Bleak House
“Not the least in the world. I have the pleasure of drinking his good
health.”
“Sir, to you!” says Mr. Smallweed.
“I was saying, what do you think NOW,” pursues Mr. Guppy, “of
enlisting?”
“Why, what I may think after dinner,” returns Mr. Jobling, “is one
thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another
thing. Still, even after dinner, I ask myself the question, What am I
to do? How am I to live? Ill fo manger, you know,” says Mr. Jobling,
pronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary fixture in an
English stable. “Ill fo manger. That’s the French saying, and
mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a Frenchman. Or more so.”
Mr. Smallweed is decidedly of opinion “much more so.”
“If any man had told me,” pursues Jobling, “even so lately as when
you and I had the frisk down in Lincolnshire, Guppy, and drove over
to see that house at Castle Wold—”
Mr. Smallweed corrects him—Chesney Wold.
“Chesney Wold. (I thank my honourable friend for that cheer.) If any
man had told me then that I should be as hard up at the present time
as I literally find myself, I should have—well, I should have
pitched into him,” says Mr. Jobling, taking a little rum-and-water
with an air of desperate resignation; “I should have let fly at his
head.”
“Still, Tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then,”
remonstrates Mr. Guppy. “You were talking about nothing else in the
gig.”
“Guppy,” says Mr. Jobling, “I will not deny it. I was on the wrong
side of the post. But I trusted to things coming round.”
That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their
being beaten round, or worked round, but in their “coming” round! As
though a lunatic should trust in the world’s “coming” triangular!
“I had confident expectations that things would come round and be all
square,” says Mr. Jobling with some vagueness of expression and
perhaps of meaning too. “But I was disappointed. They never did. And
when it came to creditors making rows at the office and to people
that the office dealt with making complaints about dirty trifles of
borrowed money, why there was an end of that connexion. And of any
new professional connexion too, for if I was to give a reference
to-morrow, it would be mentioned and would sew me up. Then what’s a
fellow to do? I have been keeping out of the way and living cheap
down about the market-gardens, but what’s the use of living cheap
when you have got no money? You might as well live dear.”
“Better,” Mr. Smallweed thinks.
“Certainly. It’s the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers have
been my weaknesses, and I don’t care who knows it,” says Mr. Jobling.
“They are great weaknesses—Damme, sir, they are great. Well,”
proceeds Mr. Jobling after a defiant visit to his rum-and-water,
“what can a fellow do, I ask you, BUT enlist?”
Mr. Guppy comes more fully into the conversation to state what, in
his opinion, a fellow can do. His manner is the gravely impressive
manner of a man who has not committed himself in life otherwise than
as he has become the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart.
“Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy, “myself and our mutual friend Smallweed—”
Mr. Smallweed modestly observes, “Gentlemen both!” and drinks.
“—Have had a little conversation on this matter more than once since
you—”
“Say, got the sack!” cries Mr. Jobling bitterly. “Say it, Guppy. You
mean it.”
“No-o-o! Left the Inn,” Mr. Smallweed delicately suggests.
“Since you left the Inn, Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy; “and I have
mentioned to our mutual friend Smallweed a plan I have lately thought
of proposing. You know Snagsby the stationer?”
“I know there is such a stationer,” returns Mr. Jobling. “He was not
ours, and I am not acquainted with him.”
“He IS ours, Jobling, and I AM acquainted with him,” Mr. Guppy
retorts. “Well, sir! I have lately become better acquainted with him
through some accidental circumstances that have made me a visitor of
his in private life. Those circumstances it is not necessary to offer
in argument. They may—or they may not—have some reference to a
subject which may—or may not—have cast its shadow on my existence.”
As it is Mr. Guppy’s perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt his
particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch it,
to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords in the
human mind, both Mr. Jobling and Mr. Smallweed decline the pitfall by
remaining silent.
“Such things may be,” repeats Mr. Guppy, “or they may not be. They
are no part of the case. It is enough to mention that both Mr. and
Mrs. Snagsby are very willing to oblige me and that Snagsby has, in
busy times, a good deal of copying work to give out. He has all
Tulkinghorn’s, and an excellent business besides. I believe if our
mutual friend Smallweed were put into the box, he could prove this?”
Mr. Smallweed nods and appears greedy to be sworn.
“Now, gentlemen of the jury,” says Mr. Guppy, “—I mean, now,
Jobling—you may say this is a poor prospect of a living. Granted.
But it’s better than nothing, and better than enlistment. You want
time. There must be time for these late affairs to blow over. You
might live through it on much worse terms than by writing for
Snagsby.”
Mr. Jobling is about to interrupt when the sagacious Smallweed checks
him with a dry cough and the words, “Hem! Shakspeare!”
“There are two branches to this subject, Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy.
“That is the first. I come to the second. You know Krook, the
Chancellor, across the lane. Come, Jobling,” says Mr. Guppy in his
encouraging cross-examination-tone, “I think you know Krook, the
Chancellor, across the lane?”
“I know him by sight,” says Mr. Jobling.
“You know him by sight. Very well. And you know little Flite?”
“Everybody knows her,” says Mr. Jobling.
