BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la sumar

CHAPTER XXXIX  

Attorney and Client

The name of Mr. Vholes, preceded by the legend Ground-Floor, is  inscribed upon a door-post in Symond's Inn, Chancery Lane--a  little, pale, wall-eyed, woebegone inn like a large dust-binn of  two compartments and a sifter.  It looks as if Symond were a  sparing man in his way and constructed his inn of old building  materials which took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and all  things decaying and dismal, and perpetuated Symond's memory with  congenial shabbiness.  Quartered in this dingy hatchment  commemorative of Symond are the legal bearings of Mr. Vholes.  Mr. Vholes's office, in disposition retiring and in situation  retired, is squeezed up in a corner and blinks at a dead wall.   Three feet of knotty-floored dark passage bring the client to Mr.  Vholes's jet-black door, in an angle profoundly dark on the  brightest midsummer morning and encumbered by a black bulk-head of  cellarage staircase against which belated civilians generally  strike their brows.  Mr. Vholes's chambers are on so small a scale  that one clerk can open the door without getting off his stool,  while the other who elbows him at the same desk has equal  facilities for poking the fire.  A smell as of unwholesome sheep  blending with the smell of must and dust is referable to the  nightly (and often daily) consumption of mutton fat in candles and  to the fretting of parchment forms and skins in greasy drawers.   The atmosphere is otherwise stale and close. 

The place was last  painted or whitewashed beyond the memory of man, and the two  chimneys smoke, and there is a loose outer surface of soot  evervwhere, and the dull cracked windows in their heavy frames have  but one piece of character in them, which is a determination to be  always dirty and always shut unless coerced.  This accounts for the  phenomenon of the weaker of the two usually having a bundle of  firewood thrust between its jaws in hot weather.  Mr. Vholes is a very respectable man.  He has not a large business,  but he is a very respectable man.  He is allowed by the greater  attorneys who have made good fortunes or are making them to be a  most respectable man.  He never misses a chance in his practice,  which is a mark of respectability.  He never takes any pleasure,  which is another mark of respectability.  He is reserved and  serious, which is another mark of respectability.  His digestion is  impaired, which is highly respectable.  And he is making hay of the  grass which is flesh, for his three daughters.  And his father is  dependent on him in the Vale of Taunton.  The one great principle of the English law is to make business for  itself.  There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and  consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings.  Viewed by  this light it becomes a coherent scheme and not the monstrous maze  the laity are apt to think it.  Let them but once clearly perceive  that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their  expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.  But not perceiving this quite plainly--only seeing it by halves in  a confused way--the laity sometimes suffer in peace and pocket,  with a bad grace, and DO grumble very much.  Then this  respectability of Mr. Vholes is brought into powerful play against  them. 

"Repeal this statute, my good sir?" says Mr. Kenge to a  smarting client. 

"Repeal it, my dear sir?  Never, with my consent.   Alter this law, sir, and what will be the effect of your rash  proceeding on a class of practitioners very worthily represented,  allow me to say to you, by the opposite attorney in the case, Mr.  Vholes?  Sir, that class of practitioners would be swept from the  face of the earth.  Now you cannot afford--I will say, the social  system cannot afford--to lose an order of men like Mr. Vholes.   Diligent, persevering, steady, acute in business.  My dear sir, I  understand your present feelings against the existing state of  things, which I grant to be a little hard in your case; but I can  never raise my voice for the demolition of a class of men like Mr.  Vholes."  The respectability of Mr. Vholes has even been cited with  crushing effect before Parliamentary committees, as in the  following blue minutes of a distinguished attorney's evidence.    

