So they go out in a loose procession, something after the manner of a straggling funeral, and make their inspection in Mr. Krook’s back second floor, from which a few of the Jurymen retire pale and precipitately. The beadle is very careful that two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons (for whose accommodation he has provided a special little table near the Coroner, in the Harmonic Meeting Room) should see all that is to be seen. For they are the public chroniclers of such inquiries, by the line; and he is not superior to the universal human infirmity, but hopes to read in print what “Mooney, the active and intelligent beadle of the district,” said and did; and even aspires to see the name of Mooney as familiarly and patronizingly mentioned as the name of the Hangman is, according to the latest examples.
Little Swills is waiting for the Coroner and Jury on their return. Mr. Tulkinghorn, also. Mr. Tulkinghorn is received with distinction, and seated near the Coroner; between that high judicial officer, a bagatelle-board, and the coal-box. The inquiry proceeds. The Jury learn how the subject of their inquiry died, and learn no more about him. “A very eminent solicitor is in attendance, gentlemen,” says the Coroner, “who, I am informed, was accidentally present, when discovery of the death was made; but he could only repeat the evidence you have already heard from the surgeon, the landlord, the lodger, and the law-stationer; and it is not necessary to trouble him. Is anybody in attendance who knows anything more?”
Mrs. Piper pushed forward by Mrs. Perkins. Mrs. Piper sworn.
Anastasia Piper, gentlemen. Married woman. Now, Mrs. Piper—what have you got to say about this?
Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and without punctuation, but not much to tell. Mrs. Piper lives in the court (which her husband is a cabinet-maker), and it has long been well beknown among the neighbours (counting from the day next but one before the half-baptizing of Alexander James Piper aged eighteen months and four days old on accounts of not being expected to live such was the sufferings gentlemen of that child in his gums) as the Plaintive—so Mrs. Piper insists on calling the deceased—was reported to have sold himself. Thinks it was the Plaintive’s air in which that report originatinin. See the Plaintive often and considered as his air was feariocious and not to be allowed to go about some children being timid (and if doubted hoping Mrs. Perkins may be brought forard for she is here and will do credit to her husband and herself and family). Has seen the Plaintive wexed and worrited by the children (for children they will ever be and you cannot expect them specially if of playful dispositions to be Methoozellers which you was not yourself). On accounts of this and his dark looks has often dreamed as she see him take a pick-axe from his pocket and split Johnny’s head (which the child knows not fear and has repeatually called after him close at his eels). Never however see the Plaintive take a pick-axe or any other wepping far from it. Has seen him hurry away when run and called after as if not partial to children and never see him speak to neither child nor grown person at any time (excepting the boy that sweeps the crossing down the lane over the way round the corner which if he was here would tell you that he has been seen a-speaking to him frequent).
Says the Coroner, is that boy here? Says the beadle, no, sir, he is not here. Says the Coroner, go and fetch him then. In the absence of the active and intelligent, the Coroner converses with Mr. Tulkinghorn.
O! Here’s the boy, gentlemen!
Here he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very ragged. Now, boy!—But stop a minute. Caution. This boy must be put through a few preliminary paces.
Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don’t know that everybody has two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don’t know that Jo is short for a longer name. Thinks it long enough for him. He don’t find no fault with it. Spell it? No. He can’t spell it. No father, no mother, no friends. Never been to school. What’s home? Knows a broom’s a broom, and knows it’s wicked to tell a lie. Don’t recollect who told him about the broom, or about the lie, but knows both. Can’t exactly say what’ll be done to him arter he’s dead if he tells a lie to the gentlemen here, but believes it’ll be something wery bad to punish him, and serve him right—and so he’ll tell the truth.
“This won’t do, gentlemen!” says the Coroner, with a melancholy shake of the head.
“Don’t you think you can receive his evidence, sir?” asks an attentive Juryman.
“Out of the question,” says the Coroner. “You have heard the boy. ‘Can’t exactly say’ won’t do, you know. We can’t take that, in a Court of Justice, gentlemen. It’s terrible depravity. Put the boy aside.”
Boy put aside; to the great edification of the audience;—especially of Little Swills, the Comic Vocalist.
Now. Is there any other witness? No other witness.
Very well, gentlemen! Here’s a man unknown, proved to have been in the habit of taking opium in large quantities for a year and a half, found dead of too much opium. If you think you have any evidence to lead you to the conclusion that he committed suicide, you will come to that conclusion. If you think it is a case of accidental death, you will find a Verdict accordingly.
Verdict accordingly. Accidental death. No doubt. Gentlemen, you are discharged. Good afternoon.
While the Coroner buttons his great-coat, Mr. Tulkinghorn and he give private audience to the rejected witness in a corner.
That graceless creature only knows that the dead man (whom he recognized just now by his yellow face and black hair) was sometimes hooted and pursued about the streets. That one cold winter night, when he, the boy, was shivering in a doorway near his crossing, the man turned to look at him, and came back, and, having questioned him and found that he had not a friend in the world, said, “Neither have I. Not one!” and gave him the price of a supper and a night’s lodging. That the man had often spoken to him since; and asked him whether he slept sound at night, and how he bore cold and hunger, and whether he ever wished to die; and similar strange questions. That when the man had no money, he would say in passing, “I am as poor as you today, Jo”; but that when he had any, he had always (as the boy most heartily believes) been glad to give him some.
