Bleak House

With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in verse, Mr. Chadband stalks to the table, and, before taking a chair, lifts up his admonitory hand.

'My friends,' says he, 'what is this which we now behold as being spread before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my friends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my friends? Because we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we are but of the earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly, my friends? We cannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?'

Mr. Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, 'No wings.' But is immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby.

'I say, my friends,' pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and obliterating Mr. Snagsby's suggestion, 'why can we not fly? Is it because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends, without strength? We could not. What should we do without strength, my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground. Then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necessary to our limbs? Is it,' says Chad-band, glancing over the table, 'from bread in various forms, from butter which is churned from the milk which is yielded untoe us by the cow, from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from sausage, and from such like? It is. Then let us partake of the good things which are set before us!'

The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr. Chadband's piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after this fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of their determination to persecute, since it must be within everybody's experience, that the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and much admired.

Mr. Chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down at Mr. Snagsby's table, and lays about him prodigiously. The conversion of nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already mentioned, appears to be a process so inseparable from the constitution of this exemplary vessel, that in beginning to eat and drink, he may be described as always becoming a kind of considerable Oil Mills, or other large factory for the production of that article on a wholesale scale. On the present evening of the long vacation, in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, he does such a powerful stroke of business, that the warehouse appears to be quite full when the works cease.

At this period of the entertainment, Guster, who has never recovered her first failure, but has neglected no possible or impossible means of bringing the establishment and herself into contempt – among which may be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly performing clashing military music on Mr. Chad-band's head with plates, and afterwards crowning that gentleman with muffins – at which period of the entertainment, Guster whispers Mr. Snagsby that he is wanted.

'And being wanted in the – not to put too fine a point upon it – in the shop!' says Mr. Snagsby, rising, 'perhaps this good company will excuse me for half a minute.'

Mr. Snagsby descends, and finds the two 'prentices intently contemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the arm.

'Why, bless my heart,' says Mr. Snagsby, 'what's the matter!'

'This boy,' says the constable, 'although he's repeatedly told to, won't move on–'

'I'm always a-moving on, sir,' cries the boy, wiping away his grimy tears with his arm. 'I've always been a-moving and a-moving on, ever since I was born. Where can I possible move to, sir, more nor I do move!'

'He won't move on,' says the constable, calmly, with a slight professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in his stiff stock, 'although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and therefore I am obliged to take him into custody. He's as obstinate a young gonoph as I know. He WON'T move on.'

'O my eye! Where can I move to!' cries the boy, clutching quite desperately at his hair, and beating his bare feet upon the floor of Mr. Snagsby's passage.

'Don't you come none of that, or I shall make blessed short work of you!' says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. 'My instructions are, that you are to move on. I have told you so five hundred times.'

'But where?' cries the boy.

'Well! Really, constable, you know,' says Mr. Snagsby wistfully, and coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and doubt; 'really that does seem a question. Where, you know?'

'My instructions don't go to that,' replies the constable. 'My instructions are that this boy is to move on.'

Do you hear, Jo? It is nothing to you or to any one else, that the great lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some few years, in this business, to set you the example of moving on. The one grand recipe remains for you – the profound philosophical prescription – the be-all and the end-all of your strange existence upon earth. Move on! You are by no means to move off, Jo, for the great lights can't at all agree about that. Move on!

Mr. Snagsby says nothing to this effect; says nothing at all, indeed; but coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no thoroughfare in any direction. By this time Mr. and Mrs. Chadband, and Mrs, Snagsby, hearing the altercation, have appeared upon the stairs. Guster having never left the end of the passage, the whole household are assembled.

'The simple question is, sir,' says the constable, 'whether you know this boy. He says you do.'

Mrs. Snagsby, from her elevation, instantly cries out, 'No he don't!'

'My lit-tie woman!' says Mr. Snagsby, looking up the staircase. 'My love, permit me! Pray have a moment's patience, my dear. I do know something of this lad, and in what I know of him, I can't say that there's any harm; perhaps on the contrary, constable.' To whom the law-stationer relates his Joful and woful experience, suppressing the half-crown fact.