"Question (number five hundred and seventeen thousand eight hundred  and sixty-nine): If I understand you, these forms of practice  indisputably occasion delay?  Answer: Yes, some delay.  Question:  And great expense?  Answer: Most assuredly they cannot be gone  through for nothing.  Question: And unspeakable vexation?  Answer:  I am not prepared to say that.  They have never given ME any  vexation; quite the contrary.  Question: But you think that their  abolition would damage a class of practitioners?  Answer: I have no  doubt of it.  Question: Can you instance any type of that class?   Answer: Yes.  I would unhesitatingly mention Mr. Vholes.  He would  be ruined.  Question: Mr. Vholes is considered, in the profession,  a respectable man?  Answer: "--which proved fatal to the inquiry  for ten years--"Mr. Vholes is considered, in the profession, a MOST  respectable man."  So in familiar conversation, private authorities no less  disinterested will remark that they don't know what this age is  coming to, that we are plunging down precipices, that now here is  something else gone, that these changes are death to people like  Vholes--a man of undoubted respectability, with a father in the  Vale of Taunton, and three daughters at home. 

Take a few steps  more in this direction, say they, and what is to become of Vholes's  father?  Is he to perish?  And of Vholes's daughters?  Are they to  be shirt-makers, or governesses?  As though, Mr. Vholes and his  relations being minor cannibal chiefs and it being proposed to  abolish cannibalism, indignant champions were to put the case thus:  Make man-eating unlawful, and you starve the Vholeses!  In a word, Mr. Vholes, with his three daughters and his father in  the Vale of Taunton, is continually doing duty, like a piece of  timber, to shore up some decayed foundation that has become a  pitfall and a nuisance.  And with a great many people in a great  many instances, the question is never one of a change from wrong to  right (which is quite an extraneous consideration), but is always  one of injury or advantage to that eminently respectable legion,  Vholes.  The Chancellor is, within these ten minutes, "up" for the long  vacation. 

Mr. Vholes, and his young client, and several blue bags  hastily stuffed out of all regularity of form, as the larger sort  of serpents are in their first gorged state, have returned to the  official den.  Mr. Vholes, quiet and unmoved, as a man of so much  respectability ought to be, takes off his close black gloves as if  he were skinning his hands, lifts off his tight hat as if he were  scalping himself, and sits down at his desk.  The client throws his  hat and gloves upon the ground--tosses them anywhere, without  looking after them or caring where they go; flings himself into a  chair, half sighing and half groaning; rests his aching head upon  his hand and looks the portrait of young despair. 

"Again nothing done!" says Richard. 

"Nothing, nothing done!" 

"Don't say nothing done, sir," returns the placid Vholes. 

"That is  scarcely fair, sir, scarcely fair!" 

"Why, what IS done?" says Richard, turning gloomily upon him. 

"That may not be the whole question," returns Vholes, "The question  may branch off into what is doing, what is doing?" 

"And what is doing?" asks the moody client.  Vholes, sitting with his arms on the desk, quietly bringing the  tips of his five right fingers to meet the tips of his five left  fingers, and quietly separating them again, and fixedly and slowly  looking at his client, replies, "A good deal is doing, sir.  We  have put our shoulders to the wheel, Mr. Carstone, and the wheel is  going round." 

"Yes, with Ixion on it.  How am I to get through the next four or  five accursed months?" exclaims the young man, rising from his  chair and walking about the room. 

"Mr. C.," returns Vholes, following him close with his eyes  wherever he goes, "your spirits are hasty, and I am sorry for it on  your account.  Excuse me if I recommend you not to chafe so much,  not to be so impetuous, not to wear yourself out so.  You should  have more patience.  You should sustain yourself better." 

"I ought to imitate you, in fact, Mr. Vholes?" says Richard,  sitting down again with an impatient laugh and beating the devil's  tattoo with his boot on the patternless carpet. 

"Sir," returns Vholes, always looking at the client as if he were  making a lingering meal of him with his eyes as well as with his  professional appetite. 

"Sir," returns Vholes with his inward  manner of speech and his bloodless quietude, "I should not have had  the presumption to propose myself as a model for your imitation or  any man's.  Let me but leave the good name to my three daughters,  and that is enough for me; I am not a self-seeker.  But since you  mention me so pointedly, I will acknowledge that I should like to  impart to you a little of my--come, sir, you are disposed to call  it insensibility, and I am sure I have no objection--say  insensibility--a little of my insensibility." 

