Now do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and
buttons who attended the last coroner's inquest at the Sol's Arms reappear in
the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly fetched by
the active and intelligent beadle), and institute perquisitions through the
court, and dive into the Sol's parlour, and write with ravenous little pens on
tissue-paper. Now do they note down, in the watches of the night, how the
neighbourhood of Chancery Lane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a
state of the most intense agitation and excitement by the following alarming and
horrible discovery. Now do they set forth how it will doubtless be remembered
that some time back a painful sensation was created in the public mind by a case
of mysterious death from opium occurring in the first floor of the house
occupied as a rag, bottle, and general marine store shop, by an eccentric
individual of intemperate habits, far advanced in life, named Krook; and how, by
a remarkable coincidence, Krook was examined at the inquest, which it may be
recollected was held on that occasion at the Sol's Arms, a well-conducted tavern
immediately adjoining the premises in question on the west side and licensed to
a highly respectable landlord, Mr. James George Bogsby. Now do they show (in as
many words as possible) how during some hours of yesterday evening a very
peculiar smell was observed by the inhabitants of the court, in which the
tragical occurrence which forms the subject of that present account transpired;
and which odour was at one time so powerful that Mr. Swills, a comic vocalist
professionally engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby, has himself stated to our reporter
that he mentioned to Miss M. Melvilleson, a lady of some pretensions to musical
ability, likewise engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby to sing at a series of concerts
called Harmonic Assemblies, or Meetings, which it would appear are held at the
Sol's Arms under Mr. Bogsby's direction pursuant to the Act of George the
Second, that he (Mr. Swills) found his voice seriously affected by the impure
state of the atmosphere, his jocose expression at the time being that he was
like an empty post-office, for he hadn't a single note in him. How this account
of Mr. Swills is entirely corroborated by two intelligent married females
residing in the same court and known respectively by the names of Mrs. Piper and
Mrs. Perkins, both of whom observed the foetid effluvia and regarded them as
being emitted from the premises in the occupation of Krook, the unfortunate
deceased. All this and a great deal more the two gentlemen who have formed an
amicable partnership in the melancholy catastrophe write down on the spot; and
the boy population of the court (out of bed in a moment) swarm up the shutters
of the Sol's Arms parlour, to behold the tops of their heads while they are
about it.
The whole court, adult as well as boy, is sleepless for that night, and can
do nothing but wrap up its many heads, and talk of the ill- fated house, and
look at it. Miss Flite has been bravely rescued from her chamber, as if it were
in flames, and accommodated with a bed at the Sol's Arms. The Sol neither turns
off its gas nor shuts its door all night, for any kind of public excitement
makes good for the Sol and causes the court to stand in need of comfort. The
house has not done so much in the stomachic article of cloves or in
brandy-and-water warm since the inquest. The moment the pot-boy heard what had
happened, he rolled up his shirt-sleeves tight to his shoulders and said,
"There'll be a run upon us!" In the first outcry, young Piper dashed off for the
fire-engines and returned in triumph at a jolting gallop perched up aloft on the
Phoenix and holding on to that fabulous creature with all his might in the midst
of helmets and torches. One helmet remains behind after careful investigation of
all chinks and crannies and slowly paces up and down before the house in company
with one of the two policemen who have likewise been left in charge thereof. To
this trio everybody in the court possessed of sixpence has an insatiate desire
to exhibit hospitality in a liquid form.
Mr. Weevle and his friend Mr. Guppy are within the bar at the Sol and are
worth anything to the Sol that the bar contains if they will only stay there.
"This is not a time, says Mr. Bogsby, "to haggle about money," though he looks
something sharply after it, over the counter; "give your orders, you two
gentlemen, and you're welcome to whatever you put a name to."
