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

him of exhausted excitement and exhausted tobacco-smoke.

“And Mr. Guppy likewise!” quoth Mr. Snagsby. “Dear, dear, dear!

What a fate there seems in all this! And my lit—”

Mr. Snagsby’s power of speech deserts him in the formation of the

words “my little woman.” For to see that injured female walk into

the Sol’s Arms at that hour of the morning and stand before the

beer-engine, with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit,

strikes him dumb.

“My dear,” says Mr. Snagsby when his tongue is loosened, “will you

take anything? A little—not to put too fine a point upon it—drop

of shrub?”

“No,” says Mrs. Snagsby.

“My love, you know these two gentlemen?”

“Yes!” says Mrs. Snagsby, and in a rigid manner acknowledges their

presence, still fixing Mr. Snagsby with her eye.

The devoted Mr. Snagsby cannot bear this treatment. He takes Mrs.

Snagsby by the hand and leads her aside to an adjacent cask.

“My little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don’t do

it.”

“I can’t help my looks,” says Mrs. Snagsby, “and if I could I

wouldn’t.”

Mr. Snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoins, “Wouldn’t you

really, my dear?” and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble

and says, “This is a dreadful mystery, my love!” still fearfully

disconcerted by Mrs. Snagsby’s eye.

“It IS,” returns Mrs. Snagsby, shaking her head, “a dreadful

mystery.”

“My little woman,” urges Mr. Snagsby in a piteous manner, “don’t

for goodness’ sake speak to me with that bitter expression and look

at me in that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do

it. Good Lord, you don’t suppose that I would go spontaneously

combusting any person, my dear?”

“I can’t say,” returns Mrs. Snagsby.

On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr. Snagsby “can’t

say” either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may

have had something to do with it. He has had something—he don’t

know what—to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious

that it is possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it,

in the present transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead with his

handkerchief and gasps.

“My life,” says the unhappy stationer, “would you have any

objections to mention why, being in general so delicately

circumspect in your conduct, you come into a wine-vaults before

breakfast?”

“Why do YOU come here?” inquires Mrs. Snagsby.

“My dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has

happened to the venerable party who has been—combusted.” Mr.

Snagsby has made a pause to suppress a groan. “I should then have

related them to you, my love, over your French roll.”

“I dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr. Snagsby.”

“Every—my lit—”

“I should be glad,” says Mrs. Snagsby after contemplating his

increased confusion with a severe and sinister smile, “if you would

come home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr. Snagsby,

than anywhere else.”

“My love, I don’t know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to

go.”

Mr. Snagsby casts his eye forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs.

Weevle and Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction

with which he sees them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs. Snagsby

from the Sol’s Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be

responsible for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is

the talk of the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into

certainty by Mrs. Snagsby’s pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His

mental sufferings are so great that he entertains wandering ideas

of delivering himself up to justice and requiring to be cleared if

innocent and punished with the utmost rigour of the law if guilty.

Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into

Lincoln’s Inn to take a little walk about the square and clear as

many of the dark cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may.

“There can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony,” says

Mr. Guppy after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the

square, “for a word or two between us upon a point on which we

must, with very little delay, come to an understanding.”

“Now, I tell you what, William G.!” returns the other, eyeing his

companion with a bloodshot eye. “If it’s a point of conspiracy,

you needn’t take the trouble to mention it. I have had enough of

that, and I ain’t going to have any more. We shall have YOU taking

fire next or blowing up with a bang.”

This supposititious phenomenon is so very disagreeable to Mr. Guppy

that his voice quakes as he says in a moral way, “Tony, I should

have thought that what we went through last night would have been a

lesson to you never to be personal any more as long as you lived.”

To which Mr. Weevle returns, “William, I should have thought it

would have been a lesson to YOU never to conspire any more as long

as you lived.” To which Mr. Guppy says, “Who’s conspiring?” To

which Mr. Jobling replies, “Why, YOU are!” To which Mr. Guppy

retorts, “No, I am not.” To which Mr. Jobling retorts again, “Yes,

you are!” To which Mr. Guppy retorts, “Who says so?” To which Mr.

Jobling retorts, “I say so!” To which Mr. Guppy retorts, “Oh,

indeed?” To which Mr. Jobling retorts, “Yes, indeed!” And both

being now in a heated state, they walk on silently for a while to

cool down again.