“He was wery good to me,” says the boy, wiping his eyes with his wretched sleeve. “Wen I see him a-layin’ so stritched out just now, I wished he could have heard me tell him so. He wos wery good to me, he wos!”
As he shuffles downstairs, Mr. Snagsby, lying in wait for him, puts a half-crown in his hand. “If you ever see me coming past your crossing with my little woman—I mean a lady—” says Mr. Snagsby, with his finger on his nose, “don’t allude to it!”
For some little time the Jurymen hang about the Sol’s Arms colloquially. In the sequel, half-a-dozen are caught up in a cloud of pipe-smoke that pervades the parlour of the Sol’s Arms; two stroll to Hampstead; and four engage to go half-price to the play at night, and top up with oysters. Little Swills is treated on several hands. Being asked what he thinks of the proceedings, characterizes them (his strength lying in a slangular direction) as “a rummy start.” The landlord of the Sol’s Arms, finding Little Swills so popular, commends him highly to the Jurymen and public; observing that, for a song in character, he don’t know his equal, and that that man’s character-wardrobe would fill a cart.
Thus, gradually the Sol’s Arms melts into the shadowy night, and then flares out of it strong in gas. The Harmonic Meeting hour arriving, the gentleman of professional celebrity takes the chair; is faced (red-faced) by Little Swills; their friends rally round them, and support first-rate talent. In the zenith of the evening, Little Swills says, Gentlemen, if you’ll permit me, I’ll attempt a short description of a scene of real life that came off here today. Is much applauded and encouraged; goes out of the room as Swills; comes in as the Coroner (not the least in the world like him); describes the Inquest, with recreative intervals of pianoforte accompaniment to the refrain: With his (the Coroner’s) tippy tol li doll, tippy tol lo doll, tippy tol li doll, Dee!
The jingling piano at last is s
ilent, and the Harmonic friends rally round their pillows. Then there is rest around the lonely figure, now laid in its last earthly habitation; and it is watched by the gaunt eyes in the shutters through some quiet hours of night. If this forlorn man could have been prophetically seen lying here, by the mother at whose breast he nestled, a little child, with eyes upraised to her loving face, and soft hand scarcely knowing how to close upon the neck to which it crept, what an impossibility the vision would have seemed! O, if, in brighter days, the now extinguished fire within him ever burned for one woman who held him in her heart, where is she, while these ashes are above the ground!
It is anything but a night of rest at Mr. Snagsby’s, in Cook’s Court; where Guster murders sleep, by going, as Mr. Snagsby himself allows—not to put too fine a point upon it—out of one fit into twenty. The occasion of this seizure is, that Guster has a tender heart, and a susceptible something that possibly might have been imagination, but for Tooting and her patron saint. Be it what it may, now, it was so direfully impressed at tea-time by Mr. Snagsby’s account of the inquiry at which he had assisted, that at supper-time she projected herself into the kitchen, preceded by a flying Dutch cheese, and fell into a fit of unusual duration: which she only came out of to go into another, and another, and so on through a chain of fits, with short intervals between, of which she has pathetically availed herself by consuming them in entreaties to Mrs. Snagsby not to give her warning “when she quite comes to”; and also in appeals to the whole establishment to lay her down on the stones, and go to bed. Hence, Mr. Snagsby, at last hearing the cock at the little dairy in Cursitor Street go into that disinterested ecstasy of his on the subject of daylight, says, drawing a long breath, though the most patient of men, “I thought you was dead, I am sure!”
What question this enthusiastic fowl supposes he settles when he strains himself to such an extent, or why he should thus crow (so men crow on various triumphant public occasions, however) about what cannot be of any moment to him, is his affair. It is enough that daylight comes, morning comes, noon comes.
Then the active and intelligent, who has got into the morning papers as such, comes with his pauper company to Mr. Krook’s, and bears off the body of our dear brother here departed, to a hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated to the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed; while our dear brothers and sisters who hang about official back-stairs—would to Heaven they had departed!—are very complacent and agreeable. Into a beastly scrap of ground which a Turk would reject as a savage abomination, and a Caffre would shudder at, they bring our dear brother here departed, to receive Christian burial.
With houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate—with every villainy of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of death in action close on life—here, they lower our dear brother down a foot or two: here, sow him in corruption, to be raised in corruption: an avenging ghost at many a sick-bedside: a shameful testimony to future ages, how civilization and barbarism walked this boastful island together.
Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon or stay too long, by such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into the windows of the ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at least with this dread scene shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so sullenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its witch-ointment slimy to the touch! It is well that you should call to every passer-by, “Look here!”
With the night, comes a slouching figure through the tunnelcourt, to the outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands, and looks in between the bars; stands looking in, for a little while.
It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step, and makes the archway clean. It does so, very busily and trimly; looks in again, a little while; and so departs.
