A touch 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
downstairs 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?" inquired 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! Call for Miss Flite up the stairs, sir. Here's poison
by the bed! Call 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 attendance and returns to finish
his dinner.
The dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face and
carefully examines the law-writer, who has established his pretensions to his
name by becoming indeed No one.
"I knew this person by sight very well," says he. "He has purchased opium of
me for the last year and a half. Was anybody present related to him?" glancing
round upon the three bystanders.
"I was his landlord," grimly answers Krook, taking the candle from the
surgeon's outstretched hand. "He told me once I was the nearest relation he
had."
"He has died," says the surgeon, "of an over-dose of opium, there is no
doubt. The room is strongly flavoured with it. There is enough here now," taking
an old teapot from Mr. Krook, "to kill a dozen people."
"Do you think he did it on purpose?" asks Krook.
"Took the over-dose?"
"Yes!" Krook almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible interest.
"I can't say. I should think it unlikely, as he has been in the habit of
taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very poor, I suppose?"
"I suppose he was. His room--don't look rich," says Krook, who might have
changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance around. "But I have
never been in it since he had it, and he was too close to name his circumstances
to me."
"Did he owe you any rent?"
"Six weeks."
"He will never pay it!" says the young man, resuming his examination. "It is
beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as Pharaoh; and to judge from his
appearance and condition, I should think it a happy release. Yet he must have
been a good figure when a youth, and I dare say, good-looking." He says this,
not unfeelingly, while sitting on the bedstead's edge with his face towards that
other face and his hand upon the region of the heart. "I recollect once thinking
there was something in his manner, uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall in
life. Was that so?" he continues, looking round.
Krook replies, "You might as well ask me to describe the ladies whose heads
of hair I have got in sacks downstairs. Than that he was my lodger for a year
and a half and lived--or didn't live--by law-writing, I know no more of him."
During this dialogue Mr. Tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old portmanteau,
with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all appearance, from all three
kinds of interest exhibited near the bed--from the young surgeon's professional
interest in death, noticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the
deceased as an individual; from the old man's unction; and the little crazy
woman's awe. His imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as his rusty
clothes. One could not even say he has been thinking all this while. He has
shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention nor abstraction. He has
shown nothing but his shell. As easily might the tone of a delicate musical
instrument be inferred from its case, as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his
case.
He now interposes, addressing the young surgeon in his unmoved, professional
way.
"I looked in here," he observes, "just before you, with the intention of
giving this deceased man, whom I never saw alive, some employment at his trade
of copying. I had heard of him from my stationer--Snagsby of Cook's Court. Since
no one here knows anything about him, it might be as well to send for Snagsby.
Ah!" to the little crazy woman, who has often seen him in court, and whom he has
often seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-show, to go for the
law-stationer. "Suppose you do!"
While she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation and covers
its subject with the patchwork counterpane. Mr. Krook and he interchange a word
or two. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, but stands, ever, near the old
portmanteau.
Mr. Snagsby arrives hastily in his grey coat and his black sleeves. "Dear me,
dear me," he says; "and it has come to this, has it! Bless my soul!"
"Can you give the person of the house any information about this unfortunate
creature, Snagsby?" inquires Mr. Tulkinghorn. "He was in arrears with his rent,
it seems. And he must be buried, you know."
"Well, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, coughing his apologetic cough behind his hand,
"I really don't know what advice I could offer, except sending for the beadle."
"I don't speak of advice," returns Mr. Tulkinghorn. "I could advise--"
"No one better, sir, I am sure," says Mr. Snagsby, with his deferential
cough.
"I speak of affording some clue to his connexions, or to where he came from,
or to anything concerning him."
"I assure you, sir," says Mr. Snagsby after prefacing his reply with his
cough of general propitiation, "that I no more know where he came from than I
know--"
"Where he has gone to, perhaps," suggests the surgeon to help him out.
A pause. Mr. Tulkinghorn looking at the law-stationer. Mr. Krook, with his
mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next.