"Mr. Vholes," explains the client, somewhat abashed, "I had no  intention to accuse you of insensibility."  "I think you had, sir, without knowing it," returns the equable  Vholes. 

"Very naturally.  It is my duty to attend to your  interests with a cool head, and I can quite understand that to your  excited feelings I may appear, at such times as the present,  insensible. 

My daughters may know me better; my aged father may  know me better.  But they have known me much longer than you have,  and the confiding eye of affection is not the distrustful eye of  business.  Not that I complain, sir, of the eye of business being  distrustful; quite the contrary.  In attending to your interests, I  wish to have all possible checks upon me; it is right that I should  have them; I court inquiry.  But your interests demand that I  should be cool and methodical, Mr. Carstone; and I cannot be  otherwise--no, sir, not even to please you." 

Mr. Vholes, after glancing at the official cat who is patiently  watching a mouse's hole, fixes his charmed gaze again on his young  client and proceeds in his buttoned-up, half-audible voice as if  there were an unclean spirit in him that will neither come out nor  speak out, "What are you to do, sir, you inquire, during the  vacation.  I should hope you gentlemen of the army may find many  means of amusing yourselves if you give your minds to it.  If you  had asked me what I was to do during the vacation, I could have  answered you more readily.  I am to attend to your interests.  I am  to be found here, day by day, attending to your interests.  That is  my duty, Mr. C., and term-time or vacation makes no difference to  me.  If you wish to consult me as to your interests, you will find  me here at all times alike.  Other professional men go out of town.   I don't.  Not that I blame them for going; I merely say I don't go.   This desk is your rock, sir!"  Mr. Vholes gives it a rap, and it sounds as hollow as a coffin.   Not to Richard, though.  There is encouragement in the sound to  him.  Perhaps Mr. Vholes knows there is. 

"I am perfectly aware, Mr. Vholes," says Richard, more familiarly  and good-humouredly, "that you are the most reliable fellow in the  world and that to have to do with you is to have to do with a man  of business who is not to be hoodwinked.  But put yourself in my  case, dragging on this dislocated life, sinking deeper and deeper  into difficulty every day, continually hoping and continually  disappointed, conscious of change upon change for the worse in  myself, and of no change for the better in anything else, and you  will find it a dark-looking case sometimes, as I do." 

"You know," says Mr. Vholes, "that I never give hopes, sir.  I told  you from the first, Mr. C., that I never give hopes.  Particularly  in a case like this, where the greater part of the costs comes out  of the estate, I should not be considerate of my good name if I  gave hopes.  It might seem as if costs were my object.  Still, when  you say there is no change for the better, I must, as a bare matter  of fact, deny that." 

"Aye?" returns Richard, brightening. 

"But how do you make it out?" 

"Mr. Carstone, you are represented by--" 

"You said just now--a rock." 

"Yes, sir," says Mr. Vholes, gently shaking his head and rapping  the hollow desk, with a sound as if ashes were falling on ashes,  and dust on dust, "a rock.  That's something.  You are separately  represented, and no longer hidden and lost in the interests of  others.  THAT'S something.  The suit does not sleep; we wake it up,  we air it, we walk it about.  THAT'S something.  It's not all  Jarndyce, in fact as well as in name.  THAT'S something.  Nobody  has it all his own way now, sir.  And THAT'S something, surely." 

Richard, his face flushing suddenly, strikes the desk with his  clenched hand. 

"Mr. Vholes!  If any man had told me when I first went to John  Jarndyce's house that he was anything but the disinterested friend  he seemed--that he was what he has gradually turned out to be--I  could have found no words strong enough to repel the slander; I  could not have defended him too ardently.  So little did I know of  the world!  Whereas now I do declare to you that he becomes to me  the embodiment of the suit; that in place of its being an  abstraction, it is John Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, the more  indignant I am with him; that every new delay and every new  disappointment is only a new injury from John Jarndyce's hand." 

