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>a loud report and echoed and rattled heavily. It shook one house,

or so a man says who was passing. It has aroused all the dogs in

the neighbourhood, who bark vehemently. Terrified cats scamper

across the road. While the dogs are yet barking and howling—there

is one dog howling like a demon—the church-clocks, as if they were

startled too, begin to strike. The hum from the streets, likewise,

seems to swell into a shout. But it is soon over. Before the last

clock begins to strike ten, there is a lull. When it has ceased,

the fine night, the bright large moon, and multitudes of stars, are

left at peace again.

 

Has Mr. Tulkinghorn been disturbed? His windows are dark and

quiet, and his door is shut. It must be something unusual indeed

to bring him out of his shell. Nothing is heard of him, nothing is

seen of him. What power of cannon might it take to shake that

rusty old man out of his immovable composure?

 

For many years the persistent Roman has been pointing, with no

particular meaning, from that ceiling. It is not likely that he

has any new meaning in him to-night. Once pointing, always

pointing—like any Roman, or even Briton, with a single idea.

There he is, no doubt, in his impossible attitude, pointing,

unavailingly, all night long. Moonlight, darkness, dawn, sunrise,

day. There he is still, eagerly pointing, and no one minds him.

 

But a little after the coming of the day come people to clean the

rooms. And either the Roman has some new meaning in him, not

expressed before, or the foremost of them goes wild, for looking up

at his outstretched hand and looking down at what is below it, that

person shrieks and flies. The others, looking in as the first one

looked, shriek and fly too, and there is an alarm in the street.

 

What does it mean? No light is admitted into the darkened chamber,

and people unaccustomed to it enter, and treading softly but

heavily, carry a weight into the bedroom and lay it down. There is

whispering and wondering all day, strict search of every corner,

careful tracing of steps, and careful noting of the disposition of

every article of furniture. All eyes look up at the Roman, and all

voices murmur, “If he could only tell what he saw!”

 

He is pointing at a table with a bottle (nearly full of wine) and a

glass upon it and two candles that were blown out suddenly soon

after being lighted. He is pointing at an empty chair and at a

stain upon the ground before it that might be almost covered with a

hand. These objects lie directly within his range. An excited

imagination might suppose that there was something in them so

terrific as to drive the rest of the composition, not only the

attendant big-legged boys, but the clouds and flowers and pillars

too—in short, the very body and soul of Allegory, and all the

brains it has—stark mad. It happens surely that every one who

comes into the darkened room and looks at these things looks up at

the Roman and that he is invested in all eyes with mystery and awe,

as if he were a paralysed dumb witness.

 

So it shall happen surely, through many years to come, that ghostly

stories shall be told of the stain upon the floor, so easy to be

covered, so hard to be got out, and that the Roman, pointing from

the ceiling shall point, so long as dust and damp and spiders spare

him, with far greater significance than he ever had in Mr.

Tulkinghorn’s time, and with a deadly meaning. For Mr.

Tulkinghorn’s time is over for evermore, and the Roman pointed at

the murderous hand uplifted against his life, and pointed

helplessly at him, from night to morning, lying face downward on

the floor, shot through the heart.

CHAPTER XLIX

Dutiful Friendship

 

A great annual occasion has come round in the establishment of Mr.

Matthew Bagnet, otherwise Lignum Vitae, ex-artilleryman and present

bassoon-player. An occasion of feasting and festival. The

celebration of a birthday in the family.

 

It is not Mr. Bagnet’s birthday. Mr. Bagnet merely distinguishes

that epoch in the musical instrument business by kissing the

children with an extra smack before breakfast, smoking an

additional pipe after dinner, and wondering towards evening what

his poor old mother is thinking about it—a subject of infinite

speculation, and rendered so by his mother having departed this

life twenty years. Some men rarely revert to their father, but

seem, in the bank-books of their remembrance, to have transferred

all the stock of filial affection into their mother’s name. Mr.

Bagnet is one of like his trade the better for that. If I had kept

clear of his old girl causes him usually to make the noun-substantive “goodness” of the feminine gender.

 

It is not the birthday of one of the three children. Those

occasions are kept with some marks of distinction, but they rarely

overleap the bounds of happy returns and a pudding. On young

Woolwich’s last birthday, Mr. Bagnet certainly did, after observing

on his growth and general advancement, proceed, in a moment of

profound reflection on the changes wrought by time, to examine him

in the catechism, accomplishing with extreme accuracy the questions

number one and two, “What is your name?” and “Who gave you that

name?” but there failing in the exact precision of his memory and

substituting for number three the question “And how do you like

that name?” which he propounded with a sense of its importance, in

itself so edifying and improving as to give it quite an orthodox

air. This, however, was a speciality on that particular birthday,

and not a general solemnity.

 

It is the old girl’s birthday, and that is the greatest holiday and

reddest-letter day in Mr. Bagnet’s calendar. The auspicious event

is always commemorated according to certain forms settled and

prescribed by Mr. Bagnet some years since. Mr. Bagnet, being

deeply convinced that to have a pair of fowls for dinner is to

attain the highest pitch of imperial luxury, invariably goes forth

himself very early in the morning of this day to buy a pair; he is,

as invariably, taken in by the vendor and installed in the

possession of the oldest inhabitants of any coop in Europe.