"As to his connexions, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, "if a person was to say to me,
"Snagsby, here's twenty thousand pound down, ready for you in the Bank of
England if you'll only name one of 'em,' I couldn't do it, sir! About a year and
a half ago--to the best of my belief, at the time when he first came to lodge at
the present rag and bottle shop--"
"That was the time!" says Krook with a nod.
"About a year and a half ago," says Mr. Snagsby, strengthened, "he came into
our place one morning after breakfast, and finding my little woman (which I name
Mrs. Snagsby when I use that appellation) in our shop, produced a specimen of
his handwriting and gave her to understand that he was in want of copying work
to do and was, not to put too fine a point upon it," a favourite apology for
plain speaking with Mr. Snagsby, which he always offers with a sort of
argumentative frankness, "hard up! My little woman is not in general partial to
strangers, particular--not to put too fine a point upon it--when they want
anything. But she was rather took by something about this person, whether by his
being unshaved, or by his hair being in want of attention, or by what other
ladies' reasons, I leave you to judge; and she accepted of the specimen, and
likewise of the address. My little woman hasn't a good ear for names," proceeds
Mr. Snagsby after consulting his cough of consideration behind his hand, "and
she considered Nemo equally the same as Nimrod. In consequence of which, she got
into a habit of saying to me at meals, 'Mr. Snagsby, you haven't found Nimrod
any work yet!' or 'Mr. Snagsby, why didn't you give that eight and thirty
Chancery folio in Jarndyce to Nimrod?' or such like. And that is the way he
gradually fell into job-work at our place; and that is the most I know of him
except that he was a quick hand, and a hand not sparing of night-work, and that
if you gave him out, say, five and forty folio on the Wednesday night, you would
have it brought in on the Thursday morning. All of which--" Mr. Snagsby
concludes by politely motioning with his hat towards the bed, as much as to add,
"I have no doubt my honourable friend would confirm if he were in a condition to
do it."
"Hadn't you better see," says Mr. Tulkinghorn to Krook, "whether he had any
papers that may enlighten you? There will be an inquest, and you will be asked
the question. You can read?"
"No, I can't," returns the old man with a sudden grin.
"Snagsby," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "look over the room for him. He will get
into some trouble or difficulty otherwise. Being here, I'll wait if you make
haste, and then I can testify on his behalf, if it should ever be necessary,
that all was fair and right. If you will hold the candle for Mr. Snagsby, my
friend, he'll soon see whether there is anything to help you."
"In the first place, here's an old portmanteau, sir," says Snagsby.
Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr. Tulkinghorn does not appear to have seen it
before, though he is standing so close to it, and though there is very little
else, heaven knows.
The marine-store merchant holds the light, and the law-stationer conducts the
search. The surgeon leans against the corner of the chimney-piece; Miss Flite
peeps and trembles just within the door. The apt old scholar of the old school,
with his dull black breeches tied with ribbons at the knees, his large black
waistcoat, his long- sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief
tied in the bow the peerage knows so well, stands in exactly the same place and
attitude.
There are some worthless articles of clothing in the old portmanteau; there
is a bundle of pawnbrokers' duplicates, those turnpike tickets on the road of
poverty; there is a crumpled paper, smelling of opium, on which are scrawled
rough memoranda--as, took, such a day, so many grains; took, such another day,
so many more-- begun some time ago, as if with the intention of being regularly
continued, but soon left off. There are a few dirty scraps of newspapers, all
referring to coroners' inquests; there is nothing else. They search the cupboard
and the drawer of the ink-splashed table. There is not a morsel of an old letter
or of any other writing in either. The young surgeon examines the dress on the
law- writer. A knife and some odd halfpence are all he finds. Mr. Snagsby's
suggestion is the practical suggestion after all, and the beadle must be called
in.
So the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle, and the rest come out of the
room. "Don't leave the cat there!" says the surgeon; "that won't do!" Mr. Krook
therefore drives her out before him, and she goes furtively downstairs, winding
her lithe tail and licking her lips.
"Good night!" says Mr. Tulkinghorn, and goes home to Allegory and meditation.
By this time the news has got into the court. Groups of its inhabitants
assemble to discuss the thing, and the outposts of the army of observation
(principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr. Krook's window, which they closely
invest. A policeman has already walked up to the room, and walked down again to
the door, where he stands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at
his base occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall back.