Thus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr. Weevle especially) put names to so
many things that in course of time they find it difficult to put a name to
anything quite distinctly, though they still relate to all new-comers some
version of the night they have had of it, and of what they said, and what they
thought, and what they saw. Meanwhile, one or other of the policemen often flits
about the door, and pushing it open a little way at the full length of his arm,
looks in from outer gloom. Not that he has any suspicions, but that he may as
well know what they are up to in there.
Thus night pursues its leaden course, finding the court still out of bed
through the unwonted hours, still treating and being treated, still conducting
itself similarly to a court that has had a little money left it unexpectedly.
Thus night at length with slow-retreating steps departs, and the lamp-lighter
going his rounds, like an executioner to a despotic king, strikes off the little
heads of fire that have aspired to lessen the darkness. Thus the day cometh,
whether or no.
And the day may discern, even with its dim London eye, that the court has
been up all night. Over and above the faces that have fallen drowsily on tables
and the heels that lie prone on hard floors instead of beds, the brick and
mortar physiognomy of the very court itself looks worn and jaded. And now the
neighbourhood, waking up and beginning to hear of what has happened, comes
streaming in, half dressed, to ask questions; and the two policemen and the
helmet (who are far less impressible externally than the court) have enough to
do to keep the door.
"Good gracious, gentlemen!" says Mr. Snagsby, coming up. "What's this I
hear!"
"Why, it's true," returns one of the policemen. "That's what it is. Now move
on here, come!"
"Why, good gracious, gentlemen," says Mr. Snagsby, somewhat promptly backed
away, "I was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven o'clock in
conversation with the young man who lodges here."
"Indeed?" returns the policeman. "You will find the young man next door then.
Now move on here, some of you,"
"Not hurt, I hope?" says Mr. Snagsby.
"Hurt? No. What's to hurt him!"
Mr. Snagsby, wholly unable to answer this or any question in his troubled
mind, repairs to the Sol's Arms and finds Mr. Weevle languishing over tea and
toast with a considerable expression on him of exhausted excitement and
exhausted tobacco-smoke.
"And Mr. Guppy likewise!" quoth Mr. Snagsby. "Dear, dear, dear! What a fate
there seems in all this! And my lit--"
Mr. Snagsby's power of speech deserts him in the formation of the words "my
little woman." For to see that injured female walk into the Sol's Arms at that
hour of the morning and stand before the beer-engine, with her eyes fixed upon
him like an accusing spirit, strikes him dumb.
"My dear," says Mr. Snagsby when his tongue is loosened, "will you take
anything? A little--not to put too fine a point upon it--drop of shrub?"
"No," says Mrs. Snagsby.
"My love, you know these two gentlemen?"
"Yes!" says Mrs. Snagsby, and in a rigid manner acknowledges their presence,
still fixing Mr. Snagsby with her eye.
The devoted Mr. Snagsby cannot bear this treatment. He takes Mrs. Snagsby by
the hand and leads her aside to an adjacent cask.
"My little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don't do it."
"I can't help my looks," says Mrs. Snagsby, "and if I could I wouldn't."
Mr. Snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoins, "Wouldn't you really, my
dear?" and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble and says, "This is a
dreadful mystery, my love!" still fearfully disconcerted by Mrs. Snagsby's eye.
"It IS," returns Mrs. Snagsby, shaking her head, "a dreadful mystery."
"My little woman," urges Mr. Snagsby in a piteous manner, "don't for
goodness' sake speak to me with that bitter expression and look at me in that
searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do it. Good Lord, you don't
suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any person, my dear?"
"I can't say," returns Mrs. Snagsby.
On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr. Snagsby "can't say"
either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may have had something to
do with it. He has had something--he don't know what--to do with so much in this
connexion that is mysterious that it is possible he may even be implicated,
without knowing it, in the present transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead
with his handkerchief and gasps.
"My life," says the unhappy stationer, "would you have any objections to
mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your conduct, you
come into a wine-vaults before breakfast?"
"Why do YOU come here?" inquires Mrs. Snagsby.