'Well!' says the constable, 'so far, it seems, he had grounds for what he said. When I took him into custody up in Holborn, he said you knew him. Upon that, a young man who was in the crowd said he was acquainted with you, and you were a respectable housekeeper, and if I'd call and make the inquiry, he'd appear. The young man don't seem inclined to keep his word, but – Oh! Here is the young man!'

Enter Mr. Guppy, who nods to Mr. Snagsby, and touches his hat with the chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs.

'I was strolling away from the office just now, when I found this row going on,' says Mr. Guppy to the law-stationer; 'and as your name was mentioned, I thought it was right the thing should be looked into.'

'It was very good-natured of you, sir,' says Mr. Snagsby, 'and I am obliged to you.' And Mr. Snagsby again relates his experience, again suppressing the half-crown fact.

'Now, I know where you live,' says the constable, then, to Jo. 'You live down in Tom-all-Alone's. That's a nice innocent place to live in, ain't it?'

'I can't go and live in no nicer place, sir,' replies Jo. 'They wouldn't have nothink to say to me if I wos to go to a nice innocent place fur to live. Who ud go and let a nice innocent lodging to such a reg'lar one as me!'

'You are very poor, ain't you?' says the constable.

'Yes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin'ral,' replies Jo.

'I leave you to judge now! I shook these two half-crowns out of him,' says the constable, producing them to the company, 'in only putting my hand upon him!'

'They're wot's left, Mr. Snagsby,' says Jo, 'out of a sov'ring as wos give me by a lady in a wale as sed she wos a servant and as come to my crossin one night and asked to be showd this 'ere ouse and the ouse wot him as you giv the writin to died at, and the berrin-ground wot he's berrid in. She ses to me, she ses, "are you the boy at the Inkwhich?" she ses. I ses, "yes," I ses. She ses to me, she ses, "can you show me all them places?" I ses, "yes, I can," I ses. And she ses to me "do it," and I dun it, and she giv me a sov'ring and hooked it. And I an't had much of the sov'ring neither,' says Jo, with dirty tears, 'fur I had to pay five bob, down in Tom-all-Alone's, afore they'd square it fur to give me change, and then a young man he thieved another five while I was asleep, and another boy he thieved ninepence, and the landlord he stood drains round with a lot more on it.'

'You don't expect anybody to believe this, about the lady and the sovereign, do you?' says the constable, eyeing him aside with ineffable disdain.

'I don't know as I do, sir,' replies Jo. 'I don't expect nothink at all, sir, much, but that's the true hist'ry on it.'

'You see what he is!' the constable observes to the audience. 'Well, Mr. Snagsby, if I don't lock him up this time, will you engage for his moving on?'

'No!' cries Mrs. Snagsby from the stairs.

'My little woman!' pleads her husband. 'Constable, I have no doubt he'll move on. You know you really must do it,' says Mr. Snagsby.

'I'm everyways agreeable, sir,' says the hapless Jo.

'Do it, then,' observes the constable. 'You know what you have got to do. Do it! And recollect you won't get off so easy next time. Catch hold of your money. Now, the sooner you're five mile off, the better for all parties.'

With this farewell hint, and pointing generally to the setting sun, as a likely place to move on to, the constable bids his auditors good afternoon; and makes the echoes of Cook's Court perform slow music for him as he walks away on the shady side, carrying his iron-bound hat in his hand for a little ventilation.

