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

a money-lender—all of which I have thought likely

at different times—it might pay you to knock up a sort of

knowledge of him. I don’t see why you shouldn’t go in for it, when

everything else suits.”

 

Mr. Jobling, Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Smallweed all lean their elbows on

the table and their chins upon their hands, and look at the

ceiling. After a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their

hands in their pockets, and look at one another.

 

“If I had the energy I once possessed, Tony!” says Mr. Guppy with a

sigh. “But there are chords in the human mind—”

 

Expressing the remainder of the desolate sentiment in rum-and-water, Mr. Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony

Jobling and informing him that during the vacation and while things

are slack, his purse, “as far as three or four or even five pound

goes,” will be at his disposal. “For never shall it be said,” Mr.

Guppy adds with emphasis, “that William Guppy turned his back upon

his friend!”

 

The latter part of the proposal is so directly to the purpose that

Mr. Jobling says with emotion, “Guppy, my trump, your fist!” Mr.

Guppy presents it, saying, “Jobling, my boy, there it is!” Mr.

Jobling returns, “Guppy, we have been pals now for some years!”

Mr. Guppy replies, “Jobling, we have.”

 

They then shake hands, and Mr. Jobling adds in a feeling manner,

“Thank you, Guppy, I don’t know but what I WILL take another glass

for old acquaintance sake.”

 

“Krook’s last lodger died there,” observes Mr. Guppy in an

incidental way.

 

“Did he though!” says Mr. Jobling.

 

“There was a verdict. Accidental death. You don’t mind that?”

 

“No,” says Mr. Jobling, “I don’t mind it; but he might as well have

died somewhere else. It’s devilish odd that he need go and die at

MY place!” Mr. Jobling quite resents this liberty, several times

returning to it with such remarks as, “There are places enough to

die in, I should think!” or, “He wouldn’t have liked my dying at

HIS place, I dare say!”

 

However, the compact being virtually made, Mr. Guppy proposes to

dispatch the trusty Smallweed to ascertain if Mr. Krook is at home,

as in that case they may complete the negotiation without delay.

Mr. Jobling approving, Smallweed puts himself under the tall hat

and conveys it out of the dining-rooms in the Guppy manner. He

soon returns with the intelligence that Mr. Krook is at home and

that he has seen him through the shop-door, sitting in the back

premises, sleeping “like one o’clock.”

 

“Then I’ll pay,” says Mr. Guppy, “and we’ll go and see him. Small,

what will it be?”

 

Mr. Smallweed, compelling the attendance of the waitress with one

hitch of his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: “Four veals and

hams is three, and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer

cabbage is three and six, and three marrows is four and six, and

six breads is five, and three Cheshires is five and three, and four

half-pints of half-and-half is six and three, and four small rums

is eight and three, and three Pollys is eight and six. Eight and

six in half a sovereign, Polly, and eighteenpence out!”

 

Not at all excited by these stupendous calculations, Smallweed

dismisses his friends with a cool nod and remains behind to take a

little admiring notice of Polly, as opportunity may serve, and to

read the daily papers, which are so very large in proportion to

himself, shorn of his hat, that when he holds up the Times to run

his eye over the columns, he seems to have retired for the night

and to have disappeared under the bedclothes.

 

Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where

they find Krook still sleeping like one o’clock, that is to say,

breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast and quite

insensible to any external sounds or even to gentle shaking. On

the table beside him, among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin-bottle and a glass. The unwholesome air is so stained with this

liquor that even the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they

open and shut and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk.

 

“Hold up here!” says Mr. Guppy, giving the relaxed figure of the

old man another shake. “Mr. Krook! Halloa, sir!”

 

But it would seem as easy to wake a bundle of old clothes with a

spirituous heat smouldering in it. “Did you ever see such a stupor

as he falls into, between drink and sleep?” says Mr. Guppy.

 

“If this is his regular sleep,” returns Jobling, rather alarmed,

“it’ll last a long time one of these days, I am thinking.”

 

“It’s always more like a fit than a nap,” says Mr. Guppy, shaking

him again. “Halloa, your lordship! Why, he might be robbed fifty

times over! Open your eyes!”

 

After much ado, he opens them, but without appearing to see his

visitors or any other objects. Though he crosses one leg on

another, and folds his hands, and several times closes and opens

his parched lips, he seems to all intents and purposes as

insensible as before.

 

“He is alive, at any rate,” says Mr. Guppy. “How are you, my Lord

Chancellor. I have brought a friend of mine, sir, on a little

matter of business.”

 

The old man still sits, often smacking his dry lips without the

least consciousness. After some minutes he makes an attempt to

rise. They help him up, and he staggers against the wall and

stares at them.

 

“How do you do, Mr. Krook?” says Mr. Guppy in some discomfiture.

“How do you do, sir? You are looking charming, Mr. Krook. I hope

you are pretty well?”