“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy then, “if you heard your friend out instead

of flying at him, you wouldn’t fall into mistakes. But your temper

is hasty and you are not considerate. Possessing in yourself,

Tony, all that is calculated to charm the eye—”

“Oh! Blow the eye!” cries Mr. Weevle, cutting him short. “Say what

you have got to say!”

Finding his friend in this morose and material condition, Mr. Guppy

only expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of

injury in which he recommences, “Tony, when I say there is a point

on which we must come to an understanding pretty soon, I say so

quite apart from any kind of conspiring, however innocent. You

know it is professionally arranged beforehand in all cases that are

tried what facts the witnesses are to prove. Is it or is it not

desirable that we should know what facts we are to prove on the

inquiry into the death of this unfortunate old mo—gentleman?”

(Mr. Guppy was going to say “mogul,” but thinks “gentleman” better

suited to the circumstances.)

“What facts? THE facts.”

“The facts bearing on that inquiry. Those are”—Mr. Guppy tells

them off on his fingers—“what we knew of his habits, when you saw

him last, what his condition was then, the discovery that we made,

and how we made it.”

“Yes,” says Mr. Weevle. “Those are about the facts.”

“We made the discovery in consequence of his having, in his

eccentric way, an appointment with you at twelve o’clock at night,

when you were to explain some writing to him as you had often done

before on account of his not being able to read. I, spending the

evening with you, was called down—and so forth. The inquiry being

only into the circumstances touching the death of the deceased,

it’s not necessary to go beyond these facts, I suppose you’ll

agree?”

“No!” returns Mr. Weevle. “I suppose not.”

“And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?” says the injured Guppy.

“No,” returns his friend; “if it’s nothing worse than this, I

withdraw the observation.”

“Now, Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, taking his arm again and walking him

slowly on, “I should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you

have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to

live at that place?”

“What do you mean?” says Tony, stopping.

“Whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your

continuing to live at that place?” repeats Mr. Guppy, walking him

on again.

“At what place? THAT place?” pointing in the direction of the rag

and bottle shop.

Mr. Guppy nods.

“Why, I wouldn’t pass another night there for any consideration

that you could offer me,” says Mr. Weevle, haggardly staring.

“Do you mean it though, Tony?”

“Mean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I feel as if I do; I know

that,” says Mr. Weevle with a very genuine shudder.

“Then the possibility or probability—for such it must be

considered—of your never being disturbed in possession of those

effects lately belonging to a lone old man who seemed to have no

relation in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find

out what he really had got stored up there, don’t weigh with you at

all against last night, Tony, if I understand you?” says Mr. Guppy,

biting his thumb with the appetite of vexation.

“Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow’s living there?”

cries Mr. Weevle indignantly. “Go and live there yourself.”

“Oh! I, Tony!” says Mr. Guppy, soothing him. “I have never lived

there and couldn’t get a lodging there now, whereas you have got

one.”

“You are welcome to it,” rejoins his friend, “and—ugh!—you may

make yourself at home in it.”

“Then you really and truly at this point,” says Mr. Guppy, “give up

the whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?”

“You never,” returns Tony with a most convincing steadfastness,

“said a truer word in all your life. I do!”

While they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the

square, on the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself

manifest to the public. Inside the coach, and consequently not so

manifest to the multitude, though sufficiently so to the two

friends, for the coach stops almost at their feet, are the

venerable Mr. Smallweed and Mrs. Smallweed, accompanied by their

granddaughter Judy.

An air of haste and excitement pervades the party, and as the tall

hat (surmounting Mr. Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr. Smallweed

the elder pokes his head out of window and bawls to Mr. Guppy, “How

de do, sir! How de do!”

“What do Chick and his family want here at this time of the

morning, I wonder!” says Mr. Guppy, nodding to his familiar.

“My dear sir,” cries Grandfather Smallweed, “would you do me a

favour? Would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry

me into the public-house in the court, while Bart and his sister

bring their grandmother along? Would you do an old man that good

turn, sir?”

Mr. Guppy looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, “The public-house in the court?” And they prepare to bear the venerable burden

to the Sol’s Arms.

“There’s your fare!” says the patriarch to the coachman with a

fierce grin and shaking his incapable fist at him. “Ask me for a

penny more, and I’ll have my lawful revenge upon you. My dear

young men, be easy with me, if you please. Allow me to catch you

round the neck. I won’t squeeze you tighter than I can help. Oh,

Lord! Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones!”

It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr. Weevle presents an

apoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished.

With no worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the

utterance of divers croaking sounds expressive of obstructed

respiration, he fulils his share of the porterage and the

benevolent old