Mrs. Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking terms with Mrs. Piper
in consequence for an unpleasantness originating in young Perkins' having
"fetched" young Piper "a crack," renews her friendly intercourse on this
auspicious occasion. The potboy at the corner, who is a privileged amateur, as
possessing official knowledge of life and having to deal with drunken men
occasionally, exchanges confidential communications with the policeman and has
the appearance of an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and
unconfinable in station-houses. People talk across the court out of window, and
bare-headed scouts come hurrying in from Chancery Lane to know what's the
matter. The general feeling seems to be that it's a blessing Mr. Krook warn't
made away with first, mingled with a little natural disappointment that he was
not. In the midst of this sensation, the beadle arrives.
The beadle, though generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a
ridiculous institution, is not without a certain popularity for the moment, if
it were only as a man who is going to see the body. The policeman considers him
an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the barbarous watchmen times, but gives him
admission as something that must be borne with until government shall abolish
him. The sensation is heightened as the tidings spread from mouth to mouth that
the beadle is on the ground and has gone in.
By and by the beadle comes out, once more intensifying the sensation, which
has rather languished in the interval. He is understood to be in want of
witnesses for the inquest to-morrow who can tell the coroner and jury anything
whatever respecting the deceased. Is immediately referred to innumerable people
who can tell nothing whatever. Is made more imbecile by being constantly
informed that Mrs. Green's son "was a law-writer his-self and knowed him better
than anybody," which son of Mrs. Green's appears, on inquiry, to be at the
present time aboard a vessel bound for China, three months out, but considered
accessible by telegraph on application to the Lords of the Admiralty. Beadle
goes into various shops and parlours, examining the inhabitants, always shutting
the door first, and by exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy exasperating the
public. Policeman seen to smile to potboy. Public loses interest and undergoes
reaction. Taunts the beadle in shrill youthful voices with having boiled a boy,
choruses fragments of a popular song to that effect and importing that the boy
was made into soup for the workhouse. Policeman at last finds it necessary to
support the law and seize a vocalist, who is released upon the flight of the
rest on condition of his getting out of this then, come, and cutting it--a
condition he immediately observes. So the sensation dies off for the time; and
the unmoved policeman (to whom a little opium, more or less, is nothing), with
his shining hat, stiff stock, inflexible great-coat, stout belt and bracelet,
and all things fitting, pursues his lounging way with a heavy tread, beating the
palms of his white gloves one against the other and stopping now and then at a
street-corner to look casually about for anything between a lost child and a
murder.
Under cover of the night, the feeble-minded beadle comes flitting about
Chancery Lane with his summonses, in which every juror's name is wrongly spelt,
and nothing rightly spelt but the beadle's own name, which nobody can read or
wants to know. The summonses served and his witnesses forewarned, the beadle
goes to Mr. Krook's to keep a small appointment he has made with certain
paupers, who, presently arriving, are conducted upstairs, where they leave the
great eyes in the shutter something new to stare at, in that last shape which
earthly lodgings take for No one--and for Every one.
And all that night the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau; and the
lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain through five and forty
years, lies there with no more track behind him that any one can trace than a
deserted infant.
Next day the court is all alive--is like a fair, as Mrs. Perkins, more than
reconciled to Mrs. Piper, says in amicable conversation with that excellent
woman. The coroner is to sit in the first-floor room at the Sol's Arms, where
the Harmonic Meetings take place twice a week and where the chair is filled by a
gentleman of professional celebrity, faced by Little Swills, the comic vocalist,
who hopes (according to the bill in the window) that his friends will rally
round him and support first-rate talent. The Sol's Arms does a brisk stroke of
business all the morning. Even children so require sustaining under the general
excitement that a pieman who has established himself for the occasion at the
corner of the court says his brandy-balls go off like smoke. What time the
beadle, hovering between the door of Mr. Krook's establishment and the door of
the Sol's Arms, shows the curiosity in his keeping to a few discreet spirits and
accepts the compliment of a glass of ale or so in return.