"My dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has happened
to the venerable party who has been--combusted." Mr. Snagsby has made a pause to
suppress a groan. "I should then have related them to you, my love, over your
French roll."
"I dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr. Snagsby."
"Every--my lit--"
"I should be glad," says Mrs. Snagsby after contemplating his increased
confusion with a severe and sinister smile, "if you would come home with me; I
think you may be safer there, Mr. Snagsby, than anywhere else."
"My love, I don't know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to go."
Mr. Snagsby casts his eye forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs. Weevle and
Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction with which he sees them
uninjured, and accompanies Mrs. Snagsby from the Sol's Arms. Before night his
doubt whether he may not be responsible for some inconceivable part in the
catastrophe which is the talk of the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into
certainty by Mrs. Snagsby's pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His mental
sufferings are so great that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself
up to justice and requiring to be cleared if innocent and punished with the
utmost rigour of the law if guilty.
Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into Lincoln's
Inn to take a little walk about the square and clear as many of the dark cobwebs
out of their brains as a little walk may.
"There can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony," says Mr. Guppy
after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the square, "for a word or
two between us upon a point on which we must, with very little delay, come to an
understanding."
"Now, I tell you what, William G.!" returns the other, eyeing his companion
with a bloodshot eye. "If it's a point of conspiracy, you needn't take the
trouble to mention it. I have had enough of that, and I ain't going to have any
more. We shall have YOU taking fire next or blowing up with a bang."
This supposititious phenomenon is so very disagreeable to Mr. Guppy that his
voice quakes as he says in a moral way, "Tony, I should have thought that what
we went through last night would have been a lesson to you never to be personal
any more as long as you lived." To which Mr. Weevle returns, "William, I should
have thought it would have been a lesson to YOU never to conspire any more as
long as you lived." To which Mr. Guppy says, "Who's conspiring?" To which Mr.
Jobling replies, "Why, YOU are!" To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "No, I am not." To
which Mr. Jobling retorts again, "Yes, you are!" To which Mr. Guppy retorts,
"Who says so?" To which Mr. Jobling retorts, "I say so!" To which Mr. Guppy
retorts, "Oh, indeed?" To which Mr. Jobling retorts, "Yes, indeed!" And both
being now in a heated state, they walk on silently for a while to cool down
again.
"Tony," says Mr. Guppy then, "if you heard your friend out instead of flying
at him, you wouldn't fall into mistakes. But your temper is hasty and you are
not considerate. Possessing in yourself, Tony, all that is calculated to charm
the eye--"
"Oh! Blow the eye!" cries Mr. Weevle, cutting him short. "Say what you have
got to say!"
Finding his friend in this morose and material condition, Mr. Guppy only
expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of injury in which he
recommences, "Tony, when I say there is a point on which we must come to an
understanding pretty soon, I say so quite apart from any kind of conspiring,
however innocent. You know it is professionally arranged beforehand in all cases
that are tried what facts the witnesses are to prove. Is it or is it not
desirable that we should know what facts we are to prove on the inquiry into the
death of this unfortunate old mo--gentleman?" (Mr. Guppy was going to say
"mogul," but thinks "gentleman" better suited to the circumstances.)
"What facts? THE facts."
"The facts bearing on that inquiry. Those are"--Mr. Guppy tells them off on
his fingers--"what we knew of his habits, when you saw him last, what his
condition was then, the discovery that we made, and how we made it."
"Yes," says Mr. Weevle. "Those are about the facts."
"We made the discovery in consequence of his having, in his eccentric way, an
appointment with you at twelve o'clock at night, when you were to explain some
writing to him as you had often done before on account of his not being able to
read. I, spending the evening with you, was called down--and so forth. The
inquiry being only into the circumstances touching the death of the deceased,
it's not necessary to go beyond these facts, I suppose you'll agree?"
"No!" returns Mr. Weevle. "I suppose not."
"And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?" says the injured Guppy.
