BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la Sumar

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 license 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 dispatched 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 he 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.  Accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house,  of the class known among its frequenters by the denomination slap- bang, where the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is  supposed to have made some impression on the susceptible Smallweed,  of whom it may be remarked that he is a weird changeling to whom  years are nothing.  He stands precociously possessed of centuries  of owlish wisdom.  If he ever lay in a cradle, it seems as if he  must have lain there in a tail-coat.  He has an old, old eye, has  Smallweed; and he drinks and smokes in a monkeyish way; and his  neck is stiff in his collar; and he is never to be taken in; and he  knows all about it, whatever it is.  In short, in his bringing up  he has been so nursed by Law and Equity that he has become a kind  of fossil imp, to account for whose terrestrial existence it is  reported at the public offices that his father was John Doe and his  mother the only female member of the Roe family, also that his  first long-clothes were made from a blue bag.  Into the dining-house, unaffected by the seductive show in the  window of artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant  baskets of peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for  the spit, Mr. Smallweed leads the way.  They know him there and  defer to him.  He has his favourite box, he bespeaks all the  papers, he is down upon bald patriarchs, who keep them more than  ten minutes afterwards.  It is of no use trying him with anything  less than a full-sized "bread" or proposing to him any joint in cut  unless it is in the very best cut.  In the matter of gravy he is  adamant. 

Conscious of his elfin power and submitting to his dread  experience, Mr. Guppy consults him in the choice of that day's  banquet, turning an appealing look towards him as the waitress  repeats the catalogue of viands and saying "What do YOU take,  Chick?"  Chick, out of the profundity of his artfulness, preferring  "veal and ham and French beans--and don't you forget the stuffing,  Polly" (with an unearthly cock of his venerable eye), Mr. Guppy and  Mr. Jobling give the like order.  Three pint pots of half-and-half  are superadded.  Quickly the waitress returns bearing what is  apparently a model of the Tower of Babel but what is really a pile  of plates and flat tin dish-covers.  Mr. Smallweed, approving of  what is set before him, conveys intelligent benignity into his  ancient eye and winks upon her.  Then, amid a constant coming in,  and going out, and running about, and a clatter of crockery, and a  rumbling up and down of the machine which brings the nice cuts from  the kitchen, and a shrill crying for more nice cuts down the  speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost of nice cuts that  have been disposed of, and a general flush and steam of hot joints,  cut and uncut, and a considerably heated atmosphere in which the  soiled knives and tablecloths seem to break out spontaneously into  eruptions of grease and blotches of beer, the legal triumvirate  appease their appetites.  Mr. Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere adornment might  require. 

His hat presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a  glistening nature, as if it had been a favourite snail-promenade.   The same phenomenon is visible on some parts of his coat, and  particularly at the seams.  He has the faded appearance of a  gentleman in embarrassed circumstances; even his light whiskers  droop with something of a shabby air.  His appetite is so vigorous that it suggests spare living for some  little time back.  He makes such a speedy end of his plate of veal  and ham, bringing it to a close while his companions are yet midway  in theirs, that Mr. Guppy proposes another. 

"Thank you, Guppy,"  says Mr. Jobling, "I really don't know but what I WILL take  another."  Another being brought, he falls to with great goodwill.  Mr. Guppy takes silent notice of him at intervals until he is half  way through this second plate and stops to take an enjoying pull at  his pint pot of half-and-half (also renewed) and stretches out his  legs and rubs his hands.  Beholding him in which glow of  contentment, Mr. Guppy says, "You are a man again, Tony!" 

"Well, not quite yet," says Mr. Jobling. 

"Say, just born." 

"Will you take any other vegetables?  Grass?  Peas?  Summer  cabbage?" 

"Thank you, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling. 

"I really don't know but  what I WILL take summer cabbage."  Order given; with the sarcastic addition (from Mr. Smallweed) of  "Without slugs, Polly!"  And cabbage produced. 

"I am growing up, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, plying his knife and  fork with a relishing steadiness.

  "Glad to hear it." 

"In fact, I have just turned into my teens," says Mr. Jobling.  He says no more until he has performed his task, which he achieves  as Messrs. Guppy and Smallweed finish theirs, thus getting over the  ground in excellent style and beating those two gentlemen easily by  a veal and ham and a cabbage. 

"Now, Small," says Mr. Guppy, "what would you recommend about  pastry?" 

"Marrow puddings," says Mr. Smallweed instantly. 

"Aye, aye!" cries Mr. Jobling with an arch look. 

"You're there,  are you? 