At the appointed hour arrives the coroner, for whom the jurymen are waiting
and who is received with a salute of skittles from the good dry skittle-ground
attached to the Sol's Arms. The coroner frequents more public-houses than any
man alive. The smell of sawdust, beer, tobacco-smoke, and spirits is inseparable
in his vocation from death in its most awful shapes. He is conducted by the
beadle and the landlord to the Harmonic Meeting Room, where he puts his hat on
the piano and takes a Windsor-chair at the head of a long table formed of
several short tables put together and ornamented with glutinous rings in endless
involutions, made by pots and glasses. As many of the jury as can crowd together
at the table sit there. The rest get among the spittoons and pipes or lean
against the piano. Over the coroner's head is a small iron garland, the pendant
handle of a bell, which rather gives the majesty of the court the appearance of
going to be hanged presently.
Call over and swear the jury! While the ceremony is in progress, sensation is
created by the entrance of a chubby little man in a large shirt-collar, with a
moist eye and an inflamed nose, who modestly takes a position near the door as
one of the general public, but seems familiar with the room too. A whisper
circulates that this is Little Swills. It is considered not unlikely that he
will get up an imitation of the coroner and make it the principal feature of the
Harmonic Meeting in the evenlng.
"Well, gentlemen--" the coroner begins.
"Silence there, will you!" says the beadle. Not to the coroner, though it
might appear so.
"Well, gentlemen," resumes the coroner. "You are impanelled here to inquire
into the death of a certain man. Evidence will be given before you as to the
circumstances attending that death, and you will give your verdict according to
the--skittles; they must be stopped, you know, beadle!--evidence, and not
according to anything else. The first thing to be done is to view the body."
"Make way there!" cries the beadle.
So they go out in a loose procession, something after the manner of a
straggling funeral, and make their inspection in Mr. Krook's back second floor,
from which a few of the jurymen retire pale and precipitately. The beadle is
very careful that two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons (for
whose accommodation he has provided a special little table near the coroner in
the Harmonic Meeting Room) should see all that is to be seen. For they are the
public chroniclers of such inquiries by the line; and he is not superior to the
universal human infirmity, but hopes to read in print what "Mooney, the active
and intelligent beadle of the district," said and did and even aspires to see
the name of Mooney as familiarly and patronizingly mentioned as the name of the
hangman is, according to the latest examples.
Little Swills is waiting for the coroner and jury on their return. Mr.
Tulkinghorn, also. Mr. Tulkinghorn is received with distinction and seated near
the coroner between that high judicial officer, a bagatelle-board, and the
coal-box. The inquiry proceeds. The jury learn how the subject of their inquiry
died, and learn no more about him. "A very eminent solicitor is in attendance,
gentlemen," says the coroner, "who, I am informed, was accidentally present when
discovery of the death was made, but he could only repeat the evidence you have
already heard from the surgeon, the landlord, the lodger, and the law-stationer,
and it is not necessary to trouble him. Is anybody in attendance who knows
anything more?"
Mrs. Piper pushed forward by Mrs. Perkins. Mrs. Piper sworn.
Anastasia Piper, gentlemen. Married woman. Now, Mrs. Piper, what have you got
to say about this?
Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and without
punctuation, but not much to tell. Mrs. Piper lives in the court (which her
husband is a cabinet-maker), and it has long been well beknown among the
neighbours (counting from the day next but one before the half-baptizing of
Alexander James Piper aged eighteen months and four days old on accounts of not
being expected to live such was the sufferings gentlemen of that child in his
gums) as the plaintive--so Mrs. Piper insists on calling the deceased--was
reported to have sold himself. Thinks it was the plaintive's air in which that
report originatinin. See the plaintive often and considered as his air was
feariocious and not to be allowed to go about some children being timid (and if
doubted hoping Mrs. Perkins may be brought forard for she is here and will do
credit to her husband and herself and family). Has seen the plaintive wexed and
worrited by the children (for children they will ever be and you cannot expect
them specially if of playful dispositions to be Methoozellers which you was not
yourself). On accounts of this and his dark looks has often dreamed as she see
him take a pick-axe from his pocket and split Johnny's head (which the child
knows not fear and has repeatually called after him close at his eels). Never
however see the plaintive take a pick-axe or any other wepping far from it. Has
seen him hurry away when run and called after as if not partial to children and
never see him speak to neither child nor grown person at any time (excepting the
boy that sweeps the crossing down the lane over the way round the corner which
if he was here would tell you that he has been seen a-speaking to him frequent).
