Bleak House

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"I wonder you remember those times, Esther," she returned with her
old asperity. "They are changed now. Well! I am glad to see you,
and glad you are not too proud to know me." But indeed she seemed
disappointed that I was not.

"Proud, Mrs. Rachael!" I remonstrated.

"I am married, Esther," she returned, coldly correcting me, "and am
Mrs. Chadband. Well! I wish you good day, and I hope you'll do
well."

Mr. Guppy, who had been attentive to this short dialogue, heaved a
sigh in my ear and elbowed his own and Mrs. Rachael's way through
the confused little crowd of people coming in and going out, which
we were in the midst of and which the change in the business had
brought together. Richard and I were making our way through it,
and I was yet in the first chill of the late unexpected recognition
when I saw, coming towards us, but not seeing us, no less a person
than Mr. George. He made nothing of the people about him as he
tramped on, staring over their heads into the body of the court.

"George!" said Richard as I called his attention to him.

"You are well met, sir," he returned. "And you, miss. Could you
point a person out for me, I want? I don't understand these
places."

Turning as he spoke and making an easy way for us, he stopped when
we were out of the press in a corner behind a great red curtain.

"There's a little cracked old woman," he began, "that--"

I put up my finger, for Miss Flite was close by me, having kept
beside me all the time and having called the attention of several
of her legal acquaintance to me (as I had overheard to my
confusion) by whispering in their ears, "Hush! Fitz Jarndyce on my
left!"

"Hem!" said Mr. George. "You remember, miss, that we passed some
conversation on a certain man this morning? Gridley," in a low
whisper behind his hand.

"Yes," said I.

"He is hiding at my place. I couldn't mention it. Hadn't his
authority. He is on his last march, miss, and has a whim to see
her. He says they can feel for one another, and she has been
almost as good as a friend to him here. I came down to look for
her, for when I sat by Gridley this afternoon, I seemed to hear the
roll of the muffled drums."

"Shall I tell her?" said I.

"Would you be so good?" he returned with a glance of something like
apprehension at Miss Flite. "It's a providence I met you, miss; I
doubt if I should have known how to get on with that lady." And he
put one hand in his breast and stood upright in a martial attitude
as I informed little Miss Flite, in her ear, of the purport of his
kind errand.

"My angry friend from Shropshire! Almost as celebrated as myself!"
she exclaimed. "Now really! My dear, I will wait upon him with
the greatest pleasure."

"He is living concealed at Mr. George's," said I. "Hush! This is
Mr. George."

"In--deed!" returned Miss Flite. "Very proud to have the honour!
A military man, my dear. You know, a perfect general!" she
whispered to me.

Poor Miss Flite deemed it necessary to be so courtly and polite, as
a mark of her respect for the army, and to curtsy so very often
that it was no easy matter to get her out of the court. When this
was at last done, and addressing Mr. George as "General," she gave
him her arm, to the great entertainment of some idlers who were
looking on, he was so discomposed and begged me so respectfully
"not to desert him" that I could not make up my mind to do it,
especially as Miss Flite was always tractable with me and as she
too said, "Fitz Jarndyce, my dear, you will accompany us, of
course." As Richard seemed quite willing, and even anxious, that
we should see them safely to their destination, we agreed to do so.
And as Mr. George informed us that Gridley's mind had run on Mr.
Jarndyce all the afternoon after hearing of their interview in the
morning, I wrote a hasty note in pencil to my guardian to say where
we were gone and why. Mr. George sealed it at a coffee-house, that
it might lead to no discovery, and we sent it off by a ticket-
porter.

We then took a hackney-coach and drove away to the neighbourhood of
Leicester Square. We walked through some narrow courts, for which
Mr. George apologized, and soon came to the shooting gallery, the
door of which was closed. As he pulled a bell-handle which hung by
a chain to the door-post, a very respectable old gentleman with
grey hair, wearing spectacles, and dressed in a black spencer and
gaiters and a broad-brimmed hat, and carrying a large gold-beaded
cane, addressed him.

"I ask your pardon, my good friend," said he, "but is this George's
Shooting Gallery?"

"It is, sir," returned Mr. George, glancing up at the great letters
in which that inscription was painted on the whitewashed wall.

"Oh! To be sure!" said the old gentleman, following his eyes.
"Thank you. Have you rung the bell?"