"No, no," says vholes. 

"Don't say so.  We ought to have patience,  all of us.  Besides, I never disparage, sir.  I never disparage." 

"Mr. Vholes," returns the angry client. 

"You know as well as I  that he would have strangled the suit if he could." 

"He was not active in it," Mr. Vholes admits with an appearance of  reluctance. 

"He certainly was not active in it.  But however, but  however, he might have had amiable intentions.  Who can read the  heart, Mr. C.!" 

"You can," returns Richard.  "I, Mr. C.?" 

"Well enough to know what his intentions were.  Are or are not our  interests conflicting?  Tell--me--that!" says Richard, accompanying  his last three words with three raps on his rock of trust. 

"Mr. C.," returns Vholes, immovable in attitude and never winking  his hungry eyes, "I should be wanting in my duty as your  professional adviser, I should be departing from my fidelity to  your interests, if I represented those interests as identical with  the interests of Mr. Jarndyce.  They are no such thing, sir.  I  never impute motives; I both have and am a father, and I never  impute motives.  But I must not shrink from a professional duty,  even if it sows dissensions in families.  I understand you to be  now consulting me professionally as to your interests?  You are so?   I reply, then, they are not identical with those of Mr. Jarndyce." 

"Of course they are not!" cries Richard. 

"You found that out long  ago." 

"Mr. C.," returns Vholes, "I wish to say no more of any third party  than is necessary.  I wish to leave my good name unsullied,  together with any little property of which I may become possessed  through industry and perseverance, to my daughters Emma, Jane, and  Caroline.  I also desire to live in amity with my professional  brethren.  When Mr. Skimpole did me the honour, sir--I will not say  the very high honour, for I never stoop to flattery--of bringing us  together in this room, I mentioned to you that I could offer no  opinion or advice as to your interests while those interests were  entrusted to another member of the profession.  And I spoke in such  terms as I was bound to speak of Kenge and Carboy's office, which  stands high.  You, sir, thought fit to withdraw your interests from  that keeping nevertheless and to offer them to me.  You brought  them with clean hands, sir, and I accepted them with clean hands.   

Those interests are now paramount in this office.  My digestive  functions, as you may have heard me mention, are not in a good  state, and rest might improve them; but I shall not rest, sir,  while I am your representative.  Whenever you want me, you will  find me here.  Summon me anywhere, and I will come.  During the  long vacation, sir, I shall devote my leisure to studying your  interests more and more closely and to making arrangements for  moving heaven and earth (including, of course, the Chancellor)  after Michaelmas term; and when I ultimately congratulate you,  sir," says Mr. Vholes with the severity of a determined man, "when  I ultimately congratulate you, sir, with all my heart, on your  accession to fortune--which, but that I never give hopes, I might  say something further about--you will owe me nothing beyond  whatever little balance may be then outstanding of the costs as  between solicitor and client not included in the taxed costs  allowed out of the estate.  I pretend to no claim upon you, Mr. C.,  but for the zealous and active discharge--not the languid and  routine discharge, sir: that much credit I stipulate for--of my  professional duty. 

My duty prosperously ended, all between us is  ended."  Vholes finally adds, by way of rider to this declaration of his  principles, that as Mr. Carstone is about to rejoin his regiment,  perhaps Mr. C. will favour him with an order on his agent for  twenty pounds on account. 

"For there have been many little consultations and attendances of  late, sir," observes Vholes, turning over the leaves of his diary,  "and these things mount up, and I don't profess to be a man of  capital.  When we first entered on our present relations I stated  to you openly--it is a principle of mine that there never can be  too much openness between solicitor and client--that I was not a  man of capital and that if capital was your object you had better  leave your papers in Kenge's office.  No, Mr. C., you will find  none of the advantages or disadvantages of capital here, sir.   