Jo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a rejected witness, who “can’t exactly say” what will be done to him in greater hands than men’s, thou art not quite in outer darkness. There is something like a distant ray of light in thy muttered reason for this:
“He wos wery good to me, he wos!”
CHAPTER 12
ON THE WATCH
It has left off raining down in Lincolnshire, at last, and Chesney Wold has taken heart. Mrs. Rouncewell is full of hospitable cares, for Sir Leicester and my Lady are coming home from Paris. The fashionable intelligence has found it out, and communicates the glad tidings to benighted England. It has also found out that they will entertain a brilliant and distinguished circle of the élite of the beau monde (the fashionable intelligence is weak in English, but a giant refreshed in French), at the ancient and hospitable family seat in Lincolnshire.
For the greater honour of the brilliant and distinguished circle, and of Chesney Wold into the bargain, the broken arch of the bridge in the park is mended; and the water, now retired within its proper limits and again spanned gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect from the house. The clear cold sunshine glances into the brittle woods, and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves and drying the moss. It glides over the park after the moving shadows of the clouds, and chases them, and never catches them, all day. It looks in at the windows, and touches the ancestral portraits with bars and patches of brightness, never contemplated by the painters. Athwart the picture of my Lady, over the great chimney-piece, it throws a broad bend-sinister of light that strikes down crookedly into the hearth, and seems to rend it.
Through the same cold sunshine, and the same sharp wind, my Lady and Sir Leicester, in their travelling chariot (my Lady’s woman, and Sir Leicester’s man affectionate in the rumble), start for home. With a considerable amount of jingling and whip-cracking, and many plunging demonstrations on the part of two bare-backed horses, and two Centaurs with glazed hats, jack-boots, and flowing manes and tails, they rattle out of the yard of the Hôtel Bristol in the Place Vendôme, and canter between the sun-and-shadow-chequered colonnade of the Rue de Rivoli and the garden of the ill-fated palace of a headless king and queen, off by the Place of Concord, and the Elysian Fields, and the Gate of the Star, out of Paris.
Sooth to say, they cannot go away too fast; for, even here, my Lady Dedlock has been bored to death. Concert, assembly, opera, theatre, drive, nothing is new to my Lady, under the worn-out heavens. Only last Sunday, when poor wretches were gay—within the walls, playing with children among the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace Garden; walking, a score abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more Elysian by performing dogs and wooden horses; between whiles filtering (a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of Our Lady, to say a word or two at the base of a pillar, within flare of a rusty little gridiron—full of gusty little tapers—without the walls, encompassing Paris with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking, tomb-visiting, billiard card and domino-playing, quack-doctoring, and much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate—only last Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits.
She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies before her, as it lies behind—her Ariel has put a girdle of it round the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped—but the imperfect remedy is always to fly, from the last place where it has been experienced. Fling Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for endless avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when next beheld, let it be some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck glittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain: two dark square towers rising out of it, and light and shadow descending on it aslant, like the angels in Jacob’s dream!
Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored. When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man, to have so inexhaustible a subject. After reading his letters, he leans back in his corner of the carriage,
and generally reviews his importance to society.
“You have an unusual amount of correspondence this morning?” says my Lady, after a long time. She is fatigued with reading. Has almost read a page in twenty miles.
“Nothing in it, though. Nothing whatever.”
“I saw one of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s long effusions, I think?”
“You see everything,” says Sir Leicester, with admiration.
“Ha!” sighs my Lady. “He is the most tiresome of men!”
“He sends—I really beg your pardon—he sends,” says Sir Leicester, selecting the letter, and unfolding it, “a message to you. Our stopping to change horses, as I came to his postscript, drove it out of my memory. I beg you’ll excuse me. He says—” Sir Leicester is so long in taking out his eye-glass and adjusting it, that my Lady looks a little irritated. “He says, ‘In the matter of the right of way—’ I beg your pardon, that’s not the place. He says—yes! Here I have it! He says, ‘I beg my respectful compliments to my Lady, who, I hope, has benefited by the change. Will you do me the favour to mention (as it may interest her), that I have something to tell her on her return, in reference to the person who copied the affidavit in the Chancery suit, which so powerfully stimulated her curiosity. I have seen him.’ ”
My Lady, leaning forward, looks out of her window.
“That’s the message,” observes Sir Leicester.
“I should like to walk a little,” says my Lady, still looking out of her window.
“Walk?” repeats Sir Leicester, in a tone of surprise.
“I should like to walk a little,” says my Lady with unmistakable distinctness. “Please to stop the carriage.”
The carriage is stopped, the affectionate man alights from the rumble, opens the door, and lets down the steps, obedient to an impatient motion of my Lady’s hand. My Lady alights so quickly, and walks so quickly, that Sir Leicester, for all his scrupulous politeness, is unable to assist her, and is left behind. A space of a minute or two has elapsed before he comes up with her. She smiles, looks very handsome, takes his arm, lounges with him for a quarter of a mile, is very much bored, and resumes her seat in the carriage.
The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White) Page 52