"No," returns his friend; "if it's nothing worse than this, I withdraw the
observation."
"Now, Tony," says Mr. Guppy, taking his arm again and walking him slowly on,
"I should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you have yet thought over the
many advantages of your continuing to live at that place?"
"What do you mean?" says Tony, stopping.
"Whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to
live at that place?" repeats Mr. Guppy, walking him on again.
"At what place? THAT place?" pointing in the direction of the rag and bottle
shop.
Mr. Guppy nods.
"Why, I wouldn't pass another night there for any consideration that you
could offer me," says Mr. Weevle, haggardly staring.
"Do you mean it though, Tony?"
"Mean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I feel as if I do; I know that," says
Mr. Weevle with a very genuine shudder.
"Then the possibility or probability--for such it must be considered--of your
never being disturbed in possession of those effects lately belonging to a lone
old man who seemed to have no relation in the world, and the certainty of your
being able to find out what he really had got stored up there, don't weigh with
you at all against last night, Tony, if I understand you?" says Mr. Guppy,
biting his thumb with the appetite of vexation.
"Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow's living there?" cries Mr.
Weevle indignantly. "Go and live there yourself."
"Oh! I, Tony!" says Mr. Guppy, soothing him. "I have never lived there and
couldn't get a lodging there now, whereas you have got one."
"You are welcome to it," rejoins his friend, "and--ugh!--you may make
yourself at home in it."
"Then you really and truly at this point," says Mr. Guppy, "give up the whole
thing, if I understand you, Tony?"
"You never," returns Tony with a most convincing steadfastness, "said a truer
word in all your life. I do!"
While they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the square, on the
box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself manifest to the public. Inside
the coach, and consequently not so manifest to the multitude, though
sufficiently so to the two friends, for the coach stops almost at their feet,
are the venerable Mr. Smallweed and Mrs. Smallweed, accompanied by their
granddaughter Judy.
An air of haste and excitement pervades the party, and as the tall hat
(surmounting Mr. Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr. Smallweed the elder pokes
his head out of window and bawls to Mr. Guppy, "How de do, sir! How de do!"
"What do Chick and his family want here at this time of the morning, I
wonder!" says Mr. Guppy, nodding to his familiar.
"My dear sir," cries Grandfather Smallweed, "would you do me a favour? Would
you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry me into the public-house in
the court, while Bart and his sister bring their grandmother along? Would you do
an old man that good turn, sir?"
Mr. Guppy looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, "The public- house in
the court?" And they prepare to bear the venerable burden to the Sol's Arms.
"There's your fare!" says the patriarch to the coachman with a fierce grin
and shaking his incapable fist at him. "Ask me for a penny more, and I'll have
my lawful revenge upon you. My dear young men, be easy with me, if you please.
Allow me to catch you round the neck. I won't squeeze you tighter than I can
help. Oh, Lord! Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones!"
It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr. Weevle presents an apoplectic
appearance before half the distance is accomplished. With no worse aggravation
of his symptoms, however, than the utterance of divers croaking sounds
expressive of obstructed respiration, he fulils his share of the porterage and
the benevolent old gentleman is deposited by his own desire in the parlour of
the Sol's Arms.
"Oh, Lord!" gasps Mr. Smallweed, looking about him, breathless, from an
arm-chair. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones and back! Oh, my aches and pains! Sit
down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling poll-parrot! Sit down!"
This little apostrophe to Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a propensity on the
part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds herself on her feet to amble
about and "set" to inanimate objects, accompanying herself with a chattering
noise, as in a witch dance. A nervous affection has probably as much to do with
these demonstrations as any imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but on the
present occasion they are so particularly lively in connexion with the Windsor
arm-chair, fellow to that in which Mr. Smallweed is seated, that she only quite
desists when her grandchildren have held her down in it, her lord in the
meanwhile bestowing upon her, with great volubility, the endearing epithet of "a
pig-headed jackdaw," repeated a surprising number of times.