This," Vholes gives the desk one hollow blow again, "is your rock;  it pretends to be nothing more."  The client, with his dejection insensibly relieved and his vague  hopes rekindled, takes pen and ink and writes the draft, not  without perplexed consideration and calculation of the date it may  bear, implying scant effects in the agent's hands.  All the while,  Vholes, buttoned up in body and mind, looks at him attentively.   All the while, Vholes's official cat watches the mouse's hole.  Lastly, the client, shaking hands, beseeches Mr. Vholes, for  heaven's sake and earth's sake, to do his utmost to "pull him  through" the Court of Chancery.  Mr. Vholes, who never gives hopes,  lays his palm upon the client's shoulder and answers with a smile,  "Always here, sir.  Personally, or by letter, you will always find  me here, sir, with my shoulder to the wheel." 

Thus they part, and  Vholes, left alone, employs himself in carrying sundry little  matters out of his diary into his draft bill book for the ultimate  behoof of his three daughters.  So might an industrious fox or bear  make up his account of chickens or stray travellers with an eye to  his cubs, not to disparage by that word the three raw-visaged,  lank, and buttoned-up maidens who dwell with the parent Vholes in  an earthy cottage situated in a damp garden at Kennington.  Richard, emerging from the heavy shade of Symond's Inn into the  sunshine of Chancery Lane--for there happens to be sunshine there  to-day--walks thoughtfully on, and turns into Lincoln's Inn, and  passes under the shadow of the Lincoln's Inn trees.  On many such  loungers have the speckled shadows of those trees often fallen; on  the like bent head, the bitten nail, the lowering eye, the  lingering step, the purposeless and dreamy air, the good consuming  and consumed, the life turned sour.  This lounger is not shabby  yet, but that may come.  Chancery, which knows no wisdom but in  precedent, is very rich in such precedents; and why should one be  different from ten thousand? 

Yet the time is so short since his depreciation began that as he  saunters away, reluctant to leave the spot for some long months  together, though he hates it, Richard himself may feel his own case  as if it were a startling one.  While his heart is heavy with  corroding care, suspense, distrust, and doubt, it may have room for  some sorrowful wonder when he recalls how different his first visit  there, how different he, how different all the colours of his mind.   But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being  defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to  combat; from the impalpable suit which no man alive can understand,  the time for that being long gone by, it has become a gloomy relief  to turn to the palpable figure of the friend who would have saved  him from this ruin and make HIM his enemy.  Richard has told Vholes  the truth.  Is he in a hardened or a softened mood, he still lays  his injuries equally at that door; he was thwarted, in that  quarter, of a set purpose, and that purpose could only originate in  the one subject that is resolving his existence into itself;  besides, it is a justification to him in his own eyes to have an  embodied antagonist and oppressor.  Is Richard a monster in all this, or would Chancery be found rich  in such precedents too if they could be got for citation from the  Recording Angel?  Two pairs of eyes not unused to such people look after him, as,  biting his nails and brooding, he crosses the square and is  swallowed up by the shadow of the southern gateway.  Mr. Guppy and  Mr. Weevle are the possessors of those eyes, and they have been  leaning in conversation against the low stone parapet under the  trees.  He passes close by them, seeing nothing but the ground. 

"William," says Mr. Weevle, adjusting his whiskers, "there's  combustion going on there!  It's not a case of spontaneous, but  it's smouldering combustion it is." 

"Ah!" says Mr. Guppy. 

"He wouldn't keep out of Jarndyce, and I  suppose he's over head and ears in debt.  I never knew much of him.   He was as high as the monument when he was on trial at our place.   A good riddance to me, whether as clerk or client!  Well, Tony,  that as I was mentioning is what they're up to." 

Mr. Guppy, refolding his arms, resettles himself against the  parapet, as resuming a conversation of interest. 

"They are still up to it, sir," says Mr. Guppy, "still taking  stock, still examining papers, still going over the heaps and heaps  of rubbish.  At this rate they'll be at it these seven years." 

"And Small is helping?" 

