Bleak House, Charles Dickens [the beginning after the end novel read .txt] 📗
- Author: Charles Dickens
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servant’s shoulder. “Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson,” said he,
rather out of breath, “with all apologies for intruding, WILL you
allow me to order up a person that’s on the stairs and that objects
to being left there in case of becoming the subject of observations
in his absence? Thank you. Be so good as chair that there member
in this direction, will you?” said Mr. Bucket, beckoning over the
banisters.
This singular request produced an old man in a black skull-cap,
unable to walk, who was carried up by a couple of bearers and
deposited in the room near the door. Mr. Bucket immediately got
rid of the bearers, mysteriously shut the door, and bolted it.
“Now you see, Mr. Jarndyce,” he then began, putting down his hat
and opening his subject with a flourish of his well-remembered
finger, “you know me, and Miss Summerson knows me. This gentleman
likewise knows me, and his name is Smallweed. The discounting line
is his line principally, and he’s what you may call a dealer in
bills. That’s about what YOU are, you know, ain’t you?” said Mr.
Bucket, stopping a little to address the gentleman in question, who
was exceedingly suspicious of him.
He seemed about to dispute this designation of himself when he was
seized with a violent fit of coughing.
“Now, moral, you know!” said Mr. Bucket, improving the accident.
“Don’t you contradict when there ain’t no occasion, and you won’t
be took in that way. Now, Mr. Jarndyce, I address myself to you.
I’ve been negotiating with this gentleman on behalf of Sir
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and one way and another I’ve been in
and out and about his premises a deal. His premises are the
premises formerly occupied by Krook, marine store dealer—a
relation of this gentleman’s that you saw in his lifetime if I
don’t mistake?”
My guardian replied, “Yes.”
“Well! You are to understand,” said Mr. Bucket, “that this
gentleman he come into Krook’s property, and a good deal of magpie
property there was. Vast lots of waste-paper among the rest. Lord
bless you, of no use to nobody!”
The cunning of Mr. Bucket’s eye and the masterly manner in which he
contrived, without a look or a word against which his watchful
auditor could protest, to let us know that he stated the case
according to previous agreement and could say much more of Mr.
Smallweed if he thought it advisable, deprived us of any merit in
quite understanding him. His difficulty was increased by Mr.
Smallweed’s being deaf as well as suspicious and watching his face
with the closest attention.
“Among them odd heaps of old papers, this gentleman, when he comes
into the property, naturally begins to rummage, don’t you see?”
said Mr. Bucket.
“To which? Say that again,” cried Mr. Smallweed in a shrill, sharp
voice.
“To rummage,” repeated Mr. Bucket. “Being a prudent man and
accustomed to take care of your own affairs, you begin to rummage
among the papers as you have come into; don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” cried Mr. Smallweed.
“Of course you do,” said Mr. Bucket conversationally, “and much to
blame you would be if you didn’t. And so you chance to find, you
know,” Mr. Bucket went on, stooping over him with an air of
cheerful raillery which Mr. Smallweed by no means reciprocated,
“and so you chance to find, you know, a paper with the signature of
Jarndyce to it. Don’t you?”
Mr. Smallweed glanced with a troubled eye at us and grudgingly
nodded assent.
“And coming to look at that paper at your full leisure and
convenience—all in good time, for you’re not curious to read it,
and why should you be?—what do you find it to be but a will, you
see. That’s the drollery of it,” said Mr. Bucket with the same
lively air of recalling a joke for the enjoyment of Mr. Smallweed,
who still had the same crest-fallen appearance of not enjoying it
at all; “what do you find it to be but a will?”
“I don’t know that it’s good as a will or as anything else,”
snarled Mr. Smallweed.
Mr. Bucket eyed the old man for a moment—he had slipped and shrunk
down in his chair into a mere bundle—as if he were much disposed
to pounce upon him; nevertheless, he continued to bend over him
with the same agreeable air, keeping the corner of one of his eyes
upon us.
“Notwithstanding which,” said Mr. Bucket, “you get a little
doubtful and uncomfortable in your mind about it, having a very
tender mind of your own.”
“Eh? What do you say I have got of my own?” asked Mr. Smallweed
with his hand to his ear.
“A very tender mind.”
“Ho! Well, go on,” said Mr. Smallweed.
“And as you’ve heard a good deal mentioned regarding a celebrated
Chancery will case of the same name, and as you know what a card
Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter, and
books, and papers, and what not, and never liking to part with ‘em,
and always a-going to teach himself to read, you begin to think—
and you never was more correct in your born days—‘Ecod, if I don’t
look about me, I may get into trouble regarding this will.’”
“Now, mind how you put it, Bucket,” cried the old man anxiously
with his hand at his ear. “Speak up; none of your brimstone
tricks. Pick me up; I want to hear better. Oh, Lord, I am shaken
to bits!”
