of expression and

perhaps of meaning too. “But I was disappointed. They never did.

And when it came to creditors making rows at the office and to

people that the office dealt with making complaints about dirty

trifles of borrowed money, why there was an end of that connexion.

And of any new professional connexion too, for if I was to give a

reference to-morrow, it would be mentioned and would sew me up.

Then what’s a fellow to do? I have been keeping out of the way and

living cheap down about the market-gardens, but what’s the use of

living cheap when you have got no money? You might as well live

dear.”

 

“Better,” Mr. Smallweed thinks.

 

“Certainly. It’s the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers

have been my weaknesses, and I don’t care who knows it,” says Mr.

Jobling. “They are great weaknesses—Damme, sir, they are great.

Well,” proceeds Mr. Jobling after a defiant visit to his rum-and-water, “what can a fellow do, I ask you, BUT enlist?”

 

Mr. Guppy comes more fully into the conversation to state what, in

his opinion, a fellow can do. His manner is the gravely impressive

manner of a man who has not committed himself in life otherwise

than as he has become the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart.

 

“Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy, “myself and our mutual friend Smallweed—”

 

Mr. Smallweed modestly observes, “Gentlemen both!” and drinks.

 

“—Have had a little conversation on this matter more than once

since you—”

 

“Say, got the sack!” cries Mr. Jobling bitterly. “Say it, Guppy.

You mean it.”

 

“No-o-o! Left the Inn,” Mr. Smallweed delicately suggests.

 

“Since you left the Inn, Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy; “and I have

mentioned to our mutual friend Smallweed a plan I have lately

thought of proposing. You know Snagsby the stationer?”

 

“I know there is such a stationer,” returns Mr. Jobling. “He was

not ours, and I am not acquainted with him.”

 

“He IS ours, Jobling, and I AM acquainted with him,” Mr. Guppy

retorts. “Well, sir! I have lately become better acquainted with

him through some accidental circumstances that have made me a

visitor of his in private life. Those circumstances it is not

necessary to offer in argument. They may—or they may not—have

some reference to a subject which may—or may not—have cast its

shadow on my existence.”

 

As it is Mr. Guppy’s perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt

his particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch

it, to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords

in the human mind, both Mr. Jobling and Mr. Smallweed decline the

pitfall by remaining silent.

 

“Such things may be,” repeats Mr. Guppy, “or they may not be. They

are no part of the case. It is enough to mention that both Mr. and

Mrs. Snagsby are very willing to oblige me and that Snagsby has, in

busy times, a good deal of copying work to give out. He has all

Tulkinghorn’s, and an excellent business besides. I believe if our

mutual friend Smallweed were put into the box, he could prove

this?”

 

Mr. Smallweed nods and appears greedy to be sworn.

 

“Now, gentlemen of the jury,” says Mr. Guppy, “—I mean, now,

Jobling—you may say this is a poor prospect of a living. Granted.

But it’s better than nothing, and better than enlistment. You want

time. There must be time for these late affairs to blow over. You

might live through it on much worse terms than by writing for

Snagsby.”

 

Mr. Jobling is about to interrupt when the sagacious Smallweed

checks him with a dry cough and the words, “Hem! Shakspeare!”

 

“There are two branches to this subject, Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy.

“That is the first. I come to the second. You know Krook, the

Chancellor, across the lane. Come, Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy in his

encouraging cross-examination-tone, “I think you know Krook, the

Chancellor, across the lane?”

 

“I know him by sight,” says Mr. Jobling.

 

“You know him by sight. Very well. And you know little Flite?”

 

“Everybody knows her,” says Mr. Jobling.

 

“Everybody knows her. VERY well. Now it has been one of my duties

of late to pay Flite a certain weekly allowance, deducting from it

the amount of her weekly rent, which I have paid (in consequence of

instructions I have received) to Krook himself, regularly in her

presence. This has brought me into communication with Krook and

into a knowledge of his house and his habits. I know he has a room

to let. You may live there at a very low charge under any name you

like, as quietly as if you were a hundred miles off. He’ll ask no

questions and would accept you as a tenant at a word from me—

before the clock strikes, if you chose. And I tell you another

thing, Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy, who has suddenly lowered his voice

and become familiar again, “he’s an extraordinary old chap—always

rummaging among a litter of papers and grubbing away at teaching

himself to read and write, without getting on a bit, as it seems to

me. He is a most extraordinary old chap, sir. I don’t know but

what it might be worth a fellow’s while to look him up a bit.”

 

“You don’t mean—” Mr. Jobling begins.

 

“I mean,” returns Mr. Guppy, shrugging his shoulders with becoming

modesty, “that I can’t make him out. I appeal to our mutual friend

Smallweed whether he has or has not heard me remark that I can’t

make him out.”

 

Mr. Smallweed bears the concise testimony, “A few!”

 

“I have seen something of the profession and something of life,

Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, “and it’s seldom I can’t make a man out,

more or less. But such an old card as this, so deep, so sly, and

secret (though I don’t believe he is ever sober), I never came

across. Now, he must be precious old, you know, and he has not a

soul about him, and he is reported to be immensely rich; and

whether he is a smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed

pawnbroker, or