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

by Lynn Shepherd

  And Charley did not die. She flutteringly and slowly turned the dangerous point, after long lingering there, and then began to mend. The hope that never had been given, from the first, of Charley being in outward appearance Charley any more, soon began to be encouraged; and even that prospered, and I saw her growing into her old childish likeness again.

  It was a great morning, when I could tell Ada all this as she stood out in the garden; and it was a great evening, when Charley and I at last took tea together in the next room. But, on that same evening, I felt that I was stricken cold.

  Happily for both of us, it was not until Charley was safe in bed again and placidly asleep, that I began to think the contagion of her illness was upon me. I had been able easily to hide what I felt at tea-time, but I was past that already now, and I knew that I was rapidly following in Charley’s steps.

  I was well enough, however, to be up early in the morning, and to return my darling’s cheerful blessing from the garden and to talk with her as long as usual. But I was not free from an impression that I had been walking about the two rooms in the night, a little beside myself, though knowing where I was; and I felt confused at times—with a curious sense of fullness, as if I were becoming too large altogether.

  In the evening I was so much worse that I resolved to prepare Charley; with which view, I said, “You’re getting quite strong, Charley, are you not?”

  “O quite!” said Charley.

  “Strong enough to be told a secret, I think, Charley?”

  “Quite strong enough for that, miss!” cried Charley. But Charley’s face fell in the height of her delight, for she saw the secret in my face; and she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my bosom, and said “O miss, it’s my doing! It’s my doing!” and a great deal more, out of the fullness of her grateful heart.

  “Now, Charley,” said I after letting her go on for a little while, “if I am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you. And unless you are as quiet and composed for me, as you always were for yourself, you can never fulfil it, Charley.”

  “If you’ll let me cry a little longer, miss,” said Charley. “O my dear, my dear! if you’ll only let me cry a little longer, O my dear!”—how affectionately and devotedly she poured this out, as she clung to my neck, I never can remember without tears—“I’ll be good.”

  So I let Charley cry a little longer, and it did us both good.

  “Trust in me now, if you please, miss,” said Charley, quietly. “I am listening to everything you say.”

  “It’s very little at present, Charley. I shall tell your doctor tonight that I don’t think I am well, and that you are going to nurse me.”

  For that the poor child thanked me with her whole heart.

  “And in the morning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I should not be quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go, Charley, and say I am asleep—that I have rather tired myself and am asleep. At all times keep the room as I have kept it, Charley, and let no one come.”

  Charley promised, and I lay down, for I was very heavy. I saw the doctor that night, and asked the favour of him that I wished to ask, relative to his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet. I have a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day, and of day melting into night again; but I was just able, on the first morning, to get to the window, and speak to my darling.

  On the second morning I heard her dear voice—O how dear now!—outside; and I asked Charley, with some difficulty (speech being painful to me), to go and say I was asleep. I heard her answer softly, “Don’t disturb her, Charley, for the world!”

  “How does my own Pride look, Charley?” I inquired.

  “Disappointed, miss,” said Charley, peeping through the curtain.

  “But I know she is very beautiful this morning.”

  “She is indeed, miss,” answered Charley, peeping. “Still looking up at the window.”

  With her blue clear eyes, God bless them, always loveliest when raised like that!

  I called Charley to me, and gave her her last charge.

  “Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her way into the room. Keep her out, Charley, if you love me truly, to the last! Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon me for one moment as I lie here, I shall die.”

  “I never will! I never will!” she promised me.

  “I believe it, my dear Charley. And now come and sit beside me for a little while, and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you, Charley; I am blind.”

  CHAPTER 32

  THE APPOINTED TIME

  It is night in Lincoln’s Inn—perplexed and troublous valley of the shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day—and fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down the crazy wooden stairs, and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine o’clock, has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows, clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land. Over which bee-like industry, these benefactors of their species linger yet, though office-hours be past; that they may give, for every day, some good account at last.

  In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the Rag and Bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and supper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours, and scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of passengers—Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged congratulations on the children being abed; and they still linger on a door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Krook and his lodger, and the fact of Mr. Krook’s being “continually in liquor,” and the testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the Harmonic Meeting at the Sol’s Arms; where the sound of the piano through the partly-opened windows jingles out into the court, and where Little Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar like a very Yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a concerted piece, and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to Listen, listen, listen, Tew the wa-ter-Fall! Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of professional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings, and who has a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window; Mrs. Perkins possessing information that she has been married a year and a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren, and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol’s Arms every night to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments. “Sooner than which, myself,” said Mrs. Perkins, “I would get my living by selling lucifers.” Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the same opinion; holding that a private station is better than public applause, and thanking Heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs. Perkins’s) respectability. By this time, the potboy of the Sol’s Arms appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs. Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to bed. Now, there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court, and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too, the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis that every one is either robbing or being robbed.

 
It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too; and there is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the Registrar of Deaths some extra business. It may be something in the air—there is plenty in it—or it may be something in himself, that is in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He comes and goes, between his own room and the open street door, twenty times an hour. He has been doing so, ever since it fell dark. Since the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early tonight, Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all proportion), oftener than before.

  It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too; for he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery, of which he is a partaker, and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby haunts what seems to be its fountain-head—the rag and bottle shop in the court. It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by the Sol’s Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out at the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated after-supper stroll of ten minutes long from his own door and back again, Mr. Snagsby approaches.