"Small left us at a week's notice.  Told Kenge his grandfather's  business was too much for the old gentleman and he could better  himself by undertaking it.  There had been a coolness between  myself and Small on account of his being so close.  But he said you  and I began it, and as he had me there--for we did--I put our  acquaintance on the old footing.  That's how I come to know what  they're up to." 

"You haven't looked in at all?" 

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, a little disconcerted, "to be unreserved  with you, I don't greatly relish the house, except in your company,  and therefore I have not; and therefore I proposed this little  appointment for our fetching away your things.  There goes the hour  by the clock!  Tony"--Mr. Guppy becomes mysteriously and tenderly  eloquent--"it is necessary that I should impress upon your mind  once more that circumstances over which I have no control have made  a melancholy alteration in my most cherished plans and in that  unrequited image which I formerly mentioned to you as a friend.   That image is shattered, and that idol is laid low.  My only wish  now in connexion with the objects which I had an idea of carrying  out in the court with your aid as a friend is to let 'em alone and  bury 'em in oblivion.  Do you think it possible, do you think it at  all likely (I put it to you, Tony, as a friend), from your  knowledge of that capricious and deep old character who fell a prey  to the--spontaneous element, do you, Tony, think it at all likely  that on second thoughts he put those letters away anywhere, after  you saw him alive, and that they were not destroyed that night?"  Mr. Weevle reflects for some time.  Shakes his head.  Decidedly  thinks not. 

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy as they walk towards the court, "once again  understand me, as a friend.  Without entering into further  explanations, I may repeat that the idol is down.  I have no  purpose to serve now but burial in oblivion.  To that I have  pledged myself.  I owe it to myself, and I owe it to the shattered  image, as also to the circumstances over which I have no control.   If you was to express to me by a gesture, by a wink, that you saw  lying anywhere in your late lodgings any papers that so much as  looked like the papers in question, I would pitch them into the  fire, sir, on my own responsibility." 

Mr. Weevle nods.  Mr. Guppy, much elevated in his own opinion by  having delivered these observations, with an air in part forensic  and in part romantic--this gentleman having a passion for  conducting anything in the form of an examination, or delivering  anything in the form of a summing up or a speech--accompanies his  friend with dignity to the court.  Never since it has been a court has it had such a Fortunatus' purse  of gossip as in the proceedings at the rag and bottle shop.   

Regularly, every morning at eight, is the elder Mr. Smallweed  brought down to the corner and carried in, accompanied by Mrs.  Smallweed, Judy, and Bart; and regularly, all day, do they all  remain there until nine at night, solaced by gipsy dinners, not  abundant in quantity, from the cook's shop, rummaging and  searching, digging, delving, and diving among the treasures of the  late lamented.  What those treasures are they keep so secret that  the court is maddened.  In its delirium it imagines guineas pouring  out of tea-pots, crown-pieces overflowing punch-bowls, old chairs  and mattresses stuffed with Bank of England notes.  It possesses  itself of the sixpenny history (with highly coloured folding  frontispiece) of Mr. Daniel Dancer and his sister, and also of Mr.  Elwes, of Suffolk, and transfers all the facts from those authentic  narratives to Mr. Krook.  Twice when the dustman is called in to  carry off a cartload of old paper, ashes, and broken bottles, the  whole court assembles and pries into the baskets as they come  forth.  Many times the two gentlemen who write with the ravenous  little pens on the tissue-paper are seen prowling in the  neighbourhood--shy of each other, their late partnership being  dissolved. 

The Sol skilfully carries a vein of the prevailing  interest through the Harmonic nights.  Little Swills, in what are  professionally known as "patter" allusions to the subject, is  received with loud applause; and the same vocalist "gags" in the  regular business like a man inspired.  Even Miss M. Melvilleson, in  the revived Caledonian melody of "We're a-Nodding," points the  sentiment that "the dogs love broo" (whatever the nature of that  refreshment may be) with such archness and such a turn of the head  towards next door that she is immediately understood to mean Mr.  Smallweed loves to find money, and is nightly honoured with a  double encore.  For all this, the court discovers nothing; and as  Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins now communicate to the late lodger whose  appearance is the signal for a general rally, it is in one  continual ferment to discover everything, and more.  Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, with every eye in the court's head upon  them, knock at the closed door of the late lamented's house, in a  high state of popularity. 