"My dear sir," Grandfather Smallweed then proceeds, addressing Mr. Guppy,
"there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it, either of you?"
"Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it."
"You discovered it. You two discovered it! Bart, THEY discovered it!"
The two discoverers stare at the Smallweeds, who return the compliment.
"My dear friends," whines Grandfather Smallweed, putting out both his hands,
"I owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the melancholy office of
discovering the ashes of Mrs. Smallweed's brother."
"Eh?" says Mr. Guppy.
"Mrs. Smallweed's brother, my dear friend--her only relation. We were not on
terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never WOULD be on terms. He was not
fond of us. He was eccentric--he was very eccentric. Unless he has left a will
(which is not at all likely) I shall take out letters of administration. I have
come down to look after the property; it must be sealed up, it must be
protected. I have come down," repeats Grandfather Smallweed, hooking the air
towards him with all his ten fingers at once, "to look after the property."
"I think, Small," says the disconsolate Mr. Guppy, "you might have mentioned
that the old man was your uncle."
"You two were so close about him that I thought you would like me to be the
same," returns that old bird with a secretly glistening eye. "Besides, I wasn't
proud of him."
"Besides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or not," says
Judy. Also with a secretly glistening eye.
"He never saw me in his life to know me," observed Small; "I don't know why I
should introduce HIM, I am sure!"
"No, he never communicated with us, which is to be deplored," the old
gentleman strikes in, "but I have come to look after the property--to look over
the papers, and to look after the property. We shall make good our title. It is
in the hands of my solicitor. Mr. Tulkinghorn, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, over the
way there, is so good as to act as my solicitor; and grass don't grow under HIS
feet, I can tell ye. Krook was Mrs. Smallweed's only brother; she had no
relation but Krook, and Krook had no relation but Mrs. Smallweed. I am speaking
of your brother, you brimstone black- beetle, that was seventy-six years of
age."
Mrs. Smallweed instantly begins to shake her head and pipe up, "Seventy-six
pound seven and sevenpence! Seventysix thousand bags of money! Seventy-six
hundred thousand million of parcels of bank- notes!"
"Will somebody give me a quart pot?" exclaims her exasperated husband,
looking helplessly about him and finding no missile within his reach. "Will
somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will somebody hand me anything hard and
bruising to pelt at her? You hag, you cat, you dog, you brimstone barker!" Here
Mr. Smallweed, wrought up to the highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually
throws Judy at her grandmother in default of anything else, by butting that
young virgin at the old lady with such force as he can muster and then dropping
into his chair in a heap.
"Shake me up, somebody, if you'll he so good," says the voice from within the
faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed. "I have come to look
after the property. Shake me up, and call in the police on duty at the next
house to be explained to about the property. My solicitor will be here presently
to protect the property. Transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall
touch the property!" As his dutiful grandchildren set him up, panting, and
putting him through the usual restorative process of shaking and punching, he
still repeats like an echo, "The--the property! The property! Property!"
Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy look at each other, the former as having
relinquished the whole affair, the latter with a discomfited countenance as
having entertained some lingering expectations yet. But there is nothing to be
done in opposition to the Smallweed interest. Mr. Tulkinghorn's clerk comes down
from his official pew in the chambers to mention to the police that Mr.
Tulkinghorn is answerable for its being all correct about the next of kin and
that the papers and effects will be formally taken possession of in due time and
course. Mr. Smallweed is at once permitted so far to assert his supremacy as to
be carried on a visit of sentiment into the next house and upstairs into Miss
Flite's deserted room, where he looks like a hideous bird of prey newly added to
her aviary.
The arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court still makes
good for the Sol and keeps the court upon its mettle. Mrs. Piper and Mrs.
