BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la sumar

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."  Jo, apparently possessed by an impression that the reverend  gentleman wants to cut his hair, shields his head with both arms  and is got into the required position with great difficulty and  every possible manifestation of reluctance.  When he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure, Mr. Chadband,  retiring behind the table, holds up his bear's-paw and says, "My  friends!"  This is the signal for a general settlement of the  audience.  The 'prentices giggle internally and nudge each other.   Guster falls into a staring and vacant state, compounded of a  stunned admiration of Mr. Chadband and pity for the friendless  outcast whose condition touches her nearly.  Mrs. Snagsby silently  lays trains of gunpowder.  Mrs. Chadband composes herself grimly by  the fire and warms her knees, finding that sensation favourable to  the reception of eloquence.  It happens that Mr. Chadband has a pulpit habit of fixing some  member of his congregation with his eye and fatly arguing his  points with that particular person, who is understood to be  expected to be moved to an occasional grunt, groan, gasp, or other  audible expression of inward working, which expression of inward  working, being echoed by some elderly lady in the next pew and so  communicated like a game of forfeits through a circle of the more  fermentable sinners present, serves the purpose of parliamentary  cheering and gets Mr. Chadband's steam up.  From mere force of  habit, Mr. Chadband in saying "My friends!" has rested his eye on  Mr. Snagsby and proceeds to make that ill-starred stationer,  already sufficiently confused, the immediate recipient of his  discourse. 

"We have here among us, my friends," says Chadband, "a Gentile and  a heathen, a dweller in the tents of Tom-all-Alone's and a mover-on  upon the surface of the earth.  We have here among us, my friends,"  and Mr. Chadband, untwisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail,  bestows an oily smile on Mr. Snagsby, signifying that he will throw  him an argumentative back-fall presently if he be not already down,  "a brother and a boy.  Devoid of parents, devoid of relations,  devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold and silver and of  precious stones.  Now, my friends, why do I say he is devoid of  these possessions?  Why?  Why is he?"  Mr. Chadband states the  question as if he were propoundlng an entirely new riddle of much  ingenuity and merit to Mr. Snagsby and entreating him not to give  it up.  Mr. Snagsby, greatly perplexed by the mysterious look he received  just now from his little woman--at about the period when Mr.  Chadband mentioned the word parents--is tempted into modestly  remarking, "I don't know, I'm sure, sir."  On which interruption  Mrs. Chadband glares and Mrs. Snagsby says, "For shame!" 

"I hear a voice," says Chadband; "is it a still small voice, my  friends?  I fear not, though I fain would hope so--"  "Ah--h!" from Mrs. Snagsby. 

"Which says, 'I don't know.'  Then I will tell you why.  I say this  brother present here among us is devoid of parents, devoid of  relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver,  and of precious stones because he is devoid of the light that  shines in upon some of us.  What is that light?  What is it?  I ask  you, what is that light?"  Mr. Chadband draws back his head and pauses, but Mr. Snagsby is not  to be lured on to his destruction again.  Mr. Chadband, leaning  forward over the table, pierces what he has got to follow directly  into Mr. Snagsby with the thumb-nail already mentioned. 

"It is," says Chadband, "the ray of rays, the sun of suns, the moon  of moons, the star of stars.  It is the light of Terewth." 

Mr. Chadband draws himself up again and looks triumphantly at Mr.  Snagsby as if he would be glad to know how he feels after that. 

"Of Terewth," says Mr. Chadband, hitting him again. 

"Say not to me  that it is NOT the lamp of lamps.  I say to you it is.  I say to  you, a million of times over, it is.  It is!  I say to you that I  will proclaim it to you, whether you like it or not; nay, that the  less you like it, the more I will proclaim it to you.  With a  speaking-trumpet!  I say to you that if you rear yourself against  it, you shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be battered,  you shall be flawed, you shall be smashed." 

The present effect of this flight of oratory--much admired for its  general power by Mr. Chadband's followers--being not only to make  Mr. Chadband unpleasantly warm, but to represent the innocent Mr.  Snagsby in the light of a determined enemy to virtue, with a  forehead of brass and a heart of adamant, that unfortunate  tradesman becomes yet more disconcerted and is in a very advanced  state of low spirits and false position when Mr. Chadband  accidentally finishes him. 

"My friends," he resumes after dabbing his fat head for some time-- and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his pocket- handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab--"to pursue  the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to improve,  let us in a spirit of love inquire what is that Terewth to which I  have alluded.  For, my young friends," suddenly addressing the  'prentices and Guster, to their consternation, "if I am told by the  doctor that calomel or castor-oil is good for me, I may naturally  ask what is calomel, and what is castor-oil.  I may wish to be  informed of that before I dose myself with either or with both.   Now, my young friends, what is this Terewth then?  Firstly (in a  spirit of love), what is the common sort of Terewth--the working  clothes--the every-day wear, my young friends?  Is it deception?" 

"Ah--h!" from Mrs. Snagsby. 

"Is it suppression?" 

A shiver in the negative from Mrs. Snagsby. 

