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

parlour of the Sol’s Arms.

“Oh, Lord!” gasps Mr. Smallweed, looking about him, breathless,

from an arm-chair. “Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones and back! Oh, my

aches and pains! Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling,

scrambling poll-parrot! Sit down!”

This little apostrophe to Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a

propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds

herself on her feet to amble about and “set” to inanimate objects,

accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance.

A nervous affection has probably as much to do with these

demonstrations as any imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but

on the present occasion they are so particularly lively in

connexion with the Windsor arm-chair, fellow to that in which Mr.

Smallweed is seated, that she only quite desists when her

grandchildren have held her down in it, her lord in the meanwhile

bestowing upon her, with great volubility, the endearing epithet of

“a pig-headed jackdaw,” repeated a surprising number of times.

“My dear sir,” Grandfather Smallweed then proceeds, addressing Mr.

Guppy, “there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it,

either of you?”

“Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it.”

“You discovered it. You two discovered it! Bart, THEY discovered

it!”

The two discoverers stare at the Smallweeds, who return the

compliment.

“My dear friends,” whines Grandfather Smallweed, putting out both

his hands, “I owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the

melancholy office of discovering the ashes of Mrs. Smallweed’s

brother.”

“Eh?” says Mr. Guppy.

“Mrs. Smallweed’s brother, my dear friend—her only relation. We

were not on terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never WOULD

be on terms. He was not fond of us. He was eccentric—he was very

eccentric. Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely)

I shall take out letters of administration. I have come down to

look after the property; it must be sealed up, it must be

protected. I have come down,” repeats Grandfather Smallweed,

hooking the air towards him with all his ten fingers at once, “to

look after the property.”

“I think, Small,” says the disconsolate Mr. Guppy, “you might have

mentioned that the old man was your uncle.”

“You two were so close about him that I thought you would like me

to be the same,” returns that old bird with a secretly glistening

eye. “Besides, I wasn’t proud of him.”

“Besides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or

not,” says Judy. Also with a secretly glistening eye.

“He never saw me in his life to know me,” observed Small; “I don’t

know why I should introduce HIM, I am sure!”

“No, he never communicated with us, which is to be deplored,” the

old gentleman strikes in, “but I have come to look after the

property—to look over the papers, and to look after the property.

We shall make good our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor.

Mr. Tulkinghorn, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, over the way there, is so

good as to act as my solicitor; and grass don’t grow under HIS

feet, I can tell ye. Krook was Mrs. Smallweed’s only brother; she

had no relation but Krook, and Krook had no relation but Mrs.

Smallweed. I am speaking of your brother, you brimstone black-beetle, that was seventy-six years of age.”

Mrs. Smallweed instantly begins to shake her head and pipe up,

“Seventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! Seventy-six thousand bags

of money! Seventy-six hundred thousand million of parcels of bank-notes!”

“Will somebody give me a quart pot?” exclaims her exasperated

husband, looking helplessly about him and finding no missile within

his reach. “Will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will

somebody hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? You

hag, you cat, you dog, you brimstone barker!” Here Mr. Smallweed,

wrought up to the highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually

throws Judy at her grandmother in default of anything else, by

butting that young virgin at the old lady with such force as he can

muster and then dropping into his chair in a heap.

“Shake me up, somebody, if you’ll be so good,” says the voice from

within the faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed.

“I have come to look after the property. Shake me up, and call in

the police on duty at the next house to be explained to about the

property. My solicitor will be here presently to protect the

property. Transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall

touch the property!” As his dutiful grandchildren set him up,

panting, and putting him through the usual restorative process of

shaking and punching, he still repeats like an echo, “The—the

property! The property! Property!”

Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy look at each other, the former as having

relinquished the whole affair, the latter with a discomfited

countenance as having entertained some lingering expectations yet.

But there is nothing to be done in opposition to the Smallweed

interest. Mr. Tulkinghorn’s clerk comes down from his official pew

in the chambers to mention to the police that Mr. Tulkinghorn is

answerable for its being all correct about the next of kin and that

the papers and effects will be formally taken possession of in due

time and course. Mr. Smallweed is at once permitted so far to

assert his supremacy as to be carried on a visit of sentiment into

the next house and upstairs into Miss Flite’s deserted room, where

he looks like a hideous bird of prey newly added to her aviary.

The arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court

still makes good for the Sol and keeps the court upon its mettle.

Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins think it hard upon the young man if

there really is no will, and consider that a handsome present ought

to be made him out of the estate. Young Piper and young Perkins,

as members of that restless juvenile circle which is the terror of

the foot-passengers in Chancery Lane, crumble into ashes behind the

pump and under the archway all day long, where wild yells and

hootings take place over their remains. Little Swills and Miss M.

Melvilleson enter into affable conversation with their patrons,

feeling that these unusual occurrences level the barriers between

professionals and non-professionals. Mr. Bogsby puts up “The

popular song of King Death, with chorus by the whole strength of

the company,” as the great Harmonic feature of the week and

announces in the bill that “J. G. B. is induced to do so at a

considerable extra expense in consequence of a wish which has been

very generally expressed at the bar by a large body of respectable

individuals and in homage to a late melancholy event which has

aroused so much sensation.” There is one point connected with the

deceased upon which the court is particularly anxious, namely, that

the fiction of a full-sized coffin should be preserved, though

there is so little to put in it. Upon the undertaker’s stating in

the Sol’s bar in the course of the day that he has received orders

to construct “a six-footer,” the general solicitude is much

relieved, and it is considered that Mr. Smallweed’s conduct does

him great honour.

Out of the court, and a long way out of it, there is considerable

excitement too, for men of science and philosophy come to look, and

carriages set down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same

intent, and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and

phosphuretted hydrogen than the court has ever imagined. Some of

these authorities (of course the wisest) hold with indignation that

the deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner; and

being reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the

evidence for such deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the

Philosophical Transactions; and also of a book not quite unknown on

English medical jurisprudence; and likewise of the Italian case of

the Countess Cornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one

Bianchini, prebendary of Verona, who wrote a scholarly work or so

and was occasionally heard of in his time as having gleams of

reason in him; and also of the testimony of Messrs. Fodere and

Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen who WOULD investigate the subject;

and further, of the corroborative testimony of Monsieur Le Cat, a

rather celebrated French surgeon once upon a time, who had the

unpoliteness to live in a house where such a case occurred and even

to write an account of it—still they regard the late Mr. Krook’s

obstinacy in going out of the world by any such by-way as wholly

unjustifiable and personally offensive. The less the court

understands of all this, the more the court likes it, and the

greater enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the Sol’s Arms.

Then there comes the artist of a picture newspaper, with a

foreground and figures ready drawn for anything from a wreck on the

Cornish coast to a review in Hyde Park or a meeting in Manchester,

and in Mrs. Perkins’ own room, memorable evermore, he then and

there throws in upon the block Mr. Krook’s house, as large as life;

in fact, considerably larger, making a very temple of it.

Similarly, being permitted to look in at the door of the fatal

chamber, he depicts that apartment as three-quarters of a mile long

by fifty yards high, at which the court is particularly charmed.

All this time the two gentlemen before mentioned pop in and out of

every house and assist at the philosophical disputations—go

everywhere and listen to everybody—and yet are always diving into

the Sol’s parlour and writing with the ravenous little pens on the

tissue-paper.

At last come the coroner and his inquiry, like as before, except

that the coroner cherishes this case as being out of the common way

and tells the gentlemen of the jury, in his private capacity, that

“that would seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a

destined house; but so we sometimes find it, and these are

mysteries we can’t account for!” After which the six-footer comes

into action and is much admired.

In all these proceedings Mr. Guppy has so slight a part, except

when he gives his evidence, that he is moved on like a private

individual and can only haunt the secret house on the outside,

where he has the mortification of seeing Mr. Smallweed padlocking

the door, and of bitterly knowing himself to be shut out. But

before these proceedings draw to a close, that is to say, on the

night next after the catastrophe, Mr. Guppy has a thing to say that

must be said to Lady Dedlock.

For which reason, with a sinking heart and with that hang-dog sense

of guilt upon him which dread and watching enfolded in the Sol’s

Arms have produced, the young man of the name of Guppy presents

himself at the town mansion at about seven o’clock in the evening

and requests to see her ladyship. Mercury replies that she is

going out to dinner; don’t he see the carriage at the door? Yes,

he does see the carriage at the door; but he wants to see my Lady

too.

Mercury is disposed, as he will presently declare to a fellow-gentleman in waiting, “to pitch into the young man”; but his

instructions are positive. Therefore he sulkily supposes that the

young man must come up into the library. There he leaves the young

man in a large room, not over-light, while he makes report of him.

Mr. Guppy looks into the shade in all directions, discovering

everywhere a certain charred