Thank you, Mr. Guppy, I don't know but what I WILL take a  marrow pudding."  Three marrow puddings being produced, Mr. Jobling adds in a  pleasant humour that he is coming of age fast.  To these succeed,  by command of Mr. Smallweed, "three Cheshires," and to those "three  small rums."  This apex of the entertainment happily reached, Mr.  Jobling puts up his legs on the carpeted seat (having his own side  of the box to himself), leans against the wall, and says, "I am  grown up now, Guppy.  I have arrived at maturity." 

"What do you think, now," says Mr. Guppy, "about--you don't mind  Smallweed?" 

"Not the least in the worid.  I have the pleasure of drinking his  good health." 

"Sir, to you!" says Mr. Smallweed. 

"I was saying, what do you think NOW," pursues Mr. Guppy, "of  enlisting?" 

"Why, what I may think after dinner," returns Mr. Jobling, "is one  thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another  thing.  Still, even after dinner, I ask myself the question, What  am I to do?  How am I to live?  Ill fo manger, you know," says Mr.  Jobling, pronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary fixture  in an English stable. 

"Ill fo manger.  That's the French saying,  and mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a Frenchman.  Or  more so."  Mr. Smallweed is decidedly of opinion "much more so." 

"If any man had told me," pursues Jobling, "even so lately as when  you and I had the frisk down in Lincolnshire, Guppy, and drove over  to see that house at Castle Wold--"  Mr. Smallweed corrects him--Chesney Wold. 

"Chesney Wold.  (I thank my honourable friend for that cheer.) If  any man had told me then that I should be as hard up at the present  time as I literally find myself, I should have--well, I should have  pitched into him," says Mr. Jobling, taking a little rum-and-water  with an air of desperate resignation; "I should have let fly at his  head." 

"Still, Tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then,"  remonstrates Mr. Guppy.  "You were talking about nothing else in  the gig." 

"Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, "I will not deny it.  I was on the wrong  side of the post.  But I trusted to things coming round." 

That very popular trust in flat things coming round!  Not in their  being beaten round, or worked round, but in their "coming" round!   As though a lunatic should trust in the world's "coming"  triangular!  "I had confident expectations that things would come round and be  all square," says Mr. Jobling with some vagueness of expression and  perhaps of meaning too.  "But I was disappointed.  They never did.   And when it came to creditors making rows at the office and to  people that the office dealt with making complaints about dirty  trifles of borrowed money, why there was an end of that connexion.   And of any new professional connexion too, for if I was to give a  reference to-morrow, it would be mentioned and would sew me up.   Then what's a fellow to do?  I have been keeping out of the way and  living cheap down about the market-gardens, but what's the use of  living cheap when you have got no money?  You might as well live  dear."  "Better," Mr. Smallweed thinks. 

"Certainly.  It's the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers  have been my weaknesses, and I don't care who knows it," says Mr.  Jobling. 

"They are great weaknesses--Damme, sir, they are great.   Well," proceeds Mr. Jobling after a defiant visit to his rum-and- water, "what can a fellow do, I ask you, BUT enlist?"  Mr. Guppy comes more fully into the conversation to state what, in  his opinion, a fellow can do.  His manner is the gravely impressive  manner of a man who has not committed himself in life otherwise  than as he has become the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart. 

"Jobling," says Mr. Guppy, "myself and our mutual friend Smallweed--"  Mr. Smallweed modestly observes, "Gentlemen both!" and drinks.  "--Have had a little conversation on this matter more than once  since you--" 

"Say, got the sack!" cries Mr. Jobling bitterly. 

"Say it, Guppy.   You mean it." 

"No-o-o!  Left the Inn," Mr. Smallweed delicately suggests. 

"Since you left the Inn, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy; "and I have  mentioned to our mutual friend Smallweed a plan I have lately  thought of proposing.  You know Snagsby the stationer?" 

"I know there is such a stationer," returns Mr. Jobling. 

"He was  not ours, and I am not acquainted with him." 

"He IS ours, Jobling, and I AM acquainted with him," Mr. Guppy  retorts. 

"Well, sir!  I have lately become better acquainted with  him through some accidental circumstances that have made me a  visitor of his in private life.  Those circumstances it is not  necessary to offer in argument.  They may--or they may not--have  some reference to a subject which may--or may not--have cast its  shadow on my existence."  As it is Mr. Guppy's perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt  his particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch  it, to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords  in the human mind, both Mr. Jobling and Mr. Smallweed decline the  pitfall by remaining silent. 

