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

and in the ruins, and behind

the walls, as before.

 

At last there is a lair found out where Toughy, or the Tough

Subject, lays him down at night; and it is thought that the Tough

Subject may be Jo. Comparison of notes between Mr. Snagsby and the

proprietress of the house—a drunken face tied up in a black

bundle, and flaring out of a heap of rags on the floor of a dog-hutch which is her private apartment—leads to the establishment of

this conclusion. Toughy has gone to the doctor’s to get a bottle

of stuff for a sick woman but will be here anon.

 

“And who have we got here to-night?” says Mr. Bucket, opening

another door and glaring in with his bull’s-eye. “Two drunken men,

eh? And two women? The men are sound enough,” turning back each

sleeper’s arm from his face to look at him. “Are these your good

men, my dears?”

 

“Yes, sir,” returns one of the women. “They are our husbands.”

 

“Brickmakers, eh?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“What are you doing here? You don’t belong to London.”

 

“No, sir. We belong to Hertfordshire.”

 

“Whereabouts in Hertfordshire?”

 

“Saint Albans.”

 

“Come up on the tramp?”

 

“We walked up yesterday. There’s no work down with us at present,

but we have done no good by coming here, and shall do none, I

expect.”

 

“That’s not the way to do much good,” says Mr. Bucket, turning his

head in the direction of the unconscious figures on the ground.

 

“It an’t indeed,” replies the woman with a sigh. “Jenny and me

knows it full well.”

 

The room, though two or three feet higher than the door, is so low

that the head of the tallest of the visitors would touch the

blackened ceiling if he stood upright. It is offensive to every

sense; even the gross candle burns pale and sickly in the polluted

air. There are a couple of benches and a higher bench by way of

table. The men lie asleep where they stumbled down, but the women

sit by the candle. Lying in the arms of the woman who has spoken

is a very young child.

 

“Why, what age do you call that little creature?” says Bucket. “It

looks as if it was born yesterday.” He is not at all rough about

it; and as he turns his light gently on the infant, Mr. Snagsby is

strangely reminded of another infant, encircled with light, that he

has seen in pictures.

 

“He is not three weeks old yet, sir,” says the woman.

 

“Is he your child?”

 

“Mine.”

 

The other woman, who was bending over it when they came in, stoops

down again and kisses it as it lies asleep.

 

“You seem as fond of it as if you were the mother yourself,” says

Mr. Bucket.

 

“I was the mother of one like it, master, and it died.”

 

“Ah, Jenny, Jenny!” says the other woman to her. “Better so. Much

better to think of dead than alive, Jenny! Much better!”

 

“Why, you an’t such an unnatural woman, I hope,” returns Bucket

sternly, “as to wish your own child dead?”

 

“God knows you are right, master,” she returns. “I am not. I’d

stand between it and death with my own life if I could, as true as

any pretty lady.”

 

“Then don’t talk in that wrong manner,” says Mr. Bucket, mollified

again. “Why do you do it?”

 

“It’s brought into my head, master,” returns the woman, her eyes

filling with tears, “when I look down at the child lying so. If it

was never to wake no more, you’d think me mad, I should take on so.

I know that very well. I was with Jenny when she lost hers—warn’t

I, Jenny?—and I know how she grieved. But look around you at this

place. Look at them,” glancing at the sleepers on the ground.

“Look at the boy you’re waiting for, who’s gone out to do me a good

turn. Think of the children that your business lays with often and

often, and that YOU see grow up!”

 

“Well, well,” says Mr. Bucket, “you train him respectable, and

he’ll be a comfort to you, and look after you in your old age, you

know.”

 

“I mean to try hard,” she answers, wiping her eyes. “But I have

been a-thinking, being over-tired to-night and not well with the

ague, of all the many things that’ll come in his way. My master

will be against it, and he’ll be beat, and see me beat, and made to

fear his home, and perhaps to stray wild. If I work for him ever

so much, and ever so hard, there’s no one to help me; and if he

should be turned bad ‘spite of all I could do, and the time should

come when I should sit by him in his sleep, made hard and changed,

an’t it likely I should think of him as he lies in my lap now and

wish he had died as Jenny’s child died!”

 

“There, there!” says Jenny. “Liz, you’re tired and ill. Let me

take him.”

 

In doing so, she displaces the mother’s dress, but quickly

readjusts it over the wounded and bruised bosom where the baby has

been lying.

 

“It’s my dead child,” says Jenny, walking up and down as she

nurses, “that makes me love this child so dear, and it’s my dead

child that makes her love it so dear too, as even to think of its

being taken away from her now. While she thinks that, I think what

fortune would I give to have my darling back. But we mean the same

thing, if we knew how to say it, us two mothers does in our poor

hearts!”

 

As Mr. Snagsby blows his nose and coughs his cough of sympathy, a

step is heard without. Mr. Bucket throws his light into the

doorway and says to Mr. Snagsby, “Now, what do you say to Toughy?

Will HE do?”

 

“That’s Jo,” says Mr. Snagsby.

