The Solitary House (116 page)

It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too; and there is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the Registrar of Deaths some extra business. It may be
something in the air—there is plenty in it—or it may be something in himself, that is in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He comes and goes, between his own room and the open street door, twenty times an hour. He has been doing so, ever since it fell dark. Since the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early tonight, Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all proportion), oftener than before.

It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too; for he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery, of which he is a partaker, and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby haunts what seems to be its fountain-head—the rag and bottle shop in the court. It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by the Sol’s Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out at the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated after-supper stroll of ten minutes long from his own door and back again, Mr. Snagsby approaches.

“What, Mr. Weevle?” says the stationer, stopping to speak. “Are
you
there?”

“Ay!” says Weevle. “Here I am, Mr. Snagsby.”

“Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?” the stationer inquires.

“Why, there’s not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not very freshening,” Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.

“Very true, sir. Don’t you observe,” says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to sniff and taste the air a little; “don’t you observe, Mr. Weevle, that you’re—not to put too fine a point upon it—that you’re rather greasy here, sir?”

“Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in the place tonight,” Mr. Weevle rejoins. “I suppose it’s chops at the Sol’s Arms.”

“Chops, do you think? Oh!—Chops, eh?” Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again. “Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has
been burning ’em, sir! And I don’t think”; Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again, and then spits and wipes his mouth; “I don’t think—not to put too fine a point upon it—that they were quite fresh, when they were shown the gridiron.”

“That’s very likely. It’s a tainting sort of weather.”

“It
is
a tainting sort of weather,” says Mr. Snagsby, “and I find it sinking to the spirits.”

“By George!
I
find it gives me the horrors,” returns Mr. Weevle.

“Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room, with a black circumstance hanging over it,” says Mr. Snagsby, looking in past the other’s shoulder along the dark passage, and then falling back a step to look up at the house. “
I
couldn’t live in that room alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door, and stand here, sooner than sit there. But then it’s very true that you didn’t see, in your room, what
I
saw there. That makes a difference.”

“I know quite enough about it,” returns Tony.

“It’s not agreeable, is it?” pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his cough of mild persuasion behind his hand. “Mr. Krook ought to consider it in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure.”

“I hope he does,” says Tony. “But I doubt it.”

“You find the rent too high, do you, sir?” returns the stationer. “Rents
are
high about here. I don’t know how it is exactly, but the law seems to put things up in price. Not,” adds Mr. Snagsby, with his apologetic cough, “that I mean to say a word against the profession I get my living by.”

Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court, and then looks at the stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a star or so, and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his way out of this conversation.

“It’s a curious fact, sir,” he observes, slowly rubbing his hands, “that he should have been—”

“Who’s he?” interrupts Mr. Weevle.

“The deceased, you know,” says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and right eyebrow towards the staircase, and tapping his acquaintance on the button.

“Ah to be sure!” returns the other, as if he were not overfond of the subject. “I thought we had done with him.”

“I was only going to say it’s a curious fact, sir, that he should have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,” says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle, “because I have known writers that have gone into Brewers’ houses and done really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir,” adds Mr. Snagsby, with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter.

“It’s a curious coincidence, as you say,” answers Weevle, once more glancing up and down the court.

“Seems a Fate in it, don’t there?” suggests the stationer.

“There does.”

“Just so,” observes the stationer, with his confirmatory cough. “Quite a Fate in it. Quite a Fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid you good night”; Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go, though he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since he stopped to speak; “my little woman will be looking for me else. Good night, sir!”

If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol’s Arms all this time, and now glides after him with a pocket-handkerchief wrapped over her head; honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching glance as she goes past.

“You’ll know me again, ma’am, at all events,” says Mr. Weevle to himself; “and I can’t compliment you on your appearance, whoever you are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow
never
coming!”

This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up his finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door. Then, they go upstairs; Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy (for it is he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they speak low.

“I thought you had gone to Jericho at least, instead of coming here,” says Tony.

“Why, I said about ten.”

“You said about ten,” Tony repeats. “Yes, so you did say about ten. But according to my count, it’s ten times ten—it’s a hundred o’clock. I never had such a night in my life!”

“What has been the matter?”

