Bleak House by Charles Dickens (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📖

writing, as a vessel, he is occasionally mistaken

by strangers for a gentleman connected with navigation, but he is,

as he expresses it, “in the ministry.” Mr. Chadband is attached to

no particular denomination and is considered by his persecutors to

have nothing so very remarkable to say on the greatest of subjects

as to render his volunteering, on his own account, at all incumbent

on his conscience; but he has his followers, and Mrs. Snagsby is of

the number. Mrs. Snagsby has but recently taken a passage upward

by the vessel, Chadband; and her attention was attracted to that

Bark A 1, when she was something flushed by the hot weather.

 

“My little woman,” says Mr. Snagsby to the sparrows in Staple Inn,

“likes to have her religion rather sharp, you see!”

 

So Guster, much impressed by regarding herself for the time as the

handmaid of Chadband, whom she knows to be endowed with the gift of

holding forth for four hours at a stretch, prepares the little

drawing-room for tea. All the furniture is shaken and dusted, the

portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are touched up with a wet cloth,

the best tea-service is set forth, and there is excellent provision

made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin

slices of ham, tongue, and German sausage, and delicate little rows

of anchovies nestling in parsley, not to mention new-laid eggs, to

be brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast. For

Chadband is rather a consuming vessel—the persecutors say a

gorging vessel—and can wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife

and fork remarkably well.

 

Mr. Snagsby in his best coat, looking at all the preparations when

they are completed and coughing his cough of deference behind his

hand, says to Mrs. Snagsby, “At what time did you expect Mr. and

Mrs. Chadband, my love?”

 

“At six,” says Mrs. Snagsby.

 

Mr. Snagsby observes in a mild and casual way that “it’s gone

that.”

 

“Perhaps you’d like to begin without them,” is Mrs. Snagsby’s

reproachful remark.

 

Mr. Snagsby does look as if he would like it very much, but he

says, with his cough of mildness, “No, my dear, no. I merely named

the time.”

 

“What’s time,” says Mrs. Snagsby, “to eternity?”

 

“Very true, my dear,” says Mr. Snagsby. “Only when a person lays

in victuals for tea, a person does it with a view—perhaps—more to

time. And when a time is named for having tea, it’s better to come

up to it.”

 

“To come up to it!” Mrs. Snagsby repeats with severity. “Up to it!

As if Mr. Chadband was a fighter!”

 

“Not at all, my dear,” says Mr. Snagsby.

 

Here, Guster, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, comes

rustling and scratching down the little staircase like a popular

ghost, and falling flushed into the drawing-room, announces that

Mr. and Mrs. Chadband have appeared in the court. The bell at the

inner door in the passage immediately thereafter tinkling, she is

admonished by Mrs. Snagsby, on pain of instant reconsignment to her

patron saint, not to omit the ceremony of announcement. Much

discomposed in her nerves (which were previously in the best order)

by this threat, she so fearfully mutilates that point of state as

to announce “Mr. and Mrs. Cheeseming, least which, Imeantersay,

whatsername!” and retires conscience-stricken from the presence.

 

Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man with a fat smile and a general

appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs.

Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr. Chadband

moves softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught

to walk upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if

they were inconvenient to him and he wanted to grovel, is very much

in a perspiration about the head, and never speaks without first

putting up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers

that he is going to edify them.

 

“My friends,” says Mr. Chadband, “peace be on this house! On the

master thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and

on the young men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is

peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and

gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh,

yes! Therefore, my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon

yours.”

 

In consequence of Mrs. Snagsby looking deeply edified, Mr. Snagsby

thinks it expedient on the whole to say amen, which is well

received.

 

“Now, my friends,” proceeds Mr. Chadband, “since I am upon this

theme—”

 

Guster presents herself. Mrs. Snagsby, in a spectral bass voice

and without removing her eyes from Chadband, says with dreadful

distinctness, “Go away!”

 

“Now, my friends,” says Chadband, “since I am upon this theme, and

in my lowly path improving it—”

 

Guster is heard unaccountably to murmur “one thousing seven hundred

and eighty-two.” The spectral voice repeats more solemnly, “Go

away!”

 

“Now, my friends,” says Mr. Chadband, “we will inquire in a spirit

of love—”

 

Still Guster reiterates “one thousing seven hundred and eighty-two.”

 

Mr. Chadband, pausing with the resignation of a man accustomed to

be persecuted and languidly folding up his chin into his fat smile,

says, “Let us hear the maiden! Speak, maiden!”

 

“One thousing seven hundred and eighty-two, if you please, sir.