But being contrary to the court's  expectation admitted, they immediately become unpopular and are  considered to mean no good.  The shutters are more or less closed all over the house, and the  ground-floor is sufficiently dark to require candles.  Introduced  into the back shop by Mr. Smallweed the younger, they, fresh from  the sunlight, can at first see nothing save darkness and shadows;  but they gradually discern the elder Mr. Smallweed seated in his  chair upon the brink of a well or grave of waste-paper, the  virtuous Judy groping therein like a female sexton, and Mrs.  Smallweed on the level ground in the vicinity snowed up in a heap  of paper fragments, print, and manuscript which would appear to be  the accumulated compliments that have been sent flying at her in  the course of the day.  The whole party, Small included, are  blackened with dust and dirt and present a fiendish appearance not  relieved by the general aspect of the room.  There is more litter  and lumber in it than of old, and it is dirtier if possible;  likewise, it is ghostly with traces of its dead inhabitant and even  with his chalked writing on the wall.  On the entrance of visitors, Mr. Smallweed and Judy simultaneously  fold their arms and stop in their researches. 

"Aha!" croaks the old gentleman. 

"How de do, gentlemen, how de do!   Come to fetch your property, Mr. Weevle?  That's well, that's well.   Ha! Ha!  We should have been forced to sell you up, sir, to pay  your warehouse room if you had left it here much longer.  You feel  quite at home here again, I dare say?  Glad to see you, glad to see  you!"  Mr. Weevle, thanking him, casts an eye about.  Mr. Guppy's eye  follows Mr. Weevle's eye.  Mr. Weevle's eye comes back without any  new intelligence in it.  Mr. Guppy's eye comes back and meets Mr.  Smallweed's eye.  That engaging old gentleman is still murmuring,  like some wound-up instrument running down, "How de do, sir--how  de--how--"  And then having run down, he lapses into grinning  silence, as Mr. Guppy starts at seeing Mr. Tulkinghorn standing in  the darkness opposite with his hands behind him. 

"Gentleman so kind as to act as my solicitor," says Grandfather  Smallweed. 

"I am not the sort of client for a gentleman of such  note, but he is so good!"  Mr. Guppy, slightly nudging his friend to take another look, makes  a shuffling bow to Mr. Tulkinghorn, who returns it with an easy  nod.  Mr. Tulkinghorn is looking on as if he had nothing else to do  and were rather amused by the novelty. 

"A good deal of property here, sir, I should say," Mr. Guppy  observes to Mr. Smallweed. 

"Principally rags and rubbish, my dear friend!  Rags and rubbish!   Me and Bart and my granddaughter Judy are endeavouring to make out  an inventory of what's worth anything to sell.  But we haven't come  to much as yet; we--haven't--come--to--hah!"  Mr. Smallweed has run down again, while Mr. Weevle's eye, attended  by Mr. Guppy's eye, has again gone round the room and come back. 

"Well, sir," says Mr. Weevle. 

"We won't intrude any longer if  you'll allow us to go upstairs." 

"Anywhere, my dear sir, anywhere!  You're at home.  Make yourself  so, pray!" 

As they go upstairs, Mr. Guppy lifts his eyebrows inquiringly and  looks at Tony.  Tony shakes his head.  They find the old room very  dull and dismal, with the ashes of the fire that was burning on  that memorable night yet in the discoloured grate.  They have a  great disinclination to touch any object, and carefully blow the  dust from it first.  Nor are they desirous to prolong their visit,  packing the few movables with all possible speed and never speaking  above a whisper. 

"Look here," says Tony, recoiling. 

"Here's that horrible cat  coming in!"  Mr. Guppy retreats behind a chair. 