Says the coroner, is that boy here? Says the beadle, no, sir, he is not here.
Says the coroner, go and fetch him then. In the absence of the active and
intelligent, the coroner converses with Mr. Tulkinghorn.
Oh! Here's the boy, gentlemen!
Here he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very ragged. Now, boy! But stop a
minute. Caution. This boy must be put through a few preliminary paces.
Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don't know that everybody has two
names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don't know that Jo is short for a longer
name. Thinks it long enough for HIM. HE don't find no fault with it. Spell it?
No. HE can't spell it. No father, no mother, no friends. Never been to school.
What's home? Knows a broom's a broom, and knows it's wicked to tell a lie. Don't
recollect who told him about the broom or about the lie, but knows both. Can't
exactly say what'll be done to him arter he's dead if he tells a lie to the
gentlemen here, but believes it'll be something wery bad to punish him, and
serve him right--and so he'll tell the truth.
"This won't do, gentlemen!" says the coroner with a melancholy shake of the
head.
"Don't you think you can receive his evidence, sir?" asks an attentive
juryman.
"Out of the question," says the coroner. "You have heard the boy. 'Can't
exactly say' won't do, you know. We can't take THAT in a court of justice,
gentlemen. It's terrible depravity. Put the boy aside."
Boy put aside, to the great edification of the audience, especially of Little
Swills, the comic vocalist.
Now. Is there any other witness? No other witness.
Very well, gentlemen! Here's a man unknown, proved to have been in the habit
of taking opium in large quantities for a year and a half, found dead of too
much opium. If you think you have any evidence to lead you to the conclusion
that he committed suicide, you will come to that conclusion. If you think it is
a case of accidental death, you will find a verdict accordingly.
Verdict accordingly. Accidental death. No doubt. Gentlemen, you are
discharged. Good afternoon.
While the coroner buttons his great-coat, Mr. Tulkinghorn and he give private
audience to the rejected witness in a corner.
That graceless creature only knows that the dead man (whom he recognized just
now by his yellow face and black hair) was sometimes hooted and pursued about
the streets. That one cold winter night when he, the boy, was shivering in a
doorway near his crossing, the man turned to look at him, and came back, and
having questioned him and found that he had not a friend in the world, said,
"Neither have I. Not one!" and gave him the price of a supper and a night's
lodging. That the man had often spoken to him since and asked him whether he
slept sound at night, and how he bore cold and hunger, and whether he ever
wished to die, and similar strange questions. That when the man had no money, he
would say in passing, "I am as poor as you to-day, Jo," but that when he had
any, he had always (as the boy most heartily believes) been glad to give him
some.
"He was wery good to me," says the boy, wiping his eyes with his wretched
sleeve. "Wen I see him a-layin' so stritched out just now, I wished he could
have heerd me tell him so. He wos wery good to me, he wos!"
As he shuffles downstairs, Mr. Snagsby, lying in wait for him, puts a
half-crown in his hand. "If you ever see me coming past your crossing with my
little woman--I mean a lady--" says Mr. Snagsby with his finger on his nose,
"don't allude to it!"
For some little time the jurymen hang about the Sol's Arms colloquially. In
the sequel, half-a-dozen are caught up in a cloud of pipe-smoke that pervades
the parlour of the Sol's Arms; two stroll to Hampstead; and four engage to go
half-price to the play at night, and top up with oysters. Little Swills is
treated on several hands. Being asked what he thinks of the proceedings,
characterizes them (his strength lying in a slangular direction) as "a rummy
start." The landlord of the Sol's Arms, finding Little Swills so popular,
commends him highly to the jurymen and public, observing that for a song in
character he don't know his equal and that that man's character-wardrobe would
fill a cart.
