Bleak House by Charles Dickens (ebook reader that looks like a book TXT) 📕

should say upon every individual thing she can lay hold of, whether

it concerns her or not—especially not. My little woman has a very

active mind, sir.”

Mr. Snagsby drinks and murmurs with an admiring cough behind his

hand, “Dear me, very fine wine indeed!”

“Therefore you kept your visit to yourself last night?” says Mr.

Tulkinghorn. “And to-night too?”

“Yes, sir, and to-night, too. My little woman is at present in—

not to put too fine a point on it—in a pious state, or in what she

considers such, and attends the Evening Exertions (which is the

name they go by) of a reverend party of the name of Chadband. He

has a great deal of eloquence at his command, undoubtedly, but I am

not quite favourable to his style myself. That’s neither here nor

there. My little woman being engaged in that way made it easier

for me to step round in a quiet manner.”

Mr. Tulkinghorn assents. “Fill your glass, Snagsby.”

“Thank you, sir, I am sure,” returns the stationer with his cough

of deference. “This is wonderfully fine wine, sir!”

“It is a rare wine now,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “It is fifty years

old.”

“Is it indeed, sir? But I am not surprised to hear it, I am sure.

It might be—any age almost.” After rendering this general tribute

to the port, Mr. Snagsby in his modesty coughs an apology behind

his hand for drinking anything so precious.

“Will you run over, once again, what the boy said?” asks Mr.

Tulkinghorn, putting his hands into the pockets of his rusty

smallclothes and leaning quietly back in his chair.

“With pleasure, sir.”

Then, with fidelity, though with some prolixity, the lawstationer

repeats Jo’s statement made to the assembled guests at his house.

On coming to the end of his narrative, he gives a great start and

breaks off with, “Dear me, sir, I wasn’t aware there was any other

gentleman present!”

Mr. Snagsby is dismayed to see, standing with an attentive face

between himself and the lawyer at a little distance from the table,

a person with a hat and stick in his hand who was not there when he

himself came in and has not since entered by the door or by either

of the windows. There is a press in the room, but its hinges have

not creaked, nor has a step been audible upon the floor. Yet this

third person stands there with his attentive face, and his hat and

stick in his hands, and his hands behind him, a composed and quiet

listener. He is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in

black, of about the middle-age. Except that he looks at Mr.

Snagsby as if he were going to take his portrait, there is nothing

remarkable about him at first sight but his ghostly manner of

appearing.

“Don’t mind this gentleman,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his quiet way.

“This is only Mr. Bucket.”

“Oh, indeed, sir?” returns the stationer, expressing by a cough

that he is quite in the dark as to who Mr. Bucket may be.

“I wanted him to hear this story,” says the lawyer, “because I have

half a mind (for a reason) to know more of it, and he is very

intelligent in such things. What do you say to this, Bucket?”

“It’s very plain, sir. Since our people have moved this boy on,

and he’s not to be found on his old lay, if Mr. Snagsby don’t

object to go down with me to Tom-all-Alone’s and point him out, we

can have him here in less than a couple of hours’ time. I can do

it without Mr. Snagsby, of course, but this is the shortest way.”

“Mr. Bucket is a detective officer, Snagsby,” says the lawyer in

explanation.

“Is he indeed, sir?” says Mr. Snagsby with a strong tendency in his

clump of hair to stand on end.

“And if you have no real objection to accompany Mr. Bucket to the

place in question,” pursues the lawyer, “I shall feel obliged to

you if you will do so.”

In a moment’s hesitation on the part of Mr. Snagsby, Bucket dips

down to the bottom of his mind.

“Don’t you be afraid of hurting the boy,” he says. “You won’t do

that. It’s all right as far as the boy’s concerned. We shall only

bring him here to ask him a question or so I want to put to him,

and he’ll be paid for his trouble and sent away again. It’ll be a

good job for him. I promise you, as a man, that you shall see the

boy sent away all right. Don’t you be afraid of hurting him; you

an’t going to do that.”

“Very well, Mr. Tulkinghorn!” cries Mr. Snagsby cheerfully. And

reassured, “Since that’s the case—”

“Yes! And lookee here, Mr. Snagsby,” resumes Bucket, taking him

aside by the arm, tapping him familiarly on the breast, and

speaking in a confidential tone. “You’re a man of the world, you

know, and a man of business, and a man of sense. That’s what YOU

are.”

“I am sure I am much obliged to you for your good opinion,” returns

the stationer with his cough of modesty, “but—”

“That’s what YOU are, you know,” says Bucket. “Now, it an’t

necessary to say to a man like you, engaged in your business, which

is a business of trust and requires a person to be wide awake and

have his senses about him and his head screwed on tight (I had an

uncle in your business once)—it an’t necessary to say to a man

like you that it’s the best and wisest way to keep little matters

like this quiet. Don’t you see? Quiet!”