"My name is George, sir, and I have rung the bell."

"Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Your name is George? Then
I am here as soon as you, you see. You came for me, no doubt?"

"No, sir. You have the advantage of me."

"Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Then it was your young man
who came for me. I am a physician and was requested--five minutes
ago--to come and visit a sick man at George's Shooting Gallery."

"The muffled drums," said Mr. George, turning to Richard and me and
gravely shaking his head. "It's quite correct, sir. Will you
please to walk in."

The door being at that moment opened by a very singular-looking
little man in a green-baize cap and apron, whose face and hands and
dress were blackened all over, we passed along a dreary passage
into a large building with bare brick walls where there were
targets, and guns, and swords, and other things of that kind. When
we had all arrived here, the physician stopped, and taking off his
hat, appeared to vanish by magic and to leave another and quite a
different man in his place.

"Now lookee here, George," said the man, turning quickly round upon
him and tapping him on the breast with a large forefinger. "You
know me, and I know you. You're a man of the world, and I'm a man
of the world. My name's Bucket, as you are aware, and I have got a
peace-warrant against Gridley. You have kept him out of the way a
long time, and you have been artful in it, and it does you credit."

Mr. George, looking hard at him, bit his lip and shook his head.

"Now, George," said the other, keeping close to him, "you're a
sensible man and a well-conducted man; that's what YOU are, beyond
a doubt. And mind you, I don't talk to you as a common character,
because you have served your country and you know that when duty
calls we must obey. Consequently you're very far from wanting to
give trouble. If I required assistance, you'd assist me; that's
what YOU'D do. Phil Squod, don't you go a-sidling round the
gallery like that"--the dirty little man was shuffling about with
his shoulder against the wall, and his eyes on the intruder, in a
manner that looked threatening--"because I know you and won't have
it."

"Phil!" said Mr. George.

"Yes, guv'ner."

"Be quiet."

The little man, with a low growl, stood still.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Bucket, "you'll excuse anything
that may appear to be disagreeable in this, for my name's Inspector
Bucket of the Detective, and I have a duty to perform. George, I
know where my man is because I was on the roof last night and saw
him through the skylight, and you along with him. He is in there,
you know," pointing; "that's where HE is--on a sofy. Now I must
see my man, and I must tell my man to consider himself in custody;
but you know me, and you know I don't want to take any
uncomfortable measures. You give me your word, as from one man to
another (and an old soldier, mind you, likewise), that it's
honourable between us two, and I'll accommodate you to the utmost
of my power."

"I give it," was the reply. '"But it wasn't handsome in you, Mr.
Bucket."

"Gammon, George! Not handsome?" said Mr. Bucket, tapping him on
his broad breast again and shaking hands with him. "I don't say it
wasn't handsome in you to keep my man so close, do I? Be equally
good-tempered to me, old boy! Old William Tell, Old Shaw, the Life
Guardsman! Why, he's a model of the whole British army in himself,
ladies and gentlemen. I'd give a fifty-pun' note to be such a
figure of a man!"

The affair being brought to this head, Mr. George, after a little
consideration, proposed to go in first to his comrade (as he called
him), taking Miss Flite with him. Mr. Bucket agreeing, they went
away to the further end of the gallery, leaving us sitting and
standing by a table covered with guns. Mr. Bucket took this
opportunity of entering into a little light conversation, asking me
if I were afraid of fire-arms, as most young ladies were; asking
Richard if he were a good shot; asking Phil Squod which he
considered the best of those rifles and what it might be worth
first-hand, telling him in return that it was a pity he ever gave
way to his temper, for he was naturally so amiable that he might
have been a young woman, and making himself generally agreeable.

After a time he followed us to the further end of the gallery, and
Richard and I were going quietly away when Mr. George came after
us. He said that if we had no objection to see his comrade, he
would take a visit from us very kindly. The words had hardly
passed his lips when the bell was rung and my guardian appeared,
"on the chance," he slightly observed, "of being able to do any
little thing for a poor fellow involved in the same misfortune as
himself." We all four went back together and went into the place
where Gridley was.

