The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  With the morning, there came a letter from Messrs. Kenge and Carboy to Mr. Boythorn, informing him that one of their clerks would wait upon him at noon. As it was the day of the week on which I paid the bills, and added up my books, and made all the household affairs as compact as possible, I remained at home while Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and Richard, took advantage of a very fine day to make a little excursion. Mr. Boythorn was to wait for Kenge and Carboy’s clerk, and then was to go on foot to meet them on their return.

  Well! I was full of business, examining tradesmen’s books, adding up columns, paying money, filing receipts, and I dare say making a great bustle about it, when Mr. Guppy was announced and shown in. I had had some idea that the clerk who was to be sent down, might be the young gentleman who had met me at the coach-office; and I was glad to see him, because he was associated with my present happiness.

  I scarcely knew him again, he was so uncommonly smart. He had an entirely new suit of glossy clothes on, a shining hat, lilac-kid gloves, a neckerchief of a variety of colours, a large hot-house flower in his button-hole, and a thick gold ring on his little finger. Besides which, he quite scented the dining-room with bear’s-grease and other perfumery. He looked at me with an attention that quite confused me, when I begged him to take a seat until the servant should return; and as he sat there, crossing and uncrossing his legs in a corner, and I asked him if he had had a pleasant ride, and hoped that Mr. Kenge was well, I never looked at him, but I found him looking at me, in the same scrutinizing and curious way.

  When the request was brought to him that he would go upstairs to Mr. Boythorn’s room, I mentioned that he would find lunch prepared for him when he came down, of which Mr. Jarndyce hoped he would partake. He said with some embarrassment, holding the handle of the door, “Shall I have the honour of finding you here, miss?” I replied yes, I should be there; and he went out with a bow and another look.

  I thought him only awkward and shy, for he was evidently much embarrassed; and I fancied that the best thing I could do, would be to wait until I saw that he had everything he wanted, and then to leave him to himself. The lunch was soon brought, but it remained for some time on the table. The interview with Mr. Boythorn was a long one—and a stormy one too, I should think; for although his room was at some distance, I heard his loud voice rising every now and then like a high wind, and evidently blowing perfect broadsides of denunciation.

  At last Mr. Guppy came back, looking something the worse for the conference. “My eye, miss,” he said in a low voice, “he’s a Tartar!”

  “Pray take some refreshment, sir,” said I.

  Mr. Guppy sat down at the table, and began nervously sharpening the carving-knife on the carving-fork; still looking at me (as I felt quite sure without looking at him), in the same unusual manner. The sharpening lasted so long, that at last I felt a kind of obligation on me to raise my eyes, in order that I might break the spell under which he seemed to labour, of not being able to leave off.

  He immediately looked at the dish, and began to carve.

  “What will you take yourself, miss? You’ll take a morsel of something?”

  “No, thank you,” said I.

  “Shan’t I give you a piece of anything at all, miss?” said Mr. Guppy, hurriedly drinking off a glass of wine.

  “Nothing, thank you,” said I. “I have only waited to see that you have everything you want. Is there anything I can order for you?”

  “No, I am much obliged to you, miss, I’m sure. I’ve everything that I can require to make me comfortable—at least I—not comfortable—I’m never that”: he drank off two more glasses of wine, one after another.

  I thought I had better go.

  “I beg your pardon, miss!” said Mr. Guppy, rising, when he saw me rise. “But would you allow me the favour of a minute’s private conversation?”

  Not knowing what to say, I sat down again.

  “What follows is without prejudice, miss?” said Mr. Guppy, anxiously bringing a chair towards my table.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” said I, wondering.

  “It’s one of our law terms, miss. You won’t make any use of it to my detriment, at Kenge and Carboy’s, or elsewhere. If our conversation shouldn’t lead to anything, I am to be as I was, and am not to be prejudiced in my situation or worldly prospects. In short, it’s in total confidence.”

  “I am at a loss, sir,” said I, “to imagine what you can have to communicate in total confidence to me, whom you have never seen but once; but I should be very sorry to do you any injury.”