“That’s it!” says Tony. “Nothing has been the matter. But, here have I been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib, till I have had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail.
There’s
a blessed-looking candle!” says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.

“That’s easily improved,” Mr. Guppy observes, as he takes the snuffers in his hand.

“
Is
it?” returns his friend. “Not so easily as you think. It has been smouldering like that, ever since it was lighted.”

“Why, what’s the matter with you, Tony?” inquires Mr. Guppy, looking at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the table.

“William Guppy,” replies the other, “I am in the Downs. It’s this unbearably dull, suicidal room—and old Boguey downstairs, I suppose.” Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender, and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his head, and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy attitude.

“Wasn’t that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?”

“Yes, and he—yes, it was Snagsby,” said Mr. Weevle, altering the construction of his sentence.

“On business?”

“No. No business. He was only sauntering by, and stopped to prose.”

“I thought it was Snagsby,” says Mr. Guppy, “and thought it as well that he shouldn’t see me, so I waited till he was gone.”

“There we go again, William G!” cried Tony, looking up for an instant. “So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were
going to commit a murder, we couldn’t have more mystery about it!”

Mr. Guppy affects to smile; and with the view of changing the conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty; terminating his survey with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm.

“That’s very like Lady Dedlock,” says Mr. Guppy. “It’s a speaking likeness.”

“I wish it was,” growls Tony, without changing his position. “I should have some fashionable conversation, here, then.”

Finding by this time, that his friend is not to be wheedled into a more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack, and remonstrates with him.

“Tony,” says he, “I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man, better than I do; and no man perhaps has a better right to know it, than a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his art. But there are bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don’t think your manner on the present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly.”

“This is strong language, William Guppy,” returns Mr. Weevle.

“Sir, it may be,” retorts Mr. William Guppy, “but I feel strongly when I use it.”

Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong, and begs Mr. William Guppy to think no more about it. Mr. William Guppy, however, having got the advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured remonstrance.

“No! Dash it, Tony,” says the gentleman, “you really ought to be careful how you wound the feelings of a man, who has an unrequited image imprinted on his art, and who is
not
altogether happy in those chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions.
You, Tony, possess in yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye, and allure the taste. It is not—happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I could say the same—it is not your character to hover around one flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am sure, to sound even your feelings without a cause!”

Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying emphatically, “William Guppy, drop it!” Mr. Guppy acquiesces, with the reply, “I never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord.”

“And now,” says Tony, stirring the fire, “touching this same bundle of letters. Isn’t it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have appointed twelve o’clock tonight to hand ’em over to me?”

“Very. What did he do it for?”

“What does he do anything for?
He
don’t know. Said, today was his birthday, and he’d hand ’em over tonight at twelve o’clock. He’ll have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day.”

“He hasn’t forgotten the appointment, I hope?”

“Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him tonight, about eight—helped him to shut up his shop—and he had got the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off, and showed ’em me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his cap on the chair back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I heard him a little while afterwards through the floor here, humming like the wind, the only song he knows—about Bibo, and old Charon, and Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been as quiet, since, as an old rat asleep in his hole.”

“And you are to go down at twelve?”

“At twelve. And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a hundred.”

“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, after considering a little with his legs crossed, “he can’t read yet, can he?”

“Read! He’ll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on that much, under me; but he can’t put them
together. He’s too old to acquire the knack of it now—and too drunk.”

“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs; “how do you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?”

“He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has, and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye alone. He imitated it—evidently from the direction of a letter; and asked me what it meant.”

“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again; “should you say that the original was a man’s writing or a woman’s?”

“A woman’s. Fifty to one a lady’s—slopes a good deal, and the end of the letter ‘n,’ long and hasty.”

Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue, generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. As he is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast.

“Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house tonight? Is there a chimney on fire?”

“Chimney on fire!”

“Ah!” returns Mr. Guppy. “See how the soot’s falling. See here, on my arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won’t blow off—smears, like black fat!”

They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back, and says it’s all right, and all quiet; and quotes the remark he lately made to Mr. Snagsby, about their cooking chops at the Sol’s Arms.

“And it was then,” resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with remarkable aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads very near together, “that he told you of his having taken the bundle of letters from his lodger’s portmanteau?”