It was a bare room, partitioned off from the gallery with unpainted
wood. As the screening was not more than eight or ten feet high
and only enclosed the sides, not the top, the rafters of the high
gallery roof were overhead, and the skylight through which Mr.
Bucket had looked down. The sun was low--near setting--and its
light came redly in above, without descending to the ground. Upon
a plain canvas-covered sofa lay the man from Shropshire, dressed
much as we had seen him last, but so changed that at first I
recognized no likeness in his colourless face to what I
recollected.

He had been still writing in his hiding-place, and still dwelling
on his grievances, hour after hour. A table and some shelves were
covered with manuscript papers and with worn pens and a medley of
such tokens. Touchingly and awfully drawn together, he and the
little mad woman were side by side and, as it were, alone. She sat
on a chair holding his hand, and none of us went close to them.

His voice had faded, with the old expression of his face, with his
strength, with his anger, with his resistance to the wrongs that
had at last subdued him. The faintest shadow of an object full of
form and colour is such a picture of it as he was of the man from
Shropshire whom we had spoken with before.

He inclined his head to Richard and me and spoke to my guardian.

"Mr. Jarndyce, it is very kind of you to come to see me. I am not
long to be seen, I think. I am very glad to take your hand, sir.
You are a good man, superior to injustice, and God knows I honour
you."

They shook hands earnestly, and my guardian said some words of
comfort to him.

"It may seem strange to you, sir," returned Gridley; "I should not
have liked to see you if this had been the flrst time of our
meeting. But you know I made a fight for it, you know I stood up
with my single hand against them all, you know I told them the
truth to the last, and told them what they were, and what they had
done to me; so I don't mind your seeing me, this wreck."

"You have been courageous with them many and many a time," returned
my guardian.

"Sir, I have been," with a faint smile. "I told you what would
come of it when I ceased to be so, and see here! Look at us--look
at us!" He drew the hand Miss Flite held through her arm and
brought her something nearer to him.

"This ends it. Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits
and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul
alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of
many suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever
had on earth that Chancery has not broken."

"Accept my blessing, Gridley," said Miss Flite in tears. "Accept
my blessing!"

"I thought, boastfully, that they never could break my heart, Mr.
Jarndyce. I was resolved that they should not. I did believe that
I could, and would, charge them with being the mockery they were
until I died of some bodily disorder. But I am worn out. How long
I have been wearing out, I don't know; I seemed to break down in an
hour. I hope they may never come to hear of it. I hope everybody
here will lead them to believe that I died defying them,
consistently and perseveringly, as I did through so many years."

Here Mr. Bucket, who was sitting in a corner by the door, good-
naturedly offered such consolation as he could administer.

"Come, come!" he said from his corner. "Don't go on in that way,
Mr. Gridley. You are only a little low. We are all of us a little
low sometimes. I am. Hold up, hold up! You'll lose your temper
with the whole round of 'em, again and again; and I shall take you
on a score of warrants yet, if I have luck."

He only shook his head.

"Don't shake your head," said Mr. Bucket. "Nod it; that's what I
want to see you do. Why, Lord bless your soul, what times we have
had together! Haven't I seen you in the Fleet over and over again
for contempt? Haven't I come into court, twenty afternoons for no
other purpose than to see you pin the Chancellor like a bull-dog?
Don't you remember when you first began to threaten the lawyers,
and the peace was sworn against you two or three times a week? Ask
the little old lady there; she has been always present. Hold up,
Mr. Gridley, hold up, sir!"

"What are you going to do about him?" asked George in a low voice.

"I don't know yet," said Bucket in the same tone. Then resuming
his encouragement, he pursued aloud: "Worn out, Mr. Gridley? After
dodging me for all these weeks and forcing me to climb the roof
here like a tom cat and to come to see you as a doctor? That ain't
like being worn out. I should think not! Now I tell you what you
want. You want excitement, you know, to keep YOU up; that's what
YOU want. You're used to it, and you can't do without it. I
couldn't myself. Very well, then; here's this warrant got by Mr.
Tulkinghorn of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and backed into half-a-dozen
counties since. What do you say to coming along with me, upon this
warrant, and having a good angry argument before the magistrates?
It'll do you good; it'll freshen you up and get you into training
for another turn at the Chancellor. Give in? Why, I am surprised
to hear a man of your energy talk of giving in. You mustn't do
that. You're half the fun of the fair in the Court of Chancery.
George, you lend Mr. Gridley a hand, and let's see now whether he
won't be better up than down."