"Such things may be," repeats Mr. Guppy, "or they may not be.  They  are no part of the case.  It is enough to mention that both Mr. and  Mrs. Snagsby are very willing to oblige me and that Snagsby has, in  busy times, a good deal of copying work to give out.  He has all  Tulkinghorn's, and an excellent business besides.  I believe if our  mutual friend Smallweed were put into the box, he could prove  this?"  Mr. Smallweed nods and appears greedy to be sworn. 

"Now, gentlemen of the jury," says Mr. Guppy, "--I mean, now,  Jobling--you may say this is a poor prospect of a living.  Granted.   But it's better than nothing, and better than enlistment.  You want  time.  There must be time for these late affairs to blow over.  You  might live through it on much worse terms than by writing for  Snagsby."  Mr. Jobling is about to interrupt when the sagacious Smallweed  checks him with a dry cough and the words, "Hem!  Shakspeare!"  "There are two branches to this subject, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy.   

"That is the first.  I come to the second.  You know Krook, the  Chancellor, across the lane.  Come, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy in his  encouraging cross-examination-tone, "I think you know Krook, the  Chancellor, across the lane?" 

"I know him by sight," says Mr. Jobling. 

"You know him by sight.  Very well.  And you know little Flite?" 

"Everybody knows her," says Mr. Jobling. 

"Everybody knows her.  VERY well.  Now it has been one of my duties  of late to pay Flite a certain weekly allowance, deducting from it  the amount of her weekly rent, which I have paid (in consequence of  instructions I have received) to Krook himself, regularly in her  presence.  This has brought me into communication with Krook and  into a knowledge of his house and his habits.  I know he has a room  to let.  You may live there at a very low charge under any name you  like, as quietly as if you were a hundred miles off.  He'll ask no  questions and would accept you as a tenant at a word from me-- before the clock strikes, if you chose.  And I tell you another  thing, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy, who has suddenly lowered his voice  and become familiar again, "he's an extraordinary old chap--always  rummaging among a litter of papers and grubbing away at teaching  himself to read and write, without getting on a bit, as it seems to  me.  He is a most extraordinary old chap, sir.  I don't know but  what it might be worth a fellow's while to look him up a bit." 

"You don't mean--" Mr. Jobling begins. 

"I mean," returns Mr. Guppy, shrugging his shoulders with becoming  modesty, "that I can't make him out.  I appeal to our mutual friend  Smallweed whether he has or has not heard me remark that I can't  make him out."  Mr. Smallweed bears the concise testimony, "A few!"  "I have seen something of the profession and something of life,  Tony," says Mr. Guppy, "and it's seldom I can't make a man out,  more or less.  But such an old card as this, so deep, so sly, and  secret (though I don't believe he is ever sober), I never came  across.  Now, he must be precious old, you know, and he has not a  soul about him, and he is reported to be immensely rich; and  whether he is a smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed  pawnbroker, or a money-lender--all of which I have thought likely  at different times--it might pay you to knock up a sort of  knowledge of him.  I don't see why you shouldn't go in for it, when  everything else suits."  Mr. Jobling, Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Smallweed all lean their elbows on  the table and their chins upon their hands, and look at the  ceiling.  After a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their  hands in their pockets, and look at one another. 

"If I had the energy I once possessed, Tony!" says Mr. Guppy with a  sigh.  "But there are chords in the human mind--"  Expressing the remainder of the desolate sentiment in rum-and- water, Mr. Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony  Jobling and informing him that during the vacation and while things  are slack, his purse, "as far as three or four or even five pound  goes," will be at his disposal. 

"For never shall it be said," Mr.  Guppy adds with emphasis, "that William Guppy turned his back upon  his friend!"  The latter part of the proposal is so directly to the purpose that  Mr. Jobling says with emotion, "Guppy, my trump, your fist!"  Mr.  Guppy presents it, saying, "Jobling, my boy, there it is!"  Mr.  Jobling returns, "Guppy, we have been pals now for some years!"   Mr. Guppy replies, "Jobling, we have."  They then shake hands, and Mr. Jobling adds in a feeling manner,  "Thank you, Guppy, I don't know but what I WILL take another glass  for old acquaintance sake." 

"Krook's last lodger died there," observes Mr. Guppy in an  incidental way. 

"Did he though!" says Mr. Jobling. 

"There was a verdict.  Accidental death.  You don't mind that?" 

