Bleak House, Charles Dickens [the beginning after the end novel read .txt] 📗
- Author: Charles Dickens
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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.
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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