Now, Jo's improbable story concerning the lady and the sovereign has awakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. Mr. Guppy, who has an inquiring mind in matters of evidence, and who has been suffering severely from the lassitude of the long vacation, takes that interest in the case, that he enters on a regular cross-examination of the witness, which is found so interesting by the ladies that Mrs. Snagsby politely invites him to step up-stairs, and drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the disarranged state of the tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions. Mr. Guppy yielding his assent to this proposal, Jo is requested to follow into the drawing-room doorway, where Mr. Guppy takes him in hand as a witness, patting him into this shape, that shape, and the other shape, like a butterman dealing with so much butter, and worrying him according to the best models. Nor is the examination unlike many such model displays, both in respect of its eliciting nothing, and of its being lengthy; for Mr. Guppy is sensible of his talent, and Mrs. Snagsby feels, not only that it gratifies her inquisitive disposition, but that it lifts her husband's establishment higher up in the law. During the progress of this keen encounter, the vessel Chadband, being merely engaged in the oil trade, gets aground, and waits to be floated off.

'Well!' says Mr. Guppy, 'either this boy sticks to it like cobbler's-wax, or there is something out of the common here that beats anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and Carboy's.'

Mrs. Chadband whispers Mrs. Snagsby, who exclaims, 'You don't say so!'

'For years!' replies Mrs. Chadband.

'Has known Kenge and Carboy's office for years,' Mrs. Snagsby triumphantly explains to Mr. Guppy. 'Mrs. Chad-band – this gentleman's wife – Reverend Mr. Chadband.'

'Oh, indeed!' says Mr. Guppy.

'Before I married my present husband,' says Mrs. Chadband.

'Was you a party in anything, ma'am?' says Mr. Guppy, transferring his cross-examination.

'No.'

'Not a party in anything, ma'am?' says Mr. Guppy.

Mrs. Chadband shakes her head.

'Perhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in something, ma'am?' says Mr. Guppy, who likes nothing better than to model his conversation on forensic principles.

'Not exactly that, either,' replies Mrs. Chadband, humouring the joke with a hard-favoured smile.

'Not exactly that, either!' repeats Mr. Guppy. 'Very good. Pray, ma'am, was it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions (we will not at present say what transactions) with Kenge and Carboy's office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance? Take time, ma'am. We shall come to it presently. Man or woman, ma'am?'

'Neither,' says Mrs. Chadband, as before.

'Oh! A child!' says Mr. Guppy, throwing on the admiring Mrs. Snagsby the regular acute professional eye which is thrown on British jurymen. 'Now, ma'am, perhaps you'll have the kindness to tell us what child.'

'You have got it at last, sir,' says Mrs. Chadband, with another hard-favoured smile. 'Well, sir, it was before your time, most likely, judging from your appearance. I was left in charge of a child named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs. Kenge and Carboy.'

'Miss Summerson, ma'am!' cries Mr. Guppy, excited.

'I call her Esther Summerson,' says Mrs. Chadband, with austerity. 'There was no Miss-ing of the girl in my time. It was Esther. ''Esther, do this! Esther, do that!" and she was made to do it.'

'My dear ma 'am,' returns Mr. Guppy, moving across the small apartment, 'the humble individual who now addresses you received that young lady in London, when she first came here from the establishment to which you have alluded. Allow me to have the pleasure of taking you by the hand.'

Mr. Chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, makes his accustomed signal, and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Snagsby whispers 'Hush!'

'My friends,' says Chadband, 'we have partaken in moderation' (which was certainly not the case so far as he was concerned), 'of the comforts which have been provided for us. May this house live upon the fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful therein; may it grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it advance, may it proceed, may it press forward! But, my friends, have we partaken of anything else? We have. My friends, of what else have we partaken? Of spiritual profit? Yes. From whence have we derived that spiritual profit? My young friend, stand forth!'

Jo, thus apostrophised, gives a slouch backward, and another slouch forward, and another slouch to each side, and confronts the eloquent Chadband, with evident doubts of his intentions.

'My young friend,' says Chadband, 'you are to us a pearl, you are to us a diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to us a jewel. And why, my young friend?'

'I don't know,' replies Joe. 'I don't know nothink.'

'My young friend,' says Chadband, 'it is because you know nothing that you are to us a gem and jewel. For what are you, my young friend? Are you a beast of the field? No. A bird of the air? No. A fish of the sea or river? No. You are a human boy, my young friend. A human boy. O glorious to be a human boy! And why glorious, my young friend? Because you are capable of receiving the lessons of wisdom, because you are capable of profiting by this discourse which I now deliver for your good, because you are not a stick, or a staff, or a stock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar.