“Everybody knows her. VERY well. Now it has been one of my duties of
late to pay Flite a certain weekly allowance, deducting from it the
amount of her weekly rent, which I have paid (in consequence of
instructions I have received) to Krook himself, regularly in her
presence. This has brought me into communication with Krook and into
a knowledge of his house and his habits. I know he has a room to let.
You may live there at a very low charge under any name you like, as
quietly as if you were a hundred miles off. He’ll ask no questions
and would accept you as a tenant at a word from me—before the clock
strikes, if you chose. And I tell you another thing, Jobling,” says
Mr. Guppy, who has suddenly lowered his voice and become familiar
again, “he’s an extraordinary old chap—always rummaging among a
litter of papers and grubbing away at teaching himself to read and
write, without getting on a bit, as it seems to me. He is a most
extraordinary old chap, sir. I don’t know but what it might be worth
a fellow’s while to look him up a bit.”
“You don’t mean—” Mr. Jobling begins.
“I mean,” returns Mr. Guppy, shrugging his shoulders with becoming
modesty, “that I can’t make him out. I appeal to our mutual friend
Smallweed whether he has or has not heard me remark that I can’t make
him out.”
Mr. Smallweed bears the concise testimony, “A few!”
“I have seen something of the profession and something of life,
Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, “and it’s seldom I can’t make a man out, more
or less. But such an old card as this, so deep, so sly, and secret
(though I don’t believe he is ever sober), I never came across. Now,
he must be precious old, you know, and he has not a soul about him,
and he is reported to be immensely rich; and whether he is a
smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed pawnbroker, or a
money-lender—all of which I have thought likely at different
times—it might pay you to knock up a sort of knowledge of him. I
don’t see why you shouldn’t go in for it, when everything else
suits.”
Mr. Jobling, Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Smallweed all lean their elbows on
the table and their chins upon their hands, and look at the ceiling.
After a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their hands in
their pockets, and look at one another.
“If I had the energy I once possessed, Tony!” says Mr. Guppy with a
sigh. “But there are chords in the human mind—”
Expressing the remainder of the desolate sentiment in rum-and-water,
Mr. Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony Jobling and
informing him that during the vacation and while things are slack,
his purse, “as far as three or four or even five pound goes,” will be
at his disposal. “For never shall it be said,” Mr. Guppy adds with
emphasis, “that William Guppy turned his back upon his friend!”
The latter part of the proposal is so directly to the purpose that
Mr. Jobling says with emotion, “Guppy, my trump, your fist!” Mr.
Guppy presents it, saying, “Jobling, my boy, there it is!” Mr.
Jobling returns, “Guppy, we have been pals now for some years!” Mr.
Guppy replies, “Jobling, we have.”
They then shake hands, and Mr. Jobling adds in a feeling manner,
“Thank you, Guppy, I don’t know but what I WILL take another glass
for old acquaintance sake.”
“Krook’s last lodger died there,” observes Mr. Guppy in an incidental
way.
“Did he though!” says Mr. Jobling.
“There was a verdict. Accidental death. You don’t mind that?”
“No,” says Mr. Jobling, “I don’t mind it; but he might as well have
died somewhere else. It’s devilish odd that he need go and die at MY
place!” Mr. Jobling quite resents this liberty, several times
returning to it with such remarks as, “There are places enough to die
in, I should think!” or, “He wouldn’t have liked my dying at HIS
place, I dare say!”
However, the compact being virtually made, Mr. Guppy proposes to
dispatch the trusty Smallweed to ascertain if Mr. Krook is at home,
as in that case they may complete the negotiation without delay. Mr.
Jobling approving, Smallweed puts himself under the tall hat and
conveys it out of the dining-rooms in the Guppy manner. He soon
returns with the intelligence that Mr. Krook is at home and that he
has seen him through the shop-door, sitting in the back premises,
sleeping “like one o’clock.”
“Then I’ll pay,” says Mr. Guppy, “and we’ll go and see him. Small,
what will it be?”
Mr. Smallweed, compelling the attendance of the waitress with one
hitch of his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: “Four veals and
hams is three, and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer
cabbage is three and six, and three marrows is four and six, and six
breads is five, and three Cheshires is five and three, and four
half-pints of half-and-half is six and three, and four small rums is
eight and three, and three Pollys is eight and six. Eight and six in
half a sovereign, Polly, and eighteenpence out!”
Not at all excited by these stupendous calculations, Smallweed
dismisses his friends with a cool nod and remains behind to take a
little admiring notice of Polly, as opportunity may serve, and to
read the daily papers, which are so very large in proportion to
himself, shorn of his hat, that when he holds up the Times to run his
eye over the columns, he seems to have retired for the night and to
have disappeared under the bedclothes.
Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where
they find Krook still sleeping like one o’clock, that is to say,
breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast and quite
insensible to any external sounds or even to gentle shaking. On the
table beside him, among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin-bottle
and a glass. The unwholesome air is so stained with this liquor that
even the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they open and shut
and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk.
“Hold up here!” says Mr. Guppy, giving the relaxed figure of the old
man another shake. “Mr. Krook! Halloa, sir!”