“Certainly, certainly,” returns the other.

“I don’t mind telling YOU,” says Bucket with an engaging appearance

of frankness, “that as far as I can understand it, there seems to

be a doubt whether this dead person wasn’t entitled to a little

property, and whether this female hasn’t been up to some games

respecting that property, don’t you see?”

“Oh!” says Mr. Snagsby, but not appearing to see quite distinctly.

“Now, what YOU want,” pursues Bucket, again tapping Mr. Snagsby on

the breast in a comfortable and soothing manner, “is that every

person should have their rights according to justice. That’s what

YOU want.”

“To be sure,” returns Mr. Snagsby with a nod.

“On account of which, and at the same time to oblige a—do you call

it, in your business, customer or client? I forget how my uncle

used to call it.”

“Why, I generally say customer myself,” replies Mr. Snagsby.

“You’re right!” returns Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him quite

affectionately. “—On account of which, and at the same time to

oblige a real good customer, you mean to go down with me, in

confidence, to Tom-all-Alone’s and to keep the whole thing quiet

ever afterwards and never mention it to any one. That’s about your

intentions, if I understand you?”

“You are right, sir. You are right,” says Mr. Snagsby.

“Then here’s your hat,” returns his new friend, quite as intimate

with it as if he had made it; “and if you’re ready, I am.”

They leave Mr. Tulkinghorn, without a ruffle on the surface of his

unfathomable depths, drinking his old wine, and go down into the

streets.

“You don’t happen to know a very good sort of person of the name of

Gridley, do you?” says Bucket in friendly converse as they descend

the stairs.

“No,” says Mr. Snagsby, considering, “I don’t know anybody of that

name. Why?”

“Nothing particular,” says Bucket; “only having allowed his temper

to get a little the better of him and having been threatening some

respectable people, he is keeping out of the way of a warrant I

have got against him—which it’s a pity that a man of sense should

do.”

As they walk along, Mr. Snagsby observes, as a novelty, that

however quick their pace may be, his companion still seems in some

undefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is

going to turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed

purpose in his mind of going straight ahead, and wheels off,

sharply, at the very last moment. Now and then, when they pass a

police-constable on his beat, Mr. Snagsby notices that both the

constable and his guide fall into a deep abstraction as they come

towards each other, and appear entirely to overlook each other, and

to gaze into space. In a few instances, Mr. Bucket, coming behind

some under-sized young man with a shining hat on, and his sleek

hair twisted into one flat curl on each side of his head, almost

without glancing at him touches him with his stick, upon which the

young man, looking round, instantly evaporates. For the most part

Mr. Bucket notices things in general, with a face as unchanging as

the great mourning ring on his little finger or the brooch,

composed of not much diamond and a good deal of setting, which he

wears in his shirt.

When they come at last to Tom-all-Alone’s, Mr. Bucket stops for a

moment at the corner and takes a lighted bull’s-eye from the

constable on duty there, who then accompanies him with his own

particular bull’s-eye at his waist. Between his two conductors,

Mr. Snagsby passes along the middle of a villainous street,

undrained, unventilated, deep in black mud and corrupt water—

though the roads are dry elsewhere—and reeking with such smells

and sights that he, who has lived in London all his life, can

scarce believe his senses. Branching from this street and its

heaps of ruins are other streets and courts so infamous that Mr.

Snagsby sickens in body and mind and feels as if he were going

every moment deeper down into the infernal gulf.

“Draw off a bit here, Mr. Snagsby,” says Bucket as a kind of shabby

palanquin is borne towards them, surrounded by a noisy crowd.

“Here’s the fever coming up the street!”

As the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd, leaving that object of

attraction, hovers round the three visitors like a dream of

horrible faces and fades away up alleys and into ruins and behind

walls, and with occasional cries and shrill whistles of warning,

thenceforth flits about them until they leave the place.

“Are those the fever-houses, Darby?” Mr. Bucket coolly asks as he

turns his bull’s-eye on a line of stinking ruins.

Darby replies that “all them are,” and further that in all, for

months and months, the people “have been down by dozens” and have

been carried out dead and dying “like sheep with the rot.” Bucket

observing to Mr. Snagsby as they go on again that he looks a little

poorly, Mr. Snagsby answers that he feels as if he couldn’t breathe

the dreadful air.

There is inquiry made at various houses for a boy named Jo. As few

people are known in Tom-all-Alone’s by any Christian sign, there is

much reference to Mr. Snagsby whether he means Carrots, or the

Colonel, or Gallows, or Young Chisel, or Terrier Tip, or Lanky, or

the Brick. Mr. Snagsby describes over and over again. There are

conflicting opinions respecting the original of his picture. Some

think it must be Carrots, some say the Brick. The Colonel is

produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr. Snagsby

and his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from

its squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket.

Whenever they move, and the angry bull’s-eyes glare, it fades away

and flits about them up the alleys,