O running stream of sparkling joyTo be a soaring human boy!

And do you cool yourself in that stream now, my young friend? No. Why do you not cool yourself in that stream now? Because you are in a state of darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity, because you are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a state of bondage. My young friend, what is bondage? Let us, in a spirit of love, inquire.'

At this threatening stage of the discourse, Jo, who seems to have been gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm over his face, and gives a terrible yawn. Mrs. Snagsby indignantly expresses her belief that he is a limb of the archfiend.

'My friends,' says Mr. Chadband, with his persecuted chin folding itself into its fat smile again as he looks round, 'it is right that I should be humbled, it is right that I should be tried, it is right that I should be mortified, it is right that I should be corrected. I stumbled, on Sabbath last, when I thought with pride of my three hours' improving. The account is now favourably balanced: my creditor has accepted a composition. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!'

Great sensation on the part of Mrs. Snagsby.

'My friends,' says Chadband, looking round him in conclusion, 'I will not proceed with my young friend now. Will you come to-morrow, my young friend, and inquire of this good lady where I am to be found to deliver a discourse untoe you, and will you come like the thirsty swallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that, and upon the day after that, and upon many pleasant days, to hear discourses?' (This, with a cow-like lightness.)

Jo, whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms, gives a shuffling nod. Mr. Guppy then throws him a penny, and Mrs. Snagsby calls to Guster to see him safely out of the house. But, before he goes down-stairs, Mr. Snagsby loads him with some broken meats from the table, which he carries away, hugging in his arms.

So Mr. Chadband – of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder he should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave off, having once the audacity to begin– retires into private life until he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade. Jo moves on, through the long vacation, down to Blackfriars Bridge, where he finds a baking stony corner, wherein to settle to his repast.

And there he sits, munching and gnawing, and looking up at the great Gross on the summit of St. Paul's Cathedral, glittering above a red and violet-tinted cloud of smoke. From the boy's face one might suppose that sacred emblem to be, in his eyes, the crowning confusion of the great, confused city; so golden, so high up, so far out of his reach. There he sits, the sun going down, the river running fast, the crowd flowing by him in two streams – everything moving on to some purpose and to one end – until he is stirred up, and told to 'move on' too.

Chapter XX

A new lodger

The long vacation saunters on towards term-time, like an idle river very leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea. Mr. Guppy saunters along with it congenially. He has blunted the blade of his penknife, and broken the point off, by sticking that instrument into his desk in every direction. Not that he bears the desk any ill-will, but he must do something, and it must be something of an unexciting nature, which will lay neither his physical nor his intellectual energies under too heavy contribution. He finds that nothing agrees with him so well, as to make little gyrations on one leg of his stool, and stab his desk, and gape.

Kenge and Carboy are out of town, and the articled clerk has taken out a shooting licence, and gone down to his father's, and Mr. Guppy's two fellow-stipendiaries are away on leave. Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Richard Carstone, divide the dignity of the office. But Mr. Carstone is for the time being established in Kenge's room, whereat Mr. Guppy chafes. So exceedingly, that he with biting sarcasm informs his mother, in the confidential moments when he sups with her off a lobster and lettuce, in the Old Street Road, that he is afraid the office is hardly good enough for swells, and that if he had known there was a swell coming, he would have got it painted.

Mr. Guppy suspects everybody who enters on the occupation of a stool in Kenge and Carboy's office, of entertaining, as a matter of course, sinister designs upon him. He is clear that every such person wants to depose him. If he be ever asked how, why, when, or wherefore, he shuts up one eye and shakes his head. On the strength of these profound views, he in the most ingenious manner takes infinite pains to counterplot, when there is no plot; and plays the deepest games of chess without any adversary.