"No," says Mr. Jobling, "I don't mind it; but he might as well have  died somewhere else.  It's devilish odd that he need go and die at  MY place!"  Mr. Jobling quite resents this liberty, several times  returning to it with such remarks as, "There are places enough to  die in, I should think!" or, "He wouldn't have liked my dying at  HIS place, I dare say!"  However, the compact being virtually made, Mr. Guppy proposes to  dispatch the trusty Smallweed to ascertain if Mr. Krook is at home,  as in that case they may complete the negotiation without delay.   Mr. Jobling approving, Smallweed puts himself under the tall hat  and conveys it out of the dining-rooms in the Guppy manner.  He  soon returns with the intelligence that Mr. Krook is at home and  that he has seen him through the shop-door, sitting in the back  premises, sleeping "like one o'clock." 

"Then I'll pay," says Mr. Guppy, "and we'll go and see him.  Small,  what will it be?"  Mr. Smallweed, compelling the attendance of the waitress with one  hitch of his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: "Four veals and  hams is three, and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer  cabbage is three and six, and three marrows is four and six, and  six breads is five, and three Cheshires is five and three, and four  half-pints of half-and-half is six and three, and four small rums  is eight and three, and three Pollys is eight and six.  Eight and  six in half a sovereign, Polly, and eighteenpence out!"  Not at all excited by these stupendous calculations, Smallweed  dismisses his friends with a cool nod and remains behind to take a  little admiring notice of Polly, as opportunity may serve, and to  read the daily papers, which are so very large in proportion to  himself, shorn of his hat, that when he holds up the Times to run  his eye over the columns, he seems to have retired for the night  and to have disappeared under the bedclothes.  Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where  they find Krook still sleeping like one o'clock, that is to say,  breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast and quite  insensible to any external sounds or even to gentle shaking.  On  the table beside him, among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin- bottle and a glass.  The unwholesome air is so stained with this  liquor that even the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they  open and shut and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk. 

"Hold up here!" says Mr. Guppy, giving the relaxed figure of the  old man another shake. 

"Mr. Krook!  Halloa, sir!"  But it would seem as easy to wake a bundle of old clothes with a  spirituous heat smouldering in it. 

"Did you ever see such a stupor  as he falls into, between drink and sleep?" says Mr. Guppy. 

"If this is his regular sleep," returns Jobling, rather alarmed,  "it'll last a long time one of these days, I am thinking." 

"It's always more like a fit than a nap," says Mr. Guppy, shaking  him again. 

"Halloa, your lordship!  Why, he might be robbed fifty  times over!  Open your eyes!"  After much ado, he opens them, but without appearing to see his  visitors or any other objects.  Though he crosses one leg on  another, and folds his hands, and several times closes and opens  his parched lips, he seems to all intents and purposes as  insensible as before. 

"He is alive, at any rate," says Mr. Guppy. 

"How are you, my Lord  Chancellor.  I have brought a friend of mine, sir, on a little  matter of business." 

The old man still sits, often smacking his dry lips without the  least consciousness.  After some minutes he makes an attempt to  rise.  They help him up, and he staggers against the wall and  stares at them.  "How do you do, Mr. Krook?" says Mr. Guppy in some discomfiture. 

"How do you do, sir?  You are looking charming, Mr. Krook.  I hope  you are pretty well?" 

The old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at Mr. Guppy, or at  nothing, feebly swings himself round and comes with his face  against the wall.  So he remains for a minute or two, heaped up  against it, and then staggers down the shop to the front door.  The  air, the movement in the court, the lapse of time, or the  combination of these things recovers him.  He comes back pretty  steadily, adjusting his fur cap on his head and looking keenly at  them. 

"Your servant, gentlemen; I've been dozing.  Hi! I am hard to wake,  odd times."  "Rather so, indeed, sir," responds Mr. Guppy. 

"What?  You've been a-trying to do it, have you?" says the  suspicious Krook. 

"Only a little," Mr. Guppy explains.  The old man's eye resting on the empty bottle, he takes it up,  examines it, and slowly tilts it upside down. 

"I say!" he cries like the hobgoblin in the story. 

"Somebody's  been making free here!"  "I assure you we found it so," says Mr. Guppy. 

"Would you allow me  to get it filled for you?" 

"Yes, certainly I would!" cries Krook in high glee. 

"Certainly I  would!  Don't mention it!  Get it filled next door--Sol's Arms--the  Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny.  Bless you, they know ME!"  He so presses the empty bottle upon Mr. Guppy that that gentleman,  with a nod to his friend, accepts the trust and hurries out and  hurries in again with the bottle filled.  The old man receives it  in his arms like a beloved grandchild and pats it tenderly. 

