Bleak House
Guppy, apparently refreshed.
“Not any,” said I.
“Not half a glass?” said Mr. Guppy. “Quarter? No! Then, to proceed.
My present salary, Miss Summerson, at Kenge and Carboy’s, is two
pound a week. When I first had the happiness of looking upon you, it
was one fifteen, and had stood at that figure for a lengthened
period. A rise of five has since taken place, and a further rise of
five is guaranteed at the expiration of a term not exceeding twelve
months from the present date. My mother has a little property, which
takes the form of a small life annuity, upon which she lives in an
independent though unassuming manner in the Old Street Road. She is
eminently calculated for a mother-in-law. She never interferes, is
all for peace, and her disposition easy. She has her failings—as who
has not?—but I never knew her do it when company was present, at
which time you may freely trust her with wines, spirits, or malt
liquors. My own abode is lodgings at Penton Place, Pentonville. It is
lowly, but airy, open at the back, and considered one of the
’ealthiest outlets. Miss Summerson! In the mildest language, I adore
you. Would you be so kind as to allow me (as I may say) to file a
declaration—to make an offer!”
Mr. Guppy went down on his knees. I was well behind my table and not
much frightened. I said, “Get up from that ridiculous position
immediately, sir, or you will oblige me to break my implied promise
and ring the bell!”
“Hear me out, miss!” said Mr. Guppy, folding his hands.
“I cannot consent to hear another word, sir,” I returned, “Unless you
get up from the carpet directly and go and sit down at the table as
you ought to do if you have any sense at all.”
He looked piteously, but slowly rose and did so.
“Yet what a mockery it is, miss,” he said with his hand upon his
heart and shaking his head at me in a melancholy manner over the
tray, “to be stationed behind food at such a moment. The soul recoils
from food at such a moment, miss.”
“I beg you to conclude,” said I; “you have asked me to hear you out,
and I beg you to conclude.”
“I will, miss,” said Mr. Guppy. “As I love and honour, so likewise I
obey. Would that I could make thee the subject of that vow before the
shrine!”
“That is quite impossible,” said I, “and entirely out of the
question.”
“I am aware,” said Mr. Guppy, leaning forward over the tray and
regarding me, as I again strangely felt, though my eyes were not
directed to him, with his late intent look, “I am aware that in a
worldly point of view, according to all appearances, my offer is a
poor one. But, Miss Summerson! Angel! No, don’t ring—I have been
brought up in a sharp school and am accustomed to a variety of
general practice. Though a young man, I have ferreted out evidence,
got up cases, and seen lots of life. Blest with your hand, what means
might I not find of advancing your interests and pushing your
fortunes! What might I not get to know, nearly concerning you? I know
nothing now, certainly; but what MIGHT I not if I had your
confidence, and you set me on?”
I told him that he addressed my interest or what he supposed to be my
interest quite as unsuccessfully as he addressed my inclination, and
he would now understand that I requested him, if he pleased, to go
away immediately.
“Cruel miss,” said Mr. Guppy, “hear but another word! I think you
must have seen that I was struck with those charms on the day when I
waited at the Whytorseller. I think you must have remarked that I
could not forbear a tribute to those charms when I put up the steps
of the ’ackney-coach. It was a feeble tribute to thee, but it was
well meant. Thy image has ever since been fixed in my breast. I have
walked up and down of an evening opposite Jellyby’s house only to
look upon the bricks that once contained thee. This out of to-day,
quite an unnecessary out so far as the attendance, which was its
pretended object, went, was planned by me alone for thee alone. If I
speak of interest, it is only to recommend myself and my respectful
wretchedness. Love was before it, and is before it.”
“I should be pained, Mr. Guppy,” said I, rising and putting my hand
upon the bell-rope, “to do you or any one who was sincere the
injustice of slighting any honest feeling, however disagreeably
expressed. If you have really meant to give me a proof of your good
opinion, though ill-timed and misplaced, I feel that I ought to thank
you. I have very little reason to be proud, and I am not proud. I
hope,” I think I added, without very well knowing what I said, “that
you will now go away as if you had never been so exceedingly foolish
and attend to Messrs. Kenge and Carboy’s business.”
“Half a minute, miss!” cried Mr. Guppy, checking me as I was about to
ring. “This has been without prejudice?”
“I will never mention it,” said I, “unless you should give me future
occasion to do so.”
“A quarter of a minute, miss! In case you should think better at any
time, however distant—THAT’S no consequence, for my feelings can
never alter—of anything I have said, particularly what might I not
do, Mr. William Guppy, eighty-seven, Penton Place, or if removed, or
dead (of blighted hopes or anything of that sort), care of Mrs.
Guppy, three hundred and two, Old Street Road, will be sufficient.”
I rang the bell, the servant came, and Mr. Guppy, laying his written
card upon the table and making a dejected bow, departed. Raising my
eyes as he went out, I once more saw him looking at me after he had
passed the door.
