Bleak House. Charles Dickens
is quite dark now, and the gas-lamps have acquired their full effect. Jostling against clerks going to post the day's letters, and against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against plaintiffs and defendants, and suitors of all sorts, and against the general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has interposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest business of life – diving through law and equity, and through that kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what, and collects about us nobody knows whence or how: we only knowing in general that when there is too much of it, we find it necessary to shovel it away – the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a Rag and Bottle shop, and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise, lying and being in the shadow of the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept, as is announced in paint, to all whom it may concern, by one Krook.
'This is where he lives, sir,' says the law-stationer.
'This is where he lives, is it?' says the lawyer unconcernedly. 'Thank you.'
'Are you not going in, sir?'
'No, thank you, no; I am going on to the Fields at present. Good evening. Thank you!' Mr. Snagsby lifts his hat, and returns to his little woman and his tea.
But Mr. Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present. He goes a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Krook, and enters it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so in the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by a fire. The old man rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed candle in his hand.
'Pray is your lodger within?'
'Male or female, sir?' says Mr. Krook.
'Male. The person who does copying.'
Mr. Krook has eyed his man narrowly. Knows him by sight. Has an indistinct impression of his aristocratic repute.
'Did you wish to see him, sir?'
'Yes.'
'It's what I seldom do myself,' says Mr. Krook with a grin. 'Shall I call him down? But it's a weak chance if he'd come, sir!'
'I'll go up to him, then,' says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
'Second floor, sir. Take the candle. Up there!' Mr. Krook, with his cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking after Mr. Tulkinghorn. 'Hi – hi!' he says, when Mr. Tulkinghorn has nearly disappeared. The lawyer looks down over the hand-rail. The cat expands her wicked mouth, and snarls at him.
'Order, Lady Jane! Behave yourself to visitors, my lady! You know what they say of my lodger?' whispers Krook, going up a step or two.
'What do they say of him?'
'They say he has sold himself to the Enemy; but you and I know better – he don't buy. I'll tell you what, though; my lodger is so black-humoured and gloomy, that I believe he'd as soon make that bargain as any other. Don't put him out, sir. That's my advice!'
Mr. Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He comes to the dark door on the second floor. He knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so.
The air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it, if he had not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease, and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as if Poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner by the chimney, stand a deal table and a broken desk; a wilderness marked with a rain of ink. In another corner, a ragged old portmanteau on one of the two chairs, serves for cabinet or wardrobe; no larger one is needed, for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. The floor is bare; except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain veils the darkness of the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn together; and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine might be staring in – the Banshee of the man upon the bed.
For, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patch-work, lean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just within the doorway, sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt and trousers, with bare feet. He has a yellow look in the spectral darkness of a candle that has guttered down, until the whole length of its wick (still burning) has doubled over, and left a tower of winding-sheet above it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his whiskers and his beard – the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the scum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is, foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the general sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco, there comes into the lawyer's mouth the bitter, vapid taste of opium.
'Hallo, my friend!' he cries, and strikes his iron candlestick against the door.
He thinks he has awakened his friend. He lies a little turned away, but his eyes are surely open.
'Hallo, my friend!' he cries again. 'Hallo! Hallo!'
As he rattles on the door, the candle which has drooped so long, goes out, and leaves him in the dark; with the gaunt eyes in the shutters staring down upon the bed.
Chapter XI
Our dear brother
A tough on the lawyer's wrinkled hand, as he stands in the dark room, irresolute, makes him start and say, 'What's that?'
'It's me,' returns the old man of the house, whose breath is in his ear. 'Can't you wake him?'
'No.'
'What have you done with your candle?'
'It's gone out. Here it is.'
Krook takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over the red embers, and tries to get a light. The dying ashes have no light to spare, and his endeavours are vain. Muttering, after an ineffectual call to his lodger, that he will go down-stairs and bring a lighted candle from the shop, the old man departs. Mr. Tulkinghorn, for some new reason that he has, does not await his return in the room, but on the stairs outside.
The welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as Krook comes slowly up, with his green-eyed cat following at his heels. 'Does the man generally sleep like this?' inquires the lawyer, in a low voice. 'Hi! I don't know,' says Krook, shaking his head and lifting his eyebrows. 'I know next to nothing of his habits, except that he keeps himself very close.'
Thus whispering, they both go in together. As the light goes in, the great eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close. Not so the eyes upon the bed.
'God save us!' exclaims Mr. Tulkinghorn. 'He is dead!'
Krook drops the heavy hand he has taken up, so suddenly that the arm swings over the bedside.
They look at one another for a moment.
'Send for some doctor! Gall for Miss Flite up the stairs, sir. Here's poison by the bed! Gall out for Flite, will you?' says Krook, with his lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire's wings.
Mr. Tulkinghorn hurries to the landing, and calls 'Miss Flite! Flite! Make haste, here, whoever you are! Flite!' Krook follows him with his eyes, and, while he is calling, finds opportunity to steal to the old portmanteau, and steal back again.
'Run, Flite, run! The nearest doctor! Run!' So Mr. Krook addresses a crazy little woman, who is his female lodger: who appears and vanishes in a breath: who soon returns, accompanied by a testy medical man, brought from his dinner – with a broad snuffy upper lip, and a broad Scotch tongue.
'Ey! Bless the hearts o' ye,' says the medical man, looking up at them after a moment's examination. 'He's just as dead as Phairy!'
Mr. Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) inquires if he has been dead any time?
'Any time, sir?' says the medical gentleman. 'It's probable he wull have been dead aboot three hours.'
'About that time, I should say,' observes a dark young man, on the other side of the bed.
'Air you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir?' inquires the first.
The dark young man says yes.
'Then I'll just tak' my depairture,' replies the other; 'for I'm nae gude here!' With which remark, he finishes his brief