Bleak House
noticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the deceased as
an individual; from the old man’s unction; and the little crazy
woman’s awe. His imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as his
rusty clothes. One could not even say he has been thinking all this
while. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention
nor abstraction. He has shown nothing but his shell. As easily might
the tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case,
as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his case.
He now interposes, addressing the young surgeon in his unmoved,
professional way.
“I looked in here,” he observes, “just before you, with the
intention of giving this deceased man, whom I never saw alive, some
employment at his trade of copying. I had heard of him from my
stationer—Snagsby of Cook’s Court. Since no one here knows anything
about him, it might be as well to send for Snagsby. Ah!” to the
little crazy woman, who has often seen him in court, and whom he has
often seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-show, to go for the
law-stationer. “Suppose you do!”
While she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation
and covers its subject with the patchwork counterpane. Mr. Krook and
he interchange a word or two. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, but
stands, ever, near the old portmanteau.
Mr. Snagsby arrives hastily in his grey coat and his black sleeves.
“Dear me, dear me,” he says; “and it has come to this, has it! Bless
my soul!”
“Can you give the person of the house any information about this
unfortunate creature, Snagsby?” inquires Mr. Tulkinghorn. “He was in
arrears with his rent, it seems. And he must be buried, you know.”
“Well, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, coughing his apologetic cough behind
his hand, “I really don’t know what advice I could offer, except
sending for the beadle.”
“I don’t speak of advice,” returns Mr. Tulkinghorn. “I could
advise—”
“No one better, sir, I am sure,” says Mr. Snagsby, with his
deferential cough.
“I speak of affording some clue to his connexions, or to where he
came from, or to anything concerning him.”
“I assure you, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby after prefacing his reply with
his cough of general propitiation, “that I no more know where he came
from than I know—”
“Where he has gone to, perhaps,” suggests the surgeon to help him
out.
A pause. Mr. Tulkinghorn looking at the law-stationer. Mr. Krook,
with his mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next.
“As to his connexions, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, “if a person was to
say to me, ‘Snagsby, here’s twenty thousand pound down, ready for you
in the Bank of England if you’ll only name one of ’em,’ I couldn’t do
it, sir! About a year and a half ago—to the best of my belief, at
the time when he first came to lodge at the present rag and bottle
shop—”
“That was the time!” says Krook with a nod.
“About a year and a half ago,” says Mr. Snagsby, strengthened, “he
came into our place one morning after breakfast, and finding my
little woman (which I name Mrs. Snagsby when I use that appellation)
in our shop, produced a specimen of his handwriting and gave her to
understand that he was in want of copying work to do and was, not to
put too fine a point upon it,” a favourite apology for plain speaking
with Mr. Snagsby, which he always offers with a sort of argumentative
frankness, “hard up! My little woman is not in general partial to
strangers, particular—not to put too fine a point upon it—when they
want anything. But she was rather took by something about this
person, whether by his being unshaved, or by his hair being in want
of attention, or by what other ladies’ reasons, I leave you to judge;
and she accepted of the specimen, and likewise of the address. My
little woman hasn’t a good ear for names,” proceeds Mr. Snagsby after
consulting his cough of consideration behind his hand, “and she
considered Nemo equally the same as Nimrod. In consequence of which,
she got into a habit of saying to me at meals, ‘Mr. Snagsby, you
haven’t found Nimrod any work yet!’ or ‘Mr. Snagsby, why didn’t you
give that eight and thirty Chancery folio in Jarndyce to Nimrod?’ or
such like. And that is the way he gradually fell into job-work at our
place; and that is the most I know of him except that he was a quick
hand, and a hand not sparing of night-work, and that if you gave him
out, say, five and forty folio on the Wednesday night, you would have
it brought in on the Thursday morning. All of which—” Mr. Snagsby
concludes by politely motioning with his hat towards the bed, as much
as to add, “I have no doubt my honourable friend would confirm if he
were in a condition to do it.”
“Hadn’t you better see,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn to Krook, “whether he
had any papers that may enlighten you? There will be an inquest, and
you will be asked the question. You can read?”
“No, I can’t,” returns the old man with a sudden grin.
“Snagsby,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “look over the room for him. He will
get into some trouble or difficulty otherwise. Being here, I’ll wait
if you make haste, and then I can testify on his behalf, if it should
ever be necessary, that all was fair and right. If you will hold the
candle for Mr. Snagsby, my friend, he’ll soon see whether there is
anything to help you.”
“In the first place, here’s an old portmanteau, sir,” says Snagsby.
Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr. Tulkinghorn does not appear to have
seen it before, though he is standing so close to it, and though
there is very little else, heaven knows.