"He is very weak," said the trooper in a low voice.

"Is he?" returned Bucket anxiously. "I only want to rouse him. I
don't like to see an old acquaintance giving in like this. It
would cheer him up more than anything if I could make him a little
waxy with me. He's welcome to drop into me, right and left, if he
likes. I shall never take advantage of it."

The roof rang with a scream from Miss Flite, which still rings in
my ears.

"Oh, no, Gridley!" she cried as he fell heavily and calmly back
from before her. "Not without my blessing. After so many years!"

The sun was down, the light had gradually stolen from the roof, and
the shadow had crept upward. But to me the shadow of that pair,
one living and one dead, fell heavier on Richard's departure than
the darkness of the darkest night. And through Richard's farewell
words I heard it echoed: "Of all my old associations, of all my old
pursuits and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one
poor soul alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a
tie of many suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie
I ever had on earth that Chancery has not broken!"

CHAPTER XXV

Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All

There is disquietude in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Black
suspicion hides in that peaceful region. The mass of Cook's
Courtiers are in their usual state of mind, no better and no worse;
but Mr. Snagsby is changed, and his little woman knows it.

For Tom-all-Alone's and Lincoln's Inn Fields persist in harnessing
themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr.
Snagsby's imagination; and Mr. Bucket drives; and the passengers
are Jo and Mr. Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though
the law-stationery business at wild speed all round the clock.
Even in the little front kitchen where the family meals are taken,
it rattles away at a smoking pace from the dinner-table, when Mr.
Snagsby pauses in carving the first slice of the leg of mutton
baked with potatoes and stares at the kitchen wall.

Mr. Snagsby cannot make out what it is that he has had to do with.
Something is wrong somewhere, but what something, what may come of
it, to whom, when, and from which unthought of and unheard of
quarter is the puzzle of his life. His remote impressions of the
robes and coronets, the stars and garters, that sparkle through the
surface-dust of Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers; his veneration for the
mysteries presided over by that best and closest of his customers,
whom all the Inns of Court, all Chancery Lane, and all the legal
neighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his remembrance of Detective
Mr. Bucket with his forefinger and his confidential manner,
impossible to be evaded or declined, persuade him that he is a
party to some dangerous secret without knowing what it is. And it
is the fearful peculiarity of this condition that, at any hour of
his daily life, at any opening of the shop-door, at any pull of the
bell, at any entrance of a messenger, or any delivery of a letter,
the secret may take air and fire, explode, and blow up--Mr. Bucket
only knows whom.

For which reason, whenever a man unknown comes into the shop (as
many men unknown do) and says, "Is Mr. Snagsby in?" or words to
that innocent effect, Mr. Snagsby's heart knocks hard at his guilty
breast. He undergoes so much from such inquiries that when they
are made by boys he revenges himself by flipping at their ears over
the counter and asking the young dogs what they mean by it and why
they can't speak out at once? More impracticable men and boys
persist in walking into Mr. Snagsby's sleep and terrifying him with
unaccountable questions, so that often when the cock at the little
dairy in Cursitor Street breaks out in his usual absurd way about
the morning, Mr. Snagsby finds himself in a crisis of nightmare,
with his little woman shaking him and saying "What's the matter
with the man!"

The little woman herself is not the least item in his difficulty.
To know that he is always keeping a secret from her, that he has
under all circumstances to conceal and hold fast a tender double
tooth, which her sharpness is ever ready to twist out of his head,
gives Mr. Snagsby, in her dentistical presence, much of the air of
a dog who has a reservation from his master and will look anywhere
rather than meet his eye.

These various signs and tokens, marked by the little woman, are not
lost upon her. They impel her to say, "Snagsby has something on
his mind!" And thus suspicion gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor
Street. From suspicion to jealousy, Mrs. Snagsby finds the road as
natural and short as from Cook's Court to Chancery Lane. And thus
jealousy gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and
it was always lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in
Mrs. Snagsby's breast, prompting her to nocturnal examinations of
Mr. Snagsby's pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby's letters;
to private researches in the day book and ledger, till, cash-box,
and iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors,
and a general putting of this and that together by the wrong end.