 

Jo stands amazed in the disk of light, like a ragged figure in a

magic-lantern, trembling to think that he has offended against the

law in not having moved on far enough. Mr. Snagsby, however,

giving him the consolatory assurance, “It’s only a job you will be

paid for, Jo,” he recovers; and on being taken outside by Mr.

Bucket for a little private confabulation, tells his tale

satisfactorily, though out of breath.

 

“I have squared it with the lad,” says Mr. Bucket, returning, “and

it’s all right. Now, Mr. Snagsby, we’re ready for you.”

 

First, Jo has to complete his errand of good nature by handing over

the physic he has been to get, which he delivers with the laconic

verbal direction that “it’s to be all took d’rectly.” Secondly,

Mr. Snagsby has to lay upon the table half a crown, his usual

panacea for an immense variety of afflictions. Thirdly, Mr. Bucket

has to take Jo by the arm a little above the elbow and walk him on

before him, without which observance neither the Tough Subject nor

any other Subject could be professionally conducted to Lincoln’s

Inn Fields. These arrangements completed, they give the women good

night and come out once more into black and foul Tom-all-Alone’s.

 

By the noisome ways through which they descended into that pit,

they gradually emerge from it, the crowd flitting, and whistling,

and skulking about them until they come to the verge, where

restoration of the bull’s-eyes is made to Darby. Here the crowd,

like a concourse of imprisoned demons, turns back, yelling, and is

seen no more. Through the clearer and fresher streets, never so

clear and fresh to Mr. Snagsby’s mind as now, they walk and ride

until they come to Mr. Tulkinghorn’s gate.

 

As they ascend the dim stairs (Mr. Tulkinghorn’s chambers being on

the first floor), Mr. Bucket mentions that he has the key of the

outer door in his pocket and that there is no need to ring. For a

man so expert in most things of that kind, Bucket takes time to

open the door and makes some noise too. It may be that he sounds a

note of preparation.

 

Howbeit, they come at last into the hall, where a lamp is burning,

and so into Mr. Tulkinghorn’s usual room—the room where he drank

his old wine to-night. He is not there, but his two old-fashioned

candlesticks are, and the room is tolerably light.

 

Mr. Bucket, still having his professional hold of Jo and appearing

to Mr. Snagsby to possess an unlimited number of eyes, makes a

little way into this room, when Jo starts and stops.

 

“What’s the matter?” says Bucket in a whisper.

 

“There she is!” cries Jo.

 

“Who!”

 

“The lady!”

 

A female figure, closely veiled, stands in the middle of the room,

where the light falls upon it. It is quite still and silent. The

front of the figure is towards them, but it takes no notice of

their entrance and remains like a statue.

 

“Now, tell me,” says Bucket aloud, “how you know that to be the

lady.”

 

“I know the wale,” replies Jo, staring, “and the bonnet, and the

gownd.”

 

“Be quite sure of what you say, Tough,” returns Bucket, narrowly

observant of him. “Look again.”

 

“I am a-looking as hard as ever I can look,” says Jo with starting

eyes, “and that there’s the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd.”

 

“What about those rings you told me of?” asks Bucket.

 

“A-sparkling all over here,” says Jo, rubbing the fingers of his

left hand on the knuckles of his right without taking his eyes from

the figure.

 

The figure removes the right-hand glove and shows the hand.

 

“Now, what do you say to that?” asks Bucket.

 

Jo shakes his head. “Not rings a bit like them. Not a hand like

that.”

 

“What are you talking of?” says Bucket, evidently pleased though,

and well pleased too.

 

“Hand was a deal whiter, a deal delicater, and a deal smaller,”

returns Jo.

 

“Why, you’ll tell me I’m my own mother next,” says Mr. Bucket. “Do

you recollect the lady’s voice?”

 

“I think I does,” says Jo.

 

The figure speaks. “Was it at all like this? I will speak as long

as you like if you are not sure. Was it this voice, or at all like

this voice?”

 

Jo looks aghast at Mr. Bucket. “Not a bit!”

 

“Then, what,” retorts that worthy, pointing to the figure, “did you

say it was the lady for?”

 

“Cos,” says Jo with a perplexed stare but without being at all

shaken in his certainty, “cos that there’s the wale, the bonnet,

and the gownd. It is her and it an’t her. It an’t her hand, nor

yet her rings, nor yet her woice. But that there’s the wale, the

bonnet, and the gownd, and they’re wore the same way wot she wore

‘em, and it’s her height wot she wos, and she giv me a sov’ring and

hooked it.”

 

“Well!” says Mr. Bucket slightly, “we haven’t got much good out of

YOU. But, however, here’s five shillings for you. Take care how

you spend it, and don’t get yourself into trouble.” Bucket

stealthily tells the coins from one hand into the other like

counters—which is a way he has, his principal use of them being in

these games of skill—and then puts them, in a little pile, into

the boy’s hand and takes him out to the door, leaving Mr. Snagsby,

not by any means comfortable under these mysterious circumstances,

alone with the veiled figure. But on Mr. Tulkinghorn’s coming into

the room, the