 

The old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at Mr. Guppy, or at

nothing, feebly swings himself round and comes with his face

against the wall. So he remains for a minute or two, heaped up

against it, and then staggers down the shop to the front door. The

air, the movement in the court, the lapse of time, or the

combination of these things recovers him. He comes back pretty

steadily, adjusting his fur cap on his head and looking keenly at

them.

 

“Your servant, gentlemen; I’ve been dozing. Hi! I am hard to wake,

odd times.”

 

“Rather so, indeed, sir,” responds Mr. Guppy.

 

“What? You’ve been a-trying to do it, have you?” says the

suspicious Krook.

 

“Only a little,” Mr. Guppy explains.

 

The old man’s eye resting on the empty bottle, he takes it up,

examines it, and slowly tilts it upside down.

 

“I say!” he cries like the hobgoblin in the story. “Somebody’s

been making free here!”

 

“I assure you we found it so,” says Mr. Guppy. “Would you allow me

to get it filled for you?”

 

“Yes, certainly I would!” cries Krook in high glee. “Certainly I

would! Don’t mention it! Get it filled next door—Sol’s Arms—the

Lord Chancellor’s fourteenpenny. Bless you, they know ME!”

 

He so presses the empty bottle upon Mr. Guppy that that gentleman,

with a nod to his friend, accepts the trust and hurries out and

hurries in again with the bottle filled. The old man receives it

in his arms like a beloved grandchild and pats it tenderly.

 

“But, I say,” he whispers, with his eyes screwed up, after tasting

it, “this ain’t the Lord Chancellor’s fourteenpenny. This is

eighteenpenny!”

 

“I thought you might like that better,” says Mr. Guppy.

 

“You’re a nobleman, sir,” returns Krook with another taste, and his

hot breath seems to come towards them like a flame. “You’re a

baron of the land.”

 

Taking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr. Guppy presents his

friend under the impromptu name of Mr. Weevle and states the object

of their visit. Krook, with his bottle under his arm (he never

gets beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety),

takes time to survey his proposed lodger and seems to approve of

him. “You’d like to see the room, young man?” he says. “Ah! It’s

a good room! Been whitewashed. Been cleaned down with soft soap

and soda. Hi! It’s worth twice the rent, letting alone my company

when you want it and such a cat to keep the mice away.”

 

Commending the room after this manner, the old man takes them

upstairs, where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be

and also containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug

up from his inexhaustible stores. The terms are easily concluded—

for the Lord Chancellor cannot be hard on Mr. Guppy, associated as

he is with Kenge and Carboy, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and other

famous claims on his professional consideration—and it is agreed

that Mr. Weevle shall take possession on the morrow. Mr. Weevle

and Mr. Guppy then repair to Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street, where

the personal introduction of the former to Mr. Snagsby is effected

and (more important) the vote and interest of Mrs. Snagsby are

secured. They then report progress to the eminent Smallweed,

waiting at the office in his tall hat for that purpose, and

separate, Mr. Guppy explaining that he would terminate his little

entertainment by standing treat at the play but that there are

chords in the human mind which would render it a hollow mockery.

 

On the morrow, in the dusk of evening, Mr. Weevle modestly appears

at Krook’s, by no means incommoded with luggage, and establishes

himself in his new lodging, where the two eyes in the shutters

stare at him in his sleep, as if they were full of wonder. On the

following day Mr. Weevle, who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of

young fellow, borrows a needle and thread of Miss Flite and a

hammer of his landlord and goes to work devising apologies for

window-curtains, and knocking up apologies for shelves, and hanging

up his two teacups, milkpot, and crockery sundries on a pennyworth

of little hooks, like a shipwrecked sailor making the best of it.

 

But what Mr. Weevle prizes most of all his few possessions (next

after his light whiskers, for which he has an attachment that only

whiskers can awaken in the breast of man) is a choice collection of

copper-plate impressions from that truly national work The

Divinities of Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty,

representing ladies of title and fashion in every variety of smirk

that art, combined with capital, is capable of producing. With

these magnificent portraits, unworthily confined in a band-box

during his seclusion among the market-gardens, he decorates his

apartment; and as the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty wears every

variety of fancy dress, plays every variety of musical instrument,

fondles every variety of dog, ogles every variety of prospect, and

is backed up by every variety of flower-pot and balustrade, the

result is very imposing.

 

But fashion is Mr. Weevle’s, as it was Tony Jobling’s, weakness.

To borrow yesterday’s paper from the Sol’s Arms of an evening and

read about the brilliant and distinguished meteors that are

shooting across the fashionable sky in every direction is

unspeakable consolation to him. To know what member of what

brilliant and distinguished circle accomplished the brilliant and

distinguished feat of joining it yesterday or contemplates the no

less brilliant and distinguished feat of leaving it to-morrow gives

him a thrill of joy. To be informed what the Galaxy Gallery of

British Beauty is about, and means to be about, and what Galaxy

marriages are on the tapis, and what Galaxy rumours are in

circulation, is to become acquainted with the most glorious

destinies of mankind. Mr. Weevle reverts from this intelligence to

the Galaxy portraits implicated, and seems to