Returning with these triumphs of toughness tied up in a clean blue

and white cotton handkerchief (essential to the arrangements), he

in a casual manner invites Mrs. Bagnet to declare at breakfast what

she would like for dinner. Mrs. Bagnet, by a coincidence never

known to fail, replying fowls, Mr. Bagnet instantly produces his

bundle from a place of concealment amidst general amazement and

rejoicing. He further requires that the old girl shall do nothing

all day long but sit in her very best gown and be served by himself

and the young people. As he is not illustrious for his cookery,

this may be supposed to be a matter of state rather than enjoyment

on the old girl’s part, but she keeps her state with all imaginable

cheerfulness.

 

On this present birthday, Mr. Bagnet has accomplished the usual

preliminaries. He has bought two specimens of poultry, which, if

there be any truth in adages, were certainly not caught with chaff,

to be prepared for the spit; he has amazed and rejoiced the family

by their unlooked-for production; he is himself directing the

roasting of the poultry; and Mrs. Bagnet, with her wholesome brown

fingers itching to prevent what she sees going wrong, sits in her

gown of ceremony, an honoured guest.

 

Quebec and Malta lay the cloth for dinner, while Woolwich, serving,

as beseems him, under his father, keeps the fowls revolving. To

these young scullions Mrs. Bagnet occasionally imparts a wink, or a

shake of the head, or a crooked face, as they made mistakes.

 

“At half after one.” Says Mr. Bagnet. “To the minute. They’ll be

done.”

 

Mrs. Bagnet, with anguish, beholds one of them at a standstill

before the fire and beginning to burn.

 

“You shall have a dinner, old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet. “Fit for a

queen.”

 

Mrs. Bagnet shows her white teeth cheerfully, but to the perception

of her son, betrays so much uneasiness of spirit that he is

impelled by the dictates of affection to ask her, with his eyes,

what is the matter, thus standing, with his eyes wide open, more

oblivious of the fowls than before, and not affording the least

hope of a return to consciousness. Fortunately his elder sister

perceives the cause of the agitation in Mrs. Bagnet’s breast and

with an admonitory poke recalls him. The stopped fowls going round

again, Mrs. Bagnet closes her eyes in the intensity of her relief.

 

“George will look us up,” says Mr. Bagnet. “At half after four.

To the moment. How many years, old girl. Has George looked us up.

This afternoon?”

 

“Ah, Lignum, Lignum, as many as make an old woman of a young one, I

begin to think. Just about that, and no less,” returns Mrs.

Bagnet, laughing and shaking her head.

 

“Old girl,” says Mr. Bagnet, “never mind. You’d be as young as

ever you was. If you wasn’t younger. Which you are. As everybody

knows.”

 

Quebec and Malta here exclaim, with clapping of hands, that Bluffy

is sure to bring mother something, and begin to speculate on what

it will be.

 

“Do you know, Lignum,” says Mrs. Bagnet, casting a glance on the

tablecloth, and winking “salt!” at Malta with her right eye, and

shaking the pepper away from Quebec with her head, “I begin to

think George is in the roving way again.”

 

“George,” returns Mr. Bagnet, “will never desert. And leave his

old comrade. In the lurch. Don’t be afraid of it.”

 

“No, Lignum. No. I don’t say he will. I don’t think he will.

But if he could get over this money trouble of his, I believe he

would be off.”

 

Mr. Bagnet asks why.

 

“Well,” returns his wife, considering, “George seems to me to be

getting not a little impatient and restless. I don’t say but what

he’s as free as ever. Of course he must be free or he wouldn’t be

George, but he smarts and seems put out.”

 

“He’s extra-drilled,” says Mr. Bagnet. “By a lawyer. Who would

put the devil out.”

 

“There’s something in that,” his wife assents; “but so it is,

Lignum.”

 

Further conversation is prevented, for the time, by the necessity

under which Mr. Bagnet finds himself of directing the whole force

of his mind to the dinner, which is a little endangered by the dry

humour of the fowls in not yielding any gravy, and also by the made

gravy acquiring no flavour and turning out of a flaxen complexion.

With a similar perverseness, the potatoes crumble off forks in the

process of peeling, upheaving from their centres in every

direction, as if they were subject to earthquakes. The legs of the

fowls, too, are longer than could be desired, and extremely scaly.

Overcoming these disadvantages to the best of his ability, Mr.

Bagnet at last dishes and they sit down at table, Mrs. Bagnet

occupying the guest’s place at his right hand.

 

It is well for the old girl that she has but one birthday in a

year, for two such indulgences in poultry might be injurious.

Every kind of finer tendon and ligament that is in the nature of

poultry to possess is developed in these specimens in the singular

form of guitar-strings. Their limbs appear to have struck roots

into their breasts and bodies, as aged trees strike roots into the

earth. Their legs are so hard as to encourage the idea that

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