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

ease. He comes and goes between his own room and the

open street door twenty times an hour. He has been doing so ever

since it fell dark. Since the Chancellor shut up his shop, which

he did very early to-night, Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and

down and up (with a cheap tight velvet skull-cap on his head,

making his whiskers look out of all proportion), oftener than

before.

 

It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too, for

he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of

the secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery of which he

is a partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby

haunts what seems to be its fountain-head—the rag and bottle shop

in the court. It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even

now, coming round by the Sol’s Arms with the intention of passing

down the court, and out at the Chancery Lane end, and so

terminating his unpremeditated after-supper stroll of ten minutes’

long from his own door and back again, Mr. Snagsby approaches.

 

“What, Mr. Weevle?” says the stationer, stopping to speak. “Are

YOU there?”

 

“Aye!” says Weevle, “Here I am, Mr. Snagsby.”

 

“Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?” the

stationer inquires.

 

“Why, there’s not much air to be got here; and what there is, is

not very freshening,” Weevle answers, glancing up and down the

court.

 

“Very true, sir. Don’t you observe,” says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to

sniff and taste the air a little, “don’t you observe, Mr. Weevle,

that you’re—not to put too fine a point upon it—that you’re

rather greasy here, sir?”

 

“Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour

in the place to-night,” Mr. Weevle rejoins. “I suppose it’s chops

at the Sol’s Arms.”

 

“Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?” Mr. Snagsby sniffs and

tastes again. “Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their

cook at the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been

burning ‘em, sir! And I don’t think”—Mr. Snagsby sniffs and

tastes again and then spits and wipes his mouth—“I don’t think—

not to put too fine a point upon it—that they were quite fresh

when they were shown the gridiron.”

 

“That’s very likely. It’s a tainting sort of weather.”

 

“It IS a tainting sort of weather,” says Mr. Snagsby, “and I find

it sinking to the spirits.”

 

“By George! I find it gives me the horrors,” returns Mr. Weevle.

 

“Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room,

with a black circumstance hanging over it,” says Mr. Snagsby,

looking in past the other’s shoulder along the dark passage and

then falling back a step to look up at the house. “I couldn’t live

in that room alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and

worried of an evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come

to the door and stand here sooner than sit there. But then it’s

very true that you didn’t see, in your room, what I saw there.

That makes a difference.”

 

“I know quite enough about it,” returns Tony.

 

“It’s not agreeable, is it?” pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his

cough of mild persuasion behind his hand. “Mr. Krook ought to

consider it in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure.”

 

“I hope he does,” says Tony. “But I doubt it.”

 

“You find the rent too high, do you, sir?” returns the stationer.

“Rents ARE high about here. I don’t know how it is exactly, but

the law seems to put things up in price. Not,” adds Mr. Snagsby

with his apologetic cough, “that I mean to say a word against the

profession I get my living by.”

 

Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at

the stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward

for a star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly

seeing his way out of this conversation.

 

“It’s a curious fact, sir,” he observes, slowly rubbing his hands,

“that he should have been—”

 

“Who’s he?” interrupts Mr. Weevle.

 

“The deceased, you know,” says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and

right eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on

the button.

 

“Ah, to be sure!” returns the other as if he were not over-fond of

the subject. “I thought we had done with him.”

 

“I was only going to say it’s a curious fact, sir, that he should

have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that

you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which

there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,”

says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have

unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle,

“because I have known writers that have gone into brewers’ houses

and done really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable,

sir,” adds Mr. Snagsby with a misgiving that he has not improved

the matter.

 

“It’s a curious coincidence, as you say,” answers Weevle, once more

glancing up and down the court.

 

“Seems a fate in it, don’t there?” suggests the stationer.

 

“There does.”

 

“Just so,” observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough.

“Quite a fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid

I must bid you good night”—Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him

desolate to go, though he has been casting about for any means of

escape ever since he stopped to speak—“my little woman will be

looking for me else. Good night, sir!”

 

If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of

looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His

little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol’s Arms all this

time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped

over her head, honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching

glance as she goes past.

 

“You’ll know me again, ma’am, at all events,” says Mr. Weevle to

himself; “and I can’t compliment you on your appearance, whoever

you are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow NEVER

coming!”

 

This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up

his finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street

door. Then they go upstairs, Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy

(for it is he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the

back room, they speak low.

 

“I thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming

here,” says Tony.

 

“Why, I said about ten.”

 

“You said about ten,” Tony repeats. “Yes, so you did say about

ten. But according to my count, it’s ten times ten—it’s a hundred

o’clock. I never had such a night in my life!”

 

“What has been the matter?”

 

“That’s it!” says Tony. “Nothing has been the matter. But here

have I been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have

had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE’S a blessed-looking candle!” says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper

on his table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.

 

“That’s easily improved,” Mr. Guppy observes as he takes the

snuffers in hand.

 

“IS it?” returns his friend. “Not so easily as you think. It has

been smouldering like that ever since it was lighted.”

 

“Why, what’s the matter with you, Tony?” inquires Mr. Guppy,

looking at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on

the table.

 

“William Guppy,” replies the other, “I am in the downs. It’s this

unbearably dull, suicidal room—and old Boguey downstairs, I

suppose.” Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him

with his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the

fender, and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly

tosses his head and sits down on the other side of the table in an

easy attitude.

 

“Wasn’t that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?”

 

“Yes, and he—yes, it was Snagsby,” said Mr. Weevle, altering the

construction of his sentence.

 

“On business?”

 

“No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to

prose.”

 

“I thought it was Snagsby,” says Mr. Guppy, “and thought it as well

that he shouldn’t see me, so I waited till he was gone.”

 

“There we go again, William G.!” cried Tony, looking up for an

instant. “So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going

to commit a murder, we couldn’t have more mystery about it!”

 

Mr. Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the

conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round

the room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his

survey with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in

which she is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the

terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase,

and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the

prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm.

 

“That’s very like Lady Dedlock,” says Mr. Guppy. “It’s a speaking

likeness.”

 

“I wish it was,” growls Tony, without changing his position. “I

should have some fashionable conversation, here, then.”

 

Finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a

more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the illused tack

and remonstrates with him.

 

“Tony,” says he, “I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for

no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I

do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who

has an unrequited image imprinted on his ‘eart. But there are

bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question,

and I will acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don’t think your manner

on the present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly.”

 

“This is strong language, William Guppy,” returns Mr. Weevle.

 

“Sir, it may be,” retorts Mr. William Guppy, “but I feel strongly

when I use it.”

 

Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. William Guppy

to think no more about it. Mr. William Guppy, however, having got

the advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more

injured remonstrance.

 

“No! Dash it, Tony,” says that gentleman, “you really ought to be

careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited

image imprinted on his ‘eart and who is NOT altogether happy in

those chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony,

possess in yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and

allure the taste. It is not—happily for you, perhaps, and I may

wish that I could say the same—it is not your character to hover

around one flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy

pinions carry you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am

sure, to wound even your feelings without a cause!”

 

Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued,

saying emphatically, “William Guppy, drop it!” Mr. Guppy

acquiesces, with the reply, “I never should have taken it up, Tony,

of my own accord.”

 

“And now,” says Tony, stirring the fire, “touching this same bundle

of letters. Isn’t it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have

appointed twelve o’clock to-night to hand ‘em over