  “Thank you, miss. I’m sure of it—that’s quite sufficient.” All this time Mr. Guppy was either planing his forehead with his handkerchief, or tightly rubbing the palm of his left hand with the palm of his right. “If you would excuse my taking another glass of wine, miss, I think it might assist me in getting on, without a continual choke that cannot fail to be mutually unpleasant.”

  He did so, and came back again. I took the opportunity of moving well behind my table.

  “You wouldn’t allow me to offer you one, would you, miss?” said Mr. Guppy, apparently refreshed.

  “Not any,” said I.

  “Not half a glass?” said Mr. Guppy; “quarter? No! Then, to proceed. My present salary, Miss Summerson, at Kenge and Carboy’s, is two pound a week. When I first had the happiness of looking upon you, it was one-fifteen, and had stood at that figure for a lengthened period. A rise of five has since taken place, and a further rise of five is guaranteed at the expiration of a term not exceeding twelve months from the present date. My mother has a little property, which takes the form of a small life annuity; upon which she lives in an independent though unassuming manner, in the Old Street Road. She is eminently calculated for a mother-in-law. She never interferes, is all for peace, and her disposition easy. She has her failings—as who has not?—but I never knew her do it when company was present; at which time you may freely trust her with wines, spirits, or malt liquors. My own abode is lodgings at Penton Place, Pentonville. It is lowly, but airy, open at the back, and considered one of the ’ealthiest outlets. Miss Summerson! In the mildest language, I adore you. Would you be so kind as to allow me (as I may say) to file a declaration—to make an offer!”

  Mr. Guppy went down on his knees. I was well behind my table, and not much frightened. I said, “Get up from that ridiculous position immediately, sir, or you will oblige me to break my implied promise and ring the bell!”

  “Hear me out, miss!” said Mr. Guppy, folding his hands.

  “I cannot consent to hear another word, sir,” I returned, “unless you get up from the carpet directly, and go and sit down at the table, as you ought to do if you have any sense at all.”

  He looked piteously, but slowly rose and did so.

  “Yet what a mockery it is, miss,” he said, with his hand upon his heart, and shaking his head at me in a melancholy manner over the tray, “to be stationed behind food at such a moment. The soul recoils from food at such a moment, miss.”

  “I beg you to conclude,” said I; “you have asked me to hear you out, and I beg you to conclude.”

  “I will, miss,” said Mr. Guppy. “As I love and honour, so likewise I obey. Would that I could make Thee the subject of that vow, before the shrine!”

  “That is quite impossible,” said I, “and entirely out of the question.”

  “I am aware,” said Mr. Guppy, leaning forward over the tray and regarding me, as I again strangely felt, though my eyes were not directed to him, with his late intent look, “I am aware that in a worldly point of view, according to all appearances, my offer is a poor one. But, Miss Summerson! Angel!—No, don’t ring—I have been brought up in a sharp school, and am accustomed to a variety of general practice. Though a young man, I have ferreted out evidence, got up cases, and seen lots of life. Blest with your hand, what means might I not find of advancing your interests, and pushing your fortunes! What might I not get to know, nearly concerning you? I know nothing now, ce
rtainly; but what might I not, if I had your confidence, and you set me on?”

  I told him that he addressed my interest, or what he supposed to be my interest, quite as unsuccessfully as he addressed my inclination; and he would now understand that I requested him, if he pleased, to go away immediately.

  “Cruel miss,” said Mr. Guppy, “hear but another word! I think you must have seen that I was struck with those charms, on the day when I waited at the Whytorseller. I think you must have remarked that I could not forbear a tribute to those charms when I put up the steps of the ’ackney-coach. It was a feeble tribute to Thee, but it was well meant. Thy image has ever since been fixed in my breast. I have walked up and down, of an evening, opposite Jellyby’s house, only to look upon the bricks that once contained Thee. This out of today, quite an unnecessary out so far as the attendance, which was its pretended object, went, was planned by me alone for Thee alone. If I speak of interest, it is only to recommend myself and my respectful wretchedness. Love was before it, and is before it.”