"Is it reservation?"  A shake of the head from Mrs. Snagsby--very long and very tight. 

"No, my friends, it is neither of these.  Neither of these names  belongs to it.  When this young heathen now among us--who is now,  my friends, asleep, the seal of indifference and perdition being  set upon his eyelids; but do not wake him, for it is right that I  should have to wrestle, and to combat and to struggle, and to  conquer, for his sake--when this young hardened heathen told us a  story of a cock, and of a bull, and of a lady, and of a sovereign,  was THAT the Terewth?  No.  Or if it was partly, was it wholly and  entirely?  No, my friends, no!"  If Mr. Snagsby could withstand his little woman's look as it enters  at his eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the whole  tenement, he were other than the man he is.  He cowers and droops. 

"Or, my juvenile friends," says Chadband, descending to the level  of their comprehension with a very obtrusive demonstration in his  greasily meek smile of coming a long way downstairs for the  purpose, "if the master of this house was to go forth into the city  and there see an eel, and was to come back, and was to call unto  him the mistress of this house, and was to say, 'Sarah, rejoice  with me, for I have seen an elephant!' would THAT be Terewth?" 

Mrs. Snagsby in tears.  "Or put it, my juvenile friends, that he saw an elephant, and  returning said 'Lo, the city is barren, I have seen but an eel,'  would THAT be Terewth?"  Mrs. Snagsby sobbing loudly. 

"Or put it, my juvenile friends," said Chadband, stimulated by the  sound, "that the unnatural parents of this slumbering heathen--for  parents he had, my juvenile friends, beyond a doubt--after casting  him forth to the wolves and the vultures, and the wild dogs and the  young gazelles, and the serpents, went back to their dwellings and  had their pipes, and their pots, and their flutings and their  dancings, and their malt liquors, and their butcher's meat and  poultry, would THAT be Terewth?" 

Mrs. Snagsby replies by delivering herself a prey to spasms, not an  unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that Cook's  Court re-echoes with her shrieks.  Finally, becoming cataleptic,  she has to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano.   After unspeakable suffering, productive of the utmost  consternation, she is pronounced, by expresses from the bedroom,  free from pain, though much exhausted, in which state of affairs  Mr. Snagsby, trampled and crushed in the piano-forte removal, and  extremely timid and feeble, ventures to come out from behind the  door in the drawing-room.  All this time Jo has been standing on the spot where he woke up,  ever picking his cap and putting bits of fur in his mouth.  He  spits them out with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in  his nature to be an unimprovable reprobate and that it's no good  HIS trying to keep awake, for HE won't never know nothink.  Though  it may be, Jo, that there is a history so interesting and affecting  even to minds as near the brutes as thine, recording deeds done on  this earth for common men, that if the Chadbands, removing their  own persons from the light, would but show it thee in simple  reverence, would but leave it unimproved, would but regard it as  being eloquent enough without their modest aid--it might hold thee  awake, and thou might learn from it yet!  Jo never heard of any such book.  Its compilers and the Reverend  Chadband are all one to him, except that he knows the Reverend  Chadband and would rather run away from him for an hour than hear  him talk for five minutes. 

"It an't no good my waiting here no  longer," thinks Jo. 

"Mr. Snagsby an't a-going to say nothink to me  to-night."  And downstairs he shuffles.  But downstairs is the charitable Guster, holding by the handrail of  the kitchen stairs and warding off a fit, as yet doubtfully, the  same having been induced by Mrs. Snagsby's screaming.  She has her  own supper of bread and cheese to hand to Jo, with whom she  ventures to interchange a word or so for the first time. 

"Here's something to eat, poor boy," says Guster. 

"Thank'ee, mum," says Jo.  "Are you hungry?" 

"Jist!" says Jo. 

"What's gone of your father and your mother, eh?"  Jo stops in the middle of a bite and looks petrified.  For this  orphan charge of the Christian saint whose shrine was at Tooting  has patted him on the shoulder, and it is the first time in his  life that any decent hand has been so laid upon him. 

"I never know'd nothink about 'em," says Jo. 

"No more didn't I of mine," cries Guster.  She is repressing  symptoms favourable to the fit when she seems to take alarm at  something and vanishes down the stairs. 

"Jo," whispers the law-stationer softly as the boy lingers on the  step. 

"Here I am, Mr. Snagsby!" 

"I didn't know you were gone--there's another half-crown, Jo.  It  was quite right of you to say nothing about the lady the other  night when we were out together.  It would breed trouble.  You  can't be too quiet, Jo." 

"I am fly, master!" 

And so, good night.  A ghostly shade, frilled and night-capped, follows the law- stationer to the room he came from and glides higher up.  And  henceforth he begins, go where he will, to be attended by another  shadow than his own, hardly less constant than his own, hardly less  quiet than his own.  And into whatsoever atmosphere of secrecy his  own shadow may pass, let all concerned in the secrecy beware!  For  the watchful Mrs. Snagsby is there too--bone of his bone, flesh of  his flesh, shadow of his shadow.

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