"Small told me of her.  She  went leaping and bounding and tearing about that night like a  dragon, and got out on the house-top, and roamed about up there for  a fortnight, and then came tumbling down the chimney very thin.   Did you ever see such a brute?  Looks as if she knew all about it,  don't she?  Almost looks as if she was Krook.  Shoohoo!  Get out,  you goblin!"  Lady Jane, in the doorway, with her tiger snarl from ear to ear and  her club of a tail, shows no intention of obeying; but Mr.  Tulkinghorn stumbling over her, she spits at his rusty legs, and  swearing wrathfully, takes her arched back upstairs.  Possibly to  roam the house-tops again and return by the chimney. 

"Mr. Guppy," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "could I have a word with you?" 

Mr. Guppy is engaged in collecting the Galaxy Gallery of British  Beauty from the wall and depositing those works of art in their old  ignoble band-box. 

"Sir," he returns, reddening, "I wish to act  with courtesy towards every member of the profession, and  especially, I am sure, towards a member of it so well known as  yourself--I will truly add, sir, so distinguished as yourself.   Still, Mr. Tulkinghorn, sir, I must stipulate that if you have any  word with me, that word is spoken in the presence of my friend." 

"Oh, indeed?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn. 

"Yes, sir.  My reasons are not of a personal nature at all, but  they are amply sufficient for myself." 

"No doubt, no doubt."  Mr. Tulkinghorn is as imperturbable as the  hearthstone to which he has quietly walked. 

"The matter is not of  that consequence that I need put you to the trouble of making any  conditions, Mr. Guppy."  He pauses here to smile, and his smile is  as dull and rusty as his pantaloons. 

"You are to be congratulated,  Mr. Guppy; you are a fortunate young man, sir." 

"Pretty well so, Mr. Tulkinghorn; I don't complain." 

"Complain?  High friends, free admission to great houses, and  access to elegant ladies!  Why, Mr. Guppy, there are people in  London who would give their ears to be you." 

Mr. Guppy, looking as if he would give his own reddening and still  reddening ears to be one of those people at present instead of  himself, replies, "Sir, if I attend to my profession and do what is  right by Kenge and Carboy, my friends and acquaintances are of no  consequence to them nor to any member of the profession, not  excepting Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields.  I am not under any  obligation to explain myself further; and with all respect for you,  sir, and without offence--I repeat, without offence--" 

"Oh, certainly!"  "--I don't intend to do it." 

"Quite so," says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a calm nod. 

"Very good; I  see by these portraits that you take a strong interest in the  fashionable great, sir?"  He addresses this to the astounded Tony, who admits the soft  impeachment. 

"A virtue in which few Englishmen are deficient," observes Mr.  Tulkinghorn.  He has been standing on the hearthstone with his back  to the smoked chimney-piece, and now turns round with his glasses  to his eyes. 

"Who is this?  'Lady Dedlock.'  Ha!  A very good  likeness in its way, but it wants force of character.  Good day to  you, gentlemen; good day!"  When he has walked out, Mr. Guppy, in a great perspiration, nerves  himself to the hasty completion of the taking down of the Galaxy  Gallery, concluding with Lady Dedlock. 

"Tony," he says hurriedly to his astonished companion, "let us be  quick in putting the things together and in getting out of this  place.  It were in vain longer to conceal from you, Tony, that  between myself and one of the members of a swan-like aristocracy  whom I now hold in my hand, there has been undivulged communication  and association.  The time might have been when I might have  revealed it to you.  It never will be more.  It is due alike to the  oath I have taken, alike to the shattered idol, and alike to  circumstances over which I have no control, that the whole should  be buried in oblivion.  I charge you as a friend, by the interest  you have ever testified in the fashionable intelligence, and by any  little advances with which I may have been able to accommodate you,  so to bury it without a word of inquiry!"  This charge Mr. Guppy delivers in a state little short of forensic  lunacy, while his friend shows a dazed mind in his whole head of  hair and even in his cultivated whiskers.

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