Perkins think it hard upon the young man if there really is no will, and
consider that a handsome present ought to be made him out of the estate. Young
Piper and young Perkins, as members of that restless juvenile circle which is
the terror of the foot-passengers in Chancery Lane, crumble into ashes behind
the pump and under the archway all day long, where wild yells and hootings take
place over their remains. Little Swills and Miss M. Melvilleson enter into
affable conversation with their patrons, feeling that these unusual occurrences
level the barriers between professionals and non-professionals. Mr. Bogsby puts
up "The popular song of King Death, with chorus by the whole strength of the
company," as the great Harmonic feature of the week and announces in the bill
that "J. G. B. is induced to do so at a considerable extra expense in
consequence of a wish which has been very generally expressed at the bar by a
large body of respectable individuals and in homage to a late melancholy event
which has aroused so much sensation." There is one point connected with the
deceased upon which the court is particularly anxious, namely, that the fiction
of a full-sized coffin should be preserved, though there is so little to put in
it. Upon the undertaker's stating in the Sol's bar in the course of the day that
he has received orders to construct "a six-footer," the general solicitude is
much relieved, and it is considered that Mr. Smallweed's conduct does him great
honour.
Out of the court, and a long way out of it, there is considerable excitement
too, for men of science and philosophy come to look, and carriages set down
doctors at the corner who arrive with the same intent, and there is more learned
talk about inflammable gases and phosphuretted hydrogen than the court has ever
imagined. Some of these authorities (of course the wisest) hold with indignation
that the deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner; and being
reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the evidence for such
deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the Philosophical Transactions; and also
of a book not quite unknown on English medical jurisprudence; and likewise of
the Italian case of the Countess Cornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one
Bianchini, prebendary of Verona, who wrote a scholarly work or so and was
occasionally heard of in his time as having gleams of reason in him; and also of
the testimony of Messrs. Fodere and Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen who WOULD
investigate the subject; and further, of the corroborative testimony of Monsieur
Le Cat, a rather celebrated French surgeon once upon a time, who had the
unpoliteness to live in a house where such a case occurred and even to write an
account of it--still they regard the late Mr. Krook's obstinacy in going out of
the world by any such by-way as wholly unjustifiable and personally offensive.
The less the court understands of all this, the more the court likes it, and the
greater enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the Sol's Arms. Then there
comes the artist of a picture newspaper, with a foreground and figures ready
drawn for anything from a wreck on the Cornish coast to a review in Hyde Park or
a meeting in Manchester, and in Mrs. Perkins' own room, memorable evermore, he
then and there throws in upon the block Mr. Krook's house, as large as life; in
fact, considerably larger, making a very temple of it. Similarly, being
permitted to look in at the door of the fatal chamber, he depicts that apartment
as three-quarters of a mile long by fifty yards high, at which the court is
particularly charmed. All this time the two gentlemen before mentioned pop in
and out of every house and assist at the philosophical disputations--go
everywhere and listen to everybody--and yet are always diving into the Sol's
parlour and writing with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper.
At last come the coroner and his inquiry, like as before, except that the
coroner cherishes this case as being out of the common way and tells the
gentlemen of the jury, in his private capacity, that "that would seem to be an
unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a destined house; but so we sometimes find
it, and these are mysteries we can't account for!" After which the six-footer
comes into action and is much admired.
In all these proceedings Mr. Guppy has so slight a part, except when he gives
his evidence, that he is moved on like a private individual and can only haunt
the secret house on the outside, where he has the mortification of seeing Mr.
Smallweed padlocking the door, and of bitterly knowing himself to be shut out.
But before these proceedings draw to a close, that is to say, on the night next
after the catastrophe, Mr. Guppy has a thing to say that must be said to Lady
Dedlock.
For which reason, with a sinking heart and with that hang-dog sense of guilt
upon him which dread and watching enfolded in the Sol's Arms have produced, the
young man of the name of Guppy presents himself at the town mansion at about
seven o'clock in the evening and requests to see her ladyship. Mercury replies
that she is going out to dinner; don't he see the carriage at the door? Yes, he
does see the carriage at the door; but he wants to see my Lady too.