It is a source of much gratification to Mr. Guppy, therefore, to find the new-comer constantly poring over the papers in Jarndyce and Jarndyce; for he well knows that nothing but confusion and failure can come of that. His satisfaction communicates itself to a third saunterer through the long vacation in Kenge and Carboy's office; to wit, Young Smallweed.

Whether Young Smallweed (metaphorically called Small and eke Chick Weed, as it were jocularly to express a fledgling,) was ever a boy, is much doubted in Lincoln's Inn. He is now something under fifteen, and an old limb of the law. He is facetiously understood to entertain a passion for a lady at a cigar-shop, in the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane, and for her sake to have broken off a contract with another lady, to whom he had been engaged some years. He is a town-made article, of small stature and weazen features; but may be perceived from a considerable distance by means of his very tall hat. To become a Guppy is the object of his ambition. He dresses at that gentleman (by whom he is patronized), talks at him, walks at him, founds himself entirely on him. He is honoured with Mr. Guppy's particular confidence, and occasionally advises him, from the deep wells of his experience, on difficult points in private life.

Mr. Guppy has been lolling out of window all the morning, after trying all the stools in succession and finding none of them easy, and after several times putting his head into the iron safe with a notion of cooling it. Mr. Smallweed has been twice despatched for effervescent drinks, and has twice mixed them in the two official tumblers and stirred them up with the ruler. Mr. Guppy propounds, for Mr. Smallweed's consideration, the paradox that the more you drink the thirstier you are; and reclines his head upon the window-sill in a state of hopeless languor.

While thus looking out into the shade of Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr. Guppy becomes conscious of a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk below, and turning itself up in the direction of his face. At the same time, a low whistle is wafted through the Inn, and a suppressed voice cries, 'Hip! Gup-py!'

'Why, you don't mean it?' says Mr, Guppy, aroused. 'Small! Here's Jobling!' Small's head looks out of window too, and nods to Jobling.

'Where have you sprung up from?' inquires Mr. Guppy.

'From the market-gardens down by Deptford. I can't stand it any longer. I must enlist. I say! I wish you'd lend me half-a-crown. Upon my soul I'm hungry.'

Jobling looks hungry, and also has the appearance of having run to seed in the market-gardens down by Deptford.

'I say! Just throw out half-a-crown, if you have got one to spare. I want to get some dinner.'

'Will you come and dine with me?' says Mr. Guppy, throwing out the coin, which Mr. Jobling catches neatly.

'How long should I have to hold out?' says Jobling.

'Not half an hour. I am only waiting here till the enemy goes,' returns Mr. Guppy, butting inward with his head.

'What enemy?'

'A new one. Going to be articled. Will you wait?'

'Can you give a fellow anything to read in the meantime?' says Mr. Jobling.

Smallweed suggests the Law List. But Mr. Jobling declares, with much earnestness, that he 'can't stand it.'

'You shall have the paper,' says Mr. Guppy. 'He shall bring it down. But you had better not be seen about here. Sit on our staircase and read. It's a quiet place.'

Jobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. The sagacious Smallweed supplies him with the newspaper, and occasionally drops his eye upon him from the landing as a precaution against his becoming disgusted with waiting, and making an untimely departure. At last the enemy retreats, and then Smallweed fetches Mr. Jobling up.

'Well, and how are you?' says Mr. Guppy, shaking hands with him.

'So, so. How are you?'

Mr. Guppy replying that ne is not much to boast of, Mr. Jobling ventures on the question, 'How is she?' This Mr. Guppy resents as a liberty; retorting, 'Jobling, there are chords in the human mind—' Jobling begs pardon.

'Any subject but that!' says Mr. Guppy, with a gloomy enjoyment of his injury. 'For there are chords, Jobling—

Mr. Jobling begs pardon again.

During this short colloquy, the active Smallweed, who is of the dinner party, has written in legal characters on a slip of paper, 'Return immediately.' This notification to all whom it may concern, he inserts in the letter-box; and then putting on the tall hat, at the angle of inclination at which Mr. Guppy wears his, informs his patron that they may now make themselves scarce.