The marine-store merchant holds the light, and the law-stationer
conducts the search. The surgeon leans against the corner of the
chimney-piece; Miss Flite peeps and trembles just within the door.
The apt old scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches
tied with ribbons at the knees, his large black waistcoat, his
long-sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief tied
in the bow the peerage knows so well, stands in exactly the same
place and attitude.
There are some worthless articles of clothing in the old portmanteau;
there is a bundle of pawnbrokers’ duplicates, those turnpike tickets
on the road of poverty; there is a crumpled paper, smelling of opium,
on which are scrawled rough memoranda—as, took, such a day, so many
grains; took, such another day, so many more—begun some time ago, as
if with the intention of being regularly continued, but soon left
off. There are a few dirty scraps of newspapers, all referring to
coroners’ inquests; there is nothing else. They search the cupboard
and the drawer of the ink-splashed table. There is not a morsel of an
old letter or of any other writing in either. The young surgeon
examines the dress on the law-writer. A knife and some odd halfpence
are all he finds. Mr. Snagsby’s suggestion is the practical
suggestion after all, and the beadle must be called in.
So the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle, and the rest come out
of the room. “Don’t leave the cat there!” says the surgeon; “that
won’t do!” Mr. Krook therefore drives her out before him, and she
goes furtively downstairs, winding her lithe tail and licking her
lips.
“Good night!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, and goes home to Allegory and
meditation.
By this time the news has got into the court. Groups of its
inhabitants assemble to discuss the thing, and the outposts of the
army of observation (principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr.
Krook’s window, which they closely invest. A policeman has already
walked up to the room, and walked down again to the door, where he
stands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at his base
occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall
back. Mrs. Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking terms
with Mrs. Piper in consequence for an unpleasantness originating in
young Perkins’ having “fetched” young Piper “a crack,” renews her
friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion. The potboy at the
corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge
of life and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges
confidential communications with the policeman and has the appearance
of an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable
in station-houses. People talk across the court out of window, and
bare-headed scouts come hurrying in from Chancery Lane to know what’s
the matter. The general feeling seems to be that it’s a blessing Mr.
Krook warn’t made away with first, mingled with a little natural
disappointment that he was not. In the midst of this sensation, the
beadle arrives.
The beadle, though generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a
ridiculous institution, is not without a certain popularity for the
moment, if it were only as a man who is going to see the body. The
policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the
barbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that
must be borne with until government shall abolish him. The sensation
is heightened as the tidings spread from mouth to mouth that the
beadle is on the ground and has gone in.
By and by the beadle comes out, once more intensifying the sensation,
which has rather languished in the interval. He is understood to be
in want of witnesses for the inquest to-morrow who can tell the
coroner and jury anything whatever respecting the deceased. Is
immediately referred to innumerable people who can tell nothing
whatever. Is made more imbecile by being constantly informed that
Mrs. Green’s son “was a law-writer his-self and knowed him better
than anybody,” which son of Mrs. Green’s appears, on inquiry, to be
at the present time aboard a vessel bound for China, three months
out, but considered accessible by telegraph on application to the
Lords of the Admiralty. Beadle goes into various shops and parlours,
examining the inhabitants, always shutting the door first, and by
exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy exasperating the public.
Policeman seen to smile to potboy. Public loses interest and
undergoes reaction. Taunts the beadle in shrill youthful voices with
having boiled a boy, choruses fragments of a popular song to that
effect and importing that the boy was made into soup for the
workhouse. Policeman at last finds it necessary to support the law
and seize a vocalist, who is released upon the flight of the rest on
condition of his getting out of this then, come, and cutting it—a
condition he immediately observes. So the sensation dies off for the
time; and the unmoved policeman (to whom a little opium, more or
less, is nothing), with his shining hat, stiff stock, inflexible
great-coat, stout belt and bracelet, and all things fitting, pursues
his lounging way with a heavy tread, beating the palms of his white
gloves one against the other and stopping now and then at a
street-corner to look casually about for anything between a lost
child and a murder.
Under cover of the night, the feeble-minded beadle comes flitting
about Chancery Lane with his summonses, in which every juror’s name
is wrongly spelt, and nothing rightly spelt but the beadle’s own
name, which nobody can read or wants to know. The summonses served
and his witnesses forewarned, the beadle goes to Mr. Krook’s to keep
a small appointment he has made with certain paupers, who, presently
arriving, are conducted upstairs, where they leave the great eyes in
the shutter something new to stare at, in that last shape which
earthly lodgings take for No one—and for Every one.
And all that night the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau;
and the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain through
five and forty years, lies there with no more track behind him that
any one can trace than a deserted infant.