  “I should be pained, Mr. Guppy,” said I, rising and putting my hand upon the bell-rope, “to do you, or any one who was sincere, the injustice of slighting any honest feeling, however disagreeably expressed. If you have really meant to give me a proof of your good opinion, though ill-timed and misplaced, I feel that I ought to thank you. I have very little reason to be proud, and I am not proud. I hope,” I think I added, without very well knowing what I said, “that you will go away as if you had never been so exceedingly foolish, and attend to Messrs. Kenge and Carboy’s business.”

  “Half a minute, miss!” cried Mr. Guppy, checking me as I was about to ring. “This has been without prejudice?”

  “I will never mention it,” said I, “unless you should give me future occasion to do so.”

  “A quarter of a minute, miss! In case you should think better—at any time, however distant, that’s no consequence, for my feelings can never alter—of anything I have said, particularly what might I not do—Mr. William Guppy, eighty-seven, Penton Place, or if removed, or dead (of blighted hopes or anything of that sort), care of Mrs. Guppy, three hundred and two, Old Street Road, will be sufficient.”

  I rang the bell, the servant came, and Mr. Guppy, laying his written card upon the table, and making a dejected bow, departed. Raising my eyes as he went out, I once more saw him looking at me after he had passed the door.

  I sat there for another hour or more, finishing my books and payments, and getting through plenty of business. Then, I arranged my desk, and put everything away, and was so composed and cheerful that I thought I had quite dismissed this unexpected incident. But, when I went upstairs to my own room, I surprised myself by beginning to laugh about it, and then surprised myself still more by beginning to cry about it. In short, I was in a flutter for a little while; and felt as if an old chord had been more coarsely touched than it ever had been since the days of the dear old doll, long buried in the garden.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE LAW-WRITER

  On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, that is to say, more particularly in Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby, Law-Stationer, pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of Cook’s Court, at most times a shady place, Mr. Snagsby has dealt in all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls of parchment; in paper—foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, whitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens, ink, India-rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers; in red tape and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs, diaries, and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands—glass and leaden, pen-knives, scissors, bodkins, and other small office-cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention; ever since he was out of his time, and went into partnership with Peffer. On that occasion, Cook’s Court was in a manner revolutionized by the new inscription in fresh paint, PEFFER AND SNAGSBY, displacing the time-honoured and not easily to be deciphered legend, PEFFER, only. For smoke, which is the London ivy, had so wreathed itself round Peffer’s name, and clung to his dwelling-place, that the affectionate parasite quite overpowered the parent tree.

  Peffer is never seen in Cook’s Court now. He is not expected there, for he has been recumbent this quarter of a century in the churchyard of St. Andrews, Holborn, with the waggons and hackney-coaches roaring past him, all the day and half the night, like one great dragon. If he ever steal forth when the dragon is at rest, to air himself again in Cook’s Court, until admonished to return by the crowing of the sanguine cock in the cellar at the little dairy in Cursitor Street, whose ideas of daylight it would be curious to ascertain, since he knows from his personal observation next to nothing about it—if Peffer ever do revisit the pale glimpses of Cook’s Court, which no law-stationer in the trade can positively deny, he comes invisibly, and no one is the worse or wiser.

  In his lifetime, and likewise in the period of Snagsby’s “time” of seven long years, there dwelt with Peffer, in the same law-stationering premises, a niece—a short, shrewd niece, something too violently compressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose like a sharp autumn evening, inclining to be frosty towards the end. The Cook’s-Courtiers had a rumour flying among them, that the mother of this niece did, in her daughter’s childhood, moved by too jealous a solicitude that her figure should approach perfection, lace her up every morning with her maternal foot against the bed-post for a stronger hold and purchase; and further, that she exhibited internally pints of vinegar and lemon-juice: which acids, they held, had mounted to the nose and temper of the patient. With whichsoever of the many tongues of Rumour this frothy report originated, it either never reached, or never influenced, the ears of young Snagsby; who, having wooed and won its fair subject on his arrival at man’s estate, entered into two partnerships at once. So now, in Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby and the niece are one; and the niece still cherishes her figure—which, however tastes may differ, is unquestionably so far precious, that there is mighty little of it.

  Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are not only one bone and one flesh, but, to the neighbours’ thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed from Mrs. Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook’s Court very often. Mr. Snagsby, otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet tones, is rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid man with a shining head, and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back. He tends to meekness and obesity. As he stands at his door in Cook’s Court, in his grey shop-coat and black calico sleeves, looking up at the clouds; or stands behind a desk in his dark shop, with a heavy flat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheepskin, in company with his two ’prentices; he is emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. From beneath his feet, at such times, as from a shrill ghost unquiet in its grave, there frequently arise complainings and lamentations in the voice already mentioned; and haply, on some occasions, when these reach a sharper pitch than usual, Mr. Snagsby mentions to the ’prentices, “I think my little woman is a-giving it to Guster!”

  This proper name, so used by Mr. Snagsby, has before now sharpened the wit of the Cook’s-Courtiers to remark that it ought to be the name of Mrs. Snagsby; seeing that she might with great force and expression be termed a Guster, in compliment to her stormy character. It is, however, the possession, and the only possession, except fifty shillings per annum and a very small box indifferently filled with clothing, of a lean young woman from a workhouse (by some supposed to have been christened Augusta); who, although she was farmed or contracted for, during her growing time, by an amiable benefactor of his species resident at Tooting, and cannot fail to have been developed under the most favourable circumstances, “has fits”—which the parish can’t account for.

  Ouster, really aged three or four and twenty, but looking a round ten years older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawback of fits; and is so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her patron saint, that except when she is found with her head in the pail, or the sink, or the copper, or the dinner, or anything else that happe
ns to be near her at the time of her seizure, she is always at work. She is a satisfaction to the parents and guardians of the ’prentices, who feel that there is little danger of her inspiring tender emotions in the breast of youth; she is a satisfaction to Mrs. Snagsby, who can always find fault with her; she is a satisfaction to Mr. Snagsby, who thinks it a charity to keep her. The law-stationer’s establishment is, in Guster’s eyes, a Temple of plenty and splendour. She believes the little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with its hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant apartment in Christendom. The view it commands of Cook’s Court at one end (not to mention a squint into Cursitor Street), and of Coavinses’ the sheriff’s officer’s backyard at the other, she regards as a prospect of unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays in oil—and plenty of it too—of Mr. Snagsby looking at Mrs. Snagsby, and of Mrs. Snagsby looking at Mr. Snagsby, are in her eyes as achievements of Raphael or Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her many privations.

  Mr. Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the business to Mrs. Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches the Tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays, licences Mr. Snagsby’s entertainments, and acknowledges no responsibility as to what she thinks fit to provide for dinner; insomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among the neighbouring wives, a long way down Chancery Lane on both sides, and even out in Holborn, who, in any domestic passages of arms, habitually call upon their husbands to look at the difference between their (the wives’) position and Mrs. Snagsby’s and their (the husbands’) behaviour and Mr. Snagsby’s. Rumour, always flying, bat-like, about Cook’s Court, and skimming in and out at everybody’s windows, does say that Mrs. Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive; and that Mr. Snagsby is sometimes worried out of house and home, and that if he had the spirit of a mouse he wouldn’t stand it. It is even observed, that the wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining example, in reality look down upon him; and that nobody does so with greater superciliousness than one particular lady whose lord is more than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of correction. But these vague whisperings may arise from Mr. Snagsby’s being, in his way, rather a meditative and poetical man; loving to walk in Staple Inn in the summer-time, and to observe how countrified the sparrows and the leaves are; also to lounge about the Rolls Yard of a Sunday afternoon, and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were old times once, and that you’d find a stone coffin or two, now, under that chapel, he’ll be bound, if you was to dig for it. He solaces his imagination, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors and Vices, and Masters of the Rolls, who are deceased; and he gets such a flavour of the country out of telling the two ’prentices how he has heard say that a brook “as clear as crystal” once ran right down the middle of Holborn, when Turnstile really was a turnstile, leading slap away into the meadows—gets such a flavour of the country out of this, that he never wants to go there.