I sat there for another hour or more, finishing my books and payments
and getting through plenty of business. Then I arranged my desk, and
put everything away, and was so composed and cheerful that I thought
I had quite dismissed this unexpected incident. But, when I went
upstairs to my own room, I surprised myself by beginning to laugh
about it and then surprised myself still more by beginning to cry
about it. In short, I was in a flutter for a little while and felt as
if an old chord had been more coarsely touched than it ever had been
since the days of the dear old doll, long buried in the garden.
CHAPTER X
The Law-Writer
On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, that is to say, more
particularly in Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby,
law-stationer, pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of Cook’s
Court, at most times a shady place, Mr. Snagsby has dealt in
all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls
of parchment; in paper—foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white,
whitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens,
ink, India-rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and
wafers; in red tape and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs,
diaries, and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands—glass
and leaden—pen-knives, scissors, bodkins, and other small
office-cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention, ever
since he was out of his time and went into partnership with Peffer.
On that occasion, Cook’s Court was in a manner revolutionized by the
new inscription in fresh paint, PEFFER AND SNAGSBY, displacing the
time-honoured and not easily to be deciphered legend PEFFER only. For
smoke, which is the London ivy, had so wreathed itself round Peffer’s
name and clung to his dwelling-place that the affectionate parasite
quite overpowered the parent tree.
Peffer is never seen in Cook’s Court now. He is not expected there,
for he has been recumbent this quarter of a century in the churchyard
of St. Andrews, Holborn, with the waggons and hackney-coaches roaring
past him all the day and half the night like one great dragon. If he
ever steal forth when the dragon is at rest to air himself again in
Cook’s Court until admonished to return by the crowing of the
sanguine cock in the cellar at the little dairy in Cursitor Street,
whose ideas of daylight it would be curious to ascertain, since he
knows from his personal observation next to nothing about it—if
Peffer ever do revisit the pale glimpses of Cook’s Court, which no
law-stationer in the trade can positively deny, he comes invisibly,
and no one is the worse or wiser.
In his lifetime, and likewise in the period of Snagsby’s “time”
of seven long years, there dwelt with Peffer in the same
law-stationering premises a niece—a short, shrewd niece, something
too violently compressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose like
a sharp autumn evening, inclining to be frosty towards the end. The
Cook’s Courtiers had a rumour flying among them that the mother of
this niece did, in her daughter’s childhood, moved by too jealous a
solicitude that her figure should approach perfection, lace her
up every morning with her maternal foot against the bed-post for
a stronger hold and purchase; and further, that she exhibited
internally pints of vinegar and lemon-juice, which acids, they held,
had mounted to the nose and temper of the patient. With whichsoever
of the many tongues of Rumour this frothy report originated, it
either never reached or never influenced the ears of young Snagsby,
who, having wooed and won its fair subject on his arrival at man’s
estate, entered into two partnerships at once. So now, in Cook’s
Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby and the niece are one; and the
niece still cherishes her figure, which, however tastes may differ,
is unquestionably so far precious that there is mighty little of it.
Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are not only one bone and one flesh, but, to the
neighbours’ thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed
from Mrs. Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook’s Court very often. Mr.
Snagsby, otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet
tones, is rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid man with a shining
head and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back. He
tends to meekness and obesity. As he stands at his door in Cook’s
Court in his grey shop-coat and black calico sleeves, looking up at
the clouds, or stands behind a desk in his dark shop with a heavy
flat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheepskin in company with his two
’prentices, he is emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. From
beneath his feet, at such times, as from a shrill ghost unquiet in
its grave, there frequently arise complainings and lamentations in
the voice already mentioned; and haply, on some occasions when these
reach a sharper pitch than usual, Mr. Snagsby mentions to the
’prentices, “I think my little woman is a-giving it to Guster!”
This proper name, so used by Mr. Snagsby, has before now sharpened
the wit of the Cook’s Courtiers to remark that it ought to be the
name of Mrs. Snagsby, seeing that she might with great force and
expression be termed a Guster, in compliment to her stormy character.
It is, however, the possession, and the only possession except fifty
shillings per annum and a very small box indifferently filled with
clothing, of a lean young woman from a workhouse (by some supposed to
have been christened Augusta) who, although she was farmed or
contracted for during her growing time by an amiable benefactor of
his species resident at Tooting, and cannot fail to have been
developed under the most favourable circumstances, “has fits,” which
the parish can’t account for.
Guster, really aged three or four and twenty, but looking a round ten
years older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawback of fits, and
is so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her patron saint
that except when she is found with her head in the pail, or the sink,
or the copper, or the dinner, or anything else that happens to be
near her at the time of her seizure, she is always at work. She is a
satisfaction to the parents and guardians of the ’prentices, who feel
that there is little danger of her inspiring tender emotions in the