Mercury is disposed, as he will presently declare to a fellow- gentleman in
waiting, "to pitch into the young man"; but his instructions are positive.
Therefore he sulkily supposes that the young man must come up into the library.
There he leaves the young man in a large room, not over-light, while he makes
report of him.
Mr. Guppy looks into the shade in all directions, discovering everywhere a
certain charred and whitened little heap of coal or wood. Presently he hears a
rustling. Is it--? No, it's no ghost, but fair flesh and blood, most brilliantly
dressed.
"I have to beg your ladyship's pardon," Mr. Guppy stammers, very downcast.
"This is an inconvenient time--"
"I told you, you could come at any time." She takes a chair, looking straight
at him as on the last occasion.
"Thank your ladyship. Your ladyship is very affable."
"You can sit down." There is not much affability in her tone.
"I don't know, your ladyship, that it's worth while my sitting down and
detaining you, for I--I have not got the letters that I mentioned when I had the
honour of waiting on your ladyship."
"Have you come merely to say so?"
"Merely to say so, your ladyship." Mr. Guppy besides being depressed,
disappointed, and uneasy, is put at a further disadvantage by the splendour and
beauty of her appearance.
She knows its influence perfectly, has studied it too well to miss a grain of
its effect on any one. As she looks at him so steadily and coldly, he not only
feels conscious that he has no guide in the least perception of what is really
the complexion of her thoughts, but also that he is being every moment, as it
were, removed further and further from her.
She will not speak, it is plain. So he must.
"In short, your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy like a meanly penitent thief, "the
person I was to have had the letters of, has come to a sudden end, and--" He
stops. Lady Dedlock calmly finishes the sentence.
"And the letters are destroyed with the person?"
Mr. Guppy would say no if he could--as he is unable to hide.
"I believe so, your ladyship."
If he could see the least sparkle of relief in her face now? No, he could see
no such thing, even if that brave outside did not utterly put him away, and he
were not looking beyond it and about it.
He falters an awkward excuse or two for his failure.
"Is this all you have to say?" inquires Lady Dedlock, having heard him
out--or as nearly out as he can stumble.
Mr. Guppy thinks that's all.
"You had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me, this being
the last time you will have the opportunity."
Mr. Guppy is quite sure. And indeed he has no such wish at present, by any
means.
"That is enough. I will dispense with excuses. Good evening to you!" And she
rings for Mercury to show the young man of the name of Guppy out.
But in that house, in that same moment, there happens to be an old man of the
name of Tulkinghorn. And that old man, coming with his quiet footstep to the
library, has his hand at that moment on the handle of the door--comes in--and
comes face to face with the young man as he is leaving the room.
One glance between the old man and the lady, and for an instant the blind
that is always down flies up. Suspicion, eager and sharp, looks out. Another
instant, close again.
"I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. I beg your pardon a thousand times. It is
so very unusual to find you here at this hour. I supposed the room was empty. I
beg your pardon!"
"Stay!" She negligently calls him back. "Remain here, I beg. I am going out
to dinner. I have nothing more to say to this young man!"
The disconcerted young man bows, as he goes out, and cringingly hopes that
Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields is well.
"Aye, aye?" says the lawyer, looking at him from under his bent brows, though
he has no need to look again--not he. "From Kenge and Carboy's, surely?"
"Kenge and Carboy's, Mr. Tulkinghorn. Name of Guppy, sir."
"To be sure. Why, thank you, Mr. Guppy, I am very well!"
"Happy to hear it, sir. You can't be too well, sir, for the credit of the
profession."
"Thank you, Mr. Guppy!"
Mr. Guppy sneaks away. Mr. Tulkinghorn, such a foil in his old- fashioned
rusty black to Lady Dedlock's brightness, hands her down the staircase to her
carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and rubs it a good deal in the course of
the evening.
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