Which he wish to know what the shilling ware for,” says Guster,

breathless.

 

“For?” returns Mrs. Chadband. “For his fare!”

 

Guster replied that “he insistes on one and eightpence or on

summonsizzing the party.” Mrs. Snagsby and Mrs. Chadband are

proceeding to grow shrill in indignation when Mr. Chadband quiets

the tumult by lifting up his hand.

 

“My friends,” says he, “I remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday.

It is right that I should be chastened in some penalty. I ought

not to murmur. Rachael, pay the eightpence!”

 

While Mrs. Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr. Snagsby,

as who should say, “You hear this apostle!” and while Mr. Chadband

glows with humility and train oil, Mrs. Chadband pays the money.

It is Mr. Chadband’s habit—it is the head and front of his

pretensions indeed—to keep this sort of debtor and creditor

account in the smallest items and to post it publicly on the most

trivial occasions.

 

“My friends,” says Chadband, “eightpence is not much; it might

justly have been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half

a crown. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!”

 

With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in

verse, Mr. Chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a chair,

lifts up his admonitory hand.

 

“My friends,” says he, “what is this which we now behold as being

spread before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my

friends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my friends?

Because we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we

are but of the earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly,

my friends? We cannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?”

 

Mr. Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures

to observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, “No wings.” But

is immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby.

 

“I say, my friends,” pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and

obliterating Mr. Snagsby’s suggestion, “why can we not fly? Is it

because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my

friends, without strength? We could not. What should we do

without strength, my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us,

our knees would double up, our ankles would turn over, and we

should come to the ground. Then from whence, my friends, in a

human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necessary to

our limbs? Is it,” says Chadband, glancing over the table, “from

bread in various forms, from butter which is churned from the milk

which is yielded unto us by the cow, from the eggs which are laid

by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from sausage, and from such

like? It is. Then let us partake of the good things which are set

before us!”

 

The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr.

Chadband’s piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another,

after this fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of

their determination to persecute, since it must be within

everybody’s experience that the Chadband style of oratory is widely

received and much admired.

 

Mr. Chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down

at Mr. Snagsby’s table and lays about him prodigiously. The

conversion of nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already

mentioned appears to be a process so inseparable from the

constitution of this exemplary vessel that in beginning to eat and

drink, he may be described as always becoming a kind of

considerable oil mills or other large factory for the production of

that article on a wholesale scale. On the present evening of the

long vacation, in Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street, he does such a

powerful stroke of business that the warehouse appears to be quite

full when the works cease.

 

At this period of the entertainment, Guster, who has never

recovered her first failure, but has neglected no possible or

impossible means of bringing the establishment and herself into

contempt—among which may be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly

performing clashing military music on Mr. Chadband’s head with

plates, and afterwards crowning that gentleman with muffins—at

which period of the entertainment, Guster whispers Mr. Snagsby that

he is wanted.

 

“And being wanted in the—not to put too fine a point upon it—in

the shop,” says Mr. Snagsby, rising, “perhaps this good company

will excuse me for half a minute.”

 

Mr. Snagsby descends and finds the two ‘prentices intently

contemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the

arm.

 

“Why, bless my heart,” says Mr. Snagsby, “what’s the matter!”

 

“This boy,” says the constable, “although he’s repeatedly told to,

won’t move on—”

 

“I’m always a-moving on, sar,” cries the boy, wiping away his grimy

tears with his arm. “I’ve always been a-moving and a-moving on,

ever since I was born. Where can I possibly move to, sir, more nor

I do move!”

 

“He won’t move on,” says the constable calmly, with a slight

professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in

his stiff stock, “although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and

therefore I am obliged to take him into custody. He’s as obstinate

a young gonoph as I know. He WON’T move on.”

 

“Oh, my eye! Where can I move to!” cries the boy, clutching quite

desperately at his hair and beating his bare feet upon the floor of

Mr. Snagsby’s passage.

 

“Don’t you come none of that or I shall make blessed short work of

you!” says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. “My

instructions are that you are to move on. I have told you so five

hundred times.”

 

“But where?” cries the boy.

 

“Well! Really, constable, you know,” says Mr. Snagsby wistfully,

and coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and

doubt, “really, that does seem a question. Where, you know?”

 

“My instructions don’t go to that,” replies the constable. “My

instructions are that this boy is to move on.”

 

Do you hear, Jo? It is nothing to you or to any one else that the

great lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some few

years in this business to set you the example of moving on. The

one grand recipe remains for you—the