Mr. Bucket had certainly picked him up at a dart. However, as soon
as he could be heard through Mr. Smallweed’s coughing and his
vicious ejaculations of “Oh, my bones! Oh, dear! I’ve no breath
in my body! I’m worse than the chattering, clattering, brimstone
pig at home!” Mr. Bucket proceeded in the same convivial manner as
before.
“So, as I happen to be in the habit of coming about your premises,
you take me into your confidence, don’t you?”
I think it would be impossible to make an admission with more ill
will and a worse grace than Mr. Smallweed displayed when he
admitted this, rendering it perfectly evident that Mr. Bucket was
the very last person he would have thought of taking into his
confidence if he could by any possibility have kept him out of it.
“And I go into the business with you—very pleasant we are over it;
and I confirm you in your well-founded fears that you will get
yourself into a most precious line if you don’t come out with that
there will,” said Mr. Bucket emphatically; “and accordingly you
arrange with me that it shall be delivered up to this present Mr.
Jarndyce, on no conditions. If it should prove to be valuable, you
trusting yourself to him for your reward; that’s about where it is,
ain’t it?”
“That’s what was agreed,” Mr. Smallweed assented with the same bad
grace.
“In consequence of which,” said Mr. Bucket, dismissing his
agreeable manner all at once and becoming strictly business-like,
“you’ve got that will upon your person at the present time, and the
only thing that remains for you to do is just to out with it!”
Having given us one glance out of the watching corner of his eye,
and having given his nose one triumphant rub with his forefinger,
Mr. Bucket stood with his eyes fastened on his confidential friend
and his hand stretched forth ready to take the paper and present it
to my guardian. It was not produced without much reluctance and
many declarations on the part of Mr. Smallweed that he was a poor
industrious man and that he left it to Mr. Jarndyce’s honour not to
let him lose by his honesty. Little by little he very slowly took
from a breast-pocket a stained, discoloured paper which was much
singed upon the outside and a little burnt at the edges, as if it
had long ago been thrown upon a fire and hastily snatched off
again. Mr. Bucket lost no time in transferring this paper, with
the dexterity of a conjuror, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr. Jarndyce.
As he gave it to my guardian, he whispered behind his fingers,
“Hadn’t settled how to make their market of it. Quarrelled and
hinted about it. I laid out twenty pound upon it. First the
avaricious grandchildren split upon him on account of their
objections to his living so unreasonably long, and then they split
on one another. Lord! There ain’t one of the family that wouldn’t
sell the other for a pound or two, except the old lady—and she’s
only out of it because she’s too weak in her mind to drive a
bargain.”
“Mr Bucket,” said my guardian aloud, “whatever the worth of this
paper may be to any one, my obligations are great to you; and if it
be of any worth, I hold myself bound to see Mr. Smallweed
remunerated accordingly.”
“Not according to your merits, you know,” said Mr. Bucket in
friendly explanation to Mr. Smallweed. “Don’t you be afraid of
that. According to its value.”
“That is what I mean,” said my guardian. “You may observe, Mr.
Bucket, that I abstain from examining this paper myself. The plain
truth is, I have forsworn and abjured the whole business these many
years, and my soul is sick of it. But Miss Summerson and I will
immediately place the paper in the hands of my solicitor in the
cause, and its existence shall be made known without delay to all
other parties interested.”
“Mr. Jarndyce can’t say fairer than that, you understand,” observed
Mr. Bucket to his fellow-visitor. “And it being now made clear to
you that nobody’s a-going to be wronged—which must be a great
relief to YOUR mind—we may proceed with the ceremony of chairing
you home again.”
He unbolted the door, called in the bearers, wished us good
morning, and with a look full of meaning and a crook of his finger
at parting went his way.
We went our way too, which was to Lincoln’s Inn, as quickly as
possible. Mr. Kenge was disengaged, and we found him at his table
in his dusty room with the inexpressive-looking books and the piles
of papers. Chairs having been placed for us by Mr. Guppy, Mr.
Kenge expressed the surprise and gratification he felt at the
unusual sight of Mr. Jarndyce in his office. He turned over his
double eye-glass as he spoke and was more Conversation Kenge than
ever.
“I hope,” said Mr. Kenge, “that the genial influence of Miss
Summerson,” he bowed to me, “may have induced Mr. Jarndyce,” he
bowed to him, “to forego some little of his animosity towards a
cause and towards a court which are—shall I say, which take their
place in the stately vista of the pillars of our profession?”
“I am inclined to think,” returned my guardian, “that Miss
Summerson has seen too much of the effects of the court and the
cause to exert any influence in their favour. Nevertheless, they
are a part of the occasion of my being here. Mr. Kenge, before I
lay this paper on your desk and have done with it, let me tell you
how it has come into my hands.”
He did so shortly and distinctly.
“It could not, sir,” said Mr. Kenge, “have been stated more plainly
and to the purpose if it had been a case at law.”
“Did you ever know English law, or equity either, plain and to the
purpose?” said my guardian.
“Oh, fie!” said Mr. Kenge.
At first he had not seemed to attach much importance to the
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