Mrs. Snagsby is so perpetually on the alert that the house becomes
ghostly with creaking boards and rustling garments. The 'prentices
think somebody may have been murdered there in bygone times.
Guster holds certain loose atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting,
where they were found floating among the orphans) that there is
buried money underneath the cellar, guarded by an old man with a
white beard, who cannot get out for seven thousand years because he
said the Lord's Prayer backwards.

"Who was Nimrod?" Mrs. Snagsby repeatedly inquires of herself.
"Who was that lady--that creature? And who is that boy?" Now,
Nimrod being as dead as the mighty hunter whose name Mrs. Snagsby
has appropriated, and the lady being unproducible, she directs her
mental eye, for the present, with redoubled vigilance to the boy.
"And who," quoth Mrs. Snagsby for the thousand and first time, "is
that boy? Who is that--!" And there Mrs. Snagsby is seized with
an inspiration.

He has no respect for Mr. Chadband. No, to be sure, and he
wouldn't have, of course. Naturally he wouldn't, under those
contagious circumstances. He was invited and appointed by Mr.
Chadband--why, Mrs. Snagsby heard it herself with her own ears!--to
come back, and be told where he was to go, to be addressed by Mr.
Chadband; and he never came! Why did he never come? Because he
was told not to come. Who told him not to come? Who? Ha, ha!
Mrs. Snagsby sees it all.

But happily (and Mrs. Snagsby tightly shakes her head and tightly
smiles) that boy was met by Mr. Chadband yesterday in the streets;
and that boy, as affording a subject which Mr. Chadband desires to
improve for the spiritual delight of a select congregation, was
seized by Mr. Chadband and threatened with being delivered over to
the police unless he showed the reverend gentleman where he lived
and unless he entered into, and fulfilled, an undertaking to appear
in Cook's Court to-morrow night, "'to--mor--row--night," Mrs.
Snagsby repeats for mere emphasis with another tight smile and
another tight shake of her head; and to-morrow night that boy will
be here, and to-morrow night Mrs. Snagsby will have her eye upon
him and upon some one else; and oh, you may walk a long while in
your secret ways (says Mrs. Snagsby with haughtiness and scorn),
but you can't blind ME!

Mrs. Snagsby sounds no timbrel in anybody's ears, but holds her
purpose quietly, and keeps her counsel. To-morrow comes, the
savoury preparations for the Oil Trade come, the evening comes.
Comes Mr. Snagsby in his black coat; come the Chadbands; come (when
the gorging vessel is replete) the 'prentices and Guster, to be
edified; comes at last, with his slouching head, and his shuflle
backward, and his shuffle forward, and his shuffle to the right,
and his shuffle to the left, and his bit of fur cap in his muddy
hand, which he picks as if it were some mangy bird he had caught
and was plucking before eating raw, Jo, the very, very tough
subject Mr. Chadband is to improve.

Mrs. Snagsby screws a watchful glance on Jo as he is brought into
the little drawing-room by Guster. He looks at Mr. Snagsby the
moment he comes in. Aha! Why does he look at Mr. Snagsby? Mr.
Snagsby looks at him. Why should he do that, but that Mrs. Snagsby
sees it all? Why else should that look pass between them, why else
should Mr. Snagsby be confused and cough a signal cough behind his
hand? It is as clear as crystal that Mr. Snagsby is that boy's
father.

'"Peace, my friends," says Chadband, rising and wiping the oily
exudations from his reverend visage. "Peace be with us! My
friends, why with us? Because," with his fat smile, "it cannot be
against us, because it must be for us; because it is not hardening,
because it is softening; because it does not make war like the
hawk, but comes home unto us like the dove. Therefore, my friends,
peace be with us! My human boy, come forward!"

Stretching forth his flabby paw, Mr. Chadband lays the same on Jo's
arm and considers where to station him. Jo, very doubtful of his
reverend friend's intentions and not at all clear but that
something practical and painful is going to be done to him,
mutters, "You let me alone. I never said nothink to you. You let
me alone."

"No, my young friend," says Chadband smoothly, "I will not let you
alone. And why? Because I am a harvest-labourer, because I am a
toiler and a moiler, because you are delivered over unto me and are
become as a precious instrument in my hands. My friends, may I so
employ this instrument as to use it to your advantage, to your
profit, to your gain, to your welfare, to your enrichment! My
young friend, sit upon this stool."