"But, I say," he whispers, with his eyes screwed up, after tasting  it, "this ain't the Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny.  This is  eighteenpenny!" 

"I thought you might like that better," says Mr. Guppy. 

"You're a nobleman, sir," returns Krook with another taste, and his  hot breath seems to come towards them like a flame. 

"You're a  baron of the land."  Taking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr. Guppy presents his  friend under the impromptu name of Mr. Weevle and states the object  of their visit.  Krook, with his bottle under his arm (he never  gets beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety),  takes time to survey his proposed lodger and seems to approve of  him. 

"You'd like to see the room, young man?" he says.  "Ah!  It's  a good room!  Been whitewashed.  Been cleaned down with soft soap  and soda.  Hi!  It's worth twice the rent, letting alone my company  when you want it and such a cat to keep the mice away."  Commending the room after this manner, the old man takes them  upstairs, where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be  and also containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug  up from his inexhaustible stores. 

The terms are easily concluded-- for the Lord Chancellor cannot be hard on Mr. Guppy, associated as  he is with Kenge and Carboy, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and other  famous claims on his professional consideration--and it is agreed  that Mr. Weevle shall take possession on the morrow.  Mr. Weevle  and Mr. Guppy then repair to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, where  the personal introduction of the former to Mr. Snagsby is effected  and (more important) the vote and interest of Mrs. Snagsby are  secured.  They then report progress to the eminent Smallweed,  waiting at the office in his tall hat for that purpose, and  separate, Mr. Guppy explaining that he would terminate his little  entertainment by standing treat at the play but that there are  chords in the human mind which would render it a hollow mockery.  On the morrow, in the dusk of evening, Mr. Weevle modestly appears  at Krook's, by no means incommoded with luggage, and establishes  himself in his new lodging, where the two eyes in the shutters  stare at him in his sleep, as if they were full of wonder. 

On the  following day Mr. Weevle, who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of  young fellow, borrows a needle and thread of Miss Flite and a  hammer of his landlord and goes to work devising apologies for  window-curtains, and knocking up apologies for shelves, and hanging  up his two teacups, milkpot, and crockery sundries on a pennyworth  of little hooks, like a shipwrecked sailor making the best of it.  But what Mr. Weevle prizes most of all his few possessions (next  after his light whiskers, for which he has an attachment that only  whiskers can awaken in the breast of man) is a choice collection of  copper-plate impressions from that truly national work The  Divinities of Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty,  representing ladies of title and fashion in every variety of smirk  that art, combined with capital, is capable of producing.  With  these magnificent portraits, unworthily confined in a band-box  during his seclusion among the market-gardens, he decorates his  apartment; and as the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty wears every  variety of fancy dress, plays every variety of musical instrument,  fondles every variety of dog, ogles every variety of prospect, and  is backed up by every variety of flower-pot and balustrade, the  result is very imposing.  But fashion is Mr. Weevle's, as it was Tony Jobling's, weakness.   To borrow yesterday's paper from the Sol's Arms of an evening and  read about the brilliant and distinguished meteors that are  shooting across the fashionable sky in every direction is  unspeakable consolation to him.  To know what member of what  brilliant and distinguished circle accomplished the brilliant and  distinguished feat of joining it yesterday or contemplates the no  less brilliant and distinguished feat of leaving it to-morrow gives  him a thrill of joy. 

To be informed what the Galaxy Gallery of  British Beauty is about, and means to be about, and what Galaxy  marriages are on the tapis, and what Galaxy rumours are in  circulation, is to become acquainted with the most glorious  destinies of mankind.  Mr. Weevle reverts from this intelligence to  the Galaxy portraits implicated, and seems to know the originals,  and to be known of them.  For the rest he is a quiet lodger, full of handy shifts and devices  as before mentioned, able to cook and clean for himself as well as  to carpenter, and developing social inclinations after the shades  of evening have fallen on the court. 

At those times, when he is  not visited by Mr. Guppy or by a small light in his likeness  quenched in a dark hat, he comes out of his dull room--where he has  inherited the deal wilderness of desk bespattered with a rain of  ink--and talks to Krook or is "very free," as they call it in the  court, commendingly, with any one disposed for conversation.   Wherefore, Mrs. Piper, who leads the court, is impelled to offer  two remarks to Mrs. Perkins: firstly, that if her Johnny was to  have whiskers, she could wish 'em to be identically like that young  man's; and secondly, "Mark my words, Mrs. Perkins, ma'am, and don't  you be surprised, Lord bless you, if that young man comes in at  last for old Krook's money!"

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