Thus, gradually the Sol's Arms melts into the shadowy night and then flares
out of it strong in gas. The Harmonic Meeting hour arriving, the gentleman of
professional celebrity takes the chair, is faced (red-faced) by Little Swills;
their friends rally round them and support first-rate talent. In the zenith of
the evening, Little Swills says, "Gentlemen, if you'll permit me, I'll attempt a
short description of a scene of real life that came off here to-day." Is much
applauded and encouraged; goes out of the room as Swills; comes in as the
coroner (not the least in the world like him); describes the inquest, with
recreative intervals of piano-forte accompaniment, to the refrain: With his (the
coroner's) tippy tol li doll, tippy tol lo doll, tippy tol li doll, Dee!
The jingling piano at last is silent, and the Harmonic friends rally round
their pillows. Then there is rest around the lonely figure, now laid in its last
earthly habitation; and it is watched by the gaunt eyes in the shutters through
some quiet hours of night. If this forlorn man could have been prophetically
seen lying here by the mother at whose breast he nestled, a little child, with
eyes upraised to her loving face, and soft hand scarcely knowing how to close
upon the neck to which it crept, what an impossibility the vision would have
seemed! Oh, if in brighter days the now- extinguished fire within him ever
burned for one woman who held him in her heart, where is she, while these ashes
are above the ground!
It is anything but a night of rest at Mr. Snagsby's, in Cook's Court, where
Guster murders sleep by going, as Mr. Snagsby himself allows--not to put too
fine a point upon it--out of one fit into twenty. The occasion of this seizure
is that Guster has a tender heart and a susceptible something that possibly
might have been imagination, but for Tooting and her patron saint. Be it what it
may, now, it was so direfully impressed at tea-time by Mr. Snagsby's account of
the inquiry at which he had assisted that at supper-time she projected herself
into the kitchen, preceded by a flying Dutch cheese, and fell into a fit of
unusual duration, which she only came out of to go into another, and another,
and so on through a chain of fits, with short intervals between, of which she
has pathetically availed herself by consuming them in entreaties to Mrs. Snagsby
not to give her warning "when she quite comes to," and also in appeals to the
whole establishment to lay her down on the stones and go to bed. Hence, Mr.
Snagsby, at last hearing the cock at the little dairy in Cursitor Street go into
that disinterested ecstasy of his on the subject of daylight, says, drawing a
long breath, though the most patient of men, "I thought you was dead, I am
sure!"
What question this enthusiastic fowl supposes he settles when he strains
himself to such an extent, or why he should thus crow (so men crow on various
triumphant public occasions, however) about what cannot be of any moment to him,
is his affair. It is enough that daylight comes, morning comes, noon comes.
Then the active and intelligent, who has got into the morning papers as such,
comes with his pauper company to Mr. Krook's and bears off the body of our dear
brother here departed to a hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, whence
malignant diseases are communicated to the bodies of our dear brothers and
sisters who have not departed, while our dear brothers and sisters who hang
about official back-stairs--would to heaven they HAD departed!--are very
complacent and agreeable. Into a beastly scrap of ground which a Turk would
reject as a savage abomination and a Caffre would shudder at, they bring our
dear brother here departed to receive Christian burial.
With houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel of
a court gives access to the iron gate--with every villainy of life in action
close on death, and every poisonous element of death in action close on
life--here they lower our dear brother down a foot or two, here sow him in
corruption, to be raised in corruption: an avenging ghost at many a
sick-bedside, a shameful testimony to future ages how civilization and barbarism
walked this boastful island together.
Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon or stay too long by
such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into the windows of the ugly
houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at least with this dread scene
shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so sullenly above the iron gate, on which
the poisoned air deposits its witch-ointment slimy to the touch! It is well that
you should call to every passerby, "Look here!"
With the night comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court to the
outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands and looks in between
the bars, stands looking in for a little while.
It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step and makes the
archway clean. It does so very busily and trimly, looks in again a little while,
and so departs.
Jo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a rejected witness, who "can't exactly
say" what will be done to him in greater hands than men's, thou art not quite in
outer darkness. There is something like a distant ray of light in thy muttered
reason for this: "He wos wery good to me, he wos!"
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