  “What, Mr. Weevle?” says the stationer, stopping to speak. “Are you there?”

  “Ay!” says Weevle. “Here I am, Mr. Snagsby.”

  “Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?” the stationer inquires.

  “Why, there’s not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not very freshening,” Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.

  “Very true, sir. Don’t you observe,” says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to sniff and taste the air a little; “don’t you observe, Mr. Weevle, that you’re—not to put too fine a point upon it—that you’re rather greasy here, sir?”

  “Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in the place tonight,” Mr. Weevle rejoins. “I suppose it’s chops at the Sol’s Arms.”

  “Chops, do you think? Oh!—Chops, eh?” Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again. “Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning ’em, sir! And I don’t think”; Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again, and then spits and wipes his mouth; “I don’t think—not to put too fine a point upon it—that they were quite fresh, when they were shown the gridiron.”

  “That’s very likely. It’s a tainting sort of weather.”

  “It is a tainting sort of weather,” says Mr. Snagsby, “and I find it sinking to the spirits.”

  “By George! I find it gives me the horrors,” returns Mr. Weevle.

  “Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room, with a black circumstance hanging over it,” says Mr. Snagsby, looking in past the other’s shoulder along the dark passage, and then falling back a step to look up at the house. “I couldn’t live in that room alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door, and stand here, sooner than sit there. But then it’s very true that you didn’t see, in your room, what I saw there. That makes a difference.”

  “I know quite enough about it,” returns Tony.

  “It’s not agreeable, is it?” pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his cough of mild persuasion behind his hand. “Mr. Krook ought to consider it in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure.”

  “I hope he does,” says Tony. “But I doubt it.”

  “You find the rent too high, do you, sir?” returns the stationer. “Rents are high about here. I don’t know how it is exactly, but the law seems to put things up in price. Not,” adds Mr. Snagsby, with his apologetic cough, “that I mean to say a word against the profession I get my living by.”

  Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court, and then looks at the stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a star or so, and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his way out of this conversation.

  “It’s a curious fact, sir,” he observes, slowly rubbing his hands, “that he should have been—”

  “Who’s he?” interrupts Mr. Weevle.

  “The deceased, you know,” says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and right eyebrow towards the staircase, and tapping his acquaintance on the button.

  “Ah to be sure!” returns the other, as if he were not overfond of the subject. “I thought we had done with him.”

  “I was only going to say it’s a curious fact, sir, that he should have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,” says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle, “because I have known writers that have gone into Brewers’ houses and done really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir,” adds Mr. Snagsby, with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter.

  “It’s a curious coincidence, as you say,” answers Weevle, once more glancing up and down the court.

  “Seems a Fate in it, don’t there?” suggests the stationer.

  “There does.”

  “Just so,” observes the stationer, with his confirmatory cough. “Quite a Fate in it. Quite a Fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid you good night”; Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go, though he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since he stopped to speak; “my little woman will be looking for me else. Good night, sir!”

  If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol’s Arms all this time, and now glides after him with a pocket-handkerchief wrapped over her head; honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching glance as she goes past.

  “You’ll know me again, ma’am, at all events,” says Mr. Weevle to himself; “and I can’t compliment you on your appearance, whoever you are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow never coming!”

  This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up his finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door. Then, they go upstairs; Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy (for it is he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they speak low.

  “I thought you had gone to Jericho at least, instead of coming here,” says Tony.

  “Why, I said about ten.”

  “You said about ten,” Tony repeats. “Yes, so you did say about ten. But according to my count, it’s ten times ten—it’s a hundred o’clock. I never had such a night in my life!”

  “What has been the matter?”

  “That’s it!” says Tony. “Nothing has been the matter. But, here have I been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib, till I have had the horrors falling on me as thick as hail. There’s a blessed-looking candle!” says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.

  “That’s easily improved,” Mr. Guppy observes, as he takes the snuffers in his hand.

  “Is it?” returns his friend. “Not so easily as you think. It has been smouldering like that, ever since it was lighted.”

  “Why, what’s the matter with you, Tony?” inquires Mr. Guppy, looking at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the table.

  “William Guppy,” replies the other, “I am in the Downs. It’s this unbearably dull, suicidal room—and old Boguey downstairs, I suppose.” Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender, and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his head, and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy attitude.

  “Was
n’t that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?”

  “Yes, and he—yes, it was Snagsby,” said Mr. Weevle, altering the construction of his sentence.

  “On business?”

  “No. No business. He was only sauntering by, and stopped to prose.”

  “I thought it was Snagsby,” says Mr. Guppy, “and thought it as well that he shouldn’t see me, so I waited till he was gone.”

  “There we go again, William G!” cried Tony, looking up for an instant. “So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to commit a murder, we couldn’t have more mystery about it!”

  Mr. Guppy affects to smile; and with the view of changing the conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty; terminating his survey with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm.

  “That’s very like Lady Dedlock,” says Mr. Guppy. “It’s a speaking likeness.”

  “I wish it was,” growls Tony, without changing his position. “I should have some fashionable conversation, here, then.”

  Finding by this time, that his friend is not to be wheedled into a more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack, and remonstrates with him.

  “Tony,” says he, “I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man, better than I do; and no man perhaps has a better right to know it, than a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his art. But there are bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don’t think your manner on the present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly.”